{"bid": "28054", "title": "The Brothers Karamazov", "text": "PART I Book I. The History Of A Family Chapter I. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov\n\n\nAlexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch\nKaramazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and\nstill remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which\nhappened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper\nplace. For the present I will only say that this \"landowner\"--for so we\nused to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own\nestate--was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a\ntype abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of\nthose senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their\nworldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch,\nfor instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest;\nhe ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet\nat his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard\ncash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless,\nfantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not\nstupidity--the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and\nintelligent enough--but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of\nit.\n\nHe was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first\nwife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch's first\nwife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble\nfamily, also landowners in our district, the Miuesovs. How it came to pass\nthat an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those\nvigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes\nalso to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny\nweakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain. I knew a young\nlady of the last \"romantic\" generation who after some years of an\nenigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have\nmarried at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and\nended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid\nriver from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to\nsatisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. Indeed, if\nthis precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less\npicturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most\nlikely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and\nprobably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or\nthree generations. Adelaida Ivanovna Miuesov's action was similarly, no\ndoubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation\ncaused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her\nfeminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of\nher family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for\na brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic\nposition, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive\nepoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more.\nWhat gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement,\nand this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's\nposition at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for\nhe was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another. To\nattach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring\nprospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the\nbride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna's beauty. This was,\nperhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who\nwas always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on\nthe slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who\nmade no particular appeal to his senses.\n\nImmediately after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a flash\nthat she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage\naccordingly showed itself in its true colors with extraordinary rapidity.\nAlthough the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the\nrunaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most\ndisorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was\nsaid that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity\nthan Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up\nto twenty-five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those\nthousands were lost to her for ever. The little village and the rather\nfine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a\nlong time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He\nwould probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to\nget rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his\npersistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaida\nIvanovna's family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known\nfor a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife,\nbut rumor had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was\nbeaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient\nwoman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the\nhouse and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity\nstudent, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband's\nhands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the\nhouse, and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he\nused to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all\nof Adelaida Ivanovna's having left him, going into details too disgraceful\nfor a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to\ngratify him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part\nof the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.\n\n\"One would think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem\nso pleased in spite of your sorrow,\" scoffers said to him. Many even added\nthat he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and\nthat it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of\nhis ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At\nlast he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor\nwoman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity\nstudent, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete\nemancipation. Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making\npreparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself\nhave said. He would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do\nso he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another\nbout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family\nreceived the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly\nin a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had\nit, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife's\ndeath, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting\nwith joy, raising his hands to Heaven: \"Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant\ndepart in peace,\" but others say he wept without restraint like a little\nchild, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the\nrepulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true,\nthat he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who\nreleased him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more\nnaive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son\n\n\nYou can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how he would\nbring up his children. His behavior as a father was exactly what might be\nexpected. He completely abandoned the child of his marriage with Adelaida\nIvanovna, not from malice, nor because of his matrimonial grievances, but\nsimply because he forgot him. While he was wearying every one with his\ntears and complaints, and turning his house into a sink of debauchery, a\nfaithful servant of the family, Grigory, took the three-year-old Mitya\ninto his care. If he hadn't looked after him there would have been no one\neven to change the baby's little shirt.\n\nIt happened moreover that the child's relations on his mother's side\nforgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living, his widow,\nMitya's grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill, while his\ndaughters were married, so that Mitya remained for almost a whole year in\nold Grigory's charge and lived with him in the servant's cottage. But if\nhis father had remembered him (he could not, indeed, have been altogether\nunaware of his existence) he would have sent him back to the cottage, as\nthe child would only have been in the way of his debaucheries. But a\ncousin of Mitya's mother, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, happened to return\nfrom Paris. He lived for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that\ntime quite a young man, and distinguished among the Miuesovs as a man of\nenlightened ideas and of European culture, who had been in the capitals\nand abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal of the type\ncommon in the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had come\ninto contact with many of the most Liberal men of his epoch, both in\nRussia and abroad. He had known Proudhon and Bakunin personally, and in\nhis declining years was very fond of describing the three days of the\nParis Revolution of February 1848, hinting that he himself had almost\ntaken part in the fighting on the barricades. This was one of the most\ngrateful recollections of his youth. He had an independent property of\nabout a thousand souls, to reckon in the old style. His splendid estate\nlay on the outskirts of our little town and bordered on the lands of our\nfamous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an endless\nlawsuit, almost as soon as he came into the estate, concerning the rights\nof fishing in the river or wood-cutting in the forest, I don't know\nexactly which. He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of\nculture to open an attack upon the \"clericals.\" Hearing all about Adelaida\nIvanovna, whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had at one time\nbeen interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he intervened, in\nspite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor Pavlovitch.\nHe made the latter's acquaintance for the first time, and told him\ndirectly that he wished to undertake the child's education. He used long\nafterwards to tell as a characteristic touch, that when he began to speak\nof Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch looked for some time as though he did not\nunderstand what child he was talking about, and even as though he was\nsurprised to hear that he had a little son in the house. The story may\nhave been exaggerated, yet it must have been something like the truth.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing an\nunexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even to\nhis own direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case. This\nhabit, however, is characteristic of a very great number of people, some\nof them very clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovitch. Pyotr Alexandrovitch\ncarried the business through vigorously, and was appointed, with Fyodor\nPavlovitch, joint guardian of the child, who had a small property, a house\nand land, left him by his mother. Mitya did, in fact, pass into this\ncousin's keeping, but as the latter had no family of his own, and after\nsecuring the revenues of his estates was in haste to return at once to\nParis, he left the boy in charge of one of his cousins, a lady living in\nMoscow. It came to pass that, settling permanently in Paris he, too,\nforgot the child, especially when the Revolution of February broke out,\nmaking an impression on his mind that he remembered all the rest of his\nlife. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya passed into the care of one of her\nmarried daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I\nwon't enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor\nPavlovitch's firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most essential\nfacts about him, without which I could not begin my story.\n\nIn the first place, this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was the\nonly one of Fyodor Pavlovitch's three sons who grew up in the belief that\nhe had property, and that he would be independent on coming of age. He\nspent an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his studies at the\ngymnasium, he got into a military school, then went to the Caucasus, was\npromoted, fought a duel, and was degraded to the ranks, earned promotion\nagain, led a wild life, and spent a good deal of money. He did not begin\nto receive any income from Fyodor Pavlovitch until he came of age, and\nuntil then got into debt. He saw and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch,\nfor the first time on coming of age, when he visited our neighborhood on\npurpose to settle with him about his property. He seems not to have liked\nhis father. He did not stay long with him, and made haste to get away,\nhaving only succeeded in obtaining a sum of money, and entering into an\nagreement for future payments from the estate, of the revenues and value\nof which he was unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this occasion, to get\na statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for the first time\nthen (this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had a vague and exaggerated\nidea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well satisfied with this,\nas it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the young man\nwas frivolous, unruly, of violent passions, impatient, and dissipated, and\nthat if he could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied, although\nonly, of course, for a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take\nadvantage of this fact, sending him from time to time small doles,\ninstallments. In the end, when four years later, Mitya, losing patience,\ncame a second time to our little town to settle up once for all with his\nfather, it turned out to his amazement that he had nothing, that it was\ndifficult to get an account even, that he had received the whole value of\nhis property in sums of money from Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even\nin debt to him, that by various agreements into which he had, of his own\ndesire, entered at various previous dates, he had no right to expect\nanything more, and so on, and so on. The young man was overwhelmed,\nsuspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside himself. And, indeed,\nthis circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms the\nsubject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of it.\nBut before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovitch's\nother two sons, and of their origin.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. The Second Marriage And The Second Family\n\n\nVery shortly after getting his four-year-old Mitya off his hands Fyodor\nPavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight years.\nHe took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from\nanother province, where he had gone upon some small piece of business in\ncompany with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard and a vicious\ndebauchee he never neglected investing his capital, and managed his\nbusiness affairs very successfully, though, no doubt, not over-\nscrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure deacon, and\nwas left from childhood an orphan without relations. She grew up in the\nhouse of a general's widow, a wealthy old lady of good position, who was\nat once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I\nhave only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once\ncut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft,\nso terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging\nof this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an\ninsufferable tyrant through idleness.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; inquiries were made about him and he\nwas refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement\nto the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any\naccount have married him if she had known a little more about him in time.\nBut she lived in another province; besides, what could a little girl of\nsixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the bottom of\nthe river than remaining with her benefactress. So the poor child\nexchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not get a\npenny this time, for the general's widow was furious. She gave them\nnothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry; what\nallured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her\ninnocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious\nprofligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of feminine\nbeauty.\n\n\"Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor,\" he used to say\nafterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might,\nof course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no\ndowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her \"from the halter,\" he\ndid not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had \"wronged\"\nhim, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to\ntrample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women\ninto his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife's\npresence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that\nGrigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had\nalways hated his first mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, took the side of his\nnew mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a\nmanner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels\nand drove all the disorderly women out of the house. In the end this\nunhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that\nkind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in peasant women\nwho are said to be \"possessed by devils.\" At times after terrible fits of\nhysterics she even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two\nsons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the\nsecond three years later. When she died, little Alexey was in his fourth\nyear, and, strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all\nhis life, like a dream, of course. At her death almost exactly the same\nthing happened to the two little boys as to their elder brother, Mitya.\nThey were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were\nlooked after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they were\nfound by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She was\nstill alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the insult done\nher. All that time she was obtaining exact information as to her Sofya's\nmanner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous surroundings she\ndeclared aloud two or three times to her retainers:\n\n\"It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude.\"\n\nExactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna's death the general's widow\nsuddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's\nhouse. She spent only half an hour in the town but she did a great deal.\nIt was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for those eight\nyears, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly upon seeing him,\nwithout any sort of explanation, she gave him two good, resounding slaps\non the face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and shook him three times up\nand down. Then, without a word, she went straight to the cottage to the\ntwo boys. Seeing, at the first glance, that they were unwashed and in\ndirty linen, she promptly gave Grigory, too, a box on the ear, and\nannouncing that she would carry off both the children she wrapped them\njust as they were in a rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her\nown town. Grigory accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word,\nand when he escorted the old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow\nand pronounced impressively that, \"God would repay her for the orphans.\"\n\"You are a blockhead all the same,\" the old lady shouted to him as she\ndrove away.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing, and\ndid not refuse the general's widow his formal consent to any proposition\nin regard to his children's education. As for the slaps she had given him,\nhe drove all over the town telling the story.\n\nIt happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys\nin her will a thousand roubles each \"for their instruction, and so that\nall be spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so\nportioned out as to last till they are twenty-one, for it is more than\nadequate provision for such children. If other people think fit to throw\naway their money, let them.\" I have not read the will myself, but I heard\nthere was something queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The\nprincipal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the\nprovince, turned out, however, to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor\nPavlovitch, and discerning at once that he could extract nothing from him\nfor his children's education (though the latter never directly refused but\nonly procrastinated as he always did in such cases, and was, indeed, at\ntimes effusively sentimental), Yefim Petrovitch took a personal interest\nin the orphans. He became especially fond of the younger, Alexey, who\nlived for a long while as one of his family. I beg the reader to note this\nfrom the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a generosity and\nhumanity rarely to be met with, the young people were more indebted for\ntheir education and bringing up than to any one. He kept the two thousand\nroubles left to them by the general's widow intact, so that by the time\nthey came of age their portions had been doubled by the accumulation of\ninterest. He educated them both at his own expense, and certainly spent\nfar more than a thousand roubles upon each of them. I won't enter into a\ndetailed account of their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few\nof the most important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he\ngrew into a somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid boy. At\nten years old he had realized that they were living not in their own home\nbut on other people's charity, and that their father was a man of whom it\nwas disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in his infancy\n(so they say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual aptitude for\nlearning. I don't know precisely why, but he left the family of Yefim\nPetrovitch when he was hardly thirteen, entering a Moscow gymnasium, and\nboarding with an experienced and celebrated teacher, an old friend of\nYefim Petrovitch. Ivan used to declare afterwards that this was all due to\nthe \"ardor for good works\" of Yefim Petrovitch, who was captivated by the\nidea that the boy's genius should be trained by a teacher of genius. But\nneither Yefim Petrovitch nor this teacher was living when the young man\nfinished at the gymnasium and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch\nhad made no provision for the payment of the tyrannical old lady's legacy,\nwhich had grown from one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to\nformalities inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in great straits\nfor the first two years at the university, as he was forced to keep\nhimself all the time he was studying. It must be noted that he did not\neven attempt to communicate with his father, perhaps from pride, from\ncontempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common sense, which told him\nthat from such a father he would get no real assistance. However that may\nhave been, the young man was by no means despondent and succeeded in\ngetting work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting\nparagraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature of\n\"Eye-Witness.\" These paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and\npiquant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young man's\npractical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and\nunfortunate students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the\nnewspapers and journals, unable to think of anything better than\neverlasting entreaties for copying and translations from the French.\nHaving once got into touch with the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always kept\nup his connection with them, and in his latter years at the university he\npublished brilliant reviews of books upon various special subjects, so\nthat he became well known in literary circles. But only in his last year\nhe suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a far wider circle of\nreaders, so that a great many people noticed and remembered him. It was\nrather a curious incident. When he had just left the university and was\npreparing to go abroad upon his two thousand roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch\npublished in one of the more important journals a strange article, which\nattracted general notice, on a subject of which he might have been\nsupposed to know nothing, as he was a student of natural science. The\narticle dealt with a subject which was being debated everywhere at the\ntime--the position of the ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several\nopinions on the subject he went on to explain his own view. What was most\nstriking about the article was its tone, and its unexpected conclusion.\nMany of the Church party regarded him unquestioningly as on their side.\nAnd yet not only the secularists but even atheists joined them in their\napplause. Finally some sagacious persons opined that the article was\nnothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I mention this incident\nparticularly because this article penetrated into the famous monastery in\nour neighborhood, where the inmates, being particularly interested in the\nquestion of the ecclesiastical courts, were completely bewildered by it.\nLearning the author's name, they were interested in his being a native of\nthe town and the son of \"that Fyodor Pavlovitch.\" And just then it was\nthat the author himself made his appearance among us.\n\nWhy Ivan Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself at the\ntime with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the first\nstep leading to so many consequences, I never fully explained to myself.\nIt seemed strange on the face of it that a young man so learned, so proud,\nand apparently so cautious, should suddenly visit such an infamous house\nand a father who had ignored him all his life, hardly knew him, never\nthought of him, and would not under any circumstances have given him\nmoney, though he was always afraid that his sons Ivan and Alexey would\nalso come to ask him for it. And here the young man was staying in the\nhouse of such a father, had been living with him for two months, and they\nwere on the best possible terms. This last fact was a special cause of\nwonder to many others as well as to me. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, of\nwhom we have spoken already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife,\nhappened to be in the neighborhood again on a visit to his estate. He had\ncome from Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he was more\nsurprised than any one when he made the acquaintance of the young man, who\ninterested him extremely, and with whom he sometimes argued and not\nwithout an inner pang compared himself in acquirements.\n\n\"He is proud,\" he used to say, \"he will never be in want of pence; he has\ngot money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Every one can\nsee that he hasn't come for money, for his father would never give him\nany. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his father can't\ndo without him. They get on so well together!\"\n\nThat was the truth; the young man had an unmistakable influence over his\nfather, who positively appeared to be behaving more decently and even\nseemed at times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and even\nspitefully perverse.\n\nIt was only later that we learned that Ivan had come partly at the request\nof, and in the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitri, whom he saw for\nthe first time on this very visit, though he had before leaving Moscow\nbeen in correspondence with him about an important matter of more concern\nto Dmitri than himself. What that business was the reader will learn fully\nin due time. Yet even when I did know of this special circumstance I still\nfelt Ivan Fyodorovitch to be an enigmatic figure, and thought his visit\nrather mysterious.\n\nI may add that Ivan appeared at the time in the light of a mediator\nbetween his father and his elder brother Dmitri, who was in open quarrel\nwith his father and even planning to bring an action against him.\n\nThe family, I repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of its\nmembers met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother,\nAlexey, had been a year already among us, having been the first of the\nthree to arrive. It is of that brother Alexey I find it most difficult to\nspeak in this introduction. Yet I must give some preliminary account of\nhim, if only to explain one queer fact, which is that I have to introduce\nmy hero to the reader wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes, he had been\nfor the last year in our monastery, and seemed willing to be cloistered\nthere for the rest of his life.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. The Third Son, Alyosha\n\n\nHe was only twenty, his brother Ivan was in his twenty-fourth year at the\ntime, while their elder brother Dmitri was twenty-seven. First of all, I\nmust explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my\nopinion at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full\nopinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and\nthat he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it\nstruck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from\nthe darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. And the reason\nthis life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as\nhe thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated elder, Zossima, to whom\nhe became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent heart. But I\ndo not dispute that he was very strange even at that time, and had been so\nindeed from his cradle. I have mentioned already, by the way, that though\nhe lost his mother in his fourth year he remembered her all his life--her\nface, her caresses, \"as though she stood living before me.\" Such memories\nmay persist, as every one knows, from an even earlier age, even from two\nyears old, but scarcely standing out through a whole lifetime like spots\nof light out of darkness, like a corner torn out of a huge picture, which\nhas all faded and disappeared except that fragment. That is how it was\nwith him. He remembered one still summer evening, an open window, the\nslanting rays of the setting sun (that he recalled most vividly of all);\nin a corner of the room the holy image, before it a lighted lamp, and on\nher knees before the image his mother, sobbing hysterically with cries and\nmoans, snatching him up in both arms, squeezing him close till it hurt,\nand praying for him to the Mother of God, holding him out in both arms to\nthe image as though to put him under the Mother's protection ... and\nsuddenly a nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror. That was the\npicture! And Alyosha remembered his mother's face at that minute. He used\nto say that it was frenzied but beautiful as he remembered. But he rarely\ncared to speak of this memory to any one. In his childhood and youth he\nwas by no means expansive, and talked little indeed, but not from shyness\nor a sullen unsociability; quite the contrary, from something different,\nfrom a sort of inner preoccupation entirely personal and unconcerned with\nother people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to\nforget others on account of it. But he was fond of people: he seemed\nthroughout his life to put implicit trust in people: yet no one ever\nlooked on him as a simpleton or naive person. There was something about\nhim which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards)\nthat he did not care to be a judge of others--that he would never take it\nupon himself to criticize and would never condemn any one for anything. He\nseemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though\noften grieving bitterly: and this was so much so that no one could\nsurprise or frighten him even in his earliest youth. Coming at twenty to\nhis father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste\nand pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was\nunbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation.\nHis father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was\nsensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and\nsullenness. \"He does not say much,\" he used to say, \"and thinks the more.\"\nBut soon, within a fortnight indeed, he took to embracing him and kissing\nhim terribly often, with drunken tears, with sottish sentimentality, yet\nhe evidently felt a real and deep affection for him, such as he had never\nbeen capable of feeling for any one before.\n\nEvery one, indeed, loved this young man wherever he went, and it was so\nfrom his earliest childhood. When he entered the household of his patron\nand benefactor, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, he gained the hearts of all the\nfamily, so that they looked on him quite as their own child. Yet he\nentered the house at such a tender age that he could not have acted from\ndesign nor artfulness in winning affection. So that the gift of making\nhimself loved directly and unconsciously was inherent in him, in his very\nnature, so to speak. It was the same at school, though he seemed to be\njust one of those children who are distrusted, sometimes ridiculed, and\neven disliked by their schoolfellows. He was dreamy, for instance, and\nrather solitary. From his earliest childhood he was fond of creeping into\na corner to read, and yet he was a general favorite all the while he was\nat school. He was rarely playful or merry, but any one could see at the\nfirst glance that this was not from any sullenness. On the contrary he was\nbright and good-tempered. He never tried to show off among his\nschoolfellows. Perhaps because of this, he was never afraid of any one,\nyet the boys immediately understood that he was not proud of his\nfearlessness and seemed to be unaware that he was bold and courageous. He\nnever resented an insult. It would happen that an hour after the offense\nhe would address the offender or answer some question with as trustful and\ncandid an expression as though nothing had happened between them. And it\nwas not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the\naffront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront, and this\ncompletely conquered and captivated the boys. He had one characteristic\nwhich made all his schoolfellows from the bottom class to the top want to\nmock at him, not from malice but because it amused them. This\ncharacteristic was a wild fanatical modesty and chastity. He could not\nbear to hear certain words and certain conversations about women. There\nare \"certain\" words and conversations unhappily impossible to eradicate in\nschools. Boys pure in mind and heart, almost children, are fond of talking\nin school among themselves, and even aloud, of things, pictures, and\nimages of which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak. More than\nthat, much that soldiers have no knowledge or conception of is familiar to\nquite young children of our intellectual and higher classes. There is no\nmoral depravity, no real corrupt inner cynicism in it, but there is the\nappearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as something\nrefined, subtle, daring, and worthy of imitation. Seeing that Alyosha\nKaramazov put his fingers in his ears when they talked of \"that,\" they\nused sometimes to crowd round him, pull his hands away, and shout\nnastiness into both ears, while he struggled, slipped to the floor, tried\nto hide himself without uttering one word of abuse, enduring their insults\nin silence. But at last they left him alone and gave up taunting him with\nbeing a \"regular girl,\" and what's more they looked upon it with\ncompassion as a weakness. He was always one of the best in the class but\nwas never first.\n\nAt the time of Yefim Petrovitch's death Alyosha had two more years to\ncomplete at the provincial gymnasium. The inconsolable widow went almost\nimmediately after his death for a long visit to Italy with her whole\nfamily, which consisted only of women and girls. Alyosha went to live in\nthe house of two distant relations of Yefim Petrovitch, ladies whom he had\nnever seen before. On what terms he lived with them he did not know\nhimself. It was very characteristic of him, indeed, that he never cared at\nwhose expense he was living. In that respect he was a striking contrast to\nhis elder brother Ivan, who struggled with poverty for his first two years\nin the university, maintained himself by his own efforts, and had from\nchildhood been bitterly conscious of living at the expense of his\nbenefactor. But this strange trait in Alyosha's character must not, I\nthink, be criticized too severely, for at the slightest acquaintance with\nhim any one would have perceived that Alyosha was one of those youths,\nalmost of the type of religious enthusiast, who, if they were suddenly to\ncome into possession of a large fortune, would not hesitate to give it\naway for the asking, either for good works or perhaps to a clever rogue.\nIn general he seemed scarcely to know the value of money, not, of course,\nin a literal sense. When he was given pocket-money, which he never asked\nfor, he was either terribly careless of it so that it was gone in a\nmoment, or he kept it for weeks together, not knowing what to do with it.\n\nIn later years Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, a man very sensitive on the\nscore of money and bourgeois honesty, pronounced the following judgment,\nafter getting to know Alyosha:\n\n\"Here is perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone\nwithout a penny, in the center of an unknown town of a million\ninhabitants, and he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and\nhunger, for he would be fed and sheltered at once; and if he were not, he\nwould find a shelter for himself, and it would cost him no effort or\nhumiliation. And to shelter him would be no burden, but, on the contrary,\nwould probably be looked on as a pleasure.\"\n\nHe did not finish his studies at the gymnasium. A year before the end of\nthe course he suddenly announced to the ladies that he was going to see\nhis father about a plan which had occurred to him. They were sorry and\nunwilling to let him go. The journey was not an expensive one, and the\nladies would not let him pawn his watch, a parting present from his\nbenefactor's family. They provided him liberally with money and even\nfitted him out with new clothes and linen. But he returned half the money\nthey gave him, saying that he intended to go third class. On his arrival\nin the town he made no answer to his father's first inquiry why he had\ncome before completing his studies, and seemed, so they say, unusually\nthoughtful. It soon became apparent that he was looking for his mother's\ntomb. He practically acknowledged at the time that that was the only\nobject of his visit. But it can hardly have been the whole reason of it.\nIt is more probable that he himself did not understand and could not\nexplain what had suddenly arisen in his soul, and drawn him irresistibly\ninto a new, unknown, but inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovitch could not show\nhim where his second wife was buried, for he had never visited her grave\nsince he had thrown earth upon her coffin, and in the course of years had\nentirely forgotten where she was buried.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch, by the way, had for some time previously not been\nliving in our town. Three or four years after his wife's death he had gone\nto the south of Russia and finally turned up in Odessa, where he spent\nseveral years. He made the acquaintance at first, in his own words, \"of a\nlot of low Jews, Jewesses, and Jewkins,\" and ended by being received by\n\"Jews high and low alike.\" It may be presumed that at this period he\ndeveloped a peculiar faculty for making and hoarding money. He finally\nreturned to our town only three years before Alyosha's arrival. His former\nacquaintances found him looking terribly aged, although he was by no means\nan old man. He behaved not exactly with more dignity but with more\neffrontery. The former buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making\nbuffoons of others. His depravity with women was not simply what it used\nto be, but even more revolting. In a short time he opened a great number\nof new taverns in the district. It was evident that he had perhaps a\nhundred thousand roubles or not much less. Many of the inhabitants of the\ntown and district were soon in his debt, and, of course, had given good\nsecurity. Of late, too, he looked somehow bloated and seemed more\nirresponsible, more uneven, had sunk into a sort of incoherence, used to\nbegin one thing and go on with another, as though he were letting himself\ngo altogether. He was more and more frequently drunk. And, if it had not\nbeen for the same servant Grigory, who by that time had aged considerably\ntoo, and used to look after him sometimes almost like a tutor, Fyodor\nPavlovitch might have got into terrible scrapes. Alyosha's arrival seemed\nto affect even his moral side, as though something had awakened in this\nprematurely old man which had long been dead in his soul.\n\n\"Do you know,\" he used often to say, looking at Alyosha, \"that you are\nlike her, 'the crazy woman' \"--that was what he used to call his dead wife,\nAlyosha's mother. Grigory it was who pointed out the \"crazy woman's\" grave\nto Alyosha. He took him to our town cemetery and showed him in a remote\ncorner a cast-iron tombstone, cheap but decently kept, on which were\ninscribed the name and age of the deceased and the date of her death, and\nbelow a four-lined verse, such as are commonly used on old-fashioned\nmiddle-class tombs. To Alyosha's amazement this tomb turned out to be\nGrigory's doing. He had put it up on the poor \"crazy woman's\" grave at his\nown expense, after Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom he had often pestered about the\ngrave, had gone to Odessa, abandoning the grave and all his memories.\nAlyosha showed no particular emotion at the sight of his mother's grave.\nHe only listened to Grigory's minute and solemn account of the erection of\nthe tomb; he stood with bowed head and walked away without uttering a\nword. It was perhaps a year before he visited the cemetery again. But this\nlittle episode was not without an influence upon Fyodor Pavlovitch--and a\nvery original one. He suddenly took a thousand roubles to our monastery to\npay for requiems for the soul of his wife; but not for the second,\nAlyosha's mother, the \"crazy woman,\" but for the first, Adelaida Ivanovna,\nwho used to thrash him. In the evening of the same day he got drunk and\nabused the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from being religious; he\nhad probably never put a penny candle before the image of a saint. Strange\nimpulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types.\n\nI have mentioned already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this\ntime bore traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he\nhad led. Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent,\nsuspicious, and ironical eyes; besides the multitude of deep wrinkles in\nhis little fat face, the Adam's apple hung below his sharp chin like a\ngreat, fleshy goiter, which gave him a peculiar, repulsive, sensual\nappearance; add to that a long rapacious mouth with full lips, between\nwhich could be seen little stumps of black decayed teeth. He slobbered\nevery time he began to speak. He was fond indeed of making fun of his own\nface, though, I believe, he was well satisfied with it. He used\nparticularly to point to his nose, which was not very large, but very\ndelicate and conspicuously aquiline. \"A regular Roman nose,\" he used to\nsay, \"with my goiter I've quite the countenance of an ancient Roman\npatrician of the decadent period.\" He seemed proud of it.\n\nNot long after visiting his mother's grave Alyosha suddenly announced that\nhe wanted to enter the monastery, and that the monks were willing to\nreceive him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire, and\nthat he was solemnly asking his consent as his father. The old man knew\nthat the elder Zossima, who was living in the monastery hermitage, had\nmade a special impression upon his \"gentle boy.\"\n\n\"That is the most honest monk among them, of course,\" he observed, after\nlistening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely surprised\nat his request. \"H'm!... So that's where you want to be, my gentle boy?\"\n\nHe was half drunk, and suddenly he grinned his slow half-drunken grin,\nwhich was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. \"H'm!... I had\na presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you\nbelieve it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have\nyour own two thousand. That's a dowry for you. And I'll never desert you,\nmy angel. And I'll pay what's wanted for you there, if they ask for it.\nBut, of course, if they don't ask, why should we worry them? What do you\nsay? You know, you spend money like a canary, two grains a week. H'm!...\nDo you know that near one monastery there's a place outside the town where\nevery baby knows there are none but 'the monks' wives' living, as they are\ncalled. Thirty women, I believe. I have been there myself. You know, it's\ninteresting in its own way, of course, as a variety. The worst of it is\nit's awfully Russian. There are no French women there. Of course they\ncould get them fast enough, they have plenty of money. If they get to hear\nof it they'll come along. Well, there's nothing of that sort here, no\n'monks' wives,' and two hundred monks. They're honest. They keep the\nfasts. I admit it.... H'm.... So you want to be a monk? And do you know\nI'm sorry to lose you, Alyosha; would you believe it, I've really grown\nfond of you? Well, it's a good opportunity. You'll pray for us sinners; we\nhave sinned too much here. I've always been thinking who would pray for\nme, and whether there's any one in the world to do it. My dear boy, I'm\nawfully stupid about that. You wouldn't believe it. Awfully. You see,\nhowever stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinking--from time\nto time, of course, not all the while. It's impossible, I think, for the\ndevils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then\nI wonder--hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do\nthey forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the\nmonastery probably believe that there's a ceiling in hell, for instance.\nNow I'm ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more\nrefined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what\ndoes it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn't? But, do you know,\nthere's a damnable question involved in it? If there's no ceiling there\ncan be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is\nunlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and\nif they don't drag me down what justice is there in the world? _Il\nfaudrait les inventer_, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you\nonly knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am.\"\n\n\"But there are no hooks there,\" said Alyosha, looking gently and seriously\nat his father.\n\n\"Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks, I know, I know. That's how a\nFrenchman described hell: '_J'ai bu l'ombre d'un cocher qui avec l'ombre\nd'une brosse frottait l'ombre d'une carrosse._' How do you know there are\nno hooks, darling? When you've lived with the monks you'll sing a\ndifferent tune. But go and get at the truth there, and then come and tell\nme. Anyway it's easier going to the other world if one knows what there is\nthere. Besides, it will be more seemly for you with the monks than here\nwith me, with a drunken old man and young harlots ... though you're like\nan angel, nothing touches you. And I dare say nothing will touch you\nthere. That's why I let you go, because I hope for that. You've got all\nyour wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out; you will be\nhealed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel that you're\nthe only creature in the world who has not condemned me. My dear boy, I\nfeel it, you know. I can't help feeling it.\"\n\nAnd he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and\nsentimental.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. Elders\n\n\nSome of my readers may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic,\npoorly developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer. On the contrary,\nAlyosha was at this time a well-grown, red-cheeked, clear-eyed lad of\nnineteen, radiant with health. He was very handsome, too, graceful,\nmoderately tall, with hair of a dark brown, with a regular, rather long,\noval-shaped face, and wide-set dark gray, shining eyes; he was very\nthoughtful, and apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red\ncheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but I fancy\nthat Alyosha was more of a realist than any one. Oh! no doubt, in the\nmonastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are\nnever a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose\nrealists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will\nalways find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if\nhe is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather\ndisbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he\nadmits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does\nnot, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.\nIf the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to\nadmit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not\nbelieve till he saw, but when he did see he said, \"My Lord and my God!\"\nWas it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed\nsolely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his\nsecret heart even when he said, \"I do not believe till I see.\"\n\nI shall be told, perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not\nfinished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is\ntrue, but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice.\nI'll simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path only\nbecause, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented\nitself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from\ndarkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of our\nlast epoch--that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it\nand believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength\nof his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice\neverything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to\nunderstand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of\nall sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of\ntheir seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply\ntenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set\nbefore them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength\nof many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite\ndirection, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As\nsoon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God\nand immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: \"I want to\nlive for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.\" In the same way,\nif he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once\nhave become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the\nlabor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the\nquestion of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of\nBabel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up\nheaven on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go\non living as before. It is written: \"Give all that thou hast to the poor\nand follow Me, if thou wouldst be perfect.\"\n\nAlyosha said to himself: \"I can't give two roubles instead of 'all,' and\nonly go to mass instead of 'following Him.' \" Perhaps his memories of\nchildhood brought back our monastery, to which his mother may have taken\nhim to mass. Perhaps the slanting sunlight and the holy image to which his\npoor \"crazy\" mother had held him up still acted upon his imagination.\nBrooding on these things he may have come to us perhaps only to see\nwhether here he could sacrifice all or only \"two roubles,\" and in the\nmonastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an \"elder\" is\nin Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent\nto do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a\nfew words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution of\n\"elders\" is of recent date, not more than a hundred years old in our\nmonasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially in Sinai and Athos,\nit has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that it existed in\nancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which overtook\nRussia--the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the East\nafter the destruction of Constantinople--this institution fell into\noblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of last century by one\nof the great \"ascetics,\" as they called him, Paissy Velitchkovsky, and his\ndisciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only, and has\nsometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It flourished\nespecially in the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery. When and how it was\nintroduced into our monastery I cannot say. There had already been three\nsuch elders and Zossima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of\nweakness and disease, and they had no one to take his place. The question\nfor our monastery was an important one, for it had not been distinguished\nby anything in particular till then: they had neither relics of saints,\nnor wonder-working ikons, nor glorious traditions, nor historical\nexploits. It had flourished and been glorious all over Russia through its\nelders, to see and hear whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles\nfrom all parts.\n\nWhat was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will,\ninto his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your\nown will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-\nabnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is\nundertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in\norder, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from\nself; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without\nfinding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not\nfounded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a\nthousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary\n\"obedience\" which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The\nobligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted\nthemselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them.\n\nThe story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity\none such novice, failing to fulfill some command laid upon him by his\nelder, left his monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great\nexploits, he was found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr's\ndeath for the faith. When the Church, regarding him as a saint, was\nburying him, suddenly, at the deacon's exhortation, \"Depart all ye\nunbaptized,\" the coffin containing the martyr's body left its place and\nwas cast forth from the church, and this took place three times. And only\nat last they learnt that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and\nleft his elder, and, therefore, could not be forgiven without the elder's\nabsolution in spite of his great deeds. Only after this could the funeral\ntake place. This, of course, is only an old legend. But here is a recent\ninstance.\n\nA monk was suddenly commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved\nas a sacred place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to\ndo homage to the Holy Places and then to go to the north to Siberia:\n\"There is the place for thee and not here.\" The monk, overwhelmed with\nsorrow, went to the OEcumenical Patriarch at Constantinople and besought\nhim to release him from his obedience. But the Patriarch replied that not\nonly was he unable to release him, but there was not and could not be on\nearth a power which could release him except the elder who had himself\nlaid that duty upon him. In this way the elders are endowed in certain\ncases with unbounded and inexplicable authority. That is why in many of\nour monasteries the institution was at first resisted almost to\npersecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly esteemed\namong the people. Masses of the ignorant people as well as men of\ndistinction flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to\nconfess their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for\ncounsel and admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared\nthat the sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously\ndegraded, though the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the\nmonk or the layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the\nend, however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming\nestablished in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this\ninstrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral\nregeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility\nmay be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and\ncomplete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage\nand not to freedom.\n\nThe elder Zossima was sixty-five. He came of a family of landowners, had\nbeen in the army in early youth, and served in the Caucasus as an officer.\nHe had, no doubt, impressed Alyosha by some peculiar quality of his soul.\nAlyosha lived in the cell of the elder, who was very fond of him and let\nhim wait upon him. It must be noted that Alyosha was bound by no\nobligation and could go where he pleased and be absent for whole days.\nThough he wore the monastic dress it was voluntarily, not to be different\nfrom others. No doubt he liked to do so. Possibly his youthful imagination\nwas deeply stirred by the power and fame of his elder. It was said that so\nmany people had for years past come to confess their sins to Father\nZossima and to entreat him for words of advice and healing, that he had\nacquired the keenest intuition and could tell from an unknown face what a\nnew-comer wanted, and what was the suffering on his conscience. He\nsometimes astounded and almost alarmed his visitors by his knowledge of\ntheir secrets before they had spoken a word.\n\nAlyosha noticed that many, almost all, went in to the elder for the first\ntime with apprehension and uneasiness, but came out with bright and happy\nfaces. Alyosha was particularly struck by the fact that Father Zossima was\nnot at all stern. On the contrary, he was always almost gay. The monks\nused to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the\ngreater the sinner the more he loved him. There were, no doubt, up to the\nend of his life, among the monks some who hated and envied him, but they\nwere few in number and they were silent, though among them were some of\ngreat dignity in the monastery, one, for instance, of the older monks\ndistinguished for his strict keeping of fasts and vows of silence. But the\nmajority were on Father Zossima's side and very many of them loved him\nwith all their hearts, warmly and sincerely. Some were almost fanatically\ndevoted to him, and declared, though not quite aloud, that he was a saint,\nthat there could be no doubt of it, and, seeing that his end was near,\nthey anticipated miracles and great glory to the monastery in the\nimmediate future from his relics. Alyosha had unquestioning faith in the\nmiraculous power of the elder, just as he had unquestioning faith in the\nstory of the coffin that flew out of the church. He saw many who came with\nsick children or relatives and besought the elder to lay hands on them and\nto pray over them, return shortly after--some the next day--and, falling in\ntears at the elder's feet, thank him for healing their sick.\n\nWhether they had really been healed or were simply better in the natural\ncourse of the disease was a question which did not exist for Alyosha, for\nhe fully believed in the spiritual power of his teacher and rejoiced in\nhis fame, in his glory, as though it were his own triumph. His heart\nthrobbed, and he beamed, as it were, all over when the elder came out to\nthe gates of the hermitage into the waiting crowd of pilgrims of the\nhumbler class who had flocked from all parts of Russia on purpose to see\nthe elder and obtain his blessing. They fell down before him, wept, kissed\nhis feet, kissed the earth on which he stood, and wailed, while the women\nheld up their children to him and brought him the sick \"possessed with\ndevils.\" The elder spoke to them, read a brief prayer over them, blessed\nthem, and dismissed them. Of late he had become so weak through attacks of\nillness that he was sometimes unable to leave his cell, and the pilgrims\nwaited for him to come out for several days. Alyosha did not wonder why\nthey loved him so, why they fell down before him and wept with emotion\nmerely at seeing his face. Oh! he understood that for the humble soul of\nthe Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the\neverlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, it was\nthe greatest need and comfort to find some one or something holy to fall\ndown before and worship.\n\n\"Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on\nearth there is some one holy and exalted. He has the truth; he knows the\ntruth; so it is not dead upon the earth; so it will come one day to us,\ntoo, and rule over all the earth according to the promise.\"\n\nAlyosha knew that this was just how the people felt and even reasoned. He\nunderstood it, but that the elder Zossima was this saint and custodian of\nGod's truth--of that he had no more doubt than the weeping peasants and the\nsick women who held out their children to the elder. The conviction that\nafter his death the elder would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery\nwas even stronger in Alyosha than in any one there, and, of late, a kind\nof deep flame of inner ecstasy burnt more and more strongly in his heart.\nHe was not at all troubled at this elder's standing as a solitary example\nbefore him.\n\n\"No matter. He is holy. He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for\nall: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all\nmen will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor\npoor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God, and\nthe true Kingdom of Christ will come.\" That was the dream in Alyosha's\nheart.\n\nThe arrival of his two brothers, whom he had not known till then, seemed\nto make a great impression on Alyosha. He more quickly made friends with\nhis half-brother Dmitri (though he arrived later) than with his own\nbrother Ivan. He was extremely interested in his brother Ivan, but when\nthe latter had been two months in the town, though they had met fairly\noften, they were still not intimate. Alyosha was naturally silent, and he\nseemed to be expecting something, ashamed about something, while his\nbrother Ivan, though Alyosha noticed at first that he looked long and\ncuriously at him, seemed soon to have left off thinking of him. Alyosha\nnoticed it with some embarrassment. He ascribed his brother's indifference\nat first to the disparity of their age and education. But he also wondered\nwhether the absence of curiosity and sympathy in Ivan might be due to some\nother cause entirely unknown to him. He kept fancying that Ivan was\nabsorbed in something--something inward and important--that he was striving\ntowards some goal, perhaps very hard to attain, and that that was why he\nhad no thought for him. Alyosha wondered, too, whether there was not some\ncontempt on the part of the learned atheist for him--a foolish novice. He\nknew for certain that his brother was an atheist. He could not take\noffense at this contempt, if it existed; yet, with an uneasy embarrassment\nwhich he did not himself understand, he waited for his brother to come\nnearer to him. Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest respect and\nwith a peculiar earnestness. From him Alyosha learnt all the details of\nthe important affair which had of late formed such a close and remarkable\nbond between the two elder brothers. Dmitri's enthusiastic references to\nIvan were the more striking in Alyosha's eyes since Dmitri was, compared\nwith Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two brothers were such a contrast in\npersonality and character that it would be difficult to find two men more\nunlike.\n\nIt was at this time that the meeting, or, rather gathering of the members\nof this inharmonious family took place in the cell of the elder who had\nsuch an extraordinary influence on Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering\nwas a false one. It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and\nhis father seemed at its acutest stage and their relations had become\ninsufferably strained. Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to have been the first to\nsuggest, apparently in joke, that they should all meet in Father Zossima's\ncell, and that, without appealing to his direct intervention, they might\nmore decently come to an understanding under the conciliating influence of\nthe elder's presence. Dmitri, who had never seen the elder, naturally\nsupposed that his father was trying to intimidate him, but, as he secretly\nblamed himself for his outbursts of temper with his father on several\nrecent occasions, he accepted the challenge. It must be noted that he was\nnot, like Ivan, staying with his father, but living apart at the other end\nof the town. It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, who was staying\nin the district at the time, caught eagerly at the idea. A Liberal of the\nforties and fifties, a freethinker and atheist, he may have been led on by\nboredom or the hope of frivolous diversion. He was suddenly seized with\nthe desire to see the monastery and the holy man. As his lawsuit with the\nmonastery still dragged on, he made it the pretext for seeing the\nSuperior, in order to attempt to settle it amicably. A visitor coming with\nsuch laudable intentions might be received with more attention and\nconsideration than if he came from simple curiosity. Influences from\nwithin the monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of late had\nscarcely left his cell, and had been forced by illness to deny even his\nordinary visitors. In the end he consented to see them, and the day was\nfixed.\n\n\"Who has made me a judge over them?\" was all he said, smilingly, to\nAlyosha.\n\nAlyosha was much perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit. Of all the\nwrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard the\ninterview seriously. All the others would come from frivolous motives,\nperhaps insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well aware of that. Ivan and\nMiuesov would come from curiosity, perhaps of the coarsest kind, while his\nfather might be contemplating some piece of buffoonery. Though he said\nnothing, Alyosha thoroughly understood his father. The boy, I repeat, was\nfar from being so simple as every one thought him. He awaited the day with\na heavy heart. No doubt he was always pondering in his mind how the family\ndiscord could be ended. But his chief anxiety concerned the elder. He\ntrembled for him, for his glory, and dreaded any affront to him,\nespecially the refined, courteous irony of Miuesov and the supercilious\nhalf-utterances of the highly educated Ivan. He even wanted to venture on\nwarning the elder, telling him something about them, but, on second\nthoughts, said nothing. He only sent word the day before, through a\nfriend, to his brother Dmitri, that he loved him and expected him to keep\nhis promise. Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had\npromised, but he answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let\nhimself be provoked \"by vileness,\" but that, although he had a deep\nrespect for the elder and for his brother Ivan, he was convinced that the\nmeeting was either a trap for him or an unworthy farce.\n\n\"Nevertheless I would rather bite out my tongue than be lacking in respect\nto the sainted man whom you reverence so highly,\" he wrote in conclusion.\nAlyosha was not greatly cheered by the letter.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook II. An Unfortunate Gathering Chapter I. They Arrive At The Monastery\n\n\nIt was a warm, bright day at the end of August. The interview with the\nelder had been fixed for half-past eleven, immediately after late mass.\nOur visitors did not take part in the service, but arrived just as it was\nover. First an elegant open carriage, drawn by two valuable horses, drove\nup with Miuesov and a distant relative of his, a young man of twenty,\ncalled Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov. This young man was preparing to enter the\nuniversity. Miuesov, with whom he was staying for the time, was trying to\npersuade him to go abroad to the university of Zurich or Jena. The young\nman was still undecided. He was thoughtful and absent-minded. He was nice-\nlooking, strongly built, and rather tall. There was a strange fixity in\nhis gaze at times. Like all very absent-minded people he would sometimes\nstare at a person without seeing him. He was silent and rather awkward,\nbut sometimes, when he was alone with any one, he became talkative and\neffusive, and would laugh at anything or nothing. But his animation\nvanished as quickly as it appeared. He was always well and even\nelaborately dressed; he had already some independent fortune and\nexpectations of much more. He was a friend of Alyosha's.\n\nIn an ancient, jolting, but roomy, hired carriage, with a pair of old\npinkish-gray horses, a long way behind Miuesov's carriage, came Fyodor\nPavlovitch, with his son Ivan. Dmitri was late, though he had been\ninformed of the time the evening before. The visitors left their carriage\nat the hotel, outside the precincts, and went to the gates of the\nmonastery on foot. Except Fyodor Pavlovitch, none of the party had ever\nseen the monastery, and Miuesov had probably not even been to church for\nthirty years. He looked about him with curiosity, together with assumed\nease. But, except the church and the domestic buildings, though these too\nwere ordinary enough, he found nothing of interest in the interior of the\nmonastery. The last of the worshippers were coming out of the church,\nbareheaded and crossing themselves. Among the humbler people were a few of\nhigher rank--two or three ladies and a very old general. They were all\nstaying at the hotel. Our visitors were at once surrounded by beggars, but\nnone of them gave them anything, except young Kalganov, who took a ten-\ncopeck piece out of his purse, and, nervous and embarrassed--God knows\nwhy!--hurriedly gave it to an old woman, saying: \"Divide it equally.\" None\nof his companions made any remark upon it, so that he had no reason to be\nembarrassed; but, perceiving this, he was even more overcome.\n\nIt was strange that their arrival did not seem expected, and that they\nwere not received with special honor, though one of them had recently made\na donation of a thousand roubles, while another was a very wealthy and\nhighly cultured landowner, upon whom all in the monastery were in a sense\ndependent, as a decision of the lawsuit might at any moment put their\nfishing rights in his hands. Yet no official personage met them.\n\nMiuesov looked absent-mindedly at the tombstones round the church, and was\non the point of saying that the dead buried here must have paid a pretty\npenny for the right of lying in this \"holy place,\" but refrained. His\nliberal irony was rapidly changing almost into anger.\n\n\"Who the devil is there to ask in this imbecile place? We must find out,\nfor time is passing,\" he observed suddenly, as though speaking to himself.\n\nAll at once there came up a bald-headed, elderly man with ingratiating\nlittle eyes, wearing a full, summer overcoat. Lifting his hat, he\nintroduced himself with a honeyed lisp as Maximov, a landowner of Tula. He\nat once entered into our visitors' difficulty.\n\n\"Father Zossima lives in the hermitage, apart, four hundred paces from the\nmonastery, the other side of the copse.\"\n\n\"I know it's the other side of the copse,\" observed Fyodor Pavlovitch,\n\"but we don't remember the way. It is a long time since we've been here.\"\n\n\"This way, by this gate, and straight across the copse ... the copse. Come\nwith me, won't you? I'll show you. I have to go.... I am going myself.\nThis way, this way.\"\n\nThey came out of the gate and turned towards the copse. Maximov, a man of\nsixty, ran rather than walked, turning sideways to stare at them all, with\nan incredible degree of nervous curiosity. His eyes looked starting out of\nhis head.\n\n\"You see, we have come to the elder upon business of our own,\" observed\nMiuesov severely. \"That personage has granted us an audience, so to speak,\nand so, though we thank you for showing us the way, we cannot ask you to\naccompany us.\"\n\n\"I've been there. I've been already; _un chevalier parfait_,\" and Maximov\nsnapped his fingers in the air.\n\n\"Who is a _chevalier_?\" asked Miuesov.\n\n\"The elder, the splendid elder, the elder! The honor and glory of the\nmonastery, Zossima. Such an elder!\"\n\nBut his incoherent talk was cut short by a very pale, wan-looking monk of\nmedium height, wearing a monk's cap, who overtook them. Fyodor Pavlovitch\nand Miuesov stopped.\n\nThe monk, with an extremely courteous, profound bow, announced:\n\n\"The Father Superior invites all of you gentlemen to dine with him after\nyour visit to the hermitage. At one o'clock, not later. And you also,\" he\nadded, addressing Maximov.\n\n\"That I certainly will, without fail,\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, hugely\ndelighted at the invitation. \"And, believe me, we've all given our word to\nbehave properly here.... And you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, will you go, too?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course. What have I come for but to study all the customs here?\nThe only obstacle to me is your company....\"\n\n\"Yes, Dmitri Fyodorovitch is non-existent as yet.\"\n\n\"It would be a capital thing if he didn't turn up. Do you suppose I like\nall this business, and in your company, too? So we will come to dinner.\nThank the Father Superior,\" he said to the monk.\n\n\"No, it is my duty now to conduct you to the elder,\" answered the monk.\n\n\"If so I'll go straight to the Father Superior--to the Father Superior,\"\nbabbled Maximov.\n\n\"The Father Superior is engaged just now. But as you please--\" the monk\nhesitated.\n\n\"Impertinent old man!\" Miuesov observed aloud, while Maximov ran back to\nthe monastery.\n\n\"He's like von Sohn,\" Fyodor Pavlovitch said suddenly.\n\n\"Is that all you can think of?... In what way is he like von Sohn? Have\nyou ever seen von Sohn?\"\n\n\"I've seen his portrait. It's not the features, but something indefinable.\nHe's a second von Sohn. I can always tell from the physiognomy.\"\n\n\"Ah, I dare say you are a connoisseur in that. But, look here, Fyodor\nPavlovitch, you said just now that we had given our word to behave\nproperly. Remember it. I advise you to control yourself. But, if you begin\nto play the fool I don't intend to be associated with you here.... You see\nwhat a man he is\"--he turned to the monk--\"I'm afraid to go among decent\npeople with him.\" A fine smile, not without a certain slyness, came on to\nthe pale, bloodless lips of the monk, but he made no reply, and was\nevidently silent from a sense of his own dignity. Miuesov frowned more than\never.\n\n\"Oh, devil take them all! An outer show elaborated through centuries, and\nnothing but charlatanism and nonsense underneath,\" flashed through\nMiuesov's mind.\n\n\"Here's the hermitage. We've arrived,\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. \"The gates\nare shut.\"\n\nAnd he repeatedly made the sign of the cross to the saints painted above\nand on the sides of the gates.\n\n\"When you go to Rome you must do as the Romans do. Here in this hermitage\nthere are twenty-five saints being saved. They look at one another, and\neat cabbages. And not one woman goes in at this gate. That's what is\nremarkable. And that really is so. But I did hear that the elder receives\nladies,\" he remarked suddenly to the monk.\n\n\"Women of the people are here too now, lying in the portico there waiting.\nBut for ladies of higher rank two rooms have been built adjoining the\nportico, but outside the precincts--you can see the windows--and the elder\ngoes out to them by an inner passage when he is well enough. They are\nalways outside the precincts. There is a Harkov lady, Madame Hohlakov,\nwaiting there now with her sick daughter. Probably he has promised to come\nout to her, though of late he has been so weak that he has hardly shown\nhimself even to the people.\"\n\n\"So then there are loopholes, after all, to creep out of the hermitage to\nthe ladies. Don't suppose, holy father, that I mean any harm. But do you\nknow that at Athos not only the visits of women are not allowed, but no\ncreature of the female sex--no hens, nor turkey-hens, nor cows.\"\n\n\"Fyodor Pavlovitch, I warn you I shall go back and leave you here. They'll\nturn you out when I'm gone.\"\n\n\"But I'm not interfering with you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. Look,\" he cried\nsuddenly, stepping within the precincts, \"what a vale of roses they live\nin!\"\n\nThough there were no roses now, there were numbers of rare and beautiful\nautumn flowers growing wherever there was space for them, and evidently\ntended by a skillful hand; there were flower-beds round the church, and\nbetween the tombs; and the one-storied wooden house where the elder lived\nwas also surrounded with flowers.\n\n\"And was it like this in the time of the last elder, Varsonofy? He didn't\ncare for such elegance. They say he used to jump up and thrash even ladies\nwith a stick,\" observed Fyodor Pavlovitch, as he went up the steps.\n\n\"The elder Varsonofy did sometimes seem rather strange, but a great deal\nthat's told is foolishness. He never thrashed any one,\" answered the monk.\n\"Now, gentlemen, if you will wait a minute I will announce you.\"\n\n\"Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the last time, your compact, do you hear? Behave\nproperly or I will pay you out!\" Miuesov had time to mutter again.\n\n\"I can't think why you are so agitated,\" Fyodor Pavlovitch observed\nsarcastically. \"Are you uneasy about your sins? They say he can tell by\none's eyes what one has come about. And what a lot you think of their\nopinion! you, a Parisian, and so advanced. I'm surprised at you.\"\n\nBut Miuesov had no time to reply to this sarcasm. They were asked to come\nin. He walked in, somewhat irritated.\n\n\"Now, I know myself, I am annoyed, I shall lose my temper and begin to\nquarrel--and lower myself and my ideas,\" he reflected.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. The Old Buffoon\n\n\nThey entered the room almost at the same moment that the elder came in\nfrom his bedroom. There were already in the cell, awaiting the elder, two\nmonks of the hermitage, one the Father Librarian, and the other Father\nPaissy, a very learned man, so they said, in delicate health, though not\nold. There was also a tall young man, who looked about two and twenty,\nstanding in the corner throughout the interview. He had a broad, fresh\nface, and clever, observant, narrow brown eyes, and was wearing ordinary\ndress. He was a divinity student, living under the protection of the\nmonastery. His expression was one of unquestioning, but self-respecting,\nreverence. Being in a subordinate and dependent position, and so not on an\nequality with the guests, he did not greet them with a bow.\n\nFather Zossima was accompanied by a novice, and by Alyosha. The two monks\nrose and greeted him with a very deep bow, touching the ground with their\nfingers; then kissed his hand. Blessing them, the elder replied with as\ndeep a reverence to them, and asked their blessing. The whole ceremony was\nperformed very seriously and with an appearance of feeling, not like an\neveryday rite. But Miuesov fancied that it was all done with intentional\nimpressiveness. He stood in front of the other visitors. He ought--he had\nreflected upon it the evening before--from simple politeness, since it was\nthe custom here, to have gone up to receive the elder's blessing, even if\nhe did not kiss his hand. But when he saw all this bowing and kissing on\nthe part of the monks he instantly changed his mind. With dignified\ngravity he made a rather deep, conventional bow, and moved away to a\nchair. Fyodor Pavlovitch did the same, mimicking Miuesov like an ape. Ivan\nbowed with great dignity and courtesy, but he too kept his hands at his\nsides, while Kalganov was so confused that he did not bow at all. The\nelder let fall the hand raised to bless them, and bowing to them again,\nasked them all to sit down. The blood rushed to Alyosha's cheeks. He was\nashamed. His forebodings were coming true.\n\nFather Zossima sat down on a very old-fashioned mahogany sofa, covered\nwith leather, and made his visitors sit down in a row along the opposite\nwall on four mahogany chairs, covered with shabby black leather. The monks\nsat, one at the door and the other at the window. The divinity student,\nthe novice, and Alyosha remained standing. The cell was not very large and\nhad a faded look. It contained nothing but the most necessary furniture,\nof coarse and poor quality. There were two pots of flowers in the window,\nand a number of holy pictures in the corner. Before one huge ancient ikon\nof the Virgin a lamp was burning. Near it were two other holy pictures in\nshining settings, and, next them, carved cherubims, china eggs, a Catholic\ncross of ivory, with a Mater Dolorosa embracing it, and several foreign\nengravings from the great Italian artists of past centuries. Next to these\ncostly and artistic engravings were several of the roughest Russian prints\nof saints and martyrs, such as are sold for a few farthings at all the\nfairs. On the other walls were portraits of Russian bishops, past and\npresent.\n\nMiuesov took a cursory glance at all these \"conventional\" surroundings and\nbent an intent look upon the elder. He had a high opinion of his own\ninsight, a weakness excusable in him as he was fifty, an age at which a\nclever man of the world of established position can hardly help taking\nhimself rather seriously. At the first moment he did not like Zossima.\nThere was, indeed, something in the elder's face which many people besides\nMiuesov might not have liked. He was a short, bent, little man, with very\nweak legs, and though he was only sixty-five, he looked at least ten years\nolder. His face was very thin and covered with a network of fine wrinkles,\nparticularly numerous about his eyes, which were small, light-colored,\nquick, and shining like two bright points. He had a sprinkling of gray\nhair about his temples. His pointed beard was small and scanty, and his\nlips, which smiled frequently, were as thin as two threads. His nose was\nnot long, but sharp, like a bird's beak.\n\n\"To all appearances a malicious soul, full of petty pride,\" thought\nMiuesov. He felt altogether dissatisfied with his position.\n\nA cheap little clock on the wall struck twelve hurriedly, and served to\nbegin the conversation.\n\n\"Precisely to our time,\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, \"but no sign of my son,\nDmitri. I apologize for him, sacred elder!\" (Alyosha shuddered all over at\n\"sacred elder.\") \"I am always punctual myself, minute for minute,\nremembering that punctuality is the courtesy of kings....\"\n\n\"But you are not a king, anyway,\" Miuesov muttered, losing his self-\nrestraint at once.\n\n\"Yes; that's true. I'm not a king, and, would you believe it, Pyotr\nAlexandrovitch, I was aware of that myself. But, there! I always say the\nwrong thing. Your reverence,\" he cried, with sudden pathos, \"you behold\nbefore you a buffoon in earnest! I introduce myself as such. It's an old\nhabit, alas! And if I sometimes talk nonsense out of place it's with an\nobject, with the object of amusing people and making myself agreeable. One\nmust be agreeable, mustn't one? I was seven years ago in a little town\nwhere I had business, and I made friends with some merchants there. We\nwent to the captain of police because we had to see him about something,\nand to ask him to dine with us. He was a tall, fat, fair, sulky man, the\nmost dangerous type in such cases. It's their liver. I went straight up to\nhim, and with the ease of a man of the world, you know, 'Mr. Ispravnik,'\nsaid I, 'be our Napravnik.' 'What do you mean by Napravnik?' said he. I\nsaw, at the first half-second, that it had missed fire. He stood there so\nglum. 'I wanted to make a joke,' said I, 'for the general diversion, as\nMr. Napravnik is our well-known Russian orchestra conductor and what we\nneed for the harmony of our undertaking is some one of that sort.' And I\nexplained my comparison very reasonably, didn't I? 'Excuse me,' said he,\n'I am an Ispravnik, and I do not allow puns to be made on my calling.' He\nturned and walked away. I followed him, shouting, 'Yes, yes, you are an\nIspravnik, not a Napravnik.' 'No,' he said, 'since you called me a\nNapravnik I am one.' And would you believe it, it ruined our business! And\nI'm always like that, always like that. Always injuring myself with my\npoliteness. Once, many years ago, I said to an influential person: 'Your\nwife is a ticklish lady,' in an honorable sense, of the moral qualities,\nso to speak. But he asked me, 'Why, have you tickled her?' I thought I'd\nbe polite, so I couldn't help saying, 'Yes,' and he gave me a fine\ntickling on the spot. Only that happened long ago, so I'm not ashamed to\ntell the story. I'm always injuring myself like that.\"\n\n\"You're doing it now,\" muttered Miuesov, with disgust.\n\nFather Zossima scrutinized them both in silence.\n\n\"Am I? Would you believe it, I was aware of that, too, Pyotr\nAlexandrovitch, and let me tell you, indeed, I foresaw I should as soon as\nI began to speak. And do you know I foresaw, too, that you'd be the first\nto remark on it. The minute I see my joke isn't coming off, your\nreverence, both my cheeks feel as though they were drawn down to the lower\njaw and there is almost a spasm in them. That's been so since I was young,\nwhen I had to make jokes for my living in noblemen's families. I am an\ninveterate buffoon, and have been from birth up, your reverence, it's as\nthough it were a craze in me. I dare say it's a devil within me. But only\na little one. A more serious one would have chosen another lodging. But\nnot your soul, Pyotr Alexandrovitch; you're not a lodging worth having\neither. But I do believe--I believe in God, though I have had doubts of\nlate. But now I sit and await words of wisdom. I'm like the philosopher,\nDiderot, your reverence. Did you ever hear, most Holy Father, how Diderot\nwent to see the Metropolitan Platon, in the time of the Empress Catherine?\nHe went in and said straight out, 'There is no God.' To which the great\nbishop lifted up his finger and answered, 'The fool hath said in his heart\nthere is no God.' And he fell down at his feet on the spot. 'I believe,'\nhe cried, 'and will be christened.' And so he was. Princess Dashkov was\nhis godmother, and Potyomkin his godfather.\"\n\n\"Fyodor Pavlovitch, this is unbearable! You know you're telling lies and\nthat that stupid anecdote isn't true. Why are you playing the fool?\" cried\nMiuesov in a shaking voice.\n\n\"I suspected all my life that it wasn't true,\" Fyodor Pavlovitch cried\nwith conviction. \"But I'll tell you the whole truth, gentlemen. Great\nelder! Forgive me, the last thing about Diderot's christening I made up\njust now. I never thought of it before. I made it up to add piquancy. I\nplay the fool, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to make myself agreeable. Though I\nreally don't know myself, sometimes, what I do it for. And as for Diderot,\nI heard as far as 'the fool hath said in his heart' twenty times from the\ngentry about here when I was young. I heard your aunt, Pyotr\nAlexandrovitch, tell the story. They all believe to this day that the\ninfidel Diderot came to dispute about God with the Metropolitan\nPlaton....\"\n\nMiuesov got up, forgetting himself in his impatience. He was furious, and\nconscious of being ridiculous.\n\nWhat was taking place in the cell was really incredible. For forty or\nfifty years past, from the times of former elders, no visitors had entered\nthat cell without feelings of the profoundest veneration. Almost every one\nadmitted to the cell felt that a great favor was being shown him. Many\nremained kneeling during the whole visit. Of those visitors, many had been\nmen of high rank and learning, some even freethinkers, attracted by\ncuriosity, but all without exception had shown the profoundest reverence\nand delicacy, for here there was no question of money, but only, on the\none side love and kindness, and on the other penitence and eager desire to\ndecide some spiritual problem or crisis. So that such buffoonery amazed\nand bewildered the spectators, or at least some of them. The monks, with\nunchanged countenances, waited, with earnest attention, to hear what the\nelder would say, but seemed on the point of standing up, like Miuesov.\nAlyosha stood, with hanging head, on the verge of tears. What seemed to\nhim strangest of all was that his brother Ivan, on whom alone he had\nrested his hopes, and who alone had such influence on his father that he\ncould have stopped him, sat now quite unmoved, with downcast eyes,\napparently waiting with interest to see how it would end, as though he had\nnothing to do with it. Alyosha did not dare to look at Rakitin, the\ndivinity student, whom he knew almost intimately. He alone in the\nmonastery knew Rakitin's thoughts.\n\n\"Forgive me,\" began Miuesov, addressing Father Zossima, \"for perhaps I seem\nto be taking part in this shameful foolery. I made a mistake in believing\nthat even a man like Fyodor Pavlovitch would understand what was due on a\nvisit to so honored a personage. I did not suppose I should have to\napologize simply for having come with him....\"\n\nPyotr Alexandrovitch could say no more, and was about to leave the room,\noverwhelmed with confusion.\n\n\"Don't distress yourself, I beg.\" The elder got on to his feeble legs, and\ntaking Pyotr Alexandrovitch by both hands, made him sit down again. \"I beg\nyou not to disturb yourself. I particularly beg you to be my guest.\" And\nwith a bow he went back and sat down again on his little sofa.\n\n\"Great elder, speak! Do I annoy you by my vivacity?\" Fyodor Pavlovitch\ncried suddenly, clutching the arms of his chair in both hands, as though\nready to leap up from it if the answer were unfavorable.\n\n\"I earnestly beg you, too, not to disturb yourself, and not to be uneasy,\"\nthe elder said impressively. \"Do not trouble. Make yourself quite at home.\nAnd, above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root\nof it all.\"\n\n\"Quite at home? To be my natural self? Oh, that is much too much, but I\naccept it with grateful joy. Do you know, blessed Father, you'd better not\ninvite me to be my natural self. Don't risk it.... I will not go so far as\nthat myself. I warn you for your own sake. Well, the rest is still plunged\nin the mists of uncertainty, though there are people who'd be pleased to\ndescribe me for you. I mean that for you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. But as for\nyou, holy being, let me tell you, I am brimming over with ecstasy.\"\n\nHe got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed, \"Blessed be the womb that\nbare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck--the paps especially. When you\nsaid just now, 'Don't be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root\nof it all,' you pierced right through me by that remark, and read me to\nthe core. Indeed, I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than\nall, and that they all take me for a buffoon. So I say, 'Let me really\nplay the buffoon. I am not afraid of your opinion, for you are every one\nof you worse than I am.' That is why I am a buffoon. It is from shame,\ngreat elder, from shame; it's simply over-sensitiveness that makes me\nrowdy. If I had only been sure that every one would accept me as the\nkindest and wisest of men, oh, Lord, what a good man I should have been\nthen! Teacher!\" he fell suddenly on his knees, \"what must I do to gain\neternal life?\"\n\nIt was difficult even now to decide whether he was joking or really moved.\n\nFather Zossima, lifting his eyes, looked at him, and said with a smile:\n\n\"You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough:\ndon't give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don't give way\nto sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your\ntaverns. If you can't close all, at least two or three. And, above\nall--don't lie.\"\n\n\"You mean about Diderot?\"\n\n\"No, not about Diderot. Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies\nto himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot\ndistinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect\nfor himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and\nin order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to\npassions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all\nfrom continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to\nhimself can be more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes\nvery pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has\ninsulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied\nand exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a\nmountain out of a molehill--he knows that himself, yet he will be the first\nto take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great\npleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit\ndown, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful posturing....\"\n\n\"Blessed man! Give me your hand to kiss.\"\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch skipped up, and imprinted a rapid kiss on the elder's\nthin hand. \"It is, it is pleasant to take offense. You said that so well,\nas I never heard it before. Yes, I have been all my life taking offense,\nto please myself, taking offense on esthetic grounds, for it is not so\nmuch pleasant as distinguished sometimes to be insulted--that you had\nforgotten, great elder, it is distinguished! I shall make a note of that.\nBut I have been lying, lying positively my whole life long, every day and\nhour of it. Of a truth, I am a lie, and the father of lies. Though I\nbelieve I am not the father of lies. I am getting mixed in my texts. Say,\nthe son of lies, and that will be enough. Only ... my angel ... I may\nsometimes talk about Diderot! Diderot will do no harm, though sometimes a\nword will do harm. Great elder, by the way, I was forgetting, though I had\nbeen meaning for the last two years to come here on purpose to ask and to\nfind out something. Only do tell Pyotr Alexandrovitch not to interrupt me.\nHere is my question: Is it true, great Father, that the story is told\nsomewhere in the _Lives of the Saints_ of a holy saint martyred for his\nfaith who, when his head was cut off at last, stood up, picked up his\nhead, and, 'courteously kissing it,' walked a long way, carrying it in his\nhands. Is that true or not, honored Father?\"\n\n\"No, it is untrue,\" said the elder.\n\n\"There is nothing of the kind in all the lives of the saints. What saint\ndo you say the story is told of?\" asked the Father Librarian.\n\n\"I do not know what saint. I do not know, and can't tell. I was deceived.\nI was told the story. I had heard it, and do you know who told it? Pyotr\nAlexandrovitch Miuesov here, who was so angry just now about Diderot. He it\nwas who told the story.\"\n\n\"I have never told it you, I never speak to you at all.\"\n\n\"It is true you did not tell me, but you told it when I was present. It\nwas three years ago. I mentioned it because by that ridiculous story you\nshook my faith, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. You knew nothing of it, but I went\nhome with my faith shaken, and I have been getting more and more shaken\never since. Yes, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, you were the cause of a great fall.\nThat was not a Diderot!\"\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch got excited and pathetic, though it was perfectly clear\nto every one by now that he was playing a part again. Yet Miuesov was stung\nby his words.\n\n\"What nonsense, and it is all nonsense,\" he muttered. \"I may really have\ntold it, some time or other ... but not to you. I was told it myself. I\nheard it in Paris from a Frenchman. He told me it was read at our mass\nfrom the _Lives of the Saints_ ... he was a very learned man who had made\na special study of Russian statistics and had lived a long time in\nRussia.... I have not read the _Lives of the Saints_ myself, and I am not\ngoing to read them ... all sorts of things are said at dinner--we were\ndining then.\"\n\n\"Yes, you were dining then, and so I lost my faith!\" said Fyodor\nPavlovitch, mimicking him.\n\n\"What do I care for your faith?\" Miuesov was on the point of shouting, but\nhe suddenly checked himself, and said with contempt, \"You defile\neverything you touch.\"\n\nThe elder suddenly rose from his seat. \"Excuse me, gentlemen, for leaving\nyou a few minutes,\" he said, addressing all his guests. \"I have visitors\nawaiting me who arrived before you. But don't you tell lies all the same,\"\nhe added, turning to Fyodor Pavlovitch with a good-humored face. He went\nout of the cell. Alyosha and the novice flew to escort him down the steps.\nAlyosha was breathless: he was glad to get away, but he was glad, too,\nthat the elder was good-humored and not offended. Father Zossima was going\ntowards the portico to bless the people waiting for him there. But Fyodor\nPavlovitch persisted in stopping him at the door of the cell.\n\n\"Blessed man!\" he cried, with feeling. \"Allow me to kiss your hand once\nmore. Yes, with you I could still talk, I could still get on. Do you think\nI always lie and play the fool like this? Believe me, I have been acting\nlike this all the time on purpose to try you. I have been testing you all\nthe time to see whether I could get on with you. Is there room for my\nhumility beside your pride? I am ready to give you a testimonial that one\ncan get on with you! But now, I'll be quiet; I will keep quiet all the\ntime. I'll sit in a chair and hold my tongue. Now it is for you to speak,\nPyotr Alexandrovitch. You are the principal person left now--for ten\nminutes.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. Peasant Women Who Have Faith\n\n\nNear the wooden portico below, built on to the outer wall of the precinct,\nthere was a crowd of about twenty peasant women. They had been told that\nthe elder was at last coming out, and they had gathered together in\nanticipation. Two ladies, Madame Hohlakov and her daughter, had also come\nout into the portico to wait for the elder, but in a separate part of it\nset aside for women of rank.\n\nMadame Hohlakov was a wealthy lady, still young and attractive, and always\ndressed with taste. She was rather pale, and had lively black eyes. She\nwas not more than thirty-three, and had been five years a widow. Her\ndaughter, a girl of fourteen, was partially paralyzed. The poor child had\nnot been able to walk for the last six months, and was wheeled about in a\nlong reclining chair. She had a charming little face, rather thin from\nillness, but full of gayety. There was a gleam of mischief in her big dark\neyes with their long lashes. Her mother had been intending to take her\nabroad ever since the spring, but they had been detained all the summer by\nbusiness connected with their estate. They had been staying a week in our\ntown, where they had come more for purposes of business than devotion, but\nhad visited Father Zossima once already, three days before. Though they\nknew that the elder scarcely saw any one, they had now suddenly turned up\nagain, and urgently entreated \"the happiness of looking once again on the\ngreat healer.\"\n\nThe mother was sitting on a chair by the side of her daughter's invalid\ncarriage, and two paces from her stood an old monk, not one of our\nmonastery, but a visitor from an obscure religious house in the far north.\nHe too sought the elder's blessing.\n\nBut Father Zossima, on entering the portico, went first straight to the\npeasants who were crowded at the foot of the three steps that led up into\nthe portico. Father Zossima stood on the top step, put on his stole, and\nbegan blessing the women who thronged about him. One crazy woman was led\nup to him. As soon as she caught sight of the elder she began shrieking\nand writhing as though in the pains of childbirth. Laying the stole on her\nforehead, he read a short prayer over her, and she was at once soothed and\nquieted.\n\nI do not know how it may be now, but in my childhood I often happened to\nsee and hear these \"possessed\" women in the villages and monasteries. They\nused to be brought to mass; they would squeal and bark like a dog so that\nthey were heard all over the church. But when the sacrament was carried in\nand they were led up to it, at once the \"possession\" ceased, and the sick\nwomen were always soothed for a time. I was greatly impressed and amazed\nat this as a child; but then I heard from country neighbors and from my\ntown teachers that the whole illness was simulated to avoid work, and that\nit could always be cured by suitable severity; various anecdotes were told\nto confirm this. But later on I learnt with astonishment from medical\nspecialists that there is no pretense about it, that it is a terrible\nillness to which women are subject, specially prevalent among us in\nRussia, and that it is due to the hard lot of the peasant women. It is a\ndisease, I was told, arising from exhausting toil too soon after hard,\nabnormal and unassisted labor in childbirth, and from the hopeless misery,\nfrom beatings, and so on, which some women were not able to endure like\nothers. The strange and instant healing of the frantic and struggling\nwoman as soon as she was led up to the holy sacrament, which had been\nexplained to me as due to malingering and the trickery of the \"clericals,\"\narose probably in the most natural manner. Both the women who supported\nher and the invalid herself fully believed as a truth beyond question that\nthe evil spirit in possession of her could not hold out if the sick woman\nwere brought to the sacrament and made to bow down before it. And so, with\na nervous and psychically deranged woman, a sort of convulsion of the\nwhole organism always took place, and was bound to take place, at the\nmoment of bowing down to the sacrament, aroused by the expectation of the\nmiracle of healing and the implicit belief that it would come to pass; and\nit did come to pass, though only for a moment. It was exactly the same now\nas soon as the elder touched the sick woman with the stole.\n\nMany of the women in the crowd were moved to tears of ecstasy by the\neffect of the moment: some strove to kiss the hem of his garment, others\ncried out in sing-song voices.\n\nHe blessed them all and talked with some of them. The \"possessed\" woman he\nknew already. She came from a village only six versts from the monastery,\nand had been brought to him before.\n\n\"But here is one from afar.\" He pointed to a woman by no means old but\nvery thin and wasted, with a face not merely sunburnt but almost blackened\nby exposure. She was kneeling and gazing with a fixed stare at the elder;\nthere was something almost frenzied in her eyes.\n\n\"From afar off, Father, from afar off! From two hundred miles from here.\nFrom afar off, Father, from afar off!\" the woman began in a sing-song\nvoice as though she were chanting a dirge, swaying her head from side to\nside with her cheek resting in her hand.\n\nThere is silent and long-suffering sorrow to be met with among the\npeasantry. It withdraws into itself and is still. But there is a grief\nthat breaks out, and from that minute it bursts into tears and finds vent\nin wailing. This is particularly common with women. But it is no lighter a\ngrief than the silent. Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart\nstill more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense\nof its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to\nreopen the wound.\n\n\"You are of the tradesman class?\" said Father Zossima, looking curiously\nat her.\n\n\"Townfolk we are, Father, townfolk. Yet we are peasants though we live in\nthe town. I have come to see you, O Father! We heard of you, Father, we\nheard of you. I have buried my little son, and I have come on a\npilgrimage. I have been in three monasteries, but they told me, 'Go,\nNastasya, go to them'--that is to you. I have come; I was yesterday at the\nservice, and to-day I have come to you.\"\n\n\"What are you weeping for?\"\n\n\"It's my little son I'm grieving for, Father. He was three years old--three\nyears all but three months. For my little boy, Father, I'm in anguish, for\nmy little boy. He was the last one left. We had four, my Nikita and I, and\nnow we've no children, our dear ones have all gone. I buried the first\nthree without grieving overmuch, and now I have buried the last I can't\nforget him. He seems always standing before me. He never leaves me. He has\nwithered my heart. I look at his little clothes, his little shirt, his\nlittle boots, and I wail. I lay out all that is left of him, all his\nlittle things. I look at them and wail. I say to Nikita, my husband, 'Let\nme go on a pilgrimage, master.' He is a driver. We're not poor people,\nFather, not poor; he drives our own horse. It's all our own, the horse and\nthe carriage. And what good is it all to us now? My Nikita has begun\ndrinking while I am away. He's sure to. It used to be so before. As soon\nas I turn my back he gives way to it. But now I don't think about him.\nIt's three months since I left home. I've forgotten him. I've forgotten\neverything. I don't want to remember. And what would our life be now\ntogether? I've done with him, I've done. I've done with them all. I don't\ncare to look upon my house and my goods. I don't care to see anything at\nall!\"\n\n\"Listen, mother,\" said the elder. \"Once in olden times a holy saint saw in\nthe Temple a mother like you weeping for her little one, her only one,\nwhom God had taken. 'Knowest thou not,' said the saint to her, 'how bold\nthese little ones are before the throne of God? Verily there are none\nbolder than they in the Kingdom of Heaven. \"Thou didst give us life, O\nLord,\" they say, \"and scarcely had we looked upon it when Thou didst take\nit back again.\" And so boldly they ask and ask again that God gives them\nat once the rank of angels. Therefore,' said the saint, 'thou, too, O\nmother, rejoice and weep not, for thy little son is with the Lord in the\nfellowship of the angels.' That's what the saint said to the weeping\nmother of old. He was a great saint and he could not have spoken falsely.\nTherefore you too, mother, know that your little one is surely before the\nthrone of God, is rejoicing and happy, and praying to God for you, and\ntherefore weep not, but rejoice.\"\n\nThe woman listened to him, looking down with her cheek in her hand. She\nsighed deeply.\n\n\"My Nikita tried to comfort me with the same words as you. 'Foolish one,'\nhe said, 'why weep? Our son is no doubt singing with the angels before\nGod.' He says that to me, but he weeps himself. I see that he cries like\nme. 'I know, Nikita,' said I. 'Where could he be if not with the Lord God?\nOnly, here with us now he is not as he used to sit beside us before.' And\nif only I could look upon him one little time, if only I could peep at him\none little time, without going up to him, without speaking, if I could be\nhidden in a corner and only see him for one little minute, hear him\nplaying in the yard, calling in his little voice, 'Mammy, where are you?'\nIf only I could hear him pattering with his little feet about the room\njust once, only once; for so often, so often I remember how he used to run\nto me and shout and laugh, if only I could hear his little feet I should\nknow him! But he's gone, Father, he's gone, and I shall never hear him\nagain. Here's his little sash, but him I shall never see or hear now.\"\n\nShe drew out of her bosom her boy's little embroidered sash, and as soon\nas she looked at it she began shaking with sobs, hiding her eyes with her\nfingers through which the tears flowed in a sudden stream.\n\n\"It is Rachel of old,\" said the elder, \"weeping for her children, and will\nnot be comforted because they are not. Such is the lot set on earth for\nyou mothers. Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need. Weep and\nbe not consoled, but weep. Only every time that you weep be sure to\nremember that your little son is one of the angels of God, that he looks\ndown from there at you and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and\npoints at them to the Lord God; and a long while yet will you keep that\ngreat mother's grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your\nbitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart\nand delivers it from sin. And I shall pray for the peace of your child's\nsoul. What was his name?\"\n\n\"Alexey, Father.\"\n\n\"A sweet name. After Alexey, the man of God?\"\n\n\"Yes, Father.\"\n\n\"What a saint he was! I will remember him, mother, and your grief in my\nprayers, and I will pray for your husband's health. It is a sin for you to\nleave him. Your little one will see from heaven that you have forsaken his\nfather, and will weep over you. Why do you trouble his happiness? He is\nliving, for the soul lives for ever, and though he is not in the house he\nis near you, unseen. How can he go into the house when you say that the\nhouse is hateful to you? To whom is he to go if he find you not together,\nhis father and mother? He comes to you in dreams now, and you grieve. But\nthen he will send you gentle dreams. Go to your husband, mother; go this\nvery day.\"\n\n\"I will go, Father, at your word. I will go. You've gone straight to my\nheart. My Nikita, my Nikita, you are waiting for me,\" the woman began in a\nsing-song voice; but the elder had already turned away to a very old\nwoman, dressed like a dweller in the town, not like a pilgrim. Her eyes\nshowed that she had come with an object, and in order to say something.\nShe said she was the widow of a non-commissioned officer, and lived close\nby in the town. Her son Vasenka was in the commissariat service, and had\ngone to Irkutsk in Siberia. He had written twice from there, but now a\nyear had passed since he had written. She did inquire about him, but she\ndid not know the proper place to inquire.\n\n\"Only the other day Stepanida Ilyinishna--she's a rich merchant's wife--said\nto me, 'You go, Prohorovna, and put your son's name down for prayer in the\nchurch, and pray for the peace of his soul as though he were dead. His\nsoul will be troubled,' she said, 'and he will write you a letter.' And\nStepanida Ilyinishna told me it was a certain thing which had been many\ntimes tried. Only I am in doubt.... Oh, you light of ours! is it true or\nfalse, and would it be right?\"\n\n\"Don't think of it. It's shameful to ask the question. How is it possible\nto pray for the peace of a living soul? And his own mother too! It's a\ngreat sin, akin to sorcery. Only for your ignorance it is forgiven you.\nBetter pray to the Queen of Heaven, our swift defense and help, for his\ngood health, and that she may forgive you for your error. And another\nthing I will tell you, Prohorovna. Either he will soon come back to you,\nyour son, or he will be sure to send a letter. Go, and henceforward be in\npeace. Your son is alive, I tell you.\"\n\n\"Dear Father, God reward you, our benefactor, who prays for all of us and\nfor our sins!\"\n\nBut the elder had already noticed in the crowd two glowing eyes fixed upon\nhim. An exhausted, consumptive-looking, though young peasant woman was\ngazing at him in silence. Her eyes besought him, but she seemed afraid to\napproach.\n\n\"What is it, my child?\"\n\n\"Absolve my soul, Father,\" she articulated softly, and slowly sank on her\nknees and bowed down at his feet. \"I have sinned, Father. I am afraid of\nmy sin.\"\n\nThe elder sat down on the lower step. The woman crept closer to him, still\non her knees.\n\n\"I am a widow these three years,\" she began in a half-whisper, with a sort\nof shudder. \"I had a hard life with my husband. He was an old man. He used\nto beat me cruelly. He lay ill; I thought looking at him, if he were to\nget well, if he were to get up again, what then? And then the thought came\nto me--\"\n\n\"Stay!\" said the elder, and he put his ear close to her lips.\n\nThe woman went on in a low whisper, so that it was almost impossible to\ncatch anything. She had soon done.\n\n\"Three years ago?\" asked the elder.\n\n\"Three years. At first I didn't think about it, but now I've begun to be\nill, and the thought never leaves me.\"\n\n\"Have you come from far?\"\n\n\"Over three hundred miles away.\"\n\n\"Have you told it in confession?\"\n\n\"I have confessed it. Twice I have confessed it.\"\n\n\"Have you been admitted to Communion?\"\n\n\"Yes. I am afraid. I am afraid to die.\"\n\n\"Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don't fret. If only your penitence\nfail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin\non all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant!\nMan cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God.\nCan there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of\nrepentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe\nthat God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your\nsin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner\nthere is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not.\nBe not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the\ndead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in\ntruth. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All\nthings are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even\nas you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will\nGod. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world\nby it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.\"\n\nHe signed her three times with the cross, took from his own neck a little\nikon and put it upon her. She bowed down to the earth without speaking.\n\nHe got up and looked cheerfully at a healthy peasant woman with a tiny\nbaby in her arms.\n\n\"From Vyshegorye, dear Father.\"\n\n\"Five miles you have dragged yourself with the baby. What do you want?\"\n\n\"I've come to look at you. I have been to you before--or have you\nforgotten? You've no great memory if you've forgotten me. They told us you\nwere ill. Thinks I, I'll go and see him for myself. Now I see you, and\nyou're not ill! You'll live another twenty years. God bless you! There are\nplenty to pray for you; how should you be ill?\"\n\n\"I thank you for all, daughter.\"\n\n\"By the way, I have a thing to ask, not a great one. Here are sixty\ncopecks. Give them, dear Father, to some one poorer than me. I thought as\nI came along, better give through him. He'll know whom to give to.\"\n\n\"Thanks, my dear, thanks! You are a good woman. I love you. I will do so\ncertainly. Is that your little girl?\"\n\n\"My little girl, Father, Lizaveta.\"\n\n\"May the Lord bless you both, you and your babe Lizaveta! You have\ngladdened my heart, mother. Farewell, dear children, farewell, dear ones.\"\n\nHe blessed them all and bowed low to them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. A Lady Of Little Faith\n\n\nA visitor looking on the scene of his conversation with the peasants and\nhis blessing them shed silent tears and wiped them away with her\nhandkerchief. She was a sentimental society lady of genuinely good\ndisposition in many respects. When the elder went up to her at last she\nmet him enthusiastically.\n\n\"Ah, what I have been feeling, looking on at this touching scene!...\" She\ncould not go on for emotion. \"Oh, I understand the people's love for you.\nI love the people myself. I want to love them. And who could help loving\nthem, our splendid Russian people, so simple in their greatness!\"\n\n\"How is your daughter's health? You wanted to talk to me again?\"\n\n\"Oh, I have been urgently begging for it, I have prayed for it! I was\nready to fall on my knees and kneel for three days at your windows until\nyou let me in. We have come, great healer, to express our ardent\ngratitude. You have healed my Lise, healed her completely, merely by\npraying over her last Thursday and laying your hands upon her. We have\nhastened here to kiss those hands, to pour out our feelings and our\nhomage.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by healed? But she is still lying down in her chair.\"\n\n\"But her night fevers have entirely ceased ever since Thursday,\" said the\nlady with nervous haste. \"And that's not all. Her legs are stronger. This\nmorning she got up well; she had slept all night. Look at her rosy cheeks,\nher bright eyes! She used to be always crying, but now she laughs and is\ngay and happy. This morning she insisted on my letting her stand up, and\nshe stood up for a whole minute without any support. She wagers that in a\nfortnight she'll be dancing a quadrille. I've called in Doctor\nHerzenstube. He shrugged his shoulders and said, 'I am amazed; I can make\nnothing of it.' And would you have us not come here to disturb you, not\nfly here to thank you? Lise, thank him--thank him!\"\n\nLise's pretty little laughing face became suddenly serious. She rose in\nher chair as far as she could and, looking at the elder, clasped her hands\nbefore him, but could not restrain herself and broke into laughter.\n\n\"It's at him,\" she said, pointing to Alyosha, with childish vexation at\nherself for not being able to repress her mirth.\n\nIf any one had looked at Alyosha standing a step behind the elder, he\nwould have caught a quick flush crimsoning his cheeks in an instant. His\neyes shone and he looked down.\n\n\"She has a message for you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How are you?\" the mother\nwent on, holding out her exquisitely gloved hand to Alyosha.\n\nThe elder turned round and all at once looked attentively at Alyosha. The\nlatter went nearer to Lise and, smiling in a strangely awkward way, held\nout his hand to her too. Lise assumed an important air.\n\n\"Katerina Ivanovna has sent you this through me.\" She handed him a little\nnote. \"She particularly begs you to go and see her as soon as possible;\nthat you will not fail her, but will be sure to come.\"\n\n\"She asks me to go and see her? Me? What for?\" Alyosha muttered in great\nastonishment. His face at once looked anxious. \"Oh, it's all to do with\nDmitri Fyodorovitch and--what has happened lately,\" the mother explained\nhurriedly. \"Katerina Ivanovna has made up her mind, but she must see you\nabout it.... Why, of course, I can't say. But she wants to see you at\nonce. And you will go to her, of course. It is a Christian duty.\"\n\n\"I have only seen her once,\" Alyosha protested with the same perplexity.\n\n\"Oh, she is such a lofty, incomparable creature! If only for her\nsuffering.... Think what she has gone through, what she is enduring now!\nThink what awaits her! It's all terrible, terrible!\"\n\n\"Very well, I will come,\" Alyosha decided, after rapidly scanning the\nbrief, enigmatic note, which consisted of an urgent entreaty that he would\ncome, without any sort of explanation.\n\n\"Oh, how sweet and generous that would be of you!\" cried Lise with sudden\nanimation. \"I told mamma you'd be sure not to go. I said you were saving\nyour soul. How splendid you are! I've always thought you were splendid.\nHow glad I am to tell you so!\"\n\n\"Lise!\" said her mother impressively, though she smiled after she had said\nit.\n\n\"You have quite forgotten us, Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" she said; \"you never\ncome to see us. Yet Lise has told me twice that she is never happy except\nwith you.\"\n\nAlyosha raised his downcast eyes and again flushed, and again smiled\nwithout knowing why. But the elder was no longer watching him. He had\nbegun talking to a monk who, as mentioned before, had been awaiting his\nentrance by Lise's chair. He was evidently a monk of the humblest, that is\nof the peasant, class, of a narrow outlook, but a true believer, and, in\nhis own way, a stubborn one. He announced that he had come from the far\nnorth, from Obdorsk, from Saint Sylvester, and was a member of a poor\nmonastery, consisting of only ten monks. The elder gave him his blessing\nand invited him to come to his cell whenever he liked.\n\n\"How can you presume to do such deeds?\" the monk asked suddenly, pointing\nsolemnly and significantly at Lise. He was referring to her \"healing.\"\n\n\"It's too early, of course, to speak of that. Relief is not complete cure,\nand may proceed from different causes. But if there has been any healing,\nit is by no power but God's will. It's all from God. Visit me, Father,\" he\nadded to the monk. \"It's not often I can see visitors. I am ill, and I\nknow that my days are numbered.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no! God will not take you from us. You will live a long, long\ntime yet,\" cried the lady. \"And in what way are you ill? You look so well,\nso gay and happy.\"\n\n\"I am extraordinarily better to-day. But I know that it's only for a\nmoment. I understand my disease now thoroughly. If I seem so happy to you,\nyou could never say anything that would please me so much. For men are\nmade for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say\nto himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the\nsaints, all the holy martyrs were happy.\"\n\n\"Oh, how you speak! What bold and lofty words!\" cried the lady. \"You seem\nto pierce with your words. And yet--happiness, happiness--where is it? Who\ncan say of himself that he is happy? Oh, since you have been so good as to\nlet us see you once more to-day, let me tell you what I could not utter\nlast time, what I dared not say, all I am suffering and have been for so\nlong! I am suffering! Forgive me! I am suffering!\"\n\nAnd in a rush of fervent feeling she clasped her hands before him.\n\n\"From what specially?\"\n\n\"I suffer ... from lack of faith.\"\n\n\"Lack of faith in God?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no! I dare not even think of that. But the future life--it is such\nan enigma! And no one, no one can solve it. Listen! You are a healer, you\nare deeply versed in the human soul, and of course I dare not expect you\nto believe me entirely, but I assure you on my word of honor that I am not\nspeaking lightly now. The thought of the life beyond the grave distracts\nme to anguish, to terror. And I don't know to whom to appeal, and have not\ndared to all my life. And now I am so bold as to ask you. Oh, God! What\nwill you think of me now?\"\n\nShe clasped her hands.\n\n\"Don't distress yourself about my opinion of you,\" said the elder. \"I\nquite believe in the sincerity of your suffering.\"\n\n\"Oh, how thankful I am to you! You see, I shut my eyes and ask myself if\nevery one has faith, where did it come from? And then they do say that it\nall comes from terror at the menacing phenomena of nature, and that none\nof it's real. And I say to myself, 'What if I've been believing all my\nlife, and when I come to die there's nothing but the burdocks growing on\nmy grave?' as I read in some author. It's awful! How--how can I get back my\nfaith? But I only believed when I was a little child, mechanically,\nwithout thinking of anything. How, how is one to prove it? I have come now\nto lay my soul before you and to ask you about it. If I let this chance\nslip, no one all my life will answer me. How can I prove it? How can I\nconvince myself? Oh, how unhappy I am! I stand and look about me and see\nthat scarcely any one else cares; no one troubles his head about it, and\nI'm the only one who can't stand it. It's deadly--deadly!\"\n\n\"No doubt. But there's no proving it, though you can be convinced of it.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively\nand indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of\nthe reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to\nperfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will\nbelieve without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has\nbeen tried. This is certain.\"\n\n\"In active love? There's another question--and such a question! You see, I\nso love humanity that--would you believe it?--I often dream of forsaking all\nthat I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister of mercy. I close my eyes\nand think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to\novercome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering sores could at that moment\nfrighten me. I would bind them up and wash them with my own hands. I would\nnurse the afflicted. I would be ready to kiss such wounds.\"\n\n\"It is much, and well that your mind is full of such dreams and not\nothers. Sometime, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality.\"\n\n\"Yes. But could I endure such a life for long?\" the lady went on\nfervently, almost frantically. \"That's the chief question--that's my most\nagonizing question. I shut my eyes and ask myself, 'Would you persevere\nlong on that path? And if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not\nmeet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing\nor remarking your charitable services, began abusing you and rudely\ncommanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which\noften happens when people are in great suffering)--what then? Would you\npersevere in your love, or not?' And do you know, I came with horror to\nthe conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it\nwould be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment\nat once--that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I\nam incapable of loving any one.\"\n\nShe was in a very paroxysm of self-castigation, and, concluding, she\nlooked with defiant resolution at the elder.\n\n\"It's just the same story as a doctor once told me,\" observed the elder.\n\"He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as\nfrankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. 'I love humanity,' he\nsaid, 'but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the\nless I love man in particular. In my dreams,' he said, 'I have often come\nto making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I\nmight actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary;\nand yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two\ndays together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his\npersonality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In\ntwenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too\nlong over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing\nhis nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But\nit has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more\nardent becomes my love for humanity.' \"\n\n\"But what's to be done? What can one do in such a case? Must one despair?\"\n\n\"No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it\nwill be reckoned unto you. Much is done already in you since you can so\ndeeply and sincerely know yourself. If you have been talking to me so\nsincerely, simply to gain approbation for your frankness, as you did from\nme just now, then of course you will not attain to anything in the\nachievement of real love; it will all get no further than dreams, and your\nwhole life will slip away like a phantom. In that case you will naturally\ncease to think of the future life too, and will of yourself grow calmer\nafter a fashion in the end.\"\n\n\"You have crushed me! Only now, as you speak, I understand that I was\nreally only seeking your approbation for my sincerity when I told you I\ncould not endure ingratitude. You have revealed me to myself. You have\nseen through me and explained me to myself!\"\n\n\"Are you speaking the truth? Well, now, after such a confession, I believe\nthat you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness,\nalways remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it.\nAbove all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness\nto yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every\nhour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself.\nWhat seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of\nyour observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the\nconsequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own\nfaint-heartedness in attaining love. Don't be frightened overmuch even at\nyour evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for\nlove in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.\nLove in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in\nthe sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does\nnot last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as\nthough on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some\npeople too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you\nsee with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther\nfrom your goal instead of nearer to it--at that very moment I predict that\nyou will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who\nhas been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you. Forgive me for\nnot being able to stay longer with you. They are waiting for me. Good-by.\"\n\nThe lady was weeping.\n\n\"Lise, Lise! Bless her--bless her!\" she cried, starting up suddenly.\n\n\"She does not deserve to be loved. I have seen her naughtiness all along,\"\nthe elder said jestingly. \"Why have you been laughing at Alexey?\"\n\nLise had in fact been occupied in mocking at him all the time. She had\nnoticed before that Alyosha was shy and tried not to look at her, and she\nfound this extremely amusing. She waited intently to catch his eye.\nAlyosha, unable to endure her persistent stare, was irresistibly and\nsuddenly drawn to glance at her, and at once she smiled triumphantly in\nhis face. Alyosha was even more disconcerted and vexed. At last he turned\naway from her altogether and hid behind the elder's back. After a few\nminutes, drawn by the same irresistible force, he turned again to see\nwhether he was being looked at or not, and found Lise almost hanging out\nof her chair to peep sideways at him, eagerly waiting for him to look.\nCatching his eye, she laughed so that the elder could not help saying,\n\"Why do you make fun of him like that, naughty girl?\"\n\nLise suddenly and quite unexpectedly blushed. Her eyes flashed and her\nface became quite serious. She began speaking quickly and nervously in a\nwarm and resentful voice:\n\n\"Why has he forgotten everything, then? He used to carry me about when I\nwas little. We used to play together. He used to come to teach me to read,\ndo you know. Two years ago, when he went away, he said that he would never\nforget me, that we were friends for ever, for ever, for ever! And now he's\nafraid of me all at once. Am I going to eat him? Why doesn't he want to\ncome near me? Why doesn't he talk? Why won't he come and see us? It's not\nthat you won't let him. We know that he goes everywhere. It's not good\nmanners for me to invite him. He ought to have thought of it first, if he\nhasn't forgotten me. No, now he's saving his soul! Why have you put that\nlong gown on him? If he runs he'll fall.\"\n\nAnd suddenly she hid her face in her hand and went off into irresistible,\nprolonged, nervous, inaudible laughter. The elder listened to her with a\nsmile, and blessed her tenderly. As she kissed his hand she suddenly\npressed it to her eyes and began crying.\n\n\"Don't be angry with me. I'm silly and good for nothing ... and perhaps\nAlyosha's right, quite right, in not wanting to come and see such a\nridiculous girl.\"\n\n\"I will certainly send him,\" said the elder.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. So Be It! So Be It!\n\n\nThe elder's absence from his cell had lasted for about twenty-five\nminutes. It was more than half-past twelve, but Dmitri, on whose account\nthey had all met there, had still not appeared. But he seemed almost to be\nforgotten, and when the elder entered the cell again, he found his guests\nengaged in eager conversation. Ivan and the two monks took the leading\nshare in it. Miuesov, too, was trying to take a part, and apparently very\neagerly, in the conversation. But he was unsuccessful in this also. He was\nevidently in the background, and his remarks were treated with neglect,\nwhich increased his irritability. He had had intellectual encounters with\nIvan before and he could not endure a certain carelessness Ivan showed\nhim.\n\n\"Hitherto at least I have stood in the front ranks of all that is\nprogressive in Europe, and here the new generation positively ignores us,\"\nhe thought.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch, who had given his word to sit still and be quiet, had\nactually been quiet for some time, but he watched his neighbor Miuesov with\nan ironical little smile, obviously enjoying his discomfiture. He had been\nwaiting for some time to pay off old scores, and now he could not let the\nopportunity slip. Bending over his shoulder he began teasing him again in\na whisper.\n\n\"Why didn't you go away just now, after the 'courteously kissing'? Why did\nyou consent to remain in such unseemly company? It was because you felt\ninsulted and aggrieved, and you remained to vindicate yourself by showing\noff your intelligence. Now you won't go till you've displayed your\nintellect to them.\"\n\n\"You again?... On the contrary, I'm just going.\"\n\n\"You'll be the last, the last of all to go!\" Fyodor Pavlovitch delivered\nhim another thrust, almost at the moment of Father Zossima's return.\n\nThe discussion died down for a moment, but the elder, seating himself in\nhis former place, looked at them all as though cordially inviting them to\ngo on. Alyosha, who knew every expression of his face, saw that he was\nfearfully exhausted and making a great effort. Of late he had been liable\nto fainting fits from exhaustion. His face had the pallor that was common\nbefore such attacks, and his lips were white. But he evidently did not\nwant to break up the party. He seemed to have some special object of his\nown in keeping them. What object? Alyosha watched him intently.\n\n\"We are discussing this gentleman's most interesting article,\" said Father\nIosif, the librarian, addressing the elder, and indicating Ivan. \"He\nbrings forward much that is new, but I think the argument cuts both ways.\nIt is an article written in answer to a book by an ecclesiastical\nauthority on the question of the ecclesiastical court, and the scope of\nits jurisdiction.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry I have not read your article, but I've heard of it,\" said the\nelder, looking keenly and intently at Ivan.\n\n\"He takes up a most interesting position,\" continued the Father Librarian.\n\"As far as Church jurisdiction is concerned he is apparently quite opposed\nto the separation of Church from State.\"\n\n\"That's interesting. But in what sense?\" Father Zossima asked Ivan.\n\nThe latter, at last, answered him, not condescendingly, as Alyosha had\nfeared, but with modesty and reserve, with evident goodwill and apparently\nwithout the slightest _arriere-pensee_.\n\n\"I start from the position that this confusion of elements, that is, of\nthe essential principles of Church and State, will, of course, go on for\never, in spite of the fact that it is impossible for them to mingle, and\nthat the confusion of these elements cannot lead to any consistent or even\nnormal results, for there is falsity at the very foundation of it.\nCompromise between the Church and State in such questions as, for\ninstance, jurisdiction, is, to my thinking, impossible in any real sense.\nMy clerical opponent maintains that the Church holds a precise and defined\nposition in the State. I maintain, on the contrary, that the Church ought\nto include the whole State, and not simply to occupy a corner in it, and,\nif this is, for some reason, impossible at present, then it ought, in\nreality, to be set up as the direct and chief aim of the future\ndevelopment of Christian society!\"\n\n\"Perfectly true,\" Father Paissy, the silent and learned monk, assented\nwith fervor and decision.\n\n\"The purest Ultramontanism!\" cried Miuesov impatiently, crossing and\nrecrossing his legs.\n\n\"Oh, well, we have no mountains,\" cried Father Iosif, and turning to the\nelder he continued: \"Observe the answer he makes to the following\n'fundamental and essential' propositions of his opponent, who is, you must\nnote, an ecclesiastic. First, that 'no social organization can or ought to\narrogate to itself power to dispose of the civic and political rights of\nits members.' Secondly, that 'criminal and civil jurisdiction ought not to\nbelong to the Church, and is inconsistent with its nature, both as a\ndivine institution and as an organization of men for religious objects,'\nand, finally, in the third place, 'the Church is a kingdom not of this\nworld.' \"\n\n\"A most unworthy play upon words for an ecclesiastic!\" Father Paissy could\nnot refrain from breaking in again. \"I have read the book which you have\nanswered,\" he added, addressing Ivan, \"and was astounded at the words 'the\nChurch is a kingdom not of this world.' If it is not of this world, then\nit cannot exist on earth at all. In the Gospel, the words 'not of this\nworld' are not used in that sense. To play with such words is\nindefensible. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to set up the Church upon earth.\nThe Kingdom of Heaven, of course, is not of this world, but in Heaven; but\nit is only entered through the Church which has been founded and\nestablished upon earth. And so a frivolous play upon words in such a\nconnection is unpardonable and improper. The Church is, in truth, a\nkingdom and ordained to rule, and in the end must undoubtedly become the\nkingdom ruling over all the earth. For that we have the divine promise.\"\n\nHe ceased speaking suddenly, as though checking himself. After listening\nattentively and respectfully Ivan went on, addressing the elder with\nperfect composure and as before with ready cordiality:\n\n\"The whole point of my article lies in the fact that during the first\nthree centuries Christianity only existed on earth in the Church and was\nnothing but the Church. When the pagan Roman Empire desired to become\nChristian, it inevitably happened that, by becoming Christian, it included\nthe Church but remained a pagan State in very many of its departments. In\nreality this was bound to happen. But Rome as a State retained too much of\nthe pagan civilization and culture, as, for example, in the very objects\nand fundamental principles of the State. The Christian Church entering\ninto the State could, of course, surrender no part of its fundamental\nprinciples--the rock on which it stands--and could pursue no other aims than\nthose which have been ordained and revealed by God Himself, and among them\nthat of drawing the whole world, and therefore the ancient pagan State\nitself, into the Church. In that way (that is, with a view to the future)\nit is not the Church that should seek a definite position in the State,\nlike 'every social organization,' or as 'an organization of men for\nreligious purposes' (as my opponent calls the Church), but, on the\ncontrary, every earthly State should be, in the end, completely\ntransformed into the Church and should become nothing else but a Church,\nrejecting every purpose incongruous with the aims of the Church. All this\nwill not degrade it in any way or take from its honor and glory as a great\nState, nor from the glory of its rulers, but only turns it from a false,\nstill pagan, and mistaken path to the true and rightful path, which alone\nleads to the eternal goal. This is why the author of the book _On the\nFoundations of Church Jurisdiction_ would have judged correctly if, in\nseeking and laying down those foundations, he had looked upon them as a\ntemporary compromise inevitable in our sinful and imperfect days. But as\nsoon as the author ventures to declare that the foundations which he\npredicates now, part of which Father Iosif just enumerated, are the\npermanent, essential, and eternal foundations, he is going directly\nagainst the Church and its sacred and eternal vocation. That is the gist\nof my article.\"\n\n\"That is, in brief,\" Father Paissy began again, laying stress on each\nword, \"according to certain theories only too clearly formulated in the\nnineteenth century, the Church ought to be transformed into the State, as\nthough this would be an advance from a lower to a higher form, so as to\ndisappear into it, making way for science, for the spirit of the age, and\ncivilization. And if the Church resists and is unwilling, some corner will\nbe set apart for her in the State, and even that under control--and this\nwill be so everywhere in all modern European countries. But Russian hopes\nand conceptions demand not that the Church should pass as from a lower\ninto a higher type into the State, but, on the contrary, that the State\nshould end by being worthy to become only the Church and nothing else. So\nbe it! So be it!\"\n\n\"Well, I confess you've reassured me somewhat,\" Miuesov said smiling, again\ncrossing his legs. \"So far as I understand, then, the realization of such\nan ideal is infinitely remote, at the second coming of Christ. That's as\nyou please. It's a beautiful Utopian dream of the abolition of war,\ndiplomacy, banks, and so on--something after the fashion of socialism,\nindeed. But I imagined that it was all meant seriously, and that the\nChurch might be _now_ going to try criminals, and sentence them to\nbeating, prison, and even death.\"\n\n\"But if there were none but the ecclesiastical court, the Church would not\neven now sentence a criminal to prison or to death. Crime and the way of\nregarding it would inevitably change, not all at once of course, but\nfairly soon,\" Ivan replied calmly, without flinching.\n\n\"Are you serious?\" Miuesov glanced keenly at him.\n\n\"If everything became the Church, the Church would exclude all the\ncriminal and disobedient, and would not cut off their heads,\" Ivan went\non. \"I ask you, what would become of the excluded? He would be cut off\nthen not only from men, as now, but from Christ. By his crime he would\nhave transgressed not only against men but against the Church of Christ.\nThis is so even now, of course, strictly speaking, but it is not clearly\nenunciated, and very, very often the criminal of to-day compromises with\nhis conscience: 'I steal,' he says, 'but I don't go against the Church.\nI'm not an enemy of Christ.' That's what the criminal of to-day is\ncontinually saying to himself, but when the Church takes the place of the\nState it will be difficult for him, in opposition to the Church all over\nthe world, to say: 'All men are mistaken, all in error, all mankind are\nthe false Church. I, a thief and murderer, am the only true Christian\nChurch.' It will be very difficult to say this to himself; it requires a\nrare combination of unusual circumstances. Now, on the other side, take\nthe Church's own view of crime: is it not bound to renounce the present\nalmost pagan attitude, and to change from a mechanical cutting off of its\ntainted member for the preservation of society, as at present, into\ncompletely and honestly adopting the idea of the regeneration of the man,\nof his reformation and salvation?\"\n\n\"What do you mean? I fail to understand again,\" Miuesov interrupted. \"Some\nsort of dream again. Something shapeless and even incomprehensible. What\nis excommunication? What sort of exclusion? I suspect you are simply\namusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"Yes, but you know, in reality it is so now,\" said the elder suddenly, and\nall turned to him at once. \"If it were not for the Church of Christ there\nwould be nothing to restrain the criminal from evil-doing, no real\nchastisement for it afterwards; none, that is, but the mechanical\npunishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only\nembitters the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one,\nthe only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the recognition of sin\nby conscience.\"\n\n\"How is that, may one inquire?\" asked Miuesov, with lively curiosity.\n\n\"Why,\" began the elder, \"all these sentences to exile with hard labor, and\nformerly with flogging also, reform no one, and what's more, deter hardly\na single criminal, and the number of crimes does not diminish but is\ncontinually on the increase. You must admit that. Consequently the\nsecurity of society is not preserved, for, although the obnoxious member\nis mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another criminal\nalways comes to take his place at once, and often two of them. If anything\ndoes preserve society, even in our time, and does regenerate and transform\nthe criminal, it is only the law of Christ speaking in his conscience. It\nis only by recognizing his wrong-doing as a son of a Christian\nsociety--that is, of the Church--that he recognizes his sin against\nsociety--that is, against the Church. So that it is only against the\nChurch, and not against the State, that the criminal of to-day can\nrecognize that he has sinned. If society, as a Church, had jurisdiction,\nthen it would know when to bring back from exclusion and to reunite to\nitself. Now the Church having no real jurisdiction, but only the power of\nmoral condemnation, withdraws of her own accord from punishing the\ncriminal actively. She does not excommunicate him but simply persists in\nmotherly exhortation of him. What is more, the Church even tries to\npreserve all Christian communion with the criminal. She admits him to\nchurch services, to the holy sacrament, gives him alms, and treats him\nmore as a captive than as a convict. And what would become of the\ncriminal, O Lord, if even the Christian society--that is, the Church--were\nto reject him even as the civil law rejects him and cuts him off? What\nwould become of him if the Church punished him with her excommunication as\nthe direct consequence of the secular law? There could be no more terrible\ndespair, at least for a Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still have\nfaith. Though, who knows, perhaps then a fearful thing would happen,\nperhaps the despairing heart of the criminal would lose its faith and then\nwhat would become of him? But the Church, like a tender, loving mother,\nholds aloof from active punishment herself, as the sinner is too severely\npunished already by the civil law, and there must be at least some one to\nhave pity on him. The Church holds aloof, above all, because its judgment\nis the only one that contains the truth, and therefore cannot practically\nand morally be united to any other judgment even as a temporary\ncompromise. She can enter into no compact about that. The foreign\ncriminal, they say, rarely repents, for the very doctrines of to-day\nconfirm him in the idea that his crime is not a crime, but only a reaction\nagainst an unjustly oppressive force. Society cuts him off completely by a\nforce that triumphs over him mechanically and (so at least they say of\nthemselves in Europe) accompanies this exclusion with hatred,\nforgetfulness, and the most profound indifference as to the ultimate fate\nof the erring brother. In this way, it all takes place without the\ncompassionate intervention of the Church, for in many cases there are no\nchurches there at all, for though ecclesiastics and splendid church\nbuildings remain, the churches themselves have long ago striven to pass\nfrom Church into State and to disappear in it completely. So it seems at\nleast in Lutheran countries. As for Rome, it was proclaimed a State\ninstead of a Church a thousand years ago. And so the criminal is no longer\nconscious of being a member of the Church and sinks into despair. If he\nreturns to society, often it is with such hatred that society itself\ninstinctively cuts him off. You can judge for yourself how it must end. In\nmany cases it would seem to be the same with us, but the difference is\nthat besides the established law courts we have the Church too, which\nalways keeps up relations with the criminal as a dear and still precious\nson. And besides that, there is still preserved, though only in thought,\nthe judgment of the Church, which though no longer existing in practice is\nstill living as a dream for the future, and is, no doubt, instinctively\nrecognized by the criminal in his soul. What was said here just now is\ntrue too, that is, that if the jurisdiction of the Church were introduced\nin practice in its full force, that is, if the whole of the society were\nchanged into the Church, not only the judgment of the Church would have\ninfluence on the reformation of the criminal such as it never has now, but\npossibly also the crimes themselves would be incredibly diminished. And\nthere can be no doubt that the Church would look upon the criminal and the\ncrime of the future in many cases quite differently and would succeed in\nrestoring the excluded, in restraining those who plan evil, and in\nregenerating the fallen. It is true,\" said Father Zossima, with a smile,\n\"the Christian society now is not ready and is only resting on some seven\nrighteous men, but as they are never lacking, it will continue still\nunshaken in expectation of its complete transformation from a society\nalmost heathen in character into a single universal and all-powerful\nChurch. So be it, so be it! Even though at the end of the ages, for it is\nordained to come to pass! And there is no need to be troubled about times\nand seasons, for the secret of the times and seasons is in the wisdom of\nGod, in His foresight, and His love. And what in human reckoning seems\nstill afar off, may by the Divine ordinance be close at hand, on the eve\nof its appearance. And so be it, so be it!\"\n\n\"So be it, so be it!\" Father Paissy repeated austerely and reverently.\n\n\"Strange, extremely strange!\" Miuesov pronounced, not so much with heat as\nwith latent indignation.\n\n\"What strikes you as so strange?\" Father Iosif inquired cautiously.\n\n\"Why, it's beyond anything!\" cried Miuesov, suddenly breaking out; \"the\nState is eliminated and the Church is raised to the position of the State.\nIt's not simply Ultramontanism, it's arch-Ultramontanism! It's beyond the\ndreams of Pope Gregory the Seventh!\"\n\n\"You are completely misunderstanding it,\" said Father Paissy sternly.\n\"Understand, the Church is not to be transformed into the State. That is\nRome and its dream. That is the third temptation of the devil. On the\ncontrary, the State is transformed into the Church, will ascend and become\na Church over the whole world--which is the complete opposite of\nUltramontanism and Rome, and your interpretation, and is only the glorious\ndestiny ordained for the Orthodox Church. This star will arise in the\neast!\"\n\nMiuesov was significantly silent. His whole figure expressed extraordinary\npersonal dignity. A supercilious and condescending smile played on his\nlips. Alyosha watched it all with a throbbing heart. The whole\nconversation stirred him profoundly. He glanced casually at Rakitin, who\nwas standing immovable in his place by the door listening and watching\nintently though with downcast eyes. But from the color in his cheeks\nAlyosha guessed that Rakitin was probably no less excited, and he knew\nwhat caused his excitement.\n\n\"Allow me to tell you one little anecdote, gentlemen,\" Miuesov said\nimpressively, with a peculiarly majestic air. \"Some years ago, soon after\nthe _coup d'etat_ of December, I happened to be calling in Paris on an\nextremely influential personage in the Government, and I met a very\ninteresting man in his house. This individual was not precisely a\ndetective but was a sort of superintendent of a whole regiment of\npolitical detectives--a rather powerful position in its own way. I was\nprompted by curiosity to seize the opportunity of conversation with him.\nAnd as he had not come as a visitor but as a subordinate official bringing\na special report, and as he saw the reception given me by his chief, he\ndeigned to speak with some openness, to a certain extent only, of course.\nHe was rather courteous than open, as Frenchmen know how to be courteous,\nespecially to a foreigner. But I thoroughly understood him. The subject\nwas the socialist revolutionaries who were at that time persecuted. I will\nquote only one most curious remark dropped by this person. 'We are not\nparticularly afraid,' said he, 'of all these socialists, anarchists,\ninfidels, and revolutionists; we keep watch on them and know all their\ngoings on. But there are a few peculiar men among them who believe in God\nand are Christians, but at the same time are socialists. These are the\npeople we are most afraid of. They are dreadful people! The socialist who\nis a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist.'\nThe words struck me at the time, and now they have suddenly come back to\nme here, gentlemen.\"\n\n\"You apply them to us, and look upon us as socialists?\" Father Paissy\nasked directly, without beating about the bush.\n\nBut before Pyotr Alexandrovitch could think what to answer, the door\nopened, and the guest so long expected, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, came in. They\nhad, in fact, given up expecting him, and his sudden appearance caused\nsome surprise for a moment.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. Why Is Such A Man Alive?\n\n\nDmitri Fyodorovitch, a young man of eight and twenty, of medium height and\nagreeable countenance, looked older than his years. He was muscular, and\nshowed signs of considerable physical strength. Yet there was something\nnot healthy in his face. It was rather thin, his cheeks were hollow, and\nthere was an unhealthy sallowness in their color. His rather large,\nprominent, dark eyes had an expression of firm determination, and yet\nthere was a vague look in them, too. Even when he was excited and talking\nirritably, his eyes somehow did not follow his mood, but betrayed\nsomething else, sometimes quite incongruous with what was passing. \"It's\nhard to tell what he's thinking,\" those who talked to him sometimes\ndeclared. People who saw something pensive and sullen in his eyes were\nstartled by his sudden laugh, which bore witness to mirthful and light-\nhearted thoughts at the very time when his eyes were so gloomy. A certain\nstrained look in his face was easy to understand at this moment. Every one\nknew, or had heard of, the extremely restless and dissipated life which he\nhad been leading of late, as well as of the violent anger to which he had\nbeen roused in his quarrels with his father. There were several stories\ncurrent in the town about it. It is true that he was irascible by nature,\n\"of an unstable and unbalanced mind,\" as our justice of the peace,\nKatchalnikov, happily described him.\n\nHe was stylishly and irreproachably dressed in a carefully buttoned frock-\ncoat. He wore black gloves and carried a top-hat. Having only lately left\nthe army, he still had mustaches and no beard. His dark brown hair was\ncropped short, and combed forward on his temples. He had the long,\ndetermined stride of a military man. He stood still for a moment on the\nthreshold, and glancing at the whole party went straight up to the elder,\nguessing him to be their host. He made him a low bow, and asked his\nblessing. Father Zossima, rising in his chair, blessed him. Dmitri kissed\nhis hand respectfully, and with intense feeling, almost anger, he said:\n\n\"Be so generous as to forgive me for having kept you waiting so long, but\nSmerdyakov, the valet sent me by my father, in reply to my inquiries, told\nme twice over that the appointment was for one. Now I suddenly learn--\"\n\n\"Don't disturb yourself,\" interposed the elder. \"No matter. You are a\nlittle late. It's of no consequence....\"\n\n\"I'm extremely obliged to you, and expected no less from your goodness.\"\n\nSaying this, Dmitri bowed once more. Then, turning suddenly towards his\nfather, made him, too, a similarly low and respectful bow. He had\nevidently considered it beforehand, and made this bow in all seriousness,\nthinking it his duty to show his respect and good intentions.\n\nAlthough Fyodor Pavlovitch was taken unawares, he was equal to the\noccasion. In response to Dmitri's bow he jumped up from his chair and made\nhis son a bow as low in return. His face was suddenly solemn and\nimpressive, which gave him a positively malignant look. Dmitri bowed\ngenerally to all present, and without a word walked to the window with his\nlong, resolute stride, sat down on the only empty chair, near Father\nPaissy, and, bending forward, prepared to listen to the conversation he\nhad interrupted.\n\nDmitri's entrance had taken no more than two minutes, and the conversation\nwas resumed. But this time Miuesov thought it unnecessary to reply to\nFather Paissy's persistent and almost irritable question.\n\n\"Allow me to withdraw from this discussion,\" he observed with a certain\nwell-bred nonchalance. \"It's a subtle question, too. Here Ivan\nFyodorovitch is smiling at us. He must have something interesting to say\nabout that also. Ask him.\"\n\n\"Nothing special, except one little remark,\" Ivan replied at once.\n\"European Liberals in general, and even our liberal dilettanti, often mix\nup the final results of socialism with those of Christianity. This wild\nnotion is, of course, a characteristic feature. But it's not only Liberals\nand dilettanti who mix up socialism and Christianity, but, in many cases,\nit appears, the police--the foreign police, of course--do the same. Your\nParis anecdote is rather to the point, Pyotr Alexandrovitch.\"\n\n\"I ask your permission to drop this subject altogether,\" Miuesov repeated.\n\"I will tell you instead, gentlemen, another interesting and rather\ncharacteristic anecdote of Ivan Fyodorovitch himself. Only five days ago,\nin a gathering here, principally of ladies, he solemnly declared in\nargument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their\nneighbors. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind,\nand that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing\nto a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality.\nIvan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in\nthat faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in\nimmortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of\nthe world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be\nimmoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That's not all. He\nended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who does not\nbelieve in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be\nchanged into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that\negoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognized as\nthe inevitable, the most rational, even honorable outcome of his position.\nFrom this paradox, gentlemen, you can judge of the rest of our eccentric\nand paradoxical friend Ivan Fyodorovitch's theories.\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" Dmitri cried suddenly; \"if I've heard aright, crime must not\nonly be permitted but even recognized as the inevitable and the most\nrational outcome of his position for every infidel! Is that so or not?\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" said Father Paissy.\n\n\"I'll remember it.\"\n\nHaving uttered these words Dmitri ceased speaking as suddenly as he had\nbegun. Every one looked at him with curiosity.\n\n\"Is that really your conviction as to the consequences of the\ndisappearance of the faith in immortality?\" the elder asked Ivan suddenly.\n\n\"Yes. That was my contention. There is no virtue if there is no\nimmortality.\"\n\n\"You are blessed in believing that, or else most unhappy.\"\n\n\"Why unhappy?\" Ivan asked smiling.\n\n\"Because, in all probability you don't believe yourself in the immortality\nof your soul, nor in what you have written yourself in your article on\nChurch jurisdiction.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you are right! ... But I wasn't altogether joking,\" Ivan suddenly\nand strangely confessed, flushing quickly.\n\n\"You were not altogether joking. That's true. The question is still\nfretting your heart, and not answered. But the martyr likes sometimes to\ndivert himself with his despair, as it were driven to it by despair\nitself. Meanwhile, in your despair, you, too, divert yourself with\nmagazine articles, and discussions in society, though you don't believe\nyour own arguments, and with an aching heart mock at them inwardly....\nThat question you have not answered, and it is your great grief, for it\nclamors for an answer.\"\n\n\"But can it be answered by me? Answered in the affirmative?\" Ivan went on\nasking strangely, still looking at the elder with the same inexplicable\nsmile.\n\n\"If it can't be decided in the affirmative, it will never be decided in\nthe negative. You know that that is the peculiarity of your heart, and all\nits suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a\nlofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher\nthings, for our dwelling is in the heavens. God grant that your heart will\nattain the answer on earth, and may God bless your path.\"\n\nThe elder raised his hand and would have made the sign of the cross over\nIvan from where he stood. But the latter rose from his seat, went up to\nhim, received his blessing, and kissing his hand went back to his place in\nsilence. His face looked firm and earnest. This action and all the\npreceding conversation, which was so surprising from Ivan, impressed every\none by its strangeness and a certain solemnity, so that all were silent\nfor a moment, and there was a look almost of apprehension in Alyosha's\nface. But Miuesov suddenly shrugged his shoulders. And at the same moment\nFyodor Pavlovitch jumped up from his seat.\n\n\"Most pious and holy elder,\" he cried, pointing to Ivan, \"that is my son,\nflesh of my flesh, the dearest of my flesh! He is my most dutiful Karl\nMoor, so to speak, while this son who has just come in, Dmitri, against\nwhom I am seeking justice from you, is the undutiful Franz Moor--they are\nboth out of Schiller's _Robbers_, and so I am the reigning Count von Moor!\nJudge and save us! We need not only your prayers but your prophecies!\"\n\n\"Speak without buffoonery, and don't begin by insulting the members of\nyour family,\" answered the elder, in a faint, exhausted voice. He was\nobviously getting more and more fatigued, and his strength was failing.\n\n\"An unseemly farce which I foresaw when I came here!\" cried Dmitri\nindignantly. He too leapt up. \"Forgive it, reverend Father,\" he added,\naddressing the elder. \"I am not a cultivated man, and I don't even know\nhow to address you properly, but you have been deceived and you have been\ntoo good-natured in letting us meet here. All my father wants is a\nscandal. Why he wants it only he can tell. He always has some motive. But\nI believe I know why--\"\n\n\"They all blame me, all of them!\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch in his turn.\n\"Pyotr Alexandrovitch here blames me too. You have been blaming me, Pyotr\nAlexandrovitch, you have!\" he turned suddenly to Miuesov, although the\nlatter was not dreaming of interrupting him. \"They all accuse me of having\nhidden the children's money in my boots, and cheated them, but isn't there\na court of law? There they will reckon out for you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\nfrom your notes, your letters, and your agreements, how much money you\nhad, how much you have spent, and how much you have left. Why does Pyotr\nAlexandrovitch refuse to pass judgment? Dmitri is not a stranger to him.\nBecause they are all against me, while Dmitri Fyodorovitch is in debt to\nme, and not a little, but some thousands of which I have documentary\nproof. The whole town is echoing with his debaucheries. And where he was\nstationed before, he several times spent a thousand or two for the\nseduction of some respectable girl; we know all about that, Dmitri\nFyodorovitch, in its most secret details. I'll prove it.... Would you\nbelieve it, holy Father, he has captivated the heart of the most honorable\nof young ladies of good family and fortune, daughter of a gallant colonel,\nformerly his superior officer, who had received many honors and had the\nAnna Order on his breast. He compromised the girl by his promise of\nmarriage, now she is an orphan and here; she is betrothed to him, yet\nbefore her very eyes he is dancing attendance on a certain enchantress.\nAnd although this enchantress has lived in, so to speak, civil marriage\nwith a respectable man, yet she is of an independent character, an\nunapproachable fortress for everybody, just like a legal wife--for she is\nvirtuous, yes, holy Fathers, she is virtuous. Dmitri Fyodorovitch wants to\nopen this fortress with a golden key, and that's why he is insolent to me\nnow, trying to get money from me, though he has wasted thousands on this\nenchantress already. He's continually borrowing money for the purpose.\nFrom whom do you think? Shall I say, Mitya?\"\n\n\"Be silent!\" cried Dmitri, \"wait till I'm gone. Don't dare in my presence\nto asperse the good name of an honorable girl! That you should utter a\nword about her is an outrage, and I won't permit it!\"\n\nHe was breathless.\n\n\"Mitya! Mitya!\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch hysterically, squeezing out a\ntear. \"And is your father's blessing nothing to you? If I curse you, what\nthen?\"\n\n\"Shameless hypocrite!\" exclaimed Dmitri furiously.\n\n\"He says that to his father! his father! What would he be with others?\nGentlemen, only fancy; there's a poor but honorable man living here,\nburdened with a numerous family, a captain who got into trouble and was\ndischarged from the army, but not publicly, not by court-martial, with no\nslur on his honor. And three weeks ago, Dmitri seized him by the beard in\na tavern, dragged him out into the street and beat him publicly, and all\nbecause he is an agent in a little business of mine.\"\n\n\"It's all a lie! Outwardly it's the truth, but inwardly a lie!\" Dmitri was\ntrembling with rage. \"Father, I don't justify my action. Yes, I confess it\npublicly, I behaved like a brute to that captain, and I regret it now, and\nI'm disgusted with myself for my brutal rage. But this captain, this agent\nof yours, went to that lady whom you call an enchantress, and suggested to\nher from you, that she should take I.O.U.'s of mine which were in your\npossession, and should sue me for the money so as to get me into prison by\nmeans of them, if I persisted in claiming an account from you of my\nproperty. Now you reproach me for having a weakness for that lady when you\nyourself incited her to captivate me! She told me so to my face.... She\ntold me the story and laughed at you.... You wanted to put me in prison\nbecause you are jealous of me with her, because you'd begun to force your\nattentions upon her; and I know all about that, too; she laughed at you\nfor that as well--you hear--she laughed at you as she described it. So here\nyou have this man, this father who reproaches his profligate son!\nGentlemen, forgive my anger, but I foresaw that this crafty old man would\nonly bring you together to create a scandal. I had come to forgive him if\nhe held out his hand; to forgive him, and ask forgiveness! But as he has\njust this minute insulted not only me, but an honorable young lady, for\nwhom I feel such reverence that I dare not take her name in vain, I have\nmade up my mind to show up his game, though he is my father....\"\n\nHe could not go on. His eyes were glittering and he breathed with\ndifficulty. But every one in the cell was stirred. All except Father\nZossima got up from their seats uneasily. The monks looked austere but\nwaited for guidance from the elder. He sat still, pale, not from\nexcitement but from the weakness of disease. An imploring smile lighted up\nhis face; from time to time he raised his hand, as though to check the\nstorm, and, of course, a gesture from him would have been enough to end\nthe scene; but he seemed to be waiting for something and watched them\nintently as though trying to make out something which was not perfectly\nclear to him. At last Miuesov felt completely humiliated and disgraced.\n\n\"We are all to blame for this scandalous scene,\" he said hotly. \"But I did\nnot foresee it when I came, though I knew with whom I had to deal. This\nmust be stopped at once! Believe me, your reverence, I had no precise\nknowledge of the details that have just come to light, I was unwilling to\nbelieve them, and I learn for the first time.... A father is jealous of\nhis son's relations with a woman of loose behavior and intrigues with the\ncreature to get his son into prison! This is the company in which I have\nbeen forced to be present! I was deceived. I declare to you all that I was\nas much deceived as any one.\"\n\n\"Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, in an unnatural\nvoice, \"if you were not my son I would challenge you this instant to a\nduel ... with pistols, at three paces ... across a handkerchief,\" he\nended, stamping with both feet.\n\nWith old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when\nthey enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears\nof emotion in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later,\nthey are able to whisper to themselves, \"You know you are lying, you\nshameless old sinner! You're acting now, in spite of your 'holy' wrath.\"\n\nDmitri frowned painfully, and looked with unutterable contempt at his\nfather.\n\n\"I thought ... I thought,\" he said, in a soft and, as it were, controlled\nvoice, \"that I was coming to my native place with the angel of my heart,\nmy betrothed, to cherish his old age, and I find nothing but a depraved\nprofligate, a despicable clown!\"\n\n\"A duel!\" yelled the old wretch again, breathless and spluttering at each\nsyllable. \"And you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, let me tell you that\nthere has never been in all your family a loftier, and more honest--you\nhear--more honest woman than this 'creature,' as you have dared to call\nher! And you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, have abandoned your betrothed for that\n'creature,' so you must yourself have thought that your betrothed couldn't\nhold a candle to her. That's the woman called a 'creature'!\"\n\n\"Shameful!\" broke from Father Iosif.\n\n\"Shameful and disgraceful!\" Kalganov, flushing crimson, cried in a boyish\nvoice, trembling with emotion. He had been silent till that moment.\n\n\"Why is such a man alive?\" Dmitri, beside himself with rage, growled in a\nhollow voice, hunching up his shoulders till he looked almost deformed.\n\"Tell me, can he be allowed to go on defiling the earth?\" He looked round\nat every one and pointed at the old man. He spoke evenly and deliberately.\n\n\"Listen, listen, monks, to the parricide!\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch,\nrushing up to Father Iosif. \"That's the answer to your 'shameful!' What is\nshameful? That 'creature,' that 'woman of loose behavior' is perhaps\nholier than you are yourselves, you monks who are seeking salvation! She\nfell perhaps in her youth, ruined by her environment. But she loved much,\nand Christ himself forgave the woman 'who loved much.' \"\n\n\"It was not for such love Christ forgave her,\" broke impatiently from the\ngentle Father Iosif.\n\n\"Yes, it was for such, monks, it was! You save your souls here, eating\ncabbage, and think you are the righteous. You eat a gudgeon a day, and you\nthink you bribe God with gudgeon.\"\n\n\"This is unendurable!\" was heard on all sides in the cell.\n\nBut this unseemly scene was cut short in a most unexpected way. Father\nZossima rose suddenly from his seat. Almost distracted with anxiety for\nthe elder and every one else, Alyosha succeeded, however, in supporting\nhim by the arm. Father Zossima moved towards Dmitri and reaching him sank\non his knees before him. Alyosha thought that he had fallen from weakness,\nbut this was not so. The elder distinctly and deliberately bowed down at\nDmitri's feet till his forehead touched the floor. Alyosha was so\nastounded that he failed to assist him when he got up again. There was a\nfaint smile on his lips.\n\n\"Good-by! Forgive me, all of you!\" he said, bowing on all sides to his\nguests.\n\nDmitri stood for a few moments in amazement. Bowing down to him--what did\nit mean? Suddenly he cried aloud, \"Oh, God!\" hid his face in his hands,\nand rushed out of the room. All the guests flocked out after him, in their\nconfusion not saying good-by, or bowing to their host. Only the monks went\nup to him again for a blessing.\n\n\"What did it mean, falling at his feet like that? Was it symbolic or\nwhat?\" said Fyodor Pavlovitch, suddenly quieted and trying to reopen\nconversation without venturing to address anybody in particular. They were\nall passing out of the precincts of the hermitage at the moment.\n\n\"I can't answer for a madhouse and for madmen,\" Miuesov answered at once\nill-humoredly, \"but I will spare myself your company, Fyodor Pavlovitch,\nand, trust me, for ever. Where's that monk?\"\n\n\"That monk,\" that is, the monk who had invited them to dine with the\nSuperior, did not keep them waiting. He met them as soon as they came down\nthe steps from the elder's cell, as though he had been waiting for them\nall the time.\n\n\"Reverend Father, kindly do me a favor. Convey my deepest respect to the\nFather Superior, apologize for me, personally, Miuesov, to his reverence,\ntelling him that I deeply regret that owing to unforeseen circumstances I\nam unable to have the honor of being present at his table, greatly as I\nshould desire to do so,\" Miuesov said irritably to the monk.\n\n\"And that unforeseen circumstance, of course, is myself,\" Fyodor\nPavlovitch cut in immediately. \"Do you hear, Father; this gentleman\ndoesn't want to remain in my company or else he'd come at once. And you\nshall go, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, pray go to the Father Superior and good\nappetite to you. I will decline, and not you. Home, home, I'll eat at\nhome, I don't feel equal to it here, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, my amiable\nrelative.\"\n\n\"I am not your relative and never have been, you contemptible man!\"\n\n\"I said it on purpose to madden you, because you always disclaim the\nrelationship, though you really are a relation in spite of your shuffling.\nI'll prove it by the church calendar. As for you, Ivan, stay if you like.\nI'll send the horses for you later. Propriety requires you to go to the\nFather Superior, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to apologize for the disturbance\nwe've been making....\"\n\n\"Is it true that you are going home? Aren't you lying?\"\n\n\"Pyotr Alexandrovitch! How could I dare after what's happened! Forgive me,\ngentlemen, I was carried away! And upset besides! And, indeed, I am\nashamed. Gentlemen, one man has the heart of Alexander of Macedon and\nanother the heart of the little dog Fido. Mine is that of the little dog\nFido. I am ashamed! After such an escapade how can I go to dinner, to\ngobble up the monastery's sauces? I am ashamed, I can't. You must excuse\nme!\"\n\n\"The devil only knows, what if he deceives us?\" thought Miuesov, still\nhesitating, and watching the retreating buffoon with distrustful eyes. The\nlatter turned round, and noticing that Miuesov was watching him, waved him\na kiss.\n\n\"Well, are you coming to the Superior?\" Miuesov asked Ivan abruptly.\n\n\"Why not? I was especially invited yesterday.\"\n\n\"Unfortunately I feel myself compelled to go to this confounded dinner,\"\nsaid Miuesov with the same irritability, regardless of the fact that the\nmonk was listening. \"We ought, at least, to apologize for the disturbance,\nand explain that it was not our doing. What do you think?\"\n\n\"Yes, we must explain that it wasn't our doing. Besides, father won't be\nthere,\" observed Ivan.\n\n\"Well, I should hope not! Confound this dinner!\"\n\nThey all walked on, however. The monk listened in silence. On the road\nthrough the copse he made one observation however--that the Father Superior\nhad been waiting a long time, and that they were more than half an hour\nlate. He received no answer. Miuesov looked with hatred at Ivan.\n\n\"Here he is, going to the dinner as though nothing had happened,\" he\nthought. \"A brazen face, and the conscience of a Karamazov!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. A Young Man Bent On A Career\n\n\nAlyosha helped Father Zossima to his bedroom and seated him on his bed. It\nwas a little room furnished with the bare necessities. There was a narrow\niron bedstead, with a strip of felt for a mattress. In the corner, under\nthe ikons, was a reading-desk with a cross and the Gospel lying on it. The\nelder sank exhausted on the bed. His eyes glittered and he breathed hard.\nHe looked intently at Alyosha, as though considering something.\n\n\"Go, my dear boy, go. Porfiry is enough for me. Make haste, you are needed\nthere, go and wait at the Father Superior's table.\"\n\n\"Let me stay here,\" Alyosha entreated.\n\n\"You are more needed there. There is no peace there. You will wait, and be\nof service. If evil spirits rise up, repeat a prayer. And remember, my\nson\"--the elder liked to call him that--\"this is not the place for you in\nthe future. When it is God's will to call me, leave the monastery. Go away\nfor good.\"\n\nAlyosha started.\n\n\"What is it? This is not your place for the time. I bless you for great\nservice in the world. Yours will be a long pilgrimage. And you will have\nto take a wife, too. You will have to bear _all_ before you come back.\nThere will be much to do. But I don't doubt of you, and so I send you\nforth. Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you.\nYou will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is\nmy last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly.\nRemember my words, for although I shall talk with you again, not only my\ndays but my hours are numbered.\"\n\nAlyosha's face again betrayed strong emotion. The corners of his mouth\nquivered.\n\n\"What is it again?\" Father Zossima asked, smiling gently. \"The worldly may\nfollow the dead with tears, but here we rejoice over the father who is\ndeparting. We rejoice and pray for him. Leave me, I must pray. Go, and\nmake haste. Be near your brothers. And not near one only, but near both.\"\n\nFather Zossima raised his hand to bless him. Alyosha could make no\nprotest, though he had a great longing to remain. He longed, moreover, to\nask the significance of his bowing to Dmitri, the question was on the tip\nof his tongue, but he dared not ask it. He knew that the elder would have\nexplained it unasked if he had thought fit. But evidently it was not his\nwill. That action had made a terrible impression on Alyosha; he believed\nblindly in its mysterious significance. Mysterious, and perhaps awful.\n\nAs he hastened out of the hermitage precincts to reach the monastery in\ntime to serve at the Father Superior's dinner, he felt a sudden pang at\nhis heart, and stopped short. He seemed to hear again Father Zossima's\nwords, foretelling his approaching end. What he had foretold so exactly\nmust infallibly come to pass. Alyosha believed that implicitly. But how\ncould he be left without him? How could he live without seeing and hearing\nhim? Where should he go? He had told him not to weep, and to leave the\nmonastery. Good God! It was long since Alyosha had known such anguish. He\nhurried through the copse that divided the monastery from the hermitage,\nand unable to bear the burden of his thoughts, he gazed at the ancient\npines beside the path. He had not far to go--about five hundred paces. He\nexpected to meet no one at that hour, but at the first turn of the path he\nnoticed Rakitin. He was waiting for some one.\n\n\"Are you waiting for me?\" asked Alyosha, overtaking him.\n\n\"Yes,\" grinned Rakitin. \"You are hurrying to the Father Superior, I know;\nhe has a banquet. There's not been such a banquet since the Superior\nentertained the Bishop and General Pahatov, do you remember? I shan't be\nthere, but you go and hand the sauces. Tell me one thing, Alexey, what\ndoes that vision mean? That's what I want to ask you.\"\n\n\"What vision?\"\n\n\"That bowing to your brother, Dmitri. And didn't he tap the ground with\nhis forehead, too!\"\n\n\"You speak of Father Zossima?\"\n\n\"Yes, of Father Zossima.\"\n\n\"Tapped the ground?\"\n\n\"Ah, an irreverent expression! Well, what of it? Anyway, what does that\nvision mean?\"\n\n\"I don't know what it means, Misha.\"\n\n\"I knew he wouldn't explain it to you! There's nothing wonderful about it,\nof course, only the usual holy mummery. But there was an object in the\nperformance. All the pious people in the town will talk about it and\nspread the story through the province, wondering what it meant. To my\nthinking the old man really has a keen nose; he sniffed a crime. Your\nhouse stinks of it.\"\n\n\"What crime?\"\n\nRakitin evidently had something he was eager to speak of.\n\n\"It'll be in your family, this crime. Between your brothers and your rich\nold father. So Father Zossima flopped down to be ready for what may turn\nup. If something happens later on, it'll be: 'Ah, the holy man foresaw it,\nprophesied it!' though it's a poor sort of prophecy, flopping like that.\n'Ah, but it was symbolic,' they'll say, 'an allegory,' and the devil knows\nwhat all! It'll be remembered to his glory: 'He predicted the crime and\nmarked the criminal!' That's always the way with these crazy fanatics;\nthey cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple. Like\nyour elder, he takes a stick to a just man and falls at the feet of a\nmurderer.\"\n\n\"What crime? What murderer? What do you mean?\"\n\nAlyosha stopped dead. Rakitin stopped, too.\n\n\"What murderer? As though you didn't know! I'll bet you've thought of it\nbefore. That's interesting, too, by the way. Listen, Alyosha, you always\nspeak the truth, though you're always between two stools. Have you thought\nof it or not? Answer.\"\n\n\"I have,\" answered Alyosha in a low voice. Even Rakitin was taken aback.\n\n\"What? Have you really?\" he cried.\n\n\"I ... I've not exactly thought it,\" muttered Alyosha, \"but directly you\nbegan speaking so strangely, I fancied I had thought of it myself.\"\n\n\"You see? (And how well you expressed it!) Looking at your father and your\nbrother Mitya to-day you thought of a crime. Then I'm not mistaken?\"\n\n\"But wait, wait a minute,\" Alyosha broke in uneasily. \"What has led you to\nsee all this? Why does it interest you? That's the first question.\"\n\n\"Two questions, disconnected, but natural. I'll deal with them separately.\nWhat led me to see it? I shouldn't have seen it, if I hadn't suddenly\nunderstood your brother Dmitri, seen right into the very heart of him all\nat once. I caught the whole man from one trait. These very honest but\npassionate people have a line which mustn't be crossed. If it were, he'd\nrun at your father with a knife. But your father's a drunken and abandoned\nold sinner, who can never draw the line--if they both let themselves go,\nthey'll both come to grief.\"\n\n\"No, Misha, no. If that's all, you've reassured me. It won't come to\nthat.\"\n\n\"But why are you trembling? Let me tell you; he may be honest, our Mitya\n(he is stupid, but honest), but he's--a sensualist. That's the very\ndefinition and inner essence of him. It's your father has handed him on\nhis low sensuality. Do you know, I simply wonder at you, Alyosha, how you\ncan have kept your purity. You're a Karamazov too, you know! In your\nfamily sensuality is carried to a disease. But now, these three\nsensualists are watching one another, with their knives in their belts.\nThe three of them are knocking their heads together, and you may be the\nfourth.\"\n\n\"You are mistaken about that woman. Dmitri--despises her,\" said Alyosha,\nwith a sort of shudder.\n\n\"Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn't despise her. Since he has openly\nabandoned his betrothed for her, he doesn't despise her. There's something\nhere, my dear boy, that you don't understand yet. A man will fall in love\nwith some beauty, with a woman's body, or even with a part of a woman's\nbody (a sensualist can understand that), and he'll abandon his own\nchildren for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia,\ntoo. If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's humane, he'll murder; if he's\nfaithful, he'll deceive. Pushkin, the poet of women's feet, sung of their\nfeet in his verse. Others don't sing their praises, but they can't look at\ntheir feet without a thrill--and it's not only their feet. Contempt's no\nhelp here, brother, even if he did despise Grushenka. He does, but he\ncan't tear himself away.\"\n\n\"I understand that,\" Alyosha jerked out suddenly.\n\n\"Really? Well, I dare say you do understand, since you blurt it out at the\nfirst word,\" said Rakitin, malignantly. \"That escaped you unawares, and\nthe confession's the more precious. So it's a familiar subject; you've\nthought about it already, about sensuality, I mean! Oh, you virgin soul!\nYou're a quiet one, Alyosha, you're a saint, I know, but the devil only\nknows what you've thought about, and what you know already! You are pure,\nbut you've been down into the depths.... I've been watching you a long\ntime. You're a Karamazov yourself; you're a thorough Karamazov--no doubt\nbirth and selection have something to answer for. You're a sensualist from\nyour father, a crazy saint from your mother. Why do you tremble? Is it\ntrue, then? Do you know, Grushenka has been begging me to bring you along.\n'I'll pull off his cassock,' she says. You can't think how she keeps\nbegging me to bring you. I wondered why she took such an interest in you.\nDo you know, she's an extraordinary woman, too!\"\n\n\"Thank her and say I'm not coming,\" said Alyosha, with a strained smile.\n\"Finish what you were saying, Misha. I'll tell you my idea after.\"\n\n\"There's nothing to finish. It's all clear. It's the same old tune,\nbrother. If even you are a sensualist at heart, what of your brother,\nIvan? He's a Karamazov, too. What is at the root of all you Karamazovs is\nthat you're all sensual, grasping and crazy! Your brother Ivan writes\ntheological articles in joke, for some idiotic, unknown motive of his own,\nthough he's an atheist, and he admits it's a fraud himself--that's your\nbrother Ivan. He's trying to get Mitya's betrothed for himself, and I\nfancy he'll succeed, too. And what's more, it's with Mitya's consent. For\nMitya will surrender his betrothed to him to be rid of her, and escape to\nGrushenka. And he's ready to do that in spite of all his nobility and\ndisinterestedness. Observe that. Those are the most fatal people! Who the\ndevil can make you out? He recognizes his vileness and goes on with it!\nLet me tell you, too, the old man, your father, is standing in Mitya's way\nnow. He has suddenly gone crazy over Grushenka. His mouth waters at the\nsight of her. It's simply on her account he made that scene in the cell\njust now, simply because Miuesov called her an 'abandoned creature.' He's\nworse than a tom-cat in love. At first she was only employed by him in\nconnection with his taverns and in some other shady business, but now he\nhas suddenly realized all she is and has gone wild about her. He keeps\npestering her with his offers, not honorable ones, of course. And they'll\ncome into collision, the precious father and son, on that path! But\nGrushenka favors neither of them, she's still playing with them, and\nteasing them both, considering which she can get most out of. For though\nshe could filch a lot of money from the papa he wouldn't marry her, and\nmaybe he'll turn stingy in the end, and keep his purse shut. That's where\nMitya's value comes in; he has no money, but he's ready to marry her. Yes,\nready to marry her! to abandon his betrothed, a rare beauty, Katerina\nIvanovna, who's rich, and the daughter of a colonel, and to marry\nGrushenka, who has been the mistress of a dissolute old merchant,\nSamsonov, a coarse, uneducated, provincial mayor. Some murderous conflict\nmay well come to pass from all this, and that's what your brother Ivan is\nwaiting for. It would suit him down to the ground. He'll carry off\nKaterina Ivanovna, for whom he is languishing, and pocket her dowry of\nsixty thousand. That's very alluring to start with, for a man of no\nconsequence and a beggar. And, take note, he won't be wronging Mitya, but\ndoing him the greatest service. For I know as a fact that Mitya only last\nweek, when he was with some gypsy girls drunk in a tavern, cried out aloud\nthat he was unworthy of his betrothed, Katya, but that his brother Ivan,\nhe was the man who deserved her. And Katerina Ivanovna will not in the end\nrefuse such a fascinating man as Ivan. She's hesitating between the two of\nthem already. And how has that Ivan won you all, so that you all worship\nhim? He is laughing at you, and enjoying himself at your expense.\"\n\n\"How do you know? How can you speak so confidently?\" Alyosha asked\nsharply, frowning.\n\n\"Why do you ask, and are frightened at my answer? It shows that you know\nI'm speaking the truth.\"\n\n\"You don't like Ivan. Ivan wouldn't be tempted by money.\"\n\n\"Really? And the beauty of Katerina Ivanovna? It's not only the money,\nthough a fortune of sixty thousand is an attraction.\"\n\n\"Ivan is above that. He wouldn't make up to any one for thousands. It is\nnot money, it's not comfort Ivan is seeking. Perhaps it's suffering he is\nseeking.\"\n\n\"What wild dream now? Oh, you--aristocrats!\"\n\n\"Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted\nby a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions,\nbut an answer to their questions.\"\n\n\"That's plagiarism, Alyosha. You're quoting your elder's phrases. Ah, Ivan\nhas set you a problem!\" cried Rakitin, with undisguised malice. His face\nchanged, and his lips twitched. \"And the problem's a stupid one. It is no\ngood guessing it. Rack your brains--you'll understand it. His article is\nabsurd and ridiculous. And did you hear his stupid theory just now: if\nthere's no immortality of the soul, then there's no virtue, and everything\nis lawful. (And by the way, do you remember how your brother Mitya cried\nout: 'I will remember!') An attractive theory for scoundrels!--(I'm being\nabusive, that's stupid.) Not for scoundrels, but for pedantic _poseurs_,\n'haunted by profound, unsolved doubts.' He's showing off, and what it all\ncomes to is, 'on the one hand we cannot but admit' and 'on the other it\nmust be confessed!' His whole theory is a fraud! Humanity will find in\nitself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality.\nIt will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.\"\n\nRakitin could hardly restrain himself in his heat, but, suddenly, as\nthough remembering something, he stopped short.\n\n\"Well, that's enough,\" he said, with a still more crooked smile. \"Why are\nyou laughing? Do you think I'm a vulgar fool?\"\n\n\"No, I never dreamed of thinking you a vulgar fool. You are clever but ...\nnever mind, I was silly to smile. I understand your getting hot about it,\nMisha. I guess from your warmth that you are not indifferent to Katerina\nIvanovna yourself; I've suspected that for a long time, brother, that's\nwhy you don't like my brother Ivan. Are you jealous of him?\"\n\n\"And jealous of her money, too? Won't you add that?\"\n\n\"I'll say nothing about money. I am not going to insult you.\"\n\n\"I believe it, since you say so, but confound you, and your brother Ivan\nwith you. Don't you understand that one might very well dislike him, apart\nfrom Katerina Ivanovna. And why the devil should I like him? He\ncondescends to abuse me, you know. Why haven't I a right to abuse him?\"\n\n\"I never heard of his saying anything about you, good or bad. He doesn't\nspeak of you at all.\"\n\n\"But I heard that the day before yesterday at Katerina Ivanovna's he was\nabusing me for all he was worth--you see what an interest he takes in your\nhumble servant. And which is the jealous one after that, brother, I can't\nsay. He was so good as to express the opinion that, if I don't go in for\nthe career of an archimandrite in the immediate future and don't become a\nmonk, I shall be sure to go to Petersburg and get on to some solid\nmagazine as a reviewer, that I shall write for the next ten years, and in\nthe end become the owner of the magazine, and bring it out on the liberal\nand atheistic side, with a socialistic tinge, with a tiny gloss of\nsocialism, but keeping a sharp look out all the time, that is, keeping in\nwith both sides and hoodwinking the fools. According to your brother's\naccount, the tinge of socialism won't hinder me from laying by the\nproceeds and investing them under the guidance of some Jew, till at the\nend of my career I build a great house in Petersburg and move my\npublishing offices to it, and let out the upper stories to lodgers. He has\neven chosen the place for it, near the new stone bridge across the Neva,\nwhich they say is to be built in Petersburg.\"\n\n\"Ah, Misha, that's just what will really happen, every word of it,\" cried\nAlyosha, unable to restrain a good-humored smile.\n\n\"You are pleased to be sarcastic, too, Alexey Fyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"No, no, I'm joking, forgive me. I've something quite different in my\nmind. But, excuse me, who can have told you all this? You can't have been\nat Katerina Ivanovna's yourself when he was talking about you?\"\n\n\"I wasn't there, but Dmitri Fyodorovitch was; and I heard him tell it with\nmy own ears; if you want to know, he didn't tell me, but I overheard him,\nunintentionally, of course, for I was sitting in Grushenka's bedroom and I\ncouldn't go away because Dmitri Fyodorovitch was in the next room.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten she was a relation of yours.\"\n\n\"A relation! That Grushenka a relation of mine!\" cried Rakitin, turning\ncrimson. \"Are you mad? You're out of your mind!\"\n\n\"Why, isn't she a relation of yours? I heard so.\"\n\n\"Where can you have heard it? You Karamazovs brag of being an ancient,\nnoble family, though your father used to run about playing the buffoon at\nother men's tables, and was only admitted to the kitchen as a favor. I may\nbe only a priest's son, and dirt in the eyes of noblemen like you, but\ndon't insult me so lightly and wantonly. I have a sense of honor, too,\nAlexey Fyodorovitch, I couldn't be a relation of Grushenka, a common\nharlot. I beg you to understand that!\"\n\nRakitin was intensely irritated.\n\n\"Forgive me, for goodness' sake, I had no idea ... besides ... how can you\ncall her a harlot? Is she ... that sort of woman?\" Alyosha flushed\nsuddenly. \"I tell you again, I heard that she was a relation of yours. You\noften go to see her, and you told me yourself you're not her lover. I\nnever dreamed that you of all people had such contempt for her! Does she\nreally deserve it?\"\n\n\"I may have reasons of my own for visiting her. That's not your business.\nBut as for relationship, your brother, or even your father, is more likely\nto make her yours than mine. Well, here we are. You'd better go to the\nkitchen. Hullo! what's wrong, what is it? Are we late? They can't have\nfinished dinner so soon! Have the Karamazovs been making trouble again? No\ndoubt they have. Here's your father and your brother Ivan after him.\nThey've broken out from the Father Superior's. And look, Father Isidor's\nshouting out something after them from the steps. And your father's\nshouting and waving his arms. I expect he's swearing. Bah, and there goes\nMiuesov driving away in his carriage. You see, he's going. And there's old\nMaximov running!--there must have been a row. There can't have been any\ndinner. Surely they've not been beating the Father Superior! Or have they,\nperhaps, been beaten? It would serve them right!\"\n\nThere was reason for Rakitin's exclamations. There had been a scandalous,\nan unprecedented scene. It had all come from the impulse of a moment.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VIII. The Scandalous Scene\n\n\nMiuesov, as a man of breeding and delicacy, could not but feel some inward\nqualms, when he reached the Father Superior's with Ivan: he felt ashamed\nof having lost his temper. He felt that he ought to have disdained that\ndespicable wretch, Fyodor Pavlovitch, too much to have been upset by him\nin Father Zossima's cell, and so to have forgotten himself. \"The monks\nwere not to blame, in any case,\" he reflected, on the steps. \"And if\nthey're decent people here (and the Father Superior, I understand, is a\nnobleman) why not be friendly and courteous with them? I won't argue, I'll\nfall in with everything, I'll win them by politeness, and ... and ... show\nthem that I've nothing to do with that AEsop, that buffoon, that Pierrot,\nand have merely been taken in over this affair, just as they have.\"\n\nHe determined to drop his litigation with the monastery, and relinquish\nhis claims to the wood-cutting and fishery rights at once. He was the more\nready to do this because the rights had become much less valuable, and he\nhad indeed the vaguest idea where the wood and river in question were.\n\nThese excellent intentions were strengthened when he entered the Father\nSuperior's dining-room, though, strictly speaking, it was not a dining-\nroom, for the Father Superior had only two rooms altogether; they were,\nhowever, much larger and more comfortable than Father Zossima's. But there\nwas no great luxury about the furnishing of these rooms either. The\nfurniture was of mahogany, covered with leather, in the old-fashioned\nstyle of 1820; the floor was not even stained, but everything was shining\nwith cleanliness, and there were many choice flowers in the windows; the\nmost sumptuous thing in the room at the moment was, of course, the\nbeautifully decorated table. The cloth was clean, the service shone; there\nwere three kinds of well-baked bread, two bottles of wine, two of\nexcellent mead, and a large glass jug of kvas--both the latter made in the\nmonastery, and famous in the neighborhood. There was no vodka. Rakitin\nrelated afterwards that there were five dishes: fish-soup made of\nsterlets, served with little fish patties; then boiled fish served in a\nspecial way; then salmon cutlets, ice pudding and compote, and finally,\nblanc-mange. Rakitin found out about all these good things, for he could\nnot resist peeping into the kitchen, where he already had a footing. He\nhad a footing everywhere, and got information about everything. He was of\nan uneasy and envious temper. He was well aware of his own considerable\nabilities, and nervously exaggerated them in his self-conceit. He knew he\nwould play a prominent part of some sort, but Alyosha, who was attached to\nhim, was distressed to see that his friend Rakitin was dishonorable, and\nquite unconscious of being so himself, considering, on the contrary, that\nbecause he would not steal money left on the table he was a man of the\nhighest integrity. Neither Alyosha nor any one else could have influenced\nhim in that.\n\nRakitin, of course, was a person of too little consequence to be invited\nto the dinner, to which Father Iosif, Father Paissy, and one other monk\nwere the only inmates of the monastery invited. They were already waiting\nwhen Miuesov, Kalganov, and Ivan arrived. The other guest, Maximov, stood a\nlittle aside, waiting also. The Father Superior stepped into the middle of\nthe room to receive his guests. He was a tall, thin, but still vigorous\nold man, with black hair streaked with gray, and a long, grave, ascetic\nface. He bowed to his guests in silence. But this time they approached to\nreceive his blessing. Miuesov even tried to kiss his hand, but the Father\nSuperior drew it back in time to avoid the salute. But Ivan and Kalganov\nwent through the ceremony in the most simple-hearted and complete manner,\nkissing his hand as peasants do.\n\n\"We must apologize most humbly, your reverence,\" began Miuesov, simpering\naffably, and speaking in a dignified and respectful tone. \"Pardon us for\nhaving come alone without the gentleman you invited, Fyodor Pavlovitch. He\nfelt obliged to decline the honor of your hospitality, and not without\nreason. In the reverend Father Zossima's cell he was carried away by the\nunhappy dissension with his son, and let fall words which were quite out\nof keeping ... in fact, quite unseemly ... as\"--he glanced at the\nmonks--\"your reverence is, no doubt, already aware. And therefore,\nrecognizing that he had been to blame, he felt sincere regret and shame,\nand begged me, and his son Ivan Fyodorovitch, to convey to you his\napologies and regrets. In brief, he hopes and desires to make amends\nlater. He asks your blessing, and begs you to forget what has taken\nplace.\"\n\nAs he uttered the last word of his tirade, Miuesov completely recovered his\nself-complacency, and all traces of his former irritation disappeared. He\nfully and sincerely loved humanity again.\n\nThe Father Superior listened to him with dignity, and, with a slight bend\nof the head, replied:\n\n\"I sincerely deplore his absence. Perhaps at our table he might have\nlearnt to like us, and we him. Pray be seated, gentlemen.\"\n\nHe stood before the holy image, and began to say grace, aloud. All bent\ntheir heads reverently, and Maximov clasped his hands before him, with\npeculiar fervor.\n\nIt was at this moment that Fyodor Pavlovitch played his last prank. It\nmust be noted that he really had meant to go home, and really had felt the\nimpossibility of going to dine with the Father Superior as though nothing\nhad happened, after his disgraceful behavior in the elder's cell. Not that\nhe was so very much ashamed of himself--quite the contrary perhaps. But\nstill he felt it would be unseemly to go to dinner. Yet his creaking\ncarriage had hardly been brought to the steps of the hotel, and he had\nhardly got into it, when he suddenly stopped short. He remembered his own\nwords at the elder's: \"I always feel when I meet people that I am lower\nthan all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play\nthe buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I.\" He\nlonged to revenge himself on every one for his own unseemliness. He\nsuddenly recalled how he had once in the past been asked, \"Why do you hate\nso and so, so much?\" And he had answered them, with his shameless\nimpudence, \"I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a\ndirty trick, and ever since I have hated him.\"\n\nRemembering that now, he smiled quietly and malignantly, hesitating for a\nmoment. His eyes gleamed, and his lips positively quivered. \"Well, since I\nhave begun, I may as well go on,\" he decided. His predominant sensation at\nthat moment might be expressed in the following words, \"Well, there is no\nrehabilitating myself now. So let me shame them for all I am worth. I will\nshow them I don't care what they think--that's all!\"\n\nHe told the coachman to wait, while with rapid steps he returned to the\nmonastery and straight to the Father Superior's. He had no clear idea what\nhe would do, but he knew that he could not control himself, and that a\ntouch might drive him to the utmost limits of obscenity, but only to\nobscenity, to nothing criminal, nothing for which he could be legally\npunished. In the last resort, he could always restrain himself, and had\nmarveled indeed at himself, on that score, sometimes. He appeared in the\nFather Superior's dining-room, at the moment when the prayer was over, and\nall were moving to the table. Standing in the doorway, he scanned the\ncompany, and laughing his prolonged, impudent, malicious chuckle, looked\nthem all boldly in the face. \"They thought I had gone, and here I am\nagain,\" he cried to the whole room.\n\nFor one moment every one stared at him without a word; and at once every\none felt that something revolting, grotesque, positively scandalous, was\nabout to happen. Miuesov passed immediately from the most benevolent frame\nof mind to the most savage. All the feelings that had subsided and died\ndown in his heart revived instantly.\n\n\"No! this I cannot endure!\" he cried. \"I absolutely cannot! and ... I\ncertainly cannot!\"\n\nThe blood rushed to his head. He positively stammered; but he was beyond\nthinking of style, and he seized his hat.\n\n\"What is it he cannot?\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, \"that he absolutely\ncannot and certainly cannot? Your reverence, am I to come in or not? Will\nyou receive me as your guest?\"\n\n\"You are welcome with all my heart,\" answered the Superior. \"Gentlemen!\"\nhe added, \"I venture to beg you most earnestly to lay aside your\ndissensions, and to be united in love and family harmony--with prayer to\nthe Lord at our humble table.\"\n\n\"No, no, it is impossible!\" cried Miuesov, beside himself.\n\n\"Well, if it is impossible for Pyotr Alexandrovitch, it is impossible for\nme, and I won't stop. That is why I came. I will keep with Pyotr\nAlexandrovitch everywhere now. If you will go away, Pyotr Alexandrovitch,\nI will go away too, if you remain, I will remain. You stung him by what\nyou said about family harmony, Father Superior, he does not admit he is my\nrelation. That's right, isn't it, von Sohn? Here's von Sohn. How are you,\nvon Sohn?\"\n\n\"Do you mean me?\" muttered Maximov, puzzled.\n\n\"Of course I mean you,\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. \"Who else? The Father\nSuperior could not be von Sohn.\"\n\n\"But I am not von Sohn either. I am Maximov.\"\n\n\"No, you are von Sohn. Your reverence, do you know who von Sohn was? It\nwas a famous murder case. He was killed in a house of harlotry--I believe\nthat is what such places are called among you--he was killed and robbed,\nand in spite of his venerable age, he was nailed up in a box and sent from\nPetersburg to Moscow in the luggage van, and while they were nailing him\nup, the harlots sang songs and played the harp, that is to say, the piano.\nSo this is that very von Sohn. He has risen from the dead, hasn't he, von\nSohn?\"\n\n\"What is happening? What's this?\" voices were heard in the group of monks.\n\n\"Let us go,\" cried Miuesov, addressing Kalganov.\n\n\"No, excuse me,\" Fyodor Pavlovitch broke in shrilly, taking another step\ninto the room. \"Allow me to finish. There in the cell you blamed me for\nbehaving disrespectfully just because I spoke of eating gudgeon, Pyotr\nAlexandrovitch. Miuesov, my relation, prefers to have _plus de noblesse que\nde sincerite_ in his words, but I prefer in mine _plus de sincerite que de\nnoblesse_, and--damn the _noblesse_! That's right, isn't it, von Sohn?\nAllow me, Father Superior, though I am a buffoon and play the buffoon, yet\nI am the soul of honor, and I want to speak my mind. Yes, I am the soul of\nhonor, while in Pyotr Alexandrovitch there is wounded vanity and nothing\nelse. I came here perhaps to have a look and speak my mind. My son,\nAlexey, is here, being saved. I am his father; I care for his welfare, and\nit is my duty to care. While I've been playing the fool, I have been\nlistening and having a look on the sly; and now I want to give you the\nlast act of the performance. You know how things are with us? As a thing\nfalls, so it lies. As a thing once has fallen, so it must lie for ever.\nNot a bit of it! I want to get up again. Holy Father, I am indignant with\nyou. Confession is a great sacrament, before which I am ready to bow down\nreverently; but there in the cell, they all kneel down and confess aloud.\nCan it be right to confess aloud? It was ordained by the holy Fathers to\nconfess in secret: then only your confession will be a mystery, and so it\nwas of old. But how can I explain to him before every one that I did this\nand that ... well, you understand what--sometimes it would not be proper to\ntalk about it--so it is really a scandal! No, Fathers, one might be carried\nalong with you to the Flagellants, I dare say ... at the first opportunity\nI shall write to the Synod, and I shall take my son, Alexey, home.\"\n\nWe must note here that Fyodor Pavlovitch knew where to look for the weak\nspot. There had been at one time malicious rumors which had even reached\nthe Archbishop (not only regarding our monastery, but in others where the\ninstitution of elders existed) that too much respect was paid to the\nelders, even to the detriment of the authority of the Superior, that the\nelders abused the sacrament of confession and so on and so on--absurd\ncharges which had died away of themselves everywhere. But the spirit of\nfolly, which had caught up Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was bearing him on the\ncurrent of his own nerves into lower and lower depths of ignominy,\nprompted him with this old slander. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not understand a\nword of it, and he could not even put it sensibly, for on this occasion no\none had been kneeling and confessing aloud in the elder's cell, so that he\ncould not have seen anything of the kind. He was only speaking from\nconfused memory of old slanders. But as soon as he had uttered his foolish\ntirade, he felt he had been talking absurd nonsense, and at once longed to\nprove to his audience, and above all to himself, that he had not been\ntalking nonsense. And, though he knew perfectly well that with each word\nhe would be adding more and more absurdity, he could not restrain himself,\nand plunged forward blindly.\n\n\"How disgraceful!\" cried Pyotr Alexandrovitch.\n\n\"Pardon me!\" said the Father Superior. \"It was said of old, 'Many have\nbegun to speak against me and have uttered evil sayings about me. And\nhearing it I have said to myself: it is the correction of the Lord and He\nhas sent it to heal my vain soul.' And so we humbly thank you, honored\nguest!\" and he made Fyodor Pavlovitch a low bow.\n\n\"Tut--tut--tut--sanctimoniousness and stock phrases! Old phrases and old\ngestures. The old lies and formal prostrations. We know all about them. A\nkiss on the lips and a dagger in the heart, as in Schiller's _Robbers_. I\ndon't like falsehood, Fathers, I want the truth. But the truth is not to\nbe found in eating gudgeon and that I proclaim aloud! Father monks, why do\nyou fast? Why do you expect reward in heaven for that? Why, for reward\nlike that I will come and fast too! No, saintly monk, you try being\nvirtuous in the world, do good to society, without shutting yourself up in\na monastery at other people's expense, and without expecting a reward up\naloft for it--you'll find that a bit harder. I can talk sense, too, Father\nSuperior. What have they got here?\" He went up to the table. \"Old port\nwine, mead brewed by the Eliseyev Brothers. Fie, fie, fathers! That is\nsomething beyond gudgeon. Look at the bottles the fathers have brought\nout, he he he! And who has provided it all? The Russian peasant, the\nlaborer, brings here the farthing earned by his horny hand, wringing it\nfrom his family and the tax-gatherer! You bleed the people, you know, holy\nfathers.\"\n\n\"This is too disgraceful!\" said Father Iosif.\n\nFather Paissy kept obstinately silent. Miuesov rushed from the room, and\nKalganov after him.\n\n\"Well, Father, I will follow Pyotr Alexandrovitch! I am not coming to see\nyou again. You may beg me on your knees, I shan't come. I sent you a\nthousand roubles, so you have begun to keep your eye on me. He he he! No,\nI'll say no more. I am taking my revenge for my youth, for all the\nhumiliation I endured.\" He thumped the table with his fist in a paroxysm\nof simulated feeling. \"This monastery has played a great part in my life!\nIt has cost me many bitter tears. You used to set my wife, the crazy one,\nagainst me. You cursed me with bell and book, you spread stories about me\nall over the place. Enough, fathers! This is the age of Liberalism, the\nage of steamers and railways. Neither a thousand, nor a hundred roubles,\nno, nor a hundred farthings will you get out of me!\"\n\nIt must be noted again that our monastery never had played any great part\nin his life, and he never had shed a bitter tear owing to it. But he was\nso carried away by his simulated emotion, that he was for one moment\nalmost believing it himself. He was so touched he was almost weeping. But\nat that very instant, he felt that it was time to draw back.\n\nThe Father Superior bowed his head at his malicious lie, and again spoke\nimpressively:\n\n\"It is written again, 'Bear circumspectly and gladly dishonor that cometh\nupon thee by no act of thine own, be not confounded and hate not him who\nhath dishonored thee.' And so will we.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut, tut! Bethinking thyself and the rest of the rigmarole. Bethink\nyourselves, Fathers, I will go. But I will take my son, Alexey, away from\nhere for ever, on my parental authority. Ivan Fyodorovitch, my most\ndutiful son, permit me to order you to follow me. Von Sohn, what have you\nto stay for? Come and see me now in the town. It is fun there. It is only\none short verst; instead of lenten oil, I will give you sucking-pig and\nkasha. We will have dinner with some brandy and liqueur to it.... I've\ncloudberry wine. Hey, von Sohn, don't lose your chance.\" He went out,\nshouting and gesticulating.\n\nIt was at that moment Rakitin saw him and pointed him out to Alyosha.\n\n\"Alexey!\" his father shouted, from far off, catching sight of him. \"You\ncome home to me to-day, for good, and bring your pillow and mattress, and\nleave no trace behind.\"\n\nAlyosha stood rooted to the spot, watching the scene in silence.\nMeanwhile, Fyodor Pavlovitch had got into the carriage, and Ivan was about\nto follow him in grim silence without even turning to say good-by to\nAlyosha. But at this point another almost incredible scene of grotesque\nbuffoonery gave the finishing touch to the episode. Maximov suddenly\nappeared by the side of the carriage. He ran up, panting, afraid of being\ntoo late. Rakitin and Alyosha saw him running. He was in such a hurry that\nin his impatience he put his foot on the step on which Ivan's left foot\nwas still resting, and clutching the carriage he kept trying to jump in.\n\"I am going with you!\" he kept shouting, laughing a thin mirthful laugh\nwith a look of reckless glee in his face. \"Take me, too.\"\n\n\"There!\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, delighted. \"Did I not say he was von\nSohn. It is von Sohn himself, risen from the dead. Why, how did you tear\nyourself away? What did you _vonsohn_ there? And how could you get away\nfrom the dinner? You must be a brazen-faced fellow! I am that myself, but\nI am surprised at you, brother! Jump in, jump in! Let him pass, Ivan. It\nwill be fun. He can lie somewhere at our feet. Will you lie at our feet,\nvon Sohn? Or perch on the box with the coachman. Skip on to the box, von\nSohn!\"\n\nBut Ivan, who had by now taken his seat, without a word gave Maximov a\nviolent punch in the breast and sent him flying. It was quite by chance he\ndid not fall.\n\n\"Drive on!\" Ivan shouted angrily to the coachman.\n\n\"Why, what are you doing, what are you about? Why did you do that?\" Fyodor\nPavlovitch protested.\n\nBut the carriage had already driven away. Ivan made no reply.\n\n\"Well, you are a fellow,\" Fyodor Pavlovitch said again.\n\nAfter a pause of two minutes, looking askance at his son, \"Why, it was you\ngot up all this monastery business. You urged it, you approved of it. Why\nare you angry now?\"\n\n\"You've talked rot enough. You might rest a bit now,\" Ivan snapped\nsullenly.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch was silent again for two minutes.\n\n\"A drop of brandy would be nice now,\" he observed sententiously, but Ivan\nmade no response.\n\n\"You shall have some, too, when we get home.\"\n\nIvan was still silent.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch waited another two minutes.\n\n\"But I shall take Alyosha away from the monastery, though you will dislike\nit so much, most honored Karl von Moor.\"\n\nIvan shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and turning away stared at the\nroad. And they did not speak again all the way home.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook III. The Sensualists Chapter I. In The Servants' Quarters\n\n\nThe Karamazovs' house was far from being in the center of the town, but it\nwas not quite outside it. It was a pleasant-looking old house of two\nstories, painted gray, with a red iron roof. It was roomy and snug, and\nmight still last many years. There were all sorts of unexpected little\ncupboards and closets and staircases. There were rats in it, but Fyodor\nPavlovitch did not altogether dislike them. \"One doesn't feel so solitary\nwhen one's left alone in the evening,\" he used to say. It was his habit to\nsend the servants away to the lodge for the night and to lock himself up\nalone. The lodge was a roomy and solid building in the yard. Fyodor\nPavlovitch used to have the cooking done there, although there was a\nkitchen in the house; he did not like the smell of cooking, and, winter\nand summer alike, the dishes were carried in across the courtyard. The\nhouse was built for a large family; there was room for five times as many,\nwith their servants. But at the time of our story there was no one living\nin the house but Fyodor Pavlovitch and his son Ivan. And in the lodge\nthere were only three servants: old Grigory, and his old wife Marfa, and a\nyoung man called Smerdyakov. Of these three we must say a few words. Of\nold Grigory we have said something already. He was firm and determined and\nwent blindly and obstinately for his object, if once he had been brought\nby any reasons (and they were often very illogical ones) to believe that\nit was immutably right. He was honest and incorruptible. His wife, Marfa\nIgnatyevna, had obeyed her husband's will implicitly all her life, yet she\nhad pestered him terribly after the emancipation of the serfs. She was set\non leaving Fyodor Pavlovitch and opening a little shop in Moscow with\ntheir small savings. But Grigory decided then, once for all, that \"the\nwoman's talking nonsense, for every woman is dishonest,\" and that they\nought not to leave their old master, whatever he might be, for \"that was\nnow their duty.\"\n\n\"Do you understand what duty is?\" he asked Marfa Ignatyevna.\n\n\"I understand what duty means, Grigory Vassilyevitch, but why it's our\nduty to stay here I never shall understand,\" Marfa answered firmly.\n\n\"Well, don't understand then. But so it shall be. And you hold your\ntongue.\"\n\nAnd so it was. They did not go away, and Fyodor Pavlovitch promised them a\nsmall sum for wages, and paid it regularly. Grigory knew, too, that he had\nan indisputable influence over his master. It was true, and he was aware\nof it. Fyodor Pavlovitch was an obstinate and cunning buffoon, yet, though\nhis will was strong enough \"in some of the affairs of life,\" as he\nexpressed it, he found himself, to his surprise, extremely feeble in\nfacing certain other emergencies. He knew his weaknesses and was afraid of\nthem. There are positions in which one has to keep a sharp look out. And\nthat's not easy without a trustworthy man, and Grigory was a most\ntrustworthy man. Many times in the course of his life Fyodor Pavlovitch\nhad only just escaped a sound thrashing through Grigory's intervention,\nand on each occasion the old servant gave him a good lecture. But it\nwasn't only thrashings that Fyodor Pavlovitch was afraid of. There were\ngraver occasions, and very subtle and complicated ones, when Fyodor\nPavlovitch could not have explained the extraordinary craving for some one\nfaithful and devoted, which sometimes unaccountably came upon him all in a\nmoment. It was almost a morbid condition. Corrupt and often cruel in his\nlust, like some noxious insect, Fyodor Pavlovitch was sometimes, in\nmoments of drunkenness, overcome by superstitious terror and a moral\nconvulsion which took an almost physical form. \"My soul's simply quaking\nin my throat at those times,\" he used to say. At such moments he liked to\nfeel that there was near at hand, in the lodge if not in the room, a\nstrong, faithful man, virtuous and unlike himself, who had seen all his\ndebauchery and knew all his secrets, but was ready in his devotion to\noverlook all that, not to oppose him, above all, not to reproach him or\nthreaten him with anything, either in this world or in the next, and, in\ncase of need, to defend him--from whom? From somebody unknown, but terrible\nand dangerous. What he needed was to feel that there was _another_ man, an\nold and tried friend, that he might call him in his sick moments merely to\nlook at his face, or, perhaps, exchange some quite irrelevant words with\nhim. And if the old servant were not angry, he felt comforted, and if he\nwere angry, he was more dejected. It happened even (very rarely however)\nthat Fyodor Pavlovitch went at night to the lodge to wake Grigory and\nfetch him for a moment. When the old man came, Fyodor Pavlovitch would\nbegin talking about the most trivial matters, and would soon let him go\nagain, sometimes even with a jest. And after he had gone, Fyodor\nPavlovitch would get into bed with a curse and sleep the sleep of the\njust. Something of the same sort had happened to Fyodor Pavlovitch on\nAlyosha's arrival. Alyosha \"pierced his heart\" by \"living with him, seeing\neverything and blaming nothing.\" Moreover, Alyosha brought with him\nsomething his father had never known before: a complete absence of\ncontempt for him and an invariable kindness, a perfectly natural\nunaffected devotion to the old man who deserved it so little. All this was\na complete surprise to the old profligate, who had dropped all family\nties. It was a new and surprising experience for him, who had till then\nloved nothing but \"evil.\" When Alyosha had left him, he confessed to\nhimself that he had learnt something he had not till then been willing to\nlearn.\n\nI have mentioned already that Grigory had detested Adelaida Ivanovna, the\nfirst wife of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the mother of Dmitri, and that he had,\non the contrary, protected Sofya Ivanovna, the poor \"crazy woman,\" against\nhis master and any one who chanced to speak ill or lightly of her. His\nsympathy for the unhappy wife had become something sacred to him, so that\neven now, twenty years after, he could not bear a slighting allusion to\nher from any one, and would at once check the offender. Externally,\nGrigory was cold, dignified and taciturn, and spoke, weighing his words,\nwithout frivolity. It was impossible to tell at first sight whether he\nloved his meek, obedient wife; but he really did love her, and she knew\nit.\n\nMarfa Ignatyevna was by no means foolish; she was probably, indeed,\ncleverer than her husband, or, at least, more prudent than he in worldly\naffairs, and yet she had given in to him in everything without question or\ncomplaint ever since her marriage, and respected him for his spiritual\nsuperiority. It was remarkable how little they spoke to one another in the\ncourse of their lives, and only of the most necessary daily affairs. The\ngrave and dignified Grigory thought over all his cares and duties alone,\nso that Marfa Ignatyevna had long grown used to knowing that he did not\nneed her advice. She felt that her husband respected her silence, and took\nit as a sign of her good sense. He had never beaten her but once, and then\nonly slightly. Once during the year after Fyodor Pavlovitch's marriage\nwith Adelaida Ivanovna, the village girls and women--at that time\nserfs--were called together before the house to sing and dance. They were\nbeginning \"In the Green Meadows,\" when Marfa, at that time a young woman,\nskipped forward and danced \"the Russian Dance,\" not in the village\nfashion, but as she had danced it when she was a servant in the service of\nthe rich Miuesov family, in their private theater, where the actors were\ntaught to dance by a dancing master from Moscow. Grigory saw how his wife\ndanced, and, an hour later, at home in their cottage he gave her a lesson,\npulling her hair a little. But there it ended: the beating was never\nrepeated, and Marfa Ignatyevna gave up dancing.\n\nGod had not blessed them with children. One child was born but it died.\nGrigory was fond of children, and was not ashamed of showing it. When\nAdelaida Ivanovna had run away, Grigory took Dmitri, then a child of three\nyears old, combed his hair and washed him in a tub with his own hands, and\nlooked after him for almost a year. Afterwards he had looked after Ivan\nand Alyosha, for which the general's widow had rewarded him with a slap in\nthe face; but I have already related all that. The only happiness his own\nchild had brought him had been in the anticipation of its birth. When it\nwas born, he was overwhelmed with grief and horror. The baby had six\nfingers. Grigory was so crushed by this, that he was not only silent till\nthe day of the christening, but kept away in the garden. It was spring,\nand he spent three days digging the kitchen garden. The third day was\nfixed for christening the baby: mean-time Grigory had reached a\nconclusion. Going into the cottage where the clergy were assembled and the\nvisitors had arrived, including Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was to stand god-\nfather, he suddenly announced that the baby \"ought not to be christened at\nall.\" He announced this quietly, briefly, forcing out his words, and\ngazing with dull intentness at the priest.\n\n\"Why not?\" asked the priest with good-humored surprise.\n\n\"Because it's a dragon,\" muttered Grigory.\n\n\"A dragon? What dragon?\"\n\nGrigory did not speak for some time. \"It's a confusion of nature,\" he\nmuttered vaguely, but firmly, and obviously unwilling to say more.\n\nThey laughed, and of course christened the poor baby. Grigory prayed\nearnestly at the font, but his opinion of the new-born child remained\nunchanged. Yet he did not interfere in any way. As long as the sickly\ninfant lived he scarcely looked at it, tried indeed not to notice it, and\nfor the most part kept out of the cottage. But when, at the end of a\nfortnight, the baby died of thrush, he himself laid the child in its\nlittle coffin, looked at it in profound grief, and when they were filling\nup the shallow little grave he fell on his knees and bowed down to the\nearth. He did not for years afterwards mention his child, nor did Marfa\nspeak of the baby before him, and, even if Grigory were not present, she\nnever spoke of it above a whisper. Marfa observed that, from the day of\nthe burial, he devoted himself to \"religion,\" and took to reading the\n_Lives of the Saints_, for the most part sitting alone and in silence, and\nalways putting on his big, round, silver-rimmed spectacles. He rarely read\naloud, only perhaps in Lent. He was fond of the Book of Job, and had\nsomehow got hold of a copy of the sayings and sermons of \"the God-fearing\nFather Isaac the Syrian,\" which he read persistently for years together,\nunderstanding very little of it, but perhaps prizing and loving it the\nmore for that. Of late he had begun to listen to the doctrines of the sect\nof Flagellants settled in the neighborhood. He was evidently shaken by\nthem, but judged it unfitting to go over to the new faith. His habit of\ntheological reading gave him an expression of still greater gravity.\n\nHe was perhaps predisposed to mysticism. And the birth of his deformed\nchild, and its death, had, as though by special design, been accompanied\nby another strange and marvelous event, which, as he said later, had left\na \"stamp\" upon his soul. It happened that, on the very night after the\nburial of his child, Marfa was awakened by the wail of a new-born baby.\nShe was frightened and waked her husband. He listened and said he thought\nit was more like some one groaning, \"it might be a woman.\" He got up and\ndressed. It was a rather warm night in May. As he went down the steps, he\ndistinctly heard groans coming from the garden. But the gate from the yard\ninto the garden was locked at night, and there was no other way of\nentering it, for it was enclosed all round by a strong, high fence. Going\nback into the house, Grigory lighted a lantern, took the garden key, and\ntaking no notice of the hysterical fears of his wife, who was still\npersuaded that she heard a child crying, and that it was her own baby\ncrying and calling for her, went into the garden in silence. There he\nheard at once that the groans came from the bath-house that stood near the\ngarden gate, and that they were the groans of a woman. Opening the door of\nthe bath-house, he saw a sight which petrified him. An idiot girl, who\nwandered about the streets and was known to the whole town by the nickname\nof Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya (Stinking Lizaveta), had got into the bath-\nhouse and had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the baby\nbeside her. She said nothing, for she had never been able to speak. But\nher story needs a chapter to itself.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Lizaveta\n\n\nThere was one circumstance which struck Grigory particularly, and\nconfirmed a very unpleasant and revolting suspicion. This Lizaveta was a\ndwarfish creature, \"not five foot within a wee bit,\" as many of the pious\nold women said pathetically about her, after her death. Her broad,\nhealthy, red face had a look of blank idiocy and the fixed stare in her\neyes was unpleasant, in spite of their meek expression. She wandered\nabout, summer and winter alike, barefooted, wearing nothing but a hempen\nsmock. Her coarse, almost black hair curled like lamb's wool, and formed a\nsort of huge cap on her head. It was always crusted with mud, and had\nleaves, bits of stick, and shavings clinging to it, as she always slept on\nthe ground and in the dirt. Her father, a homeless, sickly drunkard,\ncalled Ilya, had lost everything and lived many years as a workman with\nsome well-to-do tradespeople. Her mother had long been dead. Spiteful and\ndiseased, Ilya used to beat Lizaveta inhumanly whenever she returned to\nhim. But she rarely did so, for every one in the town was ready to look\nafter her as being an idiot, and so specially dear to God. Ilya's\nemployers, and many others in the town, especially of the tradespeople,\ntried to clothe her better, and always rigged her out with high boots and\nsheepskin coat for the winter. But, although she allowed them to dress her\nup without resisting, she usually went away, preferably to the cathedral\nporch, and taking off all that had been given her--kerchief, sheepskin,\nskirt or boots--she left them there and walked away barefoot in her smock\nas before. It happened on one occasion that a new governor of the\nprovince, making a tour of inspection in our town, saw Lizaveta, and was\nwounded in his tenderest susceptibilities. And though he was told she was\nan idiot, he pronounced that for a young woman of twenty to wander about\nin nothing but a smock was a breach of the proprieties, and must not occur\nagain. But the governor went his way, and Lizaveta was left as she was. At\nlast her father died, which made her even more acceptable in the eyes of\nthe religious persons of the town, as an orphan. In fact, every one seemed\nto like her; even the boys did not tease her, and the boys of our town,\nespecially the schoolboys, are a mischievous set. She would walk into\nstrange houses, and no one drove her away. Every one was kind to her and\ngave her something. If she were given a copper, she would take it, and at\nonce drop it in the alms-jug of the church or prison. If she were given a\nroll or bun in the market, she would hand it to the first child she met.\nSometimes she would stop one of the richest ladies in the town and give it\nto her, and the lady would be pleased to take it. She herself never tasted\nanything but black bread and water. If she went into an expensive shop,\nwhere there were costly goods or money lying about, no one kept watch on\nher, for they knew that if she saw thousands of roubles overlooked by\nthem, she would not have touched a farthing. She scarcely ever went to\nchurch. She slept either in the church porch or climbed over a hurdle\n(there are many hurdles instead of fences to this day in our town) into a\nkitchen garden. She used at least once a week to turn up \"at home,\" that\nis at the house of her father's former employers, and in the winter went\nthere every night, and slept either in the passage or the cowhouse. People\nwere amazed that she could stand such a life, but she was accustomed to\nit, and, although she was so tiny, she was of a robust constitution. Some\nof the townspeople declared that she did all this only from pride, but\nthat is hardly credible. She could hardly speak, and only from time to\ntime uttered an inarticulate grunt. How could she have been proud?\n\nIt happened one clear, warm, moonlight night in September (many years ago)\nfive or six drunken revelers were returning from the club at a very late\nhour, according to our provincial notions. They passed through the \"back-\nway,\" which led between the back gardens of the houses, with hurdles on\neither side. This way leads out on to the bridge over the long, stinking\npool which we were accustomed to call a river. Among the nettles and\nburdocks under the hurdle our revelers saw Lizaveta asleep. They stopped\nto look at her, laughing, and began jesting with unbridled licentiousness.\nIt occurred to one young gentleman to make the whimsical inquiry whether\nany one could possibly look upon such an animal as a woman, and so\nforth.... They all pronounced with lofty repugnance that it was\nimpossible. But Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was among them, sprang forward and\ndeclared that it was by no means impossible, and that, indeed, there was a\ncertain piquancy about it, and so on.... It is true that at that time he\nwas overdoing his part as a buffoon. He liked to put himself forward and\nentertain the company, ostensibly on equal terms, of course, though in\nreality he was on a servile footing with them. It was just at the time\nwhen he had received the news of his first wife's death in Petersburg,\nand, with crape upon his hat, was drinking and behaving so shamelessly\nthat even the most reckless among us were shocked at the sight of him. The\nrevelers, of course, laughed at this unexpected opinion; and one of them\neven began challenging him to act upon it. The others repelled the idea\neven more emphatically, although still with the utmost hilarity, and at\nlast they went on their way. Later on, Fyodor Pavlovitch swore that he had\ngone with them, and perhaps it was so, no one knows for certain, and no\none ever knew. But five or six months later, all the town was talking,\nwith intense and sincere indignation, of Lizaveta's condition, and trying\nto find out who was the miscreant who had wronged her. Then suddenly a\nterrible rumor was all over the town that this miscreant was no other than\nFyodor Pavlovitch. Who set the rumor going? Of that drunken band five had\nleft the town and the only one still among us was an elderly and much\nrespected civil councilor, the father of grown-up daughters, who could\nhardly have spread the tale, even if there had been any foundation for it.\nBut rumor pointed straight at Fyodor Pavlovitch, and persisted in pointing\nat him. Of course this was no great grievance to him: he would not have\ntroubled to contradict a set of tradespeople. In those days he was proud,\nand did not condescend to talk except in his own circle of the officials\nand nobles, whom he entertained so well.\n\nAt the time, Grigory stood up for his master vigorously. He provoked\nquarrels and altercations in defense of him and succeeded in bringing some\npeople round to his side. \"It's the wench's own fault,\" he asserted, and\nthe culprit was Karp, a dangerous convict, who had escaped from prison and\nwhose name was well known to us, as he had hidden in our town. This\nconjecture sounded plausible, for it was remembered that Karp had been in\nthe neighborhood just at that time in the autumn, and had robbed three\npeople. But this affair and all the talk about it did not estrange popular\nsympathy from the poor idiot. She was better looked after than ever. A\nwell-to-do merchant's widow named Kondratyev arranged to take her into her\nhouse at the end of April, meaning not to let her go out until after the\nconfinement. They kept a constant watch over her, but in spite of their\nvigilance she escaped on the very last day, and made her way into Fyodor\nPavlovitch's garden. How, in her condition, she managed to climb over the\nhigh, strong fence remained a mystery. Some maintained that she must have\nbeen lifted over by somebody; others hinted at something more uncanny. The\nmost likely explanation is that it happened naturally--that Lizaveta,\naccustomed to clambering over hurdles to sleep in gardens, had somehow\nmanaged to climb this fence, in spite of her condition, and had leapt\ndown, injuring herself.\n\nGrigory rushed to Marfa and sent her to Lizaveta, while he ran to fetch an\nold midwife who lived close by. They saved the baby, but Lizaveta died at\ndawn. Grigory took the baby, brought it home, and making his wife sit\ndown, put it on her lap. \"A child of God--an orphan is akin to all,\" he\nsaid, \"and to us above others. Our little lost one has sent us this, who\nhas come from the devil's son and a holy innocent. Nurse him and weep no\nmore.\"\n\nSo Marfa brought up the child. He was christened Pavel, to which people\nwere not slow in adding Fyodorovitch (son of Fyodor). Fyodor Pavlovitch\ndid not object to any of this, and thought it amusing, though he persisted\nvigorously in denying his responsibility. The townspeople were pleased at\nhis adopting the foundling. Later on, Fyodor Pavlovitch invented a surname\nfor the child, calling him Smerdyakov, after his mother's nickname.\n\nSo this Smerdyakov became Fyodor Pavlovitch's second servant, and was\nliving in the lodge with Grigory and Marfa at the time our story begins.\nHe was employed as cook. I ought to say something of this Smerdyakov, but\nI am ashamed of keeping my readers' attention so long occupied with these\ncommon menials, and I will go back to my story, hoping to say more of\nSmerdyakov in the course of it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart--In Verse\n\n\nAlyosha remained for some time irresolute after hearing the command his\nfather shouted to him from the carriage. But in spite of his uneasiness he\ndid not stand still. That was not his way. He went at once to the kitchen\nto find out what his father had been doing above. Then he set off,\ntrusting that on the way he would find some answer to the doubt tormenting\nhim. I hasten to add that his father's shouts, commanding him to return\nhome \"with his mattress and pillow\" did not frighten him in the least. He\nunderstood perfectly that those peremptory shouts were merely \"a flourish\"\nto produce an effect. In the same way a tradesman in our town who was\ncelebrating his name-day with a party of friends, getting angry at being\nrefused more vodka, smashed up his own crockery and furniture and tore his\nown and his wife's clothes, and finally broke his windows, all for the\nsake of effect. Next day, of course, when he was sober, he regretted the\nbroken cups and saucers. Alyosha knew that his father would let him go\nback to the monastery next day, possibly even that evening. Moreover, he\nwas fully persuaded that his father might hurt any one else, but would not\nhurt him. Alyosha was certain that no one in the whole world ever would\nwant to hurt him, and, what is more, he knew that no one could hurt him.\nThis was for him an axiom, assumed once for all without question, and he\nwent his way without hesitation, relying on it.\n\nBut at that moment an anxiety of a different sort disturbed him, and\nworried him the more because he could not formulate it. It was the fear of\na woman, of Katerina Ivanovna, who had so urgently entreated him in the\nnote handed to him by Madame Hohlakov to come and see her about something.\nThis request and the necessity of going had at once aroused an uneasy\nfeeling in his heart, and this feeling had grown more and more painful all\nthe morning in spite of the scenes at the hermitage and at the Father\nSuperior's. He was not uneasy because he did not know what she would speak\nof and what he must answer. And he was not afraid of her simply as a\nwoman. Though he knew little of women, he had spent his life, from early\nchildhood till he entered the monastery, entirely with women. He was\nafraid of that woman, Katerina Ivanovna. He had been afraid of her from\nthe first time he saw her. He had only seen her two or three times, and\nhad only chanced to say a few words to her. He thought of her as a\nbeautiful, proud, imperious girl. It was not her beauty which troubled\nhim, but something else. And the vagueness of his apprehension increased\nthe apprehension itself. The girl's aims were of the noblest, he knew\nthat. She was trying to save his brother Dmitri simply through generosity,\nthough he had already behaved badly to her. Yet, although Alyosha\nrecognized and did justice to all these fine and generous sentiments, a\nshiver began to run down his back as soon as he drew near her house.\n\nHe reflected that he would not find Ivan, who was so intimate a friend,\nwith her, for Ivan was certainly now with his father. Dmitri he was even\nmore certain not to find there, and he had a foreboding of the reason. And\nso his conversation would be with her alone. He had a great longing to run\nand see his brother Dmitri before that fateful interview. Without showing\nhim the letter, he could talk to him about it. But Dmitri lived a long way\noff, and he was sure to be away from home too. Standing still for a\nminute, he reached a final decision. Crossing himself with a rapid and\naccustomed gesture, and at once smiling, he turned resolutely in the\ndirection of his terrible lady.\n\nHe knew her house. If he went by the High Street and then across the\nmarket-place, it was a long way round. Though our town is small, it is\nscattered, and the houses are far apart. And meanwhile his father was\nexpecting him, and perhaps had not yet forgotten his command. He might be\nunreasonable, and so he had to make haste to get there and back. So he\ndecided to take a short cut by the back-way, for he knew every inch of the\nground. This meant skirting fences, climbing over hurdles, and crossing\nother people's back-yards, where every one he met knew him and greeted\nhim. In this way he could reach the High Street in half the time.\n\nHe had to pass the garden adjoining his father's, and belonging to a\nlittle tumbledown house with four windows. The owner of this house, as\nAlyosha knew, was a bedridden old woman, living with her daughter, who had\nbeen a genteel maid-servant in generals' families in Petersburg. Now she\nhad been at home a year, looking after her sick mother. She always dressed\nup in fine clothes, though her old mother and she had sunk into such\npoverty that they went every day to Fyodor Pavlovitch's kitchen for soup\nand bread, which Marfa gave readily. Yet, though the young woman came up\nfor soup, she had never sold any of her dresses, and one of these even had\na long train--a fact which Alyosha had learned from Rakitin, who always\nknew everything that was going on in the town. He had forgotten it as soon\nas he heard it, but now, on reaching the garden, he remembered the dress\nwith the train, raised his head, which had been bowed in thought, and came\nupon something quite unexpected.\n\nOver the hurdle in the garden, Dmitri, mounted on something, was leaning\nforward, gesticulating violently, beckoning to him, obviously afraid to\nutter a word for fear of being overheard. Alyosha ran up to the hurdle.\n\n\"It's a good thing you looked up. I was nearly shouting to you,\" Mitya\nsaid in a joyful, hurried whisper. \"Climb in here quickly! How splendid\nthat you've come! I was just thinking of you!\"\n\nAlyosha was delighted too, but he did not know how to get over the hurdle.\nMitya put his powerful hand under his elbow to help him jump. Tucking up\nhis cassock, Alyosha leapt over the hurdle with the agility of a bare-\nlegged street urchin.\n\n\"Well done! Now come along,\" said Mitya in an enthusiastic whisper.\n\n\"Where?\" whispered Alyosha, looking about him and finding himself in a\ndeserted garden with no one near but themselves. The garden was small, but\nthe house was at least fifty paces away.\n\n\"There's no one here. Why do you whisper?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"Why do I whisper? Deuce take it!\" cried Dmitri at the top of his voice.\n\"You see what silly tricks nature plays one. I am here in secret, and on\nthe watch. I'll explain later on, but, knowing it's a secret, I began\nwhispering like a fool, when there's no need. Let us go. Over there. Till\nthen be quiet. I want to kiss you.\n\n\n    Glory to God in the world,\n    Glory to God in me ...\n\n\nI was just repeating that, sitting here, before you came.\"\n\nThe garden was about three acres in extent, and planted with trees only\nalong the fence at the four sides. There were apple-trees, maples, limes\nand birch-trees. The middle of the garden was an empty grass space, from\nwhich several hundredweight of hay was carried in the summer. The garden\nwas let out for a few roubles for the summer. There were also plantations\nof raspberries and currants and gooseberries laid out along the sides; a\nkitchen garden had been planted lately near the house.\n\nDmitri led his brother to the most secluded corner of the garden. There,\nin a thicket of lime-trees and old bushes of black currant, elder,\nsnowball-tree, and lilac, there stood a tumble-down green summer-house,\nblackened with age. Its walls were of lattice-work, but there was still a\nroof which could give shelter. God knows when this summer-house was built.\nThere was a tradition that it had been put up some fifty years before by a\nretired colonel called von Schmidt, who owned the house at that time. It\nwas all in decay, the floor was rotting, the planks were loose, the\nwoodwork smelled musty. In the summer-house there was a green wooden table\nfixed in the ground, and round it were some green benches upon which it\nwas still possible to sit. Alyosha had at once observed his brother's\nexhilarated condition, and on entering the arbor he saw half a bottle of\nbrandy and a wineglass on the table.\n\n\"That's brandy,\" Mitya laughed. \"I see your look: 'He's drinking again!'\nDistrust the apparition.\n\n\n    Distrust the worthless, lying crowd,\n    And lay aside thy doubts.\n\n\nI'm not drinking, I'm only 'indulging,' as that pig, your Rakitin, says.\nHe'll be a civil councilor one day, but he'll always talk about\n'indulging.' Sit down. I could take you in my arms, Alyosha, and press you\nto my bosom till I crush you, for in the whole world--in reality--in re-al-\ni-ty--(can you take it in?) I love no one but you!\"\n\nHe uttered the last words in a sort of exaltation.\n\n\"No one but you and one 'jade' I have fallen in love with, to my ruin. But\nbeing in love doesn't mean loving. You may be in love with a woman and yet\nhate her. Remember that! I can talk about it gayly still. Sit down here by\nthe table and I'll sit beside you and look at you, and go on talking. You\nshall keep quiet and I'll go on talking, for the time has come. But on\nreflection, you know, I'd better speak quietly, for here--here--you can\nnever tell what ears are listening. I will explain everything; as they\nsay, 'the story will be continued.' Why have I been longing for you? Why\nhave I been thirsting for you all these days, and just now? (It's five\ndays since I've cast anchor here.) Because it's only to you I can tell\neverything; because I must, because I need you, because to-morrow I shall\nfly from the clouds, because to-morrow life is ending and beginning. Have\nyou ever felt, have you ever dreamt of falling down a precipice into a\npit? That's just how I'm falling, but not in a dream. And I'm not afraid,\nand don't you be afraid. At least, I am afraid, but I enjoy it. It's not\nenjoyment though, but ecstasy. Damn it all, whatever it is! A strong\nspirit, a weak spirit, a womanish spirit--whatever it is! Let us praise\nnature: you see what sunshine, how clear the sky is, the leaves are all\ngreen, it's still summer; four o'clock in the afternoon and the stillness!\nWhere were you going?\"\n\n\"I was going to father's, but I meant to go to Katerina Ivanovna's first.\"\n\n\"To her, and to father! Oo! what a coincidence! Why was I waiting for you?\nHungering and thirsting for you in every cranny of my soul and even in my\nribs? Why, to send you to father and to her, Katerina Ivanovna, so as to\nhave done with her and with father. To send an angel. I might have sent\nany one, but I wanted to send an angel. And here you are on your way to\nsee father and her.\"\n\n\"Did you really mean to send me?\" cried Alyosha with a distressed\nexpression.\n\n\"Stay! You knew it! And I see you understand it all at once. But be quiet,\nbe quiet for a time. Don't be sorry, and don't cry.\"\n\nDmitri stood up, thought a moment, and put his finger to his forehead.\n\n\"She's asked you, written to you a letter or something, that's why you're\ngoing to her? You wouldn't be going except for that?\"\n\n\"Here is her note.\" Alyosha took it out of his pocket. Mitya looked\nthrough it quickly.\n\n\"And you were going the back-way! Oh, gods, I thank you for sending him by\nthe back-way, and he came to me like the golden fish to the silly old\nfishermen in the fable! Listen, Alyosha, listen, brother! Now I mean to\ntell you everything, for I must tell some one. An angel in heaven I've\ntold already; but I want to tell an angel on earth. You are an angel on\nearth. You will hear and judge and forgive. And that's what I need, that\nsome one above me should forgive. Listen! If two people break away from\neverything on earth and fly off into the unknown, or at least one of them,\nand before flying off or going to ruin he comes to some one else and says,\n'Do this for me'--some favor never asked before that could only be asked on\none's deathbed--would that other refuse, if he were a friend or a brother?\"\n\n\"I will do it, but tell me what it is, and make haste,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"Make haste! H'm!... Don't be in a hurry, Alyosha, you hurry and worry\nyourself. There's no need to hurry now. Now the world has taken a new\nturning. Ah, Alyosha, what a pity you can't understand ecstasy. But what\nam I saying to him? As though you didn't understand it. What an ass I am!\nWhat am I saying? 'Be noble, O man!'--who says that?\"\n\nAlyosha made up his mind to wait. He felt that, perhaps, indeed, his work\nlay here. Mitya sank into thought for a moment, with his elbow on the\ntable and his head in his hand. Both were silent.\n\n\"Alyosha,\" said Mitya, \"you're the only one who won't laugh. I should like\nto begin--my confession--with Schiller's _Hymn to Joy_, _An die Freude_! I\ndon't know German, I only know it's called that. Don't think I'm talking\nnonsense because I'm drunk. I'm not a bit drunk. Brandy's all very well,\nbut I need two bottles to make me drunk:\n\n\n    Silenus with his rosy phiz\n    Upon his stumbling ass.\n\n\nBut I've not drunk a quarter of a bottle, and I'm not Silenus. I'm not\nSilenus, though I am strong,(1) for I've made a decision once for all.\nForgive me the pun; you'll have to forgive me a lot more than puns to-day.\nDon't be uneasy. I'm not spinning it out. I'm talking sense, and I'll come\nto the point in a minute. I won't keep you in suspense. Stay, how does it\ngo?\"\n\nHe raised his head, thought a minute, and began with enthusiasm:\n\n\n    \"Wild and fearful in his cavern\n     Hid the naked troglodyte,\n     And the homeless nomad wandered\n     Laying waste the fertile plain.\n     Menacing with spear and arrow\n     In the woods the hunter strayed....\n     Woe to all poor wretches stranded\n     On those cruel and hostile shores!\n\n    \"From the peak of high Olympus\n     Came the mother Ceres down,\n     Seeking in those savage regions\n     Her lost daughter Proserpine.\n     But the Goddess found no refuge,\n     Found no kindly welcome there,\n     And no temple bearing witness\n     To the worship of the gods.\n\n    \"From the fields and from the vineyards\n     Came no fruits to deck the feasts,\n     Only flesh of bloodstained victims\n     Smoldered on the altar-fires,\n     And where'er the grieving goddess\n     Turns her melancholy gaze,\n     Sunk in vilest degradation\n     Man his loathsomeness displays.\"\n\n\nMitya broke into sobs and seized Alyosha's hand.\n\n\"My dear, my dear, in degradation, in degradation now, too. There's a\nterrible amount of suffering for man on earth, a terrible lot of trouble.\nDon't think I'm only a brute in an officer's uniform, wallowing in dirt\nand drink. I hardly think of anything but of that degraded man--if only I'm\nnot lying. I pray God I'm not lying and showing off. I think about that\nman because I am that man myself.\n\n\n    Would he purge his soul from vileness\n    And attain to light and worth,\n    He must turn and cling for ever\n    To his ancient Mother Earth.\n\n\nBut the difficulty is how am I to cling for ever to Mother Earth. I don't\nkiss her. I don't cleave to her bosom. Am I to become a peasant or a\nshepherd? I go on and I don't know whether I'm going to shame or to light\nand joy. That's the trouble, for everything in the world is a riddle! And\nwhenever I've happened to sink into the vilest degradation (and it's\nalways been happening) I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Has it\nreformed me? Never! For I'm a Karamazov. For when I do leap into the pit,\nI go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that\ndegrading attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of\nthat degradation I begin a hymn of praise. Let me be accursed. Let me be\nvile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is\nshrouded. Though I may be following the devil, I am Thy son, O Lord, and I\nlove Thee, and I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand.\n\n\n    Joy everlasting fostereth\n    The soul of all creation,\n    It is her secret ferment fires\n    The cup of life with flame.\n    'Tis at her beck the grass hath turned\n    Each blade towards the light\n    And solar systems have evolved\n    From chaos and dark night,\n    Filling the realms of boundless space\n    Beyond the sage's sight.\n    At bounteous Nature's kindly breast,\n    All things that breathe drink Joy,\n    And birds and beasts and creeping things\n    All follow where She leads.\n    Her gifts to man are friends in need,\n    The wreath, the foaming must,\n    To angels--vision of God's throne,\n    To insects--sensual lust.\n\n\nBut enough poetry! I am in tears; let me cry. It may be foolishness that\nevery one would laugh at. But you won't laugh. Your eyes are shining, too.\nEnough poetry. I want to tell you now about the insects to whom God gave\n\"sensual lust.\"\n\n\n    To insects--sensual lust.\n\n\nI am that insect, brother, and it is said of me specially. All we\nKaramazovs are such insects, and, angel as you are, that insect lives in\nyou, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because\nsensual lust is a tempest--worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and\nawful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can\nbe fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet\nand all contradictions exist side by side. I am not a cultivated man,\nbrother, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries\nthere are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve them as\nwe can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't endure\nthe thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of\nthe Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is\nthat a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal\nof the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on\nfire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too\nbroad, indeed. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of\nit! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart.\nIs there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind\nbeauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is\nthat beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are\nfighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man. But a man always\ntalks of his own ache. Listen, now to come to facts.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart--In Anecdote\n\n\n\"I was leading a wild life then. Father said just now that I spent several\nthousand roubles in seducing young girls. That's a swinish invention, and\nthere was nothing of the sort. And if there was, I didn't need money\nsimply for _that_. With me money is an accessory, the overflow of my\nheart, the framework. To-day she would be my lady, to-morrow a wench out\nof the streets in her place. I entertained them both. I threw away money\nby the handful on music, rioting, and gypsies. Sometimes I gave it to the\nladies, too, for they'll take it greedily, that must be admitted, and be\npleased and thankful for it. Ladies used to be fond of me: not all of\nthem, but it happened, it happened. But I always liked side-paths, little\ndark back-alleys behind the main road--there one finds adventures and\nsurprises, and precious metal in the dirt. I am speaking figuratively,\nbrother. In the town I was in, there were no such back-alleys in the\nliteral sense, but morally there were. If you were like me, you'd know\nwhat that means. I loved vice, I loved the ignominy of vice. I loved\ncruelty; am I not a bug, am I not a noxious insect? In fact a Karamazov!\nOnce we went, a whole lot of us, for a picnic, in seven sledges. It was\ndark, it was winter, and I began squeezing a girl's hand, and forced her\nto kiss me. She was the daughter of an official, a sweet, gentle,\nsubmissive creature. She allowed me, she allowed me much in the dark. She\nthought, poor thing, that I should come next day to make her an offer (I\nwas looked upon as a good match, too). But I didn't say a word to her for\nfive months. I used to see her in a corner at dances (we were always\nhaving dances), her eyes watching me. I saw how they glowed with fire--a\nfire of gentle indignation. This game only tickled that insect lust I\ncherished in my soul. Five months later she married an official and left\nthe town, still angry, and still, perhaps, in love with me. Now they live\nhappily. Observe that I told no one. I didn't boast of it. Though I'm full\nof low desires, and love what's low, I'm not dishonorable. You're\nblushing; your eyes flashed. Enough of this filth with you. And all this\nwas nothing much--wayside blossoms _a la_ Paul de Kock--though the cruel\ninsect had already grown strong in my soul. I've a perfect album of\nreminiscences, brother. God bless them, the darlings. I tried to break it\noff without quarreling. And I never gave them away. I never bragged of one\nof them. But that's enough. You can't suppose I brought you here simply to\ntalk of such nonsense. No, I'm going to tell you something more curious;\nand don't be surprised that I'm glad to tell you, instead of being\nashamed.\"\n\n\"You say that because I blushed,\" Alyosha said suddenly. \"I wasn't\nblushing at what you were saying or at what you've done. I blushed because\nI am the same as you are.\"\n\n\"You? Come, that's going a little too far!\"\n\n\"No, it's not too far,\" said Alyosha warmly (obviously the idea was not a\nnew one). \"The ladder's the same. I'm at the bottom step, and you're\nabove, somewhere about the thirteenth. That's how I see it. But it's all\nthe same. Absolutely the same in kind. Any one on the bottom step is bound\nto go up to the top one.\"\n\n\"Then one ought not to step on at all.\"\n\n\"Any one who can help it had better not.\"\n\n\"But can you?\"\n\n\"I think not.\"\n\n\"Hush, Alyosha, hush, darling! I could kiss your hand, you touch me so.\nThat rogue Grushenka has an eye for men. She told me once that she'd\ndevour you one day. There, there, I won't! From this field of corruption\nfouled by flies, let's pass to my tragedy, also befouled by flies, that is\nby every sort of vileness. Although the old man told lies about my\nseducing innocence, there really was something of the sort in my tragedy,\nthough it was only once, and then it did not come off. The old man who has\nreproached me with what never happened does not even know of this fact; I\nnever told any one about it. You're the first, except Ivan, of course--Ivan\nknows everything. He knew about it long before you. But Ivan's a tomb.\"\n\n\"Ivan's a tomb?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nAlyosha listened with great attention.\n\n\"I was lieutenant in a line regiment, but still I was under supervision,\nlike a kind of convict. Yet I was awfully well received in the little\ntown. I spent money right and left. I was thought to be rich; I thought so\nmyself. But I must have pleased them in other ways as well. Although they\nshook their heads over me, they liked me. My colonel, who was an old man,\ntook a sudden dislike to me. He was always down upon me, but I had\npowerful friends, and, moreover, all the town was on my side, so he\ncouldn't do me much harm. I was in fault myself for refusing to treat him\nwith proper respect. I was proud. This obstinate old fellow, who was\nreally a very good sort, kind-hearted and hospitable, had had two wives,\nboth dead. His first wife, who was of a humble family, left a daughter as\nunpretentious as herself. She was a young woman of four and twenty when I\nwas there, and was living with her father and an aunt, her mother's\nsister. The aunt was simple and illiterate; the niece was simple but\nlively. I like to say nice things about people. I never knew a woman of\nmore charming character than Agafya--fancy, her name was Agafya Ivanovna!\nAnd she wasn't bad-looking either, in the Russian style: tall, stout, with\na full figure, and beautiful eyes, though a rather coarse face. She had\nnot married, although she had had two suitors. She refused them, but was\nas cheerful as ever. I was intimate with her, not in 'that' way, it was\npure friendship. I have often been friendly with women quite innocently. I\nused to talk to her with shocking frankness, and she only laughed. Many\nwomen like such freedom, and she was a girl too, which made it very\namusing. Another thing, one could never think of her as a young lady. She\nand her aunt lived in her father's house with a sort of voluntary\nhumility, not putting themselves on an equality with other people. She was\na general favorite, and of use to every one, for she was a clever\ndressmaker. She had a talent for it. She gave her services freely without\nasking for payment, but if any one offered her payment, she didn't refuse.\nThe colonel, of course, was a very different matter. He was one of the\nchief personages in the district. He kept open house, entertained the\nwhole town, gave suppers and dances. At the time I arrived and joined the\nbattalion, all the town was talking of the expected return of the\ncolonel's second daughter, a great beauty, who had just left a fashionable\nschool in the capital. This second daughter is Katerina Ivanovna, and she\nwas the child of the second wife, who belonged to a distinguished\ngeneral's family; although, as I learnt on good authority, she too brought\nthe colonel no money. She had connections, and that was all. There may\nhave been expectations, but they had come to nothing.\n\n\"Yet, when the young lady came from boarding-school on a visit, the whole\ntown revived. Our most distinguished ladies--two 'Excellencies' and a\ncolonel's wife--and all the rest following their lead, at once took her up\nand gave entertainments in her honor. She was the belle of the balls and\npicnics, and they got up _tableaux vivants_ in aid of distressed\ngovernesses. I took no notice, I went on as wildly as before, and one of\nmy exploits at the time set all the town talking. I saw her eyes taking my\nmeasure one evening at the battery commander's, but I didn't go up to her,\nas though I disdained her acquaintance. I did go up and speak to her at an\nevening party not long after. She scarcely looked at me, and compressed\nher lips scornfully. 'Wait a bit. I'll have my revenge,' thought I. I\nbehaved like an awful fool on many occasions at that time, and I was\nconscious of it myself. What made it worse was that I felt that 'Katenka'\nwas not an innocent boarding-school miss, but a person of character, proud\nand really high-principled; above all, she had education and intellect,\nand I had neither. You think I meant to make her an offer? No, I simply\nwanted to revenge myself, because I was such a hero and she didn't seem to\nfeel it.\n\n\"Meanwhile, I spent my time in drink and riot, till the lieutenant-colonel\nput me under arrest for three days. Just at that time father sent me six\nthousand roubles in return for my sending him a deed giving up all claims\nupon him--settling our accounts, so to speak, and saying that I wouldn't\nexpect anything more. I didn't understand a word of it at the time. Until\nI came here, Alyosha, till the last few days, indeed, perhaps even now, I\nhaven't been able to make head or tail of my money affairs with father.\nBut never mind that, we'll talk of it later.\n\n\"Just as I received the money, I got a letter from a friend telling me\nsomething that interested me immensely. The authorities, I learnt, were\ndissatisfied with our lieutenant-colonel. He was suspected of\nirregularities; in fact, his enemies were preparing a surprise for him.\nAnd then the commander of the division arrived, and kicked up the devil of\na shindy. Shortly afterwards he was ordered to retire. I won't tell you\nhow it all happened. He had enemies certainly. Suddenly there was a marked\ncoolness in the town towards him and all his family. His friends all\nturned their backs on him. Then I took my first step. I met Agafya\nIvanovna, with whom I'd always kept up a friendship, and said, 'Do you\nknow there's a deficit of 4,500 roubles of government money in your\nfather's accounts?'\n\n\" 'What do you mean? What makes you say so? The general was here not long\nago, and everything was all right.'\n\n\" 'Then it was, but now it isn't.'\n\n\"She was terribly scared.\n\n\" 'Don't frighten me!' she said. 'Who told you so?'\n\n\" 'Don't be uneasy,' I said, 'I won't tell any one. You know I'm as silent\nas the tomb. I only wanted, in view of \"possibilities,\" to add, that when\nthey demand that 4,500 roubles from your father, and he can't produce it,\nhe'll be tried, and made to serve as a common soldier in his old age,\nunless you like to send me your young lady secretly. I've just had money\npaid me. I'll give her four thousand, if you like, and keep the secret\nreligiously.'\n\n\" 'Ah, you scoundrel!'--that's what she said. 'You wicked scoundrel! How\ndare you!'\n\n\"She went away furiously indignant, while I shouted after her once more\nthat the secret should be kept sacred. Those two simple creatures, Agafya\nand her aunt, I may as well say at once, behaved like perfect angels all\nthrough this business. They genuinely adored their 'Katya,' thought her\nfar above them, and waited on her, hand and foot. But Agafya told her of\nour conversation. I found that out afterwards. She didn't keep it back,\nand of course that was all I wanted.\n\n\"Suddenly the new major arrived to take command of the battalion. The old\nlieutenant-colonel was taken ill at once, couldn't leave his room for two\ndays, and didn't hand over the government money. Dr. Kravchenko declared\nthat he really was ill. But I knew for a fact, and had known for a long\ntime, that for the last four years the money had never been in his hands\nexcept when the Commander made his visits of inspection. He used to lend\nit to a trustworthy person, a merchant of our town called Trifonov, an old\nwidower, with a big beard and gold-rimmed spectacles. He used to go to the\nfair, do a profitable business with the money, and return the whole sum to\nthe colonel, bringing with it a present from the fair, as well as interest\non the loan. But this time (I heard all about it quite by chance from\nTrifonov's son and heir, a driveling youth and one of the most vicious in\nthe world)--this time, I say, Trifonov brought nothing back from the fair.\nThe lieutenant-colonel flew to him. 'I've never received any money from\nyou, and couldn't possibly have received any.' That was all the answer he\ngot. So now our lieutenant-colonel is confined to the house, with a towel\nround his head, while they're all three busy putting ice on it. All at\nonce an orderly arrives on the scene with the book and the order to 'hand\nover the battalion money immediately, within two hours.' He signed the\nbook (I saw the signature in the book afterwards), stood up, saying he\nwould put on his uniform, ran to his bedroom, loaded his double-barreled\ngun with a service bullet, took the boot off his right foot, fixed the gun\nagainst his chest, and began feeling for the trigger with his foot. But\nAgafya, remembering what I had told her, had her suspicions. She stole up\nand peeped into the room just in time. She rushed in, flung herself upon\nhim from behind, threw her arms round him, and the gun went off, hit the\nceiling, but hurt no one. The others ran in, took away the gun, and held\nhim by the arms. I heard all about this afterwards. I was at home, it was\ngetting dusk, and I was just preparing to go out. I had dressed, brushed\nmy hair, scented my handkerchief, and taken up my cap, when suddenly the\ndoor opened, and facing me in the room stood Katerina Ivanovna.\n\n\"It's strange how things happen sometimes. No one had seen her in the\nstreet, so that no one knew of it in the town. I lodged with two decrepit\nold ladies, who looked after me. They were most obliging old things, ready\nto do anything for me, and at my request were as silent afterwards as two\ncast-iron posts. Of course I grasped the position at once. She walked in\nand looked straight at me, her dark eyes determined, even defiant, but on\nher lips and round her mouth I saw uncertainty.\n\n\" 'My sister told me,' she began, 'that you would give me 4,500 roubles if\nI came to you for it--myself. I have come ... give me the money!'\n\n\"She couldn't keep it up. She was breathless, frightened, her voice failed\nher, and the corners of her mouth and the lines round it quivered.\nAlyosha, are you listening, or are you asleep?\"\n\n\"Mitya, I know you will tell the whole truth,\" said Alyosha in agitation.\n\n\"I am telling it. If I tell the whole truth just as it happened I shan't\nspare myself. My first idea was a--Karamazov one. Once I was bitten by a\ncentipede, brother, and laid up a fortnight with fever from it. Well, I\nfelt a centipede biting at my heart then--a noxious insect, you understand?\nI looked her up and down. You've seen her? She's a beauty. But she was\nbeautiful in another way then. At that moment she was beautiful because\nshe was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she in all the grandeur of her\ngenerosity and sacrifice for her father, and I--a bug! And, scoundrel as I\nwas, she was altogether at my mercy, body and soul. She was hemmed in. I\ntell you frankly, that thought, that venomous thought, so possessed my\nheart that it almost swooned with suspense. It seemed as if there could be\nno resisting it; as though I should act like a bug, like a venomous\nspider, without a spark of pity. I could scarcely breathe. Understand, I\nshould have gone next day to ask for her hand, so that it might end\nhonorably, so to speak, and that nobody would or could know. For though\nI'm a man of base desires, I'm honest. And at that very second some voice\nseemed to whisper in my ear, 'But when you come to-morrow to make your\nproposal, that girl won't even see you; she'll order her coachman to kick\nyou out of the yard. \"Publish it through all the town,\" she would say,\n\"I'm not afraid of you.\" ' I looked at the young lady, my voice had not\ndeceived me. That is how it would be, not a doubt of it. I could see from\nher face now that I should be turned out of the house. My spite was\nroused. I longed to play her the nastiest swinish cad's trick: to look at\nher with a sneer, and on the spot where she stood before me to stun her\nwith a tone of voice that only a shopman could use.\n\n\" 'Four thousand! What do you mean? I was joking. You've been counting\nyour chickens too easily, madam. Two hundred, if you like, with all my\nheart. But four thousand is not a sum to throw away on such frivolity.\nYou've put yourself out to no purpose.'\n\n\"I should have lost the game, of course. She'd have run away. But it would\nhave been an infernal revenge. It would have been worth it all. I'd have\nhowled with regret all the rest of my life, only to have played that\ntrick. Would you believe it, it has never happened to me with any other\nwoman, not one, to look at her at such a moment with hatred. But, on my\noath, I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful\nhatred--that hate which is only a hair's-breadth from love, from the\nmaddest love!\n\n\"I went to the window, put my forehead against the frozen pane, and I\nremember the ice burnt my forehead like fire. I did not keep her long,\ndon't be afraid. I turned round, went up to the table, opened the drawer\nand took out a banknote for five thousand roubles (it was lying in a\nFrench dictionary). Then I showed it her in silence, folded it, handed it\nto her, opened the door into the passage, and, stepping back, made her a\ndeep bow, a most respectful, a most impressive bow, believe me! She\nshuddered all over, gazed at me for a second, turned horribly pale--white\nas a sheet, in fact--and all at once, not impetuously but softly, gently,\nbowed down to my feet--not a boarding-school curtsey, but a Russian bow,\nwith her forehead to the floor. She jumped up and ran away. I was wearing\nmy sword. I drew it and nearly stabbed myself with it on the spot; why, I\ndon't know. It would have been frightfully stupid, of course. I suppose it\nwas from delight. Can you understand that one might kill oneself from\ndelight? But I didn't stab myself. I only kissed my sword and put it back\nin the scabbard--which there was no need to have told you, by the way. And\nI fancy that in telling you about my inner conflict I have laid it on\nrather thick to glorify myself. But let it pass, and to hell with all who\npry into the human heart! Well, so much for that 'adventure' with Katerina\nIvanovna. So now Ivan knows of it, and you--no one else.\"\n\nDmitri got up, took a step or two in his excitement, pulled out his\nhandkerchief and mopped his forehead, then sat down again, not in the same\nplace as before, but on the opposite side, so that Alyosha had to turn\nquite round to face him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart--\"Heels Up\"\n\n\n\"Now,\" said Alyosha, \"I understand the first half.\"\n\n\"You understand the first half. That half is a drama, and it was played\nout there. The second half is a tragedy, and it is being acted here.\"\n\n\"And I understand nothing of that second half so far,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"And I? Do you suppose I understand it?\"\n\n\"Stop, Dmitri. There's one important question. Tell me, you were\nbetrothed, you are betrothed still?\"\n\n\"We weren't betrothed at once, not for three months after that adventure.\nThe next day I told myself that the incident was closed, concluded, that\nthere would be no sequel. It seemed to me caddish to make her an offer. On\nher side she gave no sign of life for the six weeks that she remained in\nthe town; except, indeed, for one action. The day after her visit the\nmaid-servant slipped round with an envelope addressed to me. I tore it\nopen: it contained the change out of the banknote. Only four thousand five\nhundred roubles was needed, but there was a discount of about two hundred\non changing it. She only sent me about two hundred and sixty. I don't\nremember exactly, but not a note, not a word of explanation. I searched\nthe packet for a pencil mark--n-nothing! Well, I spent the rest of the\nmoney on such an orgy that the new major was obliged to reprimand me.\n\n\"Well, the lieutenant-colonel produced the battalion money, to the\nastonishment of every one, for nobody believed that he had the money\nuntouched. He'd no sooner paid it than he fell ill, took to his bed, and,\nthree weeks later, softening of the brain set in, and he died five days\nafterwards. He was buried with military honors, for he had not had time to\nreceive his discharge. Ten days after his funeral, Katerina Ivanovna, with\nher aunt and sister, went to Moscow. And, behold, on the very day they\nwent away (I hadn't seen them, didn't see them off or take leave) I\nreceived a tiny note, a sheet of thin blue paper, and on it only one line\nin pencil: 'I will write to you. Wait. K.' And that was all.\n\n\"I'll explain the rest now, in two words. In Moscow their fortunes changed\nwith the swiftness of lightning and the unexpectedness of an Arabian\nfairy-tale. That general's widow, their nearest relation, suddenly lost\nthe two nieces who were her heiresses and next-of-kin--both died in the\nsame week of small-pox. The old lady, prostrated with grief, welcomed\nKatya as a daughter, as her one hope, clutched at her, altered her will in\nKatya's favor. But that concerned the future. Meanwhile she gave her, for\npresent use, eighty thousand roubles, as a marriage portion, to do what\nshe liked with. She was an hysterical woman. I saw something of her in\nMoscow, later.\n\n\"Well, suddenly I received by post four thousand five hundred roubles. I\nwas speechless with surprise, as you may suppose. Three days later came\nthe promised letter. I have it with me now. You must read it. She offers\nto be my wife, offers herself to me. 'I love you madly,' she says, 'even\nif you don't love me, never mind. Be my husband. Don't be afraid. I won't\nhamper you in any way. I will be your chattel. I will be the carpet under\nyour feet. I want to love you for ever. I want to save you from yourself.'\nAlyosha, I am not worthy to repeat those lines in my vulgar words and in\nmy vulgar tone, my everlastingly vulgar tone, that I can never cure myself\nof. That letter stabs me even now. Do you think I don't mind--that I don't\nmind still? I wrote her an answer at once, as it was impossible for me to\ngo to Moscow. I wrote to her with tears. One thing I shall be ashamed of\nfor ever. I referred to her being rich and having a dowry while I was only\na stuck-up beggar! I mentioned money! I ought to have borne it in silence,\nbut it slipped from my pen. Then I wrote at once to Ivan, and told him all\nI could about it in a letter of six pages, and sent him to her. Why do you\nlook like that? Why are you staring at me? Yes, Ivan fell in love with\nher; he's in love with her still. I know that. I did a stupid thing, in\nthe world's opinion; but perhaps that one stupid thing may be the saving\nof us all now. Oo! Don't you see what a lot she thinks of Ivan, how she\nrespects him? When she compares us, do you suppose she can love a man like\nme, especially after all that has happened here?\"\n\n\"But I am convinced that she does love a man like you, and not a man like\nhim.\"\n\n\"She loves her own _virtue_, not me.\" The words broke involuntarily, and\nalmost malignantly, from Dmitri. He laughed, but a minute later his eyes\ngleamed, he flushed crimson and struck the table violently with his fist.\n\n\"I swear, Alyosha,\" he cried, with intense and genuine anger at himself;\n\"you may not believe me, but as God is holy, and as Christ is God, I swear\nthat though I smiled at her lofty sentiments just now, I know that I am a\nmillion times baser in soul than she, and that these lofty sentiments of\nhers are as sincere as a heavenly angel's. That's the tragedy of it--that I\nknow that for certain. What if any one does show off a bit? Don't I do it\nmyself? And yet I'm sincere, I'm sincere. As for Ivan, I can understand\nhow he must be cursing nature now--with his intellect, too! To see the\npreference given--to whom, to what? To a monster who, though he is\nbetrothed and all eyes are fixed on him, can't restrain his\ndebaucheries--and before the very eyes of his betrothed! And a man like me\nis preferred, while he is rejected. And why? Because a girl wants to\nsacrifice her life and destiny out of gratitude. It's ridiculous! I've\nnever said a word of this to Ivan, and Ivan of course has never dropped a\nhint of the sort to me. But destiny will be accomplished, and the best man\nwill hold his ground while the undeserving one will vanish into his back-\nalley for ever--his filthy back-alley, his beloved back-alley, where he is\nat home and where he will sink in filth and stench at his own free will\nand with enjoyment. I've been talking foolishly. I've no words left. I use\nthem at random, but it will be as I have said. I shall drown in the back-\nalley, and she will marry Ivan.\"\n\n\"Stop, Dmitri,\" Alyosha interrupted again with great anxiety. \"There's one\nthing you haven't made clear yet: you are still betrothed all the same,\naren't you? How can you break off the engagement if she, your betrothed,\ndoesn't want to?\"\n\n\"Yes, formally and solemnly betrothed. It was all done on my arrival in\nMoscow, with great ceremony, with ikons, all in fine style. The general's\nwife blessed us, and--would you believe it?--congratulated Katya. 'You've\nmade a good choice,' she said, 'I see right through him.' And--would you\nbelieve it?--she didn't like Ivan, and hardly greeted him. I had a lot of\ntalk with Katya in Moscow. I told her about myself--sincerely, honorably.\nShe listened to everything.\n\n\n    There was sweet confusion,\n    There were tender words.\n\n\nThough there were proud words, too. She wrung out of me a mighty promise\nto reform. I gave my promise, and here--\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Why, I called to you and brought you out here to-day, this very\nday--remember it--to send you--this very day again--to Katerina Ivanovna,\nand--\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"To tell her that I shall never come to see her again. Say, 'He sends you\nhis compliments.' \"\n\n\"But is that possible?\"\n\n\"That's just the reason I'm sending you, in my place, because it's\nimpossible. And, how could I tell her myself?\"\n\n\"And where are you going?\"\n\n\"To the back-alley.\"\n\n\"To Grushenka, then!\" Alyosha exclaimed mournfully, clasping his hands.\n\"Can Rakitin really have told the truth? I thought that you had just\nvisited her, and that was all.\"\n\n\"Can a betrothed man pay such visits? Is such a thing possible and with\nsuch a betrothed, and before the eyes of all the world? Confound it, I\nhave some honor! As soon as I began visiting Grushenka, I ceased to be\nbetrothed, and to be an honest man. I understand that. Why do you look at\nme? You see, I went in the first place to beat her. I had heard, and I\nknow for a fact now, that that captain, father's agent, had given\nGrushenka an I.O.U. of mine for her to sue me for payment, so as to put an\nend to me. They wanted to scare me. I went to beat her. I had had a\nglimpse of her before. She doesn't strike one at first sight. I knew about\nher old merchant, who's lying ill now, paralyzed; but he's leaving her a\ndecent little sum. I knew, too, that she was fond of money, that she\nhoarded it, and lent it at a wicked rate of interest, that she's a\nmerciless cheat and swindler. I went to beat her, and I stayed. The storm\nbroke--it struck me down like the plague. I'm plague-stricken still, and I\nknow that everything is over, that there will never be anything more for\nme. The cycle of the ages is accomplished. That's my position. And though\nI'm a beggar, as fate would have it, I had three thousand just then in my\npocket. I drove with Grushenka to Mokroe, a place twenty-five versts from\nhere. I got gypsies there and champagne and made all the peasants there\ndrunk on it, and all the women and girls. I sent the thousands flying. In\nthree days' time I was stripped bare, but a hero. Do you suppose the hero\nhad gained his end? Not a sign of it from her. I tell you that rogue,\nGrushenka, has a supple curve all over her body. You can see it in her\nlittle foot, even in her little toe. I saw it, and kissed it, but that was\nall, I swear! 'I'll marry you if you like,' she said, 'you're a beggar,\nyou know. Say that you won't beat me, and will let me do anything I\nchoose, and perhaps I will marry you.' She laughed, and she's laughing\nstill!\"\n\nDmitri leapt up with a sort of fury. He seemed all at once as though he\nwere drunk. His eyes became suddenly bloodshot.\n\n\"And do you really mean to marry her?\"\n\n\"At once, if she will. And if she won't, I shall stay all the same. I'll\nbe the porter at her gate. Alyosha!\" he cried. He stopped short before\nhim, and taking him by the shoulders began shaking him violently. \"Do you\nknow, you innocent boy, that this is all delirium, senseless delirium, for\nthere's a tragedy here. Let me tell you, Alexey, that I may be a low man,\nwith low and degraded passions, but a thief and a pickpocket Dmitri\nKaramazov never can be. Well, then; let me tell you that I am a thief and\na pickpocket. That very morning, just before I went to beat Grushenka,\nKaterina Ivanovna sent for me, and in strict secrecy (why I don't know, I\nsuppose she had some reason) asked me to go to the chief town of the\nprovince and to post three thousand roubles to Agafya Ivanovna in Moscow,\nso that nothing should be known of it in the town here. So I had that\nthree thousand roubles in my pocket when I went to see Grushenka, and it\nwas that money we spent at Mokroe. Afterwards I pretended I had been to\nthe town, but did not show her the post office receipt. I said I had sent\nthe money and would bring the receipt, and so far I haven't brought it.\nI've forgotten it. Now what do you think you're going to her to-day to\nsay? 'He sends his compliments,' and she'll ask you, 'What about the\nmoney?' You might still have said to her, 'He's a degraded sensualist, and\na low creature, with uncontrolled passions. He didn't send your money\nthen, but wasted it, because, like a low brute, he couldn't control\nhimself.' But still you might have added, 'He isn't a thief though. Here\nis your three thousand; he sends it back. Send it yourself to Agafya\nIvanovna. But he told me to say \"he sends his compliments.\" ' But, as it\nis, she will ask, 'But where is the money?' \"\n\n\"Mitya, you are unhappy, yes! But not as unhappy as you think. Don't worry\nyourself to death with despair.\"\n\n\"What, do you suppose I'd shoot myself because I can't get three thousand\nto pay back? That's just it. I shan't shoot myself. I haven't the strength\nnow. Afterwards, perhaps. But now I'm going to Grushenka. I don't care\nwhat happens.\"\n\n\"And what then?\"\n\n\"I'll be her husband if she deigns to have me, and when lovers come, I'll\ngo into the next room. I'll clean her friends' goloshes, blow up their\nsamovar, run their errands.\"\n\n\"Katerina Ivanovna will understand it all,\" Alyosha said solemnly. \"She'll\nunderstand how great this trouble is and will forgive. She has a lofty\nmind, and no one could be more unhappy than you. She'll see that for\nherself.\"\n\n\"She won't forgive everything,\" said Dmitri, with a grin. \"There's\nsomething in it, brother, that no woman could forgive. Do you know what\nwould be the best thing to do?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Pay back the three thousand.\"\n\n\"Where can we get it from? I say, I have two thousand. Ivan will give you\nanother thousand--that makes three. Take it and pay it back.\"\n\n\"And when would you get it, your three thousand? You're not of age,\nbesides, and you must--you absolutely must--take my farewell to her to-day,\nwith the money or without it, for I can't drag on any longer, things have\ncome to such a pass. To-morrow is too late. I shall send you to father.\"\n\n\"To father?\"\n\n\"Yes, to father first. Ask him for three thousand.\"\n\n\"But, Mitya, he won't give it.\"\n\n\"As though he would! I know he won't. Do you know the meaning of despair,\nAlexey?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Listen. Legally he owes me nothing. I've had it all from him, I know\nthat. But morally he owes me something, doesn't he? You know he started\nwith twenty-eight thousand of my mother's money and made a hundred\nthousand with it. Let him give me back only three out of the twenty-eight\nthousand, and he'll draw my soul out of hell, and it will atone for many\nof his sins. For that three thousand--I give you my solemn word--I'll make\nan end of everything, and he shall hear nothing more of me. For the last\ntime I give him the chance to be a father. Tell him God Himself sends him\nthis chance.\"\n\n\"Mitya, he won't give it for anything.\"\n\n\"I know he won't. I know it perfectly well. Now, especially. That's not\nall. I know something more. Now, only a few days ago, perhaps only\nyesterday he found out for the first time _in earnest_ (underline _in\nearnest_) that Grushenka is really perhaps not joking, and really means to\nmarry me. He knows her nature; he knows the cat. And do you suppose he's\ngoing to give me money to help to bring that about when he's crazy about\nher himself? And that's not all, either. I can tell you more than that. I\nknow that for the last five days he has had three thousand drawn out of\nthe bank, changed into notes of a hundred roubles, packed into a large\nenvelope, sealed with five seals, and tied across with red tape. You see\nhow well I know all about it! On the envelope is written: 'To my angel,\nGrushenka, when she will come to me.' He scrawled it himself in silence\nand in secret, and no one knows that the money's there except the valet,\nSmerdyakov, whom he trusts like himself. So now he has been expecting\nGrushenka for the last three or four days; he hopes she'll come for the\nmoney. He has sent her word of it, and she has sent him word that perhaps\nshe'll come. And if she does go to the old man, can I marry her after\nthat? You understand now why I'm here in secret and what I'm on the watch\nfor.\"\n\n\"For her?\"\n\n\"Yes, for her. Foma has a room in the house of these sluts here. Foma\ncomes from our parts; he was a soldier in our regiment. He does jobs for\nthem. He's watchman at night and goes grouse-shooting in the day-time; and\nthat's how he lives. I've established myself in his room. Neither he nor\nthe women of the house know the secret--that is, that I am on the watch\nhere.\"\n\n\"No one but Smerdyakov knows, then?\"\n\n\"No one else. He will let me know if she goes to the old man.\"\n\n\"It was he told you about the money, then?\"\n\n\"Yes. It's a dead secret. Even Ivan doesn't know about the money, or\nanything. The old man is sending Ivan to Tchermashnya on a two or three\ndays' journey. A purchaser has turned up for the copse: he'll give eight\nthousand for the timber. So the old man keeps asking Ivan to help him by\ngoing to arrange it. It will take him two or three days. That's what the\nold man wants, so that Grushenka can come while he's away.\"\n\n\"Then he's expecting Grushenka to-day?\"\n\n\"No, she won't come to-day; there are signs. She's certain not to come,\"\ncried Mitya suddenly. \"Smerdyakov thinks so, too. Father's drinking now.\nHe's sitting at table with Ivan. Go to him, Alyosha, and ask for the three\nthousand.\"\n\n\"Mitya, dear, what's the matter with you?\" cried Alyosha, jumping up from\nhis place, and looking keenly at his brother's frenzied face. For one\nmoment the thought struck him that Dmitri was mad.\n\n\"What is it? I'm not insane,\" said Dmitri, looking intently and earnestly\nat him. \"No fear. I am sending you to father, and I know what I'm saying.\nI believe in miracles.\"\n\n\"In miracles?\"\n\n\"In a miracle of Divine Providence. God knows my heart. He sees my\ndespair. He sees the whole picture. Surely He won't let something awful\nhappen. Alyosha, I believe in miracles. Go!\"\n\n\"I am going. Tell me, will you wait for me here?\"\n\n\"Yes. I know it will take some time. You can't go at him point blank. He's\ndrunk now. I'll wait three hours--four, five, six, seven. Only remember you\nmust go to Katerina Ivanovna to-day, if it has to be at midnight, _with\nthe money or without the money_, and say, 'He sends his compliments to\nyou.' I want you to say that verse to her: 'He sends his compliments to\nyou.' \"\n\n\"Mitya! And what if Grushenka comes to-day--if not to-day, to-morrow, or\nthe next day?\"\n\n\"Grushenka? I shall see her. I shall rush out and prevent it.\"\n\n\"And if--\"\n\n\"If there's an if, it will be murder. I couldn't endure it.\"\n\n\"Who will be murdered?\"\n\n\"The old man. I shan't kill her.\"\n\n\"Brother, what are you saying?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know.... I don't know. Perhaps I shan't kill, and perhaps I\nshall. I'm afraid that he will suddenly become so loathsome to me with his\nface at that moment. I hate his ugly throat, his nose, his eyes, his\nshameless snigger. I feel a physical repulsion. That's what I'm afraid of.\nThat's what may be too much for me.\"\n\n\"I'll go, Mitya. I believe that God will order things for the best, that\nnothing awful may happen.\"\n\n\"And I will sit and wait for the miracle. And if it doesn't come to pass--\"\n\nAlyosha went thoughtfully towards his father's house.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. Smerdyakov\n\n\nHe did in fact find his father still at table. Though there was a dining-\nroom in the house, the table was laid as usual in the drawing-room, which\nwas the largest room, and furnished with old-fashioned ostentation. The\nfurniture was white and very old, upholstered in old, red, silky material.\nIn the spaces between the windows there were mirrors in elaborate white\nand gilt frames, of old-fashioned carving. On the walls, covered with\nwhite paper, which was torn in many places, there hung two large\nportraits--one of some prince who had been governor of the district thirty\nyears before, and the other of some bishop, also long since dead. In the\ncorner opposite the door there were several ikons, before which a lamp was\nlighted at nightfall ... not so much for devotional purposes as to light\nthe room. Fyodor Pavlovitch used to go to bed very late, at three or four\no'clock in the morning, and would wander about the room at night or sit in\nan arm-chair, thinking. This had become a habit with him. He often slept\nquite alone in the house, sending his servants to the lodge; but usually\nSmerdyakov remained, sleeping on a bench in the hall.\n\nWhen Alyosha came in, dinner was over, but coffee and preserves had been\nserved. Fyodor Pavlovitch liked sweet things with brandy after dinner.\nIvan was also at table, sipping coffee. The servants, Grigory and\nSmerdyakov, were standing by. Both the gentlemen and the servants seemed\nin singularly good spirits. Fyodor Pavlovitch was roaring with laughter.\nBefore he entered the room, Alyosha heard the shrill laugh he knew so\nwell, and could tell from the sound of it that his father had only reached\nthe good-humored stage, and was far from being completely drunk.\n\n\"Here he is! Here he is!\" yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch, highly delighted at\nseeing Alyosha. \"Join us. Sit down. Coffee is a lenten dish, but it's hot\nand good. I don't offer you brandy, you're keeping the fast. But would you\nlike some? No; I'd better give you some of our famous liqueur. Smerdyakov,\ngo to the cupboard, the second shelf on the right. Here are the keys. Look\nsharp!\"\n\nAlyosha began refusing the liqueur.\n\n\"Never mind. If you won't have it, we will,\" said Fyodor Pavlovitch,\nbeaming. \"But stay--have you dined?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Alyosha, who had in truth only eaten a piece of bread and\ndrunk a glass of kvas in the Father Superior's kitchen. \"Though I should\nbe pleased to have some hot coffee.\"\n\n\"Bravo, my darling! He'll have some coffee. Does it want warming? No, it's\nboiling. It's capital coffee: Smerdyakov's making. My Smerdyakov's an\nartist at coffee and at fish patties, and at fish soup, too. You must come\none day and have some fish soup. Let me know beforehand.... But, stay;\ndidn't I tell you this morning to come home with your mattress and pillow\nand all? Have you brought your mattress? He he he!\"\n\n\"No, I haven't,\" said Alyosha, smiling, too.\n\n\"Ah, but you were frightened, you were frightened this morning, weren't\nyou? There, my darling, I couldn't do anything to vex you. Do you know,\nIvan, I can't resist the way he looks one straight in the face and laughs?\nIt makes me laugh all over. I'm so fond of him. Alyosha, let me give you\nmy blessing--a father's blessing.\"\n\nAlyosha rose, but Fyodor Pavlovitch had already changed his mind.\n\n\"No, no,\" he said. \"I'll just make the sign of the cross over you, for\nnow. Sit still. Now we've a treat for you, in your own line, too. It'll\nmake you laugh. Balaam's ass has begun talking to us here--and how he\ntalks! How he talks!\"\n\nBalaam's ass, it appeared, was the valet, Smerdyakov. He was a young man\nof about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn. Not that he\nwas shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to\ndespise everybody.\n\nBut we must pause to say a few words about him now. He was brought up by\nGrigory and Marfa, but the boy grew up \"with no sense of gratitude,\" as\nGrigory expressed it; he was an unfriendly boy, and seemed to look at the\nworld mistrustfully. In his childhood he was very fond of hanging cats,\nand burying them with great ceremony. He used to dress up in a sheet as\nthough it were a surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the dead\ncat as though it were a censer. All this he did on the sly, with the\ngreatest secrecy. Grigory caught him once at this diversion and gave him a\nsound beating. He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week. \"He\ndoesn't care for you or me, the monster,\" Grigory used to say to Marfa,\n\"and he doesn't care for any one. Are you a human being?\" he said,\naddressing the boy directly. \"You're not a human being. You grew from the\nmildew in the bath-house.(2) That's what you are.\" Smerdyakov, it appeared\nafterwards, could never forgive him those words. Grigory taught him to\nread and write, and when he was twelve years old, began teaching him the\nScriptures. But this teaching came to nothing. At the second or third\nlesson the boy suddenly grinned.\n\n\"What's that for?\" asked Grigory, looking at him threateningly from under\nhis spectacles.\n\n\"Oh, nothing. God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and\nstars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?\"\n\nGrigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher.\nThere was something positively condescending in his expression. Grigory\ncould not restrain himself. \"I'll show you where!\" he cried, and gave the\nboy a violent slap on the cheek. The boy took the slap without a word, but\nwithdrew into his corner again for some days. A week later he had his\nfirst attack of the disease to which he was subject all the rest of his\nlife--epilepsy. When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of it, his attitude to the boy\nseemed changed at once. Till then he had taken no notice of him, though he\nnever scolded him, and always gave him a copeck when he met him.\nSometimes, when he was in good humor, he would send the boy something\nsweet from his table. But as soon as he heard of his illness, he showed an\nactive interest in him, sent for a doctor, and tried remedies, but the\ndisease turned out to be incurable. The fits occurred, on an average, once\na month, but at various intervals. The fits varied too, in violence: some\nwere light and some were very severe. Fyodor Pavlovitch strictly forbade\nGrigory to use corporal punishment to the boy, and began allowing him to\ncome upstairs to him. He forbade him to be taught anything whatever for a\ntime, too. One day when the boy was about fifteen, Fyodor Pavlovitch\nnoticed him lingering by the bookcase, and reading the titles through the\nglass. Fyodor Pavlovitch had a fair number of books--over a hundred--but no\none ever saw him reading. He at once gave Smerdyakov the key of the\nbookcase. \"Come, read. You shall be my librarian. You'll be better sitting\nreading than hanging about the courtyard. Come, read this,\" and Fyodor\nPavlovitch gave him _Evenings in a Cottage near Dikanka_.\n\nHe read a little but didn't like it. He did not once smile, and ended by\nfrowning.\n\n\"Why? Isn't it funny?\" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch.\n\nSmerdyakov did not speak.\n\n\"Answer, stupid!\"\n\n\"It's all untrue,\" mumbled the boy, with a grin.\n\n\"Then go to the devil! You have the soul of a lackey. Stay, here's\nSmaragdov's _Universal History_. That's all true. Read that.\"\n\nBut Smerdyakov did not get through ten pages of Smaragdov. He thought it\ndull. So the bookcase was closed again.\n\nShortly afterwards Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovitch that\nSmerdyakov was gradually beginning to show an extraordinary\nfastidiousness. He would sit before his soup, take up his spoon and look\ninto the soup, bend over it, examine it, take a spoonful and hold it to\nthe light.\n\n\"What is it? A beetle?\" Grigory would ask.\n\n\"A fly, perhaps,\" observed Marfa.\n\nThe squeamish youth never answered, but he did the same with his bread,\nhis meat, and everything he ate. He would hold a piece on his fork to the\nlight, scrutinize it microscopically, and only after long deliberation\ndecide to put it in his mouth.\n\n\"Ach! What fine gentlemen's airs!\" Grigory muttered, looking at him.\n\nWhen Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of this development in Smerdyakov he\ndetermined to make him his cook, and sent him to Moscow to be trained. He\nspent some years there and came back remarkably changed in appearance. He\nlooked extraordinarily old for his age. His face had grown wrinkled,\nyellow, and strangely emasculate. In character he seemed almost exactly\nthe same as before he went away. He was just as unsociable, and showed not\nthe slightest inclination for any companionship. In Moscow, too, as we\nheard afterwards, he had always been silent. Moscow itself had little\ninterest for him; he saw very little there, and took scarcely any notice\nof anything. He went once to the theater, but returned silent and\ndispleased with it. On the other hand, he came back to us from Moscow well\ndressed, in a clean coat and clean linen. He brushed his clothes most\nscrupulously twice a day invariably, and was very fond of cleaning his\nsmart calf boots with a special English polish, so that they shone like\nmirrors. He turned out a first-rate cook. Fyodor Pavlovitch paid him a\nsalary, almost the whole of which Smerdyakov spent on clothes, pomade,\nperfumes, and such things. But he seemed to have as much contempt for the\nfemale sex as for men; he was discreet, almost unapproachable, with them.\nFyodor Pavlovitch began to regard him rather differently. His fits were\nbecoming more frequent, and on the days he was ill Marfa cooked, which did\nnot suit Fyodor Pavlovitch at all.\n\n\"Why are your fits getting worse?\" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, looking\naskance at his new cook. \"Would you like to get married? Shall I find you\na wife?\"\n\nBut Smerdyakov turned pale with anger, and made no reply. Fyodor\nPavlovitch left him with an impatient gesture. The great thing was that he\nhad absolute confidence in his honesty. It happened once, when Fyodor\nPavlovitch was drunk, that he dropped in the muddy courtyard three\nhundred-rouble notes which he had only just received. He only missed them\nnext day, and was just hastening to search his pockets when he saw the\nnotes lying on the table. Where had they come from? Smerdyakov had picked\nthem up and brought them in the day before.\n\n\"Well, my lad, I've never met any one like you,\" Fyodor Pavlovitch said\nshortly, and gave him ten roubles. We may add that he not only believed in\nhis honesty, but had, for some reason, a liking for him, although the\nyoung man looked as morosely at him as at every one and was always silent.\nHe rarely spoke. If it had occurred to any one to wonder at the time what\nthe young man was interested in, and what was in his mind, it would have\nbeen impossible to tell by looking at him. Yet he used sometimes to stop\nsuddenly in the house, or even in the yard or street, and would stand\nstill for ten minutes, lost in thought. A physiognomist studying his face\nwould have said that there was no thought in it, no reflection, but only a\nsort of contemplation. There is a remarkable picture by the painter\nKramskoy, called \"Contemplation.\" There is a forest in winter, and on a\nroadway through the forest, in absolute solitude, stands a peasant in a\ntorn kaftan and bark shoes. He stands, as it were, lost in thought. Yet he\nis not thinking; he is \"contemplating.\" If any one touched him he would\nstart and look at one as though awakening and bewildered. It's true he\nwould come to himself immediately; but if he were asked what he had been\nthinking about, he would remember nothing. Yet probably he has, hidden\nwithin himself, the impression which had dominated him during the period\nof contemplation. Those impressions are dear to him and no doubt he hoards\nthem imperceptibly, and even unconsciously. How and why, of course, he\ndoes not know either. He may suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many\nyears, abandon everything and go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his\nsoul's salvation, or perhaps he will suddenly set fire to his native\nvillage, and perhaps do both. There are a good many \"contemplatives\" among\nthe peasantry. Well, Smerdyakov was probably one of them, and he probably\nwas greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. The Controversy\n\n\nBut Balaam's ass had suddenly spoken. The subject was a strange one.\nGrigory had gone in the morning to make purchases, and had heard from the\nshopkeeper Lukyanov the story of a Russian soldier which had appeared in\nthe newspaper of that day. This soldier had been taken prisoner in some\nremote part of Asia, and was threatened with an immediate agonizing death\nif he did not renounce Christianity and follow Islam. He refused to deny\nhis faith, and was tortured, flayed alive, and died, praising and\nglorifying Christ. Grigory had related the story at table. Fyodor\nPavlovitch always liked, over the dessert after dinner, to laugh and talk,\nif only with Grigory. This afternoon he was in a particularly good-humored\nand expansive mood. Sipping his brandy and listening to the story, he\nobserved that they ought to make a saint of a soldier like that, and to\ntake his skin to some monastery. \"That would make the people flock, and\nbring the money in.\"\n\nGrigory frowned, seeing that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means touched,\nbut, as usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was\nstanding by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the\nend of dinner, and since Ivan's arrival in our town he had done so every\nday.\n\n\"What are you grinning at?\" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, catching the smile\ninstantly, and knowing that it referred to Grigory.\n\n\"Well, my opinion is,\" Smerdyakov began suddenly and unexpectedly in a\nloud voice, \"that if that laudable soldier's exploit was so very great\nthere would have been, to my thinking, no sin in it if he had on such an\nemergency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own\nchristening, to save by that same his life, for good deeds, by which, in\nthe course of years to expiate his cowardice.\"\n\n\"How could it not be a sin? You're talking nonsense. For that you'll go\nstraight to hell and be roasted there like mutton,\" put in Fyodor\nPavlovitch.\n\nIt was at this point that Alyosha came in, and Fyodor Pavlovitch, as we\nhave seen, was highly delighted at his appearance.\n\n\"We're on your subject, your subject,\" he chuckled gleefully, making\nAlyosha sit down to listen.\n\n\"As for mutton, that's not so, and there'll be nothing there for this, and\nthere shouldn't be either, if it's according to justice,\" Smerdyakov\nmaintained stoutly.\n\n\"How do you mean 'according to justice'?\" Fyodor Pavlovitch cried still\nmore gayly, nudging Alyosha with his knee.\n\n\"He's a rascal, that's what he is!\" burst from Grigory. He looked\nSmerdyakov wrathfully in the face.\n\n\"As for being a rascal, wait a little, Grigory Vassilyevitch,\" answered\nSmerdyakov with perfect composure. \"You'd better consider yourself that,\nonce I am taken prisoner by the enemies of the Christian race, and they\ndemand from me to curse the name of God and to renounce my holy\nchristening, I am fully entitled to act by my own reason, since there\nwould be no sin in it.\"\n\n\"But you've said that before. Don't waste words. Prove it,\" cried Fyodor\nPavlovitch.\n\n\"Soup-maker!\" muttered Grigory contemptuously.\n\n\"As for being a soup-maker, wait a bit, too, and consider for yourself,\nGrigory Vassilyevitch, without abusing me. For as soon as I say to those\nenemies, 'No, I'm not a Christian, and I curse my true God,' then at once,\nby God's high judgment, I become immediately and specially anathema\naccursed, and am cut off from the Holy Church, exactly as though I were a\nheathen, so that at that very instant, not only when I say it aloud, but\nwhen I think of saying it, before a quarter of a second has passed, I am\ncut off. Is that so or not, Grigory Vassilyevitch?\"\n\nHe addressed Grigory with obvious satisfaction, though he was really\nanswering Fyodor Pavlovitch's questions, and was well aware of it, and\nintentionally pretending that Grigory had asked the questions.\n\n\"Ivan,\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, \"stoop down for me to whisper.\nHe's got this all up for your benefit. He wants you to praise him. Praise\nhim.\"\n\nIvan listened with perfect seriousness to his father's excited whisper.\n\n\"Stay, Smerdyakov, be quiet a minute,\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch once more.\n\"Ivan, your ear again.\"\n\nIvan bent down again with a perfectly grave face.\n\n\"I love you as I do Alyosha. Don't think I don't love you. Some brandy?\"\n\n\"Yes.--But you're rather drunk yourself,\" thought Ivan, looking steadily at\nhis father.\n\nHe was watching Smerdyakov with great curiosity.\n\n\"You're anathema accursed, as it is,\" Grigory suddenly burst out, \"and how\ndare you argue, you rascal, after that, if--\"\n\n\"Don't scold him, Grigory, don't scold him,\" Fyodor Pavlovitch cut him\nshort.\n\n\"You should wait, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if only a short time, and listen,\nfor I haven't finished all I had to say. For at the very moment I become\naccursed, at that same highest moment, I become exactly like a heathen,\nand my christening is taken off me and becomes of no avail. Isn't that\nso?\"\n\n\"Make haste and finish, my boy,\" Fyodor Pavlovitch urged him, sipping from\nhis wine-glass with relish.\n\n\"And if I've ceased to be a Christian, then I told no lie to the enemy\nwhen they asked whether I was a Christian or not a Christian, seeing I had\nalready been relieved by God Himself of my Christianity by reason of the\nthought alone, before I had time to utter a word to the enemy. And if I\nhave already been discharged, in what manner and with what sort of justice\ncan I be held responsible as a Christian in the other world for having\ndenied Christ, when, through the very thought alone, before denying Him I\nhad been relieved from my christening? If I'm no longer a Christian, then\nI can't renounce Christ, for I've nothing then to renounce. Who will hold\nan unclean Tatar responsible, Grigory Vassilyevitch, even in heaven, for\nnot having been born a Christian? And who would punish him for that,\nconsidering that you can't take two skins off one ox? For God Almighty\nHimself, even if He did make the Tatar responsible, when he dies would\ngive him the smallest possible punishment, I imagine (since he must be\npunished), judging that he is not to blame if he has come into the world\nan unclean heathen, from heathen parents. The Lord God can't surely take a\nTatar and say he was a Christian? That would mean that the Almighty would\ntell a real untruth. And can the Lord of Heaven and earth tell a lie, even\nin one word?\"\n\nGrigory was thunderstruck and looked at the orator, his eyes nearly\nstarting out of his head. Though he did not clearly understand what was\nsaid, he had caught something in this rigmarole, and stood, looking like a\nman who has just hit his head against a wall. Fyodor Pavlovitch emptied\nhis glass and went off into his shrill laugh.\n\n\"Alyosha! Alyosha! What do you say to that! Ah, you casuist! He must have\nbeen with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking Jesuit, who\ntaught you? But you're talking nonsense, you casuist, nonsense, nonsense,\nnonsense. Don't cry, Grigory, we'll reduce him to smoke and ashes in a\nmoment. Tell me this, O ass; you may be right before your enemies, but you\nhave renounced your faith all the same in your own heart, and you say\nyourself that in that very hour you became anathema accursed. And if once\nyou're anathema they won't pat you on the head for it in hell. What do you\nsay to that, my fine Jesuit?\"\n\n\"There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but there was\nno special sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most ordinary.\"\n\n\"How's that the most ordinary?\"\n\n\"You lie, accursed one!\" hissed Grigory.\n\n\"Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,\" Smerdyakov went on, staid and\nunruffled, conscious of his triumph, but, as it were, generous to the\nvanquished foe. \"Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch; it is said in\nthe Scripture that if you have faith, even as a mustard seed, and bid a\nmountain move into the sea, it will move without the least delay at your\nbidding. Well, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if I'm without faith and you have so\ngreat a faith that you are continually swearing at me, you try yourself\ntelling this mountain, not to move into the sea for that's a long way off,\nbut even to our stinking little river which runs at the bottom of the\ngarden. You'll see for yourself that it won't budge, but will remain just\nwhere it is however much you shout at it, and that shows, Grigory\nVassilyevitch, that you haven't faith in the proper manner, and only abuse\nothers about it. Again, taking into consideration that no one in our day,\nnot only you, but actually no one, from the highest person to the lowest\npeasant, can shove mountains into the sea--except perhaps some one man in\nthe world, or, at most, two, and they most likely are saving their souls\nin secret somewhere in the Egyptian desert, so you wouldn't find them--if\nso it be, if all the rest have no faith, will God curse all the rest? that\nis, the population of the whole earth, except about two hermits in the\ndesert, and in His well-known mercy will He not forgive one of them? And\nso I'm persuaded that though I may once have doubted I shall be forgiven\nif I shed tears of repentance.\"\n\n\"Stay!\" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, in a transport of delight. \"So you do\nsuppose there are two who can move mountains? Ivan, make a note of it,\nwrite it down. There you have the Russian all over!\"\n\n\"You're quite right in saying it's characteristic of the people's faith,\"\nIvan assented, with an approving smile.\n\n\"You agree. Then it must be so, if you agree. It's true, isn't it,\nAlyosha? That's the Russian faith all over, isn't it?\"\n\n\"No, Smerdyakov has not the Russian faith at all,\" said Alyosha firmly and\ngravely.\n\n\"I'm not talking about his faith. I mean those two in the desert, only\nthat idea. Surely that's Russian, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's purely Russian,\" said Alyosha smiling.\n\n\"Your words are worth a gold piece, O ass, and I'll give it to you to-day.\nBut as to the rest you talk nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Let me tell you,\nstupid, that we here are all of little faith, only from carelessness,\nbecause we haven't time; things are too much for us, and, in the second\nplace, the Lord God has given us so little time, only twenty-four hours in\nthe day, so that one hasn't even time to get sleep enough, much less to\nrepent of one's sins. While you have denied your faith to your enemies\nwhen you'd nothing else to think about but to show your faith! So I\nconsider, brother, that it constitutes a sin.\"\n\n\"Constitute a sin it may, but consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,\nthat it only extenuates it, if it does constitute. If I had believed then\nin very truth, as I ought to have believed, then it really would have been\nsinful if I had not faced tortures for my faith, and had gone over to the\npagan Mohammedan faith. But, of course, it wouldn't have come to torture\nthen, because I should only have had to say at that instant to the\nmountain, 'Move and crush the tormentor,' and it would have moved and at\nthe very instant have crushed him like a black-beetle, and I should have\nwalked away as though nothing had happened, praising and glorifying God.\nBut, suppose at that very moment I had tried all that, and cried to that\nmountain, 'Crush these tormentors,' and it hadn't crushed them, how could\nI have helped doubting, pray, at such a time, and at such a dread hour of\nmortal terror? And apart from that, I should know already that I could not\nattain to the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven (for since the mountain\nhad not moved at my word, they could not think very much of my faith up\naloft, and there could be no very great reward awaiting me in the world to\ncome). So why should I let them flay the skin off me as well, and to no\ngood purpose? For, even though they had flayed my skin half off my back,\neven then the mountain would not have moved at my word or at my cry. And\nat such a moment not only doubt might come over one but one might lose\none's reason from fear, so that one would not be able to think at all.\nAnd, therefore, how should I be particularly to blame if not seeing my\nadvantage or reward there or here, I should, at least, save my skin. And\nso trusting fully in the grace of the Lord I should cherish the hope that\nI might be altogether forgiven.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VIII. Over The Brandy\n\n\nThe controversy was over. But, strange to say, Fyodor Pavlovitch, who had\nbeen so gay, suddenly began frowning. He frowned and gulped brandy, and it\nwas already a glass too much.\n\n\"Get along with you, Jesuits!\" he cried to the servants. \"Go away,\nSmerdyakov. I'll send you the gold piece I promised you to-day, but be\noff! Don't cry, Grigory. Go to Marfa. She'll comfort you and put you to\nbed. The rascals won't let us sit in peace after dinner,\" he snapped\npeevishly, as the servants promptly withdrew at his word.\n\n\"Smerdyakov always pokes himself in now, after dinner. It's you he's so\ninterested in. What have you done to fascinate him?\" he added to Ivan.\n\n\"Nothing whatever,\" answered Ivan. \"He's pleased to have a high opinion of\nme; he's a lackey and a mean soul. Raw material for revolution, however,\nwhen the time comes.\"\n\n\"For revolution?\"\n\n\"There will be others and better ones. But there will be some like him as\nwell. His kind will come first, and better ones after.\"\n\n\"And when will the time come?\"\n\n\"The rocket will go off and fizzle out, perhaps. The peasants are not very\nfond of listening to these soup-makers, so far.\"\n\n\"Ah, brother, but a Balaam's ass like that thinks and thinks, and the\ndevil knows where he gets to.\"\n\n\"He's storing up ideas,\" said Ivan, smiling.\n\n\"You see, I know he can't bear me, nor any one else, even you, though you\nfancy that he has a high opinion of you. Worse still with Alyosha, he\ndespises Alyosha. But he doesn't steal, that's one thing, and he's not a\ngossip, he holds his tongue, and doesn't wash our dirty linen in public.\nHe makes capital fish pasties too. But, damn him, is he worth talking\nabout so much?\"\n\n\"Of course he isn't.\"\n\n\"And as for the ideas he may be hatching, the Russian peasant, generally\nspeaking, needs thrashing. That I've always maintained. Our peasants are\nswindlers, and don't deserve to be pitied, and it's a good thing they're\nstill flogged sometimes. Russia is rich in birches. If they destroyed the\nforests, it would be the ruin of Russia. I stand up for the clever people.\nWe've left off thrashing the peasants, we've grown so clever, but they go\non thrashing themselves. And a good thing too. 'For with what measure ye\nmete it shall be measured to you again,' or how does it go? Anyhow, it\nwill be measured. But Russia's all swinishness. My dear, if you only knew\nhow I hate Russia.... That is, not Russia, but all this vice! But maybe I\nmean Russia. _Tout cela c'est de la cochonnerie_.... Do you know what I\nlike? I like wit.\"\n\n\"You've had another glass. That's enough.\"\n\n\"Wait a bit. I'll have one more, and then another, and then I'll stop. No,\nstay, you interrupted me. At Mokroe I was talking to an old man, and he\ntold me: 'There's nothing we like so much as sentencing girls to be\nthrashed, and we always give the lads the job of thrashing them. And the\ngirl he has thrashed to-day, the young man will ask in marriage to-morrow.\nSo it quite suits the girls, too,' he said. There's a set of de Sades for\nyou! But it's clever, anyway. Shall we go over and have a look at it, eh?\nAlyosha, are you blushing? Don't be bashful, child. I'm sorry I didn't\nstay to dinner at the Superior's and tell the monks about the girls at\nMokroe. Alyosha, don't be angry that I offended your Superior this\nmorning. I lost my temper. If there is a God, if He exists, then, of\ncourse, I'm to blame, and I shall have to answer for it. But if there\nisn't a God at all, what do they deserve, your fathers? It's not enough to\ncut their heads off, for they keep back progress. Would you believe it,\nIvan, that that lacerates my sentiments? No, you don't believe it as I see\nfrom your eyes. You believe what people say, that I'm nothing but a\nbuffoon. Alyosha, do you believe that I'm nothing but a buffoon?\"\n\n\"No, I don't believe it.\"\n\n\"And I believe you don't, and that you speak the truth. You look sincere\nand you speak sincerely. But not Ivan. Ivan's supercilious.... I'd make an\nend of your monks, though, all the same. I'd take all that mystic stuff\nand suppress it, once for all, all over Russia, so as to bring all the\nfools to reason. And the gold and the silver that would flow into the\nmint!\"\n\n\"But why suppress it?\" asked Ivan.\n\n\"That Truth may prevail. That's why.\"\n\n\"Well, if Truth were to prevail, you know, you'd be the first to be robbed\nand suppressed.\"\n\n\"Ah! I dare say you're right. Ah, I'm an ass!\" burst out Fyodor\nPavlovitch, striking himself lightly on the forehead. \"Well, your\nmonastery may stand then, Alyosha, if that's how it is. And we clever\npeople will sit snug and enjoy our brandy. You know, Ivan, it must have\nbeen so ordained by the Almighty Himself. Ivan, speak, is there a God or\nnot? Stay, speak the truth, speak seriously. Why are you laughing again?\"\n\n\"I'm laughing that you should have made a clever remark just now about\nSmerdyakov's belief in the existence of two saints who could move\nmountains.\"\n\n\"Why, am I like him now, then?\"\n\n\"Very much.\"\n\n\"Well, that shows I'm a Russian, too, and I have a Russian characteristic.\nAnd you may be caught in the same way, though you are a philosopher. Shall\nI catch you? What do you bet that I'll catch you to-morrow. Speak, all the\nsame, is there a God, or not? Only, be serious. I want you to be serious\nnow.\"\n\n\"No, there is no God.\"\n\n\"Alyosha, is there a God?\"\n\n\"There is.\"\n\n\"Ivan, and is there immortality of some sort, just a little, just a tiny\nbit?\"\n\n\"There is no immortality either.\"\n\n\"None at all?\"\n\n\"None at all.\"\n\n\"There's absolute nothingness then. Perhaps there is just something?\nAnything is better than nothing!\"\n\n\"Absolute nothingness.\"\n\n\"Alyosha, is there immortality?\"\n\n\"There is.\"\n\n\"God and immortality?\"\n\n\"God and immortality. In God is immortality.\"\n\n\"H'm! It's more likely Ivan's right. Good Lord! to think what faith, what\nforce of all kinds, man has lavished for nothing, on that dream, and for\nhow many thousand years. Who is it laughing at man? Ivan! For the last\ntime, once for all, is there a God or not? I ask for the last time!\"\n\n\"And for the last time there is not.\"\n\n\"Who is laughing at mankind, Ivan?\"\n\n\"It must be the devil,\" said Ivan, smiling.\n\n\"And the devil? Does he exist?\"\n\n\"No, there's no devil either.\"\n\n\"It's a pity. Damn it all, what wouldn't I do to the man who first\ninvented God! Hanging on a bitter aspen tree would be too good for him.\"\n\n\"There would have been no civilization if they hadn't invented God.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't there have been? Without God?\"\n\n\"No. And there would have been no brandy either. But I must take your\nbrandy away from you, anyway.\"\n\n\"Stop, stop, stop, dear boy, one more little glass. I've hurt Alyosha's\nfeelings. You're not angry with me, Alyosha? My dear little Alexey!\"\n\n\"No, I am not angry. I know your thoughts. Your heart is better than your\nhead.\"\n\n\"My heart better than my head, is it? Oh, Lord! And that from you. Ivan,\ndo you love Alyosha?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You must love him\" (Fyodor Pavlovitch was by this time very drunk).\n\"Listen, Alyosha, I was rude to your elder this morning. But I was\nexcited. But there's wit in that elder, don't you think, Ivan?\"\n\n\"Very likely.\"\n\n\"There is, there is. _Il y a du Piron la-dedans._ He's a Jesuit, a Russian\none, that is. As he's an honorable person there's a hidden indignation\nboiling within him at having to pretend and affect holiness.\"\n\n\"But, of course, he believes in God.\"\n\n\"Not a bit of it. Didn't you know? Why, he tells every one so, himself.\nThat is, not every one, but all the clever people who come to him. He said\nstraight out to Governor Schultz not long ago: '_Credo_, but I don't know\nin what.' \"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"He really did. But I respect him. There's something of Mephistopheles\nabout him, or rather of 'The hero of our time' ... Arbenin, or what's his\nname?... You see, he's a sensualist. He's such a sensualist that I should\nbe afraid for my daughter or my wife if she went to confess to him. You\nknow, when he begins telling stories.... The year before last he invited\nus to tea, tea with liqueur (the ladies send him liqueur), and began\ntelling us about old times till we nearly split our sides.... Especially\nhow he once cured a paralyzed woman. 'If my legs were not bad I know a\ndance I could dance you,' he said. What do you say to that? 'I've plenty\nof tricks in my time,' said he. He did Dernidov, the merchant, out of\nsixty thousand.\"\n\n\"What, he stole it?\"\n\n\"He brought him the money as a man he could trust, saying, 'Take care of\nit for me, friend, there'll be a police search at my place to-morrow.' And\nhe kept it. 'You have given it to the Church,' he declared. I said to him:\n'You're a scoundrel,' I said. 'No,' said he, 'I'm not a scoundrel, but I'm\nbroad-minded.' But that wasn't he, that was some one else. I've muddled\nhim with some one else ... without noticing it. Come, another glass and\nthat's enough. Take away the bottle, Ivan. I've been telling lies. Why\ndidn't you stop me, Ivan, and tell me I was lying?\"\n\n\"I knew you'd stop of yourself.\"\n\n\"That's a lie. You did it from spite, from simple spite against me. You\ndespise me. You have come to me and despised me in my own house.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm going away. You've had too much brandy.\"\n\n\"I've begged you for Christ's sake to go to Tchermashnya for a day or two,\nand you don't go.\"\n\n\"I'll go to-morrow if you're so set upon it.\"\n\n\"You won't go. You want to keep an eye on me. That's what you want,\nspiteful fellow. That's why you won't go.\"\n\nThe old man persisted. He had reached that state of drunkenness when the\ndrunkard who has till then been inoffensive tries to pick a quarrel and to\nassert himself.\n\n\"Why are you looking at me? Why do you look like that? Your eyes look at\nme and say, 'You ugly drunkard!' Your eyes are mistrustful. They're\ncontemptuous.... You've come here with some design. Alyosha, here, looks\nat me and his eyes shine. Alyosha doesn't despise me. Alexey, you mustn't\nlove Ivan.\"\n\n\"Don't be ill-tempered with my brother. Leave off attacking him,\" Alyosha\nsaid emphatically.\n\n\"Oh, all right. Ugh, my head aches. Take away the brandy, Ivan. It's the\nthird time I've told you.\"\n\nHe mused, and suddenly a slow, cunning grin spread over his face.\n\n\"Don't be angry with a feeble old man, Ivan. I know you don't love me, but\ndon't be angry all the same. You've nothing to love me for. You go to\nTchermashnya. I'll come to you myself and bring you a present. I'll show\nyou a little wench there. I've had my eye on her a long time. She's still\nrunning about bare-foot. Don't be afraid of bare-footed wenches--don't\ndespise them--they're pearls!\"\n\nAnd he kissed his hand with a smack.\n\n\"To my thinking,\" he revived at once, seeming to grow sober the instant he\ntouched on his favorite topic. \"To my thinking ... Ah, you boys! You\nchildren, little sucking-pigs, to my thinking ... I never thought a woman\nugly in my life--that's been my rule! Can you understand that? How could\nyou understand it? You've milk in your veins, not blood. You're not out of\nyour shells yet. My rule has been that you can always find something\ndevilishly interesting in every woman that you wouldn't find in any other.\nOnly, one must know how to find it, that's the point! That's a talent! To\nmy mind there are no ugly women. The very fact that she is a woman is half\nthe battle ... but how could you understand that? Even in _vieilles\nfilles_, even in them you may discover something that makes you simply\nwonder that men have been such fools as to let them grow old without\nnoticing them. Bare-footed girls or unattractive ones, you must take by\nsurprise. Didn't you know that? You must astound them till they're\nfascinated, upset, ashamed that such a gentleman should fall in love with\nsuch a little slut. It's a jolly good thing that there always are and will\nbe masters and slaves in the world, so there always will be a little maid-\nof-all-work and her master, and you know, that's all that's needed for\nhappiness. Stay ... listen, Alyosha, I always used to surprise your\nmother, but in a different way. I paid no attention to her at all, but all\nat once, when the minute came, I'd be all devotion to her, crawl on my\nknees, kiss her feet, and I always, always--I remember it as though it were\nto-day--reduced her to that tinkling, quiet, nervous, queer little laugh.\nIt was peculiar to her. I knew her attacks always used to begin like that.\nThe next day she would begin shrieking hysterically, and this little laugh\nwas not a sign of delight, though it made a very good counterfeit. That's\nthe great thing, to know how to take every one. Once Belyavsky--he was a\nhandsome fellow, and rich--used to like to come here and hang about\nher--suddenly gave me a slap in the face in her presence. And she--such a\nmild sheep--why, I thought she would have knocked me down for that blow.\nHow she set on me! 'You're beaten, beaten now,' she said. 'You've taken a\nblow from him. You have been trying to sell me to him,' she said.... 'And\nhow dared he strike you in my presence! Don't dare come near me again,\nnever, never! Run at once, challenge him to a duel!'... I took her to the\nmonastery then to bring her to her senses. The holy Fathers prayed her\nback to reason. But I swear, by God, Alyosha, I never insulted the poor\ncrazy girl! Only once, perhaps, in the first year; then she was very fond\nof praying. She used to keep the feasts of Our Lady particularly and used\nto turn me out of her room then. I'll knock that mysticism out of her,\nthought I! 'Here,' said I, 'you see your holy image. Here it is. Here I\ntake it down. You believe it's miraculous, but here, I'll spit on it\ndirectly and nothing will happen to me for it!'... When she saw it, good\nLord! I thought she would kill me. But she only jumped up, wrung her\nhands, then suddenly hid her face in them, began trembling all over and\nfell on the floor ... fell all of a heap. Alyosha, Alyosha, what's the\nmatter?\"\n\nThe old man jumped up in alarm. From the time he had begun speaking about\nhis mother, a change had gradually come over Alyosha's face. He flushed\ncrimson, his eyes glowed, his lips quivered. The old sot had gone\nspluttering on, noticing nothing, till the moment when something very\nstrange happened to Alyosha. Precisely what he was describing in the crazy\nwoman was suddenly repeated with Alyosha. He jumped up from his seat\nexactly as his mother was said to have done, wrung his hands, hid his face\nin them, and fell back in his chair, shaking all over in an hysterical\nparoxysm of sudden violent, silent weeping. His extraordinary resemblance\nto his mother particularly impressed the old man.\n\n\"Ivan, Ivan! Water, quickly! It's like her, exactly as she used to be\nthen, his mother. Spurt some water on him from your mouth, that's what I\nused to do to her. He's upset about his mother, his mother,\" he muttered\nto Ivan.\n\n\"But she was my mother, too, I believe, his mother. Was she not?\" said\nIvan, with uncontrolled anger and contempt. The old man shrank before his\nflashing eyes. But something very strange had happened, though only for a\nsecond; it seemed really to have escaped the old man's mind that Alyosha's\nmother actually was the mother of Ivan too.\n\n\"Your mother?\" he muttered, not understanding. \"What do you mean? What\nmother are you talking about? Was she?... Why, damn it! of course she was\nyours too! Damn it! My mind has never been so darkened before. Excuse me,\nwhy, I was thinking, Ivan.... He he he!\" He stopped. A broad, drunken,\nhalf-senseless grin overspread his face.\n\nAt that moment a fearful noise and clamor was heard in the hall, there\nwere violent shouts, the door was flung open, and Dmitri burst into the\nroom. The old man rushed to Ivan in terror.\n\n\"He'll kill me! He'll kill me! Don't let him get at me!\" he screamed,\nclinging to the skirt of Ivan's coat.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IX. The Sensualists\n\n\nGrigory and Smerdyakov ran into the room after Dmitri. They had been\nstruggling with him in the passage, refusing to admit him, acting on\ninstructions given them by Fyodor Pavlovitch some days before. Taking\nadvantage of the fact that Dmitri stopped a moment on entering the room to\nlook about him, Grigory ran round the table, closed the double doors on\nthe opposite side of the room leading to the inner apartments, and stood\nbefore the closed doors, stretching wide his arms, prepared to defend the\nentrance, so to speak, with the last drop of his blood. Seeing this,\nDmitri uttered a scream rather than a shout and rushed at Grigory.\n\n\"Then she's there! She's hidden there! Out of the way, scoundrel!\"\n\nHe tried to pull Grigory away, but the old servant pushed him back. Beside\nhimself with fury, Dmitri struck out, and hit Grigory with all his might.\nThe old man fell like a log, and Dmitri, leaping over him, broke in the\ndoor. Smerdyakov remained pale and trembling at the other end of the room,\nhuddling close to Fyodor Pavlovitch.\n\n\"She's here!\" shouted Dmitri. \"I saw her turn towards the house just now,\nbut I couldn't catch her. Where is she? Where is she?\"\n\nThat shout, \"She's here!\" produced an indescribable effect on Fyodor\nPavlovitch. All his terror left him.\n\n\"Hold him! Hold him!\" he cried, and dashed after Dmitri. Meanwhile Grigory\nhad got up from the floor, but still seemed stunned. Ivan and Alyosha ran\nafter their father. In the third room something was heard to fall on the\nfloor with a ringing crash: it was a large glass vase--not an expensive\none--on a marble pedestal which Dmitri had upset as he ran past it.\n\n\"At him!\" shouted the old man. \"Help!\"\n\nIvan and Alyosha caught the old man and were forcibly bringing him back.\n\n\"Why do you run after him? He'll murder you outright,\" Ivan cried\nwrathfully at his father.\n\n\"Ivan! Alyosha! She must be here. Grushenka's here. He said he saw her\nhimself, running.\"\n\nHe was choking. He was not expecting Grushenka at the time, and the sudden\nnews that she was here made him beside himself. He was trembling all over.\nHe seemed frantic.\n\n\"But you've seen for yourself that she hasn't come,\" cried Ivan.\n\n\"But she may have come by that other entrance.\"\n\n\"You know that entrance is locked, and you have the key.\"\n\nDmitri suddenly reappeared in the drawing-room. He had, of course, found\nthe other entrance locked, and the key actually was in Fyodor Pavlovitch's\npocket. The windows of all the rooms were also closed, so Grushenka could\nnot have come in anywhere nor have run out anywhere.\n\n\"Hold him!\" shrieked Fyodor Pavlovitch, as soon as he saw him again. \"He's\nbeen stealing money in my bedroom.\" And tearing himself from Ivan he\nrushed again at Dmitri. But Dmitri threw up both hands and suddenly\nclutched the old man by the two tufts of hair that remained on his\ntemples, tugged at them, and flung him with a crash on the floor. He\nkicked him two or three times with his heel in the face. The old man\nmoaned shrilly. Ivan, though not so strong as Dmitri, threw his arms round\nhim, and with all his might pulled him away. Alyosha helped him with his\nslender strength, holding Dmitri in front.\n\n\"Madman! You've killed him!\" cried Ivan.\n\n\"Serve him right!\" shouted Dmitri breathlessly. \"If I haven't killed him,\nI'll come again and kill him. You can't protect him!\"\n\n\"Dmitri! Go away at once!\" cried Alyosha commandingly.\n\n\"Alexey! You tell me. It's only you I can believe; was she here just now,\nor not? I saw her myself creeping this way by the fence from the lane. I\nshouted, she ran away.\"\n\n\"I swear she's not been here, and no one expected her.\"\n\n\"But I saw her.... So she must ... I'll find out at once where she is....\nGood-by, Alexey! Not a word to AEsop about the money now. But go to\nKaterina Ivanovna at once and be sure to say, 'He sends his compliments to\nyou!' Compliments, his compliments! Just compliments and farewell!\nDescribe the scene to her.\"\n\nMeanwhile Ivan and Grigory had raised the old man and seated him in an\narm-chair. His face was covered with blood, but he was conscious and\nlistened greedily to Dmitri's cries. He was still fancying that Grushenka\nreally was somewhere in the house. Dmitri looked at him with hatred as he\nwent out.\n\n\"I don't repent shedding your blood!\" he cried. \"Beware, old man, beware\nof your dream, for I have my dream, too. I curse you, and disown you\naltogether.\"\n\nHe ran out of the room.\n\n\"She's here. She must be here. Smerdyakov! Smerdyakov!\" the old man\nwheezed, scarcely audibly, beckoning to him with his finger.\n\n\"No, she's not here, you old lunatic!\" Ivan shouted at him angrily. \"Here,\nhe's fainting! Water! A towel! Make haste, Smerdyakov!\"\n\nSmerdyakov ran for water. At last they got the old man undressed, and put\nhim to bed. They wrapped a wet towel round his head. Exhausted by the\nbrandy, by his violent emotion, and the blows he had received, he shut his\neyes and fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. Ivan and\nAlyosha went back to the drawing-room. Smerdyakov removed the fragments of\nthe broken vase, while Grigory stood by the table looking gloomily at the\nfloor.\n\n\"Shouldn't you put a wet bandage on your head and go to bed, too?\" Alyosha\nsaid to him. \"We'll look after him. My brother gave you a terrible blow--on\nthe head.\"\n\n\"He's insulted me!\" Grigory articulated gloomily and distinctly.\n\n\"He's 'insulted' his father, not only you,\" observed Ivan with a forced\nsmile.\n\n\"I used to wash him in his tub. He's insulted me,\" repeated Grigory.\n\n\"Damn it all, if I hadn't pulled him away perhaps he'd have murdered him.\nIt wouldn't take much to do for AEsop, would it?\" whispered Ivan to\nAlyosha.\n\n\"God forbid!\" cried Alyosha.\n\n\"Why should He forbid?\" Ivan went on in the same whisper, with a malignant\ngrimace. \"One reptile will devour the other. And serve them both right,\ntoo.\"\n\nAlyosha shuddered.\n\n\"Of course I won't let him be murdered as I didn't just now. Stay here,\nAlyosha, I'll go for a turn in the yard. My head's begun to ache.\"\n\nAlyosha went to his father's bedroom and sat by his bedside behind the\nscreen for about an hour. The old man suddenly opened his eyes and gazed\nfor a long while at Alyosha, evidently remembering and meditating. All at\nonce his face betrayed extraordinary excitement.\n\n\"Alyosha,\" he whispered apprehensively, \"where's Ivan?\"\n\n\"In the yard. He's got a headache. He's on the watch.\"\n\n\"Give me that looking-glass. It stands over there. Give it me.\"\n\nAlyosha gave him a little round folding looking-glass which stood on the\nchest of drawers. The old man looked at himself in it; his nose was\nconsiderably swollen, and on the left side of his forehead there was a\nrather large crimson bruise.\n\n\"What does Ivan say? Alyosha, my dear, my only son, I'm afraid of Ivan.\nI'm more afraid of Ivan than the other. You're the only one I'm not afraid\nof....\"\n\n\"Don't be afraid of Ivan either. He is angry, but he'll defend you.\"\n\n\"Alyosha, and what of the other? He's run to Grushenka. My angel, tell me\nthe truth, was she here just now or not?\"\n\n\"No one has seen her. It was a mistake. She has not been here.\"\n\n\"You know Mitya wants to marry her, to marry her.\"\n\n\"She won't marry him.\"\n\n\"She won't. She won't. She won't. She won't on any account!\"\n\nThe old man fairly fluttered with joy, as though nothing more comforting\ncould have been said to him. In his delight he seized Alyosha's hand and\npressed it warmly to his heart. Tears positively glittered in his eyes.\n\n\"That image of the Mother of God of which I was telling you just now,\" he\nsaid. \"Take it home and keep it for yourself. And I'll let you go back to\nthe monastery.... I was joking this morning, don't be angry with me. My\nhead aches, Alyosha.... Alyosha, comfort my heart. Be an angel and tell me\nthe truth!\"\n\n\"You're still asking whether she has been here or not?\" Alyosha said\nsorrowfully.\n\n\"No, no, no. I believe you. I'll tell you what it is: you go to Grushenka\nyourself, or see her somehow; make haste and ask her; see for yourself,\nwhich she means to choose, him or me. Eh? What? Can you?\"\n\n\"If I see her I'll ask her,\" Alyosha muttered, embarrassed.\n\n\"No, she won't tell you,\" the old man interrupted, \"she's a rogue. She'll\nbegin kissing you and say that it's you she wants. She's a deceitful,\nshameless hussy. You mustn't go to her, you mustn't!\"\n\n\"No, father, and it wouldn't be suitable, it wouldn't be right at all.\"\n\n\"Where was he sending you just now? He shouted 'Go' as he ran away.\"\n\n\"To Katerina Ivanovna.\"\n\n\"For money? To ask her for money?\"\n\n\"No. Not for money.\"\n\n\"He's no money; not a farthing. I'll settle down for the night, and think\nthings over, and you can go. Perhaps you'll meet her.... Only be sure to\ncome to me to-morrow in the morning. Be sure to. I have a word to say to\nyou to-morrow. Will you come?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"When you come, pretend you've come of your own accord to ask after me.\nDon't tell any one I told you to. Don't say a word to Ivan.\"\n\n\"Very well.\"\n\n\"Good-by, my angel. You stood up for me, just now. I shall never forget\nit. I've a word to say to you to-morrow--but I must think about it.\"\n\n\"And how do you feel now?\"\n\n\"I shall get up to-morrow and go out, perfectly well, perfectly well!\"\n\nCrossing the yard Alyosha found Ivan sitting on the bench at the gateway.\nHe was sitting writing something in pencil in his note-book. Alyosha told\nIvan that their father had waked up, was conscious, and had let him go\nback to sleep at the monastery.\n\n\"Alyosha, I should be very glad to meet you to-morrow morning,\" said Ivan\ncordially, standing up. His cordiality was a complete surprise to Alyosha.\n\n\"I shall be at the Hohlakovs' to-morrow,\" answered Alyosha, \"I may be at\nKaterina Ivanovna's, too, if I don't find her now.\"\n\n\"But you're going to her now, anyway? For that 'compliments and\nfarewell,' \" said Ivan smiling. Alyosha was disconcerted.\n\n\"I think I quite understand his exclamations just now, and part of what\nwent before. Dmitri has asked you to go to her and say that he--well, in\nfact--takes his leave of her?\"\n\n\"Brother, how will all this horror end between father and Dmitri?\"\nexclaimed Alyosha.\n\n\"One can't tell for certain. Perhaps in nothing: it may all fizzle out.\nThat woman is a beast. In any case we must keep the old man indoors and\nnot let Dmitri in the house.\"\n\n\"Brother, let me ask one thing more: has any man a right to look at other\nmen and decide which is worthy to live?\"\n\n\"Why bring in the question of worth? The matter is most often decided in\nmen's hearts on other grounds much more natural. And as for rights--who has\nnot the right to wish?\"\n\n\"Not for another man's death?\"\n\n\"What even if for another man's death? Why lie to oneself since all men\nlive so and perhaps cannot help living so. Are you referring to what I\nsaid just now--that one reptile will devour the other? In that case let me\nask you, do you think me like Dmitri capable of shedding AEsop's blood,\nmurdering him, eh?\"\n\n\"What are you saying, Ivan? Such an idea never crossed my mind. I don't\nthink Dmitri is capable of it, either.\"\n\n\"Thanks, if only for that,\" smiled Ivan. \"Be sure, I should always defend\nhim. But in my wishes I reserve myself full latitude in this case. Good-by\ntill to-morrow. Don't condemn me, and don't look on me as a villain,\" he\nadded with a smile.\n\nThey shook hands warmly as they had never done before. Alyosha felt that\nhis brother had taken the first step towards him, and that he had\ncertainly done this with some definite motive.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter X. Both Together\n\n\nAlyosha left his father's house feeling even more exhausted and dejected\nin spirit than when he had entered it. His mind too seemed shattered and\nunhinged, while he felt that he was afraid to put together the disjointed\nfragments and form a general idea from all the agonizing and conflicting\nexperiences of the day. He felt something bordering upon despair, which he\nhad never known till then. Towering like a mountain above all the rest\nstood the fatal, insoluble question: How would things end between his\nfather and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now he had himself\nbeen a witness of it, he had been present and seen them face to face. Yet\nonly his brother Dmitri could be made unhappy, terribly, completely\nunhappy: there was trouble awaiting him. It appeared too that there were\nother people concerned, far more so than Alyosha could have supposed\nbefore. There was something positively mysterious in it, too. Ivan had\nmade a step towards him, which was what Alyosha had been long desiring.\nYet now he felt for some reason that he was frightened at it. And these\nwomen? Strange to say, that morning he had set out for Katerina Ivanovna's\nin the greatest embarrassment; now he felt nothing of the kind. On the\ncontrary, he was hastening there as though expecting to find guidance from\nher. Yet to give her this message was obviously more difficult than\nbefore. The matter of the three thousand was decided irrevocably, and\nDmitri, feeling himself dishonored and losing his last hope, might sink to\nany depth. He had, moreover, told him to describe to Katerina Ivanovna the\nscene which had just taken place with his father.\n\nIt was by now seven o'clock, and it was getting dark as Alyosha entered\nthe very spacious and convenient house in the High Street occupied by\nKaterina Ivanovna. Alyosha knew that she lived with two aunts. One of\nthem, a woman of little education, was that aunt of her half-sister Agafya\nIvanovna who had looked after her in her father's house when she came from\nboarding-school. The other aunt was a Moscow lady of style and\nconsequence, though in straitened circumstances. It was said that they\nboth gave way in everything to Katerina Ivanovna, and that she only kept\nthem with her as chaperons. Katerina Ivanovna herself gave way to no one\nbut her benefactress, the general's widow, who had been kept by illness in\nMoscow, and to whom she was obliged to write twice a week a full account\nof all her doings.\n\nWhen Alyosha entered the hall and asked the maid who opened the door to\nhim to take his name up, it was evident that they were already aware of\nhis arrival. Possibly he had been noticed from the window. At least,\nAlyosha heard a noise, caught the sound of flying footsteps and rustling\nskirts. Two or three women, perhaps, had run out of the room.\n\nAlyosha thought it strange that his arrival should cause such excitement.\nHe was conducted however to the drawing-room at once. It was a large room,\nelegantly and amply furnished, not at all in provincial style. There were\nmany sofas, lounges, settees, big and little tables. There were pictures\non the walls, vases and lamps on the tables, masses of flowers, and even\nan aquarium in the window. It was twilight and rather dark. Alyosha made\nout a silk mantle thrown down on the sofa, where people had evidently just\nbeen sitting; and on a table in front of the sofa were two unfinished cups\nof chocolate, cakes, a glass saucer with blue raisins, and another with\nsweetmeats. Alyosha saw that he had interrupted visitors, and frowned. But\nat that instant the portiere was raised, and with rapid, hurrying\nfootsteps Katerina Ivanovna came in, holding out both hands to Alyosha\nwith a radiant smile of delight. At the same instant a servant brought in\ntwo lighted candles and set them on the table.\n\n\"Thank God! At last you have come too! I've been simply praying for you\nall day! Sit down.\"\n\nAlyosha had been struck by Katerina Ivanovna's beauty when, three weeks\nbefore, Dmitri had first brought him, at Katerina Ivanovna's special\nrequest, to be introduced to her. There had been no conversation between\nthem at that interview, however. Supposing Alyosha to be very shy,\nKaterina Ivanovna had talked all the time to Dmitri to spare him. Alyosha\nhad been silent, but he had seen a great deal very clearly. He was struck\nby the imperiousness, proud ease, and self-confidence of the haughty girl.\nAnd all that was certain, Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating it. He\nthought her great glowing black eyes were very fine, especially with her\npale, even rather sallow, longish face. But in those eyes and in the lines\nof her exquisite lips there was something with which his brother might\nwell be passionately in love, but which perhaps could not be loved for\nlong. He expressed this thought almost plainly to Dmitri when, after the\nvisit, his brother besought and insisted that he should not conceal his\nimpressions on seeing his betrothed.\n\n\"You'll be happy with her, but perhaps--not tranquilly happy.\"\n\n\"Quite so, brother. Such people remain always the same. They don't yield\nto fate. So you think I shan't love her for ever.\"\n\n\"No; perhaps you will love her for ever. But perhaps you won't always be\nhappy with her.\"\n\nAlyosha had given his opinion at the time, blushing, and angry with\nhimself for having yielded to his brother's entreaties and put such\n\"foolish\" ideas into words. For his opinion had struck him as awfully\nfoolish immediately after he had uttered it. He felt ashamed too of having\ngiven so confident an opinion about a woman. It was with the more\namazement that he felt now, at the first glance at Katerina Ivanovna as\nshe ran in to him, that he had perhaps been utterly mistaken. This time\nher face was beaming with spontaneous good-natured kindliness, and direct\nwarm-hearted sincerity. The \"pride and haughtiness,\" which had struck\nAlyosha so much before, was only betrayed now in a frank, generous energy\nand a sort of bright, strong faith in herself. Alyosha realized at the\nfirst glance, at the first word, that all the tragedy of her position in\nrelation to the man she loved so dearly was no secret to her; that she\nperhaps already knew everything, positively everything. And yet, in spite\nof that, there was such brightness in her face, such faith in the future.\nAlyosha felt at once that he had gravely wronged her in his thoughts. He\nwas conquered and captivated immediately. Besides all this, he noticed at\nher first words that she was in great excitement, an excitement perhaps\nquite exceptional and almost approaching ecstasy.\n\n\"I was so eager to see you, because I can learn from you the whole\ntruth--from you and no one else.\"\n\n\"I have come,\" muttered Alyosha confusedly, \"I--he sent me.\"\n\n\"Ah, he sent you! I foresaw that. Now I know everything--everything!\" cried\nKaterina Ivanovna, her eyes flashing. \"Wait a moment, Alexey Fyodorovitch,\nI'll tell you why I've been so longing to see you. You see, I know perhaps\nfar more than you do yourself, and there's no need for you to tell me\nanything. I'll tell you what I want from you. I want to know your own last\nimpression of him. I want you to tell me most directly, plainly, coarsely\neven (oh, as coarsely as you like!), what you thought of him just now and\nof his position after your meeting with him to-day. That will perhaps be\nbetter than if I had a personal explanation with him, as he does not want\nto come to me. Do you understand what I want from you? Now, tell me\nsimply, tell me every word of the message he sent you with (I knew he\nwould send you).\"\n\n\"He told me to give you his compliments--and to say that he would never\ncome again--but to give you his compliments.\"\n\n\"His compliments? Was that what he said--his own expression?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Accidentally perhaps he made a mistake in the word, perhaps he did not\nuse the right word?\"\n\n\"No; he told me precisely to repeat that word. He begged me two or three\ntimes not to forget to say so.\"\n\nKaterina Ivanovna flushed hotly.\n\n\"Help me now, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Now I really need your help. I'll tell\nyou what I think, and you must simply say whether it's right or not.\nListen! If he had sent me his compliments in passing, without insisting on\nyour repeating the words, without emphasizing them, that would be the end\nof everything! But if he particularly insisted on those words, if he\nparticularly told you not to forget to repeat them to me, then perhaps he\nwas in excitement, beside himself. He had made his decision and was\nfrightened at it. He wasn't walking away from me with a resolute step, but\nleaping headlong. The emphasis on that phrase may have been simply\nbravado.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes!\" cried Alyosha warmly. \"I believe that is it.\"\n\n\"And, if so, he's not altogether lost. I can still save him. Stay! Did he\nnot tell you anything about money--about three thousand roubles?\"\n\n\"He did speak about it, and it's that more than anything that's crushing\nhim. He said he had lost his honor and that nothing matters now,\" Alyosha\nanswered warmly, feeling a rush of hope in his heart and believing that\nthere really might be a way of escape and salvation for his brother. \"But\ndo you know about the money?\" he added, and suddenly broke off.\n\n\"I've known of it a long time; I telegraphed to Moscow to inquire, and\nheard long ago that the money had not arrived. He hadn't sent the money,\nbut I said nothing. Last week I learnt that he was still in need of money.\nMy only object in all this was that he should know to whom to turn, and\nwho was his true friend. No, he won't recognize that I am his truest\nfriend; he won't know me, and looks on me merely as a woman. I've been\ntormented all the week, trying to think how to prevent him from being\nashamed to face me because he spent that three thousand. Let him feel\nashamed of himself, let him be ashamed of other people's knowing, but not\nof my knowing. He can tell God everything without shame. Why is it he\nstill does not understand how much I am ready to bear for his sake? Why,\nwhy doesn't he know me? How dare he not know me after all that has\nhappened? I want to save him for ever. Let him forget me as his betrothed.\nAnd here he fears that he is dishonored in my eyes. Why, he wasn't afraid\nto be open with you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How is it that I don't deserve\nthe same?\"\n\nThe last words she uttered in tears. Tears gushed from her eyes.\n\n\"I must tell you,\" Alyosha began, his voice trembling too, \"what happened\njust now between him and my father.\"\n\nAnd he described the whole scene, how Dmitri had sent him to get the\nmoney, how he had broken in, knocked his father down, and after that had\nagain specially and emphatically begged him to take his compliments and\nfarewell. \"He went to that woman,\" Alyosha added softly.\n\n\"And do you suppose that I can't put up with that woman? Does he think I\ncan't? But he won't marry her,\" she suddenly laughed nervously. \"Could\nsuch a passion last for ever in a Karamazov? It's passion, not love. He\nwon't marry her because she won't marry him.\" Again Katerina Ivanovna\nlaughed strangely.\n\n\"He may marry her,\" said Alyosha mournfully, looking down.\n\n\"He won't marry her, I tell you. That girl is an angel. Do you know that?\nDo you know that?\" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly with extraordinary\nwarmth. \"She is one of the most fantastic of fantastic creatures. I know\nhow bewitching she is, but I know too that she is kind, firm and noble.\nWhy do you look at me like that, Alexey Fyodorovitch? Perhaps you are\nwondering at my words, perhaps you don't believe me? Agrafena\nAlexandrovna, my angel!\" she cried suddenly to some one, peeping into the\nnext room, \"come in to us. This is a friend. This is Alyosha. He knows all\nabout our affairs. Show yourself to him.\"\n\n\"I've only been waiting behind the curtain for you to call me,\" said a\nsoft, one might even say sugary, feminine voice.\n\nThe portiere was raised and Grushenka herself, smiling and beaming, came\nup to the table. A violent revulsion passed over Alyosha. He fixed his\neyes on her and could not take them off. Here she was, that awful woman,\nthe \"beast,\" as Ivan had called her half an hour before. And yet one would\nhave thought the creature standing before him most simple and ordinary, a\ngood-natured, kind woman, handsome certainly, but so like other handsome\nordinary women! It is true she was very, very good-looking with that\nRussian beauty so passionately loved by many men. She was a rather tall\nwoman, though a little shorter than Katerina Ivanovna, who was\nexceptionally tall. She had a full figure, with soft, as it were,\nnoiseless, movements, softened to a peculiar over-sweetness, like her\nvoice. She moved, not like Katerina Ivanovna, with a vigorous, bold step,\nbut noiselessly. Her feet made absolutely no sound on the floor. She sank\nsoftly into a low chair, softly rustling her sumptuous black silk dress,\nand delicately nestling her milk-white neck and broad shoulders in a\ncostly cashmere shawl. She was twenty-two years old, and her face looked\nexactly that age. She was very white in the face, with a pale pink tint on\nher cheeks. The modeling of her face might be said to be too broad, and\nthe lower jaw was set a trifle forward. Her upper lip was thin, but the\nslightly prominent lower lip was at least twice as full, and looked\npouting. But her magnificent, abundant dark brown hair, her sable-colored\neyebrows and charming gray-blue eyes with their long lashes would have\nmade the most indifferent person, meeting her casually in a crowd in the\nstreet, stop at the sight of her face and remember it long after. What\nstruck Alyosha most in that face was its expression of childlike good\nnature. There was a childlike look in her eyes, a look of childish\ndelight. She came up to the table, beaming with delight and seeming to\nexpect something with childish, impatient, and confiding curiosity. The\nlight in her eyes gladdened the soul--Alyosha felt that. There was\nsomething else in her which he could not understand, or would not have\nbeen able to define, and which yet perhaps unconsciously affected him. It\nwas that softness, that voluptuousness of her bodily movements, that\ncatlike noiselessness. Yet it was a vigorous, ample body. Under the shawl\ncould be seen full broad shoulders, a high, still quite girlish bosom. Her\nfigure suggested the lines of the Venus of Milo, though already in\nsomewhat exaggerated proportions. That could be divined. Connoisseurs of\nRussian beauty could have foretold with certainty that this fresh, still\nyouthful beauty would lose its harmony by the age of thirty, would\n\"spread\"; that the face would become puffy, and that wrinkles would very\nsoon appear upon her forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would\ngrow coarse and red perhaps--in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment,\nthe fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women. Alyosha,\nof course, did not think of this; but though he was fascinated, yet he\nwondered with an unpleasant sensation, and as it were regretfully, why she\ndrawled in that way and could not speak naturally. She did so evidently\nfeeling there was a charm in the exaggerated, honeyed modulation of the\nsyllables. It was, of course, only a bad, underbred habit that showed bad\neducation and a false idea of good manners. And yet this intonation and\nmanner of speaking impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with\nthe childishly simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish\njoy in her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an arm-\nchair facing Alyosha, and ecstatically kissed her several times on her\nsmiling lips. She seemed quite in love with her.\n\n\"This is the first time we've met, Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" she said\nrapturously. \"I wanted to know her, to see her. I wanted to go to her, but\nI'd no sooner expressed the wish than she came to me. I knew we should\nsettle everything together--everything. My heart told me so--I was begged\nnot to take the step, but I foresaw it would be a way out of the\ndifficulty, and I was not mistaken. Grushenka has explained everything to\nme, told me all she means to do. She flew here like an angel of goodness\nand brought us peace and joy.\"\n\n\"You did not disdain me, sweet, excellent young lady,\" drawled Grushenka\nin her sing-song voice, still with the same charming smile of delight.\n\n\"Don't dare to speak to me like that, you sorceress, you witch! Disdain\nyou! Here, I must kiss your lower lip once more. It looks as though it\nwere swollen, and now it will be more so, and more and more. Look how she\nlaughs, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It does one's heart good to see the angel.\"\n\nAlyosha flushed, and faint, imperceptible shivers kept running down him.\n\n\"You make so much of me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not at all\nworthy of your kindness.\"\n\n\"Not worthy! She's not worthy of it!\" Katerina Ivanovna cried again with\nthe same warmth. \"You know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we're fanciful, we're\nself-willed, but proudest of the proud in our little heart. We're noble,\nwe're generous, Alexey Fyodorovitch, let me tell you. We have only been\nunfortunate. We were too ready to make every sacrifice for an unworthy,\nperhaps, or fickle man. There was one man--one, an officer too, we loved\nhim, we sacrificed everything to him. That was long ago, five years ago,\nand he has forgotten us, he has married. Now he is a widower, he has\nwritten, he is coming here, and, do you know, we've loved him, none but\nhim, all this time, and we've loved him all our life! He will come, and\nGrushenka will be happy again. For the last five years she's been\nwretched. But who can reproach her, who can boast of her favor? Only that\nbedridden old merchant, but he is more like her father, her friend, her\nprotector. He found her then in despair, in agony, deserted by the man she\nloved. She was ready to drown herself then, but the old merchant saved\nher--saved her!\"\n\n\"You defend me very kindly, dear young lady. You are in a great hurry\nabout everything,\" Grushenka drawled again.\n\n\"Defend you! Is it for me to defend you? Should I dare to defend you?\nGrushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at that charming soft little\nhand, Alexey Fyodorovitch! Look at it! It has brought me happiness and has\nlifted me up, and I'm going to kiss it, outside and inside, here, here,\nhere!\"\n\nAnd three times she kissed the certainly charming, though rather fat, hand\nof Grushenka in a sort of rapture. She held out her hand with a charming\nmusical, nervous little laugh, watched the \"sweet young lady,\" and\nobviously liked having her hand kissed.\n\n\"Perhaps there's rather too much rapture,\" thought Alyosha. He blushed. He\nfelt a peculiar uneasiness at heart the whole time.\n\n\"You won't make me blush, dear young lady, kissing my hand like this\nbefore Alexey Fyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"Do you think I meant to make you blush?\" said Katerina Ivanovna, somewhat\nsurprised. \"Ah, my dear, how little you understand me!\"\n\n\"Yes, and you too perhaps quite misunderstand me, dear young lady. Maybe\nI'm not so good as I seem to you. I've a bad heart; I will have my own\nway. I fascinated poor Dmitri Fyodorovitch that day simply for fun.\"\n\n\"But now you'll save him. You've given me your word. You'll explain it all\nto him. You'll break to him that you have long loved another man, who is\nnow offering you his hand.\"\n\n\"Oh, no! I didn't give you my word to do that. It was you kept talking\nabout that. I didn't give you my word.\"\n\n\"Then I didn't quite understand you,\" said Katerina Ivanovna slowly,\nturning a little pale. \"You promised--\"\n\n\"Oh, no, angel lady, I've promised nothing,\" Grushenka interrupted softly\nand evenly, still with the same gay and simple expression. \"You see at\nonce, dear young lady, what a willful wretch I am compared with you. If I\nwant to do a thing I do it. I may have made you some promise just now. But\nnow again I'm thinking: I may take to Mitya again. I liked him very much\nonce--liked him for almost a whole hour. Now maybe I shall go and tell him\nto stay with me from this day forward. You see, I'm so changeable.\"\n\n\"Just now you said--something quite different,\" Katerina Ivanovna whispered\nfaintly.\n\n\"Ah, just now! But, you know. I'm such a soft-hearted, silly creature.\nOnly think what he's gone through on my account! What if when I go home I\nfeel sorry for him? What then?\"\n\n\"I never expected--\"\n\n\"Ah, young lady, how good and generous you are compared with me! Now\nperhaps you won't care for a silly creature like me, now you know my\ncharacter. Give me your sweet little hand, angelic lady,\" she said\ntenderly, and with a sort of reverence took Katerina Ivanovna's hand.\n\n\"Here, dear young lady, I'll take your hand and kiss it as you did mine.\nYou kissed mine three times, but I ought to kiss yours three hundred times\nto be even with you. Well, but let that pass. And then it shall be as God\nwills. Perhaps I shall be your slave entirely and want to do your bidding\nlike a slave. Let it be as God wills, without any agreements and promises.\nWhat a sweet hand--what a sweet hand you have! You sweet young lady, you\nincredible beauty!\"\n\nShe slowly raised the hands to her lips, with the strange object indeed of\n\"being even\" with her in kisses.\n\nKaterina Ivanovna did not take her hand away. She listened with timid hope\nto the last words, though Grushenka's promise to do her bidding like a\nslave was very strangely expressed. She looked intently into her eyes; she\nstill saw in those eyes the same simple-hearted, confiding expression, the\nsame bright gayety.\n\n\"She's perhaps too naive,\" thought Katerina Ivanovna, with a gleam of\nhope.\n\nGrushenka meanwhile seemed enthusiastic over the \"sweet hand.\" She raised\nit deliberately to her lips. But she held it for two or three minutes near\nher lips, as though reconsidering something.\n\n\"Do you know, angel lady,\" she suddenly drawled in an even more soft and\nsugary voice, \"do you know, after all, I think I won't kiss your hand?\"\nAnd she laughed a little merry laugh.\n\n\"As you please. What's the matter with you?\" said Katerina Ivanovna,\nstarting suddenly.\n\n\"So that you may be left to remember that you kissed my hand, but I didn't\nkiss yours.\"\n\nThere was a sudden gleam in her eyes. She looked with awful intentness at\nKaterina Ivanovna.\n\n\"Insolent creature!\" cried Katerina Ivanovna, as though suddenly grasping\nsomething. She flushed all over and leapt up from her seat.\n\nGrushenka too got up, but without haste.\n\n\"So I shall tell Mitya how you kissed my hand, but I didn't kiss yours at\nall. And how he will laugh!\"\n\n\"Vile slut! Go away!\"\n\n\"Ah, for shame, young lady! Ah, for shame! That's unbecoming for you, dear\nyoung lady, a word like that.\"\n\n\"Go away! You're a creature for sale!\" screamed Katerina Ivanovna. Every\nfeature was working in her utterly distorted face.\n\n\"For sale indeed! You used to visit gentlemen in the dusk for money once;\nyou brought your beauty for sale. You see, I know.\"\n\nKaterina Ivanovna shrieked, and would have rushed at her, but Alyosha held\nher with all his strength.\n\n\"Not a step, not a word! Don't speak, don't answer her. She'll go\naway--she'll go at once.\"\n\nAt that instant Katerina Ivanovna's two aunts ran in at her cry, and with\nthem a maid-servant. All hurried to her.\n\n\"I will go away,\" said Grushenka, taking up her mantle from the sofa.\n\"Alyosha, darling, see me home!\"\n\n\"Go away--go away, make haste!\" cried Alyosha, clasping his hands\nimploringly.\n\n\"Dear little Alyosha, see me home! I've got a pretty little story to tell\nyou on the way. I got up this scene for your benefit, Alyosha. See me\nhome, dear, you'll be glad of it afterwards.\"\n\nAlyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka ran out of the house,\nlaughing musically.\n\nKaterina Ivanovna went into a fit of hysterics. She sobbed, and was shaken\nwith convulsions. Every one fussed round her.\n\n\"I warned you,\" said the elder of her aunts. \"I tried to prevent your\ndoing this. You're too impulsive. How could you do such a thing? You don't\nknow these creatures, and they say she's worse than any of them. You are\ntoo self-willed.\"\n\n\"She's a tigress!\" yelled Katerina Ivanovna. \"Why did you hold me, Alexey\nFyodorovitch? I'd have beaten her--beaten her!\"\n\nShe could not control herself before Alyosha; perhaps she did not care to,\nindeed.\n\n\"She ought to be flogged in public on a scaffold!\"\n\nAlyosha withdrew towards the door.\n\n\"But, my God!\" cried Katerina Ivanovna, clasping her hands. \"He! He! He\ncould be so dishonorable, so inhuman! Why, he told that creature what\nhappened on that fatal, accursed day! 'You brought your beauty for sale,\ndear young lady.' She knows it! Your brother's a scoundrel, Alexey\nFyodorovitch.\"\n\nAlyosha wanted to say something, but he couldn't find a word. His heart\nached.\n\n\"Go away, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It's shameful, it's awful for me! To-\nmorrow, I beg you on my knees, come to-morrow. Don't condemn me. Forgive\nme. I don't know what I shall do with myself now!\"\n\nAlyosha walked out into the street reeling. He could have wept as she did.\nSuddenly he was overtaken by the maid.\n\n\"The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Hohlakov; it's\nbeen left with us since dinner-time.\"\n\nAlyosha took the little pink envelope mechanically and put it, almost\nunconsciously, into his pocket.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter XI. Another Reputation Ruined\n\n\nIt was not much more than three-quarters of a mile from the town to the\nmonastery. Alyosha walked quickly along the road, at that hour deserted.\nIt was almost night, and too dark to see anything clearly at thirty paces\nahead. There were cross-roads half-way. A figure came into sight under a\nsolitary willow at the cross-roads. As soon as Alyosha reached the cross-\nroads the figure moved out and rushed at him, shouting savagely:\n\n\"Your money or your life!\"\n\n\"So it's you, Mitya,\" cried Alyosha, in surprise, violently startled\nhowever.\n\n\"Ha ha ha! You didn't expect me? I wondered where to wait for you. By her\nhouse? There are three ways from it, and I might have missed you. At last\nI thought of waiting here, for you had to pass here, there's no other way\nto the monastery. Come, tell me the truth. Crush me like a beetle. But\nwhat's the matter?\"\n\n\"Nothing, brother--it's the fright you gave me. Oh, Dmitri! Father's blood\njust now.\" (Alyosha began to cry, he had been on the verge of tears for a\nlong time, and now something seemed to snap in his soul.) \"You almost\nkilled him--cursed him--and now--here--you're making jokes--'Your money or your\nlife!' \"\n\n\"Well, what of that? It's not seemly--is that it? Not suitable in my\nposition?\"\n\n\"No--I only--\"\n\n\"Stay. Look at the night. You see what a dark night, what clouds, what a\nwind has risen. I hid here under the willow waiting for you. And as God's\nabove, I suddenly thought, why go on in misery any longer, what is there\nto wait for? Here I have a willow, a handkerchief, a shirt, I can twist\nthem into a rope in a minute, and braces besides, and why go on burdening\nthe earth, dishonoring it with my vile presence? And then I heard you\ncoming--Heavens, it was as though something flew down to me suddenly. So\nthere is a man, then, whom I love. Here he is, that man, my dear little\nbrother, whom I love more than any one in the world, the only one I love\nin the world. And I loved you so much, so much at that moment that I\nthought, 'I'll fall on his neck at once.' Then a stupid idea struck me, to\nhave a joke with you and scare you. I shouted, like a fool, 'Your money!'\nForgive my foolery--it was only nonsense, and there's nothing unseemly in\nmy soul.... Damn it all, tell me what's happened. What did she say? Strike\nme, crush me, don't spare me! Was she furious?\"\n\n\"No, not that.... There was nothing like that, Mitya. There--I found them\nboth there.\"\n\n\"Both? Whom?\"\n\n\"Grushenka at Katerina Ivanovna's.\"\n\nDmitri was struck dumb.\n\n\"Impossible!\" he cried. \"You're raving! Grushenka with her?\"\n\nAlyosha described all that had happened from the moment he went in to\nKaterina Ivanovna's. He was ten minutes telling his story. He can't be\nsaid to have told it fluently and consecutively, but he seemed to make it\nclear, not omitting any word or action of significance, and vividly\ndescribing, often in one word, his own sensations. Dmitri listened in\nsilence, gazing at him with a terrible fixed stare, but it was clear to\nAlyosha that he understood it all, and had grasped every point. But as the\nstory went on, his face became not merely gloomy, but menacing. He\nscowled, he clenched his teeth, and his fixed stare became still more\nrigid, more concentrated, more terrible, when suddenly, with incredible\nrapidity, his wrathful, savage face changed, his tightly compressed lips\nparted, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch broke into uncontrolled, spontaneous\nlaughter. He literally shook with laughter. For a long time he could not\nspeak.\n\n\"So she wouldn't kiss her hand! So she didn't kiss it; so she ran away!\"\nhe kept exclaiming with hysterical delight; insolent delight it might have\nbeen called, if it had not been so spontaneous. \"So the other one called\nher tigress! And a tigress she is! So she ought to be flogged on a\nscaffold? Yes, yes, so she ought. That's just what I think; she ought to\nhave been long ago. It's like this, brother, let her be punished, but I\nmust get better first. I understand the queen of impudence. That's her all\nover! You saw her all over in that hand-kissing, the she-devil! She's\nmagnificent in her own line! So she ran home? I'll go--ah--I'll run to her!\nAlyosha, don't blame me, I agree that hanging is too good for her.\"\n\n\"But Katerina Ivanovna!\" exclaimed Alyosha sorrowfully.\n\n\"I see her, too! I see right through her, as I've never done before! It's\na regular discovery of the four continents of the world, that is, of the\nfive! What a thing to do! That's just like Katya, who was not afraid to\nface a coarse, unmannerly officer and risk a deadly insult on a generous\nimpulse to save her father! But the pride, the recklessness, the defiance\nof fate, the unbounded defiance! You say that aunt tried to stop her? That\naunt, you know, is overbearing, herself. She's the sister of the general's\nwidow in Moscow, and even more stuck-up than she. But her husband was\ncaught stealing government money. He lost everything, his estate and all,\nand the proud wife had to lower her colors, and hasn't raised them since.\nSo she tried to prevent Katya, but she wouldn't listen to her! She thinks\nshe can overcome everything, that everything will give way to her. She\nthought she could bewitch Grushenka if she liked, and she believed it\nherself: she plays a part to herself, and whose fault is it? Do you think\nshe kissed Grushenka's hand first, on purpose, with a motive? No, she\nreally was fascinated by Grushenka, that's to say, not by Grushenka, but\nby her own dream, her own delusion--because it was _her_ dream, _her_\ndelusion! Alyosha, darling, how did you escape from them, those women? Did\nyou pick up your cassock and run? Ha ha ha!\"\n\n\"Brother, you don't seem to have noticed how you've insulted Katerina\nIvanovna by telling Grushenka about that day. And she flung it in her face\njust now that she had gone to gentlemen in secret to sell her beauty!\nBrother, what could be worse than that insult?\"\n\nWhat worried Alyosha more than anything was that, incredible as it seemed,\nhis brother appeared pleased at Katerina Ivanovna's humiliation.\n\n\"Bah!\" Dmitri frowned fiercely, and struck his forehead with his hand. He\nonly now realized it, though Alyosha had just told him of the insult, and\nKaterina Ivanovna's cry: \"Your brother is a scoundrel!\"\n\n\"Yes, perhaps, I really did tell Grushenka about that 'fatal day,' as\nKatya calls it. Yes, I did tell her, I remember! It was that time at\nMokroe. I was drunk, the gypsies were singing.... But I was sobbing. I was\nsobbing then, kneeling and praying to Katya's image, and Grushenka\nunderstood it. She understood it all then. I remember, she cried\nherself.... Damn it all! But it's bound to be so now.... Then she cried,\nbut now 'the dagger in the heart'! That's how women are.\"\n\nHe looked down and sank into thought.\n\n\"Yes, I am a scoundrel, a thorough scoundrel!\" he said suddenly, in a\ngloomy voice. \"It doesn't matter whether I cried or not, I'm a scoundrel!\nTell her I accept the name, if that's any comfort. Come, that's enough.\nGood-by. It's no use talking! It's not amusing. You go your way and I\nmine. And I don't want to see you again except as a last resource. Good-\nby, Alexey!\"\n\nHe warmly pressed Alyosha's hand, and still looking down, without raising\nhis head, as though tearing himself away, turned rapidly towards the town.\n\nAlyosha looked after him, unable to believe he would go away so abruptly.\n\n\"Stay, Alexey, one more confession to you alone!\" cried Dmitri, suddenly\nturning back. \"Look at me. Look at me well. You see here, here--there's\nterrible disgrace in store for me.\" (As he said \"here,\" Dmitri struck his\nchest with his fist with a strange air, as though the dishonor lay\nprecisely on his chest, in some spot, in a pocket, perhaps, or hanging\nround his neck.) \"You know me now, a scoundrel, an avowed scoundrel, but\nlet me tell you that I've never done anything before and never shall\nagain, anything that can compare in baseness with the dishonor which I\nbear now at this very minute on my breast, here, here, which will come to\npass, though I'm perfectly free to stop it. I can stop it or carry it\nthrough, note that. Well, let me tell you, I shall carry it through. I\nshan't stop it. I told you everything just now, but I didn't tell you\nthis, because even I had not brass enough for it. I can still pull up; if\nI do, I can give back the full half of my lost honor to-morrow. But I\nshan't pull up. I shall carry out my base plan, and you can bear witness\nthat I told you so beforehand. Darkness and destruction! No need to\nexplain. You'll find out in due time. The filthy back-alley and the she-\ndevil. Good-by. Don't pray for me, I'm not worth it. And there's no need,\nno need at all.... I don't need it! Away!\"\n\nAnd he suddenly retreated, this time finally. Alyosha went towards the\nmonastery.\n\n\"What? I shall never see him again! What is he saying?\" he wondered\nwildly. \"Why, I shall certainly see him to-morrow. I shall look him up. I\nshall make a point of it. What does he mean?\"\n\n                  -------------------------------------\n\nHe went round the monastery, and crossed the pine-wood to the hermitage.\nThe door was opened to him, though no one was admitted at that hour. There\nwas a tremor in his heart as he went into Father Zossima's cell.\n\n\"Why, why, had he gone forth? Why had he sent him into the world? Here was\npeace. Here was holiness. But there was confusion, there was darkness in\nwhich one lost one's way and went astray at once....\"\n\nIn the cell he found the novice Porfiry and Father Paissy, who came every\nhour to inquire after Father Zossima. Alyosha learnt with alarm that he\nwas getting worse and worse. Even his usual discourse with the brothers\ncould not take place that day. As a rule every evening after service the\nmonks flocked into Father Zossima's cell, and all confessed aloud their\nsins of the day, their sinful thoughts and temptations; even their\ndisputes, if there had been any. Some confessed kneeling. The elder\nabsolved, reconciled, exhorted, imposed penance, blessed, and dismissed\nthem. It was against this general \"confession\" that the opponents of\n\"elders\" protested, maintaining that it was a profanation of the sacrament\nof confession, almost a sacrilege, though this was quite a different\nthing. They even represented to the diocesan authorities that such\nconfessions attained no good object, but actually to a large extent led to\nsin and temptation. Many of the brothers disliked going to the elder, and\nwent against their own will because every one went, and for fear they\nshould be accused of pride and rebellious ideas. People said that some of\nthe monks agreed beforehand, saying, \"I'll confess I lost my temper with\nyou this morning, and you confirm it,\" simply in order to have something\nto say. Alyosha knew that this actually happened sometimes. He knew, too,\nthat there were among the monks some who deeply resented the fact that\nletters from relations were habitually taken to the elder, to be opened\nand read by him before those to whom they were addressed.\n\nIt was assumed, of course, that all this was done freely, and in good\nfaith, by way of voluntary submission and salutary guidance. But, in fact,\nthere was sometimes no little insincerity, and much that was false and\nstrained in this practice. Yet the older and more experienced of the monks\nadhered to their opinion, arguing that \"for those who have come within\nthese walls sincerely seeking salvation, such obedience and sacrifice will\ncertainly be salutary and of great benefit; those, on the other hand, who\nfind it irksome, and repine, are no true monks, and have made a mistake in\nentering the monastery--their proper place is in the world. Even in the\ntemple one cannot be safe from sin and the devil. So it was no good taking\nit too much into account.\"\n\n\"He is weaker, a drowsiness has come over him,\" Father Paissy whispered to\nAlyosha, as he blessed him. \"It's difficult to rouse him. And he must not\nbe roused. He waked up for five minutes, sent his blessing to the\nbrothers, and begged their prayers for him at night. He intends to take\nthe sacrament again in the morning. He remembered you, Alexey. He asked\nwhether you had gone away, and was told that you were in the town. 'I\nblessed him for that work,' he said, 'his place is there, not here, for\nawhile.' Those were his words about you. He remembered you lovingly, with\nanxiety; do you understand how he honored you? But how is it that he has\ndecided that you shall spend some time in the world? He must have foreseen\nsomething in your destiny! Understand, Alexey, that if you return to the\nworld, it must be to do the duty laid upon you by your elder, and not for\nfrivolous vanity and worldly pleasures.\"\n\nFather Paissy went out. Alyosha had no doubt that Father Zossima was\ndying, though he might live another day or two. Alyosha firmly and\nardently resolved that in spite of his promises to his father, the\nHohlakovs, and Katerina Ivanovna, he would not leave the monastery next\nday, but would remain with his elder to the end. His heart glowed with\nlove, and he reproached himself bitterly for having been able for one\ninstant to forget him whom he had left in the monastery on his deathbed,\nand whom he honored above every one in the world. He went into Father\nZossima's bedroom, knelt down, and bowed to the ground before the elder,\nwho slept quietly without stirring, with regular, hardly audible breathing\nand a peaceful face.\n\nAlyosha returned to the other room, where Father Zossima had received his\nguests in the morning. Taking off his boots, he lay down on the hard,\nnarrow, leathern sofa, which he had long used as a bed, bringing nothing\nbut a pillow. The mattress, about which his father had shouted to him that\nmorning, he had long forgotten to lie on. He took off his cassock, which\nhe used as a covering. But before going to bed, he fell on his knees and\nprayed a long time. In his fervent prayer he did not beseech God to\nlighten his darkness but only thirsted for the joyous emotion, which\nalways visited his soul after the praise and adoration, of which his\nevening prayer usually consisted. That joy always brought him light\nuntroubled sleep. As he was praying, he suddenly felt in his pocket the\nlittle pink note the servant had handed him as he left Katerina\nIvanovna's. He was disturbed, but finished his prayer. Then, after some\nhesitation, he opened the envelope. In it was a letter to him, signed by\nLise, the young daughter of Madame Hohlakov, who had laughed at him before\nthe elder in the morning.\n\n\"Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" she wrote, \"I am writing to you without any one's\nknowledge, even mamma's, and I know how wrong it is. But I cannot live\nwithout telling you the feeling that has sprung up in my heart, and this\nno one but us two must know for a time. But how am I to say what I want so\nmuch to tell you? Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you it's\nnot true and that it's blushing just as I am now, all over. Dear Alyosha,\nI love you, I've loved you from my childhood, since our Moscow days, when\nyou were very different from what you are now, and I shall love you all my\nlife. My heart has chosen you, to unite our lives, and pass them together\ntill our old age. Of course, on condition that you will leave the\nmonastery. As for our age we will wait for the time fixed by the law. By\nthat time I shall certainly be quite strong, I shall be walking and\ndancing. There can be no doubt of that.\n\n\"You see how I've thought of everything. There's only one thing I can't\nimagine: what you'll think of me when you read this. I'm always laughing\nand being naughty. I made you angry this morning, but I assure you before\nI took up my pen, I prayed before the Image of the Mother of God, and now\nI'm praying, and almost crying.\n\n\"My secret is in your hands. When you come to-morrow, I don't know how I\nshall look at you. Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, what if I can't restrain\nmyself like a silly and laugh when I look at you as I did to-day. You'll\nthink I'm a nasty girl making fun of you, and you won't believe my letter.\nAnd so I beg you, dear one, if you've any pity for me, when you come to-\nmorrow, don't look me straight in the face, for if I meet your eyes, it\nwill be sure to make me laugh, especially as you'll be in that long gown.\nI feel cold all over when I think of it, so when you come, don't look at\nme at all for a time, look at mamma or at the window....\n\n\"Here I've written you a love-letter. Oh, dear, what have I done? Alyosha,\ndon't despise me, and if I've done something very horrid and wounded you,\nforgive me. Now the secret of my reputation, ruined perhaps for ever, is\nin your hands.\n\n\"I shall certainly cry to-day. Good-by till our meeting, our _awful_\nmeeting.--LISE.\n\n\"P.S.--Alyosha! You must, must, must come!--LISE.\"\n\nAlyosha read the note in amazement, read it through twice, thought a\nlittle, and suddenly laughed a soft, sweet laugh. He started. That laugh\nseemed to him sinful. But a minute later he laughed again just as softly\nand happily. He slowly replaced the note in the envelope, crossed himself\nand lay down. The agitation in his heart passed at once. \"God, have mercy\nupon all of them, have all these unhappy and turbulent souls in Thy\nkeeping, and set them in the right path. All ways are Thine. Save them\naccording to Thy wisdom. Thou art love. Thou wilt send joy to all!\"\nAlyosha murmured, crossing himself, and falling into peaceful sleep.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART II Book IV. Lacerations Chapter I. Father Ferapont\n\n\nAlyosha was roused early, before daybreak. Father Zossima woke up feeling\nvery weak, though he wanted to get out of bed and sit up in a chair. His\nmind was quite clear; his face looked very tired, yet bright and almost\njoyful. It wore an expression of gayety, kindness and cordiality. \"Maybe I\nshall not live through the coming day,\" he said to Alyosha. Then he\ndesired to confess and take the sacrament at once. He always confessed to\nFather Paissy. After taking the communion, the service of extreme unction\nfollowed. The monks assembled and the cell was gradually filled up by the\ninmates of the hermitage. Meantime it was daylight. People began coming\nfrom the monastery. After the service was over the elder desired to kiss\nand take leave of every one. As the cell was so small the earlier visitors\nwithdrew to make room for others. Alyosha stood beside the elder, who was\nseated again in his arm-chair. He talked as much as he could. Though his\nvoice was weak, it was fairly steady.\n\n\"I've been teaching you so many years, and therefore I've been talking\naloud so many years, that I've got into the habit of talking, and so much\nso that it's almost more difficult for me to hold my tongue than to talk,\neven now, in spite of my weakness, dear Fathers and brothers,\" he jested,\nlooking with emotion at the group round him.\n\nAlyosha remembered afterwards something of what he said to them. But\nthough he spoke out distinctly and his voice was fairly steady, his speech\nwas somewhat disconnected. He spoke of many things, he seemed anxious\nbefore the moment of death to say everything he had not said in his life,\nand not simply for the sake of instructing them, but as though thirsting\nto share with all men and all creation his joy and ecstasy, and once more\nin his life to open his whole heart.\n\n\"Love one another, Fathers,\" said Father Zossima, as far as Alyosha could\nremember afterwards. \"Love God's people. Because we have come here and\nshut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are\noutside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of\nus has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on\nearth.... And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly\nhe must recognize that. Else he would have had no reason to come here.\nWhen he realizes that he is not only worse than others, but that he is\nresponsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins,\nnational and individual, only then the aim of our seclusion is attained.\nFor know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for\nall men and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness\nof creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual\nman. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man.\nFor monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men ought to\nbe. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite,\nuniversal, inexhaustible love. Then every one of you will have the power\nto win over the whole world by love and to wash away the sins of the world\nwith your tears.... Each of you keep watch over your heart and confess\nyour sins to yourself unceasingly. Be not afraid of your sins, even when\nperceiving them, if only there be penitence, but make no conditions with\nGod. Again I say, Be not proud. Be proud neither to the little nor to the\ngreat. Hate not those who reject you, who insult you, who abuse and\nslander you. Hate not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the\nmaterialists--and I mean not only the good ones--for there are many good\nones among them, especially in our day--hate not even the wicked ones.\nRemember them in your prayers thus: Save, O Lord, all those who have none\nto pray for them, save too all those who will not pray. And add: it is not\nin pride that I make this prayer, O Lord, for I am lower than all men....\nLove God's people, let not strangers draw away the flock, for if you\nslumber in your slothfulness and disdainful pride, or worse still, in\ncovetousness, they will come from all sides and draw away your flock.\nExpound the Gospel to the people unceasingly ... be not extortionate....\nDo not love gold and silver, do not hoard them.... Have faith. Cling to\nthe banner and raise it on high.\"\n\nBut the elder spoke more disconnectedly than Alyosha reported his words\nafterwards. Sometimes he broke off altogether, as though to take breath,\nand recover his strength, but he was in a sort of ecstasy. They heard him\nwith emotion, though many wondered at his words and found them obscure....\nAfterwards all remembered those words.\n\nWhen Alyosha happened for a moment to leave the cell, he was struck by the\ngeneral excitement and suspense in the monks who were crowding about it.\nThis anticipation showed itself in some by anxiety, in others by devout\nsolemnity. All were expecting that some marvel would happen immediately\nafter the elder's death. Their suspense was, from one point of view,\nalmost frivolous, but even the most austere of the monks were affected by\nit. Father Paissy's face looked the gravest of all.\n\nAlyosha was mysteriously summoned by a monk to see Rakitin, who had\narrived from town with a singular letter for him from Madame Hohlakov. In\nit she informed Alyosha of a strange and very opportune incident. It\nappeared that among the women who had come on the previous day to receive\nFather Zossima's blessing, there had been an old woman from the town, a\nsergeant's widow, called Prohorovna. She had inquired whether she might\npray for the rest of the soul of her son, Vassenka, who had gone to\nIrkutsk, and had sent her no news for over a year. To which Father Zossima\nhad answered sternly, forbidding her to do so, and saying that to pray for\nthe living as though they were dead was a kind of sorcery. He afterwards\nforgave her on account of her ignorance, and added, \"as though reading the\nbook of the future\" (this was Madame Hohlakov's expression), words of\ncomfort: \"that her son Vassya was certainly alive and he would either come\nhimself very shortly or send a letter, and that she was to go home and\nexpect him.\" And \"Would you believe it?\" exclaimed Madame Hohlakov\nenthusiastically, \"the prophecy has been fulfilled literally indeed, and\nmore than that.\" Scarcely had the old woman reached home when they gave\nher a letter from Siberia which had been awaiting her. But that was not\nall; in the letter written on the road from Ekaterinenburg, Vassya\ninformed his mother that he was returning to Russia with an official, and\nthat three weeks after her receiving the letter he hoped \"to embrace his\nmother.\"\n\nMadame Hohlakov warmly entreated Alyosha to report this new \"miracle of\nprediction\" to the Superior and all the brotherhood. \"All, all, ought to\nknow of it!\" she concluded. The letter had been written in haste, the\nexcitement of the writer was apparent in every line of it. But Alyosha had\nno need to tell the monks, for all knew of it already. Rakitin had\ncommissioned the monk who brought his message \"to inform most respectfully\nhis reverence Father Paissy, that he, Rakitin, has a matter to speak of\nwith him, of such gravity that he dare not defer it for a moment, and\nhumbly begs forgiveness for his presumption.\" As the monk had given the\nmessage to Father Paissy before that to Alyosha, the latter found after\nreading the letter, there was nothing left for him to do but to hand it to\nFather Paissy in confirmation of the story.\n\nAnd even that austere and cautious man, though he frowned as he read the\nnews of the \"miracle,\" could not completely restrain some inner emotion.\nHis eyes gleamed, and a grave and solemn smile came into his lips.\n\n\"We shall see greater things!\" broke from him.\n\n\"We shall see greater things, greater things yet!\" the monks around\nrepeated.\n\nBut Father Paissy, frowning again, begged all of them, at least for a\ntime, not to speak of the matter \"till it be more fully confirmed, seeing\nthere is so much credulity among those of this world, and indeed this\nmight well have chanced naturally,\" he added, prudently, as it were to\nsatisfy his conscience, though scarcely believing his own disavowal, a\nfact his listeners very clearly perceived.\n\nWithin the hour the \"miracle\" was of course known to the whole monastery,\nand many visitors who had come for the mass. No one seemed more impressed\nby it than the monk who had come the day before from St. Sylvester, from\nthe little monastery of Obdorsk in the far North. It was he who had been\nstanding near Madame Hohlakov the previous day and had asked Father\nZossima earnestly, referring to the \"healing\" of the lady's daughter, \"How\ncan you presume to do such things?\"\n\nHe was now somewhat puzzled and did not know whom to believe. The evening\nbefore he had visited Father Ferapont in his cell apart, behind the\napiary, and had been greatly impressed and overawed by the visit. This\nFather Ferapont was that aged monk so devout in fasting and observing\nsilence who has been mentioned already, as antagonistic to Father Zossima\nand the whole institution of \"elders,\" which he regarded as a pernicious\nand frivolous innovation. He was a very formidable opponent, although from\nhis practice of silence he scarcely spoke a word to any one. What made him\nformidable was that a number of monks fully shared his feeling, and many\nof the visitors looked upon him as a great saint and ascetic, although\nthey had no doubt that he was crazy. But it was just his craziness\nattracted them.\n\nFather Ferapont never went to see the elder. Though he lived in the\nhermitage they did not worry him to keep its regulations, and this too\nbecause he behaved as though he were crazy. He was seventy-five or more,\nand he lived in a corner beyond the apiary in an old decaying wooden cell\nwhich had been built long ago for another great ascetic, Father Iona, who\nhad lived to be a hundred and five, and of whose saintly doings many\ncurious stories were still extant in the monastery and the neighborhood.\n\nFather Ferapont had succeeded in getting himself installed in this same\nsolitary cell seven years previously. It was simply a peasant's hut,\nthough it looked like a chapel, for it contained an extraordinary number\nof ikons with lamps perpetually burning before them--which men brought to\nthe monastery as offerings to God. Father Ferapont had been appointed to\nlook after them and keep the lamps burning. It was said (and indeed it was\ntrue) that he ate only two pounds of bread in three days. The beekeeper,\nwho lived close by the apiary, used to bring him the bread every three\ndays, and even to this man who waited upon him, Father Ferapont rarely\nuttered a word. The four pounds of bread, together with the sacrament\nbread, regularly sent him on Sundays after the late mass by the Father\nSuperior, made up his weekly rations. The water in his jug was changed\nevery day. He rarely appeared at mass. Visitors who came to do him homage\nsaw him sometimes kneeling all day long at prayer without looking round.\nIf he addressed them, he was brief, abrupt, strange, and almost always\nrude. On very rare occasions, however, he would talk to visitors, but for\nthe most part he would utter some one strange saying which was a complete\nriddle, and no entreaties would induce him to pronounce a word in\nexplanation. He was not a priest, but a simple monk. There was a strange\nbelief, chiefly however among the most ignorant, that Father Ferapont had\ncommunication with heavenly spirits and would only converse with them, and\nso was silent with men.\n\nThe monk from Obdorsk, having been directed to the apiary by the\nbeekeeper, who was also a very silent and surly monk, went to the corner\nwhere Father Ferapont's cell stood. \"Maybe he will speak as you are a\nstranger and maybe you'll get nothing out of him,\" the beekeeper had\nwarned him. The monk, as he related afterwards, approached in the utmost\napprehension. It was rather late in the evening. Father Ferapont was\nsitting at the door of his cell on a low bench. A huge old elm was lightly\nrustling overhead. There was an evening freshness in the air. The monk\nfrom Obdorsk bowed down before the saint and asked his blessing.\n\n\"Do you want me to bow down to you, monk?\" said Father Ferapont. \"Get up!\"\n\nThe monk got up.\n\n\"Blessing, be blessed! Sit beside me. Where have you come from?\"\n\nWhat most struck the poor monk was the fact that in spite of his strict\nfasting and great age, Father Ferapont still looked a vigorous old man. He\nwas tall, held himself erect, and had a thin, but fresh and healthy face.\nThere was no doubt he still had considerable strength. He was of athletic\nbuild. In spite of his great age he was not even quite gray, and still had\nvery thick hair and a full beard, both of which had once been black. His\neyes were gray, large and luminous, but strikingly prominent. He spoke\nwith a broad accent. He was dressed in a peasant's long reddish coat of\ncoarse convict cloth (as it used to be called) and had a stout rope round\nhis waist. His throat and chest were bare. Beneath his coat, his shirt of\nthe coarsest linen showed almost black with dirt, not having been changed\nfor months. They said that he wore irons weighing thirty pounds under his\ncoat. His stockingless feet were thrust in old slippers almost dropping to\npieces.\n\n\"From the little Obdorsk monastery, from St. Sylvester,\" the monk answered\nhumbly, whilst his keen and inquisitive, but rather frightened little eyes\nkept watch on the hermit.\n\n\"I have been at your Sylvester's. I used to stay there. Is Sylvester\nwell?\"\n\nThe monk hesitated.\n\n\"You are a senseless lot! How do you keep the fasts?\"\n\n\"Our dietary is according to the ancient conventual rules. During Lent\nthere are no meals provided for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For Tuesday\nand Thursday we have white bread, stewed fruit with honey, wild berries,\nor salt cabbage and wholemeal stirabout. On Saturday white cabbage soup,\nnoodles with peas, kasha, all with hemp oil. On weekdays we have dried\nfish and kasha with the cabbage soup. From Monday till Saturday evening,\nsix whole days in Holy Week, nothing is cooked, and we have only bread and\nwater, and that sparingly; if possible not taking food every day, just the\nsame as is ordered for first week in Lent. On Good Friday nothing is\neaten. In the same way on the Saturday we have to fast till three o'clock,\nand then take a little bread and water and drink a single cup of wine. On\nHoly Thursday we drink wine and have something cooked without oil or not\ncooked at all, inasmuch as the Laodicean council lays down for Holy\nThursday: 'It is unseemly by remitting the fast on the Holy Thursday to\ndishonor the whole of Lent!' This is how we keep the fast. But what is\nthat compared with you, holy Father,\" added the monk, growing more\nconfident, \"for all the year round, even at Easter, you take nothing but\nbread and water, and what we should eat in two days lasts you full seven.\nIt's truly marvelous--your great abstinence.\"\n\n\"And mushrooms?\" asked Father Ferapont, suddenly.\n\n\"Mushrooms?\" repeated the surprised monk.\n\n\"Yes. I can give up their bread, not needing it at all, and go away into\nthe forest and live there on the mushrooms or the berries, but they can't\ngive up their bread here, wherefore they are in bondage to the devil.\nNowadays the unclean deny that there is need of such fasting. Haughty and\nunclean is their judgment.\"\n\n\"Och, true,\" sighed the monk.\n\n\"And have you seen devils among them?\" asked Ferapont.\n\n\"Among them? Among whom?\" asked the monk, timidly.\n\n\"I went to the Father Superior on Trinity Sunday last year, I haven't been\nsince. I saw a devil sitting on one man's chest hiding under his cassock,\nonly his horns poked out; another had one peeping out of his pocket with\nsuch sharp eyes, he was afraid of me; another settled in the unclean belly\nof one, another was hanging round a man's neck, and so he was carrying him\nabout without seeing him.\"\n\n\"You--can see spirits?\" the monk inquired.\n\n\"I tell you I can see, I can see through them. When I was coming out from\nthe Superior's I saw one hiding from me behind the door, and a big one, a\nyard and a half or more high, with a thick long gray tail, and the tip of\nhis tail was in the crack of the door and I was quick and slammed the\ndoor, pinching his tail in it. He squealed and began to struggle, and I\nmade the sign of the cross over him three times. And he died on the spot\nlike a crushed spider. He must have rotted there in the corner and be\nstinking, but they don't see, they don't smell it. It's a year since I\nhave been there. I reveal it to you, as you are a stranger.\"\n\n\"Your words are terrible! But, holy and blessed Father,\" said the monk,\ngrowing bolder and bolder, \"is it true, as they noise abroad even to\ndistant lands about you, that you are in continual communication with the\nHoly Ghost?\"\n\n\"He does fly down at times.\"\n\n\"How does he fly down? In what form?\"\n\n\"As a bird.\"\n\n\"The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove?\"\n\n\"There's the Holy Ghost and there's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can\nappear as other birds--sometimes as a swallow, sometimes a goldfinch and\nsometimes as a blue-tit.\"\n\n\"How do you know him from an ordinary tit?\"\n\n\"He speaks.\"\n\n\"How does he speak, in what language?\"\n\n\"Human language.\"\n\n\"And what does he tell you?\"\n\n\"Why, to-day he told me that a fool would visit me and would ask me\nunseemly questions. You want to know too much, monk.\"\n\n\"Terrible are your words, most holy and blessed Father,\" the monk shook\nhis head. But there was a doubtful look in his frightened little eyes.\n\n\"Do you see this tree?\" asked Father Ferapont, after a pause.\n\n\"I do, blessed Father.\"\n\n\"You think it's an elm, but for me it has another shape.\"\n\n\"What sort of shape?\" inquired the monk, after a pause of vain\nexpectation.\n\n\"It happens at night. You see those two branches? In the night it is\nChrist holding out His arms to me and seeking me with those arms, I see it\nclearly and tremble. It's terrible, terrible!\"\n\n\"What is there terrible if it's Christ Himself?\"\n\n\"Why, He'll snatch me up and carry me away.\"\n\n\"Alive?\"\n\n\"In the spirit and glory of Elijah, haven't you heard? He will take me in\nHis arms and bear me away.\"\n\nThough the monk returned to the cell he was sharing with one of the\nbrothers, in considerable perplexity of mind, he still cherished at heart\na greater reverence for Father Ferapont than for Father Zossima. He was\nstrongly in favor of fasting, and it was not strange that one who kept so\nrigid a fast as Father Ferapont should \"see marvels.\" His words seemed\ncertainly queer, but God only could tell what was hidden in those words,\nand were not worse words and acts commonly seen in those who have\nsacrificed their intellects for the glory of God? The pinching of the\ndevil's tail he was ready and eager to believe, and not only in the\nfigurative sense. Besides he had, before visiting the monastery, a strong\nprejudice against the institution of \"elders,\" which he only knew of by\nhearsay and believed to be a pernicious innovation. Before he had been\nlong at the monastery, he had detected the secret murmurings of some\nshallow brothers who disliked the institution. He was, besides, a\nmeddlesome, inquisitive man, who poked his nose into everything. This was\nwhy the news of the fresh \"miracle\" performed by Father Zossima reduced\nhim to extreme perplexity. Alyosha remembered afterwards how their\ninquisitive guest from Obdorsk had been continually flitting to and fro\nfrom one group to another, listening and asking questions among the monks\nthat were crowding within and without the elder's cell. But he did not pay\nmuch attention to him at the time, and only recollected it afterwards.\n\nHe had no thought to spare for it indeed, for when Father Zossima, feeling\ntired again, had gone back to bed, he thought of Alyosha as he was closing\nhis eyes, and sent for him. Alyosha ran at once. There was no one else in\nthe cell but Father Paissy, Father Iosif, and the novice Porfiry. The\nelder, opening his weary eyes and looking intently at Alyosha, asked him\nsuddenly:\n\n\"Are your people expecting you, my son?\"\n\nAlyosha hesitated.\n\n\"Haven't they need of you? Didn't you promise some one yesterday to see\nthem to-day?\"\n\n\"I did promise--to my father--my brothers--others too.\"\n\n\"You see, you must go. Don't grieve. Be sure I shall not die without your\nbeing by to hear my last word. To you I will say that word, my son, it\nwill be my last gift to you. To you, dear son, because you love me. But\nnow go to keep your promise.\"\n\nAlyosha immediately obeyed, though it was hard to go. But the promise that\nhe should hear his last word on earth, that it should be the last gift to\nhim, Alyosha, sent a thrill of rapture through his soul. He made haste\nthat he might finish what he had to do in the town and return quickly.\nFather Paissy, too, uttered some words of exhortation which moved and\nsurprised him greatly. He spoke as they left the cell together.\n\n\"Remember, young man, unceasingly,\" Father Paissy began, without preface,\n\"that the science of this world, which has become a great power, has,\nespecially in the last century, analyzed everything divine handed down to\nus in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world\nhave nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only\nanalyzed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is\nmarvelous. Yet the whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the\ngates of hell shall not prevail against it. Has it not lasted nineteen\ncenturies, is it not still a living, a moving power in the individual soul\nand in the masses of people? It is still as strong and living even in the\nsouls of atheists, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have\nrenounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow\nthe Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of\ntheir hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue\nthan the ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted, the\nresult has been only grotesque. Remember this especially, young man, since\nyou are being sent into the world by your departing elder. Maybe,\nremembering this great day, you will not forget my words, uttered from the\nheart for your guidance, seeing you are young, and the temptations of the\nworld are great and beyond your strength to endure. Well, now go, my\norphan.\"\n\nWith these words Father Paissy blessed him. As Alyosha left the monastery\nand thought them over, he suddenly realized that he had met a new and\nunexpected friend, a warmly loving teacher, in this austere monk who had\nhitherto treated him sternly. It was as though Father Zossima had\nbequeathed him to him at his death, and \"perhaps that's just what had\npassed between them,\" Alyosha thought suddenly. The philosophic\nreflections he had just heard so unexpectedly testified to the warmth of\nFather Paissy's heart. He was in haste to arm the boy's mind for conflict\nwith temptation and to guard the young soul left in his charge with the\nstrongest defense he could imagine.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. At His Father's\n\n\nFirst of all, Alyosha went to his father. On the way he remembered that\nhis father had insisted the day before that he should come without his\nbrother Ivan seeing him. \"Why so?\" Alyosha wondered suddenly. \"Even if my\nfather has something to say to me alone, why should I go in unseen? Most\nlikely in his excitement yesterday he meant to say something different,\"\nhe decided. Yet he was very glad when Marfa Ignatyevna, who opened the\ngarden gate to him (Grigory, it appeared, was ill in bed in the lodge),\ntold him in answer to his question that Ivan Fyodorovitch had gone out two\nhours ago.\n\n\"And my father?\"\n\n\"He is up, taking his coffee,\" Marfa answered somewhat dryly.\n\nAlyosha went in. The old man was sitting alone at the table wearing\nslippers and a little old overcoat. He was amusing himself by looking\nthrough some accounts, rather inattentively however. He was quite alone in\nthe house, for Smerdyakov too had gone out marketing. Though he had got up\nearly and was trying to put a bold face on it, he looked tired and weak.\nHis forehead, upon which huge purple bruises had come out during the\nnight, was bandaged with a red handkerchief; his nose too had swollen\nterribly in the night, and some smaller bruises covered it in patches,\ngiving his whole face a peculiarly spiteful and irritable look. The old\nman was aware of this, and turned a hostile glance on Alyosha as he came\nin.\n\n\"The coffee is cold,\" he cried harshly; \"I won't offer you any. I've\nordered nothing but a Lenten fish soup to-day, and I don't invite any one\nto share it. Why have you come?\"\n\n\"To find out how you are,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"Yes. Besides, I told you to come yesterday. It's all of no consequence.\nYou need not have troubled. But I knew you'd come poking in directly.\"\n\nHe said this with almost hostile feeling. At the same time he got up and\nlooked anxiously in the looking-glass (perhaps for the fortieth time that\nmorning) at his nose. He began, too, binding his red handkerchief more\nbecomingly on his forehead.\n\n\"Red's better. It's just like the hospital in a white one,\" he observed\nsententiously. \"Well, how are things over there? How is your elder?\"\n\n\"He is very bad; he may die to-day,\" answered Alyosha. But his father had\nnot listened, and had forgotten his own question at once.\n\n\"Ivan's gone out,\" he said suddenly. \"He is doing his utmost to carry off\nMitya's betrothed. That's what he is staying here for,\" he added\nmaliciously, and, twisting his mouth, looked at Alyosha.\n\n\"Surely he did not tell you so?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"Yes, he did, long ago. Would you believe it, he told me three weeks ago?\nYou don't suppose he too came to murder me, do you? He must have had some\nobject in coming.\"\n\n\"What do you mean? Why do you say such things?\" said Alyosha, troubled.\n\n\"He doesn't ask for money, it's true, but yet he won't get a farthing from\nme. I intend living as long as possible, you may as well know, my dear\nAlexey Fyodorovitch, and so I need every farthing, and the longer I live,\nthe more I shall need it,\" he continued, pacing from one corner of the\nroom to the other, keeping his hands in the pockets of his loose greasy\novercoat made of yellow cotton material. \"I can still pass for a man at\nfive and fifty, but I want to pass for one for another twenty years. As I\nget older, you know, I shan't be a pretty object. The wenches won't come\nto me of their own accord, so I shall want my money. So I am saving up\nmore and more, simply for myself, my dear son Alexey Fyodorovitch. You may\nas well know. For I mean to go on in my sins to the end, let me tell you.\nFor sin is sweet; all abuse it, but all men live in it, only others do it\non the sly, and I openly. And so all the other sinners fall upon me for\nbeing so simple. And your paradise, Alexey Fyodorovitch, is not to my\ntaste, let me tell you that; and it's not the proper place for a\ngentleman, your paradise, even if it exists. I believe that I fall asleep\nand don't wake up again, and that's all. You can pray for my soul if you\nlike. And if you don't want to, don't, damn you! That's my philosophy.\nIvan talked well here yesterday, though we were all drunk. Ivan is a\nconceited coxcomb, but he has no particular learning ... nor education\neither. He sits silent and smiles at one without speaking--that's what\npulls him through.\"\n\nAlyosha listened to him in silence.\n\n\"Why won't he talk to me? If he does speak, he gives himself airs. Your\nIvan is a scoundrel! And I'll marry Grushenka in a minute if I want to.\nFor if you've money, Alexey Fyodorovitch, you have only to want a thing\nand you can have it. That's what Ivan is afraid of, he is on the watch to\nprevent me getting married and that's why he is egging on Mitya to marry\nGrushenka himself. He hopes to keep me from Grushenka by that (as though I\nshould leave him my money if I don't marry her!). Besides if Mitya marries\nGrushenka, Ivan will carry off his rich betrothed, that's what he's\nreckoning on! He is a scoundrel, your Ivan!\"\n\n\"How cross you are! It's because of yesterday; you had better lie down,\"\nsaid Alyosha.\n\n\"There! you say that,\" the old man observed suddenly, as though it had\nstruck him for the first time, \"and I am not angry with you. But if Ivan\nsaid it, I should be angry with him. It is only with you I have good\nmoments, else you know I am an ill-natured man.\"\n\n\"You are not ill-natured, but distorted,\" said Alyosha with a smile.\n\n\"Listen. I meant this morning to get that ruffian Mitya locked up and I\ndon't know now what I shall decide about it. Of course in these\nfashionable days fathers and mothers are looked upon as a prejudice, but\neven now the law does not allow you to drag your old father about by the\nhair, to kick him in the face in his own house, and brag of murdering him\noutright--all in the presence of witnesses. If I liked, I could crush him\nand could have him locked up at once for what he did yesterday.\"\n\n\"Then you don't mean to take proceedings?\"\n\n\"Ivan has dissuaded me. I shouldn't care about Ivan, but there's another\nthing.\"\n\nAnd bending down to Alyosha, he went on in a confidential half-whisper.\n\n\"If I send the ruffian to prison, she'll hear of it and run to see him at\nonce. But if she hears that he has beaten me, a weak old man, within an\ninch of my life, she may give him up and come to me.... For that's her\nway, everything by contraries. I know her through and through! Won't you\nhave a drop of brandy? Take some cold coffee and I'll pour a quarter of a\nglass of brandy into it, it's delicious, my boy.\"\n\n\"No, thank you. I'll take that roll with me if I may,\" said Alyosha, and\ntaking a halfpenny French roll he put it in the pocket of his cassock.\n\"And you'd better not have brandy, either,\" he suggested apprehensively,\nlooking into the old man's face.\n\n\"You are quite right, it irritates my nerves instead of soothing them.\nOnly one little glass. I'll get it out of the cupboard.\"\n\nHe unlocked the cupboard, poured out a glass, drank it, then locked the\ncupboard and put the key back in his pocket.\n\n\"That's enough. One glass won't kill me.\"\n\n\"You see you are in a better humor now,\" said Alyosha, smiling.\n\n\"Um! I love you even without the brandy, but with scoundrels I am a\nscoundrel. Ivan is not going to Tchermashnya--why is that? He wants to spy\nhow much I give Grushenka if she comes. They are all scoundrels! But I\ndon't recognize Ivan, I don't know him at all. Where does he come from? He\nis not one of us in soul. As though I'd leave him anything! I shan't leave\na will at all, you may as well know. And I'll crush Mitya like a beetle. I\nsquash black-beetles at night with my slipper; they squelch when you tread\non them. And your Mitya will squelch too. _Your_ Mitya, for you love him.\nYes, you love him and I am not afraid of your loving him. But if Ivan\nloved him I should be afraid for myself at his loving him. But Ivan loves\nnobody. Ivan is not one of us. People like Ivan are not our sort, my boy.\nThey are like a cloud of dust. When the wind blows, the dust will be\ngone.... I had a silly idea in my head when I told you to come to-day; I\nwanted to find out from you about Mitya. If I were to hand him over a\nthousand or maybe two now, would the beggarly wretch agree to take himself\noff altogether for five years or, better still, thirty-five, and without\nGrushenka, and give her up once for all, eh?\"\n\n\"I--I'll ask him,\" muttered Alyosha. \"If you would give him three thousand,\nperhaps he--\"\n\n\"That's nonsense! You needn't ask him now, no need! I've changed my mind.\nIt was a nonsensical idea of mine. I won't give him anything, not a penny,\nI want my money myself,\" cried the old man, waving his hand. \"I'll crush\nhim like a beetle without it. Don't say anything to him or else he will\nbegin hoping. There's nothing for you to do here, you needn't stay. Is\nthat betrothed of his, Katerina Ivanovna, whom he has kept so carefully\nhidden from me all this time, going to marry him or not? You went to see\nher yesterday, I believe?\"\n\n\"Nothing will induce her to abandon him.\"\n\n\"There you see how dearly these fine young ladies love a rake and a\nscoundrel. They are poor creatures I tell you, those pale young ladies,\nvery different from--Ah, if I had his youth and the looks I had then (for I\nwas better-looking than he at eight and twenty) I'd have been a conquering\nhero just as he is. He is a low cad! But he shan't have Grushenka, anyway,\nhe shan't! I'll crush him!\"\n\nHis anger had returned with the last words.\n\n\"You can go. There's nothing for you to do here to-day,\" he snapped\nharshly.\n\nAlyosha went up to say good-by to him, and kissed him on the shoulder.\n\n\"What's that for?\" The old man was a little surprised. \"We shall see each\nother again, or do you think we shan't?\"\n\n\"Not at all, I didn't mean anything.\"\n\n\"Nor did I, I did not mean anything,\" said the old man, looking at him.\n\"Listen, listen,\" he shouted after him, \"make haste and come again and\nI'll have a fish soup for you, a fine one, not like to-day. Be sure to\ncome! Come to-morrow, do you hear, to-morrow!\"\n\nAnd as soon as Alyosha had gone out of the door, he went to the cupboard\nagain and poured out another half-glass.\n\n\"I won't have more!\" he muttered, clearing his throat, and again he locked\nthe cupboard and put the key in his pocket. Then he went into his bedroom,\nlay down on the bed, exhausted, and in one minute he was asleep.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. A Meeting With The Schoolboys\n\n\n\"Thank goodness he did not ask me about Grushenka,\" thought Alyosha, as he\nleft his father's house and turned towards Madame Hohlakov's, \"or I might\nhave to tell him of my meeting with Grushenka yesterday.\"\n\nAlyosha felt painfully that since yesterday both combatants had renewed\ntheir energies, and that their hearts had grown hard again. \"Father is\nspiteful and angry, he's made some plan and will stick to it. And what of\nDmitri? He too will be harder than yesterday, he too must be spiteful and\nangry, and he too, no doubt, has made some plan. Oh, I must succeed in\nfinding him to-day, whatever happens.\"\n\nBut Alyosha had not long to meditate. An incident occurred on the road,\nwhich, though apparently of little consequence, made a great impression on\nhim. Just after he had crossed the square and turned the corner coming out\ninto Mihailovsky Street, which is divided by a small ditch from the High\nStreet (our whole town is intersected by ditches), he saw a group of\nschoolboys between the ages of nine and twelve, at the bridge. They were\ngoing home from school, some with their bags on their shoulders, others\nwith leather satchels slung across them, some in short jackets, others in\nlittle overcoats. Some even had those high boots with creases round the\nankles, such as little boys spoilt by rich fathers love to wear. The whole\ngroup was talking eagerly about something, apparently holding a council.\nAlyosha had never from his Moscow days been able to pass children without\ntaking notice of them, and although he was particularly fond of children\nof three or thereabout, he liked schoolboys of ten and eleven too. And so,\nanxious as he was to-day, he wanted at once to turn aside to talk to them.\nHe looked into their excited rosy faces, and noticed at once that all the\nboys had stones in their hands. Behind the ditch some thirty paces away,\nthere was another schoolboy standing by a fence. He too had a satchel at\nhis side. He was about ten years old, pale, delicate-looking and with\nsparkling black eyes. He kept an attentive and anxious watch on the other\nsix, obviously his schoolfellows with whom he had just come out of school,\nbut with whom he had evidently had a feud.\n\nAlyosha went up and, addressing a fair, curly-headed, rosy boy in a black\njacket, observed:\n\n\"When I used to wear a satchel like yours, I always used to carry it on my\nleft side, so as to have my right hand free, but you've got yours on your\nright side. So it will be awkward for you to get at it.\"\n\nAlyosha had no art or premeditation in beginning with this practical\nremark. But it is the only way for a grown-up person to get at once into\nconfidential relations with a child, or still more with a group of\nchildren. One must begin in a serious, businesslike way so as to be on a\nperfectly equal footing. Alyosha understood it by instinct.\n\n\"But he is left-handed,\" another, a fine healthy-looking boy of eleven,\nanswered promptly. All the others stared at Alyosha.\n\n\"He even throws stones with his left hand,\" observed a third.\n\nAt that instant a stone flew into the group, but only just grazed the\nleft-handed boy, though it was well and vigorously thrown by the boy\nstanding the other side of the ditch.\n\n\"Give it him, hit him back, Smurov,\" they all shouted. But Smurov, the\nleft-handed boy, needed no telling, and at once revenged himself; he threw\na stone, but it missed the boy and hit the ground. The boy the other side\nof the ditch, the pocket of whose coat was visibly bulging with stones,\nflung another stone at the group; this time it flew straight at Alyosha\nand hit him painfully on the shoulder.\n\n\"He aimed it at you, he meant it for you. You are Karamazov, Karamazov!\"\nthe boys shouted, laughing. \"Come, all throw at him at once!\" and six\nstones flew at the boy. One struck the boy on the head and he fell down,\nbut at once leapt up and began ferociously returning their fire. Both\nsides threw stones incessantly. Many of the group had their pockets full\ntoo.\n\n\"What are you about! Aren't you ashamed? Six against one! Why, you'll kill\nhim,\" cried Alyosha.\n\nHe ran forward and met the flying stones to screen the solitary boy. Three\nor four ceased throwing for a minute.\n\n\"He began first!\" cried a boy in a red shirt in an angry childish voice.\n\"He is a beast, he stabbed Krassotkin in class the other day with a\npenknife. It bled. Krassotkin wouldn't tell tales, but he must be\nthrashed.\"\n\n\"But what for? I suppose you tease him.\"\n\n\"There, he sent a stone in your back again, he knows you,\" cried the\nchildren. \"It's you he is throwing at now, not us. Come, all of you, at\nhim again, don't miss, Smurov!\" and again a fire of stones, and a very\nvicious one, began. The boy the other side of the ditch was hit in the\nchest; he screamed, began to cry and ran away uphill towards Mihailovsky\nStreet. They all shouted: \"Aha, he is funking, he is running away. Wisp of\ntow!\"\n\n\"You don't know what a beast he is, Karamazov, killing is too good for\nhim,\" said the boy in the jacket, with flashing eyes. He seemed to be the\neldest.\n\n\"What's wrong with him?\" asked Alyosha, \"is he a tell-tale or what?\"\n\nThe boys looked at one another as though derisively.\n\n\"Are you going that way, to Mihailovsky?\" the same boy went on. \"Catch him\nup.... You see he's stopped again, he is waiting and looking at you.\"\n\n\"He is looking at you,\" the other boys chimed in.\n\n\"You ask him, does he like a disheveled wisp of tow. Do you hear, ask him\nthat!\"\n\nThere was a general burst of laughter. Alyosha looked at them, and they at\nhim.\n\n\"Don't go near him, he'll hurt you,\" cried Smurov in a warning voice.\n\n\"I shan't ask him about the wisp of tow, for I expect you tease him with\nthat question somehow. But I'll find out from him why you hate him so.\"\n\n\"Find out then, find out,\" cried the boys, laughing.\n\nAlyosha crossed the bridge and walked uphill by the fence, straight\ntowards the boy.\n\n\"You'd better look out,\" the boys called after him; \"he won't be afraid of\nyou. He will stab you in a minute, on the sly, as he did Krassotkin.\"\n\nThe boy waited for him without budging. Coming up to him, Alyosha saw\nfacing him a child of about nine years old. He was an undersized weakly\nboy with a thin pale face, with large dark eyes that gazed at him\nvindictively. He was dressed in a rather shabby old overcoat, which he had\nmonstrously outgrown. His bare arms stuck out beyond his sleeves. There\nwas a large patch on the right knee of his trousers, and in his right boot\njust at the toe there was a big hole in the leather, carefully blackened\nwith ink. Both the pockets of his great-coat were weighed down with\nstones. Alyosha stopped two steps in front of him, looking inquiringly at\nhim. The boy, seeing at once from Alyosha's eyes that he wouldn't beat\nhim, became less defiant, and addressed him first.\n\n\"I am alone, and there are six of them. I'll beat them all, alone!\" he\nsaid suddenly, with flashing eyes.\n\n\"I think one of the stones must have hurt you badly,\" observed Alyosha.\n\n\"But I hit Smurov on the head!\" cried the boy.\n\n\"They told me that you know me, and that you threw a stone at me on\npurpose,\" said Alyosha.\n\nThe boy looked darkly at him.\n\n\"I don't know you. Do you know me?\" Alyosha continued.\n\n\"Let me alone!\" the boy cried irritably; but he did not move, as though he\nwere expecting something, and again there was a vindictive light in his\neyes.\n\n\"Very well, I am going,\" said Alyosha; \"only I don't know you and I don't\ntease you. They told me how they tease you, but I don't want to tease you.\nGood-by!\"\n\n\"Monk in silk trousers!\" cried the boy, following Alyosha with the same\nvindictive and defiant expression, and he threw himself into an attitude\nof defense, feeling sure that now Alyosha would fall upon him; but Alyosha\nturned, looked at him, and walked away. He had not gone three steps before\nthe biggest stone the boy had in his pocket hit him a painful blow in the\nback.\n\n\"So you'll hit a man from behind! They tell the truth, then, when they say\nthat you attack on the sly,\" said Alyosha, turning round again. This time\nthe boy threw a stone savagely right into Alyosha's face; but Alyosha just\nhad time to guard himself, and the stone struck him on the elbow.\n\n\"Aren't you ashamed? What have I done to you?\" he cried.\n\nThe boy waited in silent defiance, certain that now Alyosha would attack\nhim. Seeing that even now he would not, his rage was like a little wild\nbeast's; he flew at Alyosha himself, and before Alyosha had time to move,\nthe spiteful child had seized his left hand with both of his and bit his\nmiddle finger. He fixed his teeth in it and it was ten seconds before he\nlet go. Alyosha cried out with pain and pulled his finger away with all\nhis might. The child let go at last and retreated to his former distance.\nAlyosha's finger had been badly bitten to the bone, close to the nail; it\nbegan to bleed. Alyosha took out his handkerchief and bound it tightly\nround his injured hand. He was a full minute bandaging it. The boy stood\nwaiting all the time. At last Alyosha raised his gentle eyes and looked at\nhim.\n\n\"Very well,\" he said, \"you see how badly you've bitten me. That's enough,\nisn't it? Now tell me, what have I done to you?\"\n\nThe boy stared in amazement.\n\n\"Though I don't know you and it's the first time I've seen you,\" Alyosha\nwent on with the same serenity, \"yet I must have done something to you--you\nwouldn't have hurt me like this for nothing. So what have I done? How have\nI wronged you, tell me?\"\n\nInstead of answering, the boy broke into a loud tearful wail and ran away.\nAlyosha walked slowly after him towards Mihailovsky Street, and for a long\ntime he saw the child running in the distance as fast as ever, not turning\nhis head, and no doubt still keeping up his tearful wail. He made up his\nmind to find him out as soon as he had time, and to solve this mystery.\nJust now he had not the time.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. At The Hohlakovs'\n\n\nAlyosha soon reached Madame Hohlakov's house, a handsome stone house of\ntwo stories, one of the finest in our town. Though Madame Hohlakov spent\nmost of her time in another province where she had an estate, or in\nMoscow, where she had a house of her own, yet she had a house in our town\ntoo, inherited from her forefathers. The estate in our district was the\nlargest of her three estates, yet she had been very little in our province\nbefore this time. She ran out to Alyosha in the hall.\n\n\"Did you get my letter about the new miracle?\" She spoke rapidly and\nnervously.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Did you show it to every one? He restored the son to his mother!\"\n\n\"He is dying to-day,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"I have heard, I know, oh, how I long to talk to you, to you or some one,\nabout all this. No, to you, to you! And how sorry I am I can't see him!\nThe whole town is in excitement, they are all suspense. But now--do you\nknow Katerina Ivanovna is here now?\"\n\n\"Ah, that's lucky,\" cried Alyosha. \"Then I shall see her here. She told me\nyesterday to be sure to come and see her to-day.\"\n\n\"I know, I know all. I've heard exactly what happened yesterday--and the\natrocious behavior of that--creature. _C'est tragique_, and if I'd been in\nher place I don't know what I should have done. And your brother Dmitri\nFyodorovitch, what do you think of him?--my goodness! Alexey Fyodorovitch,\nI am forgetting, only fancy; your brother is in there with her, not that\ndreadful brother who was so shocking yesterday, but the other, Ivan\nFyodorovitch, he is sitting with her talking; they are having a serious\nconversation. If you could only imagine what's passing between them\nnow--it's awful, I tell you it's lacerating, it's like some incredible tale\nof horror. They are ruining their lives for no reason any one can see.\nThey both recognize it and revel in it. I've been watching for you! I've\nbeen thirsting for you! It's too much for me, that's the worst of it. I'll\ntell you all about it presently, but now I must speak of something else,\nthe most important thing--I had quite forgotten what's most important. Tell\nme, why has Lise been in hysterics? As soon as she heard you were here,\nshe began to be hysterical!\"\n\n\"_Maman_, it's you who are hysterical now, not I,\" Lise's voice caroled\nthrough a tiny crack of the door at the side. Her voice sounded as though\nshe wanted to laugh, but was doing her utmost to control it. Alyosha at\nonce noticed the crack, and no doubt Lise was peeping through it, but that\nhe could not see.\n\n\"And no wonder, Lise, no wonder ... your caprices will make me hysterical\ntoo. But she is so ill, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she has been so ill all\nnight, feverish and moaning! I could hardly wait for the morning and for\nHerzenstube to come. He says that he can make nothing of it, that we must\nwait. Herzenstube always comes and says that he can make nothing of it. As\nsoon as you approached the house, she screamed, fell into hysterics, and\ninsisted on being wheeled back into this room here.\"\n\n\"Mamma, I didn't know he had come. It wasn't on his account I wanted to be\nwheeled into this room.\"\n\n\"That's not true, Lise, Yulia ran to tell you that Alexey Fyodorovitch was\ncoming. She was on the look-out for you.\"\n\n\"My darling mamma, it's not at all clever of you. But if you want to make\nup for it and say something very clever, dear mamma, you'd better tell our\nhonored visitor, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that he has shown his want of wit by\nventuring to us after what happened yesterday and although every one is\nlaughing at him.\"\n\n\"Lise, you go too far. I declare I shall have to be severe. Who laughs at\nhim? I am so glad he has come, I need him, I can't do without him. Oh,\nAlexey Fyodorovitch, I am exceedingly unhappy!\"\n\n\"But what's the matter with you, mamma, darling?\"\n\n\"Ah, your caprices, Lise, your fidgetiness, your illness, that awful night\nof fever, that awful everlasting Herzenstube, everlasting, everlasting,\nthat's the worst of it! Everything, in fact, everything.... Even that\nmiracle, too! Oh, how it has upset me, how it has shattered me, that\nmiracle, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch! And that tragedy in the drawing-room,\nit's more than I can bear, I warn you. I can't bear it. A comedy, perhaps,\nnot a tragedy. Tell me, will Father Zossima live till to-morrow, will he?\nOh, my God! What is happening to me? Every minute I close my eyes and see\nthat it's all nonsense, all nonsense.\"\n\n\"I should be very grateful,\" Alyosha interrupted suddenly, \"if you could\ngive me a clean rag to bind up my finger with. I have hurt it, and it's\nvery painful.\"\n\nAlyosha unbound his bitten finger. The handkerchief was soaked with blood.\nMadame Hohlakov screamed and shut her eyes.\n\n\"Good heavens, what a wound, how awful!\"\n\nBut as soon as Lise saw Alyosha's finger through the crack, she flung the\ndoor wide open.\n\n\"Come, come here,\" she cried, imperiously. \"No nonsense now! Good heavens,\nwhy did you stand there saying nothing about it all this time? He might\nhave bled to death, mamma! How did you do it? Water, water! You must wash\nit first of all, simply hold it in cold water to stop the pain, and keep\nit there, keep it there.... Make haste, mamma, some water in a slop-basin.\nBut do make haste,\" she finished nervously. She was quite frightened at\nthe sight of Alyosha's wound.\n\n\"Shouldn't we send for Herzenstube?\" cried Madame Hohlakov.\n\n\"Mamma, you'll be the death of me. Your Herzenstube will come and say that\nhe can make nothing of it! Water, water! Mamma, for goodness' sake go\nyourself and hurry Yulia, she is such a slowcoach and never can come\nquickly! Make haste, mamma, or I shall die.\"\n\n\"Why, it's nothing much,\" cried Alyosha, frightened at this alarm.\n\nYulia ran in with water and Alyosha put his finger in it.\n\n\"Some lint, mamma, for mercy's sake, bring some lint and that muddy\ncaustic lotion for wounds, what's it called? We've got some. You know\nwhere the bottle is, mamma; it's in your bedroom in the right-hand\ncupboard, there's a big bottle of it there with the lint.\"\n\n\"I'll bring everything in a minute, Lise, only don't scream and don't\nfuss. You see how bravely Alexey Fyodorovitch bears it. Where did you get\nsuch a dreadful wound, Alexey Fyodorovitch?\"\n\nMadame Hohlakov hastened away. This was all Lise was waiting for.\n\n\"First of all, answer the question, where did you get hurt like this?\" she\nasked Alyosha, quickly. \"And then I'll talk to you about something quite\ndifferent. Well?\"\n\nInstinctively feeling that the time of her mother's absence was precious\nfor her, Alyosha hastened to tell her of his enigmatic meeting with the\nschoolboys in the fewest words possible. Lise clasped her hands at his\nstory.\n\n\"How can you, and in that dress too, associate with schoolboys?\" she cried\nangrily, as though she had a right to control him. \"You are nothing but a\nboy yourself if you can do that, a perfect boy! But you must find out for\nme about that horrid boy and tell me all about it, for there's some\nmystery in it. Now for the second thing, but first a question: does the\npain prevent you talking about utterly unimportant things, but talking\nsensibly?\"\n\n\"Of course not, and I don't feel much pain now.\"\n\n\"That's because your finger is in the water. It must be changed directly,\nfor it will get warm in a minute. Yulia, bring some ice from the cellar\nand another basin of water. Now she is gone, I can speak; will you give me\nthe letter I sent you yesterday, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch--be quick, for\nmamma will be back in a minute and I don't want--\"\n\n\"I haven't got the letter.\"\n\n\"That's not true, you have. I knew you would say that. You've got it in\nthat pocket. I've been regretting that joke all night. Give me back the\nletter at once, give it me.\"\n\n\"I've left it at home.\"\n\n\"But you can't consider me as a child, a little girl, after that silly\njoke! I beg your pardon for that silliness, but you must bring me the\nletter, if you really haven't got it--bring it to-day, you must, you must.\"\n\n\"To-day I can't possibly, for I am going back to the monastery and I\nshan't come and see you for the next two days--three or four perhaps--for\nFather Zossima--\"\n\n\"Four days, what nonsense! Listen. Did you laugh at me very much?\"\n\n\"I didn't laugh at all.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because I believed all you said.\"\n\n\"You are insulting me!\"\n\n\"Not at all. As soon as I read it, I thought that all that would come to\npass, for as soon as Father Zossima dies, I am to leave the monastery.\nThen I shall go back and finish my studies, and when you reach the legal\nage we will be married. I shall love you. Though I haven't had time to\nthink about it, I believe I couldn't find a better wife than you, and\nFather Zossima tells me I must marry.\"\n\n\"But I am a cripple, wheeled about in a chair,\" laughed Lise, flushing\ncrimson.\n\n\"I'll wheel you about myself, but I'm sure you'll get well by then.\"\n\n\"But you are mad,\" said Lise, nervously, \"to make all this nonsense out of\na joke! Here's mamma, very _a propos_, perhaps. Mamma, how slow you always\nare, how can you be so long! And here's Yulia with the ice!\"\n\n\"Oh, Lise, don't scream, above all things don't scream. That scream drives\nme ... How can I help it when you put the lint in another place? I've been\nhunting and hunting--I do believe you did it on purpose.\"\n\n\"But I couldn't tell that he would come with a bad finger, or else perhaps\nI might have done it on purpose. My darling mamma, you begin to say really\nwitty things.\"\n\n\"Never mind my being witty, but I must say you show nice feeling for\nAlexey Fyodorovitch's sufferings! Oh, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, what's\nkilling me is no one thing in particular, not Herzenstube, but everything\ntogether, that's what is too much for me.\"\n\n\"That's enough, mamma, enough about Herzenstube,\" Lise laughed gayly.\n\"Make haste with the lint and the lotion, mamma. That's simply Goulard's\nwater, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I remember the name now, but it's a splendid\nlotion. Would you believe it, mamma, on the way here he had a fight with\nthe boys in the street, and it was a boy bit his finger, isn't he a child,\na child himself? Is he fit to be married after that? For only fancy, he\nwants to be married, mamma. Just think of him married, wouldn't it be\nfunny, wouldn't it be awful?\"\n\nAnd Lise kept laughing her thin hysterical giggle, looking slyly at\nAlyosha.\n\n\"But why married, Lise? What makes you talk of such a thing? It's quite\nout of place--and perhaps the boy was rabid.\"\n\n\"Why, mamma! As though there were rabid boys!\"\n\n\"Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! Your boy might have\nbeen bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite any one near\nhim. How well she has bandaged it, Alexey Fyodorovitch! I couldn't have\ndone it. Do you still feel the pain?\"\n\n\"It's nothing much now.\"\n\n\"You don't feel afraid of water?\" asked Lise.\n\n\"Come, that's enough, Lise, perhaps I really was rather too quick talking\nof the boy being rabid, and you pounced upon it at once Katerina Ivanovna\nhas only just heard that you are here, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she simply\nrushed at me, she's dying to see you, dying!\"\n\n\"Ach, mamma, go to them yourself. He can't go just now, he is in too much\npain.\"\n\n\"Not at all, I can go quite well,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"What! You are going away? Is that what you say?\"\n\n\"Well, when I've seen them, I'll come back here and we can talk as much as\nyou like. But I should like to see Katerina Ivanovna at once, for I am\nvery anxious to be back at the monastery as soon as I can.\"\n\n\"Mamma, take him away quickly. Alexey Fyodorovitch, don't trouble to come\nand see me afterwards, but go straight back to your monastery and a good\nriddance. I want to sleep, I didn't sleep all night.\"\n\n\"Ah, Lise, you are only making fun, but how I wish you would sleep!\" cried\nMadame Hohlakov.\n\n\"I don't know what I've done.... I'll stay another three minutes, five if\nyou like,\" muttered Alyosha.\n\n\"Even five! Do take him away quickly, mamma, he is a monster.\"\n\n\"Lise, you are crazy. Let us go, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she is too\ncapricious to-day. I am afraid to cross her. Oh, the trouble one has with\nnervous girls! Perhaps she really will be able to sleep after seeing you.\nHow quickly you have made her sleepy, and how fortunate it is!\"\n\n\"Ah, mamma, how sweetly you talk! I must kiss you for it, mamma.\"\n\n\"And I kiss you too, Lise. Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" Madame Hohlakov\nbegan mysteriously and importantly, speaking in a rapid whisper. \"I don't\nwant to suggest anything, I don't want to lift the veil, you will see for\nyourself what's going on. It's appalling. It's the most fantastic farce.\nShe loves your brother, Ivan, and she is doing her utmost to persuade\nherself she loves your brother, Dmitri. It's appalling! I'll go in with\nyou, and if they don't turn me out, I'll stay to the end.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. A Laceration In The Drawing-Room\n\n\nBut in the drawing-room the conversation was already over. Katerina\nIvanovna was greatly excited, though she looked resolute. At the moment\nAlyosha and Madame Hohlakov entered, Ivan Fyodorovitch stood up to take\nleave. His face was rather pale, and Alyosha looked at him anxiously. For\nthis moment was to solve a doubt, a harassing enigma which had for some\ntime haunted Alyosha. During the preceding month it had been several times\nsuggested to him that his brother Ivan was in love with Katerina Ivanovna,\nand, what was more, that he meant \"to carry her off\" from Dmitri. Until\nquite lately the idea seemed to Alyosha monstrous, though it worried him\nextremely. He loved both his brothers, and dreaded such rivalry between\nthem. Meantime, Dmitri had said outright on the previous day that he was\nglad that Ivan was his rival, and that it was a great assistance to him,\nDmitri. In what way did it assist him? To marry Grushenka? But that\nAlyosha considered the worst thing possible. Besides all this, Alyosha had\ntill the evening before implicitly believed that Katerina Ivanovna had a\nsteadfast and passionate love for Dmitri; but he had only believed it till\nthe evening before. He had fancied, too, that she was incapable of loving\na man like Ivan, and that she did love Dmitri, and loved him just as he\nwas, in spite of all the strangeness of such a passion.\n\nBut during yesterday's scene with Grushenka another idea had struck him.\nThe word \"lacerating,\" which Madame Hohlakov had just uttered, almost made\nhim start, because half waking up towards daybreak that night he had cried\nout \"Laceration, laceration,\" probably applying it to his dream. He had\nbeen dreaming all night of the previous day's scene at Katerina\nIvanovna's. Now Alyosha was impressed by Madame Hohlakov's blunt and\npersistent assertion that Katerina Ivanovna was in love with Ivan, and\nonly deceived herself through some sort of pose, from \"self-laceration,\"\nand tortured herself by her pretended love for Dmitri from some fancied\nduty of gratitude. \"Yes,\" he thought, \"perhaps the whole truth lies in\nthose words.\" But in that case what was Ivan's position? Alyosha felt\ninstinctively that a character like Katerina Ivanovna's must dominate, and\nshe could only dominate some one like Dmitri, and never a man like Ivan.\nFor Dmitri might at last submit to her domination \"to his own happiness\"\n(which was what Alyosha would have desired), but Ivan--no, Ivan could not\nsubmit to her, and such submission would not give him happiness. Alyosha\ncould not help believing that of Ivan. And now all these doubts and\nreflections flitted through his mind as he entered the drawing-room.\nAnother idea, too, forced itself upon him: \"What if she loved neither of\nthem--neither Ivan nor Dmitri?\"\n\nIt must be noted that Alyosha felt as it were ashamed of his own thoughts\nand blamed himself when they kept recurring to him during the last month.\n\"What do I know about love and women and how can I decide such questions?\"\nhe thought reproachfully, after such doubts and surmises. And yet it was\nimpossible not to think about it. He felt instinctively that this rivalry\nwas of immense importance in his brothers' lives and that a great deal\ndepended upon it.\n\n\"One reptile will devour the other,\" Ivan had pronounced the day before,\nspeaking in anger of his father and Dmitri. So Ivan looked upon Dmitri as\na reptile, and perhaps had long done so. Was it perhaps since he had known\nKaterina Ivanovna? That phrase had, of course, escaped Ivan unawares\nyesterday, but that only made it more important. If he felt like that,\nwhat chance was there of peace? Were there not, on the contrary, new\ngrounds for hatred and hostility in their family? And with which of them\nwas Alyosha to sympathize? And what was he to wish for each of them? He\nloved them both, but what could he desire for each in the midst of these\nconflicting interests? He might go quite astray in this maze, and\nAlyosha's heart could not endure uncertainty, because his love was always\nof an active character. He was incapable of passive love. If he loved any\none, he set to work at once to help him. And to do so he must know what he\nwas aiming at; he must know for certain what was best for each, and having\nascertained this it was natural for him to help them both. But instead of\na definite aim, he found nothing but uncertainty and perplexity on all\nsides. \"It was lacerating,\" as was said just now. But what could he\nunderstand even in this \"laceration\"? He did not understand the first word\nin this perplexing maze.\n\nSeeing Alyosha, Katerina Ivanovna said quickly and joyfully to Ivan, who\nhad already got up to go, \"A minute! Stay another minute! I want to hear\nthe opinion of this person here whom I trust absolutely. Don't go away,\"\nshe added, addressing Madame Hohlakov. She made Alyosha sit down beside\nher, and Madame Hohlakov sat opposite, by Ivan.\n\n\"You are all my friends here, all I have in the world, my dear friends,\"\nshe began warmly, in a voice which quivered with genuine tears of\nsuffering, and Alyosha's heart warmed to her at once. \"You, Alexey\nFyodorovitch, were witness yesterday of that abominable scene, and saw\nwhat I did. You did not see it, Ivan Fyodorovitch, he did. What he thought\nof me yesterday I don't know. I only know one thing, that if it were\nrepeated to-day, this minute, I should express the same feelings again as\nyesterday--the same feelings, the same words, the same actions. You\nremember my actions, Alexey Fyodorovitch; you checked me in one of them\"\n... (as she said that, she flushed and her eyes shone). \"I must tell you\nthat I can't get over it. Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I don't even know\nwhether I still love _him_. I feel _pity_ for him, and that is a poor sign\nof love. If I loved him, if I still loved him, perhaps I shouldn't be\nsorry for him now, but should hate him.\"\n\nHer voice quivered, and tears glittered on her eyelashes. Alyosha\nshuddered inwardly. \"That girl is truthful and sincere,\" he thought, \"and\nshe does not love Dmitri any more.\"\n\n\"That's true, that's true,\" cried Madame Hohlakov.\n\n\"Wait, dear. I haven't told you the chief, the final decision I came to\nduring the night. I feel that perhaps my decision is a terrible one--for\nme, but I foresee that nothing will induce me to change it--nothing. It\nwill be so all my life. My dear, kind, ever-faithful and generous adviser,\nthe one friend I have in the world, Ivan Fyodorovitch, with his deep\ninsight into the heart, approves and commends my decision. He knows it.\"\n\n\"Yes, I approve of it,\" Ivan assented, in a subdued but firm voice.\n\n\"But I should like Alyosha, too (Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, forgive my\ncalling you simply Alyosha), I should like Alexey Fyodorovitch, too, to\ntell me before my two friends whether I am right. I feel instinctively\nthat you, Alyosha, my dear brother (for you are a dear brother to me),\"\nshe said again ecstatically, taking his cold hand in her hot one, \"I\nforesee that your decision, your approval, will bring me peace, in spite\nof all my sufferings, for, after your words, I shall be calm and submit--I\nfeel that.\"\n\n\"I don't know what you are asking me,\" said Alyosha, flushing. \"I only\nknow that I love you and at this moment wish for your happiness more than\nmy own!... But I know nothing about such affairs,\" something impelled him\nto add hurriedly.\n\n\"In such affairs, Alexey Fyodorovitch, in such affairs, the chief thing is\nhonor and duty and something higher--I don't know what--but higher perhaps\neven than duty. I am conscious of this irresistible feeling in my heart,\nand it compels me irresistibly. But it may all be put in two words. I've\nalready decided, even if he marries that--creature,\" she began solemnly,\n\"whom I never, never can forgive, _even then I will not abandon him_.\nHenceforward I will never, never abandon him!\" she cried, breaking into a\nsort of pale, hysterical ecstasy. \"Not that I would run after him\ncontinually, get in his way and worry him. Oh, no! I will go away to\nanother town--where you like--but I will watch over him all my life--I will\nwatch over him all my life unceasingly. When he becomes unhappy with that\nwoman, and that is bound to happen quite soon, let him come to me and he\nwill find a friend, a sister.... Only a sister, of course, and so for\never; but he will learn at least that that sister is really his sister,\nwho loves him and has sacrificed all her life to him. I will gain my\npoint. I will insist on his knowing me and confiding entirely in me,\nwithout reserve,\" she cried, in a sort of frenzy. \"I will be a god to whom\nhe can pray--and that, at least, he owes me for his treachery and for what\nI suffered yesterday through him. And let him see that all my life I will\nbe true to him and the promise I gave him, in spite of his being untrue\nand betraying me. I will--I will become nothing but a means for his\nhappiness, or--how shall I say?--an instrument, a machine for his happiness,\nand that for my whole life, my whole life, and that he may see that all\nhis life! That's my decision. Ivan Fyodorovitch fully approves me.\"\n\nShe was breathless. She had perhaps intended to express her idea with more\ndignity, art and naturalness, but her speech was too hurried and crude. It\nwas full of youthful impulsiveness, it betrayed that she was still\nsmarting from yesterday's insult, and that her pride craved satisfaction.\nShe felt this herself. Her face suddenly darkened, an unpleasant look came\ninto her eyes. Alyosha at once saw it and felt a pang of sympathy. His\nbrother Ivan made it worse by adding:\n\n\"I've only expressed my own view,\" he said. \"From any one else, this would\nhave been affected and overstrained, but from you--no. Any other woman\nwould have been wrong, but you are right. I don't know how to explain it,\nbut I see that you are absolutely genuine and, therefore, you are right.\"\n\n\"But that's only for the moment. And what does this moment stand for?\nNothing but yesterday's insult.\" Madame Hohlakov obviously had not\nintended to interfere, but she could not refrain from this very just\ncomment.\n\n\"Quite so, quite so,\" cried Ivan, with peculiar eagerness, obviously\nannoyed at being interrupted, \"in any one else this moment would be only\ndue to yesterday's impression and would be only a moment. But with\nKaterina Ivanovna's character, that moment will last all her life. What\nfor any one else would be only a promise is for her an everlasting\nburdensome, grim perhaps, but unflagging duty. And she will be sustained\nby the feeling of this duty being fulfilled. Your life, Katerina Ivanovna,\nwill henceforth be spent in painful brooding over your own feelings, your\nown heroism, and your own suffering; but in the end that suffering will be\nsoftened and will pass into sweet contemplation of the fulfillment of a\nbold and proud design. Yes, proud it certainly is, and desperate in any\ncase, but a triumph for you. And the consciousness of it will at last be a\nsource of complete satisfaction and will make you resigned to everything\nelse.\"\n\nThis was unmistakably said with some malice and obviously with intention;\neven perhaps with no desire to conceal that he spoke ironically and with\nintention.\n\n\"Oh, dear, how mistaken it all is!\" Madame Hohlakov cried again.\n\n\"Alexey Fyodorovitch, you speak. I want dreadfully to know what you will\nsay!\" cried Katerina Ivanovna, and burst into tears. Alyosha got up from\nthe sofa.\n\n\"It's nothing, nothing!\" she went on through her tears. \"I'm upset, I\ndidn't sleep last night. But by the side of two such friends as you and\nyour brother I still feel strong--for I know--you two will never desert me.\"\n\n\"Unluckily I am obliged to return to Moscow--perhaps to-morrow--and to leave\nyou for a long time--And, unluckily, it's unavoidable,\" Ivan said suddenly.\n\n\"To-morrow--to Moscow!\" her face was suddenly contorted; \"but--but, dear me,\nhow fortunate!\" she cried in a voice suddenly changed. In one instant\nthere was no trace left of her tears. She underwent an instantaneous\ntransformation, which amazed Alyosha. Instead of a poor, insulted girl,\nweeping in a sort of \"laceration,\" he saw a woman completely self-\npossessed and even exceedingly pleased, as though something agreeable had\njust happened.\n\n\"Oh, not fortunate that I am losing you, of course not,\" she corrected\nherself suddenly, with a charming society smile. \"Such a friend as you are\ncould not suppose that. I am only too unhappy at losing you.\" She rushed\nimpulsively at Ivan, and seizing both his hands, pressed them warmly. \"But\nwhat is fortunate is that you will be able in Moscow to see auntie and\nAgafya and to tell them all the horror of my present position. You can\nspeak with complete openness to Agafya, but spare dear auntie. You will\nknow how to do that. You can't think how wretched I was yesterday and this\nmorning, wondering how I could write them that dreadful letter--for one can\nnever tell such things in a letter.... Now it will be easy for me to\nwrite, for you will see them and explain everything. Oh, how glad I am!\nBut I am only glad of that, believe me. Of course, no one can take your\nplace.... I will run at once to write the letter,\" she finished suddenly,\nand took a step as though to go out of the room.\n\n\"And what about Alyosha and his opinion, which you were so desperately\nanxious to hear?\" cried Madame Hohlakov. There was a sarcastic, angry note\nin her voice.\n\n\"I had not forgotten that,\" cried Katerina Ivanovna, coming to a sudden\nstandstill, \"and why are you so antagonistic at such a moment?\" she added,\nwith warm and bitter reproachfulness. \"What I said, I repeat. I must have\nhis opinion. More than that, I must have his decision! As he says, so it\nshall be. You see how anxious I am for your words, Alexey Fyodorovitch....\nBut what's the matter?\"\n\n\"I couldn't have believed it. I can't understand it!\" Alyosha cried\nsuddenly in distress.\n\n\"What? What?\"\n\n\"He is going to Moscow, and you cry out that you are glad. You said that\non purpose! And you begin explaining that you are not glad of that but\nsorry to be--losing a friend. But that was acting, too--you were playing a\npart--as in a theater!\"\n\n\"In a theater? What? What do you mean?\" exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna,\nprofoundly astonished, flushing crimson, and frowning.\n\n\"Though you assure him you are sorry to lose a friend in him, you persist\nin telling him to his face that it's fortunate he is going,\" said Alyosha\nbreathlessly. He was standing at the table and did not sit down.\n\n\"What are you talking about? I don't understand.\"\n\n\"I don't understand myself.... I seemed to see in a flash ... I know I am\nnot saying it properly, but I'll say it all the same,\" Alyosha went on in\nthe same shaking and broken voice. \"What I see is that perhaps you don't\nlove Dmitri at all ... and never have, from the beginning.... And Dmitri,\ntoo, has never loved you ... and only esteems you.... I really don't know\nhow I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell the truth ... for\nnobody here will tell the truth.\"\n\n\"What truth?\" cried Katerina Ivanovna, and there was an hysterical ring in\nher voice.\n\n\"I'll tell you,\" Alyosha went on with desperate haste, as though he were\njumping from the top of a house. \"Call Dmitri; I will fetch him--and let\nhim come here and take your hand and take Ivan's and join your hands. For\nyou're torturing Ivan, simply because you love him--and torturing him,\nbecause you love Dmitri through 'self-laceration'--with an unreal\nlove--because you've persuaded yourself.\"\n\nAlyosha broke off and was silent.\n\n\"You ... you ... you are a little religious idiot--that's what you are!\"\nKaterina Ivanovna snapped. Her face was white and her lips were moving\nwith anger.\n\nIvan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his hand.\n\n\"You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,\" he said, with an expression Alyosha\nhad never seen in his face before--an expression of youthful sincerity and\nstrong, irresistibly frank feeling. \"Katerina Ivanovna has never cared for\nme! She has known all the time that I cared for her--though I never said a\nword of my love to her--she knew, but she didn't care for me. I have never\nbeen her friend either, not for one moment; she is too proud to need my\nfriendship. She kept me at her side as a means of revenge. She revenged\nwith me and on me all the insults which she has been continually receiving\nfrom Dmitri ever since their first meeting. For even that first meeting\nhas rankled in her heart as an insult--that's what her heart is like! She\nhas talked to me of nothing but her love for him. I am going now; but,\nbelieve me, Katerina Ivanovna, you really love him. And the more he\ninsults you, the more you love him--that's your 'laceration.' You love him\njust as he is; you love him for insulting you. If he reformed, you'd give\nhim up at once and cease to love him. But you need him so as to\ncontemplate continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for\ninfidelity. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there's a great deal of\nhumiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes from pride.... I\nam too young and I've loved you too much. I know that I ought not to say\nthis, that it would be more dignified on my part simply to leave you, and\nit would be less offensive for you. But I am going far away, and shall\nnever come back.... It is for ever. I don't want to sit beside a\n'laceration.'... But I don't know how to speak now. I've said\neverything.... Good-by, Katerina Ivanovna; you can't be angry with me, for\nI am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if only by the fact\nthat I shall never see you again. Good-by! I don't want your hand. You\nhave tortured me too deliberately for me to be able to forgive you at this\nmoment. I shall forgive you later, but now I don't want your hand. 'Den\nDank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,' \" he added, with a forced smile, showing,\nhowever, that he could read Schiller, and read him till he knew him by\nheart--which Alyosha would never have believed. He went out of the room\nwithout saying good-by even to his hostess, Madame Hohlakov. Alyosha\nclasped his hands.\n\n\"Ivan!\" he cried desperately after him. \"Come back, Ivan! No, nothing will\ninduce him to come back now!\" he cried again, regretfully realizing it;\n\"but it's my fault, my fault. I began it! Ivan spoke angrily, wrongly.\nUnjustly and angrily. He must come back here, come back,\" Alyosha kept\nexclaiming frantically.\n\nKaterina Ivanovna went suddenly into the next room.\n\n\"You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel,\" Madame\nHohlakov whispered rapidly and ecstatically to Alyosha. \"I will do my\nutmost to prevent Ivan Fyodorovitch from going.\"\n\nHer face beamed with delight, to the great distress of Alyosha, but\nKaterina Ivanovna suddenly returned. She had two hundred-rouble notes in\nher hand.\n\n\"I have a great favor to ask of you, Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" she began,\naddressing Alyosha with an apparently calm and even voice, as though\nnothing had happened. \"A week--yes, I think it was a week ago--Dmitri\nFyodorovitch was guilty of a hasty and unjust action--a very ugly action.\nThere is a low tavern here, and in it he met that discharged officer, that\ncaptain, whom your father used to employ in some business. Dmitri\nFyodorovitch somehow lost his temper with this captain, seized him by the\nbeard and dragged him out into the street and for some distance along it,\nin that insulting fashion. And I am told that his son, a boy, quite a\nchild, who is at the school here, saw it and ran beside them crying and\nbegging for his father, appealing to every one to defend him, while every\none laughed. You must forgive me, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I cannot think\nwithout indignation of that disgraceful action of _his_ ... one of those\nactions of which only Dmitri Fyodorovitch would be capable in his anger\n... and in his passions! I can't describe it even.... I can't find my\nwords. I've made inquiries about his victim, and find he is quite a poor\nman. His name is Snegiryov. He did something wrong in the army and was\ndischarged. I can't tell you what. And now he has sunk into terrible\ndestitution, with his family--an unhappy family of sick children, and, I\nbelieve, an insane wife. He has been living here a long time; he used to\nwork as a copying clerk, but now he is getting nothing. I thought if you\n... that is I thought ... I don't know. I am so confused. You see, I\nwanted to ask you, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, to go to him, to find some\nexcuse to go to them--I mean to that captain--oh, goodness, how badly I\nexplain it!--and delicately, carefully, as only you know how to\" (Alyosha\nblushed), \"manage to give him this assistance, these two hundred roubles.\nHe will be sure to take it.... I mean, persuade him to take it.... Or,\nrather, what do I mean? You see it's not by way of compensation to prevent\nhim from taking proceedings (for I believe he meant to), but simply a\ntoken of sympathy, of a desire to assist him from me, Dmitri\nFyodorovitch's betrothed, not from himself.... But you know.... I would go\nmyself, but you'll know how to do it ever so much better. He lives in Lake\nStreet, in the house of a woman called Kalmikov.... For God's sake, Alexey\nFyodorovitch, do it for me, and now ... now I am rather ... tired. Good-\nby!\"\n\nShe turned and disappeared behind the portiere so quickly that Alyosha had\nnot time to utter a word, though he wanted to speak. He longed to beg her\npardon, to blame himself, to say something, for his heart was full and he\ncould not bear to go out of the room without it. But Madame Hohlakov took\nhim by the hand and drew him along with her. In the hall she stopped him\nagain as before.\n\n\"She is proud, she is struggling with herself; but kind, charming,\ngenerous,\" she exclaimed, in a half-whisper. \"Oh, how I love her,\nespecially sometimes, and how glad I am again of everything! Dear Alexey\nFyodorovitch, you didn't know, but I must tell you, that we all, all--both\nher aunts, I and all of us, Lise, even--have been hoping and praying for\nnothing for the last month but that she may give up your favorite Dmitri,\nwho takes no notice of her and does not care for her, and may marry Ivan\nFyodorovitch--such an excellent and cultivated young man, who loves her\nmore than anything in the world. We are in a regular plot to bring it\nabout, and I am even staying on here perhaps on that account.\"\n\n\"But she has been crying--she has been wounded again,\" cried Alyosha.\n\n\"Never trust a woman's tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never for the\nwomen in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.\"\n\n\"Mamma, you are spoiling him,\" Lise's little voice cried from behind the\ndoor.\n\n\"No, it was all my fault. I am horribly to blame,\" Alyosha repeated\nunconsoled, hiding his face in his hands in an agony of remorse for his\nindiscretion.\n\n\"Quite the contrary; you behaved like an angel, like an angel. I am ready\nto say so a thousand times over.\"\n\n\"Mamma, how has he behaved like an angel?\" Lise's voice was heard again.\n\n\"I somehow fancied all at once,\" Alyosha went on as though he had not\nheard Lise, \"that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid thing.... What\nwill happen now?\"\n\n\"To whom, to whom?\" cried Lise. \"Mamma, you really want to be the death of\nme. I ask you and you don't answer.\"\n\nAt the moment the maid ran in.\n\n\"Katerina Ivanovna is ill.... She is crying, struggling ... hysterics.\"\n\n\"What is the matter?\" cried Lise, in a tone of real anxiety. \"Mamma, I\nshall be having hysterics, and not she!\"\n\n\"Lise, for mercy's sake, don't scream, don't persecute me. At your age one\ncan't know everything that grown-up people know. I'll come and tell you\neverything you ought to know. Oh, mercy on us! I am coming, I am\ncoming.... Hysterics is a good sign, Alexey Fyodorovitch; it's an\nexcellent thing that she is hysterical. That's just as it ought to be. In\nsuch cases I am always against the woman, against all these feminine tears\nand hysterics. Run and say, Yulia, that I'll fly to her. As for Ivan\nFyodorovitch's going away like that, it's her own fault. But he won't go\naway. Lise, for mercy's sake, don't scream! Oh, yes; you are not\nscreaming. It's I am screaming. Forgive your mamma; but I am delighted,\ndelighted, delighted! Did you notice, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how young, how\nyoung Ivan Fyodorovitch was just now when he went out, when he said all\nthat and went out? I thought he was so learned, such a _savant_, and all\nof a sudden he behaved so warmly, openly, and youthfully, with such\nyouthful inexperience, and it was all so fine, like you.... And the way he\nrepeated that German verse, it was just like you! But I must fly, I must\nfly! Alexey Fyodorovitch, make haste to carry out her commission, and then\nmake haste back. Lise, do you want anything now? For mercy's sake, don't\nkeep Alexey Fyodorovitch a minute. He will come back to you at once.\"\n\nMadame Hohlakov at last ran off. Before leaving, Alyosha would have opened\nthe door to see Lise.\n\n\"On no account,\" cried Lise. \"On no account now. Speak through the door.\nHow have you come to be an angel? That's the only thing I want to know.\"\n\n\"For an awful piece of stupidity, Lise! Good-by!\"\n\n\"Don't dare to go away like that!\" Lise was beginning.\n\n\"Lise, I have a real sorrow! I'll be back directly, but I have a great,\ngreat sorrow!\"\n\nAnd he ran out of the room.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. A Laceration In The Cottage\n\n\nHe certainly was really grieved in a way he had seldom been before. He had\nrushed in like a fool, and meddled in what? In a love-affair. \"But what do\nI know about it? What can I tell about such things?\" he repeated to\nhimself for the hundredth time, flushing crimson. \"Oh, being ashamed would\nbe nothing; shame is only the punishment I deserve. The trouble is I shall\ncertainly have caused more unhappiness.... And Father Zossima sent me to\nreconcile and bring them together. Is this the way to bring them\ntogether?\" Then he suddenly remembered how he had tried to join their\nhands, and he felt fearfully ashamed again. \"Though I acted quite\nsincerely, I must be more sensible in the future,\" he concluded suddenly,\nand did not even smile at his conclusion.\n\nKaterina Ivanovna's commission took him to Lake Street, and his brother\nDmitri lived close by, in a turning out of Lake Street. Alyosha decided to\ngo to him in any case before going to the captain, though he had a\npresentiment that he would not find his brother. He suspected that he\nwould intentionally keep out of his way now, but he must find him anyhow.\nTime was passing: the thought of his dying elder had not left Alyosha for\none minute from the time he set off from the monastery.\n\nThere was one point which interested him particularly about Katerina\nIvanovna's commission; when she had mentioned the captain's son, the\nlittle schoolboy who had run beside his father crying, the idea had at\nonce struck Alyosha that this must be the schoolboy who had bitten his\nfinger when he, Alyosha, asked him what he had done to hurt him. Now\nAlyosha felt practically certain of this, though he could not have said\nwhy. Thinking of another subject was a relief, and he resolved to think no\nmore about the \"mischief\" he had done, and not to torture himself with\nremorse, but to do what he had to do, let come what would. At that thought\nhe was completely comforted. Turning to the street where Dmitri lodged, he\nfelt hungry, and taking out of his pocket the roll he had brought from his\nfather's, he ate it. It made him feel stronger.\n\nDmitri was not at home. The people of the house, an old cabinet-maker, his\nson, and his old wife, looked with positive suspicion at Alyosha. \"He\nhasn't slept here for the last three nights. Maybe he has gone away,\" the\nold man said in answer to Alyosha's persistent inquiries. Alyosha saw that\nhe was answering in accordance with instructions. When he asked whether he\nwere not at Grushenka's or in hiding at Foma's (Alyosha spoke so freely on\npurpose), all three looked at him in alarm. \"They are fond of him, they\nare doing their best for him,\" thought Alyosha. \"That's good.\"\n\nAt last he found the house in Lake Street. It was a decrepit little house,\nsunk on one side, with three windows looking into the street, and with a\nmuddy yard, in the middle of which stood a solitary cow. He crossed the\nyard and found the door opening into the passage. On the left of the\npassage lived the old woman of the house with her old daughter. Both\nseemed to be deaf. In answer to his repeated inquiry for the captain, one\nof them at last understood that he was asking for their lodgers, and\npointed to a door across the passage. The captain's lodging turned out to\nbe a simple cottage room. Alyosha had his hand on the iron latch to open\nthe door, when he was struck by the strange hush within. Yet he knew from\nKaterina Ivanovna's words that the man had a family. \"Either they are all\nasleep or perhaps they have heard me coming and are waiting for me to open\nthe door. I'd better knock first,\" and he knocked. An answer came, but not\nat once, after an interval of perhaps ten seconds.\n\n\"Who's there?\" shouted some one in a loud and very angry voice.\n\nThen Alyosha opened the door and crossed the threshold. He found himself\nin a regular peasant's room. Though it was large, it was cumbered up with\ndomestic belongings of all sorts, and there were several people in it. On\nthe left was a large Russian stove. From the stove to the window on the\nleft was a string running across the room, and on it there were rags\nhanging. There was a bedstead against the wall on each side, right and\nleft, covered with knitted quilts. On the one on the left was a pyramid of\nfour print-covered pillows, each smaller than the one beneath. On the\nother there was only one very small pillow. The opposite corner was\nscreened off by a curtain or a sheet hung on a string. Behind this curtain\ncould be seen a bed made up on a bench and a chair. The rough square table\nof plain wood had been moved into the middle window. The three windows,\nwhich consisted each of four tiny greenish mildewy panes, gave little\nlight, and were close shut, so that the room was not very light and rather\nstuffy. On the table was a frying-pan with the remains of some fried eggs,\na half-eaten piece of bread, and a small bottle with a few drops of vodka.\n\nA woman of genteel appearance, wearing a cotton gown, was sitting on a\nchair by the bed on the left. Her face was thin and yellow, and her sunken\ncheeks betrayed at the first glance that she was ill. But what struck\nAlyosha most was the expression in the poor woman's eyes--a look of\nsurprised inquiry and yet of haughty pride. And while he was talking to\nher husband, her big brown eyes moved from one speaker to the other with\nthe same haughty and questioning expression. Beside her at the window\nstood a young girl, rather plain, with scanty reddish hair, poorly but\nvery neatly dressed. She looked disdainfully at Alyosha as he came in.\nBeside the other bed was sitting another female figure. She was a very sad\nsight, a young girl of about twenty, but hunchback and crippled \"with\nwithered legs,\" as Alyosha was told afterwards. Her crutches stood in the\ncorner close by. The strikingly beautiful and gentle eyes of this poor\ngirl looked with mild serenity at Alyosha. A man of forty-five was sitting\nat the table, finishing the fried eggs. He was spare, small and weakly\nbuilt. He had reddish hair and a scanty light-colored beard, very much\nlike a wisp of tow (this comparison and the phrase \"a wisp of tow\" flashed\nat once into Alyosha's mind for some reason, he remembered it afterwards).\nIt was obviously this gentleman who had shouted to him, as there was no\nother man in the room. But when Alyosha went in, he leapt up from the\nbench on which he was sitting, and, hastily wiping his mouth with a ragged\nnapkin, darted up to Alyosha.\n\n\"It's a monk come to beg for the monastery. A nice place to come to!\" the\ngirl standing in the left corner said aloud. The man spun round instantly\ntowards her and answered her in an excited and breaking voice:\n\n\"No, Varvara, you are wrong. Allow me to ask,\" he turned again to Alyosha,\n\"what has brought you to--our retreat?\"\n\nAlyosha looked attentively at him. It was the first time he had seen him.\nThere was something angular, flurried and irritable about him. Though he\nhad obviously just been drinking, he was not drunk. There was\nextraordinary impudence in his expression, and yet, strange to say, at the\nsame time there was fear. He looked like a man who had long been kept in\nsubjection and had submitted to it, and now had suddenly turned and was\ntrying to assert himself. Or, better still, like a man who wants\ndreadfully to hit you but is horribly afraid you will hit him. In his\nwords and in the intonation of his shrill voice there was a sort of crazy\nhumor, at times spiteful and at times cringing, and continually shifting\nfrom one tone to another. The question about \"our retreat\" he had asked as\nit were quivering all over, rolling his eyes, and skipping up so close to\nAlyosha that he instinctively drew back a step. He was dressed in a very\nshabby dark cotton coat, patched and spotted. He wore checked trousers of\nan extremely light color, long out of fashion, and of very thin material.\nThey were so crumpled and so short that he looked as though he had grown\nout of them like a boy.\n\n\"I am Alexey Karamazov,\" Alyosha began in reply.\n\n\"I quite understand that, sir,\" the gentleman snapped out at once to\nassure him that he knew who he was already. \"I am Captain Snegiryov, sir,\nbut I am still desirous to know precisely what has led you--\"\n\n\"Oh, I've come for nothing special. I wanted to have a word with you--if\nonly you allow me.\"\n\n\"In that case, here is a chair, sir; kindly be seated. That's what they\nused to say in the old comedies, 'kindly be seated,' \" and with a rapid\ngesture he seized an empty chair (it was a rough wooden chair, not\nupholstered) and set it for him almost in the middle of the room; then,\ntaking another similar chair for himself, he sat down facing Alyosha, so\nclose to him that their knees almost touched.\n\n\"Nikolay Ilyitch Snegiryov, sir, formerly a captain in the Russian\ninfantry, put to shame for his vices, but still a captain. Though I might\nnot be one now for the way I talk; for the last half of my life I've\nlearnt to say 'sir.' It's a word you use when you've come down in the\nworld.\"\n\n\"That's very true,\" smiled Alyosha. \"But is it used involuntarily or on\npurpose?\"\n\n\"As God's above, it's involuntary, and I usen't to use it! I didn't use\nthe word 'sir' all my life, but as soon as I sank into low water I began\nto say 'sir.' It's the work of a higher power. I see you are interested in\ncontemporary questions, but how can I have excited your curiosity, living\nas I do in surroundings impossible for the exercise of hospitality?\"\n\n\"I've come--about that business.\"\n\n\"About what business?\" the captain interrupted impatiently.\n\n\"About your meeting with my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" Alyosha blurted\nout awkwardly.\n\n\"What meeting, sir? You don't mean that meeting? About my 'wisp of tow,'\nthen?\" He moved closer so that his knees positively knocked against\nAlyosha. His lips were strangely compressed like a thread.\n\n\"What wisp of tow?\" muttered Alyosha.\n\n\"He is come to complain of me, father!\" cried a voice familiar to\nAlyosha--the voice of the schoolboy--from behind the curtain. \"I bit his\nfinger just now.\" The curtain was pulled, and Alyosha saw his assailant\nlying on a little bed made up on the bench and the chair in the corner\nunder the ikons. The boy lay covered by his coat and an old wadded quilt.\nHe was evidently unwell, and, judging by his glittering eyes, he was in a\nfever. He looked at Alyosha without fear, as though he felt he was at home\nand could not be touched.\n\n\"What! Did he bite your finger?\" The captain jumped up from his chair.\n\"Was it your finger he bit?\"\n\n\"Yes. He was throwing stones with other schoolboys. There were six of them\nagainst him alone. I went up to him, and he threw a stone at me and then\nanother at my head. I asked him what I had done to him. And then he rushed\nat me and bit my finger badly, I don't know why.\"\n\n\"I'll thrash him, sir, at once--this minute!\" The captain jumped up from\nhis seat.\n\n\"But I am not complaining at all, I am simply telling you ... I don't want\nhim to be thrashed. Besides, he seems to be ill.\"\n\n\"And do you suppose I'd thrash him? That I'd take my Ilusha and thrash him\nbefore you for your satisfaction? Would you like it done at once, sir?\"\nsaid the captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha, as though he were going to\nattack him. \"I am sorry about your finger, sir; but instead of thrashing\nIlusha, would you like me to chop off my four fingers with this knife here\nbefore your eyes to satisfy your just wrath? I should think four fingers\nwould be enough to satisfy your thirst for vengeance. You won't ask for\nthe fifth one too?\" He stopped short with a catch in his throat. Every\nfeature in his face was twitching and working; he looked extremely\ndefiant. He was in a sort of frenzy.\n\n\"I think I understand it all now,\" said Alyosha gently and sorrowfully,\nstill keeping his seat. \"So your boy is a good boy, he loves his father,\nand he attacked me as the brother of your assailant.... Now I understand\nit,\" he repeated thoughtfully. \"But my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch regrets\nhis action, I know that, and if only it is possible for him to come to\nyou, or better still, to meet you in that same place, he will ask your\nforgiveness before every one--if you wish it.\"\n\n\"After pulling out my beard, you mean, he will ask my forgiveness? And he\nthinks that will be a satisfactory finish, doesn't he?\"\n\n\"Oh, no! On the contrary, he will do anything you like and in any way you\nlike.\"\n\n\"So if I were to ask his highness to go down on his knees before me in\nthat very tavern--'The Metropolis' it's called--or in the market-place, he\nwould do it?\"\n\n\"Yes, he would even go down on his knees.\"\n\n\"You've pierced me to the heart, sir. Touched me to tears and pierced me\nto the heart! I am only too sensible of your brother's generosity. Allow\nme to introduce my family, my two daughters and my son--my litter. If I\ndie, who will care for them, and while I live who but they will care for a\nwretch like me? That's a great thing the Lord has ordained for every man\nof my sort, sir. For there must be some one able to love even a man like\nme.\"\n\n\"Ah, that's perfectly true!\" exclaimed Alyosha.\n\n\"Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you put us to\nshame!\" cried the girl by the window, suddenly turning to her father with\na disdainful and contemptuous air.\n\n\"Wait a little, Varvara!\" cried her father, speaking peremptorily but\nlooking at her quite approvingly. \"That's her character,\" he said,\naddressing Alyosha again.\n\n\n    \"And in all nature there was naught\n    That could find favor in his eyes--\n\n\nor rather in the feminine: that could find favor in her eyes. But now let\nme present you to my wife, Arina Petrovna. She is crippled, she is forty-\nthree; she can move, but very little. She is of humble origin. Arina\nPetrovna, compose your countenance. This is Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov.\nGet up, Alexey Fyodorovitch.\" He took him by the hand and with unexpected\nforce pulled him up. \"You must stand up to be introduced to a lady. It's\nnot the Karamazov, mamma, who ... h'm ... etcetera, but his brother,\nradiant with modest virtues. Come, Arina Petrovna, come, mamma, first your\nhand to be kissed.\"\n\nAnd he kissed his wife's hand respectfully and even tenderly. The girl at\nthe window turned her back indignantly on the scene; an expression of\nextraordinary cordiality came over the haughtily inquiring face of the\nwoman.\n\n\"Good morning! Sit down, Mr. Tchernomazov,\" she said.\n\n\"Karamazov, mamma, Karamazov. We are of humble origin,\" he whispered\nagain.\n\n\"Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always think of\nTchernomazov.... Sit down. Why has he pulled you up? He calls me crippled,\nbut I am not, only my legs are swollen like barrels, and I am shriveled up\nmyself. Once I used to be so fat, but now it's as though I had swallowed a\nneedle.\"\n\n\"We are of humble origin,\" the captain muttered again.\n\n\"Oh, father, father!\" the hunchback girl, who had till then been silent on\nher chair, said suddenly, and she hid her eyes in her handkerchief.\n\n\"Buffoon!\" blurted out the girl at the window.\n\n\"Have you heard our news?\" said the mother, pointing at her daughters.\n\"It's like clouds coming over; the clouds pass and we have music again.\nWhen we were with the army, we used to have many such guests. I don't mean\nto make any comparisons; every one to their taste. The deacon's wife used\nto come then and say, 'Alexandr Alexandrovitch is a man of the noblest\nheart, but Nastasya Petrovna,' she would say, 'is of the brood of hell.'\n'Well,' I said, 'that's a matter of taste; but you are a little spitfire.'\n'And you want keeping in your place,' says she. 'You black sword,' said I,\n'who asked you to teach me?' 'But my breath,' says she, 'is clean, and\nyours is unclean.' 'You ask all the officers whether my breath is\nunclean.' And ever since then I had it in my mind. Not long ago I was\nsitting here as I am now, when I saw that very general come in who came\nhere for Easter, and I asked him: 'Your Excellency,' said I, 'can a lady's\nbreath be unpleasant?' 'Yes,' he answered; 'you ought to open a window-\npane or open the door, for the air is not fresh here.' And they all go on\nlike that! And what is my breath to them? The dead smell worse still! 'I\nwon't spoil the air,' said I, 'I'll order some slippers and go away.' My\ndarlings, don't blame your own mother! Nikolay Ilyitch, how is it I can't\nplease you? There's only Ilusha who comes home from school and loves me.\nYesterday he brought me an apple. Forgive your own mother--forgive a poor\nlonely creature! Why has my breath become unpleasant to you?\"\n\nAnd the poor mad woman broke into sobs, and tears streamed down her\ncheeks. The captain rushed up to her.\n\n\"Mamma, mamma, my dear, give over! You are not lonely. Every one loves\nyou, every one adores you.\" He began kissing both her hands again and\ntenderly stroking her face; taking the dinner-napkin, he began wiping away\nher tears. Alyosha fancied that he too had tears in his eyes. \"There, you\nsee, you hear?\" he turned with a sort of fury to Alyosha, pointing to the\npoor imbecile.\n\n\"I see and hear,\" muttered Alyosha.\n\n\"Father, father, how can you--with him! Let him alone!\" cried the boy,\nsitting up in his bed and gazing at his father with glowing eyes.\n\n\"Do give over fooling, showing off your silly antics which never lead to\nanything!\" shouted Varvara, stamping her foot with passion.\n\n\"Your anger is quite just this time, Varvara, and I'll make haste to\nsatisfy you. Come, put on your cap, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and I'll put on\nmine. We will go out. I have a word to say to you in earnest, but not\nwithin these walls. This girl sitting here is my daughter Nina; I forgot\nto introduce her to you. She is a heavenly angel incarnate ... who has\nflown down to us mortals,... if you can understand.\"\n\n\"There he is shaking all over, as though he is in convulsions!\" Varvara\nwent on indignantly.\n\n\"And she there stamping her foot at me and calling me a fool just now, she\nis a heavenly angel incarnate too, and she has good reason to call me so.\nCome along, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we must make an end.\"\n\nAnd, snatching Alyosha's hand, he drew him out of the room into the\nstreet.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. And In The Open Air\n\n\n\"The air is fresh, but in my apartment it is not so in any sense of the\nword. Let us walk slowly, sir. I should be glad of your kind interest.\"\n\n\"I too have something important to say to you,\" observed Alyosha, \"only I\ndon't know how to begin.\"\n\n\"To be sure you must have business with me. You would never have looked in\nupon me without some object. Unless you come simply to complain of the\nboy, and that's hardly likely. And, by the way, about the boy: I could not\nexplain to you in there, but here I will describe that scene to you. My\ntow was thicker a week ago--I mean my beard. That's the nickname they give\nto my beard, the schoolboys most of all. Well, your brother Dmitri\nFyodorovitch was pulling me by my beard, I'd done nothing, he was in a\ntowering rage and happened to come upon me. He dragged me out of the\ntavern into the market-place; at that moment the boys were coming out of\nschool, and with them Ilusha. As soon as he saw me in such a state he\nrushed up to me. 'Father,' he cried, 'father!' He caught hold of me,\nhugged me, tried to pull me away, crying to my assailant, 'Let go, let go,\nit's my father, forgive him!'--yes, he actually cried 'forgive him.' He\nclutched at that hand, that very hand, in his little hands and kissed\nit.... I remember his little face at that moment, I haven't forgotten it\nand I never shall!\"\n\n\"I swear,\" cried Alyosha, \"that my brother will express his most deep and\nsincere regret, even if he has to go down on his knees in that same\nmarket-place.... I'll make him or he is no brother of mine!\"\n\n\"Aha, then it's only a suggestion! And it does not come from him but\nsimply from the generosity of your own warm heart. You should have said\nso. No, in that case allow me to tell you of your brother's highly\nchivalrous soldierly generosity, for he did give expression to it at the\ntime. He left off dragging me by my beard and released me: 'You are an\nofficer,' he said, 'and I am an officer, if you can find a decent man to\nbe your second send me your challenge. I will give satisfaction, though\nyou are a scoundrel.' That's what he said. A chivalrous spirit indeed! I\nretired with Ilusha, and that scene is a family record imprinted for ever\non Ilusha's soul. No, it's not for us to claim the privileges of noblemen.\nJudge for yourself. You've just been in our mansion, what did you see\nthere? Three ladies, one a cripple and weak-minded, another a cripple and\nhunchback and the third not crippled but far too clever. She is a student,\ndying to get back to Petersburg, to work for the emancipation of the\nRussian woman on the banks of the Neva. I won't speak of Ilusha, he is\nonly nine. I am alone in the world, and if I die, what will become of all\nof them? I simply ask you that. And if I challenge him and he kills me on\nthe spot, what then? What will become of them? And worse still, if he\ndoesn't kill me but only cripples me: I couldn't work, but I should still\nbe a mouth to feed. Who would feed it and who would feed them all? Must I\ntake Ilusha from school and send him to beg in the streets? That's what it\nmeans for me to challenge him to a duel. It's silly talk and nothing\nelse.\"\n\n\"He will beg your forgiveness, he will bow down at your feet in the middle\nof the market-place,\" cried Alyosha again, with glowing eyes.\n\n\"I did think of prosecuting him,\" the captain went on, \"but look in our\ncode, could I get much compensation for a personal injury? And then\nAgrafena Alexandrovna(3) sent for me and shouted at me: 'Don't dare to\ndream of it! If you proceed against him, I'll publish it to all the world\nthat he beat you for your dishonesty, and then you will be prosecuted.' I\ncall God to witness whose was the dishonesty and by whose commands I\nacted, wasn't it by her own and Fyodor Pavlovitch's? 'And what's more,'\nshe went on, 'I'll dismiss you for good and you'll never earn another\npenny from me. I'll speak to my merchant too' (that's what she calls her\nold man) 'and he will dismiss you!' And if he dismisses me, what can I\nearn then from any one? Those two are all I have to look to, for your\nFyodor Pavlovitch has not only given over employing me, for another\nreason, but he means to make use of papers I've signed to go to law\nagainst me. And so I kept quiet, and you have seen our retreat. But now\nlet me ask you: did Ilusha hurt your finger much? I didn't like to go into\nit in our mansion before him.\"\n\n\"Yes, very much, and he was in a great fury. He was avenging you on me as\na Karamazov, I see that now. But if only you had seen how he was throwing\nstones at his school-fellows! It's very dangerous. They might kill him.\nThey are children and stupid. A stone may be thrown and break somebody's\nhead.\"\n\n\"That's just what has happened. He has been bruised by a stone to-day. Not\non the head but on the chest, just above the heart. He came home crying\nand groaning and now he is ill.\"\n\n\"And you know he attacks them first. He is bitter against them on your\naccount. They say he stabbed a boy called Krassotkin with a pen-knife not\nlong ago.\"\n\n\"I've heard about that too, it's dangerous. Krassotkin is an official\nhere, we may hear more about it.\"\n\n\"I would advise you,\" Alyosha went on warmly, \"not to send him to school\nat all for a time till he is calmer ... and his anger is passed.\"\n\n\"Anger!\" the captain repeated, \"that's just what it is. He is a little\ncreature, but it's a mighty anger. You don't know all, sir. Let me tell\nyou more. Since that incident all the boys have been teasing him about the\n'wisp of tow.' Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are\nangels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.\nTheir teasing has stirred up a gallant spirit in Ilusha. An ordinary boy,\na weak son, would have submitted, have felt ashamed of his father, sir,\nbut he stood up for his father against them all. For his father and for\ntruth and justice. For what he suffered when he kissed your brother's hand\nand cried to him 'Forgive father, forgive him,'--that only God knows--and I,\nhis father. For our children--not your children, but ours--the children of\nthe poor gentlemen looked down upon by every one--know what justice means,\nsir, even at nine years old. How should the rich know? They don't explore\nsuch depths once in their lives. But at that moment in the square when he\nkissed his hand, at that moment my Ilusha had grasped all that justice\nmeans. That truth entered into him and crushed him for ever, sir,\" the\ncaptain said hotly again with a sort of frenzy, and he struck his right\nfist against his left palm as though he wanted to show how \"the truth\"\ncrushed Ilusha. \"That very day, sir, he fell ill with fever and was\ndelirious all night. All that day he hardly said a word to me, but I\nnoticed he kept watching me from the corner, though he turned to the\nwindow and pretended to be learning his lessons. But I could see his mind\nwas not on his lessons. Next day I got drunk to forget my troubles, sinful\nman as I am, and I don't remember much. Mamma began crying, too--I am very\nfond of mamma--well, I spent my last penny drowning my troubles. Don't\ndespise me for that, sir, in Russia men who drink are the best. The best\nmen amongst us are the greatest drunkards. I lay down and I don't remember\nabout Ilusha, though all that day the boys had been jeering at him at\nschool. 'Wisp of tow,' they shouted, 'your father was pulled out of the\ntavern by his wisp of tow, you ran by and begged forgiveness.' \"\n\n\"On the third day when he came back from school, I saw he looked pale and\nwretched. 'What is it?' I asked. He wouldn't answer. Well, there's no\ntalking in our mansion without mamma and the girls taking part in it.\nWhat's more, the girls had heard about it the very first day. Varvara had\nbegun snarling. 'You fools and buffoons, can you ever do anything\nrational?' 'Quite so,' I said, 'can we ever do anything rational?' For the\ntime I turned it off like that. So in the evening I took the boy out for a\nwalk, for you must know we go for a walk every evening, always the same\nway, along which we are going now--from our gate to that great stone which\nlies alone in the road under the hurdle, which marks the beginning of the\ntown pasture. A beautiful and lonely spot, sir. Ilusha and I walked along\nhand in hand as usual. He has a little hand, his fingers are thin and\ncold--he suffers with his chest, you know. 'Father,' said he, 'father!'\n'Well?' said I. I saw his eyes flashing. 'Father, how he treated you\nthen!' 'It can't be helped, Ilusha,' I said. 'Don't forgive him, father,\ndon't forgive him! At school they say that he has paid you ten roubles for\nit.' 'No, Ilusha,' said I, 'I would not take money from him for anything.'\nThen he began trembling all over, took my hand in both his and kissed it\nagain. 'Father,' he said, 'father, challenge him to a duel, at school they\nsay you are a coward and won't challenge him, and that you'll accept ten\nroubles from him.' 'I can't challenge him to a duel, Ilusha,' I answered.\nAnd I told briefly what I've just told you. He listened. 'Father,' he\nsaid, 'anyway don't forgive it. When I grow up I'll call him out myself\nand kill him.' His eyes shone and glowed. And of course I am his father,\nand I had to put in a word: 'It's a sin to kill,' I said, 'even in a\nduel.' 'Father,' he said, 'when I grow up, I'll knock him down, knock the\nsword out of his hand, I'll fall on him, wave my sword over him and say:\n\"I could kill you, but I forgive you, so there!\" ' You see what the\nworkings of his little mind have been during these two days; he must have\nbeen planning that vengeance all day, and raving about it at night.\n\n\"But he began to come home from school badly beaten, I found out about it\nthe day before yesterday, and you are right, I won't send him to that\nschool any more. I heard that he was standing up against all the class\nalone and defying them all, that his heart was full of resentment, of\nbitterness--I was alarmed about him. We went for another walk. 'Father,' he\nasked, 'are the rich people stronger than any one else on earth?' 'Yes,\nIlusha,' I said, 'there are no people on earth stronger than the rich.'\n'Father,' he said, 'I will get rich, I will become an officer and conquer\neverybody. The Tsar will reward me, I will come back here and then no one\nwill dare--' Then he was silent and his lips still kept trembling.\n'Father,' he said, 'what a horrid town this is.' 'Yes, Ilusha,' I said,\n'it isn't a very nice town.' 'Father, let us move into another town, a\nnice one,' he said, 'where people don't know about us.' 'We will move, we\nwill, Ilusha,' said I, 'only I must save up for it.' I was glad to be able\nto turn his mind from painful thoughts, and we began to dream of how we\nwould move to another town, how we would buy a horse and cart. 'We will\nput mamma and your sisters inside, we will cover them up and we'll walk,\nyou shall have a lift now and then, and I'll walk beside, for we must take\ncare of our horse, we can't all ride. That's how we'll go.' He was\nenchanted at that, most of all at the thought of having a horse and\ndriving him. For of course a Russian boy is born among horses. We\nchattered a long while. Thank God, I thought, I have diverted his mind and\ncomforted him.\n\n\"That was the day before yesterday, in the evening, but last night\neverything was changed. He had gone to school in the morning, he came back\ndepressed, terribly depressed. In the evening I took him by the hand and\nwe went for a walk; he would not talk. There was a wind blowing and no\nsun, and a feeling of autumn; twilight was coming on. We walked along,\nboth of us depressed. 'Well, my boy,' said I, 'how about our setting off\non our travels?' I thought I might bring him back to our talk of the day\nbefore. He didn't answer, but I felt his fingers trembling in my hand. Ah,\nI thought, it's a bad job; there's something fresh. We had reached the\nstone where we are now. I sat down on the stone. And in the air there were\nlots of kites flapping and whirling. There were as many as thirty in\nsight. Of course, it's just the season for the kites. 'Look, Ilusha,' said\nI, 'it's time we got out our last year's kite again. I'll mend it, where\nhave you put it away?' My boy made no answer. He looked away and turned\nsideways to me. And then a gust of wind blew up the sand. He suddenly fell\non me, threw both his little arms round my neck and held me tight. You\nknow, when children are silent and proud, and try to keep back their tears\nwhen they are in great trouble and suddenly break down, their tears fall\nin streams. With those warm streams of tears, he suddenly wetted my face.\nHe sobbed and shook as though he were in convulsions, and squeezed up\nagainst me as I sat on the stone. 'Father,' he kept crying, 'dear father,\nhow he insulted you!' And I sobbed too. We sat shaking in each other's\narms. 'Ilusha,' I said to him, 'Ilusha darling.' No one saw us then. God\nalone saw us, I hope He will record it to my credit. You must thank your\nbrother, Alexey Fyodorovitch. No, sir, I won't thrash my boy for your\nsatisfaction.\"\n\nHe had gone back to his original tone of resentful buffoonery. Alyosha\nfelt though that he trusted him, and that if there had been some one else\nin his, Alyosha's place, the man would not have spoken so openly and would\nnot have told what he had just told. This encouraged Alyosha, whose heart\nwas trembling on the verge of tears.\n\n\"Ah, how I would like to make friends with your boy!\" he cried. \"If you\ncould arrange it--\"\n\n\"Certainly, sir,\" muttered the captain.\n\n\"But now listen to something quite different!\" Alyosha went on. \"I have a\nmessage for you. That same brother of mine, Dmitri, has insulted his\nbetrothed, too, a noble-hearted girl of whom you have probably heard. I\nhave a right to tell you of her wrong; I ought to do so, in fact, for\nhearing of the insult done to you and learning all about your unfortunate\nposition, she commissioned me at once--just now--to bring you this help from\nher--but only from her alone, not from Dmitri, who has abandoned her. Nor\nfrom me, his brother, nor from any one else, but from her, only from her!\nShe entreats you to accept her help.... You have both been insulted by the\nsame man. She thought of you only when she had just received a similar\ninsult from him--similar in its cruelty, I mean. She comes like a sister to\nhelp a brother in misfortune.... She told me to persuade you to take these\ntwo hundred roubles from her, as from a sister, knowing that you are in\nsuch need. No one will know of it, it can give rise to no unjust slander.\nThere are the two hundred roubles, and I swear you must take them\nunless--unless all men are to be enemies on earth! But there are brothers\neven on earth.... You have a generous heart ... you must see that, you\nmust,\" and Alyosha held out two new rainbow-colored hundred-rouble notes.\n\nThey were both standing at the time by the great stone close to the fence,\nand there was no one near. The notes seemed to produce a tremendous\nimpression on the captain. He started, but at first only from\nastonishment. Such an outcome of their conversation was the last thing he\nexpected. Nothing could have been farther from his dreams than help from\nany one--and such a sum!\n\nHe took the notes, and for a minute he was almost unable to answer, quite\na new expression came into his face.\n\n\"That for me? So much money--two hundred roubles! Good heavens! Why, I\nhaven't seen so much money for the last four years! Mercy on us! And she\nsays she is a sister.... And is that the truth?\"\n\n\"I swear that all I told you is the truth,\" cried Alyosha.\n\nThe captain flushed red.\n\n\"Listen, my dear, listen. If I take it, I shan't be behaving like a\nscoundrel? In your eyes, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I shan't be a scoundrel? No,\nAlexey Fyodorovitch, listen, listen,\" he hurried, touching Alyosha with\nboth his hands. \"You are persuading me to take it, saying that it's a\nsister sends it, but inwardly, in your heart won't you feel contempt for\nme if I take it, eh?\"\n\n\"No, no, on my salvation I swear I shan't! And no one will ever know but\nme--I, you and she, and one other lady, her great friend.\"\n\n\"Never mind the lady! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, at a moment like this\nyou must listen, for you can't understand what these two hundred roubles\nmean to me now.\" The poor fellow went on rising gradually into a sort of\nincoherent, almost wild enthusiasm. He was thrown off his balance and\ntalked extremely fast, as though afraid he would not be allowed to say all\nhe had to say.\n\n\"Besides its being honestly acquired from a 'sister,' so highly respected\nand revered, do you know that now I can look after mamma and Nina, my\nhunchback angel daughter? Doctor Herzenstube came to me in the kindness of\nhis heart and was examining them both for a whole hour. 'I can make\nnothing of it,' said he, but he prescribed a mineral water which is kept\nat a chemist's here. He said it would be sure to do her good, and he\nordered baths, too, with some medicine in them. The mineral water costs\nthirty copecks, and she'd need to drink forty bottles perhaps; so I took\nthe prescription and laid it on the shelf under the ikons, and there it\nlies. And he ordered hot baths for Nina with something dissolved in them,\nmorning and evening. But how can we carry out such a cure in our mansion,\nwithout servants, without help, without a bath, and without water? Nina is\nrheumatic all over, I don't think I told you that. All her right side\naches at night, she is in agony, and, would you believe it, the angel\nbears it without groaning for fear of waking us. We eat what we can get,\nand she'll only take the leavings, what you'd scarcely give to a dog. 'I\nam not worth it, I am taking it from you, I am a burden on you,' that's\nwhat her angel eyes try to express. We wait on her, but she doesn't like\nit. 'I am a useless cripple, no good to any one.' As though she were not\nworth it, when she is the saving of all of us with her angelic sweetness.\nWithout her, without her gentle word it would be hell among us! She\nsoftens even Varvara. And don't judge Varvara harshly either, she is an\nangel too, she, too, has suffered wrong. She came to us for the summer,\nand she brought sixteen roubles she had earned by lessons and saved up, to\ngo back with to Petersburg in September, that is now. But we took her\nmoney and lived on it, so now she has nothing to go back with. Though\nindeed she couldn't go back, for she has to work for us like a slave. She\nis like an overdriven horse with all of us on her back. She waits on us\nall, mends and washes, sweeps the floor, puts mamma to bed. And mamma is\ncapricious and tearful and insane! And now I can get a servant with this\nmoney, you understand, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I can get medicines for the\ndear creatures, I can send my student to Petersburg, I can buy beef, I can\nfeed them properly. Good Lord, but it's a dream!\"\n\nAlyosha was delighted that he had brought him such happiness and that the\npoor fellow had consented to be made happy.\n\n\"Stay, Alexey Fyodorovitch, stay,\" the captain began to talk with frenzied\nrapidity, carried away by a new day-dream. \"Do you know that Ilusha and I\nwill perhaps really carry out our dream. We will buy a horse and cart, a\nblack horse, he insists on its being black, and we will set off as we\npretended the other day. I have an old friend, a lawyer in K. province,\nand I heard through a trustworthy man that if I were to go he'd give me a\nplace as clerk in his office, so, who knows, maybe he would. So I'd just\nput mamma and Nina in the cart, and Ilusha could drive, and I'd walk, I'd\nwalk.... Why, if I only succeed in getting one debt paid that's owing me,\nI should have perhaps enough for that too!\"\n\n\"There would be enough!\" cried Alyosha. \"Katerina Ivanovna will send you\nas much more as you need, and you know, I have money too, take what you\nwant, as you would from a brother, from a friend, you can give it back\nlater.... (You'll get rich, you'll get rich!) And you know you couldn't\nhave a better idea than to move to another province! It would be the\nsaving of you, especially of your boy--and you ought to go quickly, before\nthe winter, before the cold. You must write to us when you are there, and\nwe will always be brothers.... No, it's not a dream!\"\n\nAlyosha could have hugged him, he was so pleased. But glancing at him he\nstopped short. The man was standing with his neck outstretched and his\nlips protruding, with a pale and frenzied face. His lips were moving as\nthough trying to articulate something; no sound came, but still his lips\nmoved. It was uncanny.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Alyosha, startled.\n\n\"Alexey Fyodorovitch ... I ... you,\" muttered the captain, faltering,\nlooking at him with a strange, wild, fixed stare, and an air of desperate\nresolution. At the same time there was a sort of grin on his lips. \"I ...\nyou, sir ... wouldn't you like me to show you a little trick I know?\" he\nmurmured, suddenly, in a firm rapid whisper, his voice no longer\nfaltering.\n\n\"What trick?\"\n\n\"A pretty trick,\" whispered the captain. His mouth was twisted on the left\nside, his left eye was screwed up. He still stared at Alyosha.\n\n\"What is the matter? What trick?\" Alyosha cried, now thoroughly alarmed.\n\n\"Why, look,\" squealed the captain suddenly, and showing him the two notes\nwhich he had been holding by one corner between his thumb and forefinger\nduring the conversation, he crumpled them up savagely and squeezed them\ntight in his right hand. \"Do you see, do you see?\" he shrieked, pale and\ninfuriated. And suddenly flinging up his hand, he threw the crumpled notes\non the sand. \"Do you see?\" he shrieked again, pointing to them. \"Look\nthere!\"\n\nAnd with wild fury he began trampling them under his heel, gasping and\nexclaiming as he did so:\n\n\"So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your money!\nSo much for your money!\"\n\nSuddenly he darted back and drew himself up before Alyosha, and his whole\nfigure expressed unutterable pride.\n\n\"Tell those who sent you that the wisp of tow does not sell his honor,\" he\ncried, raising his arm in the air. Then he turned quickly and began to\nrun; but he had not run five steps before he turned completely round and\nkissed his hand to Alyosha. He ran another five paces and then turned\nround for the last time. This time his face was not contorted with\nlaughter, but quivering all over with tears. In a tearful, faltering,\nsobbing voice he cried:\n\n\"What should I say to my boy if I took money from you for our shame?\"\n\nAnd then he ran on without turning. Alyosha looked after him,\ninexpressibly grieved. Oh, he saw that till the very last moment the man\nhad not known he would crumple up and fling away the notes. He did not\nturn back. Alyosha knew he would not. He would not follow him and call him\nback, he knew why. When he was out of sight, Alyosha picked up the two\nnotes. They were very much crushed and crumpled, and had been pressed into\nthe sand, but were uninjured and even rustled like new ones when Alyosha\nunfolded them and smoothed them out. After smoothing them out, he folded\nthem up, put them in his pocket and went to Katerina Ivanovna to report on\nthe success of her commission.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook V. Pro And Contra Chapter I. The Engagement\n\n\nMadame Hohlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was flustered;\nsomething important had happened. Katerina Ivanovna's hysterics had ended\nin a fainting fit, and then \"a terrible, awful weakness had followed, she\nlay with her eyes turned up and was delirious. Now she was in a fever.\nThey had sent for Herzenstube; they had sent for the aunts. The aunts were\nalready here, but Herzenstube had not yet come. They were all sitting in\nher room, waiting. She was unconscious now, and what if it turned to brain\nfever!\"\n\nMadame Hohlakov looked gravely alarmed. \"This is serious, serious,\" she\nadded at every word, as though nothing that had happened to her before had\nbeen serious. Alyosha listened with distress, and was beginning to\ndescribe his adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words. She\nhad not time to listen. She begged him to sit with Lise and wait for her\nthere.\n\n\"Lise,\" she whispered almost in his ear, \"Lise has greatly surprised me\njust now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch. She touched me, too, and so my heart\nforgives her everything. Only fancy, as soon as you had gone, she began to\nbe truly remorseful for having laughed at you to-day and yesterday, though\nshe was not laughing at you, but only joking. But she was seriously sorry\nfor it, almost ready to cry, so that I was quite surprised. She has never\nbeen really sorry for laughing at me, but has only made a joke of it. And\nyou know she is laughing at me every minute. But this time she was in\nearnest. She thinks a great deal of your opinion, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and\ndon't take offense or be wounded by her if you can help it. I am never\nhard upon her, for she's such a clever little thing. Would you believe it?\nShe said just now that you were a friend of her childhood, 'the greatest\nfriend of her childhood'--just think of that--'greatest friend'--and what\nabout me? She has very strong feelings and memories, and, what's more, she\nuses these phrases, most unexpected words, which come out all of a sudden\nwhen you least expect them. She spoke lately about a pine-tree, for\ninstance: there used to be a pine-tree standing in our garden in her early\nchildhood. Very likely it's standing there still; so there's no need to\nspeak in the past tense. Pine-trees are not like people, Alexey\nFyodorovitch, they don't change quickly. 'Mamma,' she said, 'I remember\nthis pine-tree as in a dream,' only she said something so original about\nit that I can't repeat it. Besides, I've forgotten it. Well, good-by! I am\nso worried I feel I shall go out of my mind. Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I've\nbeen out of my mind twice in my life. Go to Lise, cheer her up, as you\nalways can so charmingly. Lise,\" she cried, going to her door, \"here I've\nbrought you Alexey Fyodorovitch, whom you insulted so. He is not at all\nangry, I assure you; on the contrary, he is surprised that you could\nsuppose so.\"\n\n\"_Merci, maman._ Come in, Alexey Fyodorovitch.\"\n\nAlyosha went in. Lise looked rather embarrassed, and at once flushed\ncrimson. She was evidently ashamed of something, and, as people always do\nin such cases, she began immediately talking of other things, as though\nthey were of absorbing interest to her at the moment.\n\n\"Mamma has just told me all about the two hundred roubles, Alexey\nFyodorovitch, and your taking them to that poor officer ... and she told\nme all the awful story of how he had been insulted ... and you know,\nalthough mamma muddles things ... she always rushes from one thing to\nanother ... I cried when I heard. Well, did you give him the money and how\nis that poor man getting on?\"\n\n\"The fact is I didn't give it to him, and it's a long story,\" answered\nAlyosha, as though he, too, could think of nothing but his regret at\nhaving failed, yet Lise saw perfectly well that he, too, looked away, and\nthat he, too, was trying to talk of other things.\n\nAlyosha sat down to the table and began to tell his story, but at the\nfirst words he lost his embarrassment and gained the whole of Lise's\nattention as well. He spoke with deep feeling, under the influence of the\nstrong impression he had just received, and he succeeded in telling his\nstory well and circumstantially. In old days in Moscow he had been fond of\ncoming to Lise and describing to her what had just happened to him, what\nhe had read, or what he remembered of his childhood. Sometimes they had\nmade day-dreams and woven whole romances together--generally cheerful and\namusing ones. Now they both felt suddenly transported to the old days in\nMoscow, two years before. Lise was extremely touched by his story. Alyosha\ndescribed Ilusha with warm feeling. When he finished describing how the\nluckless man trampled on the money, Lise could not help clasping her hands\nand crying out:\n\n\"So you didn't give him the money! So you let him run away! Oh, dear, you\nought to have run after him!\"\n\n\"No, Lise; it's better I didn't run after him,\" said Alyosha, getting up\nfrom his chair and walking thoughtfully across the room.\n\n\"How so? How is it better? Now they are without food and their case is\nhopeless?\"\n\n\"Not hopeless, for the two hundred roubles will still come to them. He'll\ntake the money to-morrow. To-morrow he will be sure to take it,\" said\nAlyosha, pacing up and down, pondering. \"You see, Lise,\" he went on,\nstopping suddenly before her, \"I made one blunder, but that, even that, is\nall for the best.\"\n\n\"What blunder, and why is it for the best?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you. He is a man of weak and timorous character; he has\nsuffered so much and is very good-natured. I keep wondering why he took\noffense so suddenly, for I assure you, up to the last minute, he did not\nknow that he was going to trample on the notes. And I think now that there\nwas a great deal to offend him ... and it could not have been otherwise in\nhis position.... To begin with, he was sore at having been so glad of the\nmoney in my presence and not having concealed it from me. If he had been\npleased, but not so much; if he had not shown it; if he had begun\naffecting scruples and difficulties, as other people do when they take\nmoney, he might still endure to take it. But he was too genuinely\ndelighted, and that was mortifying. Ah, Lise, he is a good and truthful\nman--that's the worst of the whole business. All the while he talked, his\nvoice was so weak, so broken, he talked so fast, so fast, he kept laughing\nsuch a laugh, or perhaps he was crying--yes, I am sure he was crying, he\nwas so delighted--and he talked about his daughters--and about the situation\nhe could get in another town.... And when he had poured out his heart, he\nfelt ashamed at having shown me his inmost soul like that. So he began to\nhate me at once. He is one of those awfully sensitive poor people. What\nhad made him feel most ashamed was that he had given in too soon and\naccepted me as a friend, you see. At first he almost flew at me and tried\nto intimidate me, but as soon as he saw the money he had begun embracing\nme; he kept touching me with his hands. This must have been how he came to\nfeel it all so humiliating, and then I made that blunder, a very important\none. I suddenly said to him that if he had not money enough to move to\nanother town, we would give it to him, and, indeed, I myself would give\nhim as much as he wanted out of my own money. That struck him all at once.\nWhy, he thought, did I put myself forward to help him? You know, Lise,\nit's awfully hard for a man who has been injured, when other people look\nat him as though they were his benefactors.... I've heard that; Father\nZossima told me so. I don't know how to put it, but I have often seen it\nmyself. And I feel like that myself, too. And the worst of it was that\nthough he did not know, up to the very last minute, that he would trample\non the notes, he had a kind of presentiment of it, I am sure of that.\nThat's just what made him so ecstatic, that he had that presentiment....\nAnd though it's so dreadful, it's all for the best. In fact, I believe\nnothing better could have happened.\"\n\n\"Why, why could nothing better have happened?\" cried Lise, looking with\ngreat surprise at Alyosha.\n\n\"Because if he had taken the money, in an hour after getting home, he\nwould be crying with mortification, that's just what would have happened.\nAnd most likely he would have come to me early to-morrow, and perhaps have\nflung the notes at me and trampled upon them as he did just now. But now\nhe has gone home awfully proud and triumphant, though he knows he has\n'ruined himself.' So now nothing could be easier than to make him accept\nthe two hundred roubles by to-morrow, for he has already vindicated his\nhonor, tossed away the money, and trampled it under foot.... He couldn't\nknow when he did it that I should bring it to him again to-morrow, and yet\nhe is in terrible need of that money. Though he is proud of himself now,\nyet even to-day he'll be thinking what a help he has lost. He will think\nof it more than ever at night, will dream of it, and by to-morrow morning\nhe may be ready to run to me to ask forgiveness. It's just then that I'll\nappear. 'Here, you are a proud man,' I shall say: 'you have shown it; but\nnow take the money and forgive us!' And then he will take it!\"\n\nAlyosha was carried away with joy as he uttered his last words, \"And then\nhe will take it!\" Lise clapped her hands.\n\n\"Ah, that's true! I understand that perfectly now. Ah, Alyosha, how do you\nknow all this? So young and yet he knows what's in the heart.... I should\nnever have worked it out.\"\n\n\"The great thing now is to persuade him that he is on an equal footing\nwith us, in spite of his taking money from us,\" Alyosha went on in his\nexcitement, \"and not only on an equal, but even on a higher footing.\"\n\n\" 'On a higher footing' is charming, Alexey Fyodorovitch; but go on, go\non!\"\n\n\"You mean there isn't such an expression as 'on a higher footing'; but\nthat doesn't matter because--\"\n\n\"Oh, no, of course it doesn't matter. Forgive me, Alyosha, dear.... You\nknow, I scarcely respected you till now--that is I respected you but on an\nequal footing; but now I shall begin to respect you on a higher footing.\nDon't be angry, dear, at my joking,\" she put in at once, with strong\nfeeling. \"I am absurd and small, but you, you! Listen, Alexey\nFyodorovitch. Isn't there in all our analysis--I mean your analysis ... no,\nbetter call it ours--aren't we showing contempt for him, for that poor\nman--in analyzing his soul like this, as it were, from above, eh? In\ndeciding so certainly that he will take the money?\"\n\n\"No, Lise, it's not contempt,\" Alyosha answered, as though he had prepared\nhimself for the question. \"I was thinking of that on the way here. How can\nit be contempt when we are all like him, when we are all just the same as\nhe is? For you know we are just the same, no better. If we are better, we\nshould have been just the same in his place.... I don't know about you,\nLise, but I consider that I have a sordid soul in many ways, and his soul\nis not sordid; on the contrary, full of fine feeling.... No, Lise, I have\nno contempt for him. Do you know, Lise, my elder told me once to care for\nmost people exactly as one would for children, and for some of them as one\nwould for the sick in hospitals.\"\n\n\"Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, dear, let us care for people as we would for the\nsick!\"\n\n\"Let us, Lise; I am ready. Though I am not altogether ready in myself. I\nam sometimes very impatient and at other times I don't see things. It's\ndifferent with you.\"\n\n\"Ah, I don't believe it! Alexey Fyodorovitch, how happy I am!\"\n\n\"I am so glad you say so, Lise.\"\n\n\"Alexey Fyodorovitch, you are wonderfully good, but you are sometimes sort\nof formal.... And yet you are not a bit formal really. Go to the door,\nopen it gently, and see whether mamma is listening,\" said Lise, in a\nnervous, hurried whisper.\n\nAlyosha went, opened the door, and reported that no one was listening.\n\n\"Come here, Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" Lise went on, flushing redder and\nredder. \"Give me your hand--that's right. I have to make a great\nconfession, I didn't write to you yesterday in joke, but in earnest,\" and\nshe hid her eyes with her hand. It was evident that she was greatly\nashamed of the confession.\n\nSuddenly she snatched his hand and impulsively kissed it three times.\n\n\"Ah, Lise, what a good thing!\" cried Alyosha joyfully. \"You know, I was\nperfectly sure you were in earnest.\"\n\n\"Sure? Upon my word!\" She put aside his hand, but did not leave go of it,\nblushing hotly, and laughing a little happy laugh. \"I kiss his hand and he\nsays, 'What a good thing!' \"\n\nBut her reproach was undeserved. Alyosha, too, was greatly overcome.\n\n\"I should like to please you always, Lise, but I don't know how to do it,\"\nhe muttered, blushing too.\n\n\"Alyosha, dear, you are cold and rude. Do you see? He has chosen me as his\nwife and is quite settled about it. He is sure I was in earnest. What a\nthing to say! Why, that's impertinence--that's what it is.\"\n\n\"Why, was it wrong of me to feel sure?\" Alyosha asked, laughing suddenly.\n\n\"Ah, Alyosha, on the contrary, it was delightfully right,\" cried Lise,\nlooking tenderly and happily at him.\n\nAlyosha stood still, holding her hand in his. Suddenly he stooped down and\nkissed her on her lips.\n\n\"Oh, what are you doing?\" cried Lise. Alyosha was terribly abashed.\n\n\"Oh, forgive me if I shouldn't.... Perhaps I'm awfully stupid.... You said\nI was cold, so I kissed you.... But I see it was stupid.\"\n\nLise laughed, and hid her face in her hands. \"And in that dress!\" she\nejaculated in the midst of her mirth. But she suddenly ceased laughing and\nbecame serious, almost stern.\n\n\"Alyosha, we must put off kissing. We are not ready for that yet, and we\nshall have a long time to wait,\" she ended suddenly. \"Tell me rather why\nyou who are so clever, so intellectual, so observant, choose a little\nidiot, an invalid like me? Ah, Alyosha, I am awfully happy, for I don't\ndeserve you a bit.\"\n\n\"You do, Lise. I shall be leaving the monastery altogether in a few days.\nIf I go into the world, I must marry. I know that. _He_ told me to marry,\ntoo. Whom could I marry better than you--and who would have me except you?\nI have been thinking it over. In the first place, you've known me from a\nchild and you've a great many qualities I haven't. You are more light-\nhearted than I am; above all, you are more innocent than I am. I have been\nbrought into contact with many, many things already.... Ah, you don't\nknow, but I, too, am a Karamazov. What does it matter if you do laugh and\nmake jokes, and at me, too? Go on laughing. I am so glad you do. You laugh\nlike a little child, but you think like a martyr.\"\n\n\"Like a martyr? How?\"\n\n\"Yes, Lise, your question just now: whether we weren't showing contempt\nfor that poor man by dissecting his soul--that was the question of a\nsufferer.... You see, I don't know how to express it, but any one who\nthinks of such questions is capable of suffering. Sitting in your invalid\nchair you must have thought over many things already.\"\n\n\"Alyosha, give me your hand. Why are you taking it away?\" murmured Lise in\na failing voice, weak with happiness. \"Listen, Alyosha. What will you wear\nwhen you come out of the monastery? What sort of suit? Don't laugh, don't\nbe angry, it's very, very important to me.\"\n\n\"I haven't thought about the suit, Lise; but I'll wear whatever you like.\"\n\n\"I should like you to have a dark blue velvet coat, a white pique\nwaistcoat, and a soft gray felt hat.... Tell me, did you believe that I\ndidn't care for you when I said I didn't mean what I wrote?\"\n\n\"No, I didn't believe it.\"\n\n\"Oh, you insupportable person, you are incorrigible.\"\n\n\"You see, I knew that you--seemed to care for me, but I pretended to\nbelieve that you didn't care for me to make it--easier for you.\"\n\n\"That makes it worse! Worse and better than all! Alyosha, I am awfully\nfond of you. Just before you came this morning, I tried my fortune. I\ndecided I would ask you for my letter, and if you brought it out calmly\nand gave it to me (as might have been expected from you) it would mean\nthat you did not love me at all, that you felt nothing, and were simply a\nstupid boy, good for nothing, and that I am ruined. But you left the\nletter at home and that cheered me. You left it behind on purpose, so as\nnot to give it back, because you knew I would ask for it? That was it,\nwasn't it?\"\n\n\"Ah, Lise, it was not so a bit. The letter is with me now, and it was this\nmorning, in this pocket. Here it is.\"\n\nAlyosha pulled the letter out laughing, and showed it her at a distance.\n\n\"But I am not going to give it to you. Look at it from here.\"\n\n\"Why, then you told a lie? You, a monk, told a lie!\"\n\n\"I told a lie if you like,\" Alyosha laughed, too. \"I told a lie so as not\nto give you back the letter. It's very precious to me,\" he added suddenly,\nwith strong feeling, and again he flushed. \"It always will be, and I won't\ngive it up to any one!\"\n\nLise looked at him joyfully. \"Alyosha,\" she murmured again, \"look at the\ndoor. Isn't mamma listening?\"\n\n\"Very well, Lise, I'll look; but wouldn't it be better not to look? Why\nsuspect your mother of such meanness?\"\n\n\"What meanness? As for her spying on her daughter, it's her right, it's\nnot meanness!\" cried Lise, firing up. \"You may be sure, Alexey\nFyodorovitch, that when I am a mother, if I have a daughter like myself I\nshall certainly spy on her!\"\n\n\"Really, Lise? That's not right.\"\n\n\"Oh, my goodness! What has meanness to do with it? If she were listening\nto some ordinary worldly conversation, it would be meanness, but when her\nown daughter is shut up with a young man.... Listen, Alyosha, do you know\nI shall spy upon you as soon as we are married, and let me tell you I\nshall open all your letters and read them, so you may as well be\nprepared.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course, if so--\" muttered Alyosha, \"only it's not right.\"\n\n\"Ah, how contemptuous! Alyosha, dear, we won't quarrel the very first day.\nI'd better tell you the whole truth. Of course, it's very wrong to spy on\npeople, and, of course, I am not right and you are, only I shall spy on\nyou all the same.\"\n\n\"Do, then; you won't find out anything,\" laughed Alyosha.\n\n\"And, Alyosha, will you give in to me? We must decide that too.\"\n\n\"I shall be delighted to, Lise, and certain to, only not in the most\nimportant things. Even if you don't agree with me, I shall do my duty in\nthe most important things.\"\n\n\"That's right; but let me tell you I am ready to give in to you not only\nin the most important matters, but in everything. And I am ready to vow to\ndo so now--in everything, and for all my life!\" cried Lise fervently, \"and\nI'll do it gladly, gladly! What's more, I'll swear never to spy on you,\nnever once, never to read one of your letters. For you are right and I am\nnot. And though I shall be awfully tempted to spy, I know that I won't do\nit since you consider it dishonorable. You are my conscience now....\nListen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, why have you been so sad lately--both\nyesterday and to-day? I know you have a lot of anxiety and trouble, but I\nsee you have some special grief besides, some secret one, perhaps?\"\n\n\"Yes, Lise, I have a secret one, too,\" answered Alyosha mournfully. \"I see\nyou love me, since you guessed that.\"\n\n\"What grief? What about? Can you tell me?\" asked Lise with timid entreaty.\n\n\"I'll tell you later, Lise--afterwards,\" said Alyosha, confused. \"Now you\nwouldn't understand it perhaps--and perhaps I couldn't explain it.\"\n\n\"I know your brothers and your father are worrying you, too.\"\n\n\"Yes, my brothers too,\" murmured Alyosha, pondering.\n\n\"I don't like your brother Ivan, Alyosha,\" said Lise suddenly.\n\nHe noticed this remark with some surprise, but did not answer it.\n\n\"My brothers are destroying themselves,\" he went on, \"my father, too. And\nthey are destroying others with them. It's 'the primitive force of the\nKaramazovs,' as Father Paissy said the other day, a crude, unbridled,\nearthly force. Does the spirit of God move above that force? Even that I\ndon't know. I only know that I, too, am a Karamazov.... Me a monk, a monk!\nAm I a monk, Lise? You said just now that I was.\"\n\n\"Yes, I did.\"\n\n\"And perhaps I don't even believe in God.\"\n\n\"You don't believe? What is the matter?\" said Lise quietly and gently. But\nAlyosha did not answer. There was something too mysterious, too subjective\nin these last words of his, perhaps obscure to himself, but yet torturing\nhim.\n\n\"And now on the top of it all, my friend, the best man in the world, is\ngoing, is leaving the earth! If you knew, Lise, how bound up in soul I am\nwith him! And then I shall be left alone.... I shall come to you, Lise....\nFor the future we will be together.\"\n\n\"Yes, together, together! Henceforward we shall be always together, all\nour lives! Listen, kiss me, I allow you.\"\n\nAlyosha kissed her.\n\n\"Come, now go. Christ be with you!\" and she made the sign of the cross\nover him. \"Make haste back to _him_ while he is alive. I see I've kept you\ncruelly. I'll pray to-day for him and you. Alyosha, we shall be happy!\nShall we be happy, shall we?\"\n\n\"I believe we shall, Lise.\"\n\nAlyosha thought it better not to go in to Madame Hohlakov and was going\nout of the house without saying good-by to her. But no sooner had he\nopened the door than he found Madame Hohlakov standing before him. From\nthe first word Alyosha guessed that she had been waiting on purpose to\nmeet him.\n\n\"Alexey Fyodorovitch, this is awful. This is all childish nonsense and\nridiculous. I trust you won't dream--It's foolishness, nothing but\nfoolishness!\" she said, attacking him at once.\n\n\"Only don't tell her that,\" said Alyosha, \"or she will be upset, and\nthat's bad for her now.\"\n\n\"Sensible advice from a sensible young man. Am I to understand that you\nonly agreed with her from compassion for her invalid state, because you\ndidn't want to irritate her by contradiction?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, not at all. I was quite serious in what I said,\" Alyosha declared\nstoutly.\n\n\"To be serious about it is impossible, unthinkable, and in the first place\nI shall never be at home to you again, and I shall take her away, you may\nbe sure of that.\"\n\n\"But why?\" asked Alyosha. \"It's all so far off. We may have to wait\nanother year and a half.\"\n\n\"Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that's true, of course, and you'll have time to\nquarrel and separate a thousand times in a year and a half. But I am so\nunhappy! Though it's such nonsense, it's a great blow to me. I feel like\nFamusov in the last scene of _Sorrow from Wit_. You are Tchatsky and she\nis Sofya, and, only fancy, I've run down to meet you on the stairs, and in\nthe play the fatal scene takes place on the staircase. I heard it all; I\nalmost dropped. So this is the explanation of her dreadful night and her\nhysterics of late! It means love to the daughter but death to the mother.\nI might as well be in my grave at once. And a more serious matter still,\nwhat is this letter she has written? Show it me at once, at once!\"\n\n\"No, there's no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna now? I must know.\"\n\n\"She still lies in delirium; she has not regained consciousness. Her aunts\nare here; but they do nothing but sigh and give themselves airs.\nHerzenstube came, and he was so alarmed that I didn't know what to do for\nhim. I nearly sent for a doctor to look after him. He was driven home in\nmy carriage. And on the top of it all, you and this letter! It's true\nnothing can happen for a year and a half. In the name of all that's holy,\nin the name of your dying elder, show me that letter, Alexey Fyodorovitch.\nI'm her mother. Hold it in your hand, if you like, and I will read it so.\"\n\n\"No, I won't show it to you. Even if she sanctioned it, I wouldn't. I am\ncoming to-morrow, and if you like, we can talk over many things, but now\ngood-by!\"\n\nAnd Alyosha ran downstairs and into the street.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Smerdyakov With A Guitar\n\n\nHe had no time to lose indeed. Even while he was saying good-by to Lise,\nthe thought had struck him that he must attempt some stratagem to find his\nbrother Dmitri, who was evidently keeping out of his way. It was getting\nlate, nearly three o'clock. Alyosha's whole soul turned to the monastery,\nto his dying saint, but the necessity of seeing Dmitri outweighed\neverything. The conviction that a great inevitable catastrophe was about\nto happen grew stronger in Alyosha's mind with every hour. What that\ncatastrophe was, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he\ncould perhaps not have said definitely. \"Even if my benefactor must die\nwithout me, anyway I won't have to reproach myself all my life with the\nthought that I might have saved something and did not, but passed by and\nhastened home. If I do as I intend, I shall be following his great\nprecept.\"\n\nHis plan was to catch his brother Dmitri unawares, to climb over the\nfence, as he had the day before, get into the garden and sit in the\nsummer-house. If Dmitri were not there, thought Alyosha, he would not\nannounce himself to Foma or the women of the house, but would remain\nhidden in the summer-house, even if he had to wait there till evening. If,\nas before, Dmitri were lying in wait for Grushenka to come, he would be\nvery likely to come to the summer-house. Alyosha did not, however, give\nmuch thought to the details of his plan, but resolved to act upon it, even\nif it meant not getting back to the monastery that day.\n\nEverything happened without hindrance, he climbed over the hurdle almost\nin the same spot as the day before, and stole into the summer-house\nunseen. He did not want to be noticed. The woman of the house and Foma\ntoo, if he were here, might be loyal to his brother and obey his\ninstructions, and so refuse to let Alyosha come into the garden, or might\nwarn Dmitri that he was being sought and inquired for.\n\nThere was no one in the summer-house. Alyosha sat down and began to wait.\nHe looked round the summer-house, which somehow struck him as a great deal\nmore ancient than before. Though the day was just as fine as yesterday, it\nseemed a wretched little place this time. There was a circle on the table,\nleft no doubt from the glass of brandy having been spilt the day before.\nFoolish and irrelevant ideas strayed about his mind, as they always do in\na time of tedious waiting. He wondered, for instance, why he had sat down\nprecisely in the same place as before, why not in the other seat. At last\nhe felt very depressed--depressed by suspense and uncertainty. But he had\nnot sat there more than a quarter of an hour, when he suddenly heard the\nthrum of a guitar somewhere quite close. People were sitting, or had only\njust sat down, somewhere in the bushes not more than twenty paces away.\nAlyosha suddenly recollected that on coming out of the summer-house the\nday before, he had caught a glimpse of an old green low garden-seat among\nthe bushes on the left, by the fence. The people must be sitting on it\nnow. Who were they?\n\nA man's voice suddenly began singing in a sugary falsetto, accompanying\nhimself on the guitar:\n\n\n    With invincible force\n    I am bound to my dear.\n    O Lord, have mercy\n    On her and on me!\n    On her and on me!\n    On her and on me!\n\n\nThe voice ceased. It was a lackey's tenor and a lackey's song. Another\nvoice, a woman's, suddenly asked insinuatingly and bashfully, though with\nmincing affectation:\n\n\"Why haven't you been to see us for so long, Pavel Fyodorovitch? Why do\nyou always look down upon us?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" answered a man's voice politely, but with emphatic dignity.\nIt was clear that the man had the best of the position, and that the woman\nwas making advances. \"I believe the man must be Smerdyakov,\" thought\nAlyosha, \"from his voice. And the lady must be the daughter of the house\nhere, who has come from Moscow, the one who wears the dress with a tail\nand goes to Marfa for soup.\"\n\n\"I am awfully fond of verses of all kinds, if they rhyme,\" the woman's\nvoice continued. \"Why don't you go on?\"\n\nThe man sang again:\n\n\n    What do I care for royal wealth\n    If but my dear one be in health?\n    Lord have mercy\n    On her and on me!\n    On her and on me!\n    On her and on me!\n\n\n\"It was even better last time,\" observed the woman's voice. \"You sang 'If\nmy darling be in health'; it sounded more tender. I suppose you've\nforgotten to-day.\"\n\n\"Poetry is rubbish!\" said Smerdyakov curtly.\n\n\"Oh, no! I am very fond of poetry.\"\n\n\"So far as it's poetry, it's essential rubbish. Consider yourself, who\never talks in rhyme? And if we were all to talk in rhyme, even though it\nwere decreed by government, we shouldn't say much, should we? Poetry is no\ngood, Marya Kondratyevna.\"\n\n\"How clever you are! How is it you've gone so deep into everything?\" The\nwoman's voice was more and more insinuating.\n\n\"I could have done better than that. I could have known more than that, if\nit had not been for my destiny from my childhood up. I would have shot a\nman in a duel if he called me names because I am descended from a filthy\nbeggar and have no father. And they used to throw it in my teeth in\nMoscow. It had reached them from here, thanks to Grigory Vassilyevitch.\nGrigory Vassilyevitch blames me for rebelling against my birth, but I\nwould have sanctioned their killing me before I was born that I might not\nhave come into the world at all. They used to say in the market, and your\nmamma too, with great lack of delicacy, set off telling me that her hair\nwas like a mat on her head, and that she was short of five foot by a wee\nbit. Why talk of a wee bit while she might have said 'a little bit,' like\nevery one else? She wanted to make it touching, a regular peasant's\nfeeling. Can a Russian peasant be said to feel, in comparison with an\neducated man? He can't be said to have feeling at all, in his ignorance.\nFrom my childhood up when I hear 'a wee bit,' I am ready to burst with\nrage. I hate all Russia, Marya Kondratyevna.\"\n\n\"If you'd been a cadet in the army, or a young hussar, you wouldn't have\ntalked like that, but would have drawn your saber to defend all Russia.\"\n\n\"I don't want to be a hussar, Marya Kondratyevna, and, what's more, I\nshould like to abolish all soldiers.\"\n\n\"And when an enemy comes, who is going to defend us?\"\n\n\"There's no need of defense. In 1812 there was a great invasion of Russia\nby Napoleon, first Emperor of the French, father of the present one, and\nit would have been a good thing if they had conquered us. A clever nation\nwould have conquered a very stupid one and annexed it. We should have had\nquite different institutions.\"\n\n\"Are they so much better in their own country than we are? I wouldn't\nchange a dandy I know of for three young Englishmen,\" observed Marya\nKondratyevna tenderly, doubtless accompanying her words with a most\nlanguishing glance.\n\n\"That's as one prefers.\"\n\n\"But you are just like a foreigner--just like a most gentlemanly foreigner.\nI tell you that, though it makes me bashful.\"\n\n\"If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are just alike in\ntheir vice. They are swindlers, only there the scoundrel wears polished\nboots and here he grovels in filth and sees no harm in it. The Russian\npeople want thrashing, as Fyodor Pavlovitch said very truly yesterday,\nthough he is mad, and all his children.\"\n\n\"You said yourself you had such a respect for Ivan Fyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"But he said I was a stinking lackey. He thinks that I might be unruly. He\nis mistaken there. If I had a certain sum in my pocket, I would have left\nhere long ago. Dmitri Fyodorovitch is lower than any lackey in his\nbehavior, in his mind, and in his poverty. He doesn't know how to do\nanything, and yet he is respected by every one. I may be only a soup-\nmaker, but with luck I could open a cafe restaurant in Petrovka, in\nMoscow, for my cookery is something special, and there's no one in Moscow,\nexcept the foreigners, whose cookery is anything special. Dmitri\nFyodorovitch is a beggar, but if he were to challenge the son of the first\ncount in the country, he'd fight him. Though in what way is he better than\nI am? For he is ever so much stupider than I am. Look at the money he has\nwasted without any need!\"\n\n\"It must be lovely, a duel,\" Marya Kondratyevna observed suddenly.\n\n\"How so?\"\n\n\"It must be so dreadful and so brave, especially when young officers with\npistols in their hands pop at one another for the sake of some lady. A\nperfect picture! Ah, if only girls were allowed to look on, I'd give\nanything to see one!\"\n\n\"It's all very well when you are firing at some one, but when he is firing\nstraight in your mug, you must feel pretty silly. You'd be glad to run\naway, Marya Kondratyevna.\"\n\n\"You don't mean you would run away?\" But Smerdyakov did not deign to\nreply. After a moment's silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang\nagain in the same falsetto:\n\n\n    Whatever you may say,\n    I shall go far away.\n    Life will be bright and gay\n    In the city far away.\n    I shall not grieve,\n    I shall not grieve at all,\n    I don't intend to grieve at all.\n\n\nThen something unexpected happened. Alyosha suddenly sneezed. They were\nsilent. Alyosha got up and walked towards them. He found Smerdyakov\ndressed up and wearing polished boots, his hair pomaded, and perhaps\ncurled. The guitar lay on the garden-seat. His companion was the daughter\nof the house, wearing a light-blue dress with a train two yards long. She\nwas young and would not have been bad-looking, but that her face was so\nround and terribly freckled.\n\n\"Will my brother Dmitri soon be back?\" asked Alyosha with as much\ncomposure as he could.\n\nSmerdyakov got up slowly; Marya Kondratyevna rose too.\n\n\"How am I to know about Dmitri Fyodorovitch? It's not as if I were his\nkeeper,\" answered Smerdyakov quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.\n\n\"But I simply asked whether you do know?\" Alyosha explained.\n\n\"I know nothing of his whereabouts and don't want to.\"\n\n\"But my brother told me that you let him know all that goes on in the\nhouse, and promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes.\"\n\nSmerdyakov turned a deliberate, unmoved glance upon him.\n\n\"And how did you get in this time, since the gate was bolted an hour ago?\"\nhe asked, looking at Alyosha.\n\n\"I came in from the back-alley, over the fence, and went straight to the\nsummer-house. I hope you'll forgive me,\" he added, addressing Marya\nKondratyevna. \"I was in a hurry to find my brother.\"\n\n\"Ach, as though we could take it amiss in you!\" drawled Marya\nKondratyevna, flattered by Alyosha's apology. \"For Dmitri Fyodorovitch\noften goes to the summer-house in that way. We don't know he is here and\nhe is sitting in the summer-house.\"\n\n\"I am very anxious to find him, or to learn from you where he is now.\nBelieve me, it's on business of great importance to him.\"\n\n\"He never tells us,\" lisped Marya Kondratyevna.\n\n\"Though I used to come here as a friend,\" Smerdyakov began again, \"Dmitri\nFyodorovitch has pestered me in a merciless way even here by his incessant\nquestions about the master. 'What news?' he'll ask. 'What's going on in\nthere now? Who's coming and going?' and can't I tell him something more.\nTwice already he's threatened me with death.\"\n\n\"With death?\" Alyosha exclaimed in surprise.\n\n\"Do you suppose he'd think much of that, with his temper, which you had a\nchance of observing yourself yesterday? He says if I let Agrafena\nAlexandrovna in and she passes the night there, I'll be the first to\nsuffer for it. I am terribly afraid of him, and if I were not even more\nafraid of doing so, I ought to let the police know. God only knows what he\nmight not do!\"\n\n\"His honor said to him the other day, 'I'll pound you in a mortar!' \"\nadded Marya Kondratyevna.\n\n\"Oh, if it's pounding in a mortar, it may be only talk,\" observed Alyosha.\n\"If I could meet him, I might speak to him about that too.\"\n\n\"Well, the only thing I can tell you is this,\" said Smerdyakov, as though\nthinking better of it; \"I am here as an old friend and neighbor, and it\nwould be odd if I didn't come. On the other hand, Ivan Fyodorovitch sent\nme first thing this morning to your brother's lodging in Lake Street,\nwithout a letter, but with a message to Dmitri Fyodorovitch to go to dine\nwith him at the restaurant here, in the market-place. I went, but didn't\nfind Dmitri Fyodorovitch at home, though it was eight o'clock. 'He's been\nhere, but he is quite gone,' those were the very words of his landlady.\nIt's as though there was an understanding between them. Perhaps at this\nmoment he is in the restaurant with Ivan Fyodorovitch, for Ivan\nFyodorovitch has not been home to dinner and Fyodor Pavlovitch dined alone\nan hour ago, and is gone to lie down. But I beg you most particularly not\nto speak of me and of what I have told you, for he'd kill me for nothing\nat all.\"\n\n\"Brother Ivan invited Dmitri to the restaurant to-day?\" repeated Alyosha\nquickly.\n\n\"That's so.\"\n\n\"The Metropolis tavern in the market-place?\"\n\n\"The very same.\"\n\n\"That's quite likely,\" cried Alyosha, much excited. \"Thank you,\nSmerdyakov; that's important. I'll go there at once.\"\n\n\"Don't betray me,\" Smerdyakov called after him.\n\n\"Oh, no, I'll go to the tavern as though by chance. Don't be anxious.\"\n\n\"But wait a minute, I'll open the gate to you,\" cried Marya Kondratyevna.\n\n\"No; it's a short cut, I'll get over the fence again.\"\n\nWhat he had heard threw Alyosha into great agitation. He ran to the\ntavern. It was impossible for him to go into the tavern in his monastic\ndress, but he could inquire at the entrance for his brothers and call them\ndown. But just as he reached the tavern, a window was flung open, and his\nbrother Ivan called down to him from it.\n\n\"Alyosha, can't you come up here to me? I shall be awfully grateful.\"\n\n\"To be sure I can, only I don't quite know whether in this dress--\"\n\n\"But I am in a room apart. Come up the steps; I'll run down to meet you.\"\n\nA minute later Alyosha was sitting beside his brother. Ivan was alone\ndining.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. The Brothers Make Friends\n\n\nIvan was not, however, in a separate room, but only in a place shut off by\na screen, so that it was unseen by other people in the room. It was the\nfirst room from the entrance with a buffet along the wall. Waiters were\ncontinually darting to and fro in it. The only customer in the room was an\nold retired military man drinking tea in a corner. But there was the usual\nbustle going on in the other rooms of the tavern; there were shouts for\nthe waiters, the sound of popping corks, the click of billiard balls, the\ndrone of the organ. Alyosha knew that Ivan did not usually visit this\ntavern and disliked taverns in general. So he must have come here, he\nreflected, simply to meet Dmitri by arrangement. Yet Dmitri was not there.\n\n\"Shall I order you fish, soup or anything. You don't live on tea alone, I\nsuppose,\" cried Ivan, apparently delighted at having got hold of Alyosha.\nHe had finished dinner and was drinking tea.\n\n\"Let me have soup, and tea afterwards, I am hungry,\" said Alyosha gayly.\n\n\"And cherry jam? They have it here. You remember how you used to love\ncherry jam when you were little?\"\n\n\"You remember that? Let me have jam too, I like it still.\"\n\nIvan rang for the waiter and ordered soup, jam and tea.\n\n\"I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were eleven, I\nwas nearly fifteen. There's such a difference between fifteen and eleven\nthat brothers are never companions at those ages. I don't know whether I\nwas fond of you even. When I went away to Moscow for the first few years I\nnever thought of you at all. Then, when you came to Moscow yourself, we\nonly met once somewhere, I believe. And now I've been here more than three\nmonths, and so far we have scarcely said a word to each other. To-morrow I\nam going away, and I was just thinking as I sat here how I could see you\nto say good-by and just then you passed.\"\n\n\"Were you very anxious to see me, then?\"\n\n\"Very. I want to get to know you once for all, and I want you to know me.\nAnd then to say good-by. I believe it's always best to get to know people\njust before leaving them. I've noticed how you've been looking at me these\nthree months. There has been a continual look of expectation in your eyes,\nand I can't endure that. That's how it is I've kept away from you. But in\nthe end I have learned to respect you. The little man stands firm, I\nthought. Though I am laughing, I am serious. You do stand firm, don't you?\nI like people who are firm like that whatever it is they stand by, even if\nthey are such little fellows as you. Your expectant eyes ceased to annoy\nme, I grew fond of them in the end, those expectant eyes. You seem to love\nme for some reason, Alyosha?\"\n\n\"I do love you, Ivan. Dmitri says of you--Ivan is a tomb! I say of you,\nIvan is a riddle. You are a riddle to me even now. But I understand\nsomething in you, and I did not understand it till this morning.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" laughed Ivan.\n\n\"You won't be angry?\" Alyosha laughed too.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"That you are just as young as other young men of three and twenty, that\nyou are just a young and fresh and nice boy, green in fact! Now, have I\ninsulted you dreadfully?\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I am struck by a coincidence,\" cried Ivan, warmly and\ngood-humoredly. \"Would you believe it that ever since that scene with her,\nI have thought of nothing else but my youthful greenness, and just as\nthough you guessed that, you begin about it. Do you know I've been sitting\nhere thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith\nin the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in\nfact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden\nchaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment--still I\nshould want to live and, having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn\naway from it till I had drained it! At thirty, though, I shall be sure to\nleave the cup, even if I've not emptied it, and turn away--where I don't\nknow. But till I am thirty, I know that my youth will triumph over\neverything--every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked\nmyself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would\novercome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've\ncome to the conclusion that there isn't, that is till I am thirty, and\nthen I shall lose it of myself, I fancy. Some driveling consumptive\nmoralists--and poets especially--often call that thirst for life base. It's\na feature of the Karamazovs, it's true, that thirst for life regardless of\neverything; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base? The centripetal\nforce on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing\nfor life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe\nin the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they\nopen in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves\nyou know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by\nmen, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old\nhabit one's heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you,\neat it, it will do you good. It's first-rate soup, they know how to make\nit here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here.\nAnd yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it's a most\nprecious graveyard, that's what it is! Precious are the dead that lie\nthere, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of\nsuch passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their\nscience, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and\nweep over them; though I'm convinced in my heart that it's long been\nnothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply\nbecause I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in my emotion.\nI love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky--that's all it is. It's\nnot a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with\none's stomach. One loves the first strength of one's youth. Do you\nunderstand anything of my tirade, Alyosha?\" Ivan laughed suddenly.\n\n\"I understand too well, Ivan. One longs to love with one's inside, with\none's stomach. You said that so well and I am awfully glad that you have\nsuch a longing for life,\" cried Alyosha. \"I think every one should love\nlife above everything in the world.\"\n\n\"Love life more than the meaning of it?\"\n\n\"Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be regardless\nof logic, and it's only then one will understand the meaning of it. I have\nthought so a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan, you love life, now\nyou've only to try to do the second half and you are saved.\"\n\n\"You are trying to save me, but perhaps I am not lost! And what does your\nsecond half mean?\"\n\n\"Why, one has to raise up your dead, who perhaps have not died after all.\nCome, let me have tea. I am so glad of our talk, Ivan.\"\n\n\"I see you are feeling inspired. I am awfully fond of such _professions de\nfoi_ from such--novices. You are a steadfast person, Alexey. Is it true\nthat you mean to leave the monastery?\"\n\n\"Yes, my elder sends me out into the world.\"\n\n\"We shall see each other then in the world. We shall meet before I am\nthirty, when I shall begin to turn aside from the cup. Father doesn't want\nto turn aside from his cup till he is seventy, he dreams of hanging on to\neighty in fact, so he says. He means it only too seriously, though he is a\nbuffoon. He stands on a firm rock, too, he stands on his sensuality--though\nafter we are thirty, indeed, there may be nothing else to stand on.... But\nto hang on to seventy is nasty, better only to thirty; one might retain 'a\nshadow of nobility' by deceiving oneself. Have you seen Dmitri to-day?\"\n\n\"No, but I saw Smerdyakov,\" and Alyosha rapidly, though minutely,\ndescribed his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan began listening anxiously and\nquestioned him.\n\n\"But he begged me not to tell Dmitri that he had told me about him,\" added\nAlyosha. Ivan frowned and pondered.\n\n\"Are you frowning on Smerdyakov's account?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"Yes, on his account. Damn him, I certainly did want to see Dmitri, but\nnow there's no need,\" said Ivan reluctantly.\n\n\"But are you really going so soon, brother?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What of Dmitri and father? how will it end?\" asked Alyosha anxiously.\n\n\"You are always harping upon it! What have I to do with it? Am I my\nbrother Dmitri's keeper?\" Ivan snapped irritably, but then he suddenly\nsmiled bitterly. \"Cain's answer about his murdered brother, wasn't it?\nPerhaps that's what you're thinking at this moment? Well, damn it all, I\ncan't stay here to be their keeper, can I? I've finished what I had to do,\nand I am going. Do you imagine I am jealous of Dmitri, that I've been\ntrying to steal his beautiful Katerina Ivanovna for the last three months?\nNonsense, I had business of my own. I finished it. I am going. I finished\nit just now, you were witness.\"\n\n\"At Katerina Ivanovna's?\"\n\n\"Yes, and I've released myself once for all. And after all, what have I to\ndo with Dmitri? Dmitri doesn't come in. I had my own business to settle\nwith Katerina Ivanovna. You know, on the contrary, that Dmitri behaved as\nthough there was an understanding between us. I didn't ask him to do it,\nbut he solemnly handed her over to me and gave us his blessing. It's all\ntoo funny. Ah, Alyosha, if you only knew how light my heart is now! Would\nyou believe, it, I sat here eating my dinner and was nearly ordering\nchampagne to celebrate my first hour of freedom. Tfoo! It's been going on\nnearly six months, and all at once I've thrown it off. I could never have\nguessed even yesterday, how easy it would be to put an end to it if I\nwanted.\"\n\n\"You are speaking of your love, Ivan?\"\n\n\"Of my love, if you like. I fell in love with the young lady, I worried\nmyself over her and she worried me. I sat watching over her ... and all at\nonce it's collapsed! I spoke this morning with inspiration, but I went\naway and roared with laughter. Would you believe it? Yes, it's the literal\ntruth.\"\n\n\"You seem very merry about it now,\" observed Alyosha, looking into his\nface, which had suddenly grown brighter.\n\n\"But how could I tell that I didn't care for her a bit! Ha ha! It appears\nafter all I didn't. And yet how she attracted me! How attractive she was\njust now when I made my speech! And do you know she attracts me awfully\neven now, yet how easy it is to leave her. Do you think I am boasting?\"\n\n\"No, only perhaps it wasn't love.\"\n\n\"Alyosha,\" laughed Ivan, \"don't make reflections about love, it's unseemly\nfor you. How you rushed into the discussion this morning! I've forgotten\nto kiss you for it.... But how she tormented me! It certainly was sitting\nby a 'laceration.' Ah, she knew how I loved her! She loved me and not\nDmitri,\" Ivan insisted gayly. \"Her feeling for Dmitri was simply a self-\nlaceration. All I told her just now was perfectly true, but the worst of\nit is, it may take her fifteen or twenty years to find out that she\ndoesn't care for Dmitri, and loves me whom she torments, and perhaps she\nmay never find it out at all, in spite of her lesson to-day. Well, it's\nbetter so; I can simply go away for good. By the way, how is she now? What\nhappened after I departed?\"\n\nAlyosha told him she had been hysterical, and that she was now, he heard,\nunconscious and delirious.\n\n\"Isn't Madame Hohlakov laying it on?\"\n\n\"I think not.\"\n\n\"I must find out. Nobody dies of hysterics, though. They don't matter. God\ngave woman hysterics as a relief. I won't go to her at all. Why push\nmyself forward again?\"\n\n\"But you told her that she had never cared for you.\"\n\n\"I did that on purpose. Alyosha, shall I call for some champagne? Let us\ndrink to my freedom. Ah, if only you knew how glad I am!\"\n\n\"No, brother, we had better not drink,\" said Alyosha suddenly. \"Besides I\nfeel somehow depressed.\"\n\n\"Yes, you've been depressed a long time, I've noticed it.\"\n\n\"Have you settled to go to-morrow morning, then?\"\n\n\"Morning? I didn't say I should go in the morning.... But perhaps it may\nbe the morning. Would you believe it, I dined here to-day only to avoid\ndining with the old man, I loathe him so. I should have left long ago, so\nfar as he is concerned. But why are you so worried about my going away?\nWe've plenty of time before I go, an eternity!\"\n\n\"If you are going away to-morrow, what do you mean by an eternity?\"\n\n\"But what does it matter to us?\" laughed Ivan. \"We've time enough for our\ntalk, for what brought us here. Why do you look so surprised? Answer: why\nhave we met here? To talk of my love for Katerina Ivanovna, of the old man\nand Dmitri? of foreign travel? of the fatal position of Russia? Of the\nEmperor Napoleon? Is that it?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then you know what for. It's different for other people; but we in our\ngreen youth have to settle the eternal questions first of all. That's what\nwe care about. Young Russia is talking about nothing but the eternal\nquestions now. Just when the old folks are all taken up with practical\nquestions. Why have you been looking at me in expectation for the last\nthree months? To ask me, 'What do you believe, or don't you believe at\nall?' That's what your eyes have been meaning for these three months,\nhaven't they?\"\n\n\"Perhaps so,\" smiled Alyosha. \"You are not laughing at me, now, Ivan?\"\n\n\"Me laughing! I don't want to wound my little brother who has been\nwatching me with such expectation for three months. Alyosha, look straight\nat me! Of course I am just such a little boy as you are, only not a\nnovice. And what have Russian boys been doing up till now, some of them, I\nmean? In this stinking tavern, for instance, here, they meet and sit down\nin a corner. They've never met in their lives before and, when they go out\nof the tavern, they won't meet again for forty years. And what do they\ntalk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of the eternal questions,\nof the existence of God and immortality. And those who do not believe in\nGod talk of socialism or anarchism, of the transformation of all humanity\non a new pattern, so that it all comes to the same, they're the same\nquestions turned inside out. And masses, masses of the most original\nRussian boys do nothing but talk of the eternal questions! Isn't it so?\"\n\n\"Yes, for real Russians the questions of God's existence and of\nimmortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, come\nfirst and foremost, of course, and so they should,\" said Alyosha, still\nwatching his brother with the same gentle and inquiring smile.\n\n\"Well, Alyosha, it's sometimes very unwise to be a Russian at all, but\nanything stupider than the way Russian boys spend their time one can\nhardly imagine. But there's one Russian boy called Alyosha I am awfully\nfond of.\"\n\n\"How nicely you put that in!\" Alyosha laughed suddenly.\n\n\"Well, tell me where to begin, give your orders. The existence of God,\neh?\"\n\n\"Begin where you like. You declared yesterday at father's that there was\nno God.\" Alyosha looked searchingly at his brother.\n\n\"I said that yesterday at dinner on purpose to tease you and I saw your\neyes glow. But now I've no objection to discussing with you, and I say so\nvery seriously. I want to be friends with you, Alyosha, for I have no\nfriends and want to try it. Well, only fancy, perhaps I too accept God,\"\nlaughed Ivan; \"that's a surprise for you, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course, if you are not joking now.\"\n\n\"Joking? I was told at the elder's yesterday that I was joking. You know,\ndear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who declared\nthat, if there were no God, he would have to be invented. _S'il n'existait\npas Dieu, il faudrait l'inventer._ And man has actually invented God. And\nwhat's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really\nexist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God,\ncould enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it\nis, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man. As for me,\nI've long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man. And I\nwon't go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject,\nall derived from European hypotheses; for what's a hypothesis there, is an\naxiom with the Russian boy, and not only with the boys but with their\nteachers too, for our Russian professors are often just the same boys\nthemselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses. For what are we aiming at\nnow? I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature,\nthat is what manner of man I am, what I believe in, and for what I hope,\nthat's it, isn't it? And therefore I tell you that I accept God simply.\nBut you must note this: if God exists and if He really did create the\nworld, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of\nEuclid and the human mind with the conception of only three dimensions in\nspace. Yet there have been and still are geometricians and philosophers,\nand even some of the most distinguished, who doubt whether the whole\nuniverse, or to speak more widely the whole of being, was only created in\nEuclid's geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which\naccording to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in\ninfinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I can't understand\neven that, I can't expect to understand about God. I acknowledge humbly\nthat I have no faculty for settling such questions, I have a Euclidian\nearthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world?\nAnd I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha,\nespecially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are\nutterly inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only three\ndimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and what's more, I accept\nHis wisdom, His purpose--which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the\nunderlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony\nin which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the Word to\nWhich the universe is striving, and Which Itself was 'with God,' and Which\nItself is God and so on, and so on, to infinity. There are all sorts of\nphrases for it. I seem to be on the right path, don't I? Yet would you\nbelieve it, in the final result I don't accept this world of God's, and,\nalthough I know it exists, I don't accept it at all. It's not that I don't\naccept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and\ncannot accept. Let me make it plain. I believe like a child that suffering\nwill be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of\nhuman contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the\ndespicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind\nof man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony,\nsomething so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all\nhearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all\nthe crimes of humanity, of all the blood they've shed; that it will make\nit not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with\nmen--but though all that may come to pass, I don't accept it. I won't\naccept it. Even if parallel lines do meet and I see it myself, I shall see\nit and say that they've met, but still I won't accept it. That's what's at\nthe root of me, Alyosha; that's my creed. I am in earnest in what I say. I\nbegan our talk as stupidly as I could on purpose, but I've led up to my\nconfession, for that's all you want. You didn't want to hear about God,\nbut only to know what the brother you love lives by. And so I've told\nyou.\"\n\nIvan concluded his long tirade with marked and unexpected feeling.\n\n\"And why did you begin 'as stupidly as you could'?\" asked Alyosha, looking\ndreamily at him.\n\n\"To begin with, for the sake of being Russian. Russian conversations on\nsuch subjects are always carried on inconceivably stupidly. And secondly,\nthe stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is,\nthe clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence\nwriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is\nhonest and straightforward. I've led the conversation to my despair, and\nthe more stupidly I have presented it, the better for me.\"\n\n\"You will explain why you don't accept the world?\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"To be sure I will, it's not a secret, that's what I've been leading up\nto. Dear little brother, I don't want to corrupt you or to turn you from\nyour stronghold, perhaps I want to be healed by you.\" Ivan smiled suddenly\nquite like a little gentle child. Alyosha had never seen such a smile on\nhis face before.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. Rebellion\n\n\n\"I must make you one confession,\" Ivan began. \"I could never understand\nhow one can love one's neighbors. It's just one's neighbors, to my mind,\nthat one can't love, though one might love those at a distance. I once\nread somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry, frozen\nbeggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and\nbegan breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some\nawful disease. I am convinced that he did that from 'self-laceration,'\nfrom the self-laceration of falsity, for the sake of the charity imposed\nby duty, as a penance laid on him. For any one to love a man, he must be\nhidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.\"\n\n\"Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,\" observed Alyosha; \"he,\ntoo, said that the face of a man often hinders many people not practiced\nin love, from loving him. But yet there's a great deal of love in mankind,\nand almost Christ-like love. I know that myself, Ivan.\"\n\n\"Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can't understand it, and the\ninnumerable mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether\nthat's due to men's bad qualities or whether it's inherent in their\nnature. To my thinking, Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible\non earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for instance, suffer\nintensely. Another can never know how much I suffer, because he is another\nand not I. And what's more, a man is rarely ready to admit another's\nsuffering (as though it were a distinction). Why won't he admit it, do you\nthink? Because I smell unpleasant, because I have a stupid face, because I\nonce trod on his foot. Besides, there is suffering and suffering;\ndegrading, humiliating suffering such as humbles me--hunger, for\ninstance--my benefactor will perhaps allow me; but when you come to higher\nsuffering--for an idea, for instance--he will very rarely admit that,\nperhaps because my face strikes him as not at all what he fancies a man\nshould have who suffers for an idea. And so he deprives me instantly of\nhis favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially\ngenteel beggars, ought never to show themselves, but to ask for charity\nthrough the newspapers. One can love one's neighbors in the abstract, or\neven at a distance, but at close quarters it's almost impossible. If it\nwere as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear\nsilken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then\none might like looking at them. But even then we should not love them. But\nenough of that. I simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to\nspeak of the suffering of mankind generally, but we had better confine\nourselves to the sufferings of the children. That reduces the scope of my\nargument to a tenth of what it would be. Still we'd better keep to the\nchildren, though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children\ncan be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when\nthey are ugly (I fancy, though, children never are ugly). The second\nreason why I won't speak of grown-up people is that, besides being\ndisgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation--they've eaten\nthe apple and know good and evil, and they have become 'like gods.' They\ngo on eating it still. But the children haven't eaten anything, and are so\nfar innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and you\nwill understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer\nhorribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers' sins, they must be\npunished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple; but that reasoning\nis of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on\nearth. The innocent must not suffer for another's sins, and especially\nsuch innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but I am awfully fond\nof children, too. And observe, cruel people, the violent, the rapacious,\nthe Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of children. Children while they\nare quite little--up to seven, for instance--are so remote from grown-up\npeople; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species.\nI knew a criminal in prison who had, in the course of his career as a\nburglar, murdered whole families, including several children. But when he\nwas in prison, he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time\nat his window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He\ntrained one little boy to come up to his window and made great friends\nwith him.... You don't know why I am telling you all this, Alyosha? My\nhead aches and I am sad.\"\n\n\"You speak with a strange air,\" observed Alyosha uneasily, \"as though you\nwere not quite yourself.\"\n\n\"By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,\" Ivan went on, seeming\nnot to hear his brother's words, \"told me about the crimes committed by\nTurks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general\nrising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and\nchildren, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them\nso till morning, and in the morning they hang them--all sorts of things you\ncan't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a\ngreat injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as\na man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all\nhe can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he\nwere able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children,\ntoo; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and tossing babies\nup in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before\ntheir mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest\nto the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting.\nImagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading\nTurks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to\nmake it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points\na pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee,\nholds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the\nbaby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way,\nTurks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say.\"\n\n\"Brother, what are you driving at?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has\ncreated him in his own image and likeness.\"\n\n\"Just as he did God, then?\" observed Alyosha.\n\n\" 'It's wonderful how you can turn words,' as Polonius says in _Hamlet_,\"\nlaughed Ivan. \"You turn my words against me. Well, I am glad. Yours must\nbe a fine God, if man created Him in his image and likeness. You asked\njust now what I was driving at. You see, I am fond of collecting certain\nfacts, and, would you believe, I even copy anecdotes of a certain sort\nfrom newspapers and books, and I've already got a fine collection. The\nTurks, of course, have gone into it, but they are foreigners. I have\nspecimens from home that are even better than the Turks. You know we\nprefer beating--rods and scourges--that's our national institution. Nailing\nears is unthinkable for us, for we are, after all, Europeans. But the rod\nand the scourge we have always with us and they cannot be taken from us.\nAbroad now they scarcely do any beating. Manners are more humane, or laws\nhave been passed, so that they don't dare to flog men now. But they make\nup for it in another way just as national as ours. And so national that it\nwould be practically impossible among us, though I believe we are being\ninoculated with it, since the religious movement began in our aristocracy.\nI have a charming pamphlet, translated from the French, describing how,\nquite recently, five years ago, a murderer, Richard, was executed--a young\nman, I believe, of three and twenty, who repented and was converted to the\nChristian faith at the very scaffold. This Richard was an illegitimate\nchild who was given as a child of six by his parents to some shepherds on\nthe Swiss mountains. They brought him up to work for them. He grew up like\na little wild beast among them. The shepherds taught him nothing, and\nscarcely fed or clothed him, but sent him out at seven to herd the flock\nin cold and wet, and no one hesitated or scrupled to treat him so. Quite\nthe contrary, they thought they had every right, for Richard had been\ngiven to them as a chattel, and they did not even see the necessity of\nfeeding him. Richard himself describes how in those years, like the\nProdigal Son in the Gospel, he longed to eat of the mash given to the\npigs, which were fattened for sale. But they wouldn't even give him that,\nand beat him when he stole from the pigs. And that was how he spent all\nhis childhood and his youth, till he grew up and was strong enough to go\naway and be a thief. The savage began to earn his living as a day laborer\nin Geneva. He drank what he earned, he lived like a brute, and finished by\nkilling and robbing an old man. He was caught, tried, and condemned to\ndeath. They are not sentimentalists there. And in prison he was\nimmediately surrounded by pastors, members of Christian brotherhoods,\nphilanthropic ladies, and the like. They taught him to read and write in\nprison, and expounded the Gospel to him. They exhorted him, worked upon\nhim, drummed at him incessantly, till at last he solemnly confessed his\ncrime. He was converted. He wrote to the court himself that he was a\nmonster, but that in the end God had vouchsafed him light and shown grace.\nAll Geneva was in excitement about him--all philanthropic and religious\nGeneva. All the aristocratic and well-bred society of the town rushed to\nthe prison, kissed Richard and embraced him; 'You are our brother, you\nhave found grace.' And Richard does nothing but weep with emotion, 'Yes,\nI've found grace! All my youth and childhood I was glad of pigs' food, but\nnow even I have found grace. I am dying in the Lord.' 'Yes, Richard, die\nin the Lord; you have shed blood and must die. Though it's not your fault\nthat you knew not the Lord, when you coveted the pigs' food and were\nbeaten for stealing it (which was very wrong of you, for stealing is\nforbidden); but you've shed blood and you must die.' And on the last day,\nRichard, perfectly limp, did nothing but cry and repeat every minute:\n'This is my happiest day. I am going to the Lord.' 'Yes,' cry the pastors\nand the judges and philanthropic ladies. 'This is the happiest day of your\nlife, for you are going to the Lord!' They all walk or drive to the\nscaffold in procession behind the prison van. At the scaffold they call to\nRichard: 'Die, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!'\nAnd so, covered with his brothers' kisses, Richard is dragged on to the\nscaffold, and led to the guillotine. And they chopped off his head in\nbrotherly fashion, because he had found grace. Yes, that's characteristic.\nThat pamphlet is translated into Russian by some Russian philanthropists\nof aristocratic rank and evangelical aspirations, and has been distributed\ngratis for the enlightenment of the people. The case of Richard is\ninteresting because it's national. Though to us it's absurd to cut off a\nman's head, because he has become our brother and has found grace, yet we\nhave our own speciality, which is all but worse. Our historical pastime is\nthe direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov\ndescribing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, 'on its meek eyes,'\nevery one must have seen it. It's peculiarly Russian. He describes how a\nfeeble little nag has foundered under too heavy a load and cannot move.\nThe peasant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what\nhe is doing in the intoxication of cruelty, thrashes it mercilessly over\nand over again. 'However weak you are, you must pull, if you die for it.'\nThe nag strains, and then he begins lashing the poor defenseless creature\non its weeping, on its 'meek eyes.' The frantic beast tugs and draws the\nload, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort\nof unnatural spasmodic action--it's awful in Nekrassov. But that's only a\nhorse, and God has given horses to be beaten. So the Tatars have taught\nus, and they left us the knout as a remembrance of it. But men, too, can\nbe beaten. A well-educated, cultured gentleman and his wife beat their own\nchild with a birch-rod, a girl of seven. I have an exact account of it.\nThe papa was glad that the birch was covered with twigs. 'It stings more,'\nsaid he, and so he began stinging his daughter. I know for a fact there\nare people who at every blow are worked up to sensuality, to literal\nsensuality, which increases progressively at every blow they inflict. They\nbeat for a minute, for five minutes, for ten minutes, more often and more\nsavagely. The child screams. At last the child cannot scream, it gasps,\n'Daddy! daddy!' By some diabolical unseemly chance the case was brought\ninto court. A counsel is engaged. The Russian people have long called a\nbarrister 'a conscience for hire.' The counsel protests in his client's\ndefense. 'It's such a simple thing,' he says, 'an everyday domestic event.\nA father corrects his child. To our shame be it said, it is brought into\ncourt.' The jury, convinced by him, give a favorable verdict. The public\nroars with delight that the torturer is acquitted. Ah, pity I wasn't\nthere! I would have proposed to raise a subscription in his honor!\nCharming pictures.\n\n\"But I've still better things about children. I've collected a great,\ngreat deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of\nfive who was hated by her father and mother, 'most worthy and respectable\npeople, of good education and breeding.' You see, I must repeat again, it\nis a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing\nchildren, and children only. To all other types of humanity these\ntorturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane\nEuropeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of\nchildren themselves in that sense. It's just their defenselessness that\ntempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no\nrefuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of\ncourse, a demon lies hidden--the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat\nat the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off\nthe chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney\ndisease, and so on.\n\n\"This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those\ncultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason\ntill her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of\ncruelty--shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and\nbecause she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five\nsleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they\nsmeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her\nmother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor\nchild's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even\nunderstand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with\nher tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful\ntears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and\nbrother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy\nmust be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have\nexisted on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he\nknow that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole\nworld of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God'! I\nsay nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the\napple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am\nmaking you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I'll leave off if you\nlike.\"\n\n\"Never mind. I want to suffer too,\" muttered Alyosha.\n\n\"One picture, only one more, because it's so curious, so characteristic,\nand I have only just read it in some collection of Russian antiquities.\nI've forgotten the name. I must look it up. It was in the darkest days of\nserfdom at the beginning of the century, and long live the Liberator of\nthe People! There was in those days a general of aristocratic connections,\nthe owner of great estates, one of those men--somewhat exceptional, I\nbelieve, even then--who, retiring from the service into a life of leisure,\nare convinced that they've earned absolute power over the lives of their\nsubjects. There were such men then. So our general, settled on his\nproperty of two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor\nneighbors as though they were dependents and buffoons. He has kennels of\nhundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-boys--all mounted, and in\nuniform. One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in\nplay and hurt the paw of the general's favorite hound. 'Why is my favorite\ndog lame?' He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog's paw.\n'So you did it.' The general looked the child up and down. 'Take him.' He\nwas taken--taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that\nmorning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his\ndependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting\nparade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of\nthem all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the\nlock-up. It's a gloomy, cold, foggy autumn day, a capital day for hunting.\nThe general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked.\nHe shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry.... 'Make him run,'\ncommands the general. 'Run! run!' shout the dog-boys. The boy runs.... 'At\nhim!' yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the\nchild. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother's\neyes!... I believe the general was afterwards declared incapable of\nadministering his estates. Well--what did he deserve? To be shot? To be\nshot for the satisfaction of our moral feelings? Speak, Alyosha!\"\n\n\"To be shot,\" murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale,\ntwisted smile.\n\n\"Bravo!\" cried Ivan, delighted. \"If even you say so.... You're a pretty\nmonk! So there is a little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha\nKaramazov!\"\n\n\"What I said was absurd, but--\"\n\n\"That's just the point, that 'but'!\" cried Ivan. \"Let me tell you, novice,\nthat the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on\nabsurdities, and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in it without\nthem. We know what we know!\"\n\n\"What do you know?\"\n\n\"I understand nothing,\" Ivan went on, as though in delirium. \"I don't want\nto understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind\nlong ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I shall be\nfalse to the fact, and I have determined to stick to the fact.\"\n\n\"Why are you trying me?\" Alyosha cried, with sudden distress. \"Will you\nsay what you mean at last?\"\n\n\"Of course, I will; that's what I've been leading up to. You are dear to\nme, I don't want to let you go, and I won't give you up to your Zossima.\"\n\nIvan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad.\n\n\"Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the\nother tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to\nits center, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I\nam a bug, and I recognize in all humility that I cannot understand why the\nworld is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they\nwere given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven,\nthough they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity\nthem. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is\nthat there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows\neffect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level--but\nthat's only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can't consent to live\nby it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause\nfollows effect simply and directly, and that I know it?--I must have\njustice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite\ntime and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have\nbelieved in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise\nagain, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I\nhaven't suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure\nthe soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my\nown eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and\nembrace his murderer. I want to be there when every one suddenly\nunderstands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are\nbuilt on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the\nchildren, and what am I to do about them? That's a question I can't\nanswer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions,\nbut I've only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so\nunanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal\nharmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It's beyond\nall comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the\nharmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the\nharmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I\nunderstand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such\nsolidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share\nresponsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this\nworld and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that\nthe child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow\nup, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I\nam not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the\nuniverse it will be, when everything in heaven and earth blends in one\nhymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou\nart just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the\nfiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears,\n'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be\nreached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I\ncan't accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take\nmy own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I\nlive to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry\naloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child's torturer,\n'Thou art just, O Lord!' but I don't want to cry aloud then. While there\nis still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher\nharmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child\nwho beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its\nstinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not\nworth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for,\nor there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them?\nIs it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging\nthem? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do,\nsince those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of\nharmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't\nwant more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum\nof sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that\nthe truth is not worth such a price. I don't want the mother to embrace\nthe oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let\nher forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for\nthe immeasurable suffering of her mother's heart. But the sufferings of\nher tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the\ntorturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if\nthey dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole\nworld a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I\ndon't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather\nbe left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my\nunavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, _even if I were wrong_.\nBesides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to\npay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance\nticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as\npossible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha,\nonly I most respectfully return Him the ticket.\"\n\n\"That's rebellion,\" murmured Alyosha, looking down.\n\n\"Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that,\" said Ivan earnestly. \"One can\nhardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I\nchallenge you--answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human\ndestiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace\nand rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to\ndeath only one tiny creature--that baby beating its breast with its fist,\nfor instance--and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you\nconsent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the\ntruth.\"\n\n\"No, I wouldn't consent,\" said Alyosha softly.\n\n\"And can you admit the idea that men for whom you are building it would\nagree to accept their happiness on the foundation of the unexpiated blood\nof a little victim? And accepting it would remain happy for ever?\"\n\n\"No, I can't admit it. Brother,\" said Alyosha suddenly, with flashing\neyes, \"you said just now, is there a being in the whole world who would\nhave the right to forgive and could forgive? But there is a Being and He\ncan forgive everything, all and for all, because He gave His innocent\nblood for all and everything. You have forgotten Him, and on Him is built\nthe edifice, and it is to Him they cry aloud, 'Thou art just, O Lord, for\nThy ways are revealed!' \"\n\n\"Ah! the One without sin and His blood! No, I have not forgotten Him; on\nthe contrary I've been wondering all the time how it was you did not bring\nHim in before, for usually all arguments on your side put Him in the\nforeground. Do you know, Alyosha--don't laugh! I made a poem about a year\nago. If you can waste another ten minutes on me, I'll tell it to you.\"\n\n\"You wrote a poem?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, I didn't write it,\" laughed Ivan, \"and I've never written two\nlines of poetry in my life. But I made up this poem in prose and I\nremembered it. I was carried away when I made it up. You will be my first\nreader--that is listener. Why should an author forego even one listener?\"\nsmiled Ivan. \"Shall I tell it to you?\"\n\n\"I am all attention,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"My poem is called 'The Grand Inquisitor'; it's a ridiculous thing, but I\nwant to tell it to you.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. The Grand Inquisitor\n\n\n\"Even this must have a preface--that is, a literary preface,\" laughed Ivan,\n\"and I am a poor hand at making one. You see, my action takes place in the\nsixteenth century, and at that time, as you probably learnt at school, it\nwas customary in poetry to bring down heavenly powers on earth. Not to\nspeak of Dante, in France, clerks, as well as the monks in the\nmonasteries, used to give regular performances in which the Madonna, the\nsaints, the angels, Christ, and God himself were brought on the stage. In\nthose days it was done in all simplicity. In Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame de\nParis_ an edifying and gratuitous spectacle was provided for the people in\nthe Hotel de Ville of Paris in the reign of Louis XI. in honor of the\nbirth of the dauphin. It was called _Le bon jugement de la tres sainte et\ngracieuse Vierge Marie_, and she appears herself on the stage and\npronounces her _bon jugement_. Similar plays, chiefly from the Old\nTestament, were occasionally performed in Moscow too, up to the times of\nPeter the Great. But besides plays there were all sorts of legends and\nballads scattered about the world, in which the saints and angels and all\nthe powers of Heaven took part when required. In our monasteries the monks\nbusied themselves in translating, copying, and even composing such\npoems--and even under the Tatars. There is, for instance, one such poem (of\ncourse, from the Greek), _The Wanderings of Our Lady through Hell_, with\ndescriptions as bold as Dante's. Our Lady visits hell, and the Archangel\nMichael leads her through the torments. She sees the sinners and their\npunishment. There she sees among others one noteworthy set of sinners in a\nburning lake; some of them sink to the bottom of the lake so that they\ncan't swim out, and 'these God forgets'--an expression of extraordinary\ndepth and force. And so Our Lady, shocked and weeping, falls before the\nthrone of God and begs for mercy for all in hell--for all she has seen\nthere, indiscriminately. Her conversation with God is immensely\ninteresting. She beseeches Him, she will not desist, and when God points\nto the hands and feet of her Son, nailed to the Cross, and asks, 'How can\nI forgive His tormentors?' she bids all the saints, all the martyrs, all\nthe angels and archangels to fall down with her and pray for mercy on all\nwithout distinction. It ends by her winning from God a respite of\nsuffering every year from Good Friday till Trinity Day, and the sinners at\nonce raise a cry of thankfulness from hell, chanting, 'Thou art just, O\nLord, in this judgment.' Well, my poem would have been of that kind if it\nhad appeared at that time. He comes on the scene in my poem, but He says\nnothing, only appears and passes on. Fifteen centuries have passed since\nHe promised to come in His glory, fifteen centuries since His prophet\nwrote, 'Behold, I come quickly'; 'Of that day and that hour knoweth no\nman, neither the Son, but the Father,' as He Himself predicted on earth.\nBut humanity awaits him with the same faith and with the same love. Oh,\nwith greater faith, for it is fifteen centuries since man has ceased to\nsee signs from heaven.\n\n\n    No signs from heaven come to-day\n    To add to what the heart doth say.\n\n\nThere was nothing left but faith in what the heart doth say. It is true\nthere were many miracles in those days. There were saints who performed\nmiraculous cures; some holy people, according to their biographies, were\nvisited by the Queen of Heaven herself. But the devil did not slumber, and\ndoubts were already arising among men of the truth of these miracles. And\njust then there appeared in the north of Germany a terrible new heresy. \"A\nhuge star like to a torch\" (that is, to a church) \"fell on the sources of\nthe waters and they became bitter.\" These heretics began blasphemously\ndenying miracles. But those who remained faithful were all the more ardent\nin their faith. The tears of humanity rose up to Him as before, awaited\nHis coming, loved Him, hoped for Him, yearned to suffer and die for Him as\nbefore. And so many ages mankind had prayed with faith and fervor, \"O Lord\nour God, hasten Thy coming,\" so many ages called upon Him, that in His\ninfinite mercy He deigned to come down to His servants. Before that day He\nhad come down, He had visited some holy men, martyrs and hermits, as is\nwritten in their lives. Among us, Tyutchev, with absolute faith in the\ntruth of his words, bore witness that\n\n\n    Bearing the Cross, in slavish dress,\n    Weary and worn, the Heavenly King\n    Our mother, Russia, came to bless,\n    And through our land went wandering.\n\n\nAnd that certainly was so, I assure you.\n\n\"And behold, He deigned to appear for a moment to the people, to the\ntortured, suffering people, sunk in iniquity, but loving Him like\nchildren. My story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time\nof the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God,\nand 'in the splendid _auto da fe_ the wicked heretics were burnt.' Oh, of\ncourse, this was not the coming in which He will appear according to His\npromise at the end of time in all His heavenly glory, and which will be\nsudden 'as lightning flashing from east to west.' No, He visited His\nchildren only for a moment, and there where the flames were crackling\nround the heretics. In His infinite mercy He came once more among men in\nthat human shape in which He walked among men for three years fifteen\ncenturies ago. He came down to the 'hot pavements' of the southern town in\nwhich on the day before almost a hundred heretics had, _ad majorem gloriam\nDei_, been burnt by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, in a magnificent\n_auto da fe_, in the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the\ncardinals, the most charming ladies of the court, and the whole population\nof Seville.\n\n\"He came softly, unobserved, and yet, strange to say, every one recognized\nHim. That might be one of the best passages in the poem. I mean, why they\nrecognized Him. The people are irresistibly drawn to Him, they surround\nHim, they flock about Him, follow Him. He moves silently in their midst\nwith a gentle smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love burns in His\nheart, light and power shine from His eyes, and their radiance, shed on\nthe people, stirs their hearts with responsive love. He holds out His\nhands to them, blesses them, and a healing virtue comes from contact with\nHim, even with His garments. An old man in the crowd, blind from\nchildhood, cries out, 'O Lord, heal me and I shall see Thee!' and, as it\nwere, scales fall from his eyes and the blind man sees Him. The crowd\nweeps and kisses the earth under His feet. Children throw flowers before\nHim, sing, and cry hosannah. 'It is He--it is He!' all repeat. 'It must be\nHe, it can be no one but Him!' He stops at the steps of the Seville\ncathedral at the moment when the weeping mourners are bringing in a little\nopen white coffin. In it lies a child of seven, the only daughter of a\nprominent citizen. The dead child lies hidden in flowers. 'He will raise\nyour child,' the crowd shouts to the weeping mother. The priest, coming to\nmeet the coffin, looks perplexed, and frowns, but the mother of the dead\nchild throws herself at His feet with a wail. 'If it is Thou, raise my\nchild!' she cries, holding out her hands to Him. The procession halts, the\ncoffin is laid on the steps at His feet. He looks with compassion, and His\nlips once more softly pronounce, 'Maiden, arise!' and the maiden arises.\nThe little girl sits up in the coffin and looks round, smiling with wide-\nopen wondering eyes, holding a bunch of white roses they had put in her\nhand.\n\n\"There are cries, sobs, confusion among the people, and at that moment the\ncardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, passes by the cathedral. He is an\nold man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken\neyes, in which there is still a gleam of light. He is not dressed in his\ngorgeous cardinal's robes, as he was the day before, when he was burning\nthe enemies of the Roman Church--at this moment he is wearing his coarse,\nold, monk's cassock. At a distance behind him come his gloomy assistants\nand slaves and the 'holy guard.' He stops at the sight of the crowd and\nwatches it from a distance. He sees everything; he sees them set the\ncoffin down at His feet, sees the child rise up, and his face darkens. He\nknits his thick gray brows and his eyes gleam with a sinister fire. He\nholds out his finger and bids the guards take Him. And such is his power,\nso completely are the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience\nto him, that the crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the\nmidst of deathlike silence they lay hands on Him and lead Him away. The\ncrowd instantly bows down to the earth, like one man, before the old\nInquisitor. He blesses the people in silence and passes on. The guards\nlead their prisoner to the close, gloomy vaulted prison in the ancient\npalace of the Holy Inquisition and shut Him in it. The day passes and is\nfollowed by the dark, burning, 'breathless' night of Seville. The air is\n'fragrant with laurel and lemon.' In the pitch darkness the iron door of\nthe prison is suddenly opened and the Grand Inquisitor himself comes in\nwith a light in his hand. He is alone; the door is closed at once behind\nhim. He stands in the doorway and for a minute or two gazes into His face.\nAt last he goes up slowly, sets the light on the table and speaks.\n\n\" 'Is it Thou? Thou?' but receiving no answer, he adds at once, 'Don't\nanswer, be silent. What canst Thou say, indeed? I know too well what Thou\nwouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst\nsaid of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast come to\nhinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost Thou know what will be to-\nmorrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it is Thou or\nonly a semblance of Him, but to-morrow I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee\nat the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have to-day\nkissed Thy feet, to-morrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap\nup the embers of Thy fire. Knowest Thou that? Yes, maybe Thou knowest it,'\nhe added with thoughtful penetration, never for a moment taking his eyes\noff the Prisoner.\"\n\n\"I don't quite understand, Ivan. What does it mean?\" Alyosha, who had been\nlistening in silence, said with a smile. \"Is it simply a wild fantasy, or\na mistake on the part of the old man--some impossible _quiproquo_?\"\n\n\"Take it as the last,\" said Ivan, laughing, \"if you are so corrupted by\nmodern realism and can't stand anything fantastic. If you like it to be a\ncase of mistaken identity, let it be so. It is true,\" he went on,\nlaughing, \"the old man was ninety, and he might well be crazy over his set\nidea. He might have been struck by the appearance of the Prisoner. It\nmight, in fact, be simply his ravings, the delusion of an old man of\nninety, over-excited by the _auto da fe_ of a hundred heretics the day\nbefore. But does it matter to us after all whether it was a mistake of\nidentity or a wild fantasy? All that matters is that the old man should\nspeak out, should speak openly of what he has thought in silence for\nninety years.\"\n\n\"And the Prisoner too is silent? Does He look at him and not say a word?\"\n\n\"That's inevitable in any case,\" Ivan laughed again. \"The old man has told\nHim He hasn't the right to add anything to what He has said of old. One\nmay say it is the most fundamental feature of Roman Catholicism, in my\nopinion at least. 'All has been given by Thee to the Pope,' they say, 'and\nall, therefore, is still in the Pope's hands, and there is no need for\nThee to come now at all. Thou must not meddle for the time, at least.'\nThat's how they speak and write too--the Jesuits, at any rate. I have read\nit myself in the works of their theologians. 'Hast Thou the right to\nreveal to us one of the mysteries of that world from which Thou hast\ncome?' my old man asks Him, and answers the question for Him. 'No, Thou\nhast not; that Thou mayest not add to what has been said of old, and\nmayest not take from men the freedom which Thou didst exalt when Thou wast\non earth. Whatsoever Thou revealest anew will encroach on men's freedom of\nfaith; for it will be manifest as a miracle, and the freedom of their\nfaith was dearer to Thee than anything in those days fifteen hundred years\nago. Didst Thou not often say then, \"I will make you free\"? But now Thou\nhast seen these \"free\" men,' the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive\nsmile. 'Yes, we've paid dearly for it,' he goes on, looking sternly at\nHim, 'but at last we have completed that work in Thy name. For fifteen\ncenturies we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and\nover for good. Dost Thou not believe that it's over for good? Thou lookest\nmeekly at me and deignest not even to be wroth with me. But let me tell\nThee that now, to-day, people are more persuaded than ever that they have\nperfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it\nhumbly at our feet. But that has been our doing. Was this what Thou didst?\nWas this Thy freedom?' \"\n\n\"I don't understand again,\" Alyosha broke in. \"Is he ironical, is he\njesting?\"\n\n\"Not a bit of it! He claims it as a merit for himself and his Church that\nat last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy.\n'For now' (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) 'for the first\ntime it has become possible to think of the happiness of men. Man was\ncreated a rebel; and how can rebels be happy? Thou wast warned,' he says\nto Him. 'Thou hast had no lack of admonitions and warnings, but Thou didst\nnot listen to those warnings; Thou didst reject the only way by which men\nmight be made happy. But, fortunately, departing Thou didst hand on the\nwork to us. Thou hast promised, Thou hast established by Thy word, Thou\nhast given to us the right to bind and to unbind, and now, of course, Thou\ncanst not think of taking it away. Why, then, hast Thou come to hinder\nus?' \"\n\n\"And what's the meaning of 'no lack of admonitions and warnings'?\" asked\nAlyosha.\n\n\"Why, that's the chief part of what the old man must say.\n\n\" 'The wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-\nexistence,' the old man goes on, 'the great spirit talked with Thee in the\nwilderness, and we are told in the books that he \"tempted\" Thee. Is that\nso? And could anything truer be said than what he revealed to Thee in\nthree questions and what Thou didst reject, and what in the books is\ncalled \"the temptation\"? And yet if there has ever been on earth a real\nstupendous miracle, it took place on that day, on the day of the three\ntemptations. The statement of those three questions was itself the\nmiracle. If it were possible to imagine simply for the sake of argument\nthat those three questions of the dread spirit had perished utterly from\nthe books, and that we had to restore them and to invent them anew, and to\ndo so had gathered together all the wise men of the earth--rulers, chief\npriests, learned men, philosophers, poets--and had set them the task to\ninvent three questions, such as would not only fit the occasion, but\nexpress in three words, three human phrases, the whole future history of\nthe world and of humanity--dost Thou believe that all the wisdom of the\nearth united could have invented anything in depth and force equal to the\nthree questions which were actually put to Thee then by the wise and\nmighty spirit in the wilderness? From those questions alone, from the\nmiracle of their statement, we can see that we have here to do not with\nthe fleeting human intelligence, but with the absolute and eternal. For in\nthose three questions the whole subsequent history of mankind is, as it\nwere, brought together into one whole, and foretold, and in them are\nunited all the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature. At the\ntime it could not be so clear, since the future was unknown; but now that\nfifteen hundred years have passed, we see that everything in those three\nquestions was so justly divined and foretold, and has been so truly\nfulfilled, that nothing can be added to them or taken from them.\n\n\" 'Judge Thyself who was right--Thou or he who questioned Thee then?\nRemember the first question; its meaning, in other words, was this: \"Thou\nwouldst go into the world, and art going with empty hands, with some\npromise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural\nunruliness cannot even understand, which they fear and dread--for nothing\nhas ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than\nfreedom. But seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren\nwilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a\nflock of sheep, grateful and obedient, though for ever trembling, lest\nThou withdraw Thy hand and deny them Thy bread.\" But Thou wouldst not\ndeprive man of freedom and didst reject the offer, thinking, what is that\nfreedom worth, if obedience is bought with bread? Thou didst reply that\nman lives not by bread alone. But dost Thou know that for the sake of that\nearthly bread the spirit of the earth will rise up against Thee and will\nstrive with Thee and overcome Thee, and all will follow him, crying, \"Who\ncan compare with this beast? He has given us fire from heaven!\" Dost Thou\nknow that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of\ntheir sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only\nhunger? \"Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!\" that's what they'll write\non the banner, which they will raise against Thee, and with which they\nwill destroy Thy temple. Where Thy temple stood will rise a new building;\nthe terrible tower of Babel will be built again, and though, like the one\nof old, it will not be finished, yet Thou mightest have prevented that new\ntower and have cut short the sufferings of men for a thousand years; for\nthey will come back to us after a thousand years of agony with their\ntower. They will seek us again, hidden underground in the catacombs, for\nwe shall be again persecuted and tortured. They will find us and cry to\nus, \"Feed us, for those who have promised us fire from heaven haven't\ngiven it!\" And then we shall finish building their tower, for he finishes\nthe building who feeds them. And we alone shall feed them in Thy name,\ndeclaring falsely that it is in Thy name. Oh, never, never can they feed\nthemselves without us! No science will give them bread so long as they\nremain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say\nto us, \"Make us your slaves, but feed us.\" They will understand\nthemselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are\ninconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share\nbetween them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free,\nfor they are weak, vicious, worthless and rebellious. Thou didst promise\nthem the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly\nbread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man? And if\nfor the sake of the bread of Heaven thousands shall follow Thee, what is\nto become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures\nwho will not have the strength to forego the earthly bread for the sake of\nthe heavenly? Or dost Thou care only for the tens of thousands of the\ngreat and strong, while the millions, numerous as the sands of the sea,\nwho are weak but love Thee, must exist only for the sake of the great and\nstrong? No, we care for the weak too. They are sinful and rebellious, but\nin the end they too will become obedient. They will marvel at us and look\non us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have\nfound so dreadful and to rule over them--so awful it will seem to them to\nbe free. But we shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in\nThy name. We shall deceive them again, for we will not let Thee come to us\nagain. That deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to\nlie.\n\n\" 'This is the significance of the first question in the wilderness, and\nthis is what Thou hast rejected for the sake of that freedom which Thou\nhast exalted above everything. Yet in this question lies hid the great\nsecret of this world. Choosing \"bread,\" Thou wouldst have satisfied the\nuniversal and everlasting craving of humanity--to find some one to worship.\nSo long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so\npainfully as to find some one to worship. But man seeks to worship what is\nestablished beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship\nit. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or\nthe other can worship, but to find something that all would believe in and\nworship; what is essential is that all may be _together_ in it. This\ncraving for _community_ of worship is the chief misery of every man\nindividually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake\nof common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set\nup gods and challenged one another, \"Put away your gods and come and\nworship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!\" And so it will be to the\nend of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall\ndown before idols just the same. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not but\nhave known, this fundamental secret of human nature, but Thou didst reject\nthe one infallible banner which was offered Thee to make all men bow down\nto Thee alone--the banner of earthly bread; and Thou hast rejected it for\nthe sake of freedom and the bread of Heaven. Behold what Thou didst\nfurther. And all again in the name of freedom! I tell Thee that man is\ntormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he\ncan hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is\nborn. But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their\nfreedom. In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread,\nand man will worship thee, for nothing is more certain than bread. But if\nsome one else gains possession of his conscience--oh! then he will cast\naway Thy bread and follow after him who has ensnared his conscience. In\nthat Thou wast right. For the secret of man's being is not only to live\nbut to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the\nobject of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather\ndestroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.\nThat is true. But what happened? Instead of taking men's freedom from\nthem, Thou didst make it greater than ever! Didst Thou forget that man\nprefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of\ngood and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of\nconscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. And behold,\ninstead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at\nrest for ever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and\nenigmatic; Thou didst choose what was utterly beyond the strength of men,\nacting as though Thou didst not love them at all--Thou who didst come to\ngive Thy life for them! Instead of taking possession of men's freedom,\nThou didst increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with\nits sufferings for ever. Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should\nfollow Thee freely, enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the\nrigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself\nwhat is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his\nguide. But didst Thou not know that he would at last reject even Thy image\nand Thy truth, if he is weighed down with the fearful burden of free\nchoice? They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not in Thee, for\nthey could not have been left in greater confusion and suffering than Thou\nhast caused, laying upon them so many cares and unanswerable problems.\n\n\" 'So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the\ndestruction of Thy kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it. Yet what\nwas offered Thee? There are three powers, three powers alone, able to\nconquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent\nrebels for their happiness--those forces are miracle, mystery and\nauthority. Thou hast rejected all three and hast set the example for doing\nso. When the wise and dread spirit set Thee on the pinnacle of the temple\nand said to Thee, \"If Thou wouldst know whether Thou art the Son of God\nthen cast Thyself down, for it is written: the angels shall hold him up\nlest he fall and bruise himself, and Thou shalt know then whether Thou art\nthe Son of God and shalt prove then how great is Thy faith in Thy Father.\"\nBut Thou didst refuse and wouldst not cast Thyself down. Oh, of course,\nThou didst proudly and well, like God; but the weak, unruly race of men,\nare they gods? Oh, Thou didst know then that in taking one step, in making\none movement to cast Thyself down, Thou wouldst be tempting God and have\nlost all Thy faith in Him, and wouldst have been dashed to pieces against\nthat earth which Thou didst come to save. And the wise spirit that tempted\nThee would have rejoiced. But I ask again, are there many like Thee? And\ncouldst Thou believe for one moment that men, too, could face such a\ntemptation? Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and\nat the great moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most\nagonizing spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of the\nheart? Oh, Thou didst know that Thy deed would be recorded in books, would\nbe handed down to remote times and the utmost ends of the earth, and Thou\ndidst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to God and not ask for a\nmiracle. But Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects\nGod too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man\ncannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of\nhis own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft,\nthough he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel. Thou\ndidst not come down from the Cross when they shouted to Thee, mocking and\nreviling Thee, \"Come down from the cross and we will believe that Thou art\nHe.\" Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst not enslave man by a\nmiracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou\ndidst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before\nthe might that has overawed him for ever. But Thou didst think too highly\nof men therein, for they are slaves, of course, though rebellious by\nnature. Look round and judge; fifteen centuries have passed, look upon\nthem. Whom hast Thou raised up to Thyself? I swear, man is weaker and\nbaser by nature than Thou hast believed him! Can he, can he do what Thou\ndidst? By showing him so much respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to\nfeel for him, for Thou didst ask far too much from him--Thou who hast loved\nhim more than Thyself! Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less\nof him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have\nbeen lighter. He is weak and vile. What though he is everywhere now\nrebelling against our power, and proud of his rebellion? It is the pride\nof a child and a schoolboy. They are little children rioting and barring\nout the teacher at school. But their childish delight will end; it will\ncost them dear. They will cast down temples and drench the earth with\nblood. But they will see at last, the foolish children, that, though they\nare rebels, they are impotent rebels, unable to keep up their own\nrebellion. Bathed in their foolish tears, they will recognize at last that\nHe who created them rebels must have meant to mock at them. They will say\nthis in despair, and their utterance will be a blasphemy which will make\nthem more unhappy still, for man's nature cannot bear blasphemy, and in\nthe end always avenges it on itself. And so unrest, confusion and\nunhappiness--that is the present lot of man after Thou didst bear so much\nfor their freedom! The great prophet tells in vision and in image, that he\nsaw all those who took part in the first resurrection and that there were\nof each tribe twelve thousand. But if there were so many of them, they\nmust have been not men but gods. They had borne Thy cross, they had\nendured scores of years in the barren, hungry wilderness, living upon\nlocusts and roots--and Thou mayest indeed point with pride at those\nchildren of freedom, of free love, of free and splendid sacrifice for Thy\nname. But remember that they were only some thousands; and what of the\nrest? And how are the other weak ones to blame, because they could not\nendure what the strong have endured? How is the weak soul to blame that it\nis unable to receive such terrible gifts? Canst Thou have simply come to\nthe elect and for the elect? But if so, it is a mystery and we cannot\nunderstand it. And if it is a mystery, we too have a right to preach a\nmystery, and to teach them that it's not the free judgment of their\nhearts, not love that matters, but a mystery which they must follow\nblindly, even against their conscience. So we have done. We have corrected\nThy work and have founded it upon _miracle_, _mystery_ and _authority_.\nAnd men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the\nterrible gift that had brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted\nfrom their hearts. Were we right teaching them this? Speak! Did we not\nlove mankind, so meekly acknowledging their feebleness, lovingly\nlightening their burden, and permitting their weak nature even sin with\nour sanction? Why hast Thou come now to hinder us? And why dost Thou look\nsilently and searchingly at me with Thy mild eyes? Be angry. I don't want\nThy love, for I love Thee not. And what use is it for me to hide anything\nfrom Thee? Don't I know to Whom I am speaking? All that I can say is known\nto Thee already. And is it for me to conceal from Thee our mystery?\nPerhaps it is Thy will to hear it from my lips. Listen, then. We are not\nworking with Thee, but with _him_--that is our mystery. It's long--eight\ncenturies--since we have been on _his_ side and not on Thine. Just eight\ncenturies ago, we took from him what Thou didst reject with scorn, that\nlast gift he offered Thee, showing Thee all the kingdoms of the earth. We\ntook from him Rome and the sword of Caesar, and proclaimed ourselves sole\nrulers of the earth, though hitherto we have not been able to complete our\nwork. But whose fault is that? Oh, the work is only beginning, but it has\nbegun. It has long to await completion and the earth has yet much to\nsuffer, but we shall triumph and shall be Caesars, and then we shall plan\nthe universal happiness of man. But Thou mightest have taken even then the\nsword of Caesar. Why didst Thou reject that last gift? Hadst Thou accepted\nthat last counsel of the mighty spirit, Thou wouldst have accomplished all\nthat man seeks on earth--that is, some one to worship, some one to keep his\nconscience, and some means of uniting all in one unanimous and harmonious\nant-heap, for the craving for universal unity is the third and last\nanguish of men. Mankind as a whole has always striven to organize a\nuniversal state. There have been many great nations with great histories,\nbut the more highly they were developed the more unhappy they were, for\nthey felt more acutely than other people the craving for world-wide union.\nThe great conquerors, Timours and Ghenghis-Khans, whirled like hurricanes\nover the face of the earth striving to subdue its people, and they too\nwere but the unconscious expression of the same craving for universal\nunity. Hadst Thou taken the world and Caesar's purple, Thou wouldst have\nfounded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who can\nrule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his\nhands? We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have\nrejected Thee and followed _him_. Oh, ages are yet to come of the\nconfusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. For having\nbegun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of course,\nwith cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet\nand spatter them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the beast and\nraise the cup, and on it will be written, \"Mystery.\" But then, and only\nthen, the reign of peace and happiness will come for men. Thou art proud\nof Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while we give rest to all.\nAnd besides, how many of those elect, those mighty ones who could become\nelect, have grown weary waiting for Thee, and have transferred and will\ntransfer the powers of their spirit and the warmth of their heart to the\nother camp, and end by raising their _free_ banner against Thee. Thou\ndidst Thyself lift up that banner. But with us all will be happy and will\nno more rebel nor destroy one another as under Thy freedom. Oh, we shall\npersuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their\nfreedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or shall we be\nlying? They will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember\nthe horrors of slavery and confusion to which Thy freedom brought them.\nFreedom, free thought and science, will lead them into such straits and\nwill bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries,\nthat some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves,\nothers, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest,\nweak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: \"Yes,\nyou were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you,\nsave us from ourselves!\"\n\n\" 'Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread\nmade by their hands from them, to give it to them, without any miracle.\nThey will see that we do not change the stones to bread, but in truth they\nwill be more thankful for taking it from our hands than for the bread\nitself! For they will remember only too well that in old days, without our\nhelp, even the bread they made turned to stones in their hands, while\nsince they have come back to us, the very stones have turned to bread in\ntheir hands. Too, too well will they know the value of complete\nsubmission! And until men know that, they will be unhappy. Who is most to\nblame for their not knowing it?--speak! Who scattered the flock and sent it\nastray on unknown paths? But the flock will come together again and will\nsubmit once more, and then it will be once for all. Then we shall give\nthem the quiet humble happiness of weak creatures such as they are by\nnature. Oh, we shall persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou didst\nlift them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall show them that\nthey are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike\nhappiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to\nus and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel\nat us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being\nso powerful and clever, that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent\nflock of thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our\nwrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears\nlike women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us\nto pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. Yes,\nwe shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their\nlife like a child's game, with children's songs and innocent dance. Oh, we\nshall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love\nus like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that\nevery sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we\nallow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins\nwe take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will\nadore us as their saviors who have taken on themselves their sins before\nGod. And they will have no secrets from us. We shall allow or forbid them\nto live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have\nchildren--according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient--and\nthey will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of\ntheir conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an\nanswer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will\nsave them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present\nin making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the\nmillions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For\nonly we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be\nthousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who\nhave taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil.\nPeacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and\nbeyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the\nsecret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of\nheaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the other world, it\ncertainly would not be for such as they. It is prophesied that Thou wilt\ncome again in victory, Thou wilt come with Thy chosen, the proud and\nstrong, but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have\nsaved all. We are told that the harlot who sits upon the beast, and holds\nin her hands the _mystery_, shall be put to shame, that the weak will rise\nup again, and will rend her royal purple and will strip naked her\nloathsome body. But then I will stand up and point out to Thee the\nthousand millions of happy children who have known no sin. And we who have\ntaken their sins upon us for their happiness will stand up before Thee and\nsay: \"Judge us if Thou canst and darest.\" Know that I fear Thee not. Know\nthat I too have been in the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and\nlocusts, I too prized the freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I\ntoo was striving to stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful,\nthirsting \"to make up the number.\" But I awakened and would not serve\nmadness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those _who have corrected\nThy work_. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness\nof the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will\nbe built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at\na sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on\nwhich I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if any one has ever\ndeserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. _Dixi._' \"\n\nIvan stopped. He was carried away as he talked, and spoke with excitement;\nwhen he had finished, he suddenly smiled.\n\nAlyosha had listened in silence; towards the end he was greatly moved and\nseemed several times on the point of interrupting, but restrained himself.\nNow his words came with a rush.\n\n\"But ... that's absurd!\" he cried, flushing. \"Your poem is in praise of\nJesus, not in blame of Him--as you meant it to be. And who will believe you\nabout freedom? Is that the way to understand it? That's not the idea of it\nin the Orthodox Church.... That's Rome, and not even the whole of Rome,\nit's false--those are the worst of the Catholics, the Inquisitors, the\nJesuits!... And there could not be such a fantastic creature as your\nInquisitor. What are these sins of mankind they take on themselves? Who\nare these keepers of the mystery who have taken some curse upon themselves\nfor the happiness of mankind? When have they been seen? We know the\nJesuits, they are spoken ill of, but surely they are not what you\ndescribe? They are not that at all, not at all.... They are simply the\nRomish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with\nthe Pontiff of Rome for Emperor ... that's their ideal, but there's no\nsort of mystery or lofty melancholy about it.... It's simple lust of\npower, of filthy earthly gain, of domination--something like a universal\nserfdom with them as masters--that's all they stand for. They don't even\nbelieve in God perhaps. Your suffering Inquisitor is a mere fantasy.\"\n\n\"Stay, stay,\" laughed Ivan, \"how hot you are! A fantasy you say, let it be\nso! Of course it's a fantasy. But allow me to say: do you really think\nthat the Roman Catholic movement of the last centuries is actually nothing\nbut the lust of power, of filthy earthly gain? Is that Father Paissy's\nteaching?\"\n\n\"No, no, on the contrary, Father Paissy did once say something rather the\nsame as you ... but of course it's not the same, not a bit the same,\"\nAlyosha hastily corrected himself.\n\n\"A precious admission, in spite of your 'not a bit the same.' I ask you\nwhy your Jesuits and Inquisitors have united simply for vile material\ngain? Why can there not be among them one martyr oppressed by great sorrow\nand loving humanity? You see, only suppose that there was one such man\namong all those who desire nothing but filthy material gain--if there's\nonly one like my old Inquisitor, who had himself eaten roots in the desert\nand made frenzied efforts to subdue his flesh to make himself free and\nperfect. But yet all his life he loved humanity, and suddenly his eyes\nwere opened, and he saw that it is no great moral blessedness to attain\nperfection and freedom, if at the same time one gains the conviction that\nmillions of God's creatures have been created as a mockery, that they will\nnever be capable of using their freedom, that these poor rebels can never\nturn into giants to complete the tower, that it was not for such geese\nthat the great idealist dreamt his dream of harmony. Seeing all that he\nturned back and joined--the clever people. Surely that could have\nhappened?\"\n\n\"Joined whom, what clever people?\" cried Alyosha, completely carried away.\n\"They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets....\nPerhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor does\nnot believe in God, that's his secret!\"\n\n\"What if it is so! At last you have guessed it. It's perfectly true, it's\ntrue that that's the whole secret, but isn't that suffering, at least for\na man like that, who has wasted his whole life in the desert and yet could\nnot shake off his incurable love of humanity? In his old age he reached\nthe clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the great dread spirit\ncould build up any tolerable sort of life for the feeble, unruly,\n'incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest.' And so, convinced of\nthis, he sees that he must follow the counsel of the wise spirit, the\ndread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore accept lying and\ndeception, and lead men consciously to death and destruction, and yet\ndeceive them all the way so that they may not notice where they are being\nled, that the poor blind creatures may at least on the way think\nthemselves happy. And note, the deception is in the name of Him in Whose\nideal the old man had so fervently believed all his life long. Is not that\ntragic? And if only one such stood at the head of the whole army 'filled\nwith the lust of power only for the sake of filthy gain'--would not one\nsuch be enough to make a tragedy? More than that, one such standing at the\nhead is enough to create the actual leading idea of the Roman Church with\nall its armies and Jesuits, its highest idea. I tell you frankly that I\nfirmly believe that there has always been such a man among those who stood\nat the head of the movement. Who knows, there may have been some such even\namong the Roman Popes. Who knows, perhaps the spirit of that accursed old\nman who loves mankind so obstinately in his own way, is to be found even\nnow in a whole multitude of such old men, existing not by chance but by\nagreement, as a secret league formed long ago for the guarding of the\nmystery, to guard it from the weak and the unhappy, so as to make them\nhappy. No doubt it is so, and so it must be indeed. I fancy that even\namong the Masons there's something of the same mystery at the bottom, and\nthat that's why the Catholics so detest the Masons as their rivals\nbreaking up the unity of the idea, while it is so essential that there\nshould be one flock and one shepherd.... But from the way I defend my idea\nI might be an author impatient of your criticism. Enough of it.\"\n\n\"You are perhaps a Mason yourself!\" broke suddenly from Alyosha. \"You\ndon't believe in God,\" he added, speaking this time very sorrowfully. He\nfancied besides that his brother was looking at him ironically. \"How does\nyour poem end?\" he asked, suddenly looking down. \"Or was it the end?\"\n\n\"I meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he\nwaited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed down\nupon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the time,\nlooking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply. The old man\nlonged for Him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But He\nsuddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his\nbloodless aged lips. That was all His answer. The old man shuddered. His\nlips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: 'Go, and come\nno more ... come not at all, never, never!' And he let Him out into the\ndark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went away.\"\n\n\"And the old man?\"\n\n\"The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.\"\n\n\"And you with him, you too?\" cried Alyosha, mournfully.\n\nIvan laughed.\n\n\"Why, it's all nonsense, Alyosha. It's only a senseless poem of a\nsenseless student, who could never write two lines of verse. Why do you\ntake it so seriously? Surely you don't suppose I am going straight off to\nthe Jesuits, to join the men who are correcting His work? Good Lord, it's\nno business of mine. I told you, all I want is to live on to thirty, and\nthen ... dash the cup to the ground!\"\n\n\"But the little sticky leaves, and the precious tombs, and the blue sky,\nand the woman you love! How will you live, how will you love them?\"\nAlyosha cried sorrowfully. \"With such a hell in your heart and your head,\nhow can you? No, that's just what you are going away for, to join them ...\nif not, you will kill yourself, you can't endure it!\"\n\n\"There is a strength to endure everything,\" Ivan said with a cold smile.\n\n\"What strength?\"\n\n\"The strength of the Karamazovs--the strength of the Karamazov baseness.\"\n\n\"To sink into debauchery, to stifle your soul with corruption, yes?\"\n\n\"Possibly even that ... only perhaps till I am thirty I shall escape it,\nand then--\"\n\n\"How will you escape it? By what will you escape it? That's impossible\nwith your ideas.\"\n\n\"In the Karamazov way, again.\"\n\n\" 'Everything is lawful,' you mean? Everything is lawful, is that it?\"\n\nIvan scowled, and all at once turned strangely pale.\n\n\"Ah, you've caught up yesterday's phrase, which so offended Miuesov--and\nwhich Dmitri pounced upon so naively, and paraphrased!\" he smiled queerly.\n\"Yes, if you like, 'everything is lawful' since the word has been said. I\nwon't deny it. And Mitya's version isn't bad.\"\n\nAlyosha looked at him in silence.\n\n\"I thought that going away from here I have you at least,\" Ivan said\nsuddenly, with unexpected feeling; \"but now I see that there is no place\nfor me even in your heart, my dear hermit. The formula, 'all is lawful,' I\nwon't renounce--will you renounce me for that, yes?\"\n\nAlyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips.\n\n\"That's plagiarism,\" cried Ivan, highly delighted. \"You stole that from my\npoem. Thank you though. Get up, Alyosha, it's time we were going, both of\nus.\"\n\nThey went out, but stopped when they reached the entrance of the\nrestaurant.\n\n\"Listen, Alyosha,\" Ivan began in a resolute voice, \"if I am really able to\ncare for the sticky little leaves I shall only love them, remembering you.\nIt's enough for me that you are somewhere here, and I shan't lose my\ndesire for life yet. Is that enough for you? Take it as a declaration of\nlove if you like. And now you go to the right and I to the left. And it's\nenough, do you hear, enough. I mean even if I don't go away to-morrow (I\nthink I certainly shall go) and we meet again, don't say a word more on\nthese subjects. I beg that particularly. And about Dmitri too, I ask you\nspecially, never speak to me again,\" he added, with sudden irritation;\n\"it's all exhausted, it has all been said over and over again, hasn't it?\nAnd I'll make you one promise in return for it. When at thirty, I want to\n'dash the cup to the ground,' wherever I may be I'll come to have one more\ntalk with you, even though it were from America, you may be sure of that.\nI'll come on purpose. It will be very interesting to have a look at you,\nto see what you'll be by that time. It's rather a solemn promise, you see.\nAnd we really may be parting for seven years or ten. Come, go now to your\nPater Seraphicus, he is dying. If he dies without you, you will be angry\nwith me for having kept you. Good-by, kiss me once more; that's right, now\ngo.\"\n\nIvan turned suddenly and went his way without looking back. It was just as\nDmitri had left Alyosha the day before, though the parting had been very\ndifferent. The strange resemblance flashed like an arrow through Alyosha's\nmind in the distress and dejection of that moment. He waited a little,\nlooking after his brother. He suddenly noticed that Ivan swayed as he\nwalked and that his right shoulder looked lower than his left. He had\nnever noticed it before. But all at once he turned too, and almost ran to\nthe monastery. It was nearly dark, and he felt almost frightened;\nsomething new was growing up in him for which he could not account. The\nwind had risen again as on the previous evening, and the ancient pines\nmurmured gloomily about him when he entered the hermitage copse. He almost\nran. \"Pater Seraphicus--he got that name from somewhere--where from?\"\nAlyosha wondered. \"Ivan, poor Ivan, and when shall I see you again?...\nHere is the hermitage. Yes, yes, that he is, Pater Seraphicus, he will\nsave me--from him and for ever!\"\n\nSeveral times afterwards he wondered how he could on leaving Ivan so\ncompletely forget his brother Dmitri, though he had that morning, only a\nfew hours before, so firmly resolved to find him and not to give up doing\nso, even should he be unable to return to the monastery that night.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. For Awhile A Very Obscure One\n\n\nAnd Ivan, on parting from Alyosha, went home to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house.\nBut, strange to say, he was overcome by insufferable depression, which\ngrew greater at every step he took towards the house. There was nothing\nstrange in his being depressed; what was strange was that Ivan could not\nhave said what was the cause of it. He had often been depressed before,\nand there was nothing surprising at his feeling so at such a moment, when\nhe had broken off with everything that had brought him here, and was\npreparing that day to make a new start and enter upon a new, unknown\nfuture. He would again be as solitary as ever, and though he had great\nhopes, and great--too great--expectations from life, he could not have given\nany definite account of his hopes, his expectations, or even his desires.\n\nYet at that moment, though the apprehension of the new and unknown\ncertainly found place in his heart, what was worrying him was something\nquite different. \"Is it loathing for my father's house?\" he wondered.\n\"Quite likely; I am so sick of it; and though it's the last time I shall\ncross its hateful threshold, still I loathe it.... No, it's not that\neither. Is it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation I had with\nhim? For so many years I've been silent with the whole world and not\ndeigned to speak, and all of a sudden I reel off a rigmarole like that.\"\nIt certainly might have been the youthful vexation of youthful\ninexperience and vanity--vexation at having failed to express himself,\nespecially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom his heart had certainly\nbeen reckoning. No doubt that came in, that vexation, it must have done\nindeed; but yet that was not it, that was not it either. \"I feel sick with\ndepression and yet I can't tell what I want. Better not think, perhaps.\"\n\nIvan tried \"not to think,\" but that, too, was no use. What made his\ndepression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of casual,\nexternal character--he felt that. Some person or thing seemed to be\nstanding out somewhere, just as something will sometimes obtrude itself\nupon the eye, and though one may be so busy with work or conversation that\nfor a long time one does not notice it, yet it irritates and almost\ntorments one till at last one realizes, and removes the offending object,\noften quite a trifling and ridiculous one--some article left about in the\nwrong place, a handkerchief on the floor, a book not replaced on the\nshelf, and so on.\n\nAt last, feeling very cross and ill-humored, Ivan arrived home, and\nsuddenly, about fifteen paces from the garden gate, he guessed what was\nfretting and worrying him.\n\nOn a bench in the gateway the valet Smerdyakov was sitting enjoying the\ncoolness of the evening, and at the first glance at him Ivan knew that the\nvalet Smerdyakov was on his mind, and that it was this man that his soul\nloathed. It all dawned upon him suddenly and became clear. Just before,\nwhen Alyosha had been telling him of his meeting with Smerdyakov, he had\nfelt a sudden twinge of gloom and loathing, which had immediately stirred\nresponsive anger in his heart. Afterwards, as he talked, Smerdyakov had\nbeen forgotten for the time; but still he had been in his mind, and as\nsoon as Ivan parted with Alyosha and was walking home, the forgotten\nsensation began to obtrude itself again. \"Is it possible that a miserable,\ncontemptible creature like that can worry me so much?\" he wondered, with\ninsufferable irritation.\n\nIt was true that Ivan had come of late to feel an intense dislike for the\nman, especially during the last few days. He had even begun to notice in\nhimself a growing feeling that was almost of hatred for the creature.\nPerhaps this hatred was accentuated by the fact that when Ivan first came\nto the neighborhood he had felt quite differently. Then he had taken a\nmarked interest in Smerdyakov, and had even thought him very original. He\nhad encouraged him to talk to him, although he had always wondered at a\ncertain incoherence, or rather restlessness, in his mind, and could not\nunderstand what it was that so continually and insistently worked upon the\nbrain of \"the contemplative.\" They discussed philosophical questions and\neven how there could have been light on the first day when the sun, moon,\nand stars were only created on the fourth day, and how that was to be\nunderstood. But Ivan soon saw that, though the sun, moon, and stars might\nbe an interesting subject, yet that it was quite secondary to Smerdyakov,\nand that he was looking for something altogether different. In one way and\nanother, he began to betray a boundless vanity, and a wounded vanity, too,\nand that Ivan disliked. It had first given rise to his aversion. Later on,\nthere had been trouble in the house. Grushenka had come on the scene, and\nthere had been the scandals with his brother Dmitri--they discussed that,\ntoo. But though Smerdyakov always talked of that with great excitement, it\nwas impossible to discover what he desired to come of it. There was, in\nfact, something surprising in the illogicality and incoherence of some of\nhis desires, accidentally betrayed and always vaguely expressed.\nSmerdyakov was always inquiring, putting certain indirect but obviously\npremeditated questions, but what his object was he did not explain, and\nusually at the most important moment he would break off and relapse into\nsilence or pass to another subject. But what finally irritated Ivan most\nand confirmed his dislike for him was the peculiar, revolting familiarity\nwhich Smerdyakov began to show more and more markedly. Not that he forgot\nhimself and was rude; on the contrary, he always spoke very respectfully,\nyet he had obviously begun to consider--goodness knows why!--that there was\nsome sort of understanding between him and Ivan Fyodorovitch. He always\nspoke in a tone that suggested that those two had some kind of compact,\nsome secret between them, that had at some time been expressed on both\nsides, only known to them and beyond the comprehension of those around\nthem. But for a long while Ivan did not recognize the real cause of his\ngrowing dislike and he had only lately realized what was at the root of\nit.\n\nWith a feeling of disgust and irritation he tried to pass in at the gate\nwithout speaking or looking at Smerdyakov. But Smerdyakov rose from the\nbench, and from that action alone, Ivan knew instantly that he wanted\nparticularly to talk to him. Ivan looked at him and stopped, and the fact\nthat he did stop, instead of passing by, as he meant to the minute before,\ndrove him to fury. With anger and repulsion he looked at Smerdyakov's\nemasculate, sickly face, with the little curls combed forward on his\nforehead. His left eye winked and he grinned as if to say, \"Where are you\ngoing? You won't pass by; you see that we two clever people have something\nto say to each other.\"\n\nIvan shook. \"Get away, miserable idiot. What have I to do with you?\" was\non the tip of his tongue, but to his profound astonishment he heard\nhimself say, \"Is my father still asleep, or has he waked?\"\n\nHe asked the question softly and meekly, to his own surprise, and at once,\nagain to his own surprise, sat down on the bench. For an instant he felt\nalmost frightened; he remembered it afterwards. Smerdyakov stood facing\nhim, his hands behind his back, looking at him with assurance and almost\nseverity.\n\n\"His honor is still asleep,\" he articulated deliberately (\"You were the\nfirst to speak, not I,\" he seemed to say). \"I am surprised at you, sir,\"\nhe added, after a pause, dropping his eyes affectedly, setting his right\nfoot forward, and playing with the tip of his polished boot.\n\n\"Why are you surprised at me?\" Ivan asked abruptly and sullenly, doing his\nutmost to restrain himself, and suddenly realizing, with disgust, that he\nwas feeling intense curiosity and would not, on any account, have gone\naway without satisfying it.\n\n\"Why don't you go to Tchermashnya, sir?\" Smerdyakov suddenly raised his\neyes and smiled familiarly. \"Why I smile you must understand of yourself,\nif you are a clever man,\" his screwed-up left eye seemed to say.\n\n\"Why should I go to Tchermashnya?\" Ivan asked in surprise.\n\nSmerdyakov was silent again.\n\n\"Fyodor Pavlovitch himself has so begged you to,\" he said at last, slowly\nand apparently attaching no significance to his answer. \"I put you off\nwith a secondary reason,\" he seemed to suggest, \"simply to say something.\"\n\n\"Damn you! Speak out what you want!\" Ivan cried angrily at last, passing\nfrom meekness to violence.\n\nSmerdyakov drew his right foot up to his left, pulled himself up, but\nstill looked at him with the same serenity and the same little smile.\n\n\"Substantially nothing--but just by way of conversation.\"\n\nAnother silence followed. They did not speak for nearly a minute. Ivan\nknew that he ought to get up and show anger, and Smerdyakov stood before\nhim and seemed to be waiting as though to see whether he would be angry or\nnot. So at least it seemed to Ivan. At last he moved to get up. Smerdyakov\nseemed to seize the moment.\n\n\"I'm in an awful position, Ivan Fyodorovitch. I don't know how to help\nmyself,\" he said resolutely and distinctly, and at his last word he\nsighed. Ivan Fyodorovitch sat down again.\n\n\"They are both utterly crazy, they are no better than little children,\"\nSmerdyakov went on. \"I am speaking of your parent and your brother Dmitri\nFyodorovitch. Here Fyodor Pavlovitch will get up directly and begin\nworrying me every minute, 'Has she come? Why hasn't she come?' and so on\nup till midnight and even after midnight. And if Agrafena Alexandrovna\ndoesn't come (for very likely she does not mean to come at all) then he\nwill be at me again to-morrow morning, 'Why hasn't she come? When will she\ncome?'--as though I were to blame for it. On the other side it's no better.\nAs soon as it gets dark, or even before, your brother will appear with his\ngun in his hands: 'Look out, you rogue, you soup-maker. If you miss her\nand don't let me know she's been--I'll kill you before any one.' When the\nnight's over, in the morning, he, too, like Fyodor Pavlovitch, begins\nworrying me to death. 'Why hasn't she come? Will she come soon?' And he,\ntoo, thinks me to blame because his lady hasn't come. And every day and\nevery hour they get angrier and angrier, so that I sometimes think I shall\nkill myself in a fright. I can't depend upon them, sir.\"\n\n\"And why have you meddled? Why did you begin to spy for Dmitri\nFyodorovitch?\" said Ivan irritably.\n\n\"How could I help meddling? Though, indeed, I haven't meddled at all, if\nyou want to know the truth of the matter. I kept quiet from the very\nbeginning, not daring to answer; but he pitched on me to be his servant.\nHe has had only one thing to say since: 'I'll kill you, you scoundrel, if\nyou miss her,' I feel certain, sir, that I shall have a long fit to-\nmorrow.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by 'a long fit'?\"\n\n\"A long fit, lasting a long time--several hours, or perhaps a day or two.\nOnce it went on for three days. I fell from the garret that time. The\nstruggling ceased and then began again, and for three days I couldn't come\nback to my senses. Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Herzenstube, the doctor\nhere, and he put ice on my head and tried another remedy, too.... I might\nhave died.\"\n\n\"But they say one can't tell with epilepsy when a fit is coming. What\nmakes you say you will have one to-morrow?\" Ivan inquired, with a\npeculiar, irritable curiosity.\n\n\"That's just so. You can't tell beforehand.\"\n\n\"Besides, you fell from the garret then.\"\n\n\"I climb up to the garret every day. I might fall from the garret again\nto-morrow. And, if not, I might fall down the cellar steps. I have to go\ninto the cellar every day, too.\"\n\nIvan took a long look at him.\n\n\"You are talking nonsense, I see, and I don't quite understand you,\" he\nsaid softly, but with a sort of menace. \"Do you mean to pretend to be ill\nto-morrow for three days, eh?\"\n\nSmerdyakov, who was looking at the ground again, and playing with the toe\nof his right foot, set the foot down, moved the left one forward, and,\ngrinning, articulated:\n\n\"If I were able to play such a trick, that is, pretend to have a fit--and\nit would not be difficult for a man accustomed to them--I should have a\nperfect right to use such a means to save myself from death. For even if\nAgrafena Alexandrovna comes to see his father while I am ill, his honor\ncan't blame a sick man for not telling him. He'd be ashamed to.\"\n\n\"Hang it all!\" Ivan cried, his face working with anger, \"why are you\nalways in such a funk for your life? All my brother Dmitri's threats are\nonly hasty words and mean nothing. He won't kill you; it's not you he'll\nkill!\"\n\n\"He'd kill me first of all, like a fly. But even more than that, I am\nafraid I shall be taken for an accomplice of his when he does something\ncrazy to his father.\"\n\n\"Why should you be taken for an accomplice?\"\n\n\"They'll think I am an accomplice, because I let him know the signals as a\ngreat secret.\"\n\n\"What signals? Whom did you tell? Confound you, speak more plainly.\"\n\n\"I'm bound to admit the fact,\" Smerdyakov drawled with pedantic composure,\n\"that I have a secret with Fyodor Pavlovitch in this business. As you know\nyourself (if only you do know it) he has for several days past locked\nhimself in as soon as night or even evening comes on. Of late you've been\ngoing upstairs to your room early every evening, and yesterday you did not\ncome down at all, and so perhaps you don't know how carefully he has begun\nto lock himself in at night, and even if Grigory Vassilyevitch comes to\nthe door he won't open to him till he hears his voice. But Grigory\nVassilyevitch does not come, because I wait upon him alone in his room\nnow. That's the arrangement he made himself ever since this to-do with\nAgrafena Alexandrovna began. But at night, by his orders, I go away to the\nlodge so that I don't get to sleep till midnight, but am on the watch,\ngetting up and walking about the yard, waiting for Agrafena Alexandrovna\nto come. For the last few days he's been perfectly frantic expecting her.\nWhat he argues is, she is afraid of him, Dmitri Fyodorovitch (Mitya, as he\ncalls him), 'and so,' says he, 'she'll come the back-way, late at night,\nto me. You look out for her,' says he, 'till midnight and later; and if\nshe does come, you run up and knock at my door or at the window from the\ngarden. Knock at first twice, rather gently, and then three times more\nquickly, then,' says he, 'I shall understand at once that she has come,\nand will open the door to you quietly.' Another signal he gave me in case\nanything unexpected happens. At first, two knocks, and then, after an\ninterval, another much louder. Then he will understand that something has\nhappened suddenly and that I must see him, and he will open to me so that\nI can go and speak to him. That's all in case Agrafena Alexandrovna can't\ncome herself, but sends a message. Besides, Dmitri Fyodorovitch might\ncome, too, so I must let him know he is near. His honor is awfully afraid\nof Dmitri Fyodorovitch, so that even if Agrafena Alexandrovna had come and\nwere locked in with him, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch were to turn up anywhere\nnear at the time, I should be bound to let him know at once, knocking\nthree times. So that the first signal of five knocks means Agrafena\nAlexandrovna has come, while the second signal of three knocks means\n'something important to tell you.' His honor has shown me them several\ntimes and explained them. And as in the whole universe no one knows of\nthese signals but myself and his honor, so he'd open the door without the\nslightest hesitation and without calling out (he is awfully afraid of\ncalling out aloud). Well, those signals are known to Dmitri Fyodorovitch\ntoo, now.\"\n\n\"How are they known? Did you tell him? How dared you tell him?\"\n\n\"It was through fright I did it. How could I dare to keep it back from\nhim? Dmitri Fyodorovitch kept persisting every day, 'You are deceiving me,\nyou are hiding something from me! I'll break both your legs for you.' So I\ntold him those secret signals that he might see my slavish devotion, and\nmight be satisfied that I was not deceiving him, but was telling him all I\ncould.\"\n\n\"If you think that he'll make use of those signals and try to get in,\ndon't let him in.\"\n\n\"But if I should be laid up with a fit, how can I prevent him coming in\nthen, even if I dared prevent him, knowing how desperate he is?\"\n\n\"Hang it! How can you be so sure you are going to have a fit, confound\nyou? Are you laughing at me?\"\n\n\"How could I dare laugh at you? I am in no laughing humor with this fear\non me. I feel I am going to have a fit. I have a presentiment. Fright\nalone will bring it on.\"\n\n\"Confound it! If you are laid up, Grigory will be on the watch. Let\nGrigory know beforehand; he will be sure not to let him in.\"\n\n\"I should never dare to tell Grigory Vassilyevitch about the signals\nwithout orders from my master. And as for Grigory Vassilyevitch hearing\nhim and not admitting him, he has been ill ever since yesterday, and Marfa\nIgnatyevna intends to give him medicine to-morrow. They've just arranged\nit. It's a very strange remedy of hers. Marfa Ignatyevna knows of a\npreparation and always keeps it. It's a strong thing made from some herb.\nShe has the secret of it, and she always gives it to Grigory Vassilyevitch\nthree times a year when his lumbago's so bad he is almost paralyzed by it.\nThen she takes a towel, wets it with the stuff, and rubs his whole back\nfor half an hour till it's quite red and swollen, and what's left in the\nbottle she gives him to drink with a special prayer; but not quite all,\nfor on such occasions she leaves some for herself, and drinks it herself.\nAnd as they never take strong drink, I assure you they both drop asleep at\nonce and sleep sound a very long time. And when Grigory Vassilyevitch\nwakes up he is perfectly well after it, but Marfa Ignatyevna always has a\nheadache from it. So, if Marfa Ignatyevna carries out her intention to-\nmorrow, they won't hear anything and hinder Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They'll\nbe asleep.\"\n\n\"What a rigmarole! And it all seems to happen at once, as though it were\nplanned. You'll have a fit and they'll both be unconscious,\" cried Ivan.\n\"But aren't you trying to arrange it so?\" broke from him suddenly, and he\nfrowned threateningly.\n\n\"How could I?... And why should I, when it all depends on Dmitri\nFyodorovitch and his plans?... If he means to do anything, he'll do it;\nbut if not, I shan't be thrusting him upon his father.\"\n\n\"And why should he go to father, especially on the sly, if, as you say\nyourself, Agrafena Alexandrovna won't come at all?\" Ivan went on, turning\nwhite with anger. \"You say that yourself, and all the while I've been\nhere, I've felt sure it was all the old man's fancy, and the creature\nwon't come to him. Why should Dmitri break in on him if she doesn't come?\nSpeak, I want to know what you are thinking!\"\n\n\"You know yourself why he'll come. What's the use of what I think? His\nhonor will come simply because he is in a rage or suspicious on account of\nmy illness perhaps, and he'll dash in, as he did yesterday through\nimpatience to search the rooms, to see whether she hasn't escaped him on\nthe sly. He is perfectly well aware, too, that Fyodor Pavlovitch has a big\nenvelope with three thousand roubles in it, tied up with ribbon and sealed\nwith three seals. On it is written in his own hand, 'To my angel\nGrushenka, if she will come,' to which he added three days later, 'for my\nlittle chicken.' There's no knowing what that might do.\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" cried Ivan, almost beside himself. \"Dmitri won't come to steal\nmoney and kill my father to do it. He might have killed him yesterday on\naccount of Grushenka, like the frantic, savage fool he is, but he won't\nsteal.\"\n\n\"He is in very great need of money now--the greatest need, Ivan\nFyodorovitch. You don't know in what need he is,\" Smerdyakov explained,\nwith perfect composure and remarkable distinctness. \"He looks on that\nthree thousand as his own, too. He said so to me himself. 'My father still\nowes me just three thousand,' he said. And besides that, consider, Ivan\nFyodorovitch, there is something else perfectly true. It's as good as\ncertain, so to say, that Agrafena Alexandrovna will force him, if only she\ncares to, to marry her--the master himself, I mean, Fyodor Pavlovitch--if\nonly she cares to, and of course she may care to. All I've said is that\nshe won't come, but maybe she's looking for more than that--I mean to be\nmistress here. I know myself that Samsonov, her merchant, was laughing\nwith her about it, telling her quite openly that it would not be at all a\nstupid thing to do. And she's got plenty of sense. She wouldn't marry a\nbeggar like Dmitri Fyodorovitch. So, taking that into consideration, Ivan\nFyodorovitch, reflect that then neither Dmitri Fyodorovitch nor yourself\nand your brother, Alexey Fyodorovitch, would have anything after the\nmaster's death, not a rouble, for Agrafena Alexandrovna would marry him\nsimply to get hold of the whole, all the money there is. But if your\nfather were to die now, there'd be some forty thousand for sure, even for\nDmitri Fyodorovitch whom he hates so, for he's made no will.... Dmitri\nFyodorovitch knows all that very well.\"\n\nA sort of shudder passed over Ivan's face. He suddenly flushed.\n\n\"Then why on earth,\" he suddenly interrupted Smerdyakov, \"do you advise me\nto go to Tchermashnya? What did you mean by that? If I go away, you see\nwhat will happen here.\" Ivan drew his breath with difficulty.\n\n\"Precisely so,\" said Smerdyakov, softly and reasonably, watching Ivan\nintently, however.\n\n\"What do you mean by 'precisely so'?\" Ivan questioned him, with a menacing\nlight in his eyes, restraining himself with difficulty.\n\n\"I spoke because I felt sorry for you. If I were in your place I should\nsimply throw it all up ... rather than stay on in such a position,\"\nanswered Smerdyakov, with the most candid air looking at Ivan's flashing\neyes. They were both silent.\n\n\"You seem to be a perfect idiot, and what's more ... an awful scoundrel,\ntoo.\" Ivan rose suddenly from the bench. He was about to pass straight\nthrough the gate, but he stopped short and turned to Smerdyakov. Something\nstrange followed. Ivan, in a sudden paroxysm, bit his lip, clenched his\nfists, and, in another minute, would have flung himself on Smerdyakov. The\nlatter, anyway, noticed it at the same moment, started, and shrank back.\nBut the moment passed without mischief to Smerdyakov, and Ivan turned in\nsilence, as it seemed in perplexity, to the gate.\n\n\"I am going away to Moscow to-morrow, if you care to know--early to-morrow\nmorning. That's all!\" he suddenly said aloud angrily, and wondered himself\nafterwards what need there was to say this then to Smerdyakov.\n\n\"That's the best thing you can do,\" he responded, as though he had\nexpected to hear it; \"except that you can always be telegraphed for from\nMoscow, if anything should happen here.\"\n\nIvan stopped again, and again turned quickly to Smerdyakov. But a change\nhad passed over him, too. All his familiarity and carelessness had\ncompletely disappeared. His face expressed attention and expectation,\nintent but timid and cringing.\n\n\"Haven't you something more to say--something to add?\" could be read in the\nintent gaze he fixed on Ivan.\n\n\"And couldn't I be sent for from Tchermashnya, too--in case anything\nhappened?\" Ivan shouted suddenly, for some unknown reason raising his\nvoice.\n\n\"From Tchermashnya, too ... you could be sent for,\" Smerdyakov muttered,\nalmost in a whisper, looking disconcerted, but gazing intently into Ivan's\neyes.\n\n\"Only Moscow is farther and Tchermashnya is nearer. Is it to save my\nspending money on the fare, or to save my going so far out of my way, that\nyou insist on Tchermashnya?\"\n\n\"Precisely so ...\" muttered Smerdyakov, with a breaking voice. He looked\nat Ivan with a revolting smile, and again made ready to draw back. But to\nhis astonishment Ivan broke into a laugh, and went through the gate still\nlaughing. Any one who had seen his face at that moment would have known\nthat he was not laughing from lightness of heart, and he could not have\nexplained himself what he was feeling at that instant. He moved and walked\nas though in a nervous frenzy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. \"It's Always Worth While Speaking To A Clever Man\"\n\n\nAnd in the same nervous frenzy, too, he spoke. Meeting Fyodor Pavlovitch\nin the drawing-room directly he went in, he shouted to him, waving his\nhands, \"I am going upstairs to my room, not in to you. Good-by!\" and\npassed by, trying not even to look at his father. Very possibly the old\nman was too hateful to him at that moment; but such an unceremonious\ndisplay of hostility was a surprise even to Fyodor Pavlovitch. And the old\nman evidently wanted to tell him something at once and had come to meet\nhim in the drawing-room on purpose. Receiving this amiable greeting, he\nstood still in silence and with an ironical air watched his son going\nupstairs, till he passed out of sight.\n\n\"What's the matter with him?\" he promptly asked Smerdyakov, who had\nfollowed Ivan.\n\n\"Angry about something. Who can tell?\" the valet muttered evasively.\n\n\"Confound him! Let him be angry then. Bring in the samovar, and get along\nwith you. Look sharp! No news?\"\n\nThen followed a series of questions such as Smerdyakov had just complained\nof to Ivan, all relating to his expected visitor, and these questions we\nwill omit. Half an hour later the house was locked, and the crazy old man\nwas wandering along through the rooms in excited expectation of hearing\nevery minute the five knocks agreed upon. Now and then he peered out into\nthe darkness, seeing nothing.\n\nIt was very late, but Ivan was still awake and reflecting. He sat up late\nthat night, till two o'clock. But we will not give an account of his\nthoughts, and this is not the place to look into that soul--its turn will\ncome. And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give an account of\nthem, for there were no thoughts in his brain, but something very vague,\nand, above all, intense excitement. He felt himself that he had lost his\nbearings. He was fretted, too, by all sorts of strange and almost\nsurprising desires; for instance, after midnight he suddenly had an\nintense irresistible inclination to go down, open the door, go to the\nlodge and beat Smerdyakov. But if he had been asked why, he could not have\ngiven any exact reason, except perhaps that he loathed the valet as one\nwho had insulted him more gravely than any one in the world. On the other\nhand, he was more than once that night overcome by a sort of inexplicable\nhumiliating terror, which he felt positively paralyzed his physical\npowers. His head ached and he was giddy. A feeling of hatred was rankling\nin his heart, as though he meant to avenge himself on some one. He even\nhated Alyosha, recalling the conversation he had just had with him. At\nmoments he hated himself intensely. Of Katerina Ivanovna he almost forgot\nto think, and wondered greatly at this afterwards, especially as he\nremembered perfectly that when he had protested so valiantly to Katerina\nIvanovna that he would go away next day to Moscow, something had whispered\nin his heart, \"That's nonsense, you are not going, and it won't be so easy\nto tear yourself away as you are boasting now.\"\n\nRemembering that night long afterwards, Ivan recalled with peculiar\nrepulsion how he had suddenly got up from the sofa and had stealthily, as\nthough he were afraid of being watched, opened the door, gone out on the\nstaircase and listened to Fyodor Pavlovitch stirring down below, had\nlistened a long while--some five minutes--with a sort of strange curiosity,\nholding his breath while his heart throbbed. And why he had done all this,\nwhy he was listening, he could not have said. That \"action\" all his life\nafterwards he called \"infamous,\" and at the bottom of his heart, he\nthought of it as the basest action of his life. For Fyodor Pavlovitch\nhimself he felt no hatred at that moment, but was simply intensely curious\nto know how he was walking down there below and what he must be doing now.\nHe wondered and imagined how he must be peeping out of the dark windows\nand stopping in the middle of the room, listening, listening--for some one\nto knock. Ivan went out on to the stairs twice to listen like this.\n\nAbout two o'clock when everything was quiet, and even Fyodor Pavlovitch\nhad gone to bed, Ivan had got into bed, firmly resolved to fall asleep at\nonce, as he felt fearfully exhausted. And he did fall asleep at once, and\nslept soundly without dreams, but waked early, at seven o'clock, when it\nwas broad daylight. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to feel himself\nextraordinarily vigorous. He jumped up at once and dressed quickly; then\ndragged out his trunk and began packing immediately. His linen had come\nback from the laundress the previous morning. Ivan positively smiled at\nthe thought that everything was helping his sudden departure. And his\ndeparture certainly was sudden. Though Ivan had said the day before (to\nKaterina Ivanovna, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov) that he was leaving next day,\nyet he remembered that he had no thought of departure when he went to bed,\nor, at least, had not dreamed that his first act in the morning would be\nto pack his trunk. At last his trunk and bag were ready. It was about nine\no'clock when Marfa Ignatyevna came in with her usual inquiry, \"Where will\nyour honor take your tea, in your own room or downstairs?\" He looked\nalmost cheerful, but there was about him, about his words and gestures,\nsomething hurried and scattered. Greeting his father affably, and even\ninquiring specially after his health, though he did not wait to hear his\nanswer to the end, he announced that he was starting off in an hour to\nreturn to Moscow for good, and begged him to send for the horses. His\nfather heard this announcement with no sign of surprise, and forgot in an\nunmannerly way to show regret at losing him. Instead of doing so, he flew\ninto a great flutter at the recollection of some important business of his\nown.\n\n\"What a fellow you are! Not to tell me yesterday! Never mind; we'll manage\nit all the same. Do me a great service, my dear boy. Go to Tchermashnya on\nthe way. It's only to turn to the left from the station at Volovya, only\nanother twelve versts and you come to Tchermashnya.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, I can't. It's eighty versts to the railway and the train\nstarts for Moscow at seven o'clock to-night. I can only just catch it.\"\n\n\"You'll catch it to-morrow or the day after, but to-day turn off to\nTchermashnya. It won't put you out much to humor your father! If I hadn't\nhad something to keep me here, I would have run over myself long ago, for\nI've some business there in a hurry. But here I ... it's not the time for\nme to go now.... You see, I've two pieces of copse land there. The\nMaslovs, an old merchant and his son, will give eight thousand for the\ntimber. But last year I just missed a purchaser who would have given\ntwelve. There's no getting any one about here to buy it. The Maslovs have\nit all their own way. One has to take what they'll give, for no one here\ndare bid against them. The priest at Ilyinskoe wrote to me last Thursday\nthat a merchant called Gorstkin, a man I know, had turned up. What makes\nhim valuable is that he is not from these parts, so he is not afraid of\nthe Maslovs. He says he will give me eleven thousand for the copse. Do you\nhear? But he'll only be here, the priest writes, for a week altogether, so\nyou must go at once and make a bargain with him.\"\n\n\"Well, you write to the priest; he'll make the bargain.\"\n\n\"He can't do it. He has no eye for business. He is a perfect treasure, I'd\ngive him twenty thousand to take care of for me without a receipt; but he\nhas no eye for business, he is a perfect child, a crow could deceive him.\nAnd yet he is a learned man, would you believe it? This Gorstkin looks\nlike a peasant, he wears a blue kaftan, but he is a regular rogue. That's\nthe common complaint. He is a liar. Sometimes he tells such lies that you\nwonder why he is doing it. He told me the year before last that his wife\nwas dead and that he had married another, and would you believe it, there\nwas not a word of truth in it? His wife has never died at all, she is\nalive to this day and gives him a beating twice a week. So what you have\nto find out is whether he is lying or speaking the truth, when he says he\nwants to buy it and would give eleven thousand.\"\n\n\"I shall be no use in such a business. I have no eye either.\"\n\n\"Stay, wait a bit! You will be of use, for I will tell you the signs by\nwhich you can judge about Gorstkin. I've done business with him a long\ntime. You see, you must watch his beard; he has a nasty, thin, red beard.\nIf his beard shakes when he talks and he gets cross, it's all right, he is\nsaying what he means, he wants to do business. But if he strokes his beard\nwith his left hand and grins--he is trying to cheat you. Don't watch his\neyes, you won't find out anything from his eyes, he is a deep one, a\nrogue--but watch his beard! I'll give you a note and you show it to him.\nHe's called Gorstkin, though his real name is Lyagavy(4); but don't call\nhim so, he will be offended. If you come to an understanding with him, and\nsee it's all right, write here at once. You need only write: 'He's not\nlying.' Stand out for eleven thousand; one thousand you can knock off, but\nnot more. Just think! there's a difference between eight thousand and\neleven thousand. It's as good as picking up three thousand; it's not so\neasy to find a purchaser, and I'm in desperate need of money. Only let me\nknow it's serious, and I'll run over and fix it up. I'll snatch the time\nsomehow. But what's the good of my galloping over, if it's all a notion of\nthe priest's? Come, will you go?\"\n\n\"Oh, I can't spare the time. You must excuse me.\"\n\n\"Come, you might oblige your father. I shan't forget it. You've no heart,\nany of you--that's what it is? What's a day or two to you? Where are you\ngoing now--to Venice? Your Venice will keep another two days. I would have\nsent Alyosha, but what use is Alyosha in a thing like that? I send you\njust because you are a clever fellow. Do you suppose I don't see that? You\nknow nothing about timber, but you've got an eye. All that is wanted is to\nsee whether the man is in earnest. I tell you, watch his beard--if his\nbeard shakes you know he is in earnest.\"\n\n\"You force me to go to that damned Tchermashnya yourself, then?\" cried\nIvan, with a malignant smile.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch did not catch, or would not catch, the malignancy, but\nhe caught the smile.\n\n\"Then you'll go, you'll go? I'll scribble the note for you at once.\"\n\n\"I don't know whether I shall go. I don't know. I'll decide on the way.\"\n\n\"Nonsense! Decide at once. My dear fellow, decide! If you settle the\nmatter, write me a line; give it to the priest and he'll send it on to me\nat once. And I won't delay you more than that. You can go to Venice. The\npriest will give you horses back to Volovya station.\"\n\nThe old man was quite delighted. He wrote the note, and sent for the\nhorses. A light lunch was brought in, with brandy. When Fyodor Pavlovitch\nwas pleased, he usually became expansive, but to-day he seemed to restrain\nhimself. Of Dmitri, for instance, he did not say a word. He was quite\nunmoved by the parting, and seemed, in fact, at a loss for something to\nsay. Ivan noticed this particularly. \"He must be bored with me,\" he\nthought. Only when accompanying his son out on to the steps, the old man\nbegan to fuss about. He would have kissed him, but Ivan made haste to hold\nout his hand, obviously avoiding the kiss. His father saw it at once, and\ninstantly pulled himself up.\n\n\"Well, good luck to you, good luck to you!\" he repeated from the steps.\n\"You'll come again some time or other? Mind you do come. I shall always be\nglad to see you. Well, Christ be with you!\"\n\nIvan got into the carriage.\n\n\"Good-by, Ivan! Don't be too hard on me!\" the father called for the last\ntime.\n\nThe whole household came out to take leave--Smerdyakov, Marfa and Grigory.\nIvan gave them ten roubles each. When he had seated himself in the\ncarriage, Smerdyakov jumped up to arrange the rug.\n\n\"You see ... I am going to Tchermashnya,\" broke suddenly from Ivan. Again,\nas the day before, the words seemed to drop of themselves, and he laughed,\ntoo, a peculiar, nervous laugh. He remembered it long after.\n\n\"It's a true saying then, that 'it's always worth while speaking to a\nclever man,' \" answered Smerdyakov firmly, looking significantly at Ivan.\n\nThe carriage rolled away. Nothing was clear in Ivan's soul, but he looked\neagerly around him at the fields, at the hills, at the trees, at a flock\nof geese flying high overhead in the bright sky. And all of a sudden he\nfelt very happy. He tried to talk to the driver, and he felt intensely\ninterested in an answer the peasant made him; but a minute later he\nrealized that he was not catching anything, and that he had not really\neven taken in the peasant's answer. He was silent, and it was pleasant\neven so. The air was fresh, pure and cool, the sky bright. The images of\nAlyosha and Katerina Ivanovna floated into his mind. But he softly smiled,\nblew softly on the friendly phantoms, and they flew away. \"There's plenty\nof time for them,\" he thought. They reached the station quickly, changed\nhorses, and galloped to Volovya. \"Why is it worth while speaking to a\nclever man? What did he mean by that?\" The thought seemed suddenly to\nclutch at his breathing. \"And why did I tell him I was going to\nTchermashnya?\" They reached Volovya station. Ivan got out of the carriage,\nand the drivers stood round him bargaining over the journey of twelve\nversts to Tchermashnya. He told them to harness the horses. He went into\nthe station house, looked round, glanced at the overseer's wife, and\nsuddenly went back to the entrance.\n\n\"I won't go to Tchermashnya. Am I too late to reach the railway by seven,\nbrothers?\"\n\n\"We shall just do it. Shall we get the carriage out?\"\n\n\"At once. Will any one of you be going to the town to-morrow?\"\n\n\"To be sure. Mitri here will.\"\n\n\"Can you do me a service, Mitri? Go to my father's, to Fyodor Pavlovitch\nKaramazov, and tell him I haven't gone to Tchermashnya. Can you?\"\n\n\"Of course I can. I've known Fyodor Pavlovitch a long time.\"\n\n\"And here's something for you, for I dare say he won't give you anything,\"\nsaid Ivan, laughing gayly.\n\n\"You may depend on it he won't.\" Mitya laughed too. \"Thank you, sir. I'll\nbe sure to do it.\"\n\nAt seven o'clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow \"Away with\nthe past. I've done with the old world for ever, and may I have no news,\nno echo, from it. To a new life, new places and no looking back!\" But\ninstead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart\nached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before. He was\nthinking all the night. The train flew on, and only at daybreak, when he\nwas approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself from his meditation.\n\n\"I am a scoundrel,\" he whispered to himself.\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch remained well satisfied at having seen his son off. For\ntwo hours afterwards he felt almost happy, and sat drinking brandy. But\nsuddenly something happened which was very annoying and unpleasant for\nevery one in the house, and completely upset Fyodor Pavlovitch's\nequanimity at once. Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell\ndown from the top of the steps. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was in the\nyard and heard him in time. She did not see the fall, but heard his\nscream--the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her--the scream of\nthe epileptic falling in a fit. They could not tell whether the fit had\ncome on him at the moment he was descending the steps, so that he must\nhave fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and the shock that had\ncaused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be liable to them. They\nfound him at the bottom of the cellar steps, writhing in convulsions and\nfoaming at the mouth. It was thought at first that he must have broken\nsomething--an arm or a leg--and hurt himself, but \"God had preserved him,\"\nas Marfa Ignatyevna expressed it--nothing of the kind had happened. But it\nwas difficult to get him out of the cellar. They asked the neighbors to\nhelp and managed it somehow. Fyodor Pavlovitch himself was present at the\nwhole ceremony. He helped, evidently alarmed and upset. The sick man did\nnot regain consciousness; the convulsions ceased for a time, but then\nbegan again, and every one concluded that the same thing would happen, as\nhad happened a year before, when he accidentally fell from the garret.\nThey remembered that ice had been put on his head then. There was still\nice in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna had some brought up. In the\nevening, Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Doctor Herzenstube, who arrived at\nonce. He was a most estimable old man, and the most careful and\nconscientious doctor in the province. After careful examination, he\nconcluded that the fit was a very violent one and might have serious\nconsequences; that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, did not fully understand it,\nbut that by to-morrow morning, if the present remedies were unavailing, he\nwould venture to try something else. The invalid was taken to the lodge,\nto a room next to Grigory's and Marfa Ignatyevna's.\n\nThen Fyodor Pavlovitch had one misfortune after another to put up with\nthat day. Marfa Ignatyevna cooked the dinner, and the soup, compared with\nSmerdyakov's, was \"no better than dish-water,\" and the fowl was so dried\nup that it was impossible to masticate it. To her master's bitter, though\ndeserved, reproaches, Marfa Ignatyevna replied that the fowl was a very\nold one to begin with, and that she had never been trained as a cook. In\nthe evening there was another trouble in store for Fyodor Pavlovitch; he\nwas informed that Grigory, who had not been well for the last three days,\nwas completely laid up by his lumbago. Fyodor Pavlovitch finished his tea\nas early as possible and locked himself up alone in the house. He was in\nterrible excitement and suspense. That evening he reckoned on Grushenka's\ncoming almost as a certainty. He had received from Smerdyakov that morning\nan assurance \"that she had promised to come without fail.\" The\nincorrigible old man's heart throbbed with excitement; he paced up and\ndown his empty rooms listening. He had to be on the alert. Dmitri might be\non the watch for her somewhere, and when she knocked on the window\n(Smerdyakov had informed him two days before that he had told her where\nand how to knock) the door must be opened at once. She must not be a\nsecond in the passage, for fear--which God forbid!--that she should be\nfrightened and run away. Fyodor Pavlovitch had much to think of, but never\nhad his heart been steeped in such voluptuous hopes. This time he could\nsay almost certainly that she would come!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook VI. The Russian Monk Chapter I. Father Zossima And His Visitors\n\n\nWhen with an anxious and aching heart Alyosha went into his elder's cell,\nhe stood still almost astonished. Instead of a sick man at his last gasp,\nperhaps unconscious, as he had feared to find him, he saw him sitting up\nin his chair and, though weak and exhausted, his face was bright and\ncheerful, he was surrounded by visitors and engaged in a quiet and joyful\nconversation. But he had only got up from his bed a quarter of an hour\nbefore Alyosha's arrival; his visitors had gathered together in his cell\nearlier, waiting for him to wake, having received a most confident\nassurance from Father Paissy that \"the teacher would get up, and as he had\nhimself promised in the morning, converse once more with those dear to his\nheart.\" This promise and indeed every word of the dying elder Father\nPaissy put implicit trust in. If he had seen him unconscious, if he had\nseen him breathe his last, and yet had his promise that he would rise up\nand say good-by to him, he would not have believed perhaps even in death,\nbut would still have expected the dead man to recover and fulfill his\npromise. In the morning as he lay down to sleep, Father Zossima had told\nhim positively: \"I shall not die without the delight of another\nconversation with you, beloved of my heart. I shall look once more on your\ndear face and pour out my heart to you once again.\" The monks, who had\ngathered for this probably last conversation with Father Zossima, had all\nbeen his devoted friends for many years. There were four of them: Father\nIosif and Father Paissy, Father Mihail, the warden of the hermitage, a man\nnot very old and far from being learned. He was of humble origin, of\nstrong will and steadfast faith, of austere appearance, but of deep\ntenderness, though he obviously concealed it as though he were almost\nashamed of it. The fourth, Father Anfim, was a very old and humble little\nmonk of the poorest peasant class. He was almost illiterate, and very\nquiet, scarcely speaking to any one. He was the humblest of the humble,\nand looked as though he had been frightened by something great and awful\nbeyond the scope of his intelligence. Father Zossima had a great affection\nfor this timorous man, and always treated him with marked respect, though\nperhaps there was no one he had known to whom he had said less, in spite\nof the fact that he had spent years wandering about holy Russia with him.\nThat was very long ago, forty years before, when Father Zossima first\nbegan his life as a monk in a poor and little monastery at Kostroma, and\nwhen, shortly after, he had accompanied Father Anfim on his pilgrimage to\ncollect alms for their poor monastery.\n\nThe whole party were in the bedroom which, as we mentioned before, was\nvery small, so that there was scarcely room for the four of them (in\naddition to Porfiry, the novice, who stood) to sit round Father Zossima on\nchairs brought from the sitting-room. It was already beginning to get\ndark, the room was lighted up by the lamps and the candles before the\nikons.\n\nSeeing Alyosha standing embarrassed in the doorway, Father Zossima smiled\nat him joyfully and held out his hand.\n\n\"Welcome, my quiet one, welcome, my dear, here you are too. I knew you\nwould come.\"\n\nAlyosha went up to him, bowed down before him to the ground and wept.\nSomething surged up from his heart, his soul was quivering, he wanted to\nsob.\n\n\"Come, don't weep over me yet,\" Father Zossima smiled, laying his right\nhand on his head. \"You see I am sitting up talking; maybe I shall live\nanother twenty years yet, as that dear good woman from Vishegorye, with\nher little Lizaveta in her arms, wished me yesterday. God bless the mother\nand the little girl Lizaveta,\" he crossed himself. \"Porfiry, did you take\nher offering where I told you?\"\n\nHe meant the sixty copecks brought him the day before by the good-humored\nwoman to be given \"to some one poorer than me.\" Such offerings, always of\nmoney gained by personal toil, are made by way of penance voluntarily\nundertaken. The elder had sent Porfiry the evening before to a widow,\nwhose house had been burnt down lately, and who after the fire had gone\nwith her children begging alms. Porfiry hastened to reply that he had\ngiven the money, as he had been instructed, \"from an unknown\nbenefactress.\"\n\n\"Get up, my dear boy,\" the elder went on to Alyosha. \"Let me look at you.\nHave you been home and seen your brother?\" It seemed strange to Alyosha\nthat he asked so confidently and precisely, about one of his brothers\nonly--but which one? Then perhaps he had sent him out both yesterday and\nto-day for the sake of that brother.\n\n\"I have seen one of my brothers,\" answered Alyosha.\n\n\"I mean the elder one, to whom I bowed down.\"\n\n\"I only saw him yesterday and could not find him to-day,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"Make haste to find him, go again to-morrow and make haste, leave\neverything and make haste. Perhaps you may still have time to prevent\nsomething terrible. I bowed down yesterday to the great suffering in store\nfor him.\"\n\nHe was suddenly silent and seemed to be pondering. The words were strange.\nFather Iosif, who had witnessed the scene yesterday, exchanged glances\nwith Father Paissy. Alyosha could not resist asking:\n\n\"Father and teacher,\" he began with extreme emotion, \"your words are too\nobscure.... What is this suffering in store for him?\"\n\n\"Don't inquire. I seemed to see something terrible yesterday ... as though\nhis whole future were expressed in his eyes. A look came into his eyes--so\nthat I was instantly horror-stricken at what that man is preparing for\nhimself. Once or twice in my life I've seen such a look in a man's face\n... reflecting as it were his future fate, and that fate, alas, came to\npass. I sent you to him, Alexey, for I thought your brotherly face would\nhelp him. But everything and all our fates are from the Lord. 'Except a\ncorn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it\ndie, it bringeth forth much fruit.' Remember that. You, Alexey, I've many\ntimes silently blessed for your face, know that,\" added the elder with a\ngentle smile. \"This is what I think of you, you will go forth from these\nwalls, but will live like a monk in the world. You will have many enemies,\nbut even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes,\nbut you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will\nmake others bless it--which is what matters most. Well, that is your\ncharacter. Fathers and teachers,\" he addressed his friends with a tender\nsmile, \"I have never till to-day told even him why the face of this youth\nis so dear to me. Now I will tell you. His face has been as it were a\nremembrance and a prophecy for me. At the dawn of my life when I was a\nchild I had an elder brother who died before my eyes at seventeen. And\nlater on in the course of my life I gradually became convinced that that\nbrother had been for a guidance and a sign from on high for me. For had he\nnot come into my life, I should never perhaps, so I fancy at least, have\nbecome a monk and entered on this precious path. He appeared first to me\nin my childhood, and here, at the end of my pilgrimage, he seems to have\ncome to me over again. It is marvelous, fathers and teachers, that Alexey,\nwho has some, though not a great, resemblance in face, seems to me so like\nhim spiritually, that many times I have taken him for that young man, my\nbrother, mysteriously come back to me at the end of my pilgrimage, as a\nreminder and an inspiration. So that I positively wondered at so strange a\ndream in myself. Do you hear this, Porfiry?\" he turned to the novice who\nwaited on him. \"Many times I've seen in your face as it were a look of\nmortification that I love Alexey more than you. Now you know why that was\nso, but I love you too, know that, and many times I grieved at your\nmortification. I should like to tell you, dear friends, of that youth, my\nbrother, for there has been no presence in my life more precious, more\nsignificant and touching. My heart is full of tenderness, and I look at my\nwhole life at this moment as though living through it again.\"\n\n                  -------------------------------------\n\nHere I must observe that this last conversation of Father Zossima with the\nfriends who visited him on the last day of his life has been partly\npreserved in writing. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov wrote it down from\nmemory, some time after his elder's death. But whether this was only the\nconversation that took place then, or whether he added to it his notes of\nparts of former conversations with his teacher, I cannot determine. In his\naccount, Father Zossima's talk goes on without interruption, as though he\ntold his life to his friends in the form of a story, though there is no\ndoubt, from other accounts of it, that the conversation that evening was\ngeneral. Though the guests did not interrupt Father Zossima much, yet they\ntoo talked, perhaps even told something themselves. Besides, Father\nZossima could not have carried on an uninterrupted narrative, for he was\nsometimes gasping for breath, his voice failed him, and he even lay down\nto rest on his bed, though he did not fall asleep and his visitors did not\nleave their seats. Once or twice the conversation was interrupted by\nFather Paissy's reading the Gospel. It is worthy of note, too, that no one\nof them supposed that he would die that night, for on that evening of his\nlife after his deep sleep in the day he seemed suddenly to have found new\nstrength, which kept him up through this long conversation. It was like a\nlast effort of love which gave him marvelous energy; only for a little\ntime, however, for his life was cut short immediately.... But of that\nlater. I will only add now that I have preferred to confine myself to the\naccount given by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. It will be shorter and not\nso fatiguing, though of course, as I must repeat, Alyosha took a great\ndeal from previous conversations and added them to it.\n\n                  -------------------------------------\n\nNotes of the Life of the deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zossima,\ntaken from his own words by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov.\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES\n\n_(a)_ _Father Zossima's Brother_\n\nBeloved fathers and teachers, I was born in a distant province in the\nnorth, in the town of V. My father was a gentleman by birth, but of no\ngreat consequence or position. He died when I was only two years old, and\nI don't remember him at all. He left my mother a small house built of\nwood, and a fortune, not large, but sufficient to keep her and her\nchildren in comfort. There were two of us, my elder brother Markel and I.\nHe was eight years older than I was, of hasty irritable temperament, but\nkind-hearted and never ironical. He was remarkably silent, especially at\nhome with me, his mother, and the servants. He did well at school, but did\nnot get on with his schoolfellows, though he never quarreled, at least so\nmy mother has told me. Six months before his death, when he was seventeen,\nhe made friends with a political exile who had been banished from Moscow\nto our town for freethinking, and led a solitary existence there. He was a\ngood scholar who had gained distinction in philosophy in the university.\nSomething made him take a fancy to Markel, and he used to ask him to see\nhim. The young man would spend whole evenings with him during that winter,\ntill the exile was summoned to Petersburg to take up his post again at his\nown request, as he had powerful friends.\n\nIt was the beginning of Lent, and Markel would not fast, he was rude and\nlaughed at it. \"That's all silly twaddle, and there is no God,\" he said,\nhorrifying my mother, the servants, and me too. For though I was only\nnine, I too was aghast at hearing such words. We had four servants, all\nserfs. I remember my mother selling one of the four, the cook Afimya, who\nwas lame and elderly, for sixty paper roubles, and hiring a free servant\nto take her place.\n\nIn the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never strong and had a\ntendency to consumption, was taken ill. He was tall but thin and delicate-\nlooking, and of very pleasing countenance. I suppose he caught cold,\nanyway the doctor, who came, soon whispered to my mother that it was\ngalloping consumption, that he would not live through the spring. My\nmother began weeping, and, careful not to alarm my brother, she entreated\nhim to go to church, to confess and take the sacrament, as he was still\nable to move about. This made him angry, and he said something profane\nabout the church. He grew thoughtful, however; he guessed at once that he\nwas seriously ill, and that that was why his mother was begging him to\nconfess and take the sacrament. He had been aware, indeed, for a long time\npast, that he was far from well, and had a year before coolly observed at\ndinner to our mother and me, \"My life won't be long among you, I may not\nlive another year,\" which seemed now like a prophecy.\n\nThree days passed and Holy Week had come. And on Tuesday morning my\nbrother began going to church. \"I am doing this simply for your sake,\nmother, to please and comfort you,\" he said. My mother wept with joy and\ngrief. \"His end must be near,\" she thought, \"if there's such a change in\nhim.\" But he was not able to go to church long, he took to his bed, so he\nhad to confess and take the sacrament at home.\n\nIt was a late Easter, and the days were bright, fine, and full of\nfragrance. I remember he used to cough all night and sleep badly, but in\nthe morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an arm-chair. That's how I\nremember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright and\njoyous, in spite of his illness. A marvelous change passed over him, his\nspirit seemed transformed. The old nurse would come in and say, \"Let me\nlight the lamp before the holy image, my dear.\" And once he would not have\nallowed it and would have blown it out.\n\n\"Light it, light it, dear, I was a wretch to have prevented you doing it.\nYou are praying when you light the lamp, and I am praying when I rejoice\nseeing you. So we are praying to the same God.\"\n\nThose words seemed strange to us, and mother would go to her room and\nweep, but when she went in to him she wiped her eyes and looked cheerful.\n\"Mother, don't weep, darling,\" he would say, \"I've long to live yet, long\nto rejoice with you, and life is glad and joyful.\"\n\n\"Ah, dear boy, how can you talk of joy when you lie feverish at night,\ncoughing as though you would tear yourself to pieces.\"\n\n\"Don't cry, mother,\" he would answer, \"life is paradise, and we are all in\nparadise, but we won't see it, if we would, we should have heaven on earth\nthe next day.\"\n\nEvery one wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely and positively; we\nwere all touched and wept. Friends came to see us. \"Dear ones,\" he would\nsay to them, \"what have I done that you should love me so, how can you\nlove any one like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not appreciate\nit before?\"\n\nWhen the servants came in to him he would say continually, \"Dear, kind\npeople, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve to be waited on? If\nit were God's will for me to live, I would wait on you, for all men should\nwait on one another.\"\n\nMother shook her head as she listened. \"My darling, it's your illness\nmakes you talk like that.\"\n\n\"Mother, darling,\" he would say, \"there must be servants and masters, but\nif so I will be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me.\nAnd another thing, mother, every one of us has sinned against all men, and\nI more than any.\"\n\nMother positively smiled at that, smiled through her tears. \"Why, how\ncould you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and\nmurderers have done that, but what sin have you committed yet, that you\nhold yourself more guilty than all?\"\n\n\"Mother, little heart of mine,\" he said (he had begun using such strange\ncaressing words at that time), \"little heart of mine, my joy, believe me,\nevery one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything.\nI don't know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is so, painfully\neven. And how is it we went on then living, getting angry and not\nknowing?\"\n\nSo he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and full of\nlove. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt, came:\n\n\"Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?\" he would ask, joking.\n\n\"You'll live many days yet,\" the doctor would answer, \"and months and\nyears too.\"\n\n\"Months and years!\" he would exclaim. \"Why reckon the days? One day is\nenough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel,\ntry to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let's go\nstraight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate, and kiss\neach other, and glorify life.\"\n\n\"Your son cannot last long,\" the doctor told my mother, as she accompanied\nhim to the door. \"The disease is affecting his brain.\"\n\nThe windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was a\nshady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first\nbirds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing at\nthe windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began suddenly\nbegging their forgiveness too: \"Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me,\nfor I have sinned against you too.\" None of us could understand that at\nthe time, but he shed tears of joy. \"Yes,\" he said, \"there was such a\nglory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in\nshame and dishonored it all and did not notice the beauty and glory.\"\n\n\"You take too many sins on yourself,\" mother used to say, weeping.\n\n\"Mother, darling, it's for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I can't\nexplain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I don't know\nhow to love them enough. If I have sinned against every one, yet all\nforgive me, too, and that's heaven. Am I not in heaven now?\"\n\nAnd there was a great deal more I don't remember. I remember I went once\ninto his room when there was no one else there. It was a bright evening,\nthe sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted up. He beckoned me,\nand I went up to him. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my\nface tenderly, lovingly; he said nothing for a minute, only looked at me\nlike that.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"run and play now, enjoy life for me too.\"\n\nI went out then and ran to play. And many times in my life afterwards I\nremembered even with tears how he told me to enjoy life for him too. There\nwere many other marvelous and beautiful sayings of his, though we did not\nunderstand them at the time. He died the third week after Easter. He was\nfully conscious though he could not talk; up to his last hour he did not\nchange. He looked happy, his eyes beamed and sought us, he smiled at us,\nbeckoned us. There was a great deal of talk even in the town about his\ndeath. I was impressed by all this at the time, but not too much so,\nthough I cried a good deal at his funeral. I was young then, a child, but\na lasting impression, a hidden feeling of it all, remained in my heart,\nready to rise up and respond when the time came. So indeed it happened.\n\n_(b) Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zossima_\n\nI was left alone with my mother. Her friends began advising her to send me\nto Petersburg as other parents did. \"You have only one son now,\" they\nsaid, \"and have a fair income, and you will be depriving him perhaps of a\nbrilliant career if you keep him here.\" They suggested I should be sent to\nPetersburg to the Cadet Corps, that I might afterwards enter the Imperial\nGuard. My mother hesitated for a long time, it was awful to part with her\nonly child, but she made up her mind to it at last, though not without\nmany tears, believing she was acting for my happiness. She brought me to\nPetersburg and put me into the Cadet Corps, and I never saw her again. For\nshe too died three years afterwards. She spent those three years mourning\nand grieving for both of us.\n\nFrom the house of my childhood I have brought nothing but precious\nmemories, for there are no memories more precious than those of early\nchildhood in one's first home. And that is almost always so if there is\nany love and harmony in the family at all. Indeed, precious memories may\nremain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is\nprecious. With my memories of home I count, too, my memories of the Bible,\nwhich, child as I was, I was very eager to read at home. I had a book of\nScripture history then with excellent pictures, called _A Hundred and Four\nStories from the Old and New Testament_, and I learned to read from it. I\nhave it lying on my shelf now, I keep it as a precious relic of the past.\nBut even before I learned to read, I remember first being moved to\ndevotional feeling at eight years old. My mother took me alone to mass (I\ndon't remember where my brother was at the time) on the Monday before\nEaster. It was a fine day, and I remember to-day, as though I saw it now,\nhow the incense rose from the censer and softly floated upwards and,\noverhead in the cupola, mingled in rising waves with the sunlight that\nstreamed in at the little window. I was stirred by the sight, and for the\nfirst time in my life I consciously received the seed of God's word in my\nheart. A youth came out into the middle of the church carrying a big book,\nso large that at the time I fancied he could scarcely carry it. He laid it\non the reading desk, opened it, and began reading, and suddenly for the\nfirst time I understood something read in the church of God. In the land\nof Uz, there lived a man, righteous and God-fearing, and he had great\nwealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children feasted,\nand he loved them very much and prayed for them. \"It may be that my sons\nhave sinned in their feasting.\" Now the devil came before the Lord\ntogether with the sons of God, and said to the Lord that he had gone up\nand down the earth and under the earth. \"And hast thou considered my\nservant Job?\" God asked of him. And God boasted to the devil, pointing to\nhis great and holy servant. And the devil laughed at God's words. \"Give\nhim over to me and Thou wilt see that Thy servant will murmur against Thee\nand curse Thy name.\" And God gave up the just man He loved so, to the\ndevil. And the devil smote his children and his cattle and scattered his\nwealth, all of a sudden like a thunderbolt from heaven. And Job rent his\nmantle and fell down upon the ground and cried aloud, \"Naked came I out of\nmy mother's womb, and naked shall I return into the earth; the Lord gave\nand the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and\never.\"\n\nFathers and teachers, forgive my tears now, for all my childhood rises up\nagain before me, and I breathe now as I breathed then, with the breast of\na little child of eight, and I feel as I did then, awe and wonder and\ngladness. The camels at that time caught my imagination, and Satan, who\ntalked like that with God, and God who gave His servant up to destruction,\nand His servant crying out: \"Blessed be Thy name although Thou dost punish\nme,\" and then the soft and sweet singing in the church: \"Let my prayer\nrise up before Thee,\" and again incense from the priest's censer and the\nkneeling and the prayer. Ever since then--only yesterday I took it up--I've\nnever been able to read that sacred tale without tears. And how much that\nis great, mysterious and unfathomable there is in it! Afterwards I heard\nthe words of mockery and blame, proud words, \"How could God give up the\nmost loved of His saints for the diversion of the devil, take from him his\nchildren, smite him with sore boils so that he cleansed the corruption\nfrom his sores with a pot-sherd--and for no object except to boast to the\ndevil! 'See what My saint can suffer for My sake.' \" But the greatness of\nit lies just in the fact that it is a mystery--that the passing earthly\nshow and the eternal verity are brought together in it. In the face of the\nearthly truth, the eternal truth is accomplished. The Creator, just as on\nthe first days of creation He ended each day with praise: \"That is good\nthat I have created,\" looks upon Job and again praises His creation. And\nJob, praising the Lord, serves not only Him but all His creation for\ngenerations and generations, and for ever and ever, since for that he was\nordained. Good heavens, what a book it is, and what lessons there are in\nit! What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what strength is given with\nit to man! It is like a mold cast of the world and man and human nature,\neverything is there, and a law for everything for all the ages. And what\nmysteries are solved and revealed! God raises Job again, gives him wealth\nagain. Many years pass by, and he has other children and loves them. But\nhow could he love those new ones when those first children are no more,\nwhen he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with\nthose new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he\ncould. It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes\ngradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place\nof the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as\nbefore, my hearts sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting,\nits long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come\nwith them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life--and over\nall the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is\nending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my\nearthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, that approaching\nlife, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind\nglowing and my heart weeping with joy.\n\nFriends and teachers, I have heard more than once, and of late one may\nhear it more often, that the priests, and above all the village priests,\nare complaining on all sides of their miserable income and their\nhumiliating lot. They plainly state, even in print--I've read it\nmyself--that they are unable to teach the Scriptures to the people because\nof the smallness of their means, and if Lutherans and heretics come and\nlead the flock astray, they let them lead them astray because they have so\nlittle to live upon. May the Lord increase the sustenance that is so\nprecious to them, for their complaint is just, too. But of a truth I say,\nif any one is to blame in the matter, half the fault is ours. For he may\nbe short of time, he may say truly that he is overwhelmed all the while\nwith work and services, but still it's not all the time, even he has an\nhour a week to remember God. And he does not work the whole year round.\nLet him gather round him once a week, some hour in the evening, if only\nthe children at first--the fathers will hear of it and they too will begin\nto come. There's no need to build halls for this, let him take them into\nhis own cottage. They won't spoil his cottage, they would only be there\none hour. Let him open that book and begin reading it without grand words\nor superciliousness, without condescension to them, but gently and kindly,\nbeing glad that he is reading to them and that they are listening with\nattention, loving the words himself, only stopping from time to time to\nexplain words that are not understood by the peasants. Don't be anxious,\nthey will understand everything, the orthodox heart will understand all!\nLet him read them about Abraham and Sarah, about Isaac and Rebecca, of how\nJacob went to Laban and wrestled with the Lord in his dream and said,\n\"This place is holy\"--and he will impress the devout mind of the peasant.\nLet him read, especially to the children, how the brothers sold Joseph,\nthe tender boy, the dreamer and prophet, into bondage, and told their\nfather that a wild beast had devoured him, and showed him his blood-\nstained clothes. Let him read them how the brothers afterwards journeyed\ninto Egypt for corn, and Joseph, already a great ruler, unrecognized by\nthem, tormented them, accused them, kept his brother Benjamin, and all\nthrough love: \"I love you, and loving you I torment you.\" For he\nremembered all his life how they had sold him to the merchants in the\nburning desert by the well, and how, wringing his hands, he had wept and\nbesought his brothers not to sell him as a slave in a strange land. And\nhow, seeing them again after many years, he loved them beyond measure, but\nhe harassed and tormented them in love. He left them at last not able to\nbear the suffering of his heart, flung himself on his bed and wept. Then,\nwiping his tears away, he went out to them joyful and told them,\n\"Brothers, I am your brother Joseph!\" Let him read them further how happy\nold Jacob was on learning that his darling boy was still alive, and how he\nwent to Egypt leaving his own country, and died in a foreign land,\nbequeathing his great prophecy that had lain mysteriously hidden in his\nmeek and timid heart all his life, that from his offspring, from Judah,\nwill come the great hope of the world, the Messiah and Saviour.\n\nFathers and teachers, forgive me and don't be angry, that like a little\nchild I've been babbling of what you know long ago, and can teach me a\nhundred times more skillfully. I only speak from rapture, and forgive my\ntears, for I love the Bible. Let him too weep, the priest of God, and be\nsure that the hearts of his listeners will throb in response. Only a\nlittle tiny seed is needed--drop it into the heart of the peasant and it\nwon't die, it will live in his soul all his life, it will be hidden in the\nmidst of his darkness and sin, like a bright spot, like a great reminder.\nAnd there's no need of much teaching or explanation, he will understand it\nall simply. Do you suppose that the peasants don't understand? Try reading\nthem the touching story of the fair Esther and the haughty Vashti; or the\nmiraculous story of Jonah in the whale. Don't forget either the parables\nof Our Lord, choose especially from the Gospel of St. Luke (that is what I\ndid), and then from the Acts of the Apostles the conversion of St. Paul\n(that you mustn't leave out on any account), and from the _Lives of the\nSaints_, for instance, the life of Alexey, the man of God and, greatest of\nall, the happy martyr and the seer of God, Mary of Egypt--and you will\npenetrate their hearts with these simple tales. Give one hour a week to it\nin spite of your poverty, only one little hour. And you will see for\nyourselves that our people is gracious and grateful, and will repay you a\nhundred-fold. Mindful of the kindness of their priest and the moving words\nthey have heard from him, they will of their own accord help him in his\nfields and in his house, and will treat him with more respect than\nbefore--so that it will even increase his worldly well-being too. The thing\nis so simple that sometimes one is even afraid to put it into words, for\nfear of being laughed at, and yet how true it is! One who does not believe\nin God will not believe in God's people. He who believes in God's people\nwill see His Holiness too, even though he had not believed in it till\nthen. Only the people and their future spiritual power will convert our\natheists, who have torn themselves away from their native soil.\n\nAnd what is the use of Christ's words, unless we set an example? The\npeople is lost without the Word of God, for its soul is athirst for the\nWord and for all that is good.\n\nIn my youth, long ago, nearly forty years ago, I traveled all over Russia\nwith Father Anfim, collecting funds for our monastery, and we stayed one\nnight on the bank of a great navigable river with some fishermen. A good-\nlooking peasant lad, about eighteen, joined us; he had to hurry back next\nmorning to pull a merchant's barge along the bank. I noticed him looking\nstraight before him with clear and tender eyes. It was a bright, warm,\nstill, July night, a cool mist rose from the broad river, we could hear\nthe plash of a fish, the birds were still, all was hushed and beautiful,\neverything praying to God. Only we two were not sleeping, the lad and I,\nand we talked of the beauty of this world of God's and of the great\nmystery of it. Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee,\nall so marvelously know their path, though they have not intelligence,\nthey bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it\nthemselves. I saw the dear lad's heart was moved. He told me that he loved\nthe forest and the forest birds. He was a bird-catcher, knew the note of\neach of them, could call each bird. \"I know nothing better than to be in\nthe forest,\" said he, \"though all things are good.\"\n\n\"Truly,\" I answered him, \"all things are good and fair, because all is\ntruth. Look,\" said I, \"at the horse, that great beast that is so near to\nman; or the lowly, pensive ox, which feeds him and works for him; look at\ntheir faces, what meekness, what devotion to man, who often beats them\nmercilessly. What gentleness, what confidence and what beauty! It's\ntouching to know that there's no sin in them, for all, all except man, is\nsinless, and Christ has been with them before us.\"\n\n\"Why,\" asked the boy, \"is Christ with them too?\"\n\n\"It cannot but be so,\" said I, \"since the Word is for all. All creation\nand all creatures, every leaf is striving to the Word, singing glory to\nGod, weeping to Christ, unconsciously accomplishing this by the mystery of\ntheir sinless life. Yonder,\" said I, \"in the forest wanders the dreadful\nbear, fierce and menacing, and yet innocent in it.\" And I told him how\nonce a bear came to a great saint who had taken refuge in a tiny cell in\nthe wood. And the great saint pitied him, went up to him without fear and\ngave him a piece of bread. \"Go along,\" said he, \"Christ be with you,\" and\nthe savage beast walked away meekly and obediently, doing no harm. And the\nlad was delighted that the bear had walked away without hurting the saint,\nand that Christ was with him too. \"Ah,\" said he, \"how good that is, how\ngood and beautiful is all God's work!\" He sat musing softly and sweetly. I\nsaw he understood. And he slept beside me a light and sinless sleep. May\nGod bless youth! And I prayed for him as I went to sleep. Lord, send peace\nand light to Thy people!\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. The Duel\n\n\n_(c) Recollections of Father Zossima's Youth before he became a Monk. The\nDuel_\n\nI spent a long time, almost eight years, in the military cadet school at\nPetersburg, and in the novelty of my surroundings there, many of my\nchildish impressions grew dimmer, though I forgot nothing. I picked up so\nmany new habits and opinions that I was transformed into a cruel, absurd,\nalmost savage creature. A surface polish of courtesy and society manners I\ndid acquire together with the French language.\n\nBut we all, myself included, looked upon the soldiers in our service as\ncattle. I was perhaps worse than the rest in that respect, for I was so\nmuch more impressionable than my companions. By the time we left the\nschool as officers, we were ready to lay down our lives for the honor of\nthe regiment, but no one of us had any knowledge of the real meaning of\nhonor, and if any one had known it, he would have been the first to\nridicule it. Drunkenness, debauchery and devilry were what we almost\nprided ourselves on. I don't say that we were bad by nature, all these\nyoung men were good fellows, but they behaved badly, and I worst of all.\nWhat made it worse for me was that I had come into my own money, and so I\nflung myself into a life of pleasure, and plunged headlong into all the\nrecklessness of youth.\n\nI was fond of reading, yet strange to say, the Bible was the one book I\nnever opened at that time, though I always carried it about with me, and I\nwas never separated from it; in very truth I was keeping that book \"for\nthe day and the hour, for the month and the year,\" though I knew it not.\n\nAfter four years of this life, I chanced to be in the town of K. where our\nregiment was stationed at the time. We found the people of the town\nhospitable, rich and fond of entertainments. I met with a cordial\nreception everywhere, as I was of a lively temperament and was known to be\nwell off, which always goes a long way in the world. And then a\ncircumstance happened which was the beginning of it all.\n\nI formed an attachment to a beautiful and intelligent young girl of noble\nand lofty character, the daughter of people much respected. They were\nwell-to-do people of influence and position. They always gave me a cordial\nand friendly reception. I fancied that the young lady looked on me with\nfavor and my heart was aflame at such an idea. Later on I saw and fully\nrealized that I perhaps was not so passionately in love with her at all,\nbut only recognized the elevation of her mind and character, which I could\nnot indeed have helped doing. I was prevented, however, from making her an\noffer at the time by my selfishness, I was loath to part with the\nallurements of my free and licentious bachelor life in the heyday of my\nyouth, and with my pockets full of money. I did drop some hint as to my\nfeelings however, though I put off taking any decisive step for a time.\nThen, all of a sudden, we were ordered off for two months to another\ndistrict.\n\nOn my return two months later, I found the young lady already married to a\nrich neighboring landowner, a very amiable man, still young though older\nthan I was, connected with the best Petersburg society, which I was not,\nand of excellent education, which I also was not. I was so overwhelmed at\nthis unexpected circumstance that my mind was positively clouded. The\nworst of it all was that, as I learned then, the young landowner had been\na long while betrothed to her, and I had met him indeed many times in her\nhouse, but blinded by my conceit I had noticed nothing. And this\nparticularly mortified me; almost everybody had known all about it, while\nI knew nothing. I was filled with sudden irrepressible fury. With flushed\nface I began recalling how often I had been on the point of declaring my\nlove to her, and as she had not attempted to stop me or to warn me, she\nmust, I concluded, have been laughing at me all the time. Later on, of\ncourse, I reflected and remembered that she had been very far from\nlaughing at me; on the contrary, she used to turn off any love-making on\nmy part with a jest and begin talking of other subjects; but at that\nmoment I was incapable of reflecting and was all eagerness for revenge. I\nam surprised to remember that my wrath and revengeful feelings were\nextremely repugnant to my own nature, for being of an easy temper, I found\nit difficult to be angry with any one for long, and so I had to work\nmyself up artificially and became at last revolting and absurd.\n\nI waited for an opportunity and succeeded in insulting my \"rival\" in the\npresence of a large company. I insulted him on a perfectly extraneous\npretext, jeering at his opinion upon an important public event--it was in\nthe year 1826(5)--and my jeer was, so people said, clever and effective.\nThen I forced him to ask for an explanation, and behaved so rudely that he\naccepted my challenge in spite of the vast inequality between us, as I was\nyounger, a person of no consequence, and of inferior rank. I learned\nafterwards for a fact that it was from a jealous feeling on his side also\nthat my challenge was accepted; he had been rather jealous of me on his\nwife's account before their marriage; he fancied now that if he submitted\nto be insulted by me and refused to accept my challenge, and if she heard\nof it, she might begin to despise him and waver in her love for him. I\nsoon found a second in a comrade, an ensign of our regiment. In those days\nthough duels were severely punished, yet dueling was a kind of fashion\namong the officers--so strong and deeply rooted will a brutal prejudice\nsometimes be.\n\nIt was the end of June, and our meeting was to take place at seven o'clock\nthe next day on the outskirts of the town--and then something happened that\nin very truth was the turning-point of my life. In the evening, returning\nhome in a savage and brutal humor, I flew into a rage with my orderly\nAfanasy, and gave him two blows in the face with all my might, so that it\nwas covered with blood. He had not long been in my service and I had\nstruck him before, but never with such ferocious cruelty. And, believe me,\nthough it's forty years ago, I recall it now with shame and pain. I went\nto bed and slept for about three hours; when I waked up the day was\nbreaking. I got up--I did not want to sleep any more--I went to the\nwindow--opened it, it looked out upon the garden; I saw the sun rising; it\nwas warm and beautiful, the birds were singing.\n\n\"What's the meaning of it?\" I thought. \"I feel in my heart as it were\nsomething vile and shameful. Is it because I am going to shed blood? No,\"\nI thought, \"I feel it's not that. Can it be that I am afraid of death,\nafraid of being killed? No, that's not it, that's not it at all.\"... And\nall at once I knew what it was: it was because I had beaten Afanasy the\nevening before! It all rose before my mind, it all was as it were repeated\nover again; he stood before me and I was beating him straight on the face\nand he was holding his arms stiffly down, his head erect, his eyes fixed\nupon me as though on parade. He staggered at every blow and did not even\ndare to raise his hands to protect himself. That is what a man has been\nbrought to, and that was a man beating a fellow creature! What a crime! It\nwas as though a sharp dagger had pierced me right through. I stood as if I\nwere struck dumb, while the sun was shining, the leaves were rejoicing and\nthe birds were trilling the praise of God.... I hid my face in my hands,\nfell on my bed and broke into a storm of tears. And then I remembered my\nbrother Markel and what he said on his death-bed to his servants: \"My dear\nones, why do you wait on me, why do you love me, am I worth your waiting\non me?\"\n\n\"Yes, am I worth it?\" flashed through my mind. \"After all what am I worth,\nthat another man, a fellow creature, made in the likeness and image of\nGod, should serve me?\" For the first time in my life this question forced\nitself upon me. He had said, \"Mother, my little heart, in truth we are\neach responsible to all for all, it's only that men don't know this. If\nthey knew it, the world would be a paradise at once.\"\n\n\"God, can that too be false?\" I thought as I wept. \"In truth, perhaps, I\nam more than all others responsible for all, a greater sinner than all men\nin the world.\" And all at once the whole truth in its full light appeared\nto me; what was I going to do? I was going to kill a good, clever, noble\nman, who had done me no wrong, and by depriving his wife of happiness for\nthe rest of her life, I should be torturing and killing her too. I lay\nthus in my bed with my face in the pillow, heedless how the time was\npassing. Suddenly my second, the ensign, came in with the pistols to fetch\nme.\n\n\"Ah,\" said he, \"it's a good thing you are up already, it's time we were\noff, come along!\"\n\nI did not know what to do and hurried to and fro undecided; we went out to\nthe carriage, however.\n\n\"Wait here a minute,\" I said to him. \"I'll be back directly, I have\nforgotten my purse.\"\n\nAnd I ran back alone, to Afanasy's little room.\n\n\"Afanasy,\" I said, \"I gave you two blows on the face yesterday, forgive\nme,\" I said.\n\nHe started as though he were frightened, and looked at me; and I saw that\nit was not enough, and on the spot, in my full officer's uniform, I\ndropped at his feet and bowed my head to the ground.\n\n\"Forgive me,\" I said.\n\nThen he was completely aghast.\n\n\"Your honor ... sir, what are you doing? Am I worth it?\"\n\nAnd he burst out crying as I had done before, hid this face in his hands,\nturned to the window and shook all over with his sobs. I flew out to my\ncomrade and jumped into the carriage.\n\n\"Ready,\" I cried. \"Have you ever seen a conqueror?\" I asked him. \"Here is\none before you.\"\n\nI was in ecstasy, laughing and talking all the way, I don't remember what\nabout.\n\nHe looked at me. \"Well, brother, you are a plucky fellow, you'll keep up\nthe honor of the uniform, I can see.\"\n\nSo we reached the place and found them there, waiting us. We were placed\ntwelve paces apart; he had the first shot. I stood gayly, looking him full\nin the face; I did not twitch an eyelash, I looked lovingly at him, for I\nknew what I would do. His shot just grazed my cheek and ear.\n\n\"Thank God,\" I cried, \"no man has been killed,\" and I seized my pistol,\nturned back and flung it far away into the wood. \"That's the place for\nyou,\" I cried.\n\nI turned to my adversary.\n\n\"Forgive me, young fool that I am, sir,\" I said, \"for my unprovoked insult\nto you and for forcing you to fire at me. I am ten times worse than you\nand more, maybe. Tell that to the person whom you hold dearest in the\nworld.\"\n\nI had no sooner said this than they all three shouted at me.\n\n\"Upon my word,\" cried my adversary, annoyed, \"if you did not want to\nfight, why did not you let me alone?\"\n\n\"Yesterday I was a fool, to-day I know better,\" I answered him gayly.\n\n\"As to yesterday, I believe you, but as for to-day, it is difficult to\nagree with your opinion,\" said he.\n\n\"Bravo,\" I cried, clapping my hands. \"I agree with you there too. I have\ndeserved it!\"\n\n\"Will you shoot, sir, or not?\"\n\n\"No, I won't,\" I said; \"if you like, fire at me again, but it would be\nbetter for you not to fire.\"\n\nThe seconds, especially mine, were shouting too: \"Can you disgrace the\nregiment like this, facing your antagonist and begging his forgiveness! If\nI'd only known this!\"\n\nI stood facing them all, not laughing now.\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" I said, \"is it really so wonderful in these days to find a\nman who can repent of his stupidity and publicly confess his wrongdoing?\"\n\n\"But not in a duel,\" cried my second again.\n\n\"That's what's so strange,\" I said. \"For I ought to have owned my fault as\nsoon as I got here, before he had fired a shot, before leading him into a\ngreat and deadly sin; but we have made our life so grotesque, that to act\nin that way would have been almost impossible, for only after I have faced\nhis shot at the distance of twelve paces could my words have any\nsignificance for him, and if I had spoken before, he would have said, 'He\nis a coward, the sight of the pistols has frightened him, no use to listen\nto him.' Gentlemen,\" I cried suddenly, speaking straight from my heart,\n\"look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the\ntender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we,\nare sinful and foolish, and we don't understand that life is heaven, for\nwe have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all\nits beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.\"\n\nI would have said more but I could not; my voice broke with the sweetness\nand youthful gladness of it, and there was such bliss in my heart as I had\nnever known before in my life.\n\n\"All this as rational and edifying,\" said my antagonist, \"and in any case\nyou are an original person.\"\n\n\"You may laugh,\" I said to him, laughing too, \"but afterwards you will\napprove of me.\"\n\n\"Oh, I am ready to approve of you now,\" said he; \"will you shake hands?\nfor I believe you are genuinely sincere.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"not now, later on when I have grown worthier and deserve\nyour esteem, then shake hands and you will do well.\"\n\nWe went home, my second upbraiding me all the way, while I kissed him. All\nmy comrades heard of the affair at once and gathered together to pass\njudgment on me the same day.\n\n\"He has disgraced the uniform,\" they said; \"let him resign his\ncommission.\"\n\nSome stood up for me: \"He faced the shot,\" they said.\n\n\"Yes, but he was afraid of his other shot and begged for forgiveness.\"\n\n\"If he had been afraid of being shot, he would have shot his own pistol\nfirst before asking forgiveness, while he flung it loaded into the forest.\nNo, there's something else in this, something original.\"\n\nI enjoyed listening and looking at them. \"My dear friends and comrades,\"\nsaid I, \"don't worry about my resigning my commission, for I have done so\nalready. I have sent in my papers this morning and as soon as I get my\ndischarge I shall go into a monastery--it's with that object I am leaving\nthe regiment.\"\n\nWhen I had said this every one of them burst out laughing.\n\n\"You should have told us of that first, that explains everything, we can't\njudge a monk.\"\n\nThey laughed and could not stop themselves, and not scornfully, but kindly\nand merrily. They all felt friendly to me at once, even those who had been\nsternest in their censure, and all the following month, before my\ndischarge came, they could not make enough of me. \"Ah, you monk,\" they\nwould say. And every one said something kind to me, they began trying to\ndissuade me, even to pity me: \"What are you doing to yourself?\"\n\n\"No,\" they would say, \"he is a brave fellow, he faced fire and could have\nfired his own pistol too, but he had a dream the night before that he\nshould become a monk, that's why he did it.\"\n\nIt was the same thing with the society of the town. Till then I had been\nkindly received, but had not been the object of special attention, and now\nall came to know me at once and invited me; they laughed at me, but they\nloved me. I may mention that although everybody talked openly of our duel,\nthe authorities took no notice of it, because my antagonist was a near\nrelation of our general, and as there had been no bloodshed and no serious\nconsequences, and as I resigned my commission, they took it as a joke. And\nI began then to speak aloud and fearlessly, regardless of their laughter,\nfor it was always kindly and not spiteful laughter. These conversations\nmostly took place in the evenings, in the company of ladies; women\nparticularly liked listening to me then and they made the men listen.\n\n\"But how can I possibly be responsible for all?\" every one would laugh in\nmy face. \"Can I, for instance, be responsible for you?\"\n\n\"You may well not know it,\" I would answer, \"since the whole world has\nlong been going on a different line, since we consider the veriest lies as\ntruth and demand the same lies from others. Here I have for once in my\nlife acted sincerely and, well, you all look upon me as a madman. Though\nyou are friendly to me, yet, you see, you all laugh at me.\"\n\n\"But how can we help being friendly to you?\" said my hostess, laughing.\nThe room was full of people. All of a sudden the young lady rose, on whose\naccount the duel had been fought and whom only lately I had intended to be\nmy future wife. I had not noticed her coming into the room. She got up,\ncame to me and held out her hand.\n\n\"Let me tell you,\" she said, \"that I am the first not to laugh at you, but\non the contrary I thank you with tears and express my respect for you for\nyour action then.\"\n\nHer husband, too, came up and then they all approached me and almost\nkissed me. My heart was filled with joy, but my attention was especially\ncaught by a middle-aged man who came up to me with the others. I knew him\nby name already, but had never made his acquaintance nor exchanged a word\nwith him till that evening.\n\n_(d) The Mysterious Visitor_\n\nHe had long been an official in the town; he was in a prominent position,\nrespected by all, rich and had a reputation for benevolence. He subscribed\nconsiderable sums to the almshouse and the orphan asylum; he was very\ncharitable, too, in secret, a fact which only became known after his\ndeath. He was a man of about fifty, almost stern in appearance and not\nmuch given to conversation. He had been married about ten years and his\nwife, who was still young, had borne him three children. Well, I was\nsitting alone in my room the following evening, when my door suddenly\nopened and this gentleman walked in.\n\nI must mention, by the way, that I was no longer living in my former\nquarters. As soon as I resigned my commission, I took rooms with an old\nlady, the widow of a government clerk. My landlady's servant waited upon\nme, for I had moved into her rooms simply because on my return from the\nduel I had sent Afanasy back to the regiment, as I felt ashamed to look\nhim in the face after my last interview with him. So prone is the man of\nthe world to be ashamed of any righteous action.\n\n\"I have,\" said my visitor, \"with great interest listened to you speaking\nin different houses the last few days and I wanted at last to make your\npersonal acquaintance, so as to talk to you more intimately. Can you, dear\nsir, grant me this favor?\"\n\n\"I can, with the greatest pleasure, and I shall look upon it as an honor.\"\nI said this, though I felt almost dismayed, so greatly was I impressed\nfrom the first moment by the appearance of this man. For though other\npeople had listened to me with interest and attention, no one had come to\nme before with such a serious, stern and concentrated expression. And now\nhe had come to see me in my own rooms. He sat down.\n\n\"You are, I see, a man of great strength of character,\" he said; \"as you\nhave dared to serve the truth, even when by doing so you risked incurring\nthe contempt of all.\"\n\n\"Your praise is, perhaps, excessive,\" I replied.\n\n\"No, it's not excessive,\" he answered; \"believe me, such a course of\naction is far more difficult than you think. It is that which has\nimpressed me, and it is only on that account that I have come to you,\" he\ncontinued. \"Tell me, please, that is if you are not annoyed by my perhaps\nunseemly curiosity, what were your exact sensations, if you can recall\nthem, at the moment when you made up your mind to ask forgiveness at the\nduel. Do not think my question frivolous; on the contrary, I have in\nasking the question a secret motive of my own, which I will perhaps\nexplain to you later on, if it is God's will that we should become more\nintimately acquainted.\"\n\nAll the while he was speaking, I was looking at him straight into the face\nand I felt all at once a complete trust in him and great curiosity on my\nside also, for I felt that there was some strange secret in his soul.\n\n\"You ask what were my exact sensations at the moment when I asked my\nopponent's forgiveness,\" I answered; \"but I had better tell you from the\nbeginning what I have not yet told any one else.\" And I described all that\nhad passed between Afanasy and me, and how I had bowed down to the ground\nat his feet. \"From that you can see for yourself,\" I concluded, \"that at\nthe time of the duel it was easier for me, for I had made a beginning\nalready at home, and when once I had started on that road, to go farther\nalong it was far from being difficult, but became a source of joy and\nhappiness.\"\n\nI liked the way he looked at me as he listened. \"All that,\" he said, \"is\nexceedingly interesting. I will come to see you again and again.\"\n\nAnd from that time forth he came to see me nearly every evening. And we\nshould have become greater friends, if only he had ever talked of himself.\nBut about himself he scarcely ever said a word, yet continually asked me\nabout myself. In spite of that I became very fond of him and spoke with\nperfect frankness to him about all my feelings; \"for,\" thought I, \"what\nneed have I to know his secrets, since I can see without that that he is a\ngood man? Moreover, though he is such a serious man and my senior, he\ncomes to see a youngster like me and treats me as his equal.\" And I\nlearned a great deal that was profitable from him, for he was a man of\nlofty mind.\n\n\"That life is heaven,\" he said to me suddenly, \"that I have long been\nthinking about\"; and all at once he added, \"I think of nothing else\nindeed.\" He looked at me and smiled. \"I am more convinced of it than you\nare, I will tell you later why.\"\n\nI listened to him and thought that he evidently wanted to tell me\nsomething.\n\n\"Heaven,\" he went on, \"lies hidden within all of us--here it lies hidden in\nme now, and if I will it, it will be revealed to me to-morrow and for all\ntime.\"\n\nI looked at him; he was speaking with great emotion and gazing\nmysteriously at me, as if he were questioning me.\n\n\"And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins,\nyou were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could\ncomprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon\nas men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a\ndream, but a living reality.\"\n\n\"And when,\" I cried out to him bitterly, \"when will that come to pass? and\nwill it ever come to pass? Is not it simply a dream of ours?\"\n\n\"What then, you don't believe it,\" he said. \"You preach it and don't\nbelieve it yourself. Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come to\npass without doubt; it will come, but not now, for every process has its\nlaw. It's a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to\nrecreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until\nyou have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one,\nbrotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind\nof common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges\nwith equal consideration for all. Every one will think his share too small\nand they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another.\nYou ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have\nto go through the period of isolation.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by isolation?\" I asked him.\n\n\"Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age--it has\nnot fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one\nstrives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure\nthe greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his\nefforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for\ninstead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All\nmankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in\nhis own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has,\nfrom the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them.\nHe heaps up riches by himself and thinks, 'How strong I am now and how\nsecure,' and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps\nup, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is\naccustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the\nwhole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men\nand in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and\nthe privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men\nhave, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to\nbe found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.\nBut this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will\nsuddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another.\nIt will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have\nsat so long in darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of the\nSon of Man will be seen in the heavens.... But, until then, we must keep\nthe banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his\nconduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men's\nsouls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love,\nthat the great idea may not die.\"\n\nOur evenings, one after another, were spent in such stirring and fervent\ntalk. I gave up society and visited my neighbors much less frequently.\nBesides, my vogue was somewhat over. I say this, not as blame, for they\nstill loved me and treated me good-humoredly, but there's no denying that\nfashion is a great power in society. I began to regard my mysterious\nvisitor with admiration, for besides enjoying his intelligence, I began to\nperceive that he was brooding over some plan in his heart, and was\npreparing himself perhaps for a great deed. Perhaps he liked my not\nshowing curiosity about his secret, not seeking to discover it by direct\nquestion nor by insinuation. But I noticed at last, that he seemed to show\nsigns of wanting to tell me something. This had become quite evident,\nindeed, about a month after he first began to visit me.\n\n\"Do you know,\" he said to me once, \"that people are very inquisitive about\nus in the town and wonder why I come to see you so often. But let them\nwonder, for _soon all will be explained_.\"\n\nSometimes an extraordinary agitation would come over him, and almost\nalways on such occasions he would get up and go away. Sometimes he would\nfix a long piercing look upon me, and I thought, \"He will say something\ndirectly now.\" But he would suddenly begin talking of something ordinary\nand familiar. He often complained of headache too.\n\nOne day, quite unexpectedly indeed, after he had been talking with great\nfervor a long time, I saw him suddenly turn pale, and his face worked\nconvulsively, while he stared persistently at me.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" I said; \"do you feel ill?\"--he had just been\ncomplaining of headache.\n\n\"I ... do you know ... I murdered some one.\"\n\nHe said this and smiled with a face as white as chalk. \"Why is it he is\nsmiling?\" The thought flashed through my mind before I realized anything\nelse. I too turned pale.\n\n\"What are you saying?\" I cried.\n\n\"You see,\" he said, with a pale smile, \"how much it has cost me to say the\nfirst word. Now I have said it, I feel I've taken the first step and shall\ngo on.\"\n\nFor a long while I could not believe him, and I did not believe him at\nthat time, but only after he had been to see me three days running and\ntold me all about it. I thought he was mad, but ended by being convinced,\nto my great grief and amazement. His crime was a great and terrible one.\n\nFourteen years before, he had murdered the widow of a landowner, a wealthy\nand handsome young woman who had a house in our town. He fell passionately\nin love with her, declared his feeling and tried to persuade her to marry\nhim. But she had already given her heart to another man, an officer of\nnoble birth and high rank in the service, who was at that time away at the\nfront, though she was expecting him soon to return. She refused his offer\nand begged him not to come and see her. After he had ceased to visit her,\nhe took advantage of his knowledge of the house to enter at night through\nthe garden by the roof, at great risk of discovery. But, as often happens,\na crime committed with extraordinary audacity is more successful than\nothers.\n\nEntering the garret through the skylight, he went down the ladder, knowing\nthat the door at the bottom of it was sometimes, through the negligence of\nthe servants, left unlocked. He hoped to find it so, and so it was. He\nmade his way in the dark to her bedroom, where a light was burning. As\nthough on purpose, both her maids had gone off to a birthday-party in the\nsame street, without asking leave. The other servants slept in the\nservants' quarters or in the kitchen on the ground-floor. His passion\nflamed up at the sight of her asleep, and then vindictive, jealous anger\ntook possession of his heart, and like a drunken man, beside himself, he\nthrust a knife into her heart, so that she did not even cry out. Then with\ndevilish and criminal cunning he contrived that suspicion should fall on\nthe servants. He was so base as to take her purse, to open her chest with\nkeys from under her pillow, and to take some things from it, doing it all\nas it might have been done by an ignorant servant, leaving valuable papers\nand taking only money. He took some of the larger gold things, but left\nsmaller articles that were ten times as valuable. He took with him, too,\nsome things for himself as remembrances, but of that later. Having done\nthis awful deed, he returned by the way he had come.\n\nNeither the next day, when the alarm was raised, nor at any time after in\nhis life, did any one dream of suspecting that he was the criminal. No one\nindeed knew of his love for her, for he was always reserved and silent and\nhad no friend to whom he would have opened his heart. He was looked upon\nsimply as an acquaintance, and not a very intimate one, of the murdered\nwoman, as for the previous fortnight he had not even visited her. A serf\nof hers called Pyotr was at once suspected, and every circumstance\nconfirmed the suspicion. The man knew--indeed his mistress did not conceal\nthe fact--that having to send one of her serfs as a recruit she had decided\nto send him, as he had no relations and his conduct was unsatisfactory.\nPeople had heard him angrily threatening to murder her when he was drunk\nin a tavern. Two days before her death, he had run away, staying no one\nknew where in the town. The day after the murder, he was found on the road\nleading out of the town, dead drunk, with a knife in his pocket, and his\nright hand happened to be stained with blood. He declared that his nose\nhad been bleeding, but no one believed him. The maids confessed that they\nhad gone to a party and that the street-door had been left open till they\nreturned. And a number of similar details came to light, throwing\nsuspicion on the innocent servant.\n\nThey arrested him, and he was tried for the murder; but a week after the\narrest, the prisoner fell sick of a fever and died unconscious in the\nhospital. There the matter ended and the judges and the authorities and\nevery one in the town remained convinced that the crime had been committed\nby no one but the servant who had died in the hospital. And after that the\npunishment began.\n\nMy mysterious visitor, now my friend, told me that at first he was not in\nthe least troubled by pangs of conscience. He was miserable a long time,\nbut not for that reason; only from regret that he had killed the woman he\nloved, that she was no more, that in killing her he had killed his love,\nwhile the fire of passion was still in his veins. But of the innocent\nblood he had shed, of the murder of a fellow creature, he scarcely\nthought. The thought that his victim might have become the wife of another\nman was insupportable to him, and so, for a long time, he was convinced in\nhis conscience that he could not have acted otherwise.\n\nAt first he was worried at the arrest of the servant, but his illness and\ndeath soon set his mind at rest, for the man's death was apparently (so he\nreflected at the time) not owing to his arrest or his fright, but a chill\nhe had taken on the day he ran away, when he had lain all night dead drunk\non the damp ground. The theft of the money and other things troubled him\nlittle, for he argued that the theft had not been committed for gain but\nto avert suspicion. The sum stolen was small, and he shortly afterwards\nsubscribed the whole of it, and much more, towards the funds for\nmaintaining an almshouse in the town. He did this on purpose to set his\nconscience at rest about the theft, and it's a remarkable fact that for a\nlong time he really was at peace--he told me this himself. He entered then\nupon a career of great activity in the service, volunteered for a\ndifficult and laborious duty, which occupied him two years, and being a\nman of strong will almost forgot the past. Whenever he recalled it, he\ntried not to think of it at all. He became active in philanthropy too,\nfounded and helped to maintain many institutions in the town, did a good\ndeal in the two capitals, and in both Moscow and Petersburg was elected a\nmember of philanthropic societies.\n\nAt last, however, he began brooding over the past, and the strain of it\nwas too much for him. Then he was attracted by a fine and intelligent girl\nand soon after married her, hoping that marriage would dispel his lonely\ndepression, and that by entering on a new life and scrupulously doing his\nduty to his wife and children, he would escape from old memories\naltogether. But the very opposite of what he expected happened. He began,\neven in the first month of his marriage, to be continually fretted by the\nthought, \"My wife loves me--but what if she knew?\" When she first told him\nthat she would soon bear him a child, he was troubled. \"I am giving life,\nbut I have taken life.\" Children came. \"How dare I love them, teach and\neducate them, how can I talk to them of virtue? I have shed blood.\" They\nwere splendid children, he longed to caress them; \"and I can't look at\ntheir innocent candid faces, I am unworthy.\"\n\nAt last he began to be bitterly and ominously haunted by the blood of his\nmurdered victim, by the young life he had destroyed, by the blood that\ncried out for vengeance. He had begun to have awful dreams. But, being a\nman of fortitude, he bore his suffering a long time, thinking: \"I shall\nexpiate everything by this secret agony.\" But that hope, too, was vain;\nthe longer it went on, the more intense was his suffering.\n\nHe was respected in society for his active benevolence, though every one\nwas overawed by his stern and gloomy character. But the more he was\nrespected, the more intolerable it was for him. He confessed to me that he\nhad thoughts of killing himself. But he began to be haunted by another\nidea--an idea which he had at first regarded as impossible and unthinkable,\nthough at last it got such a hold on his heart that he could not shake it\noff. He dreamed of rising up, going out and confessing in the face of all\nmen that he had committed murder. For three years this dream had pursued\nhim, haunting him in different forms. At last he believed with his whole\nheart that if he confessed his crime, he would heal his soul and would be\nat peace for ever. But this belief filled his heart with terror, for how\ncould he carry it out? And then came what happened at my duel.\n\n\"Looking at you, I have made up my mind.\"\n\nI looked at him.\n\n\"Is it possible,\" I cried, clasping my hands, \"that such a trivial\nincident could give rise to such a resolution in you?\"\n\n\"My resolution has been growing for the last three years,\" he answered,\n\"and your story only gave the last touch to it. Looking at you, I\nreproached myself and envied you.\" He said this to me almost sullenly.\n\n\"But you won't be believed,\" I observed; \"it's fourteen years ago.\"\n\n\"I have proofs, great proofs. I shall show them.\"\n\nThen I cried and kissed him.\n\n\"Tell me one thing, one thing,\" he said (as though it all depended upon\nme), \"my wife, my children! My wife may die of grief, and though my\nchildren won't lose their rank and property, they'll be a convict's\nchildren and for ever! And what a memory, what a memory of me I shall\nleave in their hearts!\"\n\nI said nothing.\n\n\"And to part from them, to leave them for ever? It's for ever, you know,\nfor ever!\"\n\nI sat still and repeated a silent prayer. I got up at last, I felt afraid.\n\n\"Well?\" He looked at me.\n\n\"Go!\" said I, \"confess. Everything passes, only the truth remains. Your\nchildren will understand, when they grow up, the nobility of your\nresolution.\"\n\nHe left me that time as though he had made up his mind. Yet for more than\na fortnight afterwards, he came to me every evening, still preparing\nhimself, still unable to bring himself to the point. He made my heart\nache. One day he would come determined and say fervently:\n\n\"I know it will be heaven for me, heaven, the moment I confess. Fourteen\nyears I've been in hell. I want to suffer. I will take my punishment and\nbegin to live. You can pass through the world doing wrong, but there's no\nturning back. Now I dare not love my neighbor nor even my own children.\nGood God, my children will understand, perhaps, what my punishment has\ncost me and will not condemn me! God is not in strength but in truth.\"\n\n\"All will understand your sacrifice,\" I said to him, \"if not at once, they\nwill understand later; for you have served truth, the higher truth, not of\nthe earth.\"\n\nAnd he would go away seeming comforted, but next day he would come again,\nbitter, pale, sarcastic.\n\n\"Every time I come to you, you look at me so inquisitively as though to\nsay, 'He has still not confessed!' Wait a bit, don't despise me too much.\nIt's not such an easy thing to do, as you would think. Perhaps I shall not\ndo it at all. You won't go and inform against me then, will you?\"\n\nAnd far from looking at him with indiscreet curiosity, I was afraid to\nlook at him at all. I was quite ill from anxiety, and my heart was full of\ntears. I could not sleep at night.\n\n\"I have just come from my wife,\" he went on. \"Do you understand what the\nword 'wife' means? When I went out, the children called to me, 'Good-by,\nfather, make haste back to read _The Children's Magazine_ with us.' No,\nyou don't understand that! No one is wise from another man's woe.\"\n\nHis eyes were glittering, his lips were twitching. Suddenly he struck the\ntable with his fist so that everything on it danced--it was the first time\nhe had done such a thing, he was such a mild man.\n\n\"But need I?\" he exclaimed, \"must I? No one has been condemned, no one has\nbeen sent to Siberia in my place, the man died of fever. And I've been\npunished by my sufferings for the blood I shed. And I shan't be believed,\nthey won't believe my proofs. Need I confess, need I? I am ready to go on\nsuffering all my life for the blood I have shed, if only my wife and\nchildren may be spared. Will it be just to ruin them with me? Aren't we\nmaking a mistake? What is right in this case? And will people recognize\nit, will they appreciate it, will they respect it?\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\" I thought to myself, \"he is thinking of other people's\nrespect at such a moment!\" And I felt so sorry for him then, that I\nbelieve I would have shared his fate if it could have comforted him. I saw\nhe was beside himself. I was aghast, realizing with my heart as well as my\nmind what such a resolution meant.\n\n\"Decide my fate!\" he exclaimed again.\n\n\"Go and confess,\" I whispered to him. My voice failed me, but I whispered\nit firmly. I took up the New Testament from the table, the Russian\ntranslation, and showed him the Gospel of St. John, chapter xii. verse 24:\n\n\"Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the\nground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much\nfruit.\"\n\nI had just been reading that verse when he came in. He read it.\n\n\"That's true,\" he said, but he smiled bitterly. \"It's terrible the things\nyou find in those books,\" he said, after a pause. \"It's easy enough to\nthrust them upon one. And who wrote them? Can they have been written by\nmen?\"\n\n\"The Holy Spirit wrote them,\" said I.\n\n\"It's easy for you to prate,\" he smiled again, this time almost with\nhatred.\n\nI took the book again, opened it in another place and showed him the\nEpistle to the Hebrews, chapter x. verse 31. He read:\n\n\"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.\"\n\nHe read it and simply flung down the book. He was trembling all over.\n\n\"An awful text,\" he said. \"There's no denying you've picked out fitting\nones.\" He rose from the chair. \"Well!\" he said, \"good-by, perhaps I shan't\ncome again ... we shall meet in heaven. So I have been for fourteen years\n'in the hands of the living God,' that's how one must think of those\nfourteen years. To-morrow I will beseech those hands to let me go.\"\n\nI wanted to take him in my arms and kiss him, but I did not dare--his face\nwas contorted and somber. He went away.\n\n\"Good God,\" I thought, \"what has he gone to face!\" I fell on my knees\nbefore the ikon and wept for him before the Holy Mother of God, our swift\ndefender and helper. I was half an hour praying in tears, and it was late,\nabout midnight. Suddenly I saw the door open and he came in again. I was\nsurprised.\n\n\"Where have you been?\" I asked him.\n\n\"I think,\" he said, \"I've forgotten something ... my handkerchief, I\nthink.... Well, even if I've not forgotten anything, let me stay a\nlittle.\"\n\nHe sat down. I stood over him.\n\n\"You sit down, too,\" said he.\n\nI sat down. We sat still for two minutes; he looked intently at me and\nsuddenly smiled--I remembered that--then he got up, embraced me warmly and\nkissed me.\n\n\"Remember,\" he said, \"how I came to you a second time. Do you hear,\nremember it!\"\n\nAnd he went out.\n\n\"To-morrow,\" I thought.\n\nAnd so it was. I did not know that evening that the next day was his\nbirthday. I had not been out for the last few days, so I had no chance of\nhearing it from any one. On that day he always had a great gathering,\nevery one in the town went to it. It was the same this time. After dinner\nhe walked into the middle of the room, with a paper in his hand--a formal\ndeclaration to the chief of his department who was present. This\ndeclaration he read aloud to the whole assembly. It contained a full\naccount of the crime, in every detail.\n\n\"I cut myself off from men as a monster. God has visited me,\" he said in\nconclusion. \"I want to suffer for my sin!\"\n\nThen he brought out and laid on the table all the things he had been\nkeeping for fourteen years, that he thought would prove his crime, the\njewels belonging to the murdered woman which he had stolen to divert\nsuspicion, a cross and a locket taken from her neck with a portrait of her\nbetrothed in the locket, her notebook and two letters; one from her\nbetrothed, telling her that he would soon be with her, and her unfinished\nanswer left on the table to be sent off next day. He carried off these two\nletters--what for? Why had he kept them for fourteen years afterwards\ninstead of destroying them as evidence against him?\n\nAnd this is what happened: every one was amazed and horrified, every one\nrefused to believe it and thought that he was deranged, though all\nlistened with intense curiosity. A few days later it was fully decided and\nagreed in every house that the unhappy man was mad. The legal authorities\ncould not refuse to take the case up, but they too dropped it. Though the\ntrinkets and letters made them ponder, they decided that even if they did\nturn out to be authentic, no charge could be based on those alone.\nBesides, she might have given him those things as a friend, or asked him\nto take care of them for her. I heard afterwards, however, that the\ngenuineness of the things was proved by the friends and relations of the\nmurdered woman, and that there was no doubt about them. Yet nothing was\ndestined to come of it, after all.\n\nFive days later, all had heard that he was ill and that his life was in\ndanger. The nature of his illness I can't explain, they said it was an\naffection of the heart. But it became known that the doctors had been\ninduced by his wife to investigate his mental condition also, and had come\nto the conclusion that it was a case of insanity. I betrayed nothing,\nthough people ran to question me. But when I wanted to visit him, I was\nfor a long while forbidden to do so, above all by his wife.\n\n\"It's you who have caused his illness,\" she said to me; \"he was always\ngloomy, but for the last year people noticed that he was peculiarly\nexcited and did strange things, and now you have been the ruin of him.\nYour preaching has brought him to this; for the last month he was always\nwith you.\"\n\nIndeed, not only his wife but the whole town were down upon me and blamed\nme. \"It's all your doing,\" they said. I was silent and indeed rejoiced at\nheart, for I saw plainly God's mercy to the man who had turned against\nhimself and punished himself. I could not believe in his insanity.\n\nThey let me see him at last, he insisted upon saying good-by to me. I went\nin to him and saw at once, that not only his days, but his hours were\nnumbered. He was weak, yellow, his hands trembled, he gasped for breath,\nbut his face was full of tender and happy feeling.\n\n\"It is done!\" he said. \"I've long been yearning to see you, why didn't you\ncome?\"\n\nI did not tell him that they would not let me see him.\n\n\"God has had pity on me and is calling me to Himself. I know I am dying,\nbut I feel joy and peace for the first time after so many years. There was\nheaven in my heart from the moment I had done what I had to do. Now I dare\nto love my children and to kiss them. Neither my wife nor the judges, nor\nany one has believed it. My children will never believe it either. I see\nin that God's mercy to them. I shall die, and my name will be without a\nstain for them. And now I feel God near, my heart rejoices as in Heaven\n... I have done my duty.\"\n\nHe could not speak, he gasped for breath, he pressed my hand warmly,\nlooking fervently at me. We did not talk for long, his wife kept peeping\nin at us. But he had time to whisper to me:\n\n\"Do you remember how I came back to you that second time, at midnight? I\ntold you to remember it. You know what I came back for? I came to kill\nyou!\"\n\nI started.\n\n\"I went out from you then into the darkness, I wandered about the streets,\nstruggling with myself. And suddenly I hated you so that I could hardly\nbear it. Now, I thought, he is all that binds me, and he is my judge. I\ncan't refuse to face my punishment to-morrow, for he knows all. It was not\nthat I was afraid you would betray me (I never even thought of that), but\nI thought, 'How can I look him in the face if I don't confess?' And if you\nhad been at the other end of the earth, but alive, it would have been all\nthe same, the thought was unendurable that you were alive knowing\neverything and condemning me. I hated you as though you were the cause, as\nthough you were to blame for everything. I came back to you then,\nremembering that you had a dagger lying on your table. I sat down and\nasked you to sit down, and for a whole minute I pondered. If I had killed\nyou, I should have been ruined by that murder even if I had not confessed\nthe other. But I didn't think about that at all, and I didn't want to\nthink of it at that moment. I only hated you and longed to revenge myself\non you for everything. The Lord vanquished the devil in my heart. But let\nme tell you, you were never nearer death.\"\n\nA week later he died. The whole town followed him to the grave. The chief\npriest made a speech full of feeling. All lamented the terrible illness\nthat had cut short his days. But all the town was up in arms against me\nafter the funeral, and people even refused to see me. Some, at first a few\nand afterwards more, began indeed to believe in the truth of his story,\nand they visited me and questioned me with great interest and eagerness,\nfor man loves to see the downfall and disgrace of the righteous. But I\nheld my tongue, and very shortly after, I left the town, and five months\nlater by God's grace I entered upon the safe and blessed path, praising\nthe unseen finger which had guided me so clearly to it. But I remember in\nmy prayer to this day, the servant of God, Mihail, who suffered so\ngreatly.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. Conversations And Exhortations Of Father Zossima\n\n\n_(e) The Russian Monk and his possible Significance_\n\nFathers and teachers, what is the monk? In the cultivated world the word\nis nowadays pronounced by some people with a jeer, and by others it is\nused as a term of abuse, and this contempt for the monk is growing. It is\ntrue, alas, it is true, that there are many sluggards, gluttons,\nprofligates and insolent beggars among monks. Educated people point to\nthese: \"You are idlers, useless members of society, you live on the labor\nof others, you are shameless beggars.\" And yet how many meek and humble\nmonks there are, yearning for solitude and fervent prayer in peace! These\nare less noticed, or passed over in silence. And how surprised men would\nbe if I were to say that from these meek monks, who yearn for solitary\nprayer, the salvation of Russia will come perhaps once more! For they are\nin truth made ready in peace and quiet \"for the day and the hour, the\nmonth and the year.\" Meanwhile, in their solitude, they keep the image of\nChrist fair and undefiled, in the purity of God's truth, from the times of\nthe Fathers of old, the Apostles and the martyrs. And when the time comes\nthey will show it to the tottering creeds of the world. That is a great\nthought. That star will rise out of the East.\n\nThat is my view of the monk, and is it false? is it too proud? Look at the\nworldly and all who set themselves up above the people of God, has not\nGod's image and His truth been distorted in them? They have science; but\nin science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual\nworld, the higher part of man's being is rejected altogether, dismissed\nwith a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed the\nreign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom\nof theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says:\n\n\"You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the\nmost rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even\nmultiply your desires.\" That is the modern doctrine of the world. In that\nthey see freedom. And what follows from this right of multiplication of\ndesires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy\nand murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the\nmeans of satisfying their wants. They maintain that the world is getting\nmore and more united, more and more bound together in brotherly community,\nas it overcomes distance and sets thoughts flying through the air.\n\nAlas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the\nmultiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own\nnature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous\nfancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury\nand ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to\nwait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human\nfeeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to\nsatisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the\npoor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon\nthey will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I ask\nyou is such a man free? I knew one \"champion of freedom\" who told me\nhimself that, when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so\nwretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for\nthe sake of getting tobacco again! And such a man says, \"I am fighting for\nthe cause of humanity.\"\n\nHow can such a one fight? what is he fit for? He is capable perhaps of\nsome action quickly over, but he cannot hold out long. And it's no wonder\nthat instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead\nof serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have\nfallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation, as my mysterious\nvisitor and teacher said to me in my youth. And therefore the idea of the\nservice of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is\nmore and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes\ntreated with derision. For how can a man shake off his habits? What can\nbecome of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the\ninnumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what\nconcern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in\naccumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown\nless.\n\nThe monastic way is very different. Obedience, fasting and prayer are\nlaughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real, true freedom. I\ncut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and\nwanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain\nfreedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy. Which is most capable of\nconceiving a great idea and serving it--the rich man in his isolation or\nthe man who has freed himself from the tyranny of material things and\nhabits? The monk is reproached for his solitude, \"You have secluded\nyourself within the walls of the monastery for your own salvation, and\nhave forgotten the brotherly service of humanity!\" But we shall see which\nwill be most zealous in the cause of brotherly love. For it is not we, but\nthey, who are in isolation, though they don't see that. Of old, leaders of\nthe people came from among us, and why should they not again? The same\nmeek and humble ascetics will rise up and go out to work for the great\ncause. The salvation of Russia comes from the people. And the Russian monk\nhas always been on the side of the people. We are isolated only if the\npeople are isolated. The people believe as we do, and an unbelieving\nreformer will never do anything in Russia, even if he is sincere in heart\nand a genius. Remember that! The people will meet the atheist and overcome\nhim, and Russia will be one and orthodox. Take care of the peasant and\nguard his heart. Go on educating him quietly. That's your duty as monks,\nfor the peasant has God in his heart.\n\n(_f_) _Of Masters and Servants, and of whether it is possible for them to\nbe Brothers in the Spirit_\n\nOf course, I don't deny that there is sin in the peasants too. And the\nfire of corruption is spreading visibly, hourly, working from above\ndownwards. The spirit of isolation is coming upon the people too. Money-\nlenders and devourers of the commune are rising up. Already the merchant\ngrows more and more eager for rank, and strives to show himself cultured\nthough he has not a trace of culture, and to this end meanly despises his\nold traditions, and is even ashamed of the faith of his fathers. He visits\nprinces, though he is only a peasant corrupted. The peasants are rotting\nin drunkenness and cannot shake off the habit. And what cruelty to their\nwives, to their children even! All from drunkenness! I've seen in the\nfactories children of nine years old, frail, rickety, bent and already\ndepraved. The stuffy workshop, the din of machinery, work all day long,\nthe vile language and the drink, the drink--is that what a little child's\nheart needs? He needs sunshine, childish play, good examples all about\nhim, and at least a little love. There must be no more of this, monks, no\nmore torturing of children, rise up and preach that, make haste, make\nhaste!\n\nBut God will save Russia, for though the peasants are corrupted and cannot\nrenounce their filthy sin, yet they know it is cursed by God and that they\ndo wrong in sinning. So that our people still believe in righteousness,\nhave faith in God and weep tears of devotion.\n\nIt is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to\nbase justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they\nhave already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And\nthat's consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime? In\nEurope the people are already rising up against the rich with violence,\nand the leaders of the people are everywhere leading them to bloodshed,\nand teaching them that their wrath is righteous. But their \"wrath is\naccursed, for it is cruel.\" But God will save Russia as He has saved her\nmany times. Salvation will come from the people, from their faith and\ntheir meekness.\n\nFathers and teachers, watch over the people's faith and this will not be a\ndream. I've been struck all my life in our great people by their dignity,\ntheir true and seemly dignity. I've seen it myself, I can testify to it,\nI've seen it and marveled at it, I've seen it in spite of the degraded\nsins and poverty-stricken appearance of our peasantry. They are not\nservile, and even after two centuries of serfdom they are free in manner\nand bearing, yet without insolence, and not revengeful and not envious.\n\"You are rich and noble, you are clever and talented, well, be so, God\nbless you. I respect you, but I know that I too am a man. By the very fact\nthat I respect you without envy I prove my dignity as a man.\"\n\nIn truth if they don't say this (for they don't know how to say this yet),\nthat is how they act. I have seen it myself, I have known it myself, and,\nwould you believe it, the poorer our Russian peasant is, the more\nnoticeable is that serene goodness, for the rich among them are for the\nmost part corrupted already, and much of that is due to our carelessness\nand indifference. But God will save His people, for Russia is great in her\nhumility. I dream of seeing, and seem to see clearly already, our future.\nIt will come to pass, that even the most corrupt of our rich will end by\nbeing ashamed of his riches before the poor, and the poor, seeing his\nhumility, will understand and give way before him, will respond joyfully\nand kindly to his honorable shame. Believe me that it will end in that;\nthings are moving to that. Equality is to be found only in the spiritual\ndignity of man, and that will only be understood among us. If we were\nbrothers, there would be fraternity, but before that, they will never\nagree about the division of wealth. We preserve the image of Christ, and\nit will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world. So may it\nbe, so may it be!\n\nFathers and teachers, a touching incident befell me once. In my wanderings\nI met in the town of K. my old orderly, Afanasy. It was eight years since\nI had parted from him. He chanced to see me in the market-place,\nrecognized me, ran up to me, and how delighted he was! He simply pounced\non me: \"Master dear, is it you? Is it really you I see?\" He took me home\nwith him.\n\nHe was no longer in the army, he was married and already had two little\nchildren. He and his wife earned their living as costermongers in the\nmarket-place. His room was poor, but bright and clean. He made me sit\ndown, set the samovar, sent for his wife, as though my appearance were a\nfestival for them. He brought me his children: \"Bless them, Father.\"\n\n\"Is it for me to bless them? I am only a humble monk. I will pray for\nthem. And for you, Afanasy Pavlovitch, I have prayed every day since that\nday, for it all came from you,\" said I. And I explained that to him as\nwell as I could. And what do you think? The man kept gazing at me and\ncould not believe that I, his former master, an officer, was now before\nhim in such a guise and position; it made him shed tears.\n\n\"Why are you weeping?\" said I, \"better rejoice over me, dear friend, whom\nI can never forget, for my path is a glad and joyful one.\"\n\nHe did not say much, but kept sighing and shaking his head over me\ntenderly.\n\n\"What has became of your fortune?\" he asked.\n\n\"I gave it to the monastery,\" I answered; \"we live in common.\"\n\nAfter tea I began saying good-by, and suddenly he brought out half a\nrouble as an offering to the monastery, and another half-rouble I saw him\nthrusting hurriedly into my hand: \"That's for you in your wanderings, it\nmay be of use to you, Father.\"\n\nI took his half-rouble, bowed to him and his wife, and went out rejoicing.\nAnd on my way I thought: \"Here we are both now, he at home and I on the\nroad, sighing and shaking our heads, no doubt, and yet smiling joyfully in\nthe gladness of our hearts, remembering how God brought about our\nmeeting.\"\n\nI have never seen him again since then. I had been his master and he my\nservant, but now when we exchanged a loving kiss with softened hearts,\nthere was a great human bond between us. I have thought a great deal about\nthat, and now what I think is this: Is it so inconceivable that that grand\nand simple-hearted unity might in due time become universal among the\nRussian people? I believe that it will come to pass and that the time is\nat hand.\n\nAnd of servants I will add this: In old days when I was young I was often\nangry with servants; \"the cook had served something too hot, the orderly\nhad not brushed my clothes.\" But what taught me better then was a thought\nof my dear brother's, which I had heard from him in childhood: \"Am I worth\nit, that another should serve me and be ordered about by me in his poverty\nand ignorance?\" And I wondered at the time that such simple and self-\nevident ideas should be so slow to occur to our minds.\n\nIt is impossible that there should be no servants in the world, but act so\nthat your servant may be freer in spirit than if he were not a servant.\nAnd why cannot I be a servant to my servant and even let him see it, and\nthat without any pride on my part or any mistrust on his? Why should not\nmy servant be like my own kindred, so that I may take him into my family\nand rejoice in doing so? Even now this can be done, but it will lead to\nthe grand unity of men in the future, when a man will not seek servants\nfor himself, or desire to turn his fellow creatures into servants as he\ndoes now, but on the contrary, will long with his whole heart to be the\nservant of all, as the Gospel teaches.\n\nAnd can it be a dream, that in the end man will find his joy only in deeds\nof light and mercy, and not in cruel pleasures as now, in gluttony,\nfornication, ostentation, boasting and envious rivalry of one with the\nother? I firmly believe that it is not and that the time is at hand.\nPeople laugh and ask: \"When will that time come and does it look like\ncoming?\" I believe that with Christ's help we shall accomplish this great\nthing. And how many ideas there have been on earth in the history of man\nwhich were unthinkable ten years before they appeared! Yet when their\ndestined hour had come, they came forth and spread over the whole earth.\nSo it will be with us, and our people will shine forth in the world, and\nall men will say: \"The stone which the builders rejected has become the\ncorner-stone of the building.\"\n\nAnd we may ask the scornful themselves: If our hope is a dream, when will\nyou build up your edifice and order things justly by your intellect alone,\nwithout Christ? If they declare that it is they who are advancing towards\nunity, only the most simple-hearted among them believe it, so that one may\npositively marvel at such simplicity. Of a truth, they have more fantastic\ndreams than we. They aim at justice, but, denying Christ, they will end by\nflooding the earth with blood, for blood cries out for blood, and he that\ntaketh up the sword shall perish by the sword. And if it were not for\nChrist's covenant, they would slaughter one another down to the last two\nmen on earth. And those two last men would not be able to restrain each\nother in their pride, and the one would slay the other and then himself.\nAnd that would come to pass, were it not for the promise of Christ that\nfor the sake of the humble and meek the days shall be shortened.\n\nWhile I was still wearing an officer's uniform after my duel, I talked\nabout servants in general society, and I remember every one was amazed at\nme. \"What!\" they asked, \"are we to make our servants sit down on the sofa\nand offer them tea?\" And I answered them: \"Why not, sometimes at least?\"\nEvery one laughed. Their question was frivolous and my answer was not\nclear; but the thought in it was to some extent right.\n\n(_g_) _Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds_\n\nYoung man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer\nis sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will\ngive you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an\neducation. Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to\nyourself, \"Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee to-day.\" For\nevery hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and\ntheir souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude,\nunknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even knows whether\nthey have lived or not! And behold, from the other end of the earth\nperhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew\nthem not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread\nbefore the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to\npray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him too! And\nGod will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much\npity on him, how much will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and\nmerciful than you! And He will forgive him for your sake.\n\nBrothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that\nis the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all\nGod's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf,\nevery ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love\neverything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery\nin things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better\nevery day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-\nembracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of\nthought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble it, don't harass them, don't\ndeprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do\nnot pride yourself on superiority to the animals; they are without sin,\nand you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it,\nand leave the traces of your foulness after you--alas, it is true of almost\nevery one of us! Love children especially, for they too are sinless like\nthe angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and as it were to\nguide us. Woe to him who offends a child! Father Anfim taught me to love\nchildren. The kind, silent man used often on our wanderings to spend the\nfarthings given us on sweets and cakes for the children. He could not pass\nby a child without emotion. That's the nature of the man.\n\nAt some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's\nsin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always\ndecide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may\nsubdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the\nstrongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.\n\nEvery day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch\nyourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little\nchild, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you\nmay not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image,\nunseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know\nit, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all\nbecause you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster\nin yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a\nteacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire,\nit is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labor. For we must love not\nonly occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Every one can love\noccasionally, even the wicked can.\n\nMy brother asked the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but it\nis right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch\nin one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be\nsenseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at\nyour side--a little happier, anyway--and children and all animals, if you\nwere nobler than you are now. It's all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you\nwould pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love, in a sort\nof transport, and pray that they too will forgive you your sin. Treasure\nthis ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to men.\n\nMy friends, pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds of\nheaven. And let not the sin of men confound you in your doings. Fear not\nthat it will wear away your work and hinder its being accomplished. Do not\nsay, \"Sin is mighty, wickedness is mighty, evil environment is mighty, and\nwe are lonely and helpless, and evil environment is wearing us away and\nhindering our good work from being done.\" Fly from that dejection,\nchildren! There is only one means of salvation, then take yourself and\nmake yourself responsible for all men's sins, that is the truth, you know,\nfriends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for\neverything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so, and\nthat you are to blame for every one and for all things. But throwing your\nown indolence and impotence on others you will end by sharing the pride of\nSatan and murmuring against God.\n\nOf the pride of Satan what I think is this: it is hard for us on earth to\ncomprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and to share\nit, even imagining that we are doing something grand and fine. Indeed,\nmany of the strongest feelings and movements of our nature we cannot\ncomprehend on earth. Let not that be a stumbling-block, and think not that\nit may serve as a justification to you for anything. For the Eternal Judge\nasks of you what you can comprehend and not what you cannot. You will know\nthat yourself hereafter, for you will behold all things truly then and\nwill not dispute them. On earth, indeed, we are as it were astray, and if\nit were not for the precious image of Christ before us, we should be\nundone and altogether lost, as was the human race before the flood. Much\non earth is hidden from us, but to make up for that we have been given a\nprecious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world, with the\nhigher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not\nhere but in other worlds. That is why the philosophers say that we cannot\napprehend the reality of things on earth.\n\nGod took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on this earth, and His\ngarden grew up and everything came up that could come up, but what grows\nlives and is alive only through the feeling of its contact with other\nmysterious worlds. If that feeling grows weak or is destroyed in you, the\nheavenly growth will die away in you. Then you will be indifferent to life\nand even grow to hate it. That's what I think.\n\n_(h) Can a Man judge his Fellow Creatures? Faith to the End_\n\nRemember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one\ncan judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal\nas the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men\nto blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a\njudge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous\nmyself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If\nyou can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is\njudging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without\nreproach. And even if the law itself makes you his judge, act in the same\nspirit so far as possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more\nbitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes away untouched,\nmocking at you, do not let that be a stumbling-block to you. It shows his\ntime has not yet come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not,\nno matter; if not he, then another in his place will understand and\nsuffer, and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled.\nBelieve that, believe it without doubt; for in that lies all the hope and\nfaith of the saints.\n\nWork without ceasing. If you remember in the night as you go to sleep, \"I\nhave not done what I ought to have done,\" rise up at once and do it. If\nthe people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall\ndown before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame\nfor their not wanting to hear you. And if you cannot speak to them in\ntheir bitterness, serve them in silence and in humility, never losing\nhope. If all men abandon you and even drive you away by force, then when\nyou are left alone fall on the earth and kiss it, water it with your tears\nand it will bring forth fruit even though no one has seen or heard you in\nyour solitude. Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you\nwere left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise\nGod in your loneliness. And if two of you are gathered together--then there\nis a whole world, a world of living love. Embrace each other tenderly and\npraise God, for if only in you two His truth has been fulfilled.\n\nIf you sin yourself and grieve even unto death for your sins or for your\nsudden sin, then rejoice for others, rejoice for the righteous man,\nrejoice that if you have sinned, he is righteous and has not sinned.\n\nIf the evil-doing of men moves you to indignation and overwhelming\ndistress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil-doers, shun above all\nthings that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as though\nyou were yourself guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering and bear it\nand your heart will find comfort, and you will understand that you too are\nguilty, for you might have been a light to the evil-doers, even as the one\nman sinless, and you were not a light to them. If you had been a light,\nyou would have lightened the path for others too, and the evil-doer might\nperhaps have been saved by your light from his sin. And even though your\nlight was shining, yet you see men were not saved by it, hold firm and\ndoubt not the power of the heavenly light. Believe that if they were not\nsaved, they will be saved hereafter. And if they are not saved hereafter,\nthen their sons will be saved, for your light will not die even when you\nare dead. The righteous man departs, but his light remains. Men are always\nsaved after the death of the deliverer. Men reject their prophets and slay\nthem, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.\nYou are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no\nreward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy which is\nonly vouchsafed to the righteous man. Fear not the great nor the mighty,\nbut be wise and ever serene. Know the measure, know the times, study that.\nWhen you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on the earth and\nkiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love.\nLove all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and ecstasy. Water the\nearth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. Don't be ashamed of\nthat ecstasy, prize it, for it is a gift of God and a great one; it is not\ngiven to many but only to the elect.\n\n_(i) Of Hell and Hell Fire, a Mystic Reflection_\n\nFathers and teachers, I ponder, \"What is hell?\" I maintain that it is the\nsuffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence,\nimmeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his\ncoming to earth, the power of saying, \"I am and I love.\" Once, only once,\nthere was given him a moment of active _living_ love, and for that was\nearthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And that happy\ncreature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not, scorned\nit and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth, sees Abraham's\nbosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in the parable of the rich man\nand Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go up to the Lord. But that is\njust his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be\nbrought close to those who have loved when he has despised their love. For\nhe sees clearly and says to himself, \"Now I have understanding, and though\nI now thirst to love, there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my\nlove, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a\ndrop of living water (that is the gift of earthly active life) to cool the\nfiery thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it\non earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even\nthough I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for that\nlife is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is a gulf\nfixed between that life and this existence.\"\n\nThey talk of hell fire in the material sense. I don't go into that mystery\nand I shun it. But I think if there were fire in material sense, they\nwould be glad of it, for I imagine that in material agony, their still\ngreater spiritual agony would be forgotten for a moment. Moreover, that\nspiritual agony cannot be taken from them, for that suffering is not\nexternal but within them. And if it could be taken from them, I think it\nwould be bitterer still for the unhappy creatures. For even if the\nrighteous in Paradise forgave them, beholding their torments, and called\nthem up to heaven in their infinite love, they would only multiply their\ntorments, for they would arouse in them still more keenly a flaming thirst\nfor responsive, active and grateful love which is now impossible. In the\ntimidity of my heart I imagine, however, that the very recognition of this\nimpossibility would serve at last to console them. For accepting the love\nof the righteous together with the impossibility of repaying it, by this\nsubmissiveness and the effect of this humility, they will attain at last,\nas it were, to a certain semblance of that active love which they scorned\nin life, to something like its outward expression.... I am sorry, friends\nand brothers, that I cannot express this clearly. But woe to those who\nhave slain themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I believe that there\ncan be none more miserable then they. They tell us that it is a sin to\npray for them and outwardly the Church, as it were, renounces them, but in\nmy secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them. Love can never\nbe an offense to Christ. For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my\nlife, I confess it, fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them\nevery day.\n\nOh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of\ntheir certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are\nsome fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud\nspirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are\ntortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves, cursing God\nand life. They live upon their vindictive pride like a starving man in the\ndesert sucking blood out of his own body. But they are never satisfied,\nand they refuse forgiveness, they curse God Who calls them. They cannot\nbehold the living God without hatred, and they cry out that the God of\nlife should be annihilated, that God should destroy Himself and His own\ncreation. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath for ever and\nyearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death....\n\n                  -------------------------------------\n\nHere Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov's manuscript ends. I repeat, it is\nincomplete and fragmentary. Biographical details, for instance, cover only\nFather Zossima's earliest youth. Of his teaching and opinions we find\nbrought together sayings evidently uttered on very different occasions.\nHis utterances during the last few hours have not been kept separate from\nthe rest, but their general character can be gathered from what we have in\nAlexey Fyodorovitch's manuscript.\n\nThe elder's death came in the end quite unexpectedly. For although those\nwho were gathered about him that last evening realized that his death was\napproaching, yet it was difficult to imagine that it would come so\nsuddenly. On the contrary, his friends, as I observed already, seeing him\nthat night apparently so cheerful and talkative, were convinced that there\nwas at least a temporary change for the better in his condition. Even five\nminutes before his death, they said afterwards wonderingly, it was\nimpossible to foresee it. He seemed suddenly to feel an acute pain in his\nchest, he turned pale and pressed his hands to his heart. All rose from\ntheir seats and hastened to him. But though suffering, he still looked at\nthem with a smile, sank slowly from his chair on to his knees, then bowed\nhis face to the ground, stretched out his arms and as though in joyful\necstasy, praying and kissing the ground, quietly and joyfully gave up his\nsoul to God.\n\nThe news of his death spread at once through the hermitage and reached the\nmonastery. The nearest friends of the deceased and those whose duty it was\nfrom their position began to lay out the corpse according to the ancient\nritual, and all the monks gathered together in the church. And before dawn\nthe news of the death reached the town. By the morning all the town was\ntalking of the event, and crowds were flocking from the town to the\nmonastery. But this subject will be treated in the next book; I will only\nadd here that before a day had passed something happened so unexpected, so\nstrange, upsetting, and bewildering in its effect on the monks and the\ntownspeople, that after all these years, that day of general suspense is\nstill vividly remembered in the town.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART III  Book VII. Alyosha Chapter I. The Breath Of Corruption\n\n\nThe body of Father Zossima was prepared for burial according to the\nestablished ritual. As is well known, the bodies of dead monks and hermits\nare not washed. In the words of the Church Ritual: \"If any one of the\nmonks depart in the Lord, the monk designated (that is, whose office it\nis) shall wipe the body with warm water, making first the sign of the\ncross with a sponge on the forehead of the deceased, on the breast, on the\nhands and feet and on the knees, and that is enough.\" All this was done by\nFather Paissy, who then clothed the deceased in his monastic garb and\nwrapped him in his cloak, which was, according to custom, somewhat slit to\nallow of its being folded about him in the form of a cross. On his head he\nput a hood with an eight-cornered cross. The hood was left open and the\ndead man's face was covered with black gauze. In his hands was put an ikon\nof the Saviour. Towards morning he was put in the coffin which had been\nmade ready long before. It was decided to leave the coffin all day in the\ncell, in the larger room in which the elder used to receive his visitors\nand fellow monks. As the deceased was a priest and monk of the strictest\nrule, the Gospel, not the Psalter, had to be read over his body by monks\nin holy orders. The reading was begun by Father Iosif immediately after\nthe requiem service. Father Paissy desired later on to read the Gospel all\nday and night over his dead friend, but for the present he, as well as the\nFather Superintendent of the Hermitage, was very busy and occupied, for\nsomething extraordinary, an unheard-of, even \"unseemly\" excitement and\nimpatient expectation began to be apparent in the monks, and the visitors\nfrom the monastery hostels, and the crowds of people flocking from the\ntown. And as time went on, this grew more and more marked. Both the\nSuperintendent and Father Paissy did their utmost to calm the general\nbustle and agitation.\n\nWhen it was fully daylight, some people began bringing their sick, in most\ncases children, with them from the town--as though they had been waiting\nexpressly for this moment to do so, evidently persuaded that the dead\nelder's remains had a power of healing, which would be immediately made\nmanifest in accordance with their faith. It was only then apparent how\nunquestionably every one in our town had accepted Father Zossima during\nhis lifetime as a great saint. And those who came were far from being all\nof the humbler classes.\n\nThis intense expectation on the part of believers displayed with such\nhaste, such openness, even with impatience and almost insistence,\nimpressed Father Paissy as unseemly. Though he had long foreseen something\nof the sort, the actual manifestation of the feeling was beyond anything\nhe had looked for. When he came across any of the monks who displayed this\nexcitement, Father Paissy began to reprove them. \"Such immediate\nexpectation of something extraordinary,\" he said, \"shows a levity,\npossible to worldly people but unseemly in us.\"\n\nBut little attention was paid him and Father Paissy noticed it uneasily.\nYet he himself (if the whole truth must be told), secretly at the bottom\nof his heart, cherished almost the same hopes and could not but be aware\nof it, though he was indignant at the too impatient expectation around\nhim, and saw in it light-mindedness and vanity. Nevertheless, it was\nparticularly unpleasant to him to meet certain persons, whose presence\naroused in him great misgivings. In the crowd in the dead man's cell he\nnoticed with inward aversion (for which he immediately reproached himself)\nthe presence of Rakitin and of the monk from Obdorsk, who was still\nstaying in the monastery. Of both of them Father Paissy felt for some\nreason suddenly suspicious--though, indeed, he might well have felt the\nsame about others.\n\nThe monk from Obdorsk was conspicuous as the most fussy in the excited\ncrowd. He was to be seen everywhere; everywhere he was asking questions,\neverywhere he was listening, on all sides he was whispering with a\npeculiar, mysterious air. His expression showed the greatest impatience\nand even a sort of irritation.\n\nAs for Rakitin, he, as appeared later, had come so early to the hermitage\nat the special request of Madame Hohlakov. As soon as that good-hearted\nbut weak-minded woman, who could not herself have been admitted to the\nhermitage, waked and heard of the death of Father Zossima, she was\novertaken with such intense curiosity that she promptly dispatched Rakitin\nto the hermitage, to keep a careful look out and report to her by letter\nevery half-hour or so \"_everything that takes place_.\" She regarded\nRakitin as a most religious and devout young man. He was particularly\nclever in getting round people and assuming whatever part he thought most\nto their taste, if he detected the slightest advantage to himself from\ndoing so.\n\nIt was a bright, clear day, and many of the visitors were thronging about\nthe tombs, which were particularly numerous round the church and scattered\nhere and there about the hermitage. As he walked round the hermitage,\nFather Paissy remembered Alyosha and that he had not seen him for some\ntime, not since the night. And he had no sooner thought of him than he at\nonce noticed him in the farthest corner of the hermitage garden, sitting\non the tombstone of a monk who had been famous long ago for his\nsaintliness. He sat with his back to the hermitage and his face to the\nwall, and seemed to be hiding behind the tombstone. Going up to him,\nFather Paissy saw that he was weeping quietly but bitterly, with his face\nhidden in his hands, and that his whole frame was shaking with sobs.\nFather Paissy stood over him for a little.\n\n\"Enough, dear son, enough, dear,\" he pronounced with feeling at last. \"Why\ndo you weep? Rejoice and weep not. Don't you know that this is the\ngreatest of his days? Think only where he is now, at this moment!\"\n\nAlyosha glanced at him, uncovering his face, which was swollen with crying\nlike a child's, but turned away at once without uttering a word and hid\nhis face in his hands again.\n\n\"Maybe it is well,\" said Father Paissy thoughtfully; \"weep if you must,\nChrist has sent you those tears.\"\n\n\"Your touching tears are but a relief to your spirit and will serve to\ngladden your dear heart,\" he added to himself, walking away from Alyosha,\nand thinking lovingly of him. He moved away quickly, however, for he felt\nthat he too might weep looking at him.\n\nMeanwhile the time was passing; the monastery services and the requiems\nfor the dead followed in their due course. Father Paissy again took Father\nIosif's place by the coffin and began reading the Gospel. But before three\no'clock in the afternoon that something took place to which I alluded at\nthe end of the last book, something so unexpected by all of us and so\ncontrary to the general hope, that, I repeat, this trivial incident has\nbeen minutely remembered to this day in our town and all the surrounding\nneighborhood. I may add here, for myself personally, that I feel it almost\nrepulsive to recall that event which caused such frivolous agitation and\nwas such a stumbling-block to many, though in reality it was the most\nnatural and trivial matter. I should, of course, have omitted all mention\nof it in my story, if it had not exerted a very strong influence on the\nheart and soul of the chief, though future, hero of my story, Alyosha,\nforming a crisis and turning-point in his spiritual development, giving a\nshock to his intellect, which finally strengthened it for the rest of his\nlife and gave it a definite aim.\n\nAnd so, to return to our story. When before dawn they laid Father\nZossima's body in the coffin and brought it into the front room, the\nquestion of opening the windows was raised among those who were around the\ncoffin. But this suggestion made casually by some one was unanswered and\nalmost unnoticed. Some of those present may perhaps have inwardly noticed\nit, only to reflect that the anticipation of decay and corruption from the\nbody of such a saint was an actual absurdity, calling for compassion (if\nnot a smile) for the lack of faith and the frivolity it implied. For they\nexpected something quite different.\n\nAnd, behold, soon after midday there were signs of something, at first\nonly observed in silence by those who came in and out and were evidently\neach afraid to communicate the thought in his mind. But by three o'clock\nthose signs had become so clear and unmistakable, that the news swiftly\nreached all the monks and visitors in the hermitage, promptly penetrated\nto the monastery, throwing all the monks into amazement, and finally, in\nthe shortest possible time, spread to the town, exciting every one in it,\nbelievers and unbelievers alike. The unbelievers rejoiced, and as for the\nbelievers some of them rejoiced even more than the unbelievers, for \"men\nlove the downfall and disgrace of the righteous,\" as the deceased elder\nhad said in one of his exhortations.\n\nThe fact is that a smell of decomposition began to come from the coffin,\ngrowing gradually more marked, and by three o'clock it was quite\nunmistakable. In all the past history of our monastery, no such scandal\ncould be recalled, and in no other circumstances could such a scandal have\nbeen possible, as showed itself in unseemly disorder immediately after\nthis discovery among the very monks themselves. Afterwards, even many\nyears afterwards, some sensible monks were amazed and horrified, when they\nrecalled that day, that the scandal could have reached such proportions.\nFor in the past, monks of very holy life had died, God-fearing old men,\nwhose saintliness was acknowledged by all, yet from their humble coffins,\ntoo, the breath of corruption had come, naturally, as from all dead\nbodies, but that had caused no scandal nor even the slightest excitement.\nOf course there had been, in former times, saints in the monastery whose\nmemory was carefully preserved and whose relics, according to tradition,\nshowed no signs of corruption. This fact was regarded by the monks as\ntouching and mysterious, and the tradition of it was cherished as\nsomething blessed and miraculous, and as a promise, by God's grace, of\nstill greater glory from their tombs in the future.\n\nOne such, whose memory was particularly cherished, was an old monk, Job,\nwho had died seventy years before at the age of a hundred and five. He had\nbeen a celebrated ascetic, rigid in fasting and silence, and his tomb was\npointed out to all visitors on their arrival with peculiar respect and\nmysterious hints of great hopes connected with it. (That was the very tomb\non which Father Paissy had found Alyosha sitting in the morning.) Another\nmemory cherished in the monastery was that of the famous Father Varsonofy,\nwho was only recently dead and had preceded Father Zossima in the\neldership. He was reverenced during his lifetime as a crazy saint by all\nthe pilgrims to the monastery. There was a tradition that both of these\nhad lain in their coffins as though alive, that they had shown no signs of\ndecomposition when they were buried and that there had been a holy light\nin their faces. And some people even insisted that a sweet fragrance came\nfrom their bodies.\n\nYet, in spite of these edifying memories, it would be difficult to explain\nthe frivolity, absurdity and malice that were manifested beside the coffin\nof Father Zossima. It is my private opinion that several different causes\nwere simultaneously at work, one of which was the deeply-rooted hostility\nto the institution of elders as a pernicious innovation, an antipathy\nhidden deep in the hearts of many of the monks. Even more powerful was\njealousy of the dead man's saintliness, so firmly established during his\nlifetime that it was almost a forbidden thing to question it. For though\nthe late elder had won over many hearts, more by love than by miracles,\nand had gathered round him a mass of loving adherents, none the less, in\nfact, rather the more on that account he had awakened jealousy and so had\ncome to have bitter enemies, secret and open, not only in the monastery\nbut in the world outside it. He did no one any harm, but \"Why do they\nthink him so saintly?\" And that question alone, gradually repeated, gave\nrise at last to an intense, insatiable hatred of him. That, I believe, was\nwhy many people were extremely delighted at the smell of decomposition\nwhich came so quickly, for not a day had passed since his death. At the\nsame time there were some among those who had been hitherto reverently\ndevoted to the elder, who were almost mortified and personally affronted\nby this incident. This was how the thing happened.\n\nAs soon as signs of decomposition had begun to appear, the whole aspect of\nthe monks betrayed their secret motives in entering the cell. They went\nin, stayed a little while and hastened out to confirm the news to the\ncrowd of other monks waiting outside. Some of the latter shook their heads\nmournfully, but others did not even care to conceal the delight which\ngleamed unmistakably in their malignant eyes. And now no one reproached\nthem for it, no one raised his voice in protest, which was strange, for\nthe majority of the monks had been devoted to the dead elder. But it\nseemed as though God had in this case let the minority get the upper hand\nfor a time.\n\nVisitors from outside, particularly of the educated class, soon went into\nthe cell, too, with the same spying intent. Of the peasantry few went into\nthe cell, though there were crowds of them at the gates of the hermitage.\nAfter three o'clock the rush of worldly visitors was greatly increased and\nthis was no doubt owing to the shocking news. People were attracted who\nwould not otherwise have come on that day and had not intended to come,\nand among them were some personages of high standing. But external decorum\nwas still preserved and Father Paissy, with a stern face, continued firmly\nand distinctly reading aloud the Gospel, apparently not noticing what was\ntaking place around him, though he had, in fact, observed something\nunusual long before. But at last the murmurs, first subdued but gradually\nlouder and more confident, reached even him. \"It shows God's judgment is\nnot as man's,\" Father Paissy heard suddenly. The first to give utterance\nto this sentiment was a layman, an elderly official from the town, known\nto be a man of great piety. But he only repeated aloud what the monks had\nlong been whispering. They had long before formulated this damning\nconclusion, and the worst of it was that a sort of triumphant satisfaction\nat that conclusion became more and more apparent every moment. Soon they\nbegan to lay aside even external decorum and almost seemed to feel they\nhad a sort of right to discard it.\n\n\"And for what reason can _this_ have happened,\" some of the monks said, at\nfirst with a show of regret; \"he had a small frame and his flesh was dried\nup on his bones, what was there to decay?\"\n\n\"It must be a sign from heaven,\" others hastened to add, and their opinion\nwas adopted at once without protest. For it was pointed out, too, that if\nthe decomposition had been natural, as in the case of every dead sinner,\nit would have been apparent later, after a lapse of at least twenty-four\nhours, but this premature corruption \"was in excess of nature,\" and so the\nfinger of God was evident. It was meant for a sign. This conclusion seemed\nirresistible.\n\nGentle Father Iosif, the librarian, a great favorite of the dead man's,\ntried to reply to some of the evil speakers that \"this is not held\neverywhere alike,\" and that the incorruptibility of the bodies of the just\nwas not a dogma of the Orthodox Church, but only an opinion, and that even\nin the most Orthodox regions, at Athos for instance, they were not greatly\nconfounded by the smell of corruption, and there the chief sign of the\nglorification of the saved was not bodily incorruptibility, but the color\nof the bones when the bodies have lain many years in the earth and have\ndecayed in it. \"And if the bones are yellow as wax, that is the great sign\nthat the Lord has glorified the dead saint, if they are not yellow but\nblack, it shows that God has not deemed him worthy of such glory--that is\nthe belief in Athos, a great place, where the Orthodox doctrine has been\npreserved from of old, unbroken and in its greatest purity,\" said Father\nIosif in conclusion.\n\nBut the meek Father's words had little effect and even provoked a mocking\nretort. \"That's all pedantry and innovation, no use listening to it,\" the\nmonks decided. \"We stick to the old doctrine, there are all sorts of\ninnovations nowadays, are we to follow them all?\" added others.\n\n\"We have had as many holy fathers as they had. There they are among the\nTurks, they have forgotten everything. Their doctrine has long been impure\nand they have no bells even,\" the most sneering added.\n\nFather Iosif walked away, grieving the more since he had put forward his\nown opinion with little confidence as though scarcely believing in it\nhimself. He foresaw with distress that something very unseemly was\nbeginning and that there were positive signs of disobedience. Little by\nlittle, all the sensible monks were reduced to silence like Father Iosif.\nAnd so it came to pass that all who loved the elder and had accepted with\ndevout obedience the institution of the eldership were all at once\nterribly cast down and glanced timidly in one another's faces, when they\nmet. Those who were hostile to the institution of elders, as a novelty,\nheld up their heads proudly. \"There was no smell of corruption from the\nlate elder Varsonofy, but a sweet fragrance,\" they recalled malignantly.\n\"But he gained that glory not because he was an elder, but because he was\na holy man.\"\n\nAnd this was followed by a shower of criticism and even blame of Father\nZossima. \"His teaching was false; he taught that life is a great joy and\nnot a vale of tears,\" said some of the more unreasonable. \"He followed the\nfashionable belief, he did not recognize material fire in hell,\" others,\nstill more unreasonable, added. \"He was not strict in fasting, allowed\nhimself sweet things, ate cherry jam with his tea, ladies used to send it\nto him. Is it for a monk of strict rule to drink tea?\" could be heard\namong some of the envious. \"He sat in pride,\" the most malignant declared\nvindictively; \"he considered himself a saint and he took it as his due\nwhen people knelt before him.\" \"He abused the sacrament of confession,\"\nthe fiercest opponents of the institution of elders added in a malicious\nwhisper. And among these were some of the oldest monks, strictest in their\ndevotion, genuine ascetics, who had kept silent during the life of the\ndeceased elder, but now suddenly unsealed their lips. And this was\nterrible, for their words had great influence on young monks who were not\nyet firm in their convictions. The monk from Obdorsk heard all this\nattentively, heaving deep sighs and nodding his head. \"Yes, clearly Father\nFerapont was right in his judgment yesterday,\" and at that moment Father\nFerapont himself made his appearance, as though on purpose to increase the\nconfusion.\n\nI have mentioned already that he rarely left his wooden cell by the\napiary. He was seldom even seen at church and they overlooked this neglect\non the ground of his craziness, and did not keep him to the rules binding\non all the rest. But if the whole truth is to be told, they hardly had a\nchoice about it. For it would have been discreditable to insist on\nburdening with the common regulations so great an ascetic, who prayed day\nand night (he even dropped asleep on his knees). If they had insisted, the\nmonks would have said, \"He is holier than all of us and he follows a rule\nharder than ours. And if he does not go to church, it's because he knows\nwhen he ought to; he has his own rule.\" It was to avoid the chance of\nthese sinful murmurs that Father Ferapont was left in peace.\n\nAs every one was aware, Father Ferapont particularly disliked Father\nZossima. And now the news had reached him in his hut that \"God's judgment\nis not the same as man's,\" and that something had happened which was \"in\nexcess of nature.\" It may well be supposed that among the first to run to\nhim with the news was the monk from Obdorsk, who had visited him the\nevening before and left his cell terror-stricken.\n\nI have mentioned above, that though Father Paissy, standing firm and\nimmovable reading the Gospel over the coffin, could not hear nor see what\nwas passing outside the cell, he gauged most of it correctly in his heart,\nfor he knew the men surrounding him, well. He was not shaken by it, but\nawaited what would come next without fear, watching with penetration and\ninsight for the outcome of the general excitement.\n\nSuddenly an extraordinary uproar in the passage in open defiance of\ndecorum burst on his ears. The door was flung open and Father Ferapont\nappeared in the doorway. Behind him there could be seen accompanying him a\ncrowd of monks, together with many people from the town. They did not,\nhowever, enter the cell, but stood at the bottom of the steps, waiting to\nsee what Father Ferapont would say or do. For they felt with a certain\nawe, in spite of their audacity, that he had not come for nothing.\nStanding in the doorway, Father Ferapont raised his arms, and under his\nright arm the keen inquisitive little eyes of the monk from Obdorsk peeped\nin. He alone, in his intense curiosity, could not resist running up the\nsteps after Father Ferapont. The others, on the contrary, pressed farther\nback in sudden alarm when the door was noisily flung open. Holding his\nhands aloft, Father Ferapont suddenly roared:\n\n\"Casting out I cast out!\" and, turning in all directions, he began at once\nmaking the sign of the cross at each of the four walls and four corners of\nthe cell in succession. All who accompanied Father Ferapont immediately\nunderstood his action. For they knew he always did this wherever he went,\nand that he would not sit down or say a word, till he had driven out the\nevil spirits.\n\n\"Satan, go hence! Satan, go hence!\" he repeated at each sign of the cross.\n\"Casting out I cast out,\" he roared again.\n\nHe was wearing his coarse gown girt with a rope. His bare chest, covered\nwith gray hair, could be seen under his hempen shirt. His feet were bare.\nAs soon as he began waving his arms, the cruel irons he wore under his\ngown could be heard clanking.\n\nFather Paissy paused in his reading, stepped forward and stood before him\nwaiting.\n\n\"What have you come for, worthy Father? Why do you offend against good\norder? Why do you disturb the peace of the flock?\" he said at last,\nlooking sternly at him.\n\n\"What have I come for? You ask why? What is your faith?\" shouted Father\nFerapont crazily. \"I've come here to drive out your visitors, the unclean\ndevils. I've come to see how many have gathered here while I have been\naway. I want to sweep them out with a birch broom.\"\n\n\"You cast out the evil spirit, but perhaps you are serving him yourself,\"\nFather Paissy went on fearlessly. \"And who can say of himself 'I am holy'?\nCan you, Father?\"\n\n\"I am unclean, not holy. I would not sit in an arm-chair and would not\nhave them bow down to me as an idol,\" thundered Father Ferapont. \"Nowadays\nfolk destroy the true faith. The dead man, your saint,\" he turned to the\ncrowd, pointing with his finger to the coffin, \"did not believe in devils.\nHe gave medicine to keep off the devils. And so they have become as common\nas spiders in the corners. And now he has begun to stink himself. In that\nwe see a great sign from God.\"\n\nThe incident he referred to was this. One of the monks was haunted in his\ndreams and, later on, in waking moments, by visions of evil spirits. When\nin the utmost terror he confided this to Father Zossima, the elder had\nadvised continual prayer and rigid fasting. But when that was of no use,\nhe advised him, while persisting in prayer and fasting, to take a special\nmedicine. Many persons were shocked at the time and wagged their heads as\nthey talked over it--and most of all Father Ferapont, to whom some of the\ncensorious had hastened to report this \"extraordinary\" counsel on the part\nof the elder.\n\n\"Go away, Father!\" said Father Paissy, in a commanding voice, \"it's not\nfor man to judge but for God. Perhaps we see here a 'sign' which neither\nyou, nor I, nor any one of us is able to comprehend. Go, Father, and do\nnot trouble the flock!\" he repeated impressively.\n\n\"He did not keep the fasts according to the rule and therefore the sign\nhas come. That is clear and it's a sin to hide it,\" the fanatic, carried\naway by a zeal that outstripped his reason, would not be quieted. \"He was\nseduced by sweetmeats, ladies brought them to him in their pockets, he\nsipped tea, he worshiped his belly, filling it with sweet things and his\nmind with haughty thoughts.... And for this he is put to shame....\"\n\n\"You speak lightly, Father.\" Father Paissy, too, raised his voice. \"I\nadmire your fasting and severities, but you speak lightly like some\nfrivolous youth, fickle and childish. Go away, Father, I command you!\"\nFather Paissy thundered in conclusion.\n\n\"I will go,\" said Ferapont, seeming somewhat taken aback, but still as\nbitter. \"You learned men! You are so clever you look down upon my\nhumbleness. I came hither with little learning and here I have forgotten\nwhat I did know, God Himself has preserved me in my weakness from your\nsubtlety.\"\n\nFather Paissy stood over him, waiting resolutely. Father Ferapont paused\nand, suddenly leaning his cheek on his hand despondently, pronounced in a\nsing-song voice, looking at the coffin of the dead elder:\n\n\"To-morrow they will sing over him 'Our Helper and Defender'--a splendid\nanthem--and over me when I die all they'll sing will be 'What earthly\njoy'--a little canticle,\"(6) he added with tearful regret. \"You are proud\nand puffed up, this is a vain place!\" he shouted suddenly like a madman,\nand with a wave of his hand he turned quickly and quickly descended the\nsteps. The crowd awaiting him below wavered; some followed him at once and\nsome lingered, for the cell was still open, and Father Paissy, following\nFather Ferapont on to the steps, stood watching him. But the excited old\nfanatic was not completely silenced. Walking twenty steps away, he\nsuddenly turned towards the setting sun, raised both his arms and, as\nthough some one had cut him down, fell to the ground with a loud scream.\n\n\"My God has conquered! Christ has conquered the setting sun!\" he shouted\nfrantically, stretching up his hands to the sun, and falling face\ndownwards on the ground, he sobbed like a little child, shaken by his\ntears and spreading out his arms on the ground. Then all rushed up to him;\nthere were exclamations and sympathetic sobs ... a kind of frenzy seemed\nto take possession of them all.\n\n\"This is the one who is a saint! This is the one who is a holy man!\" some\ncried aloud, losing their fear. \"This is he who should be an elder,\"\nothers added malignantly.\n\n\"He wouldn't be an elder ... he would refuse ... he wouldn't serve a\ncursed innovation ... he wouldn't imitate their foolery,\" other voices\nchimed in at once. And it is hard to say how far they might have gone, but\nat that moment the bell rang summoning them to service. All began crossing\nthemselves at once. Father Ferapont, too, got up and crossing himself went\nback to his cell without looking round, still uttering exclamations which\nwere utterly incoherent. A few followed him, but the greater number\ndispersed, hastening to service. Father Paissy let Father Iosif read in\nhis place and went down. The frantic outcries of bigots could not shake\nhim, but his heart was suddenly filled with melancholy for some special\nreason and he felt that. He stood still and suddenly wondered, \"Why am I\nsad even to dejection?\" and immediately grasped with surprise that his\nsudden sadness was due to a very small and special cause. In the crowd\nthronging at the entrance to the cell, he had noticed Alyosha and he\nremembered that he had felt at once a pang at heart on seeing him. \"Can\nthat boy mean so much to my heart now?\" he asked himself, wondering.\n\nAt that moment Alyosha passed him, hurrying away, but not in the direction\nof the church. Their eyes met. Alyosha quickly turned away his eyes and\ndropped them to the ground, and from the boy's look alone, Father Paissy\nguessed what a great change was taking place in him at that moment.\n\n\"Have you, too, fallen into temptation?\" cried Father Paissy. \"Can you be\nwith those of little faith?\" he added mournfully.\n\nAlyosha stood still and gazed vaguely at Father Paissy, but quickly turned\nhis eyes away again and again looked on the ground. He stood sideways and\ndid not turn his face to Father Paissy, who watched him attentively.\n\n\"Where are you hastening? The bell calls to service,\" he asked again, but\nagain Alyosha gave no answer.\n\n\"Are you leaving the hermitage? What, without asking leave, without asking\na blessing?\"\n\nAlyosha suddenly gave a wry smile, cast a strange, very strange, look at\nthe Father to whom his former guide, the former sovereign of his heart and\nmind, his beloved elder, had confided him as he lay dying. And suddenly,\nstill without speaking, waved his hand, as though not caring even to be\nrespectful, and with rapid steps walked towards the gates away from the\nhermitage.\n\n\"You will come back again!\" murmured Father Paissy, looking after him with\nsorrowful surprise.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. A Critical Moment\n\n\nFather Paissy, of course, was not wrong when he decided that his \"dear\nboy\" would come back again. Perhaps indeed, to some extent, he penetrated\nwith insight into the true meaning of Alyosha's spiritual condition. Yet I\nmust frankly own that it would be very difficult for me to give a clear\naccount of that strange, vague moment in the life of the young hero I love\nso much. To Father Paissy's sorrowful question, \"Are you too with those of\nlittle faith?\" I could of course confidently answer for Alyosha, \"No, he\nis not with those of little faith. Quite the contrary.\" Indeed, all his\ntrouble came from the fact that he was of great faith. But still the\ntrouble was there and was so agonizing that even long afterwards Alyosha\nthought of that sorrowful day as one of the bitterest and most fatal days\nof his life. If the question is asked: \"Could all his grief and\ndisturbance have been only due to the fact that his elder's body had shown\nsigns of premature decomposition instead of at once performing miracles?\"\nI must answer without beating about the bush, \"Yes, it certainly was.\" I\nwould only beg the reader not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my\nyoung hero's pure heart. I am far from intending to apologize for him or\nto justify his innocent faith on the ground of his youth, or the little\nprogress he had made in his studies, or any such reason. I must declare,\non the contrary, that I have genuine respect for the qualities of his\nheart. No doubt a youth who received impressions cautiously, whose love\nwas lukewarm, and whose mind was too prudent for his age and so of little\nvalue, such a young man might, I admit, have avoided what happened to my\nhero. But in some cases it is really more creditable to be carried away by\nan emotion, however unreasonable, which springs from a great love, than to\nbe unmoved. And this is even truer in youth, for a young man who is always\nsensible is to be suspected and is of little worth--that's my opinion!\n\n\"But,\" reasonable people will exclaim perhaps, \"every young man cannot\nbelieve in such a superstition and your hero is no model for others.\"\n\nTo this I reply again, \"Yes! my hero had faith, a faith holy and\nsteadfast, but still I am not going to apologize for him.\"\n\nThough I declared above, and perhaps too hastily, that I should not\nexplain or justify my hero, I see that some explanation is necessary for\nthe understanding of the rest of my story. Let me say then, it was not a\nquestion of miracles. There was no frivolous and impatient expectation of\nmiracles in his mind. And Alyosha needed no miracles at the time, for the\ntriumph of some preconceived idea--oh, no, not at all--what he saw before\nall was one figure--the figure of his beloved elder, the figure of that\nholy man whom he revered with such adoration. The fact is that all the\nlove that lay concealed in his pure young heart for every one and\neverything had, for the past year, been concentrated--and perhaps wrongly\nso--on one being, his beloved elder. It is true that being had for so long\nbeen accepted by him as his ideal, that all his young strength and energy\ncould not but turn towards that ideal, even to the forgetting at the\nmoment \"of every one and everything.\" He remembered afterwards how, on\nthat terrible day, he had entirely forgotten his brother Dmitri, about\nwhom he had been so anxious and troubled the day before; he had forgotten,\ntoo, to take the two hundred roubles to Ilusha's father, though he had so\nwarmly intended to do so the preceding evening. But again it was not\nmiracles he needed but only \"the higher justice\" which had been in his\nbelief outraged by the blow that had so suddenly and cruelly wounded his\nheart. And what does it signify that this \"justice\" looked for by Alyosha\ninevitably took the shape of miracles to be wrought immediately by the\nashes of his adored teacher? Why, every one in the monastery cherished the\nsame thought and the same hope, even those whose intellects Alyosha\nrevered, Father Paissy himself, for instance. And so Alyosha, untroubled\nby doubts, clothed his dreams too in the same form as all the rest. And a\nwhole year of life in the monastery had formed the habit of this\nexpectation in his heart. But it was justice, justice, he thirsted for,\nnot simply miracles.\n\nAnd now the man who should, he believed, have been exalted above every one\nin the whole world, that man, instead of receiving the glory that was his\ndue, was suddenly degraded and dishonored! What for? Who had judged him?\nWho could have decreed this? Those were the questions that wrung his\ninexperienced and virginal heart. He could not endure without\nmortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men\nshould have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the\nfrivolous crowd so inferior to him. Even had there been no miracles, had\nthere been nothing marvelous to justify his hopes, why this indignity, why\nthis humiliation, why this premature decay, \"in excess of nature,\" as the\nspiteful monks said? Why this \"sign from heaven,\" which they so\ntriumphantly acclaimed in company with Father Ferapont, and why did they\nbelieve they had gained the right to acclaim it? Where is the finger of\nProvidence? Why did Providence hide its face \"at the most critical moment\"\n(so Alyosha thought it), as though voluntarily submitting to the blind,\ndumb, pitiless laws of nature?\n\nThat was why Alyosha's heart was bleeding, and, of course, as I have said\nalready, the sting of it all was that the man he loved above everything on\nearth should be put to shame and humiliated! This murmuring may have been\nshallow and unreasonable in my hero, but I repeat again for the third\ntime--and am prepared to admit that it might be difficult to defend my\nfeeling--I am glad that my hero showed himself not too reasonable at that\nmoment, for any man of sense will always come back to reason in time, but,\nif love does not gain the upper hand in a boy's heart at such an\nexceptional moment, when will it? I will not, however, omit to mention\nsomething strange, which came for a time to the surface of Alyosha's mind\nat this fatal and obscure moment. This new something was the harassing\nimpression left by the conversation with Ivan, which now persistently\nhaunted Alyosha's mind. At this moment it haunted him. Oh, it was not that\nsomething of the fundamental, elemental, so to speak, faith of his soul\nhad been shaken. He loved his God and believed in Him steadfastly, though\nhe was suddenly murmuring against Him. Yet a vague but tormenting and evil\nimpression left by his conversation with Ivan the day before, suddenly\nrevived again now in his soul and seemed forcing its way to the surface of\nhis consciousness.\n\nIt had begun to get dusk when Rakitin, crossing the pine copse from the\nhermitage to the monastery, suddenly noticed Alyosha, lying face downwards\non the ground under a tree, not moving and apparently asleep. He went up\nand called him by his name.\n\n\"You here, Alexey? Can you have--\" he began wondering but broke off. He had\nmeant to say, \"Can you have come to this?\"\n\nAlyosha did not look at him, but from a slight movement Rakitin at once\nsaw that he heard and understood him.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" he went on; but the surprise in his face gradually\npassed into a smile that became more and more ironical.\n\n\"I say, I've been looking for you for the last two hours. You suddenly\ndisappeared. What are you about? What foolery is this? You might just look\nat me...\"\n\nAlyosha raised his head, sat up and leaned his back against the tree. He\nwas not crying, but there was a look of suffering and irritability in his\nface. He did not look at Rakitin, however, but looked away to one side of\nhim.\n\n\"Do you know your face is quite changed? There's none of your famous\nmildness to be seen in it. Are you angry with some one? Have they been\nill-treating you?\"\n\n\"Let me alone,\" said Alyosha suddenly, with a weary gesture of his hand,\nstill looking away from him.\n\n\"Oho! So that's how we are feeling! So you can shout at people like other\nmortals. That is a come-down from the angels. I say, Alyosha, you have\nsurprised me, do you hear? I mean it. It's long since I've been surprised\nat anything here. I always took you for an educated man....\"\n\nAlyosha at last looked at him, but vaguely, as though scarcely\nunderstanding what he said.\n\n\"Can you really be so upset simply because your old man has begun to\nstink? You don't mean to say you seriously believed that he was going to\nwork miracles?\" exclaimed Rakitin, genuinely surprised again.\n\n\"I believed, I believe, I want to believe, and I will believe, what more\ndo you want?\" cried Alyosha irritably.\n\n\"Nothing at all, my boy. Damn it all! why, no schoolboy of thirteen\nbelieves in that now. But there.... So now you are in a temper with your\nGod, you are rebelling against Him; He hasn't given promotion, He hasn't\nbestowed the order of merit! Eh, you are a set!\"\n\nAlyosha gazed a long while with his eyes half closed at Rakitin, and there\nwas a sudden gleam in his eyes ... but not of anger with Rakitin.\n\n\"I am not rebelling against my God; I simply 'don't accept His world.' \"\nAlyosha suddenly smiled a forced smile.\n\n\"How do you mean, you don't accept the world?\" Rakitin thought a moment\nover his answer. \"What idiocy is this?\"\n\nAlyosha did not answer.\n\n\"Come, enough nonsense, now to business. Have you had anything to eat to-\nday?\"\n\n\"I don't remember.... I think I have.\"\n\n\"You need keeping up, to judge by your face. It makes one sorry to look at\nyou. You didn't sleep all night either, I hear, you had a meeting in\nthere. And then all this bobbery afterwards. Most likely you've had\nnothing to eat but a mouthful of holy bread. I've got some sausage in my\npocket; I've brought it from the town in case of need, only you won't eat\nsausage....\"\n\n\"Give me some.\"\n\n\"I say! You are going it! Why, it's a regular mutiny, with barricades!\nWell, my boy, we must make the most of it. Come to my place.... I\nshouldn't mind a drop of vodka myself, I am tired to death. Vodka is going\ntoo far for you, I suppose ... or would you like some?\"\n\n\"Give me some vodka too.\"\n\n\"Hullo! You surprise me, brother!\" Rakitin looked at him in amazement.\n\"Well, one way or another, vodka or sausage, this is a jolly fine chance\nand mustn't be missed. Come along.\"\n\nAlyosha got up in silence and followed Rakitin.\n\n\"If your little brother Ivan could see this--wouldn't he be surprised! By\nthe way, your brother Ivan set off to Moscow this morning, did you know?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Alyosha listlessly, and suddenly the image of his brother\nDmitri rose before his mind. But only for a minute, and though it reminded\nhim of something that must not be put off for a moment, some duty, some\nterrible obligation, even that reminder made no impression on him, did not\nreach his heart and instantly faded out of his mind and was forgotten.\nBut, a long while afterwards, Alyosha remembered this.\n\n\"Your brother Ivan declared once that I was a 'liberal booby with no\ntalents whatsoever.' Once you, too, could not resist letting me know I was\n'dishonorable.' Well! I should like to see what your talents and sense of\nhonor will do for you now.\" This phrase Rakitin finished to himself in a\nwhisper.\n\n\"Listen!\" he said aloud, \"let's go by the path beyond the monastery\nstraight to the town. Hm! I ought to go to Madame Hohlakov's by the way.\nOnly fancy, I've written to tell her everything that happened, and would\nyou believe it, she answered me instantly in pencil (the lady has a\npassion for writing notes) that 'she would never have expected _such\nconduct_ from a man of such a reverend character as Father Zossima.' That\nwas her very word: 'conduct.' She is angry too. Eh, you are a set! Stay!\"\nhe cried suddenly again. He suddenly stopped and taking Alyosha by the\nshoulder made him stop too.\n\n\"Do you know, Alyosha,\" he peeped inquisitively into his eyes, absorbed in\na sudden new thought which had dawned on him, and though he was laughing\noutwardly he was evidently afraid to utter that new idea aloud, so\ndifficult he still found it to believe in the strange and unexpected mood\nin which he now saw Alyosha. \"Alyosha, do you know where we had better\ngo?\" he brought out at last timidly, and insinuatingly.\n\n\"I don't care ... where you like.\"\n\n\"Let's go to Grushenka, eh? Will you come?\" pronounced Rakitin at last,\ntrembling with timid suspense.\n\n\"Let's go to Grushenka,\" Alyosha answered calmly, at once, and this prompt\nand calm agreement was such a surprise to Rakitin that he almost started\nback.\n\n\"Well! I say!\" he cried in amazement, but seizing Alyosha firmly by the\narm he led him along the path, still dreading that he would change his\nmind.\n\nThey walked along in silence, Rakitin was positively afraid to talk.\n\n\"And how glad she will be, how delighted!\" he muttered, but lapsed into\nsilence again. And indeed it was not to please Grushenka he was taking\nAlyosha to her. He was a practical person and never undertook anything\nwithout a prospect of gain for himself. His object in this case was\ntwofold, first a revengeful desire to see \"the downfall of the righteous,\"\nand Alyosha's fall \"from the saints to the sinners,\" over which he was\nalready gloating in his imagination, and in the second place he had in\nview a certain material gain for himself, of which more will be said\nlater.\n\n\"So the critical moment has come,\" he thought to himself with spiteful\nglee, \"and we shall catch it on the hop, for it's just what we want.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. An Onion\n\n\nGrushenka lived in the busiest part of the town, near the cathedral\nsquare, in a small wooden lodge in the courtyard belonging to the house of\nthe widow Morozov. The house was a large stone building of two stories,\nold and very ugly. The widow led a secluded life with her two unmarried\nnieces, who were also elderly women. She had no need to let her lodge, but\nevery one knew that she had taken in Grushenka as a lodger, four years\nbefore, solely to please her kinsman, the merchant Samsonov, who was known\nto be the girl's protector. It was said that the jealous old man's object\nin placing his \"favorite\" with the widow Morozov was that the old woman\nshould keep a sharp eye on her new lodger's conduct. But this sharp eye\nsoon proved to be unnecessary, and in the end the widow Morozov seldom met\nGrushenka and did not worry her by looking after her in any way. It is\ntrue that four years had passed since the old man had brought the slim,\ndelicate, shy, timid, dreamy, and sad girl of eighteen from the chief town\nof the province, and much had happened since then. Little was known of the\ngirl's history in the town and that little was vague. Nothing more had\nbeen learnt during the last four years, even after many persons had become\ninterested in the beautiful young woman into whom Agrafena Alexandrovna\nhad meanwhile developed. There were rumors that she had been at seventeen\nbetrayed by some one, some sort of officer, and immediately afterwards\nabandoned by him. The officer had gone away and afterwards married, while\nGrushenka had been left in poverty and disgrace. It was said, however,\nthat though Grushenka had been raised from destitution by the old man,\nSamsonov, she came of a respectable family belonging to the clerical\nclass, that she was the daughter of a deacon or something of the sort.\n\nAnd now after four years the sensitive, injured and pathetic little orphan\nhad become a plump, rosy beauty of the Russian type, a woman of bold and\ndetermined character, proud and insolent. She had a good head for\nbusiness, was acquisitive, saving and careful, and by fair means or foul\nhad succeeded, it was said, in amassing a little fortune. There was only\none point on which all were agreed. Grushenka was not easily to be\napproached and except her aged protector there had not been one man who\ncould boast of her favors during those four years. It was a positive fact,\nfor there had been a good many, especially during the last two years, who\nhad attempted to obtain those favors. But all their efforts had been in\nvain and some of these suitors had been forced to beat an undignified and\neven comic retreat, owing to the firm and ironical resistance they met\nfrom the strong-willed young person. It was known, too, that the young\nperson had, especially of late, been given to what is called\n\"speculation,\" and that she had shown marked abilities in that direction,\nso that many people began to say that she was no better than a Jew. It was\nnot that she lent money on interest, but it was known, for instance, that\nshe had for some time past, in partnership with old Karamazov, actually\ninvested in the purchase of bad debts for a trifle, a tenth of their\nnominal value, and afterwards had made out of them ten times their value.\n\nThe old widower Samsonov, a man of large fortune, was stingy and\nmerciless. He tyrannized over his grown-up sons, but, for the last year\nduring which he had been ill and lost the use of his swollen legs, he had\nfallen greatly under the influence of his protegee, whom he had at first\nkept strictly and in humble surroundings, \"on Lenten fare,\" as the wits\nsaid at the time. But Grushenka had succeeded in emancipating herself,\nwhile she established in him a boundless belief in her fidelity. The old\nman, now long since dead, had had a large business in his day and was also\na noteworthy character, miserly and hard as flint. Though Grushenka's hold\nupon him was so strong that he could not live without her (it had been so\nespecially for the last two years), he did not settle any considerable\nfortune on her and would not have been moved to do so, if she had\nthreatened to leave him. But he had presented her with a small sum, and\neven that was a surprise to every one when it became known.\n\n\"You are a wench with brains,\" he said to her, when he gave her eight\nthousand roubles, \"and you must look after yourself, but let me tell you\nthat except your yearly allowance as before, you'll get nothing more from\nme to the day of my death, and I'll leave you nothing in my will either.\"\n\nAnd he kept his word; he died and left everything to his sons, whom, with\ntheir wives and children, he had treated all his life as servants.\nGrushenka was not even mentioned in his will. All this became known\nafterwards. He helped Grushenka with his advice to increase her capital\nand put business in her way.\n\nWhen Fyodor Pavlovitch, who first came into contact with Grushenka over a\npiece of speculation, ended to his own surprise by falling madly in love\nwith her, old Samsonov, gravely ill as he was, was immensely amused. It is\nremarkable that throughout their whole acquaintance Grushenka was\nabsolutely and spontaneously open with the old man, and he seems to have\nbeen the only person in the world with whom she was so. Of late, when\nDmitri too had come on the scene with his love, the old man left off\nlaughing. On the contrary, he once gave Grushenka a stern and earnest\npiece of advice.\n\n\"If you have to choose between the two, father or son, you'd better choose\nthe old man, if only you make sure the old scoundrel will marry you and\nsettle some fortune on you beforehand. But don't keep on with the captain,\nyou'll get no good out of that.\"\n\nThese were the very words of the old profligate, who felt already that his\ndeath was not far off and who actually died five months later.\n\nI will note, too, in passing, that although many in our town knew of the\ngrotesque and monstrous rivalry of the Karamazovs, father and son, the\nobject of which was Grushenka, scarcely any one understood what really\nunderlay her attitude to both of them. Even Grushenka's two servants\n(after the catastrophe of which we will speak later) testified in court\nthat she received Dmitri Fyodorovitch simply from fear because \"he\nthreatened to murder her.\" These servants were an old cook, invalidish and\nalmost deaf, who came from Grushenka's old home, and her granddaughter, a\nsmart young girl of twenty, who performed the duties of a maid. Grushenka\nlived very economically and her surroundings were anything but luxurious.\nHer lodge consisted of three rooms furnished with mahogany furniture in\nthe fashion of 1820, belonging to her landlady.\n\nIt was quite dark when Rakitin and Alyosha entered her rooms, yet they\nwere not lighted up. Grushenka was lying down in her drawing-room on the\nbig, hard, clumsy sofa, with a mahogany back. The sofa was covered with\nshabby and ragged leather. Under her head she had two white down pillows\ntaken from her bed. She was lying stretched out motionless on her back\nwith her hands behind her head. She was dressed as though expecting some\none, in a black silk dress, with a dainty lace fichu on her head, which\nwas very becoming. Over her shoulders was thrown a lace shawl pinned with\na massive gold brooch. She certainly was expecting some one. She lay as\nthough impatient and weary, her face rather pale and her lips and eyes\nhot, restlessly tapping the arm of the sofa with the tip of her right\nfoot. The appearance of Rakitin and Alyosha caused a slight excitement.\nFrom the hall they could hear Grushenka leap up from the sofa and cry out\nin a frightened voice, \"Who's there?\" But the maid met the visitors and at\nonce called back to her mistress.\n\n\"It's not he, it's nothing, only other visitors.\"\n\n\"What can be the matter?\" muttered Rakitin, leading Alyosha into the\ndrawing-room.\n\nGrushenka was standing by the sofa as though still alarmed. A thick coil\nof her dark brown hair escaped from its lace covering and fell on her\nright shoulder, but she did not notice it and did not put it back till she\nhad gazed at her visitors and recognized them.\n\n\"Ah, it's you, Rakitin? You quite frightened me. Whom have you brought?\nWho is this with you? Good heavens, you have brought him!\" she exclaimed,\nrecognizing Alyosha.\n\n\"Do send for candles!\" said Rakitin, with the free-and-easy air of a most\nintimate friend, who is privileged to give orders in the house.\n\n\"Candles ... of course, candles.... Fenya, fetch him a candle.... Well,\nyou have chosen a moment to bring him!\" she exclaimed again, nodding\ntowards Alyosha, and turning to the looking-glass she began quickly\nfastening up her hair with both hands. She seemed displeased.\n\n\"Haven't I managed to please you?\" asked Rakitin, instantly almost\noffended.\n\n\"You frightened me, Rakitin, that's what it is.\" Grushenka turned with a\nsmile to Alyosha. \"Don't be afraid of me, my dear Alyosha, you cannot\nthink how glad I am to see you, my unexpected visitor. But you frightened\nme, Rakitin, I thought it was Mitya breaking in. You see, I deceived him\njust now, I made him promise to believe me and I told him a lie. I told\nhim that I was going to spend the evening with my old man, Kuzma Kuzmitch,\nand should be there till late counting up his money. I always spend one\nwhole evening a week with him making up his accounts. We lock ourselves in\nand he counts on the reckoning beads while I sit and put things down in\nthe book. I am the only person he trusts. Mitya believes that I am there,\nbut I came back and have been sitting locked in here, expecting some news.\nHow was it Fenya let you in? Fenya, Fenya, run out to the gate, open it\nand look about whether the captain is to be seen! Perhaps he is hiding and\nspying, I am dreadfully frightened.\"\n\n\"There's no one there, Agrafena Alexandrovna, I've just looked out, I keep\nrunning to peep through the crack, I am in fear and trembling myself.\"\n\n\"Are the shutters fastened, Fenya? And we must draw the curtains--that's\nbetter!\" She drew the heavy curtains herself. \"He'd rush in at once if he\nsaw a light. I am afraid of your brother Mitya to-day, Alyosha.\"\n\nGrushenka spoke aloud, and, though she was alarmed, she seemed very happy\nabout something.\n\n\"Why are you so afraid of Mitya to-day?\" inquired Rakitin. \"I should have\nthought you were not timid with him, you'd twist him round your little\nfinger.\"\n\n\"I tell you, I am expecting news, priceless news, so I don't want Mitya at\nall. And he didn't believe, I feel he didn't, that I should stay at Kuzma\nKuzmitch's. He must be in his ambush now, behind Fyodor Pavlovitch's, in\nthe garden, watching for me. And if he's there, he won't come here, so\nmuch the better! But I really have been to Kuzma Kuzmitch's, Mitya\nescorted me there. I told him I should stay there till midnight, and I\nasked him to be sure to come at midnight to fetch me home. He went away\nand I sat ten minutes with Kuzma Kuzmitch and came back here again. Ugh, I\nwas afraid, I ran for fear of meeting him.\"\n\n\"And why are you so dressed up? What a curious cap you've got on!\"\n\n\"How curious you are yourself, Rakitin! I tell you, I am expecting a\nmessage. If the message comes, I shall fly, I shall gallop away and you\nwill see no more of me. That's why I am dressed up, so as to be ready.\"\n\n\"And where are you flying to?\"\n\n\"If you know too much, you'll get old too soon.\"\n\n\"Upon my word! You are highly delighted ... I've never seen you like this\nbefore. You are dressed up as if you were going to a ball.\" Rakitin looked\nher up and down.\n\n\"Much you know about balls.\"\n\n\"And do you know much about them?\"\n\n\"I have seen a ball. The year before last, Kuzma Kuzmitch's son was\nmarried and I looked on from the gallery. Do you suppose I want to be\ntalking to you, Rakitin, while a prince like this is standing here. Such a\nvisitor! Alyosha, my dear boy, I gaze at you and can't believe my eyes.\nGood heavens, can you have come here to see me! To tell you the truth, I\nnever had a thought of seeing you and I didn't think that you would ever\ncome and see me. Though this is not the moment now, I am awfully glad to\nsee you. Sit down on the sofa, here, that's right, my bright young moon. I\nreally can't take it in even now.... Eh, Rakitin, if only you had brought\nhim yesterday or the day before! But I am glad as it is! Perhaps it's\nbetter he has come now, at such a moment, and not the day before\nyesterday.\"\n\nShe gayly sat down beside Alyosha on the sofa, looking at him with\npositive delight. And she really was glad, she was not lying when she said\nso. Her eyes glowed, her lips laughed, but it was a good-hearted merry\nlaugh. Alyosha had not expected to see such a kind expression in her\nface.... He had hardly met her till the day before, he had formed an\nalarming idea of her, and had been horribly distressed the day before by\nthe spiteful and treacherous trick she had played on Katerina Ivanovna. He\nwas greatly surprised to find her now altogether different from what he\nhad expected. And, crushed as he was by his own sorrow, his eyes\ninvoluntarily rested on her with attention. Her whole manner seemed\nchanged for the better since yesterday, there was scarcely any trace of\nthat mawkish sweetness in her speech, of that voluptuous softness in her\nmovements. Everything was simple and good-natured, her gestures were\nrapid, direct, confiding, but she was greatly excited.\n\n\"Dear me, how everything comes together to-day!\" she chattered on again.\n\"And why I am so glad to see you, Alyosha, I couldn't say myself! If you\nask me, I couldn't tell you.\"\n\n\"Come, don't you know why you're glad?\" said Rakitin, grinning. \"You used\nto be always pestering me to bring him, you'd some object, I suppose.\"\n\n\"I had a different object once, but now that's over, this is not the\nmoment. I say, I want you to have something nice. I am so good-natured\nnow. You sit down, too, Rakitin; why are you standing? You've sat down\nalready? There's no fear of Rakitin's forgetting to look after himself.\nLook, Alyosha, he's sitting there opposite us, so offended that I didn't\nask him to sit down before you. Ugh, Rakitin is such a one to take\noffense!\" laughed Grushenka. \"Don't be angry, Rakitin, I'm kind to-day.\nWhy are you so depressed, Alyosha? Are you afraid of me?\" She peeped into\nhis eyes with merry mockery\"\n\n\"He's sad. The promotion has not been given,\" boomed Rakitin.\n\n\"What promotion?\"\n\n\"His elder stinks.\"\n\n\"What? You are talking some nonsense, you want to say something nasty. Be\nquiet, you stupid! Let me sit on your knee, Alyosha, like this.\" She\nsuddenly skipped forward and jumped, laughing, on his knee, like a\nnestling kitten, with her right arm about his neck. \"I'll cheer you up, my\npious boy. Yes, really, will you let me sit on your knee? You won't be\nangry? If you tell me, I'll get off?\"\n\nAlyosha did not speak. He sat afraid to move, he heard her words, \"If you\ntell me, I'll get off,\" but he did not answer. But there was nothing in\nhis heart such as Rakitin, for instance, watching him malignantly from his\ncorner, might have expected or fancied. The great grief in his heart\nswallowed up every sensation that might have been aroused, and, if only he\ncould have thought clearly at that moment, he would have realized that he\nhad now the strongest armor to protect him from every lust and temptation.\nYet in spite of the vague irresponsiveness of his spiritual condition and\nthe sorrow that overwhelmed him, he could not help wondering at a new and\nstrange sensation in his heart. This woman, this \"dreadful\" woman, had no\nterror for him now, none of that terror that had stirred in his soul at\nany passing thought of woman. On the contrary, this woman, dreaded above\nall women, sitting now on his knee, holding him in her arms, aroused in\nhim now a quite different, unexpected, peculiar feeling, a feeling of the\nintensest and purest interest without a trace of fear, of his former\nterror. That was what instinctively surprised him.\n\n\"You've talked nonsense enough,\" cried Rakitin, \"you'd much better give us\nsome champagne. You owe it me, you know you do!\"\n\n\"Yes, I really do. Do you know, Alyosha, I promised him champagne on the\ntop of everything, if he'd bring you? I'll have some too! Fenya, Fenya,\nbring us the bottle Mitya left! Look sharp! Though I am so stingy, I'll\nstand a bottle, not for you, Rakitin, you're a toadstool, but he is a\nfalcon! And though my heart is full of something very different, so be it,\nI'll drink with you. I long for some dissipation.\"\n\n\"But what is the matter with you? And what is this message, may I ask, or\nis it a secret?\" Rakitin put in inquisitively, doing his best to pretend\nnot to notice the snubs that were being continually aimed at him.\n\n\"Ech, it's not a secret, and you know it, too,\" Grushenka said, in a voice\nsuddenly anxious, turning her head towards Rakitin, and drawing a little\naway from Alyosha, though she still sat on his knee with her arm round his\nneck. \"My officer is coming, Rakitin, my officer is coming.\"\n\n\"I heard he was coming, but is he so near?\"\n\n\"He is at Mokroe now; he'll send a messenger from there, so he wrote; I\ngot a letter from him to-day. I am expecting the messenger every minute.\"\n\n\"You don't say so! Why at Mokroe?\"\n\n\"That's a long story, I've told you enough.\"\n\n\"Mitya'll be up to something now--I say! Does he know or doesn't he?\"\n\n\"He know! Of course he doesn't. If he knew, there would be murder. But I\nam not afraid of that now, I am not afraid of his knife. Be quiet,\nRakitin, don't remind me of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, he has bruised my heart.\nAnd I don't want to think of that at this moment. I can think of Alyosha\nhere, I can look at Alyosha ... smile at me, dear, cheer up, smile at my\nfoolishness, at my pleasure.... Ah, he's smiling, he's smiling! How kindly\nhe looks at me! And you know, Alyosha, I've been thinking all this time\nyou were angry with me, because of the day before yesterday, because of\nthat young lady. I was a cur, that's the truth.... But it's a good thing\nit happened so. It was a horrid thing, but a good thing too.\" Grushenka\nsmiled dreamily and a little cruel line showed in her smile. \"Mitya told\nme that she screamed out that I 'ought to be flogged.' I did insult her\ndreadfully. She sent for me, she wanted to make a conquest of me, to win\nme over with her chocolate.... No, it's a good thing it did end like\nthat.\" She smiled again. \"But I am still afraid of your being angry.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's really true,\" Rakitin put in suddenly with genuine surprise.\n\"Alyosha, she is really afraid of a chicken like you.\"\n\n\"He is a chicken to you, Rakitin ... because you've no conscience, that's\nwhat it is! You see, I love him with all my soul, that's how it is!\nAlyosha, do you believe I love you with all my soul?\"\n\n\"Ah, you shameless woman! She is making you a declaration, Alexey!\"\n\n\"Well, what of it, I love him!\"\n\n\"And what about your officer? And the priceless message from Mokroe?\"\n\n\"That is quite different.\"\n\n\"That's a woman's way of looking at it!\"\n\n\"Don't you make me angry, Rakitin.\" Grushenka caught him up hotly. \"This\nis quite different. I love Alyosha in a different way. It's true, Alyosha,\nI had sly designs on you before. For I am a horrid, violent creature. But\nat other times I've looked upon you, Alyosha, as my conscience. I've kept\nthinking 'how any one like that must despise a nasty thing like me.' I\nthought that the day before yesterday, as I ran home from the young\nlady's. I have thought of you a long time in that way, Alyosha, and Mitya\nknows, I've talked to him about it. Mitya understands. Would you believe\nit, I sometimes look at you and feel ashamed, utterly ashamed of\nmyself.... And how, and since when, I began to think about you like that,\nI can't say, I don't remember....\"\n\nFenya came in and put a tray with an uncorked bottle and three glasses of\nchampagne on the table.\n\n\"Here's the champagne!\" cried Rakitin. \"You're excited, Agrafena\nAlexandrovna, and not yourself. When you've had a glass of champagne,\nyou'll be ready to dance. Eh, they can't even do that properly,\" he added,\nlooking at the bottle. \"The old woman's poured it out in the kitchen and\nthe bottle's been brought in warm and without a cork. Well, let me have\nsome, anyway.\"\n\nHe went up to the table, took a glass, emptied it at one gulp and poured\nhimself out another.\n\n\"One doesn't often stumble upon champagne,\" he said, licking his lips.\n\"Now, Alyosha, take a glass, show what you can do! What shall we drink to?\nThe gates of paradise? Take a glass, Grushenka, you drink to the gates of\nparadise, too.\"\n\n\"What gates of paradise?\"\n\nShe took a glass, Alyosha took his, tasted it and put it back.\n\n\"No, I'd better not,\" he smiled gently.\n\n\"And you bragged!\" cried Rakitin.\n\n\"Well, if so, I won't either,\" chimed in Grushenka, \"I really don't want\nany. You can drink the whole bottle alone, Rakitin. If Alyosha has some, I\nwill.\"\n\n\"What touching sentimentality!\" said Rakitin tauntingly; \"and she's\nsitting on his knee, too! He's got something to grieve over, but what's\nthe matter with you? He is rebelling against his God and ready to eat\nsausage....\"\n\n\"How so?\"\n\n\"His elder died to-day, Father Zossima, the saint.\"\n\n\"So Father Zossima is dead,\" cried Grushenka. \"Good God, I did not know!\"\nShe crossed herself devoutly. \"Goodness, what have I been doing, sitting\non his knee like this at such a moment!\" She started up as though in\ndismay, instantly slipped off his knee and sat down on the sofa.\n\nAlyosha bent a long wondering look upon her and a light seemed to dawn in\nhis face.\n\n\"Rakitin,\" he said suddenly, in a firm and loud voice; \"don't taunt me\nwith having rebelled against God. I don't want to feel angry with you, so\nyou must be kinder, too, I've lost a treasure such as you have never had,\nand you cannot judge me now. You had much better look at her--do you see\nhow she has pity on me? I came here to find a wicked soul--I felt drawn to\nevil because I was base and evil myself, and I've found a true sister, I\nhave found a treasure--a loving heart. She had pity on me just now....\nAgrafena Alexandrovna, I am speaking of you. You've raised my soul from\nthe depths.\"\n\nAlyosha's lips were quivering and he caught his breath.\n\n\"She has saved you, it seems,\" laughed Rakitin spitefully. \"And she meant\nto get you in her clutches, do you realize that?\"\n\n\"Stay, Rakitin.\" Grushenka jumped up. \"Hush, both of you. Now I'll tell\nyou all about it. Hush, Alyosha, your words make me ashamed, for I am bad\nand not good--that's what I am. And you hush, Rakitin, because you are\ntelling lies. I had the low idea of trying to get him in my clutches, but\nnow you are lying, now it's all different. And don't let me hear anything\nmore from you, Rakitin.\"\n\nAll this Grushenka said with extreme emotion.\n\n\"They are both crazy,\" said Rakitin, looking at them with amazement. \"I\nfeel as though I were in a madhouse. They're both getting so feeble\nthey'll begin crying in a minute.\"\n\n\"I shall begin to cry, I shall,\" repeated Grushenka. \"He called me his\nsister and I shall never forget that. Only let me tell you, Rakitin,\nthough I am bad, I did give away an onion.\"\n\n\"An onion? Hang it all, you really are crazy.\"\n\nRakitin wondered at their enthusiasm. He was aggrieved and annoyed, though\nhe might have reflected that each of them was just passing through a\nspiritual crisis such as does not come often in a lifetime. But though\nRakitin was very sensitive about everything that concerned himself, he was\nvery obtuse as regards the feelings and sensations of others--partly from\nhis youth and inexperience, partly from his intense egoism.\n\n\"You see, Alyosha,\" Grushenka turned to him with a nervous laugh. \"I was\nboasting when I told Rakitin I had given away an onion, but it's not to\nboast I tell you about it. It's only a story, but it's a nice story. I\nused to hear it when I was a child from Matryona, my cook, who is still\nwith me. It's like this. Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a\nvery wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good\ndeed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire.\nSo her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could\nremember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said\nhe, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that\nonion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be\npulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to\nParadise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.'\nThe angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he,\n'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' And he began cautiously pulling her\nout. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake,\nseeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be\npulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking\nthem. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon\nas she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and\nshe is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. So\nthat's the story, Alyosha; I know it by heart, for I am that wicked woman\nmyself. I boasted to Rakitin that I had given away an onion, but to you\nI'll say: 'I've done nothing but give away one onion all my life, that's\nthe only good deed I've done.' So don't praise me, Alyosha, don't think me\ngood, I am bad, I am a wicked woman and you make me ashamed if you praise\nme. Eh, I must confess everything. Listen, Alyosha. I was so anxious to\nget hold of you that I promised Rakitin twenty-five roubles if he would\nbring you to me. Stay, Rakitin, wait!\"\n\nShe went with rapid steps to the table, opened a drawer, pulled out a\npurse and took from it a twenty-five rouble note.\n\n\"What nonsense! What nonsense!\" cried Rakitin, disconcerted.\n\n\"Take it. Rakitin, I owe it you, there's no fear of your refusing it, you\nasked for it yourself.\" And she threw the note to him.\n\n\"Likely I should refuse it,\" boomed Rakitin, obviously abashed, but\ncarrying off his confusion with a swagger. \"That will come in very handy;\nfools are made for wise men's profit.\"\n\n\"And now hold your tongue, Rakitin, what I am going to say now is not for\nyour ears. Sit down in that corner and keep quiet. You don't like us, so\nhold your tongue.\"\n\n\"What should I like you for?\" Rakitin snarled, not concealing his ill-\nhumor. He put the twenty-five rouble note in his pocket and he felt\nashamed at Alyosha's seeing it. He had reckoned on receiving his payment\nlater, without Alyosha's knowing of it, and now, feeling ashamed, he lost\nhis temper. Till that moment he had thought it discreet not to contradict\nGrushenka too flatly in spite of her snubbing, since he had something to\nget out of her. But now he, too, was angry:\n\n\"One loves people for some reason, but what have either of you done for\nme?\"\n\n\"You should love people without a reason, as Alyosha does.\"\n\n\"How does he love you? How has he shown it, that you make such a fuss\nabout it?\"\n\nGrushenka was standing in the middle of the room; she spoke with heat and\nthere were hysterical notes in her voice.\n\n\"Hush, Rakitin, you know nothing about us! And don't dare to speak to me\nlike that again. How dare you be so familiar! Sit in that corner and be\nquiet, as though you were my footman! And now, Alyosha, I'll tell you the\nwhole truth, that you may see what a wretch I am! I am not talking to\nRakitin, but to you. I wanted to ruin you, Alyosha, that's the holy truth;\nI quite meant to. I wanted to so much, that I bribed Rakitin to bring you.\nAnd why did I want to do such a thing? You knew nothing about it, Alyosha,\nyou turned away from me; if you passed me, you dropped your eyes. And I've\nlooked at you a hundred times before to-day; I began asking every one\nabout you. Your face haunted my heart. 'He despises me,' I thought; 'he\nwon't even look at me.' And I felt it so much at last that I wondered at\nmyself for being so frightened of a boy. I'll get him in my clutches and\nlaugh at him. I was full of spite and anger. Would you believe it, nobody\nhere dares talk or think of coming to Agrafena Alexandrovna with any evil\npurpose. Old Kuzma is the only man I have anything to do with here; I was\nbound and sold to him; Satan brought us together, but there has been no\none else. But looking at you, I thought, I'll get him in my clutches and\nlaugh at him. You see what a spiteful cur I am, and you called me your\nsister! And now that man who wronged me has come; I sit here waiting for a\nmessage from him. And do you know what that man has been to me? Five years\nago, when Kuzma brought me here, I used to shut myself up, that no one\nmight have sight or sound of me. I was a silly slip of a girl; I used to\nsit here sobbing; I used to lie awake all night, thinking: 'Where is he\nnow, the man who wronged me? He is laughing at me with another woman, most\nlikely. If only I could see him, if I could meet him again, I'd pay him\nout, I'd pay him out!' At night I used to lie sobbing into my pillow in\nthe dark, and I used to brood over it; I used to tear my heart on purpose\nand gloat over my anger. 'I'll pay him out, I'll pay him out!' That's what\nI used to cry out in the dark. And when I suddenly thought that I should\nreally do nothing to him, and that he was laughing at me then, or perhaps\nhad utterly forgotten me, I would fling myself on the floor, melt into\nhelpless tears, and lie there shaking till dawn. In the morning I would\nget up more spiteful than a dog, ready to tear the whole world to pieces.\nAnd then what do you think? I began saving money, I became hard-hearted,\ngrew stout--grew wiser, would you say? No, no one in the whole world sees\nit, no one knows it, but when night comes on, I sometimes lie as I did\nfive years ago, when I was a silly girl, clenching my teeth and crying all\nnight, thinking, 'I'll pay him out, I'll pay him out!' Do you hear? Well\nthen, now you understand me. A month ago a letter came to me--he was\ncoming, he was a widower, he wanted to see me. It took my breath away;\nthen I suddenly thought: 'If he comes and whistles to call me, I shall\ncreep back to him like a beaten dog.' I couldn't believe myself. Am I so\nabject? Shall I run to him or not? And I've been in such a rage with\nmyself all this month that I am worse than I was five years ago. Do you\nsee now, Alyosha, what a violent, vindictive creature I am? I have shown\nyou the whole truth! I played with Mitya to keep me from running to that\nother. Hush, Rakitin, it's not for you to judge me, I am not speaking to\nyou. Before you came in, I was lying here waiting, brooding, deciding my\nwhole future life, and you can never know what was in my heart. Yes,\nAlyosha, tell your young lady not to be angry with me for what happened\nthe day before yesterday.... Nobody in the whole world knows what I am\ngoing through now, and no one ever can know.... For perhaps I shall take a\nknife with me to-day, I can't make up my mind ...\"\n\nAnd at this \"tragic\" phrase Grushenka broke down, hid her face in her\nhands, flung herself on the sofa pillows, and sobbed like a little child.\n\nAlyosha got up and went to Rakitin.\n\n\"Misha,\" he said, \"don't be angry. She wounded you, but don't be angry.\nYou heard what she said just now? You mustn't ask too much of human\nendurance, one must be merciful.\"\n\nAlyosha said this at the instinctive prompting of his heart. He felt\nobliged to speak and he turned to Rakitin. If Rakitin had not been there,\nhe would have spoken to the air. But Rakitin looked at him ironically and\nAlyosha stopped short.\n\n\"You were so primed up with your elder's teaching last night that now you\nhave to let it off on me, Alexey, man of God!\" said Rakitin, with a smile\nof hatred.\n\n\"Don't laugh, Rakitin, don't smile, don't talk of the dead--he was better\nthan any one in the world!\" cried Alyosha, with tears in his voice. \"I\ndidn't speak to you as a judge but as the lowest of the judged. What am I\nbeside her? I came here seeking my ruin, and said to myself, 'What does it\nmatter?' in my cowardliness, but she, after five years in torment, as soon\nas any one says a word from the heart to her--it makes her forget\neverything, forgive everything, in her tears! The man who has wronged her\nhas come back, he sends for her and she forgives him everything, and\nhastens joyfully to meet him and she won't take a knife with her. She\nwon't! No, I am not like that. I don't know whether you are, Misha, but I\nam not like that. It's a lesson to me.... She is more loving than we....\nHave you heard her speak before of what she has just told us? No, you\nhaven't; if you had, you'd have understood her long ago ... and the person\ninsulted the day before yesterday must forgive her, too! She will, when\nshe knows ... and she shall know.... This soul is not yet at peace with\nitself, one must be tender with it ... there may be a treasure in that\nsoul....\"\n\nAlyosha stopped, because he caught his breath. In spite of his ill-humor\nRakitin looked at him with astonishment. He had never expected such a\ntirade from the gentle Alyosha.\n\n\"She's found some one to plead her cause! Why, are you in love with her?\nAgrafena Alexandrovna, our monk's really in love with you, you've made a\nconquest!\" he cried, with a coarse laugh.\n\nGrushenka lifted her head from the pillow and looked at Alyosha with a\ntender smile shining on her tear-stained face.\n\n\"Let him alone, Alyosha, my cherub; you see what he is, he is not a person\nfor you to speak to. Mihail Osipovitch,\" she turned to Rakitin, \"I meant\nto beg your pardon for being rude to you, but now I don't want to.\nAlyosha, come to me, sit down here.\" She beckoned to him with a happy\nsmile. \"That's right, sit here. Tell me,\" she shook him by the hand and\npeeped into his face, smiling, \"tell me, do I love that man or not? the\nman who wronged me, do I love him or not? Before you came, I lay here in\nthe dark, asking my heart whether I loved him. Decide for me, Alyosha, the\ntime has come, it shall be as you say. Am I to forgive him or not?\"\n\n\"But you have forgiven him already,\" said Alyosha, smiling.\n\n\"Yes, I really have forgiven him,\" Grushenka murmured thoughtfully. \"What\nan abject heart! To my abject heart!\" She snatched up a glass from the\ntable, emptied it at a gulp, lifted it in the air and flung it on the\nfloor. The glass broke with a crash. A little cruel line came into her\nsmile.\n\n\"Perhaps I haven't forgiven him, though,\" she said, with a sort of menace\nin her voice, and she dropped her eyes to the ground as though she were\ntalking to herself. \"Perhaps my heart is only getting ready to forgive. I\nshall struggle with my heart. You see, Alyosha, I've grown to love my\ntears in these five years.... Perhaps I only love my resentment, not him\n...\"\n\n\"Well, I shouldn't care to be in his shoes,\" hissed Rakitin.\n\n\"Well, you won't be, Rakitin, you'll never be in his shoes. You shall\nblack my shoes, Rakitin, that's the place you are fit for. You'll never\nget a woman like me ... and he won't either, perhaps ...\"\n\n\"Won't he? Then why are you dressed up like that?\" said Rakitin, with a\nvenomous sneer.\n\n\"Don't taunt me with dressing up, Rakitin, you don't know all that is in\nmy heart! If I choose to tear off my finery, I'll tear it off at once,\nthis minute,\" she cried in a resonant voice. \"You don't know what that\nfinery is for, Rakitin! Perhaps I shall see him and say: 'Have you ever\nseen me look like this before?' He left me a thin, consumptive cry-baby of\nseventeen. I'll sit by him, fascinate him and work him up. 'Do you see\nwhat I am like now?' I'll say to him; 'well, and that's enough for you, my\ndear sir, there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip!' That may be what\nthe finery is for, Rakitin.\" Grushenka finished with a malicious laugh.\n\"I'm violent and resentful, Alyosha, I'll tear off my finery, I'll destroy\nmy beauty, I'll scorch my face, slash it with a knife, and turn beggar. If\nI choose, I won't go anywhere now to see any one. If I choose, I'll send\nKuzma back all he has ever given me, to-morrow, and all his money and I'll\ngo out charing for the rest of my life. You think I wouldn't do it,\nRakitin, that I would not dare to do it? I would, I would, I could do it\ndirectly, only don't exasperate me ... and I'll send him about his\nbusiness, I'll snap my fingers in his face, he shall never see me again!\"\n\nShe uttered the last words in an hysterical scream, but broke down again,\nhid her face in her hands, buried it in the pillow and shook with sobs.\n\nRakitin got up.\n\n\"It's time we were off,\" he said, \"it's late, we shall be shut out of the\nmonastery.\"\n\nGrushenka leapt up from her place.\n\n\"Surely you don't want to go, Alyosha!\" she cried, in mournful surprise.\n\"What are you doing to me? You've stirred up my feeling, tortured me, and\nnow you'll leave me to face this night alone!\"\n\n\"He can hardly spend the night with you! Though if he wants to, let him!\nI'll go alone,\" Rakitin scoffed jeeringly.\n\n\"Hush, evil tongue!\" Grushenka cried angrily at him; \"you never said such\nwords to me as he has come to say.\"\n\n\"What has he said to you so special?\" asked Rakitin irritably.\n\n\"I can't say, I don't know. I don't know what he said to me, it went\nstraight to my heart; he has wrung my heart.... He is the first, the only\none who has pitied me, that's what it is. Why did you not come before, you\nangel?\" She fell on her knees before him as though in a sudden frenzy.\n\"I've been waiting all my life for some one like you, I knew that some one\nlike you would come and forgive me. I believed that, nasty as I am, some\none would really love me, not only with a shameful love!\"\n\n\"What have I done to you?\" answered Alyosha, bending over her with a\ntender smile, and gently taking her by the hands; \"I only gave you an\nonion, nothing but a tiny little onion, that was all!\"\n\nHe was moved to tears himself as he said it. At that moment there was a\nsudden noise in the passage, some one came into the hall. Grushenka jumped\nup, seeming greatly alarmed. Fenya ran noisily into the room, crying out:\n\n\"Mistress, mistress darling, a messenger has galloped up,\" she cried,\nbreathless and joyful. \"A carriage from Mokroe for you, Timofey the\ndriver, with three horses, they are just putting in fresh horses.... A\nletter, here's the letter, mistress.\"\n\nA letter was in her hand and she waved it in the air all the while she\ntalked. Grushenka snatched the letter from her and carried it to the\ncandle. It was only a note, a few lines. She read it in one instant.\n\n\"He has sent for me,\" she cried, her face white and distorted, with a wan\nsmile; \"he whistles! Crawl back, little dog!\"\n\nBut only for one instant she stood as though hesitating; suddenly the\nblood rushed to her head and sent a glow to her cheeks.\n\n\"I will go,\" she cried; \"five years of my life! Good-by! Good-by, Alyosha,\nmy fate is sealed. Go, go, leave me all of you, don't let me see you\nagain! Grushenka is flying to a new life.... Don't you remember evil\nagainst me either, Rakitin. I may be going to my death! Ugh! I feel as\nthough I were drunk!\"\n\nShe suddenly left them and ran into her bedroom.\n\n\"Well, she has no thoughts for us now!\" grumbled Rakitin. \"Let's go, or we\nmay hear that feminine shriek again. I am sick of all these tears and\ncries.\"\n\nAlyosha mechanically let himself be led out. In the yard stood a covered\ncart. Horses were being taken out of the shafts, men were running to and\nfro with a lantern. Three fresh horses were being led in at the open gate.\nBut when Alyosha and Rakitin reached the bottom of the steps, Grushenka's\nbedroom window was suddenly opened and she called in a ringing voice after\nAlyosha:\n\n\"Alyosha, give my greetings to your brother Mitya and tell him not to\nremember evil against me, though I have brought him misery. And tell him,\ntoo, in my words: 'Grushenka has fallen to a scoundrel, and not to you,\nnoble heart.' And add, too, that Grushenka loved him only one hour, only\none short hour she loved him--so let him remember that hour all his\nlife--say, 'Grushenka tells you to!' \"\n\nShe ended in a voice full of sobs. The window was shut with a slam.\n\n\"H'm, h'm!\" growled Rakitin, laughing, \"she murders your brother Mitya and\nthen tells him to remember it all his life! What ferocity!\"\n\nAlyosha made no reply, he seemed not to have heard. He walked fast beside\nRakitin as though in a terrible hurry. He was lost in thought and moved\nmechanically. Rakitin felt a sudden twinge as though he had been touched\non an open wound. He had expected something quite different by bringing\nGrushenka and Alyosha together. Something very different from what he had\nhoped for had happened.\n\n\"He is a Pole, that officer of hers,\" he began again, restraining himself;\n\"and indeed he is not an officer at all now. He served in the customs in\nSiberia, somewhere on the Chinese frontier, some puny little beggar of a\nPole, I expect. Lost his job, they say. He's heard now that Grushenka's\nsaved a little money, so he's turned up again--that's the explanation of\nthe mystery.\"\n\nAgain Alyosha seemed not to hear. Rakitin could not control himself.\n\n\"Well, so you've saved the sinner?\" he laughed spitefully. \"Have you\nturned the Magdalene into the true path? Driven out the seven devils, eh?\nSo you see the miracles you were looking out for just now have come to\npass!\"\n\n\"Hush, Rakitin,\" Alyosha answered with an aching heart.\n\n\"So you despise me now for those twenty-five roubles? I've sold my friend,\nyou think. But you are not Christ, you know, and I am not Judas.\"\n\n\"Oh, Rakitin, I assure you I'd forgotten about it,\" cried Alyosha, \"you\nremind me of it yourself....\"\n\nBut this was the last straw for Rakitin.\n\n\"Damnation take you all and each of you!\" he cried suddenly, \"why the\ndevil did I take you up? I don't want to know you from this time forward.\nGo alone, there's your road!\"\n\nAnd he turned abruptly into another street, leaving Alyosha alone in the\ndark. Alyosha came out of the town and walked across the fields to the\nmonastery.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. Cana Of Galilee\n\n\nIt was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha returned\nto the hermitage; the door-keeper let him in by a special entrance. It had\nstruck nine o'clock--the hour of rest and repose after a day of such\nagitation for all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and went into the\nelder's cell where his coffin was now standing. There was no one in the\ncell but Father Paissy, reading the Gospel in solitude over the coffin,\nand the young novice Porfiry, who, exhausted by the previous night's\nconversation and the disturbing incidents of the day, was sleeping the\ndeep sound sleep of youth on the floor of the other room. Though Father\nPaissy heard Alyosha come in, he did not even look in his direction.\nAlyosha turned to the right from the door to the corner, fell on his knees\nand began to pray.\n\nHis soul was overflowing but with mingled feelings; no single sensation\nstood out distinctly; on the contrary, one drove out another in a slow,\ncontinual rotation. But there was a sweetness in his heart and, strange to\nsay, Alyosha was not surprised at it. Again he saw that coffin before him,\nthe hidden dead figure so precious to him, but the weeping and poignant\ngrief of the morning was no longer aching in his soul. As soon as he came\nin, he fell down before the coffin as before a holy shrine, but joy, joy\nwas glowing in his mind and in his heart. The one window of the cell was\nopen, the air was fresh and cool. \"So the smell must have become stronger,\nif they opened the window,\" thought Alyosha. But even this thought of the\nsmell of corruption, which had seemed to him so awful and humiliating a\nfew hours before, no longer made him feel miserable or indignant. He began\nquietly praying, but he soon felt that he was praying almost mechanically.\nFragments of thought floated through his soul, flashed like stars and went\nout again at once, to be succeeded by others. But yet there was reigning\nin his soul a sense of the wholeness of things--something steadfast and\ncomforting--and he was aware of it himself. Sometimes he began praying\nardently, he longed to pour out his thankfulness and love....\n\nBut when he had begun to pray, he passed suddenly to something else, and\nsank into thought, forgetting both the prayer and what had interrupted it.\nHe began listening to what Father Paissy was reading, but worn out with\nexhaustion he gradually began to doze.\n\n\"_And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;_\" read Father\nPaissy. \"_And the mother of Jesus was there; And both Jesus was called,\nand his disciples, to the marriage._\"\n\n\"Marriage? What's that?... A marriage!\" floated whirling through Alyosha's\nmind. \"There is happiness for her, too.... She has gone to the feast....\nNo, she has not taken the knife.... That was only a tragic phrase.... Well\n... tragic phrases should be forgiven, they must be. Tragic phrases\ncomfort the heart.... Without them, sorrow would be too heavy for men to\nbear. Rakitin has gone off to the back alley. As long as Rakitin broods\nover his wrongs, he will always go off to the back alley.... But the high\nroad ... The road is wide and straight and bright as crystal, and the sun\nis at the end of it.... Ah!... What's being read?\"...\n\n\"_And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have\nno wine_\" ... Alyosha heard.\n\n\"Ah, yes, I was missing that, and I didn't want to miss it, I love that\npassage: it's Cana of Galilee, the first miracle.... Ah, that miracle! Ah,\nthat sweet miracle! It was not men's grief, but their joy Christ visited,\nHe worked His first miracle to help men's gladness.... 'He who loves men\nloves their gladness, too' ... He was always repeating that, it was one of\nhis leading ideas.... 'There's no living without joy,' Mitya says.... Yes,\nMitya.... 'Everything that is true and good is always full of\nforgiveness,' he used to say that, too\" ...\n\n\"_Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what has it to do with thee or me? Mine\nhour is not yet come._\n\n\"_His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do\nit_\" ...\n\n\"Do it.... Gladness, the gladness of some poor, very poor, people.... Of\ncourse they were poor, since they hadn't wine enough even at a wedding....\nThe historians write that, in those days, the people living about the Lake\nof Gennesaret were the poorest that can possibly be imagined ... and\nanother great heart, that other great being, His Mother, knew that He had\ncome not only to make His great terrible sacrifice. She knew that His\nheart was open even to the simple, artless merrymaking of some obscure and\nunlearned people, who had warmly bidden Him to their poor wedding. 'Mine\nhour is not yet come,' He said, with a soft smile (He must have smiled\ngently to her). And, indeed, was it to make wine abundant at poor weddings\nHe had come down to earth? And yet He went and did as she asked Him....\nAh, he is reading again\"....\n\n\"_Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled\nthem up to the brim._\n\n\"_And he saith unto them, Draw out now and bear unto the governor of the\nfeast. And they bare it._\n\n\"_When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and\nknew not whence it was; (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the\ngovernor of the feast called the bridegroom,_\n\n\"_And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine;\nand when men have well drunk, that which is worse; but thou hast kept the\ngood wine until now._\"\n\n\"But what's this, what's this? Why is the room growing wider?... Ah, yes\n... It's the marriage, the wedding ... yes, of course. Here are the\nguests, here are the young couple sitting, and the merry crowd and ...\nWhere is the wise governor of the feast? But who is this? Who? Again the\nwalls are receding.... Who is getting up there from the great table?\nWhat!... He here, too? But he's in the coffin ... but he's here, too. He\nhas stood up, he sees me, he is coming here.... God!\"...\n\nYes, he came up to him, to him, he, the little, thin old man, with tiny\nwrinkles on his face, joyful and laughing softly. There was no coffin now,\nand he was in the same dress as he had worn yesterday sitting with them,\nwhen the visitors had gathered about him. His face was uncovered, his eyes\nwere shining. How was this, then? He, too, had been called to the feast.\nHe, too, at the marriage of Cana in Galilee....\n\n\"Yes, my dear, I am called, too, called and bidden,\" he heard a soft voice\nsaying over him. \"Why have you hidden yourself here, out of sight? You\ncome and join us too.\"\n\nIt was his voice, the voice of Father Zossima. And it must be he, since he\ncalled him!\n\nThe elder raised Alyosha by the hand and he rose from his knees.\n\n\"We are rejoicing,\" the little, thin old man went on. \"We are drinking the\nnew wine, the wine of new, great gladness; do you see how many guests?\nHere are the bride and bridegroom, here is the wise governor of the feast,\nhe is tasting the new wine. Why do you wonder at me? I gave an onion to a\nbeggar, so I, too, am here. And many here have given only an onion\neach--only one little onion.... What are all our deeds? And you, my gentle\none, you, my kind boy, you too have known how to give a famished woman an\nonion to-day. Begin your work, dear one, begin it, gentle one!... Do you\nsee our Sun, do you see Him?\"\n\n\"I am afraid ... I dare not look,\" whispered Alyosha.\n\n\"Do not fear Him. He is terrible in His greatness, awful in His sublimity,\nbut infinitely merciful. He has made Himself like unto us from love and\nrejoices with us. He is changing the water into wine that the gladness of\nthe guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new guests, He is calling\nnew ones unceasingly for ever and ever.... There they are bringing new\nwine. Do you see they are bringing the vessels....\"\n\nSomething glowed in Alyosha's heart, something filled it till it ached,\ntears of rapture rose from his soul.... He stretched out his hands,\nuttered a cry and waked up.\n\nAgain the coffin, the open window, and the soft, solemn, distinct reading\nof the Gospel. But Alyosha did not listen to the reading. It was strange,\nhe had fallen asleep on his knees, but now he was on his feet, and\nsuddenly, as though thrown forward, with three firm rapid steps he went\nright up to the coffin. His shoulder brushed against Father Paissy without\nhis noticing it. Father Paissy raised his eyes for an instant from his\nbook, but looked away again at once, seeing that something strange was\nhappening to the boy. Alyosha gazed for half a minute at the coffin, at\nthe covered, motionless dead man that lay in the coffin, with the ikon on\nhis breast and the peaked cap with the octangular cross, on his head. He\nhad only just been hearing his voice, and that voice was still ringing in\nhis ears. He was listening, still expecting other words, but suddenly he\nturned sharply and went out of the cell.\n\nHe did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul,\noverflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault\nof heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless\nabove him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the\nhorizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white\ntowers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire\nsky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were\nslumbering till morning. The silence of earth seemed to melt into the\nsilence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of\nthe stars....\n\nAlyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did\nnot know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed so\nirresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing\nand watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love\nit for ever and ever. \"Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love\nthose tears,\" echoed in his soul.\n\nWhat was he weeping over?\n\nOh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were\nshining to him from the abyss of space, and \"he was not ashamed of that\necstasy.\" There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of\nGod, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over \"in contact\nwith other worlds.\" He longed to forgive every one and for everything, and\nto beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for\neverything. \"And others are praying for me too,\" echoed again in his soul.\nBut with every instant he felt clearly and, as it were, tangibly, that\nsomething firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had entered into his\nsoul. It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his\nmind--and it was for all his life and for ever and ever. He had fallen on\nthe earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and\nfelt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never, all\nhis life long, could Alyosha forget that minute.\n\n\"Some one visited my soul in that hour,\" he used to say afterwards, with\nimplicit faith in his words.\n\nWithin three days he left the monastery in accordance with the words of\nhis elder, who had bidden him \"sojourn in the world.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook VIII. Mitya Chapter I. Kuzma Samsonov\n\n\nBut Dmitri, to whom Grushenka, flying away to a new life, had left her\nlast greetings, bidding him remember the hour of her love for ever, knew\nnothing of what had happened to her, and was at that moment in a condition\nof feverish agitation and activity. For the last two days he had been in\nsuch an inconceivable state of mind that he might easily have fallen ill\nwith brain fever, as he said himself afterwards. Alyosha had not been able\nto find him the morning before, and Ivan had not succeeded in meeting him\nat the tavern on the same day. The people at his lodgings, by his orders,\nconcealed his movements.\n\nHe had spent those two days literally rushing in all directions,\n\"struggling with his destiny and trying to save himself,\" as he expressed\nit himself afterwards, and for some hours he even made a dash out of the\ntown on urgent business, terrible as it was to him to lose sight of\nGrushenka for a moment. All this was explained afterwards in detail, and\nconfirmed by documentary evidence; but for the present we will only note\nthe most essential incidents of those two terrible days immediately\npreceding the awful catastrophe, that broke so suddenly upon him.\n\nThough Grushenka had, it is true, loved him for an hour, genuinely and\nsincerely, yet she tortured him sometimes cruelly and mercilessly. The\nworst of it was that he could never tell what she meant to do. To prevail\nupon her by force or kindness was also impossible: she would yield to\nnothing. She would only have become angry and turned away from him\naltogether, he knew that well already. He suspected, quite correctly, that\nshe, too, was passing through an inward struggle, and was in a state of\nextraordinary indecision, that she was making up her mind to something,\nand unable to determine upon it. And so, not without good reason, he\ndivined, with a sinking heart, that at moments she must simply hate him\nand his passion. And so, perhaps, it was, but what was distressing\nGrushenka he did not understand. For him the whole tormenting question lay\nbetween him and Fyodor Pavlovitch.\n\nHere, we must note, by the way, one certain fact: he was firmly persuaded\nthat Fyodor Pavlovitch would offer, or perhaps had offered, Grushenka\nlawful wedlock, and did not for a moment believe that the old voluptuary\nhoped to gain his object for three thousand roubles. Mitya had reached\nthis conclusion from his knowledge of Grushenka and her character. That\nwas how it was that he could believe at times that all Grushenka's\nuneasiness rose from not knowing which of them to choose, which was most\nto her advantage.\n\nStrange to say, during those days it never occurred to him to think of the\napproaching return of the \"officer,\" that is, of the man who had been such\na fatal influence in Grushenka's life, and whose arrival she was expecting\nwith such emotion and dread. It is true that of late Grushenka had been\nvery silent about it. Yet he was perfectly aware of a letter she had\nreceived a month ago from her seducer, and had heard of it from her own\nlips. He partly knew, too, what the letter contained. In a moment of spite\nGrushenka had shown him that letter, but to her astonishment he attached\nhardly any consequence to it. It would be hard to say why this was.\nPerhaps, weighed down by all the hideous horror of his struggle with his\nown father for this woman, he was incapable of imagining any danger more\nterrible, at any rate for the time. He simply did not believe in a suitor\nwho suddenly turned up again after five years' disappearance, still less\nin his speedy arrival. Moreover, in the \"officer's\" first letter which had\nbeen shown to Mitya, the possibility of his new rival's visit was very\nvaguely suggested. The letter was very indefinite, high-flown, and full of\nsentimentality. It must be noted that Grushenka had concealed from him the\nlast lines of the letter, in which his return was alluded to more\ndefinitely. He had, besides, noticed at that moment, he remembered\nafterwards, a certain involuntary proud contempt for this missive from\nSiberia on Grushenka's face. Grushenka told him nothing of what had passed\nlater between her and this rival; so that by degrees he had completely\nforgotten the officer's existence.\n\nHe felt that whatever might come later, whatever turn things might take,\nhis final conflict with Fyodor Pavlovitch was close upon him, and must be\ndecided before anything else. With a sinking heart he was expecting every\nmoment Grushenka's decision, always believing that it would come suddenly,\non the impulse of the moment. All of a sudden she would say to him: \"Take\nme, I'm yours for ever,\" and it would all be over. He would seize her and\nbear her away at once to the ends of the earth. Oh, then he would bear her\naway at once, as far, far away as possible; to the farthest end of Russia,\nif not of the earth, then he would marry her, and settle down with her\nincognito, so that no one would know anything about them, there, here, or\nanywhere. Then, oh, then, a new life would begin at once!\n\nOf this different, reformed and \"virtuous\" life (\"it must, it must be\nvirtuous\") he dreamed feverishly at every moment. He thirsted for that\nreformation and renewal. The filthy morass, in which he had sunk of his\nown free will, was too revolting to him, and, like very many men in such\ncases, he put faith above all in change of place. If only it were not for\nthese people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if only he\ncould fly away from this accursed place--he would be altogether\nregenerated, would enter on a new path. That was what he believed in, and\nwhat he was yearning for.\n\nBut all this could only be on condition of the first, the _happy_ solution\nof the question. There was another possibility, a different and awful\nending. Suddenly she might say to him: \"Go away. I have just come to terms\nwith Fyodor Pavlovitch. I am going to marry him and don't want you\"--and\nthen ... but then.... But Mitya did not know what would happen then. Up to\nthe last hour he didn't know. That must be said to his credit. He had no\ndefinite intentions, had planned no crime. He was simply watching and\nspying in agony, while he prepared himself for the first, happy solution\nof his destiny. He drove away any other idea, in fact. But for that ending\na quite different anxiety arose, a new, incidental, but yet fatal and\ninsoluble difficulty presented itself.\n\nIf she were to say to him: \"I'm yours; take me away,\" how could he take\nher away? Where had he the means, the money to do it? It was just at this\ntime that all sources of revenue from Fyodor Pavlovitch, doles which had\ngone on without interruption for so many years, ceased. Grushenka had\nmoney, of course, but with regard to this Mitya suddenly evinced\nextraordinary pride; he wanted to carry her away and begin the new life\nwith her himself, at his own expense, not at hers. He could not conceive\nof taking her money, and the very idea caused him a pang of intense\nrepulsion. I won't enlarge on this fact or analyze it here, but confine\nmyself to remarking that this was his attitude at the moment. All this may\nhave arisen indirectly and unconsciously from the secret stings of his\nconscience for the money of Katerina Ivanovna that he had dishonestly\nappropriated. \"I've been a scoundrel to one of them, and I shall be a\nscoundrel again to the other directly,\" was his feeling then, as he\nexplained after: \"and when Grushenka knows, she won't care for such a\nscoundrel.\"\n\nWhere then was he to get the means, where was he to get the fateful money?\nWithout it, all would be lost and nothing could be done, \"and only because\nI hadn't the money. Oh, the shame of it!\"\n\nTo anticipate things: he did, perhaps, know where to get the money, knew,\nperhaps, where it lay at that moment. I will say no more of this here, as\nit will all be clear later. But his chief trouble, I must explain however\nobscurely, lay in the fact that to have that sum he knew of, to _have the\nright_ to take it, he must first restore Katerina Ivanovna's three\nthousand--if not, \"I'm a common pickpocket, I'm a scoundrel, and I don't\nwant to begin a new life as a scoundrel,\" Mitya decided. And so he made up\nhis mind to move heaven and earth to return Katerina Ivanovna that three\nthousand, and that _first of all_. The final stage of this decision, so to\nsay, had been reached only during the last hours, that is, after his last\ninterview with Alyosha, two days before, on the high-road, on the evening\nwhen Grushenka had insulted Katerina Ivanovna, and Mitya, after hearing\nAlyosha's account of it, had admitted that he was a scoundrel, and told\nhim to tell Katerina Ivanovna so, if it could be any comfort to her. After\nparting from his brother on that night, he had felt in his frenzy that it\nwould be better \"to murder and rob some one than fail to pay my debt to\nKatya. I'd rather every one thought me a robber and a murderer, I'd rather\ngo to Siberia than that Katya should have the right to say that I deceived\nher and stole her money, and used her money to run away with Grushenka and\nbegin a new life! That I can't do!\" So Mitya decided, grinding his teeth,\nand he might well fancy at times that his brain would give way. But\nmeanwhile he went on struggling....\n\nStrange to say, though one would have supposed there was nothing left for\nhim but despair--for what chance had he, with nothing in the world, to\nraise such a sum?--yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he would\nget that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him of\nitself, as though it might drop from heaven. That is just how it is with\npeople who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money, except\nto squander what has come to them by inheritance without any effort of\ntheir own, and have no notion how money is obtained. A whirl of the most\nfantastic notions took possession of his brain immediately after he had\nparted with Alyosha two days before, and threw his thoughts into a tangle\nof confusion. This is how it was he pitched first on a perfectly wild\nenterprise. And perhaps to men of that kind in such circumstances the most\nimpossible, fantastic schemes occur first, and seem most practical.\n\nHe suddenly determined to go to Samsonov, the merchant who was Grushenka's\nprotector, and to propose a \"scheme\" to him, and by means of it to obtain\nfrom him at once the whole of the sum required. Of the commercial value of\nhis scheme he had no doubt, not the slightest, and was only uncertain how\nSamsonov would look upon his freak, supposing he were to consider it from\nany but the commercial point of view. Though Mitya knew the merchant by\nsight, he was not acquainted with him and had never spoken a word to him.\nBut for some unknown reason he had long entertained the conviction that\nthe old reprobate, who was lying at death's door, would perhaps not at all\nobject now to Grushenka's securing a respectable position, and marrying a\nman \"to be depended upon.\" And he believed not only that he would not\nobject, but that this was what he desired, and, if opportunity arose, that\nhe would be ready to help. From some rumor, or perhaps from some stray\nword of Grushenka's, he had gathered further that the old man would\nperhaps prefer him to Fyodor Pavlovitch for Grushenka.\n\nPossibly many of the readers of my novel will feel that in reckoning on\nsuch assistance, and being ready to take his bride, so to speak, from the\nhands of her protector, Dmitri showed great coarseness and want of\ndelicacy. I will only observe that Mitya looked upon Grushenka's past as\nsomething completely over. He looked on that past with infinite pity and\nresolved with all the fervor of his passion that when once Grushenka told\nhim she loved him and would marry him, it would mean the beginning of a\nnew Grushenka and a new Dmitri, free from every vice. They would forgive\none another and would begin their lives afresh. As for Kuzma Samsonov,\nDmitri looked upon him as a man who had exercised a fateful influence in\nthat remote past of Grushenka's, though she had never loved him, and who\nwas now himself a thing of the past, completely done with, and, so to say,\nnon-existent. Besides, Mitya hardly looked upon him as a man at all, for\nit was known to every one in the town that he was only a shattered wreck,\nwhose relations with Grushenka had changed their character and were now\nsimply paternal, and that this had been so for a long time.\n\nIn any case there was much simplicity on Mitya's part in all this, for in\nspite of all his vices, he was a very simple-hearted man. It was an\ninstance of this simplicity that Mitya was seriously persuaded that, being\non the eve of his departure for the next world, old Kuzma must sincerely\nrepent of his past relations with Grushenka, and that she had no more\ndevoted friend and protector in the world than this, now harmless old man.\n\nAfter his conversation with Alyosha, at the cross-roads, he hardly slept\nall night, and at ten o'clock next morning, he was at the house of\nSamsonov and telling the servant to announce him. It was a very large and\ngloomy old house of two stories, with a lodge and outhouses. In the lower\nstory lived Samsonov's two married sons with their families, his old\nsister, and his unmarried daughter. In the lodge lived two of his clerks,\none of whom also had a large family. Both the lodge and the lower story\nwere overcrowded, but the old man kept the upper floor to himself, and\nwould not even let the daughter live there with him, though she waited\nupon him, and in spite of her asthma was obliged at certain fixed hours,\nand at any time he might call her, to run upstairs to him from below.\n\nThis upper floor contained a number of large rooms kept purely for show,\nfurnished in the old-fashioned merchant style, with long monotonous rows\nof clumsy mahogany chairs along the walls, with glass chandeliers under\nshades, and gloomy mirrors on the walls. All these rooms were entirely\nempty and unused, for the old man kept to one room, a small, remote\nbedroom, where he was waited upon by an old servant with a kerchief on her\nhead, and by a lad, who used to sit on the locker in the passage. Owing to\nhis swollen legs, the old man could hardly walk at all, and was only\nrarely lifted from his leather arm-chair, when the old woman supporting\nhim led him up and down the room once or twice. He was morose and taciturn\neven with this old woman.\n\nWhen he was informed of the arrival of the \"captain,\" he at once refused\nto see him. But Mitya persisted and sent his name up again. Samsonov\nquestioned the lad minutely: What he looked like? Whether he was drunk?\nWas he going to make a row? The answer he received was: that he was sober,\nbut wouldn't go away. The old man again refused to see him. Then Mitya,\nwho had foreseen this, and purposely brought pencil and paper with him,\nwrote clearly on the piece of paper the words: \"On most important business\nclosely concerning Agrafena Alexandrovna,\" and sent it up to the old man.\n\nAfter thinking a little Samsonov told the lad to take the visitor to the\ndrawing-room, and sent the old woman downstairs with a summons to his\nyounger son to come upstairs to him at once. This younger son, a man over\nsix foot and of exceptional physical strength, who was closely-shaven and\ndressed in the European style, though his father still wore a kaftan and a\nbeard, came at once without a comment. All the family trembled before the\nfather. The old man had sent for this giant, not because he was afraid of\nthe \"captain\" (he was by no means of a timorous temper), but in order to\nhave a witness in case of any emergency. Supported by his son and the\nservant-lad, he waddled at last into the drawing-room. It may be assumed\nthat he felt considerable curiosity. The drawing-room in which Mitya was\nawaiting him was a vast, dreary room that laid a weight of depression on\nthe heart. It had a double row of windows, a gallery, marbled walls, and\nthree immense chandeliers with glass lusters covered with shades.\n\nMitya was sitting on a little chair at the entrance, awaiting his fate\nwith nervous impatience. When the old man appeared at the opposite door,\nseventy feet away, Mitya jumped up at once, and with his long, military\nstride walked to meet him. Mitya was well dressed, in a frock-coat,\nbuttoned up, with a round hat and black gloves in his hands, just as he\nhad been three days before at the elder's, at the family meeting with his\nfather and brothers. The old man waited for him, standing dignified and\nunbending, and Mitya felt at once that he had looked him through and\nthrough as he advanced. Mitya was greatly impressed, too, with Samsonov's\nimmensely swollen face. His lower lip, which had always been thick, hung\ndown now, looking like a bun. He bowed to his guest in dignified silence,\nmotioned him to a low chair by the sofa, and, leaning on his son's arm he\nbegan lowering himself on to the sofa opposite, groaning painfully, so\nthat Mitya, seeing his painful exertions, immediately felt remorseful and\nsensitively conscious of his insignificance in the presence of the\ndignified person he had ventured to disturb.\n\n\"What is it you want of me, sir?\" said the old man, deliberately,\ndistinctly, severely, but courteously, when he was at last seated.\n\nMitya started, leapt up, but sat down again. Then he began at once\nspeaking with loud, nervous haste, gesticulating, and in a positive\nfrenzy. He was unmistakably a man driven into a corner, on the brink of\nruin, catching at the last straw, ready to sink if he failed. Old Samsonov\nprobably grasped all this in an instant, though his face remained cold and\nimmovable as a statue's.\n\n\"Most honored sir, Kuzma Kuzmitch, you have no doubt heard more than once\nof my disputes with my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, who robbed me\nof my inheritance from my mother ... seeing the whole town is gossiping\nabout it ... for here every one's gossiping of what they shouldn't ... and\nbesides, it might have reached you through Grushenka ... I beg your\npardon, through Agrafena Alexandrovna ... Agrafena Alexandrovna, the lady\nfor whom I have the highest respect and esteem ...\"\n\nSo Mitya began, and broke down at the first sentence. We will not\nreproduce his speech word for word, but will only summarize the gist of\nit. Three months ago, he said, he had of express intention (Mitya\npurposely used these words instead of \"intentionally\") consulted a lawyer\nin the chief town of the province, \"a distinguished lawyer, Kuzma\nKuzmitch, Pavel Pavlovitch Korneplodov. You have perhaps heard of him? A\nman of vast intellect, the mind of a statesman ... he knows you, too ...\nspoke of you in the highest terms ...\" Mitya broke down again. But these\nbreaks did not deter him. He leapt instantly over the gaps, and struggled\non and on.\n\nThis Korneplodov, after questioning him minutely, and inspecting the\ndocuments he was able to bring him (Mitya alluded somewhat vaguely to\nthese documents, and slurred over the subject with special haste),\nreported that they certainly might take proceedings concerning the village\nof Tchermashnya, which ought, he said, to have come to him, Mitya, from\nhis mother, and so checkmate the old villain, his father ... \"because\nevery door was not closed and justice might still find a loophole.\" In\nfact, he might reckon on an additional sum of six or even seven thousand\nroubles from Fyodor Pavlovitch, as Tchermashnya was worth, at least,\ntwenty-five thousand, he might say twenty-eight thousand, in fact,\n\"thirty, thirty, Kuzma Kuzmitch, and would you believe it, I didn't get\nseventeen from that heartless man!\" So he, Mitya, had thrown the business\nup, for the time, knowing nothing about the law, but on coming here was\nstruck dumb by a cross-claim made upon him (here Mitya went adrift again\nand again took a flying leap forward), \"so will not you, excellent and\nhonored Kuzma Kuzmitch, be willing to take up all my claims against that\nunnatural monster, and pay me a sum down of only three thousand?... You\nsee, you cannot, in any case, lose over it. On my honor, my honor, I swear\nthat. Quite the contrary, you may make six or seven thousand instead of\nthree.\" Above all, he wanted this concluded that very day.\n\n\"I'll do the business with you at a notary's, or whatever it is ... in\nfact, I'm ready to do anything.... I'll hand over all the deeds ...\nwhatever you want, sign anything ... and we could draw up the agreement at\nonce ... and if it were possible, if it were only possible, that very\nmorning.... You could pay me that three thousand, for there isn't a\ncapitalist in this town to compare with you, and so would save me from ...\nwould save me, in fact ... for a good, I might say an honorable action....\nFor I cherish the most honorable feelings for a certain person, whom you\nknow well, and care for as a father. I would not have come, indeed, if it\nhad not been as a father. And, indeed, it's a struggle of three in this\nbusiness, for it's fate--that's a fearful thing, Kuzma Kuzmitch! A tragedy,\nKuzma Kuzmitch, a tragedy! And as you've dropped out long ago, it's a tug-\nof-war between two. I'm expressing it awkwardly, perhaps, but I'm not a\nliterary man. You see, I'm on the one side, and that monster on the other.\nSo you must choose. It's either I or the monster. It all lies in your\nhands--the fate of three lives, and the happiness of two.... Excuse me, I'm\nmaking a mess of it, but you understand ... I see from your venerable eyes\nthat you understand ... and if you don't understand, I'm done for ... so\nyou see!\"\n\nMitya broke off his clumsy speech with that, \"so you see!\" and jumping up\nfrom his seat, awaited the answer to his foolish proposal. At the last\nphrase he had suddenly become hopelessly aware that it had all fallen\nflat, above all, that he had been talking utter nonsense.\n\n\"How strange it is! On the way here it seemed all right, and now it's\nnothing but nonsense.\" The idea suddenly dawned on his despairing mind.\nAll the while he had been talking, the old man sat motionless, watching\nhim with an icy expression in his eyes. After keeping him for a moment in\nsuspense, Kuzma Kuzmitch pronounced at last in the most positive and\nchilling tone:\n\n\"Excuse me, we don't undertake such business.\"\n\nMitya suddenly felt his legs growing weak under him.\n\n\"What am I to do now, Kuzma Kuzmitch?\" he muttered, with a pale smile. \"I\nsuppose it's all up with me--what do you think?\"\n\n\"Excuse me....\"\n\nMitya remained standing, staring motionless. He suddenly noticed a\nmovement in the old man's face. He started.\n\n\"You see, sir, business of that sort's not in our line,\" said the old man\nslowly. \"There's the court, and the lawyers--it's a perfect misery. But if\nyou like, there is a man here you might apply to.\"\n\n\"Good heavens! Who is it? You're my salvation, Kuzma Kuzmitch,\" faltered\nMitya.\n\n\"He doesn't live here, and he's not here just now. He is a peasant, he\ndoes business in timber. His name is Lyagavy. He's been haggling with\nFyodor Pavlovitch for the last year, over your copse at Tchermashnya. They\ncan't agree on the price, maybe you've heard? Now he's come back again and\nis staying with the priest at Ilyinskoe, about twelve versts from the\nVolovya station. He wrote to me, too, about the business of the copse,\nasking my advice. Fyodor Pavlovitch means to go and see him himself. So if\nyou were to be beforehand with Fyodor Pavlovitch and to make Lyagavy the\noffer you've made me, he might possibly--\"\n\n\"A brilliant idea!\" Mitya interrupted ecstatically. \"He's the very man, it\nwould just suit him. He's haggling with him for it, being asked too much,\nand here he would have all the documents entitling him to the property\nitself. Ha ha ha!\"\n\nAnd Mitya suddenly went off into his short, wooden laugh, startling\nSamsonov.\n\n\"How can I thank you, Kuzma Kuzmitch?\" cried Mitya effusively.\n\n\"Don't mention it,\" said Samsonov, inclining his head.\n\n\"But you don't know, you've saved me. Oh, it was a true presentiment\nbrought me to you.... So now to this priest!\"\n\n\"No need of thanks.\"\n\n\"I'll make haste and fly there. I'm afraid I've overtaxed your strength. I\nshall never forget it. It's a Russian says that, Kuzma Kuzmitch, a R-r-\nrussian!\"\n\n\"To be sure!\"\n\nMitya seized his hand to press it, but there was a malignant gleam in the\nold man's eye. Mitya drew back his hand, but at once blamed himself for\nhis mistrustfulness.\n\n\"It's because he's tired,\" he thought.\n\n\"For her sake! For her sake, Kuzma Kuzmitch! You understand that it's for\nher,\" he cried, his voice ringing through the room. He bowed, turned\nsharply round, and with the same long stride walked to the door without\nlooking back. He was trembling with delight.\n\n\"Everything was on the verge of ruin and my guardian angel saved me,\" was\nthe thought in his mind. And if such a business man as Samsonov (a most\nworthy old man, and what dignity!) had suggested this course, then ...\nthen success was assured. He would fly off immediately. \"I will be back\nbefore night, I shall be back at night and the thing is done. Could the\nold man have been laughing at me?\" exclaimed Mitya, as he strode towards\nhis lodging. He could, of course, imagine nothing, but that the advice was\npractical \"from such a business man\" with an understanding of the\nbusiness, with an understanding of this Lyagavy (curious surname!). Or--the\nold man was laughing at him.\n\nAlas! The second alternative was the correct one. Long afterwards, when\nthe catastrophe had happened, old Samsonov himself confessed, laughing,\nthat he had made a fool of the \"captain.\" He was a cold, spiteful and\nsarcastic man, liable to violent antipathies. Whether it was the\n\"captain's\" excited face, or the foolish conviction of the \"rake and\nspendthrift,\" that he, Samsonov, could be taken in by such a cock-and-bull\nstory as his scheme, or his jealousy of Grushenka, in whose name this\n\"scapegrace\" had rushed in on him with such a tale to get money which\nworked on the old man, I can't tell. But at the instant when Mitya stood\nbefore him, feeling his legs grow weak under him, and frantically\nexclaiming that he was ruined, at that moment the old man looked at him\nwith intense spite, and resolved to make a laughing-stock of him. When\nMitya had gone, Kuzma Kuzmitch, white with rage, turned to his son and\nbade him see to it that that beggar be never seen again, and never\nadmitted even into the yard, or else he'd--\n\nHe did not utter his threat. But even his son, who often saw him enraged,\ntrembled with fear. For a whole hour afterwards, the old man was shaking\nwith anger, and by evening he was worse, and sent for the doctor.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Lyagavy\n\n\nSo he must drive at full speed, and he had not the money for horses. He\nhad forty kopecks, and that was all, all that was left after so many years\nof prosperity! But he had at home an old silver watch which had long\nceased to go. He snatched it up and carried it to a Jewish watchmaker who\nhad a shop in the market-place. The Jew gave him six roubles for it.\n\n\"And I didn't expect that,\" cried Mitya, ecstatically. (He was still in a\nstate of ecstasy.) He seized his six roubles and ran home. At home he\nborrowed three roubles from the people of the house, who loved him so much\nthat they were pleased to give it him, though it was all they had. Mitya\nin his excitement told them on the spot that his fate would be decided\nthat day, and he described, in desperate haste, the whole scheme he had\nput before Samsonov, the latter's decision, his own hopes for the future,\nand so on. These people had been told many of their lodger's secrets\nbefore, and so looked upon him as a gentleman who was not at all proud,\nand almost one of themselves. Having thus collected nine roubles Mitya\nsent for posting-horses to take him to the Volovya station. This was how\nthe fact came to be remembered and established that \"at midday, on the day\nbefore the event, Mitya had not a farthing, and that he had sold his watch\nto get money and had borrowed three roubles from his landlord, all in the\npresence of witnesses.\"\n\nI note this fact, later on it will be apparent why I do so.\n\nThough he was radiant with the joyful anticipation that he would at last\nsolve all his difficulties, yet, as he drew near Volovya station, he\ntrembled at the thought of what Grushenka might be doing in his absence.\nWhat if she made up her mind to-day to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch? This was\nwhy he had gone off without telling her and why he left orders with his\nlandlady not to let out where he had gone, if any one came to inquire for\nhim.\n\n\"I must, I must get back to-night,\" he repeated, as he was jolted along in\nthe cart, \"and I dare say I shall have to bring this Lyagavy back here ...\nto draw up the deed.\" So mused Mitya, with a throbbing heart, but alas!\nhis dreams were not fated to be carried out.\n\nTo begin with, he was late, taking a short cut from Volovya station which\nturned out to be eighteen versts instead of twelve. Secondly, he did not\nfind the priest at home at Ilyinskoe; he had gone off to a neighboring\nvillage. While Mitya, setting off there with the same exhausted horses,\nwas looking for him, it was almost dark.\n\nThe priest, a shy and amiable looking little man, informed him at once\nthat though Lyagavy had been staying with him at first, he was now at\nSuhoy Possyolok, that he was staying the night in the forester's cottage,\nas he was buying timber there too. At Mitya's urgent request that he would\ntake him to Lyagavy at once, and by so doing \"save him, so to speak,\" the\npriest agreed, after some demur, to conduct him to Suhoy Possyolok; his\ncuriosity was obviously aroused. But, unluckily, he advised their going on\nfoot, as it would not be \"much over\" a verst. Mitya, of course, agreed,\nand marched off with his yard-long strides, so that the poor priest almost\nran after him. He was a very cautious man, though not old.\n\nMitya at once began talking to him, too, of his plans, nervously and\nexcitedly asking advice in regard to Lyagavy, and talking all the way. The\npriest listened attentively, but gave little advice. He turned off Mitya's\nquestions with: \"I don't know. Ah, I can't say. How can I tell?\" and so\non. When Mitya began to speak of his quarrel with his father over his\ninheritance, the priest was positively alarmed, as he was in some way\ndependent on Fyodor Pavlovitch. He inquired, however, with surprise, why\nhe called the peasant-trader Gorstkin, Lyagavy, and obligingly explained\nto Mitya that, though the man's name really was Lyagavy, he was never\ncalled so, as he would be grievously offended at the name, and that he\nmust be sure to call him Gorstkin, \"or you'll do nothing with him; he\nwon't even listen to you,\" said the priest in conclusion.\n\nMitya was somewhat surprised for a moment, and explained that that was\nwhat Samsonov had called him. On hearing this fact, the priest dropped the\nsubject, though he would have done well to put into words his doubt\nwhether, if Samsonov had sent him to that peasant, calling him Lyagavy,\nthere was not something wrong about it and he was turning him into\nridicule. But Mitya had no time to pause over such trifles. He hurried,\nstriding along, and only when he reached Suhoy Possyolok did he realize\nthat they had come not one verst, nor one and a half, but at least three.\nThis annoyed him, but he controlled himself.\n\nThey went into the hut. The forester lived in one half of the hut, and\nGorstkin was lodging in the other, the better room the other side of the\npassage. They went into that room and lighted a tallow candle. The hut was\nextremely overheated. On the table there was a samovar that had gone out,\na tray with cups, an empty rum bottle, a bottle of vodka partly full, and\nsome half-eaten crusts of wheaten bread. The visitor himself lay stretched\nat full length on the bench, with his coat crushed up under his head for a\npillow, snoring heavily. Mitya stood in perplexity.\n\n\"Of course I must wake him. My business is too important. I've come in\nsuch haste. I'm in a hurry to get back to-day,\" he said in great\nagitation. But the priest and the forester stood in silence, not giving\ntheir opinion. Mitya went up and began trying to wake him himself; he\ntried vigorously, but the sleeper did not wake.\n\n\"He's drunk,\" Mitya decided. \"Good Lord! What am I to do? What am I to\ndo?\" And, terribly impatient, he began pulling him by the arms, by the\nlegs, shaking his head, lifting him up and making him sit on the bench.\nYet, after prolonged exertions, he could only succeed in getting the\ndrunken man to utter absurd grunts, and violent, but inarticulate oaths.\n\n\"No, you'd better wait a little,\" the priest pronounced at last, \"for he's\nobviously not in a fit state.\"\n\n\"He's been drinking the whole day,\" the forester chimed in.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" cried Mitya. \"If only you knew how important it is to me\nand how desperate I am!\"\n\n\"No, you'd better wait till morning,\" the priest repeated.\n\n\"Till morning? Mercy! that's impossible!\"\n\nAnd in his despair he was on the point of attacking the sleeping man\nagain, but stopped short at once, realizing the uselessness of his\nefforts. The priest said nothing, the sleepy forester looked gloomy.\n\n\"What terrible tragedies real life contrives for people,\" said Mitya, in\ncomplete despair. The perspiration was streaming down his face. The priest\nseized the moment to put before him, very reasonably, that, even if he\nsucceeded in wakening the man, he would still be drunk and incapable of\nconversation. \"And your business is important,\" he said, \"so you'd\ncertainly better put it off till morning.\" With a gesture of despair Mitya\nagreed.\n\n\"Father, I will stay here with a light, and seize the favorable moment. As\nsoon as he wakes I'll begin. I'll pay you for the light,\" he said to the\nforester, \"for the night's lodging, too; you'll remember Dmitri Karamazov.\nOnly, Father, I don't know what we're to do with you. Where will you\nsleep?\"\n\n\"No, I'm going home. I'll take his horse and get home,\" he said,\nindicating the forester. \"And now I'll say good-by. I wish you all\nsuccess.\"\n\nSo it was settled. The priest rode off on the forester's horse, delighted\nto escape, though he shook his head uneasily, wondering whether he ought\nnot next day to inform his benefactor Fyodor Pavlovitch of this curious\nincident, \"or he may in an unlucky hour hear of it, be angry, and withdraw\nhis favor.\"\n\nThe forester, scratching himself, went back to his room without a word,\nand Mitya sat on the bench to \"catch the favorable moment,\" as he\nexpressed it. Profound dejection clung about his soul like a heavy mist. A\nprofound, intense dejection! He sat thinking, but could reach no\nconclusion. The candle burnt dimly, a cricket chirped; it became\ninsufferably close in the overheated room. He suddenly pictured the\ngarden, the path behind the garden, the door of his father's house\nmysteriously opening and Grushenka running in. He leapt up from the bench.\n\n\"It's a tragedy!\" he said, grinding his teeth. Mechanically he went up to\nthe sleeping man and looked in his face. He was a lean, middle-aged\npeasant, with a very long face, flaxen curls, and a long, thin, reddish\nbeard, wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket\nof which peeped the chain of a silver watch. Mitya looked at his face with\nintense hatred, and for some unknown reason his curly hair particularly\nirritated him.\n\nWhat was insufferably humiliating was, that after leaving things of such\nimportance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should\nwith business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole\nfate depended, while he snored as though there were nothing the matter, as\nthough he'd dropped from another planet.\n\n\"Oh, the irony of fate!\" cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he fell\nagain to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a sort of ferocity,\npulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five minutes of vain\nexertions, he returned to his bench in helpless despair, and sat down.\n\n\"Stupid! Stupid!\" cried Mitya. \"And how dishonorable it all is!\" something\nmade him add. His head began to ache horribly. \"Should he fling it up and\ngo away altogether?\" he wondered. \"No, wait till to-morrow now. I'll stay\non purpose. What else did I come for? Besides, I've no means of going. How\nam I to get away from here now? Oh, the idiocy of it!\"\n\nBut his head ached more and more. He sat without moving, and unconsciously\ndozed off and fell asleep as he sat. He seemed to have slept for two hours\nor more. He was waked up by his head aching so unbearably that he could\nhave screamed. There was a hammering in his temples, and the top of his\nhead ached. It was a long time before he could wake up fully and\nunderstand what had happened to him.\n\nAt last he realized that the room was full of charcoal fumes from the\nstove, and that he might die of suffocation. And the drunken peasant still\nlay snoring. The candle guttered and was about to go out. Mitya cried out,\nand ran staggering across the passage into the forester's room. The\nforester waked up at once, but hearing that the other room was full of\nfumes, to Mitya's surprise and annoyance, accepted the fact with strange\nunconcern, though he did go to see to it.\n\n\"But he's dead, he's dead! and ... what am I to do then?\" cried Mitya\nfrantically.\n\nThey threw open the doors, opened a window and the chimney. Mitya brought\na pail of water from the passage. First he wetted his own head, then,\nfinding a rag of some sort, dipped it into the water, and put it on\nLyagavy's head. The forester still treated the matter contemptuously, and\nwhen he opened the window said grumpily:\n\n\"It'll be all right, now.\"\n\nHe went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lighted lantern. Mitya fussed about\nthe drunken peasant for half an hour, wetting his head, and gravely\nresolved not to sleep all night. But he was so worn out that when he sat\ndown for a moment to take breath, he closed his eyes, unconsciously\nstretched himself full length on the bench and slept like the dead.\n\nIt was dreadfully late when he waked. It was somewhere about nine o'clock.\nThe sun was shining brightly in the two little windows of the hut. The\ncurly-headed peasant was sitting on the bench and had his coat on. He had\nanother samovar and another bottle in front of him. Yesterday's bottle had\nalready been finished, and the new one was more than half empty. Mitya\njumped up and saw at once that the cursed peasant was drunk again,\nhopelessly and incurably. He stared at him for a moment with wide opened\neyes. The peasant was silently and slyly watching him, with insulting\ncomposure, and even a sort of contemptuous condescension, so Mitya\nfancied. He rushed up to him.\n\n\"Excuse me, you see ... I ... you've most likely heard from the forester\nhere in the hut. I'm Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of the old\nKaramazov whose copse you are buying.\"\n\n\"That's a lie!\" said the peasant, calmly and confidently.\n\n\"A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?\"\n\n\"I don't know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches,\" said the peasant, speaking\nthickly.\n\n\"You're bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse. Do wake up, and\ncollect yourself. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me here. You wrote to\nSamsonov, and he has sent me to you,\" Mitya gasped breathlessly.\n\n\"You're l-lying!\" Lyagavy blurted out again. Mitya's legs went cold.\n\n\"For mercy's sake! It isn't a joke! You're drunk, perhaps. Yet you can\nspeak and understand ... or else ... I understand nothing!\"\n\n\"You're a painter!\"\n\n\"For mercy's sake! I'm Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov. I have an offer to\nmake you, an advantageous offer ... very advantageous offer, concerning\nthe copse!\"\n\nThe peasant stroked his beard importantly.\n\n\"No, you've contracted for the job and turned out a scamp. You're a\nscoundrel!\"\n\n\"I assure you you're mistaken,\" cried Mitya, wringing his hands in\ndespair. The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed up his\neyes cunningly.\n\n\"No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery. D'you\nhear? You're a scoundrel! Do you understand that?\"\n\nMitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly \"something seemed to hit him on\nthe head,\" as he said afterwards. In an instant a light seemed to dawn in\nhis mind, \"a light was kindled and I grasped it all.\" He stood, stupefied,\nwondering how he, after all a man of intelligence, could have yielded to\nsuch folly, have been led into such an adventure, and have kept it up for\nalmost twenty-four hours, fussing round this Lyagavy, wetting his head.\n\n\"Why, the man's drunk, dead drunk, and he'll go on drinking now for a\nweek; what's the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov sent me here on\npurpose? What if she--? Oh, God, what have I done?\"\n\nThe peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another time Mitya might have\nkilled the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a child. He went\nquietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a word, and\nwent out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next room; there\nwas no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out of his pocket\nand put them on the table for his night's lodging, the candle, and the\ntrouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all\nround. He walked at hazard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut,\nto the right or to the left. Hurrying there the evening before with the\npriest, he had not noticed the road. He had no revengeful feeling for\nanybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He strode along a narrow forest\npath, aimless, dazed, without heeding where he was going. A child could\nhave knocked him down, so weak was he in body and soul. He got out of the\nforest somehow, however, and a vista of fields, bare after the harvest,\nstretched as far as the eye could see.\n\n\"What despair! What death all round!\" he repeated, striding on and on.\n\nHe was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven across\ncountry in a hired trap. When he overtook him, Mitya asked the way, and it\nturned out that the old merchant, too, was going to Volovya. After some\ndiscussion Mitya got into the trap. Three hours later they arrived. At\nVolovya, Mitya at once ordered posting-horses to drive to the town, and\nsuddenly realized that he was appallingly hungry. While the horses were\nbeing harnessed, an omelette was prepared for him. He ate it all in an\ninstant, ate a huge hunk of bread, ate a sausage, and swallowed three\nglasses of vodka. After eating, his spirits and his heart grew lighter. He\nflew towards the town, urged on the driver, and suddenly made a new and\n\"unalterable\" plan to procure that \"accursed money\" before evening. \"And\nto think, only to think that a man's life should be ruined for the sake of\nthat paltry three thousand!\" he cried, contemptuously. \"I'll settle it to-\nday.\" And if it had not been for the thought of Grushenka and of what\nmight have happened to her, which never left him, he would perhaps have\nbecome quite cheerful again.... But the thought of her was stabbing him to\nthe heart every moment, like a sharp knife.\n\nAt last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. Gold-Mines\n\n\nThis was the visit of Mitya of which Grushenka had spoken to Rakitin with\nsuch horror. She was just then expecting the \"message,\" and was much\nrelieved that Mitya had not been to see her that day or the day before.\nShe hoped that \"please God he won't come till I'm gone away,\" and he\nsuddenly burst in on her. The rest we know already. To get him off her\nhands she suggested at once that he should walk with her to Samsonov's,\nwhere she said she absolutely must go \"to settle his accounts,\" and when\nMitya accompanied her at once, she said good-by to him at the gate, making\nhim promise to come at twelve o'clock to take her home again. Mitya, too,\nwas delighted at this arrangement. If she was sitting at Samsonov's she\ncould not be going to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, \"if only she's not lying,\" he\nadded at once. But he thought she was not lying from what he saw.\n\nHe was that sort of jealous man who, in the absence of the beloved woman,\nat once invents all sorts of awful fancies of what may be happening to\nher, and how she may be betraying him, but, when shaken, heartbroken,\nconvinced of her faithlessness, he runs back to her; at the first glance\nat her face, her gay, laughing, affectionate face, he revives at once,\nlays aside all suspicion and with joyful shame abuses himself for his\njealousy.\n\nAfter leaving Grushenka at the gate he rushed home. Oh, he had so much\nstill to do that day! But a load had been lifted from his heart, anyway.\n\n\"Now I must only make haste and find out from Smerdyakov whether anything\nhappened there last night, whether, by any chance, she went to Fyodor\nPavlovitch; ough!\" floated through his mind.\n\nBefore he had time to reach his lodging, jealousy had surged up again in\nhis restless heart.\n\nJealousy! \"Othello was not jealous, he was trustful,\" observed Pushkin.\nAnd that remark alone is enough to show the deep insight of our great\npoet. Othello's soul was shattered and his whole outlook clouded simply\nbecause _his ideal was destroyed_. But Othello did not begin hiding,\nspying, peeping. He was trustful, on the contrary. He had to be led up,\npushed on, excited with great difficulty before he could entertain the\nidea of deceit. The truly jealous man is not like that. It is impossible\nto picture to oneself the shame and moral degradation to which the jealous\nman can descend without a qualm of conscience. And yet it's not as though\nthe jealous were all vulgar and base souls. On the contrary, a man of\nlofty feelings, whose love is pure and full of self-sacrifice, may yet\nhide under tables, bribe the vilest people, and be familiar with the\nlowest ignominy of spying and eavesdropping.\n\nOthello was incapable of making up his mind to faithlessness--not incapable\nof forgiving it, but of making up his mind to it--though his soul was as\ninnocent and free from malice as a babe's. It is not so with the really\njealous man. It is hard to imagine what some jealous men can make up their\nmind to and overlook, and what they can forgive! The jealous are the\nreadiest of all to forgive, and all women know it. The jealous man can\nforgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course, after a violent\nscene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost conclusively proved,\nthe very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only he can somehow be\nconvinced that it has all been \"for the last time,\" and that his rival\nwill vanish from that day forward, will depart to the ends of the earth,\nor that he himself will carry her away somewhere, where that dreaded rival\nwill not get near her. Of course the reconciliation is only for an hour.\nFor, even if the rival did disappear next day, he would invent another one\nand would be jealous of him. And one might wonder what there was in a love\nthat had to be so watched over, what a love could be worth that needed\nsuch strenuous guarding. But that the jealous will never understand. And\nyet among them are men of noble hearts. It is remarkable, too, that those\nvery men of noble hearts, standing hidden in some cupboard, listening and\nspying, never feel the stings of conscience at that moment, anyway, though\nthey understand clearly enough with their \"noble hearts\" the shameful\ndepths to which they have voluntarily sunk.\n\nAt the sight of Grushenka, Mitya's jealousy vanished, and, for an instant\nhe became trustful and generous, and positively despised himself for his\nevil feelings. But it only proved that, in his love for the woman, there\nwas an element of something far higher than he himself imagined, that it\nwas not only a sensual passion, not only the \"curve of her body,\" of which\nhe had talked to Alyosha. But, as soon as Grushenka had gone, Mitya began\nto suspect her of all the low cunning of faithlessness, and he felt no\nsting of conscience at it.\n\nAnd so jealousy surged up in him again. He had, in any case, to make\nhaste. The first thing to be done was to get hold of at least a small,\ntemporary loan of money. The nine roubles had almost all gone on his\nexpedition. And, as we all know, one can't take a step without money. But\nhe had thought over in the cart where he could get a loan. He had a brace\nof fine dueling pistols in a case, which he had not pawned till then\nbecause he prized them above all his possessions.\n\nIn the \"Metropolis\" tavern he had some time since made acquaintance with a\nyoung official and had learnt that this very opulent bachelor was\npassionately fond of weapons. He used to buy pistols, revolvers, daggers,\nhang them on his wall and show them to acquaintances. He prided himself on\nthem, and was quite a specialist on the mechanism of the revolver. Mitya,\nwithout stopping to think, went straight to him, and offered to pawn his\npistols to him for ten roubles. The official, delighted, began trying to\npersuade him to sell them outright. But Mitya would not consent, so the\nyoung man gave him ten roubles, protesting that nothing would induce him\nto take interest. They parted friends.\n\nMitya was in haste; he rushed towards Fyodor Pavlovitch's by the back way,\nto his arbor, to get hold of Smerdyakov as soon as possible. In this way\nthe fact was established that three or four hours before a certain event,\nof which I shall speak later on, Mitya had not a farthing, and pawned for\nten roubles a possession he valued, though, three hours later, he was in\npossession of thousands.... But I am anticipating. From Marya Kondratyevna\n(the woman living near Fyodor Pavlovitch's) he learned the very disturbing\nfact of Smerdyakov's illness. He heard the story of his fall in the\ncellar, his fit, the doctor's visit, Fyodor Pavlovitch's anxiety; he heard\nwith interest, too, that his brother Ivan had set off that morning for\nMoscow.\n\n\"Then he must have driven through Volovya before me,\" thought Dmitri, but\nhe was terribly distressed about Smerdyakov. \"What will happen now? Who'll\nkeep watch for me? Who'll bring me word?\" he thought. He began greedily\nquestioning the women whether they had seen anything the evening before.\nThey quite understood what he was trying to find out, and completely\nreassured him. No one had been there. Ivan Fyodorovitch had been there the\nnight; everything had been perfectly as usual. Mitya grew thoughtful. He\nwould certainly have to keep watch to-day, but where? Here or at\nSamsonov's gate? He decided that he must be on the look out both here and\nthere, and meanwhile ... meanwhile.... The difficulty was that he had to\ncarry out the new plan that he had made on the journey back. He was sure\nof its success, but he must not delay acting upon it. Mitya resolved to\nsacrifice an hour to it: \"In an hour I shall know everything, I shall\nsettle everything, and then, then, first of all to Samsonov's. I'll\ninquire whether Grushenka's there and instantly be back here again, stay\ntill eleven, and then to Samsonov's again to bring her home.\" This was\nwhat he decided.\n\nHe flew home, washed, combed his hair, brushed his clothes, dressed, and\nwent to Madame Hohlakov's. Alas! he had built his hopes on her. He had\nresolved to borrow three thousand from that lady. And what was more, he\nfelt suddenly convinced that she would not refuse to lend it to him. It\nmay be wondered why, if he felt so certain, he had not gone to her at\nfirst, one of his own sort, so to speak, instead of to Samsonov, a man he\ndid not know, who was not of his own class, and to whom he hardly knew how\nto speak.\n\nBut the fact was that he had never known Madame Hohlakov well, and had\nseen nothing of her for the last month, and that he knew she could not\nendure him. She had detested him from the first because he was engaged to\nKaterina Ivanovna, while she had, for some reason, suddenly conceived the\ndesire that Katerina Ivanovna should throw him over, and marry the\n\"charming, chivalrously refined Ivan, who had such excellent manners.\"\nMitya's manners she detested. Mitya positively laughed at her, and had\nonce said about her that she was just as lively and at her ease as she was\nuncultivated. But that morning in the cart a brilliant idea had struck\nhim: \"If she is so anxious I should not marry Katerina Ivanovna\" (and he\nknew she was positively hysterical upon the subject) \"why should she\nrefuse me now that three thousand, just to enable me to leave Katya and\nget away from her for ever. These spoilt fine ladies, if they set their\nhearts on anything, will spare no expense to satisfy their caprice.\nBesides, she's so rich,\" Mitya argued.\n\nAs for his \"plan\" it was just the same as before; it consisted of the\noffer of his rights to Tchermashnya--but not with a commercial object, as\nit had been with Samsonov, not trying to allure the lady with the\npossibility of making a profit of six or seven thousand--but simply as a\nsecurity for the debt. As he worked out this new idea, Mitya was enchanted\nwith it, but so it always was with him in all his undertakings, in all his\nsudden decisions. He gave himself up to every new idea with passionate\nenthusiasm. Yet, when he mounted the steps of Madame Hohlakov's house he\nfelt a shiver of fear run down his spine. At that moment he saw fully, as\na mathematical certainty, that this was his last hope, that if this broke\ndown, nothing else was left him in the world, but to \"rob and murder some\none for the three thousand.\" It was half-past seven when he rang at the\nbell.\n\nAt first fortune seemed to smile upon him. As soon as he was announced he\nwas received with extraordinary rapidity. \"As though she were waiting for\nme,\" thought Mitya, and as soon as he had been led to the drawing-room,\nthe lady of the house herself ran in, and declared at once that she was\nexpecting him.\n\n\"I was expecting you! I was expecting you! Though I'd no reason to suppose\nyou would come to see me, as you will admit yourself. Yet, I did expect\nyou. You may marvel at my instinct, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but I was\nconvinced all the morning that you would come.\"\n\n\"That is certainly wonderful, madam,\" observed Mitya, sitting down limply,\n\"but I have come to you on a matter of great importance.... On a matter of\nsupreme importance for me, that is, madam ... for me alone ... and I\nhasten--\"\n\n\"I know you've come on most important business, Dmitri Fyodorovitch; it's\nnot a case of presentiment, no reactionary harking back to the miraculous\n(have you heard about Father Zossima?). This is a case of mathematics: you\ncouldn't help coming, after all that has passed with Katerina Ivanovna;\nyou couldn't, you couldn't, that's a mathematical certainty.\"\n\n\"The realism of actual life, madam, that's what it is. But allow me to\nexplain--\"\n\n\"Realism indeed, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I'm all for realism now. I've seen\ntoo much of miracles. You've heard that Father Zossima is dead?\"\n\n\"No, madam, it's the first time I've heard of it.\" Mitya was a little\nsurprised. The image of Alyosha rose to his mind.\n\n\"Last night, and only imagine--\"\n\n\"Madam,\" said Mitya, \"I can imagine nothing except that I'm in a desperate\nposition, and that if you don't help me, everything will come to grief,\nand I first of all. Excuse me for the triviality of the expression, but\nI'm in a fever--\"\n\n\"I know, I know that you're in a fever. You could hardly fail to be, and\nwhatever you may say to me, I know beforehand. I have long been thinking\nover your destiny, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I am watching over it and studying\nit.... Oh, believe me, I'm an experienced doctor of the soul, Dmitri\nFyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"Madam, if you are an experienced doctor, I'm certainly an experienced\npatient,\" said Mitya, with an effort to be polite, \"and I feel that if you\nare watching over my destiny in this way, you will come to my help in my\nruin, and so allow me, at least to explain to you the plan with which I\nhave ventured to come to you ... and what I am hoping of you.... I have\ncome, madam--\"\n\n\"Don't explain it. It's of secondary importance. But as for help, you're\nnot the first I have helped, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You have most likely\nheard of my cousin, Madame Belmesov. Her husband was ruined, 'had come to\ngrief,' as you characteristically express it, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I\nrecommended him to take to horse-breeding, and now he's doing well. Have\nyou any idea of horse-breeding, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?\"\n\n\"Not the faintest, madam; ah, madam, not the faintest!\" cried Mitya, in\nnervous impatience, positively starting from his seat. \"I simply implore\nyou, madam, to listen to me. Only give me two minutes of free speech that\nI may just explain to you everything, the whole plan with which I have\ncome. Besides, I am short of time. I'm in a fearful hurry,\" Mitya cried\nhysterically, feeling that she was just going to begin talking again, and\nhoping to cut her short. \"I have come in despair ... in the last gasp of\ndespair, to beg you to lend me the sum of three thousand, a loan, but on\nsafe, most safe security, madam, with the most trustworthy guarantees!\nOnly let me explain--\"\n\n\"You must tell me all that afterwards, afterwards!\" Madame Hohlakov with a\ngesture demanded silence in her turn, \"and whatever you may tell me, I\nknow it all beforehand; I've told you so already. You ask for a certain\nsum, for three thousand, but I can give you more, immeasurably more, I\nwill save you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but you must listen to me.\"\n\nMitya started from his seat again.\n\n\"Madam, will you really be so good!\" he cried, with strong feeling. \"Good\nGod, you've saved me! You have saved a man from a violent death, from a\nbullet.... My eternal gratitude--\"\n\n\"I will give you more, infinitely more than three thousand!\" cried Madame\nHohlakov, looking with a radiant smile at Mitya's ecstasy.\n\n\"Infinitely? But I don't need so much. I only need that fatal three\nthousand, and on my part I can give security for that sum with infinite\ngratitude, and I propose a plan which--\"\n\n\"Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, it's said and done.\" Madame Hohlakov cut him\nshort, with the modest triumph of beneficence: \"I have promised to save\nyou, and I will save you. I will save you as I did Belmesov. What do you\nthink of the gold-mines, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?\"\n\n\"Of the gold-mines, madam? I have never thought anything about them.\"\n\n\"But I have thought of them for you. Thought of them over and over again.\nI have been watching you for the last month. I've watched you a hundred\ntimes as you've walked past, saying to myself: That's a man of energy who\nought to be at the gold-mines. I've studied your gait and come to the\nconclusion: that's a man who would find gold.\"\n\n\"From my gait, madam?\" said Mitya, smiling.\n\n\"Yes, from your gait. You surely don't deny that character can be told\nfrom the gait, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Science supports the idea. I'm all for\nscience and realism now. After all this business with Father Zossima,\nwhich has so upset me, from this very day I'm a realist and I want to\ndevote myself to practical usefulness. I'm cured. 'Enough!' as Turgenev\nsays.\"\n\n\"But, madam, the three thousand you so generously promised to lend me--\"\n\n\"It is yours, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" Madame Hohlakov cut in at once. \"The\nmoney is as good as in your pocket, not three thousand, but three million,\nDmitri Fyodorovitch, in less than no time. I'll make you a present of the\nidea: you shall find gold-mines, make millions, return and become a\nleading man, and wake us up and lead us to better things. Are we to leave\nit all to the Jews? You will found institutions and enterprises of all\nsorts. You will help the poor, and they will bless you. This is the age of\nrailways, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You'll become famous and indispensable to\nthe Department of Finance, which is so badly off at present. The\ndepreciation of the rouble keeps me awake at night, Dmitri Fyodorovitch;\npeople don't know that side of me--\"\n\n\"Madam, madam!\" Dmitri interrupted with an uneasy presentiment. \"I shall\nindeed, perhaps, follow your advice, your wise advice, madam.... I shall\nperhaps set off ... to the gold-mines.... I'll come and see you again\nabout it ... many times, indeed ... but now, that three thousand you so\ngenerously ... oh, that would set me free, and if you could to-day ... you\nsee, I haven't a minute, a minute to lose to-day--\"\n\n\"Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, enough!\" Madame Hohlakov interrupted\nemphatically. \"The question is, will you go to the gold-mines or not; have\nyou quite made up your mind? Answer yes or no.\"\n\n\"I will go, madam, afterwards.... I'll go where you like ... but now--\"\n\n\"Wait!\" cried Madame Hohlakov. And jumping up and running to a handsome\nbureau with numerous little drawers, she began pulling out one drawer\nafter another, looking for something with desperate haste.\n\n\"The three thousand,\" thought Mitya, his heart almost stopping, \"and at\nthe instant ... without any papers or formalities ... that's doing things\nin gentlemanly style! She's a splendid woman, if only she didn't talk so\nmuch!\"\n\n\"Here!\" cried Madame Hohlakov, running back joyfully to Mitya, \"here is\nwhat I was looking for!\"\n\nIt was a tiny silver ikon on a cord, such as is sometimes worn next the\nskin with a cross.\n\n\"This is from Kiev, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" she went on reverently, \"from\nthe relics of the Holy Martyr, Varvara. Let me put it on your neck myself,\nand with it dedicate you to a new life, to a new career.\"\n\nAnd she actually put the cord round his neck, and began arranging it. In\nextreme embarrassment, Mitya bent down and helped her, and at last he got\nit under his neck-tie and collar through his shirt to his chest.\n\n\"Now you can set off,\" Madame Hohlakov pronounced, sitting down\ntriumphantly in her place again.\n\n\"Madam, I am so touched. I don't know how to thank you, indeed ... for\nsuch kindness, but ... If only you knew how precious time is to me....\nThat sum of money, for which I shall be indebted to your generosity....\nOh, madam, since you are so kind, so touchingly generous to me,\" Mitya\nexclaimed impulsively, \"then let me reveal to you ... though, of course,\nyou've known it a long time ... that I love somebody here.... I have been\nfalse to Katya ... Katerina Ivanovna I should say.... Oh, I've behaved\ninhumanly, dishonorably to her, but I fell in love here with another woman\n... a woman whom you, madam, perhaps, despise, for you know everything\nalready, but whom I cannot leave on any account, and therefore that three\nthousand now--\"\n\n\"Leave everything, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" Madame Hohlakov interrupted in\nthe most decisive tone. \"Leave everything, especially women. Gold-mines\nare your goal, and there's no place for women there. Afterwards, when you\ncome back rich and famous, you will find the girl of your heart in the\nhighest society. That will be a modern girl, a girl of education and\nadvanced ideas. By that time the dawning woman question will have gained\nground, and the new woman will have appeared.\"\n\n\"Madam, that's not the point, not at all....\" Mitya clasped his hands in\nentreaty.\n\n\"Yes, it is, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, just what you need; the very thing\nyou're yearning for, though you don't realize it yourself. I am not at all\nopposed to the present woman movement, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The\ndevelopment of woman, and even the political emancipation of woman in the\nnear future--that's my ideal. I've a daughter myself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\npeople don't know that side of me. I wrote a letter to the author,\nShtchedrin, on that subject. He has taught me so much, so much about the\nvocation of woman. So last year I sent him an anonymous letter of two\nlines: 'I kiss and embrace you, my teacher, for the modern woman.\nPersevere.' And I signed myself, 'A Mother.' I thought of signing myself\n'A contemporary Mother,' and hesitated, but I stuck to the simple\n'Mother'; there's more moral beauty in that, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. And the\nword 'contemporary' might have reminded him of '_The Contemporary_'--a\npainful recollection owing to the censorship.... Good Heavens, what is the\nmatter!\"\n\n\"Madam!\" cried Mitya, jumping up at last, clasping his hands before her in\nhelpless entreaty. \"You will make me weep if you delay what you have so\ngenerously--\"\n\n\"Oh, do weep, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, do weep! That's a noble feeling ...\nsuch a path lies open before you! Tears will ease your heart, and later on\nyou will return rejoicing. You will hasten to me from Siberia on purpose\nto share your joy with me--\"\n\n\"But allow me, too!\" Mitya cried suddenly. \"For the last time I entreat\nyou, tell me, can I have the sum you promised me to-day, if not, when may\nI come for it?\"\n\n\"What sum, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?\"\n\n\"The three thousand you promised me ... that you so generously--\"\n\n\"Three thousand? Roubles? Oh, no, I haven't got three thousand,\" Madame\nHohlakov announced with serene amazement. Mitya was stupefied.\n\n\"Why, you said just now ... you said ... you said it was as good as in my\nhands--\"\n\n\"Oh, no, you misunderstood me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. In that case you\nmisunderstood me. I was talking of the gold-mines. It's true I promised\nyou more, infinitely more than three thousand, I remember it all now, but\nI was referring to the gold-mines.\"\n\n\"But the money? The three thousand?\" Mitya exclaimed, awkwardly.\n\n\"Oh, if you meant money, I haven't any. I haven't a penny, Dmitri\nFyodorovitch. I'm quarreling with my steward about it, and I've just\nborrowed five hundred roubles from Miuesov, myself. No, no, I've no money.\nAnd, do you know, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, if I had, I wouldn't give it to\nyou. In the first place I never lend money. Lending money means losing\nfriends. And I wouldn't give it to you particularly. I wouldn't give it\nyou, because I like you and want to save you, for all you need is the\ngold-mines, the gold-mines, the gold-mines!\"\n\n\"Oh, the devil!\" roared Mitya, and with all his might brought his fist\ndown on the table.\n\n\"Aie! Aie!\" cried Madame Hohlakov, alarmed, and she flew to the other end\nof the drawing-room.\n\nMitya spat on the ground, and strode rapidly out of the room, out of the\nhouse, into the street, into the darkness! He walked like one possessed,\nand beating himself on the breast, on the spot where he had struck himself\ntwo days previously, before Alyosha, the last time he saw him in the dark,\non the road. What those blows upon his breast signified, _on that spot_,\nand what he meant by it--that was, for the time, a secret which was known\nto no one in the world, and had not been told even to Alyosha. But that\nsecret meant for him more than disgrace; it meant ruin, suicide. So he had\ndetermined, if he did not get hold of the three thousand that would pay\nhis debt to Katerina Ivanovna, and so remove from his breast, from _that\nspot on his breast_, the shame he carried upon it, that weighed on his\nconscience. All this will be fully explained to the reader later on, but\nnow that his last hope had vanished, this man, so strong in appearance,\nburst out crying like a little child a few steps from the Hohlakovs'\nhouse. He walked on, and not knowing what he was doing, wiped away his\ntears with his fist. In this way he reached the square, and suddenly\nbecame aware that he had stumbled against something. He heard a piercing\nwail from an old woman whom he had almost knocked down.\n\n\"Good Lord, you've nearly killed me! Why don't you look where you're\ngoing, scapegrace?\"\n\n\"Why, it's you!\" cried Mitya, recognizing the old woman in the dark. It\nwas the old servant who waited on Samsonov, whom Mitya had particularly\nnoticed the day before.\n\n\"And who are you, my good sir?\" said the old woman, in quite a different\nvoice. \"I don't know you in the dark.\"\n\n\"You live at Kuzma Kuzmitch's. You're the servant there?\"\n\n\"Just so, sir, I was only running out to Prohoritch's.... But I don't know\nyou now.\"\n\n\"Tell me, my good woman, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?\" said Mitya,\nbeside himself with suspense. \"I saw her to the house some time ago.\"\n\n\"She has been there, sir. She stayed a little while, and went off again.\"\n\n\"What? Went away?\" cried Mitya. \"When did she go?\"\n\n\"Why, as soon as she came. She only stayed a minute. She only told Kuzma\nKuzmitch a tale that made him laugh, and then she ran away.\"\n\n\"You're lying, damn you!\" roared Mitya.\n\n\"Aie! Aie!\" shrieked the old woman, but Mitya had vanished.\n\nHe ran with all his might to the house where Grushenka lived. At the\nmoment he reached it, Grushenka was on her way to Mokroe. It was not more\nthan a quarter of an hour after her departure.\n\nFenya was sitting with her grandmother, the old cook, Matryona, in the\nkitchen when \"the captain\" ran in. Fenya uttered a piercing shriek on\nseeing him.\n\n\"You scream?\" roared Mitya, \"where is she?\"\n\nBut without giving the terror-stricken Fenya time to utter a word, he fell\nall of a heap at her feet.\n\n\"Fenya, for Christ's sake, tell me, where is she?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear, I don't know. You may kill me\nbut I can't tell you.\" Fenya swore and protested. \"You went out with her\nyourself not long ago--\"\n\n\"She came back!\"\n\n\"Indeed she didn't. By God I swear she didn't come back.\"\n\n\"You're lying!\" shouted Mitya. \"From your terror I know where she is.\"\n\nHe rushed away. Fenya in her fright was glad she had got off so easily.\nBut she knew very well that it was only that he was in such haste, or she\nmight not have fared so well. But as he ran, he surprised both Fenya and\nold Matryona by an unexpected action. On the table stood a brass mortar,\nwith a pestle in it, a small brass pestle, not much more than six inches\nlong. Mitya already had opened the door with one hand when, with the\nother, he snatched up the pestle, and thrust it in his side-pocket.\n\n\"Oh, Lord! He's going to murder some one!\" cried Fenya, flinging up her\nhands.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. In The Dark\n\n\nWhere was he running? \"Where could she be except at Fyodor Pavlovitch's?\nShe must have run straight to him from Samsonov's, that was clear now. The\nwhole intrigue, the whole deceit was evident.\" ... It all rushed whirling\nthrough his mind. He did not run to Marya Kondratyevna's. \"There was no\nneed to go there ... not the slightest need ... he must raise no alarm ...\nthey would run and tell directly.... Marya Kondratyevna was clearly in the\nplot, Smerdyakov too, he too, all had been bought over!\"\n\nHe formed another plan of action: he ran a long way round Fyodor\nPavlovitch's house, crossing the lane, running down Dmitrovsky Street,\nthen over the little bridge, and so came straight to the deserted alley at\nthe back, which was empty and uninhabited, with, on one side the hurdle\nfence of a neighbor's kitchen-garden, on the other the strong high fence,\nthat ran all round Fyodor Pavlovitch's garden. Here he chose a spot,\napparently the very place, where according to the tradition, he knew\nLizaveta had once climbed over it: \"If she could climb over it,\" the\nthought, God knows why, occurred to him, \"surely I can.\" He did in fact\njump up, and instantly contrived to catch hold of the top of the fence.\nThen he vigorously pulled himself up and sat astride on it. Close by, in\nthe garden stood the bath-house, but from the fence he could see the\nlighted windows of the house too.\n\n\"Yes, the old man's bedroom is lighted up. She's there!\" and he leapt from\nthe fence into the garden. Though he knew Grigory was ill and very likely\nSmerdyakov, too, and that there was no one to hear him, he instinctively\nhid himself, stood still, and began to listen. But there was dead silence\non all sides and, as though of design, complete stillness, not the\nslightest breath of wind.\n\n\"And naught but the whispering silence,\" the line for some reason rose to\nhis mind. \"If only no one heard me jump over the fence! I think not.\"\nStanding still for a minute, he walked softly over the grass in the\ngarden, avoiding the trees and shrubs. He walked slowly, creeping\nstealthily at every step, listening to his own footsteps. It took him five\nminutes to reach the lighted window. He remembered that just under the\nwindow there were several thick and high bushes of elder and whitebeam.\nThe door from the house into the garden on the left-hand side, was shut;\nhe had carefully looked on purpose to see, in passing. At last he reached\nthe bushes and hid behind them. He held his breath. \"I must wait now,\" he\nthought, \"to reassure them, in case they heard my footsteps and are\nlistening ... if only I don't cough or sneeze.\"\n\nHe waited two minutes. His heart was beating violently, and, at moments,\nhe could scarcely breathe. \"No, this throbbing at my heart won't stop,\" he\nthought. \"I can't wait any longer.\" He was standing behind a bush in the\nshadow. The light of the window fell on the front part of the bush.\n\n\"How red the whitebeam berries are!\" he murmured, not knowing why. Softly\nand noiselessly, step by step, he approached the window, and raised\nhimself on tiptoe. All Fyodor Pavlovitch's bedroom lay open before him. It\nwas not a large room, and was divided in two parts by a red screen,\n\"Chinese,\" as Fyodor Pavlovitch used to call it. The word \"Chinese\"\nflashed into Mitya's mind, \"and behind the screen, is Grushenka,\" thought\nMitya. He began watching Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was wearing his new\nstriped-silk dressing-gown, which Mitya had never seen, and a silk cord\nwith tassels round the waist. A clean, dandified shirt of fine linen with\ngold studs peeped out under the collar of the dressing-gown. On his head\nFyodor Pavlovitch had the same red bandage which Alyosha had seen.\n\n\"He has got himself up,\" thought Mitya.\n\nHis father was standing near the window, apparently lost in thought.\nSuddenly he jerked up his head, listened a moment, and hearing nothing\nwent up to the table, poured out half a glass of brandy from a decanter\nand drank it off. Then he uttered a deep sigh, again stood still a moment,\nwalked carelessly up to the looking-glass on the wall, with his right hand\nraised the red bandage on his forehead a little, and began examining his\nbruises and scars, which had not yet disappeared.\n\n\"He's alone,\" thought Mitya, \"in all probability he's alone.\"\n\nFyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the looking-glass, turned suddenly to\nthe window and looked out. Mitya instantly slipped away into the shadow.\n\n\"She may be there behind the screen. Perhaps she's asleep by now,\" he\nthought, with a pang at his heart. Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the\nwindow. \"He's looking for her out of the window, so she's not there. Why\nshould he stare out into the dark? He's wild with impatience.\" ... Mitya\nslipped back at once, and fell to gazing in at the window again. The old\nman was sitting down at the table, apparently disappointed. At last he put\nhis elbow on the table, and laid his right cheek against his hand. Mitya\nwatched him eagerly.\n\n\"He's alone, he's alone!\" he repeated again. \"If she were here, his face\nwould be different.\"\n\nStrange to say, a queer, irrational vexation rose up in his heart that she\nwas not here. \"It's not that she's not here,\" he explained to himself,\nimmediately, \"but that I can't tell for certain whether she is or not.\"\nMitya remembered afterwards that his mind was at that moment exceptionally\nclear, that he took in everything to the slightest detail, and missed no\npoint. But a feeling of misery, the misery of uncertainty and indecision,\nwas growing in his heart with every instant. \"Is she here or not?\" The\nangry doubt filled his heart, and suddenly, making up his mind, he put out\nhis hand and softly knocked on the window frame. He knocked the signal the\nold man had agreed upon with Smerdyakov, twice slowly and then three times\nmore quickly, the signal that meant \"Grushenka is here!\"\n\nThe old man started, jerked up his head, and, jumping up quickly, ran to\nthe window. Mitya slipped away into the shadow. Fyodor Pavlovitch opened\nthe window and thrust his whole head out.\n\n\"Grushenka, is it you? Is it you?\" he said, in a sort of trembling half-\nwhisper. \"Where are you, my angel, where are you?\" He was fearfully\nagitated and breathless.\n\n\"He's alone.\" Mitya decided.\n\n\"Where are you?\" cried the old man again; and he thrust his head out\nfarther, thrust it out to the shoulders, gazing in all directions, right\nand left. \"Come here, I've a little present for you. Come, I'll show\nyou....\"\n\n\"He means the three thousand,\" thought Mitya.\n\n\"But where are you? Are you at the door? I'll open it directly.\"\n\nAnd the old man almost climbed out of the window, peering out to the\nright, where there was a door into the garden, trying to see into the\ndarkness. In another second he would certainly have run out to open the\ndoor without waiting for Grushenka's answer.\n\nMitya looked at him from the side without stirring. The old man's profile\nthat he loathed so, his pendent Adam's apple, his hooked nose, his lips\nthat smiled in greedy expectation, were all brightly lighted up by the\nslanting lamplight falling on the left from the room. A horrible fury of\nhatred suddenly surged up in Mitya's heart: \"There he was, his rival, the\nman who had tormented him, had ruined his life!\" It was a rush of that\nsudden, furious, revengeful anger of which he had spoken, as though\nforeseeing it, to Alyosha, four days ago in the arbor, when, in answer to\nAlyosha's question, \"How can you say you'll kill our father?\" \"I don't\nknow, I don't know,\" he had said then. \"Perhaps I shall not kill him,\nperhaps I shall. I'm afraid he'll suddenly be so loathsome to me at that\nmoment. I hate his double chin, his nose, his eyes, his shameless grin. I\nfeel a personal repulsion. That's what I'm afraid of, that's what may be\ntoo much for me.\" ... This personal repulsion was growing unendurable.\nMitya was beside himself, he suddenly pulled the brass pestle out of his\npocket.\n\n                  -------------------------------------\n\n\"God was watching over me then,\" Mitya himself said afterwards. At that\nvery moment Grigory waked up on his bed of sickness. Earlier in the\nevening he had undergone the treatment which Smerdyakov had described to\nIvan. He had rubbed himself all over with vodka mixed with a secret, very\nstrong decoction, had drunk what was left of the mixture while his wife\nrepeated a \"certain prayer\" over him, after which he had gone to bed.\nMarfa Ignatyevna had tasted the stuff, too, and, being unused to strong\ndrink, slept like the dead beside her husband.\n\nBut Grigory waked up in the night, quite suddenly, and, after a moment's\nreflection, though he immediately felt a sharp pain in his back, he sat up\nin bed. Then he deliberated again, got up and dressed hurriedly. Perhaps\nhis conscience was uneasy at the thought of sleeping while the house was\nunguarded \"in such perilous times.\" Smerdyakov, exhausted by his fit, lay\nmotionless in the next room. Marfa Ignatyevna did not stir. \"The stuff's\nbeen too much for the woman,\" Grigory thought, glancing at her, and\ngroaning, he went out on the steps. No doubt he only intended to look out\nfrom the steps, for he was hardly able to walk, the pain in his back and\nhis right leg was intolerable. But he suddenly remembered that he had not\nlocked the little gate into the garden that evening. He was the most\npunctual and precise of men, a man who adhered to an unchangeable routine,\nand habits that lasted for years. Limping and writhing with pain he went\ndown the steps and towards the garden. Yes, the gate stood wide open.\nMechanically he stepped into the garden. Perhaps he fancied something,\nperhaps caught some sound, and, glancing to the left he saw his master's\nwindow open. No one was looking out of it then.\n\n\"What's it open for? It's not summer now,\" thought Grigory, and suddenly,\nat that very instant he caught a glimpse of something extraordinary before\nhim in the garden. Forty paces in front of him a man seemed to be running\nin the dark, a sort of shadow was moving very fast.\n\n\"Good Lord!\" cried Grigory beside himself, and forgetting the pain in his\nback, he hurried to intercept the running figure. He took a short cut,\nevidently he knew the garden better; the flying figure went towards the\nbath-house, ran behind it and rushed to the garden fence. Grigory\nfollowed, not losing sight of him, and ran, forgetting everything. He\nreached the fence at the very moment the man was climbing over it. Grigory\ncried out, beside himself, pounced on him, and clutched his leg in his two\nhands.\n\nYes, his foreboding had not deceived him. He recognized him, it was he,\nthe \"monster,\" the \"parricide.\"\n\n\"Parricide!\" the old man shouted so that the whole neighborhood could\nhear, but he had not time to shout more, he fell at once, as though struck\nby lightning.\n\nMitya jumped back into the garden and bent over the fallen man. In Mitya's\nhands was a brass pestle, and he flung it mechanically in the grass. The\npestle fell two paces from Grigory, not in the grass but on the path, in a\nmost conspicuous place. For some seconds he examined the prostrate figure\nbefore him. The old man's head was covered with blood. Mitya put out his\nhand and began feeling it. He remembered afterwards clearly, that he had\nbeen awfully anxious to make sure whether he had broken the old man's\nskull, or simply stunned him with the pestle. But the blood was flowing\nhorribly; and in a moment Mitya's fingers were drenched with the hot\nstream. He remembered taking out of his pocket the clean white\nhandkerchief with which he had provided himself for his visit to Madame\nHohlakov, and putting it to the old man's head, senselessly trying to wipe\nthe blood from his face and temples. But the handkerchief was instantly\nsoaked with blood.\n\n\"Good heavens! what am I doing it for?\" thought Mitya, suddenly pulling\nhimself together. \"If I have broken his skull, how can I find out now? And\nwhat difference does it make now?\" he added, hopelessly. \"If I've killed\nhim, I've killed him.... You've come to grief, old man, so there you must\nlie!\" he said aloud. And suddenly turning to the fence, he vaulted over it\ninto the lane and fell to running--the handkerchief soaked with blood he\nheld, crushed up in his right fist, and as he ran he thrust it into the\nback pocket of his coat. He ran headlong, and the few passers-by who met\nhim in the dark, in the streets, remembered afterwards that they had met a\nman running that night. He flew back again to the widow Morozov's house.\n\nImmediately after he had left it that evening, Fenya had rushed to the\nchief porter, Nazar Ivanovitch, and besought him, for Christ's sake, \"not\nto let the captain in again to-day or to-morrow.\" Nazar Ivanovitch\npromised, but went upstairs to his mistress who had suddenly sent for him,\nand meeting his nephew, a boy of twenty, who had recently come from the\ncountry, on the way up told him to take his place, but forgot to mention\n\"the captain.\" Mitya, running up to the gate, knocked. The lad instantly\nrecognized him, for Mitya had more than once tipped him. Opening the gate\nat once, he let him in, and hastened to inform him with a good-humored\nsmile that \"Agrafena Alexandrovna is not at home now, you know.\"\n\n\"Where is she then, Prohor?\" asked Mitya, stopping short.\n\n\"She set off this evening, some two hours ago, with Timofey, to Mokroe.\"\n\n\"What for?\" cried Mitya.\n\n\"That I can't say. To see some officer. Some one invited her and horses\nwere sent to fetch her.\"\n\nMitya left him, and ran like a madman to Fenya.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. A Sudden Resolution\n\n\nShe was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; they were both just\ngoing to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovitch, they had not locked themselves\nin. Mitya ran in, pounced on Fenya and seized her by the throat.\n\n\"Speak at once! Where is she? With whom is she now, at Mokroe?\" he roared\nfuriously.\n\nBoth the women squealed.\n\n\"Aie! I'll tell you. Aie! Dmitri Fyodorovitch, darling, I'll tell you\neverything directly, I won't hide anything,\" gabbled Fenya, frightened to\ndeath; \"she's gone to Mokroe, to her officer.\"\n\n\"What officer?\" roared Mitya.\n\n\"To her officer, the same one she used to know, the one who threw her over\nfive years ago,\" cackled Fenya, as fast as she could speak.\n\nMitya withdrew the hands with which he was squeezing her throat. He stood\nfacing her, pale as death, unable to utter a word, but his eyes showed\nthat he realized it all, all, from the first word, and guessed the whole\nposition. Poor Fenya was not in a condition at that moment to observe\nwhether he understood or not. She remained sitting on the trunk as she had\nbeen when he ran into the room, trembling all over, holding her hands out\nbefore her as though trying to defend herself. She seemed to have grown\nrigid in that position. Her wide-opened, scared eyes were fixed immovably\nupon him. And to make matters worse, both his hands were smeared with\nblood. On the way, as he ran, he must have touched his forehead with them,\nwiping off the perspiration, so that on his forehead and his right cheek\nwere blood-stained patches. Fenya was on the verge of hysterics. The old\ncook had jumped up and was staring at him like a mad woman, almost\nunconscious with terror.\n\nMitya stood for a moment, then mechanically sank on to a chair next to\nFenya. He sat, not reflecting but, as it were, terror-stricken, benumbed.\nYet everything was clear as day: that officer, he knew about him, he knew\neverything perfectly, he had known it from Grushenka herself, had known\nthat a letter had come from him a month before. So that for a month, for a\nwhole month, this had been going on, a secret from him, till the very\narrival of this new man, and he had never thought of him! But how could\nhe, how could he not have thought of him? Why was it he had forgotten this\nofficer, like that, forgotten him as soon as he heard of him? That was the\nquestion that faced him like some monstrous thing. And he looked at this\nmonstrous thing with horror, growing cold with horror.\n\nBut suddenly, as gently and mildly as a gentle and affectionate child, he\nbegan speaking to Fenya as though he had utterly forgotten how he had\nscared and hurt her just now. He fell to questioning Fenya with an extreme\npreciseness, astonishing in his position, and though the girl looked\nwildly at his blood-stained hands, she, too, with wonderful readiness and\nrapidity, answered every question as though eager to put the whole truth\nand nothing but the truth before him. Little by little, even with a sort\nof enjoyment, she began explaining every detail, not wanting to torment\nhim, but, as it were, eager to be of the utmost service to him. She\ndescribed the whole of that day, in great detail, the visit of Rakitin and\nAlyosha, how she, Fenya, had stood on the watch, how the mistress had set\noff, and how she had called out of the window to Alyosha to give him,\nMitya, her greetings, and to tell him \"to remember for ever how she had\nloved him for an hour.\"\n\nHearing of the message, Mitya suddenly smiled, and there was a flush of\ncolor on his pale cheeks. At the same moment Fenya said to him, not a bit\nafraid now to be inquisitive:\n\n\"Look at your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They're all over blood!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Mitya mechanically. He looked carelessly at his hands and\nat once forgot them and Fenya's question.\n\nHe sank into silence again. Twenty minutes had passed since he had run in.\nHis first horror was over, but evidently some new fixed determination had\ntaken possession of him. He suddenly stood up, smiling dreamily.\n\n\"What has happened to you, sir?\" said Fenya, pointing to his hands again.\nShe spoke compassionately, as though she felt very near to him now in his\ngrief. Mitya looked at his hands again.\n\n\"That's blood, Fenya,\" he said, looking at her with a strange expression.\n\"That's human blood, and my God! why was it shed? But ... Fenya ...\nthere's a fence here\" (he looked at her as though setting her a riddle),\n\"a high fence, and terrible to look at. But at dawn to-morrow, when the\nsun rises, Mitya will leap over that fence.... You don't understand what\nfence, Fenya, and, never mind.... You'll hear to-morrow and understand ...\nand now, good-by. I won't stand in her way. I'll step aside, I know how to\nstep aside. Live, my joy.... You loved me for an hour, remember Mityenka\nKaramazov so for ever.... She always used to call me Mityenka, do you\nremember?\"\n\nAnd with those words he went suddenly out of the kitchen. Fenya was almost\nmore frightened at this sudden departure than she had been when he ran in\nand attacked her.\n\nJust ten minutes later Dmitri went in to Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, the young\nofficial with whom he had pawned his pistols. It was by now half-past\neight, and Pyotr Ilyitch had finished his evening tea, and had just put\nhis coat on again to go to the \"Metropolis\" to play billiards. Mitya\ncaught him coming out.\n\nSeeing him with his face all smeared with blood, the young man uttered a\ncry of surprise.\n\n\"Good heavens! What is the matter?\"\n\n\"I've come for my pistols,\" said Mitya, \"and brought you the money. And\nthanks very much. I'm in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyitch, please make haste.\"\n\nPyotr Ilyitch grew more and more surprised; he suddenly caught sight of a\nbundle of bank-notes in Mitya's hand, and what was more, he had walked in\nholding the notes as no one walks in and no one carries money: he had them\nin his right hand, and held them outstretched as if to show them.\nPerhotin's servant-boy, who met Mitya in the passage, said afterwards that\nhe walked into the passage in the same way, with the money outstretched in\nhis hand, so he must have been carrying them like that even in the\nstreets. They were all rainbow-colored hundred-rouble notes, and the\nfingers holding them were covered with blood.\n\nWhen Pyotr Ilyitch was questioned later on as to the sum of money, he said\nthat it was difficult to judge at a glance, but that it might have been\ntwo thousand, or perhaps three, but it was a big, \"fat\" bundle. \"Dmitri\nFyodorovitch,\" so he testified afterwards, \"seemed unlike himself, too;\nnot drunk, but, as it were, exalted, lost to everything, but at the same\ntime, as it were, absorbed, as though pondering and searching for\nsomething and unable to come to a decision. He was in great haste,\nanswered abruptly and very strangely, and at moments seemed not at all\ndejected but quite cheerful.\"\n\n\"But what _is_ the matter with you? What's wrong?\" cried Pyotr Ilyitch,\nlooking wildly at his guest. \"How is it that you're all covered with\nblood? Have you had a fall? Look at yourself!\"\n\nHe took him by the elbow and led him to the glass.\n\nSeeing his blood-stained face, Mitya started and scowled wrathfully.\n\n\"Damnation! That's the last straw,\" he muttered angrily, hurriedly\nchanging the notes from his right hand to the left, and impulsively jerked\nthe handkerchief out of his pocket. But the handkerchief turned out to be\nsoaked with blood, too (it was the handkerchief he had used to wipe\nGrigory's face). There was scarcely a white spot on it, and it had not\nmerely begun to dry, but had stiffened into a crumpled ball and could not\nbe pulled apart. Mitya threw it angrily on the floor.\n\n\"Oh, damn it!\" he said. \"Haven't you a rag of some sort ... to wipe my\nface?\"\n\n\"So you're only stained, not wounded? You'd better wash,\" said Pyotr\nIlyitch. \"Here's a wash-stand. I'll pour you out some water.\"\n\n\"A wash-stand? That's all right ... but where am I to put this?\"\n\nWith the strangest perplexity he indicated his bundle of hundred-rouble\nnotes, looking inquiringly at Pyotr Ilyitch as though it were for him to\ndecide what he, Mitya, was to do with his own money.\n\n\"In your pocket, or on the table here. They won't be lost.\"\n\n\"In my pocket? Yes, in my pocket. All right.... But, I say, that's all\nnonsense,\" he cried, as though suddenly coming out of his absorption.\n\"Look here, let's first settle that business of the pistols. Give them\nback to me. Here's your money ... because I am in great need of them ...\nand I haven't a minute, a minute to spare.\"\n\nAnd taking the topmost note from the bundle he held it out to Pyotr\nIlyitch.\n\n\"But I shan't have change enough. Haven't you less?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Mitya, looking again at the bundle, and as though not trusting\nhis own words he turned over two or three of the topmost ones.\n\n\"No, they're all alike,\" he added, and again he looked inquiringly at\nPyotr Ilyitch.\n\n\"How have you grown so rich?\" the latter asked. \"Wait, I'll send my boy to\nPlotnikov's, they close late--to see if they won't change it. Here, Misha!\"\nhe called into the passage.\n\n\"To Plotnikov's shop--first-rate!\" cried Mitya, as though struck by an\nidea. \"Misha,\" he turned to the boy as he came in, \"look here, run to\nPlotnikov's and tell them that Dmitri Fyodorovitch sends his greetings,\nand will be there directly.... But listen, listen, tell them to have\nchampagne, three dozen bottles, ready before I come, and packed as it was\nto take to Mokroe. I took four dozen with me then,\" he added (suddenly\naddressing Pyotr Ilyitch); \"they know all about it, don't you trouble,\nMisha,\" he turned again to the boy. \"Stay, listen; tell them to put in\ncheese, Strasburg pies, smoked fish, ham, caviare, and everything,\neverything they've got, up to a hundred roubles, or a hundred and twenty\nas before.... But wait: don't let them forget dessert, sweets, pears,\nwater-melons, two or three or four--no, one melon's enough, and chocolate,\ncandy, toffee, fondants; in fact, everything I took to Mokroe before,\nthree hundred roubles' worth with the champagne ... let it be just the\nsame again. And remember, Misha, if you are called Misha--His name is\nMisha, isn't it?\" He turned to Pyotr Ilyitch again.\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" Protr Ilyitch intervened, listening and watching him\nuneasily, \"you'd better go yourself and tell them. He'll muddle it.\"\n\n\"He will, I see he will! Eh, Misha! Why, I was going to kiss you for the\ncommission.... If you don't make a mistake, there's ten roubles for you,\nrun along, make haste.... Champagne's the chief thing, let them bring up\nchampagne. And brandy, too, and red and white wine, and all I had then....\nThey know what I had then.\"\n\n\"But listen!\" Pyotr Ilyitch interrupted with some impatience. \"I say, let\nhim simply run and change the money and tell them not to close, and you go\nand tell them.... Give him your note. Be off, Misha! Put your best leg\nforward!\"\n\nPyotr Ilyitch seemed to hurry Misha off on purpose, because the boy\nremained standing with his mouth and eyes wide open, apparently\nunderstanding little of Mitya's orders, gazing up with amazement and\nterror at his blood-stained face and the trembling bloodstained fingers\nthat held the notes.\n\n\"Well, now come and wash,\" said Pyotr Ilyitch sternly. \"Put the money on\nthe table or else in your pocket.... That's right, come along. But take\noff your coat.\"\n\nAnd beginning to help him off with his coat, he cried out again:\n\n\"Look, your coat's covered with blood, too!\"\n\n\"That ... it's not the coat. It's only a little here on the sleeve.... And\nthat's only here where the handkerchief lay. It must have soaked through.\nI must have sat on the handkerchief at Fenya's, and the blood's come\nthrough,\" Mitya explained at once with a childlike unconsciousness that\nwas astounding. Pyotr Ilyitch listened, frowning.\n\n\"Well, you must have been up to something; you must have been fighting\nwith some one,\" he muttered.\n\nThey began to wash. Pyotr Ilyitch held the jug and poured out the water.\nMitya, in desperate haste, scarcely soaped his hands (they were trembling,\nand Pyotr Ilyitch remembered it afterwards). But the young official\ninsisted on his soaping them thoroughly and rubbing them more. He seemed\nto exercise more and more sway over Mitya, as time went on. It may be\nnoted in passing that he was a young man of sturdy character.\n\n\"Look, you haven't got your nails clean. Now rub your face; here, on your\ntemples, by your ear.... Will you go in that shirt? Where are you going?\nLook, all the cuff of your right sleeve is covered with blood.\"\n\n\"Yes, it's all bloody,\" observed Mitya, looking at the cuff of his shirt.\n\n\"Then change your shirt.\"\n\n\"I haven't time. You see I'll ...\" Mitya went on with the same confiding\ningenuousness, drying his face and hands on the towel, and putting on his\ncoat. \"I'll turn it up at the wrist. It won't be seen under the coat....\nYou see!\"\n\n\"Tell me now, what game have you been up to? Have you been fighting with\nsome one? In the tavern again, as before? Have you been beating that\ncaptain again?\" Pyotr Ilyitch asked him reproachfully. \"Whom have you been\nbeating now ... or killing, perhaps?\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" said Mitya.\n\n\"Why 'nonsense'?\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" said Mitya, and he suddenly laughed. \"I smashed an old\nwoman in the market-place just now.\"\n\n\"Smashed? An old woman?\"\n\n\"An old man!\" cried Mitya, looking Pyotr Ilyitch straight in the face,\nlaughing, and shouting at him as though he were deaf.\n\n\"Confound it! An old woman, an old man.... Have you killed some one?\"\n\n\"We made it up. We had a row--and made it up. In a place I know of. We\nparted friends. A fool.... He's forgiven me.... He's sure to have forgiven\nme by now ... if he had got up, he wouldn't have forgiven me\"--Mitya\nsuddenly winked--\"only damn him, you know, I say, Pyotr Ilyitch, damn him!\nDon't worry about him! I don't want to just now!\" Mitya snapped out,\nresolutely.\n\n\"Whatever do you want to go picking quarrels with every one for? ... Just\nas you did with that captain over some nonsense.... You've been fighting\nand now you're rushing off on the spree--that's you all over! Three dozen\nchampagne--what do you want all that for?\"\n\n\"Bravo! Now give me the pistols. Upon my honor I've no time now. I should\nlike to have a chat with you, my dear boy, but I haven't the time. And\nthere's no need, it's too late for talking. Where's my money? Where have I\nput it?\" he cried, thrusting his hands into his pockets.\n\n\"You put it on the table ... yourself.... Here it is. Had you forgotten?\nMoney's like dirt or water to you, it seems. Here are your pistols. It's\nan odd thing, at six o'clock you pledged them for ten roubles, and now\nyou've got thousands. Two or three I should say.\"\n\n\"Three, you bet,\" laughed Mitya, stuffing the notes into the side-pocket\nof his trousers.\n\n\"You'll lose it like that. Have you found a gold-mine?\"\n\n\"The mines? The gold-mines?\" Mitya shouted at the top of his voice and\nwent off into a roar of laughter. \"Would you like to go to the mines,\nPerhotin? There's a lady here who'll stump up three thousand for you, if\nonly you'll go. She did it for me, she's so awfully fond of gold-mines. Do\nyou know Madame Hohlakov?\"\n\n\"I don't know her, but I've heard of her and seen her. Did she really give\nyou three thousand? Did she really?\" said Pyotr Ilyitch, eyeing him\ndubiously.\n\n\"As soon as the sun rises to-morrow, as soon as Phoebus, ever young, flies\nupwards, praising and glorifying God, you go to her, this Madame Hohlakov,\nand ask her whether she did stump up that three thousand or not. Try and\nfind out.\"\n\n\"I don't know on what terms you are ... since you say it so positively, I\nsuppose she did give it to you. You've got the money in your hand, but\ninstead of going to Siberia you're spending it all.... Where are you\nreally off to now, eh?\"\n\n\"To Mokroe.\"\n\n\"To Mokroe? But it's night!\"\n\n\"Once the lad had all, now the lad has naught,\" cried Mitya suddenly.\n\n\"How 'naught'? You say that with all those thousands!\"\n\n\"I'm not talking about thousands. Damn thousands! I'm talking of the\nfemale character.\n\n\n    Fickle is the heart of woman\n    Treacherous and full of vice;\n\n\nI agree with Ulysses. That's what he says.\"\n\n\"I don't understand you!\"\n\n\"Am I drunk?\"\n\n\"Not drunk, but worse.\"\n\n\"I'm drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyitch, drunk in spirit! But that's enough!\"\n\n\"What are you doing, loading the pistol?\"\n\n\"I'm loading the pistol.\"\n\nUnfastening the pistol-case, Mitya actually opened the powder horn, and\ncarefully sprinkled and rammed in the charge. Then he took the bullet and,\nbefore inserting it, held it in two fingers in front of the candle.\n\n\"Why are you looking at the bullet?\" asked Pyotr Ilyitch, watching him\nwith uneasy curiosity.\n\n\"Oh, a fancy. Why, if you meant to put that bullet in your brain, would\nyou look at it or not?\"\n\n\"Why look at it?\"\n\n\"It's going into my brain, so it's interesting to look and see what it's\nlike. But that's foolishness, a moment's foolishness. Now that's done,\" he\nadded, putting in the bullet and driving it home with the ramrod. \"Pyotr\nIlyitch, my dear fellow, that's nonsense, all nonsense, and if only you\nknew what nonsense! Give me a little piece of paper now.\"\n\n\"Here's some paper.\"\n\n\"No, a clean new piece, writing-paper. That's right.\"\n\nAnd taking a pen from the table, Mitya rapidly wrote two lines, folded the\npaper in four, and thrust it in his waistcoat pocket. He put the pistols\nin the case, locked it up, and kept it in his hand. Then he looked at\nPyotr Ilyitch with a slow, thoughtful smile.\n\n\"Now, let's go.\"\n\n\"Where are we going? No, wait a minute.... Are you thinking of putting\nthat bullet in your brain, perhaps?\" Pyotr Ilyitch asked uneasily.\n\n\"I was fooling about the bullet! I want to live. I love life! You may be\nsure of that. I love golden-haired Phoebus and his warm light.... Dear\nPyotr Ilyitch, do you know how to step aside?\"\n\n\"What do you mean by 'stepping aside'?\"\n\n\"Making way. Making way for a dear creature, and for one I hate. And to\nlet the one I hate become dear--that's what making way means! And to say to\nthem: God bless you, go your way, pass on, while I--\"\n\n\"While you--?\"\n\n\"That's enough, let's go.\"\n\n\"Upon my word. I'll tell some one to prevent your going there,\" said Pyotr\nIlyitch, looking at him. \"What are you going to Mokroe for, now?\"\n\n\"There's a woman there, a woman. That's enough for you. You shut up.\"\n\n\"Listen, though you're such a savage I've always liked you.... I feel\nanxious.\"\n\n\"Thanks, old fellow. I'm a savage you say. Savages, savages! That's what I\nam always saying. Savages! Why, here's Misha! I was forgetting him.\"\n\nMisha ran in, post-haste, with a handful of notes in change, and reported\nthat every one was in a bustle at the Plotnikovs'; \"They're carrying down\nthe bottles, and the fish, and the tea; it will all be ready directly.\"\nMitya seized ten roubles and handed it to Pyotr Ilyitch, then tossed\nanother ten-rouble note to Misha.\n\n\"Don't dare to do such a thing!\" cried Pyotr Ilyitch. \"I won't have it in\nmy house, it's a bad, demoralizing habit. Put your money away. Here, put\nit here, why waste it? It would come in handy to-morrow, and I dare say\nyou'll be coming to me to borrow ten roubles again. Why do you keep\nputting the notes in your side-pocket? Ah, you'll lose them!\"\n\n\"I say, my dear fellow, let's go to Mokroe together.\"\n\n\"What should I go for?\"\n\n\"I say, let's open a bottle at once, and drink to life! I want to drink,\nand especially to drink with you. I've never drunk with you, have I?\"\n\n\"Very well, we can go to the 'Metropolis.' I was just going there.\"\n\n\"I haven't time for that. Let's drink at the Plotnikovs', in the back\nroom. Shall I ask you a riddle?\"\n\n\"Ask away.\"\n\nMitya took the piece of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it and\nshowed it. In a large, distinct hand was written: \"I punish myself for my\nwhole life, my whole life I punish!\"\n\n\"I will certainly speak to some one, I'll go at once,\" said Pyotr Ilyitch,\nafter reading the paper.\n\n\"You won't have time, dear boy, come and have a drink. March!\"\n\nPlotnikov's shop was at the corner of the street, next door but one to\nPyotr Ilyitch's. It was the largest grocery shop in our town, and by no\nmeans a bad one, belonging to some rich merchants. They kept everything\nthat could be got in a Petersburg shop, grocery of all sort, wines\n\"bottled by the brothers Eliseyev,\" fruits, cigars, tea, coffee, sugar,\nand so on. There were three shop-assistants and two errand boys always\nemployed. Though our part of the country had grown poorer, the landowners\nhad gone away, and trade had got worse, yet the grocery stores flourished\nas before, every year with increasing prosperity; there were plenty of\npurchasers for their goods.\n\nThey were awaiting Mitya with impatience in the shop. They had vivid\nrecollections of how he had bought, three or four weeks ago, wine and\ngoods of all sorts to the value of several hundred roubles, paid for in\ncash (they would never have let him have anything on credit, of course).\nThey remembered that then, as now, he had had a bundle of hundred-rouble\nnotes in his hand, and had scattered them at random, without bargaining,\nwithout reflecting, or caring to reflect what use so much wine and\nprovisions would be to him. The story was told all over the town that,\ndriving off then with Grushenka to Mokroe, he had \"spent three thousand in\none night and the following day, and had come back from the spree without\na penny.\" He had picked up a whole troop of gypsies (encamped in our\nneighborhood at the time), who for two days got money without stint out of\nhim while he was drunk, and drank expensive wine without stint. People\nused to tell, laughing at Mitya, how he had given champagne to grimy-\nhanded peasants, and feasted the village women and girls on sweets and\nStrasburg pies. Though to laugh at Mitya to his face was rather a risky\nproceeding, there was much laughter behind his back, especially in the\ntavern, at his own ingenuous public avowal that all he had got out of\nGrushenka by this \"escapade\" was \"permission to kiss her foot, and that\nwas the utmost she had allowed him.\"\n\nBy the time Mitya and Pyotr Ilyitch reached the shop, they found a cart\nwith three horses harnessed abreast with bells, and with Andrey, the\ndriver, ready waiting for Mitya at the entrance. In the shop they had\nalmost entirely finished packing one box of provisions, and were only\nwaiting for Mitya's arrival to nail it down and put it in the cart. Pyotr\nIlyitch was astounded.\n\n\"Where did this cart come from in such a hurry?\" he asked Mitya.\n\n\"I met Andrey as I ran to you, and told him to drive straight here to the\nshop. There's no time to lose. Last time I drove with Timofey, but Timofey\nnow has gone on before me with the witch. Shall we be very late, Andrey?\"\n\n\"They'll only get there an hour at most before us, not even that maybe. I\ngot Timofey ready to start. I know how he'll go. Their pace won't be ours,\nDmitri Fyodorovitch. How could it be? They won't get there an hour\nearlier!\" Andrey, a lanky, red-haired, middle-aged driver, wearing a full-\nskirted coat, and with a kaftan on his arm, replied warmly.\n\n\"Fifty roubles for vodka if we're only an hour behind them.\"\n\n\"I warrant the time, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Ech, they won't be half an hour\nbefore us, let alone an hour.\"\n\nThough Mitya bustled about seeing after things, he gave his orders\nstrangely, as it were disconnectedly, and inconsecutively. He began a\nsentence and forgot the end of it. Pyotr Ilyitch found himself obliged to\ncome to the rescue.\n\n\"Four hundred roubles' worth, not less than four hundred roubles' worth,\njust as it was then,\" commanded Mitya. \"Four dozen champagne, not a bottle\nless.\"\n\n\"What do you want with so much? What's it for? Stay!\" cried Pyotr Ilyitch.\n\"What's this box? What's in it? Surely there isn't four hundred roubles'\nworth here?\"\n\nThe officious shopmen began explaining with oily politeness that the first\nbox contained only half a dozen bottles of champagne, and only \"the most\nindispensable articles,\" such as savories, sweets, toffee, etc. But the\nmain part of the goods ordered would be packed and sent off, as on the\nprevious occasion, in a special cart also with three horses traveling at\nfull speed, so that it would arrive not more than an hour later than\nDmitri Fyodorovitch himself.\n\n\"Not more than an hour! Not more than an hour! And put in more toffee and\nfondants. The girls there are so fond of it,\" Mitya insisted hotly.\n\n\"The fondants are all right. But what do you want with four dozen of\nchampagne? One would be enough,\" said Pyotr Ilyitch, almost angry. He\nbegan bargaining, asking for a bill of the goods, and refused to be\nsatisfied. But he only succeeded in saving a hundred roubles. In the end\nit was agreed that only three hundred roubles' worth should be sent.\n\n\"Well, you may go to the devil!\" cried Pyotr Ilyitch, on second thoughts.\n\"What's it to do with me? Throw away your money, since it's cost you\nnothing.\"\n\n\"This way, my economist, this way, don't be angry.\" Mitya drew him into a\nroom at the back of the shop. \"They'll give us a bottle here directly.\nWe'll taste it. Ech, Pyotr Ilyitch, come along with me, for you're a nice\nfellow, the sort I like.\"\n\nMitya sat down on a wicker chair, before a little table, covered with a\ndirty dinner-napkin. Pyotr Ilyitch sat down opposite, and the champagne\nsoon appeared, and oysters were suggested to the gentlemen. \"First-class\noysters, the last lot in.\"\n\n\"Hang the oysters. I don't eat them. And we don't need anything,\" cried\nPyotr Ilyitch, almost angrily.\n\n\"There's no time for oysters,\" said Mitya. \"And I'm not hungry. Do you\nknow, friend,\" he said suddenly, with feeling, \"I never have liked all\nthis disorder.\"\n\n\"Who does like it? Three dozen of champagne for peasants, upon my word,\nthat's enough to make any one angry!\"\n\n\"That's not what I mean. I'm talking of a higher order. There's no order\nin me, no higher order. But ... that's all over. There's no need to grieve\nabout it. It's too late, damn it! My whole life has been disorder, and one\nmust set it in order. Is that a pun, eh?\"\n\n\"You're raving, not making puns!\"\n\n\n    \"Glory be to God in Heaven,\n    Glory be to God in me....\n\n\n\"That verse came from my heart once, it's not a verse, but a tear.... I\nmade it myself ... not while I was pulling the captain's beard,\nthough....\"\n\n\"Why do you bring him in all of a sudden?\"\n\n\"Why do I bring him in? Foolery! All things come to an end; all things are\nmade equal. That's the long and short of it.\"\n\n\"You know, I keep thinking of your pistols.\"\n\n\"That's all foolery, too! Drink, and don't be fanciful. I love life. I've\nloved life too much, shamefully much. Enough! Let's drink to life, dear\nboy, I propose the toast. Why am I pleased with myself? I'm a scoundrel,\nbut I'm satisfied with myself. And yet I'm tortured by the thought that\nI'm a scoundrel, but satisfied with myself. I bless the creation. I'm\nready to bless God and His creation directly, but ... I must kill one\nnoxious insect for fear it should crawl and spoil life for others.... Let\nus drink to life, dear brother. What can be more precious than life?\nNothing! To life, and to one queen of queens!\"\n\n\"Let's drink to life and to your queen, too, if you like.\"\n\nThey drank a glass each. Although Mitya was excited and expansive, yet he\nwas melancholy, too. It was as though some heavy, overwhelming anxiety\nwere weighing upon him.\n\n\"Misha ... here's your Misha come! Misha, come here, my boy, drink this\nglass to Phoebus, the golden-haired, of to-morrow morn....\"\n\n\"What are you giving it him for?\" cried Pyotr Ilyitch, irritably.\n\n\"Yes, yes, yes, let me! I want to!\"\n\n\"E--ech!\"\n\nMisha emptied the glass, bowed, and ran out.\n\n\"He'll remember it afterwards,\" Mitya remarked. \"Woman, I love woman! What\nis woman? The queen of creation! My heart is sad, my heart is sad, Pyotr\nIlyitch. Do you remember Hamlet? 'I am very sorry, good Horatio! Alas,\npoor Yorick!' Perhaps that's me, Yorick? Yes, I'm Yorick now, and a skull\nafterwards.\"\n\nPyotr Ilyitch listened in silence. Mitya, too, was silent for a while.\n\n\"What dog's that you've got here?\" he asked the shopman, casually,\nnoticing a pretty little lap-dog with dark eyes, sitting in the corner.\n\n\"It belongs to Varvara Alexyevna, the mistress,\" answered the clerk. \"She\nbrought it and forgot it here. It must be taken back to her.\"\n\n\"I saw one like it ... in the regiment ...\" murmured Mitya dreamily, \"only\nthat one had its hind leg broken.... By the way, Pyotr Ilyitch, I wanted\nto ask you: have you ever stolen anything in your life?\"\n\n\"What a question!\"\n\n\"Oh, I didn't mean anything. From somebody's pocket, you know. I don't\nmean government money, every one steals that, and no doubt you do,\ntoo....\"\n\n\"You go to the devil.\"\n\n\"I'm talking of other people's money. Stealing straight out of a pocket?\nOut of a purse, eh?\"\n\n\"I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years old. I took\nit off the table on the sly, and held it tight in my hand.\"\n\n\"Well, and what happened?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing. I kept it three days, then I felt ashamed, confessed, and\ngave it back.\"\n\n\"And what then?\"\n\n\"Naturally I was whipped. But why do you ask? Have you stolen something?\"\n\n\"I have,\" said Mitya, winking slyly.\n\n\"What have you stolen?\" inquired Pyotr Ilyitch curiously.\n\n\"I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years old, and gave\nit back three days after.\"\n\nAs he said this, Mitya suddenly got up.\n\n\"Dmitri Fyodorovitch, won't you come now?\" called Andrey from the door of\nthe shop.\n\n\"Are you ready? We'll come!\" Mitya started. \"A few more last words\nand--Andrey, a glass of vodka at starting. Give him some brandy as well!\nThat box\" (the one with the pistols) \"put under my seat. Good-by, Pyotr\nIlyitch, don't remember evil against me.\"\n\n\"But you're coming back to-morrow?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Will you settle the little bill now?\" cried the clerk, springing forward.\n\n\"Oh, yes, the bill. Of course.\"\n\nHe pulled the bundle of notes out of his pocket again, picked out three\nhundred roubles, threw them on the counter, and ran hurriedly out of the\nshop. Every one followed him out, bowing and wishing him good luck.\nAndrey, coughing from the brandy he had just swallowed, jumped up on the\nbox. But Mitya was only just taking his seat when suddenly to his surprise\nhe saw Fenya before him. She ran up panting, clasped her hands before him\nwith a cry, and plumped down at his feet.\n\n\"Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear good Dmitri Fyodorovitch, don't harm my\nmistress. And it was I told you all about it.... And don't murder him, he\ncame first, he's hers! He'll marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now. That's why\nhe's come back from Siberia. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear, don't take a\nfellow creature's life!\"\n\n\"Tut--tut--tut! That's it, is it? So you're off there to make trouble!\"\nmuttered Pyotr Ilyitch. \"Now, it's all clear, as clear as daylight. Dmitri\nFyodorovitch, give me your pistols at once if you mean to behave like a\nman,\" he shouted aloud to Mitya. \"Do you hear, Dmitri?\"\n\n\"The pistols? Wait a bit, brother, I'll throw them into the pool on the\nroad,\" answered Mitya. \"Fenya, get up, don't kneel to me. Mitya won't hurt\nany one, the silly fool won't hurt any one again. But I say, Fenya,\" he\nshouted, after having taken his seat. \"I hurt you just now, so forgive me\nand have pity on me, forgive a scoundrel.... But it doesn't matter if you\ndon't. It's all the same now. Now then, Andrey, look alive, fly along full\nspeed!\"\n\nAndrey whipped up the horses, and the bells began ringing.\n\n\"Good-by, Pyotr Ilyitch! My last tear is for you!...\"\n\n\"He's not drunk, but he keeps babbling like a lunatic,\" Pyotr Ilyitch\nthought as he watched him go. He had half a mind to stay and see the cart\npacked with the remaining wines and provisions, knowing that they would\ndeceive and defraud Mitya. But, suddenly feeling vexed with himself, he\nturned away with a curse and went to the tavern to play billiards.\n\n\"He's a fool, though he's a good fellow,\" he muttered as he went. \"I've\nheard of that officer, Grushenka's former flame. Well, if he has turned\nup.... Ech, those pistols! Damn it all! I'm not his nurse! Let them do\nwhat they like! Besides, it'll all come to nothing. They're a set of\nbrawlers, that's all. They'll drink and fight, fight and make friends\nagain. They are not men who do anything real. What does he mean by 'I'm\nstepping aside, I'm punishing myself?' It'll come to nothing! He's shouted\nsuch phrases a thousand times, drunk, in the taverns. But now he's not\ndrunk. 'Drunk in spirit'--they're fond of fine phrases, the villains. Am I\nhis nurse? He must have been fighting, his face was all over blood. With\nwhom? I shall find out at the 'Metropolis.' And his handkerchief was\nsoaked in blood.... It's still lying on my floor.... Hang it!\"\n\nHe reached the tavern in a bad humor and at once made up a game. The game\ncheered him. He played a second game, and suddenly began telling one of\nhis partners that Dmitri Karamazov had come in for some cash\nagain--something like three thousand roubles, and had gone to Mokroe again\nto spend it with Grushenka.... This news roused singular interest in his\nlisteners. They all spoke of it, not laughing, but with a strange gravity.\nThey left off playing.\n\n\"Three thousand? But where can he have got three thousand?\"\n\nQuestions were asked. The story of Madame Hohlakov's present was received\nwith skepticism.\n\n\"Hasn't he robbed his old father?--that's the question.\"\n\n\"Three thousand! There's something odd about it.\"\n\n\"He boasted aloud that he would kill his father; we all heard him, here.\nAnd it was three thousand he talked about ...\"\n\nPyotr Ilyitch listened. All at once he became short and dry in his\nanswers. He said not a word about the blood on Mitya's face and hands,\nthough he had meant to speak of it at first.\n\nThey began a third game, and by degrees the talk about Mitya died away.\nBut by the end of the third game, Pyotr Ilyitch felt no more desire for\nbilliards; he laid down the cue, and without having supper as he had\nintended, he walked out of the tavern. When he reached the market-place he\nstood still in perplexity, wondering at himself. He realized that what he\nwanted was to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch's and find out if anything had\nhappened there. \"On account of some stupid nonsense--as it's sure to turn\nout--am I going to wake up the household and make a scandal? Fooh! damn it,\nis it my business to look after them?\"\n\nIn a very bad humor he went straight home, and suddenly remembered Fenya.\n\"Damn it all! I ought to have questioned her just now,\" he thought with\nvexation, \"I should have heard everything.\" And the desire to speak to\nher, and so find out, became so pressing and importunate that when he was\nhalf-way home he turned abruptly and went towards the house where\nGrushenka lodged. Going up to the gate he knocked. The sound of the knock\nin the silence of the night sobered him and made him feel annoyed. And no\none answered him; every one in the house was asleep.\n\n\"And I shall be making a fuss!\" he thought, with a feeling of positive\ndiscomfort. But instead of going away altogether, he fell to knocking\nagain with all his might, filling the street with clamor.\n\n\"Not coming? Well, I will knock them up, I will!\" he muttered at each\nknock, fuming at himself, but at the same time he redoubled his knocks on\nthe gate.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. \"I Am Coming, Too!\"\n\n\nBut Dmitri Fyodorovitch was speeding along the road. It was a little more\nthan twenty versts to Mokroe, but Andrey's three horses galloped at such a\npace that the distance might be covered in an hour and a quarter. The\nswift motion revived Mitya. The air was fresh and cool, there were big\nstars shining in the sky. It was the very night, and perhaps the very\nhour, in which Alyosha fell on the earth, and rapturously swore to love it\nfor ever and ever.\n\nAll was confusion, confusion, in Mitya's soul, but although many things\nwere goading his heart, at that moment his whole being was yearning for\nher, his queen, to whom he was flying to look on her for the last time.\nOne thing I can say for certain; his heart did not waver for one instant.\nI shall perhaps not be believed when I say that this jealous lover felt\nnot the slightest jealousy of this new rival, who seemed to have sprung\nout of the earth. If any other had appeared on the scene, he would have\nbeen jealous at once, and would perhaps have stained his fierce hands with\nblood again. But as he flew through the night, he felt no envy, no\nhostility even, for the man who had been her first lover.... It is true he\nhad not yet seen him.\n\n\"Here there was no room for dispute: it was her right and his; this was\nher first love which, after five years, she had not forgotten; so she had\nloved him only for those five years, and I, how do I come in? What right\nhave I? Step aside, Mitya, and make way! What am I now? Now everything is\nover apart from the officer--even if he had not appeared, everything would\nbe over ...\"\n\nThese words would roughly have expressed his feelings, if he had been\ncapable of reasoning. But he could not reason at that moment. His present\nplan of action had arisen without reasoning. At Fenya's first words, it\nhad sprung from feeling, and been adopted in a flash, with all its\nconsequences. And yet, in spite of his resolution, there was confusion in\nhis soul, an agonizing confusion: his resolution did not give him peace.\nThere was so much behind that tortured him. And it seemed strange to him,\nat moments, to think that he had written his own sentence of death with\npen and paper: \"I punish myself,\" and the paper was lying there in his\npocket, ready; the pistol was loaded; he had already resolved how, next\nmorning, he would meet the first warm ray of \"golden-haired Phoebus.\"\n\nAnd yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had left behind\nand that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the thought of it sank\ninto his heart with despair. There was one moment when he felt an impulse\nto stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to pull out his loaded pistol,\nand to make an end of everything without waiting for the dawn. But that\nmoment flew by like a spark. The horses galloped on, \"devouring space,\"\nand as he drew near his goal, again the thought of her, of her alone, took\nmore and more complete possession of his soul, chasing away the fearful\nimages that had been haunting it. Oh, how he longed to look upon her, if\nonly for a moment, if only from a distance!\n\n\"She's now with _him_,\" he thought, \"now I shall see what she looks like\nwith him, her first love, and that's all I want.\" Never had this woman,\nwho was such a fateful influence in his life, aroused such love in his\nbreast, such new and unknown feeling, surprising even to himself, a\nfeeling tender to devoutness, to self-effacement before her! \"I will\nefface myself!\" he said, in a rush of almost hysterical ecstasy.\n\nThey had been galloping nearly an hour. Mitya was silent, and though\nAndrey was, as a rule, a talkative peasant, he did not utter a word,\neither. He seemed afraid to talk, he only whipped up smartly his three\nlean, but mettlesome, bay horses. Suddenly Mitya cried out in horrible\nanxiety:\n\n\"Andrey! What if they're asleep?\"\n\nThis thought fell upon him like a blow. It had not occurred to him before.\n\n\"It may well be that they're gone to bed, by now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.\"\n\nMitya frowned as though in pain. Yes, indeed ... he was rushing there ...\nwith such feelings ... while they were asleep ... she was asleep, perhaps,\nthere too.... An angry feeling surged up in his heart.\n\n\"Drive on, Andrey! Whip them up! Look alive!\" he cried, beside himself.\n\n\"But maybe they're not in bed!\" Andrey went on after a pause. \"Timofey\nsaid they were a lot of them there--\"\n\n\"At the station?\"\n\n\"Not at the posting-station, but at Plastunov's, at the inn, where they\nlet out horses, too.\"\n\n\"I know. So you say there are a lot of them? How's that? Who are they?\"\ncried Mitya, greatly dismayed at this unexpected news.\n\n\"Well, Timofey was saying they're all gentlefolk. Two from our town--who\nthey are I can't say--and there are two others, strangers, maybe more\nbesides. I didn't ask particularly. They've set to playing cards, so\nTimofey said.\"\n\n\"Cards?\"\n\n\"So, maybe they're not in bed if they're at cards. It's most likely not\nmore than eleven.\"\n\n\"Quicker, Andrey! Quicker!\" Mitya cried again, nervously.\n\n\"May I ask you something, sir?\" said Andrey, after a pause. \"Only I'm\nafraid of angering you, sir.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Why, Fenya threw herself at your feet just now, and begged you not to\nharm her mistress, and some one else, too ... so you see, sir-- It's I am\ntaking you there ... forgive me, sir, it's my conscience ... maybe it's\nstupid of me to speak of it--\"\n\nMitya suddenly seized him by the shoulders from behind.\n\n\"Are you a driver?\" he asked frantically.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Then you know that one has to make way. What would you say to a driver\nwho wouldn't make way for any one, but would just drive on and crush\npeople? No, a driver mustn't run over people. One can't run over a man.\nOne can't spoil people's lives. And if you have spoilt a life--punish\nyourself.... If only you've spoilt, if only you've ruined any one's\nlife--punish yourself and go away.\"\n\nThese phrases burst from Mitya almost hysterically. Though Andrey was\nsurprised at him, he kept up the conversation.\n\n\"That's right, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, you're quite right, one mustn't crush\nor torment a man, or any kind of creature, for every creature is created\nby God. Take a horse, for instance, for some folks, even among us drivers,\ndrive anyhow. Nothing will restrain them, they just force it along.\"\n\n\"To hell?\" Mitya interrupted, and went off into his abrupt, short laugh.\n\"Andrey, simple soul,\" he seized him by the shoulders again, \"tell me,\nwill Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov go to hell, or not, what do you think?\"\n\n\"I don't know, darling, it depends on you, for you are ... you see, sir,\nwhen the Son of God was nailed on the Cross and died, He went straight\ndown to hell from the Cross, and set free all sinners that were in agony.\nAnd the devil groaned, because he thought that he would get no more\nsinners in hell. And God said to him, then, 'Don't groan, for you shall\nhave all the mighty of the earth, the rulers, the chief judges, and the\nrich men, and shall be filled up as you have been in all the ages till I\ncome again.' Those were His very words ...\"\n\n\"A peasant legend! Capital! Whip up the left, Andrey!\"\n\n\"So you see, sir, who it is hell's for,\" said Andrey, whipping up the left\nhorse, \"but you're like a little child ... that's how we look on you ...\nand though you're hasty-tempered, sir, yet God will forgive you for your\nkind heart.\"\n\n\"And you, do you forgive me, Andrey?\"\n\n\"What should I forgive you for, sir? You've never done me any harm.\"\n\n\"No, for every one, for every one, you here alone, on the road, will you\nforgive me for every one? Speak, simple peasant heart!\"\n\n\"Oh, sir! I feel afraid of driving you, your talk is so strange.\"\n\nBut Mitya did not hear. He was frantically praying and muttering to\nhimself.\n\n\"Lord, receive me, with all my lawlessness, and do not condemn me. Let me\npass by Thy judgment ... do not condemn me, for I have condemned myself,\ndo not condemn me, for I love Thee, O Lord. I am a wretch, but I love\nThee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee there, and from there\nI shall cry out that I love Thee for ever and ever.... But let me love to\nthe end.... Here and now for just five hours ... till the first light of\nThy day ... for I love the queen of my soul ... I love her and I cannot\nhelp loving her. Thou seest my whole heart.... I shall gallop up, I shall\nfall before her and say, 'You are right to pass on and leave me. Farewell\nand forget your victim ... never fret yourself about me!' \"\n\n\"Mokroe!\" cried Andrey, pointing ahead with his whip.\n\nThrough the pale darkness of the night loomed a solid black mass of\nbuildings, flung down, as it were, in the vast plain. The village of\nMokroe numbered two thousand inhabitants, but at that hour all were\nasleep, and only here and there a few lights still twinkled.\n\n\"Drive on, Andrey, I come!\" Mitya exclaimed, feverishly.\n\n\"They're not asleep,\" said Andrey again, pointing with his whip to the\nPlastunovs' inn, which was at the entrance to the village. The six\nwindows, looking on the street, were all brightly lighted up.\n\n\"They're not asleep,\" Mitya repeated joyously. \"Quicker, Andrey! Gallop!\nDrive up with a dash! Set the bells ringing! Let all know that I have\ncome. I'm coming! I'm coming, too!\"\n\nAndrey lashed his exhausted team into a gallop, drove with a dash and\npulled up his steaming, panting horses at the high flight of steps.\n\nMitya jumped out of the cart just as the innkeeper, on his way to bed,\npeeped out from the steps curious to see who had arrived.\n\n\"Trifon Borissovitch, is that you?\"\n\nThe innkeeper bent down, looked intently, ran down the steps, and rushed\nup to the guest with obsequious delight.\n\n\"Dmitri Fyodorovitch, your honor! Do I see you again?\"\n\nTrifon Borissovitch was a thick-set, healthy peasant, of middle height,\nwith a rather fat face. His expression was severe and uncompromising,\nespecially with the peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of assuming\nthe most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that it was to his\ninterest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt buttoning down on one\nside, and a full-skirted coat. He had saved a good sum of money, but was\nfor ever dreaming of improving his position. More than half the peasants\nwere in his clutches, every one in the neighborhood was in debt to him.\nFrom the neighboring landowners he bought and rented lands which were\nworked by the peasants, in payment of debts which they could never shake\noff. He was a widower, with four grown-up daughters. One of them was\nalready a widow and lived in the inn with her two children, his\ngrandchildren, and worked for him like a charwoman. Another of his\ndaughters was married to a petty official, and in one of the rooms of the\ninn, on the wall could be seen, among the family photographs, a miniature\nphotograph of this official in uniform and official epaulettes. The two\nyounger daughters used to wear fashionable blue or green dresses, fitting\ntight at the back, and with trains a yard long, on Church holidays or when\nthey went to pay visits. But next morning they would get up at dawn, as\nusual, sweep out the rooms with a birch-broom, empty the slops, and clean\nup after lodgers.\n\nIn spite of the thousands of roubles he had saved, Trifon Borissovitch was\nvery fond of emptying the pockets of a drunken guest, and remembering that\nnot a month ago he had, in twenty-four hours, made two if not three\nhundred roubles out of Dmitri, when he had come on his escapade with\nGrushenka, he met him now with eager welcome, scenting his prey the moment\nMitya drove up to the steps.\n\n\"Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear sir, we see you once more!\"\n\n\"Stay, Trifon Borissovitch,\" began Mitya, \"first and foremost, where is\nshe?\"\n\n\"Agrafena Alexandrovna?\" The inn-keeper understood at once, looking\nsharply into Mitya's face. \"She's here, too ...\"\n\n\"With whom? With whom?\"\n\n\"Some strangers. One is an official gentleman, a Pole, to judge from his\nspeech. He sent the horses for her from here; and there's another with\nhim, a friend of his, or a fellow traveler, there's no telling. They're\ndressed like civilians.\"\n\n\"Well, are they feasting? Have they money?\"\n\n\"Poor sort of a feast! Nothing to boast of, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"Nothing to boast of? And who are the others?\"\n\n\"They're two gentlemen from the town.... They've come back from Tcherny,\nand are putting up here. One's quite a young gentleman, a relative of Mr.\nMiuesov, he must be, but I've forgotten his name ... and I expect you know\nthe other, too, a gentleman called Maximov. He's been on a pilgrimage, so\nhe says, to the monastery in the town. He's traveling with this young\nrelation of Mr. Miuesov.\"\n\n\"Is that all?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Stay, listen, Trifon Borissovitch. Tell me the chief thing: What of her?\nHow is she?\"\n\n\"Oh, she's only just come. She's sitting with them.\"\n\n\"Is she cheerful? Is she laughing?\"\n\n\"No, I think she's not laughing much. She's sitting quite dull. She's\ncombing the young gentleman's hair.\"\n\n\"The Pole--the officer?\"\n\n\"He's not young, and he's not an officer, either. Not him, sir. It's the\nyoung gentleman that's Mr. Miuesov's relation ... I've forgotten his name.\"\n\n\"Kalganov.\"\n\n\"That's it, Kalganov!\"\n\n\"All right. I'll see for myself. Are they playing cards?\"\n\n\"They have been playing, but they've left off. They've been drinking tea,\nthe official gentleman asked for liqueurs.\"\n\n\"Stay, Trifon Borissovitch, stay, my good soul, I'll see for myself. Now\nanswer one more question: are the gypsies here?\"\n\n\"You can't have the gypsies now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The authorities have\nsent them away. But we've Jews that play the cymbals and the fiddle in the\nvillage, so one might send for them. They'd come.\"\n\n\"Send for them. Certainly send for them!\" cried Mitya. \"And you can get\nthe girls together as you did then, Marya especially, Stepanida, too, and\nArina. Two hundred roubles for a chorus!\"\n\n\"Oh, for a sum like that I can get all the village together, though by now\nthey're asleep. Are the peasants here worth such kindness, Dmitri\nFyodorovitch, or the girls either? To spend a sum like that on such\ncoarseness and rudeness! What's the good of giving a peasant a cigar to\nsmoke, the stinking ruffian! And the girls are all lousy. Besides, I'll\nget my daughters up for nothing, let alone a sum like that. They've only\njust gone to bed, I'll give them a kick and set them singing for you. You\ngave the peasants champagne to drink the other day, e--ech!\"\n\nFor all his pretended compassion for Mitya, Trifon Borissovitch had hidden\nhalf a dozen bottles of champagne on that last occasion, and had picked up\na hundred-rouble note under the table, and it had remained in his\nclutches.\n\n\"Trifon Borissovitch, I sent more than one thousand flying last time I was\nhere. Do you remember?\"\n\n\"You did send it flying. I may well remember. You must have left three\nthousand behind you.\"\n\n\"Well, I've come to do the same again, do you see?\"\n\nAnd he pulled out his roll of notes, and held them up before the\ninnkeeper's nose.\n\n\"Now, listen and remember. In an hour's time the wine will arrive,\nsavories, pies, and sweets--bring them all up at once. That box Andrey has\ngot is to be brought up at once, too. Open it, and hand champagne\nimmediately. And the girls, we must have the girls, Marya especially.\"\n\nHe turned to the cart and pulled out the box of pistols.\n\n\"Here, Andrey, let's settle. Here's fifteen roubles for the drive, and\nfifty for vodka ... for your readiness, for your love.... Remember\nKaramazov!\"\n\n\"I'm afraid, sir,\" faltered Andrey. \"Give me five roubles extra, but more\nI won't take. Trifon Borissovitch, bear witness. Forgive my foolish words\n...\"\n\n\"What are you afraid of?\" asked Mitya, scanning him. \"Well, go to the\ndevil, if that's it!\" he cried, flinging him five roubles. \"Now, Trifon\nBorissovitch, take me up quietly and let me first get a look at them, so\nthat they don't see me. Where are they? In the blue room?\"\n\nTrifon Borissovitch looked apprehensively at Mitya, but at once obediently\ndid his bidding. Leading him into the passage, he went himself into the\nfirst large room, adjoining that in which the visitors were sitting, and\ntook the light away. Then he stealthily led Mitya in, and put him in a\ncorner in the dark, whence he could freely watch the company without being\nseen. But Mitya did not look long, and, indeed, he could not see them, he\nsaw her, his heart throbbed violently, and all was dark before his eyes.\n\nShe was sitting sideways to the table in a low chair, and beside her, on\nthe sofa, was the pretty youth, Kalganov. She was holding his hand and\nseemed to be laughing, while he, seeming vexed and not looking at her, was\nsaying something in a loud voice to Maximov, who sat the other side of the\ntable, facing Grushenka. Maximov was laughing violently at something. On\nthe sofa sat _he_, and on a chair by the sofa there was another stranger.\nThe one on the sofa was lolling backwards, smoking a pipe, and Mitya had\nan impression of a stoutish, broad-faced, short little man, who was\napparently angry about something. His friend, the other stranger, struck\nMitya as extraordinarily tall, but he could make out nothing more. He\ncaught his breath. He could not bear it for a minute, he put the pistol-\ncase on a chest, and with a throbbing heart he walked, feeling cold all\nover, straight into the blue room to face the company.\n\n\"Aie!\" shrieked Grushenka, the first to notice him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. The First And Rightful Lover\n\n\nWith his long, rapid strides, Mitya walked straight up to the table.\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" he said in a loud voice, almost shouting, yet stammering at\nevery word, \"I ... I'm all right! Don't be afraid!\" he exclaimed,\n\"I--there's nothing the matter,\" he turned suddenly to Grushenka, who had\nshrunk back in her chair towards Kalganov, and clasped his hand tightly.\n\"I ... I'm coming, too. I'm here till morning. Gentlemen, may I stay with\nyou till morning? Only till morning, for the last time, in this same\nroom?\"\n\nSo he finished, turning to the fat little man, with the pipe, sitting on\nthe sofa. The latter removed his pipe from his lips with dignity and\nobserved severely:\n\n\"_Panie_, we're here in private. There are other rooms.\"\n\n\"Why, it's you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch! What do you mean?\" answered Kalganov\nsuddenly. \"Sit down with us. How are you?\"\n\n\"Delighted to see you, dear ... and precious fellow, I always thought a\nlot of you.\" Mitya responded, joyfully and eagerly, at once holding out\nhis hand across the table.\n\n\"Aie! How tight you squeeze! You've quite broken my fingers,\" laughed\nKalganov.\n\n\"He always squeezes like that, always,\" Grushenka put in gayly, with a\ntimid smile, seeming suddenly convinced from Mitya's face that he was not\ngoing to make a scene. She was watching him with intense curiosity and\nstill some uneasiness. She was impressed by something about him, and\nindeed the last thing she expected of him was that he would come in and\nspeak like this at such a moment.\n\n\"Good evening,\" Maximov ventured blandly on the left. Mitya rushed up to\nhim, too.\n\n\"Good evening. You're here, too! How glad I am to find you here, too!\nGentlemen, gentlemen, I--\" (He addressed the Polish gentleman with the pipe\nagain, evidently taking him for the most important person present.) \"I\nflew here.... I wanted to spend my last day, my last hour in this room, in\nthis very room ... where I, too, adored ... my queen.... Forgive me,\n_panie_,\" he cried wildly, \"I flew here and vowed-- Oh, don't be afraid,\nit's my last night! Let's drink to our good understanding. They'll bring\nthe wine at once.... I brought this with me.\" (Something made him pull out\nhis bundle of notes.) \"Allow me, _panie_! I want to have music, singing, a\nrevel, as we had before. But the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl\naway, and there'll be no more of him. I will commemorate my day of joy on\nmy last night.\"\n\nHe was almost choking. There was so much, so much he wanted to say, but\nstrange exclamations were all that came from his lips. The Pole gazed\nfixedly at him, at the bundle of notes in his hand; looked at Grushenka,\nand was in evident perplexity.\n\n\"If my suverin lady is permitting--\" he was beginning.\n\n\"What does 'suverin' mean? 'Sovereign,' I suppose?\" interrupted Grushenka.\n\"I can't help laughing at you, the way you talk. Sit down, Mitya, what are\nyou talking about? Don't frighten us, please. You won't frighten us, will\nyou? If you won't, I am glad to see you ...\"\n\n\"Me, me frighten you?\" cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. \"Oh, pass me\nby, go your way, I won't hinder you!...\"\n\nAnd suddenly he surprised them all, and no doubt himself as well, by\nflinging himself on a chair, and bursting into tears, turning his head\naway to the opposite wall, while his arms clasped the back of the chair\ntight, as though embracing it.\n\n\"Come, come, what a fellow you are!\" cried Grushenka reproachfully.\n\"That's just how he comes to see me--he begins talking, and I can't make\nout what he means. He cried like that once before, and now he's crying\nagain! It's shameful! Why are you crying? _As though you had anything to\ncry for!_\" she added enigmatically, emphasizing each word with some\nirritability.\n\n\"I ... I'm not crying.... Well, good evening!\" He instantly turned round\nin his chair, and suddenly laughed, not his abrupt wooden laugh, but a\nlong, quivering, inaudible nervous laugh.\n\n\"Well, there you are again.... Come, cheer up, cheer up!\" Grushenka said\nto him persuasively. \"I'm very glad you've come, very glad, Mitya, do you\nhear, I'm very glad! I want him to stay here with us,\" she said\nperemptorily, addressing the whole company, though her words were\nobviously meant for the man sitting on the sofa. \"I wish it, I wish it!\nAnd if he goes away I shall go, too!\" she added with flashing eyes.\n\n\"What my queen commands is law!\" pronounced the Pole, gallantly kissing\nGrushenka's hand. \"I beg you, _panie_, to join our company,\" he added\npolitely, addressing Mitya.\n\nMitya was jumping up with the obvious intention of delivering another\ntirade, but the words did not come.\n\n\"Let's drink, _panie_,\" he blurted out instead of making a speech. Every\none laughed.\n\n\"Good heavens! I thought he was going to begin again!\" Grushenka exclaimed\nnervously. \"Do you hear, Mitya,\" she went on insistently, \"don't prance\nabout, but it's nice you've brought the champagne. I want some myself, and\nI can't bear liqueurs. And best of all, you've come yourself. We were\nfearfully dull here.... You've come for a spree again, I suppose? But put\nyour money in your pocket. Where did you get such a lot?\"\n\nMitya had been, all this time, holding in his hand the crumpled bundle of\nnotes on which the eyes of all, especially of the Poles, were fixed. In\nconfusion he thrust them hurriedly into his pocket. He flushed. At that\nmoment the innkeeper brought in an uncorked bottle of champagne, and\nglasses on a tray. Mitya snatched up the bottle, but he was so bewildered\nthat he did not know what to do with it. Kalganov took it from him and\npoured out the champagne.\n\n\"Another! Another bottle!\" Mitya cried to the innkeeper, and, forgetting\nto clink glasses with the Pole whom he had so solemnly invited to drink to\ntheir good understanding, he drank off his glass without waiting for any\none else. His whole countenance suddenly changed. The solemn and tragic\nexpression with which he had entered vanished completely, and a look of\nsomething childlike came into his face. He seemed to have become suddenly\ngentle and subdued. He looked shyly and happily at every one, with a\ncontinual nervous little laugh, and the blissful expression of a dog who\nhas done wrong, been punished, and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten\neverything, and was looking round at every one with a childlike smile of\ndelight. He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his\nchair close up to her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two\nPoles, though he had formed no definite conception of them yet.\n\nThe Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanor and his Polish\naccent; and, above all, by his pipe. \"Well, what of it? It's a good thing\nhe's smoking a pipe,\" he reflected. The Pole's puffy, middle-aged face,\nwith its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed, dyed and impudent-looking\nmustaches, had not so far roused the faintest doubts in Mitya. He was not\neven particularly struck by the Pole's absurd wig made in Siberia, with\nlove-locks foolishly combed forward over the temples. \"I suppose it's all\nright since he wears a wig,\" he went on, musing blissfully. The other,\nyounger Pole, who was staring insolently and defiantly at the company and\nlistening to the conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed\nMitya by his great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on\nthe sofa. \"If he stood up he'd be six foot three.\" The thought flitted\nthrough Mitya's mind. It occurred to him, too, that this Pole must be the\nfriend of the other, as it were, a \"bodyguard,\" and no doubt the big Pole\nwas at the disposal of the little Pole with the pipe. But this all seemed\nto Mitya perfectly right and not to be questioned. In his mood of doglike\nsubmissiveness all feeling of rivalry had died away.\n\nGrushenka's mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he completely\nfailed to grasp. All he understood, with thrilling heart, was that she was\nkind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made him sit by her. He was\nbeside himself with delight, watching her sip her glass of champagne. The\nsilence of the company seemed somehow to strike him, however, and he\nlooked round at every one with expectant eyes.\n\n\"Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don't you begin doing\nsomething?\" his smiling eyes seemed to ask.\n\n\"He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing,\" Kalganov began\nsuddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to Maximov.\n\nMitya immediately stared at Kalganov and then at Maximov.\n\n\"He's talking nonsense?\" he laughed, his short, wooden laugh, seeming\nsuddenly delighted at something--\"ha ha!\"\n\n\"Yes. Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry officers\nin the twenties married Polish women. That's awful rot, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Polish women?\" repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic.\n\nKalganov was well aware of Mitya's attitude to Grushenka, and he guessed\nabout the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him, perhaps did\nnot interest him at all; what he was interested in was Maximov. He had\ncome here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles here at the inn for\nthe first time in his life. Grushenka he knew before, and had once been\nwith some one to see her; but she had not taken to him. But here she\nlooked at him very affectionately: before Mitya's arrival, she had been\nmaking much of him, but he seemed somehow to be unmoved by it. He was a\nboy, not over twenty, dressed like a dandy, with a very charming fair-\nskinned face, and splendid thick, fair hair. From his fair face looked out\nbeautiful pale blue eyes, with an intelligent and sometimes even deep\nexpression, beyond his age indeed, although the young man sometimes looked\nand talked quite like a child, and was not at all ashamed of it, even when\nhe was aware of it himself. As a rule he was very willful, even\ncapricious, though always friendly. Sometimes there was something fixed\nand obstinate in his expression. He would look at you and listen, seeming\nall the while to be persistently dreaming over something else. Often he\nwas listless and lazy, at other times he would grow excited, sometimes,\napparently, over the most trivial matters.\n\n\"Only imagine, I've been taking him about with me for the last four days,\"\nhe went on, indolently drawling his words, quite naturally though, without\nthe slightest affectation. \"Ever since your brother, do you remember,\nshoved him off the carriage and sent him flying. That made me take an\ninterest in him at the time, and I took him into the country, but he keeps\ntalking such rot I'm ashamed to be with him. I'm taking him back.\"\n\n\"The gentleman has not seen Polish ladies, and says what is impossible,\"\nthe Pole with the pipe observed to Maximov.\n\nHe spoke Russian fairly well, much better, anyway, than he pretended. If\nhe used Russian words, he always distorted them into a Polish form.\n\n\"But I was married to a Polish lady myself,\" tittered Maximov.\n\n\"But did you serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry.\nWere you a cavalry officer?\" put in Kalganov at once.\n\n\"Was he a cavalry officer indeed? Ha ha!\" cried Mitya, listening eagerly,\nand turning his inquiring eyes to each as he spoke, as though there were\nno knowing what he might hear from each.\n\n\"No, you see,\" Maximov turned to him. \"What I mean is that those pretty\nPolish ladies ... when they danced the mazurka with our Uhlans ... when\none of them dances a mazurka with a Uhlan she jumps on his knee like a\nkitten ... a little white one ... and the _pan_-father and _pan_-mother\nlook on and allow it.... They allow it ... and next day the Uhlan comes\nand offers her his hand.... That's how it is ... offers her his hand, he\nhe!\" Maximov ended, tittering.\n\n\"The _pan_ is a _lajdak_!\" the tall Pole on the chair growled suddenly and\ncrossed one leg over the other. Mitya's eye was caught by his huge greased\nboot, with its thick, dirty sole. The dress of both the Poles looked\nrather greasy.\n\n\"Well, now it's _lajdak_! What's he scolding about?\" said Grushenka,\nsuddenly vexed.\n\n\"_Pani_ Agrippina, what the gentleman saw in Poland were servant girls,\nand not ladies of good birth,\" the Pole with the pipe observed to\nGrushenka.\n\n\"You can reckon on that,\" the tall Pole snapped contemptuously.\n\n\"What next! Let him talk! People talk, why hinder them? It makes it\ncheerful,\" Grushenka said crossly.\n\n\"I'm not hindering them, _pani_,\" said the Pole in the wig, with a long\nlook at Grushenka, and relapsing into dignified silence he sucked his pipe\nagain.\n\n\"No, no. The Polish gentleman spoke the truth.\" Kalganov got excited\nagain, as though it were a question of vast import. \"He's never been in\nPoland, so how can he talk about it? I suppose you weren't married in\nPoland, were you?\"\n\n\"No, in the Province of Smolensk. Only, a Uhlan had brought her to Russia\nbefore that, my future wife, with her mamma and her aunt, and another\nfemale relation with a grown-up son. He brought her straight from Poland\nand gave her up to me. He was a lieutenant in our regiment, a very nice\nyoung man. At first he meant to marry her himself. But he didn't marry\nher, because she turned out to be lame.\"\n\n\"So you married a lame woman?\" cried Kalganov.\n\n\"Yes. They both deceived me a little bit at the time, and concealed it. I\nthought she was hopping; she kept hopping.... I thought it was for fun.\"\n\n\"So pleased she was going to marry you!\" yelled Kalganov, in a ringing,\nchildish voice.\n\n\"Yes, so pleased. But it turned out to be quite a different cause.\nAfterwards, when we were married, after the wedding, that very evening,\nshe confessed, and very touchingly asked forgiveness. 'I once jumped over\na puddle when I was a child,' she said, 'and injured my leg.' He he!\"\n\nKalganov went off into the most childish laughter, almost falling on the\nsofa. Grushenka, too, laughed. Mitya was at the pinnacle of happiness.\n\n\"Do you know, that's the truth, he's not lying now,\" exclaimed Kalganov,\nturning to Mitya; \"and do you know, he's been married twice; it's his\nfirst wife he's talking about. But his second wife, do you know, ran away,\nand is alive now.\"\n\n\"Is it possible?\" said Mitya, turning quickly to Maximov with an\nexpression of the utmost astonishment.\n\n\"Yes. She did run away. I've had that unpleasant experience,\" Maximov\nmodestly assented, \"with a _monsieur_. And what was worse, she'd had all\nmy little property transferred to her beforehand. 'You're an educated\nman,' she said to me. 'You can always get your living.' She settled my\nbusiness with that. A venerable bishop once said to me: 'One of your wives\nwas lame, but the other was too light-footed.' He he!\"\n\n\"Listen, listen!\" cried Kalganov, bubbling over, \"if he's telling lies--and\nhe often is--he's only doing it to amuse us all. There's no harm in that,\nis there? You know, I sometimes like him. He's awfully low, but it's\nnatural to him, eh? Don't you think so? Some people are low from self-\ninterest, but he's simply so, from nature. Only fancy, he claims (he was\narguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol wrote _Dead Souls_\nabout him. Do you remember, there's a landowner called Maximov in it, whom\nNozdryov thrashed. He was charged, do you remember, 'for inflicting bodily\ninjury with rods on the landowner Maximov in a drunken condition.' Would\nyou believe it, he claims that he was that Maximov and that he was beaten!\nNow can it be so? Tchitchikov made his journey, at the very latest, at the\nbeginning of the twenties, so that the dates don't fit. He couldn't have\nbeen thrashed then, he couldn't, could he?\"\n\nIt was difficult to imagine what Kalganov was excited about, but his\nexcitement was genuine. Mitya followed his lead without protest.\n\n\"Well, but if they did thrash him!\" he cried, laughing.\n\n\"It's not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is--\" put in\nMaximov.\n\n\"What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn't.\"\n\n\"What o'clock is it, _panie_?\" the Pole, with the pipe, asked his tall\nfriend, with a bored expression. The other shrugged his shoulders in\nreply. Neither of them had a watch.\n\n\"Why not talk? Let other people talk. Mustn't other people talk because\nyou're bored?\" Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of finding\nfault. Something seemed for the first time to flash upon Mitya's mind.\nThis time the Pole answered with unmistakable irritability.\n\n\"_Pani_, I didn't oppose it. I didn't say anything.\"\n\n\"All right then. Come, tell us your story,\" Grushenka cried to Maximov.\n\"Why are you all silent?\"\n\n\"There's nothing to tell, it's all so foolish,\" answered Maximov at once,\nwith evident satisfaction, mincing a little. \"Besides, all that's by way\nof allegory in Gogol, for he's made all the names have a meaning. Nozdryov\nwas really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a different name, he\nwas called Shkvornev. Fenardi really was called Fenardi, only he wasn't an\nItalian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi was a pretty girl with her\npretty little legs in tights, and she had a little short skirt with\nspangles, and she kept turning round and round, only not for four hours\nbut for four minutes only, and she bewitched every one...\"\n\n\"But what were you beaten for?\" cried Kalganov.\n\n\"For Piron!\" answered Maximov.\n\n\"What Piron?\" cried Mitya.\n\n\"The famous French writer, Piron. We were all drinking then, a big party\nof us, in a tavern at that very fair. They'd invited me, and first of all\nI began quoting epigrams. 'Is that you, Boileau? What a funny get-up!' and\nBoileau answers that he's going to a masquerade, that is to the baths, he\nhe! And they took it to themselves, so I made haste to repeat another,\nvery sarcastic, well known to all educated people:\n\n\n    Yes, Sappho and Phaon are we!\n    But one grief is weighing on me.\n    You don't know your way to the sea!\n\n\nThey were still more offended and began abusing me in the most unseemly\nway for it. And as ill-luck would have it, to set things right, I began\ntelling a very cultivated anecdote about Piron, how he was not accepted\ninto the French Academy, and to revenge himself wrote his own epitaph:\n\n\n    Ci-git Piron qui ne fut rien,\n    Pas meme academicien.\n\n\nThey seized me and thrashed me.\"\n\n\"But what for? What for?\"\n\n\"For my education. People can thrash a man for anything,\" Maximov\nconcluded, briefly and sententiously.\n\n\"Eh, that's enough! That's all stupid, I don't want to listen. I thought\nit would be amusing,\" Grushenka cut them short, suddenly.\n\nMitya started, and at once left off laughing. The tall Pole rose upon his\nfeet, and with the haughty air of a man, bored and out of his element,\nbegan pacing from corner to corner of the room, his hands behind his back.\n\n\"Ah, he can't sit still,\" said Grushenka, looking at him contemptuously.\nMitya began to feel anxious. He noticed besides, that the Pole on the sofa\nwas looking at him with an irritable expression.\n\n\"_Panie!_\" cried Mitya, \"let's drink! and the other _pan_, too! Let us\ndrink.\"\n\nIn a flash he had pulled three glasses towards him, and filled them with\nchampagne.\n\n\"To Poland, _panovie_, I drink to your Poland!\" cried Mitya.\n\n\"I shall be delighted, _panie_,\" said the Pole on the sofa, with dignity\nand affable condescension, and he took his glass.\n\n\"And the other _pan_, what's his name? Drink, most illustrious, take your\nglass!\" Mitya urged.\n\n\"Pan Vrublevsky,\" put in the Pole on the sofa.\n\nPan Vrublevsky came up to the table, swaying as he walked.\n\n\"To Poland, _panovie!_\" cried Mitya, raising his glass. \"Hurrah!\"\n\nAll three drank. Mitya seized the bottle and again poured out three\nglasses.\n\n\"Now to Russia, _panovie_, and let us be brothers!\"\n\n\"Pour out some for us,\" said Grushenka; \"I'll drink to Russia, too!\"\n\n\"So will I,\" said Kalganov.\n\n\"And I would, too ... to Russia, the old grandmother!\" tittered Maximov.\n\n\"All! All!\" cried Mitya. \"Trifon Borissovitch, some more bottles!\"\n\nThe other three bottles Mitya had brought with him were put on the table.\nMitya filled the glasses.\n\n\"To Russia! Hurrah!\" he shouted again. All drank the toast except the\nPoles, and Grushenka tossed off her whole glass at once. The Poles did not\ntouch theirs.\n\n\"How's this, _panovie_?\" cried Mitya, \"won't you drink it?\"\n\nPan Vrublevsky took the glass, raised it and said with a resonant voice:\n\n\"To Russia as she was before 1772.\"\n\n\"Come, that's better!\" cried the other Pole, and they both emptied their\nglasses at once.\n\n\"You're fools, you _panovie_,\" broke suddenly from Mitya.\n\n\"_Panie!_\" shouted both the Poles, menacingly, setting on Mitya like a\ncouple of cocks. Pan Vrublevsky was specially furious.\n\n\"Can one help loving one's own country?\" he shouted.\n\n\"Be silent! Don't quarrel! I won't have any quarreling!\" cried Grushenka\nimperiously, and she stamped her foot on the floor. Her face glowed, her\neyes were shining. The effects of the glass she had just drunk were\napparent. Mitya was terribly alarmed.\n\n\"_Panovie_, forgive me! It was my fault, I'm sorry. Vrublevsky, _panie_\nVrublevsky, I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Hold your tongue, you, anyway! Sit down, you stupid!\" Grushenka scolded\nwith angry annoyance.\n\nEvery one sat down, all were silent, looking at one another.\n\n\"Gentlemen, I was the cause of it all,\" Mitya began again, unable to make\nanything of Grushenka's words. \"Come, why are we sitting here? What shall\nwe do ... to amuse ourselves again?\"\n\n\"Ach, it's certainly anything but amusing!\" Kalganov mumbled lazily.\n\n\"Let's play faro again, as we did just now,\" Maximov tittered suddenly.\n\n\"Faro? Splendid!\" cried Mitya. \"If only the _panovie_--\"\n\n\"It's lite, _panovie_,\" the Pole on the sofa responded, as it were\nunwillingly.\n\n\"That's true,\" assented Pan Vrublevsky.\n\n\"Lite? What do you mean by 'lite'?\" asked Grushenka.\n\n\"Late, _pani_! 'a late hour' I mean,\" the Pole on the sofa explained.\n\n\"It's always late with them. They can never do anything!\" Grushenka almost\nshrieked in her anger. \"They're dull themselves, so they want others to be\ndull. Before you came, Mitya, they were just as silent and kept turning up\ntheir noses at me.\"\n\n\"My goddess!\" cried the Pole on the sofa, \"I see you're not well-disposed\nto me, that's why I'm gloomy. I'm ready, _panie_,\" added he, addressing\nMitya.\n\n\"Begin, _panie_,\" Mitya assented, pulling his notes out of his pocket, and\nlaying two hundred-rouble notes on the table. \"I want to lose a lot to\nyou. Take your cards. Make the bank.\"\n\n\"We'll have cards from the landlord, _panie_,\" said the little Pole,\ngravely and emphatically.\n\n\"That's much the best way,\" chimed in Pan Vrublevsky.\n\n\"From the landlord? Very good, I understand, let's get them from him.\nCards!\" Mitya shouted to the landlord.\n\nThe landlord brought in a new, unopened pack, and informed Mitya that the\ngirls were getting ready, and that the Jews with the cymbals would most\nlikely be here soon; but the cart with the provisions had not yet arrived.\nMitya jumped up from the table and ran into the next room to give orders,\nbut only three girls had arrived, and Marya was not there yet. And he did\nnot know himself what orders to give and why he had run out. He only told\nthem to take out of the box the presents for the girls, the sweets, the\ntoffee and the fondants. \"And vodka for Andrey, vodka for Andrey!\" he\ncried in haste. \"I was rude to Andrey!\"\n\nSuddenly Maximov, who had followed him out, touched him on the shoulder.\n\n\"Give me five roubles,\" he whispered to Mitya. \"I'll stake something at\nfaro, too, he he!\"\n\n\"Capital! Splendid! Take ten, here!\"\n\nAgain he took all the notes out of his pocket and picked out one for ten\nroubles. \"And if you lose that, come again, come again.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" Maximov whispered joyfully, and he ran back again. Mitya,\ntoo, returned, apologizing for having kept them waiting. The Poles had\nalready sat down, and opened the pack. They looked much more amiable,\nalmost cordial. The Pole on the sofa had lighted another pipe and was\npreparing to throw. He wore an air of solemnity.\n\n\"To your places, gentlemen,\" cried Pan Vrublevsky.\n\n\"No, I'm not going to play any more,\" observed Kalganov, \"I've lost fifty\nroubles to them just now.\"\n\n\"The _pan_ had no luck, perhaps he'll be lucky this time,\" the Pole on the\nsofa observed in his direction.\n\n\"How much in the bank? To correspond?\" asked Mitya.\n\n\"That's according, _panie_, maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred, as much as\nyou will stake.\"\n\n\"A million!\" laughed Mitya.\n\n\"The Pan Captain has heard of Pan Podvysotsky, perhaps?\"\n\n\"What Podvysotsky?\"\n\n\"In Warsaw there was a bank and any one comes and stakes against it.\nPodvysotsky comes, sees a thousand gold pieces, stakes against the bank.\nThe banker says, '_Panie_ Podvysotsky, are you laying down the gold, or\nmust we trust to your honor?' 'To my honor, _panie_,' says Podvysotsky.\n'So much the better.' The banker throws the dice. Podvysotsky wins. 'Take\nit, _panie_,' says the banker, and pulling out the drawer he gives him a\nmillion. 'Take it, _panie_, this is your gain.' There was a million in the\nbank. 'I didn't know that,' says Podvysotsky. '_Panie_ Podvysotsky,' said\nthe banker, 'you pledged your honor and we pledged ours.' Podvysotsky took\nthe million.\"\n\n\"That's not true,\" said Kalganov.\n\n\"_Panie_ Kalganov, in gentlemanly society one doesn't say such things.\"\n\n\"As if a Polish gambler would give away a million!\" cried Mitya, but\nchecked himself at once. \"Forgive me, _panie_, it's my fault again, he\nwould, he would give away a million, for honor, for Polish honor. You see\nhow I talk Polish, ha ha! Here, I stake ten roubles, the knave leads.\"\n\n\"And I put a rouble on the queen, the queen of hearts, the pretty little\n_panienotchka_, he he!\" laughed Maximov, pulling out his queen, and, as\nthough trying to conceal it from every one, he moved right up and crossed\nhimself hurriedly under the table. Mitya won. The rouble won, too.\n\n\"A corner!\" cried Mitya.\n\n\"I'll bet another rouble, a 'single' stake,\" Maximov muttered gleefully,\nhugely delighted at having won a rouble.\n\n\"Lost!\" shouted Mitya. \"A 'double' on the seven!\"\n\nThe seven too was trumped.\n\n\"Stop!\" cried Kalganov suddenly.\n\n\"Double! Double!\" Mitya doubled his stakes, and each time he doubled the\nstake, the card he doubled was trumped by the Poles. The rouble stakes\nkept winning.\n\n\"On the double!\" shouted Mitya furiously.\n\n\"You've lost two hundred, _panie_. Will you stake another hundred?\" the\nPole on the sofa inquired.\n\n\"What? Lost two hundred already? Then another two hundred! All doubles!\"\n\nAnd pulling his money out of his pocket, Mitya was about to fling two\nhundred roubles on the queen, but Kalganov covered it with his hand.\n\n\"That's enough!\" he shouted in his ringing voice.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" Mitya stared at him.\n\n\"That's enough! I don't want you to play any more. Don't!\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because I don't. Hang it, come away. That's why. I won't let you go on\nplaying.\"\n\nMitya gazed at him in astonishment.\n\n\"Give it up, Mitya. He may be right. You've lost a lot as it is,\" said\nGrushenka, with a curious note in her voice. Both the Poles rose from\ntheir seats with a deeply offended air.\n\n\"Are you joking, _panie_?\" said the short man, looking severely at\nKalganov.\n\n\"How dare you!\" Pan Vrublevsky, too, growled at Kalganov.\n\n\"Don't dare to shout like that,\" cried Grushenka. \"Ah, you turkey-cocks!\"\n\nMitya looked at each of them in turn. But something in Grushenka's face\nsuddenly struck him, and at the same instant something new flashed into\nhis mind--a strange new thought!\n\n\"_Pani_ Agrippina,\" the little Pole was beginning, crimson with anger,\nwhen Mitya suddenly went up to him and slapped him on the shoulder.\n\n\"Most illustrious, two words with you.\"\n\n\"What do you want?\"\n\n\"In the next room, I've two words to say to you, something pleasant, very\npleasant. You'll be glad to hear it.\"\n\nThe little _pan_ was taken aback and looked apprehensively at Mitya. He\nagreed at once, however, on condition that Pan Vrublevsky went with them.\n\n\"The bodyguard? Let him come, and I want him, too. I must have him!\" cried\nMitya. \"March, _panovie_!\"\n\n\"Where are you going?\" asked Grushenka, anxiously.\n\n\"We'll be back in one moment,\" answered Mitya.\n\nThere was a sort of boldness, a sudden confidence shining in his eyes. His\nface had looked very different when he entered the room an hour before.\n\nHe led the Poles, not into the large room where the chorus of girls was\nassembling and the table was being laid, but into the bedroom on the\nright, where the trunks and packages were kept, and there were two large\nbeds, with pyramids of cotton pillows on each. There was a lighted candle\non a small deal table in the corner. The small man and Mitya sat down to\nthis table, facing each other, while the huge Vrublevsky stood beside\nthem, his hands behind his back. The Poles looked severe but were\nevidently inquisitive.\n\n\"What can I do for you, _panie_?\" lisped the little Pole.\n\n\"Well, look here, _panie_, I won't keep you long. There's money for you,\"\nhe pulled out his notes. \"Would you like three thousand? Take it and go\nyour way.\"\n\nThe Pole gazed open-eyed at Mitya, with a searching look.\n\n\"Three thousand, _panie_?\" He exchanged glances with Vrublevsky.\n\n\"Three, _panovie_, three! Listen, _panie_, I see you're a sensible man.\nTake three thousand and go to the devil, and Vrublevsky with you--d'you\nhear? But, at once, this very minute, and for ever. You understand that,\n_panie_, for ever. Here's the door, you go out of it. What have you got\nthere, a great-coat, a fur coat? I'll bring it out to you. They'll get the\nhorses out directly, and then--good-by, _panie_!\"\n\nMitya awaited an answer with assurance. He had no doubts. An expression of\nextraordinary resolution passed over the Pole's face.\n\n\"And the money, _panie_?\"\n\n\"The money, _panie_? Five hundred roubles I'll give you this moment for\nthe journey, and as a first installment, and two thousand five hundred to-\nmorrow, in the town--I swear on my honor, I'll get it, I'll get it at any\ncost!\" cried Mitya.\n\nThe Poles exchanged glances again. The short man's face looked more\nforbidding.\n\n\"Seven hundred, seven hundred, not five hundred, at once, this minute,\ncash down!\" Mitya added, feeling something wrong. \"What's the matter,\n_panie_? Don't you trust me? I can't give you the whole three thousand\nstraight off. If I give it, you may come back to her to-morrow....\nBesides, I haven't the three thousand with me. I've got it at home in the\ntown,\" faltered Mitya, his spirit sinking at every word he uttered. \"Upon\nmy word, the money's there, hidden.\"\n\nIn an instant an extraordinary sense of personal dignity showed itself in\nthe little man's face.\n\n\"What next?\" he asked ironically. \"For shame!\" and he spat on the floor.\nPan Vrublevsky spat too.\n\n\"You do that, _panie_,\" said Mitya, recognizing with despair that all was\nover, \"because you hope to make more out of Grushenka? You're a couple of\ncapons, that's what you are!\"\n\n\"This is a mortal insult!\" The little Pole turned as red as a crab, and he\nwent out of the room, briskly, as though unwilling to hear another word.\nVrublevsky swung out after him, and Mitya followed, confused and\ncrestfallen. He was afraid of Grushenka, afraid that the _pan_ would at\nonce raise an outcry. And so indeed he did. The Pole walked into the room\nand threw himself in a theatrical attitude before Grushenka.\n\n\"_Pani_ Agrippina, I have received a mortal insult!\" he exclaimed. But\nGrushenka suddenly lost all patience, as though they had wounded her in\nthe tenderest spot.\n\n\"Speak Russian! Speak Russian!\" she cried, \"not another word of Polish!\nYou used to talk Russian. You can't have forgotten it in five years.\"\n\nShe was red with passion.\n\n\"_Pani_ Agrippina--\"\n\n\"My name's Agrafena, Grushenka, speak Russian or I won't listen!\"\n\nThe Pole gasped with offended dignity, and quickly and pompously delivered\nhimself in broken Russian:\n\n\"_Pani_ Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and forgive it, to forget\nall that has happened till to-day--\"\n\n\"Forgive? Came here to forgive me?\" Grushenka cut him short, jumping up\nfrom her seat.\n\n\"Just so, _pani_, I'm not pusillanimous, I'm magnanimous. But I was\nastounded when I saw your lovers. Pan Mitya offered me three thousand, in\nthe other room to depart. I spat in the _pan's_ face.\"\n\n\"What? He offered you money for me?\" cried Grushenka, hysterically. \"Is it\ntrue, Mitya? How dare you? Am I for sale?\"\n\n\"_Panie, panie!_\" yelled Mitya, \"she's pure and shining, and I have never\nbeen her lover! That's a lie....\"\n\n\"How dare you defend me to him?\" shrieked Grushenka. \"It wasn't virtue\nkept me pure, and it wasn't that I was afraid of Kuzma, but that I might\nhold up my head when I met him, and tell him he's a scoundrel. And he did\nactually refuse the money?\"\n\n\"He took it! He took it!\" cried Mitya; \"only he wanted to get the whole\nthree thousand at once, and I could only give him seven hundred straight\noff.\"\n\n\"I see: he heard I had money, and came here to marry me!\"\n\n\"_Pani_ Agrippina!\" cried the little Pole. \"I'm--a knight, I'm--a nobleman,\nand not a _lajdak_. I came here to make you my wife and I find you a\ndifferent woman, perverse and shameless.\"\n\n\"Oh, go back where you came from! I'll tell them to turn you out and\nyou'll be turned out,\" cried Grushenka, furious. \"I've been a fool, a\nfool, to have been miserable these five years! And it wasn't for his sake,\nit was my anger made me miserable. And this isn't he at all! Was he like\nthis? It might be his father! Where did you get your wig from? He was a\nfalcon, but this is a gander. He used to laugh and sing to me.... And I've\nbeen crying for five years, damned fool, abject, shameless I was!\"\n\nShe sank back in her low chair and hid her face in her hands. At that\ninstant the chorus of Mokroe began singing in the room on the left--a\nrollicking dance song.\n\n\"A regular Sodom!\" Vrublevsky roared suddenly. \"Landlord, send the\nshameless hussies away!\"\n\nThe landlord, who had been for some time past inquisitively peeping in at\nthe door, hearing shouts and guessing that his guests were quarreling, at\nonce entered the room.\n\n\"What are you shouting for? D'you want to split your throat?\" he said,\naddressing Vrublevsky, with surprising rudeness.\n\n\"Animal!\" bellowed Pan Vrublevsky.\n\n\"Animal? And what sort of cards were you playing with just now? I gave you\na pack and you hid it. You played with marked cards! I could send you to\nSiberia for playing with false cards, d'you know that, for it's just the\nsame as false banknotes....\"\n\nAnd going up to the sofa he thrust his fingers between the sofa back and\nthe cushion, and pulled out an unopened pack of cards.\n\n\"Here's my pack unopened!\"\n\nHe held it up and showed it to all in the room. \"From where I stood I saw\nhim slip my pack away, and put his in place of it--you're a cheat and not a\ngentleman!\"\n\n\"And I twice saw the _pan_ change a card!\" cried Kalganov.\n\n\"How shameful! How shameful!\" exclaimed Grushenka, clasping her hands, and\nblushing for genuine shame. \"Good Lord, he's come to that!\"\n\n\"I thought so, too!\" said Mitya. But before he had uttered the words,\nVrublevsky, with a confused and infuriated face, shook his fist at\nGrushenka, shouting:\n\n\"You low harlot!\"\n\nMitya flew at him at once, clutched him in both hands, lifted him in the\nair, and in one instant had carried him into the room on the right, from\nwhich they had just come.\n\n\"I've laid him on the floor, there,\" he announced, returning at once,\ngasping with excitement. \"He's struggling, the scoundrel! But he won't\ncome back, no fear of that!...\"\n\nHe closed one half of the folding doors, and holding the other ajar called\nout to the little Pole:\n\n\"Most illustrious, will you be pleased to retire as well?\"\n\n\"My dear Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" said Trifon Borissovitch, \"make them give\nyou back the money you lost. It's as good as stolen from you.\"\n\n\"I don't want my fifty roubles back,\" Kalganov declared suddenly.\n\n\"I don't want my two hundred, either,\" cried Mitya, \"I wouldn't take it\nfor anything! Let him keep it as a consolation.\"\n\n\"Bravo, Mitya! You're a trump, Mitya!\" cried Grushenka, and there was a\nnote of fierce anger in the exclamation.\n\nThe little _pan_, crimson with fury but still mindful of his dignity, was\nmaking for the door, but he stopped short and said suddenly, addressing\nGrushenka:\n\n\"_Pani_, if you want to come with me, come. If not, good-by.\"\n\nAnd swelling with indignation and importance he went to the door. This was\na man of character: he had so good an opinion of himself that after all\nthat had passed, he still expected that she would marry him. Mitya slammed\nthe door after him.\n\n\"Lock it,\" said Kalganov. But the key clicked on the other side, they had\nlocked it from within.\n\n\"That's capital!\" exclaimed Grushenka relentlessly. \"Serve them right!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VIII. Delirium\n\n\nWhat followed was almost an orgy, a feast to which all were welcome.\nGrushenka was the first to call for wine.\n\n\"I want to drink. I want to be quite drunk, as we were before. Do you\nremember, Mitya, do you remember how we made friends here last time!\"\n\nMitya himself was almost delirious, feeling that his happiness was at\nhand. But Grushenka was continually sending him away from her.\n\n\"Go and enjoy yourself. Tell them to dance, to make merry, 'let the stove\nand cottage dance'; as we had it last time,\" she kept exclaiming. She was\ntremendously excited. And Mitya hastened to obey her. The chorus were in\nthe next room. The room in which they had been sitting till that moment\nwas too small, and was divided in two by cotton curtains, behind which was\na huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pyramid of cotton pillows.\nIn the four rooms for visitors there were beds. Grushenka settled herself\njust at the door. Mitya set an easy chair for her. She had sat in the same\nplace to watch the dancing and singing \"the time before,\" when they had\nmade merry there. All the girls who had come had been there then; the\nJewish band with fiddles and zithers had come, too, and at last the long\nexpected cart had arrived with the wines and provisions.\n\nMitya bustled about. All sorts of people began coming into the room to\nlook on, peasants and their women, who had been roused from sleep and\nattracted by the hopes of another marvelous entertainment such as they had\nenjoyed a month before. Mitya remembered their faces, greeting and\nembracing every one he knew. He uncorked bottles and poured out wine for\nevery one who presented himself. Only the girls were very eager for the\nchampagne. The men preferred rum, brandy, and, above all, hot punch. Mitya\nhad chocolate made for all the girls, and ordered that three samovars\nshould be kept boiling all night to provide tea and punch for everyone to\nhelp himself.\n\nAn absurd chaotic confusion followed, but Mitya was in his natural\nelement, and the more foolish it became, the more his spirits rose. If the\npeasants had asked him for money at that moment, he would have pulled out\nhis notes and given them away right and left. This was probably why the\nlandlord, Trifon Borissovitch, kept hovering about Mitya to protect him.\nHe seemed to have given up all idea of going to bed that night; but he\ndrank little, only one glass of punch, and kept a sharp look-out on\nMitya's interests after his own fashion. He intervened in the nick of\ntime, civilly and obsequiously persuading Mitya not to give away \"cigars\nand Rhine wine,\" and, above all, money to the peasants as he had done\nbefore. He was very indignant, too, at the peasant girls drinking liqueur,\nand eating sweets.\n\n\"They're a lousy lot, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" he said. \"I'd give them a\nkick, every one of them, and they'd take it as an honor--that's all they're\nworth!\"\n\nMitya remembered Andrey again, and ordered punch to be sent out to him. \"I\nwas rude to him just now,\" he repeated with a sinking, softened voice.\nKalganov did not want to drink, and at first did not care for the girls'\nsinging; but after he had drunk a couple of glasses of champagne he became\nextraordinarily lively, strolling about the room, laughing and praising\nthe music and the songs, admiring every one and everything. Maximov,\nblissfully drunk, never left his side. Grushenka, too, was beginning to\nget drunk. Pointing to Kalganov, she said to Mitya:\n\n\"What a dear, charming boy he is!\"\n\nAnd Mitya, delighted, ran to kiss Kalganov and Maximov. Oh, great were his\nhopes! She had said nothing yet, and seemed, indeed, purposely to refrain\nfrom speaking. But she looked at him from time to time with caressing and\npassionate eyes. At last she suddenly gripped his hand and drew him\nvigorously to her. She was sitting at the moment in the low chair by the\ndoor.\n\n\"How was it you came just now, eh? Have you walked in!... I was\nfrightened. So you wanted to give me up to him, did you? Did you really\nwant to?\"\n\n\"I didn't want to spoil your happiness!\" Mitya faltered blissfully. But\nshe did not need his answer.\n\n\"Well, go and enjoy yourself ...\" she sent him away once more. \"Don't cry,\nI'll call you back again.\"\n\nHe would run away, and she listened to the singing and looked at the\ndancing, though her eyes followed him wherever he went. But in another\nquarter of an hour she would call him once more and again he would run\nback to her.\n\n\"Come, sit beside me, tell me, how did you hear about me, and my coming\nhere yesterday? From whom did you first hear it?\"\n\nAnd Mitya began telling her all about it, disconnectedly, incoherently,\nfeverishly. He spoke strangely, often frowning, and stopping abruptly.\n\n\"What are you frowning at?\" she asked.\n\n\"Nothing.... I left a man ill there. I'd give ten years of my life for him\nto get well, to know he was all right!\"\n\n\"Well, never mind him, if he's ill. So you meant to shoot yourself to-\nmorrow! What a silly boy! What for? I like such reckless fellows as you,\"\nshe lisped, with a rather halting tongue. \"So you would go any length for\nme, eh? Did you really mean to shoot yourself to-morrow, you stupid? No,\nwait a little. To-morrow I may have something to say to you.... I won't\nsay it to-day, but to-morrow. You'd like it to be to-day? No, I don't want\nto to-day. Come, go along now, go and amuse yourself.\"\n\nOnce, however, she called him, as it were, puzzled and uneasy.\n\n\"Why are you sad? I see you're sad.... Yes, I see it,\" she added, looking\nintently into his eyes. \"Though you keep kissing the peasants and\nshouting, I see something. No, be merry. I'm merry; you be merry, too....\nI love somebody here. Guess who it is. Ah, look, my boy has fallen asleep,\npoor dear, he's drunk.\"\n\nShe meant Kalganov. He was, in fact, drunk, and had dropped asleep for a\nmoment, sitting on the sofa. But he was not merely drowsy from drink; he\nfelt suddenly dejected, or, as he said, \"bored.\" He was intensely\ndepressed by the girls' songs, which, as the drinking went on, gradually\nbecame coarse and more reckless. And the dances were as bad. Two girls\ndressed up as bears, and a lively girl, called Stepanida, with a stick in\nher hand, acted the part of keeper, and began to \"show them.\"\n\n\"Look alive, Marya, or you'll get the stick!\"\n\nThe bears rolled on the ground at last in the most unseemly fashion, amid\nroars of laughter from the closely-packed crowd of men and women.\n\n\"Well, let them! Let them!\" said Grushenka sententiously, with an ecstatic\nexpression on her face. \"When they do get a day to enjoy themselves, why\nshouldn't folks be happy?\"\n\nKalganov looked as though he had been besmirched with dirt.\n\n\"It's swinish, all this peasant foolery,\" he murmured, moving away; \"it's\nthe game they play when it's light all night in summer.\"\n\nHe particularly disliked one \"new\" song to a jaunty dance-tune. It\ndescribed how a gentleman came and tried his luck with the girls, to see\nwhether they would love him:\n\n\n    The master came to try the girls:\n    Would they love him, would they not?\n\n\nBut the girls could not love the master:\n\n\n    He would beat me cruelly\n    And such love won't do for me.\n\n\nThen a gypsy comes along and he, too, tries:\n\n\n    The gypsy came to try the girls:\n    Would they love him, would they not?\n\n\nBut they couldn't love the gypsy either:\n\n\n    He would be a thief, I fear,\n    And would cause me many a tear.\n\n\nAnd many more men come to try their luck, among them a soldier:\n\n\n    The soldier came to try the girls:\n    Would they love him, would they not?\n\n\nBut the soldier is rejected with contempt, in two indecent lines, sung\nwith absolute frankness and producing a furore in the audience. The song\nends with a merchant:\n\n\n    The merchant came to try the girls:\n    Would they love him, would they not?\n\n\nAnd it appears that he wins their love because:\n\n\n    The merchant will make gold for me\n    And his queen I'll gladly be.\n\n\nKalvanov was positively indignant.\n\n\"That's just a song of yesterday,\" he said aloud. \"Who writes such things\nfor them? They might just as well have had a railwayman or a Jew come to\ntry his luck with the girls; they'd have carried all before them.\"\n\nAnd, almost as though it were a personal affront, he declared, on the\nspot, that he was bored, sat down on the sofa and immediately fell asleep.\nHis pretty little face looked rather pale, as it fell back on the sofa\ncushion.\n\n\"Look how pretty he is,\" said Grushenka, taking Mitya up to him. \"I was\ncombing his hair just now; his hair's like flax, and so thick....\"\n\nAnd, bending over him tenderly, she kissed his forehead. Kalganov\ninstantly opened his eyes, looked at her, stood up, and with the most\nanxious air inquired where was Maximov?\n\n\"So that's who it is you want.\" Grushenka laughed. \"Stay with me a minute.\nMitya, run and find his Maximov.\"\n\nMaximov, it appeared, could not tear himself away from the girls, only\nrunning away from time to time to pour himself out a glass of liqueur. He\nhad drunk two cups of chocolate. His face was red, and his nose was\ncrimson; his eyes were moist and mawkishly sweet. He ran up and announced\nthat he was going to dance the \"sabotiere.\"\n\n\"They taught me all those well-bred, aristocratic dances when I was\nlittle....\"\n\n\"Go, go with him, Mitya, and I'll watch from here how he dances,\" said\nGrushenka.\n\n\"No, no, I'm coming to look on, too,\" exclaimed Kalganov, brushing aside\nin the most naive way Grushenka's offer to sit with him. They all went to\nlook on. Maximov danced his dance. But it roused no great admiration in\nany one but Mitya. It consisted of nothing but skipping and hopping,\nkicking up the feet, and at every skip Maximov slapped the upturned sole\nof his foot. Kalganov did not like it at all, but Mitya kissed the dancer.\n\n\"Thanks. You're tired perhaps? What are you looking for here? Would you\nlike some sweets? A cigar, perhaps?\"\n\n\"A cigarette.\"\n\n\"Don't you want a drink?\"\n\n\"I'll just have a liqueur.... Have you any chocolates?\"\n\n\"Yes, there's a heap of them on the table there. Choose one, my dear\nsoul!\"\n\n\"I like one with vanilla ... for old people. He he!\"\n\n\"No, brother, we've none of that special sort.\"\n\n\"I say,\" the old man bent down to whisper in Mitya's ear. \"That girl\nthere, little Marya, he he! How would it be if you were to help me make\nfriends with her?\"\n\n\"So that's what you're after! No, brother, that won't do!\"\n\n\"I'd do no harm to any one,\" Maximov muttered disconsolately.\n\n\"Oh, all right, all right. They only come here to dance and sing, you\nknow, brother. But damn it all, wait a bit!... Eat and drink and be merry,\nmeanwhile. Don't you want money?\"\n\n\"Later on, perhaps,\" smiled Maximov.\n\n\"All right, all right....\"\n\nMitya's head was burning. He went outside to the wooden balcony which ran\nround the whole building on the inner side, overlooking the courtyard. The\nfresh air revived him. He stood alone in a dark corner, and suddenly\nclutched his head in both hands. His scattered thoughts came together; his\nsensations blended into a whole and threw a sudden light into his mind. A\nfearful and terrible light! \"If I'm to shoot myself, why not now?\" passed\nthrough his mind. \"Why not go for the pistols, bring them here, and here,\nin this dark dirty corner, make an end?\" Almost a minute he stood,\nundecided. A few hours earlier, when he had been dashing here, he was\npursued by disgrace, by the theft he had committed, and that blood, that\nblood!... But yet it was easier for him then. Then everything was over: he\nhad lost her, given her up. She was gone, for him--oh, then his death\nsentence had been easier for him; at least it had seemed necessary,\ninevitable, for what had he to stay on earth for?\n\nBut now? Was it the same as then? Now one phantom, one terror at least was\nat an end: that first, rightful lover, that fateful figure had vanished,\nleaving no trace. The terrible phantom had turned into something so small,\nso comic; it had been carried into the bedroom and locked in. It would\nnever return. She was ashamed, and from her eyes he could see now whom she\nloved. Now he had everything to make life happy ... but he could not go on\nliving, he could not; oh, damnation! \"O God! restore to life the man I\nknocked down at the fence! Let this fearful cup pass from me! Lord, thou\nhast wrought miracles for such sinners as me! But what, what if the old\nman's alive? Oh, then the shame of the other disgrace I would wipe away. I\nwould restore the stolen money. I'd give it back; I'd get it somehow....\nNo trace of that shame will remain except in my heart for ever! But no,\nno; oh, impossible cowardly dreams! Oh, damnation!\"\n\nYet there was a ray of light and hope in his darkness. He jumped up and\nran back to the room--to her, to her, his queen for ever! Was not one\nmoment of her love worth all the rest of life, even in the agonies of\ndisgrace? This wild question clutched at his heart. \"To her, to her alone,\nto see her, to hear her, to think of nothing, to forget everything, if\nonly for that night, for an hour, for a moment!\" Just as he turned from\nthe balcony into the passage, he came upon the landlord, Trifon\nBorissovitch. He thought he looked gloomy and worried, and fancied he had\ncome to find him.\n\n\"What is it, Trifon Borissovitch? are you looking for me?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\" The landlord seemed disconcerted. \"Why should I be looking for\nyou? Where have you been?\"\n\n\"Why do you look so glum? You're not angry, are you? Wait a bit, you shall\nsoon get to bed.... What's the time?\"\n\n\"It'll be three o'clock. Past three, it must be.\"\n\n\"We'll leave off soon. We'll leave off.\"\n\n\"Don't mention it; it doesn't matter. Keep it up as long as you like....\"\n\n\"What's the matter with him?\" Mitya wondered for an instant, and he ran\nback to the room where the girls were dancing. But she was not there. She\nwas not in the blue room either; there was no one but Kalganov asleep on\nthe sofa. Mitya peeped behind the curtain--she was there. She was sitting\nin the corner, on a trunk. Bent forward, with her head and arms on the bed\nclose by, she was crying bitterly, doing her utmost to stifle her sobs\nthat she might not be heard. Seeing Mitya, she beckoned him to her, and\nwhen he ran to her, she grasped his hand tightly.\n\n\"Mitya, Mitya, I loved him, you know. How I have loved him these five\nyears, all that time! Did I love him or only my own anger? No, him, him!\nIt's a lie that it was my anger I loved and not him. Mitya, I was only\nseventeen then; he was so kind to me, so merry; he used to sing to me....\nOr so it seemed to a silly girl like me.... And now, O Lord, it's not the\nsame man. Even his face is not the same; he's different altogether. I\nshouldn't have known him. I drove here with Timofey, and all the way I was\nthinking how I should meet him, what I should say to him, how we should\nlook at one another. My soul was faint, and all of a sudden it was just as\nthough he had emptied a pail of dirty water over me. He talked to me like\na schoolmaster, all so grave and learned; he met me so solemnly that I was\nstruck dumb. I couldn't get a word in. At first I thought he was ashamed\nto talk before his great big Pole. I sat staring at him and wondering why\nI couldn't say a word to him now. It must have been his wife that ruined\nhim; you know he threw me up to get married. She must have changed him\nlike that. Mitya, how shameful it is! Oh, Mitya, I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed\nfor all my life. Curse it, curse it, curse those five years!\"\n\nAnd again she burst into tears, but clung tight to Mitya's hand and did\nnot let it go.\n\n\"Mitya, darling, stay, don't go away. I want to say one word to you,\" she\nwhispered, and suddenly raised her face to him. \"Listen, tell me who it is\nI love? I love one man here. Who is that man? That's what you must tell\nme.\"\n\nA smile lighted up her face that was swollen with weeping, and her eyes\nshone in the half darkness.\n\n\"A falcon flew in, and my heart sank. 'Fool! that's the man you love!'\nThat was what my heart whispered to me at once. You came in and all grew\nbright. What's he afraid of? I wondered. For you were frightened; you\ncouldn't speak. It's not them he's afraid of--could you be frightened of\nany one? It's me he's afraid of, I thought, only me. So Fenya told you,\nyou little stupid, how I called to Alyosha out of the window that I'd\nloved Mityenka for one hour, and that I was going now to love ... another.\nMitya, Mitya, how could I be such a fool as to think I could love any one\nafter you? Do you forgive me, Mitya? Do you forgive me or not? Do you love\nme? Do you love me?\" She jumped up and held him with both hands on his\nshoulders. Mitya, dumb with rapture, gazed into her eyes, at her face, at\nher smile, and suddenly clasped her tightly in his arms and kissed her\npassionately.\n\n\"You will forgive me for having tormented you? It was through spite I\ntormented you all. It was for spite I drove the old man out of his\nmind.... Do you remember how you drank at my house one day and broke the\nwine-glass? I remembered that and I broke a glass to-day and drank 'to my\nvile heart.' Mitya, my falcon, why don't you kiss me? He kissed me once,\nand now he draws back and looks and listens. Why listen to me? Kiss me,\nkiss me hard, that's right. If you love, well, then, love! I'll be your\nslave now, your slave for the rest of my life. It's sweet to be a slave.\nKiss me! Beat me, ill-treat me, do what you will with me.... And I do\ndeserve to suffer. Stay, wait, afterwards, I won't have that....\" she\nsuddenly thrust him away. \"Go along, Mitya, I'll come and have some wine,\nI want to be drunk, I'm going to get drunk and dance; I must, I must!\" She\ntore herself away from him and disappeared behind the curtain. Mitya\nfollowed like a drunken man.\n\n\"Yes, come what may--whatever may happen now, for one minute I'd give the\nwhole world,\" he thought. Grushenka did, in fact, toss off a whole glass\nof champagne at one gulp, and became at once very tipsy. She sat down in\nthe same chair as before, with a blissful smile on her face. Her cheeks\nwere glowing, her lips were burning, her flashing eyes were moist; there\nwas passionate appeal in her eyes. Even Kalganov felt a stir at the heart\nand went up to her.\n\n\"Did you feel how I kissed you when you were asleep just now?\" she said\nthickly. \"I'm drunk now, that's what it is.... And aren't you drunk? And\nwhy isn't Mitya drinking? Why don't you drink, Mitya? I'm drunk, and you\ndon't drink....\"\n\n\"I am drunk! I'm drunk as it is ... drunk with you ... and now I'll be\ndrunk with wine, too.\"\n\nHe drank off another glass, and--he thought it strange himself--that glass\nmade him completely drunk. He was suddenly drunk, although till that\nmoment he had been quite sober, he remembered that. From that moment\neverything whirled about him, as though he were delirious. He walked,\nlaughed, talked to everybody, without knowing what he was doing. Only one\npersistent burning sensation made itself felt continually, \"like a red-hot\ncoal in his heart,\" he said afterwards. He went up to her, sat beside her,\ngazed at her, listened to her.... She became very talkative, kept calling\nevery one to her, and beckoned to different girls out of the chorus. When\nthe girl came up, she either kissed her, or made the sign of the cross\nover her. In another minute she might have cried. She was greatly amused\nby the \"little old man,\" as she called Maximov. He ran up every minute to\nkiss her hands, \"each little finger,\" and finally he danced another dance\nto an old song, which he sang himself. He danced with special vigor to the\nrefrain:\n\n\n    The little pig says--umph! umph! umph!\n    The little calf says--moo, moo, moo,\n    The little duck says--quack, quack, quack,\n    The little goose says--ga, ga, ga.\n    The hen goes strutting through the porch;\n    Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she'll say,\n    Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she'll say!\n\n\n\"Give him something, Mitya,\" said Grushenka. \"Give him a present, he's\npoor, you know. Ah, the poor, the insulted!... Do you know, Mitya, I shall\ngo into a nunnery. No, I really shall one day, Alyosha said something to\nme to-day that I shall remember all my life.... Yes.... But to-day let us\ndance. To-morrow to the nunnery, but to-day we'll dance. I want to play\nto-day, good people, and what of it? God will forgive us. If I were God,\nI'd forgive every one: 'My dear sinners, from this day forth I forgive\nyou.' I'm going to beg forgiveness: 'Forgive me, good people, a silly\nwench.' I'm a beast, that's what I am. But I want to pray. I gave a little\nonion. Wicked as I've been, I want to pray. Mitya, let them dance, don't\nstop them. Every one in the world is good. Every one--even the worst of\nthem. The world's a nice place. Though we're bad the world's all right.\nWe're good and bad, good and bad.... Come, tell me, I've something to ask\nyou: come here every one, and I'll ask you: Why am I so good? You know I\nam good. I'm very good.... Come, why am I so good?\"\n\nSo Grushenka babbled on, getting more and more drunk. At last she\nannounced that she was going to dance, too. She got up from her chair,\nstaggering. \"Mitya, don't give me any more wine--if I ask you, don't give\nit to me. Wine doesn't give peace. Everything's going round, the stove,\nand everything. I want to dance. Let every one see how I dance ... let\nthem see how beautifully I dance....\"\n\nShe really meant it. She pulled a white cambric handkerchief out of her\npocket, and took it by one corner in her right hand, to wave it in the\ndance. Mitya ran to and fro, the girls were quiet, and got ready to break\ninto a dancing song at the first signal. Maximov, hearing that Grushenka\nwanted to dance, squealed with delight, and ran skipping about in front of\nher, humming:\n\n\n    With legs so slim and sides so trim\n    And its little tail curled tight.\n\n\nBut Grushenka waved her handkerchief at him and drove him away.\n\n\"Sh-h! Mitya, why don't they come? Let every one come ... to look on. Call\nthem in, too, that were locked in.... Why did you lock them in? Tell them\nI'm going to dance. Let them look on, too....\"\n\nMitya walked with a drunken swagger to the locked door, and began knocking\nto the Poles with his fist.\n\n\"Hi, you ... Podvysotskys! Come, she's going to dance. She calls you.\"\n\n\"_Lajdak!_\" one of the Poles shouted in reply.\n\n\"You're a _lajdak_ yourself! You're a little scoundrel, that's what you\nare.\"\n\n\"Leave off laughing at Poland,\" said Kalganov sententiously. He too was\ndrunk.\n\n\"Be quiet, boy! If I call him a scoundrel, it doesn't mean that I called\nall Poland so. One _lajdak_ doesn't make a Poland. Be quiet, my pretty\nboy, eat a sweetmeat.\"\n\n\"Ach, what fellows! As though they were not men. Why won't they make\nfriends?\" said Grushenka, and went forward to dance. The chorus broke into\n\"Ah, my porch, my new porch!\" Grushenka flung back her head, half opened\nher lips, smiled, waved her handkerchief, and suddenly, with a violent\nlurch, stood still in the middle of the room, looking bewildered.\n\n\"I'm weak....\" she said in an exhausted voice. \"Forgive me.... I'm weak, I\ncan't.... I'm sorry.\"\n\nShe bowed to the chorus, and then began bowing in all directions.\n\n\"I'm sorry.... Forgive me....\"\n\n\"The lady's been drinking. The pretty lady has been drinking,\" voices were\nheard saying.\n\n\"The lady's drunk too much,\" Maximov explained to the girls, giggling.\n\n\"Mitya, lead me away ... take me,\" said Grushenka helplessly. Mitya\npounced on her, snatched her up in his arms, and carried the precious\nburden through the curtains.\n\n\"Well, now I'll go,\" thought Kalganov, and walking out of the blue room,\nhe closed the two halves of the door after him. But the orgy in the larger\nroom went on and grew louder and louder. Mitya laid Grushenka on the bed\nand kissed her on the lips.\n\n\"Don't touch me....\" she faltered, in an imploring voice. \"Don't touch me,\ntill I'm yours.... I've told you I'm yours, but don't touch me ... spare\nme.... With them here, with them close, you mustn't. He's here. It's nasty\nhere....\"\n\n\"I'll obey you! I won't think of it ... I worship you!\" muttered Mitya.\n\"Yes, it's nasty here, it's abominable.\"\n\nAnd still holding her in his arms, he sank on his knees by the bedside.\n\n\"I know, though you're a brute, you're generous,\" Grushenka articulated\nwith difficulty. \"It must be honorable ... it shall be honorable for the\nfuture ... and let us be honest, let us be good, not brutes, but good ...\ntake me away, take me far away, do you hear? I don't want it to be here,\nbut far, far away....\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, yes, it must be!\" said Mitya, pressing her in his arms. \"I'll\ntake you and we'll fly away.... Oh, I'd give my whole life for one year\nonly to know about that blood!\"\n\n\"What blood?\" asked Grushenka, bewildered.\n\n\"Nothing,\" muttered Mitya, through his teeth. \"Grusha, you wanted to be\nhonest, but I'm a thief. But I've stolen money from Katya.... Disgrace, a\ndisgrace!\"\n\n\"From Katya, from that young lady? No, you didn't steal it. Give it her\nback, take it from me.... Why make a fuss? Now everything of mine is\nyours. What does money matter? We shall waste it anyway.... Folks like us\nare bound to waste money. But we'd better go and work the land. I want to\ndig the earth with my own hands. We must work, do you hear? Alyosha said\nso. I won't be your mistress, I'll be faithful to you, I'll be your slave,\nI'll work for you. We'll go to the young lady and bow down to her\ntogether, so that she may forgive us, and then we'll go away. And if she\nwon't forgive us, we'll go, anyway. Take her her money and love me....\nDon't love her.... Don't love her any more. If you love her, I shall\nstrangle her.... I'll put out both her eyes with a needle....\"\n\n\"I love you. I love only you. I'll love you in Siberia....\"\n\n\"Why Siberia? Never mind, Siberia, if you like. I don't care ... we'll\nwork ... there's snow in Siberia.... I love driving in the snow ... and\nmust have bells.... Do you hear, there's a bell ringing? Where is that\nbell ringing? There are people coming.... Now it's stopped.\"\n\nShe closed her eyes, exhausted, and suddenly fell asleep for an instant.\nThere had certainly been the sound of a bell in the distance, but the\nringing had ceased. Mitya let his head sink on her breast. He did not\nnotice that the bell had ceased ringing, nor did he notice that the songs\nhad ceased, and that instead of singing and drunken clamor there was\nabsolute stillness in the house. Grushenka opened her eyes.\n\n\"What's the matter? Was I asleep? Yes ... a bell ... I've been asleep and\ndreamt I was driving over the snow with bells, and I dozed. I was with\nsome one I loved, with you. And far, far away. I was holding you and\nkissing you, nestling close to you. I was cold, and the snow glistened....\nYou know how the snow glistens at night when the moon shines. It was as\nthough I was not on earth. I woke up, and my dear one is close to me. How\nsweet that is!...\"\n\n\"Close to you,\" murmured Mitya, kissing her dress, her bosom, her hands.\nAnd suddenly he had a strange fancy: it seemed to him that she was looking\nstraight before her, not at him, not into his face, but over his head,\nwith an intent, almost uncanny fixity. An expression of wonder, almost of\nalarm, came suddenly into her face.\n\n\"Mitya, who is that looking at us?\" she whispered.\n\nMitya turned, and saw that some one had, in fact, parted the curtains and\nseemed to be watching them. And not one person alone, it seemed.\n\nHe jumped up and walked quickly to the intruder.\n\n\"Here, come to us, come here,\" said a voice, speaking not loudly, but\nfirmly and peremptorily.\n\nMitya passed to the other side of the curtain and stood stock still. The\nroom was filled with people, but not those who had been there before. An\ninstantaneous shiver ran down his back, and he shuddered. He recognized\nall those people instantly. That tall, stout old man in the overcoat and\nforage-cap with a cockade--was the police captain, Mihail Makarovitch. And\nthat \"consumptive-looking\" trim dandy, \"who always has such polished\nboots\"--that was the deputy prosecutor. \"He has a chronometer worth four\nhundred roubles; he showed it to me.\" And that small young man in\nspectacles.... Mitya forgot his surname though he knew him, had seen him:\nhe was the \"investigating lawyer,\" from the \"school of jurisprudence,\" who\nhad only lately come to the town. And this man--the inspector of police,\nMavriky Mavrikyevitch, a man he knew well. And those fellows with the\nbrass plates on, why are they here? And those other two ... peasants....\nAnd there at the door Kalganov with Trifon Borissovitch....\n\n\"Gentlemen! What's this for, gentlemen?\" began Mitya, but suddenly, as\nthough beside himself, not knowing what he was doing, he cried aloud, at\nthe top of his voice:\n\n\"I un--der--stand!\"\n\nThe young man in spectacles moved forward suddenly, and stepping up to\nMitya, began with dignity, though hurriedly:\n\n\"We have to make ... in brief, I beg you to come this way, this way to the\nsofa.... It is absolutely imperative that you should give an explanation.\"\n\n\"The old man!\" cried Mitya frantically. \"The old man and his blood!... I\nunderstand.\"\n\nAnd he sank, almost fell, on a chair close by, as though he had been mown\ndown by a scythe.\n\n\"You understand? He understands it! Monster and parricide! Your father's\nblood cries out against you!\" the old captain of police roared suddenly,\nstepping up to Mitya.\n\nHe was beside himself, crimson in the face and quivering all over.\n\n\"This is impossible!\" cried the small young man. \"Mihail Makarovitch,\nMihail Makarovitch, this won't do!... I beg you'll allow me to speak. I\nshould never have expected such behavior from you....\"\n\n\"This is delirium, gentlemen, raving delirium,\" cried the captain of\npolice; \"look at him: drunk, at this time of night, in the company of a\ndisreputable woman, with the blood of his father on his hands.... It's\ndelirium!...\"\n\n\"I beg you most earnestly, dear Mihail Makarovitch, to restrain your\nfeelings,\" the prosecutor said in a rapid whisper to the old police\ncaptain, \"or I shall be forced to resort to--\"\n\nBut the little lawyer did not allow him to finish. He turned to Mitya, and\ndelivered himself in a loud, firm, dignified voice:\n\n\"Ex-Lieutenant Karamazov, it is my duty to inform you that you are charged\nwith the murder of your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, perpetrated\nthis night....\"\n\nHe said something more, and the prosecutor, too, put in something, but\nthough Mitya heard them he did not understand them. He stared at them all\nwith wild eyes.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook IX. The Preliminary Investigation Chapter I. The Beginning Of Perhotin's Official Career\n\n\nPyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, whom we left knocking at the strong locked gates\nof the widow Morozov's house, ended, of course, by making himself heard.\nFenya, who was still excited by the fright she had had two hours before,\nand too much \"upset\" to go to bed, was almost frightened into hysterics on\nhearing the furious knocking at the gate. Though she had herself seen him\ndrive away, she fancied that it must be Dmitri Fyodorovitch knocking\nagain, no one else could knock so savagely. She ran to the house-porter,\nwho had already waked up and gone out to the gate, and began imploring him\nnot to open it. But having questioned Pyotr Ilyitch, and learned that he\nwanted to see Fenya on very \"important business,\" the man made up his mind\nat last to open. Pyotr Ilyitch was admitted into Fenya's kitchen, but the\ngirl begged him to allow the house-porter to be present, \"because of her\nmisgivings.\" He began questioning her and at once learnt the most vital\nfact, that is, that when Dmitri Fyodorovitch had run out to look for\nGrushenka, he had snatched up a pestle from the mortar, and that when he\nreturned, the pestle was not with him and his hands were smeared with\nblood.\n\n\"And the blood was simply flowing, dripping from him, dripping!\" Fenya\nkept exclaiming. This horrible detail was simply the product of her\ndisordered imagination. But although not \"dripping,\" Pyotr Ilyitch had\nhimself seen those hands stained with blood, and had helped to wash them.\nMoreover, the question he had to decide was not how soon the blood had\ndried, but where Dmitri Fyodorovitch had run with the pestle, or rather,\nwhether it really was to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, and how he could\nsatisfactorily ascertain. Pyotr Ilyitch persisted in returning to this\npoint, and though he found out nothing conclusive, yet he carried away a\nconviction that Dmitri Fyodorovitch could have gone nowhere but to his\nfather's house, and that therefore something must have happened there.\n\n\"And when he came back,\" Fenya added with excitement, \"I told him the\nwhole story, and then I began asking him, 'Why have you got blood on your\nhands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?' and he answered that that was human blood,\nand that he had just killed some one. He confessed it all to me, and\nsuddenly ran off like a madman. I sat down and began thinking, where's he\nrun off to now like a madman? He'll go to Mokroe, I thought, and kill my\nmistress there. I ran out to beg him not to kill her. I was running to his\nlodgings, but I looked at Plotnikov's shop, and saw him just setting off,\nand there was no blood on his hands then.\" (Fenya had noticed this and\nremembered it.) Fenya's old grandmother confirmed her evidence as far as\nshe was capable. After asking some further questions, Pyotr Ilyitch left\nthe house, even more upset and uneasy than he had been when he entered it.\n\nThe most direct and the easiest thing for him to do would have been to go\nstraight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, to find out whether anything had happened\nthere, and if so, what; and only to go to the police captain, as Pyotr\nIlyitch firmly intended doing, when he had satisfied himself of the fact.\nBut the night was dark, Fyodor Pavlovitch's gates were strong, and he\nwould have to knock again. His acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovitch was of\nthe slightest, and what if, after he had been knocking, they opened to\nhim, and nothing had happened? Then Fyodor Pavlovitch in his jeering way\nwould go telling the story all over the town, how a stranger, called\nPerhotin, had broken in upon him at midnight to ask if any one had killed\nhim. It would make a scandal. And scandal was what Pyotr Ilyitch dreaded\nmore than anything in the world.\n\nYet the feeling that possessed him was so strong, that though he stamped\nhis foot angrily and swore at himself, he set off again, not to Fyodor\nPavlovitch's but to Madame Hohlakov's. He decided that if she denied\nhaving just given Dmitri Fyodorovitch three thousand roubles, he would go\nstraight to the police captain, but if she admitted having given him the\nmoney, he would go home and let the matter rest till next morning.\n\nIt is, of course, perfectly evident that there was even more likelihood of\ncausing scandal by going at eleven o'clock at night to a fashionable lady,\na complete stranger, and perhaps rousing her from her bed to ask her an\namazing question, than by going to Fyodor Pavlovitch. But that is just how\nit is, sometimes, especially in cases like the present one, with the\ndecisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. Pyotr Ilyitch was by\nno means phlegmatic at that moment. He remembered all his life how a\nhaunting uneasiness gradually gained possession of him, growing more and\nmore painful and driving him on, against his will. Yet he kept cursing\nhimself, of course, all the way for going to this lady, but \"I will get to\nthe bottom of it, I will!\" he repeated for the tenth time, grinding his\nteeth, and he carried out his intention.\n\nIt was exactly eleven o'clock when he entered Madame Hohlakov's house. He\nwas admitted into the yard pretty quickly, but, in response to his inquiry\nwhether the lady was still up, the porter could give no answer, except\nthat she was usually in bed by that time.\n\n\"Ask at the top of the stairs. If the lady wants to receive you, she'll\nreceive you. If she won't, she won't.\"\n\nPyotr Ilyitch went up, but did not find things so easy here. The footman\nwas unwilling to take in his name, but finally called a maid. Pyotr\nIlyitch politely but insistently begged her to inform her lady that an\nofficial, living in the town, called Perhotin, had called on particular\nbusiness, and that if it were not of the greatest importance he would not\nhave ventured to come. \"Tell her in those words, in those words exactly,\"\nhe asked the girl.\n\nShe went away. He remained waiting in the entry. Madame Hohlakov herself\nwas already in her bedroom, though not yet asleep. She had felt upset ever\nsince Mitya's visit, and had a presentiment that she would not get through\nthe night without the sick headache which always, with her, followed such\nexcitement. She was surprised on hearing the announcement from the maid.\nShe irritably declined to see him, however, though the unexpected visit at\nsuch an hour, of an \"official living in the town,\" who was a total\nstranger, roused her feminine curiosity intensely. But this time Pyotr\nIlyitch was as obstinate as a mule. He begged the maid most earnestly to\ntake another message in these very words:\n\n\"That he had come on business of the greatest importance, and that Madame\nHohlakov might have cause to regret it later, if she refused to see him\nnow.\"\n\n\"I plunged headlong,\" he described it afterwards.\n\nThe maid, gazing at him in amazement, went to take his message again.\nMadame Hohlakov was impressed. She thought a little, asked what he looked\nlike, and learned that he was \"very well dressed, young and so polite.\" We\nmay note, parenthetically, that Pyotr Ilyitch was a rather good-looking\nyoung man, and well aware of the fact. Madame Hohlakov made up her mind to\nsee him. She was in her dressing-gown and slippers, but she flung a black\nshawl over her shoulders. \"The official\" was asked to walk into the\ndrawing-room, the very room in which Mitya had been received shortly\nbefore. The lady came to meet her visitor, with a sternly inquiring\ncountenance, and, without asking him to sit down, began at once with the\nquestion:\n\n\"What do you want?\"\n\n\"I have ventured to disturb you, madam, on a matter concerning our common\nacquaintance, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov,\" Perhotin began.\n\nBut he had hardly uttered the name, when the lady's face showed signs of\nacute irritation. She almost shrieked, and interrupted him in a fury:\n\n\"How much longer am I to be worried by that awful man?\" she cried\nhysterically. \"How dare you, sir, how could you venture to disturb a lady\nwho is a stranger to you, in her own house at such an hour!... And to\nforce yourself upon her to talk of a man who came here, to this very\ndrawing-room, only three hours ago, to murder me, and went stamping out of\nthe room, as no one would go out of a decent house. Let me tell you, sir,\nthat I shall lodge a complaint against you, that I will not let it pass.\nKindly leave me at once.... I am a mother.... I ... I--\"\n\n\"Murder! then he tried to murder you, too?\"\n\n\"Why, has he killed somebody else?\" Madame Hohlakov asked impulsively.\n\n\"If you would kindly listen, madam, for half a moment, I'll explain it all\nin a couple of words,\" answered Perhotin, firmly. \"At five o'clock this\nafternoon Dmitri Fyodorovitch borrowed ten roubles from me, and I know for\na fact he had no money. Yet at nine o'clock, he came to see me with a\nbundle of hundred-rouble notes in his hand, about two or three thousand\nroubles. His hands and face were all covered with blood, and he looked\nlike a madman. When I asked him where he had got so much money, he\nanswered that he had just received it from you, that you had given him a\nsum of three thousand to go to the gold-mines....\"\n\nMadame Hohlakov's face assumed an expression of intense and painful\nexcitement.\n\n\"Good God! He must have killed his old father!\" she cried, clasping her\nhands. \"I have never given him money, never! Oh, run, run!... Don't say\nanother word! Save the old man ... run to his father ... run!\"\n\n\"Excuse me, madam, then you did not give him money? You remember for a\nfact that you did not give him any money?\"\n\n\"No, I didn't, I didn't! I refused to give it him, for he could not\nappreciate it. He ran out in a fury, stamping. He rushed at me, but I\nslipped away.... And let me tell you, as I wish to hide nothing from you\nnow, that he positively spat at me. Can you fancy that! But why are we\nstanding? Ah, sit down.\"\n\n\"Excuse me, I....\"\n\n\"Or better run, run, you must run and save the poor old man from an awful\ndeath!\"\n\n\"But if he has killed him already?\"\n\n\"Ah, good heavens, yes! Then what are we to do now? What do you think we\nmust do now?\"\n\nMeantime she had made Pyotr Ilyitch sit down and sat down herself, facing\nhim. Briefly, but fairly clearly, Pyotr Ilyitch told her the history of\nthe affair, that part of it at least which he had himself witnessed. He\ndescribed, too, his visit to Fenya, and told her about the pestle. All\nthese details produced an overwhelming effect on the distracted lady, who\nkept uttering shrieks, and covering her face with her hands....\n\n\"Would you believe it, I foresaw all this! I have that special faculty,\nwhatever I imagine comes to pass. And how often I've looked at that awful\nman and always thought, that man will end by murdering me. And now it's\nhappened ... that is, if he hasn't murdered me, but only his own father,\nit's only because the finger of God preserved me, and what's more, he was\nashamed to murder me because, in this very place, I put the holy ikon from\nthe relics of the holy martyr, Saint Varvara, on his neck.... And to think\nhow near I was to death at that minute, I went close up to him and he\nstretched out his neck to me!... Do you know, Pyotr Ilyitch (I think you\nsaid your name was Pyotr Ilyitch), I don't believe in miracles, but that\nikon and this unmistakable miracle with me now--that shakes me, and I'm\nready to believe in anything you like. Have you heard about Father\nZossima?... But I don't know what I'm saying ... and only fancy, with the\nikon on his neck he spat at me.... He only spat, it's true, he didn't\nmurder me and ... he dashed away! But what shall we do, what must we do\nnow? What do you think?\"\n\nPyotr Ilyitch got up, and announced that he was going straight to the\npolice captain, to tell him all about it, and leave him to do what he\nthought fit.\n\n\"Oh, he's an excellent man, excellent! Mihail Makarovitch, I know him. Of\ncourse, he's the person to go to. How practical you are, Pyotr Ilyitch!\nHow well you've thought of everything! I should never have thought of it\nin your place!\"\n\n\"Especially as I know the police captain very well, too,\" observed Pyotr\nIlyitch, who still continued to stand, and was obviously anxious to escape\nas quickly as possible from the impulsive lady, who would not let him say\ngood-by and go away.\n\n\"And be sure, be sure,\" she prattled on, \"to come back and tell me what\nyou see there, and what you find out ... what comes to light ... how\nthey'll try him ... and what he's condemned to.... Tell me, we have no\ncapital punishment, have we? But be sure to come, even if it's at three\no'clock at night, at four, at half-past four.... Tell them to wake me, to\nwake me, to shake me, if I don't get up.... But, good heavens, I shan't\nsleep! But wait, hadn't I better come with you?\"\n\n\"N--no. But if you would write three lines with your own hand, stating that\nyou did not give Dmitri Fyodorovitch money, it might, perhaps, be of use\n... in case it's needed....\"\n\n\"To be sure!\" Madame Hohlakov skipped, delighted, to her bureau. \"And you\nknow I'm simply struck, amazed at your resourcefulness, your good sense in\nsuch affairs. Are you in the service here? I'm delighted to think that\nyou're in the service here!\"\n\nAnd still speaking, she scribbled on half a sheet of notepaper the\nfollowing lines:\n\n\n    I've never in my life lent to that unhappy man, Dmitri\n    Fyodorovitch Karamazov (for, in spite of all, he is unhappy),\n    three thousand roubles to-day. I've never given him money, never:\n    That I swear by all that's holy!\n\n    K. HOHLAKOV.\n\n\n\"Here's the note!\" she turned quickly to Pyotr Ilyitch. \"Go, save him.\nIt's a noble deed on your part!\"\n\nAnd she made the sign of the cross three times over him. She ran out to\naccompany him to the passage.\n\n\"How grateful I am to you! You can't think how grateful I am to you for\nhaving come to me, first. How is it I haven't met you before? I shall feel\nflattered at seeing you at my house in the future. How delightful it is\nthat you are living here!... Such precision! Such practical ability!...\nThey must appreciate you, they must understand you. If there's anything I\ncan do, believe me ... oh, I love young people! I'm in love with young\npeople! The younger generation are the one prop of our suffering country.\nHer one hope.... Oh, go, go!...\"\n\nBut Pyotr Ilyitch had already run away or she would not have let him go so\nsoon. Yet Madame Hohlakov had made a rather agreeable impression on him,\nwhich had somewhat softened his anxiety at being drawn into such an\nunpleasant affair. Tastes differ, as we all know. \"She's by no means so\nelderly,\" he thought, feeling pleased, \"on the contrary I should have\ntaken her for her daughter.\"\n\nAs for Madame Hohlakov, she was simply enchanted by the young man. \"Such\nsense! such exactness! in so young a man! in our day! and all that with\nsuch manners and appearance! People say the young people of to-day are no\ngood for anything, but here's an example!\" etc. So she simply forgot this\n\"dreadful affair,\" and it was only as she was getting into bed, that,\nsuddenly recalling \"how near death she had been,\" she exclaimed: \"Ah, it\nis awful, awful!\"\n\nBut she fell at once into a sound, sweet sleep.\n\nI would not, however, have dwelt on such trivial and irrelevant details,\nif this eccentric meeting of the young official with the by no means\nelderly widow had not subsequently turned out to be the foundation of the\nwhole career of that practical and precise young man. His story is\nremembered to this day with amazement in our town, and I shall perhaps\nhave something to say about it, when I have finished my long history of\nthe Brothers Karamazov.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. The Alarm\n\n\nOur police captain, Mihail Makarovitch Makarov, a retired lieutenant-\ncolonel, was a widower and an excellent man. He had only come to us three\nyears previously, but had won general esteem, chiefly because he \"knew how\nto keep society together.\" He was never without visitors, and could not\nhave got on without them. Some one or other was always dining with him; he\nnever sat down to table without guests. He gave regular dinners, too, on\nall sorts of occasions, sometimes most surprising ones. Though the fare\nwas not _recherche_, it was abundant. The fish-pies were excellent, and\nthe wine made up in quantity for what it lacked in quality.\n\nThe first room his guests entered was a well-fitted billiard-room, with\npictures of English race-horses, in black frames on the walls, an\nessential decoration, as we all know, for a bachelor's billiard-room.\nThere was card-playing every evening at his house, if only at one table.\nBut at frequent intervals, all the society of our town, with the mammas\nand young ladies, assembled at his house to dance. Though Mihail\nMakarovitch was a widower, he did not live alone. His widowed daughter\nlived with him, with her two unmarried daughters, grown-up girls, who had\nfinished their education. They were of agreeable appearance and lively\ncharacter, and though every one knew they would have no dowry, they\nattracted all the young men of fashion to their grandfather's house.\n\nMihail Makarovitch was by no means very efficient in his work, though he\nperformed his duties no worse than many others. To speak plainly, he was a\nman of rather narrow education. His understanding of the limits of his\nadministrative power could not always be relied upon. It was not so much\nthat he failed to grasp certain reforms enacted during the present reign,\nas that he made conspicuous blunders in his interpretation of them. This\nwas not from any special lack of intelligence, but from carelessness, for\nhe was always in too great a hurry to go into the subject.\n\n\"I have the heart of a soldier rather than of a civilian,\" he used to say\nof himself. He had not even formed a definite idea of the fundamental\nprinciples of the reforms connected with the emancipation of the serfs,\nand only picked it up, so to speak, from year to year, involuntarily\nincreasing his knowledge by practice. And yet he was himself a landowner.\nPyotr Ilyitch knew for certain that he would meet some of Mihail\nMakarovitch's visitors there that evening, but he didn't know which. As it\nhappened, at that moment the prosecutor, and Varvinsky, our district\ndoctor, a young man, who had only just come to us from Petersburg after\ntaking a brilliant degree at the Academy of Medicine, were playing whist\nat the police captain's. Ippolit Kirillovitch, the prosecutor (he was\nreally the deputy prosecutor, but we always called him the prosecutor),\nwas rather a peculiar man, of about five and thirty, inclined to be\nconsumptive, and married to a fat and childless woman. He was vain and\nirritable, though he had a good intellect, and even a kind heart. It\nseemed that all that was wrong with him was that he had a better opinion\nof himself than his ability warranted. And that made him seem constantly\nuneasy. He had, moreover, certain higher, even artistic, leanings, towards\npsychology, for instance, a special study of the human heart, a special\nknowledge of the criminal and his crime. He cherished a grievance on this\nground, considering that he had been passed over in the service, and being\nfirmly persuaded that in higher spheres he had not been properly\nappreciated, and had enemies. In gloomy moments he even threatened to give\nup his post, and practice as a barrister in criminal cases. The unexpected\nKaramazov case agitated him profoundly: \"It was a case that might well be\ntalked about all over Russia.\" But I am anticipating.\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov, the young investigating lawyer, who had\nonly come from Petersburg two months before, was sitting in the next room\nwith the young ladies. People talked about it afterwards and wondered that\nall the gentlemen should, as though intentionally, on the evening of \"the\ncrime\" have been gathered together at the house of the executive\nauthority. Yet it was perfectly simple and happened quite naturally.\n\nIppolit Kirillovitch's wife had had toothache for the last two days, and\nhe was obliged to go out to escape from her groans. The doctor, from the\nvery nature of his being, could not spend an evening except at cards.\nNikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov had been intending for three days past to\ndrop in that evening at Mihail Makarovitch's, so to speak casually, so as\nslyly to startle the eldest granddaughter, Olga Mihailovna, by showing\nthat he knew her secret, that he knew it was her birthday, and that she\nwas trying to conceal it on purpose, so as not to be obliged to give a\ndance. He anticipated a great deal of merriment, many playful jests about\nher age, and her being afraid to reveal it, about his knowing her secret\nand telling everybody, and so on. The charming young man was a great adept\nat such teasing; the ladies had christened him \"the naughty man,\" and he\nseemed to be delighted at the name. He was extremely well-bred, however,\nof good family, education and feelings, and, though leading a life of\npleasure, his sallies were always innocent and in good taste. He was\nshort, and delicate-looking. On his white, slender, little fingers he\nalways wore a number of big, glittering rings. When he was engaged in his\nofficial duties, he always became extraordinarily grave, as though\nrealizing his position and the sanctity of the obligations laid upon him.\nHe had a special gift for mystifying murderers and other criminals of the\npeasant class during interrogation, and if he did not win their respect,\nhe certainly succeeded in arousing their wonder.\n\nPyotr Ilyitch was simply dumbfounded when he went into the police\ncaptain's. He saw instantly that every one knew. They had positively\nthrown down their cards, all were standing up and talking. Even Nikolay\nParfenovitch had left the young ladies and run in, looking strenuous and\nready for action. Pyotr Ilyitch was met with the astounding news that old\nFyodor Pavlovitch really had been murdered that evening in his own house,\nmurdered and robbed. The news had only just reached them in the following\nmanner.\n\nMarfa Ignatyevna, the wife of old Grigory, who had been knocked senseless\nnear the fence, was sleeping soundly in her bed and might well have slept\ntill morning after the draught she had taken. But, all of a sudden she\nwaked up, no doubt roused by a fearful epileptic scream from Smerdyakov,\nwho was lying in the next room unconscious. That scream always preceded\nhis fits, and always terrified and upset Marfa Ignatyevna. She could never\nget accustomed to it. She jumped up and ran half-awake to Smerdyakov's\nroom. But it was dark there, and she could only hear the invalid beginning\nto gasp and struggle. Then Marfa Ignatyevna herself screamed out and was\ngoing to call her husband, but suddenly realized that when she had got up,\nhe was not beside her in bed. She ran back to the bedstead and began\ngroping with her hands, but the bed was really empty. Then he must have\ngone out--where? She ran to the steps and timidly called him. She got no\nanswer, of course, but she caught the sound of groans far away in the\ngarden in the darkness. She listened. The groans were repeated, and it was\nevident they came from the garden.\n\n\"Good Lord! Just as it was with Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya!\" she thought\ndistractedly. She went timidly down the steps and saw that the gate into\nthe garden was open.\n\n\"He must be out there, poor dear,\" she thought. She went up to the gate\nand all at once she distinctly heard Grigory calling her by name, \"Marfa!\nMarfa!\" in a weak, moaning, dreadful voice.\n\n\"Lord, preserve us from harm!\" Marfa Ignatyevna murmured, and ran towards\nthe voice, and that was how she found Grigory. But she found him not by\nthe fence where he had been knocked down, but about twenty paces off. It\nappeared later, that he had crawled away on coming to himself, and\nprobably had been a long time getting so far, losing consciousness several\ntimes. She noticed at once that he was covered with blood, and screamed at\nthe top of her voice. Grigory was muttering incoherently:\n\n\"He has murdered ... his father murdered.... Why scream, silly ... run ...\nfetch some one....\"\n\nBut Marfa continued screaming, and seeing that her master's window was\nopen and that there was a candle alight in the window, she ran there and\nbegan calling Fyodor Pavlovitch. But peeping in at the window, she saw a\nfearful sight. Her master was lying on his back, motionless, on the floor.\nHis light-colored dressing-gown and white shirt were soaked with blood.\nThe candle on the table brightly lighted up the blood and the motionless\ndead face of Fyodor Pavlovitch. Terror-stricken, Marfa rushed away from\nthe window, ran out of the garden, drew the bolt of the big gate and ran\nheadlong by the back way to the neighbor, Marya Kondratyevna. Both mother\nand daughter were asleep, but they waked up at Marfa's desperate and\npersistent screaming and knocking at the shutter. Marfa, shrieking and\nscreaming incoherently, managed to tell them the main fact, and to beg for\nassistance. It happened that Foma had come back from his wanderings and\nwas staying the night with them. They got him up immediately and all three\nran to the scene of the crime. On the way, Marya Kondratyevna remembered\nthat at about eight o'clock she heard a dreadful scream from their garden,\nand this was no doubt Grigory's scream, \"Parricide!\" uttered when he\ncaught hold of Mitya's leg.\n\n\"Some one person screamed out and then was silent,\" Marya Kondratyevna\nexplained as she ran. Running to the place where Grigory lay, the two\nwomen with the help of Foma carried him to the lodge. They lighted a\ncandle and saw that Smerdyakov was no better, that he was writhing in\nconvulsions, his eyes fixed in a squint, and that foam was flowing from\nhis lips. They moistened Grigory's forehead with water mixed with vinegar,\nand the water revived him at once. He asked immediately:\n\n\"Is the master murdered?\"\n\nThen Foma and both the women ran to the house and saw this time that not\nonly the window, but also the door into the garden was wide open, though\nFyodor Pavlovitch had for the last week locked himself in every night and\ndid not allow even Grigory to come in on any pretext. Seeing that door\nopen, they were afraid to go in to Fyodor Pavlovitch \"for fear anything\nshould happen afterwards.\" And when they returned to Grigory, the old man\ntold them to go straight to the police captain. Marya Kondratyevna ran\nthere and gave the alarm to the whole party at the police captain's. She\narrived only five minutes before Pyotr Ilyitch, so that his story came,\nnot as his own surmise and theory, but as the direct confirmation, by a\nwitness, of the theory held by all, as to the identity of the criminal (a\ntheory he had in the bottom of his heart refused to believe till that\nmoment).\n\nIt was resolved to act with energy. The deputy police inspector of the\ntown was commissioned to take four witnesses, to enter Fyodor Pavlovitch's\nhouse and there to open an inquiry on the spot, according to the regular\nforms, which I will not go into here. The district doctor, a zealous man,\nnew to his work, almost insisted on accompanying the police captain, the\nprosecutor, and the investigating lawyer.\n\nI will note briefly that Fyodor Pavlovitch was found to be quite dead,\nwith his skull battered in. But with what? Most likely with the same\nweapon with which Grigory had been attacked. And immediately that weapon\nwas found, Grigory, to whom all possible medical assistance was at once\ngiven, described in a weak and breaking voice how he had been knocked\ndown. They began looking with a lantern by the fence and found the brass\npestle dropped in a most conspicuous place on the garden path. There were\nno signs of disturbance in the room where Fyodor Pavlovitch was lying. But\nby the bed, behind the screen, they picked up from the floor a big and\nthick envelope with the inscription: \"A present of three thousand roubles\nfor my angel Grushenka, if she is willing to come.\" And below had been\nadded by Fyodor Pavlovitch, \"For my little chicken.\" There were three\nseals of red sealing-wax on the envelope, but it had been torn open and\nwas empty: the money had been removed. They found also on the floor a\npiece of narrow pink ribbon, with which the envelope had been tied up.\n\nOne piece of Pyotr Ilyitch's evidence made a great impression on the\nprosecutor and the investigating magistrate, namely, his idea that Dmitri\nFyodorovitch would shoot himself before daybreak, that he had resolved to\ndo so, had spoken of it to Ilyitch, had taken the pistols, loaded them\nbefore him, written a letter, put it in his pocket, etc. When Pyotr\nIlyitch, though still unwilling to believe in it, threatened to tell some\none so as to prevent the suicide, Mitya had answered grinning: \"You'll be\ntoo late.\" So they must make haste to Mokroe to find the criminal, before\nhe really did shoot himself.\n\n\"That's clear, that's clear!\" repeated the prosecutor in great excitement.\n\"That's just the way with mad fellows like that: 'I shall kill myself to-\nmorrow, so I'll make merry till I die!' \"\n\nThe story of how he had bought the wine and provisions excited the\nprosecutor more than ever.\n\n\"Do you remember the fellow that murdered a merchant called Olsufyev,\ngentlemen? He stole fifteen hundred, went at once to have his hair curled,\nand then, without even hiding the money, carrying it almost in his hand in\nthe same way, he went off to the girls.\"\n\nAll were delayed, however, by the inquiry, the search, and the\nformalities, etc., in the house of Fyodor Pavlovitch. It all took time and\nso, two hours before starting, they sent on ahead to Mokroe the officer of\nthe rural police, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch Schmertsov, who had arrived in the\ntown the morning before to get his pay. He was instructed to avoid raising\nthe alarm when he reached Mokroe, but to keep constant watch over the\n\"criminal\" till the arrival of the proper authorities, to procure also\nwitnesses for the arrest, police constables, and so on. Mavriky\nMavrikyevitch did as he was told, preserving his incognito, and giving no\none but his old acquaintance, Trifon Borissovitch, the slightest hint of\nhis secret business. He had spoken to him just before Mitya met the\nlandlord in the balcony, looking for him in the dark, and noticed at once\na change in Trifon Borissovitch's face and voice. So neither Mitya nor any\none else knew that he was being watched. The box with the pistols had been\ncarried off by Trifon Borissovitch and put in a suitable place. Only after\nfour o'clock, almost at sunrise, all the officials, the police captain,\nthe prosecutor, the investigating lawyer, drove up in two carriages, each\ndrawn by three horses. The doctor remained at Fyodor Pavlovitch's to make\na post-mortem next day on the body. But he was particularly interested in\nthe condition of the servant, Smerdyakov.\n\n\"Such violent and protracted epileptic fits, recurring continually for\ntwenty-four hours, are rarely to be met with, and are of interest to\nscience,\" he declared enthusiastically to his companions, and as they left\nthey laughingly congratulated him on his find. The prosecutor and the\ninvestigating lawyer distinctly remembered the doctor's saying that\nSmerdyakov could not outlive the night.\n\nAfter these long, but I think necessary explanations, we will return to\nthat moment of our tale at which we broke off.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. The Sufferings Of A Soul, The First Ordeal\n\n\nAnd so Mitya sat looking wildly at the people round him, not understanding\nwhat was said to him. Suddenly he got up, flung up his hands, and shouted\naloud:\n\n\"I'm not guilty! I'm not guilty of that blood! I'm not guilty of my\nfather's blood.... I meant to kill him. But I'm not guilty. Not I.\"\n\nBut he had hardly said this, before Grushenka rushed from behind the\ncurtain and flung herself at the police captain's feet.\n\n\"It was my fault! Mine! My wickedness!\" she cried, in a heartrending\nvoice, bathed in tears, stretching out her clasped hands towards them. \"He\ndid it through me. I tortured him and drove him to it. I tortured that\npoor old man that's dead, too, in my wickedness, and brought him to this!\nIt's my fault, mine first, mine most, my fault!\"\n\n\"Yes, it's your fault! You're the chief criminal! You fury! You harlot!\nYou're the most to blame!\" shouted the police captain, threatening her\nwith his hand. But he was quickly and resolutely suppressed. The\nprosecutor positively seized hold of him.\n\n\"This is absolutely irregular, Mihail Makarovitch!\" he cried. \"You are\npositively hindering the inquiry.... You're ruining the case....\" he\nalmost gasped.\n\n\"Follow the regular course! Follow the regular course!\" cried Nikolay\nParfenovitch, fearfully excited too, \"otherwise it's absolutely\nimpossible!...\"\n\n\"Judge us together!\" Grushenka cried frantically, still kneeling. \"Punish\nus together. I will go with him now, if it's to death!\"\n\n\"Grusha, my life, my blood, my holy one!\" Mitya fell on his knees beside\nher and held her tight in his arms. \"Don't believe her,\" he cried, \"she's\nnot guilty of anything, of any blood, of anything!\"\n\nHe remembered afterwards that he was forcibly dragged away from her by\nseveral men, and that she was led out, and that when he recovered himself\nhe was sitting at the table. Beside him and behind him stood the men with\nmetal plates. Facing him on the other side of the table sat Nikolay\nParfenovitch, the investigating lawyer. He kept persuading him to drink a\nlittle water out of a glass that stood on the table.\n\n\"That will refresh you, that will calm you. Be calm, don't be frightened,\"\nhe added, extremely politely. Mitya (he remembered it afterwards) became\nsuddenly intensely interested in his big rings, one with an amethyst, and\nanother with a transparent bright yellow stone, of great brilliance. And\nlong afterwards he remembered with wonder how those rings had riveted his\nattention through all those terrible hours of interrogation, so that he\nwas utterly unable to tear himself away from them and dismiss them, as\nthings that had nothing to do with his position. On Mitya's left side, in\nthe place where Maximov had been sitting at the beginning of the evening,\nthe prosecutor was now seated, and on Mitya's right hand, where Grushenka\nhad been, was a rosy-cheeked young man in a sort of shabby hunting-jacket,\nwith ink and paper before him. This was the secretary of the investigating\nlawyer, who had brought him with him. The police captain was now standing\nby the window at the other end of the room, beside Kalganov, who was\nsitting there.\n\n\"Drink some water,\" said the investigating lawyer softly, for the tenth\ntime.\n\n\"I have drunk it, gentlemen, I have ... but ... come, gentlemen, crush me,\npunish me, decide my fate!\" cried Mitya, staring with terribly fixed wide-\nopen eyes at the investigating lawyer.\n\n\"So you positively declare that you are not guilty of the death of your\nfather, Fyodor Pavlovitch?\" asked the investigating lawyer, softly but\ninsistently.\n\n\"I am not guilty. I am guilty of the blood of another old man but not of\nmy father's. And I weep for it! I killed, I killed the old man and knocked\nhim down.... But it's hard to have to answer for that murder with another,\na terrible murder of which I am not guilty.... It's a terrible accusation,\ngentlemen, a knock-down blow. But who has killed my father, who has killed\nhim? Who can have killed him if I didn't? It's marvelous, extraordinary,\nimpossible.\"\n\n\"Yes, who can have killed him?\" the investigating lawyer was beginning,\nbut Ippolit Kirillovitch, the prosecutor, glancing at him, addressed\nMitya.\n\n\"You need not worry yourself about the old servant, Grigory Vassilyevitch.\nHe is alive, he has recovered, and in spite of the terrible blows\ninflicted, according to his own and your evidence, by you, there seems no\ndoubt that he will live, so the doctor says, at least.\"\n\n\"Alive? He's alive?\" cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. His face beamed.\n\"Lord, I thank Thee for the miracle Thou has wrought for me, a sinner and\nevildoer. That's an answer to my prayer. I've been praying all night.\" And\nhe crossed himself three times. He was almost breathless.\n\n\"So from this Grigory we have received such important evidence concerning\nyou, that--\" The prosecutor would have continued, but Mitya suddenly jumped\nup from his chair.\n\n\"One minute, gentlemen, for God's sake, one minute; I will run to her--\"\n\n\"Excuse me, at this moment it's quite impossible,\" Nikolay Parfenovitch\nalmost shrieked. He, too, leapt to his feet. Mitya was seized by the men\nwith the metal plates, but he sat down of his own accord....\n\n\"Gentlemen, what a pity! I wanted to see her for one minute only; I wanted\nto tell her that it has been washed away, it has gone, that blood that was\nweighing on my heart all night, and that I am not a murderer now!\nGentlemen, she is my betrothed!\" he said ecstatically and reverently,\nlooking round at them all. \"Oh, thank you, gentlemen! Oh, in one minute\nyou have given me new life, new heart!... That old man used to carry me in\nhis arms, gentlemen. He used to wash me in the tub when I was a baby three\nyears old, abandoned by every one, he was like a father to me!...\"\n\n\"And so you--\" the investigating lawyer began.\n\n\"Allow me, gentlemen, allow me one minute more,\" interposed Mitya, putting\nhis elbows on the table and covering his face with his hands. \"Let me have\na moment to think, let me breathe, gentlemen. All this is horribly\nupsetting, horribly. A man is not a drum, gentlemen!\"\n\n\"Drink a little more water,\" murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\nMitya took his hands from his face and laughed. His eyes were confident.\nHe seemed completely transformed in a moment. His whole bearing was\nchanged; he was once more the equal of these men, with all of whom he was\nacquainted, as though they had all met the day before, when nothing had\nhappened, at some social gathering. We may note in passing that, on his\nfirst arrival, Mitya had been made very welcome at the police captain's,\nbut later, during the last month especially, Mitya had hardly called at\nall, and when the police captain met him, in the street, for instance,\nMitya noticed that he frowned and only bowed out of politeness. His\nacquaintance with the prosecutor was less intimate, though he sometimes\npaid his wife, a nervous and fanciful lady, visits of politeness, without\nquite knowing why, and she always received him graciously and had, for\nsome reason, taken an interest in him up to the last. He had not had time\nto get to know the investigating lawyer, though he had met him and talked\nto him twice, each time about the fair sex.\n\n\"You're a most skillful lawyer, I see, Nikolay Parfenovitch,\" cried Mitya,\nlaughing gayly, \"but I can help you now. Oh, gentlemen, I feel like a new\nman, and don't be offended at my addressing you so simply and directly.\nI'm rather drunk, too, I'll tell you that frankly. I believe I've had the\nhonor and pleasure of meeting you, Nikolay Parfenovitch, at my kinsman\nMiuesov's. Gentlemen, gentlemen, I don't pretend to be on equal terms with\nyou. I understand, of course, in what character I am sitting before you.\nOh, of course, there's a horrible suspicion ... hanging over me ... if\nGrigory has given evidence.... A horrible suspicion! It's awful, awful, I\nunderstand that! But to business, gentlemen, I am ready, and we will make\nan end of it in one moment; for, listen, listen, gentlemen! Since I know\nI'm innocent, we can put an end to it in a minute. Can't we? Can't we?\"\n\nMitya spoke much and quickly, nervously and effusively, as though he\npositively took his listeners to be his best friends.\n\n\"So, for the present, we will write that you absolutely deny the charge\nbrought against you,\" said Nikolay Parfenovitch, impressively, and bending\ndown to the secretary he dictated to him in an undertone what to write.\n\n\"Write it down? You want to write that down? Well, write it; I consent, I\ngive my full consent, gentlemen, only ... do you see?... Stay, stay, write\nthis. Of disorderly conduct I am guilty, of violence on a poor old man I\nam guilty. And there is something else at the bottom of my heart, of which\nI am guilty, too--but that you need not write down\" (he turned suddenly to\nthe secretary); \"that's my personal life, gentlemen, that doesn't concern\nyou, the bottom of my heart, that's to say.... But of the murder of my old\nfather I'm not guilty. That's a wild idea. It's quite a wild idea!... I\nwill prove you that and you'll be convinced directly.... You will laugh,\ngentlemen. You'll laugh yourselves at your suspicion!...\"\n\n\"Be calm, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" said the investigating lawyer evidently\ntrying to allay Mitya's excitement by his own composure. \"Before we go on\nwith our inquiry, I should like, if you will consent to answer, to hear\nyou confirm the statement that you disliked your father, Fyodor\nPavlovitch, that you were involved in continual disputes with him. Here at\nleast, a quarter of an hour ago, you exclaimed that you wanted to kill\nhim: 'I didn't kill him,' you said, 'but I wanted to kill him.' \"\n\n\"Did I exclaim that? Ach, that may be so, gentlemen! Yes, unhappily, I did\nwant to kill him ... many times I wanted to ... unhappily, unhappily!\"\n\n\"You wanted to. Would you consent to explain what motives precisely led\nyou to such a sentiment of hatred for your parent?\"\n\n\"What is there to explain, gentlemen?\" Mitya shrugged his shoulders\nsullenly, looking down. \"I have never concealed my feelings. All the town\nknows about it--every one knows in the tavern. Only lately I declared them\nin Father Zossima's cell.... And the very same day, in the evening I beat\nmy father. I nearly killed him, and I swore I'd come again and kill him,\nbefore witnesses.... Oh, a thousand witnesses! I've been shouting it aloud\nfor the last month, any one can tell you that!... The fact stares you in\nthe face, it speaks for itself, it cries aloud, but feelings, gentlemen,\nfeelings are another matter. You see, gentlemen\"--Mitya frowned--\"it seems\nto me that about feelings you've no right to question me. I know that you\nare bound by your office, I quite understand that, but that's my affair,\nmy private, intimate affair, yet ... since I haven't concealed my feelings\nin the past ... in the tavern, for instance, I've talked to every one, so\n... so I won't make a secret of it now. You see, I understand, gentlemen,\nthat there are terrible facts against me in this business. I told every\none that I'd kill him, and now, all of a sudden, he's been killed. So it\nmust have been me! Ha ha! I can make allowances for you, gentlemen, I can\nquite make allowances. I'm struck all of a heap myself, for who can have\nmurdered him, if not I? That's what it comes to, isn't it? If not I, who\ncan it be, who? Gentlemen, I want to know, I insist on knowing!\" he\nexclaimed suddenly. \"Where was he murdered? How was he murdered? How, and\nwith what? Tell me,\" he asked quickly, looking at the two lawyers.\n\n\"We found him in his study, lying on his back on the floor, with his head\nbattered in,\" said the prosecutor.\n\n\"That's horrible!\" Mitya shuddered and, putting his elbows on the table,\nhid his face in his right hand.\n\n\"We will continue,\" interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch. \"So what was it that\nimpelled you to this sentiment of hatred? You have asserted in public, I\nbelieve, that it was based upon jealousy?\"\n\n\"Well, yes, jealousy. And not only jealousy.\"\n\n\"Disputes about money?\"\n\n\"Yes, about money, too.\"\n\n\"There was a dispute about three thousand roubles, I think, which you\nclaimed as part of your inheritance?\"\n\n\"Three thousand! More, more,\" cried Mitya hotly; \"more than six thousand,\nmore than ten, perhaps. I told every one so, shouted it at them. But I\nmade up my mind to let it go at three thousand. I was desperately in need\nof that three thousand ... so the bundle of notes for three thousand that\nI knew he kept under his pillow, ready for Grushenka, I considered as\nsimply stolen from me. Yes, gentlemen, I looked upon it as mine, as my own\nproperty....\"\n\nThe prosecutor looked significantly at the investigating lawyer, and had\ntime to wink at him on the sly.\n\n\"We will return to that subject later,\" said the lawyer promptly. \"You\nwill allow us to note that point and write it down; that you looked upon\nthat money as your own property?\"\n\n\"Write it down, by all means. I know that's another fact that tells\nagainst me, but I'm not afraid of facts and I tell them against myself. Do\nyou hear? Do you know, gentlemen, you take me for a different sort of man\nfrom what I am,\" he added, suddenly gloomy and dejected. \"You have to deal\nwith a man of honor, a man of the highest honor; above all--don't lose\nsight of it--a man who's done a lot of nasty things, but has always been,\nand still is, honorable at bottom, in his inner being. I don't know how to\nexpress it. That's just what's made me wretched all my life, that I\nyearned to be honorable, that I was, so to say, a martyr to a sense of\nhonor, seeking for it with a lantern, with the lantern of Diogenes, and\nyet all my life I've been doing filthy things like all of us, gentlemen\n... that is like me alone. That was a mistake, like me alone, me alone!...\nGentlemen, my head aches ...\" His brows contracted with pain. \"You see,\ngentlemen, I couldn't bear the look of him, there was something in him\nignoble, impudent, trampling on everything sacred, something sneering and\nirreverent, loathsome, loathsome. But now that he's dead, I feel\ndifferently.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"I don't feel differently, but I wish I hadn't hated him so.\"\n\n\"You feel penitent?\"\n\n\"No, not penitent, don't write that. I'm not much good myself, I'm not\nvery beautiful, so I had no right to consider him repulsive. That's what I\nmean. Write that down, if you like.\"\n\nSaying this Mitya became very mournful. He had grown more and more gloomy\nas the inquiry continued.\n\nAt that moment another unexpected scene followed. Though Grushenka had\nbeen removed, she had not been taken far away, only into the room next but\none from the blue room, in which the examination was proceeding. It was a\nlittle room with one window, next beyond the large room in which they had\ndanced and feasted so lavishly. She was sitting there with no one by her\nbut Maximov, who was terribly depressed, terribly scared, and clung to her\nside, as though for security. At their door stood one of the peasants with\na metal plate on his breast. Grushenka was crying, and suddenly her grief\nwas too much for her, she jumped up, flung up her arms and, with a loud\nwail of sorrow, rushed out of the room to him, to her Mitya, and so\nunexpectedly that they had not time to stop her. Mitya, hearing her cry,\ntrembled, jumped up, and with a yell rushed impetuously to meet her, not\nknowing what he was doing. But they were not allowed to come together,\nthough they saw one another. He was seized by the arms. He struggled, and\ntried to tear himself away. It took three or four men to hold him. She was\nseized too, and he saw her stretching out her arms to him, crying aloud as\nthey carried her away. When the scene was over, he came to himself again,\nsitting in the same place as before, opposite the investigating lawyer,\nand crying out to them:\n\n\"What do you want with her? Why do you torment her? She's done nothing,\nnothing!...\"\n\nThe lawyers tried to soothe him. About ten minutes passed like this. At\nlast Mihail Makarovitch, who had been absent, came hurriedly into the\nroom, and said in a loud and excited voice to the prosecutor:\n\n\"She's been removed, she's downstairs. Will you allow me to say one word\nto this unhappy man, gentlemen? In your presence, gentlemen, in your\npresence.\"\n\n\"By all means, Mihail Makarovitch,\" answered the investigating lawyer. \"In\nthe present case we have nothing against it.\"\n\n\"Listen, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear fellow,\" began the police captain,\nand there was a look of warm, almost fatherly, feeling for the luckless\nprisoner on his excited face. \"I took your Agrafena Alexandrovna\ndownstairs myself, and confided her to the care of the landlord's\ndaughters, and that old fellow Maximov is with her all the time. And I\nsoothed her, do you hear? I soothed and calmed her. I impressed on her\nthat you have to clear yourself, so she mustn't hinder you, must not\ndepress you, or you may lose your head and say the wrong thing in your\nevidence. In fact, I talked to her and she understood. She's a sensible\ngirl, my boy, a good-hearted girl, she would have kissed my old hands,\nbegging help for you. She sent me herself, to tell you not to worry about\nher. And I must go, my dear fellow, I must go and tell her that you are\ncalm and comforted about her. And so you must be calm, do you understand?\nI was unfair to her; she is a Christian soul, gentlemen, yes, I tell you,\nshe's a gentle soul, and not to blame for anything. So what am I to tell\nher, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Will you sit quiet or not?\"\n\nThe good-natured police captain said a great deal that was irregular, but\nGrushenka's suffering, a fellow creature's suffering, touched his good-\nnatured heart, and tears stood in his eyes. Mitya jumped up and rushed\ntowards him.\n\n\"Forgive me, gentlemen, oh, allow me, allow me!\" he cried. \"You've the\nheart of an angel, an angel, Mihail Makarovitch, I thank you for her. I\nwill, I will be calm, cheerful, in fact. Tell her, in the kindness of your\nheart, that I am cheerful, quite cheerful, that I shall be laughing in a\nminute, knowing that she has a guardian angel like you. I shall have done\nwith all this directly, and as soon as I'm free, I'll be with her, she'll\nsee, let her wait. Gentlemen,\" he said, turning to the two lawyers, \"now\nI'll open my whole soul to you; I'll pour out everything. We'll finish\nthis off directly, finish it off gayly. We shall laugh at it in the end,\nshan't we? But, gentlemen, that woman is the queen of my heart. Oh, let me\ntell you that. That one thing I'll tell you now.... I see I'm with\nhonorable men. She is my light, she is my holy one, and if only you knew!\nDid you hear her cry, 'I'll go to death with you'? And what have I, a\npenniless beggar, done for her? Why such love for me? How can a clumsy,\nugly brute like me, with my ugly face, deserve such love, that she is\nready to go to exile with me? And how she fell down at your feet for my\nsake, just now!... and yet she's proud and has done nothing! How can I\nhelp adoring her, how can I help crying out and rushing to her as I did\njust now? Gentlemen, forgive me! But now, now I am comforted.\"\n\nAnd he sank back in his chair and, covering his face with his hands, burst\ninto tears. But they were happy tears. He recovered himself instantly. The\nold police captain seemed much pleased, and the lawyers also. They felt\nthat the examination was passing into a new phase. When the police captain\nwent out, Mitya was positively gay.\n\n\"Now, gentlemen, I am at your disposal, entirely at your disposal. And if\nit were not for all these trivial details, we should understand one\nanother in a minute. I'm at those details again. I'm at your disposal,\ngentlemen, but I declare that we must have mutual confidence, you in me\nand I in you, or there'll be no end to it. I speak in your interests. To\nbusiness, gentlemen, to business, and don't rummage in my soul; don't\ntease me with trifles, but only ask me about facts and what matters, and I\nwill satisfy you at once. And damn the details!\"\n\nSo spoke Mitya. The interrogation began again.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. The Second Ordeal\n\n\n\"You don't know how you encourage us, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, by your\nreadiness to answer,\" said Nikolay Parfenovitch, with an animated air, and\nobvious satisfaction beaming in his very prominent, short-sighted, light\ngray eyes, from which he had removed his spectacles a moment before. \"And\nyou have made a very just remark about the mutual confidence, without\nwhich it is sometimes positively impossible to get on in cases of such\nimportance, if the suspected party really hopes and desires to defend\nhimself and is in a position to do so. We, on our side, will do everything\nin our power, and you can see for yourself how we are conducting the case.\nYou approve, Ippolit Kirillovitch?\" He turned to the prosecutor.\n\n\"Oh, undoubtedly,\" replied the prosecutor. His tone was somewhat cold,\ncompared with Nikolay Parfenovitch's impulsiveness.\n\nI will note once for all that Nikolay Parfenovitch, who had but lately\narrived among us, had from the first felt marked respect for Ippolit\nKirillovitch, our prosecutor, and had become almost his bosom friend. He\nwas almost the only person who put implicit faith in Ippolit\nKirillovitch's extraordinary talents as a psychologist and orator and in\nthe justice of his grievance. He had heard of him in Petersburg. On the\nother hand, young Nikolay Parfenovitch was the only person in the whole\nworld whom our \"unappreciated\" prosecutor genuinely liked. On their way to\nMokroe they had time to come to an understanding about the present case.\nAnd now as they sat at the table, the sharp-witted junior caught and\ninterpreted every indication on his senior colleague's face--half a word, a\nglance, or a wink.\n\n\"Gentlemen, only let me tell my own story and don't interrupt me with\ntrivial questions and I'll tell you everything in a moment,\" said Mitya\nexcitedly.\n\n\"Excellent! Thank you. But before we proceed to listen to your\ncommunication, will you allow me to inquire as to another little fact of\ngreat interest to us? I mean the ten roubles you borrowed yesterday at\nabout five o'clock on the security of your pistols, from your friend,\nPyotr Ilyitch Perhotin.\"\n\n\"I pledged them, gentlemen. I pledged them for ten roubles. What more?\nThat's all about it. As soon as I got back to town I pledged them.\"\n\n\"You got back to town? Then you had been out of town?\"\n\n\"Yes, I went a journey of forty versts into the country. Didn't you know?\"\n\nThe prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch exchanged glances.\n\n\"Well, how would it be if you began your story with a systematic\ndescription of all you did yesterday, from the morning onwards? Allow us,\nfor instance, to inquire why you were absent from the town, and just when\nyou left and when you came back--all those facts.\"\n\n\"You should have asked me like that from the beginning,\" cried Mitya,\nlaughing aloud, \"and, if you like, we won't begin from yesterday, but from\nthe morning of the day before; then you'll understand how, why, and where\nI went. I went the day before yesterday, gentlemen, to a merchant of the\ntown, called Samsonov, to borrow three thousand roubles from him on safe\nsecurity. It was a pressing matter, gentlemen, it was a sudden necessity.\"\n\n\"Allow me to interrupt you,\" the prosecutor put in politely. \"Why were you\nin such pressing need for just that sum, three thousand?\"\n\n\"Oh, gentlemen, you needn't go into details, how, when and why, and why\njust so much money, and not so much, and all that rigmarole. Why, it'll\nrun to three volumes, and then you'll want an epilogue!\"\n\nMitya said all this with the good-natured but impatient familiarity of a\nman who is anxious to tell the whole truth and is full of the best\nintentions.\n\n\"Gentlemen!\"--he corrected himself hurriedly--\"don't be vexed with me for my\nrestiveness, I beg you again. Believe me once more, I feel the greatest\nrespect for you and understand the true position of affairs. Don't think\nI'm drunk. I'm quite sober now. And, besides, being drunk would be no\nhindrance. It's with me, you know, like the saying: 'When he is sober, he\nis a fool; when he is drunk, he is a wise man.' Ha ha! But I see,\ngentlemen, it's not the proper thing to make jokes to you, till we've had\nour explanation, I mean. And I've my own dignity to keep up, too. I quite\nunderstand the difference for the moment. I am, after all, in the position\nof a criminal, and so, far from being on equal terms with you. And it's\nyour business to watch me. I can't expect you to pat me on the head for\nwhat I did to Grigory, for one can't break old men's heads with impunity.\nI suppose you'll put me away for him for six months, or a year perhaps, in\na house of correction. I don't know what the punishment is--but it will be\nwithout loss of the rights of my rank, without loss of my rank, won't it?\nSo you see, gentlemen, I understand the distinction between us.... But you\nmust see that you could puzzle God Himself with such questions. 'How did\nyou step? Where did you step? When did you step? And on what did you\nstep?' I shall get mixed up, if you go on like this, and you will put it\nall down against me. And what will that lead to? To nothing! And even if\nit's nonsense I'm talking now, let me finish, and you, gentlemen, being\nmen of honor and refinement, will forgive me! I'll finish by asking you,\ngentlemen, to drop that conventional method of questioning. I mean,\nbeginning from some miserable trifle, how I got up, what I had for\nbreakfast, how I spat, and where I spat, and so distracting the attention\nof the criminal, suddenly stun him with an overwhelming question, 'Whom\ndid you murder? Whom did you rob?' Ha ha! That's your regulation method,\nthat's where all your cunning comes in. You can put peasants off their\nguard like that, but not me. I know the tricks. I've been in the service,\ntoo. Ha ha ha! You're not angry, gentlemen? You forgive my impertinence?\"\nhe cried, looking at them with a good-nature that was almost surprising.\n\"It's only Mitya Karamazov, you know, so you can overlook it. It would be\ninexcusable in a sensible man; but you can forgive it in Mitya. Ha ha!\"\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch listened, and laughed too. Though the prosecutor did\nnot laugh, he kept his eyes fixed keenly on Mitya, as though anxious not\nto miss the least syllable, the slightest movement, the smallest twitch of\nany feature of his face.\n\n\"That's how we have treated you from the beginning,\" said Nikolay\nParfenovitch, still laughing. \"We haven't tried to put you out by asking\nhow you got up in the morning and what you had for breakfast. We began,\nindeed, with questions of the greatest importance.\"\n\n\"I understand. I saw it and appreciated it, and I appreciate still more\nyour present kindness to me, an unprecedented kindness, worthy of your\nnoble hearts. We three here are gentlemen, and let everything be on the\nfooting of mutual confidence between educated, well-bred people, who have\nthe common bond of noble birth and honor. In any case, allow me to look\nupon you as my best friends at this moment of my life, at this moment when\nmy honor is assailed. That's no offense to you, gentlemen, is it?\"\n\n\"On the contrary. You've expressed all that so well, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\"\nNikolay Parfenovitch answered with dignified approbation.\n\n\"And enough of those trivial questions, gentlemen, all those tricky\nquestions!\" cried Mitya enthusiastically. \"Or there's simply no knowing\nwhere we shall get to! Is there?\"\n\n\"I will follow your sensible advice entirely,\" the prosecutor interposed,\naddressing Mitya. \"I don't withdraw my question, however. It is now\nvitally important for us to know exactly why you needed that sum, I mean\nprecisely three thousand.\"\n\n\"Why I needed it?... Oh, for one thing and another.... Well, it was to pay\na debt.\"\n\n\"A debt to whom?\"\n\n\"That I absolutely refuse to answer, gentlemen. Not because I couldn't, or\nbecause I shouldn't dare, or because it would be damaging, for it's all a\npaltry matter and absolutely trifling, but--I won't, because it's a matter\nof principle: that's my private life, and I won't allow any intrusion into\nmy private life. That's my principle. Your question has no bearing on the\ncase, and whatever has nothing to do with the case is my private affair. I\nwanted to pay a debt. I wanted to pay a debt of honor but to whom I won't\nsay.\"\n\n\"Allow me to make a note of that,\" said the prosecutor.\n\n\"By all means. Write down that I won't say, that I won't. Write that I\nshould think it dishonorable to say. Ech! you can write it; you've nothing\nelse to do with your time.\"\n\n\"Allow me to caution you, sir, and to remind you once more, if you are\nunaware of it,\" the prosecutor began, with a peculiar and stern\nimpressiveness, \"that you have a perfect right not to answer the questions\nput to you now, and we on our side have no right to extort an answer from\nyou, if you decline to give it for one reason or another. That is entirely\na matter for your personal decision. But it is our duty, on the other\nhand, in such cases as the present, to explain and set before you the\ndegree of injury you will be doing yourself by refusing to give this or\nthat piece of evidence. After which I will beg you to continue.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen, I'm not angry ... I ...\" Mitya muttered in a rather\ndisconcerted tone. \"Well, gentlemen, you see, that Samsonov to whom I went\nthen ...\"\n\nWe will, of course, not reproduce his account of what is known to the\nreader already. Mitya was impatiently anxious not to omit the slightest\ndetail. At the same time he was in a hurry to get it over. But as he gave\nhis evidence it was written down, and therefore they had continually to\npull him up. Mitya disliked this, but submitted; got angry, though still\ngood-humoredly. He did, it is true, exclaim, from time to time,\n\"Gentlemen, that's enough to make an angel out of patience!\" Or,\n\"Gentlemen, it's no good your irritating me.\"\n\nBut even though he exclaimed he still preserved for a time his genially\nexpansive mood. So he told them how Samsonov had made a fool of him two\ndays before. (He had completely realized by now that he had been fooled.)\nThe sale of his watch for six roubles to obtain money for the journey was\nsomething new to the lawyers. They were at once greatly interested, and\neven, to Mitya's intense indignation, thought it necessary to write the\nfact down as a secondary confirmation of the circumstance that he had\nhardly a farthing in his pocket at the time. Little by little Mitya began\nto grow surly. Then, after describing his journey to see Lyagavy, the\nnight spent in the stifling hut, and so on, he came to his return to the\ntown. Here he began, without being particularly urged, to give a minute\naccount of the agonies of jealousy he endured on Grushenka's account.\n\nHe was heard with silent attention. They inquired particularly into the\ncircumstance of his having a place of ambush in Marya Kondratyevna's house\nat the back of Fyodor Pavlovitch's garden to keep watch on Grushenka, and\nof Smerdyakov's bringing him information. They laid particular stress on\nthis, and noted it down. Of his jealousy he spoke warmly and at length,\nand though inwardly ashamed at exposing his most intimate feelings to\n\"public ignominy,\" so to speak, he evidently overcame his shame in order\nto tell the truth. The frigid severity, with which the investigating\nlawyer, and still more the prosecutor, stared intently at him as he told\nhis story, disconcerted him at last considerably.\n\n\"That boy, Nikolay Parfenovitch, to whom I was talking nonsense about\nwomen only a few days ago, and that sickly prosecutor are not worth my\ntelling this to,\" he reflected mournfully. \"It's ignominious. 'Be patient,\nhumble, hold thy peace.' \" He wound up his reflections with that line. But\nhe pulled himself together to go on again. When he came to telling of his\nvisit to Madame Hohlakov, he regained his spirits and even wished to tell\na little anecdote of that lady which had nothing to do with the case. But\nthe investigating lawyer stopped him, and civilly suggested that he should\npass on to \"more essential matters.\" At last, when he described his\ndespair and told them how, when he left Madame Hohlakov's, he thought that\nhe'd \"get three thousand if he had to murder some one to do it,\" they\nstopped him again and noted down that he had \"meant to murder some one.\"\nMitya let them write it without protest. At last he reached the point in\nhis story when he learned that Grushenka had deceived him and had returned\nfrom Samsonov's as soon as he left her there, though she had said that she\nwould stay there till midnight.\n\n\"If I didn't kill Fenya then, gentlemen, it was only because I hadn't\ntime,\" broke from him suddenly at that point in his story. That, too, was\ncarefully written down. Mitya waited gloomily, and was beginning to tell\nhow he ran into his father's garden when the investigating lawyer suddenly\nstopped him, and opening the big portfolio that lay on the sofa beside him\nhe brought out the brass pestle.\n\n\"Do you recognize this object?\" he asked, showing it to Mitya.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" he laughed gloomily. \"Of course I recognize it. Let me have a\nlook at it.... Damn it, never mind!\"\n\n\"You have forgotten to mention it,\" observed the investigating lawyer.\n\n\"Hang it all, I shouldn't have concealed it from you. Do you suppose I\ncould have managed without it? It simply escaped my memory.\"\n\n\"Be so good as to tell us precisely how you came to arm yourself with it.\"\n\n\"Certainly I will be so good, gentlemen.\"\n\nAnd Mitya described how he took the pestle and ran.\n\n\"But what object had you in view in arming yourself with such a weapon?\"\n\n\"What object? No object. I just picked it up and ran off.\"\n\n\"What for, if you had no object?\"\n\nMitya's wrath flared up. He looked intently at \"the boy\" and smiled\ngloomily and malignantly. He was feeling more and more ashamed at having\ntold \"such people\" the story of his jealousy so sincerely and\nspontaneously.\n\n\"Bother the pestle!\" broke from him suddenly.\n\n\"But still--\"\n\n\"Oh, to keep off dogs.... Oh, because it was dark.... In case anything\nturned up.\"\n\n\"But have you ever on previous occasions taken a weapon with you when you\nwent out, since you're afraid of the dark?\"\n\n\"Ugh! damn it all, gentlemen! There's positively no talking to you!\" cried\nMitya, exasperated beyond endurance, and turning to the secretary, crimson\nwith anger, he said quickly, with a note of fury in his voice:\n\n\"Write down at once ... at once ... 'that I snatched up the pestle to go\nand kill my father ... Fyodor Pavlovitch ... by hitting him on the head\nwith it!' Well, now are you satisfied, gentlemen? Are your minds\nrelieved?\" he said, glaring defiantly at the lawyers.\n\n\"We quite understand that you made that statement just now through\nexasperation with us and the questions we put to you, which you consider\ntrivial, though they are, in fact, essential,\" the prosecutor remarked\ndryly in reply.\n\n\"Well, upon my word, gentlemen! Yes, I took the pestle.... What does one\npick things up for at such moments? I don't know what for. I snatched it\nup and ran--that's all. For to me, gentlemen, _passons_, or I declare I\nwon't tell you any more.\"\n\nHe sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hand. He sat\nsideways to them and gazed at the wall, struggling against a feeling of\nnausea. He had, in fact, an awful inclination to get up and declare that\nhe wouldn't say another word, \"not if you hang me for it.\"\n\n\"You see, gentlemen,\" he said at last, with difficulty controlling\nhimself, \"you see. I listen to you and am haunted by a dream.... It's a\ndream I have sometimes, you know.... I often dream it--it's always the same\n... that some one is hunting me, some one I'm awfully afraid of ... that\nhe's hunting me in the dark, in the night ... tracking me, and I hide\nsomewhere from him, behind a door or cupboard, hide in a degrading way,\nand the worst of it is, he always knows where I am, but he pretends not to\nknow where I am on purpose, to prolong my agony, to enjoy my terror....\nThat's just what you're doing now. It's just like that!\"\n\n\"Is that the sort of thing you dream about?\" inquired the prosecutor.\n\n\"Yes, it is. Don't you want to write it down?\" said Mitya, with a\ndistorted smile.\n\n\"No; no need to write it down. But still you do have curious dreams.\"\n\n\"It's not a question of dreams now, gentlemen--this is realism, this is\nreal life! I'm a wolf and you're the hunters. Well, hunt him down!\"\n\n\"You are wrong to make such comparisons ...\" began Nikolay Parfenovitch,\nwith extraordinary softness.\n\n\"No, I'm not wrong, not at all!\" Mitya flared up again, though his\noutburst of wrath had obviously relieved his heart. He grew more good-\nhumored at every word. \"You may not trust a criminal or a man on trial\ntortured by your questions, but an honorable man, the honorable impulses\nof the heart (I say that boldly!)--no! That you must believe you have no\nright indeed ... but--\n\n\n    Be silent, heart,\n    Be patient, humble, hold thy peace.\n\n\nWell, shall I go on?\" he broke off gloomily.\n\n\"If you'll be so kind,\" answered Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. The Third Ordeal\n\n\nThough Mitya spoke sullenly, it was evident that he was trying more than\never not to forget or miss a single detail of his story. He told them how\nhe had leapt over the fence into his father's garden; how he had gone up\nto the window; told them all that had passed under the window. Clearly,\nprecisely, distinctly, he described the feelings that troubled him during\nthose moments in the garden when he longed so terribly to know whether\nGrushenka was with his father or not. But, strange to say, both the\nlawyers listened now with a sort of awful reserve, looked coldly at him,\nasked few questions. Mitya could gather nothing from their faces.\n\n\"They're angry and offended,\" he thought. \"Well, bother them!\"\n\nWhen he described how he made up his mind at last to make the \"signal\" to\nhis father that Grushenka had come, so that he should open the window, the\nlawyers paid no attention to the word \"signal,\" as though they entirely\nfailed to grasp the meaning of the word in this connection: so much so,\nthat Mitya noticed it. Coming at last to the moment when, seeing his\nfather peering out of the window, his hatred flared up and he pulled the\npestle out of his pocket, he suddenly, as though of design, stopped short.\nHe sat gazing at the wall and was aware that their eyes were fixed upon\nhim.\n\n\"Well?\" said the investigating lawyer. \"You pulled out the weapon and ...\nand what happened then?\"\n\n\"Then? Why, then I murdered him ... hit him on the head and cracked his\nskull.... I suppose that's your story. That's it!\"\n\nHis eyes suddenly flashed. All his smothered wrath suddenly flamed up with\nextraordinary violence in his soul.\n\n\"Our story?\" repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch. \"Well--and yours?\"\n\nMitya dropped his eyes and was a long time silent.\n\n\"My story, gentlemen? Well, it was like this,\" he began softly. \"Whether\nit was some one's tears, or my mother prayed to God, or a good angel\nkissed me at that instant, I don't know. But the devil was conquered. I\nrushed from the window and ran to the fence. My father was alarmed and,\nfor the first time, he saw me then, cried out, and sprang back from the\nwindow. I remember that very well. I ran across the garden to the fence\n... and there Grigory caught me, when I was sitting on the fence.\"\n\nAt that point he raised his eyes at last and looked at his listeners. They\nseemed to be staring at him with perfectly unruffled attention. A sort of\nparoxysm of indignation seized on Mitya's soul.\n\n\"Why, you're laughing at me at this moment, gentlemen!\" he broke off\nsuddenly.\n\n\"What makes you think that?\" observed Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\"You don't believe one word--that's why! I understand, of course, that I\nhave come to the vital point. The old man's lying there now with his skull\nbroken, while I--after dramatically describing how I wanted to kill him,\nand how I snatched up the pestle--I suddenly run away from the window. A\nromance! Poetry! As though one could believe a fellow on his word. Ha ha!\nYou are scoffers, gentlemen!\"\n\nAnd he swung round on his chair so that it creaked.\n\n\"And did you notice,\" asked the prosecutor suddenly, as though not\nobserving Mitya's excitement, \"did you notice when you ran away from the\nwindow, whether the door into the garden was open?\"\n\n\"No, it was not open.\"\n\n\"It was not?\"\n\n\"It was shut. And who could open it? Bah! the door. Wait a bit!\" he seemed\nsuddenly to bethink himself, and almost with a start:\n\n\"Why, did you find the door open?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was open.\"\n\n\"Why, who could have opened it if you did not open it yourselves?\" cried\nMitya, greatly astonished.\n\n\"The door stood open, and your father's murderer undoubtedly went in at\nthat door, and, having accomplished the crime, went out again by the same\ndoor,\" the prosecutor pronounced deliberately, as though chiseling out\neach word separately. \"That is perfectly clear. The murder was committed\nin the room and _not through the __ window_; that is absolutely certain\nfrom the examination that has been made, from the position of the body and\neverything. There can be no doubt of that circumstance.\"\n\nMitya was absolutely dumbfounded.\n\n\"But that's utterly impossible!\" he cried, completely at a loss. \"I ... I\ndidn't go in.... I tell you positively, definitely, the door was shut the\nwhole time I was in the garden, and when I ran out of the garden. I only\nstood at the window and saw him through the window. That's all, that's\nall.... I remember to the last minute. And if I didn't remember, it would\nbe just the same. I know it, for no one knew the signals except\nSmerdyakov, and me, and the dead man. And he wouldn't have opened the door\nto any one in the world without the signals.\"\n\n\"Signals? What signals?\" asked the prosecutor, with greedy, almost\nhysterical, curiosity. He instantly lost all trace of his reserve and\ndignity. He asked the question with a sort of cringing timidity. He\nscented an important fact of which he had known nothing, and was already\nfilled with dread that Mitya might be unwilling to disclose it.\n\n\"So you didn't know!\" Mitya winked at him with a malicious and mocking\nsmile. \"What if I won't tell you? From whom could you find out? No one\nknew about the signals except my father, Smerdyakov, and me: that was all.\nHeaven knew, too, but it won't tell you. But it's an interesting fact.\nThere's no knowing what you might build on it. Ha ha! Take comfort,\ngentlemen, I'll reveal it. You've some foolish idea in your hearts. You\ndon't know the man you have to deal with! You have to do with a prisoner\nwho gives evidence against himself, to his own damage! Yes, for I'm a man\nof honor and you--are not.\"\n\nThe prosecutor swallowed this without a murmur. He was trembling with\nimpatience to hear the new fact. Minutely and diffusely Mitya told them\neverything about the signals invented by Fyodor Pavlovitch for Smerdyakov.\nHe told them exactly what every tap on the window meant, tapped the\nsignals on the table, and when Nikolay Parfenovitch said that he supposed\nhe, Mitya, had tapped the signal \"Grushenka has come,\" when he tapped to\nhis father, he answered precisely that he had tapped that signal, that\n\"Grushenka had come.\"\n\n\"So now you can build up your tower,\" Mitya broke off, and again turned\naway from them contemptuously.\n\n\"So no one knew of the signals but your dead father, you, and the valet\nSmerdyakov? And no one else?\" Nikolay Parfenovitch inquired once more.\n\n\"Yes. The valet Smerdyakov, and Heaven. Write down about Heaven. That may\nbe of use. Besides, you will need God yourselves.\"\n\nAnd they had already, of course, begun writing it down. But while they\nwrote, the prosecutor said suddenly, as though pitching on a new idea:\n\n\"But if Smerdyakov also knew of these signals and you absolutely deny all\nresponsibility for the death of your father, was it not he, perhaps, who\nknocked the signal agreed upon, induced your father to open to him, and\nthen ... committed the crime?\"\n\nMitya turned upon him a look of profound irony and intense hatred. His\nsilent stare lasted so long that it made the prosecutor blink.\n\n\"You've caught the fox again,\" commented Mitya at last; \"you've got the\nbeast by the tail. Ha ha! I see through you, Mr. Prosecutor. You thought,\nof course, that I should jump at that, catch at your prompting, and shout\nwith all my might, 'Aie! it's Smerdyakov; he's the murderer.' Confess\nthat's what you thought. Confess, and I'll go on.\"\n\nBut the prosecutor did not confess. He held his tongue and waited.\n\n\"You're mistaken. I'm not going to shout 'It's Smerdyakov,' \" said Mitya.\n\n\"And you don't even suspect him?\"\n\n\"Why, do you suspect him?\"\n\n\"He is suspected, too.\"\n\nMitya fixed his eyes on the floor.\n\n\"Joking apart,\" he brought out gloomily. \"Listen. From the very beginning,\nalmost from the moment when I ran out to you from behind the curtain, I've\nhad the thought of Smerdyakov in my mind. I've been sitting here, shouting\nthat I'm innocent and thinking all the time 'Smerdyakov!' I can't get\nSmerdyakov out of my head. In fact, I, too, thought of Smerdyakov just\nnow; but only for a second. Almost at once I thought, 'No, it's not\nSmerdyakov.' It's not his doing, gentlemen.\"\n\n\"In that case is there anybody else you suspect?\" Nikolay Parfenovitch\ninquired cautiously.\n\n\"I don't know any one it could be, whether it's the hand of Heaven or\nSatan, but ... not Smerdyakov,\" Mitya jerked out with decision.\n\n\"But what makes you affirm so confidently and emphatically that it's not\nhe?\"\n\n\"From my conviction--my impression. Because Smerdyakov is a man of the most\nabject character and a coward. He's not a coward, he's the epitome of all\nthe cowardice in the world walking on two legs. He has the heart of a\nchicken. When he talked to me, he was always trembling for fear I should\nkill him, though I never raised my hand against him. He fell at my feet\nand blubbered; he has kissed these very boots, literally, beseeching me\n'not to frighten him.' Do you hear? 'Not to frighten him.' What a thing to\nsay! Why, I offered him money. He's a puling chicken--sickly, epileptic,\nweak-minded--a child of eight could thrash him. He has no character worth\ntalking about. It's not Smerdyakov, gentlemen. He doesn't care for money;\nhe wouldn't take my presents. Besides, what motive had he for murdering\nthe old man? Why, he's very likely his son, you know--his natural son. Do\nyou know that?\"\n\n\"We have heard that legend. But you are your father's son, too, you know;\nyet you yourself told every one you meant to murder him.\"\n\n\"That's a thrust! And a nasty, mean one, too! I'm not afraid! Oh,\ngentlemen, isn't it too base of you to say that to my face? It's base,\nbecause I told you that myself. I not only wanted to murder him, but I\nmight have done it. And, what's more, I went out of my way to tell you of\nmy own accord that I nearly murdered him. But, you see, I didn't murder\nhim; you see, my guardian angel saved me--that's what you've not taken into\naccount. And that's why it's so base of you. For I didn't kill him, I\ndidn't kill him! Do you hear, I did not kill him.\"\n\nHe was almost choking. He had not been so moved before during the whole\ninterrogation.\n\n\"And what has he told you, gentlemen--Smerdyakov, I mean?\" he added\nsuddenly, after a pause. \"May I ask that question?\"\n\n\"You may ask any question,\" the prosecutor replied with frigid severity,\n\"any question relating to the facts of the case, and we are, I repeat,\nbound to answer every inquiry you make. We found the servant Smerdyakov,\nconcerning whom you inquire, lying unconscious in his bed, in an epileptic\nfit of extreme severity, that had recurred, possibly, ten times. The\ndoctor who was with us told us, after seeing him, that he may possibly not\noutlive the night.\"\n\n\"Well, if that's so, the devil must have killed him,\" broke suddenly from\nMitya, as though until that moment he had been asking himself: \"Was it\nSmerdyakov or not?\"\n\n\"We will come back to this later,\" Nikolay Parfenovitch decided. \"Now,\nwouldn't you like to continue your statement?\"\n\nMitya asked for a rest. His request was courteously granted. After\nresting, he went on with his story. But he was evidently depressed. He was\nexhausted, mortified and morally shaken. To make things worse the\nprosecutor exasperated him, as though intentionally, by vexatious\ninterruptions about \"trifling points.\" Scarcely had Mitya described how,\nsitting on the wall, he had struck Grigory on the head with the pestle,\nwhile the old man had hold of his left leg, and how he had then jumped\ndown to look at him, when the prosecutor stopped him to ask him to\ndescribe exactly how he was sitting on the wall. Mitya was surprised.\n\n\"Oh, I was sitting like this, astride, one leg on one side of the wall and\none on the other.\"\n\n\"And the pestle?\"\n\n\"The pestle was in my hand.\"\n\n\"Not in your pocket? Do you remember that precisely? Was it a violent blow\nyou gave him?\"\n\n\"It must have been a violent one. But why do you ask?\"\n\n\"Would you mind sitting on the chair just as you sat on the wall then and\nshowing us just how you moved your arm, and in what direction?\"\n\n\"You're making fun of me, aren't you?\" asked Mitya, looking haughtily at\nthe speaker; but the latter did not flinch.\n\nMitya turned abruptly, sat astride on his chair, and swung his arm.\n\n\"This was how I struck him! That's how I knocked him down! What more do\nyou want?\"\n\n\"Thank you. May I trouble you now to explain why you jumped down, with\nwhat object, and what you had in view?\"\n\n\"Oh, hang it!... I jumped down to look at the man I'd hurt ... I don't\nknow what for!\"\n\n\"Though you were so excited and were running away?\"\n\n\"Yes, though I was excited and running away.\"\n\n\"You wanted to help him?\"\n\n\"Help!... Yes, perhaps I did want to help him.... I don't remember.\"\n\n\"You don't remember? Then you didn't quite know what you were doing?\"\n\n\"Not at all. I remember everything--every detail. I jumped down to look at\nhim, and wiped his face with my handkerchief.\"\n\n\"We have seen your handkerchief. Did you hope to restore him to\nconsciousness?\"\n\n\"I don't know whether I hoped it. I simply wanted to make sure whether he\nwas alive or not.\"\n\n\"Ah! You wanted to be sure? Well, what then?\"\n\n\"I'm not a doctor. I couldn't decide. I ran away thinking I'd killed him.\nAnd now he's recovered.\"\n\n\"Excellent,\" commented the prosecutor. \"Thank you. That's all I wanted.\nKindly proceed.\"\n\nAlas! it never entered Mitya's head to tell them, though he remembered it,\nthat he had jumped back from pity, and standing over the prostrate figure\nhad even uttered some words of regret: \"You've come to grief, old\nman--there's no help for it. Well, there you must lie.\"\n\nThe prosecutor could only draw one conclusion: that the man had jumped\nback \"at such a moment and in such excitement simply with the object of\nascertaining whether the _only_ witness of his crime were dead; that he\nmust therefore have been a man of great strength, coolness, decision and\nforesight even at such a moment,\" ... and so on. The prosecutor was\nsatisfied: \"I've provoked the nervous fellow by 'trifles' and he has said\nmore than he meant to.\"\n\nWith painful effort Mitya went on. But this time he was pulled up\nimmediately by Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\"How came you to run to the servant, Fedosya Markovna, with your hands so\ncovered with blood, and, as it appears, your face, too?\"\n\n\"Why, I didn't notice the blood at all at the time,\" answered Mitya.\n\n\"That's quite likely. It does happen sometimes.\" The prosecutor exchanged\nglances with Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\"I simply didn't notice. You're quite right there, prosecutor,\" Mitya\nassented suddenly.\n\nNext came the account of Mitya's sudden determination to \"step aside\" and\nmake way for their happiness. But he could not make up his mind to open\nhis heart to them as before, and tell them about \"the queen of his soul.\"\nHe disliked speaking of her before these chilly persons \"who were\nfastening on him like bugs.\" And so in response to their reiterated\nquestions he answered briefly and abruptly:\n\n\"Well, I made up my mind to kill myself. What had I left to live for? That\nquestion stared me in the face. Her first rightful lover had come back,\nthe man who wronged her but who'd hurried back to offer his love, after\nfive years, and atone for the wrong with marriage.... So I knew it was all\nover for me.... And behind me disgrace, and that blood--Grigory's.... What\nhad I to live for? So I went to redeem the pistols I had pledged, to load\nthem and put a bullet in my brain to-morrow.\"\n\n\"And a grand feast the night before?\"\n\n\"Yes, a grand feast the night before. Damn it all, gentlemen! Do make\nhaste and finish it. I meant to shoot myself not far from here, beyond the\nvillage, and I'd planned to do it at five o'clock in the morning. And I\nhad a note in my pocket already. I wrote it at Perhotin's when I loaded my\npistols. Here's the letter. Read it! It's not for you I tell it,\" he added\ncontemptuously. He took it from his waistcoat pocket and flung it on the\ntable. The lawyers read it with curiosity, and, as is usual, added it to\nthe papers connected with the case.\n\n\"And you didn't even think of washing your hands at Perhotin's? You were\nnot afraid then of arousing suspicion?\"\n\n\"What suspicion? Suspicion or not, I should have galloped here just the\nsame, and shot myself at five o'clock, and you wouldn't have been in time\nto do anything. If it hadn't been for what's happened to my father, you\nwould have known nothing about it, and wouldn't have come here. Oh, it's\nthe devil's doing. It was the devil murdered father, it was through the\ndevil that you found it out so soon. How did you manage to get here so\nquick? It's marvelous, a dream!\"\n\n\"Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him, you held in your\nhands ... your blood-stained hands ... your money ... a lot of money ... a\nbundle of hundred-rouble notes, and that his servant-boy saw it too.\"\n\n\"That's true, gentlemen. I remember it was so.\"\n\n\"Now, there's one little point presents itself. Can you inform us,\"\nNikolay Parfenovitch began, with extreme gentleness, \"where did you get so\nmuch money all of a sudden, when it appears from the facts, from the\nreckoning of time, that you had not been home?\"\n\nThe prosecutor's brows contracted at the question being asked so plainly,\nbut he did not interrupt Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\"No, I didn't go home,\" answered Mitya, apparently perfectly composed, but\nlooking at the floor.\n\n\"Allow me then to repeat my question,\" Nikolay Parfenovitch went on as\nthough creeping up to the subject. \"Where were you able to procure such a\nsum all at once, when by your own confession, at five o'clock the same day\nyou--\"\n\n\"I was in want of ten roubles and pledged my pistols with Perhotin, and\nthen went to Madame Hohlakov to borrow three thousand which she wouldn't\ngive me, and so on, and all the rest of it,\" Mitya interrupted sharply.\n\"Yes, gentlemen, I was in want of it, and suddenly thousands turned up,\neh? Do you know, gentlemen, you're both afraid now 'what if he won't tell\nus where he got it?' That's just how it is. I'm not going to tell you,\ngentlemen. You've guessed right. You'll never know,\" said Mitya, chipping\nout each word with extraordinary determination. The lawyers were silent\nfor a moment.\n\n\"You must understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it is of vital importance for us\nto know,\" said Nikolay Parfenovitch, softly and suavely.\n\n\"I understand; but still I won't tell you.\"\n\nThe prosecutor, too, intervened, and again reminded the prisoner that he\nwas at liberty to refuse to answer questions, if he thought it to his\ninterest, and so on. But in view of the damage he might do himself by his\nsilence, especially in a case of such importance as--\n\n\"And so on, gentlemen, and so on. Enough! I've heard that rigmarole\nbefore,\" Mitya interrupted again. \"I can see for myself how important it\nis, and that this is the vital point, and still I won't say.\"\n\n\"What is it to us? It's not our business, but yours. You are doing\nyourself harm,\" observed Nikolay Parfenovitch nervously.\n\n\"You see, gentlemen, joking apart\"--Mitya lifted his eyes and looked firmly\nat them both--\"I had an inkling from the first that we should come to\nloggerheads at this point. But at first when I began to give my evidence,\nit was all still far away and misty; it was all floating, and I was so\nsimple that I began with the supposition of mutual confidence existing\nbetween us. Now I can see for myself that such confidence is out of the\nquestion, for in any case we were bound to come to this cursed stumbling-\nblock. And now we've come to it! It's impossible and there's an end of it!\nBut I don't blame you. You can't believe it all simply on my word. I\nunderstand that, of course.\"\n\nHe relapsed into gloomy silence.\n\n\"Couldn't you, without abandoning your resolution to be silent about the\nchief point, could you not, at the same time, give us some slight hint as\nto the nature of the motives which are strong enough to induce you to\nrefuse to answer, at a crisis so full of danger to you?\"\n\nMitya smiled mournfully, almost dreamily.\n\n\"I'm much more good-natured than you think, gentlemen. I'll tell you the\nreason why and give you that hint, though you don't deserve it. I won't\nspeak of that, gentlemen, because it would be a stain on my honor. The\nanswer to the question where I got the money would expose me to far\ngreater disgrace than the murder and robbing of my father, if I had\nmurdered and robbed him. That's why I can't tell you. I can't for fear of\ndisgrace. What, gentlemen, are you going to write that down?\"\n\n\"Yes, we'll write it down,\" lisped Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\"You ought not to write that down about 'disgrace.' I only told you that\nin the goodness of my heart. I needn't have told you. I made you a present\nof it, so to speak, and you pounce upon it at once. Oh, well, write--write\nwhat you like,\" he concluded, with scornful disgust. \"I'm not afraid of\nyou and I can still hold up my head before you.\"\n\n\"And can't you tell us the nature of that disgrace?\" Nikolay Parfenovitch\nhazarded.\n\nThe prosecutor frowned darkly.\n\n\"No, no, _c'est fini_, don't trouble yourselves. It's not worth while\nsoiling one's hands. I have soiled myself enough through you as it is.\nYou're not worth it--no one is ... Enough, gentlemen. I'm not going on.\"\n\nThis was said too peremptorily. Nikolay Parfenovitch did not insist\nfurther, but from Ippolit Kirillovitch's eyes he saw that he had not given\nup hope.\n\n\"Can you not, at least, tell us what sum you had in your hands when you\nwent into Mr. Perhotin's--how many roubles exactly?\"\n\n\"I can't tell you that.\"\n\n\"You spoke to Mr. Perhotin, I believe, of having received three thousand\nfrom Madame Hohlakov.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I did. Enough, gentlemen. I won't say how much I had.\"\n\n\"Will you be so good then as to tell us how you came here and what you\nhave done since you arrived?\"\n\n\"Oh! you might ask the people here about that. But I'll tell you if you\nlike.\"\n\nHe proceeded to do so, but we won't repeat his story. He told it dryly and\ncurtly. Of the raptures of his love he said nothing, but told them that he\nabandoned his determination to shoot himself, owing to \"new factors in the\ncase.\" He told the story without going into motives or details. And this\ntime the lawyers did not worry him much. It was obvious that there was no\nessential point of interest to them here.\n\n\"We shall verify all that. We will come back to it during the examination\nof the witnesses, which will, of course, take place in your presence,\"\nsaid Nikolay Parfenovitch in conclusion. \"And now allow me to request you\nto lay on the table everything in your possession, especially all the\nmoney you still have about you.\"\n\n\"My money, gentlemen? Certainly. I understand that that is necessary. I'm\nsurprised, indeed, that you haven't inquired about it before. It's true I\ncouldn't get away anywhere. I'm sitting here where I can be seen. But\nhere's my money--count it--take it. That's all, I think.\"\n\nHe turned it all out of his pockets; even the small change--two pieces of\ntwenty copecks--he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket. They counted the\nmoney, which amounted to eight hundred and thirty-six roubles, and forty\ncopecks.\n\n\"And is that all?\" asked the investigating lawyer.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You stated just now in your evidence that you spent three hundred roubles\nat Plotnikovs'. You gave Perhotin ten, your driver twenty, here you lost\ntwo hundred, then....\"\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch reckoned it all up. Mitya helped him readily. They\nrecollected every farthing and included it in the reckoning. Nikolay\nParfenovitch hurriedly added up the total.\n\n\"With this eight hundred you must have had about fifteen hundred at\nfirst?\"\n\n\"I suppose so,\" snapped Mitya.\n\n\"How is it they all assert there was much more?\"\n\n\"Let them assert it.\"\n\n\"But you asserted it yourself.\"\n\n\"Yes, I did, too.\"\n\n\"We will compare all this with the evidence of other persons not yet\nexamined. Don't be anxious about your money. It will be properly taken\ncare of and be at your disposal at the conclusion of ... what is beginning\n... if it appears, or, so to speak, is proved that you have undisputed\nright to it. Well, and now....\"\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch suddenly got up, and informed Mitya firmly that it\nwas his duty and obligation to conduct a minute and thorough search \"of\nyour clothes and everything else....\"\n\n\"By all means, gentlemen. I'll turn out all my pockets, if you like.\"\n\nAnd he did, in fact, begin turning out his pockets.\n\n\"It will be necessary to take off your clothes, too.\"\n\n\"What! Undress? Ugh! Damn it! Won't you search me as I am! Can't you?\"\n\n\"It's utterly impossible, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You must take off your\nclothes.\"\n\n\"As you like,\" Mitya submitted gloomily; \"only, please, not here, but\nbehind the curtains. Who will search them?\"\n\n\"Behind the curtains, of course.\"\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch bent his head in assent. His small face wore an\nexpression of peculiar solemnity.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. The Prosecutor Catches Mitya\n\n\nSomething utterly unexpected and amazing to Mitya followed. He could\nnever, even a minute before, have conceived that any one could behave like\nthat to him, Mitya Karamazov. What was worst of all, there was something\nhumiliating in it, and on their side something \"supercilious and\nscornful.\" It was nothing to take off his coat, but he was asked to\nundress further, or rather not asked but \"commanded,\" he quite understood\nthat. From pride and contempt he submitted without a word. Several\npeasants accompanied the lawyers and remained on the same side of the\ncurtain. \"To be ready if force is required,\" thought Mitya, \"and perhaps\nfor some other reason, too.\"\n\n\"Well, must I take off my shirt, too?\" he asked sharply, but Nikolay\nParfenovitch did not answer. He was busily engaged with the prosecutor in\nexamining the coat, the trousers, the waistcoat and the cap; and it was\nevident that they were both much interested in the scrutiny. \"They make no\nbones about it,\" thought Mitya, \"they don't keep up the most elementary\npoliteness.\"\n\n\"I ask you for the second time--need I take off my shirt or not?\" he said,\nstill more sharply and irritably.\n\n\"Don't trouble yourself. We will tell you what to do,\" Nikolay\nParfenovitch said, and his voice was positively peremptory, or so it\nseemed to Mitya.\n\nMeantime a consultation was going on in undertones between the lawyers.\nThere turned out to be on the coat, especially on the left side at the\nback, a huge patch of blood, dry, and still stiff. There were bloodstains\non the trousers, too. Nikolay Parfenovitch, moreover, in the presence of\nthe peasant witnesses, passed his fingers along the collar, the cuffs, and\nall the seams of the coat and trousers, obviously looking for\nsomething--money, of course. He didn't even hide from Mitya his suspicion\nthat he was capable of sewing money up in his clothes.\n\n\"He treats me not as an officer but as a thief,\" Mitya muttered to\nhimself. They communicated their ideas to one another with amazing\nfrankness. The secretary, for instance, who was also behind the curtain,\nfussing about and listening, called Nikolay Parfenovitch's attention to\nthe cap, which they were also fingering.\n\n\"You remember Gridyenko, the copying-clerk,\" observed the secretary. \"Last\nsummer he received the wages of the whole office, and pretended to have\nlost the money when he was drunk. And where was it found? Why, in just\nsuch pipings in his cap. The hundred-rouble notes were screwed up in\nlittle rolls and sewed in the piping.\"\n\nBoth the lawyers remembered Gridyenko's case perfectly, and so laid aside\nMitya's cap, and decided that all his clothes must be more thoroughly\nexamined later.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" cried Nikolay Parfenovitch, suddenly, noticing that the right\ncuff of Mitya's shirt was turned in, and covered with blood, \"excuse me,\nwhat's that, blood?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Mitya jerked out.\n\n\"That is, what blood? ... and why is the cuff turned in?\"\n\nMitya told him how he had got the sleeve stained with blood looking after\nGrigory, and had turned it inside when he was washing his hands at\nPerhotin's.\n\n\"You must take off your shirt, too. That's very important as material\nevidence.\"\n\nMitya flushed red and flew into a rage.\n\n\"What, am I to stay naked?\" he shouted.\n\n\"Don't disturb yourself. We will arrange something. And meanwhile take off\nyour socks.\"\n\n\"You're not joking? Is that really necessary?\" Mitya's eyes flashed.\n\n\"We are in no mood for joking,\" answered Nikolay Parfenovitch sternly.\n\n\"Well, if I must--\" muttered Mitya, and sitting down on the bed, he took\noff his socks. He felt unbearably awkward. All were clothed, while he was\nnaked, and strange to say, when he was undressed he felt somehow guilty in\ntheir presence, and was almost ready to believe himself that he was\ninferior to them, and that now they had a perfect right to despise him.\n\n\"When all are undressed, one is somehow not ashamed, but when one's the\nonly one undressed and everybody is looking, it's degrading,\" he kept\nrepeating to himself, again and again. \"It's like a dream, I've sometimes\ndreamed of being in such degrading positions.\" It was a misery to him to\ntake off his socks. They were very dirty, and so were his underclothes,\nand now every one could see it. And what was worse, he disliked his feet.\nAll his life he had thought both his big toes hideous. He particularly\nloathed the coarse, flat, crooked nail on the right one, and now they\nwould all see it. Feeling intolerably ashamed made him, at once and\nintentionally, rougher. He pulled off his shirt, himself.\n\n\"Would you like to look anywhere else if you're not ashamed to?\"\n\n\"No, there's no need to, at present.\"\n\n\"Well, am I to stay naked like this?\" he added savagely.\n\n\"Yes, that can't be helped for the time.... Kindly sit down here for a\nwhile. You can wrap yourself in a quilt from the bed, and I ... I'll see\nto all this.\"\n\nAll the things were shown to the witnesses. The report of the search was\ndrawn up, and at last Nikolay Parfenovitch went out, and the clothes were\ncarried out after him. Ippolit Kirillovitch went out, too. Mitya was left\nalone with the peasants, who stood in silence, never taking their eyes off\nhim. Mitya wrapped himself up in the quilt. He felt cold. His bare feet\nstuck out, and he couldn't pull the quilt over so as to cover them.\nNikolay Parfenovitch seemed to be gone a long time, \"an insufferable\ntime.\" \"He thinks of me as a puppy,\" thought Mitya, gnashing his teeth.\n\"That rotten prosecutor has gone, too, contemptuous no doubt, it disgusts\nhim to see me naked!\"\n\nMitya imagined, however, that his clothes would be examined and returned\nto him. But what was his indignation when Nikolay Parfenovitch came back\nwith quite different clothes, brought in behind him by a peasant.\n\n\"Here are clothes for you,\" he observed airily, seeming well satisfied\nwith the success of his mission. \"Mr. Kalganov has kindly provided these\nfor this unusual emergency, as well as a clean shirt. Luckily he had them\nall in his trunk. You can keep your own socks and underclothes.\"\n\nMitya flew into a passion.\n\n\"I won't have other people's clothes!\" he shouted menacingly, \"give me my\nown!\"\n\n\"It's impossible!\"\n\n\"Give me my own. Damn Kalganov and his clothes, too!\"\n\nIt was a long time before they could persuade him. But they succeeded\nsomehow in quieting him down. They impressed upon him that his clothes,\nbeing stained with blood, must be \"included with the other material\nevidence,\" and that they \"had not even the right to let him have them now\n... taking into consideration the possible outcome of the case.\" Mitya at\nlast understood this. He subsided into gloomy silence and hurriedly\ndressed himself. He merely observed, as he put them on, that the clothes\nwere much better than his old ones, and that he disliked \"gaining by the\nchange.\" The coat was, besides, \"ridiculously tight. Am I to be dressed up\nlike a fool ... for your amusement?\"\n\nThey urged upon him again that he was exaggerating, that Kalganov was only\na little taller, so that only the trousers might be a little too long. But\nthe coat turned out to be really tight in the shoulders.\n\n\"Damn it all! I can hardly button it,\" Mitya grumbled. \"Be so good as to\ntell Mr. Kalganov from me that I didn't ask for his clothes, and it's not\nmy doing that they've dressed me up like a clown.\"\n\n\"He understands that, and is sorry ... I mean, not sorry to lend you his\nclothes, but sorry about all this business,\" mumbled Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\"Confound his sorrow! Well, where now? Am I to go on sitting here?\"\n\nHe was asked to go back to the \"other room.\" Mitya went in, scowling with\nanger, and trying to avoid looking at any one. Dressed in another man's\nclothes he felt himself disgraced, even in the eyes of the peasants, and\nof Trifon Borissovitch, whose face appeared, for some reason, in the\ndoorway, and vanished immediately. \"He's come to look at me dressed up,\"\nthought Mitya. He sat down on the same chair as before. He had an absurd\nnightmarish feeling, as though he were out of his mind.\n\n\"Well, what now? Are you going to flog me? That's all that's left for\nyou,\" he said, clenching his teeth and addressing the prosecutor. He would\nnot turn to Nikolay Parfenovitch, as though he disdained to speak to him.\n\n\"He looked too closely at my socks, and turned them inside out on purpose\nto show every one how dirty they were--the scoundrel!\"\n\n\"Well, now we must proceed to the examination of witnesses,\" observed\nNikolay Parfenovitch, as though in reply to Mitya's question.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the prosecutor thoughtfully, as though reflecting on\nsomething.\n\n\"We've done what we could in your interest, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" Nikolay\nParfenovitch went on, \"but having received from you such an uncompromising\nrefusal to explain to us the source from which you obtained the money\nfound upon you, we are, at the present moment--\"\n\n\"What is the stone in your ring?\" Mitya interrupted suddenly, as though\nawakening from a reverie. He pointed to one of the three large rings\nadorning Nikolay Parfenovitch's right hand.\n\n\"Ring?\" repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch with surprise.\n\n\"Yes, that one ... on your middle finger, with the little veins in it,\nwhat stone is that?\" Mitya persisted, like a peevish child.\n\n\"That's a smoky topaz,\" said Nikolay Parfenovitch, smiling. \"Would you\nlike to look at it? I'll take it off ...\"\n\n\"No, don't take it off,\" cried Mitya furiously, suddenly waking up, and\nangry with himself. \"Don't take it off ... there's no need.... Damn it!...\nGentlemen, you've sullied my heart! Can you suppose that I would conceal\nit from you, if I had really killed my father, that I would shuffle, lie,\nand hide myself? No, that's not like Dmitri Karamazov, that he couldn't\ndo, and if I were guilty, I swear I shouldn't have waited for your coming,\nor for the sunrise as I meant at first, but should have killed myself\nbefore this, without waiting for the dawn! I know that about myself now. I\ncouldn't have learnt so much in twenty years as I've found out in this\naccursed night!... And should I have been like this on this night, and at\nthis moment, sitting with you, could I have talked like this, could I have\nmoved like this, could I have looked at you and at the world like this, if\nI had really been the murderer of my father, when the very thought of\nhaving accidentally killed Grigory gave me no peace all night--not from\nfear--oh, not simply from fear of your punishment! The disgrace of it! And\nyou expect me to be open with such scoffers as you, who see nothing and\nbelieve in nothing, blind moles and scoffers, and to tell you another\nnasty thing I've done, another disgrace, even if that would save me from\nyour accusation! No, better Siberia! The man who opened the door to my\nfather and went in at that door, he killed him, he robbed him. Who was he?\nI'm racking my brains and can't think who. But I can tell you it was not\nDmitri Karamazov, and that's all I can tell you, and that's enough,\nenough, leave me alone.... Exile me, punish me, but don't bother me any\nmore. I'll say no more. Call your witnesses!\"\n\nMitya uttered his sudden monologue as though he were determined to be\nabsolutely silent for the future. The prosecutor watched him the whole\ntime and only when he had ceased speaking, observed, as though it were the\nmost ordinary thing, with the most frigid and composed air:\n\n\"Oh, about the open door of which you spoke just now, we may as well\ninform you, by the way, now, of a very interesting piece of evidence of\nthe greatest importance both to you and to us, that has been given us by\nGrigory, the old man you wounded. On his recovery, he clearly and\nemphatically stated, in reply to our questions, that when, on coming out\nto the steps, and hearing a noise in the garden, he made up his mind to go\ninto it through the little gate which stood open, before he noticed you\nrunning, as you have told us already, in the dark from the open window\nwhere you saw your father, he, Grigory, glanced to the left, and, while\nnoticing the open window, observed at the same time, much nearer to him,\nthe door, standing wide open--that door which you have stated to have been\nshut the whole time you were in the garden. I will not conceal from you\nthat Grigory himself confidently affirms and bears witness that you must\nhave run from that door, though, of course, he did not see you do so with\nhis own eyes, since he only noticed you first some distance away in the\ngarden, running towards the fence.\"\n\nMitya had leapt up from his chair half-way through this speech.\n\n\"Nonsense!\" he yelled, in a sudden frenzy, \"it's a barefaced lie. He\ncouldn't have seen the door open because it was shut. He's lying!\"\n\n\"I consider it my duty to repeat that he is firm in his statement. He does\nnot waver. He adheres to it. We've cross-examined him several times.\"\n\n\"Precisely. I have cross-examined him several times,\" Nikolay Parfenovitch\nconfirmed warmly.\n\n\"It's false, false! It's either an attempt to slander me, or the\nhallucination of a madman,\" Mitya still shouted. \"He's simply raving, from\nloss of blood, from the wound. He must have fancied it when he came to....\nHe's raving.\"\n\n\"Yes, but he noticed the open door, not when he came to after his\ninjuries, but before that, as soon as he went into the garden from the\nlodge.\"\n\n\"But it's false, it's false! It can't be so! He's slandering me from\nspite.... He couldn't have seen it ... I didn't come from the door,\"\ngasped Mitya.\n\nThe prosecutor turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and said to him\nimpressively:\n\n\"Confront him with it.\"\n\n\"Do you recognize this object?\"\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch laid upon the table a large and thick official\nenvelope, on which three seals still remained intact. The envelope was\nempty, and slit open at one end. Mitya stared at it with open eyes.\n\n\"It ... it must be that envelope of my father's, the envelope that\ncontained the three thousand roubles ... and if there's inscribed on it,\nallow me, 'For my little chicken' ... yes--three thousand!\" he shouted, \"do\nyou see, three thousand, do you see?\"\n\n\"Of course, we see. But we didn't find the money in it. It was empty, and\nlying on the floor by the bed, behind the screen.\"\n\nFor some seconds Mitya stood as though thunderstruck.\n\n\"Gentlemen, it's Smerdyakov!\" he shouted suddenly, at the top of his\nvoice. \"It's he who's murdered him! He's robbed him! No one else knew\nwhere the old man hid the envelope. It's Smerdyakov, that's clear, now!\"\n\n\"But you, too, knew of the envelope and that it was under the pillow.\"\n\n\"I never knew it. I've never seen it. This is the first time I've looked\nat it. I'd only heard of it from Smerdyakov.... He was the only one who\nknew where the old man kept it hidden, I didn't know ...\" Mitya was\ncompletely breathless.\n\n\"But you told us yourself that the envelope was under your deceased\nfather's pillow. You especially stated that it was under the pillow, so\nyou must have known it.\"\n\n\"We've got it written down,\" confirmed Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\"Nonsense! It's absurd! I'd no idea it was under the pillow. And perhaps\nit wasn't under the pillow at all.... It was just a chance guess that it\nwas under the pillow. What does Smerdyakov say? Have you asked him where\nit was? What does Smerdyakov say? that's the chief point.... And I went\nout of my way to tell lies against myself.... I told you without thinking\nthat it was under the pillow, and now you-- Oh, you know how one says the\nwrong thing, without meaning it. No one knew but Smerdyakov, only\nSmerdyakov, and no one else.... He didn't even tell me where it was! But\nit's his doing, his doing; there's no doubt about it, he murdered him,\nthat's as clear as daylight now,\" Mitya exclaimed more and more\nfrantically, repeating himself incoherently, and growing more and more\nexasperated and excited. \"You must understand that, and arrest him at\nonce.... He must have killed him while I was running away and while\nGrigory was unconscious, that's clear now.... He gave the signal and\nfather opened to him ... for no one but he knew the signal, and without\nthe signal father would never have opened the door....\"\n\n\"But you're again forgetting the circumstance,\" the prosecutor observed,\nstill speaking with the same restraint, though with a note of triumph,\n\"that there was no need to give the signal if the door already stood open\nwhen you were there, while you were in the garden....\"\n\n\"The door, the door,\" muttered Mitya, and he stared speechless at the\nprosecutor. He sank back helpless in his chair. All were silent.\n\n\"Yes, the door!... It's a nightmare! God is against me!\" he exclaimed,\nstaring before him in complete stupefaction.\n\n\"Come, you see,\" the prosecutor went on with dignity, \"and you can judge\nfor yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. On the one hand we have the evidence of\nthe open door from which you ran out, a fact which overwhelms you and us.\nOn the other side your incomprehensible, persistent, and, so to speak,\nobdurate silence with regard to the source from which you obtained the\nmoney which was so suddenly seen in your hands, when only three hours\nearlier, on your own showing, you pledged your pistols for the sake of ten\nroubles! In view of all these facts, judge for yourself. What are we to\nbelieve, and what can we depend upon? And don't accuse us of being\n'frigid, cynical, scoffing people,' who are incapable of believing in the\ngenerous impulses of your heart.... Try to enter into our position ...\"\n\nMitya was indescribably agitated. He turned pale.\n\n\"Very well!\" he exclaimed suddenly. \"I will tell you my secret. I'll tell\nyou where I got the money!... I'll reveal my shame, that I may not have to\nblame myself or you hereafter.\"\n\n\"And believe me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" put in Nikolay Parfenovitch, in a\nvoice of almost pathetic delight, \"that every sincere and complete\nconfession on your part at this moment may, later on, have an immense\ninfluence in your favor, and may, indeed, moreover--\"\n\nBut the prosecutor gave him a slight shove under the table, and he checked\nhimself in time. Mitya, it is true, had not heard him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. Mitya's Great Secret. Received With Hisses\n\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" he began, still in the same agitation, \"I want to make a full\nconfession: that money was _my own_.\" The lawyers' faces lengthened. That\nwas not at all what they expected.\n\n\"How do you mean?\" faltered Nikolay Parfenovitch, \"when at five o'clock on\nthe same day, from your own confession--\"\n\n\"Damn five o'clock on the same day and my own confession! That's nothing\nto do with it now! That money was my own, my own, that is, stolen by me\n... not mine, I mean, but stolen by me, and it was fifteen hundred\nroubles, and I had it on me all the time, all the time ...\"\n\n\"But where did you get it?\"\n\n\"I took it off my neck, gentlemen, off this very neck ... it was here,\nround my neck, sewn up in a rag, and I'd had it round my neck a long time,\nit's a month since I put it round my neck ... to my shame and disgrace!\"\n\n\"And from whom did you ... appropriate it?\"\n\n\"You mean, 'steal it'? Speak out plainly now. Yes, I consider that I\npractically stole it, but, if you prefer, I 'appropriated it.' I consider\nI stole it. And last night I stole it finally.\"\n\n\"Last night? But you said that it's a month since you ... obtained it?...\"\n\n\"Yes. But not from my father. Not from my father, don't be uneasy. I\ndidn't steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell you without\ninterrupting. It's hard to do, you know. You see, a month ago, I was sent\nfor by Katerina Ivanovna, formerly my betrothed. Do you know her?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course.\"\n\n\"I know you know her. She's a noble creature, noblest of the noble. But\nshe has hated me ever so long, oh, ever so long ... and hated me with good\nreason, good reason!\"\n\n\"Katerina Ivanovna!\" Nikolay Parfenovitch exclaimed with wonder. The\nprosecutor, too, stared.\n\n\"Oh, don't take her name in vain! I'm a scoundrel to bring her into it.\nYes, I've seen that she hated me ... a long while.... From the very first,\neven that evening at my lodging ... but enough, enough. You're unworthy\neven to know of that. No need of that at all.... I need only tell you that\nshe sent for me a month ago, gave me three thousand roubles to send off to\nher sister and another relation in Moscow (as though she couldn't have\nsent it off herself!) and I ... it was just at that fatal moment in my\nlife when I ... well, in fact, when I'd just come to love another, her,\nshe's sitting down below now, Grushenka. I carried her off here to Mokroe\nthen, and wasted here in two days half that damned three thousand, but the\nother half I kept on me. Well, I've kept that other half, that fifteen\nhundred, like a locket round my neck, but yesterday I undid it, and spent\nit. What's left of it, eight hundred roubles, is in your hands now,\nNikolay Parfenovitch. That's the change out of the fifteen hundred I had\nyesterday.\"\n\n\"Excuse me. How's that? Why, when you were here a month ago you spent\nthree thousand, not fifteen hundred, everybody knows that.\"\n\n\"Who knows it? Who counted the money? Did I let any one count it?\"\n\n\"Why, you told every one yourself that you'd spent exactly three\nthousand.\"\n\n\"It's true, I did. I told the whole town so, and the whole town said so.\nAnd here, at Mokroe, too, every one reckoned it was three thousand. Yet I\ndidn't spend three thousand, but fifteen hundred. And the other fifteen\nhundred I sewed into a little bag. That's how it was, gentlemen. That's\nwhere I got that money yesterday....\"\n\n\"This is almost miraculous,\" murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.\n\n\"Allow me to inquire,\" observed the prosecutor at last, \"have you informed\nany one whatever of this circumstance before, I mean that you had fifteen\nhundred left about you a month ago?\"\n\n\"I told no one.\"\n\n\"That's strange. Do you mean absolutely no one?\"\n\n\"Absolutely no one. No one and nobody.\"\n\n\"What was your reason for this reticence? What was your motive for making\nsuch a secret of it? To be more precise: You have told us at last your\nsecret, in your words, so 'disgraceful,' though in reality--that is, of\ncourse, comparatively speaking--this action, that is, the appropriation of\nthree thousand roubles belonging to some one else, and, of course, only\nfor a time is, in my view at least, only an act of the greatest\nrecklessness and not so disgraceful, when one takes into consideration\nyour character.... Even admitting that it was an action in the highest\ndegree discreditable, still, discreditable is not 'disgraceful.'... Many\npeople have already guessed, during this last month, about the three\nthousand of Katerina Ivanovna's, that you have spent, and I heard the\nlegend myself, apart from your confession.... Mihail Makarovitch, for\ninstance, had heard it, too, so that indeed, it was scarcely a legend, but\nthe gossip of the whole town. There are indications, too, if I am not\nmistaken, that you confessed this yourself to some one, I mean that the\nmoney was Katerina Ivanovna's, and so, it's extremely surprising to me\nthat hitherto, that is, up to the present moment, you have made such an\nextraordinary secret of the fifteen hundred you say you put by, apparently\nconnecting a feeling of positive horror with that secret.... It's not easy\nto believe that it could cost you such distress to confess such a\nsecret.... You cried out, just now, that Siberia would be better than\nconfessing it ...\"\n\nThe prosecutor ceased speaking. He was provoked. He did not conceal his\nvexation, which was almost anger, and gave vent to all his accumulated\nspleen, disconnectedly and incoherently, without choosing words.\n\n\"It's not the fifteen hundred that's the disgrace, but that I put it apart\nfrom the rest of the three thousand,\" said Mitya firmly.\n\n\"Why?\" smiled the prosecutor irritably. \"What is there disgraceful, to\nyour thinking, in your having set aside half of the three thousand you had\ndiscreditably, if you prefer, 'disgracefully,' appropriated? Your taking\nthe three thousand is more important than what you did with it. And by the\nway, why did you do that--why did you set apart that half, for what\npurpose, for what object did you do it? Can you explain that to us?\"\n\n\"Oh, gentlemen, the purpose is the whole point!\" cried Mitya. \"I put it\naside because I was vile, that is, because I was calculating, and to be\ncalculating in such a case is vile ... and that vileness has been going on\na whole month.\"\n\n\"It's incomprehensible.\"\n\n\"I wonder at you. But I'll make it clearer. Perhaps it really is\nincomprehensible. You see, attend to what I say. I appropriate three\nthousand entrusted to my honor, I spend it on a spree, say I spend it all,\nand next morning I go to her and say, 'Katya, I've done wrong, I've\nsquandered your three thousand,' well, is that right? No, it's not\nright--it's dishonest and cowardly, I'm a beast, with no more self-control\nthan a beast, that's so, isn't it? But still I'm not a thief? Not a\ndownright thief, you'll admit! I squandered it, but I didn't steal it. Now\na second, rather more favorable alternative: follow me carefully, or I may\nget confused again--my head's going round--and so, for the second\nalternative: I spend here only fifteen hundred out of the three thousand,\nthat is, only half. Next day I go and take that half to her: 'Katya, take\nthis fifteen hundred from me, I'm a low beast, and an untrustworthy\nscoundrel, for I've wasted half the money, and I shall waste this, too, so\nkeep me from temptation!' Well, what of that alternative? I should be a\nbeast and a scoundrel, and whatever you like; but not a thief, not\naltogether a thief, or I should not have brought back what was left, but\nhave kept that, too. She would see at once that since I brought back half,\nI should pay back what I'd spent, that I should never give up trying to,\nthat I should work to get it and pay it back. So in that case I should be\na scoundrel, but not a thief, you may say what you like, not a thief!\"\n\n\"I admit that there is a certain distinction,\" said the prosecutor, with a\ncold smile. \"But it's strange that you see such a vital difference.\"\n\n\"Yes, I see a vital difference! Every man may be a scoundrel, and perhaps\nevery man is a scoundrel, but not every one can be a thief, it takes an\narch-scoundrel to be that. Oh, of course, I don't know how to make these\nfine distinctions ... but a thief is lower than a scoundrel, that's my\nconviction. Listen, I carry the money about me a whole month, I may make\nup my mind to give it back to-morrow, and I'm a scoundrel no longer, but I\ncannot make up my mind, you see, though I'm making up my mind every day,\nand every day spurring myself on to do it, and yet for a whole month I\ncan't bring myself to it, you see. Is that right to your thinking, is that\nright?\"\n\n\"Certainly, that's not right, that I can quite understand, and that I\ndon't dispute,\" answered the prosecutor with reserve. \"And let us give up\nall discussion of these subtleties and distinctions, and, if you will be\nso kind, get back to the point. And the point is, that you have still not\ntold us, altogether we've asked you, why, in the first place, you halved\nthe money, squandering one half and hiding the other? For what purpose\nexactly did you hide it, what did you mean to do with that fifteen\nhundred? I insist upon that question, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course!\" cried Mitya, striking himself on the forehead; \"forgive\nme, I'm worrying you, and am not explaining the chief point, or you'd\nunderstand in a minute, for it's just the motive of it that's the\ndisgrace! You see, it was all to do with the old man, my dead father. He\nwas always pestering Agrafena Alexandrovna, and I was jealous; I thought\nthen that she was hesitating between me and him. So I kept thinking every\nday, suppose she were to make up her mind all of a sudden, suppose she\nwere to leave off tormenting me, and were suddenly to say to me, 'I love\nyou, not him; take me to the other end of the world.' And I'd only forty\ncopecks; how could I take her away, what could I do? Why, I'd be lost. You\nsee, I didn't know her then, I didn't understand her, I thought she wanted\nmoney, and that she wouldn't forgive my poverty. And so I fiendishly\ncounted out the half of that three thousand, sewed it up, calculating on\nit, sewed it up before I was drunk, and after I had sewn it up, I went off\nto get drunk on the rest. Yes, that was base. Do you understand now?\"\n\nBoth the lawyers laughed aloud.\n\n\"I should have called it sensible and moral on your part not to have\nsquandered it all,\" chuckled Nikolay Parfenovitch, \"for after all what\ndoes it amount to?\"\n\n\"Why, that I stole it, that's what it amounts to! Oh, God, you horrify me\nby not understanding! Every day that I had that fifteen hundred sewn up\nround my neck, every day and every hour I said to myself, 'You're a thief!\nyou're a thief!' Yes, that's why I've been so savage all this month,\nthat's why I fought in the tavern, that's why I attacked my father, it was\nbecause I felt I was a thief. I couldn't make up my mind, I didn't dare\neven to tell Alyosha, my brother, about that fifteen hundred: I felt I was\nsuch a scoundrel and such a pickpocket. But, do you know, while I carried\nit I said to myself at the same time every hour: 'No, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\nyou may yet not be a thief.' Why? Because I might go next day and pay back\nthat fifteen hundred to Katya. And only yesterday I made up my mind to\ntear my amulet off my neck, on my way from Fenya's to Perhotin. I hadn't\nbeen able till that moment to bring myself to it. And it was only when I\ntore it off that I became a downright thief, a thief and a dishonest man\nfor the rest of my life. Why? Because, with that I destroyed, too, my\ndream of going to Katya and saying, 'I'm a scoundrel, but not a thief!' Do\nyou understand now? Do you understand?\"\n\n\"What was it made you decide to do it yesterday?\" Nikolay Parfenovitch\ninterrupted.\n\n\"Why? It's absurd to ask. Because I had condemned myself to die at five\no'clock this morning, here, at dawn. I thought it made no difference\nwhether I died a thief or a man of honor. But I see it's not so, it turns\nout that it does make a difference. Believe me, gentlemen, what has\ntortured me most during this night has not been the thought that I'd\nkilled the old servant, and that I was in danger of Siberia just when my\nlove was being rewarded, and Heaven was open to me again. Oh, that did\ntorture me, but not in the same way: not so much as the damned\nconsciousness that I had torn that damned money off my breast at last and\nspent it, and had become a downright thief! Oh, gentlemen, I tell you\nagain, with a bleeding heart, I have learnt a great deal this night. I\nhave learnt that it's not only impossible to live a scoundrel, but\nimpossible to die a scoundrel.... No, gentlemen, one must die honest....\"\n\nMitya was pale. His face had a haggard and exhausted look, in spite of his\nbeing intensely excited.\n\n\"I am beginning to understand you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" the prosecutor\nsaid slowly, in a soft and almost compassionate tone. \"But all this, if\nyou'll excuse my saying so, is a matter of nerves, in my opinion ... your\noverwrought nerves, that's what it is. And why, for instance, should you\nnot have saved yourself such misery for almost a month, by going and\nreturning that fifteen hundred to the lady who had entrusted it to you?\nAnd why could you not have explained things to her, and in view of your\nposition, which you describe as being so awful, why could you not have had\nrecourse to the plan which would so naturally have occurred to one's mind,\nthat is, after honorably confessing your errors to her, why could you not\nhave asked her to lend you the sum needed for your expenses, which, with\nher generous heart, she would certainly not have refused you in your\ndistress, especially if it had been with some guarantee, or even on the\nsecurity you offered to the merchant Samsonov, and to Madame Hohlakov? I\nsuppose you still regard that security as of value?\"\n\nMitya suddenly crimsoned.\n\n\"Surely you don't think me such an out and out scoundrel as that? You\ncan't be speaking in earnest?\" he said, with indignation, looking the\nprosecutor straight in the face, and seeming unable to believe his ears.\n\n\"I assure you I'm in earnest.... Why do you imagine I'm not serious?\" It\nwas the prosecutor's turn to be surprised.\n\n\"Oh, how base that would have been! Gentlemen, do you know, you are\ntorturing me! Let me tell you everything, so be it. I'll confess all my\ninfernal wickedness, but to put you to shame, and you'll be surprised\nyourselves at the depth of ignominy to which a medley of human passions\ncan sink. You must know that I already had that plan myself, that plan you\nspoke of, just now, prosecutor! Yes, gentlemen, I, too, have had that\nthought in my mind all this current month, so that I was on the point of\ndeciding to go to Katya--I was mean enough for that. But to go to her, to\ntell her of my treachery, and for that very treachery, to carry it out,\nfor the expenses of that treachery, to beg for money from her, Katya (to\nbeg, do you hear, to beg), and go straight from her to run away with the\nother, the rival, who hated and insulted her--to think of it! You must be\nmad, prosecutor!\"\n\n\"Mad I am not, but I did speak in haste, without thinking ... of that\nfeminine jealousy ... if there could be jealousy in this case, as you\nassert ... yes, perhaps there is something of the kind,\" said the\nprosecutor, smiling.\n\n\"But that would have been so infamous!\" Mitya brought his fist down on the\ntable fiercely. \"That would have been filthy beyond everything! Yes, do\nyou know that she might have given me that money, yes, and she would have\ngiven it, too; she'd have been certain to give it, to be revenged on me,\nshe'd have given it to satisfy her vengeance, to show her contempt for me,\nfor hers is an infernal nature, too, and she's a woman of great wrath. I'd\nhave taken the money, too, oh, I should have taken it; I should have taken\nit, and then, for the rest of my life ... oh, God! Forgive me, gentlemen,\nI'm making such an outcry because I've had that thought in my mind so\nlately, only the day before yesterday, that night when I was having all\nthat bother with Lyagavy, and afterwards yesterday, all day yesterday, I\nremember, till that happened ...\"\n\n\"Till what happened?\" put in Nikolay Parfenovitch inquisitively, but Mitya\ndid not hear it.\n\n\"I have made you an awful confession,\" Mitya said gloomily in conclusion.\n\"You must appreciate it, and what's more, you must respect it, for if not,\nif that leaves your souls untouched, then you've simply no respect for me,\ngentlemen, I tell you that, and I shall die of shame at having confessed\nit to men like you! Oh, I shall shoot myself! Yes, I see, I see already\nthat you don't believe me. What, you want to write that down, too?\" he\ncried in dismay.\n\n\"Yes, what you said just now,\" said Nikolay Parfenovitch, looking at him\nin surprise, \"that is, that up to the last hour you were still\ncontemplating going to Katerina Ivanovna to beg that sum from her.... I\nassure you, that's a very important piece of evidence for us, Dmitri\nFyodorovitch, I mean for the whole case ... and particularly for you,\nparticularly important for you.\"\n\n\"Have mercy, gentlemen!\" Mitya flung up his hands. \"Don't write that,\nanyway; have some shame. Here I've torn my heart asunder before you, and\nyou seize the opportunity and are fingering the wounds in both halves....\nOh, my God!\"\n\nIn despair he hid his face in his hands.\n\n\"Don't worry yourself so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" observed the prosecutor,\n\"everything that is written down will be read over to you afterwards, and\nwhat you don't agree to we'll alter as you like. But now I'll ask you one\nlittle question for the second time. Has no one, absolutely no one, heard\nfrom you of that money you sewed up? That, I must tell you, is almost\nimpossible to believe.\"\n\n\"No one, no one, I told you so before, or you've not understood anything!\nLet me alone!\"\n\n\"Very well, this matter is bound to be explained, and there's plenty of\ntime for it, but meantime, consider; we have perhaps a dozen witnesses\nthat you yourself spread it abroad, and even shouted almost everywhere\nabout the three thousand you'd spent here; three thousand, not fifteen\nhundred. And now, too, when you got hold of the money you had yesterday,\nyou gave many people to understand that you had brought three thousand\nwith you.\"\n\n\"You've got not dozens, but hundreds of witnesses, two hundred witnesses,\ntwo hundred have heard it, thousands have heard it!\" cried Mitya.\n\n\"Well, you see, all bear witness to it. And the word _all_ means\nsomething.\"\n\n\"It means nothing. I talked rot, and every one began repeating it.\"\n\n\"But what need had you to 'talk rot,' as you call it?\"\n\n\"The devil knows. From bravado perhaps ... at having wasted so much\nmoney.... To try and forget that money I had sewn up, perhaps ... yes,\nthat was why ... damn it ... how often will you ask me that question?\nWell, I told a fib, and that was the end of it, once I'd said it, I didn't\ncare to correct it. What does a man tell lies for sometimes?\"\n\n\"That's very difficult to decide, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, what makes a man\ntell lies,\" observed the prosecutor impressively. \"Tell me, though, was\nthat 'amulet,' as you call it, on your neck, a big thing?\"\n\n\"No, not big.\"\n\n\"How big, for instance?\"\n\n\"If you fold a hundred-rouble note in half, that would be the size.\"\n\n\"You'd better show us the remains of it. You must have them somewhere.\"\n\n\"Damnation, what nonsense! I don't know where they are.\"\n\n\"But excuse me: where and when did you take it off your neck? According to\nyour own evidence you didn't go home.\"\n\n\"When I was going from Fenya's to Perhotin's, on the way I tore it off my\nneck and took out the money.\"\n\n\"In the dark?\"\n\n\"What should I want a light for? I did it with my fingers in one minute.\"\n\n\"Without scissors, in the street?\"\n\n\"In the market-place I think it was. Why scissors? It was an old rag. It\nwas torn in a minute.\"\n\n\"Where did you put it afterwards?\"\n\n\"I dropped it there.\"\n\n\"Where was it, exactly?\"\n\n\"In the market-place, in the market-place! The devil knows whereabouts.\nWhat do you want to know for?\"\n\n\"That's extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. It would be material\nevidence in your favor. How is it you don't understand that? Who helped\nyou to sew it up a month ago?\"\n\n\"No one helped me. I did it myself.\"\n\n\"Can you sew?\"\n\n\"A soldier has to know how to sew. No knowledge was needed to do that.\"\n\n\"Where did you get the material, that is, the rag in which you sewed the\nmoney?\"\n\n\"Are you laughing at me?\"\n\n\"Not at all. And we are in no mood for laughing, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"I don't know where I got the rag from--somewhere, I suppose.\"\n\n\"I should have thought you couldn't have forgotten it?\"\n\n\"Upon my word, I don't remember. I might have torn a bit off my linen.\"\n\n\"That's very interesting. We might find in your lodgings to-morrow the\nshirt or whatever it is from which you tore the rag. What sort of rag was\nit, cloth or linen?\"\n\n\"Goodness only knows what it was. Wait a bit.... I believe I didn't tear\nit off anything. It was a bit of calico.... I believe I sewed it up in a\ncap of my landlady's.\"\n\n\"In your landlady's cap?\"\n\n\"Yes. I took it from her.\"\n\n\"How did you get it?\"\n\n\"You see, I remember once taking a cap for a rag, perhaps to wipe my pen\non. I took it without asking, because it was a worthless rag. I tore it\nup, and I took the notes and sewed them up in it. I believe it was in that\nvery rag I sewed them. An old piece of calico, washed a thousand times.\"\n\n\"And you remember that for certain now?\"\n\n\"I don't know whether for certain. I think it was in the cap. But, hang\nit, what does it matter?\"\n\n\"In that case your landlady will remember that the thing was lost?\"\n\n\"No, she won't, she didn't miss it. It was an old rag, I tell you, an old\nrag not worth a farthing.\"\n\n\"And where did you get the needle and thread?\"\n\n\"I'll stop now. I won't say any more. Enough of it!\" said Mitya, losing\nhis temper at last.\n\n\"It's strange that you should have so completely forgotten where you threw\nthe pieces in the market-place.\"\n\n\"Give orders for the market-place to be swept to-morrow, and perhaps\nyou'll find it,\" said Mitya, sneering. \"Enough, gentlemen, enough!\" he\ndecided, in an exhausted voice. \"I see you don't believe me! Not for a\nmoment! It's my fault, not yours. I ought not to have been so ready. Why,\nwhy did I degrade myself by confessing my secret to you? It's a joke to\nyou. I see that from your eyes. You led me on to it, prosecutor? Sing a\nhymn of triumph if you can.... Damn you, you torturers!\"\n\nHe bent his head, and hid his face in his hands. The lawyers were silent.\nA minute later he raised his head and looked at them almost vacantly. His\nface now expressed complete, hopeless despair, and he sat mute and passive\nas though hardly conscious of what was happening. In the meantime they had\nto finish what they were about. They had immediately to begin examining\nthe witnesses. It was by now eight o'clock in the morning. The lights had\nbeen extinguished long ago. Mihail Makarovitch and Kalganov, who had been\ncontinually in and out of the room all the while the interrogation had\nbeen going on, had now both gone out again. The lawyers, too, looked very\ntired. It was a wretched morning, the whole sky was overcast, and the rain\nstreamed down in bucketfuls. Mitya gazed blankly out of the window.\n\n\"May I look out of the window?\" he asked Nikolay Parfenovitch, suddenly.\n\n\"Oh, as much as you like,\" the latter replied.\n\nMitya got up and went to the window.... The rain lashed against its little\ngreenish panes. He could see the muddy road just below the house, and\nfarther away, in the rain and mist, a row of poor, black, dismal huts,\nlooking even blacker and poorer in the rain. Mitya thought of \"Phoebus the\ngolden-haired,\" and how he had meant to shoot himself at his first ray.\n\"Perhaps it would be even better on a morning like this,\" he thought with\na smile, and suddenly, flinging his hand downwards, he turned to his\n\"torturers.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" he cried, \"I see that I am lost! But she? Tell me about her,\nI beseech you. Surely she need not be ruined with me? She's innocent, you\nknow, she was out of her mind when she cried last night 'It's all my\nfault!' She's done nothing, nothing! I've been grieving over her all night\nas I sat with you.... Can't you, won't you tell me what you are going to\ndo with her now?\"\n\n\"You can set your mind quite at rest on that score, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\"\nthe prosecutor answered at once, with evident alacrity. \"We have, so far,\nno grounds for interfering with the lady in whom you are so interested. I\ntrust that it may be the same in the later development of the case.... On\nthe contrary, we'll do everything that lies in our power in that matter.\nSet your mind completely at rest.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen, I thank you. I knew that you were honest, straight-forward\npeople in spite of everything. You've taken a load off my heart.... Well,\nwhat are we to do now? I'm ready.\"\n\n\"Well, we ought to make haste. We must pass to examining the witnesses\nwithout delay. That must be done in your presence and therefore--\"\n\n\"Shouldn't we have some tea first?\" interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch, \"I\nthink we've deserved it!\"\n\nThey decided that if tea were ready downstairs (Mihail Makarovitch had, no\ndoubt, gone down to get some) they would have a glass and then \"go on and\non,\" putting off their proper breakfast until a more favorable\nopportunity. Tea really was ready below, and was soon brought up. Mitya at\nfirst refused the glass that Nikolay Parfenovitch politely offered him,\nbut afterwards he asked for it himself and drank it greedily. He looked\nsurprisingly exhausted. It might have been supposed from his Herculean\nstrength that one night of carousing, even accompanied by the most violent\nemotions, could have had little effect on him. But he felt that he could\nhardly hold his head up, and from time to time all the objects about him\nseemed heaving and dancing before his eyes. \"A little more and I shall\nbegin raving,\" he said to himself.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VIII. The Evidence Of The Witnesses. The Babe\n\n\nThe examination of the witnesses began. But we will not continue our story\nin such detail as before. And so we will not dwell on how Nikolay\nParfenovitch impressed on every witness called that he must give his\nevidence in accordance with truth and conscience, and that he would\nafterwards have to repeat his evidence on oath, how every witness was\ncalled upon to sign the protocol of his evidence, and so on. We will only\nnote that the point principally insisted upon in the examination was the\nquestion of the three thousand roubles, that is, was the sum spent here,\nat Mokroe, by Mitya on the first occasion, a month before, three thousand\nor fifteen hundred? And again had he spent three thousand or fifteen\nhundred yesterday? Alas, all the evidence given by every one turned out to\nbe against Mitya. There was not one in his favor, and some witnesses\nintroduced new, almost crushing facts, in contradiction of his, Mitya's,\nstory.\n\nThe first witness examined was Trifon Borissovitch. He was not in the\nleast abashed as he stood before the lawyers. He had, on the contrary, an\nair of stern and severe indignation with the accused, which gave him an\nappearance of truthfulness and personal dignity. He spoke little, and with\nreserve, waited to be questioned, answered precisely and deliberately.\nFirmly and unhesitatingly he bore witness that the sum spent a month\nbefore could not have been less than three thousand, that all the peasants\nabout here would testify that they had heard the sum of three thousand\nmentioned by Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself. \"What a lot of money he flung\naway on the gypsy girls alone! He wasted a thousand, I daresay, on them\nalone.\"\n\n\"I don't believe I gave them five hundred,\" was Mitya's gloomy comment on\nthis. \"It's a pity I didn't count the money at the time, but I was\ndrunk....\"\n\nMitya was sitting sideways with his back to the curtains. He listened\ngloomily, with a melancholy and exhausted air, as though he would say:\n\n\"Oh, say what you like. It makes no difference now.\"\n\n\"More than a thousand went on them, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,\" retorted Trifon\nBorissovitch firmly. \"You flung it about at random and they picked it up.\nThey were a rascally, thievish lot, horse-stealers, they've been driven\naway from here, or maybe they'd bear witness themselves how much they got\nfrom you. I saw the sum in your hands, myself--count it I didn't, you\ndidn't let me, that's true enough--but by the look of it I should say it\nwas far more than fifteen hundred ... fifteen hundred, indeed! We've seen\nmoney too. We can judge of amounts....\"\n\nAs for the sum spent yesterday he asserted that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had\ntold him, as soon as he arrived, that he had brought three thousand with\nhim.\n\n\"Come now, is that so, Trifon Borissovitch?\" replied Mitya. \"Surely I\ndidn't declare so positively that I'd brought three thousand?\"\n\n\"You did say so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You said it before Andrey. Andrey\nhimself is still here. Send for him. And in the hall, when you were\ntreating the chorus, you shouted straight out that you would leave your\nsixth thousand here--that is with what you spent before, we must\nunderstand. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov, too,\nwas standing beside you at the time. Maybe he'd remember it....\"\n\nThe evidence as to the \"sixth\" thousand made an extraordinary impression\non the two lawyers. They were delighted with this new mode of reckoning;\nthree and three made six, three thousand then and three now made six, that\nwas clear.\n\nThey questioned all the peasants suggested by Trifon Borissovitch, Stepan\nand Semyon, the driver Andrey, and Kalganov. The peasants and the driver\nunhesitatingly confirmed Trifon Borissovitch's evidence. They noted down,\nwith particular care, Andrey's account of the conversation he had had with\nMitya on the road: \" 'Where,' says he, 'am I, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, going,\nto heaven or to hell, and shall I be forgiven in the next world or not?' \"\n\nThe psychological Ippolit Kirillovitch heard this with a subtle smile, and\nended by recommending that these remarks as to where Dmitri Fyodorovitch\nwould go should be \"included in the case.\"\n\nKalganov, when called, came in reluctantly, frowning and ill-humored, and\nhe spoke to the lawyers as though he had never met them before in his\nlife, though they were acquaintances whom he had been meeting every day\nfor a long time past. He began by saying that \"he knew nothing about it\nand didn't want to.\" But it appeared that he had heard of the \"sixth\"\nthousand, and he admitted that he had been standing close by at the\nmoment. As far as he could see he \"didn't know\" how much money Mitya had\nin his hands. He affirmed that the Poles had cheated at cards. In reply to\nreiterated questions he stated that, after the Poles had been turned out,\nMitya's position with Agrafena Alexandrovna had certainly improved, and\nthat she had said that she loved him. He spoke of Agrafena Alexandrovna\nwith reserve and respect, as though she had been a lady of the best\nsociety, and did not once allow himself to call her Grushenka. In spite of\nthe young man's obvious repugnance at giving evidence, Ippolit\nKirillovitch examined him at great length, and only from him learnt all\nthe details of what made up Mitya's \"romance,\" so to say, on that night.\nMitya did not once pull Kalganov up. At last they let the young man go,\nand he left the room with unconcealed indignation.\n\nThe Poles, too, were examined. Though they had gone to bed in their room,\nthey had not slept all night, and on the arrival of the police officers\nthey hastily dressed and got ready, realizing that they would certainly be\nsent for. They gave their evidence with dignity, though not without some\nuneasiness. The little Pole turned out to be a retired official of the\ntwelfth class, who had served in Siberia as a veterinary surgeon. His name\nwas Mussyalovitch. Pan Vrublevsky turned out to be an uncertificated\ndentist. Although Nikolay Parfenovitch asked them questions on entering\nthe room they both addressed their answers to Mihail Makarovitch, who was\nstanding on one side, taking him in their ignorance for the most important\nperson and in command, and addressed him at every word as \"Pan Colonel.\"\nOnly after several reproofs from Mihail Makarovitch himself, they grasped\nthat they had to address their answers to Nikolay Parfenovitch only. It\nturned out that they could speak Russian quite correctly except for their\naccent in some words. Of his relations with Grushenka, past and present,\nPan Mussyalovitch spoke proudly and warmly, so that Mitya was roused at\nonce and declared that he would not allow the \"scoundrel\" to speak like\nthat in his presence! Pan Mussyalovitch at once called attention to the\nword \"scoundrel\" and begged that it should be put down in the protocol.\nMitya fumed with rage.\n\n\"He's a scoundrel! A scoundrel! You can put that down. And put down, too,\nthat, in spite of the protocol I still declare that he's a scoundrel!\" he\ncried.\n\nThough Nikolay Parfenovitch did insert this in the protocol, he showed the\nmost praiseworthy tact and management. After sternly reprimanding Mitya,\nhe cut short all further inquiry into the romantic aspect of the case, and\nhastened to pass to what was essential. One piece of evidence given by the\nPoles roused special interest in the lawyers: that was how, in that very\nroom, Mitya had tried to buy off Pan Mussyalovitch, and had offered him\nthree thousand roubles to resign his claims, seven hundred roubles down,\nand the remaining two thousand three hundred \"to be paid next day in the\ntown.\" He had sworn at the time that he had not the whole sum with him at\nMokroe, but that his money was in the town. Mitya observed hotly that he\nhad not said that he would be sure to pay him the remainder next day in\nthe town. But Pan Vrublevsky confirmed the statement, and Mitya, after\nthinking for a moment admitted, frowning, that it must have been as the\nPoles stated, that he had been excited at the time, and might indeed have\nsaid so.\n\nThe prosecutor positively pounced on this piece of evidence. It seemed to\nestablish for the prosecution (and they did, in fact, base this deduction\non it) that half, or a part of, the three thousand that had come into\nMitya's hands might really have been left somewhere hidden in the town, or\neven, perhaps, somewhere here, in Mokroe. This would explain the\ncircumstance, so baffling for the prosecution, that only eight hundred\nroubles were to be found in Mitya's hands. This circumstance had been the\none piece of evidence which, insignificant as it was, had hitherto told,\nto some extent, in Mitya's favor. Now this one piece of evidence in his\nfavor had broken down. In answer to the prosecutor's inquiry, where he\nwould have got the remaining two thousand three hundred roubles, since he\nhimself had denied having more than fifteen hundred, Mitya confidently\nreplied that he had meant to offer the \"little chap,\" not money, but a\nformal deed of conveyance of his rights to the village of Tchermashnya,\nthose rights which he had already offered to Samsonov and Madame Hohlakov.\nThe prosecutor positively smiled at the \"innocence of this subterfuge.\"\n\n\"And you imagine he would have accepted such a deed as a substitute for\ntwo thousand three hundred roubles in cash?\"\n\n\"He certainly would have accepted it,\" Mitya declared warmly. \"Why, look\nhere, he might have grabbed not two thousand, but four or six, for it. He\nwould have put his lawyers, Poles and Jews, on to the job, and might have\ngot, not three thousand, but the whole property out of the old man.\"\n\nThe evidence of Pan Mussyalovitch was, of course, entered in the protocol\nin the fullest detail. Then they let the Poles go. The incident of the\ncheating at cards was hardly touched upon. Nikolay Parfenovitch was too\nwell pleased with them, as it was, and did not want to worry them with\ntrifles, moreover, it was nothing but a foolish, drunken quarrel over\ncards. There had been drinking and disorder enough, that night.... So the\ntwo hundred roubles remained in the pockets of the Poles.\n\nThen old Maximov was summoned. He came in timidly, approached with little\nsteps, looking very disheveled and depressed. He had, all this time, taken\nrefuge below with Grushenka, sitting dumbly beside her, and \"now and then\nhe'd begin blubbering over her and wiping his eyes with a blue check\nhandkerchief,\" as Mihail Makarovitch described afterwards. So that she\nherself began trying to pacify and comfort him. The old man at once\nconfessed that he had done wrong, that he had borrowed \"ten roubles in my\npoverty,\" from Dmitri Fyodorovitch, and that he was ready to pay it back.\nTo Nikolay Parfenovitch's direct question, had he noticed how much money\nDmitri Fyodorovitch held in his hand, as he must have been able to see the\nsum better than any one when he took the note from him, Maximov, in the\nmost positive manner, declared that there was twenty thousand.\n\n\"Have you ever seen so much as twenty thousand before, then?\" inquired\nNikolay Parfenovitch, with a smile.\n\n\"To be sure I have, not twenty, but seven, when my wife mortgaged my\nlittle property. She'd only let me look at it from a distance, boasting of\nit to me. It was a very thick bundle, all rainbow-colored notes. And\nDmitri Fyodorovitch's were all rainbow-colored....\"\n\nHe was not kept long. At last it was Grushenka's turn. Nikolay\nParfenovitch was obviously apprehensive of the effect her appearance might\nhave on Mitya, and he muttered a few words of admonition to him, but Mitya\nbowed his head in silence, giving him to understand \"that he would not\nmake a scene.\" Mihail Makarovitch himself led Grushenka in. She entered\nwith a stern and gloomy face, that looked almost composed and sat down\nquietly on the chair offered her by Nikolay Parfenovitch. She was very\npale, she seemed to be cold, and wrapped herself closely in her\nmagnificent black shawl. She was suffering from a slight feverish\nchill--the first symptom of the long illness which followed that night. Her\ngrave air, her direct earnest look and quiet manner made a very favorable\nimpression on every one. Nikolay Parfenovitch was even a little bit\n\"fascinated.\" He admitted himself, when talking about it afterwards, that\nonly then had he seen \"how handsome the woman was,\" for, though he had\nseen her several times before, he had always looked upon her as something\nof a \"provincial hetaira.\" \"She has the manners of the best society,\" he\nsaid enthusiastically, gossiping about her in a circle of ladies. But this\nwas received with positive indignation by the ladies, who immediately\ncalled him a \"naughty man,\" to his great satisfaction.\n\nAs she entered the room, Grushenka only glanced for an instant at Mitya,\nwho looked at her uneasily. But her face reassured him at once. After the\nfirst inevitable inquiries and warnings, Nikolay Parfenovitch asked her,\nhesitating a little, but preserving the most courteous manner, on what\nterms she was with the retired lieutenant, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov.\nTo this Grushenka firmly and quietly replied:\n\n\"He was an acquaintance. He came to see me as an acquaintance during the\nlast month.\" To further inquisitive questions she answered plainly and\nwith complete frankness, that, though \"at times\" she had thought him\nattractive, she had not loved him, but had won his heart as well as his\nold father's \"in my nasty spite,\" that she had seen that Mitya was very\njealous of Fyodor Pavlovitch and every one else; but that had only amused\nher. She had never meant to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch, she had simply been\nlaughing at him. \"I had no thoughts for either of them all this last\nmonth. I was expecting another man who had wronged me. But I think,\" she\nsaid in conclusion, \"that there's no need for you to inquire about that,\nnor for me to answer you, for that's my own affair.\"\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch immediately acted upon this hint. He again dismissed\nthe \"romantic\" aspect of the case and passed to the serious one, that is,\nto the question of most importance, concerning the three thousand roubles.\nGrushenka confirmed the statement that three thousand roubles had\ncertainly been spent on the first carousal at Mokroe, and, though she had\nnot counted the money herself, she had heard that it was three thousand\nfrom Dmitri Fyodorovitch's own lips.\n\n\"Did he tell you that alone, or before some one else, or did you only hear\nhim speak of it to others in your presence?\" the prosecutor inquired\nimmediately.\n\nTo which Grushenka replied that she had heard him say so before other\npeople, and had heard him say so when they were alone.\n\n\"Did he say it to you alone once, or several times?\" inquired the\nprosecutor, and learned that he had told Grushenka so several times.\n\nIppolit Kirillovitch was very well satisfied with this piece of evidence.\nFurther examination elicited that Grushenka knew, too, where that money\nhad come from, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had got it from Katerina\nIvanovna.\n\n\"And did you never, once, hear that the money spent a month ago was not\nthree thousand, but less, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had saved half that\nsum for his own use?\"\n\n\"No, I never heard that,\" answered Grushenka.\n\nIt was explained further that Mitya had, on the contrary, often told her\nthat he hadn't a farthing.\n\n\"He was always expecting to get some from his father,\" said Grushenka in\nconclusion.\n\n\"Did he never say before you ... casually, or in a moment of irritation,\"\nNikolay Parfenovitch put in suddenly, \"that he intended to make an attempt\non his father's life?\"\n\n\"Ach, he did say so,\" sighed Grushenka.\n\n\"Once or several times?\"\n\n\"He mentioned it several times, always in anger.\"\n\n\"And did you believe he would do it?\"\n\n\"No, I never believed it,\" she answered firmly. \"I had faith in his noble\nheart.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen, allow me,\" cried Mitya suddenly, \"allow me to say one word to\nAgrafena Alexandrovna, in your presence.\"\n\n\"You can speak,\" Nikolay Parfenovitch assented.\n\n\"Agrafena Alexandrovna!\" Mitya got up from his chair, \"have faith in God\nand in me. I am not guilty of my father's murder!\"\n\nHaving uttered these words Mitya sat down again on his chair. Grushenka\nstood up and crossed herself devoutly before the ikon. \"Thanks be to Thee,\nO Lord,\" she said, in a voice thrilled with emotion, and still standing,\nshe turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and added:\n\n\"As he has spoken now, believe it! I know him. He'll say anything as a\njoke or from obstinacy, but he'll never deceive you against his\nconscience. He's telling the whole truth, you may believe it.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Agrafena Alexandrovna, you've given me fresh courage,\" Mitya\nresponded in a quivering voice.\n\nAs to the money spent the previous day, she declared that she did not know\nwhat sum it was, but had heard him tell several people that he had three\nthousand with him. And to the question where he got the money, she said\nthat he had told her that he had \"stolen\" it from Katerina Ivanovna, and\nthat she had replied to that that he hadn't stolen it, and that he must\npay the money back next day. On the prosecutor's asking her emphatically\nwhether the money he said he had stolen from Katerina Ivanovna was what he\nhad spent yesterday, or what he had squandered here a month ago, she\ndeclared that he meant the money spent a month ago, and that that was how\nshe understood him.\n\nGrushenka was at last released, and Nikolay Parfenovitch informed her\nimpulsively that she might at once return to the town and that if he could\nbe of any assistance to her, with horses for example, or if she would care\nfor an escort, he ... would be--\n\n\"I thank you sincerely,\" said Grushenka, bowing to him, \"I'm going with\nthis old gentleman, I am driving him back to town with me, and meanwhile,\nif you'll allow me, I'll wait below to hear what you decide about Dmitri\nFyodorovitch.\"\n\nShe went out. Mitya was calm, and even looked more cheerful, but only for\na moment. He felt more and more oppressed by a strange physical weakness.\nHis eyes were closing with fatigue. The examination of the witnesses was,\nat last, over. They proceeded to a final revision of the protocol. Mitya\ngot up, moved from his chair to the corner by the curtain, lay down on a\nlarge chest covered with a rug, and instantly fell asleep.\n\nHe had a strange dream, utterly out of keeping with the place and the\ntime.\n\nHe was driving somewhere in the steppes, where he had been stationed long\nago, and a peasant was driving him in a cart with a pair of horses,\nthrough snow and sleet. He was cold, it was early in November, and the\nsnow was falling in big wet flakes, melting as soon as it touched the\nearth. And the peasant drove him smartly, he had a fair, long beard. He\nwas not an old man, somewhere about fifty, and he had on a gray peasant's\nsmock. Not far off was a village, he could see the black huts, and half\nthe huts were burnt down, there were only the charred beams sticking up.\nAnd as they drove in, there were peasant women drawn up along the road, a\nlot of women, a whole row, all thin and wan, with their faces a sort of\nbrownish color, especially one at the edge, a tall, bony woman, who looked\nforty, but might have been only twenty, with a long thin face. And in her\narms was a little baby crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that\nthere was not a drop of milk in them. And the child cried and cried, and\nheld out its little bare arms, with its little fists blue from cold.\n\n\"Why are they crying? Why are they crying?\" Mitya asked, as they dashed\ngayly by.\n\n\"It's the babe,\" answered the driver, \"the babe weeping.\"\n\nAnd Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, \"the babe,\" and he\nliked the peasant's calling it a \"babe.\" There seemed more pity in it.\n\n\"But why is it weeping?\" Mitya persisted stupidly, \"why are its little\narms bare? Why don't they wrap it up?\"\n\n\"The babe's cold, its little clothes are frozen and don't warm it.\"\n\n\"But why is it? Why?\" foolish Mitya still persisted.\n\n\"Why, they're poor people, burnt out. They've no bread. They're begging\nbecause they've been burnt out.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" Mitya, as it were, still did not understand. \"Tell me why it is\nthose poor mothers stand there? Why are people poor? Why is the babe poor?\nWhy is the steppe barren? Why don't they hug each other and kiss? Why\ndon't they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why\ndon't they feed the babe?\"\n\nAnd he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless,\nyet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it just in that way. And\nhe felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before, was\nrising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something\nfor them all, so that the babe should weep no more, so that the dark-\nfaced, dried-up mother should not weep, that no one should shed tears\nagain from that moment, and he wanted to do it at once, at once,\nregardless of all obstacles, with all the recklessness of the Karamazovs.\n\n\"And I'm coming with you. I won't leave you now for the rest of my life,\nI'm coming with you,\" he heard close beside him Grushenka's tender voice,\nthrilling with emotion. And his heart glowed, and he struggled forward\ntowards the light, and he longed to live, to live, to go on and on,\ntowards the new, beckoning light, and to hasten, hasten, now, at once!\n\n\"What! Where?\" he exclaimed opening his eyes, and sitting up on the chest,\nas though he had revived from a swoon, smiling brightly. Nikolay\nParfenovitch was standing over him, suggesting that he should hear the\nprotocol read aloud and sign it. Mitya guessed that he had been asleep an\nhour or more, but he did not hear Nikolay Parfenovitch. He was suddenly\nstruck by the fact that there was a pillow under his head, which hadn't\nbeen there when he had leant back, exhausted, on the chest.\n\n\"Who put that pillow under my head? Who was so kind?\" he cried, with a\nsort of ecstatic gratitude, and tears in his voice, as though some great\nkindness had been shown him.\n\nHe never found out who this kind man was; perhaps one of the peasant\nwitnesses, or Nikolay Parfenovitch's little secretary, had compassionately\nthought to put a pillow under his head; but his whole soul was quivering\nwith tears. He went to the table and said that he would sign whatever they\nliked.\n\n\"I've had a good dream, gentlemen,\" he said in a strange voice, with a new\nlight, as of joy, in his face.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IX. They Carry Mitya Away\n\n\nWhen the protocol had been signed, Nikolay Parfenovitch turned solemnly to\nthe prisoner and read him the \"Committal,\" setting forth, that in such a\nyear, on such a day, in such a place, the investigating lawyer of such-\nand-such a district court, having examined so-and-so (to wit, Mitya)\naccused of this and of that (all the charges were carefully written out)\nand having considered that the accused, not pleading guilty to the charges\nmade against him, had brought forward nothing in his defense, while the\nwitnesses, so-and-so, and so-and-so, and the circumstances such-and-such\ntestify against him, acting in accordance with such-and-such articles of\nthe Statute Book, and so on, has ruled, that, in order to preclude so-and-\nso (Mitya) from all means of evading pursuit and judgment he be detained\nin such-and-such a prison, which he hereby notifies to the accused and\ncommunicates a copy of this same \"Committal\" to the deputy prosecutor, and\nso on, and so on.\n\nIn brief, Mitya was informed that he was, from that moment, a prisoner,\nand that he would be driven at once to the town, and there shut up in a\nvery unpleasant place. Mitya listened attentively, and only shrugged his\nshoulders.\n\n\"Well, gentlemen, I don't blame you. I'm ready.... I understand that\nthere's nothing else for you to do.\"\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch informed him gently that he would be escorted at once\nby the rural police officer, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, who happened to be on\nthe spot....\n\n\"Stay,\" Mitya interrupted, suddenly, and impelled by uncontrollable\nfeeling he pronounced, addressing all in the room:\n\n\"Gentlemen, we're all cruel, we're all monsters, we all make men weep, and\nmothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now,\nof all I am the lowest reptile! I've sworn to amend, and every day I've\ndone the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a\nblow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a\nforce from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! But the\nthunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of accusation, and my public\nshame, I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified. Perhaps I\nshall be purified, gentlemen? But listen, for the last time, I am not\nguilty of my father's blood. I accept my punishment, not because I killed\nhim, but because I meant to kill him, and perhaps I really might have\nkilled him. Still I mean to fight it out with you. I warn you of that.\nI'll fight it out with you to the end, and then God will decide. Good-by,\ngentlemen, don't be vexed with me for having shouted at you during the\nexamination. Oh, I was still such a fool then.... In another minute I\nshall be a prisoner, but now, for the last time, as a free man, Dmitri\nKaramazov offers you his hand. Saying good-by to you, I say it to all\nmen.\"\n\nHis voice quivered and he stretched out his hand, but Nikolay\nParfenovitch, who happened to stand nearest to him, with a sudden, almost\nnervous movement, hid his hands behind his back. Mitya instantly noticed\nthis, and started. He let his outstretched hand fall at once.\n\n\"The preliminary inquiry is not yet over,\" Nikolay Parfenovitch faltered,\nsomewhat embarrassed. \"We will continue it in the town, and I, for my\npart, of course, am ready to wish you all success ... in your defense....\nAs a matter of fact, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I've always been disposed to\nregard you as, so to speak, more unfortunate than guilty. All of us here,\nif I may make bold to speak for all, we are all ready to recognize that\nyou are, at bottom, a young man of honor, but, alas, one who has been\ncarried away by certain passions to a somewhat excessive degree....\"\n\nNikolay Parfenovitch's little figure was positively majestic by the time\nhe had finished speaking. It struck Mitya that in another minute this\n\"boy\" would take his arm, lead him to another corner, and renew their\nconversation about \"girls.\" But many quite irrelevant and inappropriate\nthoughts sometimes occur even to a prisoner when he is being led out to\nexecution.\n\n\"Gentlemen, you are good, you are humane, may I see _her_ to say 'good-by'\nfor the last time?\" asked Mitya.\n\n\"Certainly, but considering ... in fact, now it's impossible except in the\npresence of--\"\n\n\"Oh, well, if it must be so, it must!\"\n\nGrushenka was brought in, but the farewell was brief, and of few words,\nand did not at all satisfy Nikolay Parfenovitch. Grushenka made a deep bow\nto Mitya.\n\n\"I have told you I am yours, and I will be yours. I will follow you for\never, wherever they may send you. Farewell; you are guiltless, though\nyou've been your own undoing.\"\n\nHer lips quivered, tears flowed from her eyes.\n\n\"Forgive me, Grusha, for my love, for ruining you, too, with my love.\"\n\nMitya would have said something more, but he broke off and went out. He\nwas at once surrounded by men who kept a constant watch on him. At the\nbottom of the steps to which he had driven up with such a dash the day\nbefore with Andrey's three horses, two carts stood in readiness. Mavriky\nMavrikyevitch, a sturdy, thick-set man with a wrinkled face, was annoyed\nabout something, some sudden irregularity. He was shouting angrily. He\nasked Mitya to get into the cart with somewhat excessive surliness.\n\n\"When I stood him drinks in the tavern, the man had quite a different\nface,\" thought Mitya, as he got in. At the gates there was a crowd of\npeople, peasants, women and drivers. Trifon Borissovitch came down the\nsteps too. All stared at Mitya.\n\n\"Forgive me at parting, good people!\" Mitya shouted suddenly from the\ncart.\n\n\"Forgive us too!\" he heard two or three voices.\n\n\"Good-by to you, too, Trifon Borissovitch!\"\n\nBut Trifon Borissovitch did not even turn round. He was, perhaps, too\nbusy. He, too, was shouting and fussing about something. It appeared that\neverything was not yet ready in the second cart, in which two constables\nwere to accompany Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. The peasant who had been ordered\nto drive the second cart was pulling on his smock, stoutly maintaining\nthat it was not his turn to go, but Akim's. But Akim was not to be seen.\nThey ran to look for him. The peasant persisted and besought them to wait.\n\n\"You see what our peasants are, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. They've no shame!\"\nexclaimed Trifon Borissovitch. \"Akim gave you twenty-five copecks the day\nbefore yesterday. You've drunk it all and now you cry out. I'm simply\nsurprised at your good-nature, with our low peasants, Mavriky\nMavrikyevitch, that's all I can say.\"\n\n\"But what do we want a second cart for?\" Mitya put in. \"Let's start with\nthe one, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. I won't be unruly, I won't run away from\nyou, old fellow. What do we want an escort for?\"\n\n\"I'll trouble you, sir, to learn how to speak to me if you've never been\ntaught. I'm not 'old fellow' to you, and you can keep your advice for\nanother time!\" Mavriky Mavrikyevitch snapped out savagely, as though glad\nto vent his wrath.\n\nMitya was reduced to silence. He flushed all over. A moment later he felt\nsuddenly very cold. The rain had ceased, but the dull sky was still\novercast with clouds, and a keen wind was blowing straight in his face.\n\n\"I've taken a chill,\" thought Mitya, twitching his shoulders.\n\nAt last Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, too, got into the cart, sat down heavily,\nand, as though without noticing it, squeezed Mitya into the corner. It is\ntrue that he was out of humor and greatly disliked the task that had been\nlaid upon him.\n\n\"Good-by, Trifon Borissovitch!\" Mitya shouted again, and felt himself,\nthat he had not called out this time from good-nature, but involuntarily,\nfrom resentment.\n\nBut Trifon Borissovitch stood proudly, with both hands behind his back,\nand staring straight at Mitya with a stern and angry face, he made no\nreply.\n\n\"Good-by, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, good-by!\" he heard all at once the voice of\nKalganov, who had suddenly darted out. Running up to the cart he held out\nhis hand to Mitya. He had no cap on.\n\nMitya had time to seize and press his hand.\n\n\"Good-by, dear fellow! I shan't forget your generosity,\" he cried warmly.\n\nBut the cart moved and their hands parted. The bell began ringing and\nMitya was driven off.\n\nKalganov ran back, sat down in a corner, bent his head, hid his face in\nhis hands, and burst out crying. For a long while he sat like that, crying\nas though he were a little boy instead of a young man of twenty. Oh, he\nbelieved almost without doubt in Mitya's guilt.\n\n\"What are these people? What can men be after this?\" he exclaimed\nincoherently, in bitter despondency, almost despair. At that moment he had\nno desire to live.\n\n\"Is it worth it? Is it worth it?\" exclaimed the boy in his grief.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART IV Book X. The Boys Chapter I. Kolya Krassotkin\n\n\nIt was the beginning of November. There had been a hard frost, eleven\ndegrees Reaumur, without snow, but a little dry snow had fallen on the\nfrozen ground during the night, and a keen dry wind was lifting and\nblowing it along the dreary streets of our town, especially about the\nmarket-place. It was a dull morning, but the snow had ceased.\n\nNot far from the market-place, close to Plotnikov's shop, there stood a\nsmall house, very clean both without and within. It belonged to Madame\nKrassotkin, the widow of a former provincial secretary, who had been dead\nfor fourteen years. His widow, still a nice-looking woman of thirty-two,\nwas living in her neat little house on her private means. She lived in\nrespectable seclusion; she was of a soft but fairly cheerful disposition.\nShe was about eighteen at the time of her husband's death; she had been\nmarried only a year and had just borne him a son. From the day of his\ndeath she had devoted herself heart and soul to the bringing up of her\nprecious treasure, her boy Kolya. Though she had loved him passionately\nthose fourteen years, he had caused her far more suffering than happiness.\nShe had been trembling and fainting with terror almost every day, afraid\nhe would fall ill, would catch cold, do something naughty, climb on a\nchair and fall off it, and so on and so on. When Kolya began going to\nschool, the mother devoted herself to studying all the sciences with him\nso as to help him, and go through his lessons with him. She hastened to\nmake the acquaintance of the teachers and their wives, even made up to\nKolya's schoolfellows, and fawned upon them in the hope of thus saving\nKolya from being teased, laughed at, or beaten by them. She went so far\nthat the boys actually began to mock at him on her account and taunt him\nwith being a \"mother's darling.\"\n\nBut the boy could take his own part. He was a resolute boy, \"tremendously\nstrong,\" as was rumored in his class, and soon proved to be the fact; he\nwas agile, strong-willed, and of an audacious and enterprising temper. He\nwas good at lessons, and there was a rumor in the school that he could\nbeat the teacher, Dardanelov, at arithmetic and universal history. Though\nhe looked down upon every one, he was a good comrade and not supercilious.\nHe accepted his schoolfellows' respect as his due, but was friendly with\nthem. Above all, he knew where to draw the line. He could restrain himself\non occasion, and in his relations with the teachers he never overstepped\nthat last mystic limit beyond which a prank becomes an unpardonable breach\nof discipline. But he was as fond of mischief on every possible occasion\nas the smallest boy in the school, and not so much for the sake of\nmischief as for creating a sensation, inventing something, something\neffective and conspicuous. He was extremely vain. He knew how to make even\nhis mother give way to him; he was almost despotic in his control of her.\nShe gave way to him, oh, she had given way to him for years. The one\nthought unendurable to her was that her boy had no great love for her. She\nwas always fancying that Kolya was \"unfeeling\" to her, and at times,\ndissolving into hysterical tears, she used to reproach him with his\ncoldness. The boy disliked this, and the more demonstrations of feeling\nwere demanded of him the more he seemed intentionally to avoid them. Yet\nit was not intentional on his part but instinctive--it was his character.\nHis mother was mistaken; he was very fond of her. He only disliked\n\"sheepish sentimentality,\" as he expressed it in his schoolboy language.\n\nThere was a bookcase in the house containing a few books that had been his\nfather's. Kolya was fond of reading, and had read several of them by\nhimself. His mother did not mind that and only wondered sometimes at\nseeing the boy stand for hours by the bookcase poring over a book instead\nof going to play. And in that way Kolya read some things unsuitable for\nhis age.\n\nThough the boy, as a rule, knew where to draw the line in his mischief, he\nhad of late begun to play pranks that caused his mother serious alarm. It\nis true there was nothing vicious in what he did, but a wild mad\nrecklessness.\n\nIt happened that July, during the summer holidays, that the mother and son\nwent to another district, forty-five miles away, to spend a week with a\ndistant relation, whose husband was an official at the railway station\n(the very station, the nearest one to our town, from which a month later\nIvan Fyodorovitch Karamazov set off for Moscow). There Kolya began by\ncarefully investigating every detail connected with the railways, knowing\nthat he could impress his schoolfellows when he got home with his newly\nacquired knowledge. But there happened to be some other boys in the place\nwith whom he soon made friends. Some of them were living at the station,\nothers in the neighborhood; there were six or seven of them, all between\ntwelve and fifteen, and two of them came from our town. The boys played\ntogether, and on the fourth or fifth day of Kolya's stay at the station, a\nmad bet was made by the foolish boys. Kolya, who was almost the youngest\nof the party and rather looked down upon by the others in consequence, was\nmoved by vanity or by reckless bravado to bet them two roubles that he\nwould lie down between the rails at night when the eleven o'clock train\nwas due, and would lie there without moving while the train rolled over\nhim at full speed. It is true they made a preliminary investigation, from\nwhich it appeared that it was possible to lie so flat between the rails\nthat the train could pass over without touching, but to lie there was no\njoke! Kolya maintained stoutly that he would. At first they laughed at\nhim, called him a little liar, a braggart, but that only egged him on.\nWhat piqued him most was that these boys of fifteen turned up their noses\nat him too superciliously, and were at first disposed to treat him as \"a\nsmall boy,\" not fit to associate with them, and that was an unendurable\ninsult.\n\nAnd so it was resolved to go in the evening, half a mile from the station,\nso that the train might have time to get up full speed after leaving the\nstation. The boys assembled. It was a pitch-dark night without a moon. At\nthe time fixed, Kolya lay down between the rails. The five others who had\ntaken the bet waited among the bushes below the embankment, their hearts\nbeating with suspense, which was followed by alarm and remorse. At last\nthey heard in the distance the rumble of the train leaving the station.\nTwo red lights gleamed out of the darkness; the monster roared as it\napproached.\n\n\"Run, run away from the rails,\" the boys cried to Kolya from the bushes,\nbreathless with terror. But it was too late: the train darted up and flew\npast. The boys rushed to Kolya. He lay without moving. They began pulling\nat him, lifting him up. He suddenly got up and walked away without a word.\nThen he explained that he had lain there as though he were insensible to\nfrighten them, but the fact was that he really had lost consciousness, as\nhe confessed long after to his mother. In this way his reputation as \"a\ndesperate character,\" was established for ever. He returned home to the\nstation as white as a sheet. Next day he had a slight attack of nervous\nfever, but he was in high spirits and well pleased with himself. The\nincident did not become known at once, but when they came back to the town\nit penetrated to the school and even reached the ears of the masters. But\nthen Kolya's mother hastened to entreat the masters on her boy's behalf,\nand in the end Dardanelov, a respected and influential teacher, exerted\nhimself in his favor, and the affair was ignored.\n\nDardanelov was a middle-aged bachelor, who had been passionately in love\nwith Madame Krassotkin for many years past, and had once already, about a\nyear previously, ventured, trembling with fear and the delicacy of his\nsentiments, to offer her most respectfully his hand in marriage. But she\nrefused him resolutely, feeling that to accept him would be an act of\ntreachery to her son, though Dardanelov had, to judge from certain\nmysterious symptoms, reason for believing that he was not an object of\naversion to the charming but too chaste and tender-hearted widow. Kolya's\nmad prank seemed to have broken the ice, and Dardanelov was rewarded for\nhis intercession by a suggestion of hope. The suggestion, it is true, was\na faint one, but then Dardanelov was such a paragon of purity and delicacy\nthat it was enough for the time being to make him perfectly happy. He was\nfond of the boy, though he would have felt it beneath him to try and win\nhim over, and was severe and strict with him in class. Kolya, too, kept\nhim at a respectful distance. He learned his lessons perfectly; he was\nsecond in his class, was reserved with Dardanelov, and the whole class\nfirmly believed that Kolya was so good at universal history that he could\n\"beat\" even Dardanelov. Kolya did indeed ask him the question, \"Who\nfounded Troy?\" to which Dardanelov had made a very vague reply, referring\nto the movements and migrations of races, to the remoteness of the period,\nto the mythical legends. But the question, \"Who had founded Troy?\" that\nis, what individuals, he could not answer, and even for some reason\nregarded the question as idle and frivolous. But the boys remained\nconvinced that Dardanelov did not know who founded Troy. Kolya had read of\nthe founders of Troy in Smaragdov, whose history was among the books in\nhis father's bookcase. In the end all the boys became interested in the\nquestion, who it was that had founded Troy, but Krassotkin would not tell\nhis secret, and his reputation for knowledge remained unshaken.\n\nAfter the incident on the railway a certain change came over Kolya's\nattitude to his mother. When Anna Fyodorovna (Madame Krassotkin) heard of\nher son's exploit, she almost went out of her mind with horror. She had\nsuch terrible attacks of hysterics, lasting with intervals for several\ndays, that Kolya, seriously alarmed at last, promised on his honor that\nsuch pranks should never be repeated. He swore on his knees before the\nholy image, and swore by the memory of his father, at Madame Krassotkin's\ninstance, and the \"manly\" Kolya burst into tears like a boy of six. And\nall that day the mother and son were constantly rushing into each other's\narms sobbing. Next day Kolya woke up as \"unfeeling\" as before, but he had\nbecome more silent, more modest, sterner, and more thoughtful.\n\nSix weeks later, it is true, he got into another scrape, which even\nbrought his name to the ears of our Justice of the Peace, but it was a\nscrape of quite another kind, amusing, foolish, and he did not, as it\nturned out, take the leading part in it, but was only implicated in it.\nBut of this later. His mother still fretted and trembled, but the more\nuneasy she became, the greater were the hopes of Dardanelov. It must be\nnoted that Kolya understood and divined what was in Dardanelov's heart\nand, of course, despised him profoundly for his \"feelings\"; he had in the\npast been so tactless as to show this contempt before his mother, hinting\nvaguely that he knew what Dardanelov was after. But from the time of the\nrailway incident his behavior in this respect also was changed; he did not\nallow himself the remotest allusion to the subject and began to speak more\nrespectfully of Dardanelov before his mother, which the sensitive woman at\nonce appreciated with boundless gratitude. But at the slightest mention of\nDardanelov by a visitor in Kolya's presence, she would flush as pink as a\nrose. At such moments Kolya would either stare out of the window scowling,\nor would investigate the state of his boots, or would shout angrily for\n\"Perezvon,\" the big, shaggy, mangy dog, which he had picked up a month\nbefore, brought home, and kept for some reason secretly indoors, not\nshowing him to any of his schoolfellows. He bullied him frightfully,\nteaching him all sorts of tricks, so that the poor dog howled for him\nwhenever he was absent at school, and when he came in, whined with\ndelight, rushed about as if he were crazy, begged, lay down on the ground\npretending to be dead, and so on; in fact, showed all the tricks he had\ntaught him, not at the word of command, but simply from the zeal of his\nexcited and grateful heart.\n\nI have forgotten, by the way, to mention that Kolya Krassotkin was the boy\nstabbed with a penknife by the boy already known to the reader as the son\nof Captain Snegiryov. Ilusha had been defending his father when the\nschoolboys jeered at him, shouting the nickname \"wisp of tow.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Children\n\n\nAnd so on that frosty, snowy, and windy day in November, Kolya Krassotkin\nwas sitting at home. It was Sunday and there was no school. It had just\nstruck eleven, and he particularly wanted to go out \"on very urgent\nbusiness,\" but he was left alone in charge of the house, for it so\nhappened that all its elder inmates were absent owing to a sudden and\nsingular event. Madame Krassotkin had let two little rooms, separated from\nthe rest of the house by a passage, to a doctor's wife with her two small\nchildren. This lady was the same age as Anna Fyodorovna, and a great\nfriend of hers. Her husband, the doctor, had taken his departure twelve\nmonths before, going first to Orenburg and then to Tashkend, and for the\nlast six months she had not heard a word from him. Had it not been for her\nfriendship with Madame Krassotkin, which was some consolation to the\nforsaken lady, she would certainly have completely dissolved away in\ntears. And now, to add to her misfortunes, Katerina, her only servant, was\nsuddenly moved the evening before to announce, to her mistress's\namazement, that she proposed to bring a child into the world before\nmorning. It seemed almost miraculous to every one that no one had noticed\nthe probability of it before. The astounded doctor's wife decided to move\nKaterina while there was still time to an establishment in the town kept\nby a midwife for such emergencies. As she set great store by her servant,\nshe promptly carried out this plan and remained there looking after her.\nBy the morning all Madame Krassotkin's friendly sympathy and energy were\ncalled upon to render assistance and appeal to some one for help in the\ncase.\n\nSo both the ladies were absent from home, the Krassotkins' servant,\nAgafya, had gone out to the market, and Kolya was thus left for a time to\nprotect and look after \"the kids,\" that is, the son and daughter of the\ndoctor's wife, who were left alone. Kolya was not afraid of taking care of\nthe house, besides he had Perezvon, who had been told to lie flat, without\nmoving, under the bench in the hall. Every time Kolya, walking to and fro\nthrough the rooms, came into the hall, the dog shook his head and gave two\nloud and insinuating taps on the floor with his tail, but alas! the\nwhistle did not sound to release him. Kolya looked sternly at the luckless\ndog, who relapsed again into obedient rigidity. The one thing that\ntroubled Kolya was \"the kids.\" He looked, of course, with the utmost scorn\non Katerina's unexpected adventure, but he was very fond of the bereaved\n\"kiddies,\" and had already taken them a picture-book. Nastya, the elder, a\ngirl of eight, could read, and Kostya, the boy, aged seven, was very fond\nof being read to by her. Krassotkin could, of course, have provided more\ndiverting entertainment for them. He could have made them stand side by\nside and played soldiers with them, or sent them hiding all over the\nhouse. He had done so more than once before and was not above doing it, so\nmuch so that a report once spread at school that Krassotkin played horses\nwith the little lodgers at home, prancing with his head on one side like a\ntrace-horse. But Krassotkin haughtily parried this thrust, pointing out\nthat to play horses with boys of one's own age, boys of thirteen, would\ncertainly be disgraceful \"at this date,\" but that he did it for the sake\nof \"the kids\" because he liked them, and no one had a right to call him to\naccount for his feelings. The two \"kids\" adored him.\n\nBut on this occasion he was in no mood for games. He had very important\nbusiness of his own before him, something almost mysterious. Meanwhile\ntime was passing and Agafya, with whom he could have left the children,\nwould not come back from market. He had several times already crossed the\npassage, opened the door of the lodgers' room and looked anxiously at \"the\nkids\" who were sitting over the book, as he had bidden them. Every time he\nopened the door they grinned at him, hoping he would come in and would do\nsomething delightful and amusing. But Kolya was bothered and did not go\nin.\n\nAt last it struck eleven and he made up his mind, once for all, that if\nthat \"damned\" Agafya did not come back within ten minutes he should go out\nwithout waiting for her, making \"the kids\" promise, of course, to be brave\nwhen he was away, not to be naughty, not to cry from fright. With this\nidea he put on his wadded winter overcoat with its catskin fur collar,\nslung his satchel round his shoulder, and, regardless of his mother's\nconstantly reiterated entreaties that he would always put on goloshes in\nsuch cold weather, he looked at them contemptuously as he crossed the hall\nand went out with only his boots on. Perezvon, seeing him in his outdoor\nclothes, began tapping nervously, yet vigorously, on the floor with his\ntail. Twitching all over, he even uttered a plaintive whine. But Kolya,\nseeing his dog's passionate excitement, decided that it was a breach of\ndiscipline, kept him for another minute under the bench, and only when he\nhad opened the door into the passage, whistled for him. The dog leapt up\nlike a mad creature and rushed bounding before him rapturously.\n\nKolya opened the door to peep at \"the kids.\" They were both sitting as\nbefore at the table, not reading but warmly disputing about something. The\nchildren often argued together about various exciting problems of life,\nand Nastya, being the elder, always got the best of it. If Kostya did not\nagree with her, he almost always appealed to Kolya Krassotkin, and his\nverdict was regarded as infallible by both of them. This time the \"kids'\"\ndiscussion rather interested Krassotkin, and he stood still in the passage\nto listen. The children saw he was listening and that made them dispute\nwith even greater energy.\n\n\"I shall never, never believe,\" Nastya prattled, \"that the old women find\nbabies among the cabbages in the kitchen-garden. It's winter now and there\nare no cabbages, and so the old woman couldn't have taken Katerina a\ndaughter.\"\n\nKolya whistled to himself.\n\n\"Or perhaps they do bring babies from somewhere, but only to those who are\nmarried.\"\n\nKostya stared at Nastya and listened, pondering profoundly.\n\n\"Nastya, how silly you are!\" he said at last, firmly and calmly. \"How can\nKaterina have a baby when she isn't married?\"\n\nNastya was exasperated.\n\n\"You know nothing about it,\" she snapped irritably. \"Perhaps she has a\nhusband, only he is in prison, so now she's got a baby.\"\n\n\"But is her husband in prison?\" the matter-of-fact Kostya inquired\ngravely.\n\n\"Or, I tell you what,\" Nastya interrupted impulsively, completely\nrejecting and forgetting her first hypothesis. \"She hasn't a husband, you\nare right there, but she wants to be married, and so she's been thinking\nof getting married, and thinking and thinking of it till now she's got it,\nthat is, not a husband but a baby.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps so,\" Kostya agreed, entirely vanquished. \"But you didn't\nsay so before. So how could I tell?\"\n\n\"Come, kiddies,\" said Kolya, stepping into the room. \"You're terrible\npeople, I see.\"\n\n\"And Perezvon with you!\" grinned Kostya, and began snapping his fingers\nand calling Perezvon.\n\n\"I am in a difficulty, kids,\" Krassotkin began solemnly, \"and you must\nhelp me. Agafya must have broken her leg, since she has not turned up till\nnow, that's certain. I must go out. Will you let me go?\"\n\nThe children looked anxiously at one another. Their smiling faces showed\nsigns of uneasiness, but they did not yet fully grasp what was expected of\nthem.\n\n\"You won't be naughty while I am gone? You won't climb on the cupboard and\nbreak your legs? You won't be frightened alone and cry?\"\n\nA look of profound despondency came into the children's faces.\n\n\"And I could show you something as a reward, a little copper cannon which\ncan be fired with real gunpowder.\"\n\nThe children's faces instantly brightened. \"Show us the cannon,\" said\nKostya, beaming all over.\n\nKrassotkin put his hand in his satchel, and pulling out a little bronze\ncannon stood it on the table.\n\n\"Ah, you are bound to ask that! Look, it's on wheels.\" He rolled the toy\non along the table. \"And it can be fired off, too. It can be loaded with\nshot and fired off.\"\n\n\"And it could kill any one?\"\n\n\"It can kill any one; you've only got to aim at anybody,\" and Krassotkin\nexplained where the powder had to be put, where the shot should be rolled\nin, showing a tiny hole like a touch-hole, and told them that it kicked\nwhen it was fired.\n\nThe children listened with intense interest. What particularly struck\ntheir imagination was that the cannon kicked.\n\n\"And have you got any powder?\" Nastya inquired.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Show us the powder, too,\" she drawled with a smile of entreaty.\n\nKrassotkin dived again into his satchel and pulled out a small flask\ncontaining a little real gunpowder. He had some shot, too, in a screw of\npaper. He even uncorked the flask and shook a little powder into the palm\nof his hand.\n\n\"One has to be careful there's no fire about, or it would blow up and kill\nus all,\" Krassotkin warned them sensationally.\n\nThe children gazed at the powder with an awe-stricken alarm that only\nintensified their enjoyment. But Kostya liked the shot better.\n\n\"And does the shot burn?\" he inquired.\n\n\"No, it doesn't.\"\n\n\"Give me a little shot,\" he asked in an imploring voice.\n\n\"I'll give you a little shot; here, take it, but don't show it to your\nmother till I come back, or she'll be sure to think it's gunpowder, and\nwill die of fright and give you a thrashing.\"\n\n\"Mother never does whip us,\" Nastya observed at once.\n\n\"I know, I only said it to finish the sentence. And don't you ever deceive\nyour mother except just this once, until I come back. And so, kiddies, can\nI go out? You won't be frightened and cry when I'm gone?\"\n\n\"We sha--all cry,\" drawled Kostya, on the verge of tears already.\n\n\"We shall cry, we shall be sure to cry,\" Nastya chimed in with timid\nhaste.\n\n\"Oh, children, children, how fraught with peril are your years! There's no\nhelp for it, chickens, I shall have to stay with you I don't know how\nlong. And time is passing, time is passing, oogh!\"\n\n\"Tell Perezvon to pretend to be dead!\" Kostya begged.\n\n\"There's no help for it, we must have recourse to Perezvon. _Ici_,\nPerezvon.\" And Kolya began giving orders to the dog, who performed all his\ntricks.\n\nHe was a rough-haired dog, of medium size, with a coat of a sort of lilac-\ngray color. He was blind in his right eye, and his left ear was torn. He\nwhined and jumped, stood and walked on his hind legs, lay on his back with\nhis paws in the air, rigid as though he were dead. While this last\nperformance was going on, the door opened and Agafya, Madame Krassotkin's\nservant, a stout woman of forty, marked with small-pox, appeared in the\ndoorway. She had come back from market and had a bag full of provisions in\nher hand. Holding up the bag of provisions in her left hand she stood\nstill to watch the dog. Though Kolya had been so anxious for her return,\nhe did not cut short the performance, and after keeping Perezvon dead for\nthe usual time, at last he whistled to him. The dog jumped up and began\nbounding about in his joy at having done his duty.\n\n\"Only think, a dog!\" Agafya observed sententiously.\n\n\"Why are you late, female?\" asked Krassotkin sternly.\n\n\"Female, indeed! Go on with you, you brat.\"\n\n\"Brat?\"\n\n\"Yes, a brat. What is it to you if I'm late; if I'm late, you may be sure\nI have good reason,\" muttered Agafya, busying herself about the stove,\nwithout a trace of anger or displeasure in her voice. She seemed quite\npleased, in fact, to enjoy a skirmish with her merry young master.\n\n\"Listen, you frivolous young woman,\" Krassotkin began, getting up from the\nsofa, \"can you swear by all you hold sacred in the world and something\nelse besides, that you will watch vigilantly over the kids in my absence?\nI am going out.\"\n\n\"And what am I going to swear for?\" laughed Agafya. \"I shall look after\nthem without that.\"\n\n\"No, you must swear on your eternal salvation. Else I shan't go.\"\n\n\"Well, don't then. What does it matter to me? It's cold out; stay at\nhome.\"\n\n\"Kids,\" Kolya turned to the children, \"this woman will stay with you till\nI come back or till your mother comes, for she ought to have been back\nlong ago. She will give you some lunch, too. You'll give them something,\nAgafya, won't you?\"\n\n\"That I can do.\"\n\n\"Good-by, chickens, I go with my heart at rest. And you, granny,\" he added\ngravely, in an undertone, as he passed Agafya, \"I hope you'll spare their\ntender years and not tell them any of your old woman's nonsense about\nKaterina. _Ici_, Perezvon!\"\n\n\"Get along with you!\" retorted Agafya, really angry this time. \"Ridiculous\nboy! You want a whipping for saying such things, that's what you want!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. The Schoolboy\n\n\nBut Kolya did not hear her. At last he could go out. As he went out at the\ngate he looked round him, shrugged up his shoulders, and saying \"It is\nfreezing,\" went straight along the street and turned off to the right\ntowards the market-place. When he reached the last house but one before\nthe market-place he stopped at the gate, pulled a whistle out of his\npocket, and whistled with all his might as though giving a signal. He had\nnot to wait more than a minute before a rosy-cheeked boy of about eleven,\nwearing a warm, neat and even stylish coat, darted out to meet him. This\nwas Smurov, a boy in the preparatory class (two classes below Kolya\nKrassotkin), son of a well-to-do official. Apparently he was forbidden by\nhis parents to associate with Krassotkin, who was well known to be a\ndesperately naughty boy, so Smurov was obviously slipping out on the sly.\nHe was--if the reader has not forgotten--one of the group of boys who two\nmonths before had thrown stones at Ilusha. He was the one who told Alyosha\nKaramazov about Ilusha.\n\n\"I've been waiting for you for the last hour, Krassotkin,\" said Smurov\nstolidly, and the boys strode towards the market-place.\n\n\"I am late,\" answered Krassotkin. \"I was detained by circumstances. You\nwon't be thrashed for coming with me?\"\n\n\"Come, I say, I'm never thrashed! And you've got Perezvon with you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You're taking him, too?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Ah! if it were only Zhutchka!\"\n\n\"That's impossible. Zhutchka's non-existent. Zhutchka is lost in the mists\nof obscurity.\"\n\n\"Ah! couldn't we do this?\" Smurov suddenly stood still. \"You see Ilusha\nsays that Zhutchka was a shaggy, grayish, smoky-looking dog like Perezvon.\nCouldn't you tell him this is Zhutchka, and he might believe you?\"\n\n\"Boy, shun a lie, that's one thing; even with a good object--that's\nanother. Above all, I hope you've not told them anything about my coming.\"\n\n\"Heaven forbid! I know what I am about. But you won't comfort him with\nPerezvon,\" said Smurov, with a sigh. \"You know his father, the captain,\n'the wisp of tow,' told us that he was going to bring him a real mastiff\npup, with a black nose, to-day. He thinks that would comfort Ilusha; but I\ndoubt it.\"\n\n\"And how is Ilusha?\"\n\n\"Ah, he is bad, very bad! I believe he's in consumption: he is quite\nconscious, but his breathing! His breathing's gone wrong. The other day he\nasked to have his boots on to be led round the room. He tried to walk, but\nhe couldn't stand. 'Ah, I told you before, father,' he said, 'that those\nboots were no good. I could never walk properly in them.' He fancied it\nwas his boots that made him stagger, but it was simply weakness, really.\nHe won't live another week. Herzenstube is looking after him. Now they are\nrich again--they've got heaps of money.\"\n\n\"They are rogues.\"\n\n\"Who are rogues?\"\n\n\"Doctors and the whole crew of quacks collectively, and also, of course,\nindividually. I don't believe in medicine. It's a useless institution. I\nmean to go into all that. But what's that sentimentality you've got up\nthere? The whole class seems to be there every day.\"\n\n\"Not the whole class: it's only ten of our fellows who go to see him every\nday. There's nothing in that.\"\n\n\"What I don't understand in all this is the part that Alexey Karamazov is\ntaking in it. His brother's going to be tried to-morrow or next day for\nsuch a crime, and yet he has so much time to spend on sentimentality with\nboys.\"\n\n\"There's no sentimentality about it. You are going yourself now to make it\nup with Ilusha.\"\n\n\"Make it up with him? What an absurd expression! But I allow no one to\nanalyze my actions.\"\n\n\"And how pleased Ilusha will be to see you! He has no idea that you are\ncoming. Why was it, why was it you wouldn't come all this time?\" Smurov\ncried with sudden warmth.\n\n\"My dear boy, that's my business, not yours. I am going of myself because\nI choose to, but you've all been hauled there by Alexey Karamazov--there's\na difference, you know. And how do you know? I may not be going to make it\nup at all. It's a stupid expression.\"\n\n\"It's not Karamazov at all; it's not his doing. Our fellows began going\nthere of themselves. Of course, they went with Karamazov at first. And\nthere's been nothing of that sort--no silliness. First one went, and then\nanother. His father was awfully pleased to see us. You know he will simply\ngo out of his mind if Ilusha dies. He sees that Ilusha's dying. And he\nseems so glad we've made it up with Ilusha. Ilusha asked after you, that\nwas all. He just asks and says no more. His father will go out of his mind\nor hang himself. He behaved like a madman before. You know he is a very\ndecent man. We made a mistake then. It's all the fault of that murderer\nwho beat him then.\"\n\n\"Karamazov's a riddle to me all the same. I might have made his\nacquaintance long ago, but I like to have a proper pride in some cases.\nBesides, I have a theory about him which I must work out and verify.\"\n\nKolya subsided into dignified silence. Smurov, too, was silent. Smurov, of\ncourse, worshiped Krassotkin and never dreamed of putting himself on a\nlevel with him. Now he was tremendously interested at Kolya's saying that\nhe was \"going of himself\" to see Ilusha. He felt that there must be some\nmystery in Kolya's suddenly taking it into his head to go to him that day.\nThey crossed the market-place, in which at that hour were many loaded\nwagons from the country and a great number of live fowls. The market women\nwere selling rolls, cottons and threads, etc., in their booths. These\nSunday markets were naively called \"fairs\" in the town, and there were\nmany such fairs in the year.\n\nPerezvon ran about in the wildest spirits, sniffing about first one side,\nthen the other. When he met other dogs they zealously smelt each other\nover according to the rules of canine etiquette.\n\n\"I like to watch such realistic scenes, Smurov,\" said Kolya suddenly.\n\"Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems\nto be a law of their nature.\"\n\n\"Yes; it's a funny habit.\"\n\n\"No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature,\nhowever funny it may seem to man with his prejudices. If dogs could reason\nand criticize us they'd be sure to find just as much that would be funny\nto them, if not far more, in the social relations of men, their\nmasters--far more, indeed. I repeat that, because I am convinced that there\nis far more foolishness among us. That's Rakitin's idea--a remarkable idea.\nI am a Socialist, Smurov.\"\n\n\"And what is a Socialist?\" asked Smurov.\n\n\"That's when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no\nmarriages, and every one has any religion and laws he likes best, and all\nthe rest of it. You are not old enough to understand that yet. It's cold,\nthough.\"\n\n\"Yes, twelve degrees of frost. Father looked at the thermometer just now.\"\n\n\"Have you noticed, Smurov, that in the middle of winter we don't feel so\ncold even when there are fifteen or eighteen degrees of frost as we do\nnow, in the beginning of winter, when there is a sudden frost of twelve\ndegrees, especially when there is not much snow. It's because people are\nnot used to it. Everything is habit with men, everything even in their\nsocial and political relations. Habit is the great motive-power. What a\nfunny-looking peasant!\"\n\nKolya pointed to a tall peasant, with a good-natured countenance in a long\nsheepskin coat, who was standing by his wagon, clapping together his\nhands, in their shapeless leather gloves, to warm them. His long fair\nbeard was all white with frost.\n\n\"That peasant's beard's frozen,\" Kolya cried in a loud provocative voice\nas he passed him.\n\n\"Lots of people's beards are frozen,\" the peasant replied, calmly and\nsententiously.\n\n\"Don't provoke him,\" observed Smurov.\n\n\"It's all right; he won't be cross; he's a nice fellow. Good-by, Matvey.\"\n\n\"Good-by.\"\n\n\"Is your name Matvey?\"\n\n\"Yes. Didn't you know?\"\n\n\"No, I didn't. It was a guess.\"\n\n\"You don't say so! You are a schoolboy, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You get whipped, I expect?\"\n\n\"Nothing to speak of--sometimes.\"\n\n\"Does it hurt?\"\n\n\"Well, yes, it does.\"\n\n\"Ech, what a life!\" The peasant heaved a sigh from the bottom of his\nheart.\n\n\"Good-by, Matvey.\"\n\n\"Good-by. You are a nice chap, that you are.\"\n\nThe boys went on.\n\n\"That was a nice peasant,\" Kolya observed to Smurov. \"I like talking to\nthe peasants, and am always glad to do them justice.\"\n\n\"Why did you tell a lie, pretending we are thrashed?\" asked Smurov.\n\n\"I had to say that to please him.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"You know, Smurov, I don't like being asked the same thing twice. I like\npeople to understand at the first word. Some things can't be explained.\nAccording to a peasant's notions, schoolboys are whipped, and must be\nwhipped. What would a schoolboy be if he were not whipped? And if I were\nto tell him we are not, he'd be disappointed. But you don't understand\nthat. One has to know how to talk to the peasants.\"\n\n\"Only don't tease them, please, or you'll get into another scrape as you\ndid about that goose.\"\n\n\"So you're afraid?\"\n\n\"Don't laugh, Kolya. Of course I'm afraid. My father would be awfully\ncross. I am strictly forbidden to go out with you.\"\n\n\"Don't be uneasy, nothing will happen this time. Hallo, Natasha!\" he\nshouted to a market woman in one of the booths.\n\n\"Call me Natasha! What next! My name is Marya,\" the middle-aged market\nwoman shouted at him.\n\n\"I am so glad it's Marya. Good-by!\"\n\n\"Ah, you young rascal! A brat like you to carry on so!\"\n\n\"I'm in a hurry. I can't stay now. You shall tell me next Sunday.\" Kolya\nwaved his hand at her, as though she had attacked him and not he her.\n\n\"I've nothing to tell you next Sunday. You set upon me, you impudent young\nmonkey. I didn't say anything,\" bawled Marya. \"You want a whipping, that's\nwhat you want, you saucy jackanapes!\"\n\nThere was a roar of laughter among the other market women round her.\nSuddenly a man in a violent rage darted out from the arcade of shops close\nby. He was a young man, not a native of the town, with dark, curly hair\nand a long, pale face, marked with smallpox. He wore a long blue coat and\na peaked cap, and looked like a merchant's clerk. He was in a state of\nstupid excitement and brandished his fist at Kolya.\n\n\"I know you!\" he cried angrily, \"I know you!\"\n\nKolya stared at him. He could not recall when he could have had a row with\nthe man. But he had been in so many rows in the street that he could\nhardly remember them all.\n\n\"Do you?\" he asked sarcastically.\n\n\"I know you! I know you!\" the man repeated idiotically.\n\n\"So much the better for you. Well, it's time I was going. Good-by!\"\n\n\"You are at your saucy pranks again?\" cried the man. \"You are at your\nsaucy pranks again? I know, you are at it again!\"\n\n\"It's not your business, brother, if I am at my saucy pranks again,\" said\nKolya, standing still and scanning him.\n\n\"Not my business?\"\n\n\"No; it's not your business.\"\n\n\"Whose then? Whose then? Whose then?\"\n\n\"It's Trifon Nikititch's business, not yours.\"\n\n\"What Trifon Nikititch?\" asked the youth, staring with loutish amazement\nat Kolya, but still as angry as ever.\n\nKolya scanned him gravely.\n\n\"Have you been to the Church of the Ascension?\" he suddenly asked him,\nwith stern emphasis.\n\n\"What Church of Ascension? What for? No, I haven't,\" said the young man,\nsomewhat taken aback.\n\n\"Do you know Sabaneyev?\" Kolya went on even more emphatically and even\nmore severely.\n\n\"What Sabaneyev? No, I don't know him.\"\n\n\"Well then you can go to the devil,\" said Kolya, cutting short the\nconversation; and turning sharply to the right he strode quickly on his\nway as though he disdained further conversation with a dolt who did not\neven know Sabaneyev.\n\n\"Stop, heigh! What Sabaneyev?\" the young man recovered from his momentary\nstupefaction and was as excited as before. \"What did he say?\" He turned to\nthe market women with a silly stare.\n\nThe women laughed.\n\n\"You can never tell what he's after,\" said one of them.\n\n\"What Sabaneyev is it he's talking about?\" the young man repeated, still\nfurious and brandishing his right arm.\n\n\"It must be a Sabaneyev who worked for the Kuzmitchovs, that's who it must\nbe,\" one of the women suggested.\n\nThe young man stared at her wildly.\n\n\"For the Kuzmitchovs?\" repeated another woman. \"But his name wasn't\nTrifon. His name's Kuzma, not Trifon; but the boy said Trifon Nikititch,\nso it can't be the same.\"\n\n\"His name is not Trifon and not Sabaneyev, it's Tchizhov,\" put in suddenly\na third woman, who had hitherto been silent, listening gravely. \"Alexey\nIvanitch is his name. Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch.\"\n\n\"Not a doubt about it, it's Tchizhov,\" a fourth woman emphatically\nconfirmed the statement.\n\nThe bewildered youth gazed from one to another.\n\n\"But what did he ask for, what did he ask for, good people?\" he cried\nalmost in desperation. \" 'Do you know Sabaneyev?' says he. And who the\ndevil's to know who is Sabaneyev?\"\n\n\"You're a senseless fellow. I tell you it's not Sabaneyev, but Tchizhov,\nAlexey Ivanitch Tchizhov, that's who it is!\" one of the women shouted at\nhim impressively.\n\n\"What Tchizhov? Who is he? Tell me, if you know.\"\n\n\"That tall, sniveling fellow who used to sit in the market in the summer.\"\n\n\"And what's your Tchizhov to do with me, good people, eh?\"\n\n\"How can I tell what he's to do with you?\" put in another. \"You ought to\nknow yourself what you want with him, if you make such a clamor about him.\nHe spoke to you, he did not speak to us, you stupid. Don't you really know\nhim?\"\n\n\"Know whom?\"\n\n\"Tchizhov.\"\n\n\"The devil take Tchizhov and you with him. I'll give him a hiding, that I\nwill. He was laughing at me!\"\n\n\"Will give Tchizhov a hiding! More likely he will give you one. You are a\nfool, that's what you are!\"\n\n\"Not Tchizhov, not Tchizhov, you spiteful, mischievous woman. I'll give\nthe boy a hiding. Catch him, catch him, he was laughing at me!\"\n\nThe woman guffawed. But Kolya was by now a long way off, marching along\nwith a triumphant air. Smurov walked beside him, looking round at the\nshouting group far behind. He too was in high spirits, though he was still\nafraid of getting into some scrape in Kolya's company.\n\n\"What Sabaneyev did you mean?\" he asked Kolya, foreseeing what his answer\nwould be.\n\n\"How do I know? Now there'll be a hubbub among them all day. I like to\nstir up fools in every class of society. There's another blockhead, that\npeasant there. You know, they say 'there's no one stupider than a stupid\nFrenchman,' but a stupid Russian shows it in his face just as much. Can't\nyou see it all over his face that he is a fool, that peasant, eh?\"\n\n\"Let him alone, Kolya. Let's go on.\"\n\n\"Nothing could stop me, now I am once off. Hey, good morning, peasant!\"\n\nA sturdy-looking peasant, with a round, simple face and grizzled beard,\nwho was walking by, raised his head and looked at the boy. He seemed not\nquite sober.\n\n\"Good morning, if you are not laughing at me,\" he said deliberately in\nreply.\n\n\"And if I am?\" laughed Kolya.\n\n\"Well, a joke's a joke. Laugh away. I don't mind. There's no harm in a\njoke.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon, brother, it was a joke.\"\n\n\"Well, God forgive you!\"\n\n\"Do you forgive me, too?\"\n\n\"I quite forgive you. Go along.\"\n\n\"I say, you seem a clever peasant.\"\n\n\"Cleverer than you,\" the peasant answered unexpectedly, with the same\ngravity.\n\n\"I doubt it,\" said Kolya, somewhat taken aback.\n\n\"It's true, though.\"\n\n\"Perhaps it is.\"\n\n\"It is, brother.\"\n\n\"Good-by, peasant!\"\n\n\"Good-by!\"\n\n\"There are all sorts of peasants,\" Kolya observed to Smurov after a brief\nsilence. \"How could I tell I had hit on a clever one? I am always ready to\nrecognize intelligence in the peasantry.\"\n\nIn the distance the cathedral clock struck half-past eleven. The boys made\nhaste and they walked as far as Captain Snegiryov's lodging, a\nconsiderable distance, quickly and almost in silence. Twenty paces from\nthe house Kolya stopped and told Smurov to go on ahead and ask Karamazov\nto come out to him.\n\n\"One must sniff round a bit first,\" he observed to Smurov.\n\n\"Why ask him to come out?\" Smurov protested. \"You go in; they will be\nawfully glad to see you. What's the sense of making friends in the frost\nout here?\"\n\n\"I know why I want to see him out here in the frost,\" Kolya cut him short\nin the despotic tone he was fond of adopting with \"small boys,\" and Smurov\nran to do his bidding.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. The Lost Dog\n\n\nKolya leaned against the fence with an air of dignity, waiting for Alyosha\nto appear. Yes, he had long wanted to meet him. He had heard a great deal\nabout him from the boys, but hitherto he had always maintained an\nappearance of disdainful indifference when he was mentioned, and he had\neven \"criticized\" what he heard about Alyosha. But secretly he had a great\nlonging to make his acquaintance; there was something sympathetic and\nattractive in all he was told about Alyosha. So the present moment was\nimportant: to begin with, he had to show himself at his best, to show his\nindependence, \"Or he'll think of me as thirteen and take me for a boy,\nlike the rest of them. And what are these boys to him? I shall ask him\nwhen I get to know him. It's a pity I am so short, though. Tuzikov is\nyounger than I am, yet he is half a head taller. But I have a clever face.\nI am not good-looking. I know I'm hideous, but I've a clever face. I\nmustn't talk too freely; if I fall into his arms all at once, he may\nthink--Tfoo! how horrible if he should think--!\"\n\nSuch were the thoughts that excited Kolya while he was doing his utmost to\nassume the most independent air. What distressed him most was his being so\nshort; he did not mind so much his \"hideous\" face, as being so short. On\nthe wall in a corner at home he had the year before made a pencil-mark to\nshow his height, and every two months since he anxiously measured himself\nagainst it to see how much he had gained. But alas! he grew very slowly,\nand this sometimes reduced him almost to despair. His face was in reality\nby no means \"hideous\"; on the contrary, it was rather attractive, with a\nfair, pale skin, freckled. His small, lively gray eyes had a fearless\nlook, and often glowed with feeling. He had rather high cheekbones; small,\nvery red, but not very thick, lips; his nose was small and unmistakably\nturned up. \"I've a regular pug nose, a regular pug nose,\" Kolya used to\nmutter to himself when he looked in the looking-glass, and he always left\nit with indignation. \"But perhaps I haven't got a clever face?\" he\nsometimes thought, doubtful even of that. But it must not be supposed that\nhis mind was preoccupied with his face and his height. On the contrary,\nhowever bitter the moments before the looking-glass were to him, he\nquickly forgot them, and forgot them for a long time, \"abandoning himself\nentirely to ideas and to real life,\" as he formulated it to himself.\n\nAlyosha came out quickly and hastened up to Kolya. Before he reached him,\nKolya could see that he looked delighted. \"Can he be so glad to see me?\"\nKolya wondered, feeling pleased. We may note here, in passing, that\nAlyosha's appearance had undergone a complete change since we saw him\nlast. He had abandoned his cassock and was wearing now a well-cut coat, a\nsoft, round hat, and his hair had been cropped short. All this was very\nbecoming to him, and he looked quite handsome. His charming face always\nhad a good-humored expression; but there was a gentleness and serenity in\nhis good-humor. To Kolya's surprise, Alyosha came out to him just as he\nwas, without an overcoat. He had evidently come in haste. He held out his\nhand to Kolya at once.\n\n\"Here you are at last! How anxious we've been to see you!\"\n\n\"There were reasons which you shall know directly. Anyway, I am glad to\nmake your acquaintance. I've long been hoping for an opportunity, and have\nheard a great deal about you,\" Kolya muttered, a little breathless.\n\n\"We should have met anyway. I've heard a great deal about you, too; but\nyou've been a long time coming here.\"\n\n\"Tell me, how are things going?\"\n\n\"Ilusha is very ill. He is certainly dying.\"\n\n\"How awful! You must admit that medicine is a fraud, Karamazov,\" cried\nKolya warmly.\n\n\"Ilusha has mentioned you often, very often, even in his sleep, in\ndelirium, you know. One can see that you used to be very, very dear to him\n... before the incident ... with the knife.... Then there's another\nreason.... Tell me, is that your dog?\"\n\n\"Yes, Perezvon.\"\n\n\"Not Zhutchka?\" Alyosha looked at Kolya with eyes full of pity. \"Is she\nlost for ever?\"\n\n\"I know you would all like it to be Zhutchka. I've heard all about it.\"\nKolya smiled mysteriously. \"Listen, Karamazov, I'll tell you all about it.\nThat's what I came for; that's what I asked you to come out here for, to\nexplain the whole episode to you before we go in,\" he began with\nanimation. \"You see, Karamazov, Ilusha came into the preparatory class\nlast spring. Well, you know what our preparatory class is--a lot of small\nboys. They began teasing Ilusha at once. I am two classes higher up, and,\nof course, I only look on at them from a distance. I saw the boy was weak\nand small, but he wouldn't give in to them; he fought with them. I saw he\nwas proud, and his eyes were full of fire. I like children like that. And\nthey teased him all the more. The worst of it was he was horribly dressed\nat the time, his breeches were too small for him, and there were holes in\nhis boots. They worried him about it; they jeered at him. That I can't\nstand. I stood up for him at once, and gave it to them hot. I beat them,\nbut they adore me, do you know, Karamazov?\" Kolya boasted impulsively;\n\"but I am always fond of children. I've two chickens in my hands at home\nnow--that's what detained me to-day. So they left off beating Ilusha and I\ntook him under my protection. I saw the boy was proud. I tell you that,\nthe boy was proud; but in the end he became slavishly devoted to me: he\ndid my slightest bidding, obeyed me as though I were God, tried to copy\nme. In the intervals between the classes he used to run to me at once, and\nI'd go about with him. On Sundays, too. They always laugh when an older\nboy makes friends with a younger one like that; but that's a prejudice. If\nit's my fancy, that's enough. I am teaching him, developing him. Why\nshouldn't I develop him if I like him? Here you, Karamazov, have taken up\nwith all these nestlings. I see you want to influence the younger\ngeneration--to develop them, to be of use to them, and I assure you this\ntrait in your character, which I knew by hearsay, attracted me more than\nanything. Let us get to the point, though. I noticed that there was a sort\nof softness and sentimentality coming over the boy, and you know I have a\npositive hatred of this sheepish sentimentality, and I have had it from a\nbaby. There were contradictions in him, too: he was proud, but he was\nslavishly devoted to me, and yet all at once his eyes would flash and he'd\nrefuse to agree with me; he'd argue, fly into a rage. I used sometimes to\npropound certain ideas; I could see that it was not so much that he\ndisagreed with the ideas, but that he was simply rebelling against me,\nbecause I was cool in responding to his endearments. And so, in order to\ntrain him properly, the tenderer he was, the colder I became. I did it on\npurpose: that was my idea. My object was to form his character, to lick\nhim into shape, to make a man of him ... and besides ... no doubt, you\nunderstand me at a word. Suddenly I noticed for three days in succession\nhe was downcast and dejected, not because of my coldness, but for\nsomething else, something more important. I wondered what the tragedy was.\nI have pumped him and found out that he had somehow got to know\nSmerdyakov, who was footman to your late father--it was before his death,\nof course--and he taught the little fool a silly trick--that is, a brutal,\nnasty trick. He told him to take a piece of bread, to stick a pin in it,\nand throw it to one of those hungry dogs who snap up anything without\nbiting it, and then to watch and see what would happen. So they prepared a\npiece of bread like that and threw it to Zhutchka, that shaggy dog there's\nbeen such a fuss about. The people of the house it belonged to never fed\nit at all, though it barked all day. (Do you like that stupid barking,\nKaramazov? I can't stand it.) So it rushed at the bread, swallowed it, and\nbegan to squeal; it turned round and round and ran away, squealing as it\nran out of sight. That was Ilusha's own account of it. He confessed it to\nme, and cried bitterly. He hugged me, shaking all over. He kept on\nrepeating 'He ran away squealing': the sight of that haunted him. He was\ntormented by remorse, I could see that. I took it seriously. I determined\nto give him a lesson for other things as well. So I must confess I wasn't\nquite straightforward, and pretended to be more indignant perhaps than I\nwas. 'You've done a nasty thing,' I said, 'you are a scoundrel. I won't\ntell of it, of course, but I shall have nothing more to do with you for a\ntime. I'll think it over and let you know through Smurov'--that's the boy\nwho's just come with me; he's always ready to do anything for me--'whether\nI will have anything to do with you in the future or whether I give you up\nfor good as a scoundrel.' He was tremendously upset. I must own I felt I'd\ngone too far as I spoke, but there was no help for it. I did what I\nthought best at the time. A day or two after, I sent Smurov to tell him\nthat I would not speak to him again. That's what we call it when two\nschoolfellows refuse to have anything more to do with one another.\nSecretly I only meant to send him to Coventry for a few days and then, if\nI saw signs of repentance, to hold out my hand to him again. That was my\nintention. But what do you think happened? He heard Smurov's message, his\neyes flashed. 'Tell Krassotkin from me,' he cried, 'that I will throw\nbread with pins to all the dogs--all--all of them!' 'So he's going in for a\nlittle temper. We must smoke it out of him.' And I began to treat him with\ncontempt; whenever I met him I turned away or smiled sarcastically. And\njust then that affair with his father happened. You remember? You must\nrealize that he was fearfully worked up by what had happened already. The\nboys, seeing I'd given him up, set on him and taunted him, shouting, 'Wisp\nof tow, wisp of tow!' And he had soon regular skirmishes with them, which\nI am very sorry for. They seem to have given him one very bad beating. One\nday he flew at them all as they were coming out of school. I stood a few\nyards off, looking on. And, I swear, I don't remember that I laughed; it\nwas quite the other way, I felt awfully sorry for him, in another minute I\nwould have run up to take his part. But he suddenly met my eyes. I don't\nknow what he fancied; but he pulled out a penknife, rushed at me, and\nstruck at my thigh, here in my right leg. I didn't move. I don't mind\nowning I am plucky sometimes, Karamazov. I simply looked at him\ncontemptuously, as though to say, 'This is how you repay all my kindness!\nDo it again, if you like, I'm at your service.' But he didn't stab me\nagain; he broke down, he was frightened at what he had done, he threw away\nthe knife, burst out crying, and ran away. I did not sneak on him, of\ncourse, and I made them all keep quiet, so it shouldn't come to the ears\nof the masters. I didn't even tell my mother till it had healed up. And\nthe wound was a mere scratch. And then I heard that the same day he'd been\nthrowing stones and had bitten your finger--but you understand now what a\nstate he was in! Well, it can't be helped: it was stupid of me not to come\nand forgive him--that is, to make it up with him--when he was taken ill. I\nam sorry for it now. But I had a special reason. So now I've told you all\nabout it ... but I'm afraid it was stupid of me.\"\n\n\"Oh, what a pity,\" exclaimed Alyosha, with feeling, \"that I didn't know\nbefore what terms you were on with him, or I'd have come to you long ago\nto beg you to go to him with me. Would you believe it, when he was\nfeverish he talked about you in delirium. I didn't know how much you were\nto him! And you've really not succeeded in finding that dog? His father\nand the boys have been hunting all over the town for it. Would you believe\nit, since he's been ill, I've three times heard him repeat with tears,\n'It's because I killed Zhutchka, father, that I am ill now. God is\npunishing me for it.' He can't get that idea out of his head. And if the\ndog were found and proved to be alive, one might almost fancy the joy\nwould cure him. We have all rested our hopes on you.\"\n\n\"Tell me, what made you hope that I should be the one to find him?\" Kolya\nasked, with great curiosity. \"Why did you reckon on me rather than any one\nelse?\"\n\n\"There was a report that you were looking for the dog, and that you would\nbring it when you'd found it. Smurov said something of the sort. We've all\nbeen trying to persuade Ilusha that the dog is alive, that it's been seen.\nThe boys brought him a live hare; he just looked at it, with a faint\nsmile, and asked them to set it free in the fields. And so we did. His\nfather has just this moment come back, bringing him a mastiff pup, hoping\nto comfort him with that; but I think it only makes it worse.\"\n\n\"Tell me, Karamazov, what sort of man is the father? I know him, but what\ndo you make of him--a mountebank, a buffoon?\"\n\n\"Oh, no; there are people of deep feeling who have been somehow crushed.\nBuffoonery in them is a form of resentful irony against those to whom they\ndaren't speak the truth, from having been for years humiliated and\nintimidated by them. Believe me, Krassotkin, that sort of buffoonery is\nsometimes tragic in the extreme. His whole life now is centered in Ilusha,\nand if Ilusha dies, he will either go mad with grief or kill himself. I\nfeel almost certain of that when I look at him now.\"\n\n\"I understand you, Karamazov. I see you understand human nature,\" Kolya\nadded, with feeling.\n\n\"And as soon as I saw you with a dog, I thought it was Zhutchka you were\nbringing.\"\n\n\"Wait a bit, Karamazov, perhaps we shall find it yet; but this is\nPerezvon. I'll let him go in now and perhaps it will amuse Ilusha more\nthan the mastiff pup. Wait a bit, Karamazov, you will know something in a\nminute. But, I say, I am keeping you here!\" Kolya cried suddenly. \"You've\nno overcoat on in this bitter cold. You see what an egoist I am. Oh, we\nare all egoists, Karamazov!\"\n\n\"Don't trouble; it is cold, but I don't often catch cold. Let us go in,\nthough, and, by the way, what is your name? I know you are called Kolya,\nbut what else?\"\n\n\"Nikolay--Nikolay Ivanovitch Krassotkin, or, as they say in official\ndocuments, 'Krassotkin son.' \" Kolya laughed for some reason, but added\nsuddenly, \"Of course I hate my name Nikolay.\"\n\n\"Why so?\"\n\n\"It's so trivial, so ordinary.\"\n\n\"You are thirteen?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"No, fourteen--that is, I shall be fourteen very soon, in a fortnight. I'll\nconfess one weakness of mine, Karamazov, just to you, since it's our first\nmeeting, so that you may understand my character at once. I hate being\nasked my age, more than that ... and in fact ... there's a libelous story\ngoing about me, that last week I played robbers with the preparatory boys.\nIt's a fact that I did play with them, but it's a perfect libel to say I\ndid it for my own amusement. I have reasons for believing that you've\nheard the story; but I wasn't playing for my own amusement, it was for the\nsake of the children, because they couldn't think of anything to do by\nthemselves. But they've always got some silly tale. This is an awful town\nfor gossip, I can tell you.\"\n\n\"But what if you had been playing for your own amusement, what's the\nharm?\"\n\n\"Come, I say, for my own amusement! You don't play horses, do you?\"\n\n\"But you must look at it like this,\" said Alyosha, smiling. \"Grown-up\npeople go to the theater and there the adventures of all sorts of heroes\nare represented--sometimes there are robbers and battles, too--and isn't\nthat just the same thing, in a different form, of course? And young\npeople's games of soldiers or robbers in their playtime are also art in\nits first stage. You know, they spring from the growing artistic instincts\nof the young. And sometimes these games are much better than performances\nin the theater, the only difference is that people go there to look at the\nactors, while in these games the young people are the actors themselves.\nBut that's only natural.\"\n\n\"You think so? Is that your idea?\" Kolya looked at him intently. \"Oh, you\nknow, that's rather an interesting view. When I go home, I'll think it\nover. I'll admit I thought I might learn something from you. I've come to\nlearn of you, Karamazov,\" Kolya concluded, in a voice full of spontaneous\nfeeling.\n\n\"And I of you,\" said Alyosha, smiling and pressing his hand.\n\nKolya was much pleased with Alyosha. What struck him most was that he\ntreated him exactly like an equal and that he talked to him just as if he\nwere \"quite grown up.\"\n\n\"I'll show you something directly, Karamazov; it's a theatrical\nperformance, too,\" he said, laughing nervously. \"That's why I've come.\"\n\n\"Let us go first to the people of the house, on the left. All the boys\nleave their coats in there, because the room is small and hot.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm only coming in for a minute. I'll keep on my overcoat. Perezvon\nwill stay here in the passage and be dead. _Ici_, Perezvon, lie down and\nbe dead! You see how he's dead. I'll go in first and explore, then I'll\nwhistle to him when I think fit, and you'll see, he'll dash in like mad.\nOnly Smurov must not forget to open the door at the moment. I'll arrange\nit all and you'll see something.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. By Ilusha's Bedside\n\n\nThe room inhabited by the family of the retired captain Snegiryov is\nalready familiar to the reader. It was close and crowded at that moment\nwith a number of visitors. Several boys were sitting with Ilusha, and\nthough all of them, like Smurov, were prepared to deny that it was Alyosha\nwho had brought them and reconciled them with Ilusha, it was really the\nfact. All the art he had used had been to take them, one by one, to\nIlusha, without \"sheepish sentimentality,\" appearing to do so casually and\nwithout design. It was a great consolation to Ilusha in his suffering. He\nwas greatly touched by seeing the almost tender affection and sympathy\nshown him by these boys, who had been his enemies. Krassotkin was the only\none missing and his absence was a heavy load on Ilusha's heart. Perhaps\nthe bitterest of all his bitter memories was his stabbing Krassotkin, who\nhad been his one friend and protector. Clever little Smurov, who was the\nfirst to make it up with Ilusha, thought it was so. But when Smurov hinted\nto Krassotkin that Alyosha wanted to come and see him about something, the\nlatter cut him short, bidding Smurov tell \"Karamazov\" at once that he knew\nbest what to do, that he wanted no one's advice, and that, if he went to\nsee Ilusha, he would choose his own time for he had \"his own reasons.\"\n\nThat was a fortnight before this Sunday. That was why Alyosha had not been\nto see him, as he had meant to. But though he waited, he sent Smurov to\nhim twice again. Both times Krassotkin met him with a curt, impatient\nrefusal, sending Alyosha a message not to bother him any more, that if he\ncame himself, he, Krassotkin, would not go to Ilusha at all. Up to the\nvery last day, Smurov did not know that Kolya meant to go to Ilusha that\nmorning, and only the evening before, as he parted from Smurov, Kolya\nabruptly told him to wait at home for him next morning, for he would go\nwith him to the Snegiryovs', but warned him on no account to say he was\ncoming, as he wanted to drop in casually. Smurov obeyed. Smurov's fancy\nthat Kolya would bring back the lost dog was based on the words Kolya had\ndropped that \"they must be asses not to find the dog, if it was alive.\"\nWhen Smurov, waiting for an opportunity, timidly hinted at his guess about\nthe dog, Krassotkin flew into a violent rage. \"I'm not such an ass as to\ngo hunting about the town for other people's dogs when I've got a dog of\nmy own! And how can you imagine a dog could be alive after swallowing a\npin? Sheepish sentimentality, that's what it is!\"\n\nFor the last fortnight Ilusha had not left his little bed under the ikons\nin the corner. He had not been to school since the day he met Alyosha and\nbit his finger. He was taken ill the same day, though for a month\nafterwards he was sometimes able to get up and walk about the room and\npassage. But latterly he had become so weak that he could not move without\nhelp from his father. His father was terribly concerned about him. He even\ngave up drinking and was almost crazy with terror that his boy would die.\nAnd often, especially after leading him round the room on his arm and\nputting him back to bed, he would run to a dark corner in the passage and,\nleaning his head against the wall, he would break into paroxysms of\nviolent weeping, stifling his sobs that they might not be heard by Ilusha.\n\nReturning to the room, he would usually begin doing something to amuse and\ncomfort his precious boy; he would tell him stories, funny anecdotes, or\nwould mimic comic people he had happened to meet, even imitate the howls\nand cries of animals. But Ilusha could not bear to see his father fooling\nand playing the buffoon. Though the boy tried not to show how he disliked\nit, he saw with an aching heart that his father was an object of contempt,\nand he was continually haunted by the memory of the \"wisp of tow\" and that\n\"terrible day.\"\n\nNina, Ilusha's gentle, crippled sister, did not like her father's\nbuffoonery either (Varvara had been gone for some time past to Petersburg\nto study at the university). But the half-imbecile mother was greatly\ndiverted and laughed heartily when her husband began capering about or\nperforming something. It was the only way she could be amused; all the\nrest of the time she was grumbling and complaining that now every one had\nforgotten her, that no one treated her with respect, that she was\nslighted, and so on. But during the last few days she had completely\nchanged. She began looking constantly at Ilusha's bed in the corner and\nseemed lost in thought. She was more silent, quieter, and, if she cried,\nshe cried quietly so as not to be heard. The captain noticed the change in\nher with mournful perplexity. The boys' visits at first only angered her,\nbut later on their merry shouts and stories began to divert her, and at\nlast she liked them so much that, if the boys had given up coming, she\nwould have felt dreary without them. When the children told some story or\nplayed a game, she laughed and clapped her hands. She called some of them\nto her and kissed them. She was particularly fond of Smurov.\n\nAs for the captain, the presence in his room of the children, who came to\ncheer up Ilusha, filled his heart from the first with ecstatic joy. He\neven hoped that Ilusha would now get over his depression, and that that\nwould hasten his recovery. In spite of his alarm about Ilusha, he had not,\ntill lately, felt one minute's doubt of his boy's ultimate recovery.\n\nHe met his little visitors with homage, waited upon them hand and foot; he\nwas ready to be their horse and even began letting them ride on his back,\nbut Ilusha did not like the game and it was given up. He began buying\nlittle things for them, gingerbread and nuts, gave them tea and cut them\nsandwiches. It must be noted that all this time he had plenty of money. He\nhad taken the two hundred roubles from Katerina Ivanovna just as Alyosha\nhad predicted he would. And afterwards Katerina Ivanovna, learning more\nabout their circumstances and Ilusha's illness, visited them herself, made\nthe acquaintance of the family, and succeeded in fascinating the half-\nimbecile mother. Since then she had been lavish in helping them, and the\ncaptain, terror-stricken at the thought that his boy might be dying,\nforgot his pride and humbly accepted her assistance.\n\nAll this time Doctor Herzenstube, who was called in by Katerina Ivanovna,\ncame punctually every other day, but little was gained by his visits and\nhe dosed the invalid mercilessly. But on that Sunday morning a new doctor\nwas expected, who had come from Moscow, where he had a great reputation.\nKaterina Ivanovna had sent for him from Moscow at great expense, not\nexpressly for Ilusha, but for another object of which more will be said in\nits place hereafter. But, as he had come, she had asked him to see Ilusha\nas well, and the captain had been told to expect him. He hadn't the\nslightest idea that Kolya Krassotkin was coming, though he had long wished\nfor a visit from the boy for whom Ilusha was fretting.\n\nAt the moment when Krassotkin opened the door and came into the room, the\ncaptain and all the boys were round Ilusha's bed, looking at a tiny\nmastiff pup, which had only been born the day before, though the captain\nhad bespoken it a week ago to comfort and amuse Ilusha, who was still\nfretting over the lost and probably dead Zhutchka. Ilusha, who had heard\nthree days before that he was to be presented with a puppy, not an\nordinary puppy, but a pedigree mastiff (a very important point, of\ncourse), tried from delicacy of feeling to pretend that he was pleased.\nBut his father and the boys could not help seeing that the puppy only\nserved to recall to his little heart the thought of the unhappy dog he had\nkilled. The puppy lay beside him feebly moving and he, smiling sadly,\nstroked it with his thin, pale, wasted hand. Clearly he liked the puppy,\nbut ... it wasn't Zhutchka; if he could have had Zhutchka and the puppy,\ntoo, then he would have been completely happy.\n\n\"Krassotkin!\" cried one of the boys suddenly. He was the first to see him\ncome in.\n\nKrassotkin's entrance made a general sensation; the boys moved away and\nstood on each side of the bed, so that he could get a full view of Ilusha.\nThe captain ran eagerly to meet Kolya.\n\n\"Please come in ... you are welcome!\" he said hurriedly. \"Ilusha, Mr.\nKrassotkin has come to see you!\"\n\nBut Krassotkin, shaking hands with him hurriedly, instantly showed his\ncomplete knowledge of the manners of good society. He turned first to the\ncaptain's wife sitting in her arm-chair, who was very ill-humored at the\nmoment, and was grumbling that the boys stood between her and Ilusha's bed\nand did not let her see the new puppy. With the greatest courtesy he made\nher a bow, scraping his foot, and turning to Nina, he made her, as the\nonly other lady present, a similar bow. This polite behavior made an\nextremely favorable impression on the deranged lady.\n\n\"There, you can see at once he is a young man that has been well brought\nup,\" she commented aloud, throwing up her hands; \"but as for our other\nvisitors they come in one on the top of another.\"\n\n\"How do you mean, mamma, one on the top of another, how is that?\" muttered\nthe captain affectionately, though a little anxious on her account.\n\n\"That's how they ride in. They get on each other's shoulders in the\npassage and prance in like that on a respectable family. Strange sort of\nvisitors!\"\n\n\"But who's come in like that, mamma?\"\n\n\"Why, that boy came in riding on that one's back and this one on that\none's.\"\n\nKolya was already by Ilusha's bedside. The sick boy turned visibly paler.\nHe raised himself in the bed and looked intently at Kolya. Kolya had not\nseen his little friend for two months, and he was overwhelmed at the sight\nof him. He had never imagined that he would see such a wasted, yellow\nface, such enormous, feverishly glowing eyes and such thin little hands.\nHe saw, with grieved surprise, Ilusha's rapid, hard breathing and dry\nlips. He stepped close to him, held out his hand, and almost overwhelmed,\nhe said:\n\n\"Well, old man ... how are you?\" But his voice failed him, he couldn't\nachieve an appearance of ease; his face suddenly twitched and the corners\nof his mouth quivered. Ilusha smiled a pitiful little smile, still unable\nto utter a word. Something moved Kolya to raise his hand and pass it over\nIlusha's hair.\n\n\"Never mind!\" he murmured softly to him to cheer him up, or perhaps not\nknowing why he said it. For a minute they were silent again.\n\n\"Hallo, so you've got a new puppy?\" Kolya said suddenly, in a most callous\nvoice.\n\n\"Ye--es,\" answered Ilusha in a long whisper, gasping for breath.\n\n\"A black nose, that means he'll be fierce, a good house-dog,\" Kolya\nobserved gravely and stolidly, as if the only thing he cared about was the\npuppy and its black nose. But in reality he still had to do his utmost to\ncontrol his feelings not to burst out crying like a child, and do what he\nwould he could not control it. \"When it grows up, you'll have to keep it\non the chain, I'm sure.\"\n\n\"He'll be a huge dog!\" cried one of the boys.\n\n\"Of course he will,\" \"a mastiff,\" \"large,\" \"like this,\" \"as big as a\ncalf,\" shouted several voices.\n\n\"As big as a calf, as a real calf,\" chimed in the captain. \"I got one like\nthat on purpose, one of the fiercest breed, and his parents are huge and\nvery fierce, they stand as high as this from the floor.... Sit down here,\non Ilusha's bed, or here on the bench. You are welcome, we've been hoping\nto see you a long time.... You were so kind as to come with Alexey\nFyodorovitch?\"\n\nKrassotkin sat on the edge of the bed, at Ilusha's feet. Though he had\nperhaps prepared a free-and-easy opening for the conversation on his way,\nnow he completely lost the thread of it.\n\n\"No ... I came with Perezvon. I've got a dog now, called Perezvon. A\nSlavonic name. He's out there ... if I whistle, he'll run in. I've brought\na dog, too,\" he said, addressing Ilusha all at once. \"Do you remember\nZhutchka, old man?\" he suddenly fired the question at him.\n\nIlusha's little face quivered. He looked with an agonized expression at\nKolya. Alyosha, standing at the door, frowned and signed to Kolya not to\nspeak of Zhutchka, but he did not or would not notice.\n\n\"Where ... is Zhutchka?\" Ilusha asked in a broken voice.\n\n\"Oh, well, my boy, your Zhutchka's lost and done for!\"\n\nIlusha did not speak, but he fixed an intent gaze once more on Kolya.\nAlyosha, catching Kolya's eye, signed to him vigorously again, but he\nturned away his eyes pretending not to have noticed.\n\n\"It must have run away and died somewhere. It must have died after a meal\nlike that,\" Kolya pronounced pitilessly, though he seemed a little\nbreathless. \"But I've got a dog, Perezvon ... A Slavonic name.... I've\nbrought him to show you.\"\n\n\"I don't want him!\" said Ilusha suddenly.\n\n\"No, no, you really must see him ... it will amuse you. I brought him on\npurpose.... He's the same sort of shaggy dog.... You allow me to call in\nmy dog, madam?\" He suddenly addressed Madame Snegiryov, with inexplicable\nexcitement in his manner.\n\n\"I don't want him, I don't want him!\" cried Ilusha, with a mournful break\nin his voice. There was a reproachful light in his eyes.\n\n\"You'd better,\" the captain started up from the chest by the wall on which\nhe had just sat down, \"you'd better ... another time,\" he muttered, but\nKolya could not be restrained. He hurriedly shouted to Smurov, \"Open the\ndoor,\" and as soon as it was open, he blew his whistle. Perezvon dashed\nheadlong into the room.\n\n\"Jump, Perezvon, beg! Beg!\" shouted Kolya, jumping up, and the dog stood\nerect on its hind-legs by Ilusha's bedside. What followed was a surprise\nto every one: Ilusha started, lurched violently forward, bent over\nPerezvon and gazed at him, faint with suspense.\n\n\"It's ... Zhutchka!\" he cried suddenly, in a voice breaking with joy and\nsuffering.\n\n\"And who did you think it was?\" Krassotkin shouted with all his might, in\na ringing, happy voice, and bending down he seized the dog and lifted him\nup to Ilusha.\n\n\"Look, old man, you see, blind of one eye and the left ear is torn, just\nthe marks you described to me. It was by that I found him. I found him\ndirectly. He did not belong to any one!\" he explained, turning quickly to\nthe captain, to his wife, to Alyosha and then again to Ilusha. \"He used to\nlive in the Fedotovs' back-yard. Though he made his home there, they did\nnot feed him. He was a stray dog that had run away from the village ... I\nfound him.... You see, old man, he couldn't have swallowed what you gave\nhim. If he had, he must have died, he must have! So he must have spat it\nout, since he is alive. You did not see him do it. But the pin pricked his\ntongue, that is why he squealed. He ran away squealing and you thought\nhe'd swallowed it. He might well squeal, because the skin of dogs' mouths\nis so tender ... tenderer than in men, much tenderer!\" Kolya cried\nimpetuously, his face glowing and radiant with delight. Ilusha could not\nspeak. White as a sheet, he gazed open-mouthed at Kolya, with his great\neyes almost starting out of his head. And if Krassotkin, who had no\nsuspicion of it, had known what a disastrous and fatal effect such a\nmoment might have on the sick child's health, nothing would have induced\nhim to play such a trick on him. But Alyosha was perhaps the only person\nin the room who realized it. As for the captain he behaved like a small\nchild.\n\n\"Zhutchka! It's Zhutchka!\" he cried in a blissful voice, \"Ilusha, this is\nZhutchka, your Zhutchka! Mamma, this is Zhutchka!\" He was almost weeping.\n\n\"And I never guessed!\" cried Smurov regretfully. \"Bravo, Krassotkin! I\nsaid he'd find the dog and here he's found him.\"\n\n\"Here he's found him!\" another boy repeated gleefully.\n\n\"Krassotkin's a brick!\" cried a third voice.\n\n\"He's a brick, he's a brick!\" cried the other boys, and they began\nclapping.\n\n\"Wait, wait,\" Krassotkin did his utmost to shout above them all. \"I'll\ntell you how it happened, that's the whole point. I found him, I took him\nhome and hid him at once. I kept him locked up at home and did not show\nhim to any one till to-day. Only Smurov has known for the last fortnight,\nbut I assured him this dog was called Perezvon and he did not guess. And\nmeanwhile I taught the dog all sorts of tricks. You should only see all\nthe things he can do! I trained him so as to bring you a well-trained dog,\nin good condition, old man, so as to be able to say to you, 'See, old man,\nwhat a fine dog your Zhutchka is now!' Haven't you a bit of meat? He'll\nshow you a trick that will make you die with laughing. A piece of meat,\nhaven't you got any?\"\n\nThe captain ran across the passage to the landlady, where their cooking\nwas done. Not to lose precious time, Kolya, in desperate haste, shouted to\nPerezvon, \"Dead!\" And the dog immediately turned round and lay on his back\nwith its four paws in the air. The boys laughed. Ilusha looked on with the\nsame suffering smile, but the person most delighted with the dog's\nperformance was \"mamma.\" She laughed at the dog and began snapping her\nfingers and calling it, \"Perezvon, Perezvon!\"\n\n\"Nothing will make him get up, nothing!\" Kolya cried triumphantly, proud\nof his success. \"He won't move for all the shouting in the world, but if I\ncall to him, he'll jump up in a minute. Ici, Perezvon!\" The dog leapt up\nand bounded about, whining with delight. The captain ran back with a piece\nof cooked beef.\n\n\"Is it hot?\" Kolya inquired hurriedly, with a business-like air, taking\nthe meat. \"Dogs don't like hot things. No, it's all right. Look,\neverybody, look, Ilusha, look, old man; why aren't you looking? He does\nnot look at him, now I've brought him.\"\n\nThe new trick consisted in making the dog stand motionless with his nose\nout and putting a tempting morsel of meat just on his nose. The luckless\ndog had to stand without moving, with the meat on his nose, as long as his\nmaster chose to keep him, without a movement, perhaps for half an hour.\nBut he kept Perezvon only for a brief moment.\n\n\"Paid for!\" cried Kolya, and the meat passed in a flash from the dog's\nnose to his mouth. The audience, of course, expressed enthusiasm and\nsurprise.\n\n\"Can you really have put off coming all this time simply to train the\ndog?\" exclaimed Alyosha, with an involuntary note of reproach in his\nvoice.\n\n\"Simply for that!\" answered Kolya, with perfect simplicity. \"I wanted to\nshow him in all his glory.\"\n\n\"Perezvon! Perezvon,\" called Ilusha suddenly, snapping his thin fingers\nand beckoning to the dog.\n\n\"What is it? Let him jump up on the bed! _Ici_, Perezvon!\" Kolya slapped\nthe bed and Perezvon darted up by Ilusha. The boy threw both arms round\nhis head and Perezvon instantly licked his cheek. Ilusha crept close to\nhim, stretched himself out in bed and hid his face in the dog's shaggy\ncoat.\n\n\"Dear, dear!\" kept exclaiming the captain. Kolya sat down again on the\nedge of the bed.\n\n\"Ilusha, I can show you another trick. I've brought you a little cannon.\nYou remember, I told you about it before and you said how much you'd like\nto see it. Well, here, I've brought it to you.\"\n\nAnd Kolya hurriedly pulled out of his satchel the little bronze cannon. He\nhurried, because he was happy himself. Another time he would have waited\ntill the sensation made by Perezvon had passed off, now he hurried on\nregardless of all consideration. \"You are all happy now,\" he felt, \"so\nhere's something to make you happier!\" He was perfectly enchanted himself.\n\n\"I've been coveting this thing for a long while; it's for you, old man,\nit's for you. It belonged to Morozov, it was no use to him, he had it from\nhis brother. I swopped a book from father's book-case for it, _A Kinsman\nof Mahomet or Salutary Folly_, a scandalous book published in Moscow a\nhundred years ago, before they had any censorship. And Morozov has a taste\nfor such things. He was grateful to me, too....\"\n\nKolya held the cannon in his hand so that all could see and admire it.\nIlusha raised himself, and, with his right arm still round the dog, he\ngazed enchanted at the toy. The sensation was even greater when Kolya\nannounced that he had gunpowder too, and that it could be fired off at\nonce \"if it won't alarm the ladies.\" \"Mamma\" immediately asked to look at\nthe toy closer and her request was granted. She was much pleased with the\nlittle bronze cannon on wheels and began rolling it to and fro on her lap.\nShe readily gave permission for the cannon to be fired, without any idea\nof what she had been asked. Kolya showed the powder and the shot. The\ncaptain, as a military man, undertook to load it, putting in a minute\nquantity of powder. He asked that the shot might be put off till another\ntime. The cannon was put on the floor, aiming towards an empty part of the\nroom, three grains of powder were thrust into the touch-hole and a match\nwas put to it. A magnificent explosion followed. Mamma was startled, but\nat once laughed with delight. The boys gazed in speechless triumph. But\nthe captain, looking at Ilusha, was more enchanted than any of them. Kolya\npicked up the cannon and immediately presented it to Ilusha, together with\nthe powder and the shot.\n\n\"I got it for you, for you! I've been keeping it for you a long time,\" he\nrepeated once more in his delight.\n\n\"Oh, give it to me! No, give me the cannon!\" mamma began begging like a\nlittle child. Her face showed a piteous fear that she would not get it.\nKolya was disconcerted. The captain fidgeted uneasily.\n\n\"Mamma, mamma,\" he ran to her, \"the cannon's yours, of course, but let\nIlusha have it, because it's a present to him, but it's just as good as\nyours. Ilusha will always let you play with it; it shall belong to both of\nyou, both of you.\"\n\n\"No, I don't want it to belong to both of us, I want it to be mine\naltogether, not Ilusha's,\" persisted mamma, on the point of tears.\n\n\"Take it, mother, here, keep it!\" Ilusha cried. \"Krassotkin, may I give it\nto my mother?\" he turned to Krassotkin with an imploring face, as though\nhe were afraid he might be offended at his giving his present to some one\nelse.\n\n\"Of course you may,\" Krassotkin assented heartily, and, taking the cannon\nfrom Ilusha, he handed it himself to mamma with a polite bow. She was so\ntouched that she cried.\n\n\"Ilusha, darling, he's the one who loves his mamma!\" she said tenderly,\nand at once began wheeling the cannon to and fro on her lap again.\n\n\"Mamma, let me kiss your hand.\" The captain darted up to her at once and\ndid so.\n\n\"And I never saw such a charming fellow as this nice boy,\" said the\ngrateful lady, pointing to Krassotkin.\n\n\"And I'll bring you as much powder as you like, Ilusha. We make the powder\nourselves now. Borovikov found out how it's made--twenty-four parts of\nsaltpeter, ten of sulphur and six of birchwood charcoal. It's all pounded\ntogether, mixed into a paste with water and rubbed through a tammy\nsieve--that's how it's done.\"\n\n\"Smurov told me about your powder, only father says it's not real\ngunpowder,\" responded Ilusha.\n\n\"Not real?\" Kolya flushed. \"It burns. I don't know, of course.\"\n\n\"No, I didn't mean that,\" put in the captain with a guilty face. \"I only\nsaid that real powder is not made like that, but that's nothing, it can be\nmade so.\"\n\n\"I don't know, you know best. We lighted some in a pomatum pot, it burned\nsplendidly, it all burnt away leaving only a tiny ash. But that was only\nthe paste, and if you rub it through ... but of course you know best, I\ndon't know.... And Bulkin's father thrashed him on account of our powder,\ndid you hear?\" he turned to Ilusha.\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Ilusha. He listened to Kolya with immense interest and\nenjoyment.\n\n\"We had prepared a whole bottle of it and he used to keep it under his\nbed. His father saw it. He said it might explode, and thrashed him on the\nspot. He was going to make a complaint against me to the masters. He is\nnot allowed to go about with me now, no one is allowed to go about with me\nnow. Smurov is not allowed to either, I've got a bad name with every one.\nThey say I'm a 'desperate character,' \" Kolya smiled scornfully. \"It all\nbegan from what happened on the railway.\"\n\n\"Ah, we've heard of that exploit of yours, too,\" cried the captain. \"How\ncould you lie still on the line? Is it possible you weren't the least\nafraid, lying there under the train? Weren't you frightened?\"\n\nThe captain was abject in his flattery of Kolya.\n\n\"N--not particularly,\" answered Kolya carelessly. \"What's blasted my\nreputation more than anything here was that cursed goose,\" he said,\nturning again to Ilusha. But though he assumed an unconcerned air as he\ntalked, he still could not control himself and was continually missing the\nnote he tried to keep up.\n\n\"Ah! I heard about the goose!\" Ilusha laughed, beaming all over. \"They\ntold me, but I didn't understand. Did they really take you to the court?\"\n\n\"The most stupid, trivial affair, they made a mountain of a molehill as\nthey always do,\" Kolya began carelessly. \"I was walking through the\nmarket-place here one day, just when they'd driven in the geese. I stopped\nand looked at them. All at once a fellow, who is an errand-boy at\nPlotnikov's now, looked at me and said, 'What are you looking at the geese\nfor?' I looked at him; he was a stupid, moon-faced fellow of twenty. I am\nalways on the side of the peasantry, you know. I like talking to the\npeasants.... We've dropped behind the peasants--that's an axiom. I believe\nyou are laughing, Karamazov?\"\n\n\"No, Heaven forbid, I am listening,\" said Alyosha with a most good-natured\nair, and the sensitive Kolya was immediately reassured.\n\n\"My theory, Karamazov, is clear and simple,\" he hurried on again, looking\npleased. \"I believe in the people and am always glad to give them their\ndue, but I am not for spoiling them, that is a _sine qua non_ ... But I\nwas telling you about the goose. So I turned to the fool and answered, 'I\nam wondering what the goose thinks about.' He looked at me quite stupidly,\n'And what does the goose think about?' he asked. 'Do you see that cart\nfull of oats?' I said. 'The oats are dropping out of the sack, and the\ngoose has put its neck right under the wheel to gobble them up--do you\nsee?' 'I see that quite well,' he said. 'Well,' said I, 'if that cart were\nto move on a little, would it break the goose's neck or not?' 'It'd be\nsure to break it,' and he grinned all over his face, highly delighted.\n'Come on, then,' said I, 'let's try.' 'Let's,' he said. And it did not\ntake us long to arrange: he stood at the bridle without being noticed, and\nI stood on one side to direct the goose. And the owner wasn't looking, he\nwas talking to some one, so I had nothing to do, the goose thrust its head\nin after the oats of itself, under the cart, just under the wheel. I\nwinked at the lad, he tugged at the bridle, and crack. The goose's neck\nwas broken in half. And, as luck would have it, all the peasants saw us at\nthat moment and they kicked up a shindy at once. 'You did that on\npurpose!' 'No, not on purpose.' 'Yes, you did, on purpose!' Well, they\nshouted, 'Take him to the justice of the peace!' They took me, too. 'You\nwere there, too,' they said, 'you helped, you're known all over the\nmarket!' And, for some reason, I really am known all over the market,\"\nKolya added conceitedly. \"We all went off to the justice's, they brought\nthe goose, too. The fellow was crying in a great funk, simply blubbering\nlike a woman. And the farmer kept shouting that you could kill any number\nof geese like that. Well, of course, there were witnesses. The justice of\nthe peace settled it in a minute, that the farmer was to be paid a rouble\nfor the goose, and the fellow to have the goose. And he was warned not to\nplay such pranks again. And the fellow kept blubbering like a woman. 'It\nwasn't me,' he said, 'it was he egged me on,' and he pointed to me. I\nanswered with the utmost composure that I hadn't egged him on, that I\nsimply stated the general proposition, had spoken hypothetically. The\njustice of the peace smiled and was vexed with himself at once for having\nsmiled. 'I'll complain to your masters of you, so that for the future you\nmayn't waste your time on such general propositions, instead of sitting at\nyour books and learning your lessons.' He didn't complain to the masters,\nthat was a joke, but the matter was noised abroad and came to the ears of\nthe masters. Their ears are long, you know! The classical master,\nKolbasnikov, was particularly shocked about it, but Dardanelov got me off\nagain. But Kolbasnikov is savage with every one now like a green ass. Did\nyou know, Ilusha, he is just married, got a dowry of a thousand roubles,\nand his bride's a regular fright of the first rank and the last degree.\nThe third-class fellows wrote an epigram on it:\n\n\n    Astounding news has reached the class,\n    Kolbasnikov has been an ass.\n\n\nAnd so on, awfully funny, I'll bring it to you later on. I say nothing\nagainst Dardanelov, he is a learned man, there's no doubt about it. I\nrespect men like that and it's not because he stood up for me.\"\n\n\"But you took him down about the founders of Troy!\" Smurov put in\nsuddenly, unmistakably proud of Krassotkin at such a moment. He was\nparticularly pleased with the story of the goose.\n\n\"Did you really take him down?\" the captain inquired, in a flattering way.\n\"On the question who founded Troy? We heard of it, Ilusha told me about it\nat the time.\"\n\n\"He knows everything, father, he knows more than any of us!\" put in\nIlusha; \"he only pretends to be like that, but really he is top in every\nsubject....\"\n\nIlusha looked at Kolya with infinite happiness.\n\n\"Oh, that's all nonsense about Troy, a trivial matter. I consider this an\nunimportant question,\" said Kolya with haughty humility. He had by now\ncompletely recovered his dignity, though he was still a little uneasy. He\nfelt that he was greatly excited and that he had talked about the goose,\nfor instance, with too little reserve, while Alyosha had looked serious\nand had not said a word all the time. And the vain boy began by degrees to\nhave a rankling fear that Alyosha was silent because he despised him, and\nthought he was showing off before him. If he dared to think anything like\nthat Kolya would--\n\n\"I regard the question as quite a trivial one,\" he rapped out again,\nproudly.\n\n\"And I know who founded Troy,\" a boy, who had not spoken before, said\nsuddenly, to the surprise of every one. He was silent and seemed to be\nshy. He was a pretty boy of about eleven, called Kartashov. He was sitting\nnear the door. Kolya looked at him with dignified amazement.\n\nThe fact was that the identity of the founders of Troy had become a secret\nfor the whole school, a secret which could only be discovered by reading\nSmaragdov, and no one had Smaragdov but Kolya. One day, when Kolya's back\nwas turned, Kartashov hastily opened Smaragdov, which lay among Kolya's\nbooks, and immediately lighted on the passage relating to the foundation\nof Troy. This was a good time ago, but he felt uneasy and could not bring\nhimself to announce publicly that he too knew who had founded Troy, afraid\nof what might happen and of Krassotkin's somehow putting him to shame over\nit. But now he couldn't resist saying it. For weeks he had been longing\nto.\n\n\"Well, who did found it?\" asked Kolya, turning to him with haughty\nsuperciliousness. He saw from his face that he really did know and at once\nmade up his mind how to take it. There was, so to speak, a discordant note\nin the general harmony.\n\n\"Troy was founded by Teucer, Dardanus, Ilius and Tros,\" the boy rapped out\nat once, and in the same instant he blushed, blushed so, that it was\npainful to look at him. But the boys stared at him, stared at him for a\nwhole minute, and then all the staring eyes turned at once and were\nfastened upon Kolya, who was still scanning the audacious boy with\ndisdainful composure.\n\n\"In what sense did they found it?\" he deigned to comment at last. \"And\nwhat is meant by founding a city or a state? What do they do? Did they go\nand each lay a brick, do you suppose?\"\n\nThere was laughter. The offending boy turned from pink to crimson. He was\nsilent and on the point of tears. Kolya held him so for a minute.\n\n\"Before you talk of a historical event like the foundation of a\nnationality, you must first understand what you mean by it,\" he admonished\nhim in stern, incisive tones. \"But I attach no consequence to these old\nwives' tales and I don't think much of universal history in general,\" he\nadded carelessly, addressing the company generally.\n\n\"Universal history?\" the captain inquired, looking almost scared.\n\n\"Yes, universal history! It's the study of the successive follies of\nmankind and nothing more. The only subjects I respect are mathematics and\nnatural science,\" said Kolya. He was showing off and he stole a glance at\nAlyosha; his was the only opinion he was afraid of there. But Alyosha was\nstill silent and still serious as before. If Alyosha had said a word it\nwould have stopped him, but Alyosha was silent and \"it might be the\nsilence of contempt,\" and that finally irritated Kolya.\n\n\"The classical languages, too ... they are simply madness, nothing more.\nYou seem to disagree with me again, Karamazov?\"\n\n\"I don't agree,\" said Alyosha, with a faint smile.\n\n\"The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a police\nmeasure, that's simply why it has been introduced into our schools.\" By\ndegrees Kolya began to get breathless again. \"Latin and Greek were\nintroduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the intellect.\nIt was dull before, so what could they do to make things duller? It was\nsenseless enough before, so what could they do to make it more senseless?\nSo they thought of Greek and Latin. That's my opinion, I hope I shall\nnever change it,\" Kolya finished abruptly. His cheeks were flushed.\n\n\"That's true,\" assented Smurov suddenly, in a ringing tone of conviction.\nHe had listened attentively.\n\n\"And yet he is first in Latin himself,\" cried one of the group of boys\nsuddenly.\n\n\"Yes, father, he says that and yet he is first in Latin,\" echoed Ilusha.\n\n\"What of it?\" Kolya thought fit to defend himself, though the praise was\nvery sweet to him. \"I am fagging away at Latin because I have to, because\nI promised my mother to pass my examination, and I think that whatever you\ndo, it's worth doing it well. But in my soul I have a profound contempt\nfor the classics and all that fraud.... You don't agree, Karamazov?\"\n\n\"Why 'fraud'?\" Alyosha smiled again.\n\n\"Well, all the classical authors have been translated into all languages,\nso it was not for the sake of studying the classics they introduced Latin,\nbut solely as a police measure, to stupefy the intelligence. So what can\none call it but a fraud?\"\n\n\"Why, who taught you all this?\" cried Alyosha, surprised at last.\n\n\"In the first place I am capable of thinking for myself without being\ntaught. Besides, what I said just now about the classics being translated\nour teacher Kolbasnikov has said to the whole of the third class.\"\n\n\"The doctor has come!\" cried Nina, who had been silent till then.\n\nA carriage belonging to Madame Hohlakov drove up to the gate. The captain,\nwho had been expecting the doctor all the morning, rushed headlong out to\nmeet him. \"Mamma\" pulled herself together and assumed a dignified air.\nAlyosha went up to Ilusha and began setting his pillows straight. Nina,\nfrom her invalid chair, anxiously watched him putting the bed tidy. The\nboys hurriedly took leave. Some of them promised to come again in the\nevening. Kolya called Perezvon and the dog jumped off the bed.\n\n\"I won't go away, I won't go away,\" Kolya said hastily to Ilusha. \"I'll\nwait in the passage and come back when the doctor's gone, I'll come back\nwith Perezvon.\"\n\nBut by now the doctor had entered, an important-looking person with long,\ndark whiskers and a shiny, shaven chin, wearing a bearskin coat. As he\ncrossed the threshold he stopped, taken aback; he probably fancied he had\ncome to the wrong place. \"How is this? Where am I?\" he muttered, not\nremoving his coat nor his peaked sealskin cap. The crowd, the poverty of\nthe room, the washing hanging on a line in the corner, puzzled him. The\ncaptain, bent double, was bowing low before him.\n\n\"It's here, sir, here, sir,\" he muttered cringingly; \"it's here, you've\ncome right, you were coming to us...\"\n\n\"Sne-gi-ryov?\" the doctor said loudly and pompously. \"Mr. Snegiryov--is\nthat you?\"\n\n\"That's me, sir!\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\nThe doctor looked round the room with a squeamish air once more and threw\noff his coat, displaying to all eyes the grand decoration at his neck. The\ncaptain caught the fur coat in the air, and the doctor took off his cap.\n\n\"Where is the patient?\" he asked emphatically.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. Precocity\n\n\n\"What do you think the doctor will say to him?\" Kolya asked quickly. \"What\na repulsive mug, though, hasn't he? I can't endure medicine!\"\n\n\"Ilusha is dying. I think that's certain,\" answered Alyosha, mournfully.\n\n\"They are rogues! Medicine's a fraud! I am glad to have made your\nacquaintance, though, Karamazov. I wanted to know you for a long time. I\nam only sorry we meet in such sad circumstances.\"\n\nKolya had a great inclination to say something even warmer and more\ndemonstrative, but he felt ill at ease. Alyosha noticed this, smiled, and\npressed his hand.\n\n\"I've long learned to respect you as a rare person,\" Kolya muttered again,\nfaltering and uncertain. \"I have heard you are a mystic and have been in\nthe monastery. I know you are a mystic, but ... that hasn't put me off.\nContact with real life will cure you.... It's always so with characters\nlike yours.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?\" Alyosha was rather\nastonished.\n\n\"Oh, God and all the rest of it.\"\n\n\"What, don't you believe in God?\"\n\n\"Oh, I've nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but\n... I admit that He is needed ... for the order of the universe and all\nthat ... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented,\"\nadded Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly fancied that Alyosha might\nthink he was trying to show off his knowledge and to prove that he was\n\"grown up.\" \"I haven't the slightest desire to show off my knowledge to\nhim,\" Kolya thought indignantly. And all of a sudden he felt horribly\nannoyed.\n\n\"I must confess I can't endure entering on such discussions,\" he said with\na final air. \"It's possible for one who doesn't believe in God to love\nmankind, don't you think so? Voltaire didn't believe in God and loved\nmankind?\" (\"I am at it again,\" he thought to himself.)\n\n\"Voltaire believed in God, though not very much, I think, and I don't\nthink he loved mankind very much either,\" said Alyosha quietly, gently,\nand quite naturally, as though he were talking to some one of his own age,\nor even older. Kolya was particularly struck by Alyosha's apparent\ndiffidence about his opinion of Voltaire. He seemed to be leaving the\nquestion for him, little Kolya, to settle.\n\n\"Have you read Voltaire?\" Alyosha finished.\n\n\"No, not to say read.... But I've read _Candide_ in the Russian\ntranslation ... in an absurd, grotesque, old translation ... (At it again!\nagain!)\"\n\n\"And did you understand it?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, everything.... That is ... Why do you suppose I shouldn't\nunderstand it? There's a lot of nastiness in it, of course.... Of course I\ncan understand that it's a philosophical novel and written to advocate an\nidea....\" Kolya was getting mixed by now. \"I am a Socialist, Karamazov, I\nam an incurable Socialist,\" he announced suddenly, apropos of nothing.\n\n\"A Socialist?\" laughed Alyosha. \"But when have you had time to become one?\nWhy, I thought you were only thirteen?\"\n\nKolya winced.\n\n\"In the first place I am not thirteen, but fourteen, fourteen in a\nfortnight,\" he flushed angrily, \"and in the second place I am at a\ncomplete loss to understand what my age has to do with it? The question is\nwhat are my convictions, not what is my age, isn't it?\"\n\n\"When you are older, you'll understand for yourself the influence of age\non convictions. I fancied, too, that you were not expressing your own\nideas,\" Alyosha answered serenely and modestly, but Kolya interrupted him\nhotly:\n\n\"Come, you want obedience and mysticism. You must admit that the Christian\nreligion, for instance, has only been of use to the rich and the powerful\nto keep the lower classes in slavery. That's so, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Ah, I know where you read that, and I am sure some one told you so!\"\ncried Alyosha.\n\n\"I say, what makes you think I read it? And certainly no one told me so. I\ncan think for myself.... I am not opposed to Christ, if you like. He was a\nmost humane person, and if He were alive to-day, He would be found in the\nranks of the revolutionists, and would perhaps play a conspicuous part....\nThere's no doubt about that.\"\n\n\"Oh, where, where did you get that from? What fool have you made friends\nwith?\" exclaimed Alyosha.\n\n\"Come, the truth will out! It has so chanced that I have often talked to\nMr. Rakitin, of course, but ... old Byelinsky said that, too, so they\nsay.\"\n\n\"Byelinsky? I don't remember. He hasn't written that anywhere.\"\n\n\"If he didn't write it, they say he said it. I heard that from a ... but\nnever mind.\"\n\n\"And have you read Byelinsky?\"\n\n\"Well, no ... I haven't read all of him, but ... I read the passage about\nTatyana, why she didn't go off with Onyegin.\"\n\n\"Didn't go off with Onyegin? Surely you don't ... understand that\nalready?\"\n\n\"Why, you seem to take me for little Smurov,\" said Kolya, with a grin of\nirritation. \"But please don't suppose I am such a revolutionist. I often\ndisagree with Mr. Rakitin. Though I mention Tatyana, I am not at all for\nthe emancipation of women. I acknowledge that women are a subject race and\nmust obey. _Les femmes tricottent_, as Napoleon said.\" Kolya, for some\nreason, smiled, \"And on that question at least I am quite of one mind with\nthat pseudo-great man. I think, too, that to leave one's own country and\nfly to America is mean, worse than mean--silly. Why go to America when one\nmay be of great service to humanity here? Now especially. There's a\nperfect mass of fruitful activity open to us. That's what I answered.\"\n\n\"What do you mean? Answered whom? Has some one suggested your going to\nAmerica already?\"\n\n\"I must own, they've been at me to go, but I declined. That's between\nourselves, of course, Karamazov; do you hear, not a word to any one. I say\nthis only to you. I am not at all anxious to fall into the clutches of the\nsecret police and take lessons at the Chain bridge.\n\n\n    _Long will you remember_\n    _The house at the Chain bridge._\n\n\nDo you remember? It's splendid. Why are you laughing? You don't suppose I\nam fibbing, do you?\" (\"What if he should find out that I've only that one\nnumber of _The Bell_ in father's bookcase, and haven't read any more of\nit?\" Kolya thought with a shudder.)\n\n\"Oh, no, I am not laughing and don't suppose for a moment that you are\nlying. No, indeed, I can't suppose so, for all this, alas! is perfectly\ntrue. But tell me, have you read Pushkin--_Onyegin_, for instance?... You\nspoke just now of Tatyana.\"\n\n\"No, I haven't read it yet, but I want to read it. I have no prejudices,\nKaramazov; I want to hear both sides. What makes you ask?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing.\"\n\n\"Tell me, Karamazov, have you an awful contempt for me?\" Kolya rapped out\nsuddenly and drew himself up before Alyosha, as though he were on drill.\n\"Be so kind as to tell me, without beating about the bush.\"\n\n\"I have a contempt for you?\" Alyosha looked at him wondering. \"What for? I\nam only sad that a charming nature such as yours should be perverted by\nall this crude nonsense before you have begun life.\"\n\n\"Don't be anxious about my nature,\" Kolya interrupted, not without\ncomplacency. \"But it's true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely\nsensitive. You smiled just now, and I fancied you seemed to--\"\n\n\"Oh, my smile meant something quite different. I'll tell you why I smiled.\nNot long ago I read the criticism made by a German who had lived in\nRussia, on our students and schoolboys of to-day. 'Show a Russian\nschoolboy,' he writes, 'a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about,\nand he will give you back the map next day with corrections on it.' No\nknowledge and unbounded conceit--that's what the German meant to say about\nthe Russian schoolboy.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's perfectly right,\" Kolya laughed suddenly, \"exactly so! Bravo\nthe German! But he did not see the good side, what do you think? Conceit\nmay be, that comes from youth, that will be corrected if need be, but, on\nthe other hand, there is an independent spirit almost from childhood,\nboldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of these sausage\nmakers, groveling before authority.... But the German was right all the\nsame. Bravo the German! But Germans want strangling all the same. Though\nthey are so good at science and learning they must be strangled.\"\n\n\"Strangled, what for?\" smiled Alyosha.\n\n\"Well, perhaps I am talking nonsense, I agree. I am awfully childish\nsometimes, and when I am pleased about anything I can't restrain myself\nand am ready to talk any stuff. But, I say, we are chattering away here\nabout nothing, and that doctor has been a long time in there. But perhaps\nhe's examining the mamma and that poor crippled Nina. I liked that Nina,\nyou know. She whispered to me suddenly as I was coming away, 'Why didn't\nyou come before?' And in such a voice, so reproachfully! I think she is\nawfully nice and pathetic.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes! Well, you'll be coming often, you will see what she is like. It\nwould do you a great deal of good to know people like that, to learn to\nvalue a great deal which you will find out from knowing these people,\"\nAlyosha observed warmly. \"That would have more effect on you than\nanything.\"\n\n\"Oh, how I regret and blame myself for not having come sooner!\" Kolya\nexclaimed, with bitter feeling.\n\n\"Yes, it's a great pity. You saw for yourself how delighted the poor child\nwas to see you. And how he fretted for you to come!\"\n\n\"Don't tell me! You make it worse! But it serves me right. What kept me\nfrom coming was my conceit, my egoistic vanity, and the beastly\nwilfullness, which I never can get rid of, though I've been struggling\nwith it all my life. I see that now. I am a beast in lots of ways,\nKaramazov!\"\n\n\"No, you have a charming nature, though it's been distorted, and I quite\nunderstand why you have had such an influence on this generous, morbidly\nsensitive boy,\" Alyosha answered warmly.\n\n\"And you say that to me!\" cried Kolya; \"and would you believe it, I\nthought--I've thought several times since I've been here--that you despised\nme! If only you knew how I prize your opinion!\"\n\n\"But are you really so sensitive? At your age! Would you believe it, just\nnow, when you were telling your story, I thought, as I watched you, that\nyou must be very sensitive!\"\n\n\"You thought so? What an eye you've got, I say! I bet that was when I was\ntalking about the goose. That was just when I was fancying you had a great\ncontempt for me for being in such a hurry to show off, and for a moment I\nquite hated you for it, and began talking like a fool. Then I fancied--just\nnow, here--when I said that if there were no God He would have to be\ninvented, that I was in too great a hurry to display my knowledge,\nespecially as I got that phrase out of a book. But I swear I wasn't\nshowing off out of vanity, though I really don't know why. Because I was\nso pleased? Yes, I believe it was because I was so pleased ... though it's\nperfectly disgraceful for any one to be gushing directly they are pleased,\nI know that. But I am convinced now that you don't despise me; it was all\nmy imagination. Oh, Karamazov, I am profoundly unhappy. I sometimes fancy\nall sorts of things, that every one is laughing at me, the whole world,\nand then I feel ready to overturn the whole order of things.\"\n\n\"And you worry every one about you,\" smiled Alyosha.\n\n\"Yes, I worry every one about me, especially my mother. Karamazov, tell\nme, am I very ridiculous now?\"\n\n\"Don't think about that, don't think of it at all!\" cried Alyosha. \"And\nwhat does ridiculous mean? Isn't every one constantly being or seeming\nridiculous? Besides, nearly all clever people now are fearfully afraid of\nbeing ridiculous, and that makes them unhappy. All I am surprised at is\nthat you should be feeling that so early, though I've observed it for some\ntime past, and not only in you. Nowadays the very children have begun to\nsuffer from it. It's almost a sort of insanity. The devil has taken the\nform of that vanity and entered into the whole generation; it's simply the\ndevil,\" added Alyosha, without a trace of the smile that Kolya, staring at\nhim, expected to see. \"You are like every one else,\" said Alyosha, in\nconclusion, \"that is, like very many others. Only you must not be like\neverybody else, that's all.\"\n\n\"Even if every one is like that?\"\n\n\"Yes, even if every one is like that. You be the only one not like it. You\nreally are not like every one else, here you are not ashamed to confess to\nsomething bad and even ridiculous. And who will admit so much in these\ndays? No one. And people have even ceased to feel the impulse to self-\ncriticism. Don't be like every one else, even if you are the only one.\"\n\n\"Splendid! I was not mistaken in you. You know how to console one. Oh, how\nI have longed to know you, Karamazov! I've long been eager for this\nmeeting. Can you really have thought about me, too? You said just now that\nyou thought of me, too?\"\n\n\"Yes, I'd heard of you and had thought of you, too ... and if it's partly\nvanity that makes you ask, it doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"Do you know, Karamazov, our talk has been like a declaration of love,\"\nsaid Kolya, in a bashful and melting voice. \"That's not ridiculous, is\nit?\"\n\n\"Not at all ridiculous, and if it were, it wouldn't matter, because it's\nbeen a good thing.\" Alyosha smiled brightly.\n\n\"But do you know, Karamazov, you must admit that you are a little ashamed\nyourself, now.... I see it by your eyes.\" Kolya smiled with a sort of sly\nhappiness.\n\n\"Why ashamed?\"\n\n\"Well, why are you blushing?\"\n\n\"It was you made me blush,\" laughed Alyosha, and he really did blush. \"Oh,\nwell, I am a little, goodness knows why, I don't know...\" he muttered,\nalmost embarrassed.\n\n\"Oh, how I love you and admire you at this moment just because you are\nrather ashamed! Because you are just like me,\" cried Kolya, in positive\necstasy. His cheeks glowed, his eyes beamed.\n\n\"You know, Kolya, you will be very unhappy in your life,\" something made\nAlyosha say suddenly.\n\n\"I know, I know. How you know it all beforehand!\" Kolya agreed at once.\n\n\"But you will bless life on the whole, all the same.\"\n\n\"Just so, hurrah! You are a prophet. Oh, we shall get on together,\nKaramazov! Do you know, what delights me most, is that you treat me quite\nlike an equal. But we are not equals, no, we are not, you are better! But\nwe shall get on. Do you know, all this last month, I've been saying to\nmyself, 'Either we shall be friends at once, for ever, or we shall part\nenemies to the grave!' \"\n\n\"And saying that, of course, you loved me,\" Alyosha laughed gayly.\n\n\"I did. I loved you awfully. I've been loving and dreaming of you. And how\ndo you know it all beforehand? Ah, here's the doctor. Goodness! What will\nhe tell us? Look at his face!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. Ilusha\n\n\nThe doctor came out of the room again, muffled in his fur coat and with\nhis cap on his head. His face looked almost angry and disgusted, as though\nhe were afraid of getting dirty. He cast a cursory glance round the\npassage, looking sternly at Alyosha and Kolya as he did so. Alyosha waved\nfrom the door to the coachman, and the carriage that had brought the\ndoctor drove up. The captain darted out after the doctor, and, bowing\napologetically, stopped him to get the last word. The poor fellow looked\nutterly crushed; there was a scared look in his eyes.\n\n\"Your Excellency, your Excellency ... is it possible?\" he began, but could\nnot go on and clasped his hands in despair. Yet he still gazed imploringly\nat the doctor, as though a word from him might still change the poor boy's\nfate.\n\n\"I can't help it, I am not God!\" the doctor answered offhand, though with\nthe customary impressiveness.\n\n\"Doctor ... your Excellency ... and will it be soon, soon?\"\n\n\"You must be prepared for anything,\" said the doctor in emphatic and\nincisive tones, and dropping his eyes, he was about to step out to the\ncoach.\n\n\"Your Excellency, for Christ's sake!\" the terror-stricken captain stopped\nhim again. \"Your Excellency! but can nothing, absolutely nothing save him\nnow?\"\n\n\"It's not in my hands now,\" said the doctor impatiently, \"but h'm!...\" he\nstopped suddenly. \"If you could, for instance ... send ... your patient\n... at once, without delay\" (the words \"at once, without delay,\" the\ndoctor uttered with an almost wrathful sternness that made the captain\nstart) \"to Syracuse, the change to the new be-ne-ficial climatic\nconditions might possibly effect--\"\n\n\"To Syracuse!\" cried the captain, unable to grasp what was said.\n\n\"Syracuse is in Sicily,\" Kolya jerked out suddenly in explanation. The\ndoctor looked at him.\n\n\"Sicily! your Excellency,\" faltered the captain, \"but you've seen\"--he\nspread out his hands, indicating his surroundings--\"mamma and my family?\"\n\n\"N--no, Sicily is not the place for the family, the family should go to\nCaucasus in the early spring ... your daughter must go to the Caucasus,\nand your wife ... after a course of the waters in the Caucasus for her\nrheumatism ... must be sent straight to Paris to the mental specialist\nLepelletier; I could give you a note to him, and then ... there might be a\nchange--\"\n\n\"Doctor, doctor! But you see!\" The captain flung wide his hands again\ndespairingly, indicating the bare wooden walls of the passage.\n\n\"Well, that's not my business,\" grinned the doctor. \"I have only told you\nthe answer of medical science to your question as to possible treatment.\nAs for the rest, to my regret--\"\n\n\"Don't be afraid, apothecary, my dog won't bite you,\" Kolya rapped out\nloudly, noticing the doctor's rather uneasy glance at Perezvon, who was\nstanding in the doorway. There was a wrathful note in Kolya's voice. He\nused the word apothecary instead of doctor on purpose, and, as he\nexplained afterwards, used it \"to insult him.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" The doctor flung up his head, staring with surprise at\nKolya. \"Who's this?\" he addressed Alyosha, as though asking him to\nexplain.\n\n\"It's Perezvon's master, don't worry about me,\" Kolya said incisively\nagain.\n\n\"Perezvon?\"(7) repeated the doctor, perplexed.\n\n\"He hears the bell, but where it is he cannot tell. Good-by, we shall meet\nin Syracuse.\"\n\n\"Who's this? Who's this?\" The doctor flew into a terrible rage.\n\n\"He is a schoolboy, doctor, he is a mischievous boy; take no notice of\nhim,\" said Alyosha, frowning and speaking quickly. \"Kolya, hold your\ntongue!\" he cried to Krassotkin. \"Take no notice of him, doctor,\" he\nrepeated, rather impatiently.\n\n\"He wants a thrashing, a good thrashing!\" The doctor stamped in a perfect\nfury.\n\n\"And you know, apothecary, my Perezvon might bite!\" said Kolya, turning\npale, with quivering voice and flashing eyes. \"_Ici_, Perezvon!\"\n\n\"Kolya, if you say another word, I'll have nothing more to do with you,\"\nAlyosha cried peremptorily.\n\n\"There is only one man in the world who can command Nikolay\nKrassotkin--this is the man\"; Kolya pointed to Alyosha. \"I obey him, good-\nby!\"\n\nHe stepped forward, opened the door, and quickly went into the inner room.\nPerezvon flew after him. The doctor stood still for five seconds in\namazement, looking at Alyosha; then, with a curse, he went out quickly to\nthe carriage, repeating aloud, \"This is ... this is ... I don't know what\nit is!\" The captain darted forward to help him into the carriage. Alyosha\nfollowed Kolya into the room. He was already by Ilusha's bedside. The sick\nboy was holding his hand and calling for his father. A minute later the\ncaptain, too, came back.\n\n\"Father, father, come ... we ...\" Ilusha faltered in violent excitement,\nbut apparently unable to go on, he flung his wasted arms round his father\nand Kolya, uniting them in one embrace, and hugging them as tightly as he\ncould. The captain suddenly began to shake with dumb sobs, and Kolya's\nlips and chin twitched.\n\n\"Father, father! How sorry I am for you!\" Ilusha moaned bitterly.\n\n\"Ilusha ... darling ... the doctor said ... you would be all right ... we\nshall be happy ... the doctor ...\" the captain began.\n\n\"Ah, father! I know what the new doctor said to you about me.... I saw!\"\ncried Ilusha, and again he hugged them both with all his strength, hiding\nhis face on his father's shoulder.\n\n\"Father, don't cry, and when I die get a good boy, another one ... choose\none of them all, a good one, call him Ilusha and love him instead of\nme....\"\n\n\"Hush, old man, you'll get well,\" Krassotkin cried suddenly, in a voice\nthat sounded angry.\n\n\"But don't ever forget me, father,\" Ilusha went on, \"come to my grave ...\nand, father, bury me by our big stone, where we used to go for our walk,\nand come to me there with Krassotkin in the evening ... and Perezvon ... I\nshall expect you.... Father, father!\"\n\nHis voice broke. They were all three silent, still embracing. Nina was\ncrying quietly in her chair, and at last seeing them all crying, \"mamma,\"\ntoo, burst into tears.\n\n\"Ilusha! Ilusha!\" she exclaimed.\n\nKrassotkin suddenly released himself from Ilusha's embrace.\n\n\"Good-by, old man, mother expects me back to dinner,\" he said quickly.\n\"What a pity I did not tell her! She will be dreadfully anxious.... But\nafter dinner I'll come back to you for the whole day, for the whole\nevening, and I'll tell you all sorts of things, all sorts of things. And\nI'll bring Perezvon, but now I will take him with me, because he will\nbegin to howl when I am away and bother you. Good-by!\"\n\nAnd he ran out into the passage. He didn't want to cry, but in the passage\nhe burst into tears. Alyosha found him crying.\n\n\"Kolya, you must be sure to keep your word and come, or he will be\nterribly disappointed,\" Alyosha said emphatically.\n\n\"I will! Oh, how I curse myself for not having come before!\" muttered\nKolya, crying, and no longer ashamed of it.\n\nAt that moment the captain flew out of the room, and at once closed the\ndoor behind him. His face looked frenzied, his lips were trembling. He\nstood before the two and flung up his arms.\n\n\"I don't want a good boy! I don't want another boy!\" he muttered in a wild\nwhisper, clenching his teeth. \"If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my\ntongue--\" He broke off with a sob and sank on his knees before the wooden\nbench. Pressing his fists against his head, he began sobbing with absurd\nwhimpering cries, doing his utmost that his cries should not be heard in\nthe room.\n\nKolya ran out into the street.\n\n\"Good-by, Karamazov? Will you come yourself?\" he cried sharply and angrily\nto Alyosha.\n\n\"I will certainly come in the evening.\"\n\n\"What was that he said about Jerusalem?... What did he mean by that?\"\n\n\"It's from the Bible. 'If I forget thee, Jerusalem,' that is, if I forget\nall that is most precious to me, if I let anything take its place, then\nmay--\"\n\n\"I understand, that's enough! Mind you come! _Ici_, Perezvon!\" he cried\nwith positive ferocity to the dog, and with rapid strides he went home.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook XI. Ivan  Chapter I. At Grushenka's\n\n\nAlyosha went towards the cathedral square to the widow Morozov's house to\nsee Grushenka, who had sent Fenya to him early in the morning with an\nurgent message begging him to come. Questioning Fenya, Alyosha learned\nthat her mistress had been particularly distressed since the previous day.\nDuring the two months that had passed since Mitya's arrest, Alyosha had\ncalled frequently at the widow Morozov's house, both from his own\ninclination and to take messages for Mitya. Three days after Mitya's\narrest, Grushenka was taken very ill and was ill for nearly five weeks.\nFor one whole week she was unconscious. She was very much changed--thinner\nand a little sallow, though she had for the past fortnight been well\nenough to go out. But to Alyosha her face was even more attractive than\nbefore, and he liked to meet her eyes when he went in to her. A look of\nfirmness and intelligent purpose had developed in her face. There were\nsigns of a spiritual transformation in her, and a steadfast, fine and\nhumble determination that nothing could shake could be discerned in her.\nThere was a small vertical line between her brows which gave her charming\nface a look of concentrated thought, almost austere at the first glance.\nThere was scarcely a trace of her former frivolity.\n\nIt seemed strange to Alyosha, too, that in spite of the calamity that had\novertaken the poor girl, betrothed to a man who had been arrested for a\nterrible crime, almost at the instant of their betrothal, in spite of her\nillness and the almost inevitable sentence hanging over Mitya, Grushenka\nhad not yet lost her youthful cheerfulness. There was a soft light in the\nonce proud eyes, though at times they gleamed with the old vindictive fire\nwhen she was visited by one disturbing thought stronger than ever in her\nheart. The object of that uneasiness was the same as ever--Katerina\nIvanovna, of whom Grushenka had even raved when she lay in delirium.\nAlyosha knew that she was fearfully jealous of her. Yet Katerina Ivanovna\nhad not once visited Mitya in his prison, though she might have done it\nwhenever she liked. All this made a difficult problem for Alyosha, for he\nwas the only person to whom Grushenka opened her heart and from whom she\nwas continually asking advice. Sometimes he was unable to say anything.\n\nFull of anxiety he entered her lodging. She was at home. She had returned\nfrom seeing Mitya half an hour before, and from the rapid movement with\nwhich she leapt up from her chair to meet him he saw that she had been\nexpecting him with great impatience. A pack of cards dealt for a game of\n\"fools\" lay on the table. A bed had been made up on the leather sofa on\nthe other side and Maximov lay, half-reclining, on it. He wore a dressing-\ngown and a cotton nightcap, and was evidently ill and weak, though he was\nsmiling blissfully. When the homeless old man returned with Grushenka from\nMokroe two months before, he had simply stayed on and was still staying\nwith her. He arrived with her in rain and sleet, sat down on the sofa,\ndrenched and scared, and gazed mutely at her with a timid, appealing\nsmile. Grushenka, who was in terrible grief and in the first stage of\nfever, almost forgot his existence in all she had to do the first half-\nhour after her arrival. Suddenly she chanced to look at him intently: he\nlaughed a pitiful, helpless little laugh. She called Fenya and told her to\ngive him something to eat. All that day he sat in the same place, almost\nwithout stirring. When it got dark and the shutters were closed, Fenya\nasked her mistress:\n\n\"Is the gentleman going to stay the night, mistress?\"\n\n\"Yes; make him a bed on the sofa,\" answered Grushenka.\n\nQuestioning him more in detail, Grushenka learned from him that he had\nliterally nowhere to go, and that \"Mr. Kalganov, my benefactor, told me\nstraight that he wouldn't receive me again and gave me five roubles.\"\n\n\"Well, God bless you, you'd better stay, then,\" Grushenka decided in her\ngrief, smiling compassionately at him. Her smile wrung the old man's heart\nand his lips twitched with grateful tears. And so the destitute wanderer\nhad stayed with her ever since. He did not leave the house even when she\nwas ill. Fenya and her grandmother, the cook, did not turn him out, but\nwent on serving him meals and making up his bed on the sofa. Grushenka had\ngrown used to him, and coming back from seeing Mitya (whom she had begun\nto visit in prison before she was really well) she would sit down and\nbegin talking to \"Maximushka\" about trifling matters, to keep her from\nthinking of her sorrow. The old man turned out to be a good story-teller\non occasions, so that at last he became necessary to her. Grushenka saw\nscarcely any one else beside Alyosha, who did not come every day and never\nstayed long. Her old merchant lay seriously ill at this time, \"at his last\ngasp\" as they said in the town, and he did, in fact, die a week after\nMitya's trial. Three weeks before his death, feeling the end approaching,\nhe made his sons, their wives and children, come upstairs to him at last\nand bade them not leave him again. From that moment he gave strict orders\nto his servants not to admit Grushenka and to tell her if she came, \"The\nmaster wishes you long life and happiness and tells you to forget him.\"\nBut Grushenka sent almost every day to inquire after him.\n\n\"You've come at last!\" she cried, flinging down the cards and joyfully\ngreeting Alyosha, \"and Maximushka's been scaring me that perhaps you\nwouldn't come. Ah, how I need you! Sit down to the table. What will you\nhave--coffee?\"\n\n\"Yes, please,\" said Alyosha, sitting down at the table. \"I am very\nhungry.\"\n\n\"That's right. Fenya, Fenya, coffee,\" cried Grushenka. \"It's been made a\nlong time ready for you. And bring some little pies, and mind they are\nhot. Do you know, we've had a storm over those pies to-day. I took them to\nthe prison for him, and would you believe it, he threw them back to me: he\nwould not eat them. He flung one of them on the floor and stamped on it.\nSo I said to him: 'I shall leave them with the warder; if you don't eat\nthem before evening, it will be that your venomous spite is enough for\nyou!' With that I went away. We quarreled again, would you believe it?\nWhenever I go we quarrel.\"\n\nGrushenka said all this in one breath in her agitation. Maximov, feeling\nnervous, at once smiled and looked on the floor.\n\n\"What did you quarrel about this time?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"I didn't expect it in the least. Only fancy, he is jealous of the Pole.\n'Why are you keeping him?' he said. 'So you've begun keeping him.' He is\njealous, jealous of me all the time, jealous eating and sleeping! He even\ntook it into his head to be jealous of Kuzma last week.\"\n\n\"But he knew about the Pole before?\"\n\n\"Yes, but there it is. He has known about him from the very beginning, but\nto-day he suddenly got up and began scolding about him. I am ashamed to\nrepeat what he said. Silly fellow! Rakitin went in as I came out. Perhaps\nRakitin is egging him on. What do you think?\" she added carelessly.\n\n\"He loves you, that's what it is: he loves you so much. And now he is\nparticularly worried.\"\n\n\"I should think he might be, with the trial to-morrow. And I went to him\nto say something about to-morrow, for I dread to think what's going to\nhappen then. You say that he is worried, but how worried I am! And he\ntalks about the Pole! He's too silly! He is not jealous of Maximushka yet,\nanyway.\"\n\n\"My wife was dreadfully jealous over me, too,\" Maximov put in his word.\n\n\"Jealous of you?\" Grushenka laughed in spite of herself. \"Of whom could\nshe have been jealous?\"\n\n\"Of the servant girls.\"\n\n\"Hold your tongue, Maximushka, I am in no laughing mood now; I feel angry.\nDon't ogle the pies. I shan't give you any; they are not good for you, and\nI won't give you any vodka either. I have to look after him, too, just as\nthough I kept an almshouse,\" she laughed.\n\n\"I don't deserve your kindness. I am a worthless creature,\" said Maximov,\nwith tears in his voice. \"You would do better to spend your kindness on\npeople of more use than me.\"\n\n\"Ech, every one is of use, Maximushka, and how can we tell who's of most\nuse? If only that Pole didn't exist, Alyosha. He's taken it into his head\nto fall ill, too, to-day. I've been to see him also. And I shall send him\nsome pies, too, on purpose. I hadn't sent him any, but Mitya accused me of\nit, so now I shall send some! Ah, here's Fenya with a letter! Yes, it's\nfrom the Poles--begging again!\"\n\nPan Mussyalovitch had indeed sent an extremely long and characteristically\neloquent letter in which he begged her to lend him three roubles. In the\nletter was enclosed a receipt for the sum, with a promise to repay it\nwithin three months, signed by Pan Vrublevsky as well. Grushenka had\nreceived many such letters, accompanied by such receipts, from her former\nlover during the fortnight of her convalescence. But she knew that the two\nPoles had been to ask after her health during her illness. The first\nletter Grushenka got from them was a long one, written on large notepaper\nand with a big family crest on the seal. It was so obscure and rhetorical\nthat Grushenka put it down before she had read half, unable to make head\nor tail of it. She could not attend to letters then. The first letter was\nfollowed next day by another in which Pan Mussyalovitch begged her for a\nloan of two thousand roubles for a very short period. Grushenka left that\nletter, too, unanswered. A whole series of letters had followed--one every\nday--all as pompous and rhetorical, but the loan asked for, gradually\ndiminishing, dropped to a hundred roubles, then to twenty-five, to ten,\nand finally Grushenka received a letter in which both the Poles begged her\nfor only one rouble and included a receipt signed by both.\n\nThen Grushenka suddenly felt sorry for them, and at dusk she went round\nherself to their lodging. She found the two Poles in great poverty, almost\ndestitution, without food or fuel, without cigarettes, in debt to their\nlandlady. The two hundred roubles they had carried off from Mitya at\nMokroe had soon disappeared. But Grushenka was surprised at their meeting\nher with arrogant dignity and self-assertion, with the greatest punctilio\nand pompous speeches. Grushenka simply laughed, and gave her former\nadmirer ten roubles. Then, laughing, she told Mitya of it and he was not\nin the least jealous. But ever since, the Poles had attached themselves to\nGrushenka and bombarded her daily with requests for money and she had\nalways sent them small sums. And now that day Mitya had taken it into his\nhead to be fearfully jealous.\n\n\"Like a fool, I went round to him just for a minute, on the way to see\nMitya, for he is ill, too, my Pole,\" Grushenka began again with nervous\nhaste. \"I was laughing, telling Mitya about it. 'Fancy,' I said, 'my Pole\nhad the happy thought to sing his old songs to me to the guitar. He\nthought I would be touched and marry him!' Mitya leapt up swearing.... So,\nthere, I'll send them the pies! Fenya, is it that little girl they've\nsent? Here, give her three roubles and pack a dozen pies up in a paper and\ntell her to take them. And you, Alyosha, be sure to tell Mitya that I did\nsend them the pies.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't tell him for anything,\" said Alyosha, smiling.\n\n\"Ech! You think he is unhappy about it. Why, he's jealous on purpose. He\ndoesn't care,\" said Grushenka bitterly.\n\n\"On purpose?\" queried Alyosha.\n\n\"I tell you you are silly, Alyosha. You know nothing about it, with all\nyour cleverness. I am not offended that he is jealous of a girl like me. I\nwould be offended if he were not jealous. I am like that. I am not\noffended at jealousy. I have a fierce heart, too. I can be jealous myself.\nOnly what offends me is that he doesn't love me at all. I tell you he is\njealous now _on purpose_. Am I blind? Don't I see? He began talking to me\njust now of that woman, of Katerina, saying she was this and that, how she\nhad ordered a doctor from Moscow for him, to try and save him; how she had\nordered the best counsel, the most learned one, too. So he loves her, if\nhe'll praise her to my face, more shame to him! He's treated me badly\nhimself, so he attacked me, to make out I am in fault first and to throw\nit all on me. 'You were with your Pole before me, so I can't be blamed for\nKaterina,' that's what it amounts to. He wants to throw the whole blame on\nme. He attacked me on purpose, on purpose, I tell you, but I'll--\"\n\nGrushenka could not finish saying what she would do. She hid her eyes in\nher handkerchief and sobbed violently.\n\n\"He doesn't love Katerina Ivanovna,\" said Alyosha firmly.\n\n\"Well, whether he loves her or not, I'll soon find out for myself,\" said\nGrushenka, with a menacing note in her voice, taking the handkerchief from\nher eyes. Her face was distorted. Alyosha saw sorrowfully that from being\nmild and serene, it had become sullen and spiteful.\n\n\"Enough of this foolishness,\" she said suddenly; \"it's not for that I sent\nfor you. Alyosha, darling, to-morrow--what will happen to-morrow? That's\nwhat worries me! And it's only me it worries! I look at every one and no\none is thinking of it. No one cares about it. Are you thinking about it\neven? To-morrow he'll be tried, you know. Tell me, how will he be tried?\nYou know it's the valet, the valet killed him! Good heavens! Can they\ncondemn him in place of the valet and will no one stand up for him? They\nhaven't troubled the valet at all, have they?\"\n\n\"He's been severely cross-examined,\" observed Alyosha thoughtfully; \"but\nevery one came to the conclusion it was not he. Now he is lying very ill.\nHe has been ill ever since that attack. Really ill,\" added Alyosha.\n\n\"Oh, dear! couldn't you go to that counsel yourself and tell him the whole\nthing by yourself? He's been brought from Petersburg for three thousand\nroubles, they say.\"\n\n\"We gave these three thousand together--Ivan, Katerina Ivanovna and I--but\nshe paid two thousand for the doctor from Moscow herself. The counsel\nFetyukovitch would have charged more, but the case has become known all\nover Russia; it's talked of in all the papers and journals. Fetyukovitch\nagreed to come more for the glory of the thing, because the case has\nbecome so notorious. I saw him yesterday.\"\n\n\"Well? Did you talk to him?\" Grushenka put in eagerly.\n\n\"He listened and said nothing. He told me that he had already formed his\nopinion. But he promised to give my words consideration.\"\n\n\"Consideration! Ah, they are swindlers! They'll ruin him. And why did she\nsend for the doctor?\"\n\n\"As an expert. They want to prove that Mitya's mad and committed the\nmurder when he didn't know what he was doing\"; Alyosha smiled gently; \"but\nMitya won't agree to that.\"\n\n\"Yes; but that would be the truth if he had killed him!\" cried Grushenka.\n\"He was mad then, perfectly mad, and that was my fault, wretch that I am!\nBut, of course, he didn't do it, he didn't do it! And they are all against\nhim, the whole town. Even Fenya's evidence went to prove he had done it.\nAnd the people at the shop, and that official, and at the tavern, too,\nbefore, people had heard him say so! They are all, all against him, all\ncrying out against him.\"\n\n\"Yes, there's a fearful accumulation of evidence,\" Alyosha observed\ngrimly.\n\n\"And Grigory--Grigory Vassilyevitch--sticks to his story that the door was\nopen, persists that he saw it--there's no shaking him. I went and talked to\nhim myself. He's rude about it, too.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's perhaps the strongest evidence against him,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"And as for Mitya's being mad, he certainly seems like it now,\" Grushenka\nbegan with a peculiarly anxious and mysterious air. \"Do you know, Alyosha,\nI've been wanting to talk to you about it for a long time. I go to him\nevery day and simply wonder at him. Tell me, now, what do you suppose he's\nalways talking about? He talks and talks and I can make nothing of it. I\nfancied he was talking of something intellectual that I couldn't\nunderstand in my foolishness. Only he suddenly began talking to me about a\nbabe--that is, about some child. 'Why is the babe poor?' he said. 'It's for\nthat babe I am going to Siberia now. I am not a murderer, but I must go to\nSiberia!' What that meant, what babe, I couldn't tell for the life of me.\nOnly I cried when he said it, because he said it so nicely. He cried\nhimself, and I cried, too. He suddenly kissed me and made the sign of the\ncross over me. What did it mean, Alyosha, tell me? What is this babe?\"\n\n\"It must be Rakitin, who's been going to see him lately,\" smiled Alyosha,\n\"though ... that's not Rakitin's doing. I didn't see Mitya yesterday. I'll\nsee him to-day.\"\n\n\"No, it's not Rakitin; it's his brother Ivan Fyodorovitch upsetting him.\nIt's his going to see him, that's what it is,\" Grushenka began, and\nsuddenly broke off. Alyosha gazed at her in amazement.\n\n\"Ivan's going? Has he been to see him? Mitya told me himself that Ivan\nhasn't been once.\"\n\n\"There ... there! What a girl I am! Blurting things out!\" exclaimed\nGrushenka, confused and suddenly blushing. \"Stay, Alyosha, hush! Since\nI've said so much I'll tell the whole truth--he's been to see him twice,\nthe first directly he arrived. He galloped here from Moscow at once, of\ncourse, before I was taken ill; and the second time was a week ago. He\ntold Mitya not to tell you about it, under any circumstances; and not to\ntell any one, in fact. He came secretly.\"\n\nAlyosha sat plunged in thought, considering something. The news evidently\nimpressed him.\n\n\"Ivan doesn't talk to me of Mitya's case,\" he said slowly. \"He's said very\nlittle to me these last two months. And whenever I go to see him, he seems\nvexed at my coming, so I've not been to him for the last three weeks.\nH'm!... if he was there a week ago ... there certainly has been a change\nin Mitya this week.\"\n\n\"There has been a change,\" Grushenka assented quickly. \"They have a\nsecret, they have a secret! Mitya told me himself there was a secret, and\nsuch a secret that Mitya can't rest. Before then, he was cheerful--and,\nindeed, he is cheerful now--but when he shakes his head like that, you\nknow, and strides about the room and keeps pulling at the hair on his\nright temple with his right hand, I know there is something on his mind\nworrying him.... I know! He was cheerful before, though, indeed, he is\ncheerful to-day.\"\n\n\"But you said he was worried.\"\n\n\"Yes, he is worried and yet cheerful. He keeps on being irritable for a\nminute and then cheerful and then irritable again. And you know, Alyosha,\nI am constantly wondering at him--with this awful thing hanging over him,\nhe sometimes laughs at such trifles as though he were a baby himself.\"\n\n\"And did he really tell you not to tell me about Ivan? Did he say, 'Don't\ntell him'?\"\n\n\"Yes, he told me, 'Don't tell him.' It's you that Mitya's most afraid of.\nBecause it's a secret: he said himself it was a secret. Alyosha, darling,\ngo to him and find out what their secret is and come and tell me,\"\nGrushenka besought him with sudden eagerness. \"Set my mind at rest that I\nmay know the worst that's in store for me. That's why I sent for you.\"\n\n\"You think it's something to do with you? If it were, he wouldn't have\ntold you there was a secret.\"\n\n\"I don't know. Perhaps he wants to tell me, but doesn't dare to. He warns\nme. There is a secret, he tells me, but he won't tell me what it is.\"\n\n\"What do you think yourself?\"\n\n\"What do I think? It's the end for me, that's what I think. They all three\nhave been plotting my end, for Katerina's in it. It's all Katerina, it all\ncomes from her. She is this and that, and that means that I am not. He\ntells me that beforehand--warns me. He is planning to throw me over, that's\nthe whole secret. They've planned it together, the three of them--Mitya,\nKaterina, and Ivan Fyodorovitch. Alyosha, I've been wanting to ask you a\nlong time. A week ago he suddenly told me that Ivan was in love with\nKaterina, because he often goes to see her. Did he tell me the truth or\nnot? Tell me, on your conscience, tell me the worst.\"\n\n\"I won't tell you a lie. Ivan is not in love with Katerina Ivanovna, I\nthink.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's what I thought! He is lying to me, shameless deceiver, that's\nwhat it is! And he was jealous of me just now, so as to put the blame on\nme afterwards. He is stupid, he can't disguise what he is doing; he is so\nopen, you know.... But I'll give it to him, I'll give it to him! 'You\nbelieve I did it,' he said. He said that to me, to me. He reproached me\nwith that! God forgive him! You wait, I'll make it hot for Katerina at the\ntrial! I'll just say a word then ... I'll tell everything then!\"\n\nAnd again she cried bitterly.\n\n\"This I can tell you for certain, Grushenka,\" Alyosha said, getting up.\n\"First, that he loves you, loves you more than any one in the world, and\nyou only, believe me. I know. I do know. The second thing is that I don't\nwant to worm his secret out of him, but if he'll tell me of himself to-\nday, I shall tell him straight out that I have promised to tell you. Then\nI'll come to you to-day, and tell you. Only ... I fancy ... Katerina\nIvanovna has nothing to do with it, and that the secret is about something\nelse. That's certain. It isn't likely it's about Katerina Ivanovna, it\nseems to me. Good-by for now.\"\n\nAlyosha shook hands with her. Grushenka was still crying. He saw that she\nput little faith in his consolation, but she was better for having had her\nsorrow out, for having spoken of it. He was sorry to leave her in such a\nstate of mind, but he was in haste. He had a great many things to do\nstill.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. The Injured Foot\n\n\nThe first of these things was at the house of Madame Hohlakov, and he\nhurried there to get it over as quickly as possible and not be too late\nfor Mitya. Madame Hohlakov had been slightly ailing for the last three\nweeks: her foot had for some reason swollen up, and though she was not in\nbed, she lay all day half-reclining on the couch in her boudoir, in a\nfascinating but decorous _deshabille_. Alyosha had once noted with\ninnocent amusement that, in spite of her illness, Madame Hohlakov had\nbegun to be rather dressy--top-knots, ribbons, loose wrappers, had made\ntheir appearance, and he had an inkling of the reason, though he dismissed\nsuch ideas from his mind as frivolous. During the last two months the\nyoung official, Perhotin, had become a regular visitor at the house.\n\nAlyosha had not called for four days and he was in haste to go straight to\nLise, as it was with her he had to speak, for Lise had sent a maid to him\nthe previous day, specially asking him to come to her \"about something\nvery important,\" a request which, for certain reasons, had interest for\nAlyosha. But while the maid went to take his name in to Lise, Madame\nHohlakov heard of his arrival from some one, and immediately sent to beg\nhim to come to her \"just for one minute.\" Alyosha reflected that it was\nbetter to accede to the mamma's request, or else she would be sending down\nto Lise's room every minute that he was there. Madame Hohlakov was lying\non a couch. She was particularly smartly dressed and was evidently in a\nstate of extreme nervous excitement. She greeted Alyosha with cries of\nrapture.\n\n\"It's ages, ages, perfect ages since I've seen you! It's a whole week--only\nthink of it! Ah, but you were here only four days ago, on Wednesday. You\nhave come to see Lise. I'm sure you meant to slip into her room on tiptoe,\nwithout my hearing you. My dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, if you only\nknew how worried I am about her! But of that later, though that's the most\nimportant thing, of that later. Dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, I trust you\nimplicitly with my Lise. Since the death of Father Zossima--God rest his\nsoul!\" (she crossed herself)--\"I look upon you as a monk, though you look\ncharming in your new suit. Where did you find such a tailor in these\nparts? No, no, that's not the chief thing--of that later. Forgive me for\nsometimes calling you Alyosha; an old woman like me may take liberties,\"\nshe smiled coquettishly; \"but that will do later, too. The important thing\nis that I shouldn't forget what is important. Please remind me of it\nyourself. As soon as my tongue runs away with me, you just say 'the\nimportant thing?' Ach! how do I know now what is of most importance? Ever\nsince Lise took back her promise--her childish promise, Alexey\nFyodorovitch--to marry you, you've realized, of course, that it was only\nthe playful fancy of a sick child who had been so long confined to her\nchair--thank God, she can walk now!... that new doctor Katya sent for from\nMoscow for your unhappy brother, who will to-morrow--But why speak of to-\nmorrow? I am ready to die at the very thought of to-morrow. Ready to die\nof curiosity.... That doctor was with us yesterday and saw Lise.... I paid\nhim fifty roubles for the visit. But that's not the point, that's not the\npoint again. You see, I'm mixing everything up. I am in such a hurry. Why\nam I in a hurry? I don't understand. It's awful how I seem growing unable\nto understand anything. Everything seems mixed up in a sort of tangle. I\nam afraid you are so bored you will jump up and run away, and that will be\nall I shall see of you. Goodness! Why are we sitting here and no coffee?\nYulia, Glafira, coffee!\"\n\nAlyosha made haste to thank her, and said that he had only just had\ncoffee.\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"At Agrafena Alexandrovna's.\"\n\n\"At ... at that woman's? Ah, it's she has brought ruin on every one. I\nknow nothing about it though. They say she has become a saint, though it's\nrather late in the day. She had better have done it before. What use is it\nnow? Hush, hush, Alexey Fyodorovitch, for I have so much to say to you\nthat I am afraid I shall tell you nothing. This awful trial ... I shall\ncertainly go, I am making arrangements. I shall be carried there in my\nchair; besides I can sit up. I shall have people with me. And, you know, I\nam a witness. How shall I speak, how shall I speak? I don't know what I\nshall say. One has to take an oath, hasn't one?\"\n\n\"Yes; but I don't think you will be able to go.\"\n\n\"I can sit up. Ah, you put me out! Ah! this trial, this savage act, and\nthen they are all going to Siberia, some are getting married, and all this\nso quickly, so quickly, everything's changing, and at last--nothing. All\ngrow old and have death to look forward to. Well, so be it! I am weary.\nThis Katya, _cette charmante personne_, has disappointed all my hopes. Now\nshe is going to follow one of your brothers to Siberia, and your other\nbrother is going to follow her, and will live in the nearest town, and\nthey will all torment one another. It drives me out of my mind. Worst of\nall--the publicity. The story has been told a million times over in all the\npapers in Moscow and Petersburg. Ah! yes, would you believe it, there's a\nparagraph that I was 'a dear friend' of your brother's ----, I can't repeat\nthe horrid word. Just fancy, just fancy!\"\n\n\"Impossible! Where was the paragraph? What did it say?\"\n\n\"I'll show you directly. I got the paper and read it yesterday. Here, in\nthe Petersburg paper _Gossip_. The paper began coming out this year. I am\nawfully fond of gossip, and I take it in, and now it pays me out--this is\nwhat gossip comes to! Here it is, here, this passage. Read it.\"\n\nAnd she handed Alyosha a sheet of newspaper which had been under her\npillow.\n\nIt was not exactly that she was upset, she seemed overwhelmed and perhaps\neverything really was mixed up in a tangle in her head. The paragraph was\nvery typical, and must have been a great shock to her, but, fortunately\nperhaps, she was unable to keep her mind fixed on any one subject at that\nmoment, and so might race off in a minute to something else and quite\nforget the newspaper.\n\nAlyosha was well aware that the story of the terrible case had spread all\nover Russia. And, good heavens! what wild rumors about his brother, about\nthe Karamazovs, and about himself he had read in the course of those two\nmonths, among other equally credible items! One paper had even stated that\nhe had gone into a monastery and become a monk, in horror at his brother's\ncrime. Another contradicted this, and stated that he and his elder, Father\nZossima, had broken into the monastery chest and \"made tracks from the\nmonastery.\" The present paragraph in the paper _Gossip_ was under the\nheading, \"The Karamazov Case at Skotoprigonyevsk.\" (That, alas! was the\nname of our little town. I had hitherto kept it concealed.) It was brief,\nand Madame Hohlakov was not directly mentioned in it. No names appeared,\nin fact. It was merely stated that the criminal, whose approaching trial\nwas making such a sensation--retired army captain, an idle swaggerer, and\nreactionary bully--was continually involved in amorous intrigues, and\nparticularly popular with certain ladies \"who were pining in solitude.\"\nOne such lady, a pining widow, who tried to seem young though she had a\ngrown-up daughter, was so fascinated by him that only two hours before the\ncrime she offered him three thousand roubles, on condition that he would\nelope with her to the gold mines. But the criminal, counting on escaping\npunishment, had preferred to murder his father to get the three thousand\nrather than go off to Siberia with the middle-aged charms of his pining\nlady. This playful paragraph finished, of course, with an outburst of\ngenerous indignation at the wickedness of parricide and at the lately\nabolished institution of serfdom. Reading it with curiosity, Alyosha\nfolded up the paper and handed it back to Madame Hohlakov.\n\n\"Well, that must be me,\" she hurried on again. \"Of course I am meant.\nScarcely more than an hour before, I suggested gold mines to him, and here\nthey talk of 'middle-aged charms' as though that were my motive! He writes\nthat out of spite! God Almighty forgive him for the middle-aged charms, as\nI forgive him! You know it's-- Do you know who it is? It's your friend\nRakitin.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Alyosha, \"though I've heard nothing about it.\"\n\n\"It's he, it's he! No 'perhaps' about it. You know I turned him out of the\nhouse.... You know all that story, don't you?\"\n\n\"I know that you asked him not to visit you for the future, but why it\nwas, I haven't heard ... from you, at least.\"\n\n\"Ah, then you've heard it from him! He abuses me, I suppose, abuses me\ndreadfully?\"\n\n\"Yes, he does; but then he abuses every one. But why you've given him up I\nhaven't heard from him either. I meet him very seldom now, indeed. We are\nnot friends.\"\n\n\"Well, then, I'll tell you all about it. There's no help for it, I'll\nconfess, for there is one point in which I was perhaps to blame. Only a\nlittle, little point, so little that perhaps it doesn't count. You see, my\ndear boy\"--Madame Hohlakov suddenly looked arch and a charming, though\nenigmatic, smile played about her lips--\"you see, I suspect ... You must\nforgive me, Alyosha. I am like a mother to you.... No, no; quite the\ncontrary. I speak to you now as though you were my father--mother's quite\nout of place. Well, it's as though I were confessing to Father Zossima,\nthat's just it. I called you a monk just now. Well, that poor young man,\nyour friend, Rakitin (Mercy on us! I can't be angry with him. I feel\ncross, but not very), that frivolous young man, would you believe it,\nseems to have taken it into his head to fall in love with me. I only\nnoticed it later. At first--a month ago--he only began to come oftener to\nsee me, almost every day; though, of course, we were acquainted before. I\nknew nothing about it ... and suddenly it dawned upon me, and I began to\nnotice things with surprise. You know, two months ago, that modest,\ncharming, excellent young man, Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, who's in the\nservice here, began to be a regular visitor at the house. You met him here\never so many times yourself. And he is an excellent, earnest young man,\nisn't he? He comes once every three days, not every day (though I should\nbe glad to see him every day), and always so well dressed. Altogether, I\nlove young people, Alyosha, talented, modest, like you, and he has almost\nthe mind of a statesman, he talks so charmingly, and I shall certainly,\ncertainly try and get promotion for him. He is a future diplomat. On that\nawful day he almost saved me from death by coming in the night. And your\nfriend Rakitin comes in such boots, and always stretches them out on the\ncarpet.... He began hinting at his feelings, in fact, and one day, as he\nwas going, he squeezed my hand terribly hard. My foot began to swell\ndirectly after he pressed my hand like that. He had met Pyotr Ilyitch here\nbefore, and would you believe it, he is always gibing at him, growling at\nhim, for some reason. I simply looked at the way they went on together and\nlaughed inwardly. So I was sitting here alone--no, I was laid up then.\nWell, I was lying here alone and suddenly Rakitin comes in, and only\nfancy! brought me some verses of his own composition--a short poem, on my\nbad foot: that is, he described my foot in a poem. Wait a minute--how did\nit go?\n\n\n    A captivating little foot.\n\n\nIt began somehow like that. I can never remember poetry. I've got it here.\nI'll show it to you later. But it's a charming thing--charming; and, you\nknow, it's not only about the foot, it had a good moral, too, a charming\nidea, only I've forgotten it; in fact, it was just the thing for an album.\nSo, of course, I thanked him, and he was evidently flattered. I'd hardly\nhad time to thank him when in comes Pyotr Ilyitch, and Rakitin suddenly\nlooked as black as night. I could see that Pyotr Ilyitch was in the way,\nfor Rakitin certainly wanted to say something after giving me the verses.\nI had a presentiment of it; but Pyotr Ilyitch came in. I showed Pyotr\nIlyitch the verses and didn't say who was the author. But I am convinced\nthat he guessed, though he won't own it to this day, and declares he had\nno idea. But he says that on purpose. Pyotr Ilyitch began to laugh at\nonce, and fell to criticizing it. 'Wretched doggerel,' he said they were,\n'some divinity student must have written them,' and with such vehemence,\nsuch vehemence! Then, instead of laughing, your friend flew into a rage.\n'Good gracious!' I thought, 'they'll fly at each other.' 'It was I who\nwrote them,' said he. 'I wrote them as a joke,' he said, 'for I think it\ndegrading to write verses.... But they are good poetry. They want to put a\nmonument to your Pushkin for writing about women's feet, while I wrote\nwith a moral purpose, and you,' said he, 'are an advocate of serfdom.\nYou've no humane ideas,' said he. 'You have no modern enlightened\nfeelings, you are uninfluenced by progress, you are a mere official,' he\nsaid, 'and you take bribes.' Then I began screaming and imploring them.\nAnd, you know, Pyotr Ilyitch is anything but a coward. He at once took up\nthe most gentlemanly tone, looked at him sarcastically, listened, and\napologized. 'I'd no idea,' said he. 'I shouldn't have said it, if I had\nknown. I should have praised it. Poets are all so irritable,' he said. In\nshort, he laughed at him under cover of the most gentlemanly tone. He\nexplained to me afterwards that it was all sarcastic. I thought he was in\nearnest. Only as I lay there, just as before you now, I thought, 'Would\nit, or would it not, be the proper thing for me to turn Rakitin out for\nshouting so rudely at a visitor in my house?' And, would you believe it, I\nlay here, shut my eyes, and wondered, would it be the proper thing or not.\nI kept worrying and worrying, and my heart began to beat, and I couldn't\nmake up my mind whether to make an outcry or not. One voice seemed to be\ntelling me, 'Speak,' and the other 'No, don't speak.' And no sooner had\nthe second voice said that than I cried out, and fainted. Of course, there\nwas a fuss. I got up suddenly and said to Rakitin, 'It's painful for me to\nsay it, but I don't wish to see you in my house again.' So I turned him\nout. Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I know myself I did wrong. I was putting it\non. I wasn't angry with him at all, really; but I suddenly fancied--that\nwas what did it--that it would be such a fine scene.... And yet, believe\nme, it was quite natural, for I really shed tears and cried for several\ndays afterwards, and then suddenly, one afternoon, I forgot all about it.\nSo it's a fortnight since he's been here, and I kept wondering whether he\nwould come again. I wondered even yesterday, then suddenly last night came\nthis _Gossip_. I read it and gasped. Who could have written it? He must\nhave written it. He went home, sat down, wrote it on the spot, sent it,\nand they put it in. It was a fortnight ago, you see. But, Alyosha, it's\nawful how I keep talking and don't say what I want to say. Ah! the words\ncome of themselves!\"\n\n\"It's very important for me to be in time to see my brother to-day,\"\nAlyosha faltered.\n\n\"To be sure, to be sure! You bring it all back to me. Listen, what is an\naberration?\"\n\n\"What aberration?\" asked Alyosha, wondering.\n\n\"In the legal sense. An aberration in which everything is pardonable.\nWhatever you do, you will be acquitted at once.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you. This Katya ... Ah! she is a charming, charming creature,\nonly I never can make out who it is she is in love with. She was with me\nsome time ago and I couldn't get anything out of her. Especially as she\nwon't talk to me except on the surface now. She is always talking about my\nhealth and nothing else, and she takes up such a tone with me, too. I\nsimply said to myself, 'Well, so be it. I don't care'... Oh, yes. I was\ntalking of aberration. This doctor has come. You know a doctor has come?\nOf course, you know it--the one who discovers madmen. You wrote for him.\nNo, it wasn't you, but Katya. It's all Katya's doing. Well, you see, a man\nmay be sitting perfectly sane and suddenly have an aberration. He may be\nconscious and know what he is doing and yet be in a state of aberration.\nAnd there's no doubt that Dmitri Fyodorovitch was suffering from\naberration. They found out about aberration as soon as the law courts were\nreformed. It's all the good effect of the reformed law courts. The doctor\nhas been here and questioned me about that evening, about the gold mines.\n'How did he seem then?' he asked me. He must have been in a state of\naberration. He came in shouting, 'Money, money, three thousand! Give me\nthree thousand!' and then went away and immediately did the murder. 'I\ndon't want to murder him,' he said, and he suddenly went and murdered him.\nThat's why they'll acquit him, because he struggled against it and yet he\nmurdered him.\"\n\n\"But he didn't murder him,\" Alyosha interrupted rather sharply. He felt\nmore and more sick with anxiety and impatience.\n\n\"Yes, I know it was that old man Grigory murdered him.\"\n\n\"Grigory?\" cried Alyosha.\n\n\"Yes, yes; it was Grigory. He lay as Dmitri Fyodorovitch struck him down,\nand then got up, saw the door open, went in and killed Fyodor Pavlovitch.\"\n\n\"But why, why?\"\n\n\"Suffering from aberration. When he recovered from the blow Dmitri\nFyodorovitch gave him on the head, he was suffering from aberration; he\nwent and committed the murder. As for his saying he didn't, he very likely\ndoesn't remember. Only, you know, it'll be better, ever so much better, if\nDmitri Fyodorovitch murdered him. And that's how it must have been, though\nI say it was Grigory. It certainly was Dmitri Fyodorovitch, and that's\nbetter, ever so much better! Oh! not better that a son should have killed\nhis father, I don't defend that. Children ought to honor their parents,\nand yet it would be better if it were he, as you'd have nothing to cry\nover then, for he did it when he was unconscious or rather when he was\nconscious, but did not know what he was doing. Let them acquit him--that's\nso humane, and would show what a blessing reformed law courts are. I knew\nnothing about it, but they say they have been so a long time. And when I\nheard it yesterday, I was so struck by it that I wanted to send for you at\nonce. And if he is acquitted, make him come straight from the law courts\nto dinner with me, and I'll have a party of friends, and we'll drink to\nthe reformed law courts. I don't believe he'd be dangerous; besides, I'll\ninvite a great many friends, so that he could always be led out if he did\nanything. And then he might be made a justice of the peace or something in\nanother town, for those who have been in trouble themselves make the best\njudges. And, besides, who isn't suffering from aberration nowadays?--you,\nI, all of us are in a state of aberration, and there are ever so many\nexamples of it: a man sits singing a song, suddenly something annoys him,\nhe takes a pistol and shoots the first person he comes across, and no one\nblames him for it. I read that lately, and all the doctors confirm it. The\ndoctors are always confirming; they confirm anything. Why, my Lise is in a\nstate of aberration. She made me cry again yesterday, and the day before,\ntoo, and to-day I suddenly realized that it's all due to aberration. Oh,\nLise grieves me so! I believe she's quite mad. Why did she send for you?\nDid she send for you or did you come of yourself?\"\n\n\"Yes, she sent for me, and I am just going to her.\" Alyosha got up\nresolutely.\n\n\"Oh, my dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, perhaps that's what's most\nimportant,\" Madame Hohlakov cried, suddenly bursting into tears. \"God\nknows I trust Lise to you with all my heart, and it's no matter her\nsending for you on the sly, without telling her mother. But forgive me, I\ncan't trust my daughter so easily to your brother Ivan Fyodorovitch,\nthough I still consider him the most chivalrous young man. But only fancy,\nhe's been to see Lise and I knew nothing about it!\"\n\n\"How? What? When?\" Alyosha was exceedingly surprised. He had not sat down\nagain and listened standing.\n\n\"I will tell you; that's perhaps why I asked you to come, for I don't know\nnow why I did ask you to come. Well, Ivan Fyodorovitch has been to see me\ntwice, since he came back from Moscow. First time he came as a friend to\ncall on me, and the second time Katya was here and he came because he\nheard she was here. I didn't, of course, expect him to come often, knowing\nwhat a lot he has to do as it is, _vous comprenez, cette affaire et la\nmort terrible de votre papa_. But I suddenly heard he'd been here again,\nnot to see me but to see Lise. That's six days ago now. He came, stayed\nfive minutes, and went away. And I didn't hear of it till three days\nafterwards, from Glafira, so it was a great shock to me. I sent for Lise\ndirectly. She laughed. 'He thought you were asleep,' she said, 'and came\nin to me to ask after your health.' Of course, that's how it happened. But\nLise, Lise, mercy on us, how she distresses me! Would you believe it, one\nnight, four days ago, just after you saw her last time, and had gone away,\nshe suddenly had a fit, screaming, shrieking, hysterics! Why is it I never\nhave hysterics? Then, next day another fit, and the same thing on the\nthird, and yesterday too, and then yesterday that aberration. She suddenly\nscreamed out, 'I hate Ivan Fyodorovitch. I insist on your never letting\nhim come to the house again.' I was struck dumb at these amazing words,\nand answered, 'On what grounds could I refuse to see such an excellent\nyoung man, a young man of such learning too, and so unfortunate?'--for all\nthis business is a misfortune, isn't it? She suddenly burst out laughing\nat my words, and so rudely, you know. Well, I was pleased; I thought I had\namused her and the fits would pass off, especially as I wanted to refuse\nto see Ivan Fyodorovitch anyway on account of his strange visits without\nmy knowledge, and meant to ask him for an explanation. But early this\nmorning Lise waked up and flew into a passion with Yulia and, would you\nbelieve it, slapped her in the face. That's monstrous; I am always polite\nto my servants. And an hour later she was hugging Yulia's feet and kissing\nthem. She sent a message to me that she wasn't coming to me at all, and\nwould never come and see me again, and when I dragged myself down to her,\nshe rushed to kiss me, crying, and as she kissed me, she pushed me out of\nthe room without saying a word, so I couldn't find out what was the\nmatter. Now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, I rest all my hopes on you, and, of\ncourse, my whole life is in your hands. I simply beg you to go to Lise and\nfind out everything from her, as you alone can, and come back and tell\nme--me, her mother, for you understand it will be the death of me, simply\nthe death of me, if this goes on, or else I shall run away. I can stand no\nmore. I have patience; but I may lose patience, and then ... then\nsomething awful will happen. Ah, dear me! At last, Pyotr Ilyitch!\" cried\nMadame Hohlakov, beaming all over as she saw Perhotin enter the room. \"You\nare late, you are late! Well, sit down, speak, put us out of suspense.\nWhat does the counsel say. Where are you off to, Alexey Fyodorovitch?\"\n\n\"To Lise.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. You won't forget, you won't forget what I asked you? It's a\nquestion of life and death!\"\n\n\"Of course, I won't forget, if I can ... but I am so late,\" muttered\nAlyosha, beating a hasty retreat.\n\n\"No, be sure, be sure to come in; don't say 'If you can.' I shall die if\nyou don't,\" Madame Hohlakov called after him, but Alyosha had already left\nthe room.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. A Little Demon\n\n\nGoing in to Lise, he found her half reclining in the invalid-chair, in\nwhich she had been wheeled when she was unable to walk. She did not move\nto meet him, but her sharp, keen eyes were simply riveted on his face.\nThere was a feverish look in her eyes, her face was pale and yellow.\nAlyosha was amazed at the change that had taken place in her in three\ndays. She was positively thinner. She did not hold out her hand to him. He\ntouched the thin, long fingers which lay motionless on her dress, then he\nsat down facing her, without a word.\n\n\"I know you are in a hurry to get to the prison,\" Lise said curtly, \"and\nmamma's kept you there for hours; she's just been telling you about me and\nYulia.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"I've been listening. Why do you stare at me? I want to listen and I do\nlisten, there's no harm in that. I don't apologize.\"\n\n\"You are upset about something?\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I am very happy. I've only just been reflecting for the\nthirtieth time what a good thing it is I refused you and shall not be your\nwife. You are not fit to be a husband. If I were to marry you and give you\na note to take to the man I loved after you, you'd take it and be sure to\ngive it to him and bring an answer back, too. If you were forty, you would\nstill go on taking my love-letters for me.\"\n\nShe suddenly laughed.\n\n\"There is something spiteful and yet open-hearted about you,\" Alyosha\nsmiled to her.\n\n\"The open-heartedness consists in my not being ashamed of myself with you.\nWhat's more, I don't want to feel ashamed with you, just with you.\nAlyosha, why is it I don't respect you? I am very fond of you, but I don't\nrespect you. If I respected you, I shouldn't talk to you without shame,\nshould I?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"But do you believe that I am not ashamed with you?\"\n\n\"No, I don't believe it.\"\n\nLise laughed nervously again; she spoke rapidly.\n\n\"I sent your brother, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, some sweets in prison. Alyosha,\nyou know, you are quite pretty! I shall love you awfully for having so\nquickly allowed me not to love you.\"\n\n\"Why did you send for me to-day, Lise?\"\n\n\"I wanted to tell you of a longing I have. I should like some one to\ntorture me, marry me and then torture me, deceive me and go away. I don't\nwant to be happy.\"\n\n\"You are in love with disorder?\"\n\n\"Yes, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. I keep\nimagining how I'll creep up and set fire to the house on the sly; it must\nbe on the sly. They'll try to put it out, but it'll go on burning. And I\nshall know and say nothing. Ah, what silliness! And how bored I am!\"\n\nShe waved her hand with a look of repulsion.\n\n\"It's your luxurious life,\" said Alyosha, softly.\n\n\"Is it better, then, to be poor?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is better.\"\n\n\"That's what your monk taught you. That's not true. Let me be rich and all\nthe rest poor, I'll eat sweets and drink cream and not give any to any one\nelse. Ach, don't speak, don't say anything,\" she shook her hand at him,\nthough Alyosha had not opened his mouth. \"You've told me all that before,\nI know it all by heart. It bores me. If I am ever poor, I shall murder\nsomebody, and even if I am rich, I may murder some one, perhaps--why do\nnothing! But do you know, I should like to reap, cut the rye? I'll marry\nyou, and you shall become a peasant, a real peasant; we'll keep a colt,\nshall we? Do you know Kalganov?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"He is always wandering about, dreaming. He says, 'Why live in real life?\nIt's better to dream. One can dream the most delightful things, but real\nlife is a bore.' But he'll be married soon for all that; he's been making\nlove to me already. Can you spin tops?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Well, he's just like a top: he wants to be wound up and set spinning and\nthen to be lashed, lashed, lashed with a whip. If I marry him, I'll keep\nhim spinning all his life. You are not ashamed to be with me?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You are awfully cross, because I don't talk about holy things. I don't\nwant to be holy. What will they do to one in the next world for the\ngreatest sin? You must know all about that.\"\n\n\"God will censure you.\" Alyosha was watching her steadily.\n\n\"That's just what I should like. I would go up and they would censure me,\nand I would burst out laughing in their faces. I should dreadfully like to\nset fire to the house, Alyosha, to our house; you still don't believe me?\"\n\n\"Why? There are children of twelve years old, who have a longing to set\nfire to something and they do set things on fire, too. It's a sort of\ndisease.\"\n\n\"That's not true, that's not true; there may be children, but that's not\nwhat I mean.\"\n\n\"You take evil for good; it's a passing crisis, it's the result of your\nillness, perhaps.\"\n\n\"You do despise me, though! It's simply that I don't want to do good, I\nwant to do evil, and it has nothing to do with illness.\"\n\n\"Why do evil?\"\n\n\"So that everything might be destroyed. Ah, how nice it would be if\neverything were destroyed! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think of doing a\nfearful lot of harm and everything bad, and I should do it for a long\nwhile on the sly and suddenly every one would find it out. Every one will\nstand round and point their fingers at me and I would look at them all.\nThat would be awfully nice. Why would it be so nice, Alyosha?\"\n\n\"I don't know. It's a craving to destroy something good or, as you say, to\nset fire to something. It happens sometimes.\"\n\n\"I not only say it, I shall do it.\"\n\n\"I believe you.\"\n\n\"Ah, how I love you for saying you believe me. And you are not lying one\nlittle bit. But perhaps you think that I am saying all this on purpose to\nannoy you?\"\n\n\"No, I don't think that ... though perhaps there is a little desire to do\nthat in it, too.\"\n\n\"There is a little. I never can tell lies to you,\" she declared, with a\nstrange fire in her eyes.\n\nWhat struck Alyosha above everything was her earnestness. There was not a\ntrace of humor or jesting in her face now, though, in old days, fun and\ngayety never deserted her even at her most \"earnest\" moments.\n\n\"There are moments when people love crime,\" said Alyosha thoughtfully.\n\n\"Yes, yes! You have uttered my thought; they love crime, every one loves\ncrime, they love it always, not at some 'moments.' You know, it's as\nthough people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied about\nit ever since. They all declare that they hate evil, but secretly they all\nlove it.\"\n\n\"And are you still reading nasty books?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am. Mamma reads them and hides them under her pillow and I steal\nthem.\"\n\n\"Aren't you ashamed to destroy yourself?\"\n\n\"I want to destroy myself. There's a boy here, who lay down between the\nrailway lines when the train was passing. Lucky fellow! Listen, your\nbrother is being tried now for murdering his father and every one loves\nhis having killed his father.\"\n\n\"Loves his having killed his father?\"\n\n\"Yes, loves it; every one loves it! Everybody says it's so awful, but\nsecretly they simply love it. I for one love it.\"\n\n\"There is some truth in what you say about every one,\" said Alyosha\nsoftly.\n\n\"Oh, what ideas you have!\" Lise shrieked in delight. \"And you a monk, too!\nYou wouldn't believe how I respect you, Alyosha, for never telling lies.\nOh, I must tell you a funny dream of mine. I sometimes dream of devils.\nIt's night; I am in my room with a candle and suddenly there are devils\nall over the place, in all the corners, under the table, and they open the\ndoors; there's a crowd of them behind the doors and they want to come and\nseize me. And they are just coming, just seizing me. But I suddenly cross\nmyself and they all draw back, though they don't go away altogether, they\nstand at the doors and in the corners, waiting. And suddenly I have a\nfrightful longing to revile God aloud, and so I begin, and then they come\ncrowding back to me, delighted, and seize me again and I cross myself\nagain and they all draw back. It's awful fun. it takes one's breath away.\"\n\n\"I've had the same dream, too,\" said Alyosha suddenly.\n\n\"Really?\" cried Lise, surprised. \"I say, Alyosha, don't laugh, that's\nawfully important. Could two different people have the same dream?\"\n\n\"It seems they can.\"\n\n\"Alyosha, I tell you, it's awfully important,\" Lise went on, with really\nexcessive amazement. \"It's not the dream that's important, but your having\nthe same dream as me. You never lie to me, don't lie now: is it true? You\nare not laughing?\"\n\n\"It's true.\"\n\nLise seemed extraordinarily impressed and for half a minute she was\nsilent.\n\n\"Alyosha, come and see me, come and see me more often,\" she said suddenly,\nin a supplicating voice.\n\n\"I'll always come to see you, all my life,\" answered Alyosha firmly.\n\n\"You are the only person I can talk to, you know,\" Lise began again. \"I\ntalk to no one but myself and you. Only you in the whole world. And to you\nmore readily than to myself. And I am not a bit ashamed with you, not a\nbit. Alyosha, why am I not ashamed with you, not a bit? Alyosha, is it\ntrue that at Easter the Jews steal a child and kill it?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"There's a book here in which I read about the trial of a Jew, who took a\nchild of four years old and cut off the fingers from both hands, and then\ncrucified him on the wall, hammered nails into him and crucified him, and\nafterwards, when he was tried, he said that the child died soon, within\nfour hours. That was 'soon'! He said the child moaned, kept on moaning and\nhe stood admiring it. That's nice!\"\n\n\"Nice?\"\n\n\"Nice; I sometimes imagine that it was I who crucified him. He would hang\nthere moaning and I would sit opposite him eating pineapple _compote_. I\nam awfully fond of pineapple _compote_. Do you like it?\"\n\nAlyosha looked at her in silence. Her pale, sallow face was suddenly\ncontorted, her eyes burned.\n\n\"You know, when I read about that Jew I shook with sobs all night. I kept\nfancying how the little thing cried and moaned (a child of four years old\nunderstands, you know), and all the while the thought of pineapple\n_compote_ haunted me. In the morning I wrote a letter to a certain person,\nbegging him _particularly_ to come and see me. He came and I suddenly told\nhim all about the child and the pineapple _compote_. _All_ about it,\n_all_, and said that it was nice. He laughed and said it really was nice.\nThen he got up and went away. He was only here five minutes. Did he\ndespise me? Did he despise me? Tell me, tell me, Alyosha, did he despise\nme or not?\" She sat up on the couch, with flashing eyes.\n\n\"Tell me,\" Alyosha asked anxiously, \"did you send for that person?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did.\"\n\n\"Did you send him a letter?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Simply to ask about that, about that child?\"\n\n\"No, not about that at all. But when he came, I asked him about that at\nonce. He answered, laughed, got up and went away.\"\n\n\"That person behaved honorably,\" Alyosha murmured.\n\n\"And did he despise me? Did he laugh at me?\"\n\n\"No, for perhaps he believes in the pineapple _compote_ himself. He is\nvery ill now, too, Lise.\"\n\n\"Yes, he does believe in it,\" said Lise, with flashing eyes.\n\n\"He doesn't despise any one,\" Alyosha went on. \"Only he does not believe\nany one. If he doesn't believe in people, of course, he does despise\nthem.\"\n\n\"Then he despises me, me?\"\n\n\"You, too.\"\n\n\"Good,\" Lise seemed to grind her teeth. \"When he went out laughing, I felt\nthat it was nice to be despised. The child with fingers cut off is nice,\nand to be despised is nice....\"\n\nAnd she laughed in Alyosha's face, a feverish malicious laugh.\n\n\"Do you know, Alyosha, do you know, I should like--Alyosha, save me!\" She\nsuddenly jumped from the couch, rushed to him and seized him with both\nhands. \"Save me!\" she almost groaned. \"Is there any one in the world I\ncould tell what I've told you? I've told you the truth, the truth. I shall\nkill myself, because I loathe everything! I don't want to live, because I\nloathe everything! I loathe everything, everything. Alyosha, why don't you\nlove me in the least?\" she finished in a frenzy.\n\n\"But I do love you!\" answered Alyosha warmly.\n\n\"And will you weep over me, will you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Not because I won't be your wife, but simply weep for me?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Thank you! It's only your tears I want. Every one else may punish me and\ntrample me under foot, every one, every one, not excepting _any one_. For\nI don't love any one. Do you hear, not any one! On the contrary, I hate\nhim! Go, Alyosha; it's time you went to your brother\"; she tore herself\naway from him suddenly.\n\n\"How can I leave you like this?\" said Alyosha, almost in alarm.\n\n\"Go to your brother, the prison will be shut; go, here's your hat. Give my\nlove to Mitya, go, go!\"\n\nAnd she almost forcibly pushed Alyosha out of the door. He looked at her\nwith pained surprise, when he was suddenly aware of a letter in his right\nhand, a tiny letter folded up tight and sealed. He glanced at it and\ninstantly read the address, \"To Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov.\" He looked\nquickly at Lise. Her face had become almost menacing.\n\n\"Give it to him, you must give it to him!\" she ordered him, trembling and\nbeside herself. \"To-day, at once, or I'll poison myself! That's why I sent\nfor you.\"\n\nAnd she slammed the door quickly. The bolt clicked. Alyosha put the note\nin his pocket and went straight downstairs, without going back to Madame\nHohlakov; forgetting her, in fact. As soon as Alyosha had gone, Lise\nunbolted the door, opened it a little, put her finger in the crack and\nslammed the door with all her might, pinching her finger. Ten seconds\nafter, releasing her finger, she walked softly, slowly to her chair, sat\nup straight in it and looked intently at her blackened finger and at the\nblood that oozed from under the nail. Her lips were quivering and she kept\nwhispering rapidly to herself:\n\n\"I am a wretch, wretch, wretch, wretch!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. A Hymn And A Secret\n\n\nIt was quite late (days are short in November) when Alyosha rang at the\nprison gate. It was beginning to get dusk. But Alyosha knew that he would\nbe admitted without difficulty. Things were managed in our little town, as\neverywhere else. At first, of course, on the conclusion of the preliminary\ninquiry, relations and a few other persons could only obtain interviews\nwith Mitya by going through certain inevitable formalities. But later,\nthough the formalities were not relaxed, exceptions were made for some, at\nleast, of Mitya's visitors. So much so, that sometimes the interviews with\nthe prisoner in the room set aside for the purpose were practically\n_tete-a-tete_.\n\nThese exceptions, however, were few in number; only Grushenka, Alyosha and\nRakitin were treated like this. But the captain of the police, Mihail\nMihailovitch, was very favorably disposed to Grushenka. His abuse of her\nat Mokroe weighed on the old man's conscience, and when he learned the\nwhole story, he completely changed his view of her. And strange to say,\nthough he was firmly persuaded of his guilt, yet after Mitya was once in\nprison, the old man came to take a more and more lenient view of him. \"He\nwas a man of good heart, perhaps,\" he thought, \"who had come to grief from\ndrinking and dissipation.\" His first horror had been succeeded by pity. As\nfor Alyosha, the police captain was very fond of him and had known him for\na long time. Rakitin, who had of late taken to coming very often to see\nthe prisoner, was one of the most intimate acquaintances of the \"police\ncaptain's young ladies,\" as he called them, and was always hanging about\ntheir house. He gave lessons in the house of the prison superintendent,\ntoo, who, though scrupulous in the performance of his duties, was a kind-\nhearted old man. Alyosha, again, had an intimate acquaintance of long\nstanding with the superintendent, who was fond of talking to him,\ngenerally on sacred subjects. He respected Ivan Fyodorovitch, and stood in\nawe of his opinion, though he was a great philosopher himself; \"self-\ntaught,\" of course. But Alyosha had an irresistible attraction for him.\nDuring the last year the old man had taken to studying the Apocryphal\nGospels, and constantly talked over his impressions with his young friend.\nHe used to come and see him in the monastery and discussed for hours\ntogether with him and with the monks. So even if Alyosha were late at the\nprison, he had only to go to the superintendent and everything was made\neasy. Besides, every one in the prison, down to the humblest warder, had\ngrown used to Alyosha. The sentry, of course, did not trouble him so long\nas the authorities were satisfied.\n\nWhen Mitya was summoned from his cell, he always went downstairs, to the\nplace set aside for interviews. As Alyosha entered the room he came upon\nRakitin, who was just taking leave of Mitya. They were both talking\nloudly. Mitya was laughing heartily as he saw him out, while Rakitin\nseemed grumbling. Rakitin did not like meeting Alyosha, especially of\nlate. He scarcely spoke to him, and bowed to him stiffly. Seeing Alyosha\nenter now, he frowned and looked away, as though he were entirely absorbed\nin buttoning his big, warm, fur-trimmed overcoat. Then he began looking at\nonce for his umbrella.\n\n\"I must mind not to forget my belongings,\" he muttered, simply to say\nsomething.\n\n\"Mind you don't forget other people's belongings,\" said Mitya, as a joke,\nand laughed at once at his own wit. Rakitin fired up instantly.\n\n\"You'd better give that advice to your own family, who've always been a\nslave-driving lot, and not to Rakitin,\" he cried, suddenly trembling with\nanger.\n\n\"What's the matter? I was joking,\" cried Mitya. \"Damn it all! They are all\nlike that,\" he turned to Alyosha, nodding towards Rakitin's hurriedly\nretreating figure. \"He was sitting here, laughing and cheerful, and all at\nonce he boils up like that. He didn't even nod to you. Have you broken\nwith him completely? Why are you so late? I've not been simply waiting,\nbut thirsting for you the whole morning. But never mind. We'll make up for\nit now.\"\n\n\"Why does he come here so often? Surely you are not such great friends?\"\nasked Alyosha. He, too, nodded at the door through which Rakitin had\ndisappeared.\n\n\"Great friends with Rakitin? No, not as much as that. Is it likely--a pig\nlike that? He considers I am ... a blackguard. They can't understand a\njoke either, that's the worst of such people. They never understand a\njoke, and their souls are dry, dry and flat; they remind me of prison\nwalls when I was first brought here. But he is a clever fellow, very\nclever. Well, Alexey, it's all over with me now.\"\n\nHe sat down on the bench and made Alyosha sit down beside him.\n\n\"Yes, the trial's to-morrow. Are you so hopeless, brother?\" Alyosha said,\nwith an apprehensive feeling.\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" said Mitya, looking at him rather\nuncertainly. \"Oh, you mean the trial! Damn it all! Till now we've been\ntalking of things that don't matter, about this trial, but I haven't said\na word to you about the chief thing. Yes, the trial is to-morrow; but it\nwasn't the trial I meant, when I said it was all over with me. Why do you\nlook at me so critically?\"\n\n\"What do you mean, Mitya?\"\n\n\"Ideas, ideas, that's all! Ethics! What is ethics?\"\n\n\"Ethics?\" asked Alyosha, wondering.\n\n\"Yes; is it a science?\"\n\n\"Yes, there is such a science ... but ... I confess I can't explain to you\nwhat sort of science it is.\"\n\n\"Rakitin knows. Rakitin knows a lot, damn him! He's not going to be a\nmonk. He means to go to Petersburg. There he'll go in for criticism of an\nelevating tendency. Who knows, he may be of use and make his own career,\ntoo. Ough! they are first-rate, these people, at making a career! Damn\nethics, I am done for, Alexey, I am, you man of God! I love you more than\nany one. It makes my heart yearn to look at you. Who was Karl Bernard?\"\n\n\"Karl Bernard?\" Alyosha was surprised again.\n\n\"No, not Karl. Stay, I made a mistake. Claude Bernard. What was he?\nChemist or what?\"\n\n\"He must be a savant,\" answered Alyosha; \"but I confess I can't tell you\nmuch about him, either. I've heard of him as a savant, but what sort I\ndon't know.\"\n\n\"Well, damn him, then! I don't know either,\" swore Mitya. \"A scoundrel of\nsome sort, most likely. They are all scoundrels. And Rakitin will make his\nway. Rakitin will get on anywhere; he is another Bernard. Ugh, these\nBernards! They are all over the place.\"\n\n\"But what is the matter?\" Alyosha asked insistently.\n\n\"He wants to write an article about me, about my case, and so begin his\nliterary career. That's what he comes for; he said so himself. He wants to\nprove some theory. He wants to say 'he couldn't help murdering his father,\nhe was corrupted by his environment,' and so on. He explained it all to\nme. He is going to put in a tinge of Socialism, he says. But there, damn\nthe fellow, he can put in a tinge if he likes, I don't care. He can't bear\nIvan, he hates him. He's not fond of you, either. But I don't turn him\nout, for he is a clever fellow. Awfully conceited, though. I said to him\njust now, 'The Karamazovs are not blackguards, but philosophers; for all\ntrue Russians are philosophers, and though you've studied, you are not a\nphilosopher--you are a low fellow.' He laughed, so maliciously. And I said\nto him, '_De ideabus non est disputandum_.' Isn't that rather good? I can\nset up for being a classic, you see!\" Mitya laughed suddenly.\n\n\"Why is it all over with you? You said so just now,\" Alyosha interposed.\n\n\"Why is it all over with me? H'm!... The fact of it is ... if you take it\nas a whole, I am sorry to lose God--that's why it is.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by 'sorry to lose God'?\"\n\n\"Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head--that is, these nerves are\nthere in the brain ... (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the\nlittle tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering ... that\nis, you see, I look at something with my eyes and then they begin\nquivering, those little tails ... and when they quiver, then an image\nappears ... it doesn't appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes\n... and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment--devil\ntake the moment!--but an image; that is, an object, or an action, damn it!\nThat's why I see and then think, because of those tails, not at all\nbecause I've got a soul, and that I am some sort of image and likeness.\nAll that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to me yesterday, brother,\nand it simply bowled me over. It's magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A\nnew man's arising--that I understand.... And yet I am sorry to lose God!\"\n\n\"Well, that's a good thing, anyway,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"That I am sorry to lose God? It's chemistry, brother, chemistry! There's\nno help for it, your reverence, you must make way for chemistry. And\nRakitin does dislike God. Ough! doesn't he dislike Him! That's the sore\npoint with all of them. But they conceal it. They tell lies. They pretend.\n'Will you preach this in your reviews?' I asked him. 'Oh, well, if I did\nit openly, they won't let it through,' he said. He laughed. 'But what will\nbecome of men then?' I asked him, 'without God and immortal life? All\nthings are lawful then, they can do what they like?' 'Didn't you know?' he\nsaid laughing, 'a clever man can do what he likes,' he said. 'A clever man\nknows his way about, but you've put your foot in it, committing a murder,\nand now you are rotting in prison.' He says that to my face! A regular\npig! I used to kick such people out, but now I listen to them. He talks a\nlot of sense, too. Writes well. He began reading me an article last week.\nI copied out three lines of it. Wait a minute. Here it is.\"\n\nMitya hurriedly pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and read:\n\n\" 'In order to determine this question, it is above all essential to put\none's personality in contradiction to one's reality.' Do you understand\nthat?\"\n\n\"No, I don't,\" said Alyosha. He looked at Mitya and listened to him with\ncuriosity.\n\n\"I don't understand either. It's dark and obscure, but intellectual.\n'Every one writes like that now,' he says, 'it's the effect of their\nenvironment.' They are afraid of the environment. He writes poetry, too,\nthe rascal. He's written in honor of Madame Hohlakov's foot. Ha ha ha!\"\n\n\"I've heard about it,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"Have you? And have you heard the poem?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I've got it. Here it is. I'll read it to you. You don't know--I haven't\ntold you--there's quite a story about it. He's a rascal! Three weeks ago he\nbegan to tease me. 'You've got yourself into a mess, like a fool, for the\nsake of three thousand, but I'm going to collar a hundred and fifty\nthousand. I am going to marry a widow and buy a house in Petersburg.' And\nhe told me he was courting Madame Hohlakov. She hadn't much brains in her\nyouth, and now at forty she has lost what she had. 'But she's awfully\nsentimental,' he says; 'that's how I shall get hold of her. When I marry\nher, I shall take her to Petersburg and there I shall start a newspaper.'\nAnd his mouth was simply watering, the beast, not for the widow, but for\nthe hundred and fifty thousand. And he made me believe it. He came to see\nme every day. 'She is coming round,' he declared. He was beaming with\ndelight. And then, all of a sudden, he was turned out of the house.\nPerhotin's carrying everything before him, bravo! I could kiss the silly\nold noodle for turning him out of the house. And he had written this\ndoggerel. 'It's the first time I've soiled my hands with writing poetry,'\nhe said. 'It's to win her heart, so it's in a good cause. When I get hold\nof the silly woman's fortune, I can be of great social utility.' They have\nthis social justification for every nasty thing they do! 'Anyway it's\nbetter than your Pushkin's poetry,' he said, 'for I've managed to advocate\nenlightenment even in that.' I understand what he means about Pushkin, I\nquite see that, if he really was a man of talent and only wrote about\nwomen's feet. But wasn't Rakitin stuck up about his doggerel! The vanity\nof these fellows! 'On the convalescence of the swollen foot of the object\nof my affections'--he thought of that for a title. He's a waggish fellow.\n\n\n    A captivating little foot,\n    Though swollen and red and tender!\n    The doctors come and plasters put,\n    But still they cannot mend her.\n\n    Yet, 'tis not for her foot I dread--\n    A theme for Pushkin's muse more fit--\n    It's not her foot, it is her head:\n    I tremble for her loss of wit!\n\n    For as her foot swells, strange to say,\n    Her intellect is on the wane--\n    Oh, for some remedy I pray\n    That may restore both foot and brain!\n\n\nHe is a pig, a regular pig, but he's very arch, the rascal! And he really\nhas put in a progressive idea. And wasn't he angry when she kicked him\nout! He was gnashing his teeth!\"\n\n\"He's taken his revenge already,\" said Alyosha. \"He's written a paragraph\nabout Madame Hohlakov.\"\n\nAnd Alyosha told him briefly about the paragraph in _Gossip_.\n\n\"That's his doing, that's his doing!\" Mitya assented, frowning. \"That's\nhim! These paragraphs ... I know ... the insulting things that have been\nwritten about Grushenka, for instance.... And about Katya, too.... H'm!\"\n\nHe walked across the room with a harassed air.\n\n\"Brother, I cannot stay long,\" Alyosha said, after a pause. \"To-morrow\nwill be a great and awful day for you, the judgment of God will be\naccomplished ... I am amazed at you, you walk about here, talking of I\ndon't know what ...\"\n\n\"No, don't be amazed at me,\" Mitya broke in warmly. \"Am I to talk of that\nstinking dog? Of the murderer? We've talked enough of him. I don't want to\nsay more of the stinking son of Stinking Lizaveta! God will kill him, you\nwill see. Hush!\"\n\nHe went up to Alyosha excitedly and kissed him. His eyes glowed.\n\n\"Rakitin wouldn't understand it,\" he began in a sort of exaltation; \"but\nyou, you'll understand it all. That's why I was thirsting for you. You\nsee, there's so much I've been wanting to tell you for ever so long, here,\nwithin these peeling walls, but I haven't said a word about what matters\nmost; the moment never seems to have come. Now I can wait no longer. I\nmust pour out my heart to you. Brother, these last two months I've found\nin myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me,\nbut would never have come to the surface, if it hadn't been for this blow\nfrom heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in\nthe mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that--it's\nsomething else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even\nthere, in the mines, under-ground, I may find a human heart in another\nconvict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even\nthere one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen\nheart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring\nup from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one\nmay bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them,\nhundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. Why was it I dreamed\nof that 'babe' at such a moment? 'Why is the babe so poor?' That was a\nsign to me at that moment. It's for the babe I'm going. Because we are all\nresponsible for all. For all the 'babes,' for there are big children as\nwell as little children. All are 'babes.' I go for all, because some one\nmust go for all. I didn't kill father, but I've got to go. I accept it.\nIt's all come to me here, here, within these peeling walls. There are\nnumbers of them there, hundreds of them underground, with hammers in their\nhands. Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but\nthen, in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man\ncannot live nor God exist, for God gives joy: it's His privilege--a grand\none. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer! What should I be underground\nthere without God? Rakitin's laughing! If they drive God from the earth,\nwe shall shelter Him underground. One cannot exist in prison without God;\nit's even more impossible than out of prison. And then we men underground\nwill sing from the bowels of the earth a glorious hymn to God, with Whom\nis joy. Hail to God and His joy! I love Him!\"\n\nMitya was almost gasping for breath as he uttered his wild speech. He\nturned pale, his lips quivered, and tears rolled down his cheeks.\n\n\"Yes, life is full, there is life even underground,\" he began again. \"You\nwouldn't believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst for\nexistence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling\nwalls. Rakitin doesn't understand that; all he cares about is building a\nhouse and letting flats. But I've been longing for you. And what is\nsuffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond reckoning. I am\nnot afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you know, perhaps I\nwon't answer at the trial at all.... And I seem to have such strength in\nme now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be\nable to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands\nof agonies--I exist. I'm tormented on the rack--but I exist! Though I sit\nalone on a pillar--I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I\nknow it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun\nis there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me.\nDamn them! Brother Ivan--\"\n\n\"What of brother Ivan?\" interrupted Alyosha, but Mitya did not hear.\n\n\"You see, I never had any of these doubts before, but it was all hidden\naway in me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were\nsurging up in me, that I used to drink and fight and rage. It was to\nstifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them. Ivan is not\nRakitin, there is an idea in him. Ivan is a sphinx and is silent; he is\nalways silent. It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's\nworrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right--that it's\nan idea made up by men? Then if He doesn't exist, man is the chief of the\nearth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good\nwithout God? That's the question. I always come back to that. For whom is\nman going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing\nthe hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity without\nGod. Well, only a sniveling idiot can maintain that. I can't understand\nit. Life's easy for Rakitin. 'You'd better think about the extension of\ncivic rights, or even of keeping down the price of meat. You will show\nyour love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by\nphilosophy.' I answered him, 'Well, but you, without a God, are more\nlikely to raise the price of meat, if it suits you, and make a rouble on\nevery copeck.' He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer\nme that, Alexey. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a\nChinaman, so it's a relative thing. Or isn't it? Is it not relative? A\ntreacherous question! You won't laugh if I tell you it's kept me awake two\nnights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it.\nVanity! Ivan has no God. He has an idea. It's beyond me. But he is silent.\nI believe he is a free-mason. I asked him, but he is silent. I wanted to\ndrink from the springs of his soul--he was silent. But once he did drop a\nword.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\" Alyosha took it up quickly.\n\n\"I said to him, 'Then everything is lawful, if it is so?' He frowned.\n'Fyodor Pavlovitch, our papa,' he said, 'was a pig, but his ideas were\nright enough.' That was what he dropped. That was all he said. That was\ngoing one better than Rakitin.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Alyosha assented bitterly. \"When was he with you?\"\n\n\"Of that later; now I must speak of something else. I have said nothing\nabout Ivan to you before. I put it off to the last. When my business here\nis over and the verdict has been given, then I'll tell you something. I'll\ntell you everything. We've something tremendous on hand.... And you shall\nbe my judge in it. But don't begin about that now; be silent. You talk of\nto-morrow, of the trial; but, would you believe it, I know nothing about\nit.\"\n\n\"Have you talked to the counsel?\"\n\n\"What's the use of the counsel? I told him all about it. He's a soft,\ncity-bred rogue--a Bernard! But he doesn't believe me--not a bit of it. Only\nimagine, he believes I did it. I see it. 'In that case,' I asked him, 'why\nhave you come to defend me?' Hang them all! They've got a doctor down,\ntoo, want to prove I'm mad. I won't have that! Katerina Ivanovna wants to\ndo her 'duty' to the end, whatever the strain!\" Mitya smiled bitterly.\n\"The cat! Hard-hearted creature! She knows that I said of her at Mokroe\nthat she was a woman of 'great wrath.' They repeated it. Yes, the facts\nagainst me have grown numerous as the sands of the sea. Grigory sticks to\nhis point. Grigory's honest, but a fool. Many people are honest because\nthey are fools: that's Rakitin's idea. Grigory's my enemy. And there are\nsome people who are better as foes than friends. I mean Katerina Ivanovna.\nI am afraid, oh, I am afraid she will tell how she bowed to the ground\nafter that four thousand. She'll pay it back to the last farthing. I don't\nwant her sacrifice; they'll put me to shame at the trial. I wonder how I\ncan stand it. Go to her, Alyosha, ask her not to speak of that in the\ncourt, can't you? But damn it all, it doesn't matter! I shall get through\nsomehow. I don't pity her. It's her own doing. She deserves what she gets.\nI shall have my own story to tell, Alexey.\" He smiled bitterly again.\n\"Only ... only Grusha, Grusha! Good Lord! Why should she have such\nsuffering to bear?\" he exclaimed suddenly, with tears. \"Grusha's killing\nme; the thought of her's killing me, killing me. She was with me just\nnow....\"\n\n\"She told me she was very much grieved by you to-day.\"\n\n\"I know. Confound my temper! It was jealousy. I was sorry, I kissed her as\nshe was going. I didn't ask her forgiveness.\"\n\n\"Why didn't you?\" exclaimed Alyosha.\n\nSuddenly Mitya laughed almost mirthfully.\n\n\"God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for a fault\nfrom a woman you love. From one you love especially, however greatly you\nmay have been in fault. For a woman--devil only knows what to make of a\nwoman! I know something about them, anyway. But try acknowledging you are\nin fault to a woman. Say, 'I am sorry, forgive me,' and a shower of\nreproaches will follow! Nothing will make her forgive you simply and\ndirectly, she'll humble you to the dust, bring forward things that have\nnever happened, recall everything, forget nothing, add something of her\nown, and only then forgive you. And even the best, the best of them do it.\nShe'll scrape up all the scrapings and load them on your head. They are\nready to flay you alive, I tell you, every one of them, all these angels\nwithout whom we cannot live! I tell you plainly and openly, dear boy,\nevery decent man ought to be under some woman's thumb. That's my\nconviction--not conviction, but feeling. A man ought to be magnanimous, and\nit's no disgrace to a man! No disgrace to a hero, not even a Caesar! But\ndon't ever beg her pardon all the same for anything. Remember that rule\ngiven you by your brother Mitya, who's come to ruin through women. No, I'd\nbetter make it up to Grusha somehow, without begging pardon. I worship\nher, Alexey, worship her. Only she doesn't see it. No, she still thinks I\ndon't love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The\npast was nothing! In the past it was only those infernal curves of hers\nthat tortured me, but now I've taken all her soul into my soul and through\nher I've become a man myself. Will they marry us? If they don't, I shall\ndie of jealousy. I imagine something every day.... What did she say to you\nabout me?\"\n\nAlyosha repeated all Grushenka had said to him that day. Mitya listened,\nmade him repeat things, and seemed pleased.\n\n\"Then she is not angry at my being jealous?\" he exclaimed. \"She is a\nregular woman! 'I've a fierce heart myself!' Ah, I love such fierce\nhearts, though I can't bear any one's being jealous of me. I can't endure\nit. We shall fight. But I shall love her, I shall love her infinitely.\nWill they marry us? Do they let convicts marry? That's the question. And\nwithout her I can't exist....\"\n\nMitya walked frowning across the room. It was almost dark. He suddenly\nseemed terribly worried.\n\n\"So there's a secret, she says, a secret? We have got up a plot against\nher, and Katya is mixed up in it, she thinks. No, my good Grushenka,\nthat's not it. You are very wide of the mark, in your foolish feminine\nway. Alyosha, darling, well, here goes! I'll tell you our secret!\"\n\nHe looked round, went close up quickly to Alyosha, who was standing before\nhim, and whispered to him with an air of mystery, though in reality no one\ncould hear them: the old warder was dozing in the corner, and not a word\ncould reach the ears of the soldiers on guard.\n\n\"I will tell you all our secret,\" Mitya whispered hurriedly. \"I meant to\ntell you later, for how could I decide on anything without you? You are\neverything to me. Though I say that Ivan is superior to us, you are my\nangel. It's your decision will decide it. Perhaps it's you that is\nsuperior and not Ivan. You see, it's a question of conscience, question of\nthe higher conscience--the secret is so important that I can't settle it\nmyself, and I've put it off till I could speak to you. But anyway it's too\nearly to decide now, for we must wait for the verdict. As soon as the\nverdict is given, you shall decide my fate. Don't decide it now. I'll tell\nyou now. You listen, but don't decide. Stand and keep quiet. I won't tell\nyou everything. I'll only tell you the idea, without details, and you keep\nquiet. Not a question, not a movement. You agree? But, goodness, what\nshall I do with your eyes? I'm afraid your eyes will tell me your\ndecision, even if you don't speak. Oo! I'm afraid! Alyosha, listen! Ivan\nsuggests my _escaping_. I won't tell you the details: it's all been\nthought out: it can all be arranged. Hush, don't decide. I should go to\nAmerica with Grusha. You know I can't live without Grusha! What if they\nwon't let her follow me to Siberia? Do they let convicts get married? Ivan\nthinks not. And without Grusha what should I do there underground with a\nhammer? I should only smash my skull with the hammer! But, on the other\nhand, my conscience? I should have run away from suffering. A sign has\ncome, I reject the sign. I have a way of salvation and I turn my back on\nit. Ivan says that in America, 'with the good-will,' I can be of more use\nthan underground. But what becomes of our hymn from underground? What's\nAmerica? America is vanity again! And there's a lot of swindling in\nAmerica, too, I expect. I should have run away from crucifixion! I tell\nyou, you know, Alexey, because you are the only person who can understand\nthis. There's no one else. It's folly, madness to others, all I've told\nyou of the hymn. They'll say I'm out of my mind or a fool. I am not out of\nmy mind and I am not a fool. Ivan understands about the hymn, too. He\nunderstands, only he doesn't answer--he doesn't speak. He doesn't believe\nin the hymn. Don't speak, don't speak. I see how you look! You have\nalready decided. Don't decide, spare me! I can't live without Grusha. Wait\ntill after the trial!\"\n\nMitya ended beside himself. He held Alyosha with both hands on his\nshoulders, and his yearning, feverish eyes were fixed on his brother's.\n\n\"They don't let convicts marry, do they?\" he repeated for the third time\nin a supplicating voice.\n\nAlyosha listened with extreme surprise and was deeply moved.\n\n\"Tell me one thing,\" he said. \"Is Ivan very keen on it, and whose idea was\nit?\"\n\n\"His, his, and he is very keen on it. He didn't come to see me at first,\nthen he suddenly came a week ago and he began about it straight away. He\nis awfully keen on it. He doesn't ask me, but orders me to escape. He\ndoesn't doubt of my obeying him, though I showed him all my heart as I\nhave to you, and told him about the hymn, too. He told me he'd arrange it;\nhe's found out about everything. But of that later. He's simply set on it.\nIt's all a matter of money: he'll pay ten thousand for escape and give me\ntwenty thousand for America. And he says we can arrange a magnificent\nescape for ten thousand.\"\n\n\"And he told you on no account to tell me?\" Alyosha asked again.\n\n\"To tell no one, and especially not you; on no account to tell you. He is\nafraid, no doubt, that you'll stand before me as my conscience. Don't tell\nhim I told you. Don't tell him, for anything.\"\n\n\"You are right,\" Alyosha pronounced; \"it's impossible to decide anything\nbefore the trial is over. After the trial you'll decide of yourself. Then\nyou'll find that new man in yourself and he will decide.\"\n\n\"A new man, or a Bernard who'll decide _a la_ Bernard, for I believe I'm a\ncontemptible Bernard myself,\" said Mitya, with a bitter grin.\n\n\"But, brother, have you no hope then of being acquitted?\"\n\nMitya shrugged his shoulders nervously and shook his head. \"Alyosha,\ndarling, it's time you were going,\" he said, with a sudden haste. \"There's\nthe superintendent shouting in the yard. He'll be here directly. We are\nlate; it's irregular. Embrace me quickly. Kiss me! Sign me with the cross,\ndarling, for the cross I have to bear to-morrow.\"\n\nThey embraced and kissed.\n\n\"Ivan,\" said Mitya suddenly, \"suggests my escaping; but, of course, he\nbelieves I did it.\"\n\nA mournful smile came on to his lips.\n\n\"Have you asked him whether he believes it?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"No, I haven't. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I hadn't the courage. But I\nsaw it from his eyes. Well, good-by!\"\n\nOnce more they kissed hurriedly, and Alyosha was just going out, when\nMitya suddenly called him back.\n\n\"Stand facing me! That's right!\" And again he seized Alyosha, putting both\nhands on his shoulders. His face became suddenly quite pale, so that it\nwas dreadfully apparent, even through the gathering darkness. His lips\ntwitched, his eyes fastened upon Alyosha.\n\n\"Alyosha, tell me the whole truth, as you would before God. Do you believe\nI did it? Do you, do you in yourself, believe it? The whole truth, don't\nlie!\" he cried desperately.\n\nEverything seemed heaving before Alyosha, and he felt something like a\nstab at his heart.\n\n\"Hush! What do you mean?\" he faltered helplessly.\n\n\"The whole truth, the whole, don't lie!\" repeated Mitya.\n\n\"I've never for one instant believed that you were the murderer!\" broke in\na shaking voice from Alyosha's breast, and he raised his right hand in the\nair, as though calling God to witness his words.\n\nMitya's whole face was lighted up with bliss.\n\n\"Thank you!\" he articulated slowly, as though letting a sigh escape him\nafter fainting. \"Now you have given me new life. Would you believe it,\ntill this moment I've been afraid to ask you, you, even you. Well, go!\nYou've given me strength for to-morrow. God bless you! Come, go along!\nLove Ivan!\" was Mitya's last word.\n\nAlyosha went out in tears. Such distrustfulness in Mitya, such lack of\nconfidence even to him, to Alyosha--all this suddenly opened before Alyosha\nan unsuspected depth of hopeless grief and despair in the soul of his\nunhappy brother. Intense, infinite compassion overwhelmed him instantly.\nThere was a poignant ache in his torn heart. \"Love Ivan!\"--he suddenly\nrecalled Mitya's words. And he was going to Ivan. He badly wanted to see\nIvan all day. He was as much worried about Ivan as about Mitya, and more\nthan ever now.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. Not You, Not You!\n\n\nOn the way to Ivan he had to pass the house where Katerina Ivanovna was\nliving. There was light in the windows. He suddenly stopped and resolved\nto go in. He had not seen Katerina Ivanovna for more than a week. But now\nit struck him that Ivan might be with her, especially on the eve of the\nterrible day. Ringing, and mounting the staircase, which was dimly lighted\nby a Chinese lantern, he saw a man coming down, and as they met, he\nrecognized him as his brother. So he was just coming from Katerina\nIvanovna.\n\n\"Ah, it's only you,\" said Ivan dryly. \"Well, good-by! You are going to\nher?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I don't advise you to; she's upset and you'll upset her more.\"\n\nA door was instantly flung open above, and a voice cried suddenly:\n\n\"No, no! Alexey Fyodorovitch, have you come from him?\"\n\n\"Yes, I have been with him.\"\n\n\"Has he sent me any message? Come up, Alyosha, and you, Ivan Fyodorovitch,\nyou must come back, you must. Do you hear?\"\n\nThere was such a peremptory note in Katya's voice that Ivan, after a\nmoment's hesitation, made up his mind to go back with Alyosha.\n\n\"She was listening,\" he murmured angrily to himself, but Alyosha heard it.\n\n\"Excuse my keeping my greatcoat on,\" said Ivan, going into the drawing-\nroom. \"I won't sit down. I won't stay more than a minute.\"\n\n\"Sit down, Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" said Katerina Ivanovna, though she\nremained standing. She had changed very little during this time, but there\nwas an ominous gleam in her dark eyes. Alyosha remembered afterwards that\nshe had struck him as particularly handsome at that moment.\n\n\"What did he ask you to tell me?\"\n\n\"Only one thing,\" said Alyosha, looking her straight in the face, \"that\nyou would spare yourself and say nothing at the trial of what\" (he was a\nlittle confused) \"... passed between you ... at the time of your first\nacquaintance ... in that town.\"\n\n\"Ah! that I bowed down to the ground for that money!\" She broke into a\nbitter laugh. \"Why, is he afraid for me or for himself? He asks me to\nspare--whom? Him or myself? Tell me, Alexey Fyodorovitch!\"\n\nAlyosha watched her intently, trying to understand her.\n\n\"Both yourself and him,\" he answered softly.\n\n\"I am glad to hear it,\" she snapped out maliciously, and she suddenly\nblushed.\n\n\"You don't know me yet, Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" she said menacingly. \"And I\ndon't know myself yet. Perhaps you'll want to trample me under foot after\nmy examination to-morrow.\"\n\n\"You will give your evidence honorably,\" said Alyosha; \"that's all that's\nwanted.\"\n\n\"Women are often dishonorable,\" she snarled. \"Only an hour ago I was\nthinking I felt afraid to touch that monster ... as though he were a\nreptile ... but no, he is still a human being to me! But did he do it? Is\nhe the murderer?\" she cried, all of a sudden, hysterically, turning\nquickly to Ivan. Alyosha saw at once that she had asked Ivan that question\nbefore, perhaps only a moment before he came in, and not for the first\ntime, but for the hundredth, and that they had ended by quarreling.\n\n\"I've been to see Smerdyakov.... It was you, you who persuaded me that he\nmurdered his father. It's only you I believed!\" she continued, still\naddressing Ivan. He gave her a sort of strained smile. Alyosha started at\nher tone. He had not suspected such familiar intimacy between them.\n\n\"Well, that's enough, anyway,\" Ivan cut short the conversation. \"I am\ngoing. I'll come to-morrow.\" And turning at once, he walked out of the\nroom and went straight downstairs.\n\nWith an imperious gesture, Katerina Ivanovna seized Alyosha by both hands.\n\n\"Follow him! Overtake him! Don't leave him alone for a minute!\" she said,\nin a hurried whisper. \"He's mad! Don't you know that he's mad? He is in a\nfever, nervous fever. The doctor told me so. Go, run after him....\"\n\nAlyosha jumped up and ran after Ivan, who was not fifty paces ahead of\nhim.\n\n\"What do you want?\" He turned quickly on Alyosha, seeing that he was\nrunning after him. \"She told you to catch me up, because I'm mad. I know\nit all by heart,\" he added irritably.\n\n\"She is mistaken, of course; but she is right that you are ill,\" said\nAlyosha. \"I was looking at your face just now. You look very ill, Ivan.\"\n\nIvan walked on without stopping. Alyosha followed him.\n\n\"And do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their\nmind?\" Ivan asked in a voice suddenly quiet, without a trace of\nirritation, with a note of the simplest curiosity.\n\n\"No, I don't. I suppose there are all kinds of insanity.\"\n\n\"And can one observe that one's going mad oneself?\"\n\n\"I imagine one can't see oneself clearly in such circumstances,\" Alyosha\nanswered with surprise.\n\nIvan paused for half a minute.\n\n\"If you want to talk to me, please change the subject,\" he said suddenly.\n\n\"Oh, while I think of it, I have a letter for you,\" said Alyosha timidly,\nand he took Lise's note from his pocket and held it out to Ivan. They were\njust under a lamp-post. Ivan recognized the handwriting at once.\n\n\"Ah, from that little demon!\" he laughed maliciously, and, without opening\nthe envelope, he tore it into bits and threw it in the air. The bits were\nscattered by the wind.\n\n\"She's not sixteen yet, I believe, and already offering herself,\" he said\ncontemptuously, striding along the street again.\n\n\"How do you mean, offering herself?\" exclaimed Alyosha.\n\n\"As wanton women offer themselves, to be sure.\"\n\n\"How can you, Ivan, how can you?\" Alyosha cried warmly, in a grieved\nvoice. \"She is a child; you are insulting a child! She is ill; she is very\nill, too. She is on the verge of insanity, too, perhaps.... I had hoped to\nhear something from you ... that would save her.\"\n\n\"You'll hear nothing from me. If she is a child I am not her nurse. Be\nquiet, Alexey. Don't go on about her. I am not even thinking about it.\"\n\nThey were silent again for a moment.\n\n\"She will be praying all night now to the Mother of God to show her how to\nact to-morrow at the trial,\" he said sharply and angrily again.\n\n\"You ... you mean Katerina Ivanovna?\"\n\n\"Yes. Whether she's to save Mitya or ruin him. She'll pray for light from\nabove. She can't make up her mind for herself, you see. She has not had\ntime to decide yet. She takes me for her nurse, too. She wants me to sing\nlullabies to her.\"\n\n\"Katerina Ivanovna loves you, brother,\" said Alyosha sadly.\n\n\"Perhaps; but I am not very keen on her.\"\n\n\"She is suffering. Why do you ... sometimes say things to her that give\nher hope?\" Alyosha went on, with timid reproach. \"I know that you've given\nher hope. Forgive me for speaking to you like this,\" he added.\n\n\"I can't behave to her as I ought--break off altogether and tell her so\nstraight out,\" said Ivan, irritably. \"I must wait till sentence is passed\non the murderer. If I break off with her now, she will avenge herself on\nme by ruining that scoundrel to-morrow at the trial, for she hates him and\nknows she hates him. It's all a lie--lie upon lie! As long as I don't break\noff with her, she goes on hoping, and she won't ruin that monster, knowing\nhow I want to get him out of trouble. If only that damned verdict would\ncome!\"\n\nThe words \"murderer\" and \"monster\" echoed painfully in Alyosha's heart.\n\n\"But how can she ruin Mitya?\" he asked, pondering on Ivan's words. \"What\nevidence can she give that would ruin Mitya?\"\n\n\"You don't know that yet. She's got a document in her hands, in Mitya's\nown writing, that proves conclusively that he did murder Fyodor\nPavlovitch.\"\n\n\"That's impossible!\" cried Alyosha.\n\n\"Why is it impossible? I've read it myself.\"\n\n\"There can't be such a document!\" Alyosha repeated warmly. \"There can't\nbe, because he's not the murderer. It's not he murdered father, not he!\"\n\nIvan suddenly stopped.\n\n\"Who is the murderer then, according to you?\" he asked, with apparent\ncoldness. There was even a supercilious note in his voice.\n\n\"You know who,\" Alyosha pronounced in a low, penetrating voice.\n\n\"Who? You mean the myth about that crazy idiot, the epileptic,\nSmerdyakov?\"\n\nAlyosha suddenly felt himself trembling all over.\n\n\"You know who,\" broke helplessly from him. He could scarcely breathe.\n\n\"Who? Who?\" Ivan cried almost fiercely. All his restraint suddenly\nvanished.\n\n\"I only know one thing,\" Alyosha went on, still almost in a whisper, \"_it\nwasn't you_ killed father.\"\n\n\" 'Not you'! What do you mean by 'not you'?\" Ivan was thunderstruck.\n\n\"It was not you killed father, not you!\" Alyosha repeated firmly.\n\nThe silence lasted for half a minute.\n\n\"I know I didn't. Are you raving?\" said Ivan, with a pale, distorted\nsmile. His eyes were riveted on Alyosha. They were standing again under a\nlamp-post.\n\n\"No, Ivan. You've told yourself several times that you are the murderer.\"\n\n\"When did I say so? I was in Moscow.... When have I said so?\" Ivan\nfaltered helplessly.\n\n\"You've said so to yourself many times, when you've been alone during\nthese two dreadful months,\" Alyosha went on softly and distinctly as\nbefore. Yet he was speaking now, as it were, not of himself, not of his\nown will, but obeying some irresistible command. \"You have accused\nyourself and have confessed to yourself that you are the murderer and no\none else. But you didn't do it: you are mistaken: you are not the\nmurderer. Do you hear? It was not you! God has sent me to tell you so.\"\n\nThey were both silent. The silence lasted a whole long minute. They were\nboth standing still, gazing into each other's eyes. They were both pale.\nSuddenly Ivan began trembling all over, and clutched Alyosha's shoulder.\n\n\"You've been in my room!\" he whispered hoarsely. \"You've been there at\nnight, when he came.... Confess ... have you seen him, have you seen him?\"\n\n\"Whom do you mean--Mitya?\" Alyosha asked, bewildered.\n\n\"Not him, damn the monster!\" Ivan shouted, in a frenzy. \"Do you know that\nhe visits me? How did you find out? Speak!\"\n\n\"Who is _he_! I don't know whom you are talking about,\" Alyosha faltered,\nbeginning to be alarmed.\n\n\"Yes, you do know ... or how could you--? It's impossible that you don't\nknow.\"\n\nSuddenly he seemed to check himself. He stood still and seemed to reflect.\nA strange grin contorted his lips.\n\n\"Brother,\" Alyosha began again, in a shaking voice, \"I have said this to\nyou, because you'll believe my word, I know that. I tell you once and for\nall, it's not you. You hear, once for all! God has put it into my heart to\nsay this to you, even though it may make you hate me from this hour.\"\n\nBut by now Ivan had apparently regained his self-control.\n\n\"Alexey Fyodorovitch,\" he said, with a cold smile, \"I can't endure\nprophets and epileptics--messengers from God especially--and you know that\nonly too well. I break off all relations with you from this moment and\nprobably for ever. I beg you to leave me at this turning. It's the way to\nyour lodgings, too. You'd better be particularly careful not to come to me\nto-day! Do you hear?\"\n\nHe turned and walked on with a firm step, not looking back.\n\n\"Brother,\" Alyosha called after him, \"if anything happens to you to-day,\nturn to me before any one!\"\n\nBut Ivan made no reply. Alyosha stood under the lamp-post at the cross\nroads, till Ivan had vanished into the darkness. Then he turned and walked\nslowly homewards. Both Alyosha and Ivan were living in lodgings; neither\nof them was willing to live in Fyodor Pavlovitch's empty house. Alyosha\nhad a furnished room in the house of some working people. Ivan lived some\ndistance from him. He had taken a roomy and fairly comfortable lodge\nattached to a fine house that belonged to a well-to-do lady, the widow of\nan official. But his only attendant was a deaf and rheumatic old crone who\nwent to bed at six o'clock every evening and got up at six in the morning.\nIvan had become remarkably indifferent to his comforts of late, and very\nfond of being alone. He did everything for himself in the one room he\nlived in, and rarely entered any of the other rooms in his abode.\n\nHe reached the gate of the house and had his hand on the bell, when he\nsuddenly stopped. He felt that he was trembling all over with anger.\nSuddenly he let go of the bell, turned back with a curse, and walked with\nrapid steps in the opposite direction. He walked a mile and a half to a\ntiny, slanting, wooden house, almost a hut, where Marya Kondratyevna, the\nneighbor who used to come to Fyodor Pavlovitch's kitchen for soup and to\nwhom Smerdyakov had once sung his songs and played on the guitar, was now\nlodging. She had sold their little house, and was now living here with her\nmother. Smerdyakov, who was ill--almost dying--had been with them ever since\nFyodor Pavlovitch's death. It was to him Ivan was going now, drawn by a\nsudden and irresistible prompting.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. The First Interview With Smerdyakov\n\n\nThis was the third time that Ivan had been to see Smerdyakov since his\nreturn from Moscow. The first time he had seen him and talked to him was\non the first day of his arrival, then he had visited him once more, a\nfortnight later. But his visits had ended with that second one, so that it\nwas now over a month since he had seen him. And he had scarcely heard\nanything of him.\n\nIvan had only returned five days after his father's death, so that he was\nnot present at the funeral, which took place the day before he came back.\nThe cause of his delay was that Alyosha, not knowing his Moscow address,\nhad to apply to Katerina Ivanovna to telegraph to him, and she, not\nknowing his address either, telegraphed to her sister and aunt, reckoning\non Ivan's going to see them as soon as he arrived in Moscow. But he did\nnot go to them till four days after his arrival. When he got the telegram,\nhe had, of course, set off post-haste to our town. The first to meet him\nwas Alyosha, and Ivan was greatly surprised to find that, in opposition to\nthe general opinion of the town, he refused to entertain a suspicion\nagainst Mitya, and spoke openly of Smerdyakov as the murderer. Later on,\nafter seeing the police captain and the prosecutor, and hearing the\ndetails of the charge and the arrest, he was still more surprised at\nAlyosha, and ascribed his opinion only to his exaggerated brotherly\nfeeling and sympathy with Mitya, of whom Alyosha, as Ivan knew, was very\nfond.\n\nBy the way, let us say a word or two of Ivan's feeling to his brother\nDmitri. He positively disliked him; at most, felt sometimes a compassion\nfor him, and even that was mixed with great contempt, almost repugnance.\nMitya's whole personality, even his appearance, was extremely unattractive\nto him. Ivan looked with indignation on Katerina Ivanovna's love for his\nbrother. Yet he went to see Mitya on the first day of his arrival, and\nthat interview, far from shaking Ivan's belief in his guilt, positively\nstrengthened it. He found his brother agitated, nervously excited. Mitya\nhad been talkative, but very absent-minded and incoherent. He used violent\nlanguage, accused Smerdyakov, and was fearfully muddled. He talked\nprincipally about the three thousand roubles, which he said had been\n\"stolen\" from him by his father.\n\n\"The money was mine, it was my money,\" Mitya kept repeating. \"Even if I\nhad stolen it, I should have had the right.\"\n\nHe hardly contested the evidence against him, and if he tried to turn a\nfact to his advantage, it was in an absurd and incoherent way. He hardly\nseemed to wish to defend himself to Ivan or any one else. Quite the\ncontrary, he was angry and proudly scornful of the charges against him; he\nwas continually firing up and abusing every one. He only laughed\ncontemptuously at Grigory's evidence about the open door, and declared\nthat it was \"the devil that opened it.\" But he could not bring forward any\ncoherent explanation of the fact. He even succeeded in insulting Ivan\nduring their first interview, telling him sharply that it was not for\npeople who declared that \"everything was lawful,\" to suspect and question\nhim. Altogether he was anything but friendly with Ivan on that occasion.\nImmediately after that interview with Mitya, Ivan went for the first time\nto see Smerdyakov.\n\nIn the railway train on his way from Moscow, he kept thinking of\nSmerdyakov and of his last conversation with him on the evening before he\nwent away. Many things seemed to him puzzling and suspicious. But when he\ngave his evidence to the investigating lawyer Ivan said nothing, for the\ntime, of that conversation. He put that off till he had seen Smerdyakov,\nwho was at that time in the hospital.\n\nDoctor Herzenstube and Varvinsky, the doctor he met in the hospital,\nconfidently asserted in reply to Ivan's persistent questions, that\nSmerdyakov's epileptic attack was unmistakably genuine, and were surprised\nindeed at Ivan asking whether he might not have been shamming on the day\nof the catastrophe. They gave him to understand that the attack was an\nexceptional one, the fits persisting and recurring several times, so that\nthe patient's life was positively in danger, and it was only now, after\nthey had applied remedies, that they could assert with confidence that the\npatient would survive. \"Though it might well be,\" added Doctor\nHerzenstube, \"that his reason would be impaired for a considerable period,\nif not permanently.\" On Ivan's asking impatiently whether that meant that\nhe was now mad, they told him that this was not yet the case, in the full\nsense of the word, but that certain abnormalities were perceptible. Ivan\ndecided to find out for himself what those abnormalities were.\n\nAt the hospital he was at once allowed to see the patient. Smerdyakov was\nlying on a truckle-bed in a separate ward. There was only one other bed in\nthe room, and in it lay a tradesman of the town, swollen with dropsy, who\nwas obviously almost dying; he could be no hindrance to their\nconversation. Smerdyakov grinned uncertainly on seeing Ivan, and for the\nfirst instant seemed nervous. So at least Ivan fancied. But that was only\nmomentary. For the rest of the time he was struck, on the contrary, by\nSmerdyakov's composure. From the first glance Ivan had no doubt that he\nwas very ill. He was very weak; he spoke slowly, seeming to move his\ntongue with difficulty; he was much thinner and sallower. Throughout the\ninterview, which lasted twenty minutes, he kept complaining of headache\nand of pain in all his limbs. His thin emasculate face seemed to have\nbecome so tiny; his hair was ruffled, and his crest of curls in front\nstood up in a thin tuft. But in the left eye, which was screwed up and\nseemed to be insinuating something, Smerdyakov showed himself unchanged.\n\"It's always worth while speaking to a clever man.\" Ivan was reminded of\nthat at once. He sat down on the stool at his feet. Smerdyakov, with\npainful effort, shifted his position in bed, but he was not the first to\nspeak. He remained dumb, and did not even look much interested.\n\n\"Can you talk to me?\" asked Ivan. \"I won't tire you much.\"\n\n\"Certainly I can,\" mumbled Smerdyakov, in a faint voice. \"Has your honor\nbeen back long?\" he added patronizingly, as though encouraging a nervous\nvisitor.\n\n\"I only arrived to-day.... To see the mess you are in here.\" Smerdyakov\nsighed.\n\n\"Why do you sigh? You knew of it all along,\" Ivan blurted out.\n\nSmerdyakov was stolidly silent for a while.\n\n\"How could I help knowing? It was clear beforehand. But how could I tell\nit would turn out like that?\"\n\n\"What would turn out? Don't prevaricate! You've foretold you'd have a fit;\non the way down to the cellar, you know. You mentioned the very spot.\"\n\n\"Have you said so at the examination yet?\" Smerdyakov queried with\ncomposure.\n\nIvan felt suddenly angry.\n\n\"No, I haven't yet, but I certainly shall. You must explain a great deal\nto me, my man; and let me tell you, I am not going to let you play with\nme!\"\n\n\"Why should I play with you, when I put my whole trust in you, as in God\nAlmighty?\" said Smerdyakov, with the same composure, only for a moment\nclosing his eyes.\n\n\"In the first place,\" began Ivan, \"I know that epileptic fits can't be\ntold beforehand. I've inquired; don't try and take me in. You can't\nforetell the day and the hour. How was it you told me the day and the hour\nbeforehand, and about the cellar, too? How could you tell that you would\nfall down the cellar stairs in a fit, if you didn't sham a fit on\npurpose?\"\n\n\"I had to go to the cellar anyway, several times a day, indeed,\"\nSmerdyakov drawled deliberately. \"I fell from the garret just in the same\nway a year ago. It's quite true you can't tell the day and hour of a fit\nbeforehand, but you can always have a presentiment of it.\"\n\n\"But you did foretell the day and the hour!\"\n\n\"In regard to my epilepsy, sir, you had much better inquire of the doctors\nhere. You can ask them whether it was a real fit or a sham; it's no use my\nsaying any more about it.\"\n\n\"And the cellar? How could you know beforehand of the cellar?\"\n\n\"You don't seem able to get over that cellar! As I was going down to the\ncellar, I was in terrible dread and doubt. What frightened me most was\nlosing you and being left without defense in all the world. So I went down\ninto the cellar thinking, 'Here, it'll come on directly, it'll strike me\ndown directly, shall I fall?' And it was through this fear that I suddenly\nfelt the spasm that always comes ... and so I went flying. All that and\nall my previous conversation with you at the gate the evening before, when\nI told you how frightened I was and spoke of the cellar, I told all that\nto Doctor Herzenstube and Nikolay Parfenovitch, the investigating lawyer,\nand it's all been written down in the protocol. And the doctor here, Mr.\nVarvinsky, maintained to all of them that it was just the thought of it\nbrought it on, the apprehension that I might fall. It was just then that\nthe fit seized me. And so they've written it down, that it's just how it\nmust have happened, simply from my fear.\"\n\nAs he finished, Smerdyakov drew a deep breath, as though exhausted.\n\n\"Then you have said all that in your evidence?\" said Ivan, somewhat taken\naback. He had meant to frighten him with the threat of repeating their\nconversation, and it appeared that Smerdyakov had already reported it all\nhimself.\n\n\"What have I to be afraid of? Let them write down the whole truth,\"\nSmerdyakov pronounced firmly.\n\n\"And have you told them every word of our conversation at the gate?\"\n\n\"No, not to say every word.\"\n\n\"And did you tell them that you can sham fits, as you boasted then?\"\n\n\"No, I didn't tell them that either.\"\n\n\"Tell me now, why did you send me then to Tchermashnya?\"\n\n\"I was afraid you'd go away to Moscow; Tchermashnya is nearer, anyway.\"\n\n\"You are lying; you suggested my going away yourself; you told me to get\nout of the way of trouble.\"\n\n\"That was simply out of affection and my sincere devotion to you,\nforeseeing trouble in the house, to spare you. Only I wanted to spare\nmyself even more. That's why I told you to get out of harm's way, that you\nmight understand that there would be trouble in the house, and would\nremain at home to protect your father.\"\n\n\"You might have said it more directly, you blockhead!\" Ivan suddenly fired\nup.\n\n\"How could I have said it more directly then? It was simply my fear that\nmade me speak, and you might have been angry, too. I might well have been\napprehensive that Dmitri Fyodorovitch would make a scene and carry away\nthat money, for he considered it as good as his own; but who could tell\nthat it would end in a murder like this? I thought that he would only\ncarry off the three thousand that lay under the master's mattress in the\nenvelope, and you see, he's murdered him. How could you guess it either,\nsir?\"\n\n\"But if you say yourself that it couldn't be guessed, how could I have\nguessed and stayed at home? You contradict yourself!\" said Ivan,\npondering.\n\n\"You might have guessed from my sending you to Tchermashnya and not to\nMoscow.\"\n\n\"How could I guess it from that?\"\n\nSmerdyakov seemed much exhausted, and again he was silent for a minute.\n\n\"You might have guessed from the fact of my asking you not to go to\nMoscow, but to Tchermashnya, that I wanted to have you nearer, for\nMoscow's a long way off, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch, knowing you are not far\noff, would not be so bold. And if anything had happened, you might have\ncome to protect me, too, for I warned you of Grigory Vassilyevitch's\nillness, and that I was afraid of having a fit. And when I explained those\nknocks to you, by means of which one could go in to the deceased, and that\nDmitri Fyodorovitch knew them all through me, I thought that you would\nguess yourself that he would be sure to do something, and so wouldn't go\nto Tchermashnya even, but would stay.\"\n\n\"He talks very coherently,\" thought Ivan, \"though he does mumble; what's\nthe derangement of his faculties that Herzenstube talked of?\"\n\n\"You are cunning with me, damn you!\" he exclaimed, getting angry.\n\n\"But I thought at the time that you quite guessed,\" Smerdyakov parried\nwith the simplest air.\n\n\"If I'd guessed, I should have stayed,\" cried Ivan.\n\n\"Why, I thought that it was because you guessed, that you went away in\nsuch a hurry, only to get out of trouble, only to run away and save\nyourself in your fright.\"\n\n\"You think that every one is as great a coward as yourself?\"\n\n\"Forgive me, I thought you were like me.\"\n\n\"Of course, I ought to have guessed,\" Ivan said in agitation; \"and I did\nguess there was some mischief brewing on your part ... only you are lying,\nyou are lying again,\" he cried, suddenly recollecting. \"Do you remember\nhow you went up to the carriage and said to me, 'It's always worth while\nspeaking to a clever man'? So you were glad I went away, since you praised\nme?\"\n\nSmerdyakov sighed again and again. A trace of color came into his face.\n\n\"If I was pleased,\" he articulated rather breathlessly, \"it was simply\nbecause you agreed not to go to Moscow, but to Tchermashnya. For it was\nnearer, anyway. Only when I said these words to you, it was not by way of\npraise, but of reproach. You didn't understand it.\"\n\n\"What reproach?\"\n\n\"Why, that foreseeing such a calamity you deserted your own father, and\nwould not protect us, for I might have been taken up any time for stealing\nthat three thousand.\"\n\n\"Damn you!\" Ivan swore again. \"Stay, did you tell the prosecutor and the\ninvestigating lawyer about those knocks?\"\n\n\"I told them everything just as it was.\"\n\nIvan wondered inwardly again.\n\n\"If I thought of anything then,\" he began again, \"it was solely of some\nwickedness on your part. Dmitri might kill him, but that he would steal--I\ndid not believe that then.... But I was prepared for any wickedness from\nyou. You told me yourself you could sham a fit. What did you say that\nfor?\"\n\n\"It was just through my simplicity, and I never have shammed a fit on\npurpose in my life. And I only said so then to boast to you. It was just\nfoolishness. I liked you so much then, and was open-hearted with you.\"\n\n\"My brother directly accuses you of the murder and theft.\"\n\n\"What else is left for him to do?\" said Smerdyakov, with a bitter grin.\n\"And who will believe him with all the proofs against him? Grigory\nVassilyevitch saw the door open. What can he say after that? But never\nmind him! He is trembling to save himself.\"\n\nHe slowly ceased speaking; then suddenly, as though on reflection, added:\n\n\"And look here again. He wants to throw it on me and make out that it is\nthe work of my hands--I've heard that already. But as to my being clever at\nshamming a fit: should I have told you beforehand that I could sham one,\nif I really had had such a design against your father? If I had been\nplanning such a murder could I have been such a fool as to give such\nevidence against myself beforehand? And to his son, too! Upon my word! Is\nthat likely? As if that could be, such a thing has never happened. No one\nhears this talk of ours now, except Providence itself, and if you were to\ntell of it to the prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch you might defend me\ncompletely by doing so, for who would be likely to be such a criminal, if\nhe is so open-hearted beforehand? Any one can see that.\"\n\n\"Well,\" and Ivan got up to cut short the conversation, struck by\nSmerdyakov's last argument. \"I don't suspect you at all, and I think it's\nabsurd, indeed, to suspect you. On the contrary, I am grateful to you for\nsetting my mind at rest. Now I am going, but I'll come again. Meanwhile,\ngood-by. Get well. Is there anything you want?\"\n\n\"I am very thankful for everything. Marfa Ignatyevna does not forget me,\nand provides me anything I want, according to her kindness. Good people\nvisit me every day.\"\n\n\"Good-by. But I shan't say anything of your being able to sham a fit, and\nI don't advise you to, either,\" something made Ivan say suddenly.\n\n\"I quite understand. And if you don't speak of that, I shall say nothing\nof that conversation of ours at the gate.\"\n\nThen it happened that Ivan went out, and only when he had gone a dozen\nsteps along the corridor, he suddenly felt that there was an insulting\nsignificance in Smerdyakov's last words. He was almost on the point of\nturning back, but it was only a passing impulse, and muttering,\n\"Nonsense!\" he went out of the hospital.\n\nHis chief feeling was one of relief at the fact that it was not\nSmerdyakov, but Mitya, who had committed the murder, though he might have\nbeen expected to feel the opposite. He did not want to analyze the reason\nfor this feeling, and even felt a positive repugnance at prying into his\nsensations. He felt as though he wanted to make haste to forget something.\nIn the following days he became convinced of Mitya's guilt, as he got to\nknow all the weight of evidence against him. There was evidence of people\nof no importance, Fenya and her mother, for instance, but the effect of it\nwas almost overpowering. As to Perhotin, the people at the tavern, and at\nPlotnikov's shop, as well as the witnesses at Mokroe, their evidence\nseemed conclusive. It was the details that were so damning. The secret of\nthe knocks impressed the lawyers almost as much as Grigory's evidence as\nto the open door. Grigory's wife, Marfa, in answer to Ivan's questions,\ndeclared that Smerdyakov had been lying all night the other side of the\npartition wall. \"He was not three paces from our bed,\" and that although\nshe was a sound sleeper she waked several times and heard him moaning, \"He\nwas moaning the whole time, moaning continually.\"\n\nTalking to Herzenstube, and giving it as his opinion that Smerdyakov was\nnot mad, but only rather weak, Ivan only evoked from the old man a subtle\nsmile.\n\n\"Do you know how he spends his time now?\" he asked; \"learning lists of\nFrench words by heart. He has an exercise-book under his pillow with the\nFrench words written out in Russian letters for him by some one, he he\nhe!\"\n\nIvan ended by dismissing all doubts. He could not think of Dmitri without\nrepulsion. Only one thing was strange, however. Alyosha persisted that\nDmitri was not the murderer, and that \"in all probability\" Smerdyakov was.\nIvan always felt that Alyosha's opinion meant a great deal to him, and so\nhe was astonished at it now. Another thing that was strange was that\nAlyosha did not make any attempt to talk about Mitya with Ivan, that he\nnever began on the subject and only answered his questions. This, too,\nstruck Ivan particularly.\n\nBut he was very much preoccupied at that time with something quite apart\nfrom that. On his return from Moscow, he abandoned himself hopelessly to\nhis mad and consuming passion for Katerina Ivanovna. This is not the time\nto begin to speak of this new passion of Ivan's, which left its mark on\nall the rest of his life: this would furnish the subject for another\nnovel, which I may perhaps never write. But I cannot omit to mention here\nthat when Ivan, on leaving Katerina Ivanovna with Alyosha, as I've related\nalready, told him, \"I am not keen on her,\" it was an absolute lie: he\nloved her madly, though at times he hated her so that he might have\nmurdered her. Many causes helped to bring about this feeling. Shattered by\nwhat had happened with Mitya, she rushed on Ivan's return to meet him as\nher one salvation. She was hurt, insulted and humiliated in her feelings.\nAnd here the man had come back to her, who had loved her so ardently\nbefore (oh! she knew that very well), and whose heart and intellect she\nconsidered so superior to her own. But the sternly virtuous girl did not\nabandon herself altogether to the man she loved, in spite of the Karamazov\nviolence of his passions and the great fascination he had for her. She was\ncontinually tormented at the same time by remorse for having deserted\nMitya, and in moments of discord and violent anger (and they were\nnumerous) she told Ivan so plainly. This was what he had called to Alyosha\n\"lies upon lies.\" There was, of course, much that was false in it, and\nthat angered Ivan more than anything.... But of all this later.\n\nHe did, in fact, for a time almost forget Smerdyakov's existence, and yet,\na fortnight after his first visit to him, he began to be haunted by the\nsame strange thoughts as before. It's enough to say that he was\ncontinually asking himself, why was it that on that last night in Fyodor\nPavlovitch's house he had crept out on to the stairs like a thief and\nlistened to hear what his father was doing below? Why had he recalled that\nafterwards with repulsion? Why next morning, had he been suddenly so\ndepressed on the journey? Why, as he reached Moscow, had he said to\nhimself, \"I am a scoundrel\"? And now he almost fancied that these\ntormenting thoughts would make him even forget Katerina Ivanovna, so\ncompletely did they take possession of him again. It was just after\nfancying this, that he met Alyosha in the street. He stopped him at once,\nand put a question to him:\n\n\"Do you remember when Dmitri burst in after dinner and beat father, and\nafterwards I told you in the yard that I reserved 'the right to\ndesire'?... Tell me, did you think then that I desired father's death or\nnot?\"\n\n\"I did think so,\" answered Alyosha, softly.\n\n\"It was so, too; it was not a matter of guessing. But didn't you fancy\nthen that what I wished was just that 'one reptile should devour another';\nthat is, just that Dmitri should kill father, and as soon as possible ...\nand that I myself was even prepared to help to bring that about?\"\n\nAlyosha turned rather pale, and looked silently into his brother's face.\n\n\"Speak!\" cried Ivan, \"I want above everything to know what you thought\nthen. I want the truth, the truth!\"\n\nHe drew a deep breath, looking angrily at Alyosha before his answer came.\n\n\"Forgive me, I did think that, too, at the time,\" whispered Alyosha, and\nhe did not add one softening phrase.\n\n\"Thanks,\" snapped Ivan, and, leaving Alyosha, he went quickly on his way.\nFrom that time Alyosha noticed that Ivan began obviously to avoid him and\nseemed even to have taken a dislike to him, so much so that Alyosha gave\nup going to see him. Immediately after that meeting with him, Ivan had not\ngone home, but went straight to Smerdyakov again.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. The Second Visit To Smerdyakov\n\n\nBy that time Smerdyakov had been discharged from the hospital. Ivan knew\nhis new lodging, the dilapidated little wooden house, divided in two by a\npassage on one side of which lived Marya Kondratyevna and her mother, and\non the other, Smerdyakov. No one knew on what terms he lived with them,\nwhether as a friend or as a lodger. It was supposed afterwards that he had\ncome to stay with them as Marya Kondratyevna's betrothed, and was living\nthere for a time without paying for board or lodging. Both mother and\ndaughter had the greatest respect for him and looked upon him as greatly\nsuperior to themselves.\n\nIvan knocked, and, on the door being opened, went straight into the\npassage. By Marya Kondratyevna's directions he went straight to the better\nroom on the left, occupied by Smerdyakov. There was a tiled stove in the\nroom and it was extremely hot. The walls were gay with blue paper, which\nwas a good deal used however, and in the cracks under it cockroaches\nswarmed in amazing numbers, so that there was a continual rustling from\nthem. The furniture was very scanty: two benches against each wall and two\nchairs by the table. The table of plain wood was covered with a cloth with\npink patterns on it. There was a pot of geranium on each of the two little\nwindows. In the corner there was a case of ikons. On the table stood a\nlittle copper samovar with many dents in it, and a tray with two cups. But\nSmerdyakov had finished tea and the samovar was out. He was sitting at the\ntable on a bench. He was looking at an exercise-book and slowly writing\nwith a pen. There was a bottle of ink by him and a flat iron candlestick,\nbut with a composite candle. Ivan saw at once from Smerdyakov's face that\nhe had completely recovered from his illness. His face was fresher,\nfuller, his hair stood up jauntily in front, and was plastered down at the\nsides. He was sitting in a parti-colored, wadded dressing-gown, rather\ndirty and frayed, however. He had spectacles on his nose, which Ivan had\nnever seen him wearing before. This trifling circumstance suddenly\nredoubled Ivan's anger: \"A creature like that and wearing spectacles!\"\n\nSmerdyakov slowly raised his head and looked intently at his visitor\nthrough his spectacles; then he slowly took them off and rose from the\nbench, but by no means respectfully, almost lazily, doing the least\npossible required by common civility. All this struck Ivan instantly; he\ntook it all in and noted it at once--most of all the look in Smerdyakov's\neyes, positively malicious, churlish and haughty. \"What do you want to\nintrude for?\" it seemed to say; \"we settled everything then; why have you\ncome again?\" Ivan could scarcely control himself.\n\n\"It's hot here,\" he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his overcoat.\n\n\"Take off your coat,\" Smerdyakov conceded.\n\nIvan took off his coat and threw it on a bench with trembling hands. He\ntook a chair, moved it quickly to the table and sat down. Smerdyakov\nmanaged to sit down on his bench before him.\n\n\"To begin with, are we alone?\" Ivan asked sternly and impulsively. \"Can\nthey overhear us in there?\"\n\n\"No one can hear anything. You've seen for yourself: there's a passage.\"\n\n\"Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving the\nhospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming fits, you\nwouldn't tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation at the gate?\nWhat do you mean by _all_? What could you mean by it? Were you threatening\nme? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you? Do you suppose I am\nafraid of you?\"\n\nIvan said this in a perfect fury, giving him to understand with obvious\nintention that he scorned any subterfuge or indirectness and meant to show\nhis cards. Smerdyakov's eyes gleamed resentfully, his left eye winked, and\nhe at once gave his answer, with his habitual composure and deliberation.\n\"You want to have everything above-board; very well, you shall have it,\"\nhe seemed to say.\n\n\"This is what I meant then, and this is why I said that, that you, knowing\nbeforehand of this murder of your own parent, left him to his fate, and\nthat people mightn't after that conclude any evil about your feelings and\nperhaps of something else, too--that's what I promised not to tell the\nauthorities.\"\n\nThough Smerdyakov spoke without haste and obviously controlling himself,\nyet there was something in his voice, determined and emphatic, resentful\nand insolently defiant. He stared impudently at Ivan. A mist passed before\nIvan's eyes for the first moment.\n\n\"How? What? Are you out of your mind?\"\n\n\"I'm perfectly in possession of all my faculties.\"\n\n\"Do you suppose I _knew_ of the murder?\" Ivan cried at last, and he\nbrought his fist violently on the table. \"What do you mean by 'something\nelse, too'? Speak, scoundrel!\"\n\nSmerdyakov was silent and still scanned Ivan with the same insolent stare.\n\n\"Speak, you stinking rogue, what is that 'something else, too'?\"\n\n\"The 'something else' I meant was that you probably, too, were very\ndesirous of your parent's death.\"\n\nIvan jumped up and struck him with all his might on the shoulder, so that\nhe fell back against the wall. In an instant his face was bathed in tears.\nSaying, \"It's a shame, sir, to strike a sick man,\" he dried his eyes with\na very dirty blue check handkerchief and sank into quiet weeping. A minute\npassed.\n\n\"That's enough! Leave off,\" Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again.\n\"Don't put me out of all patience.\"\n\nSmerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his puckered face\nreflected the insult he had just received.\n\n\"So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant to\nkill my father?\"\n\n\"I didn't know what thoughts were in your mind then,\" said Smerdyakov\nresentfully; \"and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on that\nvery point.\"\n\n\"To sound what, what?\"\n\n\"Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be\nmurdered or not.\"\n\nWhat infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent tone\nto which Smerdyakov persistently adhered.\n\n\"It was you murdered him?\" he cried suddenly.\n\nSmerdyakov smiled contemptuously.\n\n\"You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn't I murdered him. And I\nshould have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak of\nit again.\"\n\n\"But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?\"\n\n\"As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a\nposition, shaking with fear, that I suspected every one. I resolved to\nsound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother, then\nthe business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a fly,\ntoo.\"\n\n\"Look here, you didn't say that a fortnight ago.\"\n\n\"I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only I thought\nyou'd understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible man\nyou wouldn't care to talk of it openly.\"\n\n\"What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it ... what could I\nhave done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?\"\n\n\"As for the murder, you couldn't have done that and didn't want to, but as\nfor wanting some one else to do it, that was just what you did want.\"\n\n\"And how coolly, how coolly he speaks! But why should I have wanted it;\nwhat grounds had I for wanting it?\"\n\n\"What grounds had you? What about the inheritance?\" said Smerdyakov\nsarcastically, and, as it were, vindictively. \"Why, after your parent's\ndeath there was at least forty thousand to come to each of you, and very\nlikely more, but if Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that lady,\nAgrafena Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made over to her\ndirectly after the wedding, for she's plenty of sense, so that your parent\nwould not have left you two roubles between the three of you. And were\nthey far from a wedding, either? Not a hair's-breadth: that lady had only\nto lift her little finger and he would have run after her to church, with\nhis tongue out.\"\n\nIvan restrained himself with painful effort.\n\n\"Very good,\" he commented at last. \"You see, I haven't jumped up, I\nhaven't knocked you down, I haven't killed you. Speak on. So, according to\nyou, I had fixed on Dmitri to do it; I was reckoning on him?\"\n\n\"How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him, then he would lose\nall the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go off to\nexile; so his share of the inheritance would come to you and your brother\nAlexey Fyodorovitch in equal parts; so you'd each have not forty, but\nsixty thousand each. There's not a doubt you did reckon on Dmitri\nFyodorovitch.\"\n\n\"What I put up with from you! Listen, scoundrel, if I had reckoned on any\none then, it would have been on you, not on Dmitri, and I swear I did\nexpect some wickedness from you ... at the time.... I remember my\nimpression!\"\n\n\"I thought, too, for a minute, at the time, that you were reckoning on me\nas well,\" said Smerdyakov, with a sarcastic grin. \"So that it was just by\nthat more than anything you showed me what was in your mind. For if you\nhad a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as said to me,\n'You can murder my parent, I won't hinder you!' \"\n\n\"You scoundrel! So that's how you understood it!\"\n\n\"It was all that going to Tchermashnya. Why! You were meaning to go to\nMoscow and refused all your father's entreaties to go to Tchermashnya--and\nsimply at a foolish word from me you consented at once! What reason had\nyou to consent to Tchermashnya? Since you went to Tchermashnya with no\nreason, simply at my word, it shows that you must have expected something\nfrom me.\"\n\n\"No, I swear I didn't!\" shouted Ivan, grinding his teeth.\n\n\"You didn't? Then you ought, as your father's son, to have had me taken to\nthe lock-up and thrashed at once for my words then ... or at least, to\nhave given me a punch in the face on the spot, but you were not a bit\nangry, if you please, and at once in a friendly way acted on my foolish\nword and went away, which was utterly absurd, for you ought to have stayed\nto save your parent's life. How could I help drawing my conclusions?\"\n\nIvan sat scowling, both his fists convulsively pressed on his knees.\n\n\"Yes, I am sorry I didn't punch you in the face,\" he said with a bitter\nsmile. \"I couldn't have taken you to the lock-up just then. Who would have\nbelieved me and what charge could I bring against you? But the punch in\nthe face ... oh, I'm sorry I didn't think of it. Though blows are\nforbidden, I should have pounded your ugly face to a jelly.\"\n\nSmerdyakov looked at him almost with relish.\n\n\"In the ordinary occasions of life,\" he said in the same complacent and\nsententious tone in which he had taunted Grigory and argued with him about\nreligion at Fyodor Pavlovitch's table, \"in the ordinary occasions of life,\nblows on the face are forbidden nowadays by law, and people have given\nthem up, but in exceptional occasions of life people still fly to blows,\nnot only among us but all over the world, be it even the fullest Republic\nof France, just as in the time of Adam and Eve, and they never will leave\noff, but you, even in an exceptional case, did not dare.\"\n\n\"What are you learning French words for?\" Ivan nodded towards the\nexercise-book lying on the table.\n\n\"Why shouldn't I learn them so as to improve my education, supposing that\nI may myself chance to go some day to those happy parts of Europe?\"\n\n\"Listen, monster.\" Ivan's eyes flashed and he trembled all over. \"I am not\nafraid of your accusations; you can say what you like about me, and if I\ndon't beat you to death, it's simply because I suspect you of that crime\nand I'll drag you to justice. I'll unmask you.\"\n\n\"To my thinking, you'd better keep quiet, for what can you accuse me of,\nconsidering my absolute innocence? and who would believe you? Only if you\nbegin, I shall tell everything, too, for I must defend myself.\"\n\n\"Do you think I am afraid of you now?\"\n\n\"If the court doesn't believe all I've said to you just now, the public\nwill, and you will be ashamed.\"\n\n\"That's as much as to say, 'It's always worth while speaking to a sensible\nman,' eh?\" snarled Ivan.\n\n\"You hit the mark, indeed. And you'd better be sensible.\"\n\nIvan got up, shaking all over with indignation, put on his coat, and\nwithout replying further to Smerdyakov, without even looking at him,\nwalked quickly out of the cottage. The cool evening air refreshed him.\nThere was a bright moon in the sky. A nightmare of ideas and sensations\nfilled his soul. \"Shall I go at once and give information against\nSmerdyakov? But what information can I give? He is not guilty, anyway. On\nthe contrary, he'll accuse me. And in fact, why did I set off for\nTchermashnya then? What for? What for?\" Ivan asked himself. \"Yes, of\ncourse, I was expecting something and he is right....\" And he remembered\nfor the hundredth time how, on the last night in his father's house, he\nhad listened on the stairs. But he remembered it now with such anguish\nthat he stood still on the spot as though he had been stabbed. \"Yes, I\nexpected it then, that's true! I wanted the murder, I did want the murder!\nDid I want the murder? Did I want it? I must kill Smerdyakov! If I don't\ndare kill Smerdyakov now, life is not worth living!\"\n\nIvan did not go home, but went straight to Katerina Ivanovna and alarmed\nher by his appearance. He was like a madman. He repeated all his\nconversation with Smerdyakov, every syllable of it. He couldn't be calmed,\nhowever much she tried to soothe him: he kept walking about the room,\nspeaking strangely, disconnectedly. At last he sat down, put his elbows on\nthe table, leaned his head on his hands and pronounced this strange\nsentence: \"If it's not Dmitri, but Smerdyakov who's the murderer, I share\nhis guilt, for I put him up to it. Whether I did, I don't know yet. But if\nhe is the murderer, and not Dmitri, then, of course, I am the murderer,\ntoo.\"\n\nWhen Katerina Ivanovna heard that, she got up from her seat without a\nword, went to her writing-table, opened a box standing on it, took out a\nsheet of paper and laid it before Ivan. This was the document of which\nIvan spoke to Alyosha later on as a \"conclusive proof\" that Dmitri had\nkilled his father. It was the letter written by Mitya to Katerina Ivanovna\nwhen he was drunk, on the very evening he met Alyosha at the crossroads on\nthe way to the monastery, after the scene at Katerina Ivanovna's, when\nGrushenka had insulted her. Then, parting from Alyosha, Mitya had rushed\nto Grushenka. I don't know whether he saw her, but in the evening he was\nat the \"Metropolis,\" where he got thoroughly drunk. Then he asked for pen\nand paper and wrote a document of weighty consequences to himself. It was\na wordy, disconnected, frantic letter, a drunken letter in fact. It was\nlike the talk of a drunken man, who, on his return home, begins with\nextraordinary heat telling his wife or one of his household how he has\njust been insulted, what a rascal had just insulted him, what a fine\nfellow he is on the other hand, and how he will pay that scoundrel out;\nand all that at great length, with great excitement and incoherence, with\ndrunken tears and blows on the table. The letter was written on a dirty\npiece of ordinary paper of the cheapest kind. It had been provided by the\ntavern and there were figures scrawled on the back of it. There was\nevidently not space enough for his drunken verbosity and Mitya not only\nfilled the margins but had written the last line right across the rest.\nThe letter ran as follows:\n\n\n    FATAL KATYA: To-morrow I will get the money and repay your three\n    thousand and farewell, woman of great wrath, but farewell, too, my\n    love! Let us make an end! To-morrow I shall try and get it from\n    every one, and if I can't borrow it, I give you my word of honor I\n    shall go to my father and break his skull and take the money from\n    under the pillow, if only Ivan has gone. If I have to go to\n    Siberia for it, I'll give you back your three thousand. And\n    farewell. I bow down to the ground before you, for I've been a\n    scoundrel to you. Forgive me! No, better not forgive me, you'll be\n    happier and so shall I! Better Siberia than your love, for I love\n    another woman and you got to know her too well to-day, so how can\n    you forgive? I will murder the man who's robbed me! I'll leave you\n    all and go to the East so as to see no one again. Not _her_\n    either, for you are not my only tormentress; she is too. Farewell!\n\n    P.S.--I write my curse, but I adore you! I hear it in my heart. One\n    string is left, and it vibrates. Better tear my heart in two! I\n    shall kill myself, but first of all that cur. I shall tear three\n    thousand from him and fling it to you. Though I've been a\n    scoundrel to you, I am not a thief! You can expect three thousand.\n    The cur keeps it under his mattress, in pink ribbon. I am not a\n    thief, but I'll murder my thief. Katya, don't look disdainful.\n    Dmitri is not a thief! but a murderer! He has murdered his father\n    and ruined himself to hold his ground, rather than endure your\n    pride. And he doesn't love you.\n\n    P.P.S.--I kiss your feet, farewell! P.P.P.S.--Katya, pray to God\n    that some one'll give me the money. Then I shall not be steeped in\n    gore, and if no one does--I shall! Kill me!\n\n    Your slave and enemy,\n\n    D. KARAMAZOV.\n\n\nWhen Ivan read this \"document\" he was convinced. So then it was his\nbrother, not Smerdyakov. And if not Smerdyakov, then not he, Ivan. This\nletter at once assumed in his eyes the aspect of a logical proof. There\ncould be no longer the slightest doubt of Mitya's guilt. The suspicion\nnever occurred to Ivan, by the way, that Mitya might have committed the\nmurder in conjunction with Smerdyakov, and, indeed, such a theory did not\nfit in with the facts. Ivan was completely reassured. The next morning he\nonly thought of Smerdyakov and his gibes with contempt. A few days later\nhe positively wondered how he could have been so horribly distressed at\nhis suspicions. He resolved to dismiss him with contempt and forget him.\nSo passed a month. He made no further inquiry about Smerdyakov, but twice\nhe happened to hear that he was very ill and out of his mind.\n\n\"He'll end in madness,\" the young doctor Varvinsky observed about him, and\nIvan remembered this. During the last week of that month Ivan himself\nbegan to feel very ill. He went to consult the Moscow doctor who had been\nsent for by Katerina Ivanovna just before the trial. And just at that time\nhis relations with Katerina Ivanovna became acutely strained. They were\nlike two enemies in love with one another. Katerina Ivanovna's \"returns\"\nto Mitya, that is, her brief but violent revulsions of feeling in his\nfavor, drove Ivan to perfect frenzy. Strange to say, until that last scene\ndescribed above, when Alyosha came from Mitya to Katerina Ivanovna, Ivan\nhad never once, during that month, heard her express a doubt of Mitya's\nguilt, in spite of those \"returns\" that were so hateful to him. It is\nremarkable, too, that while he felt that he hated Mitya more and more\nevery day, he realized that it was not on account of Katya's \"returns\"\nthat he hated him, but just _because he was the murderer of his father_.\nHe was conscious of this and fully recognized it to himself.\n\nNevertheless, he went to see Mitya ten days before the trial and proposed\nto him a plan of escape--a plan he had obviously thought over a long time.\nHe was partly impelled to do this by a sore place still left in his heart\nfrom a phrase of Smerdyakov's, that it was to his, Ivan's, advantage that\nhis brother should be convicted, as that would increase his inheritance\nand Alyosha's from forty to sixty thousand roubles. He determined to\nsacrifice thirty thousand on arranging Mitya's escape. On his return from\nseeing him, he was very mournful and dispirited; he suddenly began to feel\nthat he was anxious for Mitya's escape, not only to heal that sore place\nby sacrificing thirty thousand, but for another reason. \"Is it because I\nam as much a murderer at heart?\" he asked himself. Something very deep\ndown seemed burning and rankling in his soul. His pride above all suffered\ncruelly all that month. But of that later....\n\nWhen, after his conversation with Alyosha, Ivan suddenly decided with his\nhand on the bell of his lodging to go to Smerdyakov, he obeyed a sudden\nand peculiar impulse of indignation. He suddenly remembered how Katerina\nIvanovna had only just cried out to him in Alyosha's presence: \"It was\nyou, you, persuaded me of his\" (that is, Mitya's) \"guilt!\" Ivan was\nthunderstruck when he recalled it. He had never once tried to persuade her\nthat Mitya was the murderer; on the contrary, he had suspected himself in\nher presence, that time when he came back from Smerdyakov. It was _she_,\nshe, who had produced that \"document\" and proved his brother's guilt. And\nnow she suddenly exclaimed: \"I've been at Smerdyakov's myself!\" When had\nshe been there? Ivan had known nothing of it. So she was not at all so\nsure of Mitya's guilt! And what could Smerdyakov have told her? What,\nwhat, had he said to her? His heart burned with violent anger. He could\nnot understand how he could, half an hour before, have let those words\npass and not have cried out at the moment. He let go of the bell and\nrushed off to Smerdyakov. \"I shall kill him, perhaps, this time,\" he\nthought on the way.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VIII. The Third And Last Interview With Smerdyakov\n\n\nWhen he was half-way there, the keen dry wind that had been blowing early\nthat morning rose again, and a fine dry snow began falling thickly. It did\nnot lie on the ground, but was whirled about by the wind, and soon there\nwas a regular snowstorm. There were scarcely any lamp-posts in the part of\nthe town where Smerdyakov lived. Ivan strode alone in the darkness,\nunconscious of the storm, instinctively picking out his way. His head\nached and there was a painful throbbing in his temples. He felt that his\nhands were twitching convulsively. Not far from Marya Kondratyevna's\ncottage, Ivan suddenly came upon a solitary drunken little peasant. He was\nwearing a coarse and patched coat, and was walking in zigzags, grumbling\nand swearing to himself. Then suddenly he would begin singing in a husky\ndrunken voice:\n\n\n    \"Ach, Vanka's gone to Petersburg;\n    I won't wait till he comes back.\"\n\n\nBut he broke off every time at the second line and began swearing again;\nthen he would begin the same song again. Ivan felt an intense hatred for\nhim before he had thought about him at all. Suddenly he realized his\npresence and felt an irresistible impulse to knock him down. At that\nmoment they met, and the peasant with a violent lurch fell full tilt\nagainst Ivan, who pushed him back furiously. The peasant went flying\nbackwards and fell like a log on the frozen ground. He uttered one\nplaintive \"O--oh!\" and then was silent. Ivan stepped up to him. He was\nlying on his back, without movement or consciousness. \"He will be frozen,\"\nthought Ivan, and he went on his way to Smerdyakov's.\n\nIn the passage, Marya Kondratyevna, who ran out to open the door with a\ncandle in her hand, whispered that Smerdyakov was very ill, \"It's not that\nhe's laid up, but he seems not himself, and he even told us to take the\ntea away; he wouldn't have any.\"\n\n\"Why, does he make a row?\" asked Ivan coarsely.\n\n\"Oh, dear, no, quite the contrary, he's very quiet. Only please don't talk\nto him too long,\" Marya Kondratyevna begged him. Ivan opened the door and\nstepped into the room.\n\nIt was over-heated as before, but there were changes in the room. One of\nthe benches at the side had been removed, and in its place had been put a\nlarge old mahogany leather sofa, on which a bed had been made up, with\nfairly clean white pillows. Smerdyakov was sitting on the sofa, wearing\nthe same dressing-gown. The table had been brought out in front of the\nsofa, so that there was hardly room to move. On the table lay a thick book\nin yellow cover, but Smerdyakov was not reading it. He seemed to be\nsitting doing nothing. He met Ivan with a slow silent gaze, and was\napparently not at all surprised at his coming. There was a great change in\nhis face; he was much thinner and sallower. His eyes were sunken and there\nwere blue marks under them.\n\n\"Why, you really are ill?\" Ivan stopped short. \"I won't keep you long, I\nwon't even take off my coat. Where can one sit down?\"\n\nHe went to the other end of the table, moved up a chair and sat down on\nit.\n\n\"Why do you look at me without speaking? I've only come with one question,\nand I swear I won't go without an answer. Has the young lady, Katerina\nIvanovna, been with you?\"\n\nSmerdyakov still remained silent, looking quietly at Ivan as before.\nSuddenly, with a motion of his hand, he turned his face away.\n\n\"What's the matter with you?\" cried Ivan.\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by 'nothing'?\"\n\n\"Yes, she has. It's no matter to you. Let me alone.\"\n\n\"No, I won't let you alone. Tell me, when was she here?\"\n\n\"Why, I'd quite forgotten about her,\" said Smerdyakov, with a scornful\nsmile, and turning his face to Ivan again, he stared at him with a look of\nfrenzied hatred, the same look that he had fixed on him at their last\ninterview, a month before.\n\n\"You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don't look like\nyourself,\" he said to Ivan.\n\n\"Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you.\"\n\n\"But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow. Are you so\nworried?\" He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed outright.\n\n\"Listen; I've told you I won't go away without an answer!\" Ivan cried,\nintensely irritated.\n\n\"Why do you keep pestering me? Why do you torment me?\" said Smerdyakov,\nwith a look of suffering.\n\n\"Damn it! I've nothing to do with you. Just answer my question and I'll go\naway.\"\n\n\"I've no answer to give you,\" said Smerdyakov, looking down again.\n\n\"You may be sure I'll make you answer!\"\n\n\"Why are you so uneasy?\" Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with\ncontempt, but almost with repulsion. \"Is this because the trial begins to-\nmorrow? Nothing will happen to you; can't you believe that at last? Go\nhome, go to bed and sleep in peace, don't be afraid of anything.\"\n\n\"I don't understand you.... What have I to be afraid of to-morrow?\" Ivan\narticulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill breath of fear did in\nfact pass over his soul. Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.\n\n\"You don't understand?\" he drawled reproachfully. \"It's a strange thing a\nsensible man should care to play such a farce!\"\n\nIvan looked at him speechless. The startling, incredibly supercilious tone\nof this man who had once been his valet, was extraordinary in itself. He\nhad not taken such a tone even at their last interview.\n\n\"I tell you, you've nothing to be afraid of. I won't say anything about\nyou; there's no proof against you. I say, how your hands are trembling!\nWhy are your fingers moving like that? Go home, _you_ did not murder him.\"\n\nIvan started. He remembered Alyosha.\n\n\"I know it was not I,\" he faltered.\n\n\"Do you?\" Smerdyakov caught him up again.\n\nIvan jumped up and seized him by the shoulder.\n\n\"Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!\"\n\nSmerdyakov was not in the least scared. He only riveted his eyes on Ivan\nwith insane hatred.\n\n\"Well, it was you who murdered him, if that's it,\" he whispered furiously.\n\nIvan sank back on his chair, as though pondering something. He laughed\nmalignantly.\n\n\"You mean my going away. What you talked about last time?\"\n\n\"You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you understand\nit now.\"\n\n\"All I understand is that you are mad.\"\n\n\"Aren't you tired of it? Here we are face to face; what's the use of going\non keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying to throw it all\non me, to my face? _You_ murdered him; you are the real murderer, I was\nonly your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was following your\nwords I did it.\"\n\n\"_Did_ it? Why, did you murder him?\" Ivan turned cold.\n\nSomething seemed to give way in his brain, and he shuddered all over with\na cold shiver. Then Smerdyakov himself looked at him wonderingly; probably\nthe genuineness of Ivan's horror struck him.\n\n\"You don't mean to say you really did not know?\" he faltered\nmistrustfully, looking with a forced smile into his eyes. Ivan still gazed\nat him, and seemed unable to speak.\n\n\n    Ach, Vanka's gone to Petersburg;\n    I won't wait till he comes back,\n\n\nsuddenly echoed in his head.\n\n\"Do you know, I am afraid that you are a dream, a phantom sitting before\nme,\" he muttered.\n\n\"There's no phantom here, but only us two and one other. No doubt he is\nhere, that third, between us.\"\n\n\"Who is he? Who is here? What third person?\" Ivan cried in alarm, looking\nabout him, his eyes hastily searching in every corner.\n\n\"That third is God Himself--Providence. He is the third beside us now. Only\ndon't look for Him, you won't find Him.\"\n\n\"It's a lie that you killed him!\" Ivan cried madly. \"You are mad, or\nteasing me again!\"\n\nSmerdyakov, as before, watched him curiously, with no sign of fear. He\ncould still scarcely get over his incredulity; he still fancied that Ivan\nknew everything and was trying to \"throw it all on him to his face.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" he said at last in a weak voice, and suddenly bringing up\nhis left leg from under the table, he began turning up his trouser leg. He\nwas wearing long white stockings and slippers. Slowly he took off his\ngarter and fumbled to the bottom of his stocking. Ivan gazed at him, and\nsuddenly shuddered in a paroxysm of terror.\n\n\"He's mad!\" he cried, and rapidly jumping up, he drew back, so that he\nknocked his back against the wall and stood up against it, stiff and\nstraight. He looked with insane terror at Smerdyakov, who, entirely\nunaffected by his terror, continued fumbling in his stocking, as though he\nwere making an effort to get hold of something with his fingers and pull\nit out. At last he got hold of it and began pulling it out. Ivan saw that\nit was a piece of paper, or perhaps a roll of papers. Smerdyakov pulled it\nout and laid it on the table.\n\n\"Here,\" he said quietly.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Ivan, trembling.\n\n\"Kindly look at it,\" Smerdyakov answered, still in the same low tone.\n\nIvan stepped up to the table, took up the roll of paper and began\nunfolding it, but suddenly he drew back his fingers, as though from\ncontact with a loathsome reptile.\n\n\"Your hands keep twitching,\" observed Smerdyakov, and he deliberately\nunfolded the bundle himself. Under the wrapper were three packets of\nhundred-rouble notes.\n\n\"They are all here, all the three thousand roubles; you need not count\nthem. Take them,\" Smerdyakov suggested to Ivan, nodding at the notes. Ivan\nsank back in his chair. He was as white as a handkerchief.\n\n\"You frightened me ... with your stocking,\" he said, with a strange grin.\n\n\"Can you really not have known till now?\" Smerdyakov asked once more.\n\n\"No, I did not know. I kept thinking of Dmitri. Brother, brother! Ach!\" He\nsuddenly clutched his head in both hands.\n\n\"Listen. Did you kill him alone? With my brother's help or without?\"\n\n\"It was only with you, with your help, I killed him, and Dmitri\nFyodorovitch is quite innocent.\"\n\n\"All right, all right. Talk about me later. Why do I keep on trembling? I\ncan't speak properly.\"\n\n\"You were bold enough then. You said 'everything was lawful,' and how\nfrightened you are now,\" Smerdyakov muttered in surprise. \"Won't you have\nsome lemonade? I'll ask for some at once. It's very refreshing. Only I\nmust hide this first.\"\n\nAnd again he motioned at the notes. He was just going to get up and call\nat the door to Marya Kondratyevna to make some lemonade and bring it them,\nbut, looking for something to cover up the notes that she might not see\nthem, he first took out his handkerchief, and as it turned out to be very\ndirty, took up the big yellow book that Ivan had noticed at first lying on\nthe table, and put it over the notes. The book was _The Sayings of the\nHoly Father Isaac the Syrian_. Ivan read it mechanically.\n\n\"I won't have any lemonade,\" he said. \"Talk of me later. Sit down and tell\nme how you did it. Tell me all about it.\"\n\n\"You'd better take off your greatcoat, or you'll be too hot.\" Ivan, as\nthough he'd only just thought of it, took off his coat, and, without\ngetting up from his chair, threw it on the bench.\n\n\"Speak, please, speak.\"\n\nHe seemed calmer. He waited, feeling sure that Smerdyakov would tell him\n_all_ about it.\n\n\"How it was done?\" sighed Smerdyakov. \"It was done in a most natural way,\nfollowing your very words.\"\n\n\"Of my words later,\" Ivan broke in again, apparently with complete self-\npossession, firmly uttering his words, and not shouting as before. \"Only\ntell me in detail how you did it. Everything, as it happened. Don't forget\nanything. The details, above everything, the details, I beg you.\"\n\n\"You'd gone away, then I fell into the cellar.\"\n\n\"In a fit or in a sham one?\"\n\n\"A sham one, naturally. I shammed it all. I went quietly down the steps to\nthe very bottom and lay down quietly, and as I lay down I gave a scream,\nand struggled, till they carried me out.\"\n\n\"Stay! And were you shamming all along, afterwards, and in the hospital?\"\n\n\"No, not at all. Next day, in the morning, before they took me to the\nhospital, I had a real attack and a more violent one than I've had for\nyears. For two days I was quite unconscious.\"\n\n\"All right, all right. Go on.\"\n\n\"They laid me on the bed. I knew I'd be the other side of the partition,\nfor whenever I was ill, Marfa Ignatyevna used to put me there, near them.\nShe's always been very kind to me, from my birth up. At night I moaned,\nbut quietly. I kept expecting Dmitri Fyodorovitch to come.\"\n\n\"Expecting him? To come to you?\"\n\n\"Not to me. I expected him to come into the house, for I'd no doubt that\nhe'd come that night, for being without me and getting no news, he'd be\nsure to come and climb over the fence, as he used to, and do something.\"\n\n\"And if he hadn't come?\"\n\n\"Then nothing would have happened. I should never have brought myself to\nit without him.\"\n\n\"All right, all right ... speak more intelligibly, don't hurry; above all,\ndon't leave anything out!\"\n\n\"I expected him to kill Fyodor Pavlovitch. I thought that was certain, for\nI had prepared him for it ... during the last few days.... He knew about\nthe knocks, that was the chief thing. With his suspiciousness and the fury\nwhich had been growing in him all those days, he was bound to get into the\nhouse by means of those taps. That was inevitable, so I was expecting\nhim.\"\n\n\"Stay,\" Ivan interrupted; \"if he had killed him, he would have taken the\nmoney and carried it away; you must have considered that. What would you\nhave got by it afterwards? I don't see.\"\n\n\"But he would never have found the money. That was only what I told him,\nthat the money was under the mattress. But that wasn't true. It had been\nlying in a box. And afterwards I suggested to Fyodor Pavlovitch, as I was\nthe only person he trusted, to hide the envelope with the notes in the\ncorner behind the ikons, for no one would have guessed that place,\nespecially if they came in a hurry. So that's where the envelope lay, in\nthe corner behind the ikons. It would have been absurd to keep it under\nthe mattress; the box, anyway, could be locked. But all believe it was\nunder the mattress. A stupid thing to believe. So if Dmitri Fyodorovitch\nhad committed the murder, finding nothing, he would either have run away\nin a hurry, afraid of every sound, as always happens with murderers, or he\nwould have been arrested. So I could always have clambered up to the ikons\nand have taken away the money next morning or even that night, and it\nwould have all been put down to Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I could reckon upon\nthat.\"\n\n\"But what if he did not kill him, but only knocked him down?\"\n\n\"If he did not kill him, of course, I would not have ventured to take the\nmoney, and nothing would have happened. But I calculated that he would\nbeat him senseless, and I should have time to take it then, and then I'd\nmake out to Fyodor Pavlovitch that it was no one but Dmitri Fyodorovitch\nwho had taken the money after beating him.\"\n\n\"Stop ... I am getting mixed. Then it was Dmitri after all who killed him;\nyou only took the money?\"\n\n\"No, he didn't kill him. Well, I might as well have told you now that he\nwas the murderer.... But I don't want to lie to you now, because ...\nbecause if you really haven't understood till now, as I see for myself,\nand are not pretending, so as to throw your guilt on me to my very face,\nyou are still responsible for it all, since you knew of the murder and\ncharged me to do it, and went away knowing all about it. And so I want to\nprove to your face this evening that you are the only real murderer in the\nwhole affair, and I am not the real murderer, though I did kill him. You\nare the rightful murderer.\"\n\n\"Why, why, am I a murderer? Oh, God!\" Ivan cried, unable to restrain\nhimself at last, and forgetting that he had put off discussing himself\ntill the end of the conversation. \"You still mean that Tchermashnya? Stay,\ntell me, why did you want my consent, if you really took Tchermashnya for\nconsent? How will you explain that now?\"\n\n\"Assured of your consent, I should have known that you wouldn't have made\nan outcry over those three thousand being lost, even if I'd been\nsuspected, instead of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, or as his accomplice; on the\ncontrary, you would have protected me from others.... And when you got\nyour inheritance you would have rewarded me when you were able, all the\nrest of your life. For you'd have received your inheritance through me,\nseeing that if he had married Agrafena Alexandrovna, you wouldn't have had\na farthing.\"\n\n\"Ah! Then you intended to worry me all my life afterwards,\" snarled Ivan.\n\"And what if I hadn't gone away then, but had informed against you?\"\n\n\"What could you have informed? That I persuaded you to go to Tchermashnya?\nThat's all nonsense. Besides, after our conversation you would either have\ngone away or have stayed. If you had stayed, nothing would have happened.\nI should have known that you didn't want it done, and should have\nattempted nothing. As you went away, it meant you assured me that you\nwouldn't dare to inform against me at the trial, and that you'd overlook\nmy having the three thousand. And, indeed, you couldn't have prosecuted me\nafterwards, because then I should have told it all in the court; that is,\nnot that I had stolen the money or killed him--I shouldn't have said\nthat--but that you'd put me up to the theft and the murder, though I didn't\nconsent to it. That's why I needed your consent, so that you couldn't have\ncornered me afterwards, for what proof could you have had? I could always\nhave cornered you, revealing your eagerness for your father's death, and I\ntell you the public would have believed it all, and you would have been\nashamed for the rest of your life.\"\n\n\"Was I then so eager, was I?\" Ivan snarled again.\n\n\"To be sure you were, and by your consent you silently sanctioned my doing\nit.\" Smerdyakov looked resolutely at Ivan. He was very weak and spoke\nslowly and wearily, but some hidden inner force urged him on. He evidently\nhad some design. Ivan felt that.\n\n\"Go on,\" he said. \"Tell me what happened that night.\"\n\n\"What more is there to tell! I lay there and I thought I heard the master\nshout. And before that Grigory Vassilyevitch had suddenly got up and came\nout, and he suddenly gave a scream, and then all was silence and darkness.\nI lay there waiting, my heart beating; I couldn't bear it. I got up at\nlast, went out. I saw the window open on the left into the garden, and I\nstepped to the left to listen whether he was sitting there alive, and I\nheard the master moving about, sighing, so I knew he was alive. 'Ech!' I\nthought. I went to the window and shouted to the master, 'It's I.' And he\nshouted to me, 'He's been, he's been; he's run away.' He meant Dmitri\nFyodorovitch had been. 'He's killed Grigory!' 'Where?' I whispered.\n'There, in the corner,' he pointed. He was whispering, too. 'Wait a bit,'\nI said. I went to the corner of the garden to look, and there I came upon\nGrigory Vassilyevitch lying by the wall, covered with blood, senseless. So\nit's true that Dmitri Fyodorovitch has been here, was the thought that\ncame into my head, and I determined on the spot to make an end of it, as\nGrigory Vassilyevitch, even if he were alive, would see nothing of it, as\nhe lay there senseless. The only risk was that Marfa Ignatyevna might wake\nup. I felt that at the moment, but the longing to get it done came over\nme, till I could scarcely breathe. I went back to the window to the master\nand said, 'She's here, she's come; Agrafena Alexandrovna has come, wants\nto be let in.' And he started like a baby. 'Where is she?' he fairly\ngasped, but couldn't believe it. 'She's standing there,' said I. 'Open.'\nHe looked out of the window at me, half believing and half distrustful,\nbut afraid to open. 'Why, he is afraid of me now,' I thought. And it was\nfunny. I bethought me to knock on the window-frame those taps we'd agreed\nupon as a signal that Grushenka had come, in his presence, before his\neyes. He didn't seem to believe my word, but as soon as he heard the taps,\nhe ran at once to open the door. He opened it. I would have gone in, but\nhe stood in the way to prevent me passing. 'Where is she? Where is she?'\nHe looked at me, all of a tremble. 'Well,' thought I, 'if he's so\nfrightened of me as all that, it's a bad look out!' And my legs went weak\nwith fright that he wouldn't let me in or would call out, or Marfa\nIgnatyevna would run up, or something else might happen. I don't remember\nnow, but I must have stood pale, facing him. I whispered to him, 'Why,\nshe's there, there, under the window; how is it you don't see her?' I\nsaid. 'Bring her then, bring her.' 'She's afraid,' said I; 'she was\nfrightened at the noise, she's hidden in the bushes; go and call to her\nyourself from the study.' He ran to the window, put the candle in the\nwindow. 'Grushenka,' he cried, 'Grushenka, are you here?' Though he cried\nthat, he didn't want to lean out of the window, he didn't want to move\naway from me, for he was panic-stricken; he was so frightened he didn't\ndare to turn his back on me. 'Why, here she is,' said I. I went up to the\nwindow and leaned right out of it. 'Here she is; she's in the bush,\nlaughing at you, don't you see her?' He suddenly believed it; he was all\nof a shake--he was awfully crazy about her--and he leaned right out of the\nwindow. I snatched up that iron paper-weight from his table; do you\nremember, weighing about three pounds? I swung it and hit him on the top\nof the skull with the corner of it. He didn't even cry out. He only sank\ndown suddenly, and I hit him again and a third time. And the third time I\nknew I'd broken his skull. He suddenly rolled on his back, face upwards,\ncovered with blood. I looked round. There was no blood on me, not a spot.\nI wiped the paper-weight, put it back, went up to the ikons, took the\nmoney out of the envelope, and flung the envelope on the floor and the\npink ribbon beside it. I went out into the garden all of a tremble,\nstraight to the apple-tree with a hollow in it--you know that hollow. I'd\nmarked it long before and put a rag and a piece of paper ready in it. I\nwrapped all the notes in the rag and stuffed it deep down in the hole. And\nthere it stayed for over a fortnight. I took it out later, when I came out\nof the hospital. I went back to my bed, lay down and thought, 'If Grigory\nVassilyevitch has been killed outright it may be a bad job for me, but if\nhe is not killed and recovers, it will be first-rate, for then he'll bear\nwitness that Dmitri Fyodorovitch has been here, and so he must have killed\nhim and taken the money.' Then I began groaning with suspense and\nimpatience, so as to wake Marfa Ignatyevna as soon as possible. At last\nshe got up and she rushed to me, but when she saw Grigory Vassilyevitch\nwas not there, she ran out, and I heard her scream in the garden. And that\nset it all going and set my mind at rest.\"\n\nHe stopped. Ivan had listened all the time in dead silence without\nstirring or taking his eyes off him. As he told his story Smerdyakov\nglanced at him from time to time, but for the most part kept his eyes\naverted. When he had finished he was evidently agitated and was breathing\nhard. The perspiration stood out on his face. But it was impossible to\ntell whether it was remorse he was feeling, or what.\n\n\"Stay,\" cried Ivan, pondering. \"What about the door? If he only opened the\ndoor to you, how could Grigory have seen it open before? For Grigory saw\nit before you went.\"\n\nIt was remarkable that Ivan spoke quite amicably, in a different tone, not\nangry as before, so if any one had opened the door at that moment and\npeeped in at them, he would certainly have concluded that they were\ntalking peaceably about some ordinary, though interesting, subject.\n\n\"As for that door and Grigory Vassilyevitch's having seen it open, that's\nonly his fancy,\" said Smerdyakov, with a wry smile. \"He is not a man, I\nassure you, but an obstinate mule. He didn't see it, but fancied he had\nseen it, and there's no shaking him. It's just our luck he took that\nnotion into his head, for they can't fail to convict Dmitri Fyodorovitch\nafter that.\"\n\n\"Listen ...\" said Ivan, beginning to seem bewildered again and making an\neffort to grasp something. \"Listen. There are a lot of questions I want to\nask you, but I forget them ... I keep forgetting and getting mixed up.\nYes. Tell me this at least, why did you open the envelope and leave it\nthere on the floor? Why didn't you simply carry off the envelope?... When\nyou were telling me, I thought you spoke about it as though it were the\nright thing to do ... but why, I can't understand....\"\n\n\"I did that for a good reason. For if a man had known all about it, as I\ndid for instance, if he'd seen those notes before, and perhaps had put\nthem in that envelope himself, and had seen the envelope sealed up and\naddressed, with his own eyes, if such a man had done the murder, what\nshould have made him tear open the envelope afterwards, especially in such\ndesperate haste, since he'd know for certain the notes must be in the\nenvelope? No, if the robber had been some one like me, he'd simply have\nput the envelope straight in his pocket and got away with it as fast as he\ncould. But it'd be quite different with Dmitri Fyodorovitch. He only knew\nabout the envelope by hearsay; he had never seen it, and if he'd found it,\nfor instance, under the mattress, he'd have torn it open as quickly as\npossible to make sure the notes were in it. And he'd have thrown the\nenvelope down, without having time to think that it would be evidence\nagainst him. Because he was not an habitual thief and had never directly\nstolen anything before, for he is a gentleman born, and if he did bring\nhimself to steal, it would not be regular stealing, but simply taking what\nwas his own, for he'd told the whole town he meant to before, and had even\nbragged aloud before every one that he'd go and take his property from\nFyodor Pavlovitch. I didn't say that openly to the prosecutor when I was\nbeing examined, but quite the contrary, I brought him to it by a hint, as\nthough I didn't see it myself, and as though he'd thought of it himself\nand I hadn't prompted him; so that Mr. Prosecutor's mouth positively\nwatered at my suggestion.\"\n\n\"But can you possibly have thought of all that on the spot?\" cried Ivan,\novercome with astonishment. He looked at Smerdyakov again with alarm.\n\n\"Mercy on us! Could any one think of it all in such a desperate hurry? It\nwas all thought out beforehand.\"\n\n\"Well ... well, it was the devil helped you!\" Ivan cried again. \"No, you\nare not a fool, you are far cleverer than I thought....\"\n\nHe got up, obviously intending to walk across the room. He was in terrible\ndistress. But as the table blocked his way, and there was hardly room to\npass between the table and the wall, he only turned round where he stood\nand sat down again. Perhaps the impossibility of moving irritated him, as\nhe suddenly cried out almost as furiously as before.\n\n\"Listen, you miserable, contemptible creature! Don't you understand that\nif I haven't killed you, it's simply because I am keeping you to answer\nto-morrow at the trial. God sees,\" Ivan raised his hand, \"perhaps I, too,\nwas guilty; perhaps I really had a secret desire for my father's ...\ndeath, but I swear I was not as guilty as you think, and perhaps I didn't\nurge you on at all. No, no, I didn't urge you on! But no matter, I will\ngive evidence against myself to-morrow at the trial. I'm determined to! I\nshall tell everything, everything. But we'll make our appearance together.\nAnd whatever you may say against me at the trial, whatever evidence you\ngive, I'll face it; I am not afraid of you. I'll confirm it all myself!\nBut you must confess, too! You must, you must; we'll go together. That's\nhow it shall be!\"\n\nIvan said this solemnly and resolutely and from his flashing eyes alone it\ncould be seen that it would be so.\n\n\"You are ill, I see; you are quite ill. Your eyes are yellow,\" Smerdyakov\ncommented, without the least irony, with apparent sympathy in fact.\n\n\"We'll go together,\" Ivan repeated. \"And if you won't go, no matter, I'll\ngo alone.\"\n\nSmerdyakov paused as though pondering.\n\n\"There'll be nothing of the sort, and you won't go,\" he concluded at last\npositively.\n\n\"You don't understand me,\" Ivan exclaimed reproachfully.\n\n\"You'll be too much ashamed, if you confess it all. And, what's more, it\nwill be no use at all, for I shall say straight out that I never said\nanything of the sort to you, and that you are either ill (and it looks\nlike it, too), or that you're so sorry for your brother that you are\nsacrificing yourself to save him and have invented it all against me, for\nyou've always thought no more of me than if I'd been a fly. And who will\nbelieve you, and what single proof have you got?\"\n\n\"Listen, you showed me those notes just now to convince me.\"\n\nSmerdyakov lifted the book off the notes and laid it on one side.\n\n\"Take that money away with you,\" Smerdyakov sighed.\n\n\"Of course, I shall take it. But why do you give it to me, if you\ncommitted the murder for the sake of it?\" Ivan looked at him with great\nsurprise.\n\n\"I don't want it,\" Smerdyakov articulated in a shaking voice, with a\ngesture of refusal. \"I did have an idea of beginning a new life with that\nmoney in Moscow or, better still, abroad. I did dream of it, chiefly\nbecause 'all things are lawful.' That was quite right what you taught me,\nfor you talked a lot to me about that. For if there's no everlasting God,\nthere's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it. You were right\nthere. So that's how I looked at it.\"\n\n\"Did you come to that of yourself?\" asked Ivan, with a wry smile.\n\n\"With your guidance.\"\n\n\"And now, I suppose, you believe in God, since you are giving back the\nmoney?\"\n\n\"No, I don't believe,\" whispered Smerdyakov.\n\n\"Then why are you giving it back?\"\n\n\"Leave off ... that's enough!\" Smerdyakov waved his hand again. \"You used\nto say yourself that everything was lawful, so now why are you so upset,\ntoo? You even want to go and give evidence against yourself.... Only\nthere'll be nothing of the sort! You won't go to give evidence,\"\nSmerdyakov decided with conviction.\n\n\"You'll see,\" said Ivan.\n\n\"It isn't possible. You are very clever. You are fond of money, I know\nthat. You like to be respected, too, for you're very proud; you are far\ntoo fond of female charms, too, and you mind most of all about living in\nundisturbed comfort, without having to depend on any one--that's what you\ncare most about. You won't want to spoil your life for ever by taking such\na disgrace on yourself. You are like Fyodor Pavlovitch, you are more like\nhim than any of his children; you've the same soul as he had.\"\n\n\"You are not a fool,\" said Ivan, seeming struck. The blood rushed to his\nface. \"You are serious now!\" he observed, looking suddenly at Smerdyakov\nwith a different expression.\n\n\"It was your pride made you think I was a fool. Take the money.\"\n\nIvan took the three rolls of notes and put them in his pocket without\nwrapping them in anything.\n\n\"I shall show them at the court to-morrow,\" he said.\n\n\"Nobody will believe you, as you've plenty of money of your own; you may\nsimply have taken it out of your cash-box and brought it to the court.\"\n\nIvan rose from his seat.\n\n\"I repeat,\" he said, \"the only reason I haven't killed you is that I need\nyou for to-morrow, remember that, don't forget it!\"\n\n\"Well, kill me. Kill me now,\" Smerdyakov said, all at once looking\nstrangely at Ivan. \"You won't dare do that even!\" he added, with a bitter\nsmile. \"You won't dare to do anything, you, who used to be so bold!\"\n\n\"Till to-morrow,\" cried Ivan, and moved to go out.\n\n\"Stay a moment.... Show me those notes again.\"\n\nIvan took out the notes and showed them to him. Smerdyakov looked at them\nfor ten seconds.\n\n\"Well, you can go,\" he said, with a wave of his hand. \"Ivan Fyodorovitch!\"\nhe called after him again.\n\n\"What do you want?\" Ivan turned without stopping.\n\n\"Good-by!\"\n\n\"Till to-morrow!\" Ivan cried again, and he walked out of the cottage.\n\nThe snowstorm was still raging. He walked the first few steps boldly, but\nsuddenly began staggering. \"It's something physical,\" he thought with a\ngrin. Something like joy was springing up in his heart. He was conscious\nof unbounded resolution; he would make an end of the wavering that had so\ntortured him of late. His determination was taken, \"and now it will not be\nchanged,\" he thought with relief. At that moment he stumbled against\nsomething and almost fell down. Stopping short, he made out at his feet\nthe peasant he had knocked down, still lying senseless and motionless. The\nsnow had almost covered his face. Ivan seized him and lifted him in his\narms. Seeing a light in the little house to the right he went up, knocked\nat the shutters, and asked the man to whom the house belonged to help him\ncarry the peasant to the police-station, promising him three roubles. The\nman got ready and came out. I won't describe in detail how Ivan succeeded\nin his object, bringing the peasant to the police-station and arranging\nfor a doctor to see him at once, providing with a liberal hand for the\nexpenses. I will only say that this business took a whole hour, but Ivan\nwas well content with it. His mind wandered and worked incessantly.\n\n\"If I had not taken my decision so firmly for to-morrow,\" he reflected\nwith satisfaction, \"I should not have stayed a whole hour to look after\nthe peasant, but should have passed by, without caring about his being\nfrozen. I am quite capable of watching myself, by the way,\" he thought at\nthe same instant, with still greater satisfaction, \"although they have\ndecided that I am going out of my mind!\"\n\nJust as he reached his own house he stopped short, asking himself suddenly\nhadn't he better go at once to the prosecutor and tell him everything. He\ndecided the question by turning back to the house. \"Everything together\nto-morrow!\" he whispered to himself, and, strange to say, almost all his\ngladness and self-satisfaction passed in one instant.\n\nAs he entered his own room he felt something like a touch of ice on his\nheart, like a recollection or, more exactly, a reminder, of something\nagonizing and revolting that was in that room now, at that moment, and had\nbeen there before. He sank wearily on his sofa. The old woman brought him\na samovar; he made tea, but did not touch it. He sat on the sofa and felt\ngiddy. He felt that he was ill and helpless. He was beginning to drop\nasleep, but got up uneasily and walked across the room to shake off his\ndrowsiness. At moments he fancied he was delirious, but it was not illness\nthat he thought of most. Sitting down again, he began looking round, as\nthough searching for something. This happened several times. At last his\neyes were fastened intently on one point. Ivan smiled, but an angry flush\nsuffused his face. He sat a long time in his place, his head propped on\nboth arms, though he looked sideways at the same point, at the sofa that\nstood against the opposite wall. There was evidently something, some\nobject, that irritated him there, worried him and tormented him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IX. The Devil. Ivan's Nightmare\n\n\nI am not a doctor, but yet I feel that the moment has come when I must\ninevitably give the reader some account of the nature of Ivan's illness.\nAnticipating events I can say at least one thing: he was at that moment on\nthe very eve of an attack of brain fever. Though his health had long been\naffected, it had offered a stubborn resistance to the fever which in the\nend gained complete mastery over it. Though I know nothing of medicine, I\nventure to hazard the suggestion that he really had perhaps, by a terrible\neffort of will, succeeded in delaying the attack for a time, hoping, of\ncourse, to check it completely. He knew that he was unwell, but he loathed\nthe thought of being ill at that fatal time, at the approaching crisis in\nhis life, when he needed to have all his wits about him, to say what he\nhad to say boldly and resolutely and \"to justify himself to himself.\"\n\nHe had, however, consulted the new doctor, who had been brought from\nMoscow by a fantastic notion of Katerina Ivanovna's to which I have\nreferred already. After listening to him and examining him the doctor came\nto the conclusion that he was actually suffering from some disorder of the\nbrain, and was not at all surprised by an admission which Ivan had\nreluctantly made him. \"Hallucinations are quite likely in your condition,\"\nthe doctor opined, \"though it would be better to verify them ... you must\ntake steps at once, without a moment's delay, or things will go badly with\nyou.\" But Ivan did not follow this judicious advice and did not take to\nhis bed to be nursed. \"I am walking about, so I am strong enough, if I\ndrop, it'll be different then, any one may nurse me who likes,\" he\ndecided, dismissing the subject.\n\nAnd so he was sitting almost conscious himself of his delirium and, as I\nhave said already, looking persistently at some object on the sofa against\nthe opposite wall. Some one appeared to be sitting there, though goodness\nknows how he had come in, for he had not been in the room when Ivan came\ninto it, on his return from Smerdyakov. This was a person or, more\naccurately speaking, a Russian gentleman of a particular kind, no longer\nyoung, _qui faisait la cinquantaine_, as the French say, with rather long,\nstill thick, dark hair, slightly streaked with gray and a small pointed\nbeard. He was wearing a brownish reefer jacket, rather shabby, evidently\nmade by a good tailor though, and of a fashion at least three years old,\nthat had been discarded by smart and well-to-do people for the last two\nyears. His linen and his long scarf-like neck-tie were all such as are\nworn by people who aim at being stylish, but on closer inspection his\nlinen was not over-clean and his wide scarf was very threadbare. The\nvisitor's check trousers were of excellent cut, but were too light in\ncolor and too tight for the present fashion. His soft fluffy white hat was\nout of keeping with the season.\n\nIn brief there was every appearance of gentility on straitened means. It\nlooked as though the gentleman belonged to that class of idle landowners\nwho used to flourish in the times of serfdom. He had unmistakably been, at\nsome time, in good and fashionable society, had once had good connections,\nhad possibly preserved them indeed, but, after a gay youth, becoming\ngradually impoverished on the abolition of serfdom, he had sunk into the\nposition of a poor relation of the best class, wandering from one good old\nfriend to another and received by them for his companionable and\naccommodating disposition and as being, after all, a gentleman who could\nbe asked to sit down with any one, though, of course, not in a place of\nhonor. Such gentlemen of accommodating temper and dependent position, who\ncan tell a story, take a hand at cards, and who have a distinct aversion\nfor any duties that may be forced upon them, are usually solitary\ncreatures, either bachelors or widowers. Sometimes they have children, but\nif so, the children are always being brought up at a distance, at some\naunt's, to whom these gentlemen never allude in good society, seeming\nashamed of the relationship. They gradually lose sight of their children\naltogether, though at intervals they receive a birthday or Christmas\nletter from them and sometimes even answer it.\n\nThe countenance of the unexpected visitor was not so much good-natured, as\naccommodating and ready to assume any amiable expression as occasion might\narise. He had no watch, but he had a tortoise-shell lorgnette on a black\nribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand was a massive gold ring\nwith a cheap opal stone in it.\n\nIvan was angrily silent and would not begin the conversation. The visitor\nwaited and sat exactly like a poor relation who had come down from his\nroom to keep his host company at tea, and was discreetly silent, seeing\nthat his host was frowning and preoccupied. But he was ready for any\naffable conversation as soon as his host should begin it. All at once his\nface expressed a sudden solicitude.\n\n\"I say,\" he began to Ivan, \"excuse me, I only mention it to remind you.\nYou went to Smerdyakov's to find out about Katerina Ivanovna, but you came\naway without finding out anything about her, you probably forgot--\"\n\n\"Ah, yes,\" broke from Ivan and his face grew gloomy with uneasiness. \"Yes,\nI'd forgotten ... but it doesn't matter now, never mind, till to-morrow,\"\nhe muttered to himself, \"and you,\" he added, addressing his visitor, \"I\nshould have remembered that myself in a minute, for that was just what was\ntormenting me! Why do you interfere, as if I should believe that you\nprompted me, and that I didn't remember it of myself?\"\n\n\"Don't believe it then,\" said the gentleman, smiling amicably, \"what's the\ngood of believing against your will? Besides, proofs are no help to\nbelieving, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he saw\nChrist risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. Look at the\nspiritualists, for instance.... I am very fond of them ... only fancy,\nthey imagine that they are serving the cause of religion, because the\ndevils show them their horns from the other world. That, they say, is a\nmaterial proof, so to speak, of the existence of another world. The other\nworld and material proofs, what next! And if you come to that, does\nproving there's a devil prove that there's a God? I want to join an\nidealist society, I'll lead the opposition in it, I'll say I am a realist,\nbut not a materialist, he he!\"\n\n\"Listen,\" Ivan suddenly got up from the table. \"I seem to be delirious....\nI am delirious, in fact, talk any nonsense you like, I don't care! You\nwon't drive me to fury, as you did last time. But I feel somehow\nashamed.... I want to walk about the room.... I sometimes don't see you\nand don't even hear your voice as I did last time, but I always guess what\nyou are prating, for it's I, _I myself speaking, not you_. Only I don't\nknow whether I was dreaming last time or whether I really saw you. I'll\nwet a towel and put it on my head and perhaps you'll vanish into air.\"\n\nIvan went into the corner, took a towel, and did as he said, and with a\nwet towel on his head began walking up and down the room.\n\n\"I am so glad you treat me so familiarly,\" the visitor began.\n\n\"Fool,\" laughed Ivan, \"do you suppose I should stand on ceremony with you?\nI am in good spirits now, though I've a pain in my forehead ... and in the\ntop of my head ... only please don't talk philosophy, as you did last\ntime. If you can't take yourself off, talk of something amusing. Talk\ngossip, you are a poor relation, you ought to talk gossip. What a\nnightmare to have! But I am not afraid of you. I'll get the better of you.\nI won't be taken to a mad-house!\"\n\n\"_C'est charmant_, poor relation. Yes, I am in my natural shape. For what\nam I on earth but a poor relation? By the way, I am listening to you and\nam rather surprised to find you are actually beginning to take me for\nsomething real, not simply your fancy, as you persisted in declaring last\ntime--\"\n\n\"Never for one minute have I taken you for reality,\" Ivan cried with a\nsort of fury. \"You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom. It's\nonly that I don't know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer for a\ntime. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself, but\nonly of one side of me ... of my thoughts and feelings, but only the\nnastiest and stupidest of them. From that point of view you might be of\ninterest to me, if only I had time to waste on you--\"\n\n\"Excuse me, excuse me, I'll catch you. When you flew out at Alyosha under\nthe lamp-post this evening and shouted to him, 'You learnt it from _him_!\nHow do you know that _he_ visits me?' you were thinking of me then. So for\none brief moment you did believe that I really exist,\" the gentleman\nlaughed blandly.\n\n\"Yes, that was a moment of weakness ... but I couldn't believe in you. I\ndon't know whether I was asleep or awake last time. Perhaps I was only\ndreaming then and didn't see you really at all--\"\n\n\"And why were you so surly with Alyosha just now? He is a dear; I've\ntreated him badly over Father Zossima.\"\n\n\"Don't talk of Alyosha! How dare you, you flunkey!\" Ivan laughed again.\n\n\"You scold me, but you laugh--that's a good sign. But you are ever so much\nmore polite than you were last time and I know why: that great resolution\nof yours--\"\n\n\"Don't speak of my resolution,\" cried Ivan, savagely.\n\n\"I understand, I understand, _c'est noble, c'est charmant_, you are going\nto defend your brother and to sacrifice yourself ... _C'est\nchevaleresque_.\"\n\n\"Hold your tongue, I'll kick you!\"\n\n\"I shan't be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If you\nkick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don't kick ghosts.\nJoking apart, it doesn't matter to me, scold if you like, though it's\nbetter to be a trifle more polite even to me. 'Fool, flunkey!' what\nwords!\"\n\n\"Scolding you, I scold myself,\" Ivan laughed again, \"you are myself,\nmyself, only with a different face. You just say what I am thinking ...\nand are incapable of saying anything new!\"\n\n\"If I am like you in my way of thinking, it's all to my credit,\" the\ngentleman declared, with delicacy and dignity.\n\n\"You choose out only my worst thoughts, and what's more, the stupid ones.\nYou are stupid and vulgar. You are awfully stupid. No, I can't put up with\nyou! What am I to do, what am I to do?\" Ivan said through his clenched\nteeth.\n\n\"My dear friend, above all things I want to behave like a gentleman and to\nbe recognized as such,\" the visitor began in an excess of deprecating and\nsimple-hearted pride, typical of a poor relation. \"I am poor, but ... I\nwon't say very honest, but ... it's an axiom generally accepted in society\nthat I am a fallen angel. I certainly can't conceive how I can ever have\nbeen an angel. If I ever was, it must have been so long ago that there's\nno harm in forgetting it. Now I only prize the reputation of being a\ngentlemanly person and live as I can, trying to make myself agreeable. I\nlove men genuinely, I've been greatly calumniated! Here when I stay with\nyou from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality and that's what I\nlike most of all. You see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I\nlove the realism of earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed,\nhere all is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but\nindeterminate equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming.\nBesides, on earth I become superstitious. Please don't laugh, that's just\nwhat I like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your habits here: I've\ngrown fond of going to the public baths, would you believe it? and I go\nand steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becoming\nincarnate once for all and irrevocably in the form of some merchant's wife\nweighing eighteen stone, and of believing all she believes. My ideal is to\ngo to church and offer a candle in simple-hearted faith, upon my word it\nis. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like being doctored\ntoo; in the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox and I went and was\nvaccinated in a foundling hospital--if only you knew how I enjoyed myself\nthat day. I subscribed ten roubles in the cause of the Slavs!... But you\nare not listening. Do you know, you are not at all well this evening? I\nknow you went yesterday to that doctor ... well, what about your health?\nWhat did the doctor say?\"\n\n\"Fool!\" Ivan snapped out.\n\n\"But you are clever, anyway. You are scolding again? I didn't ask out of\nsympathy. You needn't answer. Now rheumatism has come in again--\"\n\n\"Fool!\" repeated Ivan.\n\n\"You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack of rheumatism\nlast year that I remember it to this day.\"\n\n\"The devil have rheumatism!\"\n\n\"Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I\ntake the consequences. Satan _sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto_.\"\n\n\"What, what, Satan _sum et nihil humanum_ ... that's not bad for the\ndevil!\"\n\n\"I am glad I've pleased you at last.\"\n\n\"But you didn't get that from me.\" Ivan stopped suddenly, seeming struck.\n\"That never entered my head, that's strange.\"\n\n\"_C'est du nouveau, n'est-ce pas?_ This time I'll act honestly and explain\nto you. Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion\nor anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and\nreal actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such\na plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the\nlast button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such\ndreams are sometimes seen not by writers, but by the most ordinary people,\nofficials, journalists, priests.... The subject is a complete enigma. A\nstatesman confessed to me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him\nwhen he was asleep. Well, that's how it is now, though I am your\nhallucination, yet just as in a nightmare, I say original things which had\nnot entered your head before. So I don't repeat your ideas, yet I am only\nyour nightmare, nothing more.\"\n\n\"You are lying, your aim is to convince me you exist apart and are not my\nnightmare, and now you are asserting you are a dream.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I've adopted a special method to-day, I'll explain it to\nyou afterwards. Stay, where did I break off? Oh, yes! I caught cold then,\nonly not here but yonder.\"\n\n\"Where is yonder? Tell me, will you be here long? Can't you go away?\" Ivan\nexclaimed almost in despair. He ceased walking to and fro, sat down on the\nsofa, leaned his elbows on the table again and held his head tight in both\nhands. He pulled the wet towel off and flung it away in vexation. It was\nevidently of no use.\n\n\"Your nerves are out of order,\" observed the gentleman, with a carelessly\neasy, though perfectly polite, air. \"You are angry with me even for being\nable to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural way. I was\nhurrying then to a diplomatic _soiree_ at the house of a lady of high rank\nin Petersburg, who was aiming at influence in the Ministry. Well, an\nevening suit, white tie, gloves, though I was God knows where and had to\nfly through space to reach your earth.... Of course, it took only an\ninstant, but you know a ray of light from the sun takes full eight\nminutes, and fancy in an evening suit and open waistcoat. Spirits don't\nfreeze, but when one's in fleshly form, well ... in brief, I didn't think,\nand set off, and you know in those ethereal spaces, in the water that is\nabove the firmament, there's such a frost ... at least one can't call it\nfrost, you can fancy, 150 degrees below zero! You know the game the\nvillage girls play--they invite the unwary to lick an ax in thirty degrees\nof frost, the tongue instantly freezes to it and the dupe tears the skin\noff, so it bleeds. But that's only in 30 degrees, in 150 degrees I imagine\nit would be enough to put your finger on the ax and it would be the end of\nit ... if only there could be an ax there.\"\n\n\"And can there be an ax there?\" Ivan interrupted, carelessly and\ndisdainfully. He was exerting himself to the utmost not to believe in the\ndelusion and not to sink into complete insanity.\n\n\"An ax?\" the guest interrupted in surprise.\n\n\"Yes, what would become of an ax there?\" Ivan cried suddenly, with a sort\nof savage and insistent obstinacy.\n\n\"What would become of an ax in space? _Quelle idee!_ If it were to fall to\nany distance, it would begin, I think, flying round the earth without\nknowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate the rising\nand the setting of the ax, _Gatzuk_ would put it in his calendar, that's\nall.\"\n\n\"You are stupid, awfully stupid,\" said Ivan peevishly. \"Fib more cleverly\nor I won't listen. You want to get the better of me by realism, to\nconvince me that you exist, but I don't want to believe you exist! I won't\nbelieve it!\"\n\n\"But I am not fibbing, it's all the truth; the truth is unhappily hardly\never amusing. I see you persist in expecting something big of me, and\nperhaps something fine. That's a great pity, for I only give what I can--\"\n\n\"Don't talk philosophy, you ass!\"\n\n\"Philosophy, indeed, when all my right side is numb and I am moaning and\ngroaning. I've tried all the medical faculty: they can diagnose\nbeautifully, they have the whole of your disease at their finger-tips, but\nthey've no idea how to cure you. There was an enthusiastic little student\nhere, 'You may die,' said he, 'but you'll know perfectly what disease you\nare dying of!' And then what a way they have sending people to\nspecialists! 'We only diagnose,' they say, 'but go to such-and-such a\nspecialist, he'll cure you.' The old doctor who used to cure all sorts of\ndisease has completely disappeared, I assure you, now there are only\nspecialists and they all advertise in the newspapers. If anything is wrong\nwith your nose, they send you to Paris: there, they say, is a European\nspecialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris, he'll look at your nose; I\ncan only cure your right nostril, he'll tell you, for I don't cure the\nleft nostril, that's not my speciality, but go to Vienna, there there's a\nspecialist who will cure your left nostril. What are you to do? I fell\nback on popular remedies, a German doctor advised me to rub myself with\nhoney and salt in the bath-house. Solely to get an extra bath I went,\nsmeared myself all over and it did me no good at all. In despair I wrote\nto Count Mattei in Milan. He sent me a book and some drops, bless him,\nand, only fancy, Hoff's malt extract cured me! I bought it by accident,\ndrank a bottle and a half of it, and I was ready to dance, it took it away\ncompletely. I made up my mind to write to the papers to thank him, I was\nprompted by a feeling of gratitude, and only fancy, it led to no end of a\nbother: not a single paper would take my letter. 'It would be very\nreactionary,' they said, 'no one will believe it. _Le diable n'existe\npoint._ You'd better remain anonymous,' they advised me. What use is a\nletter of thanks if it's anonymous? I laughed with the men at the\nnewspaper office; 'It's reactionary to believe in God in our days,' I\nsaid, 'but I am the devil, so I may be believed in.' 'We quite understand\nthat,' they said. 'Who doesn't believe in the devil? Yet it won't do, it\nmight injure our reputation. As a joke, if you like.' But I thought as a\njoke it wouldn't be very witty. So it wasn't printed. And do you know, I\nhave felt sore about it to this day. My best feelings, gratitude, for\ninstance, are literally denied me simply from my social position.\"\n\n\"Philosophical reflections again?\" Ivan snarled malignantly.\n\n\"God preserve me from it, but one can't help complaining sometimes. I am a\nslandered man. You upbraid me every moment with being stupid. One can see\nyou are young. My dear fellow, intelligence isn't the only thing! I have\nnaturally a kind and merry heart. 'I also write vaudevilles of all sorts.'\nYou seem to take me for Hlestakov grown old, but my fate is a far more\nserious one. Before time was, by some decree which I could never make out,\nI was pre-destined 'to deny' and yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not\nat all inclined to negation. 'No, you must go and deny, without denial\nthere's no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of\ncriticism?' Without criticism it would be nothing but one 'hosannah.' But\nnothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in\nthe crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don't meddle in\nthat, I didn't create it, I am not answerable for it. Well, they've chosen\ntheir scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism and so life\nwas made possible. We understand that comedy; I, for instance, simply ask\nfor annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there'd be nothing without you.\nIf everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen. There\nwould be no events without you, and there must be events. So against the\ngrain I serve to produce events and do what's irrational because I am\ncommanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce\nas something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course\n... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for\nsuffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It\nwould be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but\ntedious. But what about me? I suffer, but still, I don't live. I am x in\nan indeterminate equation. I am a sort of phantom in life who has lost all\nbeginning and end, and who has even forgotten his own name. You are\nlaughing-- no, you are not laughing, you are angry again. You are for ever\nangry, all you care about is intelligence, but I repeat again that I would\ngive away all this super-stellar life, all the ranks and honors, simply to\nbe transformed into the soul of a merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone\nand set candles at God's shrine.\"\n\n\"Then even you don't believe in God?\" said Ivan, with a smile of hatred.\n\n\"What can I say?--that is, if you are in earnest--\"\n\n\"Is there a God or not?\" Ivan cried with the same savage intensity.\n\n\"Ah, then you are in earnest! My dear fellow, upon my word I don't know.\nThere! I've said it now!\"\n\n\"You don't know, but you see God? No, you are not some one apart, you are\nmyself, you are I and nothing more! You are rubbish, you are my fancy!\"\n\n\"Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be true.\n_Je pense, donc je suis_, I know that for a fact; all the rest, all these\nworlds, God and even Satan--all that is not proved, to my mind. Does all\nthat exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of myself, a logical\ndevelopment of my ego which alone has existed for ever: but I make haste\nto stop, for I believe you will be jumping up to beat me directly.\"\n\n\"You'd better tell me some anecdote!\" said Ivan miserably.\n\n\"There is an anecdote precisely on our subject, or rather a legend, not an\nanecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, you see, you say, yet you don't\nbelieve. But, my dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We are all\nin a muddle over there now and all through your science. Once there used\nto be atoms, five senses, four elements, and then everything hung together\nsomehow. There were atoms in the ancient world even, but since we've\nlearned that you've discovered the chemical molecule and protoplasm and\nthe devil knows what, we had to lower our crest. There's a regular muddle,\nand, above all, superstition, scandal; there's as much scandal among us as\namong you, you know; a little more in fact, and spying, indeed, for we\nhave our secret police department where private information is received.\nWell, this wild legend belongs to our middle ages--not yours, but ours--and\nno one believes it even among us, except the old ladies of eighteen stone,\nnot your old ladies I mean, but ours. We've everything you have, I am\nrevealing one of our secrets out of friendship for you; though it's\nforbidden. This legend is about Paradise. There was, they say, here on\nearth a thinker and philosopher. He rejected everything, 'laws,\nconscience, faith,' and, above all, the future life. He died; he expected\nto go straight to darkness and death and he found a future life before\nhim. He was astounded and indignant. 'This is against my principles!' he\nsaid. And he was punished for that ... that is, you must excuse me, I am\njust repeating what I heard myself, it's only a legend ... he was\nsentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometers in the dark (we've adopted the\nmetric system, you know) and when he has finished that quadrillion, the\ngates of heaven would be opened to him and he'll be forgiven--\"\n\n\"And what tortures have you in the other world besides the quadrillion\nkilometers?\" asked Ivan, with a strange eagerness.\n\n\"What tortures? Ah, don't ask. In old days we had all sorts, but now they\nhave taken chiefly to moral punishments--'the stings of conscience' and all\nthat nonsense. We got that, too, from you, from the softening of your\nmanners. And who's the better for it? Only those who have got no\nconscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have\nnone? But decent people who have conscience and a sense of honor suffer\nfor it. Reforms, when the ground has not been prepared for them,\nespecially if they are institutions copied from abroad, do nothing but\nmischief! The ancient fire was better. Well, this man, who was condemned\nto the quadrillion kilometers, stood still, looked round and lay down\nacross the road. 'I won't go, I refuse on principle!' Take the soul of an\nenlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah,\nwho sulked for three days and nights in the belly of the whale, and you\nget the character of that thinker who lay across the road.\"\n\n\"What did he lie on there?\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You are not laughing?\"\n\n\"Bravo!\" cried Ivan, still with the same strange eagerness. Now he was\nlistening with an unexpected curiosity. \"Well, is he lying there now?\"\n\n\"That's the point, that he isn't. He lay there almost a thousand years and\nthen he got up and went on.\"\n\n\"What an ass!\" cried Ivan, laughing nervously and still seeming to be\npondering something intently. \"Does it make any difference whether he lies\nthere for ever or walks the quadrillion kilometers? It would take a\nbillion years to walk it?\"\n\n\"Much more than that. I haven't got a pencil and paper or I could work it\nout. But he got there long ago, and that's where the story begins.\"\n\n\"What, he got there? But how did he get the billion years to do it?\"\n\n\"Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may\nhave been repeated a billion times. Why, it's become extinct, been frozen;\ncracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again 'the water\nabove the firmament,' then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun\nit becomes earth--and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly\nand exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably\ntedious--\"\n\n\"Well, well, what happened when he arrived?\"\n\n\"Why, the moment the gates of Paradise were open and he walked in, before\nhe had been there two seconds, by his watch (though to my thinking his\nwatch must have long dissolved into its elements on the way), he cried out\nthat those two seconds were worth walking not a quadrillion kilometers but\na quadrillion of quadrillions, raised to the quadrillionth power! In fact,\nhe sang 'hosannah' and overdid it so, that some persons there of lofty\nideas wouldn't shake hands with him at first--he'd become too rapidly\nreactionary, they said. The Russian temperament. I repeat, it's a legend.\nI give it for what it's worth. So that's the sort of ideas we have on such\nsubjects even now.\"\n\n\"I've caught you!\" Ivan cried, with an almost childish delight, as though\nhe had succeeded in remembering something at last. \"That anecdote about\nthe quadrillion years, I made up myself! I was seventeen then, I was at\nthe high school. I made up that anecdote and told it to a schoolfellow\ncalled Korovkin, it was at Moscow.... The anecdote is so characteristic\nthat I couldn't have taken it from anywhere. I thought I'd forgotten it\n... but I've unconsciously recalled it--I recalled it myself--it was not you\ntelling it! Thousands of things are unconsciously remembered like that\neven when people are being taken to execution ... it's come back to me in\na dream. You are that dream! You are a dream, not a living creature!\"\n\n\"From the vehemence with which you deny my existence,\" laughed the\ngentleman, \"I am convinced that you believe in me.\"\n\n\"Not in the slightest! I haven't a hundredth part of a grain of faith in\nyou!\"\n\n\"But you have the thousandth of a grain. Homeopathic doses perhaps are the\nstrongest. Confess that you have faith even to the ten-thousandth of a\ngrain.\"\n\n\"Not for one minute,\" cried Ivan furiously. \"But I should like to believe\nin you,\" he added strangely.\n\n\"Aha! There's an admission! But I am good-natured. I'll come to your\nassistance again. Listen, it was I caught you, not you me. I told you your\nanecdote you'd forgotten, on purpose, so as to destroy your faith in me\ncompletely.\"\n\n\"You are lying. The object of your visit is to convince me of your\nexistence!\"\n\n\"Just so. But hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and\ndisbelief--is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you\nare, that it's better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are\ninclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you\nthat anecdote. I lead you to belief and disbelief by turns, and I have my\nmotive in it. It's the new method. As soon as you disbelieve in me\ncompletely, you'll begin assuring me to my face that I am not a dream but\na reality. I know you. Then I shall have attained my object, which is an\nhonorable one. I shall sow in you only a tiny grain of faith and it will\ngrow into an oak-tree--and such an oak-tree that, sitting on it, you will\nlong to enter the ranks of 'the hermits in the wilderness and the saintly\nwomen,' for that is what you are secretly longing for. You'll dine on\nlocusts, you'll wander into the wilderness to save your soul!\"\n\n\"Then it's for the salvation of my soul you are working, is it, you\nscoundrel?\"\n\n\"One must do a good work sometimes. How ill-humored you are!\"\n\n\"Fool! did you ever tempt those holy men who ate locusts and prayed\nseventeen years in the wilderness till they were overgrown with moss?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I've done nothing else. One forgets the whole world and\nall the worlds, and sticks to one such saint, because he is a very\nprecious diamond. One such soul, you know, is sometimes worth a whole\nconstellation. We have our system of reckoning, you know. The conquest is\npriceless! And some of them, on my word, are not inferior to you in\nculture, though you won't believe it. They can contemplate such depths of\nbelief and disbelief at the same moment that sometimes it really seems\nthat they are within a hair's-breadth of being 'turned upside down,' as\nthe actor Gorbunov says.\"\n\n\"Well, did you get your nose pulled?\"(8)\n\n\"My dear fellow,\" observed the visitor sententiously, \"it's better to get\noff with your nose pulled than without a nose at all. As an afflicted\nmarquis observed not long ago (he must have been treated by a specialist)\nin confession to his spiritual father--a Jesuit. I was present, it was\nsimply charming. 'Give me back my nose!' he said, and he beat his breast.\n'My son,' said the priest evasively, 'all things are accomplished in\naccordance with the inscrutable decrees of Providence, and what seems a\nmisfortune sometimes leads to extraordinary, though unapparent, benefits.\nIf stern destiny has deprived you of your nose, it's to your advantage\nthat no one can ever pull you by your nose.' 'Holy father, that's no\ncomfort,' cried the despairing marquis. 'I'd be delighted to have my nose\npulled every day of my life, if it were only in its proper place.' 'My\nson,' sighs the priest, 'you can't expect every blessing at once. This is\nmurmuring against Providence, who even in this has not forgotten you, for\nif you repine as you repined just now, declaring you'd be glad to have\nyour nose pulled for the rest of your life, your desire has already been\nfulfilled indirectly, for when you lost your nose, you were led by the\nnose.' \"\n\n\"Fool, how stupid!\" cried Ivan.\n\n\"My dear friend, I only wanted to amuse you. But I swear that's the\ngenuine Jesuit casuistry and I swear that it all happened word for word as\nI've told you. It happened lately and gave me a great deal of trouble. The\nunhappy young man shot himself that very night when he got home. I was by\nhis side till the very last moment. Those Jesuit confessionals are really\nmy most delightful diversion at melancholy moments. Here's another\nincident that happened only the other day. A little blonde Norman girl of\ntwenty--a buxom, unsophisticated beauty that would make your mouth\nwater--comes to an old priest. She bends down and whispers her sin into the\ngrating. 'Why, my daughter, have you fallen again already?' cries the\npriest. 'O Sancta Maria, what do I hear! Not the same man this time, how\nlong is this going on? Aren't you ashamed!' '_Ah, mon pere_,' answers the\nsinner with tears of penitence, '_ca lui fait tant de plaisir, et a moi si\npeu de peine!_' Fancy, such an answer! I drew back. It was the cry of\nnature, better than innocence itself, if you like. I absolved her sin on\nthe spot and was turning to go, but I was forced to turn back. I heard the\npriest at the grating making an appointment with her for the\nevening--though he was an old man hard as flint, he fell in an instant! It\nwas nature, the truth of nature asserted its rights! What, you are turning\nup your nose again? Angry again? I don't know how to please you--\"\n\n\"Leave me alone, you are beating on my brain like a haunting nightmare,\"\nIvan moaned miserably, helpless before his apparition. \"I am bored with\nyou, agonizingly and insufferably. I would give anything to be able to\nshake you off!\"\n\n\"I repeat, moderate your expectations, don't demand of me 'everything\ngreat and noble' and you'll see how well we shall get on,\" said the\ngentleman impressively. \"You are really angry with me for not having\nappeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched\nwings, but have shown myself in such a modest form. You are wounded, in\nthe first place, in your esthetic feelings, and, secondly, in your pride.\nHow could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as you! Yes, there is\nthat romantic strain in you, that was so derided by Byelinsky. I can't\nhelp it, young man, as I got ready to come to you I did think as a joke of\nappearing in the figure of a retired general who had served in the\nCaucasus, with a star of the Lion and the Sun on my coat. But I was\npositively afraid of doing it, for you'd have thrashed me for daring to\npin the Lion and the Sun on my coat, instead of, at least, the Polar Star\nor the Sirius. And you keep on saying I am stupid, but, mercy on us! I\nmake no claim to be equal to you in intelligence. Mephistopheles declared\nto Faust that he desired evil, but did only good. Well, he can say what he\nlikes, it's quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the one man in all\ncreation who loves the truth and genuinely desires good. I was there when\nthe Word, Who died on the Cross, rose up into heaven bearing on His bosom\nthe soul of the penitent thief. I heard the glad shrieks of the cherubim\nsinging and shouting hosannah and the thunderous rapture of the seraphim\nwhich shook heaven and all creation, and I swear to you by all that's\nsacred, I longed to join the choir and shout hosannah with them all. The\nword had almost escaped me, had almost broken from my lips ... you know\nhow susceptible and esthetically impressionable I am. But common sense--oh,\na most unhappy trait in my character--kept me in due bounds and I let the\nmoment pass! For what would have happened, I reflected, what would have\nhappened after my hosannah? Everything on earth would have been\nextinguished at once and no events could have occurred. And so, solely\nfrom a sense of duty and my social position, I was forced to suppress the\ngood moment and to stick to my nasty task. Somebody takes all the credit\nof what's good for Himself, and nothing but nastiness is left for me. But\nI don't envy the honor of a life of idle imposture, I am not ambitious.\nWhy am I, of all creatures in the world, doomed to be cursed by all decent\npeople and even to be kicked, for if I put on mortal form I am bound to\ntake such consequences sometimes? I know, of course, there's a secret in\nit, but they won't tell me the secret for anything, for then perhaps,\nseeing the meaning of it, I might bawl hosannah, and the indispensable\nminus would disappear at once, and good sense would reign supreme\nthroughout the whole world. And that, of course, would mean the end of\neverything, even of magazines and newspapers, for who would take them in?\nI know that at the end of all things I shall be reconciled. I, too, shall\nwalk my quadrillion and learn the secret. But till that happens I am\nsulking and fulfill my destiny though it's against the grain--that is, to\nruin thousands for the sake of saving one. How many souls have had to be\nruined and how many honorable reputations destroyed for the sake of that\none righteous man, Job, over whom they made such a fool of me in old days!\nYes, till the secret is revealed, there are two sorts of truths for\nme--one, their truth, yonder, which I know nothing about so far, and the\nother my own. And there's no knowing which will turn out the better....\nAre you asleep?\"\n\n\"I might well be,\" Ivan groaned angrily. \"All my stupid ideas--outgrown,\nthrashed out long ago, and flung aside like a dead carcass--you present to\nme as something new!\"\n\n\"There's no pleasing you! And I thought I should fascinate you by my\nliterary style. That hosannah in the skies really wasn't bad, was it? And\nthen that ironical tone _a la_ Heine, eh?\"\n\n\"No, I was never such a flunkey! How then could my soul beget a flunkey\nlike you?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I know a most charming and attractive young Russian\ngentleman, a young thinker and a great lover of literature and art, the\nauthor of a promising poem entitled _The Grand Inquisitor_. I was only\nthinking of him!\"\n\n\"I forbid you to speak of _The Grand Inquisitor_,\" cried Ivan, crimson\nwith shame.\n\n\"And the _Geological Cataclysm_. Do you remember? That was a poem, now!\"\n\n\"Hold your tongue, or I'll kill you!\"\n\n\"You'll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to\nthat pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering\nwith eagerness for life! 'There are new men,' you decided last spring,\nwhen you were meaning to come here, 'they propose to destroy everything\nand begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows! they didn't ask my advice! I\nmaintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the\nidea of God in man, that's how we have to set to work. It's that, that we\nmust begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding! As soon\nas men have all of them denied God--and I believe that period, analogous\nwith geological periods, will come to pass--the old conception of the\nuniverse will fall of itself without cannibalism, and, what's more, the\nold morality, and everything will begin anew. Men will unite to take from\nlife all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world.\nMan will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-\ngod will appear. From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature\ninfinitely by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from\nhour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of\nthe joys of heaven. Every one will know that he is mortal and will accept\ndeath proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it's\nuseless for him to repine at life's being a moment, and he will love his\nbrother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment\nof life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify\nits fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the\ngrave'... and so on and so on in the same style. Charming!\"\n\nIvan sat with his eyes on the floor, and his hands pressed to his ears,\nbut he began trembling all over. The voice continued.\n\n\"The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that such\na period will ever come? If it does, everything is determined and humanity\nis settled for ever. But as, owing to man's inveterate stupidity, this\ncannot come about for at least a thousand years, every one who recognizes\nthe truth even now may legitimately order his life as he pleases, on the\nnew principles. In that sense, 'all things are lawful' for him. What's\nmore, even if this period never comes to pass, since there is anyway no\nGod and no immortality, the new man may well become the man-god, even if\nhe is the only one in the whole world, and promoted to his new position,\nhe may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality of the\nold slave-man, if necessary. There is no law for God. Where God stands,\nthe place is holy. Where I stand will be at once the foremost place ...\n'all things are lawful' and that's the end of it! That's all very\ncharming; but if you want to swindle why do you want a moral sanction for\ndoing it? But that's our modern Russian all over. He can't bring himself\nto swindle without a moral sanction. He is so in love with truth--\"\n\nThe visitor talked, obviously carried away by his own eloquence, speaking\nlouder and louder and looking ironically at his host. But he did not\nsucceed in finishing; Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from the table and\nflung it at the orator.\n\n\"_Ah, mais c'est bete enfin_,\" cried the latter, jumping up from the sofa\nand shaking the drops of tea off himself. \"He remembers Luther's inkstand!\nHe takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a dream! It's like a woman!\nI suspected you were only pretending to stop up your ears.\"\n\nA loud, persistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window. Ivan jumped\nup from the sofa.\n\n\"Do you hear? You'd better open,\" cried the visitor; \"it's your brother\nAlyosha with the most interesting and surprising news, I'll be bound!\"\n\n\"Be silent, deceiver, I knew it was Alyosha, I felt he was coming, and of\ncourse he has not come for nothing; of course he brings 'news,' \" Ivan\nexclaimed frantically.\n\n\"Open, open to him. There's a snowstorm and he is your brother. _Monsieur\nsait-il le temps qu'il fait? C'est a ne pas mettre un chien dehors_.\"\n\nThe knocking continued. Ivan wanted to rush to the window, but something\nseemed to fetter his arms and legs. He strained every effort to break his\nchains, but in vain. The knocking at the window grew louder and louder. At\nlast the chains were broken and Ivan leapt up from the sofa. He looked\nround him wildly. Both candles had almost burnt out, the glass he had just\nthrown at his visitor stood before him on the table, and there was no one\non the sofa opposite. The knocking on the window frame went on\npersistently, but it was by no means so loud as it had seemed in his\ndream; on the contrary, it was quite subdued.\n\n\"It was not a dream! No, I swear it was not a dream, it all happened just\nnow!\" cried Ivan. He rushed to the window and opened the movable pane.\n\n\"Alyosha, I told you not to come,\" he cried fiercely to his brother. \"In\ntwo words, what do you want? In two words, do you hear?\"\n\n\"An hour ago Smerdyakov hanged himself,\" Alyosha answered from the yard.\n\n\"Come round to the steps, I'll open at once,\" said Ivan, going to open the\ndoor to Alyosha.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter X. \"It Was He Who Said That\"\n\n\nAlyosha coming in told Ivan that a little over an hour ago Marya\nKondratyevna had run to his rooms and informed him Smerdyakov had taken\nhis own life. \"I went in to clear away the samovar and he was hanging on a\nnail in the wall.\" On Alyosha's inquiring whether she had informed the\npolice, she answered that she had told no one, \"but I flew straight to\nyou, I've run all the way.\" She seemed perfectly crazy, Alyosha reported,\nand was shaking like a leaf. When Alyosha ran with her to the cottage, he\nfound Smerdyakov still hanging. On the table lay a note: \"I destroy my\nlife of my own will and desire, so as to throw no blame on any one.\"\nAlyosha left the note on the table and went straight to the police captain\nand told him all about it. \"And from him I've come straight to you,\" said\nAlyosha, in conclusion, looking intently into Ivan's face. He had not\ntaken his eyes off him while he told his story, as though struck by\nsomething in his expression.\n\n\"Brother,\" he cried suddenly, \"you must be terribly ill. You look and\ndon't seem to understand what I tell you.\"\n\n\"It's a good thing you came,\" said Ivan, as though brooding, and not\nhearing Alyosha's exclamation. \"I knew he had hanged himself.\"\n\n\"From whom?\"\n\n\"I don't know. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He told me so just\nnow.\"\n\nIvan stood in the middle of the room, and still spoke in the same brooding\ntone, looking at the ground.\n\n\"Who is _he_?\" asked Alyosha, involuntarily looking round.\n\n\"He's slipped away.\"\n\nIvan raised his head and smiled softly.\n\n\"He was afraid of you, of a dove like you. You are a 'pure cherub.' Dmitri\ncalls you a cherub. Cherub!... the thunderous rapture of the seraphim.\nWhat are seraphim? Perhaps a whole constellation. But perhaps that\nconstellation is only a chemical molecule. There's a constellation of the\nLion and the Sun. Don't you know it?\"\n\n\"Brother, sit down,\" said Alyosha in alarm. \"For goodness' sake, sit down\non the sofa! You are delirious; put your head on the pillow, that's right.\nWould you like a wet towel on your head? Perhaps it will do you good.\"\n\n\"Give me the towel: it's here on the chair. I just threw it down there.\"\n\n\"It's not here. Don't worry yourself. I know where it is--here,\" said\nAlyosha, finding a clean towel, folded up and unused, by Ivan's dressing-\ntable in the other corner of the room. Ivan looked strangely at the towel:\nrecollection seemed to come back to him for an instant.\n\n\"Stay\"--he got up from the sofa--\"an hour ago I took that new towel from\nthere and wetted it. I wrapped it round my head and threw it down here ...\nHow is it it's dry? There was no other.\"\n\n\"You put that towel on your head?\" asked Alyosha.\n\n\"Yes, and walked up and down the room an hour ago ... Why have the candles\nburnt down so? What's the time?\"\n\n\"Nearly twelve.\"\n\n\"No, no, no!\" Ivan cried suddenly. \"It was not a dream. He was here; he\nwas sitting here, on that sofa. When you knocked at the window, I threw a\nglass at him ... this one. Wait a minute. I was asleep last time, but this\ndream was not a dream. It has happened before. I have dreams now, Alyosha\n... yet they are not dreams, but reality. I walk about, talk and see ...\nthough I am asleep. But he was sitting here, on that sofa there.... He is\nfrightfully stupid, Alyosha, frightfully stupid.\" Ivan laughed suddenly\nand began pacing about the room.\n\n\"Who is stupid? Of whom are you talking, brother?\" Alyosha asked anxiously\nagain.\n\n\"The devil! He's taken to visiting me. He's been here twice, almost three\ntimes. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil and not\nSatan, with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he is not Satan:\nthat's a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil--a paltry, trivial\ndevil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him, you'd be sure to find\nhe had a tail, long and smooth like a Danish dog's, a yard long, dun\ncolor.... Alyosha, you are cold. You've been in the snow. Would you like\nsome tea? What? Is it cold? Shall I tell her to bring some? _C'est a ne\npas mettre un chien dehors._...\"\n\nAlyosha ran to the washing-stand, wetted the towel, persuaded Ivan to sit\ndown again, and put the wet towel round his head. He sat down beside him.\n\n\"What were you telling me just now about Lise?\" Ivan began again. (He was\nbecoming very talkative.) \"I like Lise. I said something nasty about her.\nIt was a lie. I like her ... I am afraid for Katya to-morrow. I am more\nafraid of her than of anything. On account of the future. She will cast me\noff to-morrow and trample me under foot. She thinks that I am ruining\nMitya from jealousy on her account! Yes, she thinks that! But it's not so.\nTo-morrow the cross, but not the gallows. No, I shan't hang myself. Do you\nknow, I can never commit suicide, Alyosha. Is it because I am base? I am\nnot a coward. Is it from love of life? How did I know that Smerdyakov had\nhanged himself? Yes, it was _he_ told me so.\"\n\n\"And you are quite convinced that there has been some one here?\" asked\nAlyosha.\n\n\"Yes, on that sofa in the corner. You would have driven him away. You did\ndrive him away: he disappeared when you arrived. I love your face,\nAlyosha. Did you know that I loved your face? And _he_ is myself, Alyosha.\nAll that's base in me, all that's mean and contemptible. Yes, I am a\nromantic. He guessed it ... though it's a libel. He is frightfully stupid;\nbut it's to his advantage. He has cunning, animal cunning--he knew how to\ninfuriate me. He kept taunting me with believing in him, and that was how\nhe made me listen to him. He fooled me like a boy. He told me a great deal\nthat was true about myself, though. I should never have owned it to\nmyself. Do you know, Alyosha,\" Ivan added in an intensely earnest and\nconfidential tone, \"I should be awfully glad to think that it was _he_ and\nnot I.\"\n\n\"He has worn you out,\" said Alyosha, looking compassionately at his\nbrother.\n\n\"He's been teasing me. And you know he does it so cleverly, so cleverly.\n'Conscience! What is conscience? I make it up for myself. Why am I\ntormented by it? From habit. From the universal habit of mankind for the\nseven thousand years. So let us give it up, and we shall be gods.' It was\nhe said that, it was he said that!\"\n\n\"And not you, not you?\" Alyosha could not help crying, looking frankly at\nhis brother. \"Never mind him, anyway; have done with him and forget him.\nAnd let him take with him all that you curse now, and never come back!\"\n\n\"Yes, but he is spiteful. He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha,\"\nIvan said, with a shudder of offense. \"But he was unfair to me, unfair to\nme about lots of things. He told lies about me to my face. 'Oh, you are\ngoing to perform an act of heroic virtue: to confess you murdered your\nfather, that the valet murdered him at your instigation.' \"\n\n\"Brother,\" Alyosha interposed, \"restrain yourself. It was not you murdered\nhim. It's not true!\"\n\n\"That's what he says, he, and he knows it. 'You are going to perform an\nact of heroic virtue, and you don't believe in virtue; that's what\ntortures you and makes you angry, that's why you are so vindictive.' He\nsaid that to me about me and he knows what he says.\"\n\n\"It's you say that, not he,\" exclaimed Alyosha mournfully, \"and you say it\nbecause you are ill and delirious, tormenting yourself.\"\n\n\"No, he knows what he says. 'You are going from pride,' he says. 'You'll\nstand up and say it was I killed him, and why do you writhe with horror?\nYou are lying! I despise your opinion, I despise your horror!' He said\nthat about me. 'And do you know you are longing for their praise--\"he is a\ncriminal, a murderer, but what a generous soul; he wanted to save his\nbrother and he confessed.\" ' That's a lie, Alyosha!\" Ivan cried suddenly,\nwith flashing eyes. \"I don't want the low rabble to praise me, I swear I\ndon't! That's a lie! That's why I threw the glass at him and it broke\nagainst his ugly face.\"\n\n\"Brother, calm yourself, stop!\" Alyosha entreated him.\n\n\"Yes, he knows how to torment one. He's cruel,\" Ivan went on, unheeding.\n\"I had an inkling from the first what he came for. 'Granting that you go\nthrough pride, still you had a hope that Smerdyakov might be convicted and\nsent to Siberia, and Mitya would be acquitted, while you would only be\npunished with moral condemnation' ('Do you hear?' he laughed then)--'and\nsome people will praise you. But now Smerdyakov's dead, he has hanged\nhimself, and who'll believe you alone? But yet you are going, you are\ngoing, you'll go all the same, you've decided to go. What are you going\nfor now?' That's awful, Alyosha. I can't endure such questions. Who dare\nask me such questions?\"\n\n\"Brother,\" interposed Alyosha--his heart sank with terror, but he still\nseemed to hope to bring Ivan to reason--\"how could he have told you of\nSmerdyakov's death before I came, when no one knew of it and there was no\ntime for any one to know of it?\"\n\n\"He told me,\" said Ivan firmly, refusing to admit a doubt. \"It was all he\ndid talk about, if you come to that. 'And it would be all right if you\nbelieved in virtue,' he said. 'No matter if they disbelieve you, you are\ngoing for the sake of principle. But you are a little pig like Fyodor\nPavlovitch, and what do you want with virtue? Why do you want to go\nmeddling if your sacrifice is of no use to any one? Because you don't know\nyourself why you go! Oh, you'd give a great deal to know yourself why you\ngo! And can you have made up your mind? You've not made up your mind.\nYou'll sit all night deliberating whether to go or not. But you will go;\nyou know you'll go. You know that whichever way you decide, the decision\ndoes not depend on you. You'll go because you won't dare not to go. Why\nwon't you dare? You must guess that for yourself. That's a riddle for\nyou!' He got up and went away. You came and he went. He called me a\ncoward, Alyosha! _Le mot de l'enigme_ is that I am a coward. 'It is not\nfor such eagles to soar above the earth.' It was he added that--he! And\nSmerdyakov said the same. He must be killed! Katya despises me. I've seen\nthat for a month past. Even Lise will begin to despise me! 'You are going\nin order to be praised.' That's a brutal lie! And you despise me too,\nAlyosha. Now I am going to hate you again! And I hate the monster, too! I\nhate the monster! I don't want to save the monster. Let him rot in\nSiberia! He's begun singing a hymn! Oh, to-morrow I'll go, stand before\nthem, and spit in their faces!\"\n\nHe jumped up in a frenzy, flung off the towel, and fell to pacing up and\ndown the room again. Alyosha recalled what he had just said. \"I seem to be\nsleeping awake.... I walk, I speak, I see, but I am asleep.\" It seemed to\nbe just like that now. Alyosha did not leave him. The thought passed\nthrough his mind to run for a doctor, but he was afraid to leave his\nbrother alone: there was no one to whom he could leave him. By degrees\nIvan lost consciousness completely at last. He still went on talking,\ntalking incessantly, but quite incoherently, and even articulated his\nwords with difficulty. Suddenly he staggered violently; but Alyosha was in\ntime to support him. Ivan let him lead him to his bed. Alyosha undressed\nhim somehow and put him to bed. He sat watching over him for another two\nhours. The sick man slept soundly, without stirring, breathing softly and\nevenly. Alyosha took a pillow and lay down on the sofa, without\nundressing.\n\nAs he fell asleep he prayed for Mitya and Ivan. He began to understand\nIvan's illness. \"The anguish of a proud determination. An earnest\nconscience!\" God, in Whom he disbelieved, and His truth were gaining\nmastery over his heart, which still refused to submit. \"Yes,\" the thought\nfloated through Alyosha's head as it lay on the pillow, \"yes, if\nSmerdyakov is dead, no one will believe Ivan's evidence; but he will go\nand give it.\" Alyosha smiled softly. \"God will conquer!\" he thought. \"He\nwill either rise up in the light of truth, or ... he'll perish in hate,\nrevenging on himself and on every one his having served the cause he does\nnot believe in,\" Alyosha added bitterly, and again he prayed for Ivan.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook XII. A Judicial Error  Chapter I. The Fatal Day\n\n\nAt ten o'clock in the morning of the day following the events I have\ndescribed, the trial of Dmitri Karamazov began in our district court.\n\nI hasten to emphasize the fact that I am far from esteeming myself capable\nof reporting all that took place at the trial in full detail, or even in\nthe actual order of events. I imagine that to mention everything with full\nexplanation would fill a volume, even a very large one. And so I trust I\nmay not be reproached, for confining myself to what struck me. I may have\nselected as of most interest what was of secondary importance, and may\nhave omitted the most prominent and essential details. But I see I shall\ndo better not to apologize. I will do my best and the reader will see for\nhimself that I have done all I can.\n\nAnd, to begin with, before entering the court, I will mention what\nsurprised me most on that day. Indeed, as it appeared later, every one was\nsurprised at it, too. We all knew that the affair had aroused great\ninterest, that every one was burning with impatience for the trial to\nbegin, that it had been a subject of talk, conjecture, exclamation and\nsurmise for the last two months in local society. Every one knew, too,\nthat the case had become known throughout Russia, but yet we had not\nimagined that it had aroused such burning, such intense, interest in every\none, not only among ourselves, but all over Russia. This became evident at\nthe trial this day.\n\nVisitors had arrived not only from the chief town of our province, but\nfrom several other Russian towns, as well as from Moscow and Petersburg.\nAmong them were lawyers, ladies, and even several distinguished\npersonages. Every ticket of admission had been snatched up. A special\nplace behind the table at which the three judges sat was set apart for the\nmost distinguished and important of the men visitors; a row of arm-chairs\nhad been placed there--something exceptional, which had never been allowed\nbefore. A large proportion--not less than half of the public--were ladies.\nThere was such a large number of lawyers from all parts that they did not\nknow where to seat them, for every ticket had long since been eagerly\nsought for and distributed. I saw at the end of the room, behind the\nplatform, a special partition hurriedly put up, behind which all these\nlawyers were admitted, and they thought themselves lucky to have standing\nroom there, for all chairs had been removed for the sake of space, and the\ncrowd behind the partition stood throughout the case closely packed,\nshoulder to shoulder.\n\nSome of the ladies, especially those who came from a distance, made their\nappearance in the gallery very smartly dressed, but the majority of the\nladies were oblivious even of dress. Their faces betrayed hysterical,\nintense, almost morbid, curiosity. A peculiar fact--established afterwards\nby many observations--was that almost all the ladies, or, at least the vast\nmajority of them, were on Mitya's side and in favor of his being\nacquitted. This was perhaps chiefly owing to his reputation as a conqueror\nof female hearts. It was known that two women rivals were to appear in the\ncase. One of them--Katerina Ivanovna--was an object of general interest. All\nsorts of extraordinary tales were told about her, amazing anecdotes of her\npassion for Mitya, in spite of his crime. Her pride and \"aristocratic\nconnections\" were particularly insisted upon (she had called upon scarcely\nany one in the town). People said she intended to petition the Government\nfor leave to accompany the criminal to Siberia and to be married to him\nsomewhere in the mines. The appearance of Grushenka in court was awaited\nwith no less impatience. The public was looking forward with anxious\ncuriosity to the meeting of the two rivals--the proud aristocratic girl and\n\"the hetaira.\" But Grushenka was a more familiar figure to the ladies of\nthe district than Katerina Ivanovna. They had already seen \"the woman who\nhad ruined Fyodor Pavlovitch and his unhappy son,\" and all, almost without\nexception, wondered how father and son could be so in love with \"such a\nvery common, ordinary Russian girl, who was not even pretty.\"\n\nIn brief, there was a great deal of talk. I know for a fact that there\nwere several serious family quarrels on Mitya's account in our town. Many\nladies quarreled violently with their husbands over differences of opinion\nabout the dreadful case, and it was only natural that the husbands of\nthese ladies, far from being favorably disposed to the prisoner, should\nenter the court bitterly prejudiced against him. In fact, one may say\npretty certainly that the masculine, as distinguished from the feminine,\npart of the audience were biased against the prisoner. There were numbers\nof severe, frowning, even vindictive faces. Mitya, indeed, had managed to\noffend many people during his stay in the town. Some of the visitors were,\nof course, in excellent spirits and quite unconcerned as to the fate of\nMitya personally. But all were interested in the trial, and the majority\nof the men were certainly hoping for the conviction of the criminal,\nexcept perhaps the lawyers, who were more interested in the legal than in\nthe moral aspect of the case.\n\nEverybody was excited at the presence of the celebrated lawyer,\nFetyukovitch. His talent was well known, and this was not the first time\nhe had defended notorious criminal cases in the provinces. And if he\ndefended them, such cases became celebrated and long remembered all over\nRussia. There were stories, too, about our prosecutor and about the\nPresident of the Court. It was said that Ippolit Kirillovitch was in a\ntremor at meeting Fetyukovitch, and that they had been enemies from the\nbeginning of their careers in Petersburg, that though our sensitive\nprosecutor, who always considered that he had been aggrieved by some one\nin Petersburg because his talents had not been properly appreciated, was\nkeenly excited over the Karamazov case, and was even dreaming of\nrebuilding his flagging fortunes by means of it, Fetyukovitch, they said,\nwas his one anxiety. But these rumors were not quite just. Our prosecutor\nwas not one of those men who lose heart in face of danger. On the\ncontrary, his self-confidence increased with the increase of danger. It\nmust be noted that our prosecutor was in general too hasty and morbidly\nimpressionable. He would put his whole soul into some case and work at it\nas though his whole fate and his whole fortune depended on its result.\nThis was the subject of some ridicule in the legal world, for just by this\ncharacteristic our prosecutor had gained a wider notoriety than could have\nbeen expected from his modest position. People laughed particularly at his\npassion for psychology. In my opinion, they were wrong, and our prosecutor\nwas, I believe, a character of greater depth than was generally supposed.\nBut with his delicate health he had failed to make his mark at the outset\nof his career and had never made up for it later.\n\nAs for the President of our Court, I can only say that he was a humane and\ncultured man, who had a practical knowledge of his work and progressive\nviews. He was rather ambitious, but did not concern himself greatly about\nhis future career. The great aim of his life was to be a man of advanced\nideas. He was, too, a man of connections and property. He felt, as we\nlearnt afterwards, rather strongly about the Karamazov case, but from a\nsocial, not from a personal standpoint. He was interested in it as a\nsocial phenomenon, in its classification and its character as a product of\nour social conditions, as typical of the national character, and so on,\nand so on. His attitude to the personal aspect of the case, to its tragic\nsignificance and the persons involved in it, including the prisoner, was\nrather indifferent and abstract, as was perhaps fitting, indeed.\n\nThe court was packed and overflowing long before the judges made their\nappearance. Our court is the best hall in the town--spacious, lofty, and\ngood for sound. On the right of the judges, who were on a raised platform,\na table and two rows of chairs had been put ready for the jury. On the\nleft was the place for the prisoner and the counsel for the defense. In\nthe middle of the court, near the judges, was a table with the \"material\nproofs.\" On it lay Fyodor Pavlovitch's white silk dressing-gown, stained\nwith blood; the fatal brass pestle with which the supposed murder had been\ncommitted; Mitya's shirt, with a blood-stained sleeve; his coat, stained\nwith blood in patches over the pocket in which he had put his\nhandkerchief; the handkerchief itself, stiff with blood and by now quite\nyellow; the pistol loaded by Mitya at Perhotin's with a view to suicide,\nand taken from him on the sly at Mokroe by Trifon Borissovitch; the\nenvelope in which the three thousand roubles had been put ready for\nGrushenka, the narrow pink ribbon with which it had been tied, and many\nother articles I don't remember. In the body of the hall, at some\ndistance, came the seats for the public. But in front of the balustrade a\nfew chairs had been placed for witnesses who remained in the court after\ngiving their evidence.\n\nAt ten o'clock the three judges arrived--the President, one honorary\njustice of the peace, and one other. The prosecutor, of course, entered\nimmediately after. The President was a short, stout, thick-set man of\nfifty, with a dyspeptic complexion, dark hair turning gray and cut short,\nand a red ribbon, of what Order I don't remember. The prosecutor struck me\nand the others, too, as looking particularly pale, almost green. His face\nseemed to have grown suddenly thinner, perhaps in a single night, for I\nhad seen him looking as usual only two days before. The President began\nwith asking the court whether all the jury were present.\n\nBut I see I can't go on like this, partly because some things I did not\nhear, others I did not notice, and others I have forgotten, but most of\nall because, as I have said before, I have literally no time or space to\nmention everything that was said and done. I only know that neither side\nobjected to very many of the jurymen. I remember the twelve jurymen--four\nwere petty officials of the town, two were merchants, and six peasants and\nartisans of the town. I remember, long before the trial, questions were\ncontinually asked with some surprise, especially by ladies: \"Can such a\ndelicate, complex and psychological case be submitted for decision to\npetty officials and even peasants?\" and \"What can an official, still more\na peasant, understand in such an affair?\" All the four officials in the\njury were, in fact, men of no consequence and of low rank. Except one who\nwas rather younger, they were gray-headed men, little known in society,\nwho had vegetated on a pitiful salary, and who probably had elderly,\nunpresentable wives and crowds of children, perhaps even without shoes and\nstockings. At most, they spent their leisure over cards and, of course,\nhad never read a single book. The two merchants looked respectable, but\nwere strangely silent and stolid. One of them was close-shaven, and was\ndressed in European style; the other had a small, gray beard, and wore a\nred ribbon with some sort of a medal upon it on his neck. There is no need\nto speak of the artisans and the peasants. The artisans of\nSkotoprigonyevsk are almost peasants, and even work on the land. Two of\nthem also wore European dress, and, perhaps for that reason, were dirtier\nand more uninviting-looking than the others. So that one might well\nwonder, as I did as soon as I had looked at them, \"what men like that\ncould possibly make of such a case?\" Yet their faces made a strangely\nimposing, almost menacing, impression; they were stern and frowning.\n\nAt last the President opened the case of the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch\nKaramazov. I don't quite remember how he described him. The court usher\nwas told to bring in the prisoner, and Mitya made his appearance. There\nwas a hush through the court. One could have heard a fly. I don't know how\nit was with others, but Mitya made a most unfavorable impression on me. He\nlooked an awful dandy in a brand-new frock-coat. I heard afterwards that\nhe had ordered it in Moscow expressly for the occasion from his own\ntailor, who had his measure. He wore immaculate black kid gloves and\nexquisite linen. He walked in with his yard-long strides, looking stiffly\nstraight in front of him, and sat down in his place with a most\nunperturbed air.\n\nAt the same moment the counsel for defense, the celebrated Fetyukovitch,\nentered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the court. He was a\ntall, spare man, with long thin legs, with extremely long, thin, pale\nfingers, clean-shaven face, demurely brushed, rather short hair, and thin\nlips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile.\nHe looked about forty. His face would have been pleasant, if it had not\nbeen for his eyes, which, in themselves small and inexpressive, were set\nremarkably close together, with only the thin, long nose as a dividing\nline between them. In fact, there was something strikingly birdlike about\nhis face. He was in evening dress and white tie.\n\nI remember the President's first questions to Mitya, about his name, his\ncalling, and so on. Mitya answered sharply, and his voice was so\nunexpectedly loud that it made the President start and look at the\nprisoner with surprise. Then followed a list of persons who were to take\npart in the proceedings--that is, of the witnesses and experts. It was a\nlong list. Four of the witnesses were not present--Miuesov, who had given\nevidence at the preliminary inquiry, but was now in Paris; Madame Hohlakov\nand Maximov, who were absent through illness; and Smerdyakov, through his\nsudden death, of which an official statement from the police was\npresented. The news of Smerdyakov's death produced a sudden stir and\nwhisper in the court. Many of the audience, of course, had not heard of\nthe sudden suicide. What struck people most was Mitya's sudden outburst As\nsoon as the statement of Smerdyakov's death was made, he cried out aloud\nfrom his place:\n\n\"He was a dog and died like a dog!\"\n\nI remember how his counsel rushed to him, and how the President addressed\nhim, threatening to take stern measures, if such an irregularity were\nrepeated. Mitya nodded and in a subdued voice repeated several times\nabruptly to his counsel, with no show of regret:\n\n\"I won't again, I won't. It escaped me. I won't do it again.\"\n\nAnd, of course, this brief episode did him no good with the jury or the\npublic. His character was displayed, and it spoke for itself. It was under\nthe influence of this incident that the opening statement was read. It was\nrather short, but circumstantial. It only stated the chief reasons why he\nhad been arrested, why he must be tried, and so on. Yet it made a great\nimpression on me. The clerk read it loudly and distinctly. The whole\ntragedy was suddenly unfolded before us, concentrated, in bold relief, in\na fatal and pitiless light. I remember how, immediately after it had been\nread, the President asked Mitya in a loud impressive voice:\n\n\"Prisoner, do you plead guilty?\"\n\nMitya suddenly rose from his seat.\n\n\"I plead guilty to drunkenness and dissipation,\" he exclaimed, again in a\nstartling, almost frenzied, voice, \"to idleness and debauchery. I meant to\nbecome an honest man for good, just at the moment when I was struck down\nby fate. But I am not guilty of the death of that old man, my enemy and my\nfather. No, no, I am not guilty of robbing him! I could not be. Dmitri\nKaramazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief.\"\n\nHe sat down again, visibly trembling all over. The President again\nbriefly, but impressively, admonished him to answer only what was asked,\nand not to go off into irrelevant exclamations. Then he ordered the case\nto proceed. All the witnesses were led up to take the oath. Then I saw\nthem all together. The brothers of the prisoner were, however, allowed to\ngive evidence without taking the oath. After an exhortation from the\npriest and the President, the witnesses were led away and were made to sit\nas far as possible apart from one another. Then they began calling them up\none by one.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Dangerous Witnesses\n\n\nI do not know whether the witnesses for the defense and for the\nprosecution were separated into groups by the President, and whether it\nwas arranged to call them in a certain order. But no doubt it was so. I\nonly know that the witnesses for the prosecution were called first. I\nrepeat I don't intend to describe all the questions step by step. Besides,\nmy account would be to some extent superfluous, because in the speeches\nfor the prosecution and for the defense the whole course of the evidence\nwas brought together and set in a strong and significant light, and I took\ndown parts of those two remarkable speeches in full, and will quote them\nin due course, together with one extraordinary and quite unexpected\nepisode, which occurred before the final speeches, and undoubtedly\ninfluenced the sinister and fatal outcome of the trial.\n\nI will only observe that from the first moments of the trial one peculiar\ncharacteristic of the case was conspicuous and observed by all, that is,\nthe overwhelming strength of the prosecution as compared with the\narguments the defense had to rely upon. Every one realized it from the\nfirst moment that the facts began to group themselves round a single\npoint, and the whole horrible and bloody crime was gradually revealed.\nEvery one, perhaps, felt from the first that the case was beyond dispute,\nthat there was no doubt about it, that there could be really no\ndiscussion, and that the defense was only a matter of form, and that the\nprisoner was guilty, obviously and conclusively guilty. I imagine that\neven the ladies, who were so impatiently longing for the acquittal of the\ninteresting prisoner, were at the same time, without exception, convinced\nof his guilt. What's more, I believe they would have been mortified if his\nguilt had not been so firmly established, as that would have lessened the\neffect of the closing scene of the criminal's acquittal. That he would be\nacquitted, all the ladies, strange to say, were firmly persuaded up to the\nvery last moment. \"He is guilty, but he will be acquitted, from motives of\nhumanity, in accordance with the new ideas, the new sentiments that had\ncome into fashion,\" and so on, and so on. And that was why they had\ncrowded into the court so impatiently. The men were more interested in the\ncontest between the prosecutor and the famous Fetyukovitch. All were\nwondering and asking themselves what could even a talent like\nFetyukovitch's make of such a desperate case; and so they followed his\nachievements, step by step, with concentrated attention.\n\nBut Fetyukovitch remained an enigma to all up to the very end, up to his\nspeech. Persons of experience suspected that he had some design, that he\nwas working towards some object, but it was almost impossible to guess\nwhat it was. His confidence and self-reliance were unmistakable, however.\nEvery one noticed with pleasure, moreover, that he, after so short a stay,\nnot more than three days, perhaps, among us, had so wonderfully succeeded\nin mastering the case and \"had studied it to a nicety.\" People described\nwith relish, afterwards, how cleverly he had \"taken down\" all the\nwitnesses for the prosecution, and as far as possible perplexed them and,\nwhat's more, had aspersed their reputation and so depreciated the value of\ntheir evidence. But it was supposed that he did this rather by way of\nsport, so to speak, for professional glory, to show nothing had been\nomitted of the accepted methods, for all were convinced that he could do\nno real good by such disparagement of the witnesses, and probably was more\naware of this than any one, having some idea of his own in the background,\nsome concealed weapon of defense, which he would suddenly reveal when the\ntime came. But meanwhile, conscious of his strength, he seemed to be\ndiverting himself.\n\nSo, for instance, when Grigory, Fyodor Pavlovitch's old servant, who had\ngiven the most damning piece of evidence about the open door, was\nexamined, the counsel for the defense positively fastened upon him when\nhis turn came to question him. It must be noted that Grigory entered the\nhall with a composed and almost stately air, not the least disconcerted by\nthe majesty of the court or the vast audience listening to him. He gave\nevidence with as much confidence as though he had been talking with his\nMarfa, only perhaps more respectfully. It was impossible to make him\ncontradict himself. The prosecutor questioned him first in detail about\nthe family life of the Karamazovs. The family picture stood out in lurid\ncolors. It was plain to ear and eye that the witness was guileless and\nimpartial. In spite of his profound reverence for the memory of his\ndeceased master, he yet bore witness that he had been unjust to Mitya and\n\"hadn't brought up his children as he should. He'd have been devoured by\nlice when he was little, if it hadn't been for me,\" he added, describing\nMitya's early childhood. \"It wasn't fair either of the father to wrong his\nson over his mother's property, which was by right his.\"\n\nIn reply to the prosecutor's question what grounds he had for asserting\nthat Fyodor Pavlovitch had wronged his son in their money relations,\nGrigory, to the surprise of every one, had no proof at all to bring\nforward, but he still persisted that the arrangement with the son was\n\"unfair,\" and that he ought \"to have paid him several thousand roubles\nmore.\" I must note, by the way, that the prosecutor asked this question\nwhether Fyodor Pavlovitch had really kept back part of Mitya's inheritance\nwith marked persistence of all the witnesses who could be asked it, not\nexcepting Alyosha and Ivan, but he obtained no exact information from any\none; all alleged that it was so, but were unable to bring forward any\ndistinct proof. Grigory's description of the scene at the dinner-table,\nwhen Dmitri had burst in and beaten his father, threatening to come back\nto kill him, made a sinister impression on the court, especially as the\nold servant's composure in telling it, his parsimony of words and peculiar\nphraseology, were as effective as eloquence. He observed that he was not\nangry with Mitya for having knocked him down and struck him on the face;\nhe had forgiven him long ago, he said. Of the deceased Smerdyakov he\nobserved, crossing himself, that he was a lad of ability, but stupid and\nafflicted, and, worse still, an infidel, and that it was Fyodor Pavlovitch\nand his elder son who had taught him to be so. But he defended\nSmerdyakov's honesty almost with warmth, and related how Smerdyakov had\nonce found the master's money in the yard, and, instead of concealing it,\nhad taken it to his master, who had rewarded him with a \"gold piece\" for\nit, and trusted him implicitly from that time forward. He maintained\nobstinately that the door into the garden had been open. But he was asked\nso many questions that I can't recall them all.\n\nAt last the counsel for the defense began to cross-examine him, and the\nfirst question he asked was about the envelope in which Fyodor Pavlovitch\nwas supposed to have put three thousand roubles for \"a certain person.\"\n\"Have you ever seen it, you, who were for so many years in close\nattendance on your master?\" Grigory answered that he had not seen it and\nhad never heard of the money from any one \"till everybody was talking\nabout it.\" This question about the envelope Fetyukovitch put to every one\nwho could conceivably have known of it, as persistently as the prosecutor\nasked his question about Dmitri's inheritance, and got the same answer\nfrom all, that no one had seen the envelope, though many had heard of it.\nFrom the beginning every one noticed Fetyukovitch's persistence on this\nsubject.\n\n\"Now, with your permission I'll ask you a question,\" Fetyukovitch said,\nsuddenly and unexpectedly. \"Of what was that balsam, or, rather,\ndecoction, made, which, as we learn from the preliminary inquiry, you used\non that evening to rub your lumbago, in the hope of curing it?\"\n\nGrigory looked blankly at the questioner, and after a brief silence\nmuttered, \"There was saffron in it.\"\n\n\"Nothing but saffron? Don't you remember any other ingredient?\"\n\n\"There was milfoil in it, too.\"\n\n\"And pepper perhaps?\" Fetyukovitch queried.\n\n\"Yes, there was pepper, too.\"\n\n\"Etcetera. And all dissolved in vodka?\"\n\n\"In spirit.\"\n\nThere was a faint sound of laughter in the court.\n\n\"You see, in spirit. After rubbing your back, I believe, you drank what\nwas left in the bottle with a certain pious prayer, only known to your\nwife?\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"Did you drink much? Roughly speaking, a wine-glass or two?\"\n\n\"It might have been a tumbler-full.\"\n\n\"A tumbler-full, even. Perhaps a tumbler and a half?\"\n\nGrigory did not answer. He seemed to see what was meant.\n\n\"A glass and a half of neat spirit--is not at all bad, don't you think? You\nmight see the gates of heaven open, not only the door into the garden?\"\n\nGrigory remained silent. There was another laugh in the court. The\nPresident made a movement.\n\n\"Do you know for a fact,\" Fetyukovitch persisted, \"whether you were awake\nor not when you saw the open door?\"\n\n\"I was on my legs.\"\n\n\"That's not a proof that you were awake.\" (There was again laughter in the\ncourt.) \"Could you have answered at that moment, if any one had asked you\na question--for instance, what year it is?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"And what year is it, Anno Domini, do you know?\"\n\nGrigory stood with a perplexed face, looking straight at his tormentor.\nStrange to say, it appeared he really did not know what year it was.\n\n\"But perhaps you can tell me how many fingers you have on your hands?\"\n\n\"I am a servant,\" Grigory said suddenly, in a loud and distinct voice. \"If\nmy betters think fit to make game of me, it is my duty to suffer it.\"\n\nFetyukovitch was a little taken aback, and the President intervened,\nreminding him that he must ask more relevant questions. Fetyukovitch bowed\nwith dignity and said that he had no more questions to ask of the witness.\nThe public and the jury, of course, were left with a grain of doubt in\ntheir minds as to the evidence of a man who might, while undergoing a\ncertain cure, have seen \"the gates of heaven,\" and who did not even know\nwhat year he was living in. But before Grigory left the box another\nepisode occurred. The President, turning to the prisoner, asked him\nwhether he had any comment to make on the evidence of the last witness.\n\n\"Except about the door, all he has said is true,\" cried Mitya, in a loud\nvoice. \"For combing the lice off me, I thank him; for forgiving my blows,\nI thank him. The old man has been honest all his life and as faithful to\nmy father as seven hundred poodles.\"\n\n\"Prisoner, be careful in your language,\" the President admonished him.\n\n\"I am not a poodle,\" Grigory muttered.\n\n\"All right, it's I am a poodle myself,\" cried Mitya. \"If it's an insult, I\ntake it to myself and I beg his pardon. I was a beast and cruel to him. I\nwas cruel to AEsop too.\"\n\n\"What AEsop?\" the President asked sternly again.\n\n\"Oh, Pierrot ... my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch.\"\n\nThe President again and again warned Mitya impressively and very sternly\nto be more careful in his language.\n\n\"You are injuring yourself in the opinion of your judges.\"\n\nThe counsel for the defense was equally clever in dealing with the\nevidence of Rakitin. I may remark that Rakitin was one of the leading\nwitnesses and one to whom the prosecutor attached great significance. It\nappeared that he knew everything; his knowledge was amazing, he had been\neverywhere, seen everything, talked to everybody, knew every detail of the\nbiography of Fyodor Pavlovitch and all the Karamazovs. Of the envelope, it\nis true, he had only heard from Mitya himself. But he described minutely\nMitya's exploits in the \"Metropolis,\" all his compromising doings and\nsayings, and told the story of Captain Snegiryov's \"wisp of tow.\" But even\nRakitin could say nothing positive about Mitya's inheritance, and confined\nhimself to contemptuous generalities.\n\n\"Who could tell which of them was to blame, and which was in debt to the\nother, with their crazy Karamazov way of muddling things so that no one\ncould make head or tail of it?\" He attributed the tragic crime to the\nhabits that had become ingrained by ages of serfdom and the distressed\ncondition of Russia, due to the lack of appropriate institutions. He was,\nin fact, allowed some latitude of speech. This was the first occasion on\nwhich Rakitin showed what he could do, and attracted notice. The\nprosecutor knew that the witness was preparing a magazine article on the\ncase, and afterwards in his speech, as we shall see later, quoted some\nideas from the article, showing that he had seen it already. The picture\ndrawn by the witness was a gloomy and sinister one, and greatly\nstrengthened the case for the prosecution. Altogether, Rakitin's discourse\nfascinated the public by its independence and the extraordinary nobility\nof its ideas. There were even two or three outbreaks of applause when he\nspoke of serfdom and the distressed condition of Russia.\n\nBut Rakitin, in his youthful ardor, made a slight blunder, of which the\ncounsel for the defense at once adroitly took advantage. Answering certain\nquestions about Grushenka, and carried away by the loftiness of his own\nsentiments and his success, of which he was, of course, conscious, he went\nso far as to speak somewhat contemptuously of Agrafena Alexandrovna as\n\"the kept mistress of Samsonov.\" He would have given a good deal to take\nback his words afterwards, for Fetyukovitch caught him out over it at\nonce. And it was all because Rakitin had not reckoned on the lawyer having\nbeen able to become so intimately acquainted with every detail in so short\na time.\n\n\"Allow me to ask,\" began the counsel for the defense, with the most\naffable and even respectful smile, \"you are, of course, the same Mr.\nRakitin whose pamphlet, _The Life of the Deceased Elder, Father Zossima_,\npublished by the diocesan authorities, full of profound and religious\nreflections and preceded by an excellent and devout dedication to the\nbishop, I have just read with such pleasure?\"\n\n\"I did not write it for publication ... it was published afterwards,\"\nmuttered Rakitin, for some reason fearfully disconcerted and almost\nashamed.\n\n\"Oh, that's excellent! A thinker like you can, and indeed ought to, take\nthe widest view of every social question. Your most instructive pamphlet\nhas been widely circulated through the patronage of the bishop, and has\nbeen of appreciable service.... But this is the chief thing I should like\nto learn from you. You stated just now that you were very intimately\nacquainted with Madame Svyetlov.\" (It must be noted that Grushenka's\nsurname was Svyetlov. I heard it for the first time that day, during the\ncase.)\n\n\"I cannot answer for all my acquaintances.... I am a young man ... and who\ncan be responsible for every one he meets?\" cried Rakitin, flushing all\nover.\n\n\"I understand, I quite understand,\" cried Fetyukovitch, as though he, too,\nwere embarrassed and in haste to excuse himself. \"You, like any other,\nmight well be interested in an acquaintance with a young and beautiful\nwoman who would readily entertain the _elite_ of the youth of the\nneighborhood, but ... I only wanted to know ... It has come to my\nknowledge that Madame Svyetlov was particularly anxious a couple of months\nago to make the acquaintance of the younger Karamazov, Alexey\nFyodorovitch, and promised you twenty-five roubles, if you would bring him\nto her in his monastic dress. And that actually took place on the evening\nof the day on which the terrible crime, which is the subject of the\npresent investigation, was committed. You brought Alexey Karamazov to\nMadame Svyetlov, and did you receive the twenty-five roubles from Madame\nSvyetlov as a reward, that's what I wanted to hear from you?\"\n\n\"It was a joke.... I don't see of what interest that can be to you.... I\ntook it for a joke ... meaning to give it back later....\"\n\n\"Then you did take-- But you have not given it back yet ... or have you?\"\n\n\"That's of no consequence,\" muttered Rakitin, \"I refuse to answer such\nquestions.... Of course I shall give it back.\"\n\nThe President intervened, but Fetyukovitch declared he had no more\nquestions to ask of the witness. Mr. Rakitin left the witness-box not\nabsolutely without a stain upon his character. The effect left by the\nlofty idealism of his speech was somewhat marred, and Fetyukovitch's\nexpression, as he watched him walk away, seemed to suggest to the public\n\"this is a specimen of the lofty-minded persons who accuse him.\" I\nremember that this incident, too, did not pass off without an outbreak\nfrom Mitya. Enraged by the tone in which Rakitin had referred to\nGrushenka, he suddenly shouted \"Bernard!\" When, after Rakitin's cross-\nexamination, the President asked the prisoner if he had anything to say,\nMitya cried loudly:\n\n\"Since I've been arrested, he has borrowed money from me! He is a\ncontemptible Bernard and opportunist, and he doesn't believe in God; he\ntook the bishop in!\"\n\nMitya, of course, was pulled up again for the intemperance of his\nlanguage, but Rakitin was done for. Captain Snegiryov's evidence was a\nfailure, too, but from quite a different reason. He appeared in ragged and\ndirty clothes, muddy boots, and in spite of the vigilance and expert\nobservation of the police officers, he turned out to be hopelessly drunk.\nOn being asked about Mitya's attack upon him, he refused to answer.\n\n\"God bless him. Ilusha told me not to. God will make it up to me yonder.\"\n\n\"Who told you not to tell? Of whom are you talking?\"\n\n\"Ilusha, my little son. 'Father, father, how he insulted you!' He said\nthat at the stone. Now he is dying....\"\n\nThe captain suddenly began sobbing, and plumped down on his knees before\nthe President. He was hurriedly led away amidst the laughter of the\npublic. The effect prepared by the prosecutor did not come off at all.\n\nFetyukovitch went on making the most of every opportunity, and amazed\npeople more and more by his minute knowledge of the case. Thus, for\nexample, Trifon Borissovitch made a great impression, of course, very\nprejudicial to Mitya. He calculated almost on his fingers that on his\nfirst visit to Mokroe, Mitya must have spent three thousand roubles, \"or\nvery little less. Just think what he squandered on those gypsy girls\nalone! And as for our lousy peasants, it wasn't a case of flinging half a\nrouble in the street, he made them presents of twenty-five roubles each,\nat least, he didn't give them less. And what a lot of money was simply\nstolen from him! And if any one did steal, he did not leave a receipt. How\ncould one catch the thief when he was flinging his money away all the\ntime? Our peasants are robbers, you know; they have no care for their\nsouls. And the way he went on with the girls, our village girls! They're\ncompletely set up since then, I tell you, they used to be poor.\" He\nrecalled, in fact, every item of expense and added it all up. So the\ntheory that only fifteen hundred had been spent and the rest had been put\naside in a little bag seemed inconceivable.\n\n\"I saw three thousand as clear as a penny in his hands, I saw it with my\nown eyes; I should think I ought to know how to reckon money,\" cried\nTrifon Borissovitch, doing his best to satisfy \"his betters.\"\n\nWhen Fetyukovitch had to cross-examine him, he scarcely tried to refute\nhis evidence, but began asking him about an incident at the first carousal\nat Mokroe, a month before the arrest, when Timofey and another peasant\ncalled Akim had picked up on the floor in the passage a hundred roubles\ndropped by Mitya when he was drunk, and had given them to Trifon\nBorissovitch and received a rouble each from him for doing so. \"Well,\"\nasked the lawyer, \"did you give that hundred roubles back to Mr.\nKaramazov?\" Trifon Borissovitch shuffled in vain.... He was obliged, after\nthe peasants had been examined, to admit the finding of the hundred\nroubles, only adding that he had religiously returned it all to Dmitri\nFyodorovitch \"in perfect honesty, and it's only because his honor was in\nliquor at the time, he wouldn't remember it.\" But, as he had denied the\nincident of the hundred roubles till the peasants had been called to prove\nit, his evidence as to returning the money to Mitya was naturally regarded\nwith great suspicion. So one of the most dangerous witnesses brought\nforward by the prosecution was again discredited.\n\nThe same thing happened with the Poles. They took up an attitude of pride\nand independence; they vociferated loudly that they had both been in the\nservice of the Crown, and that \"Pan Mitya\" had offered them three thousand\n\"to buy their honor,\" and that they had seen a large sum of money in his\nhands. Pan Mussyalovitch introduced a terrible number of Polish words into\nhis sentences, and seeing that this only increased his consequence in the\neyes of the President and the prosecutor, grew more and more pompous, and\nended by talking in Polish altogether. But Fetyukovitch caught them, too,\nin his snares. Trifon Borissovitch, recalled, was forced, in spite of his\nevasions, to admit that Pan Vrublevsky had substituted another pack of\ncards for the one he had provided, and that Pan Mussyalovitch had cheated\nduring the game. Kalganov confirmed this, and both the Poles left the\nwitness-box with damaged reputations, amidst laughter from the public.\n\nThen exactly the same thing happened with almost all the most dangerous\nwitnesses. Fetyukovitch succeeded in casting a slur on all of them, and\ndismissing them with a certain derision. The lawyers and experts were lost\nin admiration, and were only at a loss to understand what good purpose\ncould be served by it, for all, I repeat, felt that the case for the\nprosecution could not be refuted, but was growing more and more tragically\noverwhelming. But from the confidence of the \"great magician\" they saw\nthat he was serene, and they waited, feeling that \"such a man\" had not\ncome from Petersburg for nothing, and that he was not a man to return\nunsuccessful.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. The Medical Experts And A Pound Of Nuts\n\n\nThe evidence of the medical experts, too, was of little use to the\nprisoner. And it appeared later that Fetyukovitch had not reckoned much\nupon it. The medical line of defense had only been taken up through the\ninsistence of Katerina Ivanovna, who had sent for a celebrated doctor from\nMoscow on purpose. The case for the defense could, of course, lose nothing\nby it and might, with luck, gain something from it. There was, however, an\nelement of comedy about it, through the difference of opinion of the\ndoctors. The medical experts were the famous doctor from Moscow, our\ndoctor, Herzenstube, and the young doctor, Varvinsky. The two latter\nappeared also as witnesses for the prosecution.\n\nThe first to be called in the capacity of expert was Doctor Herzenstube.\nHe was a gray and bald old man of seventy, of middle height and sturdy\nbuild. He was much esteemed and respected by every one in the town. He was\na conscientious doctor and an excellent and pious man, a Hernguter or\nMoravian brother, I am not quite sure which. He had been living amongst us\nfor many years and behaved with wonderful dignity. He was a kind-hearted\nand humane man. He treated the sick poor and peasants for nothing, visited\nthem in their slums and huts, and left money for medicine, but he was as\nobstinate as a mule. If once he had taken an idea into his head, there was\nno shaking it. Almost every one in the town was aware, by the way, that\nthe famous doctor had, within the first two or three days of his presence\namong us, uttered some extremely offensive allusions to Doctor\nHerzenstube's qualifications. Though the Moscow doctor asked twenty-five\nroubles for a visit, several people in the town were glad to take\nadvantage of his arrival, and rushed to consult him regardless of expense.\nAll these had, of course, been previously patients of Doctor Herzenstube,\nand the celebrated doctor had criticized his treatment with extreme\nharshness. Finally, he had asked the patients as soon as he saw them,\n\"Well, who has been cramming you with nostrums? Herzenstube? He, he!\"\nDoctor Herzenstube, of course, heard all this, and now all the three\ndoctors made their appearance, one after another, to be examined.\n\nDoctor Herzenstube roundly declared that the abnormality of the prisoner's\nmental faculties was self-evident. Then giving his grounds for this\nopinion, which I omit here, he added that the abnormality was not only\nevident in many of the prisoner's actions in the past, but was apparent\neven now at this very moment. When he was asked to explain how it was\napparent now at this moment, the old doctor, with simple-hearted\ndirectness, pointed out that the prisoner on entering the court had \"an\nextraordinary air, remarkable in the circumstances\"; that he had \"marched\nin like a soldier, looking straight before him, though it would have been\nmore natural for him to look to the left where, among the public, the\nladies were sitting, seeing that he was a great admirer of the fair sex\nand must be thinking much of what the ladies are saying of him now,\" the\nold man concluded in his peculiar language.\n\nI must add that he spoke Russian readily, but every phrase was formed in\nGerman style, which did not, however, trouble him, for it had always been\na weakness of his to believe that he spoke Russian perfectly, better\nindeed than Russians. And he was very fond of using Russian proverbs,\nalways declaring that the Russian proverbs were the best and most\nexpressive sayings in the whole world. I may remark, too, that in\nconversation, through absent-mindedness he often forgot the most ordinary\nwords, which sometimes went out of his head, though he knew them\nperfectly. The same thing happened, though, when he spoke German, and at\nsuch times he always waved his hand before his face as though trying to\ncatch the lost word, and no one could induce him to go on speaking till he\nhad found the missing word. His remark that the prisoner ought to have\nlooked at the ladies on entering roused a whisper of amusement in the\naudience. All our ladies were very fond of our old doctor; they knew, too,\nthat having been all his life a bachelor and a religious man of exemplary\nconduct, he looked upon women as lofty creatures. And so his unexpected\nobservation struck every one as very queer.\n\nThe Moscow doctor, being questioned in his turn, definitely and\nemphatically repeated that he considered the prisoner's mental condition\nabnormal in the highest degree. He talked at length and with erudition of\n\"aberration\" and \"mania,\" and argued that, from all the facts collected,\nthe prisoner had undoubtedly been in a condition of aberration for several\ndays before his arrest, and, if the crime had been committed by him, it\nmust, even if he were conscious of it, have been almost involuntary, as he\nhad not the power to control the morbid impulse that possessed him.\n\nBut apart from temporary aberration, the doctor diagnosed mania, which\npremised, in his words, to lead to complete insanity in the future. (It\nmust be noted that I report this in my own words, the doctor made use of\nvery learned and professional language.) \"All his actions are in\ncontravention of common sense and logic,\" he continued. \"Not to refer to\nwhat I have not seen, that is, the crime itself and the whole catastrophe,\nthe day before yesterday, while he was talking to me, he had an\nunaccountably fixed look in his eye. He laughed unexpectedly when there\nwas nothing to laugh at. He showed continual and inexplicable\nirritability, using strange words, 'Bernard!' 'Ethics!' and others equally\ninappropriate.\" But the doctor detected mania, above all, in the fact that\nthe prisoner could not even speak of the three thousand roubles, of which\nhe considered himself to have been cheated, without extraordinary\nirritation, though he could speak comparatively lightly of other\nmisfortunes and grievances. According to all accounts, he had even in the\npast, whenever the subject of the three thousand roubles was touched on,\nflown into a perfect frenzy, and yet he was reported to be a disinterested\nand not grasping man.\n\n\"As to the opinion of my learned colleague,\" the Moscow doctor added\nironically in conclusion, \"that the prisoner would, on entering the court,\nhave naturally looked at the ladies and not straight before him, I will\nonly say that, apart from the playfulness of this theory, it is radically\nunsound. For though I fully agree that the prisoner, on entering the court\nwhere his fate will be decided, would not naturally look straight before\nhim in that fixed way, and that that may really be a sign of his abnormal\nmental condition, at the same time I maintain that he would naturally not\nlook to the left at the ladies, but, on the contrary, to the right to find\nhis legal adviser, on whose help all his hopes rest and on whose defense\nall his future depends.\" The doctor expressed his opinion positively and\nemphatically.\n\nBut the unexpected pronouncement of Doctor Varvinsky gave the last touch\nof comedy to the difference of opinion between the experts. In his opinion\nthe prisoner was now, and had been all along, in a perfectly normal\ncondition, and, although he certainly must have been in a nervous and\nexceedingly excited state before his arrest, this might have been due to\nseveral perfectly obvious causes, jealousy, anger, continual drunkenness,\nand so on. But this nervous condition would not involve the mental\naberration of which mention had just been made. As to the question whether\nthe prisoner should have looked to the left or to the right on entering\nthe court, \"in his modest opinion,\" the prisoner would naturally look\nstraight before him on entering the court, as he had in fact done, as that\nwas where the judges, on whom his fate depended, were sitting. So that it\nwas just by looking straight before him that he showed his perfectly\nnormal state of mind at the present. The young doctor concluded his\n\"modest\" testimony with some heat.\n\n\"Bravo, doctor!\" cried Mitya, from his seat, \"just so!\"\n\nMitya, of course, was checked, but the young doctor's opinion had a\ndecisive influence on the judges and on the public, and, as appeared\nafterwards, every one agreed with him. But Doctor Herzenstube, when called\nas a witness, was quite unexpectedly of use to Mitya. As an old resident\nin the town who had known the Karamazov family for years, he furnished\nsome facts of great value for the prosecution, and suddenly, as though\nrecalling something, he added:\n\n\"But the poor young man might have had a very different life, for he had a\ngood heart both in childhood and after childhood, that I know. But the\nRussian proverb says, 'If a man has one head, it's good, but if another\nclever man comes to visit him, it would be better still, for then there\nwill be two heads and not only one.' \"\n\n\"One head is good, but two are better,\" the prosecutor put in impatiently.\nHe knew the old man's habit of talking slowly and deliberately, regardless\nof the impression he was making and of the delay he was causing, and\nhighly prizing his flat, dull and always gleefully complacent German wit.\nThe old man was fond of making jokes.\n\n\"Oh, yes, that's what I say,\" he went on stubbornly. \"One head is good,\nbut two are much better, but he did not meet another head with wits, and\nhis wits went. Where did they go? I've forgotten the word.\" He went on,\npassing his hand before his eyes, \"Oh, yes, _spazieren_.\"\n\n\"Wandering?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, wandering, that's what I say. Well, his wits went wandering and\nfell in such a deep hole that he lost himself. And yet he was a grateful\nand sensitive boy. Oh, I remember him very well, a little chap so high,\nleft neglected by his father in the back yard, when he ran about without\nboots on his feet, and his little breeches hanging by one button.\"\n\nA note of feeling and tenderness suddenly came into the honest old man's\nvoice. Fetyukovitch positively started, as though scenting something, and\ncaught at it instantly.\n\n\"Oh, yes, I was a young man then.... I was ... well, I was forty-five\nthen, and had only just come here. And I was so sorry for the boy then; I\nasked myself why shouldn't I buy him a pound of ... a pound of what? I've\nforgotten what it's called. A pound of what children are very fond of,\nwhat is it, what is it?\" The doctor began waving his hands again. \"It\ngrows on a tree and is gathered and given to every one....\"\n\n\"Apples?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no. You have a dozen of apples, not a pound.... No, there are a\nlot of them, and all little. You put them in the mouth and crack.\"\n\n\"Nuts?\"\n\n\"Quite so, nuts, I say so.\" The doctor repeated in the calmest way as\nthough he had been at no loss for a word. \"And I bought him a pound of\nnuts, for no one had ever bought the boy a pound of nuts before. And I\nlifted my finger and said to him, 'Boy, _Gott der Vater_.' He laughed and\nsaid, '_Gott der Vater_.'... '_Gott der Sohn_.' He laughed again and\nlisped, '_Gott der Sohn_.' '_Gott der heilige Geist_.' Then he laughed and\nsaid as best he could, '_Gott der heilige Geist_.' I went away, and two\ndays after I happened to be passing, and he shouted to me of himself,\n'Uncle, _Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn_,' and he had only forgotten '_Gott\nder heilige Geist_.' But I reminded him of it and I felt very sorry for\nhim again. But he was taken away, and I did not see him again. Twenty-\nthree years passed. I am sitting one morning in my study, a white-haired\nold man, when there walks into the room a blooming young man, whom I\nshould never have recognized, but he held up his finger and said,\nlaughing, '_Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn_, and _Gott der heilige Geist_.\nI have just arrived and have come to thank you for that pound of nuts, for\nno one else ever bought me a pound of nuts; you are the only one that ever\ndid.' And then I remembered my happy youth and the poor child in the yard,\nwithout boots on his feet, and my heart was touched and I said, 'You are a\ngrateful young man, for you have remembered all your life the pound of\nnuts I bought you in your childhood.' And I embraced him and blessed him.\nAnd I shed tears. He laughed, but he shed tears, too ... for the Russian\noften laughs when he ought to be weeping. But he did weep; I saw it. And\nnow, alas!...\"\n\n\"And I am weeping now, German, I am weeping now, too, you saintly man,\"\nMitya cried suddenly.\n\nIn any case the anecdote made a certain favorable impression on the\npublic. But the chief sensation in Mitya's favor was created by the\nevidence of Katerina Ivanovna, which I will describe directly. Indeed,\nwhen the witnesses _a decharge_, that is, called by the defense, began\ngiving evidence, fortune seemed all at once markedly more favorable to\nMitya, and what was particularly striking, this was a surprise even to the\ncounsel for the defense. But before Katerina Ivanovna was called, Alyosha\nwas examined, and he recalled a fact which seemed to furnish positive\nevidence against one important point made by the prosecution.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV. Fortune Smiles On Mitya\n\n\nIt came quite as a surprise even to Alyosha himself. He was not required\nto take the oath, and I remember that both sides addressed him very gently\nand sympathetically. It was evident that his reputation for goodness had\npreceded him. Alyosha gave his evidence modestly and with restraint, but\nhis warm sympathy for his unhappy brother was unmistakable. In answer to\none question, he sketched his brother's character as that of a man,\nviolent-tempered perhaps and carried away by his passions, but at the same\ntime honorable, proud and generous, capable of self-sacrifice, if\nnecessary. He admitted, however, that, through his passion for Grushenka\nand his rivalry with his father, his brother had been of late in an\nintolerable position. But he repelled with indignation the suggestion that\nhis brother might have committed a murder for the sake of gain, though he\nrecognized that the three thousand roubles had become almost an obsession\nwith Mitya; that he looked upon them as part of the inheritance he had\nbeen cheated of by his father, and that, indifferent as he was to money as\na rule, he could not even speak of that three thousand without fury. As\nfor the rivalry of the two \"ladies,\" as the prosecutor expressed it--that\nis, of Grushenka and Katya--he answered evasively and was even unwilling to\nanswer one or two questions altogether.\n\n\"Did your brother tell you, anyway, that he intended to kill your father?\"\nasked the prosecutor. \"You can refuse to answer if you think necessary,\"\nhe added.\n\n\"He did not tell me so directly,\" answered Alyosha.\n\n\"How so? Did he indirectly?\"\n\n\"He spoke to me once of his hatred for our father and his fear that at an\nextreme moment ... at a moment of fury, he might perhaps murder him.\"\n\n\"And you believed him?\"\n\n\"I am afraid to say that I did. But I never doubted that some higher\nfeeling would always save him at the fatal moment, as it has indeed saved\nhim, for it was not he killed my father,\" Alyosha said firmly, in a loud\nvoice that was heard throughout the court.\n\nThe prosecutor started like a war-horse at the sound of a trumpet.\n\n\"Let me assure you that I fully believe in the complete sincerity of your\nconviction and do not explain it by or identify it with your affection for\nyour unhappy brother. Your peculiar view of the whole tragic episode is\nknown to us already from the preliminary investigation. I won't attempt to\nconceal from you that it is highly individual and contradicts all the\nother evidence collected by the prosecution. And so I think it essential\nto press you to tell me what facts have led you to this conviction of your\nbrother's innocence and of the guilt of another person against whom you\ngave evidence at the preliminary inquiry?\"\n\n\"I only answered the questions asked me at the preliminary inquiry,\"\nreplied Alyosha, slowly and calmly. \"I made no accusation against\nSmerdyakov of myself.\"\n\n\"Yet you gave evidence against him?\"\n\n\"I was led to do so by my brother Dmitri's words. I was told what took\nplace at his arrest and how he had pointed to Smerdyakov before I was\nexamined. I believe absolutely that my brother is innocent, and if he\ndidn't commit the murder, then--\"\n\n\"Then Smerdyakov? Why Smerdyakov? And why are you so completely persuaded\nof your brother's innocence?\"\n\n\"I cannot help believing my brother. I know he wouldn't lie to me. I saw\nfrom his face he wasn't lying.\"\n\n\"Only from his face? Is that all the proof you have?\"\n\n\"I have no other proof.\"\n\n\"And of Smerdyakov's guilt you have no proof whatever but your brother's\nword and the expression of his face?\"\n\n\"No, I have no other proof.\"\n\nThe prosecutor dropped the examination at this point. The impression left\nby Alyosha's evidence on the public was most disappointing. There had been\ntalk about Smerdyakov before the trial; some one had heard something, some\none had pointed out something else, it was said that Alyosha had gathered\ntogether some extraordinary proofs of his brother's innocence and\nSmerdyakov's guilt, and after all there was nothing, no evidence except\ncertain moral convictions so natural in a brother.\n\nBut Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination. On his asking Alyosha when\nit was that the prisoner had told him of his hatred for his father and\nthat he might kill him, and whether he had heard it, for instance, at\ntheir last meeting before the catastrophe, Alyosha started as he answered,\nas though only just recollecting and understanding something.\n\n\"I remember one circumstance now which I'd quite forgotten myself. It\nwasn't clear to me at the time, but now--\"\n\nAnd, obviously only now for the first time struck by an idea, he recounted\neagerly how, at his last interview with Mitya that evening under the tree,\non the road to the monastery, Mitya had struck himself on the breast, \"the\nupper part of the breast,\" and had repeated several times that he had a\nmeans of regaining his honor, that that means was here, here on his\nbreast. \"I thought, when he struck himself on the breast, he meant that it\nwas in his heart,\" Alyosha continued, \"that he might find in his heart\nstrength to save himself from some awful disgrace which was awaiting him\nand which he did not dare confess even to me. I must confess I did think\nat the time that he was speaking of our father, and that the disgrace he\nwas shuddering at was the thought of going to our father and doing some\nviolence to him. Yet it was just then that he pointed to something on his\nbreast, so that I remember the idea struck me at the time that the heart\nis not on that part of the breast, but below, and that he struck himself\nmuch too high, just below the neck, and kept pointing to that place. My\nidea seemed silly to me at the time, but he was perhaps pointing then to\nthat little bag in which he had fifteen hundred roubles!\"\n\n\"Just so,\" Mitya cried from his place. \"That's right, Alyosha, it was the\nlittle bag I struck with my fist.\"\n\nFetyukovitch flew to him in hot haste entreating him to keep quiet, and at\nthe same instant pounced on Alyosha. Alyosha, carried away himself by his\nrecollection, warmly expressed his theory that this disgrace was probably\njust that fifteen hundred roubles on him, which he might have returned to\nKaterina Ivanovna as half of what he owed her, but which he had yet\ndetermined not to repay her and to use for another purpose--namely, to\nenable him to elope with Grushenka, if she consented.\n\n\"It is so, it must be so,\" exclaimed Alyosha, in sudden excitement. \"My\nbrother cried several times that half of the disgrace, half of it (he said\n_half_ several times) he could free himself from at once, but that he was\nso unhappy in his weakness of will that he wouldn't do it ... that he knew\nbeforehand he was incapable of doing it!\"\n\n\"And you clearly, confidently remember that he struck himself just on this\npart of the breast?\" Fetyukovitch asked eagerly.\n\n\"Clearly and confidently, for I thought at the time, 'Why does he strike\nhimself up there when the heart is lower down?' and the thought seemed\nstupid to me at the time ... I remember its seeming stupid ... it flashed\nthrough my mind. That's what brought it back to me just now. How could I\nhave forgotten it till now? It was that little bag he meant when he said\nhe had the means but wouldn't give back that fifteen hundred. And when he\nwas arrested at Mokroe he cried out--I know, I was told it--that he\nconsidered it the most disgraceful act of his life that when he had the\nmeans of repaying Katerina Ivanovna half (half, note!) what he owed her,\nhe yet could not bring himself to repay the money and preferred to remain\na thief in her eyes rather than part with it. And what torture, what\ntorture that debt has been to him!\" Alyosha exclaimed in conclusion.\n\nThe prosecutor, of course, intervened. He asked Alyosha to describe once\nmore how it had all happened, and several times insisted on the question,\n\"Had the prisoner seemed to point to anything? Perhaps he had simply\nstruck himself with his fist on the breast?\"\n\n\"But it was not with his fist,\" cried Alyosha; \"he pointed with his\nfingers and pointed here, very high up.... How could I have so completely\nforgotten it till this moment?\"\n\nThe President asked Mitya what he had to say to the last witness's\nevidence. Mitya confirmed it, saying that he had been pointing to the\nfifteen hundred roubles which were on his breast, just below the neck, and\nthat that was, of course, the disgrace, \"A disgrace I cannot deny, the\nmost shameful act of my whole life,\" cried Mitya. \"I might have repaid it\nand didn't repay it. I preferred to remain a thief in her eyes rather than\ngive it back. And the most shameful part of it was that I knew beforehand\nI shouldn't give it back! You are right, Alyosha! Thanks, Alyosha!\"\n\nSo Alyosha's cross-examination ended. What was important and striking\nabout it was that one fact at least had been found, and even though this\nwere only one tiny bit of evidence, a mere hint at evidence, it did go\nsome little way towards proving that the bag had existed and had contained\nfifteen hundred roubles and that the prisoner had not been lying at the\npreliminary inquiry when he alleged at Mokroe that those fifteen hundred\nroubles were \"his own.\" Alyosha was glad. With a flushed face he moved\naway to the seat assigned to him. He kept repeating to himself: \"How was\nit I forgot? How could I have forgotten it? And what made it come back to\nme now?\"\n\nKaterina Ivanovna was called to the witness-box. As she entered something\nextraordinary happened in the court. The ladies clutched their lorgnettes\nand opera-glasses. There was a stir among the men: some stood up to get a\nbetter view. Everybody alleged afterwards that Mitya had turned \"white as\na sheet\" on her entrance. All in black, she advanced modestly, almost\ntimidly. It was impossible to tell from her face that she was agitated;\nbut there was a resolute gleam in her dark and gloomy eyes. I may remark\nthat many people mentioned that she looked particularly handsome at that\nmoment. She spoke softly but clearly, so that she was heard all over the\ncourt. She expressed herself with composure, or at least tried to appear\ncomposed. The President began his examination discreetly and very\nrespectfully, as though afraid to touch on \"certain chords,\" and showing\nconsideration for her great unhappiness. But in answer to one of the first\nquestions Katerina Ivanovna replied firmly that she had been formerly\nbetrothed to the prisoner, \"until he left me of his own accord...\" she\nadded quietly. When they asked her about the three thousand she had\nentrusted to Mitya to post to her relations, she said firmly, \"I didn't\ngive him the money simply to send it off. I felt at the time that he was\nin great need of money.... I gave him the three thousand on the\nunderstanding that he should post it within the month if he cared to.\nThere was no need for him to worry himself about that debt afterwards.\"\n\nI will not repeat all the questions asked her and all her answers in\ndetail. I will only give the substance of her evidence.\n\n\"I was firmly convinced that he would send off that sum as soon as he got\nmoney from his father,\" she went on. \"I have never doubted his\ndisinterestedness and his honesty ... his scrupulous honesty ... in money\nmatters. He felt quite certain that he would receive the money from his\nfather, and spoke to me several times about it. I knew he had a feud with\nhis father and have always believed that he had been unfairly treated by\nhis father. I don't remember any threat uttered by him against his father.\nHe certainly never uttered any such threat before me. If he had come to me\nat that time, I should have at once relieved his anxiety about that\nunlucky three thousand roubles, but he had given up coming to see me ...\nand I myself was put in such a position ... that I could not invite\nhim.... And I had no right, indeed, to be exacting as to that money,\" she\nadded suddenly, and there was a ring of resolution in her voice. \"I was\nonce indebted to him for assistance in money for more than three thousand,\nand I took it, although I could not at that time foresee that I should\never be in a position to repay my debt.\"\n\nThere was a note of defiance in her voice. It was then Fetyukovitch began\nhis cross-examination.\n\n\"Did that take place not here, but at the beginning of your acquaintance?\"\nFetyukovitch suggested cautiously, feeling his way, instantly scenting\nsomething favorable. I must mention in parenthesis that, though\nFetyukovitch had been brought from Petersburg partly at the instance of\nKaterina Ivanovna herself, he knew nothing about the episode of the four\nthousand roubles given her by Mitya, and of her \"bowing to the ground to\nhim.\" She concealed this from him and said nothing about it, and that was\nstrange. It may be pretty certainly assumed that she herself did not know\ntill the very last minute whether she would speak of that episode in the\ncourt, and waited for the inspiration of the moment.\n\nNo, I can never forget those moments. She began telling her story. She\ntold everything, the whole episode that Mitya had told Alyosha, and her\nbowing to the ground, and her reason. She told about her father and her\ngoing to Mitya, and did not in one word, in a single hint, suggest that\nMitya had himself, through her sister, proposed they should \"send him\nKaterina Ivanovna\" to fetch the money. She generously concealed that and\nwas not ashamed to make it appear as though she had of her own impulse run\nto the young officer, relying on something ... to beg him for the money.\nIt was something tremendous! I turned cold and trembled as I listened. The\ncourt was hushed, trying to catch each word. It was something unexampled.\nEven from such a self-willed and contemptuously proud girl as she was,\nsuch an extremely frank avowal, such sacrifice, such self-immolation,\nseemed incredible. And for what, for whom? To save the man who had\ndeceived and insulted her and to help, in however small a degree, in\nsaving him, by creating a strong impression in his favor. And, indeed, the\nfigure of the young officer who, with a respectful bow to the innocent\ngirl, handed her his last four thousand roubles--all he had in the\nworld--was thrown into a very sympathetic and attractive light, but ... I\nhad a painful misgiving at heart! I felt that calumny might come of it\nlater (and it did, in fact, it did). It was repeated all over the town\nafterwards with spiteful laughter that the story was perhaps not quite\ncomplete--that is, in the statement that the officer had let the young lady\ndepart \"with nothing but a respectful bow.\" It was hinted that something\nwas here omitted.\n\n\"And even if nothing had been omitted, if this were the whole story,\" the\nmost highly respected of our ladies maintained, \"even then it's very\ndoubtful whether it was creditable for a young girl to behave in that way,\neven for the sake of saving her father.\"\n\nAnd can Katerina Ivanovna, with her intelligence, her morbid\nsensitiveness, have failed to understand that people would talk like that?\nShe must have understood it, yet she made up her mind to tell everything.\nOf course, all these nasty little suspicions as to the truth of her story\nonly arose afterwards and at the first moment all were deeply impressed by\nit. As for the judges and the lawyers, they listened in reverent, almost\nshame-faced silence to Katerina Ivanovna. The prosecutor did not venture\nupon even one question on the subject. Fetyukovitch made a low bow to her.\nOh, he was almost triumphant! Much ground had been gained. For a man to\ngive his last four thousand on a generous impulse and then for the same\nman to murder his father for the sake of robbing him of three thousand--the\nidea seemed too incongruous. Fetyukovitch felt that now the charge of\ntheft, at least, was as good as disproved. \"The case\" was thrown into\nquite a different light. There was a wave of sympathy for Mitya. As for\nhim.... I was told that once or twice, while Katerina Ivanovna was giving\nher evidence, he jumped up from his seat, sank back again, and hid his\nface in his hands. But when she had finished, he suddenly cried in a\nsobbing voice:\n\n\"Katya, why have you ruined me?\" and his sobs were audible all over the\ncourt. But he instantly restrained himself, and cried again:\n\n\"Now I am condemned!\"\n\nThen he sat rigid in his place, with his teeth clenched and his arms\nacross his chest. Katerina Ivanovna remained in the court and sat down in\nher place. She was pale and sat with her eyes cast down. Those who were\nsitting near her declared that for a long time she shivered all over as\nthough in a fever. Grushenka was called.\n\nI am approaching the sudden catastrophe which was perhaps the final cause\nof Mitya's ruin. For I am convinced, so is every one--all the lawyers said\nthe same afterwards--that if the episode had not occurred, the prisoner\nwould at least have been recommended to mercy. But of that later. A few\nwords first about Grushenka.\n\nShe, too, was dressed entirely in black, with her magnificent black shawl\non her shoulders. She walked to the witness-box with her smooth, noiseless\ntread, with the slightly swaying gait common in women of full figure. She\nlooked steadily at the President, turning her eyes neither to the right\nnor to the left. To my thinking she looked very handsome at that moment,\nand not at all pale, as the ladies alleged afterwards. They declared, too,\nthat she had a concentrated and spiteful expression. I believe that she\nwas simply irritated and painfully conscious of the contemptuous and\ninquisitive eyes of our scandal-loving public. She was proud and could not\nstand contempt. She was one of those people who flare up, angry and eager\nto retaliate, at the mere suggestion of contempt. There was an element of\ntimidity, too, of course, and inward shame at her own timidity, so it was\nnot strange that her tone kept changing. At one moment it was angry,\ncontemptuous and rough, and at another there was a sincere note of self-\ncondemnation. Sometimes she spoke as though she were taking a desperate\nplunge; as though she felt, \"I don't care what happens, I'll say it....\"\nApropos of her acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovitch, she remarked curtly,\n\"That's all nonsense, and was it my fault that he would pester me?\" But a\nminute later she added, \"It was all my fault. I was laughing at them\nboth--at the old man and at him, too--and I brought both of them to this. It\nwas all on account of me it happened.\"\n\nSamsonov's name came up somehow. \"That's nobody's business,\" she snapped\nat once, with a sort of insolent defiance. \"He was my benefactor; he took\nme when I hadn't a shoe to my foot, when my family had turned me out.\" The\nPresident reminded her, though very politely, that she must answer the\nquestions directly, without going off into irrelevant details. Grushenka\ncrimsoned and her eyes flashed.\n\nThe envelope with the notes in it she had not seen, but had only heard\nfrom \"that wicked wretch\" that Fyodor Pavlovitch had an envelope with\nnotes for three thousand in it. \"But that was all foolishness. I was only\nlaughing. I wouldn't have gone to him for anything.\"\n\n\"To whom are you referring as 'that wicked wretch'?\" inquired the\nprosecutor.\n\n\"The lackey, Smerdyakov, who murdered his master and hanged himself last\nnight.\"\n\nShe was, of course, at once asked what ground she had for such a definite\naccusation; but it appeared that she, too, had no grounds for it.\n\n\"Dmitri Fyodorovitch told me so himself; you can believe him. The woman\nwho came between us has ruined him; she is the cause of it all, let me\ntell you,\" Grushenka added. She seemed to be quivering with hatred, and\nthere was a vindictive note in her voice.\n\nShe was again asked to whom she was referring.\n\n\"The young lady, Katerina Ivanovna there. She sent for me, offered me\nchocolate, tried to fascinate me. There's not much true shame about her, I\ncan tell you that....\"\n\nAt this point the President checked her sternly, begging her to moderate\nher language. But the jealous woman's heart was burning, and she did not\ncare what she did.\n\n\"When the prisoner was arrested at Mokroe,\" the prosecutor asked, \"every\none saw and heard you run out of the next room and cry out: 'It's all my\nfault. We'll go to Siberia together!' So you already believed him to have\nmurdered his father?\"\n\n\"I don't remember what I felt at the time,\" answered Grushenka. \"Every one\nwas crying out that he had killed his father, and I felt that it was my\nfault, that it was on my account he had murdered him. But when he said he\nwasn't guilty, I believed him at once, and I believe him now and always\nshall believe him. He is not the man to tell a lie.\"\n\nFetyukovitch began his cross-examination. I remember that among other\nthings he asked about Rakitin and the twenty-five roubles \"you paid him\nfor bringing Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov to see you.\"\n\n\"There was nothing strange about his taking the money,\" sneered Grushenka,\nwith angry contempt. \"He was always coming to me for money: he used to get\nthirty roubles a month at least out of me, chiefly for luxuries: he had\nenough to keep him without my help.\"\n\n\"What led you to be so liberal to Mr. Rakitin?\" Fetyukovitch asked, in\nspite of an uneasy movement on the part of the President.\n\n\"Why, he is my cousin. His mother was my mother's sister. But he's always\nbesought me not to tell any one here of it, he is so dreadfully ashamed of\nme.\"\n\nThis fact was a complete surprise to every one; no one in the town nor in\nthe monastery, not even Mitya, knew of it. I was told that Rakitin turned\npurple with shame where he sat. Grushenka had somehow heard before she\ncame into the court that he had given evidence against Mitya, and so she\nwas angry. The whole effect on the public, of Rakitin's speech, of his\nnoble sentiments, of his attacks upon serfdom and the political disorder\nof Russia, was this time finally ruined. Fetyukovitch was satisfied: it\nwas another godsend. Grushenka's cross-examination did not last long and,\nof course, there could be nothing particularly new in her evidence. She\nleft a very disagreeable impression on the public; hundreds of\ncontemptuous eyes were fixed upon her, as she finished giving her evidence\nand sat down again in the court, at a good distance from Katerina\nIvanovna. Mitya was silent throughout her evidence. He sat as though\nturned to stone, with his eyes fixed on the ground.\n\nIvan was called to give evidence.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter V. A Sudden Catastrophe\n\n\nI may note that he had been called before Alyosha. But the usher of the\ncourt announced to the President that, owing to an attack of illness or\nsome sort of fit, the witness could not appear at the moment, but was\nready to give his evidence as soon as he recovered. But no one seemed to\nhave heard it and it only came out later.\n\nHis entrance was for the first moment almost unnoticed. The principal\nwitnesses, especially the two rival ladies, had already been questioned.\nCuriosity was satisfied for the time; the public was feeling almost\nfatigued. Several more witnesses were still to be heard, who probably had\nlittle information to give after all that had been given. Time was\npassing. Ivan walked up with extraordinary slowness, looking at no one,\nand with his head bowed, as though plunged in gloomy thought. He was\nirreproachably dressed, but his face made a painful impression, on me at\nleast: there was an earthy look in it, a look like a dying man's. His eyes\nwere lusterless; he raised them and looked slowly round the court. Alyosha\njumped up from his seat and moaned \"Ah!\" I remember that, but it was\nhardly noticed.\n\nThe President began by informing him that he was a witness not on oath,\nthat he might answer or refuse to answer, but that, of course, he must\nbear witness according to his conscience, and so on, and so on. Ivan\nlistened and looked at him blankly, but his face gradually relaxed into a\nsmile, and as soon as the President, looking at him in astonishment,\nfinished, he laughed outright.\n\n\"Well, and what else?\" he asked in a loud voice.\n\nThere was a hush in the court; there was a feeling of something strange.\nThe President showed signs of uneasiness.\n\n\"You ... are perhaps still unwell?\" he began, looking everywhere for the\nusher.\n\n\"Don't trouble yourself, your excellency, I am well enough and can tell\nyou something interesting,\" Ivan answered with sudden calmness and\nrespectfulness.\n\n\"You have some special communication to make?\" the President went on,\nstill mistrustfully.\n\nIvan looked down, waited a few seconds and, raising his head, answered,\nalmost stammering:\n\n\"No ... I haven't. I have nothing particular.\"\n\nThey began asking him questions. He answered, as it were, reluctantly,\nwith extreme brevity, with a sort of disgust which grew more and more\nmarked, though he answered rationally. To many questions he answered that\nhe did not know. He knew nothing of his father's money relations with\nDmitri. \"I wasn't interested in the subject,\" he added. Threats to murder\nhis father he had heard from the prisoner. Of the money in the envelope he\nhad heard from Smerdyakov.\n\n\"The same thing over and over again,\" he interrupted suddenly, with a look\nof weariness. \"I have nothing particular to tell the court.\"\n\n\"I see you are unwell and understand your feelings,\" the President began.\n\nHe turned to the prosecutor and the counsel for the defense to invite them\nto examine the witness, if necessary, when Ivan suddenly asked in an\nexhausted voice:\n\n\"Let me go, your excellency, I feel very ill.\"\n\nAnd with these words, without waiting for permission, he turned to walk\nout of the court. But after taking four steps he stood still, as though he\nhad reached a decision, smiled slowly, and went back.\n\n\"I am like the peasant girl, your excellency ... you know. How does it go?\n'I'll stand up if I like, and I won't if I don't.' They were trying to put\non her sarafan to take her to church to be married, and she said, 'I'll\nstand up if I like, and I won't if I don't.'... It's in some book about\nthe peasantry.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\" the President asked severely.\n\n\"Why, this,\" Ivan suddenly pulled out a roll of notes. \"Here's the money\n... the notes that lay in that envelope\" (he nodded towards the table on\nwhich lay the material evidence), \"for the sake of which our father was\nmurdered. Where shall I put them? Mr. Superintendent, take them.\"\n\nThe usher of the court took the whole roll and handed it to the President.\n\n\"How could this money have come into your possession if it is the same\nmoney?\" the President asked wonderingly.\n\n\"I got them from Smerdyakov, from the murderer, yesterday.... I was with\nhim just before he hanged himself. It was he, not my brother, killed our\nfather. He murdered him and I incited him to do it ... Who doesn't desire\nhis father's death?\"\n\n\"Are you in your right mind?\" broke involuntarily from the President.\n\n\"I should think I am in my right mind ... in the same nasty mind as all of\nyou ... as all these ... ugly faces.\" He turned suddenly to the audience.\n\"My father has been murdered and they pretend they are horrified,\" he\nsnarled, with furious contempt. \"They keep up the sham with one another.\nLiars! They all desire the death of their fathers. One reptile devours\nanother.... If there hadn't been a murder, they'd have been angry and gone\nhome ill-humored. It's a spectacle they want! _Panem et circenses_. Though\nI am one to talk! Have you any water? Give me a drink for Christ's sake!\"\nHe suddenly clutched his head.\n\nThe usher at once approached him. Alyosha jumped up and cried, \"He is ill.\nDon't believe him: he has brain fever.\" Katerina Ivanovna rose impulsively\nfrom her seat and, rigid with horror, gazed at Ivan. Mitya stood up and\ngreedily looked at his brother and listened to him with a wild, strange\nsmile.\n\n\"Don't disturb yourselves. I am not mad, I am only a murderer,\" Ivan began\nagain. \"You can't expect eloquence from a murderer,\" he added suddenly for\nsome reason and laughed a queer laugh.\n\nThe prosecutor bent over to the President in obvious dismay. The two other\njudges communicated in agitated whispers. Fetyukovitch pricked up his ears\nas he listened: the hall was hushed in expectation. The President seemed\nsuddenly to recollect himself.\n\n\"Witness, your words are incomprehensible and impossible here. Calm\nyourself, if you can, and tell your story ... if you really have something\nto tell. How can you confirm your statement ... if indeed you are not\ndelirious?\"\n\n\"That's just it. I have no proof. That cur Smerdyakov won't send you\nproofs from the other world ... in an envelope. You think of nothing but\nenvelopes--one is enough. I've no witnesses ... except one, perhaps,\" he\nsmiled thoughtfully.\n\n\"Who is your witness?\"\n\n\"He has a tail, your excellency, and that would be irregular! _Le diable\nn'existe point!_ Don't pay attention: he is a paltry, pitiful devil,\" he\nadded suddenly. He ceased laughing and spoke as it were, confidentially.\n\"He is here somewhere, no doubt--under that table with the material\nevidence on it, perhaps. Where should he sit if not there? You see, listen\nto me. I told him I don't want to keep quiet, and he talked about the\ngeological cataclysm ... idiocy! Come, release the monster ... he's been\nsinging a hymn. That's because his heart is light! It's like a drunken man\nin the street bawling how 'Vanka went to Petersburg,' and I would give a\nquadrillion quadrillions for two seconds of joy. You don't know me! Oh,\nhow stupid all this business is! Come, take me instead of him! I didn't\ncome for nothing.... Why, why is everything so stupid?...\"\n\nAnd he began slowly, and as it were reflectively, looking round him again.\nBut the court was all excitement by now. Alyosha rushed towards him, but\nthe court usher had already seized Ivan by the arm.\n\n\"What are you about?\" he cried, staring into the man's face, and suddenly\nseizing him by the shoulders, he flung him violently to the floor. But the\npolice were on the spot and he was seized. He screamed furiously. And all\nthe time he was being removed, he yelled and screamed something\nincoherent.\n\nThe whole court was thrown into confusion. I don't remember everything as\nit happened. I was excited myself and could not follow. I only know that\nafterwards, when everything was quiet again and every one understood what\nhad happened, the court usher came in for a reprimand, though he very\nreasonably explained that the witness had been quite well, that the doctor\nhad seen him an hour ago, when he had a slight attack of giddiness, but\nthat, until he had come into the court, he had talked quite consecutively,\nso that nothing could have been foreseen--that he had, in fact, insisted on\ngiving evidence. But before every one had completely regained their\ncomposure and recovered from this scene, it was followed by another.\nKaterina Ivanovna had an attack of hysterics. She sobbed, shrieking\nloudly, but refused to leave the court, struggled, and besought them not\nto remove her. Suddenly she cried to the President:\n\n\"There is more evidence I must give at once ... at once! Here is a\ndocument, a letter ... take it, read it quickly, quickly! It's a letter\nfrom that monster ... that man there, there!\" she pointed to Mitya. \"It\nwas he killed his father, you will see that directly. He wrote to me how\nhe would kill his father! But the other one is ill, he is ill, he is\ndelirious!\" she kept crying out, beside herself.\n\nThe court usher took the document she held out to the President, and she,\ndropping into her chair, hiding her face in her hands, began convulsively\nand noiselessly sobbing, shaking all over, and stifling every sound for\nfear she should be ejected from the court. The document she had handed up\nwas that letter Mitya had written at the \"Metropolis\" tavern, which Ivan\nhad spoken of as a \"mathematical proof.\" Alas! its mathematical\nconclusiveness was recognized, and had it not been for that letter, Mitya\nmight have escaped his doom or, at least, that doom would have been less\nterrible. It was, I repeat, difficult to notice every detail. What\nfollowed is still confused to my mind. The President must, I suppose, have\nat once passed on the document to the judges, the jury, and the lawyers on\nboth sides. I only remember how they began examining the witness. On being\ngently asked by the President whether she had recovered sufficiently,\nKaterina Ivanovna exclaimed impetuously:\n\n\"I am ready, I am ready! I am quite equal to answering you,\" she added,\nevidently still afraid that she would somehow be prevented from giving\nevidence. She was asked to explain in detail what this letter was and\nunder what circumstances she received it.\n\n\"I received it the day before the crime was committed, but he wrote it the\nday before that, at the tavern--that is, two days before he committed the\ncrime. Look, it is written on some sort of bill!\" she cried breathlessly.\n\"He hated me at that time, because he had behaved contemptibly and was\nrunning after that creature ... and because he owed me that three\nthousand.... Oh! he was humiliated by that three thousand on account of\nhis own meanness! This is how it happened about that three thousand. I beg\nyou, I beseech you, to hear me. Three weeks before he murdered his father,\nhe came to me one morning. I knew he was in want of money, and what he\nwanted it for. Yes, yes--to win that creature and carry her off. I knew\nthen that he had been false to me and meant to abandon me, and it was I,\nI, who gave him that money, who offered it to him on the pretext of his\nsending it to my sister in Moscow. And as I gave it him, I looked him in\nthe face and said that he could send it when he liked, 'in a month's time\nwould do.' How, how could he have failed to understand that I was\npractically telling him to his face, 'You want money to be false to me\nwith your creature, so here's the money for you. I give it to you myself.\nTake it, if you have so little honor as to take it!' I wanted to prove\nwhat he was, and what happened? He took it, he took it, and squandered it\nwith that creature in one night.... But he knew, he knew that I knew all\nabout it. I assure you he understood, too, that I gave him that money to\ntest him, to see whether he was so lost to all sense of honor as to take\nit from me. I looked into his eyes and he looked into mine, and he\nunderstood it all and he took it--he carried off my money!\"\n\n\"That's true, Katya,\" Mitya roared suddenly, \"I looked into your eyes and\nI knew that you were dishonoring me, and yet I took your money. Despise me\nas a scoundrel, despise me, all of you! I've deserved it!\"\n\n\"Prisoner,\" cried the President, \"another word and I will order you to be\nremoved.\"\n\n\"That money was a torment to him,\" Katya went on with impulsive haste. \"He\nwanted to repay it me. He wanted to, that's true; but he needed money for\nthat creature, too. So he murdered his father, but he didn't repay me, and\nwent off with her to that village where he was arrested. There, again, he\nsquandered the money he had stolen after the murder of his father. And a\nday before the murder he wrote me this letter. He was drunk when he wrote\nit. I saw it at once, at the time. He wrote it from spite, and feeling\ncertain, positively certain, that I should never show it to any one, even\nif he did kill him, or else he wouldn't have written it. For he knew I\nshouldn't want to revenge myself and ruin him! But read it, read it\nattentively--more attentively, please--and you will see that he had\ndescribed it all in his letter, all beforehand, how he would kill his\nfather and where his money was kept. Look, please, don't overlook that,\nthere's one phrase there, 'I shall kill him as soon as Ivan has gone\naway.' So he thought it all out beforehand how he would kill him,\"\nKaterina Ivanovna pointed out to the court with venomous and malignant\ntriumph. Oh! it was clear she had studied every line of that letter and\ndetected every meaning underlining it. \"If he hadn't been drunk, he\nwouldn't have written to me; but, look, everything is written there\nbeforehand, just as he committed the murder after. A complete program of\nit!\" she exclaimed frantically.\n\nShe was reckless now of all consequences to herself, though, no doubt, she\nhad foreseen them even a month ago, for even then, perhaps, shaking with\nanger, she had pondered whether to show it at the trial or not. Now she\nhad taken the fatal plunge. I remember that the letter was read aloud by\nthe clerk, directly afterwards, I believe. It made an overwhelming\nimpression. They asked Mitya whether he admitted having written the\nletter.\n\n\"It's mine, mine!\" cried Mitya. \"I shouldn't have written it, if I hadn't\nbeen drunk!... We've hated each other for many things, Katya, but I swear,\nI swear I loved you even while I hated you, and you didn't love me!\"\n\nHe sank back on his seat, wringing his hands in despair. The prosecutor\nand counsel for the defense began cross-examining her, chiefly to\nascertain what had induced her to conceal such a document and to give her\nevidence in quite a different tone and spirit just before.\n\n\"Yes, yes. I was telling lies just now. I was lying against my honor and\nmy conscience, but I wanted to save him, for he has hated and despised me\nso!\" Katya cried madly. \"Oh, he has despised me horribly, he has always\ndespised me, and do you know, he has despised me from the very moment that\nI bowed down to him for that money. I saw that.... I felt it at once at\nthe time, but for a long time I wouldn't believe it. How often I have read\nit in his eyes, 'You came of yourself, though.' Oh, he didn't understand,\nhe had no idea why I ran to him, he can suspect nothing but baseness, he\njudged me by himself, he thought every one was like himself!\" Katya hissed\nfuriously, in a perfect frenzy. \"And he only wanted to marry me, because\nI'd inherited a fortune, because of that, because of that! I always\nsuspected it was because of that! Oh, he is a brute! He was always\nconvinced that I should be trembling with shame all my life before him,\nbecause I went to him then, and that he had a right to despise me for ever\nfor it, and so to be superior to me--that's why he wanted to marry me!\nThat's so, that's all so! I tried to conquer him by my love--a love that\nknew no bounds. I even tried to forgive his faithlessness; but he\nunderstood nothing, nothing! How could he understand indeed? He is a\nmonster! I only received that letter the next evening: it was brought me\nfrom the tavern--and only that morning, only that morning I wanted to\nforgive him everything, everything--even his treachery!\"\n\nThe President and the prosecutor, of course, tried to calm her. I can't\nhelp thinking that they felt ashamed of taking advantage of her hysteria\nand of listening to such avowals. I remember hearing them say to her, \"We\nunderstand how hard it is for you; be sure we are able to feel for you,\"\nand so on, and so on. And yet they dragged the evidence out of the raving,\nhysterical woman. She described at last with extraordinary clearness,\nwhich is so often seen, though only for a moment, in such over-wrought\nstates, how Ivan had been nearly driven out of his mind during the last\ntwo months trying to save \"the monster and murderer,\" his brother.\n\n\"He tortured himself,\" she exclaimed, \"he was always trying to minimize\nhis brother's guilt and confessing to me that he, too, had never loved his\nfather, and perhaps desired his death himself. Oh, he has a tender, over-\ntender conscience! He tormented himself with his conscience! He told me\neverything, everything! He came every day and talked to me as his only\nfriend. I have the honor to be his only friend!\" she cried suddenly with a\nsort of defiance, and her eyes flashed. \"He had been twice to see\nSmerdyakov. One day he came to me and said, 'If it was not my brother, but\nSmerdyakov committed the murder' (for the legend was circulating\neverywhere that Smerdyakov had done it), 'perhaps I too am guilty, for\nSmerdyakov knew I didn't like my father and perhaps believed that I\ndesired my father's death.' Then I brought out that letter and showed it\nhim. He was entirely convinced that his brother had done it, and he was\noverwhelmed by it. He couldn't endure the thought that his own brother was\na parricide! Only a week ago I saw that it was making him ill. During the\nlast few days he has talked incoherently in my presence. I saw his mind\nwas giving way. He walked about, raving; he was seen muttering in the\nstreets. The doctor from Moscow, at my request, examined him the day\nbefore yesterday and told me that he was on the eve of brain fever--and all\non his account, on account of this monster! And last night he learnt that\nSmerdyakov was dead! It was such a shock that it drove him out of his mind\n... and all through this monster, all for the sake of saving the monster!\"\n\nOh, of course, such an outpouring, such an avowal is only possible once in\na lifetime--at the hour of death, for instance, on the way to the scaffold!\nBut it was in Katya's character, and it was such a moment in her life. It\nwas the same impetuous Katya who had thrown herself on the mercy of a\nyoung profligate to save her father; the same Katya who had just before,\nin her pride and chastity, sacrificed herself and her maidenly modesty\nbefore all these people, telling of Mitya's generous conduct, in the hope\nof softening his fate a little. And now, again, she sacrificed herself;\nbut this time it was for another, and perhaps only now--perhaps only at\nthis moment--she felt and knew how dear that other was to her! She had\nsacrificed herself in terror for him, conceiving all of a sudden that he\nhad ruined himself by his confession that it was he who had committed the\nmurder, not his brother, she had sacrificed herself to save him, to save\nhis good name, his reputation!\n\nAnd yet one terrible doubt occurred to one--was she lying in her\ndescription of her former relations with Mitya?--that was the question. No,\nshe had not intentionally slandered him when she cried that Mitya despised\nher for her bowing down to him! She believed it herself. She had been\nfirmly convinced, perhaps ever since that bow, that the simple-hearted\nMitya, who even then adored her, was laughing at her and despising her.\nShe had loved him with an hysterical, \"lacerated\" love only from pride,\nfrom wounded pride, and that love was not like love, but more like\nrevenge. Oh! perhaps that lacerated love would have grown into real love,\nperhaps Katya longed for nothing more than that, but Mitya's faithlessness\nhad wounded her to the bottom of her heart, and her heart could not\nforgive him. The moment of revenge had come upon her suddenly, and all\nthat had been accumulating so long and so painfully in the offended\nwoman's breast burst out all at once and unexpectedly. She betrayed Mitya,\nbut she betrayed herself, too. And no sooner had she given full expression\nto her feelings than the tension of course was over and she was\noverwhelmed with shame. Hysterics began again: she fell on the floor,\nsobbing and screaming. She was carried out. At that moment Grushenka, with\na wail, rushed towards Mitya before they had time to prevent her.\n\n\"Mitya,\" she wailed, \"your serpent has destroyed you! There, she has shown\nyou what she is!\" she shouted to the judges, shaking with anger. At a\nsignal from the President they seized her and tried to remove her from the\ncourt. She wouldn't allow it. She fought and struggled to get back to\nMitya. Mitya uttered a cry and struggled to get to her. He was\noverpowered.\n\nYes, I think the ladies who came to see the spectacle must have been\nsatisfied--the show had been a varied one. Then I remember the Moscow\ndoctor appeared on the scene. I believe the President had previously sent\nthe court usher to arrange for medical aid for Ivan. The doctor announced\nto the court that the sick man was suffering from a dangerous attack of\nbrain fever, and that he must be at once removed. In answer to questions\nfrom the prosecutor and the counsel for the defense he said that the\npatient had come to him of his own accord the day before yesterday and\nthat he had warned him that he had such an attack coming on, but he had\nnot consented to be looked after. \"He was certainly not in a normal state\nof mind: he told me himself that he saw visions when he was awake, that he\nmet several persons in the street, who were dead, and that Satan visited\nhim every evening,\" said the doctor, in conclusion. Having given his\nevidence, the celebrated doctor withdrew. The letter produced by Katerina\nIvanovna was added to the material proofs. After some deliberation, the\njudges decided to proceed with the trial and to enter both the unexpected\npieces of evidence (given by Ivan and Katerina Ivanovna) on the protocol.\n\nBut I will not detail the evidence of the other witnesses, who only\nrepeated and confirmed what had been said before, though all with their\ncharacteristic peculiarities. I repeat, all was brought together in the\nprosecutor's speech, which I shall quote immediately. Every one was\nexcited, every one was electrified by the late catastrophe, and all were\nawaiting the speeches for the prosecution and the defense with intense\nimpatience. Fetyukovitch was obviously shaken by Katerina Ivanovna's\nevidence. But the prosecutor was triumphant. When all the evidence had\nbeen taken, the court was adjourned for almost an hour. I believe it was\njust eight o'clock when the President returned to his seat and our\nprosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovitch, began his speech.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI. The Prosecutor's Speech. Sketches Of Character\n\n\nIppolit Kirillovitch began his speech, trembling with nervousness, with\ncold sweat on his forehead, feeling hot and cold all over by turns. He\ndescribed this himself afterwards. He regarded this speech as his _chef-\nd'oeuvre_, the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of his whole life, as his swan-song. He died,\nit is true, nine months later of rapid consumption, so that he had the\nright, as it turned out, to compare himself to a swan singing his last\nsong. He had put his whole heart and all the brain he had into that\nspeech. And poor Ippolit Kirillovitch unexpectedly revealed that at least\nsome feeling for the public welfare and \"the eternal question\" lay\nconcealed in him. Where his speech really excelled was in its sincerity.\nHe genuinely believed in the prisoner's guilt; he was accusing him not as\nan official duty only, and in calling for vengeance he quivered with a\ngenuine passion \"for the security of society.\" Even the ladies in the\naudience, though they remained hostile to Ippolit Kirillovitch, admitted\nthat he made an extraordinary impression on them. He began in a breaking\nvoice, but it soon gained strength and filled the court to the end of his\nspeech. But as soon as he had finished, he almost fainted.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury,\" began the prosecutor, \"this case has made a stir\nthroughout Russia. But what is there to wonder at, what is there so\npeculiarly horrifying in it for us? We are so accustomed to such crimes!\nThat's what's so horrible, that such dark deeds have ceased to horrify us.\nWhat ought to horrify us is that we are so accustomed to it, and not this\nor that isolated crime. What are the causes of our indifference, our\nlukewarm attitude to such deeds, to such signs of the times, ominous of an\nunenviable future? Is it our cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of\nintellect and imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in\nspite of its youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their\nfoundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles among\nus? I cannot answer such questions; nevertheless they are disturbing, and\nevery citizen not only must, but ought to be harassed by them. Our newborn\nand still timid press has done good service to the public already, for\nwithout it we should never have heard of the horrors of unbridled violence\nand moral degradation which are continually made known by the press, not\nmerely to those who attend the new jury courts established in the present\nreign, but to every one. And what do we read almost daily? Of things\nbeside which the present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace.\nBut what is most important is that the majority of our national crimes of\nviolence bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us that\nit is difficult to contend against it.\n\n\"One day we see a brilliant young officer of high society, at the very\noutset of his career, in a cowardly underhand way, without a pang of\nconscience, murdering an official who had once been his benefactor, and\nthe servant girl, to steal his own I.O.U. and what ready money he could\nfind on him; 'it will come in handy for my pleasures in the fashionable\nworld and for my career in the future.' After murdering them, he puts\npillows under the head of each of his victims; he goes away. Next, a young\nhero 'decorated for bravery' kills the mother of his chief and benefactor,\nlike a highwayman, and to urge his companions to join him he asserts that\n'she loves him like a son, and so will follow all his directions and take\nno precautions.' Granted that he is a monster, yet I dare not say in these\ndays that he is unique. Another man will not commit the murder, but will\nfeel and think like him, and is as dishonorable in soul. In silence, alone\nwith his conscience, he asks himself perhaps, 'What is honor, and isn't\nthe condemnation of bloodshed a prejudice?'\n\n\"Perhaps people will cry out against me that I am morbid, hysterical, that\nit is a monstrous slander, that I am exaggerating. Let them say so--and\nheavens! I should be the first to rejoice if it were so! Oh, don't believe\nme, think of me as morbid, but remember my words; if only a tenth, if only\na twentieth part of what I say is true--even so it's awful! Look how our\nyoung people commit suicide, without asking themselves Hamlet's question\nwhat there is beyond, without a sign of such a question, as though all\nthat relates to the soul and to what awaits us beyond the grave had long\nbeen erased in their minds and buried under the sands. Look at our vice,\nat our profligates. Fyodor Pavlovitch, the luckless victim in the present\ncase, was almost an innocent babe compared with many of them. And yet we\nall knew him, 'he lived among us!'...\n\n\"Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects of Russia and of Europe will\nstudy the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject is worth it. But\nthis study will come later, at leisure, when all the tragic topsy-turvydom\nof to-day is farther behind us, so that it's possible to examine it with\nmore insight and more impartiality than I can do. Now we are either\nhorrified or pretend to be horrified, though we really gloat over the\nspectacle, and love strong and eccentric sensations which tickle our\ncynical, pampered idleness. Or, like little children, we brush the\ndreadful ghosts away and hide our heads in the pillow so as to return to\nour sports and merriment as soon as they have vanished. But we must one\nday begin life in sober earnest, we must look at ourselves as a society;\nit's time we tried to grasp something of our social position, or at least\nto make a beginning in that direction.\n\n\"A great writer(9) of the last epoch, comparing Russia to a swift troika\ngalloping to an unknown goal, exclaims, 'Oh, troika, birdlike troika, who\ninvented thee!' and adds, in proud ecstasy, that all the peoples of the\nworld stand aside respectfully to make way for the recklessly galloping\ntroika to pass. That may be, they may stand aside, respectfully or no, but\nin my poor opinion the great writer ended his book in this way either in\nan access of childish and naive optimism, or simply in fear of the\ncensorship of the day. For if the troika were drawn by his heroes,\nSobakevitch, Nozdryov, Tchitchikov, it could reach no rational goal,\nwhoever might be driving it. And those were the heroes of an older\ngeneration, ours are worse specimens still....\"\n\nAt this point Ippolit Kirillovitch's speech was interrupted by applause.\nThe liberal significance of this simile was appreciated. The applause was,\nit's true, of brief duration, so that the President did not think it\nnecessary to caution the public, and only looked severely in the direction\nof the offenders. But Ippolit Kirillovitch was encouraged; he had never\nbeen applauded before! He had been all his life unable to get a hearing,\nand now he suddenly had an opportunity of securing the ear of all Russia.\n\n\"What, after all, is this Karamazov family, which has gained such an\nunenviable notoriety throughout Russia?\" he continued. \"Perhaps I am\nexaggerating, but it seems to me that certain fundamental features of the\neducated class of to-day are reflected in this family picture--only, of\ncourse, in miniature, 'like the sun in a drop of water.' Think of that\nunhappy, vicious, unbridled old man, who has met with such a melancholy\nend, the head of a family! Beginning life of noble birth, but in a poor\ndependent position, through an unexpected marriage he came into a small\nfortune. A petty knave, a toady and buffoon, of fairly good, though\nundeveloped, intelligence, he was, above all, a moneylender, who grew\nbolder with growing prosperity. His abject and servile characteristics\ndisappeared, his malicious and sarcastic cynicism was all that remained.\nOn the spiritual side he was undeveloped, while his vitality was\nexcessive. He saw nothing in life but sensual pleasure, and he brought his\nchildren up to be the same. He had no feelings for his duties as a father.\nHe ridiculed those duties. He left his little children to the servants,\nand was glad to be rid of them, forgot about them completely. The old\nman's maxim was _Apres moi le deluge_. He was an example of everything\nthat is opposed to civic duty, of the most complete and malignant\nindividualism. 'The world may burn for aught I care, so long as I am all\nright,' and he was all right; he was content, he was eager to go on living\nin the same way for another twenty or thirty years. He swindled his own\nson and spent his money, his maternal inheritance, on trying to get his\nmistress from him. No, I don't intend to leave the prisoner's defense\naltogether to my talented colleague from Petersburg. I will speak the\ntruth myself, I can well understand what resentment he had heaped up in\nhis son's heart against him.\n\n\"But enough, enough of that unhappy old man; he has paid the penalty. Let\nus remember, however, that he was a father, and one of the typical fathers\nof to-day. Am I unjust, indeed, in saying that he is typical of many\nmodern fathers? Alas! many of them only differ in not openly professing\nsuch cynicism, for they are better educated, more cultured, but their\nphilosophy is essentially the same as his. Perhaps I am a pessimist, but\nyou have agreed to forgive me. Let us agree beforehand, you need not\nbelieve me, but let me speak. Let me say what I have to say, and remember\nsomething of my words.\n\n\"Now for the children of this father, this head of a family. One of them\nis the prisoner before us, all the rest of my speech will deal with him.\nOf the other two I will speak only cursorily.\n\n\"The elder is one of those modern young men of brilliant education and\nvigorous intellect, who has lost all faith in everything. He has denied\nand rejected much already, like his father. We have all heard him, he was\na welcome guest in local society. He never concealed his opinions, quite\nthe contrary in fact, which justifies me in speaking rather openly of him\nnow, of course, not as an individual, but as a member of the Karamazov\nfamily. Another personage closely connected with the case died here by his\nown hand last night. I mean an afflicted idiot, formerly the servant, and\npossibly the illegitimate son, of Fyodor Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov. At the\npreliminary inquiry, he told me with hysterical tears how the young Ivan\nKaramazov had horrified him by his spiritual audacity. 'Everything in the\nworld is lawful according to him, and nothing must be forbidden in the\nfuture--that is what he always taught me.' I believe that idiot was driven\nout of his mind by this theory, though, of course, the epileptic attacks\nfrom which he suffered, and this terrible catastrophe, have helped to\nunhinge his faculties. But he dropped one very interesting observation,\nwhich would have done credit to a more intelligent observer, and that is,\nindeed, why I've mentioned it: 'If there is one of the sons that is like\nFyodor Pavlovitch in character, it is Ivan Fyodorovitch.'\n\n\"With that remark I conclude my sketch of his character, feeling it\nindelicate to continue further. Oh, I don't want to draw any further\nconclusions and croak like a raven over the young man's future. We've seen\nto-day in this court that there are still good impulses in his young\nheart, that family feeling has not been destroyed in him by lack of faith\nand cynicism, which have come to him rather by inheritance than by the\nexercise of independent thought.\n\n\"Then the third son. Oh, he is a devout and modest youth, who does not\nshare his elder brother's gloomy and destructive theory of life. He has\nsought to cling to the 'ideas of the people,' or to what goes by that name\nin some circles of our intellectual classes. He clung to the monastery,\nand was within an ace of becoming a monk. He seems to me to have betrayed\nunconsciously, and so early, that timid despair which leads so many in our\nunhappy society, who dread cynicism and its corrupting influences, and\nmistakenly attribute all the mischief to European enlightenment, to return\nto their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their\nmother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the\nwithered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only\nto escape the horrors that terrify them.\n\n\"For my part I wish the excellent and gifted young man every success; I\ntrust that his youthful idealism and impulse towards the ideas of the\npeople may never degenerate, as often happens, on the moral side into\ngloomy mysticism, and on the political into blind chauvinism--two elements\nwhich are even a greater menace to Russia than the premature decay, due to\nmisunderstanding and gratuitous adoption of European ideas, from which his\nelder brother is suffering.\"\n\nTwo or three people clapped their hands at the mention of chauvinism and\nmysticism. Ippolit Kirillovitch had been, indeed, carried away by his own\neloquence. All this had little to do with the case in hand, to say nothing\nof the fact of its being somewhat vague, but the sickly and consumptive\nman was overcome by the desire to express himself once in his life. People\nsaid afterwards that he was actuated by unworthy motives in his criticism\nof Ivan, because the latter had on one or two occasions got the better of\nhim in argument, and Ippolit Kirillovitch, remembering it, tried now to\ntake his revenge. But I don't know whether it was true. All this was only\nintroductory, however, and the speech passed to more direct consideration\nof the case.\n\n\"But to return to the eldest son,\" Ippolit Kirillovitch went on. \"He is\nthe prisoner before us. We have his life and his actions, too, before us;\nthe fatal day has come and all has been brought to the surface. While his\nbrothers seem to stand for 'Europeanism' and 'the principles of the\npeople,' he seems to represent Russia as she is. Oh, not all Russia, not\nall! God preserve us, if it were! Yet, here we have her, our mother\nRussia, the very scent and sound of her. Oh, he is spontaneous, he is a\nmarvelous mingling of good and evil, he is a lover of culture and\nSchiller, yet he brawls in taverns and plucks out the beards of his boon\ncompanions. Oh, he, too, can be good and noble, but only when all goes\nwell with him. What is more, he can be carried off his feet, positively\ncarried off his feet by noble ideals, but only if they come of themselves,\nif they fall from heaven for him, if they need not be paid for. He\ndislikes paying for anything, but is very fond of receiving, and that's so\nwith him in everything. Oh, give him every possible good in life (he\ncouldn't be content with less), and put no obstacle in his way, and he\nwill show that he, too, can be noble. He is not greedy, no, but he must\nhave money, a great deal of money, and you will see how generously, with\nwhat scorn of filthy lucre, he will fling it all away in the reckless\ndissipation of one night. But if he has not money, he will show what he is\nready to do to get it when he is in great need of it. But all this later,\nlet us take events in their chronological order.\n\n\"First, we have before us a poor abandoned child, running about the back-\nyard 'without boots on his feet,' as our worthy and esteemed fellow\ncitizen, of foreign origin, alas! expressed it just now. I repeat it\nagain, I yield to no one the defense of the criminal. I am here to accuse\nhim, but to defend him also. Yes, I, too, am human; I, too, can weigh the\ninfluence of home and childhood on the character. But the boy grows up and\nbecomes an officer; for a duel and other reckless conduct he is exiled to\none of the remote frontier towns of Russia. There he led a wild life as an\nofficer. And, of course, he needed money, money before all things, and so\nafter prolonged disputes he came to a settlement with his father, and the\nlast six thousand was sent him. A letter is in existence in which he\npractically gives up his claim to the rest and settles his conflict with\nhis father over the inheritance on the payment of this six thousand.\n\n\"Then came his meeting with a young girl of lofty character and brilliant\neducation. Oh, I do not venture to repeat the details; you have only just\nheard them. Honor, self-sacrifice were shown there, and I will be silent.\nThe figure of the young officer, frivolous and profligate, doing homage to\ntrue nobility and a lofty ideal, was shown in a very sympathetic light\nbefore us. But the other side of the medal was unexpectedly turned to us\nimmediately after in this very court. Again I will not venture to\nconjecture why it happened so, but there were causes. The same lady,\nbathed in tears of long-concealed indignation, alleged that he, he of all\nmen, had despised her for her action, which, though incautious, reckless\nperhaps, was still dictated by lofty and generous motives. He, he, the\ngirl's betrothed, looked at her with that smile of mockery, which was more\ninsufferable from him than from any one. And knowing that he had already\ndeceived her (he had deceived her, believing that she was bound to endure\neverything from him, even treachery), she intentionally offered him three\nthousand roubles, and clearly, too clearly, let him understand that she\nwas offering him money to deceive her. 'Well, will you take it or not, are\nyou so lost to shame?' was the dumb question in her scrutinizing eyes. He\nlooked at her, saw clearly what was in her mind (he's admitted here before\nyou that he understood it all), appropriated that three thousand\nunconditionally, and squandered it in two days with the new object of his\naffections.\n\n\"What are we to believe then? The first legend of the young officer\nsacrificing his last farthing in a noble impulse of generosity and doing\nreverence to virtue, or this other revolting picture? As a rule, between\ntwo extremes one has to find the mean, but in the present case this is not\ntrue. The probability is that in the first case he was genuinely noble,\nand in the second as genuinely base. And why? Because he was of the broad\nKaramazov character--that's just what I am leading up to--capable of\ncombining the most incongruous contradictions, and capable of the greatest\nheights and of the greatest depths. Remember the brilliant remark made by\na young observer who has seen the Karamazov family at close quarters--Mr.\nRakitin: 'The sense of their own degradation is as essential to those\nreckless, unbridled natures as the sense of their lofty generosity.' And\nthat's true, they need continually this unnatural mixture. Two extremes at\nthe same moment, or they are miserable and dissatisfied and their\nexistence is incomplete. They are wide, wide as mother Russia; they\ninclude everything and put up with everything.\n\n\"By the way, gentlemen of the jury, we've just touched upon that three\nthousand roubles, and I will venture to anticipate things a little. Can\nyou conceive that a man like that, on receiving that sum and in such a\nway, at the price of such shame, such disgrace, such utter degradation,\ncould have been capable that very day of setting apart half that sum, that\nvery day, and sewing it up in a little bag, and would have had the\nfirmness of character to carry it about with him for a whole month\nafterwards, in spite of every temptation and his extreme need of it!\nNeither in drunken debauchery in taverns, nor when he was flying into the\ncountry, trying to get from God knows whom, the money so essential to him\nto remove the object of his affections from being tempted by his father,\ndid he bring himself to touch that little bag! Why, if only to avoid\nabandoning his mistress to the rival of whom he was so jealous, he would\nhave been certain to have opened that bag and to have stayed at home to\nkeep watch over her, and to await the moment when she would say to him at\nlast 'I am yours,' and to fly with her far from their fatal surroundings.\n\n\"But no, he did not touch his talisman, and what is the reason he gives\nfor it? The chief reason, as I have just said, was that when she would\nsay, 'I am yours, take me where you will,' he might have the wherewithal\nto take her. But that first reason, in the prisoner's own words, was of\nlittle weight beside the second. While I have that money on me, he said, I\nam a scoundrel, not a thief, for I can always go to my insulted betrothed,\nand, laying down half the sum I have fraudulently appropriated, I can\nalways say to her, 'You see, I've squandered half your money, and shown I\nam a weak and immoral man, and, if you like, a scoundrel' (I use the\nprisoner's own expressions), 'but though I am a scoundrel, I am not a\nthief, for if I had been a thief, I shouldn't have brought you back this\nhalf of the money, but should have taken it as I did the other half!' A\nmarvelous explanation! This frantic, but weak man, who could not resist\nthe temptation of accepting the three thousand roubles at the price of\nsuch disgrace, this very man suddenly develops the most stoical firmness,\nand carries about a thousand roubles without daring to touch it. Does that\nfit in at all with the character we have analyzed? No, and I venture to\ntell you how the real Dmitri Karamazov would have behaved in such\ncircumstances, if he really had brought himself to put away the money.\n\n\"At the first temptation--for instance, to entertain the woman with whom he\nhad already squandered half the money--he would have unpicked his little\nbag and have taken out some hundred roubles, for why should he have taken\nback precisely half the money, that is, fifteen hundred roubles? why not\nfourteen hundred? He could just as well have said then that he was not a\nthief, because he brought back fourteen hundred roubles. Then another time\nhe would have unpicked it again and taken out another hundred, and then a\nthird, and then a fourth, and before the end of the month he would have\ntaken the last note but one, feeling that if he took back only a hundred\nit would answer the purpose, for a thief would have stolen it all. And\nthen he would have looked at this last note, and have said to himself,\n'It's really not worth while to give back one hundred; let's spend that,\ntoo!' That's how the real Dmitri Karamazov, as we know him, would have\nbehaved. One cannot imagine anything more incongruous with the actual fact\nthan this legend of the little bag. Nothing could be more inconceivable.\nBut we shall return to that later.\"\n\nAfter touching upon what had come out in the proceedings concerning the\nfinancial relations of father and son, and arguing again and again that it\nwas utterly impossible, from the facts known, to determine which was in\nthe wrong, Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to the evidence of the medical\nexperts in reference to Mitya's fixed idea about the three thousand owing\nhim.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII. An Historical Survey\n\n\n\"The medical experts have striven to convince us that the prisoner is out\nof his mind and, in fact, a maniac. I maintain that he is in his right\nmind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more cleverly. As\nfor his being a maniac, that I would agree with, but only in one point,\nthat is, his fixed idea about the three thousand. Yet I think one might\nfind a much simpler cause than his tendency to insanity. For my part I\nagree thoroughly with the young doctor who maintained that the prisoner's\nmental faculties have always been normal, and that he has only been\nirritable and exasperated. The object of the prisoner's continual and\nviolent anger was not the sum itself; there was a special motive at the\nbottom of it. That motive is jealousy!\"\n\nHere Ippolit Kirillovitch described at length the prisoner's fatal passion\nfor Grushenka. He began from the moment when the prisoner went to the\n\"young person's\" lodgings \"to beat her\"--\"I use his own expression,\" the\nprosecutor explained--\"but instead of beating her, he remained there, at\nher feet. That was the beginning of the passion. At the same time the\nprisoner's father was captivated by the same young person--a strange and\nfatal coincidence, for they both lost their hearts to her simultaneously,\nthough both had known her before. And she inspired in both of them the\nmost violent, characteristically Karamazov passion. We have her own\nconfession: 'I was laughing at both of them.' Yes, the sudden desire to\nmake a jest of them came over her, and she conquered both of them at once.\nThe old man, who worshiped money, at once set aside three thousand roubles\nas a reward for one visit from her, but soon after that, he would have\nbeen happy to lay his property and his name at her feet, if only she would\nbecome his lawful wife. We have good evidence of this. As for the\nprisoner, the tragedy of his fate is evident; it is before us. But such\nwas the young person's 'game.' The enchantress gave the unhappy young man\nno hope until the last moment, when he knelt before her, stretching out\nhands that were already stained with the blood of his father and rival. It\nwas in that position that he was arrested. 'Send me to Siberia with him, I\nhave brought him to this, I am most to blame,' the woman herself cried, in\ngenuine remorse at the moment of his arrest.\n\n\"The talented young man, to whom I have referred already, Mr. Rakitin,\ncharacterized this heroine in brief and impressive terms: 'She was\ndisillusioned early in life, deceived and ruined by a betrothed, who\nseduced and abandoned her. She was left in poverty, cursed by her\nrespectable family, and taken under the protection of a wealthy old man,\nwhom she still, however, considers as her benefactor. There was perhaps\nmuch that was good in her young heart, but it was embittered too early.\nShe became prudent and saved money. She grew sarcastic and resentful\nagainst society.' After this sketch of her character it may well be\nunderstood that she might laugh at both of them simply from mischief, from\nmalice.\n\n\"After a month of hopeless love and moral degradation, during which he\nbetrayed his betrothed and appropriated money entrusted to his honor, the\nprisoner was driven almost to frenzy, almost to madness by continual\njealousy--and of whom? His father! And the worst of it was that the crazy\nold man was alluring and enticing the object of his affection by means of\nthat very three thousand roubles, which the son looked upon as his own\nproperty, part of his inheritance from his mother, of which his father was\ncheating him. Yes, I admit it was hard to bear! It might well drive a man\nto madness. It was not the money, but the fact that this money was used\nwith such revolting cynicism to ruin his happiness!\"\n\nThen the prosecutor went on to describe how the idea of murdering his\nfather had entered the prisoner's head, and illustrated his theory with\nfacts.\n\n\"At first he only talked about it in taverns--he was talking about it all\nthat month. Ah, he likes being always surrounded with company, and he\nlikes to tell his companions everything, even his most diabolical and\ndangerous ideas; he likes to share every thought with others, and expects,\nfor some reason, that those he confides in will meet him with perfect\nsympathy, enter into all his troubles and anxieties, take his part and not\noppose him in anything. If not, he flies into a rage and smashes up\neverything in the tavern. [Then followed the anecdote about Captain\nSnegiryov.] Those who heard the prisoner began to think at last that he\nmight mean more than threats, and that such a frenzy might turn threats\ninto actions.\"\n\nHere the prosecutor described the meeting of the family at the monastery,\nthe conversations with Alyosha, and the horrible scene of violence when\nthe prisoner had rushed into his father's house just after dinner.\n\n\"I cannot positively assert,\" the prosecutor continued, \"that the prisoner\nfully intended to murder his father before that incident. Yet the idea had\nseveral times presented itself to him, and he had deliberated on it--for\nthat we have facts, witnesses, and his own words. I confess, gentlemen of\nthe jury,\" he added, \"that till to-day I have been uncertain whether to\nattribute to the prisoner conscious premeditation. I was firmly convinced\nthat he had pictured the fatal moment beforehand, but had only pictured\nit, contemplating it as a possibility. He had not definitely considered\nwhen and how he might commit the crime.\n\n\"But I was only uncertain till to-day, till that fatal document was\npresented to the court just now. You yourselves heard that young lady's\nexclamation, 'It is the plan, the program of the murder!' That is how she\ndefined that miserable, drunken letter of the unhappy prisoner. And, in\nfact, from that letter we see that the whole fact of the murder was\npremeditated. It was written two days before, and so we know now for a\nfact that, forty-eight hours before the perpetration of his terrible\ndesign, the prisoner swore that, if he could not get money next day, he\nwould murder his father in order to take the envelope with the notes from\nunder his pillow, as soon as Ivan had left. 'As soon as Ivan had gone\naway'--you hear that; so he had thought everything out, weighing every\ncircumstance, and he carried it all out just as he had written it. The\nproof of premeditation is conclusive; the crime must have been committed\nfor the sake of the money, that is stated clearly, that is written and\nsigned. The prisoner does not deny his signature.\n\n\"I shall be told he was drunk when he wrote it. But that does not diminish\nthe value of the letter, quite the contrary; he wrote when drunk what he\nhad planned when sober. Had he not planned it when sober, he would not\nhave written it when drunk. I shall be asked: Then why did he talk about\nit in taverns? A man who premeditates such a crime is silent and keeps it\nto himself. Yes, but he talked about it before he had formed a plan, when\nhe had only the desire, only the impulse to it. Afterwards he talked less\nabout it. On the evening he wrote that letter at the 'Metropolis' tavern,\ncontrary to his custom he was silent, though he had been drinking. He did\nnot play billiards, he sat in a corner, talked to no one. He did indeed\nturn a shopman out of his seat, but that was done almost unconsciously,\nbecause he could never enter a tavern without making a disturbance. It is\ntrue that after he had taken the final decision, he must have felt\napprehensive that he had talked too much about his design beforehand, and\nthat this might lead to his arrest and prosecution afterwards. But there\nwas nothing for it; he could not take his words back, but his luck had\nserved him before, it would serve him again. He believed in his star, you\nknow! I must confess, too, that he did a great deal to avoid the fatal\ncatastrophe. 'To-morrow I shall try and borrow the money from every one,'\nas he writes in his peculiar language, 'and if they won't give it to me,\nthere will be bloodshed.' \"\n\nHere Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to a detailed description of all Mitya's\nefforts to borrow the money. He described his visit to Samsonov, his\njourney to Lyagavy. \"Harassed, jeered at, hungry, after selling his watch\nto pay for the journey (though he tells us he had fifteen hundred roubles\non him--a likely story), tortured by jealousy at having left the object of\nhis affections in the town, suspecting that she would go to Fyodor\nPavlovitch in his absence, he returned at last to the town, to find, to\nhis joy, that she had not been near his father. He accompanied her himself\nto her protector. (Strange to say, he doesn't seem to have been jealous of\nSamsonov, which is psychologically interesting.) Then he hastens back to\nhis ambush in the back gardens, and there learns that Smerdyakov is in a\nfit, that the other servant is ill--the coast is clear and he knows the\n'signals'--what a temptation! Still he resists it; he goes off to a lady\nwho has for some time been residing in the town, and who is highly\nesteemed among us, Madame Hohlakov. That lady, who had long watched his\ncareer with compassion, gave him the most judicious advice, to give up his\ndissipated life, his unseemly love-affair, the waste of his youth and\nvigor in pot-house debauchery, and to set off to Siberia to the gold-\nmines: 'that would be an outlet for your turbulent energies, your romantic\ncharacter, your thirst for adventure.' \"\n\nAfter describing the result of this conversation and the moment when the\nprisoner learnt that Grushenka had not remained at Samsonov's, the sudden\nfrenzy of the luckless man worn out with jealousy and nervous exhaustion,\nat the thought that she had deceived him and was now with his father,\nIppolit Kirillovitch concluded by dwelling upon the fatal influence of\nchance. \"Had the maid told him that her mistress was at Mokroe with her\nformer lover, nothing would have happened. But she lost her head, she\ncould only swear and protest her ignorance, and if the prisoner did not\nkill her on the spot, it was only because he flew in pursuit of his false\nmistress.\n\n\"But note, frantic as he was, he took with him a brass pestle. Why that?\nWhy not some other weapon? But since he had been contemplating his plan\nand preparing himself for it for a whole month, he would snatch up\nanything like a weapon that caught his eye. He had realized for a month\npast that any object of the kind would serve as a weapon, so he instantly,\nwithout hesitation, recognized that it would serve his purpose. So it was\nby no means unconsciously, by no means involuntarily, that he snatched up\nthat fatal pestle. And then we find him in his father's garden--the coast\nis clear, there are no witnesses, darkness and jealousy. The suspicion\nthat she was there, with him, with his rival, in his arms, and perhaps\nlaughing at him at that moment--took his breath away. And it was not mere\nsuspicion, the deception was open, obvious. She must be there, in that\nlighted room, she must be behind the screen; and the unhappy man would\nhave us believe that he stole up to the window, peeped respectfully in,\nand discreetly withdrew, for fear something terrible and immoral should\nhappen. And he tries to persuade us of that, us, who understand his\ncharacter, who know his state of mind at the moment, and that he knew the\nsignals by which he could at once enter the house.\" At this point Ippolit\nKirillovitch broke off to discuss exhaustively the suspected connection of\nSmerdyakov with the murder. He did this very circumstantially, and every\none realized that, although he professed to despise that suspicion, he\nthought the subject of great importance.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter VIII. A Treatise On Smerdyakov\n\n\n\"To begin with, what was the source of this suspicion?\" (Ippolit\nKirillovitch began.) \"The first person who cried out that Smerdyakov had\ncommitted the murder was the prisoner himself at the moment of his arrest,\nyet from that time to this he had not brought forward a single fact to\nconfirm the charge, nor the faintest suggestion of a fact. The charge is\nconfirmed by three persons only--the two brothers of the prisoner and\nMadame Svyetlov. The elder of these brothers expressed his suspicions only\nto-day, when he was undoubtedly suffering from brain fever. But we know\nthat for the last two months he has completely shared our conviction of\nhis brother's guilt and did not attempt to combat that idea. But of that\nlater. The younger brother has admitted that he has not the slightest fact\nto support his notion of Smerdyakov's guilt, and has only been led to that\nconclusion from the prisoner's own words and the expression of his face.\nYes, that astounding piece of evidence has been brought forward twice to-\nday by him. Madame Svyetlov was even more astounding. 'What the prisoner\ntells you, you must believe; he is not a man to tell a lie.' That is all\nthe evidence against Smerdyakov produced by these three persons, who are\nall deeply concerned in the prisoner's fate. And yet the theory of\nSmerdyakov's guilt has been noised about, has been and is still\nmaintained. Is it credible? Is it conceivable?\"\n\nHere Ippolit Kirillovitch thought it necessary to describe the personality\nof Smerdyakov, \"who had cut short his life in a fit of insanity.\" He\ndepicted him as a man of weak intellect, with a smattering of education,\nwho had been thrown off his balance by philosophical ideas above his level\nand certain modern theories of duty, which he learnt in practice from the\nreckless life of his master, who was also perhaps his father--Fyodor\nPavlovitch; and, theoretically, from various strange philosophical\nconversations with his master's elder son, Ivan Fyodorovitch, who readily\nindulged in this diversion, probably feeling dull or wishing to amuse\nhimself at the valet's expense. \"He spoke to me himself of his spiritual\ncondition during the last few days at his father's house,\" Ippolit\nKirillovitch explained; \"but others too have borne witness to it--the\nprisoner himself, his brother, and the servant Grigory--that is, all who\nknew him well.\n\n\"Moreover, Smerdyakov, whose health was shaken by his attacks of epilepsy,\nhad not the courage of a chicken. 'He fell at my feet and kissed them,'\nthe prisoner himself has told us, before he realized how damaging such a\nstatement was to himself. 'He is an epileptic chicken,' he declared about\nhim in his characteristic language. And the prisoner chose him for his\nconfidant (we have his own word for it) and he frightened him into\nconsenting at last to act as a spy for him. In that capacity he deceived\nhis master, revealing to the prisoner the existence of the envelope with\nthe notes in it and the signals by means of which he could get into the\nhouse. How could he help telling him, indeed? 'He would have killed me, I\ncould see that he would have killed me,' he said at the inquiry, trembling\nand shaking even before us, though his tormentor was by that time arrested\nand could do him no harm. 'He suspected me at every instant. In fear and\ntrembling I hastened to tell him every secret to pacify him, that he might\nsee that I had not deceived him and let me off alive.' Those are his own\nwords. I wrote them down and I remember them. 'When he began shouting at\nme, I would fall on my knees.'\n\n\"He was naturally very honest and enjoyed the complete confidence of his\nmaster, ever since he had restored him some money he had lost. So it may\nbe supposed that the poor fellow suffered pangs of remorse at having\ndeceived his master, whom he loved as his benefactor. Persons severely\nafflicted with epilepsy are, so the most skillful doctors tell us, always\nprone to continual and morbid self-reproach. They worry over their\n'wickedness,' they are tormented by pangs of conscience, often entirely\nwithout cause; they exaggerate and often invent all sorts of faults and\ncrimes. And here we have a man of that type who had really been driven to\nwrong-doing by terror and intimidation.\n\n\"He had, besides, a strong presentiment that something terrible would be\nthe outcome of the situation that was developing before his eyes. When\nIvan Fyodorovitch was leaving for Moscow, just before the catastrophe,\nSmerdyakov besought him to remain, though he was too timid to tell him\nplainly what he feared. He confined himself to hints, but his hints were\nnot understood.\n\n\"It must be observed that he looked on Ivan Fyodorovitch as a protector,\nwhose presence in the house was a guarantee that no harm would come to\npass. Remember the phrase in Dmitri Karamazov's drunken letter, 'I shall\nkill the old man, if only Ivan goes away.' So Ivan Fyodorovitch's presence\nseemed to every one a guarantee of peace and order in the house.\n\n\"But he went away, and within an hour of his young master's departure\nSmerdyakov was taken with an epileptic fit. But that's perfectly\nintelligible. Here I must mention that Smerdyakov, oppressed by terror and\ndespair of a sort, had felt during those last few days that one of the\nfits from which he had suffered before at moments of strain, might be\ncoming upon him again. The day and hour of such an attack cannot, of\ncourse, be foreseen, but every epileptic can feel beforehand that he is\nlikely to have one. So the doctors tell us. And so, as soon as Ivan\nFyodorovitch had driven out of the yard, Smerdyakov, depressed by his\nlonely and unprotected position, went to the cellar. He went down the\nstairs wondering if he would have a fit or not, and what if it were to\ncome upon him at once. And that very apprehension, that very wonder,\nbrought on the spasm in his throat that always precedes such attacks, and\nhe fell unconscious into the cellar. And in this perfectly natural\noccurrence people try to detect a suspicion, a hint that he was shamming\nan attack _on purpose_. But, if it were on purpose, the question arises at\nonce, what was his motive? What was he reckoning on? What was he aiming\nat? I say nothing about medicine: science, I am told, may go astray: the\ndoctors were not able to discriminate between the counterfeit and the\nreal. That may be so, but answer me one question: what motive had he for\nsuch a counterfeit? Could he, had he been plotting the murder, have\ndesired to attract the attention of the household by having a fit just\nbefore?\n\n\"You see, gentlemen of the jury, on the night of the murder, there were\nfive persons in Fyodor Pavlovitch's--Fyodor Pavlovitch himself (but he did\nnot kill himself, that's evident); then his servant, Grigory, but he was\nalmost killed himself; the third person was Grigory's wife, Marfa\nIgnatyevna, but it would be simply shameful to imagine her murdering her\nmaster. Two persons are left--the prisoner and Smerdyakov. But, if we are\nto believe the prisoner's statement that he is not the murderer, then\nSmerdyakov must have been, for there is no other alternative, no one else\ncan be found. That is what accounts for the artful, astounding accusation\nagainst the unhappy idiot who committed suicide yesterday. Had a shadow of\nsuspicion rested on any one else, had there been any sixth person, I am\npersuaded that even the prisoner would have been ashamed to accuse\nSmerdyakov, and would have accused that sixth person, for to charge\nSmerdyakov with that murder is perfectly absurd.\n\n\"Gentlemen, let us lay aside psychology, let us lay aside medicine, let us\neven lay aside logic, let us turn only to the facts and see what the facts\ntell us. If Smerdyakov killed him, how did he do it? Alone or with the\nassistance of the prisoner? Let us consider the first alternative--that he\ndid it alone. If he had killed him it must have been with some object, for\nsome advantage to himself. But not having a shadow of the motive that the\nprisoner had for the murder--hatred, jealousy, and so on--Smerdyakov could\nonly have murdered him for the sake of gain, in order to appropriate the\nthree thousand roubles he had seen his master put in the envelope. And yet\nhe tells another person--and a person most closely interested, that is, the\nprisoner--everything about the money and the signals, where the envelope\nlay, what was written on it, what it was tied up with, and, above all,\ntold him of those signals by which he could enter the house. Did he do\nthis simply to betray himself, or to invite to the same enterprise one who\nwould be anxious to get that envelope for himself? 'Yes,' I shall be told,\n'but he betrayed it from fear.' But how do you explain this? A man who\ncould conceive such an audacious, savage act, and carry it out, tells\nfacts which are known to no one else in the world, and which, if he held\nhis tongue, no one would ever have guessed!\n\n\"No, however cowardly he might be, if he had plotted such a crime, nothing\nwould have induced him to tell any one about the envelope and the signals,\nfor that was as good as betraying himself beforehand. He would have\ninvented something, he would have told some lie if he had been forced to\ngive information, but he would have been silent about that. For, on the\nother hand, if he had said nothing about the money, but had committed the\nmurder and stolen the money, no one in the world could have charged him\nwith murder for the sake of robbery, since no one but he had seen the\nmoney, no one but he knew of its existence in the house. Even if he had\nbeen accused of the murder, it could only have been thought that he had\ncommitted it from some other motive. But since no one had observed any\nsuch motive in him beforehand, and every one saw, on the contrary, that\nhis master was fond of him and honored him with his confidence, he would,\nof course, have been the last to be suspected. People would have suspected\nfirst the man who had a motive, a man who had himself declared he had such\nmotives, who had made no secret of it; they would, in fact, have suspected\nthe son of the murdered man, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Had Smerdyakov killed\nand robbed him, and the son been accused of it, that would, of course,\nhave suited Smerdyakov. Yet are we to believe that, though plotting the\nmurder, he told that son, Dmitri, about the money, the envelope, and the\nsignals? Is that logical? Is that clear?\n\n\"When the day of the murder planned by Smerdyakov came, we have him\nfalling downstairs in a _feigned_ fit--with what object? In the first place\nthat Grigory, who had been intending to take his medicine, might put it\noff and remain on guard, seeing there was no one to look after the house,\nand, in the second place, I suppose, that his master seeing that there was\nno one to guard him, and in terror of a visit from his son, might redouble\nhis vigilance and precaution. And, most of all, I suppose that he,\nSmerdyakov, disabled by the fit, might be carried from the kitchen, where\nhe always slept, apart from all the rest, and where he could go in and out\nas he liked, to Grigory's room at the other end of the lodge, where he was\nalways put, shut off by a screen three paces from their own bed. This was\nthe immemorial custom established by his master and the kind-hearted Marfa\nIgnatyevna, whenever he had a fit. There, lying behind the screen, he\nwould most likely, to keep up the sham, have begun groaning, and so\nkeeping them awake all night (as Grigory and his wife testified). And all\nthis, we are to believe, that he might more conveniently get up and murder\nhis master!\n\n\"But I shall be told that he shammed illness on purpose that he might not\nbe suspected and that he told the prisoner of the money and the signals to\ntempt him to commit the murder, and when he had murdered him and had gone\naway with the money, making a noise, most likely, and waking people,\nSmerdyakov got up, am I to believe, and went in--what for? To murder his\nmaster a second time and carry off the money that had already been stolen?\nGentlemen, are you laughing? I am ashamed to put forward such suggestions,\nbut, incredible as it seems, that's just what the prisoner alleges. When\nhe had left the house, had knocked Grigory down and raised an alarm, he\ntells us Smerdyakov got up, went in and murdered his master and stole the\nmoney! I won't press the point that Smerdyakov could hardly have reckoned\non this beforehand, and have foreseen that the furious and exasperated son\nwould simply come to peep in respectfully, though he knew the signals, and\nbeat a retreat, leaving Smerdyakov his booty. Gentlemen of the jury, I put\nthis question to you in earnest; when was the moment when Smerdyakov could\nhave committed his crime? Name that moment, or you can't accuse him.\n\n\"But, perhaps, the fit was a real one, the sick man suddenly recovered,\nheard a shout, and went out. Well--what then? He looked about him and said,\n'Why not go and kill the master?' And how did he know what had happened,\nsince he had been lying unconscious till that moment? But there's a limit\nto these flights of fancy.\n\n\" 'Quite so,' some astute people will tell me, 'but what if they were in\nagreement? What if they murdered him together and shared the money--what\nthen?' A weighty question, truly! And the facts to confirm it are\nastounding. One commits the murder and takes all the trouble while his\naccomplice lies on one side shamming a fit, apparently to arouse suspicion\nin every one, alarm in his master and alarm in Grigory. It would be\ninteresting to know what motives could have induced the two accomplices to\nform such an insane plan.\n\n\"But perhaps it was not a case of active complicity on Smerdyakov's part,\nbut only of passive acquiescence; perhaps Smerdyakov was intimidated and\nagreed not to prevent the murder, and foreseeing that he would be blamed\nfor letting his master be murdered, without screaming for help or\nresisting, he may have obtained permission from Dmitri Karamazov to get\nout of the way by shamming a fit--'you may murder him as you like; it's\nnothing to me.' But as this attack of Smerdyakov's was bound to throw the\nhousehold into confusion, Dmitri Karamazov could never have agreed to such\na plan. I will waive that point however. Supposing that he did agree, it\nwould still follow that Dmitri Karamazov is the murderer and the\ninstigator, and Smerdyakov is only a passive accomplice, and not even an\naccomplice, but merely acquiesced against his will through terror.\n\n\"But what do we see? As soon as he is arrested the prisoner instantly\nthrows all the blame on Smerdyakov, not accusing him of being his\naccomplice, but of being himself the murderer. 'He did it alone,' he says.\n'He murdered and robbed him. It was the work of his hands.' Strange sort\nof accomplices who begin to accuse one another at once! And think of the\nrisk for Karamazov. After committing the murder while his accomplice lay\nin bed, he throws the blame on the invalid, who might well have resented\nit and in self-preservation might well have confessed the truth. For he\nmight well have seen that the court would at once judge how far he was\nresponsible, and so he might well have reckoned that if he were punished,\nit would be far less severely than the real murderer. But in that case he\nwould have been certain to make a confession, yet he has not done so.\nSmerdyakov never hinted at their complicity, though the actual murderer\npersisted in accusing him and declaring that he had committed the crime\nalone.\n\n\"What's more, Smerdyakov at the inquiry volunteered the statement that it\nwas _he_ who had told the prisoner of the envelope of notes and of the\nsignals, and that, but for him, he would have known nothing about them. If\nhe had really been a guilty accomplice, would he so readily have made this\nstatement at the inquiry? On the contrary, he would have tried to conceal\nit, to distort the facts or minimize them. But he was far from distorting\nor minimizing them. No one but an innocent man, who had no fear of being\ncharged with complicity, could have acted as he did. And in a fit of\nmelancholy arising from his disease and this catastrophe he hanged himself\nyesterday. He left a note written in his peculiar language, 'I destroy\nmyself of my own will and inclination so as to throw no blame on any one.'\nWhat would it have cost him to add: 'I am the murderer, not Karamazov'?\nBut that he did not add. Did his conscience lead him to suicide and not to\navowing his guilt?\n\n\"And what followed? Notes for three thousand roubles were brought into the\ncourt just now, and we were told that they were the same that lay in the\nenvelope now on the table before us, and that the witness had received\nthem from Smerdyakov the day before. But I need not recall the painful\nscene, though I will make one or two comments, selecting such trivial ones\nas might not be obvious at first sight to every one, and so may be\noverlooked. In the first place, Smerdyakov must have given back the money\nand hanged himself yesterday from remorse. And only yesterday he confessed\nhis guilt to Ivan Karamazov, as the latter informs us. If it were not so,\nindeed, why should Ivan Fyodorovitch have kept silence till now? And so,\nif he has confessed, then why, I ask again, did he not avow the whole\ntruth in the last letter he left behind, knowing that the innocent\nprisoner had to face this terrible ordeal the next day?\n\n\"The money alone is no proof. A week ago, quite by chance, the fact came\nto the knowledge of myself and two other persons in this court that Ivan\nFyodorovitch had sent two five per cent. coupons of five thousand\neach--that is, ten thousand in all--to the chief town of the province to be\nchanged. I only mention this to point out that any one may have money, and\nthat it can't be proved that these notes are the same as were in Fyodor\nPavlovitch's envelope.\n\n\"Ivan Karamazov, after receiving yesterday a communication of such\nimportance from the real murderer, did not stir. Why didn't he report it\nat once? Why did he put it all off till morning? I think I have a right to\nconjecture why. His health had been giving way for a week past: he had\nadmitted to a doctor and to his most intimate friends that he was\nsuffering from hallucinations and seeing phantoms of the dead: he was on\nthe eve of the attack of brain fever by which he has been stricken down\nto-day. In this condition he suddenly heard of Smerdyakov's death, and at\nonce reflected, 'The man is dead, I can throw the blame on him and save my\nbrother. I have money. I will take a roll of notes and say that Smerdyakov\ngave them me before his death.' You will say that was dishonorable: it's\ndishonorable to slander even the dead, and even to save a brother. True,\nbut what if he slandered him unconsciously? What if, finally unhinged by\nthe sudden news of the valet's death, he imagined it really was so? You\nsaw the recent scene: you have seen the witness's condition. He was\nstanding up and was speaking, but where was his mind?\n\n\"Then followed the document, the prisoner's letter written two days before\nthe crime, and containing a complete program of the murder. Why, then, are\nwe looking for any other program? The crime was committed precisely\naccording to this program, and by no other than the writer of it. Yes,\ngentlemen of the jury, it went off without a hitch! He did not run\nrespectfully and timidly away from his father's window, though he was\nfirmly convinced that the object of his affections was with him. No, that\nis absurd and unlikely! He went in and murdered him. Most likely he killed\nhim in anger, burning with resentment, as soon as he looked on his hated\nrival. But having killed him, probably with one blow of the brass pestle,\nand having convinced himself, after careful search, that she was not\nthere, he did not, however, forget to put his hand under the pillow and\ntake out the envelope, the torn cover of which lies now on the table\nbefore us.\n\n\"I mention this fact that you may note one, to my thinking, very\ncharacteristic circumstance. Had he been an experienced murderer and had\nhe committed the murder for the sake of gain only, would he have left the\ntorn envelope on the floor as it was found, beside the corpse? Had it been\nSmerdyakov, for instance, murdering his master to rob him, he would have\nsimply carried away the envelope with him, without troubling himself to\nopen it over his victim's corpse, for he would have known for certain that\nthe notes were in the envelope--they had been put in and sealed up in his\npresence--and had he taken the envelope with him, no one would ever have\nknown of the robbery. I ask you, gentlemen, would Smerdyakov have behaved\nin that way? Would he have left the envelope on the floor?\n\n\"No, this was the action of a frantic murderer, a murderer who was not a\nthief and had never stolen before that day, who snatched the notes from\nunder the pillow, not like a thief stealing them, but as though seizing\nhis own property from the thief who had stolen it. For that was the idea\nwhich had become almost an insane obsession in Dmitri Karamazov in regard\nto that money. And pouncing upon the envelope, which he had never seen\nbefore, he tore it open to make sure whether the money was in it, and ran\naway with the money in his pocket, even forgetting to consider that he had\nleft an astounding piece of evidence against himself in that torn envelope\non the floor. All because it was Karamazov, not Smerdyakov, he didn't\nthink, he didn't reflect, and how should he? He ran away; he heard behind\nhim the servant cry out; the old man caught him, stopped him and was\nfelled to the ground by the brass pestle.\n\n\"The prisoner, moved by pity, leapt down to look at him. Would you believe\nit, he tells us that he leapt down out of pity, out of compassion, to see\nwhether he could do anything for him. Was that a moment to show\ncompassion? No; he jumped down simply to make certain whether the only\nwitness of his crime were dead or alive. Any other feeling, any other\nmotive would be unnatural. Note that he took trouble over Grigory, wiped\nhis head with his handkerchief and, convincing himself he was dead, he ran\nto the house of his mistress, dazed and covered with blood. How was it he\nnever thought that he was covered with blood and would be at once\ndetected? But the prisoner himself assures us that he did not even notice\nthat he was covered with blood. That may be believed, that is very\npossible, that always happens at such moments with criminals. On one point\nthey will show diabolical cunning, while another will escape them\naltogether. But he was thinking at that moment of one thing only--where was\n_she_? He wanted to find out at once where she was, so he ran to her\nlodging and learnt an unexpected and astounding piece of news--she had gone\noff to Mokroe to meet her first lover.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter IX. The Galloping Troika. The End Of The Prosecutor's Speech.\n\n\nIppolit Kirillovitch had chosen the historical method of exposition,\nbeloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on\ntheir own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into a\ndissertation on Grushenka's \"first lover,\" and brought forward several\ninteresting thoughts on this theme.\n\n\"Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of every one, collapsed, so\nto speak, and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What makes\nit all the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought of this\nformidable rival. But he had looked upon him as a remote danger, and\nKaramazov always lives in the present. Possibly he regarded him as a\nfiction. But his wounded heart grasped instantly that the woman had been\nconcealing this new rival and deceiving him, because he was anything but a\nfiction to her, because he was the one hope of her life. Grasping this\ninstantly, he resigned himself.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot help dwelling on this unexpected trait in\nthe prisoner's character. He suddenly evinces an irresistible desire for\njustice, a respect for woman and a recognition of her right to love. And\nall this at the very moment when he had stained his hands with his\nfather's blood for her sake! It is true that the blood he had shed was\nalready crying out for vengeance, for, after having ruined his soul and\nhis life in this world, he was forced to ask himself at that same instant\nwhat he was and what he could be now to her, to that being, dearer to him\nthan his own soul, in comparison with that former lover who had returned\npenitent, with new love, to the woman he had once betrayed, with honorable\noffers, with the promise of a reformed and happy life. And he, luckless\nman, what could he give her now, what could he offer her?\n\n\"Karamazov felt all this, knew that all ways were barred to him by his\ncrime and that he was a criminal under sentence, and not a man with life\nbefore him! This thought crushed him. And so he instantly flew to one\nfrantic plan, which, to a man of Karamazov's character, must have appeared\nthe one inevitable way out of his terrible position. That way out was\nsuicide. He ran for the pistols he had left in pledge with his friend\nPerhotin and on the way, as he ran, he pulled out of his pocket the money,\nfor the sake of which he had stained his hands with his father's gore. Oh,\nnow he needed money more than ever. Karamazov would die, Karamazov would\nshoot himself and it should be remembered! To be sure, he was a poet and\nhad burnt the candle at both ends all his life. 'To her, to her! and\nthere, oh, there I will give a feast to the whole world, such as never was\nbefore, that will be remembered and talked of long after! In the midst of\nshouts of wild merriment, reckless gypsy songs and dances I shall raise\nthe glass and drink to the woman I adore and her new-found happiness! And\nthen, on the spot, at her feet, I shall dash out my brains before her and\npunish myself! She will remember Mitya Karamazov sometimes, she will see\nhow Mitya loved her, she will feel for Mitya!'\n\n\"Here we see in excess a love of effect, a romantic despair and\nsentimentality, and the wild recklessness of the Karamazovs. Yes, but\nthere is something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out\nin the soul, throbs incessantly in the mind, and poisons the heart unto\ndeath--that _something_ is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, its judgment,\nits terrible torments! The pistol will settle everything, the pistol is\nthe only way out! But _beyond_--I don't know whether Karamazov wondered at\nthat moment 'What lies beyond,' and whether Karamazov could, like Hamlet,\nwonder 'What lies beyond.' No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their\nHamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!\"\n\nHere Ippolit Kirillovitch drew a minute picture of Mitya's preparations,\nthe scene at Perhotin's, at the shop, with the drivers. He quoted numerous\nwords and actions, confirmed by witnesses, and the picture made a terrible\nimpression on the audience. The guilt of this harassed and desperate man\nstood out clear and convincing, when the facts were brought together.\n\n\"What need had he of precaution? Two or three times he almost confessed,\nhinted at it, all but spoke out.\" (Then followed the evidence given by\nwitnesses.) \"He even cried out to the peasant who drove him, 'Do you know,\nyou are driving a murderer!' But it was impossible for him to speak out,\nhe had to get to Mokroe and there to finish his romance. But what was\nawaiting the luckless man? Almost from the first minute at Mokroe he saw\nthat his invincible rival was perhaps by no means so invincible, that the\ntoast to their new-found happiness was not desired and would not be\nacceptable. But you know the facts, gentlemen of the jury, from the\npreliminary inquiry. Karamazov's triumph over his rival was complete and\nhis soul passed into quite a new phase, perhaps the most terrible phase\nthrough which his soul has passed or will pass.\n\n\"One may say with certainty, gentlemen of the jury,\" the prosecutor\ncontinued, \"that outraged nature and the criminal heart bring their own\nvengeance more completely than any earthly justice. What's more, justice\nand punishment on earth positively alleviate the punishment of nature and\nare, indeed, essential to the soul of the criminal at such moments, as its\nsalvation from despair. For I cannot imagine the horror and moral\nsuffering of Karamazov when he learnt that she loved him, that for his\nsake she had rejected her first lover, that she was summoning him, Mitya,\nto a new life, that she was promising him happiness--and when? When\neverything was over for him and nothing was possible!\n\n\"By the way, I will note in parenthesis a point of importance for the\nlight it throws on the prisoner's position at the moment. This woman, this\nlove of his, had been till the last moment, till the very instant of his\narrest, a being unattainable, passionately desired by him but\nunattainable. Yet why did he not shoot himself then, why did he relinquish\nhis design and even forget where his pistol was? It was just that\npassionate desire for love and the hope of satisfying it that restrained\nhim. Throughout their revels he kept close to his adored mistress, who was\nat the banquet with him and was more charming and fascinating to him than\never--he did not leave her side, abasing himself in his homage before her.\n\n\"His passion might well, for a moment, stifle not only the fear of arrest,\nbut even the torments of conscience. For a moment, oh, only for a moment!\nI can picture the state of mind of the criminal hopelessly enslaved by\nthese influences--first, the influence of drink, of noise and excitement,\nof the thud of the dance and the scream of the song, and of her, flushed\nwith wine, singing and dancing and laughing to him! Secondly, the hope in\nthe background that the fatal end might still be far off, that not till\nnext morning, at least, they would come and take him. So he had a few\nhours and that's much, very much! In a few hours one can think of many\nthings. I imagine that he felt something like what criminals feel when\nthey are being taken to the scaffold. They have another long, long street\nto pass down and at walking pace, past thousands of people. Then there\nwill be a turning into another street and only at the end of that street\nthe dread place of execution! I fancy that at the beginning of the journey\nthe condemned man, sitting on his shameful cart, must feel that he has\ninfinite life still before him. The houses recede, the cart moves on--oh,\nthat's nothing, it's still far to the turning into the second street and\nhe still looks boldly to right and to left at those thousands of callously\ncurious people with their eyes fixed on him, and he still fancies that he\nis just such a man as they. But now the turning comes to the next street.\nOh, that's nothing, nothing, there's still a whole street before him, and\nhowever many houses have been passed, he will still think there are many\nleft. And so to the very end, to the very scaffold.\n\n\"This I imagine is how it was with Karamazov then. 'They've not had time\nyet,' he must have thought, 'I may still find some way out, oh, there's\nstill time to make some plan of defense, and now, now--she is so\nfascinating!'\n\n\"His soul was full of confusion and dread, but he managed, however, to put\naside half his money and hide it somewhere--I cannot otherwise explain the\ndisappearance of quite half of the three thousand he had just taken from\nhis father's pillow. He had been in Mokroe more than once before, he had\ncaroused there for two days together already, he knew the old big house\nwith all its passages and outbuildings. I imagine that part of the money\nwas hidden in that house, not long before the arrest, in some crevice,\nunder some floor, in some corner, under the roof. With what object? I\nshall be asked. Why, the catastrophe may take place at once, of course; he\nhadn't yet considered how to meet it, he hadn't the time, his head was\nthrobbing and his heart was with _her_, but money--money was indispensable\nin any case! With money a man is always a man. Perhaps such foresight at\nsuch a moment may strike you as unnatural? But he assures us himself that\na month before, at a critical and exciting moment, he had halved his money\nand sewn it up in a little bag. And though that was not true, as we shall\nprove directly, it shows the idea was a familiar one to Karamazov, he had\ncontemplated it. What's more, when he declared at the inquiry that he had\nput fifteen hundred roubles in a bag (which never existed) he may have\ninvented that little bag on the inspiration of the moment, because he had\ntwo hours before divided his money and hidden half of it at Mokroe till\nmorning, in case of emergency, simply not to have it on himself. Two\nextremes, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate\ntwo extremes and both at once.\n\n\"We have looked in the house, but we haven't found the money. It may still\nbe there or it may have disappeared next day and be in the prisoner's\nhands now. In any case he was at her side, on his knees before her, she\nwas lying on the bed, he had his hands stretched out to her and he had so\nentirely forgotten everything that he did not even hear the men coming to\narrest him. He hadn't time to prepare any line of defense in his mind. He\nwas caught unawares and confronted with his judges, the arbiters of his\ndestiny.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, there are moments in the execution of our duties\nwhen it is terrible for us to face a man, terrible on his account, too!\nThe moments of contemplating that animal fear, when the criminal sees that\nall is lost, but still struggles, still means to struggle, the moments\nwhen every instinct of self-preservation rises up in him at once and he\nlooks at you with questioning and suffering eyes, studies you, your face,\nyour thoughts, uncertain on which side you will strike, and his distracted\nmind frames thousands of plans in an instant, but he is still afraid to\nspeak, afraid of giving himself away! This purgatory of the spirit, this\nanimal thirst for self-preservation, these humiliating moments of the\nhuman soul, are awful, and sometimes arouse horror and compassion for the\ncriminal even in the lawyer. And this was what we all witnessed then.\n\n\"At first he was thunderstruck and in his terror dropped some very\ncompromising phrases. 'Blood! I've deserved it!' But he quickly restrained\nhimself. He had not prepared what he was to say, what answer he was to\nmake, he had nothing but a bare denial ready. 'I am not guilty of my\nfather's death.' That was his fence for the moment and behind it he hoped\nto throw up a barricade of some sort. His first compromising exclamations\nhe hastened to explain by declaring that he was responsible for the death\nof the servant Grigory only. 'Of that bloodshed I am guilty, but who has\nkilled my father, gentlemen, who has killed him? Who can have killed him,\n_if not I_?' Do you hear, he asked us that, us, who had come to ask him\nthat question! Do you hear that phrase uttered with such premature\nhaste--'if not I'--the animal cunning, the naivete, the Karamazov impatience\nof it? 'I didn't kill him and you mustn't think I did! I wanted to kill\nhim, gentlemen, I wanted to kill him,' he hastens to admit (he was in a\nhurry, in a terrible hurry), 'but still I am not guilty, it is not I\nmurdered him.' He concedes to us that he wanted to murder him, as though\nto say, you can see for yourselves how truthful I am, so you'll believe\nall the sooner that I didn't murder him. Oh, in such cases the criminal is\noften amazingly shallow and credulous.\n\n\"At that point one of the lawyers asked him, as it were incidentally, the\nmost simple question, 'Wasn't it Smerdyakov killed him?' Then, as we\nexpected, he was horribly angry at our having anticipated him and caught\nhim unawares, before he had time to pave the way to choose and snatch the\nmoment when it would be most natural to bring in Smerdyakov's name. He\nrushed at once to the other extreme, as he always does, and began to\nassure us that Smerdyakov could not have killed him, was not capable of\nit. But don't believe him, that was only his cunning; he didn't really\ngive up the idea of Smerdyakov; on the contrary, he meant to bring him\nforward again; for, indeed, he had no one else to bring forward, but he\nwould do that later, because for the moment that line was spoiled for him.\nHe would bring him forward perhaps next day, or even a few days later,\nchoosing an opportunity to cry out to us, 'You know I was more skeptical\nabout Smerdyakov than you, you remember that yourselves, but now I am\nconvinced. He killed him, he must have done!' And for the present he falls\nback upon a gloomy and irritable denial. Impatience and anger prompted\nhim, however, to the most inept and incredible explanation of how he\nlooked into his father's window and how he respectfully withdrew. The\nworst of it was that he was unaware of the position of affairs, of the\nevidence given by Grigory.\n\n\"We proceeded to search him. The search angered, but encouraged him, the\nwhole three thousand had not been found on him, only half of it. And no\ndoubt only at that moment of angry silence, the fiction of the little bag\nfirst occurred to him. No doubt he was conscious himself of the\nimprobability of the story and strove painfully to make it sound more\nlikely, to weave it into a romance that would sound plausible. In such\ncases the first duty, the chief task of the investigating lawyers, is to\nprevent the criminal being prepared, to pounce upon him unexpectedly so\nthat he may blurt out his cherished ideas in all their simplicity,\nimprobability and inconsistency. The criminal can only be made to speak by\nthe sudden and apparently incidental communication of some new fact, of\nsome circumstance of great importance in the case, of which he had no\nprevious idea and could not have foreseen. We had such a fact in\nreadiness--that was Grigory's evidence about the open door through which\nthe prisoner had run out. He had completely forgotten about that door and\nhad not even suspected that Grigory could have seen it.\n\n\"The effect of it was amazing. He leapt up and shouted to us, 'Then\nSmerdyakov murdered him, it was Smerdyakov!' and so betrayed the basis of\nthe defense he was keeping back, and betrayed it in its most improbable\nshape, for Smerdyakov could only have committed the murder after he had\nknocked Grigory down and run away. When we told him that Grigory saw the\ndoor was open before he fell down, and had heard Smerdyakov behind the\nscreen as he came out of his bedroom--Karamazov was positively crushed. My\nesteemed and witty colleague, Nikolay Parfenovitch, told me afterwards\nthat he was almost moved to tears at the sight of him. And to improve\nmatters, the prisoner hastened to tell us about the much-talked-of little\nbag--so be it, you shall hear this romance!\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, I have told you already why I consider this\nromance not only an absurdity, but the most improbable invention that\ncould have been brought forward in the circumstances. If one tried for a\nbet to invent the most unlikely story, one could hardly find anything more\nincredible. The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can\nalways be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real\nlife is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers\nneglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for\nsuch details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a\nwhole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's\nhow they are caught. The prisoner was asked the question, 'Where did you\nget the stuff for your little bag and who made it for you?' 'I made it\nmyself.' 'And where did you get the linen?' The prisoner was positively\noffended, he thought it almost insulting to ask him such a trivial\nquestion, and would you believe it, his resentment was genuine! But they\nare all like that. 'I tore it off my shirt.' 'Then we shall find that\nshirt among your linen to-morrow, with a piece torn off.' And only fancy,\ngentlemen of the jury, if we really had found that torn shirt (and how\ncould we have failed to find it in his chest of drawers or trunk?) that\nwould have been a fact, a material fact in support of his statement! But\nhe was incapable of that reflection. 'I don't remember, it may not have\nbeen off my shirt, I sewed it up in one of my landlady's caps.' 'What sort\nof a cap?' 'It was an old cotton rag of hers lying about.' 'And do you\nremember that clearly?' 'No, I don't.' And he was angry, very angry, and\nyet imagine not remembering it! At the most terrible moments of man's\nlife, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just\nsuch trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed\npast him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross--that he will remember. He\nconcealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must have\nremembered his humiliating fear that some one might come in and find him\nneedle in hand, how at the slightest sound he slipped behind the screen\n(there is a screen in his lodgings).\n\n\"But, gentlemen of the jury, why do I tell you all this, all these\ndetails, trifles?\" cried Ippolit Kirillovitch suddenly. \"Just because the\nprisoner still persists in these absurdities to this moment. He has not\nexplained anything since that fatal night two months ago, he has not added\none actual illuminating fact to his former fantastic statements; all those\nare trivialities. 'You must believe it on my honor.' Oh, we are glad to\nbelieve it, we are eager to believe it, even if only on his word of honor!\nAre we jackals thirsting for human blood? Show us a single fact in the\nprisoner's favor and we shall rejoice; but let it be a substantial, real\nfact, and not a conclusion drawn from the prisoner's expression by his own\nbrother, or that when he beat himself on the breast he must have meant to\npoint to the little bag, in the darkness, too. We shall rejoice at the new\nfact, we shall be the first to repudiate our charge, we shall hasten to\nrepudiate it. But now justice cries out and we persist, we cannot\nrepudiate anything.\"\n\nIppolit Kirillovitch passed to his final peroration. He looked as though\nhe was in a fever, he spoke of the blood that cried for vengeance, the\nblood of the father murdered by his son, with the base motive of robbery!\nHe pointed to the tragic and glaring consistency of the facts.\n\n\"And whatever you may hear from the talented and celebrated counsel for\nthe defense,\" Ippolit Kirillovitch could not resist adding, \"whatever\neloquent and touching appeals may be made to your sensibilities, remember\nthat at this moment you are in a temple of justice. Remember that you are\nthe champions of our justice, the champions of our holy Russia, of her\nprinciples, her family, everything that she holds sacred! Yes, you\nrepresent Russia here at this moment, and your verdict will be heard not\nin this hall only but will reecho throughout the whole of Russia, and all\nRussia will hear you, as her champions and her judges, and she will be\nencouraged or disheartened by your verdict. Do not disappoint Russia and\nher expectations. Our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight\nperhaps to destruction and in all Russia for long past men have stretched\nout imploring hands and called a halt to its furious reckless course. And\nif other nations stand aside from that troika that may be, not from\nrespect, as the poet would fain believe, but simply from horror. From\nhorror, perhaps from disgust. And well it is that they stand aside, but\nmaybe they will cease one day to do so and will form a firm wall\nconfronting the hurrying apparition and will check the frenzied rush of\nour lawlessness, for the sake of their own safety, enlightenment and\ncivilization. Already we have heard voices of alarm from Europe, they\nalready begin to sound. Do not tempt them! Do not heap up their growing\nhatred by a sentence justifying the murder of a father by his son!\"\n\nThough Ippolit Kirillovitch was genuinely moved, he wound up his speech\nwith this rhetorical appeal--and the effect produced by him was\nextraordinary. When he had finished his speech, he went out hurriedly and,\nas I have mentioned before, almost fainted in the adjoining room. There\nwas no applause in the court, but serious persons were pleased. The ladies\nwere not so well satisfied, though even they were pleased with his\neloquence, especially as they had no apprehensions as to the upshot of the\ntrial and had full trust in Fetyukovitch. \"He will speak at last and of\ncourse carry all before him.\"\n\nEvery one looked at Mitya; he sat silent through the whole of the\nprosecutor's speech, clenching his teeth, with his hands clasped, and his\nhead bowed. Only from time to time he raised his head and listened,\nespecially when Grushenka was spoken of. When the prosecutor mentioned\nRakitin's opinion of her, a smile of contempt and anger passed over his\nface and he murmured rather audibly, \"The Bernards!\" When Ippolit\nKirillovitch described how he had questioned and tortured him at Mokroe,\nMitya raised his head and listened with intense curiosity. At one point he\nseemed about to jump up and cry out, but controlled himself and only\nshrugged his shoulders disdainfully. People talked afterwards of the end\nof the speech, of the prosecutor's feat in examining the prisoner at\nMokroe, and jeered at Ippolit Kirillovitch. \"The man could not resist\nboasting of his cleverness,\" they said.\n\nThe court was adjourned, but only for a short interval, a quarter of an\nhour or twenty minutes at most. There was a hum of conversation and\nexclamations in the audience. I remember some of them.\n\n\"A weighty speech,\" a gentleman in one group observed gravely.\n\n\"He brought in too much psychology,\" said another voice.\n\n\"But it was all true, the absolute truth!\"\n\n\"Yes, he is first rate at it.\"\n\n\"He summed it all up.\"\n\n\"Yes, he summed us up, too,\" chimed in another voice. \"Do you remember, at\nthe beginning of his speech, making out we were all like Fyodor\nPavlovitch?\"\n\n\"And at the end, too. But that was all rot.\"\n\n\"And obscure too.\"\n\n\"He was a little too much carried away.\"\n\n\"It's unjust, it's unjust.\"\n\n\"No, it was smartly done, anyway. He's had long to wait, but he's had his\nsay, ha ha!\"\n\n\"What will the counsel for the defense say?\"\n\nIn another group I heard:\n\n\"He had no business to make a thrust at the Petersburg man like that;\n'appealing to your sensibilities'--do you remember?\"\n\n\"Yes, that was awkward of him.\"\n\n\"He was in too great a hurry.\"\n\n\"He is a nervous man.\"\n\n\"We laugh, but what must the prisoner be feeling?\"\n\n\"Yes, what must it be for Mitya?\"\n\nIn a third group:\n\n\"What lady is that, the fat one, with the lorgnette, sitting at the end?\"\n\n\"She is a general's wife, divorced, I know her.\"\n\n\"That's why she has the lorgnette.\"\n\n\"She is not good for much.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, she is a piquante little woman.\"\n\n\"Two places beyond her there is a little fair woman, she is prettier.\"\n\n\"They caught him smartly at Mokroe, didn't they, eh?\"\n\n\"Oh, it was smart enough. We've heard it before, how often he has told the\nstory at people's houses!\"\n\n\"And he couldn't resist doing it now. That's vanity.\"\n\n\"He is a man with a grievance, he he!\"\n\n\"Yes, and quick to take offense. And there was too much rhetoric, such\nlong sentences.\"\n\n\"Yes, he tries to alarm us, he kept trying to alarm us. Do you remember\nabout the troika? Something about 'They have Hamlets, but we have, so far,\nonly Karamazovs!' That was cleverly said!\"\n\n\"That was to propitiate the liberals. He is afraid of them.\"\n\n\"Yes, and he is afraid of the lawyer, too.\"\n\n\"Yes, what will Fetyukovitch say?\"\n\n\"Whatever he says, he won't get round our peasants.\"\n\n\"Don't you think so?\"\n\nA fourth group:\n\n\"What he said about the troika was good, that piece about the other\nnations.\"\n\n\"And that was true what he said about other nations not standing it.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Why, in the English Parliament a Member got up last week and speaking\nabout the Nihilists asked the Ministry whether it was not high time to\nintervene, to educate this barbarous people. Ippolit was thinking of him,\nI know he was. He was talking about that last week.\"\n\n\"Not an easy job.\"\n\n\"Not an easy job? Why not?\"\n\n\"Why, we'd shut up Kronstadt and not let them have any corn. Where would\nthey get it?\"\n\n\"In America. They get it from America now.\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\"\n\nBut the bell rang, all rushed to their places. Fetyukovitch mounted the\ntribune.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter X. The Speech For The Defense. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways\n\n\nAll was hushed as the first words of the famous orator rang out. The eyes\nof the audience were fastened upon him. He began very simply and directly,\nwith an air of conviction, but not the slightest trace of conceit. He made\nno attempt at eloquence, at pathos, or emotional phrases. He was like a\nman speaking in a circle of intimate and sympathetic friends. His voice\nwas a fine one, sonorous and sympathetic, and there was something genuine\nand simple in the very sound of it. But every one realized at once that\nthe speaker might suddenly rise to genuine pathos and \"pierce the heart\nwith untold power.\" His language was perhaps more irregular than Ippolit\nKirillovitch's, but he spoke without long phrases, and indeed, with more\nprecision. One thing did not please the ladies: he kept bending forward,\nespecially at the beginning of his speech, not exactly bowing, but as\nthough he were about to dart at his listeners, bending his long spine in\nhalf, as though there were a spring in the middle that enabled him to bend\nalmost at right angles.\n\nAt the beginning of his speech he spoke rather disconnectedly, without\nsystem, one may say, dealing with facts separately, though, at the end,\nthese facts formed a whole. His speech might be divided into two parts,\nthe first consisting of criticism in refutation of the charge, sometimes\nmalicious and sarcastic. But in the second half he suddenly changed his\ntone, and even his manner, and at once rose to pathos. The audience seemed\non the look-out for it, and quivered with enthusiasm.\n\nHe went straight to the point, and began by saying that although he\npracticed in Petersburg, he had more than once visited provincial towns to\ndefend prisoners, of whose innocence he had a conviction or at least a\npreconceived idea. \"That is what has happened to me in the present case,\"\nhe explained. \"From the very first accounts in the newspapers I was struck\nby something which strongly prepossessed me in the prisoner's favor. What\ninterested me most was a fact which often occurs in legal practice, but\nrarely, I think, in such an extreme and peculiar form as in the present\ncase. I ought to formulate that peculiarity only at the end of my speech,\nbut I will do so at the very beginning, for it is my weakness to go to\nwork directly, not keeping my effects in reserve and economizing my\nmaterial. That may be imprudent on my part, but at least it's sincere.\nWhat I have in my mind is this: there is an overwhelming chain of evidence\nagainst the prisoner, and at the same time not one fact that will stand\ncriticism, if it is examined separately. As I followed the case more\nclosely in the papers my idea was more and more confirmed, and I suddenly\nreceived from the prisoner's relatives a request to undertake his defense.\nI at once hurried here, and here I became completely convinced. It was to\nbreak down this terrible chain of facts, and to show that each piece of\nevidence taken separately was unproved and fantastic, that I undertook the\ncase.\"\n\nSo Fetyukovitch began.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury,\" he suddenly protested, \"I am new to this\ndistrict. I have no preconceived ideas. The prisoner, a man of turbulent\nand unbridled temper, has not insulted me. But he has insulted perhaps\nhundreds of persons in this town, and so prejudiced many people against\nhim beforehand. Of course I recognize that the moral sentiment of local\nsociety is justly excited against him. The prisoner is of turbulent and\nviolent temper. Yet he was received in society here; he was even welcome\nin the family of my talented friend, the prosecutor.\"\n\n(N.B. At these words there were two or three laughs in the audience,\nquickly suppressed, but noticed by all. All of us knew that the prosecutor\nreceived Mitya against his will, solely because he had somehow interested\nhis wife--a lady of the highest virtue and moral worth, but fanciful,\ncapricious, and fond of opposing her husband, especially in trifles.\nMitya's visits, however, had not been frequent.)\n\n\"Nevertheless I venture to suggest,\" Fetyukovitch continued, \"that in\nspite of his independent mind and just character, my opponent may have\nformed a mistaken prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that is so\nnatural; the unfortunate man has only too well deserved such prejudice.\nOutraged morality, and still more outraged taste, is often relentless. We\nhave, in the talented prosecutor's speech, heard a stern analysis of the\nprisoner's character and conduct, and his severe critical attitude to the\ncase was evident. And, what's more, he went into psychological subtleties\ninto which he could not have entered, if he had the least conscious and\nmalicious prejudice against the prisoner. But there are things which are\neven worse, even more fatal in such cases, than the most malicious and\nconsciously unfair attitude. It is worse if we are carried away by the\nartistic instinct, by the desire to create, so to speak, a romance,\nespecially if God has endowed us with psychological insight. Before I\nstarted on my way here, I was warned in Petersburg, and was myself aware,\nthat I should find here a talented opponent whose psychological insight\nand subtlety had gained him peculiar renown in legal circles of recent\nyears. But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways.\"\n(Laughter among the public.) \"You will, of course, forgive me my\ncomparison; I can't boast of eloquence. But I will take as an example any\npoint in the prosecutor's speech.\n\n\"The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the\nfence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass\npestle. Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five minutes over\nthe man, trying to discover whether he had killed him or not. And the\nprosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner's statement that he ran to old\nGrigory out of pity. 'No,' he says, 'such sensibility is impossible at\nsuch a moment, that's unnatural; he ran to find out whether the only\nwitness of his crime was dead or alive, and so showed that he had\ncommitted the murder, since he would not have run back for any other\nreason.'\n\n\"Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it to\nthe case the other way round, and our result will be no less probable. The\nmurderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a precaution, whether\nthe witness was alive or not, yet he had left in his murdered father's\nstudy, as the prosecutor himself argues, an amazing piece of evidence in\nthe shape of a torn envelope, with an inscription that there had been\nthree thousand roubles in it. 'If he had carried that envelope away with\nhim, no one in the world would have known of that envelope and of the\nnotes in it, and that the money had been stolen by the prisoner.' Those\nare the prosecutor's own words. So on one side you see a complete absence\nof precaution, a man who has lost his head and run away in a fright,\nleaving that clew on the floor, and two minutes later, when he has killed\nanother man, we are entitled to assume the most heartless and calculating\nforesight in him. But even admitting this was so, it is psychological\nsubtlety, I suppose, that discerns that under certain circumstances I\nbecome as bloodthirsty and keen-sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at the\nnext I am as timid and blind as a mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty and\ncruelly calculating that when I kill a man I only run back to find out\nwhether he is alive to witness against me, why should I spend five minutes\nlooking after my victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why\nsoak my handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may be\nevidence against me later? If he were so cold-hearted and calculating, why\nnot hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle so as\nto kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the witness?\n\n\"Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left\nanother witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from the\ntwo women, and which they could always recognize afterwards as theirs, and\nprove that he had taken it from them. And it is not as though he had\nforgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness or haste, no, he\nhad flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen paces from where\nGrigory lay. Why did he do so? Just because he was grieved at having\nkilled a man, an old servant; and he flung away the pestle with a curse,\nas a murderous weapon. That's how it must have been, what other reason\ncould he have had for throwing it so far? And if he was capable of feeling\ngrief and pity at having killed a man, it shows that he was innocent of\nhis father's murder. Had he murdered him, he would never have run to\nanother victim out of pity; then he would have felt differently; his\nthoughts would have been centered on self-preservation. He would have had\nnone to spare for pity, that is beyond doubt. On the contrary, he would\nhave broken his skull instead of spending five minutes looking after him.\nThere was room for pity and good-feeling just because his conscience had\nbeen clear till then. Here we have a different psychology. I have\npurposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you\ncan prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use of it.\nPsychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite\nunconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen.\"\n\nSounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were\nagain audible in the court. I will not repeat the speech in detail; I will\nonly quote some passages from it, some leading points.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter XI. There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery\n\n\nThere was one point that struck every one in Fetyukovitch's speech. He\nflatly denied the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and\nconsequently, the possibility of their having been stolen.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury,\" he began. \"Every new and unprejudiced observer\nmust be struck by a characteristic peculiarity in the present case,\nnamely, the charge of robbery, and the complete impossibility of proving\nthat there was anything to be stolen. We are told that money was\nstolen--three thousand roubles--but whether those roubles ever existed,\nnobody knows. Consider, how have we heard of that sum, and who has seen\nthe notes? The only person who saw them, and stated that they had been put\nin the envelope, was the servant, Smerdyakov. He had spoken of it to the\nprisoner and his brother, Ivan Fyodorovitch, before the catastrophe.\nMadame Svyetlov, too, had been told of it. But not one of these three\npersons had actually seen the notes, no one but Smerdyakov had seen them.\n\n\"Here the question arises, if it's true that they did exist, and that\nSmerdyakov had seen them, when did he see them for the last time? What if\nhis master had taken the notes from under his bed and put them back in his\ncash-box without telling him? Note, that according to Smerdyakov's story\nthe notes were kept under the mattress; the prisoner must have pulled them\nout, and yet the bed was absolutely unrumpled; that is carefully recorded\nin the protocol. How could the prisoner have found the notes without\ndisturbing the bed? How could he have helped soiling with his blood-\nstained hands the fine and spotless linen with which the bed had been\npurposely made?\n\n\"But I shall be asked: What about the envelope on the floor? Yes, it's\nworth saying a word or two about that envelope. I was somewhat surprised\njust now to hear the highly talented prosecutor declare of himself--of\nhimself, observe--that but for that envelope, but for its being left on the\nfloor, no one in the world would have known of the existence of that\nenvelope and the notes in it, and therefore of the prisoner's having\nstolen it. And so that torn scrap of paper is, by the prosecutor's own\nadmission, the sole proof on which the charge of robbery rests, 'otherwise\nno one would have known of the robbery, nor perhaps even of the money.'\nBut is the mere fact that that scrap of paper was lying on the floor a\nproof that there was money in it, and that that money had been stolen?\nYet, it will be objected, Smerdyakov had seen the money in the envelope.\nBut when, when had he seen it for the last time, I ask you that? I talked\nto Smerdyakov, and he told me that he had seen the notes two days before\nthe catastrophe. Then why not imagine that old Fyodor Pavlovitch, locked\nup alone in impatient and hysterical expectation of the object of his\nadoration, may have whiled away the time by breaking open the envelope and\ntaking out the notes. 'What's the use of the envelope?' he may have asked\nhimself. 'She won't believe the notes are there, but when I show her the\nthirty rainbow-colored notes in one roll, it will make more impression,\nyou may be sure, it will make her mouth water.' And so he tears open the\nenvelope, takes out the money, and flings the envelope on the floor,\nconscious of being the owner and untroubled by any fears of leaving\nevidence.\n\n\"Listen, gentlemen, could anything be more likely than this theory and\nsuch an action? Why is it out of the question? But if anything of the sort\ncould have taken place, the charge of robbery falls to the ground; if\nthere was no money, there was no theft of it. If the envelope on the floor\nmay be taken as evidence that there had been money in it, why may I not\nmaintain the opposite, that the envelope was on the floor because the\nmoney had been taken from it by its owner?\n\n\"But I shall be asked what became of the money if Fyodor Pavlovitch took\nit out of the envelope since it was not found when the police searched the\nhouse? In the first place, part of the money was found in the cash-box,\nand secondly, he might have taken it out that morning or the evening\nbefore to make some other use of it, to give or send it away; he may have\nchanged his idea, his plan of action completely, without thinking it\nnecessary to announce the fact to Smerdyakov beforehand. And if there is\nthe barest possibility of such an explanation, how can the prisoner be so\npositively accused of having committed murder for the sake of robbery, and\nof having actually carried out that robbery? This is encroaching on the\ndomain of romance. If it is maintained that something has been stolen, the\nthing must be produced, or at least its existence must be proved beyond\ndoubt. Yet no one had ever seen these notes.\n\n\"Not long ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen, hardly more than a\nboy, who carried on a small business as a costermonger, went in broad\ndaylight into a moneychanger's shop with an ax, and with extraordinary,\ntypical audacity killed the master of the shop and carried off fifteen\nhundred roubles. Five hours later he was arrested, and, except fifteen\nroubles he had already managed to spend, the whole sum was found on him.\nMoreover, the shopman, on his return to the shop after the murder,\ninformed the police not only of the exact sum stolen, but even of the\nnotes and gold coins of which that sum was made up, and those very notes\nand coins were found on the criminal. This was followed by a full and\ngenuine confession on the part of the murderer. That's what I call\nevidence, gentlemen of the jury! In that case I know, I see, I touch the\nmoney, and cannot deny its existence. Is it the same in the present case?\nAnd yet it is a question of life and death.\n\n\"Yes, I shall be told, but he was carousing that night, squandering money;\nhe was shown to have had fifteen hundred roubles--where did he get the\nmoney? But the very fact that only fifteen hundred could be found, and the\nother half of the sum could nowhere be discovered, shows that that money\nwas not the same, and had never been in any envelope. By strict\ncalculation of time it was proved at the preliminary inquiry that the\nprisoner ran straight from those women servants to Perhotin's without\ngoing home, and that he had been nowhere. So he had been all the time in\ncompany and therefore could not have divided the three thousand in half\nand hidden half in the town. It's just this consideration that has led the\nprosecutor to assume that the money is hidden in some crevice at Mokroe.\nWhy not in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho, gentlemen? Isn't this\nsupposition really too fantastic and too romantic? And observe, if that\nsupposition breaks down, the whole charge of robbery is scattered to the\nwinds, for in that case what could have become of the other fifteen\nhundred roubles? By what miracle could they have disappeared, since it's\nproved the prisoner went nowhere else? And we are ready to ruin a man's\nlife with such tales!\n\n\"I shall be told that he could not explain where he got the fifteen\nhundred that he had, and every one knew that he was without money before\nthat night. Who knew it, pray? The prisoner has made a clear and\nunflinching statement of the source of that money, and if you will have it\nso, gentlemen of the jury, nothing can be more probable than that\nstatement, and more consistent with the temper and spirit of the prisoner.\nThe prosecutor is charmed with his own romance. A man of weak will, who\nhad brought himself to take the three thousand so insultingly offered by\nhis betrothed, could not, we are told, have set aside half and sewn it up,\nbut would, even if he had done so, have unpicked it every two days and\ntaken out a hundred, and so would have spent it all in a month. All this,\nyou will remember, was put forward in a tone that brooked no\ncontradiction. But what if the thing happened quite differently? What if\nyou've been weaving a romance, and about quite a different kind of man?\nThat's just it, you have invented quite a different man!\n\n\"I shall be told, perhaps, there are witnesses that he spent on one day\nall that three thousand given him by his betrothed a month before the\ncatastrophe, so he could not have divided the sum in half. But who are\nthese witnesses? The value of their evidence has been shown in court\nalready. Besides, in another man's hand a crust always seems larger, and\nno one of these witnesses counted that money; they all judged simply at\nsight. And the witness Maximov has testified that the prisoner had twenty\nthousand in his hand. You see, gentlemen of the jury, psychology is a two-\nedged weapon. Let me turn the other edge now and see what comes of it.\n\n\"A month before the catastrophe the prisoner was entrusted by Katerina\nIvanovna with three thousand roubles to send off by post. But the question\nis: is it true that they were entrusted to him in such an insulting and\ndegrading way as was proclaimed just now? The first statement made by the\nyoung lady on the subject was different, perfectly different. In the\nsecond statement we heard only cries of resentment and revenge, cries of\nlong-concealed hatred. And the very fact that the witness gave her first\nevidence incorrectly, gives us a right to conclude that her second piece\nof evidence may have been incorrect also. The prosecutor will not, dare\nnot (his own words) touch on that story. So be it. I will not touch on it\neither, but will only venture to observe that if a lofty and high-\nprincipled person, such as that highly respected young lady unquestionably\nis, if such a person, I say, allows herself suddenly in court to\ncontradict her first statement, with the obvious motive of ruining the\nprisoner, it is clear that this evidence has been given not impartially,\nnot coolly. Have not we the right to assume that a revengeful woman might\nhave exaggerated much? Yes, she may well have exaggerated, in particular,\nthe insult and humiliation of her offering him the money. No, it was\noffered in such a way that it was possible to take it, especially for a\nman so easy-going as the prisoner, above all, as he expected to receive\nshortly from his father the three thousand roubles that he reckoned was\nowing to him. It was unreflecting of him, but it was just his\nirresponsible want of reflection that made him so confident that his\nfather would give him the money, that he would get it, and so could always\ndispatch the money entrusted to him and repay the debt.\n\n\"But the prosecutor refuses to allow that he could the same day have set\naside half the money and sewn it up in a little bag. That's not his\ncharacter, he tells us, he couldn't have had such feelings. But yet he\ntalked himself of the broad Karamazov nature; he cried out about the two\nextremes which a Karamazov can contemplate at once. Karamazov is just such\na two-sided nature, fluctuating between two extremes, that even when moved\nby the most violent craving for riotous gayety, he can pull himself up, if\nsomething strikes him on the other side. And on the other side is\nlove--that new love which had flamed up in his heart, and for that love he\nneeded money; oh, far more than for carousing with his mistress. If she\nwere to say to him, 'I am yours, I won't have Fyodor Pavlovitch,' then he\nmust have money to take her away. That was more important than carousing.\nCould a Karamazov fail to understand it? That anxiety was just what he was\nsuffering from--what is there improbable in his laying aside that money and\nconcealing it in case of emergency?\n\n\"But time passed, and Fyodor Pavlovitch did not give the prisoner the\nexpected three thousand; on the contrary, the latter heard that he meant\nto use this sum to seduce the woman he, the prisoner, loved. 'If Fyodor\nPavlovitch doesn't give the money,' he thought, 'I shall be put in the\nposition of a thief before Katerina Ivanovna.' And then the idea presented\nitself to him that he would go to Katerina Ivanovna, lay before her the\nfifteen hundred roubles he still carried round his neck, and say, 'I am a\nscoundrel, but not a thief.' So here we have already a twofold reason why\nhe should guard that sum of money as the apple of his eye, why he\nshouldn't unpick the little bag, and spend it a hundred at a time. Why\nshould you deny the prisoner a sense of honor? Yes, he has a sense of\nhonor, granted that it's misplaced, granted it's often mistaken, yet it\nexists and amounts to a passion, and he has proved that.\n\n\"But now the affair becomes even more complex; his jealous torments reach\na climax, and those same two questions torture his fevered brain more and\nmore: 'If I repay Katerina Ivanovna, where can I find the means to go off\nwith Grushenka?' If he behaved wildly, drank, and made disturbances in the\ntaverns in the course of that month, it was perhaps because he was\nwretched and strained beyond his powers of endurance. These two questions\nbecame so acute that they drove him at last to despair. He sent his\nyounger brother to beg for the last time for the three thousand roubles,\nbut without waiting for a reply, burst in himself and ended by beating the\nold man in the presence of witnesses. After that he had no prospect of\ngetting it from any one; his father would not give it him after that\nbeating.\n\n\"The same evening he struck himself on the breast, just on the upper part\nof the breast where the little bag was, and swore to his brother that he\nhad the means of not being a scoundrel, but that still he would remain a\nscoundrel, for he foresaw that he would not use that means, that he\nwouldn't have the character, that he wouldn't have the will-power to do\nit. Why, why does the prosecutor refuse to believe the evidence of Alexey\nKaramazov, given so genuinely and sincerely, so spontaneously and\nconvincingly? And why, on the contrary, does he force me to believe in\nmoney hidden in a crevice, in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho?\n\n\"The same evening, after his talk with his brother, the prisoner wrote\nthat fatal letter, and that letter is the chief, the most stupendous proof\nof the prisoner having committed robbery! 'I shall beg from every one, and\nif I don't get it I shall murder my father and shall take the envelope\nwith the pink ribbon on it from under his mattress as soon as Ivan has\ngone.' A full program of the murder, we are told, so it must have been he.\n'It has all been done as he wrote,' cries the prosecutor.\n\n\"But in the first place, it's the letter of a drunken man and written in\ngreat irritation; secondly, he writes of the envelope from what he has\nheard from Smerdyakov again, for he has not seen the envelope himself; and\nthirdly, he wrote it indeed, but how can you prove that he did it? Did the\nprisoner take the envelope from under the pillow, did he find the money,\ndid that money exist indeed? And was it to get money that the prisoner ran\noff, if you remember? He ran off post-haste not to steal, but to find out\nwhere she was, the woman who had crushed him. He was not running to carry\nout a program, to carry out what he had written, that is, not for an act\nof premeditated robbery, but he ran suddenly, spontaneously, in a jealous\nfury. Yes! I shall be told, but when he got there and murdered him he\nseized the money, too. But did he murder him after all? The charge of\nrobbery I repudiate with indignation. A man cannot be accused of robbery,\nif it's impossible to state accurately what he has stolen; that's an\naxiom. But did he murder him without robbery, did he murder him at all? Is\nthat proved? Isn't that, too, a romance?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter XII. And There Was No Murder Either\n\n\n\"Allow me, gentlemen of the jury, to remind you that a man's life is at\nstake and that you must be careful. We have heard the prosecutor himself\nadmit that until to-day he hesitated to accuse the prisoner of a full and\nconscious premeditation of the crime; he hesitated till he saw that fatal\ndrunken letter which was produced in court to-day. 'All was done as\nwritten.' But, I repeat again, he was running to her, to seek her, solely\nto find out where she was. That's a fact that can't be disputed. Had she\nbeen at home, he would not have run away, but would have remained at her\nside, and so would not have done what he promised in the letter. He ran\nunexpectedly and accidentally, and by that time very likely he did not\neven remember his drunken letter. 'He snatched up the pestle,' they say,\nand you will remember how a whole edifice of psychology was built on that\npestle--why he was bound to look at that pestle as a weapon, to snatch it\nup, and so on, and so on. A very commonplace idea occurs to me at this\npoint: What if that pestle had not been in sight, had not been lying on\nthe shelf from which it was snatched by the prisoner, but had been put\naway in a cupboard? It would not have caught the prisoner's eye, and he\nwould have run away without a weapon, with empty hands, and then he would\ncertainly not have killed any one. How then can I look upon the pestle as\na proof of premeditation?\n\n\"Yes, but he talked in the taverns of murdering his father, and two days\nbefore, on the evening when he wrote his drunken letter, he was quiet and\nonly quarreled with a shopman in the tavern, because a Karamazov could not\nhelp quarreling, forsooth! But my answer to that is, that, if he was\nplanning such a murder in accordance with his letter, he certainly would\nnot have quarreled even with a shopman, and probably would not have gone\ninto the tavern at all, because a person plotting such a crime seeks quiet\nand retirement, seeks to efface himself, to avoid being seen and heard,\nand that not from calculation, but from instinct. Gentlemen of the jury,\nthe psychological method is a two-edged weapon, and we, too, can use it.\nAs for all this shouting in taverns throughout the month, don't we often\nhear children, or drunkards coming out of taverns shout, 'I'll kill you'?\nbut they don't murder any one. And that fatal letter--isn't that simply\ndrunken irritability, too? Isn't that simply the shout of the brawler\noutside the tavern, 'I'll kill you! I'll kill the lot of you!' Why not,\nwhy could it not be that? What reason have we to call that letter 'fatal'\nrather than absurd? Because his father has been found murdered, because a\nwitness saw the prisoner running out of the garden with a weapon in his\nhand, and was knocked down by him: therefore, we are told, everything was\ndone as he had planned in writing, and the letter was not 'absurd,' but\n'fatal.'\n\n\"Now, thank God! we've come to the real point: 'since he was in the\ngarden, he must have murdered him.' In those few words: 'since he _was_,\nthen he _must_' lies the whole case for the prosecution. He was there, so\nhe must have. And what if there is no _must_ about it, even if he was\nthere? Oh, I admit that the chain of evidence--the coincidences--are really\nsuggestive. But examine all these facts separately, regardless of their\nconnection. Why, for instance, does the prosecution refuse to admit the\ntruth of the prisoner's statement that he ran away from his father's\nwindow? Remember the sarcasms in which the prosecutor indulged at the\nexpense of the respectful and 'pious' sentiments which suddenly came over\nthe murderer. But what if there were something of the sort, a feeling of\nreligious awe, if not of filial respect? 'My mother must have been praying\nfor me at that moment,' were the prisoner's words at the preliminary\ninquiry, and so he ran away as soon as he convinced himself that Madame\nSvyetlov was not in his father's house. 'But he could not convince himself\nby looking through the window,' the prosecutor objects. But why couldn't\nhe? Why? The window opened at the signals given by the prisoner. Some word\nmight have been uttered by Fyodor Pavlovitch, some exclamation which\nshowed the prisoner that she was not there. Why should we assume\neverything as we imagine it, as we make up our minds to imagine it? A\nthousand things may happen in reality which elude the subtlest\nimagination.\n\n\" 'Yes, but Grigory saw the door open and so the prisoner certainly was in\nthe house, therefore he killed him.' Now about that door, gentlemen of the\njury.... Observe that we have only the statement of one witness as to that\ndoor, and he was at the time in such a condition, that-- But supposing the\ndoor was open; supposing the prisoner has lied in denying it, from an\ninstinct of self-defense, natural in his position; supposing he did go\ninto the house--well, what then? How does it follow that because he was\nthere he committed the murder? He might have dashed in, run through the\nrooms; might have pushed his father away; might have struck him; but as\nsoon as he had made sure Madame Svyetlov was not there, he may have run\naway rejoicing that she was not there and that he had not killed his\nfather. And it was perhaps just because he had escaped from the temptation\nto kill his father, because he had a clear conscience and was rejoicing at\nnot having killed him, that he was capable of a pure feeling, the feeling\nof pity and compassion, and leapt off the fence a minute later to the\nassistance of Grigory after he had, in his excitement, knocked him down.\n\n\"With terrible eloquence the prosecutor has described to us the dreadful\nstate of the prisoner's mind at Mokroe when love again lay before him\ncalling him to new life, while love was impossible for him because he had\nhis father's bloodstained corpse behind him and beyond that\ncorpse--retribution. And yet the prosecutor allowed him love, which he\nexplained, according to his method, talking about his drunken condition,\nabout a criminal being taken to execution, about it being still far off,\nand so on and so on. But again I ask, Mr. Prosecutor, have you not\ninvented a new personality? Is the prisoner so coarse and heartless as to\nbe able to think at that moment of love and of dodges to escape\npunishment, if his hands were really stained with his father's blood? No,\nno, no! As soon as it was made plain to him that she loved him and called\nhim to her side, promising him new happiness, oh! then, I protest he must\nhave felt the impulse to suicide doubled, trebled, and must have killed\nhimself, if he had his father's murder on his conscience. Oh, no! he would\nnot have forgotten where his pistols lay! I know the prisoner: the savage,\nstony heartlessness ascribed to him by the prosecutor is inconsistent with\nhis character. He would have killed himself, that's certain. He did not\nkill himself just because 'his mother's prayers had saved him,' and he was\ninnocent of his father's blood. He was troubled, he was grieving that\nnight at Mokroe only about old Grigory and praying to God that the old man\nwould recover, that his blow had not been fatal, and that he would not\nhave to suffer for it. Why not accept such an interpretation of the facts?\nWhat trustworthy proof have we that the prisoner is lying?\n\n\"But we shall be told at once again, 'There is his father's corpse! If he\nran away without murdering him, who did murder him?' Here, I repeat, you\nhave the whole logic of the prosecution. Who murdered him, if not he?\nThere's no one to put in his place.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, is that really so? Is it positively, actually true\nthat there is no one else at all? We've heard the prosecutor count on his\nfingers all the persons who were in that house that night. They were five\nin number; three of them, I agree, could not have been responsible--the\nmurdered man himself, old Grigory, and his wife. There are left then the\nprisoner and Smerdyakov, and the prosecutor dramatically exclaims that the\nprisoner pointed to Smerdyakov because he had no one else to fix on, that\nhad there been a sixth person, even a phantom of a sixth person, he would\nhave abandoned the charge against Smerdyakov at once in shame and have\naccused that other. But, gentlemen of the jury, why may I not draw the\nvery opposite conclusion? There are two persons--the prisoner and\nSmerdyakov. Why can I not say that you accuse my client, simply because\nyou have no one else to accuse? And you have no one else only because you\nhave determined to exclude Smerdyakov from all suspicion.\n\n\"It's true, indeed, Smerdyakov is accused only by the prisoner, his two\nbrothers, and Madame Svyetlov. But there are others who accuse him: there\nare vague rumors of a question, of a suspicion, an obscure report, a\nfeeling of expectation. Finally, we have the evidence of a combination of\nfacts very suggestive, though, I admit, inconclusive. In the first place\nwe have precisely on the day of the catastrophe that fit, for the\ngenuineness of which the prosecutor, for some reason, has felt obliged to\nmake a careful defense. Then Smerdyakov's sudden suicide on the eve of the\ntrial. Then the equally startling evidence given in court to-day by the\nelder of the prisoner's brothers, who had believed in his guilt, but has\nto-day produced a bundle of notes and proclaimed Smerdyakov as the\nmurderer. Oh, I fully share the court's and the prosecutor's conviction\nthat Ivan Karamazov is suffering from brain fever, that his statement may\nreally be a desperate effort, planned in delirium, to save his brother by\nthrowing the guilt on the dead man. But again Smerdyakov's name is\npronounced, again there is a suggestion of mystery. There is something\nunexplained, incomplete. And perhaps it may one day be explained. But we\nwon't go into that now. Of that later.\n\n\"The court has resolved to go on with the trial, but, meantime, I might\nmake a few remarks about the character-sketch of Smerdyakov drawn with\nsubtlety and talent by the prosecutor. But while I admire his talent I\ncannot agree with him. I have visited Smerdyakov, I have seen him and\ntalked to him, and he made a very different impression on me. He was weak\nin health, it is true; but in character, in spirit, he was by no means the\nweak man the prosecutor has made him out to be. I found in him no trace of\nthe timidity on which the prosecutor so insisted. There was no simplicity\nabout him, either. I found in him, on the contrary, an extreme\nmistrustfulness concealed under a mask of _naivete_, and an intelligence\nof considerable range. The prosecutor was too simple in taking him for\nweak-minded. He made a very definite impression on me: I left him with the\nconviction that he was a distinctly spiteful creature, excessively\nambitious, vindictive, and intensely envious. I made some inquiries: he\nresented his parentage, was ashamed of it, and would clench his teeth when\nhe remembered that he was the son of 'stinking Lizaveta.' He was\ndisrespectful to the servant Grigory and his wife, who had cared for him\nin his childhood. He cursed and jeered at Russia. He dreamed of going to\nFrance and becoming a Frenchman. He used often to say that he hadn't the\nmeans to do so. I fancy he loved no one but himself and had a strangely\nhigh opinion of himself. His conception of culture was limited to good\nclothes, clean shirt-fronts and polished boots. Believing himself to be\nthe illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovitch (there is evidence of this), he\nmight well have resented his position, compared with that of his master's\nlegitimate sons. They had everything, he nothing. They had all the rights,\nthey had the inheritance, while he was only the cook. He told me himself\nthat he had helped Fyodor Pavlovitch to put the notes in the envelope. The\ndestination of that sum--a sum which would have made his career--must have\nbeen hateful to him. Moreover, he saw three thousand roubles in new\nrainbow-colored notes. (I asked him about that on purpose.) Oh, beware of\nshowing an ambitious and envious man a large sum of money at once! And it\nwas the first time he had seen so much money in the hands of one man. The\nsight of the rainbow-colored notes may have made a morbid impression on\nhis imagination, but with no immediate results.\n\n\"The talented prosecutor, with extraordinary subtlety, sketched for us all\nthe arguments for and against the hypothesis of Smerdyakov's guilt, and\nasked us in particular what motive he had in feigning a fit. But he may\nnot have been feigning at all, the fit may have happened quite naturally,\nbut it may have passed off quite naturally, and the sick man may have\nrecovered, not completely perhaps, but still regaining consciousness, as\nhappens with epileptics.\n\n\"The prosecutor asks at what moment could Smerdyakov have committed the\nmurder. But it is very easy to point out that moment. He might have waked\nup from deep sleep (for he was only asleep--an epileptic fit is always\nfollowed by a deep sleep) at that moment when the old Grigory shouted at\nthe top of his voice 'Parricide!' That shout in the dark and stillness may\nhave waked Smerdyakov whose sleep may have been less sound at the moment:\nhe might naturally have waked up an hour before.\n\n\"Getting out of bed, he goes almost unconsciously and with no definite\nmotive towards the sound to see what's the matter. His head is still\nclouded with his attack, his faculties are half asleep; but, once in the\ngarden, he walks to the lighted windows and he hears terrible news from\nhis master, who would be, of course, glad to see him. His mind sets to\nwork at once. He hears all the details from his frightened master, and\ngradually in his disordered brain there shapes itself an idea--terrible,\nbut seductive and irresistibly logical. To kill the old man, take the\nthree thousand, and throw all the blame on to his young master. A terrible\nlust of money, of booty, might seize upon him as he realized his security\nfrom detection. Oh! these sudden and irresistible impulses come so often\nwhen there is a favorable opportunity, and especially with murderers who\nhave had no idea of committing a murder beforehand. And Smerdyakov may\nhave gone in and carried out his plan. With what weapon? Why, with any\nstone picked up in the garden. But what for, with what object? Why, the\nthree thousand which means a career for him. Oh, I am not contradicting\nmyself--the money may have existed. And perhaps Smerdyakov alone knew where\nto find it, where his master kept it. And the covering of the money--the\ntorn envelope on the floor?\n\n\"Just now, when the prosecutor was explaining his subtle theory that only\nan inexperienced thief like Karamazov would have left the envelope on the\nfloor, and not one like Smerdyakov, who would have avoided leaving a piece\nof evidence against himself, I thought as I listened that I was hearing\nsomething very familiar, and, would you believe it, I have heard that very\nargument, that very conjecture, of how Karamazov would have behaved,\nprecisely two days before, from Smerdyakov himself. What's more, it struck\nme at the time. I fancied that there was an artificial simplicity about\nhim; that he was in a hurry to suggest this idea to me that I might fancy\nit was my own. He insinuated it, as it were. Did he not insinuate the same\nidea at the inquiry and suggest it to the talented prosecutor?\n\n\"I shall be asked, 'What about the old woman, Grigory's wife? She heard\nthe sick man moaning close by, all night.' Yes, she heard it, but that\nevidence is extremely unreliable. I knew a lady who complained bitterly\nthat she had been kept awake all night by a dog in the yard. Yet the poor\nbeast, it appeared, had only yelped once or twice in the night. And that's\nnatural. If any one is asleep and hears a groan he wakes up, annoyed at\nbeing waked, but instantly falls asleep again. Two hours later, again a\ngroan, he wakes up and falls asleep again; and the same thing again two\nhours later--three times altogether in the night. Next morning the sleeper\nwakes up and complains that some one has been groaning all night and\nkeeping him awake. And it is bound to seem so to him: the intervals of two\nhours of sleep he does not remember, he only remembers the moments of\nwaking, so he feels he has been waked up all night.\n\n\"But why, why, asks the prosecutor, did not Smerdyakov confess in his last\nletter? Why did his conscience prompt him to one step and not to both?\nBut, excuse me, conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may not have\nfelt penitence, but only despair. Despair and penitence are two very\ndifferent things. Despair may be vindictive and irreconcilable, and the\nsuicide, laying his hands on himself, may well have felt redoubled hatred\nfor those whom he had envied all his life.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! What is there\nunlikely in all I have put before you just now? Find the error in my\nreasoning; find the impossibility, the absurdity. And if there is but a\nshade of possibility, but a shade of probability in my propositions, do\nnot condemn him. And is there only a shade? I swear by all that is sacred,\nI fully believe in the explanation of the murder I have just put forward.\nWhat troubles me and makes me indignant is that of all the mass of facts\nheaped up by the prosecution against the prisoner, there is not a single\none certain and irrefutable. And yet the unhappy man is to be ruined by\nthe accumulation of these facts. Yes, the accumulated effect is awful: the\nblood, the blood dripping from his fingers, the bloodstained shirt, the\ndark night resounding with the shout 'Parricide!' and the old man falling\nwith a broken head. And then the mass of phrases, statements, gestures,\nshouts! Oh! this has so much influence, it can so bias the mind; but,\ngentlemen of the jury, can it bias your minds? Remember, you have been\ngiven absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the\nmore terrible its responsibility.\n\n\"I do not draw back one iota from what I have said just now, but suppose\nfor one moment I agreed with the prosecution that my luckless client had\nstained his hands with his father's blood. This is only hypothesis, I\nrepeat; I never for one instant doubt of his innocence. But, so be it, I\nassume that my client is guilty of parricide. Even so, hear what I have to\nsay. I have it in my heart to say something more to you, for I feel that\nthere must be a great conflict in your hearts and minds.... Forgive my\nreferring to your hearts and minds, gentlemen of the jury, but I want to\nbe truthful and sincere to the end. Let us all be sincere!\"\n\nAt this point the speech was interrupted by rather loud applause. The last\nwords, indeed, were pronounced with a note of such sincerity that every\none felt that he really might have something to say, and that what he was\nabout to say would be of the greatest consequence. But the President,\nhearing the applause, in a loud voice threatened to clear the court if\nsuch an incident were repeated. Every sound was hushed and Fetyukovitch\nbegan in a voice full of feeling quite unlike the tone he had used\nhitherto.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter XIII. A Corrupter Of Thought\n\n\n\"It's not only the accumulation of facts that threatens my client with\nruin, gentlemen of the jury,\" he began, \"what is really damning for my\nclient is one fact--the dead body of his father. Had it been an ordinary\ncase of murder you would have rejected the charge in view of the\ntriviality, the incompleteness, and the fantastic character of the\nevidence, if you examine each part of it separately; or, at least, you\nwould have hesitated to ruin a man's life simply from the prejudice\nagainst him which he has, alas! only too well deserved. But it's not an\nordinary case of murder, it's a case of parricide. That impresses men's\nminds, and to such a degree that the very triviality and incompleteness of\nthe evidence becomes less trivial and less incomplete even to an\nunprejudiced mind. How can such a prisoner be acquitted? What if he\ncommitted the murder and gets off unpunished? That is what every one,\nalmost involuntarily, instinctively, feels at heart.\n\n\"Yes, it's a fearful thing to shed a father's blood--the father who has\nbegotten me, loved me, not spared his life for me, grieved over my\nillnesses from childhood up, troubled all his life for my happiness, and\nhas lived in my joys, in my successes. To murder such a father--that's\ninconceivable. Gentlemen of the jury, what is a father--a real father? What\nis the meaning of that great word? What is the great idea in that name? We\nhave just indicated in part what a true father is and what he ought to be.\nIn the case in which we are now so deeply occupied and over which our\nhearts are aching--in the present case, the father, Fyodor Pavlovitch\nKaramazov, did not correspond to that conception of a father to which we\nhave just referred. That's the misfortune. And indeed some fathers are a\nmisfortune. Let us examine this misfortune rather more closely: we must\nshrink from nothing, gentlemen of the jury, considering the importance of\nthe decision you have to make. It's our particular duty not to shrink from\nany idea, like children or frightened women, as the talented prosecutor\nhappily expresses it.\n\n\"But in the course of his heated speech my esteemed opponent (and he was\nmy opponent before I opened my lips) exclaimed several times, 'Oh, I will\nnot yield the defense of the prisoner to the lawyer who has come down from\nPetersburg. I accuse, but I defend also!' He exclaimed that several times,\nbut forgot to mention that if this terrible prisoner was for twenty-three\nyears so grateful for a mere pound of nuts given him by the only man who\nhad been kind to him, as a child in his father's house, might not such a\nman well have remembered for twenty-three years how he ran in his father's\nback-yard, 'without boots on his feet and with his little trousers hanging\nby one button'--to use the expression of the kind-hearted doctor,\nHerzenstube?\n\n\"Oh, gentlemen of the jury, why need we look more closely at this\nmisfortune, why repeat what we all know already? What did my client meet\nwith when he arrived here, at his father's house, and why depict my client\nas a heartless egoist and monster? He is uncontrolled, he is wild and\nunruly--we are trying him now for that--but who is responsible for his life?\nWho is responsible for his having received such an unseemly bringing up,\nin spite of his excellent disposition and his grateful and sensitive\nheart? Did any one train him to be reasonable? Was he enlightened by\nstudy? Did any one love him ever so little in his childhood? My client was\nleft to the care of Providence like a beast of the field. He thirsted\nperhaps to see his father after long years of separation. A thousand times\nperhaps he may, recalling his childhood, have driven away the loathsome\nphantoms that haunted his childish dreams and with all his heart he may\nhave longed to embrace and to forgive his father! And what awaited him? He\nwas met by cynical taunts, suspicions and wrangling about money. He heard\nnothing but revolting talk and vicious precepts uttered daily over the\nbrandy, and at last he saw his father seducing his mistress from him with\nhis own money. Oh, gentlemen of the jury, that was cruel and revolting!\nAnd that old man was always complaining of the disrespect and cruelty of\nhis son. He slandered him in society, injured him, calumniated him, bought\nup his unpaid debts to get him thrown into prison.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, people like my client, who are fierce, unruly, and\nuncontrolled on the surface, are sometimes, most frequently indeed,\nexceedingly tender-hearted, only they don't express it. Don't laugh, don't\nlaugh at my idea! The talented prosecutor laughed mercilessly just now at\nmy client for loving Schiller--loving the sublime and beautiful! I should\nnot have laughed at that in his place. Yes, such natures--oh, let me speak\nin defense of such natures, so often and so cruelly misunderstood--these\nnatures often thirst for tenderness, goodness, and justice, as it were, in\ncontrast to themselves, their unruliness, their ferocity--they thirst for\nit unconsciously. Passionate and fierce on the surface, they are painfully\ncapable of loving woman, for instance, and with a spiritual and elevated\nlove. Again do not laugh at me, this is very often the case in such\nnatures. But they cannot hide their passions--sometimes very coarse--and\nthat is conspicuous and is noticed, but the inner man is unseen. Their\npassions are quickly exhausted; but, by the side of a noble and lofty\ncreature that seemingly coarse and rough man seeks a new life, seeks to\ncorrect himself, to be better, to become noble and honorable, 'sublime and\nbeautiful,' however much the expression has been ridiculed.\n\n\"I said just now that I would not venture to touch upon my client's\nengagement. But I may say half a word. What we heard just now was not\nevidence, but only the scream of a frenzied and revengeful woman, and it\nwas not for her--oh, not for her!--to reproach him with treachery, for she\nhas betrayed him! If she had had but a little time for reflection she\nwould not have given such evidence. Oh, do not believe her! No, my client\nis not a monster, as she called him!\n\n\"The Lover of Mankind on the eve of His Crucifixion said: 'I am the Good\nShepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, so that not\none of them might be lost.' Let not a man's soul be lost through us!\n\n\"I asked just now what does 'father' mean, and exclaimed that it was a\ngreat word, a precious name. But one must use words honestly, gentlemen,\nand I venture to call things by their right names: such a father as old\nKaramazov cannot be called a father and does not deserve to be. Filial\nlove for an unworthy father is an absurdity, an impossibility. Love cannot\nbe created from nothing: only God can create something from nothing.\n\n\" 'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath,' the apostle writes, from\na heart glowing with love. It's not for the sake of my client that I quote\nthese sacred words, I mention them for all fathers. Who has authorized me\nto preach to fathers? No one. But as a man and a citizen I make my\nappeal--_vivos voco!_ We are not long on earth, we do many evil deeds and\nsay many evil words. So let us all catch a favorable moment when we are\nall together to say a good word to each other. That's what I am doing:\nwhile I am in this place I take advantage of my opportunity. Not for\nnothing is this tribune given us by the highest authority--all Russia hears\nus! I am not speaking only for the fathers here present, I cry aloud to\nall fathers: 'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.' Yes, let us\nfirst fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to\nexpect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of\nour children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have\nmade them our enemies ourselves. 'What measure ye mete it shall be\nmeasured unto you again'--it's not I who say that, it's the Gospel precept,\nmeasure to others according as they measure to you. How can we blame\nchildren if they measure us according to our measure?\n\n\"Not long ago a servant girl in Finland was suspected of having secretly\ngiven birth to a child. She was watched, and a box of which no one knew\nanything was found in the corner of the loft, behind some bricks. It was\nopened and inside was found the body of a new-born child which she had\nkilled. In the same box were found the skeletons of two other babies\nwhich, according to her own confession, she had killed at the moment of\ntheir birth.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, was she a mother to her children? She gave birth\nto them, indeed; but was she a mother to them? Would any one venture to\ngive her the sacred name of mother? Let us be bold, gentlemen, let us be\naudacious even: it's our duty to be so at this moment and not to be afraid\nof certain words and ideas like the Moscow women in Ostrovsky's play, who\nare scared at the sound of certain words. No, let us prove that the\nprogress of the last few years has touched even us, and let us say\nplainly, the father is not merely he who begets the child, but he who\nbegets it and does his duty by it.\n\n\"Oh, of course, there is the other meaning, there is the other\ninterpretation of the word 'father,' which insists that any father, even\nthough he be a monster, even though he be the enemy of his children, still\nremains my father simply because he begot me. But this is, so to say, the\nmystical meaning which I cannot comprehend with my intellect, but can only\naccept by faith, or, better to say, _on faith_, like many other things\nwhich I do not understand, but which religion bids me believe. But in that\ncase let it be kept outside the sphere of actual life. In the sphere of\nactual life, which has, indeed, its own rights, but also lays upon us\ngreat duties and obligations, in that sphere, if we want to be\nhumane--Christian, in fact--we must, or ought to, act only upon convictions\njustified by reason and experience, which have been passed through the\ncrucible of analysis; in a word, we must act rationally, and not as though\nin dream and delirium, that we may not do harm, that we may not ill-treat\nand ruin a man. Then it will be real Christian work, not only mystic, but\nrational and philanthropic....\"\n\nThere was violent applause at this passage from many parts of the court,\nbut Fetyukovitch waved his hands as though imploring them to let him\nfinish without interruption. The court relapsed into silence at once. The\norator went on.\n\n\"Do you suppose, gentlemen, that our children as they grow up and begin to\nreason can avoid such questions? No, they cannot, and we will not impose\non them an impossible restriction. The sight of an unworthy father\ninvoluntarily suggests tormenting questions to a young creature,\nespecially when he compares him with the excellent fathers of his\ncompanions. The conventional answer to this question is: 'He begot you,\nand you are his flesh and blood, and therefore you are bound to love him.'\nThe youth involuntarily reflects: 'But did he love me when he begot me?'\nhe asks, wondering more and more. 'Was it for my sake he begot me? He did\nnot know me, not even my sex, at that moment, at the moment of passion,\nperhaps, inflamed by wine, and he has only transmitted to me a propensity\nto drunkenness--that's all he's done for me.... Why am I bound to love him\nsimply for begetting me when he has cared nothing for me all my life\nafter?'\n\n\"Oh, perhaps those questions strike you as coarse and cruel, but do not\nexpect an impossible restraint from a young mind. 'Drive nature out of the\ndoor and it will fly in at the window,' and, above all, let us not be\nafraid of words, but decide the question according to the dictates of\nreason and humanity and not of mystic ideas. How shall it be decided? Why,\nlike this. Let the son stand before his father and ask him, 'Father, tell\nme, why must I love you? Father, show me that I must love you,' and if\nthat father is able to answer him and show him good reason, we have a\nreal, normal, parental relation, not resting on mystical prejudice, but on\na rational, responsible and strictly humanitarian basis. But if he does\nnot, there's an end to the family tie. He is not a father to him, and the\nson has a right to look upon him as a stranger, and even an enemy. Our\ntribune, gentlemen of the jury, ought to be a school of true and sound\nideas.\"\n\n(Here the orator was interrupted by irrepressible and almost frantic\napplause. Of course, it was not the whole audience, but a good half of it\napplauded. The fathers and mothers present applauded. Shrieks and\nexclamations were heard from the gallery, where the ladies were sitting.\nHandkerchiefs were waved. The President began ringing his bell with all\nhis might. He was obviously irritated by the behavior of the audience, but\ndid not venture to clear the court as he had threatened. Even persons of\nhigh position, old men with stars on their breasts, sitting on specially\nreserved seats behind the judges, applauded the orator and waved their\nhandkerchiefs. So that when the noise died down, the President confined\nhimself to repeating his stern threat to clear the court, and\nFetyukovitch, excited and triumphant, continued his speech.)\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, you remember that awful night of which so much has\nbeen said to-day, when the son got over the fence and stood face to face\nwith the enemy and persecutor who had begotten him. I insist most\nemphatically it was not for money he ran to his father's house: the charge\nof robbery is an absurdity, as I proved before. And it was not to murder\nhim he broke into the house, oh, no! If he had had that design he would,\nat least, have taken the precaution of arming himself beforehand. The\nbrass pestle he caught up instinctively without knowing why he did it.\nGranted that he deceived his father by tapping at the window, granted that\nhe made his way in--I've said already that I do not for a moment believe\nthat legend, but let it be so, let us suppose it for a moment. Gentlemen,\nI swear to you by all that's holy, if it had not been his father, but an\nordinary enemy, he would, after running through the rooms and satisfying\nhimself that the woman was not there, have made off, post-haste, without\ndoing any harm to his rival. He would have struck him, pushed him away\nperhaps, nothing more, for he had no thought and no time to spare for\nthat. What he wanted to know was where she was. But his father, his\nfather! The mere sight of the father who had hated him from his childhood,\nhad been his enemy, his persecutor, and now his unnatural rival, was\nenough! A feeling of hatred came over him involuntarily, irresistibly,\nclouding his reason. It all surged up in one moment! It was an impulse of\nmadness and insanity, but also an impulse of nature, irresistibly and\nunconsciously (like everything in nature) avenging the violation of its\neternal laws.\n\n\"But the prisoner even then did not murder him--I maintain that, I cry that\naloud!--no, he only brandished the pestle in a burst of indignant disgust,\nnot meaning to kill him, not knowing that he would kill him. Had he not\nhad this fatal pestle in his hand, he would have only knocked his father\ndown perhaps, but would not have killed him. As he ran away, he did not\nknow whether he had killed the old man. Such a murder is not a murder.\nSuch a murder is not a parricide. No, the murder of such a father cannot\nbe called parricide. Such a murder can only be reckoned parricide by\nprejudice.\n\n\"But I appeal to you again and again from the depths of my soul; did this\nmurder actually take place? Gentlemen of the jury, if we convict and\npunish him, he will say to himself: 'These people have done nothing for my\nbringing up, for my education, nothing to improve my lot, nothing to make\nme better, nothing to make me a man. These people have not given me to eat\nand to drink, have not visited me in prison and nakedness, and here they\nhave sent me to penal servitude. I am quits, I owe them nothing now, and\nowe no one anything for ever. They are wicked and I will be wicked. They\nare cruel and I will be cruel.' That is what he will say, gentlemen of the\njury. And I swear, by finding him guilty you will only make it easier for\nhim: you will ease his conscience, he will curse the blood he has shed and\nwill not regret it. At the same time you will destroy in him the\npossibility of becoming a new man, for he will remain in his wickedness\nand blindness all his life.\n\n\"But do you want to punish him fearfully, terribly, with the most awful\npunishment that could be imagined, and at the same time to save him and\nregenerate his soul? If so, overwhelm him with your mercy! You will see,\nyou will hear how he will tremble and be horror-struck. 'How can I endure\nthis mercy? How can I endure so much love? Am I worthy of it?' That's what\nhe will exclaim.\n\n\"Oh, I know, I know that heart, that wild but grateful heart, gentlemen of\nthe jury! It will bow before your mercy; it thirsts for a great and loving\naction, it will melt and mount upwards. There are souls which, in their\nlimitation, blame the whole world. But subdue such a soul with mercy, show\nit love, and it will curse its past, for there are many good impulses in\nit. Such a heart will expand and see that God is merciful and that men are\ngood and just. He will be horror-stricken; he will be crushed by remorse\nand the vast obligation laid upon him henceforth. And he will not say\nthen, 'I am quits,' but will say, 'I am guilty in the sight of all men and\nam more unworthy than all.' With tears of penitence and poignant, tender\nanguish, he will exclaim: 'Others are better than I, they wanted to save\nme, not to ruin me!' Oh, this act of mercy is so easy for you, for in the\nabsence of anything like real evidence it will be too awful for you to\npronounce: 'Yes, he is guilty.'\n\n\"Better acquit ten guilty men than punish one innocent man! Do you hear,\ndo you hear that majestic voice from the past century of our glorious\nhistory? It is not for an insignificant person like me to remind you that\nthe Russian court does not exist for the punishment only, but also for the\nsalvation of the criminal! Let other nations think of retribution and the\nletter of the law, we will cling to the spirit and the meaning--the\nsalvation and the reformation of the lost. If this is true, if Russia and\nher justice are such, she may go forward with good cheer! Do not try to\nscare us with your frenzied troikas from which all the nations stand aside\nin disgust. Not a runaway troika, but the stately chariot of Russia will\nmove calmly and majestically to its goal. In your hands is the fate of my\nclient, in your hands is the fate of Russian justice. You will defend it,\nyou will save it, you will prove that there are men to watch over it, that\nit is in good hands!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter XIV. The Peasants Stand Firm\n\n\nThis was how Fetyukovitch concluded his speech, and the enthusiasm of the\naudience burst like an irresistible storm. It was out of the question to\nstop it: the women wept, many of the men wept too, even two important\npersonages shed tears. The President submitted, and even postponed ringing\nhis bell. The suppression of such an enthusiasm would be the suppression\nof something sacred, as the ladies cried afterwards. The orator himself\nwas genuinely touched.\n\nAnd it was at this moment that Ippolit Kirillovitch got up to make certain\nobjections. People looked at him with hatred. \"What? What's the meaning of\nit? He positively dares to make objections,\" the ladies babbled. But if\nthe whole world of ladies, including his wife, had protested he could not\nhave been stopped at that moment. He was pale, he was shaking with\nemotion, his first phrases were even unintelligible, he gasped for breath,\ncould hardly speak clearly, lost the thread. But he soon recovered\nhimself. Of this new speech of his I will quote only a few sentences.\n\n\"... I am reproached with having woven a romance. But what is this defense\nif not one romance on the top of another? All that was lacking was poetry.\nFyodor Pavlovitch, while waiting for his mistress, tears open the envelope\nand throws it on the floor. We are even told what he said while engaged in\nthis strange act. Is not this a flight of fancy? And what proof have we\nthat he had taken out the money? Who heard what he said? The weak-minded\nidiot, Smerdyakov, transformed into a Byronic hero, avenging society for\nhis illegitimate birth--isn't this a romance in the Byronic style? And the\nson who breaks into his father's house and murders him without murdering\nhim is not even a romance--this is a sphinx setting us a riddle which he\ncannot solve himself. If he murdered him, he murdered him, and what's the\nmeaning of his murdering him without having murdered him--who can make head\nor tail of this?\n\n\"Then we are admonished that our tribune is a tribune of true and sound\nideas and from this tribune of 'sound ideas' is heard a solemn declaration\nthat to call the murder of a father 'parricide' is nothing but a\nprejudice! But if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child is to ask\nhis father why he is to love him, what will become of us? What will become\nof the foundations of society? What will become of the family? Parricide,\nit appears, is only a bogy of Moscow merchants' wives. The most precious,\nthe most sacred guarantees for the destiny and future of Russian justice\nare presented to us in a perverted and frivolous form, simply to attain an\nobject--to obtain the justification of something which cannot be justified.\n'Oh, crush him by mercy,' cries the counsel for the defense; but that's\nall the criminal wants, and to-morrow it will be seen how much he is\ncrushed. And is not the counsel for the defense too modest in asking only\nfor the acquittal of the prisoner? Why not found a charity in the honor of\nthe parricide to commemorate his exploit among future generations?\nReligion and the Gospel are corrected--that's all mysticism, we are told,\nand ours is the only true Christianity which has been subjected to the\nanalysis of reason and common sense. And so they set up before us a false\nsemblance of Christ! 'What measure ye mete so it shall be meted unto you\nagain,' cried the counsel for the defense, and instantly deduces that\nChrist teaches us to measure as it is measured to us--and this from the\ntribune of truth and sound sense! We peep into the Gospel only on the eve\nof making speeches, in order to dazzle the audience by our acquaintance\nwith what is, anyway, a rather original composition, which may be of use\nto produce a certain effect--all to serve the purpose! But what Christ\ncommands us is something very different: He bids us beware of doing this,\nbecause the wicked world does this, but we ought to forgive and to turn\nthe other cheek, and not to measure to our persecutors as they measure to\nus. This is what our God has taught us and not that to forbid children to\nmurder their fathers is a prejudice. And we will not from the tribune of\ntruth and good sense correct the Gospel of our Lord, Whom the counsel for\nthe defense deigns to call only 'the crucified lover of humanity,' in\nopposition to all orthodox Russia, which calls to Him, 'For Thou art our\nGod!' \"\n\nAt this the President intervened and checked the over-zealous speaker,\nbegging him not to exaggerate, not to overstep the bounds, and so on, as\npresidents always do in such cases. The audience, too, was uneasy. The\npublic was restless: there were even exclamations of indignation.\nFetyukovitch did not so much as reply; he only mounted the tribune to lay\nhis hand on his heart and, with an offended voice, utter a few words full\nof dignity. He only touched again, lightly and ironically, on \"romancing\"\nand \"psychology,\" and in an appropriate place quoted, \"Jupiter, you are\nangry, therefore you are wrong,\" which provoked a burst of approving\nlaughter in the audience, for Ippolit Kirillovitch was by no means like\nJupiter. Then, _a propos_ of the accusation that he was teaching the young\ngeneration to murder their fathers, Fetyukovitch observed, with great\ndignity, that he would not even answer. As for the prosecutor's charge of\nuttering unorthodox opinions, Fetyukovitch hinted that it was a personal\ninsinuation and that he had expected in this court to be secure from\naccusations \"damaging to my reputation as a citizen and a loyal subject.\"\nBut at these words the President pulled him up, too, and Fetyukovitch\nconcluded his speech with a bow, amid a hum of approbation in the court.\nAnd Ippolit Kirillovitch was, in the opinion of our ladies, \"crushed for\ngood.\"\n\nThen the prisoner was allowed to speak. Mitya stood up, but said very\nlittle. He was fearfully exhausted, physically and mentally. The look of\nstrength and independence with which he had entered in the morning had\nalmost disappeared. He seemed as though he had passed through an\nexperience that day, which had taught him for the rest of his life\nsomething very important he had not understood till then. His voice was\nweak, he did not shout as before. In his words there was a new note of\nhumility, defeat and submission.\n\n\"What am I to say, gentlemen of the jury? The hour of judgment has come\nfor me, I feel the hand of God upon me! The end has come to an erring man!\nBut, before God, I repeat to you, I am innocent of my father's blood! For\nthe last time I repeat, it wasn't I killed him! I was erring, but I loved\nwhat is good. Every instant I strove to reform, but I lived like a wild\nbeast. I thank the prosecutor, he told me many things about myself that I\ndid not know; but it's not true that I killed my father, the prosecutor is\nmistaken. I thank my counsel, too. I cried listening to him; but it's not\ntrue that I killed my father, and he needn't have supposed it. And don't\nbelieve the doctors. I am perfectly sane, only my heart is heavy. If you\nspare me, if you let me go, I will pray for you. I will be a better man. I\ngive you my word before God I will! And if you will condemn me, I'll break\nmy sword over my head myself and kiss the pieces. But spare me, do not rob\nme of my God! I know myself, I shall rebel! My heart is heavy, gentlemen\n... spare me!\"\n\nHe almost fell back in his place: his voice broke: he could hardly\narticulate the last phrase. Then the judges proceeded to put the questions\nand began to ask both sides to formulate their conclusions.\n\nBut I will not describe the details. At last the jury rose to retire for\nconsultation. The President was very tired, and so his last charge to the\njury was rather feeble. \"Be impartial, don't be influenced by the\neloquence of the defense, but yet weigh the arguments. Remember that there\nis a great responsibility laid upon you,\" and so on and so on.\n\nThe jury withdrew and the court adjourned. People could get up, move\nabout, exchange their accumulated impressions, refresh themselves at the\nbuffet. It was very late, almost one o'clock in the night, but nobody went\naway: the strain was so great that no one could think of repose. All\nwaited with sinking hearts; though that is, perhaps, too much to say, for\nthe ladies were only in a state of hysterical impatience and their hearts\nwere untroubled. An acquittal, they thought, was inevitable. They all\nprepared themselves for a dramatic moment of general enthusiasm. I must\nown there were many among the men, too, who were convinced that an\nacquittal was inevitable. Some were pleased, others frowned, while some\nwere simply dejected, not wanting him to be acquitted. Fetyukovitch\nhimself was confident of his success. He was surrounded by people\ncongratulating him and fawning upon him.\n\n\"There are,\" he said to one group, as I was told afterwards, \"there are\ninvisible threads binding the counsel for the defense with the jury. One\nfeels during one's speech if they are being formed. I was aware of them.\nThey exist. Our cause is won. Set your mind at rest.\"\n\n\"What will our peasants say now?\" said one stout, cross-looking, pock-\nmarked gentleman, a landowner of the neighborhood, approaching a group of\ngentlemen engaged in conversation.\n\n\"But they are not all peasants. There are four government clerks among\nthem.\"\n\n\"Yes, there are clerks,\" said a member of the district council, joining\nthe group.\n\n\"And do you know that Nazaryev, the merchant with the medal, a juryman?\"\n\n\"What of him?\"\n\n\"He is a man with brains.\"\n\n\"But he never speaks.\"\n\n\"He is no great talker, but so much the better. There's no need for the\nPetersburg man to teach him: he could teach all Petersburg himself. He's\nthe father of twelve children. Think of that!\"\n\n\"Upon my word, you don't suppose they won't acquit him?\" one of our young\nofficials exclaimed in another group.\n\n\"They'll acquit him for certain,\" said a resolute voice.\n\n\"It would be shameful, disgraceful, not to acquit him!\" cried the\nofficial. \"Suppose he did murder him--there are fathers and fathers! And,\nbesides, he was in such a frenzy.... He really may have done nothing but\nswing the pestle in the air, and so knocked the old man down. But it was a\npity they dragged the valet in. That was simply an absurd theory! If I'd\nbeen in Fetyukovitch's place, I should simply have said straight out: 'He\nmurdered him; but he is not guilty, hang it all!' \"\n\n\"That's what he did, only without saying, 'Hang it all!' \"\n\n\"No, Mihail Semyonovitch, he almost said that, too,\" put in a third voice.\n\n\"Why, gentlemen, in Lent an actress was acquitted in our town who had cut\nthe throat of her lover's lawful wife.\"\n\n\"Oh, but she did not finish cutting it.\"\n\n\"That makes no difference. She began cutting it.\"\n\n\"What did you think of what he said about children? Splendid, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Splendid!\"\n\n\"And about mysticism, too!\"\n\n\"Oh, drop mysticism, do!\" cried some one else; \"think of Ippolit and his\nfate from this day forth. His wife will scratch his eyes out to-morrow for\nMitya's sake.\"\n\n\"Is she here?\"\n\n\"What an idea! If she'd been here she'd have scratched them out in court.\nShe is at home with toothache. He he he!\"\n\n\"He he he!\"\n\nIn a third group:\n\n\"I dare say they will acquit Mitenka, after all.\"\n\n\"I should not be surprised if he turns the 'Metropolis' upside down to-\nmorrow. He will be drinking for ten days!\"\n\n\"Oh, the devil!\"\n\n\"The devil's bound to have a hand in it. Where should he be if not here?\"\n\n\"Well, gentlemen, I admit it was eloquent. But still it's not the thing to\nbreak your father's head with a pestle! Or what are we coming to?\"\n\n\"The chariot! Do you remember the chariot?\"\n\n\"Yes; he turned a cart into a chariot!\"\n\n\"And to-morrow he will turn a chariot into a cart, just to suit his\npurpose.\"\n\n\"What cunning chaps there are nowadays! Is there any justice to be had in\nRussia?\"\n\nBut the bell rang. The jury deliberated for exactly an hour, neither more\nnor less. A profound silence reigned in the court as soon as the public\nhad taken their seats. I remember how the jurymen walked into the court.\nAt last! I won't repeat the questions in order, and, indeed, I have\nforgotten them. I remember only the answer to the President's first and\nchief question: \"Did the prisoner commit the murder for the sake of\nrobbery and with premeditation?\" (I don't remember the exact words.) There\nwas a complete hush. The foreman of the jury, the youngest of the clerks,\npronounced, in a clear, loud voice, amidst the deathlike stillness of the\ncourt:\n\n\"Yes, guilty!\"\n\nAnd the same answer was repeated to every question: \"Yes, guilty!\" and\nwithout the slightest extenuating comment. This no one had expected;\nalmost every one had reckoned upon a recommendation to mercy, at least.\nThe deathlike silence in the court was not broken--all seemed petrified:\nthose who desired his conviction as well as those who had been eager for\nhis acquittal. But that was only for the first instant, and it was\nfollowed by a fearful hubbub. Many of the men in the audience were\npleased. Some were rubbing their hands with no attempt to conceal their\njoy. Those who disagreed with the verdict seemed crushed, shrugged their\nshoulders, whispered, but still seemed unable to realize this. But how\nshall I describe the state the ladies were in? I thought they would create\na riot. At first they could scarcely believe their ears. Then suddenly the\nwhole court rang with exclamations: \"What's the meaning of it? What next?\"\nThey leapt up from their places. They seemed to fancy that it might be at\nonce reconsidered and reversed. At that instant Mitya suddenly stood up\nand cried in a heartrending voice, stretching his hands out before him:\n\n\"I swear by God and the dreadful Day of Judgment I am not guilty of my\nfather's blood! Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, have pity on the\nother woman!\"\n\nHe could not go on, and broke into a terrible sobbing wail that was heard\nall over the court in a strange, unnatural voice unlike his own. From the\nfarthest corner at the back of the gallery came a piercing shriek--it was\nGrushenka. She had succeeded in begging admittance to the court again\nbefore the beginning of the lawyers' speeches. Mitya was taken away. The\npassing of the sentence was deferred till next day. The whole court was in\na hubbub but I did not wait to hear. I only remember a few exclamations I\nheard on the steps as I went out.\n\n\"He'll have a twenty years' trip to the mines!\"\n\n\"Not less.\"\n\n\"Well, our peasants have stood firm.\"\n\n\"And have done for our Mitya.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE Chapter I. Plans For Mitya's Escape\n\n\nVery early, at nine o'clock in the morning, five days after the trial,\nAlyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna's to talk over a matter of great\nimportance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat and talked\nto him in the very room in which she had once received Grushenka. In the\nnext room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a high fever. Katerina\nIvanovna had immediately after the scene at the trial ordered the sick and\nunconscious man to be carried to her house, disregarding the inevitable\ngossip and general disapproval of the public. One of the two relations who\nlived with her had departed to Moscow immediately after the scene in\ncourt, the other remained. But if both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna\nwould have adhered to her resolution, and would have gone on nursing the\nsick man and sitting by him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were\nattending him. The famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give\nan opinion as to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors\nencouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could\nnot yet give them positive hopes of recovery.\n\nAlyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had\nspecially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would be to\napproach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had another engagement\nthat could not be put off for that same morning, and there was need of\nhaste.\n\nThey had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale\nand terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a state of hysterical\nexcitement. She had a presentiment of the reason why Alyosha had come to\nher.\n\n\"Don't worry about his decision,\" she said, with confident emphasis to\nAlyosha. \"One way or another he is bound to come to it. He must escape.\nThat unhappy man, that hero of honor and principle--not he, not Dmitri\nFyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of that door, who has\nsacrificed himself for his brother,\" Katya added, with flashing eyes--\"told\nme the whole plan of escape long ago. You know he has already entered into\nnegotiations.... I've told you something already.... You see, it will\nprobably come off at the third _etape_ from here, when the party of\nprisoners is being taken to Siberia. Oh, it's a long way off yet. Ivan\nFyodorovitch has already visited the superintendent of the third _etape_.\nBut we don't know yet who will be in charge of the party, and it's\nimpossible to find that out so long beforehand. To-morrow perhaps I will\nshow you in detail the whole plan which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the\neve of the trial in case of need.... That was when--do you remember?--you\nfound us quarreling. He had just gone down-stairs, but seeing you I made\nhim come back; do you remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about\nthen?\"\n\n\"No, I don't,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of escape. He had\ntold me the main idea three days before, and we began quarreling about it\nat once and quarreled for three days. We quarreled because, when he told\nme that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would escape abroad with\nthat creature, I felt furious at once--I can't tell you why, I don't know\nmyself why.... Oh, of course, I was furious then about that creature, and\nthat she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!\" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed\nsuddenly, her lips quivering with anger. \"As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw\nthat I was furious about that woman, he instantly imagined I was jealous\nof Dmitri and that I still loved Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel\nbegan. I would not give an explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I\ncould not bear to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving\nthat ... and when I myself had told him long before that I did not love\nDmitri, that I loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that\ncreature that made me angry with him. Three days later, on the evening you\ncame, he brought me a sealed envelope, which I was to open at once, if\nanything happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the\nenvelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or was\ntaken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone. Then he left me money,\nnearly ten thousand--those notes to which the prosecutor referred in his\nspeech, having learnt from some one that he had sent them to be changed. I\nwas tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch had not given up\nhis idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this plan of escape to\nme, though he was still jealous of me and still convinced that I loved\nMitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot understand the greatness\nof such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I wanted to fall at his feet\nin reverence, but I thought at once that he would take it only for my joy\nat the thought of Mitya's being saved (and he certainly would have\nimagined that!), and I was so exasperated at the mere possibility of such\nan unjust thought on his part that I lost my temper again, and instead of\nkissing his feet, flew into a fury again! Oh, I am unhappy! It's my\ncharacter, my awful, unhappy character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by\ndriving him, too, to abandon me for another with whom he can get on\nbetter, like Dmitri. But ... no, I could not bear it, I should kill\nmyself. And when you came in then, and when I called to you and told him\nto come back, I was so enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he\nturned on me that--do you remember?--I cried out to you that it was he, he\nalone who had persuaded me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said\nthat malicious thing on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never\npersuaded me that his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it was I\nwho persuaded him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved\nthe way to that hideous scene at the trial. He wanted to show me that he\nwas an honorable man, and that, even if I loved his brother, he would not\nruin him for revenge or jealousy. So he came to the court ... I am the\ncause of it all, I alone am to blame!\"\n\nKatya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt that\nshe was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the proudest\nheart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by grief. Oh,\nAlyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery, though she had\ncarefully concealed it from him during those days since the trial; but it\nwould have been for some reason too painful to him if she had been brought\nso low as to speak to him now about that. She was suffering for her\n\"treachery\" at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her conscience was\nimpelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha, with tears and cries\nand hysterical writhings on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and\nlonged to spare her. It made the commission on which he had come even more\ndifficult. He spoke of Mitya again.\n\n\"It's all right, it's all right, don't be anxious about him!\" she began\nagain, sharply and stubbornly. \"All that is only momentary, I know him, I\nknow his heart only too well. You may be sure he will consent to escape.\nIt's not as though it would be immediately; he will have time to make up\nhis mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time and will\nmanage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with it. Don't\nbe anxious; he will consent to run away. He has agreed already: do you\nsuppose he would give up that creature? And they won't let her go to him,\nso he is bound to escape. It's you he's most afraid of, he is afraid you\nwon't approve of his escape on moral grounds. But you must generously\n_allow_ it, if your sanction is so necessary,\" Katya added viciously. She\npaused and smiled.\n\n\"He talks about some hymn,\" she went on again, \"some cross he has to bear,\nsome duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal about it, and\nif you knew how he talked!\" Katya cried suddenly, with feeling she could\nnot repress, \"if you knew how he loved that wretched man at the moment he\ntold me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment. And I heard\nhis story and his tears with sneering disdain. Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I\nam responsible for his fever. But that man in prison is incapable of\nsuffering,\" Katya concluded irritably. \"Can such a man suffer? Men like\nhim never suffer!\"\n\nThere was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And\nyet it was she who had betrayed him. \"Perhaps because she feels how she's\nwronged him she hates him at moments,\" Alyosha thought to himself. He\nhoped that it was only \"at moments.\" In Katya's last words he detected a\nchallenging note, but he did not take it up.\n\n\"I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him yourself.\nOr do you, too, consider that to escape would be dishonorable, cowardly,\nor something ... unchristian, perhaps?\" Katya added, even more defiantly.\n\n\"Oh, no. I'll tell him everything,\" muttered Alyosha. \"He asks you to come\nand see him to-day,\" he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily in the\nface. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa.\n\n\"Me? Can that be?\" she faltered, turning pale.\n\n\"It can and ought to be!\" Alyosha began emphatically, growing more\nanimated. \"He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened the\nsubject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is beside\nhimself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled with you that\nhe wants you, but only that you would go and show yourself at his door. So\nmuch has happened to him since that day. He realizes that he has injured\nyou beyond all reckoning. He does not ask your forgiveness--'It's\nimpossible to forgive me,' he says himself--but only that you would show\nyourself in his doorway.\"\n\n\"It's so sudden....\" faltered Katya. \"I've had a presentiment all these\ndays that you would come with that message. I knew he would ask me to\ncome. It's impossible!\"\n\n\"Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first\ntime how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never\ngrasped it before so fully. He said, 'If she refuses to come I shall be\nunhappy all my life.' Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal\nservitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy--is not that\npiteous? Think--you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is innocent,\"\nbroke like a challenge from Alyosha. \"His hands are clean, there is no\nblood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in the future visit\nhim now. Go, greet him on his way into the darkness--stand at his door,\nthat is all.... You ought to do it, you ought to!\" Alyosha concluded,\nlaying immense stress on the word \"ought.\"\n\n\"I ought to ... but I cannot....\" Katya moaned. \"He will look at me.... I\ncan't.\"\n\n\"Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don't\nmake up your mind to do it now?\"\n\n\"Better suffer all my life.\"\n\n\"You ought to go, you ought to go,\" Alyosha repeated with merciless\nemphasis.\n\n\"But why to-day, why at once?... I can't leave our patient--\"\n\n\"You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don't come, he\nwill be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity on\nhim!\"\n\n\"Have pity on _me!_\" Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst into\ntears.\n\n\"Then you will come,\" said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. \"I'll go and\ntell him you will come directly.\"\n\n\"No, don't tell him so on any account,\" cried Katya in alarm. \"I will\ncome, but don't tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go\nin.... I don't know yet--\"\n\nHer voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go.\n\n\"And what if I meet any one?\" she said suddenly, in a low voice, turning\nwhite again.\n\n\"That's just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will be\nno one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you,\" he\nconcluded emphatically, and went out of the room.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth\n\n\nHe hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his\nfate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was sent\nto the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of several\npersons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor Varvinsky had put\nMitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate little room, the one\nwhere Smerdyakov had been. It is true that there was a sentinel at the\nother end of the corridor, and there was a grating over the window, so\nthat Varvinsky could be at ease about the indulgence he had shown, which\nwas not quite legal, indeed; but he was a kind-hearted and compassionate\nyoung man. He knew how hard it would be for a man like Mitya to pass at\nonce so suddenly into the society of robbers and murderers, and that he\nmust get used to it by degrees. The visits of relations and friends were\ninformally sanctioned by the doctor and overseer, and even by the police\ncaptain. But only Alyosha and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had\ntried to force his way in twice, but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky\nnot to admit him.\n\nAlyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing-gown, rather\nfeverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on his head. He\nlooked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined expression, but there\nwas a shade of something like dread discernible in it. He had become\nterribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be silent for\nhalf an hour together, and seemed to be pondering something heavily and\npainfully, oblivious of everything about him. If he roused himself from\nhis brooding and began to talk, he always spoke with a kind of abruptness\nand never of what he really wanted to say. He looked sometimes with a face\nof suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more at ease with Grushenka\nthan with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke to her at all, but as\nsoon as she came in, his whole face lighted up with joy.\n\nAlyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya was\nwaiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a question.\nHe felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to come, and at the\nsame time he felt that if she did not come, something inconceivable would\nhappen. Alyosha understood his feelings.\n\n\"Trifon Borissovitch,\" Mitya began nervously, \"has pulled his whole inn to\npieces, I am told. He's taken up the flooring, pulled apart the planks,\nsplit up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking treasure all the\ntime--the fifteen hundred roubles which the prosecutor said I'd hidden\nthere. He began playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he got home.\nServe him right, the swindler! The guard here told me yesterday; he comes\nfrom there.\"\n\n\"Listen,\" began Alyosha. \"She will come, but I don't know when. Perhaps\nto-day, perhaps in a few days, that I can't tell. But she will come, she\nwill, that's certain.\"\n\nMitya started, would have said something, but was silent. The news had a\ntremendous effect on him. It was evident that he would have liked terribly\nto know what had been said, but he was again afraid to ask. Something\ncruel and contemptuous from Katya would have cut him like a knife at that\nmoment.\n\n\"This was what she said among other things; that I must be sure to set\nyour conscience at rest about escaping. If Ivan is not well by then she\nwill see to it all herself.\"\n\n\"You've spoken of that already,\" Mitya observed musingly.\n\n\"And you have repeated it to Grusha,\" observed Alyosha.\n\n\"Yes,\" Mitya admitted. \"She won't come this morning.\" He looked timidly at\nhis brother. \"She won't come till the evening. When I told her yesterday\nthat Katya was taking measures, she was silent, but she set her mouth. She\nonly whispered, 'Let her!' She understood that it was important. I did not\ndare to try her further. She understands now, I think, that Katya no\nlonger cares for me, but loves Ivan.\"\n\n\"Does she?\" broke from Alyosha.\n\n\"Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning,\" Mitya\nhastened to explain again; \"I asked her to do something for me. You know,\nIvan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will recover.\"\n\n\"Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely\ndoubts of his recovery,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"That means that she is convinced he will die. It's because she is\nfrightened she's so sure he will get well.\"\n\n\"Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there's every hope\nthat he will get well,\" Alyosha observed anxiously.\n\n\"Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has a\ngreat deal of sorrow to bear...\" A silence followed. A grave anxiety was\nfretting Mitya.\n\n\"Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,\" he said suddenly in a shaking voice,\nfull of tears.\n\n\"They won't let her go out there to you,\" Alyosha put in at once.\n\n\"And there is something else I wanted to tell you,\" Mitya went on, with a\nsudden ring in his voice. \"If they beat me on the way or out there, I\nwon't submit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it. And\nthis will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as it is.\nI've been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am not\nready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a 'hymn'; but if a\nguard speaks rudely to me, I have not the strength to bear it. For Grusha\nI would bear anything ... anything except blows.... But she won't be\nallowed to come there.\"\n\nAlyosha smiled gently.\n\n\"Listen, brother, once for all,\" he said. \"This is what I think about it.\nAnd you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not ready,\nand such a cross is not for you. What's more, you don't need such a\nmartyr's cross when you are not ready for it. If you had murdered our\nfather, it would grieve me that you should reject your punishment. But you\nare innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make\nyourself another man by suffering. I say, only remember that other man\nalways, all your life and wherever you go; and that will be enough for\nyou. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all\nyour life an even greater duty, and that constant feeling will do more to\nmake you a new man, perhaps, than if you went there. For there you would\nnot endure it and would repine, and perhaps at last would say: 'I am\nquits.' The lawyer was right about that. Such heavy burdens are not for\nall men. For some they are impossible. These are my thoughts about it, if\nyou want them so much. If other men would have to answer for your escape,\nofficers or soldiers, then I would not have 'allowed' you,\" smiled\nAlyosha. \"But they declare--the superintendent of that _etape_ told Ivan\nhimself--that if it's well managed there will be no great inquiry, and that\nthey can get off easily. Of course, bribing is dishonest even in such a\ncase, but I can't undertake to judge about it, because if Ivan and Katya\ncommissioned me to act for you, I know I should go and give bribes. I must\ntell you the truth. And so I can't judge of your own action. But let me\nassure you that I shall never condemn you. And it would be a strange thing\nif I could judge you in this. Now I think I've gone into everything.\"\n\n\"But I do condemn myself!\" cried Mitya. \"I shall escape, that was settled\napart from you; could Mitya Karamazov do anything but run away? But I\nshall condemn myself, and I will pray for my sin for ever. That's how the\nJesuits talk, isn't it? Just as we are doing?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Alyosha smiled gently.\n\n\"I love you for always telling the whole truth and never hiding anything,\"\ncried Mitya, with a joyful laugh. \"So I've caught my Alyosha being\nJesuitical. I must kiss you for that. Now listen to the rest; I'll open\nthe other side of my heart to you. This is what I planned and decided. If\nI run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I should\nbe cheered up by the thought that I am not running away for pleasure, not\nfor happiness, but to another exile as bad, perhaps, as Siberia. It is as\nbad, Alyosha, it is! I hate that America, damn it, already. Even though\nGrusha will be with me. Just look at her; is she an American? She is\nRussian, Russian to the marrow of her bones; she will be homesick for the\nmother country, and I shall see every hour that she is suffering for my\nsake, that she has taken up that cross for me. And what harm has she done?\nAnd how shall I, too, put up with the rabble out there, though they may be\nbetter than I, every one of them? I hate that America already! And though\nthey may be wonderful at machinery, every one of them, damn them, they are\nnot of my soul. I love Russia, Alyosha, I love the Russian God, though I\nam a scoundrel myself. I shall choke there!\" he exclaimed, his eyes\nsuddenly flashing. His voice was trembling with tears. \"So this is what\nI've decided, Alyosha, listen,\" he began again, mastering his emotion. \"As\nsoon as I arrive there with Grusha, we will set to work at once on the\nland, in solitude, somewhere very remote, with wild bears. There must be\nsome remote parts even there. I am told there are still Redskins there,\nsomewhere, on the edge of the horizon. So to the country of the _Last of\nthe Mohicans_, and there we'll tackle the grammar at once, Grusha and I.\nWork and grammar--that's how we'll spend three years. And by that time we\nshall speak English like any Englishman. And as soon as we've learnt\nit--good-by to America! We'll run here to Russia as American citizens.\nDon't be uneasy--we would not come to this little town. We'd hide\nsomewhere, a long way off, in the north or in the south. I shall be\nchanged by that time, and she will, too, in America. The doctors shall\nmake me some sort of wart on my face--what's the use of their being so\nmechanical!--or else I'll put out one eye, let my beard grow a yard, and I\nshall turn gray, fretting for Russia. I dare say they won't recognize us.\nAnd if they do, let them send us to Siberia. I don't care. It will show\nit's our fate. We'll work on the land here, too, somewhere in the wilds,\nand I'll make up as an American all my life. But we shall die on our own\nsoil. That's my plan, and it shan't be altered. Do you approve?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Alyosha, not wanting to contradict him. Mitya paused for a\nminute and said suddenly:\n\n\"And how they worked it up at the trial! Didn't they work it up!\"\n\n\"If they had not, you would have been convicted just the same,\" said\nAlyosha, with a sigh.\n\n\"Yes, people are sick of me here! God bless them, but it's hard,\" Mitya\nmoaned miserably. Again there was silence for a minute.\n\n\"Alyosha, put me out of my misery at once!\" he exclaimed suddenly. \"Tell\nme, is she coming now, or not? Tell me? What did she say? How did she say\nit?\"\n\n\"She said she would come, but I don't know whether she will come to-day.\nIt's hard for her, you know,\" Alyosha looked timidly at his brother.\n\n\"I should think it is hard for her! Alyosha, it will drive me out of my\nmind. Grusha keeps looking at me. She understands. My God, calm my heart:\nwhat is it I want? I want Katya! Do I understand what I want? It's the\nheadstrong, evil Karamazov spirit! No, I am not fit for suffering. I am a\nscoundrel, that's all one can say.\"\n\n\"Here she is!\" cried Alyosha.\n\nAt that instant Katya appeared in the doorway. For a moment she stood\nstill, gazing at Mitya with a dazed expression. He leapt impulsively to\nhis feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale, but a\ntimid, pleading smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an\nirresistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. Seeing it, she flew\nimpetuously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by force made\nhim sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still keeping his\nhands pressed them violently. Several times they both strove to speak, but\nstopped short and again gazed speechless with a strange smile, their eyes\nfastened on one another. So passed two minutes.\n\n\"Have you forgiven me?\" Mitya faltered at last, and at the same moment\nturning to Alyosha, his face working with joy, he cried, \"Do you hear what\nI am asking, do you hear?\"\n\n\"That's what I loved you for, that you are generous at heart!\" broke from\nKatya. \"My forgiveness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether you\nforgive me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and I in\nyours--so it must be....\" She stopped to take breath. \"What have I come\nfor?\" she began again with nervous haste: \"to embrace your feet, to press\nyour hands like this, till it hurts--you remember how in Moscow I used to\nsqueeze them--to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you\nthat I love you madly,\" she moaned in anguish, and suddenly pressed his\nhand greedily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes. Alyosha stood\nspeechless and confounded; he had never expected what he was seeing.\n\n\"Love is over, Mitya!\" Katya began again, \"but the past is painfully dear\nto me. Know that you will always be so. But now let what might have been\ncome true for one minute,\" she faltered, with a drawn smile, looking into\nhis face joyfully again. \"You love another woman, and I love another man,\nand yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love me; do you know that?\nDo you hear? Love me, love me all your life!\" she cried, with a quiver\nalmost of menace in her voice.\n\n\"I shall love you, and ... do you know, Katya,\" Mitya began, drawing a\ndeep breath at each word, \"do you know, five days ago, that same evening,\nI loved you.... When you fell down and were carried out ... All my life!\nSo it will be, so it will always be--\"\n\nSo they murmured to one another frantic words, almost meaningless, perhaps\nnot even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they both believed\nwhat they said implicitly.\n\n\"Katya,\" cried Mitya suddenly, \"do you believe I murdered him? I know you\ndon't believe it now, but then ... when you gave evidence.... Surely,\nsurely you did not believe it!\"\n\n\"I did not believe it even then. I've never believed it. I hated you, and\nfor a moment I persuaded myself. While I was giving evidence I persuaded\nmyself and believed it, but when I'd finished speaking I left off\nbelieving it at once. Don't doubt that! I have forgotten that I came here\nto punish myself,\" she said, with a new expression in her voice, quite\nunlike the loving tones of a moment before.\n\n\"Woman, yours is a heavy burden,\" broke, as it were, involuntarily from\nMitya.\n\n\"Let me go,\" she whispered. \"I'll come again. It's more than I can bear\nnow.\"\n\nShe was getting up from her place, but suddenly uttered a loud scream and\nstaggered back. Grushenka walked suddenly and noiselessly into the room.\nNo one had expected her. Katya moved swiftly to the door, but when she\nreached Grushenka, she stopped suddenly, turned as white as chalk and\nmoaned softly, almost in a whisper:\n\n\"Forgive me!\"\n\nGrushenka stared at her and, pausing for an instant, in a vindictive,\nvenomous voice, answered:\n\n\"We are full of hatred, my girl, you and I! We are both full of hatred! As\nthough we could forgive one another! Save him, and I'll worship you all my\nlife.\"\n\n\"You won't forgive her!\" cried Mitya, with frantic reproach.\n\n\"Don't be anxious, I'll save him for you!\" Katya whispered rapidly, and\nshe ran out of the room.\n\n\"And you could refuse to forgive her when she begged your forgiveness\nherself?\" Mitya exclaimed bitterly again.\n\n\"Mitya, don't dare to blame her; you have no right to!\" Alyosha cried\nhotly.\n\n\"Her proud lips spoke, not her heart,\" Grushenka brought out in a tone of\ndisgust. \"If she saves you I'll forgive her everything--\"\n\nShe stopped speaking, as though suppressing something. She could not yet\nrecover herself. She had come in, as appeared afterwards, accidentally,\nwith no suspicion of what she would meet.\n\n\"Alyosha, run after her!\" Mitya cried to his brother; \"tell her ... I\ndon't know ... don't let her go away like this!\"\n\n\"I'll come to you again at nightfall,\" said Alyosha, and he ran after\nKatya. He overtook her outside the hospital grounds. She was walking fast,\nbut as soon as Alyosha caught her up she said quickly:\n\n\"No, before that woman I can't punish myself! I asked her forgiveness\nbecause I wanted to punish myself to the bitter end. She would not forgive\nme.... I like her for that!\" she added, in an unnatural voice, and her\neyes flashed with fierce resentment.\n\n\"My brother did not expect this in the least,\" muttered Alyosha. \"He was\nsure she would not come--\"\n\n\"No doubt. Let us leave that,\" she snapped. \"Listen: I can't go with you\nto the funeral now. I've sent them flowers. I think they still have money.\nIf necessary, tell them I'll never abandon them.... Now leave me, leave\nme, please. You are late as it is--the bells are ringing for the\nservice.... Leave me, please!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. Ilusha's Funeral. The Speech At The Stone\n\n\nHe really was late. They had waited for him and had already decided to\nbear the pretty flower-decked little coffin to the church without him. It\nwas the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died two days after Mitya was\nsentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the\nboys, Ilusha's schoolfellows. They had all been impatiently expecting him\nand were glad that he had come at last. There were about twelve of them,\nthey all had their school-bags or satchels on their shoulders. \"Father\nwill cry, be with father,\" Ilusha had told them as he lay dying, and the\nboys remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was the foremost of them.\n\n\"How glad I am you've come, Karamazov!\" he cried, holding out his hand to\nAlyosha. \"It's awful here. It's really horrible to see it. Snegiryov is\nnot drunk, we know for a fact he's had nothing to drink to-day, but he\nseems as if he were drunk ... I am always manly, but this is awful.\nKaramazov, if I am not keeping you, one question before you go in?\"\n\n\"What is it, Kolya?\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he killed your father or was\nit the valet? As you say, so it will be. I haven't slept for the last four\nnights for thinking of it.\"\n\n\"The valet killed him, my brother is innocent,\" answered Alyosha.\n\n\"That's what I said,\" cried Smurov.\n\n\"So he will perish an innocent victim!\" exclaimed Kolya; \"though he is\nruined he is happy! I could envy him!\"\n\n\"What do you mean? How can you? Why?\" cried Alyosha surprised.\n\n\"Oh, if I, too, could sacrifice myself some day for truth!\" said Kolya\nwith enthusiasm.\n\n\"But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace and such horror!\" said\nAlyosha.\n\n\"Of course ... I should like to die for all humanity, and as for disgrace,\nI don't care about that--our names may perish. I respect your brother!\"\n\n\"And so do I!\" the boy, who had once declared that he knew who had founded\nTroy, cried suddenly and unexpectedly, and he blushed up to his ears like\na peony as he had done on that occasion.\n\nAlyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and his eyes\nclosed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin face was\nhardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no smell of decay from\nthe corpse. The expression of his face was serious and, as it were,\nthoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast, looked particularly\nbeautiful, as though chiseled in marble. There were flowers in his hands\nand the coffin, inside and out, was decked with flowers, which had been\nsent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But there were flowers too\nfrom Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door, the captain had\na bunch in his trembling hands and was strewing them again over his dear\nboy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha when he came in, and he would not look\nat any one, even at his crazy weeping wife, \"mamma,\" who kept trying to\nstand on her crippled legs to get a nearer look at her dead boy. Nina had\nbeen pushed in her chair by the boys close up to the coffin. She sat with\nher head pressed to it and she too was no doubt quietly weeping.\nSnegiryov's face looked eager, yet bewildered and exasperated. There was\nsomething crazy about his gestures and the words that broke from him. \"Old\nman, dear old man!\" he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was\nhis habit to call Ilusha \"old man,\" as a term of affection when he was\nalive.\n\n\"Father, give me a flower, too; take that white one out of his hand and\ngive it me,\" the crazy mother begged, whimpering. Either because the\nlittle white rose in Ilusha's hand had caught her fancy or that she wanted\none from his hand to keep in memory of him, she moved restlessly,\nstretching out her hands for the flower.\n\n\"I won't give it to any one, I won't give you anything,\" Snegiryov cried\ncallously. \"They are his flowers, not yours! Everything is his, nothing is\nyours!\"\n\n\"Father, give mother a flower!\" said Nina, lifting her face wet with\ntears.\n\n\"I won't give away anything and to her less than any one! She didn't love\nIlusha. She took away his little cannon and he gave it to her,\" the\ncaptain broke into loud sobs at the thought of how Ilusha had given up his\ncannon to his mother. The poor, crazy creature was bathed in noiseless\ntears, hiding her face in her hands.\n\nThe boys, seeing that the father would not leave the coffin and that it\nwas time to carry it out, stood round it in a close circle and began to\nlift it up.\n\n\"I don't want him to be buried in the churchyard,\" Snegiryov wailed\nsuddenly; \"I'll bury him by the stone, by our stone! Ilusha told me to. I\nwon't let him be carried out!\"\n\nHe had been saying for the last three days that he would bury him by the\nstone, but Alyosha, Krassotkin, the landlady, her sister and all the boys\ninterfered.\n\n\"What an idea, bury him by an unholy stone, as though he had hanged\nhimself!\" the old landlady said sternly. \"There in the churchyard the\nground has been crossed. He'll be prayed for there. One can hear the\nsinging in church and the deacon reads so plainly and verbally that it\nwill reach him every time just as though it were read over his grave.\"\n\nAt last the captain made a gesture of despair as though to say, \"Take him\nwhere you will.\" The boys raised the coffin, but as they passed the\nmother, they stopped for a moment and lowered it that she might say good-\nby to Ilusha. But on seeing that precious little face, which for the last\nthree days she had only looked at from a distance, she trembled all over\nand her gray head began twitching spasmodically over the coffin.\n\n\"Mother, make the sign of the cross over him, give him your blessing, kiss\nhim,\" Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched like an automaton and\nwith a face contorted with bitter grief she began, without a word, beating\nher breast with her fist. They carried the coffin past her. Nina pressed\nher lips to her brother's for the last time as they bore the coffin by\nher. As Alyosha went out of the house he begged the landlady to look after\nthose who were left behind, but she interrupted him before he had\nfinished.\n\n\"To be sure, I'll stay with them, we are Christians, too.\" The old woman\nwept as she said it.\n\nThey had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three\nhundred paces. It was a still, clear day, with a slight frost. The church\nbells were still ringing. Snegiryov ran fussing and distracted after the\ncoffin, in his short old summer overcoat, with his head bare and his soft,\nold, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state of bewildered\nanxiety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to support the head of\nthe coffin and only hindered the bearers, at another he ran alongside and\ntried to find a place for himself there. A flower fell on the snow and he\nrushed to pick it up as though everything in the world depended on the\nloss of that flower.\n\n\"And the crust of bread, we've forgotten the crust!\" he cried suddenly in\ndismay. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the crust of\nbread already and that it was in his pocket. He instantly pulled it out\nand was reassured.\n\n\"Ilusha told me to, Ilusha,\" he explained at once to Alyosha. \"I was\nsitting by him one night and he suddenly told me: 'Father, when my grave\nis filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows may fly\ndown, I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying alone.' \"\n\n\"That's a good thing,\" said Alyosha, \"we must often take some.\"\n\n\"Every day, every day!\" said the captain quickly, seeming cheered at the\nthought.\n\nThey reached the church at last and set the coffin in the middle of it.\nThe boys surrounded it and remained reverently standing so, all through\nthe service. It was an old and rather poor church; many of the ikons were\nwithout settings; but such churches are the best for praying in. During\nthe mass Snegiryov became somewhat calmer, though at times he had\noutbursts of the same unconscious and, as it were, incoherent anxiety. At\none moment he went up to the coffin to set straight the cover or the\nwreath, when a candle fell out of the candlestick he rushed to replace it\nand was a fearful time fumbling over it, then he subsided and stood\nquietly by the coffin with a look of blank uneasiness and perplexity.\nAfter the Epistle he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who was standing\nbeside him, that the Epistle had not been read properly but did not\nexplain what he meant. During the prayer, \"Like the Cherubim,\" he joined\nin the singing but did not go on to the end. Falling on his knees, he\npressed his forehead to the stone floor and lay so for a long while.\n\nAt last came the funeral service itself and candles were distributed. The\ndistracted father began fussing about again, but the touching and\nimpressive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul. He seemed suddenly\nto shrink together and broke into rapid, short sobs, which he tried at\nfirst to smother, but at last he sobbed aloud. When they began taking\nleave of the dead and closing the coffin, he flung his arms about, as\nthough he would not allow them to cover Ilusha, and began greedily and\npersistently kissing his dead boy on the lips. At last they succeeded in\npersuading him to come away from the step, but suddenly he impulsively\nstretched out his hand and snatched a few flowers from the coffin. He\nlooked at them and a new idea seemed to dawn upon him, so that he\napparently forgot his grief for a minute. Gradually he seemed to sink into\nbrooding and did not resist when the coffin was lifted up and carried to\nthe grave. It was an expensive one in the churchyard close to the church,\nKaterina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the customary rites the grave-\ndiggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov with his flowers in his hands bent\ndown so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in\nalarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to understand fully what was\nhappening. When they began filling up the grave, he suddenly pointed\nanxiously at the falling earth and began trying to say something, but no\none could make out what he meant, and he stopped suddenly. Then he was\nreminded that he must crumble the bread and he was awfully excited,\nsnatched up the bread and began pulling it to pieces and flinging the\nmorsels on the grave.\n\n\"Come, fly down, birds, fly down, sparrows!\" he muttered anxiously.\n\nOne of the boys observed that it was awkward for him to crumble the bread\nwith the flowers in his hands and suggested he should give them to some\none to hold for a time. But he would not do this and seemed indeed\nsuddenly alarmed for his flowers, as though they wanted to take them from\nhim altogether. And after looking at the grave, and as it were, satisfying\nhimself that everything had been done and the bread had been crumbled, he\nsuddenly, to the surprise of every one, turned, quite composedly even, and\nmade his way homewards. But his steps became more and more hurried, he\nalmost ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.\n\n\"The flowers are for mamma, the flowers are for mamma! I was unkind to\nmamma,\" he began exclaiming suddenly.\n\nSome one called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he flung the\nhat in the snow as though he were angry and kept repeating, \"I won't have\nthe hat, I won't have the hat.\" Smurov picked it up and carried it after\nhim. All the boys were crying, and Kolya and the boy who discovered about\nTroy most of all. Though Smurov, with the captain's hat in his hand, was\ncrying bitterly too, he managed, as he ran, to snatch up a piece of red\nbrick that lay on the snow of the path, to fling it at the flock of\nsparrows that was flying by. He missed them, of course, and went on crying\nas he ran. Half-way, Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood still for half a\nminute, as though struck by something, and suddenly turning back to the\nchurch, ran towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly overtook\nhim and caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell helpless on the snow\nas though he had been knocked down, and struggling, sobbing, and wailing,\nhe began crying out, \"Ilusha, old man, dear old man!\" Alyosha and Kolya\ntried to make him get up, soothing and persuading him.\n\n\"Captain, give over, a brave man must show fortitude,\" muttered Kolya.\n\n\"You'll spoil the flowers,\" said Alyosha, \"and mamma is expecting them,\nshe is sitting crying because you would not give her any before. Ilusha's\nlittle bed is still there--\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, mamma!\" Snegiryov suddenly recollected, \"they'll take away the\nbed, they'll take it away,\" he added as though alarmed that they really\nwould. He jumped up and ran homewards again. But it was not far off and\nthey all arrived together. Snegiryov opened the door hurriedly and called\nto his wife with whom he had so cruelly quarreled just before:\n\n\"Mamma, poor crippled darling, Ilusha has sent you these flowers,\" he\ncried, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers that had been frozen\nand broken while he was struggling in the snow. But at that instant he saw\nin the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha's little boots, which the\nlandlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old, patched, rusty-\nlooking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed to them, fell on his\nknees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his lips to it, began kissing it\ngreedily, crying, \"Ilusha, old man, dear old man, where are your little\nfeet?\"\n\n\"Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?\" the lunatic\ncried in a heartrending voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs. Kolya ran out\nof the room, the boys followed him. At last Alyosha too went out.\n\n\"Let them weep,\" he said to Kolya, \"it's no use trying to comfort them\njust now. Let us wait a minute and then go back.\"\n\n\"No, it's no use, it's awful,\" Kolya assented. \"Do you know, Karamazov,\"\nhe dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, \"I feel dreadfully\nsad, and if it were only possible to bring him back, I'd give anything in\nthe world to do it.\"\n\n\"Ah, so would I,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here to-night?\nHe'll be drunk, you know.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be enough, to\nspend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we all come together\nwe shall remind them of everything again,\" Alyosha suggested.\n\n\"The landlady is laying the table for them now--there'll be a funeral\ndinner or something, the priest is coming; shall we go back to it,\nKaramazov?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said Alyosha.\n\n\"It's all so strange, Karamazov, such sorrow and then pancakes after it,\nit all seems so unnatural in our religion.\"\n\n\"They are going to have salmon, too,\" the boy who had discovered about\nTroy observed in a loud voice.\n\n\"I beg you most earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again with your\nidiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you and doesn't\ncare to know whether you exist or not!\" Kolya snapped out irritably. The\nboy flushed crimson but did not dare to reply.\n\nMeantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly Smurov\nexclaimed:\n\n\"There's Ilusha's stone, under which they wanted to bury him.\"\n\nThey all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole\npicture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha,\nweeping and hugging his father, had cried, \"Father, father, how he\ninsulted you,\" rose at once before his imagination.\n\nA sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and earnest\nexpression he looked from one to another of the bright, pleasant faces of\nIlusha's schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:\n\n\"Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place.\"\n\nThe boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and expectant eyes\nupon him.\n\n\"Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers,\nof whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death's door.\nBut soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall\npart. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha's stone, that we will never\nforget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life,\nif we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how\nwe buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by\nthe bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy,\na kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honor and resented the\ncruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we\nwill remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with\nmost important things, if we attain to honor or fall into great\nmisfortune--still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were\nall together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the\ntime we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. My little\ndoves--let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue\nbirds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear children,\nperhaps you won't understand what I am saying to you, because I often\nspeak very unintelligibly, but you'll remember it all the same and will\nagree with my words some time. You must know that there is nothing higher\nand stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some\ngood memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you\na great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved\nfrom childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such\nmemories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one\nhas only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be\nthe means of saving us. Perhaps we may even grow wicked later on, may be\nunable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men's tears and at those\npeople who say as Kolya did just now, 'I want to suffer for all men,' and\nmay even jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may\nbecome--which God forbid--yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we\nloved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all\ntogether, at this stone, the cruelest and most mocking of us--if we do\nbecome so--will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at\nthis moment! What's more, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great\nevil and he will reflect and say, 'Yes, I was good and brave and honest\nthen!' Let him laugh to himself, that's no matter, a man often laughs at\nwhat's good and kind. That's only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you,\nboys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, 'No, I do wrong\nto laugh, for that's not a thing to laugh at.' \"\n\n\"That will be so, I understand you, Karamazov!\" cried Kolya, with flashing\neyes.\n\nThe boys were excited and they, too, wanted to say something, but they\nrestrained themselves, looking with intentness and emotion at the speaker.\n\n\"I say this in case we become bad,\" Alyosha went on, \"but there's no\nreason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and\nabove all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I\nsay that again. I give you my word for my part that I'll never forget one\nof you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for thirty\nyears. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to know\nwhether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov exists and\nthat he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the founders of\nTroy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys,\nmy dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave\nand generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he\nis grown up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as\nKartashov. But why am I talking about those two? You are all dear to me,\nboys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I\nbeg you to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us\nin this kind, good feeling which we shall remember and intend to remember\nall our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the good boy, the dear boy, precious to\nus for ever! Let us never forget him. May his memory live for ever in our\nhearts from this time forth!\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, for ever, for ever!\" the boys cried in their ringing voices,\nwith softened faces.\n\n\"Let us remember his face and his clothes and his poor little boots, his\ncoffin and his unhappy, sinful father, and how boldly he stood up for him\nalone against the whole school.\"\n\n\"We will remember, we will remember,\" cried the boys. \"He was brave, he\nwas good!\"\n\n\"Ah, how I loved him!\" exclaimed Kolya.\n\n\"Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good life is\nwhen one does something good and just!\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" the boys repeated enthusiastically.\n\n\"Karamazov, we love you!\" a voice, probably Kartashov's, cried\nimpulsively.\n\n\"We love you, we love you!\" they all caught it up. There were tears in the\neyes of many of them.\n\n\"Hurrah for Karamazov!\" Kolya shouted ecstatically.\n\n\"And may the dead boy's memory live for ever!\" Alyosha added again with\nfeeling.\n\n\"For ever!\" the boys chimed in again.\n\n\"Karamazov,\" cried Kolya, \"can it be true what's taught us in religion,\nthat we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each\nother again, all, Ilusha too?\"\n\n\"Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and\nshall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!\"\nAlyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.\n\n\"Ah, how splendid it will be!\" broke from Kolya.\n\n\"Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner. Don't be\nput out at our eating pancakes--it's a very old custom and there's\nsomething nice in that!\" laughed Alyosha. \"Well, let us go! And now we go\nhand in hand.\"\n\n\"And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!\" Kolya\ncried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his\nexclamation: \"Hurrah for Karamazov!\"\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n    1 In Russian, \"silen.\"\n\n    2 A proverbial expression in Russia.\n\n    3 Grushenka.\n\n    4 i.e. setter dog.\n\n    5 Probably the public event was the Decabrist plot against the Tsar,\n      of December 1825, in which the most distinguished men in Russia were\n      concerned.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.\n\n    6 When a monk's body is carried out from the cell to the church and\n      from the church to the graveyard, the canticle \"What earthly joy...\"\n      is sung. If the deceased was a priest as well as a monk the canticle\n      \"Our Helper and Defender\" is sung instead.\n\n    7 i.e. a chime of bells.\n\n    8 Literally: \"Did you get off with a long nose made at you?\"--a\n      proverbial expression in Russia for failure.\n\n    9 Gogol is meant.\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The Brothers Karamazov is a family tragedy centered around a father and his sons. Fyodor, the eldest Karamazov, has three sons: Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha. Ivan and Alyosha have the same mother, but Dmitri, the oldest, has a different mother. Fyodor is a greedy landowner, a bawdy lecher, and a neglectful father. Hence, the Karamazov brothers end up growing into young men under the care of various other people. But they all have returned home to visit their father, and it is the first time they all have been together for quite some time. Dmitri has a dispute with Fyodor over his inheritance, and Alyosha, who is living in a monastery, suggests that they see Father Zossima, Alyosha's mentor. Alyosha believes that the wise old man can settle the dispute peacefully. Father Zossima is patient and kind, but Fyodor and Dmitri end up quarreling anyway. After Fyodor drives the men to frustration, they leave the monastery separately, and Alyosha worries about their family's future. Alyosha talks to Dmitri, who confesses his complicated situation with women and money. Dmitri promised to marry a girl named Katerina, and she lent him 3,000 rubles. Instead of paying it back, he spent it on another girl named Grushenka. He wants to run away with Grushenka, but he feels that he needs to pay Katerina back before he can do so. This is why he is so interested in getting the money from Fyodor. Back at Fyodor's house, Smerdyakov is talking to the Karamazovs. Smerdyakov is an epileptic servant who was adopted by Grigory and Marfa, Fyodor's other servants. He was born to a woman named Lizaveta who died in childbirth. She was the town idiot, and she lived off charity from the other townspeople. Everyone called her \"Stinking Lizaveta,\" and when the town found out she was pregnant, they were furious at whoever could do such a thing to a helpless girl. They decided Fyodor must have been the culprit. Grigory and Marfa gave birth to a deformed child, and when they buried the child, they found Lizaveta, who had just given birth to Smerdyakov. They adopted the child immediately, and Fyodor named him. Father Zossima is dying, and Alyosha is distraught. Instead of asking Alyosha to stay with him during his last days, however, Father Zossima tells Alyosha he should leave the monastery to be with his family. His life gets even more complicated when a young crippled girl named Lise expresses that she has feelings for him. Alyosha visits Katerina, the girl who is engaged to marry Dmitri. Ivan is in love with her, but he feels that Dmitri is a better match for her. Frustrated and disgusted with his family's situation, Ivan says he is going to leave town. Alyosha sees a boy being picked on by his schoolmates, and he tries to talk to the boy, but he bites Alyosha's hand and runs away. Later, when Alyosha is bringing money to a man named Captain Snegiryov, who has been beaten by Dmitri, he recognizes the man's son. It is Ilusha, the boy who bit his hand. The family is poor, but Captain Snegiryov refuses to take the money because he feels that he needs to earn his son's respect after being humiliated by Dmitri--and accepting charity, especially from a Karamazov, is out of the question. When Alyosha goes back to see Katerina, he finds Lise, Madame Hohlakov's daughter. The two realize that they love each other, and they decide to get married. Alyosha goes to visit Ivan, and he finds him in a restaurant. Ivan has gone there to get away from his father, and Alyosha sits down with him to have an intimate talk. Ivan tells his brother about his thoughts regarding God and the world. He recites to Alyosha a poem he has written called \"The Great Inquisitor.\" The poem describes Christ returning to earth in the sixteenth century. The Church throws him in jail, and The Great Inquisitor explains to him that his presence is problematic for the world. The Church has spent years trying to replace the sense of freedom Christ gave man with security. He talks about how cruel the world is, especially to innocent children. After their meal, Alyosha and Ivan part ways, feeling closer than ever. Ivan sees Smerdyakov when he goes back to his father's house, and Smerdyakov tells him he is worried about Fyodor. He is worried Dmitri will come to kill him and the old man will be helpless to save himself. Ivan goes to sleep very troubled. Father Zossima is on his deathbed, and Alyosha goes to visit him. The Elder tells those around him how much Alyosha reminds him of his older brother, a boy who died when he was a youth. He talks about being a profligate youth in the army. One day, he challenged another man to a duel because of a girl. Before the duel, however, he had a change of heart. He did not shoot and, after the duel, he retired from the army and joined a monastery. He talks about how much the Bible has affected him and says that everyone should embrace the world and the people in it. He dies. Many predicted that a miracle would happen upon Father Zossima's death, but his body begins to putrefy, filling the monastery with an awful smell. This fills the other monks with doubt that Father Zossima was the saintly man they thought he was. Alyosha is shaken by the news. He goes to see Grushenka, who has sent for him, and she admits to wanting to \"ruin\" him. When he tells her that Father Zossima has died, however, she becomes contrite about her callousness. She says she thinks she is a wicked person, and the two comfort each other. When Alyosha leaves, he has a renewed faith in Father Zossima and his teachings because Alyosha feels how wonderful it is to love and be loved in return. Meanwhile, Dmitri has become desperate. He wants to be with Grushenka, but he wants to pay Katerina back first. He goes on an odyssey, hoping that he can depend on the charity of others. He visits a man named Samsanov, a man who used to pursue Grushenka, and he hates Dmitri. He sends Karamazov to see a surly drunk, tricking Dmitri into thinking this man may be helpful. The man is practically incoherent, however, and Dmitri goes to find Madame Hohlakov. She tells Dmitri that the only way he will find 3,000 rubles is in the gold mines. In confusion, Dmitri concludes that Grushenka has gone to visit his father, and he goes to his father's house in a rage, carrying a brass pestle. When he arrives, he does not find Grushenka, but as he is leaving, Grigory, his father's servant, thinks he has come to murder Fyodor. The two scuffle, and Dmitri hits Grigory on the head with the pestle. After determining that the man is not dead, Dmitri flees the scene and looks for Grushenka. She is with Kalganov, a former lover who had treated her poorly. Dmitri decides that he will not end up with Grushenka and decides to kill himself after seeing her one more time. He crashes her party and sits down with her gentleman friend and some other men. The situation becomes tense, and after the gentlemen make some disparaging remarks about Russians and Dmitri, Grushenka decides she does not want to be with such an insulting and vicious man. She decides that she loves Dmitri, and as the two are coming to terms with their love, the police come to arrest him for the murder of Fyodor. As the police question Dmitri, it becomes clear that the facts all support the conclusion that he did indeed murder his father, even though he did not commit the crime. He was at the scene of the crime, wielding a weapon, the night of the murder. He had said he would kill his father on several occasions. He publicly announced he was looking for 3,000 rubles and was desperate to find them, and Fyodor reportedly had an envelope with 3,000 rubles that was stolen the night of the murder. Dmitri is carried away, and very few people believe that he is innocent of Fyodor's murder. Meanwhile, Alyosha is visiting Ilusha, the boy who bit his hand, in the hospital. The boy has fallen quite ill, and Alyosha has gotten to know many of the boy's friends, who are also visiting him. One boy, Kolya Krassotkin, is a leader among the boys. He and Ilusha were friends, but they had a falling out because Ilusha fed a pin to a dog, and Kolya did not approve of his cruelty. When Alyosha comes to visit, he and Kolya talk for quite some time. The boy looks up to this wise man about which he has heard so much from the other boys, and he wants to impress him. The two become friends, and Alyosha treats all the boys as equals. When Kolya goes in to see Ilusha, he gives him a dog as a present. He reveals that the dog is none other but the dog Ilusha gave the piece of bread with a pin in it. Kolya has nursed the dog back to health and has fully trained him as a gesture of friendship to Ilusha. The mood is dampened, however, when the doctors go in to see Ilusha. Without even saying it, everyone understands that the boy does not have much time left. Ilusha is brave, and he tries to lift the spirits of those around him. Later, Alyosha visits his brother in jail. Dmitri tells Alyosha that Ivan has concocted a plan for his escape from jail. Alyosha goes to talk to Ivan, who feels strangely guilty about his father's death. Alyosha tells his brother that he should not feel responsible for a crime that he did not commit, but Ivan stalks off angrily. He meets Smerdyakov, who tells Ivan he thinks the Karamazov brother is guilty as an accomplice to the murder. He says that Ivan wanted his father dead and left the night of the murder to try to free himself of the responsibility of protecting his father. Ivan is angry and troubled by this, and when he talks to Smerdyakov later, Smerdyakov flatly admits to hilling Fyodor. He says that Ivan's theories and ideas were the basis for his crime and that Ivan's talks with Smerdyakov basically rationalized the deed. When Ivan returns home after this meeting, he sees a devil in his room. The devil chastises him for being a wicked person with weaknesses and foibles that have led to disastrous circumstances. Alyosha bangs on the door and finds his brother in a feverish state, muttering about a devil and Smerdyakov. Alyosha stays the night with his brother to take care of him. Dmitri's trial begins. Many people from all around come to see the spectacle of the parricide trial. Dmitri has an excellent lawyer, but it is a hard case to win. The prosecution brings many witnesses who testify to seemingly damning evidence against Dmitri. The defense, however, discredits one after another of these witnesses, showing ulterior motives or mitigating circumstances. Alyosha defends his brother from the stand, and Katerina gives a moving account of Dmitri's honorable nature. Then Ivan comes into the courtroom, waving money and implicating Smerdyakov. Since he is yelling nonsense, disrupting the trial, and generally acting crazy, the court does not believe him. Suddenly, at the end of the trial, Katerina stands up again, showing a letter from Dmitri that clearly states Dmitri's intention to kill Fyodor as a last resort. She has a change of heart and no longer wants to lie to protect a man who has hurt her so much. Word comes to the courtoom that Smerdyakov has hanged himself. After final statements are made, the verdict comes back: guilty. Dmitri is sentenced to jail. Dmitri welcomes this chance to become a new man, but he does not want to be in exile in Siberia for the rest of his life; he wants to return to his home country before he dies. Ivan is still sick, and Katerina takes care of him. Alyosha visits the boys with whom he has become friends. They are sad because Ilusha has died. Alyosha passes along Father Zossima's teachings of love and understanding, and they all embrace his words, cheering him.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "The novel opens with the Karamazov brothers returning to their hometown after being raised largely away from home by distant relatives. Now young men, they each have their own reasons for being there: Dmitri seeks to settle an inheritance dispute with their father, Fyodor Karamazov; Alyosha is a novice at the local monastery; and Ivan ostensibly has returned to assist Dmitri. The dispute between Dmitri and his father has been aggravated by their romantic rivalry over Grushenka, despite the fact that Dmitri is already engaged to Katerina Ivanovna. The Karamazovs meet with the elder Zosima at the monastery in an attempt to resolve their differences, but scandal ensues when Fyodor causes a scene. After the scandal, Alyosha seeks out Dmitri, who is spying on Fyodor from a neighboring garden. Dmitri spills the details of his sordid affair with Grushenka and his shameful theft of Katerina's money in order to woo Grushenka. Leaving Dmitri, Alyosha enters his father's house, where he finds his father, Ivan, Smerdyakov, and Grigory engaged in a religious dispute over dinner. Suddenly Dmitri enters in a rage and beats Fyodor, then runs out the door. After the attack, Alyosha seeks out Katerina, who, to his surprise, is entertaining Grushenka. Grushenka insults Katerina and is thrown out. Katerina's maid hands Alyosha a note, which he opens when he finally returns to the monastery. The note is from Lise Khokhlakov, who declares her love for him. The next morning, the elder Zosima sends Alyosha to check on his brothers and his father. Alyosha first visits his father, who is angry and suspicions about Dmitri and Ivan. On leaving his father, Alyosha heads off to the Khokhlakov residence, but his journey is interrupted by a group of schoolboys who are attacking another schoolboy. When Alyosha attempts to aid the defenseless schoolboy, the boy bites his hand and runs off. At the Khokhlakovs', Alyosha is taken aside by Lise and proposes marriage to her. After his chat with Lise, Alyosha enters the drawing room, where Ivan and Katerina have a dispute. After Ivan leaves, Katerina gives Alyosha 200 roubles to give to a Captain Snegiryov, who was insulted by Dmitri. Alyosha heads to the Snegiryovs' cottage, where he meets the entire Snegiryov family, including the young boy, Ilyusha, who bit him earlier in the day. Captain Snegiryov proudly rejects Alyosha's offer of charity. After another brief visit to the Khokhlakovs, Alyosha seeks out Dmitri again. In his father's neighbor's garden, Alyosha meets Smerdyakov, who tells him that Dmitri has gone off to visit Ivan at the village tavern. At the tavern, Alyosha finds Ivan alone. As they dine together, Ivan defends his religious skepticism to Alyosha by way of a long poetic fantasy entitled \"The Grand Inquisitor.\" At the end of their meal, they part ways. At this point, the novel shifts to Ivan's perspective. He heads back to his father's, where he meets up with Smerdyakov. Smerdyakov's sly insinuations about a possible murder of Fyodor trouble Ivan. During the night, Ivan finds himself checking on his father for no reason, and feels ashamed. The next morning, Fyodor convinces Ivan to go to Chermashnya, but on the way to the train station Ivan changes his mind and heads to Moscow. The novel then shifts gears back to Alyosha, who is in the elder Zosima's cell where other monks have gathered to share his last moments. Zosima relates stories from his life and elaborates his religious teachings. Then suddenly he falls to the floor, praying, and dies. The next morning Zosima's body is put on display at his wake. But despite everyone's expectations that some miracle might occur, his body begins to decay, much to the delight of his detractors. This scandal troubles Alyosha, and Rakitin, sensing Alyosha's state, invites him to visit Grushenka. Grushenka happily announces to them both that a former lover of hers, a Pole, has finally returned to her, and she awaits his call to join him. Alyosha is grateful that Grushenka has not seduced him and returns that evening to Zosima's wake, where he prays and feels his faith revived. The novel shifts perspective to Dmitri, who runs around town looking for someone to loan him 3,000 roubles, the amount he stole from Katerina. Both Kuzma Samsonov and Madame Khokhlakov turn him down. Dmitri at first believes that Grushenka is at Samsonov's, but when he realizes that she isn't, he immediately suspects her of going to his father's. Dmitri is tempted to attack his father, but refrains. As he escapes over the garden wall, he is caught by Grigory. In an attempt to free himself, he hits Grigory on the head. Dmitri returns to Grushenka's, and finally learns from her servants that she is off at Mokroye to meet her Polish lover. He rushes off to Mokroye, where Grushenka rejects her Polish lover and declares her love for Dmitri. They throw a party to celebrate, but the festivities come to an end when officials arrive to arrest Dmitri for the murder of his father. At this point, the novel moves several months ahead to the days leading up to Dmitri's trial, and turns to the story of Kolya Krasotkin and Ilyusha Snegiryov. After the incident with Alyosha, Ilyusha takes seriously ill. Alyosha rallies the other boys to cheer Ilyusha. Kolya, who was reluctant to visit at first, finally visits Ilyusha with the gift of a dog which Ilyusha was convinced he had killed. Despite Ilyusha's excitement and joy, a Moscow doctor, on a visit paid by Katerina's charitable generosity, announces that Ilyusha has very little time left to live. Meanwhile Dmitri's case has caused quite a stir throughout Russia, helped in part by Rakitin's sensationalist journalism. Ivan attempts to convince Dmitri to escape a trial he surely can't win, but Ivan's own certainty about his behavior during the murder are put to the test by his conversations with the sly Smerdyakov. In their last conversation, Smerdyakov confesses that he murdered Fyodor. When Ivan returns home after his conversation with Smerdyakov, he imagines that he meets the devil in his own room. The hallucination is interrupted by a visit from Alyosha, who informs Ivan that Smerdyakov has committed suicide. Dmitri's trial begins the next morning. Just as the witness testimony seems to be going Dmitri's way, Ivan makes a scene at the trial, which in turn stirs Katerina to reveal some damning evidence against Dmitri. Despite his defense lawyer's brilliant closing argument, Dmitri is found guilty. The novel ends in the days following Dmitri's trial. Dmitri contemplates escaping with Grushenka to America, and Katerina nurses Ivan, who took ill immediately after he caused a scene at Dmitri's trial. Alyosha attends the funeral of little Ilyusha, and the novel closes with Alyosha and his young friends at Ilyusha's wake.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "cliffnotes", "text": "By his first wife, Fyodor Karamazov sired one son -- Dmitri -- and by his second wife, two sons -- Ivan and Alyosha. None of the Karamazov, boys, however, was reared in the family home. Their mothers dead and their father a drunken fornicator, they were parceled out to various relatives. Fyodor could not have been more grateful; he could devote all energy and time to his notorious orgies. Those were the early years. Dmitri comes of age, as the novel opens, and asks his father for an inheritance that, he has long been told, his mother left him. His request is scoffed at. Old Karamazov feigns ignorance of any mythical monies or properties that are rightfully Dmitri's. The matter is far from ended, though, for Dmitri and his father find themselves instinctive enemies, and besides quarreling over the inheritance, they vie for Grushenka, a woman of questionable reputation. Finally it is suggested that if there is to be peace in the Karamazov household, the family must go together to the monastery and allow Alyosha's elder, Father Zossima, to arbitrate and resolve the quarrels. Ivan, Karamazov's intellectual son, accompanies them to the meeting. At the monastery, there seems to be little hope for a successful reconciliation. Fyodor parades his usual disgusting vulgarities, makes a dreadful scene, and when Dmitri arrives late, he accuses his son of all sorts of degeneracy. Dmitri then retorts that his father has tried to lure Grushenka into a liaison by promising her 3,000 rubles, and in the midst of their shouting, Father Zossima bows and kisses Dmitri's feet. This act ends the interview. All are shocked into silence. Later, old Karamazov recovers from his astonishment and once again he makes a disgraceful scene in the dining room of the Father Superior. He then leaves the monastery and commands Alyosha to leave also. It is now that Dostoevsky reveals that Karamazov perhaps has fathered another son. Years ago, a raggle-taggle moron girl who roamed the town was seduced and bore a child; everyone, naturally, assumed that the satyr-like Karamazov was responsible. The child grew up to be an epileptic and now cooks for Karamazov. He is a strange sort, this Smerdyakov, and lately his epileptic seizures have become more frequent. Curiously, he enjoys talking philosophy with Ivan. The day after the explosive scene in the monastery, Alyosha comes to visit his father and is stopped midway by Dmitri. The emotional, impulsive Karamazov son explains to Alyosha that he is sick with grief -- that some time ago, he became engaged to a girl named Katerina, and has recently borrowed 3,000 rubles from her to finance an orgy with Grushenka. He pleads for Alyosha to speak to Katerina, to break the engagement, and to help him find some way to repay the squandered money so that he can feel free to elope with Grushenka. Alyosha promises to help if he is able. The young man reaches his father's house and finds more confusion: Smerdyakov is loudly arguing with another servant about religion, spouting many of Ivan's ideas. Later, when the servants are ordered away, Karamazov taunts Ivan and Alyosha about God and immortality, and Ivan answers that he believes in neither. Alyosha quietly affirms the existence of both. Dmitri then bursts into the room crying for Grushenka and when he cannot find her, attacks his father and threatens to kill him. Alyosha tends his father's wounds, then goes back to the monastery for the night. The next day he goes to see Katerina, as he promised Dmitri, and tries to convince her that she and Ivan love each other and that she should not concern herself with Dmitri and his problems. He is unsuccessful. Later that same day, Alyosha comes upon Ivan in a restaurant, and they continue the conversation about God and immortality that they began at their father's house. Ivan says that he cannot accept a world in which God allows so many innocent people to suffer and Alyosha says that, although Ivan cannot comprehend the logic of God, there is One who can comprehend all: Jesus. Ivan then explains, with his poem \"The Grand Inquisitor,\" that Jesus is neither a ready nor an easy answer-all for his questionings -- that He placed an intolerable burden on man by giving him total freedom of choice. When Alyosha returns to the monastery, he finds Father Zossima near death. The elder rallies a bit and lives long enough to expound his religious beliefs to his small audience, stressing, above all, a life of simplicity, a life in which every man shall love all people and all things, and shall refrain from condemning others. This is Zossima's final wisdom, and when he finishes, he dies. Next day many people gather to view the holy man's corpse, for popular rumor has whispered for years that upon Zossima's death, a miracle would occur. No miracle occurs, however. Instead, a foul and putrid odor fills the room, and all of the mourners are horrified. Even Alyosha questions God's justice and, momentarily yielding to temptation, he flees to Grushenka's house. But after he has talked with the girl, he discovers that she is not the sinful woman he sought; she is remarkably sensitive and quite understanding and compassionate. Alyosha's faith is restored and, later, in a dream of Jesus' coming to the wedding of Cana, he realizes that life is meant to be joyously shared. Now he is absolutely certain of his faith in God and in immortality. Dmitri has meanwhile been frantically searching for a way to raise the money to repay Katerina. He has even gone to a neighboring town to try and borrow the sum, but even there he fails. Returning, lie discovers that Grushenka is no longer at home and panics, sure that she has succumbed to Fyodor's rubles. He goes first to his father's house; then, after discovering that she is not there, he tries to escape but is cornered by an old servant. He strikes him aside, leaving him bloody and unconscious, and returns to Grushenka's house. He demands to know her whereabouts and at last is told that she has gone to join a former lover, one who deserted her five years before. Dmitri makes a final decision: he will see Grushenka once more, for the last time, and then kill himself. He travels to the couple's rendezvous, finds Grushenka celebrating with her lover, and joins them. There is resentment and arguing, and finally Grushenka is convinced that her former lover is a scoundrel and that it is Dmitri whom she really loves. The two lovers are not to be reunited, however, for the police arrive and accuse Dmitri of murdering his father. Both are stunned by the circumstantial evidence, for the accusation is weighty. Dmitri indeed seems guilty and is indicted to stand trial. Alyosha, in the meantime, has made friends with a young schoolboy, the son of a man brutally beaten by Dmitri in a rage of passion and gradually the youth has proven his sincere desire to help the frightened, avenging boy. Now that the youngster is dying, Alyosha remains at his bedside, where he hopes to help the family and also to reconcile the young boy with many of his schoolmates. Ivan, the intellectual, has neither the romantic passion of Dmitri nor the wide, spiritual interests of Alyosha, and when he learns of his father's murder, he broods, then decides to discuss his theories with Smerdyakov. He is astonished at the bastard servant's open confession that he is responsible for the murder. But Smerdyakov is clever; he disavows total responsibility and maintains that Ivan gave him the intellectual and moral justification for the murder and, furthermore, that he actually permitted the act by leaving town so that Smerdyakov would be free to accomplish the deed. Ivan is slow to accept the argument but after he does, he is absolutely convinced of Smerdyakov's logic. The transition is disastrous. His newfound guilt makes him a madman and the night before Dmitri's trial, he is devoured with burning brain fever. That same night, Smerdyakov commits suicide. Dmitri's situation becomes increasingly perilous. During the trial, the circumstantial evidence is presented in so thorough a manner that Dmitri is logically convicted as Fyodor's murderer. He has the motive, the passion, and was at the scene of the crime. Perhaps the most damning bit of evidence, however, is presented by Katerina. She shows the court a letter of Dmitri's in which he says that he fears he might be driven to murder his father. After the conviction, Dmitri agrees to certain plans for his escape but says that it will be great torture and suffering for him to flee from Mother Russia, from Russian soil, and to live in exile. As for Alyosha, his future holds the promise of hope and goodness , for after young Ilusha dies and all his schoolmates attend the funeral, Alyosha gathers them together and deeply impresses them with his explanation of love and of friendship. Spontaneously, the boys rise and cheer Alyosha and his wisdom.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "In his youth, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is a coarse, vulgar man whose main concerns are making money and seducing young women. He marries twice and has three sons: Dmitri, the child of his first wife, and Ivan and Alyosha, children of his second wife. Fyodor Pavlovich never has any interest in his sons, and when their mothers die, he sends them away to be brought up by relatives and friends. At the beginning of the novel, Dmitri Karamazov, who is now a twenty-eight-year-old soldier, has just returned to Fyodor Pavlovich's town. Fyodor Pavlovich is unhappy to see Dmitri because Dmitri has come to claim an inheritance left to him by his mother. Fyodor Pavlovich plans to keep the inheritance for himself. The two men swiftly fall into conflict over the money, and the coldly intellectual Ivan, who knows neither his father nor his brother well, is eventually called in to help settle their dispute. The kind, faithful Alyosha, who is about twenty, also lives in the town, where he is an acolyte, or apprentice, at the monastery, studying with the renowned elder Zosima. Eventually Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich agree that perhaps Zosima could help resolve the Karamazovs' quarrel, and Alyosha tentatively consents to arrange a meeting. At the monastery, Alyosha's worst fears are realized. After Fyodor Pavlovich makes a fool of himself by mocking the monks and telling vulgar stories, Dmitri arrives late, and Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich become embroiled in a shouting match. It turns out that they have more to quarrel about than money: they are both in love with Grushenka, a beautiful young woman in the town. Dmitri has left his fiancee, Katerina, to pursue Grushenka, while Fyodor Pavlovich has promised to give Grushenka 3,000 rubles if she becomes his lover. This sum is significant, as Dmitri recently stole 3,000 rubles from Katerina in order to finance a lavish trip with Grushenka, and he is now desperate to pay the money back. As father and son shout at each other at the monastery, the wise old Zosima unexpectedly kneels and bows his head to the ground at Dmitri's feet. He later explains to Alyosha that he could see that Dmitri is destined to suffer greatly. Many years previously, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov fathered a fourth son with a retarded mute girl who lived in town as the village idiot. The girl died as she gave birth to the baby, who was taken in by servants of Fyodor Pavlovich and forced to work as a servant for him as well. Fyodor Pavlovich never treats the child, Smerdyakov, as a son, and Smerdyakov develops a strange and malicious personality. He also suffers from epilepsy. Despite the limitations of his upbringing, however, Smerdyakov is not stupid. He enjoys nothing more than listening to Ivan discuss philosophy, and in his own conversations, he frequently invokes many of Ivan's ideas--specifically that the soul is not immortal, and that therefore morality does not exist and the categories of good and evil are irrelevant to human experience. After the humiliating scene in the monastery, the rest of Alyosha's day is only slightly less trying. Dmitri sends Alyosha to break off Dmitri's engagement with Katerina. Alyosha then argues about religion with Ivan in front of the smirking Fyodor Pavlovich. Alyosha also gets caught in the middle of another explosion between Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich over Grushenka, in the course of which Dmitri throws Fyodor Pavlovich to the ground and threatens to kill him. But despite the hardships of his day, Alyosha is so gentle and loving that he is concerned only with how he might help his family. After tending his father's wounds, he returns to the monastery for the night. The next day, Alyosha visits Katerina. To his surprise, Ivan is with Katerina, and Alyosha immediately perceives that Ivan and Katerina are in love. Alyosha tries to convince them that they should act on their love for one another, but they are both too proud and cold to listen. Alyosha has dinner with Ivan, and Ivan explains to him the source of his religious doubt: he cannot reconcile the idea of a loving God with the needless suffering of innocent people, particularly children. Any God that would allow such suffering, he says, does not love mankind. He recites a poem he has written called \"The Grand Inquisitor,\" in which he accuses Christ of placing an intolerable burden upon humanity by guaranteeing that people have free will and the ability to choose whether or not to believe in God. That evening, Alyosha again returns to the monastery, where the frail Zosima is now on his deathbed. Alyosha hurries to Zosima's cell, and arrives just in time to hear his final lesson, which emphasizes the importance of love and forgiveness in all human affairs. Zosima dies stretching his arms out before him, as though to embrace the world. Many of the monks are optimistic that Zosima's death will be accompanied by a miracle, but no miracle takes place. If anything, Zosima's corpse begins to stink more quickly than might have been expected, which is taken by Zosima's critics to mean that he was corrupt and unreliable in life. Sickened by the injustice of seeing the wise and loving Zosima humiliated after his death, Alyosha allows his friend Rakitin to take him to see Grushenka. Although Rakitin and Grushenka hope to corrupt Alyosha, just the opposite happens, and a bond of sympathy and understanding springs up between Grushenka and Alyosha. Their friendship renews Alyosha's faith, and Alyosha helps Grushenka to begin her own spiritual redemption. That night, Alyosha has a dream in which Zosima tells him that he has done a good deed in helping Grushenka. This dream further strengthens Alyosha's love and resolve, and he goes outside to kiss the ground to show his passion for doing good on Earth. Dmitri has spent two days unsuccessfully trying to raise the money to pay Katerina the 3,000 rubles he owes her. No one will lend him the money, and he has nothing to sell. At last he goes to Grushenka's house, and when she is not there, he is suddenly convinced that she has gone to be with Fyodor Pavlovich. He rushes to Fyodor Pavlovich's house, but finds that Grushenka is not there. While prowling on the grounds, Dmitri strikes Fyodor Pavlovich's old servant, Grigory, leaving him bloody and unconscious. Then he flees. He returns to Grushenka's house, and learns from her maid that Grushenka has gone to rejoin a lover who abandoned her several years ago. Dmitri now decides that his only course of action is to kill himself. But he decides to see Grushenka one last time before he does so. A few minutes later, Dmitri strides into a shop, with his shirt bloody and a large wad of cash in his hand. He buys food and wine, and travels out to see Grushenka and her lover. When Grushenka sees the two men together, she realizes that she really loves Dmitri. Dmitri locks the other man in a closet, and Dmitri and Grushenka begin to plan their wedding. But the police suddenly burst in and arrest Dmitri. He is accused of the murder of his father, who has been found dead. Due to the large amount of evidence against Dmitri, including the money suddenly found in his possession, he will be made to stand trial. Dmitri says that the money was what he had left after spending half of the 3,000 rubles he stole from Katerina, but no one believes him. Dmitri is imprisoned. Meanwhile, Alyosha befriends some of the local schoolboys. He meets a dying boy named Ilyusha, and arranges for the other boys to come visit him every day. Alyosha helps Ilyusha's family as the young boy nears death, and he is universally adored by all the schoolboys, who look to him for guidance. Ivan talks to Smerdyakov about Fyodor Pavlovich's death, and Smerdyakov confesses to Ivan that he, and not Dmitri, committed the murder. But he says that Ivan is also implicated in the crime because the philosophical lessons Smerdyakov learned from Ivan, regarding the impossibility of evil in a world without a God, made Smerdyakov capable of committing murder. This statement causes Ivan to become consumed with guilt. After returning home, Ivan suffers a nervous breakdown in which he sees a devil that relentlessly taunts him. The apparition vanishes when Alyosha arrives with the news that Smerdyakov has hung himself. At the trial, Dmitri's case seems to be going well until Ivan is called upon to testify. Ivan madly asserts that he himself is guilty of the murder, throwing the courtroom into confusion. To clear Ivan's name, Katerina leaps up and shows a letter she received from Dmitri in which he wrote that he was afraid he might one day murder his father. Even after the letter is read, most of the people in the courtroom are convinced of Dmitri's innocence. But the peasants on the jury find him guilty, and he is taken back to prison to await his exile in Siberia. After the trial, Katerina takes Ivan to her house, where she plans to nurse him through his illness. She and Dmitri forgive one another, and she arranges for Dmitri to escape from prison and flee to America with Grushenka. Alyosha's friend Ilyusha dies, and Alyosha gives a speech to the schoolboys at his funeral. In plain language, he says that they must all remember the love they feel for one another and treasure their memories of one another. The schoolboys, moved, give Alyosha an enthusiastic cheer.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "2833", "title": "The Portrait of a Lady", "text": "\nUnder certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable\nthan the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There\nare circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not--some\npeople of course never do,--the situation is in itself delightful. Those\nthat I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered\nan admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of\nthe little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English\ncountry-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid\nsummer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was\nleft, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk\nwould not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun\nto ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth,\ndense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed\nthat sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source\nof one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to\neight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion\nas this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons\nconcerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not\nof the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the\nceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight\nand angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep\nwicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and\nof two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of\nhim. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup,\nof a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant\ncolours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding\nit for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house.\nHis companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to\ntheir privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll.\nOne of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain\nattention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his\neyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond\nthe lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most\ncharacteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted\nto sketch.\n\nIt stood upon a low hill, above the river--the river being the Thames at\nsome forty miles from London. A long gabled front of red brick, with\nthe complexion of which time and the weather had played all sorts of\npictorial tricks, only, however, to improve and refine it, presented\nto the lawn its patches of ivy, its clustered chimneys, its windows\nsmothered in creepers. The house had a name and a history; the old\ngentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these\nthings: how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a\nnight's hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had\nextended itself upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which\nstill formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been\na good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell's wars, and then, under the\nRestoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having\nbeen remodelled and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed\ninto the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it\noriginally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth)\nit was offered at a great bargain: bought it with much grumbling at its\nugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of\ntwenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it,\nso that he knew all its points and would tell you just where to stand\nto see them in combination and just the hour when the shadows of\nits various protuberances which fell so softly upon the warm, weary\nbrickwork--were of the right measure. Besides this, as I have said,\nhe could have counted off most of the successive owners and occupants,\nseveral of whom were known to general fame; doing so, however, with an\nundemonstrative conviction that the latest phase of its destiny was not\nthe least honourable. The front of the house overlooking that portion\nof the lawn with which we are concerned was not the entrance-front; this\nwas in quite another quarter. Privacy here reigned supreme, and the wide\ncarpet of turf that covered the level hill-top seemed but the extension\nof a luxurious interior. The great still oaks and beeches flung down a\nshade as dense as that of velvet curtains; and the place was furnished,\nlike a room, with cushioned seats, with rich-coloured rugs, with\nthe books and papers that lay upon the grass. The river was at some\ndistance; where the ground began to slope the lawn, properly speaking,\nceased. But it was none the less a charming walk down to the water.\n\nThe old gentleman at the tea-table, who had come from America thirty\nyears before, had brought with him, at the top of his baggage, his\nAmerican physiognomy; and he had not only brought it with him, but he\nhad kept it in the best order, so that, if necessary, he might have\ntaken it back to his own country with perfect confidence. At present,\nobviously, nevertheless, he was not likely to displace himself; his\njourneys were over and he was taking the rest that precedes the\ngreat rest. He had a narrow, clean-shaven face, with features evenly\ndistributed and an expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a\nface in which the range of representation was not large, so that the air\nof contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed to tell\nthat he had been successful in life, yet it seemed to tell also that his\nsuccess had not been exclusive and invidious, but had had much of the\ninoffensiveness of failure. He had certainly had a great experience of\nmen, but there was an almost rustic simplicity in the faint smile that\nplayed upon his lean, spacious cheek and lighted up his humorous eye\nas he at last slowly and carefully deposited his big tea-cup upon the\ntable. He was neatly dressed, in well-brushed black; but a shawl was\nfolded upon his knees, and his feet were encased in thick, embroidered\nslippers. A beautiful collie dog lay upon the grass near his chair,\nwatching the master's face almost as tenderly as the master took in the\nstill more magisterial physiognomy of the house; and a little bristling,\nbustling terrier bestowed a desultory attendance upon the other\ngentlemen.\n\nOne of these was a remarkably well-made man of five-and-thirty, with a\nface as English as that of the old gentleman I have just sketched was\nsomething else; a noticeably handsome face, fresh-coloured, fair and\nfrank, with firm, straight features, a lively grey eye and the rich\nadornment of a chestnut beard. This person had a certain fortunate,\nbrilliant exceptional look--the air of a happy temperament fertilised by\na high civilisation--which would have made almost any observer envy him\nat a venture. He was booted and spurred, as if he had dismounted from a\nlong ride; he wore a white hat, which looked too large for him; he\nheld his two hands behind him, and in one of them--a large, white,\nwell-shaped fist--was crumpled a pair of soiled dog-skin gloves.\n\nHis companion, measuring the length of the lawn beside him, was a person\nof quite a different pattern, who, although he might have excited\ngrave curiosity, would not, like the other, have provoked you to wish\nyourself, almost blindly, in his place. Tall, lean, loosely and feebly\nput together, he had an ugly, sickly, witty, charming face, furnished,\nbut by no means decorated, with a straggling moustache and whisker. He\nlooked clever and ill--a combination by no means felicitous; and he wore\na brown velvet jacket. He carried his hands in his pockets, and there\nwas something in the way he did it that showed the habit was inveterate.\nHis gait had a shambling, wandering quality; he was not very firm on\nhis legs. As I have said, whenever he passed the old man in the chair he\nrested his eyes upon him; and at this moment, with their faces brought\ninto relation, you would easily have seen they were father and son.\nThe father caught his son's eye at last and gave him a mild, responsive\nsmile.\n\n\"I'm getting on very well,\" he said.\n\n\"Have you drunk your tea?\" asked the son.\n\n\"Yes, and enjoyed it.\"\n\n\"Shall I give you some more?\"\n\nThe old man considered, placidly. \"Well, I guess I'll wait and see.\" He\nhad, in speaking, the American tone.\n\n\"Are you cold?\" the son enquired.\n\nThe father slowly rubbed his legs. \"Well, I don't know. I can't tell\ntill I feel.\"\n\n\"Perhaps some one might feel for you,\" said the younger man, laughing.\n\n\"Oh, I hope some one will always feel for me! Don't you feel for me,\nLord Warburton?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, immensely,\" said the gentleman addressed as Lord Warburton,\npromptly. \"I'm bound to say you look wonderfully comfortable.\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose I am, in most respects.\" And the old man looked down at\nhis green shawl and smoothed it over his knees. \"The fact is I've been\ncomfortable so many years that I suppose I've got so used to it I don't\nknow it.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's the bore of comfort,\" said Lord Warburton. \"We only know\nwhen we're uncomfortable.\"\n\n\"It strikes me we're rather particular,\" his companion remarked.\n\n\"Oh yes, there's no doubt we're particular,\" Lord Warburton murmured.\nAnd then the three men remained silent a while; the two younger ones\nstanding looking down at the other, who presently asked for more tea. \"I\nshould think you would be very unhappy with that shawl,\" Lord Warburton\nresumed while his companion filled the old man's cup again.\n\n\"Oh no, he must have the shawl!\" cried the gentleman in the velvet coat.\n\"Don't put such ideas as that into his head.\"\n\n\"It belongs to my wife,\" said the old man simply.\n\n\"Oh, if it's for sentimental reasons--\" And Lord Warburton made a\ngesture of apology.\n\n\"I suppose I must give it to her when she comes,\" the old man went on.\n\n\"You'll please to do nothing of the kind. You'll keep it to cover your\npoor old legs.\"\n\n\"Well, you mustn't abuse my legs,\" said the old man. \"I guess they are\nas good as yours.\"\n\n\"Oh, you're perfectly free to abuse mine,\" his son replied, giving him\nhis tea.\n\n\"Well, we're two lame ducks; I don't think there's much difference.\"\n\n\"I'm much obliged to you for calling me a duck. How's your tea?\"\n\n\"Well, it's rather hot.\"\n\n\"That's intended to be a merit.\"\n\n\"Ah, there's a great deal of merit,\" murmured the old man, kindly. \"He's\na very good nurse, Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"Isn't he a bit clumsy?\" asked his lordship.\n\n\"Oh no, he's not clumsy--considering that he's an invalid himself. He's\na very good nurse--for a sick-nurse. I call him my sick-nurse because\nhe's sick himself.\"\n\n\"Oh, come, daddy!\" the ugly young man exclaimed.\n\n\"Well, you are; I wish you weren't. But I suppose you can't help it.\"\n\n\"I might try: that's an idea,\" said the young man.\n\n\"Were you ever sick, Lord Warburton?\" his father asked.\n\nLord Warburton considered a moment. \"Yes, sir, once, in the Persian\nGulf.\"\n\n\"He's making light of you, daddy,\" said the other young man. \"That's a\nsort of joke.\"\n\n\"Well, there seem to be so many sorts now,\" daddy replied, serenely.\n\"You don't look as if you had been sick, anyway, Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"He's sick of life; he was just telling me so; going on fearfully about\nit,\" said Lord Warburton's friend.\n\n\"Is that true, sir?\" asked the old man gravely.\n\n\"If it is, your son gave me no consolation. He's a wretched fellow to\ntalk to--a regular cynic. He doesn't seem to believe in anything.\"\n\n\"That's another sort of joke,\" said the person accused of cynicism.\n\n\"It's because his health is so poor,\" his father explained to Lord\nWarburton. \"It affects his mind and colours his way of looking at\nthings; he seems to feel as if he had never had a chance. But it's\nalmost entirely theoretical, you know; it doesn't seem to affect his\nspirits. I've hardly ever seen him when he wasn't cheerful--about as he\nis at present. He often cheers me up.\"\n\nThe young man so described looked at Lord Warburton and laughed. \"Is it\na glowing eulogy or an accusation of levity? Should you like me to carry\nout my theories, daddy?\"\n\n\"By Jove, we should see some queer things!\" cried Lord Warburton.\n\n\"I hope you haven't taken up that sort of tone,\" said the old man.\n\n\"Warburton's tone is worse than mine; he pretends to be bored. I'm not\nin the least bored; I find life only too interesting.\"\n\n\"Ah, too interesting; you shouldn't allow it to be that, you know!\"\n\n\"I'm never bored when I come here,\" said Lord Warburton. \"One gets such\nuncommonly good talk.\"\n\n\"Is that another sort of joke?\" asked the old man. \"You've no excuse for\nbeing bored anywhere. When I was your age I had never heard of such a\nthing.\"\n\n\"You must have developed very late.\"\n\n\"No, I developed very quick; that was just the reason. When I was twenty\nyears old I was very highly developed indeed. I was working tooth and\nnail. You wouldn't be bored if you had something to do; but all you\nyoung men are too idle. You think too much of your pleasure. You're too\nfastidious, and too indolent, and too rich.\"\n\n\"Oh, I say,\" cried Lord Warburton, \"you're hardly the person to accuse a\nfellow-creature of being too rich!\"\n\n\"Do you mean because I'm a banker?\" asked the old man.\n\n\"Because of that, if you like; and because you have--haven't you?--such\nunlimited means.\"\n\n\"He isn't very rich,\" the other young man mercifully pleaded. \"He has\ngiven away an immense deal of money.\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose it was his own,\" said Lord Warburton; \"and in that case\ncould there be a better proof of wealth? Let not a public benefactor\ntalk of one's being too fond of pleasure.\"\n\n\"Daddy's very fond of pleasure--of other people's.\"\n\nThe old man shook his head. \"I don't pretend to have contributed\nanything to the amusement of my contemporaries.\"\n\n\"My dear father, you're too modest!\"\n\n\"That's a kind of joke, sir,\" said Lord Warburton.\n\n\"You young men have too many jokes. When there are no jokes you've\nnothing left.\"\n\n\"Fortunately there are always more jokes,\" the ugly young man remarked.\n\n\"I don't believe it--I believe things are getting more serious. You\nyoung men will find that out.\"\n\n\"The increasing seriousness of things, then that's the great opportunity\nof jokes.\"\n\n\"They'll have to be grim jokes,\" said the old man. \"I'm convinced there\nwill be great changes, and not all for the better.\"\n\n\"I quite agree with you, sir,\" Lord Warburton declared. \"I'm very sure\nthere will be great changes, and that all sorts of queer things will\nhappen. That's why I find so much difficulty in applying your advice;\nyou know you told me the other day that I ought to 'take hold' of\nsomething. One hesitates to take hold of a thing that may the next\nmoment be knocked sky-high.\"\n\n\"You ought to take hold of a pretty woman,\" said his companion. \"He's\ntrying hard to fall in love,\" he added, by way of explanation, to his\nfather.\n\n\"The pretty women themselves may be sent flying!\" Lord Warburton\nexclaimed.\n\n\"No, no, they'll be firm,\" the old man rejoined; \"they'll not be\naffected by the social and political changes I just referred to.\"\n\n\"You mean they won't be abolished? Very well, then, I'll lay hands on\none as soon as possible and tie her round my neck as a life-preserver.\"\n\n\"The ladies will save us,\" said the old man; \"that is the best of them\nwill--for I make a difference between them. Make up to a good one and\nmarry her, and your life will become much more interesting.\"\n\nA momentary silence marked perhaps on the part of his auditors a sense\nof the magnanimity of this speech, for it was a secret neither for his\nson nor for his visitor that his own experiment in matrimony had not\nbeen a happy one. As he said, however, he made a difference; and these\nwords may have been intended as a confession of personal error; though\nof course it was not in place for either of his companions to remark\nthat apparently the lady of his choice had not been one of the best.\n\n\"If I marry an interesting woman I shall be interested: is that what you\nsay?\" Lord Warburton asked. \"I'm not at all keen about marrying--your\nson misrepresented me; but there's no knowing what an interesting woman\nmight do with me.\"\n\n\"I should like to see your idea of an interesting woman,\" said his\nfriend.\n\n\"My dear fellow, you can't see ideas--especially such highly ethereal\nones as mine. If I could only see it myself--that would be a great step\nin advance.\"\n\n\"Well, you may fall in love with whomsoever you please; but you mustn't\nfall in love with my niece,\" said the old man.\n\nHis son broke into a laugh. \"He'll think you mean that as a provocation!\nMy dear father, you've lived with the English for thirty years, and\nyou've picked up a good many of the things they say. But you've never\nlearned the things they don't say!\"\n\n\"I say what I please,\" the old man returned with all his serenity.\n\n\"I haven't the honour of knowing your niece,\" Lord Warburton said. \"I\nthink it's the first time I've heard of her.\"\n\n\"She's a niece of my wife's; Mrs. Touchett brings her to England.\"\n\nThen young Mr. Touchett explained. \"My mother, you know, has been\nspending the winter in America, and we're expecting her back. She writes\nthat she has discovered a niece and that she has invited her to come out\nwith her.\"\n\n\"I see,--very kind of her,\" said Lord Warburton. Is the young lady\ninteresting?\"\n\n\"We hardly know more about her than you; my mother has not gone into\ndetails. She chiefly communicates with us by means of telegrams, and her\ntelegrams are rather inscrutable. They say women don't know how to write\nthem, but my mother has thoroughly mastered the art of condensation.\n'Tired America, hot weather awful, return England with niece, first\nsteamer decent cabin.' That's the sort of message we get from her--that\nwas the last that came. But there had been another before, which I think\ncontained the first mention of the niece. 'Changed hotel, very bad,\nimpudent clerk, address here. Taken sister's girl, died last year, go to\nEurope, two sisters, quite independent.' Over that my father and I\nhave scarcely stopped puzzling; it seems to admit of so many\ninterpretations.\"\n\n\"There's one thing very clear in it,\" said the old man; \"she has given\nthe hotel-clerk a dressing.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure even of that, since he has driven her from the field. We\nthought at first that the sister mentioned might be the sister of the\nclerk; but the subsequent mention of a niece seems to prove that the\nallusion is to one of my aunts. Then there was a question as to whose\nthe two other sisters were; they are probably two of my late aunt's\ndaughters. But who's 'quite independent,' and in what sense is the term\nused?--that point's not yet settled. Does the expression apply more\nparticularly to the young lady my mother has adopted, or does it\ncharacterise her sisters equally?--and is it used in a moral or in a\nfinancial sense? Does it mean that they've been left well off, or\nthat they wish to be under no obligations? or does it simply mean that\nthey're fond of their own way?\"\n\n\"Whatever else it means, it's pretty sure to mean that,\" Mr. Touchett\nremarked.\n\n\"You'll see for yourself,\" said Lord Warburton. \"When does Mrs. Touchett\narrive?\"\n\n\"We're quite in the dark; as soon as she can find a decent cabin.\nShe may be waiting for it yet; on the other hand she may already have\ndisembarked in England.\"\n\n\"In that case she would probably have telegraphed to you.\"\n\n\"She never telegraphs when you would expect it--only when you don't,\"\nsaid the old man. \"She likes to drop on me suddenly; she thinks she'll\nfind me doing something wrong. She has never done so yet, but she's not\ndiscouraged.\"\n\n\"It's her share in the family trait, the independence she speaks of.\"\nHer son's appreciation of the matter was more favourable. \"Whatever the\nhigh spirit of those young ladies may be, her own is a match for it. She\nlikes to do everything for herself and has no belief in any one's power\nto help her. She thinks me of no more use than a postage-stamp without\ngum, and she would never forgive me if I should presume to go to\nLiverpool to meet her.\"\n\n\"Will you at least let me know when your cousin arrives?\" Lord Warburton\nasked.\n\n\"Only on the condition I've mentioned--that you don't fall in love with\nher!\" Mr. Touchett replied.\n\n\"That strikes me as hard, don't you think me good enough?\"\n\n\"I think you too good--because I shouldn't like her to marry you. She\nhasn't come here to look for a husband, I hope; so many young ladies are\ndoing that, as if there were no good ones at home. Then she's probably\nengaged; American girls are usually engaged, I believe. Moreover I'm not\nsure, after all, that you'd be a remarkable husband.\"\n\n\"Very likely she's engaged; I've known a good many American girls, and\nthey always were; but I could never see that it made any difference,\nupon my word! As for my being a good husband,\" Mr. Touchett's visitor\npursued, \"I'm not sure of that either. One can but try!\"\n\n\"Try as much as you please, but don't try on my niece,\" smiled the old\nman, whose opposition to the idea was broadly humorous.\n\n\"Ah, well,\" said Lord Warburton with a humour broader still, \"perhaps,\nafter all, she's not worth trying on!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nWhile this exchange of pleasantries took place between the two Ralph\nTouchett wandered away a little, with his usual slouching gait, his\nhands in his pockets and his little rowdyish terrier at his heels. His\nface was turned toward the house, but his eyes were bent musingly on the\nlawn; so that he had been an object of observation to a person who had\njust made her appearance in the ample doorway for some moments before\nhe perceived her. His attention was called to her by the conduct of\nhis dog, who had suddenly darted forward with a little volley of shrill\nbarks, in which the note of welcome, however, was more sensible than\nthat of defiance. The person in question was a young lady, who seemed\nimmediately to interpret the greeting of the small beast. He advanced\nwith great rapidity and stood at her feet, looking up and barking hard;\nwhereupon, without hesitation, she stooped and caught him in her hands,\nholding him face to face while he continued his quick chatter. His\nmaster now had had time to follow and to see that Bunchie's new friend\nwas a tall girl in a black dress, who at first sight looked pretty.\nShe was bareheaded, as if she were staying in the house--a fact which\nconveyed perplexity to the son of its master, conscious of that immunity\nfrom visitors which had for some time been rendered necessary by the\nlatter's ill-health. Meantime the two other gentlemen had also taken\nnote of the new-comer.\n\n\"Dear me, who's that strange woman?\" Mr. Touchett had asked.\n\n\"Perhaps it's Mrs. Touchett's niece--the independent young lady,\" Lord\nWarburton suggested. \"I think she must be, from the way she handles the\ndog.\"\n\nThe collie, too, had now allowed his attention to be diverted, and he\ntrotted toward the young lady in the doorway, slowly setting his tail in\nmotion as he went.\n\n\"But where's my wife then?\" murmured the old man.\n\n\"I suppose the young lady has left her somewhere: that's a part of the\nindependence.\"\n\nThe girl spoke to Ralph, smiling, while she still held up the terrier.\n\"Is this your little dog, sir?\"\n\n\"He was mine a moment ago; but you've suddenly acquired a remarkable air\nof property in him.\"\n\n\"Couldn't we share him?\" asked the girl. \"He's such a perfect little\ndarling.\"\n\nRalph looked at her a moment; she was unexpectedly pretty. \"You may have\nhim altogether,\" he then replied.\n\nThe young lady seemed to have a great deal of confidence, both in\nherself and in others; but this abrupt generosity made her blush. \"I\nought to tell you that I'm probably your cousin,\" she brought out,\nputting down the dog. \"And here's another!\" she added quickly, as the\ncollie came up.\n\n\"Probably?\" the young man exclaimed, laughing. \"I supposed it was quite\nsettled! Have you arrived with my mother?\"\n\n\"Yes, half an hour ago.\"\n\n\"And has she deposited you and departed again?\"\n\n\"No, she went straight to her room, and she told me that, if I should\nsee you, I was to say to you that you must come to her there at a\nquarter to seven.\"\n\nThe young man looked at his watch. \"Thank you very much; I shall be\npunctual.\" And then he looked at his cousin. \"You're very welcome here.\nI'm delighted to see you.\"\n\nShe was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted clear\nperception--at her companion, at the two dogs, at the two gentlemen\nunder the trees, at the beautiful scene that surrounded her. \"I've never\nseen anything so lovely as this place. I've been all over the house;\nit's too enchanting.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry you should have been here so long without our knowing it.\"\n\n\"Your mother told me that in England people arrived very quietly; so I\nthought it was all right. Is one of those gentlemen your father?\"\n\n\"Yes, the elder one--the one sitting down,\" said Ralph.\n\nThe girl gave a laugh. \"I don't suppose it's the other. Who's the\nother?\"\n\n\"He's a friend of ours--Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"Oh, I hoped there would be a lord; it's just like a novel!\" And then,\n\"Oh you adorable creature!\" she suddenly cried, stooping down and\npicking up the small dog again.\n\nShe remained standing where they had met, making no offer to advance or\nto speak to Mr. Touchett, and while she lingered so near the threshold,\nslim and charming, her interlocutor wondered if she expected the old man\nto come and pay her his respects. American girls were used to a great\ndeal of deference, and it had been intimated that this one had a high\nspirit. Indeed Ralph could see that in her face.\n\n\"Won't you come and make acquaintance with my father?\" he nevertheless\nventured to ask. \"He's old and infirm--he doesn't leave his chair.\"\n\n\"Ah, poor man, I'm very sorry!\" the girl exclaimed, immediately moving\nforward. \"I got the impression from your mother that he was rather\nintensely active.\"\n\nRalph Touchett was silent a moment. \"She hasn't seen him for a year.\"\n\n\"Well, he has a lovely place to sit. Come along, little hound.\"\n\n\"It's a dear old place,\" said the young man, looking sidewise at his\nneighbour.\n\n\"What's his name?\" she asked, her attention having again reverted to the\nterrier.\n\n\"My father's name?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the young lady with amusement; \"but don't tell him I asked\nyou.\"\n\nThey had come by this time to where old Mr. Touchett was sitting, and he\nslowly got up from his chair to introduce himself.\n\n\"My mother has arrived,\" said Ralph, \"and this is Miss Archer.\"\n\nThe old man placed his two hands on her shoulders, looked at her a\nmoment with extreme benevolence and then gallantly kissed her. \"It's\na great pleasure to me to see you here; but I wish you had given us a\nchance to receive you.\"\n\n\"Oh, we were received,\" said the girl. \"There were about a dozen\nservants in the hall. And there was an old woman curtseying at the\ngate.\"\n\n\"We can do better than that--if we have notice!\" And the old man stood\nthere smiling, rubbing his hands and slowly shaking his head at her.\n\"But Mrs. Touchett doesn't like receptions.\"\n\n\"She went straight to her room.\"\n\n\"Yes--and locked herself in. She always does that. Well, I suppose I\nshall see her next week.\" And Mrs. Touchett's husband slowly resumed his\nformer posture.\n\n\"Before that,\" said Miss Archer. \"She's coming down to dinner--at eight\no'clock. Don't you forget a quarter to seven,\" she added, turning with a\nsmile to Ralph.\n\n\"What's to happen at a quarter to seven?\"\n\n\"I'm to see my mother,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Ah, happy boy!\" the old man commented. \"You must sit down--you must\nhave some tea,\" he observed to his wife's niece.\n\n\"They gave me some tea in my room the moment I got there,\" this young\nlady answered. \"I'm sorry you're out of health,\" she added, resting her\neyes upon her venerable host.\n\n\"Oh, I'm an old man, my dear; it's time for me to be old. But I shall be\nthe better for having you here.\"\n\nShe had been looking all round her again--at the lawn, the great trees,\nthe reedy, silvery Thames, the beautiful old house; and while engaged\nin this survey she had made room in it for her companions; a\ncomprehensiveness of observation easily conceivable on the part of a\nyoung woman who was evidently both intelligent and excited. She had\nseated herself and had put away the little dog; her white hands, in\nher lap, were folded upon her black dress; her head was erect, her eye\nlighted, her flexible figure turned itself easily this way and that, in\nsympathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught impressions.\nHer impressions were numerous, and they were all reflected in a clear,\nstill smile. \"I've never seen anything so beautiful as this.\"\n\n\"It's looking very well,\" said Mr. Touchett. \"I know the way it strikes\nyou. I've been through all that. But you're very beautiful yourself,\" he\nadded with a politeness by no means crudely jocular and with the happy\nconsciousness that his advanced age gave him the privilege of saying\nsuch things--even to young persons who might possibly take alarm at\nthem.\n\nWhat degree of alarm this young person took need not be exactly\nmeasured; she instantly rose, however, with a blush which was not a\nrefutation. \"Oh yes, of course I'm lovely!\" she returned with a quick\nlaugh. \"How old is your house? Is it Elizabethan?\"\n\n\"It's early Tudor,\" said Ralph Touchett.\n\nShe turned toward him, watching his face. \"Early Tudor? How very\ndelightful! And I suppose there are a great many others.\"\n\n\"There are many much better ones.\"\n\n\"Don't say that, my son!\" the old man protested. \"There's nothing better\nthan this.\"\n\n\"I've got a very good one; I think in some respects it's rather better,\"\nsaid Lord Warburton, who as yet had not spoken, but who had kept an\nattentive eye upon Miss Archer. He slightly inclined himself, smiling;\nhe had an excellent manner with women. The girl appreciated it in an\ninstant; she had not forgotten that this was Lord Warburton. \"I should\nlike very much to show it to you,\" he added.\n\n\"Don't believe him,\" cried the old man; \"don't look at it! It's a\nwretched old barrack--not to be compared with this.\"\n\n\"I don't know--I can't judge,\" said the girl, smiling at Lord Warburton.\n\nIn this discussion Ralph Touchett took no interest whatever; he stood\nwith his hands in his pockets, looking greatly as if he should like to\nrenew his conversation with his new-found cousin.\n\n\"Are you very fond of dogs?\" he enquired by way of beginning. He seemed\nto recognise that it was an awkward beginning for a clever man.\n\n\"Very fond of them indeed.\"\n\n\"You must keep the terrier, you know,\" he went on, still awkwardly.\n\n\"I'll keep him while I'm here, with pleasure.\"\n\n\"That will be for a long time, I hope.\"\n\n\"You're very kind. I hardly know. My aunt must settle that.\"\n\n\"I'll settle it with her--at a quarter to seven.\" And Ralph looked at\nhis watch again.\n\n\"I'm glad to be here at all,\" said the girl.\n\n\"I don't believe you allow things to be settled for you.\"\n\n\"Oh yes; if they're settled as I like them.\"\n\n\"I shall settle this as I like it,\" said Ralph. \"It's most unaccountable\nthat we should never have known you.\"\n\n\"I was there--you had only to come and see me.\"\n\n\"There? Where do you mean?\"\n\n\"In the United States: in New York and Albany and other American\nplaces.\"\n\n\"I've been there--all over, but I never saw you. I can't make it out.\"\n\nMiss Archer just hesitated. \"It was because there had been some\ndisagreement between your mother and my father, after my mother's death,\nwhich took place when I was a child. In consequence of it we never\nexpected to see you.\"\n\n\"Ah, but I don't embrace all my mother's quarrels--heaven forbid!\"\nthe young man cried. \"You've lately lost your father?\" he went on more\ngravely.\n\n\"Yes; more than a year ago. After that my aunt was very kind to me; she\ncame to see me and proposed that I should come with her to Europe.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Ralph. \"She has adopted you.\"\n\n\"Adopted me?\" The girl stared, and her blush came back to her, together\nwith a momentary look of pain which gave her interlocutor some alarm. He\nhad underestimated the effect of his words. Lord Warburton, who appeared\nconstantly desirous of a nearer view of Miss Archer, strolled toward the\ntwo cousins at the moment, and as he did so she rested her wider eyes on\nhim.\n\n\"Oh no; she has not adopted me. I'm not a candidate for adoption.\"\n\n\"I beg a thousand pardons,\" Ralph murmured. \"I meant--I meant--\" He\nhardly knew what he meant.\n\n\"You meant she has taken me up. Yes; she likes to take people up.\nShe has been very kind to me; but,\" she added with a certain visible\neagerness of desire to be explicit, \"I'm very fond of my liberty.\"\n\n\"Are you talking about Mrs. Touchett?\" the old man called out from his\nchair. \"Come here, my dear, and tell me about her. I'm always thankful\nfor information.\"\n\nThe girl hesitated again, smiling. \"She's really very benevolent,\"\nshe answered; after which she went over to her uncle, whose mirth was\nexcited by her words.\n\nLord Warburton was left standing with Ralph Touchett, to whom in a\nmoment he said: \"You wished a while ago to see my idea of an interesting\nwoman. There it is!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her\nbehaviour on returning to her husband's house after many months was a\nnoticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and\nthis is the simplest description of a character which, although by no\nmeans without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression\nof suavity. Mrs. Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she\nnever pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not\nintrinsically offensive--it was just unmistakeably distinguished from\nthe ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that\nfor susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife-like effect. That hard\nfineness came out in her deportment during the first hours of her return\nfrom America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed that\nher first act would have been to exchange greetings with her husband\nand son. Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which she deemed excellent, always\nretired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion, postponing the\nmore sentimental ceremony until she had repaired the disorder of dress\nwith a completeness which had the less reason to be of high importance\nas neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. She was a plain-faced\nold woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with an\nextreme respect for her own motives. She was usually prepared to explain\nthese--when the explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case\nthey proved totally different from those that had been attributed to\nher. She was virtually separated from her husband, but she appeared to\nperceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had become clear, at an\nearly stage of their community, that they should never desire the same\nthing at the same moment, and this appearance had prompted her to rescue\ndisagreement from the vulgar realm of accident. She did what she could\nto erect it into a law--a much more edifying aspect of it--by going to\nlive in Florence, where she bought a house and established herself; and\nby leaving her husband to take care of the English branch of his bank.\nThis arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so felicitously definite.\nIt struck her husband in the same light, in a foggy square in London,\nwhere it was at times the most definite fact he discerned; but he\nwould have preferred that such unnatural things should have a greater\nvagueness. To agree to disagree had cost him an effort; he was ready to\nagree to almost anything but that, and saw no reason why either assent\nor dissent should be so terribly consistent. Mrs. Touchett indulged in\nno regrets nor speculations, and usually came once a year to spend a\nmonth with her husband, a period during which she apparently took pains\nto convince him that she had adopted the right system. She was not fond\nof the English style of life, and had three or four reasons for it to\nwhich she currently alluded; they bore upon minor points of that ancient\norder, but for Mrs. Touchett they amply justified non-residence. She\ndetested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked like a poultice\nand tasted like soap; she objected to the consumption of beer by\nher maid-servants; and she affirmed that the British laundress (Mrs.\nTouchett was very particular about the appearance of her linen) was not\na mistress of her art. At fixed intervals she paid a visit to her own\ncountry; but this last had been longer than any of its predecessors.\n\nShe had taken up her niece--there was little doubt of that. One wet\nafternoon, some four months earlier than the occurrence lately narrated,\nthis young lady had been seated alone with a book. To say she was so\noccupied is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her\nlove of knowledge had a fertilising quality and her imagination was\nstrong. There was at this time, however, a want of fresh taste in\nher situation which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to\ncorrect. The visitor had not been announced; the girl heard her at last\nwalking about the adjoining room. It was in an old house at Albany, a\nlarge, square, double house, with a notice of sale in the windows of one\nof the lower apartments. There were two entrances, one of which had\nlong been out of use but had never been removed. They were exactly\nalike--large white doors, with an arched frame and wide side-lights,\nperched upon little \"stoops\" of red stone, which descended sidewise\nto the brick pavement of the street. The two houses together formed a\nsingle dwelling, the party-wall having been removed and the rooms placed\nin communication. These rooms, above-stairs, were extremely numerous,\nand were painted all over exactly alike, in a yellowish white which had\ngrown sallow with time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched\npassage, connecting the two sides of the house, which Isabel and her\nsisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel and which, though it\nwas short and well lighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange and\nlonely, especially on winter afternoons. She had been in the house,\nat different periods, as a child; in those days her grandmother lived\nthere. Then there had been an absence of ten years, followed by a return\nto Albany before her father's death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Archer,\nhad exercised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large\nhospitality in the early period, and the little girls often spent weeks\nunder her roof--weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. The\nmanner of life was different from that of her own home--larger, more\nplentiful, practically more festal; the discipline of the nursery was\ndelightfully vague and the opportunity of listening to the conversation\nof one's elders (which with Isabel was a highly-valued pleasure) almost\nunbounded. There was a constant coming and going; her grandmother's\nsons and daughters and their children appeared to be in the enjoyment of\nstanding invitations to arrive and remain, so that the house offered to\na certain extent the appearance of a bustling provincial inn kept by a\ngentle old landlady who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill.\nIsabel of course knew nothing about bills; but even as a child she\nthought her grandmother's home romantic. There was a covered piazza\nbehind it, furnished with a swing which was a source of tremulous\ninterest; and beyond this was a long garden, sloping down to the stable\nand containing peach-trees of barely credible familiarity. Isabel had\nstayed with her grandmother at various seasons, but somehow all her\nvisits had a flavour of peaches. On the other side, across the street,\nwas an old house that was called the Dutch House--a peculiar structure\ndating from the earliest colonial time, composed of bricks that had been\npainted yellow, crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers,\ndefended by a rickety wooden paling and standing sidewise to the street.\nIt was occupied by a primary school for children of both sexes, kept\nor rather let go, by a demonstrative lady of whom Isabel's chief\nrecollection was that her hair was fastened with strange bedroomy combs\nat the temples and that she was the widow of some one of consequence.\nThe little girl had been offered the opportunity of laying a foundation\nof knowledge in this establishment; but having spent a single day in it,\nshe had protested against its laws and had been allowed to stay at home,\nwhere, in the September days, when the windows of the Dutch House\nwere open, she used to hear the hum of childish voices repeating the\nmultiplication table--an incident in which the elation of liberty and\nthe pain of exclusion were indistinguishably mingled. The foundation\nof her knowledge was really laid in the idleness of her grandmother's\nhouse, where, as most of the other inmates were not reading people,\nshe had uncontrolled use of a library full of books with frontispieces,\nwhich she used to climb upon a chair to take down. When she had found\none to her taste--she was guided in the selection chiefly by the\nfrontispiece--she carried it into a mysterious apartment which lay\nbeyond the library and which was called, traditionally, no one knew\nwhy, the office. Whose office it had been and at what period it had\nflourished, she never learned; it was enough for her that it contained\nan echo and a pleasant musty smell and that it was a chamber of disgrace\nfor old pieces of furniture whose infirmities were not always apparent\n(so that the disgrace seemed unmerited and rendered them victims\nof injustice) and with which, in the manner of children, she had\nestablished relations almost human, certainly dramatic. There was an old\nhaircloth sofa in especial, to which she had confided a hundred childish\nsorrows. The place owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the fact\nthat it was properly entered from the second door of the house, the\ndoor that had been condemned, and that it was secured by bolts which a\nparticularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. She\nknew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the\nsidelights had not been filled with green paper she might have looked\nout upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. But\nshe had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her\ntheory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side--a place\nwhich became to the child's imagination, according to its different\nmoods, a region of delight or of terror.\n\nIt was in the \"office\" still that Isabel was sitting on that melancholy\nafternoon of early spring which I have just mentioned. At this time\nshe might have had the whole house to choose from, and the room she had\nselected was the most depressed of its scenes. She had never opened the\nbolted door nor removed the green paper (renewed by other hands) from\nits sidelights; she had never assured herself that the vulgar street lay\nbeyond. A crude, cold rain fell heavily; the spring-time was indeed an\nappeal--and it seemed a cynical, insincere appeal--to patience. Isabel,\nhowever, gave as little heed as possible to cosmic treacheries; she kept\nher eyes on her book and tried to fix her mind. It had lately occurred\nto her that her mind was a good deal of a vagabond, and she had spent\nmuch ingenuity in training it to a military step and teaching it\nto advance, to halt, to retreat, to perform even more complicated\nmanoeuvres, at the word of command. Just now she had given it marching\norders and it had been trudging over the sandy plains of a history of\nGerman Thought. Suddenly she became aware of a step very different from\nher own intellectual pace; she listened a little and perceived that some\none was moving in the library, which communicated with the office. It\nstruck her first as the step of a person from whom she was looking for a\nvisit, then almost immediately announced itself as the tread of a\nwoman and a stranger--her possible visitor being neither. It had an\ninquisitive, experimental quality which suggested that it would not stop\nshort of the threshold of the office; and in fact the doorway of this\napartment was presently occupied by a lady who paused there and looked\nvery hard at our heroine. She was a plain, elderly woman, dressed in\na comprehensive waterproof mantle; she had a face with a good deal of\nrather violent point.\n\n\"Oh,\" she began, \"is that where you usually sit?\" She looked about at\nthe heterogeneous chairs and tables.\n\n\"Not when I have visitors,\" said Isabel, getting up to receive the\nintruder.\n\nShe directed their course back to the library while the visitor\ncontinued to look about her. \"You seem to have plenty of other rooms;\nthey're in rather better condition. But everything's immensely worn.\"\n\n\"Have you come to look at the house?\" Isabel asked. \"The servant will\nshow it to you.\"\n\n\"Send her away; I don't want to buy it. She has probably gone to\nlook for you and is wandering about upstairs; she didn't seem at all\nintelligent. You had better tell her it's no matter.\" And then, since\nthe girl stood there hesitating and wondering, this unexpected critic\nsaid to her abruptly: \"I suppose you're one of the daughters?\"\n\nIsabel thought she had very strange manners. \"It depends upon whose\ndaughters you mean.\"\n\n\"The late Mr. Archer's--and my poor sister's.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel slowly, \"you must be our crazy Aunt Lydia!\"\n\n\"Is that what your father told you to call me? I'm your Aunt Lydia, but\nI'm not at all crazy: I haven't a delusion! And which of the daughters\nare you?\"\n\n\"I'm the youngest of the three, and my name's Isabel.\"\n\n\"Yes; the others are Lilian and Edith. And are you the prettiest?\"\n\n\"I haven't the least idea,\" said the girl.\n\n\"I think you must be.\" And in this way the aunt and the niece made\nfriends. The aunt had quarrelled years before with her brother-in-law,\nafter the death of her sister, taking him to task for the manner in\nwhich he brought up his three girls. Being a high-tempered man he had\nrequested her to mind her own business, and she had taken him at his\nword. For many years she held no communication with him and after his\ndeath had addressed not a word to his daughters, who had been bred in\nthat disrespectful view of her which we have just seen Isabel betray.\nMrs. Touchett's behaviour was, as usual, perfectly deliberate. She\nintended to go to America to look after her investments (with which her\nhusband, in spite of his great financial position, had nothing to\ndo) and would take advantage of this opportunity to enquire into the\ncondition of her nieces. There was no need of writing, for she should\nattach no importance to any account of them she should elicit by letter;\nshe believed, always, in seeing for one's self. Isabel found, however,\nthat she knew a good deal about them, and knew about the marriage of the\ntwo elder girls; knew that their poor father had left very little money,\nbut that the house in Albany, which had passed into his hands, was to\nbe sold for their benefit; knew, finally, that Edmund Ludlow,\nLilian's husband, had taken upon himself to attend to this matter, in\nconsideration of which the young couple, who had come to Albany during\nMr. Archer's illness, were remaining there for the present and, as well\nas Isabel herself, occupying the old place.\n\n\"How much money do you expect for it?\" Mrs. Touchett asked of her\ncompanion, who had brought her to sit in the front parlour, which she\nhad inspected without enthusiasm.\n\n\"I haven't the least idea,\" said the girl.\n\n\"That's the second time you have said that to me,\" her aunt rejoined.\n\"And yet you don't look at all stupid.\"\n\n\"I'm not stupid; but I don't know anything about money.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's the way you were brought up--as if you were to inherit a\nmillion. What have you in point of fact inherited?\"\n\n\"I really can't tell you. You must ask Edmund and Lilian; they'll be\nback in half an hour.\"\n\n\"In Florence we should call it a very bad house,\" said Mrs. Touchett;\n\"but here, I dare say, it will bring a high price. It ought to make\na considerable sum for each of you. In addition to that you must have\nsomething else; it's most extraordinary your not knowing. The position's\nof value, and they'll probably pull it down and make a row of shops.\nI wonder you don't do that yourself; you might let the shops to great\nadvantage.\"\n\nIsabel stared; the idea of letting shops was new to her. \"I hope they\nwon't pull it down,\" she said; \"I'm extremely fond of it.\"\n\n\"I don't see what makes you fond of it; your father died here.\"\n\n\"Yes; but I don't dislike it for that,\" the girl rather strangely\nreturned. \"I like places in which things have happened--even if they're\nsad things. A great many people have died here; the place has been full\nof life.\"\n\n\"Is that what you call being full of life?\"\n\n\"I mean full of experience--of people's feelings and sorrows. And not of\ntheir sorrows only, for I've been very happy here as a child.\"\n\n\"You should go to Florence if you like houses in which things have\nhappened--especially deaths. I live in an old palace in which three\npeople have been murdered; three that were known and I don't know how\nmany more besides.\"\n\n\"In an old palace?\" Isabel repeated.\n\n\"Yes, my dear; a very different affair from this. This is very\nbourgeois.\"\n\nIsabel felt some emotion, for she had always thought highly of her\ngrandmother's house. But the emotion was of a kind which led her to say:\n\"I should like very much to go to Florence.\"\n\n\"Well, if you'll be very good, and do everything I tell you I'll take\nyou there,\" Mrs. Touchett declared.\n\nOur young woman's emotion deepened; she flushed a little and smiled at\nher aunt in silence. \"Do everything you tell me? I don't think I can\npromise that.\"\n\n\"No, you don't look like a person of that sort. You're fond of your own\nway; but it's not for me to blame you.\"\n\n\"And yet, to go to Florence,\" the girl exclaimed in a moment, \"I'd\npromise almost anything!\"\n\nEdmund and Lilian were slow to return, and Mrs. Touchett had an\nhour's uninterrupted talk with her niece, who found her a strange and\ninteresting figure: a figure essentially--almost the first she had ever\nmet. She was as eccentric as Isabel had always supposed; and hitherto,\nwhenever the girl had heard people described as eccentric, she had\nthought of them as offensive or alarming. The term had always suggested\nto her something grotesque and even sinister. But her aunt made it a\nmatter of high but easy irony, or comedy, and led her to ask herself\nif the common tone, which was all she had known, had ever been as\ninteresting. No one certainly had on any occasion so held her as this\nlittle thin-lipped, bright-eyed, foreign-looking woman, who retrieved an\ninsignificant appearance by a distinguished manner and, sitting there in\na well-worn waterproof, talked with striking familiarity of the courts\nof Europe. There was nothing flighty about Mrs. Touchett, but she\nrecognised no social superiors, and, judging the great ones of the earth\nin a way that spoke of this, enjoyed the consciousness of making\nan impression on a candid and susceptible mind. Isabel at first had\nanswered a good many questions, and it was from her answers apparently\nthat Mrs. Touchett derived a high opinion of her intelligence. But after\nthis she had asked a good many, and her aunt's answers, whatever turn\nthey took, struck her as food for deep reflexion. Mrs. Touchett waited\nfor the return of her other niece as long as she thought reasonable, but\nas at six o'clock Mrs. Ludlow had not come in she prepared to take her\ndeparture.\n\n\"Your sister must be a great gossip. Is she accustomed to staying out so\nmany hours?\"\n\n\"You've been out almost as long as she,\" Isabel replied; \"she can have\nleft the house but a short time before you came in.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett looked at the girl without resentment; she appeared to\nenjoy a bold retort and to be disposed to be gracious. \"Perhaps she\nhasn't had so good an excuse as I. Tell her at any rate that she must\ncome and see me this evening at that horrid hotel. She may bring her\nhusband if she likes, but she needn't bring you. I shall see plenty of\nyou later.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Ludlow was the eldest of the three sisters, and was usually thought\nthe most sensible; the classification being in general that Lilian\nwas the practical one, Edith the beauty and Isabel the \"intellectual\"\nsuperior. Mrs. Keyes, the second of the group, was the wife of an\nofficer of the United States Engineers, and as our history is not\nfurther concerned with her it will suffice that she was indeed very\npretty and that she formed the ornament of those various military\nstations, chiefly in the unfashionable West, to which, to her deep\nchagrin, her husband was successively relegated. Lilian had married a\nNew York lawyer, a young man with a loud voice and an enthusiasm for\nhis profession; the match was not brilliant, any more than Edith's, but\nLilian had occasionally been spoken of as a young woman who might be\nthankful to marry at all--she was so much plainer than her sisters.\nShe was, however, very happy, and now, as the mother of two peremptory\nlittle boys and the mistress of a wedge of brown stone violently driven\ninto Fifty-third Street, seemed to exult in her condition as in a bold\nescape. She was short and solid, and her claim to figure was questioned,\nbut she was conceded presence, though not majesty; she had moreover, as\npeople said, improved since her marriage, and the two things in life\nof which she was most distinctly conscious were her husband's force in\nargument and her sister Isabel's originality. \"I've never kept up with\nIsabel--it would have taken all my time,\" she had often remarked;\nin spite of which, however, she held her rather wistfully in sight;\nwatching her as a motherly spaniel might watch a free greyhound. \"I want\nto see her safely married--that's what I want to see,\" she frequently\nnoted to her husband.\n\n\"Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry her,\"\nEdmund Ludlow was accustomed to answer in an extremely audible tone.\n\n\"I know you say that for argument; you always take the opposite ground.\nI don't see what you've against her except that she's so original.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't like originals; I like translations,\" Mr. Ludlow had more\nthan once replied. \"Isabel's written in a foreign tongue. I can't make\nher out. She ought to marry an Armenian or a Portuguese.\"\n\n\"That's just what I'm afraid she'll do!\" cried Lilian, who thought\nIsabel capable of anything.\n\nShe listened with great interest to the girl's account of Mrs.\nTouchett's appearance and in the evening prepared to comply with their\naunt's commands. Of what Isabel then said no report has remained, but\nher sister's words had doubtless prompted a word spoken to her husband\nas the two were making ready for their visit. \"I do hope immensely\nshe'll do something handsome for Isabel; she has evidently taken a great\nfancy to her.\"\n\n\"What is it you wish her to do?\" Edmund Ludlow asked. \"Make her a big\npresent?\"\n\n\"No indeed; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in her--sympathise\nwith her. She's evidently just the sort of person to appreciate her. She\nhas lived so much in foreign society; she told Isabel all about it. You\nknow you've always thought Isabel rather foreign.\"\n\n\"You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh? Don't you think\nshe gets enough at home?\"\n\n\"Well, she ought to go abroad,\" said Mrs. Ludlow. \"She's just the person\nto go abroad.\"\n\n\"And you want the old lady to take her, is that it?\"\n\n\"She has offered to take her--she's dying to have Isabel go. But what\nI want her to do when she gets her there is to give her all the\nadvantages. I'm sure all we've got to do,\" said Mrs. Ludlow, \"is to give\nher a chance.\"\n\n\"A chance for what?\"\n\n\"A chance to develop.\"\n\n\"Oh Moses!\" Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. \"I hope she isn't going to develop\nany more!\"\n\n\"If I were not sure you only said that for argument I should feel very\nbadly,\" his wife replied. \"But you know you love her.\"\n\n\"Do you know I love you?\" the young man said, jocosely, to Isabel a\nlittle later, while he brushed his hat.\n\n\"I'm sure I don't care whether you do or not!\" exclaimed the girl; whose\nvoice and smile, however, were less haughty than her words.\n\n\"Oh, she feels so grand since Mrs. Touchett's visit,\" said her sister.\n\nBut Isabel challenged this assertion with a good deal of seriousness.\n\"You must not say that, Lily. I don't feel grand at all.\"\n\n\"I'm sure there's no harm,\" said the conciliatory Lily.\n\n\"Ah, but there's nothing in Mrs. Touchett's visit to make one feel\ngrand.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" exclaimed Ludlow, \"she's grander than ever!\"\n\n\"Whenever I feel grand,\" said the girl, \"it will be for a better\nreason.\"\n\nWhether she felt grand or no, she at any rate felt different, as if\nsomething had happened to her. Left to herself for the evening she sat\na while under the lamp, her hands empty, her usual avocations unheeded.\nThen she rose and moved about the room, and from one room to another,\npreferring the places where the vague lamplight expired. She was\nrestless and even agitated; at moments she trembled a little. The\nimportance of what had happened was out of proportion to its appearance;\nthere had really been a change in her life. What it would bring with it\nwas as yet extremely indefinite; but Isabel was in a situation that gave\na value to any change. She had a desire to leave the past behind her\nand, as she said to herself, to begin afresh. This desire indeed was not\na birth of the present occasion; it was as familiar as the sound of the\nrain upon the window and it had led to her beginning afresh a great many\ntimes. She closed her eyes as she sat in one of the dusky corners of the\nquiet parlour; but it was not with a desire for dozing forgetfulness. It\nwas on the contrary because she felt too wide-eyed and wished to check\nthe sense of seeing too many things at once. Her imagination was by\nhabit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out of\nthe window. She was not accustomed indeed to keep it behind bolts; and\nat important moments, when she would have been thankful to make use\nof her judgement alone, she paid the penalty of having given undue\nencouragement to the faculty of seeing without judging. At present, with\nher sense that the note of change had been struck, came gradually a host\nof images of the things she was leaving behind her. The years and hours\nof her life came back to her, and for a long time, in a stillness broken\nonly by the ticking of the big bronze clock, she passed them in\nreview. It had been a very happy life and she had been a very fortunate\nperson--this was the truth that seemed to emerge most vividly. She had\nhad the best of everything, and in a world in which the circumstances\nof so many people made them unenviable it was an advantage never to have\nknown anything particularly unpleasant. It appeared to Isabel that the\nunpleasant had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she had\ngathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was often a\nsource of interest and even of instruction. Her father had kept it\naway from her--her handsome, much loved father, who always had such\nan aversion to it. It was a great felicity to have been his daughter;\nIsabel rose even to pride in her parentage. Since his death she had\nseemed to see him as turning his braver side to his children and as\nnot having managed to ignore the ugly quite so much in practice as in\naspiration. But this only made her tenderness for him greater; it\nwas scarcely even painful to have to suppose him too generous, too\ngood-natured, too indifferent to sordid considerations. Many persons\nhad held that he carried this indifference too far, especially the large\nnumber of those to whom he owed money. Of their opinions Isabel was\nnever very definitely informed; but it may interest the reader to know\nthat, while they had recognised in the late Mr. Archer a remarkably\nhandsome head and a very taking manner (indeed, as one of them had said,\nhe was always taking something), they had declared that he was making a\nvery poor use of his life. He had squandered a substantial fortune, he\nhad been deplorably convivial, he was known to have gambled freely.\nA few very harsh critics went so far as to say that he had not even\nbrought up his daughters. They had had no regular education and no\npermanent home; they had been at once spoiled and neglected; they had\nlived with nursemaids and governesses (usually very bad ones) or had\nbeen sent to superficial schools, kept by the French, from which, at the\nend of a month, they had been removed in tears. This view of the matter\nwould have excited Isabel's indignation, for to her own sense her\nopportunities had been large. Even when her father had left his\ndaughters for three months at Neufchatel with a French bonne who had\neloped with a Russian nobleman staying at the same hotel--even in this\nirregular situation (an incident of the girl's eleventh year) she had\nbeen neither frightened nor ashamed, but had thought it a romantic\nepisode in a liberal education. Her father had a large way of looking at\nlife, of which his restlessness and even his occasional incoherency\nof conduct had been only a proof. He wished his daughters, even as\nchildren, to see as much of the world as possible; and it was for this\npurpose that, before Isabel was fourteen, he had transported them three\ntimes across the Atlantic, giving them on each occasion, however, but a\nfew months' view of the subject proposed: a course which had whetted\nour heroine's curiosity without enabling her to satisfy it. She ought to\nhave been a partisan of her father, for she was the member of his trio\nwho most \"made up\" to him for the disagreeables he didn't mention. In\nhis last days his general willingness to take leave of a world in which\nthe difficulty of doing as one liked appeared to increase as one grew\nolder had been sensibly modified by the pain of separation from his\nclever, his superior, his remarkable girl. Later, when the journeys to\nEurope ceased, he still had shown his children all sorts of indulgence,\nand if he had been troubled about money-matters nothing ever disturbed\ntheir irreflective consciousness of many possessions. Isabel, though she\ndanced very well, had not the recollection of having been in New York a\nsuccessful member of the choreographic circle; her sister Edith was,\nas every one said, so very much more fetching. Edith was so striking\nan example of success that Isabel could have no illusions as to what\nconstituted this advantage, or as to the limits of her own power to\nfrisk and jump and shriek--above all with rightness of effect. Nineteen\npersons out of twenty (including the younger sister herself) pronounced\nEdith infinitely the prettier of the two; but the twentieth, besides\nreversing this judgement, had the entertainment of thinking all the\nothers aesthetic vulgarians. Isabel had in the depths of her nature an\neven more unquenchable desire to please than Edith; but the depths of\nthis young lady's nature were a very out-of-the-way place, between which\nand the surface communication was interrupted by a dozen capricious\nforces. She saw the young men who came in large numbers to see her\nsister; but as a general thing they were afraid of her; they had a\nbelief that some special preparation was required for talking with her.\nHer reputation of reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy\nenvelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engender difficult\nquestions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature. The poor\ngirl liked to be thought clever, but she hated to be thought bookish;\nshe used to read in secret and, though her memory was excellent, to\nabstain from showy reference. She had a great desire for knowledge, but\nshe really preferred almost any source of information to the printed\npage; she had an immense curiosity about life and was constantly staring\nand wondering. She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her\ndeepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of\nher own soul and the agitations of the world. For this reason she was\nfond of seeing great crowds and large stretches of country, of reading\nabout revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures--a class\nof efforts as to which she had often committed the conscious solecism of\nforgiving them much bad painting for the sake of the subject. While the\nCivil War went on she was still a very young girl; but she passed months\nof this long period in a state of almost passionate excitement, in which\nshe felt herself at times (to her extreme confusion) stirred\nalmost indiscriminately by the valour of either army. Of course the\ncircumspection of suspicious swains had never gone the length of making\nher a social proscript; for the number of those whose hearts, as they\napproached her, beat only just fast enough to remind them they had heads\nas well, had kept her unacquainted with the supreme disciplines of\nher sex and age. She had had everything a girl could have: kindness,\nadmiration, bonbons, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the\nprivileges of the world she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing,\nplenty of new dresses, the London Spectator, the latest publications,\nthe music of Gounod, the poetry of Browning, the prose of George Eliot.\n\nThese things now, as memory played over them, resolved themselves into a\nmultitude of scenes and figures. Forgotten things came back to her; many\nothers, which she had lately thought of great moment, dropped out of\nsight. The result was kaleidoscopic, but the movement of the instrument\nwas checked at last by the servant's coming in with the name of a\ngentleman. The name of the gentleman was Caspar Goodwood; he was a\nstraight young man from Boston, who had known Miss Archer for the last\ntwelvemonth and who, thinking her the most beautiful young woman of her\ntime, had pronounced the time, according to the rule I have hinted at,\na foolish period of history. He sometimes wrote to her and had within a\nweek or two written from New York. She had thought it very possible he\nwould come in--had indeed all the rainy day been vaguely expecting him.\nNow that she learned he was there, nevertheless, she felt no eagerness\nto receive him. He was the finest young man she had ever seen, was\nindeed quite a splendid young man; he inspired her with a sentiment of\nhigh, of rare respect. She had never felt equally moved to it by any\nother person. He was supposed by the world in general to wish to marry\nher, but this of course was between themselves. It at least may be\naffirmed that he had travelled from New York to Albany expressly to see\nher; having learned in the former city, where he was spending a few\ndays and where he had hoped to find her, that she was still at the State\ncapital. Isabel delayed for some minutes to go to him; she moved about\nthe room with a new sense of complications. But at last she presented\nherself and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, strong and\nsomewhat stiff; he was also lean and brown. He was not romantically, he\nwas much rather obscurely, handsome; but his physiognomy had an air of\nrequesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the charm you\nfound in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness, the eyes of a complexion\nother than his own, and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould which is\nsupposed to bespeak resolution. Isabel said to herself that it bespoke\nresolution to-night; in spite of which, in half an hour, Caspar\nGoodwood, who had arrived hopeful as well as resolute, took his way back\nto his lodging with the feeling of a man defeated. He was not, it may be\nadded, a man weakly to accept defeat.\n\n\n\n\n\nRalph Touchett was a philosopher, but nevertheless he knocked at his\nmother's door (at a quarter to seven) with a good deal of eagerness.\nEven philosophers have their preferences, and it must be admitted\nthat of his progenitors his father ministered most to his sense of the\nsweetness of filial dependence. His father, as he had often said to\nhimself, was the more motherly; his mother, on the other hand, was\npaternal, and even, according to the slang of the day, gubernatorial.\nShe was nevertheless very fond of her only child and had always insisted\non his spending three months of the year with her. Ralph rendered\nperfect justice to her affection and knew that in her thoughts and her\nthoroughly arranged and servanted life his turn always came after the\nother nearest subjects of her solicitude, the various punctualities of\nperformance of the workers of her will. He found her completely dressed\nfor dinner, but she embraced her boy with her gloved hands and made\nhim sit on the sofa beside her. She enquired scrupulously about her\nhusband's health and about the young man's own, and, receiving no\nvery brilliant account of either, remarked that she was more than ever\nconvinced of her wisdom in not exposing herself to the English climate.\nIn this case she also might have given way. Ralph smiled at the idea of\nhis mother's giving way, but made no point of reminding her that his\nown infirmity was not the result of the English climate, from which he\nabsented himself for a considerable part of each year.\n\nHe had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy Touchett,\na native of Rutland, in the State of Vermont, came to England as\nsubordinate partner in a banking-house where some ten years later he\ngained preponderant control. Daniel Touchett saw before him a life-long\nresidence in his adopted country, of which, from the first, he took a\nsimple, sane and accommodating view. But, as he said to himself, he had\nno intention of disamericanising, nor had he a desire to teach his\nonly son any such subtle art. It had been for himself so very soluble a\nproblem to live in England assimilated yet unconverted that it seemed to\nhim equally simple his lawful heir should after his death carry on the\ngrey old bank in the white American light. He was at pains to intensify\nthis light, however, by sending the boy home for his education. Ralph\nspent several terms at an American school and took a degree at an\nAmerican university, after which, as he struck his father on his return\nas even redundantly native, he was placed for some three years in\nresidence at Oxford. Oxford swallowed up Harvard, and Ralph became\nat last English enough. His outward conformity to the manners that\nsurrounded him was none the less the mask of a mind that greatly enjoyed\nits independence, on which nothing long imposed itself, and which,\nnaturally inclined to adventure and irony, indulged in a boundless\nliberty of appreciation. He began with being a young man of promise; at\nOxford he distinguished himself, to his father's ineffable satisfaction,\nand the people about him said it was a thousand pities so clever a\nfellow should be shut out from a career. He might have had a career\nby returning to his own country (though this point is shrouded in\nuncertainty) and even if Mr. Touchett had been willing to part with\nhim (which was not the case) it would have gone hard with him to put\na watery waste permanently between himself and the old man whom he\nregarded as his best friend. Ralph was not only fond of his father,\nhe admired him--he enjoyed the opportunity of observing him. Daniel\nTouchett, to his perception, was a man of genius, and though he himself\nhad no aptitude for the banking mystery he made a point of learning\nenough of it to measure the great figure his father had played. It was\nnot this, however, he mainly relished; it was the fine ivory surface,\npolished as by the English air, that the old man had opposed to\npossibilities of penetration. Daniel Touchett had been neither at\nHarvard nor at Oxford, and it was his own fault if he had placed in his\nson's hands the key to modern criticism. Ralph, whose head was full\nof ideas which his father had never guessed, had a high esteem for the\nlatter's originality. Americans, rightly or wrongly, are commended for\nthe ease with which they adapt themselves to foreign conditions; but Mr.\nTouchett had made of the very limits of his pliancy half the ground\nof his general success. He had retained in their freshness most of\nhis marks of primary pressure; his tone, as his son always noted with\npleasure, was that of the more luxuriant parts of New England. At the\nend of his life he had become, on his own ground, as mellow as he\nwas rich; he combined consummate shrewdness with the disposition\nsuperficially to fraternise, and his \"social position,\" on which he had\nnever wasted a care, had the firm perfection of an unthumbed fruit. It\nwas perhaps his want of imagination and of what is called the historic\nconsciousness; but to many of the impressions usually made by English\nlife upon the cultivated stranger his sense was completely closed. There\nwere certain differences he had never perceived, certain habits he had\nnever formed, certain obscurities he had never sounded. As regards these\nlatter, on the day he had sounded them his son would have thought less\nwell of him.\n\nRalph, on leaving Oxford, had spent a couple of years in travelling;\nafter which he had found himself perched on a high stool in his father's\nbank. The responsibility and honour of such positions is not, I\nbelieve, measured by the height of the stool, which depends upon other\nconsiderations: Ralph, indeed, who had very long legs, was fond of\nstanding, and even of walking about, at his work. To this exercise,\nhowever, he was obliged to devote but a limited period, for at the end\nof some eighteen months he had become aware of his being seriously out\nof health. He had caught a violent cold, which fixed itself on his lungs\nand threw them into dire confusion. He had to give up work and apply,\nto the letter, the sorry injunction to take care of himself. At first he\nslighted the task; it appeared to him it was not himself in the least\nhe was taking care of, but an uninteresting and uninterested person\nwith whom he had nothing in common. This person, however, improved\non acquaintance, and Ralph grew at last to have a certain grudging\ntolerance, even an undemonstrative respect, for him. Misfortune makes\nstrange bedfellows, and our young man, feeling that he had something\nat stake in the matter--it usually struck him as his reputation for\nordinary wit--devoted to his graceless charge an amount of attention of\nwhich note was duly taken and which had at least the effect of keeping\nthe poor fellow alive. One of his lungs began to heal, the other\npromised to follow its example, and he was assured he might outweather\na dozen winters if he would betake himself to those climates in which\nconsumptives chiefly congregate. As he had grown extremely fond of\nLondon, he cursed the flatness of exile: but at the same time that he\ncursed he conformed, and gradually, when he found his sensitive organ\ngrateful even for grim favours, he conferred them with a lighter hand.\nHe wintered abroad, as the phrase is; basked in the sun, stopped at home\nwhen the wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when\nit had snowed overnight, almost never got up again.\n\nA secret hoard of indifference--like a thick cake a fond old nurse might\nhave slipped into his first school outfit--came to his aid and helped to\nreconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was too ill for aught\nbut that arduous game. As he said to himself, there was really nothing\nhe had wanted very much to do, so that he had at least not renounced the\nfield of valour. At present, however, the fragrance of forbidden fruit\nseemed occasionally to float past him and remind him that the finest of\npleasures is the rush of action. Living as he now lived was like reading\na good book in a poor translation--a meagre entertainment for a young\nman who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist. He had good\nwinters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was sometimes\nthe sport of a vision of virtual recovery. But this vision was dispelled\nsome three years before the occurrence of the incidents with which this\nhistory opens: he had on that occasion remained later than usual in\nEngland and had been overtaken by bad weather before reaching Algiers.\nHe arrived more dead than alive and lay there for several weeks between\nlife and death. His convalescence was a miracle, but the first use he\nmade of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen but once. He\nsaid to himself that his hour was in sight and that it behoved him to\nkeep his eyes upon it, yet that it was also open to him to spend the\ninterval as agreeably as might be consistent with such a preoccupation.\nWith the prospect of losing them the simple use of his faculties became\nan exquisite pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of contemplation had\nnever been sounded. He was far from the time when he had found it hard\nthat he should be obliged to give up the idea of distinguishing himself;\nan idea none the less importunate for being vague and none the less\ndelightful for having had to struggle in the same breast with bursts\nof inspiring self-criticism. His friends at present judged him more\ncheerful, and attributed it to a theory, over which they shook their\nheads knowingly, that he would recover his health. His serenity was but\nthe array of wild flowers niched in his ruin.\n\nIt was very probably this sweet-tasting property of the observed thing\nin itself that was mainly concerned in Ralph's quickly-stirred interest\nin the advent of a young lady who was evidently not insipid. If he was\nconsideringly disposed, something told him, here was occupation enough\nfor a succession of days. It may be added, in summary fashion, that the\nimagination of loving--as distinguished from that of being loved--had\nstill a place in his reduced sketch. He had only forbidden himself the\nriot of expression. However, he shouldn't inspire his cousin with a\npassion, nor would she be able, even should she try, to help him to one.\n\"And now tell me about the young lady,\" he said to his mother. \"What do\nyou mean to do with her?\"\n\nMrs. Touchett was prompt. \"I mean to ask your father to invite her to\nstay three or four weeks at Gardencourt.\"\n\n\"You needn't stand on any such ceremony as that,\" said Ralph. \"My father\nwill ask her as a matter of course.\"\n\n\"I don't know about that. She's my niece; she's not his.\"\n\n\"Good Lord, dear mother; what a sense of property! That's all the more\nreason for his asking her. But after that--I mean after three months\n(for its absurd asking the poor girl to remain but for three or four\npaltry weeks)--what do you mean to do with her?\"\n\n\"I mean to take her to Paris. I mean to get her clothing.\"\n\n\"Ah yes, that's of course. But independently of that?\"\n\n\"I shall invite her to spend the autumn with me in Florence.\"\n\n\"You don't rise above detail, dear mother,\" said Ralph. \"I should like\nto know what you mean to do with her in a general way.\"\n\n\"My duty!\" Mrs. Touchett declared. \"I suppose you pity her very much,\"\nshe added.\n\n\"No, I don't think I pity her. She doesn't strike me as inviting\ncompassion. I think I envy her. Before being sure, however, give me a\nhint of where you see your duty.\"\n\n\"In showing her four European countries--I shall leave her the choice of\ntwo of them--and in giving her the opportunity of perfecting herself in\nFrench, which she already knows very well.\"\n\nRalph frowned a little. \"That sounds rather dry--even allowing her the\nchoice of two of the countries.\"\n\n\"If it's dry,\" said his mother with a laugh, \"you can leave Isabel alone\nto water it! She is as good as a summer rain, any day.\"\n\n\"Do you mean she's a gifted being?\"\n\n\"I don't know whether she's a gifted being, but she's a clever\ngirl--with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being\nbored.\"\n\n\"I can imagine that,\" said Ralph; and then he added abruptly: \"How do\nyou two get on?\"\n\n\"Do you mean by that that I'm a bore? I don't think she finds me one.\nSome girls might, I know; but Isabel's too clever for that. I think I\ngreatly amuse her. We get on because I understand her, I know the sort\nof girl she is. She's very frank, and I'm very frank: we know just what\nto expect of each other.\"\n\n\"Ah, dear mother,\" Ralph exclaimed, \"one always knows what to expect\nof you! You've never surprised me but once, and that's to-day--in\npresenting me with a pretty cousin whose existence I had never\nsuspected.\"\n\n\"Do you think her so very pretty?\"\n\n\"Very pretty indeed; but I don't insist upon that. It's her general\nair of being some one in particular that strikes me. Who is this rare\ncreature, and what is she? Where did you find her, and how did you make\nher acquaintance?\"\n\n\"I found her in an old house at Albany, sitting in a dreary room on a\nrainy day, reading a heavy book and boring herself to death. She didn't\nknow she was bored, but when I left her no doubt of it she seemed very\ngrateful for the service. You may say I shouldn't have enlightened he--I\nshould have let her alone. There's a good deal in that, but I acted\nconscientiously; I thought she was meant for something better. It\noccurred to me that it would be a kindness to take her about and\nintroduce her to the world. She thinks she knows a great deal of\nit--like most American girls; but like most American girls she's\nridiculously mistaken. If you want to know, I thought she would do me\ncredit. I like to be well thought of, and for a woman of my age there's\nno greater convenience, in some ways, than an attractive niece. You\nknow I had seen nothing of my sister's children for years; I disapproved\nentirely of the father. But I always meant to do something for them when\nhe should have gone to his reward. I ascertained where they were to be\nfound and, without any preliminaries, went and introduced myself. There\nare two others of them, both of whom are married; but I saw only the\nelder, who has, by the way, a very uncivil husband. The wife, whose name\nis Lily, jumped at the idea of my taking an interest in Isabel; she\nsaid it was just what her sister needed--that some one should take\nan interest in her. She spoke of her as you might speak of some young\nperson of genius--in want of encouragement and patronage. It may be that\nIsabel's a genius; but in that case I've not yet learned her special\nline. Mrs. Ludlow was especially keen about my taking her to Europe;\nthey all regard Europe over there as a land of emigration, of rescue, a\nrefuge for their superfluous population. Isabel herself seemed very\nglad to come, and the thing was easily arranged. There was a little\ndifficulty about the money-question, as she seemed averse to being\nunder pecuniary obligations. But she has a small income and she supposes\nherself to be travelling at her own expense.\"\n\nRalph had listened attentively to this judicious report, by which his\ninterest in the subject of it was not impaired. \"Ah, if she's a genius,\"\nhe said, \"we must find out her special line. Is it by chance for\nflirting?\"\n\n\"I don't think so. You may suspect that at first, but you'll be wrong.\nYou won't, I think, in any way, be easily right about her.\"\n\n\"Warburton's wrong then!\" Ralph rejoicingly exclaimed. \"He flatters\nhimself he has made that discovery.\"\n\nHis mother shook her head. \"Lord Warburton won't understand her. He\nneedn't try.\"\n\n\"He's very intelligent,\" said Ralph; \"but it's right he should be\npuzzled once in a while.\"\n\n\"Isabel will enjoy puzzling a lord,\" Mrs. Touchett remarked.\n\nHer son frowned a little. \"What does she know about lords?\"\n\n\"Nothing at all: that will puzzle him all the more.\"\n\nRalph greeted these words with a laugh and looked out of the window.\nThen, \"Are you not going down to see my father?\" he asked.\n\n\"At a quarter to eight,\" said Mrs. Touchett.\n\nHer son looked at his watch. \"You've another quarter of an hour then.\nTell me some more about Isabel.\" After which, as Mrs. Touchett declined\nhis invitation, declaring that he must find out for himself, \"Well,\" he\npursued, \"she'll certainly do you credit. But won't she also give you\ntrouble?\"\n\n\"I hope not; but if she does I shall not shrink from it. I never do\nthat.\"\n\n\"She strikes me as very natural,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Natural people are not the most trouble.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Ralph; \"you yourself are a proof of that. You're extremely\nnatural, and I'm sure you have never troubled any one. It takes trouble\nto do that. But tell me this; it just occurs to me. Is Isabel capable of\nmaking herself disagreeable?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried his mother, \"you ask too many questions! Find that out for\nyourself.\"\n\nHis questions, however, were not exhausted. \"All this time,\" he said,\n\"you've not told me what you intend to do with her.\"\n\n\"Do with her? You talk as if she were a yard of calico. I shall do\nabsolutely nothing with her, and she herself will do everything she\nchooses. She gave me notice of that.\"\n\n\"What you meant then, in your telegram, was that her character's\nindependent.\"\n\n\"I never know what I mean in my telegrams--especially those I send from\nAmerica. Clearness is too expensive. Come down to your father.\"\n\n\"It's not yet a quarter to eight,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"I must allow for his impatience,\" Mrs. Touchett answered. Ralph knew\nwhat to think of his father's impatience; but, making no rejoinder, he\noffered his mother his arm. This put it in his power, as they\ndescended together, to stop her a moment on the middle landing of the\nstaircase--the broad, low, wide-armed staircase of time-blackened oak\nwhich was one of the most striking features of Gardencourt. \"You've no\nplan of marrying her?\" he smiled.\n\n\"Marrying her? I should be sorry to play her such a trick! But apart\nfrom that, she's perfectly able to marry herself. She has every\nfacility.\"\n\n\"Do you mean to say she has a husband picked out?\"\n\n\"I don't know about a husband, but there's a young man in Boston--!\"\n\nRalph went on; he had no desire to hear about the young man in Boston.\n\"As my father says, they're always engaged!\"\n\nHis mother had told him that he must satisfy his curiosity at the\nsource, and it soon became evident he should not want for occasion. He\nhad a good deal of talk with his young kinswoman when the two had been\nleft together in the drawing-room. Lord Warburton, who had ridden over\nfrom his own house, some ten miles distant, remounted and took his\ndeparture before dinner; and an hour after this meal was ended Mr. and\nMrs. Touchett, who appeared to have quite emptied the measure of their\nforms, withdrew, under the valid pretext of fatigue, to their respective\napartments. The young man spent an hour with his cousin; though she had\nbeen travelling half the day she appeared in no degree spent. She was\nreally tired; she knew it, and knew she should pay for it on the morrow;\nbut it was her habit at this period to carry exhaustion to the furthest\npoint and confess to it only when dissimulation broke down. A fine\nhypocrisy was for the present possible; she was interested; she was, as\nshe said to herself, floated. She asked Ralph to show her the pictures;\nthere were a great many in the house, most of them of his own choosing.\nThe best were arranged in an oaken gallery, of charming proportions,\nwhich had a sitting-room at either end of it and which in the evening\nwas usually lighted. The light was insufficient to show the pictures\nto advantage, and the visit might have stood over to the morrow.\nThis suggestion Ralph had ventured to make; but Isabel looked\ndisappointed--smiling still, however--and said: \"If you please I should\nlike to see them just a little.\" She was eager, she knew she was eager\nand now seemed so; she couldn't help it. \"She doesn't take suggestions,\"\nRalph said to himself; but he said it without irritation; her pressure\namused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at intervals,\nand if the light was imperfect it was genial. It fell upon the vague\nsquares of rich colour and on the faded gilding of heavy frames; it made\na sheen on the polished floor of the gallery. Ralph took a candlestick\nand moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Isabel, inclining to\none picture after another, indulged in little exclamations and murmurs.\nShe was evidently a judge; she had a natural taste; he was struck with\nthat. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here and there;\nshe lifted it high, and as she did so he found himself pausing in the\nmiddle of the place and bending his eyes much less upon the pictures\nthan on her presence. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering\nglances, for she was better worth looking at than most works of art.\nShe was undeniably spare, and ponderably light, and proveably tall; when\npeople had wished to distinguish her from the other two Miss Archers\nthey had always called her the willowy one. Her hair, which was dark\neven to blackness, had been an object of envy to many women; her light\ngrey eyes, a little too firm perhaps in her graver moments, had an\nenchanting range of concession. They walked slowly up one side of the\ngallery and down the other, and then she said: \"Well, now I know more\nthan I did when I began!\"\n\n\"You apparently have a great passion for knowledge,\" her cousin\nreturned.\n\n\"I think I have; most girls are horridly ignorant.\"\n\n\"You strike me as different from most girls.\"\n\n\"Ah, some of them would--but the way they're talked to!\" murmured\nIsabel, who preferred not to dilate just yet on herself. Then in a\nmoment, to change the subject, \"Please tell me--isn't there a ghost?\"\nshe went on.\n\n\"A ghost?\"\n\n\"A castle-spectre, a thing that appears. We call them ghosts in\nAmerica.\"\n\n\"So we do here, when we see them.\"\n\n\"You do see them then? You ought to, in this romantic old house.\"\n\n\"It's not a romantic old house,\" said Ralph. \"You'll be disappointed if\nyou count on that. It's a dismally prosaic one; there's no romance here\nbut what you may have brought with you.\"\n\n\"I've brought a great deal; but it seems to me I've brought it to the\nright place.\"\n\n\"To keep it out of harm, certainly; nothing will ever happen to it here,\nbetween my father and me.\"\n\nIsabel looked at him a moment. \"Is there never any one here but your\nfather and you?\"\n\n\"My mother, of course.\"\n\n\"Oh, I know your mother; she's not romantic. Haven't you other people?\"\n\n\"Very few.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry for that; I like so much to see people.\"\n\n\"Oh, we'll invite all the county to amuse you,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Now you're making fun of me,\" the girl answered rather gravely. \"Who\nwas the gentleman on the lawn when I arrived?\"\n\n\"A county neighbour; he doesn't come very often.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry for that; I liked him,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him,\" Ralph objected.\n\n\"Never mind, I like him all the same. I like your father too,\nimmensely.\"\n\n\"You can't do better than that. He's the dearest of the dear.\"\n\n\"I'm so sorry he is ill,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"You must help me to nurse him; you ought to be a good nurse.\"\n\n\"I don't think I am; I've been told I'm not; I'm said to have too many\ntheories. But you haven't told me about the ghost,\" she added.\n\nRalph, however, gave no heed to this observation. \"You like my father\nand you like Lord Warburton. I infer also that you like my mother.\"\n\n\"I like your mother very much, because--because--\" And Isabel found\nherself attempting to assign a reason for her affection for Mrs.\nTouchett.\n\n\"Ah, we never know why!\" said her companion, laughing.\n\n\"I always know why,\" the girl answered. \"It's because she doesn't expect\none to like her. She doesn't care whether one does or not.\"\n\n\"So you adore her--out of perversity? Well, I take greatly after my\nmother,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"I don't believe you do at all. You wish people to like you, and you try\nto make them do it.\"\n\n\"Good heavens, how you see through one!\" he cried with a dismay that was\nnot altogether jocular.\n\n\"But I like you all the same,\" his cousin went on. \"The way to clinch\nthe matter will be to show me the ghost.\"\n\nRalph shook his head sadly. \"I might show it to you, but you'd never see\nit. The privilege isn't given to every one; it's not enviable. It has\nnever been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must\nhave suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable\nknowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago,\"\nsaid Ralph.\n\n\"I told you just now I'm very fond of knowledge,\" Isabel answered.\n\n\"Yes, of happy knowledge--of pleasant knowledge. But you haven't\nsuffered, and you're not made to suffer. I hope you'll never see the\nghost!\"\n\nShe had listened to him attentively, with a smile on her lips, but with\na certain gravity in her eyes. Charming as he found her, she had struck\nhim as rather presumptuous--indeed it was a part of her charm; and he\nwondered what she would say. \"I'm not afraid, you know,\" she said: which\nseemed quite presumptuous enough.\n\n\"You're not afraid of suffering?\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm afraid of suffering. But I'm not afraid of ghosts. And I think\npeople suffer too easily,\" she added.\n\n\"I don't believe you do,\" said Ralph, looking at her with his hands in\nhis pockets.\n\n\"I don't think that's a fault,\" she answered. \"It's not absolutely\nnecessary to suffer; we were not made for that.\"\n\n\"You were not, certainly.\"\n\n\"I'm not speaking of myself.\" And she wandered off a little.\n\n\"No, it isn't a fault,\" said her cousin. \"It's a merit to be strong.\"\n\n\"Only, if you don't suffer they call you hard,\" Isabel remarked.\n\nThey passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into which they had\nreturned from the gallery, and paused in the hall, at the foot of the\nstaircase. Here Ralph presented his companion with her bedroom candle,\nwhich he had taken from a niche. \"Never mind what they call you. When\nyou do suffer they call you an idiot. The great point's to be as happy\nas possible.\"\n\nShe looked at him a little; she had taken her candle and placed her foot\non the oaken stair. \"Well,\" she said, \"that's what I came to Europe for,\nto be as happy as possible. Good-night.\"\n\n\"Good-night! I wish you all success, and shall be very glad to\ncontribute to it!\"\n\nShe turned away, and he watched her as she slowly ascended. Then, with\nhis hands always in his pockets, he went back to the empty drawing-room.\n\n\n\n\n\nIsabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was\nremarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind\nthan most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger\nperception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was\ntinged with the unfamiliar. It is true that among her contemporaries\nshe passed for a young woman of extraordinary profundity; for these\nexcellent people never withheld their admiration from a reach of\nintellect of which they themselves were not conscious, and spoke of\nIsabel as a prodigy of learning, a creature reported to have read the\nclassic authors--in translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Varian, once\nspread the rumour that Isabel was writing a book--Mrs. Varian having a\nreverence for books, and averred that the girl would distinguish herself\nin print. Mrs. Varian thought highly of literature, for which she\nentertained that esteem that is connected with a sense of privation.\nHer own large house, remarkable for its assortment of mosaic tables and\ndecorated ceilings, was unfurnished with a library, and in the way of\nprinted volumes contained nothing but half a dozen novels in paper on\na shelf in the apartment of one of the Miss Varians. Practically, Mrs.\nVarian's acquaintance with literature was confined to The New York\nInterviewer; as she very justly said, after you had read the Interviewer\nyou had lost all faith in culture. Her tendency, with this, was rather\nto keep the Interviewer out of the way of her daughters; she was\ndetermined to bring them up properly, and they read nothing at all. Her\nimpression with regard to Isabel's labours was quite illusory; the girl\nhad never attempted to write a book and had no desire for the laurels\nof authorship. She had no talent for expression and too little of the\nconsciousness of genius; she only had a general idea that people were\nright when they treated her as if she were rather superior. Whether or\nno she were superior, people were right in admiring her if they thought\nher so; for it seemed to her often that her mind moved more quickly\nthan theirs, and this encouraged an impatience that might easily be\nconfounded with superiority. It may be affirmed without delay that\nIsabel was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often\nsurveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in the\nhabit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right;\nshe treated herself to occasions of homage. Meanwhile her errors and\ndelusions were frequently such as a biographer interested in preserving\nthe dignity of his subject must shrink from specifying. Her thoughts\nwere a tangle of vague outlines which had never been corrected by the\njudgement of people speaking with authority. In matters of opinion\nshe had had her own way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculous\nzigzags. At moments she discovered she was grotesquely wrong, and then\nshe treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she\nheld her head higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had an\nunquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had a theory that it\nwas only under this provision life was worth living; that one should\nbe one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organisation (she\ncouldn't help knowing her organisation was fine), should move in a realm\nof light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully\nchronic. It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of one's self\nas to cultivate doubt of one's best friend: one should try to be one's\nown best friend and to give one's self, in this manner, distinguished\ncompany. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which rendered\nher a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent\nhalf her time in thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she had\na fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of\nfree expansion, of irresistible action: she held it must be detestable\nto be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should never\ndo anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them,\nher mere errors of feeling (the discovery always made her tremble as if\nshe had escaped from a trap which might have caught her and smothered\nher) that the chance of inflicting a sensible injury upon another\nperson, presented only as a contingency, caused her at moments to hold\nher breath. That always struck her as the worst thing that could happen\nto her. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about\nthe things that were wrong. She had no love of their look, but when\nshe fixed them hard she recognised them. It was wrong to be mean, to be\njealous, to be false, to be cruel; she had seen very little of the evil\nof the world, but she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurt\neach other. Seeing such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemed\nindecent not to scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit was\nthe danger of inconsistency--the danger of keeping up the flag after the\nplace has surrendered; a sort of behaviour so crooked as to be almost\na dishonour to the flag. But Isabel, who knew little of the sorts of\nartillery to which young women are exposed, flattered herself that such\ncontradictions would never be noted in her own conduct. Her life should\nalways be in harmony with the most pleasing impression she should\nproduce; she would be what she appeared, and she would appear what she\nwas. Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she might find herself\nsome day in a difficult position, so that she should have the pleasure\nof being as heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with her meagre\nknowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once innocent and\ndogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture of\ncuriosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire\nto look very well and to be if possible even better, her determination\nto see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate, desultory,\nflame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she\nwould be an easy victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended\nto awaken on the reader's part an impulse more tender and more purely\nexpectant.\n\nIt was one of her theories that Isabel Archer was very fortunate in\nbeing independent, and that she ought to make some very enlightened use\nof that state. She never called it the state of solitude, much less of\nsingleness; she thought such descriptions weak, and, besides, her sister\nLily constantly urged her to come and abide. She had a friend whose\nacquaintance she had made shortly before her father's death, who offered\nso high an example of useful activity that Isabel always thought of her\nas a model. Henrietta Stackpole had the advantage of an admired ability;\nshe was thoroughly launched in journalism, and her letters to the\nInterviewer, from Washington, Newport, the White Mountains and other\nplaces, were universally quoted. Isabel pronounced them with confidence\n\"ephemeral,\" but she esteemed the courage, energy and good-humour of the\nwriter, who, without parents and without property, had adopted three\nof the children of an infirm and widowed sister and was paying their\nschool-bills out of the proceeds of her literary labour. Henrietta was\nin the van of progress and had clear-cut views on most subjects; her\ncherished desire had long been to come to Europe and write a series of\nletters to the Interviewer from the radical point of view--an enterprise\nthe less difficult as she knew perfectly in advance what her opinions\nwould be and to how many objections most European institutions lay\nopen. When she heard that Isabel was coming she wished to start at once;\nthinking, naturally, that it would be delightful the two should travel\ntogether. She had been obliged, however, to postpone this enterprise.\nShe thought Isabel a glorious creature, and had spoken of her covertly\nin some of her letters, though she never mentioned the fact to her\nfriend, who would not have taken pleasure in it and was not a regular\nstudent of the Interviewer. Henrietta, for Isabel, was chiefly a proof\nthat a woman might suffice to herself and be happy. Her resources were\nof the obvious kind; but even if one had not the journalistic talent and\na genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the public was going to\nwant, one was not therefore to conclude that one had no vocation,\nno beneficent aptitude of any sort, and resign one's self to being\nfrivolous and hollow. Isabel was stoutly determined not to be hollow. If\none should wait with the right patience one would find some happy work\nto one's hand. Of course, among her theories, this young lady was not\nwithout a collection of views on the subject of marriage. The first on\nthe list was a conviction of the vulgarity of thinking too much of it.\nFrom lapsing into eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed she might\nbe delivered; she held that a woman ought to be able to live to herself,\nin the absence of exceptional flimsiness, and that it was perfectly\npossible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse-minded\nperson of another sex. The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered;\nsomething pure and proud that there was in her--something cold and dry\nan unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have called\nit--had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjecture on the\narticle of possible husbands. Few of the men she saw seemed worth a\nruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to think that one of them\nshould present himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience.\nDeep in her soul--it was the deepest thing there--lay a belief that if\na certain light should dawn she could give herself completely; but\nthis image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive. Isabel's\nthoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after a\nlittle it ended in alarms. It often seemed to her that she thought too\nmuch about herself; you could have made her colour, any day in the\nyear, by calling her a rank egoist. She was always planning out her\ndevelopment, desiring her perfection, observing her progress. Her nature\nhad, in her conceit, a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of\nperfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and lengthening vistas,\nwhich made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise\nin the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one's spirit was\nharmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses. But she was\noften reminded that there were other gardens in the world than those of\nher remarkable soul, and that there were moreover a great many places\nwhich were not gardens at all--only dusky pestiferous tracts, planted\nthick with ugliness and misery. In the current of that repaid curiosity\non which she had lately been floating, which had conveyed her to this\nbeautiful old England and might carry her much further still, she often\nchecked herself with the thought of the thousands of people who were\nless happy than herself--a thought which for the moment made her fine,\nfull consciousness appear a kind of immodesty. What should one do with\nthe misery of the world in a scheme of the agreeable for one's self? It\nmust be confessed that this question never held her long. She was too\nyoung, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She always\nreturned to her theory that a young woman whom after all every one\nthought clever should begin by getting a general impression of life.\nThis impression was necessary to prevent mistakes, and after it should\nbe secured she might make the unfortunate condition of others a subject\nof special attention.\n\nEngland was a revelation to her, and she found herself as diverted as a\nchild at a pantomime. In her infantine excursions to Europe she had\nseen only the Continent, and seen it from the nursery window; Paris, not\nLondon, was her father's Mecca, and into many of his interests there his\nchildren had naturally not entered. The images of that time moreover had\ngrown faint and remote, and the old-world quality in everything that\nshe now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her uncle's house seemed a\npicture made real; no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon\nIsabel; the rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world and\ngratified a need. The large, low rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky\ncorners, the deep embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light on\ndark, polished panels, the deep greenness outside, that seemed always\npeeping in, the sense of well-ordered privacy in the centre of a\n\"property\"--a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, where\nthe tread was muffed by the earth itself and in the thick mild air all\nfriction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk--these\nthings were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste played a\nconsiderable part in her emotions. She formed a fast friendship with her\nuncle, and often sat by his chair when he had had it moved out to the\nlawn. He passed hours in the open air, sitting with folded hands like\na placid, homely household god, a god of service, who had done his work\nand received his wages and was trying to grow used to weeks and months\nmade up only of off-days. Isabel amused him more than she suspected--the\neffect she produced upon people was often different from what she\nsupposed--and he frequently gave himself the pleasure of making her\nchatter. It was by this term that he qualified her conversation, which\nhad much of the \"point\" observable in that of the young ladies of her\ncountry, to whom the ear of the world is more directly presented than to\ntheir sisters in other lands. Like the mass of American girls Isabel had\nbeen encouraged to express herself; her remarks had been attended\nto; she had been expected to have emotions and opinions. Many of her\nopinions had doubtless but a slender value, many of her emotions passed\naway in the utterance; but they had left a trace in giving her the habit\nof seeming at least to feel and think, and in imparting moreover to\nher words when she was really moved that prompt vividness which so many\npeople had regarded as a sign of superiority. Mr. Touchett used to think\nthat she reminded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It was\nbecause she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to speak--so\nmany characteristics of her niece--that he had fallen in love with Mrs.\nTouchett. He never expressed this analogy to the girl herself, however;\nfor if Mrs. Touchett had once been like Isabel, Isabel was not at all\nlike Mrs. Touchett. The old man was full of kindness for her; it was a\nlong time, as he said, since they had had any young life in the house;\nand our rustling, quickly-moving, clear-voiced heroine was as agreeable\nto his sense as the sound of flowing water. He wanted to do something\nfor her and wished she would ask it of him. She would ask nothing but\nquestions; it is true that of these she asked a quantity. Her uncle had\na great fund of answers, though her pressure sometimes came in forms\nthat puzzled him. She questioned him immensely about England, about the\nBritish constitution, the English character, the state of politics,\nthe manners and customs of the royal family, the peculiarities of the\naristocracy, the way of living and thinking of his neighbours; and in\nbegging to be enlightened on these points she usually enquired whether\nthey corresponded with the descriptions in the books. The old man always\nlooked at her a little with his fine dry smile while he smoothed down\nthe shawl spread across his legs.\n\n\"The books?\" he once said; \"well, I don't know much about the books. You\nmust ask Ralph about that. I've always ascertained for myself--got my\ninformation in the natural form. I never asked many questions even;\nI just kept quiet and took notice. Of course I've had very good\nopportunities--better than what a young lady would naturally have. I'm\nof an inquisitive disposition, though you mightn't think it if you were\nto watch me: however much you might watch me I should be watching you\nmore. I've been watching these people for upwards of thirty-five years,\nand I don't hesitate to say that I've acquired considerable information.\nIt's a very fine country on the whole--finer perhaps than what we give\nit credit for on the other side. Several improvements I should like to\nsee introduced; but the necessity of them doesn't seem to be generally\nfelt as yet. When the necessity of a thing is generally felt they\nusually manage to accomplish it; but they seem to feel pretty\ncomfortable about waiting till then. I certainly feel more at home among\nthem than I expected to when I first came over; I suppose it's because\nI've had a considerable degree of success. When you're successful you\nnaturally feel more at home.\"\n\n\"Do you suppose that if I'm successful I shall feel at home?\" Isabel\nasked.\n\n\"I should think it very probable, and you certainly will be successful.\nThey like American young ladies very much over here; they show them\na great deal of kindness. But you mustn't feel too much at home, you\nknow.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm by no means sure it will satisfy me,\" Isabel judicially\nemphasised. \"I like the place very much, but I'm not sure I shall like\nthe people.\"\n\n\"The people are very good people; especially if you like them.\"\n\n\"I've no doubt they're good,\" Isabel rejoined; \"but are they pleasant\nin society? They won't rob me nor beat me; but will they make themselves\nagreeable to me? That's what I like people to do. I don't hesitate to\nsay so, because I always appreciate it. I don't believe they're very\nnice to girls; they're not nice to them in the novels.\"\n\n\"I don't know about the novels,\" said Mr. Touchett. \"I believe the\nnovels have a great deal but I don't suppose they're very accurate.\nWe once had a lady who wrote novels staying here; she was a friend\nof Ralph's and he asked her down. She was very positive, quite up to\neverything; but she was not the sort of person you could depend on\nfor evidence. Too free a fancy--I suppose that was it. She afterwards\npublished a work of fiction in which she was understood to have given\na representation--something in the nature of a caricature, as you might\nsay--of my unworthy self. I didn't read it, but Ralph just handed me\nthe book with the principal passages marked. It was understood to be\na description of my conversation; American peculiarities, nasal twang,\nYankee notions, stars and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate;\nshe couldn't have listened very attentively. I had no objection to her\ngiving a report of my conversation, if she liked but I didn't like the\nidea that she hadn't taken the trouble to listen to it. Of course I talk\nlike an American--I can't talk like a Hottentot. However I talk, I've\nmade them understand me pretty well over here. But I don't talk like the\nold gentleman in that lady's novel. He wasn't an American; we wouldn't\nhave him over there at any price. I just mention that fact to show you\nthat they're not always accurate. Of course, as I've no daughters,\nand as Mrs. Touchett resides in Florence, I haven't had much chance\nto notice about the young ladies. It sometimes appears as if the young\nwomen in the lower class were not very well treated; but I guess their\nposition is better in the upper and even to some extent in the middle.\"\n\n\"Gracious,\" Isabel exclaimed; \"how many classes have they? About fifty,\nI suppose.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know that I ever counted them. I never took much notice\nof the classes. That's the advantage of being an American here; you\ndon't belong to any class.\"\n\n\"I hope so,\" said Isabel. \"Imagine one's belonging to an English class!\"\n\n\"Well, I guess some of them are pretty comfortable--especially towards\nthe top. But for me there are only two classes: the people I trust and\nthe people I don't. Of those two, my dear Isabel, you belong to the\nfirst.\"\n\n\"I'm much obliged to you,\" said the girl quickly. Her way of taking\ncompliments seemed sometimes rather dry; she got rid of them as rapidly\nas possible. But as regards this she was sometimes misjudged; she was\nthought insensible to them, whereas in fact she was simply unwilling to\nshow how infinitely they pleased her. To show that was to show too much.\n\"I'm sure the English are very conventional,\" she added.\n\n\"They've got everything pretty well fixed,\" Mr. Touchett admitted. \"It's\nall settled beforehand--they don't leave it to the last moment.\"\n\n\"I don't like to have everything settled beforehand,\" said the girl. \"I\nlike more unexpectedness.\"\n\nHer uncle seemed amused at her distinctness of preference. \"Well, it's\nsettled beforehand that you'll have great success,\" he rejoined. \"I\nsuppose you'll like that.\"\n\n\"I shall not have success if they're too stupidly conventional. I'm not\nin the least stupidly conventional. I'm just the contrary. That's what\nthey won't like.\"\n\n\"No, no, you're all wrong,\" said the old man. \"You can't tell what\nthey'll like. They're very inconsistent; that's their principal\ninterest.\"\n\n\"Ah well,\" said Isabel, standing before her uncle with her hands\nclasped about the belt of her black dress and looking up and down the\nlawn--\"that will suit me perfectly!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nThe two amused themselves, time and again, with talking of the attitude\nof the British public as if the young lady had been in a position to\nappeal to it; but in fact the British public remained for the present\nprofoundly indifferent to Miss Isabel Archer, whose fortune had dropped\nher, as her cousin said, into the dullest house in England. Her gouty\nuncle received very little company, and Mrs. Touchett, not having\ncultivated relations with her husband's neighbours, was not warranted\nin expecting visits from them. She had, however, a peculiar taste; she\nliked to receive cards. For what is usually called social intercourse\nshe had very little relish; but nothing pleased her more than to find\nher hall-table whitened with oblong morsels of symbolic pasteboard. She\nflattered herself that she was a very just woman, and had mastered the\nsovereign truth that nothing in this world is got for nothing. She had\nplayed no social part as mistress of Gardencourt, and it was not to be\nsupposed that, in the surrounding country, a minute account should be\nkept of her comings and goings. But it is by no means certain that she\ndid not feel it to be wrong that so little notice was taken of them and\nthat her failure (really very gratuitous) to make herself important in\nthe neighbourhood had not much to do with the acrimony of her allusions\nto her husband's adopted country. Isabel presently found herself in the\nsingular situation of defending the British constitution against her\naunt; Mrs. Touchett having formed the habit of sticking pins into this\nvenerable instrument. Isabel always felt an impulse to pull out the\npins; not that she imagined they inflicted any damage on the tough old\nparchment, but because it seemed to her her aunt might make better use\nof her sharpness. She was very critical herself--it was incidental to\nher age, her sex and her nationality; but she was very sentimental as\nwell, and there was something in Mrs. Touchett's dryness that set her\nown moral fountains flowing.\n\n\"Now what's your point of view?\" she asked of her aunt. \"When you\ncriticise everything here you should have a point of view. Yours doesn't\nseem to be American--you thought everything over there so disagreeable.\nWhen I criticise I have mine; it's thoroughly American!\"\n\n\"My dear young lady,\" said Mrs. Touchett, \"there are as many points of\nview in the world as there are people of sense to take them. You may\nsay that doesn't make them very numerous! American? Never in the world;\nthat's shockingly narrow. My point of view, thank God, is personal!\"\n\nIsabel thought this a better answer than she admitted; it was a\ntolerable description of her own manner of judging, but it would not\nhave sounded well for her to say so. On the lips of a person less\nadvanced in life and less enlightened by experience than Mrs. Touchett\nsuch a declaration would savour of immodesty, even of arrogance. She\nrisked it nevertheless in talking with Ralph, with whom she talked a\ngreat deal and with whom her conversation was of a sort that gave a\nlarge licence to extravagance. Her cousin used, as the phrase is, to\nchaff her; he very soon established with her a reputation for treating\neverything as a joke, and he was not a man to neglect the privileges\nsuch a reputation conferred. She accused him of an odious want of\nseriousness, of laughing at all things, beginning with himself. Such\nslender faculty of reverence as he possessed centred wholly upon his\nfather; for the rest, he exercised his wit indifferently upon his\nfather's son, this gentleman's weak lungs, his useless life, his\nfantastic mother, his friends (Lord Warburton in especial), his adopted,\nand his native country, his charming new-found cousin. \"I keep a band\nof music in my ante-room,\" he said once to her. \"It has orders to play\nwithout stopping; it renders me two excellent services. It keeps the\nsounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and it makes\nthe world think that dancing's going on within.\" It was dance-music\nindeed that you usually heard when you came within ear-shot of Ralph's\nband; the liveliest waltzes seemed to float upon the air. Isabel often\nfound herself irritated by this perpetual fiddling; she would have liked\nto pass through the ante-room, as her cousin called it, and enter the\nprivate apartments. It mattered little that he had assured her they were\na very dismal place; she would have been glad to undertake to sweep them\nand set them in order. It was but half-hospitality to let her remain\noutside; to punish him for which Isabel administered innumerable taps\nwith the ferule of her straight young wit. It must be said that her wit\nwas exercised to a large extent in self-defence, for her cousin amused\nhimself with calling her \"Columbia\" and accusing her of a patriotism so\nheated that it scorched. He drew a caricature of her in which she was\nrepresented as a very pretty young woman dressed, on the lines of the\nprevailing fashion, in the folds of the national banner. Isabel's chief\ndread in life at this period of her development was that she should\nappear narrow-minded; what she feared next afterwards was that she\nshould really be so. But she nevertheless made no scruple of abounding\nin her cousin's sense and pretending to sigh for the charms of her\nnative land. She would be as American as it pleased him to regard her,\nand if he chose to laugh at her she would give him plenty of occupation.\nShe defended England against his mother, but when Ralph sang its praises\non purpose, as she said, to work her up, she found herself able to\ndiffer from him on a variety of points. In fact, the quality of this\nsmall ripe country seemed as sweet to her as the taste of an October\npear; and her satisfaction was at the root of the good spirits which\nenabled her to take her cousin's chaff and return it in kind. If her\ngood-humour flagged at moments it was not because she thought herself\nill-used, but because she suddenly felt sorry for Ralph. It seemed to\nher he was talking as a blind and had little heart in what he said. \"I\ndon't know what's the matter with you,\" she observed to him once; \"but I\nsuspect you're a great humbug.\"\n\n\"That's your privilege,\" Ralph answered, who had not been used to being\nso crudely addressed.\n\n\"I don't know what you care for; I don't think you care for anything.\nYou don't really care for England when you praise it; you don't care for\nAmerica even when you pretend to abuse it.\"\n\n\"I care for nothing but you, dear cousin,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"If I could believe even that, I should be very glad.\"\n\n\"Ah well, I should hope so!\" the young man exclaimed.\n\nIsabel might have believed it and not have been far from the truth. He\nthought a great deal about her; she was constantly present to his mind.\nAt a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a burden to him her\nsudden arrival, which promised nothing and was an open-handed gift of\nfate, had refreshed and quickened them, given them wings and something\nto fly for. Poor Ralph had been for many weeks steeped in melancholy;\nhis outlook, habitually sombre, lay under the shadow of a deeper cloud.\nHe had grown anxious about his father, whose gout, hitherto confined to\nhis legs, had begun to ascend into regions more vital. The old man had\nbeen gravely ill in the spring, and the doctors had whispered to\nRalph that another attack would be less easy to deal with. Just now\nhe appeared disburdened of pain, but Ralph could not rid himself of a\nsuspicion that this was a subterfuge of the enemy, who was waiting to\ntake him off his guard. If the manoeuvre should succeed there would be\nlittle hope of any great resistance. Ralph had always taken for granted\nthat his father would survive him--that his own name would be the first\ngrimly called. The father and son had been close companions, and the\nidea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless life on his\nhands was not gratifying to the young man, who had always and tacitly\ncounted upon his elder's help in making the best of a poor business.\nAt the prospect of losing his great motive Ralph lost indeed his one\ninspiration. If they might die at the same time it would be all very\nwell; but without the encouragement of his father's society he should\nbarely have patience to await his own turn. He had not the incentive of\nfeeling that he was indispensable to his mother; it was a rule with his\nmother to have no regrets. He bethought himself of course that it had\nbeen a small kindness to his father to wish that, of the two, the active\nrather than the passive party should know the felt wound; he remembered\nthat the old man had always treated his own forecast of an early end as\na clever fallacy, which he should be delighted to discredit so far as\nhe might by dying first. But of the two triumphs, that of refuting a\nsophistical son and that of holding on a while longer to a state of\nbeing which, with all abatements, he enjoyed, Ralph deemed it no sin to\nhope the latter might be vouchsafed to Mr. Touchett.\n\nThese were nice questions, but Isabel's arrival put a stop to his\npuzzling over them. It even suggested there might be a compensation for\nthe intolerable ennui of surviving his genial sire. He wondered whether\nhe were harbouring \"love\" for this spontaneous young woman from Albany;\nbut he judged that on the whole he was not. After he had known her for\na week he quite made up his mind to this, and every day he felt a little\nmore sure. Lord Warburton had been right about her; she was a really\ninteresting little figure. Ralph wondered how their neighbour had\nfound it out so soon; and then he said it was only another proof of his\nfriend's high abilities, which he had always greatly admired. If his\ncousin were to be nothing more than an entertainment to him, Ralph was\nconscious she was an entertainment of a high order. \"A character like\nthat,\" he said to himself--\"a real little passionate force to see at\nplay is the finest thing in nature. It's finer than the finest work\nof art--than a Greek bas-relief, than a great Titian, than a Gothic\ncathedral. It's very pleasant to be so well treated where one had least\nlooked for it. I had never been more blue, more bored, than for a week\nbefore she came; I had never expected less that anything pleasant would\nhappen. Suddenly I receive a Titian, by the post, to hang on my wall--a\nGreek bas-relief to stick over my chimney-piece. The key of a beautiful\nedifice is thrust into my hand, and I'm told to walk in and admire. My\npoor boy, you've been sadly ungrateful, and now you had better keep very\nquiet and never grumble again.\" The sentiment of these reflexions was\nvery just; but it was not exactly true that Ralph Touchett had had a key\nput into his hand. His cousin was a very brilliant girl, who would take,\nas he said, a good deal of knowing; but she needed the knowing, and his\nattitude with regard to her, though it was contemplative and critical,\nwas not judicial. He surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired\nit greatly; he looked in at the windows and received an impression of\nproportions equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses\nand that he had not yet stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and\nthough he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them\nwould fit. She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature;\nbut what was she going to do with herself? This question was irregular,\nfor with most women one had no occasion to ask it. Most women did\nwith themselves nothing at all; they waited, in attitudes more or less\ngracefully passive, for a man to come that way and furnish them with\na destiny. Isabel's originality was that she gave one an impression of\nhaving intentions of her own. \"Whenever she executes them,\" said Ralph,\n\"may I be there to see!\"\n\nIt devolved upon him of course to do the honours of the place. Mr.\nTouchett was confined to his chair, and his wife's position was that of\nrather a grim visitor; so that in the line of conduct that opened itself\nto Ralph duty and inclination were harmoniously mixed. He was not a\ngreat walker, but he strolled about the grounds with his cousin--a\npastime for which the weather remained favourable with a persistency not\nallowed for in Isabel's somewhat lugubrious prevision of the climate;\nand in the long afternoons, of which the length was but the measure of\nher gratified eagerness, they took a boat on the river, the dear little\nriver, as Isabel called it, where the opposite shore seemed still a\npart of the foreground of the landscape; or drove over the country in a\nphaeton--a low, capacious, thick-wheeled phaeton formerly much used by\nMr. Touchett, but which he had now ceased to enjoy. Isabel enjoyed it\nlargely and, handling the reins in a manner which approved itself to\nthe groom as \"knowing,\" was never weary of driving her uncle's capital\nhorses through winding lanes and byways full of the rural incidents she\nhad confidently expected to find; past cottages thatched and timbered,\npast ale-houses latticed and sanded, past patches of ancient common and\nglimpses of empty parks, between hedgerows made thick by midsummer. When\nthey reached home they usually found tea had been served on the lawn\nand that Mrs. Touchett had not shrunk from the extremity of handing her\nhusband his cup. But the two for the most part sat silent; the old\nman with his head back and his eyes closed, his wife occupied with her\nknitting and wearing that appearance of rare profundity with which some\nladies consider the movement of their needles.\n\nOne day, however, a visitor had arrived. The two young persons, after\nspending an hour on the river, strolled back to the house and perceived\nLord Warburton sitting under the trees and engaged in conversation, of\nwhich even at a distance the desultory character was appreciable, with\nMrs. Touchett. He had driven over from his own place with a portmanteau\nand had asked, as the father and son often invited him to do, for a\ndinner and a lodging. Isabel, seeing him for half an hour on the day of\nher arrival, had discovered in this brief space that she liked him; he\nhad indeed rather sharply registered himself on her fine sense and\nshe had thought of him several times. She had hoped she should see him\nagain--hoped too that she should see a few others. Gardencourt was not\ndull; the place itself was sovereign, her uncle was more and more a\nsort of golden grandfather, and Ralph was unlike any cousin she had\never encountered--her idea of cousins having tended to gloom. Then her\nimpressions were still so fresh and so quickly renewed that there was as\nyet hardly a hint of vacancy in the view. But Isabel had need to remind\nherself that she was interested in human nature and that her foremost\nhope in coming abroad had been that she should see a great many people.\nWhen Ralph said to her, as he had done several times, \"I wonder you find\nthis endurable; you ought to see some of the neighbours and some of\nour friends, because we have really got a few, though you would never\nsuppose it\"--when he offered to invite what he called a \"lot of people\"\nand make her acquainted with English society, she encouraged the\nhospitable impulse and promised in advance to hurl herself into the\nfray. Little, however, for the present, had come of his offers, and it\nmay be confided to the reader that if the young man delayed to carry\nthem out it was because he found the labour of providing for his\ncompanion by no means so severe as to require extraneous help. Isabel\nhad spoken to him very often about \"specimens;\" it was a word that\nplayed a considerable part in her vocabulary; she had given him to\nunderstand that she wished to see English society illustrated by eminent\ncases.\n\n\"Well now, there's a specimen,\" he said to her as they walked up from\nthe riverside and he recognised Lord Warburton.\n\n\"A specimen of what?\" asked the girl.\n\n\"A specimen of an English gentleman.\"\n\n\"Do you mean they're all like him?\"\n\n\"Oh no; they're not all like him.\"\n\n\"He's a favourable specimen then,\" said Isabel; \"because I'm sure he's\nnice.\"\n\n\"Yes, he's very nice. And he's very fortunate.\"\n\nThe fortunate Lord Warburton exchanged a handshake with our heroine\nand hoped she was very well. \"But I needn't ask that,\" he said, \"since\nyou've been handling the oars.\"\n\n\"I've been rowing a little,\" Isabel answered; \"but how should you know\nit?\"\n\n\"Oh, I know he doesn't row; he's too lazy,\" said his lordship,\nindicating Ralph Touchett with a laugh.\n\n\"He has a good excuse for his laziness,\" Isabel rejoined, lowering her\nvoice a little.\n\n\"Ah, he has a good excuse for everything!\" cried Lord Warburton, still\nwith his sonorous mirth.\n\n\"My excuse for not rowing is that my cousin rows so well,\" said Ralph.\n\"She does everything well. She touches nothing that she doesn't adorn!\"\n\n\"It makes one want to be touched, Miss Archer,\" Lord Warburton declared.\n\n\"Be touched in the right sense and you'll never look the worse for\nit,\" said Isabel, who, if it pleased her to hear it said that her\naccomplishments were numerous, was happily able to reflect that such\ncomplacency was not the indication of a feeble mind, inasmuch as there\nwere several things in which she excelled. Her desire to think well of\nherself had at least the element of humility that it always needed to be\nsupported by proof.\n\nLord Warburton not only spent the night at Gardencourt, but he was\npersuaded to remain over the second day; and when the second day was\nended he determined to postpone his departure till the morrow. During\nthis period he addressed many of his remarks to Isabel, who accepted\nthis evidence of his esteem with a very good grace. She found herself\nliking him extremely; the first impression he had made on her had had\nweight, but at the end of an evening spent in his society she scarce\nfell short of seeing him--though quite without luridity--as a hero\nof romance. She retired to rest with a sense of good fortune, with a\nquickened consciousness of possible felicities. \"It's very nice to know\ntwo such charming people as those,\" she said, meaning by \"those\" her\ncousin and her cousin's friend. It must be added moreover that an\nincident had occurred which might have seemed to put her good-humour to\nthe test. Mr. Touchett went to bed at half-past nine o'clock, but his\nwife remained in the drawing-room with the other members of the party.\nShe prolonged her vigil for something less than an hour, and then,\nrising, observed to Isabel that it was time they should bid the\ngentlemen good-night. Isabel had as yet no desire to go to bed; the\noccasion wore, to her sense, a festive character, and feasts were not\nin the habit of terminating so early. So, without further thought, she\nreplied, very simply--\n\n\"Need I go, dear aunt? I'll come up in half an hour.\"\n\n\"It's impossible I should wait for you,\" Mrs. Touchett answered.\n\n\"Ah, you needn't wait! Ralph will light my candle,\" Isabel gaily\nengaged.\n\n\"I'll light your candle; do let me light your candle, Miss Archer!\" Lord\nWarburton exclaimed. \"Only I beg it shall not be before midnight.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett fixed her bright little eyes upon him a moment and\ntransferred them coldly to her niece. \"You can't stay alone with the\ngentlemen. You're not--you're not at your blest Albany, my dear.\"\n\nIsabel rose, blushing. \"I wish I were,\" she said.\n\n\"Oh, I say, mother!\" Ralph broke out.\n\n\"My dear Mrs. Touchett!\" Lord Warburton murmured.\n\n\"I didn't make your country, my lord,\" Mrs. Touchett said majestically.\n\"I must take it as I find it.\"\n\n\"Can't I stay with my own cousin?\" Isabel enquired.\n\n\"I'm not aware that Lord Warburton is your cousin.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I had better go to bed!\" the visitor suggested. \"That will\narrange it.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett gave a little look of despair and sat down again. \"Oh, if\nit's necessary I'll stay up till midnight.\"\n\nRalph meanwhile handed Isabel her candlestick. He had been watching her;\nit had seemed to him her temper was involved--an accident that might\nbe interesting. But if he had expected anything of a flare he was\ndisappointed, for the girl simply laughed a little, nodded good-night\nand withdrew accompanied by her aunt. For himself he was annoyed at his\nmother, though he thought she was right. Above-stairs the two ladies\nseparated at Mrs. Touchett's door. Isabel had said nothing on her way\nup.\n\n\"Of course you're vexed at my interfering with you,\" said Mrs. Touchett.\n\nIsabel considered. \"I'm not vexed, but I'm surprised--and a good deal\nmystified. Wasn't it proper I should remain in the drawing-room?\"\n\n\"Not in the least. Young girls here--in decent houses--don't sit alone\nwith the gentlemen late at night.\"\n\n\"You were very right to tell me then,\" said Isabel. \"I don't understand\nit, but I'm very glad to know it.\n\n\"I shall always tell you,\" her aunt answered, \"whenever I see you taking\nwhat seems to me too much liberty.\"\n\n\"Pray do; but I don't say I shall always think your remonstrance just.\"\n\n\"Very likely not. You're too fond of your own ways.\"\n\n\"Yes, I think I'm very fond of them. But I always want to know the\nthings one shouldn't do.\"\n\n\"So as to do them?\" asked her aunt.\n\n\"So as to choose,\" said Isabel.\n\n\n\n\n\nAs she was devoted to romantic effects Lord Warburton ventured to\nexpress a hope that she would come some day and see his house, a very\ncurious old place. He extracted from Mrs. Touchett a promise that she\nwould bring her niece to Lockleigh, and Ralph signified his willingness\nto attend the ladies if his father should be able to spare him. Lord\nWarburton assured our heroine that in the mean time his sisters would\ncome and see her. She knew something about his sisters, having sounded\nhim, during the hours they spent together while he was at Gardencourt,\non many points connected with his family. When Isabel was interested she\nasked a great many questions, and as her companion was a copious talker\nshe urged him on this occasion by no means in vain. He told her he\nhad four sisters and two brothers and had lost both his parents. The\nbrothers and sisters were very good people--\"not particularly clever,\nyou know,\" he said, \"but very decent and pleasant;\" and he was so good\nas to hope Miss Archer might know them well. One of the brothers was in\nthe Church, settled in the family living, that of Lockleigh, which was\na heavy, sprawling parish, and was an excellent fellow in spite of his\nthinking differently from himself on every conceivable topic. And then\nLord Warburton mentioned some of the opinions held by his brother, which\nwere opinions Isabel had often heard expressed and that she supposed to\nbe entertained by a considerable portion of the human family. Many of\nthem indeed she supposed she had held herself, till he assured her\nshe was quite mistaken, that it was really impossible, that she had\ndoubtless imagined she entertained them, but that she might depend that,\nif she thought them over a little, she would find there was nothing\nin them. When she answered that she had already thought several of the\nquestions involved over very attentively he declared that she was only\nanother example of what he had often been struck with--the fact that,\nof all the people in the world, the Americans were the most grossly\nsuperstitious. They were rank Tories and bigots, every one of them;\nthere were no conservatives like American conservatives. Her uncle and\nher cousin were there to prove it; nothing could be more medieval than\nmany of their views; they had ideas that people in England nowadays were\nashamed to confess to; and they had the impudence moreover, said his\nlordship, laughing, to pretend they knew more about the needs and\ndangers of this poor dear stupid old England than he who was born in it\nand owned a considerable slice of it--the more shame to him! From all of\nwhich Isabel gathered that Lord Warburton was a nobleman of the newest\npattern, a reformer, a radical, a contemner of ancient ways. His other\nbrother, who was in the army in India, was rather wild and pig-headed\nand had not been of much use as yet but to make debts for Warburton to\npay--one of the most precious privileges of an elder brother. \"I don't\nthink I shall pay any more,\" said her friend; \"he lives a monstrous deal\nbetter than I do, enjoys unheard-of luxuries and thinks himself a much\nfiner gentleman than I. As I'm a consistent radical I go in only for\nequality; I don't go in for the superiority of the younger brothers.\"\nTwo of his four sisters, the second and fourth, were married, one of\nthem having done very well, as they said, the other only so-so.\nThe husband of the elder, Lord Haycock, was a very good fellow, but\nunfortunately a horrid Tory; and his wife, like all good English wives,\nwas worse than her husband. The other had espoused a smallish squire\nin Norfolk and, though married but the other day, had already five\nchildren. This information and much more Lord Warburton imparted to his\nyoung American listener, taking pains to make many things clear and to\nlay bare to her apprehension the peculiarities of English life. Isabel\nwas often amused at his explicitness and at the small allowance he\nseemed to make either for her own experience or for her imagination. \"He\nthinks I'm a barbarian,\" she said, \"and that I've never seen forks and\nspoons;\" and she used to ask him artless questions for the pleasure of\nhearing him answer seriously. Then when he had fallen into the trap,\n\"It's a pity you can't see me in my war-paint and feathers,\" she\nremarked; \"if I had known how kind you are to the poor savages I would\nhave brought over my native costume!\" Lord Warburton had travelled\nthrough the United States and knew much more about them than Isabel; he\nwas so good as to say that America was the most charming country in the\nworld, but his recollections of it appeared to encourage the idea that\nAmericans in England would need to have a great many things explained\nto them. \"If I had only had you to explain things to me in America!\"\nhe said. \"I was rather puzzled in your country; in fact I was quite\nbewildered, and the trouble was that the explanations only puzzled me\nmore. You know I think they often gave me the wrong ones on purpose;\nthey're rather clever about that over there. But when I explain you\ncan trust me; about what I tell you there's no mistake.\" There was no\nmistake at least about his being very intelligent and cultivated and\nknowing almost everything in the world. Although he gave the most\ninteresting and thrilling glimpses Isabel felt he never did it to\nexhibit himself, and though he had had rare chances and had tumbled in,\nas she put it, for high prizes, he was as far as possible from making\na merit of it. He had enjoyed the best things of life, but they had not\nspoiled his sense of proportion. His quality was a mixture of the effect\nof rich experience--oh, so easily come by!--with a modesty at times\nalmost boyish; the sweet and wholesome savour of which--it was as\nagreeable as something tasted--lost nothing from the addition of a tone\nof responsible kindness.\n\n\"I like your specimen English gentleman very much,\" Isabel said to Ralph\nafter Lord Warburton had gone.\n\n\"I like him too--I love him well,\" Ralph returned. \"But I pity him\nmore.\"\n\nIsabel looked at him askance. \"Why, that seems to me his only\nfault--that one can't pity him a little. He appears to have everything,\nto know everything, to be everything.\"\n\n\"Oh, he's in a bad way!\" Ralph insisted.\n\n\"I suppose you don't mean in health?\"\n\n\"No, as to that he's detestably sound. What I mean is that he's a man\nwith a great position who's playing all sorts of tricks with it. He\ndoesn't take himself seriously.\"\n\n\"Does he regard himself as a joke?\"\n\n\"Much worse; he regards himself as an imposition--as an abuse.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps he is,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Perhaps he is--though on the whole I don't think so. But in that case\nwhat's more pitiable than a sentient, self-conscious abuse planted by\nother hands, deeply rooted but aching with a sense of its injustice?\nFor me, in his place, I could be as solemn as a statue of Buddha.\nHe occupies a position that appeals to my imagination. Great\nresponsibilities, great opportunities, great consideration, great\nwealth, great power, a natural share in the public affairs of a great\ncountry. But he's all in a muddle about himself, his position, his\npower, and indeed about everything in the world. He's the victim of a\ncritical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know\nwhat to believe in. When I attempt to tell him (because if I were he I\nknow very well what I should believe in) he calls me a pampered bigot.\nI believe he seriously thinks me an awful Philistine; he says I don't\nunderstand my time. I understand it certainly better than he, who\ncan neither abolish himself as a nuisance nor maintain himself as an\ninstitution.\"\n\n\"He doesn't look very wretched,\" Isabel observed.\n\n\"Possibly not; though, being a man of a good deal of charming taste, I\nthink he often has uncomfortable hours. But what is it to say of a being\nof his opportunities that he's not miserable? Besides, I believe he is.\"\n\n\"I don't,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Well,\" her cousin rejoined, \"if he isn't he ought to be!\"\n\nIn the afternoon she spent an hour with her uncle on the lawn, where the\nold man sat, as usual, with his shawl over his legs and his large cup\nof diluted tea in his hands. In the course of conversation he asked her\nwhat she thought of their late visitor.\n\nIsabel was prompt. \"I think he's charming.\"\n\n\"He's a nice person,\" said Mr. Touchett, \"but I don't recommend you to\nfall in love with him.\"\n\n\"I shall not do it then; I shall never fall in love but on your\nrecommendation. Moreover,\" Isabel added, \"my cousin gives me rather a\nsad account of Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"Oh, indeed? I don't know what there may be to say, but you must\nremember that Ralph must talk.\"\n\n\"He thinks your friend's too subversive--or not subversive enough! I\ndon't quite understand which,\" said Isabel.\n\nThe old man shook his head slowly, smiled and put down his cup. \"I don't\nknow which either. He goes very far, but it's quite possible he doesn't\ngo far enough. He seems to want to do away with a good many things, but\nhe seems to want to remain himself. I suppose that's natural, but it's\nrather inconsistent.\"\n\n\"Oh, I hope he'll remain himself,\" said Isabel. \"If he were to be done\naway with his friends would miss him sadly.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the old man, \"I guess he'll stay and amuse his friends.\nI should certainly miss him very much here at Gardencourt. He always\namuses me when he comes over, and I think he amuses himself as well.\nThere's a considerable number like him, round in society; they're very\nfashionable just now. I don't know what they're trying to do--whether\nthey're trying to get up a revolution. I hope at any rate they'll put it\noff till after I'm gone. You see they want to disestablish everything;\nbut I'm a pretty big landowner here, and I don't want to be\ndisestablished. I wouldn't have come over if I had thought they\nwere going to behave like that,\" Mr. Touchett went on with expanding\nhilarity. \"I came over because I thought England was a safe country. I\ncall it a regular fraud if they are going to introduce any considerable\nchanges; there'll be a large number disappointed in that case.\"\n\n\"Oh, I do hope they'll make a revolution!\" Isabel exclaimed. \"I should\ndelight in seeing a revolution.\"\n\n\"Let me see,\" said her uncle, with a humorous intention; \"I forget\nwhether you're on the side of the old or on the side of the new. I've\nheard you take such opposite views.\"\n\n\"I'm on the side of both. I guess I'm a little on the side of\neverything. In a revolution--after it was well begun--I think I should\nbe a high, proud loyalist. One sympathises more with them, and they've a\nchance to behave so exquisitely. I mean so picturesquely.\"\n\n\"I don't know that I understand what you mean by behaving picturesquely,\nbut it seems to me that you do that always, my dear.\"\n\n\"Oh, you lovely man, if I could believe that!\" the girl interrupted.\n\n\"I'm afraid, after all, you won't have the pleasure of going gracefully\nto the guillotine here just now,\" Mr. Touchett went on. \"If you want to\nsee a big outbreak you must pay us a long visit. You see, when you come\nto the point it wouldn't suit them to be taken at their word.\"\n\n\"Of whom are you speaking?\"\n\n\"Well, I mean Lord Warburton and his friends--the radicals of the upper\nclass. Of course I only know the way it strikes me. They talk about the\nchanges, but I don't think they quite realise. You and I, you know, we\nknow what it is to have lived under democratic institutions: I always\nthought them very comfortable, but I was used to them from the first.\nAnd then I ain't a lord; you're a lady, my dear, but I ain't a lord. Now\nover here I don't think it quite comes home to them. It's a matter of\nevery day and every hour, and I don't think many of them would find it\nas pleasant as what they've got. Of course if they want to try, it's\ntheir own business; but I expect they won't try very hard.\"\n\n\"Don't you think they're sincere?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"Well, they want to FEEL earnest,\" Mr. Touchett allowed; \"but it seems\nas if they took it out in theories mostly. Their radical views are a\nkind of amusement; they've got to have some amusement, and they might\nhave coarser tastes than that. You see they're very luxurious, and these\nprogressive ideas are about their biggest luxury. They make them feel\nmoral and yet don't damage their position. They think a great deal of\ntheir position; don't let one of them ever persuade you he doesn't, for\nif you were to proceed on that basis you'd be pulled up very short.\"\n\nIsabel followed her uncle's argument, which he unfolded with his quaint\ndistinctness, most attentively, and though she was unacquainted with the\nBritish aristocracy she found it in harmony with her general impressions\nof human nature. But she felt moved to put in a protest on Lord\nWarburton's behalf. \"I don't believe Lord Warburton's a humbug; I don't\ncare what the others are. I should like to see Lord Warburton put to the\ntest.\"\n\n\"Heaven deliver me from my friends!\" Mr. Touchett answered. \"Lord\nWarburton's a very amiable young man--a very fine young man. He has a\nhundred thousand a year. He owns fifty thousand acres of the soil of\nthis little island and ever so many other things besides. He has half a\ndozen houses to live in. He has a seat in Parliament as I have one at my\nown dinner-table. He has elegant tastes--cares for literature, for art,\nfor science, for charming young ladies. The most elegant is his taste\nfor the new views. It affords him a great deal of pleasure--more\nperhaps than anything else, except the young ladies. His old house over\nthere--what does he call it, Lockleigh?--is very attractive; but I don't\nthink it's as pleasant as this. That doesn't matter, however--he has\nso many others. His views don't hurt any one as far as I can see; they\ncertainly don't hurt himself. And if there were to be a revolution he\nwould come off very easily. They wouldn't touch him, they'd leave him as\nhe is: he's too much liked.\"\n\n\"Ah, he couldn't be a martyr even if he wished!\" Isabel sighed. \"That's\na very poor position.\"\n\n\"He'll never be a martyr unless you make him one,\" said the old man.\n\nIsabel shook her head; there might have been something laughable in the\nfact that she did it with a touch of melancholy. \"I shall never make any\none a martyr.\"\n\n\"You'll never be one, I hope.\"\n\n\"I hope not. But you don't pity Lord Warburton then as Ralph does?\"\n\nHer uncle looked at her a while with genial acuteness. \"Yes, I do, after\nall!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nThe two Misses Molyneux, this nobleman's sisters, came presently to call\nupon her, and Isabel took a fancy to the young ladies, who appeared to\nher to show a most original stamp. It is true that when she described\nthem to her cousin by that term he declared that no epithet could be\nless applicable than this to the two Misses Molyneux, since there\nwere fifty thousand young women in England who exactly resembled them.\nDeprived of this advantage, however, Isabel's visitors retained that\nof an extreme sweetness and shyness of demeanour, and of having, as\nshe thought, eyes like the balanced basins, the circles of \"ornamental\nwater,\" set, in parterres, among the geraniums.\n\n\"They're not morbid, at any rate, whatever they are,\" our heroine said\nto herself; and she deemed this a great charm, for two or three of the\nfriends of her girlhood had been regrettably open to the charge (they\nwould have been so nice without it), to say nothing of Isabel's having\noccasionally suspected it as a tendency of her own. The Misses Molyneux\nwere not in their first youth, but they had bright, fresh complexions\nand something of the smile of childhood. Yes, their eyes, which Isabel\nadmired, were round, quiet and contented, and their figures, also of a\ngenerous roundness, were encased in sealskin jackets. Their friendliness\nwas great, so great that they were almost embarrassed to show it; they\nseemed somewhat afraid of the young lady from the other side of the\nworld and rather looked than spoke their good wishes. But they made it\nclear to her that they hoped she would come to luncheon at Lockleigh,\nwhere they lived with their brother, and then they might see her very,\nvery often. They wondered if she wouldn't come over some day, and sleep:\nthey were expecting some people on the twenty-ninth, so perhaps she\nwould come while the people were there.\n\n\"I'm afraid it isn't any one very remarkable,\" said the elder sister;\n\"but I dare say you'll take us as you find us.\"\n\n\"I shall find you delightful; I think you're enchanting just as you\nare,\" replied Isabel, who often praised profusely.\n\nHer visitors flushed, and her cousin told her, after they were gone,\nthat if she said such things to those poor girls they would think she\nwas in some wild, free manner practising on them: he was sure it was the\nfirst time they had been called enchanting.\n\n\"I can't help it,\" Isabel answered. \"I think it's lovely to be so quiet\nand reasonable and satisfied. I should like to be like that.\"\n\n\"Heaven forbid!\" cried Ralph with ardour.\n\n\"I mean to try and imitate them,\" said Isabel. \"I want very much to see\nthem at home.\"\n\nShe had this pleasure a few days later, when, with Ralph and his mother,\nshe drove over to Lockleigh. She found the Misses Molyneux sitting in a\nvast drawing-room (she perceived afterwards it was one of several) in a\nwilderness of faded chintz; they were dressed on this occasion in black\nvelveteen. Isabel liked them even better at home than she had done at\nGardencourt, and was more than ever struck with the fact that they were\nnot morbid. It had seemed to her before that if they had a fault it was\na want of play of mind; but she presently saw they were capable of deep\nemotion. Before luncheon she was alone with them for some time, on one\nside of the room, while Lord Warburton, at a distance, talked to Mrs.\nTouchett.\n\n\"Is it true your brother's such a great radical?\" Isabel asked. She\nknew it was true, but we have seen that her interest in human nature was\nkeen, and she had a desire to draw the Misses Molyneux out.\n\n\"Oh dear, yes; he's immensely advanced,\" said Mildred, the younger\nsister.\n\n\"At the same time Warburton's very reasonable,\" Miss Molyneux observed.\n\nIsabel watched him a moment at the other side of the room; he was\nclearly trying hard to make himself agreeable to Mrs. Touchett. Ralph\nhad met the frank advances of one of the dogs before the fire that the\ntemperature of an English August, in the ancient expanses, had not\nmade an impertinence. \"Do you suppose your brother's sincere?\" Isabel\nenquired with a smile.\n\n\"Oh, he must be, you know!\" Mildred exclaimed quickly, while the elder\nsister gazed at our heroine in silence.\n\n\"Do you think he would stand the test?\"\n\n\"The test?\"\n\n\"I mean for instance having to give up all this.\"\n\n\"Having to give up Lockleigh?\" said Miss Molyneux, finding her voice.\n\n\"Yes, and the other places; what are they called?\"\n\nThe two sisters exchanged an almost frightened glance. \"Do you mean--do\nyou mean on account of the expense?\" the younger one asked.\n\n\"I dare say he might let one or two of his houses,\" said the other.\n\n\"Let them for nothing?\" Isabel demanded.\n\n\"I can't fancy his giving up his property,\" said Miss Molyneux.\n\n\"Ah, I'm afraid he is an impostor!\" Isabel returned. \"Don't you think\nit's a false position?\"\n\nHer companions, evidently, had lost themselves. \"My brother's position?\"\nMiss Molyneux enquired.\n\n\"It's thought a very good position,\" said the younger sister. \"It's the\nfirst position in this part of the county.\"\n\n\"I dare say you think me very irreverent,\" Isabel took occasion to\nremark. \"I suppose you revere your brother and are rather afraid of\nhim.\"\n\n\"Of course one looks up to one's brother,\" said Miss Molyneux simply.\n\n\"If you do that he must be very good--because you, evidently, are\nbeautifully good.\"\n\n\"He's most kind. It will never be known, the good he does.\"\n\n\"His ability is known,\" Mildred added; \"every one thinks it's immense.\"\n\n\"Oh, I can see that,\" said Isabel. \"But if I were he I should wish to\nfight to the death: I mean for the heritage of the past. I should hold\nit tight.\"\n\n\"I think one ought to be liberal,\" Mildred argued gently. \"We've always\nbeen so, even from the earliest times.\"\n\n\"Ah well,\" said Isabel, \"you've made a great success of it; I don't\nwonder you like it. I see you're very fond of crewels.\"\n\nWhen Lord Warburton showed her the house, after luncheon, it seemed to\nher a matter of course that it should be a noble picture. Within, it\nhad been a good deal modernised--some of its best points had lost their\npurity; but as they saw it from the gardens, a stout grey pile, of the\nsoftest, deepest, most weather-fretted hue, rising from a broad, still\nmoat, it affected the young visitor as a castle in a legend. The day was\ncool and rather lustreless; the first note of autumn had been struck,\nand the watery sunshine rested on the walls in blurred and desultory\ngleams, washing them, as it were, in places tenderly chosen, where the\nache of antiquity was keenest. Her host's brother, the Vicar, had come\nto luncheon, and Isabel had had five minutes' talk with him--time enough\nto institute a search for a rich ecclesiasticism and give it up as\nvain. The marks of the Vicar of Lockleigh were a big, athletic figure,\na candid, natural countenance, a capacious appetite and a tendency to\nindiscriminate laughter. Isabel learned afterwards from her cousin\nthat before taking orders he had been a mighty wrestler and that he\nwas still, on occasion--in the privacy of the family circle as it\nwere--quite capable of flooring his man. Isabel liked him--she was in\nthe mood for liking everything; but her imagination was a good deal\ntaxed to think of him as a source of spiritual aid. The whole party, on\nleaving lunch, went to walk in the grounds; but Lord Warburton exercised\nsome ingenuity in engaging his least familiar guest in a stroll apart\nfrom the others.\n\n\"I wish you to see the place properly, seriously,\" he said. \"You can't\ndo so if your attention is distracted by irrelevant gossip.\" His own\nconversation (though he told Isabel a good deal about the house, which\nhad a very curious history) was not purely archaeological; he reverted\nat intervals to matters more personal--matters personal to the young\nlady as well as to himself. But at last, after a pause of some duration,\nreturning for a moment to their ostensible theme, \"Ah, well,\" he said,\n\"I'm very glad indeed you like the old barrack. I wish you could see\nmore of it--that you could stay here a while. My sisters have taken an\nimmense fancy to you--if that would be any inducement.\"\n\n\"There's no want of inducements,\" Isabel answered; \"but I'm afraid I\ncan't make engagements. I'm quite in my aunt's hands.\"\n\n\"Ah, pardon me if I say I don't exactly believe that. I'm pretty sure\nyou can do whatever you want.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry if I make that impression on you; I don't think it's a nice\nimpression to make.\"\n\n\"It has the merit of permitting me to hope.\" And Lord Warburton paused a\nmoment.\n\n\"To hope what?\"\n\n\"That in future I may see you often.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel, \"to enjoy that pleasure I needn't be so terribly\nemancipated.\"\n\n\"Doubtless not; and yet, at the same time, I don't think your uncle\nlikes me.\"\n\n\"You're very much mistaken. I've heard him speak very highly of you.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you have talked about me,\" said Lord Warburton. \"But, I\nnevertheless don't think he'd like me to keep coming to Gardencourt.\"\n\n\"I can't answer for my uncle's tastes,\" the girl rejoined, \"though I\nought as far as possible to take them into account. But for myself I\nshall be very glad to see you.\"\n\n\"Now that's what I like to hear you say. I'm charmed when you say that.\"\n\n\"You're easily charmed, my lord,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"No, I'm not easily charmed!\" And then he stopped a moment. \"But you've\ncharmed me, Miss Archer.\"\n\nThese words were uttered with an indefinable sound which startled the\ngirl; it struck her as the prelude to something grave: she had heard the\nsound before and she recognised it. She had no wish, however, that for\nthe moment such a prelude should have a sequel, and she said as gaily\nas possible and as quickly as an appreciable degree of agitation would\nallow her: \"I'm afraid there's no prospect of my being able to come here\nagain.\"\n\n\"Never?\" said Lord Warburton.\n\n\"I won't say 'never'; I should feel very melodramatic.\"\n\n\"May I come and see you then some day next week?\"\n\n\"Most assuredly. What is there to prevent it?\"\n\n\"Nothing tangible. But with you I never feel safe. I've a sort of sense\nthat you're always summing people up.\"\n\n\"You don't of necessity lose by that.\"\n\n\"It's very kind of you to say so; but, even if I gain, stern justice is\nnot what I most love. Is Mrs. Touchett going to take you abroad?\"\n\n\"I hope so.\"\n\n\"Is England not good enough for you?\"\n\n\"That's a very Machiavellian speech; it doesn't deserve an answer. I\nwant to see as many countries as I can.\"\n\n\"Then you'll go on judging, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Enjoying, I hope, too.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's what you enjoy most; I can't make out what you're up to,\"\nsaid Lord Warburton. \"You strike me as having mysterious purposes--vast\ndesigns.\"\n\n\"You're so good as to have a theory about me which I don't at all fill\nout. Is there anything mysterious in a purpose entertained and\nexecuted every year, in the most public manner, by fifty thousand of\nmy fellow-countrymen--the purpose of improving one's mind by foreign\ntravel?\"\n\n\"You can't improve your mind, Miss Archer,\" her companion declared.\n\"It's already a most formidable instrument. It looks down on us all; it\ndespises us.\"\n\n\"Despises you? You're making fun of me,\" said Isabel seriously.\n\n\"Well, you think us 'quaint'--that's the same thing. I won't be thought\n'quaint,' to begin with; I'm not so in the least. I protest.\"\n\n\"That protest is one of the quaintest things I've ever heard,\" Isabel\nanswered with a smile.\n\nLord Warburton was briefly silent. \"You judge only from the outside--you\ndon't care,\" he said presently. \"You only care to amuse yourself.\" The\nnote she had heard in his voice a moment before reappeared, and mixed\nwith it now was an audible strain of bitterness--a bitterness so abrupt\nand inconsequent that the girl was afraid she had hurt him. She had\noften heard that the English are a highly eccentric people, and she\nhad even read in some ingenious author that they are at bottom the most\nromantic of races. Was Lord Warburton suddenly turning romantic--was he\ngoing to make her a scene, in his own house, only the third time they\nhad met? She was reassured quickly enough by her sense of his great good\nmanners, which was not impaired by the fact that he had already touched\nthe furthest limit of good taste in expressing his admiration of a young\nlady who had confided in his hospitality. She was right in trusting\nto his good manners, for he presently went on, laughing a little and\nwithout a trace of the accent that had discomposed her: \"I don't mean of\ncourse that you amuse yourself with trifles. You select great materials;\nthe foibles, the afflictions of human nature, the peculiarities of\nnations!\"\n\n\"As regards that,\" said Isabel, \"I should find in my own nation\nentertainment for a lifetime. But we've a long drive, and my aunt\nwill soon wish to start.\" She turned back toward the others and Lord\nWarburton walked beside her in silence. But before they reached the\nothers, \"I shall come and see you next week,\" he said.\n\nShe had received an appreciable shock, but as it died away she felt that\nshe couldn't pretend to herself that it was altogether a painful one.\nNevertheless she made answer to his declaration, coldly enough, \"Just as\nyou please.\" And her coldness was not the calculation of her effect--a\ngame she played in a much smaller degree than would have seemed probable\nto many critics. It came from a certain fear.\n\n\n\n\n\nThe day after her visit to Lockleigh she received a note from her friend\nMiss Stackpole--a note of which the envelope, exhibiting in conjunction\nthe postmark of Liverpool and the neat calligraphy of the quick-fingered\nHenrietta, caused her some liveliness of emotion. \"Here I am, my lovely\nfriend,\" Miss Stackpole wrote; \"I managed to get off at last. I decided\nonly the night before I left New York--the Interviewer having come round\nto my figure. I put a few things into a bag, like a veteran journalist,\nand came down to the steamer in a street-car. Where are you and where\ncan we meet? I suppose you're visiting at some castle or other and have\nalready acquired the correct accent. Perhaps even you have married a\nlord; I almost hope you have, for I want some introductions to the first\npeople and shall count on you for a few. The Interviewer wants some\nlight on the nobility. My first impressions (of the people at large) are\nnot rose-coloured; but I wish to talk them over with you, and you know\nthat, whatever I am, at least I'm not superficial. I've also something\nvery particular to tell you. Do appoint a meeting as quickly as you can;\ncome to London (I should like so much to visit the sights with you) or\nelse let me come to you, wherever you are. I will do so with pleasure;\nfor you know everything interests me and I wish to see as much as\npossible of the inner life.\"\n\nIsabel judged best not to show this letter to her uncle; but she\nacquainted him with its purport, and, as she expected, he begged her\ninstantly to assure Miss Stackpole, in his name, that he should be\ndelighted to receive her at Gardencourt. \"Though she's a literary lady,\"\nhe said, \"I suppose that, being an American, she won't show me up, as\nthat other one did. She has seen others like me.\"\n\n\"She has seen no other so delightful!\" Isabel answered; but she was\nnot altogether at ease about Henrietta's reproductive instincts, which\nbelonged to that side of her friend's character which she regarded with\nleast complacency. She wrote to Miss Stackpole, however, that she would\nbe very welcome under Mr. Touchett's roof; and this alert young woman\nlost no time in announcing her prompt approach. She had gone up to\nLondon, and it was from that centre that she took the train for the\nstation nearest to Gardencourt, where Isabel and Ralph were in waiting\nto receive her.\n\n\"Shall I love her or shall I hate her?\" Ralph asked while they moved\nalong the platform.\n\n\"Whichever you do will matter very little to her,\" said Isabel. \"She\ndoesn't care a straw what men think of her.\"\n\n\"As a man I'm bound to dislike her then. She must be a kind of monster.\nIs she very ugly?\"\n\n\"No, she's decidedly pretty.\"\n\n\"A female interviewer--a reporter in petticoats? I'm very curious to see\nher,\" Ralph conceded.\n\n\"It's very easy to laugh at her but it is not easy to be as brave as\nshe.\"\n\n\"I should think not; crimes of violence and attacks on the person\nrequire more or less pluck. Do you suppose she'll interview me?\"\n\n\"Never in the world. She'll not think you of enough importance.\"\n\n\"You'll see,\" said Ralph. \"She'll send a description of us all,\nincluding Bunchie, to her newspaper.\"\n\n\"I shall ask her not to,\" Isabel answered.\n\n\"You think she's capable of it then?\"\n\n\"Perfectly.\"\n\n\"And yet you've made her your bosom-friend?\"\n\n\"I've not made her my bosom-friend; but I like her in spite of her\nfaults.\"\n\n\"Ah well,\" said Ralph, \"I'm afraid I shall dislike her in spite of her\nmerits.\"\n\n\"You'll probably fall in love with her at the end of three days.\"\n\n\"And have my love-letters published in the Interviewer? Never!\" cried\nthe young man.\n\nThe train presently arrived, and Miss Stackpole, promptly descending,\nproved, as Isabel had promised, quite delicately, even though rather\nprovincially, fair. She was a neat, plump person, of medium stature,\nwith a round face, a small mouth, a delicate complexion, a bunch of\nlight brown ringlets at the back of her head and a peculiarly open,\nsurprised-looking eye. The most striking point in her appearance was the\nremarkable fixedness of this organ, which rested without impudence or\ndefiance, but as if in conscientious exercise of a natural right, upon\nevery object it happened to encounter. It rested in this manner upon\nRalph himself, a little arrested by Miss Stackpole's gracious and\ncomfortable aspect, which hinted that it wouldn't be so easy as he had\nassumed to disapprove of her. She rustled, she shimmered, in fresh,\ndove-coloured draperies, and Ralph saw at a glance that she was as crisp\nand new and comprehensive as a first issue before the folding. From top\nto toe she had probably no misprint. She spoke in a clear, high voice--a\nvoice not rich but loud; yet after she had taken her place with her\ncompanions in Mr. Touchett's carriage she struck him as not all in the\nlarge type, the type of horrid \"headings,\" that he had expected. She\nanswered the enquiries made of her by Isabel, however, and in which the\nyoung man ventured to join, with copious lucidity; and later, in the\nlibrary at Gardencourt, when she had made the acquaintance of Mr.\nTouchett (his wife not having thought it necessary to appear) did more\nto give the measure of her confidence in her powers.\n\n\"Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves American\nor English,\" she broke out. \"If once I knew I could talk to you\naccordingly.\"\n\n\"Talk to us anyhow and we shall be thankful,\" Ralph liberally answered.\n\nShe fixed her eyes on him, and there was something in their character\nthat reminded him of large polished buttons--buttons that might have\nfixed the elastic loops of some tense receptacle: he seemed to see the\nreflection of surrounding objects on the pupil. The expression of a\nbutton is not usually deemed human, but there was something in Miss\nStackpole's gaze that made him, as a very modest man, feel vaguely\nembarrassed--less inviolate, more dishonoured, than he liked. This\nsensation, it must be added, after he had spent a day or two in her\ncompany, sensibly diminished, though it never wholly lapsed. \"I don't\nsuppose that you're going to undertake to persuade me that you're an\nAmerican,\" she said.\n\n\"To please you I'll be an Englishman, I'll be a Turk!\"\n\n\"Well, if you can change about that way you're very welcome,\" Miss\nStackpole returned.\n\n\"I'm sure you understand everything and that differences of nationality\nare no barrier to you,\" Ralph went on.\n\nMiss Stackpole gazed at him still. \"Do you mean the foreign languages?\"\n\n\"The languages are nothing. I mean the spirit--the genius.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure that I understand you,\" said the correspondent of the\nInterviewer; \"but I expect I shall before I leave.\"\n\n\"He's what's called a cosmopolite,\" Isabel suggested.\n\n\"That means he's a little of everything and not much of any. I must say\nI think patriotism is like charity--it begins at home.\"\n\n\"Ah, but where does home begin, Miss Stackpole?\" Ralph enquired.\n\n\"I don't know where it begins, but I know where it ends. It ended a long\ntime before I got here.\"\n\n\"Don't you like it over here?\" asked Mr. Touchett with his aged,\ninnocent voice.\n\n\"Well, sir, I haven't quite made up my mind what ground I shall take.\nI feel a good deal cramped. I felt it on the journey from Liverpool to\nLondon.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you were in a crowded carriage,\" Ralph suggested.\n\n\"Yes, but it was crowded with friends--party of Americans whose\nacquaintance I had made upon the steamer; a lovely group from Little\nRock, Arkansas. In spite of that I felt cramped--I felt something\npressing upon me; I couldn't tell what it was. I felt at the very\ncommencement as if I were not going to accord with the atmosphere. But\nI suppose I shall make my own atmosphere. That's the true way--then you\ncan breathe. Your surroundings seem very attractive.\"\n\n\"Ah, we too are a lovely group!\" said Ralph. \"Wait a little and you'll\nsee.\"\n\nMiss Stackpole showed every disposition to wait and evidently was\nprepared to make a considerable stay at Gardencourt. She occupied\nherself in the mornings with literary labour; but in spite of this\nIsabel spent many hours with her friend, who, once her daily task\nperformed, deprecated, in fact defied, isolation. Isabel speedily found\noccasion to desire her to desist from celebrating the charms of their\ncommon sojourn in print, having discovered, on the second morning\nof Miss Stackpole's visit, that she was engaged on a letter to the\nInterviewer, of which the title, in her exquisitely neat and legible\nhand (exactly that of the copybooks which our heroine remembered at\nschool) was \"Americans and Tudors--Glimpses of Gardencourt.\" Miss\nStackpole, with the best conscience in the world, offered to read her\nletter to Isabel, who immediately put in her protest.\n\n\"I don't think you ought to do that. I don't think you ought to describe\nthe place.\"\n\nHenrietta gazed at her as usual. \"Why, it's just what the people want,\nand it's a lovely place.\"\n\n\"It's too lovely to be put in the newspapers, and it's not what my uncle\nwants.\"\n\n\"Don't you believe that!\" cried Henrietta. \"They're always delighted\nafterwards.\"\n\n\"My uncle won't be delighted--nor my cousin either. They'll consider it\na breach of hospitality.\"\n\nMiss Stackpole showed no sense of confusion; she simply wiped her pen,\nvery neatly, upon an elegant little implement which she kept for the\npurpose, and put away her manuscript. \"Of course if you don't approve I\nwon't do it; but I sacrifice a beautiful subject.\"\n\n\"There are plenty of other subjects, there are subjects all round you.\nWe'll take some drives; I'll show you some charming scenery.\"\n\n\"Scenery's not my department; I always need a human interest. You know\nI'm deeply human, Isabel; I always was,\" Miss Stackpole rejoined. \"I was\ngoing to bring in your cousin--the alienated American. There's a\ngreat demand just now for the alienated American, and your cousin's a\nbeautiful specimen. I should have handled him severely.\"\n\n\"He would have died of it!\" Isabel exclaimed. \"Not of the severity, but\nof the publicity.\"\n\n\"Well, I should have liked to kill him a little. And I should have\ndelighted to do your uncle, who seems to me a much nobler type--the\nAmerican faithful still. He's a grand old man; I don't see how he can\nobject to my paying him honour.\"\n\nIsabel looked at her companion in much wonderment; it struck her as\nstrange that a nature in which she found so much to esteem should break\ndown so in spots. \"My poor Henrietta,\" she said, \"you've no sense of\nprivacy.\"\n\nHenrietta coloured deeply, and for a moment her brilliant eyes were\nsuffused, while Isabel found her more than ever inconsequent. \"You do me\ngreat injustice,\" said Miss Stackpole with dignity. \"I've never written\na word about myself!\"\n\n\"I'm very sure of that; but it seems to me one should be modest for\nothers also!\"\n\n\"Ah, that's very good!\" cried Henrietta, seizing her pen again. \"Just\nlet me make a note of it and I'll put it in somewhere.\" she was a\nthoroughly good-natured woman, and half an hour later she was in as\ncheerful a mood as should have been looked for in a newspaper-lady\nin want of matter. \"I've promised to do the social side,\" she said to\nIsabel; \"and how can I do it unless I get ideas? If I can't describe\nthis place don't you know some place I can describe?\" Isabel promised\nshe would bethink herself, and the next day, in conversation with her\nfriend, she happened to mention her visit to Lord Warburton's ancient\nhouse. \"Ah, you must take me there--that's just the place for me!\" Miss\nStackpole cried. \"I must get a glimpse of the nobility.\"\n\n\"I can't take you,\" said Isabel; \"but Lord Warburton's coming here, and\nyou'll have a chance to see him and observe him. Only if you intend to\nrepeat his conversation I shall certainly give him warning.\"\n\n\"Don't do that,\" her companion pleaded; \"I want him to be natural.\"\n\n\"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue,\"\nIsabel declared.\n\nIt was not apparent, at the end of three days, that her cousin had,\naccording to her prophecy, lost his heart to their visitor, though he\nhad spent a good deal of time in her society. They strolled about the\npark together and sat under the trees, and in the afternoon, when it was\ndelightful to float along the Thames, Miss Stackpole occupied a place\nin the boat in which hitherto Ralph had had but a single companion. Her\npresence proved somehow less irreducible to soft particles than Ralph\nhad expected in the natural perturbation of his sense of the perfect\nsolubility of that of his cousin; for the correspondent of the\nInterviewer prompted mirth in him, and he had long since decided that\nthe crescendo of mirth should be the flower of his declining days.\nHenrietta, on her side, failed a little to justify Isabel's declaration\nwith regard to her indifference to masculine opinion; for poor Ralph\nappeared to have presented himself to her as an irritating problem,\nwhich it would be almost immoral not to work out.\n\n\"What does he do for a living?\" she asked of Isabel the evening of her\narrival. \"Does he go round all day with his hands in his pockets?\"\n\n\"He does nothing,\" smiled Isabel; \"he's a gentleman of large leisure.\"\n\n\"Well, I call that a shame--when I have to work like a car-conductor,\"\nMiss Stackpole replied. \"I should like to show him up.\"\n\n\"He's in wretched health; he's quite unfit for work,\" Isabel urged.\n\n\"Pshaw! don't you believe it. I work when I'm sick,\" cried her friend.\nLater, when she stepped into the boat on joining the water-party, she\nremarked to Ralph that she supposed he hated her and would like to drown\nher.\n\n\"Ah no,\" said Ralph, \"I keep my victims for a slower torture. And you'd\nbe such an interesting one!\"\n\n\"Well, you do torture me; I may say that. But I shock all your\nprejudices; that's one comfort.\"\n\n\"My prejudices? I haven't a prejudice to bless myself with. There's\nintellectual poverty for you.\"\n\n\"The more shame to you; I've some delicious ones. Of course I spoil your\nflirtation, or whatever it is you call it, with your cousin; but I don't\ncare for that, as I render her the service of drawing you out. She'll\nsee how thin you are.\"\n\n\"Ah, do draw me out!\" Ralph exclaimed. \"So few people will take the\ntrouble.\"\n\nMiss Stackpole, in this undertaking, appeared to shrink from no effort;\nresorting largely, whenever the opportunity offered, to the natural\nexpedient of interrogation. On the following day the weather was\nbad, and in the afternoon the young man, by way of providing indoor\namusement, offered to show her the pictures. Henrietta strolled through\nthe long gallery in his society, while he pointed out its principal\nornaments and mentioned the painters and subjects. Miss Stackpole looked\nat the pictures in perfect silence, committing herself to no opinion,\nand Ralph was gratified by the fact that she delivered herself of none\nof the little ready-made ejaculations of delight of which the visitors\nto Gardencourt were so frequently lavish. This young lady indeed, to do\nher justice, was but little addicted to the use of conventional terms;\nthere was something earnest and inventive in her tone, which at times,\nin its strained deliberation, suggested a person of high culture\nspeaking a foreign language. Ralph Touchett subsequently learned that\nshe had at one time officiated as art critic to a journal of the other\nworld; but she appeared, in spite of this fact, to carry in her pocket\nnone of the small change of admiration. Suddenly, just after he had\ncalled her attention to a charming Constable, she turned and looked at\nhim as if he himself had been a picture.\n\n\"Do you always spend your time like this?\" she demanded.\n\n\"I seldom spend it so agreeably.\"\n\n\"Well, you know what I mean--without any regular occupation.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Ralph, \"I'm the idlest man living.\"\n\nMiss Stackpole directed her gaze to the Constable again, and Ralph\nbespoke her attention for a small Lancret hanging near it, which\nrepresented a gentleman in a pink doublet and hose and a ruff, leaning\nagainst the pedestal of the statue of a nymph in a garden and playing\nthe guitar to two ladies seated on the grass. \"That's my ideal of a\nregular occupation,\" he said.\n\nMiss Stackpole turned to him again, and, though her eyes had rested\nupon the picture, he saw she had missed the subject. She was thinking\nof something much more serious. \"I don't see how you can reconcile it to\nyour conscience.\"\n\n\"My dear lady, I have no conscience!\"\n\n\"Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You'll need it the next time you\ngo to America.\"\n\n\"I shall probably never go again.\"\n\n\"Are you ashamed to show yourself?\"\n\nRalph meditated with a mild smile. \"I suppose that if one has no\nconscience one has no shame.\"\n\n\"Well, you've got plenty of assurance,\" Henrietta declared. \"Do you\nconsider it right to give up your country?\"\n\n\"Ah, one doesn't give up one's country any more than one gives UP\none's grandmother. They're both antecedent to choice--elements of one's\ncomposition that are not to be eliminated.\"\n\n\"I suppose that means that you've tried and been worsted. What do they\nthink of you over here?\"\n\n\"They delight in me.\"\n\n\"That's because you truckle to them.\"\n\n\"Ah, set it down a little to my natural charm!\" Ralph sighed.\n\n\"I don't know anything about your natural charm. If you've got any charm\nit's quite unnatural. It's wholly acquired--or at least you've tried\nhard to acquire it, living over here. I don't say you've succeeded. It's\na charm that I don't appreciate, anyway. Make yourself useful in some\nway, and then we'll talk about it.\" \"Well, now, tell me what I shall\ndo,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Go right home, to begin with.\"\n\n\"Yes, I see. And then?\"\n\n\"Take right hold of something.\"\n\n\"Well, now, what sort of thing?\"\n\n\"Anything you please, so long as you take hold. Some new idea, some big\nwork.\"\n\n\"Is it very difficult to take hold?\" Ralph enquired.\n\n\"Not if you put your heart into it.\"\n\n\"Ah, my heart,\" said Ralph. \"If it depends upon my heart--!\"\n\n\"Haven't you got a heart?\"\n\n\"I had one a few days ago, but I've lost it since.\"\n\n\"You're not serious,\" Miss Stackpole remarked; \"that's what's the matter\nwith you.\" But for all this, in a day or two, she again permitted him to\nfix her attention and on the later occasion assigned a different cause\nto her mysterious perversity. \"I know what's the matter with you, Mr.\nTouchett,\" she said. \"You think you're too good to get married.\"\n\n\"I thought so till I knew you, Miss Stackpole,\" Ralph answered; \"and\nthen I suddenly changed my mind.\"\n\n\"Oh pshaw!\" Henrietta groaned.\n\n\"Then it seemed to me,\" said Ralph, \"that I was not good enough.\"\n\n\"It would improve you. Besides, it's your duty.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried the young man, \"one has so many duties! Is that a duty too?\"\n\n\"Of course it is--did you never know that before? It's every one's duty\nto get married.\"\n\nRalph meditated a moment; he was disappointed. There was something in\nMiss Stackpole he had begun to like; it seemed to him that if she\nwas not a charming woman she was at least a very good \"sort.\" She was\nwanting in distinction, but, as Isabel had said, she was brave: she went\ninto cages, she flourished lashes, like a spangled lion-tamer. He had\nnot supposed her to be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words\nstruck him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges\nmatrimony on an unencumbered young man the most obvious explanation of\nher conduct is not the altruistic impulse.\n\n\"Ah, well now, there's a good deal to be said about that,\" Ralph\nrejoined.\n\n\"There may be, but that's the principal thing. I must say I think it\nlooks very exclusive, going round all alone, as if you thought no woman\nwas good enough for you. Do you think you're better than any one else in\nthe world? In America it's usual for people to marry.\"\n\n\"If it's my duty,\" Ralph asked, \"is it not, by analogy, yours as well?\"\n\nMiss Stackpole's ocular surfaces unwinkingly caught the sun. \"Have you\nthe fond hope of finding a flaw in my reasoning? Of course I've as good\na right to marry as any one else.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" said Ralph, \"I won't say it vexes me to see you single. It\ndelights me rather.\"\n\n\"You're not serious yet. You never will be.\"\n\n\"Shall you not believe me to be so on the day I tell you I desire to\ngive up the practice of going round alone?\"\n\nMiss Stackpole looked at him for a moment in a manner which seemed to\nannounce a reply that might technically be called encouraging. But to\nhis great surprise this expression suddenly resolved itself into an\nappearance of alarm and even of resentment. \"No, not even then,\" she\nanswered dryly. After which she walked away.\n\n\"I've not conceived a passion for your friend,\" Ralph said that evening\nto Isabel, \"though we talked some time this morning about it.\"\n\n\"And you said something she didn't like,\" the girl replied.\n\nRalph stared. \"Has she complained of me?\"\n\n\"She told me she thinks there's something very low in the tone of\nEuropeans towards women.\"\n\n\"Does she call me a European?\"\n\n\"One of the worst. She told me you had said to her something that an\nAmerican never would have said. But she didn't repeat it.\"\n\nRalph treated himself to a luxury of laughter. \"She's an extraordinary\ncombination. Did she think I was making love to her?\"\n\n\"No; I believe even Americans do that. But she apparently thought you\nmistook the intention of something she had said, and put an unkind\nconstruction on it.\"\n\n\"I thought she was proposing marriage to me and I accepted her. Was that\nunkind?\"\n\nIsabel smiled. \"It was unkind to me. I don't want you to marry.\"\n\n\"My dear cousin, what's one to do among you all?\" Ralph demanded. \"Miss\nStackpole tells me it's my bounden duty, and that it's hers, in general,\nto see I do mine!\"\n\n\"She has a great sense of duty,\" said Isabel gravely. \"She has indeed,\nand it's the motive of everything she says. That's what I like her for.\nShe thinks it's unworthy of you to keep so many things to yourself.\nThat's what she wanted to express. If you thought she was trying to--to\nattract you, you were very wrong.\"\n\n\"It's true it was an odd way, but I did think she was trying to attract\nme. Forgive my depravity.\"\n\n\"You're very conceited. She had no interested views, and never supposed\nyou would think she had.\"\n\n\"One must be very modest then to talk with such women,\" Ralph said\nhumbly. \"But it's a very strange type. She's too personal--considering\nthat she expects other people not to be. She walks in without knocking\nat the door.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Isabel admitted, \"she doesn't sufficiently recognise the\nexistence of knockers; and indeed I'm not sure that she doesn't think\nthem rather a pretentious ornament. She thinks one's door should stand\najar. But I persist in liking her.\"\n\n\"I persist in thinking her too familiar,\" Ralph rejoined, naturally\nsomewhat uncomfortable under the sense of having been doubly deceived in\nMiss Stackpole.\n\n\"Well,\" said Isabel, smiling, \"I'm afraid it's because she's rather\nvulgar that I like her.\"\n\n\"She would be flattered by your reason!\"\n\n\"If I should tell her I wouldn't express it in that way. I should say\nit's because there's something of the 'people' in her.\"\n\n\"What do you know about the people? and what does she, for that matter?\"\n\n\"She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she's a kind\nof emanation of the great democracy--of the continent, the country, the\nnation. I don't say that she sums it all up, that would be too much to\nask of her. But she suggests it; she vividly figures it.\"\n\n\"You like her then for patriotic reasons. I'm afraid it is on those very\ngrounds I object to her.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel with a kind of joyous sigh, \"I like so many things! If\na thing strikes me with a certain intensity I accept it. I don't want to\nswagger, but I suppose I'm rather versatile. I like people to be totally\ndifferent from Henrietta--in the style of Lord Warburton's sisters for\ninstance. So long as I look at the Misses Molyneux they seem to me\nto answer a kind of ideal. Then Henrietta presents herself, and I'm\nstraightway convinced by her; not so much in respect to herself as in\nrespect to what masses behind her.\"\n\n\"Ah, you mean the back view of her,\" Ralph suggested.\n\n\"What she says is true,\" his cousin answered; \"you'll never be serious.\nI like the great country stretching away beyond the rivers and across\nthe prairies, blooming and smiling and spreading till it stops at the\ngreen Pacific! A strong, sweet, fresh odour seems to rise from it,\nand Henrietta--pardon my simile--has something of that odour in her\ngarments.\"\n\nIsabel blushed a little as she concluded this speech, and the blush,\ntogether with the momentary ardour she had thrown into it, was so\nbecoming to her that Ralph stood smiling at her for a moment after she\nhad ceased speaking. \"I'm not sure the Pacific's so green as that,\" he\nsaid; \"but you're a young woman of imagination. Henrietta, however, does\nsmell of the Future--it almost knocks one down!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nHe took a resolve after this not to misinterpret her words even when\nMiss Stackpole appeared to strike the personal note most strongly. He\nbethought himself that persons, in her view, were simple and homogeneous\norganisms, and that he, for his own part, was too perverted a\nrepresentative of the nature of man to have a right to deal with her\nin strict reciprocity. He carried out his resolve with a great deal of\ntact, and the young lady found in renewed contact with him no obstacle\nto the exercise of her genius for unshrinking enquiry, the general\napplication of her confidence. Her situation at Gardencourt therefore,\nappreciated as we have seen her to be by Isabel and full of appreciation\nherself of that free play of intelligence which, to her sense, rendered\nIsabel's character a sister-spirit, and of the easy venerableness of Mr.\nTouchett, whose noble tone, as she said, met with her full approval--her\nsituation at Gardencourt would have been perfectly comfortable had she\nnot conceived an irresistible mistrust of the little lady for whom she\nhad at first supposed herself obliged to \"allow\" as mistress of the\nhouse. She presently discovered, in truth, that this obligation was of\nthe lightest and that Mrs. Touchett cared very little how Miss Stackpole\nbehaved. Mrs. Touchett had defined her to Isabel as both an adventuress\nand a bore--adventuresses usually giving one more of a thrill; she had\nexpressed some surprise at her niece's having selected such a friend,\nyet had immediately added that she knew Isabel's friends were her own\naffair and that she had never undertaken to like them all or to restrict\nthe girl to those she liked.\n\n\"If you could see none but the people I like, my dear, you'd have a very\nsmall society,\" Mrs. Touchett frankly admitted; \"and I don't think I\nlike any man or woman well enough to recommend them to you. When\nit comes to recommending it's a serious affair. I don't like Miss\nStackpole--everything about her displeases me; she talks so much\ntoo loud and looks at one as if one wanted to look at her--which one\ndoesn't. I'm sure she has lived all her life in a boarding-house, and I\ndetest the manners and the liberties of such places. If you ask me if I\nprefer my own manners, which you doubtless think very bad, I'll tell\nyou that I prefer them immensely. Miss Stackpole knows I detest\nboarding-house civilisation, and she detests me for detesting it,\nbecause she thinks it the highest in the world. She'd like Gardencourt a\ngreat deal better if it were a boarding-house. For me, I find it almost\ntoo much of one! We shall never get on together therefore, and there's\nno use trying.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett was right in guessing that Henrietta disapproved of her,\nbut she had not quite put her finger on the reason. A day or two after\nMiss Stackpole's arrival she had made some invidious reflexions on\nAmerican hotels, which excited a vein of counter-argument on the part\nof the correspondent of the Interviewer, who in the exercise of her\nprofession had acquainted herself, in the western world, with every form\nof caravansary. Henrietta expressed the opinion that American hotels\nwere the best in the world, and Mrs. Touchett, fresh from a renewed\nstruggle with them, recorded a conviction that they were the worst.\nRalph, with his experimental geniality, suggested, by way of healing\nthe breach, that the truth lay between the two extremes and that the\nestablishments in question ought to be described as fair middling. This\ncontribution to the discussion, however, Miss Stackpole rejected with\nscorn. Middling indeed! If they were not the best in the world they were\nthe worst, but there was nothing middling about an American hotel.\n\n\"We judge from different points of view, evidently,\" said Mrs. Touchett.\n\"I like to be treated as an individual; you like to be treated as a\n'party.'\"\n\n\"I don't know what you mean,\" Henrietta replied. \"I like to be treated\nas an American lady.\"\n\n\"Poor American ladies!\" cried Mrs. Touchett with a laugh. \"They're the\nslaves of slaves.\"\n\n\"They're the companions of freemen,\" Henrietta retorted.\n\n\"They're the companions of their servants--the Irish chambermaid and the\nnegro waiter. They share their work.\"\n\n\"Do you call the domestics in an American household 'slaves'?\" Miss\nStackpole enquired. \"If that's the way you desire to treat them, no\nwonder you don't like America.\"\n\n\"If you've not good servants you're miserable,\" Mrs. Touchett serenely\nsaid. \"They're very bad in America, but I've five perfect ones in\nFlorence.\"\n\n\"I don't see what you want with five,\" Henrietta couldn't help\nobserving. \"I don't think I should like to see five persons surrounding\nme in that menial position.\"\n\n\"I like them in that position better than in some others,\" proclaimed\nMrs. Touchett with much meaning.\n\n\"Should you like me better if I were your butler, dear?\" her husband\nasked.\n\n\"I don't think I should: you wouldn't at all have the tenue.\"\n\n\"The companions of freemen--I like that, Miss Stackpole,\" said Ralph.\n\"It's a beautiful description.\"\n\n\"When I said freemen I didn't mean you, sir!\"\n\nAnd this was the only reward that Ralph got for his compliment. Miss\nStackpole was baffled; she evidently thought there was something\ntreasonable in Mrs. Touchett's appreciation of a class which she\nprivately judged to be a mysterious survival of feudalism. It was\nperhaps because her mind was oppressed with this image that she suffered\nsome days to elapse before she took occasion to say to Isabel: \"My dear\nfriend, I wonder if you're growing faithless.\"\n\n\"Faithless? Faithless to you, Henrietta?\"\n\n\"No, that would be a great pain; but it's not that.\"\n\n\"Faithless to my country then?\"\n\n\"Ah, that I hope will never be. When I wrote to you from Liverpool I\nsaid I had something particular to tell you. You've never asked me what\nit is. Is it because you've suspected?\"\n\n\"Suspected what? As a rule I don't think I suspect,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I remember now that phrase in your letter, but I confess I had\nforgotten it. What have you to tell me?\"\n\nHenrietta looked disappointed, and her steady gaze betrayed it.\n\"You don't ask that right--as if you thought it important. You're\nchanged--you're thinking of other things.\"\n\n\"Tell me what you mean, and I'll think of that.\"\n\n\"Will you really think of it? That's what I wish to be sure of.\"\n\n\"I've not much control of my thoughts, but I'll do my best,\" said\nIsabel. Henrietta gazed at her, in silence, for a period which tried\nIsabel's patience, so that our heroine added at last: \"Do you mean that\nyou're going to be married?\"\n\n\"Not till I've seen Europe!\" said Miss Stackpole. \"What are you laughing\nat?\" she went on. \"What I mean is that Mr. Goodwood came out in the\nsteamer with me.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" Isabel responded.\n\n\"You say that right. I had a good deal of talk with him; he has come\nafter you.\"\n\n\"Did he tell you so?\"\n\n\"No, he told me nothing; that's how I knew it,\" said Henrietta cleverly.\n\"He said very little about you, but I spoke of you a good deal.\"\n\nIsabel waited. At the mention of Mr. Goodwood's name she had turned a\nlittle pale. \"I'm very sorry you did that,\" she observed at last.\n\n\"It was a pleasure to me, and I liked the way he listened. I could have\ntalked a long time to such a listener; he was so quiet, so intense; he\ndrank it all in.\"\n\n\"What did you say about me?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"I said you were on the whole the finest creature I know.\"\n\n\"I'm very sorry for that. He thinks too well of me already; he oughtn't\nto be encouraged.\"\n\n\"He's dying for a little encouragement. I see his face now, and his\nearnest absorbed look while I talked. I never saw an ugly man look so\nhandsome.\"\n\n\"He's very simple-minded,\" said Isabel. \"And he's not so ugly.\"\n\n\"There's nothing so simplifying as a grand passion.\"\n\n\"It's not a grand passion; I'm very sure it's not that.\"\n\n\"You don't say that as if you were sure.\"\n\nIsabel gave rather a cold smile. \"I shall say it better to Mr. Goodwood\nhimself.\"\n\n\"He'll soon give you a chance,\" said Henrietta. Isabel offered no\nanswer to this assertion, which her companion made with an air of great\nconfidence. \"He'll find you changed,\" the latter pursued. \"You've been\naffected by your new surroundings.\"\n\n\"Very likely. I'm affected by everything.\"\n\n\"By everything but Mr. Goodwood!\" Miss Stackpole exclaimed with a\nslightly harsh hilarity.\n\nIsabel failed even to smile back and in a moment she said: \"Did he ask\nyou to speak to me?\"\n\n\"Not in so many words. But his eyes asked it--and his handshake, when he\nbade me good-bye.\"\n\n\"Thank you for doing so.\" And Isabel turned away.\n\n\"Yes, you're changed; you've got new ideas over here,\" her friend\ncontinued.\n\n\"I hope so,\" said Isabel; \"one should get as many new ideas as\npossible.\"\n\n\"Yes; but they shouldn't interfere with the old ones when the old ones\nhave been the right ones.\"\n\nIsabel turned about again. \"If you mean that I had any idea with regard\nto Mr. Goodwood--!\" But she faltered before her friend's implacable\nglitter.\n\n\"My dear child, you certainly encouraged him.\"\n\nIsabel made for the moment as if to deny this charge; instead of which,\nhowever, she presently answered: \"It's very true. I did encourage him.\"\nAnd then she asked if her companion had learned from Mr. Goodwood\nwhat he intended to do. It was a concession to her curiosity, for she\ndisliked discussing the subject and found Henrietta wanting in delicacy.\n\n\"I asked him, and he said he meant to do nothing,\" Miss Stackpole\nanswered. \"But I don't believe that; he's not a man to do nothing. He\nis a man of high, bold action. Whatever happens to him he'll always do\nsomething, and whatever he does will always be right.\"\n\n\"I quite believe that.\" Henrietta might be wanting in delicacy, but it\ntouched the girl, all the same, to hear this declaration.\n\n\"Ah, you do care for him!\" her visitor rang out.\n\n\"Whatever he does will always be right,\" Isabel repeated. \"When a man's\nof that infallible mould what does it matter to him what one feels?\"\n\n\"It may not matter to him, but it matters to one's self.\"\n\n\"Ah, what it matters to me--that's not what we're discussing,\" said\nIsabel with a cold smile.\n\nThis time her companion was grave. \"Well, I don't care; you have\nchanged. You're not the girl you were a few short weeks ago, and Mr.\nGoodwood will see it. I expect him here any day.\"\n\n\"I hope he'll hate me then,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I believe you hope it about as much as I believe him capable of it.\"\n\nTo this observation our heroine made no return; she was absorbed in the\nalarm given her by Henrietta's intimation that Caspar Goodwood would\npresent himself at Gardencourt. She pretended to herself, however,\nthat she thought the event impossible, and, later, she communicated her\ndisbelief to her friend. For the next forty-eight hours, nevertheless,\nshe stood prepared to hear the young man's name announced. The feeling\npressed upon her; it made the air sultry, as if there were to be a\nchange of weather; and the weather, socially speaking, had been so\nagreeable during Isabel's stay at Gardencourt that any change would be\nfor the worse. Her suspense indeed was dissipated the second day. She\nhad walked into the park in company with the sociable Bunchie, and\nafter strolling about for some time, in a manner at once listless and\nrestless, had seated herself on a garden-bench, within sight of the\nhouse, beneath a spreading beech, where, in a white dress ornamented\nwith black ribbons, she formed among the flickering shadows a graceful\nand harmonious image. She entertained herself for some moments with\ntalking to the little terrier, as to whom the proposal of an ownership\ndivided with her cousin had been applied as impartially as possible--as\nimpartially as Bunchie's own somewhat fickle and inconstant sympathies\nwould allow. But she was notified for the first time, on this occasion,\nof the finite character of Bunchie's intellect; hitherto she had been\nmainly struck with its extent. It seemed to her at last that she would\ndo well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been\nable, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat\nof consciousness to the organ of pure reason. Of late, it was not to\nbe denied, literature had seemed a fading light, and even after she had\nreminded herself that her uncle's library was provided with a complete\nset of those authors which no gentleman's collection should be without,\nshe sat motionless and empty-handed, her eyes bent on the cool green\nturf of the lawn. Her meditations were presently interrupted by the\narrival of a servant who handed her a letter. The letter bore the\nLondon postmark and was addressed in a hand she knew--that came into her\nvision, already so held by him, with the vividness of the writer's voice\nor his face. This document proved short and may be given entire.\n\nMY DEAR MISS ARCHER--I don't know whether you will have heard of my\ncoming to England, but even if you have not it will scarcely be a\nsurprise to you. You will remember that when you gave me my dismissal at\nAlbany, three months ago, I did not accept it. I protested against it.\nYou in fact appeared to accept my protest and to admit that I had the\nright on my side. I had come to see you with the hope that you would\nlet me bring you over to my conviction; my reasons for entertaining this\nhope had been of the best. But you disappointed it; I found you changed,\nand you were able to give me no reason for the change. You admitted that\nyou were unreasonable, and it was the only concession you would make;\nbut it was a very cheap one, because that's not your character. No, you\nare not, and you never will be, arbitrary or capricious. Therefore it is\nthat I believe you will let me see you again. You told me that I'm not\ndisagreeable to you, and I believe it; for I don't see why that should\nbe. I shall always think of you; I shall never think of any one else.\nI came to England simply because you are here; I couldn't stay at home\nafter you had gone: I hated the country because you were not in it. If\nI like this country at present it is only because it holds you. I have\nbeen to England before, but have never enjoyed it much. May I not come\nand see you for half an hour? This at present is the dearest wish of\nyours faithfully,\n\nCASPAR GOODWOOD.\n\n\nIsabel read this missive with such deep attention that she had not\nperceived an approaching tread on the soft grass. Looking up, however,\nas she mechanically folded it she saw Lord Warburton standing before\nher.\n\n\n\n\n\nShe put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a smile of\nwelcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure and half surprised at her\ncoolness.\n\n\"They told me you were out here,\" said Lord Warburton; \"and as there\nwas no one in the drawing-room and it's really you that I wish to see, I\ncame out with no more ado.\"\n\nIsabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he should not\nsit down beside her. \"I was just going indoors.\"\n\n\"Please don't do that; it's much jollier here; I've ridden over from\nLockleigh; it's a lovely day.\" His smile was peculiarly friendly\nand pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit that radiance of\ngood-feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl's\nfirst impression of him. It surrounded him like a zone of fine June\nweather.\n\n\"We'll walk about a little then,\" said Isabel, who could not divest\nherself of the sense of an intention on the part of her visitor and who\nwished both to elude the intention and to satisfy her curiosity about\nit. It had flashed upon her vision once before, and it had given her on\nthat occasion, as we know, a certain alarm. This alarm was composed of\nseveral elements, not all of which were disagreeable; she had indeed\nspent some days in analysing them and had succeeded in separating the\npleasant part of the idea of Lord Warburton's \"making up\" to her from\nthe painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady was both\nprecipitate and unduly fastidious; but the latter of these facts, if\nthe charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from the discredit of\nthe former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territorial\nmagnate, as she had heard Lord Warburton called, was smitten with her\ncharms; the fact of a declaration from such a source carrying with it\nreally more questions than it would answer. She had received a strong\nimpression of his being a \"personage,\" and she had occupied herself in\nexamining the image so conveyed. At the risk of adding to the evidence\nof her self-sufficiency it must be said that there had been moments\nwhen this possibility of admiration by a personage represented to her an\naggression almost to the degree of an affront, quite to the degree of\nan inconvenience. She had never yet known a personage; there had been no\npersonages, in this sense, in her life; there were probably none such at\nall in her native land. When she had thought of individual eminence she\nhad thought of it on the basis of character and wit--of what one\nmight like in a gentleman's mind and in his talk. She herself was a\ncharacter--she couldn't help being aware of that; and hitherto her\nvisions of a completed consciousness had concerned themselves largely\nwith moral images--things as to which the question would be whether they\npleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up before her, largely\nand brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to\nbe measured by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of\nappreciation--an appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging\nquickly and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared to\ndemand of her something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to\ndo. What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a social magnate\nhad conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he\nrather invidiously lived and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious,\nbut persuasive, told her to resist--murmured to her that virtually\nshe had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her other things\nbesides--things which both contradicted and confirmed each other; that\na girl might do much worse than trust herself to such a man and that it\nwould be very interesting to see something of his system from his own\npoint of view; that on the other hand, however, there was evidently a\ngreat deal of it which she should regard only as a complication of every\nhour, and that even in the whole there was something stiff and stupid\nwhich would make it a burden. Furthermore there was a young man lately\ncome from America who had no system at all, but who had a character\nof which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the\nimpression on her mind had been light. The letter she carried in\nher pocket all sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. Smile not,\nhowever, I venture to repeat, at this simple young woman from Albany who\ndebated whether she should accept an English peer before he had offered\nhimself and who was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do\nbetter. She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great\ndeal of folly in her wisdom those who judge her severely may have the\nsatisfaction of finding that, later, she became consistently wise only\nat the cost of an amount of folly which will constitute almost a direct\nappeal to charity.\n\nLord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit or to do anything that\nIsabel should propose, and he gave her this assurance with his usual air\nof being particularly pleased to exercise a social virtue. But he was,\nnevertheless, not in command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside\nher for a moment, in silence, looking at her without letting her know\nit, there was something embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected\nlaughter. Yes, assuredly--as we have touched on the point, we may return\nto it for a moment again--the English are the most romantic people in\nthe world and Lord Warburton was about to give an example of it. He was\nabout to take a step which would astonish all his friends and displease\na great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to recommend\nit. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come from a queer\ncountry across the sea which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents,\nher associations were very vague to his mind except in so far as they\nwere generic, and in this sense they showed as distinct and unimportant.\nMiss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies\na man to the multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about\ntwenty-six hours in her company. He had summed up all this--the\nperversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the\nmost liberal opportunities to subside, and the judgement of mankind, as\nexemplified particularly in the more quickly-judging half of it: he had\nlooked these things well in the face and then had dismissed them from\nhis thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in his\nbuttonhole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the greater part of\na lifetime has abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable\nto his friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not\ndiscredited by irritating associations.\n\n\"I hope you had a pleasant ride,\" said Isabel, who observed her\ncompanion's hesitancy.\n\n\"It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it brought me\nhere.\"\n\n\"Are you so fond of Gardencourt?\" the girl asked, more and more sure\nthat he meant to make some appeal to her; wishing not to challenge him\nif he hesitated, and yet to keep all the quietness of her reason if he\nproceeded. It suddenly came upon her that her situation was one which a\nfew weeks ago she would have deemed deeply romantic: the park of an old\nEnglish country-house, with the foreground embellished by a \"great\" (as\nshe supposed) nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady who, on\ncareful inspection, should be found to present remarkable analogies with\nherself. But if she was now the heroine of the situation she succeeded\nscarcely the less in looking at it from the outside.\n\n\"I care nothing for Gardencourt,\" said her companion. \"I care only for\nyou.\"\n\n\"You've known me too short a time to have a right to say that, and I\ncan't believe you're serious.\"\n\nThese words of Isabel's were not perfectly sincere, for she had no doubt\nwhatever that he himself was. They were simply a tribute to the fact, of\nwhich she was perfectly aware, that those he had just uttered would\nhave excited surprise on the part of a vulgar world. And, moreover, if\nanything beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord Warburton\nwas not a loose thinker had been needed to convince her, the tone in\nwhich he replied would quite have served the purpose.\n\n\"One's right in such a matter is not measured by the time, Miss Archer;\nit's measured by the feeling itself. If I were to wait three months it\nwould make no difference; I shall not be more sure of what I mean than I\nam to-day. Of course I've seen you very little, but my impression dates\nfrom the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you\nthen. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that's not a\nfancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore. Those two\ndays I spent here settled it; I don't know whether you suspected I was\ndoing so, but I paid-mentally speaking I mean--the greatest possible\nattention to you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon\nme. When you came to Lockleigh the other day--or rather when you went\naway--I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless I made up my mind to think it\nover and to question myself narrowly. I've done so; all these days I've\ndone nothing else. I don't make mistakes about such things; I'm a very\njudicious animal. I don't go off easily, but when I'm touched, it's\nfor life. It's for life, Miss Archer, it's for life,\" Lord Warburton\nrepeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel had ever\nheard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion\nthat had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion--the heat,\nthe violence, the unreason--and that burned as steadily as a lamp in a\nwindless place.\n\nBy tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly,\nand at last they stopped and he took her hand. \"Ah, Lord Warburton, how\nlittle you know me!\" Isabel said very gently. Gently too she drew her\nhand away.\n\n\"Don't taunt me with that; that I don't know you better makes me unhappy\nenough already; it's all my loss. But that's what I want, and it seems\nto me I'm taking the best way. If you'll be my wife, then I shall know\nyou, and when I tell you all the good I think of you you'll not be able\nto say it's from ignorance.\"\n\n\"If you know me little I know you even less,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah,\nof course that's very possible. But think, to speak to you as I do,\nhow determined I must be to try and give satisfaction! You do like me\nrather, don't you?\"\n\n\"I like you very much, Lord Warburton,\" she answered; and at this moment\nshe liked him immensely.\n\n\"I thank you for saying that; it shows you don't regard me as a\nstranger. I really believe I've filled all the other relations of life\nvery creditably, and I don't see why I shouldn't fill this one--in which\nI offer myself to you--seeing that I care so much more about it. Ask the\npeople who know me well; I've friends who'll speak for me.\"\n\n\"I don't need the recommendation of your friends,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Ah now, that's delightful of you. You believe in me yourself.\"\n\n\"Completely,\" Isabel declared. She quite glowed there, inwardly, with\nthe pleasure of feeling she did.\n\nThe light in her companion's eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a\nlong exhalation of joy. \"If you're mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose\nall I possess!\"\n\nShe wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he was rich, and,\non the instant, felt sure that he didn't. He was thinking that, as he\nwould have said himself; and indeed he might safely leave it to the\nmemory of any interlocutor, especially of one to whom he was offering\nhis hand. Isabel had prayed that she might not be agitated, and her mind\nwas tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what it\nwas best she should say, to indulge in this incidental criticism. What\nshe should say, had she asked herself? Her foremost wish was to say\nsomething if possible not less kind than what he had said to her. His\nwords had carried perfect conviction with them; she felt she did, all so\nmysteriously, matter to him. \"I thank you more than I can say for your\noffer,\" she returned at last. \"It does me great honour.\"\n\n\"Ah, don't say that!\" he broke out. \"I was afraid you'd say something\nlike that. I don't see what you've to do with that sort of thing. I\ndon't see why you should thank me--it's I who ought to thank you for\nlistening to me: a man you know so little coming down on you with such\na thumper! Of course it's a great question; I must tell you that\nI'd rather ask it than have it to answer myself. But the way you've\nlistened--or at least your having listened at all--gives me some hope.\"\n\n\"Don't hope too much,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"Oh Miss Archer!\" her companion murmured, smiling again, in his\nseriousness, as if such a warning might perhaps be taken but as the play\nof high spirits, the exuberance of elation.\n\n\"Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to hope at\nall?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"Surprised? I don't know what you mean by surprise. It wouldn't be that;\nit would be a feeling very much worse.\"\n\nIsabel walked on again; she was silent for some minutes. \"I'm very sure\nthat, highly as I already think of you, my opinion of you, if I should\nknow you well, would only rise. But I'm by no means sure that you\nwouldn't be disappointed. And I say that not in the least out of\nconventional modesty; it's perfectly sincere.\"\n\n\"I'm willing to risk it, Miss Archer,\" her companion replied.\n\n\"It's a great question, as you say. It's a very difficult question.\"\n\n\"I don't expect you of course to answer it outright. Think it over as\nlong as may be necessary. If I can gain by waiting I'll gladly wait a\nlong time. Only remember that in the end my dearest happiness depends on\nyour answer.\"\n\n\"I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Oh, don't mind. I'd much rather have a good answer six months hence\nthan a bad one to-day.\"\n\n\"But it's very probable that even six months hence I shouldn't be able\nto give you one that you'd think good.\"\n\n\"Why not, since you really like me?\"\n\n\"Ah, you must never doubt that,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Well then, I don't see what more you ask!\"\n\n\"It's not what I ask; it's what I can give. I don't think I should suit\nyou; I really don't think I should.\"\n\n\"You needn't worry about that. That's my affair. You needn't be a better\nroyalist than the king.\"\n\n\"It's not only that,\" said Isabel; \"but I'm not sure I wish to marry any\none.\"\n\n\"Very likely you don't. I've no doubt a great many women begin that\nway,\" said his lordship, who, be it averred, did not in the least\nbelieve in the axiom he thus beguiled his anxiety by uttering. \"But\nthey're frequently persuaded.\"\n\n\"Ah, that's because they want to be!\" And Isabel lightly laughed. Her\nsuitor's countenance fell, and he looked at her for a while in silence.\n\"I'm afraid it's my being an Englishman that makes you hesitate,\" he\nsaid presently. \"I know your uncle thinks you ought to marry in your own\ncountry.\"\n\nIsabel listened to this assertion with some interest; it had never\noccurred to her that Mr. Touchett was likely to discuss her matrimonial\nprospects with Lord Warburton. \"Has he told you that?\"\n\n\"I remember his making the remark. He spoke perhaps of Americans\ngenerally.\"\n\n\"He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in England.\"\nIsabel spoke in a manner that might have seemed a little perverse, but\nwhich expressed both her constant perception of her uncle's outward\nfelicity and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a\nrestricted view.\n\nIt gave her companion hope, and he immediately cried with warmth: \"Ah,\nmy dear Miss Archer, old England's a very good sort of country, you\nknow! And it will be still better when we've furbished it up a little.\"\n\n\"Oh, don't furbish it, Lord Warburton--, leave it alone. I like it this\nway.\"\n\n\"Well then, if you like it, I'm more and more unable to see your\nobjection to what I propose.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I can't make you understand.\"\n\n\"You ought at least to try. I've a fair intelligence. Are you\nafraid--afraid of the climate? We can easily live elsewhere, you know.\nYou can pick out your climate, the whole world over.\"\n\nThese words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like the\nembrace of strong arms--that was like the fragrance straight in her\nface, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not what strange\ngardens, what charged airs. She would have given her little finger at\nthat moment to feel strongly and simply the impulse to answer: \"Lord\nWarburton, it's impossible for me to do better in this wonderful world,\nI think, than commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty.\" But\nthough she was lost in admiration of her opportunity she managed to move\nback into the deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in\na vast cage. The \"splendid\" security so offered her was not the greatest\nshe could conceive. What she finally bethought herself of saying was\nsomething very different--something that deferred the need of really\nfacing her crisis. \"Don't think me unkind if I ask you to say no more\nabout this to-day.\"\n\n\"Certainly, certainly!\" her companion cried. \"I wouldn't bore you for\nthe world.\"\n\n\"You've given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you to do it\njustice.\"\n\n\"That's all I ask of you, of course--and that you'll remember how\nabsolutely my happiness is in your hands.\"\n\nIsabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she said\nafter a minute: \"I must tell you that what I shall think about is some\nway of letting you know that what you ask is impossible--letting you\nknow it without making you miserable.\"\n\n\"There's no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won't say that if you refuse\nme you'll kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do worse; I shall\nlive to no purpose.\"\n\n\"You'll live to marry a better woman than I.\"\n\n\"Don't say that, please,\" said Lord Warburton very gravely. \"That's fair\nto neither of us.\"\n\n\"To marry a worse one then.\"\n\n\"If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That's all I\ncan say,\" he went on with the same earnestness. \"There's no accounting\nfor tastes.\"\n\nHis gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by again\nrequesting him to drop the subject for the present. \"I'll speak to you\nmyself--very soon. Perhaps I shall write to you.\"\n\n\"At your convenience, yes,\" he replied. \"Whatever time you take, it must\nseem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of that.\"\n\n\"I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind a\nlittle.\"\n\nHe gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his\nhands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-crop. \"Do\nyou know I'm very much afraid of it--of that remarkable mind of yours?\"\n\nOur heroine's biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question made\nher start and brought a conscious blush to her cheek. She returned his\nlook a moment, and then with a note in her voice that might almost have\nappealed to his compassion, \"So am I, my lord!\" she oddly exclaimed.\n\nHis compassion was not stirred, however; all he possessed of the faculty\nof pity was needed at home. \"Ah! be merciful, be merciful,\" he murmured.\n\n\"I think you had better go,\" said Isabel. \"I'll write to you.\"\n\n\"Very good; but whatever you write I'll come and see you, you know.\" And\nthen he stood reflecting, his eyes fixed on the observant countenance of\nBunchie, who had the air of having understood all that had been said\nand of pretending to carry off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of\ncuriosity as to the roots of an ancient oak. \"There's one thing more,\"\nhe went on. \"You know, if you don't like Lockleigh--if you think it's\ndamp or anything of that sort--you need never go within fifty miles of\nit. It's not damp, by the way; I've had the house thoroughly examined;\nit's perfectly safe and right. But if you shouldn't fancy it you needn't\ndream of living in it. There's no difficulty whatever about that; there\nare plenty of houses. I thought I'd just mention it; some people don't\nlike a moat, you know. Good-bye.\"\n\n\"I adore a moat,\" said Isabel. \"Good-bye.\"\n\nHe held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment--a moment long\nenough for him to bend his handsome bared head and kiss it. Then, still\nagitating, in his mastered emotion, his implement of the chase, he\nwalked rapidly away. He was evidently much upset.\n\nIsabel herself was upset, but she had not been affected as she would\nhave imagined. What she felt was not a great responsibility, a great\ndifficulty of choice; it appeared to her there had been no choice in the\nquestion. She couldn't marry Lord Warburton; the idea failed to support\nany enlightened prejudice in favour of the free exploration of life that\nshe had hitherto entertained or was now capable of entertaining.\nShe must write this to him, she must convince him, and that duty was\ncomparatively simple. But what disturbed her, in the sense that it\nstruck her with wonderment, was this very fact that it cost her so\nlittle to refuse a magnificent \"chance.\" With whatever qualifications\none would, Lord Warburton had offered her a great opportunity; the\nsituation might have discomforts, might contain oppressive, might\ncontain narrowing elements, might prove really but a stupefying anodyne;\nbut she did her sex no injustice in believing that nineteen women out of\ntwenty would have accommodated themselves to it without a pang. Why then\nupon her also should it not irresistibly impose itself? Who was she,\nwhat was she, that she should hold herself superior? What view of\nlife, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that\npretended to be larger than these large these fabulous occasions? If she\nwouldn't do such a thing as that then she must do great things, she must\ndo something greater. Poor Isabel found ground to remind herself from\ntime to time that she must not be too proud, and nothing could be\nmore sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger: the\nisolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a\ndesert place. If it had been pride that interfered with her accepting\nLord Warburton such a betise was singularly misplaced; and she was so\nconscious of liking him that she ventured to assure herself it was the\nvery softness, and the fine intelligence, of sympathy. She liked him too\nmuch to marry him, that was the truth; something assured her there was\na fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition--as he saw\nit--even though she mightn't put her very finest finger-point on it;\nand to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to\ncriticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him\nshe would consider his question, and when, after he had left her, she\nwandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in\nmeditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her vow. But\nthis was not the case; she was wondering if she were not a cold, hard,\npriggish person, and, on her at last getting up and going rather\nquickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to her friend, really\nfrightened at herself.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was this feeling and not the wish to ask advice--she had no desire\nwhatever for that--that led her to speak to her uncle of what had taken\nplace. She wished to speak to some one; she should feel more natural,\nmore human, and her uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a\nmore attractive light than either her aunt or her friend Henrietta. Her\ncousin of course was a possible confidant; but she would have had to do\nherself violence to air this special secret to Ralph. So the next day,\nafter breakfast, she sought her occasion. Her uncle never left his\napartment till the afternoon, but he received his cronies, as he said,\nin his dressing-room. Isabel had quite taken her place in the class\nso designated, which, for the rest, included the old man's son, his\nphysician, his personal servant, and even Miss Stackpole. Mrs. Touchett\ndid not figure in the list, and this was an obstacle the less to\nIsabel's finding her host alone. He sat in a complicated mechanical\nchair, at the open window of his room, looking westward over the park\nand the river, with his newspapers and letters piled up beside him,\nhis toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative face\ncomposed to benevolent expectation.\n\nShe approached her point directly. \"I think I ought to let you know that\nLord Warburton has asked me to marry him. I suppose I ought to tell my\naunt; but it seems best to tell you first.\"\n\nThe old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the confidence\nshe showed him. \"Do you mind telling me whether you accepted him?\" he\nthen enquired.\n\n\"I've not answered him definitely yet; I've taken a little time to think\nof it, because that seems more respectful. But I shall not accept him.\"\n\nMr. Touchett made no comment upon this; he had the air of thinking that,\nwhatever interest he might take in the matter from the point of view of\nsociability, he had no active voice in it. \"Well, I told you you'd be a\nsuccess over here. Americans are highly appreciated.\"\n\n\"Very highly indeed,\" said Isabel. \"But at the cost of seeming both\ntasteless and ungrateful, I don't think I can marry Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"Well,\" her uncle went on, \"of course an old man can't judge for a young\nlady. I'm glad you didn't ask me before you made up your mind. I suppose\nI ought to tell you,\" he added slowly, but as if it were not of much\nconsequence, \"that I've known all about it these three days.\"\n\n\"About Lord Warburton's state of mind?\"\n\n\"About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very pleasant\nletter, telling me all about them. Should you like to see his letter?\"\nthe old man obligingly asked.\n\n\"Thank you; I don't think I care about that. But I'm glad he wrote to\nyou; it was right that he should, and he would be certain to do what was\nright.\"\n\n\"Ah well, I guess you do like him!\" Mr. Touchett declared. \"You needn't\npretend you don't.\"\n\n\"I like him extremely; I'm very free to admit that. But I don't wish to\nmarry any one just now.\"\n\n\"You think some one may come along whom you may like better. Well,\nthat's very likely,\" said Mr. Touchett, who appeared to wish to show his\nkindness to the girl by easing off her decision, as it were, and finding\ncheerful reasons for it.\n\n\"I don't care if I don't meet any one else. I like Lord Warburton quite\nwell enough.\" she fell into that appearance of a sudden change of\npoint of view with which she sometimes startled and even displeased her\ninterlocutors.\n\nHer uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these impressions.\n\"He's a very fine man,\" he resumed in a tone which might have passed\nfor that of encouragement. \"His letter was one of the pleasantest I've\nreceived for some weeks. I suppose one of the reasons I liked it was\nthat it was all about you; that is all except the part that was about\nhimself. I suppose he told you all that.\"\n\n\"He would have told me everything I wished to ask him,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"But you didn't feel curious?\"\n\n\"My curiosity would have been idle--once I had determined to decline his\noffer.\"\n\n\"You didn't find it sufficiently attractive?\" Mr. Touchett enquired.\n\nShe was silent a little. \"I suppose it was that,\" she presently\nadmitted. \"But I don't know why.\"\n\n\"Fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons,\" said her uncle.\n\"There's a great deal that's attractive about such an idea; but I don't\nsee why the English should want to entice us away from our native land.\nI know that we try to attract them over there, but that's because our\npopulation is insufficient. Here, you know, they're rather crowded.\nHowever, I presume there's room for charming young ladies everywhere.\"\n\n\"There seems to have been room here for you,\" said Isabel, whose eyes\nhad been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of the park.\n\nMr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. \"There's room everywhere,\nmy dear, if you'll pay for it. I sometimes think I've paid too much for\nthis. Perhaps you also might have to pay too much.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I might,\" the girl replied.\n\nThat suggestion gave her something more definite to rest on than she\nhad found in her own thoughts, and the fact of this association of her\nuncle's mild acuteness with her dilemma seemed to prove that she was\nconcerned with the natural and reasonable emotions of life and\nnot altogether a victim to intellectual eagerness and vague\nambitions--ambitions reaching beyond Lord Warburton's beautiful appeal,\nreaching to something indefinable and possibly not commendable. In so\nfar as the indefinable had an influence upon Isabel's behaviour at this\njuncture, it was not the conception, even unformulated, of a union with\nCaspar Goodwood; for however she might have resisted conquest at her\nEnglish suitor's large quiet hands she was at least as far removed\nfrom the disposition to let the young man from Boston take positive\npossession of her. The sentiment in which She sought refuge after\nreading his letter was a critical view of his having come abroad; for it\nwas part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed to deprive her\nof the sense of freedom. There was a disagreeably strong push, a kind\nof hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her. She had been\nhaunted at moments by the image, by the danger, of his disapproval and\nhad wondered--a consideration she had never paid in equal degree to any\none else--whether he would like what she did. The difficulty was that\nmore than any man she had ever known, more than poor Lord Warburton (she\nhad begun now to give his lordship the benefit of this epithet), Caspar\nGoodwood expressed for her an energy--and she had already felt it as a\npower that was of his very nature. It was in no degree a matter of\nhis \"advantages\"--it was a matter of the spirit that sat in his\nclear-burning eyes like some tireless watcher at a window. She might\nlike it or not, but he insisted, ever, with his whole weight and force:\neven in one's usual contact with him one had to reckon with that. The\nidea of a diminished liberty was particularly disagreeable to her at\npresent, since she had just given a sort of personal accent to her\nindependence by looking so straight at Lord Warburton's big bribe and\nyet turning away from it. Sometimes Caspar Goodwood had seemed to range\nhimself on the side of her destiny, to be the stubbornest fact she knew;\nshe said to herself at such moments that she might evade him for a time,\nbut that she must make terms with him at last--terms which would be\ncertain to be favourable to himself. Her impulse had been to avail\nherself of the things that helped her to resist such an obligation;\nand this impulse had been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her\naunt's invitation, which had come to her at an hour when she expected\nfrom day to day to see Mr. Goodwood and when she was glad to have an\nanswer ready for something she was sure he would say to her. When she\nhad told him at Albany, on the evening of Mrs. Touchett's visit, that\nshe couldn't then discuss difficult questions, dazzled as she was by\nthe great immediate opening of her aunt's offer of \"Europe,\" he declared\nthat this was no answer at all; and it was now to obtain a better one\nthat he was following her across the sea. To say to herself that he was\na kind of grim fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman who was\nable to take much for granted in him; but the reader has a right to a\nnearer and a clearer view.\n\nHe was the son of a proprietor of well-known cotton-mills in\nMassachusetts--a gentleman who had accumulated a considerable fortune in\nthe exercise of this industry. Caspar at present managed the works, and\nwith a judgement and a temper which, in spite of keen competition and\nlanguid years, had kept their prosperity from dwindling. He had received\nthe better part of his education at Harvard College, where, however, he\nhad gained renown rather as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a gleaner\nof more dispersed knowledge. Later on he had learned that the finer\nintelligence too could vault and pull and strain--might even, breaking\nthe record, treat itself to rare exploits. He had thus discovered in\nhimself a sharp eye for the mystery of mechanics, and had invented an\nimprovement in the cotton-spinning process which was now largely used\nand was known by his name. You might have seen it in the newspapers in\nconnection with this fruitful contrivance; assurance of which he\nhad given to Isabel by showing her in the columns of the New York\nInterviewer an exhaustive article on the Goodwood patent--an article not\nprepared by Miss Stackpole, friendly as she had proved herself to his\nmore sentimental interests. There were intricate, bristling things he\nrejoiced in; he liked to organise, to contend, to administer; he could\nmake people work his will, believe in him, march before him and justify\nhim. This was the art, as they said, of managing men--which rested, in\nhim, further, on a bold though brooding ambition. It struck those\nwho knew him well that he might do greater things than carry on a\ncotton-factory; there was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and\nhis friends took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere\nwrite himself in bigger letters. But it was as if something large and\nconfused, something dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was\nnot after all in harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an\norder of things of which the vital breath was ubiquitous advertisement.\nIt pleased Isabel to believe that he might have ridden, on a plunging\nsteed, the whirlwind of a great war--a war like the Civil strife that\nhad overdarkened her conscious childhood and his ripening youth.\n\nShe liked at any rate this idea of his being by character and in fact a\nmover of men--liked it much better than some other points in his nature\nand aspect. She cared nothing for his cotton-mill--the Goodwood patent\nleft her imagination absolutely cold. She wished him no ounce less of\nhis manhood, but she sometimes thought he would be rather nicer if he\nlooked, for instance, a little differently. His jaw was too square and\nset and his figure too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want\nof easy consonance with the deeper rhythms of life. Then she viewed with\nreserve a habit he had of dressing always in the same manner; it was\nnot apparently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the\ncontrary, his garments had a way of looking rather too new. But they all\nseemed of the same piece; the figure, the stuff, was so drearily usual.\nShe had reminded herself more than once that this was a frivolous\nobjection to a person of his importance; and then she had amended the\nrebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection only if she\nwere in love with him. She was not in love with him and therefore might\ncriticise his small defects as well as his great--which latter consisted\nin the collective reproach of his being too serious, or, rather, not of\nhis being so, since one could never be, but certainly of his seeming so.\nHe showed his appetites and designs too simply and artlessly; when one\nwas alone with him he talked too much about the same subject, and when\nother people were present he talked too little about anything. And yet\nhe was of supremely strong, clean make--which was so much she saw the\ndifferent fitted parts of him as she had seen, in museums and portraits,\nthe different fitted parts of armoured warriors--in plates of steel\nhandsomely inlaid with gold. It was very strange: where, ever, was any\ntangible link between her impression and her act? Caspar Goodwood had\nnever corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed\nthat this was why he left her so harshly critical. When, however, Lord\nWarburton, who not only did correspond with it, but gave an extension to\nthe term, appealed to her approval, she found herself still unsatisfied.\nIt was certainly strange.\n\nThe sense of her incoherence was not a help to answering Mr. Goodwood's\nletter, and Isabel determined to leave it a while unhonoured. If he\nhad determined to persecute her he must take the consequences; foremost\namong which was his being left to perceive how little it charmed her\nthat he should come down to Gardencourt. She was already liable to the\nincursions of one suitor at this place, and though it might be pleasant\nto be appreciated in opposite quarters there was a kind of grossness in\nentertaining two such passionate pleaders at once, even in a case where\nthe entertainment should consist of dismissing them. She made no\nreply to Mr. Goodwood; but at the end of three days she wrote to Lord\nWarburton, and the letter belongs to our history.\n\nDEAR LORD WARBURTON--A great deal of earnest thought has not led me to\nchange my mind about the suggestion you were so kind as to make me the\nother day. I am not, I am really and truly not, able to regard you\nin the light of a companion for life; or to think of your home--your\nvarious homes--as the settled seat of my existence. These things cannot\nbe reasoned about, and I very earnestly entreat you not to return to\nthe subject we discussed so exhaustively. We see our lives from our own\npoint of view; that is the privilege of the weakest and humblest of us;\nand I shall never be able to see mine in the manner you proposed. Kindly\nlet this suffice you, and do me the justice to believe that I have given\nyour proposal the deeply respectful consideration it deserves. It is\nwith this very great regard that I remain sincerely yours,\n\nISABEL ARCHER.\n\nWhile the author of this missive was making up her mind to dispatch it\nHenrietta Stackpole formed a resolve which was accompanied by no demur.\nShe invited Ralph Touchett to take a walk with her in the garden, and\nwhen he had assented with that alacrity which seemed constantly to\ntestify to his high expectations, she informed him that she had a favour\nto ask of him. It may be admitted that at this information the young man\nflinched; for we know that Miss Stackpole had struck him as apt to push\nan advantage. The alarm was unreasoned, however; for he was clear about\nthe area of her indiscretion as little as advised of its vertical depth,\nand he made a very civil profession of the desire to serve her. He\nwas afraid of her and presently told her so. \"When you look at me in a\ncertain way my knees knock together, my faculties desert me; I'm filled\nwith trepidation and I ask only for strength to execute your commands.\nYou've an address that I've never encountered in any woman.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Henrietta replied good-humouredly, \"if I had not known before\nthat you were trying somehow to abash me I should know it now. Of course\nI'm easy game--I was brought up with such different customs and ideas.\nI'm not used to your arbitrary standards, and I've never been spoken to\nin America as you have spoken to me. If a gentleman conversing with me\nover there were to speak to me like that I shouldn't know what to make\nof it. We take everything more naturally over there, and, after all,\nwe're a great deal more simple. I admit that; I'm very simple myself.\nOf course if you choose to laugh at me for it you're very welcome; but I\nthink on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I'm quite content\nto be myself; I don't want to change. There are plenty of people that\nappreciate me just as I am. It's true they're nice fresh free-born\nAmericans!\" Henrietta had lately taken up the tone of helpless innocence\nand large concession. \"I want you to assist me a little,\" she went on.\n\"I don't care in the least whether I amuse you while you do so; or,\nrather, I'm perfectly willing your amusement should be your reward. I\nwant you to help me about Isabel.\"\n\n\"Has she injured you?\" Ralph asked.\n\n\"If she had I shouldn't mind, and I should never tell you. What I'm\nafraid of is that she'll injure herself.\"\n\n\"I think that's very possible,\" said Ralph.\n\nHis companion stopped in the garden-walk, fixing on him perhaps the very\ngaze that unnerved him. \"That too would amuse you, I suppose. The way\nyou do say things! I never heard any one so indifferent.\"\n\n\"To Isabel? Ah, not that!\"\n\n\"Well, you're not in love with her, I hope.\"\n\n\"How can that be, when I'm in love with Another?\"\n\n\"You're in love with yourself, that's the Other!\" Miss Stackpole\ndeclared. \"Much good may it do you! But if you wish to be serious once\nin your life here's a chance; and if you really care for your cousin\nhere's an opportunity to prove it. I don't expect you to understand her;\nthat's too much to ask. But you needn't do that to grant my favour. I'll\nsupply the necessary intelligence.\"\n\n\"I shall enjoy that immensely!\" Ralph exclaimed. \"I'll be Caliban and\nyou shall be Ariel.\"\n\n\"You're not at all like Caliban, because you're sophisticated, and\nCaliban was not. But I'm not talking about imaginary characters; I'm\ntalking about Isabel. Isabel's intensely real. What I wish to tell you\nis that I find her fearfully changed.\"\n\n\"Since you came, do you mean?\"\n\n\"Since I came and before I came. She's not the same as she once so\nbeautifully was.\"\n\n\"As she was in America?\"\n\n\"Yes, in America. I suppose you know she comes from there. She can't\nhelp it, but she does.\"\n\n\"Do you want to change her back again?\"\n\n\"Of course I do, and I want you to help me.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Ralph, \"I'm only Caliban; I'm not Prospero.\"\n\n\"You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become. You've acted\non Isabel Archer since she came here, Mr. Touchett.\"\n\n\"I, my dear Miss Stackpole? Never in the world. Isabel Archer has acted\non me--yes; she acts on every one. But I've been absolutely passive.\"\n\n\"You're too passive then. You had better stir yourself and be careful.\nIsabel's changing every day; she's drifting away--right out to sea. I've\nwatched her and I can see it. She's not the bright American girl she\nwas. She's taking different views, a different colour, and turning away\nfrom her old ideals. I want to save those ideals, Mr. Touchett, and\nthat's where you come in.\"\n\n\"Not surely as an ideal?\"\n\n\"Well, I hope not,\" Henrietta replied promptly. \"I've got a fear in my\nheart that she's going to marry one of these fell Europeans, and I want\nto prevent it.\n\n\"Ah, I see,\" cried Ralph; \"and to prevent it you want me to step in and\nmarry her?\"\n\n\"Not quite; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for you're the\ntypical, the fell European from whom I wish to rescue her. No; I wish\nyou to take an interest in another person--a young man to whom she once\ngave great encouragement and whom she now doesn't seem to think good\nenough. He's a thoroughly grand man and a very dear friend of mine, and\nI wish very much you would invite him to pay a visit here.\"\n\nRalph was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not to the\ncredit of his purity of mind that he failed to look at it at first in\nthe simplest light. It wore, to his eyes, a tortuous air, and his fault\nwas that he was not quite sure that anything in the world could really\nbe as candid as this request of Miss Stackpole's appeared. That a young\nwoman should demand that a gentleman whom she described as her very dear\nfriend should be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable\nto another young woman, a young woman whose attention had wandered and\nwhose charms were greater--this was an anomaly which for the moment\nchallenged all his ingenuity of interpretation. To read between the\nlines was easier than to follow the text, and to suppose that Miss\nStackpole wished the gentleman invited to Gardencourt on her own account\nwas the sign not so much of a vulgar as of an embarrassed mind. Even\nfrom this venial act of vulgarity, however, Ralph was saved, and saved\nby a force that I can only speak of as inspiration. With no more outward\nlight on the subject than he already possessed he suddenly acquired the\nconviction that it would be a sovereign injustice to the correspondent\nof the Interviewer to assign a dishonourable motive to any act of hers.\nThis conviction passed into his mind with extreme rapidity; it was\nperhaps kindled by the pure radiance of the young lady's imperturbable\ngaze. He returned this challenge a moment, consciously, resisting an\ninclination to frown as one frowns in the presence of larger luminaries.\n\"Who's the gentleman you speak of?\"\n\n\"Mr. Caspar Goodwood--of Boston. He has been extremely attentive to\nIsabel--just as devoted to her as he can live. He has followed her out\nhere and he's at present in London. I don't know his address, but I\nguess I can obtain it.\"\n\n\"I've never heard of him,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Well, I suppose you haven't heard of every one. I don't believe he has\never heard of you; but that's no reason why Isabel shouldn't marry him.\"\n\nRalph gave a mild ambiguous laugh. \"What a rage you have for marrying\npeople! Do you remember how you wanted to marry me the other day?\"\n\n\"I've got over that. You don't know how to take such ideas. Mr. Goodwood\ndoes, however; and that's what I like about him. He's a splendid man and\na perfect gentleman, and Isabel knows it.\"\n\n\"Is she very fond of him?\"\n\n\"If she isn't she ought to be. He's simply wrapped up in her.\"\n\n\"And you wish me to ask him here,\" said Ralph reflectively.\n\n\"It would be an act of true hospitality.\"\n\n\"Caspar Goodwood,\" Ralph continued--\"it's rather a striking name.\"\n\n\"I don't care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel Jenkins, and\nI should say the same. He's the only man I have ever seen whom I think\nworthy of Isabel.\"\n\n\"You're a very devoted friend,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Of course I am. If you say that to pour scorn on me I don't care.\"\n\n\"I don't say it to pour scorn on you; I'm very much struck with it.\"\n\n\"You're more satiric than ever, but I advise you not to laugh at Mr.\nGoodwood.\"\n\n\"I assure you I'm very serious; you ought to understand that,\" said\nRalph.\n\nIn a moment his companion understood it. \"I believe you are; now you're\ntoo serious.\"\n\n\"You're difficult to please.\"\n\n\"Oh, you're very serious indeed. You won't invite Mr. Goodwood.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Ralph. \"I'm capable of strange things. Tell me a\nlittle about Mr. Goodwood. What's he like?\"\n\n\"He's just the opposite of you. He's at the head of a cotton-factory; a\nvery fine one.\"\n\n\"Has he pleasant manners?\" asked Ralph.\n\n\"Splendid manners--in the American style.\"\n\n\"Would he be an agreeable member of our little circle?\"\n\n\"I don't think he'd care much about our little circle. He'd concentrate\non Isabel.\"\n\n\"And how would my cousin like that?\"\n\n\"Very possibly not at all. But it will be good for her. It will call\nback her thoughts.\"\n\n\"Call them back--from where?\"\n\n\"From foreign parts and other unnatural places. Three months ago she\ngave Mr. Goodwood every reason to suppose he was acceptable to her, and\nit's not worthy of Isabel to go back on a real friend simply because she\nhas changed the scene. I've changed the scene too, and the effect of it\nhas been to make me care more for my old associations than ever. It's my\nbelief that the sooner Isabel changes it back again the better. I know\nher well enough to know that she would never be truly happy over here,\nand I wish her to form some strong American tie that will act as a\npreservative.\"\n\n\"Aren't you perhaps a little too much in a hurry?\" Ralph enquired.\n\"Don't you think you ought to give her more of a chance in poor old\nEngland?\"\n\n\"A chance to ruin her bright young life? One's never too much in a hurry\nto save a precious human creature from drowning.\"\n\n\"As I understand it then,\" said Ralph, \"you wish me to push Mr. Goodwood\noverboard after her. Do you know,\" he added, \"that I've never heard her\nmention his name?\"\n\nHenrietta gave a brilliant smile. \"I'm delighted to hear that; it proves\nhow much she thinks of him.\"\n\nRalph appeared to allow that there was a good deal in this, and he\nsurrendered to thought while his companion watched him askance. \"If I\nshould invite Mr. Goodwood,\" he finally said, \"it would be to quarrel\nwith him.\"\n\n\"Don't do that; he'd prove the better man.\"\n\n\"You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him! I really don't\nthink I can ask him. I should be afraid of being rude to him.\"\n\n\"It's just as you please,\" Henrietta returned. \"I had no idea you were\nin love with her yourself.\"\n\n\"Do you really believe that?\" the young man asked with lifted eyebrows.\n\n\"That's the most natural speech I've ever heard you make! Of course I\nbelieve it,\" Miss Stackpole ingeniously said.\n\n\"Well,\" Ralph concluded, \"to prove to you that you're wrong I'll invite\nhim. It must be of course as a friend of yours.\"\n\n\"It will not be as a friend of mine that he'll come; and it will not be\nto prove to me that I'm wrong that you'll ask him--but to prove it to\nyourself!\"\n\nThese last words of Miss Stackpole's (on which the two presently\nseparated) contained an amount of truth which Ralph Touchett was obliged\nto recognise; but it so far took the edge from too sharp a recognition\nthat, in spite of his suspecting it would be rather more indiscreet\nto keep than to break his promise, he wrote Mr. Goodwood a note of six\nlines, expressing the pleasure it would give Mr. Touchett the elder that\nhe should join a little party at Gardencourt, of which Miss Stackpole\nwas a valued member. Having sent his letter (to the care of a banker\nwhom Henrietta suggested) he waited in some suspense. He had heard this\nfresh formidable figure named for the first time; for when his mother\nhad mentioned on her arrival that there was a story about the girl's\nhaving an \"admirer\" at home, the idea had seemed deficient in reality\nand he had taken no pains to ask questions the answers to which would\ninvolve only the vague or the disagreeable. Now, however, the native\nadmiration of which his cousin was the object had become more concrete;\nit took the form of a young man who had followed her to London, who was\ninterested in a cotton-mill and had manners in the most splendid of the\nAmerican styles. Ralph had two theories about this intervenes. Either\nhis passion was a sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole's (there was\nalways a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity\nof the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other),\nin which case he was not to be feared and would probably not accept the\ninvitation; or else he would accept the invitation and in this event\nprove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration.\nThe latter clause of Ralph's argument might have seemed incoherent;\nbut it embodied his conviction that if Mr. Goodwood were interested in\nIsabel in the serious manner described by Miss Stackpole he would not\ncare to present himself at Gardencourt on a summons from the latter\nlady. \"On this supposition,\" said Ralph, \"he must regard her as a thorn\non the stem of his rose; as an intercessor he must find her wanting in\ntact.\"\n\nTwo days after he had sent his invitation he received a very short\nnote from Caspar Goodwood, thanking him for it, regretting that other\nengagements made a visit to Gardencourt impossible and presenting many\ncompliments to Miss Stackpole. Ralph handed the note to Henrietta, who,\nwhen she had read it, exclaimed: \"Well, I never have heard of anything\nso stiff!\"\n\n\"I'm afraid he doesn't care so much about my cousin as you suppose,\"\nRalph observed.\n\n\"No, it's not that; it's some subtler motive. His nature's very deep.\nBut I'm determined to fathom it, and I shall write to him to know what\nhe means.\"\n\nHis refusal of Ralph's overtures was vaguely disconcerting; from the\nmoment he declined to come to Gardencourt our friend began to think\nhim of importance. He asked himself what it signified to him whether\nIsabel's admirers should be desperadoes or laggards; they were not\nrivals of his and were perfectly welcome to act out their genius.\nNevertheless he felt much curiosity as to the result of Miss Stackpole's\npromised enquiry into the causes of Mr. Goodwood's stiffness--a\ncuriosity for the present ungratified, inasmuch as when he asked her\nthree days later if she had written to London she was obliged to confess\nshe had written in vain. Mr. Goodwood had not replied.\n\n\"I suppose he's thinking it over,\" she said; \"he thinks everything\nover; he's not really at all impetuous. But I'm accustomed to having my\nletters answered the same day.\" She presently proposed to Isabel, at\nall events, that they should make an excursion to London together. \"If I\nmust tell the truth,\" she observed, \"I'm not seeing much at this\nplace, and I shouldn't think you were either. I've not even seen that\naristocrat--what's his name?--Lord Washburton. He seems to let you\nseverely alone.\"\n\n\"Lord Warburton's coming to-morrow, I happen to know,\" replied her\nfriend, who had received a note from the master of Lockleigh in answer\nto her own letter. \"You'll have every opportunity of turning him inside\nout.\"\n\n\"Well, he may do for one letter, but what's one letter when you want to\nwrite fifty? I've described all the scenery in this vicinity and raved\nabout all the old women and donkeys. You may say what you please,\nscenery doesn't make a vital letter. I must go back to London and get\nsome impressions of real life. I was there but three days before I came\naway, and that's hardly time to get in touch.\"\n\nAs Isabel, on her journey from New York to Gardencourt, had seen even\nless of the British capital than this, it appeared a happy suggestion of\nHenrietta's that the two should go thither on a visit of pleasure. The\nidea struck Isabel as charming; he was curious of the thick detail of\nLondon, which had always loomed large and rich to her. They turned over\ntheir schemes together and indulged in visions of romantic hours. They\nwould stay at some picturesque old inn--one of the inns described by\nDickens--and drive over the town in those delightful hansoms. Henrietta\nwas a literary woman, and the great advantage of being a literary woman\nwas that you could go everywhere and do everything. They would dine at\na coffee-house and go afterwards to the play; they would frequent the\nAbbey and the British Museum and find out where Doctor Johnson had\nlived, and Goldsmith and Addison. Isabel grew eager and presently\nunveiled the bright vision to Ralph, who burst into a fit of laughter\nwhich scarce expressed the sympathy she had desired.\n\n\"It's a delightful plan,\" he said. \"I advise you to go to the Duke's\nHead in Covent Garden, an easy, informal, old-fashioned place, and I'll\nhave you put down at my club.\"\n\n\"Do you mean it's improper?\" Isabel asked. \"Dear me, isn't anything\nproper here? With Henrietta surely I may go anywhere; she isn't hampered\nin that way. She has travelled over the whole American continent and can\nat least find her way about this minute island.\"\n\n\"Ah then,\" said Ralph, \"let me take advantage of her protection to go up\nto town as well. I may never have a chance to travel so safely!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nMiss Stackpole would have prepared to start immediately; but Isabel, as\nwe have seen, had been notified that Lord Warburton would come again to\nGardencourt, and she believed it her duty to remain there and see him.\nFor four or five days he had made no response to her letter; then he had\nwritten, very briefly, to say he would come to luncheon two days later.\nThere was something in these delays and postponements that touched the\ngirl and renewed her sense of his desire to be considerate and patient,\nnot to appear to urge her too grossly; a consideration the more studied\nthat she was so sure he \"really liked\" her. Isabel told her uncle she\nhad written to him, mentioning also his intention of coming; and the\nold man, in consequence, left his room earlier than usual and made his\nappearance at the two o'clock repast. This was by no means an act of\nvigilance on his part, but the fruit of a benevolent belief that his\nbeing of the company might help to cover any conjoined straying away\nin case Isabel should give their noble visitor another hearing. That\npersonage drove over from Lockleigh and brought the elder of his sisters\nwith him, a measure presumably dictated by reflexions of the same order\nas Mr. Touchett's. The two visitors were introduced to Miss Stackpole,\nwho, at luncheon, occupied a seat adjoining Lord Warburton's. Isabel,\nwho was nervous and had no relish for the prospect of again arguing\nthe question he had so prematurely opened, could not help admiring his\ngood-humoured self-possession, which quite disguised the symptoms of\nthat preoccupation with her presence it was natural she should suppose\nhim to feel. He neither looked at her nor spoke to her, and the only\nsign of his emotion was that he avoided meeting her eyes. He had plenty\nof talk for the others, however, and he appeared to eat his luncheon\nwith discrimination and appetite. Miss Molyneux, who had a smooth,\nnun-like forehead and wore a large silver cross suspended from her neck,\nwas evidently preoccupied with Henrietta Stackpole, upon whom her\neyes constantly rested in a manner suggesting a conflict between deep\nalienation and yearning wonder. Of the two ladies from Lockleigh she\nwas the one Isabel had liked best; there was such a world of hereditary\nquiet in her. Isabel was sure moreover that her mild forehead and\nsilver cross referred to some weird Anglican mystery--some delightful\nreinstitution perhaps of the quaint office of the canoness. She wondered\nwhat Miss Molyneux would think of her if she knew Miss Archer had\nrefused her brother; and then she felt sure that Miss Molyneux would\nnever know--that Lord Warburton never told her such things. He was fond\nof her and kind to her, but on the whole he told her little. Such, at\nleast, was Isabel's theory; when, at table, she was not occupied in\nconversation she was usually occupied in forming theories about her\nneighbours. According to Isabel, if Miss Molyneux should ever learn what\nhad passed between Miss Archer and Lord Warburton she would probably be\nshocked at such a girl's failure to rise; or no, rather (this was our\nheroine's last position) she would impute to the young American but a\ndue consciousness of inequality.\n\nWhatever Isabel might have made of her opportunities, at all events,\nHenrietta Stackpole was by no means disposed to neglect those in which\nshe now found herself immersed. \"Do you know you're the first lord I've\never seen?\" she said very promptly to her neighbour. \"I suppose you\nthink I'm awfully benighted.\"\n\n\"You've escaped seeing some very ugly men,\" Lord Warburton answered,\nlooking a trifle absently about the table.\n\n\"Are they very ugly? They try to make us believe in America that they're\nall handsome and magnificent and that they wear wonderful robes and\ncrowns.\"\n\n\"Ah, the robes and crowns are gone out of fashion,\" said Lord Warburton,\n\"like your tomahawks and revolvers.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry for that; I think an aristocracy ought to be splendid,\"\nHenrietta declared. \"If it's not that, what is it?\"\n\n\"Oh, you know, it isn't much, at the best,\" her neighbour allowed.\n\"Won't you have a potato?\"\n\n\"I don't care much for these European potatoes. I shouldn't know you\nfrom an ordinary American gentleman.\"\n\n\"Do talk to me as if I were one,\" said Lord Warburton. \"I don't see how\nyou manage to get on without potatoes; you must find so few things to\neat over here.\"\n\nHenrietta was silent a little; there was a chance he was not sincere.\n\"I've had hardly any appetite since I've been here,\" she went on at\nlast; \"so it doesn't much matter. I don't approve of you, you know; I\nfeel as if I ought to tell you that.\"\n\n\"Don't approve of me?\"\n\n\"Yes; I don't suppose any one ever said such a thing to you before, did\nthey? I don't approve of lords as an institution. I think the world has\ngot beyond them--far beyond.\"\n\n\"Oh, so do I. I don't approve of myself in the least. Sometimes it comes\nover me--how I should object to myself if I were not myself, don't you\nknow? But that's rather good, by the way--not to be vainglorious.\"\n\n\"Why don't you give it up then?\" Miss Stackpole enquired.\n\n\"Give up--a--?\" asked Lord Warburton, meeting her harsh inflexion with a\nvery mellow one.\n\n\"Give up being a lord.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm so little of one! One would really forget all about it if you\nwretched Americans were not constantly reminding one. However, I do\nthink of giving it up, the little there is left of it, one of these\ndays.\"\n\n\"I should like to see you do it!\" Henrietta exclaimed rather grimly.\n\n\"I'll invite you to the ceremony; we'll have a supper and a dance.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Miss Stackpole, \"I like to see all sides. I don't approve\nof a privileged class, but I like to hear what they have to say for\nthemselves.\"\n\n\"Mighty little, as you see!\"\n\n\"I should like to draw you out a little more,\" Henrietta continued. \"But\nyou're always looking away. You're afraid of meeting my eye. I see you\nwant to escape me.\"\n\n\"No, I'm only looking for those despised potatoes.\"\n\n\"Please explain about that young lady--your sister--then. I don't\nunderstand about her. Is she a Lady?\"\n\n\"She's a capital good girl.\"\n\n\"I don't like the way you say that--as if you wanted to change the\nsubject. Is her position inferior to yours?\"\n\n\"We neither of us have any position to speak of; but she's better off\nthan I, because she has none of the bother.\"\n\n\"Yes, she doesn't look as if she had much bother. I wish I had as little\nbother as that. You do produce quiet people over here, whatever else you\nmay do.\"\n\n\"Ah, you see one takes life easily, on the whole,\" said Lord Warburton.\n\"And then you know we're very dull. Ah, we can be dull when we try!\"\n\n\"I should advise you to try something else. I shouldn't know what to\ntalk to your sister about; she looks so different. Is that silver cross\na badge?\"\n\n\"A badge?\"\n\n\"A sign of rank.\"\n\nLord Warburton's glance had wandered a good deal, but at this it met the\ngaze of his neighbour. \"Oh yes,\" he answered in a moment; \"the women go\nin for those things. The silver cross is worn by the eldest daughters of\nViscounts.\" Which was his harmless revenge for having occasionally had\nhis credulity too easily engaged in America. After luncheon he proposed\nto Isabel to come into the gallery and look at the pictures; and though\nshe knew he had seen the pictures twenty times she complied without\ncriticising this pretext. Her conscience now was very easy; ever since\nshe sent him her letter she had felt particularly light of spirit. He\nwalked slowly to the end of the gallery, staring at its contents and\nsaying nothing; and then he suddenly broke out: \"I hoped you wouldn't\nwrite to me that way.\"\n\n\"It was the only way, Lord Warburton,\" said the girl. \"Do try and\nbelieve that.\"\n\n\"If I could believe it of course I should let you alone. But we can't\nbelieve by willing it; and I confess I don't understand. I could\nunderstand your disliking me; that I could understand well. But that you\nshould admit you do--\"\n\n\"What have I admitted?\" Isabel interrupted, turning slightly pale.\n\n\"That you think me a good fellow; isn't that it?\" She said nothing,\nand he went on: \"You don't seem to have any reason, and that gives me a\nsense of injustice.\"\n\n\"I have a reason, Lord Warburton.\" She said it in a tone that made his\nheart contract.\n\n\"I should like very much to know it.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you some day when there's more to show for it.\"\n\n\"Excuse my saying that in the mean time I must doubt of it.\"\n\n\"You make me very unhappy,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I'm not sorry for that; it may help you to know how I feel. Will you\nkindly answer me a question?\" Isabel made no audible assent, but he\napparently saw in her eyes something that gave him courage to go on. \"Do\nyou prefer some one else?\"\n\n\"That's a question I'd rather not answer.\"\n\n\"Ah, you do then!\" her suitor murmured with bitterness.\n\nThe bitterness touched her, and she cried out: \"You're mistaken! I\ndon't.\"\n\nHe sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly, like a man in\ntrouble; leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at the floor. \"I\ncan't even be glad of that,\" he said at last, throwing himself back\nagainst the wall; \"for that would be an excuse.\"\n\nShe raised her eyebrows in surprise. \"An excuse? Must I excuse myself?\"\n\nHe paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea had come into\nhis head. \"Is it my political opinions? Do you think I go too far?\"\n\n\"I can't object to your political opinions, because I don't understand\nthem.\"\n\n\"You don't care what I think!\" he cried, getting up. \"It's all the same\nto you.\"\n\nIsabel walked to the other side of the gallery and stood there showing\nhim her charming back, her light slim figure, the length of her white\nneck as she bent her head, and the density of her dark braids. She\nstopped in front of a small picture as if for the purpose of examining\nit; and there was something so young and free in her movement that her\nvery pliancy seemed to mock at him. Her eyes, however, saw nothing; they\nhad suddenly been suffused with tears. In a moment he followed her, and\nby this time she had brushed her tears away; but when she turned round\nher face was pale and the expression of her eyes strange. \"That reason\nthat I wouldn't tell you--I'll tell it you after all. It's that I can't\nescape my fate.\"\n\n\"Your fate?\"\n\n\"I should try to escape it if I were to marry you.\"\n\n\"I don't understand. Why should not that be your fate as well as\nanything else?\"\n\n\"Because it's not,\" said Isabel femininely. \"I know it's not. It's not\nmy fate to give up--I know it can't be.\"\n\nPoor Lord Warburton stared, an interrogative point in either eye. \"Do\nyou call marrying me giving up?\"\n\n\"Not in the usual sense. It's getting--getting--getting a great deal.\nBut it's giving up other chances.\"\n\n\"Other chances for what?\"\n\n\"I don't mean chances to marry,\" said Isabel, her colour quickly coming\nback to her. And then she stopped, looking down with a deep frown, as if\nit were hopeless to attempt to make her meaning clear.\n\n\"I don't think it presumptuous in me to suggest that you'll gain more\nthan you'll lose,\" her companion observed.\n\n\"I can't escape unhappiness,\" said Isabel. \"In marrying you I shall be\ntrying to.\"\n\n\"I don't know whether you'd try to, but you certainly would: that I must\nin candour admit!\" he exclaimed with an anxious laugh.\n\n\"I mustn't--I can't!\" cried the girl.\n\n\"Well, if you're bent on being miserable I don't see why you should make\nme so. Whatever charms a life of misery may have for you, it has none\nfor me.\"\n\n\"I'm not bent on a life of misery,\" said Isabel. \"I've always been\nintensely determined to be happy, and I've often believed I should be.\nI've told people that; you can ask them. But it comes over me every\nnow and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by\nturning away, by separating myself.\"\n\n\"By separating yourself from what?\"\n\n\"From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what most people\nknow and suffer.\"\n\nLord Warburton broke into a smile that almost denoted hope. \"Why,\nmy dear Miss Archer,\" he began to explain with the most considerate\neagerness, \"I don't offer you any exoneration from life or from any\nchances or dangers whatever. I wish I could; depend upon it I would! For\nwhat do you take me, pray? Heaven help me, I'm not the Emperor of China!\nAll I offer you is the chance of taking the common lot in a comfortable\nsort of way. The common lot? Why, I'm devoted to the common lot! Strike\nan alliance with me, and I promise you that you shall have plenty of it.\nYou shall separate from nothing whatever--not even from your friend Miss\nStackpole.\"\n\n\"She'd never approve of it,\" said Isabel, trying to smile and take\nadvantage of this side-issue; despising herself too, not a little, for\ndoing so.\n\n\"Are we speaking of Miss Stackpole?\" his lordship asked impatiently. \"I\nnever saw a person judge things on such theoretic grounds.\"\n\n\"Now I suppose you're speaking of me,\" said Isabel with humility; and\nshe turned away again, for she saw Miss Molyneux enter the gallery,\naccompanied by Henrietta and by Ralph.\n\nLord Warburton's sister addressed him with a certain timidity and\nreminded him she ought to return home in time for tea, as she was\nexpecting company to partake of it. He made no answer--apparently\nnot having heard her; he was preoccupied, and with good reason. Miss\nMolyneux--as if he had been Royalty--stood like a lady-in-waiting.\n\n\"Well, I never, Miss Molyneux!\" said Henrietta Stackpole. \"If I wanted\nto go he'd have to go. If I wanted my brother to do a thing he'd have to\ndo it.\"\n\n\"Oh, Warburton does everything one wants,\" Miss Molyneux answered with\na quick, shy laugh. \"How very many pictures you have!\" she went on,\nturning to Ralph.\n\n\"They look a good many, because they're all put together,\" said Ralph.\n\"But it's really a bad way.\"\n\n\"Oh, I think it's so nice. I wish we had a gallery at Lockleigh. I'm so\nvery fond of pictures,\" Miss Molyneux went on, persistently, to Ralph,\nas if she were afraid Miss Stackpole would address her again. Henrietta\nappeared at once to fascinate and to frighten her.\n\n\"Ah yes, pictures are very convenient,\" said Ralph, who appeared to know\nbetter what style of reflexion was acceptable to her.\n\n\"They're so very pleasant when it rains,\" the young lady continued. \"It\nhas rained of late so very often.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry you're going away, Lord Warburton,\" said Henrietta. \"I wanted\nto get a great deal more out of you.\"\n\n\"I'm not going away,\" Lord Warburton answered.\n\n\"Your sister says you must. In America the gentlemen obey the ladies.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid we have some people to tea,\" said Miss Molyneux, looking at\nher brother.\n\n\"Very good, my dear. We'll go.\"\n\n\"I hoped you would resist!\" Henrietta exclaimed. \"I wanted to see what\nMiss Molyneux would do.\"\n\n\"I never do anything,\" said this young lady.\n\n\"I suppose in your position it's sufficient for you to exist!\" Miss\nStackpole returned. \"I should like very much to see you at home.\"\n\n\"You must come to Lockleigh again,\" said Miss Molyneux, very sweetly, to\nIsabel, ignoring this remark of Isabel's friend. Isabel looked into her\nquiet eyes a moment, and for that moment seemed to see in their grey\ndepths the reflexion of everything she had rejected in rejecting Lord\nWarburton--the peace, the kindness, the honour, the possessions, a deep\nsecurity and a great exclusion. She kissed Miss Molyneux and then she\nsaid: \"I'm afraid I can never come again.\"\n\n\"Never again?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I'm going away.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm so very sorry,\" said Miss Molyneux. \"I think that's so very\nwrong of you.\"\n\nLord Warburton watched this little passage; then he turned away and\nstared at a picture. Ralph, leaning against the rail before the picture\nwith his hands in his pockets, had for the moment been watching him.\n\n\"I should like to see you at home,\" said Henrietta, whom Lord Warburton\nfound beside him. \"I should like an hour's talk with you; there are a\ngreat many questions I wish to ask you.\"\n\n\"I shall be delighted to see you,\" the proprietor of Lockleigh answered;\n\"but I'm certain not to be able to answer many of your questions. When\nwill you come?\"\n\n\"Whenever Miss Archer will take me. We're thinking of going to London,\nbut we'll go and see you first. I'm determined to get some satisfaction\nout of you.\"\n\n\"If it depends upon Miss Archer I'm afraid you won't get much. She won't\ncome to Lockleigh; she doesn't like the place.\"\n\n\"She told me it was lovely!\" said Henrietta.\n\nLord Warburton hesitated. \"She won't come, all the same. You had better\ncome alone,\" he added.\n\nHenrietta straightened herself, and her large eyes expanded. \"Would you\nmake that remark to an English lady?\" she enquired with soft asperity.\n\nLord Warburton stared. \"Yes, if I liked her enough.\"\n\n\"You'd be careful not to like her enough. If Miss Archer won't visit\nyour place again it's because she doesn't want to take me. I know what\nshe thinks of me, and I suppose you think the same--that I oughtn't to\nbring in individuals.\" Lord Warburton was at a loss; he had not been\nmade acquainted with Miss Stackpole's professional character and failed\nto catch her allusion. \"Miss Archer has been warning you!\" she therefore\nwent on.\n\n\"Warning me?\"\n\n\"Isn't that why she came off alone with you here--to put you on your\nguard?\"\n\n\"Oh dear, no,\" said Lord Warburton brazenly; \"our talk had no such\nsolemn character as that.\"\n\n\"Well, you've been on your guard--intensely. I suppose it's natural\nto you; that's just what I wanted to observe. And so, too, Miss\nMolyneux--she wouldn't commit herself. You have been warned, anyway,\"\nHenrietta continued, addressing this young lady; \"but for you it wasn't\nnecessary.\"\n\n\"I hope not,\" said Miss Molyneux vaguely.\n\n\"Miss Stackpole takes notes,\" Ralph soothingly explained. \"She's a great\nsatirist; she sees through us all and she works us up.\"\n\n\"Well, I must say I never have had such a collection of bad material!\"\nHenrietta declared, looking from Isabel to Lord Warburton and from this\nnobleman to his sister and to Ralph. \"There's something the matter with\nyou all; you're as dismal as if you had got a bad cable.\"\n\n\"You do see through us, Miss Stackpole,\" said Ralph in a low tone,\ngiving her a little intelligent nod as he led the party out of the\ngallery. \"There's something the matter with us all.\"\n\nIsabel came behind these two; Miss Molyneux, who decidedly liked her\nimmensely, had taken her arm, to walk beside her over the polished\nfloor. Lord Warburton strolled on the other side with his hands behind\nhim and his eyes lowered. For some moments he said nothing; and then,\n\"Is it true you're going to London?\" he asked.\n\n\"I believe it has been arranged.\"\n\n\"And when shall you come back?\"\n\n\"In a few days; but probably for a very short time. I'm going to Paris\nwith my aunt.\"\n\n\"When, then, shall I see you again?\"\n\n\"Not for a good while,\" said Isabel. \"But some day or other, I hope.\"\n\n\"Do you really hope it?\"\n\n\"Very much.\"\n\nHe went a few steps in silence; then he stopped and put out his hand.\n\"Good-bye.\"\n\n\"Good-bye,\" said Isabel.\n\nMiss Molyneux kissed her again, and she let the two depart. After it,\nwithout rejoining Henrietta and Ralph, she retreated to her own room; in\nwhich apartment, before dinner, she was found by Mrs. Touchett, who had\nstopped on her way to the salon. \"I may as well tell you,\" said that\nlady, \"that your uncle has informed me of your relations with Lord\nWarburton.\"\n\nIsabel considered. \"Relations? They're hardly relations. That's the\nstrange part of it: he has seen me but three or four times.\"\n\n\"Why did you tell your uncle rather than me?\" Mrs. Touchett\ndispassionately asked.\n\nAgain the girl hesitated. \"Because he knows Lord Warburton better.\"\n\n\"Yes, but I know you better.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure of that,\" said Isabel, smiling.\n\n\"Neither am I, after all; especially when you give me that rather\nconceited look. One would think you were awfully pleased with yourself\nand had carried off a prize! I suppose that when you refuse an offer\nlike Lord Warburton's it's because you expect to do something better.\"\n\n\"Ah, my uncle didn't say that!\" cried Isabel, smiling still.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt had been arranged that the two young ladies should proceed to London\nunder Ralph's escort, though Mrs. Touchett looked with little favour on\nthe plan. It was just the sort of plan, she said, that Miss Stackpole\nwould be sure to suggest, and she enquired if the correspondent of\nthe Interviewer was to take the party to stay at her favourite\nboarding-house.\n\n\"I don't care where she takes us to stay, so long as there's local\ncolour,\" said Isabel. \"That's what we're going to London for.\"\n\n\"I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do\nanything,\" her aunt rejoined. \"After that one needn't stand on trifles.\"\n\n\"Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton?\" Isabel enquired.\n\n\"Of course I should.\"\n\n\"I thought you disliked the English so much.\"\n\n\"So I do; but it's all the greater reason for making use of them.\"\n\n\"Is that your idea of marriage?\" And Isabel ventured to add that her\naunt appeared to her to have made very little use of Mr. Touchett.\n\n\"Your uncle's not an English nobleman,\" said Mrs. Touchett, \"though even\nif he had been I should still probably have taken up my residence in\nFlorence.\"\n\n\"Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any better than I am?\" the\ngirl asked with some animation. \"I don't mean I'm too good to improve. I\nmean that I don't love Lord Warburton enough to marry him.\"\n\n\"You did right to refuse him then,\" said Mrs. Touchett in her smallest,\nsparest voice. \"Only, the next great offer you get, I hope you'll manage\nto come up to your standard.\"\n\n\"We had better wait till the offer comes before we talk about it. I\nhope very much I may have no more offers for the present. They upset me\ncompletely.\"\n\n\"You probably won't be troubled with them if you adopt permanently the\nBohemian manner of life. However, I've promised Ralph not to criticise.\"\n\n\"I'll do whatever Ralph says is right,\" Isabel returned. \"I've unbounded\nconfidence in Ralph.\"\n\n\"His mother's much obliged to you!\" this lady dryly laughed.\n\n\"It seems to me indeed she ought to feel it!\" Isabel irrepressibly\nanswered.\n\nRalph had assured her that there would be no violation of decency in\ntheir paying a visit--the little party of three--to the sights of the\nmetropolis; but Mrs. Touchett took a different view. Like many ladies of\nher country who had lived a long time in Europe, she had completely\nlost her native tact on such points, and in her reaction, not in itself\ndeplorable, against the liberty allowed to young persons beyond the\nseas, had fallen into gratuitous and exaggerated scruples. Ralph\naccompanied their visitors to town and established them at a quiet inn\nin a street that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first idea had\nbeen to take them to his father's house in Winchester Square, a large,\ndull mansion which at this period of the year was shrouded in silence\nand brown holland; but he bethought himself that, the cook being at\nGardencourt, there was no one in the house to get them their meals,\nand Pratt's Hotel accordingly became their resting-place. Ralph, on his\nside, found quarters in Winchester Square, having a \"den\" there of which\nhe was very fond and being familiar with deeper fears than that of a\ncold kitchen. He availed himself largely indeed of the resources of\nPratt's Hotel, beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow\ntravellers, who had Mr. Pratt in person, in a large bulging white\nwaistcoat, to remove their dish-covers. Ralph turned up, as he said,\nafter breakfast, and the little party made out a scheme of entertainment\nfor the day. As London wears in the month of September a face blank but\nfor its smears of prior service, the young man, who occasionally took\nan apologetic tone, was obliged to remind his companion, to Miss\nStackpole's high derision, that there wasn't a creature in town.\n\n\"I suppose you mean the aristocracy are absent,\" Henrietta answered;\n\"but I don't think you could have a better proof that if they were\nabsent altogether they wouldn't be missed. It seems to me the place is\nabout as full as it can be. There's no one here, of course, but three\nor four millions of people. What is it you call them--the lower-middle\nclass? They're only the population of London, and that's of no\nconsequence.\"\n\nRalph declared that for him the aristocracy left no void that Miss\nStackpole herself didn't fill, and that a more contented man was nowhere\nat that moment to be found. In this he spoke the truth, for the stale\nSeptember days, in the huge half-empty town, had a charm wrapped in them\nas a coloured gem might be wrapped in a dusty cloth. When he went home\nat night to the empty house in Winchester Square, after a chain of hours\nwith his comparatively ardent friends, he wandered into the big dusky\ndining-room, where the candle he took from the hall-table, after letting\nhimself in, constituted the only illumination. The square was still, the\nhouse was still; when he raised one of the windows of the dining-room to\nlet in the air he heard the slow creak of the boots of a lone constable.\nHis own step, in the empty place, seemed loud and sonorous; some of the\ncarpets had been raised, and whenever he moved he roused a melancholy\necho. He sat down in one of the armchairs; the big dark dining table\ntwinkled here and there in the small candle-light; the pictures on the\nwall, all of them very brown, looked vague and incoherent. There was a\nghostly presence as of dinners long since digested, of table-talk\nthat had lost its actuality. This hint of the supernatural perhaps had\nsomething to do with the fact that his imagination took a flight and\nthat he remained in his chair a long time beyond the hour at which he\nshould have been in bed; doing nothing, not even reading the evening\npaper. I say he did nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of\nthe fact that he thought at these moments of Isabel. To think of Isabel\ncould only be for him an idle pursuit, leading to nothing and profiting\nlittle to any one. His cousin had not yet seemed to him so charming\nas during these days spent in sounding, tourist-fashion, the deeps\nand shallows of the metropolitan element. Isabel was full of premises,\nconclusions, emotions; if she had come in search of local colour she\nfound it everywhere. She asked more questions than he could answer, and\nlaunched brave theories, as to historic cause and social effect, that he\nwas equally unable to accept or to refute. The party went more than once\nto the British Museum and to that brighter palace of art which reclaims\nfor antique variety so large an area of a monotonous suburb; they spent\na morning in the Abbey and went on a penny-steamer to the Tower; they\nlooked at pictures both in public and private collections and sat\non various occasions beneath the great trees in Kensington Gardens.\nHenrietta proved an indestructible sight-seer and a more lenient judge\nthan Ralph had ventured to hope. She had indeed many disappointments,\nand London at large suffered from her vivid remembrance of the strong\npoints of the American civic idea; but she made the best of its dingy\ndignities and only heaved an occasional sigh and uttered a desultory\n\"Well!\" which led no further and lost itself in retrospect. The truth\nwas that, as she said herself, she was not in her element. \"I've not a\nsympathy with inanimate objects,\" she remarked to Isabel at the National\nGallery; and she continued to suffer from the meagreness of the glimpse\nthat had as yet been vouchsafed to her of the inner life. Landscapes\nby Turner and Assyrian bulls were a poor substitute for the literary\ndinner-parties at which she had hoped to meet the genius and renown of\nGreat Britain.\n\n\"Where are your public men, where are your men and women of intellect?\"\nshe enquired of Ralph, standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square as\nif she had supposed this to be a place where she would naturally meet a\nfew. \"That's one of them on the top of the column, you say--Lord Nelson.\nWas he a lord too? Wasn't he high enough, that they had to stick him a\nhundred feet in the air? That's the past--I don't care about the past; I\nwant to see some of the leading minds of the present. I won't say of the\nfuture, because I don't believe much in your future.\" Poor Ralph had few\nleading minds among his acquaintance and rarely enjoyed the pleasure\nof buttonholing a celebrity; a state of things which appeared to Miss\nStackpole to indicate a deplorable want of enterprise. \"If I were on the\nother side I should call,\" she said, \"and tell the gentleman, whoever\nhe might be, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come to see\nfor myself. But I gather from what you say that this is not the custom\nhere. You seem to have plenty of meaningless customs, but none of those\nthat would help along. We are in advance, certainly. I suppose I shall\nhave to give up the social side altogether;\" and Henrietta, though\nshe went about with her guidebook and pencil and wrote a letter to the\nInterviewer about the Tower (in which she described the execution of\nLady Jane Grey), had a sad sense of falling below her mission.\n\nThe incident that had preceded Isabel's departure from Gardencourt left\na painful trace in our young woman's mind: when she felt again in her\nface, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath of her last suitor's\nsurprise, she could only muffle her head till the air cleared. She could\nnot have done less than what she did; this was certainly true. But her\nnecessity, all the same, had been as graceless as some physical act in\na strained attitude, and she felt no desire to take credit for her\nconduct. Mixed with this imperfect pride, nevertheless, was a feeling of\nfreedom which in itself was sweet and which, as she wandered through the\ngreat city with her ill-matched companions, occasionally throbbed into\nodd demonstrations. When she walked in Kensington Gardens she stopped\nthe children (mainly of the poorer sort) whom she saw playing on the\ngrass; she asked them their names and gave them sixpence and, when\nthey were pretty, kissed them. Ralph noticed these quaint charities;\nhe noticed everything she did. One afternoon, that his companions might\npass the time, he invited them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had\nthe house set in order as much as possible for their visit. There\nwas another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of\nRalph's who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with\nMiss Stackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr.\nBantling, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed,\nuniversally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at\neverything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her\nsociety the bric-a-brac, of which Ralph had a considerable collection,\nand afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the\nsquare and pretend it was a fete-champetre, walked round the limited\nenclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk,\nbounded responsive--as with a positive passion for argument--to her\nremarks upon the inner life.\n\n\"Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally\nthere's not much going on there when there's such a lot of illness\nabout. Touchett's very bad, you know; the doctors have forbidden his\nbeing in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his\nfather. The old man, I believe, has half a dozen things the matter\nwith him. They call it gout, but to my certain knowledge he has organic\ndisease so developed that you may depend upon it he'll go, some day\nsoon, quite quickly. Of course that sort of thing makes a dreadfully\ndull house; I wonder they have people when they can do so little for\nthem. Then I believe Mr. Touchett's always squabbling with his wife; she\nlives away from her husband, you know, in that extraordinary American\nway of yours. If you want a house where there's always something going\non, I recommend you to go down and stay with my sister, Lady Pensil,\nin Bedfordshire. I'll write to her to-morrow and I'm sure she'll be\ndelighted to ask you. I know just what you want--you want a house\nwhere they go in for theatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My\nsister's just that sort of woman; she's always getting up something or\nother and she's always glad to have the sort of people who help her. I'm\nsure she'll ask you down by return of post: she's tremendously fond of\ndistinguished people and writers. She writes herself, you know; but\nI haven't read everything she has written. It's usually poetry, and I\ndon't go in much for poetry--unless it's Byron. I suppose you think a\ngreat deal of Byron in America,\" Mr. Bantling continued, expanding\nin the stimulating air of Miss Stackpole's attention, bringing up his\nsequences promptly and changing his topic with an easy turn of hand.\nYet he none the less gracefully kept in sight of the idea, dazzling to\nHenrietta, of her going to stay with Lady Pensil in Bedfordshire. \"I\nunderstand what you want; you want to see some genuine English sport.\nThe Touchetts aren't English at all, you know; they have their own\nhabits, their own language, their own food--some odd religion even, I\nbelieve, of their own. The old man thinks it's wicked to hunt, I'm told.\nYou must get down to my sister's in time for the theatricals, and I'm\nsure she'll be glad to give you a part. I'm sure you act well; I know\nyou're very clever. My sister's forty years old and has seven children,\nbut she's going to play the principal part. Plain as she is she makes up\nawfully well--I will say for her. Of course you needn't act if you don't\nwant to.\"\n\nIn this manner Mr. Bantling delivered himself while they strolled over\nthe grass in Winchester Square, which, although it had been peppered\nby the London soot, invited the tread to linger. Henrietta thought her\nblooming, easy-voiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine\nmerit and his splendid range of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and\nshe valued the opportunity he offered her. \"I don't know but I would go,\nif your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty. What do you\ncall her name?\"\n\n\"Pensil. It's an odd name, but it isn't a bad one.\"\n\n\"I think one name's as good as another. But what's her rank?\".\n\n\"Oh, she's a baron's wife; a convenient sort of rank. You're fine enough\nand you're not too fine.\"\n\n\"I don't know but what she'd be too fine for me. What do you call the\nplace she lives in--Bedfordshire?\"\n\n\"She lives away in the northern corner of it. It's a tiresome country,\nbut I dare say you won't mind it. I'll try and run down while you're\nthere.\"\n\nAll this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was sorry to be\nobliged to separate from Lady Pensil's obliging brother. But it happened\nthat she had met the day before, in Piccadilly, some friends whom she\nhad not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington,\nDelaware, who had been travelling on the Continent and were now\npreparing to re-embark. Henrietta had had a long interview with them on\nthe Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at once\nthey had not exhausted their store. It had been agreed therefore that\nHenrietta should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn\nStreet at six o'clock on the morrow, and she now bethought herself of\nthis engagement. She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave\nfirst of Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs\nin another part of the enclosure, were occupied--if the term may be\nused--with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the practical\ncolloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When it had been settled\nbetween Isabel and her friend that they should be reunited at some\nreputable hour at Pratt's Hotel, Ralph remarked that the latter must\nhave a cab. She couldn't walk all the way to Jermyn Street.\n\n\"I suppose you mean it's improper for me to walk alone!\" Henrietta\nexclaimed. \"Merciful powers, have I come to this?\"\n\n\"There's not the slightest need of your walking alone,\" Mr. Bantling\ngaily interposed. \"I should be greatly pleased to go with you.\"\n\n\"I simply meant that you'd be late for dinner,\" Ralph returned. \"Those\npoor ladies may easily believe that we refuse, at the last, to spare\nyou.\"\n\n\"You had better have a hansom, Henrietta,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I'll get you a hansom if you'll trust me,\" Mr. Bantling went on.\n\n\"We might walk a little till we meet one.\"\n\n\"I don't see why I shouldn't trust him, do you?\" Henrietta enquired of\nIsabel.\n\n\"I don't see what Mr. Bantling could do to you,\" Isabel obligingly\nanswered; \"but, if you like, we'll walk with you till you find your\ncab.\"\n\n\"Never mind; we'll go alone. Come on, Mr. Bantling, and take care you\nget me a good one.\"\n\nMr. Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their departure,\nleaving the girl and her cousin together in the square, over which\na clear September twilight had now begun to gather. It was perfectly\nstill; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses showed lights in none of the\nwindows, where the shutters and blinds were closed; the pavements were\na vacant expanse, and, putting aside two small children from a\nneighbouring slum, who, attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation\nin the interior, poked their faces between the rusty rails of\nthe enclosure, the most vivid object within sight was the big red\npillar-post on the southeast corner.\n\n\"Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with her to Jermyn\nStreet,\" Ralph observed. He always spoke of Miss Stackpole as Henrietta.\n\n\"Very possibly,\" said his companion.\n\n\"Or rather, no, she won't,\" he went on. \"But Bantling will ask leave to\nget in.\"\n\n\"Very likely again. I'm glad very they're such good friends.\"\n\n\"She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. It may go\nfar,\" said Ralph.\n\nIsabel was briefly silent. \"I call Henrietta a very brilliant woman, but\nI don't think it will go far. They would never really know each other.\nHe has not the least idea what she really is, and she has no just\ncomprehension of Mr. Bantling.\"\n\n\"There's no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding.\nBut it ought not to be so difficult to understand Bob Bantling,\" Ralph\nadded. \"He is a very simple organism.\"\n\n\"Yes, but Henrietta's a simpler one still. And, pray, what am I to do?\"\nIsabel asked, looking about her through the fading light, in which the\nlimited landscape-gardening of the square took on a large and effective\nappearance. \"I don't imagine that you'll propose that you and I, for our\namusement, shall drive about London in a hansom.\"\n\n\"There's no reason we shouldn't stay here--if you don't dislike it. It's\nvery warm; there will be half an hour yet before dark; and if you permit\nit I'll light a cigarette.\"\n\n\"You may do what you please,\" said Isabel, \"if you'll amuse me till\nseven o'clock. I propose at that hour to go back and partake of a simple\nand solitary repast--two poached eggs and a muffin--at Pratt's Hotel.\"\n\n\"Mayn't I dine with you?\" Ralph asked.\n\n\"No, you'll dine at your club.\"\n\nThey had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the square\nagain, and Ralph had lighted his cigarette. It would have given him\nextreme pleasure to be present in person at the modest little feast she\nhad sketched; but in default of this he liked even being forbidden. For\nthe moment, however, he liked immensely being alone with her, in the\nthickening dusk, in the centre of the multitudinous town; it made her\nseem to depend upon him and to be in his power. This power he could\nexert but vaguely; the best exercise of it was to accept her decisions\nsubmissively which indeed there was already an emotion in doing. \"Why\nwon't you let me dine with you?\" he demanded after a pause.\n\n\"Because I don't care for it.\"\n\n\"I suppose you're tired of me.\"\n\n\"I shall be an hour hence. You see I have the gift of foreknowledge.\"\n\n\"Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile,\" said Ralph.\n\nBut he said nothing more, and as she made no rejoinder they sat\nsome time in a stillness which seemed to contradict his promise of\nentertainment. It seemed to him she was preoccupied, and he wondered\nwhat she was thinking about; there were two or three very possible\nsubjects. At last he spoke again. \"Is your objection to my society this\nevening caused by your expectation of another visitor?\"\n\nShe turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. \"Another\nvisitor? What visitor should I have?\"\n\nHe had none to suggest; which made his question seem to himself silly as\nwell as brutal. \"You've a great many friends that I don't know. You've a\nwhole past from which I was perversely excluded.\"\n\n\"You were reserved for my future. You must remember that my past is over\nthere across the water. There's none of it here in London.\"\n\n\"Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. Capital thing\nto have your future so handy.\" And Ralph lighted another cigarette and\nreflected that Isabel probably meant she had received news that Mr.\nCaspar Goodwood had crossed to Paris. After he had lighted his cigarette\nhe puffed it a while, and then he resumed. \"I promised just now to be\nvery amusing; but you see I don't come up to the mark, and the fact is\nthere's a good deal of temerity in one's undertaking to amuse a\nperson like you. What do you care for my feeble attempts? You've grand\nideas--you've a high standard in such matters. I ought at least to bring\nin a band of music or a company of mountebanks.\"\n\n\"One mountebank's enough, and you do very well. Pray go on, and in\nanother ten minutes I shall begin to laugh.\"\n\n\"I assure you I'm very serious,\" said Ralph. \"You do really ask a great\ndeal.\"\n\n\"I don't know what you mean. I ask nothing.\"\n\n\"You accept nothing,\" said Ralph. She coloured, and now suddenly it\nseemed to her that she guessed his meaning. But why should he speak\nto her of such things? He hesitated a little and then he continued:\n\"There's something I should like very much to say to you. It's a\nquestion I wish to ask. It seems to me I've a right to ask it, because\nI've a kind of interest in the answer.\"\n\n\"Ask what you will,\" Isabel replied gently, \"and I'll try to satisfy\nyou.\"\n\n\"Well then, I hope you won't mind my saying that Warburton has told me\nof something that has passed between you.\"\n\nIsabel suppressed a start; she sat looking at her open fan. \"Very good;\nI suppose it was natural he should tell you.\"\n\n\"I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has some hope\nstill,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Still?\"\n\n\"He had it a few days ago.\"\n\n\"I don't believe he has any now,\" said the girl.\n\n\"I'm very sorry for him then; he's such an honest man.\"\n\n\"Pray, did he ask you to talk to me?\"\n\n\"No, not that. But he told me because he couldn't help it. We're old\nfriends, and he was greatly disappointed. He sent me a line asking me\nto come and see him, and I drove over to Lockleigh the day before he and\nhis sister lunched with us. He was very heavy-hearted; he had just got a\nletter from you.\"\n\n\"Did he show you the letter?\" asked Isabel with momentary loftiness.\n\n\"By no means. But he told me it was a neat refusal. I was very sorry for\nhim,\" Ralph repeated.\n\nFor some moments Isabel said nothing; then at last, \"Do you know how\noften he had seen me?\" she enquired. \"Five or six times.\"\n\n\"That's to your glory.\"\n\n\"It's not for that I say it.\"\n\n\"What then do you say it for. Not to prove that poor Warburton's state\nof mind's superficial, because I'm pretty sure you don't think that.\"\n\nIsabel certainly was unable to say she thought it; but presently she\nsaid something else. \"If you've not been requested by Lord Warburton to\nargue with me, then you're doing it disinterestedly--or for the love of\nargument.\"\n\n\"I've no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to leave you alone.\nI'm simply greatly interested in your own sentiments.\"\n\n\"I'm greatly obliged to you!\" cried Isabel with a slightly nervous\nlaugh.\n\n\"Of course you mean that I'm meddling in what doesn't concern me. But\nwhy shouldn't I speak to you of this matter without annoying you or\nembarrassing myself? What's the use of being your cousin if I can't have\na few privileges? What's the use of adoring you without hope of a reward\nif I can't have a few compensations? What's the use of being ill and\ndisabled and restricted to mere spectatorship at the game of life if I\nreally can't see the show when I've paid so much for my ticket? Tell me\nthis,\" Ralph went on while she listened to him with quickened attention.\n\"What had you in mind when you refused Lord Warburton?\"\n\n\"What had I in mind?\"\n\n\"What was the logic--the view of your situation--that dictated so\nremarkable an act?\"\n\n\"I didn't wish to marry him--if that's logic.\"\n\n\"No, that's not logic--and I knew that before. It's really nothing, you\nknow. What was it you said to yourself? You certainly said more than\nthat.\"\n\nIsabel reflected a moment, then answered with a question of her own.\n\"Why do you call it a remarkable act? That's what your mother thinks\ntoo.\"\n\n\"Warburton's such a thorough good sort; as a man, I consider he has\nhardly a fault. And then he's what they call here no end of a swell. He\nhas immense possessions, and his wife would be thought a superior being.\nHe unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic advantages.\"\n\nIsabel watched her cousin as to see how far he would go. \"I refused him\nbecause he was too perfect then. I'm not perfect myself, and he's too\ngood for me. Besides, his perfection would irritate me.\"\n\n\"That's ingenious rather than candid,\" said Ralph. \"As a fact you think\nnothing in the world too perfect for you.\"\n\n\"Do you think I'm so good?\"\n\n\"No, but you're exacting, all the same, without the excuse of thinking\nyourself good. Nineteen women out of twenty, however, even of the most\nexacting sort, would have managed to do with Warburton. Perhaps you\ndon't know how he has been stalked.\"\n\n\"I don't wish to know. But it seems to me,\" said Isabel, \"that one day\nwhen we talked of him you mentioned odd things in him.\" Ralph smokingly\nconsidered. \"I hope that what I said then had no weight with you;\nfor they were not faults, the things I spoke of: they were simply\npeculiarities of his position. If I had known he wished to marry you I'd\nnever have alluded to them. I think I said that as regards that position\nhe was rather a sceptic. It would have been in your power to make him a\nbeliever.\"\n\n\"I think not. I don't understand the matter, and I'm not conscious of\nany mission of that sort. You're evidently disappointed,\" Isabel added,\nlooking at her cousin with rueful gentleness. \"You'd have liked me to\nmake such a marriage.\"\n\n\"Not in the least. I'm absolutely without a wish on the subject. I don't\npretend to advise you, and I content myself with watching you--with the\ndeepest interest.\"\n\nShe gave rather a conscious sigh. \"I wish I could be as interesting to\nmyself as I am to you!\"\n\n\"There you're not candid again; you're extremely interesting to\nyourself. Do you know, however,\" said Ralph, \"that if you've really\ngiven Warburton his final answer I'm rather glad it has been what it\nwas. I don't mean I'm glad for you, and still less of course for him.\nI'm glad for myself.\"\n\n\"Are you thinking of proposing to me?\"\n\n\"By no means. From the point of view I speak of that would be fatal;\nI should kill the goose that supplies me with the material of my\ninimitable omelettes. I use that animal as the symbol of my insane\nillusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of seeing what a\nyoung lady does who won't marry Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"That's what your mother counts upon too,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Ah, there will be plenty of spectators! We shall hang on the rest of\nyour career. I shall not see all of it, but I shall probably see the\nmost interesting years. Of course if you were to marry our friend you'd\nstill have a career--a very decent, in fact a very brilliant one. But\nrelatively speaking it would be a little prosaic. It would be definitely\nmarked out in advance; it would be wanting in the unexpected. You know\nI'm extremely fond of the unexpected, and now that you've kept the game\nin your hands I depend on your giving us some grand example of it.\"\n\n\"I don't understand you very well,\" said Isabel, \"but I do so well\nenough to be able to say that if you look for grand examples of anything\nfrom me I shall disappoint you.\"\n\n\"You'll do so only by disappointing yourself and that will go hard with\nyou!\"\n\nTo this she made no direct reply; there was an amount of truth in it\nthat would bear consideration. At last she said abruptly: \"I don't see\nwhat harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don't want to\nbegin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do.\"\n\n\"There's nothing she can do so well. But you're of course so\nmany-sided.\"\n\n\"If one's two-sided it's enough,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"You're the most charming of polygons!\" her companion broke out. At a\nglance from his companion, however, he became grave, and to prove it\nwent on: \"You want to see life--you'll be hanged if you don't, as the\nyoung men say.\"\n\n\"I don't think I want to see it as the young men want to see it. But I\ndo want to look about me.\"\n\n\"You want to drain the cup of experience.\"\n\n\"No, I don't wish to touch the cup of experience. It's a poisoned drink!\nI only want to see for myself.\"\n\n\"You want to see, but not to feel,\" Ralph remarked.\n\n\"I don't think that if one's a sentient being one can make the\ndistinction. I'm a good deal like Henrietta. The other day when I asked\nher if she wished to marry she said: 'Not till I've seen Europe!' I too\ndon't wish to marry till I've seen Europe.\"\n\n\"You evidently expect a crowned head will be struck with you.\"\n\n\"No, that would be worse than marrying Lord Warburton. But it's getting\nvery dark,\" Isabel continued, \"and I must go home.\" She rose from her\nplace, but Ralph only sat still and looked at her. As he remained there\nshe stopped, and they exchanged a gaze that was full on either side, but\nespecially on Ralph's, of utterances too vague for words.\n\n\"You've answered my question,\" he said at last. \"You've told me what I\nwanted. I'm greatly obliged to you.\"\n\n\"It seems to me I've told you very little.\"\n\n\"You've told me the great thing: that the world interests you and that\nyou want to throw yourself into it.\"\n\nHer silvery eyes shone a moment in the dusk. \"I never said that.\" \"I\nthink you meant it. Don't repudiate it. It's so fine!\"\n\n\"I don't know what you're trying to fasten upon me, for I'm not in the\nleast an adventurous spirit. Women are not like men.\"\n\nRalph slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the gate of\nthe square. \"No,\" he said; \"women rarely boast of their courage. Men do\nso with a certain frequency.\"\n\n\"Men have it to boast of!\"\n\n\"Women have it too. You've a great deal.\"\n\n\"Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt's Hotel, but not more.\"\n\nRalph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he fastened it.\n\"We'll find your cab,\" he said; and as they turned toward a neighbouring\nstreet in which this quest might avail he asked her again if he mightn't\nsee her safely to the inn.\n\n\"By no means,\" she answered; \"you're very tired; you must go home and go\nto bed.\"\n\nThe cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a moment at the\ndoor. \"When people forget I'm a poor creature I'm often incommoded,\" he\nsaid. \"But it's worse when they remember it!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nShe had had no hidden motive in wishing him not to take her home; it\nsimply struck her that for some days past she had consumed an inordinate\nquantity of his time, and the independent spirit of the American girl\nwhom extravagance of aid places in an attitude that she ends by finding\n\"affected\" had made her decide that for these few hours she must suffice\nto herself. She had moreover a great fondness for intervals of solitude,\nwhich since her arrival in England had been but meagrely met. It was a\nluxury she could always command at home and she had wittingly missed\nit. That evening, however, an incident occurred which--had there been a\ncritic to note it--would have taken all colour from the theory that the\nwish to be quite by herself had caused her to dispense with her cousin's\nattendance. Seated toward nine o'clock in the dim illumination of\nPratt's Hotel and trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose\nherself in a volume she had brought from Gardencourt, she succeeded\nonly to the extent of reading other words than those printed on the\npage--words that Ralph had spoken to her that afternoon. Suddenly\nthe well-muffed knuckle of the waiter was applied to the door, which\npresently gave way to his exhibition, even as a glorious trophy, of the\ncard of a visitor. When this memento had offered to her fixed sight the\nname of Mr. Caspar Goodwood she let the man stand before her without\nsignifying her wishes.\n\n\"Shall I show the gentleman up, ma'am?\" he asked with a slightly\nencouraging inflexion.\n\nIsabel hesitated still and while she hesitated glanced at the mirror.\n\"He may come in,\" she said at last; and waited for him not so much\nsmoothing her hair as girding her spirit.\n\nCaspar Goodwood was accordingly the next moment shaking hands with her,\nbut saying nothing till the servant had left the room. \"Why didn't you\nanswer my letter?\" he then asked in a quick, full, slightly peremptory\ntone--the tone of a man whose questions were habitually pointed and who\nwas capable of much insistence.\n\nShe answered by a ready question, \"How did you know I was here?\"\n\n\"Miss Stackpole let me know,\" said Caspar Goodwood. \"She told me you\nwould probably be at home alone this evening and would be willing to see\nme.\"\n\n\"Where did she see you--to tell you that?\"\n\n\"She didn't see me; she wrote to me.\"\n\nIsabel was silent; neither had sat down; they stood there with an air\nof defiance, or at least of contention. \"Henrietta never told me she was\nwriting to you,\" she said at last. \"This is not kind of her.\"\n\n\"Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?\" asked the young man.\n\n\"I didn't expect it. I don't like such surprises.\"\n\n\"But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should meet.\"\n\n\"Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn't see you. In so big a\nplace as London it seemed very possible.\"\n\n\"It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me,\" her visitor\nwent on.\n\nIsabel made no reply; the sense of Henrietta Stackpole's treachery,\nas she momentarily qualified it, was strong within her. \"Henrietta's\ncertainly not a model of all the delicacies!\" she exclaimed with\nbitterness. \"It was a great liberty to take.\"\n\n\"I suppose I'm not a model either--of those virtues or of any others.\nThe fault's mine as much as hers.\"\n\nAs Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never been\nmore square. This might have displeased her, but she took a different\nturn. \"No, it's not your fault so much as hers. What you've done was\ninevitable, I suppose, for you.\"\n\n\"It was indeed!\" cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh.\n\n\"And now that I've come, at any rate, mayn't I stay?\"\n\n\"You may sit down, certainly.\"\n\nShe went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the first place\nthat offered, in the manner of a man accustomed to pay little thought to\nthat sort of furtherance. \"I've been hoping every day for an answer to\nmy letter. You might have written me a few lines.\"\n\n\"It wasn't the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as easily\nhave written you four pages as one. But my silence was an intention,\"\nIsabel said. \"I thought it the best thing.\"\n\nHe sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she spoke; then he lowered them\nand attached them to a spot in the carpet as if he were making a strong\neffort to say nothing but what he ought. He was a strong man in the\nwrong, and he was acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition\nof his strength would only throw the falsity of his position into\nrelief. Isabel was not incapable of tasting any advantage of position\nover a person of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it\nin his face she could enjoy being able to say \"You know you oughtn't to\nhave written to me yourself!\" and to say it with an air of triumph.\n\nCaspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her own again; they seemed to shine\nthrough the vizard of a helmet. He had a strong sense of justice and was\nready any day in the year--over and above this--to argue the question\nof his rights. \"You said you hoped never to hear from me again; I know\nthat. But I never accepted any such rule as my own. I warned you that\nyou should hear very soon.\"\n\n\"I didn't say I hoped NEVER to hear from you,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Not for five years then; for ten years; twenty years. It's the same\nthing.\"\n\n\"Do you find it so? It seems to me there's a great difference. I can\nimagine that at the end of ten years we might have a very pleasant\ncorrespondence. I shall have matured my epistolary style.\"\n\nShe looked away while she spoke these words, knowing them of so much\nless earnest a cast than the countenance of her listener. Her eyes,\nhowever, at last came back to him, just as he said very irrelevantly;\n\"Are you enjoying your visit to your uncle?\"\n\n\"Very much indeed.\" She dropped, but then she broke out. \"What good do\nyou expect to get by insisting?\"\n\n\"The good of not losing you.\"\n\n\"You've no right to talk of losing what's not yours. And even from your\nown point of view,\" Isabel added, \"you ought to know when to let one\nalone.\"\n\n\"I disgust you very much,\" said Caspar Goodwood gloomily; not as if to\nprovoke her to compassion for a man conscious of this blighting fact,\nbut as if to set it well before himself, so that he might endeavour to\nact with his eyes on it.\n\n\"Yes, you don't at all delight me, you don't fit in, not in any way,\njust now, and the worst is that your putting it to the proof in this\nmanner is quite unnecessary.\" It wasn't certainly as if his nature had\nbeen soft, so that pin-pricks would draw blood from it; and from the\nfirst of her acquaintance with him, and of her having to defend herself\nagainst a certain air that he had of knowing better what was good for\nher than she knew herself, she had recognised the fact that perfect\nfrankness was her best weapon. To attempt to spare his sensibility or to\nescape from him edgewise, as one might do from a man who had barred\nthe way less sturdily--this, in dealing with Caspar Goodwood, who would\ngrasp at everything of every sort that one might give him, was wasted\nagility. It was not that he had not susceptibilities, but his passive\nsurface, as well as his active, was large and hard, and he might always\nbe trusted to dress his wounds, so far as they required it, himself. She\ncame back, even for her measure of possible pangs and aches in him,\nto her old sense that he was naturally plated and steeled, armed\nessentially for aggression.\n\n\"I can't reconcile myself to that,\" he simply said. There was a\ndangerous liberality about it; for she felt how open it was to him to\nmake the point that he had not always disgusted her.\n\n\"I can't reconcile myself to it either, and it's not the state of things\nthat ought to exist between us. If you'd only try to banish me from your\nmind for a few months we should be on good terms again.\"\n\n\"I see. If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed time,\nI should find I could keep it up indefinitely.\"\n\n\"Indefinitely is more than I ask. It's more even than I should like.\"\n\n\"You know that what you ask is impossible,\" said the young man, taking\nhis adjective for granted in a manner she found irritating.\n\n\"Aren't you capable of making a calculated effort?\" she demanded.\n\"You're strong for everything else; why shouldn't you be strong for\nthat?\"\n\n\"An effort calculated for what?\" And then as she hung fire, \"I'm\ncapable of nothing with regard to you,\" he went on, \"but just of being\ninfernally in love with you. If one's strong one loves only the more\nstrongly.\"\n\n\"There's a good deal in that;\" and indeed our young lady felt the\nforce of it--felt it thrown off, into the vast of truth and poetry,\nas practically a bait to her imagination. But she promptly came round.\n\"Think of me or not, as you find most possible; only leave me alone.\"\n\n\"Until when?\"\n\n\"Well, for a year or two.\"\n\n\"Which do you mean? Between one year and two there's all the difference\nin the world.\"\n\n\"Call it two then,\" said Isabel with a studied effect of eagerness.\n\n\"And what shall I gain by that?\" her friend asked with no sign of\nwincing.\n\n\"You'll have obliged me greatly.\"\n\n\"And what will be my reward?\"\n\n\"Do you need a reward for an act of generosity?\"\n\n\"Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice.\"\n\n\"There's no generosity without some sacrifice. Men don't understand such\nthings. If you make the sacrifice you'll have all my admiration.\"\n\n\"I don't care a cent for your admiration--not one straw, with nothing to\nshow for it. When will you marry me? That's the only question.\"\n\n\"Never--if you go on making me feel only as I feel at present.\"\n\n\"What do I gain then by not trying to make you feel otherwise?\"\n\n\"You'll gain quite as much as by worrying me to death!\" Caspar Goodwood\nbent his eyes again and gazed a while into the crown of his hat. A\ndeep flush overspread his face; she could see her sharpness had at last\npenetrated. This immediately had a value--classic, romantic, redeeming,\nwhat did she know? for her; \"the strong man in pain\" was one of the\ncategories of the human appeal, little charm as he might exert in the\ngiven case. \"Why do you make me say such things to you?\" she cried in a\ntrembling voice. \"I only want to be gentle--to be thoroughly kind. It's\nnot delightful to me to feel people care for me and yet to have to try\nand reason them out of it. I think others also ought to be considerate;\nwe have each to judge for ourselves. I know you're considerate, as much\nas you can be; you've good reasons for what you do. But I really don't\nwant to marry, or to talk about it at all now. I shall probably never\ndo it--no, never. I've a perfect right to feel that way, and it's no\nkindness to a woman to press her so hard, to urge her against her will.\nIf I give you pain I can only say I'm very sorry. It's not my fault; I\ncan't marry you simply to please you. I won't say that I shall always\nremain your friend, because when women say that, in these situations, it\npasses, I believe, for a sort of mockery. But try me some day.\"\n\nCaspar Goodwood, during this speech, had kept his eyes fixed upon the\nname of his hatter, and it was not until some time after she had ceased\nspeaking that he raised them. When he did so the sight of a rosy, lovely\neagerness in Isabel's face threw some confusion into his attempt to\nanalyse her words. \"I'll go home--I'll go to-morrow--I'll leave you\nalone,\" he brought out at last. \"Only,\" he heavily said, \"I hate to lose\nsight of you!\"\n\n\"Never fear. I shall do no harm.\"\n\n\"You'll marry some one else, as sure as I sit here,\" Caspar Goodwood\ndeclared.\n\n\"Do you think that a generous charge?\"\n\n\"Why not? Plenty of men will try to make you.\"\n\n\"I told you just now that I don't wish to marry and that I almost\ncertainly never shall.\"\n\n\"I know you did, and I like your 'almost certainly'! I put no faith in\nwhat you say.\"\n\n\"Thank you very much. Do you accuse me of lying to shake you off? You\nsay very delicate things.\"\n\n\"Why should I not say that? You've given me no pledge of anything at\nall.\"\n\n\"No, that's all that would be wanting!\"\n\n\"You may perhaps even believe you're safe--from wishing to be. But\nyou're not,\" the young man went on as if preparing himself for the\nworst.\n\n\"Very well then. We'll put it that I'm not safe. Have it as you please.\"\n\n\"I don't know, however,\" said Caspar Goodwood, \"that my keeping you in\nsight would prevent it.\"\n\n\"Don't you indeed? I'm after all very much afraid of you. Do you think\nI'm so very easily pleased?\" she asked suddenly, changing her tone.\n\n\"No--I don't; I shall try to console myself with that. But there are a\ncertain number of very dazzling men in the world, no doubt; and if there\nwere only one it would be enough. The most dazzling of all will make\nstraight for you. You'll be sure to take no one who isn't dazzling.\"\n\n\"If you mean by dazzling brilliantly clever,\" Isabel said--\"and I can't\nimagine what else you mean--I don't need the aid of a clever man to\nteach me how to live. I can find it out for myself.\"\n\n\"Find out how to live alone? I wish that, when you have, you'd teach\nme!\"\n\nShe looked at him a moment; then with a quick smile, \"Oh, you ought to\nmarry!\" she said.\n\nHe might be pardoned if for an instant this exclamation seemed to him\nto sound the infernal note, and it is not on record that her motive for\ndischarging such a shaft had been of the clearest. He oughtn't to stride\nabout lean and hungry, however--she certainly felt THAT for him. \"God\nforgive you!\" he murmured between his teeth as he turned away.\n\nHer accent had put her slightly in the wrong, and after a moment she\nfelt the need to right herself. The easiest way to do it was to place\nhim where she had been. \"You do me great injustice--you say what you\ndon't know!\" she broke out. \"I shouldn't be an easy victim--I've proved\nit.\"\n\n\"Oh, to me, perfectly.\"\n\n\"I've proved it to others as well.\" And she paused a moment. \"I refused\na proposal of marriage last week; what they call--no doubt--a dazzling\none.\"\n\n\"I'm very glad to hear it,\" said the young man gravely.\n\n\"It was a proposal many girls would have accepted; it had everything to\nrecommend it.\" Isabel had not proposed to herself to tell this story,\nbut, now she had begun, the satisfaction of speaking it out and doing\nherself justice took possession of her. \"I was offered a great position\nand a great fortune--by a person whom I like extremely.\"\n\nCaspar watched her with intense interest. \"Is he an Englishman?\"\n\n\"He's an English nobleman,\" said Isabel.\n\nHer visitor received this announcement at first in silence, but at last\nsaid: \"I'm glad he's disappointed.\"\n\n\"Well then, as you have companions in misfortune, make the best of it.\"\n\n\"I don't call him a companion,\" said Casper grimly.\n\n\"Why not--since I declined his offer absolutely?\"\n\n\"That doesn't make him my companion. Besides, he's an Englishman.\"\n\n\"And pray isn't an Englishman a human being?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"Oh, those people? They're not of my humanity, and I don't care what\nbecomes of them.\"\n\n\"You're very angry,\" said the girl. \"We've discussed this matter quite\nenough.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I'm very angry. I plead guilty to that!\"\n\nShe turned away from him, walked to the open window and stood a moment\nlooking into the dusky void of the street, where a turbid gaslight\nalone represented social animation. For some time neither of these young\npersons spoke; Caspar lingered near the chimney-piece with eyes gloomily\nattached. She had virtually requested him to go--he knew that; but at\nthe risk of making himself odious he kept his ground. She was far too\ndear to him to be easily renounced, and he had crossed the sea all to\nwring from her some scrap of a vow. Presently she left the window and\nstood again before him. \"You do me very little justice--after my telling\nyou what I told you just now. I'm sorry I told you--since it matters so\nlittle to you.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried the young man, \"if you were thinking of ME when you did it!\"\nAnd then he paused with the fear that she might contradict so happy a\nthought.\n\n\"I was thinking of you a little,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"A little? I don't understand. If the knowledge of what I feel for you\nhad any weight with you at all, calling it a 'little' is a poor account\nof it.\"\n\nIsabel shook her head as if to carry off a blunder. \"I've refused a most\nkind, noble gentleman. Make the most of that.\"\n\n\"I thank you then,\" said Caspar Goodwood gravely. \"I thank you\nimmensely.\"\n\n\"And now you had better go home.\"\n\n\"May I not see you again?\" he asked.\n\n\"I think it's better not. You'll be sure to talk of this, and you see it\nleads to nothing.\"\n\n\"I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you.\"\n\nIsabel reflected and then answered: \"I return in a day or two to my\nuncle's, and I can't propose to you to come there. It would be too\ninconsistent.\"\n\nCaspar Goodwood, on his side, considered. \"You must do me justice too.\nI received an invitation to your uncle's more than a week ago, and I\ndeclined it.\"\n\nShe betrayed surprise. \"From whom was your invitation?\"\n\n\"From Mr. Ralph Touchett, whom I suppose to be your cousin. I declined\nit because I had not your authorisation to accept it. The suggestion\nthat Mr. Touchett should invite me appeared to have come from Miss\nStackpole.\"\n\n\"It certainly never did from me. Henrietta really goes very far,\" Isabel\nadded.\n\n\"Don't be too hard on her--that touches ME.\"\n\n\"No; if you declined you did quite right, and I thank you for it.\" And\nshe gave a little shudder of dismay at the thought that Lord Warburton\nand Mr. Goodwood might have met at Gardencourt: it would have been so\nawkward for Lord Warburton.\n\n\"When you leave your uncle where do you go?\" her companion asked.\n\n\"I go abroad with my aunt--to Florence and other places.\"\n\nThe serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young man's\nheart; he seemed to see her whirled away into circles from which he was\ninexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on quickly with his questions.\n\"And when shall you come back to America?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not for a long time. I'm very happy here.\"\n\n\"Do you mean to give up your country?\"\n\n\"Don't be an infant!\"\n\n\"Well, you'll be out of my sight indeed!\" said Caspar Goodwood.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she answered rather grandly. \"The world--with all these\nplaces so arranged and so touching each other--comes to strike one as\nrather small.\"\n\n\"It's a sight too big for ME!\" Caspar exclaimed with a simplicity\nour young lady might have found touching if her face had not been set\nagainst concessions.\n\nThis attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had lately\nembraced, and to be thorough she said after a moment: \"Don't think me\nunkind if I say it's just THAT--being out of your sight--that I like.\nIf you were in the same place I should feel you were watching me, and I\ndon't like that--I like my liberty too much. If there's a thing in the\nworld I'm fond of,\" she went on with a slight recurrence of grandeur,\n\"it's my personal independence.\"\n\nBut whatever there might be of the too superior in this speech moved\nCaspar Goodwood's admiration; there was nothing he winced at in the\nlarge air of it. He had never supposed she hadn't wings and the need of\nbeautiful free movements--he wasn't, with his own long arms and strides,\nafraid of any force in her. Isabel's words, if they had been meant to\nshock him, failed of the mark and only made him smile with the sense\nthat here was common ground. \"Who would wish less to curtail your\nliberty than I? What can give me greater pleasure than to see you\nperfectly independent--doing whatever you like? It's to make you\nindependent that I want to marry you.\"\n\n\"That's a beautiful sophism,\" said the girl with a smile more beautiful\nstill.\n\n\"An unmarried woman--a girl of your age--isn't independent. There are\nall sorts of things she can't do. She's hampered at every step.\"\n\n\"That's as she looks at the question,\" Isabel answered with much spirit.\n\"I'm not in my first youth--I can do what I choose--I belong quite to\nthe independent class. I've neither father nor mother; I'm poor and of\na serious disposition; I'm not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be\ntimid and conventional; indeed I can't afford such luxuries. Besides,\nI try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more\nhonourable than not to judge at all. I don't wish to be a mere sheep in\nthe flock; I wish to choose my fate and know something of human affairs\nbeyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me.\"\nShe paused a moment, but not long enough for her companion to reply. He\nwas apparently on the point of doing so when she went on: \"Let me say\nthis to you, Mr. Goodwood. You're so kind as to speak of being afraid of\nmy marrying. If you should hear a rumour that I'm on the point of doing\nso--girls are liable to have such things said about them--remember what\nI have told you about my love of liberty and venture to doubt it.\"\n\nThere was something passionately positive in the tone in which she gave\nhim this advice, and he saw a shining candour in her eyes that helped\nhim to believe her. On the whole he felt reassured, and you might have\nperceived it by the manner in which he said, quite eagerly: \"You want\nsimply to travel for two years? I'm quite willing to wait two years, and\nyou may do what you like in the interval. If that's all you want,\npray say so. I don't want you to be conventional; do I strike you as\nconventional myself? Do you want to improve your mind? Your mind's quite\ngood enough for me; but if it interests you to wander about a while and\nsee different countries I shall be delighted to help you in any way in\nmy power.\"\n\n\"You're very generous; that's nothing new to me. The best way to help me\nwill be to put as many hundred miles of sea between us as possible.\"\n\n\"One would think you were going to commit some atrocity!\" said Caspar\nGoodwood.\n\n\"Perhaps I am. I wish to be free even to do that if the fancy takes me.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" he said slowly, \"I'll go home.\" And he put out his hand,\ntrying to look contented and confident.\n\nIsabel's confidence in him, however, was greater than any he could feel\nin her. Not that he thought her capable of committing an atrocity; but,\nturn it over as he would, there was something ominous in the way she\nreserved her option. As she took his hand she felt a great respect for\nhim; she knew how much he cared for her and she thought him magnanimous.\nThey stood so for a moment, looking at each other, united by a\nhand-clasp which was not merely passive on her side. \"That's right,\"\nshe said very kindly, almost tenderly. \"You'll lose nothing by being a\nreasonable man.\"\n\n\"But I'll come back, wherever you are, two years hence,\" he returned\nwith characteristic grimness.\n\nWe have seen that our young lady was inconsequent, and at this she\nsuddenly changed her note. \"Ah, remember, I promise nothing--absolutely\nnothing!\" Then more softly, as if to help him to leave her: \"And\nremember too that I shall not be an easy victim!\"\n\n\"You'll get very sick of your independence.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I shall; it's even very probable. When that day comes I shall\nbe very glad to see you.\"\n\nShe had laid her hand on the knob of the door that led into her room,\nand she waited a moment to see whether her visitor would not take his\ndeparture. But he appeared unable to move; there was still an immense\nunwillingness in his attitude and a sore remonstrance in his eyes. \"I\nmust leave you now,\" said Isabel; and she opened the door and passed\ninto the other room.\n\nThis apartment was dark, but the darkness was tempered by a vague\nradiance sent up through the window from the court of the hotel, and\nIsabel could make out the masses of the furniture, the dim shining of\nthe mirror and the looming of the big four-posted bed. She stood still a\nmoment, listening, and at last she heard Caspar Goodwood walk out of\nthe sitting-room and close the door behind him. She stood still a little\nlonger, and then, by an irresistible impulse, dropped on her knees\nbefore her bed and hid her face in her arms.\n\n\n\n\n\nShe was not praying; she was trembling--trembling all over. Vibration\nwas easy to her, was in fact too constant with her, and she found\nherself now humming like a smitten harp. She only asked, however, to put\non the cover, to case herself again in brown holland, but she wished to\nresist her excitement, and the attitude of devotion, which she kept for\nsome time, seemed to help her to be still. She intensely rejoiced that\nCaspar Goodwood was gone; there was something in having thus got rid of\nhim that was like the payment, for a stamped receipt, of some debt\ntoo long on her mind. As she felt the glad relief she bowed her head a\nlittle lower; the sense was there, throbbing in her heart; it was part\nof her emotion, but it was a thing to be ashamed of--it was profane and\nout of place. It was not for some ten minutes that she rose from her\nknees, and even when she came back to the sitting-room her tremor had\nnot quite subsided. It had had, verily, two causes: part of it was to be\naccounted for by her long discussion with Mr. Goodwood, but it might be\nfeared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the exercise\nof her power. She sat down in the same chair again and took up her book,\nbut without going through the form of opening the volume. She leaned\nback, with that low, soft, aspiring murmur with which she often\nuttered her response to accidents of which the brighter side was not\nsuperficially obvious, and yielded to the satisfaction of having refused\ntwo ardent suitors in a fortnight. That love of liberty of which she\nhad given Caspar Goodwood so bold a sketch was as yet almost exclusively\ntheoretic; she had not been able to indulge it on a large scale. But it\nappeared to her she had done something; she had tasted of the delight,\nif not of battle, at least of victory; she had done what was truest to\nher plan. In the glow of this consciousness the image of Mr. Goodwood\ntaking his sad walk homeward through the dingy town presented itself\nwith a certain reproachful force; so that, as at the same moment the\ndoor of the room was opened, she rose with an apprehension that he\nhad come back. But it was only Henrietta Stackpole returning from her\ndinner.\n\nMiss Stackpole immediately saw that our young lady had been \"through\"\nsomething, and indeed the discovery demanded no great penetration. She\nwent straight up to her friend, who received her without a greeting.\nIsabel's elation in having sent Caspar Goodwood back to America\npresupposed her being in a manner glad he had come to see her; but at\nthe same time she perfectly remembered Henrietta had had no right to set\na trap for her. \"Has he been here, dear?\" the latter yearningly asked.\n\nIsabel turned away and for some moments answered nothing. \"You acted\nvery wrongly,\" she declared at last.\n\n\"I acted for the best. I only hope you acted as well.\"\n\n\"You're not the judge. I can't trust you,\" said Isabel.\n\nThis declaration was unflattering, but Henrietta was much too unselfish\nto heed the charge it conveyed; she cared only for what it intimated\nwith regard to her friend. \"Isabel Archer,\" she observed with equal\nabruptness and solemnity, \"if you marry one of these people I'll never\nspeak to you again!\"\n\n\"Before making so terrible a threat you had better wait till I'm asked,\"\nIsabel replied. Never having said a word to Miss Stackpole about Lord\nWarburton's overtures, she had now no impulse whatever to justify\nherself to Henrietta by telling her that she had refused that nobleman.\n\n\"Oh, you'll be asked quick enough, once you get off on the Continent.\nAnnie Climber was asked three times in Italy--poor plain little Annie.\"\n\n\"Well, if Annie Climber wasn't captured why should I be?\"\n\n\"I don't believe Annie was pressed; but you'll be.\"\n\n\"That's a flattering conviction,\" said Isabel without alarm.\n\n\"I don't flatter you, Isabel, I tell you the truth!\" cried her friend.\n\"I hope you don't mean to tell me that you didn't give Mr. Goodwood some\nhope.\"\n\n\"I don't see why I should tell you anything; as I said to you just now,\nI can't trust you. But since you're so much interested in Mr. Goodwood I\nwon't conceal from you that he returns immediately to America.\"\n\n\"You don't mean to say you've sent him off?\" Henrietta almost shrieked.\n\n\"I asked him to leave me alone; and I ask you the same, Henrietta.\" Miss\nStackpole glittered for an instant with dismay, and then passed to the\nmirror over the chimney-piece and took off her bonnet. \"I hope you've\nenjoyed your dinner,\" Isabel went on.\n\nBut her companion was not to be diverted by frivolous propositions. \"Do\nyou know where you're going, Isabel Archer?\"\n\n\"Just now I'm going to bed,\" said Isabel with persistent frivolity.\n\n\"Do you know where you're drifting?\" Henrietta pursued, holding out her\nbonnet delicately.\n\n\"No, I haven't the least idea, and I find it very pleasant not to know.\nA swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads\nthat one can't see--that's my idea of happiness.\"\n\n\"Mr. Goodwood certainly didn't teach you to say such things as\nthat--like the heroine of an immoral novel,\" said Miss Stackpole.\n\"You're drifting to some great mistake.\"\n\nIsabel was irritated by her friend's interference, yet she still tried\nto think what truth this declaration could represent. She could think\nof nothing that diverted her from saying: \"You must be very fond of me,\nHenrietta, to be willing to be so aggressive.\"\n\n\"I love you intensely, Isabel,\" said Miss Stackpole with feeling.\n\n\"Well, if you love me intensely let me as intensely alone. I asked that\nof Mr. Goodwood, and I must also ask it of you.\"\n\n\"Take care you're not let alone too much.\"\n\n\"That's what Mr. Goodwood said to me. I told him I must take the risks.\"\n\n\"You're a creature of risks--you make me shudder!\" cried Henrietta.\n\"When does Mr. Goodwood return to America?\"\n\n\"I don't know--he didn't tell me.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you didn't enquire,\" said Henrietta with the note of righteous\nirony.\n\n\"I gave him too little satisfaction to have the right to ask questions\nof him.\"\n\nThis assertion seemed to Miss Stackpole for a moment to bid defiance to\ncomment; but at last she exclaimed: \"Well, Isabel, if I didn't know you\nI might think you were heartless!\"\n\n\"Take care,\" said Isabel; \"you're spoiling me.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I've done that already. I hope, at least,\" Miss Stackpole\nadded, \"that he may cross with Annie Climber!\"\n\nIsabel learned from her the next morning that she had determined not to\nreturn to Gardencourt (where old Mr. Touchett had promised her a renewed\nwelcome), but to await in London the arrival of the invitation that Mr.\nBantling had promised her from his sister Lady Pensil. Miss Stackpole\nrelated very freely her conversation with Ralph Touchett's sociable\nfriend and declared to Isabel that she really believed she had now got\nhold of something that would lead to something. On the receipt of Lady\nPensil's letter--Mr. Bantling had virtually guaranteed the arrival of\nthis document--she would immediately depart for Bedfordshire, and if\nIsabel cared to look out for her impressions in the Interviewer\nshe would certainly find them. Henrietta was evidently going to see\nsomething of the inner life this time.\n\n\"Do you know where you're drifting, Henrietta Stackpole?\" Isabel asked,\nimitating the tone in which her friend had spoken the night before.\n\n\"I'm drifting to a big position--that of the Queen of American\nJournalism. If my next letter isn't copied all over the West I'll\nswallow my penwiper!\"\n\nShe had arranged with her friend Miss Annie Climber, the young lady\nof the continental offers, that they should go together to make\nthose purchases which were to constitute Miss Climber's farewell to a\nhemisphere in which she at least had been appreciated; and she presently\nrepaired to Jermyn Street to pick up her companion. Shortly after her\ndeparture Ralph Touchett was announced, and as soon as he came in Isabel\nsaw he had something on his mind. He very soon took his cousin into his\nconfidence. He had received from his mother a telegram to the effect\nthat his father had had a sharp attack of his old malady, that she\nwas much alarmed and that she begged he would instantly return to\nGardencourt. On this occasion at least Mrs. Touchett's devotion to the\nelectric wire was not open to criticism.\n\n\"I've judged it best to see the great doctor, Sir Matthew Hope,\nfirst,\" Ralph said; \"by great good luck he's in town. He's to see me\nat half-past twelve, and I shall make sure of his coming down to\nGardencourt--which he will do the more readily as he has already seen\nmy father several times, both there and in London. There's an express\nat two-forty-five, which I shall take; and you'll come back with me or\nremain here a few days longer, exactly as you prefer.\"\n\n\"I shall certainly go with you,\" Isabel returned. \"I don't suppose I can\nbe of any use to my uncle, but if he's ill I shall like to be near him.\"\n\n\"I think you're fond of him,\" said Ralph with a certain shy pleasure\nin his face. \"You appreciate him, which all the world hasn't done. The\nquality's too fine.\"\n\n\"I quite adore him,\" Isabel after a moment said.\n\n\"That's very well. After his son he's your greatest admirer.\" She\nwelcomed this assurance, but she gave secretly a small sigh of relief\nat the thought that Mr. Touchett was one of those admirers who couldn't\npropose to marry her. This, however, was not what she spoke; she went on\nto inform Ralph that there were other reasons for her not remaining in\nLondon. She was tired of it and wished to leave it; and then Henrietta\nwas going away--going to stay in Bedfordshire.\n\n\"In Bedfordshire?\"\n\n\"With Lady Pensil, the sister of Mr. Bantling, who has answered for an\ninvitation.\"\n\nRalph was feeling anxious, but at this he broke into a laugh. Suddenly,\nnone the less, his gravity returned. \"Bantling's a man of courage. But\nif the invitation should get lost on the way?\"\n\n\"I thought the British post-office was impeccable.\"\n\n\"The good Homer sometimes nods,\" said Ralph. \"However,\" he went on more\nbrightly, \"the good Bantling never does, and, whatever happens, he'll\ntake care of Henrietta.\"\n\nRalph went to keep his appointment with Sir Matthew Hope, and Isabel\nmade her arrangements for quitting Pratt's Hotel. Her uncle's danger\ntouched her nearly, and while she stood before her open trunk, looking\nabout her vaguely for what she should put into it, the tears suddenly\nrose to her eyes. It was perhaps for this reason that when Ralph came\nback at two o'clock to take her to the station she was not yet ready. He\nfound Miss Stackpole, however, in the sitting-room, where she had just\nrisen from her luncheon, and this lady immediately expressed her regret\nat his father's illness.\n\n\"He's a grand old man,\" she said; \"he's faithful to the last. If it's\nreally to be the last--pardon my alluding to it, but you must often\nhave thought of the possibility--I'm sorry that I shall not be at\nGardencourt.\"\n\n\"You'll amuse yourself much more in Bedfordshire.\"\n\n\"I shall be sorry to amuse myself at such a time,\" said Henrietta\nwith much propriety. But she immediately added: \"I should like so to\ncommemorate the closing scene.\"\n\n\"My father may live a long time,\" said Ralph simply. Then, adverting\nto topics more cheerful, he interrogated Miss Stackpole as to her own\nfuture.\n\nNow that Ralph was in trouble she addressed him in a tone of larger\nallowance and told him that she was much indebted to him for having made\nher acquainted with Mr. Bantling. \"He has told me just the things I\nwant to know,\" she said; \"all the society items and all about the royal\nfamily. I can't make out that what he tells me about the royal family is\nmuch to their credit; but he says that's only my peculiar way of looking\nat it. Well, all I want is that he should give me the facts; I can put\nthem together quick enough, once I've got them.\" And she added that Mr.\nBantling had been so good as to promise to come and take her out that\nafternoon.\n\n\"To take you where?\" Ralph ventured to enquire.\n\n\"To Buckingham Palace. He's going to show me over it, so that I may get\nsome idea how they live.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Ralph, \"we leave you in good hands. The first thing we shall\nhear is that you're invited to Windsor Castle.\"\n\n\"If they ask me, I shall certainly go. Once I get started I'm not\nafraid. But for all that,\" Henrietta added in a moment, \"I'm not\nsatisfied; I'm not at peace about Isabel.\"\n\n\"What is her last misdemeanour?\"\n\n\"Well, I've told you before, and I suppose there's no harm in my going\non. I always finish a subject that I take up. Mr. Goodwood was here last\nnight.\"\n\nRalph opened his eyes; he even blushed a little--his blush being\nthe sign of an emotion somewhat acute. He remembered that Isabel, in\nseparating from him in Winchester Square, had repudiated his suggestion\nthat her motive in doing so was the expectation of a visitor at Pratt's\nHotel, and it was a new pang to him to have to suspect her of duplicity.\nOn the other hand, he quickly said to himself, what concern was it of\nhis that she should have made an appointment with a lover? Had it not\nbeen thought graceful in every age that young ladies should make a\nmystery of such appointments? Ralph gave Miss Stackpole a diplomatic\nanswer. \"I should have thought that, with the views you expressed to me\nthe other day, this would satisfy you perfectly.\"\n\n\"That he should come to see her? That was very well, as far as it went.\nIt was a little plot of mine; I let him know that we were in London, and\nwhen it had been arranged that I should spend the evening out I sent him\na word--the word we just utter to the 'wise.' I hoped he would find her\nalone; I won't pretend I didn't hope that you'd be out of the way. He\ncame to see her, but he might as well have stayed away.\"\n\n\"Isabel was cruel?\"--and Ralph's face lighted with the relief of his\ncousin's not having shown duplicity.\n\n\"I don't exactly know what passed between them. But she gave him no\nsatisfaction--she sent him back to America.\"\n\n\"Poor Mr. Goodwood!\" Ralph sighed.\n\n\"Her only idea seems to be to get rid of him,\" Henrietta went on.\n\n\"Poor Mr. Goodwood!\" Ralph repeated. The exclamation, it must be\nconfessed, was automatic; it failed exactly to express his thoughts,\nwhich were taking another line.\n\n\"You don't say that as if you felt it. I don't believe you care.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Ralph, \"you must remember that I don't know this interesting\nyoung man--that I've never seen him.\"\n\n\"Well, I shall see him, and I shall tell him not to give up. If I didn't\nbelieve Isabel would come round,\" Miss Stackpole added--\"well, I'd give\nup myself. I mean I'd give HER up!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nIt had occurred to Ralph that, in the conditions, Isabel's parting with\nher friend might be of a slightly embarrassed nature, and he went down\nto the door of the hotel in advance of his cousin, who, after a slight\ndelay, followed with the traces of an unaccepted remonstrance, as he\nthought, in her eyes. The two made the journey to Gardencourt in almost\nunbroken silence, and the servant who met them at the station had no\nbetter news to give them of Mr. Touchett--a fact which caused Ralph to\ncongratulate himself afresh on Sir Matthew Hope's having promised to\ncome down in the five o'clock train and spend the night. Mrs. Touchett,\nhe learned, on reaching home, had been constantly with the old man and\nwas with him at that moment; and this fact made Ralph say to himself\nthat, after all, what his mother wanted was just easy occasion. The\nfiner natures were those that shone at the larger times. Isabel went to\nher own room, noting throughout the house that perceptible hush which\nprecedes a crisis. At the end of an hour, however, she came downstairs\nin search of her aunt, whom she wished to ask about Mr. Touchett. She\nwent into the library, but Mrs. Touchett was not there, and as the\nweather, which had been damp and chill, was now altogether spoiled, it\nwas not probable she had gone for her usual walk in the grounds. Isabel\nwas on the point of ringing to send a question to her room, when this\npurpose quickly yielded to an unexpected sound--the sound of low music\nproceeding apparently from the saloon. She knew her aunt never touched\nthe piano, and the musician was therefore probably Ralph, who played for\nhis own amusement. That he should have resorted to this recreation at\nthe present time indicated apparently that his anxiety about his father\nhad been relieved; so that the girl took her way, almost with restored\ncheer, toward the source of the harmony. The drawing-room at Gardencourt\nwas an apartment of great distances, and, as the piano was placed at\nthe end of it furthest removed from the door at which she entered, her\narrival was not noticed by the person seated before the instrument.\nThis person was neither Ralph nor his mother; it was a lady whom\nIsabel immediately saw to be a stranger to herself, though her back was\npresented to the door. This back--an ample and well-dressed one--Isabel\nviewed for some moments with surprise. The lady was of course a visitor\nwho had arrived during her absence and who had not been mentioned by\neither of the servants--one of them her aunt's maid--of whom she had had\nspeech since her return. Isabel had already learned, however, with\nwhat treasures of reserve the function of receiving orders may be\naccompanied, and she was particularly conscious of having been treated\nwith dryness by her aunt's maid, through whose hands she had slipped\nperhaps a little too mistrustfully and with an effect of plumage but\nthe more lustrous. The advent of a guest was in itself far from\ndisconcerting; she had not yet divested herself of a young faith that\neach new acquaintance would exert some momentous influence on her life.\nBy the time she had made these reflexions she became aware that the\nlady at the piano played remarkably well. She was playing something\nof Schubert's--Isabel knew not what, but recognised Schubert--and she\ntouched the piano with a discretion of her own. It showed skill, it\nshowed feeling; Isabel sat down noiselessly on the nearest chair and\nwaited till the end of the piece. When it was finished she felt a strong\ndesire to thank the player, and rose from her seat to do so, while at\nthe same time the stranger turned quickly round, as if but just aware of\nher presence.\n\n\"That's very beautiful, and your playing makes it more beautiful still,\"\nsaid Isabel with all the young radiance with which she usually uttered a\ntruthful rapture.\n\n\"You don't think I disturbed Mr. Touchett then?\" the musician answered\nas sweetly as this compliment deserved. \"The house is so large and his\nroom so far away that I thought I might venture, especially as I played\njust--just du bout des doigts.\"\n\n\"She's a Frenchwoman,\" Isabel said to herself; \"she says that as if she\nwere French.\" And this supposition made the visitor more interesting to\nour speculative heroine. \"I hope my uncle's doing well,\" Isabel added.\n\"I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make\nhim feel better.\"\n\nThe lady smiled and discriminated. \"I'm afraid there are moments in life\nwhen even Schubert has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however,\nthat they are our worst.\"\n\n\"I'm not in that state now then,\" said Isabel. \"On the contrary I should\nbe so glad if you would play something more.\"\n\n\"If it will give you pleasure--delighted.\" And this obliging person took\nher place again and struck a few chords, while Isabel sat down nearer\nthe instrument. Suddenly the new-comer stopped with her hands on the\nkeys, half-turning and looking over her shoulder. She was forty years\nold and not pretty, though her expression charmed. \"Pardon me,\" she\nsaid; \"but are you the niece--the young American?\"\n\n\"I'm my aunt's niece,\" Isabel replied with simplicity.\n\nThe lady at the piano sat still a moment longer, casting her air of\ninterest over her shoulder. \"That's very well; we're compatriots.\" And\nthen she began to play.\n\n\"Ah then she's not French,\" Isabel murmured; and as the opposite\nsupposition had made her romantic it might have seemed that this\nrevelation would have marked a drop. But such was not the fact; rarer\neven than to be French seemed it to be American on such interesting\nterms.\n\nThe lady played in the same manner as before, softly and solemnly, and\nwhile she played the shadows deepened in the room. The autumn twilight\ngathered in, and from her place Isabel could see the rain, which had now\nbegun in earnest, washing the cold-looking lawn and the wind shaking the\ngreat trees. At last, when the music had ceased, her companion got up\nand, coming nearer with a smile, before Isabel had time to thank her\nagain, said: \"I'm very glad you've come back; I've heard a great deal\nabout you.\"\n\nIsabel thought her a very attractive person, but nevertheless spoke with\na certain abruptness in reply to this speech. \"From whom have you heard\nabout me?\"\n\nThe stranger hesitated a single moment and then, \"From your uncle,\" she\nanswered. \"I've been here three days, and the first day he let me come\nand pay him a visit in his room. Then he talked constantly of you.\"\n\n\"As you didn't know me that must rather have bored you.\"\n\n\"It made me want to know you. All the more that since then--your aunt\nbeing so much with Mr. Touchett--I've been quite alone and have got\nrather tired of my own society. I've not chosen a good moment for my\nvisit.\"\n\nA servant had come in with lamps and was presently followed by another\nbearing the tea-tray. On the appearance of this repast Mrs. Touchett had\napparently been notified, for she now arrived and addressed herself to\nthe tea-pot. Her greeting to her niece did not differ materially from\nher manner of raising the lid of this receptacle in order to glance at\nthe contents: in neither act was it becoming to make a show of avidity.\nQuestioned about her husband she was unable to say he was better; but\nthe local doctor was with him, and much light was expected from this\ngentleman's consultation with Sir Matthew Hope.\n\n\"I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance,\" she pursued. \"If you\nhaven't I recommend you to do so; for so long as we continue--Ralph and\nI--to cluster about Mr. Touchett's bed you're not likely to have much\nsociety but each other.\"\n\n\"I know nothing about you but that you're a great musician,\" Isabel said\nto the visitor.\n\n\"There's a good deal more than that to know,\" Mrs. Touchett affirmed in\nher little dry tone.\n\n\"A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Archer!\" the lady\nexclaimed with a light laugh. \"I'm an old friend of your aunt's.\nI've lived much in Florence. I'm Madame Merle.\" She made this last\nannouncement as if she were referring to a person of tolerably distinct\nidentity. For Isabel, however, it represented little; she could only\ncontinue to feel that Madame Merle had as charming a manner as any she\nhad ever encountered.\n\n\"She's not a foreigner in spite of her name,\" said Mrs. Touchett.\n\n\"She was born--I always forget where you were born.\"\n\n\"It's hardly worth while then I should tell you.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a logical\npoint; \"if I remembered your telling me would be quite superfluous.\"\n\nMadame Merle glanced at Isabel with a sort of world-wide smile, a\nthing that over-reached frontiers. \"I was born under the shadow of the\nnational banner.\"\n\n\"She's too fond of mystery,\" said Mrs. Touchett; \"that's her great\nfault.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" exclaimed Madame Merle, \"I've great faults, but I don't think\nthat's one of then; it certainly isn't the greatest. I came into the\nworld in the Brooklyn navy-yard. My father was a high officer in the\nUnited States Navy, and had a post--a post of responsibility--in that\nestablishment at the time. I suppose I ought to love the sea, but I hate\nit. That's why I don't return to America. I love the land; the great\nthing is to love something.\"\n\nIsabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the\nforce of Mrs. Touchett's characterisation of her visitor, who had an\nexpressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means of the sort\nwhich, to Isabel's mind, suggested a secretive disposition. It was a\nface that told of an amplitude of nature and of quick and free motions\nand, though it had no regular beauty, was in the highest degree engaging\nand attaching. Madame Merle was a tall, fair, smooth woman; everything\nin her person was round and replete, though without those accumulations\nwhich suggest heaviness. Her features were thick but in perfect\nproportion and harmony, and her complexion had a healthy clearness.\nHer grey eyes were small but full of light and incapable of\nstupidity--incapable, according to some people, even of tears; she had\na liberal, full-rimmed mouth which when she smiled drew itself upward to\nthe left side in a manner that most people thought very odd, some very\naffected and a few very graceful. Isabel inclined to range herself in\nthe last category. Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, arranged somehow\n\"classically\" and as if she were a Bust, Isabel judged--a Juno or a\nNiobe; and large white hands, of a perfect shape, a shape so perfect\nthat their possessor, preferring to leave them unadorned, wore no\njewelled rings. Isabel had taken her at first, as we have seen, for\na Frenchwoman; but extended observation might have ranked her as a\nGerman--a German of high degree, perhaps an Austrian, a baroness, a\ncountess, a princess. It would never have been supposed she had come\ninto the world in Brooklyn--though one could doubtless not have carried\nthrough any argument that the air of distinction marking her in so\neminent a degree was inconsistent with such a birth. It was true that\nthe national banner had floated immediately over her cradle, and the\nbreezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an influence\nupon the attitude she there took towards life. And yet she had evidently\nnothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the\nwind; her manner expressed the repose and confidence which come from a\nlarge experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it\nhad simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of\nstrong impulses kept in admirable order. This commended itself to Isabel\nas an ideal combination.\n\nThe girl made these reflexions while the three ladies sat at their tea,\nbut that ceremony was interrupted before long by the arrival of the\ngreat doctor from London, who had been immediately ushered into the\ndrawing-room. Mrs. Touchett took him off to the library for a private\ntalk; and then Madame Merle and Isabel parted, to meet again at dinner.\nThe idea of seeing more of this interesting woman did much to mitigate\nIsabel's sense of the sadness now settling on Gardencourt.\n\nWhen she came into the drawing-room before dinner she found the place\nempty; but in the course of a moment Ralph arrived. His anxiety about\nhis father had been lightened; Sir Matthew Hope's view of his condition\nwas less depressed than his own had been. The doctor recommended that\nthe nurse alone should remain with the old man for the next three or\nfour hours; so that Ralph, his mother and the great physician himself\nwere free to dine at table. Mrs. Touchett and Sir Matthew appeared;\nMadame Merle was the last.\n\nBefore she came Isabel spoke of her to Ralph, who was standing before\nthe fireplace. \"Pray who is this Madame Merle?\"\n\n\"The cleverest woman I know, not excepting yourself,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"I thought she seemed very pleasant.\"\n\n\"I was sure you'd think her very pleasant.\"\n\n\"Is that why you invited her?\"\n\n\"I didn't invite her, and when we came back from London I didn't know\nshe was here. No one invited her. She's a friend of my mother's, and\njust after you and I went to town my mother got a note from her. She had\narrived in England (she usually lives abroad, though she has first and\nlast spent a good deal of time here), and asked leave to come down for\na few days. She's a woman who can make such proposals with perfect\nconfidence; she's so welcome wherever she goes. And with my mother there\ncould be no question of hesitating; she's the one person in the world\nwhom my mother very much admires. If she were not herself (which she\nafter all much prefers), she would like to be Madame Merle. It would\nindeed be a great change.\"\n\n\"Well, she's very charming,\" said Isabel. \"And she plays beautifully.\"\n\n\"She does everything beautifully. She's complete.\"\n\nIsabel looked at her cousin a moment. \"You don't like her.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I was once in love with her.\"\n\n\"And she didn't care for you, and that's why you don't like her.\"\n\n\"How can we have discussed such things? Monsieur Merle was then living.\"\n\n\"Is he dead now?\"\n\n\"So she says.\"\n\n\"Don't you believe her?\"\n\n\"Yes, because the statement agrees with the probabilities. The husband\nof Madame Merle would be likely to pass away.\"\n\nIsabel gazed at her cousin again. \"I don't know what you mean. You mean\nsomething--that you don't mean. What was Monsieur Merle?\"\n\n\"The husband of Madame.\"\n\n\"You're very odious. Has she any children?\"\n\n\"Not the least little child--fortunately.\"\n\n\"Fortunately?\"\n\n\"I mean fortunately for the child. She'd be sure to spoil it.\"\n\nIsabel was apparently on the point of assuring her cousin for the third\ntime that he was odious; but the discussion was interrupted by the\narrival of the lady who was the topic of it. She came rustling in\nquickly, apologising for being late, fastening a bracelet, dressed in\ndark blue satin, which exposed a white bosom that was ineffectually\ncovered by a curious silver necklace. Ralph offered her his arm with the\nexaggerated alertness of a man who was no longer a lover.\n\nEven if this had still been his condition, however, Ralph had other\nthings to think about. The great doctor spent the night at Gardencourt\nand, returning to London on the morrow, after another consultation with\nMr. Touchett's own medical adviser, concurred in Ralph's desire that he\nshould see the patient again on the day following. On the day following\nSir Matthew Hope reappeared at Gardencourt, and now took a less\nencouraging view of the old man, who had grown worse in the twenty-four\nhours. His feebleness was extreme, and to his son, who constantly sat\nby his bedside, it often seemed that his end must be at hand. The local\ndoctor, a very sagacious man, in whom Ralph had secretly more confidence\nthan in his distinguished colleague, was constantly in attendance, and\nSir Matthew Hope came back several times. Mr. Touchett was much of the\ntime unconscious; he slept a great deal; he rarely spoke. Isabel had a\ngreat desire to be useful to him and was allowed to watch with him at\nhours when his other attendants (of whom Mrs. Touchett was not the least\nregular) went to take rest. He never seemed to know her, and she always\nsaid to herself \"Suppose he should die while I'm sitting here;\" an idea\nwhich excited her and kept her awake. Once he opened his eyes for a\nwhile and fixed them upon her intelligently, but when she went to him,\nhoping he would recognise her, he closed them and relapsed into stupor.\nThe day after this, however, he revived for a longer time; but on this\noccasion Ralph only was with him. The old man began to talk, much to his\nson's satisfaction, who assured him that they should presently have him\nsitting up.\n\n\"No, my boy,\" said Mr. Touchett, \"not unless you bury me in a sitting\nposture, as some of the ancients--was it the ancients?--used to do.\"\n\n\"Ah, daddy, don't talk about that,\" Ralph murmured. \"You mustn't deny\nthat you're getting better.\"\n\n\"There will be no need of my denying it if you don't say it,\" the old\nman answered. \"Why should we prevaricate just at the last? We never\nprevaricated before. I've got to die some time, and it's better to die\nwhen one's sick than when one's well. I'm very sick--as sick as I shall\never be. I hope you don't want to prove that I shall ever be worse than\nthis? That would be too bad. You don't? Well then.\"\n\nHaving made this excellent point he became quiet; but the next time that\nRalph was with him he again addressed himself to conversation. The\nnurse had gone to her supper and Ralph was alone in charge, having just\nrelieved Mrs. Touchett, who had been on guard since dinner. The room was\nlighted only by the flickering fire, which of late had become necessary,\nand Ralph's tall shadow was projected over wall and ceiling with an\noutline constantly varying but always grotesque.\n\n\"Who's that with me--is it my son?\" the old man asked.\n\n\"Yes, it's your son, daddy.\"\n\n\"And is there no one else?\"\n\n\"No one else.\"\n\nMr. Touchett said nothing for a while; and then, \"I want to talk a\nlittle,\" he went on.\n\n\"Won't it tire you?\" Ralph demurred.\n\n\"It won't matter if it does. I shall have a long rest. I want to talk\nabout YOU.\"\n\nRalph had drawn nearer to the bed; he sat leaning forward with his hand\non his father's. \"You had better select a brighter topic.\"\n\n\"You were always bright; I used to be proud of your brightness. I should\nlike so much to think you'd do something.\"\n\n\"If you leave us,\" said Ralph, \"I shall do nothing but miss you.\"\n\n\"That's just what I don't want; it's what I want to talk about. You must\nget a new interest.\"\n\n\"I don't want a new interest, daddy. I have more old ones than I know\nwhat to do with.\"\n\nThe old man lay there looking at his son; his face was the face of the\ndying, but his eyes were the eyes of Daniel Touchett. He seemed to be\nreckoning over Ralph's interests. \"Of course you have your mother,\" he\nsaid at last. \"You'll take care of her.\"\n\n\"My mother will always take care of herself,\" Ralph returned.\n\n\"Well,\" said his father, \"perhaps as she grows older she'll need a\nlittle help.\"\n\n\"I shall not see that. She'll outlive me.\"\n\n\"Very likely she will; but that's no reason--!\" Mr. Touchett let his\nphrase die away in a helpless but not quite querulous sigh and remained\nsilent again.\n\n\"Don't trouble yourself about us,\" said his son, \"My mother and I get on\nvery well together, you know.\"\n\n\"You get on by always being apart; that's not natural.\"\n\n\"If you leave us we shall probably see more of each other.\"\n\n\"Well,\" the old man observed with wandering irrelevance, \"it can't be\nsaid that my death will make much difference in your mother's life.\"\n\n\"It will probably make more than you think.\"\n\n\"Well, she'll have more money,\" said Mr. Touchett. \"I've left her a good\nwife's portion, just as if she had been a good wife.\"\n\n\"She has been one, daddy, according to her own theory. She has never\ntroubled you.\"\n\n\"Ah, some troubles are pleasant,\" Mr. Touchett murmured. \"Those you've\ngiven me for instance. But your mother has been less--less--what shall\nI call it? less out of the way since I've been ill. I presume she knows\nI've noticed it.\"\n\n\"I shall certainly tell her so; I'm so glad you mention it.\"\n\n\"It won't make any difference to her; she doesn't do it to please me.\nShe does it to please--to please--\" And he lay a while trying to think\nwhy she did it. \"She does it because it suits her. But that's not what\nI want to talk about,\" he added. \"It's about you. You'll be very well\noff.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Ralph, \"I know that. But I hope you've not forgotten the\ntalk we had a year ago--when I told you exactly what money I should need\nand begged you to make some good use of the rest.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I remember. I made a new will--in a few days. I suppose it\nwas the first time such a thing had happened--a young man trying to get\na will made against him.\"\n\n\"It is not against me,\" said Ralph. \"It would be against me to have a\nlarge property to take care of. It's impossible for a man in my state of\nhealth to spend much money, and enough is as good as a feast.\"\n\n\"Well, you'll have enough--and something over. There will be more than\nenough for one--there will be enough for two.\"\n\n\"That's too much,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Ah, don't say that. The best thing you can do; when I'm gone, will be\nto marry.\"\n\nRalph had foreseen what his father was coming to, and this suggestion\nwas by no means fresh. It had long been Mr. Touchett's most ingenious\nway of taking the cheerful view of his son's possible duration. Ralph\nhad usually treated it facetiously; but present circumstances proscribed\nthe facetious. He simply fell back in his chair and returned his\nfather's appealing gaze.\n\n\"If I, with a wife who hasn't been very fond of me, have had a very\nhappy life,\" said the old man, carrying his ingenuity further still,\n\"what a life mightn't you have if you should marry a person different\nfrom Mrs. Touchett. There are more different from her than there are\nlike her.\" Ralph still said nothing; and after a pause his father\nresumed softly: \"What do you think of your cousin?\"\n\nAt this Ralph started, meeting the question with a strained smile. \"Do I\nunderstand you to propose that I should marry Isabel?\"\n\n\"Well, that's what it comes to in the end. Don't you like Isabel?\"\n\n\"Yes, very much.\" And Ralph got up from his chair and wandered over to\nthe fire. He stood before it an instant and then he stooped and stirred\nit mechanically. \"I like Isabel very much,\" he repeated.\n\n\"Well,\" said his father, \"I know she likes you. She has told me how much\nshe likes you.\"\n\n\"Did she remark that she would like to marry me?\"\n\n\"No, but she can't have anything against you. And she's the most\ncharming young lady I've ever seen. And she would be good to you. I have\nthought a great deal about it.\"\n\n\"So have I,\" said Ralph, coming back to the bedside again. \"I don't mind\ntelling you that.\"\n\n\"You ARE in love with her then? I should think you would be. It's as if\nshe came over on purpose.\"\n\n\"No, I'm not in love with her; but I should be if--if certain things\nwere different.\"\n\n\"Ah, things are always different from what they might be,\" said the old\nman. \"If you wait for them to change you'll never do anything. I don't\nknow whether you know,\" he went on; \"but I suppose there's no harm in\nmy alluding to it at such an hour as this: there was some one wanted to\nmarry Isabel the other day, and she wouldn't have him.\"\n\n\"I know she refused Warburton: he told me himself.\"\n\n\"Well, that proves there's a chance for somebody else.\"\n\n\"Somebody else took his chance the other day in London--and got nothing\nby it.\"\n\n\"Was it you?\" Mr. Touchett eagerly asked.\n\n\"No, it was an older friend; a poor gentleman who came over from America\nto see about it.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm sorry for him, whoever he was. But it only proves what I\nsay--that the way's open to you.\"\n\n\"If it is, dear father, it's all the greater pity that I'm unable to\ntread it. I haven't many convictions; but I have three or four that I\nhold strongly. One is that people, on the whole, had better not marry\ntheir cousins. Another is that people in an advanced stage of pulmonary\ndisorder had better not marry at all.\"\n\nThe old man raised his weak hand and moved it to and fro before his\nface. \"What do you mean by that? You look at things in a way that would\nmake everything wrong. What sort of a cousin is a cousin that you\nhad never seen for more than twenty years of her life? We're all each\nother's cousins, and if we stopped at that the human race would die out.\nIt's just the same with your bad lung. You're a great deal better than\nyou used to be. All you want is to lead a natural life. It is a great\ndeal more natural to marry a pretty young lady that you're in love with\nthan it is to remain single on false principles.\"\n\n\"I'm not in love with Isabel,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"You said just now that you would be if you didn't think it wrong. I\nwant to prove to you that it isn't wrong.\"\n\n\"It will only tire you, dear daddy,\" said Ralph, who marvelled at his\nfather's tenacity and at his finding strength to insist. \"Then where\nshall we all be?\"\n\n\"Where shall you be if I don't provide for you? You won't have anything\nto do with the bank, and you won't have me to take care of. You say\nyou've so many interests; but I can't make them out.\"\n\nRalph leaned back in his chair with folded arms; his eyes were fixed for\nsome time in meditation. At last, with the air of a man fairly mustering\ncourage, \"I take a great interest in my cousin,\" he said, \"but not the\nsort of interest you desire. I shall not live many years; but I hope I\nshall live long enough to see what she does with herself. She's entirely\nindependent of me; I can exercise very little influence upon her life.\nBut I should like to do something for her.\"\n\n\"What should you like to do?\"\n\n\"I should like to put a little wind in her sails.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\"\n\n\"I should like to put it into her power to do some of the things she\nwants. She wants to see the world for instance. I should like to put\nmoney in her purse.\"\n\n\"Ah, I'm glad you've thought of that,\" said the old man. \"But I've\nthought of it too. I've left her a legacy--five thousand pounds.\"\n\n\"That's capital; it's very kind of you. But I should like to do a little\nmore.\"\n\nSomething of that veiled acuteness with which it had been on Daniel\nTouchett's part the habit of a lifetime to listen to a financial\nproposition still lingered in the face in which the invalid had not\nobliterated the man of business. \"I shall be happy to consider it,\" he\nsaid softly.\n\n\"Isabel's poor then. My mother tells me that she has but a few hundred\ndollars a year. I should like to make her rich.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by rich?\"\n\n\"I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their\nimagination. Isabel has a great deal of imagination.\"\n\n\"So have you, my son,\" said Mr. Touchett, listening very attentively but\na little confusedly.\n\n\"You tell me I shall have money enough for two. What I want is that you\nshould kindly relieve me of my superfluity and make it over to Isabel.\nDivide my inheritance into two equal halves and give her the second.\"\n\n\"To do what she likes with?\"\n\n\"Absolutely what she likes.\"\n\n\"And without an equivalent?\"\n\n\"What equivalent could there be?\"\n\n\"The one I've already mentioned.\"\n\n\"Her marrying--some one or other? It's just to do away with anything of\nthat sort that I make my suggestion. If she has an easy income she'll\nnever have to marry for a support. That's what I want cannily to\nprevent. She wishes to be free, and your bequest will make her free.\"\n\n\"Well, you seem to have thought it out,\" said Mr. Touchett. \"But I don't\nsee why you appeal to me. The money will be yours, and you can easily\ngive it to her yourself.\"\n\nRalph openly stared. \"Ah, dear father, I can't offer Isabel money!\"\n\nThe old man gave a groan. \"Don't tell me you're not in love with her! Do\nyou want me to have the credit of it?\"\n\n\"Entirely. I should like it simply to be a clause in your will, without\nthe slightest reference to me.\"\n\n\"Do you want me to make a new will then?\"\n\n\"A few words will do it; you can attend to it the next time you feel a\nlittle lively.\"\n\n\"You must telegraph to Mr. Hilary then. I'll do nothing without my\nsolicitor.\"\n\n\"You shall see Mr. Hilary to-morrow.\"\n\n\"He'll think we've quarrelled, you and I,\" said the old man.\n\n\"Very probably; I shall like him to think it,\" said Ralph, smiling;\n\"and, to carry out the idea, I give you notice that I shall be very\nsharp, quite horrid and strange, with you.\"\n\nThe humour of this appeared to touch his father, who lay a little while\ntaking it in. \"I'll do anything you like,\" Mr. Touchett said at last;\n\"but I'm not sure it's right. You say you want to put wind in her sails;\nbut aren't you afraid of putting too much?\"\n\n\"I should like to see her going before the breeze!\" Ralph answered.\n\n\"You speak as if it were for your mere amusement.\"\n\n\"So it is, a good deal.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't think I understand,\" said Mr. Touchett with a sigh.\n\"Young men are very different from what I was. When I cared for a\ngirl--when I was young--I wanted to do more than look at her.\"\n\n\"You've scruples that I shouldn't have had, and you've ideas that I\nshouldn't have had either. You say Isabel wants to be free, and that\nher being rich will keep her from marrying for money. Do you think that\nshe's a girl to do that?\"\n\n\"By no means. But she has less money than she has ever had before. Her\nfather then gave her everything, because he used to spend his capital.\nShe has nothing but the crumbs of that feast to live on, and she doesn't\nreally know how meagre they are--she has yet to learn it. My mother has\ntold me all about it. Isabel will learn it when she's really thrown upon\nthe world, and it would be very painful to me to think of her coming to\nthe consciousness of a lot of wants she should be unable to satisfy.\"\n\n\"I've left her five thousand pounds. She can satisfy a good many wants\nwith that.\"\n\n\"She can indeed. But she would probably spend it in two or three years.\"\n\n\"You think she'd be extravagant then?\"\n\n\"Most certainly,\" said Ralph, smiling serenely.\n\nPoor Mr. Touchett's acuteness was rapidly giving place to pure\nconfusion. \"It would merely be a question of time then, her spending the\nlarger sum?\"\n\n\"No--though at first I think she'd plunge into that pretty freely: she'd\nprobably make over a part of it to each of her sisters. But after that\nshe'd come to her senses, remember she has still a lifetime before her,\nand live within her means.\"\n\n\"Well, you HAVE worked it out,\" said the old man helplessly. \"You do\ntake an interest in her, certainly.\"\n\n\"You can't consistently say I go too far. You wished me to go further.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know,\" Mr. Touchett answered. \"I don't think I enter into\nyour spirit. It seems to me immoral.\"\n\n\"Immoral, dear daddy?\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know that it's right to make everything so easy for a\nperson.\"\n\n\"It surely depends upon the person. When the person's good, your making\nthings easy is all to the credit of virtue. To facilitate the execution\nof good impulses, what can be a nobler act?\"\n\nThis was a little difficult to follow, and Mr. Touchett considered it\nfor a while. At last he said: \"Isabel's a sweet young thing; but do you\nthink she's so good as that?\"\n\n\"She's as good as her best opportunities,\" Ralph returned.\n\n\"Well,\" Mr. Touchett declared, \"she ought to get a great many\nopportunities for sixty thousand pounds.\"\n\n\"I've no doubt she will.\"\n\n\"Of course I'll do what you want,\" said the old man. \"I only want to\nunderstand it a little.\"\n\n\"Well, dear daddy, don't you understand it now?\" his son caressingly\nasked. \"If you don't we won't take any more trouble about it. We'll\nleave it alone.\"\n\nMr. Touchett lay a long time still. Ralph supposed he had given up the\nattempt to follow. But at last, quite lucidly, he began again. \"Tell\nme this first. Doesn't it occur to you that a young lady with sixty\nthousand pounds may fall a victim to the fortune-hunters?\"\n\n\"She'll hardly fall a victim to more than one.\"\n\n\"Well, one's too many.\"\n\n\"Decidedly. That's a risk, and it has entered into my calculation. I\nthink it's appreciable, but I think it's small, and I'm prepared to take\nit.\"\n\nPoor Mr. Touchett's acuteness had passed into perplexity, and his\nperplexity now passed into admiration. \"Well, you have gone into it!\" he\nrepeated. \"But I don't see what good you're to get of it.\"\n\nRalph leaned over his father's pillows and gently smoothed them; he was\naware their talk had been unduly prolonged. \"I shall get just the good\nI said a few moments ago I wished to put into Isabel's reach--that of\nhaving met the requirements of my imagination. But it's scandalous, the\nway I've taken advantage of you!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nAs Mrs. Touchett had foretold, Isabel and Madame Merle were thrown\nmuch together during the illness of their host, so that if they had\nnot become intimate it would have been almost a breach of good manners.\nTheir manners were of the best, but in addition to this they happened\nto please each other. It is perhaps too much to say that they swore\nan eternal friendship, but tacitly at least they called the future to\nwitness. Isabel did so with a perfectly good conscience, though she\nwould have hesitated to admit she was intimate with her new friend in\nthe high sense she privately attached to this term. She often wondered\nindeed if she ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with any one.\nShe had an ideal of friendship as well as of several other sentiments,\nwhich it failed to seem to her in this case--it had not seemed to her\nin other cases--that the actual completely expressed. But she often\nreminded herself that there were essential reasons why one's ideal\ncould never become concrete. It was a thing to believe in, not to see--a\nmatter of faith, not of experience. Experience, however, might supply\nus with very creditable imitations of it, and the part of wisdom was\nto make the best of these. Certainly, on the whole, Isabel had never\nencountered a more agreeable and interesting figure than Madame Merle;\nshe had never met a person having less of that fault which is the\nprincipal obstacle to friendship--the air of reproducing the more\ntiresome, the stale, the too-familiar parts of one's own character.\nThe gates of the girl's confidence were opened wider than they had ever\nbeen; she said things to this amiable auditress that she had not yet\nsaid to any one. Sometimes she took alarm at her candour: it was as\nif she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of\njewels. These spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude that\nIsabel possessed, but there was all the greater reason for their being\ncarefully guarded. Afterwards, however, she always remembered that one\nshould never regret a generous error and that if Madame Merle had not\nthe merits she attributed to her, so much the worse for Madame Merle.\nThere was no doubt she had great merits--she was charming, sympathetic,\nintelligent, cultivated. More than this (for it had not been Isabel's\nill-fortune to go through life without meeting in her own sex several\npersons of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, superior\nand preeminent. There are many amiable people in the world, and Madame\nMerle was far from being vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She\nknew how to think--an accomplishment rare in women; and she had thought\nto very good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how to feel; Isabel\ncouldn't have spent a week with her without being sure of that. This was\nindeed Madame Merle's great talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told\nupon her; she had felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction\nto be taken in her society that when the girl talked of what she was\npleased to call serious matters this lady understood her so easily and\nquickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with her rather historic; she\nmade no secret of the fact that the fount of passion, thanks to having\nbeen rather violently tapped at one period, didn't flow quite so\nfreely as of yore. She proposed moreover, as well as expected, to cease\nfeeling; she freely admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and\nnow she pretended to be perfectly sane.\n\n\"I judge more than I used to,\" she said to Isabel, \"but it seems to me\none has earned the right. One can't judge till one's forty; before that\nwe're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.\nI'm sorry for you; it will be a long time before you're forty. But every\ngain's a loss of some kind; I often think that after forty one can't\nreally feel. The freshness, the quickness have certainly gone. You'll\nkeep them longer than most people; it will be a great satisfaction to me\nto see you some years hence. I want to see what life makes of you. One\nthing's certain--it can't spoil you. It may pull you about horribly, but\nI defy it to break you up.\"\n\nIsabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting from\na slight skirmish in which he has come off with honour, might receive a\npat on the shoulder from his colonel. Like such a recognition of merit\nit seemed to come with authority. How could the lightest word do less\non the part of a person who was prepared to say, of almost everything\nIsabel told her, \"Oh, I've been in that, my dear; it passes, like\neverything else.\" On many of her interlocutors Madame Merle might have\nproduced an irritating effect; it was disconcertingly difficult to\nsurprise her. But Isabel, though by no means incapable of desiring to\nbe effective, had not at present this impulse. She was too sincere, too\ninterested in her judicious companion. And then moreover Madame Merle\nnever said such things in the tone of triumph or of boastfulness; they\ndropped from her like cold confessions.\n\nA period of bad weather had settled upon Gardencourt; the days grew\nshorter and there was an end to the pretty tea-parties on the lawn. But\nour young woman had long indoor conversations with her fellow visitor,\nand in spite of the rain the two ladies often sallied forth for a walk,\nequipped with the defensive apparatus which the English climate and\nthe English genius have between them brought to such perfection. Madame\nMerle liked almost everything, including the English rain. \"There's\nalways a little of it and never too much at once,\" she said; \"and it\nnever wets you and it always smells good.\" She declared that in England\nthe pleasures of smell were great--that in this inimitable island there\nwas a certain mixture of fog and beer and soot which, however odd it\nmight sound, was the national aroma, and was most agreeable to the\nnostril; and she used to lift the sleeve of her British overcoat and\nbury her nose in it, inhaling the clear, fine scent of the wool. Poor\nRalph Touchett, as soon as the autumn had begun to define itself, became\nalmost a prisoner; in bad weather he was unable to step out of the\nhouse, and he used sometimes to stand at one of the windows with his\nhands in his pockets and, from a countenance half-rueful, half-critical,\nwatch Isabel and Madame Merle as they walked down the avenue under a\npair of umbrellas. The roads about Gardencourt were so firm, even in the\nworst weather, that the two ladies always came back with a healthy glow\nin their cheeks, looking at the soles of their neat, stout boots and\ndeclaring that their walk had done them inexpressible good. Before\nluncheon, always, Madame Merle was engaged; Isabel admired and envied\nher rigid possession of her morning. Our heroine had always passed for a\nperson of resources and had taken a certain pride in being one; but she\nwandered, as by the wrong side of the wall of a private garden, round\nthe enclosed talents, accomplishments, aptitudes of Madame Merle. She\nfound herself desiring to emulate them, and in twenty such ways this\nlady presented herself as a model. \"I should like awfully to be so!\"\nIsabel secretly exclaimed, more than once, as one after another of her\nfriend's fine aspects caught the light, and before long she knew that\nshe had learned a lesson from a high authority. It took no great time\nindeed for her to feel herself, as the phrase is, under an influence.\n\"What's the harm,\" she wondered, \"so long as it's a good one? The more\none's under a good influence the better. The only thing is to see our\nsteps as we take them--to understand them as we go. That, no doubt, I\nshall always do. I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable; isn't it\nmy fault that I'm not pliable enough?\" It is said that imitation is the\nsincerest flattery; and if Isabel was sometimes moved to gape at her\nfriend aspiringly and despairingly it was not so much because she\ndesired herself to shine as because she wished to hold up the lamp for\nMadame Merle. She liked her extremely, but was even more dazzled than\nattracted. She sometimes asked herself what Henrietta Stackpole would\nsay to her thinking so much of this perverted product of their common\nsoil, and had a conviction that it would be severely judged. Henrietta\nwould not at all subscribe to Madame Merle; for reasons she could not\nhave defined this truth came home to the girl. On the other hand she\nwas equally sure that, should the occasion offer, her new friend would\nstrike off some happy view of her old: Madame Merle was too humorous,\ntoo observant, not to do justice to Henrietta, and on becoming\nacquainted with her would probably give the measure of a tact which\nMiss Stackpole couldn't hope to emulate. She appeared to have in her\nexperience a touchstone for everything, and somewhere in the capacious\npocket of her genial memory she would find the key to Henrietta's value.\n\"That's the great thing,\" Isabel solemnly pondered; \"that's the supreme\ngood fortune: to be in a better position for appreciating people than\nthey are for appreciating you.\" And she added that such, when one\nconsidered it, was simply the essence of the aristocratic situation.\nIn this light, if in none other, one should aim at the aristocratic\nsituation.\n\nI may not count over all the links in the chain which led Isabel to\nthink of Madame Merle's situation as aristocratic--a view of it never\nexpressed in any reference made to it by that lady herself. She had\nknown great things and great people, but she had never played a great\npart. She was one of the small ones of the earth; she had not been born\nto honours; she knew the world too well to nourish fatuous illusions\non the article of her own place in it. She had encountered many of the\nfortunate few and was perfectly aware of those points at which their\nfortune differed from hers. But if by her informed measure she was no\nfigure for a high scene, she had yet to Isabel's imagination a sort of\ngreatness. To be so cultivated and civilised, so wise and so easy,\nand still make so light of it--that was really to be a great lady,\nespecially when one so carried and presented one's self. It was as if\nsomehow she had all society under contribution, and all the arts and\ngraces it practised--or was the effect rather that of charming uses\nfound for her, even from a distance, subtle service rendered by her to\na clamorous world wherever she might be? After breakfast she wrote a\nsuccession of letters, as those arriving for her appeared innumerable:\nher correspondence was a source of surprise to Isabel when they\nsometimes walked together to the village post-office to deposit Madame\nMerle's offering to the mail. She knew more people, as she told Isabel,\nthan she knew what to do with, and something was always turning up to be\nwritten about. Of painting she was devotedly fond, and made no more of\nbrushing in a sketch than of pulling off her gloves. At Gardencourt she\nwas perpetually taking advantage of an hour's sunshine to go out with a\ncamp-stool and a box of water-colours. That she was a brave musician we\nhave already perceived, and it was evidence of the fact that when she\nseated herself at the piano, as she always did in the evening, her\nlisteners resigned themselves without a murmur to losing the grace\nof her talk. Isabel, since she had known her, felt ashamed of her own\nfacility, which she now looked upon as basely inferior; and indeed,\nthough she had been thought rather a prodigy at home, the loss to\nsociety when, in taking her place upon the music-stool, she turned her\nback to the room, was usually deemed greater than the gain. When Madame\nMerle was neither writing, nor painting, nor touching the piano, she\nwas usually employed upon wonderful tasks of rich embroidery, cushions,\ncurtains, decorations for the chimneypiece; an art in which her bold,\nfree invention was as noted as the agility of her needle. She was never\nidle, for when engaged in none of the ways I have mentioned she was\neither reading (she appeared to Isabel to read \"everything important\"),\nor walking out, or playing patience with the cards, or talking with her\nfellow inmates. And with all this she had always the social quality, was\nnever rudely absent and yet never too seated. She laid down her pastimes\nas easily as she took them up; she worked and talked at the same time,\nand appeared to impute scant worth to anything she did. She gave away\nher sketches and tapestries; she rose from the piano or remained\nthere, according to the convenience of her auditors, which she always\nunerringly divined. She was in short the most comfortable, profitable,\namenable person to live with. If for Isabel she had a fault it was that\nshe was not natural; by which the girl meant, not that she was either\naffected or pretentious, since from these vulgar vices no woman could\nhave been more exempt, but that her nature had been too much overlaid by\ncustom and her angles too much rubbed away. She had become too flexible,\ntoo useful, was too ripe and too final. She was in a word too perfectly\nthe social animal that man and woman are supposed to have been intended\nto be; and she had rid herself of every remnant of that tonic wildness\nwhich we may assume to have belonged even to the most amiable persons\nin the ages before country-house life was the fashion. Isabel found it\ndifficult to think of her in any detachment or privacy, she existed only\nin her relations, direct or indirect, with her fellow mortals. One might\nwonder what commerce she could possibly hold with her own spirit.\nOne always ended, however, by feeling that a charming surface doesn't\nnecessarily prove one superficial; this was an illusion in which, in\none's youth, one had but just escaped being nourished. Madame Merle was\nnot superficial--not she. She was deep, and her nature spoke none the\nless in her behaviour because it spoke a conventional tongue. \"What's\nlanguage at all but a convention?\" said Isabel. \"She has the good\ntaste not to pretend, like some people I've met, to express herself by\noriginal signs.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid you've suffered much,\" she once found occasion to say to her\nfriend in response to some allusion that had appeared to reach far.\n\n\"What makes you think that?\" Madame Merle asked with the amused smile\nof a person seated at a game of guesses. \"I hope I haven't too much the\ndroop of the misunderstood.\"\n\n\"No; but you sometimes say things that I think people who have always\nbeen happy wouldn't have found out.\"\n\n\"I haven't always been happy,\" said Madame Merle, smiling still, but\nwith a mock gravity, as if she were telling a child a secret. \"Such a\nwonderful thing!\"\n\nBut Isabel rose to the irony. \"A great many people give me the\nimpression of never having for a moment felt anything.\"\n\n\"It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain.\nBut you may depend on it that every one bears some mark; even the\nhardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I\nflatter myself that I'm rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth\nI've been shockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service\nyet, because I've been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the\ncupboard--the quiet, dusky cupboard where there's an odour of stale\nspices--as much as I can. But when I've to come out and into a strong\nlight--then, my dear, I'm a horror!\"\n\nI know not whether it was on this occasion or on some other that the\nconversation had taken the turn I have just indicated she said to Isabel\nthat she would some day a tale unfold. Isabel assured her she should\ndelight to listen to one, and reminded her more than once of this\nengagement. Madame Merle, however, begged repeatedly for a respite, and\nat last frankly told her young companion that they must wait till they\nknew each other better. This would be sure to happen, a long friendship\nso visibly lay before them. Isabel assented, but at the same time\nenquired if she mightn't be trusted--if she appeared capable of a\nbetrayal of confidence.\n\n\"It's not that I'm afraid of your repeating what I say,\" her fellow\nvisitor answered; \"I'm afraid, on the contrary, of your taking it too\nmuch to yourself. You'd judge me too harshly; you're of the cruel age.\"\nShe preferred for the present to talk to Isabel of Isabel, and exhibited\nthe greatest interest in our heroine's history, sentiments, opinions,\nprospects. She made her chatter and listened to her chatter with\ninfinite good nature. This flattered and quickened the girl, who was\nstruck with all the distinguished people her friend had known and with\nher having lived, as Mrs. Touchett said, in the best company in Europe.\nIsabel thought the better of herself for enjoying the favour of a person\nwho had so large a field of comparison; and it was perhaps partly to\ngratify the sense of profiting by comparison that she often appealed to\nthese stores of reminiscence. Madame Merle had been a dweller in many\nlands and had social ties in a dozen different countries. \"I don't\npretend to be educated,\" she would say, \"but I think I know my Europe;\"\nand she spoke one day of going to Sweden to stay with an old friend,\nand another of proceeding to Malta to follow up a new acquaintance. With\nEngland, where she had often dwelt, she was thoroughly familiar, and\nfor Isabel's benefit threw a great deal of light upon the customs of\nthe country and the character of the people, who \"after all,\" as she was\nfond of saying, were the most convenient in the world to live with.\n\n\"You mustn't think it strange her remaining here at such a time as this,\nwhen Mr. Touchett's passing away,\" that gentleman's wife remarked to her\nniece. \"She is incapable of a mistake; she's the most tactful woman I\nknow. It's a favour to me that she stays; she's putting off a lot of\nvisits at great houses,\" said Mrs. Touchett, who never forgot that when\nshe herself was in England her social value sank two or three degrees in\nthe scale. \"She has her pick of places; she's not in want of a shelter.\nBut I've asked her to put in this time because I wish you to know her. I\nthink it will be a good thing for you. Serena Merle hasn't a fault.\"\n\n\"If I didn't already like her very much that description might alarm\nme,\" Isabel returned.\n\n\"She's never the least little bit 'off.' I've brought you out here and I\nwish to do the best for you. Your sister Lily told me she hoped I would\ngive you plenty of opportunities. I give you one in putting you in\nrelation with Madame Merle. She's one of the most brilliant women in\nEurope.\"\n\n\"I like her better than I like your description of her,\" Isabel\npersisted in saying.\n\n\"Do you flatter yourself that you'll ever feel her open to criticism? I\nhope you'll let me know when you do.\"\n\n\"That will be cruel--to you,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"You needn't mind me. You won't discover a fault in her.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not. But I dare say I shan't miss it.\"\n\n\"She knows absolutely everything on earth there is to know,\" said Mrs.\nTouchett.\n\nIsabel after this observed to their companion that she hoped she knew\nMrs. Touchett considered she hadn't a speck on her perfection. On which\n\"I'm obliged to you,\" Madame Merle replied, \"but I'm afraid your aunt\nimagines, or at least alludes to, no aberrations that the clock-face\ndoesn't register.\"\n\n\"So that you mean you've a wild side that's unknown to her?\"\n\n\"Ah no, I fear my darkest sides are my tamest. I mean that having no\nfaults, for your aunt, means that one's never late for dinner--that is\nfor her dinner. I was not late, by the way, the other day, when you\ncame back from London; the clock was just at eight when I came into the\ndrawing-room: it was the rest of you that were before the time. It means\nthat one answers a letter the day one gets it and that when one comes to\nstay with her one doesn't bring too much luggage and is careful not to\nbe taken ill. For Mrs. Touchett those things constitute virtue; it's a\nblessing to be able to reduce it to its elements.\"\n\nMadame Merle's own conversation, it will be perceived, was enriched with\nbold, free touches of criticism, which, even when they had a restrictive\neffect, never struck Isabel as ill-natured. It couldn't occur to the\ngirl for instance that Mrs. Touchett's accomplished guest was abusing\nher; and this for very good reasons. In the first place Isabel rose\neagerly to the sense of her shades; in the second Madame Merle implied\nthat there was a great deal more to say; and it was clear in the\nthird that for a person to speak to one without ceremony of one's near\nrelations was an agreeable sign of that person's intimacy with one's\nself. These signs of deep communion multiplied as the days elapsed, and\nthere was none of which Isabel was more sensible than of her companion's\npreference for making Miss Archer herself a topic. Though she referred\nfrequently to the incidents of her own career she never lingered upon\nthem; she was as little of a gross egotist as she was of a flat gossip.\n\n\"I'm old and stale and faded,\" she said more than once; \"I'm of no\nmore interest than last week's newspaper. You're young and fresh and of\nto-day; you've the great thing--you've actuality. I once had it--we all\nhave it for an hour. You, however, will have it for longer. Let us talk\nabout you then; you can say nothing I shall not care to hear. It's a\nsign that I'm growing old--that I like to talk with younger people. I\nthink it's a very pretty compensation. If we can't have youth within us\nwe can have it outside, and I really think we see it and feel it better\nthat way. Of course we must be in sympathy with it--that I shall always\nbe. I don't know that I shall ever be ill-natured with old people--I\nhope not; there are certainly some old people I adore. But I shall never\nbe anything but abject with the young; they touch me and appeal to me\ntoo much. I give you carte blanche then; you can even be impertinent if\nyou like; I shall let it pass and horribly spoil you. I speak as if I\nwere a hundred years old, you say? Well, I am, if you please; I was born\nbefore the French Revolution. Ah, my dear, je viens de loin; I belong to\nthe old, old world. But it's not of that I want to talk; I want to talk\nabout the new. You must tell me more about America; you never tell me\nenough. Here I've been since I was brought here as a helpless child, and\nit's ridiculous, or rather it's scandalous, how little I know about that\nsplendid, dreadful, funny country--surely the greatest and drollest of\nthem all. There are a great many of us like that in these parts, and I\nmust say I think we're a wretched set of people. You should live in your\nown land; whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we're\nnot good Americans we're certainly poor Europeans; we've no natural\nplace here. We're mere parasites, crawling over the surface; we haven't\nour feet in the soil. At least one can know it and not have illusions. A\nwoman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems to me, has no natural place\nanywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface\nand, more or less, to crawl. You protest, my dear? you're horrified?\nyou declare you'll never crawl? It's very true that I don't see you\ncrawling; you stand more upright than a good many poor creatures.\nVery good; on the whole, I don't think you'll crawl. But the men, the\nAmericans; je vous demande un peu, what do they make of it over here?\nI don't envy them trying to arrange themselves. Look at poor Ralph\nTouchett: what sort of a figure do you call that? Fortunately he has a\nconsumption; I say fortunately, because it gives him something to do.\nHis consumption's his carriere it's a kind of position. You can say:\n'Oh, Mr. Touchett, he takes care of his lungs, he knows a great deal\nabout climates.' But without that who would he be, what would he\nrepresent? 'Mr. Ralph Touchett: an American who lives in Europe.' That\nsignifies absolutely nothing--it's impossible anything should signify\nless. 'He's very cultivated,' they say: 'he has a very pretty collection\nof old snuff-boxes.' The collection is all that's wanted to make it\npitiful. I'm tired of the sound of the word; I think it's grotesque.\nWith the poor old father it's different; he has his identity, and it's\nrather a massive one. He represents a great financial house, and that,\nin our day, is as good as anything else. For an American, at any rate,\nthat will do very well. But I persist in thinking your cousin very lucky\nto have a chronic malady so long as he doesn't die of it. It's much\nbetter than the snuffboxes. If he weren't ill, you say, he'd do\nsomething?--he'd take his father's place in the house. My poor child, I\ndoubt it; I don't think he's at all fond of the house. However, you know\nhim better than I, though I used to know him rather well, and he may\nhave the benefit of the doubt. The worst case, I think, is a friend\nof mine, a countryman of ours, who lives in Italy (where he also was\nbrought before he knew better), and who is one of the most delightful\nmen I know. Some day you must know him. I'll bring you together and then\nyou'll see what I mean. He's Gilbert Osmond--he lives in Italy; that's\nall one can say about him or make of him. He's exceedingly clever, a\nman made to be distinguished; but, as I tell you, you exhaust the\ndescription when you say he's Mr. Osmond who lives tout betement in\nItaly. No career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past, no future,\nno anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please--paints in water-colours;\nlike me, only better than I. His painting's pretty bad; on the whole I'm\nrather glad of that. Fortunately he's very indolent, so indolent that\nit amounts to a sort of position. He can say, 'Oh, I do nothing; I'm too\ndeadly lazy. You can do nothing to-day unless you get up at five o'clock\nin the morning.' In that way he becomes a sort of exception; you feel\nhe might do something if he'd only rise early. He never speaks of his\npainting to people at large; he's too clever for that. But he has a\nlittle girl--a dear little girl; he does speak of her. He's devoted\nto her, and if it were a career to be an excellent father he'd be very\ndistinguished. But I'm afraid that's no better than the snuff-boxes;\nperhaps not even so good. Tell me what they do in America,\" pursued\nMadame Merle, who, it must be observed parenthetically, did not deliver\nherself all at once of these reflexions, which are presented in a\ncluster for the convenience of the reader. She talked of Florence, where\nMr. Osmond lived and where Mrs. Touchett occupied a medieval palace; she\ntalked of Rome, where she herself had a little pied-a-terre with some\nrather good old damask. She talked of places, of people and even, as the\nphrase is, of \"subjects\"; and from time to time she talked of their kind\nold host and of the prospect of his recovery. From the first she\nhad thought this prospect small, and Isabel had been struck with the\npositive, discriminating, competent way in which she took the measure\nof his remainder of life. One evening she announced definitely that he\nwouldn't live.\n\n\"Sir Matthew Hope told me so as plainly as was proper,\" she said;\n\"standing there, near the fire, before dinner. He makes himself very\nagreeable, the great doctor. I don't mean his saying that has anything\nto do with it. But he says such things with great tact. I had told him\nI felt ill at my ease, staying here at such a time; it seemed to me so\nindiscreet--it wasn't as if I could nurse. 'You must remain, you must\nremain,' he answered; 'your office will come later.' Wasn't that a very\ndelicate way of saying both that poor Mr. Touchett would go and that I\nmight be of some use as a consoler? In fact, however, I shall not be of\nthe slightest use. Your aunt will console herself; she, and she alone,\nknows just how much consolation she'll require. It would be a very\ndelicate matter for another person to undertake to administer the dose.\nWith your cousin it will be different; he'll miss his father immensely.\nBut I should never presume to condole with Mr. Ralph; we're not on\nthose terms.\" Madame Merle had alluded more than once to some undefined\nincongruity in her relations with Ralph Touchett; so Isabel took this\noccasion of asking her if they were not good friends.\n\n\"Perfectly, but he doesn't like me.\"\n\n\"What have you done to him?\"\n\n\"Nothing whatever. But one has no need of a reason for that.\"\n\n\"For not liking you? I think one has need of a very good reason.\"\n\n\"You're very kind. Be sure you have one ready for the day you begin.\"\n\n\"Begin to dislike you? I shall never begin.\"\n\n\"I hope not; because if you do you'll never end. That's the way with\nyour cousin; he doesn't get over it. It's an antipathy of nature--if\nI can call it that when it's all on his side. I've nothing whatever\nagainst him and don't bear him the least little grudge for not doing me\njustice. Justice is all I want. However, one feels that he's a gentleman\nand would never say anything underhand about one. Cartes sur table,\"\nMadame Merle subjoined in a moment, \"I'm not afraid of him.\"\n\n\"I hope not indeed,\" said Isabel, who added something about his being\nthe kindest creature living. She remembered, however, that on her first\nasking him about Madame Merle he had answered her in a manner which\nthis lady might have thought injurious without being explicit. There\nwas something between them, Isabel said to herself, but she said nothing\nmore than this. If it were something of importance it should inspire\nrespect; if it were not it was not worth her curiosity. With all her\nlove of knowledge she had a natural shrinking from raising curtains and\nlooking into unlighted corners. The love of knowledge coexisted in her\nmind with the finest capacity for ignorance.\n\nBut Madame Merle sometimes said things that startled her, made her raise\nher clear eyebrows at the time and think of the words afterwards. \"I'd\ngive a great deal to be your age again,\" she broke out once with a\nbitterness which, though diluted in her customary amplitude of ease, was\nimperfectly disguised by it. \"If I could only begin again--if I could\nhave my life before me!\"\n\n\"Your life's before you yet,\" Isabel answered gently, for she was\nvaguely awe-struck.\n\n\"No; the best part's gone, and gone for nothing.\"\n\n\"Surely not for nothing,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Why not--what have I got? Neither husband, nor child, nor fortune, nor\nposition, nor the traces of a beauty that I never had.\"\n\n\"You have many friends, dear lady.\"\n\n\"I'm not so sure!\" cried Madame Merle.\n\n\"Ah, you're wrong. You have memories, graces, talents--\"\n\nBut Madame Merle interrupted her. \"What have my talents brought me?\nNothing but the need of using them still, to get through the hours,\nthe years, to cheat myself with some pretence of movement, of\nunconsciousness. As for my graces and memories the less said about them\nthe better. You'll be my friend till you find a better use for your\nfriendship.\"\n\n\"It will be for you to see that I don't then,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Yes; I would make an effort to keep you.\" And her companion looked at\nher gravely. \"When I say I should like to be your age I mean with your\nqualities--frank, generous, sincere like you. In that case I should have\nmade something better of my life.\"\n\n\"What should you have liked to do that you've not done?\"\n\nMadame Merle took a sheet of music--she was seated at the piano and\nhad abruptly wheeled about on the stool when she first spoke--and\nmechanically turned the leaves. \"I'm very ambitious!\" she at last\nreplied.\n\n\"And your ambitions have not been satisfied? They must have been great.\"\n\n\"They WERE great. I should make myself ridiculous by talking of them.\"\n\nIsabel wondered what they could have been--whether Madame Merle had\naspired to wear a crown. \"I don't know what your idea of success may be,\nbut you seem to me to have been successful. To me indeed you're a vivid\nimage of success.\"\n\nMadame Merle tossed away the music with a smile. \"What's YOUR idea of\nsuccess?\"\n\n\"You evidently think it must be a very tame one. It's to see some dream\nof one's youth come true.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Madame Merle exclaimed, \"that I've never seen! But my dreams were\nso great--so preposterous. Heaven forgive me, I'm dreaming now!\" And she\nturned back to the piano and began grandly to play. On the morrow she\nsaid to Isabel that her definition of success had been very pretty,\nyet frightfully sad. Measured in that way, who had ever succeeded? The\ndreams of one's youth, why they were enchanting, they were divine! Who\nhad ever seen such things come to pass?\n\n\"I myself--a few of them,\" Isabel ventured to answer.\n\n\"Already? They must have been dreams of yesterday.\"\n\n\"I began to dream very young,\" Isabel smiled.\n\n\"Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood--that of having a\npink sash and a doll that could close her eyes.\"\n\n\"No, I don't mean that.\"\n\n\"Or a young man with a fine moustache going down on his knees to you.\"\n\n\"No, nor that either,\" Isabel declared with still more emphasis.\n\nMadame Merle appeared to note this eagerness. \"I suspect that's what\nyou do mean. We've all had the young man with the moustache. He's the\ninevitable young man; he doesn't count.\"\n\nIsabel was silent a little but then spoke with extreme and\ncharacteristic inconsequence. \"Why shouldn't he count? There are young\nmen and young men.\"\n\n\"And yours was a paragon--is that what you mean?\" asked her friend with\na laugh. \"If you've had the identical young man you dreamed of, then\nthat was success, and I congratulate you with all my heart. Only in that\ncase why didn't you fly with him to his castle in the Apennines?\"\n\n\"He has no castle in the Apennines.\"\n\n\"What has he? An ugly brick house in Fortieth Street? Don't tell me\nthat; I refuse to recognise that as an ideal.\"\n\n\"I don't care anything about his house,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"That's very crude of you. When you've lived as long as I you'll see\nthat every human being has his shell and that you must take the shell\ninto account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances.\nThere's no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we're each of us\nmade up of some cluster of appurtenances. What shall we call our 'self'?\nWhere does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into everything\nthat belongs to us--and then it flows back again. I know a large part\nof myself is in the clothes I choose to wear. I've a great respect for\nTHINGS! One's self--for other people--is one's expression of one's self;\nand one's house, one's furniture, one's garments, the books one reads,\nthe company one keeps--these things are all expressive.\"\n\nThis was very metaphysical; not more so, however, than several\nobservations Madame Merle had already made. Isabel was fond of\nmetaphysics, but was unable to accompany her friend into this bold\nanalysis of the human personality. \"I don't agree with you. I think just\nthe other way. I don't know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but\nI know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that belongs to me is any\nmeasure of me; everything's on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and\na perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I\nchoose to wear, don't express me; and heaven forbid they should!\"\n\n\"You dress very well,\" Madame Merle lightly interposed.\n\n\"Possibly; but I don't care to be judged by that. My clothes may express\nthe dressmaker, but they don't express me. To begin with it's not my own\nchoice that I wear them; they're imposed upon me by society.\"\n\n\"Should you prefer to go without them?\" Madame Merle enquired in a tone\nwhich virtually terminated the discussion.\n\nI am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit on the sketch I\nhave given of the youthful loyalty practised by our heroine toward this\naccomplished woman, that Isabel had said nothing whatever to her about\nLord Warburton and had been equally reticent on the subject of Caspar\nGoodwood. She had not, however, concealed the fact that she had had\nopportunities of marrying and had even let her friend know of how\nadvantageous a kind they had been. Lord Warburton had left Lockleigh\nand was gone to Scotland, taking his sisters with him; and though he had\nwritten to Ralph more than once to ask about Mr. Touchett's health the\ngirl was not liable to the embarrassment of such enquiries as, had he\nstill been in the neighbourhood, he would probably have felt bound to\nmake in person. He had excellent ways, but she felt sure that if he had\ncome to Gardencourt he would have seen Madame Merle, and that if he had\nseen her he would have liked her and betrayed to her that he was in love\nwith her young friend. It so happened that during this lady's previous\nvisits to Gardencourt--each of them much shorter than the present--he\nhad either not been at Lockleigh or had not called at Mr. Touchett's.\nTherefore, though she knew him by name as the great man of that\ncounty, she had no cause to suspect him as a suitor of Mrs. Touchett's\nfreshly-imported niece.\n\n\"You've plenty of time,\" she had said to Isabel in return for the\nmutilated confidences which our young woman made her and which didn't\npretend to be perfect, though we have seen that at moments the girl\nhad compunctions at having said so much. \"I'm glad you've done nothing\nyet--that you have it still to do. It's a very good thing for a girl to\nhave refused a few good offers--so long of course as they are not the\nbest she's likely to have. Pardon me if my tone seems horribly corrupt;\none must take the worldly view sometimes. Only don't keep on refusing\nfor the sake of refusing. It's a pleasant exercise of power; but\naccepting's after all an exercise of power as well. There's always the\ndanger of refusing once too often. It was not the one I fell into--I\ndidn't refuse often enough. You're an exquisite creature, and I should\nlike to see you married to a prime minister. But speaking strictly, you\nknow, you're not what is technically called a parti. You're extremely\ngood-looking and extremely clever; in yourself you're quite exceptional.\nYou appear to have the vaguest ideas about your earthly possessions; but\nfrom what I can make out you're not embarrassed with an income. I wish\nyou had a little money.\"\n\n\"I wish I had!\" said Isabel, simply, apparently forgetting for the\nmoment that her poverty had been a venial fault for two gallant\ngentlemen.\n\nIn spite of Sir Matthew Hope's benevolent recommendation Madame Merle\ndid not remain to the end, as the issue of poor Mr. Touchett's malady\nhad now come frankly to be designated. She was under pledges to other\npeople which had at last to be redeemed, and she left Gardencourt with\nthe understanding that she should in any event see Mrs. Touchett there\nagain, or else in town, before quitting England. Her parting with Isabel\nwas even more like the beginning of a friendship than their meeting had\nbeen. \"I'm going to six places in succession, but I shall see no one I\nlike so well as you. They'll all be old friends, however; one doesn't\nmake new friends at my age. I've made a great exception for you. You\nmust remember that and must think as well of me as possible. You must\nreward me by believing in me.\"\n\nBy way of answer Isabel kissed her, and, though some women kiss with\nfacility, there are kisses and kisses, and this embrace was satisfactory\nto Madame Merle. Our young lady, after this, was much alone; she saw her\naunt and cousin only at meals, and discovered that of the hours during\nwhich Mrs. Touchett was invisible only a minor portion was now devoted\nto nursing her husband. She spent the rest in her own apartments, to\nwhich access was not allowed even to her niece, apparently occupied\nthere with mysterious and inscrutable exercises. At table she was grave\nand silent; but her solemnity was not an attitude--Isabel could see it\nwas a conviction. She wondered if her aunt repented of having taken her\nown way so much; but there was no visible evidence of this--no tears, no\nsighs, no exaggeration of a zeal always to its own sense adequate. Mrs.\nTouchett seemed simply to feel the need of thinking things over and\nsumming them up; she had a little moral account-book--with columns\nunerringly ruled and a sharp steel clasp--which she kept with exemplary\nneatness. Uttered reflection had with her ever, at any rate, a practical\nring. \"If I had foreseen this I'd not have proposed your coming abroad\nnow,\" she said to Isabel after Madame Merle had left the house. \"I'd\nhave waited and sent for you next year.\"\n\n\"So that perhaps I should never have known my uncle? It's a great\nhappiness to me to have come now.\"\n\n\"That's very well. But it was not that you might know your uncle that\nI brought you to Europe.\" A perfectly veracious speech; but, as Isabel\nthought, not as perfectly timed. She had leisure to think of this and\nother matters. She took a solitary walk every day and spent vague hours\nin turning over books in the library. Among the subjects that engaged\nher attention were the adventures of her friend Miss Stackpole, with\nwhom she was in regular correspondence. Isabel liked her friend's\nprivate epistolary style better than her public; that is she felt her\npublic letters would have been excellent if they had not been printed.\nHenrietta's career, however, was not so successful as might have been\nwished even in the interest of her private felicity; that view of the\ninner life of Great Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to\ndance before her like an ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil,\nfor mysterious reasons, had never arrived; and poor Mr. Bantling\nhimself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain\nso grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had obviously been\nsent. He had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart,\nand believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to\nBedfordshire. \"He says he should think I would go to the Continent,\"\nHenrietta wrote; \"and as he thinks of going there himself I suppose his\nadvice is sincere. He wants to know why I don't take a view of French\nlife; and it's a fact that I want very much to see the new Republic. Mr.\nBantling doesn't care much about the Republic, but he thinks of going\nover to Paris anyway. I must say he's quite as attentive as I could\nwish, and at least I shall have seen one polite Englishman. I keep\ntelling Mr. Bantling that he ought to have been an American, and you\nshould see how that pleases him. Whenever I say so he always breaks out\nwith the same exclamation--'Ah, but really, come now!\" A few days later\nshe wrote that she had decided to go to Paris at the end of the week and\nthat Mr. Bantling had promised to see her off--perhaps even would go\nas far as Dover with her. She would wait in Paris till Isabel should\narrive, Henrietta added; speaking quite as if Isabel were to start on\nher continental journey alone and making no allusion to Mrs. Touchett.\nBearing in mind his interest in their late companion, our heroine\ncommunicated several passages from this correspondence to Ralph,\nwho followed with an emotion akin to suspense the career of the\nrepresentative of the Interviewer.\n\n\"It seems to me she's doing very well,\" he said, \"going over to Paris\nwith an ex-Lancer! If she wants something to write about she has only to\ndescribe that episode.\"\n\n\"It's not conventional, certainly,\" Isabel answered; \"but if you mean\nthat--as far as Henrietta is concerned--it's not perfectly innocent,\nyou're very much mistaken. You'll never understand Henrietta.\"\n\n\"Pardon me, I understand her perfectly. I didn't at all at first, but\nnow I've the point of view. I'm afraid, however, that Bantling hasn't;\nhe may have some surprises. Oh, I understand Henrietta as well as if I\nhad made her!\"\n\nIsabel was by no means sure of this, but she abstained from expressing\nfurther doubt, for she was disposed in these days to extend a great\ncharity to her cousin. One afternoon less than a week after Madame\nMerle's departure she was seated in the library with a volume to\nwhich her attention was not fastened. She had placed herself in a deep\nwindow-bench, from which she looked out into the dull, damp park; and as\nthe library stood at right angles to the entrance-front of the house she\ncould see the doctor's brougham, which had been waiting for the last two\nhours before the door. She was struck with his remaining so long, but at\nlast she saw him appear in the portico, stand a moment slowly drawing on\nhis gloves and looking at the knees of his horse, and then get into the\nvehicle and roll away. Isabel kept her place for half an hour; there was\na great stillness in the house. It was so great that when she at last\nheard a soft, slow step on the deep carpet of the room she was almost\nstartled by the sound. She turned quickly away from the window and saw\nRalph Touchett standing there with his hands still in his pockets, but\nwith a face absolutely void of its usual latent smile. She got up and\nher movement and glance were a question.\n\n\"It's all over,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Do you mean that my uncle...?\" And Isabel stopped.\n\n\"My dear father died an hour ago.\"\n\n\"Ah, my poor Ralph!\" she gently wailed, putting out her two hands to\nhim.\n\n\n\n\n\nSome fortnight after this Madame Merle drove up in a hansom cab to\nthe house in Winchester Square. As she descended from her vehicle she\nobserved, suspended between the dining-room windows, a large, neat,\nwooden tablet, on whose fresh black ground were inscribed in white paint\nthe words--\"This noble freehold mansion to be sold\"; with the name of\nthe agent to whom application should be made. \"They certainly lose no\ntime,\" said the visitor as, after sounding the big brass knocker, she\nwaited to be admitted; \"it's a practical country!\" And within the house,\nas she ascended to the drawing-room, she perceived numerous signs of\nabdication; pictures removed from the walls and placed upon sofas,\nwindows undraped and floors laid bare. Mrs. Touchett presently received\nher and intimated in a few words that condolences might be taken for\ngranted.\n\n\"I know what you're going to say--he was a very good man. But I know it\nbetter than any one, because I gave him more chance to show it. In that\nI think I was a good wife.\" Mrs. Touchett added that at the end her\nhusband apparently recognised this fact. \"He has treated me most\nliberally,\" she said; \"I won't say more liberally than I expected,\nbecause I didn't expect. You know that as a general thing I don't\nexpect. But he chose, I presume, to recognise the fact that though I\nlived much abroad and mingled--you may say freely--in foreign life, I\nnever exhibited the smallest preference for any one else.\"\n\n\"For any one but yourself,\" Madame Merle mentally observed; but the\nreflexion was perfectly inaudible.\n\n\"I never sacrificed my husband to another,\" Mrs. Touchett continued with\nher stout curtness.\n\n\"Oh no,\" thought Madame Merle; \"you never did anything for another!\"\n\nThere was a certain cynicism in these mute comments which demands an\nexplanation; the more so as they are not in accord either with the\nview--somewhat superficial perhaps--that we have hitherto enjoyed of\nMadame Merle's character or with the literal facts of Mrs. Touchett's\nhistory; the more so, too, as Madame Merle had a well-founded conviction\nthat her friend's last remark was not in the least to be construed as a\nside-thrust at herself. The truth is that the moment she had crossed the\nthreshold she received an impression that Mr. Touchett's death had had\nsubtle consequences and that these consequences had been profitable to\na little circle of persons among whom she was not numbered. Of course\nit was an event which would naturally have consequences; her imagination\nhad more than once rested upon this fact during her stay at Gardencourt.\nBut it had been one thing to foresee such a matter mentally and another\nto stand among its massive records. The idea of a distribution of\nproperty--she would almost have said of spoils--just now pressed upon\nher senses and irritated her with a sense of exclusion. I am far from\nwishing to picture her as one of the hungry mouths or envious hearts of\nthe general herd, but we have already learned of her having desires\nthat had never been satisfied. If she had been questioned, she would\nof course have admitted--with a fine proud smile--that she had not the\nfaintest claim to a share in Mr. Touchett's relics. \"There was never\nanything in the world between us,\" she would have said. \"There was never\nthat, poor man!\"--with a fillip of her thumb and her third finger. I\nhasten to add, moreover, that if she couldn't at the present moment keep\nfrom quite perversely yearning she was careful not to betray herself.\nShe had after all as much sympathy for Mrs. Touchett's gains as for her\nlosses.\n\n\"He has left me this house,\" the newly-made widow said; \"but of course\nI shall not live in it; I've a much better one in Florence. The will\nwas opened only three days since, but I've already offered the house for\nsale. I've also a share in the bank; but I don't yet understand if I'm\nobliged to leave it there. If not I shall certainly take it out. Ralph,\nof course, has Gardencourt; but I'm not sure that he'll have means to\nkeep up the place. He's naturally left very well off, but his father has\ngiven away an immense deal of money; there are bequests to a string of\nthird cousins in Vermont. Ralph, however, is very fond of Gardencourt\nand would be quite capable of living there--in summer--with a\nmaid-of-all-work and a gardener's boy. There's one remarkable clause\nin my husband's will,\" Mrs. Touchett added. \"He has left my niece a\nfortune.\"\n\n\"A fortune!\" Madame Merle softly repeated.\n\n\"Isabel steps into something like seventy thousand pounds.\" Madame\nMerle's hands were clasped in her lap; at this she raised them, still\nclasped, and held them a moment against her bosom while her eyes, a\nlittle dilated, fixed themselves on those of her friend. \"Ah,\" she\ncried, \"the clever creature!\"\n\nMrs. Touchett gave her a quick look. \"What do you mean by that?\"\n\nFor an instant Madame Merle's colour rose and she dropped her eyes. \"It\ncertainly is clever to achieve such results--without an effort!\"\n\n\"There assuredly was no effort. Don't call it an achievement.\"\n\nMadame Merle was seldom guilty of the awkwardness of retracting what she\nhad said; her wisdom was shown rather in maintaining it and placing it\nin a favourable light. \"My dear friend, Isabel would certainly not\nhave had seventy thousand pounds left her if she had not been the most\ncharming girl in the world. Her charm includes great cleverness.\"\n\n\"She never dreamed, I'm sure, of my husband's doing anything for her;\nand I never dreamed of it either, for he never spoke to me of his\nintention,\" Mrs. Touchett said. \"She had no claim upon him whatever; it\nwas no great recommendation to him that she was my niece. Whatever she\nachieved she achieved unconsciously.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" rejoined Madame Merle, \"those are the greatest strokes!\" Mrs.\nTouchett reserved her opinion. \"The girl's fortunate; I don't deny that.\nBut for the present she's simply stupefied.\"\n\n\"Do you mean that she doesn't know what to do with the money?\"\n\n\"That, I think, she has hardly considered. She doesn't know what to\nthink about the matter at all. It has been as if a big gun were suddenly\nfired off behind her; she's feeling herself to see if she be hurt. It's\nbut three days since she received a visit from the principal executor,\nwho came in person, very gallantly, to notify her. He told me afterwards\nthat when he had made his little speech she suddenly burst into tears.\nThe money's to remain in the affairs of the bank, and she's to draw the\ninterest.\"\n\nMadame Merle shook her head with a wise and now quite benignant smile.\n\"How very delicious! After she has done that two or three times she'll\nget used to it.\" Then after a silence, \"What does your son think of it?\"\nshe abruptly asked.\n\n\"He left England before the will was read--used up by his fatigue and\nanxiety and hurrying off to the south. He's on his way to the Riviera\nand I've not yet heard from him. But it's not likely he'll ever object\nto anything done by his father.\"\n\n\"Didn't you say his own share had been cut down?\"\n\n\"Only at his wish. I know that he urged his father to do something for\nthe people in America. He's not in the least addicted to looking after\nnumber one.\"\n\n\"It depends upon whom he regards as number one!\" said Madame Merle. And\nshe remained thoughtful a moment, her eyes bent on the floor.\n\n\"Am I not to see your happy niece?\" she asked at last as she raised\nthem.\n\n\"You may see her; but you'll not be struck with her being happy. She\nhas looked as solemn, these three days, as a Cimabue Madonna!\" And Mrs.\nTouchett rang for a servant.\n\nIsabel came in shortly after the footman had been sent to call her; and\nMadame Merle thought, as she appeared, that Mrs. Touchett's comparison\nhad its force. The girl was pale and grave--an effect not mitigated by\nher deeper mourning; but the smile of her brightest moments came into\nher face as she saw Madame Merle, who went forward, laid her hand on our\nheroine's shoulder and, after looking at her a moment, kissed her as if\nshe were returning the kiss she had received from her at Gardencourt.\nThis was the only allusion the visitor, in her great good taste, made\nfor the present to her young friend's inheritance.\n\nMrs. Touchett had no purpose of awaiting in London the sale of her\nhouse. After selecting from among its furniture the objects she wished\nto transport to her other abode, she left the rest of its contents to be\ndisposed of by the auctioneer and took her departure for the Continent.\nShe was of course accompanied on this journey by her niece, who now had\nplenty of leisure to measure and weigh and otherwise handle the windfall\non which Madame Merle had covertly congratulated her. Isabel thought\nvery often of the fact of her accession of means, looking at it in a\ndozen different lights; but we shall not now attempt to follow her train\nof thought or to explain exactly why her new consciousness was at first\noppressive. This failure to rise to immediate joy was indeed but brief;\nthe girl presently made up her mind that to be rich was a virtue because\nit was to be able to do, and that to do could only be sweet. It was\nthe graceful contrary of the stupid side of weakness--especially the\nfeminine variety. To be weak was, for a delicate young person, rather\ngraceful, but, after all, as Isabel said to herself, there was a larger\ngrace than that. Just now, it is true, there was not much to do--once\nshe had sent off a cheque to Lily and another to poor Edith; but she was\nthankful for the quiet months which her mourning robes and her aunt's\nfresh widowhood compelled them to spend together. The acquisition of\npower made her serious; she scrutinised her power with a kind of tender\nferocity, but was not eager to exercise it. She began to do so during\na stay of some weeks which she eventually made with her aunt in Paris,\nthough in ways that will inevitably present themselves as trivial. They\nwere the ways most naturally imposed in a city in which the shops are\nthe admiration of the world, and that were prescribed unreservedly by\nthe guidance of Mrs. Touchett, who took a rigidly practical view of the\ntransformation of her niece from a poor girl to a rich one. \"Now that\nyou're a young woman of fortune you must know how to play the part--I\nmean to play it well,\" she said to Isabel once for all; and she added\nthat the girl's first duty was to have everything handsome. \"You don't\nknow how to take care of your things, but you must learn,\" she went on;\nthis was Isabel's second duty. Isabel submitted, but for the present\nher imagination was not kindled; she longed for opportunities, but these\nwere not the opportunities she meant.\n\nMrs. Touchett rarely changed her plans, and, having intended before her\nhusband's death to spend a part of the winter in Paris, saw no reason to\ndeprive herself--still less to deprive her companion--of this advantage.\nThough they would live in great retirement she might still present\nher niece, informally, to the little circle of her fellow countrymen\ndwelling upon the skirts of the Champs Elysees. With many of these\namiable colonists Mrs. Touchett was intimate; she shared their\nexpatriation, their convictions, their pastimes, their ennui. Isabel\nsaw them arrive with a good deal of assiduity at her aunt's hotel, and\npronounced on them with a trenchancy doubtless to be accounted for by\nthe temporary exaltation of her sense of human duty. She made up her\nmind that their lives were, though luxurious, inane, and incurred some\ndisfavour by expressing this view on bright Sunday afternoons, when the\nAmerican absentees were engaged in calling on each other. Though her\nlisteners passed for people kept exemplarily genial by their cooks and\ndressmakers, two or three of them thought her cleverness, which was\ngenerally admitted, inferior to that of the new theatrical pieces. \"You\nall live here this way, but what does it lead to?\" she was pleased to\nask. \"It doesn't seem to lead to anything, and I should think you'd get\nvery tired of it.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett thought the question worthy of Henrietta Stackpole. The\ntwo ladies had found Henrietta in Paris, and Isabel constantly saw her;\nso that Mrs. Touchett had some reason for saying to herself that if her\nniece were not clever enough to originate almost anything, she might be\nsuspected of having borrowed that style of remark from her journalistic\nfriend. The first occasion on which Isabel had spoken was that of\na visit paid by the two ladies to Mrs. Luce, an old friend of Mrs.\nTouchett's and the only person in Paris she now went to see. Mrs. Luce\nhad been living in Paris since the days of Louis Philippe; she used to\nsay jocosely that she was one of the generation of 1830--a joke of\nwhich the point was not always taken. When it failed Mrs. Luce used to\nexplain--\"Oh yes, I'm one of the romantics;\" her French had never\nbecome quite perfect. She was always at home on Sunday afternoons and\nsurrounded by sympathetic compatriots, usually the same. In fact she\nwas at home at all times, and reproduced with wondrous truth in her\nwell-cushioned little corner of the brilliant city, the domestic tone of\nher native Baltimore. This reduced Mr. Luce, her worthy husband, a tall,\nlean, grizzled, well-brushed gentleman who wore a gold eye-glass and\ncarried his hat a little too much on the back of his head, to mere\nplatonic praise of the \"distractions\" of Paris--they were his great\nword--since you would never have guessed from what cares he escaped to\nthem. One of them was that he went every day to the American banker's,\nwhere he found a post-office that was almost as sociable and colloquial\nan institution as in an American country town. He passed an hour (in\nfine weather) in a chair in the Champs Elysees, and he dined uncommonly\nwell at his own table, seated above a waxed floor which it was Mrs.\nLuce's happiness to believe had a finer polish than any other in the\nFrench capital. Occasionally he dined with a friend or two at the Cafe\nAnglais, where his talent for ordering a dinner was a source of felicity\nto his companions and an object of admiration even to the headwaiter\nof the establishment. These were his only known pastimes, but they had\nbeguiled his hours for upwards of half a century, and they doubtless\njustified his frequent declaration that there was no place like Paris.\nIn no other place, on these terms, could Mr. Luce flatter himself that\nhe was enjoying life. There was nothing like Paris, but it must be\nconfessed that Mr. Luce thought less highly of this scene of his\ndissipations than in earlier days. In the list of his resources his\npolitical reflections should not be omitted, for they were doubtless the\nanimating principle of many hours that superficially seemed vacant.\nLike many of his fellow colonists Mr. Luce was a high--or rather a\ndeep--conservative, and gave no countenance to the government lately\nestablished in France. He had no faith in its duration and would assure\nyou from year to year that its end was close at hand. \"They want to be\nkept down, sir, to be kept down; nothing but the strong hand--the iron\nheel--will do for them,\" he would frequently say of the French people;\nand his ideal of a fine showy clever rule was that of the superseded\nEmpire. \"Paris is much less attractive than in the days of the Emperor;\nHE knew how to make a city pleasant,\" Mr. Luce had often remarked to\nMrs. Touchett, who was quite of his own way of thinking and wished to\nknow what one had crossed that odious Atlantic for but to get away from\nrepublics.\n\n\"Why, madam, sitting in the Champs Elysees, opposite to the Palace of\nIndustry, I've seen the court-carriages from the Tuileries pass up and\ndown as many as seven times a day. I remember one occasion when they\nwent as high as nine. What do you see now? It's no use talking, the\nstyle's all gone. Napoleon knew what the French people want, and\nthere'll be a dark cloud over Paris, our Paris, till they get the Empire\nback again.\"\n\nAmong Mrs. Luce's visitors on Sunday afternoons was a young man with\nwhom Isabel had had a good deal of conversation and whom she found\nfull of valuable knowledge. Mr. Edward Rosier--Ned Rosier as he was\ncalled--was native to New York and had been brought up in Paris, living\nthere under the eye of his father who, as it happened, had been an early\nand intimate friend of the late Mr. Archer. Edward Rosier remembered\nIsabel as a little girl; it had been his father who came to the rescue\nof the small Archers at the inn at Neufchatel (he was travelling that\nway with the boy and had stopped at the hotel by chance), after their\nbonne had gone off with the Russian prince and when Mr. Archer's\nwhereabouts remained for some days a mystery. Isabel remembered\nperfectly the neat little male child whose hair smelt of a delicious\ncosmetic and who had a bonne all his own, warranted to lose sight of him\nunder no provocation. Isabel took a walk with the pair beside the lake\nand thought little Edward as pretty as an angel--a comparison by no\nmeans conventional in her mind, for she had a very definite conception\nof a type of features which she supposed to be angelic and which her\nnew friend perfectly illustrated. A small pink face surmounted by a blue\nvelvet bonnet and set off by a stiff embroidered collar had become the\ncountenance of her childish dreams; and she had firmly believed for some\ntime afterwards that the heavenly hosts conversed among themselves in\na queer little dialect of French-English, expressing the properest\nsentiments, as when Edward told her that he was \"defended\" by his bonne\nto go near the edge of the lake, and that one must always obey to one's\nbonne. Ned Rosier's English had improved; at least it exhibited in a\nless degree the French variation. His father was dead and his bonne\ndismissed, but the young man still conformed to the spirit of their\nteaching--he never went to the edge of the lake. There was still\nsomething agreeable to the nostrils about him and something not\noffensive to nobler organs. He was a very gentle and gracious youth,\nwith what are called cultivated tastes--an acquaintance with old china,\nwith good wine, with the bindings of books, with the Almanach de Gotha,\nwith the best shops, the best hotels, the hours of railway-trains. He\ncould order a dinner almost as well as Mr. Luce, and it was probable\nthat as his experience accumulated he would be a worthy successor to\nthat gentleman, whose rather grim politics he also advocated in a soft\nand innocent voice. He had some charming rooms in Paris, decorated with\nold Spanish altar-lace, the envy of his female friends, who declared\nthat his chimney-piece was better draped than the high shoulders of many\na duchess. He usually, however, spent a part of every winter at Pau, and\nhad once passed a couple of months in the United States.\n\nHe took a great interest in Isabel and remembered perfectly the walk at\nNeufchatel, when she would persist in going so near the edge. He seemed\nto recognise this same tendency in the subversive enquiry that I quoted\na moment ago, and set himself to answer our heroine's question with\ngreater urbanity than it perhaps deserved. \"What does it lead to, Miss\nArcher? Why Paris leads everywhere. You can't go anywhere unless you\ncome here first. Every one that comes to Europe has got to pass through.\nYou don't mean it in that sense so much? You mean what good it does you?\nWell, how can you penetrate futurity? How can you tell what lies ahead?\nIf it's a pleasant road I don't care where it leads. I like the road,\nMiss Archer; I like the dear old asphalte. You can't get tired of\nit--you can't if you try. You think you would, but you wouldn't;\nthere's always something new and fresh. Take the Hotel Drouot, now;\nthey sometimes have three and four sales a week. Where can you get such\nthings as you can here? In spite of all they say I maintain they're\ncheaper too, if you know the right places. I know plenty of places,\nbut I keep them to myself. I'll tell you, if you like, as a particular\nfavour; only you mustn't tell any one else. Don't you go anywhere\nwithout asking me first; I want you to promise me that. As a general\nthing avoid the Boulevards; there's very little to be done on the\nBoulevards. Speaking conscientiously--sans blague--I don't believe\nany one knows Paris better than I. You and Mrs. Touchett must come and\nbreakfast with me some day, and I'll show you my things; je ne vous dis\nque ca! There has been a great deal of talk about London of late; it's\nthe fashion to cry up London. But there's nothing in it--you can't\ndo anything in London. No Louis Quinze--nothing of the First Empire;\nnothing but their eternal Queen Anne. It's good for one's bed-room,\nQueen Anne--for one's washing-room; but it isn't proper for a salon. Do\nI spend my life at the auctioneer's?\" Mr. Rosier pursued in answer to\nanother question of Isabel's. \"Oh no; I haven't the means. I wish I\nhad. You think I'm a mere trifler; I can tell by the expression of your\nface--you've got a wonderfully expressive face. I hope you don't mind\nmy saying that; I mean it as a kind of warning. You think I ought to do\nsomething, and so do I, so long as you leave it vague. But when you\ncome to the point you see you have to stop. I can't go home and be\na shopkeeper. You think I'm very well fitted? Ah, Miss Archer, you\noverrate me. I can buy very well, but I can't sell; you should see when\nI sometimes try to get rid of my things. It takes much more ability to\nmake other people buy than to buy yourself. When I think how clever they\nmust be, the people who make ME buy! Ah no; I couldn't be a shopkeeper.\nI can't be a doctor; it's a repulsive business. I can't be a clergyman;\nI haven't got convictions. And then I can't pronounce the names right in\nthe Bible. They're very difficult, in the Old Testament particularly. I\ncan't be a lawyer; I don't understand--how do you call it?--the American\nprocedure. Is there anything else? There's nothing for a gentleman\nin America. I should like to be a diplomatist; but American\ndiplomacy--that's not for gentlemen either. I'm sure if you had seen the\nlast min--\"\n\nHenrietta Stackpole, who was often with her friend when Mr. Rosier,\ncoming to pay his compliments late in the afternoon, expressed himself\nafter the fashion I have sketched, usually interrupted the young man at\nthis point and read him a lecture on the duties of the American citizen.\nShe thought him most unnatural; he was worse than poor Ralph Touchett.\nHenrietta, however, was at this time more than ever addicted to fine\ncriticism, for her conscience had been freshly alarmed as regards\nIsabel. She had not congratulated this young lady on her augmentations\nand begged to be excused from doing so.\n\n\"If Mr. Touchett had consulted me about leaving you the money,\" she\nfrankly asserted, \"I'd have said to him 'Never!\"\n\n\"I see,\" Isabel had answered. \"You think it will prove a curse in\ndisguise. Perhaps it will.\"\n\n\"Leave it to some one you care less for--that's what I should have\nsaid.\"\n\n\"To yourself for instance?\" Isabel suggested jocosely. And then, \"Do you\nreally believe it will ruin me?\" she asked in quite another tone.\n\n\"I hope it won't ruin you; but it will certainly confirm your dangerous\ntendencies.\"\n\n\"Do you mean the love of luxury--of extravagance?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" said Henrietta; \"I mean your exposure on the moral side. I\napprove of luxury; I think we ought to be as elegant as possible. Look\nat the luxury of our western cities; I've seen nothing over here to\ncompare with it. I hope you'll never become grossly sensual; but I'm not\nafraid of that. The peril for you is that you live too much in the world\nof your own dreams. You're not enough in contact with reality--with\nthe toiling, striving, suffering, I may even say sinning, world\nthat surrounds you. You're too fastidious; you've too many graceful\nillusions. Your newly-acquired thousands will shut you up more and\nmore to the society of a few selfish and heartless people who will be\ninterested in keeping them up.\"\n\nIsabel's eyes expanded as she gazed at this lurid scene. \"What are my\nillusions?\" she asked. \"I try so hard not to have any.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Henrietta, \"you think you can lead a romantic life, that\nyou can live by pleasing yourself and pleasing others. You'll find\nyou're mistaken. Whatever life you lead you must put your soul in it--to\nmake any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it\nceases to be romance, I assure you: it becomes grim reality! And you\ncan't always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people.\nThat, I admit, you're very ready to do; but there's another thing that's\nstill more important--you must often displease others. You must always\nbe ready for that--you must never shrink from it. That doesn't suit you\nat all--you're too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well\nof. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic\nviews--that's your great illusion, my dear. But we can't. You must be\nprepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all--not even\nyourself.\"\n\nIsabel shook her head sadly; she looked troubled and frightened. \"This,\nfor you, Henrietta,\" she said, \"must be one of those occasions!\"\n\nIt was certainly true that Miss Stackpole, during her visit to Paris,\nwhich had been professionally more remunerative than her English\nsojourn, had not been living in the world of dreams. Mr. Bantling, who\nhad now returned to England, was her companion for the first four weeks\nof her stay; and about Mr. Bantling there was nothing dreamy. Isabel\nlearned from her friend that the two had led a life of great personal\nintimacy and that this had been a peculiar advantage to Henrietta,\nowing to the gentleman's remarkable knowledge of Paris. He had\nexplained everything, shown her everything, been her constant guide and\ninterpreter. They had breakfasted together, dined together, gone to\nthe theatre together, supped together, really in a manner quite lived\ntogether. He was a true friend, Henrietta more than once assured our\nheroine; and she had never supposed that she could like any Englishman\nso well. Isabel could not have told you why, but she found something\nthat ministered to mirth in the alliance the correspondent of the\nInterviewer had struck with Lady Pensil's brother; her amusement\nmoreover subsisted in face of the fact that she thought it a credit to\neach of them. Isabel couldn't rid herself of a suspicion that they were\nplaying somehow at cross-purposes--that the simplicity of each had\nbeen entrapped. But this simplicity was on either side none the less\nhonourable. It was as graceful on Henrietta's part to believe that Mr.\nBantling took an interest in the diffusion of lively journalism and in\nconsolidating the position of lady-correspondents as it was on the\npart of his companion to suppose that the cause of the Interviewer--a\nperiodical of which he never formed a very definite conception--was, if\nsubtly analysed (a task to which Mr. Bantling felt himself quite equal),\nbut the cause of Miss Stackpole's need of demonstrative affection. Each\nof these groping celibates supplied at any rate a want of which the\nother was impatiently conscious. Mr. Bantling, who was of rather a slow\nand a discursive habit, relished a prompt, keen, positive woman, who\ncharmed him by the influence of a shining, challenging eye and a kind of\nbandbox freshness, and who kindled a perception of raciness in a mind\nto which the usual fare of life seemed unsalted. Henrietta, on the other\nhand, enjoyed the society of a gentleman who appeared somehow, in his\nway, made, by expensive, roundabout, almost \"quaint\" processes, for\nher use, and whose leisured state, though generally indefensible, was a\ndecided boon to a breathless mate, and who was furnished with an easy,\ntraditional, though by no means exhaustive, answer to almost any social\nor practical question that could come up. She often found Mr. Bantling's\nanswers very convenient, and in the press of catching the American post\nwould largely and showily address them to publicity. It was to be feared\nthat she was indeed drifting toward those abysses of sophistication as\nto which Isabel, wishing for a good-humoured retort, had warned her.\nThere might be danger in store for Isabel; but it was scarcely to be\nhoped that Miss Stackpole, on her side, would find permanent rest in any\nadoption of the views of a class pledged to all the old abuses. Isabel\ncontinued to warn her good-humouredly; Lady Pensil's obliging brother\nwas sometimes, on our heroine's lips, an object of irreverent and\nfacetious allusion. Nothing, however, could exceed Henrietta's\namiability on this point; she used to abound in the sense of Isabel's\nirony and to enumerate with elation the hours she had spent with this\nperfect man of the world--a term that had ceased to make with her, as\npreviously, for opprobrium. Then, a few moments later, she would forget\nthat they had been talking jocosely and would mention with impulsive\nearnestness some expedition she had enjoyed in his company. She would\nsay: \"Oh, I know all about Versailles; I went there with Mr. Bantling. I\nwas bound to see it thoroughly--I warned him when we went out there that\nI was thorough: so we spent three days at the hotel and wandered all\nover the place. It was lovely weather--a kind of Indian summer, only not\nso good. We just lived in that park. Oh yes; you can't tell me anything\nabout Versailles.\" Henrietta appeared to have made arrangements to meet\nher gallant friend during the spring in Italy.\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Touchett, before arriving in Paris, had fixed the day for her\ndeparture and by the middle of February had begun to travel southward.\nShe interrupted her journey to pay a visit to her son, who at San Remo,\non the Italian shore of the Mediterranean, had been spending a dull,\nbright winter beneath a slow-moving white umbrella. Isabel went with her\naunt as a matter of course, though Mrs. Touchett, with homely, customary\nlogic, had laid before her a pair of alternatives.\n\n\"Now, of course, you're completely your own mistress and are as free as\nthe bird on the bough. I don't mean you were not so before, but you're\nat present on a different footing--property erects a kind of barrier.\nYou can do a great many things if you're rich which would be severely\ncriticised if you were poor. You can go and come, you can travel alone,\nyou can have your own establishment: I mean of course if you'll take\na companion--some decayed gentlewoman, with a darned cashmere and dyed\nhair, who paints on velvet. You don't think you'd like that? Of course\nyou can do as you please; I only want you to understand how much you're\nat liberty. You might take Miss Stackpole as your dame de compagnie;\nshe'd keep people off very well. I think, however, that it's a great\ndeal better you should remain with me, in spite of there being no\nobligation. It's better for several reasons, quite apart from your\nliking it. I shouldn't think you'd like it, but I recommend you to make\nthe sacrifice. Of course whatever novelty there may have been at first\nin my society has quite passed away, and you see me as I am--a dull,\nobstinate, narrow-minded old woman.\"\n\n\"I don't think you're at all dull,\" Isabel had replied to this.\n\n\"But you do think I'm obstinate and narrow-minded? I told you so!\" said\nMrs. Touchett with much elation at being justified.\n\nIsabel remained for the present with her aunt, because, in spite of\neccentric impulses, she had a great regard for what was usually deemed\ndecent, and a young gentlewoman without visible relations had always\nstruck her as a flower without foliage. It was true that Mrs. Touchett's\nconversation had never again appeared so brilliant as that first\nafternoon in Albany, when she sat in her damp waterproof and sketched\nthe opportunities that Europe would offer to a young person of taste.\nThis, however, was in a great measure the girl's own fault; she had\ngot a glimpse of her aunt's experience, and her imagination constantly\nanticipated the judgements and emotions of a woman who had very little\nof the same faculty. Apart from this, Mrs. Touchett had a great merit;\nshe was as honest as a pair of compasses. There was a comfort in her\nstiffness and firmness; you knew exactly where to find her and were\nnever liable to chance encounters and concussions. On her own ground\nshe was perfectly present, but was never over-inquisitive as regards\nthe territory of her neighbour. Isabel came at last to have a kind of\nundemonstrable pity for her; there seemed something so dreary in\nthe condition of a person whose nature had, as it were, so little\nsurface--offered so limited a face to the accretions of human contact.\nNothing tender, nothing sympathetic, had ever had a chance to fasten\nupon it--no wind-sown blossom, no familiar softening moss. Her offered,\nher passive extent, in other words, was about that of a knife-edge.\nIsabel had reason to believe none the less that as she advanced in life\nshe made more of those concessions to the sense of something obscurely\ndistinct from convenience--more of them than she independently exacted.\nShe was learning to sacrifice consistency to considerations of that\ninferior order for which the excuse must be found in the particular\ncase. It was not to the credit of her absolute rectitude that she should\nhave gone the longest way round to Florence in order to spend a few\nweeks with her invalid son; since in former years it had been one of her\nmost definite convictions that when Ralph wished to see her he was at\nliberty to remember that Palazzo Crescentini contained a large apartment\nknown as the quarter of the signorino.\n\n\"I want to ask you something,\" Isabel said to this young man the day\nafter her arrival at San Remo--\"something I've thought more than once\nof asking you by letter, but that I've hesitated on the whole to write\nabout. Face to face, nevertheless, my question seems easy enough. Did\nyou know your father intended to leave me so much money?\"\n\nRalph stretched his legs a little further than usual and gazed a little\nmore fixedly at the Mediterranean.\n\n\"What does it matter, my dear Isabel, whether I knew? My father was very\nobstinate.\"\n\n\"So,\" said the girl, \"you did know.\"\n\n\"Yes; he told me. We even talked it over a little.\" \"What did he do it\nfor?\" asked Isabel abruptly. \"Why, as a kind of compliment.\"\n\n\"A compliment on what?\"\n\n\"On your so beautifully existing.\"\n\n\"He liked me too much,\" she presently declared.\n\n\"That's a way we all have.\"\n\n\"If I believed that I should be very unhappy. Fortunately I don't\nbelieve it. I want to be treated with justice; I want nothing but that.\"\n\n\"Very good. But you must remember that justice to a lovely being is\nafter all a florid sort of sentiment.\"\n\n\"I'm not a lovely being. How can you say that, at the very moment when\nI'm asking such odious questions? I must seem to you delicate!\"\n\n\"You seem to me troubled,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"I am troubled.\"\n\n\"About what?\"\n\nFor a moment she answered nothing; then she broke out: \"Do you think it\ngood for me suddenly to be made so rich? Henrietta doesn't.\"\n\n\"Oh, hang Henrietta!\" said Ralph coarsely, \"If you ask me I'm delighted\nat it.\"\n\n\"Is that why your father did it--for your amusement?\"\n\n\"I differ with Miss Stackpole,\" Ralph went on more gravely. \"I think it\nvery good for you to have means.\"\n\nIsabel looked at him with serious eyes. \"I wonder whether you know\nwhat's good for me--or whether you care.\"\n\n\"If I know depend upon it I care. Shall I tell you what it is? Not to\ntorment yourself.\"\n\n\"Not to torment you, I suppose you mean.\"\n\n\"You can't do that; I'm proof. Take things more easily. Don't ask\nyourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don't question\nyour conscience so much--it will get out of tune like a strummed\npiano. Keep it for great occasions. Don't try so much to form your\ncharacter--it's like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose.\nLive as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most\nthings are good for you; the exceptions are very rare, and a comfortable\nincome's not one of them.\" Ralph paused, smiling; Isabel had listened\nquickly. \"You've too much power of thought--above all too much\nconscience,\" Ralph added. \"It's out of all reason, the number of things\nyou think wrong. Put back your watch. Diet your fever. Spread your\nwings; rise above the ground. It's never wrong to do that.\"\n\nShe had listened eagerly, as I say; and it was her nature to understand\nquickly. \"I wonder if you appreciate what you say. If you do, you take a\ngreat responsibility.\"\n\n\"You frighten me a little, but I think I'm right,\" said Ralph,\npersisting in cheer.\n\n\"All the same what you say is very true,\" Isabel pursued. \"You could say\nnothing more true. I'm absorbed in myself--I look at life too much as\na doctor's prescription. Why indeed should we perpetually be thinking\nwhether things are good for us, as if we were patients lying in a\nhospital? Why should I be so afraid of not doing right? As if it\nmattered to the world whether I do right or wrong!\"\n\n\"You're a capital person to advise,\" said Ralph; \"you take the wind out\nof my sails!\"\n\nShe looked at him as if she had not heard him--though she was following\nout the train of reflexion which he himself had kindled. \"I try to\ncare more about the world than about myself--but I always come back to\nmyself. It's because I'm afraid.\" She stopped; her voice had trembled\na little. \"Yes, I'm afraid; I can't tell you. A large fortune means\nfreedom, and I'm afraid of that. It's such a fine thing, and one should\nmake such a good use of it. If one shouldn't one would be ashamed. And\none must keep thinking; it's a constant effort. I'm not sure it's not a\ngreater happiness to be powerless.\"\n\n\"For weak people I've no doubt it's a greater happiness. For weak people\nthe effort not to be contemptible must be great.\"\n\n\"And how do you know I'm not weak?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"Ah,\" Ralph answered with a flush that the girl noticed, \"if you are I'm\nawfully sold!\"\n\nThe charm of the Mediterranean coast only deepened for our heroine\non acquaintance, for it was the threshold of Italy, the gate of\nadmirations. Italy, as yet imperfectly seen and felt, stretched before\nher as a land of promise, a land in which a love of the beautiful might\nbe comforted by endless knowledge. Whenever she strolled upon the shore\nwith her cousin--and she was the companion of his daily walk--she looked\nacross the sea, with longing eyes, to where she knew that Genoa lay. She\nwas glad to pause, however, on the edge of this larger adventure; there\nwas such a thrill even in the preliminary hovering. It affected her\nmoreover as a peaceful interlude, as a hush of the drum and fife in a\ncareer which she had little warrant as yet for regarding as agitated,\nbut which nevertheless she was constantly picturing to herself by\nthe light of her hopes, her fears, her fancies, her ambitions, her\npredilections, and which reflected these subjective accidents in\na manner sufficiently dramatic. Madame Merle had predicted to Mrs.\nTouchett that after their young friend had put her hand into her pocket\nhalf a dozen times she would be reconciled to the idea that it had been\nfilled by a munificent uncle; and the event justified, as it had so\noften justified before, that lady's perspicacity. Ralph Touchett had\npraised his cousin for being morally inflammable, that is for being\nquick to take a hint that was meant as good advice. His advice had\nperhaps helped the matter; she had at any rate before leaving San Remo\ngrown used to feeling rich. The consciousness in question found a\nproper place in rather a dense little group of ideas that she had about\nherself, and often it was by no means the least agreeable. It took\nperpetually for granted a thousand good intentions. She lost herself in\na maze of visions; the fine things to be done by a rich, independent,\ngenerous girl who took a large human view of occasions and obligations\nwere sublime in the mass. Her fortune therefore became to her mind a\npart of her better self; it gave her importance, gave her even, to her\nown imagination, a certain ideal beauty. What it did for her in the\nimagination of others is another affair, and on this point we must also\ntouch in time. The visions I have just spoken of were mixed with other\ndebates. Isabel liked better to think of the future than of the past;\nbut at times, as she listened to the murmur of the Mediterranean waves,\nher glance took a backward flight. It rested upon two figures which, in\nspite of increasing distance, were still sufficiently salient; they were\nrecognisable without difficulty as those of Caspar Goodwood and Lord\nWarburton. It was strange how quickly these images of energy had fallen\ninto the background of our young lady's life. It was in her disposition\nat all times to lose faith in the reality of absent things; she could\nsummon back her faith, in case of need, with an effort, but the effort\nwas often painful even when the reality had been pleasant. The past was\napt to look dead and its revival rather to show the livid light of a\njudgement-day. The girl moreover was not prone to take for granted that\nshe herself lived in the mind of others--she had not the fatuity to\nbelieve she left indelible traces. She was capable of being wounded by\nthe discovery that she had been forgotten; but of all liberties the one\nshe herself found sweetest was the liberty to forget. She had not given\nher last shilling, sentimentally speaking, either to Caspar Goodwood or\nto Lord Warburton, and yet couldn't but feel them appreciably in debt\nto her. She had of course reminded herself that she was to hear from Mr.\nGoodwood again; but this was not to be for another year and a half, and\nin that time a great many things might happen. She had indeed failed to\nsay to herself that her American suitor might find some other girl more\ncomfortable to woo; because, though it was certain many other girls\nwould prove so, she had not the smallest belief that this merit\nwould attract him. But she reflected that she herself might know the\nhumiliation of change, might really, for that matter, come to the end of\nthe things that were not Caspar (even though there appeared so many of\nthem), and find rest in those very elements of his presence which struck\nher now as impediments to the finer respiration. It was conceivable\nthat these impediments should some day prove a sort of blessing\nin disguise--a clear and quiet harbour enclosed by a brave granite\nbreakwater. But that day could only come in its order, and she couldn't\nwait for it with folded hands. That Lord Warburton should continue\nto cherish her image seemed to her more than a noble humility or an\nenlightened pride ought to wish to reckon with. She had so definitely\nundertaken to preserve no record of what had passed between them that a\ncorresponding effort on his own part would be eminently just. This\nwas not, as it may seem, merely a theory tinged with sarcasm. Isabel\ncandidly believed that his lordship would, in the usual phrase, get over\nhis disappointment. He had been deeply affected--this she believed, and\nshe was still capable of deriving pleasure from the belief; but it\nwas absurd that a man both so intelligent and so honourably dealt with\nshould cultivate a scar out of proportion to any wound. Englishmen\nliked moreover to be comfortable, said Isabel, and there could be\nlittle comfort for Lord Warburton, in the long run, in brooding over a\nself-sufficient American girl who had been but a casual acquaintance.\nShe flattered herself that, should she hear from one day to another that\nhe had married some young woman of his own country who had done more\nto deserve him, she should receive the news without a pang even of\nsurprise. It would have proved that he believed she was firm--which was\nwhat she wished to seem to him. That alone was grateful to her pride.\n\n\n\n\n\nOn one of the first days of May, some six months after old Mr.\nTouchett's death, a small group that might have been described by a\npainter as composing well was gathered in one of the many rooms of an\nancient villa crowning an olive-muffled hill outside of the Roman gate\nof Florence. The villa was a long, rather blank-looking structure, with\nthe far-projecting roof which Tuscany loves and which, on the hills that\nencircle Florence, when considered from a distance, makes so harmonious\na rectangle with the straight, dark, definite cypresses that usually\nrise in groups of three or four beside it. The house had a front upon\na little grassy, empty, rural piazza which occupied a part of the\nhill-top; and this front, pierced with a few windows in irregular\nrelations and furnished with a stone bench lengthily adjusted to the\nbase of the structure and useful as a lounging-place to one or two\npersons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued merit which in\nItaly, for some reason or other, always gracefully invests any one who\nconfidently assumes a perfectly passive attitude--this antique,\nsolid, weather-worn, yet imposing front had a somewhat incommunicative\ncharacter. It was the mask, not the face of the house. It had heavy\nlids, but no eyes; the house in reality looked another way--looked off\nbehind, into splendid openness and the range of the afternoon light.\nIn that quarter the villa overhung the slope of its hill and the long\nvalley of the Arno, hazy with Italian colour. It had a narrow garden, in\nthe manner of a terrace, productive chiefly of tangles of wild roses\nand other old stone benches, mossy and sun-warmed. The parapet of the\nterrace was just the height to lean upon, and beneath it the ground\ndeclined into the vagueness of olive-crops and vineyards. It is not,\nhowever, with the outside of the place that we are concerned; on this\nbright morning of ripened spring its tenants had reason to prefer the\nshady side of the wall. The windows of the ground-floor, as you saw\nthem from the piazza, were, in their noble proportions, extremely\narchitectural; but their function seemed less to offer communication\nwith the world than to defy the world to look in. They were massively\ncross-barred, and placed at such a height that curiosity, even on\ntiptoe, expired before it reached them. In an apartment lighted by a\nrow of three of these jealous apertures--one of the several distinct\napartments into which the villa was divided and which were mainly\noccupied by foreigners of random race long resident in Florence--a\ngentleman was seated in company with a young girl and two good sisters\nfrom a religious house. The room was, however, less sombre than our\nindications may have represented, for it had a wide, high door, which\nnow stood open into the tangled garden behind; and the tall iron\nlattices admitted on occasion more than enough of the Italian\nsunshine. It was moreover a seat of ease, indeed of luxury, telling\nof arrangements subtly studied and refinements frankly proclaimed, and\ncontaining a variety of those faded hangings of damask and tapestry,\nthose chests and cabinets of carved and time-polished oak, those angular\nspecimens of pictorial art in frames as pedantically primitive, those\nperverse-looking relics of medieval brass and pottery, of which Italy\nhas long been the not quite exhausted storehouse. These things kept\nterms with articles of modern furniture in which large allowance had\nbeen made for a lounging generation; it was to be noticed that all the\nchairs were deep and well padded and that much space was occupied by a\nwriting-table of which the ingenious perfection bore the stamp of London\nand the nineteenth century. There were books in profusion and magazines\nand newspapers, and a few small, odd, elaborate pictures, chiefly in\nwater-colour. One of these productions stood on a drawing-room easel\nbefore which, at the moment we begin to be concerned with her, the young\ngirl I have mentioned had placed herself. She was looking at the picture\nin silence.\n\nSilence--absolute silence--had not fallen upon her companions; but their\ntalk had an appearance of embarrassed continuity. The two good sisters\nhad not settled themselves in their respective chairs; their attitude\nexpressed a final reserve and their faces showed the glaze of\nprudence. They were plain, ample, mild-featured women, with a kind of\nbusiness-like modesty to which the impersonal aspect of their stiffened\nlinen and of the serge that draped them as if nailed on frames gave an\nadvantage. One of them, a person of a certain age, in spectacles, with a\nfresh complexion and a full cheek, had a more discriminating manner\nthan her colleague, as well as the responsibility of their errand, which\napparently related to the young girl. This object of interest wore her\nhat--an ornament of extreme simplicity and not at variance with her\nplain muslin gown, too short for her years, though it must already\nhave been \"let out.\" The gentleman who might have been supposed to be\nentertaining the two nuns was perhaps conscious of the difficulties of\nhis function, it being in its way as arduous to converse with the very\nmeek as with the very mighty. At the same time he was clearly much\noccupied with their quiet charge, and while she turned her back to\nhim his eyes rested gravely on her slim, small figure. He was a man of\nforty, with a high but well-shaped head, on which the hair, still dense,\nbut prematurely grizzled, had been cropped close. He had a fine, narrow,\nextremely modelled and composed face, of which the only fault was just\nthis effect of its running a trifle too much to points; an appearance to\nwhich the shape of the beard contributed not a little. This beard, cut\nin the manner of the portraits of the sixteenth century and surmounted\nby a fair moustache, of which the ends had a romantic upward flourish,\ngave its wearer a foreign, traditionary look and suggested that he was a\ngentleman who studied style. His conscious, curious eyes, however, eyes\nat once vague and penetrating, intelligent and hard, expressive of\nthe observer as well as of the dreamer, would have assured you that\nhe studied it only within well-chosen limits, and that in so far as he\nsought it he found it. You would have been much at a loss to determine\nhis original clime and country; he had none of the superficial signs\nthat usually render the answer to this question an insipidly easy one.\nIf he had English blood in his veins it had probably received some\nFrench or Italian commixture; but he suggested, fine gold coin as he\nwas, no stamp nor emblem of the common mintage that provides for general\ncirculation; he was the elegant complicated medal struck off for a\nspecial occasion. He had a light, lean, rather languid-looking figure,\nand was apparently neither tall nor short. He was dressed as a man\ndresses who takes little other trouble about it than to have no vulgar\nthings.\n\n\"Well, my dear, what do you think of it?\" he asked of the young girl. He\nused the Italian tongue, and used it with perfect ease; but this would\nnot have convinced you he was Italian.\n\nThe child turned her head earnestly to one side and the other. \"It's\nvery pretty, papa. Did you make it yourself?\"\n\n\"Certainly I made it. Don't you think I'm clever?\"\n\n\"Yes, papa, very clever; I also have learned to make pictures.\" And\nshe turned round and showed a small, fair face painted with a fixed and\nintensely sweet smile.\n\n\"You should have brought me a specimen of your powers.\"\n\n\"I've brought a great many; they're in my trunk.\"\n\n\"She draws very--very carefully,\" the elder of the nuns remarked,\nspeaking in French.\n\n\"I'm glad to hear it. Is it you who have instructed her?\"\n\n\"Happily no,\" said the good sister, blushing a little. \"Ce n'est pas ma\npartie. I teach nothing; I leave that to those who are wiser. We've an\nexcellent drawing-master, Mr.--Mr.--what is his name?\" she asked of her\ncompanion.\n\nHer companion looked about at the carpet. \"It's a German name,\" she said\nin Italian, as if it needed to be translated.\n\n\"Yes,\" the other went on, \"he's a German, and we've had him many years.\"\n\nThe young girl, who was not heeding the conversation, had wandered away\nto the open door of the large room and stood looking into the garden.\n\"And you, my sister, are French,\" said the gentleman.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" the visitor gently replied. \"I speak to the pupils in my\nown tongue. I know no other. But we have sisters of other\ncountries--English, German, Irish. They all speak their proper\nlanguage.\"\n\nThe gentleman gave a smile. \"Has my daughter been under the care of one\nof the Irish ladies?\" And then, as he saw that his visitors suspected\na joke, though failing to understand it, \"You're very complete,\" he\ninstantly added.\n\n\"Oh, yes, we're complete. We've everything, and everything's of the\nbest.\"\n\n\"We have gymnastics,\" the Italian sister ventured to remark. \"But not\ndangerous.\"\n\n\"I hope not. Is that YOUR branch?\" A question which provoked much candid\nhilarity on the part of the two ladies; on the subsidence of which their\nentertainer, glancing at his daughter, remarked that she had grown.\n\n\"Yes, but I think she has finished. She'll remain--not big,\" said the\nFrench sister.\n\n\"I'm not sorry. I prefer women like books--very good and not too long.\nBut I know,\" the gentleman said, \"no particular reason why my child\nshould be short.\"\n\nThe nun gave a temperate shrug, as if to intimate that such things might\nbe beyond our knowledge. \"She's in very good health; that's the best\nthing.\"\n\n\"Yes, she looks sound.\" And the young girl's father watched her a\nmoment. \"What do you see in the garden?\" he asked in French.\n\n\"I see many flowers,\" she replied in a sweet, small voice and with an\naccent as good as his own.\n\n\"Yes, but not many good ones. However, such as they are, go out and\ngather some for ces dames.\"\n\nThe child turned to him with her smile heightened by pleasure. \"May I,\ntruly?\"\n\n\"Ah, when I tell you,\" said her father.\n\nThe girl glanced at the elder of the nuns. \"May I, truly, ma mere?\"\n\n\"Obey monsieur your father, my child,\" said the sister, blushing again.\n\nThe child, satisfied with this authorisation, descended from the\nthreshold and was presently lost to sight. \"You don't spoil them,\" said\nher father gaily.\n\n\"For everything they must ask leave. That's our system. Leave is freely\ngranted, but they must ask it.\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't quarrel with your system; I've no doubt it's excellent. I\nsent you my daughter to see what you'd make of her. I had faith.\"\n\n\"One must have faith,\" the sister blandly rejoined, gazing through her\nspectacles.\n\n\"Well, has my faith been rewarded? What have you made of her?\"\n\nThe sister dropped her eyes a moment. \"A good Christian, monsieur.\"\n\nHer host dropped his eyes as well; but it was probable that the movement\nhad in each case a different spring. \"Yes, and what else?\"\n\nHe watched the lady from the convent, probably thinking she would say\nthat a good Christian was everything; but for all her simplicity she\nwas not so crude as that. \"A charming young lady--a real little woman--a\ndaughter in whom you will have nothing but contentment.\"\n\n\"She seems to me very gentille,\" said the father. \"She's really pretty.\"\n\n\"She's perfect. She has no faults.\"\n\n\"She never had any as a child, and I'm glad you have given her none.\"\n\n\"We love her too much,\" said the spectacled sister with dignity.\n\n\"And as for faults, how can we give what we have not? Le couvent n'est\npas comme le monde, monsieur. She's our daughter, as you may say. We've\nhad her since she was so small.\"\n\n\"Of all those we shall lose this year she's the one we shall miss most,\"\nthe younger woman murmured deferentially.\n\n\"Ah, yes, we shall talk long of her,\" said the other. \"We shall hold her\nup to the new ones.\" And at this the good sister appeared to find her\nspectacles dim; while her companion, after fumbling a moment, presently\ndrew forth a pocket-handkerchief of durable texture.\n\n\"It's not certain you'll lose her; nothing's settled yet,\" their host\nrejoined quickly; not as if to anticipate their tears, but in the tone\nof a man saying what was most agreeable to himself. \"We should be very\nhappy to believe that. Fifteen is very young to leave us.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" exclaimed the gentleman with more vivacity than he had yet used,\n\"it is not I who wish to take her away. I wish you could keep her\nalways!\"\n\n\"Ah, monsieur,\" said the elder sister, smiling and getting up, \"good as\nshe is, she's made for the world. Le monde y gagnera.\"\n\n\"If all the good people were hidden away in convents how would the world\nget on?\" her companion softly enquired, rising also.\n\nThis was a question of a wider bearing than the good woman apparently\nsupposed; and the lady in spectacles took a harmonising view by saying\ncomfortably: \"Fortunately there are good people everywhere.\"\n\n\"If you're going there will be two less here,\" her host remarked\ngallantly.\n\nFor this extravagant sally his simple visitors had no answer, and they\nsimply looked at each other in decent deprecation; but their confusion\nwas speedily covered by the return of the young girl with two large\nbunches of roses--one of them all white, the other red.\n\n\"I give you your choice, mamman Catherine,\" said the child. \"It's only\nthe colour that's different, mamman Justine; there are just as many\nroses in one bunch as in the other.\"\n\nThe two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating, with\n\"Which will you take?\" and \"No, it's for you to choose.\"\n\n\"I'll take the red, thank you,\" said Catherine in the spectacles. \"I'm\nso red myself. They'll comfort us on our way back to Rome.\"\n\n\"Ah, they won't last,\" cried the young girl. \"I wish I could give you\nsomething that would last!\"\n\n\"You've given us a good memory of yourself, my daughter. That will\nlast!\"\n\n\"I wish nuns could wear pretty things. I would give you my blue beads,\"\nthe child went on.\n\n\"And do you go back to Rome to-night?\" her father enquired.\n\n\"Yes, we take the train again. We've so much to do la-bas.\"\n\n\"Are you not tired?\"\n\n\"We are never tired.\"\n\n\"Ah, my sister, sometimes,\" murmured the junior votaress.\n\n\"Not to-day, at any rate. We have rested too well here. Que Dieu vous\ngarde, ma fine.\"\n\nTheir host, while they exchanged kisses with his daughter, went forward\nto open the door through which they were to pass; but as he did so he\ngave a slight exclamation, and stood looking beyond. The door opened\ninto a vaulted ante-chamber, as high as a chapel and paved with red\ntiles; and into this antechamber a lady had just been admitted by a\nservant, a lad in shabby livery, who was now ushering her toward the\napartment in which our friends were grouped. The gentleman at the door,\nafter dropping his exclamation, remained silent; in silence too the lady\nadvanced. He gave her no further audible greeting and offered her no\nhand, but stood aside to let her pass into the saloon. At the threshold\nshe hesitated. \"Is there any one?\" she asked.\n\n\"Some one you may see.\"\n\nShe went in and found herself confronted with the two nuns and their\npupil, who was coming forward, between them, with a hand in the arm of\neach. At the sight of the new visitor they all paused, and the lady, who\nhad also stopped, stood looking at them. The young girl gave a little\nsoft cry: \"Ah, Madame Merle!\"\n\nThe visitor had been slightly startled, but her manner the next instant\nwas none the less gracious. \"Yes, it's Madame Merle, come to welcome you\nhome.\" And she held out two hands to the girl, who immediately came up\nto her, presenting her forehead to be kissed. Madame Merle saluted this\nportion of her charming little person and then stood smiling at the two\nnuns. They acknowledged her smile with a decent obeisance, but permitted\nthemselves no direct scrutiny of this imposing, brilliant woman, who\nseemed to bring in with her something of the radiance of the outer\nworld. \"These ladies have brought my daughter home, and now they return\nto the convent,\" the gentleman explained.\n\n\"Ah, you go back to Rome? I've lately come from there. It's very lovely\nnow,\" said Madame Merle.\n\nThe good sisters, standing with their hands folded into their sleeves,\naccepted this statement uncritically; and the master of the house asked\nhis new visitor how long it was since she had left Rome. \"She came to\nsee me at the convent,\" said the young girl before the lady addressed\nhad time to reply.\n\n\"I've been more than once, Pansy,\" Madame Merle declared. \"Am I not your\ngreat friend in Rome?\"\n\n\"I remember the last time best,\" said Pansy, \"because you told me I\nshould come away.\"\n\n\"Did you tell her that?\" the child's father asked.\n\n\"I hardly remember. I told her what I thought would please her. I've\nbeen in Florence a week. I hoped you would come to see me.\"\n\n\"I should have done so if I had known you were there. One doesn't know\nsuch things by inspiration--though I suppose one ought. You had better\nsit down.\"\n\nThese two speeches were made in a particular tone of voice--a tone\nhalf-lowered and carefully quiet, but as from habit rather than from any\ndefinite need. Madame Merle looked about her, choosing her seat. \"You're\ngoing to the door with these women? Let me of course not interrupt the\nceremony. Je vous salue, mesdames,\" she added, in French, to the nuns,\nas if to dismiss them.\n\n\"This lady's a great friend of ours; you will have seen her at the\nconvent,\" said their entertainer. \"We've much faith in her judgement,\nand she'll help me to decide whether my daughter shall return to you at\nthe end of the holidays.\"\n\n\"I hope you'll decide in our favour, madame,\" the sister in spectacles\nventured to remark.\n\n\"That's Mr. Osmond's pleasantry; I decide nothing,\" said Madame Merle,\nbut also as in pleasantry. \"I believe you've a very good school, but\nMiss Osmond's friends must remember that she's very naturally meant for\nthe world.\"\n\n\"That's what I've told monsieur,\" sister Catherine answered. \"It's\nprecisely to fit her for the world,\" she murmured, glancing at Pansy,\nwho stood, at a little distance, attentive to Madame Merle's elegant\napparel.\n\n\"Do you hear that, Pansy? You're very naturally meant for the world,\"\nsaid Pansy's father.\n\nThe child fixed him an instant with her pure young eyes. \"Am I not meant\nfor you, papa?\"\n\nPapa gave a quick, light laugh. \"That doesn't prevent it! I'm of the\nworld, Pansy.\"\n\n\"Kindly permit us to retire,\" said sister Catherine. \"Be good and wise\nand happy in any case, my daughter.\"\n\n\"I shall certainly come back and see you,\" Pansy returned, recommencing\nher embraces, which were presently interrupted by Madame Merle.\n\n\"Stay with me, dear child,\" she said, \"while your father takes the good\nladies to the door.\"\n\nPansy stared, disappointed, yet not protesting. She was evidently\nimpregnated with the idea of submission, which was due to any one who\ntook the tone of authority; and she was a passive spectator of the\noperation of her fate. \"May I not see mamman Catherine get into the\ncarriage?\" she nevertheless asked very gently.\n\n\"It would please me better if you'd remain with me,\" said Madame Merle,\nwhile Mr. Osmond and his companions, who had bowed low again to the\nother visitor, passed into the ante-chamber.\n\n\"Oh yes, I'll stay,\" Pansy answered; and she stood near Madame Merle,\nsurrendering her little hand, which this lady took. She stared out of\nthe window; her eyes had filled with tears.\n\n\"I'm glad they've taught you to obey,\" said Madame Merle. \"That's what\ngood little girls should do.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I obey very well,\" cried Pansy with soft eagerness, almost with\nboastfulness, as if she had been speaking of her piano-playing. And then\nshe gave a faint, just audible sigh.\n\nMadame Merle, holding her hand, drew it across her own fine palm and\nlooked at it. The gaze was critical, but it found nothing to deprecate;\nthe child's small hand was delicate and fair. \"I hope they always see\nthat you wear gloves,\" she said in a moment. \"Little girls usually\ndislike them.\"\n\n\"I used to dislike them, but I like them now,\" the child made answer.\n\n\"Very good, I'll make you a present of a dozen.\"\n\n\"I thank you very much. What colours will they be?\" Pansy demanded with\ninterest.\n\nMadame Merle meditated. \"Useful colours.\"\n\n\"But very pretty?\"\n\n\"Are you very fond of pretty things?\"\n\n\"Yes; but--but not too fond,\" said Pansy with a trace of asceticism.\n\n\"Well, they won't be too pretty,\" Madame Merle returned with a laugh.\nShe took the child's other hand and drew her nearer; after which,\nlooking at her a moment, \"Shall you miss mother Catherine?\" she went on.\n\n\"Yes--when I think of her.\"\n\n\"Try then not to think of her. Perhaps some day,\" added Madame Merle,\n\"you'll have another mother.\"\n\n\"I don't think that's necessary,\" Pansy said, repeating her little soft\nconciliatory sigh. \"I had more than thirty mothers at the convent.\"\n\nHer father's step sounded again in the antechamber, and Madame Merle got\nup, releasing the child. Mr. Osmond came in and closed the door; then,\nwithout looking at Madame Merle, he pushed one or two chairs back into\ntheir places. His visitor waited a moment for him to speak, watching him\nas he moved about. Then at last she said: \"I hoped you'd have come to\nRome. I thought it possible you'd have wished yourself to fetch Pansy\naway.\"\n\n\"That was a natural supposition; but I'm afraid it's not the first time\nI've acted in defiance of your calculations.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Madame Merle, \"I think you very perverse.\"\n\nMr. Osmond busied himself for a moment in the room--there was plenty of\nspace in it to move about--in the fashion of a man mechanically\nseeking pretexts for not giving an attention which may be embarrassing.\nPresently, however, he had exhausted his pretexts; there was nothing\nleft for him--unless he took up a book--but to stand with his hands\nbehind him looking at Pansy. \"Why didn't you come and see the last of\nmamman Catherine?\" he asked of her abruptly in French.\n\nPansy hesitated a moment, glancing at Madame Merle. \"I asked her to stay\nwith me,\" said this lady, who had seated herself again in another place.\n\n\"Ah, that was better,\" Osmond conceded. With which he dropped into a\nchair and sat looking at Madame Merle; bent forward a little, his elbows\non the edge of the arms and his hands interlocked.\n\n\"She's going to give me some gloves,\" said Pansy.\n\n\"You needn't tell that to every one, my dear,\" Madame Merle observed.\n\n\"You're very kind to her,\" said Osmond. \"She's supposed to have\neverything she needs.\"\n\n\"I should think she had had enough of the nuns.\"\n\n\"If we're going to discuss that matter she had better go out of the\nroom.\"\n\n\"Let her stay,\" said Madame Merle. \"We'll talk of something else.\"\n\n\"If you like I won't listen,\" Pansy suggested with an appearance of\ncandour which imposed conviction.\n\n\"You may listen, charming child, because you won't understand,\" her\nfather replied. The child sat down, deferentially, near the open door,\nwithin sight of the garden, into which she directed her innocent,\nwistful eyes; and Mr. Osmond went on irrelevantly, addressing himself to\nhis other companion. \"You're looking particularly well.\"\n\n\"I think I always look the same,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"You always ARE the same. You don't vary. You're a wonderful woman.\"\n\n\"Yes, I think I am.\"\n\n\"You sometimes change your mind, however. You told me on your return\nfrom England that you wouldn't leave Rome again for the present.\"\n\n\"I'm pleased that you remember so well what I say. That was my\nintention. But I've come to Florence to meet some friends who have\nlately arrived and as to whose movements I was at that time uncertain.\"\n\n\"That reason's characteristic. You're always doing something for your\nfriends.\"\n\nMadame Merle smiled straight at her host. \"It's less characteristic than\nyour comment upon it which is perfectly insincere. I don't, however,\nmake a crime of that,\" she added, \"because if you don't believe what\nyou say there's no reason why you should. I don't ruin myself for my\nfriends; I don't deserve your praise. I care greatly for myself.\"\n\n\"Exactly; but yourself includes so many other selves--so much of every\none else and of everything. I never knew a person whose life touched so\nmany other lives.\"\n\n\"What do you call one's life?\" asked Madame Merle. \"One's appearance,\none's movements, one's engagements, one's society?\"\n\n\"I call YOUR life your ambitions,\" said Osmond.\n\nMadame Merle looked a moment at Pansy. \"I wonder if she understands\nthat,\" she murmured.\n\n\"You see she can't stay with us!\" And Pansy's father gave rather a\njoyless smile. \"Go into the garden, mignonne, and pluck a flower or two\nfor Madame Merle,\" he went on in French.\n\n\"That's just what I wanted to do,\" Pansy exclaimed, rising with\npromptness and noiselessly departing. Her father followed her to the\nopen door, stood a moment watching her, and then came back, but remained\nstanding, or rather strolling to and fro, as if to cultivate a sense of\nfreedom which in another attitude might be wanting.\n\n\"My ambitions are principally for you,\" said Madame Merle, looking up at\nhim with a certain courage.\n\n\"That comes back to what I say. I'm part of your life--I and a thousand\nothers. You're not selfish--I can't admit that. If you were selfish,\nwhat should I be? What epithet would properly describe me?\"\n\n\"You're indolent. For me that's your worst fault.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid it's really my best.\"\n\n\"You don't care,\" said Madame Merle gravely.\n\n\"No; I don't think I care much. What sort of a fault do you call that?\nMy indolence, at any rate, was one of the reasons I didn't go to Rome.\nBut it was only one of them.\"\n\n\"It's not of importance--to me at least--that you didn't go; though I\nshould have been glad to see you. I'm glad you're not in Rome now--which\nyou might be, would probably be, if you had gone there a month ago.\nThere's something I should like you to do at present in Florence.\"\n\n\"Please remember my indolence,\" said Osmond.\n\n\"I do remember it; but I beg you to forget it. In that way you'll have\nboth the virtue and the reward. This is not a great labour, and it\nmay prove a real interest. How long is it since you made a new\nacquaintance?\"\n\n\"I don't think I've made any since I made yours.\"\n\n\"It's time then you should make another. There's a friend of mine I want\nyou to know.\"\n\nMr. Osmond, in his walk, had gone back to the open door again and was\nlooking at his daughter as she moved about in the intense sunshine.\n\"What good will it do me?\" he asked with a sort of genial crudity.\n\nMadame Merle waited. \"It will amuse you.\" There was nothing crude in\nthis rejoinder; it had been thoroughly well considered.\n\n\"If you say that, you know, I believe it,\" said Osmond, coming toward\nher. \"There are some points in which my confidence in you is complete.\nI'm perfectly aware, for instance, that you know good society from bad.\"\n\n\"Society is all bad.\"\n\n\"Pardon me. That isn't--the knowledge I impute to you--a common sort\nof wisdom. You've gained it in the right way--experimentally; you've\ncompared an immense number of more or less impossible people with each\nother.\"\n\n\"Well, I invite you to profit by my knowledge.\"\n\n\"To profit? Are you very sure that I shall?\"\n\n\"It's what I hope. It will depend on yourself. If I could only induce\nyou to make an effort!\"\n\n\"Ah, there you are! I knew something tiresome was coming. What in the\nworld--that's likely to turn up here--is worth an effort?\"\n\nMadame Merle flushed as with a wounded intention. \"Don't be foolish,\nOsmond. No one knows better than you what IS worth an effort. Haven't I\nseen you in old days?\"\n\n\"I recognise some things. But they're none of them probable in this poor\nlife.\"\n\n\"It's the effort that makes them probable,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"There's something in that. Who then is your friend?\"\n\n\"The person I came to Florence to see. She's a niece of Mrs. Touchett,\nwhom you'll not have forgotten.\"\n\n\"A niece? The word niece suggests youth and ignorance. I see what you're\ncoming to.\"\n\n\"Yes, she's young--twenty-three years old. She's a great friend of mine.\nI met her for the first time in England, several months ago, and we\nstruck up a grand alliance. I like her immensely, and I do what I don't\ndo every day--I admire her. You'll do the same.\"\n\n\"Not if I can help it.\"\n\n\"Precisely. But you won't be able to help it.\"\n\n\"Is she beautiful, clever, rich, splendid, universally intelligent and\nunprecedentedly virtuous? It's only on those conditions that I care to\nmake her acquaintance. You know I asked you some time ago never to speak\nto me of a creature who shouldn't correspond to that description. I know\nplenty of dingy people; I don't want to know any more.\"\n\n\"Miss Archer isn't dingy; she's as bright as the morning. She\ncorresponds to your description; it's for that I wish you to know her.\nShe fills all your requirements.\"\n\n\"More or less, of course.\"\n\n\"No; quite literally. She's beautiful, accomplished, generous and, for\nan American, well-born. She's also very clever and very amiable, and she\nhas a handsome fortune.\"\n\nMr. Osmond listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it over in his\nmind with his eyes on his informant. \"What do you want to do with her?\"\nhe asked at last.\n\n\"What you see. Put her in your way.\"\n\n\"Isn't she meant for something better than that?\"\n\n\"I don't pretend to know what people are meant for,\" said Madame Merle.\n\"I only know what I can do with them.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry for Miss Archer!\" Osmond declared.\n\nMadame Merle got up. \"If that's a beginning of interest in her I take\nnote of it.\"\n\nThe two stood there face to face; she settled her mantilla, looking down\nat it as she did so. \"You're looking very well,\" Osmond repeated still\nless relevantly than before. \"You have some idea. You're never so well\nas when you've got an idea; they're always becoming to you.\"\n\nIn the manner and tone of these two persons, on first meeting at any\njuncture, and especially when they met in the presence of others, was\nsomething indirect and circumspect, as if they had approached each other\nobliquely and addressed each other by implication. The effect of\neach appeared to be to intensify to an appreciable degree the\nself-consciousness of the other. Madame Merle of course carried off any\nembarrassment better than her friend; but even Madame Merle had not\non this occasion the form she would have liked to have--the perfect\nself-possession she would have wished to wear for her host. The point to\nbe made is, however, that at a certain moment the element between them,\nwhatever it was, always levelled itself and left them more closely\nface to face than either ever was with any one else. This was what had\nhappened now. They stood there knowing each other well and each on the\nwhole willing to accept the satisfaction of knowing as a compensation\nfor the inconvenience--whatever it might be--of being known. \"I wish\nvery much you were not so heartless,\" Madame Merle quietly said. \"It has\nalways been against you, and it will be against you now.\"\n\n\"I'm not so heartless as you think. Every now and then something touches\nme--as for instance your saying just now that your ambitions are for\nme. I don't understand it; I don't see how or why they should be. But it\ntouches me, all the same.\"\n\n\"You'll probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some\nthings you'll never understand. There's no particular need you should.\"\n\n\"You, after all, are the most remarkable of women,\" said Osmond. \"You\nhave more in you than almost any one. I don't see why you think Mrs.\nTouchett's niece should matter very much to me, when--when--\" But he\npaused a moment.\n\n\"When I myself have mattered so little?\"\n\n\"That of course is not what I meant to say. When I've known and\nappreciated such a woman as you.\"\n\n\"Isabel Archer's better than I,\" said Madame Merle.\n\nHer companion gave a laugh. \"How little you must think of her to say\nthat!\"\n\n\"Do you suppose I'm capable of jealousy? Please answer me that.\"\n\n\"With regard to me? No; on the whole I don't.\"\n\n\"Come and see me then, two days hence. I'm staying at Mrs.\nTouchett's--Palazzo Crescentini--and the girl will be there.\"\n\n\"Why didn't you ask me that at first simply, without speaking of the\ngirl?\" said Osmond. \"You could have had her there at any rate.\"\n\nMadame Merle looked at him in the manner of a woman whom no question he\ncould ever put would find unprepared. \"Do you wish to know why? Because\nI've spoken of you to her.\"\n\nOsmond frowned and turned away. \"I'd rather not know that.\" Then in\na moment he pointed out the easel supporting the little water-colour\ndrawing. \"Have you seen what's there--my last?\"\n\nMadame Merle drew near and considered. \"Is it the Venetian Alps--one of\nyour last year's sketches?\"\n\n\"Yes--but how you guess everything!\"\n\nShe looked a moment longer, then turned away. \"You know I don't care for\nyour drawings.\"\n\n\"I know it, yet I'm always surprised at it. They're really so much\nbetter than most people's.\"\n\n\"That may very well be. But as the only thing you do--well, it's so\nlittle. I should have liked you to do so many other things: those were\nmy ambitions.\"\n\n\"Yes; you've told me many times--things that were impossible.\"\n\n\"Things that were impossible,\" said Madame Merle. And then in quite a\ndifferent tone: \"In itself your little picture's very good.\" She looked\nabout the room--at the old cabinets, pictures, tapestries, surfaces\nof faded silk. \"Your rooms at least are perfect. I'm struck with that\nafresh whenever I come back; I know none better anywhere. You understand\nthis sort of thing as nobody anywhere does. You've such adorable taste.\"\n\n\"I'm sick of my adorable taste,\" said Gilbert Osmond.\n\n\"You must nevertheless let Miss Archer come and see it. I've told her\nabout it.\"\n\n\"I don't object to showing my things--when people are not idiots.\"\n\n\"You do it delightfully. As cicerone of your museum you appear to\nparticular advantage.\"\n\nMr. Osmond, in return for this compliment, simply looked at once colder\nand more attentive. \"Did you say she was rich?\"\n\n\"She has seventy thousand pounds.\"\n\n\"En ecus bien comptes?\"\n\n\"There's no doubt whatever about her fortune. I've seen it, as I may\nsay.\"\n\n\"Satisfactory woman!--I mean you. And if I go to see her shall I see the\nmother?\"\n\n\"The mother? She has none--nor father either.\"\n\n\"The aunt then--whom did you say?--Mrs. Touchett. I can easily keep her\nout of the way.\"\n\n\"I don't object to her,\" said Osmond; \"I rather like Mrs. Touchett.\nShe has a sort of old-fashioned character that's passing away--a vivid\nidentity. But that long jackanapes the son--is he about the place?\"\n\n\"He's there, but he won't trouble you.\"\n\n\"He's a good deal of a donkey.\"\n\n\"I think you're mistaken. He's a very clever man. But he's not fond of\nbeing about when I'm there, because he doesn't like me.\"\n\n\"What could he be more asinine than that? Did you say she has looks?\"\nOsmond went on.\n\n\"Yes; but I won't say it again, lest you should be disappointed in them.\nCome and make a beginning; that's all I ask of you.\"\n\n\"A beginning of what?\"\n\nMadame Merle was silent a little. \"I want you of course to marry her.\"\n\n\"The beginning of the end? Well, I'll see for myself. Have you told her\nthat?\"\n\n\"For what do you take me? She's not so coarse a piece of machinery--nor\nam I.\"\n\n\"Really,\" said Osmond after some meditation, \"I don't understand your\nambitions.\"\n\n\"I think you'll understand this one after you've seen Miss Archer.\nSuspend your judgement.\" Madame Merle, as she spoke, had drawn near the\nopen door of the garden, where she stood a moment looking out. \"Pansy\nhas really grown pretty,\" she presently added.\n\n\"So it seemed to me.\"\n\n\"But she has had enough of the convent.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Osmond. \"I like what they've made of her. It's very\ncharming.\"\n\n\"That's not the convent. It's the child's nature.\"\n\n\"It's the combination, I think. She's as pure as a pearl.\"\n\n\"Why doesn't she come back with my flowers then?\" Madame Merle asked.\n\"She's not in a hurry.\"\n\n\"We'll go and get them.\"\n\n\"She doesn't like me,\" the visitor murmured as she raised her parasol\nand they passed into the garden.\n\n\n\n\n\nMadame Merle, who had come to Florence on Mrs. Touchett's arrival at\nthe invitation of this lady--Mrs. Touchett offering her for a month the\nhospitality of Palazzo Crescentini--the judicious Madame Merle spoke to\nIsabel afresh about Gilbert Osmond and expressed the hope she might know\nhim; making, however, no such point of the matter as we have seen her do\nin recommending the girl herself to Mr. Osmond's attention. The reason\nof this was perhaps that Isabel offered no resistance whatever to Madame\nMerle's proposal. In Italy, as in England, the lady had a multitude of\nfriends, both among the natives of the country and its heterogeneous\nvisitors. She had mentioned to Isabel most of the people the girl would\nfind it well to \"meet\"--of course, she said, Isabel could know whomever\nin the wide world she would--and had placed Mr. Osmond near the top of\nthe list. He was an old friend of her own; she had known him these dozen\nyears; he was one of the cleverest and most agreeable men--well, in\nEurope simply. He was altogether above the respectable average; quite\nanother affair. He wasn't a professional charmer--far from it, and the\neffect he produced depended a good deal on the state of his nerves and\nhis spirits. When not in the right mood he could fall as low as any one,\nsaved only by his looking at such hours rather like a demoralised prince\nin exile. But if he cared or was interested or rightly challenged--just\nexactly rightly it had to be--then one felt his cleverness and his\ndistinction. Those qualities didn't depend, in him, as in so many\npeople, on his not committing or exposing himself. He had his\nperversities--which indeed Isabel would find to be the case with all the\nmen really worth knowing--and didn't cause his light to shine equally\nfor all persons. Madame Merle, however, thought she could undertake that\nfor Isabel he would be brilliant. He was easily bored, too easily, and\ndull people always put him out; but a quick and cultivated girl like\nIsabel would give him a stimulus which was too absent from his life. At\nany rate he was a person not to miss. One shouldn't attempt to live in\nItaly without making a friend of Gilbert Osmond, who knew more about the\ncountry than any one except two or three German professors. And if\nthey had more knowledge than he it was he who had most perception and\ntaste--being artistic through and through. Isabel remembered that her\nfriend had spoken of him during their plunge, at Gardencourt, into the\ndeeps of talk, and wondered a little what was the nature of the tie\nbinding these superior spirits. She felt that Madame Merle's ties always\nsomehow had histories, and such an impression was part of the interest\ncreated by this inordinate woman. As regards her relations with Mr.\nOsmond, however, she hinted at nothing but a long-established calm\nfriendship. Isabel said she should be happy to know a person who had\nenjoyed so high a confidence for so many years. \"You ought to see a\ngreat many men,\" Madame Merle remarked; \"you ought to see as many as\npossible, so as to get used to them.\"\n\n\"Used to them?\" Isabel repeated with that solemn stare which sometimes\nseemed to proclaim her deficient in the sense of comedy. \"Why, I'm not\nafraid of them--I'm as used to them as the cook to the butcher-boys.\"\n\n\"Used to them, I mean, so as to despise them. That's what one comes to\nwith most of them. You'll pick out, for your society, the few whom you\ndon't despise.\"\n\nThis was a note of cynicism that Madame Merle didn't often allow herself\nto sound; but Isabel was not alarmed, for she had never supposed that\nas one saw more of the world the sentiment of respect became the\nmost active of one's emotions. It was excited, none the less, by the\nbeautiful city of Florence, which pleased her not less than Madame Merle\nhad promised; and if her unassisted perception had not been able to\ngauge its charms she had clever companions as priests to the mystery.\nShe was--in no want indeed of esthetic illumination, for Ralph found it\na joy that renewed his own early passion to act as cicerone to his\neager young kinswoman. Madame Merle remained at home; she had seen the\ntreasures of Florence again and again and had always something else\nto do. But she talked of all things with remarkable vividness of\nmemory--she recalled the right-hand corner of the large Perugino and the\nposition of the hands of the Saint Elizabeth in the picture next to it.\nShe had her opinions as to the character of many famous works of art,\ndiffering often from Ralph with great sharpness and defending her\ninterpretations with as much ingenuity as good-humour. Isabel listened\nto the discussions taking place between the two with a sense that\nshe might derive much benefit from them and that they were among the\nadvantages she couldn't have enjoyed for instance in Albany. In the\nclear May mornings before the formal breakfast--this repast at Mrs.\nTouchett's was served at twelve o'clock--she wandered with her cousin\nthrough the narrow and sombre Florentine streets, resting a while in\nthe thicker dusk of some historic church or the vaulted chambers of some\ndispeopled convent. She went to the galleries and palaces; she looked at\nthe pictures and statues that had hitherto been great names to her,\nand exchanged for a knowledge which was sometimes a limitation a\npresentiment which proved usually to have been a blank. She performed\nall those acts of mental prostration in which, on a first visit to\nItaly, youth and enthusiasm so freely indulge; she felt her heart beat\nin the presence of immortal genius and knew the sweetness of rising\ntears in eyes to which faded fresco and darkened marble grew dim. But\nthe return, every day, was even pleasanter than the going forth; the\nreturn into the wide, monumental court of the great house in which Mrs.\nTouchett, many years before, had established herself, and into the\nhigh, cool rooms where the carven rafters and pompous frescoes of the\nsixteenth century looked down on the familiar commodities of the age of\nadvertisement. Mrs. Touchett inhabited an historic building in a narrow\nstreet whose very name recalled the strife of medieval factions; and\nfound compensation for the darkness of her frontage in the modicity of\nher rent and the brightness of a garden where nature itself looked as\narchaic as the rugged architecture of the palace and which cleared\nand scented the rooms in regular use. To live in such a place was, for\nIsabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This\nvague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.\n\nGilbert Osmond came to see Madame Merle, who presented him to the young\nlady lurking at the other side of the room. Isabel took on this occasion\nlittle part in the talk; she scarcely even smiled when the others turned\nto her invitingly; she sat there as if she had been at the play and had\npaid even a large sum for her place. Mrs. Touchett was not present, and\nthese two had it, for the effect of brilliancy, all their own way. They\ntalked of the Florentine, the Roman, the cosmopolite world, and might\nhave been distinguished performers figuring for a charity. It all had\nthe rich readiness that would have come from rehearsal. Madame Merle\nappealed to her as if she had been on the stage, but she could ignore\nany learnt cue without spoiling the scene--though of course she thus put\ndreadfully in the wrong the friend who had told Mr. Osmond she could be\ndepended on. This was no matter for once; even if more had been involved\nshe could have made no attempt to shine. There was something in\nthe visitor that checked her and held her in suspense--made it more\nimportant she should get an impression of him than that she should\nproduce one herself. Besides, she had little skill in producing an\nimpression which she knew to be expected: nothing could be happier, in\ngeneral, than to seem dazzling, but she had a perverse unwillingness to\nglitter by arrangement. Mr. Osmond, to do him justice, had a well-bred\nair of expecting nothing, a quiet ease that covered everything, even the\nfirst show of his own wit. This was the more grateful as his face, his\nhead, was sensitive; he was not handsome, but he was fine, as fine as\none of the drawings in the long gallery above the bridge of the\nUffizi. And his very voice was fine--the more strangely that, with its\nclearness, it yet somehow wasn't sweet. This had had really to do with\nmaking her abstain from interference. His utterance was the vibration\nof glass, and if she had put out her finger she might have changed the\npitch and spoiled the concert. Yet before he went she had to speak.\n\n\"Madame Merle,\" he said, \"consents to come up to my hill-top some day\nnext week and drink tea in my garden. It would give me much pleasure if\nyou would come with her. It's thought rather pretty--there's what they\ncall a general view. My daughter too would be so glad--or rather, for\nshe's too young to have strong emotions, I should be so glad--so very\nglad.\" And Mr. Osmond paused with a slight air of embarrassment, leaving\nhis sentence unfinished. \"I should be so happy if you could know my\ndaughter,\" he went on a moment afterwards.\n\nIsabel replied that she should be delighted to see Miss Osmond and that\nif Madame Merle would show her the way to the hill-top she should be\nvery grateful. Upon this assurance the visitor took his leave; after\nwhich Isabel fully expected her friend would scold her for having been\nso stupid. But to her surprise that lady, who indeed never fell into the\nmere matter-of-course, said to her in a few moments,\n\n\"You were charming, my dear; you were just as one would have wished you.\nYou're never disappointing.\"\n\nA rebuke might possibly have been irritating, though it is much more\nprobable that Isabel would have taken it in good part; but, strange\nto say, the words that Madame Merle actually used caused her the first\nfeeling of displeasure she had known this ally to excite. \"That's more\nthan I intended,\" she answered coldly. \"I'm under no obligation that I\nknow of to charm Mr. Osmond.\"\n\nMadame Merle perceptibly flushed, but we know it was not her habit to\nretract. \"My dear child, I didn't speak for him, poor man; I spoke for\nyourself. It's not of course a question as to his liking you; it matters\nlittle whether he likes you or not! But I thought you liked HIM.\"\n\n\"I did,\" said Isabel honestly. \"But I don't see what that matters\neither.\"\n\n\"Everything that concerns you matters to me,\" Madame Merle returned\nwith her weary nobleness; \"especially when at the same time another old\nfriend's concerned.\"\n\nWhatever Isabel's obligations may have been to Mr. Osmond, it must be\nadmitted that she found them sufficient to lead her to put to Ralph\nsundry questions about him. She thought Ralph's judgements distorted by\nhis trials, but she flattered herself she had learned to make allowance\nfor that.\n\n\"Do I know him?\" said her cousin. \"Oh, yes, I 'know' him; not well,\nbut on the whole enough. I've never cultivated his society, and he\napparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who is\nhe, what is he? He's a vague, unexplained American who has been living\nthese thirty years, or less, in Italy. Why do I call him unexplained?\nOnly as a cover for my ignorance; I don't know his antecedents, his\nfamily, his origin. For all I do know he may be a prince in disguise; he\nrather looks like one, by the way--like a prince who has abdicated in a\nfit of fastidiousness and has been in a state of disgust ever since. He\nused to live in Rome; but of late years he has taken up his abode here;\nI remember hearing him say that Rome has grown vulgar. He has a great\ndread of vulgarity; that's his special line; he hasn't any other that I\nknow of. He lives on his income, which I suspect of not being vulgarly\nlarge. He's a poor but honest gentleman that's what he calls himself.\nHe married young and lost his wife, and I believe he has a daughter. He\nalso has a sister, who's married to some small Count or other, of these\nparts; I remember meeting her of old. She's nicer than he, I should\nthink, but rather impossible. I remember there used to be some stories\nabout her. I don't think I recommend you to know her. But why don't you\nask Madame Merle about these people? She knows them all much better than\nI.\"\n\n\"I ask you because I want your opinion as well as hers,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"A fig for my opinion! If you fall in love with Mr. Osmond what will you\ncare for that?\"\n\n\"Not much, probably. But meanwhile it has a certain importance. The more\ninformation one has about one's dangers the better.\"\n\n\"I don't agree to that--it may make them dangers. We know too much about\npeople in these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths,\nare stuffed with personalities. Don't mind anything any one tells you\nabout any one else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.\"\n\n\"That's what I try to do,\" said Isabel \"but when you do that people call\nyou conceited.\"\n\n\"You're not to mind them--that's precisely my argument; not to mind what\nthey say about yourself any more than what they say about your friend or\nyour enemy.\"\n\nIsabel considered. \"I think you're right; but there are some things I\ncan't help minding: for instance when my friend's attacked or when I\nmyself am praised.\"\n\n\"Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as\ncritics, however,\" Ralph added, \"and you'll condemn them all!\"\n\n\"I shall see Mr. Osmond for myself,\" said Isabel. \"I've promised to pay\nhim a visit.\"\n\n\"To pay him a visit?\"\n\n\"To go and see his view, his pictures, his daughter--I don't know\nexactly what. Madame Merle's to take me; she tells me a great many\nladies call on him.\"\n\n\"Ah, with Madame Merle you may go anywhere, de confiance,\" said Ralph.\n\"She knows none but the best people.\"\n\nIsabel said no more about Mr. Osmond, but she presently remarked to her\ncousin that she was not satisfied with his tone about Madame Merle. \"It\nseems to me you insinuate things about her. I don't know what you mean,\nbut if you've any grounds for disliking her I think you should either\nmention them frankly or else say nothing at all.\"\n\nRalph, however, resented this charge with more apparent earnestness than\nhe commonly used. \"I speak of Madame Merle exactly as I speak to her:\nwith an even exaggerated respect.\"\n\n\"Exaggerated, precisely. That's what I complain of.\"\n\n\"I do so because Madame Merle's merits are exaggerated.\"\n\n\"By whom, pray? By me? If so I do her a poor service.\"\n\n\"No, no; by herself.\"\n\n\"Ah, I protest!\" Isabel earnestly cried. \"If ever there was a woman who\nmade small claims--!\"\n\n\"You put your finger on it,\" Ralph interrupted. \"Her modesty's\nexaggerated. She has no business with small claims--she has a perfect\nright to make large ones.\"\n\n\"Her merits are large then. You contradict yourself.\"\n\n\"Her merits are immense,\" said Ralph. \"She's indescribably blameless; a\npathless desert of virtue; the only woman I know who never gives one a\nchance.\"\n\n\"A chance for what?\"\n\n\"Well, say to call her a fool! She's the only woman I know who has but\nthat one little fault.\"\n\nIsabel turned away with impatience. \"I don't understand you; you're too\nparadoxical for my plain mind.\"\n\n\"Let me explain. When I say she exaggerates I don't mean it in the\nvulgar sense--that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine an account of\nherself. I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection too\nfar--that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She's too good, too\nkind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything. She's\ntoo complete, in a word. I confess to you that she acts on my nerves and\nthat I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian felt\nabout Aristides the Just.\"\n\nIsabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked\nin his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his face. \"Do you\nwish Madame Merle to be banished?\"\n\n\"By no means. She's much too good company. I delight in Madame Merle,\"\nsaid Ralph Touchett simply.\n\n\"You're very odious, sir!\" Isabel exclaimed. And then she asked him if\nhe knew anything that was not to the honour of her brilliant friend.\n\n\"Nothing whatever. Don't you see that's just what I mean? On the\ncharacter of every one else you may find some little black speck; if\nI were to take half an hour to it, some day, I've no doubt I should be\nable to find one on yours. For my own, of course, I'm spotted like a\nleopard. But on Madame Merle's nothing, nothing, nothing!\"\n\n\"That's just what I think!\" said Isabel with a toss of her head. \"That\nis why I like her so much.\"\n\n\"She's a capital person for you to know. Since you wish to see the world\nyou couldn't have a better guide.\"\n\n\"I suppose you mean by that that she's worldly?\"\n\n\"Worldly? No,\" said Ralph, \"she's the great round world itself!\"\n\nIt had certainly not, as Isabel for the moment took it into her head to\nbelieve, been a refinement of malice in him to say that he delighted in\nMadame Merle. Ralph Touchett took his refreshment wherever he could find\nit, and he would not have forgiven himself if he had been left wholly\nunbeguiled by such a mistress of the social art. There are deep-lying\nsympathies and antipathies, and it may have been that, in spite of the\nadministered justice she enjoyed at his hands, her absence from his\nmother's house would not have made life barren to him. But Ralph\nTouchett had learned more or less inscrutably to attend, and there could\nhave been nothing so \"sustained\" to attend to as the general performance\nof Madame Merle. He tasted her in sips, he let her stand, with an\nopportuneness she herself could not have surpassed. There were moments\nwhen he felt almost sorry for her; and these, oddly enough, were the\nmoments when his kindness was least demonstrative. He was sure she had\nbeen yearningly ambitious and that what she had visibly accomplished was\nfar below her secret measure. She had got herself into perfect training,\nbut had won none of the prizes. She was always plain Madame Merle,\nthe widow of a Swiss negociant, with a small income and a large\nacquaintance, who stayed with people a great deal and was almost as\nuniversally \"liked\" as some new volume of smooth twaddle. The contrast\nbetween this position and any one of some half-dozen others that he\nsupposed to have at various moments engaged her hope had an element of\nthe tragical. His mother thought he got on beautifully with their genial\nguest; to Mrs. Touchett's sense two persons who dealt so largely in\ntoo-ingenious theories of conduct--that is of their own--would have much\nin common. He had given due consideration to Isabel's intimacy with her\neminent friend, having long since made up his mind that he could not,\nwithout opposition, keep his cousin to himself; and he made the best of\nit, as he had done of worse things. He believed it would take care of\nitself; it wouldn't last forever. Neither of these two superior persons\nknew the other as well as she supposed, and when each had made an\nimportant discovery or two there would be, if not a rupture, at least\na relaxation. Meanwhile he was quite willing to admit that the\nconversation of the elder lady was an advantage to the younger, who had\na great deal to learn and would doubtless learn it better from Madame\nMerle than from some other instructors of the young. It was not probable\nthat Isabel would be injured.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt would certainly have been hard to see what injury could arise to\nher from the visit she presently paid to Mr. Osmond's hill-top. Nothing\ncould have been more charming than this occasion--a soft afternoon in\nthe full maturity of the Tuscan spring. The companions drove out of the\nRoman Gate, beneath the enormous blank superstructure which crowns the\nfine clear arch of that portal and makes it nakedly impressive, and\nwound between high-walled lanes into which the wealth of blossoming\norchards over-drooped and flung a fragrance, until they reached the\nsmall superurban piazza, of crooked shape, where the long brown wall of\nthe villa occupied in part by Mr. Osmond formed a principal, or at least\na very imposing, object. Isabel went with her friend through a wide,\nhigh court, where a clear shadow rested below and a pair of light-arched\ngalleries, facing each other above, caught the upper sunshine upon their\nslim columns and the flowering plants in which they were dressed. There\nwas something grave and strong in the place; it looked somehow as\nif, once you were in, you would need an act of energy to get out. For\nIsabel, however, there was of course as yet no thought of getting out,\nbut only of advancing. Mr. Osmond met her in the cold ante-chamber--it\nwas cold even in the month of May--and ushered her, with her\nconductress, into the apartment to which we have already been\nintroduced. Madame Merle was in front, and while Isabel lingered a\nlittle, talking with him, she went forward familiarly and greeted two\npersons who were seated in the saloon. One of these was little Pansy, on\nwhom she bestowed a kiss; the other was a lady whom Mr. Osmond indicated\nto Isabel as his sister, the Countess Gemini. \"And that's my little\ngirl,\" he said, \"who has just come out of her convent.\"\n\nPansy had on a scant white dress, and her fair hair was neatly arranged\nin a net; she wore her small shoes tied sandal-fashion about her ankles.\nShe made Isabel a little conventual curtsey and then came to be kissed.\nThe Countess Gemini simply nodded without getting up: Isabel could see\nshe was a woman of high fashion. She was thin and dark and not at\nall pretty, having features that suggested some tropical bird--a long\nbeak-like nose, small, quickly-moving eyes and a mouth and chin\nthat receded extremely. Her expression, however, thanks to various\nintensities of emphasis and wonder, of horror and joy, was not inhuman,\nand, as regards her appearance, it was plain she understood herself\nand made the most of her points. Her attire, voluminous and delicate,\nbristling with elegance, had the look of shimmering plumage, and her\nattitudes were as light and sudden as those of a creature who perched\nupon twigs. She had a great deal of manner; Isabel, who had never\nknown any one with so much manner, immediately classed her as the most\naffected of women. She remembered that Ralph had not recommended her as\nan acquaintance; but she was ready to acknowledge that to a casual view\nthe Countess Gemini revealed no depths. Her demonstrations suggested the\nviolent waving of some flag of general truce--white silk with fluttering\nstreamers.\n\n\"You'll believe I'm glad to see you when I tell you it's only because\nI knew you were to be here that I came myself. I don't come and see my\nbrother--I make him come and see me. This hill of his is impossible--I\ndon't see what possesses him. Really, Osmond, you'll be the ruin of my\nhorses some day, and if it hurts them you'll have to give me another\npair. I heard them wheezing to-day; I assure you I did. It's very\ndisagreeable to hear one's horses wheezing when one's sitting in the\ncarriage; it sounds too as if they weren't what they should be. But\nI've always had good horses; whatever else I may have lacked I've always\nmanaged that. My husband doesn't know much, but I think he knows a\nhorse. In general Italians don't, but my husband goes in, according to\nhis poor light, for everything English. My horses are English--so it's\nall the greater pity they should be ruined. I must tell you,\" she went\non, directly addressing Isabel, \"that Osmond doesn't often invite me;\nI don't think he likes to have me. It was quite my own idea, coming\nto-day. I like to see new people, and I'm sure you're very new. But\ndon't sit there; that chair's not what it looks. There are some very\ngood seats here, but there are also some horrors.\"\n\nThese remarks were delivered with a series of little jerks and pecks, of\nroulades of shrillness, and in an accent that was as some fond recall of\ngood English, or rather of good American, in adversity.\n\n\"I don't like to have you, my dear?\" said her brother. \"I'm sure you're\ninvaluable.\"\n\n\"I don't see any horrors anywhere,\" Isabel returned, looking about her.\n\"Everything seems to me beautiful and precious.\"\n\n\"I've a few good things,\" Mr. Osmond allowed; \"indeed I've nothing very\nbad. But I've not what I should have liked.\"\n\nHe stood there a little awkwardly, smiling and glancing about; his\nmanner was an odd mixture of the detached and the involved. He seemed to\nhint that nothing but the right \"values\" was of any consequence. Isabel\nmade a rapid induction: perfect simplicity was not the badge of his\nfamily. Even the little girl from the convent, who, in her prim white\ndress, with her small submissive face and her hands locked before her,\nstood there as if she were about to partake of her first communion,\neven Mr. Osmond's diminutive daughter had a kind of finish that was not\nentirely artless.\n\n\"You'd have liked a few things from the Uffizi and the Pitti--that's what\nyou'd have liked,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"Poor Osmond, with his old curtains and crucifixes!\" the Countess Gemini\nexclaimed: she appeared to call her brother only by his family-name. Her\nejaculation had no particular object; she smiled at Isabel as she made\nit and looked at her from head to foot.\n\nHer brother had not heard her; he seemed to be thinking what he could\nsay to Isabel. \"Won't you have some tea?--you must be very tired,\" he at\nlast bethought himself of remarking.\n\n\"No indeed, I'm not tired; what have I done to tire me?\" Isabel felt a\ncertain need of being very direct, of pretending to nothing; there was\nsomething in the air, in her general impression of things--she could\nhardly have said what it was--that deprived her of all disposition to\nput herself forward. The place, the occasion, the combination of people,\nsignified more than lay on the surface; she would try to understand--she\nwould not simply utter graceful platitudes. Poor Isabel was doubtless\nnot aware that many women would have uttered graceful platitudes to\ncover the working of their observation. It must be confessed that her\npride was a trifle alarmed. A man she had heard spoken of in terms\nthat excited interest and who was evidently capable of distinguishing\nhimself, had invited her, a young lady not lavish of her favours,\nto come to his house. Now that she had done so the burden of the\nentertainment rested naturally on his wit. Isabel was not rendered\nless observant, and for the moment, we judge, she was not rendered\nmore indulgent, by perceiving that Mr. Osmond carried his burden less\ncomplacently than might have been expected. \"What a fool I was to\nhave let myself so needlessly in--!\" she could fancy his exclaiming to\nhimself.\n\n\"You'll be tired when you go home, if he shows you all his bibelots and\ngives you a lecture on each,\" said the Countess Gemini.\n\n\"I'm not afraid of that; but if I'm tired I shall at least have learned\nsomething.\"\n\n\"Very little, I suspect. But my sister's dreadfully afraid of learning\nanything,\" said Mr. Osmond.\n\n\"Oh, I confess to that; I don't want to know anything more--I know too\nmuch already. The more you know the more unhappy you are.\"\n\n\"You should not undervalue knowledge before Pansy, who has not finished\nher education,\" Madame Merle interposed with a smile. \"Pansy will\nnever know any harm,\" said the child's father. \"Pansy's a little\nconvent-flower.\"\n\n\"Oh, the convents, the convents!\" cried the Countess with a flutter of\nher ruffles. \"Speak to me of the convents! You may learn anything there;\nI'm a convent-flower myself. I don't pretend to be good, but the nuns\ndo. Don't you see what I mean?\" she went on, appealing to Isabel.\n\nIsabel was not sure she saw, and she answered that she was very bad\nat following arguments. The Countess then declared that she herself\ndetested arguments, but that this was her brother's taste--he would\nalways discuss. \"For me,\" she said, \"one should like a thing or one\nshouldn't; one can't like everything, of course. But one shouldn't\nattempt to reason it out--you never know where it may lead you. There\nare some very good feelings that may have bad reasons, don't you know?\nAnd then there are very bad feelings, sometimes, that have good reasons.\nDon't you see what I mean? I don't care anything about reasons, but I\nknow what I like.\"\n\n\"Ah, that's the great thing,\" said Isabel, smiling and suspecting that\nher acquaintance with this lightly flitting personage would not lead to\nintellectual repose. If the Countess objected to argument Isabel at this\nmoment had as little taste for it, and she put out her hand to Pansy\nwith a pleasant sense that such a gesture committed her to nothing that\nwould admit of a divergence of views. Gilbert Osmond apparently took a\nrather hopeless view of his sister's tone; he turned the conversation to\nanother topic. He presently sat down on the other side of his daughter,\nwho had shyly brushed Isabel's fingers with her own; but he ended by\ndrawing her out of her chair and making her stand between his knees,\nleaning against him while he passed his arm round her slimness. The\nchild fixed her eyes on Isabel with a still, disinterested gaze which\nseemed void of an intention, yet conscious of an attraction. Mr. Osmond\ntalked of many things; Madame Merle had said he could be agreeable\nwhen he chose, and to-day, after a little, he appeared not only to have\nchosen but to have determined. Madame Merle and the Countess Gemini sat\na little apart, conversing in the effortless manner of persons who knew\neach other well enough to take their ease; but every now and then Isabel\nheard the Countess, at something said by her companion, plunge into the\nlatter's lucidity as a poodle splashes after a thrown stick. It was as\nif Madame Merle were seeing how far she would go. Mr. Osmond talked of\nFlorence, of Italy, of the pleasure of living in that country and of the\nabatements to the pleasure. There were both satisfactions and drawbacks;\nthe drawbacks were numerous; strangers were too apt to see such a world\nas all romantic. It met the case soothingly for the human, for the\nsocial failure--by which he meant the people who couldn't \"realise,\" as\nthey said, on their sensibility: they could keep it about them there,\nin their poverty, without ridicule, as you might keep an heirloom or an\ninconvenient entailed place that brought you in nothing. Thus there were\nadvantages in living in the country which contained the greatest sum of\nbeauty. Certain impressions you could get only there. Others, favourable\nto life, you never got, and you got some that were very bad. But from\ntime to time you got one of a quality that made up for everything.\nItaly, all the same, had spoiled a great many people; he was even\nfatuous enough to believe at times that he himself might have been a\nbetter man if he had spent less of his life there. It made one idle and\ndilettantish and second-rate; it had no discipline for the character,\ndidn't cultivate in you, otherwise expressed, the successful social\nand other \"cheek\" that flourished in Paris and London. \"We're sweetly\nprovincial,\" said Mr. Osmond, \"and I'm perfectly aware that I myself am\nas rusty as a key that has no lock to fit it. It polishes me up a little\nto talk with you--not that I venture to pretend I can turn that very\ncomplicated lock I suspect your intellect of being! But you'll be going\naway before I've seen you three times, and I shall perhaps never see you\nafter that. That's what it is to live in a country that people come to.\nWhen they're disagreeable here it's bad enough; when they're agreeable\nit's still worse. As soon as you like them they're off again! I've been\ndeceived too often; I've ceased to form attachments, to permit myself\nto feel attractions. You mean to stay--to settle? That would be really\ncomfortable. Ah yes, your aunt's a sort of guarantee; I believe she may\nbe depended on. Oh, she's an old Florentine; I mean literally an old\none; not a modern outsider. She's a contemporary of the Medici; she must\nhave been present at the burning of Savonarola, and I'm not sure she\ndidn't throw a handful of chips into the flame. Her face is very much\nlike some faces in the early pictures; little, dry, definite faces that\nmust have had a good deal of expression, but almost always the same one.\nIndeed I can show you her portrait in a fresco of Ghirlandaio's. I hope\nyou don't object to my speaking that way of your aunt, eh? I've an idea\nyou don't. Perhaps you think that's even worse. I assure you there's\nno want of respect in it, to either of you. You know I'm a particular\nadmirer of Mrs. Touchett.\"\n\nWhile Isabel's host exerted himself to entertain her in this somewhat\nconfidential fashion she looked occasionally at Madame Merle, who met\nher eyes with an inattentive smile in which, on this occasion, there\nwas no infelicitous intimation that our heroine appeared to advantage.\nMadame Merle eventually proposed to the Countess Gemini that they\nshould go into the garden, and the Countess, rising and shaking out\nher feathers, began to rustle toward the door. \"Poor Miss Archer!\" she\nexclaimed, surveying the other group with expressive compassion. \"She\nhas been brought quite into the family.\"\n\n\"Miss Archer can certainly have nothing but sympathy for a family to\nwhich you belong,\" Mr. Osmond answered, with a laugh which, though it\nhad something of a mocking ring, had also a finer patience.\n\n\"I don't know what you mean by that! I'm sure she'll see no harm in\nme but what you tell her. I'm better than he says, Miss Archer,\" the\nCountess went on. \"I'm only rather an idiot and a bore. Is that all he\nhas said? Ah then, you keep him in good-humour. Has he opened on one of\nhis favourite subjects? I give you notice that there are two or three\nthat he treats a fond. In that case you had better take off your\nbonnet.\"\n\n\"I don't think I know what Mr. Osmond's favourite subjects are,\" said\nIsabel, who had risen to her feet.\n\nThe Countess assumed for an instant an attitude of intense meditation,\npressing one of her hands, with the finger-tips gathered together, to\nher forehead. \"I'll tell you in a moment. One's Machiavelli; the other's\nVittoria Colonna; the next is Metastasio.\"\n\n\"Ah, with me,\" said Madame Merle, passing her arm into the Countess\nGemini's as if to guide her course to the garden, \"Mr. Osmond's never so\nhistorical.\"\n\n\"Oh you,\" the Countess answered as they moved away, \"you yourself are\nMachiavelli--you yourself are Vittoria Colonna!\"\n\n\"We shall hear next that poor Madame Merle is Metastasio!\" Gilbert\nOsmond resignedly sighed.\n\nIsabel had got up on the assumption that they too were to go into the\ngarden; but her host stood there with no apparent inclination to leave\nthe room, his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his daughter, who\nhad now locked her arm into one of his own, clinging to him and looking\nup while her eyes moved from his own face to Isabel's. Isabel waited,\nwith a certain unuttered contentedness, to have her movements directed;\nshe liked Mr. Osmond's talk, his company: she had what always gave her\na very private thrill, the consciousness of a new relation. Through\nthe open doors of the great room she saw Madame Merle and the Countess\nstroll across the fine grass of the garden; then she turned, and her\neyes wandered over the things scattered about her. The understanding\nhad been that Mr. Osmond should show her his treasures; his pictures and\ncabinets all looked like treasures. Isabel after a moment went toward\none of the pictures to see it better; but just as she had done so he\nsaid to her abruptly: \"Miss Archer, what do you think of my sister?\"\n\nShe faced him with some surprise. \"Ah, don't ask me that--I've seen your\nsister too little.\"\n\n\"Yes, you've seen her very little; but you must have observed that\nthere is not a great deal of her to see. What do you think of our family\ntone?\" he went on with his cool smile. \"I should like to know how\nit strikes a fresh, unprejudiced mind. I know what you're going to\nsay--you've had almost no observation of it. Of course this is only\na glimpse. But just take notice, in future, if you have a chance. I\nsometimes think we've got into a rather bad way, living off here among\nthings and people not our own, without responsibilities or attachments,\nwith nothing to hold us together or keep us up; marrying foreigners,\nforming artificial tastes, playing tricks with our natural mission. Let\nme add, though, that I say that much more for myself than for my sister.\nShe's a very honest lady--more so than she seems. She's rather\nunhappy, and as she's not of a serious turn she doesn't tend to show\nit tragically: she shows it comically instead. She has got a horrid\nhusband, though I'm not sure she makes the best of him. Of course,\nhowever, a horrid husband's an awkward thing. Madame Merle gives her\nexcellent advice, but it's a good deal like giving a child a dictionary\nto learn a language with. He can look out the words, but he can't put\nthem together. My sister needs a grammar, but unfortunately she's not\ngrammatical. Pardon my troubling you with these details; my sister was\nvery right in saying you've been taken into the family. Let me take down\nthat picture; you want more light.\"\n\nHe took down the picture, carried it toward the window, related some\ncurious facts about it. She looked at the other works of art, and he\ngave her such further information as might appear most acceptable to\na young lady making a call on a summer afternoon. His pictures, his\nmedallions and tapestries were interesting; but after a while Isabel\nfelt the owner much more so, and independently of them, thickly as they\nseemed to overhang him. He resembled no one she had ever seen; most\nof the people she knew might be divided into groups of half a dozen\nspecimens. There were one or two exceptions to this; she could think for\ninstance of no group that would contain her aunt Lydia. There were other\npeople who were, relatively speaking, original--original, as one might\nsay, by courtesy such as Mr. Goodwood, as her cousin Ralph, as Henrietta\nStackpole, as Lord Warburton, as Madame Merle. But in essentials, when\none came to look at them, these individuals belonged to types already\npresent to her mind. Her mind contained no class offering a natural\nplace to Mr. Osmond--he was a specimen apart. It was not that she\nrecognised all these truths at the hour, but they were falling into\norder before her. For the moment she only said to herself that this \"new\nrelation\" would perhaps prove her very most distinguished. Madame Merle\nhad had that note of rarity, but what quite other power it immediately\ngained when sounded by a man! It was not so much what he said and did,\nbut rather what he withheld, that marked him for her as by one of those\nsigns of the highly curious that he was showing her on the underside of\nold plates and in the corner of sixteenth-century drawings: he indulged\nin no striking deflections from common usage, he was an original without\nbeing an eccentric. She had never met a person of so fine a grain.\nThe peculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it extended to\nimpalpabilities. His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn, retouched\nfeatures, his clear complexion, ripe without being coarse, the very\nevenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth slenderness\nof structure which made the movement of a single one of his fingers\nproduce the effect of an expressive gesture--these personal points\nstruck our sensitive young woman as signs of quality, of intensity,\nsomehow as promises of interest. He was certainly fastidious and\ncritical; he was probably irritable. His sensibility had governed\nhim--possibly governed him too much; it had made him impatient of\nvulgar troubles and had led him to live by himself, in a sorted, sifted,\narranged world, thinking about art and beauty and history. He had\nconsulted his taste in everything--his taste alone perhaps, as a sick\nman consciously incurable consults at last only his lawyer: that was\nwhat made him so different from every one else. Ralph had something of\nthis same quality, this appearance of thinking that life was a matter\nof connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an anomaly, a kind of humorous\nexcrescence, whereas in Mr. Osmond it was the keynote, and everything\nwas in harmony with it. She was certainly far from understanding him\ncompletely; his meaning was not at all times obvious. It was hard to see\nwhat he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side--which\nwas exactly the side she would have taken him most to lack. Was it a\nharmless paradox, intended to puzzle her? or was it the last refinement\nof high culture? She trusted she should learn in time; it would be very\ninteresting to learn. If it was provincial to have that harmony, what\nthen was the finish of the capital? And she could put this question\nin spite of so feeling her host a shy personage; since such shyness as\nhis--the shyness of ticklish nerves and fine perceptions--was perfectly\nconsistent with the best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of\nstandards and touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the\nvulgar would be first on the ground. He wasn't a man of easy assurance,\nwho chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he\nwas critical of himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal\nof others, to think them agreeable, probably took a rather ironical view\nof what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he was not\ngrossly conceited. If he had not been shy he wouldn't have effected that\ngradual, subtle, successful conversion of it to which she owed both what\npleased her in him and what mystified her. If he had suddenly asked her\nwhat she thought of the Countess Gemini, that was doubtless a proof that\nhe was interested in her; it could scarcely be as a help to knowledge\nof his own sister. That he should be so interested showed an enquiring\nmind; but it was a little singular he should sacrifice his fraternal\nfeeling to his curiosity. This was the most eccentric thing he had done.\n\nThere were two other rooms, beyond the one in which she had been\nreceived, equally full of romantic objects, and in these apartments\nIsabel spent a quarter of an hour. Everything was in the last degree\ncurious and precious, and Mr. Osmond continued to be the kindest of\nciceroni as he led her from one fine piece to another and still held his\nlittle girl by the hand. His kindness almost surprised our young friend,\nwho wondered why he should take so much trouble for her; and she was\noppressed at last with the accumulation of beauty and knowledge to which\nshe found herself introduced. There was enough for the present; she had\nceased to attend to what he said; she listened to him with attentive\neyes, but was not thinking of what he told her. He probably thought\nher quicker, cleverer in every way, more prepared, than she was. Madame\nMerle would have pleasantly exaggerated; which was a pity, because in\nthe end he would be sure to find out, and then perhaps even her real\nintelligence wouldn't reconcile him to his mistake. A part of Isabel's\nfatigue came from the effort to appear as intelligent as she believed\nMadame Merle had described her, and from the fear (very unusual with\nher) of exposing--not her ignorance; for that she cared comparatively\nlittle--but her possible grossness of perception. It would have annoyed\nher to express a liking for something he, in his superior enlightenment,\nwould think she oughtn't to like; or to pass by something at which the\ntruly initiated mind would arrest itself. She had no wish to fall into\nthat grotesqueness--in which she had seen women (and it was a warning)\nserenely, yet ignobly, flounder. She was very careful therefore as to\nwhat she said, as to what she noticed or failed to notice; more careful\nthan she had ever been before.\n\nThey came back into the first of the rooms, where the tea had been\nserved; but as the two other ladies were still on the terrace, and as\nIsabel had not yet been made acquainted with the view, the paramount\ndistinction of the place, Mr. Osmond directed her steps into the garden\nwithout more delay. Madame Merle and the Countess had had chairs brought\nout, and as the afternoon was lovely the Countess proposed they should\ntake their tea in the open air. Pansy therefore was sent to bid the\nservant bring out the preparations. The sun had got low, the golden\nlight took a deeper tone, and on the mountains and the plain that\nstretched beneath them the masses of purple shadow glowed as richly\nas the places that were still exposed. The scene had an extraordinary\ncharm. The air was almost solemnly still, and the large expanse of the\nlandscape, with its garden-like culture and nobleness of outline,\nits teeming valley and delicately-fretted hills, its peculiarly\nhuman-looking touches of habitation, lay there in splendid harmony and\nclassic grace. \"You seem so well pleased that I think you can be trusted\nto come back,\" Osmond said as he led his companion to one of the angles\nof the terrace.\n\n\"I shall certainly come back,\" she returned, \"in spite of what you say\nabout its being bad to live in Italy. What was that you said about one's\nnatural mission? I wonder if I should forsake my natural mission if I\nwere to settle in Florence.\"\n\n\"A woman's natural mission is to be where she's most appreciated.\"\n\n\"The point's to find out where that is.\"\n\n\"Very true--she often wastes a great deal of time in the enquiry. People\nought to make it very plain to her.\"\n\n\"Such a matter would have to be made very plain to me,\" smiled Isabel.\n\n\"I'm glad, at any rate, to hear you talk of settling. Madame Merle had\ngiven me an idea that you were of a rather roving disposition. I thought\nshe spoke of your having some plan of going round the world.\"\n\n\"I'm rather ashamed of my plans; I make a new one every day.\"\n\n\"I don't see why you should be ashamed; it's the greatest of pleasures.\"\n\n\"It seems frivolous, I think,\" said Isabel. \"One ought to choose\nsomething very deliberately, and be faithful to that.\"\n\n\"By that rule then, I've not been frivolous.\"\n\n\"Have you never made plans?\"\n\n\"Yes, I made one years ago, and I'm acting on it to-day.\"\n\n\"It must have been a very pleasant one,\" Isabel permitted herself to\nobserve.\n\n\"It was very simple. It was to be as quiet as possible.\"\n\n\"As quiet?\" the girl repeated.\n\n\"Not to worry--not to strive nor struggle. To resign myself. To be\ncontent with little.\" He spoke these sentences slowly, with short pauses\nbetween, and his intelligent regard was fixed on his visitor's with the\nconscious air of a man who has brought himself to confess something.\n\n\"Do you call that simple?\" she asked with mild irony.\n\n\"Yes, because it's negative.\"\n\n\"Has your life been negative?\"\n\n\"Call it affirmative if you like. Only it has affirmed my indifference.\nMind you, not my natural indifference--I HAD none. But my studied, my\nwilful renunciation.\"\n\nShe scarcely understood him; it seemed a question whether he were\njoking or not. Why should a man who struck her as having a great fund\nof reserve suddenly bring himself to be so confidential? This was his\naffair, however, and his confidences were interesting. \"I don't see why\nyou should have renounced,\" she said in a moment.\n\n\"Because I could do nothing. I had no prospects, I was poor, and I was\nnot a man of genius. I had no talents even; I took my measure early in\nlife. I was simply the most fastidious young gentleman living. There\nwere two or three people in the world I envied--the Emperor of Russia,\nfor instance, and the Sultan of Turkey! There were even moments when I\nenvied the Pope of Rome--for the consideration he enjoys. I should have\nbeen delighted to be considered to that extent; but since that couldn't\nbe I didn't care for anything less, and I made up my mind not to go\nin for honours. The leanest gentleman can always consider himself,\nand fortunately I was, though lean, a gentleman. I could do nothing in\nItaly--I couldn't even be an Italian patriot. To do that I should have\nhad to get out of the country; and I was too fond of it to leave it, to\nsay nothing of my being too well satisfied with it, on the whole, as it\nthen was, to wish it altered. So I've passed a great many years here on\nthat quiet plan I spoke of. I've not been at all unhappy. I don't mean\nto say I've cared for nothing; but the things I've cared for have\nbeen definite--limited. The events of my life have been absolutely\nunperceived by any one save myself; getting an old silver crucifix at a\nbargain (I've never bought anything dear, of course), or discovering,\nas I once did, a sketch by Correggio on a panel daubed over by some\ninspired idiot.\"\n\nThis would have been rather a dry account of Mr. Osmond's career if\nIsabel had fully believed it; but her imagination supplied the human\nelement which she was sure had not been wanting. His life had been\nmingled with other lives more than he admitted; naturally she couldn't\nexpect him to enter into this. For the present she abstained from\nprovoking further revelations; to intimate that he had not told her\neverything would be more familiar and less considerate than she now\ndesired to be--would in fact be uproariously vulgar. He had certainly\ntold her quite enough. It was her present inclination, however, to\nexpress a measured sympathy for the success with which he had preserved\nhis independence. \"That's a very pleasant life,\" she said, \"to renounce\neverything but Correggio!\"\n\n\"Oh, I've made in my way a good thing of it. Don't imagine I'm whining\nabout it. It's one's own fault if one isn't happy.\"\n\nThis was large; she kept down to something smaller. \"Have you lived here\nalways?\"\n\n\"No, not always. I lived a long time at Naples, and many years in\nRome. But I've been here a good while. Perhaps I shall have to change,\nhowever; to do something else. I've no longer myself to think of. My\ndaughter's growing up and may very possibly not care so much for the\nCorreggios and crucifixes as I. I shall have to do what's best for\nPansy.\"\n\n\"Yes, do that,\" said Isabel. \"She's such a dear little girl.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried Gilbert Osmond beautifully, \"she's a little saint of heaven!\nShe is my great happiness!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nWhile this sufficiently intimate colloquy (prolonged for some time after\nwe cease to follow it) went forward Madame Merle and her companion,\nbreaking a silence of some duration, had begun to exchange remarks.\nThey were sitting in an attitude of unexpressed expectancy; an attitude\nespecially marked on the part of the Countess Gemini, who, being of a\nmore nervous temperament than her friend, practised with less success\nthe art of disguising impatience. What these ladies were waiting for\nwould not have been apparent and was perhaps not very definite to their\nown minds. Madame Merle waited for Osmond to release their young friend\nfrom her tete-a-tete, and the Countess waited because Madame Merle did.\nThe Countess, moreover, by waiting, found the time ripe for one of her\npretty perversities. She might have desired for some minutes to place\nit. Her brother wandered with Isabel to the end of the garden, to which\npoint her eyes followed them.\n\n\"My dear,\" she then observed to her companion, \"you'll excuse me if I\ndon't congratulate you!\"\n\n\"Very willingly, for I don't in the least know why you should.\"\n\n\"Haven't you a little plan that you think rather well of?\" And the\nCountess nodded at the sequestered couple.\n\nMadame Merle's eyes took the same direction; then she looked serenely at\nher neighbour. \"You know I never understand you very well,\" she smiled.\n\n\"No one can understand better than you when you wish. I see that just\nnow you DON'T wish.\"\n\n\"You say things to me that no one else does,\" said Madame Merle gravely,\nyet without bitterness.\n\n\"You mean things you don't like? Doesn't Osmond sometimes say such\nthings?\"\n\n\"What your brother says has a point.\"\n\n\"Yes, a poisoned one sometimes. If you mean that I'm not so clever as he\nyou mustn't think I shall suffer from your sense of our difference. But\nit will be much better that you should understand me.\"\n\n\"Why so?\" asked Madame Merle. \"To what will it conduce?\"\n\n\"If I don't approve of your plan you ought to know it in order to\nappreciate the danger of my interfering with it.\"\n\nMadame Merle looked as if she were ready to admit that there might be\nsomething in this; but in a moment she said quietly: \"You think me more\ncalculating than I am.\"\n\n\"It's not your calculating I think ill of; it's your calculating wrong.\nYou've done so in this case.\"\n\n\"You must have made extensive calculations yourself to discover that.\"\n\n\"No, I've not had time. I've seen the girl but this once,\" said the\nCountess, \"and the conviction has suddenly come to me. I like her very\nmuch.\"\n\n\"So do I,\" Madame Merle mentioned.\n\n\"You've a strange way of showing it.\"\n\n\"Surely I've given her the advantage of making your acquaintance.\"\n\n\"That indeed,\" piped the Countess, \"is perhaps the best thing that could\nhappen to her!\"\n\nMadame Merle said nothing for some time. The Countess's manner was\nodious, was really low; but it was an old story, and with her eyes upon\nthe violet slope of Monte Morello she gave herself up to reflection. \"My\ndear lady,\" she finally resumed, \"I advise you not to agitate yourself.\nThe matter you allude to concerns three persons much stronger of purpose\nthan yourself.\"\n\n\"Three persons? You and Osmond of course. But is Miss Archer also very\nstrong of purpose?\"\n\n\"Quite as much so as we.\"\n\n\"Ah then,\" said the Countess radiantly, \"if I convince her it's her\ninterest to resist you she'll do so successfully!\"\n\n\"Resist us? Why do you express yourself so coarsely? She's not exposed\nto compulsion or deception.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure of that. You're capable of anything, you and Osmond. I\ndon't mean Osmond by himself, and I don't mean you by yourself. But\ntogether you're dangerous--like some chemical combination.\"\n\n\"You had better leave us alone then,\" smiled Madame Merle.\n\n\"I don't mean to touch you--but I shall talk to that girl.\"\n\n\"My poor Amy,\" Madame Merle murmured, \"I don't see what has got into\nyour head.\"\n\n\"I take an interest in her--that's what has got into my head. I like\nher.\"\n\nMadame Merle hesitated a moment. \"I don't think she likes you.\"\n\nThe Countess's bright little eyes expanded and her face was set in a\ngrimace. \"Ah, you ARE dangerous--even by yourself!\"\n\n\"If you want her to like you don't abuse your brother to her,\" said\nMadame Merle.\n\n\"I don't suppose you pretend she has fallen in love with him in two\ninterviews.\"\n\nMadame Merle looked a moment at Isabel and at the master of the house.\nHe was leaning against the parapet, facing her, his arms folded; and\nshe at present was evidently not lost in the mere impersonal view,\npersistently as she gazed at it. As Madame Merle watched her she lowered\nher eyes; she was listening, possibly with a certain embarrassment,\nwhile she pressed the point of her parasol into the path. Madame Merle\nrose from her chair. \"Yes, I think so!\" she pronounced.\n\nThe shabby footboy, summoned by Pansy--he might, tarnished as to livery\nand quaint as to type, have issued from some stray sketch of old-time\nmanners, been \"put in\" by the brush of a Longhi or a Goya--had come out\nwith a small table and placed it on the grass, and then had gone back\nand fetched the tea-tray; after which he had again disappeared, to\nreturn with a couple of chairs. Pansy had watched these proceedings with\nthe deepest interest, standing with her small hands folded together\nupon the front of her scanty frock; but she had not presumed to offer\nassistance. When the tea-table had been arranged, however, she gently\napproached her aunt.\n\n\"Do you think papa would object to my making the tea?\"\n\nThe Countess looked at her with a deliberately critical gaze and without\nanswering her question. \"My poor niece,\" she said, \"is that your best\nfrock?\"\n\n\"Ah no,\" Pansy answered, \"it's just a little toilette for common\noccasions.\"\n\n\"Do you call it a common occasion when I come to see you?--to say\nnothing of Madame Merle and the pretty lady yonder.\"\n\nPansy reflected a moment, turning gravely from one of the persons\nmentioned to the other. Then her face broke into its perfect smile.\n\"I have a pretty dress, but even that one's very simple. Why should I\nexpose it beside your beautiful things?\"\n\n\"Because it's the prettiest you have; for me you must always wear the\nprettiest. Please put it on the next time. It seems to me they don't\ndress you so well as they might.\"\n\nThe child sparingly stroked down her antiquated skirt. \"It's a good\nlittle dress to make tea--don't you think? Don't you believe papa would\nallow me?\"\n\n\"Impossible for me to say, my child,\" said the Countess. \"For me, your\nfather's ideas are unfathomable. Madame Merle understands them better.\nAsk HER.\"\n\nMadame Merle smiled with her usual grace. \"It's a weighty question--let\nme think. It seems to me it would please your father to see a careful\nlittle daughter making his tea. It's the proper duty of the daughter of\nthe house--when she grows up.\"\n\n\"So it seems to me, Madame Merle!\" Pansy cried. \"You shall see how well\nI'll make it. A spoonful for each.\" And she began to busy herself at the\ntable.\n\n\"Two spoonfuls for me,\" said the Countess, who, with Madame Merle,\nremained for some moments watching her. \"Listen to me, Pansy,\" the\nCountess resumed at last. \"I should like to know what you think of your\nvisitor.\"\n\n\"Ah, she's not mine--she's papa's,\" Pansy objected.\n\n\"Miss Archer came to see you as well,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"I'm very happy to hear that. She has been very polite to me.\"\n\n\"Do you like her then?\" the Countess asked.\n\n\"She's charming--charming,\" Pansy repeated in her little neat\nconversational tone. \"She pleases me thoroughly.\"\n\n\"And how do you think she pleases your father?\"\n\n\"Ah really, Countess!\" murmured Madame Merle dissuasively. \"Go and call\nthem to tea,\" she went on to the child.\n\n\"You'll see if they don't like it!\" Pansy declared; and departed to\nsummon the others, who had still lingered at the end of the terrace.\n\n\"If Miss Archer's to become her mother it's surely interesting to know\nif the child likes her,\" said the Countess.\n\n\"If your brother marries again it won't be for Pansy's sake,\" Madame\nMerle replied. \"She'll soon be sixteen, and after that she'll begin to\nneed a husband rather than a stepmother.\"\n\n\"And will you provide the husband as well?\"\n\n\"I shall certainly take an interest in her marrying fortunately. I\nimagine you'll do the same.\"\n\n\"Indeed I shan't!\" cried the Countess. \"Why should I, of all women, set\nsuch a price on a husband?\"\n\n\"You didn't marry fortunately; that's what I'm speaking of. When I say a\nhusband I mean a good one.\"\n\n\"There are no good ones. Osmond won't be a good one.\"\n\nMadame Merle closed her eyes a moment. \"You're irritated just now; I\ndon't know why,\" she presently said. \"I don't think you'll really object\neither to your brother's or to your niece's marrying, when the time\ncomes for them to do so; and as regards Pansy I'm confident that we\nshall some day have the pleasure of looking for a husband for her\ntogether. Your large acquaintance will be a great help.\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm irritated,\" the Countess answered. \"You often irritate me.\nYour own coolness is fabulous. You're a strange woman.\"\n\n\"It's much better that we should always act together,\" Madame Merle went\non.\n\n\"Do you mean that as a threat?\" asked the Countess rising. Madame\nMerle shook her head as for quiet amusement. \"No indeed, you've not my\ncoolness!\"\n\nIsabel and Mr. Osmond were now slowly coming toward them and Isabel\nhad taken Pansy by the hand. \"Do you pretend to believe he'd make her\nhappy?\" the Countess demanded.\n\n\"If he should marry Miss Archer I suppose he'd behave like a gentleman.\"\n\nThe Countess jerked herself into a succession of attitudes. \"Do you\nmean as most gentlemen behave? That would be much to be thankful for! Of\ncourse Osmond's a gentleman; his own sister needn't be reminded of that.\nBut does he think he can marry any girl he happens to pick out? Osmond's\na gentleman, of course; but I must say I've NEVER, no, no, never, seen\nany one of Osmond's pretensions! What they're all founded on is more\nthan I can say. I'm his own sister; I might be supposed to know. Who\nis he, if you please? What has he ever done? If there had been anything\nparticularly grand in his origin--if he were made of some superior\nclay--I presume I should have got some inkling of it. If there had been\nany great honours or splendours in the family I should certainly have\nmade the most of them: they would have been quite in my line. But\nthere's nothing, nothing, nothing. One's parents were charming people of\ncourse; but so were yours, I've no doubt. Every one's a charming person\nnowadays. Even I'm a charming person; don't laugh, it has literally\nbeen said. As for Osmond, he has always appeared to believe that he's\ndescended from the gods.\"\n\n\"You may say what you please,\" said Madame Merle, who had listened to\nthis quick outbreak none the less attentively, we may believe, because\nher eye wandered away from the speaker and her hands busied themselves\nwith adjusting the knots of ribbon on her dress. \"You Osmonds are a fine\nrace--your blood must flow from some very pure source. Your brother,\nlike an intelligent man, has had the conviction of it if he has not\nhad the proofs. You're modest about it, but you yourself are extremely\ndistinguished. What do you say about your niece? The child's a little\nprincess. Nevertheless,\" Madame Merle added, \"it won't be an easy matter\nfor Osmond to marry Miss Archer. Yet he can try.\"\n\n\"I hope she'll refuse him. It will take him down a little.\"\n\n\"We mustn't forget that he is one of the cleverest of men.\"\n\n\"I've heard you say that before, but I haven't yet discovered what he\nhas done.\"\n\n\"What he has done? He has done nothing that has had to be undone. And he\nhas known how to wait.\"\n\n\"To wait for Miss Archer's money? How much of it is there?\"\n\n\"That's not what I mean,\" said Madame Merle. \"Miss Archer has seventy\nthousand pounds.\"\n\n\"Well, it's a pity she's so charming,\" the Countess declared. \"To be\nsacrificed, any girl would do. She needn't be superior.\"\n\n\"If she weren't superior your brother would never look at her. He must\nhave the best.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" returned the Countess as they went forward a little to meet\nthe others, \"he's very hard to satisfy. That makes me tremble for her\nhappiness!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nGilbert Osmond came to see Isabel again; that is he came to Palazzo\nCrescentini. He had other friends there as well, and to Mrs. Touchett\nand Madame Merle he was always impartially civil; but the former of\nthese ladies noted the fact that in the course of a fortnight he\ncalled five times, and compared it with another fact that she found no\ndifficulty in remembering. Two visits a year had hitherto constituted\nhis regular tribute to Mrs. Touchett's worth, and she had never\nobserved him select for such visits those moments, of almost periodical\nrecurrence, when Madame Merle was under her roof. It was not for Madame\nMerle that he came; these two were old friends and he never put himself\nout for her. He was not fond of Ralph--Ralph had told her so--and it was\nnot supposable that Mr. Osmond had suddenly taken a fancy to her son.\nRalph was imperturbable--Ralph had a kind of loose-fitting urbanity\nthat wrapped him about like an ill-made overcoat, but of which he\nnever divested himself; he thought Mr. Osmond very good company and was\nwilling at any time to look at him in the light of hospitality. But he\ndidn't flatter himself that the desire to repair a past injustice was\nthe motive of their visitor's calls; he read the situation more clearly.\nIsabel was the attraction, and in all conscience a sufficient one.\nOsmond was a critic, a student of the exquisite, and it was natural he\nshould be curious of so rare an apparition. So when his mother observed\nto him that it was plain what Mr. Osmond was thinking of, Ralph replied\nthat he was quite of her opinion. Mrs. Touchett had from far back found\na place on her scant list for this gentleman, though wondering dimly by\nwhat art and what process--so negative and so wise as they were--he\nhad everywhere effectively imposed himself. As he had never been an\nimportunate visitor he had had no chance to be offensive, and he was\nrecommended to her by his appearance of being as well able to do without\nher as she was to do without him--a quality that always, oddly enough,\naffected her as providing ground for a relation with her. It gave her\nno satisfaction, however, to think that he had taken it into his head to\nmarry her niece. Such an alliance, on Isabel's part, would have an air\nof almost morbid perversity. Mrs. Touchett easily remembered that the\ngirl had refused an English peer; and that a young lady with whom Lord\nWarburton had not successfully wrestled should content herself with an\nobscure American dilettante, a middle-aged widower with an uncanny child\nand an ambiguous income, this answered to nothing in Mrs. Touchett's\nconception of success. She took, it will be observed, not the\nsentimental, but the political, view of matrimony--a view which has\nalways had much to recommend it. \"I trust she won't have the folly\nto listen to him,\" she said to her son; to which Ralph replied that\nIsabel's listening was one thing and Isabel's answering quite another.\nHe knew she had listened to several parties, as his father would\nhave said, but had made them listen in return; and he found much\nentertainment in the idea that in these few months of his knowing her he\nshould observe a fresh suitor at her gate. She had wanted to see life,\nand fortune was serving her to her taste; a succession of fine gentlemen\ngoing down on their knees to her would do as well as anything else.\nRalph looked forward to a fourth, a fifth, a tenth besieger; he had no\nconviction she would stop at a third. She would keep the gate ajar and\nopen a parley; she would certainly not allow number three to come in.\nHe expressed this view, somewhat after this fashion, to his mother, who\nlooked at him as if he had been dancing a jig. He had such a fanciful,\npictorial way of saying things that he might as well address her in the\ndeaf-mute's alphabet.\n\n\"I don't think I know what you mean,\" she said; \"you use too many\nfigures of speech; I could never understand allegories. The two words in\nthe language I most respect are Yes and No. If Isabel wants to marry Mr.\nOsmond she'll do so in spite of all your comparisons. Let her alone to\nfind a fine one herself for anything she undertakes. I know very little\nabout the young man in America; I don't think she spends much of her\ntime in thinking of him, and I suspect he has got tired of waiting for\nher. There's nothing in life to prevent her marrying Mr. Osmond if\nshe only looks at him in a certain way. That's all very well; no one\napproves more than I of one's pleasing one's self. But she takes her\npleasure in such odd things; she's capable of marrying Mr. Osmond for\nthe beauty of his opinions or for his autograph of Michael Angelo.\nShe wants to be disinterested: as if she were the only person who's\nin danger of not being so! Will HE be so disinterested when he has the\nspending of her money? That was her idea before your father's death, and\nit has acquired new charms for her since. She ought to marry some one of\nwhose disinterestedness she shall herself be sure; and there would be no\nsuch proof of that as his having a fortune of his own.\"\n\n\"My dear mother, I'm not afraid,\" Ralph answered. \"She's making fools of\nus all. She'll please herself, of course; but she'll do so by studying\nhuman nature at close quarters and yet retaining her liberty. She has\nstarted on an exploring expedition, and I don't think she'll change her\ncourse, at the outset, at a signal from Gilbert Osmond. She may have\nslackened speed for an hour, but before we know it she'll be steaming\naway again. Excuse another metaphor.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett excused it perhaps, but was not so much reassured as to\nwithhold from Madame Merle the expression of her fears. \"You who\nknow everything,\" she said, \"you must know this: whether that curious\ncreature's really making love to my niece.\"\n\n\"Gilbert Osmond?\" Madame Merle widened her clear eyes and, with a full\nintelligence, \"Heaven help us,\" she exclaimed, \"that's an idea!\"\n\n\"Hadn't it occurred to you?\"\n\n\"You make me feel an idiot, but I confess it hadn't. I wonder,\" she\nadded, \"if it has occurred to Isabel.\"\n\n\"Oh, I shall now ask her,\" said Mrs. Touchett.\n\nMadame Merle reflected. \"Don't put it into her head. The thing would be\nto ask Mr. Osmond.\"\n\n\"I can't do that,\" said Mrs. Touchett. \"I won't have him enquire\nof me--as he perfectly may with that air of his, given Isabel's\nsituation--what business it is of mine.\"\n\n\"I'll ask him myself,\" Madame Merle bravely declared.\n\n\"But what business--for HIM--is it of yours?\"\n\n\"It's being none whatever is just why I can afford to speak. It's so\nmuch less my business than any one's else that he can put me off with\nanything he chooses. But it will be by the way he does this that I shall\nknow.\"\n\n\"Pray let me hear then,\" said Mrs. Touchett, \"of the fruits of your\npenetration. If I can't speak to him, however, at least I can speak to\nIsabel.\"\n\nHer companion sounded at this the note of warning. \"Don't be too quick\nwith her. Don't inflame her imagination.\"\n\n\"I never did anything in life to any one's imagination. But I'm always\nsure of her doing something--well, not of MY kind.\"\n\n\"No, you wouldn't like this,\" Madame Merle observed without the point of\ninterrogation.\n\n\"Why in the world should I, pray? Mr. Osmond has nothing the least solid\nto offer.\"\n\nAgain Madame Merle was silent while her thoughtful smile drew up her\nmouth even more charmingly than usual toward the left corner. \"Let us\ndistinguish. Gilbert Osmond's certainly not the first comer. He's a man\nwho in favourable conditions might very well make a great impression. He\nhas made a great impression, to my knowledge, more than once.\"\n\n\"Don't tell me about his probably quite cold-blooded love-affairs;\nthey're nothing to me!\" Mrs. Touchett cried. \"What you say's precisely\nwhy I wish he would cease his visits. He has nothing in the world that\nI know of but a dozen or two of early masters and a more or less pert\nlittle daughter.\"\n\n\"The early masters are now worth a good deal of money,\" said Madame\nMerle, \"and the daughter's a very young and very innocent and very\nharmless person.\"\n\n\"In other words she's an insipid little chit. Is that what you mean?\nHaving no fortune she can't hope to marry as they marry here; so that\nIsabel will have to furnish her either with a maintenance or with a\ndowry.\"\n\n\"Isabel probably wouldn't object to being kind to her. I think she likes\nthe poor child.\"\n\n\"Another reason then for Mr. Osmond's stopping at home! Otherwise, a\nweek hence, we shall have my niece arriving at the conviction that her\nmission in life's to prove that a stepmother may sacrifice herself--and\nthat, to prove it, she must first become one.\"\n\n\"She would make a charming stepmother,\" smiled Madame Merle; \"but I\nquite agree with you that she had better not decide upon her mission\ntoo hastily. Changing the form of one's mission's almost as difficult as\nchanging the shape of one's nose: there they are, each, in the middle of\none's face and one's character--one has to begin too far back. But I'll\ninvestigate and report to you.\"\n\nAll this went on quite over Isabel's head; she had no suspicions that\nher relations with Mr. Osmond were being discussed. Madame Merle had\nsaid nothing to put her on her guard; she alluded no more pointedly to\nhim than to the other gentlemen of Florence, native and foreign, who now\narrived in considerable numbers to pay their respects to Miss Archer's\naunt. Isabel thought him interesting--she came back to that; she liked\nso to think of him. She had carried away an image from her visit to his\nhill-top which her subsequent knowledge of him did nothing to efface\nand which put on for her a particular harmony with other supposed\nand divined things, histories within histories: the image of a quiet,\nclever, sensitive, distinguished man, strolling on a moss-grown terrace\nabove the sweet Val d'Arno and holding by the hand a little girl whose\nbell-like clearness gave a new grace to childhood. The picture had no\nflourishes, but she liked its lowness of tone and the atmosphere of\nsummer twilight that pervaded it. It spoke of the kind of personal issue\nthat touched her most nearly; of the choice between objects, subjects,\ncontacts--what might she call them?--of a thin and those of a rich\nassociation; of a lonely, studious life in a lovely land; of an old\nsorrow that sometimes ached to-day; of a feeling of pride that was\nperhaps exaggerated, but that had an element of nobleness; of a care\nfor beauty and perfection so natural and so cultivated together that the\ncareer appeared to stretch beneath it in the disposed vistas and with\nthe ranges of steps and terraces and fountains of a formal Italian\ngarden--allowing only for arid places freshened by the natural dews of\na quaint half-anxious, half-helpless fatherhood. At Palazzo Crescentini\nMr. Osmond's manner remained the same; diffident at first--oh\nself-conscious beyond doubt! and full of the effort (visible only to a\nsympathetic eye) to overcome this disadvantage; an effort which\nusually resulted in a great deal of easy, lively, very positive, rather\naggressive, always suggestive talk. Mr. Osmond's talk was not injured by\nthe indication of an eagerness to shine; Isabel found no difficulty\nin believing that a person was sincere who had so many of the signs of\nstrong conviction--as for instance an explicit and graceful appreciation\nof anything that might be said on his own side of the question, said\nperhaps by Miss Archer in especial. What continued to please this young\nwoman was that while he talked so for amusement he didn't talk, as she\nhad heard people, for \"effect.\" He uttered his ideas as if, odd as\nthey often appeared, he were used to them and had lived with them; old\npolished knobs and heads and handles, of precious substance, that could\nbe fitted if necessary to new walking-sticks--not switches plucked in\ndestitution from the common tree and then too elegantly waved about. One\nday he brought his small daughter with him, and she rejoiced to renew\nacquaintance with the child, who, as she presented her forehead to be\nkissed by every member of the circle, reminded her vividly of an ingenue\nin a French play. Isabel had never seen a little person of this pattern;\nAmerican girls were very different--different too were the maidens of\nEngland. Pansy was so formed and finished for her tiny place in the\nworld, and yet in imagination, as one could see, so innocent and\ninfantine. She sat on the sofa by Isabel; she wore a small grenadine\nmantle and a pair of the useful gloves that Madame Merle had given\nher--little grey gloves with a single button. She was like a sheet of\nblank paper--the ideal jeune fille of foreign fiction. Isabel hoped that\nso fair and smooth a page would be covered with an edifying text.\n\nThe Countess Gemini also came to call upon her, but the Countess was\nquite another affair. She was by no means a blank sheet; she had been\nwritten over in a variety of hands, and Mrs. Touchett, who felt by no\nmeans honoured by her visit, pronounced that a number of unmistakeable\nblots were to be seen upon her surface. The Countess gave rise indeed to\nsome discussion between the mistress of the house and the visitor from\nRome, in which Madame Merle (who was not such a fool as to irritate\npeople by always agreeing with them) availed herself felicitously enough\nof that large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as freely\nas she practised it. Mrs. Touchett had declared it a piece of audacity\nthat this highly compromised character should have presented herself at\nsuch a time of day at the door of a house in which she was esteemed so\nlittle as she must long have known herself to be at Palazzo Crescentini.\nIsabel had been made acquainted with the estimate prevailing under that\nroof: it represented Mr. Osmond's sister as a lady who had so mismanaged\nher improprieties that they had ceased to hang together at all--which\nwas at the least what one asked of such matters--and had become the mere\nfloating fragments of a wrecked renown, incommoding social circulation.\nShe had been married by her mother--a more administrative person, with\nan appreciation of foreign titles which the daughter, to do her justice,\nhad probably by this time thrown off--to an Italian nobleman who had\nperhaps given her some excuse for attempting to quench the consciousness\nof outrage. The Countess, however, had consoled herself outrageously,\nand the list of her excuses had now lost itself in the labyrinth of her\nadventures. Mrs. Touchett had never consented to receive her, though the\nCountess had made overtures of old. Florence was not an austere city;\nbut, as Mrs. Touchett said, she had to draw the line somewhere.\n\nMadame Merle defended the luckless lady with a great deal of zeal and\nwit. She couldn't see why Mrs. Touchett should make a scapegoat of a\nwoman who had really done no harm, who had only done good in the wrong\nway. One must certainly draw the line, but while one was about it one\nshould draw it straight: it was a very crooked chalk-mark that would\nexclude the Countess Gemini. In that case Mrs. Touchett had better\nshut up her house; this perhaps would be the best course so long as\nshe remained in Florence. One must be fair and not make arbitrary\ndifferences: the Countess had doubtless been imprudent, she had not been\nso clever as other women. She was a good creature, not clever at\nall; but since when had that been a ground of exclusion from the best\nsociety? For ever so long now one had heard nothing about her, and there\ncould be no better proof of her having renounced the error of her ways\nthan her desire to become a member of Mrs. Touchett's circle. Isabel\ncould contribute nothing to this interesting dispute, not even a patient\nattention; she contented herself with having given a friendly welcome to\nthe unfortunate lady, who, whatever her defects, had at least the merit\nof being Mr. Osmond's sister. As she liked the brother Isabel thought it\nproper to try and like the sister: in spite of the growing complexity of\nthings she was still capable of these primitive sequences. She had not\nreceived the happiest impression of the Countess on meeting her at the\nvilla, but was thankful for an opportunity to repair the accident.\nHad not Mr. Osmond remarked that she was a respectable person? To have\nproceeded from Gilbert Osmond this was a crude proposition, but Madame\nMerle bestowed upon it a certain improving polish. She told Isabel\nmore about the poor Countess than Mr. Osmond had done, and related the\nhistory of her marriage and its consequences. The Count was a member of\nan ancient Tuscan family, but of such small estate that he had been glad\nto accept Amy Osmond, in spite of the questionable beauty which had yet\nnot hampered her career, with the modest dowry her mother was able\nto offer--a sum about equivalent to that which had already formed her\nbrother's share of their patrimony. Count Gemini since then, however,\nhad inherited money, and now they were well enough off, as Italians\nwent, though Amy was horribly extravagant. The Count was a low-lived\nbrute; he had given his wife every pretext. She had no children; she had\nlost three within a year of their birth. Her mother, who had bristled\nwith pretensions to elegant learning and published descriptive poems and\ncorresponded on Italian subjects with the English weekly journals, her\nmother had died three years after the Countess's marriage, the father,\nlost in the grey American dawn of the situation, but reputed originally\nrich and wild, having died much earlier. One could see this in Gilbert\nOsmond, Madame Merle held--see that he had been brought up by a woman;\nthough, to do him justice, one would suppose it had been by a more\nsensible woman than the American Corinne, as Mrs. Osmond had liked to be\ncalled. She had brought her children to Italy after her husband's death,\nand Mrs. Touchett remembered her during the year that followed her\narrival. She thought her a horrible snob; but this was an irregularity\nof judgement on Mrs. Touchett's part, for she, like Mrs. Osmond,\napproved of political marriages. The Countess was very good company and\nnot really the featherhead she seemed; all one had to do with her was\nto observe the simple condition of not believing a word she said.\nMadame Merle had always made the best of her for her brother's sake;\nhe appreciated any kindness shown to Amy, because (if it had to be\nconfessed for him) he rather felt she let down their common name.\nNaturally he couldn't like her style, her shrillness, her egotism,\nher violations of taste and above all of truth: she acted badly on his\nnerves, she was not HIS sort of woman. What was his sort of woman? Oh,\nthe very opposite of the Countess, a woman to whom the truth should be\nhabitually sacred. Isabel was unable to estimate the number of times her\nvisitor had, in half an hour, profaned it: the Countess indeed had\ngiven her an impression of rather silly sincerity. She had talked almost\nexclusively about herself; how much she should like to know Miss Archer;\nhow thankful she should be for a real friend; how base the people in\nFlorence were; how tired she was of the place; how much she should\nlike to live somewhere else--in Paris, in London, in Washington; how\nimpossible it was to get anything nice to wear in Italy except a little\nold lace; how dear the world was growing everywhere; what a life of\nsuffering and privation she had led. Madame Merle listened with interest\nto Isabel's account of this passage, but she had not needed it to feel\nexempt from anxiety. On the whole she was not afraid of the Countess,\nand she could afford to do what was altogether best--not to appear so.\n\nIsabel had meanwhile another visitor, whom it was not, even behind her\nback, so easy a matter to patronise. Henrietta Stackpole, who had left\nParis after Mrs. Touchett's departure for San Remo and had worked her\nway down, as she said, through the cities of North Italy, reached the\nbanks of the Arno about the middle of May. Madame Merle surveyed her\nwith a single glance, took her in from head to foot, and after a pang\nof despair determined to endure her. She determined indeed to delight\nin her. She mightn't be inhaled as a rose, but she might be grasped as\na nettle. Madame Merle genially squeezed her into insignificance, and\nIsabel felt that in foreseeing this liberality she had done justice to\nher friend's intelligence. Henrietta's arrival had been announced by\nMr. Bantling, who, coming down from Nice while she was at Venice, and\nexpecting to find her in Florence, which she had not yet reached, called\nat Palazzo Crescentini to express his disappointment. Henrietta's own\nadvent occurred two days later and produced in Mr. Bantling an emotion\namply accounted for by the fact that he had not seen her since the\ntermination of the episode at Versailles. The humorous view of his\nsituation was generally taken, but it was uttered only by Ralph\nTouchett, who, in the privacy of his own apartment, when Bantling smoked\na cigar there, indulged in goodness knew what strong comedy on the\nsubject of the all-judging one and her British backer. This gentleman\ntook the joke in perfectly good part and candidly confessed that he\nregarded the affair as a positive intellectual adventure. He liked\nMiss Stackpole extremely; he thought she had a wonderful head on her\nshoulders, and found great comfort in the society of a woman who was not\nperpetually thinking about what would be said and how what she did, how\nwhat they did--and they had done things!--would look. Miss Stackpole\nnever cared how anything looked, and, if she didn't care, pray why\nshould he? But his curiosity had been roused; he wanted awfully to see\nif she ever WOULD care. He was prepared to go as far as she--he didn't\nsee why he should break down first.\n\nHenrietta showed no signs of breaking down. Her prospects had brightened\non her leaving England, and she was now in the full enjoyment of her\ncopious resources. She had indeed been obliged to sacrifice her hopes\nwith regard to the inner life; the social question, on the Continent,\nbristled with difficulties even more numerous than those she had\nencountered in England. But on the Continent there was the outer\nlife, which was palpable and visible at every turn, and more easily\nconvertible to literary uses than the customs of those opaque islanders.\nOut of doors in foreign lands, as she ingeniously remarked, one seemed\nto see the right side of the tapestry; out of doors in England one\nseemed to see the wrong side, which gave one no notion of the figure.\nThe admission costs her historian a pang, but Henrietta, despairing of\nmore occult things, was now paying much attention to the outer life. She\nhad been studying it for two months at Venice, from which city she sent\nto the Interviewer a conscientious account of the gondolas, the Piazza,\nthe Bridge of Sighs, the pigeons and the young boatman who chanted\nTasso. The Interviewer was perhaps disappointed, but Henrietta was at\nleast seeing Europe. Her present purpose was to get down to Rome before\nthe malaria should come on--she apparently supposed that it began on a\nfixed day; and with this design she was to spend at present but few days\nin Florence. Mr. Bantling was to go with her to Rome, and she pointed\nout to Isabel that as he had been there before, as he was a military man\nand as he had had a classical education--he had been bred at Eton, where\nthey study nothing but Latin and Whyte-Melville, said Miss Stackpole--he\nwould be a most useful companion in the city of the Caesars. At this\njuncture Ralph had the happy idea of proposing to Isabel that she also,\nunder his own escort, should make a pilgrimage to Rome. She expected\nto pass a portion of the next winter there--that was very well; but\nmeantime there was no harm in surveying the field. There were ten days\nleft of the beautiful month of May--the most precious month of all\nto the true Rome-lover. Isabel would become a Rome-lover; that was a\nforegone conclusion. She was provided with a trusty companion of her\nown sex, whose society, thanks to the fact of other calls on this lady's\nattention, would probably not be oppressive. Madame Merle would remain\nwith Mrs. Touchett; she had left Rome for the summer and wouldn't\ncare to return. She professed herself delighted to be left at peace\nin Florence; she had locked up her apartment and sent her cook home to\nPalestrina. She urged Isabel, however, to assent to Ralph's proposal,\nand assured her that a good introduction to Rome was not a thing to\nbe despised. Isabel in truth needed no urging, and the party of four\narranged its little journey. Mrs. Touchett, on this occasion, had\nresigned herself to the absence of a duenna; we have seen that she\nnow inclined to the belief that her niece should stand alone. One of\nIsabel's preparations consisted of her seeing Gilbert Osmond before she\nstarted and mentioning her intention to him.\n\n\"I should like to be in Rome with you,\" he commented. \"I should like to\nsee you on that wonderful ground.\"\n\nShe scarcely faltered. \"You might come then.\"\n\n\"But you'll have a lot of people with you.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Isabel admitted, \"of course I shall not be alone.\"\n\nFor a moment he said nothing more. \"You'll like it,\" he went on at last.\n\"They've spoiled it, but you'll rave about it.\"\n\n\"Ought I to dislike it because, poor old dear--the Niobe of Nations, you\nknow--it has been spoiled?\" she asked.\n\n\"No, I think not. It has been spoiled so often,\" he smiled. \"If I were\nto go, what should I do with my little girl?\"\n\n\"Can't you leave her at the villa?\"\n\n\"I don't know that I like that--though there's a very good old woman who\nlooks after her. I can't afford a governess.\"\n\n\"Bring her with you then,\" said Isabel promptly.\n\nMr. Osmond looked grave. \"She has been in Rome all winter, at her\nconvent; and she's too young to make journeys of pleasure.\"\n\n\"You don't like bringing her forward?\" Isabel enquired.\n\n\"No, I think young girls should be kept out of the world.\"\n\n\"I was brought up on a different system.\"\n\n\"You? Oh, with you it succeeded, because you--you were exceptional.\"\n\n\"I don't see why,\" said Isabel, who, however, was not sure there was not\nsome truth in the speech.\n\nMr. Osmond didn't explain; he simply went on: \"If I thought it would\nmake her resemble you to join a social group in Rome I'd take her there\nto-morrow.\"\n\n\"Don't make her resemble me,\" said Isabel. \"Keep her like herself.\"\n\n\"I might send her to my sister,\" Mr. Osmond observed. He had almost\nthe air of asking advice; he seemed to like to talk over his domestic\nmatters with Miss Archer.\n\n\"Yes,\" she concurred; \"I think that wouldn't do much towards making her\nresemble me!\"\n\nAfter she had left Florence Gilbert Osmond met Madame Merle at the\nCountess Gemini's. There were other people present; the Countess's\ndrawing-room was usually well filled, and the talk had been general,\nbut after a while Osmond left his place and came and sat on an ottoman\nhalf-behind, half-beside Madame Merle's chair. \"She wants me to go to\nRome with her,\" he remarked in a low voice.\n\n\"To go with her?\"\n\n\"To be there while she's there. She proposed it.\n\n\"I suppose you mean that you proposed it and she assented.\"\n\n\"Of course I gave her a chance. But she's encouraging--she's very\nencouraging.\"\n\n\"I rejoice to hear it--but don't cry victory too soon. Of course you'll\ngo to Rome.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Osmond, \"it makes one work, this idea of yours!\"\n\n\"Don't pretend you don't enjoy it--you're very ungrateful. You've not\nbeen so well occupied these many years.\"\n\n\"The way you take it's beautiful,\" said Osmond. \"I ought to be grateful\nfor that.\"\n\n\"Not too much so, however,\" Madame Merle answered. She talked with\nher usual smile, leaning back in her chair and looking round the room.\n\"You've made a very good impression, and I've seen for myself that\nyou've received one. You've not come to Mrs. Touchett's seven times to\noblige me.\"\n\n\"The girl's not disagreeable,\" Osmond quietly conceded.\n\nMadame Merle dropped her eye on him a moment, during which her lips\nclosed with a certain firmness. \"Is that all you can find to say about\nthat fine creature?\"\n\n\"All? Isn't it enough? Of how many people have you heard me say more?\"\n\nShe made no answer to this, but still presented her talkative grace to\nthe room. \"You're unfathomable,\" she murmured at last. \"I'm frightened\nat the abyss into which I shall have cast her.\"\n\nHe took it almost gaily. \"You can't draw back--you've gone too far.\"\n\n\"Very good; but you must do the rest yourself.\"\n\n\"I shall do it,\" said Gilbert Osmond.\n\nMadame Merle remained silent and he changed his place again; but when\nshe rose to go he also took leave. Mrs. Touchett's victoria was awaiting\nher guest in the court, and after he had helped his friend into it he\nstood there detaining her. \"You're very indiscreet,\" she said rather\nwearily; \"you shouldn't have moved when I did.\"\n\nHe had taken off his hat; he passed his hand over his forehead. \"I\nalways forget; I'm out of the habit.\"\n\n\"You're quite unfathomable,\" she repeated, glancing up at the windows of\nthe house, a modern structure in the new part of the town.\n\nHe paid no heed to this remark, but spoke in his own sense. \"She's\nreally very charming. I've scarcely known any one more graceful.\"\n\n\"It does me good to hear you say that. The better you like her the\nbetter for me.\"\n\n\"I like her very much. She's all you described her, and into the bargain\ncapable, I feel, of great devotion. She has only one fault.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"Too many ideas.\"\n\n\"I warned you she was clever.\"\n\n\"Fortunately they're very bad ones,\" said Osmond.\n\n\"Why is that fortunate?\"\n\n\"Dame, if they must be sacrificed!\"\n\nMadame Merle leaned back, looking straight before her; then she spoke to\nthe coachman. But her friend again detained her. \"If I go to Rome what\nshall I do with Pansy?\"\n\n\"I'll go and see her,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\n\n\n\nI may not attempt to report in its fulness our young woman's response\nto the deep appeal of Rome, to analyse her feelings as she trod the\npavement of the Forum or to number her pulsations as she crossed the\nthreshold of Saint Peter's. It is enough to say that her impression was\nsuch as might have been expected of a person of her freshness and her\neagerness. She had always been fond of history, and here was history\nin the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine. She had an\nimagination that kindled at the mention of great deeds, and wherever she\nturned some great deed had been acted. These things strongly moved her,\nbut moved her all inwardly. It seemed to her companions that she talked\nless than usual, and Ralph Touchett, when he appeared to be looking\nlistlessly and awkwardly over her head, was really dropping on her an\nintensity of observation. By her own measure she was very happy; she\nwould even have been willing to take these hours for the happiest she\nwas ever to know. The sense of the terrible human past was heavy to her,\nbut that of something altogether contemporary would suddenly give it\nwings that it could wave in the blue. Her consciousness was so mixed\nthat she scarcely knew where the different parts of it would lead her,\nand she went about in a repressed ecstasy of contemplation, seeing often\nin the things she looked at a great deal more than was there, and yet\nnot seeing many of the items enumerated in her Murray. Rome, as Ralph\nsaid, confessed to the psychological moment. The herd of reechoing\ntourists had departed and most of the solemn places had relapsed into\nsolemnity. The sky was a blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains\nin their mossy niches had lost its chill and doubled its music. On the\ncorners of the warm, bright streets one stumbled on bundles of flowers.\nOur friends had gone one afternoon--it was the third of their stay--to\nlook at the latest excavations in the Forum, these labours having been\nfor some time previous largely extended. They had descended from the\nmodern street to the level of the Sacred Way, along which they wandered\nwith a reverence of step which was not the same on the part of each.\nHenrietta Stackpole was struck with the fact that ancient Rome had been\npaved a good deal like New York, and even found an analogy between the\ndeep chariot-ruts traceable in the antique street and the overjangled\niron grooves which express the intensity of American life. The sun had\nbegun to sink, the air was a golden haze, and the long shadows of broken\ncolumn and vague pedestal leaned across the field of ruin. Henrietta\nwandered away with Mr. Bantling, whom it was apparently delightful to\nher to hear speak of Julius Caesar as a \"cheeky old boy,\" and Ralph\naddressed such elucidations as he was prepared to offer to the attentive\near of our heroine. One of the humble archeologists who hover about\nthe place had put himself at the disposal of the two, and repeated his\nlesson with a fluency which the decline of the season had done nothing\nto impair. A process of digging was on view in a remote corner of the\nForum, and he presently remarked that if it should please the signori\nto go and watch it a little they might see something of interest. The\nproposal commended itself more to Ralph than to Isabel, weary with much\nwandering; so that she admonished her companion to satisfy his curiosity\nwhile she patiently awaited his return. The hour and the place were much\nto her taste--she should enjoy being briefly alone. Ralph accordingly\nwent off with the cicerone while Isabel sat down on a prostrate column\nnear the foundations of the Capitol. She wanted a short solitude, but\nshe was not long to enjoy it. Keen as was her interest in the rugged\nrelics of the Roman past that lay scattered about her and in which the\ncorrosion of centuries had still left so much of individual life, her\nthoughts, after resting a while on these things, had wandered, by a\nconcatenation of stages it might require some subtlety to trace, to\nregions and objects charged with a more active appeal. From the Roman\npast to Isabel Archer's future was a long stride, but her imagination\nhad taken it in a single flight and now hovered in slow circles over\nthe nearer and richer field. She was so absorbed in her thoughts, as she\nbent her eyes upon a row of cracked but not dislocated slabs covering\nthe ground at her feet, that she had not heard the sound of approaching\nfootsteps before a shadow was thrown across the line of her vision. She\nlooked up and saw a gentleman--a gentleman who was not Ralph come back\nto say that the excavations were a bore. This personage was startled as\nshe was startled; he stood there baring his head to her perceptibly pale\nsurprise.\n\n\"Lord Warburton!\" Isabel exclaimed as she rose.\n\n\"I had no idea it was you. I turned that corner and came upon you.\"\n\nShe looked about her to explain. \"I'm alone, but my companions have just\nleft me. My cousin's gone to look at the work over there.\"\n\n\"Ah yes; I see.\" And Lord Warburton's eyes wandered vaguely in the\ndirection she had indicated. He stood firmly before her now; he had\nrecovered his balance and seemed to wish to show it, though very kindly.\n\"Don't let me disturb you,\" he went on, looking at her dejected pillar.\n\"I'm afraid you're tired.\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm rather tired.\" She hesitated a moment, but sat down again.\n\"Don't let me interrupt you,\" she added.\n\n\"Oh dear, I'm quite alone, I've nothing on earth to do. I had no\nidea you were in Rome. I've just come from the East. I'm only passing\nthrough.\"\n\n\"You've been making a long journey,\" said Isabel, who had learned from\nRalph that Lord Warburton was absent from England.\n\n\"Yes, I came abroad for six months--soon after I saw you last. I've been\nin Turkey and Asia Minor; I came the other day from Athens.\" He managed\nnot to be awkward, but he wasn't easy, and after a longer look at the\ngirl he came down to nature. \"Do you wish me to leave you, or will you\nlet me stay a little?\"\n\nShe took it all humanely. \"I don't wish you to leave me, Lord Warburton;\nI'm very glad to see you.\"\n\n\"Thank you for saying that. May I sit down?\"\n\nThe fluted shaft on which she had taken her seat would have afforded a\nresting-place to several persons, and there was plenty of room even for\na highly-developed Englishman. This fine specimen of that great class\nseated himself near our young lady, and in the course of five minutes he\nhad asked her several questions, taken rather at random and to which, as\nhe put some of them twice over, he apparently somewhat missed catching\nthe answer; had given her too some information about himself which was\nnot wasted upon her calmer feminine sense. He repeated more than once\nthat he had not expected to meet her, and it was evident that the\nencounter touched him in a way that would have made preparation\nadvisable. He began abruptly to pass from the impunity of things\nto their solemnity, and from their being delightful to their being\nimpossible. He was splendidly sunburnt; even his multitudinous beard had\nbeen burnished by the fire of Asia. He was dressed in the loose-fitting,\nheterogeneous garments in which the English traveller in foreign lands\nis wont to consult his comfort and affirm his nationality; and with\nhis pleasant steady eyes, his bronzed complexion, fresh beneath its\nseasoning, his manly figure, his minimising manner and his general air\nof being a gentleman and an explorer, he was such a representative of\nthe British race as need not in any clime have been disavowed by those\nwho have a kindness for it. Isabel noted these things and was glad she\nhad always liked him. He had kept, evidently in spite of shocks, every\none of his merits--properties these partaking of the essence of great\ndecent houses, as one might put it; resembling their innermost fixtures\nand ornaments, not subject to vulgar shifting and removable only by\nsome whole break-up. They talked of the matters naturally in order;\nher uncle's death, Ralph's state of health, the way she had passed her\nwinter, her visit to Rome, her return to Florence, her plans for the\nsummer, the hotel she was staying at; and then of Lord Warburton's own\nadventures, movements, intentions, impressions and present domicile. At\nlast there was a silence, and it said so much more than either had said\nthat it scarce needed his final words. \"I've written to you several\ntimes.\"\n\n\"Written to me? I've never had your letters.\"\n\n\"I never sent them. I burned them up.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" laughed Isabel, \"it was better that you should do that than I!\"\n\n\"I thought you wouldn't care for them,\" he went on with a simplicity\nthat touched her. \"It seemed to me that after all I had no right to\ntrouble you with letters.\"\n\n\"I should have been very glad to have news of you. You know how I hoped\nthat--that--\" But she stopped; there would be such a flatness in the\nutterance of her thought.\n\n\"I know what you're going to say. You hoped we should always remain good\nfriends.\" This formula, as Lord Warburton uttered it, was certainly flat\nenough; but then he was interested in making it appear so.\n\nShe found herself reduced simply to \"Please don't talk of all that\"; a\nspeech which hardly struck her as improvement on the other.\n\n\"It's a small consolation to allow me!\" her companion exclaimed with\nforce.\n\n\"I can't pretend to console you,\" said the girl, who, all still as\nshe sat there, threw herself back with a sort of inward triumph on\nthe answer that had satisfied him so little six months before. He was\npleasant, he was powerful, he was gallant; there was no better man than\nhe. But her answer remained.\n\n\"It's very well you don't try to console me; it wouldn't be in your\npower,\" she heard him say through the medium of her strange elation.\n\n\"I hoped we should meet again, because I had no fear you would attempt\nto make me feel I had wronged you. But when you do that--the pain's\ngreater than the pleasure.\" And she got up with a small conscious\nmajesty, looking for her companions.\n\n\"I don't want to make you feel that; of course I can't say that. I only\njust want you to know one or two things--in fairness to myself, as it\nwere. I won't return to the subject again. I felt very strongly what I\nexpressed to you last year; I couldn't think of anything else. I tried\nto forget--energetically, systematically. I tried to take an interest in\nsomebody else. I tell you this because I want you to know I did my duty.\nI didn't succeed. It was for the same purpose I went abroad--as far\naway as possible. They say travelling distracts the mind, but it didn't\ndistract mine. I've thought of you perpetually, ever since I last saw\nyou. I'm exactly the same. I love you just as much, and everything I\nsaid to you then is just as true. This instant at which I speak to you\nshows me again exactly how, to my great misfortune, you just insuperably\ncharm me. There--I can't say less. I don't mean, however, to insist;\nit's only for a moment. I may add that when I came upon you a few\nminutes since, without the smallest idea of seeing you, I was, upon\nmy honour, in the very act of wishing I knew where you were.\" He had\nrecovered his self-control, and while he spoke it became complete. He\nmight have been addressing a small committee--making all quietly and\nclearly a statement of importance; aided by an occasional look at a\npaper of notes concealed in his hat, which he had not again put on. And\nthe committee, assuredly, would have felt the point proved.\n\n\"I've often thought of you, Lord Warburton,\" Isabel answered. \"You may\nbe sure I shall always do that.\" And she added in a tone of which she\ntried to keep up the kindness and keep down the meaning: \"There's no\nharm in that on either side.\"\n\nThey walked along together, and she was prompt to ask about his sisters\nand request him to let them know she had done so. He made for the moment\nno further reference to their great question, but dipped again into\nshallower and safer waters. But he wished to know when she was to leave\nRome, and on her mentioning the limit of her stay declared he was glad\nit was still so distant.\n\n\"Why do you say that if you yourself are only passing through?\" she\nenquired with some anxiety.\n\n\"Ah, when I said I was passing through I didn't mean that one would\ntreat Rome as if it were Clapham Junction. To pass through Rome is to\nstop a week or two.\"\n\n\"Say frankly that you mean to stay as long as I do!\"\n\nHis flushed smile, for a little, seemed to sound her. \"You won't like\nthat. You're afraid you'll see too much of me.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter what I like. I certainly can't expect you to leave\nthis delightful place on my account. But I confess I'm afraid of you.\"\n\n\"Afraid I'll begin again? I promise to be very careful.\"\n\nThey had gradually stopped and they stood a moment face to face. \"Poor\nLord Warburton!\" she said with a compassion intended to be good for both\nof them.\n\n\"Poor Lord Warburton indeed! But I'll be careful.\"\n\n\"You may be unhappy, but you shall not make ME so. That I can't allow.\"\n\n\"If I believed I could make you unhappy I think I should try it.\" At\nthis she walked in advance and he also proceeded. \"I'll never say a word\nto displease you.\"\n\n\"Very good. If you do, our friendship's at an end.\"\n\n\"Perhaps some day--after a while--you'll give me leave.\"\n\n\"Give you leave to make me unhappy?\"\n\nHe hesitated. \"To tell you again--\" But he checked himself. \"I'll keep\nit down. I'll keep it down always.\"\n\nRalph Touchett had been joined in his visit to the excavation by Miss\nStackpole and her attendant, and these three now emerged from among the\nmounds of earth and stone collected round the aperture and came into\nsight of Isabel and her companion. Poor Ralph hailed his friend with joy\nqualified by wonder, and Henrietta exclaimed in a high voice \"Gracious,\nthere's that lord!\" Ralph and his English neighbour greeted with the\nausterity with which, after long separations, English neighbours greet,\nand Miss Stackpole rested her large intellectual gaze upon the sunburnt\ntraveller. But she soon established her relation to the crisis. \"I don't\nsuppose you remember me, sir.\"\n\n\"Indeed I do remember you,\" said Lord Warburton. \"I asked you to come\nand see me, and you never came.\"\n\n\"I don't go everywhere I'm asked,\" Miss Stackpole answered coldly.\n\n\"Ah well, I won't ask you again,\" laughed the master of Lockleigh.\n\n\"If you do I'll go; so be sure!\"\n\nLord Warburton, for all his hilarity, seemed sure enough. Mr. Bantling\nhad stood by without claiming a recognition, but he now took occasion\nto nod to his lordship, who answered him with a friendly \"Oh, you here,\nBantling?\" and a hand-shake.\n\n\"Well,\" said Henrietta, \"I didn't know you knew him!\"\n\n\"I guess you don't know every one I know,\" Mr. Bantling rejoined\nfacetiously.\n\n\"I thought that when an Englishman knew a lord he always told you.\"\n\n\"Ah, I'm afraid Bantling was ashamed of me,\" Lord Warburton laughed\nagain. Isabel took pleasure in that note; she gave a small sigh of\nrelief as they kept their course homeward.\n\nThe next day was Sunday; she spent her morning over two long\nletters--one to her sister Lily, the other to Madame Merle; but in\nneither of these epistles did she mention the fact that a rejected\nsuitor had threatened her with another appeal. Of a Sunday afternoon\nall good Romans (and the best Romans are often the northern barbarians)\nfollow the custom of going to vespers at Saint Peter's; and it had been\nagreed among our friends that they would drive together to the great\nchurch. After lunch, an hour before the carriage came, Lord Warburton\npresented himself at the Hotel de Paris and paid a visit to the two\nladies, Ralph Touchett and Mr. Bantling having gone out together. The\nvisitor seemed to have wished to give Isabel a proof of his intention to\nkeep the promise made her the evening before; he was both discreet and\nfrank--not even dumbly importunate or remotely intense. He thus left\nher to judge what a mere good friend he could be. He talked about his\ntravels, about Persia, about Turkey, and when Miss Stackpole asked him\nwhether it would \"pay\" for her to visit those countries assured her they\noffered a great field to female enterprise. Isabel did him justice, but\nshe wondered what his purpose was and what he expected to gain even by\nproving the superior strain of his sincerity. If he expected to melt\nher by showing what a good fellow he was, he might spare himself the\ntrouble. She knew the superior strain of everything about him, and\nnothing he could now do was required to light the view. Moreover\nhis being in Rome at all affected her as a complication of the wrong\nsort--she liked so complications of the right. Nevertheless, when, on\nbringing his call to a close, he said he too should be at Saint Peter's\nand should look out for her and her friends, she was obliged to reply\nthat he must follow his convenience.\n\nIn the church, as she strolled over its tesselated acres, he was the\nfirst person she encountered. She had not been one of the superior\ntourists who are \"disappointed\" in Saint Peter's and find it smaller\nthan its fame; the first time she passed beneath the huge leathern\ncurtain that strains and bangs at the entrance, the first time she found\nherself beneath the far-arching dome and saw the light drizzle down\nthrough the air thickened with incense and with the reflections of\nmarble and gilt, of mosaic and bronze, her conception of greatness rose\nand dizzily rose. After this it never lacked space to soar. She gazed\nand wondered like a child or a peasant, she paid her silent tribute to\nthe seated sublime. Lord Warburton walked beside her and talked of Saint\nSophia of Constantinople; she feared for instance that he would end\nby calling attention to his exemplary conduct. The service had not yet\nbegun, but at Saint Peter's there is much to observe, and as there is\nsomething almost profane in the vastness of the place, which seems meant\nas much for physical as for spiritual exercise, the different figures\nand groups, the mingled worshippers and spectators, may follow their\nvarious intentions without conflict or scandal. In that splendid\nimmensity individual indiscretion carries but a short distance. Isabel\nand her companions, however, were guilty of none; for though Henrietta\nwas obliged in candour to declare that Michael Angelo's dome suffered\nby comparison with that of the Capitol at Washington, she addressed\nher protest chiefly to Mr. Bantling's ear and reserved it in its more\naccentuated form for the columns of the Interviewer. Isabel made the\ncircuit of the church with his lordship, and as they drew near the choir\non the left of the entrance the voices of the Pope's singers were borne\nto them over the heads of the large number of persons clustered outside\nthe doors. They paused a while on the skirts of this crowd, composed\nin equal measure of Roman cockneys and inquisitive strangers, and while\nthey stood there the sacred concert went forward. Ralph, with Henrietta\nand Mr. Bantling, was apparently within, where Isabel, looking beyond\nthe dense group in front of her, saw the afternoon light, silvered by\nclouds of incense that seemed to mingle with the splendid chant, slope\nthrough the embossed recesses of high windows. After a while the singing\nstopped and then Lord Warburton seemed disposed to move off with her.\nIsabel could only accompany him; whereupon she found herself confronted\nwith Gilbert Osmond, who appeared to have been standing at a short\ndistance behind her. He now approached with all the forms--he appeared\nto have multiplied them on this occasion to suit the place.\n\n\"So you decided to come?\" she said as she put out her hand.\n\n\"Yes, I came last night and called this afternoon at your hotel. They\ntold me you had come here, and I looked about for you.\"\n\n\"The others are inside,\" she decided to say.\n\n\"I didn't come for the others,\" he promptly returned.\n\nShe looked away; Lord Warburton was watching them; perhaps he had heard\nthis. Suddenly she remembered it to be just what he had said to her the\nmorning he came to Gardencourt to ask her to marry him. Mr. Osmond's\nwords had brought the colour to her cheek, and this reminiscence had not\nthe effect of dispelling it. She repaired any betrayal by mentioning to\neach companion the name of the other, and fortunately at this moment Mr.\nBantling emerged from the choir, cleaving the crowd with British valour\nand followed by Miss Stackpole and Ralph Touchett. I say fortunately,\nbut this is perhaps a superficial view of the matter; since on\nperceiving the gentleman from Florence Ralph Touchett appeared to take\nthe case as not committing him to joy. He didn't hang back, however,\nfrom civility, and presently observed to Isabel, with due benevolence,\nthat she would soon have all her friends about her. Miss Stackpole had\nmet Mr. Osmond in Florence, but she had already found occasion to say\nto Isabel that she liked him no better than her other admirers--than Mr.\nTouchett and Lord Warburton, and even than little Mr. Rosier in Paris.\n\"I don't know what it's in you,\" she had been pleased to remark, \"but\nfor a nice girl you do attract the most unnatural people. Mr. Goodwood's\nthe only one I've any respect for, and he's just the one you don't\nappreciate.\"\n\n\"What's your opinion of Saint Peter's?\" Mr. Osmond was meanwhile\nenquiring of our young lady.\n\n\"It's very large and very bright,\" she contented herself with replying.\n\n\"It's too large; it makes one feel like an atom.\"\n\n\"Isn't that the right way to feel in the greatest of human temples?\" she\nasked with rather a liking for her phrase.\n\n\"I suppose it's the right way to feel everywhere, when one IS nobody.\nBut I like it in a church as little as anywhere else.\"\n\n\"You ought indeed to be a Pope!\" Isabel exclaimed, remembering something\nhe had referred to in Florence.\n\n\"Ah, I should have enjoyed that!\" said Gilbert Osmond.\n\nLord Warburton meanwhile had joined Ralph Touchett, and the two strolled\naway together. \"Who's the fellow speaking to Miss Archer?\" his lordship\ndemanded.\n\n\"His name's Gilbert Osmond--he lives in Florence,\" Ralph said.\n\n\"What is he besides?\"\n\n\"Nothing at all. Oh yes, he's an American; but one forgets that--he's so\nlittle of one.\"\n\n\"Has he known Miss Archer long?\"\n\n\"Three or four weeks.\"\n\n\"Does she like him?\"\n\n\"She's trying to find out.\"\n\n\"And will she?\"\n\n\"Find out--?\" Ralph asked.\n\n\"Will she like him?\"\n\n\"Do you mean will she accept him?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Lord Warburton after an instant; \"I suppose that's what I\nhorribly mean.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not if one does nothing to prevent it,\" Ralph replied.\n\nHis lordship stared a moment, but apprehended. \"Then we must be\nperfectly quiet?\"\n\n\"As quiet as the grave. And only on the chance!\" Ralph added.\n\n\"The chance she may?\"\n\n\"The chance she may not?\"\n\nLord Warburton took this at first in silence, but he spoke again. \"Is he\nawfully clever?\"\n\n\"Awfully,\" said Ralph.\n\nHis companion thought. \"And what else?\"\n\n\"What more do you want?\" Ralph groaned.\n\n\"Do you mean what more does SHE?\"\n\nRalph took him by the arm to turn him: they had to rejoin the others.\n\"She wants nothing that WE can give her.\"\n\n\"Ah well, if she won't have You--!\" said his lordship handsomely as they\nwent.\n\n\n\n\n\nOn the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his\nfriends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they\nhad gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying\nthem a visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when\nhe had obtained his admittance--it was one of the secondary\ntheatres--looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act\nhad just terminated and he was at liberty to pursue his quest. After\nscanning two or three tiers of boxes he perceived in one of the largest\nof these receptacles a lady whom he easily recognised. Miss Archer was\nseated facing the stage and partly screened by the curtain of the box;\nand beside her, leaning back in his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They\nappeared to have the place to themselves, and Warburton supposed their\ncompanions had taken advantage of the recess to enjoy the relative\ncoolness of the lobby. He stood a while with his eyes on the interesting\npair; he asked himself if he should go up and interrupt the harmony. At\nlast he judged that Isabel had seen him, and this accident determined\nhim. There should be no marked holding off. He took his way to the upper\nregions and on the staircase met Ralph Touchett slowly descending, his\nhat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where they usually were.\n\n\"I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely\nand want company,\" was Ralph's greeting.\n\n\"You've some that's very good which you've yet deserted.\"\n\n\"Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn't want me. Then\nMiss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to eat an ice--Miss\nStackpole delights in an ice. I didn't think they wanted me either.\nThe opera's very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like\npeacocks. I feel very low.\"\n\n\"You had better go home,\" Lord Warburton said without affectation.\n\n\"And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over\nher.\"\n\n\"She seems to have plenty of friends.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's why I must watch,\" said Ralph with the same large\nmock-melancholy.\n\n\"If she doesn't want you it's probable she doesn't want me.\"\n\n\"No, you're different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about.\"\n\nLord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel's welcome was as to a\nfriend so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what queer\ntemporal province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings with Mr.\nOsmond, to whom he had been introduced the day before and who, after he\ncame in, sat blandly apart and silent, as if repudiating competence in\nthe subjects of allusion now probable. It struck her second visitor\nthat Miss Archer had, in operatic conditions, a radiance, even a\nslight exaltation; as she was, however, at all times a keenly-glancing,\nquickly-moving, completely animated young woman, he may have been\nmistaken on this point. Her talk with him moreover pointed to presence\nof mind; it expressed a kindness so ingenious and deliberate as to\nindicate that she was in undisturbed possession of her faculties. Poor\nLord Warburton had moments of bewilderment. She had discouraged him,\nformally, as much as a woman could; what business had she then with\nsuch arts and such felicities, above all with such tones of\nreparation--preparation? Her voice had tricks of sweetness, but why play\nthem on HIM? The others came back; the bare, familiar, trivial opera\nbegan again. The box was large, and there was room for him to remain\nif he would sit a little behind and in the dark. He did so for half an\nhour, while Mr. Osmond remained in front, leaning forward, his elbows\non his knees, just behind Isabel. Lord Warburton heard nothing, and from\nhis gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile of this young\nlady defined against the dim illumination of the house. When there was\nanother interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked to Isabel, and Lord\nWarburton kept his corner. He did so but for a short time, however;\nafter which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies. Isabel said\nnothing to detain him, but it didn't prevent his being puzzled again.\nWhy should she mark so one of his values--quite the wrong one--when she\nwould have nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He was\nangry with himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry.\nVerdi's music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and\nwalked homeward, without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic\nstreets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under\nthe stars.\n\n\"What's the character of that gentleman?\" Osmond asked of Isabel after\nhe had retired.\n\n\"Irreproachable--don't you see it?\"\n\n\"He owns about half England; that's his character,\" Henrietta remarked.\n\"That's what they call a free country!\"\n\n\"Ah, he's a great proprietor? Happy man!\" said Gilbert Osmond.\n\n\"Do you call that happiness--the ownership of wretched human beings?\"\ncried Miss Stackpole. \"He owns his tenants and has thousands of them.\nIt's pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me.\nI don't insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences.\"\n\n\"It seems to me you own a human being or two,\" Mr. Bantling suggested\njocosely. \"I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me.\"\n\n\"Lord Warburton's a great radical,\" Isabel said. \"He has very advanced\nopinions.\"\n\n\"He has very advanced stone walls. His park's enclosed by a gigantic\niron fence, some thirty miles round,\" Henrietta announced for the\ninformation of Mr. Osmond. \"I should like him to converse with a few of\nour Boston radicals.\"\n\n\"Don't they approve of iron fences?\" asked Mr. Bantling.\n\n\"Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were\ntalking to YOU over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.\"\n\n\"Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?\" Osmond went on,\nquestioning Isabel.\n\n\"Well enough for all the use I have for him.\"\n\n\"And how much of a use is that?\"\n\n\"Well, I like to like him.\"\n\n\"'Liking to like'--why, it makes a passion!\" said Osmond.\n\n\"No\"--she considered--\"keep that for liking to DISlike.\"\n\n\"Do you wish to provoke me then,\" Osmond laughed, \"to a passion for\nHIM?\"\n\nShe said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a\ndisproportionate gravity. \"No, Mr. Osmond; I don't think I should ever\ndare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,\" she more easily\nadded, \"is a very nice man.\"\n\n\"Of great ability?\" her friend enquired.\n\n\"Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.\"\n\n\"As good as he's good-looking do you mean? He's very good-looking. How\ndetestably fortunate!--to be a great English magnate, to be clever and\nhandsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your\nhigh favour! That's a man I could envy.\"\n\nIsabel considered him with interest. \"You seem to me to be always\nenvying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it's poor Lord\nWarburton.\"\n\n\"My envy's not dangerous; it wouldn't hurt a mouse. I don't want to\ndestroy the people--I only want to BE them. You see it would destroy\nonly myself.\"\n\n\"You'd like to be the Pope?\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I should love it--but I should have gone in for it earlier. But\nwhy\"--Osmond reverted--\"do you speak of your friend as poor?\"\n\n\"Women--when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after they've\nhurt them; that's their great way of showing kindness,\" said Ralph,\njoining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so\ntransparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.\n\n\"Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?\" Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows\nas if the idea were perfectly fresh.\n\n\"It serves him right if you have,\" said Henrietta while the curtain rose\nfor the ballet.\n\nIsabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four\nhours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she\nencountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the\nlion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come\nin with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert\nOsmond had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase,\nentered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her\nalertly enough, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery.\n\"And I'm leaving Rome,\" he added. \"I must bid you goodbye.\" Isabel,\ninconsequently enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps\nbecause she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was\nthinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her regret,\nbut she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey; which\nmade him look at her rather unlightedly. \"I'm afraid you'll think me\nvery 'volatile.' I told you the other day I wanted so much to stop.\"\n\n\"Oh no; you could easily change your mind.\"\n\n\"That's what I have done.\"\n\n\"Bon voyage then.\"\n\n\"You're in a great hurry to get rid of me,\" said his lordship quite\ndismally.\n\n\"Not in the least. But I hate partings.\"\n\n\"You don't care what I do,\" he went on pitifully.\n\nIsabel looked at him a moment. \"Ah,\" she said, \"you're not keeping your\npromise!\"\n\nHe coloured like a boy of fifteen. \"If I'm not, then it's because I\ncan't; and that's why I'm going.\"\n\n\"Good-bye then.\"\n\n\"Good-bye.\" He lingered still, however. \"When shall I see you again?\"\n\nIsabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: \"Some\nday after you're married.\"\n\n\"That will never be. It will be after you are.\"\n\n\"That will do as well,\" she smiled.\n\n\"Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.\"\n\nThey shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the\nshining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of\nthese presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their\nbeautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence.\nIt is impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of\nGreek sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude;\nwhich, as with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on\nthe spirit the large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially,\nbecause the Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The\ngolden sunshine mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so\nvivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw\na solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows\nof the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made\nthem more mildly human. Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm\nof their motionless grace, wondering to what, of their experience, their\nabsent eyes were open, and how, to our ears, their alien lips would\nsound. The dark red walls of the room threw them into relief; the\npolished marble floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all\nbefore, but her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater\nbecause she was glad again, for the time, to be alone. At last, however,\nher attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide of life. An occasional\ntourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the Dying Gladiator, and\nthen passed out of the other door, creaking over the smooth pavement. At\nthe end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared, apparently in advance\nof his companions. He strolled toward her slowly, with his hands\nbehind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing smile. \"I'm\nsurprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.\n\n\"So I have--the best.\" And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.\n\n\"Do you call them better company than an English peer?\"\n\n\"Ah, my English peer left me some time ago.\" She got up, speaking with\nintention a little dryly.\n\nMr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest\nof his question. \"I'm afraid that what I heard the other evening is\ntrue: you're rather cruel to that nobleman.\"\n\nIsabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. \"It's not true. I'm\nscrupulously kind.\"\n\n\"That's exactly what I mean!\" Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such\nhappy hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was\nfond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and\nnow that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example\nof his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of\ntaking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in\nhis collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert\nOsmond had a high appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so\nmuch for its distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for\nits solid actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing\nhim to an English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of\nsuch conduct as Isabel's. It would be proper that the woman he might\nmarry should have done something of that sort.\n\n\n\n\n\nRalph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly\nqualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond's personal\nmerits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of\nthat gentleman's conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond\nspent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and ended\nby affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn't have\nseen that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--which\nperhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial\nsociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel's invidious kinsman was\nobliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His\ngood humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his\nproduction of the right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of\na match for your cigarette. Clearly he was amused--as amused as a man\ncould be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almost\napplausive. It was not that his spirits were visibly high--he would\nnever, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a\nknuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what\nhe called random ravings. He thought Miss Archer sometimes of too\nprecipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she\nhad not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as\nsmooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm. If he\nwas not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing\ndays of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow\nirregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the\nsmall sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with\neverything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at\nonce. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening,\ngoing home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to\nwhich he prefixed the title of \"Rome Revisited.\" A day or two later he\nshowed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining\nto her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of\nlife by a tribute to the muse.\n\nHe took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he would have\nadmitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the\nfertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his\nspirit. But at present he was happy--happier than he had perhaps ever\nbeen in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was\nsimply the sense of success--the most agreeable emotion of the human\nheart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the\nirritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded\nhimself. \"Ah no, I've not been spoiled; certainly I've not been\nspoiled,\" he used inwardly to repeat. \"If I do succeed before I die\nI shall thoroughly have earned it.\" He was too apt to reason as if\n\"earning\" this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and\nmight be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his\ncareer had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here\nand there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were,\nsome of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had\nbeen less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--that\nis had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether exceptional\neffort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. The\ndesire to have something or other to show for his \"parts\"--to show\nsomehow or other--had been the dream of his youth; but as the years went\non the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected\nhim more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs\nof beer to advertise what one could \"stand.\" If an anonymous drawing on\na museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known this\npeculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--as\nfrom the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact of\nstyle. His \"style\" was what the girl had discovered with a little help;\nand now, beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world\nwithout his having any of the trouble. She should do the thing FOR him,\nand he would not have waited in vain.\n\nShortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young\nlady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: \"Leave\nFlorence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other\nviews. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome.\" The dawdling in Rome was\nvery pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know\nshe would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had\ndone so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as\nhis winters in Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the\ncool shadow of Saint Peter's. He would not return to Florence for ten\ndays more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio.\nIt might be months in this case before he should see her again. This\nexchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied by our\nfriends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Ralph Touchett was\nto take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. Osmond had found the\ngirl alone; Miss Stackpole had contracted a friendship with a delightful\nAmerican family on the fourth floor and had mounted the interminable\nstaircase to pay them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in\ntravelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages\nseveral that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making\narrangements for the morrow's journey, and Isabel sat alone in a\nwilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange;\nthe walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the\npictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and\npainted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was ugly\nto distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar,\nbragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere,\npresented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in\nher lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient\nto pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink\ntissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale\nrosiness over the scene.\n\n\"You say you'll come back; but who knows?\" Gilbert Osmond said.\n\n\"I think you're much more likely to start on your voyage round the\nworld. You're under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what\nyou choose; you can roam through space.\"\n\n\"Well, Italy's a part of space,\" Isabel answered. \"I can take it on the\nway.\"\n\n\"On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in a\nparenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see you on\nyour travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I should like to see\nyou when you're tired and satiated,\" Osmond added in a moment. \"I shall\nprefer you in that state.\"\n\nIsabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. \"You turn\nthings into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think,\nwithout intending it. You've no respect for my travels--you think them\nridiculous.\"\n\n\"Where do you find that?\"\n\nShe went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the\npaper-knife. \"You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about\nas if the world belonged to me, simply because--because it has been put\ninto my power to do so. You don't think a woman ought to do that. You\nthink it bold and ungraceful.\"\n\n\"I think it beautiful,\" said Osmond. \"You know my opinions--I've treated\nyou to enough of them. Don't you remember my telling you that one ought\nto make one's life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first;\nbut then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be\ntrying to do with your own.\"\n\nShe looked up from her book. \"What you despise most in the world is bad,\nis stupid art.\"\n\n\"Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good.\"\n\n\"If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me,\" she went\non.\n\nOsmond gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their\nconversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he had\nseen it before. \"You have one!\"\n\n\"That's exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd.\"\n\n\"I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the countries\nI want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my taste for old\nlacquer?\"\n\n\"I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"You've a better excuse--the means of going. You're quite wrong in\nyour theory that I laugh at you. I don't know what has put it into your\nhead.\"\n\n\"It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should\nhave the means to travel when you've not; for you know everything and I\nknow nothing.\"\n\n\"The more reason why you should travel and learn,\" smiled Osmond.\n\"Besides,\" he added as if it were a point to be made, \"I don't know\neverything.\"\n\nIsabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she\nwas thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it pleased\nher to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have\nlikened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress\novermuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages\nor historians to hold up--that this felicity was coming to an end. That\nmost of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a\nreflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done\nthe point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were\na danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be\nas well. Happy things don't repeat themselves, and her adventure wore\nalready the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from\nwhich, after feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the\nbreeze rose. She might come back to Italy and find him different--this\nstrange man who pleased her just as he was; and it would be better\nnot to come than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come the\ngreater the pity that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a\npang that touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her\nsilent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. \"Go\neverywhere,\" he said at last, in a low, kind voice; \"do everything; get\neverything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by being triumphant?\"\n\n\"Well, doing what you like.\"\n\n\"To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things\none likes is often very tiresome.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Osmond with his quiet quickness. \"As I intimated just\nnow, you'll be tired some day.\" He paused a moment and then he went on:\n\"I don't know whether I had better not wait till then for something I\nwant to say to you.\"\n\n\"Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm horrid when\nI'm tired,\" Isabel added with due inconsequence.\n\n\"I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes--that I can believe,\nthough I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never 'cross.'\"\n\n\"Not even when I lose my temper?\"\n\n\"You don't lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful.\" Osmond\nspoke with a noble earnestness. \"They must be great moments to see.\"\n\n\"If I could only find it now!\" Isabel nervously cried.\n\n\"I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm speaking very\nseriously.\" He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he\nbent his eyes on the floor. \"What I wish to say to you,\" he went on at\nlast, looking up, \"is that I find I'm in love with you.\"\n\nShe instantly rose. \"Ah, keep that till I am tired!\"\n\n\"Tired of hearing it from others?\" He sat there raising his eyes to her.\n\"No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must\nsay it now.\" She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped\nherself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this\nsituation, exchanging a long look--the large, conscious look of the\ncritical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply\nrespectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. \"I'm\nabsolutely in love with you.\"\n\nHe had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal\ndiscretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke\nfor his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time\nthey obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow\nthe slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she couldn't have said\nwhich. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful\nand generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but,\nmorally speaking, she retreated before them--facing him still--as she\nhad retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. \"Oh don't say\nthat, please,\" she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread\nof having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread\ngreat was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have\nbanished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep down,\nthat she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there\nlike a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a terror in having to\nbegin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.\n\n\"I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you,\" said Osmond. \"I've\ntoo little to offer you. What I have--it's enough for me; but it's not\nenough for you. I've neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages\nof any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it\ncan't offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It\ngives me pleasure, I assure you,\" he went on, standing there before her,\nconsiderately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken\nup, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of\nawkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm,\nrefined, slightly ravaged face. \"It gives me no pain, because it's\nperfectly simple. For me you'll always be the most important woman in\nthe world.\"\n\nIsabel looked at herself in this character--looked intently, thinking\nshe filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an\nexpression of any such complacency. \"You don't offend me; but you\nought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded,\ntroubled.\" \"Incommoded,\" she heard herself saying that, and it struck\nher as a ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.\n\n\"I remember perfectly. Of course you're surprised and startled. But\nif it's nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave\nsomething that I may not be ashamed of.\"\n\n\"I don't know what it may leave. You see at all events that I'm not\noverwhelmed,\" said Isabel with rather a pale smile. \"I'm not too\ntroubled to think. And I think that I'm glad I leave Rome to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Of course I don't agree with you there.\"\n\n\"I don't at all KNOW you,\" she added abruptly; and then she coloured as\nshe heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to Lord\nWarburton.\n\n\"If you were not going away you'd know me better.\"\n\n\"I shall do that some other time.\"\n\n\"I hope so. I'm very easy to know.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" she emphatically answered--\"there you're not sincere. You're\nnot easy to know; no one could be less so.\"\n\n\"Well,\" he laughed, \"I said that because I know myself. It may be a\nboast, but I do.\"\n\n\"Very likely; but you're very wise.\"\n\n\"So are you, Miss Archer!\" Osmond exclaimed.\n\n\"I don't feel so just now. Still, I'm wise enough to think you had\nbetter go. Good-night.\"\n\n\"God bless you!\" said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed\nto surrender. After which he added: \"If we meet again you'll find me as\nyou leave me. If we don't I shall be so all the same.\"\n\n\"Thank you very much. Good-bye.\"\n\nThere was something quietly firm about Isabel's visitor; he might go of\nhis own movement, but wouldn't be dismissed. \"There's one thing more.\nI haven't asked anything of you--not even a thought in the future; you\nmust do me that justice. But there's a little service I should like to\nask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome's delightful, and\nit's a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you're sorry\nto leave it; but you're right to do what your aunt wishes.\"\n\n\"She doesn't even wish it!\" Isabel broke out strangely.\n\nOsmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match\nthese words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: \"Ah well, it's\nproper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that's proper;\nI go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don't\nknow me, but when you do you'll discover what a worship I have for\npropriety.\"\n\n\"You're not conventional?\" Isabel gravely asked.\n\n\"I like the way you utter that word! No, I'm not conventional: I'm\nconvention itself. You don't understand that?\" And he paused a moment,\nsmiling. \"I should like to explain it.\" Then with a sudden, quick,\nbright naturalness, \"Do come back again,\" he pleaded. \"There are so many\nthings we might talk about.\"\n\nShe stood there with lowered eyes. \"What service did you speak of just\nnow?\"\n\n\"Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She's alone at\nthe villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn't at all my\nideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much,\" said Gilbert\nOsmond gently.\n\n\"It will be a great pleasure to me to go,\" Isabel answered. \"I'll tell\nher what you say. Once more good-bye.\"\n\nOn this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood\na moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of\ndeliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with\nfolded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation--for it had not\ndiminished--was very still, very deep. What had happened was something\nthat for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but\nhere, when it came, she stopped--that sublime principle somehow broke\ndown. The working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I can\nonly give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether\nnatural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last\nvague space it couldn't cross--a dusky, uncertain tract which looked\nambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the\nwinter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.\n\n\n\n\n\nShe returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin's escort, and\nRalph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought\nvery well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried\nhis companion away from the city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond's\npreference--hours that were to form the first stage in a larger scheme\nof travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a little\ntrip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr. Bantling's aid. Isabel was\nto have three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of Mrs.\nTouchett's departure, and she determined to devote the last of these\nto her promise to call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for\na moment likely to modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame\nMerle's. This lady was still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the\npoint of leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle\nin the mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that\ncountry, whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, \"forever\")\nseemed to Isabel, in the light of certain photographs of their immense\ncrenellated dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious\nprivilege. She mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Osmond had\nasked her to take a look at his daughter, but didn't mention that he had\nalso made her a declaration of love.\n\n\"Ah, comme cela se trouve!\" Madame Merle exclaimed. \"I myself have been\nthinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit before I\ngo off.\"\n\n\"We can go together then,\" Isabel reasonably said: \"reasonably\" because\nthe proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had\nprefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like\nit better so. She was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic\nsentiment to her great consideration for her friend.\n\nThat personage finely meditated. \"After all, why should we both go;\nhaving, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?\"\n\n\"Very good; I can easily go alone.\"\n\n\"I don't know about your going alone--to the house of a handsome\nbachelor. He has been married--but so long ago!\"\n\nIsabel stared. \"When Mr. Osmond's away what does it matter?\"\n\n\"They don't know he's away, you see.\"\n\n\"They? Whom do you mean?\"\n\n\"Every one. But perhaps it doesn't signify.\"\n\n\"If you were going why shouldn't I?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"Because I'm an old frump and you're a beautiful young woman.\"\n\n\"Granting all that, you've not promised.\"\n\n\"How much you think of your promises!\" said the elder woman in mild\nmockery.\n\n\"I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?\"\n\n\"You're right,\" Madame Merle audibly reflected. \"I really think you wish\nto be kind to the child.\"\n\n\"I wish very much to be kind to her.\"\n\n\"Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd have\ncome if you hadn't. Or rather,\" Madame Merle added, \"DON'T tell her. She\nwon't care.\"\n\nAs Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding\nway which led to Mr. Osmond's hill-top, she wondered what her friend had\nmeant by no one's being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals,\nthis lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of\nthe open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous\nquality, struck a note that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for\nthe vulgar judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose\nthat she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly\ndone? Of course not: she must have meant something else--something which\nin the press of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had\ntime to explain. Isabel would return to this some day; there were sorts\nof things as to which she liked to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming\nat the piano in another place as she herself was ushered into Mr.\nOsmond's drawing-room; the little girl was \"practising,\" and Isabel was\npleased to think she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately\ncame in, smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father's\nhouse with a wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Isabel sat there half an\nhour, and Pansy rose to the occasion as the small, winged fairy in the\npantomime soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire--not chattering, but\nconversing, and showing the same respectful interest in Isabel's affairs\nthat Isabel was so good as to take in hers. Isabel wondered at her;\nshe had never had so directly presented to her nose the white flower\nof cultivated sweetness. How well the child had been taught, said our\nadmiring young woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned;\nand yet how simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel\nwas fond, ever, of the question of character and quality, of sounding,\nas who should say, the deep personal mystery, and it had pleased her,\nup to this time, to be in doubt as to whether this tender slip were not\nreally all-knowing. Was the extremity of her candour but the perfection\nof self-consciousness? Was it put on to please her father's visitor,\nor was it the direct expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that\nIsabel spent in Mr. Osmond's beautiful empty, dusky rooms--the windows\nhad been half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there,\nthrough an easy crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a\ngleam of faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom--her interview\nwith the daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this\nquestion. Pansy was really a blank page, a pure white surface,\nsuccessfully kept so; she had neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor\ntalent--only two or three small exquisite instincts: for knowing a\nfriend, for avoiding a mistake, for taking care of an old toy or a new\nfrock. Yet to be so tender was to be touching withal, and she could\nbe felt as an easy victim of fate. She would have no will, no power to\nresist, no sense of her own importance; she would easily be mystified,\neasily crushed: her force would be all in knowing when and where to\ncling. She moved about the place with her visitor, who had asked leave\nto walk through the other rooms again, where Pansy gave her judgement on\nseveral works of art. She spoke of her prospects, her occupations, her\nfather's intentions; she was not egotistical, but felt the propriety\nof supplying the information so distinguished a guest would naturally\nexpect.\n\n\"Please tell me,\" she said, \"did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame\nCatherine? He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not time.\nPapa likes a great deal of time. He wished to speak about my education;\nit isn't finished yet, you know. I don't know what they can do with me\nmore; but it appears it's far from finished. Papa told me one day he\nthought he would finish it himself; for the last year or two, at the\nconvent, the masters that teach the tall girls are so very dear. Papa's\nnot rich, and I should be very sorry if he were to pay much money for\nme, because I don't think I'm worth it. I don't learn quickly enough,\nand I have no memory. For what I'm told, yes--especially when it's\npleasant; but not for what I learn in a book. There was a young girl who\nwas my best friend, and they took her away from the convent, when she\nwas fourteen, to make--how do you say it in English?--to make a dot. You\ndon't say it in English? I hope it isn't wrong; I only mean they wished\nto keep the money to marry her. I don't know whether it is for that that\npapa wishes to keep the money--to marry me. It costs so much to marry!\"\nPansy went on with a sigh; \"I think papa might make that economy. At\nany rate I'm too young to think about it yet, and I don't care for any\ngentleman; I mean for any but him. If he were not my papa I should like\nto marry him; I would rather be his daughter than the wife of--of some\nstrange person. I miss him very much, but not so much as you might\nthink, for I've been so much away from him. Papa has always been\nprincipally for holidays. I miss Madame Catherine almost more; but you\nmust not tell him that. You shall not see him again? I'm very sorry,\nand he'll be sorry too. Of everyone who comes here I like you the best.\nThat's not a great compliment, for there are not many people. It was\nvery kind of you to come to-day--so far from your house; for I'm really\nas yet only a child. Oh, yes, I've only the occupations of a child. When\ndid YOU give them up, the occupations of a child? I should like to know\nhow old you are, but I don't know whether it's right to ask. At the\nconvent they told us that we must never ask the age. I don't like to do\nanything that's not expected; it looks as if one had not been properly\ntaught. I myself--I should never like to be taken by surprise. Papa left\ndirections for everything. I go to bed very early. When the sun goes off\nthat side I go into the garden. Papa left strict orders that I was not\nto get scorched. I always enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful.\nIn Rome, from the convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I\npractise three hours. I don't play very well. You play yourself? I wish\nvery much you'd play something for me; papa has the idea that I should\nhear good music. Madame Merle has played for me several times; that's\nwhat I like best about Madame Merle; she has great facility. I shall\nnever have facility. And I've no voice--just a small sound like the\nsqueak of a slate-pencil making flourishes.\"\n\nIsabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and sat down\nto the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched her white\nhands move quickly over the keys. When she stopped she kissed the child\ngood-bye, held her close, looked at her long. \"Be very good,\" she said;\n\"give pleasure to your father.\"\n\n\"I think that's what I live for,\" Pansy answered. \"He has not much\npleasure; he's rather a sad man.\"\n\nIsabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt it\nalmost a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride that obliged\nher, and a certain sense of decency; there were still other things in\nher head which she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say\nto Pansy about her father; there were things it would have given her\npleasure to hear the child, to make the child, say. But she no sooner\nbecame conscious of these things than her imagination was hushed with\nhorror at the idea of taking advantage of the little girl--it was of\nthis she would have accused herself--and of exhaling into that air where\nhe might still have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmed\nstate. She had come--she had come; but she had stayed only an hour. She\nrose quickly from the music-stool; even then, however, she lingered a\nmoment, still holding her small companion, drawing the child's sweet\nslimness closer and looking down at her almost in envy. She was obliged\nto confess it to herself--she would have taken a passionate pleasure in\ntalking of Gilbert Osmond to this innocent, diminutive creature who\nwas so near him. But she said no other word; she only kissed Pansy once\nagain. They went together through the vestibule, to the door that\nopened on the court; and there her young hostess stopped, looking rather\nwistfully beyond. \"I may go no further. I've promised papa not to pass\nthis door.\"\n\n\"You're right to obey him; he'll never ask you anything unreasonable.\"\n\n\"I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?\"\n\n\"Not for a long time, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"As soon as you can, I hope. I'm only a little girl,\" said Pansy, \"but\nI shall always expect you.\" And the small figure stood in the high, dark\ndoorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court and disappear into\nthe brightness beyond the big portone, which gave a wider dazzle as it\nopened.\n\n\n\n\n\nIsabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval\nsufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, during this\ninterval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is\nengaged again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after\nher return to Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the\nincidents just narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the\nsmaller of the numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses,\nand there was that in her expression and attitude which would have\nsuggested that she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open,\nand though its green shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the\ngarden had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with\nwarmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time, her\nhands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest.\nToo troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not\nbe in her thought to catch a glimpse of her visitor before he should\npass into the house, since the entrance to the palace was not through\nthe garden, in which stillness and privacy always reigned. She wished\nrather to forestall his arrival by a process of conjecture, and to judge\nby the expression of her face this attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave\nshe found herself, and positively more weighted, as by the experience of\nthe lapse of the year she had spent in seeing the world. She had ranged,\nshe would have said, through space and surveyed much of mankind, and\nwas therefore now, in her own eyes, a very different person from the\nfrivolous young woman from Albany who had begun to take the measure\nof Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of years before. She\nflattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a great deal\nmore of life than this light-minded creature had even suspected. If\nher thoughts just now had inclined themselves to retrospect, instead\nof fluttering their wings nervously about the present, they would have\nevoked a multitude of interesting pictures. These pictures would have\nbeen both landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have\nbeen the more numerous. With several of the images that might have been\nprojected on such a field we are already acquainted. There would be for\ninstance the conciliatory Lily, our heroine's sister and Edmund Ludlow's\nwife, who had come out from New York to spend five months with her\nrelative. She had left her husband behind her, but had brought\nher children, to whom Isabel now played with equal munificence and\ntenderness the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had\nbeen able to snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing\nthe ocean with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies\nin Paris before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet,\neven from the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so\nthat while her sister was with her Isabel had confined her movements to\na narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in\nthe month of July, and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an\nAlpine valley where the flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade\nof great chestnuts made a resting-place for such upward wanderings as\nmight be undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons. They had\nafterwards reached the French capital, which was worshipped, and with\ncostly ceremonies, by Lily, but thought of as noisily vacant by Isabel,\nwho in these days made use of her memory of Rome as she might have done,\nin a hot and crowded room, of a phial of something pungent hidden in her\nhandkerchief.\n\nMrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and\nwonderments not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had joined\nher found further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these\nspeculations. They all had Isabel for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as\nhe had always done before, declined to be surprised, or distressed, or\nmystified, or elated, at anything his sister-in-law might have done\nor have failed to do. Mrs. Ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently\nvarious. At one moment she thought it would be so natural for that young\nwoman to come home and take a house in New York--the Rossiters', for\ninstance, which had an elegant conservatory and was just round the\ncorner from her own; at another she couldn't conceal her surprise at the\ngirl's not marrying some member of one of the great aristocracies. On\nthe whole, as I have said, she had fallen from high communion with the\nprobabilities. She had taken more satisfaction in Isabel's accession of\nfortune than if the money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her\nto offer just the proper setting for her sister's slightly meagre, but\nscarce the less eminent figure. Isabel had developed less, however, than\nLily had thought likely--development, to Lily's understanding, being\nsomehow mysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties.\nIntellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but she\nappeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of which Mrs.\nLudlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily's conception of such\nachievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly what she had\nexpected of Isabel--to give it form and body. Isabel could have done\nas well as she had done in New York; and Mrs. Ludlow appealed to her\nhusband to know whether there was any privilege she enjoyed in Europe\nwhich the society of that city might not offer her. We know ourselves\nthat Isabel had made conquests--whether inferior or not to those she\nmight have effected in her native land it would be a delicate matter to\ndecide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of complacency that\nI again mention that she had not rendered these honourable victories\npublic. She had not told her sister the history of Lord Warburton, nor\nhad she given her a hint of Mr. Osmond's state of mind; and she had had\nno better reason for her silence than that she didn't wish to speak.\nIt was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of\nromance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily's advice as she\nwould have been to close that rare volume forever. But Lily knew nothing\nof these discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister's career\na strange anti-climax--an impression confirmed by the fact that Isabel's\nsilence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct proportion to the\nfrequency with which he occupied her thoughts. As this happened very\noften it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that she had lost her\ncourage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as\ninheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it\nadded to her general sense that Isabel was not at all like other people.\n\nOur young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as reaching\nits height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver\nthings than spending the winter in Paris--Paris had sides by which it\nso resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose--and her close\ncorrespondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She\nhad never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and\nwantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform\nat the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the\ndeparture of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her\nchildren to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale;\nshe was very conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of\nwhat was good for her, and her effort was constantly to find something\nthat was good enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest\nmoment she had made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers.\nShe would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow\nhad asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and\nshe asked such impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away;\nshe kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative\nchild who leaned dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and\nmade separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked\nback into the foggy London street. The world lay before her--she could\ndo whatever she chose. There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the\npresent her choice was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back\nfrom Euston Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon\nhad already closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked\nweak and red; our heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long\nway from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey with a positive\nenjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order\nto get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging\npoliceman easily set her right again. She was so fond of the spectacle\nof human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the\nLondon streets--the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops,\nthe flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything. That\nevening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should start\nin a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome without touching\nat Florence--having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by\nAncona. She accomplished this journey without other assistance than that\nof her servant, for her natural protectors were not now on the ground.\nRalph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in\nthe September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from\nthe Interviewer. This journal offered its brilliant correspondent a\nfresher field for her genius than the mouldering cities of Europe, and\nHenrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr. Bantling that\nhe would soon come over to see her. Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to\napologise for not presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt\nreplied characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated,\nwere of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt\nin such articles. One either did the thing or one didn't, and what one\n\"would\" have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the\nidea of a future life or of the origin of things. Her letter was frank,\nbut (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) not so frank as it pretended. She\neasily forgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because she\ntook it for a sign that Gilbert Osmond was less in question there than\nformerly. She watched of course to see if he would now find a pretext\nfor going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning that he had\nnot been guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side, had not been a\nfortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame Merle that they should\nmake a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that her\nfriend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been\nconsumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two\nladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months\nin Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in\nthese countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among\nthe most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose\nand reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in her. Isabel travelled\nrapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person draining cup\nafter cup. Madame Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess\ncirculating incognita, panted a little in her rear. It was on Isabel's\ninvitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the girl's\nuncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might have\nbeen expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a\ncompanion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however,\nhad no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking\npair on their travels would not have been able to tell you which\nwas patroness and which client. To say that Madame Merle improved on\nacquaintance states meagrely the impression she made on her friend,\nwho had found her from the first so ample and so easy. At the end of an\nintimacy of three months Isabel felt she knew her better; her character\nhad revealed itself, and the admirable woman had also at last redeemed\nher promise of relating her history from her own point of view--a\nconsummation the more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related\nfrom the point of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so\nfar as it concerned the late M. Merle, a positive adventurer, she might\nsay, though originally so plausible, who had taken advantage, years\nbefore, of her youth and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who\nknew her only now would find it difficult to believe); it abounded so in\nstartling and lamentable incidents that her companion wondered a person\nso eprouvee could have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in\nlife. Into this freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable\ninsight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical,\ncarried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed\nand bridled like the \"favourite\" of the jockey. She liked her as much\nas ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted;\nit was as if she had remained after all something of a public performer,\ncondemned to emerge only in character and in costume. She had once\nsaid that she came from a distance, that she belonged to the \"old, old\"\nworld, and Isabel never lost the impression that she was the product of\na different moral or social clime from her own, that she had grown up\nunder other stars.\n\nShe believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course\nthe morality of civilised persons has always much in common; but our\nyoung woman had a sense in her of values gone wrong or, as they said at\nthe shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth,\nthat a morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this\nconviction was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an\noccasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of a person who had\nraised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for\nthe narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives might,\nin certain lights, have been acquired at the court of some kingdom in\ndecadence, and there were several in her list of which our heroine had\nnot even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain;\nand there were evidently things in the world of which it was not\nadvantageous to hear. She had once or twice had a positive scare; since\nit so affected her to have to exclaim, of her friend, \"Heaven forgive\nher, she doesn't understand me!\" Absurd as it may seem this discovery\noperated as a shock, left her with a vague dismay in which there was\neven an element of foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the\nlight of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable intelligence;\nbut it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence.\nMadame Merle had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases\nto grow it immediately begins to decline--there being no point of\nequilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection,\nin other words, was impossible--it must move one way or the other.\nHowever that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for\nher sense of the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been.\nI do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids\nin the course of an excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the\nbroken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point\ndesignated to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these\nemotions had remained. She came back by the last of March from Egypt\nand Greece and made another stay in Rome. A few days after her arrival\nGilbert Osmond descended from Florence and remained three weeks, during\nwhich the fact of her being with his old friend Madame Merle, in whose\nhouse she had gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he\nshould see her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs.\nTouchett that she should now rejoice to accept an invitation given long\nbefore, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo Crescentini, Madame Merle on\nthis occasion remaining in Rome. She found her aunt alone; her cousin\nwas still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was expected in Florence from day\nto day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, was\nprepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood\nat the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any\nof the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past,\nbut to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene,\nand she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she\nshould say to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What\nhe would say to her--that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing\nin the least soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction\ndoubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all\nclearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked\nin no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older--ever so much,\nand as if she were \"worth more\" for it, like some curious piece in an\nantiquary's collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her\napprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his\ntray. \"Let the gentleman come in,\" she said, and continued to gaze out\nof the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had\nheard the door close behind the person who presently entered that she\nlooked round.\n\nCaspar Goodwood stood there--stood and received a moment, from head to\nfoot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered\na greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept pace with Isabel's\nwe shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to\nher critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight,\nstrong and hard, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke\npositively either of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence nor\nweakness, so he had no practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same\nvoluntary cast as in earlier days; but a crisis like the present had in\nit of course something grim. He had the air of a man who had travelled\nhard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath. This\ngave Isabel time to make a reflexion: \"Poor fellow, what great things\nhe's capable of, and what a pity he should waste so dreadfully his\nsplendid force! What a pity too that one can't satisfy everybody!\" It\ngave her time to do more to say at the end of a minute: \"I can't tell\nyou how I hoped you wouldn't come!\"\n\n\"I've no doubt of that.\" And he looked about him for a seat. Not only\nhad he come, but he meant to settle.\n\n\"You must be very tired,\" said Isabel, seating herself, and generously,\nas she thought, to give him his opportunity.\n\n\"No, I'm not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?\"\n\n\"Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?\"\n\n\"Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express.\nThese Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral.\"\n\n\"That's in keeping--you must have felt as if you were coming to bury\nme!\" And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view of their\nsituation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making it perfectly\nclear that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all\nthis she was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she\nwas devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked\nat her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such\na want of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on\nher as a physical weight.\n\n\"No, I didn't feel that; I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I\ncould!\" he candidly declared.\n\n\"I thank you immensely.\"\n\n\"I'd rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.\"\n\n\"That's very selfish of you!\" she returned with the ardour of a real\nconviction. \"If you're not happy yourself others have yet a right to\nbe.\"\n\n\"Very likely it's selfish; but I don't in the least mind your saying so.\nI don't mind anything you can say now--I don't feel it. The cruellest\nthings you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you've\ndone I shall never feel anything--I mean anything but that. That I shall\nfeel all my life.\"\n\nMr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness,\nin his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over\npropositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than\ntouched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave\nher a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure\nof this control that she became, after a little, irrelevant. \"When did\nyou leave New York?\"\n\nHe threw up his head as if calculating. \"Seventeen days ago.\"\n\n\"You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.\"\n\n\"I came as fast as I could. I'd have come five days ago if I had been\nable.\"\n\n\"It wouldn't have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood,\" she coldly smiled.\n\n\"Not to you--no. But to me.\"\n\n\"You gain nothing that I see.\"\n\n\"That's for me to judge!\"\n\n\"Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself.\" And then, to\nchange the subject, she asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole.\nHe looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk of\nHenrietta Stackpole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young\nlady had been with him just before he left America. \"She came to see\nyou?\" Isabel then demanded.\n\n\"Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I\nhad got your letter.\"\n\n\"Did you tell her?\" Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.\n\n\"Oh no,\" said Caspar Goodwood simply; \"I didn't want to do that. She'll\nhear it quick enough; she hears everything.\"\n\n\"I shall write to her, and then she'll write to me and scold me,\" Isabel\ndeclared, trying to smile again.\n\nCaspar, however, remained sternly grave. \"I guess she'll come right\nout,\" he said.\n\n\"On purpose to scold me?\"\n\n\"I don't know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you tell me that,\" Isabel said. \"I must prepare for her.\"\n\nMr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last,\nraising them, \"Does she know Mr. Osmond?\" he enquired.\n\n\"A little. And she doesn't like him. But of course I don't marry to\nplease Henrietta,\" she added. It would have been better for poor Caspar\nif she had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he didn't\nsay so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To\nwhich she made answer that she didn't know yet. \"I can only say it will\nbe soon. I've told no one but yourself and one other person--an old\nfriend of Mr. Osmond's.\"\n\n\"Is it a marriage your friends won't like?\" he demanded.\n\n\"I really haven't an idea. As I say, I don't marry for my friends.\"\n\nHe went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions,\ndoing it quite without delicacy. \"Who and what then is Mr. Gilbert\nOsmond?\"\n\n\"Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable\nman. He's not in business,\" said Isabel. \"He's not rich; he's not known\nfor anything in particular.\"\n\nShe disliked Mr. Goodwood's questions, but she said to herself that she\nowed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The satisfaction poor\nCaspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat very upright, gazing at\nher. \"Where does he come from? Where does he belong?\"\n\nShe had never been so little pleased with the way he said \"belawng.\" \"He\ncomes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.\"\n\n\"You said in your letter he was American. Hasn't he a native place?\"\n\n\"Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.\"\n\n\"Has he never gone back?\"\n\n\"Why should he go back?\" Isabel asked, flushing all defensively. \"He has\nno profession.\"\n\n\"He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn't he like the United\nStates?\"\n\n\"He doesn't know them. Then he's very quiet and very simple--he contents\nhimself with Italy.\"\n\n\"With Italy and with you,\" said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and\nno appearance of trying to make an epigram. \"What has he ever done?\" he\nadded abruptly.\n\n\"That I should marry him? Nothing at all,\" Isabel replied while her\npatience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. \"If he had done\ngreat things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr. Goodwood;\nI'm marrying a perfect nonentity. Don't try to take an interest in him.\nYou can't.\"\n\n\"I can't appreciate him; that's what you mean. And you don't mean in\nthe least that he's a perfect nonentity. You think he's grand, you think\nhe's great, though no one else thinks so.\"\n\nIsabel's colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her companion,\nand it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion might render\nperceptions she had never taken for fine. \"Why do you always come back\nto what others think? I can't discuss Mr. Osmond with you.\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air\nof stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were\nnothing else that they might discuss.\n\n\"You see how little you gain,\" she accordingly broke out--\"how little\ncomfort or satisfaction I can give you.\"\n\n\"I didn't expect you to give me much.\"\n\n\"I don't understand then why you came.\"\n\n\"I came because I wanted to see you once more--even just as you are.\"\n\n\"I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later\nwe should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been\npleasanter for each of us than this.\"\n\n\"Waited till after you're married? That's just what I didn't want to do.\nYou'll be different then.\"\n\n\"Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You'll see.\"\n\n\"That will make it all the worse,\" said Mr. Goodwood grimly.\n\n\"Ah, you're unaccommodating! I can't promise to dislike you in order to\nhelp you to resign yourself.\"\n\n\"I shouldn't care if you did!\"\n\nIsabel got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked to the\nwindow, where she remained a moment looking out. When she turned round\nher visitor was still motionless in his place. She came toward him again\nand stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just\nquitted. \"Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That's better for\nyou perhaps than for me.\"\n\n\"I wished to hear the sound of your voice,\" he said.\n\n\"You've heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet.\"\n\n\"It gives me pleasure, all the same.\" And with this he got up. She had\nfelt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the news he was in\nFlorence and by her leave would come within an hour to see her. She\nhad been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back word by his\nmessenger that he might come when he would. She had not been better\npleased when she saw him; his being there at all was so full of heavy\nimplications. It implied things she could never assent to--rights,\nreproaches, remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change\nher purpose. These things, however, if implied, had not been expressed;\nand now our young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her visitor's\nremarkable self-control. There was a dumb misery about him that\nirritated her; there was a manly staying of his hand that made her heart\nbeat faster. She felt her agitation rising, and she said to herself\nthat she was angry in the way a woman is angry when she has been in the\nwrong. She was not in the wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness\nto swallow; but, all the same, she wished he would denounce her a\nlittle. She had wished his visit would be short; it had no purpose, no\npropriety; yet now that he seemed to be turning away she felt a sudden\nhorror of his leaving her without uttering a word that would give her an\nopportunity to defend herself more than she had done in writing to him\na month before, in a few carefully chosen words, to announce her\nengagement. If she were not in the wrong, however, why should she desire\nto defend herself? It was an excess of generosity on Isabel's part to\ndesire that Mr. Goodwood should be angry. And if he had not meanwhile\nheld himself hard it might have made him so to hear the tone in which\nshe suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him of having accused\nher: \"I've not deceived you! I was perfectly free!\"\n\n\"Yes, I know that,\" said Caspar.\n\n\"I gave you full warning that I'd do as I chose.\"\n\n\"You said you'd probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner\nthat I pretty well believed it.\"\n\nShe considered this an instant. \"No one can be more surprised than\nmyself at my present intention.\"\n\n\"You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to believe\nit,\" Caspar went on. \"I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I\nremembered what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and\nthat's partly why I came.\"\n\n\"If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that's soon done. There's\nno mistake whatever.\"\n\n\"I saw that as soon as I came into the room.\"\n\n\"What good would it do you that I shouldn't marry?\" she asked with a\ncertain fierceness.\n\n\"I should like it better than this.\"\n\n\"You're very selfish, as I said before.\"\n\n\"I know that. I'm selfish as iron.\"\n\n\"Even iron sometimes melts! If you'll be reasonable I'll see you again.\"\n\n\"Don't you call me reasonable now?\"\n\n\"I don't know what to say to you,\" she answered with sudden humility.\n\n\"I shan't trouble you for a long time,\" the young man went on. He made\na step towards the door, but he stopped. \"Another reason why I came was\nthat I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having\nchanged your mind.\"\n\nHer humbleness as suddenly deserted her. \"In explanation? Do you think\nI'm bound to explain?\"\n\nHe gave her one of his long dumb looks. \"You were very positive. I did\nbelieve it.\"\n\n\"So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?\"\n\n\"No, I suppose not. Well,\" he added, \"I've done what I wished. I've seen\nyou.\"\n\n\"How little you make of these terrible journeys,\" she felt the poverty\nof her presently replying.\n\n\"If you're afraid I'm knocked up--in any such way as that--you may be\nat your ease about it.\" He turned away, this time in earnest, and no\nhand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them.\n\nAt the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. \"I shall leave\nFlorence to-morrow,\" he said without a quaver.\n\n\"I'm delighted to hear it!\" she answered passionately. Five minutes\nafter he had gone out she burst into tears.\n\n\n\n\n\nHer fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of it had\nvanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her aunt. I use this\nexpression because she had been sure Mrs. Touchett would not be pleased;\nIsabel had only waited to tell her till she had seen Mr. Goodwood. She\nhad an odd impression that it would not be honourable to make the fact\npublic before she should have heard what Mr. Goodwood would say about\nit. He had said rather less than she expected, and she now had a\nsomewhat angry sense of having lost time. But she would lose no more;\nshe waited till Mrs. Touchett came into the drawing-room before the\nmid-day breakfast, and then she began. \"Aunt Lydia, I've something to\ntell you.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely. \"You\nneedn't tell me; I know what it is.\"\n\n\"I don't know how you know.\"\n\n\"The same way that I know when the window's open--by feeling a draught.\nYou're going to marry that man.\"\n\n\"What man do you mean?\" Isabel enquired with great dignity.\n\n\"Madame Merle's friend--Mr. Osmond.\"\n\n\"I don't know why you call him Madame Merle's friend. Is that the\nprincipal thing he's known by?\"\n\n\"If he's not her friend he ought to be--after what she has done for\nhim!\" cried Mrs. Touchett. \"I shouldn't have expected it of her; I'm\ndisappointed.\"\n\n\"If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my engagement\nyou're greatly mistaken,\" Isabel declared with a sort of ardent\ncoldness.\n\n\"You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman's\nhaving had to be lashed up? You're quite right. They're immense, your\nattractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she\nhadn't put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he\nwas not a man to take trouble. Madame Merle took the trouble for him.\"\n\n\"He has taken a great deal for himself!\" cried Isabel with a voluntary\nlaugh.\n\nMrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. \"I think he must, after all, to have\nmade you like him so much.\"\n\n\"I thought he even pleased YOU.\"\n\n\"He did, at one time; and that's why I'm angry with him.\"\n\n\"Be angry with me, not with him,\" said the girl.\n\n\"Oh, I'm always angry with you; that's no satisfaction! Was it for this\nthat you refused Lord Warburton?\"\n\n\"Please don't go back to that. Why shouldn't I like Mr. Osmond, since\nothers have done so?\"\n\n\"Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him. There's\nnothing OF him,\" Mrs. Touchett explained.\n\n\"Then he can't hurt me,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Do you think you're going to be happy? No one's happy, in such doings,\nyou should know.\"\n\n\"I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?\"\n\n\"What YOU will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry as\nthey go into partnership--to set up a house. But in your partnership\nyou'll bring everything.\"\n\n\"Is it that Mr. Osmond isn't rich? Is that what you're talking about?\"\nIsabel asked.\n\n\"He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value such\nthings and I have the courage to say it; I think they're very precious.\nMany other people think the same, and they show it. But they give some\nother reason.\"\n\nIsabel hesitated a little. \"I think I value everything that's valuable.\nI care very much for money, and that's why I wish Mr. Osmond to have a\nlittle.\"\n\n\"Give it to him then; but marry some one else.\"\n\n\"His name's good enough for me,\" the girl went on. \"It's a very pretty\nname. Have I such a fine one myself?\"\n\n\"All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen\nAmerican names. Do you marry him out of charity?\"\n\n\"It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don't think it's my duty\nto explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn't be able. So please don't\nremonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a disadvantage. I can't\ntalk about it.\"\n\n\"I don't remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of\nintelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never meddle.\"\n\n\"You never do, and I'm greatly obliged to you. You've been very\nconsiderate.\"\n\n\"It was not considerate--it was convenient,\" said Mrs. Touchett. \"But I\nshall talk to Madame Merle.\"\n\n\"I don't see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good\nfriend to me.\"\n\n\"Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me.\"\n\n\"What has she done to you?\"\n\n\"She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your\nengagement.\"\n\n\"She couldn't have prevented it.\"\n\n\"She can do anything; that's what I've always liked her for. I knew she\ncould play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I\ndidn't understand that she would play two at the same time.\"\n\n\"I don't know what part she may have played to you,\" Isabel said;\n\"that's between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind and\ndevoted.\"\n\n\"Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me\nshe was watching you only in order to interpose.\"\n\n\"She said that to please you,\" the girl answered; conscious, however, of\nthe inadequacy of the explanation.\n\n\"To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased\nto-day?\"\n\n\"I don't think you're ever much pleased,\" Isabel was obliged to reply.\n\"If Madame Merle knew you would learn the truth what had she to gain by\ninsincerity?\"\n\n\"She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you\nwere marching away, and she was really beating the drum.\"\n\n\"That's very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and\neven if she had given the alarm you wouldn't have tried to stop me.\"\n\n\"No, but some one else would.\"\n\n\"Whom do you mean?\" Isabel asked, looking very hard at her aunt. Mrs.\nTouchett's little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained\nher gaze rather than returned it. \"Would you have listened to Ralph?\"\n\n\"Not if he had abused Mr. Osmond.\"\n\n\"Ralph doesn't abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares very much\nfor you.\"\n\n\"I know he does,\" said Isabel; \"and I shall feel the value of it now,\nfor he knows that whatever I do I do with reason.\"\n\n\"He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it,\nand he argued the other way.\"\n\n\"He did it for the sake of argument,\" the girl smiled. \"You don't accuse\nhim of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame Merle?\"\n\n\"He never pretended he'd prevent it.\"\n\n\"I'm glad of that!\" cried Isabel gaily. \"I wish very much,\" she\npresently added, \"that when he comes you'd tell him first of my\nengagement.\"\n\n\"Of course I'll mention it,\" said Mrs. Touchett. \"I shall say nothing\nmore to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk to others.\"\n\n\"That's as you please. I only meant that it's rather better the\nannouncement should come from you than from me.\"\n\n\"I quite agree with you; it's much more proper!\" And on this the aunt\nand the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Touchett, as good as her\nword, made no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence,\nhowever, she asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an\nhour before.\n\n\"From an old friend--an American gentleman,\" Isabel said with a colour\nin her cheek.\n\n\"An American gentleman of course. It's only an American gentleman who\ncalls at ten o'clock in the morning.\"\n\n\"It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this\nevening.\"\n\n\"Couldn't he have come yesterday, at the usual time?\"\n\n\"He only arrived last night.\"\n\n\"He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?\" Mrs. Touchett cried.\n\"He's an American gentleman truly.\"\n\n\"He is indeed,\" said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of what\nCaspar Goodwood had done for her.\n\nTwo days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that Mrs.\nTouchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact, he showed\nat first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk was naturally of\nhis health; Isabel had many questions to ask about Corfu. She had been\nshocked by his appearance when he came into the room; she had forgotten\nhow ill he looked. In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she\nwondered if he were really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed\nto living with an invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to\nconventional beauty as he advanced in life, and the now apparently\ncomplete loss of his health had done little to mitigate the natural\noddity of his person. Blighted and battered, but still responsive and\nstill ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with paper\nand unsteadily held; his thin whisker languished upon a lean cheek; the\nexorbitant curve of his nose defined itself more sharply. Lean he was\naltogether, lean and long and loose-jointed; an accidental cohesion of\nrelaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket had become perennial; his\nhands had fixed themselves in his pockets; he shambled and stumbled and\nshuffled in a manner that denoted great physical helplessness. It was\nperhaps this whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than\never as that of the humorous invalid--the invalid for whom even his own\ndisabilities are part of the general joke. They might well indeed with\nRalph have been the chief cause of the want of seriousness marking his\nview of a world in which the reason for his own continued presence was\npast finding out. Isabel had grown fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness\nhad become dear to her. They had been sweetened by association; they\nstruck her as the very terms on which it had been given him to be\ncharming. He was so charming that her sense of his being ill had\nhitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed\nnot a limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him\nfrom all professional and official emotions and left him the luxury of\nbeing exclusively personal. The personality so resulting was delightful;\nhe had remained proof against the staleness of disease; he had had to\nconsent to be deplorably ill, yet had somehow escaped being formally\nsick. Such had been the girl's impression of her cousin; and when she\nhad pitied him it was only on reflection. As she reflected a good deal\nshe had allowed him a certain amount of compassion; but she always had\na dread of wasting that essence--a precious article, worth more to the\ngiver than to any one else. Now, however, it took no great sensibility\nto feel that poor Ralph's tenure of life was less elastic than it should\nbe. He was a bright, free, generous spirit, he had all the illumination\nof wisdom and none of its pedantry, and yet he was distressfully dying.\n\nIsabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people,\nand she felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now\npromised to become for herself. She was prepared to learn that Ralph was\nnot pleased with her engagement; but she was not prepared, in spite of\nher affection for him, to let this fact spoil the situation. She was not\neven prepared, or so she thought, to resent his want of sympathy; for\nit would be his privilege--it would be indeed his natural line--to find\nfault with any step she might take toward marriage. One's cousin always\npretended to hate one's husband; that was traditional, classical; it\nwas a part of one's cousin's always pretending to adore one. Ralph was\nnothing if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things\nbeing equal, have been as glad to marry to please him as to please any\none, it would be absurd to regard as important that her choice should\nsquare with his views. What were his views after all? He had pretended\nto believe she had better have married Lord Warburton; but this was\nonly because she had refused that excellent man. If she had accepted\nhim Ralph would certainly have taken another tone; he always took the\nopposite. You could criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a\nmarriage to be open to criticism. How well she herself, should she only\ngive her mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She had\nother employment, however, and Ralph was welcome to relieve her of the\ncare. Isabel was prepared to be most patient and most indulgent. He must\nhave seen that, and this made it the more odd he should say nothing.\nAfter three days had elapsed without his speaking our young woman\nwearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he might at least go through\nthe form. We, who know more about poor Ralph than his cousin, may easily\nbelieve that during the hours that followed his arrival at Palazzo\nCrescentini he had privately gone through many forms. His mother had\nliterally greeted him with the great news, which had been even more\nsensibly chilling than Mrs. Touchett's maternal kiss. Ralph was shocked\nand humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in the\nworld in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about the\nhouse like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden\nof the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs extended, his head\nthrown back and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt cold about the\nheart; he had never liked anything less. What could he do, what could\nhe say? If the girl were irreclaimable could he pretend to like it?\nTo attempt to reclaim her was permissible only if the attempt should\nsucceed. To try to persuade her of anything sordid or sinister in the\nman to whose deep art she had succumbed would be decently discreet only\nin the event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have\ndamned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought and to\ndissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor protest with hope.\nMeanwhile he knew--or rather he supposed--that the affianced pair were\ndaily renewing their mutual vows. Osmond at this moment showed himself\nlittle at Palazzo Crescentini; but Isabel met him every day elsewhere,\nas she was free to do after their engagement had been made public. She\nhad taken a carriage by the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt\nfor the means of pursuing a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved,\nand she drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness,\nduring the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our young lady,\njoined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him a while\nthrough the grey Italian shade and listened to the nightingales.\n\n\n\n\n\nOne morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before\nluncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and,\ninstead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the court, passed\nbeneath another archway and entered the garden. A sweeter spot at this\nmoment could not have been imagined. The stillness of noontide hung over\nit, and the warm shade, enclosed and still, made bowers like spacious\ncaves. Ralph was sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a\nstatue of Terpsichore--a dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated\ndraperies in the manner of Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his\nattitude suggested at first to Isabel that he was asleep. Her light\nfootstep on the grass had not roused him, and before turning away she\nstood for a moment looking at him. During this instant he opened his\neyes; upon which she sat down on a rustic chair that matched with his\nown. Though in her irritation she had accused him of indifference she\nwas not blind to the fact that he had visibly had something to brood\nover. But she had explained his air of absence partly by the languor of\nhis increased weakness, partly by worries connected with the property\ninherited from his father--the fruit of eccentric arrangements of\nwhich Mrs. Touchett disapproved and which, as she had told Isabel, now\nencountered opposition from the other partners in the bank. He ought to\nhave gone to England, his mother said, instead of coming to Florence;\nhe had not been there for months, and took no more interest in the bank\nthan in the state of Patagonia.\n\n\"I'm sorry I waked you,\" Isabel said; \"you look too tired.\"\n\n\"I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you.\"\n\n\"Are you tired of that?\"\n\n\"Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road's long and I never arrive.\"\n\n\"What do you wish to arrive at?\" she put to him, closing her parasol.\n\n\"At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your\nengagement.\"\n\n\"Don't think too much of it,\" she lightly returned.\n\n\"Do you mean that it's none of my business?\"\n\n\"Beyond a certain point, yes.\"\n\n\"That's the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me\nwanting in good manners. I've never congratulated you.\"\n\n\"Of course I've noticed that. I wondered why you were silent.\"\n\n\"There have been a good many reasons. I'll tell you now,\" Ralph said.\nHe pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat looking at\nher. He leaned back under the protection of Bernini, his head against\nhis marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either side of him, his hands\nlaid upon the rests of his wide chair. He looked awkward, uncomfortable;\nhe hesitated long. Isabel said nothing; when people were embarrassed she\nwas usually sorry for them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to\nutter a word that should not be to the honour of her high decision. \"I\nthink I've hardly got over my surprise,\" he went on at last. \"You were\nthe last person I expected to see caught.\"\n\n\"I don't know why you call it caught.\"\n\n\"Because you're going to be put into a cage.\"\n\n\"If I like my cage, that needn't trouble you,\" she answered.\n\n\"That's what I wonder at; that's what I've been thinking of.\"\n\n\"If you've been thinking you may imagine how I've thought! I'm satisfied\nthat I'm doing well.\"\n\n\"You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty\nbeyond everything. You wanted only to see life.\"\n\n\"I've seen it,\" said Isabel. \"It doesn't look to me now, I admit, such\nan inviting expanse.\"\n\n\"I don't pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view\nof it and wanted to survey the whole field.\"\n\n\"I've seen that one can't do anything so general. One must choose a\ncorner and cultivate that.\"\n\n\"That's what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible.\nI had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, that\nyou were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put me\noff my guard.\"\n\n\"It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides, I knew\nnothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had been on your\nguard, however,\" Isabel asked, \"what would you have done?\"\n\n\"I should have said 'Wait a little longer.'\"\n\n\"Wait for what?\"\n\n\"Well, for a little more light,\" said Ralph with rather an absurd smile,\nwhile his hands found their way into his pockets.\n\n\"Where should my light have come from? From you?\"\n\n\"I might have struck a spark or two.\"\n\nIsabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay\nupon her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for her\nexpression was not conciliatory. \"You're beating about the bush, Ralph.\nYou wish to say you don't like Mr. Osmond, and yet you're afraid.\"\n\n\"Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I'm willing to wound HIM,\nyes--but not to wound you. I'm afraid of you, not of him. If you marry\nhim it won't be a fortunate way for me to have spoken.\"\n\n\"IF I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?\"\n\n\"Of course that seems to you too fatuous.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Isabel after a little; \"it seems to me too touching.\"\n\n\"That's the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity me.\"\n\nShe stroked out her long gloves again. \"I know you've a great affection\nfor me. I can't get rid of that.\"\n\n\"For heaven's sake don't try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince\nyou how intensely I want you to do well.\"\n\n\"And how little you trust me!\"\n\nThere was a moment's silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen. \"I\ntrust you, but I don't trust him,\" said Ralph.\n\nShe raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. \"You've said it now,\nand I'm glad you've made it so clear. But you'll suffer by it.\"\n\n\"Not if you're just.\"\n\n\"I'm very just,\" said Isabel. \"What better proof of it can there be than\nthat I'm not angry with you? I don't know what's the matter with me, but\nI'm not. I was when you began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought\nto be angry, but Mr. Osmond wouldn't think so. He wants me to know\neverything; that's what I like him for. You've nothing to gain, I know\nthat. I've never been so nice to you, as a girl, that you should have\nmuch reason for wishing me to remain one. You give very good advice;\nyou've often done so. No, I'm very quiet; I've always believed in your\nwisdom,\" she went on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a\nkind of contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be\njust; it touched Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a\ncreature he had injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her; for a\nmoment he was absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted what he had\nsaid. But she gave him no chance; she went on, having caught a glimpse,\nas she thought, of the heroic line and desiring to advance in that\ndirection. \"I see you've some special idea; I should like very much to\nhear it. I'm sure it's disinterested; I feel that. It seems a strange\nthing to argue about, and of course I ought to tell you definitely that\nif you expect to dissuade me you may give it up. You'll not move me\nan inch; it's too late. As you say, I'm caught. Certainly it won't be\npleasant for you to remember this, but your pain will be in your own\nthoughts. I shall never reproach you.\"\n\n\"I don't think you ever will,\" said Ralph. \"It's not in the least the\nsort of marriage I thought you'd make.\"\n\n\"What sort of marriage was that, pray?\"\n\n\"Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view of it, but I\nhad a negative. I didn't think you'd decide for--well, for that type.\"\n\n\"What's the matter with Mr. Osmond's type, if it be one? His being\nso independent, so individual, is what I most see in him,\" the girl\ndeclared. \"What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Ralph said, \"I know him very little, and I confess I haven't\nfacts and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can't help\nfeeling that you're running a grave risk.\"\n\n\"Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk's as grave as mine.\"\n\n\"That's his affair! If he's afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he\nwould.\"\n\nIsabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her\ncousin. \"I don't think I understand you,\" she said at last coldly. \"I\ndon't know what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"I believed you'd marry a man of more importance.\"\n\nCold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped\ninto her face. \"Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that\none's husband should be of importance to one's self!\"\n\nRalph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking\nhe proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward,\nresting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an\nair of the most respectful deliberation.\n\n\"I'll tell you in a moment what I mean,\" he presently said. He felt\nagitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he\nwished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively\ngentle.\n\nIsabel waited a little--then she went on with majesty. \"In everything\nthat makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may\nbe nobler natures, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr.\nOsmond's is the finest I know; he's good enough for me, and interesting\nenough, and clever enough. I'm far more struck with what he has and what\nhe represents than with what he may lack.\"\n\n\"I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future,\" Ralph\nobserved without answering this; \"I had amused myself with planning out\na high destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You\nwere not to come down so easily or so soon.\"\n\n\"Come down, you say?\"\n\n\"Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to\nme to be soaring far up in the blue--to be, sailing in the bright light,\nover the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud--a\nmissile that should never have reached you--and straight you drop to\nthe ground. It hurts me,\" said Ralph audaciously, \"hurts me as if I had\nfallen myself!\"\n\nThe look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion's face. \"I\ndon't understand you in the least,\" she repeated. \"You say you amused\nyourself with a project for my career--I don't understand that.\nDon't amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you're doing it at my\nexpense.\"\n\nRalph shook his head. \"I'm not afraid of your not believing that I've\nhad great ideas for you.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?\" she pursued.\n\n\"I've never moved on a higher plane than I'm moving on now. There's\nnothing higher for a girl than to marry a--a person she likes,\" said\npoor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.\n\n\"It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my\ndear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a\nmore active, larger, freer sort of nature.\" Ralph hesitated, then added:\n\"I can't get over the sense that Osmond is somehow--well, small.\" He had\nuttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would\nflash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of\nconsidering.\n\n\"Small?\" She made it sound immense.\n\n\"I think he's narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!\"\n\n\"He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that,\" said\nIsabel. \"It makes one more sure to respect others.\"\n\nRalph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.\n\n\"Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one's relation to\nthings--to others. I don't think Mr. Osmond does that.\"\n\n\"I've chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he's excellent.\"\n\n\"He's the incarnation of taste,\" Ralph went on, thinking hard how he\ncould best express Gilbert Osmond's sinister attributes without putting\nhimself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished\nto describe him impersonally, scientifically. \"He judges and measures,\napproves and condemns, altogether by that.\"\n\n\"It's a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite.\"\n\n\"It's exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as\nhis bride. But have you ever seen such a taste--a really exquisite\none--ruffled?\"\n\n\"I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband's.\"\n\nAt these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph's lips. \"Ah, that's\nwilful, that's unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in\nthat way--you were meant for something better than to keep guard over\nthe sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!\"\n\nIsabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment\nlooking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult.\nBut \"You go too far,\" she simply breathed.\n\n\"I've said what I had on my mind--and I've said it because I love you!\"\n\nIsabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden\nwish to strike him off. \"Ah then, you're not disinterested!\"\n\n\"I love you, but I love without hope,\" said Ralph quickly, forcing a\nsmile and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more\nthan he intended.\n\nIsabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the\ngarden; but after a little she turned back to him. \"I'm afraid your talk\nthen is the wildness of despair! I don't understand it--but it doesn't\nmatter. I'm not arguing with you; it's impossible I should; I've only\ntried to listen to you. I'm much obliged to you for attempting to\nexplain,\" she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just\nsprung up had already subsided. \"It's very good of you to try to warn\nme, if you're really alarmed; but I won't promise to think of what\nyou've said: I shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it\nyourself; you've done your duty, and no man can do more. I can't explain\nto you what I feel, what I believe, and I wouldn't if I could.\" She\npaused a moment and then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph\nobserved even in the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of\nconcession. \"I can't enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can't do it\njustice, because I see him in quite another way. He's not important--no,\nhe's not important; he's a man to whom importance is supremely\nindifferent. If that's what you mean when you call him 'small,' then\nhe's as small as you please. I call that large--it's the largest thing\nI know. I won't pretend to argue with you about a person I'm going to\nmarry,\" Isabel repeated. \"I'm not in the least concerned to defend Mr.\nOsmond; he's not so weak as to need my defence. I should think it would\nseem strange even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and\ncoldly, as if he were any one else. I wouldn't talk of him at all to any\none but you; and you, after what you've said--I may just answer you once\nfor all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary marriage--what\nthey call a marriage of ambition? I've only one ambition--to be free to\nfollow out a good feeling. I had others once, but they've passed away.\nDo you complain of Mr. Osmond because he's not rich? That's just what I\nlike him for. I've fortunately money enough; I've never felt so thankful\nfor it as to-day. There have been moments when I should like to go and\nkneel down by your father's grave: he did perhaps a better thing than\nhe knew when he put it into my power to marry a poor man--a man who has\nborne his poverty with such dignity, with such indifference. Mr. Osmond\nhas never scrambled nor struggled--he has cared for no worldly prize. If\nthat's to be narrow, if that's to be selfish, then it's very well. I'm\nnot frightened by such words, I'm not even displeased; I'm only sorry\nthat you should make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I'm\nsurprised that you should. You might know a gentleman when you see\none--you might know a fine mind. Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows\neverything, he understands everything, he has the kindest, gentlest,\nhighest spirit. You've got hold of some false idea. It's a pity, but\nI can't help it; it regards you more than me.\" Isabel paused a moment,\nlooking at her cousin with an eye illumined by a sentiment which\ncontradicted the careful calmness of her manner--a mingled sentiment,\nto which the angry pain excited by his words and the wounded pride of\nhaving needed to justify a choice of which she felt only the nobleness\nand purity, equally contributed. Though she paused Ralph said\nnothing; he saw she had more to say. She was grand, but she was highly\nsolicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a passion. \"What\nsort of a person should you have liked me to marry?\" she asked suddenly.\n\"You talk about one's soaring and sailing, but if one marries at all one\ntouches the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in\none's bosom, and one must marry a particular individual. Your mother\nhas never forgiven me for not having come to a better understanding\nwith Lord Warburton, and she's horrified at my contenting myself with a\nperson who has none of his great advantages--no property, no title,\nno honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor\nbrilliant belongings of any sort. It's the total absence of all these\nthings that pleases me. Mr. Osmond's simply a very lonely, a very\ncultivated and a very honest man--he's not a prodigious proprietor.\"\n\nRalph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said\nmerited deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of\nthe things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself\nto the weight of his total impression--the impression of her ardent good\nfaith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was\ndismally consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that,\nhaving invented a fine theory, about Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not\nfor what he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as\nhonours. Ralph remembered what he had said to his father about wishing\nto put it into her power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He\nhad done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the luxury. Poor\nRalph felt sick; he felt ashamed. Isabel had uttered her last words with\na low solemnity of conviction which virtually terminated the discussion,\nand she closed it formally by turning away and walking back to the\nhouse. Ralph walked beside her, and they passed into the court together\nand reached the big staircase. Here he stopped and Isabel paused,\nturning on him a face of elation--absolutely and perversely of\ngratitude. His opposition had made her own conception of her conduct\nclearer to her. \"Shall you not come up to breakfast?\" she asked.\n\n\"No; I want no breakfast; I'm not hungry.\"\n\n\"You ought to eat,\" said the girl; \"you live on air.\"\n\n\"I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another\nmouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you last year that\nif you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That's how\nI feel to-day.\"\n\n\"Do you think I'm in trouble?\"\n\n\"One's in trouble when one's in error.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Isabel; \"I shall never complain of my trouble to you!\"\nAnd she moved up the staircase.\n\nRalph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with\nhis eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and\nmade him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast on the\nFlorentine sunshine.\n\n\n\n\n\nIsabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse\nto tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo Crescentini. The\ndiscreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin\nmade on the whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was\nsimply that they disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming\nto Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to\nthrow into higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she\nmarried to please herself. One did other things to please other people;\none did this for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel's satisfaction\nwas confirmed by her lover's admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond was\nin love, and he had never deserved less than during these still, bright\ndays, each of them numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his\nhopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by Ralph Touchett. The chief\nimpression produced on Isabel's spirit by this criticism was that the\npassion of love separated its victim terribly from every one but the\nloved object. She felt herself disjoined from every one she had ever\nknown before--from her two sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope\nthat she would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her\nnot having chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation of\nanecdote; from Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out, too late,\non purpose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who would certainly\nconsole himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who perhaps would not; from\nher aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she\nwas not sorry to display her contempt; and from Ralph, whose talk\nabout having great views for her was surely but a whimsical cover for\na personal disappointment. Ralph apparently wished her not to marry\nat all--that was what it really meant--because he was amused with the\nspectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made\nhim say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: Isabel\nflattered herself that she believed Ralph had been angry. It was the\nmore easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she had now little\nfree or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and accepted as an incident,\nin fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to prefer Gilbert\nOsmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She\ntasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her conscious,\nalmost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of the charmed\nand possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and imputed\nvirtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness; one's\nright was always made of the wrong of some one else.\n\nThe elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted\nmeanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on\nhis part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of\nmen, was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however,\nmade him an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten\nand dedicated state. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he\nnever forgot to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance--which\npresented indeed no difficulty--of stirred senses and deep intentions.\nHe was immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him\na present of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live\nwith than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness\nbe all for one's self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired\nthe air of superiority? What could be a happier gift in a companion than\na quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one's\nthought on a polished, elegant surface? Osmond hated to see his thought\nreproduced literally--that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred\nit to be freshened in the reproduction even as \"words\" by music. His\negotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this\nlady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one--a\nplate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give\na decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served\ndessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he\ncould tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew\nperfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little\nfavour with the girl's relations; but he had always treated her so\ncompletely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary\nto express regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one\nmorning, he made an abrupt allusion to it. \"It's the difference in our\nfortune they don't like,\" he said. \"They think I'm in love with your\nmoney.\"\n\n\"Are you speaking of my aunt--of my cousin?\" Isabel asked. \"How do you\nknow what they think?\"\n\n\"You've not told me they're pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs. Touchett\nthe other day she never answered my note. If they had been delighted I\nshould have had some sign of it, and the fact of my being poor and you\nrich is the most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course\nwhen a poor man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations.\nI don't mind them; I only care for one thing--for your not having\nthe shadow of a doubt. I don't care what people of whom I ask nothing\nthink--I'm not even capable perhaps of wanting to know. I've never so\nconcerned myself, God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I\nhave taken to myself a compensation for everything? I won't pretend\nI'm sorry you're rich; I'm delighted. I delight in everything that's\nyours--whether it be money or virtue. Money's a horrid thing to follow,\nbut a charming thing to meet. It seems to me, however, that I've\nsufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I never in my life\ntried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than\nmost of the people one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it's their\nbusiness to suspect--that of your family; it's proper on the whole they\nshould. They'll like me better some day; so will you, for that matter.\nMeanwhile my business is not to make myself bad blood, but simply to\nbe thankful for life and love.\" \"It has made me better, loving you,\" he\nsaid on another occasion; \"it has made me wiser and easier and--I won't\npretend to deny--brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want\na great many things before and to be angry I didn't have them.\nTheoretically I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself\nI had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to\nhave morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really\nsatisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when\none has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the\nlamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life and\nfinding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it\nproperly I see it's a delightful story. My dear girl, I can't tell you\nhow life seems to stretch there before us--what a long summer afternoon\nawaits us. It's the latter half of an Italian day--with a golden haze,\nand the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy in the light,\nthe air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life and which you\nlove to-day. Upon my honour, I don't see why we shouldn't get on. We've\ngot what we like--to say nothing of having each other. We've the faculty\nof admiration and several capital convictions. We're not stupid, we're\nnot mean, we're not under bonds to any kind of ignorance or dreariness.\nYou're remarkably fresh, and I'm remarkably well-seasoned. We've my poor\nchild to amuse us; we'll try and make up some little life for her. It's\nall soft and mellow--it has the Italian colouring.\"\n\nThey made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal\nof latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they should live\nfor the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met, Italy had\nbeen a party to their first impressions of each other, and Italy\nshould be a party to their happiness. Osmond had the attachment of old\nacquaintance and Isabel the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her\na future at a high level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire\nfor unlimited expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense\nthat life was vacant without some private duty that might gather one's\nenergies to a point. She had told Ralph she had \"seen life\" in a year\nor two and that she was already tired, not of the act of living, but of\nthat of observing. What had become of all her ardours, her aspirations,\nher theories, her high estimate of her independence and her incipient\nconviction that she should never marry? These things had been absorbed\nin a more primitive need--a need the answer to which brushed away\nnumberless questions, yet gratified infinite desires. It simplified the\nsituation at a stroke, it came down from above like the light of the\nstars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation enough in the\nfact that he was her lover, her own, and that she should be able to be\nof use to him. She could surrender to him with a kind of humility, she\ncould marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, she was\ngiving.\n\nHe brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine--Pansy who\nwas very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That she\nwould always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father, who\nheld her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her to\ngo and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore\na short dress and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her.\nShe found pleasure in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the\nend of the alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an\nappeal for approbation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the abundance\nhad the personal touch that the child's affectionate nature craved.\nShe watched her indications as if for herself also much depended on\nthem--Pansy already so represented part of the service she could render,\npart of the responsibility she could face. Her father took so the\nchildish view of her that he had not yet explained to her the new\nrelation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. \"She doesn't\nknow,\" he said to Isabel; \"she doesn't guess; she thinks it perfectly\nnatural that you and I should come and walk here together simply as good\nfriends. There seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that; it's\nthe way I like her to be. No, I'm not a failure, as I used to think;\nI've succeeded in two things. I'm to marry the woman I adore, and I've\nbrought up my child, as I wished, in the old way.\"\n\nHe was very fond, in all things, of the \"old way\"; that had struck\nIsabel as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. \"It occurs to me that\nyou'll not know whether you've succeeded until you've told her,\" she\nsaid. \"You must see how she takes your news, She may be horrified--she\nmay be jealous.\"\n\n\"I'm not afraid of that; she's too fond of you on her own account. I\nshould like to leave her in the dark a little longer--to see if it will\ncome into her head that if we're not engaged we ought to be.\"\n\nIsabel was impressed by Osmond's artistic, the plastic view, as it\nsomehow appeared, of Pansy's innocence--her own appreciation of it being\nmore anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told\nher a few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter,\nwho had made such a pretty little speech--\"Oh, then I shall have a\nbeautiful sister!\" She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not\ncried, as he expected.\n\n\"Perhaps she had guessed it,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Don't say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it\nwould be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her\ngood manners are paramount. That's also what I wished. You shall see for\nyourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person.\"\n\nThe meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini's, whither\nPansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come\nin the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Countess on learning\nthat they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett the\nvisitor had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been\nushered into the Countess's drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her\naunt would presently appear. Pansy was spending the day with that lady,\nwho thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in\ncompany. It was Isabel's view that the little girl might have given\nlessons in deportment to her relative, and nothing could have justified\nthis conviction more than the manner in which Pansy acquitted herself\nwhile they waited together for the Countess. Her father's decision, the\nyear before, had finally been to send her back to the convent to receive\nthe last graces, and Madame Catherine had evidently carried out her\ntheory that Pansy was to be fitted for the great world.\n\n\"Papa has told me that you've kindly consented to marry him,\" said this\nexcellent woman's pupil. \"It's very delightful; I think you'll suit very\nwell.\"\n\n\"You think I shall suit YOU?\"\n\n\"You'll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will\nsuit each other. You're both so quiet and so serious. You're not so\nquiet as he--or even as Madame Merle; but you're more quiet than many\nothers. He should not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She's\nalways in motion, in agitation--to-day especially; you'll see when she\ncomes in. They told us at the convent it was wrong to judge our elders,\nbut I suppose there's no harm if we judge them favourably. You'll be a\ndelightful companion for papa.\"\n\n\"For you too, I hope,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"I speak first of him on purpose. I've told you already what I myself\nthink of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so much that I\nthink it will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You'll be\nmy model; I shall try to imitate you though I'm afraid it will be\nvery feeble. I'm very glad for papa--he needed something more than\nme. Without you I don't see how he could have got it. You'll be my\nstepmother, but we mustn't use that word. They're always said to be\ncruel; but I don't think you'll ever so much as pinch or even push me.\nI'm not afraid at all.\"\n\n\"My good little Pansy,\" said Isabel gently, \"I shall be ever so kind to\nyou.\" A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need\nit had intervened with the effect of a chill.\n\n\"Very well then, I've nothing to fear,\" the child returned with her\nnote of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to\nsuggest--or what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!\n\nHer description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini\nwas further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room\nwith a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead\nand then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite.\nShe drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of\nturns of the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand\nbefore an easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to\na composition of figures already sketched in. \"If you expect me to\ncongratulate you I must beg you to excuse me. I don't suppose you care\nif I do or not; I believe you're supposed not to care--through being so\nclever--for all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell\nfibs; I never tell them unless there's something rather good to be\ngained. I don't see what's to be gained with you--especially as you\nwouldn't believe me. I don't make professions any more than I make paper\nflowers or flouncey lampshades--I don't know how. My lampshades would be\nsure to take fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I'm very\nglad for my own sake that you're to marry Osmond; but I won't pretend\nI'm glad for yours. You're very brilliant--you know that's the way\nyou're always spoken of; you're an heiress and very good-looking and\noriginal, not banal; so it's a good thing to have you in the family.\nOur family's very good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and\nmy mother was rather distinguished--she was called the American Corinne.\nBut we're dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you'll pick us up.\nI've great confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to\ntalk to you about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think\nthey ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose\nPansy oughtn't to hear all this; but that's what she has come to me\nfor--to acquire the tone of society. There's no harm in her knowing what\nhorrors she may be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had\ndesigns on you I thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the\nstrongest terms, not to listen to him. Then I thought it would be\ndisloyal, and I hate anything of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was\nenchanted for myself; and after all I'm very selfish. By the way, you\nwon't respect me, not one little mite, and we shall never be intimate.\nI should like it, but you won't. Some day, all the same, we shall be\nbetter friends than you will believe at first. My husband will come and\nsee you, though, as you probably know, he's on no sort of terms with\nOsmond. He's very fond of going to see pretty women, but I'm not afraid\nof you. In the first place I don't care what he does. In the second, you\nwon't care a straw for him; he won't be a bit, at any time, your affair,\nand, stupid as he is, he'll see you're not his. Some day, if you can\nstand it, I'll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece ought to go\nout of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my boudoir.\"\n\n\"Let her stay, please,\" said Isabel. \"I would rather hear nothing that\nPansy may not!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nOne afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of\npleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third\nfloor of an old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame\nMerle; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face\nand a lady's maid's manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room\nand requested the favour of his name. \"Mr. Edward Rosier,\" said the\nyoung man, who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.\n\nThe reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an\nornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered\nthat he sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of\nseveral winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits\nhe might have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this\ncharming resort. In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him\nwhich changed the current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary\nsequences. He passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at\nSaint Moritz a charming young girl. To this little person he began to\npay, on the spot, particular attention: she struck him as exactly the\nhousehold angel he had long been looking for. He was never precipitate,\nhe was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare\nhis passion; but it seemed to him when they parted--the young lady to go\ndown into Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under\nbonds to join other friends--that he should be romantically wretched if\nhe were not to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in\nthe autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr.\nRosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it\non the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the\nyoung man there was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He might\nexpose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in\nNovember lay, notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the\nbrave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had\nat the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to\na certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain\nto finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably\nfinished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece.\nHe thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have\nthought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the\nbloom of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose\ntaste was predominantly for that manner, could not fail to appreciate.\nThat he esteemed the productions of comparatively frivolous periods\nwould have been apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame\nMerle's drawing-room, which, although furnished with specimens of every\nstyle, was especially rich in articles of the last two centuries. He\nhad immediately put a glass into one eye and looked round; and then \"By\nJove, she has some jolly good things!\" he had yearningly murmured. The\nroom was small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression\nof faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one moved.\nRosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending over\nthe tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with\nprincely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him standing before\nthe fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace flounce\nattached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately,\nas if he were smelling it.\n\n\"It's old Venetian,\" she said; \"it's rather good.\"\n\n\"It's too good for this; you ought to wear it.\"\n\n\"They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation.\"\n\n\"Ah, but I can't wear mine,\" smiled the visitor.\n\n\"I don't see why you shouldn't! I've better lace than that to wear.\"\n\nHis eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. \"You've some very\ngood things.\"\n\n\"Yes, but I hate them.\"\n\n\"Do you want to get rid of them?\" the young man quickly asked.\n\n\"No, it's good to have something to hate: one works it off!\"\n\n\"I love my things,\" said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his\nrecognitions. \"But it's not about them, nor about yours, that I came\nto talk to you.\" He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: \"I\ncare more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!\"\n\nMadame Merle opened wide eyes. \"Did you come to tell me that?\"\n\n\"I came to ask your advice.\"\n\nShe looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her\nlarge white hand. \"A man in love, you know, doesn't ask advice.\"\n\n\"Why not, if he's in a difficult position? That's often the case with a\nman in love. I've been in love before, and I know. But never so much as\nthis time--really never so much. I should like particularly to know what\nyou think of my prospects. I'm afraid that for Mr. Osmond I'm not--well,\na real collector's piece.\"\n\n\"Do you wish me to intercede?\" Madame Merle asked with her fine arms\nfolded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.\n\n\"If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There\nwill be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to\nbelieve her father will consent.\"\n\n\"You're very considerate; that's in your favour. But you assume in\nrather an off-hand way that I think you a prize.\"\n\n\"You've been very kind to me,\" said the young man. \"That's why I came.\"\n\n\"I'm always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It's very rare\nnow, and there's no telling what one may get by it.\" With which the\nleft-hand corner of Madame Merle's mouth gave expression to the joke.\n\nBut he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently\nstrenuous. \"Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!\"\n\n\"I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyse. Pardon me\nif I seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little gentleman. I\nmust tell you, however, that I've not the marrying of Pansy Osmond.\"\n\n\"I didn't suppose that. But you've seemed to me intimate with her\nfamily, and I thought you might have influence.\"\n\nMadame Merle considered. \"Whom do you call her family?\"\n\n\"Why, her father; and--how do you say it in English?--her belle-mere.\"\n\n\"Mr. Osmond's her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed\na member of her family. Mrs. Osmond has nothing to do with marrying\nher.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry for that,\" said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good faith. \"I\nthink Mrs. Osmond would favour me.\"\n\n\"Very likely--if her husband doesn't.\"\n\nHe raised his eyebrows. \"Does she take the opposite line from him?\"\n\n\"In everything. They think quite differently.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Rosier, \"I'm sorry for that; but it's none of my business.\nShe's very fond of Pansy.\"\n\n\"Yes, she's very fond of Pansy.\"\n\n\"And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves\nher as if she were her own mother.\"\n\n\"You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor\nchild,\" said Madame Merle. \"Have you declared your sentiments?\"\n\n\"Never!\" cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. \"Never till I've\nassured myself of those of the parents.\"\n\n\"You always wait for that? You've excellent principles; you observe the\nproprieties.\"\n\n\"I think you're laughing at me,\" the young man murmured, dropping back\nin his chair and feeling his small moustache. \"I didn't expect that of\nyou, Madame Merle.\"\n\nShe shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them.\n\"You don't do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and\nthe best you could adopt. Yes, that's what I think.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't agitate her--only to agitate her; I love her too much for\nthat,\" said Ned Rosier.\n\n\"I'm glad, after all, that you've told me,\" Madame Merle went on. \"Leave\nit to me a little; I think I can help you.\"\n\n\"I said you were the person to come to!\" her visitor cried with prompt\nelation.\n\n\"You were very clever,\" Madame Merle returned more dryly. \"When I say I\ncan help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let us think a\nlittle if it is.\"\n\n\"I'm awfully decent, you know,\" said Rosier earnestly. \"I won't say I've\nno faults, but I'll say I've no vices.\"\n\n\"All that's negative, and it always depends, also, on what people call\nvices. What's the positive side? What's the virtuous? What have you got\nbesides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?\"\n\n\"I've a comfortable little fortune--about forty thousand francs a year.\nWith the talent I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on such an\nincome.\"\n\n\"Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you\nlive.\"\n\n\"Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris.\"\n\nMadame Merle's mouth rose to the left. \"It wouldn't be famous; you'd\nhave to make use of the teacups, and they'd get broken.\"\n\n\"We don't want to be famous. If Miss Osmond should have everything\npretty it would be enough. When one's as pretty as she one can\nafford--well, quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but\nmuslin--without the sprig,\" said Rosier reflectively.\n\n\"Wouldn't you even allow her the sprig? She'd be much obliged to you at\nany rate for that theory.\"\n\n\"It's the correct one, I assure you; and I'm sure she'd enter into it.\nShe understands all that; that's why I love her.\"\n\n\"She's a very good little girl, and most tidy--also extremely graceful.\nBut her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing.\"\n\nRosier scarce demurred. \"I don't in the least desire that he should. But\nI may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man.\"\n\n\"The money's his wife's; she brought him a large fortune.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Osmond then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do\nsomething.\"\n\n\"For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!\" Madame Merle\nexclaimed with a laugh.\n\n\"I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Osmond,\" Madame Merle went on, \"will probably prefer to keep her\nmoney for her own children.\"\n\n\"Her own children? Surely she has none.\"\n\n\"She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago,\nsix months after his birth. Others therefore may come.\"\n\n\"I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She's a splendid woman.\"\n\nMadame Merle failed to burst into speech. \"Ah, about her there's much to\nbe said. Splendid as you like! We've not exactly made out that you're a\nparti. The absence of vices is hardly a source of income.\n\n\"Pardon me, I think it may be,\" said Rosier quite lucidly.\n\n\"You'll be a touching couple, living on your innocence!\"\n\n\"I think you underrate me.\"\n\n\"You're not so innocent as that? Seriously,\" said Madame Merle,\n\"of course forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a\ncombination to be considered. I don't say it's to be jumped at, but\nthere might be a worse offer. Mr. Osmond, however, will probably incline\nto believe he can do better.\"\n\n\"HE can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can't do better\nthan marry the man she loves. For she does, you know,\" Rosier added\neagerly.\n\n\"She does--I know it.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried the young man, \"I said you were the person to come to.\"\n\n\"But I don't know how you know it, if you haven't asked her,\" Madame\nMerle went on.\n\n\"In such a case there's no need of asking and telling; as you say, we're\nan innocent couple. How did YOU know it?\"\n\n\"I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I'll find\nout for you.\"\n\nRosier got up and stood smoothing his hat. \"You say that rather coldly.\nDon't simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it should be.\"\n\n\"I'll do my best. I'll try to make the most of your advantages.\"\n\n\"Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I'll say a word to Mrs. Osmond.\"\n\n\"Gardez-vous-en bien!\" And Madame Merle was on her feet. \"Don't set her\ngoing, or you'll spoil everything.\"\n\nRosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess HAD been\nafter all the right person to come to. \"I don't think I understand\nyou. I'm an old friend of Mrs. Osmond, and I think she would like me to\nsucceed.\"\n\n\"Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she has the\nbetter, for she doesn't get on very well with some of her new. But don't\nfor the present try to make her take up the cudgels for you. Her husband\nmay have other views, and, as a person who wishes her well, I advise you\nnot to multiply points of difference between them.\"\n\nPoor Rosier's face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the hand\nof Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business than his taste\nfor proper transitions had allowed. But the extreme good sense which\nhe concealed under a surface suggesting that of a careful owner's \"best\nset\" came to his assistance. \"I don't see that I'm bound to consider Mr.\nOsmond so very much!\" he exclaimed. \"No, but you should consider HER.\nYou say you're an old friend. Would you make her suffer?\"\n\n\"Not for the world.\"\n\n\"Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I've taken a few\nsoundings.\"\n\n\"Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle? Remember that I'm in love.\"\n\n\"Oh, you won't burn up! Why did you come to me, if you're not to heed\nwhat I say?\"\n\n\"You're very kind; I'll be very good,\" the young man promised. \"But I'm\nafraid Mr. Osmond's pretty hard,\" he added in his mild voice as he went\nto the door.\n\nMadame Merle gave a short laugh. \"It has been said before. But his wife\nisn't easy either.\"\n\n\"Ah, she's a splendid woman!\" Ned Rosier repeated, for departure.\nHe resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who was\nalready a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any pledge he\nhad given Madame Merle that made it improper he should keep himself\nin spirits by an occasional visit to Miss Osmond's home. He reflected\nconstantly on what his adviser had said to him, and turned over in his\nmind the impression of her rather circumspect tone. He had gone to her\nde confiance, as they put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been\nprecipitate. He found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash--he had\nincurred this reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had\nknown Madame Merle only for the last month, and that his thinking her\na delightful woman was not, when one came to look into it, a reason for\nassuming that she would be eager to push Pansy Osmond into his arms,\ngracefully arranged as these members might be to receive her. She had\nindeed shown him benevolence, and she was a person of consideration\namong the girl's people, where she had a rather striking appearance\n(Rosier had more than once wondered how she managed it) of being\nintimate without being familiar. But possibly he had exaggerated these\nadvantages. There was no particular reason why she should take trouble\nfor him; a charming woman was charming to every one, and Rosier felt\nrather a fool when he thought of his having appealed to her on the\nground that she had distinguished him. Very likely--though she had\nappeared to say it in joke--she was really only thinking of his\nbibelots. Had it come into her head that he might offer her two or three\nof the gems of his collection? If she would only help him to marry Miss\nOsmond he would present her with his whole museum. He could hardly say\nso to her outright; it would seem too gross a bribe. But he should like\nher to believe it.\n\nIt was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Osmond's,\nMrs. Osmond having an \"evening\"--she had taken the Thursday of each\nweek--when his presence could be accounted for on general principles of\ncivility. The object of Mr. Rosier's well-regulated affection dwelt in\na high house in the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure\noverlooking a sunny piazzetta in the neighbourhood of the Farnese\nPalace. In a palace, too, little Pansy lived--a palace by Roman measure,\nbut a dungeon to poor Rosier's apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of\nevil omen that the young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious\nfather he doubted of his ability to conciliate, should be immured in\na kind of domestic fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman name,\nwhich smelt of historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence, which\nwas mentioned in \"Murray\" and visited by tourists who looked, on a vague\nsurvey, disappointed and depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio\nin the piano nobile and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the\nwide, nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain\ngushed out of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he\ncould have done justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered\ninto the sentiment of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told him that on\nsettling themselves in Rome she and her husband had chosen this\nhabitation for the love of local colour. It had local colour enough,\nand though he knew less about architecture than about Limoges enamels\nhe could see that the proportions of the windows and even the details\nof the cornice had quite the grand air. But Rosier was haunted by the\nconviction that at picturesque periods young girls had been shut up\nthere to keep them from their true loves, and then, under the threat of\nbeing thrown into convents, had been forced into unholy marriages. There\nwas one point, however, to which he always did justice when once he\nfound himself in Mrs. Osmond's warm, rich-looking reception-rooms, which\nwere on the second floor. He acknowledged that these people were very\nstrong in \"good things.\" It was a taste of Osmond's own--not at all of\nhers; this she had told him the first time he came to the house, when,\nafter asking himself for a quarter of an hour whether they had even\nbetter \"French\" than he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot to admit\nthat they had, very much, and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman\nshould, to the point of expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of\nher treasures. He learned from Mrs. Osmond that her husband had made a\nlarge collection before their marriage and that, though he had annexed\na number of fine pieces within the last three years, he had achieved his\ngreatest finds at a time when he had not the advantage of her advice.\nRosier interpreted this information according to principles of his own.\nFor \"advice\" read \"cash,\" he said to himself; and the fact that Gilbert\nOsmond had landed his highest prizes during his impecunious season\nconfirmed his most cherished doctrine--the doctrine that a collector may\nfreely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when Rosier presented\nhimself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the walls\nof the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes really\nyearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the extreme\nseriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about\nfor the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted\na gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took\neverything comfortable for granted.\n\n\n\n\n\nPansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a\nconcave ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here\nMrs. Osmond usually sat--though she was not in her most customary place\nto-night--and that a circle of more especial intimates gathered about\nthe fire. The room was flushed with subdued, diffused brightness; it\ncontained the larger things and--almost always--an odour of flowers.\nPansy on this occasion was presumably in the next of the series, the\nresort of younger visitors, where tea was served. Osmond stood before\nthe chimney, leaning back with his hands behind him; he had one foot up\nand was warming the sole. Half a dozen persons, scattered near him, were\ntalking together; but he was not in the conversation; his eyes had an\nexpression, frequent with them, that seemed to represent them as engaged\nwith objects more worth their while than the appearances actually\nthrust upon them. Rosier, coming in unannounced, failed to attract his\nattention; but the young man, who was very punctilious, though he was\neven exceptionally conscious that it was the wife, not the husband, he\nhad come to see, went up to shake hands with him. Osmond put out his\nleft hand, without changing his attitude.\n\n\"How d'ye do? My wife's somewhere about.\"\n\n\"Never fear; I shall find her,\" said Rosier cheerfully.\n\nOsmond, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt himself so\nefficiently looked at. \"Madame Merle has told him, and he doesn't like\nit,\" he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame Merle would be there,\nbut she was not in sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms or\nwould come later. He had never especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond,\nhaving a fancy he gave himself airs. But Rosier was not quickly\nresentful, and where politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of\nbeing quite in the right. He looked round him and smiled, all without\nhelp, and then in a moment, \"I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte\nto-day,\" he said.\n\nOsmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his\nboot-sole, \"I don't care a fig for Capo di Monte!\" he returned.\n\n\"I hope you're not losing your interest?\"\n\n\"In old pots and plates? Yes, I'm losing my interest.\"\n\nRosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. \"You're not\nthinking of parting with a--a piece or two?\"\n\n\"No, I'm not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. Rosier,\" said\nOsmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his visitor.\n\n\"Ah, you want to keep, but not to add,\" Rosier remarked brightly.\n\n\"Exactly. I've nothing I wish to match.\"\n\nPoor Rosier was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his want of\nassurance. \"Ah, well, I have!\" was all he could murmur; and he knew\nhis murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the\nadjoining room and met Mrs. Osmond coming out of the deep doorway. She\nwas dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had\nsaid, and yet oh so radiantly gentle! We know what Mr. Rosier thought\nof her and the terms in which, to Madame Merle, he had expressed his\nadmiration. Like his appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it\nwas based partly on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for\nauthenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for that\nsecret of a \"lustre\" beyond any recorded losing or rediscovering,\nwhich his devotion to brittle wares had still not disqualified him\nto recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might well have gratified such\ntastes. The years had touched her only to enrich her; the flower of her\nyouth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on its stem. She had lost\nsomething of that quick eagerness to which her husband had privately\ntaken exception--she had more the air of being able to wait. Now, at all\nevents, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck our young man as the\npicture of a gracious lady. \"You see I'm very regular,\" he said. \"But\nwho should be if I'm not?\"\n\n\"Yes, I've known you longer than any one here. But we mustn't indulge in\ntender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a young lady.\"\n\n\"Ah, please, what young lady?\" Rosier was immensely obliging; but this\nwas not what he had come for.\n\n\"She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to.\" Rosier\nhesitated a moment. \"Can't Mr. Osmond speak to her? He's within six feet\nof her.\"\n\nMrs. Osmond also hesitated. \"She's not very lively, and he doesn't like\ndull people.\"\n\n\"But she's good enough for me? Ah now, that's hard!\"\n\n\"I only mean that you've ideas for two. And then you're so obliging.\"\n\n\"No, he's not--to me.\" And Mrs. Osmond vaguely smiled.\n\n\"That's a sign he should be doubly so to other women.\n\n\"So I tell him,\" she said, still smiling.\n\n\"You see I want some tea,\" Rosier went on, looking wistfully beyond.\n\n\"That's perfect. Go and give some to my young lady.\"\n\n\"Very good; but after that I'll abandon her to her fate. The simple\ntruth is I'm dying to have a little talk with Miss Osmond.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel, turning away, \"I can't help you there!\"\n\nFive minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink,\nwhom he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in\nmaking to Mrs. Osmond the profession I have just quoted, he had broken\nthe spirit of his promise to Madame Merle. Such a question was capable\nof occupying this young man's mind for a considerable time. At last,\nhowever, he became--comparatively speaking--reckless; he cared little\nwhat promises he might break. The fate to which he had threatened to\nabandon the damsel in pink proved to be none so terrible; for Pansy\nOsmond, who had given him the tea for his companion--Pansy was as fond\nas ever of making tea--presently came and talked to her. Into this mild\ncolloquy Edward Rosier entered little; he sat by moodily, watching his\nsmall sweetheart. If we look at her now through his eyes we shall at\nfirst not see much to remind us of the obedient little girl who, at\nFlorence, three years before, was sent to walk short distances in the\nCascine while her father and Miss Archer talked together of matters\nsacred to elder people. But after a moment we shall perceive that if at\nnineteen Pansy has become a young lady she doesn't really fill out the\npart; that if she has grown very pretty she lacks in a deplorable degree\nthe quality known and esteemed in the appearance of females as style;\nand that if she is dressed with great freshness she wears her smart\nattire with an undisguised appearance of saving it--very much as if it\nwere lent her for the occasion. Edward Rosier, it would seem, would have\nbeen just the man to note these defects; and in point of fact there was\nnot a quality of this young lady, of any sort, that he had not noted.\nOnly he called her qualities by names of his own--some of which indeed\nwere happy enough. \"No, she's unique--she's absolutely unique,\" he used\nto say to himself; and you may be sure that not for an instant would he\nhave admitted to you that she was wanting in style. Style? Why, she had\nthe style of a little princess; if you couldn't see it you had no eye.\nIt was not modern, it was not conscious, it would produce no impression\nin Broadway; the small, serious damsel, in her stiff little dress, only\nlooked like an Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough for Edward Rosier,\nwho thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her\ncharming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a childish\nprayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she liked\nhim--a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair. It made him\nfeel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his handkerchief; he\nhad never been so uncomfortable. She was such a perfect jeune fille, and\none couldn't make of a jeune fille the enquiry requisite for throwing\nlight on such a point. A jeune fille was what Rosier had always dreamed\nof--a jeune fille who should yet not be French, for he had felt that\nthis nationality would complicate the question. He was sure Pansy had\nnever looked at a newspaper and that, in the way of novels, if she\nhad read Sir Walter Scott it was the very most. An American jeune\nfille--what could be better than that? She would be frank and gay, and\nyet would not have walked alone, nor have received letters from men,\nnor have been taken to the theatre to see the comedy of manners. Rosier\ncould not deny that, as the matter stood, it would be a breach of\nhospitality to appeal directly to this unsophisticated creature; but\nhe was now in imminent danger of asking himself if hospitality were\nthe most sacred thing in the world. Was not the sentiment that he\nentertained for Miss Osmond of infinitely greater importance? Of greater\nimportance to him--yes; but not probably to the master of the house.\nThere was one comfort; even if this gentleman had been placed on his\nguard by Madame Merle he would not have extended the warning to Pansy;\nit would not have been part of his policy to let her know that a\nprepossessing young man was in love with her. But he WAS in love\nwith her, the prepossessing young man; and all these restrictions of\ncircumstance had ended by irritating him. What had Gilbert Osmond meant\nby giving him two fingers of his left hand? If Osmond was rude, surely\nhe himself might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl\nin so vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of her\nmother, who came in to say, with a significant simper at Rosier, that\nshe must carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter\ndeparted together, and now it depended only upon him that he should be\nvirtually alone with Pansy. He had never been alone with her before;\nhe had never been alone with a jeune fille. It was a great moment; poor\nRosier began to pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond\nthe one in which they stood--a small room that had been thrown open and\nlighted, but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty\nall the evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow;\nthere were several lamps; through the open door it looked the very\ntemple of authorised love. Rosier gazed a moment through this aperture;\nhe was afraid that Pansy would run away, and felt almost capable of\nstretching out a hand to detain her. But she lingered where the other\nmaiden had left them, making no motion to join a knot of visitors on\nthe far side of the room. For a little it occurred to him that she was\nfrightened--too frightened perhaps to move; but a second glance assured\nhim she was not, and he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed\nfor that. After a supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and\nlook at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal. He\nhad been there already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture, which was\nof the First French Empire, and especially to admire the clock (which he\ndidn't really admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He\ntherefore felt that he had now begun to manoeuvre.\n\n\"Certainly, you may go,\" said Pansy; \"and if you like I'll show you.\"\nShe was not in the least frightened.\n\n\"That's just what I hoped you'd say; you're so very kind,\" Rosier\nmurmured.\n\nThey went in together; Rosier really thought the room very ugly, and it\nseemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Pansy. \"It's not for\nwinter evenings; it's more for summer,\" she said. \"It's papa's taste; he\nhas so much.\"\n\nHe had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad. He\nlooked about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a situation.\n\"Doesn't Mrs. Osmond care how her rooms are done? Has she no taste?\" he\nasked.\n\n\"Oh yes, a great deal; but it's more for literature,\" said Pansy--\"and\nfor conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I think he knows\neverything.\"\n\nRosier was silent a little. \"There's one thing I'm sure he knows!\" he\nbroke out presently. \"He knows that when I come here it's, with all\nrespect to him, with all respect to Mrs. Osmond, who's so charming--it's\nreally,\" said the young man, \"to see you!\"\n\n\"To see me?\" And Pansy raised her vaguely troubled eyes.\n\n\"To see you; that's what I come for,\" Rosier repeated, feeling the\nintoxication of a rupture with authority.\n\nPansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not\nneeded to make her face more modest. \"I thought it was for that.\"\n\n\"And it was not disagreeable to you?\"\n\n\"I couldn't tell; I didn't know. You never told me,\" said Pansy.\n\n\"I was afraid of offending you.\"\n\n\"You don't offend me,\" the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel\nhad kissed her.\n\n\"You like me then, Pansy?\" Rosier asked very gently, feeling very happy.\n\n\"Yes--I like you.\"\n\nThey had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire clock\nwas perched; they were well within the room and beyond observation from\nwithout. The tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him\nthe very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her\nhand and hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted,\nstill with her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something\nineffably passive. She liked him--she had liked him all the while; now\nanything might happen! She was ready--she had been ready always, waiting\nfor him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever;\nbut when the word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree.\nRosier felt that if he should draw her toward him and hold her to his\nheart she would submit without a murmur, would rest there without a\nquestion. It was true that this would be a rash experiment in a yellow\nEmpire salottino. She had known it was for her he came, and yet like\nwhat a perfect little lady she had carried it off!\n\n\"You're very dear to me,\" he murmured, trying to believe that there was\nafter all such a thing as hospitality.\n\nShe looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. \"Did you say\npapa knows?\"\n\n\"You told me just now he knows everything.\"\n\n\"I think you must make sure,\" said Pansy.\n\n\"Ah, my dear, when once I'm sure of YOU!\" Rosier murmured in her ear;\nwhereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little air of\nconsistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should be immediate.\n\nThe other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of Madame\nMerle, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when she entered.\nHow she did it the most attentive spectator could not have told you, for\nshe neither spoke loud, nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor\ndressed with splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the\naudience. Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in her very\ntranquillity that diffused itself, and when people looked round it was\nbecause of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she had done the quietest\nthing she could do; after embracing Mrs. Osmond, which was more\nstriking, she had sat down on a small sofa to commune with the master\nof the house. There was a brief exchange of commonplaces between these\ntwo--they always paid, in public, a certain formal tribute to the\ncommonplace--and then Madame Merle, whose eyes had been wandering, asked\nif little Mr. Rosier had come this evening.\n\n\"He came nearly an hour ago--but he has disappeared,\" Osmond said.\n\n\"And where's Pansy?\"\n\n\"In the other room. There are several people there.\"\n\n\"He's probably among them,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"Do you wish to see him?\" Osmond asked in a provokingly pointless tone.\n\nMadame Merle looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones to the\neighth of a note. \"Yes, I should like to say to him that I've told you\nwhat he wants, and that it interests you but feebly.\"\n\n\"Don't tell him that. He'll try to interest me more--which is exactly\nwhat I don't want. Tell him I hate his proposal.\"\n\n\"But you don't hate it.\"\n\n\"It doesn't signify; I don't love it. I let him see that, myself, this\nevening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing's a great\nbore. There's no hurry.\"\n\n\"I'll tell him that you'll take time and think it over.\"\n\n\"No, don't do that. He'll hang on.\"\n\n\"If I discourage him he'll do the same.\"\n\n\"Yes, but in the one case he'll try to talk and explain--which would be\nexceedingly tiresome. In the other he'll probably hold his tongue and go\nin for some deeper game. That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with a\ndonkey.\"\n\n\"Is that what you call poor Mr. Rosier?\"\n\n\"Oh, he's a nuisance--with his eternal majolica.\"\n\nMadame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. \"He's a gentleman,\nhe has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of forty thousand\nfrancs!\"\n\n\"It's misery--'genteel' misery,\" Osmond broke in. \"It's not what I've\ndreamed of for Pansy.\"\n\n\"Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her.\"\n\n\"Do you believe him?\" Osmond asked absentmindedly.\n\n\"Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don't\nsuppose you consider that that matters.\"\n\n\"I don't consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has\nthought of him.\"\n\n\"That opinion's more convenient,\" said Madame Merle quietly.\n\n\"Has she told you she's in love with him?\"\n\n\"For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?\" Madame Merle\nadded in a moment.\n\nOsmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the other\nknee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly--his long, fine\nforefinger and thumb could make a ring for it--and gazed a while\nbefore him. \"This kind of thing doesn't find me unprepared. It's what I\neducated her for. It was all for this--that when such a case should come\nup she should do what I prefer.\"\n\n\"I'm not afraid that she'll not do it.\"\n\n\"Well then, where's the hitch?\"\n\n\"I don't see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get rid of\nMr. Rosier. Keep him on hand; he may be useful.\"\n\n\"I can't keep him. Keep him yourself.\"\n\n\"Very good; I'll put him into a corner and allow him so much a day.\"\nMadame Merle had, for the most part, while they talked, been glancing\nabout her; it was her habit in this situation, just as it was her habit\nto interpose a good many blank-looking pauses. A long drop followed the\nlast words I have quoted; and before it had ended she saw Pansy come out\nof the adjoining room, followed by Edward Rosier. The girl advanced a\nfew steps and then stopped and stood looking at Madame Merle and at her\nfather.\n\n\"He has spoken to her,\" Madame Merle went on to Osmond.\n\nHer companion never turned his head. \"So much for your belief in his\npromises. He ought to be horsewhipped.\"\n\n\"He intends to confess, poor little man!\"\n\nOsmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. \"It\ndoesn't matter,\" he murmured, turning away.\n\nPansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her little manner\nof unfamiliar politeness. This lady's reception of her was not more\nintimate; she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave her a friendly\nsmile.\n\n\"You're very late,\" the young creature gently said.\n\n\"My dear child, I'm never later than I intend to be.\"\n\nMadame Merle had not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she moved toward\nEdward Rosier. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as if to get it\noff his mind, \"I've spoken to her!\" he whispered.\n\n\"I know it, Mr. Rosier.\"\n\n\"Did she tell you?\"\n\n\"Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come\nand see me to-morrow at a quarter past five.\" She was severe, and in\nthe manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of\ncontempt which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation.\n\nHe had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither the time nor\nthe place. But he instinctively wandered toward Isabel, who sat talking\nwith an old lady. He sat down on the other side of her; the old lady\nwas Italian, and Rosier took for granted she understood no English. \"You\nsaid just now you wouldn't help me,\" he began to Mrs. Osmond. \"Perhaps\nyou'll feel differently when you know--when you know--!\"\n\nIsabel met his hesitation. \"When I know what?\"\n\n\"That she's all right.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\"\n\n\"Well, that we've come to an understanding.\"\n\n\"She's all wrong,\" said Isabel. \"It won't do.\"\n\nPoor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush\ntestified to his sense of injury. \"I've never been treated so,\" he said.\n\"What is there against me, after all? That's not the way I'm usually\nconsidered. I could have married twenty times.\"\n\n\"It's a pity you didn't. I don't mean twenty times, but once,\ncomfortably,\" Isabel added, smiling kindly. \"You're not rich enough for\nPansy.\"\n\n\"She doesn't care a straw for one's money.\"\n\n\"No, but her father does.\"\n\n\"Ah yes, he has proved that!\" cried the young man.\n\nIsabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without\nceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending\nto look at Gilbert Osmond's collection of miniatures, which were neatly\narranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without\nseeing; his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was\ncertain that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used\nto being thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such\na fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He\nsearched again for Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his main desire\nwas now to get out of the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to\nIsabel; it was not agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a\nrude thing to her--the only point that would now justify a low view of\nhim.\n\n\"I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn't have done, a while ago,\" he\nbegan. \"But you must remember my situation.\"\n\n\"I don't remember what you said,\" she answered coldly.\n\n\"Ah, you're offended, and now you'll never help me.\"\n\nShe was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: \"It's not\nthat I won't; I simply can't!\" Her manner was almost passionate.\n\n\"If you COULD, just a little, I'd never again speak of your husband save\nas an angel.\"\n\n\"The inducement's great,\" said Isabel gravely--inscrutably, as he\nafterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the\neyes, a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow\nthat he had known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked,\nand he took himself off.\n\n\n\n\n\nHe went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let\nhim off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop\nthere till something should have been decided. Mr. Osmond had had higher\nexpectations; it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his\ndaughter a portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if\none would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that\ntone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his\nfelicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn't be\na miracle if he should gradually come round. Pansy would never defy\nher father, he might depend on that; so nothing was to be gained by\nprecipitation. Mr. Osmond needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a\nsort that he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of\nitself--it was useless to try to force it. Rosier remarked that his own\nsituation would be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the world,\nand Madame Merle assured him that she felt for him. But, as she justly\ndeclared, one couldn't have everything one wanted; she had learned that\nlesson for herself. There would be no use in his writing to Gilbert\nOsmond, who had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter\ndropped for a few weeks and would himself write when he should have\nanything to communicate that it might please Mr. Rosier to hear.\n\n\"He doesn't like your having spoken to Pansy, Ah, he doesn't like it at\nall,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"I'm perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!\"\n\n\"If you do that he'll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the\nhouse, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to\nme.\"\n\n\"As little as possible? Who's to measure the possibility?\"\n\n\"Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world,\nbut don't go at all at odd times, and don't fret about Pansy. I'll see\nthat she understands everything. She's a calm little nature; she'll take\nit quietly.\"\n\nEdward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was\nadvised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to\nPalazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he\nwent early the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual,\nwas in the first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so\nthat, not to be distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him.\n\n\"I'm glad that you can take a hint,\" Pansy's father said, slightly\nclosing his keen, conscious eyes.\n\n\"I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be.\"\n\n\"You took it? Where did you take it?\"\n\nIt seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment,\nasking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. \"Madame Merle\ngave me, as I understood it, a message from you--to the effect that you\ndeclined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain\nmy wishes to you.\" And he flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.\n\n\"I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to\nMadame Merle?\"\n\n\"I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because she had\nseemed to me to know you very well.\"\n\n\"She doesn't know me so well as she thinks,\" said Osmond.\n\n\"I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for\nhope.\"\n\nOsmond stared into the fire a moment. \"I set a great price on my\ndaughter.\"\n\n\"You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing to\nmarry her?\"\n\n\"I wish to marry her very well,\" Osmond went on with a dry impertinence\nwhich, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired.\n\n\"Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She couldn't\nmarry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to add, she loves\nmore.\"\n\n\"I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter\nloves\"--and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.\n\n\"I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken.\"\n\n\"Not to me,\" Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping\nhis eyes to his boot-toes.\n\n\"I have her promise, sir!\" cried Rosier with the sharpness of\nexasperation.\n\nAs their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted\nsome attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement\nhad subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: \"I think she has no\nrecollection of having given it.\"\n\nThey had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had\nuttered these last words the master of the house turned round again\nto the room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a\ngentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced, according to the\nRoman custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter\nsmiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face\nand a large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman.\n\n\"You apparently don't recognise me,\" he said with a smile that expressed\nmore than Osmond's.\n\n\"Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you.\"\n\nRosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought her, as\nusual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs. Osmond\nin his path. He gave his hostess no greeting--he was too righteously\nindignant, but said to her crudely: \"Your husband's awfully\ncold-blooded.\"\n\nShe gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. \"You can't\nexpect every one to be as hot as yourself.\"\n\n\"I don't pretend to be cold, but I'm cool. What has he been doing to his\ndaughter?\"\n\n\"I've no idea.\"\n\n\"Don't you take any interest?\" Rosier demanded with his sense that she\ntoo was irritating.\n\nFor a moment she answered nothing; then, \"No!\" she said abruptly and\nwith a quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word.\n\n\"Pardon me if I don't believe that. Where's Miss Osmond?\"\n\n\"In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there.\"\n\nRosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by\nintervening groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely\ngiven to her occupation. \"What on earth has he done to her?\" he asked\nagain imploringly. \"He declares to me she has given me up.\"\n\n\"She has not given you up,\" Isabel said in a low tone and without\nlooking at him.\n\n\"Ah, thank you for that! Now I'll leave her alone as long as you think\nproper!\"\n\nHe had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware\nthat Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had\njust entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good\nlooks and evident social experience, a little embarrassed. \"Isabel,\"\nsaid her husband, \"I bring you an old friend.\"\n\nMrs. Osmond's face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend's,\nnot perfectly confident. \"I'm very happy to see Lord Warburton,\" she\nsaid. Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been\ninterrupted, felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He\nhad a quick impression that Mrs. Osmond wouldn't notice what he did.\n\nIsabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe\nhim. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or\na pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her,\nwas plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey\neyes had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and\nattestation strictly sincere. He was \"heavier\" than of yore and looked\nolder; he stood there very solidly and sensibly.\n\n\"I suppose you didn't expect to see me,\" he said; \"I've but just\narrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've lost\nno time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on\nThursdays.\"\n\n\"You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,\" Osmond\nremarked to his wife.\n\n\"It's very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we're greatly\nflattered,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"Ah well, it's better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,\"\nOsmond went on.\n\n\"The hotel seems very good; I think it's the same at which I saw you\nfour years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it's a\nlong time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?\" his lordship\nasked of his hostess. \"It was in the Capitol, in the first room.\"\n\n\"I remember that myself,\" said Osmond. \"I was there at the time.\"\n\n\"Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome--so sorry\nthat, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I've never\ncared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here,\" her\nold friend went on to Isabel, \"and I assure you I've often thought of\nyou. It must be a charming place to live in,\" he added with a look,\nround him, at her established home, in which she might have caught the\ndim ghost of his old ruefulness.\n\n\"We should have been glad to see you at any time,\" Osmond observed with\npropriety.\n\n\"Thank you very much. I haven't been out of England since then. Till a\nmonth ago I really supposed my travels over.\"\n\n\"I've heard of you from time to time,\" said Isabel, who had already,\nwith her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what\nmeeting him again meant for her.\n\n\"I hope you've heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete\nblank.\"\n\n\"Like the good reigns in history,\" Osmond suggested. He appeared to\nthink his duties as a host now terminated--he had performed them so\nconscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more\nnicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife's old friend. It\nwas punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but natural--a\ndeficiency which Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good\ndeal of nature, may be supposed to have perceived. \"I'll leave you and\nMrs. Osmond together,\" he added. \"You have reminiscences into which I\ndon't enter.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid you lose a good deal!\" Lord Warburton called after him, as\nhe moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation\nof his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the deeper, the\ndeepest, consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious.\n\"I'm really very glad to see you.\"\n\n\"It's very pleasant. You're very kind.\"\n\n\"Do you know that you're changed--a little?\"\n\nShe just hesitated. \"Yes--a good deal.\"\n\n\"I don't mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the\nbetter?\"\n\n\"I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to YOU,\" she bravely\nreturned.\n\n\"Ah well, for me--it's a long time. It would be a pity there shouldn't\nbe something to show for it.\" They sat down and she asked him about\nhis sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He\nanswered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments\nshe saw--or believed she saw--that he would press with less of his\nwhole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without\nchilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel\nfelt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend's manner was\ncertainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like people, or\nlike her at least, to know him for such. \"There's something I must tell\nyou without more delay,\" he resumed. \"I've brought Ralph Touchett with\nme.\"\n\n\"Brought him with you?\" Isabel's surprise was great.\n\n\"He's at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed.\"\n\n\"I'll go to see him,\" she immediately said.\n\n\"That's exactly what I hoped you'd do. I had an idea you hadn't seen\nmuch of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a--a\nlittle more formal. That's why I hesitated--like an awkward Briton.\"\n\n\"I'm as fond of Ralph as ever,\" Isabel answered. \"But why has he come to\nRome?\" The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp.\n\n\"Because he's very far gone, Mrs. Osmond.\"\n\n\"Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined\nto give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England,\nindoors, in what he called an artificial climate.\"\n\n\"Poor fellow, he doesn't succeed with the artificial! I went to see him\nthree weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has\nbeen getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He\nsmokes no more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed;\nthe house was as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it\ninto his head to start for Sicily. I didn't believe in it--neither did\nthe doctors, nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know,\nis in America, so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea\nthat it would be the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania.\nHe said he could take servants and furniture, could make himself\ncomfortable, but in point of fact he hasn't brought anything. I wanted\nhim at least to go by sea, to save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea\nand wished to stop at Rome. After that, though I thought it all rubbish,\nI made up my mind to come with him. I'm acting as--what do you call it\nin America?--as a kind of moderator. Poor Ralph's very moderate now. We\nleft England a fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He\ncan't keep warm, and the further south we come the more he feels the\ncold. He has got rather a good man, but I'm afraid he's beyond human\nhelp. I wanted him to take with him some clever fellow--I mean some\nsharp young doctor; but he wouldn't hear of it. If you don't mind my\nsaying so, I think it was a most extraordinary time for Mrs. Touchett to\ndecide on going to America.\"\n\nIsabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. \"My\naunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When\nthe date comes round she starts; I think she'd have started if Ralph had\nbeen dying.\"\n\n\"I sometimes think he IS dying,\" Lord Warburton said.\n\nIsabel sprang up. \"I'll go to him then now.\"\n\nHe checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his\nwords. \"I don't mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day,\nin the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching\nRome--he's very fond of Rome, you know--gave him strength. An hour ago,\nwhen I bade him goodnight, he told me he was very tired, but very happy.\nGo to him in the morning; that's all I mean. I didn't tell him I was\ncoming here; I didn't decide to till after we had separated. Then I\nremembered he had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very\nThursday. It occurred to me to come in and tell you he's here, and let\nyou know you had perhaps better not wait for him to call. I think he\nsaid he hadn't written to you.\" There was no need of Isabel's declaring\nthat she would act upon Lord Warburton's information; she looked, as she\nsat there, like a winged creature held back. \"Let alone that I wanted to\nsee you for myself,\" her visitor gallantly added.\n\n\"I don't understand Ralph's plan; it seems to me very wild,\" she said.\n\"I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt.\"\n\n\"He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company.\"\n\n\"You went to see him; you've been extremely kind.\"\n\n\"Oh dear, I had nothing to do,\" said Lord Warburton.\n\n\"We hear, on the contrary, that you're doing great things. Every one\nspeaks of you as a great statesman, and I'm perpetually seeing your name\nin the Times, which, by the way, doesn't appear to hold it in reverence.\nYou're apparently as wild a radical as ever.\"\n\n\"I don't feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me.\nTouchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way\nfrom London. I tell him he's the last of the Tories, and he calls me\nthe King of the Goths--says I have, down to the details of my personal\nappearance, every sign of the brute. So you see there's life in him\nyet.\"\n\nIsabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained from\nasking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived\nthat after a little Lord Warburton would tire of that subject--he had a\nconception of other possible topics. She was more and more able to say\nto herself that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she\nwas able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old,\nsuch an image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted\nand reasoned with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new\ntrouble. But she was now reassured; she could see he only wished to live\nwith her on good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her\nand was incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This was\nnot a form of revenge, of course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to\npunish her by an exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice\nto believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a\ngood-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation\nof a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never\nfester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She\ngave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free\nto plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton of course\nspoke of the past, but he spoke of it without implications; he even\nwent so far as to allude to their former meeting in Rome as a very jolly\ntime. And he told her he had been immensely interested in hearing of her\nmarriage and that it was a great pleasure for him to make Mr. Osmond's\nacquaintance--since he could hardly be said to have made it on the other\noccasion. He had not written to her at the time of that passage in her\nhistory, but he didn't apologise to her for this. The only thing he\nimplied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It was very\nmuch as an intimate friend that he said to her, suddenly, after a short\npause which he had occupied in smiling, as he looked about him, like a\nperson amused, at a provincial entertainment, by some innocent game of\nguesses--\n\n\"Well now, I suppose you're very happy and all that sort of thing?\"\n\nIsabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her\nalmost as the accent of comedy. \"Do you suppose if I were not I'd tell\nyou?\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know. I don't see why not.\"\n\n\"I do then. Fortunately, however, I'm very happy.\"\n\n\"You've got an awfully good house.\"\n\n\"Yes, it's very pleasant. But that's not my merit--it's my husband's.\"\n\n\"You mean he has arranged it?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was nothing when we came.\"\n\n\"He must be very clever.\"\n\n\"He has a genius for upholstery,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"There's a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a\ntaste of your own.\"\n\n\"I enjoy things when they're done, but I've no ideas. I can never\npropose anything.\"\n\n\"Do you mean you accept what others propose?\"\n\n\"Very willingly, for the most part.\"\n\n\"That's a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something.\"\n\n\"It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I've in a few small\nways a certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you\nto some of these people.\"\n\n\"Oh, please don't; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young\nlady in the blue dress. She has a charming face.\"\n\n\"The one talking to the rosy young man? That's my husband's daughter.\"\n\n\"Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!\"\n\n\"You must make her acquaintance.\"\n\n\"In a moment--with pleasure. I like looking at her from here.\" He ceased\nto look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to Mrs.\nOsmond. \"Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?\" he\npresently went on. \"You seem to me, after all, very much the same.\"\n\n\"And yet I find it a great change to be married,\" said Isabel with mild\ngaiety.\n\n\"It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven't\ngone in for that.\"\n\n\"It rather surprises me.\"\n\n\"You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to marry,\" he\nadded more simply.\n\n\"It ought to be very easy,\" Isabel said, rising--after which she\nreflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the\nperson to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined the\npang that he generously forbore to call her attention to her not having\ncontributed then to the facility.\n\nEdward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy's\ntea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she\nasked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother.\n\n\"He's an English lord,\" said Rosier. \"I don't know more.\"\n\n\"I wonder if he'll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea.\"\n\n\"Never mind that; I've something particular to say to you.\"\n\n\"Don't speak so loud every one will hear,\" said Pansy.\n\n\"They won't hear if you continue to look that way: as if your only\nthought in life was the wish the kettle would boil.\"\n\n\"It has just been filled; the servants never know!\"--and she sighed with\nthe weight of her responsibility.\n\n\"Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn't mean\nwhat you said a week ago.\"\n\n\"I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean\nwhat I say to you.\"\n\n\"He told me you had forgotten me.\"\n\n\"Ah no, I don't forget,\" said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed\nsmile.\n\n\"Then everything's just the very same?\"\n\n\"Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe.\"\n\n\"What has he done to you?\"\n\n\"He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he\nforbade me to marry you.\"\n\n\"You needn't mind that.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I must indeed. I can't disobey papa.\"\n\n\"Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?\"\n\nShe raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment;\nthen she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. \"I love you just as\nmuch.\"\n\n\"What good will that do me?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, \"I don't know that.\"\n\n\"You disappoint me,\" groaned poor Rosier.\n\nShe was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. \"Please\ndon't talk any more.\"\n\n\"Is this to be all my satisfaction?\"\n\n\"Papa said I was not to talk with you.\"\n\n\"Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it's too much!\"\n\n\"I wish you'd wait a little,\" said the girl in a voice just distinct\nenough to betray a quaver.\n\n\"Of course I'll wait if you'll give me hope. But you take my life away.\"\n\n\"I'll not give you up--oh no!\" Pansy went on.\n\n\"He'll try and make you marry some one else.\"\n\n\"I'll never do that.\"\n\n\"What then are we to wait for?\"\n\nShe hesitated again. \"I'll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she'll help us.\" It\nwas in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother.\n\n\"She won't help us much. She's afraid.\"\n\n\"Afraid of what?\"\n\n\"Of your father, I suppose.\"\n\nPansy shook her little head. \"She's not afraid of any one. We must have\npatience.\"\n\n\"Ah, that's an awful word,\" Rosier groaned; he was deeply disconcerted.\nOblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his\nhands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the\ncarpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about\nhim and, as he looked up, saw Pansy making a curtsey--it was still her\nlittle curtsey of the convent--to the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond had\nintroduced.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Ralph Touchett\nshould have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had done\nbefore that event--an event of which he took such a view as could hardly\nprove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as we\nknow, and after this had held his peace, Isabel not having invited him\nto resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. That\ndiscussion had made a difference--the difference he feared rather than\nthe one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl's zeal in carrying out her\nengagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship.\nNo reference was ever again made between them to Ralph's opinion of\nGilbert Osmond, and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence they\nmanaged to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was a\ndifference, as Ralph often said to himself--there was a difference. She\nhad not forgiven him, she never would forgive him: that was all he had\ngained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn't care;\nand as she was both very generous and very proud these convictions\nrepresented a certain reality. But whether or no the event should\njustify him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the wrong was\nof the sort that women remember best. As Osmond's wife she could never\nagain be his friend. If in this character she should enjoy the felicity\nshe expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who had\nattempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the\nother hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he\nshould never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make\nher hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followed\nhis cousin's marriage, Ralph's prevision of the future; and if his\nmeditations appear morbid we must remember he was not in the bloom\nof health. He consoled himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed)\nbeautifully, and was present at the ceremony by which Isabel was united\nto Mr. Osmond, and which was performed in Florence in the month of\nJune. He learned from his mother that Isabel at first had thought of\ncelebrating her nuptials in her native land, but that as simplicity was\nwhat she chiefly desired to secure she had finally decided, in spite\nof Osmond's professed willingness to make a journey of any length, that\nthis characteristic would be best embodied in their being married by the\nnearest clergyman in the shortest time. The thing was done therefore at\nthe little American chapel, on a very hot day, in the presence only of\nMrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy Osmond and the Countess Gemini. That\nseverity in the proceedings of which I just spoke was in part the result\nof the absence of two persons who might have been looked for on the\noccasion and who would have lent it a certain richness. Madame Merle\nhad been invited, but Madame Merle, who was unable to leave Rome, had\nwritten a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta Stackpole had not been\ninvited, as her departure from America, announced to Isabel by Mr.\nGoodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her profession; but\nshe had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Merle's, intimating\nthat, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have been\npresent not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe had\ntaken place somewhat later, and she had effected a meeting with Isabel\nin the autumn, in Paris, when she had indulged--perhaps a trifle too\nfreely--her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject\nof it, had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to\nIsabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between them. \"It\nisn't in the least that you've married--it is that you have married\nHIM,\" she had deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be seen,\nmuch more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, though she had few of\nhis hesitations and compunctions. Henrietta's second visit to Europe,\nhowever, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the\nmoment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to\nthat newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he\ntook Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had appeared upon\nthe scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain.\nHenrietta's letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she\nhad yet published, and there had been one in especial, dated from the\nAlhambra and entitled 'Moors and Moonlight,' which generally passed for\nher masterpiece. Isabel had been secretly disappointed at her husband's\nnot seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She even\nwondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his sense\nof humour, wouldn't it?--were by chance defective. Of course she herself\nlooked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothing\nto grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience. Osmond had thought their\nalliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't imagine what they had in\ncommon. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow tourist was simply the most\nvulgar of women, and he had also pronounced her the most abandoned.\nAgainst this latter clause of the verdict Isabel had appealed with an\nardour that had made him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his\nwife's tastes. Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked to\nknow people who were as different as possible from herself. \"Why\nthen don't you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman?\" Osmond\nhad enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she was afraid her\nwasherwoman wouldn't care for her. Now Henrietta cared so much.\n\nRalph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that\nhad followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her\nresidence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had been\njoined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him\nto England, to see what they were doing at the bank--an operation she\ncouldn't induce him to perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house at\nSan Remo, a small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but\nlate in the month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome.\nIt was the first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face\nwith Isabel; his desire to see her again was then of the keenest. She\nhad written to him from time to time, but her letters told him nothing\nhe wanted to know. He had asked his mother what she was making of her\nlife, and his mother had simply answered that she supposed she was\nmaking the best of it. Mrs. Touchett had not the imagination that\ncommunes with the unseen, and she now pretended to no intimacy with\nher niece, whom she rarely encountered. This young woman appeared to\nbe living in a sufficiently honourable way, but Mrs. Touchett still\nremained of the opinion that her marriage had been a shabby affair. It\nhad given her no pleasure to think of Isabel's establishment, which she\nwas sure was a very lame business. From time to time, in Florence, she\nrubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her best always to minimise\nthe contact; and the Countess reminded her of Osmond, who made her\nthink of Isabel. The Countess was less talked of in these days; but Mrs.\nTouchett augured no good of that: it only proved how she had been talked\nof before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in the person\nof Madame Merle; but Madame Merle's relations with Mrs. Touchett had\nundergone a perceptible change. Isabel's aunt had told her, without\ncircumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and Madame\nMerle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no one\nworth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less,\nfor several years with Mrs. Touchett and showing no symptom of\nirritation--Madame Merle now took a very high tone and declared that\nthis was an accusation from which she couldn't stoop to defend herself.\nShe added, however (without stooping), that her behaviour had been only\ntoo simple, that she had believed only what she saw, that she saw Isabel\nwas not eager to marry and Osmond not eager to please (his repeated\nvisits had been nothing; he was boring himself to death on his hill-top\nand he came merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to\nherself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectually thrown\ndust in her companion's eyes. Madame Merle accepted the event--she was\nunprepared to think of it as a scandal; but that she had played any part\nin it, double or single, was an imputation against which she proudly\nprotested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Touchett's attitude,\nand of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many charming\nseasons, that Madame Merle had, after this, chosen to pass many months\nin England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had\ndone her a wrong; there are some things that can't be forgiven. But\nMadame Merle suffered in silence; there was always something exquisite\nin her dignity.\n\nRalph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged in\nthis pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to put the\ngirl on her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost the\ngame. He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would\nalways wear a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight in\nher union, so that later, when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom should\nfall out of it, she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he\nhad been a goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in\norder to know Isabel's real situation. At present, however, she neither\ntaunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was\njustified; if she wore a mask it completely covered her face. There was\nsomething fixed and mechanical in the serenity painted on it; this was\nnot an expression, Ralph said--it was a representation, it was even an\nadvertisement. She had lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a\nsorrow she scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she\ncould say to Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurred\nsix months before and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning.\nShe appeared to be leading the life of the world; Ralph heard her spoken\nof as having a \"charming position.\" He observed that she produced the\nimpression of being peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, among\nmany people, to be a privilege even to know her. Her house was not open\nto every one, and she had an evening in the week to which people\nwere not invited as a matter of course. She lived with a certain\nmagnificence, but you needed to be a member of her circle to perceive\nit; for there was nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing even\nto admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in\nall this, recognised the hand of the master; for he knew that Isabel had\nno faculty for producing studied impressions. She struck him as having\na great love of movement, of gaiety, of late hours, of long rides, of\nfatigue; an eagerness to be entertained, to be interested, even to be\nbored, to make acquaintances, to see people who were talked about, to\nexplore the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into relation with certain\nof the mustiest relics of its old society. In all this there was\nmuch less discrimination than in that desire for comprehensiveness of\ndevelopment on which he had been used to exercise his wit. There was\na kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in some of her\nexperiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that she even\nspoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her marriage.\nCertainly she had fallen into exaggerations--she who used to care so\nmuch for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great delight\nin good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never looked\nso charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received a\ncrushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), she\nappeared now to think there was nothing worth people's either differing\nabout or agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was\nindifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity was\ngreater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she had\ngained no great maturity of aspect; yet there was an amplitude and a\nbrilliancy in her personal arrangements that gave a touch of insolence\nto her beauty. Poor human-hearted Isabel, what perversity had bitten\nher? Her light step drew a mass of drapery behind it; her intelligent\nhead sustained a majesty of ornament. The free, keen girl had become\nquite another person; what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed to\nrepresent something. What did Isabel represent? Ralph asked himself;\nand he could only answer by saying that she represented Gilbert Osmond.\n\"Good heavens, what a function!\" he then woefully exclaimed. He was lost\nin wonder at the mystery of things.\n\nHe recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every turn. He\nsaw how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, regulated,\nanimated their manner of life. Osmond was in his element; at last he had\nmaterial to work with. He always had an eye to effect, and his effects\nwere deeply calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the\nmotive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior\nwith a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense\nof exclusion, to make people believe his house was different from every\nother, to impart to the face that he presented to the world a cold\noriginality--this was the ingenious effort of the personage to whom\nIsabel had attributed a superior morality. \"He works with superior\nmaterial,\" Ralph said to himself; \"it's rich abundance compared with his\nformer resources.\" Ralph was a clever man; but Ralph had never--to his\nown sense--been so clever as when he observed, in petto, that under the\nguise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for\nthe world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was\nits very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only\nmeasure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night,\nand the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything\nhe did was pose--pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the\nlookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived\nso much in the land of consideration. His tastes, his studies, his\naccomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life on\nhis hill-top at Florence had been the conscious attitude of years. His\nsolitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, his\nbad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly present\nto him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was\nnot to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world's\ncuriosity and then declining to satisfy it. It had made him feel great,\never, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most\ndirectly to please himself was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this\ncase indeed the gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel,\nwho had been mystified to the top of her bent. Ralph of course found\na fitness in being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he had\nsuffered for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this little\nsketch of its articles for what they may at the time have been worth.\nIt was certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to his\ntheory--even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at this\nperiod the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard him not in\nthe least as an enemy.\n\nFor Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that he\nhad the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all.\nHe was Isabel's cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill--it was on\nthis basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper enquiries,\nasked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winter\nclimates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on\nthe few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary;\nbut his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in\nthe presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had had, toward\nthe end, a sharp inward vision of Osmond's making it of small ease to\nhis wife that she should continue to receive Mr. Touchett. He was not\njealous--he had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But\nhe made Isabel pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was\nstill left; and as Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, so when his\nsuspicion had become sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so he\nhad deprived Isabel of a very interesting occupation: she had been\nconstantly wondering what fine principle was keeping him alive. She had\ndecided that it was his love of conversation; his conversation had been\nbetter than ever. He had given up walking; he was no longer a humorous\nstroller. He sat all day in a chair--almost any chair would serve, and\nwas so dependent on what you would do for him that, had not his talk\nbeen highly contemplative, you might have thought he was blind. The\nreader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know, and\nthe reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What kept\nRalph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough of\nthe person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was not yet\nsatisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't make up his mind to lose\nthat. He wanted to see what she would make of her husband--or what her\nhusband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and\nhe was determined to sit out the performance. His determination had held\ngood; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time of\nhis return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such an\nair of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more\naccessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange,\nunremunerative--and unremunerated--son of hers than she had ever been\nbefore, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant\nland. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal\nof the same emotion--the excitement of wondering in what state she\nshould find him--that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after Lord\nWarburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.\n\nShe spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. Gilbert\nOsmond called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage for\nhim Ralph came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed,\nat the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought\nafter all he wouldn't go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together\nafter a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had\nleft the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar,\nwhich he instantly removed from his lips.\n\n\"Won't go to Sicily? Where then will you go?\"\n\n\"Well, I guess I won't go anywhere,\" said Ralph, from the sofa, all\nshamelessly.\n\n\"Do you mean you'll return to England?\"\n\n\"Oh dear no; I'll stay in Rome.\"\n\n\"Rome won't do for you. Rome's not warm enough.\"\n\n\"It will have to do. I'll make it do. See how well I've been.\"\n\nLord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if trying\nto see it. \"You've been better than you were on the journey, certainly.\nI wonder how you lived through that. But I don't understand your\ncondition. I recommend you to try Sicily.\"\n\n\"I can't try,\" said poor Ralph. \"I've done trying. I can't move further.\nI can't face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I\ndon't want to die on the Sicilian plains--to be snatched away, like\nProserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades.\"\n\n\"What the deuce then did you come for?\" his lordship enquired.\n\n\"Because the idea took me. I see it won't do. It really doesn't\nmatter where I am now. I've exhausted all remedies, I've swallowed\nall climates. As I'm here I'll stay. I haven't a single cousin in\nSicily--much less a married one.\"\n\n\"Your cousin's certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?\"\n\n\"I haven't asked him, and I don't care a fig. If I die here Mrs. Osmond\nwill bury me. But I shall not die here.\"\n\n\"I hope not.\" Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively. \"Well,\nI must say,\" he resumed, \"for myself I'm very glad you don't insist on\nSicily. I had a horror of that journey.\"\n\n\"Ah, but for you it needn't have mattered. I had no idea of dragging you\nin my train.\"\n\n\"I certainly didn't mean to let you go alone.\"\n\n\"My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than this,\"\nRalph cried.\n\n\"I should have gone with you and seen you settled,\" said Lord Warburton.\n\n\"You're a very good Christian. You're a very kind man.\"\n\n\"Then I should have come back here.\"\n\n\"And then you'd have gone to England.\"\n\n\"No, no; I should have stayed.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Ralph, \"if that's what we are both up to, I don't see where\nSicily comes in!\"\n\nHis companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, looking\nup, \"I say, tell me this,\" he broke out; \"did you really mean to go to\nSicily when we started?\"\n\n\"Ah, vous m'en demandez trop! Let me put a question first. Did you come\nwith me quite--platonically?\"\n\n\"I don't know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad.\"\n\n\"I suspect we've each been playing our little game.\"\n\n\"Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here\na while.\"\n\n\"Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign\nAffairs.\"\n\n\"I've seen him three times. He's very amusing.\"\n\n\"I think you've forgotten what you came for,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Perhaps I have,\" his companion answered rather gravely.\n\nThese two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by the\nabsence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Rome\nwithout an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each.\nThere was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its\nrecognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival\nin Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the same\nhalf-diffident, half-confident silence.\n\n\"I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same,\" Lord\nWarburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.\n\n\"The doctor's consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can help\nit.\"\n\n\"What then does Mrs. Osmond think?\" Ralph's friend demanded. \"I've not\ntold her. She'll probably say that Rome's too cold and even offer to go\nwith me to Catania. She's capable of that.\"\n\n\"In your place I should like it.\"\n\n\"Her husband won't like it.\"\n\n\"Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you're not bound to\nmind his likings. They're his affair.\"\n\n\"I don't want to make any more trouble between them,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Is there so much already?\"\n\n\"There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make\nthe explosion. Osmond isn't fond of his wife's cousin.\"\n\n\"Then of course he'd make a row. But won't he make a row if you stop\nhere?\"\n\n\"That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and\nthen I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it's my duty to stop\nand defend her.\"\n\n\"My dear Touchett, your defensive powers--!\" Lord Warburton began with\na smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him.\n\"Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question,\" he\nobserved instead.\n\nRalph for a short time answered nothing. \"It's true that my defensive\npowers are small,\" he returned at last; \"but as my aggressive ones are\nstill smaller Osmond may after all not think me worth his gunpowder. At\nany rate,\" he added, \"there are things I'm curious to see.\"\n\n\"You're sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?\"\n\n\"I'm not much interested in my health, and I'm deeply interested in Mrs.\nOsmond.\"\n\n\"So am I. But not as I once was,\" Lord Warburton added quickly. This was\none of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.\n\n\"Does she strike you as very happy?\" Ralph enquired, emboldened by this\nconfidence.\n\n\"Well, I don't know; I've hardly thought. She told me the other night\nshe was happy.\"\n\n\"Ah, she told YOU, of course,\" Ralph exclaimed, smiling.\n\n\"I don't know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she\nmight have complained to.\"\n\n\"Complained? She'll never complain. She has done it--what she HAS\ndone--and she knows it. She'll complain to you least of all. She's very\ncareful.\"\n\n\"She needn't be. I don't mean to make love to her again.\"\n\n\"I'm delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of YOUR duty.\"\n\n\"Ah no,\" said Lord Warburton gravely; \"none!\"\n\n\"Permit me to ask,\" Ralph went on, \"whether it's to bring out the fact\nthat you don't mean to make love to her that you're so very civil to the\nlittle girl?\"\n\nLord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire,\nlooking at it hard. \"Does that strike you as very ridiculous?\"\n\n\"Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her.\"\n\n\"I think her a delightful little person. I don't know when a girl of\nthat age has pleased me more.\"\n\n\"She's a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine.\"\n\n\"Of course there's the difference in our ages--more than twenty years.\"\n\n\"My dear Warburton,\" said Ralph, \"are you serious?\"\n\n\"Perfectly serious--as far as I've got.\"\n\n\"I'm very glad. And, heaven help us,\" cried Ralph, \"how cheered-up old\nOsmond will be!\"\n\nHis companion frowned. \"I say, don't spoil it. I shouldn't propose for\nhis daughter to please HIM.\"\n\n\"He'll have the perversity to be pleased all the same.\"\n\n\"He's not so fond of me as that,\" said his lordship.\n\n\"As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is that\npeople needn't be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you.\nNow, with me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that\nthey loved me.\"\n\nLord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general\naxioms--he was thinking of a special case. \"Do you judge she'll be\npleased?\"\n\n\"The girl herself? Delighted, surely.\"\n\n\"No, no; I mean Mrs. Osmond.\"\n\nRalph looked at him a moment. \"My dear fellow, what has she to do with\nit?\"\n\n\"Whatever she chooses. She's very fond of Pansy.\"\n\n\"Very true--very true.\" And Ralph slowly got up. \"It's an interesting\nquestion--how far her fondness for Pansy will carry her.\" He stood there\na moment with his hands in his pockets and rather a clouded brow. \"I\nhope, you know, that you're very--very sure. The deuce!\" he broke off.\n\"I don't know how to say it.\"\n\n\"Yes, you do; you know how to say everything.\"\n\n\"Well, it's awkward. I hope you're sure that among Miss Osmond's merits\nher being--a--so near her stepmother isn't a leading one?\"\n\n\"Good heavens, Touchett!\" cried Lord Warburton angrily, \"for what do you\ntake me?\"\n\n\n\n\n\nIsabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage, this lady\nhaving indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time she had\nspent six months in England; at another she had passed a portion of a\nwinter in Paris. She had made numerous visits to distant friends and\ngave countenance to the idea that for the future she should be a less\ninveterate Roman than in the past. As she had been inveterate in the\npast only in the sense of constantly having an apartment in one of\nthe sunniest niches of the Pincian--an apartment which often stood\nempty--this suggested a prospect of almost constant absence; a\ndanger which Isabel at one period had been much inclined to deplore.\nFamiliarity had modified in some degree her first impression of Madame\nMerle, but it had not essentially altered it; there was still much\nwonder of admiration in it. That personage was armed at all points; it\nwas a pleasure to see a character so completely equipped for the social\nbattle. She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished\nsteel, and she used them with a skill which struck Isabel as more\nand more that of a veteran. She was never weary, never overcome with\ndisgust; she never appeared to need rest or consolation. She had her own\nideas; she had of old exposed a great many of them to Isabel, who\nknew also that under an appearance of extreme self-control her\nhighly-cultivated friend concealed a rich sensibility. But her will was\nmistress of her life; there was something gallant in the way she kept\ngoing. It was as if she had learned the secret of it--as if the art of\nlife were some clever trick she had guessed. Isabel, as she herself grew\nolder, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days\nwhen the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness\nwhat it was that she was pretending to live for. Her old habit had\nbeen to live by enthusiasm, to fall in love with suddenly-perceived\npossibilities, with the idea of some new adventure. As a younger person\nshe had been used to proceed from one little exaltation to the other:\nthere were scarcely any dull places between. But Madame Merle had\nsuppressed enthusiasm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing; she\nlived entirely by reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel\nwould have given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant\nfriend had been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had\nbecome aware more than before of the advantage of being like that--of\nhaving made one's self a firm surface, a sort of corselet of silver.\n\nBut, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately renewed\nacquaintance with our heroine that the personage in question made again\na continuous stay in Rome. Isabel now saw more of her than she had done\nsince her marriage; but by this time Isabel's needs and inclinations\nhad considerably changed. It was not at present to Madame Merle that she\nwould have applied for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this\nlady's clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself,\nand if life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess herself\nbeaten. Madame Merle was doubtless of great use to herself and an\nornament to any circle; but was she--would she be--of use to others\nin periods of refined embarrassment? The best way to profit by her\nfriend--this indeed Isabel had always thought--was to imitate her, to be\nas firm and bright as she. She recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel,\nconsidering this fact, determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside\nher own. It seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which\nhad virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was\nalmost detached--pushing to the extreme a certain rather artificial fear\nof being indiscreet. Ralph Touchett, we know, had been of the opinion\nthat she was prone to exaggeration, to forcing the note--was apt, in the\nvulgar phrase, to overdo it. Isabel had never admitted this charge--had\nnever indeed quite understood it; Madame Merle's conduct, to her\nperception, always bore the stamp of good taste, was always \"quiet.\"\nBut in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the\nOsmond family it at last occurred to our young woman that she overdid a\nlittle. That of course was not the best taste; that was rather violent.\nShe remembered too much that Isabel was married; that she had now other\ninterests; that though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and\nhis little Pansy very well, better almost than any one, she was not\nafter all of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she never spoke of\ntheir affairs till she was asked, even pressed--as when her opinion was\nwanted; she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid\nas we know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Isabel.\n\n\"I MUST be on my guard,\" she said; \"I might so easily, without\nsuspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, even if my\nintention should have been of the purest. I must not forget that I knew\nyour husband long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you\nwere a silly woman you might be jealous. You're not a silly woman; I\nknow that perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I'm determined not\nto get into trouble. A little harm's very soon done; a mistake's made\nbefore one knows it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your\nhusband I had ten years to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn't\nlikely I shall begin to-day, when I'm so much less attractive than I\nwas. But if I were to annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn't\nbelong to me, you wouldn't make that reflection; you'd simply say I\nwas forgetting certain differences. I'm determined not to forget them.\nCertainly a good friend isn't always thinking of that; one doesn't\nsuspect one's friends of injustice. I don't suspect you, my dear, in\nthe least; but I suspect human nature. Don't think I make myself\nuncomfortable; I'm not always watching myself. I think I sufficiently\nprove it in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, however,\nthat if you were to be jealous--that's the form it would take--I should\nbe sure to think it was a little my fault. It certainly wouldn't be your\nhusband's.\"\n\nIsabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett's theory that\nMadame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond's marriage. We know how she had\nat first received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond's\nmarriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer's. That was the\nwork of--Isabel scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of\nthe eternal mystery of things. It was true her aunt's complaint had\nbeen not so much of Madame Merle's activity as of her duplicity: she had\nbrought about the strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such\nguilt would not have been great, to Isabel's mind; she couldn't make\na crime of Madame Merle's having been the producing cause of the most\nimportant friendship she had ever formed. This had occurred to her just\nbefore her marriage, after her little discussion with her aunt and at a\ntime when she was still capable of that large inward reference, the\ntone almost of the philosophic historian, to her scant young annals. If\nMadame Merle had desired her change of state she could only say it had\nbeen a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly\nstraightforward; she had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert\nOsmond. After their union Isabel discovered that her husband took a less\nconvenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in talk,\nthis roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary. \"Don't you like\nMadame Merle?\" Isabel had once said to him. \"She thinks a great deal of\nyou.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you once for all,\" Osmond had answered. \"I liked her once\nbetter than I do to-day. I'm tired of her, and I'm rather ashamed of it.\nShe's so almost unnaturally good! I'm glad she's not in Italy; it makes\nfor relaxation--for a sort of moral detente. Don't talk of her too much;\nit seems to bring her back. She'll come back in plenty of time.\"\n\nMadame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late--too late,\nI mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But meantime,\nif, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel's feelings were\nalso not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation was as\nacute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind,\nwhatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as\nthick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle's having had a\nhand in Gilbert Osmond's marriage ceased to be one of her titles to\nconsideration; it might have been written, after all, that there was not\nso much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less, and\nIsabel once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would\nnot have been. That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an\nimmediate horror at having made it. \"Whatever happens to me let me not\nbe unjust,\" she said; \"let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them\nupon others!\" This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious\napology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make\nand of which I have given a sketch; for there was something\nirritating--there was almost an air of mockery--in her neat\ndiscriminations and clear convictions. In Isabel's mind to-day there\nwas nothing clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of\nfears. She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had\njust made the statements I have quoted: Madame Merle knew so little\nwhat she was thinking of! She was herself moreover so unable to\nexplain. Jealous of her--jealous of her with Gilbert? The idea just then\nsuggested no near reality. She almost wished jealousy had been possible;\nit would have made in a manner for refreshment. Wasn't it in a manner\none of the symptoms of happiness? Madame Merle, however, was wise, so\nwise that she might have been pretending to know Isabel better than\nIsabel knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in\nresolutions--any of them of an elevated character; but at no period had\nthey flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more richly than to-day.\nIt is true that they all had a family likeness; they might have been\nsummed up in the determination that if she was to be unhappy it should\nnot be by a fault of her own. Her poor winged spirit had always had\na great desire to do its best, and it had not as yet been seriously\ndiscouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice--not to\npay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Merle with its\ndisappointment would be a petty revenge--especially as the pleasure to\nbe derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed\nher sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was\nimpossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever\na girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a\nfree agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within herself.\nThere had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered and\nchosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way to\nrepair it--just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it.\nOne folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second\none would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a\ncertain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been\nright, for all that, in taking her precautions.\n\nOne day about a month after Ralph Touchett's arrival in Rome Isabel\ncame back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general\ndetermination to be just that she was at present very thankful for\nPansy--it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure\nand weak. Pansy was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her\nlife that had the rightness of the young creature's attachment or\nthe sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft\npresence--like a small hand in her own; on Pansy's part it was more than\nan affection--it was a kind of ardent coercive faith. On her own side\nher sense of the girl's dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated\nas a definite reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said\nto herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we\nmust look for it as much as possible. Pansy's sympathy was a direct\nadmonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not eminent\nperhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for what Isabel could\nhardly have said; in general, to be more for the child than the child\nwas able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, to\nremember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she\nnow perceived that Pansy's ambiguities were simply her own grossness of\nvision. She had been unable to believe any one could care so much--so\nextraordinarily much--to please. But since then she had seen this\ndelicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It\nwas the whole creature--it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to\ninterfere with it, and though she was constantly extending her conquests\nshe took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs.\nOsmond was rarely seen without her stepdaughter. Isabel liked her\ncompany; it had the effect of one's carrying a nosegay composed all\nof the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under any\nprovocation to neglect her--this she had made an article of religion.\nThe young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel's society\nthan in that of any one save her father,--whom she admired with an\nintensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite\npleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously mild. Isabel\nknew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the means of\npleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her was\nnegative, and consisted in not giving her trouble--a conviction which\ncertainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She\nwas therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she\nwas careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to\nIsabel's propositions and which might have implied that she could have\nthought otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions,\nand though she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale\nwhen it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked\ntoward it wistfully--an attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes\nthe prettiest in the world. When during the second winter at Palazzo\nRoccanera she began to go to parties, to dances, she always, at a\nreasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond should be tired, was the first to\npropose departure. Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances,\nfor she knew her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this\nexercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy.\nSociety, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome\nparts--the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at\nthe door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this\nvehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative\nposture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been taken\nto drive for the first time.\n\nOn the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of\nthe city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await\nthem by the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the\nCampagna, which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate\nflowers. This was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a\nwalk and had a swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her\nfirst coming to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved\nbest, but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with\na shorter undulation beside her father's wife, who afterwards, on their\nreturn to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit\nof the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of\nflowers in a sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching\nPalazzo Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into\nwater. Isabel passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually\noccupied, the second in order from the large ante-chamber which was\nentered from the staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond's rich\ndevices had not been able to correct a look of rather grand nudity. Just\nbeyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped short, the\nreason for her doing so being that she had received an impression. The\nimpression had, in strictness, nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as\nsomething new, and the soundlessness of her step gave her time to take\nin the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her\nbonnet, and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute they were\nunaware she had come in. Isabel had often seen that before, certainly;\nbut what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was that their\ncolloquy had for the moment converted itself into a sort of familiar\nsilence, from which she instantly perceived that her entrance would\nstartle them. Madame Merle was standing on the rug, a little way from\nthe fire; Osmond was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her.\nHer head was erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck\nIsabel first was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was\nan anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they had\narrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing,\nface to face, with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange\nideas without uttering them. There was nothing to shock in this; they\nwere old friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only a\nmoment, like a sudden flicker of light. Their relative positions, their\nabsorbed mutual gaze, struck her as something detected. But it was all\nover by the time she had fairly seen it. Madame Merle had seen her and\nhad welcomed her without moving; her husband, on the other hand, had\ninstantly jumped up. He presently murmured something about wanting a\nwalk and, after having asked their visitor to excuse him, left the room.\n\n\"I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn't I\nwaited for you,\" Madame Merle said.\n\n\"Didn't he ask you to sit down?\" Isabel asked with a smile.\n\nMadame Merle looked about her. \"Ah, it's very true; I was going away.\"\n\n\"You must stay now.\"\n\n\"Certainly. I came for a reason; I've something on my mind.\"\n\n\"I've told you that before,\" Isabel said--\"that it takes something\nextraordinary to bring you to this house.\"\n\n\"And you know what I've told YOU; that whether I come or whether I stay\naway, I've always the same motive--the affection I bear you.\"\n\n\"Yes, you've told me that.\"\n\n\"You look just now as if you didn't believe it,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"Ah,\" Isabel answered, \"the profundity of your motives, that's the last\nthing I doubt!\"\n\n\"You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words.\"\n\nIsabel shook her head gravely. \"I know you've always been kind to me.\"\n\n\"As often as you would let me. You don't always take it; then one has\nto let you alone. It's not to do you a kindness, however, that I've come\nto-day; it's quite another affair. I've come to get rid of a trouble of\nmy own--to make it over to you. I've been talking to your husband about\nit.\"\n\n\"I'm surprised at that; he doesn't like troubles.\"\n\n\"Especially other people's; I know very well. But neither do you, I\nsuppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It's\nabout poor Mr. Rosier.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel reflectively, \"it's his trouble then, not yours.\"\n\n\"He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a\nweek, to talk about Pansy.\"\n\n\"Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it.\"\n\nMadame Merle hesitated. \"I gathered from your husband that perhaps you\ndidn't.\"\n\n\"How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the\nmatter.\"\n\n\"It's probably because he doesn't know how to speak of it.\"\n\n\"It's nevertheless the sort of question in which he's rarely at fault.\"\n\n\"Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think.\nTo-day he doesn't.\"\n\n\"Haven't you been telling him?\" Isabel asked.\n\nMadame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. \"Do you know you're a\nlittle dry?\"\n\n\"Yes; I can't help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me.\"\n\n\"In that there's some reason. You're so near the child.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel, \"for all the comfort I've given him! If you think me\ndry, I wonder what HE thinks.\"\n\n\"I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.\"\n\n\"I can do nothing.\"\n\n\"You can do more at least than I. I don't know what mysterious\nconnection he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he came to\nme from the first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps\ncoming back, to spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his\nfeelings.\"\n\n\"He's very much in love,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Very much--for him.\"\n\n\"Very much for Pansy, you might say as well.\"\n\nMadame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. \"Don't you think she's\nattractive?\"\n\n\"The dearest little person possible--but very limited.\"\n\n\"She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr. Rosier's not\nunlimited.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Isabel, \"he has about the extent of one's\npocket-handkerchief--the small ones with lace borders.\" Her humour had\nlately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed\nof exercising it on so innocent an object as Pansy's suitor. \"He's very\nkind, very honest,\" she presently added; \"and he's not such a fool as he\nseems.\"\n\n\"He assures me that she delights in him,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"I don't know; I've not asked her.\"\n\n\"You've never sounded her a little?\"\n\n\"It's not my place; it's her father's.\"\n\n\"Ah, you're too literal!\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"I must judge for myself.\"\n\nMadame Merle gave her smile again. \"It isn't easy to help you.\"\n\n\"To help me?\" said Isabel very seriously. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"It's easy to displease you. Don't you see how wise I am to be careful?\nI notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of\nthe love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier. Je n'y peux rien,\nmoi! I can't talk to Pansy about him. Especially,\" added Madame Merle,\n\"as I don't think him a paragon of husbands.\"\n\nIsabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, \"You don't wash\nyour hands then!\" she said. After which again she added in another tone:\n\"You can't--you're too much interested.\"\n\nMadame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the\nintimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before.\nOnly this time the latter saw nothing. \"Ask him the next time, and\nyou'll see.\"\n\n\"I can't ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let\nhim know that he's not welcome.\"\n\n\"Ah yes,\" said Madame Merle, \"I forgot that--though it's the burden of\nhis lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All the same,\" she\nwent on, \"Osmond doesn't dislike him so much as he thinks.\" She had got\nup as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her,\nand had evidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the\npoint she had in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not\nopening the way.\n\n\"That must have pleased him, if you've told him,\" she answered, smiling.\n\n\"Certainly I've told him; as far as that goes I've encouraged him. I've\npreached patience, have said that his case isn't desperate if he'll only\nhold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his\nhead to be jealous.\"\n\n\"Jealous?\"\n\n\"Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here.\"\n\nIsabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose.\n\"Ah!\" she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame\nMerle observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the\nmantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.\n\n\"Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there's nothing impossible in Lord\nWarburton's falling in love with Pansy,\" Madame Merle went on. Isabel\nwas silent a little; she turned away from the glass. \"It's true--there's\nnothing impossible,\" she returned at last, gravely and more gently.\n\n\"So I've had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks.\"\n\n\"That I don't know.\"\n\n\"Ask him and you'll see.\"\n\n\"I shall not ask him,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course,\" Madame Merle\nadded, \"you've had infinitely more observation of Lord Warburton's\nbehaviour than I.\"\n\n\"I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you that he likes my stepdaughter\nvery much.\"\n\nMadame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. \"Likes her, you mean--as\nMr. Rosier means?\"\n\n\"I don't know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know\nthat he's charmed with Pansy.\"\n\n\"And you've never told Osmond?\" This observation was immediate,\nprecipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle's lips.\n\nIsabel's eyes rested on her. \"I suppose he'll know in time; Lord\nWarburton has a tongue and knows how to express himself.\"\n\nMadame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly\nthan usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave\nthe treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been\nthinking it over a little: \"That would be better than marrying poor Mr.\nRosier.\"\n\n\"Much better, I think.\"\n\n\"It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It's really\nvery kind of him.\"\n\n\"Very kind of him?\"\n\n\"To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.\"\n\n\"I don't see that.\"\n\n\"It's very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond--\"\n\n\"After all, Pansy Osmond's the most attractive person he has ever\nknown!\" Isabel exclaimed.\n\nMadame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. \"Ah, a moment\nago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her.\"\n\n\"I said she was limited. And so she is. And so's Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"So are we all, if you come to that. If it's no more than Pansy\ndeserves, all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr. Rosier\nI won't admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse.\"\n\n\"Mr. Rosier's a nuisance!\" Isabel cried abruptly.\n\n\"I quite agree with you, and I'm delighted to know that I'm not expected\nto feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be\nclosed to him.\" And gathering her mantle together Madame Merle prepared\nto depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an\ninconsequent request from Isabel.\n\n\"All the same, you know, be kind to him.\"\n\nShe lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend.\n\"I don't understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan't be kind to\nhim, for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord\nWarburton.\"\n\n\"You had better wait till he asks her.\"\n\n\"If what you say's true, he'll ask her. Especially,\" said Madame Merle\nin a moment, \"if you make him.\"\n\n\"If I make him?\"\n\n\"It's quite in your power. You've great influence with him.\"\n\nIsabel frowned a little. \"Where did you learn that?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you--never!\" said Madame Merle, smiling.\n\n\"I certainly never told you anything of the sort.\"\n\n\"You MIGHT have done so--so far as opportunity went--when we were by\nway of being confidential with each other. But you really told me very\nlittle; I've often thought so since.\"\n\nIsabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction.\nBut she didn't admit it now--perhaps because she wished not to appear to\nexult in it. \"You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,\"\nshe simply returned.\n\n\"She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord\nWarburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject.\nOf course I think you've done better in doing as you did. But if you\nwouldn't marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of\nhelping him to marry some one else.\"\n\nIsabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting\nthe bright expressiveness of Madame Merle's. But in a moment she said,\nreasonably and gently enough: \"I should be very glad indeed if, as\nregards Pansy, it could be arranged.\" Upon which her companion, who\nseemed to regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more\ntenderly than might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.\n\n\n\n\n\nOsmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming\nvery late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had\nspent the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had\nbeen sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged\nhis books and which he called his study. At ten o'clock Lord Warburton\nhad come in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to\nbe at home; he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour.\nIsabel, after asking him for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on\npurpose; she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to\nread; she even went after a little to the piano; she asked herself if\nshe mightn't leave the room. She had come little by little to think\nwell of the idea of Pansy's becoming the wife of the master of beautiful\nLockleigh, though at first it had not presented itself in a manner to\nexcite her enthusiasm. Madame Merle, that afternoon, had applied the\nmatch to an accumulation of inflammable material. When Isabel was\nunhappy she always looked about her--partly from impulse and partly by\ntheory--for some form of positive exertion. She could never rid herself\nof the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease--of suffering as\nopposed to doing. To \"do\"--it hardly mattered what--would therefore\nbe an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides, she wished to\nconvince herself that she had done everything possible to content her\nhusband; she was determined not to be haunted by visions of his wife's\nlimpness under appeal. It would please him greatly to see Pansy married\nto an English nobleman, and justly please him, since this nobleman was\nso sound a character. It seemed to Isabel that if she could make it her\nduty to bring about such an event she should play the part of a good\nwife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able to believe sincerely,\nand with proof of it, that she had been that. Then such an undertaking\nhad other recommendations. It would occupy her, and she desired\noccupation. It would even amuse her, and if she could really amuse\nherself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to\nLord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming\ngirl. It was a little \"weird\" he should--being what he was; but there\nwas no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any\none--any one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her\ntoo small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was\nalways a little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been\nlooking for. Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They\nlooked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only when\nthey saw it. No theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was more\nunaccountable or more natural than anything else. If he had cared for\nHER it might seem odd he should care for Pansy, who was so different;\nbut he had not cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had,\nhe had completely got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair\nhad failed, he should think something of quite another sort might\nsucceed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at first to Isabel, but\nit came to-day and made her feel almost happy. It was astonishing what\nhappiness she could still find in the idea of procuring a pleasure for\nher husband. It was a pity, however, that Edward Rosier had crossed\ntheir path!\n\nAt this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that path\nlost something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortunately as sure that\nPansy thought Mr. Rosier the nicest of all the young men--as sure as if\nshe had held an interview with her on the subject. It was very tiresome\nshe should be so sure, when she had carefully abstained from informing\nherself; almost as tiresome as that poor Mr. Rosier should have taken it\ninto his own head. He was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. It\nwas not the difference in fortune so much as the difference in the men;\nthe young American was really so light a weight. He was much more of\nthe type of the useless fine gentleman than the English nobleman. It\nwas true that there was no particular reason why Pansy should marry a\nstatesman; still, if a statesman admired her, that was his affair, and\nshe would make a perfect little pearl of a peeress.\n\nIt may seem to the reader that Mrs. Osmond had grown of a sudden\nstrangely cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this\ndifficulty could probably be arranged. An impediment that was embodied\nin poor Rosier could not anyhow present itself as a dangerous one; there\nwere always means of levelling secondary obstacles. Isabel was perfectly\naware that she had not taken the measure of Pansy's tenacity, which\nmight prove to be inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her\nas rather letting go, under suggestion, than as clutching under\ndeprecation--since she had certainly the faculty of assent developed in\na very much higher degree than that of protest. She would cling, yes,\nshe would cling; but it really mattered to her very little what she\nclung to. Lord Warburton would do as well as Mr. Rosier--especially as\nshe seemed quite to like him; she had expressed this sentiment to Isabel\nwithout a single reservation; she had said she thought his conversation\nmost interesting--he had told her all about India. His manner to Pansy\nhad been of the rightest and easiest--Isabel noticed that for herself,\nas she also observed that he talked to her not in the least in a\npatronising way, reminding himself of her youth and simplicity, but\nquite as if she understood his subjects with that sufficiency with which\nshe followed those of the fashionable operas. This went far enough\nfor attention to the music and the barytone. He was careful only to be\nkind--he was as kind as he had been to another fluttered young chit at\nGardencourt. A girl might well be touched by that; she remembered how\nshe herself had been touched, and said to herself that if she had been\nas simple as Pansy the impression would have been deeper still. She\nhad not been simple when she refused him; that operation had been\nas complicated as, later, her acceptance of Osmond had been. Pansy,\nhowever, in spite of HER simplicity, really did understand, and was\nglad that Lord Warburton should talk to her, not about her partners and\nbouquets, but about the state of Italy, the condition of the peasantry,\nthe famous grist-tax, the pellagra, his impressions of Roman society.\nShe looked at him, as she drew her needle through her tapestry, with\nsweet submissive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave little quiet\noblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his clothes, as if\nshe were considering him. Even his person, Isabel might have reminded\nher, was better than Mr. Rosier's. But Isabel contented herself at such\nmoments with wondering where this gentleman was; he came no more at all\nto Palazzo Roccanera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold it had taken\nof her--the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.\n\nIt was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall presently touch\nupon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord Warburton sat there, she had\nbeen on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and\nleaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in\nthis light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was\ntrying as much as possible to take her husband's view. She succeeded\nafter a fashion, but she fell short of the point I mention. After all\nshe couldn't rise to it; something held her and made this impossible.\nIt was not exactly that it would be base or insidious; for women as a\ngeneral thing practise such manoeuvres with a perfectly good conscience,\nand Isabel was instinctively much more true than false to the common\ngenius of her sex. There was a vague doubt that interposed--a sense that\nshe was not quite sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, and after a\nwhile Lord Warburton went off to his party, of which he promised to give\nPansy a full account on the morrow. After he had gone she wondered\nif she had prevented something which would have happened if she\nhad absented herself for a quarter of an hour; and then she\npronounced--always mentally--that when their distinguished visitor\nshould wish her to go away he would easily find means to let her know\nit. Pansy said nothing whatever about him after he had gone, and Isabel\nstudiously said nothing, as she had taken a vow of reserve until after\nhe should have declared himself. He was a little longer in coming to\nthis than might seem to accord with the description he had given Isabel\nof his feelings. Pansy went to bed, and Isabel had to admit that\nshe could not now guess what her stepdaughter was thinking of. Her\ntransparent little companion was for the moment not to be seen through.\n\nShe remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of half an\nhour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in silence and\nthen sat down; he looked at the fire like herself. But she now had\ntransferred her eyes from the flickering flame in the chimney to\nOsmond's face, and she watched him while he kept his silence. Covert\nobservation had become a habit with her; an instinct, of which it is not\nan exaggeration to say that it was allied to that of self-defence, had\nmade it habitual. She wished as much as possible to know his thoughts,\nto know what he would say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her\nanswer. Preparing answers had not been her strong point of old; she had\nrarely in this respect got further than thinking afterwards of clever\nthings she might have said. But she had learned caution--learned it in\na measure from her husband's very countenance. It was the same face she\nhad looked into with eyes equally earnest perhaps, but less penetrating,\non the terrace of a Florentine villa; except that Osmond had grown\nslightly stouter since his marriage. He still, however, might strike one\nas very distinguished.\n\n\"Has Lord Warburton been here?\" he presently asked.\n\n\"Yes, he stayed half an hour.\"\n\n\"Did he see Pansy?\"\n\n\"Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her.\"\n\n\"Did he talk with her much?\"\n\n\"He talked almost only to her.\"\n\n\"It seems to me he's attentive. Isn't that what you call it?\"\n\n\"I don't call it anything,\" said Isabel; \"I've waited for you to give it\na name.\"\n\n\"That's a consideration you don't always show,\" Osmond answered after a\nmoment.\n\n\"I've determined, this time, to try and act as you'd like. I've so often\nfailed of that.\"\n\nOsmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. \"Are you trying to\nquarrel with me?\"\n\n\"No, I'm trying to live at peace.\"\n\n\"Nothing's more easy; you know I don't quarrel myself.\"\n\n\"What do you call it when you try to make me angry?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"I don't try; if I've done so it has been the most natural thing in the\nworld. Moreover I'm not in the least trying now.\"\n\nIsabel smiled. \"It doesn't matter. I've determined never to be angry\nagain.\"\n\n\"That's an excellent resolve. Your temper isn't good.\"\n\n\"No--it's not good.\" She pushed away the book she had been reading and\ntook up the band of tapestry Pansy had left on the table.\n\n\"That's partly why I've not spoken to you about this business of my\ndaughter's,\" Osmond said, designating Pansy in the manner that was most\nfrequent with him. \"I was afraid I should encounter opposition--that you\ntoo would have views on the subject. I've sent little Rosier about his\nbusiness.\"\n\n\"You were afraid I'd plead for Mr. Rosier? Haven't you noticed that I've\nnever spoken to you of him?\"\n\n\"I've never given you a chance. We've so little conversation in these\ndays. I know he was an old friend of yours.\"\n\n\"Yes; he's an old friend of mine.\" Isabel cared little more for him than\nfor the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he\nwas an old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to\nextenuate such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which\nfortified her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they\nwere in themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion\nof tenderness for memories which had no other merit than that they\nbelonged to her unmarried life. \"But as regards Pansy,\" she added in a\nmoment, \"I've given him no encouragement.\"\n\n\"That's fortunate,\" Osmond observed.\n\n\"Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little.\"\n\n\"There's no use talking of him,\" Osmond said. \"As I tell you, I've\nturned him out.\"\n\n\"Yes; but a lover outside's always a lover. He's sometimes even more of\none. Mr. Rosier still has hope.\"\n\n\"He's welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit\nperfectly quiet to become Lady Warburton.\"\n\n\"Should you like that?\" Isabel asked with a simplicity which was not\nso affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume nothing, for\nOsmond had a way of unexpectedly turning her assumptions against her.\nThe intensity with which he would like his daughter to become Lady\nWarburton had been the very basis of her own recent reflections. But\nthat was for herself; she would recognise nothing until Osmond should\nhave put it into words; she would not take for granted with him that\nhe thought Lord Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort that was\nunusual among the Osmonds. It was Gilbert's constant intimation that for\nhim nothing in life was a prize; that he treated as from equal to equal\nwith the most distinguished people in the world, and that his daughter\nhad only to look about her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore\na lapse from consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Lord\nWarburton and that if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might\nnot be found; with which moreover it was another of his customary\nimplications that he was never inconsistent. He would have liked his\nwife to glide over the point. But strangely enough, now that she\nwas face to face with him and although an hour before she had almost\ninvented a scheme for pleasing him, Isabel was not accommodating,\nwould not glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect on his mind of\nher question: it would operate as an humiliation. Never mind; he was\nterribly capable of humiliating her--all the more so that he was also\ncapable of waiting for great opportunities and of showing sometimes an\nalmost unaccountable indifference to small ones. Isabel perhaps took a\nsmall opportunity because she would not have availed herself of a great\none.\n\nOsmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. \"I should like it\nextremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord Warburton has\nanother advantage: he's an old friend of yours. It would be pleasant for\nhim to come into the family. It's very odd Pansy's admirers should all\nbe your old friends.\"\n\n\"It's natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see me they\nsee Pansy. Seeing her it's natural they should fall in love with her.\"\n\n\"So I think. But you're not bound to do so.\"\n\n\"If she should marry Lord Warburton I should be very glad,\" Isabel went\non frankly. \"He's an excellent man. You say, however, that she has only\nto sit perfectly still. Perhaps she won't sit perfectly still. If she\nloses Mr. Rosier she may jump up!\"\n\nOsmond appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the fire.\n\"Pansy would like to be a great lady,\" he remarked in a moment with a\ncertain tenderness of tone. \"She wishes above all to please,\" he added.\n\n\"To please Mr. Rosier, perhaps.\"\n\n\"No, to please me.\"\n\n\"Me too a little, I think,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she'll do what I like.\"\n\n\"If you're sure of that, it's very well,\" she went on.\n\n\"Meantime,\" said Osmond, \"I should like our distinguished visitor to\nspeak.\"\n\n\"He has spoken--to me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to\nhim to believe she could care for him.\"\n\nOsmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, \"Why\ndidn't you tell me that?\" he asked sharply.\n\n\"There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I've taken the first\nchance that has offered.\"\n\n\"Did you speak to him of Rosier?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, a little.\"\n\n\"That was hardly necessary.\"\n\n\"I thought it best he should know, so that, so that--\" And Isabel\npaused.\n\n\"So that what?\"\n\n\"So that he might act accordingly.\"\n\n\"So that he might back out, do you mean?\"\n\n\"No, so that he might advance while there's yet time.\"\n\n\"That's not the effect it seems to have had.\"\n\n\"You should have patience,\" said Isabel. \"You know Englishmen are shy.\"\n\n\"This one's not. He was not when he made love to YOU.\"\n\nShe had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was disagreeable to\nher. \"I beg your pardon; he was extremely so,\" she returned.\n\nHe answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered the\npages while she sat silent and occupied herself with Pansy's tapestry.\n\"You must have a great deal of influence with him,\" Osmond went on at\nlast. \"The moment you really wish it you can bring him to the point.\"\n\nThis was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness of\nhis saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she had said\nto herself. \"Why should I have influence?\" she asked. \"What have I ever\ndone to put him under an obligation to me?\"\n\n\"You refused to marry him,\" said Osmond with his eyes on his book.\n\n\"I must not presume too much on that,\" she replied.\n\nHe threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the fire\nwith his hands behind him. \"Well, I hold that it lies in your hands. I\nshall leave it there. With a little good-will you may manage it. Think\nthat over and remember how much I count on you.\" He waited a little,\nto give her time to answer; but she answered nothing, and he presently\nstrolled out of the room.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShe had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before\nher and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them\nthat suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust\nherself to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and\nclosed her eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still\nfurther, she sat in the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation.\nA servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh\ncandles and then go to bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had\nsaid; and she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion\nfrom another that she had a definite influence on Lord Warburton--this\nhad given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it\ntrue that there was something still between them that might be a handle\nto make him declare himself to Pansy--a susceptibility, on his part, to\napproval, a desire to do what would please her? Isabel had hitherto not\nasked herself the question, because she had not been forced; but now\nthat it was directly presented to her she saw the answer, and the answer\nfrightened her. Yes, there was something--something on Lord Warburton's\npart. When he had first come to Rome she believed the link that united\nthem to be completely snapped; but little by little she had been\nreminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a hair,\nbut there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For herself\nnothing was changed; what she once thought of him she always thought;\nit was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to her in fact a\nbetter feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she might\nbe more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the memory\nof the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed?\nIsabel knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But\nwhat were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they\nmingled with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was\nhe in love with Gilbert Osmond's wife, and if so what comfort did he\nexpect to derive from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was not in\nlove with her stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother\nhe was not in love with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she\npossessed in order to make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would\ndo so for her sake and not for the small creature's own--was this the\nservice her husband had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty\nwith which she found herself confronted--from the moment she admitted to\nherself that her old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for\nher society. It was not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive\none. She asked herself with dismay whether Lord Warburton were\npretending to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another\nsatisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of this refinement\nof duplicity she presently acquitted him; she preferred to believe him\nin perfect good faith. But if his admiration for Pansy were a delusion\nthis was scarcely better than its being an affectation. Isabel wandered\namong these ugly possibilities until she had completely lost her way;\nsome of them, as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. Then\nshe broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared that her\nimagination surely did her little honour and that her husband's did him\neven less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested as he need be, and she\nwas no more to him than she need wish. She would rest upon this till\nthe contrary should be proved; proved more effectually than by a cynical\nintimation of Osmond's.\n\nSuch a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace,\nfor her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of\nthought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set\nthem into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange\nimpression she had received in the afternoon of her husband's being in\nmore direct communication with Madame Merle than she suspected. That\nimpression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it\nhad never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond\nhalf an hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making\neverything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he\nlooked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty;\nthe real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a\npresumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his\npresence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in\nhimself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This\nmistrust was now the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf\nhad opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes\nthat were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered. It\nwas a strange opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed--an\nopposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of\ncontempt to the other. It was not her fault--she had practised no\ndeception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all the\nfirst steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found\nthe infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley\nwith a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of\nhappiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one\ncould look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and\nchoose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of\nrestriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier\nand freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the\nfeeling of failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband--this was\nwhat darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not\nso easily explained, and so composite in its character that much time\nand still more suffering had been needed to bring it to its actual\nperfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active condition; it was\nnot a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of thought, of\nspeculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered herself\nthat she had kept her failing faith to herself, however,--that no one\nsuspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when she\nthought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually--it was not till the first\nyear of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed\nthat she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it\nwas as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights\nout one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could\nstill see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again\nit had occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect\nthat were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from\nher own mind: she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be\njust and temperate, to see only the truth. They were a part, they were\na kind of creation and consequence, of her husband's very presence. They\nwere not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that\nis but of one thing, which was NOT a crime. She knew of no wrong he had\ndone; he was not violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated\nher. That was all she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was\nprecisely that it was not a crime, for against a crime she might have\nfound redress. He had discovered that she was so different, that she was\nnot what he had believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first\nhe could change her, and she had done her best to be what he would like.\nBut she was, after all, herself--she couldn't help that; and now there\nwas no use pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he knew her and\nhad made up his mind. She was not afraid of him; she had no apprehension\nhe would hurt her; for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort.\nHe would if possible never give her a pretext, never put himself in the\nwrong. Isabel, scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he\nwould have the better of her there. She would give him many pretexts,\nshe would often put herself in the wrong. There were times when she\nalmost pitied him; for if she had not deceived him in intention she\nunderstood how completely she must have done so in fact. She had effaced\nherself when he first knew her; she had made herself small, pretending\nthere was less of her than there really was. It was because she had been\nunder the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken pains to\nput forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the\nyear of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only half his\nnature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked\nby the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now--she saw the\nwhole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free\nfield, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole.\n\nAh, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it\nwas there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond\ndelightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love\nto her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he\nhad succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never\noccurred to her now to deny him that. He admired her--he had told her\nwhy: because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might\nvery well have been true; for during those months she had imagined\na world of things that had no substance. She had had a more wondrous\nvision of him, fed through charmed senses and oh such a stirred\nfancy!--she had not read him right. A certain combination of features\nhad touched her, and in them she had seen the most striking of figures.\nThat he was poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble--that was\nwhat had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There\nhad been an indefinable beauty about him--in his situation, in his mind,\nin his face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless and\nineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness\nwhich was the very flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager\nstrolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet\nnot putting to sea. It was in all this she had found her occasion. She\nwould launch his boat for him; she would be his providence; it would be\na good thing to love him. And she had loved him, she had so anxiously\nand yet so ardently given herself--a good deal for what she found in\nhim, but a good deal also for what she brought him and what might enrich\nthe gift. As she looked back at the passion of those full weeks she\nperceived in it a kind of maternal strain--the happiness of a woman who\nfelt that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But\nfor her money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then\nher mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf,\nthe beneficent author of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact.\nAt bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which\nwas filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other\nconscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her\nown conscience more effectually than to make it over to the man with the\nbest taste in the world? Unless she should have given it to a hospital\nthere would have been nothing better she could do with it; and there was\nno charitable institution in which she had been as much interested as\nin Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune in a way that would make her\nthink better of it and rub off a certain grossness attaching to the good\nluck of an unexpected inheritance. There had been nothing very delicate\nin inheriting seventy thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr.\nTouchett's leaving them to her. But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring\nhim such a portion--in that there would be delicacy for her as well.\nThere would be less for him--that was true; but that was his affair, and\nif he loved her he wouldn't object to her being rich. Had he not had the\ncourage to say he was glad she was rich?\n\nIsabel's cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married\non a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with\nher money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was\nonly half the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of\nher--a sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in\nhis personal qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme\nconviction had filled her life for months, and enough of it still\nremained to prove to her that she could not have done otherwise. The\nfinest--in the sense of being the subtlest--manly organism she had ever\nknown had become her property, and the recognition of her having but\nto put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of\ndevotion. She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she\nknew that organ perfectly now. She had lived with it, she had lived IN\nit almost--it appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been\ncaptured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps\nhad some worth. A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated,\nmore trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was\nthis exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself\nin infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of HIS deception.\nIt was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn't hate her more.\nShe remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it--it had been\nlike the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of\ntheir life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that\nshe must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their\nmarriage; but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only\nafterwards. This time she might well have noticed it, because he had\nreally meant it. The words had been nothing superficially; but when in\nthe light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then\nappeared portentous. He had really meant it--he would have liked her to\nhave nothing of her own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had\ntoo many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed, many more than\nshe had expressed to him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she\nHAD been hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas\nfor herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with\nsome one else. One couldn't pluck them up by the roots, though of course\none might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been\nthis, however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She\nhad no opinions--none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in\nthe satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant\nhad been the whole thing--her character, the way she felt, the way she\njudged. This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not\nknown until he had found himself--with the door closed behind, as it\nwere--set down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at\nlife which he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least\nit was a very humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that\nshe should not have suspected from the first that his own had been so\ndifferent. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly\nthat of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn't he assured her that he had\nno superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their\nfreshness? Hadn't he all the appearance of a man living in the open air\nof the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth\nand knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look\nfor them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least\nsome happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional;\nbut there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that\nsense, that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the\nstately offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had\ncontained nothing ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she\nhad followed him further and he had led her into the mansion of his own\nhabitation, then, THEN she had seen where she really was.\n\nShe could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she\nhad taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had\nlived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life.\nIt was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of\nsuffocation. Osmond's beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air;\nOsmond's beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high\nwindow and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering;\nfor physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come\nand go; she had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took\nhimself so seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture,\nhis cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his\nknowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank\nof flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not taken him so\nseriously as that. How could she--especially when she had known him\nbetter? She was to think of him as he thought of himself--as the first\ngentleman in Europe. So it was that she had thought of him at first, and\nthat indeed was the reason she had married him. But when she began to\nsee what it implied she drew back; there was more in the bond than she\nhad meant to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every\none but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and for\neverything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own. That was very\nwell; she would have gone with him even there a long distance; for\nhe pointed out to her so much of the baseness and shabbiness of life,\nopened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the depravity, the ignorance\nof mankind, that she had been properly impressed with the infinite\nvulgarity of things and of the virtue of keeping one's self unspotted by\nit. But this base, if noble world, it appeared, was after all what one\nwas to live for; one was to keep it forever in one's eye, in order\nnot to enlighten or convert or redeem it, but to extract from it some\nrecognition of one's own superiority. On the one hand it was despicable,\nbut on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond had talked to Isabel\nabout his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he\ndispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to\nher admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite\nindependence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities;\nshe had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself,\navowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her\nfellow creatures been her constant passion. She would have been willing,\nhowever, to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of\na personal life, if the person concerned had only been able to make her\nbelieve it was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and\nthe thing certainly would have been easier than to care for society as\nOsmond cared for it.\n\nHe was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really\ndone so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared\nto be most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to\nhave hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in\nsuch different quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity\nand propriety, of the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he\ndeemed himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never\nlapsed from it for an hour; he would never have recovered from the shame\nof doing so. That again was very well; here too she would have agreed;\nbut they attached such different ideas, such different associations and\ndesires, to the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was\nsimply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge\nwould give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But\nfor Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated\nattitude. He was fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted;\nso was she, but she pretended to do what she chose with it. He had an\nimmense esteem for tradition; he had told her once that the best thing\nin the world was to have it, but that if one was so unfortunate as not\nto have it one must immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he\nmeant by this that she hadn't it, but that he was better off; though\nfrom what source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He\nhad a very large collection of them, however; that was very certain,\nand after a little she began to see. The great thing was to act in\naccordance with them; the great thing not only for him but for her.\nIsabel had an undefined conviction that to serve for another person than\ntheir proprietor traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but\nshe nevertheless assented to this intimation that she too must march\nto the stately music that floated down from unknown periods in her\nhusband's past; she who of old had been so free of step, so desultory,\nso devious, so much the reverse of processional. There were certain\nthings they must do, a certain posture they must take, certain people\nthey must know and not know. When she saw this rigid system close about\nher, draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense of darkness\nand suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of her; she\nseemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted of\ncourse; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then, as the\nsituation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. She had\npleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, of not caring for\nthe aspect and denomination of their life--the cause of other instincts\nand longings, of quite another ideal.\n\nThen it was that her husband's personality, touched as it never had\nbeen, stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were\nanswered only by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed\nof her. What did he think of her--that she was base, vulgar, ignoble?\nHe at least knew now that she had no traditions! It had not been in his\nprevision of things that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments\nwere worthy of a radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real\noffence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her\nown at all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small\ngarden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the\nflowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay.\nIt would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already\nfar-reaching. He didn't wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was\nbecause she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her\nintelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from\ndesiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered himself that it would\nbe richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for\nhim, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and\nIsabel was obliged to confess that this was no great insolence on the\npart of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at least so\ntender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To\nbegin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the\nPuritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and\neven as decency. It would appear that Osmond was far from doing anything\nof the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did\nall women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their\nprice? Were there only three or four that didn't deceive their husbands?\nWhen Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for\nthe gossip of a village parlour--a scorn that kept its freshness in\na very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her\nhusband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied,\nand she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was\nenough to find these facts assumed among Osmond's traditions--it was\nenough without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn\nof his assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He\nhad plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well\nfurnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon\nhis own conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for.\nHe believed he should have regulated her emotions before she came to\nit; and Isabel could easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his\ndiscovering he had been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one\nthat sensation there was nothing left but to hate her.\n\nShe was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first\nhad been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and\ncomfort of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he\nhad had the revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If\nto herself the idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a\nkind of infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might\nit not be expected to have had upon HIM? It was very simple; he\ndespised her; she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a\nUnitarian minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand\nUnitarianism! This was the certitude she had been living with now for\na time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming--what was before\nthem? That was her constant question. What would he do--what ought SHE\nto do? When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn't hate\nhim, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate\nwish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt\nafraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, that she\nhad deceived him at the very first. They were strangely married, at all\nevents, and it was a horrible life. Until that morning he had scarcely\nspoken to her for a week; his manner was as dry as a burned-out\nfire. She knew there was a special reason; he was displeased at Ralph\nTouchett's staying on in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her\ncousin--he had told her a week before it was indecent she should go to\nhim at his hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph's invalid\nstate had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having had\nto contain himself had only deepened his disgust. Isabel read all this\nas she would have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as perfectly\naware that the sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband's\nrage as if Osmond had locked her into her room--which she was sure was\nwhat he wanted to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she\nwas not defiant, but she certainly couldn't pretend to be indifferent to\nRalph. She believed he was dying at last and that she should never see\nhim again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that she had never\nknown before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be\na pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life? There\nwas an everlasting weight on her heart--there was a livid light on\neverything. But Ralph's little visit was a lamp in the darkness; for the\nhour that she sat with him her ache for herself became somehow her ache\nfor HIM. She felt to-day as if he had been her brother. She had never\nhad a brother, but if she had and she were in trouble and he were dying,\nhe would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if Gilbert was jealous of\nher there was perhaps some reason; it didn't make Gilbert look better to\nsit for half an hour with Ralph. It was not that they talked of him--it\nwas not that she complained. His name was never uttered between them. It\nwas simply that Ralph was generous and that her husband was not. There\nwas something in Ralph's talk, in his smile, in the mere fact of his\nbeing in Rome, that made the blasted circle round which she walked more\nspacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he made her feel what\nmight have been. He was after all as intelligent as Osmond--quite apart\nfrom his being better. And thus it seemed to her an act of devotion\nto conceal her misery from him. She concealed it elaborately; she\nwas perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and before her\nagain--it lived before her again,--it had never had time to die--that\nmorning in the garden at Florence when he had warned her against Osmond.\nShe had only to close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to\nfeel the warm, sweet air. How could he have known? What a mystery,\nwhat a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Gilbert? He was much more\nintelligent--to arrive at such a judgement as that. Gilbert had never\nbeen so deep, so just. She had told him then that from her at least he\nshould never know if he was right; and this was what she was taking\ncare of now. It gave her plenty to do; there was passion, exaltation,\nreligion in it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange\nexercises, and Isabel at present, in playing a part before her cousin,\nhad an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been a\nkindness perhaps if he had been for a single instant a dupe. As it was,\nthe kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him believe that he had\nonce wounded her greatly and that the event had put him to shame, but\nthat, as she was very generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge\nand even considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face.\nRalph smiled to himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary\nform of consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She\ndidn't wish him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy: that was\nthe great thing, and it didn't matter that such knowledge would rather\nhave righted him.\n\nFor herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire\nhad gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in\na fever. She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but\nher vigil took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a\nstate of extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to\nher there, where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a\nmockery of rest. As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and\nwhat could be a better proof of it than that she should linger there\nhalf the night, trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why\nPansy shouldn't be married as you would put a letter in the post-office?\nWhen the clock struck four she got up; she was going to bed at last, for\nthe lamp had long since gone out and the candles burned down to their\nsockets. But even then she stopped again in the middle of the room\nand stood there gazing at a remembered vision--that of her husband and\nMadame Merle unconsciously and familiarly associated.\n\n\n\n\n\nThree nights after this she took Pansy to a great party, to which\nOsmond, who never went to dances, did not accompany them. Pansy was as\nready for a dance as ever; she was not of a generalising turn and had\nnot extended to other pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on\nthose of love. If she was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her\nfather she must have had a prevision of success. Isabel thought this\nunlikely; it was much more likely that Pansy had simply determined to\nbe a good girl. She had never had such a chance, and she had a proper\nesteem for chances. She carried herself no less attentively than usual\nand kept no less anxious an eye upon her vaporous skirts; she held her\nbouquet very tight and counted over the flowers for the twentieth time.\nShe made Isabel feel old; it seemed so long since she had been in a\nflutter about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly admired, was never in want\nof partners, and very soon after their arrival she gave Isabel, who was\nnot dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had rendered her this service\nfor some minutes when she became aware of the near presence of Edward\nRosier. He stood before her; he had lost his affable smile and wore a\nlook of almost military resolution. The change in his appearance would\nhave made Isabel smile if she had not felt his case to be at bottom\na hard one: he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of\ngunpowder. He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to notify\nher he was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet. After\nhe had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: \"It's all\npansies; it must be hers!\"\n\nIsabel smiled kindly. \"Yes, it's hers; she gave it to me to hold.\"\n\n\"May I hold it a little, Mrs. Osmond?\" the poor young man asked.\n\n\"No, I can't trust you; I'm afraid you wouldn't give it back.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it instantly.\nBut may I not at least have a single flower?\"\n\nIsabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the\nbouquet. \"Choose one yourself. It's frightful what I'm doing for you.\"\n\n\"Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond!\" Rosier exclaimed with\nhis glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.\n\n\"Don't put it into your button-hole,\" she said. \"Don't for the world!\"\n\n\"I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I\nwish to show her that I believe in her still.\"\n\n\"It's very well to show it to her, but it's out of place to show it to\nothers. Her father has told her not to dance with you.\"\n\n\"And is that all YOU can do for me? I expected more from you, Mrs.\nOsmond,\" said the young man in a tone of fine general reference. \"You\nknow our acquaintance goes back very far--quite into the days of our\ninnocent childhood.\"\n\n\"Don't make me out too old,\" Isabel patiently answered. \"You come back\nto that very often, and I've never denied it. But I must tell you that,\nold friends as we are, if you had done me the honour to ask me to marry\nyou I should have refused you on the spot.\"\n\n\"Ah, you don't esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a mere\nParisian trifler!\"\n\n\"I esteem you very much, but I'm not in love with you. What I mean by\nthat, of course, is that I'm not in love with you for Pansy.\"\n\n\"Very good; I see. You pity me--that's all.\" And Edward Rosier looked\nall round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a revelation to\nhim that people shouldn't be more pleased; but he was at least too proud\nto show that the deficiency struck him as general.\n\nIsabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had not the\ndignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among other things,\nwas against that. But she suddenly felt touched; her own unhappiness,\nafter all, had something in common with his, and it came over her, more\nthan before, that here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form,\nwas the most affecting thing in the world--young love struggling with\nadversity. \"Would you really be very kind to her?\" she finally asked in\na low tone.\n\nHe dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he held\nin his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. \"You pity me; but\ndon't you pity HER a little?\"\n\n\"I don't know; I'm not sure. She'll always enjoy life.\"\n\n\"It will depend on what you call life!\" Mr. Rosier effectively said.\n\"She won't enjoy being tortured.\"\n\n\"There'll be nothing of that.\"\n\n\"I'm glad to hear it. She knows what she's about. You'll see.\"\n\n\"I think she does, and she'll never disobey her father. But she's coming\nback to me,\" Isabel added, \"and I must beg you to go away.\"\n\nRosier lingered a moment till Pansy came in sight on the arm of her\ncavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face. Then he\nwalked away, holding up his head; and the manner in which he achieved\nthis sacrifice to expediency convinced Isabel he was very much in love.\n\nPansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly fresh\nand cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took back her\nbouquet. Isabel watched her and saw she was counting the flowers;\nwhereupon she said to herself that decidedly there were deeper forces at\nplay than she had recognised. Pansy had seen Rosier turn away, but she\nsaid nothing to Isabel about him; she talked only of her partner, after\nhe had made his bow and retired; of the music, the floor, the rare\nmisfortune of having already torn her dress. Isabel was sure, however,\nshe had discovered her lover to have abstracted a flower; though this\nknowledge was not needed to account for the dutiful grace with which she\nresponded to the appeal of her next partner. That perfect amenity under\nacute constraint was part of a larger system. She was again led forth\nby a flushed young man, this time carrying her bouquet; and she had\nnot been absent many minutes when Isabel saw Lord Warburton advancing\nthrough the crowd. He presently drew near and bade her good-evening;\nshe had not seen him since the day before. He looked about him, and then\n\"Where's the little maid?\" he asked. It was in this manner that he had\nformed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss Osmond.\n\n\"She's dancing,\" said Isabel. \"You'll see her somewhere.\"\n\nHe looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy's eye. \"She sees\nme, but she won't notice me,\" he then remarked. \"Are you not dancing?\"\n\n\"As you see, I'm a wall-flower.\"\n\n\"Won't you dance with me?\"\n\n\"Thank you; I'd rather you should dance with the little maid.\"\n\n\"One needn't prevent the other--especially as she's engaged.\"\n\n\"She's not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She\ndances very hard, and you'll be the fresher.\"\n\n\"She dances beautifully,\" said Lord Warburton, following her with his\neyes. \"Ah, at last,\" he added, \"she has given me a smile.\" He stood\nthere with his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and as Isabel\nobserved him it came over her, as it had done before, that it was\nstrange a man of his mettle should take an interest in a little maid. It\nstruck her as a great incongruity; neither Pansy's small fascinations,\nnor his own kindness, his good-nature, not even his need for amusement,\nwhich was extreme and constant, were sufficient to account for it. \"I\nshould like to dance with you,\" he went on in a moment, turning back to\nIsabel; \"but I think I like even better to talk with you.\"\n\n\"Yes, it's better, and it's more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen\noughtn't to waltz.\"\n\n\"Don't be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss\nOsmond?\"\n\n\"Ah, that's different. If you danced with her it would look simply like\na piece of kindness--as if you were doing it for her amusement. If you\ndance with me you'll look as if you were doing it for your own.\"\n\n\"And pray haven't I a right to amuse myself?\"\n\n\"No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands.\"\n\n\"The British Empire be hanged! You're always laughing at it.\"\n\n\"Amuse yourself with talking to me,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I'm not sure it's really a recreation. You're too pointed; I've always\nto be defending myself. And you strike me as more than usually dangerous\nto-night. Will you absolutely not dance?\"\n\n\"I can't leave my place. Pansy must find me here.\"\n\nHe was silent a little. \"You're wonderfully good to her,\" he said\nsuddenly.\n\nIsabel stared a little and smiled. \"Can you imagine one's not being?\"\n\n\"No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have done a\ngreat deal for her.\"\n\n\"I've taken her out with me,\" said Isabel, smiling still. \"And I've seen\nthat she has proper clothes.\"\n\n\"Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You've talked to\nher, advised her, helped her to develop.\"\n\n\"Ah yes, if she isn't the rose she has lived near it.\"\n\nShe laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain\nvisible preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete\nhilarity. \"We all try to live as near it as we can,\" he said after a\nmoment's hesitation.\n\nIsabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and she\nwelcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord Warburton; she\nthought him pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there\nwas something in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case\nof indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She\nfelt happier when he was in the room; there was something reassuring in\nhis approach; the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of\nnature. Yet for all that it didn't suit her that he should be too near\nher, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted. She was\nafraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn't. She\nfelt that if he should come too near, as it were, it might be in her to\nflash out and bid him keep his distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with\nanother rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the\nfirst and which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were\ntoo many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which\nwere fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became apparent\nthat the resources of women are innumerable. Isabel devoted herself\nto Pansy's desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the\ninjury; she smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her\nattention, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they were\nin direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no way\nconnected--a lively conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be\ntrying to make love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it\nwas others as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was\nwhat she thought about while she pinned up Pansy's dress. If it were\nso, as she feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not taken\naccount of his intention. But this made it none the more auspicious,\nmade the situation none less impossible. The sooner he should get back\ninto right relations with things the better. He immediately began\nto talk to Pansy--on whom it was certainly mystifying to see that he\ndropped a smile of chastened devotion. Pansy replied, as usual, with a\nlittle air of conscientious aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good\ndeal in conversation, and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his\nrobust person as if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always\nseemed a little frightened; yet her fright was not of the painful\ncharacter that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as if she\nknew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together a little and\nwandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with whom she talked till\nthe music of the following dance began, for which she knew Pansy to be\nalso engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a little fluttered\nflush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond's view of his daughter's\ncomplete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan,\nto her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own\nimaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy's extreme\nadhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But Osmond\nhad given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter's\nduenna, which consisted of gracious alternations of concession and\ncontraction; and there were directions of his which she liked to think\nshe obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was\nbecause her doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.\n\nAfter Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing near her\nagain. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound\nhis thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. \"She has promised\nto dance with me later,\" he said.\n\n\"I'm glad of that. I suppose you've engaged her for the cotillion.\"\n\nAt this he looked a little awkward. \"No, I didn't ask her for that. It's\na quadrille.\"\n\n\"Ah, you're not clever!\" said Isabel almost angrily. \"I told her to keep\nthe cotillion in case you should ask for it.\"\n\n\"Poor little maid, fancy that!\" And Lord Warburton laughed frankly. \"Of\ncourse I will if you like.\"\n\n\"If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it--!\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her\nbook.\"\n\nIsabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood there\nlooking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined\nto ask him to remove them. She didn't do so, however; she only said to\nhim, after a minute, with her own raised: \"Please let me understand.\"\n\n\"Understand what?\"\n\n\"You told me ten days ago that you'd like to marry my stepdaughter.\nYou've not forgotten it!\"\n\n\"Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel, \"he didn't mention to me that he had heard from you.\"\n\nLord Warburton stammered a little. \"I--I didn't send my letter.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you forgot THAT.\"\n\n\"No, I wasn't satisfied with it. It's an awkward sort of letter to\nwrite, you know. But I shall send it to-night.\"\n\n\"At three o'clock in the morning?\"\n\n\"I mean later, in the course of the day.\"\n\n\"Very good. You still wish then to marry her?\"\n\n\"Very much indeed.\"\n\n\"Aren't you afraid that you'll bore her?\" And as her companion stared at\nthis enquiry Isabel added: \"If she can't dance with you for half an hour\nhow will she be able to dance with you for life?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Lord Warburton readily, \"I'll let her dance with other\npeople! About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you--that you--\"\n\n\"That I would do it with you? I told you I'd do nothing.\"\n\n\"Exactly; so that while it's going on I might find some quiet corner\nwhere we may sit down and talk.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Isabel gravely, \"you're much too considerate of me.\"\n\nWhen the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself,\nthinking, in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no intentions.\nIsabel recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that\nhe would dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite\nof the remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the\nground that she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to\nmake an exception in Lord Warburton's favour.\n\n\"After all I don't care to dance,\" he said; \"it's a barbarous amusement:\nI'd much rather talk.\" And he intimated that he had discovered exactly\nthe corner he had been looking for--a quiet nook in one of the smaller\nrooms, where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere\nwith conversation. Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she\nwished to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him,\nthough she knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his\ndaughter. It was with his daughter's pretendant, however; that would\nmake it right for Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon\nEdward Rosier, who was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking\nat the dance in the attitude of a young man without illusions. She\nstopped a moment and asked him if he were not dancing.\n\n\"Certainly not, if I can't dance with HER!\" he answered.\n\n\"You had better go away then,\" said Isabel with the manner of good\ncounsel.\n\n\"I shall not go till she does!\" And he let Lord Warburton pass without\ngiving him a look.\n\nThis nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he\nasked Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him\nsomewhere before.\n\n\"It's the young man I've told you about, who's in love with Pansy.\"\n\n\"Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.\"\n\n\"He has reason. My husband won't listen to him.\"\n\n\"What's the matter with him?\" Lord Warburton enquired. \"He seems very\nharmless.\"\n\n\"He hasn't money enough, and he isn't very clever.\"\n\nLord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this\naccount of Edward Rosier. \"Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young\nfellow.\"\n\n\"So he is, but my husband's very particular.\"\n\n\"Oh, I see.\" And Lord Warburton paused a moment. \"How much money has he\ngot?\" he then ventured to ask.\n\n\"Some forty thousand francs a year.\"\n\n\"Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that's very good, you know.\"\n\n\"So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas.\"\n\n\"Yes; I've noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really\nan idiot, the young man?\"\n\n\"An idiot? Not in the least; he's charming. When he was twelve years old\nI myself was in love with him.\"\n\n\"He doesn't look much more than twelve to-day,\" Lord Warburton rejoined\nvaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, \"Don't you think we\nmight sit here?\" he asked.\n\n\"Wherever you please.\" The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a\nsubdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as\nour friends came in. \"It's very kind of you to take such an interest in\nMr. Rosier,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I\nwondered what ailed him.\"\n\n\"You're a just man,\" said Isabel. \"You've a kind thought even for a\nrival.\"\n\nLord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. \"A rival! Do you call him\nmy rival?\"\n\n\"Surely--if you both wish to marry the same person.\"\n\n\"Yes--but since he has no chance!\"\n\n\"I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his place. It\nshows imagination.\"\n\n\"You like me for it?\" And Lord Warburton looked at her with an uncertain\neye. \"I think you mean you're laughing at me for it.\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh\nat.\"\n\n\"Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do\nyou suppose one could do for him?\"\n\n\"Since I have been praising your imagination I'll leave you to imagine\nthat yourself,\" Isabel said. \"Pansy too would like you for that.\"\n\n\"Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.\"\n\n\"Very much, I think.\"\n\nHe waited a little; he was still questioning her face. \"Well then, I\ndon't understand you. You don't mean that she cares for him?\"\n\nA quick blush sprang to his brow. \"You told me she would have no wish\napart from her father's, and as I've gathered that he would favour\nme--!\" He paused a little and then suggested \"Don't you see?\" through\nhis blush.\n\n\"Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that\nit would probably take her very far.\"\n\n\"That seems to me a very proper feeling,\" said Lord Warburton.\n\n\"Certainly; it's a very proper feeling.\" Isabel remained silent for some\nmoments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them\nwith its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last\nshe said: \"But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a\nman would wish to be indebted for a wife.\"\n\n\"I don't know; if the wife's a good one and he thinks she does well!\"\n\n\"Yes, of course you must think that.\"\n\n\"I do; I can't help it. You call that very British, of course.\"\n\n\"No, I don't. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you,\nand I don't know who should know it better than you. But you're not in\nlove.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!\"\n\nIsabel shook her head. \"You like to think you are while you sit here\nwith me. But that's not how you strike me.\"\n\n\"I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes\nit so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss\nOsmond?\"\n\n\"No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.\"\n\n\"I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons.\"\n\n\"Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw\nfor them.\"\n\n\"Ah, really in love--really in love!\" Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding\nhis arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. \"You\nmust remember that I'm forty-two years old. I won't pretend I'm as I\nonce was.\"\n\n\"Well, if you're sure,\" said Isabel, \"it's all right.\"\n\nHe answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before\nhim. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to\nhis friend. \"Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?\" She met his eyes,\nand for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to\nbe satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his\nexpression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own\naccount--that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a\nhope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an\ninstant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying\nher step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or\nof thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely\npersonal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they\nwere conscious of at the moment.\n\n\"My dear Lord Warburton,\" she said, smiling, \"you may do, so far as I'm\nconcerned, whatever comes into your head.\"\n\nAnd with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where,\nwithin her companion's view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of\ngentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they\nhad been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself\nregretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away--all the\nmore as Lord Warburton didn't follow her. She was glad of this, however,\nand at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that\nwhen, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still\nplanted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. \"You did\nright not to go away. I've some comfort for you.\"\n\n\"I need it,\" the young man softly wailed, \"when I see you so awfully\nthick with him!\"\n\n\"Don't speak of him; I'll do what I can for you. I'm afraid it won't be\nmuch, but what I can I'll do.\"\n\nHe looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. \"What has suddenly brought you\nround?\"\n\n\"The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!\" she answered,\nsmiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with\nPansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many\nother departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it\napproached Lord Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to\nreach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if\nshe had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a\nlittle air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by\na movement of her finger, murmured gently: \"Don't forget to send your\nletter to her father!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Countess Gemini was often extremely bored--bored, in her own phrase,\nto extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she\nstruggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an\nunaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town,\nwhere he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose\ntalent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an\nobliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who\nwon from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in\nFlorence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without\ncurrency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very\ndull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared\nto pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness\nneeded more explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her\neyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she\nhad not an habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had\nbeen allowed to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that\nthere were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been\nthere at all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say.\nOr rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much\nmore to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated\nFlorence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter's. They\nare reasons, however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually\nsummed up in the declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City\nand that Florence was simply a pretty little place like any other. The\nCountess apparently needed to connect the idea of eternity with\nher amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely more\ninteresting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening\nparties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one\nhad heard of. Since her brother's marriage her impatience had greatly\nincreased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life than\nherself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was intellectual\nenough to do justice to Rome--not to the ruins and the catacombs, not\neven perhaps to the monuments and museums, the church ceremonies and the\nscenery; but certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about\nher sister-in-law and knew perfectly that Isabel was having a beautiful\ntime. She had indeed seen it for herself on the only occasion on which\nshe had enjoyed the hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a\nweek there during the first winter of her brother's marriage, but she\nhad not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn't want\nher--that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have gone all the\nsame, for after all she didn't care two straws about Osmond. It was\nher husband who wouldn't let her, and the money question was always\na trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the Countess, who had liked her\nsister-in-law from the first, had not been blinded by envy to Isabel's\npersonal merits. She had always observed that she got on better with\nclever women than with silly ones like herself; the silly ones could\nnever understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones--the really\nclever ones--always understood her silliness. It appeared to her that,\ndifferent as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and she\nhad somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet\nupon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should\nboth know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived,\nwith Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was\nconstantly expecting that Isabel would \"look down\" on her, and she as\nconstantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would\nbegin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she\ncared much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law\nregarded her with none but level glances and expressed for the poor\nCountess as little contempt as admiration. In reality Isabel would as\nsoon have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a\ngrasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband's sister, however;\nshe was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought\nher very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she\nwas like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a remarkably\npink lip, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle\nwas apparently the Countess's spiritual principle, a little loose nut\nthat tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too\nanomalous for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there\nwas no question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage,\nhad not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst\nspecies--a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said\nat another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she\nhad given it all away--in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake.\nThe fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to\nthe Countess's going again to Rome; but at the period with which this\nhistory has now to deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend\nseveral weeks at Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond\nhimself, who wrote to his sister that she must be prepared to be very\nquiet. Whether or no she found in this phrase all the meaning he had\nput into it I am unable to say; but she accepted the invitation on any\nterms. She was curious, moreover; for one of the impressions of her\nformer visit had been that her brother had found his match. Before the\nmarriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so sorry as to have had serious\nthoughts--if any of the Countess's thoughts were serious--of putting\nher on her guard. But she had let that pass, and after a little she was\nreassured. Osmond was as lofty as ever, but his wife would not be an\neasy victim. The Countess was not very exact at measurements, but it\nseemed to her that if Isabel should draw herself up she would be the\ntaller spirit of the two. What she wanted to learn now was whether\nIsabel had drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to see\nOsmond overtopped.\n\nSeveral days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the\ncard of a visitor--a card with the simple superscription \"Henrietta C.\nStackpole.\" The Countess pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she\ndidn't remember to have known any such Henrietta as that. The servant\nthen remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the\nCountess should not recognise her name she would know her well enough on\nseeing her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact\nreminded herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Touchett's;\nthe only woman of letters she had ever encountered--that is the only\nmodern one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She\nrecognised Miss Stackpole immediately, the more so that Miss Stackpole\nseemed perfectly unchanged; and the Countess, who was thoroughly\ngood-natured, thought it rather fine to be called on by a person of that\nsort of distinction. She wondered if Miss Stackpole had come on account\nof her mother--whether she had heard of the American Corinne. Her mother\nwas not at all like Isabel's friend; the Countess could see at a\nglance that this lady was much more contemporary; and she received\nan impression of the improvements that were taking place--chiefly in\ndistant countries--in the character (the professional character) of\nliterary ladies. Her mother had been used to wear a Roman scarf thrown\nover a pair of shoulders timorously bared of their tight black velvet\n(oh the old clothes!) and a gold laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of\nglossy ringlets. She had spoken softly and vaguely, with the accent of\nher \"Creole\" ancestors, as she always confessed; she sighed a great deal\nand was not at all enterprising. But Henrietta, the Countess could see,\nwas always closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something\nbrisk and business-like in her appearance; her manner was almost\nconscientiously familiar. It was as impossible to imagine her ever\nvaguely sighing as to imagine a letter posted without its address. The\nCountess could not but feel that the correspondent of the Interviewer\nwas much more in the movement than the American Corinne. She explained\nthat she had called on the Countess because she was the only person she\nknew in Florence, and that when she visited a foreign city she liked to\nsee something more than superficial travellers. She knew Mrs. Touchett,\nbut Mrs. Touchett was in America, and even if she had been in Florence\nHenrietta would not have put herself out for her, since Mrs. Touchett\nwas not one of her admirations.\n\n\"Do you mean by that that I am?\" the Countess graciously asked.\n\n\"Well, I like you better than I do her,\" said Miss Stackpole. \"I seem to\nremember that when I saw you before you were very interesting. I don't\nknow whether it was an accident or whether it's your usual style. At\nany rate I was a good deal struck with what you said. I made use of it\nafterwards in print.\"\n\n\"Dear me!\" cried the Countess, staring and half-alarmed; \"I had no idea\nI ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at the time.\"\n\n\"It was about the position of woman in this city,\" Miss Stackpole\nremarked. \"You threw a good deal of light upon it.\"\n\n\"The position of woman's very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And\nyou wrote it down and published it?\" the Countess went on. \"Ah, do let\nme see it!\"\n\n\"I'll write to them to send you the paper if you like,\" Henrietta said.\n\"I didn't mention your name; I only said a lady of high rank. And then I\nquoted your views.\"\n\nThe Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her clasped\nhands. \"Do you know I'm rather sorry you didn't mention my name? I\nshould have rather liked to see my name in the papers. I forget what my\nviews were; I have so many! But I'm not ashamed of them. I'm not at all\nlike my brother--I suppose you know my brother? He thinks it a kind of\nscandal to be put in the papers; if you were to quote him he'd never\nforgive you.\"\n\n\"He needn't be afraid; I shall never refer to him,\" said Miss Stackpole\nwith bland dryness. \"That's another reason,\" she added, \"why I wanted to\ncome to see you. You know Mr. Osmond married my dearest friend.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel's. I was trying to think what I\nknew about you.\"\n\n\"I'm quite willing to be known by that,\" Henrietta declared. \"But that\nisn't what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to break up my\nrelations with Isabel.\"\n\n\"Don't permit it,\" said the Countess.\n\n\"That's what I want to talk about. I'm going to Rome.\"\n\n\"So am I!\" the Countess cried. \"We'll go together.\"\n\n\"With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I'll mention you\nby name as my companion.\"\n\nThe Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa beside\nher visitor. \"Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband won't like it,\nbut he need never see it. Besides, he doesn't know how to read.\"\n\nHenrietta's large eyes became immense. \"Doesn't know how to read? May I\nput that into my letter?\"\n\n\"Into your letter?\"\n\n\"In the Interviewer. That's my paper.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with Isabel?\"\n\nHenrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess.\n\"She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered\nthat she would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason.\"\n\nThe Countess listened with extreme interest. \"The reason's Osmond,\" she\npregnantly remarked.\n\n\"Isabel ought to make a stand,\" said Miss Stackpole. \"I'm afraid she has\nchanged a great deal. I told her she would.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn't\nmy brother like you?\" the Countess ingenuously added.\n\n\"I don't know and I don't care. He's perfectly welcome not to like me;\nI don't want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some\npeople did. A journalist can't hope to do much good unless he gets a\ngood deal hated; that's the way he knows how his work goes on. And it's\njust the same for a lady. But I didn't expect it of Isabel.\"\n\n\"Do you mean that she hates you?\" the Countess enquired.\n\n\"I don't know; I want to see. That's what I'm going to Rome for.\"\n\n\"Dear me, what a tiresome errand!\" the Countess exclaimed.\n\n\"She doesn't write to me in the same way; it's easy to see there's a\ndifference. If you know anything,\" Miss Stackpole went on, \"I should\nlike to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take.\"\n\nThe Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. \"I know\nvery little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He doesn't like me\nany better than he appears to like you.\"\n\n\"Yet you're not a lady correspondent,\" said Henrietta pensively.\n\n\"Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they've invited me--I'm\nto stay in the house!\" And the Countess smiled almost fiercely; her\nexultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole's\ndisappointment.\n\nThis lady, however, regarded it very placidly. \"I shouldn't have gone if\nshe HAD asked me. That is I think I shouldn't; and I'm glad I hadn't\nto make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I\nshouldn't have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn't have\nbeen happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that's\nnot all.\"\n\n\"Rome's very good just now,\" said the Countess; \"there are all sorts of\nbrilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?\"\n\n\"Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?\"\nHenrietta enquired.\n\n\"I don't know him, but I'm told he's extremely grand seigneur. He's\nmaking love to Isabel.\"\n\n\"Making love to her?\"\n\n\"So I'm told; I don't know the details,\" said the Countess lightly. \"But\nIsabel's pretty safe.\"\n\nHenrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said\nnothing. \"When do you go to Rome?\" she enquired abruptly.\n\n\"Not for a week, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"I shall go to-morrow,\" Henrietta said. \"I think I had better not wait.\"\n\n\"Dear me, I'm sorry; I'm having some dresses made. I'm told Isabel\nreceives immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall call on you\nat your pension.\" Henrietta sat still--she was lost in thought; and\nsuddenly the Countess cried: \"Ah, but if you don't go with me you can't\ndescribe our journey!\"\n\nMiss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was thinking\nof something else and presently expressed it. \"I'm not sure that I\nunderstand you about Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"Understand me? I mean he's very nice, that's all.\"\n\n\"Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?\" Henrietta\nenquired with unprecedented distinctness.\n\nThe Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: \"It's certain\nall the nice men do it. Get married and you'll see!\" she added.\n\n\"That idea would be enough to prevent me,\" said Miss Stackpole. \"I\nshould want my own husband; I shouldn't want any one else's. Do you mean\nthat Isabel's guilty--guilty--?\" And she paused a little, choosing her\nexpression.\n\n\"Do I mean she's guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean that\nOsmond's very tiresome and that Lord Warburton, as I hear, is a great\ndeal at the house. I'm afraid you're scandalised.\"\n\n\"No, I'm just anxious,\" Henrietta said.\n\n\"Ah, you're not very complimentary to Isabel! You should have more\nconfidence. I'll tell you,\" the Countess added quickly: \"if it will be a\ncomfort to you I engage to draw him off.\"\n\nMiss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper solemnity of her\ngaze. \"You don't understand me,\" she said after a while. \"I haven't the\nidea you seem to suppose. I'm not afraid for Isabel--in that way. I'm\nonly afraid she's unhappy--that's what I want to get at.\"\n\nThe Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient and\nsarcastic. \"That may very well be; for my part I should like to know\nwhether Osmond is.\" Miss Stackpole had begun a little to bore her.\n\n\"If she's really changed that must be at the bottom of it,\" Henrietta\nwent on.\n\n\"You'll see; she'll tell you,\" said the Countess.\n\n\"Ah, she may NOT tell me--that's what I'm afraid of!\"\n\n\"Well, if Osmond isn't amusing himself--in his own old way--I flatter\nmyself I shall discover it,\" the Countess rejoined.\n\n\"I don't care for that,\" said Henrietta.\n\n\"I do immensely! If Isabel's unhappy I'm very sorry for her, but I can't\nhelp it. I might tell her something that would make her worse, but I\ncan't tell her anything that would console her. What did she go and\nmarry him for? If she had listened to me she'd have got rid of him. I'll\nforgive her, however, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she\nhas simply allowed him to trample upon her I don't know that I shall\neven pity her. But I don't think that's very likely. I count upon\nfinding that if she's miserable she has at least made HIM so.\"\n\nHenrietta got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful\nexpectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr. Osmond\nunhappy; and indeed he could not be for her the subject of a flight of\nfancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in the Countess, whose\nmind moved in a narrower circle than she had imagined, though with a\ncapacity for coarseness even there. \"It will be better if they love each\nother,\" she said for edification.\n\n\"They can't. He can't love any one.\"\n\n\"I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for\nIsabel. I shall positively start to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Isabel certainly has devotees,\" said the Countess, smiling very\nvividly. \"I declare I don't pity her.\"\n\n\"It may be I can't assist her,\" Miss Stackpole pursued, as if it were\nwell not to have illusions.\n\n\"You can have wanted to, at any rate; that's something. I believe that's\nwhat you came from America for,\" the Countess suddenly added.\n\n\"Yes, I wanted to look after her,\" Henrietta said serenely.\n\nHer hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an\neager-looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had come.\n\"Ah, that's very pretty c'est bien gentil! Isn't it what they call\nfriendship?\"\n\n\"I don't know what they call it. I thought I had better come.\"\n\n\"She's very happy--she's very fortunate,\" the Countess went on. \"She\nhas others besides.\" And then she broke out passionately. \"She's more\nfortunate than I! I'm as unhappy as she--I've a very bad husband; he's a\ngreat deal worse than Osmond. And I've no friends. I thought I had, but\nthey're gone. No one, man or woman, would do for me what you've done for\nher.\"\n\nHenrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion. She\ngazed at her companion a moment, and then: \"Look here, Countess, I'll do\nanything for you that you like. I'll wait over and travel with you.\"\n\n\"Never mind,\" the Countess answered with a quick change of tone: \"only\ndescribe me in the newspaper!\"\n\nHenrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her\nunderstand that she could give no fictitious representation of her\njourney to Rome. Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious reporter. On\nquitting her she took the way to the Lung' Arno, the sunny quay beside\nthe yellow river where the bright-faced inns familiar to tourists stand\nall in a row. She had learned her way before this through the streets of\nFlorence (she was very quick in such matters), and was therefore able\nto turn with great decision of step out of the little square which forms\nthe approach to the bridge of the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the\nleft, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and stopped in front of one of the\nhotels which overlook that delightful structure. Here she drew forth\na small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after\nmeditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over\nher shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: \"Could\nI see you this evening for a few moments on a very important matter?\"\nHenrietta added that she should start on the morrow for Rome. Armed with\nthis little document she approached the porter, who now had taken up\nhis station in the doorway, and asked if Mr. Goodwood were at home.\nThe porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out about\ntwenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her card and begged\nit might be handed him on his return. She left the inn and pursued her\ncourse along the quay to the severe portico of the Uffizi, through which\nshe presently reached the entrance of the famous gallery of paintings.\nMaking her way in, she ascended the high staircase which leads to the\nupper chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated with\nantique busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented an\nempty vista in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble\nfloor. The gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but\nscantily visited. Miss Stackpole may appear more ardent in her quest of\nartistic beauty than she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had\nafter all her preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the\nlittle Correggio of the Tribune--the Virgin kneeling down before the\nsacred infant, who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her hands\nto him while he delightedly laughs and crows. Henrietta had a special\ndevotion to this intimate scene--she thought it the most beautiful\npicture in the world. On her way, at present, from New York to Rome, she\nwas spending but three days in Florence, and yet reminded herself that\nthey must not elapse without her paying another visit to her favourite\nwork of art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it\ninvolved a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn\ninto the Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a\nlittle exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood.\n\n\"I've just been at your hotel,\" she said. \"I left a card for you.\"\n\n\"I'm very much honoured,\" Caspar Goodwood answered as if he really meant\nit.\n\n\"It was not to honour you I did it; I've called on you before and I know\nyou don't like it. It was to talk to you a little about something.\"\n\nHe looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. \"I shall be very glad\nto hear what you wish to say.\"\n\n\"You don't like to talk with me,\" said Henrietta. \"But I don't care for\nthat; I don't talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to ask you to come\nand see me; but since I've met you here this will do as well.\"\n\n\"I was just going away,\" Goodwood stated; \"but of course I'll stop.\" He\nwas civil, but not enthusiastic.\n\nHenrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and she was\nso much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to her on\nany terms. She asked him first, none the less, if he had seen all the\npictures.\n\n\"All I want to. I've been here an hour.\"\n\n\"I wonder if you've seen my Correggio,\" said Henrietta. \"I came up on\npurpose to have a look at it.\" She went into the Tribune and he slowly\naccompanied her.\n\n\"I suppose I've seen it, but I didn't know it was yours. I don't\nremember pictures--especially that sort.\" She had pointed out her\nfavourite work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to\ntalk with him.\n\n\"No,\" said Henrietta, \"it's about something less harmonious!\" They\nhad the small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to\nthemselves; there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus.\n\"I want you to do me a favour,\" Miss Stackpole went on.\n\nCaspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at\nthe sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man\nthan our earlier friend. \"I'm sure it's something I shan't like,\" he\nsaid rather loudly.\n\n\"No, I don't think you'll like it. If you did it would be no favour.\"\n\n\"Well, let's hear it,\" he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious\nof his patience.\n\n\"You may say there's no particular reason why you should do me a favour.\nIndeed I only know of one: the fact that if you'd let me I'd gladly do\nyou one.\" Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect,\nhad an extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather\na hard surface, couldn't help being touched by it. When he was touched\nhe rarely showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed,\nnor looked away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more\ndirectly; he seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued\ntherefore disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. \"I may say\nnow, indeed--it seems a good time--that if I've ever annoyed you (and\nI think sometimes I have) it's because I knew I was willing to suffer\nannoyance for you. I've troubled you--doubtless. But I'd TAKE trouble\nfor you.\"\n\nGoodwood hesitated. \"You're taking trouble now.\"\n\n\"Yes, I am--some. I want you to consider whether it's better on the\nwhole that you should go to Rome.\"\n\n\"I thought you were going to say that!\" he answered rather artlessly.\n\n\"You HAVE considered it then?\"\n\n\"Of course I have, very carefully. I've looked all round it. Otherwise\nI shouldn't have come so far as this. That's what I stayed in Paris two\nmonths for. I was thinking it over.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because\nyou were so much attracted.\"\n\n\"Best for whom, do you mean?\" Goodwood demanded.\n\n\"Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next.\"\n\n\"Oh, it won't do HER any good! I don't flatter myself that.\"\n\n\"Won't it do her some harm?--that's the question.\"\n\n\"I don't see what it will matter to her. I'm nothing to Mrs. Osmond. But\nif you want to know, I do want to see her myself.\"\n\n\"Yes, and that's why you go.\"\n\n\"Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?\"\n\n\"How will it help you?--that's what I want to know,\" said Miss\nStackpole.\n\n\"That's just what I can't tell you. It's just what I was thinking about\nin Paris.\"\n\n\"It will make you more discontented.\"\n\n\"Why do you say 'more' so?\" Goodwood asked rather sternly. \"How do you\nknow I'm discontented?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Henrietta, hesitating a little, \"you seem never to have\ncared for another.\"\n\n\"How do you know what I care for?\" he cried with a big blush. \"Just now\nI care to go to Rome.\"\n\nHenrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression.\n\"Well,\" she observed at last, \"I only wanted to tell you what I think;\nI had it on my mind. Of course you think it's none of my business. But\nnothing is any one's business, on that principle.\"\n\n\"It's very kind of you; I'm greatly obliged to you for your interest,\"\nsaid Caspar Goodwood. \"I shall go to Rome and I shan't hurt Mrs.\nOsmond.\"\n\n\"You won't hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?--that's the real\nissue.\"\n\n\"Is she in need of help?\" he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.\n\n\"Most women always are,\" said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness\nand generalising less hopefully than usual. \"If you go to Rome,\" she\nadded, \"I hope you'll be a true friend--not a selfish one!\" And she\nturned off and began to look at the pictures.\n\nCaspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered\nround the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. \"You've heard\nsomething about her here,\" he then resumed. \"I should like to know what\nyou've heard.\"\n\nHenrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this\noccasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after\nthinking some minutes, to make no superficial exception. \"Yes, I've\nheard,\" she answered; \"but as I don't want you to go to Rome I won't\ntell you.\"\n\n\"Just as you please. I shall see for myself,\" he said. Then\ninconsistently, for him, \"You've heard she's unhappy!\" he added.\n\n\"Oh, you won't see that!\" Henrietta exclaimed.\n\n\"I hope not. When do you start?\"\n\n\"To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?\"\n\nGoodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss\nStackpole's company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the\nsame character as Gilbert Osmond's, but it had at this moment an equal\ndistinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole's virtues than a\nreference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant,\nand he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged.\nLady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of\nthings in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters\nhe supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But\nit was this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss\nStackpole didn't take so much for granted. She took for granted that he\nwas always ready for some allusion to Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when\nthey met in Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had\nrepeated the assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no\nwish whatever to allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was NOT always thinking of\nher; he was perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least\ncolloquial of men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly flashing\nher lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn't\ncare so much; he even wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him,\nthat she would leave him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now\nmade other reflections--which show how widely different, in effect, his\nill-humour was from Gilbert Osmond's. He desired to go immediately to\nRome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-train. He hated the\nEuropean railway-carriages, in which one sat for hours in a vise, knee\nto knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one presently found\none's self objecting with all the added vehemence of one's wish to have\nthe window open; and if they were worse at night even than by day, at\nleast at night one could sleep and dream of an American saloon-car. But\nhe couldn't take a night-train when Miss Stackpole was starting in the\nmorning; it struck him that this would be an insult to an unprotected\nwoman. Nor could he wait until after she had gone unless he should wait\nlonger than he had patience for. It wouldn't do to start the next day.\nShe worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in\na European railway-carriage with her offered a complication of\nirritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it was his duty to\nput himself out for her. There could be no two questions about that;\nit was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave for some\nmoments and then said, wholly without the flourish of gallantry but in a\ntone of extreme distinctness, \"Of course if you're going to-morrow I'll\ngo too, as I may be of assistance to you.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!\" Henrietta returned\nimperturbably.\n\n\n\n\n\nI have already had reason to say that Isabel knew her husband to be\ndispleased by the continuance of Ralph's visit to Rome. That knowledge\nwas very present to her as she went to her cousin's hotel the day\nafter she had invited Lord Warburton to give a tangible proof of his\nsincerity; and at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient\nperception of the sources of Osmond's opposition. He wished her to have\nno freedom of mind, and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle\nof freedom. It was just because he was this, Isabel said to herself,\nthat it was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that\nshe partook of this refreshment in spite of her husband's aversion to\nit, that is partook of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had\nnot as yet undertaken to act in direct opposition to his wishes; he was\nher appointed and inscribed master; she gazed at moments with a sort\nof incredulous blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination,\nhowever; constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary\ndecencies and sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled\nher with shame as well as with dread, for on giving herself away she had\nlost sight of this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband's\nintentions were as generous as her own. She seemed to see, none the\nless, the rapid approach of the day when she should have to take back\nsomething she had solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and\nmonstrous; she tried to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do\nnothing to help it by beginning first; he would put that burden upon her\nto the end. He had not yet formally forbidden her to call upon Ralph;\nbut she felt sure that unless Ralph should very soon depart this\nprohibition would come. How could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet\nmade it impossible. She could perfectly understand her husband's wish\nfor the event; she didn't, to be just, see how he COULD like her to be\nwith her cousin. Ralph never said a word against him, but Osmond's\nsore, mute protest was none the less founded. If he should positively\ninterpose, if he should put forth his authority, she would have to\ndecide, and that wouldn't be easy. The prospect made her heart beat and\nher cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were moments when, in her\nwish to avoid an open rupture, she found herself wishing Ralph would\nstart even at a risk. And it was of no use that, when catching herself\nin this state of mind, she called herself a feeble spirit, a coward.\nIt was not that she loved Ralph less, but that almost anything seemed\npreferable to repudiating the most serious act--the single sacred\nact--of her life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous.\nTo break with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any open\nacknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that\ntheir whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be\nno condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal\nreadjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was\nto have been exquisite. Once they missed it nothing else would do; there\nwas no conceivable substitute for that success. For the moment, Isabel\nwent to the Hotel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure\nof propriety was in the canon of taste, and there couldn't have been\na better proof that morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest\nappreciation. Isabel's application of that measure had been particularly\nfree to-day, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn't\nleave Ralph to die alone she had something important to ask of him. This\nindeed was Gilbert's business as well as her own.\n\nShe came very soon to what she wished to speak of. \"I want you to answer\nme a question. It's about Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"I think I guess your question,\" Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out\nof which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.\n\n\"Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it.\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't say I can do that.\"\n\n\"You're intimate with him,\" she said; \"you've a great deal of\nobservation of him.\"\n\n\"Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!\"\n\n\"Why should he dissimulate? That's not his nature.\"\n\n\"Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar,\" said Ralph\nwith an air of private amusement.\n\n\"To a certain extent--yes. But is he really in love?\"\n\n\"Very much, I think. I can make that out.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Isabel with a certain dryness.\n\nRalph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with\nmystification. \"You say that as if you were disappointed.\"\n\nIsabel got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them thoughtfully.\n\"It's after all no business of mine.\"\n\n\"You're very philosophic,\" said her cousin. And then in a moment: \"May I\nenquire what you're talking about?\"\n\nIsabel stared. \"I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he wants,\nof all things in the world, to marry Pansy. I've told you that before,\nwithout eliciting a comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I\nthink. Is it your belief that he really cares for her?\"\n\n\"Ah, for Pansy, no!\" cried Ralph very positively.\n\n\"But you said just now he did.\"\n\nRalph waited a moment. \"That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond.\"\n\nIsabel shook her head gravely. \"That's nonsense, you know.\"\n\n\"Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton's, not mine.\"\n\n\"That would be very tiresome.\" She spoke, as she flattered herself, with\nmuch subtlety.\n\n\"I ought to tell you indeed,\" Ralph went on, \"that to me he has denied\nit.\"\n\n\"It's very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you\nthat he's in love with Pansy?\"\n\n\"He has spoken very well of her--very properly. He has let me know, of\ncourse, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh.\"\n\n\"Does he really think it?\"\n\n\"Ah, what Warburton really thinks--!\" said Ralph.\n\nIsabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves\non which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked\nup, and then, \"Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!\" she cried abruptly and\npassionately.\n\nIt was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the\nwords shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of\nrelief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf\nbetween them had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a\nmoment: \"How unhappy you must be!\"\n\nHe had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the\nfirst use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him. \"When I\ntalk of your helping me I talk great nonsense,\" she said with a quick\nsmile. \"The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments!\nThe matter's very simple; Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can't\nundertake to see him through.\"\n\n\"He ought to succeed easily,\" said Ralph.\n\nIsabel debated. \"Yes--but he has not always succeeded.\"\n\n\"Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss\nOsmond capable of giving us a surprise?\"\n\n\"It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all he'll let\nthe matter drop.\"\n\n\"He'll do nothing dishonourable,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"I'm very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to\nleave the poor child alone. She cares for another person, and it's cruel\nto attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up.\"\n\n\"Cruel to the other person perhaps--the one she cares for. But Warburton\nisn't obliged to mind that.\"\n\n\"No, cruel to her,\" said Isabel. \"She would be very unhappy if she were\nto allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr. Rosier. That idea\nseems to amuse you; of course you're not in love with him. He has the\nmerit--for Pansy--of being in love with Pansy. She can see at a glance\nthat Lord Warburton isn't.\"\n\n\"He'd be very good to her,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said\na word to disturb her. He could come and bid her good-bye to-morrow with\nperfect propriety.\"\n\n\"How would your husband like that?\"\n\n\"Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain\nsatisfaction himself.\"\n\n\"Has he commissioned you to obtain it?\" Ralph ventured to ask.\n\n\"It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton's--an older\nfriend, that is, than Gilbert--I should take an interest in his\nintentions.\"\n\n\"Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean?\"\n\nIsabel hesitated, frowning a little. \"Let me understand. Are you\npleading his cause?\"\n\n\"Not in the least. I'm very glad he shouldn't become your stepdaughter's\nhusband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!\" said Ralph,\nsmiling. \"But I'm rather nervous lest your husband should think you\nhaven't pushed him enough.\"\n\nIsabel found herself able to smile as well as he. \"He knows me well\nenough not to have expected me to push. He himself has no intention\nof pushing, I presume. I'm not afraid I shall not be able to justify\nmyself!\" she said lightly.\n\nHer mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to\nRalph's infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural\nface and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage\ndesire to hear her complain of her husband--hear her say that she should\nbe held accountable for Lord Warburton's defection. Ralph was certain\nthat this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the form\nthat in such an event Osmond's displeasure would take. It could only\ntake the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of\nit--to let her see at least how he judged for her and how he knew. It\nlittle mattered that Isabel would know much better; it was for his own\nsatisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her he was not\ndeceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Osmond; he felt\ncold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, in doing so. But it scarcely\nmattered, for he only failed. What had she come for then, and why did\nshe seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention?\nWhy did she ask him his advice if she gave him no liberty to answer her?\nHow could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her\nhumorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be\nmentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her\ntrouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was\nbound to consider. \"You'll be decidedly at variance, all the same,\" he\nsaid in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarce\nunderstood, \"You'll find yourselves thinking very differently,\" he\ncontinued.\n\n\"That may easily happen, among the most united couples!\" She took up her\nparasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. \"It's a\nmatter we can hardly quarrel about, however,\" she added; \"for almost all\nthe interest is on his side. That's very natural. Pansy's after all his\ndaughter--not mine.\" And she put out her hand to wish him goodbye.\n\nRalph took an inward resolution that she shouldn't leave him without\nhis letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed too great an\nopportunity to lose. \"Do you know what his interest will make him say?\"\nhe asked as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly--not\ndiscouragingly--and he went on. \"It will make him say that your want\nof zeal is owing to jealousy.\" He stopped a moment; her face made him\nafraid.\n\n\"To jealousy?\"\n\n\"To jealousy of his daughter.\"\n\nShe blushed red and threw back her head. \"You're not kind,\" she said in\na voice that he had never heard on her lips.\n\n\"Be frank with me and you'll see,\" he answered.\n\nBut she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own, which he\ntried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room. She made up her\nmind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going\nto the girl's room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was\nalways in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty\npatience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait.\nAt present she was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room\nfire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in\naccordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up\nand which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that\nthe room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in Palazzo\nRoccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Pansy's virginal\nbower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling.\nIts diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of\nhumanity, and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Isabel,\nthe latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity. Isabel\nhad a difficult task--the only thing was to perform it as simply as\npossible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself against\nbetraying this heat. She was afraid even of looking too grave, or at\nleast too stern; she was afraid of causing alarm. But Pansy seemed to\nhave guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for after she\nhad moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer to the\nfire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a\ncushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her\nstepmother's knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own\nlips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she\ndesired the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke\nit. The girl's father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and\nindeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of\na disposition to encourage Lord Warburton her own duty was to hold her\ntongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest;\nPansy's supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than Isabel\nhad yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry something of the\neffect of an admonition. As she knelt there in the vague firelight, with\nher pretty dress dimly shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half\nin submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness\nof the situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked\nout for sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When\nIsabel said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might\nhave been going on in relation to her getting married, but that her\nsilence had not been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire\nto leave her at liberty, Pansy bent forward, raised her face nearer\nand nearer, and with a little murmur which evidently expressed a deep\nlonging, answered that she had greatly wished her to speak and that she\nbegged her to advise her now.\n\n\"It's difficult for me to advise you,\" Isabel returned. \"I don't know\nhow I can undertake that. That's for your father; you must get his\nadvice and, above all, you must act on it.\"\n\nAt this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. \"I think\nI should like your advice better than papa's,\" she presently remarked.\n\n\"That's not as it should be,\" said Isabel coldly. \"I love you very much,\nbut your father loves you better.\"\n\n\"It isn't because you love me--it's because you're a lady,\" Pansy\nanswered with the air of saying something very reasonable. \"A lady can\nadvise a young girl better than a man.\"\n\n\"I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father's wishes.\"\n\n\"Ah yes,\" said the child eagerly, \"I must do that.\"\n\n\"But if I speak to you now about your getting married it's not for your\nown sake, it's for mine,\" Isabel went on. \"If I try to learn from you\nwhat you expect, what you desire, it's only that I may act accordingly.\"\n\nPansy stared, and then very quickly, \"Will you do everything I want?\"\nshe asked.\n\n\"Before I say yes I must know what such things are.\"\n\nPansy presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life was to\nmarry Mr. Rosier. He had asked her and she had told him she would do so\nif her papa would allow it. Now her papa wouldn't allow it.\n\n\"Very well then, it's impossible,\" Isabel pronounced.\n\n\"Yes, it's impossible,\" said Pansy without a sigh and with the same\nextreme attention in her clear little face.\n\n\"You must think of something else then,\" Isabel went on; but Pansy,\nsighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat without the\nleast success.\n\n\"You think of those who think of you,\" she said with a faint smile. \"I\nknow Mr. Rosier thinks of me.\"\n\n\"He ought not to,\" said Isabel loftily. \"Your father has expressly\nrequested he shouldn't.\"\n\n\"He can't help it, because he knows I think of HIM.\"\n\n\"You shouldn't think of him. There's some excuse for him, perhaps; but\nthere's none for you.\"\n\n\"I wish you would try to find one,\" the girl exclaimed as if she were\npraying to the Madonna.\n\n\"I should be very sorry to attempt it,\" said the Madonna with unusual\nfrigidity. \"If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you\nthink of him?\"\n\n\"No one can think of me as Mr. Rosier does; no one has the right.\"\n\n\"Ah, but I don't admit Mr. Rosier's right!\" Isabel hypocritically cried.\n\nPansy only gazed at her, evidently much puzzled; and Isabel, taking\nadvantage of it, began to represent to her the wretched consequences of\ndisobeying her father. At this Pansy stopped her with the assurance that\nshe would never disobey him, would never marry without his consent. And\nshe announced, in the serenest, simplest tone, that, though she might\nnever marry Mr. Rosier, she would never cease to think of him. She\nappeared to have accepted the idea of eternal singleness; but Isabel of\ncourse was free to reflect that she had no conception of its meaning.\nShe was perfectly sincere; she was prepared to give up her lover. This\nmight seem an important step toward taking another, but for Pansy,\nevidently, it failed to lead in that direction. She felt no bitterness\ntoward her father; there was no bitterness in her heart; there was only\nthe sweetness of fidelity to Edward Rosier, and a strange, exquisite\nintimation that she could prove it better by remaining single than even\nby marrying him.\n\n\"Your father would like you to make a better marriage,\" said Isabel.\n\"Mr. Rosier's fortune is not at all large.\"\n\n\"How do you mean better--if that would be good enough? And I have myself\nso little money; why should I look for a fortune?\"\n\n\"Your having so little is a reason for looking for more.\" With which\nIsabel was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as if her face\nwere hideously insincere. It was what she was doing for Osmond; it was\nwhat one had to do for Osmond! Pansy's solemn eyes, fixed on her own,\nalmost embarrassed her; she was ashamed to think she had made so light\nof the girl's preference.\n\n\"What should you like me to do?\" her companion softly demanded.\n\nThe question was a terrible one, and Isabel took refuge in timorous\nvagueness. \"To remember all the pleasure it's in your power to give your\nfather.\"\n\n\"To marry some one else, you mean--if he should ask me?\"\n\nFor a moment Isabel's answer caused itself to be waited for; then she\nheard herself utter it in the stillness that Pansy's attention seemed to\nmake. \"Yes--to marry some one else.\"\n\nThe child's eyes grew more penetrating; Isabel believed she was doubting\nher sincerity, and the impression took force from her slowly getting\nup from her cushion. She stood there a moment with her small hands\nunclasped and then quavered out: \"Well, I hope no one will ask me!\"\n\n\"There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready\nto ask you.\"\n\n\"I don't think he can have been ready,\" said Pansy.\n\n\"It would appear so if he had been sure he'd succeed.\"\n\n\"If he had been sure? Then he wasn't ready!\"\n\nIsabel thought this rather sharp; she also got up and stood a moment\nlooking into the fire. \"Lord Warburton has shown you great attention,\"\nshe resumed; \"of course you know it's of him I speak.\" She found\nherself, against her expectation, almost placed in the position of\njustifying herself; which led her to introduce this nobleman more\ncrudely than she had intended.\n\n\"He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean\nthat he'll propose for me I think you're mistaken.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely.\"\n\nPansy shook her head with a little wise smile. \"Lord Warburton won't\npropose simply to please papa.\"\n\n\"Your father would like you to encourage him,\" Isabel went on\nmechanically.\n\n\"How can I encourage him?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Your father must tell you that.\"\n\nPansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if\nshe were in possession of a bright assurance. \"There's no danger--no\ndanger!\" she declared at last.\n\nThere was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her\nbelieving it, which conduced to Isabel's awkwardness. She felt accused\nof dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To repair her self-respect\nshe was on the point of saying that Lord Warburton had let her know that\nthere was a danger. But she didn't; she only said--in her embarrassment\nrather wide of the mark--that he surely had been most kind, most\nfriendly.\n\n\"Yes, he has been very kind,\" Pansy answered. \"That's what I like him\nfor.\"\n\n\"Why then is the difficulty so great?\"\n\n\"I've always felt sure of his knowing that I don't want--what did you\nsay I should do?--to encourage him. He knows I don't want to marry,\nand he wants me to know that he therefore won't trouble me. That's the\nmeaning of his kindness. It's as if he said to me: 'I like you very\nmuch, but if it doesn't please you I'll never say it again.' I\nthink that's very kind, very noble,\" Pansy went on with deepening\npositiveness. \"That is all we've said to each other. And he doesn't care\nfor me either. Ah no, there's no danger.\"\n\nIsabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which\nthis submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid of Pansy's\nwisdom--began almost to retreat before it. \"You must tell your father\nthat,\" she remarked reservedly.\n\n\"I think I'd rather not,\" Pansy unreservedly answered.\n\n\"You oughtn't to let him have false hopes.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long as he\nbelieves that Lord Warburton intends anything of the kind you say, papa\nwon't propose any one else. And that will be an advantage for me,\" said\nthe child very lucidly.\n\nThere was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made her companion\ndraw a long breath. It relieved this friend of a heavy responsibility.\nPansy had a sufficient illumination of her own, and Isabel felt that\nshe herself just now had no light to spare from her small stock.\nNevertheless it still clung to her that she must be loyal to Osmond,\nthat she was on her honour in dealing with his daughter. Under the\ninfluence of this sentiment she threw out another suggestion before she\nretired--a suggestion with which it seemed to her that she should have\ndone her utmost.\n\n\"Your father takes for granted at least that you would like to marry a\nnobleman.\"\n\nPansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for\nIsabel to pass. \"I think Mr. Rosier looks like one!\" she remarked very\ngravely.\n\n\n\n\n\nLord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond's drawing-room for several\ndays, and Isabel couldn't fail to observe that her husband said nothing\nto her about having received a letter from him. She couldn't fail to\nobserve, either, that Osmond was in a state of expectancy and that,\nthough it was not agreeable to him to betray it, he thought their\ndistinguished friend kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of four\ndays he alluded to his absence.\n\n\"What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one like a\ntradesman with a bill?\"\n\n\"I know nothing about him,\" Isabel said. \"I saw him last Friday at the\nGerman ball. He told me then that he meant to write to you.\"\n\n\"He has never written to me.\"\n\n\"So I supposed, from your not having told me.\"\n\n\"He's an odd fish,\" said Osmond comprehensively. And on Isabel's making\nno rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his lordship five\ndays to indite a letter. \"Does he form his words with such difficulty?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Isabel was reduced to replying. \"I've never had a letter\nfrom him.\"\n\n\"Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in intimate\ncorrespondence.\"\n\nShe answered that this had not been the case, and let the conversation\ndrop. On the morrow, however, coming into the drawing-room late in the\nafternoon, her husband took it up again.\n\n\"When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing what did you\nsay to him?\" he asked.\n\nShe just faltered. \"I think I told him not to forget it.\n\n\"Did you believe there was a danger of that?\"\n\n\"As you say, he's an odd fish.\"\n\n\"Apparently he has forgotten it,\" said Osmond. \"Be so good as to remind\nhim.\"\n\n\"Should you like me to write to him?\" she demanded.\n\n\"I've no objection whatever.\"\n\n\"You expect too much of me.\"\n\n\"Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I shall disappoint you,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment.\"\n\n\"Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself!\nIf you really wish hands laid on Lord Warburton you must lay them\nyourself.\"\n\nFor a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said: \"That\nwon't be easy, with you working against me.\"\n\nIsabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of\nlooking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were thinking of\nher but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have a wonderfully\ncruel intention. It appeared to recognise her as a disagreeable\nnecessity of thought, but to ignore her for the time as a presence.\nThat effect had never been so marked as now. \"I think you accuse me of\nsomething very base,\" she returned.\n\n\"I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn't after all come\nforward it will be because you've kept him off. I don't know that it's\nbase: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she may do. I've no\ndoubt you've the finest ideas about it.\"\n\n\"I told you I would do what I could,\" she went on.\n\n\"Yes, that gained you time.\"\n\nIt came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him\nbeautiful. \"How much you must want to make sure of him!\" she exclaimed\nin a moment.\n\nShe had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her\nwords, of which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They made\na comparison between Osmond and herself, recalled the fact that she had\nonce held this coveted treasure in her hand and felt herself rich\nenough to let it fall. A momentary exultation took possession of her--a\nhorrible delight in having wounded him; for his face instantly told her\nthat none of the force of her exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing\notherwise, however; he only said quickly: \"Yes, I want it immensely.\"\n\nAt this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was followed\nthe next by Lord Warburton, who received a visible check on seeing\nOsmond. He looked rapidly from the master of the house to the mistress;\na movement that seemed to denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a\nperception of ominous conditions. Then he advanced, with his English\naddress, in which a vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element\nof good-breeding; in which the only defect was a difficulty in achieving\ntransitions. Osmond was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel\nremarked, promptly enough, that they had been in the act of talking\nabout their visitor. Upon this her husband added that they hadn't known\nwhat was become of him--they had been afraid he had gone away. \"No,\"\nhe explained, smiling and looking at Osmond; \"I'm only on the point of\ngoing.\" And then he mentioned that he found himself suddenly recalled\nto England: he should start on the morrow or the day after. \"I'm awfully\nsorry to leave poor Touchett!\" he ended by exclaiming.\n\nFor a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond only leaned back\nin his chair, listening. Isabel didn't look at him; she could only fancy\nhow he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor's face, where they were\nthe more free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them.\nYet Isabel was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it\nexpressive. \"You had better take poor Touchett with you,\" she heard her\nhusband say, lightly enough, in a moment.\n\n\"He had better wait for warmer weather,\" Lord Warburton answered. \"I\nshouldn't advise him to travel just now.\"\n\nHe sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon\nsee them again--unless indeed they should come to England, a course\nhe strongly recommended. Why shouldn't they come to England in the\nautumn?--that struck him as a very happy thought. It would give him such\npleasure to do what he could for them--to have them come and spend a\nmonth with him. Osmond, by his own admission, had been to England but\nonce; which was an absurd state of things for a man of his leisure and\nintelligence. It was just the country for him--he would be sure to get\non well there. Then Lord Warburton asked Isabel if she remembered what\na good time she had had there and if she didn't want to try it again.\nDidn't she want to see Gardencourt once more? Gardencourt was really\nvery good. Touchett didn't take proper care of it, but it was the sort\nof place you could hardly spoil by letting it alone. Why didn't they\ncome and pay Touchett a visit? He surely must have asked them. Hadn't\nasked them? What an ill-mannered wretch!--and Lord Warburton promised to\ngive the master of Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of course it was a\nmere accident; he would be delighted to have them. Spending a month with\nTouchett and a month with himself, and seeing all the rest of the\npeople they must know there, they really wouldn't find it half bad. Lord\nWarburton added that it would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had told\nhim that she had never been to England and whom he had assured it was a\ncountry she deserved to see. Of course she didn't need to go to England\nto be admired--that was her fate everywhere; but she would be an immense\nsuccess there, she certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked\nif she were not at home: couldn't he say good-bye? Not that he liked\ngood-byes--he always funked them. When he left England the other day he\nhadn't said good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had half a mind\nto leave Rome without troubling Mrs. Osmond for a final interview. What\ncould be more dreary than final interviews? One never said the things\none wanted--one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other\nhand one usually said a lot of things one shouldn't, simply from a sense\nthat one had to say something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled\none's wits. He had it at present, and that was the effect it produced\non him. If Mrs. Osmond didn't think he spoke as he ought she must set\nit down to agitation; it was no light thing to part with Mrs. Osmond.\nHe was really very sorry to be going. He had thought of writing to her\ninstead of calling--but he would write to her at any rate, to tell her a\nlot of things that would be sure to occur to him as soon as he had left\nthe house. They must think seriously about coming to Lockleigh.\n\nIf there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or in the\nannouncement of his departure it failed to come to the surface. Lord\nWarburton talked about his agitation; but he showed it in no other\nmanner, and Isabel saw that since he had determined on a retreat he was\ncapable of executing it gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked\nhim quite well enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He\nwould do that on any occasion--not from impudence but simply from the\nhabit of success; and Isabel felt it out of her husband's power to\nfrustrate this faculty. A complex operation, as she sat there, went on\nin her mind. On one side she listened to their visitor; said what was\nproper to him; read, more or less, between the lines of what he said\nhimself; and wondered how he would have spoken if he had found her\nalone. On the other she had a perfect consciousness of Osmond's emotion.\nShe felt almost sorry for him; he was condemned to the sharp pain of\nloss without the relief of cursing. He had had a great hope, and now, as\nhe saw it vanish into smoke, he was obliged to sit and smile and twirl\nhis thumbs. Not that he troubled himself to smile very brightly; he\ntreated their friend on the whole to as vacant a countenance as so\nclever a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part of Osmond's\ncleverness that he could look consummately uncompromised. His present\nappearance, however, was not a confession of disappointment; it was\nsimply a part of Osmond's habitual system, which was to be inexpressive\nexactly in proportion as he was really intent. He had been intent on\nthis prize from the first; but he had never allowed his eagerness to\nirradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible son-in-law as he\ntreated every one--with an air of being interested in him only for his\nown advantage, not for any profit to a person already so generally, so\nperfectly provided as Gilbert Osmond. He would give no sign now of an\ninward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect of gain--not\nthe faintest nor subtlest. Isabel could be sure of that, if it was any\nsatisfaction to her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a satisfaction;\nshe wished Lord Warburton to triumph before her husband, and at the same\ntime she wished her husband to be very superior before Lord Warburton.\nOsmond, in his way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor, the\nadvantage of an acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it\nwas something almost as good--that of not attempting. As he leaned back\nin his place, listening but vaguely to the other's friendly offers and\nsuppressed explanations--as if it were only proper to assume that they\nwere addressed essentially to his wife--he had at least (since so little\nelse was left him) the comfort of thinking how well he personally had\nkept out of it, and how the air of indifference, which he was now able\nto wear, had the added beauty of consistency. It was something to be\nable to look as if the leave-taker's movements had no relation to his\nown mind. The latter did well, certainly; but Osmond's performance was\nin its very nature more finished. Lord Warburton's position was after\nall an easy one; there was no reason in the world why he shouldn't leave\nRome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but they had stopped short\nof fruition; he had never committed himself, and his honour was safe.\nOsmond appeared to take but a moderate interest in the proposal that\nthey should go and stay with him and in his allusion to the success\nPansy might extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, but\nleft Isabel to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration.\nIsabel, even while she made this remark, could see the great vista\nwhich had suddenly opened out in her husband's mind, with Pansy's little\nfigure marching up the middle of it.\n\nLord Warburton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pansy, but neither\nIsabel nor Osmond had made any motion to send for her. He had the air of\ngiving out that his visit must be short; he sat on a small chair, as if\nit were only for a moment, keeping his hat in his hand. But he stayed\nand stayed; Isabel wondered what he was waiting for. She believed it\nwas not to see Pansy; she had an impression that on the whole he would\nrather not see Pansy. It was of course to see herself alone--he had\nsomething to say to her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she\nwas afraid it would be an explanation, and she could perfectly dispense\nwith explanations. Osmond, however, presently got up, like a man of good\ntaste to whom it had occurred that so inveterate a visitor might wish\nto say just the last word of all to the ladies. \"I've a letter to write\nbefore dinner,\" he said; \"you must excuse me. I'll see if my daughter's\ndisengaged, and if she is she shall know you're here. Of course when\nyou come to Rome you'll always look us up. Mrs. Osmond will talk to you\nabout the English expedition: she decides all those things.\"\n\nThe nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this little\nspeech was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but on the whole\nit was all the occasion demanded. Isabel reflected that after he\nleft the room Lord Warburton would have no pretext for saying, \"Your\nhusband's very angry\"; which would have been extremely disagreeable to\nher. Nevertheless, if he had done so, she would have said: \"Oh, don't be\nanxious. He doesn't hate you: it's me that he hates!\"\n\nIt was only when they had been left alone together that her friend\nshowed a certain vague awkwardness--sitting down in another chair,\nhandling two or three of the objects that were near him. \"I hope he'll\nmake Miss Osmond come,\" he presently remarked. \"I want very much to see\nher.\"\n\n\"I'm glad it's the last time,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"So am I. She doesn't care for me.\"\n\n\"No, she doesn't care for you.\"\n\n\"I don't wonder at it,\" he returned. Then he added with inconsequence:\n\"You'll come to England, won't you?\"\n\n\"I think we had better not.\"\n\n\"Ah, you owe me a visit. Don't you remember that you were to have come\nto Lockleigh once, and you never did?\"\n\n\"Everything's changed since then,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Not changed for the worse, surely--as far as we're concerned. To see\nyou under my roof\"--and he hung fire but an instant--\"would be a great\nsatisfaction.\"\n\nShe had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that occurred.\nThey talked a little of Ralph, and in another moment Pansy came in,\nalready dressed for dinner and with a little red spot in either cheek.\nShe shook hands with Lord Warburton and stood looking up into his\nface with a fixed smile--a smile that Isabel knew, though his lordship\nprobably never suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.\n\n\"I'm going away,\" he said. \"I want to bid you good-bye.\"\n\n\"Good-bye, Lord Warburton.\" Her voice perceptibly trembled.\n\n\"And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Lord Warburton,\" Pansy answered.\n\nHe lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. \"You ought to be very\nhappy--you've got a guardian angel.\"\n\n\"I'm sure I shall be happy,\" said Pansy in the tone of a person whose\ncertainties were always cheerful.\n\n\"Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should\never fail you, remember--remember--\" And her interlocutor stammered a\nlittle. \"Think of me sometimes, you know!\" he said with a vague laugh.\nThen he shook hands with Isabel in silence, and presently he was gone.\n\nWhen he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her\nstepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very different.\n\n\"I think you ARE my guardian angel!\" she exclaimed very sweetly.\n\nIsabel shook her head. \"I'm not an angel of any kind. I'm at the most\nyour good friend.\"\n\n\"You're a very good friend then--to have asked papa to be gentle with\nme.\"\n\n\"I've asked your father nothing,\" said Isabel, wondering.\n\n\"He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a\nvery kind kiss.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel, \"that was quite his own idea!\"\n\nShe recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she\nwas to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he couldn't put\nhimself the least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after\ntheir dinner they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till\nlate in the evening that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him\nbefore going to bed he returned her embrace with even more than his\nusual munificence, and Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that his\ndaughter had been injured by the machinations of her stepmother. It was\na partial expression, at any rate, of what he continued to expect of his\nwife. She was about to follow Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she\nwould remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked about the\ndrawing-room a little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.\n\n\"I don't understand what you wish to do,\" he said in a moment. \"I should\nlike to know--so that I may know how to act.\"\n\n\"Just now I wish to go to bed. I'm very tired.\"\n\n\"Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there--take a\ncomfortable place.\" And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were\nscattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not,\nhowever, where she seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair.\nThe fire had gone out; the lights in the great room were few. She drew\nher cloak about her; she felt mortally cold. \"I think you're trying to\nhumiliate me,\" Osmond went on. \"It's a most absurd undertaking.\"\n\n\"I haven't the least idea what you mean,\" she returned.\n\n\"You've played a very deep game; you've managed it beautifully.\"\n\n\"What is it that I've managed?\"\n\n\"You've not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again.\" And he\nstopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at\nher thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know\nthat she was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of\nthought.\n\n\"If you mean that Lord Warburton's under an obligation to come back\nyou're wrong,\" Isabel said. \"He's under none whatever.\"\n\n\"That's just what I complain of. But when I say he'll come back I don't\nmean he'll come from a sense of duty.\"\n\n\"There's nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted Rome.\"\n\n\"Ah no, that's a shallow judgement. Rome's inexhaustible.\" And Osmond\nbegan to walk about again. \"However, about that perhaps there's no\nhurry,\" he added. \"It's rather a good idea of his that we should go\nto England. If it were not for the fear of finding your cousin there I\nthink I should try to persuade you.\"\n\n\"It may be that you'll not find my cousin,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as\npossible. At the same time I should like to see his house, that you told\nme so much about at one time: what do you call it?--Gardencourt. It must\nbe a charming thing. And then, you know, I've a devotion to the memory\nof your uncle: you made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to\nsee where he lived and died. That indeed is a detail. Your friend was\nright. Pansy ought to see England.\"\n\n\"I've no doubt she would enjoy it,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"But that's a long time hence; next autumn's far off,\" Osmond continued;\n\"and meantime there are things that more nearly interest us. Do you\nthink me so very proud?\" he suddenly asked.\n\n\"I think you very strange.\"\n\n\"You don't understand me.\"\n\n\"No, not even when you insult me.\"\n\n\"I don't insult you; I'm incapable of it. I merely speak of certain\nfacts, and if the allusion's an injury to you the fault's not mine.\nIt's surely a fact that you have kept all this matter quite in your own\nhands.\"\n\n\"Are you going back to Lord Warburton?\" Isabel asked. \"I'm very tired of\nhis name.\"\n\n\"You shall hear it again before we've done with it.\"\n\nShe had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that\nthis ceased to be a pain. He was going down--down; the vision of such a\nfall made her almost giddy: that was the only pain. He was too strange,\ntoo different; he didn't touch her. Still, the working of his morbid\npassion was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in\nwhat light he saw himself justified. \"I might say to you that I judge\nyou've nothing to say to me that's worth hearing,\" she returned in a\nmoment. \"But I should perhaps be wrong. There's a thing that would be\nworth my hearing--to know in the plainest words of what it is you accuse\nme.\"\n\n\"Of having prevented Pansy's marriage to Warburton. Are those words\nplain enough?\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so; and when\nyou told me that you counted on me--that I think was what you said--I\naccepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so, but I did it.\"\n\n\"You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to make me\nmore willing to trust you. Then you began to use your ingenuity to get\nhim out of the way.\"\n\n\"I think I see what you mean,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Where's the letter you told me he had written me?\" her husband\ndemanded.\n\n\"I haven't the least idea; I haven't asked him.\"\n\n\"You stopped it on the way,\" said Osmond.\n\nIsabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered\nher to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first\ncousin to that of pity. \"Oh, Gilbert, for a man who was so fine--!\" she\nexclaimed in a long murmur.\n\n\"I was never so fine as you. You've done everything you wanted. You've\ngot him out of the way without appearing to do so, and you've placed\nme in the position in which you wished to see me--that of a man who has\ntried to marry his daughter to a lord, but has grotesquely failed.\"\n\n\"Pansy doesn't care for him. She's very glad he's gone,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"That has nothing to do with the matter.\"\n\n\"And he doesn't care for Pansy.\"\n\n\"That won't do; you told me he did. I don't know why you wanted this\nparticular satisfaction,\" Osmond continued; \"you might have taken some\nother. It doesn't seem to me that I've been presumptuous--that I have\ntaken too much for granted. I've been very modest about it, very quiet.\nThe idea didn't originate with me. He began to show that he liked her\nbefore I ever thought of it. I left it all to you.\"\n\n\"Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must attend\nto such things yourself.\"\n\nHe looked at her a moment; then he turned away. \"I thought you were very\nfond of my daughter.\"\n\n\"I've never been more so than to-day.\"\n\n\"Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However, that\nperhaps is natural.\"\n\n\"Is this all you wished to say to me?\" Isabel asked, taking a candle\nthat stood on one of the tables.\n\n\"Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?\"\n\n\"I don't think that on the whole you're disappointed. You've had another\nopportunity to try to stupefy me.\"\n\n\"It's not that. It's proved that Pansy can aim high.\"\n\n\"Poor little Pansy!\" said Isabel as she turned away with her candle.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar Goodwood had\ncome to Rome; an event that took place three days after Lord Warburton's\ndeparture. This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of some\nimportance to Isabel--the temporary absence, once again, of Madame\nMerle, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor\nof a villa at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel's\nhappiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of\nwomen might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, at\nnight, she had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her\nfriend--his friend--in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed to\nher that she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve.\nIsabel's imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but\nevery now and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that when\nthe charming woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness\nof respite. She had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar\nGoodwood was in Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to\nher immediately after meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to\nIsabel, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible he\nmight not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her marriage,\nhad had quite the character of a complete rupture; if she remembered\nrightly he had said he wished to take his last look at her. Since then\nhe had been the most discordant survival of her earlier time--the only\none in fact with which a permanent pain was associated. He had left her\nthat morning with a sense of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like\na collision between vessels in broad daylight. There had been no mist,\nno hidden current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer\nwide. He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was on the\ntiller, and--to complete the metaphor--had given the lighter vessel a\nstrain which still occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking. It\nhad been horrid to see him, because he represented the only serious harm\nthat (to her belief) she had ever done in the world: he was the only\nperson with an unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she\ncouldn't help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried\nwith rage, after he had left her, at--she hardly knew what: she tried to\nthink it had been at his want of consideration. He had come to her with\nhis unhappiness when her own bliss was so perfect; he had done his best\nto darken the brightness of those pure rays. He had not been violent,\nand yet there had been a violence in the impression. There had been a\nviolence at any rate in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her\nown fit of weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lasted\nthree or four days.\n\nThe effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the\nfirst year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a\nthankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think\nof a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do\nnothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to\ndoubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord\nWarburton's; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive,\nuncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could\nnever say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as\nshe was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith\nin Mr. Goodwood's compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory\nwas not a compensation for anything--least of all for having failed\nto marry Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what\nhe had--save of course his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic\nenough; she never thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If\nhe extended his business--that, to the best of her belief, was the\nonly form exertion could take with him--it would be because it was an\nenterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least because\nhe might hope it would overlay the past. This gave his figure a kind of\nbareness and bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memory\nor in apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social\ndrapery commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness of\nhuman contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she never\nheard from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this\nimpression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, from\ntime to time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston--her imagination was\nall bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had\nthought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more\nthan once the idea of writing to him. She had never told her husband\nabout him--never let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a\nreserve not dictated in the early period by a want of confidence\nin Osmond, but simply by the consideration that the young man's\ndisappointment was not her secret but his own. It would be wrong of her,\nshe had believed, to convey it to another, and Mr. Goodwood's affairs\ncould have, after all, little interest for Gilbert. When it had come\nto the point she had never written to him; it seemed to her that,\nconsidering his grievance, the least she could do was to let him alone.\nNevertheless she would have been glad to be in some way nearer to him.\nIt was not that it ever occurred to her that she might have married him;\neven after the consequences of her actual union had grown vivid to her\nthat particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had not had\nthe assurance to present itself. But on finding herself in trouble he\nhad become a member of that circle of things with which she wished to\nset herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed to feel\nthat her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own fault.\nShe had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her peace\nwith the world--to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back to\nher from time to time that there was an account still to be settled\nwith Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-day\non terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned he was\ncoming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable for\nhim than for any one else to make out--since he WOULD make it out, as\nover a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort--the intimate\ndisarray of her affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he had\ninvested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only\na part. He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her\nstress. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for he\nspent several days without coming to see her.\n\nHenrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was more punctual, and\nIsabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend. She threw\nherself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping\nher conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been\nsuperficial--the more so as the years, in their flight, had rather\nenriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously\ncriticised by persons less interested than Isabel, and which were still\nmarked enough to give loyalty a spice of heroism. Henrietta was as\nkeen and quick and fresh as ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Her\nremarkably open eyes, lighted like great glazed railway-stations, had\nput up no shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, her\nopinions none of their national reference. She was by no means quite\nunchanged, however it struck Isabel she had grown vague. Of old she had\nnever been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at once, she had\nmanaged to be entire and pointed about each. She had a reason for\neverything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. Formerly, when\nshe came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now, having\nalready seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn't for a moment pretend\nthat the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything to do\nwith her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of her\nindependence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations to\nit. \"It's nothing to come to Europe,\" she said to Isabel; \"it doesn't\nseem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay\nat home; this is much more important.\" It was not therefore with a sense\nof doing anything very important that she treated herself to another\npilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully\ninspected it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her\nknowing all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to\nbe there. This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had a\nperfect right to be restless too, if one came to that. But she had after\nall a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so\nlittle. Her friend easily recognised it, and with it the worth of the\nother's fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because\nshe had guessed that Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but\nshe had never guessed so happily as that. Isabel's satisfactions just\nnow were few, but even if they had been more numerous there would still\nhave been something of individual joy in her sense of being justified\nin having always thought highly of Henrietta. She had made large\nconcessions with regard to her, and had yet insisted that, with all\nabatements, she was very valuable. It was not her own triumph, however,\nthat she found good; it was simply the relief of confessing to this\nconfidant, the first person to whom she had owned it, that she was not\nin the least at her ease. Henrietta had herself approached this point\nwith the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her face of\nbeing wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not Ralph,\nnor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak.\n\n\"Yes, I'm wretched,\" she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say\nit; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.\n\n\"What does he do to you?\" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were\nenquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.\n\n\"He does nothing. But he doesn't like me.\"\n\n\"He's very hard to please!\" cried Miss Stackpole. \"Why don't you leave\nhim?\"\n\n\"I can't change that way,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've made a\nmistake. You're too proud.\"\n\n\"I don't know whether I'm too proud. But I can't publish my mistake. I\ndon't think that's decent. I'd much rather die.\"\n\n\"You won't think so always,\" said Henrietta.\n\n\"I don't know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to\nme I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one's deeds. I married\nhim before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do\nanything more deliberate. One can't change that way,\" Isabel repeated.\n\n\"You HAVE changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don't mean\nto say you like him.\"\n\nIsabel debated. \"No, I don't like him. I can tell you, because I'm weary\nof my secret. But that's enough; I can't announce it on the housetops.\"\n\nHenrietta gave a laugh. \"Don't you think you're rather too considerate?\"\n\n\"It's not of him that I'm considerate--it's of myself!\" Isabel answered.\n\nIt was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken comfort in\nMiss Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to a\nyoung lady capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugal\nroof. When she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he hoped she\nwould leave her friend the interviewer alone; and Isabel had answered\nthat he at least had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta\nthat as Osmond didn't like her she couldn't invite her to dine, but\nthey could easily see each other in other ways. Isabel received Miss\nStackpole freely in her own sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to\ndrive, face to face with Pansy, who, bending a little forward, on the\nopposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the celebrated authoress with a\nrespectful attention which Henrietta occasionally found irritating. She\ncomplained to Isabel that Miss Osmond had a little look as if she should\nremember everything one said. \"I don't want to be remembered that way,\"\nMiss Stackpole declared; \"I consider that my conversation refers only\nto the moment, like the morning papers. Your stepdaughter, as she sits\nthere, looks as if she kept all the back numbers and would bring\nthem out some day against me.\" She could not teach herself to think\nfavourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, of\npersonal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and even\nuncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have liked her to urge a\nlittle the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving her,\nso that he might appear to suffer for good manners' sake. Her immediate\nacceptance of his objections put him too much in the wrong--it being in\neffect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you cannot\nenjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy. Osmond held\nto his credit, and yet he held to his objections--all of which were\nelements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been that\nMiss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice,\nso that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she\nmight judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the\nmoment, however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was\nnothing for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take herself\noff. It was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife's\nfriends; he took occasion to call Isabel's attention to it.\n\n\"You're certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make\na new collection,\" he said to her one morning in reference to nothing\nvisible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived\nthe remark of all brutal abruptness. \"It's as if you had taken the\ntrouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common\nwith. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass--besides his\nbeing the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably\ntiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of\nhis health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him\nprivileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's so desperately ill there's\nonly one way to prove it; but he seems to have no mind for that. I can't\nsay much more for the great Warburton. When one really thinks of it,\nthe cool insolence of that performance was something rare! He comes and\nlooks at one's daughter as if she were a suite of apartments; he tries\nthe door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on the walls and\nalmost thinks he'll take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up a\nlease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; he\ndoesn't think he could live on a third floor; he must look out for a\npiano nobile. And he goes away after having got a month's lodging in the\npoor little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole, however, is your most\nwonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. One hasn't\na nerve in one's body that she doesn't set quivering. You know I never\nhave admitted that she's a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Of\na new steel pen--the most odious thing in nature. She talks as a steel\npen writes; aren't her letters, by the way, on ruled paper? She thinks\nand moves and walks and looks exactly as she talks. You may say that\nshe doesn't hurt me, inasmuch as I don't see her. I don't see her, but I\nhear her; I hear her all day long. Her voice is in my ears; I can't get\nrid of it. I know exactly what she says, and every inflexion of the tone\nin which she says it. She says charming things about me, and they give\nyou great comfort. I don't like at all to think she talks about me--I\nfeel as I should feel if I knew the footman were wearing my hat.\"\n\nHenrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him, rather\nless than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two of\nwhich the reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She let\nher friend know that Caspar Goodwood had discovered for himself that\nshe was unhappy, though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what\ncomfort he hoped to give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling\non her. They met him twice in the street, but he had no appearance of\nseeing them; they were driving, and he had a habit of looking straight\nin front of him, as if he proposed to take in but one object at a time.\nIsabel could have fancied she had seen him the day before; it must\nhave been with just that face and step that he had walked out of Mrs.\nTouchett's door at the close of their last interview. He was dressed\njust as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel remembered the colour\nof his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar look there was a\nstrangeness in his figure too, something that made her feel it afresh\nto be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked bigger and\nmore overtopping than of old, and in those days he certainly reached\nhigh enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed looked back\nafter him; but he went straight forward, lifting above them a face like\na February sky.\n\nMiss Stackpole's other topic was very different; she gave Isabel the\nlatest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in the United States\nthe year before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show him\nconsiderable attention. She didn't know how much he had enjoyed it, but\nshe would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn't the same man\nwhen he left as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes and\nshown him that England wasn't everything. He had been very much liked in\nmost places, and thought extremely simple--more simple than the English\nwere commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought him\naffected; she didn't know whether they meant that his simplicity was an\naffectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging; he thought all\nthe chambermaids were farmers' daughters--or all the farmers' daughters\nwere chambermaids--she couldn't exactly remember which. He hadn't seemed\nable to grasp the great school system; it had been really too much\nfor him. On the whole he had behaved as if there were too much of\neverything--as if he could only take in a small part. The part he had\nchosen was the hotel system and the river navigation. He had seemed\nreally fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph of every one\nhe had visited. But the river steamers were his principal interest;\nhe wanted to do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelled\ntogether from New York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interesting\ncities on the route; and whenever they started afresh he had wanted\nto know if they could go by the steamer. He seemed to have no idea of\ngeography--had an impression that Baltimore was a Western city and was\nperpetually expecting to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared never\nto have heard of any river in America but the Mississippi and was\nunprepared to recognise the existence of the Hudson, though obliged to\nconfess at last that it was fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent\nsome pleasant hours in the palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream\nfrom the coloured man. He could never get used to that idea--that you\ncould get ice-cream in the cars. Of course you couldn't, nor fans,\nnor candy, nor anything in the English cars! He found the heat quite\noverwhelming, and she had told him she indeed expected it was\nthe biggest he had ever experienced. He was now in England,\nhunting--\"hunting round\" Henrietta called it. These amusements were\nthose of the American red men; we had left that behind long ago, the\npleasures of the chase. It seemed to be generally believed in England\nthat we wore tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was more in\nkeeping with English habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to join\nher in Italy, but when she should go to Paris again he expected to come\nover. He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond of\nthe ancient regime. They didn't agree about that, but that was what she\nliked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient regime had been\nswept away. There were no dukes and marquises there now; she remembered\non the contrary one day when there were five American families, walking\nall round. Mr. Bantling was very anxious that she should take up the\nsubject of England again, and he thought she might get on better with it\nnow; England had changed a good deal within two or three years. He was\ndetermined that if she went there he should go to see his sister, Lady\nPensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her straight.\nThe mystery about that other one had never been explained.\n\nCaspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Isabel\na note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would be\nat home at six o'clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering what\nhe was coming for--what good he expected to get of it. He had presented\nhimself hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who\nwould take what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel's hospitality,\nhowever, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty in\nappearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction at\nleast that she deceived him, made him say to himself that he had\nbeen misinformed. But she also saw, so she believed, that he was not\ndisappointed, as some other men, she was sure, would have been; he had\nnot come to Rome to look for an opportunity. She never found out what he\nhad come for; he offered her no explanation; there could be none but the\nvery simple one that he wanted to see her. In other words he had come\nfor his amusement. Isabel followed up this induction with a good deal of\neagerness, and was delighted to have found a formula that would lay the\nghost of this gentleman's ancient grievance. If he had come to Rome\nfor his amusement this was exactly what she wanted; for if he cared\nfor amusement he had got over his heartache. If he had got over his\nheartache everything was as it should be and her responsibilities were\nat an end. It was true that he took his recreation a little stiffly, but\nhe had never been loose and easy and she had every reason to believe\nhe was satisfied with what he saw. Henrietta was not in his confidence,\nthough he was in hers, and Isabel consequently received no side-light\nupon his state of mind. He was open to little conversation on general\ntopics; it came back to her that she had said of him once, years before,\n\"Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he doesn't talk.\" He spoke a good\ndeal now, but he talked perhaps as little as ever; considering, that is,\nhow much there was in Rome to talk about. His arrival was not calculated\nto simplify her relations with her husband, for if Mr. Osmond didn't\nlike her friends Mr. Goodwood had no claim upon his attention save as\nhaving been one of the first of them. There was nothing for her to say\nof him but that he was the very oldest; this rather meagre synthesis\nexhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce him to Gilbert;\nit was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her Thursday\nevenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her husband\nstill held for the sake not so much of inviting people as of not\ninviting them.\n\nTo the Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather early;\nhe appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel every\nnow and then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal about\nhim; she thought he might know that she didn't know what to do with him.\nBut she couldn't call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he was\nonly extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man very\ndifferent from most people; one had to be almost equally honest with\nHIM. She made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering\nherself she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted of\nwomen. He never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her any\npersonal questions. He got on much better with Osmond than had seemed\nprobable. Osmond had a great dislike to being counted on; in such a case\nhe had an irresistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue of\nthis principle that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a fancy\nto a perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended upon to treat\nwith coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr. Goodwood also had wanted to marry\nher, and expressed surprise at her not having accepted him. It would\nhave been an excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry which\nwould strike all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air.\nHe declared he liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn't easy at\nfirst, you had to climb up an interminable steep staircase up to the\ntop of the tower; but when you got there you had a big view and felt a\nlittle fresh breeze. Osmond, as we know, had delightful qualities, and\nhe gave Caspar Goodwood the benefit of them all. Isabel could see that\nMr. Goodwood thought better of her husband than he had ever wished\nto; he had given her the impression that morning in Florence of being\ninaccessible to a good impression. Gilbert asked him repeatedly to\ndinner, and Mr. Goodwood smoked a cigar with him afterwards and even\ndesired to be shown his collections. Gilbert said to Isabel that he was\nvery original; he was as strong and of as good a style as an English\nportmanteau,--he had plenty of straps and buckles which would never wear\nout, and a capital patent lock. Caspar Goodwood took to riding on the\nCampagna and devoted much time to this exercise; it was therefore mainly\nin the evening that Isabel saw him. She bethought herself of saying to\nhim one day that if he were willing he could render her a service. And\nthen she added smiling:\n\n\"I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you.\"\n\n\"You're the person in the world who has most right,\" he answered. \"I've\ngiven you assurances that I've never given any one else.\"\n\nThe service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who was ill\nat the Hotel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr.\nGoodwood had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellow\nwas; if she was not mistaken Ralph had once invited him to Gardencourt.\nCaspar remembered the invitation perfectly, and, though he was not\nsupposed to be a man of imagination, had enough to put himself in the\nplace of a poor gentleman who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the\nHotel de Paris and, on being shown into the presence of the master of\nGardencourt, found Miss Stackpole sitting beside his sofa. A singular\nchange had in fact occurred in this lady's relations with Ralph\nTouchett. She had not been asked by Isabel to go and see him, but on\nhearing that he was too ill to come out had immediately gone of her\nown motion. After this she had paid him a daily visit--always under\nthe conviction that they were great enemies. \"Oh yes, we're intimate\nenemies,\" Ralph used to say; and he accused her freely--as freely as the\nhumour of it would allow--of coming to worry him to death. In reality\nthey became excellent friends, Henrietta much wondering that she should\nnever have liked him before. Ralph liked her exactly as much as he had\nalways done; he had never doubted for a moment that she was an excellent\nfellow. They talked about everything and always differed; about\neverything, that is, but Isabel--a topic as to which Ralph always had\na thin forefinger on his lips. Mr. Bantling on the other hand proved\na great resource; Ralph was capable of discussing Mr. Bantling with\nHenrietta for hours. Discussion was stimulated of course by their\ninevitable difference of view--Ralph having amused himself with taking\nthe ground that the genial ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli.\nCaspar Goodwood could contribute nothing to such a debate; but after\nhe had been left alone with his host he found there were various other\nmatters they could take up. It must be admitted that the lady who had\njust gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted all Miss Stackpole's\nmerits in advance, but had no further remark to make about her. Neither,\nafter the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond--a\ntheme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers as Ralph. He felt very\nsorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn't bear to see a pleasant\nman, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond anything to be done.\nThere was always something to be done, for Goodwood, and he did it in\nthis case by repeating several times his visit to the Hotel de Paris.\nIt seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever; she had artfully\ndisposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an occupation; she\nhad converted him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a plan of making\nhim travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild weather\nshould allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and Mr.\nGoodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this,\nand she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had a\nconstant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of the\noccurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarely\nentered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in\none of those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy would\ncluster round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel\nin these days something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past\nwas more perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had\nspent there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I\nsay, upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster;\nfor several events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. The\nCountess Gemini arrived from Florence--arrived with her trunks, her\ndresses, her chatter, her falsehoods, her frivolity, the strange, the\nunholy legend of the number of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had been\naway somewhere,--no one, not even Pansy, knew where,--reappeared in Rome\nand began to write her long letters, which she never answered. Madame\nMerle returned from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: \"What\non earth did you do with Lord Warburton?\" As if it were any business of\nhers!\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOne day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made up his mind to\nreturn to England. He had his own reasons for this decision, which\nhe was not bound to communicate; but Henrietta Stackpole, to whom he\nmentioned his intention, flattered herself that she guessed them. She\nforbore to express them, however; she only said, after a moment, as she\nsat by his sofa: \"I suppose you know you can't go alone?\"\n\n\"I've no idea of doing that,\" Ralph answered. \"I shall have people with\nme.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by 'people'? Servants whom you pay?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Ralph jocosely, \"after all, they're human beings.\"\n\n\"Are there any women among them?\" Miss Stackpole desired to know.\n\n\"You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven't a soubrette in\nmy employment.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Henrietta calmly, \"you can't go to England that way. You\nmust have a woman's care.\"\n\n\"I've had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will last me a\ngood while.\"\n\n\"You've not had enough of it yet. I guess I'll go with you,\" said\nHenrietta.\n\n\"Go with me?\" Ralph slowly raised himself from his sofa.\n\n\"Yes, I know you don't like me, but I'll go with you all the same. It\nwould be better for your health to lie down again.\"\n\nRalph looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. \"I like you very\nmuch,\" he said in a moment.\n\nMiss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. \"You needn't think\nthat by saying that you can buy me off. I'll go with you, and what is\nmore I'll take care of you.\"\n\n\"You're a very good woman,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won't be easy.\nBut you had better go, all the same.\"\n\nBefore she left him, Ralph said to her: \"Do you really mean to take care\nof me?\"\n\n\"Well, I mean to try.\"\n\n\"I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!\" And it was perhaps a\nsign of submission that a few minutes after she had left him alone he\nburst into a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to him so inconsequent,\nsuch a conclusive proof of his having abdicated all functions and\nrenounced all exercise, that he should start on a journey across Europe\nunder the supervision of Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that\nthe prospect pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He\nfelt even impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing to\nsee his own house again. The end of everything was at hand; it seemed\nto him he could stretch out his arm and touch the goal. But he wanted to\ndie at home; it was the only wish he had left--to extend himself in the\nlarge quiet room where he had last seen his father lie, and close his\neyes upon the summer dawn.\n\nThat same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed his\nvisitor that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to conduct him back\nto England. \"Ah then,\" said Caspar, \"I'm afraid I shall be a fifth wheel\nto the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me promise to go with you.\"\n\n\"Good heavens--it's the golden age! You're all too kind.\"\n\n\"The kindness on my part is to her; it's hardly to you.\"\n\n\"Granting that, SHE'S kind,\" smiled Ralph.\n\n\"To get people to go with you? Yes, that's a sort of kindness,\" Goodwood\nanswered without lending himself to the joke. \"For myself, however,\" he\nadded, \"I'll go so far as to say that I would much rather travel with\nyou and Miss Stackpole than with Miss Stackpole alone.\"\n\n\"And you'd rather stay here than do either,\" said Ralph. \"There's really\nno need of your coming. Henrietta's extraordinarily efficient.\"\n\n\"I'm sure of that. But I've promised Mrs. Osmond.\"\n\n\"You can easily get her to let you off.\"\n\n\"She wouldn't let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you,\nbut that isn't the principal thing. The principal thing is that she\nwants me to leave Rome.\"\n\n\"Ah, you see too much in it,\" Ralph suggested.\n\n\"I bore her,\" Goodwood went on; \"she has nothing to say to me, so she\ninvented that.\"\n\n\"Oh then, if it's a convenience to her I certainly will take you with\nme. Though I don't see why it should be a convenience,\" Ralph added in a\nmoment.\n\n\"Well,\" said Caspar Goodwood simply, \"she thinks I'm watching her.\"\n\n\"Watching her?\"\n\n\"Trying to make out if she's happy.\"\n\n\"That's easy to make out,\" said Ralph. \"She's the most visibly happy\nwoman I know.\"\n\n\"Exactly so; I'm satisfied,\" Goodwood answered dryly. For all his\ndryness, however, he had more to say. \"I've been watching her; I was\nan old friend and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be\nhappy; that was what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to\nsee for myself what it amounts to. I've seen,\" he continued with a harsh\nring in his voice, \"and I don't want to see any more. I'm now quite\nready to go.\"\n\n\"Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?\" Ralph rejoined.\nAnd this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel\nOsmond.\n\nHenrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she found\nit proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who returned at\nMiss Stackpole's pension the visit which this lady had paid her in\nFlorence.\n\n\"You were very wrong about Lord Warburton,\" she remarked to the\nCountess. \"I think it right you should know that.\"\n\n\"About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house\nthree times a day. He has left traces of his passage!\" the Countess\ncried.\n\n\"He wished to marry your niece; that's why he came to the house.\"\n\nThe Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: \"Is that the\nstory that Isabel tells? It isn't bad, as such things go. If he wishes\nto marry my niece, pray why doesn't he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy\nthe wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I'm gone.\"\n\n\"No, he'll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn't wish to marry him.\"\n\n\"She's very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn't\nknow she carried it so far.\"\n\n\"I don't understand you,\" said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that\nthe Countess was unpleasantly perverse. \"I really must stick to my\npoint--that Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my\nbrother's capable of everything.\"\n\n\"I don't know what your brother's capable of,\" said Henrietta with\ndignity.\n\n\"It's not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it's her sending\nhim away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought\nI would make him faithless?\" the Countess continued with audacious\ninsistence. \"However, she's only keeping him, one can feel that. The\nhouse is full of him there; he's quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left\ntraces; I'm sure I shall see him yet.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Henrietta after a little, with one of those inspirations\nwhich had made the fortune of her letters to the Interviewer, \"perhaps\nhe'll be more successful with you than with Isabel!\"\n\nWhen she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel replied\nthat she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It\nhad always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and this young woman were\nmade to understand each other. \"I don't care whether he understands me\nor not,\" Henrietta declared. \"The great thing is that he shouldn't die\nin the cars.\"\n\n\"He won't do that,\" Isabel said, shaking her head with an extension of\nfaith.\n\n\"He won't if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don't know\nwhat you want to do.\"\n\n\"I want to be alone,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"You won't be that so long as you've so much company at home.\"\n\n\"Ah, they're part of the comedy. You others are spectators.\"\n\n\"Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer?\" Henrietta rather grimly asked.\n\n\"The tragedy then if you like. You're all looking at me; it makes me\nuncomfortable.\"\n\nHenrietta engaged in this act for a while. \"You're like the stricken\ndeer, seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me such a sense of\nhelplessness!\" she broke out.\n\n\"I'm not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do.\"\n\n\"It's not you I'm speaking of; it's myself. It's too much, having come\non purpose, to leave you just as I find you.\"\n\n\"You don't do that; you leave me much refreshed,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"Very mild refreshment--sour lemonade! I want you to promise me\nsomething.\"\n\n\"I can't do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a\nsolemn one four years ago, and I've succeeded so ill in keeping it.\"\n\n\"You've had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the\ngreatest. Leave your husband before the worst comes; that's what I want\nyou to promise.\"\n\n\"The worst? What do you call the worst?\"\n\n\"Before your character gets spoiled.\"\n\n\"Do you mean my disposition? It won't get spoiled,\" Isabel answered,\nsmiling. \"I'm taking very good care of it. I'm extremely struck,\" she\nadded, turning away, \"with the off-hand way in which you speak of a\nwoman's leaving her husband. It's easy to see you've never had one!\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, \"nothing is\nmore common in our Western cities, and it's to them, after all, that we\nmust look in the future.\" Her argument, however, does not concern this\nhistory, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to\nRalph Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might\ndesignate, and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure.\nIsabel went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that\nHenrietta had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get\nrid of them all.\n\nFor all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a\nlow tone, with a quick smile: \"My dear Ralph--!\"\n\nIt was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the\nsame way, jocosely, ingenuously: \"I've seen less of you than I might,\nbut it's better than nothing. And then I've heard a great deal about\nyou.\"\n\n\"I don't know from whom, leading the life you've done.\"\n\n\"From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other\npeople speak of you. They always say you're 'charming,' and that's so\nflat.\"\n\n\"I might have seen more of you certainly,\" Isabel said. \"But when one's\nmarried one has so much occupation.\"\n\n\"Fortunately I'm not married. When you come to see me in England I\nshall be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor.\" He\ncontinued to talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded\nin making the assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to\nhis term being near, to the probability that he should not outlast the\nsummer. If he preferred it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality\nwas sufficiently distinct without their erecting finger-posts in\nconversation. That had been well enough for the earlier time, though\nabout this, as about his other affairs, Ralph had never been egotistic.\nIsabel spoke of his journey, of the stages into which he should\ndivide it, of the precautions he should take. \"Henrietta's my greatest\nprecaution,\" he went on. \"The conscience of that woman's sublime.\"\n\n\"Certainly she'll be very conscientious.\"\n\n\"Will be? She has been! It's only because she thinks it's her duty that\nshe goes with me. There's a conception of duty for you.\"\n\n\"Yes, it's a generous one,\" said Isabel, \"and it makes me deeply\nashamed. I ought to go with you, you know.\"\n\n\"Your husband wouldn't like that.\"\n\n\"No, he wouldn't like it. But I might go, all the same.\"\n\n\"I'm startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a\ncause of disagreement between a lady and her husband!\"\n\n\"That's why I don't go,\" said Isabel simply--yet not very lucidly.\n\nRalph understood well enough, however. \"I should think so, with all\nthose occupations you speak of.\"\n\n\"It isn't that. I'm afraid,\" said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as\nif to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: \"I'm afraid.\"\n\nRalph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely\ndeliberate--apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do public\npenance for a fault of which she had not been convicted? or were her\nwords simply an attempt at enlightened self-analysis? However this\nmight be, Ralph could not resist so easy an opportunity. \"Afraid of your\nhusband?\"\n\n\"Afraid of myself!\" she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and\nthen added: \"If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my\nduty. That's what women are expected to be.\"\n\n\"Ah yes,\" laughed Ralph; \"but to make up for it there's always some man\nawfully afraid of some woman!\"\n\nShe gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a different\nturn. \"With Henrietta at the head of your little band,\" she exclaimed\nabruptly, \"there will be nothing left for Mr. Goodwood!\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear Isabel,\" Ralph answered, \"he's used to that. There is\nnothing left for Mr. Goodwood.\"\n\nShe coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him. They\nstood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his. \"You've\nbeen my best friend,\" she said.\n\n\"It was for you that I wanted--that I wanted to live. But I'm of no use\nto you.\"\n\nThen it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again.\nShe could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. \"If you\nshould send for me I'd come,\" she said at last.\n\n\"Your husband won't consent to that.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I can arrange it.\"\n\n\"I shall keep that for my last pleasure!\" said Ralph.\n\nIn answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and that\nevening Caspar Goodwood came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the\nfirst to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation with Gilbert\nOsmond, who almost always was present when his wife received. They sat\ndown together, and Osmond, talkative, communicative, expansive, seemed\npossessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his\nlegs crossed, lounging and chatting, while Goodwood, more restless, but\nnot at all lively, shifted his position, played with his hat, made the\nlittle sofa creak beneath him. Osmond's face wore a sharp, aggressive\nsmile; he was as a man whose perceptions have been quickened by good\nnews. He remarked to Goodwood that he was sorry they were to lose him;\nhe himself should particularly miss him. He saw so few intelligent\nmen--they were surprisingly scarce in Rome. He must be sure to come\nback; there was something very refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like\nhimself, in talking with a genuine outsider.\n\n\"I'm very fond of Rome, you know,\" Osmond said; \"but there's nothing\nI like better than to meet people who haven't that superstition. The\nmodern world's after all very fine. Now you're thoroughly modern and yet\nare not at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor\nstuff. If they're the children of the future we're willing to die young.\nOf course the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like\neverything that's really new--not the mere pretence of it. There's\nnothing new, unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty\nof that in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of\nlight. A revelation of vulgarity! There's a certain kind of vulgarity\nwhich I believe is really new; I don't think there ever was anything\nlike it before. Indeed I don't find vulgarity, at all, before the\npresent century. You see a faint menace of it here and there in the\nlast, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things\nare literally not recognised. Now, we've liked you--!\" With which\nhe hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Goodwood's knee and\nsmiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment. \"I'm going to say\nsomething extremely offensive and patronising, but you must let me\nhave the satisfaction of it. We've liked you because--because you've\nreconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain\nnumber of people like you--a la bonne heure! I'm talking for my wife as\nwell as for myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn't\nI speak for her? We're as united, you know, as the candlestick and the\nsnuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I've understood\nfrom you that your occupations have been--a--commercial? There's a\ndanger in that, you know; but it's the way you have escaped that\nstrikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste;\nfortunately my wife doesn't hear me. What I mean is that you might have\nbeen--a--what I was mentioning just now. The whole American world was\nin a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you've something about\nyou that saved you. And yet you're so modern, so modern; the most modern\nman we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again.\"\n\nI have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give\nample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he\nusually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more\nclosely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather\nodd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what\nhe was about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a\ngrossness not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade.\nGoodwood had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he\nscarcely knew where the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely knew\nwhat Osmond was talking about; he wanted to be alone with Isabel, and\nthat idea spoke louder to him than her husband's perfectly-pitched\nvoice. He watched her talking with other people and wondered when she\nwould be at liberty and whether he might ask her to go into one of the\nother rooms. His humour was not, like Osmond's, of the best; there was\nan element of dull rage in his consciousness of things. Up to this time\nhe had not disliked Osmond personally; he had only thought him very\nwell-informed and obliging and more than he had supposed like the person\nwhom Isabel Archer would naturally marry. His host had won in the open\nfield a great advantage over him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense\nof fair play to have been moved to underrate him on that account. He\nhad not tried positively to think well of him; this was a flight of\nsentimental benevolence of which, even in the days when he came\nnearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, Goodwood was\nquite incapable. He accepted him as rather a brilliant personage of the\namateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which it amused\nhim to work off in little refinements of conversation. But he only half\ntrusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Osmond should lavish\nrefinements of any sort upon HIM. It made him suspect that he found some\nprivate entertainment in it, and it ministered to a general impression\nthat his triumphant rival had in his composition a streak of perversity.\nHe knew indeed that Osmond could have no reason to wish him evil; he\nhad nothing to fear from him. He had carried off a supreme advantage and\ncould afford to be kind to a man who had lost everything. It was true\nthat Goodwood had at times grimly wished he were dead and would have\nliked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of knowing this, for practice\nhad made the younger man perfect in the art of appearing inaccessible\nto-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this art in order to\ndeceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first. He cultivated\nit, moreover, with very limited success; of which there could be no\nbetter proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in his\nsoul when he heard Osmond speak of his wife's feelings as if he were\ncommissioned to answer for them.\n\nThat was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this\nevening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a point even\nthan usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo\nRoccanera. He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his\nwife had all things in sweet community and it were as natural to each\nof them to say \"we\" as to say \"I\". In all this there was an air of\nintention that had puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could\nonly reflect for his comfort that Mrs. Osmond's relations with her\nhusband were none of his business. He had no proof whatever that her\nhusband misrepresented her, and if he judged her by the surface of\nthings was bound to believe that she liked her life. She had never given\nhim the faintest sign of discontent. Miss Stackpole had told him that\nshe had lost her illusions, but writing for the papers had made Miss\nStackpole sensational. She was too fond of early news. Moreover, since\nher arrival in Rome she had been much on her guard; she had pretty well\nceased to flash her lantern at him. This indeed, it may be said for\nher, would have been quite against her conscience. She had now seen\nthe reality of Isabel's situation, and it had inspired her with a just\nreserve. Whatever could be done to improve it the most useful form of\nassistance would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense of her\nwrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest in the state\nof Mr. Goodwood's feelings, but she showed it at present only by sending\nhim choice extracts, humorous and other, from the American journals, of\nwhich she received several by every post and which she always perused\nwith a pair of scissors in her hand. The articles she cut out she placed\nin an envelope addressed to Mr. Goodwood, which she left with her own\nhand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about Isabel: hadn't\nhe come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the\nleast authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of\nauthorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harsh-ness\nwith which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care, he now\nrecognised that, so far as she was concerned, the future had nothing\nmore for him. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the truth;\napparently he could not even be trusted to respect her if she WERE\nunhappy. He was hopeless, helpless, useless. To this last character\nshe had called his attention by her ingenious plan for making him\nleave Rome. He had no objection whatever to doing what he could for\nher cousin, but it made him grind his teeth to think that of all the\nservices she might have asked of him this was the one she had been eager\nto select. There had been no danger of her choosing one that would have\nkept him in Rome.\n\nTo-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave her\nto-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge\nthat he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he had gained no\nknowledge; she was imperturbable, inscrutable, impenetrable. He felt the\nold bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his\nthroat, and he knew there are disappointments that last as long as life.\nOsmond went on talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching\nagain upon his perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a\nmoment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible\nthat without malice he should have selected so unusual a topic. But what\ndid it matter, after all, whether he were demonic or not, and whether\nshe loved him or hated him? She might hate him to the death without\none's gaining a straw one's self. \"You travel, by the by, with Ralph\nTouchett,\" Osmond said. \"I suppose that means you'll move slowly?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I shall do just as he likes.\"\n\n\"You're very accommodating. We're immensely obliged to you; you must\nreally let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you what we\nfeel. Touchett has been on our minds all winter; it has looked more than\nonce as if he would never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it's\nworse than an imprudence for people in that state to travel; it's a kind\nof indelicacy. I wouldn't for the world be under such an obligation to\nTouchett as he has been to--to my wife and me. Other people inevitably\nhave to look after him, and every one isn't so generous as you.\"\n\n\"I've nothing else to do,\" Caspar said dryly.\n\nOsmond looked at him a moment askance. \"You ought to marry, and then\nyou'd have plenty to do! It's true that in that case you wouldn't be\nquite so available for deeds of mercy.\"\n\n\"Do you find that as a married man you're so much occupied?\" the young\nman mechanically asked.\n\n\"Ah, you see, being married's in itself an occupation. It isn't always\nactive; it's often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my\nwife and I do so many things together. We read, we study, we make music,\nwe walk, we drive--we talk even, as when we first knew each other. I\ndelight, to this hour, in my wife's conversation. If you're ever bored\ntake my advice and get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that\ncase; but you'll never bore yourself. You'll always have something to\nsay to yourself--always have a subject of reflection.\"\n\n\"I'm not bored,\" said Goodwood. \"I've plenty to think about and to say\nto myself.\"\n\n\"More than to say to others!\" Osmond exclaimed with a light laugh.\n\"Where shall you go next? I mean after you've consigned Touchett to his\nnatural caretakers--I believe his mother's at last coming back to look\nafter him. That little lady's superb; she neglects her duties with a\nfinish--! Perhaps you'll spend the summer in England?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I've no plans.\"\n\n\"Happy man! That's a little bleak, but it's very free.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I'm very free.\"\n\n\"Free to come back to Rome I hope,\" said Osmond as he saw a group of\nnew visitors enter the room. \"Remember that when you do come we count on\nyou!\"\n\nGoodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without\nhis having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise than as one of several\nassociated interlocutors. There was something perverse in the inveteracy\nwith which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an\nintention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was\nabsolutely no appearance of one. She met his eyes with her clear\nhospitable smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and help\nher to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he\nopposed but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked\nto the few people he knew, who found him for the first time rather\nself-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood, though he\noften contradicted others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera,\nand it was usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed to\ncontain himself; but toward the end, when he saw the people beginning to\ngo, he drew near to Isabel and asked her in a low tone if he might\nnot speak to her in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured\nhimself was empty. She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found\nher self absolutely prevented. \"I'm afraid it's impossible. People are\nsaying good-night, and I must be where they can see me.\"\n\n\"I shall wait till they are all gone then.\"\n\nShe hesitated a moment. \"Ah, that will be delightful!\" she exclaimed.\n\nAnd he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several\npeople, at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The Countess\nGemini, who was never herself till midnight, as she said, displayed no\nconsciousness that the entertainment was over; she had still a little\ncircle of gentlemen in front of the fire, who every now and then broke\ninto a united laugh. Osmond had disappeared--he never bade good-bye to\npeople; and as the Countess was extending her range, according to her\ncustom at this period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed.\nIsabel sat a little apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law\nwould sound a lower note and let the last loiterers depart in peace.\n\n\"May I not say a word to you now?\" Goodwood presently asked her. She\ngot up immediately, smiling. \"Certainly, we'll go somewhere else if you\nlike.\" They went together, leaving the Countess with her little circle,\nand for a moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of them\nspoke. Isabel would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room\nslowly fanning herself; she had for him the same familiar grace. She\nseemed to wait for him to speak. Now that he was alone with her all the\npassion he had never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his\neyes and made things swim round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and\nblurred, and through the heaving veil he felt her hover before him with\ngleaming eyes and parted lips. If he had seen more distinctly he would\nhave perceived her smile was fixed and a trifle forced--that she was\nfrightened at what she saw in his own face. \"I suppose you wish to bid\nme goodbye?\" she said.\n\n\"Yes--but I don't like it. I don't want to leave Rome,\" he answered with\nalmost plaintive honesty.\n\n\"I can well imagine. It's wonderfully good of you. I can't tell you how\nkind I think you.\"\n\nFor a moment more he said nothing. \"With a few words like that you make\nme go.\"\n\n\"You must come back some day,\" she brightly returned.\n\n\"Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible.\"\n\n\"Oh no; I don't mean all that.\"\n\n\"What do you mean? I don't understand! But I said I'd go, and I'll go,\"\nGoodwood added.\n\n\"Come back whenever you like,\" said Isabel with attempted lightness.\n\n\"I don't care a straw for your cousin!\" Caspar broke out.\n\n\"Is that what you wished to tell me?\"\n\n\"No, no; I didn't want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask you--\" he\npaused a moment, and then--\"what have you really made of your life?\" he\nsaid, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an answer; but\nshe said nothing, and he went on: \"I can't understand, I can't penetrate\nyou! What am I to believe--what do you want me to think?\" Still she said\nnothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to\nease. \"I'm told you're unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it.\nThat would be something for me. But you yourself say you're happy, and\nyou're somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You're completely changed.\nYou conceal everything; I haven't really come near you.\"\n\n\"You come very near,\" Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.\n\n\"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done\nwell?\"\n\n\"You ask a great deal.\"\n\n\"Yes--I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell me. I\nshall never know if you can help it. And then it's none of my business.\"\nHe had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a\nconsiderate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that\nit was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she\nwould think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a\nlash and added a deep vibration to his low voice. \"You're perfectly\ninscrutable, and that's what makes me think you've something to hide. I\ntell you I don't care a straw for your cousin, but I don't mean that I\ndon't like him. I mean that it isn't because I like him that I go away\nwith him. I'd go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If\nyou should ask me I'd go to Siberia tomorrow. Why do you want me to\nleave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were as\ncontented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd rather know the\ntruth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come here for nothing.\nThat isn't what I came for. I thought I shouldn't care. I came because I\nwanted to assure myself that I needn't think of you any more. I haven't\nthought of anything else, and you're quite right to wish me to go away.\nBut if I must go, there's no harm in my letting myself out for a single\nmoment, is there? If you're really hurt--if HE hurts you--nothing I say\nwill hurt you. When I tell you I love you it's simply what I came for. I\nthought it was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn't\nsay it if I didn't believe I should never see you again. It's the last\ntime--let me pluck a single flower! I've no right to say that, I know;\nand you've no right to listen. But you don't listen; you never listen,\nyou're always thinking of something else. After this I must go, of\ncourse; so I shall at least have a reason. Your asking me is no reason,\nnot a real one. I can't judge by your husband,\" he went on irrelevantly,\nalmost incoherently; \"I don't understand him; he tells me you adore each\nother. Why does he tell me that? What business is it of mine? When I say\nthat to you, you look strange. But you always look strange. Yes, you've\nsomething to hide. It's none of my business--very true. But I love you,\"\nsaid Caspar Goodwood.\n\nAs he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which\nthey had entered and raised her fan as if in warning.\n\n\"You've behaved so well; don't spoil it,\" she uttered softly.\n\n\"No one hears me. It's wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I\nlove you as I've never loved you.\"\n\n\"I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go.\"\n\n\"You can't help it--of course not. You would if you could, but\nyou can't, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask\nnothing--nothing, that is, I shouldn't. But I do ask one sole\nsatisfaction:--that you tell me--that you tell me--!\"\n\n\"That I tell you what?\"\n\n\"Whether I may pity you.\"\n\n\"Should you like that?\" Isabel asked, trying to smile again.\n\n\"To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something.\nI'd give my life to it.\"\n\nShe raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her eyes.\nThey rested a moment on his. \"Don't give your life to it; but give a\nthought to it every now and then.\" And with that she went back to the\nCountess Gemini.\n\n\n\n\n\nMadame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the\nevening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents,\nand Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it.\nThings had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability,\nand to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been\nmentioned that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord\nWarburton had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Isabel\n(whom, to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first\nutterance had been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman,\nfor whom she appeared to hold her dear friend accountable.\n\n\"Please don't talk of him,\" said Isabel for answer; \"we've heard so much\nof him of late.\"\n\nMadame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and\nsmiled at the left corner of her mouth. \"You've heard, yes. But you must\nremember that I've not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be\nable to congratulate Pansy.\"\n\n\"You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton.\"\n\n\"How you say that! Don't you know I had set my heart on it?\" Madame\nMerle asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation\nof good-humour.\n\nIsabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too.\n\"You shouldn't have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to\nwatch the affair.\"\n\n\"I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it's too late?\"\n\n\"You had better ask Pansy,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I shall ask her what you've said to her.\"\n\nThese words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused\non Isabel's part by her perceiving that her visitor's attitude was a\ncritical one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto;\nshe had never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling.\nBut apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since\nshe now had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation\nwhich even her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had\nsuffered a disappointment which excited Isabel's surprise--our heroine\nhaving no knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy's marriage; and\nshe betrayed it in a manner which quickened Mrs. Osmond's alarm. More\nclearly than ever before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from\nshe knew not where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare\nthat this bright, strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of\nthe practical, the personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in her\ndestiny. She was nearer to her than Isabel had yet discovered, and her\nnearness was not the charming accident she had so long supposed. The\nsense of accident indeed had died within her that day when she happened\nto be struck with the manner in which the wonderful lady and her own\nhusband sat together in private. No definite suspicion had as yet\ntaken its place; but it was enough to make her view this friend with a\ndifferent eye, to have been led to reflect that there was more intention\nin her past behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah yes,\nthere had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said to\nherself; and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream. What was\nit that brought home to her that Madame Merle's intention had not been\ngood? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which\nmarried itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor's\nchallenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was something in this challenge\nwhich had at the very outset excited an answering defiance; a nameless\nvitality which she could see to have been absent from her friend's\nprofessions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been unwilling to\ninterfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing to interfere\nwith. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went fast in\ncasting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several\nyears of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a\nstrange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Merle's interest was\nidentical with Osmond's: that was enough. \"I think Pansy will tell\nyou nothing that will make you more angry,\" she said in answer to her\ncompanion's last remark.\n\n\"I'm not in the least angry. I've only a great desire to retrieve the\nsituation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for ever?\"\n\n\"I can't tell you; I don't understand you. It's all over; please let it\nrest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and I've nothing\nmore to say or to hear. I've no doubt,\" Isabel added, \"that he'll be\nvery happy to discuss the subject with you.\"\n\n\"I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening.\"\n\n\"As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn't\napply to me for information.\"\n\n\"It isn't information I want. At bottom it's sympathy. I had set my\nheart on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do--it satisfied\nthe imagination.\"\n\n\"Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned.\"\n\n\"You mean by that of course that I'm not concerned. Of course not\ndirectly. But when one's such an old friend one can't help having\nsomething at stake. You forget how long I've known Pansy. You mean,\nof course,\" Madame Merle added, \"that YOU are one of the persons\nconcerned.\"\n\n\"No; that's the last thing I mean. I'm very weary of it all.\"\n\nMadame Merle hesitated a little. \"Ah yes, your work's done.\"\n\n\"Take care what you say,\" said Isabel very gravely.\n\n\"Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your\nhusband judges you severely.\"\n\nIsabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with\nbitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle's informing her\nthat Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife\nthat struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was\nmeant for insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only\nwhen it was exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not\nright yet. What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an\nopen wound was the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as\nwell as in his thoughts. \"Should you like to know how I judge HIM?\" she\nasked at last.\n\n\"No, because you'd never tell me. And it would be painful for me to\nknow.\"\n\nThere was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel\nthought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would leave her.\n\"Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don't despair,\" she said\nabruptly, with a desire that this should close their interview.\n\nBut Madame Merle's expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only\ngathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the\nair a faint, agreeable fragrance. \"I don't despair; I feel encouraged.\nAnd I didn't come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I\nknow you'll tell it if I ask you. It's an immense blessing with you that\none can count upon that. No, you won't believe what a comfort I take in\nit.\"\n\n\"What truth do you speak of?\" Isabel asked, wondering.\n\n\"Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own\nmovement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to\nplease you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite\nof having lost a little of it,\" Madame Merle continued with a smile, \"to\nask such a question as that!\" She sat looking at her friend, to judge\nthe effect of her words, and then went on: \"Now don't be heroic, don't\nbe unreasonable, don't take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour\nin speaking so. I don't know another woman to whom I would do it. I\nhaven't the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And\ndon't you see how well it is that your husband should know it? It's\ntrue that he doesn't appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to\nextract it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn't\nalter the fact that it would make a difference in his view of his\ndaughter's prospects to know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord\nWarburton simply got tired of the poor child, that's one thing, and it's\na pity. If he gave her up to please you it's another. That's a pity too,\nbut in a different way. Then, in the latter case, you'd perhaps resign\nyourself to not being pleased--to simply seeing your step-daughter\nmarried. Let him off--let us have him!\"\n\nMadame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and\napparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew\npale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her\nvisitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this\nwas not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. \"Who\nare you--what are you?\" Isabel murmured. \"What have you to do with my\nhusband?\" It was strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as\nif she had loved him.\n\n\"Ah then, you take it heroically! I'm very sorry. Don't think, however,\nthat I shall do so.\"\n\n\"What have you to do with me?\" Isabel went on.\n\nMadame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes\nfrom Isabel's face. \"Everything!\" she answered.\n\nIsabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost\na prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman's eyes seemed\nonly a darkness. \"Oh misery!\" she murmured at last; and she fell\nback, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a\nhigh-surging wave that Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married\nher. Before she uncovered her face again that lady had left the room.\n\nIsabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away,\nunder the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread\nupon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her\nconfidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a\nless unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that\nhad crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her\nsecret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern\nquality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a\nsun-warmed angle on a winter's day, or stood in a mouldy church to which\nno one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness.\nSmall it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the\ncontinuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the\ngreater. She had become deeply, tenderly acquainted with Rome; it\ninterfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it\nchiefly as the place where people had suffered. This was what came to\nher in the starved churches, where the marble columns, transferred from\npagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance and the\nmusty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers. There was\nno gentler nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the firmest of\nworshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or clustered candles, could\nnot have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these objects nor\nhave been more liable at such moments to a spiritual visitation. Pansy,\nas we know, was almost always her companion, and of late the Countess\nGemini, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to their equipage;\nbut she still occasionally found herself alone when it suited her\nmood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had several\nresorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low\nparapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front\nof Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the\nfar-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain,\nbetween, which is still so full of all that has passed from it. After\nthe departure of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than\nusual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the\nother. Even when Pansy and the Countess were with her she felt the touch\nof a vanished world. The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind,\nrolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to\ntangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where\nthe fields lay near, while she strolled further and further over the\nflower-freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and\ngazed through the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness\nof the scene--at the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft\nconfusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the\nhills where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.\n\nOn the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution\nnot to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this\nlady's image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an\nalmost childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate\nfriend of several years the great historical epithet of wicked were\nto be applied. She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary\nworks; to the best of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance\nwith wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life,\nand in spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated it with\nsome success this elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it\nwas not wicked--in the historic sense--to be even deeply false; for that\nwas what Madame Merle had been--deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel's Aunt\nLydia had made this discovery long before, and had mentioned it to her\nniece; but Isabel had flattered herself at this time that she had a much\nricher view of things, especially of the spontaneity of her own\ncareer and the nobleness of her own interpretations, than poor\nstiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle had done what she wanted;\nshe had brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection which\ncould not fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so much\nhave desired such an event. There were people who had the match-making\npassion, like the votaries of art for art; but Madame Merle, great\nartist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of\nmarriage, too ill even of life; she had desired that particular marriage\nbut had not desired others. She had therefore had a conception of gain,\nand Isabel asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her\nnaturally a long time to discover, and even then her discovery was\nimperfect. It came back to her that Madame Merle, though she had seemed\nto like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly\naffectionate after Mr. Touchett's death and after learning that her\nyoung friend had been subject to the good old man's charity. She had\nfound her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money, but in\nthe more refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young\nwoman's fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her\nclosest intimate, and it was already vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert\noccupied this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with\nthe conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the\nleast sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money.\nStrange to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought\na good deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular\ninjury. This was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying\nto herself that the worst was still to come. A man might marry a woman\nfor her money perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least\nhe should let her know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her\nmoney, her money would now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let\nher go. Ah, if Mr. Touchett's great charity would but help her to-day it\nwould be blessed indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame\nMerle had wished to do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the\nboon must have lost its warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in\nregard to his too zealous benefactress, and what expression must they\nhave found on the part of such a master of irony? It is a singular, but\na characteristic, fact that before Isabel returned from her silent drive\nshe had broken its silence by the soft exclamation: \"Poor, poor Madame\nMerle!\"\n\nHer compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same\nafternoon she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of\ntime-softened damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the\nlady to whom it referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which\nwe once paid a visit in company with the discreet Mr. Rosier. In that\napartment, towards six o'clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his\nhostess stood before him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion\ncommemorated in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to\nits apparent as to its real importance.\n\n\"I don't believe you're unhappy; I believe you like it,\" said Madame\nMerle.\n\n\"Did I say I was unhappy?\" Osmond asked with a face grave enough to\nsuggest that he might have been.\n\n\"No, but you don't say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude.\"\n\n\"Don't talk about gratitude,\" he returned dryly. \"And don't aggravate\nme,\" he added in a moment.\n\nMadame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white\nhands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were,\nto the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. \"On\nyour side, don't try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my\nthoughts.\"\n\n\"I trouble about them no more than I can help. I've quite enough of my\nown.\"\n\n\"That's because they're so delightful.\"\n\nOsmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at\nhis companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an\nexpression of fatigue. \"You do aggravate me,\" he remarked in a moment.\n\"I'm very tired.\"\n\n\"Eh moi donc!\" cried Madame Merle.\n\n\"With you it's because you fatigue yourself. With me it's not my own\nfault.\"\n\n\"When I fatigue myself it's for you. I've given you an interest. That's\na great gift.\"\n\n\"Do you call it an interest?\" Osmond enquired with detachment.\n\n\"Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.\"\n\n\"The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.\"\n\n\"You've never looked better; you've never been so agreeable, so\nbrilliant.\"\n\n\"Damn my brilliancy!\" he thoughtfully murmured. \"How little, after all,\nyou know me!\"\n\n\"If I don't know you I know nothing,\" smiled Madame Merle. \"You've the\nfeeling of complete success.\"\n\n\"No, I shall not have that till I've made you stop judging me.\"\n\n\"I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express\nyourself more too.\"\n\nOsmond just hung fire. \"I wish you'd express yourself less!\"\n\n\"You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I've never been a\nchatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to\nsay to you first. Your wife doesn't know what to do with herself,\" she\nwent on with a change of tone.\n\n\"Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means\nto carry out her ideas.\"\n\n\"Her ideas to-day must be remarkable.\"\n\n\"Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.\"\n\n\"She was unable to show me any this morning,\" said Madame Merle. \"She\nseemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was\ncompletely bewildered.\"\n\n\"You had better say at once that she was pathetic.\"\n\n\"Ah no, I don't want to encourage you too much.\"\n\nHe still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one\nfoot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. \"I should like to\nknow what's the matter with you,\" he said at last.\n\n\"The matter--the matter--!\" And here Madame Merle stopped. Then she went\non with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder in a\nclear sky: \"The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able to\nweep, and that I can't!\"\n\n\"What good would it do you to weep?\"\n\n\"It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.\"\n\n\"If I've dried your tears, that's something. But I've seen you shed\nthem.\"\n\n\"Oh, I believe you'll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a\nwolf. I've a great hope, I've a great need, of that. I was vile this\nmorning; I was horrid,\" she said.\n\n\"If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably\ndidn't perceive it,\" Osmond answered.\n\n\"It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn't help it; I\nwas full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don't know.\nYou've not only dried up my tears; you've dried up my soul.\"\n\n\"It's not I then that am responsible for my wife's condition,\" Osmond\nsaid. \"It's pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your\ninfluence upon her. Don't you know the soul is an immortal principle?\nHow can it suffer alteration?\"\n\n\"I don't believe at all that it's an immortal principle. I believe it\ncan perfectly be destroyed. That's what has happened to mine, which\nwas a very good one to start with; and it's you I have to thank for it.\nYou're VERY bad,\" she added with gravity in her emphasis.\n\n\"Is this the way we're to end?\" Osmond asked with the same studied\ncoldness.\n\n\"I don't know how we're to end. I wish I did--How do bad people\nend?--especially as to their COMMON crimes. You have made me as bad as\nyourself.\"\n\n\"I don't understand you. You seem to me quite good enough,\" said Osmond,\nhis conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.\n\nMadame Merle's self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and\nshe was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the\npleasure of meeting her. The glow of her eye turners sombre; her smile\nbetrayed a painful effort. \"Good enough for anything that I've done with\nmyself? I suppose that's what you mean.\"\n\n\"Good enough to be always charming!\" Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.\n\n\"Oh God!\" his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe\nfreshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on\nIsabel's part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her\nhands.\n\n\"Are you going to weep after all?\" Osmond asked; and on her remaining\nmotionless he went on: \"Have I ever complained to you?\"\n\nShe dropped her hands quickly. \"No, you've taken your revenge\notherwise--you have taken it on HER.\"\n\nOsmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling\nand might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the\nheavenly powers. \"Oh, the imagination of women! It's always vulgar, at\nbottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist.\"\n\n\"Of course you haven't complained. You've enjoyed your triumph too\nmuch.\"\n\n\"I'm rather curious to know what you call my triumph.\"\n\n\"You've made your wife afraid of you.\"\n\nOsmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on\nhis knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at\nhis feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any one's valuation\nof anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a\npeculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse\nwith. \"Isabel's not afraid of me, and it's not what I wish,\" he said\nat last. \"To what do you want to provoke me when you say such things as\nthat?\"\n\n\"I've thought over all the harm you can do me,\" Madame Merle answered.\n\"Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you\nshe feared.\"\n\n\"You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I'm not\nresponsible for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see her at\nall: you're capable of acting without her. I've not made you afraid of\nme that I can see,\" he went on; \"how then should I have made her? You're\nat least as brave. I can't think where you've picked up such rubbish;\none might suppose you knew me by this time.\" He got up as he spoke and\nwalked to the chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if\nhe had seen them for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare\nporcelain with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it\nin his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel,\nhe pursued: \"You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you\nlose sight of the real. I'm much simpler than you think.\"\n\n\"I think you're very simple.\" And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup.\n\"I've come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it's\nonly since your marriage that I've understood you. I've seen better what\nyou have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please\nbe very careful of that precious object.\"\n\n\"It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack,\" said Osmond dryly as he put\nit down. \"If you didn't understand me before I married it was cruelly\nrash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box\nmyself; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I\nonly asked that she should like me.\"\n\n\"That she should like you so much!\"\n\n\"So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she\nshould adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that.\"\n\n\"I never adored you,\" said Madame Merle.\n\n\"Ah, but you pretended to!\"\n\n\"It's true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,\" Madame\nMerle went on.\n\n\"My wife has declined--declined to do anything of the sort,\" said\nOsmond. \"If you're determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy's\nhardly for her.\"\n\n\"The tragedy's for me!\" Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long\nlow sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her\nmantel-shelf.\n\n\"It appears that I'm to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false\nposition.\"\n\n\"You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for\nour comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me, at least\nmy child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I\nhaven't a fault to find with her.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" she said softly, \"if I had a child--!\"\n\nOsmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, \"The children of\nothers may be a great interest!\" he announced.\n\n\"You're more like a copy-book than I. There's something after all that\nholds us together.\"\n\n\"Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?\" Osmond asked.\n\n\"No; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It's that,\" Madame\nMerle pursued, \"that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be\nMY work,\" she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter,\nrelaxing to its habit of smoothness.\n\nHer friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the\nformer article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, \"On the whole, I\nthink,\" he said, \"you had better leave it to me.\"\n\nAfter he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the\nmantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the\nexistence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. \"Have I\nbeen so vile all for nothing?\" she vaguely wailed.\n\n\n\n\n\nAs the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments\nIsabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics\nand to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who\nprofessed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made\nan objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if\nthey had been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense,\nthough she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself\nthe apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only\ndesired to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour\nevery day in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus if it had been a\ncondition of her remaining at Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel, however, was\nnot a severe cicerone; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they\noffered an excuse for talking about other matters than the love affairs\nof the ladies of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary\nof offering information. It must be added that during these visits the\nCountess forbade herself every form of active research; her preference\nwas to sit in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most\ninteresting. It was in this manner that she had hitherto examined the\nColiseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who--with all the respect\nthat she owed her--could not see why she should not descend from the\nvehicle and enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble\nthat her view of the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be\ndivined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her parents' guest\nmight be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when\nthe Countess announced her willingness to undertake this feat--a mild\nafternoon in March when the windy month expressed itself in occasional\npuffs of spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together,\nbut Isabel left her companions to wander over the place. She had often\nascended to those desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to\nbellow applause and where now the wild flowers (when they are allowed)\nbloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she felt weary and disposed\nto sit in the despoiled arena. It made an intermission too, for the\nCountess often asked more from one's attention than she gave in return;\nand Isabel believed that when she was alone with her niece she let the\ndust gather for a moment on the ancient scandals of the Arnide. She so\nremained below therefore, while Pansy guided her undiscriminating aunt\nto the steep brick staircase at the foot of which the custodian unlocks\nthe tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was half in shadow; the\nwestern sun brought out the pale red tone of the great blocks of\ntravertine--the latent colour that is the only living element in the\nimmense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a tourist, looking\nup at the far sky-line where, in the clear stillness, a multitude of\nswallows kept circling and plunging. Isabel presently became aware\nthat one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena, had\nturned his attention to her own person and was looking at her with\na certain little poise of the head which she had some weeks before\nperceived to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose.\nSuch an attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and\nthis gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the question of\nspeaking to her. When he had assured himself that she was unaccompanied\nhe drew near, remarking that though she would not answer his letters\nshe would perhaps not wholly close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She\nreplied that her stepdaughter was close at hand and that she could only\ngive him five minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon\na broken block.\n\n\"It's very soon told,\" said Edward Rosier. \"I've sold all my bibelots!\"\nIsabel gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had\ntold her he had had all his teeth drawn. \"I've sold them by auction at\nthe Hotel Drouot,\" he went on. \"The sale took place three days ago, and\nthey've telegraphed me the result. It's magnificent.\"\n\n\"I'm glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things.\"\n\n\"I have the money instead--fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond think\nme rich enough now?\"\n\n\"Is it for that you did it?\" Isabel asked gently.\n\n\"For what else in the world could it be? That's the only thing I think\nof. I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn't stop for the\nsale; I couldn't have seen them going off; I think it would have killed\nme. But I put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I\nshould tell you I have kept my enamels. Now I have the money in my\npocket, and he can't say I'm poor!\" the young man exclaimed defiantly.\n\n\"He'll say now that you're not wise,\" said Isabel, as if Gilbert Osmond\nhad never said this before.\n\nRosier gave her a sharp look. \"Do you mean that without my bibelots I'm\nnothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about me? That's what they\ntold me in Paris; oh they were very frank about it. But they hadn't seen\nHER!\"\n\n\"My dear friend, you deserve to succeed,\" said Isabel very kindly.\n\n\"You say that so sadly that it's the same as if you said I shouldn't.\"\nAnd he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation of his own. He had\nthe air of a man who knows he has been the talk of Paris for a week and\nis full half a head taller in consequence, but who also has a painful\nsuspicion that in spite of this increase of stature one or two persons\nstill have the perversity to think him diminutive. \"I know what happened\nhere while I was away,\" he went on; \"What does Mr. Osmond expect after\nshe has refused Lord Warburton?\"\n\nIsabel debated. \"That she'll marry another nobleman.\"\n\n\"What other nobleman?\"\n\n\"One that he'll pick out.\"\n\nRosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket.\n\"You're laughing at some one, but this time I don't think it's at me.\"\n\n\"I didn't mean to laugh,\" said Isabel. \"I laugh very seldom. Now you had\nbetter go away.\"\n\n\"I feel very safe!\" Rosier declared without moving. This might be; but\nit evidently made him feel more so to make the announcement in rather\na loud voice, balancing himself a little complacently on his toes and\nlooking all round the Coliseum as if it were filled with an audience.\nSuddenly Isabel saw him change colour; there was more of an audience\nthan he had suspected. She turned and perceived that her two companions\nhad returned from their excursion. \"You must really go away,\" she said\nquickly. \"Ah, my dear lady, pity me!\" Edward Rosier murmured in a voice\nstrangely at variance with the announcement I have just quoted. And then\nhe added eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his misery is seized by\na happy thought: \"Is that lady the Countess Gemini? I've a great desire\nto be presented to her.\"\n\nIsabel looked at him a moment. \"She has no influence with her brother.\"\n\n\"Ah, what a monster you make him out!\" And Rosier faced the Countess,\nwho advanced, in front of Pansy, with an animation partly due perhaps\nto the fact that she perceived her sister-in-law to be engaged in\nconversation with a very pretty young man.\n\n\"I'm glad you've kept your enamels!\" Isabel called as she left him. She\nwent straight to Pansy, who, on seeing Edward Rosier, had stopped short,\nwith lowered eyes. \"We'll go back to the carriage,\" she said gently.\n\n\"Yes, it's getting late,\" Pansy returned more gently still. And she\nwent on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back. Isabel,\nhowever, allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had\nimmediately taken place between the Countess and Mr. Rosier. He had\nremoved his hat and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced\nhimself, while the Countess's expressive back displayed to Isabel's eye\na gracious inclination. These facts, none the less, were presently lost\nto sight, for Isabel and Pansy took their places again in the carriage.\nPansy, who faced her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her\nlap; then she raised them and rested them on Isabel's. There shone out\nof each of them a little melancholy ray--a spark of timid passion which\ntouched Isabel to the heart. At the same time a wave of envy passed over\nher soul, as she compared the tremulous longing, the definite ideal\nof the child with her own dry despair. \"Poor little Pansy!\" she\naffectionately said.\n\n\"Oh never mind!\" Pansy answered in the tone of eager apology. And then\nthere was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming. \"Did you show\nyour aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?\" Isabel asked at last.\n\n\"Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased.\"\n\n\"And you're not tired, I hope.\"\n\n\"Oh no, thank you, I'm not tired.\"\n\nThe Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the footman\nto go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting. He presently\nreturned with the announcement that the Signora Contessa begged them not\nto wait--she would come home in a cab!\n\nAbout a week after this lady's quick sympathies had enlisted themselves\nwith Mr. Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress for dinner, found\nPansy sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been awaiting her;\nshe got up from her low chair. \"Pardon my taking the liberty,\" she said\nin a small voice. \"It will be the last--for some time.\"\n\nHer voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited,\nfrightened look. \"You're not going away!\" Isabel exclaimed.\n\n\"I'm going to the convent.\"\n\n\"To the convent?\"\n\nPansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round\nIsabel and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a moment,\nperfectly still; but her companion could feel her tremble. The quiver\nof her little body expressed everything she was unable to say. Isabel\nnevertheless pressed her. \"Why are you going to the convent?\"\n\n\"Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl's better, every now\nand then, for making a little retreat. He says the world, always the\nworld, is very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a little\nseclusion--a little reflexion.\" Pansy spoke in short detached sentences,\nas if she could scarce trust herself; and then she added with a triumph\nof self-control: \"I think papa's right; I've been so much in the world\nthis winter.\"\n\nHer announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a\nlarger meaning than the girl herself knew. \"When was this decided?\" she\nasked. \"I've heard nothing of it.\"\n\n\"Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn't be\ntoo much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine's to come for me at a\nquarter past seven, and I'm only to take two frocks. It's only for a few\nweeks; I'm sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who\nused to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being\neducated. I'm very fond of little girls,\" said Pansy with an effect\nof diminutive grandeur. \"And I'm also very fond of Mother Catherine. I\nshall be very quiet and think a great deal.\"\n\nIsabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck.\n\"Think of ME sometimes.\"\n\n\"Ah, come and see me soon!\" cried Pansy; and the cry was very different\nfrom the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered herself.\n\nIsabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how\nlittle she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long,\ntender kiss.\n\nHalf an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had\narrived in a cab and had departed again with the signorina. On going to\nthe drawing-room before dinner she found the Countess Gemini alone, and\nthis lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful\ntoss of the head, \"En voila, ma chere, une pose!\" But if it was an\naffectation she was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She\ncould only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she supposed.\nIt had become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him\nthat, strange as it may appear, she hesitated, for several minutes after\nhe had come in, to allude to his daughter's sudden departure: she\nspoke of it only after they were seated at table. But she had forbidden\nherself ever to ask Osmond a question. All she could do was to make a\ndeclaration, and there was one that came very naturally. \"I shall miss\nPansy very much.\"\n\nHe looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of\nflowers in the middle of the table. \"Ah yes,\" he said at last, \"I had\nthought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too often. I\ndare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I\ncan make you understand. It doesn't matter; don't trouble yourself about\nit. That's why I had not spoken of it. I didn't believe you would enter\ninto it. But I've always had the idea; I've always thought it a part\nof the education of one's daughter. One's daughter should be fresh and\nfair; she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present\ntime she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Pansy's a little\ndusty, a little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This\nbustling, pushing rabble that calls itself society--one should take her\nout of it occasionally. Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very\nsalutary. I like to think of her there, in the old garden, under\nthe arcade, among those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are\ngentlewomen born; several of them are noble. She will have her books\nand her drawing, she will have her piano. I've made the most liberal\narrangements. There is to be nothing ascetic; there's just to be a\ncertain little sense of sequestration. She'll have time to think, and\nthere's something I want her to think about.\" Osmond spoke deliberately,\nreasonably, still with his head on one side, as if he were looking at\nthe basket of flowers. His tone, however, was that of a man not so\nmuch offering an explanation as putting a thing into words--almost into\npictures--to see, himself, how it would look. He considered a while the\npicture he had evoked and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then he\nwent on: \"The Catholics are very wise after all. The convent is a great\ninstitution; we can't do without it; it corresponds to an essential need\nin families, in society. It's a school of good manners; it's a school\nof repose. Oh, I don't want to detach my daughter from the world,\" he\nadded; \"I don't want to make her fix her thoughts on any other. This\none's very well, as SHE should take it, and she may think of it as much\nas she likes. Only she must think of it in the right way.\"\n\nIsabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found\nit indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her\nhusband's desire to be effective was capable of going--to the point of\nplaying theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She\ncould not understand his purpose, no--not wholly; but she understood it\nbetter than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced\nthat the whole proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to\nherself and destined to act upon her imagination. He had wanted to do\nsomething sudden and arbitrary, something unexpected and refined; to\nmark the difference between his sympathies and her own, and show that\nif he regarded his daughter as a precious work of art it was natural\nhe should be more and more careful about the finishing touches. If he\nwished to be effective he had succeeded; the incident struck a chill\ninto Isabel's heart. Pansy had known the convent in her childhood and\nhad found a happy home there; she was fond of the good sisters, who were\nvery fond of her, and there was therefore for the moment no definite\nhardship in her lot. But all the same the girl had taken fright; the\nimpression her father desired to make would evidently be sharp enough.\nThe old Protestant tradition had never faded from Isabel's imagination,\nand as her thoughts attached themselves to this striking example of\nher husband's genius--she sat looking, like him, at the basket of\nflowers--poor little Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond\nwished it to be known that he shrank from nothing, and his wife found it\nhard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain relief presently,\nin hearing the high, strained voice of her sister-in-law. The Countess\ntoo, apparently, had been thinking the thing out, but had arrived at a\ndifferent conclusion from Isabel.\n\n\"It's very absurd, my dear Osmond,\" she said, \"to invent so many pretty\nreasons for poor Pansy's banishment. Why don't you say at once that you\nwant to get her out of my way? Haven't you discovered that I think very\nwell of Mr. Rosier? I do indeed; he seems to me simpaticissimo. He has\nmade me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you've\nmade up your mind that with those convictions I'm dreadful company for\nPansy.\"\n\nOsmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good-humoured.\n\"My dear Amy,\" he answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece\nof gallantry, \"I don't know anything about your convictions, but if\nI suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to\nbanish YOU.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure\nof her brother's hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received\na telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of\nMrs. Touchett's authorship. \"Ralph cannot last many days,\" it ran, \"and\nif convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come\nonly if you've not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk\na good deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious\nto see whether you've found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there's\nno other company.\" Isabel was prepared for this news, having received\nfrom Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England\nwith her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive,\nbut she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to\nhis bed, which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave\nagain. She added that she had really had two patients on her hands\ninstead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly\nuse, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett.\nAfterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field to\nMrs. Touchett, who had just returned from America and had promptly given\nher to understand that she didn't wish any interviewing at Gardencourt.\nIsabel had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting\nher know of his critical condition and suggesting that she should\nlose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an\nacknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Isabel\nreceived from her was the second telegram I have just quoted.\n\nIsabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it\ninto her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband's study.\nHere she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and\nwent in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio\nvolume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open\nat a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he\nhad been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of\nwater-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already\ntransferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted\ndisk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wife\nwithout looking round.\n\n\"Excuse me for disturbing you,\" she said.\n\n\"When I come to your room I always knock,\" he answered, going on with\nhis work.\n\n\"I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin's dying.\"\n\n\"Ah, I don't believe that,\" said Osmond, looking at his drawing through\na magnifying glass. \"He was dying when we married; he'll outlive us\nall.\"\n\nIsabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful\ncynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of\nher own intention \"My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to\nGardencourt.\"\n\n\"Why must you go to Gardencourt?\" Osmond asked in the tone of impartial\ncuriosity.\n\n\"To see Ralph before he dies.\"\n\nTo this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his\nchief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no\nnegligence. \"I don't see the need of it,\" he said at last. \"He came to\nsee you here. I didn't like that; I thought his being in Rome a great\nmistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you\nshould see him. Now you tell me it's not to have been the last. Ah,\nyou're not grateful!\"\n\n\"What am I to be grateful for?\"\n\nGilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust\nfrom his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his\nwife. \"For my not having interfered while he was here.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you\ndidn't like it. I was very glad when he went away.\"\n\n\"Leave him alone then. Don't run after him.\"\n\nIsabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little\ndrawing. \"I must go to England,\" she said, with a full consciousness\nthat her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly\nobstinate.\n\n\"I shall not like it if you do,\" Osmond remarked.\n\n\"Why should I mind that? You won't like it if I don't. You like nothing\nI do or don't do. You pretend to think I lie.\"\n\nOsmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. \"That's why you must\ngo then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me.\"\n\n\"I know nothing about revenge.\"\n\n\"I do,\" said Osmond. \"Don't give me an occasion.\"\n\n\"You're only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would\ncommit some folly.\"\n\n\"I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me.\"\n\n\"If I disobeyed you?\" said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of\nmildness.\n\n\"Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the\nmost deliberate, the most calculated, opposition.\"\n\n\"How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt's telegram but three\nminutes ago.\"\n\n\"You calculate rapidly; it's a great accomplishment. I don't see why we\nshould prolong our discussion; you know my wish.\" And he stood there as\nif he expected to see her withdraw.\n\nBut she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem; she\nstill wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary\ndegree, of making her feel this need. There was something in her\nimagination he could always appeal to against her judgement. \"You've no\nreason for such a wish,\" said Isabel, \"and I've every reason for going.\nI can't tell you how unjust you seem to me. But I think you know. It's\nyour own opposition that's calculated. It's malignant.\"\n\nShe had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the\nsensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no\nsurprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed\nhis wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious\nendeavour to draw her out. \"It's all the more intense then,\" he\nanswered. And he added almost as if he were giving her a friendly\ncounsel: \"This is a very important matter.\" She recognised that; she\nwas fully conscious of the weight of the occasion; she knew that between\nthem they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she\nsaid nothing, and he went on. \"You say I've no reason? I have the very\nbest. I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It's\ndishonourable; it's indelicate; it's indecent. Your cousin is nothing\nwhatever to me, and I'm under no obligation to make concessions to him.\nI've already made the very handsomest. Your relations with him, while he\nwas here, kept me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because from\nweek to week I expected him to go. I've never liked him and he has never\nliked me. That's why you like him--because he hates me,\" said Osmond\nwith a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. \"I've an ideal of what\nmy wife should do and should not do. She should not travel across Europe\nalone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other\nmen. Your cousin's nothing to you; he's nothing to us. You smile most\nexpressively when I talk about US, but I assure you that WE, WE, Mrs.\nOsmond, is all I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to\nhave found a way of not doing so. I'm not aware that we're divorced or\nseparated; for me we're indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than\nany human creature, and I'm nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable\nproximity; it's one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. You\ndon't like to be reminded of that, I know; but I'm perfectly willing,\nbecause--because--\" And he paused a moment, looking as if he had\nsomething to say which would be very much to the point. \"Because I think\nwe should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most\nin life is the honour of a thing!\"\n\nHe spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped\nout of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife's quick\nemotion; the resolution with which she had entered the room found itself\ncaught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command,\nthey constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any\nexpression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism,\nthey represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign\nof the cross or the flag of one's country. He spoke in the name of\nsomething sacred and precious--the observance of a magnificent form.\nThey were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers\nhad ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not\nchanged; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in\nthe very thick of her sense of her husband's blasphemous sophistry, it\nbegan to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It\ncame over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after\nall sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes\nbefore she had felt all the joy of irreflective action--a joy to which\nshe had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to\nslow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch. If she\nmust renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather\nthan a dupe. \"I know you're a master of the art of mockery,\" she said.\n\"How can you speak of an indissoluble union--how can you speak of\nyour being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity?\nWhere's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in\nyour heart?\"\n\n\"It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.\"\n\n\"We don't live decently together!\" cried Isabel.\n\n\"Indeed we don't if you go to England.\"\n\n\"That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more.\"\n\nHe raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived\nlong enough in Italy to catch this trick. \"Ah, if you've come to\nthreaten me I prefer my drawing.\" And he walked back to his table, where\nhe took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood\nstudying it.\n\n\"I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back,\" said Isabel.\n\nHe turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was\nnot designed. He looked at her a little, and then, \"Are you out of your\nmind?\" he enquired.\n\n\"How can it be anything but a rupture?\" she went on; \"especially if all\nyou say is true?\" She was unable to see how it could be anything but a\nrupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.\n\nHe sat down before his table. \"I really can't argue with you on the\nhypothesis of your defying me,\" he said. And he took up one of his\nlittle brushes again.\n\nShe lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye\nhis whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after\nwhich she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion,\nwere all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly\nencompassed her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of\neliciting any weakness. On her way back to her room she found the\nCountess Gemini standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in\nwhich a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged.\nThe Countess had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been\nglancing down a page which failed to strike her as interesting. At the\nsound of Isabel's step she raised her head.\n\n\"Ah my dear,\" she said, \"you, who are so literary, do tell me some\namusing book to read! Everything here's of a dreariness--! Do you think\nthis would do me any good?\"\n\nIsabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without\nreading or understanding it. \"I'm afraid I can't advise you. I've had\nbad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying.\"\n\nThe Countess threw down her book. \"Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm awfully\nsorry for you.\"\n\n\"You would be sorrier still if you knew.\"\n\n\"What is there to know? You look very badly,\" the Countess added. \"You\nmust have been with Osmond.\"\n\nHalf an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an\nintimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of\nher sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present\nembarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady's\nfluttering attention. \"I've been with Osmond,\" she said, while the\nCountess's bright eyes glittered at her.\n\n\"I'm sure then he has been odious!\" the Countess cried. \"Did he say he\nwas glad poor Mr. Touchett's dying?\"\n\n\"He said it's impossible I should go to England.\"\n\nThe Countess's mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she\nalready foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to\nRome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then\nthere would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for\na moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid,\npicturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment.\nAfter all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had\nalready overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for\nIsabel's trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel's trouble\nwas deep.\n\nIt seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had\nno hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression\nof her sister-in-law's eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous\nexpectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the\nconditions looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to\nEngland she herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing\nwould induce her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt\nan immense desire to hear that Isabel would go to England. \"Nothing's\nimpossible for you, my dear,\" she said caressingly. \"Why else are you\nrich and clever and good?\"\n\n\"Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.\"\n\n\"Why does Osmond say it's impossible?\" the Countess asked in a tone\nwhich sufficiently declared that she couldn't imagine.\n\nFrom the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew\nback; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately\ntaken. But she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. \"Because\nwe're so happy together that we can't separate even for a fortnight.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, \"when I want to make\na journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!\"\n\nIsabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It\nmay appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is\ncertain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily\nto be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the\ngreat undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as\nthis, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one's\nhusband. \"I'm afraid--yes, I'm afraid,\" she said to herself more than\nonce, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her\nhusband--his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her\nown later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often held\nher in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when\nOsmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between\nthem, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was\na horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with\nwhich he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what\nhe was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for\nall that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with\nwhom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank\ndown on her sofa at last and buried her head in a pile of cushions.\n\nWhen she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before her.\nShe had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin\nlips and her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She\nlived assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now\nshe was leaning far out. \"I knocked,\" she began, \"but you didn't\nanswer me. So I ventured in. I've been looking at you for the past five\nminutes. You're very unhappy.\"\n\n\"Yes; but I don't think you can comfort me.\"\n\n\"Will you give me leave to try?\" And the Countess sat down on the\nsofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something\ncommunicative and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have\na deal to say, and it occurred to Isabel for the first time that her\nsister-in-law might say something really human. She made play with her\nglittering eyes, in which there was an unpleasant fascination. \"After\nall,\" she soon resumed, \"I must tell you, to begin with, that I don't\nunderstand your state of mind. You seem to have so many scruples, so\nmany reasons, so many ties. When I discovered, ten years ago, that my\nhusband's dearest wish was to make me miserable--of late he has simply\nlet me alone--ah, it was a wonderful simplification! My poor Isabel,\nyou're not simple enough.\"\n\n\"No, I'm not simple enough,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"There's something I want you to know,\" the Countess declared--\"because\nI think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you've guessed it.\nBut if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you\nshouldn't do as you like.\"\n\n\"What do you wish me to know?\" Isabel felt a foreboding that made her\nheart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and this\nalone was portentous.\n\nBut she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject.\n\"In your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really\nsuspected?\"\n\n\"I've guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don't know what\nyou mean.\"\n\n\"That's because you've such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman\nwith such a pure mind!\" cried the Countess.\n\nIsabel slowly got up. \"You're going to tell me something horrible.\"\n\n\"You can call it by whatever name you will!\" And the Countess rose\nalso, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood\na moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even\nthen, of ugliness; after which she said: \"My first sister-in-law had no\nchildren.\"\n\nIsabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. \"Your\nfirst sister-in-law?\"\n\n\"I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has\nbeen married before! I've never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it\nmightn't be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must\nhave done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died\nchildless. It wasn't till after her death that Pansy arrived.\"\n\nIsabel's brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale,\nvague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to\nfollow than she could see. \"Pansy's not my husband's child then?\"\n\n\"Your husband's--in perfection! But no one else's husband's. Some one\nelse's wife's. Ah, my good Isabel,\" cried the Countess, \"with you one\nmust dot one's i's!\"\n\n\"I don't understand. Whose wife's?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died--how long?--a dozen, more\nthan fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing\nwhat he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no\nreason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to\nfit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife's having died in\nchildbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little\ngirl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from\nnurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and\nin quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had\ngone, one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but\nwhere she was suddenly taken worse--fatally ill. The story passed,\nsufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody\nheeded, as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew--without\nresearches,\" the Countess lucidly proceeded; \"as also, you'll\nunderstand, without a word said between us--I mean between Osmond and\nme. Don't you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle\nit?--that is to settle ME if I should say anything. I said nothing,\nright or left--never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of\nme: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all\nthis time, as I've never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me,\nfrom the first, that the child was my niece--from the moment she was\nmy brother's daughter. As for her veritable mother--!\" But with this\nPansy's wonderful aunt dropped--as, involuntarily, from the impression\nof her sister-in-law's face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to\nlook at her than she had ever had to meet.\n\nShe had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, an\necho of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head.\n\"Why have you told me this?\" she asked in a voice the Countess hardly\nrecognised.\n\n\"Because I've been so bored with your not knowing. I've been bored,\nfrankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this\ntime I couldn't have managed! Ca me depasse, if you don't mind my saying\nso, the things, all round you, that you've appeared to succeed in not\nknowing. It's a sort of assistance--aid to innocent ignorance--that\nI've always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that\nof keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally\nfound itself exhausted. It's not a black lie, moreover, you know,\" the\nCountess inimitably added. \"The facts are exactly what I tell you.\"\n\n\"I had no idea,\" said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a manner\nthat doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.\n\n\"So I believed--though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred to\nyou that he was for six or seven years her lover?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Things HAVE occurred to me, and perhaps that was what\nthey all meant.\"\n\n\"She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about\nPansy!\" the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.\n\n\"Oh, no idea, for me,\" Isabel went on, \"ever DEFINITELY took that form.\"\nShe appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what hadn't.\n\"And as it is--I don't understand.\"\n\nShe spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess seemed to\nhave seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She\nhad expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a\nspark. Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might have\nbeen, as a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister\npassage of public history. \"Don't you recognise how the child could\nnever pass for HER husband's?--that is with M. Merle himself,\" her\ncompanion resumed. \"They had been separated too long for that, and he\nhad gone to some far country--I think to South America. If she had ever\nhad children--which I'm not sure of--she had lost them. The conditions\nhappened to make it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward a\npinch), that Osmond should acknowledge the little girl. His wife was\ndead--very true; but she had not been dead too long to put a certain\naccommodation of dates out of the question--from the moment, I mean,\nthat suspicion wasn't started; which was what they had to take care of.\nWhat was more natural than that poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and\nfor a world not troubling about trifles, should have left behind her,\npoverina, the pledge of her brief happiness that had cost her her life?\nWith the aid of a change of residence--Osmond had been living with her\nat Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course\nleft it for ever--the whole history was successfully set going. My poor\nsister-in-law, in her grave, couldn't help herself, and the real mother,\nto save HER skin, renounced all visible property in the child.\"\n\n\"Ah, poor, poor woman!\" cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It\nwas a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction\nfrom weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the\nCountess Gemini found only another discomfiture.\n\n\"It's very kind of you to pity her!\" she discordantly laughed. \"Yes\nindeed, you have a way of your own--!\"\n\n\"He must have been false to his wife--and so very soon!\" said Isabel\nwith a sudden check.\n\n\"That's all that's wanting--that you should take up her cause!\" the\nCountess went on. \"I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too\nsoon.\"\n\n\"But to me, to me--?\" And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard; as\nif her question--though it was sufficiently there in her eyes--were all\nfor herself.\n\n\"To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you\ncall faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another\nwoman--SUCH a lover as he had been, cara mia, between their risks and\ntheir precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had\npassed away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her\nown, drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances\nso intense that even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may\ntherefore imagine what it was--when he couldn't patch it on conveniently\nto ANY of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between them.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Isabel mechanically echoed, \"the whole past is between them.\"\n\n\"Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say,\nthey had kept it up.\"\n\nShe was silent a little. \"Why then did she want him to marry me?\"\n\n\"Ah my dear, that's her superiority! Because you had money; and because\nshe believed you would be good to Pansy.\"\n\n\"Poor woman--and Pansy who doesn't like her!\" cried Isabel.\n\n\"That's the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows\nit; she knows everything.\"\n\n\"Will she know that you've told me this?\"\n\n\"That will depend upon whether you tell her. She's prepared for it, and\ndo you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that\nI lie. Perhaps you do; don't make yourself uncomfortable to hide it.\nOnly, as it happens this time, I don't. I've told plenty of little\nidiotic fibs, but they've never hurt any one but myself.\"\n\nIsabel sat staring at her companion's story as at a bale of fantastic\nwares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her\nfeet. \"Why did Osmond never marry her?\" she finally asked.\n\n\"Because she had no money.\" The Countess had an answer for everything,\nand if she lied she lied well. \"No one knows, no one has ever known,\nwhat she lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I\ndon't believe Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn't have married\nhim.\"\n\n\"How can she have loved him then?\"\n\n\"She doesn't love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I\nsuppose, she would have married him; but at that time her husband was\nliving. By the time M. Merle had rejoined--I won't say his ancestors,\nbecause he never had any--her relations with Osmond had changed, and she\nhad grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,\"\nthe Countess went on, leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragically\nafterwards--\"she HAD never had, what you might call any illusions of\nINTELLIGENCE. She hoped she might marry a great man; that has always\nbeen her idea. She has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; but\nshe has never succeeded. I don't call Madame Merle a success, you know.\nI don't know what she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very\nlittle to show. The only tangible result she has ever achieved--except,\nof course, getting to know every one and staying with them free of\nexpense--has been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she did\nthat, my dear; you needn't look as if you doubted it. I've watched\nthem for years; I know everything--everything. I'm thought a great\nscatterbrain, but I've had enough application of mind to follow up those\ntwo. She hates me, and her way of showing it is to pretend to be for\never defending me. When people say I've had fifteen lovers she looks\nhorrified and declares that quite half of them were never proved. She\nhas been afraid of me for years, and she has taken great comfort in the\nvile, false things people have said about me. She has been afraid I'd\nexpose her, and she threatened me one day when Osmond began to pay his\ncourt to you. It was at his house in Florence; do you remember that\nafternoon when she brought you there and we had tea in the garden? She\nlet me know then that if I should tell tales two could play at that\ngame. She pretends there's a good deal more to tell about me than about\nher. It would be an interesting comparison! I don't care a fig what she\nmay say, simply because I know YOU don't care a fig. You can't trouble\nyour head about me less than you do already. So she may take her revenge\nas she chooses; I don't think she'll frighten you very much. Her great\nidea has been to be tremendously irreproachable--a kind of full-blown\nlily--the incarnation of propriety. She has always worshipped that god.\nThere should be no scandal about Caesar's wife, you know; and, as I say,\nshe has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one reason she wouldn't\nmarry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with Pansy people would put\nthings together--would even see a resemblance. She has had a terror\nlest the mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful; the\nmother has never done so.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, the mother has done so,\" said Isabel, who had listened to\nall this with a face more and more wan. \"She betrayed herself to me the\nother day, though I didn't recognise her. There appeared to have been a\nchance of Pansy's making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at\nits not coming off she almost dropped the mask.\"\n\n\"Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!\" cried the Countess. \"She has\nfailed so dreadfully that she's determined her daughter shall make it\nup.\"\n\nIsabel started at the words \"her daughter,\" which her guest threw off\nso familiarly. \"It seems very wonderful,\" she murmured; and in this\nbewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally\ntouched by the story.\n\n\"Now don't go and turn against the poor innocent child!\" the Countess\nwent on. \"She's very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself\nhave liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she\nhad become yours.\"\n\n\"Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at\nseeing me--!\" Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.\n\n\"I don't believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed.\nOsmond's marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before\nthat she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That\nyou might take such a fancy to the child that you'd do something for\nher. Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was really\nextremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,\"\ncried the Countess, \"why did you ever inherit money?\" She stopped a\nmoment as if she saw something singular in Isabel's face. \"Don't tell\nme now that you'll give her a dot. You're capable of that, but I would\nrefuse to believe it. Don't try to be too good. Be a little easy and\nnatural and nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in\nyour life!\"\n\n\"It's very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I'm sorry,\" Isabel\nsaid. \"I'm much obliged to you.\"\n\n\"Yes, you seem to be!\" cried the Countess with a mocking laugh.\n\"Perhaps you are--perhaps you're not. You don't take it as I should have\nthought.\"\n\n\"How should I take it?\" Isabel asked.\n\n\"Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of.\" Isabel made\nno answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. \"They've\nalways been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke\noff--or HE did. But he has always been more for her than she has been\nfor him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that\neach should give the other complete liberty, but that each should also\ndo everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know\nsuch a thing as that. I know it by the way they've behaved. Now see how\nmuch better women are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but\nOsmond has never lifted a little finger for HER. She has worked for him,\nplotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once found\nmoney for him; and the end of it is that he's tired of her. She's an old\nhabit; there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn't\nmiss her if she were removed. And, what's more, today she knows it. So\nyou needn't be jealous!\" the Countess added humorously.\n\nIsabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath;\nher head was humming with new knowledge. \"I'm much obliged to you,\" she\nrepeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: \"How\ndo you know all this?\"\n\nThis enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel's\nexpression of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a bold\nstare, with which, \"Let us assume that I've invented it!\" she cried. She\ntoo, however, suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel's\narm, said with the penetration of her sharp bright smile: \"Now will you\ngive up your journey?\"\n\nIsabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a\nmoment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a\nminute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed\neyes and pale lips.\n\n\"I've done wrong to speak--I've made you ill!\" the Countess cried.\n\n\"Ah, I must see Ralph!\" Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in\nthe quick passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of\nfar-reaching, infinite sadness.\n\n\n\n\n\nThere was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the\nCountess had left her Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference with\nher maid, who was discreet, devoted and active. After this she thought\n(except of her journey) only of one thing. She must go and see Pansy;\nfrom her she couldn't turn away. She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had\ngiven her to understand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five\no'clock to a high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza\nNavona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and\nobsequious person. Isabel had been at this institution before; she had\ncome with Pansy to see the sisters. She knew they were good women,\nand she saw that the large rooms were clean and cheerful and that\nthe well-used garden had sun for winter and shade for spring. But she\ndisliked the place, which affronted and almost frightened her; not for\nthe world would she have spent a night there. It produced to-day more\nthan before the impression of a well-appointed prison; for it was not\npossible to pretend Pansy was free to leave it. This innocent creature\nhad been presented to her in a new and violent light, but the secondary\neffect of the revelation was to make her reach out a hand.\n\nThe portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she\nwent to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady.\nThe parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a\nlarge clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax\nflowers under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures\non the walls. On the other occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome\nthan like Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment\nonly seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned\nat the end of some five minutes, ushering in another person. Isabel got\nup, expecting to see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her\nextreme surprise found herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect\nwas strange, for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision\nthat her appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully,\nseeing a painted picture move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her\nfalsity, her audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these\ndark things seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the\nroom. Her being there at all had the character of ugly evidence, of\nhandwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced in court. It\nmade Isabel feel faint; if it had been necessary to speak on the spot\nshe would have been quite unable. But no such necessity was distinct to\nher; it seemed to her indeed that she had absolutely nothing to say to\nMadame Merle. In one's relations with this lady, however, there were\nnever any absolute necessities; she had a manner which carried off\nnot only her own deficiencies but those of other people. But she was\ndifferent from usual; she came in slowly, behind the portress, and\nIsabel instantly perceived that she was not likely to depend upon her\nhabitual resources. For her too the occasion was exceptional, and she\nhad undertaken to treat it by the light of the moment. This gave her a\npeculiar gravity; she pretended not even to smile, and though Isabel saw\nthat she was more than ever playing a part it seemed to her that on the\nwhole the wonderful woman had never been so natural. She looked at her\nyoung friend from head to foot, but not harshly nor defiantly; with a\ncold gentleness rather, and an absence of any air of allusion to their\nlast meeting. It was as if she had wished to mark a distinction. She had\nbeen irritated then, she was reconciled now.\n\n\"You can leave us alone,\" she said to the portress; \"in five minutes\nthis lady will ring for you.\" And then she turned to Isabel, who, after\nnoting what has just been mentioned, had ceased to notice and had let\nher eyes wander as far as the limits of the room would allow. She wished\nnever to look at Madame Merle again. \"You're surprised to find me here,\nand I'm afraid you're not pleased,\" this lady went on. \"You don't see\nwhy I should have come; it's as if I had anticipated you. I confess I've\nbeen rather indiscreet--I ought to have asked your permission.\" There\nwas none of the oblique movement of irony in this; it was said simply\nand mildly; but Isabel, far afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could\nnot have told herself with what intention it was uttered. \"But I've not\nbeen sitting long,\" Madame Merle continued; \"that is I've not been long\nwith Pansy. I came to see her because it occurred to me this afternoon\nthat she must be rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable.\nIt may be good for a small girl; I know so little about small girls; I\ncan't tell. At any rate it's a little dismal. Therefore I came--on the\nchance. I knew of course that you'd come, and her father as well;\nstill, I had not been told other visitors were forbidden. The good\nwoman--what's her name? Madame Catherine--made no objection whatever. I\nstayed twenty minutes with Pansy; she has a charming little room, not\nin the least conventual, with a piano and flowers. She has arranged\nit delightfully; she has so much taste. Of course it's all none of my\nbusiness, but I feel happier since I've seen her. She may even have a\nmaid if she likes; but of course she has no occasion to dress. She wears\na little black frock; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see\nMother Catherine, who has a very good room too; I assure you I don't\nfind the poor sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine has a most\ncoquettish little toilet-table, with something that looked uncommonly\nlike a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks delightfully of Pansy; says\nit's a great happiness for them to have her. She's a little saint of\nheaven and a model to the oldest of them. Just as I was leaving Madame\nCatherine the portress came to say to her that there was a lady for the\nsignorina. Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked her to let me\ngo and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly--I must tell you\nthat--and said it was her duty to notify the Mother Superior; it was\nof such high importance that you should be treated with respect. I\nrequested her to let the Mother Superior alone and asked her how she\nsupposed I would treat you!\"\n\nSo Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman who had\nlong been a mistress of the art of conversation. But there were phases\nand gradations in her speech, not one of which was lost upon Isabel's\near, though her eyes were absent from her companion's face. She had not\nproceeded far before Isabel noted a sudden break in her voice, a lapse\nin her continuity, which was in itself a complete drama. This subtle\nmodulation marked a momentous discovery--the perception of an entirely\nnew attitude on the part of her listener. Madame Merle had guessed in\nthe space of an instant that everything was at end between them, and in\nthe space of another instant she had guessed the reason why. The person\nwho stood there was not the same one she had seen hitherto, but was a\nvery different person--a person who knew her secret. This discovery was\ntremendous, and from the moment she made it the most accomplished of\nwomen faltered and lost her courage. But only for that moment. Then the\nconscious stream of her perfect manner gathered itself again and flowed\non as smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only because she had\nthe end in view that she was able to proceed. She had been touched with\na point that made her quiver, and she needed all the alertness of her\nwill to repress her agitation. Her only safety was in her not betraying\nherself. She resisted this, but the startled quality of her voice\nrefused to improve--she couldn't help it--while she heard herself say\nshe hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence ebbed, and she was able\nonly just to glide into port, faintly grazing the bottom.\n\nIsabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large\nclear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might\nhave been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle had lost her pluck and\nsaw before her the phantom of exposure--this in itself was a revenge,\nthis in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day. And for a\nmoment during which she stood apparently looking out of the window, with\nher back half-turned, Isabel enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side\nof the window lay the garden of the convent; but this is not what she\nsaw; she saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon.\nShe saw, in the crude light of that revelation which had already become\na part of experience and to which the very frailty of the vessel in\nwhich it had been offered her only gave an intrinsic price, the dry\nstaring fact that she had been an applied handled hung-up tool,\nas senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and iron. All the\nbitterness of this knowledge surged into her soul again; it was as if\nshe felt on her lips the taste of dishonour. There was a moment during\nwhich, if she had turned and spoken, she would have said something that\nwould hiss like a lash. But she closed her eyes, and then the hideous\nvision dropped. What remained was the cleverest woman in the world\nstanding there within a few feet of her and knowing as little what to\nthink as the meanest. Isabel's only revenge was to be silent still--to\nleave Madame Merle in this unprecedented situation. She left her there\nfor a period that must have seemed long to this lady, who at last\nseated herself with a movement which was in itself a confession of\nhelplessness. Then Isabel turned slow eyes, looking down at her. Madame\nMerle was very pale; her own eyes covered Isabel's face. She might see\nwhat she would, but her danger was over. Isabel would never accuse\nher, never reproach her; perhaps because she never would give her the\nopportunity to defend herself.\n\n\"I'm come to bid Pansy good-bye,\" our young woman said at last. \"I go to\nEngland to-night.\"\n\n\"Go to England to-night!\" Madame Merle repeated sitting there and\nlooking up at her.\n\n\"I'm going to Gardencourt. Ralph Touchett's dying.\"\n\n\"Ah, you'll feel that.\" Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance\nto express sympathy. \"Do you go alone?\"\n\n\"Yes; without my husband.\"\n\nMadame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the\ngeneral sadness of things. \"Mr. Touchett never liked me, but I'm sorry\nhe's dying. Shall you see his mother?\"\n\n\"Yes; she has returned from America.\"\n\n\"She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too have\nchanged,\" said Madame Merle with a quiet noble pathos. She paused a\nmoment, then added: \"And you'll see dear old Gardencourt again!\"\n\n\"I shall not enjoy it much,\" Isabel answered.\n\n\"Naturally--in your grief. But it's on the whole, of all the houses I\nknow, and I know many, the one I should have liked best to live in. I\ndon't venture to send a message to the people,\" Madame Merle added; \"but\nI should like to give my love to the place.\"\n\nIsabel turned away. \"I had better go to Pansy. I've not much time.\"\n\nWhile she looked about her for the proper egress, the door opened and\nadmitted one of the ladies of the house, who advanced with a discreet\nsmile, gently rubbing, under her long loose sleeves, a pair of plump\nwhite hands. Isabel recognised Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she\nhad already made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss\nOsmond. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly\nand said: \"It will be good for her to see you. I'll take you to her\nmyself.\" Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Merle.\n\n\"Will you let me remain a little?\" this lady asked. \"It's so good to be\nhere.\"\n\n\"You may remain always if you like!\" And the good sister gave a knowing\nlaugh.\n\nShe led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and up a long\nstaircase. All these departments were solid and bare, light and clean;\nso, thought Isabel, are the great penal establishments. Madame Catherine\ngently pushed open the door of Pansy's room and ushered in the visitor;\nthen stood smiling with folded hands while the two others met and\nembraced.\n\n\"She's glad to see you,\" she repeated; \"it will do her good.\" And she\nplaced the best chair carefully for Isabel. But she made no movement\nto seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. \"How does this dear child\nlook?\" she asked of Isabel, lingering a moment.\n\n\"She looks pale,\" Isabel answered.\n\n\"That's the pleasure of seeing you. She's very happy. Elle eclaire la\nmaison,\" said the good sister.\n\nPansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress; it was\nperhaps this that made her look pale. \"They're very good to me--they\nthink of everything!\" she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to\naccommodate.\n\n\"We think of you always--you're a precious charge,\" Madame Catherine\nremarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence was a habit and\nwhose conception of duty was the acceptance of every care. It fell with\na leaden weight on Isabel's ears; it seemed to represent the surrender\nof a personality, the authority of the Church.\n\nWhen Madame Catherine had left them together Pansy kneeled down and hid\nher head in her stepmother's lap. So she remained some moments, while\nIsabel gently stroked her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and\nlooking about the room. \"Don't you think I've arranged it well? I've\neverything I have at home.\"\n\n\"It's very pretty; you're very comfortable.\" Isabel scarcely knew what\nshe could say to her. On the one hand she couldn't let her think she had\ncome to pity her, and on the other it would be a dull mockery to pretend\nto rejoice with her. So she simply added after a moment: \"I've come to\nbid you good-bye. I'm going to England.\"\n\nPansy's white little face turned red. \"To England! Not to come back?\"\n\n\"I don't know when I shall come back.\"\n\n\"Ah, I'm sorry,\" Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had\nno right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of disappointment.\n\n\"My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he'll probably die. I wish to see\nhim,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will papa\ngo?\"\n\n\"No; I shall go alone.\"\n\nFor a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered what she\nthought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but never\nby a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she deemed\nthem deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her reflexions, Isabel\nwas sure; and she must have had a conviction that there were husbands\nand wives who were more intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet\neven in thought; she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle\nstepmother as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have\nstood almost as still as it would have done had she seen two of the\nsaints in the great picture in the convent chapel turn their painted\nheads and shake them at each other. But as in this latter case she would\n(for very solemnity's sake) never have mentioned the awful phenomenon,\nso she put away all knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than her\nown. \"You'll be very far away,\" she presently went on.\n\n\"Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter,\" Isabel\nexplained; \"since so long as you're here I can't be called near you.\"\n\n\"Yes, but you can come and see me; though you've not come very often.\"\n\n\"I've not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring nothing\nwith me. I can't amuse you.\"\n\n\"I'm not to be amused. That's not what papa wishes.\"\n\n\"Then it hardly matters whether I'm in Rome or in England.\"\n\n\"You're not happy, Mrs. Osmond,\" said Pansy.\n\n\"Not very. But it doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"That's what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to\ncome out.\"\n\n\"I wish indeed you might.\"\n\n\"Don't leave me here,\" Pansy went on gently.\n\nIsabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. \"Will you come\naway with me now?\" she asked.\n\nPansy looked at her pleadingly. \"Did papa tell you to bring me?\"\n\n\"No; it's my own proposal.\"\n\n\"I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?\"\n\n\"I don't think he knew I was coming.\"\n\n\"He thinks I've not had enough,\" said Pansy. \"But I have. The ladies are\nvery kind to me and the little girls come to see me. There are some\nvery little ones--such charming children. Then my room--you can see for\nyourself. All that's very delightful. But I've had enough. Papa wished\nme to think a little--and I've thought a great deal.\"\n\n\"What have you thought?\"\n\n\"Well, that I must never displease papa.\"\n\n\"You knew that before.\"\n\n\"Yes; but I know it better. I'll do anything--I'll do anything,\" said\nPansy. Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush came into\nher face. Isabel read the meaning of it; she saw the poor girl had been\nvanquished. It was well that Mr. Edward Rosier had kept his enamels!\nIsabel looked into her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be treated\neasily. She laid her hand on Pansy's as if to let her know that her\nlook conveyed no diminution of esteem; for the collapse of the girl's\nmomentary resistance (mute and modest thought it had been) seemed only\nher tribute to the truth of things. She didn't presume to judge others,\nbut she had judged herself; she had seen the reality. She had no\nvocation for struggling with combinations; in the solemnity of\nsequestration there was something that overwhelmed her. She bowed her\npretty head to authority and only asked of authority to be merciful.\nYes; it was very well that Edward Rosier had reserved a few articles!\n\nIsabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. \"Good-bye then. I leave\nRome to-night.\"\n\nPansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child's\nface. \"You look strange, you frighten me.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm very harmless,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"Perhaps you won't come back?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not. I can't tell.\"\n\n\"Ah, Mrs. Osmond, you won't leave me!\"\n\nIsabel now saw she had guessed everything. \"My dear child, what can I do\nfor you?\" she asked.\n\n\"I don't know--but I'm happier when I think of you.\"\n\n\"You can always think of me.\"\n\n\"Not when you're so far. I'm a little afraid,\" said Pansy.\n\n\"What are you afraid of?\"\n\n\"Of papa--a little. And of Madame Merle. She has just been to see me.\"\n\n\"You must not say that,\" Isabel observed.\n\n\"Oh, I'll do everything they want. Only if you're here I shall do it\nmore easily.\"\n\nIsabel considered. \"I won't desert you,\" she said at last. \"Good-bye, my\nchild.\"\n\nThen they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two\nsisters; and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor with her visitor\nto the top of the staircase. \"Madame Merle has been here,\" she remarked\nas they went; and as Isabel answered nothing she added abruptly: \"I\ndon't like Madame Merle!\"\n\nIsabel hesitated, then stopped. \"You must never say that--that you don't\nlike Madame Merle.\"\n\nPansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never been a\nreason for non-compliance. \"I never will again,\" she said with exquisite\ngentleness. At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it\nappeared to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which\nPansy lived that she should not go down. Isabel descended, and when she\nreached the bottom the girl was standing above. \"You'll come back?\" she\ncalled out in a voice that Isabel remembered afterwards.\n\n\"Yes--I'll come back.\"\n\nMadame Catherine met Mrs. Osmond below and conducted her to the door of\nthe parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a minute. \"I won't\ngo in,\" said the good sister. \"Madame Merle's waiting for you.\"\n\nAt this announcement Isabel stiffened; she was on the point of asking\nif there were no other egress from the convent. But a moment's reflexion\nassured her that she would do well not to betray to the worthy nun her\ndesire to avoid Pansy's other friend. Her companion grasped her arm\nvery gently and, fixing her a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said\nin French and almost familiarly: \"Eh bien, chere Madame, qu'en\npensez-vous?\"\n\n\"About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you.\"\n\n\"We think it's enough,\" Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she\npushed open the door of the parlour.\n\nMadame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a woman so\nabsorbed in thought that she had not moved a little finger. As Madame\nCatherine closed the door she got up, and Isabel saw that she had been\nthinking to some purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full\npossession of her resources. \"I found I wished to wait for you,\" she\nsaid urbanely. \"But it's not to talk about Pansy.\"\n\nIsabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of Madame\nMerle's declaration she answered after a moment: \"Madame Catherine says\nit's enough.\"\n\n\"Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about\npoor Mr. Touchett,\" Madame Merle added. \"Have you reason to believe that\nhe's really at his last?\"\n\n\"I've no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a\nprobability.\"\n\n\"I'm going to ask you a strange question,\" said Madame Merle. \"Are\nyou very fond of your cousin?\" And she gave a smile as strange as her\nutterance.\n\n\"Yes, I'm very fond of him. But I don't understand you.\"\n\nShe just hung fire. \"It's rather hard to explain. Something has occurred\nto me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit\nof my idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never\nguessed it?\"\n\n\"He has done me many services.\"\n\n\"Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman.\"\n\n\"HE made me--?\"\n\nMadame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on more\ntriumphantly: \"He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required\nto make you a brilliant match. At bottom it's him you've to thank.\" She\nstopped; there was something in Isabel's eyes.\n\n\"I don't understand you. It was my uncle's money.\"\n\n\"Yes; it was your uncle's money, but it was your cousin's idea. He\nbrought his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!\"\n\nIsabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by\nlurid flashes. \"I don't know why you say such things. I don't know what\nyou know.\"\n\n\"I know nothing but what I've guessed. But I've guessed that.\"\n\nIsabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment\nwith her hand on the latch. Then she said--it was her only revenge: \"I\nbelieved it was you I had to thank!\"\n\nMadame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud\npenance. \"You're very unhappy, I know. But I'm more so.\"\n\n\"Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again.\"\n\nMadame Merle raised her eyes. \"I shall go to America,\" she quietly\nremarked while Isabel passed out.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other\ncircumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Isabel\ndescended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the\narms, as it were--or at any rate into the hands--of Henrietta Stackpole.\nShe had telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she had not\ndefinitely said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she had felt\nher telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey from\nRome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question\nthe future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took\nlittle pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though they\nwere in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their\ncourse through other countries--strange-looking, dimly-lighted, pathless\nlands, in which there was no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed,\na perpetual dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about; but\nit was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind.\nDisconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of\nmemory, of expectation. The past and the future came and went at their\nwill, but she saw them only in fitful images, which rose and fell by a\nlogic of their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now\nthat she was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much\nconcerned her and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt\nto play whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things,\ntheir mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their\nhorror, rose before her with a kind of architectural vastness. She\nremembered a thousand trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity\nof a shiver. She had thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that\nthey had been weighted with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after\nall, for of what use was it to her to understand them? Nothing seemed of\nuse to her to-day. All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all\ndesire too save the single desire to reach her much-embracing refuge.\nGardencourt had been her starting-point, and to those muffled chambers\nit was at least a temporary solution to return. She had gone forth in\nher strength; she would come back in her weakness, and if the place had\nbeen a rest to her before, it would be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph\nhis dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect\nof all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything\nmore--this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble\ntank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.\n\nShe had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as\ngood as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive,\nsimply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and\nregret, that she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures\ncouched upon the receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret\nnow--that was all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of\nher repentance was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle\nhad been so--well, so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped,\nfrom literal inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been.\nWhatever it was it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and\ndoubtless she would do so in America, where she had announced she was\ngoing. It concerned Isabel no more; she only had an impression that she\nshould never again see Madame Merle. This impression carried her into\nthe future, of which from time to time she had a mutilated glimpse. She\nsaw herself, in the distant years, still in the attitude of a woman who\nhad her life to live, and these intimations contradicted the spirit of\nthe present hour. It might be desirable to get quite away, really away,\nfurther away than little grey-green England, but this privilege was\nevidently to be denied her. Deep in her soul--deeper than any appetite\nfor renunciation--was the sense that life would be her business for a\nlong time to come. And at moments there was something inspiring, almost\nenlivening, in the conviction. It was a proof of strength--it was a\nproof she should some day be happy again. It couldn't be she was to live\nonly to suffer; she was still young, after all, and a great many things\nmight happen to her yet. To live only to suffer--only to feel the injury\nof life repeated and enlarged--it seemed to her she was too valuable,\ntoo capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid\nto think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be\nvaluable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things?\nWasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It\ninvolved then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but\nIsabel recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow\nof a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end.\nThen the middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of\nher indifference closed her in.\n\nHenrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were afraid\nshe should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there in the crowd,\nlooking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she\nwished to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped.\nShe rejoiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in an\narrival in London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station,\nthe strange, livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her\nwith a nervous fear and made her put her arm into her friend's. She\nremembered she had once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty\nspectacle in which there was something that touched her. She remembered\nhow she walked away from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded\nstreets, five years before. She could not have done that to-day, and the\nincident came before her as the deed of another person.\n\n\"It's too beautiful that you should have come,\" said Henrietta, looking\nat her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to challenge the\nproposition. \"If you hadn't--if you hadn't; well, I don't know,\"\nremarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.\n\nIsabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another\nfigure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment\nshe recognised the genial countenance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little\napart, and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about\nhim to make him yield an inch of the ground he had taken--that of\nabstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their\nembraces.\n\n\"There's Mr. Bantling,\" said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely\ncaring much now whether she should find her maid or not.\n\n\"Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!\" Henrietta\nexclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile--a smile\ntempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion. \"Isn't it lovely she\nhas come?\" Henrietta asked. \"He knows all about it,\" she added; \"we had\nquite a discussion. He said you wouldn't, I said you would.\"\n\n\"I thought you always agreed,\" Isabel smiled in return. She felt she\ncould smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr. Bantling's brave\neyes, that he had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to\nremember he was an old friend of her cousin--that he understood, that\nit was all right. Isabel gave him her hand; she thought of him,\nextravagantly, as a beautiful blameless knight.\n\n\"Oh, I always agree,\" said Mr. Bantling. \"But she doesn't, you know.\"\n\n\"Didn't I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?\" Henrietta enquired.\n\"Your young lady has probably remained at Calais.\"\n\n\"I don't care,\" said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom she had never\nfound so interesting.\n\n\"Stay with her while I go and see,\" Henrietta commanded, leaving the two\nfor a moment together.\n\nThey stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling asked Isabel\nhow it had been on the Channel.\n\n\"Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough,\" she said, to her\ncompanion's obvious surprise. After which she added: \"You've been to\nGardencourt, I know.\"\n\n\"Now how do you know that?\"\n\n\"I can't tell you--except that you look like a person who has been to\nGardencourt.\"\n\n\"Do you think I look awfully sad? It's awfully sad there, you know.\"\n\n\"I don't believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,\"\nsaid Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she\nshould never again feel a superficial embarrassment.\n\nPoor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed\na good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue,\nand that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. \"You can ask Miss\nStackpole, you know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago.\"\n\n\"Did you see my cousin?\"\n\n\"Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had been\nthere the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual, except that he\nwas in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can't speak,\"\nMr. Bantling pursued. \"He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He\nwas just as clever as ever. It's awfully wretched.\"\n\nEven in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. \"Was\nthat late in the day?\"\n\n\"Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you'd like to know.\"\n\n\"I'm greatly obliged to you. Can I go down tonight?\"\n\n\"Ah, I don't think SHE'LL let you go,\" said Mr. Bantling. \"She wants you\nto stop with her. I made Touchett's man promise to telegraph me to-day,\nand I found the telegram an hour ago at my club. 'Quiet and easy,'\nthat's what it says, and it's dated two o'clock. So you see you can wait\ntill to-morrow. You must be awfully tired.\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm awfully tired. And I thank you again.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Mr. Bantling, \"We were certain you would like the last news.\"\nOn which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed after all to\nagree. Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel's maid, whom she had caught\nin the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of\nlosing herself in the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress's\nluggage, so that the latter was now at liberty to leave the station.\n\"You know you're not to think of going to the country to-night,\"\nHenrietta remarked to her. \"It doesn't matter whether there's a train\nor not. You're to come straight to me in Wimpole Street. There isn't a\ncorner to be had in London, but I've got you one all the same. It isn't\na Roman palace, but it will do for a night.\"\n\n\"I'll do whatever you wish,\" Isabel said.\n\n\"You'll come and answer a few questions; that's what I wish.\"\n\n\"She doesn't say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Osmond?\" Mr.\nBantling enquired jocosely.\n\nHenrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. \"I see you're\nin a great hurry to get your own. You'll be at the Paddington Station\nto-morrow morning at ten.\"\n\n\"Don't come for my sake, Mr. Bantling,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"He'll come for mine,\" Henrietta declared as she ushered her friend into\na cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole Street--to do her\njustice there had been dinner enough--she asked those questions to which\nshe had alluded at the station. \"Did your husband make you a scene about\nyour coming?\" That was Miss Stackpole's first enquiry.\n\n\"No; I can't say he made a scene.\"\n\n\"He didn't object then?\"\n\n\"Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you'd call a scene.\"\n\n\"What was it then?\"\n\n\"It was a very quiet conversation.\"\n\nHenrietta for a moment regarded her guest. \"It must have been hellish,\"\nshe then remarked. And Isabel didn't deny that it had been hellish. But\nshe confined herself to answering Henrietta's questions, which was easy,\nas they were tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no\nnew information. \"Well,\" said Miss Stackpole at last, \"I've only one\ncriticism to make. I don't see why you promised little Miss Osmond to go\nback.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I myself see now,\" Isabel replied. \"But I did then.\"\n\n\"If you've forgotten your reason perhaps you won't return.\"\n\nIsabel waited a moment. \"Perhaps I shall find another.\"\n\n\"You'll certainly never find a good one.\"\n\n\"In default of a better my having promised will do,\" Isabel suggested.\n\n\"Yes; that's why I hate it.\"\n\n\"Don't speak of it now. I've a little time. Coming away was a\ncomplication, but what will going back be?\"\n\n\"You must remember, after all, that he won't make you a scene!\" said\nHenrietta with much intention.\n\n\"He will, though,\" Isabel answered gravely. \"It won't be the scene of a\nmoment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life.\"\n\nFor some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and\nthen Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had requested,\nannounced abruptly: \"I've been to stay with Lady Pensil!\"\n\n\"Ah, the invitation came at last!\"\n\n\"Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me.\"\n\n\"Naturally enough.\"\n\n\"It was more natural than I think you know,\" said Henrietta, who fixed\nher eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly:\n\"Isabel Archer, I beg your pardon. You don't know why? Because I\ncriticised you, and yet I've gone further than you. Mr. Osmond, at\nleast, was born on the other side!\"\n\nIt was a moment before Isabel grasped her meaning; this sense was so\nmodestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel's mind was not\npossessed at present with the comicality of things; but she greeted with\na quick laugh the image that her companion had raised. She immediately\nrecovered herself, however, and with the right excess of intensity,\n\"Henrietta Stackpole,\" she asked, \"are you going to give up your\ncountry?\"\n\n\"Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won't pretend to deny it; I look the fact\nin the face. I'm going to marry Mr. Bantling and locate right here in\nLondon.\"\n\n\"It seems very strange,\" said Isabel, smiling now.\n\n\"Well yes, I suppose it does. I've come to it little by little. I think\nI know what I'm doing; but I don't know as I can explain.\"\n\n\"One can't explain one's marriage,\" Isabel answered. \"And yours doesn't\nneed to be explained. Mr. Bantling isn't a riddle.\"\n\n\"No, he isn't a bad pun--or even a high flight of American humour. He\nhas a beautiful nature,\" Henrietta went on. \"I've studied him for many\nyears and I see right through him. He's as clear as the style of a good\nprospectus. He's not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the\nother hand he doesn't exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in\nthe United States.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel, \"you're changed indeed! It's the first time I've ever\nheard you say anything against your native land.\"\n\n\"I only say that we're too infatuated with mere brain-power; that, after\nall, isn't a vulgar fault. But I AM changed; a woman has to change a\ngood deal to marry.\"\n\n\"I hope you'll be very happy. You will at last--over here--see something\nof the inner life.\"\n\nHenrietta gave a little significant sigh. \"That's the key to the\nmystery, I believe. I couldn't endure to be kept off. Now I've as good\na right as any one!\" she added with artless elation. Isabel was duly\ndiverted, but there was a certain melancholy in her view. Henrietta,\nafter all, had confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta whom she\nhad hitherto regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was\na disappointment to find she had personal susceptibilities, that she was\nsubject to common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Bantling had\nnot been completely original. There was a want of originality in her\nmarrying him--there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a moment, to\nIsabel's sense, the dreariness of the world took on a deeper tinge. A\nlittle later indeed she reflected that Mr. Bantling himself at least was\noriginal. But she didn't see how Henrietta could give up her country.\nShe herself had relaxed her hold of it, but it had never been her\ncountry as it had been Henrietta's. She presently asked her if she had\nenjoyed her visit to Lady Pensil.\n\n\"Oh yes,\" said Henrietta, \"she didn't know what to make of me.\"\n\n\"And was that very enjoyable?\"\n\n\"Very much so, because she's supposed to be a master mind. She thinks\nshe knows everything; but she doesn't understand a woman of my modern\ntype. It would be so much easier for her if I were only a little better\nor a little worse. She's so puzzled; I believe she thinks it's my duty\nto go and do something immoral. She thinks it's immoral that I should\nmarry her brother; but, after all, that isn't immoral enough. And she'll\nnever understand my mixture--never!\"\n\n\"She's not so intelligent as her brother then,\" said Isabel. \"He appears\nto have understood.\"\n\n\"Oh no, he hasn't!\" cried Miss Stackpole with decision. \"I really\nbelieve that's what he wants to marry me for--just to find out the\nmystery and the proportions of it. That's a fixed idea--a kind of\nfascination.\"\n\n\"It's very good in you to humour it.\"\n\n\"Oh well,\" said Henrietta, \"I've something to find out too!\" And Isabel\nsaw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She\nwas at last about to grapple in earnest with England.\n\nIsabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington\nStation, where she found herself, at ten o'clock, in the company both\nof Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling, that the gentleman bore his\nperplexities lightly. If he had not found out everything he had found\nout at least the great point--that Miss Stackpole would not be wanting\nin initiative. It was evident that in the selection of a wife he had\nbeen on his guard against this deficiency.\n\n\"Henrietta has told me, and I'm very glad,\" Isabel said as she gave him\nher hand.\n\n\"I dare say you think it awfully odd,\" Mr. Bantling replied, resting on\nhis neat umbrella.\n\n\"Yes, I think it awfully odd.\"\n\n\"You can't think it so awfully odd as I do. But I've always rather liked\nstriking out a line,\" said Mr. Bantling serenely.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIsabel's arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even\nquieter than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept but a small\nhousehold, and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond was a stranger; so that\ninstead of being conducted to her own apartment she was coldly shown\ninto the drawing-room and left to wait while her name was carried up to\nher aunt. She waited a long time; Mrs. Touchett appeared in no hurry to\ncome to her. She grew impatient at last; she grew nervous and scared--as\nscared as if the objects about her had begun to show for conscious\nthings, watching her trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark\nand cold; the dusk was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The\nhouse was perfectly still--with a stillness that Isabel remembered; it\nhad filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle. She\nleft the drawing-room and wandered about--strolled into the library and\nalong the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep silence, her footstep\nmade an echo. Nothing was changed; she recognised everything she had\nseen years before; it might have been only yesterday she had stood\nthere. She envied the security of valuable \"pieces\" which change by no\nhair's breadth, only grow in value, while their owners lose inch by\ninch youth, happiness, beauty; and she became aware that she was walking\nabout as her aunt had done on the day she had come to see her in Albany.\nShe was changed enough since then--that had been the beginning. It\nsuddenly struck her that if her Aunt Lydia had not come that day in just\nthat way and found her alone, everything might have been different. She\nmight have had another life and she might have been a woman more blest.\nShe stopped in the gallery in front of a small picture--a charming and\nprecious Bonington--upon which her eyes rested a long time. But she was\nnot looking at the picture; she was wondering whether if her aunt had\nnot come that day in Albany she would have married Caspar Goodwood.\n\nMrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the\nbig uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her\neye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a\nrepository of latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress of the most\nundecorated fashion, and Isabel wondered, as she had wondered the first\ntime, if her remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the\nmatron of a gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed on Isabel's hot cheek.\n\n\"I've kept you waiting because I've been sitting with Ralph,\" Mrs.\nTouchett said. \"The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had taken her\nplace. He has a man who's supposed to look after him, but the man's good\nfor nothing; he's always looking out of the window--as if there were\nanything to see! I didn't wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be\nsleeping and I was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the\nnurse came back. I remembered you knew the house.\"\n\n\"I find I know it better even than I thought; I've been walking\neverywhere,\" Isabel answered. And then she asked if Ralph slept much.\n\n\"He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I'm not sure that\nit's always sleep.\"\n\n\"Will he see me? Can he speak to me?\"\n\nMrs. Touchett declined the office of saying. \"You can try him,\" was the\nlimit of her extravagance. And then she offered to conduct Isabel to her\nroom. \"I thought they had taken you there; but it's not my house, it's\nRalph's; and I don't know what they do. They must at least have taken\nyour luggage; I don't suppose you've brought much. Not that I care,\nhowever. I believe they've given you the same room you had before; when\nRalph heard you were coming he said you must have that one.\"\n\n\"Did he say anything else?\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear, he doesn't chatter as he used!\" cried Mrs. Touchett as she\npreceded her niece up the staircase.\n\nIt was the same room, and something told Isabel it had not been slept\nin since she occupied it. Her luggage was there and was not voluminous;\nMrs. Touchett sat down a moment with her eyes upon it. \"Is there really\nno hope?\" our young woman asked as she stood before her.\n\n\"None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful\nlife.\"\n\n\"No--it has only been a beautiful one.\" Isabel found herself already\ncontradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness.\n\n\"I don't know what you mean by that; there's no beauty without health.\nThat is a very odd dress to travel in.\"\n\nIsabel glanced at her garment. \"I left Rome at an hour's notice; I took\nthe first that came.\"\n\n\"Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That seemed to\nbe their principal interest. I wasn't able to tell them--but they seemed\nto have the right idea: that you never wear anything less than black\nbrocade.\"\n\n\"They think I'm more brilliant than I am; I'm afraid to tell them the\ntruth,\" said Isabel. \"Lily wrote me you had dined with her.\"\n\n\"She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second time she\nshould have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it must have been\nexpensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to\nAmerica? Why should I have enjoyed it? I didn't go for my pleasure.\"\n\nThese were interesting items, but Mrs. Touchett soon left her niece,\nwhom she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal. For this\nrepast the two ladies faced each other at an abbreviated table in the\nmelancholy dining-room. Here, after a little, Isabel saw her aunt not\nto be so dry as she appeared, and her old pity for the poor woman's\ninexpressiveness, her want of regret, of disappointment, came back to\nher. Unmistakeably she would have found it a blessing to-day to be able\nto feel a defeat, a mistake, even a shame or two. She wondered if she\nwere not even missing those enrichments of consciousness and privately\ntrying--reaching out for some aftertaste of life, dregs of the banquet;\nthe testimony of pain or the cold recreation of remorse. On the other\nhand perhaps she was afraid; if she should begin to know remorse at all\nit might take her too far. Isabel could perceive, however, how it had\ncome over her dimly that she had failed of something, that she saw\nherself in the future as an old woman without memories. Her little\nsharp face looked tragical. She told her niece that Ralph had as yet not\nmoved, but that he probably would be able to see her before dinner.\nAnd then in a moment she added that he had seen Lord Warburton the day\nbefore; an announcement which startled Isabel a little, as it seemed\nan intimation that this personage was in the neighbourhood and that an\naccident might bring them together. Such an accident would not be happy;\nshe had not come to England to struggle again with Lord Warburton. She\nnone the less presently said to her aunt that he had been very kind to\nRalph; she had seen something of that in Rome.\n\n\"He has something else to think of now,\" Mrs. Touchett returned. And she\npaused with a gaze like a gimlet.\n\nIsabel saw she meant something, and instantly guessed what she meant.\nBut her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster and she wished\nto gain a moment. \"Ah yes--the House of Lords and all that.\"\n\n\"He's not thinking of the Lords; he's thinking of the ladies. At least\nhe's thinking of one of them; he told Ralph he's engaged to be married.\"\n\n\"Ah, to be married!\" Isabel mildly exclaimed.\n\n\"Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to know.\nPoor Ralph can't go to the wedding, though I believe it's to take place\nvery soon.\n\n\"And who's the young lady?\"\n\n\"A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia--something of\nthat sort.\"\n\n\"I'm very glad,\" Isabel said. \"It must be a sudden decision.\"\n\n\"Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has only just\nbeen made public.\"\n\n\"I'm very glad,\" Isabel repeated with a larger emphasis. She knew her\naunt was watching her--looking for the signs of some imputed soreness,\nand the desire to prevent her companion from seeing anything of this\nkind enabled her to speak in the tone of quick satisfaction, the tone\nalmost of relief. Mrs. Touchett of course followed the tradition that\nladies, even married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as\nan offence to themselves. Isabel's first care therefore was to show\nthat however that might be in general she was not offended now. But\nmeanwhile, as I say, her heart beat faster; and if she sat for some\nmoments thoughtful--she presently forgot Mrs. Touchett's observation--it\nwas not because she had lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed\nhalf Europe; it halted, panting, and even trembling a little, in the\ncity of Rome. She figured herself announcing to her husband that Lord\nWarburton was to lead a bride to the altar, and she was of course\nnot aware how extremely wan she must have looked while she made this\nintellectual effort. But at last she collected herself and said to her\naunt: \"He was sure to do it some time or other.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of the\nhead. \"Ah, my dear, you're beyond me!\" she cried suddenly. They went on\nwith their luncheon in silence; Isabel felt as if she had heard of Lord\nWarburton's death. She had known him only as a suitor, and now that was\nall over. He was dead for poor Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A\nservant had been hovering about; at last Mrs. Touchett requested him\nto leave them alone. She had finished her meal; she sat with her\nhands folded on the edge of the table. \"I should like to ask you three\nquestions,\" she observed when the servant had gone.\n\n\"Three are a great many.\"\n\n\"I can't do with less; I've been thinking. They're all very good ones.\"\n\n\"That's what I'm afraid of. The best questions are the worst,\" Isabel\nanswered. Mrs. Touchett had pushed back her chair, and as her niece left\nthe table and walked, rather consciously, to one of the deep windows,\nshe felt herself followed by her eyes.\n\n\"Have you ever been sorry you didn't marry Lord Warburton?\" Mrs.\nTouchett enquired.\n\nIsabel shook her head slowly, but not heavily. \"No, dear aunt.\"\n\n\"Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you say.\"\n\n\"Your believing me's an immense temptation,\" she declared, smiling\nstill.\n\n\"A temptation to lie? I don't recommend you to do that, for when I'm\nmisinformed I'm as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don't mean to crow\nover you.\"\n\n\"It's my husband who doesn't get on with me,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I could have told him he wouldn't. I don't call that crowing over YOU,\"\nMrs. Touchett added. \"Do you still like Serena Merle?\" she went on.\n\n\"Not as I once did. But it doesn't matter, for she's going to America.\"\n\n\"To America? She must have done something very bad.\"\n\n\"Yes--very bad.\"\n\n\"May I ask what it is?\"\n\n\"She made a convenience of me.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried Mrs. Touchett, \"so she did of me! She does of every one.\"\n\n\"She'll make a convenience of America,\" said Isabel, smiling again and\nglad that her aunt's questions were over.\n\nIt was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He had been\ndozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was\nthere, but after a while went away--the local doctor, who had attended\nhis father and whom Ralph liked. He came three or four times a day; he\nwas deeply interested in his patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew Hope,\nbut he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked his\nmother to send word he was now dead and was therefore without further\nneed of medical advice. Mrs. Touchett had simply written to Sir Matthew\nthat her son disliked him. On the day of Isabel's arrival Ralph gave no\nsign, as I have related, for many hours; but toward evening he raised\nhimself and said he knew that she had come.\n\nHow he knew was not apparent, inasmuch as for fear of exciting him no\none had offered the information. Isabel came in and sat by his bed in\nthe dim light; there was only a shaded candle in a corner of the room.\nShe told the nurse she might go--she herself would sit with him for the\nrest of the evening. He had opened his eyes and recognised her, and had\nmoved his hand, which lay helpless beside him, so that she might take\nit. But he was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained\nperfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a\nlong time--till the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He\nmight have passed away while she looked at him; he was already the\nfigure and pattern of death. She had thought him far gone in Rome,\nand this was worse; there was but one change possible now. There was a\nstrange tranquillity in his face; it was as still as the lid of a box.\nWith this he was a mere lattice of bones; when he opened his eyes to\ngreet her it was as if she were looking into immeasurable space. It was\nnot till midnight that the nurse came back; but the hours, to Isabel,\nhad not seemed long; it was exactly what she had come for. If she had\ncome simply to wait she found ample occasion, for he lay three days in\na kind of grateful silence. He recognised her and at moments seemed to\nwish to speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed his eyes again, as\nif he too were waiting for something--for something that certainly would\ncome. He was so absolutely quiet that it seemed to her what was coming\nhad already arrived; and yet she never lost the sense that they were\nstill together. But they were not always together; there were other\nhours that she passed in wandering through the empty house and listening\nfor a voice that was not poor Ralph's. She had a constant fear; she\nthought it possible her husband would write to her. But he remained\nsilent, and she only got a letter from Florence and from the Countess\nGemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last--on the evening of the third day.\n\n\"I feel better to-night,\" he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless\ndimness of her vigil; \"I think I can say something.\" She sank upon her\nknees beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own; begged him\nnot to make an effort--not to tire himself. His face was of necessity\nserious--it was incapable of the muscular play of a smile; but its owner\napparently had not lost a perception of incongruities. \"What does it\nmatter if I'm tired when I've all eternity to rest? There's no harm in\nmaking an effort when it's the very last of all. Don't people always\nfeel better just before the end? I've often heard of that; it's what I\nwas waiting for. Ever since you've been here I thought it would come.\nI tried two or three times; I was afraid you'd get tired of sitting\nthere.\" He spoke slowly, with painful breaks and long pauses; his voice\nseemed to come from a distance. When he ceased he lay with his face\nturned to Isabel and his large unwinking eyes open into her own. \"It\nwas very good of you to come,\" he went on. \"I thought you would; but I\nwasn't sure.\"\n\n\"I was not sure either till I came,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"You've been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about the\nangel of death. It's the most beautiful of all. You've been like that;\nas if you were waiting for me.\"\n\n\"I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for--for this. This is\nnot death, dear Ralph.\"\n\n\"Not for you--no. There's nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see\nothers die. That's the sensation of life--the sense that we remain. I've\nhad it--even I. But now I'm of no use but to give it to others. With me\nit's all over.\" And then he paused. Isabel bowed her head further, till\nit rested on the two hands that were clasped upon his own. She couldn't\nsee him now; but his far-away voice was close to her ear. \"Isabel,\" he\nwent on suddenly, \"I wish it were over for you.\" She answered nothing;\nshe had burst into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face. He lay\nsilent, listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan. \"Ah, what\nis it you have done for me?\"\n\n\"What is it you did for me?\" she cried, her now extreme agitation half\nsmothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide\nthings. Now he must know; she wished him to know, for it brought them\nsupremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. \"You did\nsomething once--you know it. O Ralph, you've been everything! What have\nI done for you--what can I do to-day? I would die if you could live.\nBut I don't wish you to live; I would die myself, not to lose you.\" Her\nvoice was as broken as his own and full of tears and anguish.\n\n\"You won't lose me--you'll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be\nnearer to you than I've ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better; for in\nlife there's love. Death is good--but there's no love.\"\n\n\"I never thanked you--I never spoke--I never was what I should be!\"\nIsabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse\nherself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the\nmoment, became single and melted together into this present pain. \"What\nmust you have thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I\nonly know to-day because there are people less stupid than I.\"\n\n\"Don't mind people,\" said Ralph. \"I think I'm glad to leave people.\"\n\nShe raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to\npray to him. \"Is it true--is it true?\" she asked.\n\n\"True that you've been stupid? Oh no,\" said Ralph with a sensible\nintention of wit.\n\n\"That you made me rich--that all I have is yours?\"\n\nHe turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last:\n\"Ah, don't speak of that--that was not happy.\" Slowly he moved his face\ntoward her again, and they once more saw each other. \"But for that--but\nfor that--!\" And he paused. \"I believe I ruined you,\" he wailed.\n\nShe was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain; he\nseemed already so little of this world. But even if she had not had\nit she would still have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only\nknowledge that was not pure anguish--the knowledge that they were\nlooking at the truth together.\n\n\"He married me for the money,\" she said. She wished to say everything;\nshe was afraid he might die before she had done so. He gazed at her a\nlittle, and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their lids. But he\nraised them in a moment, and then, \"He was greatly in love with you,\" he\nanswered.\n\n\"Yes, he was in love with me. But he wouldn't have married me if I had\nbeen poor. I don't hurt you in saying that. How can I? I only want you\nto understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding; but that's\nall over.\"\n\n\"I always understood,\" said Ralph.\n\n\"I thought you did, and I didn't like it. But now I like it.\"\n\n\"You don't hurt me--you make me very happy.\" And as Ralph said this\nthere was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her\nhead again, and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. \"I always\nunderstood,\" he continued, \"though it was so strange--so pitiful. You\nwanted to look at life for yourself--but you were not allowed; you\nwere punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the\nconventional!\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I've been punished,\" Isabel sobbed.\n\nHe listened to her a little, and then continued: \"Was he very bad about\nyour coming?\"\n\n\"He made it very hard for me. But I don't care.\"\n\n\"It is all over then between you?\"\n\n\"Oh no; I don't think anything's over.\"\n\n\"Are you going back to him?\" Ralph gasped.\n\n\"I don't know--I can't tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I don't\nwant to think--I needn't think. I don't care for anything but you, and\nthat's enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my\nknees, with you dying in my arms, I'm happier than I have been for a\nlong time. And I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad;\nonly to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be\npain--? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not\nthe deepest thing; there's something deeper.\"\n\nRalph evidently found from moment to moment greater difficulty in\nspeaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared\nto make no response to these last words; he let a long time elapse. Then\nhe murmured simply: \"You must stay here.\"\n\n\"I should like to stay--as long as seems right.\"\n\n\"As seems right--as seems right?\" He repeated her words. \"Yes, you think\na great deal about that.\"\n\n\"Of course one must. You're very tired,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"I'm very tired. You said just now that pain's not the deepest thing.\nNo--no. But it's very deep. If I could stay--\"\n\n\"For me you'll always be here,\" she softly interrupted. It was easy to\ninterrupt him.\n\nBut he went on, after a moment: \"It passes, after all; it's passing now.\nBut love remains. I don't know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I\nshall find out. There are many things in life. You're very young.\"\n\n\"I feel very old,\" said Isabel.\n\n\"You'll grow young again. That's how I see you. I don't believe--I don't\nbelieve--\" But he stopped again; his strength failed him.\n\nShe begged him to be quiet now. \"We needn't speak to understand each\nother,\" she said.\n\n\"I don't believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt you for\nmore than a little.\"\n\n\"Oh Ralph, I'm very happy now,\" she cried through her tears.\n\n\"And remember this,\" he continued, \"that if you've been hated\nyou've also been loved. Ah but, Isabel--ADORED!\" he just audibly and\nlingeringly breathed.\n\n\"Oh my brother!\" she cried with a movement of still deeper prostration.\n\n\n\n\n\nHe had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt, that\nif she should live to suffer enough she might some day see the ghost\nwith which the old house was duly provided. She apparently had fulfilled\nthe necessary condition; for the next morning, in the cold, faint\ndawn, she knew that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down\nwithout undressing, it being her belief that Ralph would not outlast\nthe night. She had no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such\nwaiting was wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed that as the\nnight wore on she should hear a knock at her door. She heard no knock,\nbut at the time the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she started up\nfrom her pillow as abruptly as if she had received a summons. It seemed\nto her for an instant that he was standing there--a vague, hovering\nfigure in the vagueness of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his\nwhite face--his kind eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not\nafraid; she was only sure. She quitted the place and in her certainty\npassed through dark corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that\nshone in the vague light of a hall-window. Outside Ralph's door she\nstopped a moment, listening, but she seemed to hear only the hush that\nfilled it. She opened the door with a hand as gentle as if she were\nlifting a veil from the face of the dead, and saw Mrs. Touchett sitting\nmotionless and upright beside the couch of her son, with one of his\nhands in her own. The doctor was on the other side, with poor Ralph's\nfurther wrist resting in his professional fingers. The two nurses were\nat the foot between them. Mrs. Touchett took no notice of Isabel, but\nthe doctor looked at her very hard; then he gently placed Ralph's hand\nin a proper position, close beside him. The nurse looked at her very\nhard too, and no one said a word; but Isabel only looked at what she had\ncome to see. It was fairer than Ralph had ever been in life, and there\nwas a strange resemblance to the face of his father, which, six years\nbefore, she had seen lying on the same pillow. She went to her aunt\nand put her arm around her; and Mrs. Touchett, who as a general thing\nneither invited nor enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment to this\none, rising, as might be, to take it. But she was stiff and dry-eyed;\nher acute white face was terrible.\n\n\"Dear Aunt Lydia,\" Isabel murmured.\n\n\"Go and thank God you've no child,\" said Mrs. Touchett, disengaging\nherself.\n\nThree days after this a considerable number of people found time, at the\nheight of the London \"season,\" to take a morning train down to a quiet\nstation in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a small grey church which\nstood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this\nedifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself\nat the edge of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton\nhimself had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs.\nTouchett. It was a solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one;\nthere was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather\nhad changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous\nMay-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the\nhawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it\nwas not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been\ndying so long; he was so ready; everything had been so expected and\nprepared. There were tears in Isabel's eyes, but they were not tears\nthat blinded. She looked through them at the beauty of the day, the\nsplendour of nature, the sweetness of the old English churchyard, the\nbowed heads of good friends. Lord Warburton was there, and a group\nof gentlemen all unknown to her, several of whom, as she afterwards\nlearned, were connected with the bank; and there were others whom she\nknew. Miss Stackpole was among the first, with honest Mr. Bantling\nbeside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head higher than the\nrest--bowing it rather less. During much of the time Isabel was\nconscious of Mr. Goodwood's gaze; he looked at her somewhat harder than\nhe usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their eyes upon\nthe churchyard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him; she\nthought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. She found\nshe had taken for granted that after accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt\nhe had gone away; she remembered how little it was a country that\npleased him. He was there, however, very distinctly there; and\nsomething in his attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex\nintention. She wouldn't meet his eyes, though there was doubtless\nsympathy in them; he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the\nlittle group he disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to\nher--though several spoke to Mrs. Touchett--was Henrietta Stackpole.\nHenrietta had been crying.\n\nRalph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at Gardencourt,\nand she made no immediate motion to leave the place. She said to herself\nthat it was but common charity to stay a little with her aunt. It was\nfortunate she had so good a formula; otherwise she might have been\ngreatly in want of one. Her errand was over; she had done what she had\nleft her husband to do. She had a husband in a foreign city, counting\nthe hours of her absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive.\nHe was not one of the best husbands, but that didn't alter the case.\nCertain obligations were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were\nquite independent of the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it. Isabel\nthought of her husband as little as might be; but now that she was at a\ndistance, beyond its spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder\nof Rome. There was a penetrating chill in the image, and she drew\nback into the deepest shade of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day,\npostponing, closing her eyes, trying not to think. She knew she must\ndecide, but she decided nothing; her coming itself had not been a\ndecision. On that occasion she had simply started. Osmond gave no sound\nand now evidently would give none; he would leave it all to her. From\nPansy she heard nothing, but that was very simple: her father had told\nher not to write.\n\nMrs. Touchett accepted Isabel's company, but offered her no assistance;\nshe appeared to be absorbed in considering, without enthusiasm but\nwith perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of her own situation. Mrs.\nTouchett was not an optimist, but even from painful occurrences she\nmanaged to extract a certain utility. This consisted in the reflexion\nthat, after all, such things happened to other people and not to\nherself. Death was disagreeable, but in this case it was her son's\ndeath, not her own; she had never flattered herself that her own would\nbe disagreeable to any one but Mrs. Touchett. She was better off than\npoor Ralph, who had left all the commodities of life behind him,\nand indeed all the security; since the worst of dying was, to Mrs.\nTouchett's mind, that it exposed one to be taken advantage of. For\nherself she was on the spot; there was nothing so good as that. She\nmade known to Isabel very punctually--it was the evening her son was\nburied--several of Ralph's testamentary arrangements. He had told her\neverything, had consulted her about everything. He left her no money;\nof course she had no need of money. He left her the furniture of\nGardencourt, exclusive of the pictures and books and the use of the\nplace for a year; after which it was to be sold. The money produced by\nthe sale was to constitute an endowment for a hospital for poor persons\nsuffering from the malady of which he died; and of this portion of the\nwill Lord Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his property,\nwhich was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in various\nbequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his\nfather had already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small\nlegacies.\n\n\"Some of them are extremely peculiar,\" said Mrs. Touchett; \"he has left\nconsiderable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I\nasked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at\nvarious times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn't\nlike him, for he hasn't left you a penny. It was his opinion that you\nhad been handsomely treated by his father, which I'm bound to say I\nthink you were--though I don't mean that I ever heard him complain of\nit. The pictures are to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one\nby one, as little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to\nLord Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his library?\nIt sounds like a practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss\nStackpole--'in recognition of her services to literature.' Does he mean\nher following him up from Rome? Was that a service to literature? It\ncontains a great many rare and valuable books, and as she can't carry\nit about the world in her trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction.\nShe will sell it of course at Christie's, and with the proceeds she'll\nset up a newspaper. Will that be a service to literature?\"\n\nThis question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little\ninterrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her\narrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in literature than\nto-day, as she found when she occasionally took down from the shelf one\nof the rare and valuable volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She\nwas quite unable to read; her attention had never been so little at her\ncommand. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the ceremony\nin the churchyard, she was trying to fix it for an hour; but her eyes\noften wandered from the book in her hand to the open window, which\nlooked down the long avenue. It was in this way that she saw a modest\nvehicle approach the door and perceived Lord Warburton sitting, in\nrather an uncomfortable attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had\na high standard of courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under\nthe circumstances, that he should have taken the trouble to come down\nfrom London to call on Mrs. Touchett. It was of course Mrs. Touchett\nhe had come to see, and not Mrs. Osmond; and to prove to herself the\nvalidity of this thesis Isabel presently stepped out of the house and\nwandered away into the park. Since her arrival at Gardencourt she\nhad been but little out of doors, the weather being unfavourable for\nvisiting the grounds. This evening, however, was fine, and at first it\nstruck her as a happy thought to have come out. The theory I have just\nmentioned was plausible enough, but it brought her little rest, and\nif you had seen her pacing about you would have said she had a bad\nconscience. She was not pacified when at the end of a quarter of an\nhour, finding herself in view of the house, she saw Mrs. Touchett emerge\nfrom the portico accompanied by her visitor. Her aunt had evidently\nproposed to Lord Warburton that they should come in search of her. She\nwas in no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance, would have\ndrawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had been seen\nand that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at Gardencourt\nwas a vast expanse this took some time; during which she observed that,\nas he walked beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his hands rather\nstiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons apparently\nwere silent; but Mrs. Touchett's thin little glance, as she directed it\ntoward Isabel, had even at a distance an expression. It seemed to say\nwith cutting sharpness: \"Here's the eminently amenable nobleman you\nmight have married!\" When Lord Warburton lifted his own eyes, however,\nthat was not what they said. They only said \"This is rather awkward, you\nknow, and I depend upon you to help me.\" He was very grave, very proper\nand, for the first time since Isabel had known him, greeted her without\na smile. Even in his days of distress he had always begun with a smile.\nHe looked extremely selfconscious.\n\n\"Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me,\" said Mrs.\nTouchett. \"He tells me he didn't know you were still here. I know he's\nan old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not in the house I\nbrought him out to see for himself.\"\n\n\"Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get me back\nin time for dinner,\" Mrs. Touchett's companion rather irrelevantly\nexplained. \"I'm so glad to find you've not gone.\"\n\n\"I'm not here for long, you know,\" Isabel said with a certain eagerness.\n\n\"I suppose not; but I hope it's for some weeks. You came to England\nsooner than--a--than you thought?\"\n\n\"Yes, I came very suddenly.\"\n\nMrs. Touchett turned away as if she were looking at the condition of the\ngrounds, which indeed was not what it should be, while Lord Warburton\nhesitated a little. Isabel fancied he had been on the point of asking\nabout her husband--rather confusedly--and then had checked himself. He\ncontinued immitigably grave, either because he thought it becoming in a\nplace over which death had just passed, or for more personal reasons. If\nhe was conscious of personal reasons it was very fortunate that he had\nthe cover of the former motive; he could make the most of that. Isabel\nthought of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for that was\nanother matter; but it was strangely inexpressive.\n\n\"My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were\nstill here--if they had thought you would see them,\" Lord Warburton went\non. \"Do kindly let them see you before you leave England.\"\n\n\"It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly recollection of\nthem.\"\n\n\"I don't know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or two?\nYou know there's always that old promise.\" And his lordship coloured a\nlittle as he made this suggestion, which gave his face a somewhat more\nfamiliar air. \"Perhaps I'm not right in saying that just now; of course\nyou're not thinking of visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a\nvisit. My sisters are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for five days;\nand if you could come then--as you say you're not to be very long in\nEngland--I would see that there should be literally no one else.\"\n\nIsabel wondered if not even the young lady he was to marry would be\nthere with her mamma; but she did not express this idea.\n\n\"Thank you extremely,\" she contented herself with saying; \"I'm afraid I\nhardly know about Whitsuntide.\"\n\n\"But I have your promise--haven't I?--for some other time.\"\n\nThere was an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. She looked\nat her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her observation was\nthat--as had happened before--she felt sorry for him. \"Take care you\ndon't miss your train,\" she said. And then she added: \"I wish you every\nhappiness.\"\n\nHe blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch. \"Ah yes,\n6.40; I haven't much time, but I've a fly at the door. Thank you very\nmuch.\" It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having\nreminded him of his train or to the more sentimental remark. \"Good-bye,\nMrs. Osmond; good-bye.\" He shook hands with her, without meeting her\neyes, and then he turned to Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back to\nthem. With her his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two\nladies saw him move with long steps across the lawn.\n\n\"Are you very sure he's to be married?\" Isabel asked of her aunt.\n\n\"I can't be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and\nhe accepted it.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Isabel, \"I give it up!\"--while her aunt returned to the house\nand to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted.\n\nShe gave it up, but she still thought of it--thought of it while she\nstrolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the\nacres of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a\nrustic bench, which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as\nan object recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before,\nnor even that she had sat upon it; it was that on this spot something\nimportant had happened to her--that the place had an air of association.\nThen she remembered that she had been sitting there, six years before,\nwhen a servant brought her from the house the letter in which Caspar\nGoodwood informed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when\nshe had read the letter she looked up to hear Lord Warburton announcing\nthat he should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an\ninteresting, bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might have\nsomething to say to her. She wouldn't sit down on it now--she felt\nrather afraid of it. She only stood before it, and while she stood the\npast came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which\npersons of sensibility are visited at odd hours. The effect of this\nagitation was a sudden sense of being very tired, under the influence\nof which she overcame her scruples and sank into the rustic seat. I have\nsaid that she was restless and unable to occupy herself; and whether or\nno, if you had seen her there, you would have admired the justice of the\nformer epithet, you would at least have allowed that at this moment\nshe was the image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude had a singular\nabsence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her sides, lost themselves in\nthe folds of her black dress; her eyes gazed vaguely before her.\nThere was nothing to recall her to the house; the two ladies, in their\nseclusion, dined early and had tea at an indefinite hour. How long she\nhad sat in this position she could not have told you; but the twilight\nhad grown thick when she became aware that she was not alone. She\nquickly straightened herself, glancing about, and then saw what had\nbecome of her solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar Goodwood,\nwho stood looking at her, a few yards off, and whose footfall on the\nunresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to her\nin the midst of this that it was just so Lord Warburton had surprised\nher of old.\n\nShe instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw he was seen he started\nforward. She had had time only to rise when, with a motion that looked\nlike violence, but felt like--she knew not what, he grasped her by the\nwrist and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he had\nnot hurt her; it was only a touch, which she had obeyed. But there was\nsomething in his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he\nhad looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only at present\nit was worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to\nher--beside her on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost\nseemed to her that no one had ever been so close to her as that.\nAll this, however, took but an instant, at the end of which she had\ndisengaged her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant. \"You've\nfrightened me,\" she said.\n\n\"I didn't mean to,\" he answered, \"but if I did a little, no matter.\nI came from London a while ago by the train, but I couldn't come here\ndirectly. There was a man at the station who got ahead of me. He took\na fly that was there, and I heard him give the order to drive here. I\ndon't know who he was, but I didn't want to come with him; I wanted to\nsee you alone. So I've been waiting and walking about. I've walked all\nover, and I was just coming to the house when I saw you here. There was\na keeper, or someone, who met me; but that was all right, because I\nhad made his acquaintance when I came here with your cousin. Is that\ngentleman gone? Are you really alone? I want to speak to you.\" Goodwood\nspoke very fast; he was as excited as when they had parted in Rome.\nIsabel had hoped that condition would subside; and she shrank into\nherself as she perceived that, on the contrary, he had only let out\nsail. She had a new sensation; he had never produced it before; it was\na feeling of danger. There was indeed something really formidable in his\nresolution. She gazed straight before her; he, with a hand on each knee,\nleaned forward, looking deeply into her face. The twilight seemed\nto darken round them. \"I want to speak to you,\" he repeated; \"I've\nsomething particular to say. I don't want to trouble you--as I did\nthe other day in Rome. That was of no use; it only distressed you. I\ncouldn't help it; I knew I was wrong. But I'm not wrong now; please\ndon't think I am,\" he went on with his hard, deep voice melting a moment\ninto entreaty. \"I came here to-day for a purpose. It's very different.\nIt was vain for me to speak to you then; but now I can help you.\"\n\nShe couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or\nbecause such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she\nlistened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep\ninto her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and\nit was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him. \"How can you\nhelp me?\" she asked in a low tone, as if she were taking what he had\nsaid seriously enough to make the enquiry in confidence.\n\n\"By inducing you to trust me. Now I know--to-day I know. Do you remember\nwhat I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But to-day I\nknow on good authority; everything's clear to me to-day. It was a good\nthing when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good man,\na fine man, one of the best; he told me how the case stands for you. He\nexplained everything; he guessed my sentiments. He was a member of\nyour family and he left you--so long as you should be in England--to my\ncare,\" said Goodwood as if he were making a great point. \"Do you know\nwhat he said to me the last time I saw him--as he lay there where he\ndied? He said: 'Do everything you can for her; do everything she'll let\nyou.'\"\n\nIsabel suddenly got up. \"You had no business to talk about me!\"\n\n\"Why not--why not, when we talked in that way?\" he demanded, following\nher fast. \"And he was dying--when a man's dying it's different.\" She\nchecked the movement she had made to leave him; she was listening more\nthan ever; it was true that he was not the same as that last time. That\nhad been aimless, fruitless passion, but at present he had an idea,\nwhich she scented in all her being. \"But it doesn't matter!\" he\nexclaimed, pressing her still harder, though now without touching a hem\nof her garment. \"If Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have\nknown all the same. I had only to look at you at your cousin's funeral\nto see what's the matter with you. You can't deceive me any more; for\nGod's sake be honest with a man who's so honest with you. You're the\nmost unhappy of women, and your husband's the deadliest of fiends.\"\n\nShe turned on him as if he had struck her. \"Are you mad?\" she cried.\n\n\"I've never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don't think it's\nnecessary to defend him. But I won't say another word against him; I'll\nspeak only of you,\" Goodwood added quickly. \"How can you pretend you're\nnot heart-broken? You don't know what to do--you don't know where to\nturn. It's too late to play a part; didn't you leave all that behind you\nin Rome? Touchett knew all about it, and I knew it too--what it\nwould cost you to come here. It will have cost you your life? Say it\nwill\"--and he flared almost into anger: \"give me one word of truth! When\nI know such a horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save\nyou? What would you think of me if I should stand still and see you\ngo back to your reward? 'It's awful, what she'll have to pay for\nit!'--that's what Touchett said to me. I may tell you that, mayn't I? He\nwas such a near relation!\" cried Goodwood, making his queer grim point\nagain. \"I'd sooner have been shot than let another man say those things\nto me; but he was different; he seemed to me to have the right. It was\nafter he got home--when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too.\nI understand all about it: you're afraid to go back. You're perfectly\nalone; you don't know where to turn. You can't turn anywhere; you know\nthat perfectly. Now it is therefore that I want you to think of ME.\"\n\n\"To think of 'you'?\" Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk. The\nidea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed\nlarge. She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had\nbeen a comet in the sky.\n\n\"You don't know where to turn. Turn straight to me. I want to persuade\nyou to trust me,\" Goodwood repeated. And then he paused with his shining\neyes. \"Why should you go back--why should you go through that ghastly\nform?\"\n\n\"To get away from you!\" she answered. But this expressed only a little\nof what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She\nhad believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the\ndesert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere\nsweet airs of the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her\nfeet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and\nstrange, forced open her set teeth.\n\nAt first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that\nhe would break out into greater violence. But after an instant he was\nperfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane, that he had reasoned it\nall out. \"I want to prevent that, and I think I may, if you'll only for\nonce listen to me. It's too monstrous of you to think of sinking back\ninto that misery, of going to open your mouth to that poisoned air. It's\nyou that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why\nshouldn't we be happy--when it's here before us, when it's so easy? I'm\nyours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock.\nWhat have you to care about? You've no children; that perhaps would be\nan obstacle. As it is you've nothing to consider. You must save what you\ncan of your life; you mustn't lose it all simply because you've lost a\npart. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look\nof the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the\nworld. We've nothing to do with all that; we're quite out of it; we look\nat things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next\nis nothing; it's the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a woman\ndeliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life--in going\ndown into the streets if that will help her! I know how you suffer, and\nthat's why I'm here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under\nthe sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us, what is it that\nhas the smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a\nquestion is between ourselves--and to say that is to settle it! Were we\nborn to rot in our misery--were we born to be afraid? I never knew YOU\nafraid! If you'll only trust me, how little you will be disappointed!\nThe world's all before us--and the world's very big. I know something\nabout that.\"\n\nIsabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were\npressing something that hurt her.\n\n\"The world's very small,\" she said at random; she had an immense\ndesire to appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say\nsomething; but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never\nseemed so large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form\nof a mighty sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted\nhelp, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not\nwhether she believed everything he said; but she believed just then\nthat to let him take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her\ndying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she\nfelt herself sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her\nfeet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.\n\n\"Ah, be mine as I'm yours!\" she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly\ngiven up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh and terrible,\nthrough a confusion of vaguer sounds.\n\nThis however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the\nmetaphysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters, all the rest\nof it, were in her own swimming head. In an instant she became aware of\nthis. \"Do me the greatest kindness of all,\" she panted. \"I beseech you\nto go away!\"\n\n\"Ah, don't say that. Don't kill me!\" he cried.\n\nShe clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. \"As you love\nme, as you pity me, leave me alone!\"\n\nHe glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she\nfelt his arms about her and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like\nwhite lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and\nit was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in\nhis hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his\nface, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and\nmade one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked\nand under water following a train of images before they sink. But when\ndarkness returned she was free. She never looked about her; she only\ndarted from the spot. There were lights in the windows of the house;\nthey shone far across the lawn. In an extraordinarily short time--for\nthe distance was considerable--she had moved through the darkness (for\nshe saw nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked\nall about her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the\nlatch. She had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a\nvery straight path.\n\nTwo days afterwards Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the house in\nWimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied furnished lodgings.\nHe had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened\nand Miss Stackpole herself stood before him. She had on her hat and\njacket; she was on the point of going out. \"Oh, good-morning,\" he said,\n\"I was in hopes I should find Mrs. Osmond.\"\n\nHenrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good\ndeal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was silent. \"Pray\nwhat led you to suppose she was here?\"\n\n\"I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she\nhad come to London. He believed she was to come to you.\"\n\nAgain Miss Stackpole held him--with an intention of perfect kindness--in\nsuspense. \"She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this\nmorning she started for Rome.\"\n\nCaspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the\ndoorstep. \"Oh, she started--?\" he stammered. And without finishing\nhis phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself. But he couldn't\notherwise move.\n\nHenrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out\nher hand and grasped his arm. \"Look here, Mr. Goodwood,\" she said; \"just\nyou wait!\"\n\nOn which he looked up at her--but only to guess, from her face, with a\nrevulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him\nwith that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his\nlife. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now\nthe key to patience.\n\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The novel opens with an American son and father, Ralph and Mr. Touchett, and one English man, Lord Warburton, sitting in a garden belonging to a manor called Gardencourt in England. They discuss the great hope of the future, and they believe it lies in the women of their time. They declare that a change is coming. Isabel Archer, the main subject of the novel, then appears on the horizon. Her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, has brought her from America so that she can see the world. Isabel Archer is a young, opinionated woman with many ideas of her own, but little concrete experience or practical knowledge. She is unattached, ambitious and wants to assert her own unique self in life. It is unclear though what she can do in life that could help her realize her ambition. The novel is a representation of the ambitions of a young woman, and her dismal prospects for realizing her own ideas in a restricted, conventional society. Marriage was often the only possibility for a woman to assert her \"success\" in society. It is also an exploration of the possibilities of freedom: can one really be a unique, original and free self, without having to rely upon the generosity of others? Can one assert one's own freedom in any other way, other than negatively, by rejecting other people? What does it mean to be an original? What does it mean to be free? How much does one have to take into account the moral claims of other people on one's own person? Lord Warburton takes an extraordinary step by proposing marriage to Isabel Archer after knowing her for only a short time. He has a great reputation, name, title and plenty of money. This would make him a good husband in the eyes of society. However, Isabel takes the surprising step of turning him down, even though she likes him very much as a person. This makes her very interesting to her cousin Ralph Touchett, who wants to see what a woman who turns down Lord Warburton will do with her life. Ralph and Isabel go with Isabel's American friend, Henrietta Stackpole, to London for a short trip. There, Caspar Goodwood, Isabel's suitor from America, has arrived in order to follow Isabel. He also would like to marry Isabel. He also has a lot of money and has become well established because of his involvement in the cotton industry. Isabel tries to refuse him, but he insists. She tells him to at least give her two years of freedom from him. The group returns to Gardencourt, where Ralph Touchett's father has taken ill and is about to die. There, Isabel meets Madame Merle, a friend of Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle is a very graceful and talented socialite. Isabel is impressed with her. Meanwhile, Ralph Touchett, who has consumption and expects to die young, tells his father that he does not need all the money his father would leave him in his will. Instead, Ralph insists that his father give half of his money to Isabel Archer upon his death. Ralph tells his father he would like to see what Isabel will do when she is granted the material wealth that will allow her to enact her ideas. Upon Mr. Touchett's death, Mrs. Touchett, Isabel, Ralph, and Madame Merle go to Florence, Italy, where Mrs. Touchett has her own house. Madame Merle introduces Isabel to her friend Gilbert Osmond, an American collector who resides in Florence. He is distinguished by his impeccable taste in art and other commodities. Gilbert Osmond also has a daughter named Pansy. Madame Merle has a plan to get Isabel to marry Gilbert Osmond. Isabel is surprisingly timid in Osmond's presence and is afraid of saying the wrong thing in his presence. Isabel travels around Europe for half a year, and then goes to Greece and the Asia Minor for another half with Madame Merle. She ends her journey in Rome, where Gilbert Osmond comes to visit her. They become engaged in Rome. Isabel then informs her social acquaintances, beginning with Caspar Goodwood, of her intention to marry Gilbert Osmond. None of them approve. Isabel feels that her act of marrying Gilbert Osmond isolates her from her friends. Several years later, Isabel finds herself in a loveless marriage. She gives all the appearance to others of being happy, hosting Thursday evening social gatherings and \"representing\" Gilbert Osmond to the world. But she feels that her husband detests her. He has been unable to change her, to mold her into his image. However they do not ever articulate their dislike for each other; they live civilly, but coolly. Isabel realizes that Osmond is really very shallow, and cares too much about what other people think. He likes to show his superiority to the world by pretending to reject its values in favor of his own ideas, but this is just a show, because he deeply cares about his own image. When Gilbert Osmond's daughter, Pansy, comes of age to be wed, an impetuous young man named Edward Rosier pursues her. He asks for assistance from Madame Merle and Isabel. However, Gilbert Osmond believes that Mr. Rosier is neither rich enough for his daughter, nor well respected enough. Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle would like Isabel to help them marry Pansy to Lord Warburton. They want Isabel to use Lord Warburton's devotion to Isabel to accomplish this. Isabel ultimately does not want to bring this about, making Osmond believe that she has secretly defied him. Meanwhile, Ralph has taken a turn for the worse. He visits in Rome for a while, and Osmond is displeased that Isabel spends a lot of time with him. Ralph then returns to his home in Gardencourt, where he plans to take his final resting place. Isabel's friends come to Rome to observe whether or not she is really happy in this marriage of which they all disapproved. Isabel begins to suspect, from Madame Merle's overzealous interest in Pansy's marriage, that Madame Merle has meddled in her affairs. She then learns from Osmond's sister that Madame Merle is in fact Pansy's mother, and that Osmond and Madame Merle once had an extramarital affair with each other. Isabel is shocked and horrified to realize that Merle has actually manipulated her into marrying Osmond, and that Osmond has married her for her husband. Isabel's discovery of this fact makes her question whether or not she really was capable of making a free choice all on her own. She realizes that her own life is too mixed up in the affairs of others - in order to be free, she must acknowledge the way her life is entangled in social relations with other people. Isabel openly defies her husband when she returns to Gardencourt to say goodbye to Ralph on his deathbed. Osmond has meanwhile sent his daughter Pansy to a convent, so as to make her forget her love for Edward Rosier. Isabel promises Pansy that she will return. Isabel learns from Madame Merle that Ralph was the one who made her a rich woman. Upon his deathbed, Ralph confesses to having ruined Isabel by giving her so much money and making her a target for fortune hunters. Isabel and Ralph though share an intimate moment and stress the importance of one another for each other's lives. The novel concludes with Caspar Goodwood's arrival at Gardencourt, and his suggestion to Isabel that they begin a love affair, since Isabel is so unhappy in her marriage. She refuses and runs away, to return to her husband and Pansy in Rome. This novel explores the nature of human freedom, moral choice, and conventional social relations. What does it mean to be free? How should the needs of others factor into our lives? What does it mean to be deceptive to others? It also explores the significance of the aesthetic approach to objects. Aesthetics is the philosophical exploration of beauty: what makes something beautiful? And what makes something a work of art? Henry James is considering how we might use the aesthetic approach in our relationships to other people. Is it wrong to see another person as a work of art? What can we learn from reading the story of a person as if it were a \"portrait\" of a lady?", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "Isabel Archer, a young, beautiful, and decidedly interesting American girl, arrives in England after being \"discovered\" in Albany by her eccentric aunt, Mrs. Touchett. Upon arrival at the Touchett home, Gardencourt, a spacious estate in southern England, she takes a keen liking to her uncle, Mr. Touchett, her cousin Ralph, and assorted dogs. A family friend, Lord Warburton, is also present - he's immediately interested in her. Shortly thereafter, the smitten nobleman proposes to Isabel, but, despite his personal and financial charms, she turns him down.It seems that Isabel is in high demand - another suitor named Caspar Goodwood arrives from Boston to continue to woo her. Another of Isabel's American friends, an adventurous young lady journalist named Henrietta Stackpole, also arrives on the scene, eager to report on European life to her newspaper stateside. Isabel, Henrietta, and Ralph take a field trip to London for some time, where Isabel encounters Caspar Goodwood, who also proposes. Despite her attraction to him, Isabel turns her American suitor down as well.Henrietta flounces off elsewhere, and Isabel and Ralph return to Gardencourt, where Mr. Touchett's health is failing. There, Isabel meets Madame Merle, an old friend of Mrs. Touchett's, and the two become fast friends. Sadly, old Mr. Touchett dies, but not before Ralph convinces him to leave Isabel a fortune, so that she may live as she chooses. After Mr. Touchett's death and the subsequent divvying up of money, Madame Merle takes an interest in Isabel and introduces her to a rather mysterious acquaintance, Gilbert Osmond.Osmond is a little on the creepy side, but still fascinating . He's a smart, seductive man of the world. Osmond is a passionate collector of beautiful things: including art, furniture, and his lovely and innocent adolescent daughter, Pansy. Isabel's family and friends begin to wonder if this strange man intends to make Isabel a part of his collection...And, he does. After two years, Isabel and Osmond are married and live in a gorgeous old palace in Rome. We learn that Isabel had a baby, but the child died after six months. Isabel is wholly miserable in her marriage, but she is too proud to show her mistake to anyone. She isolates herself from her dearest friends, including Ralph, whose health is steadily declining. Osmond controls her life, and takes from Isabel the most important thing she possessed: her independence.When Lord Warburton and Ralph come visit the unhappy family in Rome, we see just how controlling Osmond is; he is unhappy when Isabel even visits her ailing cousin in his hotel, and makes his anger known. He gives her the chance to do something to make him happy - get Lord Warburton to marry Pansy. However, with Isabel's encouragement, Lord Warburton decides against the match, since Pansy is in love with someone else. Osmond is furious at Isabel for failing him in this task. The news that Ralph is dying back in England and wants Isabel to come see him one last time makes matters worse - Osmond refuses to let his wife go.Sensing the weaknesses in their relationship, Osmond's sister, Countess Gemini, lets slip a horrifying fact. Isabel suddenly learns that she was always simply a pawn in Osmond and Madame Merle's warped game. The two of them never acted in Isabel's interest, nor did they act out of any love for her. Rather, by ensnaring Isabel in marriage, they wanted to ensure that Pansy, who is actually their illegitimate daughter, would be set for life. Stunned, Isabel visits Ralph before he dies. While she's away from home, Caspar Goodwood professes his love for her one last time, but Isabel chooses to return to Rome , rather than escape with him.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "cliffnotes", "text": "Isabel Archer's aunt comes to America after the death of Isabel's father in order to take her niece to Europe. On her arrival in England, Isabel meets her cousin Ralph, her uncle, Mr. Touchett, and the great nobleman of the area, Lord Warburton, who immediately falls in love with her. After a short time, Warburton proposes to Isabel, but she turns him down, maintaining that she cherishes her freedom and independence too much to marry. A short time later, her journalist friend Henrietta Stackpole arrives in England and tells Isabel that her American suitor Caspar Goodwood has followed Isabel to England. During a visit to London, Isabel encounters Caspar Goodwood, who tries to convince her that she should marry him. Again, Isabel says that she must have time to see the world and make a few independent judgments. She promises Goodwood that she will discuss the subject again in two years. He leaves, promising to remain in America for this time. While in London, Isabel hears of the sickness of her uncle. She returns to his home, Gardencourt, where she finds him dying. She also finds another guest, Madame Merle, an old friend of Mrs. Touchett's. During the long days when the house is involved with sickness, Isabel and Madame Merle become good friends. Ralph Touchett knows that his father plans to leave him a huge fortune, but he also knows that he is slowly dying himself and does not need much money. He therefore convinces his father to leave some of his fortune to Isabel. After Mr. Touchett's death, Isabel becomes a great heiress. She continues to travel with her aunt and they go to Mrs. Touchett's home in Florence, Italy. Here, Madame Merle introduces Isabel to her old friend Gilbert Osmond. Madame Merle has already instructed Osmond to be nice to Isabel because she thinks that Gilbert should marry her. After some time, Isabel believes that she is in love with Osmond. She maintains her independence by refusing to listen to any advice. Everyone is opposed to her marrying Osmond because all feel that he is a worthless fortune hunter. Some years later, Isabel knows that she has made a mistake. Gilbert Osmond, now her husband, has tried to break Isabel's independent nature and has tried to make her obey his every wish. He wants Isabel to be as quiet and obedient as is his daughter. Pansy, the daughter, has been brought up in a convent and has been taught to obey her father in everything. Thus when the father disapproves of the young man that Pansy is in love with, she must submit to his wishes. When Isabel receives a letter telling her that her cousin Ralph is dying, she wants to go to England to visit him. Osmond opposes the trip because it would not look proper. At this time, Isabel discovers that Pansy is actually the illegitimate child of Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond. She then realizes that her friend Madame Merle tricked her into an imprudent marriage with Osmond, and with this knowledge Isabel leaves for England in spite of her husband's disapproval. In England, she confesses the mistake she made in marrying Osmond, and Caspar Goodwood pleads with her to leave her husband. Isabel, however, feels that she cannot forsake the sacred bonds of marriage and feels that Pansy needs her help. She therefore decides to return to Osmond in spite of her dislike for him.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "Isabel Archer is a woman in her early twenties who comes from a genteel family in Albany, New York, in the late 1860s. Her mother died when she was a young girl, and her father raised her in a haphazard manner, allowing her to educate herself and encouraging her independence. As a result, the adult Isabel is widely read, imaginative, confident in her own mind, and slightly narcissistic; she has the reputation in Albany for being a formidable intellect, and as a result she often seems intimidating to men. She has had few suitors, but one of them is Caspar Goodwood, the powerful, charismatic son of a wealthy Boston mill owner. Isabel is drawn to Caspar, but her commitment to her independence makes her fear him as well, for she feels that to marry him would be to sacrifice her freedom. Shortly after Isabel's father dies, she receives a visit from her indomitable aunt, Mrs. Touchett, an American who lives in Europe. Mrs. Touchett offers to take Isabel on a trip to Europe, and Isabel eagerly agrees, telling Caspar that she cannot tell him whether she wishes to marry him until she has had at least a year to travel in Europe with her aunt. Isabel and Mrs. Touchett leave for England, where Mrs. Touchett's estranged husband is a powerful banker. Isabel makes a strong impression on everyone at Mr. Touchett's county manor of Gardencourt: her cousin Ralph, slowly dying of a lung disorder, becomes deeply devoted to her, and the Touchetts' aristocratic neighbor Lord Warburton falls in love with her. Warburton proposes, but Isabel declines; though she fears that she is passing up a great social opportunity by not marrying Warburton, she still believes that marriage would damage her treasured independence. As a result, she pledges to accomplish something wonderful with her life, something that will justify her decision to reject Warburton. Isabel's friend Henrietta Stackpole, an American journalist, believes that Europe is changing Isabel, slowly eroding her American values and replacing them with romantic idealism. Henrietta comes to Gardencourt and secretly arranges for Caspar Goodwood to meet Isabel in London. Goodwood again presses Isabel to marry him; this time, she tells him she needs at least two years before she can answer him, and she promises him nothing. She is thrilled to have exercised her independence so forcefully. Mr. Touchett's health declines, and Ralph convinces him that when he dies, he should leave half his wealth to Isabel: this will protect her independence and ensure that she will never have to marry for money. Mr. Touchett agrees shortly before he dies. Isabel is left with a large fortune for the first time in her life. Her inheritance piques the interest of Madame Merle, Mrs. Touchett's polished, elegant friend; Madame Merle begins to lavish attention on Isabel, and the two women become close friends. Isabel travels to Florence with Mrs. Touchett and Madame Merle; Merle introduces Isabel to a man named Gilbert Osmond, a man of no social standing or wealth, but whom Merle describes as one of the finest gentlemen in Europe, wholly devoted to art and aesthetics. Osmond's daughter Pansy is being brought up in a convent; his wife is dead. In secret, Osmond and Merle have a mysterious relationship; Merle is attempting to manipulate Isabel into marrying Osmond so that he will have access to her fortune. Osmond is pleased to marry Isabel, not only for her money, but also because she makes a fine addition to his collection of art objects. Everyone in Isabel's world disapproves of Osmond, especially Ralph, but Isabel chooses to marry him anyway. She has a child the year after they are married, but the boy dies six months after he is born. Three years into their marriage, Isabel and Osmond have come to despise one another; they live with Pansy in a palazzo in Rome, where Osmond treats Isabel as barely a member of the family: to him, she is a social hostess and a source of wealth, and he is annoyed by her independence and her insistence on having her own opinions. Isabel chafes against Osmond's arrogance, his selfishness, and his sinister desire to crush her individuality, but she does not consider leaving him. For all her commitment to her independence, Isabel is also committed to her social duty, and when she married Osmond, she did so with the intention of transforming herself into a good wife. A young American art collector who lives in Paris, Edward Rosier, comes to Rome and falls in love with Pansy; Pansy returns his feelings. But Osmond is insistent that Pansy should marry a nobleman, and he says that Rosier is neither rich nor highborn enough. Matters grow complicated when Lord Warburton arrives on the scene and begins to court Pansy. Warburton is still in love with Isabel and wants to marry Pansy solely to get closer to her. But Osmond desperately wants to see Pansy married to Warburton. Isabel is torn about whether to fulfill her duty to her husband and help him arrange the match between Warburton and Pansy, or to fulfill the impulse of her conscience and discourage Warburton, while helping Pansy find a way to marry Rosier. At a ball one night, Isabel shows Warburton the dejected-looking Rosier and explains that this is the man who is in love with Pansy. Guiltily, Warburton admits that he is not in love with Pansy; he quietly arranges to leave Rome. Osmond is furious with Isabel, convinced that she is plotting intentionally to humiliate him. Madame Merle is also furious with her, confronting her with shocking impropriety and demanding brazenly to know what she did to Warburton. Isabel has realized that there is something mysterious about Madame Merle's relationship with her husband; now, she suddenly realizes that Merle is his lover. At this time, Ralph is rapidly deteriorating, and Isabel receives word that he is dying. She longs to travel to England to be with him, but Osmond forbids it. Now Isabel must struggle to decide whether to obey his command and remain true to her marriage vows or to disregard him and hurry to her cousin's bedside. Encouraging her to go, Osmond's sister, the Countess Gemini, tells her that there is still more to Merle and Osmond's relationship. Merle is Pansy's mother; Pansy was born out of wedlock. Osmond's wife died at about the same time, so Merle and Osmond spread the story that she died in childbirth. Pansy was placed in a convent to be raised, and she does not know that Merle is her real mother. Isabel is shocked and disgusted by her husband's atrocious behavior--she even feels sorry for Merle for falling under his spell--so she decides to follow her heart and travel to England. After Ralph's death, Isabel struggles to decide whether to return to her husband or not. She promised Pansy that she would return to Rome, and her commitment to social propriety impels her to go back and honor her marriage. But her independent spirit urges her to flee from Osmond and find happiness elsewhere. Caspar Goodwood appears at the funeral, and afterwards, he asks Isabel to run away with him and forget about her husband. The next day, unable to find her, Goodwood asks Henrietta where she has gone. Henrietta quietly tells him that Isabel has returned to Rome, unable to break away from her marriage to Gilbert Osmond.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "1232", "title": "The Prince", "text": "\nAll states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been\nand are either republics or principalities.\n\nPrincipalities are either hereditary, in which the family has been long\nestablished; or they are new.\n\nThe new are either entirely new, as was Milan to Francesco Sforza, or\nthey are, as it were, members annexed to the hereditary state of the\nprince who has acquired them, as was the kingdom of Naples to that of\nthe King of Spain.\n\nSuch dominions thus acquired are either accustomed to live under a\nprince, or to live in freedom; and are acquired either by the arms of\nthe prince himself, or of others, or else by fortune or by ability.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI will leave out all discussion on republics, inasmuch as in another\nplace I have written of them at length, and will address myself only to\nprincipalities. In doing so I will keep to the order indicated above,\nand discuss how such principalities are to be ruled and preserved.\n\nI say at once there are fewer difficulties in holding hereditary states,\nand those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than new\nones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his\nancestors, and to deal prudently with circumstances as they arise, for a\nprince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he\nbe deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he\nshould be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the\nusurper, he will regain it.\n\nWe have in Italy, for example, the Duke of Ferrara, who could not have\nwithstood the attacks of the Venetians in '84, nor those of Pope Julius\nin '10, unless he had been long established in his dominions. For the\nhereditary prince has less cause and less necessity to offend; hence it\nhappens that he will be more loved; and unless extraordinary vices cause\nhim to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be\nnaturally well disposed towards him; and in the antiquity and duration\nof his rule the memories and motives that make for change are lost, for\none change always leaves the toothing for another.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBut the difficulties occur in a new principality. And firstly, if it be\nnot entirely new, but is, as it were, a member of a state which, taken\ncollectively, may be called composite, the changes arise chiefly from\nan inherent difficulty which there is in all new principalities; for\nmen change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves, and this\nhope induces them to take up arms against him who rules: wherein they\nare deceived, because they afterwards find by experience they have\ngone from bad to worse. This follows also on another natural and common\nnecessity, which always causes a new prince to burden those who have\nsubmitted to him with his soldiery and with infinite other hardships\nwhich he must put upon his new acquisition.\n\nIn this way you have enemies in all those whom you have injured in\nseizing that principality, and you are not able to keep those friends\nwho put you there because of your not being able to satisfy them in the\nway they expected, and you cannot take strong measures against them,\nfeeling bound to them. For, although one may be very strong in armed\nforces, yet in entering a province one has always need of the goodwill\nof the natives.\n\nFor these reasons Louis the Twelfth, King of France, quickly occupied\nMilan, and as quickly lost it; and to turn him out the first time it\nonly needed Lodovico's own forces; because those who had opened the\ngates to him, finding themselves deceived in their hopes of future\nbenefit, would not endure the ill-treatment of the new prince. It is\nvery true that, after acquiring rebellious provinces a second time,\nthey are not so lightly lost afterwards, because the prince, with\nlittle reluctance, takes the opportunity of the rebellion to punish the\ndelinquents, to clear out the suspects, and to strengthen himself in the\nweakest places. Thus to cause France to lose Milan the first time it was\nenough for the Duke Lodovico(*) to raise insurrections on the borders;\nbut to cause him to lose it a second time it was necessary to bring\nthe whole world against him, and that his armies should be defeated and\ndriven out of Italy; which followed from the causes above mentioned.\n\n     (*) Duke Lodovico was Lodovico Moro, a son of Francesco\n     Sforza, who married Beatrice d'Este. He ruled over Milan\n     from 1494 to 1500, and died in 1510.\n\nNevertheless Milan was taken from France both the first and the second\ntime. The general reasons for the first have been discussed; it remains\nto name those for the second, and to see what resources he had, and what\nany one in his situation would have had for maintaining himself more\nsecurely in his acquisition than did the King of France.\n\nNow I say that those dominions which, when acquired, are added to an\nancient state by him who acquires them, are either of the same country\nand language, or they are not. When they are, it is easier to hold them,\nespecially when they have not been accustomed to self-government; and\nto hold them securely it is enough to have destroyed the family of the\nprince who was ruling them; because the two peoples, preserving in other\nthings the old conditions, and not being unlike in customs, will live\nquietly together, as one has seen in Brittany, Burgundy, Gascony, and\nNormandy, which have been bound to France for so long a time: and,\nalthough there may be some difference in language, nevertheless the\ncustoms are alike, and the people will easily be able to get on amongst\nthemselves. He who has annexed them, if he wishes to hold them, has only\nto bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the family of their\nformer lord is extinguished; the other, that neither their laws nor\ntheir taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become\nentirely one body with the old principality.\n\nBut when states are acquired in a country differing in language,\ncustoms, or laws, there are difficulties, and good fortune and great\nenergy are needed to hold them, and one of the greatest and most real\nhelps would be that he who has acquired them should go and reside there.\nThis would make his position more secure and durable, as it has made\nthat of the Turk in Greece, who, notwithstanding all the other measures\ntaken by him for holding that state, if he had not settled there, would\nnot have been able to keep it. Because, if one is on the spot, disorders\nare seen as they spring up, and one can quickly remedy them; but if one\nis not at hand, they are heard of only when they are great, and then one\ncan no longer remedy them. Besides this, the country is not pillaged\nby your officials; the subjects are satisfied by prompt recourse to the\nprince; thus, wishing to be good, they have more cause to love him, and\nwishing to be otherwise, to fear him. He who would attack that state\nfrom the outside must have the utmost caution; as long as the prince\nresides there it can only be wrested from him with the greatest\ndifficulty.\n\nThe other and better course is to send colonies to one or two places,\nwhich may be as keys to that state, for it is necessary either to do\nthis or else to keep there a great number of cavalry and infantry. A\nprince does not spend much on colonies, for with little or no expense he\ncan send them out and keep them there, and he offends a minority only of\nthe citizens from whom he takes lands and houses to give them to the new\ninhabitants; and those whom he offends, remaining poor and scattered,\nare never able to injure him; whilst the rest being uninjured are easily\nkept quiet, and at the same time are anxious not to err for fear it\nshould happen to them as it has to those who have been despoiled. In\nconclusion, I say that these colonies are not costly, they are more\nfaithful, they injure less, and the injured, as has been said, being\npoor and scattered, cannot hurt. Upon this, one has to remark that men\nought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge\nthemselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot;\ntherefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a\nkind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.\n\nBut in maintaining armed men there in place of colonies one spends much\nmore, having to consume on the garrison all the income from the\nstate, so that the acquisition turns into a loss, and many more are\nexasperated, because the whole state is injured; through the shifting\nof the garrison up and down all become acquainted with hardship, and\nall become hostile, and they are enemies who, whilst beaten on their\nown ground, are yet able to do hurt. For every reason, therefore, such\nguards are as useless as a colony is useful.\n\nAgain, the prince who holds a country differing in the above respects\nought to make himself the head and defender of his less powerful\nneighbours, and to weaken the more powerful amongst them, taking care\nthat no foreigner as powerful as himself shall, by any accident, get\na footing there; for it will always happen that such a one will be\nintroduced by those who are discontented, either through excess of\nambition or through fear, as one has seen already. The Romans were\nbrought into Greece by the Aetolians; and in every other country where\nthey obtained a footing they were brought in by the inhabitants. And the\nusual course of affairs is that, as soon as a powerful foreigner enters\na country, all the subject states are drawn to him, moved by the hatred\nwhich they feel against the ruling power. So that in respect to those\nsubject states he has not to take any trouble to gain them over to\nhimself, for the whole of them quickly rally to the state which he has\nacquired there. He has only to take care that they do not get hold of\ntoo much power and too much authority, and then with his own forces, and\nwith their goodwill, he can easily keep down the more powerful of them,\nso as to remain entirely master in the country. And he who does not\nproperly manage this business will soon lose what he has acquired, and\nwhilst he does hold it he will have endless difficulties and troubles.\n\nThe Romans, in the countries which they annexed, observed closely these\nmeasures; they sent colonies and maintained friendly relations with(*)\nthe minor powers, without increasing their strength; they kept down the\ngreater, and did not allow any strong foreign powers to gain authority.\nGreece appears to me sufficient for an example. The Achaeans and\nAetolians were kept friendly by them, the kingdom of Macedonia was\nhumbled, Antiochus was driven out; yet the merits of the Achaeans and\nAetolians never secured for them permission to increase their power, nor\ndid the persuasions of Philip ever induce the Romans to be his friends\nwithout first humbling him, nor did the influence of Antiochus make them\nagree that he should retain any lordship over the country. Because the\nRomans did in these instances what all prudent princes ought to do,\nwho have to regard not only present troubles, but also future ones, for\nwhich they must prepare with every energy, because, when foreseen, it is\neasy to remedy them; but if you wait until they approach, the medicine\nis no longer in time because the malady has become incurable; for it\nhappens in this, as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever,\nthat in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to\ndetect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or\ntreated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to\ncure. Thus it happens in affairs of state, for when the evils that arise\nhave been foreseen (which it is only given to a wise man to see), they\ncan be quickly redressed, but when, through not having been foreseen,\nthey have been permitted to grow in a way that every one can see them,\nthere is no longer a remedy. Therefore, the Romans, foreseeing troubles,\ndealt with them at once, and, even to avoid a war, would not let them\ncome to a head, for they knew that war is not to be avoided, but is only\nto be put off to the advantage of others; moreover they wished to fight\nwith Philip and Antiochus in Greece so as not to have to do it in Italy;\nthey could have avoided both, but this they did not wish; nor did that\never please them which is forever in the mouths of the wise ones of our\ntime:--Let us enjoy the benefits of the time--but rather the benefits of\ntheir own valour and prudence, for time drives everything before it, and\nis able to bring with it good as well as evil, and evil as well as good.\n\n     (*) See remark in the introduction on the word\n     \"intrattenere.\"\n\nBut let us turn to France and inquire whether she has done any of the\nthings mentioned. I will speak of Louis(*) (and not of Charles)(+) as\nthe one whose conduct is the better to be observed, he having held\npossession of Italy for the longest period; and you will see that he\nhas done the opposite to those things which ought to be done to retain a\nstate composed of divers elements.\n\n     (*) Louis XII, King of France, \"The Father of the People,\"\n     born 1462, died 1515.\n\n     (+) Charles VIII, King of France, born 1470, died 1498.\n\nKing Louis was brought into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who\ndesired to obtain half the state of Lombardy by his intervention. I\nwill not blame the course taken by the king, because, wishing to get a\nfoothold in Italy, and having no friends there--seeing rather that every\ndoor was shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles--he was forced to\naccept those friendships which he could get, and he would have succeeded\nvery quickly in his design if in other matters he had not made some\nmistakes. The king, however, having acquired Lombardy, regained at once\nthe authority which Charles had lost: Genoa yielded; the Florentines\nbecame his friends; the Marquess of Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara, the\nBentivogli, my lady of Forli, the Lords of Faenza, of Pesaro, of\nRimini, of Camerino, of Piombino, the Lucchese, the Pisans, the\nSienese--everybody made advances to him to become his friend. Then could\nthe Venetians realize the rashness of the course taken by them, which,\nin order that they might secure two towns in Lombardy, had made the king\nmaster of two-thirds of Italy.\n\nLet any one now consider with what little difficulty the king could have\nmaintained his position in Italy had he observed the rules above laid\ndown, and kept all his friends secure and protected; for although they\nwere numerous they were both weak and timid, some afraid of the Church,\nsome of the Venetians, and thus they would always have been forced to\nstand in with him, and by their means he could easily have made himself\nsecure against those who remained powerful. But he was no sooner in\nMilan than he did the contrary by assisting Pope Alexander to occupy the\nRomagna. It never occurred to him that by this action he was weakening\nhimself, depriving himself of friends and of those who had thrown\nthemselves into his lap, whilst he aggrandized the Church by adding much\ntemporal power to the spiritual, thus giving it greater authority. And\nhaving committed this prime error, he was obliged to follow it up, so\nmuch so that, to put an end to the ambition of Alexander, and to prevent\nhis becoming the master of Tuscany, he was himself forced to come into\nItaly.\n\nAnd as if it were not enough to have aggrandized the Church, and\ndeprived himself of friends, he, wishing to have the kingdom of Naples,\ndivided it with the King of Spain, and where he was the prime arbiter in\nItaly he takes an associate, so that the ambitious of that country and\nthe malcontents of his own should have somewhere to shelter; and whereas\nhe could have left in the kingdom his own pensioner as king, he drove\nhim out, to put one there who was able to drive him, Louis, out in turn.\n\nThe wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always\ndo so when they can, and for this they will be praised not blamed; but\nwhen they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is\nfolly and blame. Therefore, if France could have attacked Naples with\nher own forces she ought to have done so; if she could not, then she\nought not to have divided it. And if the partition which she made with\nthe Venetians in Lombardy was justified by the excuse that by it she got\na foothold in Italy, this other partition merited blame, for it had not\nthe excuse of that necessity.\n\nTherefore Louis made these five errors: he destroyed the minor powers,\nhe increased the strength of one of the greater powers in Italy, he\nbrought in a foreign power, he did not settle in the country, he did not\nsend colonies. Which errors, had he lived, were not enough to injure\nhim had he not made a sixth by taking away their dominions from the\nVenetians; because, had he not aggrandized the Church, nor brought Spain\ninto Italy, it would have been very reasonable and necessary to humble\nthem; but having first taken these steps, he ought never to have\nconsented to their ruin, for they, being powerful, would always have\nkept off others from designs on Lombardy, to which the Venetians would\nnever have consented except to become masters themselves there; also\nbecause the others would not wish to take Lombardy from France in order\nto give it to the Venetians, and to run counter to both they would not\nhave had the courage.\n\nAnd if any one should say: \"King Louis yielded the Romagna to Alexander\nand the kingdom to Spain to avoid war,\" I answer for the reasons given\nabove that a blunder ought never to be perpetrated to avoid war, because\nit is not to be avoided, but is only deferred to your disadvantage. And\nif another should allege the pledge which the king had given to the\nPope that he would assist him in the enterprise, in exchange for the\ndissolution of his marriage(*) and for the cap to Rouen,(+) to that I\nreply what I shall write later on concerning the faith of princes, and\nhow it ought to be kept.\n\n     (*) Louis XII divorced his wife, Jeanne, daughter of Louis\n     XI, and married in 1499 Anne of Brittany, widow of Charles\n     VIII, in order to retain the Duchy of Brittany for the\n     crown.\n\n     (+) The Archbishop of Rouen. He was Georges d'Amboise,\n     created a cardinal by Alexander VI. Born 1460, died 1510.\n\nThus King Louis lost Lombardy by not having followed any of the\nconditions observed by those who have taken possession of countries and\nwished to retain them. Nor is there any miracle in this, but much that\nis reasonable and quite natural. And on these matters I spoke at Nantes\nwith Rouen, when Valentino, as Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander,\nwas usually called, occupied the Romagna, and on Cardinal Rouen\nobserving to me that the Italians did not understand war, I replied\nto him that the French did not understand statecraft, meaning that\notherwise they would not have allowed the Church to reach such\ngreatness. And in fact it has been seen that the greatness of the Church\nand of Spain in Italy has been caused by France, and her ruin may be\nattributed to them. From this a general rule is drawn which never or\nrarely fails: that he who is the cause of another becoming powerful\nis ruined; because that predominancy has been brought about either by\nastuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been\nraised to power.\n\n\n\n\n\nConsidering the difficulties which men have had to hold to a newly\nacquired state, some might wonder how, seeing that Alexander the\nGreat became the master of Asia in a few years, and died whilst it\nwas scarcely settled (whence it might appear reasonable that the whole\nempire would have rebelled), nevertheless his successors maintained\nthemselves, and had to meet no other difficulty than that which arose\namong themselves from their own ambitions.\n\nI answer that the principalities of which one has record are found to\nbe governed in two different ways; either by a prince, with a body\nof servants, who assist him to govern the kingdom as ministers by his\nfavour and permission; or by a prince and barons, who hold that dignity\nby antiquity of blood and not by the grace of the prince. Such barons\nhave states and their own subjects, who recognize them as lords and hold\nthem in natural affection. Those states that are governed by a prince\nand his servants hold their prince in more consideration, because in all\nthe country there is no one who is recognized as superior to him, and\nif they yield obedience to another they do it as to a minister and\nofficial, and they do not bear him any particular affection.\n\nThe examples of these two governments in our time are the Turk and the\nKing of France. The entire monarchy of the Turk is governed by one lord,\nthe others are his servants; and, dividing his kingdom into sanjaks, he\nsends there different administrators, and shifts and changes them as\nhe chooses. But the King of France is placed in the midst of an ancient\nbody of lords, acknowledged by their own subjects, and beloved by them;\nthey have their own prerogatives, nor can the king take these away\nexcept at his peril. Therefore, he who considers both of these states\nwill recognize great difficulties in seizing the state of the Turk,\nbut, once it is conquered, great ease in holding it. The causes of the\ndifficulties in seizing the kingdom of the Turk are that the usurper\ncannot be called in by the princes of the kingdom, nor can he hope to be\nassisted in his designs by the revolt of those whom the lord has around\nhim. This arises from the reasons given above; for his ministers, being\nall slaves and bondmen, can only be corrupted with great difficulty, and\none can expect little advantage from them when they have been corrupted,\nas they cannot carry the people with them, for the reasons assigned.\nHence, he who attacks the Turk must bear in mind that he will find him\nunited, and he will have to rely more on his own strength than on the\nrevolt of others; but, if once the Turk has been conquered, and routed\nin the field in such a way that he cannot replace his armies, there\nis nothing to fear but the family of this prince, and, this being\nexterminated, there remains no one to fear, the others having no credit\nwith the people; and as the conqueror did not rely on them before his\nvictory, so he ought not to fear them after it.\n\nThe contrary happens in kingdoms governed like that of France, because\none can easily enter there by gaining over some baron of the kingdom,\nfor one always finds malcontents and such as desire a change. Such men,\nfor the reasons given, can open the way into the state and render the\nvictory easy; but if you wish to hold it afterwards, you meet with\ninfinite difficulties, both from those who have assisted you and from\nthose you have crushed. Nor is it enough for you to have exterminated\nthe family of the prince, because the lords that remain make themselves\nthe heads of fresh movements against you, and as you are unable either\nto satisfy or exterminate them, that state is lost whenever time brings\nthe opportunity.\n\nNow if you will consider what was the nature of the government of\nDarius, you will find it similar to the kingdom of the Turk, and\ntherefore it was only necessary for Alexander, first to overthrow him in\nthe field, and then to take the country from him. After which victory,\nDarius being killed, the state remained secure to Alexander, for the\nabove reasons. And if his successors had been united they would have\nenjoyed it securely and at their ease, for there were no tumults raised\nin the kingdom except those they provoked themselves.\n\nBut it is impossible to hold with such tranquillity states constituted\nlike that of France. Hence arose those frequent rebellions against the\nRomans in Spain, France, and Greece, owing to the many principalities\nthere were in these states, of which, as long as the memory of them\nendured, the Romans always held an insecure possession; but with the\npower and long continuance of the empire the memory of them passed\naway, and the Romans then became secure possessors. And when fighting\nafterwards amongst themselves, each one was able to attach to himself\nhis own parts of the country, according to the authority he had assumed\nthere; and the family of the former lord being exterminated, none other\nthan the Romans were acknowledged.\n\nWhen these things are remembered no one will marvel at the ease with\nwhich Alexander held the Empire of Asia, or at the difficulties which\nothers have had to keep an acquisition, such as Pyrrhus and many more;\nthis is not occasioned by the little or abundance of ability in the\nconqueror, but by the want of uniformity in the subject state.\n\n\n\n\n\nWhenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been\naccustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three\ncourses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the\nnext is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live\nunder their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an\noligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government,\nbeing created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without\nhis friendship and interest, and does it utmost to support him; and\ntherefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it\nmore easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.\n\nThere are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held\nAthens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy; nevertheless they\nlost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia,\ndismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as\nthe Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did\nnot succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many\ncities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them\notherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city\naccustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be\ndestroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty\nand its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time\nnor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And whatever you may do or\nprovide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless\nthey are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately\nrally to them, as Pisa after the hundred years she had been held in\nbondage by the Florentines.\n\nBut when cities or countries are accustomed to live under a prince, and\nhis family is exterminated, they, being on the one hand accustomed to\nobey and on the other hand not having the old prince, cannot agree in\nmaking one from amongst themselves, and they do not know how to govern\nthemselves. For this reason they are very slow to take up arms, and a\nprince can gain them to himself and secure them much more easily. But\nin republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire\nfor vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their\nformer liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to\nreside there.\n\n\n\n\n\nLet no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities\nas I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of\nstate; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and\nfollowing by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to\nthe ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise\nman ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate\nthose who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal\ntheirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever\narchers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far\ndistant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow\nattains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their\nstrength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of\nso high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.\n\nI say, therefore, that in entirely new principalities, where there is\na new prince, more or less difficulty is found in keeping them,\naccordingly as there is more or less ability in him who has acquired\nthe state. Now, as the fact of becoming a prince from a private station\npresupposes either ability or fortune, it is clear that one or other\nof these things will mitigate in some degree many difficulties.\nNevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the\nstrongest. Further, it facilitates matters when the prince, having no\nother state, is compelled to reside there in person.\n\nBut to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune,\nhave risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus,\nand such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not\ndiscuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet\nhe ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to\nspeak with God. But in considering Cyrus and others who have acquired or\nfounded kingdoms, all will be found admirable; and if their particular\ndeeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be found inferior\nto those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in\nexamining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything\nto fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould\ninto the form which seemed best to them. Without that opportunity their\npowers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers\nthe opportunity would have come in vain.\n\nIt was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people of\nIsrael in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order that\nthey should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out of\nbondage. It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and\nthat he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become\nKing of Rome and founder of the fatherland. It was necessary that Cyrus\nshould find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes,\nand the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. Theseus\ncould not have shown his ability had he not found the Athenians\ndispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men fortunate,\nand their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby\ntheir country was ennobled and made famous.\n\nThose who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire\na principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The\ndifficulties they have in acquiring it rise in part from the new rules\nand methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their\ngovernment and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there\nis nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or\nmore uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction\nof a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies\nall those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm\ndefenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises\npartly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and\npartly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new\nthings until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens\nthat whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they\ndo it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise\nthat the prince is endangered along with them.\n\nIt is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter\nthoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves\nor have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate\ntheir enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the\nfirst instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything;\nbut when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely\nendangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the\nunarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the\nnature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade\nthem, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is\nnecessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it\nmay be possible to make them believe by force.\n\nIf Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not\nhave enforced their constitutions for long--as happened in our time to\nFra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things\nimmediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means\nof keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to\nbelieve. Therefore such as these have great difficulties in consummating\ntheir enterprise, for all their dangers are in the ascent, yet with\nability they will overcome them; but when these are overcome, and those\nwho envied them their success are exterminated, they will begin to be\nrespected, and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured,\nand happy.\n\nTo these great examples I wish to add a lesser one; still it bears some\nresemblance to them, and I wish it to suffice me for all of a like kind:\nit is Hiero the Syracusan.(*) This man rose from a private station to\nbe Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune but\nopportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for their\ncaptain, afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince. He was\nof so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes\nof him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king. This man\nabolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances,\nmade new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such\nfoundations he was able to build any edifice: thus, whilst he had\nendured much trouble in acquiring, he had but little in keeping.\n\n     (*) Hiero II, born about 307 B.C., died 216 B.C.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThose who solely by good fortune become princes from being private\ncitizens have little trouble in rising, but much in keeping atop; they\nhave not any difficulties on the way up, because they fly, but they have\nmany when they reach the summit. Such are those to whom some state\nis given either for money or by the favour of him who bestows it;\nas happened to many in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the\nHellespont, where princes were made by Darius, in order that they might\nhold the cities both for his security and his glory; as also were those\nemperors who, by the corruption of the soldiers, from being citizens\ncame to empire. Such stand simply elevated upon the goodwill and the\nfortune of him who has elevated them--two most inconstant and unstable\nthings. Neither have they the knowledge requisite for the position;\nbecause, unless they are men of great worth and ability, it is not\nreasonable to expect that they should know how to command, having always\nlived in a private condition; besides, they cannot hold it because they\nhave not forces which they can keep friendly and faithful.\n\nStates that rise unexpectedly, then, like all other things in nature\nwhich are born and grow rapidly, cannot leave their foundations and\ncorrespondencies(*) fixed in such a way that the first storm will\nnot overthrow them; unless, as is said, those who unexpectedly become\nprinces are men of so much ability that they know they have to be\nprepared at once to hold that which fortune has thrown into their laps,\nand that those foundations, which others have laid BEFORE they became\nprinces, they must lay AFTERWARDS.\n\n     (*) \"Le radici e corrispondenze,\" their roots (i.e.\n     foundations) and correspondencies or relations with other\n     states--a common meaning of \"correspondence\" and\n     \"correspondency\" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.\n\nConcerning these two methods of rising to be a prince by ability or\nfortune, I wish to adduce two examples within our own recollection, and\nthese are Francesco Sforza(*) and Cesare Borgia. Francesco, by proper\nmeans and with great ability, from being a private person rose to be\nDuke of Milan, and that which he had acquired with a thousand anxieties\nhe kept with little trouble. On the other hand, Cesare Borgia, called by\nthe people Duke Valentino, acquired his state during the ascendancy of\nhis father, and on its decline he lost it, notwithstanding that he had\ntaken every measure and done all that ought to be done by a wise and\nable man to fix firmly his roots in the states which the arms and\nfortunes of others had bestowed on him.\n\n     (*) Francesco Sforza, born 1401, died 1466. He married\n     Bianca Maria Visconti, a natural daughter of Filippo\n     Visconti, the Duke of Milan, on whose death he procured his\n     own elevation to the duchy. Machiavelli was the accredited\n     agent of the Florentine Republic to Cesare Borgia (1478-\n     1507) during the transactions which led up to the\n     assassinations of the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, and\n     along with his letters to his chiefs in Florence he has left\n     an account, written ten years before \"The Prince,\" of the\n     proceedings of the duke in his \"Descritione del modo tenuto\n     dal duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli,\"\n     etc., a translation of which is appended to the present\n     work.\n\nBecause, as is stated above, he who has not first laid his foundations\nmay be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will\nbe laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building. If,\ntherefore, all the steps taken by the duke be considered, it will be\nseen that he laid solid foundations for his future power, and I do not\nconsider it superfluous to discuss them, because I do not know what\nbetter precepts to give a new prince than the example of his actions;\nand if his dispositions were of no avail, that was not his fault, but\nthe extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune.\n\nAlexander the Sixth, in wishing to aggrandize the duke, his son, had\nmany immediate and prospective difficulties. Firstly, he did not see his\nway to make him master of any state that was not a state of the Church;\nand if he was willing to rob the Church he knew that the Duke of Milan\nand the Venetians would not consent, because Faenza and Rimini were\nalready under the protection of the Venetians. Besides this, he saw the\narms of Italy, especially those by which he might have been assisted, in\nhands that would fear the aggrandizement of the Pope, namely, the Orsini\nand the Colonnesi and their following. It behoved him, therefore,\nto upset this state of affairs and embroil the powers, so as to make\nhimself securely master of part of their states. This was easy for him\nto do, because he found the Venetians, moved by other reasons, inclined\nto bring back the French into Italy; he would not only not oppose this,\nbut he would render it more easy by dissolving the former marriage of\nKing Louis. Therefore the king came into Italy with the assistance of\nthe Venetians and the consent of Alexander. He was no sooner in Milan\nthan the Pope had soldiers from him for the attempt on the Romagna,\nwhich yielded to him on the reputation of the king. The duke, therefore,\nhaving acquired the Romagna and beaten the Colonnesi, while wishing to\nhold that and to advance further, was hindered by two things: the one,\nhis forces did not appear loyal to him, the other, the goodwill of\nFrance: that is to say, he feared that the forces of the Orsini, which\nhe was using, would not stand to him, that not only might they hinder\nhim from winning more, but might themselves seize what he had won, and\nthat the king might also do the same. Of the Orsini he had a warning\nwhen, after taking Faenza and attacking Bologna, he saw them go very\nunwillingly to that attack. And as to the king, he learned his mind when\nhe himself, after taking the Duchy of Urbino, attacked Tuscany, and the\nking made him desist from that undertaking; hence the duke decided to\ndepend no more upon the arms and the luck of others.\n\nFor the first thing he weakened the Orsini and Colonnesi parties in\nRome, by gaining to himself all their adherents who were gentlemen,\nmaking them his gentlemen, giving them good pay, and, according to their\nrank, honouring them with office and command in such a way that in a few\nmonths all attachment to the factions was destroyed and turned entirely\nto the duke. After this he awaited an opportunity to crush the Orsini,\nhaving scattered the adherents of the Colonna house. This came to him\nsoon and he used it well; for the Orsini, perceiving at length that the\naggrandizement of the duke and the Church was ruin to them, called a\nmeeting of the Magione in Perugia. From this sprung the rebellion at\nUrbino and the tumults in the Romagna, with endless dangers to the duke,\nall of which he overcame with the help of the French. Having restored\nhis authority, not to leave it at risk by trusting either to the French\nor other outside forces, he had recourse to his wiles, and he knew\nso well how to conceal his mind that, by the mediation of Signor\nPagolo--whom the duke did not fail to secure with all kinds of\nattention, giving him money, apparel, and horses--the Orsini were\nreconciled, so that their simplicity brought them into his power\nat Sinigalia.(*) Having exterminated the leaders, and turned their\npartisans into his friends, the duke laid sufficiently good foundations\nto his power, having all the Romagna and the Duchy of Urbino; and the\npeople now beginning to appreciate their prosperity, he gained them\nall over to himself. And as this point is worthy of notice, and to be\nimitated by others, I am not willing to leave it out.\n\n     (*) Sinigalia, 31st December 1502.\n\nWhen the duke occupied the Romagna he found it under the rule of weak\nmasters, who rather plundered their subjects than ruled them, and gave\nthem more cause for disunion than for union, so that the country was\nfull of robbery, quarrels, and every kind of violence; and so, wishing\nto bring back peace and obedience to authority, he considered it\nnecessary to give it a good governor. Thereupon he promoted Messer\nRamiro d'Orco,(*) a swift and cruel man, to whom he gave the fullest\npower. This man in a short time restored peace and unity with the\ngreatest success. Afterwards the duke considered that it was not\nadvisable to confer such excessive authority, for he had no doubt but\nthat he would become odious, so he set up a court of judgment in the\ncountry, under a most excellent president, wherein all cities had their\nadvocates. And because he knew that the past severity had caused some\nhatred against himself, so, to clear himself in the minds of the people,\nand gain them entirely to himself, he desired to show that, if any\ncruelty had been practised, it had not originated with him, but in the\nnatural sternness of the minister. Under this pretence he took Ramiro,\nand one morning caused him to be executed and left on the piazza at\nCesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The barbarity of\nthis spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed.\n\n     (*) Ramiro d'Orco. Ramiro de Lorqua.\n\nBut let us return whence we started. I say that the duke, finding\nhimself now sufficiently powerful and partly secured from immediate\ndangers by having armed himself in his own way, and having in a great\nmeasure crushed those forces in his vicinity that could injure him if he\nwished to proceed with his conquest, had next to consider France, for\nhe knew that the king, who too late was aware of his mistake, would not\nsupport him. And from this time he began to seek new alliances and to\ntemporize with France in the expedition which she was making towards the\nkingdom of Naples against the Spaniards who were besieging Gaeta. It\nwas his intention to secure himself against them, and this he would have\nquickly accomplished had Alexander lived.\n\nSuch was his line of action as to present affairs. But as to the future\nhe had to fear, in the first place, that a new successor to the Church\nmight not be friendly to him and might seek to take from him that which\nAlexander had given him, so he decided to act in four ways. Firstly, by\nexterminating the families of those lords whom he had despoiled, so as\nto take away that pretext from the Pope. Secondly, by winning to himself\nall the gentlemen of Rome, so as to be able to curb the Pope with their\naid, as has been observed. Thirdly, by converting the college more to\nhimself. Fourthly, by acquiring so much power before the Pope should die\nthat he could by his own measures resist the first shock. Of these four\nthings, at the death of Alexander, he had accomplished three. For he had\nkilled as many of the dispossessed lords as he could lay hands on, and\nfew had escaped; he had won over the Roman gentlemen, and he had the\nmost numerous party in the college. And as to any fresh acquisition, he\nintended to become master of Tuscany, for he already possessed Perugia\nand Piombino, and Pisa was under his protection. And as he had no longer\nto study France (for the French were already driven out of the kingdom\nof Naples by the Spaniards, and in this way both were compelled to buy\nhis goodwill), he pounced down upon Pisa. After this, Lucca and Siena\nyielded at once, partly through hatred and partly through fear of\nthe Florentines; and the Florentines would have had no remedy had he\ncontinued to prosper, as he was prospering the year that Alexander died,\nfor he had acquired so much power and reputation that he would have\nstood by himself, and no longer have depended on the luck and the forces\nof others, but solely on his own power and ability.\n\nBut Alexander died five years after he had first drawn the sword. He\nleft the duke with the state of Romagna alone consolidated, with the\nrest in the air, between two most powerful hostile armies, and sick unto\ndeath. Yet there were in the duke such boldness and ability, and he knew\nso well how men are to be won or lost, and so firm were the foundations\nwhich in so short a time he had laid, that if he had not had those\narmies on his back, or if he had been in good health, he would have\novercome all difficulties. And it is seen that his foundations were\ngood, for the Romagna awaited him for more than a month. In Rome,\nalthough but half alive, he remained secure; and whilst the Baglioni,\nthe Vitelli, and the Orsini might come to Rome, they could not effect\nanything against him. If he could not have made Pope him whom he wished,\nat least the one whom he did not wish would not have been elected. But\nif he had been in sound health at the death of Alexander,(*) everything\nwould have been different to him. On the day that Julius the Second(+)\nwas elected, he told me that he had thought of everything that might\noccur at the death of his father, and had provided a remedy for all,\nexcept that he had never anticipated that, when the death did happen, he\nhimself would be on the point to die.\n\n     (*) Alexander VI died of fever, 18th August 1503.\n\n     (+) Julius II was Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of San\n     Pietro ad Vincula, born 1443, died 1513.\n\nWhen all the actions of the duke are recalled, I do not know how to\nblame him, but rather it appears to be, as I have said, that I ought to\noffer him for imitation to all those who, by the fortune or the arms of\nothers, are raised to government. Because he, having a lofty spirit and\nfar-reaching aims, could not have regulated his conduct otherwise,\nand only the shortness of the life of Alexander and his own sickness\nfrustrated his designs. Therefore, he who considers it necessary to\nsecure himself in his new principality, to win friends, to overcome\neither by force or fraud, to make himself beloved and feared by the\npeople, to be followed and revered by the soldiers, to exterminate those\nwho have power or reason to hurt him, to change the old order of things\nfor new, to be severe and gracious, magnanimous and liberal, to destroy\na disloyal soldiery and to create new, to maintain friendship with kings\nand princes in such a way that they must help him with zeal and offend\nwith caution, cannot find a more lively example than the actions of this\nman.\n\nOnly can he be blamed for the election of Julius the Second, in whom he\nmade a bad choice, because, as is said, not being able to elect a Pope\nto his own mind, he could have hindered any other from being elected\nPope; and he ought never to have consented to the election of any\ncardinal whom he had injured or who had cause to fear him if they became\npontiffs. For men injure either from fear or hatred. Those whom he\nhad injured, amongst others, were San Pietro ad Vincula, Colonna, San\nGiorgio, and Ascanio.(*) The rest, in becoming Pope, had to fear him,\nRouen and the Spaniards excepted; the latter from their relationship and\nobligations, the former from his influence, the kingdom of France having\nrelations with him. Therefore, above everything, the duke ought to have\ncreated a Spaniard Pope, and, failing him, he ought to have consented to\nRouen and not San Pietro ad Vincula. He who believes that new benefits\nwill cause great personages to forget old injuries is deceived.\nTherefore, the duke erred in his choice, and it was the cause of his\nultimate ruin.\n\n     (*) San Giorgio is Raffaello Riario. Ascanio is Ascanio\n     Sforza.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlthough a prince may rise from a private station in two ways, neither\nof which can be entirely attributed to fortune or genius, yet it is\nmanifest to me that I must not be silent on them, although one could be\nmore copiously treated when I discuss republics. These methods are\nwhen, either by some wicked or nefarious ways, one ascends to the\nprincipality, or when by the favour of his fellow-citizens a private\nperson becomes the prince of his country. And speaking of the first\nmethod, it will be illustrated by two examples--one ancient, the other\nmodern--and without entering further into the subject, I consider these\ntwo examples will suffice those who may be compelled to follow them.\n\nAgathocles, the Sicilian,(*) became King of Syracuse not only from\na private but from a low and abject position. This man, the son of a\npotter, through all the changes in his fortunes always led an infamous\nlife. Nevertheless, he accompanied his infamies with so much ability of\nmind and body that, having devoted himself to the military profession,\nhe rose through its ranks to be Praetor of Syracuse. Being established\nin that position, and having deliberately resolved to make himself\nprince and to seize by violence, without obligation to others, that\nwhich had been conceded to him by assent, he came to an understanding\nfor this purpose with Amilcar, the Carthaginian, who, with his army, was\nfighting in Sicily. One morning he assembled the people and the senate\nof Syracuse, as if he had to discuss with them things relating to the\nRepublic, and at a given signal the soldiers killed all the senators and\nthe richest of the people; these dead, he seized and held the princedom\nof that city without any civil commotion. And although he was twice\nrouted by the Carthaginians, and ultimately besieged, yet not only was\nhe able to defend his city, but leaving part of his men for its defence,\nwith the others he attacked Africa, and in a short time raised the\nsiege of Syracuse. The Carthaginians, reduced to extreme necessity, were\ncompelled to come to terms with Agathocles, and, leaving Sicily to him,\nhad to be content with the possession of Africa.\n\n     (*) Agathocles the Sicilian, born 361 B.C., died 289 B.C.\n\nTherefore, he who considers the actions and the genius of this man will\nsee nothing, or little, which can be attributed to fortune, inasmuch as\nhe attained pre-eminence, as is shown above, not by the favour of any\none, but step by step in the military profession, which steps were\ngained with a thousand troubles and perils, and were afterwards boldly\nheld by him with many hazardous dangers. Yet it cannot be called talent\nto slay fellow-citizens, to deceive friends, to be without faith,\nwithout mercy, without religion; such methods may gain empire, but\nnot glory. Still, if the courage of Agathocles in entering into and\nextricating himself from dangers be considered, together with his\ngreatness of mind in enduring and overcoming hardships, it cannot be\nseen why he should be esteemed less than the most notable captain.\nNevertheless, his barbarous cruelty and inhumanity with infinite\nwickedness do not permit him to be celebrated among the most excellent\nmen. What he achieved cannot be attributed either to fortune or genius.\n\nIn our times, during the rule of Alexander the Sixth, Oliverotto da\nFermo, having been left an orphan many years before, was brought up\nby his maternal uncle, Giovanni Fogliani, and in the early days of his\nyouth sent to fight under Pagolo Vitelli, that, being trained under\nhis discipline, he might attain some high position in the military\nprofession. After Pagolo died, he fought under his brother Vitellozzo,\nand in a very short time, being endowed with wit and a vigorous body\nand mind, he became the first man in his profession. But it appearing\na paltry thing to serve under others, he resolved, with the aid of some\ncitizens of Fermo, to whom the slavery of their country was dearer than\nits liberty, and with the help of the Vitelleschi, to seize Fermo. So\nhe wrote to Giovanni Fogliani that, having been away from home for many\nyears, he wished to visit him and his city, and in some measure to look\nupon his patrimony; and although he had not laboured to acquire anything\nexcept honour, yet, in order that the citizens should see he had not\nspent his time in vain, he desired to come honourably, so would be\naccompanied by one hundred horsemen, his friends and retainers; and he\nentreated Giovanni to arrange that he should be received honourably by\nthe Fermians, all of which would be not only to his honour, but also to\nthat of Giovanni himself, who had brought him up.\n\nGiovanni, therefore, did not fail in any attentions due to his nephew,\nand he caused him to be honourably received by the Fermians, and he\nlodged him in his own house, where, having passed some days, and having\narranged what was necessary for his wicked designs, Oliverotto gave a\nsolemn banquet to which he invited Giovanni Fogliani and the chiefs of\nFermo. When the viands and all the other entertainments that are usual\nin such banquets were finished, Oliverotto artfully began certain grave\ndiscourses, speaking of the greatness of Pope Alexander and his son\nCesare, and of their enterprises, to which discourse Giovanni and others\nanswered; but he rose at once, saying that such matters ought to be\ndiscussed in a more private place, and he betook himself to a chamber,\nwhither Giovanni and the rest of the citizens went in after him. No\nsooner were they seated than soldiers issued from secret places and\nslaughtered Giovanni and the rest. After these murders Oliverotto,\nmounted on horseback, rode up and down the town and besieged the chief\nmagistrate in the palace, so that in fear the people were forced to obey\nhim, and to form a government, of which he made himself the prince. He\nkilled all the malcontents who were able to injure him, and strengthened\nhimself with new civil and military ordinances, in such a way that, in\nthe year during which he held the principality, not only was he\nsecure in the city of Fermo, but he had become formidable to all his\nneighbours. And his destruction would have been as difficult as that\nof Agathocles if he had not allowed himself to be overreached by Cesare\nBorgia, who took him with the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, as was\nstated above. Thus one year after he had committed this parricide, he\nwas strangled, together with Vitellozzo, whom he had made his leader in\nvalour and wickedness.\n\nSome may wonder how it can happen that Agathocles, and his like, after\ninfinite treacheries and cruelties, should live for long secure in\nhis country, and defend himself from external enemies, and never be\nconspired against by his own citizens; seeing that many others, by means\nof cruelty, have never been able even in peaceful times to hold the\nstate, still less in the doubtful times of war. I believe that this\nfollows from severities(*) being badly or properly used. Those may be\ncalled properly used, if of evil it is possible to speak well, that are\napplied at one blow and are necessary to one's security, and that are\nnot persisted in afterwards unless they can be turned to the advantage\nof the subjects. The badly employed are those which, notwithstanding\nthey may be few in the commencement, multiply with time rather than\ndecrease. Those who practise the first system are able, by aid of God\nor man, to mitigate in some degree their rule, as Agathocles did. It is\nimpossible for those who follow the other to maintain themselves.\n\n     (*) Mr Burd suggests that this word probably comes near the\n     modern equivalent of Machiavelli's thought when he speaks of\n     \"crudelta\" than the more obvious \"cruelties.\"\n\nHence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought\nto examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him\nto inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat\nthem daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure\nthem, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either\nfrom timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife\nin his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach\nthemselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For\ninjuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less,\nthey offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that\nthe flavour of them may last longer.\n\nAnd above all things, a prince ought to live amongst his people in such\na way that no unexpected circumstances, whether of good or evil, shall\nmake him change; because if the necessity for this comes in troubled\ntimes, you are too late for harsh measures; and mild ones will not help\nyou, for they will be considered as forced from you, and no one will be\nunder any obligation to you for them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBut coming to the other point--where a leading citizen becomes the\nprince of his country, not by wickedness or any intolerable violence,\nbut by the favour of his fellow citizens--this may be called a civil\nprincipality: nor is genius or fortune altogether necessary to attain to\nit, but rather a happy shrewdness. I say then that such a principality\nis obtained either by the favour of the people or by the favour of the\nnobles. Because in all cities these two distinct parties are found,\nand from this it arises that the people do not wish to be ruled nor\noppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the\npeople; and from these two opposite desires there arises in cities one\nof three results, either a principality, self-government, or anarchy.\n\nA principality is created either by the people or by the nobles,\naccordingly as one or other of them has the opportunity; for the nobles,\nseeing they cannot withstand the people, begin to cry up the reputation\nof one of themselves, and they make him a prince, so that under his\nshadow they can give vent to their ambitions. The people, finding\nthey cannot resist the nobles, also cry up the reputation of one of\nthemselves, and make him a prince so as to be defended by his authority.\nHe who obtains sovereignty by the assistance of the nobles maintains\nhimself with more difficulty than he who comes to it by the aid of\nthe people, because the former finds himself with many around him who\nconsider themselves his equals, and because of this he can neither rule\nnor manage them to his liking. But he who reaches sovereignty by popular\nfavour finds himself alone, and has none around him, or few, who are not\nprepared to obey him.\n\nBesides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to others,\nsatisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their object is\nmore righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress,\nwhile the former only desire not to be oppressed. It is to be added also\nthat a prince can never secure himself against a hostile people, because\nof there being too many, whilst from the nobles he can secure himself,\nas they are few in number. The worst that a prince may expect from a\nhostile people is to be abandoned by them; but from hostile nobles he\nhas not only to fear abandonment, but also that they will rise against\nhim; for they, being in these affairs more far-seeing and astute, always\ncome forward in time to save themselves, and to obtain favours from him\nwhom they expect to prevail. Further, the prince is compelled to live\nalways with the same people, but he can do well without the same nobles,\nbeing able to make and unmake them daily, and to give or take away\nauthority when it pleases him.\n\nTherefore, to make this point clearer, I say that the nobles ought to\nbe looked at mainly in two ways: that is to say, they either shape their\ncourse in such a way as binds them entirely to your fortune, or they do\nnot. Those who so bind themselves, and are not rapacious, ought to be\nhonoured and loved; those who do not bind themselves may be dealt\nwith in two ways; they may fail to do this through pusillanimity and a\nnatural want of courage, in which case you ought to make use of them,\nespecially of those who are of good counsel; and thus, whilst in\nprosperity you honour them, in adversity you do not have to fear them.\nBut when for their own ambitious ends they shun binding themselves, it\nis a token that they are giving more thought to themselves than to you,\nand a prince ought to guard against such, and to fear them as if they\nwere open enemies, because in adversity they always help to ruin him.\n\nTherefore, one who becomes a prince through the favour of the people\nought to keep them friendly, and this he can easily do seeing they\nonly ask not to be oppressed by him. But one who, in opposition to\nthe people, becomes a prince by the favour of the nobles, ought, above\neverything, to seek to win the people over to himself, and this he may\neasily do if he takes them under his protection. Because men, when they\nreceive good from him of whom they were expecting evil, are bound more\nclosely to their benefactor; thus the people quickly become more devoted\nto him than if he had been raised to the principality by their favours;\nand the prince can win their affections in many ways, but as these vary\naccording to the circumstances one cannot give fixed rules, so I omit\nthem; but, I repeat, it is necessary for a prince to have the people\nfriendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity.\n\nNabis,(*) Prince of the Spartans, sustained the attack of all Greece,\nand of a victorious Roman army, and against them he defended his country\nand his government; and for the overcoming of this peril it was only\nnecessary for him to make himself secure against a few, but this would\nnot have been sufficient had the people been hostile. And do not let any\none impugn this statement with the trite proverb that \"He who builds on\nthe people, builds on the mud,\" for this is true when a private citizen\nmakes a foundation there, and persuades himself that the people will\nfree him when he is oppressed by his enemies or by the magistrates;\nwherein he would find himself very often deceived, as happened to the\nGracchi in Rome and to Messer Giorgio Scali(+) in Florence. But granted\na prince who has established himself as above, who can command, and is\na man of courage, undismayed in adversity, who does not fail in other\nqualifications, and who, by his resolution and energy, keeps the whole\npeople encouraged--such a one will never find himself deceived in them,\nand it will be shown that he has laid his foundations well.\n\n     (*) Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, conquered by the Romans under\n     Flamininus in 195 B.C.; killed 192 B.C.\n\n     (+) Messer Giorgio Scali. This event is to be found in\n     Machiavelli's \"Florentine History,\" Book III.\n\nThese principalities are liable to danger when they are passing from the\ncivil to the absolute order of government, for such princes either rule\npersonally or through magistrates. In the latter case their government\nis weaker and more insecure, because it rests entirely on the goodwill\nof those citizens who are raised to the magistracy, and who, especially\nin troubled times, can destroy the government with great ease, either\nby intrigue or open defiance; and the prince has not the chance amid\ntumults to exercise absolute authority, because the citizens and\nsubjects, accustomed to receive orders from magistrates, are not of\na mind to obey him amid these confusions, and there will always be in\ndoubtful times a scarcity of men whom he can trust. For such a prince\ncannot rely upon what he observes in quiet times, when citizens have\nneed of the state, because then every one agrees with him; they all\npromise, and when death is far distant they all wish to die for him;\nbut in troubled times, when the state has need of its citizens, then\nhe finds but few. And so much the more is this experiment dangerous,\ninasmuch as it can only be tried once. Therefore a wise prince ought to\nadopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and\nkind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will\nalways find them faithful.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt is necessary to consider another point in examining the character of\nthese principalities: that is, whether a prince has such power that, in\ncase of need, he can support himself with his own resources, or whether\nhe has always need of the assistance of others. And to make this quite\nclear I say that I consider those who are able to support themselves by\ntheir own resources who can, either by abundance of men or money, raise\na sufficient army to join battle against any one who comes to attack\nthem; and I consider those always to have need of others who cannot\nshow themselves against the enemy in the field, but are forced to\ndefend themselves by sheltering behind walls. The first case has been\ndiscussed, but we will speak of it again should it recur. In the second\ncase one can say nothing except to encourage such princes to provision\nand fortify their towns, and not on any account to defend the country.\nAnd whoever shall fortify his town well, and shall have managed the\nother concerns of his subjects in the way stated above, and to be often\nrepeated, will never be attacked without great caution, for men are\nalways adverse to enterprises where difficulties can be seen, and it\nwill be seen not to be an easy thing to attack one who has his town well\nfortified, and is not hated by his people.\n\nThe cities of Germany are absolutely free, they own but little country\naround them, and they yield obedience to the emperor when it suits\nthem, nor do they fear this or any other power they may have near them,\nbecause they are fortified in such a way that every one thinks the\ntaking of them by assault would be tedious and difficult, seeing they\nhave proper ditches and walls, they have sufficient artillery, and they\nalways keep in public depots enough for one year's eating, drinking, and\nfiring. And beyond this, to keep the people quiet and without loss to\nthe state, they always have the means of giving work to the community\nin those labours that are the life and strength of the city, and on\nthe pursuit of which the people are supported; they also hold military\nexercises in repute, and moreover have many ordinances to uphold them.\n\nTherefore, a prince who has a strong city, and had not made himself\nodious, will not be attacked, or if any one should attack he will only\nbe driven off with disgrace; again, because that the affairs of this\nworld are so changeable, it is almost impossible to keep an army a whole\nyear in the field without being interfered with. And whoever should\nreply: If the people have property outside the city, and see it burnt,\nthey will not remain patient, and the long siege and self-interest will\nmake them forget their prince; to this I answer that a powerful and\ncourageous prince will overcome all such difficulties by giving at one\ntime hope to his subjects that the evil will not be for long, at another\ntime fear of the cruelty of the enemy, then preserving himself adroitly\nfrom those subjects who seem to him to be too bold.\n\nFurther, the enemy would naturally on his arrival at once burn and ruin\nthe country at the time when the spirits of the people are still hot and\nready for the defence; and, therefore, so much the less ought the prince\nto hesitate; because after a time, when spirits have cooled, the damage\nis already done, the ills are incurred, and there is no longer any\nremedy; and therefore they are so much the more ready to unite with\ntheir prince, he appearing to be under obligations to them now that\ntheir houses have been burnt and their possessions ruined in his\ndefence. For it is the nature of men to be bound by the benefits they\nconfer as much as by those they receive. Therefore, if everything is\nwell considered, it will not be difficult for a wise prince to keep the\nminds of his citizens steadfast from first to last, when he does not\nfail to support and defend them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt only remains now to speak of ecclesiastical principalities, touching\nwhich all difficulties are prior to getting possession, because they\nare acquired either by capacity or good fortune, and they can be held\nwithout either; for they are sustained by the ancient ordinances of\nreligion, which are so all-powerful, and of such a character that the\nprincipalities may be held no matter how their princes behave and live.\nThese princes alone have states and do not defend them; and they have\nsubjects and do not rule them; and the states, although unguarded, are\nnot taken from them, and the subjects, although not ruled, do not care,\nand they have neither the desire nor the ability to alienate themselves.\nSuch principalities only are secure and happy. But being upheld by\npowers, to which the human mind cannot reach, I shall speak no more of\nthem, because, being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act\nof a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them.\n\nNevertheless, if any one should ask of me how comes it that the\nChurch has attained such greatness in temporal power, seeing that from\nAlexander backwards the Italian potentates (not only those who have been\ncalled potentates, but every baron and lord, though the smallest)\nhave valued the temporal power very slightly--yet now a king of France\ntrembles before it, and it has been able to drive him from Italy, and\nto ruin the Venetians--although this may be very manifest, it does not\nappear to me superfluous to recall it in some measure to memory.\n\nBefore Charles, King of France, passed into Italy,(*) this country was\nunder the dominion of the Pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the\nDuke of Milan, and the Florentines. These potentates had two principal\nanxieties: the one, that no foreigner should enter Italy under arms; the\nother, that none of themselves should seize more territory. Those about\nwhom there was the most anxiety were the Pope and the Venetians. To\nrestrain the Venetians the union of all the others was necessary, as it\nwas for the defence of Ferrara; and to keep down the Pope they made use\nof the barons of Rome, who, being divided into two factions, Orsini and\nColonnesi, had always a pretext for disorder, and, standing with arms in\ntheir hands under the eyes of the Pontiff, kept the pontificate weak and\npowerless. And although there might arise sometimes a courageous pope,\nsuch as Sixtus, yet neither fortune nor wisdom could rid him of these\nannoyances. And the short life of a pope is also a cause of weakness;\nfor in the ten years, which is the average life of a pope, he can with\ndifficulty lower one of the factions; and if, so to speak, one people\nshould almost destroy the Colonnesi, another would arise hostile to the\nOrsini, who would support their opponents, and yet would not have time\nto ruin the Orsini. This was the reason why the temporal powers of the\npope were little esteemed in Italy.\n\n     (*) Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494.\n\nAlexander the Sixth arose afterwards, who of all the pontiffs that\nhave ever been showed how a pope with both money and arms was able to\nprevail; and through the instrumentality of the Duke Valentino, and by\nreason of the entry of the French, he brought about all those things\nwhich I have discussed above in the actions of the duke. And although\nhis intention was not to aggrandize the Church, but the duke,\nnevertheless, what he did contributed to the greatness of the Church,\nwhich, after his death and the ruin of the duke, became the heir to all\nhis labours.\n\nPope Julius came afterwards and found the Church strong, possessing all\nthe Romagna, the barons of Rome reduced to impotence, and, through the\nchastisements of Alexander, the factions wiped out; he also found\nthe way open to accumulate money in a manner such as had never been\npractised before Alexander's time. Such things Julius not only followed,\nbut improved upon, and he intended to gain Bologna, to ruin the\nVenetians, and to drive the French out of Italy. All of these\nenterprises prospered with him, and so much the more to his credit,\ninasmuch as he did everything to strengthen the Church and not any\nprivate person. He kept also the Orsini and Colonnesi factions within\nthe bounds in which he found them; and although there was among them\nsome mind to make disturbance, nevertheless he held two things firm: the\none, the greatness of the Church, with which he terrified them; and the\nother, not allowing them to have their own cardinals, who caused the\ndisorders among them. For whenever these factions have their cardinals\nthey do not remain quiet for long, because cardinals foster the factions\nin Rome and out of it, and the barons are compelled to support them, and\nthus from the ambitions of prelates arise disorders and tumults among\nthe barons. For these reasons his Holiness Pope Leo(*) found the\npontificate most powerful, and it is to be hoped that, if others made it\ngreat in arms, he will make it still greater and more venerated by his\ngoodness and infinite other virtues.\n\n\n\n\n\nHaving discoursed particularly on the characteristics of such\nprincipalities as in the beginning I proposed to discuss, and having\nconsidered in some degree the causes of there being good or bad, and\nhaving shown the methods by which many have sought to acquire them and\nto hold them, it now remains for me to discuss generally the means of\noffence and defence which belong to each of them.\n\nWe have seen above how necessary it is for a prince to have his\nfoundations well laid, otherwise it follows of necessity he will go\nto ruin. The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or\ncomposite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws\nwhere the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well\narmed they have good laws. I shall leave the laws out of the discussion\nand shall speak of the arms.\n\nI say, therefore, that the arms with which a prince defends his state\nare either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed.\nMercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds\nhis state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe;\nfor they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful,\nvaliant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the\nfear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so\nlong as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war\nby the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for\nkeeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient\nto make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be\nyour soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take\nthemselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble\nto prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by\nresting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they\nformerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet\nwhen the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was that\nCharles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with chalk in\nhand;(*) and he who told us that our sins were the cause of it told the\ntruth, but they were not the sins he imagined, but those which I have\nrelated. And as they were the sins of princes, it is the princes who\nhave also suffered the penalty.\n\n     (*) \"With chalk in hand,\" \"col gesso.\" This is one of the\n     _bons mots_ of Alexander VI, and refers to the ease with\n     which Charles VIII seized Italy, implying that it was only\n     necessary for him to send his quartermasters to chalk up the\n     billets for his soldiers to conquer the country. Cf. \"The\n     History of Henry VII,\" by Lord Bacon: \"King Charles had\n     conquered the realm of Naples, and lost it again, in a kind\n     of a felicity of a dream. He passed the whole length of\n     Italy without resistance: so that it was true what Pope\n     Alexander was wont to say: That the Frenchmen came into\n     Italy with chalk in their hands, to mark up their lodgings,\n     rather than with swords to fight.\"\n\nI wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms. The\nmercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they\nare, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own\ngreatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others\ncontrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are\nruined in the usual way.\n\nAnd if it be urged that whoever is armed will act in the same way,\nwhether mercenary or not, I reply that when arms have to be resorted to,\neither by a prince or a republic, then the prince ought to go in\nperson and perform the duty of a captain; the republic has to send its\ncitizens, and when one is sent who does not turn out satisfactorily, it\nought to recall him, and when one is worthy, to hold him by the laws so\nthat he does not leave the command. And experience has shown princes and\nrepublics, single-handed, making the greatest progress, and mercenaries\ndoing nothing except damage; and it is more difficult to bring a\nrepublic, armed with its own arms, under the sway of one of its citizens\nthan it is to bring one armed with foreign arms. Rome and Sparta stood\nfor many ages armed and free. The Switzers are completely armed and\nquite free.\n\nOf ancient mercenaries, for example, there are the Carthaginians, who\nwere oppressed by their mercenary soldiers after the first war with the\nRomans, although the Carthaginians had their own citizens for captains.\nAfter the death of Epaminondas, Philip of Macedon was made captain of\ntheir soldiers by the Thebans, and after victory he took away their\nliberty.\n\nDuke Filippo being dead, the Milanese enlisted Francesco Sforza against\nthe Venetians, and he, having overcome the enemy at Caravaggio,(*)\nallied himself with them to crush the Milanese, his masters. His father,\nSforza, having been engaged by Queen Johanna(+) of Naples, left her\nunprotected, so that she was forced to throw herself into the arms of\nthe King of Aragon, in order to save her kingdom. And if the Venetians\nand Florentines formerly extended their dominions by these arms, and yet\ntheir captains did not make themselves princes, but have defended them,\nI reply that the Florentines in this case have been favoured by chance,\nfor of the able captains, of whom they might have stood in fear, some\nhave not conquered, some have been opposed, and others have turned their\nambitions elsewhere. One who did not conquer was Giovanni Acuto,(%) and\nsince he did not conquer his fidelity cannot be proved; but every one\nwill acknowledge that, had he conquered, the Florentines would have\nstood at his discretion. Sforza had the Bracceschi always against him,\nso they watched each other. Francesco turned his ambition to Lombardy;\nBraccio against the Church and the kingdom of Naples. But let us come\nto that which happened a short while ago. The Florentines appointed as\ntheir captain Pagolo Vitelli, a most prudent man, who from a private\nposition had risen to the greatest renown. If this man had taken Pisa,\nnobody can deny that it would have been proper for the Florentines to\nkeep in with him, for if he became the soldier of their enemies they had\nno means of resisting, and if they held to him they must obey him. The\nVenetians, if their achievements are considered, will be seen to have\nacted safely and gloriously so long as they sent to war their own men,\nwhen with armed gentlemen and plebians they did valiantly. This was\nbefore they turned to enterprises on land, but when they began to fight\non land they forsook this virtue and followed the custom of Italy. And\nin the beginning of their expansion on land, through not having much\nterritory, and because of their great reputation, they had not much\nto fear from their captains; but when they expanded, as under\nCarmignuola,(#) they had a taste of this mistake; for, having found him\na most valiant man (they beat the Duke of Milan under his leadership),\nand, on the other hand, knowing how lukewarm he was in the war, they\nfeared they would no longer conquer under him, and for this reason they\nwere not willing, nor were they able, to let him go; and so, not to lose\nagain that which they had acquired, they were compelled, in order to\nsecure themselves, to murder him. They had afterwards for their\ncaptains Bartolomeo da Bergamo, Roberto da San Severino, the count of\nPitigliano,(&) and the like, under whom they had to dread loss and not\ngain, as happened afterwards at Vaila,($) where in one battle they\nlost that which in eight hundred years they had acquired with so much\ntrouble. Because from such arms conquests come but slowly, long delayed\nand inconsiderable, but the losses sudden and portentous.\n\n     (*) Battle of Caravaggio, 15th September 1448.\n\n     (+) Johanna II of Naples, the widow of Ladislao, King of\n     Naples.\n\n     (%) Giovanni Acuto. An English knight whose name was Sir\n     John Hawkwood. He fought in the English wars in France, and\n     was knighted by Edward III; afterwards he collected a body\n     of troops and went into Italy. These became the famous\n     \"White Company.\" He took part in many wars, and died in\n     Florence in 1394. He was born about 1320 at Sible Hedingham,\n     a village in Essex. He married Domnia, a daughter of Bernabo\n     Visconti.\n\n     (#) Carmignuola. Francesco Bussone, born at Carmagnola about\n     1390, executed at Venice, 5th May 1432.\n\n     (&) Bartolomeo Colleoni of Bergamo; died 1457. Roberto of\n     San Severino; died fighting for Venice against Sigismund,\n     Duke of Austria, in 1487. \"Primo capitano in Italia.\"--\n     Machiavelli. Count of Pitigliano; Nicolo Orsini, born 1442,\n     died 1510.\n\n     ($) Battle of Vaila in 1509.\n\nAnd as with these examples I have reached Italy, which has been ruled\nfor many years by mercenaries, I wish to discuss them more seriously,\nin order that, having seen their rise and progress, one may be better\nprepared to counteract them. You must understand that the empire has\nrecently come to be repudiated in Italy, that the Pope has acquired more\ntemporal power, and that Italy has been divided up into more states,\nfor the reason that many of the great cities took up arms against their\nnobles, who, formerly favoured by the emperor, were oppressing them,\nwhilst the Church was favouring them so as to gain authority in temporal\npower: in many others their citizens became princes. From this it came\nto pass that Italy fell partly into the hands of the Church and of\nrepublics, and, the Church consisting of priests and the republic of\ncitizens unaccustomed to arms, both commenced to enlist foreigners.\n\nThe first who gave renown to this soldiery was Alberigo da Conio,(*) the\nRomagnian. From the school of this man sprang, among others, Braccio and\nSforza, who in their time were the arbiters of Italy. After these came\nall the other captains who till now have directed the arms of Italy;\nand the end of all their valour has been, that she has been overrun\nby Charles, robbed by Louis, ravaged by Ferdinand, and insulted by the\nSwitzers. The principle that has guided them has been, first, to lower\nthe credit of infantry so that they might increase their own. They did\nthis because, subsisting on their pay and without territory, they were\nunable to support many soldiers, and a few infantry did not give them\nany authority; so they were led to employ cavalry, with a moderate force\nof which they were maintained and honoured; and affairs were brought to\nsuch a pass that, in an army of twenty thousand soldiers, there were\nnot to be found two thousand foot soldiers. They had, besides this, used\nevery art to lessen fatigue and danger to themselves and their soldiers,\nnot killing in the fray, but taking prisoners and liberating without\nransom. They did not attack towns at night, nor did the garrisons of the\ntowns attack encampments at night; they did not surround the camp either\nwith stockade or ditch, nor did they campaign in the winter. All these\nthings were permitted by their military rules, and devised by them to\navoid, as I have said, both fatigue and dangers; thus they have brought\nItaly to slavery and contempt.\n\n     (*) Alberigo da Conio. Alberico da Barbiano, Count of Cunio\n     in Romagna. He was the leader of the famous \"Company of St\n     George,\" composed entirely of Italian soldiers. He died in\n     1409.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAuxiliaries, which are the other useless arm, are employed when a prince\nis called in with his forces to aid and defend, as was done by Pope\nJulius in the most recent times; for he, having, in the enterprise\nagainst Ferrara, had poor proof of his mercenaries, turned to\nauxiliaries, and stipulated with Ferdinand, King of Spain,(*) for his\nassistance with men and arms. These arms may be useful and good\nin themselves, but for him who calls them in they are always\ndisadvantageous; for losing, one is undone, and winning, one is their\ncaptive.\n\nAnd although ancient histories may be full of examples, I do not wish\nto leave this recent one of Pope Julius the Second, the peril of which\ncannot fail to be perceived; for he, wishing to get Ferrara, threw\nhimself entirely into the hands of the foreigner. But his good fortune\nbrought about a third event, so that he did not reap the fruit of his\nrash choice; because, having his auxiliaries routed at Ravenna, and\nthe Switzers having risen and driven out the conquerors (against all\nexpectation, both his and others), it so came to pass that he did\nnot become prisoner to his enemies, they having fled, nor to his\nauxiliaries, he having conquered by other arms than theirs.\n\nThe Florentines, being entirely without arms, sent ten thousand\nFrenchmen to take Pisa, whereby they ran more danger than at any other\ntime of their troubles.\n\nThe Emperor of Constantinople,(*) to oppose his neighbours, sent ten\nthousand Turks into Greece, who, on the war being finished, were not\nwilling to quit; this was the beginning of the servitude of Greece to\nthe infidels.\n\nTherefore, let him who has no desire to conquer make use of these arms,\nfor they are much more hazardous than mercenaries, because with them the\nruin is ready made; they are all united, all yield obedience to others;\nbut with mercenaries, when they have conquered, more time and better\nopportunities are needed to injure you; they are not all of one\ncommunity, they are found and paid by you, and a third party, which you\nhave made their head, is not able all at once to assume enough authority\nto injure you. In conclusion, in mercenaries dastardy is most dangerous;\nin auxiliaries, valour. The wise prince, therefore, has always avoided\nthese arms and turned to his own; and has been willing rather to lose\nwith them than to conquer with the others, not deeming that a real\nvictory which is gained with the arms of others.\n\nI shall never hesitate to cite Cesare Borgia and his actions. This duke\nentered the Romagna with auxiliaries, taking there only French soldiers,\nand with them he captured Imola and Forli; but afterwards, such forces\nnot appearing to him reliable, he turned to mercenaries, discerning less\ndanger in them, and enlisted the Orsini and Vitelli; whom presently,\non handling and finding them doubtful, unfaithful, and dangerous, he\ndestroyed and turned to his own men. And the difference between one\nand the other of these forces can easily be seen when one considers\nthe difference there was in the reputation of the duke, when he had the\nFrench, when he had the Orsini and Vitelli, and when he relied on his\nown soldiers, on whose fidelity he could always count and found it ever\nincreasing; he was never esteemed more highly than when every one saw\nthat he was complete master of his own forces.\n\nI was not intending to go beyond Italian and recent examples, but I am\nunwilling to leave out Hiero, the Syracusan, he being one of those I\nhave named above. This man, as I have said, made head of the army by the\nSyracusans, soon found out that a mercenary soldiery, constituted like\nour Italian condottieri, was of no use; and it appearing to him that he\ncould neither keep them not let them go, he had them all cut to pieces,\nand afterwards made war with his own forces and not with aliens.\n\nI wish also to recall to memory an instance from the Old Testament\napplicable to this subject. David offered himself to Saul to fight with\nGoliath, the Philistine champion, and, to give him courage, Saul armed\nhim with his own weapons; which David rejected as soon as he had them\non his back, saying he could make no use of them, and that he wished to\nmeet the enemy with his sling and his knife. In conclusion, the arms of\nothers either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind\nyou fast.\n\nCharles the Seventh,(*) the father of King Louis the Eleventh,(+) having\nby good fortune and valour liberated France from the English, recognized\nthe necessity of being armed with forces of his own, and he established\nin his kingdom ordinances concerning men-at-arms and infantry.\nAfterwards his son, King Louis, abolished the infantry and began to\nenlist the Switzers, which mistake, followed by others, is, as is now\nseen, a source of peril to that kingdom; because, having raised the\nreputation of the Switzers, he has entirely diminished the value of\nhis own arms, for he has destroyed the infantry altogether; and his\nmen-at-arms he has subordinated to others, for, being as they are so\naccustomed to fight along with Switzers, it does not appear that they\ncan now conquer without them. Hence it arises that the French cannot\nstand against the Switzers, and without the Switzers they do not come\noff well against others. The armies of the French have thus become\nmixed, partly mercenary and partly national, both of which arms together\nare much better than mercenaries alone or auxiliaries alone, but much\ninferior to one's own forces. And this example proves it, for the\nkingdom of France would be unconquerable if the ordinance of Charles had\nbeen enlarged or maintained.\n\nBut the scanty wisdom of man, on entering into an affair which looks\nwell at first, cannot discern the poison that is hidden in it, as I have\nsaid above of hectic fevers. Therefore, if he who rules a principality\ncannot recognize evils until they are upon him, he is not truly wise;\nand this insight is given to few. And if the first disaster to the Roman\nEmpire(*) should be examined, it will be found to have commenced only\nwith the enlisting of the Goths; because from that time the vigour of\nthe Roman Empire began to decline, and all that valour which had raised\nit passed away to others.\n\n     (*) \"Many speakers to the House the other night in the\n     debate on the reduction of armaments seemed to show a most\n     lamentable ignorance of the conditions under which the\n     British Empire maintains its existence. When Mr Balfour\n     replied to the allegations that the Roman Empire sank under\n     the weight of its military obligations, he said that this\n     was 'wholly unhistorical.' He might well have added that the\n     Roman power was at its zenith when every citizen\n     acknowledged his liability to fight for the State, but that\n     it began to decline as soon as this obligation was no longer\n     recognized.\"--Pall Mall Gazette, 15th May 1906.\n\nI conclude, therefore, that no principality is secure without having its\nown forces; on the contrary, it is entirely dependent on good fortune,\nnot having the valour which in adversity would defend it. And it has\nalways been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can be so\nuncertain or unstable as fame or power not founded on its own strength.\nAnd one's own forces are those which are composed either of subjects,\ncitizens, or dependents; all others are mercenaries or auxiliaries. And\nthe way to make ready one's own forces will be easily found if the rules\nsuggested by me shall be reflected upon, and if one will consider\nhow Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and many republics and\nprinces have armed and organized themselves, to which rules I entirely\ncommit myself.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else\nfor his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the\nsole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it\nnot only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men\nto rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is\nseen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have\nlost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect\nthis art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of\nthe art. Francesco Sforza, through being martial, from a private person\nbecame Duke of Milan; and the sons, through avoiding the hardships and\ntroubles of arms, from dukes became private persons. For among other\nevils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised, and\nthis is one of those ignominies against which a prince ought to guard\nhimself, as is shown later on. Because there is nothing proportionate\nbetween the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who\nis armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that\nthe unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there\nbeing in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible\nfor them to work well together. And therefore a prince who does not\nunderstand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already\nmentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them.\nHe ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of\nwar, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in\nwar; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.\n\nAs regards action, he ought above all things to keep his men well\norganized and drilled, to follow incessantly the chase, by which he\naccustoms his body to hardships, and learns something of the nature of\nlocalities, and gets to find out how the mountains rise, how the valleys\nopen out, how the plains lie, and to understand the nature of rivers and\nmarshes, and in all this to take the greatest care. Which knowledge\nis useful in two ways. Firstly, he learns to know his country, and\nis better able to undertake its defence; afterwards, by means of the\nknowledge and observation of that locality, he understands with ease any\nother which it may be necessary for him to study hereafter; because\nthe hills, valleys, and plains, and rivers and marshes that are, for\ninstance, in Tuscany, have a certain resemblance to those of other\ncountries, so that with a knowledge of the aspect of one country one can\neasily arrive at a knowledge of others. And the prince that lacks this\nskill lacks the essential which it is desirable that a captain should\npossess, for it teaches him to surprise his enemy, to select quarters,\nto lead armies, to array the battle, to besiege towns to advantage.\n\nPhilopoemen,(*) Prince of the Achaeans, among other praises which\nwriters have bestowed on him, is commended because in time of peace he\nnever had anything in his mind but the rules of war; and when he was in\nthe country with friends, he often stopped and reasoned with them: \"If\nthe enemy should be upon that hill, and we should find ourselves here\nwith our army, with whom would be the advantage? How should one best\nadvance to meet him, keeping the ranks? If we should wish to retreat,\nhow ought we to pursue?\" And he would set forth to them, as he went, all\nthe chances that could befall an army; he would listen to their opinion\nand state his, confirming it with reasons, so that by these continual\ndiscussions there could never arise, in time of war, any unexpected\ncircumstances that he could not deal with.\n\n     (*) Philopoemen, \"the last of the Greeks,\" born 252 B.C.,\n     died 183 B.C.\n\nBut to exercise the intellect the prince should read histories, and\nstudy there the actions of illustrious men, to see how they have borne\nthemselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeat,\nso as to avoid the latter and imitate the former; and above all do as\nan illustrious man did, who took as an exemplar one who had been praised\nand famous before him, and whose achievements and deeds he always kept\nin his mind, as it is said Alexander the Great imitated Achilles, Caesar\nAlexander, Scipio Cyrus. And whoever reads the life of Cyrus, written\nby Xenophon, will recognize afterwards in the life of Scipio how that\nimitation was his glory, and how in chastity, affability, humanity, and\nliberality Scipio conformed to those things which have been written of\nCyrus by Xenophon. A wise prince ought to observe some such rules, and\nnever in peaceful times stand idle, but increase his resources with\nindustry in such a way that they may be available to him in adversity,\nso that if fortune chances it may find him prepared to resist her blows.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince\ntowards subject and friends. And as I know that many have written on\nthis point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning it\nagain, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods of\nother people. But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall\nbe useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to\nfollow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for\nmany have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never\nbeen known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one\nought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to\nbe done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who\nwishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with\nwhat destroys him among so much that is evil.\n\nHence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know\nhow to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.\nTherefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and\ndiscussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken\nof, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable\nfor some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and\nthus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan\nterm (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who\ndesires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives\nhimself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous,\none rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another\nfaithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one\naffable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere,\nanother cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous;\none religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that every\none will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to\nexhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because\nthey can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human\nconditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently\nprudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which\nwould lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible,\nfrom those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he\nmay with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need\nnot make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without\nwhich the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is\nconsidered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like\nvirtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which\nlooks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCommencing then with the first of the above-named characteristics, I say\nthat it would be well to be reputed liberal. Nevertheless, liberality\nexercised in a way that does not bring you the reputation for it,\ninjures you; for if one exercises it honestly and as it should be\nexercised, it may not become known, and you will not avoid the reproach\nof its opposite. Therefore, any one wishing to maintain among men the\nname of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; so\nthat a prince thus inclined will consume in such acts all his property,\nand will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name\nof liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do\neverything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his\nsubjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus,\nwith his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, he is\naffected by the very first trouble and imperilled by whatever may be the\nfirst danger; recognizing this himself, and wishing to draw back from\nit, he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.\n\nTherefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of\nliberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if\nhe is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in\ntime he will come to be more considered than if liberal, seeing that\nwith his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself\nagainst all attacks, and is able to engage in enterprises without\nburdening his people; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality\ntowards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness\ntowards those to whom he does not give, who are few.\n\nWe have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have\nbeen considered mean; the rest have failed. Pope Julius the Second was\nassisted in reaching the papacy by a reputation for liberality, yet he\ndid not strive afterwards to keep it up, when he made war on the King of\nFrance; and he made many wars without imposing any extraordinary tax on\nhis subjects, for he supplied his additional expenses out of his long\nthriftiness. The present King of Spain would not have undertaken or\nconquered in so many enterprises if he had been reputed liberal. A\nprince, therefore, provided that he has not to rob his subjects, that he\ncan defend himself, that he does not become poor and abject, that he\nis not forced to become rapacious, ought to hold of little account\na reputation for being mean, for it is one of those vices which will\nenable him to govern.\n\nAnd if any one should say: Caesar obtained empire by liberality, and\nmany others have reached the highest positions by having been liberal,\nand by being considered so, I answer: Either you are a prince in\nfact, or in a way to become one. In the first case this liberality is\ndangerous, in the second it is very necessary to be considered liberal;\nand Caesar was one of those who wished to become pre-eminent in Rome;\nbut if he had survived after becoming so, and had not moderated his\nexpenses, he would have destroyed his government. And if any one should\nreply: Many have been princes, and have done great things with armies,\nwho have been considered very liberal, I reply: Either a prince spends\nthat which is his own or his subjects' or else that of others. In the\nfirst case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect\nany opportunity for liberality. And to the prince who goes forth with\nhis army, supporting it by pillage, sack, and extortion, handling that\nwhich belongs to others, this liberality is necessary, otherwise he\nwould not be followed by soldiers. And of that which is neither yours\nnor your subjects' you can be a ready giver, as were Cyrus, Caesar, and\nAlexander; because it does not take away your reputation if you squander\nthat of others, but adds to it; it is only squandering your own that\ninjures you.\n\nAnd there is nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst\nyou exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor\nor despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated. And a\nprince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised\nand hated; and liberality leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to\nhave a reputation for meanness which brings reproach without hatred,\nthan to be compelled through seeking a reputation for liberality to\nincur a name for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.\n\n\n\n\n\nComing now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every\nprince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel.\nNevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare\nBorgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the\nRomagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this\nbe rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful\nthan the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty,\npermitted Pistoia to be destroyed.(*) Therefore a prince, so long as he\nkeeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of\ncruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those\nwho, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow\nmurders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people,\nwhilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the\nindividual only.\n\n     (*) During the rioting between the Cancellieri and\n     Panciatichi factions in 1502 and 1503.\n\nAnd of all princes, it is impossible for the new prince to avoid the\nimputation of cruelty, owing to new states being full of dangers. Hence\nVirgil, through the mouth of Dido, excuses the inhumanity of her reign\nowing to its being new, saying:\n\n     \"Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt\n     Moliri, et late fines custode tueri.\"(*)\n\nNevertheless he ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he\nhimself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and\nhumanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and\ntoo much distrust render him intolerable.\n\n     (*) . . . against my will, my fate\n     A throne unsettled, and an infant state,\n     Bid me defend my realms with all my pow'rs,\n     And guard with these severities my shores.\n\n     Christopher Pitt.\n\nUpon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than\nfeared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to\nbe both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it\nis much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be\ndispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that\nthey are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as\nyou succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood,\nproperty, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far\ndistant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that\nprince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other\nprecautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by\npayments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be\nearned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied\nupon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one\nwho is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which,\nowing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their\nadvantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never\nfails.\n\nNevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he\ndoes not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well\nbeing feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he\nabstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their\nwomen. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of\nsomeone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause,\nbut above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others,\nbecause men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss\nof their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are\nnever wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always\nfind pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking\nlife, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But\nwhen a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of\nsoldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation\nof cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or\ndisposed to its duties.\n\nAmong the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that\nhaving led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men,\nto fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or\nagainst the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This\narose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his\nboundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of\nhis soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not\nsufficient to produce this effect. And short-sighted writers admire\nhis deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal\ncause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been\nsufficient for him may be proved by the case of Scipio, that most\nexcellent man, not only of his own times but within the memory of man,\nagainst whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain; this arose from\nnothing but his too great forbearance, which gave his soldiers more\nlicense than is consistent with military discipline. For this he was\nupbraided in the Senate by Fabius Maximus, and called the corrupter of\nthe Roman soldiery. The Locrians were laid waste by a legate of Scipio,\nyet they were not avenged by him, nor was the insolence of the legate\npunished, owing entirely to his easy nature. Insomuch that someone in\nthe Senate, wishing to excuse him, said there were many men who knew\nmuch better how not to err than to correct the errors of others.\nThis disposition, if he had been continued in the command, would have\ndestroyed in time the fame and glory of Scipio; but, he being under the\ncontrol of the Senate, this injurious characteristic not only concealed\nitself, but contributed to his glory.\n\nReturning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the\nconclusion that, men loving according to their own will and fearing\naccording to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself\non that which is in his own control and not in that of others; he must\nendeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted.\n\n\n\n\n\nEvery one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and\nto live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience\nhas been that those princes who have done great things have held good\nfaith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect\nof men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on\ntheir word. You must know there are two ways of contesting,(*) the one\nby the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the\nsecond to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it\nis necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary\nfor a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the\nman. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers,\nwho describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to\nthe Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline;\nwhich means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half\nbeast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make\nuse of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A\nprince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought\nto choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself\nagainst snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves.\nTherefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a\nlion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not\nunderstand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought\nhe to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and\nwhen the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men\nwere entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are\nbad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe\nit with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate\nreasons to excuse this non-observance. Of this endless modern examples\ncould be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made\nvoid and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who\nhas known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.\n\n     (*) \"Contesting,\" i.e. \"striving for mastery.\" Mr Burd\n     points out that this passage is imitated directly from\n     Cicero's \"De Officiis\": \"Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi,\n     unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud\n     proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est ad\n     posterius, si uti non licet superiore.\"\n\nBut it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic,\nand to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and\nso subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will\nalways find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent\nexample I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander the Sixth did nothing\nelse but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he\nalways found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power\nin asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would\nobserve it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to\nhis wishes,(*) because he well understood this side of mankind.\n\n     (*) \"Nondimanco sempre gli succederono gli inganni (ad\n     votum).\" The words \"ad votum\" are omitted in the Testina\n     addition, 1550.\n\n     Alexander never did what he said,\n     Cesare never said what he did.\n\nTherefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities\nI have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And\nI shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe\nthem is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear\nmerciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a\nmind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and\nknow how to change to the opposite.\n\nAnd you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one,\ncannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often\nforced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity,(*)\nfriendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to\nhave a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations\nof fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the\ngood if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to\nset about it.\n\n     (*) \"Contrary to fidelity\" or \"faith,\" \"contro alla fede,\"\n     and \"tutto fede,\" \"altogether faithful,\" in the next\n     paragraph. It is noteworthy that these two phrases, \"contro\n     alla fede\" and \"tutto fede,\" were omitted in the Testina\n     edition, which was published with the sanction of the papal\n     authorities. It may be that the meaning attached to the word\n     \"fede\" was \"the faith,\" i.e. the Catholic creed, and not as\n     rendered here \"fidelity\" and \"faithful.\" Observe that the\n     word \"religione\" was suffered to stand in the text of the\n     Testina, being used to signify indifferently every shade of\n     belief, as witness \"the religion,\" a phrase inevitably\n     employed to designate the Huguenot heresy. South in his\n     Sermon IX, p. 69, ed. 1843, comments on this passage as\n     follows: \"That great patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe,\n     Nicolo Machiavel, laid down this for a master rule in his\n     political scheme: 'That the show of religion was helpful to\n     the politician, but the reality of it hurtful and\n     pernicious.'\"\n\nFor this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything\nslip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five\nqualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether\nmerciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing\nmore necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men\njudge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to\neverybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees\nwhat you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare\nnot oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty\nof the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and\nespecially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges\nby the result.\n\nFor that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding\nhis state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be\npraised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a\nthing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are\nonly the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have\nno ground to rest on.\n\nOne prince(*) of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never\npreaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is\nmost hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of\nreputation and kingdom many a time.\n\n     (*) Ferdinand of Aragon. \"When Machiavelli was writing 'The\n     Prince' it would have been clearly impossible to mention\n     Ferdinand's name here without giving offence.\" Burd's \"Il\n     Principe,\" p. 308.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNow, concerning the characteristics of which mention is made above, I\nhave spoken of the more important ones, the others I wish to discuss\nbriefly under this generality, that the prince must consider, as has\nbeen in part said before, how to avoid those things which will make him\nhated or contemptible; and as often as he shall have succeeded he\nwill have fulfilled his part, and he need not fear any danger in other\nreproaches.\n\nIt makes him hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious,\nand to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from\nboth of which he must abstain. And when neither their property nor their\nhonor is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to\ncontend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many\nways.\n\nIt makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous,\neffeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should\nguard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavour to show in his\nactions greatness, courage, gravity, and fortitude; and in his\nprivate dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are\nirrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can\nhope either to deceive him or to get round him.\n\nThat prince is highly esteemed who conveys this impression of himself,\nand he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against; for,\nprovided it is well known that he is an excellent man and revered by\nhis people, he can only be attacked with difficulty. For this reason\na prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his\nsubjects, the other from without, on account of external powers. From\nthe latter he is defended by being well armed and having good allies,\nand if he is well armed he will have good friends, and affairs will\nalways remain quiet within when they are quiet without, unless they\nshould have been already disturbed by conspiracy; and even should\naffairs outside be disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and\nhas lived as I have said, as long as he does not despair, he will resist\nevery attack, as I said Nabis the Spartan did.\n\nBut concerning his subjects, when affairs outside are disturbed he has\nonly to fear that they will conspire secretly, from which a prince\ncan easily secure himself by avoiding being hated and despised, and by\nkeeping the people satisfied with him, which it is most necessary\nfor him to accomplish, as I said above at length. And one of the most\nefficacious remedies that a prince can have against conspiracies is not\nto be hated and despised by the people, for he who conspires against\na prince always expects to please them by his removal; but when the\nconspirator can only look forward to offending them, he will not have\nthe courage to take such a course, for the difficulties that confront\na conspirator are infinite. And as experience shows, many have been the\nconspiracies, but few have been successful; because he who conspires\ncannot act alone, nor can he take a companion except from those whom he\nbelieves to be malcontents, and as soon as you have opened your mind\nto a malcontent you have given him the material with which to content\nhimself, for by denouncing you he can look for every advantage; so that,\nseeing the gain from this course to be assured, and seeing the other\nto be doubtful and full of dangers, he must be a very rare friend, or a\nthoroughly obstinate enemy of the prince, to keep faith with you.\n\nAnd, to reduce the matter into a small compass, I say that, on the side\nof the conspirator, there is nothing but fear, jealousy, prospect of\npunishment to terrify him; but on the side of the prince there is the\nmajesty of the principality, the laws, the protection of friends and\nthe state to defend him; so that, adding to all these things the\npopular goodwill, it is impossible that any one should be so rash as to\nconspire. For whereas in general the conspirator has to fear before the\nexecution of his plot, in this case he has also to fear the sequel to\nthe crime; because on account of it he has the people for an enemy, and\nthus cannot hope for any escape.\n\nEndless examples could be given on this subject, but I will be content\nwith one, brought to pass within the memory of our fathers. Messer\nAnnibale Bentivogli, who was prince in Bologna (grandfather of the\npresent Annibale), having been murdered by the Canneschi, who had\nconspired against him, not one of his family survived but Messer\nGiovanni,(*) who was in childhood: immediately after his assassination\nthe people rose and murdered all the Canneschi. This sprung from the\npopular goodwill which the house of Bentivogli enjoyed in those days in\nBologna; which was so great that, although none remained there after the\ndeath of Annibale who was able to rule the state, the Bolognese, having\ninformation that there was one of the Bentivogli family in Florence,\nwho up to that time had been considered the son of a blacksmith, sent to\nFlorence for him and gave him the government of their city, and it was\nruled by him until Messer Giovanni came in due course to the government.\n\n     (*) Giovanni Bentivogli, born in Bologna 1438, died at Milan\n     1508. He ruled Bologna from 1462 to 1506. Machiavelli's\n     strong condemnation of conspiracies may get its edge from\n     his own very recent experience (February 1513), when he had\n     been arrested and tortured for his alleged complicity in the\n     Boscoli conspiracy.\n\nFor this reason I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies\nof little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it\nis hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear\neverything and everybody. And well-ordered states and wise princes have\ntaken every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to keep the\npeople satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important\nobjects a prince can have.\n\nAmong the best ordered and governed kingdoms of our times is France, and\nin it are found many good institutions on which depend the liberty\nand security of the king; of these the first is the parliament and its\nauthority, because he who founded the kingdom, knowing the ambition of\nthe nobility and their boldness, considered that a bit to their mouths\nwould be necessary to hold them in; and, on the other side, knowing the\nhatred of the people, founded in fear, against the nobles, he wished to\nprotect them, yet he was not anxious for this to be the particular care\nof the king; therefore, to take away the reproach which he would be\nliable to from the nobles for favouring the people, and from the people\nfor favouring the nobles, he set up an arbiter, who should be one who\ncould beat down the great and favour the lesser without reproach to the\nking. Neither could you have a better or a more prudent arrangement, or\na greater source of security to the king and kingdom. From this one can\ndraw another important conclusion, that princes ought to leave affairs\nof reproach to the management of others, and keep those of grace in\ntheir own hands. And further, I consider that a prince ought to cherish\nthe nobles, but not so as to make himself hated by the people.\n\nIt may appear, perhaps, to some who have examined the lives and deaths\nof the Roman emperors that many of them would be an example contrary\nto my opinion, seeing that some of them lived nobly and showed great\nqualities of soul, nevertheless they have lost their empire or have been\nkilled by subjects who have conspired against them. Wishing, therefore,\nto answer these objections, I will recall the characters of some of the\nemperors, and will show that the causes of their ruin were not different\nto those alleged by me; at the same time I will only submit for\nconsideration those things that are noteworthy to him who studies the\naffairs of those times.\n\nIt seems to me sufficient to take all those emperors who succeeded to\nthe empire from Marcus the philosopher down to Maximinus; they were\nMarcus and his son Commodus, Pertinax, Julian, Severus and his son\nAntoninus Caracalla, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander, and Maximinus.\n\nThere is first to note that, whereas in other principalities the\nambition of the nobles and the insolence of the people only have to be\ncontended with, the Roman emperors had a third difficulty in having to\nput up with the cruelty and avarice of their soldiers, a matter so beset\nwith difficulties that it was the ruin of many; for it was a hard thing\nto give satisfaction both to soldiers and people; because the people\nloved peace, and for this reason they loved the unaspiring prince,\nwhilst the soldiers loved the warlike prince who was bold, cruel, and\nrapacious, which qualities they were quite willing he should exercise\nupon the people, so that they could get double pay and give vent to\ntheir own greed and cruelty. Hence it arose that those emperors were\nalways overthrown who, either by birth or training, had no great\nauthority, and most of them, especially those who came new to the\nprincipality, recognizing the difficulty of these two opposing humours,\nwere inclined to give satisfaction to the soldiers, caring little about\ninjuring the people. Which course was necessary, because, as princes\ncannot help being hated by someone, they ought, in the first place, to\navoid being hated by every one, and when they cannot compass this, they\nought to endeavour with the utmost diligence to avoid the hatred of the\nmost powerful. Therefore, those emperors who through inexperience had\nneed of special favour adhered more readily to the soldiers than to\nthe people; a course which turned out advantageous to them or not,\naccordingly as the prince knew how to maintain authority over them.\n\nFrom these causes it arose that Marcus, Pertinax, and Alexander, being\nall men of modest life, lovers of justice, enemies to cruelty, humane,\nand benignant, came to a sad end except Marcus; he alone lived and died\nhonoured, because he had succeeded to the throne by hereditary title,\nand owed nothing either to the soldiers or the people; and afterwards,\nbeing possessed of many virtues which made him respected, he always kept\nboth orders in their places whilst he lived, and was neither hated nor\ndespised.\n\nBut Pertinax was created emperor against the wishes of the soldiers,\nwho, being accustomed to live licentiously under Commodus, could not\nendure the honest life to which Pertinax wished to reduce them; thus,\nhaving given cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added contempt\nfor his old age, he was overthrown at the very beginning of his\nadministration. And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as\nmuch by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince\nwishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that\nbody is corrupt whom you think you have need of to maintain yourself--it\nmay be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles--you have to\nsubmit to its humours and to gratify them, and then good works will do\nyou harm.\n\nBut let us come to Alexander, who was a man of such great goodness,\nthat among the other praises which are accorded him is this, that in the\nfourteen years he held the empire no one was ever put to death by\nhim unjudged; nevertheless, being considered effeminate and a man who\nallowed himself to be governed by his mother, he became despised, the\narmy conspired against him, and murdered him.\n\nTurning now to the opposite characters of Commodus, Severus, Antoninus\nCaracalla, and Maximinus, you will find them all cruel and rapacious-men\nwho, to satisfy their soldiers, did not hesitate to commit every kind of\niniquity against the people; and all, except Severus, came to a bad\nend; but in Severus there was so much valour that, keeping the soldiers\nfriendly, although the people were oppressed by him, he reigned\nsuccessfully; for his valour made him so much admired in the sight of\nthe soldiers and people that the latter were kept in a way astonished\nand awed and the former respectful and satisfied. And because the\nactions of this man, as a new prince, were great, I wish to show\nbriefly that he knew well how to counterfeit the fox and the lion, which\nnatures, as I said above, it is necessary for a prince to imitate.\n\nKnowing the sloth of the Emperor Julian, he persuaded the army in\nSclavonia, of which he was captain, that it would be right to go to Rome\nand avenge the death of Pertinax, who had been killed by the praetorian\nsoldiers; and under this pretext, without appearing to aspire to the\nthrone, he moved the army on Rome, and reached Italy before it was known\nthat he had started. On his arrival at Rome, the Senate, through fear,\nelected him emperor and killed Julian. After this there remained for\nSeverus, who wished to make himself master of the whole empire, two\ndifficulties; one in Asia, where Niger, head of the Asiatic army, had\ncaused himself to be proclaimed emperor; the other in the west where\nAlbinus was, who also aspired to the throne. And as he considered it\ndangerous to declare himself hostile to both, he decided to attack\nNiger and to deceive Albinus. To the latter he wrote that, being elected\nemperor by the Senate, he was willing to share that dignity with him and\nsent him the title of Caesar; and, moreover, that the Senate had made\nAlbinus his colleague; which things were accepted by Albinus as true.\nBut after Severus had conquered and killed Niger, and settled oriental\naffairs, he returned to Rome and complained to the Senate that Albinus,\nlittle recognizing the benefits that he had received from him, had\nby treachery sought to murder him, and for this ingratitude he was\ncompelled to punish him. Afterwards he sought him out in France, and\ntook from him his government and life. He who will, therefore, carefully\nexamine the actions of this man will find him a most valiant lion and\na most cunning fox; he will find him feared and respected by every one,\nand not hated by the army; and it need not be wondered at that he, a\nnew man, was able to hold the empire so well, because his supreme\nrenown always protected him from that hatred which the people might have\nconceived against him for his violence.\n\nBut his son Antoninus was a most eminent man, and had very excellent\nqualities, which made him admirable in the sight of the people and\nacceptable to the soldiers, for he was a warlike man, most enduring\nof fatigue, a despiser of all delicate food and other luxuries, which\ncaused him to be beloved by the armies. Nevertheless, his ferocity and\ncruelties were so great and so unheard of that, after endless single\nmurders, he killed a large number of the people of Rome and all those of\nAlexandria. He became hated by the whole world, and also feared by those\nhe had around him, to such an extent that he was murdered in the midst\nof his army by a centurion. And here it must be noted that such-like\ndeaths, which are deliberately inflicted with a resolved and desperate\ncourage, cannot be avoided by princes, because any one who does not fear\nto die can inflict them; but a prince may fear them the less because\nthey are very rare; he has only to be careful not to do any grave injury\nto those whom he employs or has around him in the service of the state.\nAntoninus had not taken this care, but had contumeliously killed a\nbrother of that centurion, whom also he daily threatened, yet retained\nin his bodyguard; which, as it turned out, was a rash thing to do, and\nproved the emperor's ruin.\n\nBut let us come to Commodus, to whom it should have been very easy to\nhold the empire, for, being the son of Marcus, he had inherited it,\nand he had only to follow in the footsteps of his father to please his\npeople and soldiers; but, being by nature cruel and brutal, he gave\nhimself up to amusing the soldiers and corrupting them, so that he might\nindulge his rapacity upon the people; on the other hand, not maintaining\nhis dignity, often descending to the theatre to compete with gladiators,\nand doing other vile things, little worthy of the imperial majesty, he\nfell into contempt with the soldiers, and being hated by one party and\ndespised by the other, he was conspired against and was killed.\n\nIt remains to discuss the character of Maximinus. He was a very warlike\nman, and the armies, being disgusted with the effeminacy of Alexander,\nof whom I have already spoken, killed him and elected Maximinus to the\nthrone. This he did not possess for long, for two things made him hated\nand despised; the one, his having kept sheep in Thrace, which brought\nhim into contempt (it being well known to all, and considered a great\nindignity by every one), and the other, his having at the accession\nto his dominions deferred going to Rome and taking possession of the\nimperial seat; he had also gained a reputation for the utmost ferocity\nby having, through his prefects in Rome and elsewhere in the empire,\npractised many cruelties, so that the whole world was moved to anger\nat the meanness of his birth and to fear at his barbarity. First Africa\nrebelled, then the Senate with all the people of Rome, and all Italy\nconspired against him, to which may be added his own army; this latter,\nbesieging Aquileia and meeting with difficulties in taking it, were\ndisgusted with his cruelties, and fearing him less when they found so\nmany against him, murdered him.\n\nI do not wish to discuss Heliogabalus, Macrinus, or Julian, who, being\nthoroughly contemptible, were quickly wiped out; but I will bring this\ndiscourse to a conclusion by saying that princes in our times have this\ndifficulty of giving inordinate satisfaction to their soldiers in a\nfar less degree, because, notwithstanding one has to give them some\nindulgence, that is soon done; none of these princes have armies that\nare veterans in the governance and administration of provinces, as were\nthe armies of the Roman Empire; and whereas it was then more necessary\nto give satisfaction to the soldiers than to the people, it is now more\nnecessary to all princes, except the Turk and the Soldan, to satisfy the\npeople rather the soldiers, because the people are the more powerful.\n\nFrom the above I have excepted the Turk, who always keeps round him\ntwelve thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry on which depend\nthe security and strength of the kingdom, and it is necessary that,\nputting aside every consideration for the people, he should keep them\nhis friends. The kingdom of the Soldan is similar; being entirely in the\nhands of soldiers, it follows again that, without regard to the people,\nhe must keep them his friends. But you must note that the state of the\nSoldan is unlike all other principalities, for the reason that it\nis like the Christian pontificate, which cannot be called either an\nhereditary or a newly formed principality; because the sons of the old\nprince are not the heirs, but he who is elected to that position by\nthose who have authority, and the sons remain only noblemen. And this\nbeing an ancient custom, it cannot be called a new principality, because\nthere are none of those difficulties in it that are met with in new\nones; for although the prince is new, the constitution of the state is\nold, and it is framed so as to receive him as if he were its hereditary\nlord.\n\nBut returning to the subject of our discourse, I say that whoever will\nconsider it will acknowledge that either hatred or contempt has been\nfatal to the above-named emperors, and it will be recognized also how\nit happened that, a number of them acting in one way and a number\nin another, only one in each way came to a happy end and the rest to\nunhappy ones. Because it would have been useless and dangerous for\nPertinax and Alexander, being new princes, to imitate Marcus, who\nwas heir to the principality; and likewise it would have been utterly\ndestructive to Caracalla, Commodus, and Maximinus to have imitated\nSeverus, they not having sufficient valour to enable them to tread\nin his footsteps. Therefore a prince, new to the principality, cannot\nimitate the actions of Marcus, nor, again, is it necessary to follow\nthose of Severus, but he ought to take from Severus those parts which\nare necessary to found his state, and from Marcus those which are proper\nand glorious to keep a state that may already be stable and firm.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1. Some princes, so as to hold securely the state, have disarmed their\nsubjects; others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions;\nothers have fostered enmities against themselves; others have laid\nthemselves out to gain over those whom they distrusted in the beginning\nof their governments; some have built fortresses; some have overthrown\nand destroyed them. And although one cannot give a final judgment on all\nof these things unless one possesses the particulars of those states\nin which a decision has to be made, nevertheless I will speak as\ncomprehensively as the matter of itself will admit.\n\n2. There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather\nwhen he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by\narming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted\nbecome faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your\nsubjects become your adherents. And whereas all subjects cannot be\narmed, yet when those whom you do arm are benefited, the others can be\nhandled more freely, and this difference in their treatment, which they\nquite understand, makes the former your dependents, and the latter,\nconsidering it to be necessary that those who have the most danger and\nservice should have the most reward, excuse you. But when you disarm\nthem, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either\nfor cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions\nbreeds hatred against you. And because you cannot remain unarmed, it\nfollows that you turn to mercenaries, which are of the character already\nshown; even if they should be good they would not be sufficient to\ndefend you against powerful enemies and distrusted subjects. Therefore,\nas I have said, a new prince in a new principality has always\ndistributed arms. Histories are full of examples. But when a prince\nacquires a new state, which he adds as a province to his old one, then\nit is necessary to disarm the men of that state, except those who have\nbeen his adherents in acquiring it; and these again, with time and\nopportunity, should be rendered soft and effeminate; and matters should\nbe managed in such a way that all the armed men in the state shall be\nyour own soldiers who in your old state were living near you.\n\n3. Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed\nto say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia by factions and Pisa by\nfortresses; and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their\ntributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily.\nThis may have been well enough in those times when Italy was in a way\nbalanced, but I do not believe that it can be accepted as a precept\nfor to-day, because I do not believe that factions can ever be of use;\nrather it is certain that when the enemy comes upon you in divided\ncities you are quickly lost, because the weakest party will always\nassist the outside forces and the other will not be able to resist.\nThe Venetians, moved, as I believe, by the above reasons, fostered the\nGuelph and Ghibelline factions in their tributary cities; and although\nthey never allowed them to come to bloodshed, yet they nursed these\ndisputes amongst them, so that the citizens, distracted by their\ndifferences, should not unite against them. Which, as we saw, did not\nafterwards turn out as expected, because, after the rout at Vaila, one\nparty at once took courage and seized the state. Such methods argue,\ntherefore, weakness in the prince, because these factions will never be\npermitted in a vigorous principality; such methods for enabling one the\nmore easily to manage subjects are only useful in times of peace, but if\nwar comes this policy proves fallacious.\n\n4. Without doubt princes become great when they overcome the\ndifficulties and obstacles by which they are confronted, and therefore\nfortune, especially when she desires to make a new prince great, who\nhas a greater necessity to earn renown than an hereditary one, causes\nenemies to arise and form designs against him, in order that he may have\nthe opportunity of overcoming them, and by them to mount higher, as by a\nladder which his enemies have raised. For this reason many consider that\na wise prince, when he has the opportunity, ought with craft to foster\nsome animosity against himself, so that, having crushed it, his renown\nmay rise higher.\n\n5. Princes, especially new ones, have found more fidelity and assistance\nin those men who in the beginning of their rule were distrusted than\namong those who in the beginning were trusted. Pandolfo Petrucci, Prince\nof Siena, ruled his state more by those who had been distrusted than by\nothers. But on this question one cannot speak generally, for it varies\nso much with the individual; I will only say this, that those men who\nat the commencement of a princedom have been hostile, if they are of\na description to need assistance to support themselves, can always be\ngained over with the greatest ease, and they will be tightly held to\nserve the prince with fidelity, inasmuch as they know it to be very\nnecessary for them to cancel by deeds the bad impression which he had\nformed of them; and thus the prince always extracts more profit from\nthem than from those who, serving him in too much security, may neglect\nhis affairs. And since the matter demands it, I must not fail to warn a\nprince, who by means of secret favours has acquired a new state, that he\nmust well consider the reasons which induced those to favour him who\ndid so; and if it be not a natural affection towards him, but only\ndiscontent with their government, then he will only keep them friendly\nwith great trouble and difficulty, for it will be impossible to satisfy\nthem. And weighing well the reasons for this in those examples which\ncan be taken from ancient and modern affairs, we shall find that it is\neasier for the prince to make friends of those men who were contented\nunder the former government, and are therefore his enemies, than of\nthose who, being discontented with it, were favourable to him and\nencouraged him to seize it.\n\n6. It has been a custom with princes, in order to hold their states\nmore securely, to build fortresses that may serve as a bridle and bit\nto those who might design to work against them, and as a place of refuge\nfrom a first attack. I praise this system because it has been made use\nof formerly. Notwithstanding that, Messer Nicolo Vitelli in our times\nhas been seen to demolish two fortresses in Citta di Castello so that he\nmight keep that state; Guido Ubaldo, Duke of Urbino, on returning to\nhis dominion, whence he had been driven by Cesare Borgia, razed to the\nfoundations all the fortresses in that province, and considered that\nwithout them it would be more difficult to lose it; the Bentivogli\nreturning to Bologna came to a similar decision. Fortresses, therefore,\nare useful or not according to circumstances; if they do you good in one\nway they injure you in another. And this question can be reasoned thus:\nthe prince who has more to fear from the people than from foreigners\nought to build fortresses, but he who has more to fear from foreigners\nthan from the people ought to leave them alone. The castle of Milan,\nbuilt by Francesco Sforza, has made, and will make, more trouble for the\nhouse of Sforza than any other disorder in the state. For this reason\nthe best possible fortress is--not to be hated by the people, because,\nalthough you may hold the fortresses, yet they will not save you if the\npeople hate you, for there will never be wanting foreigners to assist\na people who have taken arms against you. It has not been seen in our\ntimes that such fortresses have been of use to any prince, unless to the\nCountess of Forli,(*) when the Count Girolamo, her consort, was killed;\nfor by that means she was able to withstand the popular attack and wait\nfor assistance from Milan, and thus recover her state; and the posture\nof affairs was such at that time that the foreigners could not assist\nthe people. But fortresses were of little value to her afterwards when\nCesare Borgia attacked her, and when the people, her enemy, were allied\nwith foreigners. Therefore, it would have been safer for her, both then\nand before, not to have been hated by the people than to have had the\nfortresses. All these things considered then, I shall praise him\nwho builds fortresses as well as him who does not, and I shall blame\nwhoever, trusting in them, cares little about being hated by the people.\n\n     (*) Catherine Sforza, a daughter of Galeazzo Sforza and\n     Lucrezia Landriani, born 1463, died 1509. It was to the\n     Countess of Forli that Machiavelli was sent as envoy on 1499.\n     A letter from Fortunati to the countess announces the\n     appointment: \"I have been with the signori,\" wrote\n     Fortunati, \"to learn whom they would send and when. They\n     tell me that Nicolo Machiavelli, a learned young Florentine\n     noble, secretary to my Lords of the Ten, is to leave with me\n     at once.\" Cf. \"Catherine Sforza,\" by Count Pasolini,\n     translated by P. Sylvester, 1898.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNothing makes a prince so much esteemed as great enterprises and setting\na fine example. We have in our time Ferdinand of Aragon, the present\nKing of Spain. He can almost be called a new prince, because he has\nrisen, by fame and glory, from being an insignificant king to be the\nforemost king in Christendom; and if you will consider his deeds\nyou will find them all great and some of them extraordinary. In the\nbeginning of his reign he attacked Granada, and this enterprise was the\nfoundation of his dominions. He did this quietly at first and without\nany fear of hindrance, for he held the minds of the barons of Castile\noccupied in thinking of the war and not anticipating any innovations;\nthus they did not perceive that by these means he was acquiring power\nand authority over them. He was able with the money of the Church and\nof the people to sustain his armies, and by that long war to lay the\nfoundation for the military skill which has since distinguished him.\nFurther, always using religion as a plea, so as to undertake greater\nschemes, he devoted himself with pious cruelty to driving out and\nclearing his kingdom of the Moors; nor could there be a more admirable\nexample, nor one more rare. Under this same cloak he assailed Africa,\nhe came down on Italy, he has finally attacked France; and thus his\nachievements and designs have always been great, and have kept the minds\nof his people in suspense and admiration and occupied with the issue of\nthem. And his actions have arisen in such a way, one out of the other,\nthat men have never been given time to work steadily against him.\n\nAgain, it much assists a prince to set unusual examples in internal\naffairs, similar to those which are related of Messer Bernabo da Milano,\nwho, when he had the opportunity, by any one in civil life doing some\nextraordinary thing, either good or bad, would take some method of\nrewarding or punishing him, which would be much spoken about. And a\nprince ought, above all things, always endeavour in every action to gain\nfor himself the reputation of being a great and remarkable man.\n\nA prince is also respected when he is either a true friend or a\ndownright enemy, that is to say, when, without any reservation, he\ndeclares himself in favour of one party against the other; which course\nwill always be more advantageous than standing neutral; because if two\nof your powerful neighbours come to blows, they are of such a character\nthat, if one of them conquers, you have either to fear him or not.\nIn either case it will always be more advantageous for you to declare\nyourself and to make war strenuously; because, in the first case, if\nyou do not declare yourself, you will invariably fall a prey to\nthe conqueror, to the pleasure and satisfaction of him who has been\nconquered, and you will have no reasons to offer, nor anything to\nprotect or to shelter you. Because he who conquers does not want\ndoubtful friends who will not aid him in the time of trial; and he who\nloses will not harbour you because you did not willingly, sword in hand,\ncourt his fate.\n\nAntiochus went into Greece, being sent for by the Aetolians to drive\nout the Romans. He sent envoys to the Achaeans, who were friends of\nthe Romans, exhorting them to remain neutral; and on the other hand the\nRomans urged them to take up arms. This question came to be discussed in\nthe council of the Achaeans, where the legate of Antiochus urged them to\nstand neutral. To this the Roman legate answered: \"As for that which has\nbeen said, that it is better and more advantageous for your state not\nto interfere in our war, nothing can be more erroneous; because by\nnot interfering you will be left, without favour or consideration, the\nguerdon of the conqueror.\" Thus it will always happen that he who is not\nyour friend will demand your neutrality, whilst he who is your friend\nwill entreat you to declare yourself with arms. And irresolute princes,\nto avoid present dangers, generally follow the neutral path, and are\ngenerally ruined. But when a prince declares himself gallantly in favour\nof one side, if the party with whom he allies himself conquers, although\nthe victor may be powerful and may have him at his mercy, yet he is\nindebted to him, and there is established a bond of amity; and men are\nnever so shameless as to become a monument of ingratitude by oppressing\nyou. Victories after all are never so complete that the victor must not\nshow some regard, especially to justice. But if he with whom you ally\nyourself loses, you may be sheltered by him, and whilst he is able he\nmay aid you, and you become companions on a fortune that may rise again.\n\nIn the second case, when those who fight are of such a character that\nyou have no anxiety as to who may conquer, so much the more is it\ngreater prudence to be allied, because you assist at the destruction\nof one by the aid of another who, if he had been wise, would have saved\nhim; and conquering, as it is impossible that he should not do with your\nassistance, he remains at your discretion. And here it is to be noted\nthat a prince ought to take care never to make an alliance with one\nmore powerful than himself for the purposes of attacking others, unless\nnecessity compels him, as is said above; because if he conquers you are\nat his discretion, and princes ought to avoid as much as possible being\nat the discretion of any one. The Venetians joined with France against\nthe Duke of Milan, and this alliance, which caused their ruin, could\nhave been avoided. But when it cannot be avoided, as happened to the\nFlorentines when the Pope and Spain sent armies to attack Lombardy, then\nin such a case, for the above reasons, the prince ought to favour one of\nthe parties.\n\nNever let any Government imagine that it can choose perfectly safe\ncourses; rather let it expect to have to take very doubtful ones,\nbecause it is found in ordinary affairs that one never seeks to avoid\none trouble without running into another; but prudence consists in\nknowing how to distinguish the character of troubles, and for choice to\ntake the lesser evil.\n\nA prince ought also to show himself a patron of ability, and to honour\nthe proficient in every art. At the same time he should encourage his\ncitizens to practise their callings peaceably, both in commerce and\nagriculture, and in every other following, so that the one should not be\ndeterred from improving his possessions for fear lest they be taken away\nfrom him or another from opening up trade for fear of taxes; but the\nprince ought to offer rewards to whoever wishes to do these things and\ndesigns in any way to honour his city or state.\n\nFurther, he ought to entertain the people with festivals and spectacles\nat convenient seasons of the year; and as every city is divided into\nguilds or into societies,(*) he ought to hold such bodies in esteem, and\nassociate with them sometimes, and show himself an example of courtesy\nand liberality; nevertheless, always maintaining the majesty of his\nrank, for this he must never consent to abate in anything.\n\n     (*) \"Guilds or societies,\" \"in arti o in tribu.\" \"Arti\" were\n     craft or trade guilds, cf. Florio: \"Arte . . . a whole\n     company of any trade in any city or corporation town.\" The\n     guilds of Florence are most admirably described by Mr\n     Edgcumbe Staley in his work on the subject (Methuen, 1906).\n     Institutions of a somewhat similar character, called\n     \"artel,\" exist in Russia to-day, cf. Sir Mackenzie Wallace's\n     \"Russia,\" ed. 1905: \"The sons . . . were always during the\n     working season members of an artel. In some of the larger\n     towns there are artels of a much more complex kind--\n     permanent associations, possessing large capital, and\n     pecuniarily responsible for the acts of the individual\n     members.\" The word \"artel,\" despite its apparent similarity,\n     has, Mr Aylmer Maude assures me, no connection with \"ars\" or\n     \"arte.\" Its root is that of the verb \"rotisya,\" to bind\n     oneself by an oath; and it is generally admitted to be only\n     another form of \"rota,\" which now signifies a \"regimental\n     company.\" In both words the underlying idea is that of a\n     body of men united by an oath. \"Tribu\" were possibly gentile\n     groups, united by common descent, and included individuals\n     connected by marriage. Perhaps our words \"sects\" or \"clans\"\n     would be most appropriate.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and they\nare good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And the\nfirst opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is\nby observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and\nfaithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how\nto recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are\notherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error\nwhich he made was in choosing them.\n\nThere were none who knew Messer Antonio da Venafro as the servant of\nPandolfo Petrucci, Prince of Siena, who would not consider Pandolfo to\nbe a very clever man in having Venafro for his servant. Because there\nare three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself;\nanother which appreciates what others comprehended; and a third which\nneither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is\nthe most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless. Therefore,\nit follows necessarily that, if Pandolfo was not in the first rank, he\nwas in the second, for whenever one has judgment to know good and\nbad when it is said and done, although he himself may not have the\ninitiative, yet he can recognize the good and the bad in his servant,\nand the one he can praise and the other correct; thus the servant cannot\nhope to deceive him, and is kept honest.\n\nBut to enable a prince to form an opinion of his servant there is one\ntest which never fails; when you see the servant thinking more of his\nown interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in\neverything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever\nbe able to trust him; because he who has the state of another in his\nhands ought never to think of himself, but always of his prince, and\nnever pay any attention to matters in which the prince is not concerned.\n\nOn the other hand, to keep his servant honest the prince ought to study\nhim, honouring him, enriching him, doing him kindnesses, sharing with\nhim the honours and cares; and at the same time let him see that he\ncannot stand alone, so that many honours may not make him desire more,\nmany riches make him wish for more, and that many cares may make him\ndread chances. When, therefore, servants, and princes towards servants,\nare thus disposed, they can trust each other, but when it is otherwise,\nthe end will always be disastrous for either one or the other.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for it\nis a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless\nthey are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of\nwhom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own\naffairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with\ndifficulty from this pest, and if they wish to defend themselves they\nrun the danger of falling into contempt. Because there is no other way\nof guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that\nto tell you the truth does not offend you; but when every one may tell\nyou the truth, respect for you abates.\n\nTherefore a wise prince ought to hold a third course by choosing the\nwise men in his state, and giving to them only the liberty of speaking\nthe truth to him, and then only of those things of which he inquires,\nand of none others; but he ought to question them upon everything, and\nlisten to their opinions, and afterwards form his own conclusions.\nWith these councillors, separately and collectively, he ought to carry\nhimself in such a way that each of them should know that, the more\nfreely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred; outside of\nthese, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be\nsteadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown\nby flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls\ninto contempt.\n\nI wish on this subject to adduce a modern example. Fra Luca, the man of\naffairs to Maximilian,(*) the present emperor, speaking of his majesty,\nsaid: He consulted with no one, yet never got his own way in anything.\nThis arose because of his following a practice the opposite to the\nabove; for the emperor is a secretive man--he does not communicate his\ndesigns to any one, nor does he receive opinions on them. But as in\ncarrying them into effect they become revealed and known, they are\nat once obstructed by those men whom he has around him, and he, being\npliant, is diverted from them. Hence it follows that those things he\ndoes one day he undoes the next, and no one ever understands what he\nwishes or intends to do, and no one can rely on his resolutions.\n\n     (*) Maximilian I, born in 1459, died 1519, Emperor of the\n     Holy Roman Empire. He married, first, Mary, daughter of\n     Charles the Bold; after her death, Bianca Sforza; and thus\n     became involved in Italian politics.\n\nA prince, therefore, ought always to take counsel, but only when he\nwishes and not when others wish; he ought rather to discourage every one\nfrom offering advice unless he asks it; but, however, he ought to be\na constant inquirer, and afterwards a patient listener concerning the\nthings of which he inquired; also, on learning that any one, on any\nconsideration, has not told him the truth, he should let his anger be\nfelt.\n\nAnd if there are some who think that a prince who conveys an impression\nof his wisdom is not so through his own ability, but through the good\nadvisers that he has around him, beyond doubt they are deceived, because\nthis is an axiom which never fails: that a prince who is not wise\nhimself will never take good advice, unless by chance he has yielded his\naffairs entirely to one person who happens to be a very prudent man. In\nthis case indeed he may be well governed, but it would not be for long,\nbecause such a governor would in a short time take away his state from\nhim.\n\nBut if a prince who is not inexperienced should take counsel from more\nthan one he will never get united counsels, nor will he know how to\nunite them. Each of the counsellors will think of his own interests, and\nthe prince will not know how to control them or to see through them. And\nthey are not to be found otherwise, because men will always prove untrue\nto you unless they are kept honest by constraint. Therefore it must be\ninferred that good counsels, whencesoever they come, are born of\nthe wisdom of the prince, and not the wisdom of the prince from good\ncounsels.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe previous suggestions, carefully observed, will enable a new prince\nto appear well established, and render him at once more secure and fixed\nin the state than if he had been long seated there. For the actions of\na new prince are more narrowly observed than those of an hereditary\none, and when they are seen to be able they gain more men and bind\nfar tighter than ancient blood; because men are attracted more by the\npresent than by the past, and when they find the present good they enjoy\nit and seek no further; they will also make the utmost defence of a\nprince if he fails them not in other things. Thus it will be a double\nglory for him to have established a new principality, and adorned and\nstrengthened it with good laws, good arms, good allies, and with a good\nexample; so will it be a double disgrace to him who, born a prince,\nshall lose his state by want of wisdom.\n\nAnd if those seigniors are considered who have lost their states in\nItaly in our times, such as the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan,\nand others, there will be found in them, firstly, one common defect in\nregard to arms from the causes which have been discussed at length; in\nthe next place, some one of them will be seen, either to have had the\npeople hostile, or if he has had the people friendly, he has not known\nhow to secure the nobles. In the absence of these defects states that\nhave power enough to keep an army in the field cannot be lost.\n\nPhilip of Macedon, not the father of Alexander the Great, but he who\nwas conquered by Titus Quintius, had not much territory compared to\nthe greatness of the Romans and of Greece who attacked him, yet being a\nwarlike man who knew how to attract the people and secure the nobles, he\nsustained the war against his enemies for many years, and if in the\nend he lost the dominion of some cities, nevertheless he retained the\nkingdom.\n\nTherefore, do not let our princes accuse fortune for the loss of their\nprincipalities after so many years' possession, but rather their own\nsloth, because in quiet times they never thought there could be a change\n(it is a common defect in man not to make any provision in the calm\nagainst the tempest), and when afterwards the bad times came they\nthought of flight and not of defending themselves, and they hoped that\nthe people, disgusted with the insolence of the conquerors, would recall\nthem. This course, when others fail, may be good, but it is very bad to\nhave neglected all other expedients for that, since you would never\nwish to fall because you trusted to be able to find someone later on to\nrestore you. This again either does not happen, or, if it does, it will\nnot be for your security, because that deliverance is of no avail which\ndoes not depend upon yourself; those only are reliable, certain, and\ndurable that depend on yourself and your valour.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the\nopinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by\nfortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and\nthat no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us\nbelieve that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let\nchance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times\nbecause of the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and\nmay still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes\npondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion.\nNevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that\nFortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions,(*) but that she still\nleaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.\n\n     (*) Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: \"The older\n     one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty\n     King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this\n     miserable universe.\" Sorel's \"Eastern Question.\"\n\nI compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood\noverflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away\nthe soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to\nits violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet,\nthough its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when\nthe weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences\nand barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the waters may\npass away by canal, and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so\ndangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour\nhas not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where\nshe knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain\nher.\n\nAnd if you will consider Italy, which is the seat of these changes, and\nwhich has given to them their impulse, you will see it to be an open\ncountry without barriers and without any defence. For if it had been\ndefended by proper valour, as are Germany, Spain, and France, either\nthis invasion would not have made the great changes it has made or it\nwould not have come at all. And this I consider enough to say concerning\nresistance to fortune in general.\n\nBut confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be\nseen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change\nof disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes\nthat have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who\nrelies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that\nhe will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of\nthe times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will\nnot be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end\nwhich every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there\nby various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force,\nanother by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one\nsucceeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of\ntwo cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly,\ntwo men by different observances are equally successful, the one being\ncautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than\nwhether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times.\nThis follows from what I have said, that two men working differently\nbring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains\nhis object and the other does not.\n\nChanges in estate also issue from this, for if, to one who governs\nhimself with caution and patience, times and affairs converge in such a\nway that his administration is successful, his fortune is made; but if\ntimes and affairs change, he is ruined if he does not change his course\nof action. But a man is not often found sufficiently circumspect to know\nhow to accommodate himself to the change, both because he cannot deviate\nfrom what nature inclines him to do, and also because, having always\nprospered by acting in one way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well\nto leave it; and, therefore, the cautious man, when it is time to turn\nadventurous, does not know how to do it, hence he is ruined; but had he\nchanged his conduct with the times fortune would not have changed.\n\nPope Julius the Second went to work impetuously in all his affairs, and\nfound the times and circumstances conform so well to that line of action\nthat he always met with success. Consider his first enterprise against\nBologna, Messer Giovanni Bentivogli being still alive. The Venetians\nwere not agreeable to it, nor was the King of Spain, and he had the\nenterprise still under discussion with the King of France; nevertheless\nhe personally entered upon the expedition with his accustomed boldness\nand energy, a move which made Spain and the Venetians stand irresolute\nand passive, the latter from fear, the former from desire to recover\nthe kingdom of Naples; on the other hand, he drew after him the King of\nFrance, because that king, having observed the movement, and desiring\nto make the Pope his friend so as to humble the Venetians, found it\nimpossible to refuse him. Therefore Julius with his impetuous action\naccomplished what no other pontiff with simple human wisdom could have\ndone; for if he had waited in Rome until he could get away, with his\nplans arranged and everything fixed, as any other pontiff would have\ndone, he would never have succeeded. Because the King of France would\nhave made a thousand excuses, and the others would have raised a\nthousand fears.\n\nI will leave his other actions alone, as they were all alike, and they\nall succeeded, for the shortness of his life did not let him experience\nthe contrary; but if circumstances had arisen which required him to go\ncautiously, his ruin would have followed, because he would never have\ndeviated from those ways to which nature inclined him.\n\nI conclude, therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind\nsteadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are\nsuccessful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider\nthat it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is\na woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and\nill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by\nthe adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is,\ntherefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are\nless cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHaving carefully considered the subject of the above discourses, and\nwondering within myself whether the present times were propitious to\na new prince, and whether there were elements that would give an\nopportunity to a wise and virtuous one to introduce a new order of\nthings which would do honour to him and good to the people of this\ncountry, it appears to me that so many things concur to favour a new\nprince that I never knew a time more fit than the present.\n\nAnd if, as I said, it was necessary that the people of Israel should be\ncaptive so as to make manifest the ability of Moses; that the Persians\nshould be oppressed by the Medes so as to discover the greatness of the\nsoul of Cyrus; and that the Athenians should be dispersed to illustrate\nthe capabilities of Theseus: then at the present time, in order to\ndiscover the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was necessary that Italy\nshould be reduced to the extremity that she is now in, that she should\nbe more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians,\nmore scattered than the Athenians; without head, without order, beaten,\ndespoiled, torn, overrun; and to have endured every kind of desolation.\n\nAlthough lately some spark may have been shown by one, which made us\nthink he was ordained by God for our redemption, nevertheless it was\nafterwards seen, in the height of his career, that fortune rejected him;\nso that Italy, left as without life, waits for him who shall yet heal\nher wounds and put an end to the ravaging and plundering of Lombardy,\nto the swindling and taxing of the kingdom and of Tuscany, and cleanse\nthose sores that for long have festered. It is seen how she entreats God\nto send someone who shall deliver her from these wrongs and barbarous\ninsolencies. It is seen also that she is ready and willing to follow a\nbanner if only someone will raise it.\n\nNor is there to be seen at present one in whom she can place more hope\nthan in your illustrious house,(*) with its valour and fortune, favoured\nby God and by the Church of which it is now the chief, and which could\nbe made the head of this redemption. This will not be difficult if you\nwill recall to yourself the actions and lives of the men I have named.\nAnd although they were great and wonderful men, yet they were men, and\neach one of them had no more opportunity than the present offers, for\ntheir enterprises were neither more just nor easier than this, nor was\nGod more their friend than He is yours.\n\n     (*) Giuliano de Medici. He had just been created a cardinal\n     by Leo X. In 1523 Giuliano was elected Pope, and took the\n     title of Clement VII.\n\nWith us there is great justice, because that war is just which is\nnecessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in\nthem. Here there is the greatest willingness, and where the willingness\nis great the difficulties cannot be great if you will only follow those\nmen to whom I have directed your attention. Further than this, how\nextraordinarily the ways of God have been manifested beyond example:\nthe sea is divided, a cloud has led the way, the rock has poured\nforth water, it has rained manna, everything has contributed to\nyour greatness; you ought to do the rest. God is not willing to do\neverything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory\nwhich belongs to us.\n\nAnd it is not to be wondered at if none of the above-named Italians\nhave been able to accomplish all that is expected from your illustrious\nhouse; and if in so many revolutions in Italy, and in so many campaigns,\nit has always appeared as if military virtue were exhausted, this has\nhappened because the old order of things was not good, and none of us\nhave known how to find a new one. And nothing honours a man more than to\nestablish new laws and new ordinances when he himself was newly risen.\nSuch things when they are well founded and dignified will make him\nrevered and admired, and in Italy there are not wanting opportunities to\nbring such into use in every form.\n\nHere there is great valour in the limbs whilst it fails in the head.\nLook attentively at the duels and the hand-to-hand combats, how superior\nthe Italians are in strength, dexterity, and subtlety. But when it comes\nto armies they do not bear comparison, and this springs entirely from\nthe insufficiency of the leaders, since those who are capable are not\nobedient, and each one seems to himself to know, there having never been\nany one so distinguished above the rest, either by valour or fortune,\nthat others would yield to him. Hence it is that for so long a time,\nand during so much fighting in the past twenty years, whenever there\nhas been an army wholly Italian, it has always given a poor account of\nitself; the first witness to this is Il Taro, afterwards Allesandria,\nCapua, Genoa, Vaila, Bologna, Mestri.(*)\n\n     (*) The battles of Il Taro, 1495; Alessandria, 1499; Capua,\n     1501; Genoa, 1507; Vaila, 1509; Bologna, 1511; Mestri, 1513.\n\nIf, therefore, your illustrious house wishes to follow these remarkable\nmen who have redeemed their country, it is necessary before all things,\nas a true foundation for every enterprise, to be provided with your\nown forces, because there can be no more faithful, truer, or better\nsoldiers. And although singly they are good, altogether they will\nbe much better when they find themselves commanded by their prince,\nhonoured by him, and maintained at his expense. Therefore it is\nnecessary to be prepared with such arms, so that you can be defended\nagainst foreigners by Italian valour.\n\nAnd although Swiss and Spanish infantry may be considered very\nformidable, nevertheless there is a defect in both, by reason of which\na third order would not only be able to oppose them, but might be relied\nupon to overthrow them. For the Spaniards cannot resist cavalry, and the\nSwitzers are afraid of infantry whenever they encounter them in close\ncombat. Owing to this, as has been and may again be seen, the Spaniards\nare unable to resist French cavalry, and the Switzers are overthrown by\nSpanish infantry. And although a complete proof of this latter cannot\nbe shown, nevertheless there was some evidence of it at the battle of\nRavenna, when the Spanish infantry were confronted by German battalions,\nwho follow the same tactics as the Swiss; when the Spaniards, by agility\nof body and with the aid of their shields, got in under the pikes of the\nGermans and stood out of danger, able to attack, while the Germans stood\nhelpless, and, if the cavalry had not dashed up, all would have been\nover with them. It is possible, therefore, knowing the defects of both\nthese infantries, to invent a new one, which will resist cavalry and not\nbe afraid of infantry; this need not create a new order of arms, but\na variation upon the old. And these are the kind of improvements which\nconfer reputation and power upon a new prince.\n\nThis opportunity, therefore, ought not to be allowed to pass for letting\nItaly at last see her liberator appear. Nor can one express the love\nwith which he would be received in all those provinces which have\nsuffered so much from these foreign scourings, with what thirst for\nrevenge, with what stubborn faith, with what devotion, with what tears.\nWhat door would be closed to him? Who would refuse obedience to him?\nWhat envy would hinder him? What Italian would refuse him homage? To all\nof us this barbarous dominion stinks. Let, therefore, your illustrious\nhouse take up this charge with that courage and hope with which all\njust enterprises are undertaken, so that under its standard our native\ncountry may be ennobled, and under its auspices may be verified that\nsaying of Petrarch:\n\n     Virtu contro al Furore\n     Prendera l'arme, e fia il combatter corto:\n     Che l'antico valore\n     Negli italici cuor non e ancor morto.\n\n     Virtue against fury shall advance the fight,\n     And it i' th' combat soon shall put to flight:\n     For the old Roman valour is not dead,\n     Nor in th' Italians' brests extinguished.\n\n     Edward Dacre, 1640.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Duke Valentino had returned from Lombardy, where he had been to\nclear himself with the King of France from the calumnies which had been\nraised against him by the Florentines concerning the rebellion of Arezzo\nand other towns in the Val di Chiana, and had arrived at Imola, whence\nhe intended with his army to enter upon the campaign against Giovanni\nBentivogli, the tyrant of Bologna: for he intended to bring that city\nunder his domination, and to make it the head of his Romagnian duchy.\n\nThese matters coming to the knowledge of the Vitelli and Orsini and\ntheir following, it appeared to them that the duke would become too\npowerful, and it was feared that, having seized Bologna, he would seek\nto destroy them in order that he might become supreme in Italy. Upon\nthis a meeting was called at Magione in the district of Perugia,\nto which came the cardinal, Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini,\nVitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Gianpagolo Baglioni, the tyrant\nof Perugia, and Messer Antonio da Venafro, sent by Pandolfo Petrucci,\nthe Prince of Siena. Here were discussed the power and courage of the\nduke and the necessity of curbing his ambitions, which might otherwise\nbring danger to the rest of being ruined. And they decided not to\nabandon the Bentivogli, but to strive to win over the Florentines; and\nthey sent their men to one place and another, promising to one party\nassistance and to another encouragement to unite with them against the\ncommon enemy. This meeting was at once reported throughout all Italy,\nand those who were discontented under the duke, among whom were the\npeople of Urbino, took hope of effecting a revolution.\n\nThus it arose that, men's minds being thus unsettled, it was decided by\ncertain men of Urbino to seize the fortress of San Leo, which was\nheld for the duke, and which they captured by the following means. The\ncastellan was fortifying the rock and causing timber to be taken there;\nso the conspirators watched, and when certain beams which were being\ncarried to the rock were upon the bridge, so that it was prevented from\nbeing drawn up by those inside, they took the opportunity of leaping\nupon the bridge and thence into the fortress. Upon this capture being\neffected, the whole state rebelled and recalled the old duke, being\nencouraged in this, not so much by the capture of the fort, as by the\nDiet at Magione, from whom they expected to get assistance.\n\nThose who heard of the rebellion at Urbino thought they would not lose\nthe opportunity, and at once assembled their men so as to take any town,\nshould any remain in the hands of the duke in that state; and they sent\nagain to Florence to beg that republic to join with them in destroying\nthe common firebrand, showing that the risk was lessened and that they\nought not to wait for another opportunity.\n\nBut the Florentines, from hatred, for sundry reasons, of the Vitelli and\nOrsini, not only would not ally themselves, but sent Nicolo Machiavelli,\ntheir secretary, to offer shelter and assistance to the duke against\nhis enemies. The duke was found full of fear at Imola, because, against\neverybody's expectation, his soldiers had at once gone over to the\nenemy and he found himself disarmed and war at his door. But recovering\ncourage from the offers of the Florentines, he decided to temporize\nbefore fighting with the few soldiers that remained to him, and to\nnegotiate for a reconciliation, and also to get assistance. This latter\nhe obtained in two ways, by sending to the King of France for men and by\nenlisting men-at-arms and others whom he turned into cavalry of a sort:\nto all he gave money.\n\nNotwithstanding this, his enemies drew near to him, and approached\nFossombrone, where they encountered some men of the duke and, with the\naid of the Orsini and Vitelli, routed them. When this happened, the duke\nresolved at once to see if he could not close the trouble with offers of\nreconciliation, and being a most perfect dissembler he did not fail in\nany practices to make the insurgents understand that he wished every man\nwho had acquired anything to keep it, as it was enough for him to have\nthe title of prince, whilst others might have the principality.\n\nAnd the duke succeeded so well in this that they sent Signor Pagolo to\nhim to negotiate for a reconciliation, and they brought their army to a\nstandstill. But the duke did not stop his preparations, and took\nevery care to provide himself with cavalry and infantry, and that such\npreparations might not be apparent to the others, he sent his troops in\nseparate parties to every part of the Romagna. In the meanwhile there\ncame also to him five hundred French lancers, and although he found\nhimself sufficiently strong to take vengeance on his enemies in open\nwar, he considered that it would be safer and more advantageous\nto outwit them, and for this reason he did not stop the work of\nreconciliation.\n\nAnd that this might be effected the duke concluded a peace with them in\nwhich he confirmed their former covenants; he gave them four thousand\nducats at once; he promised not to injure the Bentivogli; and he formed\nan alliance with Giovanni; and moreover he would not force them to come\npersonally into his presence unless it pleased them to do so. On the\nother hand, they promised to restore to him the duchy of Urbino and\nother places seized by them, to serve him in all his expeditions, and\nnot to make war against or ally themselves with any one without his\npermission.\n\nThis reconciliation being completed, Guido Ubaldo, the Duke of Urbino,\nagain fled to Venice, having first destroyed all the fortresses in\nhis state; because, trusting in the people, he did not wish that the\nfortresses, which he did not think he could defend, should be held by\nthe enemy, since by these means a check would be kept upon his friends.\nBut the Duke Valentino, having completed this convention, and dispersed\nhis men throughout the Romagna, set out for Imola at the end of November\ntogether with his French men-at-arms: thence he went to Cesena, where he\nstayed some time to negotiate with the envoys of the Vitelli and Orsini,\nwho had assembled with their men in the duchy of Urbino, as to the\nenterprise in which they should now take part; but nothing being\nconcluded, Oliverotto da Fermo was sent to propose that if the duke\nwished to undertake an expedition against Tuscany they were ready; if\nhe did not wish it, then they would besiege Sinigalia. To this the duke\nreplied that he did not wish to enter into war with Tuscany, and thus\nbecome hostile to the Florentines, but that he was very willing to\nproceed against Sinigalia.\n\nIt happened that not long afterwards the town surrendered, but the\nfortress would not yield to them because the castellan would not give\nit up to any one but the duke in person; therefore they exhorted him\nto come there. This appeared a good opportunity to the duke, as, being\ninvited by them, and not going of his own will, he would awaken no\nsuspicions. And the more to reassure them, he allowed all the French\nmen-at-arms who were with him in Lombardy to depart, except the hundred\nlancers under Mons. di Candales, his brother-in-law. He left Cesena\nabout the middle of December, and went to Fano, and with the utmost\ncunning and cleverness he persuaded the Vitelli and Orsini to wait for\nhim at Sinigalia, pointing out to them that any lack of compliance would\ncast a doubt upon the sincerity and permanency of the reconciliation,\nand that he was a man who wished to make use of the arms and councils of\nhis friends. But Vitellozzo remained very stubborn, for the death of\nhis brother warned him that he should not offend a prince and afterwards\ntrust him; nevertheless, persuaded by Pagolo Orsini, whom the duke had\ncorrupted with gifts and promises, he agreed to wait.\n\nUpon this the duke, before his departure from Fano, which was to be\non 30th December 1502, communicated his designs to eight of his most\ntrusted followers, among whom were Don Michele and the Monsignor d'Euna,\nwho was afterwards cardinal; and he ordered that, as soon as Vitellozzo,\nPagolo Orsini, the Duke di Gravina, and Oliverotto should arrive, his\nfollowers in pairs should take them one by one, entrusting certain\nmen to certain pairs, who should entertain them until they reached\nSinigalia; nor should they be permitted to leave until they came to the\nduke's quarters, where they should be seized.\n\nThe duke afterwards ordered all his horsemen and infantry, of which\nthere were more than two thousand cavalry and ten thousand footmen, to\nassemble by daybreak at the Metauro, a river five miles distant from\nFano, and await him there. He found himself, therefore, on the last day\nof December at the Metauro with his men, and having sent a cavalcade\nof about two hundred horsemen before him, he then moved forward the\ninfantry, whom he accompanied with the rest of the men-at-arms.\n\nFano and Sinigalia are two cities of La Marca situated on the shore of\nthe Adriatic Sea, fifteen miles distant from each other, so that he who\ngoes towards Sinigalia has the mountains on his right hand, the bases\nof which are touched by the sea in some places. The city of Sinigalia is\ndistant from the foot of the mountains a little more than a bow-shot\nand from the shore about a mile. On the side opposite to the city runs\na little river which bathes that part of the walls looking towards Fano,\nfacing the high road. Thus he who draws near to Sinigalia comes for\na good space by road along the mountains, and reaches the river which\npasses by Sinigalia. If he turns to his left hand along the bank of it,\nand goes for the distance of a bow-shot, he arrives at a bridge which\ncrosses the river; he is then almost abreast of the gate that leads into\nSinigalia, not by a straight line, but transversely. Before this gate\nthere stands a collection of houses with a square to which the bank of\nthe river forms one side.\n\nThe Vitelli and Orsini having received orders to wait for the duke, and\nto honour him in person, sent away their men to several castles distant\nfrom Sinigalia about six miles, so that room could be made for the men\nof the duke; and they left in Sinigalia only Oliverotto and his band,\nwhich consisted of one thousand infantry and one hundred and fifty\nhorsemen, who were quartered in the suburb mentioned above. Matters\nhaving been thus arranged, the Duke Valentino left for Sinigalia, and\nwhen the leaders of the cavalry reached the bridge they did not pass\nover, but having opened it, one portion wheeled towards the river and\nthe other towards the country, and a way was left in the middle through\nwhich the infantry passed, without stopping, into the town.\n\nVitellozzo, Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina on mules, accompanied by a\nfew horsemen, went towards the duke; Vitellozo, unarmed and wearing a\ncape lined with green, appeared very dejected, as if conscious of his\napproaching death--a circumstance which, in view of the ability of the\nman and his former fortune, caused some amazement. And it is said that\nwhen he parted from his men before setting out for Sinigalia to meet the\nduke he acted as if it were his last parting from them. He recommended\nhis house and its fortunes to his captains, and advised his nephews that\nit was not the fortune of their house, but the virtues of their fathers\nthat should be kept in mind. These three, therefore, came before\nthe duke and saluted him respectfully, and were received by him with\ngoodwill; they were at once placed between those who were commissioned\nto look after them.\n\nBut the duke noticing that Oliverotto, who had remained with his band in\nSinigalia, was missing--for Oliverotto was waiting in the square before\nhis quarters near the river, keeping his men in order and drilling\nthem--signalled with his eye to Don Michelle, to whom the care of\nOliverotto had been committed, that he should take measures that\nOliverotto should not escape. Therefore Don Michele rode off and joined\nOliverotto, telling him that it was not right to keep his men out of\ntheir quarters, because these might be taken up by the men of the duke;\nand he advised him to send them at once to their quarters and to come\nhimself to meet the duke. And Oliverotto, having taken this advice, came\nbefore the duke, who, when he saw him, called to him; and Oliverotto,\nhaving made his obeisance, joined the others.\n\nSo the whole party entered Sinigalia, dismounted at the duke's quarters,\nand went with him into a secret chamber, where the duke made them\nprisoners; he then mounted on horseback, and issued orders that the men\nof Oliverotto and the Orsini should be stripped of their arms. Those of\nOliverotto, being at hand, were quickly settled, but those of the Orsini\nand Vitelli, being at a distance, and having a presentiment of the\ndestruction of their masters, had time to prepare themselves, and\nbearing in mind the valour and discipline of the Orsinian and Vitellian\nhouses, they stood together against the hostile forces of the country\nand saved themselves.\n\nBut the duke's soldiers, not being content with having pillaged the\nmen of Oliverotto, began to sack Sinigalia, and if the duke had\nnot repressed this outrage by killing some of them they would have\ncompletely sacked it. Night having come and the tumult being silenced,\nthe duke prepared to kill Vitellozzo and Oliverotto; he led them into\na room and caused them to be strangled. Neither of them used words in\nkeeping with their past lives: Vitellozzo prayed that he might ask of\nthe pope full pardon for his sins; Oliverotto cringed and laid the blame\nfor all injuries against the duke on Vitellozzo. Pagolo and the Duke di\nGravina Orsini were kept alive until the duke heard from Rome that the\npope had taken the Cardinal Orsino, the Archbishop of Florence, and\nMesser Jacopo da Santa Croce. After which news, on 18th January 1502, in\nthe castle of Pieve, they also were strangled in the same way.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt appears, dearest Zanobi and Luigi, a wonderful thing to those who\nhave considered the matter, that all men, or the larger number of them,\nwho have performed great deeds in the world, and excelled all others in\ntheir day, have had their birth and beginning in baseness and obscurity;\nor have been aggrieved by Fortune in some outrageous way. They have\neither been exposed to the mercy of wild beasts, or they have had so\nmean a parentage that in shame they have given themselves out to be\nsons of Jove or of some other deity. It would be wearisome to relate who\nthese persons may have been because they are well known to everybody,\nand, as such tales would not be particularly edifying to those who read\nthem, they are omitted. I believe that these lowly beginnings of great\nmen occur because Fortune is desirous of showing to the world that such\nmen owe much to her and little to wisdom, because she begins to show\nher hand when wisdom can really take no part in their career: thus all\nsuccess must be attributed to her. Castruccio Castracani of Lucca was\none of those men who did great deeds, if he is measured by the times in\nwhich he lived and the city in which he was born; but, like many others,\nhe was neither fortunate nor distinguished in his birth, as the course\nof this history will show. It appeared to be desirable to recall his\nmemory, because I have discerned in him such indications of valour and\nfortune as should make him a great exemplar to men. I think also that\nI ought to call your attention to his actions, because you of all men I\nknow delight most in noble deeds.\n\nThe family of Castracani was formerly numbered among the noble families\nof Lucca, but in the days of which I speak it had somewhat fallen in\nestate, as so often happens in this world. To this family was born a son\nAntonio, who became a priest of the order of San Michele of Lucca, and\nfor this reason was honoured with the title of Messer Antonio. He had an\nonly sister, who had been married to Buonaccorso Cenami, but Buonaccorso\ndying she became a widow, and not wishing to marry again went to live\nwith her brother. Messer Antonio had a vineyard behind the house where\nhe resided, and as it was bounded on all sides by gardens, any person\ncould have access to it without difficulty. One morning, shortly after\nsunrise, Madonna Dianora, as the sister of Messer Antonio was called,\nhad occasion to go into the vineyard as usual to gather herbs for\nseasoning the dinner, and hearing a slight rustling among the leaves\nof a vine she turned her eyes in that direction, and heard something\nresembling the cry of an infant. Whereupon she went towards it, and saw\nthe hands and face of a baby who was lying enveloped in the leaves and\nwho seemed to be crying for its mother. Partly wondering and partly\nfearing, yet full of compassion, she lifted it up and carried it to\nthe house, where she washed it and clothed it with clean linen as is\ncustomary, and showed it to Messer Antonio when he returned home. When\nhe heard what had happened and saw the child he was not less surprised\nor compassionate than his sister. They discussed between themselves\nwhat should be done, and seeing that he was priest and that she had no\nchildren, they finally determined to bring it up. They had a nurse for\nit, and it was reared and loved as if it were their own child. They\nbaptized it, and gave it the name of Castruccio after their father. As\nthe years passed Castruccio grew very handsome, and gave evidence of\nwit and discretion, and learnt with a quickness beyond his years those\nlessons which Messer Antonio imparted to him. Messer Antonio intended\nto make a priest of him, and in time would have inducted him into his\ncanonry and other benefices, and all his instruction was given with\nthis object; but Antonio discovered that the character of Castruccio was\nquite unfitted for the priesthood. As soon as Castruccio reached the\nage of fourteen he began to take less notice of the chiding of Messer\nAntonio and Madonna Dianora and no longer to fear them; he left\noff reading ecclesiastical books, and turned to playing with arms,\ndelighting in nothing so much as in learning their uses, and in running,\nleaping, and wrestling with other boys. In all exercises he far excelled\nhis companions in courage and bodily strength, and if at any time he did\nturn to books, only those pleased him which told of wars and the mighty\ndeeds of men. Messer Antonio beheld all this with vexation and sorrow.\n\nThere lived in the city of Lucca a gentleman of the Guinigi family,\nnamed Messer Francesco, whose profession was arms and who in riches,\nbodily strength, and valour excelled all other men in Lucca. He had\noften fought under the command of the Visconti of Milan, and as a\nGhibelline was the valued leader of that party in Lucca. This gentleman\nresided in Lucca and was accustomed to assemble with others most\nmornings and evenings under the balcony of the Podesta, which is at the\ntop of the square of San Michele, the finest square in Lucca, and he had\noften seen Castruccio taking part with other children of the street\nin those games of which I have spoken. Noticing that Castruccio far\nexcelled the other boys, and that he appeared to exercise a royal\nauthority over them, and that they loved and obeyed him, Messer\nFrancesco became greatly desirous of learning who he was. Being informed\nof the circumstances of the bringing up of Castruccio he felt a greater\ndesire to have him near to him. Therefore he called him one day and\nasked him whether he would more willingly live in the house of a\ngentleman, where he would learn to ride horses and use arms, or in\nthe house of a priest, where he would learn nothing but masses and\nthe services of the Church. Messer Francesco could see that it pleased\nCastruccio greatly to hear horses and arms spoken of, even though\nhe stood silent, blushing modestly; but being encouraged by Messer\nFrancesco to speak, he answered that, if his master were agreeable,\nnothing would please him more than to give up his priestly studies and\ntake up those of a soldier. This reply delighted Messer Francesco, and\nin a very short time he obtained the consent of Messer Antonio, who was\ndriven to yield by his knowledge of the nature of the lad, and the fear\nthat he would not be able to hold him much longer.\n\nThus Castruccio passed from the house of Messer Antonio the priest\nto the house of Messer Francesco Guinigi the soldier, and it was\nastonishing to find that in a very short time he manifested all that\nvirtue and bearing which we are accustomed to associate with a true\ngentleman. In the first place he became an accomplished horseman, and\ncould manage with ease the most fiery charger, and in all jousts and\ntournaments, although still a youth, he was observed beyond all others,\nand he excelled in all exercises of strength and dexterity. But what\nenhanced so much the charm of these accomplishments, was the delightful\nmodesty which enabled him to avoid offence in either act or word to\nothers, for he was deferential to the great men, modest with his equals,\nand courteous to his inferiors. These gifts made him beloved, not only\nby all the Guinigi family, but by all Lucca. When Castruccio had reached\nhis eighteenth year, the Ghibellines were driven from Pavia by the\nGuelphs, and Messer Francesco was sent by the Visconti to assist the\nGhibellines, and with him went Castruccio, in charge of his forces.\nCastruccio gave ample proof of his prudence and courage in this\nexpedition, acquiring greater reputation than any other captain, and\nhis name and fame were known, not only in Pavia, but throughout all\nLombardy.\n\nCastruccio, having returned to Lucca in far higher estimation than he\nleft it, did not omit to use all the means in his power to gain as many\nfriends as he could, neglecting none of those arts which are necessary\nfor that purpose. About this time Messer Francesco died, leaving a son\nthirteen years of age named Pagolo, and having appointed Castruccio\nto be his son's tutor and administrator of his estate. Before he died\nFrancesco called Castruccio to him, and prayed him to show Pagolo that\ngoodwill which he (Francesco) had always shown to HIM, and to render to\nthe son the gratitude which he had not been able to repay to the father.\nUpon the death of Francesco, Castruccio became the governor and tutor of\nPagolo, which increased enormously his power and position, and created\na certain amount of envy against him in Lucca in place of the former\nuniversal goodwill, for many men suspected him of harbouring tyrannical\nintentions. Among these the leading man was Giorgio degli Opizi, the\nhead of the Guelph party. This man hoped after the death of Messer\nFrancesco to become the chief man in Lucca, but it seemed to him that\nCastruccio, with the great abilities which he already showed, and\nholding the position of governor, deprived him of his opportunity;\ntherefore he began to sow those seeds which should rob Castruccio of his\neminence. Castruccio at first treated this with scorn, but afterwards\nhe grew alarmed, thinking that Messer Giorgio might be able to bring\nhim into disgrace with the deputy of King Ruberto of Naples and have him\ndriven out of Lucca.\n\nThe Lord of Pisa at that time was Uguccione of the Faggiuola of Arezzo,\nwho being in the first place elected their captain afterwards became\ntheir lord. There resided in Paris some exiled Ghibellines from Lucca,\nwith whom Castruccio held communications with the object of effecting\ntheir restoration by the help of Uguccione. Castruccio also brought into\nhis plans friends from Lucca who would not endure the authority of the\nOpizi. Having fixed upon a plan to be followed, Castruccio cautiously\nfortified the tower of the Onesti, filling it with supplies and\nmunitions of war, in order that it might stand a siege for a few days\nin case of need. When the night came which had been agreed upon with\nUguccione, who had occupied the plain between the mountains and\nPisa with many men, the signal was given, and without being observed\nUguccione approached the gate of San Piero and set fire to the\nportcullis. Castruccio raised a great uproar within the city, calling\nthe people to arms and forcing open the gate from his side. Uguccione\nentered with his men, poured through the town, and killed Messer Giorgio\nwith all his family and many of his friends and supporters. The governor\nwas driven out, and the government reformed according to the wishes of\nUguccione, to the detriment of the city, because it was found that more\nthan one hundred families were exiled at that time. Of those who\nfled, part went to Florence and part to Pistoia, which city was the\nheadquarters of the Guelph party, and for this reason it became most\nhostile to Uguccione and the Lucchese.\n\nAs it now appeared to the Florentines and others of the Guelph party\nthat the Ghibellines absorbed too much power in Tuscany, they determined\nto restore the exiled Guelphs to Lucca. They assembled a large army in\nthe Val di Nievole, and seized Montecatini; from thence they marched to\nMontecarlo, in order to secure the free passage into Lucca. Upon this\nUguccione assembled his Pisan and Lucchese forces, and with a number\nof German cavalry which he drew out of Lombardy, he moved against\nthe quarters of the Florentines, who upon the appearance of the enemy\nwithdrew from Montecarlo, and posted themselves between Montecatini and\nPescia. Uguccione now took up a position near to Montecarlo, and within\nabout two miles of the enemy, and slight skirmishes between the horse\nof both parties were of daily occurrence. Owing to the illness of\nUguccione, the Pisans and Lucchese delayed coming to battle with the\nenemy. Uguccione, finding himself growing worse, went to Montecarlo to\nbe cured, and left the command of the army in the hands of Castruccio.\nThis change brought about the ruin of the Guelphs, who, thinking\nthat the hostile army having lost its captain had lost its head, grew\nover-confident. Castruccio observed this, and allowed some days to pass\nin order to encourage this belief; he also showed signs of fear, and\ndid not allow any of the munitions of the camp to be used. On the other\nside, the Guelphs grew more insolent the more they saw these evidences\nof fear, and every day they drew out in the order of battle in front\nof the army of Castruccio. Presently, deeming that the enemy was\nsufficiently emboldened, and having mastered their tactics, he decided\nto join battle with them. First he spoke a few words of encouragement to\nhis soldiers, and pointed out to them the certainty of victory if they\nwould but obey his commands. Castruccio had noticed how the enemy had\nplaced all his best troops in the centre of the line of battle, and his\nless reliable men on the wings of the army; whereupon he did exactly\nthe opposite, putting his most valiant men on the flanks, while those\non whom he could not so strongly rely he moved to the centre. Observing\nthis order of battle, he drew out of his lines and quickly came in sight\nof the hostile army, who, as usual, had come in their insolence to defy\nhim. He then commanded his centre squadrons to march slowly, whilst\nhe moved rapidly forward those on the wings. Thus, when they came into\ncontact with the enemy, only the wings of the two armies became engaged,\nwhilst the center battalions remained out of action, for these two\nportions of the line of battle were separated from each other by a long\ninterval and thus unable to reach each other. By this expedient the more\nvaliant part of Castruccio's men were opposed to the weaker part of the\nenemy's troops, and the most efficient men of the enemy were disengaged;\nand thus the Florentines were unable to fight with those who were\narrayed opposite to them, or to give any assistance to their own flanks.\nSo, without much difficulty, Castruccio put the enemy to flight on\nboth flanks, and the centre battalions took to flight when they found\nthemselves exposed to attack, without having a chance of displaying\ntheir valour. The defeat was complete, and the loss in men very heavy,\nthere being more than ten thousand men killed with many officers and\nknights of the Guelph party in Tuscany, and also many princes who had\ncome to help them, among whom were Piero, the brother of King Ruberto,\nand Carlo, his nephew, and Filippo, the lord of Taranto. On the part of\nCastruccio the loss did not amount to more than three hundred men, among\nwhom was Francesco, the son of Uguccione, who, being young and rash, was\nkilled in the first onset.\n\nThis victory so greatly increased the reputation of Castruccio that\nUguccione conceived some jealousy and suspicion of him, because it\nappeared to Uguccione that this victory had given him no increase of\npower, but rather than diminished it. Being of this mind, he only waited\nfor an opportunity to give effect to it. This occurred on the death of\nPier Agnolo Micheli, a man of great repute and abilities in Lucca, the\nmurderer of whom fled to the house of Castruccio for refuge. On the\nsergeants of the captain going to arrest the murderer, they were driven\noff by Castruccio, and the murderer escaped. This affair coming to\nthe knowledge of Uguccione, who was then at Pisa, it appeared to him a\nproper opportunity to punish Castruccio. He therefore sent for his\nson Neri, who was the governor of Lucca, and commissioned him to take\nCastruccio prisoner at a banquet and put him to death. Castruccio,\nfearing no evil, went to the governor in a friendly way, was entertained\nat supper, and then thrown into prison. But Neri, fearing to put him to\ndeath lest the people should be incensed, kept him alive, in order to\nhear further from his father concerning his intentions. Ugucionne cursed\nthe hesitation and cowardice of his son, and at once set out from Pisa\nto Lucca with four hundred horsemen to finish the business in his own\nway; but he had not yet reached the baths when the Pisans rebelled and\nput his deputy to death and created Count Gaddo della Gherardesca their\nlord. Before Uguccione reached Lucca he heard of the occurrences at\nPisa, but it did not appear wise to him to turn back, lest the Lucchese\nwith the example of Pisa before them should close their gates against\nhim. But the Lucchese, having heard of what had happened at Pisa,\navailed themselves of this opportunity to demand the liberation of\nCastruccio, notwithstanding that Uguccione had arrived in their city.\nThey first began to speak of it in private circles, afterwards openly\nin the squares and streets; then they raised a tumult, and with arms in\ntheir hands went to Uguccione and demanded that Castruccio should be\nset at liberty. Uguccione, fearing that worse might happen, released him\nfrom prison. Whereupon Castruccio gathered his friends around him, and\nwith the help of the people attacked Uguccione; who, finding he had no\nresource but in flight, rode away with his friends to Lombardy, to the\nlords of Scale, where he died in poverty.\n\nBut Castruccio from being a prisoner became almost a prince in Lucca,\nand he carried himself so discreetly with his friends and the people\nthat they appointed him captain of their army for one year. Having\nobtained this, and wishing to gain renown in war, he planned the\nrecovery of the many towns which had rebelled after the departure of\nUguccione, and with the help of the Pisans, with whom he had concluded a\ntreaty, he marched to Serezzana. To capture this place he constructed a\nfort against it, which is called to-day Zerezzanello; in the course of\ntwo months Castruccio captured the town. With the reputation gained\nat that siege, he rapidly seized Massa, Carrara, and Lavenza, and in\na short time had overrun the whole of Lunigiana. In order to close the\npass which leads from Lombardy to Lunigiana, he besieged Pontremoli and\nwrested it from the hands of Messer Anastagio Palavicini, who was the\nlord of it. After this victory he returned to Lucca, and was welcomed by\nthe whole people. And now Castruccio, deeming it imprudent any longer to\ndefer making himself a prince, got himself created the lord of Lucca\nby the help of Pazzino del Poggio, Puccinello dal Portico, Francesco\nBoccansacchi, and Cecco Guinigi, all of whom he had corrupted; and he\nwas afterwards solemnly and deliberately elected prince by the people.\nAt this time Frederick of Bavaria, the King of the Romans, came into\nItaly to assume the Imperial crown, and Castruccio, in order that\nhe might make friends with him, met him at the head of five hundred\nhorsemen. Castruccio had left as his deputy in Lucca, Pagolo Guinigi,\nwho was held in high estimation, because of the people's love for\nthe memory of his father. Castruccio was received in great honour by\nFrederick, and many privileges were conferred upon him, and he was\nappointed the emperor's lieutenant in Tuscany. At this time the Pisans\nwere in great fear of Gaddo della Gherardesca, whom they had driven out\nof Pisa, and they had recourse for assistance to Frederick. Frederick\ncreated Castruccio the lord of Pisa, and the Pisans, in dread of the\nGuelph party, and particularly of the Florentines, were constrained to\naccept him as their lord.\n\nFrederick, having appointed a governor in Rome to watch his Italian\naffairs, returned to Germany. All the Tuscan and Lombardian Ghibellines,\nwho followed the imperial lead, had recourse to Castruccio for help\nand counsel, and all promised him the governorship of his country,\nif enabled to recover it with his assistance. Among these exiles were\nMatteo Guidi, Nardo Scolari, Lapo Uberti, Gerozzo Nardi, and Piero\nBuonaccorsi, all exiled Florentines and Ghibellines. Castruccio had the\nsecret intention of becoming the master of all Tuscany by the aid of\nthese men and of his own forces; and in order to gain greater weight\nin affairs, he entered into a league with Messer Matteo Visconti, the\nPrince of Milan, and organized for him the forces of his city and the\ncountry districts. As Lucca had five gates, he divided his own country\ndistricts into five parts, which he supplied with arms, and enrolled the\nmen under captains and ensigns, so that he could quickly bring into the\nfield twenty thousand soldiers, without those whom he could summon to\nhis assistance from Pisa. While he surrounded himself with these forces\nand allies, it happened at Messer Matteo Visconti was attacked by\nthe Guelphs of Piacenza, who had driven out the Ghibellines with the\nassistance of a Florentine army and the King Ruberto. Messer Matteo\ncalled upon Castruccio to invade the Florentines in their own\nterritories, so that, being attacked at home, they should be compelled\nto draw their army out of Lombardy in order to defend themselves.\nCastruccio invaded the Valdarno, and seized Fucecchio and San Miniato,\ninflicting immense damage upon the country. Whereupon the Florentines\nrecalled their army, which had scarcely reached Tuscany, when Castruccio\nwas forced by other necessities to return to Lucca.\n\nThere resided in the city of Lucca the Poggio family, who were so\npowerful that they could not only elevate Castruccio, but even advance\nhim to the dignity of prince; and it appearing to them they had not\nreceived such rewards for their services as they deserved, they incited\nother families to rebel and to drive Castruccio out of Lucca. They found\ntheir opportunity one morning, and arming themselves, they set upon the\nlieutenant whom Castruccio had left to maintain order and killed him.\nThey endeavoured to raise the people in revolt, but Stefano di Poggio, a\npeaceable old man who had taken no hand in the rebellion, intervened and\ncompelled them by his authority to lay down their arms; and he offered\nto be their mediator with Castruccio to obtain from him what\nthey desired. Therefore they laid down their arms with no greater\nintelligence than they had taken them up. Castruccio, having heard\nthe news of what had happened at Lucca, at once put Pagolo Guinigi\nin command of the army, and with a troop of cavalry set out for home.\nContrary to his expectations, he found the rebellion at an end, yet he\nposted his men in the most advantageous places throughout the city. As\nit appeared to Stefano that Castruccio ought to be very much obliged to\nhim, he sought him out, and without saying anything on his own behalf,\nfor he did not recognize any need for doing so, he begged Castruccio to\npardon the other members of his family by reason of their youth, their\nformer friendships, and the obligations which Castruccio was under to\ntheir house. To this Castruccio graciously responded, and begged Stefano\nto reassure himself, declaring that it gave him more pleasure to find\nthe tumult at an end than it had ever caused him anxiety to hear of its\ninception. He encouraged Stefano to bring his family to him, saying\nthat he thanked God for having given him the opportunity of showing his\nclemency and liberality. Upon the word of Stefano and Castruccio they\nsurrendered, and with Stefano were immediately thrown into prison and\nput to death. Meanwhile the Florentines had recovered San Miniato,\nwhereupon it seemed advisable to Castruccio to make peace, as it did not\nappear to him that he was sufficiently secure at Lucca to leave him.\nHe approached the Florentines with the proposal of a truce, which they\nreadily entertained, for they were weary of the war, and desirous of\ngetting rid of the expenses of it. A treaty was concluded with them for\ntwo years, by which both parties agreed to keep the conquests they had\nmade. Castruccio thus released from this trouble, turned his attention\nto affairs in Lucca, and in order that he should not again be subject to\nthe perils from which he had just escaped, he, under various pretences\nand reasons, first wiped out all those who by their ambition might\naspire to the principality; not sparing one of them, but depriving them\nof country and property, and those whom he had in his hands of life\nalso, stating that he had found by experience that none of them were to\nbe trusted. Then for his further security he raised a fortress in Lucca\nwith the stones of the towers of those whom he had killed or hunted out\nof the state.\n\nWhilst Castruccio made peace with the Florentines, and strengthened his\nposition in Lucca, he neglected no opportunity, short of open war, of\nincreasing his importance elsewhere. It appeared to him that if he could\nget possession of Pistoia, he would have one foot in Florence, which was\nhis great desire. He, therefore, in various ways made friends with\nthe mountaineers, and worked matters so in Pistoia that both parties\nconfided their secrets to him. Pistoia was divided, as it always had\nbeen, into the Bianchi and Neri parties; the head of the Bianchi was\nBastiano di Possente, and of the Neri, Jacopo da Gia. Each of these men\nheld secret communications with Castruccio, and each desired to drive\nthe other out of the city; and, after many threatenings, they came to\nblows. Jacopo fortified himself at the Florentine gate, Bastiano at that\nof the Lucchese side of the city; both trusted more in Castruccio than\nin the Florentines, because they believed that Castruccio was far more\nready and willing to fight than the Florentines, and they both sent to\nhim for assistance. He gave promises to both, saying to Bastiano that he\nwould come in person, and to Jacopo that he would send his pupil, Pagolo\nGuinigi. At the appointed time he sent forward Pagolo by way of Pisa,\nand went himself direct to Pistoia; at midnight both of them met outside\nthe city, and both were admitted as friends. Thus the two leaders\nentered, and at a signal given by Castruccio, one killed Jacopo da Gia,\nand the other Bastiano di Possente, and both took prisoners or killed\nthe partisans of either faction. Without further opposition Pistoia\npassed into the hands of Castruccio, who, having forced the Signoria to\nleave the palace, compelled the people to yield obedience to him,\nmaking them many promises and remitting their old debts. The countryside\nflocked to the city to see the new prince, and all were filled with hope\nand quickly settled down, influenced in a great measure by his great\nvalour.\n\nAbout this time great disturbances arose in Rome, owing to the dearness\nof living which was caused by the absence of the pontiff at Avignon. The\nGerman governor, Enrico, was much blamed for what happened--murders and\ntumults following each other daily, without his being able to put an end\nto them. This caused Enrico much anxiety lest the Romans should call\nin Ruberto, the King of Naples, who would drive the Germans out of the\ncity, and bring back the Pope. Having no nearer friend to whom he could\napply for help than Castruccio, he sent to him, begging him not only\nto give him assistance, but also to come in person to Rome. Castruccio\nconsidered that he ought not to hesitate to render the emperor this\nservice, because he believed that he himself would not be safe if at any\ntime the emperor ceased to hold Rome. Leaving Pagolo Guinigi in command\nat Lucca, Castruccio set out for Rome with six hundred horsemen, where\nhe was received by Enrico with the greatest distinction. In a short time\nthe presence of Castruccio obtained such respect for the emperor that,\nwithout bloodshed or violence, good order was restored, chiefly by\nreason of Castruccio having sent by sea from the country round Pisa\nlarge quantities of corn, and thus removed the source of the trouble.\nWhen he had chastised some of the Roman leaders, and admonished others,\nvoluntary obedience was rendered to Enrico. Castruccio received many\nhonours, and was made a Roman senator. This dignity was assumed with the\ngreatest pomp, Castruccio being clothed in a brocaded toga, which had\nthe following words embroidered on its front: \"I am what God wills.\"\nWhilst on the back was: \"What God desires shall be.\"\n\nDuring this time the Florentines, who were much enraged that Castruccio\nshould have seized Pistoia during the truce, considered how they could\ntempt the city to rebel, to do which they thought would not be difficult\nin his absence. Among the exiled Pistoians in Florence were Baldo Cecchi\nand Jacopo Baldini, both men of leading and ready to face danger. These\nmen kept up communications with their friends in Pistoia, and with the\naid of the Florentines entered the city by night, and after driving out\nsome of Castruccio's officials and partisans, and killing others, they\nrestored the city to its freedom. The news of this greatly angered\nCastruccio, and taking leave of Enrico, he pressed on in great haste to\nPistoia. When the Florentines heard of his return, knowing that he would\nlose no time, they decided to intercept him with their forces in the\nVal di Nievole, under the belief that by doing so they would cut off his\nroad to Pistoia. Assembling a great army of the supporters of the Guelph\ncause, the Florentines entered the Pistoian territories. On the other\nhand, Castruccio reached Montecarlo with his army; and having heard\nwhere the Florentines' lay, he decided not to encounter it in the plains\nof Pistoia, nor to await it in the plains of Pescia, but, as far as\nhe possibly could, to attack it boldly in the Pass of Serravalle. He\nbelieved that if he succeeded in this design, victory was assured,\nalthough he was informed that the Florentines had thirty thousand men,\nwhilst he had only twelve thousand. Although he had every confidence\nin his own abilities and the valour of his troops, yet he hesitated to\nattack his enemy in the open lest he should be overwhelmed by numbers.\nSerravalle is a castle between Pescia and Pistoia, situated on a hill\nwhich blocks the Val di Nievole, not in the exact pass, but about a\nbowshot beyond; the pass itself is in places narrow and steep, whilst in\ngeneral it ascends gently, but is still narrow, especially at the summit\nwhere the waters divide, so that twenty men side by side could hold it.\nThe lord of Serravalle was Manfred, a German, who, before Castruccio\nbecame lord of Pistoia, had been allowed to remain in possession of the\ncastle, it being common to the Lucchese and the Pistoians, and unclaimed\nby either--neither of them wishing to displace Manfred as long as he\nkept his promise of neutrality, and came under obligations to no one.\nFor these reasons, and also because the castle was well fortified,\nhe had always been able to maintain his position. It was here that\nCastruccio had determined to fall upon his enemy, for here his few men\nwould have the advantage, and there was no fear lest, seeing the large\nmasses of the hostile force before they became engaged, they should not\nstand. As soon as this trouble with Florence arose, Castruccio saw the\nimmense advantage which possession of this castle would give him, and\nhaving an intimate friendship with a resident in the castle, he managed\nmatters so with him that four hundred of his men were to be admitted\ninto the castle the night before the attack on the Florentines, and the\ncastellan put to death.\n\nCastruccio, having prepared everything, had now to encourage the\nFlorentines to persist in their desire to carry the seat of war away\nfrom Pistoia into the Val di Nievole, therefore he did not move his\narmy from Montecarlo. Thus the Florentines hurried on until they reached\ntheir encampment under Serravalle, intending to cross the hill on the\nfollowing morning. In the meantime, Castruccio had seized the castle at\nnight, had also moved his army from Montecarlo, and marching from thence\nat midnight in dead silence, had reached the foot of Serravalle: thus he\nand the Florentines commenced the ascent of the hill at the same time in\nthe morning. Castruccio sent forward his infantry by the main road,\nand a troop of four hundred horsemen by a path on the left towards the\ncastle. The Florentines sent forward four hundred cavalry ahead of\ntheir army which was following, never expecting to find Castruccio in\npossession of the hill, nor were they aware of his having seized the\ncastle. Thus it happened that the Florentine horsemen mounting the hill\nwere completely taken by surprise when they discovered the infantry of\nCastruccio, and so close were they upon it they had scarcely time to\npull down their visors. It was a case of unready soldiers being attacked\nby ready, and they were assailed with such vigour that with difficulty\nthey could hold their own, although some few of them got through. When\nthe noise of the fighting reached the Florentine camp below, it was\nfilled with confusion. The cavalry and infantry became inextricably\nmixed: the captains were unable to get their men either backward or\nforward, owing to the narrowness of the pass, and amid all this tumult\nno one knew what ought to be done or what could be done. In a short time\nthe cavalry who were engaged with the enemy's infantry were scattered\nor killed without having made any effective defence because of their\nunfortunate position, although in sheer desperation they had offered\na stout resistance. Retreat had been impossible, with the mountains on\nboth flanks, whilst in front were their enemies, and in the rear their\nfriends. When Castruccio saw that his men were unable to strike a\ndecisive blow at the enemy and put them to flight, he sent one thousand\ninfantrymen round by the castle, with orders to join the four hundred\nhorsemen he had previously dispatched there, and commanded the whole\nforce to fall upon the flank of the enemy. These orders they carried out\nwith such fury that the Florentines could not sustain the attack,\nbut gave way, and were soon in full retreat--conquered more by their\nunfortunate position than by the valour of their enemy. Those in the\nrear turned towards Pistoia, and spread through the plains, each\nman seeking only his own safety. The defeat was complete and very\nsanguinary. Many captains were taken prisoners, among whom were\nBandini dei Rossi, Francesco Brunelleschi, and Giovanni della Tosa, all\nFlorentine noblemen, with many Tuscans and Neapolitans who fought on the\nFlorentine side, having been sent by King Ruberto to assist the Guelphs.\nImmediately the Pistoians heard of this defeat they drove out the\nfriends of the Guelphs, and surrendered to Castruccio. He was not\ncontent with occupying Prato and all the castles on the plains on both\nsides of the Arno, but marched his army into the plain of Peretola,\nabout two miles from Florence. Here he remained many days, dividing the\nspoils, and celebrating his victory with feasts and games, holding\nhorse races, and foot races for men and women. He also struck medals\nin commemoration of the defeat of the Florentines. He endeavoured to\ncorrupt some of the citizens of Florence, who were to open the city\ngates at night; but the conspiracy was discovered, and the participators\nin it taken and beheaded, among whom were Tommaso Lupacci and\nLambertuccio Frescobaldi. This defeat caused the Florentines great\nanxiety, and despairing of preserving their liberty, they sent envoys to\nKing Ruberto of Naples, offering him the dominion of their city; and he,\nknowing of what immense importance the maintenance of the Guelph cause\nwas to him, accepted it. He agreed with the Florentines to receive from\nthem a yearly tribute of two hundred thousand florins, and he sent his\nson Carlo to Florence with four thousand horsemen.\n\nShortly after this the Florentines were relieved in some degree of the\npressure of Castruccio's army, owing to his being compelled to leave\nhis positions before Florence and march on Pisa, in order to suppress a\nconspiracy that had been raised against him by Benedetto Lanfranchi,\none of the first men in Pisa, who could not endure that his fatherland\nshould be under the dominion of the Lucchese. He had formed this\nconspiracy, intending to seize the citadel, kill the partisans of\nCastruccio, and drive out the garrison. As, however, in a conspiracy\npaucity of numbers is essential to secrecy, so for its execution a few\nare not sufficient, and in seeking more adherents to his conspiracy\nLanfranchi encountered a person who revealed the design to Castruccio.\nThis betrayal cannot be passed by without severe reproach to Bonifacio\nCerchi and Giovanni Guidi, two Florentine exiles who were suffering\ntheir banishment in Pisa. Thereupon Castruccio seized Benedetto and put\nhim to death, and beheaded many other noble citizens, and drove their\nfamilies into exile. It now appeared to Castruccio that both Pisa and\nPistoia were thoroughly disaffected; he employed much thought and energy\nupon securing his position there, and this gave the Florentines their\nopportunity to reorganize their army, and to await the coming of Carlo,\nthe son of the King of Naples. When Carlo arrived they decided to lose\nno more time, and assembled a great army of more than thirty thousand\ninfantry and ten thousand cavalry--having called to their aid every\nGuelph there was in Italy. They consulted whether they should attack\nPistoia or Pisa first, and decided that it would be better to march on\nthe latter--a course, owing to the recent conspiracy, more likely to\nsucceed, and of more advantage to them, because they believed that the\nsurrender of Pistoia would follow the acquisition of Pisa.\n\nIn the early part of May 1328, the Florentines put in motion this army\nand quickly occupied Lastra, Signa, Montelupo, and Empoli, passing from\nthence on to San Miniato. When Castruccio heard of the enormous army\nwhich the Florentines were sending against him, he was in no degree\nalarmed, believing that the time had now arrived when Fortune would\ndeliver the empire of Tuscany into his hands, for he had no reason to\nthink that his enemy would make a better fight, or had better prospects\nof success, than at Pisa or Serravalle. He assembled twenty thousand\nfoot soldiers and four thousand horsemen, and with this army went to\nFucecchio, whilst he sent Pagolo Guinigi to Pisa with five thousand\ninfantry. Fucecchio has a stronger position than any other town in\nthe Pisan district, owing to its situation between the rivers Arno and\nGusciana and its slight elevation above the surrounding plain. Moreover,\nthe enemy could not hinder its being victualled unless they divided\ntheir forces, nor could they approach it either from the direction\nof Lucca or Pisa, nor could they get through to Pisa, or attack\nCastruccio's forces except at a disadvantage. In one case they would\nfind themselves placed between his two armies, the one under his own\ncommand and the other under Pagolo, and in the other case they would\nhave to cross the Arno to get to close quarters with the enemy, an\nundertaking of great hazard. In order to tempt the Florentines to take\nthis latter course, Castruccio withdrew his men from the banks of the\nriver and placed them under the walls of Fucecchio, leaving a wide\nexpanse of land between them and the river.\n\nThe Florentines, having occupied San Miniato, held a council of war to\ndecide whether they should attack Pisa or the army of Castruccio, and,\nhaving weighed the difficulties of both courses, they decided upon the\nlatter. The river Arno was at that time low enough to be fordable, yet\nthe water reached to the shoulders of the infantrymen and to the\nsaddles of the horsemen. On the morning of 10 June 1328, the Florentines\ncommenced the battle by ordering forward a number of cavalry and ten\nthousand infantry. Castruccio, whose plan of action was fixed, and\nwho well knew what to do, at once attacked the Florentines with five\nthousand infantry and three thousand horsemen, not allowing them to\nissue from the river before he charged them; he also sent one thousand\nlight infantry up the river bank, and the same number down the Arno. The\ninfantry of the Florentines were so much impeded by their arms and the\nwater that they were not able to mount the banks of the river, whilst\nthe cavalry had made the passage of the river more difficult for the\nothers, by reason of the few who had crossed having broken up the bed of\nthe river, and this being deep with mud, many of the horses rolled over\nwith their riders and many of them had stuck so fast that they could not\nmove. When the Florentine captains saw the difficulties their men were\nmeeting, they withdrew them and moved higher up the river, hoping to\nfind the river bed less treacherous and the banks more adapted for\nlanding. These men were met at the bank by the forces which Castruccio\nhad already sent forward, who, being light armed with bucklers and\njavelins in their hands, let fly with tremendous shouts into the faces\nand bodies of the cavalry. The horses, alarmed by the noise and the\nwounds, would not move forward, and trampled each other in great\nconfusion. The fight between the men of Castruccio and those of the\nenemy who succeeded in crossing was sharp and terrible; both sides\nfought with the utmost desperation and neither would yield. The soldiers\nof Castruccio fought to drive the others back into the river, whilst the\nFlorentines strove to get a footing on land in order to make room for\nthe others pressing forward, who if they could but get out of the water\nwould be able to fight, and in this obstinate conflict they were urged\non by their captains. Castruccio shouted to his men that these were the\nsame enemies whom they had before conquered at Serravalle, whilst the\nFlorentines reproached each other that the many should be overcome by\nthe few. At length Castruccio, seeing how long the battle had lasted,\nand that both his men and the enemy were utterly exhausted, and that\nboth sides had many killed and wounded, pushed forward another body of\ninfantry to take up a position at the rear of those who were fighting;\nhe then commanded these latter to open their ranks as if they intended\nto retreat, and one part of them to turn to the right and another to\nthe left. This cleared a space of which the Florentines at once took\nadvantage, and thus gained possession of a portion of the battlefield.\nBut when these tired soldiers found themselves at close quarters with\nCastruccio's reserves they could not stand against them and at once fell\nback into the river. The cavalry of either side had not as yet gained\nany decisive advantage over the other, because Castruccio, knowing his\ninferiority in this arm, had commanded his leaders only to stand on the\ndefensive against the attacks of their adversaries, as he hoped that\nwhen he had overcome the infantry he would be able to make short work\nof the cavalry. This fell out as he had hoped, for when he saw the\nFlorentine army driven back across the river he ordered the remainder\nof his infantry to attack the cavalry of the enemy. This they did with\nlance and javelin, and, joined by their own cavalry, fell upon the\nenemy with the greatest fury and soon put him to flight. The Florentine\ncaptains, having seen the difficulty their cavalry had met with in\ncrossing the river, had attempted to make their infantry cross lower\ndown the river, in order to attack the flanks of Castruccio's army.\nBut here, also, the banks were steep and already lined by the men of\nCastruccio, and this movement was quite useless. Thus the Florentines\nwere so completely defeated at all points that scarcely a third of them\nescaped, and Castruccio was again covered with glory. Many captains were\ntaken prisoners, and Carlo, the son of King Ruberto, with Michelagnolo\nFalconi and Taddeo degli Albizzi, the Florentine commissioners, fled to\nEmpoli. If the spoils were great, the slaughter was infinitely greater,\nas might be expected in such a battle. Of the Florentines there fell\ntwenty thousand two hundred and thirty-one men, whilst Castruccio lost\none thousand five hundred and seventy men.\n\nBut Fortune growing envious of the glory of Castruccio took away his\nlife just at the time when she should have preserved it, and thus ruined\nall those plans which for so long a time he had worked to carry into\neffect, and in the successful prosecution of which nothing but death\ncould have stopped him. Castruccio was in the thick of the battle the\nwhole of the day; and when the end of it came, although fatigued and\noverheated, he stood at the gate of Fucecchio to welcome his men on\ntheir return from victory and personally thank them. He was also on the\nwatch for any attempt of the enemy to retrieve the fortunes of the day;\nhe being of the opinion that it was the duty of a good general to be the\nfirst man in the saddle and the last out of it. Here Castruccio stood\nexposed to a wind which often rises at midday on the banks of the Arno,\nand which is often very unhealthy; from this he took a chill, of which\nhe thought nothing, as he was accustomed to such troubles; but it was\nthe cause of his death. On the following night he was attacked with high\nfever, which increased so rapidly that the doctors saw it must prove\nfatal. Castruccio, therefore, called Pagolo Guinigi to him, and\naddressed him as follows:\n\n\"If I could have believed that Fortune would have cut me off in the\nmidst of the career which was leading to that glory which all my\nsuccesses promised, I should have laboured less, and I should have\nleft thee, if a smaller state, at least with fewer enemies and perils,\nbecause I should have been content with the governorships of Lucca and\nPisa. I should neither have subjugated the Pistoians, nor outraged the\nFlorentines with so many injuries. But I would have made both these\npeoples my friends, and I should have lived, if no longer, at least more\npeacefully, and have left you a state without a doubt smaller, but one\nmore secure and established on a surer foundation. But Fortune, who\ninsists upon having the arbitrament of human affairs, did not endow me\nwith sufficient judgment to recognize this from the first, nor the time\nto surmount it. Thou hast heard, for many have told thee, and I have\nnever concealed it, how I entered the house of thy father whilst yet a\nboy--a stranger to all those ambitions which every generous soul should\nfeel--and how I was brought up by him, and loved as though I had been\nborn of his blood; how under his governance I learned to be valiant and\ncapable of availing myself of all that fortune, of which thou hast been\nwitness. When thy good father came to die, he committed thee and all his\npossessions to my care, and I have brought thee up with that love, and\nincreased thy estate with that care, which I was bound to show. And in\norder that thou shouldst not only possess the estate which thy father\nleft, but also that which my fortune and abilities have gained, I have\nnever married, so that the love of children should never deflect my mind\nfrom that gratitude which I owed to the children of thy father. Thus I\nleave thee a vast estate, of which I am well content, but I am deeply\nconcerned, inasmuch as I leave it thee unsettled and insecure. Thou hast\nthe city of Lucca on thy hands, which will never rest contented under\nthy government. Thou hast also Pisa, where the men are of nature\nchangeable and unreliable, who, although they may be sometimes held\nin subjection, yet they will ever disdain to serve under a Lucchese.\nPistoia is also disloyal to thee, she being eaten up with factions and\ndeeply incensed against thy family by reason of the wrongs recently\ninflicted upon them. Thou hast for neighbours the offended Florentines,\ninjured by us in a thousand ways, but not utterly destroyed, who\nwill hail the news of my death with more delight than they would the\nacquisition of all Tuscany. In the Emperor and in the princes of Milan\nthou canst place no reliance, for they are far distant, slow, and their\nhelp is very long in coming. Therefore, thou hast no hope in anything\nbut in thine own abilities, and in the memory of my valour, and in the\nprestige which this latest victory has brought thee; which, as thou\nknowest how to use it with prudence, will assist thee to come to terms\nwith the Florentines, who, as they are suffering under this great\ndefeat, should be inclined to listen to thee. And whereas I have sought\nto make them my enemies, because I believed that war with them would\nconduce to my power and glory, thou hast every inducement to make\nfriends of them, because their alliance will bring thee advantages\nand security. It is of the greatest important in this world that a man\nshould know himself, and the measure of his own strength and means; and\nhe who knows that he has not a genius for fighting must learn how to\ngovern by the arts of peace. And it will be well for thee to rule\nthy conduct by my counsel, and to learn in this way to enjoy what my\nlife-work and dangers have gained; and in this thou wilt easily succeed\nwhen thou hast learnt to believe that what I have told thee is true. And\nthou wilt be doubly indebted to me, in that I have left thee this realm\nand have taught thee how to keep it.\"\n\nAfter this there came to Castruccio those citizens of Pisa, Pistoia, and\nLucca, who had been fighting at his side, and whilst recommending Pagolo\nto them, and making them swear obedience to him as his successor, he\ndied. He left a happy memory to those who had known him, and no\nprince of those times was ever loved with such devotion as he was. His\nobsequies were celebrated with every sign of mourning, and he was buried\nin San Francesco at Lucca. Fortune was not so friendly to Pagolo Guinigi\nas she had been to Castruccio, for he had not the abilities. Not long\nafter the death of Castruccio, Pagolo lost Pisa, and then Pistoia, and\nonly with difficulty held on to Lucca. This latter city continued in the\nfamily of Guinigi until the time of the great-grandson of Pagolo.\n\nFrom what has been related here it will be seen that Castruccio was a\nman of exceptional abilities, not only measured by men of his own\ntime, but also by those of an earlier date. In stature he was above\nthe ordinary height, and perfectly proportioned. He was of a gracious\npresence, and he welcomed men with such urbanity that those who spoke\nwith him rarely left him displeased. His hair was inclined to be red,\nand he wore it cut short above the ears, and, whether it rained or\nsnowed, he always went without a hat. He was delightful among friends,\nbut terrible to his enemies; just to his subjects; ready to play false\nwith the unfaithful, and willing to overcome by fraud those whom he\ndesired to subdue, because he was wont to say that it was the victory\nthat brought the glory, not the methods of achieving it. No one was\nbolder in facing danger, none more prudent in extricating himself. He\nwas accustomed to say that men ought to attempt everything and fear\nnothing; that God is a lover of strong men, because one always sees that\nthe weak are chastised by the strong. He was also wonderfully sharp or\nbiting though courteous in his answers; and as he did not look for any\nindulgence in this way of speaking from others, so he was not angered\nwith others did not show it to him. It has often happened that he has\nlistened quietly when others have spoken sharply to him, as on the\nfollowing occasions. He had caused a ducat to be given for a partridge,\nand was taken to task for doing so by a friend, to whom Castruccio had\nsaid: \"You would not have given more than a penny.\" \"That is true,\"\nanswered the friend. Then said Castruccio to him: \"A ducat is much less\nto me.\" Having about him a flatterer on whom he had spat to show that\nhe scorned him, the flatterer said to him: \"Fisherman are willing to let\nthe waters of the sea saturate them in order that they may take a few\nlittle fishes, and I allow myself to be wetted by spittle that I may\ncatch a whale\"; and this was not only heard by Castruccio with patience\nbut rewarded. When told by a priest that it was wicked for him to live\nso sumptuously, Castruccio said: \"If that be a vice then you should\nnot fare so splendidly at the feasts of our saints.\" Passing through a\nstreet he saw a young man as he came out of a house of ill fame blush at\nbeing seen by Castruccio, and said to him: \"Thou shouldst not be ashamed\nwhen thou comest out, but when thou goest into such places.\" A friend\ngave him a very curiously tied knot to undo and was told: \"Fool, do\nyou think that I wish to untie a thing which gave so much trouble to\nfasten.\" Castruccio said to one who professed to be a philosopher: \"You\nare like the dogs who always run after those who will give them the best\nto eat,\" and was answered: \"We are rather like the doctors who go to the\nhouses of those who have the greatest need of them.\" Going by water from\nPisa to Leghorn, Castruccio was much disturbed by a dangerous storm that\nsprang up, and was reproached for cowardice by one of those with him,\nwho said that he did not fear anything. Castruccio answered that he\ndid not wonder at that, since every man valued his soul for what is was\nworth. Being asked by one what he ought to do to gain estimation, he\nsaid: \"When thou goest to a banquet take care that thou dost not seat\none piece of wood upon another.\" To a person who was boasting that he\nhad read many things, Castruccio said: \"He knows better than to boast\nof remembering many things.\" Someone bragged that he could drink much\nwithout becoming intoxicated. Castruccio replied: \"An ox does the\nsame.\" Castruccio was acquainted with a girl with whom he had intimate\nrelations, and being blamed by a friend who told him that it was\nundignified for him to be taken in by a woman, he said: \"She has not\ntaken me in, I have taken her.\" Being also blamed for eating very dainty\nfoods, he answered: \"Thou dost not spend as much as I do?\" and being\ntold that it was true, he continued: \"Then thou art more avaricious\nthan I am gluttonous.\" Being invited by Taddeo Bernardi, a very rich and\nsplendid citizen of Luca, to supper, he went to the house and was shown\nby Taddeo into a chamber hung with silk and paved with fine stones\nrepresenting flowers and foliage of the most beautiful colouring.\nCastruccio gathered some saliva in his mouth and spat it out upon\nTaddeo, and seeing him much disturbed by this, said to him: \"I knew not\nwhere to spit in order to offend thee less.\" Being asked how Caesar\ndied he said: \"God willing I will die as he did.\" Being one night in the\nhouse of one of his gentlemen where many ladies were assembled, he was\nreproved by one of his friends for dancing and amusing himself with\nthem more than was usual in one of his station, so he said: \"He who is\nconsidered wise by day will not be considered a fool at night.\" A person\ncame to demand a favour of Castruccio, and thinking he was not listening\nto his plea threw himself on his knees to the ground, and being sharply\nreproved by Castruccio, said: \"Thou art the reason of my acting thus for\nthou hast thy ears in thy feet,\" whereupon he obtained double the favour\nhe had asked. Castruccio used to say that the way to hell was an easy\none, seeing that it was in a downward direction and you travelled\nblindfolded. Being asked a favour by one who used many superfluous\nwords, he said to him: \"When you have another request to make, send\nsomeone else to make it.\" Having been wearied by a similar man with a\nlong oration who wound up by saying: \"Perhaps I have fatigued you by\nspeaking so long,\" Castruccio said: \"You have not, because I have not\nlistened to a word you said.\" He used to say of one who had been a\nbeautiful child and who afterwards became a fine man, that he was\ndangerous, because he first took the husbands from the wives and now he\ntook the wives from their husbands. To an envious man who laughed, he\nsaid: \"Do you laugh because you are successful or because another is\nunfortunate?\" Whilst he was still in the charge of Messer Francesco\nGuinigi, one of his companions said to him: \"What shall I give you if\nyou will let me give you a blow on the nose?\" Castruccio answered:\n\"A helmet.\" Having put to death a citizen of Lucca who had been\ninstrumental in raising him to power, and being told that he had done\nwrong to kill one of his old friends, he answered that people deceived\nthemselves; he had only killed a new enemy. Castruccio praised greatly\nthose men who intended to take a wife and then did not do so, saying\nthat they were like men who said they would go to sea, and then refused\nwhen the time came. He said that it always struck him with surprise that\nwhilst men in buying an earthen or glass vase would sound it first to\nlearn if it were good, yet in choosing a wife they were content with\nonly looking at her. He was once asked in what manner he would wish to\nbe buried when he died, and answered: \"With the face turned downwards,\nfor I know when I am gone this country will be turned upside down.\" On\nbeing asked if it had ever occurred to him to become a friar in order to\nsave his soul, he answered that it had not, because it appeared strange\nto him that Fra Lazerone should go to Paradise and Uguccione della\nFaggiuola to the Inferno. He was once asked when should a man eat to\npreserve his health, and replied: \"If the man be rich let him eat\nwhen he is hungry; if he be poor, then when he can.\" Seeing one of his\ngentlemen make a member of his family lace him up, he said to him: \"I\npray God that you will let him feed you also.\" Seeing that someone had\nwritten upon his house in Latin the words: \"May God preserve this house\nfrom the wicked,\" he said, \"The owner must never go in.\" Passing through\none of the streets he saw a small house with a very large door, and\nremarked: \"That house will fly through the door.\" He was having a\ndiscussion with the ambassador of the King of Naples concerning the\nproperty of some banished nobles, when a dispute arose between them, and\nthe ambassador asked him if he had no fear of the king. \"Is this king of\nyours a bad man or a good one?\" asked Castruccio, and was told that he\nwas a good one, whereupon he said, \"Why should you suggest that I should\nbe afraid of a good man?\"\n\nI could recount many other stories of his sayings both witty and\nweighty, but I think that the above will be sufficient testimony to\nhis high qualities. He lived forty-four years, and was in every way a\nprince. And as he was surrounded by many evidences of his good fortune,\nso he also desired to have near him some memorials of his bad fortune;\ntherefore the manacles with which he was chained in prison are to be\nseen to this day fixed up in the tower of his residence, where they were\nplaced by him to testify forever to his days of adversity. As in\nhis life he was inferior neither to Philip of Macedon, the father of\nAlexander, nor to Scipio of Rome, so he died in the same year of his\nage as they did, and he would doubtless have excelled both of them had\nFortune decreed that he should be born, not in Lucca, but in Macedonia\nor Rome.\n\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The Prince begins with an address to Lorenzo de Medici, in which Machiavelli explains that he is seeking favor with the prince by offering him some of his knowledge. He then proceeds to classify the various kinds of states: republics, hereditary princedoms, brand-new princedoms, and mixed principalities. New states are his primary focus, for those are the hardest to deal with. A conquered state whose original prince was its sole ruler is difficult to conquer, but easy to maintain; a conquered state in which the prince shared power with the barons is easy to conquer, but difficult to maintain. When possible, a prince should strive to rise to power on his own merits and with his own arms. Relying on friends, good luck, or other people's arms may make the rise easier, but holding onto his newfound power will prove a difficult task. Machiavelli devotes almost an entire chapter to Cesare Borgia, who rose to prominence largely through connections and his father's help, but was crafty enough to carve out his own niche - though he wound up failing in the end. Princes who rise to the throne through crime are another matter altogether: Machiavelli condemns them as wicked, and yet his words betray his admiration for their cleverness. Cruelty, when well-used, can be justified. According to Machiavelli, reliance on mercenaries and auxiliaries for troops is a grave mistake. A prince must lay strong foundations - good laws and good arms - and if the latter is lacking, the former is rendered irrelevant. A state needs both to survive. Mercenaries are disloyal and divided; foreign auxiliaries come already united under another master, and so are in a way even more dangerous. The prince himself should be a student of war and an avid reader of military history. Reputation is another important element to consider. The front princes put on to appeal to the populace is often a lie, as Machiavelli notes; the better the liar, the better the prince. That said, giving out money when it is fiscally irresponsible, just to appear generous, is a mistake; displaying excessive mercy in order to garner affection can prove fatal. Better safe than sorry; better to be feared than to be loved. Machiavelli closes The Prince with a meditation on luck and its role in human affairs, and a call to unite Italy. He addresses much of this last argument to Lorenzo de Medici, thereby imposing some semblance of symmetry on his book's structure and honing his theoretical musings into a direct exhortation.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "How to be a prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli to his BFF Lorenzo de' Medici: Step 1: get yourself a kingdom, and preferably have your own army while doing it since mercenaries are bad news. Be careful when choosing a place to take over. Even though it will be harder to conquer at first, choose the land of a king with no powerful barons or ministers, because it will be easiest to maintain in the long run. Make sure you kill anyone who might oppose you before continuing. And choose a role model. Step 2: keep your kingdom secure by not allowing people as strong as you are into the neighborhood. Also, make friends with your neighbors. Don't let people hate you, but don't worry too much if they grumble a bit. Maintain a reputation for awesomeness. When in doubt, think of Cesare Borgia. P.S. Pleasie weasie come rule Italy using the steps Machiavelli showed you. You can do it! Okay, okay, we'll break it down a little more: Chapters 1-4: States can be republics or kingdoms, old or new. The easiest to rule are old hereditary kingdoms, lands that are passed down from father to son . Basically, instead of passing along their 2001 Toyota Camry, your parents give you a kingdom. You'd have to be an idiot to have problems ruling one of these. Because they're so easy to rule, they are hard to take. The opposite is true of states that are easy to take: they tend to be hard to rule. The best way to take old hereditary kingdoms is by killing the old monarchy. Every last one. Chapters 5-7: You also need violence to take self-governed republics, because they will rebel if you don't crush them. Just remember not to keep being violent. Get it over with so you can start being nice and people won't hate you. Never let your people hate you. Lie, cheat, steal--just don't become hated. And make sure you have your own army. Chapters 10-14: Mercenaries and auxiliaries are a waste of time and dangerous, to boot. If you have a strong army, and your people love you, no one can touch you. They won't even think about it. On that topic, you need to run your army, so war needs to be on your mind all day every day. You need to be on the cutting edge of war techniques and technology. By the way, a word on fortresses: they look cool and everything, but they can also make people resent you. They're really only useful if you are afraid of your people. Chapters 16-23: Throw parties for your people. Listen to your ministers but avoid brown-noses. Chapters 24-26: Finally, Italy is not doing so great right now because its rulers didn't follow Machiavelli's rules. They blame bad luck, but you can always prepare for luck, and they didn't. Don't be like them. Be awesome.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "cliffnotes", "text": "The Prince is an extended analysis of how to acquire and maintain political power. It includes 26 chapters and an opening dedication to Lorenzo de Medici. The dedication declares Machiavelli's intention to discuss in plain language the conduct of great men and the principles of princely government. He does so in hope of pleasing and enlightening the Medici family. The book's 26 chapters can be divided into four sections: Chapters 1-11 discuss the different types of principalities or states, Chapters 12-14 discuss the different types of armies and the proper conduct of a prince as military leader, Chapters 15-23 discuss the character and behavior of the prince, and Chapters 24-26 discuss Italy's desperate political situation. The final chapter is a plea for the Medici family to supply the prince who will lead Italy out of humiliation. The types of principalities Machiavelli lists four types of principalities: Hereditary principalities, which are inherited by the ruler Mixed principalities, territories that are annexed to the ruler's existing territories New principalities, which may be acquired by several methods: by one's own power, by the power of others, by criminal acts or extreme cruelty, or by the will of the people Ecclesiastical principalities, namely the Papal States belonging to the Catholic church The types of armies A prince must always pay close attention to military affairs if he wants to remain in power. Machiavelli lists four types of armies: Mercenaries or hired soldiers, which are dangerous and unreliable Auxiliaries, troops that are loaned to you by other rulers--also dangerous and unreliable Native troops, composed of one's own citizens or subjects--by far the most desirable kind Mixed troops, a combination of native troops and mercenaries or auxiliaries--still less desirable than a completely native army The character and behavior of the prince Machiavelli recommends the following character and behavior for princes: It is better to be stingy than generous. It is better to be cruel than merciful. It is better to break promises if keeping them would be against one's interests. Princes must avoid making themselves hated and despised; the goodwill of the people is a better defense than any fortress. Princes should undertake great projects to enhance their reputation. Princes should choose wise advisors and avoid flatterers. Italy's political situation Machiavelli outlines and recommends the following: The rulers of Italy have lost their states by ignoring the political and military principles Machiavelli enumerates. Fortune controls half of human affairs, but free will controls the rest, leaving the prince free to act. However, few princes can adapt their actions to the times. The final chapter is an exhortation to the Medici family to follow Machiavelli's principles and thereby free Italy from foreign domination.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "Machiavelli composed The Prince as a practical guide for ruling . This goal is evident from the very beginning, the dedication of the book to Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence. The Prince is not particularly theoretical or abstract; its prose is simple and its logic straightforward. These traits underscore Machiavelli's desire to provide practical, easily understandable advice. The first two chapters describe the book's scope. The Prince is concerned with autocratic regimes, not with republican regimes. The first chapter defines the various types of principalities and princes; in doing so, it constructs an outline for the rest of the book. Chapter III comprehensively describes how to maintain composite principalities--that is, principalities that are newly created or annexed from another power, so that the prince is not familiar to the people he rules. Chapter III also introduces the book's main concerns--power politics, warcraft, and popular goodwill--in an encapsulated form. Chapters IV through XIV constitute the heart of the book. Machiavelli offers practical advice on a variety of matters, including the advantages and disadvantages that attend various routes to power, how to acquire and hold new states, how to deal with internal insurrection, how to make alliances, and how to maintain a strong military. Implicit in these chapters are Machiavelli's views regarding free will, human nature, and ethics, but these ideas do not manifest themselves explicitly as topics of discussion until later. Chapters XV to XXIII focus on the qualities of the prince himself. Broadly speaking, this discussion is guided by Machiavelli's underlying view that lofty ideals translate into bad government. This premise is especially true with respect to personal virtue. Certain virtues may be admired for their own sake, but for a prince to act in accordance with virtue is often detrimental to the state. Similarly, certain vices may be frowned upon, but vicious actions are sometimes indispensable to the good of the state. Machiavelli combines this line of reasoning with another: the theme that obtaining the goodwill of the populace is the best way to maintain power. Thus, the appearance of virtue may be more important than true virtue, which may be seen as a liability. The final sections of The Prince link the book to a specific historical context: Italy's disunity. Machiavelli sets down his account and explanation of the failure of past Italian rulers and concludes with an impassioned plea to the future rulers of the nation. Machiavelli asserts the belief that only Lorenzo de' Medici, to whom the book is dedicated, can restore Italy's honor and pride.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "1200", "title": "Gargantua and Pantagruel", "text": "The Author's Prologue to the First Book.\n\nMost noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified\nblades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my writings), Alcibiades,\nin that dialogue of Plato's, which is entitled The Banquet, whilst he was\nsetting forth the praises of his schoolmaster Socrates (without all\nquestion the prince of philosophers), amongst other discourses to that\npurpose, said that he resembled the Silenes.  Silenes of old were little\nboxes, like those we now may see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on\nthe outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese,\nhorned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other\nsuch-like counterfeited pictures at discretion, to excite people unto\nlaughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was\nwont to do; but within those capricious caskets were carefully preserved and\nkept many rich jewels and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergris, amomon, musk,\ncivet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other things of great\nprice.  Just such another thing was Socrates.  For to have eyed his outside,\nand esteemed of him by his exterior appearance, you would not have given the\npeel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous in his\ngesture.  He had a sharp pointed nose, with the look of a bull, and\ncountenance of a fool:  he was in his carriage simple, boorish in his\napparel, in fortune poor, unhappy in his wives, unfit for all offices in the\ncommonwealth, always laughing, tippling, and merrily carousing to everyone,\nwith continual gibes and jeers, the better by those means to conceal his\ndivine knowledge.  Now, opening this box you would have found within it a\nheavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human understanding, an admirable\nvirtue, matchless learning, invincible courage, unimitable sobriety, certain\ncontentment of mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible misregard of all\nthat for which men commonly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil\nand turmoil themselves.\n\nWhereunto (in your opinion) doth this little flourish of a preamble tend?\nFor so much as you, my good disciples, and some other jolly fools of ease\nand leisure, reading the pleasant titles of some books of our invention, as\nGargantua, Pantagruel, Whippot (Fessepinte.), the Dignity of Codpieces, of\nPease and Bacon with a Commentary, &c., are too ready to judge that there\nis nothing in them but jests, mockeries, lascivious discourse, and\nrecreative lies; because the outside (which is the title) is usually,\nwithout any farther inquiry, entertained with scoffing and derision.  But\ntruly it is very unbeseeming to make so slight account of the works of men,\nseeing yourselves avouch that it is not the habit makes the monk, many\nbeing monasterially accoutred, who inwardly are nothing less than monachal,\nand that there are of those that wear Spanish capes, who have but little of\nthe valour of Spaniards in them.  Therefore is it, that you must open the\nbook, and seriously consider of the matter treated in it.  Then shall you\nfind that it containeth things of far higher value than the box did\npromise; that is to say, that the subject thereof is not so foolish as by\nthe title at the first sight it would appear to be.\n\nAnd put the case, that in the literal sense you meet with purposes merry\nand solacious enough, and consequently very correspondent to their\ninscriptions, yet must not you stop there as at the melody of the charming\nsyrens, but endeavour to interpret that in a sublimer sense which possibly\nyou intended to have spoken in the jollity of your heart.  Did you ever\npick the lock of a cupboard to steal a bottle of wine out of it?  Tell me\ntruly, and, if you did, call to mind the countenance which then you had.\nOr, did you ever see a dog with a marrowbone in his mouth,--the beast of\nall other, says Plato, lib. 2, de Republica, the most philosophical?  If\nyou have seen him, you might have remarked with what devotion and\ncircumspectness he wards and watcheth it:  with what care he keeps it:  how\nfervently he holds it:  how prudently he gobbets it:  with what affection\nhe breaks it:  and with what diligence he sucks it.  To what end all this?\nWhat moveth him to take all these pains?  What are the hopes of his labour?\nWhat doth he expect to reap thereby?  Nothing but a little marrow.  True it\nis, that this little is more savoury and delicious than the great\nquantities of other sorts of meat, because the marrow (as Galen testifieth,\n5. facult. nat. & 11. de usu partium) is a nourishment most perfectly\nelaboured by nature.\n\nIn imitation of this dog, it becomes you to be wise, to smell, feel and\nhave in estimation these fair goodly books, stuffed with high conceptions,\nwhich, though seemingly easy in the pursuit, are in the cope and encounter\nsomewhat difficult.  And then, like him, you must, by a sedulous lecture,\nand frequent meditation, break the bone, and suck out the marrow,--that is,\nmy allegorical sense, or the things I to myself propose to be signified by\nthese Pythagorical symbols, with assured hope, that in so doing you will at\nlast attain to be both well-advised and valiant by the reading of them:\nfor in the perusal of this treatise you shall find another kind of taste,\nand a doctrine of a more profound and abstruse consideration, which will\ndisclose unto you the most glorious sacraments and dreadful mysteries, as\nwell in what concerneth your religion, as matters of the public state, and\nlife economical.\n\nDo you believe, upon your conscience, that Homer, whilst he was a-couching\nhis Iliads and Odysses, had any thought upon those allegories, which\nPlutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius, Cornutus squeezed out of him,\nand which Politian filched again from them?  If you trust it, with neither\nhand nor foot do you come near to my opinion, which judgeth them to have\nbeen as little dreamed of by Homer, as the Gospel sacraments were by Ovid\nin his Metamorphoses, though a certain gulligut friar (Frere Lubin\ncroquelardon.) and true bacon-picker would have undertaken to prove it, if\nperhaps he had met with as very fools as himself, (and as the proverb says)\na lid worthy of such a kettle.\n\nIf you give no credit thereto, why do not you the same in these jovial new\nchronicles of mine?  Albeit when I did dictate them, I thought upon no more\nthan you, who possibly were drinking the whilst as I was.  For in the\ncomposing of this lordly book, I never lost nor bestowed any more, nor any\nother time than what was appointed to serve me for taking of my bodily\nrefection, that is, whilst I was eating and drinking.  And indeed that is\nthe fittest and most proper hour wherein to write these high matters and\ndeep sciences:  as Homer knew very well, the paragon of all philologues,\nand Ennius, the father of the Latin poets, as Horace calls him, although a\ncertain sneaking jobernol alleged that his verses smelled more of the wine\nthan oil.\n\nSo saith a turlupin or a new start-up grub of my books, but a turd for him.\nThe fragrant odour of the wine, O how much more dainty, pleasant, laughing\n(Riant, priant, friant.), celestial and delicious it is, than that smell of\noil!  And I will glory as much when it is said of me, that I have spent\nmore on wine than oil, as did Demosthenes, when it was told him, that his\nexpense on oil was greater than on wine.  I truly hold it for an honour and\npraise to be called and reputed a Frolic Gualter and a Robin Goodfellow;\nfor under this name am I welcome in all choice companies of Pantagruelists.\nIt was upbraided to Demosthenes by an envious surly knave, that his\nOrations did smell like the sarpler or wrapper of a foul and filthy\noil-vessel.  For this cause interpret you all my deeds and sayings in the\nperfectest sense; reverence the cheese-like brain that feeds you with these\nfair billevezees and trifling jollities, and do what lies in you to keep me\nalways merry.  Be frolic now, my lads, cheer up your hearts, and joyfully\nread the rest, with all the ease of your body and profit of your reins.\nBut hearken, joltheads, you viedazes, or dickens take ye, remember to drink\na health to me for the like favour again, and I will pledge you instantly,\nTout ares-metys.\n\n\n\nRabelais to the Reader.\n\nGood friends, my Readers, who peruse this Book,\nBe not offended, whilst on it you look:\nDenude yourselves of all depraved affection,\nFor it contains no badness, nor infection:\n'Tis true that it brings forth to you no birth\nOf any value, but in point of mirth;\nThinking therefore how sorrow might your mind\nConsume, I could no apter subject find;\nOne inch of joy surmounts of grief a span;\nBecause to laugh is proper to the man.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the Genealogy and Antiquity of Gargantua.\n\nI must refer you to the great chronicle of Pantagruel for the knowledge of\nthat genealogy and antiquity of race by which Gargantua is come unto us.\nIn it you may understand more at large how the giants were born in this\nworld, and how from them by a direct line issued Gargantua, the father of\nPantagruel:  and do not take it ill, if for this time I pass by it,\nalthough the subject be such, that the oftener it were remembered, the more\nit would please your worshipful Seniorias; according to which you have the\nauthority of Plato in Philebo and Gorgias; and of Flaccus, who says that\nthere are some kinds of purposes (such as these are without doubt), which,\nthe frequentlier they be repeated, still prove the more delectable.\n\nWould to God everyone had as certain knowledge of his genealogy since the\ntime of the ark of Noah until this age.  I think many are at this day\nemperors, kings, dukes, princes, and popes on the earth, whose extraction\nis from some porters and pardon-pedlars; as, on the contrary, many are now\npoor wandering beggars, wretched and miserable, who are descended of the\nblood and lineage of great kings and emperors, occasioned, as I conceive\nit, by the transport and revolution of kingdoms and empires, from the\nAssyrians to the Medes, from the Medes to the Persians, from the Persians\nto the Macedonians, from the Macedonians to the Romans, from the Romans to\nthe Greeks, from the Greeks to the French.\n\nAnd to give you some hint concerning myself, who speaks unto you, I cannot\nthink but I am come of the race of some rich king or prince in former\ntimes; for never yet saw you any man that had a greater desire to be a\nking, and to be rich, than I have, and that only that I may make good\ncheer, do nothing, nor care for anything, and plentifully enrich my\nfriends, and all honest and learned men.  But herein do I comfort myself,\nthat in the other world I shall be so, yea and greater too than at this\npresent I dare wish.  As for you, with the same or a better conceit\nconsolate yourselves in your distresses, and drink fresh if you can come by\nit.\n\nTo return to our wethers, I say that by the sovereign gift of heaven, the\nantiquity and genealogy of Gargantua hath been reserved for our use more\nfull and perfect than any other except that of the Messias, whereof I mean\nnot to speak; for it belongs not unto my purpose, and the devils, that is\nto say, the false accusers and dissembled gospellers, will therein oppose\nme.  This genealogy was found by John Andrew in a meadow, which he had near\nthe pole-arch, under the olive-tree, as you go to Narsay:  where, as he was\nmaking cast up some ditches, the diggers with their mattocks struck against\na great brazen tomb, and unmeasurably long, for they could never find the\nend thereof, by reason that it entered too far within the sluices of\nVienne.  Opening this tomb in a certain place thereof, sealed on the top\nwith the mark of a goblet, about which was written in Etrurian letters Hic\nBibitur, they found nine flagons set in such order as they use to rank\ntheir kyles in Gascony, of which that which was placed in the middle had\nunder it a big, fat, great, grey, pretty, small, mouldy, little pamphlet,\nsmelling stronger, but no better than roses.  In that book the said\ngenealogy was found written all at length, in a chancery hand, not in\npaper, not in parchment, nor in wax, but in the bark of an elm-tree, yet so\nworn with the long tract of time, that hardly could three letters together\nbe there perfectly discerned.\n\nI (though unworthy) was sent for thither, and with much help of those\nspectacles, whereby the art of reading dim writings, and letters that do\nnot clearly appear to the sight, is practised, as Aristotle teacheth it,\ndid translate the book as you may see in your Pantagruelizing, that is to\nsay, in drinking stiffly to your own heart's desire, and reading the\ndreadful and horrific acts of Pantagruel.  At the end of the book there was\na little treatise entitled the Antidoted Fanfreluches, or a Galimatia of\nextravagant conceits.  The rats and moths, or (that I may not lie) other\nwicked beasts, had nibbled off the beginning:  the rest I have hereto\nsubjoined, for the reverence I bear to antiquity.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Antidoted Fanfreluches:  or, a Galimatia of extravagant Conceits found\nin an ancient Monument.\n\nNo sooner did the Cymbrians' overcomer\nPass through the air to shun the dew of summer,\nBut at his coming straight great tubs were fill'd,\nWith pure fresh butter down in showers distill'd:\nWherewith when water'd was his grandam, Hey,\nAloud he cried, Fish it, sir, I pray y';\nBecause his beard is almost all beray'd;\nOr, that he would hold to 'm a scale, he pray'd.\n\nTo lick his slipper, some told was much better,\nThan to gain pardons, and the merit greater.\nIn th' interim a crafty chuff approaches,\nFrom the depth issued, where they fish for roaches;\nWho said, Good sirs, some of them let us save,\nThe eel is here, and in this hollow cave\nYou'll find, if that our looks on it demur,\nA great waste in the bottom of his fur.\n\nTo read this chapter when he did begin,\nNothing but a calf's horns were found therein;\nI feel, quoth he, the mitre which doth hold\nMy head so chill, it makes my brains take cold.\nBeing with the perfume of a turnip warm'd,\nTo stay by chimney hearths himself he arm'd,\nProvided that a new thill-horse they made\nOf every person of a hair-brain'd head.\n\nThey talked of the bunghole of Saint Knowles,\nOf Gilbathar and thousand other holes,\nIf they might be reduced t' a scarry stuff,\nSuch as might not be subject to the cough:\nSince ev'ry man unseemly did it find,\nTo see them gaping thus at ev'ry wind:\nFor, if perhaps they handsomely were closed,\nFor pledges they to men might be exposed.\n\nIn this arrest by Hercules the raven\nWas flayed at her (his) return from Lybia haven.\nWhy am not I, said Minos, there invited?\nUnless it be myself, not one's omitted:\nAnd then it is their mind, I do no more\nOf frogs and oysters send them any store:\nIn case they spare my life and prove but civil,\nI give their sale of distaffs to the devil.\n\nTo quell him comes Q.B., who limping frets\nAt the safe pass of tricksy crackarets:\nThe boulter, the grand Cyclops' cousin, those\nDid massacre, whilst each one wiped his nose:\nFew ingles in this fallow ground are bred,\nBut on a tanner's mill are winnowed.\nRun thither all of you, th' alarms sound clear,\nYou shall have more than you had the last year.\n\nShort while thereafter was the bird of Jove\nResolved to speak, though dismal it should prove;\nYet was afraid, when he saw them in ire,\nThey should o'erthrow quite flat down dead th' empire.\nHe rather choosed the fire from heaven to steal,\nTo boats where were red herrings put to sale;\nThan to be calm 'gainst those, who strive to brave us,\nAnd to the Massorets' fond words enslave us.\n\nAll this at last concluded gallantly,\nIn spite of Ate and her hern-like thigh,\nWho, sitting, saw Penthesilea ta'en,\nIn her old age, for a cress-selling quean.\nEach one cried out, Thou filthy collier toad,\nDoth it become thee to be found abroad?\nThou hast the Roman standard filch'd away,\nWhich they in rags of parchment did display.\n\nJuno was born, who, under the rainbow,\nWas a-bird-catching with her duck below:\nWhen her with such a grievous trick they plied\nThat she had almost been bethwacked by it.\nThe bargain was, that, of that throatful, she\nShould of Proserpina have two eggs free;\nAnd if that she thereafter should be found,\nShe to a hawthorn hill should be fast bound.\n\nSeven months thereafter, lacking twenty-two,\nHe, that of old did Carthage town undo,\nDid bravely midst them all himself advance,\nRequiring of them his inheritance;\nAlthough they justly made up the division,\nAccording to the shoe-welt-law's decision,\nBy distributing store of brews and beef\nTo these poor fellows that did pen the brief.\n\nBut th' year will come, sign of a Turkish bow,\nFive spindles yarn'd, and three pot-bottoms too,\nWherein of a discourteous king the dock\nShall pepper'd be under an hermit's frock.\nAh! that for one she hypocrite you must\nPermit so many acres to be lost!\nCease, cease, this vizard may become another,\nWithdraw yourselves unto the serpent's brother.\n\n'Tis in times past, that he who is shall reign\nWith his good friends in peace now and again.\nNo rash nor heady prince shall then rule crave,\nEach good will its arbitrement shall have;\nAnd the joy, promised of old as doom\nTo the heaven's guests, shall in its beacon come.\nThen shall the breeding mares, that benumb'd were,\nLike royal palfreys ride triumphant there.\n\nAnd this continue shall from time to time,\nTill Mars be fetter'd for an unknown crime;\nThen shall one come, who others will surpass,\nDelightful, pleasing, matchless, full of grace.\nCheer up your hearts, approach to this repast,\nAll trusty friends of mine; for he's deceased,\nWho would not for a world return again,\nSo highly shall time past be cried up then.\n\nHe who was made of wax shall lodge each member\nClose by the hinges of a block of timber.\nWe then no more shall Master, master, whoot,\nThe swagger, who th' alarum bell holds out;\nCould one seize on the dagger which he bears,\nHeads would be free from tingling in the ears,\nTo baffle the whole storehouse of abuses.\nThe thus farewell Apollo and the Muses.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua was carried eleven months in his mother's belly.\n\nGrangousier was a good fellow in his time, and notable jester; he loved to\ndrink neat, as much as any man that then was in the world, and would\nwillingly eat salt meat.  To this intent he was ordinarily well furnished\nwith gammons of bacon, both of Westphalia, Mayence and Bayonne, with store\nof dried neat's tongues, plenty of links, chitterlings and puddings in\ntheir season; together with salt beef and mustard, a good deal of hard roes\nof powdered mullet called botargos, great provision of sausages, not of\nBolonia (for he feared the Lombard Boccone), but of Bigorre, Longaulnay,\nBrene, and Rouargue.  In the vigour of his age he married Gargamelle,\ndaughter to the King of the Parpaillons, a jolly pug, and well-mouthed\nwench.  These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully\nrubbing and frotting their bacon 'gainst one another, in so far, that at\nlast she became great with child of a fair son, and went with him unto the\neleventh month; for so long, yea longer, may a woman carry her great belly,\nespecially when it is some masterpiece of nature, and a person\npredestinated to the performance, in his due time, of great exploits.  As\nHomer says, that the child, which Neptune begot upon the nymph, was born a\nwhole year after the conception, that is, in the twelfth month.  For, as\nAulus Gellius saith, lib. 3, this long time was suitable to the majesty of\nNeptune, that in it the child might receive his perfect form.  For the like\nreason Jupiter made the night, wherein he lay with Alcmena, last\nforty-eight hours, a shorter time not being sufficient for the forging of\nHercules, who cleansed the world of the monsters and tyrants wherewith it\nwas suppressed.  My masters, the ancient Pantagruelists, have confirmed\nthat which I say, and withal declared it to be not only possible, but also\nmaintained the lawful birth and legitimation of the infant born of a woman\nin the eleventh month after the decease of her husband.  Hypocrates, lib.\nde alimento.  Plinius, lib. 7, cap. 5.  Plautus, in his Cistelleria.\nMarcus Varro, in his satire inscribed The Testament, alleging to this\npurpose the authority of Aristotle.  Censorinus, lib. de die natali.\nArist. lib. 7, cap. 3 & 4, de natura animalium.  Gellius, lib. 3, cap. 16.\nServius, in his exposition upon this verse of Virgil's eclogues, Matri\nlonga decem, &c., and a thousand other fools, whose number hath been\nincreased by the lawyers ff. de suis, et legit l. intestato. paragrapho.\nfin. and in Auth. de restitut. et ea quae parit in xi mense.  Moreover upon\nthese grounds they have foisted in their Robidilardic, or Lapiturolive law.\nGallus ff. de lib. et posth. l. sept. ff. de stat. hom., and some other\nlaws, which at this time I dare not name.  By means whereof the honest\nwidows may without danger play at the close buttock game with might and\nmain, and as hard as they can, for the space of the first two months after\nthe decease of their husbands.  I pray you, my good lusty springal lads, if\nyou find any of these females, that are worth the pains of untying the\ncodpiece-point, get up, ride upon them, and bring them to me; for, if they\nhappen within the third month to conceive, the child should be heir to the\ndeceased, if, before he died, he had no other children, and the mother\nshall pass for an honest woman.\n\nWhen she is known to have conceived, thrust forward boldly, spare her not,\nwhatever betide you, seeing the paunch is full.  As Julia, the daughter of\nthe Emperor Octavian, never prostituted herself to her belly-bumpers, but\nwhen she found herself with child, after the manner of ships, that receive\nnot their steersman till they have their ballast and lading.  And if any\nblame them for this their rataconniculation, and reiterated lechery upon\ntheir pregnancy and big-belliedness, seeing beasts, in the like exigent of\ntheir fulness, will never suffer the male-masculant to encroach them, their\nanswer will be, that those are beasts, but they are women, very well\nskilled in the pretty vales and small fees of the pleasant trade and\nmysteries of superfetation:  as Populia heretofore answered, according to\nthe relation of Macrobius, lib. 2. Saturnal.  If the devil will not have\nthem to bag, he must wring hard the spigot, and stop the bung-hole.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargamelle, being great with Gargantua, did eat a huge deal of tripes.\n\nThe occasion and manner how Gargamelle was brought to bed, and delivered of\nher child, was thus:  and, if you do not believe it, I wish your bum-gut\nfall out and make an escapade.  Her bum-gut, indeed, or fundament escaped\nher in an afternoon, on the third day of February, with having eaten at\ndinner too many godebillios.  Godebillios are the fat tripes of coiros.\nCoiros are beeves fattened at the cratch in ox-stalls, or in the fresh\nguimo meadows.  Guimo meadows are those that for their fruitfulness may be\nmowed twice a year.  Of those fat beeves they had killed three hundred\nsixty-seven thousand and fourteen, to be salted at Shrovetide, that in the\nentering of the spring they might have plenty of powdered beef, wherewith\nto season their mouths at the beginning of their meals, and to taste their\nwine the better.\n\nThey had abundance of tripes, as you have heard, and they were so\ndelicious, that everyone licked his fingers.  But the mischief was this,\nthat, for all men could do, there was no possibility to keep them long in\nthat relish; for in a very short while they would have stunk, which had\nbeen an undecent thing.  It was therefore concluded, that they should be\nall of them gulched up, without losing anything.  To this effect they\ninvited all the burghers of Sainais, of Suille, of the Roche-Clermaud, of\nVaugaudry, without omitting the Coudray, Monpensier, the Gue de Vede, and\nother their neighbours, all stiff drinkers, brave fellows, and good players\nat the kyles.  The good man Grangousier took great pleasure in their\ncompany, and commanded there should be no want nor pinching for anything.\nNevertheless he bade his wife eat sparingly, because she was near her time,\nand that these tripes were no very commendable meat.  They would fain, said\nhe, be at the chewing of ordure, that would eat the case wherein it was.\nNotwithstanding these admonitions, she did eat sixteen quarters, two\nbushels, three pecks and a pipkin full.  O the fair fecality wherewith she\nswelled, by the ingrediency of such shitten stuff!\n\nAfter dinner they all went out in a hurl to the grove of the willows,\nwhere, on the green grass, to the sound of the merry flutes and pleasant\nbagpipes, they danced so gallantly, that it was a sweet and heavenly sport\nto see them so frolic.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Discourse of the Drinkers.\n\nThen did they fall upon the chat of victuals and some belly furniture to be\nsnatched at in the very same place.  Which purpose was no sooner mentioned,\nbut forthwith began flagons to go, gammons to trot, goblets to fly, great\nbowls to ting, glasses to ring.  Draw, reach, fill, mix, give it me without\nwater.  So, my friend, so, whip me off this glass neatly, bring me hither\nsome claret, a full weeping glass till it run over.  A cessation and truce\nwith thirst.  Ha, thou false fever, wilt thou not be gone?  By my figgins,\ngodmother, I cannot as yet enter in the humour of being merry, nor drink so\ncurrently as I would.  You have catched a cold, gammer?  Yea, forsooth,\nsir.  By the belly of Sanct Buff, let us talk of our drink:  I never drink\nbut at my hours, like the Pope's mule.  And I never drink but in my\nbreviary, like a fair father guardian.  Which was first, thirst or\ndrinking?  Thirst, for who in the time of innocence would have drunk\nwithout being athirst?  Nay, sir, it was drinking; for privatio\npraesupponit habitum.  I am learned, you see:  Foecundi calices quem non\nfecere disertum?  We poor innocents drink but too much without thirst.  Not\nI truly, who am a sinner, for I never drink without thirst, either present\nor future.  To prevent it, as you know, I drink for the thirst to come.  I\ndrink eternally.  This is to me an eternity of drinking, and drinking of\neternity.  Let us sing, let us drink, and tune up our roundelays.  Where is\nmy funnel?  What, it seems I do not drink but by an attorney?  Do you wet\nyourselves to dry, or do you dry to wet you?  Pish, I understand not the\nrhetoric (theoric, I should say), but I help myself somewhat by the\npractice.  Baste! enough!  I sup, I wet, I humect, I moisten my gullet, I\ndrink, and all for fear of dying.  Drink always and you shall never die.\nIf I drink not, I am a-ground, dry, gravelled and spent.  I am stark dead\nwithout drink, and my soul ready to fly into some marsh amongst frogs; the\nsoul never dwells in a dry place, drouth kills it.  O you butlers, creators\nof new forms, make me of no drinker a drinker, a perennity and\neverlastingness of sprinkling and bedewing me through these my parched and\nsinewy bowels.  He drinks in vain that feels not the pleasure of it.  This\nentereth into my veins,--the pissing tools and urinal vessels shall have\nnothing of it.  I would willingly wash the tripes of the calf which I\napparelled this morning.  I have pretty well now ballasted my stomach and\nstuffed my paunch.  If the papers of my bonds and bills could drink as well\nas I do, my creditors would not want for wine when they come to see me, or\nwhen they are to make any formal exhibition of their rights to what of me\nthey can demand.  This hand of yours spoils your nose.  O how many other\nsuch will enter here before this go out!  What, drink so shallow?  It is\nenough to break both girds and petrel.  This is called a cup of\ndissimulation, or flagonal hypocrisy.\n\nWhat difference is there between a bottle and a flagon.  Great difference;\nfor the bottle is stopped and shut up with a stopple, but the flagon with a\nvice (La bouteille est fermee a bouchon, et le flaccon a vis.).  Bravely\nand well played upon the words!  Our fathers drank lustily, and emptied\ntheir cans.  Well cacked, well sung!  Come, let us drink:  will you send\nnothing to the river?  Here is one going to wash the tripes.  I drink no\nmore than a sponge.  I drink like a Templar knight.  And I, tanquam\nsponsus.  And I, sicut terra sine aqua.  Give me a synonymon for a gammon\nof bacon.  It is the compulsory of drinkers:  it is a pulley.  By a\npulley-rope wine is let down into a cellar, and by a gammon into the\nstomach. Hey! now, boys, hither, some drink, some drink.  There is no\ntrouble in it. Respice personam, pone pro duos, bus non est in usu.  If I\ncould get up as well as I can swallow down, I had been long ere now very\nhigh in the air.\n\nThus became Tom Tosspot rich,--thus went in the tailor's stitch.  Thus did\nBacchus conquer th' Inde--thus Philosophy, Melinde.  A little rain allays a\ngreat deal of wind:  long tippling breaks the thunder.  But if there came\nsuch liquor from my ballock, would you not willingly thereafter suck the\nudder whence it issued?  Here, page, fill!  I prithee, forget me not when\nit comes to my turn, and I will enter the election I have made of thee into\nthe very register of my heart.  Sup, Guillot, and spare not, there is\nsomewhat in the pot.  I appeal from thirst, and disclaim its jurisdiction.\nPage, sue out my appeal in form.  This remnant in the bottom of the glass\nmust follow its leader.  I was wont heretofore to drink out all, but now I\nleave nothing.  Let us not make too much haste; it is requisite we carry\nall along with us.  Heyday, here are tripes fit for our sport, and, in\nearnest, excellent godebillios of the dun ox (you know) with the black\nstreak.  O, for God's sake, let us lash them soundly, yet thriftily.\nDrink, or I will,--No, no, drink, I beseech you (Ou je vous, je vous\nprie.).  Sparrows will not eat unless you bob them on the tail, nor can I\ndrink if I be not fairly spoke to.  The concavities of my body are like\nanother Hell for their capacity.  Lagonaedatera (lagon lateris cavitas:\naides orcus: and eteros alter.).  There is not a corner, nor coney-burrow in\nall my body, where this wine doth not ferret out my thirst.  Ho, this will\nbang it soundly.  But this shall banish it utterly.  Let us wind our horns\nby the sound of flagons and bottles, and cry aloud, that whoever hath lost\nhis thirst come not hither to seek it.  Long clysters of drinking are to be\nvoided without doors.  The great God made the planets, and we make the\nplatters neat.  I have the word of the gospel in my mouth, Sitio.  The\nstone called asbestos is not more unquenchable than the thirst of my\npaternity.  Appetite comes with eating, says Angeston, but the thirst goes\naway with drinking.  I have a remedy against thirst, quite contrary to that\nwhich is good against the biting of a mad dog.  Keep running after a dog,\nand he will never bite you; drink always before the thirst, and it will\nnever come upon you.  There I catch you, I awake you.  Argus had a hundred\neyes for his sight, a butler should have (like Briareus) a hundred hands\nwherewith to fill us wine indefatigably.  Hey now, lads, let us moisten\nourselves, it will be time to dry hereafter.  White wine here, wine, boys!\nPour out all in the name of Lucifer, fill here, you, fill and fill\n(peascods on you) till it be full.  My tongue peels.  Lans trinque; to\nthee, countryman, I drink to thee, good fellow, comrade to thee, lusty,\nlively!  Ha, la, la, that was drunk to some purpose, and bravely gulped\nover.  O lachryma Christi, it is of the best grape!  I'faith, pure Greek,\nGreek!  O the fine white wine! upon my conscience, it is a kind of taffetas\nwine,--hin, hin, it is of one ear, well wrought, and of good wool.\nCourage, comrade, up thy heart, billy!  We will not be beasted at this\nbout, for I have got one trick.  Ex hoc in hoc.  There is no enchantment\nnor charm there, every one of you hath seen it.  My 'prenticeship is out, I\nam a free man at this trade.  I am prester mast (Prestre mace, maistre\npasse.), Prish, Brum!  I should say, master past.  O the drinkers, those\nthat are a-dry, O poor thirsty souls!  Good page, my friend, fill me here\nsome, and crown the wine, I pray thee.  Like a cardinal!  Natura abhorret\nvacuum.  Would you say that a fly could drink in this?  This is after the\nfashion of Switzerland.  Clear off, neat, supernaculum!  Come, therefore,\nblades, to this divine liquor and celestial juice, swill it over heartily,\nand spare not!  It is a decoction of nectar and ambrosia.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua was born in a strange manner.\n\nWhilst they were on this discourse and pleasant tattle of drinking,\nGargamelle began to be a little unwell in her lower parts; whereupon\nGrangousier arose from off the grass, and fell to comfort her very honestly\nand kindly, suspecting that she was in travail, and told her that it was\nbest for her to sit down upon the grass under the willows, because she was\nlike very shortly to see young feet, and that therefore it was convenient\nshe should pluck up her spirits, and take a good heart of new at the fresh\narrival of her baby; saying to her withal, that although the pain was\nsomewhat grievous to her, it would be but of short continuance, and that\nthe succeeding joy would quickly remove that sorrow, in such sort that she\nshould not so much as remember it.  On, with a sheep's courage! quoth he.\nDespatch this boy, and we will speedily fall to work for the making of\nanother.  Ha! said she, so well as you speak at your own ease, you that are\nmen!  Well, then, in the name of God, I'll do my best, seeing that you will\nhave it so, but would to God that it were cut off from you!  What? said\nGrangousier.  Ha, said she, you are a good man indeed, you understand it\nwell enough.  What, my member? said he.  By the goat's blood, if it please\nyou, that shall be done instantly; cause bring hither a knife.  Alas, said\nshe, the Lord forbid, and pray Jesus to forgive me!  I did not say it from\nmy heart, therefore let it alone, and do not do it neither more nor less\nany kind of harm for my speaking so to you.  But I am like to have work\nenough to do to-day and all for your member, yet God bless you and it.\n\nCourage, courage, said he, take you no care of the matter, let the four\nforemost oxen do the work.  I will yet go drink one whiff more, and if in\nthe mean time anything befall you that may require my presence, I will be\nso near to you, that, at the first whistling in your fist, I shall be with\nyou forthwith.  A little while after she began to groan, lament and cry.\nThen suddenly came the midwives from all quarters, who groping her below,\nfound some peloderies, which was a certain filthy stuff, and of a taste\ntruly bad enough.  This they thought had been the child, but it was her\nfundament, that was slipped out with the mollification of her straight\nentrail, which you call the bum-gut, and that merely by eating of too many\ntripes, as we have showed you before.  Whereupon an old ugly trot in the\ncompany, who had the repute of an expert she-physician, and was come from\nBrisepaille, near to Saint Genou, three score years before, made her so\nhorrible a restrictive and binding medicine, and whereby all her larris,\narse-pipes, and conduits were so oppilated, stopped, obstructed, and\ncontracted, that you could hardly have opened and enlarged them with your\nteeth, which is a terrible thing to think upon; seeing the Devil at the\nmass at Saint Martin's was puzzled with the like task, when with his teeth\nhe had lengthened out the parchment whereon he wrote the tittle-tattle of\ntwo young mangy whores.  By this inconvenient the cotyledons of her matrix\nwere presently loosed, through which the child sprang up and leaped, and\nso, entering into the hollow vein, did climb by the diaphragm even above\nher shoulders, where the vein divides itself into two, and from thence\ntaking his way towards the left side, issued forth at her left ear.  As\nsoon as he was born, he cried not as other babes use to do, Miez, miez,\nmiez, miez, but with a high, sturdy, and big voice shouted about, Some\ndrink, some drink, some drink, as inviting all the world to drink with him.\nThe noise hereof was so extremely great, that it was heard in both the\ncountries at once of Beauce and Bibarois.  I doubt me, that you do not\nthoroughly believe the truth of this strange nativity.  Though you believe\nit not, I care not much:  but an honest man, and of good judgment,\nbelieveth still what is told him, and that which he finds written.\n\nIs this beyond our law or our faith--against reason or the holy Scripture?\nFor my part, I find nothing in the sacred Bible that is against it.  But\ntell me, if it had been the will of God, would you say that he could not do\nit?  Ha, for favour sake, I beseech you, never emberlucock or inpulregafize\nyour spirits with these vain thoughts and idle conceits; for I tell you, it\nis not impossible with God, and, if he pleased, all women henceforth should\nbring forth their children at the ear.  Was not Bacchus engendered out of\nthe very thigh of Jupiter?  Did not Roquetaillade come out at his mother's\nheel, and Crocmoush from the slipper of his nurse?  Was not Minerva born of\nthe brain, even through the ear of Jove?  Adonis, of the bark of a myrrh\ntree; and Castor and Pollux of the doupe of that egg which was laid and\nhatched by Leda?  But you would wonder more, and with far greater\namazement, if I should now present you with that chapter of Plinius,\nwherein he treateth of strange births, and contrary to nature, and yet am\nnot I so impudent a liar as he was.  Read the seventh book of his Natural\nHistory, chap.3, and trouble not my head any more about this.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAfter what manner Gargantua had his name given him, and how he tippled,\nbibbed, and curried the can.\n\nThe good man Grangousier, drinking and making merry with the rest, heard\nthe horrible noise which his son had made as he entered into the light of\nthis world, when he cried out, Some drink, some drink, some drink;\nwhereupon he said in French, Que grand tu as et souple le gousier! that is\nto say, How great and nimble a throat thou hast.  Which the company\nhearing, said that verily the child ought to be called Gargantua; because\nit was the first word that after his birth his father had spoke, in\nimitation, and at the example of the ancient Hebrews; whereunto he\ncondescended, and his mother was very well pleased therewith.  In the\nmeanwhile, to quiet the child, they gave him to drink a tirelaregot, that\nis, till his throat was like to crack with it; then was he carried to the\nfont, and there baptized, according to the manner of good Christians.\n\nImmediately thereafter were appointed for him seventeen thousand, nine\nhundred, and thirteen cows of the towns of Pautille and Brehemond, to\nfurnish him with milk in ordinary, for it was impossible to find a nurse\nsufficient for him in all the country, considering the great quantity of\nmilk that was requisite for his nourishment; although there were not\nwanting some doctors of the opinion of Scotus, who affirmed that his own\nmother gave him suck, and that she could draw out of her breasts one\nthousand, four hundred, two pipes, and nine pails of milk at every time.\n\nWhich indeed is not probable, and this point hath been found duggishly\nscandalous and offensive to tender ears, for that it savoured a little of\nheresy.  Thus was he handled for one year and ten months; after which time,\nby the advice of physicians, they began to carry him, and then was made for\nhim a fine little cart drawn with oxen, of the invention of Jan Denio,\nwherein they led him hither and thither with great joy; and he was worth\nthe seeing, for he was a fine boy, had a burly physiognomy, and almost ten\nchins.  He cried very little, but beshit himself every hour:  for, to speak\ntruly of him, he was wonderfully phlegmatic in his posteriors, both by\nreason of his natural complexion and the accidental disposition which had\nbefallen him by his too much quaffing of the Septembral juice.  Yet without\na cause did not he sup one drop; for if he happened to be vexed, angry,\ndispleased, or sorry, if he did fret, if he did weep, if he did cry, and\nwhat grievous quarter soever he kept, in bringing him some drink, he would\nbe instantly pacified, reseated in his own temper, in a good humour again,\nand as still and quiet as ever.  One of his governesses told me (swearing\nby her fig), how he was so accustomed to this kind of way, that, at the\nsound of pints and flagons, he would on a sudden fall into an ecstasy, as\nif he had then tasted of the joys of paradise; so that they, upon\nconsideration of this, his divine complexion, would every morning, to cheer\nhim up, play with a knife upon the glasses, on the bottles with their\nstopples, and on the pottle-pots with their lids and covers, at the sound\nwhereof he became gay, did leap for joy, would loll and rock himself in the\ncradle, then nod with his head, monochordizing with his fingers, and\nbarytonizing with his tail.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow they apparelled Gargantua.\n\nBeing of this age, his father ordained to have clothes made to him in his\nown livery, which was white and blue.  To work then went the tailors, and\nwith great expedition were those clothes made, cut, and sewed, according to\nthe fashion that was then in request.  I find by the ancient records or\npancarts, to be seen in the chamber of accounts, or court of the exchequer\nat Montsoreau, that he was accoutred in manner as followeth.  To make him\nevery shirt of his were taken up nine hundred ells of Chasteleraud linen,\nand two hundred for the gussets, in manner of cushions, which they put\nunder his armpits.  His shirt was not gathered nor plaited, for the\nplaiting of shirts was not found out till the seamstresses (when the point\nof their needle (Besongner du cul, Englished The eye of the needle.) was\nbroken) began to work and occupy with the tail.  There were taken up for\nhis doublet, eight hundred and thirteen ells of white satin, and for his\npoints fifteen hundred and nine dogs' skins and a half.  Then was it that\nmen began to tie their breeches to their doublets, and not their doublets\nto their breeches:  for it is against nature, as hath most amply been\nshowed by Ockham upon the exponibles of Master Haultechaussade.\n\nFor his breeches were taken up eleven hundred and five ells and a third of\nwhite broadcloth.  They were cut in the form of pillars, chamfered,\nchannelled and pinked behind that they might not over-heat his reins:  and\nwere, within the panes, puffed out with the lining of as much blue damask\nas was needful:  and remark, that he had very good leg-harness,\nproportionable to the rest of his stature.\n\nFor his codpiece were used sixteen ells and a quarter of the same cloth,\nand it was fashioned on the top like unto a triumphant arch, most gallantly\nfastened with two enamelled clasps, in each of which was set a great\nemerald, as big as an orange; for, as says Orpheus, lib. de lapidibus, and\nPlinius, libro ultimo, it hath an erective virtue and comfortative of the\nnatural member.  The exiture, outjecting or outstanding, of his codpiece\nwas of the length of a yard, jagged and pinked, and withal bagging, and\nstrutting out with the blue damask lining, after the manner of his\nbreeches.  But had you seen the fair embroidery of the small needlework\npurl, and the curiously interlaced knots, by the goldsmith's art set out\nand trimmed with rich diamonds, precious rubies, fine turquoises, costly\nemeralds, and Persian pearls, you would have compared it to a fair\ncornucopia, or horn of abundance, such as you see in antiques, or as Rhea\ngave to the two nymphs, Amalthea and Ida, the nurses of Jupiter.\n\nAnd, like to that horn of abundance, it was still gallant, succulent,\ndroppy, sappy, pithy, lively, always flourishing, always fructifying, full\nof juice, full of flower, full of fruit, and all manner of delight.  I avow\nGod, it would have done one good to have seen him, but I will tell you more\nof him in the book which I have made of the dignity of codpieces.  One\nthing I will tell you, that as it was both long and large, so was it well\nfurnished and victualled within, nothing like unto the hypocritical\ncodpieces of some fond wooers and wench-courtiers, which are stuffed only\nwith wind, to the great prejudice of the female sex.\n\nFor his shoes were taken up four hundred and six ells of blue\ncrimson-velvet, and were very neatly cut by parallel lines, joined in\nuniform cylinders.  For the soling of them were made use of eleven hundred\nhides of brown cows, shapen like the tail of a keeling.\n\nFor his coat were taken up eighteen hundred ells of blue velvet, dyed in\ngrain, embroidered in its borders with fair gilliflowers, in the middle\ndecked with silver purl, intermixed with plates of gold and store of\npearls, hereby showing that in his time he would prove an especial good\nfellow and singular whipcan.\n\nHis girdle was made of three hundred ells and a half of silken serge, half\nwhite and half blue, if I mistake it not.  His sword was not of Valentia,\nnor his dagger of Saragossa, for his father could not endure these hidalgos\nborrachos maranisados como diablos:  but he had a fair sword made of wood,\nand the dagger of boiled leather, as well painted and gilded as any man\ncould wish.\n\nHis purse was made of the cod of an elephant, which was given him by Herr\nPracontal, proconsul of Lybia.\n\nFor his gown were employed nine thousand six hundred ells, wanting\ntwo-thirds, of blue velvet, as before, all so diagonally purled, that by\ntrue perspective issued thence an unnamed colour, like that you see in the\nnecks of turtle-doves or turkey-cocks, which wonderfully rejoiced the eyes\nof the beholders.  For his bonnet or cap were taken up three hundred, two\nells and a quarter of white velvet, and the form thereof was wide and round,\nof the bigness of his head; for his father said that the caps of the\nMarrabaise fashion, made like the cover of a pasty, would one time or other\nbring a mischief on those that wore them.  For his plume, he wore a fair\ngreat blue feather, plucked from an onocrotal of the country of Hircania the\nwild, very prettily hanging down over his right ear.  For the jewel or\nbrooch which in his cap he carried, he had in a cake of gold, weighing three\nscore and eight marks, a fair piece enamelled, wherein was portrayed a man's\nbody with two heads, looking towards one another, four arms, four feet, two\narses, such as Plato, in Symposio, says was the mystical beginning of man's\nnature; and about it was written in Ionic letters, Agame ou zetei ta eautes,\nor rather, Aner kai gune zugada anthrotos idiaitata, that is, Vir et mulier\njunctim propriissime homo.  To wear about his neck, he had a golden chain,\nweighing twenty-five thousand and sixty-three marks of gold, the links\nthereof being made after the manner of great berries, amongst which were set\nin work green jaspers engraven and cut dragon-like, all environed with beams\nand sparks, as king Nicepsos of old was wont to wear them:  and it reached\ndown to the very bust of the rising of his belly, whereby he reaped great\nbenefit all his life long, as the Greek physicians know well enough.  For\nhis gloves were put in work sixteen otters' skins, and three of the\nloupgarous, or men-eating wolves, for the bordering of them:  and of this\nstuff were they made, by the appointment of the Cabalists of Sanlouand.  As\nfor the rings which his father would have him to wear, to renew the ancient\nmark of nobility, he had on the forefinger of his left hand a carbuncle as\nbig as an ostrich's egg, enchased very daintily in gold of the fineness of a\nTurkey seraph.  Upon the middle finger of the same hand he had a ring made\nof four metals together, of the strangest fashion that ever was seen; so\nthat the steel did not crash against the gold, nor the silver crush the\ncopper.  All this was made by Captain Chappuys, and Alcofribas his good\nagent.  On the medical finger of his right hand he had a ring made\nspire-wise, wherein was set a perfect Balas ruby, a pointed diamond, and\na Physon emerald, of an inestimable value.  For Hans Carvel, the king of\nMelinda's jeweller, esteemed them at the rate of threescore nine millions,\neight hundred ninety-four thousand, and eighteen French crowns of Berry, and\nat so much did the Foucres of Augsburg prize them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe colours and liveries of Gargantua.\n\nGargantua's colours were white and blue, as I have showed you before, by\nwhich his father would give us to understand that his son to him was a\nheavenly joy; for the white did signify gladness, pleasure, delight, and\nrejoicing, and the blue, celestial things.  I know well enough that, in\nreading this, you laugh at the old drinker, and hold this exposition of\ncolours to be very extravagant, and utterly disagreeable to reason, because\nwhite is said to signify faith, and blue constancy.  But without moving,\nvexing, heating, or putting you in a chafe (for the weather is dangerous),\nanswer me, if it please you; for no other compulsory way of arguing will I\nuse towards you, or any else; only now and then I will mention a word or\ntwo of my bottle.  What is it that induceth you, what stirs you up to\nbelieve, or who told you that white signifieth faith, and blue constancy?\nAn old paltry book, say you, sold by the hawking pedlars and balladmongers,\nentitled The Blason of Colours.  Who made it?  Whoever it was, he was wise\nin that he did not set his name to it.  But, besides, I know not what I\nshould rather admire in him, his presumption or his sottishness.  His\npresumption and overweening, for that he should without reason, without\ncause, or without any appearance of truth, have dared to prescribe, by his\nprivate authority, what things should be denotated and signified by the\ncolour:  which is the custom of tyrants, who will have their will to bear\nsway in stead of equity, and not of the wise and learned, who with the\nevidence of reason satisfy their readers.  His sottishness and want of\nspirit, in that he thought that, without any other demonstration or\nsufficient argument, the world would be pleased to make his blockish and\nridiculous impositions the rule of their devices.  In effect, according to\nthe proverb, To a shitten tail fails never ordure, he hath found, it seems,\nsome simple ninny in those rude times of old, when the wearing of high\nround bonnets was in fashion, who gave some trust to his writings,\naccording to which they carved and engraved their apophthegms and mottoes,\ntrapped and caparisoned their mules and sumpter-horses, apparelled their\npages, quartered their breeches, bordered their gloves, fringed the\ncurtains and valances of their beds, painted their ensigns, composed songs,\nand, which is worse, placed many deceitful jugglings and unworthy base\ntricks undiscoveredly amongst the very chastest matrons and most reverend\nsciences.  In the like darkness and mist of ignorance are wrapped up these\nvain-glorious courtiers and name-transposers, who, going about in their\nimpresas to signify esperance (that is, hope), have portrayed a sphere--and\nbirds' pennes for pains--l'ancholie (which is the flower colombine) for\nmelancholy--a waning moon or crescent, to show the increasing or rising of\none's fortune--a bench rotten and broken, to signify bankrupt--non and a\ncorslet for non dur habit (otherwise non durabit, it shall not last), un\nlit sans ciel, that is, a bed without a tester, for un licencie, a\ngraduated person, as bachelor in divinity or utter barrister-at-law; which\nare equivocals so absurd and witless, so barbarous and clownish, that a\nfox's tail should be fastened to the neck-piece of, and a vizard made of a\ncowsherd given to everyone that henceforth should offer, after the\nrestitution of learning, to make use of any such fopperies in France.\n\nBy the same reasons (if reasons I should call them, and not ravings rather,\nand idle triflings about words), might I cause paint a pannier, to signify\nthat I am in pain--a mustard-pot, that my heart tarries much for't--one\npissing upwards for a bishop--the bottom of a pair of breeches for a vessel\nfull of fart-hings--a codpiece for the office of the clerks of the\nsentences, decrees, or judgments, or rather, as the English bears it, for\nthe tail of a codfish--and a dog's turd for the dainty turret wherein lies\nthe love of my sweetheart.  Far otherwise did heretofore the sages of\nEgypt, when they wrote by letters, which they called hieroglyphics, which\nnone understood who were not skilled in the virtue, property, and nature of\nthe things represented by them.  Of which Orus Apollon hath in Greek\ncomposed two books, and Polyphilus, in his Dream of Love, set down more.\nIn France you have a taste of them in the device or impresa of my Lord\nAdmiral, which was carried before that time by Octavian Augustus.  But my\nlittle skiff alongst these unpleasant gulfs and shoals will sail no\nfurther, therefore must I return to the port from whence I came.  Yet do I\nhope one day to write more at large of these things, and to show both by\nphilosophical arguments and authorities, received and approved of by and\nfrom all antiquity, what, and how many colours there are in nature, and\nwhat may be signified by every one of them, if God save the mould of my\ncap, which is my best wine-pot, as my grandam said.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf that which is signified by the colours white and blue.\n\nThe white therefore signifieth joy, solace, and gladness, and that not at\nrandom, but upon just and very good grounds:  which you may perceive to be\ntrue, if laying aside all prejudicate affections, you will but give ear to\nwhat presently I shall expound unto you.\n\nAristotle saith that, supposing two things contrary in their kind, as good\nand evil, virtue and vice, heat and cold, white and black, pleasure and\npain, joy and grief,--and so of others,--if you couple them in such manner\nthat the contrary of one kind may agree in reason with the contrary of the\nother, it must follow by consequence that the other contrary must answer to\nthe remanent opposite to that wherewith it is conferred.  As, for example,\nvirtue and vice are contrary in one kind, so are good and evil.  If one of\nthe contraries of the first kind be consonant to one of those of the\nsecond, as virtue and goodness, for it is clear that virtue is good, so\nshall the other two contraries, which are evil and vice, have the same\nconnection, for vice is evil.\n\nThis logical rule being understood, take these two contraries, joy and\nsadness; then these other two, white and black, for they are physically\ncontrary.  If so be, then, that black do signify grief, by good reason then\nshould white import joy.  Nor is this signification instituted by human\nimposition, but by the universal consent of the world received, which\nphilosophers call Jus Gentium, the Law of Nations, or an uncontrollable\nright of force in all countries whatsoever.  For you know well enough that\nall people, and all languages and nations, except the ancient Syracusans\nand certain Argives, who had cross and thwarting souls, when they mean\noutwardly to give evidence of their sorrow, go in black; and all mourning\nis done with black.  Which general consent is not without some argument and\nreason in nature, the which every man may by himself very suddenly\ncomprehend, without the instruction of any--and this we call the law of\nnature.  By virtue of the same natural instinct we know that by white all\nthe world hath understood joy, gladness, mirth, pleasure, and delight.  In\nformer times the Thracians and Cretans did mark their good, propitious, and\nfortunate days with white stones, and their sad, dismal, and unfortunate\nones with black.  Is not the night mournful, sad, and melancholic?  It is\nblack and dark by the privation of light.  Doth not the light comfort all\nthe world?  And it is more white than anything else.  Which to prove, I\ncould direct you to the book of Laurentius Valla against Bartolus; but an\nevangelical testimony I hope will content you.  Matth. 17 it is said that,\nat the transfiguration of our Lord, Vestimenta ejus facta sunt alba sicut\nlux, his apparel was made white like the light.  By which lightsome\nwhiteness he gave his three apostles to understand the idea and figure of\nthe eternal joys; for by the light are all men comforted, according to the\nword of the old woman, who, although she had never a tooth in her head, was\nwont to say, Bona lux.  And Tobit, chap.5, after he had lost his sight,\nwhen Raphael saluted him, answered, What joy can I have, that do not see\nthe light of Heaven?  In that colour did the angels testify the joy of the\nwhole world at the resurrection of our Saviour, John 20, and at his\nascension, Acts 1.  With the like colour of vesture did St. John the\nEvangelist, Apoc. 4.7, see the faithful clothed in the heavenly and blessed\nJerusalem.\n\nRead the ancient, both Greek and Latin histories, and you shall find that\nthe town of Alba (the first pattern of Rome) was founded and so named by\nreason of a white sow that was seen there.  You shall likewise find in\nthose stories, that when any man, after he had vanquished his enemies, was\nby decree of the senate to enter into Rome triumphantly, he usually rode in\na chariot drawn by white horses:  which in the ovation triumph was also the\ncustom; for by no sign or colour would they so significantly express the\njoy of their coming as by the white.  You shall there also find, how\nPericles, the general of the Athenians, would needs have that part of his\narmy unto whose lot befell the white beans, to spend the whole day in\nmirth, pleasure, and ease, whilst the rest were a-fighting.  A thousand\nother examples and places could I allege to this purpose, but that it is\nnot here where I should do it.\n\nBy understanding hereof, you may resolve one problem, which Alexander\nAphrodiseus hath accounted unanswerable:  why the lion, who with his only\ncry and roaring affrights all beasts, dreads and feareth only a white cock?\nFor, as Proclus saith, Libro de Sacrificio et Magia, it is because the\npresence of the virtue of the sun, which is the organ and promptuary of all\nterrestrial and sidereal light, doth more symbolize and agree with a white\ncock, as well in regard of that colour, as of his property and specifical\nquality, than with a lion.  He saith, furthermore, that devils have been\noften seen in the shape of lions, which at the sight of a white cock have\npresently vanished.  This is the cause why Galli or Gallices (so are the\nFrenchmen called, because they are naturally white as milk, which the\nGreeks call Gala,) do willingly wear in their caps white feathers, for by\nnature they are of a candid disposition, merry, kind, gracious, and\nwell-beloved, and for their cognizance and arms have the whitest flower\nof any, the Flower de luce or Lily.\n\nIf you demand how, by white, nature would have us understand joy and\ngladness, I answer, that the analogy and uniformity is thus.  For, as the\nwhite doth outwardly disperse and scatter the rays of the sight, whereby\nthe optic spirits are manifestly dissolved, according to the opinion of\nAristotle in his problems and perspective treatises; as you may likewise\nperceive by experience, when you pass over mountains covered with snow, how\nyou will complain that you cannot see well; as Xenophon writes to have\nhappened to his men, and as Galen very largely declareth, lib. 10, de usu\npartium:  just so the heart with excessive joy is inwardly dilated, and\nsuffereth a manifest resolution of the vital spirits, which may go so far\non that it may thereby be deprived of its nourishment, and by consequence\nof life itself, by this perichary or extremity of gladness, as Galen saith,\nlib. 12, method, lib. 5, de locis affectis, and lib. 2, de symptomatum\ncausis.  And as it hath come to pass in former times, witness Marcus\nTullius, lib. 1, Quaest. Tuscul., Verrius, Aristotle, Titus Livius, in his\nrelation of the battle of Cannae, Plinius, lib. 7, cap. 32 and 34, A.\nGellius, lib. 3, c. 15, and many other writers,--to Diagoras the Rhodian,\nChilon, Sophocles, Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily, Philippides, Philemon,\nPolycrates, Philistion, M. Juventi, and others who died with joy.  And as\nAvicen speaketh, in 2 canon et lib. de virib. cordis, of the saffron, that\nit doth so rejoice the heart that, if you take of it excessively, it will\nby a superfluous resolution and dilation deprive it altogether of life.\nHere peruse Alex. Aphrodiseus, lib. 1, Probl., cap. 19, and that for a\ncause.  But what?  It seems I am entered further into this point than I\nintended at the first.  Here, therefore, will I strike sail, referring the\nrest to that book of mine which handleth this matter to the full.\nMeanwhile, in a word I will tell you, that blue doth certainly signify\nheaven and heavenly things, by the same very tokens and symbols that white\nsignifieth joy and pleasure.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the youthful age of Gargantua.\n\nGargantua, from three years upwards unto five, was brought up and\ninstructed in all convenient discipline by the commandment of his father;\nand spent that time like the other little children of the country, that is,\nin drinking, eating, and sleeping:  in eating, sleeping, and drinking:  and\nin sleeping, drinking, and eating.  Still he wallowed and rolled up and\ndown himself in the mire and dirt--he blurred and sullied his nose with\nfilth--he blotted and smutched his face with any kind of scurvy stuff--he\ntrod down his shoes in the heel--at the flies he did oftentimes yawn, and\nran very heartily after the butterflies, the empire whereof belonged to his\nfather.  He pissed in his shoes, shit in his shirt, and wiped his nose on\nhis sleeve--he did let his snot and snivel fall in his pottage, and\ndabbled, paddled, and slobbered everywhere--he would drink in his slipper,\nand ordinarily rub his belly against a pannier.  He sharpened his teeth\nwith a top, washed his hands with his broth, and combed his head with a\nbowl.  He would sit down betwixt two stools, and his arse to the ground\n--would cover himself with a wet sack, and drink in eating of his soup.  He\ndid eat his cake sometimes without bread, would bite in laughing, and laugh\nin biting.  Oftentimes did he spit in the basin, and fart for fatness, piss\nagainst the sun, and hide himself in the water for fear of rain.  He would\nstrike out of the cold iron, be often in the dumps, and frig and wriggle\nit.  He would flay the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep,\nand turn the hogs to the hay.  He would beat the dogs before the lion, put\nthe plough before the oxen, and claw where it did not itch.  He would pump\none to draw somewhat out of him, by griping all would hold fast nothing,\nand always eat his white bread first.  He shoed the geese, kept a\nself-tickling to make himself laugh, and was very steadable in the kitchen:\nmade a mock at the gods, would cause sing Magnificat at matins, and found\nit very convenient so to do.  He would eat cabbage, and shite beets,--knew\nflies in a dish of milk, and would make them lose their feet.  He would\nscrape paper, blur parchment, then run away as hard as he could.  He would\npull at the kid's leather, or vomit up his dinner, then reckon without his\nhost.  He would beat the bushes without catching the birds, thought the\nmoon was made of green cheese, and that bladders are lanterns.  Out of one\nsack he would take two moultures or fees for grinding; would act the ass's\npart to get some bran, and of his fist would make a mallet.  He took the\ncranes at the first leap, and would have the mail-coats to be made link\nafter link.  He always looked a given horse in the mouth, leaped from the\ncock to the ass, and put one ripe between two green.  By robbing Peter he\npaid Paul, he kept the moon from the wolves, and hoped to catch larks if\never the heavens should fall.  He did make of necessity virtue, of such\nbread such pottage, and cared as little for the peeled as for the shaven.\nEvery morning he did cast up his gorge, and his father's little dogs eat\nout of the dish with him, and he with them.  He would bite their ears, and\nthey would scratch his nose--he would blow in their arses, and they would\nlick his chaps.\n\nBut hearken, good fellows, the spigot ill betake you, and whirl round your\nbrains, if you do not give ear!  This little lecher was always groping his\nnurses and governesses, upside down, arsiversy, topsyturvy, harri\nbourriquet, with a Yacco haick, hyck gio! handling them very rudely in\njumbling and tumbling them to keep them going; for he had already begun to\nexercise the tools, and put his codpiece in practice.  Which codpiece, or\nbraguette, his governesses did every day deck up and adorn with fair\nnosegays, curious rubies, sweet flowers, and fine silken tufts, and very\npleasantly would pass their time in taking you know what between their\nfingers, and dandling it, till it did revive and creep up to the bulk and\nstiffness of a suppository, or street magdaleon, which is a hard rolled-up\nsalve spread upon leather.  Then did they burst out in laughing, when they\nsaw it lift up its ears, as if the sport had liked them.  One of them would\ncall it her little dille, her staff of love, her quillety, her faucetin,\nher dandilolly.  Another, her peen, her jolly kyle, her bableret, her\nmembretoon, her quickset imp:  another again, her branch of coral, her\nfemale adamant, her placket-racket, her Cyprian sceptre, her jewel for\nladies.  And some of the other women would give it these names,--my\nbunguetee, my stopple too, my bush-rusher, my gallant wimble, my pretty\nborer, my coney-burrow-ferret, my little piercer, my augretine, my dangling\nhangers, down right to it, stiff and stout, in and to, my pusher, dresser,\npouting stick, my honey pipe, my pretty pillicock, linky pinky, futilletie,\nmy lusty andouille, and crimson chitterling, my little couille bredouille,\nmy pretty rogue, and so forth.  It belongs to me, said one.  It is mine,\nsaid the other.  What, quoth a third, shall I have no share in it?  By my\nfaith, I will cut it then.  Ha, to cut it, said the other, would hurt him.\nMadam, do you cut little children's things?  Were his cut off, he would be\nthen Monsieur sans queue, the curtailed master.  And that he might play and\nsport himself after the manner of the other little children of the country,\nthey made him a fair weather whirl-jack of the wings of the windmill of\nMyrebalais.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf Gargantua's wooden horses.\n\nAfterwards, that he might be all his lifetime a good rider, they made to\nhim a fair great horse of wood, which he did make leap, curvet, jerk out\nbehind, and skip forward, all at a time:  to pace, trot, rack, gallop,\namble, to play the hobby, the hackney-gelding:  go the gait of the camel,\nand of the wild ass.  He made him also change his colour of hair, as the\nmonks of Coultibo (according to the variety of their holidays) use to do\ntheir clothes, from bay brown, to sorrel, dapple-grey, mouse-dun,\ndeer-colour, roan, cow-colour, gingioline, skewed colour, piebald, and the\ncolour of the savage elk.\n\nHimself of a huge big post made a hunting nag, and another for daily\nservice of the beam of a vinepress:  and of a great oak made up a mule,\nwith a footcloth, for his chamber.  Besides this, he had ten or twelve\nspare horses, and seven horses for post; and all these were lodged in his\nown chamber, close by his bedside.  One day the Lord of Breadinbag\n(Painensac.) came to visit his father in great bravery, and with a gallant\ntrain:  and, at the same time, to see him came likewise the Duke of\nFreemeal (Francrepas.) and the Earl of Wetgullet (Mouillevent.).  The house\ntruly for so many guests at once was somewhat narrow, but especially the\nstables; whereupon the steward and harbinger of the said Lord Breadinbag,\nto know if there were any other empty stable in the house, came to\nGargantua, a little young lad, and secretly asked him where the stables of\nthe great horses were, thinking that children would be ready to tell all.\nThen he led them up along the stairs of the castle, passing by the second\nhall unto a broad great gallery, by which they entered into a large tower,\nand as they were going up at another pair of stairs, said the harbinger to\nthe steward, This child deceives us, for the stables are never on the top\nof the house.  You may be mistaken, said the steward, for I know some\nplaces at Lyons, at the Basmette, at Chaisnon, and elsewhere, which have\ntheir stables at the very tops of the houses:  so it may be that behind the\nhouse there is a way to come to this ascent.  But I will question with him\nfurther.  Then said he to Gargantua, My pretty little boy, whither do you\nlead us?  To the stable, said he, of my great horses.  We are almost come\nto it; we have but these stairs to go up at.  Then leading them alongst\nanother great hall, he brought them into his chamber, and, opening the\ndoor, said unto them, This is the stable you ask for; this is my jennet;\nthis is my gelding; this is my courser, and this is my hackney, and laid on\nthem with a great lever.  I will bestow upon you, said he, this Friesland\nhorse; I had him from Frankfort, yet will I give him you; for he is a\npretty little nag, and will go very well, with a tessel of goshawks, half a\ndozen of spaniels, and a brace of greyhounds:  thus are you king of the\nhares and partridges for all this winter.  By St. John, said they, now we\nare paid, he hath gleeked us to some purpose, bobbed we are now for ever.\nI deny it, said he,--he was not here above three days.  Judge you now,\nwhether they had most cause, either to hide their heads for shame, or to\nlaugh at the jest.  As they were going down again thus amazed, he asked\nthem, Will you have a whimwham (Aubeliere.)?  What is that, said they?  It\nis, said he, five turds to make you a muzzle.  To-day, said the steward,\nthough we happen to be roasted, we shall not be burnt, for we are pretty\nwell quipped and larded, in my opinion.  O my jolly dapper boy, thou hast\ngiven us a gudgeon; I hope to see thee Pope before I die.  I think so, said\nhe, myself; and then shall you be a puppy, and this gentle popinjay a\nperfect papelard, that is, dissembler.  Well, well, said the harbinger.\nBut, said Gargantua, guess how many stitches there are in my mother's\nsmock.  Sixteen, quoth the harbinger.  You do not speak gospel, said\nGargantua, for there is cent before, and cent behind, and you did not\nreckon them ill, considering the two under holes.  When? said the\nharbinger.  Even then, said Gargantua, when they made a shovel of your nose\nto take up a quarter of dirt, and of your throat a funnel, wherewith to put\nit into another vessel, because the bottom of the old one was out.\nCocksbod, said the steward, we have met with a prater.  Farewell, master\ntattler, God keep you, so goodly are the words which you come out with, and\nso fresh in your mouth, that it had need to be salted.\n\nThus going down in great haste, under the arch of the stairs they let fall\nthe great lever, which he had put upon their backs; whereupon Gargantua\nsaid, What a devil! you are, it seems, but bad horsemen, that suffer your\nbilder to fail you when you need him most.  If you were to go from hence to\nCahusac, whether had you rather, ride on a gosling or lead a sow in a\nleash?  I had rather drink, said the harbinger.  With this they entered\ninto the lower hall, where the company was, and relating to them this new\nstory, they made them laugh like a swarm of flies.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua's wonderful understanding became known to his father\nGrangousier, by the invention of a torchecul or wipebreech.\n\nAbout the end of the fifth year, Grangousier returning from the conquest of\nthe Canarians, went by the way to see his son Gargantua.  There was he\nfilled with joy, as such a father might be at the sight of such a child of\nhis:  and whilst he kissed and embraced him, he asked many childish\nquestions of him about divers matters, and drank very freely with him and\nwith his governesses, of whom in great earnest he asked, amongst other\nthings, whether they had been careful to keep him clean and sweet.  To this\nGargantua answered, that he had taken such a course for that himself, that\nin all the country there was not to be found a cleanlier boy than he.  How\nis that? said Grangousier.  I have, answered Gargantua, by a long and\ncurious experience, found out a means to wipe my bum, the most lordly, the\nmost excellent, and the most convenient that ever was seen.  What is that?\nsaid Grangousier, how is it?  I will tell you by-and-by, said Gargantua.\nOnce I did wipe me with a gentle-woman's velvet mask, and found it to be\ngood; for the softness of the silk was very voluptuous and pleasant to my\nfundament.  Another time with one of their hoods, and in like manner that\nwas comfortable.  At another time with a lady's neckerchief, and after that\nI wiped me with some ear-pieces of hers made of crimson satin, but there\nwas such a number of golden spangles in them (turdy round things, a pox\ntake them) that they fetched away all the skin of my tail with a vengeance.\nNow I wish St. Antony's fire burn the bum-gut of the goldsmith that made\nthem, and of her that wore them!  This hurt I cured by wiping myself with a\npage's cap, garnished with a feather after the Switzers' fashion.\n\nAfterwards, in dunging behind a bush, I found a March-cat, and with it I\nwiped my breech, but her claws were so sharp that they scratched and\nexulcerated all my perinee.  Of this I recovered the next morning\nthereafter, by wiping myself with my mother's gloves, of a most excellent\nperfume and scent of the Arabian Benin.  After that I wiped me with sage,\nwith fennel, with anet, with marjoram, with roses, with gourd-leaves, with\nbeets, with colewort, with leaves of the vine-tree, with mallows,\nwool-blade, which is a tail-scarlet, with lettuce, and with spinach leaves.\nAll this did very great good to my leg.  Then with mercury, with parsley,\nwith nettles, with comfrey, but that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy,\nwhich I healed by wiping me with my braguette.  Then I wiped my tail in the\nsheets, in the coverlet, in the curtains, with a cushion, with arras\nhangings, with a green carpet, with a table-cloth, with a napkin, with a\nhandkerchief, with a combing-cloth; in all which I found more pleasure than\ndo the mangy dogs when you rub them.  Yea, but, said Grangousier, which\ntorchecul did you find to be the best?  I was coming to it, said Gargantua,\nand by-and-by shall you hear the tu autem, and know the whole mystery and\nknot of the matter.  I wiped myself with hay, with straw, with\nthatch-rushes, with flax, with wool, with paper, but,\n\n  Who his foul tail with paper wipes,\n  Shall at his ballocks leave some chips.\n\nWhat, said Grangousier, my little rogue, hast thou been at the pot, that\nthou dost rhyme already?  Yes, yes, my lord the king, answered Gargantua, I\ncan rhyme gallantly, and rhyme till I become hoarse with rheum.  Hark, what\nour privy says to the skiters:\n\n\nShittard,\nSquirtard,\nCrackard,\n   Turdous,\nThy bung\nHath flung\nSome dung\n   On us:\nFilthard,\nCackard,\nStinkard,\n   St. Antony's fire seize on thy toane (bone?),\nIf thy\nDirty\nDounby\n   Thou do not wipe, ere thou be gone.\n\nWill you have any more of it?  Yes, yes, answered Grangousier.  Then, said\nGargantua,\n\nA Roundelay.\n\nIn shitting yes'day I did know\nThe sess I to my arse did owe:\nThe smell was such came from that slunk,\nThat I was with it all bestunk:\nO had but then some brave Signor\nBrought her to me I waited for,\n   In shitting!\n\nI would have cleft her watergap,\nAnd join'd it close to my flipflap,\nWhilst she had with her fingers guarded\nMy foul nockandrow, all bemerded\n   In shitting.\n\nNow say that I can do nothing!  By the Merdi, they are not of my making,\nbut I heard them of this good old grandam, that you see here, and ever\nsince have retained them in the budget of my memory.\n\nLet us return to our purpose, said Grangousier.  What, said Gargantua, to\nskite?  No, said Grangousier, but to wipe our tail.  But, said Gargantua,\nwill not you be content to pay a puncheon of Breton wine, if I do not blank\nand gravel you in this matter, and put you to a non-plus?  Yes, truly, said\nGrangousier.\n\nThere is no need of wiping one's tail, said Gargantua, but when it is foul;\nfoul it cannot be, unless one have been a-skiting; skite then we must\nbefore we wipe our tails.  O my pretty little waggish boy, said\nGrangousier, what an excellent wit thou hast?  I will make thee very\nshortly proceed doctor in the jovial quirks of gay learning, and that, by\nG--, for thou hast more wit than age.  Now, I prithee, go on in this\ntorcheculative, or wipe-bummatory discourse, and by my beard I swear, for\none puncheon, thou shalt have threescore pipes, I mean of the good Breton\nwine, not that which grows in Britain, but in the good country of Verron.\nAfterwards I wiped my bum, said Gargantua, with a kerchief, with a pillow,\nwith a pantoufle, with a pouch, with a pannier, but that was a wicked and\nunpleasant torchecul; then with a hat.  Of hats, note that some are shorn,\nand others shaggy, some velveted, others covered with taffeties, and others\nwith satin.  The best of all these is the shaggy hat, for it makes a very\nneat abstersion of the fecal matter.\n\nAfterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a\ncalf's skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an\nattorney's bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer's lure.  But,\nto conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps,\nbumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is\nnone in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed,\nif you hold her head betwixt your legs.  And believe me therein upon mine\nhonour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful\npleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the\ntemporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut\nand the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of\nthe heart and brains.  And think not that the felicity of the heroes and\ndemigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel,\nambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this,\naccording to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a\ngoose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of\nMaster John of Scotland, alias Scotus.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua was taught Latin by a Sophister.\n\nThe good man Grangousier having heard this discourse, was ravished with\nadmiration, considering the high reach and marvellous understanding of his\nson Gargantua, and said to his governesses, Philip, king of Macedon, knew\nthe great wit of his son Alexander by his skilful managing of a horse; for\nhis horse Bucephalus was so fierce and unruly that none durst adventure\nto ride him, after that he had given to his riders such devilish falls,\nbreaking the neck of this man, the other man's leg, braining one, and\nputting another out of his jawbone.  This by Alexander being considered,\none day in the hippodrome (which was a place appointed for the breaking and\nmanaging of great horses), he perceived that the fury of the horse\nproceeded merely from the fear he had of his own shadow, whereupon getting\non his back, he run him against the sun, so that the shadow fell behind,\nand by that means tamed the horse and brought him to his hand.  Whereby his\nfather, knowing the divine judgment that was in him, caused him most\ncarefully to be instructed by Aristotle, who at that time was highly\nrenowned above all the philosophers of Greece.  After the same manner I\ntell you, that by this only discourse, which now I have here had before you\nwith my son Gargantua, I know that his understanding doth participate of\nsome divinity, and that, if he be well taught, and have that education\nwhich is fitting, he will attain to a supreme degree of wisdom.  Therefore\nwill I commit him to some learned man, to have him indoctrinated according\nto his capacity, and will spare no cost.  Presently they appointed him a\ngreat sophister-doctor, called Master Tubal Holofernes, who taught him his\nABC so well, that he could say it by heart backwards; and about this he was\nfive years and three months.  Then read he to him Donat, Le Facet,\nTheodolet, and Alanus in parabolis.  About this he was thirteen years, six\nmonths, and two weeks.  But you must remark that in the mean time he did\nlearn to write in Gothic characters, and that he wrote all his books--for\nthe art of printing was not then in use--and did ordinarily carry a great\npen and inkhorn, weighing about seven thousand quintals (that is, 700,000\npound weight), the penner whereof was as big and as long as the great\npillars of Enay, and the horn was hanging to it in great iron chains, it\nbeing of the wideness of a tun of merchant ware.  After that he read unto\nhim the book de modis significandi, with the commentaries of Hurtbise, of\nFasquin, of Tropdieux, of Gualhaut, of John Calf, of Billonio, of\nBerlinguandus, and a rabble of others; and herein he spent more than\neighteen years and eleven months, and was so well versed in it that, to try\nmasteries in school disputes with his condisciples, he would recite it by\nheart backwards, and did sometimes prove on his finger-ends to his mother,\nquod de modis significandi non erat scientia.  Then did he read to him the\ncompost for knowing the age of the moon, the seasons of the year, and tides\nof the sea, on which he spent sixteen years and two months, and that justly\nat the time that his said preceptor died of the French pox, which was in\nthe year one thousand four hundred and twenty.  Afterwards he got an old\ncoughing fellow to teach him, named Master Jobelin Bride, or muzzled dolt,\nwho read unto him Hugutio, Hebrard('s) Grecism, the Doctrinal, the Parts,\nthe Quid est, the Supplementum, Marmotretus, De moribus in mensa servandis,\nSeneca de quatuor virtutibus cardinalibus, Passavantus cum commento, and\nDormi secure for the holidays, and some other of such like mealy stuff, by\nreading whereof he became as wise as any we ever since baked in an oven.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua was put under other schoolmasters.\n\nAt the last his father perceived that indeed he studied hard, and that,\nalthough he spent all his time in it, he did nevertheless profit nothing,\nbut which is worse, grew thereby foolish, simple, doted, and blockish,\nwhereof making a heavy regret to Don Philip of Marays, Viceroy or Depute\nKing of Papeligosse, he found that it were better for him to learn nothing\nat all, than to be taught such-like books, under such schoolmasters;\nbecause their knowledge was nothing but brutishness, and their wisdom but\nblunt foppish toys, serving only to bastardize good and noble spirits, and\nto corrupt all the flower of youth.  That it is so, take, said he, any\nyoung boy of this time who hath only studied two years,--if he have not a\nbetter judgment, a better discourse, and that expressed in better terms\nthan your son, with a completer carriage and civility to all manner of\npersons, account me for ever hereafter a very clounch and bacon-slicer of\nBrene.  This pleased Grangousier very well, and he commanded that it should\nbe done.  At night at supper, the said Des Marays brought in a young page\nof his, of Ville-gouges, called Eudemon, so neat, so trim, so handsome in\nhis apparel, so spruce, with his hair in so good order, and so sweet and\ncomely in his behaviour, that he had the resemblance of a little angel more\nthan of a human creature.  Then he said to Grangousier, Do you see this\nyoung boy?  He is not as yet full twelve years old.  Let us try, if it\nplease you, what difference there is betwixt the knowledge of the doting\nMateologians of old time and the young lads that are now.  The trial\npleased Grangousier, and he commanded the page to begin.  Then Eudemon,\nasking leave of the vice-king his master so to do, with his cap in his\nhand, a clear and open countenance, beautiful and ruddy lips, his eyes\nsteady, and his looks fixed upon Gargantua with a youthful modesty,\nstanding up straight on his feet, began very gracefully to commend him;\nfirst, for his virtue and good manners; secondly, for his knowledge,\nthirdly, for his nobility; fourthly, for his bodily accomplishments; and,\nin the fifth place, most sweetly exhorted him to reverence his father with\nall due observancy, who was so careful to have him well brought up.  In the\nend he prayed him, that he would vouchsafe to admit of him amongst the\nleast of his servants; for other favour at that time desired he none of\nheaven, but that he might do him some grateful and acceptable service.  All\nthis was by him delivered with such proper gestures, such distinct\npronunciation, so pleasant a delivery, in such exquisite fine terms, and so\ngood Latin, that he seemed rather a Gracchus, a Cicero, an Aemilius of the\ntime past, than a youth of this age.  But all the countenance that\nGargantua kept was, that he fell to crying like a cow, and cast down his\nface, hiding it with his cap, nor could they possibly draw one word from\nhim, no more than a fart from a dead ass.  Whereat his father was so\ngrievously vexed that he would have killed Master Jobelin, but the said Des\nMarays withheld him from it by fair persuasions, so that at length he\npacified his wrath.  Then Grangousier commanded he should be paid his\nwages, that they should whittle him up soundly, like a sophister, with good\ndrink, and then give him leave to go to all the devils in hell.  At least,\nsaid he, today shall it not cost his host much if by chance he should die\nas drunk as a Switzer.  Master Jobelin being gone out of the house,\nGrangousier consulted with the Viceroy what schoolmaster they should choose\nfor him, and it was betwixt them resolved that Ponocrates, the tutor of\nEudemon, should have the charge, and that they should go altogether to\nParis, to know what was the study of the young men of France at that time.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua was sent to Paris, and of the huge great mare that he rode\non; how she destroyed the oxflies of the Beauce.\n\nIn the same season Fayoles, the fourth King of Numidia, sent out of the\ncountry of Africa to Grangousier the most hideously great mare that ever\nwas seen, and of the strangest form, for you know well enough how it is\nsaid that Africa always is productive of some new thing.  She was as big as\nsix elephants, and had her feet cloven into fingers, like Julius Caesar's\nhorse, with slouch-hanging ears, like the goats in Languedoc, and a little\nhorn on her buttock.  She was of a burnt sorrel hue, with a little mixture\nof dapple-grey spots, but above all she had a horrible tail; for it was\nlittle more or less than every whit as great as the steeple-pillar of St.\nMark beside Langes:  and squared as that is, with tuffs and ennicroches or\nhair-plaits wrought within one another, no otherwise than as the beards are\nupon the ears of corn.\n\nIf you wonder at this, wonder rather at the tails of the Scythian rams,\nwhich weighed above thirty pounds each; and of the Surian sheep, who need,\nif Tenaud say true, a little cart at their heels to bear up their tail, it\nis so long and heavy.  You female lechers in the plain countries have no\nsuch tails.  And she was brought by sea in three carricks and a brigantine\nunto the harbour of Olone in Thalmondois.  When Grangousier saw her, Here\nis, said he, what is fit to carry my son to Paris.  So now, in the name of\nGod, all will be well.  He will in times coming be a great scholar.  If it\nwere not, my masters, for the beasts, we should live like clerks.  The next\nmorning--after they had drunk, you must understand--they took their\njourney; Gargantua, his pedagogue Ponocrates, and his train, and with them\nEudemon, the young page.  And because the weather was fair and temperate,\nhis father caused to be made for him a pair of dun boots,--Babin calls them\nbuskins.  Thus did they merrily pass their time in travelling on their high\nway, always making good cheer, and were very pleasant till they came a\nlittle above Orleans, in which place there was a forest of five-and-thirty\nleagues long, and seventeen in breadth, or thereabouts.  This forest was\nmost horribly fertile and copious in dorflies, hornets, and wasps, so that\nit was a very purgatory for the poor mares, asses, and horses.  But\nGargantua's mare did avenge herself handsomely of all the outrages therein\ncommitted upon beasts of her kind, and that by a trick whereof they had no\nsuspicion.  For as soon as ever they were entered into the said forest, and\nthat the wasps had given the assault, she drew out and unsheathed her tail,\nand therewith skirmishing, did so sweep them that she overthrew all the\nwood alongst and athwart, here and there, this way and that way, longwise\nand sidewise, over and under, and felled everywhere the wood with as much\nease as a mower doth the grass, in such sort that never since hath there\nbeen there neither wood nor dorflies:  for all the country was thereby\nreduced to a plain champaign field.  Which Gargantua took great pleasure to\nbehold, and said to his company no more but this:  Je trouve beau ce (I\nfind this pretty); whereupon that country hath been ever since that time\ncalled Beauce.  But all the breakfast the mare got that day was but a\nlittle yawning and gaping, in memory whereof the gentlemen of Beauce do as\nyet to this day break their fast with gaping, which they find to be very\ngood, and do spit the better for it.  At last they came to Paris, where\nGargantua refreshed himself two or three days, making very merry with his\nfolks, and inquiring what men of learning there were then in the city, and\nwhat wine they drunk there.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua paid his welcome to the Parisians, and how he took away the\ngreat bells of Our Lady's Church.\n\nSome few days after that they had refreshed themselves, he went to see the\ncity, and was beheld of everybody there with great admiration; for the\npeople of Paris are so sottish, so badot, so foolish and fond by nature,\nthat a juggler, a carrier of indulgences, a sumpter-horse, or mule with\ncymbals or tinkling bells, a blind fiddler in the middle of a cross lane,\nshall draw a greater confluence of people together than an evangelical\npreacher.  And they pressed so hard upon him that he was constrained to\nrest himself upon the towers of Our Lady's Church.  At which place, seeing\nso many about him, he said with a loud voice, I believe that these buzzards\nwill have me to pay them here my welcome hither, and my Proficiat.  It is\nbut good reason.  I will now give them their wine, but it shall be only in\nsport.  Then smiling, he untied his fair braguette, and drawing out his\nmentul into the open air, he so bitterly all-to-bepissed them, that he\ndrowned two hundred and sixty thousand, four hundred and eighteen, besides\nthe women and little children.  Some, nevertheless, of the company escaped\nthis piss-flood by mere speed of foot, who, when they were at the higher\nend of the university, sweating, coughing, spitting, and out of breath,\nthey began to swear and curse, some in good hot earnest, and others in\njest.  Carimari, carimara:  golynoly, golynolo.  By my sweet Sanctess, we\nare washed in sport, a sport truly to laugh at;--in French, Par ris, for\nwhich that city hath been ever since called Paris; whose name formerly was\nLeucotia, as Strabo testifieth, lib. quarto, from the Greek word leukotes,\nwhiteness,--because of the white thighs of the ladies of that place.  And\nforasmuch as, at this imposition of a new name, all the people that were\nthere swore everyone by the Sancts of his parish, the Parisians, which are\npatched up of all nations and all pieces of countries, are by nature both\ngood jurors and good jurists, and somewhat overweening; whereupon Joanninus\nde Barrauco, libro de copiositate reverentiarum, thinks that they are\ncalled Parisians from the Greek word parresia, which signifies boldness and\nliberty in speech.  This done, he considered the great bells, which were in\nthe said towers, and made them sound very harmoniously.  Which whilst he\nwas doing, it came into his mind that they would serve very well for\ntingling tantans and ringing campanels to hang about his mare's neck when\nshe should be sent back to his father, as he intended to do, loaded with\nBrie cheese and fresh herring.  And indeed he forthwith carried them to his\nlodging.  In the meanwhile there came a master beggar of the friars of St.\nAnthony to demand in his canting way the usual benevolence of some hoggish\nstuff, who, that he might be heard afar off, and to make the bacon he was\nin quest of shake in the very chimneys, made account to filch them away\nprivily.  Nevertheless, he left them behind very honestly, not for that\nthey were too hot, but that they were somewhat too heavy for his carriage.\nThis was not he of Bourg, for he was too good a friend of mine.  All the\ncity was risen up in sedition, they being, as you know, upon any slight\noccasion, so ready to uproars and insurrections, that foreign nations\nwonder at the patience of the kings of France, who do not by good justice\nrestrain them from such tumultuous courses, seeing the manifold\ninconveniences which thence arise from day to day.  Would to God I knew the\nshop wherein are forged these divisions and factious combinations, that I\nmight bring them to light in the confraternities of my parish!  Believe for\na truth, that the place wherein the people gathered together, were thus\nsulphured, hopurymated, moiled, and bepissed, was called Nesle, where then\nwas, but now is no more, the oracle of Leucotia.  There was the case\nproposed, and the inconvenience showed of the transporting of the bells.\nAfter they had well ergoted pro and con, they concluded in baralipton, that\nthey should send the oldest and most sufficient of the faculty unto\nGargantua, to signify unto him the great and horrible prejudice they\nsustain by the want of those bells.  And notwithstanding the good reasons\ngiven in by some of the university why this charge was fitter for an orator\nthan a sophister, there was chosen for this purpose our Master Janotus de\nBragmardo.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Janotus de Bragmardo was sent to Gargantua to recover the great bells.\n\nMaster Janotus, with his hair cut round like a dish a la Caesarine, in his\nmost antique accoutrement liripipionated with a graduate's hood, and having\nsufficiently antidoted his stomach with oven-marmalades, that is, bread and\nholy water of the cellar, transported himself to the lodging of Gargantua,\ndriving before him three red-muzzled beadles, and dragging after him five\nor six artless masters, all thoroughly bedaggled with the mire of the\nstreets.  At their entry Ponocrates met them, who was afraid, seeing them\nso disguised, and thought they had been some masquers out of their wits,\nwhich moved him to inquire of one of the said artless masters of the\ncompany what this mummery meant.  It was answered him, that they desired to\nhave their bells restored to them.  As soon as Ponocrates heard that, he\nran in all haste to carry the news unto Gargantua, that he might be ready\nto answer them, and speedily resolve what was to be done.  Gargantua being\nadvertised hereof, called apart his schoolmaster Ponocrates, Philotimus,\nsteward of his house, Gymnastes, his esquire, and Eudemon, and very\nsummarily conferred with them, both of what he should do and what answer he\nshould give.  They were all of opinion that they should bring them unto the\ngoblet-office, which is the buttery, and there make them drink like\nroysters and line their jackets soundly.  And that this cougher might not\nbe puffed up with vain-glory by thinking the bells were restored at his\nrequest, they sent, whilst he was chopining and plying the pot, for the\nmayor of the city, the rector of the faculty, and the vicar of the church,\nunto whom they resolved to deliver the bells before the sophister had\npropounded his commission.  After that, in their hearing, he should\npronounce his gallant oration, which was done; and they being come, the\nsophister was brought in full hall, and began as followeth, in coughing.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe oration of Master Janotus de Bragmardo for recovery of the bells.\n\nHem, hem, gud-day, sirs, gud-day.  Et vobis, my masters.  It were but\nreason that you should restore to us our bells; for we have great need of\nthem.  Hem, hem, aihfuhash.  We have oftentimes heretofore refused good\nmoney for them of those of London in Cahors, yea and those of Bourdeaux in\nBrie, who would have bought them for the substantific quality of the\nelementary complexion, which is intronificated in the terrestreity of their\nquidditative nature, to extraneize the blasting mists and whirlwinds upon\nour vines, indeed not ours, but these round about us.  For if we lose the\npiot and liquor of the grape, we lose all, both sense and law.  If you\nrestore them unto us at my request, I shall gain by it six basketfuls of\nsausages and a fine pair of breeches, which will do my legs a great deal of\ngood, or else they will not keep their promise to me.  Ho by gob, Domine, a\npair of breeches is good, et vir sapiens non abhorrebit eam.  Ha, ha, a\npair of breeches is not so easily got; I have experience of it myself.\nConsider, Domine, I have been these eighteen days in matagrabolizing this\nbrave speech.  Reddite quae sunt Caesaris, Caesari, et quae sunt Dei, Deo.\nIbi jacet lepus.  By my faith, Domine, if you will sup with me in cameris,\nby cox body, charitatis, nos faciemus bonum cherubin.  Ego occiditunum\nporcum, et ego habet bonum vino:  but of good wine we cannot make bad\nLatin.  Well, de parte Dei date nobis bellas nostras.  Hold, I give you in\nthe name of the faculty a Sermones de Utino, that utinam you would give us\nour bells.  Vultis etiam pardonos?  Per diem vos habebitis, et nihil\npayabitis.  O, sir, Domine, bellagivaminor nobis; verily, est bonum vobis.\nThey are useful to everybody.  If they fit your mare well, so do they do\nour faculty; quae comparata est jumentis insipientibus, et similis facta\nest eis, Psalmo nescio quo.  Yet did I quote it in my note-book, et est\nunum bonum Achilles, a good defending argument.  Hem, hem, hem, haikhash!\nFor I prove unto you, that you should give me them.  Ego sic argumentor.\nOmnis bella bellabilis in bellerio bellando, bellans, bellativo, bellare\nfacit, bellabiliter bellantes.  Parisius habet bellas.  Ergo gluc, Ha, ha,\nha.  This is spoken to some purpose.  It is in tertio primae, in Darii, or\nelsewhere.  By my soul, I have seen the time that I could play the devil in\narguing, but now I am much failed, and henceforward want nothing but a cup\nof good wine, a good bed, my back to the fire, my belly to the table, and a\ngood deep dish.  Hei, Domine, I beseech you, in nomine Patris, Filii, et\nSpiritus sancti, Amen, to restore unto us our bells:  and God keep you from\nevil, and our Lady from health, qui vivit et regnat per omnia secula\nseculorum, Amen.  Hem, hashchehhawksash, qzrchremhemhash.\n\nVerum enim vero, quandoquidem, dubio procul.  Edepol, quoniam, ita certe,\nmedius fidius; a town without bells is like a blind man without a staff, an\nass without a crupper, and a cow without cymbals.  Therefore be assured,\nuntil you have restored them unto us, we will never leave crying after you,\nlike a blind man that hath lost his staff, braying like an ass without a\ncrupper, and making a noise like a cow without cymbals.  A certain\nlatinisator, dwelling near the hospital, said since, producing the\nauthority of one Taponnus,--I lie, it was one Pontanus the secular poet,\n--who wished those bells had been made of feathers, and the clapper of a\nfoxtail, to the end they might have begot a chronicle in the bowels of his\nbrain, when he was about the composing of his carminiformal lines.  But nac\npetetin petetac, tic, torche lorgne, or rot kipipur kipipot put pantse\nmalf, he was declared an heretic.  We make them as of wax.  And no more\nsaith the deponent.  Valete et plaudite.  Calepinus recensui.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Sophister carried away his cloth, and how he had a suit in law\nagainst the other masters.\n\nThe sophister had no sooner ended, but Ponocrates and Eudemon burst out in\na laughing so heartily, that they had almost split with it, and given up\nthe ghost, in rendering their souls to God:  even just as Crassus did,\nseeing a lubberly ass eat thistles; and as Philemon, who, for seeing an ass\neat those figs which were provided for his own dinner, died with force of\nlaughing.  Together with them Master Janotus fell a-laughing too as fast as\nhe could, in which mood of laughing they continued so long, that their eyes\ndid water by the vehement concussion of the substance of the brain, by\nwhich these lachrymal humidities, being pressed out, glided through the\noptic nerves, and so to the full represented Democritus Heraclitizing and\nHeraclitus Democritizing.\n\nWhen they had done laughing, Gargantua consulted with the prime of his\nretinue what should be done.  There Ponocrates was of opinion that they\nshould make this fair orator drink again; and seeing he had showed them\nmore pastime, and made them laugh more than a natural soul could have done,\nthat they should give him ten baskets full of sausages, mentioned in his\npleasant speech, with a pair of hose, three hundred great billets of\nlogwood, five-and-twenty hogsheads of wine, a good large down-bed, and a\ndeep capacious dish, which he said were necessary for his old age.  All\nthis was done as they did appoint:  only Gargantua, doubting that they\ncould not quickly find out breeches fit for his wearing, because he knew\nnot what fashion would best become the said orator, whether the martingale\nfashion of breeches, wherein is a spunghole with a drawbridge for the more\neasy caguing:  or the fashion of the mariners, for the greater solace and\ncomfort of his kidneys:  or that of the Switzers, which keeps warm the\nbedondaine or belly-tabret:  or round breeches with straight cannions,\nhaving in the seat a piece like a cod's tail, for fear of over-heating his\nreins:--all which considered, he caused to be given him seven ells of white\ncloth for the linings.  The wood was carried by the porters, the masters of\narts carried the sausages and the dishes, and Master Janotus himself would\ncarry the cloth.  One of the said masters, called Jousse Bandouille, showed\nhim that it was not seemly nor decent for one of his condition to do so,\nand that therefore he should deliver it to one of them.  Ha, said Janotus,\nbaudet, baudet, or blockhead, blockhead, thou dost not conclude in modo et\nfigura.  For lo, to this end serve the suppositions and parva logicalia.\nPannus, pro quo supponit?  Confuse, said Bandouille, et distributive.  I do\nnot ask thee, said Janotus, blockhead, quomodo supponit, but pro quo?  It\nis, blockhead, pro tibiis meis, and therefore I will carry it, Egomet,\nsicut suppositum portat appositum.  So did he carry it away very close and\ncovertly, as Patelin the buffoon did his cloth.  The best was, that when\nthis cougher, in a full act or assembly held at the Mathurins, had with\ngreat confidence required his breeches and sausages, and that they were\nflatly denied him, because he had them of Gargantua, according to the\ninformations thereupon made, he showed them that this was gratis, and out\nof his liberality, by which they were not in any sort quit of their\npromises.  Notwithstanding this, it was answered him that he should be\ncontent with reason, without expectation of any other bribe there.  Reason?\nsaid Janotus.  We use none of it here.  Unlucky traitors, you are not worth\nthe hanging.  The earth beareth not more arrant villains than you are.  I\nknow it well enough; halt not before the lame.  I have practised wickedness\nwith you.  By God's rattle, I will inform the king of the enormous abuses\nthat are forged here and carried underhand by you, and let me be a leper,\nif he do not burn you alive like sodomites, traitors, heretics and\nseducers, enemies to God and virtue.\n\nUpon these words they framed articles against him:  he on the other side\nwarned them to appear.  In sum, the process was retained by the court, and\nis there as yet.  Hereupon the magisters made a vow never to decrott\nthemselves in rubbing off the dirt of either their shoes or clothes:\nMaster Janotus with his adherents vowed never to blow or snuff their noses,\nuntil judgment were given by a definitive sentence.\n\nBy these vows do they continue unto this time both dirty and snotty; for\nthe court hath not garbled, sifted, and fully looked into all the pieces as\nyet.  The judgment or decree shall be given out and pronounced at the next\nGreek kalends, that is, never.  As you know that they do more than nature,\nand contrary to their own articles.  The articles of Paris maintain that to\nGod alone belongs infinity, and nature produceth nothing that is immortal;\nfor she putteth an end and period to all things by her engendered,\naccording to the saying, Omnia orta cadunt, &c.  But these thick\nmist-swallowers make the suits in law depending before them both infinite\nand immortal.  In doing whereof, they have given occasion to, and verified\nthe saying of Chilo the Lacedaemonian, consecrated to the oracle at Delphos,\nthat misery is the inseparable companion of law-debates; and that pleaders\nare miserable; for sooner shall they attain to the end of their lives, than\nto the final decision of their pretended rights.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe study of Gargantua, according to the discipline of his schoolmasters\nthe Sophisters.\n\nThe first day being thus spent, and the bells put up again in their own\nplace, the citizens of Paris, in acknowledgment of this courtesy, offered\nto maintain and feed his mare as long as he pleased, which Gargantua took\nin good part, and they sent her to graze in the forest of Biere.  I think\nshe is not there now.  This done, he with all his heart submitted his study\nto the discretion of Ponocrates; who for the beginning appointed that he\nshould do as he was accustomed, to the end he might understand by what\nmeans, in so long time, his old masters had made him so sottish and\nignorant.  He disposed therefore of his time in such fashion, that\nordinarily he did awake betwixt eight and nine o'clock, whether it was day\nor not, for so had his ancient governors ordained, alleging that which\nDavid saith, Vanum est vobis ante lucem surgere.  Then did he tumble and\ntoss, wag his legs, and wallow in the bed some time, the better to stir up\nand rouse his vital spirits, and apparelled himself according to the\nseason:  but willingly he would wear a great long gown of thick frieze,\nfurred with fox-skins.  Afterwards he combed his head with an Almain comb,\nwhich is the four fingers and the thumb.  For his preceptor said that to\ncomb himself otherwise, to wash and make himself neat, was to lose time in\nthis world.  Then he dunged, pissed, spewed, belched, cracked, yawned,\nspitted, coughed, yexed, sneezed and snotted himself like an archdeacon,\nand, to suppress the dew and bad air, went to breakfast, having some good\nfried tripes, fair rashers on the coals, excellent gammons of bacon, store\nof fine minced meat, and a great deal of sippet brewis, made up of the fat\nof the beef-pot, laid upon bread, cheese, and chopped parsley strewed\ntogether.  Ponocrates showed him that he ought not to eat so soon after\nrising out of his bed, unless he had performed some exercise beforehand.\nGargantua answered, What! have not I sufficiently well exercised myself?  I\nhave wallowed and rolled myself six or seven turns in my bed before I rose.\nIs not that enough?  Pope Alexander did so, by the advice of a Jew his\nphysician, and lived till his dying day in despite of his enemies.  My\nfirst masters have used me to it, saying that to breakfast made a good\nmemory, and therefore they drank first.  I am very well after it, and dine\nbut the better.  And Master Tubal, who was the first licenciate at Paris,\ntold me that it was not enough to run apace, but to set forth betimes:  so\ndoth not the total welfare of our humanity depend upon perpetual drinking\nin a ribble rabble, like ducks, but on drinking early in the morning; unde\nversus,\n\n  To rise betimes is no good hour,\n  To drink betimes is better sure.\n\nAfter that he had thoroughly broke his fast, he went to church, and they\ncarried to him, in a great basket, a huge impantoufled or thick-covered\nbreviary, weighing, what in grease, clasps, parchment and cover, little\nmore or less than eleven hundred and six pounds.  There he heard\nsix-and-twenty or thirty masses.  This while, to the same place came his\norison-mutterer impaletocked, or lapped up about the chin like a tufted\nwhoop, and his breath pretty well antidoted with store of the\nvine-tree-syrup.  With him he mumbled all his kiriels and dunsical\nbreborions, which he so curiously thumbed and fingered, that there fell not\nso much as one grain to the ground.  As he went from the church, they\nbrought him, upon a dray drawn with oxen, a confused heap of paternosters\nand aves of St. Claude, every one of them being of the bigness of a\nhat-block; and thus walking through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he\nsaid more in turning them over than sixteen hermits would have done.  Then\ndid he study some paltry half-hour with his eyes fixed upon his book; but,\nas the comic saith, his mind was in the kitchen.  Pissing then a full\nurinal, he sat down at table; and because he was naturally phlegmatic, he\nbegan his meal with some dozens of gammons, dried neat's tongues, hard roes\nof mullet, called botargos, andouilles or sausages, and such other\nforerunners of wine. In the meanwhile, four of his folks did cast into his\nmouth one after another continually mustard by whole shovelfuls.\nImmediately after that, he drank a horrible draught of white wine for the\nease of his kidneys.  When that was done, he ate according to the season\nmeat agreeable to his appetite, and then left off eating when his belly\nbegan to strout, and was like to crack for fulness.  As for his drinking, he\nhad in that neither end nor rule.  For he was wont to say, That the limits\nand bounds of drinking were, when the cork of the shoes of him that drinketh\nswelleth up half a foot high.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe games of Gargantua.\n\nThen blockishly mumbling with a set on countenance a piece of scurvy grace,\nhe washed his hands in fresh wine, picked his teeth with the foot of a hog,\nand talked jovially with his attendants.  Then the carpet being spread,\nthey brought plenty of cards, many dice, with great store and abundance of\nchequers and chessboards.\n\nThere he played.\nAt flush.                            At love.\nAt primero.                          At the chess.\nAt the beast.                        At Reynard the fox.\nAt the rifle.                        At the squares.\nAt trump.                            At the cows.\nAt the prick and spare not.          At the lottery.\nAt the hundred.                      At the chance or mumchance.\nAt the peeny.                        At three dice or maniest bleaks.\nAt the unfortunate woman.            At the tables.\nAt the fib.                          At nivinivinack.\nAt the pass ten.                     At the lurch.\nAt one-and-thirty.                   At doublets or queen's game.\nAt post and pair, or even and        At the faily.\n  sequence.                          At the French trictrac.\nAt three hundred.                    At the long tables or ferkeering.\nAt the unlucky man.                  At feldown.\nAt the last couple in hell.          At tod's body.\nAt the hock.                         At needs must.\nAt the surly.                        At the dames or draughts.\nAt the lansquenet.                   At bob and mow.\nAt the cuckoo.                       At primus secundus.\nAt puff, or let him speak that       At mark-knife.\n  hath it.                           At the keys.\nAt take nothing and throw out.       At span-counter.\nAt the marriage.                     At even or odd.\nAt the frolic or jackdaw.            At cross or pile.\nAt the opinion.                      At ball and huckle-bones.\nAt who doth the one, doth the        At ivory balls.\n  other.                             At the billiards.\nAt the sequences.                    At bob and hit.\nAt the ivory bundles.                At the owl.\nAt the tarots.                       At the charming of the hare.\nAt losing load him.                  At pull yet a little.\nAt he's gulled and esto.             At trudgepig.\nAt the torture.                      At the magatapies.\nAt the handruff.                     At the horn.\nAt the click.                        At the flowered or Shrovetide ox.\nAt honours.                          At the madge-owlet.\nAt pinch without laughing.           At tilt at weeky.\nAt prickle me tickle me.             At ninepins.\nAt the unshoeing of the ass.         At the cock quintin.\nAt the cocksess.                     At tip and hurl.\nAt hari hohi.                        At the flat bowls.\nAt I set me down.                    At the veer and turn.\nAt earl beardy.                      At rogue and ruffian.\nAt the old mode.                     At bumbatch touch.\nAt draw the spit.                    At the mysterious trough.\nAt put out.                          At the short bowls.\nAt gossip lend me your sack.         At the dapple-grey.\nAt the ramcod ball.                  At cock and crank it.\nAt thrust out the harlot.            At break-pot.\nAt Marseilles figs.                  At my desire.\nAt nicknamry.                        At twirly whirlytrill.\nAt stick and hole.                   At the rush bundles.\nAt boke or him, or flaying the fox.  At the short staff.\nAt the branching it.                 At the whirling gig.\nAt trill madam, or grapple my lady.  At hide and seek, or are you all\nAt the cat selling.                    hid?\nAt blow the coal.                    At the picket.\nAt the re-wedding.                   At the blank.\nAt the quick and dead judge.         At the pilferers.\nAt unoven the iron.                  At the caveson.\nAt the false clown.                  At prison bars.\nAt the flints, or at the nine stones.At have at the nuts.\nAt to the crutch hulch back.         At cherry-pit.\nAt the Sanct is found.               At rub and rice.\nAt hinch, pinch and laugh not.       At whiptop.\nAt the leek.                         At the casting top.\nAt bumdockdousse.                    At the hobgoblins.\nAt the loose gig.                    At the O wonderful.\nAt the hoop.                         At the soily smutchy.\nAt the sow.                          At fast and loose.\nAt belly to belly.                   At scutchbreech.\nAt the dales or straths.             At the broom-besom.\nAt the twigs.                        At St. Cosme, I come to adore\nAt the quoits.                         thee.\nAt I'm for that.                     At the lusty brown boy.\nAt I take you napping.               At greedy glutton.\nAt fair and softly passeth Lent.     At the morris dance.\nAt the forked oak.                   At feeby.\nAt truss.                            At the whole frisk and gambol.\nAt the wolf's tail.                  At battabum, or riding of the\nAt bum to buss, or nose in breech.     wild mare.\nAt Geordie, give me my lance.        At Hind the ploughman.\nAt swaggy, waggy or shoggyshou.      At the good mawkin.\nAt stook and rook, shear and         At the dead beast.\n  threave.                           At climb the ladder, Billy.\nAt the birch.                        At the dying hog.\nAt the muss.                         At the salt doup.\nAt the dilly dilly darling.          At the pretty pigeon.\nAt ox moudy.                         At barley break.\nAt purpose in purpose.               At the bavine.\nAt nine less.                        At the bush leap.\nAt blind-man-buff.                   At crossing.\nAt the fallen bridges.               At bo-peep.\nAt bridled nick.                     At the hardit arsepursy.\nAt the white at butts.               At the harrower's nest.\nAt thwack swinge him.                At forward hey.\nAt apple, pear, plum.                At the fig.\nAt mumgi.                            At gunshot crack.\nAt the toad.                         At mustard peel.\nAt cricket.                          At the gome.\nAt the pounding stick.               At the relapse.\nAt jack and the box.                 At jog breech, or prick him\nAt the queens.                         forward.\nAt the trades.                       At knockpate.\nAt heads and points.                 At the Cornish c(h)ough.\nAt the vine-tree hug.                At the crane-dance.\nAt black be thy fall.                At slash and cut.\nAt ho the distaff.                   At bobbing, or flirt on the\nAt Joan Thomson.                       nose.\nAt the bolting cloth.                At the larks.\nAt the oat's seed.                   At fillipping.\n\nAfter he had thus well played, revelled, past and spent his time, it was\nthought fit to drink a little, and that was eleven glassfuls the man, and,\nimmediately after making good cheer again, he would stretch himself upon a\nfair bench, or a good large bed, and there sleep two or three hours\ntogether, without thinking or speaking any hurt.  After he was awakened he\nwould shake his ears a little.  In the mean time they brought him fresh\nwine.  There he drank better than ever.  Ponocrates showed him that it was\nan ill diet to drink so after sleeping.  It is, answered Gargantua, the\nvery life of the patriarchs and holy fathers; for naturally I sleep salt,\nand my sleep hath been to me in stead of so many gammons of bacon.  Then\nbegan he to study a little, and out came the paternosters or rosary of\nbeads, which the better and more formally to despatch, he got upon an old\nmule, which had served nine kings, and so mumbling with his mouth, nodding\nand doddling his head, would go see a coney ferreted or caught in a gin.\nAt his return he went into the kitchen to know what roast meat was on the\nspit, and what otherwise was to be dressed for supper.  And supped very\nwell, upon my conscience, and commonly did invite some of his neighbours\nthat were good drinkers, with whom carousing and drinking merrily, they\ntold stories of all sorts from the old to the new.  Amongst others he had\nfor domestics the Lords of Fou, of Gourville, of Griniot, and of Marigny.\nAfter supper were brought in upon the place the fair wooden gospels and the\nbooks of the four kings, that is to say, many pairs of tables and cards--or\nthe fair flush, one, two, three--or at all, to make short work; or else\nthey went to see the wenches thereabouts, with little small banquets,\nintermixed with collations and rear-suppers.  Then did he sleep, without\nunbridling, until eight o'clock in the next morning.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua was instructed by Ponocrates, and in such sort disciplinated,\nthat he lost not one hour of the day.\n\nWhen Ponocrates knew Gargantua's vicious manner of living, he resolved to\nbring him up in another kind; but for a while he bore with him, considering\nthat nature cannot endure a sudden change, without great violence.\nTherefore, to begin his work the better, he requested a learned physician\nof that time, called Master Theodorus, seriously to perpend, if it were\npossible, how to bring Gargantua into a better course.  The said physician\npurged him canonically with Anticyrian hellebore, by which medicine he\ncleansed all the alteration and perverse habitude of his brain.  By this\nmeans also Ponocrates made him forget all that he had learned under his\nancient preceptors, as Timotheus did to his disciples, who had been\ninstructed under other musicians.  To do this the better, they brought him\ninto the company of learned men, which were there, in whose imitation he\nhad a great desire and affection to study otherwise, and to improve his\nparts.  Afterwards he put himself into such a road and way of studying,\nthat he lost not any one hour in the day, but employed all his time in\nlearning and honest knowledge.  Gargantua awaked, then, about four o'clock\nin the morning.  Whilst they were in rubbing of him, there was read unto\nhim some chapter of the holy Scripture aloud and clearly, with a\npronunciation fit for the matter, and hereunto was appointed a young page\nborn in Basche, named Anagnostes.  According to the purpose and argument of\nthat lesson, he oftentimes gave himself to worship, adore, pray, and send\nup his supplications to that good God, whose Word did show his majesty and\nmarvellous judgment.  Then went he unto the secret places to make excretion\nof his natural digestions.  There his master repeated what had been read,\nexpounding unto him the most obscure and difficult points.  In returning,\nthey considered the face of the sky, if it was such as they had observed it\nthe night before, and into what signs the sun was entering, as also the\nmoon for that day.  This done, he was apparelled, combed, curled, trimmed,\nand perfumed, during which time they repeated to him the lessons of the day\nbefore.  He himself said them by heart, and upon them would ground some\npractical cases concerning the estate of man, which he would prosecute\nsometimes two or three hours, but ordinarily they ceased as soon as he was\nfully clothed.  Then for three good hours he had a lecture read unto him.\nThis done they went forth, still conferring of the substance of the\nlecture, either unto a field near the university called the Brack, or unto\nthe meadows, where they played at the ball, the long-tennis, and at the\npiletrigone (which is a play wherein we throw a triangular piece of iron at\na ring, to pass it), most gallantly exercising their bodies, as formerly\nthey had done their minds.  All their play was but in liberty, for they\nleft off when they pleased, and that was commonly when they did sweat over\nall their body, or were otherwise weary.  Then were they very well wiped\nand rubbed, shifted their shirts, and, walking soberly, went to see if\ndinner was ready.  Whilst they stayed for that, they did clearly and\neloquently pronounce some sentences that they had retained of the lecture.\nIn the meantime Master Appetite came, and then very orderly sat they down\nat table.  At the beginning of the meal there was read some pleasant\nhistory of the warlike actions of former times, until he had taken a glass\nof wine.  Then, if they thought good, they continued reading, or began to\ndiscourse merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, propriety,\nefficacy, and nature of all that was served in at the table; of bread, of\nwine, of water, of salt, of fleshes, fishes, fruits, herbs, roots, and of\ntheir dressing.  By means whereof he learned in a little time all the\npassages competent for this that were to be found in Pliny, Athenaeus,\nDioscorides, Julius Pollux, Galen, Porphyry, Oppian, Polybius, Heliodore,\nAristotle, Aelian, and others.  Whilst they talked of these things, many\ntimes, to be the more certain, they caused the very books to be brought to\nthe table, and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain the things\nabove said, that in that time there was not a physician that knew half so\nmuch as he did.  Afterwards they conferred of the lessons read in the\nmorning, and, ending their repast with some conserve or marmalade of\nquinces, he picked his teeth with mastic tooth-pickers, washed his hands\nand eyes with fair fresh water, and gave thanks unto God in some fine\ncantiques, made in praise of the divine bounty and munificence.  This done,\nthey brought in cards, not to play, but to learn a thousand pretty tricks\nand new inventions, which were all grounded upon arithmetic.  By this means\nhe fell in love with that numerical science, and every day after dinner and\nsupper he passed his time in it as pleasantly as he was wont to do at cards\nand dice; so that at last he understood so well both the theory and\npractical part thereof, that Tunstall the Englishman, who had written very\nlargely of that purpose, confessed that verily in comparison of him he had\nno skill at all.  And not only in that, but in the other mathematical\nsciences, as geometry, astronomy, music, &c.  For in waiting on the\nconcoction and attending the digestion of his food, they made a thousand\npretty instruments and geometrical figures, and did in some measure\npractise the astronomical canons.\n\nAfter this they recreated themselves with singing musically, in four or\nfive parts, or upon a set theme or ground at random, as it best pleased\nthem.  In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play upon the lute,\nthe virginals, the harp, the Almain flute with nine holes, the viol, and\nthe sackbut.  This hour thus spent, and digestion finished, he did purge\nhis body of natural excrements, then betook himself to his principal study\nfor three hours together, or more, as well to repeat his matutinal lectures\nas to proceed in the book wherein he was, as also to write handsomely, to\ndraw and form the antique and Roman letters.  This being done, they went\nout of their house, and with them a young gentleman of Touraine, named the\nEsquire Gymnast, who taught him the art of riding.  Changing then his\nclothes, he rode a Naples courser, a Dutch roussin, a Spanish jennet, a\nbarded or trapped steed, then a light fleet horse, unto whom he gave a\nhundred carieres, made him go the high saults, bounding in the air, free\nthe ditch with a skip, leap over a stile or pale, turn short in a ring both\nto the right and left hand.  There he broke not his lance; for it is the\ngreatest foolery in the world to say, I have broken ten lances at tilts or\nin fight.  A carpenter can do even as much.  But it is a glorious and\npraise-worthy action with one lance to break and overthrow ten enemies.\nTherefore, with a sharp, stiff, strong, and well-steeled lance would he\nusually force up a door, pierce a harness, beat down a tree, carry away the\nring, lift up a cuirassier saddle, with the mail-coat and gauntlet.  All\nthis he did in complete arms from head to foot.  As for the prancing\nflourishes and smacking popisms for the better cherishing of the horse,\ncommonly used in riding, none did them better than he.  The cavallerize of\nFerrara was but as an ape compared to him.  He was singularly skilful in\nleaping nimbly from one horse to another without putting foot to ground,\nand these horses were called desultories.  He could likewise from either\nside, with a lance in his hand, leap on horseback without stirrups, and\nrule the horse at his pleasure without a bridle, for such things are useful\nin military engagements.  Another day he exercised the battle-axe, which he\nso dexterously wielded, both in the nimble, strong, and smooth management\nof that weapon, and that in all the feats practicable by it, that he passed\nknight of arms in the field, and at all essays.\n\nThen tossed he the pike, played with the two-handed sword, with the\nbacksword, with the Spanish tuck, the dagger, poniard, armed, unarmed, with\na buckler, with a cloak, with a target.  Then would he hunt the hart, the\nroebuck, the bear, the fallow deer, the wild boar, the hare, the pheasant,\nthe partridge, and the bustard.  He played at the balloon, and made it\nbound in the air, both with fist and foot.  He wrestled, ran, jumped--not\nat three steps and a leap, called the hops, nor at clochepied, called the\nhare's leap, nor yet at the Almains; for, said Gymnast, these jumps are for\nthe wars altogether unprofitable, and of no use--but at one leap he would\nskip over a ditch, spring over a hedge, mount six paces upon a wall, ramp\nand grapple after this fashion up against a window of the full height of a\nlance.  He did swim in deep waters on his belly, on his back, sideways,\nwith all his body, with his feet only, with one hand in the air, wherein he\nheld a book, crossing thus the breadth of the river of Seine without\nwetting it, and dragged along his cloak with his teeth, as did Julius\nCaesar; then with the help of one hand he entered forcibly into a boat,\nfrom whence he cast himself again headlong into the water, sounded the\ndepths, hollowed the rocks, and plunged into the pits and gulfs.  Then\nturned he the boat about, governed it, led it swiftly or slowly with the\nstream and against the stream, stopped it in his course, guided it with one\nhand, and with the other laid hard about him with a huge great oar, hoisted\nthe sail, hied up along the mast by the shrouds, ran upon the edge of the\ndecks, set the compass in order, tackled the bowlines, and steered the\nhelm.  Coming out of the water, he ran furiously up against a hill, and\nwith the same alacrity and swiftness ran down again.  He climbed up at\ntrees like a cat, and leaped from the one to the other like a squirrel.  He\ndid pull down the great boughs and branches like another Milo; then with\ntwo sharp well-steeled daggers and two tried bodkins would he run up by the\nwall to the very top of a house like a rat; then suddenly came down from\nthe top to the bottom, with such an even composition of members that by the\nfall he would catch no harm.\n\nHe did cast the dart, throw the bar, put the stone, practise the javelin,\nthe boar-spear or partisan, and the halbert.  He broke the strongest bows\nin drawing, bended against his breast the greatest crossbows of steel, took\nhis aim by the eye with the hand-gun, and shot well, traversed and planted\nthe cannon, shot at butt-marks, at the papgay from below upwards, or to a\nheight from above downwards, or to a descent; then before him, sideways,\nand behind him, like the Parthians.  They tied a cable-rope to the top of a\nhigh tower, by one end whereof hanging near the ground he wrought himself\nwith his hands to the very top; then upon the same track came down so\nsturdily and firm that you could not on a plain meadow have run with more\nassurance.  They set up a great pole fixed upon two trees.  There would he\nhang by his hands, and with them alone, his feet touching at nothing, would\ngo back and fore along the foresaid rope with so great swiftness that\nhardly could one overtake him with running; and then, to exercise his\nbreast and lungs, he would shout like all the devils in hell.  I heard him\nonce call Eudemon from St. Victor's gate to Montmartre.  Stentor had never\nsuch a voice at the siege of Troy.  Then for the strengthening of his\nnerves or sinews they made him two great sows of lead, each of them\nweighing eight thousand and seven hundred quintals, which they called\nalteres.  Those he took up from the ground, in each hand one, then lifted\nthem up over his head, and held them so without stirring three quarters of\nan hour and more, which was an inimitable force.  He fought at barriers\nwith the stoutest and most vigorous champions; and when it came to the\ncope, he stood so sturdily on his feet that he abandoned himself unto the\nstrongest, in case they could remove him from his place, as Milo was wont\nto do of old.  In whose imitation, likewise, he held a pomegranate in his\nhand, to give it unto him that could take it from him.  The time being thus\nbestowed, and himself rubbed, cleansed, wiped, and refreshed with other\nclothes, he returned fair and softly; and passing through certain meadows,\nor other grassy places, beheld the trees and plants, comparing them with\nwhat is written of them in the books of the ancients, such as Theophrast,\nDioscorides, Marinus, Pliny, Nicander, Macer, and Galen, and carried home\nto the house great handfuls of them, whereof a young page called Rizotomos\nhad charge; together with little mattocks, pickaxes, grubbing-hooks,\ncabbies, pruning-knives, and other instruments requisite for herborizing.\nBeing come to their lodging, whilst supper was making ready, they repeated\ncertain passages of that which hath been read, and sat down to table.  Here\nremark, that his dinner was sober and thrifty, for he did then eat only to\nprevent the gnawings of his stomach, but his supper was copious and large,\nfor he took then as much as was fit to maintain and nourish him; which,\nindeed, is the true diet prescribed by the art of good and sound physic,\nalthough a rabble of loggerheaded physicians, nuzzeled in the brabbling\nshop of sophisters, counsel the contrary.  During that repast was continued\nthe lesson read at dinner as long as they thought good; the rest was spent\nin good discourse, learned and profitable.  After that they had given\nthanks, he set himself to sing vocally, and play upon harmonious\ninstruments, or otherwise passed his time at some pretty sports, made with\ncards or dice, or in practising the feats of legerdemain with cups and\nballs.  There they stayed some nights in frolicking thus, and making\nthemselves merry till it was time to go to bed; and on other nights they\nwould go make visits unto learned men, or to such as had been travellers in\nstrange and remote countries.  When it was full night before they retired\nthemselves, they went unto the most open place of the house to see the face\nof the sky, and there beheld the comets, if any were, as likewise the\nfigures, situations, aspects, oppositions, and conjunctions of both the\nfixed stars and planets.\n\nThen with his master did he briefly recapitulate, after the manner of the\nPythagoreans, that which he had read, seen, learned, done, and understood\nin the whole course of that day.\n\nThen prayed they unto God the Creator, in falling down before him, and\nstrengthening their faith towards him, and glorifying him for his boundless\nbounty; and, giving thanks unto him for the time that was past, they\nrecommended themselves to his divine clemency for the future.  Which being\ndone, they went to bed, and betook themselves to their repose and rest.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua spent his time in rainy weather.\n\nIf it happened that the weather were anything cloudy, foul, and rainy, all\nthe forenoon was employed, as before specified, according to custom, with\nthis difference only, that they had a good clear fire lighted to correct\nthe distempers of the air.  But after dinner, instead of their wonted\nexercitations, they did abide within, and, by way of apotherapy (that is, a\nmaking the body healthful by exercise), did recreate themselves in bottling\nup of hay, in cleaving and sawing of wood, and in threshing sheaves of corn\nat the barn.  Then they studied the art of painting or carving; or brought\ninto use the antique play of tables, as Leonicus hath written of it, and as\nour good friend Lascaris playeth at it.  In playing they examined the\npassages of ancient authors wherein the said play is mentioned or any\nmetaphor drawn from it.  They went likewise to see the drawing of metals,\nor the casting of great ordnance; how the lapidaries did work; as also the\ngoldsmiths and cutters of precious stones.  Nor did they omit to visit the\nalchemists, money-coiners, upholsterers, weavers, velvet-workers,\nwatchmakers, looking-glass framers, printers, organists, and other such\nkind of artificers, and, everywhere giving them somewhat to drink, did\nlearn and consider the industry and invention of the trades.  They went\nalso to hear the public lectures, the solemn commencements, the\nrepetitions, the acclamations, the pleadings of the gentle lawyers, and\nsermons of evangelical preachers.  He went through the halls and places\nappointed for fencing, and there played against the masters themselves at\nall weapons, and showed them by experience that he knew as much in it as,\nyea, more than, they.  And, instead of herborizing, they visited the shops\nof druggists, herbalists, and apothecaries, and diligently considered the\nfruits, roots, leaves, gums, seeds, the grease and ointments of some\nforeign parts, as also how they did adulterate them.  He went to see the\njugglers, tumblers, mountebanks, and quacksalvers, and considered their\ncunning, their shifts, their somersaults and smooth tongue, especially of\nthose of Chauny in Picardy, who are naturally great praters, and brave\ngivers of fibs, in matter of green apes.\n\nAt their return they did eat more soberly at supper than at other times,\nand meats more desiccative and extenuating; to the end that the intemperate\nmoisture of the air, communicated to the body by a necessary confinitive,\nmight by this means be corrected, and that they might not receive any\nprejudice for want of their ordinary bodily exercise.  Thus was Gargantua\ngoverned, and kept on in this course of education, from day to day\nprofiting, as you may understand such a young man of his age may, of a\npregnant judgment, with good discipline well continued.  Which, although at\nthe beginning it seemed difficult, became a little after so sweet, so easy,\nand so delightful, that it seemed rather the recreation of a king than the\nstudy of a scholar.  Nevertheless Ponocrates, to divert him from this\nvehement intension of the spirits, thought fit, once in a month, upon some\nfair and clear day, to go out of the city betimes in the morning, either\ntowards Gentilly, or Boulogne, or to Montrouge, or Charanton bridge, or to\nVanves, or St. Clou, and there spend all the day long in making the\ngreatest cheer that could be devised, sporting, making merry, drinking\nhealths, playing, singing, dancing, tumbling in some fair meadow,\nunnestling of sparrows, taking of quails, and fishing for frogs and crabs.\nBut although that day was passed without books or lecture, yet was it not\nspent without profit; for in the said meadows they usually repeated certain\npleasant verses of Virgil's agriculture, of Hesiod and of Politian's\nhusbandry, would set a-broach some witty Latin epigrams, then immediately\nturned them into roundelays and songs for dancing in the French language.\nIn their feasting they would sometimes separate the water from the wine\nthat was therewith mixed, as Cato teacheth, De re rustica, and Pliny with\nan ivy cup would wash the wine in a basinful of water, then take it out\nagain with a funnel as pure as ever.  They made the water go from one glass\nto another, and contrived a thousand little automatory engines, that is to\nsay, moving of themselves.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow there was great strife and debate raised betwixt the cake-bakers of\nLerne, and those of Gargantua's country, whereupon were waged great wars.\n\nAt that time, which was the season of vintage, in the beginning of harvest,\nwhen the country shepherds were set to keep the vines, and hinder the\nstarlings from eating up the grapes, as some cake-bakers of Lerne happened\nto pass along in the broad highway, driving into the city ten or twelve\nhorses loaded with cakes, the said shepherds courteously entreated them to\ngive them some for their money, as the price then ruled in the market.  For\nhere it is to be remarked, that it is a celestial food to eat for breakfast\nhot fresh cakes with grapes, especially the frail clusters, the great red\ngrapes, the muscadine, the verjuice grape, and the laskard, for those that\nare costive in their belly, because it will make them gush out, and squirt\nthe length of a hunter's staff, like the very tap of a barrel; and\noftentimes, thinking to let a squib, they did all-to-besquatter and\nconskite themselves, whereupon they are commonly called the vintage\nthinkers.  The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to\ntheir request; but, which was worse, did injure them most outrageously,\ncalling them prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy\nrascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy\nloiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts,\ncozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets,\ndrawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns,\nforlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base\nloons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks,\nblockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish\nloggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels,\ngaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer\nflycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other\nsuchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to\neat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the\ncoarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.  To\nwhich provoking words, one amongst them, called Forgier, an honest fellow\nof his person and a notable springal, made answer very calmly thus:  How\nlong is it since you have got horns, that you are become so proud?  Indeed\nformerly you were wont to give us some freely, and will you not now let us\nhave any for our money?  This is not the part of good neighbours, neither\ndo we serve you thus when you come hither to buy our good corn, whereof you\nmake your cakes and buns.  Besides that, we would have given you to the\nbargain some of our grapes, but, by his zounds, you may chance to repent\nit, and possibly have need of us at another time, when we shall use you\nafter the like manner, and therefore remember it.  Then Marquet, a prime\nman in the confraternity of the cake-bakers, said unto him, Yea, sir, thou\nart pretty well crest-risen this morning, thou didst eat yesternight too\nmuch millet and bolymong.  Come hither, sirrah, come hither, I will give\nthee some cakes.  Whereupon Forgier, dreading no harm, in all simplicity\nwent towards him, and drew a sixpence out of his leather satchel, thinking\nthat Marquet would have sold him some of his cakes.  But, instead of cakes,\nhe gave him with his whip such a rude lash overthwart the legs, that the\nmarks of the whipcord knots were apparent in them, then would have fled\naway; but Forgier cried out as loud as he could, O, murder, murder, help,\nhelp, help! and in the meantime threw a great cudgel after him, which he\ncarried under his arm, wherewith he hit him in the coronal joint of his\nhead, upon the crotaphic artery of the right side thereof, so forcibly,\nthat Marquet fell down from his mare more like a dead than living man.\nMeanwhile the farmers and country swains, that were watching their walnuts\nnear to that place, came running with their great poles and long staves,\nand laid such load on these cake-bakers, as if they had been to thresh upon\ngreen rye.  The other shepherds and shepherdesses, hearing the lamentable\nshout of Forgier, came with their slings and slackies following them, and\nthrowing great stones at them, as thick as if it had been hail.  At last\nthey overtook them, and took from them about four or five dozen of their\ncakes.  Nevertheless they paid for them the ordinary price, and gave them\nover and above one hundred eggs and three baskets full of mulberries.  Then\ndid the cake-bakers help to get up to his mare Marquet, who was most\nshrewdly wounded, and forthwith returned to Lerne, changing the resolution\nthey had to go to Pareille, threatening very sharp and boisterously the\ncowherds, shepherds, and farmers of Seville and Sinays.  This done, the\nshepherds and shepherdesses made merry with these cakes and fine grapes,\nand sported themselves together at the sound of the pretty small pipe,\nscoffing and laughing at those vainglorious cake-bakers, who had that day\nmet with a mischief for want of crossing themselves with a good hand in the\nmorning.  Nor did they forget to apply to Forgier's leg some fair great red\nmedicinal grapes, and so handsomely dressed it and bound it up that he was\nquickly cured.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the inhabitants of Lerne, by the commandment of Picrochole their king,\nassaulted the shepherds of Gargantua unexpectedly and on a sudden.\n\nThe cake-bakers, being returned to Lerne, went presently, before they did\neither eat or drink, to the Capitol, and there before their king, called\nPicrochole, the third of that name, made their complaint, showing their\npanniers broken, their caps all crumpled, their coats torn, their cakes\ntaken away, but, above all, Marquet most enormously wounded, saying that\nall that mischief was done by the shepherds and herdsmen of Grangousier,\nnear the broad highway beyond Seville.  Picrochole incontinent grew angry\nand furious; and, without asking any further what, how, why, or wherefore,\ncommanded the ban and arriere ban to be sounded throughout all his country,\nthat all his vassals of what condition soever should, upon pain of the\nhalter, come, in the best arms they could, unto the great place before the\ncastle, at the hour of noon, and, the better to strengthen his design, he\ncaused the drum to be beat about the town.  Himself, whilst his dinner was\nmaking ready, went to see his artillery mounted upon the carriage, to\ndisplay his colours, and set up the great royal standard, and loaded wains\nwith store of ammunition both for the field and the belly, arms and\nvictuals.  At dinner he despatched his commissions, and by his express\nedict my Lord Shagrag was appointed to command the vanguard, wherein were\nnumbered sixteen thousand and fourteen arquebusiers or firelocks, together\nwith thirty thousand and eleven volunteer adventurers.  The great\nTouquedillon, master of the horse, had the charge of the ordnance, wherein\nwere reckoned nine hundred and fourteen brazen pieces, in cannons, double\ncannons, basilisks, serpentines, culverins, bombards or murderers, falcons,\nbases or passevolins, spirols, and other sorts of great guns.  The\nrearguard was committed to the Duke of Scrapegood.  In the main battle was\nthe king and the princes of his kingdom.  Thus being hastily furnished,\nbefore they would set forward, they sent three hundred light horsemen,\nunder the conduct of Captain Swillwind, to discover the country, clear the\navenues, and see whether there was any ambush laid for them.  But, after\nthey had made diligent search, they found all the land round about in peace\nand quiet, without any meeting or convention at all; which Picrochole\nunderstanding, commanded that everyone should march speedily under his\ncolours.  Then immediately in all disorder, without keeping either rank or\nfile, they took the fields one amongst another, wasting, spoiling,\ndestroying, and making havoc of all wherever they went, not sparing poor\nnor rich, privileged or unprivileged places, church nor laity, drove away\noxen and cows, bulls, calves, heifers, wethers, ewes, lambs, goats, kids,\nhens, capons, chickens, geese, ganders, goslings, hogs, swine, pigs, and\nsuch like; beating down the walnuts, plucking the grapes, tearing the\nhedges, shaking the fruit-trees, and committing such incomparable abuses,\nthat the like abomination was never heard of.  Nevertheless, they met with\nnone to resist them, for everyone submitted to their mercy, beseeching them\nthat they might be dealt with courteously in regard that they had always\ncarried themselves as became good and loving neighbours, and that they had\nnever been guilty of any wrong or outrage done upon them, to be thus\nsuddenly surprised, troubled, and disquieted, and that, if they would not\ndesist, God would punish them very shortly.  To which expostulations and\nremonstrances no other answer was made, but that they would teach them to\neat cakes.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow a monk of Seville saved the close of the abbey from being ransacked by\nthe enemy.\n\nSo much they did, and so far they went pillaging and stealing, that at last\nthey came to Seville, where they robbed both men and women, and took all\nthey could catch:  nothing was either too hot or too heavy for them.\nAlthough the plague was there in the most part of all the houses, they\nnevertheless entered everywhere, then plundered and carried away all that\nwas within, and yet for all this not one of them took any hurt, which is a\nmost wonderful case.  For the curates, vicars, preachers, physicians,\nchirurgeons, and apothecaries, who went to visit, to dress, to cure, to\nheal, to preach unto and admonish those that were sick, were all dead of\nthe infection, and these devilish robbers and murderers caught never any\nharm at all.  Whence comes this to pass, my masters?  I beseech you think\nupon it.  The town being thus pillaged, they went unto the abbey with a\nhorrible noise and tumult, but they found it shut and made fast against\nthem.  Whereupon the body of the army marched forward towards a pass or\nford called the Gue de Vede, except seven companies of foot and two hundred\nlancers, who, staying there, broke down the walls of the close, to waste,\nspoil, and make havoc of all the vines and vintage within that place.  The\nmonks (poor devils) knew not in that extremity to which of all their sancts\nthey should vow themselves.  Nevertheless, at all adventures they rang the\nbells ad capitulum capitulantes.  There it was decreed that they should\nmake a fair procession, stuffed with good lectures, prayers, and litanies\ncontra hostium insidias, and jolly responses pro pace.\n\nThere was then in the abbey a claustral monk, called Friar John of the\nfunnels and gobbets, in French des entoumeures, young, gallant, frisk,\nlusty, nimble, quick, active, bold, adventurous, resolute, tall, lean,\nwide-mouthed, long-nosed, a fair despatcher of morning prayers, unbridler\nof masses, and runner over of vigils; and, to conclude summarily in a word,\na right monk, if ever there was any, since the monking world monked a\nmonkery:  for the rest, a clerk even to the teeth in matter of breviary.\nThis monk, hearing the noise that the enemy made within the enclosure of\nthe vineyard, went out to see what they were doing; and perceiving that\nthey were cutting and gathering  the grapes, whereon was grounded the\nfoundation of all their next year's wine, returned unto the choir of the\nchurch where the other monks were, all amazed and astonished like so many\nbell-melters.  Whom when he heard sing, im, nim, pe, ne, ne, ne, ne, nene,\ntum, ne, num, num, ini, i mi, co, o, no, o, o, neno, ne, no, no, no, rum,\nnenum, num:  It is well shit, well sung, said he.  By the virtue of God,\nwhy do not you sing, Panniers, farewell, vintage is done?  The devil snatch\nme, if they be not already within the middle of our close, and cut so well\nboth vines and grapes, that, by Cod's body, there will not be found for\nthese four years to come so much as a gleaning in it.  By the belly of\nSanct James, what shall we poor devils drink the while?  Lord God! da mihi\npotum.  Then said the prior of the convent:  What should this drunken\nfellow do here? let him be carried to prison for troubling the divine\nservice.  Nay, said the monk, the wine service, let us behave ourselves so\nthat it be not troubled; for you yourself, my lord prior, love to drink of\nthe best, and so doth every honest man.  Never yet did a man of worth\ndislike good wine, it is a monastical apophthegm.  But these responses that\nyou chant here, by G--, are not in season.  Wherefore is it, that our\ndevotions were instituted to be short in the time of harvest and vintage,\nand long in the advent, and all the winter?  The late friar, Massepelosse,\nof good memory, a true zealous man, or else I give myself to the devil, of\nour religion, told me, and I remember it well, how the reason was, that in\nthis season we might press and make the wine, and in winter whiff it up.\nHark you, my masters, you that love the wine, Cop's body, follow me; for\nSanct Anthony burn me as freely as a faggot, if they get leave to taste one\ndrop of the liquor that will not now come and fight for relief of the vine.\nHog's belly, the goods of the church!  Ha, no, no.  What the devil, Sanct\nThomas of England was well content to die for them; if I died in the same\ncause, should not I be a sanct likewise?  Yes.  Yet shall not I die there\nfor all this, for it is I that must do it to others and send them\na-packing.\n\nAs he spake this he threw off his great monk's habit, and laid hold upon\nthe staff of the cross, which was made of the heart of a sorbapple-tree, it\nbeing of the length of a lance, round, of a full grip, and a little\npowdered with lilies called flower de luce, the workmanship whereof was\nalmost all defaced and worn out.  Thus went he out in a fair long-skirted\njacket, putting his frock scarfwise athwart his breast, and in this\nequipage, with his staff, shaft or truncheon of the cross, laid on so\nlustily, brisk, and fiercely upon his enemies, who, without any order, or\nensign, or trumpet, or drum, were busied in gathering the grapes of the\nvineyard.  For the cornets, guidons, and ensign-bearers had laid down their\nstandards, banners, and colours by the wall sides:  the drummers had\nknocked out the heads of their drums on one end to fill them with grapes:\nthe trumpeters were loaded with great bundles of bunches and huge knots of\nclusters:  in sum, everyone of them was out of array, and all in disorder.\nHe hurried, therefore, upon them so rudely, without crying gare or beware,\nthat he overthrew them like hogs, tumbled them over like swine, striking\nathwart and alongst, and by one means or other laid so about him, after the\nold fashion of fencing, that to some he beat out their brains, to others he\ncrushed their arms, battered their legs, and bethwacked their sides till\ntheir ribs cracked with it.  To others again he unjointed the spondyles or\nknuckles of the neck, disfigured their chaps, gashed their faces, made\ntheir cheeks hang flapping on their chin, and so swinged and balammed them\nthat they fell down before him like hay before a mower.  To some others he\nspoiled the frame of their kidneys, marred their backs, broke their\nthigh-bones, pashed in their noses, poached out their eyes, cleft their\nmandibles, tore their jaws, dung in their teeth into their throat, shook\nasunder their omoplates or shoulder-blades, sphacelated their shins,\nmortified their shanks, inflamed their ankles, heaved off of the hinges\ntheir ishies, their sciatica or hip-gout, dislocated the joints of their\nknees, squattered into pieces the boughts or pestles of their thighs, and\nso thumped, mauled and belaboured them everywhere, that never was corn so\nthick and threefold threshed upon by ploughmen's flails as were the\npitifully disjointed members of their mangled bodies under the merciless\nbaton of the cross.  If any offered to hide himself amongst the thickest of\nthe vines, he laid him squat as a flounder, bruised the ridge of his back,\nand dashed his reins like a dog.  If any thought by flight to escape, he\nmade his head to fly in pieces by the lamboidal commissure, which is a seam\nin the hinder part of the skull.  If anyone did scramble up into a tree,\nthinking there to be safe, he rent up his perinee, and impaled him in at\nthe fundament.  If any of his old acquaintance happened to cry out, Ha,\nFriar John, my friend Friar John, quarter, quarter, I yield myself to you,\nto you I render myself!  So thou shalt, said he, and must, whether thou\nwouldst or no, and withal render and yield up thy soul to all the devils in\nhell; then suddenly gave them dronos, that is, so many knocks, thumps,\nraps, dints, thwacks, and bangs, as sufficed to warn Pluto of their coming\nand despatch them a-going.  If any was so rash and full of temerity as to\nresist him to his face, then was it he did show the strength of his\nmuscles, for without more ado he did transpierce him, by running him in at\nthe breast, through the mediastine and the heart.  Others, again, he so\nquashed and bebumped, that, with a sound bounce under the hollow of their\nshort ribs, he overturned their stomachs so that they died immediately.  To\nsome, with a smart souse on the epigaster, he would make their midriff\nswag, then, redoubling the blow, gave them such a homepush on the navel\nthat he made their puddings to gush out.  To others through their ballocks\nhe pierced their bumgut, and left not bowel, tripe, nor entrail in their\nbody that had not felt the impetuosity, fierceness, and fury of his\nviolence.  Believe, that it was the most horrible spectacle that ever one\nsaw.  Some cried unto Sanct Barbe, others to St. George.  O the holy Lady\nNytouch, said one, the good Sanctess; O our Lady of Succours, said another,\nhelp, help!  Others cried, Our Lady of Cunaut, of Loretto, of Good Tidings,\non the other side of the water St. Mary Over.  Some vowed a pilgrimage to\nSt. James, and others to the holy handkerchief at Chamberry, which three\nmonths after that burnt so well in the fire that they could not get one\nthread of it saved.  Others sent up their vows to St. Cadouin, others to\nSt. John d'Angely, and to St. Eutropius of Xaintes.  Others again invoked\nSt. Mesmes of Chinon, St. Martin of Candes, St. Clouaud of Sinays, the holy\nrelics of Laurezay, with a thousand other jolly little sancts and santrels.\nSome died without speaking, others spoke without dying; some died in\nspeaking, others spoke in dying.  Others shouted as loud as they could\nConfession, Confession, Confiteor, Miserere, In manus!  So great was the\ncry of the wounded, that the prior of the abbey with all his monks came\nforth, who, when they saw these poor wretches so slain amongst the vines,\nand wounded to death, confessed some of them.  But whilst the priests were\nbusied in confessing them, the little monkies ran all to the place where\nFriar John was, and asked him wherein he would be pleased to require their\nassistance.  To which he answered that they should cut the throats of those\nhe had thrown down upon the ground.  They presently, leaving their outer\nhabits and cowls upon the rails, began to throttle and make an end of those\nwhom he had already crushed.  Can you tell with what instruments they did\nit?  With fair gullies, which are little hulchbacked demi-knives, the iron\ntool whereof is two inches long, and the wooden handle one inch thick, and\nthree inches in length, wherewith the little boys in our country cut ripe\nwalnuts in two while they are yet in the shell, and pick out the kernel,\nand they found them very fit for the expediting of that weasand-slitting\nexploit.  In the meantime Friar John, with his formidable baton of the\ncross, got to the breach which the enemies had made, and there stood to\nsnatch up those that endeavoured to escape.  Some of the monkitos carried\nthe standards, banners, ensigns, guidons, and colours into their cells and\nchambers to make garters of them.  But when those that had been shriven\nwould have gone out at the gap of the said breach, the sturdy monk quashed\nand felled them down with blows, saying, These men have had confession and\nare penitent souls; they have got their absolution and gained the pardons;\nthey go into paradise as straight as a sickle, or as the way is to Faye\n(like Crooked-Lane at Eastcheap).  Thus by his prowess and valour were\ndiscomfited all those of the army that entered into the close of the abbey,\nunto the number of thirteen thousand, six hundred, twenty and two, besides\nthe women and little children, which is always to be understood.  Never did\nMaugis the Hermit bear himself more valiantly with his bourdon or pilgrim's\nstaff against the Saracens, of whom is written in the Acts of the four sons\nof Aymon, than did this monk against his enemies with the staff of the\ncross.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Picrochole stormed and took by assault the rock Clermond, and of\nGrangousier's unwillingness and aversion from the undertaking of war.\n\nWhilst the monk did thus skirmish, as we have said, against those which\nwere entered within the close, Picrochole in great haste passed the ford of\nVede--a very especial pass--with all his soldiers, and set upon the rock\nClermond, where there was made him no resistance at all; and, because it\nwas already night, he resolved to quarter himself and his army in that\ntown, and to refresh himself of his pugnative choler.  In the morning he\nstormed and took the bulwarks and castle, which afterwards he fortified\nwith rampiers, and furnished with all ammunition requisite, intending to\nmake his retreat there, if he should happen to be otherwise worsted; for it\nwas a strong place, both by art and nature, in regard of the stance and\nsituation of it.  But let us leave them there, and return to our good\nGargantua, who is at Paris very assiduous and earnest at the study of good\nletters and athletical exercitations, and to the good old man Grangousier\nhis father, who after supper warmeth his ballocks by a good, clear, great\nfire, and, waiting upon the broiling of some chestnuts, is very serious in\ndrawing scratches on the hearth, with a stick burnt at the one end,\nwherewith they did stir up the fire, telling to his wife and the rest of\nthe family pleasant old stories and tales of former times.\n\nWhilst he was thus employed, one of the shepherds which did keep the vines,\nnamed Pillot, came towards him, and to the full related the enormous abuses\nwhich were committed, and the excessive spoil that was made by Picrochole,\nKing of Lerne, upon his lands and territories, and how he had pillaged,\nwasted, and ransacked all the country, except the enclosure at Seville,\nwhich Friar John des Entoumeures to his great honour had preserved; and\nthat at the same present time the said king was in the rock Clermond, and\nthere, with great industry and circumspection, was strengthening himself\nand his whole army.  Halas, halas, alas! said Grangousier, what is this,\ngood people?  Do I dream, or is it true that they tell me?  Picrochole, my\nancient friend of old time, of my own kindred and alliance, comes he to\ninvade me?  What moves him?  What provokes him?  What sets him on?  What\ndrives him to it?  Who hath given him this counsel?  Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, my\nGod, my Saviour, help me, inspire me, and advise me what I shall do!  I\nprotest, I swear before thee, so be thou favourable to me, if ever I did\nhim or his subjects any damage or displeasure, or committed any the least\nrobbery in his country; but, on the contrary, I have succoured and supplied\nhim with men, money, friendship, and counsel, upon any occasion wherein I\ncould be steadable for the improvement of his good.  That he hath therefore\nat this nick of time so outraged and wronged me, it cannot be but by the\nmalevolent and wicked spirit.  Good God, thou knowest my courage, for\nnothing can be hidden from thee.  If perhaps he be grown mad, and that thou\nhast sent him hither to me for the better recovery and re-establishment of\nhis brain, grant me power and wisdom to bring him to the yoke of thy holy\nwill by good discipline.  Ho, ho, ho, ho, my good people, my friends and my\nfaithful servants, must I hinder you from helping me?  Alas, my old age\nrequired hence-forward nothing else but rest, and all the days of my life I\nhave laboured for nothing so much as peace; but now I must, I see it well,\nload with arms my poor, weary, and feeble shoulders, and take in my\ntrembling hand the lance and horseman's mace, to succour and protect my\nhonest subjects.  Reason will have it so; for by their labour am I\nentertained, and with their sweat am I nourished, I, my children and my\nfamily.  This notwithstanding, I will not undertake war, until I have first\ntried all the ways and means of peace:  that I resolve upon.\n\nThen assembled he his council, and proposed the matter as it was indeed.\nWhereupon it was concluded that they should send some discreet man unto\nPicrochole, to know wherefore he had thus suddenly broken the peace and\ninvaded those lands unto which he had no right nor title.  Furthermore,\nthat they should send for Gargantua, and those under his command, for the\npreservation of the country, and defence thereof now at need.  All this\npleased Grangousier very well, and he commanded that so it should be done.\nPresently therefore he sent the Basque his lackey to fetch Gargantua with\nall diligence, and wrote him as followeth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe tenour of the letter which Grangousier wrote to his son Gargantua.\n\nThe fervency of thy studies did require that I should not in a long time\nrecall thee from that philosophical rest thou now enjoyest, if the\nconfidence reposed in our friends and ancient confederates had not at this\npresent disappointed the assurance of my old age.  But seeing such is my\nfatal destiny, that I should be now disquieted by those in whom I trusted\nmost, I am forced to call thee back to help the people and goods which by\nthe right of nature belong unto thee.  For even as arms are weak abroad, if\nthere be not counsel at home, so is that study vain and counsel\nunprofitable which in a due and convenient time is not by virtue executed\nand put in effect.  My deliberation is not to provoke, but to appease--not\nto assault, but to defend--not to conquer, but to preserve my faithful\nsubjects and hereditary dominions, into which Picrochole is entered in a\nhostile manner without any ground or cause, and from day to day pursueth\nhis furious enterprise with that height of insolence that is intolerable to\nfreeborn spirits.  I have endeavoured to moderate his tyrannical choler,\noffering him all that which I thought might give him satisfaction; and\noftentimes have I sent lovingly unto him to understand wherein, by whom,\nand how he found himself to be wronged.  But of him could I obtain no other\nanswer but a mere defiance, and that in my lands he did pretend only to the\nright of a civil correspondency and good behaviour, whereby I knew that the\neternal God hath left him to the disposure of his own free will and sensual\nappetite--which cannot choose but be wicked, if by divine grace it be not\ncontinually guided--and to contain him within his duty, and bring him to\nknow himself, hath sent him hither to me by a grievous token.  Therefore,\nmy beloved son, as soon as thou canst, upon sight of these letters, repair\nhither with all diligence, to succour not me so much, which nevertheless by\nnatural piety thou oughtest to do, as thine own people, which by reason\nthou mayest save and preserve.  The exploit shall be done with as little\neffusion of blood as may be.  And, if possible, by means far more\nexpedient, such as military policy, devices, and stratagems of war, we\nshall save all the souls, and send them home as merry as crickets unto\ntheir own houses.  My dearest son, the peace of Jesus Christ our Redeemer\nbe with thee.  Salute from me Ponocrates, Gymnastes, and Eudemon.  The\ntwentieth of September.\nThy Father Grangousier.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Ulric Gallet was sent unto Picrochole.\n\nThe letters being dictated, signed, and sealed, Grangousier ordained that\nUlric Gallet, master of the requests, a very wise and discreet man, of\nwhose prudence and sound judgment he had made trial in several difficult\nand debateful matters, (should) go unto Picrochole, to show what had been\ndecreed amongst them.  At the same hour departed the good man Gallet, and\nhaving passed the ford, asked at the miller that dwelt there in what\ncondition Picrochole was:  who answered him that his soldiers had left him\nneither cock nor hen, that they were retired and shut up into the rock\nClermond, and that he would not advise him to go any further for fear of\nthe scouts, because they were enormously furious.  Which he easily\nbelieved, and therefore lodged that night with the miller.\n\nThe next morning he went with a trumpeter to the gate of the castle, and\nrequired the guards he might be admitted to speak with the king of somewhat\nthat concerned him.  These words being told unto the king, he would by no\nmeans consent that they should open the gate; but, getting upon the top of\nthe bulwark, said unto the ambassador, What is the news, what have you to\nsay?  Then the ambassador began to speak as followeth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe speech made by Gallet to Picrochole.\n\nThere cannot arise amongst men a juster cause of grief than when they\nreceive hurt and damage where they may justly expect for favour and good\nwill; and not without cause, though without reason, have many, after they\nhad fallen into such a calamitous accident, esteemed this indignity less\nsupportable than the loss of their own lives, in such sort that, if they\nhave not been able by force of arms nor any other means, by reach of wit or\nsubtlety, to stop them in their course and restrain their fury, they have\nfallen into desperation, and utterly deprived themselves of this light.  It\nis therefore no wonder if King Grangousier, my master, be full of high\ndispleasure and much disquieted in mind upon thy outrageous and hostile\ncoming; but truly it would be a marvel if he were not sensible of and moved\nwith the incomparable abuses and injuries perpetrated by thee and thine\nupon those of his country, towards whom there hath been no example of\ninhumanity omitted.  Which in itself is to him so grievous, for the cordial\naffection wherewith he hath always cherished his subjects, that more it\ncannot be to any mortal man; yet in this, above human apprehension, is it\nto him the more grievous that these wrongs and sad offences have been\ncommitted by thee and thine, who, time out of mind, from all antiquity,\nthou and thy predecessors have been in a continual league and amity with\nhim and all his ancestors; which, even until this time, you have as sacred\ntogether inviolably preserved, kept, and entertained, so well, that not he\nand his only, but the very barbarous nations of the Poictevins, Bretons,\nManceaux, and those that dwell beyond the isles of the Canaries, and that\nof Isabella, have thought it as easy to pull down the firmament, and to set\nup the depths above the clouds, as to make a breach in your alliance; and\nhave been so afraid of it in their enterprises that they have never dared\nto provoke, incense, or endamage the one for fear of the other.  Nay, which\nis more, this sacred league hath so filled the world, that there are few\nnations at this day inhabiting throughout all the continent and isles of\nthe ocean, who have not ambitiously aspired to be received into it, upon\nyour own covenants and conditions, holding your joint confederacy in as\nhigh esteem as their own territories and dominions, in such sort, that from\nthe memory of man there hath not been either prince or league so wild and\nproud that durst have offered to invade, I say not your countries, but not\nso much as those of your confederates.  And if, by rash and heady counsel,\nthey have attempted any new design against them, as soon as they heard the\nname and title of your alliance, they have suddenly desisted from their\nenterprises.  What rage and madness, therefore, doth now incite thee, all\nold alliance infringed, all amity trod under foot, and all right violated,\nthus in a hostile manner to invade his country, without having been by him\nor his in anything prejudiced, wronged, or provoked?  Where is faith?\nWhere is law?  Where is reason?  Where is humanity?  Where is the fear of\nGod?  Dost thou think that these atrocious abuses are hidden from the\neternal spirit and the supreme God who is the just rewarder of all our\nundertakings?  If thou so think, thou deceivest thyself; for all things\nshall come to pass as in his incomprehensible judgment he hath appointed.\nIs it thy fatal destiny, or influences of the stars, that would put an end\nto thy so long enjoyed ease and rest?  For that all things have their end\nand period, so as that, when they are come to the superlative point of\ntheir greatest height, they are in a trice tumbled down again, as not being\nable to abide long in that state.  This is the conclusion and end of those\nwho cannot by reason and temperance moderate their fortunes and\nprosperities.  But if it be predestinated that thy happiness and ease must\nnow come to an end, must it needs be by wronging my king,--him by whom thou\nwert established?  If thy house must come to ruin, should it therefore in\nits fall crush the heels of him that set it up?  The matter is so\nunreasonable, and so dissonant from common sense, that hardly can it be\nconceived by human understanding, and altogether incredible unto strangers,\ntill by the certain and undoubted effects thereof it be made apparent that\nnothing is either sacred or holy to those who, having emancipated\nthemselves from God and reason, do merely follow the perverse affections of\ntheir own depraved nature.  If any wrong had been done by us to thy\nsubjects and dominions--if we had favoured thy ill-willers--if we had not\nassisted thee in thy need--if thy name and reputation had been wounded by\nus--or, to speak more truly, if the calumniating spirit, tempting to induce\nthee to evil, had, by false illusions and deceitful fantasies, put into thy\nconceit the impression of a thought that we had done unto thee anything\nunworthy of our ancient correspondence and friendship, thou oughtest first\nto have inquired out the truth, and afterwards by a seasonable warning to\nadmonish us thereof; and we should have so satisfied thee, according to\nthine own heart's desire, that thou shouldst have had occasion to be\ncontented.  But, O eternal God, what is thy enterprise?  Wouldst thou, like\na perfidious tyrant, thus spoil and lay waste my master's kingdom?  Hast\nthou found him so silly and blockish, that he would not--or so destitute of\nmen and money, of counsel and skill in military discipline, that he cannot\nwithstand thy unjust invasion?  March hence presently, and to-morrow, some\ntime of the day, retreat unto thine own country, without doing any kind of\nviolence or disorderly act by the way; and pay withal a thousand besans of\ngold (which, in English money, amounteth to five thousand pounds), for\nreparation of the damages thou hast done in this country.  Half thou shalt\npay to-morrow, and the other half at the ides of May next coming, leaving\nwith us in the mean time, for hostages, the Dukes of Turnbank, Lowbuttock,\nand Smalltrash, together with the Prince of Itches and Viscount of\nSnatchbit (Tournemoule, Bas-de-fesses, Menuail, Gratelles, Morpiaille.).\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Grangousier, to buy peace, caused the cakes to be restored.\n\nWith that the good man Gallet held his peace, but Picrochole to all his\ndiscourse answered nothing but Come and fetch them, come and fetch them,\n--they have ballocks fair and soft,--they will knead and provide some cakes\nfor you.  Then returned he to Grangousier, whom he found upon his knees\nbareheaded, crouching in a little corner of his cabinet, and humbly praying\nunto God that he would vouchsafe to assuage the choler of Picrochole, and\nbring him to the rule of reason without proceeding by force.  When the good\nman came back, he asked him, Ha, my friend, what news do you bring me?\nThere is neither hope nor remedy, said Gallet; the man is quite out of his\nwits, and forsaken of God.  Yea, but, said Grangousier, my friend, what\ncause doth he pretend for his outrages?  He did not show me any cause at\nall, said Gallet, only that in a great anger he spoke some words of cakes.\nI cannot tell if they have done any wrong to his cake-bakers.  I will know,\nsaid Grangousier, the matter thoroughly, before I resolve any more upon\nwhat is to be done.  Then sent he to learn concerning that business, and\nfound by true information that his men had taken violently some cakes from\nPicrochole's people, and that Marquet's head was broken with a slacky or\nshort cudgel; that, nevertheless, all was well paid, and that the said\nMarquet had first hurt Forgier with a stroke of his whip athwart the legs.\nAnd it seemed good to his whole council, that he should defend himself with\nall his might.  Notwithstanding all this, said Grangousier, seeing the\nquestion is but about a few cakes, I will labour to content him; for I am\nvery unwilling to wage war against him.  He inquired then what quantity of\ncakes they had taken away, and understanding that it was but some four or\nfive dozen, he commanded five cartloads of them to be baked that same\nnight; and that there should be one full of cakes made with fine butter,\nfine yolks of eggs, fine saffron, and fine spice, to be bestowed upon\nMarquet, unto whom likewise he directed to be given seven hundred thousand\nand three Philips (that is, at three shillings the piece, one hundred five\nthousand pounds and nine shillings of English money), for reparation of his\nlosses and hindrances, and for satisfaction of the chirurgeon that had\ndressed his wound; and furthermore settled upon him and his for ever in\nfreehold the apple-orchard called La Pomardiere.  For the conveyance and\npassing of all which was sent Gallet, who by the way as they went made them\ngather near the willow-trees great store of boughs, canes, and reeds,\nwherewith all the carriers were enjoined to garnish and deck their carts,\nand each of them to carry one in his hand, as himself likewise did, thereby\nto give all men to understand that they demanded but peace, and that they\ncame to buy it.\n\nBeing come to the gate, they required to speak with Picrochole from\nGrangousier.  Picrochole would not so much as let them in, nor go to speak\nwith them, but sent them word that he was busy, and that they should\ndeliver their mind to Captain Touquedillon, who was then planting a piece\nof ordnance upon the wall.  Then said the good man unto him, My lord, to\nease you of all this labour, and to take away all excuses why you may not\nreturn unto our former alliance, we do here presently restore unto you the\ncakes upon which the quarrel arose.  Five dozen did our people take away:\nthey were well paid for:  we love peace so well that we restore unto you\nfive cartloads, of which this cart shall be for Marquet, who doth most\ncomplain.  Besides, to content him entirely, here are seven hundred\nthousand and three Philips, which I deliver to him, and, for the losses he\nmay pretend to have sustained, I resign for ever the farm of the\nPomardiere, to be possessed in fee-simple by him and his for ever, without\nthe payment of any duty, or acknowledgement of homage, fealty, fine, or\nservice whatsoever, and here is the tenour of the deed.  And, for God's\nsake, let us live henceforward in peace, and withdraw yourselves merrily\ninto your own country from within this place, unto which you have no right\nat all, as yourselves must needs confess, and let us be good friends as\nbefore.  Touquedillon related all this to Picrochole, and more and more\nexasperated his courage, saying to him, These clowns are afraid to some\npurpose.  By G--, Grangousier conskites himself for fear, the poor drinker.\nHe is not skilled in warfare, nor hath he any stomach for it.  He knows\nbetter how to empty the flagons,--that is his art.  I am of opinion that it\nis fit we send back the carts and the money, and, for the rest, that very\nspeedily we fortify ourselves here, then prosecute our fortune.  But what!\nDo they think to have to do with a ninnywhoop, to feed you thus with cakes?\nYou may see what it is.  The good usage and great familiarity which you\nhave had with them heretofore hath made you contemptible in their eyes.\nAnoint a villain, he will prick you:  prick a villain, and he will anoint\nyou (Ungentem pungit, pungentem rusticus ungit.).\n\nSa, sa, sa, said Picrochole, by St. James you have given a true character\nof them.  One thing I will advise you, said Touquedillon.  We are here but\nbadly victualled, and furnished with mouth-harness very slenderly.  If\nGrangousier should come to besiege us, I would go presently, and pluck out\nof all your soldiers' heads and mine own all the teeth, except three to\neach of us, and with them alone we should make an end of our provision but\ntoo soon.  We shall have, said Picrochole, but too much sustenance and\nfeeding-stuff.  Came we hither to eat or to fight?  To fight, indeed, said\nTouquedillon; yet from the paunch comes the dance, and where famine rules\nforce is exiled.  Leave off your prating, said Picrochole, and forthwith\nseize upon what they have brought.  Then took they money and cakes, oxen\nand carts, and sent them away without speaking one word, only that they\nwould come no more so near, for a reason that they would give them the\nmorrow after.  Thus, without doing anything, returned they to Grangousier,\nand related the whole matter unto him, subjoining that there was no hope\nleft to draw them to peace but by sharp and fierce wars.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow some statesmen of Picrochole, by hairbrained counsel, put him in\nextreme danger.\n\nThe carts being unloaded, and the money and cakes secured, there came\nbefore Picrochole the Duke of Smalltrash, the Earl Swashbuckler, and\nCaptain Dirt-tail (Menuail, Spadassin, Merdaille.), who said unto him, Sir,\nthis day we make you the happiest, the most warlike and chivalrous prince\nthat ever was since the death of Alexander of Macedonia.  Be covered, be\ncovered, said Picrochole.  Gramercy, said they, we do but our duty.  The\nmanner is thus.  You shall leave some captain here to have the charge of\nthis garrison, with a party competent for keeping of the place, which,\nbesides its natural strength, is made stronger by the rampiers and\nfortresses of your devising.  Your army you are to divide into two parts,\nas you know very well how to do.  One part thereof shall fall upon\nGrangousier and his forces.  By it shall he be easily at the very first\nshock routed, and then shall you get money by heaps, for the clown hath\nstore of ready coin.  Clown we call him, because a noble and generous\nprince hath never a penny, and that to hoard up treasure is but a clownish\ntrick.  The other part of the army, in the meantime, shall draw towards\nOnys, Xaintonge, Angomois, and Gascony.  Then march to Perigot, Medoc, and\nElanes, taking wherever you come, without resistance, towns, castles, and\nforts; afterwards to Bayonne, St. John de Luc, to Fontarabia, where you\nshall seize upon all the ships, and coasting along Galicia and Portugal,\nshall pillage all the maritime places, even unto Lisbon, where you shall be\nsupplied with all necessaries befitting a conqueror.  By copsody, Spain\nwill yield, for they are but a race of loobies.  Then are you to pass by\nthe Straits of Gibraltar, where you shall erect two pillars more stately\nthan those of Hercules, to the perpetual memory of your name, and the\nnarrow entrance there shall be called the Picrocholinal sea.\n\nHaving passed the Picrocholinal sea, behold, Barbarossa yields himself your\nslave.  I will, said Picrochole, give him fair quarter and spare his life.\nYea, said they, so that he be content to be christened.  And you shall\nconquer the kingdoms of Tunis, of Hippo, Argier, Bomine (Bona), Corone,\nyea, all Barbary.  Furthermore, you shall take into your hands Majorca,\nMinorca, Sardinia, Corsica, with the other islands of the Ligustic and\nBalearian seas.  Going alongst on the left hand, you shall rule all Gallia\nNarbonensis, Provence, the Allobrogians, Genoa, Florence, Lucca, and then\nGod b'w'ye, Rome.  (Our poor Monsieur the Pope dies now for fear.)  By my\nfaith, said Picrochole, I will not then kiss his pantoufle.\n\nItaly being thus taken, behold Naples, Calabria, Apulia, and Sicily, all\nransacked, and Malta too.  I wish the pleasant Knights of the Rhodes\nheretofore would but come to resist you, that we might see their urine.  I\nwould, said Picrochole, very willingly go to Loretto.  No, no, said they,\nthat shall be at our return.  From thence we will sail eastwards, and take\nCandia, Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclade Islands, and set upon (the) Morea.\nIt is ours, by St. Trenian.  The Lord preserve Jerusalem; for the great\nSoldan is not comparable to you in power.  I will then, said he, cause\nSolomon's temple to be built.  No, said they, not yet, have a little\npatience, stay awhile, be never too sudden in your enterprises.  Can you\ntell what Octavian Augustus said?  Festina lente.  It is requisite that you\nfirst have the Lesser Asia, Caria, Lycia, Pamphilia, Cilicia, Lydia,\nPhrygia, Mysia, Bithynia, Carazia, Satalia, Samagaria, Castamena, Luga,\nSavasta, even unto Euphrates.  Shall we see, said Picrochole, Babylon and\nMount Sinai?  There is no need, said they, at this time.  Have we not\nhurried up and down, travelled and toiled enough, in having transfretted\nand passed over the Hircanian sea, marched alongst the two Armenias and the\nthree Arabias?  Ay, by my faith, said he, we have played the fools, and are\nundone.  Ha, poor souls!  What's the matter? said they.  What shall we\nhave, said he, to drink in these deserts?  For Julian Augustus with his\nwhole army died there for thirst, as they say.  We have already, said they,\ngiven order for that.  In the Syriac sea you have nine thousand and\nfourteen great ships laden with the best wines in the world.  They arrived\nat Port Joppa.  There they found two-and-twenty thousand camels and sixteen\nhundred elephants, which you shall have taken at one hunting about\nSigelmes, when you entered into Lybia; and, besides this, you had all the\nMecca caravan.  Did not they furnish you sufficiently with wine?  Yes, but,\nsaid he, we did not drink it fresh.  By the virtue, said they, not of a\nfish, a valiant man, a conqueror, who pretends and aspires to the monarchy\nof the world, cannot always have his ease.  God be thanked that you and\nyour men are come safe and sound unto the banks of the river Tigris.  But,\nsaid he, what doth that part of our army in the meantime which overthrows\nthat unworthy swillpot Grangousier?  They are not idle, said they.  We\nshall meet with them by-and-by.  They shall have won you Brittany,\nNormandy, Flanders, Hainault, Brabant, Artois, Holland, Zealand; they have\npassed the Rhine over the bellies of the Switzers and lansquenets, and a\nparty of these hath subdued Luxembourg, Lorraine, Champagne, and Savoy,\neven to Lyons, in which place they have met with your forces returning from\nthe naval conquests of the Mediterranean sea; and have rallied again in\nBohemia, after they had plundered and sacked Suevia, Wittemberg, Bavaria,\nAustria, Moravia, and Styria.  Then they set fiercely together upon Lubeck,\nNorway, Swedeland, Rie, Denmark, Gitland, Greenland, the Sterlins, even\nunto the frozen sea.  This done, they conquered the Isles of Orkney and\nsubdued Scotland, England, and Ireland.  From thence sailing through the\nsandy sea and by the Sarmates, they have vanquished and overcome Prussia,\nPoland, Lithuania, Russia, Wallachia, Transylvania, Hungary, Bulgaria,\nTurkeyland, and are now at Constantinople.  Come, said Picrochole, let us\ngo join with them quickly, for I will be Emperor of Trebizond also.  Shall\nwe not kill all these dogs, Turks and Mahometans?  What a devil should we\ndo else? said they.  And you shall give their goods and lands to such as\nshall have served you honestly.  Reason, said he, will have it so, that is\nbut just.  I give unto you the Caramania, Suria, and all the Palestine.\nHa, sir, said they, it is out of your goodness; gramercy, we thank you.\nGod grant you may always prosper.  There was there present at that time an\nold gentleman well experienced in the wars, a stern soldier, and who had\nbeen in many great hazards, named Echephron, who, hearing this discourse,\nsaid, I do greatly doubt that all this enterprise will be like the tale or\ninterlude of the pitcher full of milk wherewith a shoemaker made himself\nrich in conceit; but, when the pitcher was broken, he had not whereupon to\ndine.  What do you pretend by these large conquests?  What shall be the end\nof so many labours and crosses?  Thus it shall be, said Picrochole, that\nwhen we are returned we shall sit down, rest, and be merry.  But, said\nEchephron, if by chance you should never come back, for the voyage is long\nand dangerous, were it not better for us to take our rest now, than\nunnecessarily to expose ourselves to so many dangers?  O, said\nSwashbuckler, by G--, here is a good dotard; come, let us go hide ourselves\nin the corner of a chimney, and there spend the whole time of our life\namongst ladies, in threading of pearls, or spinning, like Sardanapalus.  He\nthat nothing ventures hath neither horse nor mule, says Solomon.  He who\nadventureth too much, said Echephron, loseth both horse and mule, answered\nMalchon.  Enough, said Picrochole, go forward.  I fear nothing but that\nthese devilish legions of Grangousier, whilst we are in Mesopotamia, will\ncome on our backs and charge up our rear.  What course shall we then take?\nWhat shall be our remedy?  A very good one, said Dirt-tail; a pretty little\ncommission, which you must send unto the Muscovites, shall bring you into\nthe field in an instant four hundred and fifty thousand choice men of war.\nOh that you would but make me your lieutenant-general, I should for the\nlightest faults of any inflict great punishments.  I fret, I charge, I\nstrike, I take, I kill, I slay, I play the devil.  On, on, said Picrochole,\nmake haste, my lads, and let him that loves me follow me.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua left the city of Paris to succour his country, and how\nGymnast encountered with the enemy.\n\nIn this same very hour Gargantua, who was gone out of Paris as soon as he\nhad read his father's letters, coming upon his great mare, had already\npassed the Nunnery-bridge, himself, Ponocrates, Gymnast, and Eudemon, who\nall three, the better to enable them to go along with him, took\npost-horses.  The rest of his train came after him by even journeys at a\nslower pace, bringing with them all his books and philosophical instruments.\nAs soon as he had alighted at Parille, he was informed by a farmer of\nGouguet how Picrochole had fortified himself within the rock Clermond, and\nhad sent Captain Tripet with a great army to set upon the wood of Vede and\nVaugaudry, and that they had already plundered the whole country, not\nleaving cock nor hen, even as far as to the winepress of Billard.  These\nstrange and almost incredible news of the enormous abuses thus committed\nover all the land, so affrighted Gargantua that he knew not what to say nor\ndo.  But Ponocrates counselled him to go unto the Lord of Vauguyon, who at\nall times had been their friend and confederate, and that by him they should\nbe better advised in their business.  Which they did incontinently, and\nfound him very willing and fully resolved to assist them, and therefore was\nof opinion that they should send some one of his company to scout along and\ndiscover the country, to learn in what condition and posture the enemy was,\nthat they might take counsel, and proceed according to the present occasion.\nGymnast offered himself to go.  Whereupon it was concluded, that for his\nsafety and the better expedition, he should have with him someone that knew\nthe ways, avenues, turnings, windings, and rivers thereabout. Then away went\nhe and Prelingot, the equerry or gentleman of Vauguyon's horse, who scouted\nand espied as narrowly as they could upon all quarters without any fear.  In\nthe meantime Gargantua took a little refreshment, ate somewhat himself, the\nlike did those who were with him, and caused to give to his mare a picotine\nof oats, that is, three score and fourteen quarters and three bushels.\nGymnast and his comrade rode so long, that at last they met with the enemy's\nforces, all scattered and out of order, plundering, stealing, robbing, and\npillaging all they could lay their hands on.  And, as far off as they could\nperceive him, they ran thronging upon the back of one another in all haste\ntowards him, to unload him of his money, and untruss his portmantles.  Then\ncried he out unto them, My masters, I am a poor devil, I desire you to spare\nme.  I have yet one crown left.  Come, we must drink it, for it is aurum\npotabile, and this horse here shall be sold to pay my welcome.  Afterwards\ntake me for one of your own, for never yet was there any man that knew\nbetter how to take, lard, roast, and dress, yea, by G--, to tear asunder and\ndevour a hen, than I that am here:  and for my proficiat I drink to all good\nfellows.  With that he unscrewed his borracho (which was a great Dutch\nleathern bottle), and without putting in his nose drank very honestly.  The\nmaroufle rogues looked upon him, opening their throats a foot wide, and\nputting out their tongues like greyhounds, in hopes to drink after him; but\nCaptain Tripet, in the very nick of that their expectation, came running to\nhim to see who it was.  To him Gymnast offered his bottle, saying, Hold,\ncaptain, drink boldly and spare not; I have been thy taster, it is wine of\nLa Faye Monjau.  What! said Tripet, this fellow gibes and flouts us?  Who\nart thou? said Tripet.  I am, said Gymnast, a poor devil (pauvre diable).\nHa, said Tripet, seeing thou art a poor devil, it is reason that thou\nshouldst be permitted to go whithersoever thou wilt, for all poor devils\npass everywhere without toll or tax.  But it is not the custom of poor\ndevils to be so well mounted; therefore, sir devil, come down, and let me\nhave your horse, and if he do not carry me well, you, master devil, must do\nit:  for I love a life that such a devil as you should carry me away.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gymnast very souply and cunningly killed Captain Tripet and others of\nPicrochole's men.\n\nWhen they heard these words, some amongst them began to be afraid, and\nblessed themselves with both hands, thinking indeed that he had been a\ndevil disguised, insomuch that one of them, named Good John, captain of the\ntrained bands of the country bumpkins, took his psalter out of his\ncodpiece, and cried out aloud, Hagios ho theos.  If thou be of God, speak;\nif thou be of the other spirit, avoid hence, and get thee going.  Yet he\nwent not away.  Which words being heard by all the soldiers that were\nthere, divers of them being a little inwardly terrified, departed from the\nplace.  All this did Gymnast very well remark and consider, and therefore\nmaking as if he would have alighted from off his horse, as he was poising\nhimself on the mounting side, he most nimbly, with his short sword by his\nthigh, shifting his foot in the stirrup, performed the stirrup-leather\nfeat, whereby, after the inclining of his body downwards, he forthwith\nlaunched himself aloft in the air, and placed both his feet together on the\nsaddle, standing upright with his back turned towards the horse's head.\nNow, said he, my case goes backward.  Then suddenly in the same very\nposture wherein he was, he fetched a gambol upon one foot, and, turning to\nthe left hand, failed not to carry his body perfectly round, just into its\nformer stance, without missing one jot.  Ha, said Tripet, I will not do\nthat at this time, and not without cause.  Well, said Gymnast, I have\nfailed, I will undo this leap.  Then with a marvellous strength and\nagility, turning towards the right hand, he fetched another frisking gambol\nas before, which done, he set his right-hand thumb upon the hind-bow of the\nsaddle, raised himself up, and sprung in the air, poising and upholding his\nwhole body upon the muscle and nerve of the said thumb, and so turned and\nwhirled himself about three times.  At the fourth, reversing his body, and\noverturning it upside down, and foreside back, without touching anything,\nhe brought himself betwixt the horse's two ears, springing with all his\nbody into the air, upon the thumb of his left hand, and in that posture,\nturning like a windmill, did most actively do that trick which is called\nthe miller's pass.  After this, clapping his right hand flat upon the\nmiddle of the saddle, he gave himself such a jerking swing that he thereby\nseated himself upon the crupper, after the manner of gentlewomen sitting on\nhorseback.  This done, he easily passed his right leg over the saddle, and\nplaced himself like one that rides in croup.  But, said he, it were better\nfor me to get into the saddle; then putting the thumbs of both hands upon\nthe crupper before him, and thereupon leaning himself, as upon the only\nsupporters of his body, he incontinently turned heels over head in the air,\nand straight found himself betwixt the bow of the saddle in a good\nsettlement.  Then with a somersault springing into the air again, he fell\nto stand with both his feet close together upon the saddle, and there made\nabove a hundred frisks, turns, and demipommads, with his arms held out\nacross, and in so doing cried out aloud, I rage, I rage, devils, I am stark\nmad, devils, I am mad, hold me, devils, hold me, hold, devils, hold, hold!\n\nWhilst he was thus vaulting, the rogues in great astonishment said to one\nanother, By cock's death, he is a goblin or a devil thus disguised.  Ab\nhoste maligno libera nos, Domine, and ran away in a full flight, as if they\nhad been routed, looking now and then behind them, like a dog that carrieth\naway a goose-wing in his mouth.  Then Gymnast, spying his advantage,\nalighted from his horse, drew his sword, and laid on great blows upon the\nthickset and highest crested among them, and overthrew them in great heaps,\nhurt, wounded, and bruised, being resisted by nobody, they thinking he had\nbeen a starved devil, as well in regard of his wonderful feats in vaulting,\nwhich they had seen, as for the talk Tripet had with him, calling him poor\ndevil.  Only Tripet would have traitorously cleft his head with his\nhorseman's sword, or lance-knight falchion; but he was well armed, and felt\nnothing of the blow but the weight of the stroke.  Whereupon, turning\nsuddenly about, he gave Tripet a home-thrust, and upon the back of that,\nwhilst he was about to ward his head from a slash, he ran him in at the\nbreast with a hit, which at once cut his stomach, the fifth gut called the\ncolon, and the half of his liver, wherewith he fell to the ground, and in\nfalling gushed forth above four pottles of pottage, and his soul mingled\nwith the pottage.\n\nThis done, Gymnast withdrew himself, very wisely considering that a case of\ngreat adventure and hazard should not be pursued unto its utmost period,\nand that it becomes all cavaliers modestly to use their good fortune,\nwithout troubling or stretching it too far.  Wherefore, getting to horse,\nhe gave him the spur, taking the right way unto Vauguyon, and Prelinguand\nwith him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua demolished the castle at the ford of Vede, and how they\npassed the ford.\n\nAs soon as he came, he related the estate and condition wherein they had\nfound the enemy, and the stratagem which he alone had used against all\ntheir multitude, affirming that they were but rascally rogues, plunderers,\nthieves, and robbers, ignorant of all military discipline, and that they\nmight boldly set forward unto the field; it being an easy matter to fell\nand strike them down like beasts.  Then Gargantua mounted his great mare,\naccompanied as we have said before, and finding in his way a high and great\ntree, which commonly was called by the name of St. Martin's tree, because\nheretofore St. Martin planted a pilgrim's staff there, which in tract of\ntime grew to that height and greatness, said, This is that which I lacked;\nthis tree shall serve me both for a staff and lance.  With that he pulled\nit up easily, plucked off the boughs, and trimmed it at his pleasure.  In\nthe meantime his mare pissed to ease her belly, but it was in such\nabundance that it did overflow the country seven leagues, and all the piss\nof that urinal flood ran glib away towards the ford of Vede, wherewith the\nwater was so swollen that all the forces the enemy had there were with\ngreat horror drowned, except some who had taken the way on the left hand\ntowards the hills.  Gargantua, being come to the place of the wood of Vede,\nwas informed by Eudemon that there was some remainder of the enemy within\nthe castle, which to know, Gargantua cried out as loud as he was able, Are\nyou there, or are you not there?  If you be there, be there no more; and if\nyou are not there, I have no more to say.  But a ruffian gunner, whose\ncharge was to attend the portcullis over the gate, let fly a cannon-ball at\nhim, and hit him with that shot most furiously on the right temple of his\nhead, yet did him no more hurt than if he had but cast a prune or kernel of\na wine-grape at him.  What is this? said Gargantua; do you throw at us\ngrape-kernels here?  The vintage shall cost you dear; thinking indeed that\nthe bullet had been the kernel of a grape, or raisin-kernel.\n\nThose who were within the castle, being till then busy at the pillage, when\nthey heard this noise ran to the towers and fortresses, from whence they\nshot at him above nine thousand and five-and-twenty falconshot and\narquebusades, aiming all at his head, and so thick did they shoot at him\nthat he cried out, Ponocrates, my friend, these flies here are like to put\nout mine eyes; give me a branch of those willow-trees to drive them away,\nthinking that the bullets and stones shot out of the great ordnance had\nbeen but dunflies.  Ponocrates looked and saw that there were no other\nflies but great shot which they had shot from the castle.  Then was it that\nhe rushed with his great tree against the castle, and with mighty blows\noverthrew both towers and fortresses, and laid all level with the ground,\nby which means all that were within were slain and broken in pieces.  Going\nfrom thence, they came to the bridge at the mill, where they found all the\nford covered with dead bodies, so thick that they had choked up the mill\nand stopped the current of its water, and these were those that were\ndestroyed in the urinal deluge of the mare.  There they were at a stand,\nconsulting how they might pass without hindrance by these dead carcasses.\nBut Gymnast said, If the devils have passed there, I will pass well enough.\nThe devils have passed there, said Eudemon, to carry away the damned souls.\nBy St. Treignan! said Ponocrates, then by necessary consequence he shall\npass there.  Yes, yes, said Gymnastes, or I shall stick in the way.  Then\nsetting spurs to his horse, he passed through freely, his horse not fearing\nnor being anything affrighted at the sight of the dead bodies; for he had\naccustomed him, according to the doctrine of Aelian, not to fear armour,\nnor the carcasses of dead men; and that not by killing men as Diomedes did\nthe Thracians, or as Ulysses did in throwing the corpses of his enemies at\nhis horse's feet, as Homer saith, but by putting a Jack-a-lent amongst his\nhay, and making him go over it ordinarily when he gave him his oats.  The\nother three followed him very close, except Eudemon only, whose horse's\nfore-right or far forefoot sank up to the knee in the paunch of a great fat\nchuff who lay there upon his back drowned, and could not get it out.  There\nwas he pestered, until Gargantua, with the end of his staff, thrust down\nthe rest of the villain's tripes into the water whilst the horse pulled out\nhis foot; and, which is a wonderful thing in hippiatry, the said horse was\nthoroughly cured of a ringbone which he had in that foot by this touch of\nthe burst guts of that great looby.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua, in combing his head, made the great cannon-balls fall out of\nhis hair.\n\nBeing come out of the river of Vede, they came very shortly after to\nGrangousier's castle, who waited for them with great longing.  At their\ncoming they were entertained with many congees, and cherished with\nembraces.  Never was seen a more joyful company, for Supplementum\nSupplementi Chronicorum saith that Gargamelle died there with joy; for my\npart, truly I cannot tell, neither do I care very much for her, nor for\nanybody else.  The truth was, that Gargantua, in shifting his clothes, and\ncombing his head with a comb, which was nine hundred foot long of the\nJewish cane measure, and whereof the teeth were great tusks of elephants,\nwhole and entire, he made fall at every rake above seven balls of bullets,\nat a dozen the ball, that stuck in his hair at the razing of the castle of\nthe wood of Vede.  Which his father Grangousier seeing, thought they had\nbeen lice, and said unto him, What, my dear son, hast thou brought us this\nfar some short-winged hawks of the college of Montague?  I did not mean\nthat thou shouldst reside there.  Then answered Ponocrates, My sovereign\nlord, think not that I have placed him in that lousy college which they\ncall Montague; I had rather have put him amongst the grave-diggers of Sanct\nInnocent, so enormous is the cruelty and villainy that I have known there:\nfor the galley-slaves are far better used amongst the Moors and Tartars,\nthe murderers in the criminal dungeons, yea, the very dogs in your house,\nthan are the poor wretched students in the aforesaid college.  And if I\nwere King of Paris, the devil take me if I would not set it on fire, and\nburn both principal and regents, for suffering this inhumanity to be\nexercised before their eyes.  Then, taking up one of these bullets, he\nsaid, These are cannon-shot, which your son Gargantua hath lately received\nby the treachery of your enemies, as he was passing before the wood of\nVede.\n\nBut they have been so rewarded, that they are all destroyed in the ruin of\nthe castle, as were the Philistines by the policy of Samson, and those whom\nthe tower of Silohim slew, as it is written in the thirteenth of Luke.  My\nopinion is, that we pursue them whilst the luck is on our side; for\noccasion hath all her hair on her forehead; when she is passed, you may not\nrecall her,--she hath no tuft whereby you can lay hold on her, for she is\nbald in the hind-part of her head, and never returneth again.  Truly, said\nGrangousier, it shall not be at this time; for I will make you a feast\nthis night, and bid you welcome.\n\nThis said, they made ready supper, and, of extraordinary besides his daily\nfare, were roasted sixteen oxen, three heifers, two and thirty calves,\nthree score and three fat kids, four score and fifteen wethers, three\nhundred farrow pigs or sheats soused in sweet wine or must, eleven score\npartridges, seven hundred snipes and woodcocks, four hundred Loudun and\nCornwall capons, six thousand pullets, and as many pigeons, six hundred\ncrammed hens, fourteen hundred leverets, or young hares and rabbits, three\nhundred and three buzzards, and one thousand and seven hundred cockerels.\nFor venison, they could not so suddenly come by it, only eleven wild boars,\nwhich the Abbot of Turpenay sent, and eighteen fallow deer which the Lord\nof Gramount bestowed; together with seven score pheasants, which were sent\nby the Lord of Essars; and some dozens of queests, coushats, ringdoves, and\nwoodculvers; river-fowl, teals and awteals, bitterns, courtes, plovers,\nfrancolins, briganders, tyrasons, young lapwings, tame ducks, shovellers,\nwoodlanders, herons, moorhens, criels, storks, canepetiers, oranges,\nflamans, which are phaenicopters, or crimson-winged sea-fowls, terrigoles,\nturkeys, arbens, coots, solan-geese, curlews, termagants, and\nwater-wagtails, with a great deal of cream, curds, and fresh cheese, and\nstore of soup, pottages, and brewis with great variety.  Without doubt there\nwas meat enough, and it was handsomely dressed by Snapsauce, Hotchpot, and\nBrayverjuice, Grangousier's cooks.  Jenkin Trudgeapace and Cleanglass were\nvery careful to fill them drink.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua did eat up six pilgrims in a salad.\n\nThe story requireth that we relate that which happened unto six pilgrims\nwho came from Sebastian near to Nantes, and who for shelter that night,\nbeing afraid of the enemy, had hid themselves in the garden upon the\nchichling peas, among the cabbages and lettuces.  Gargantua finding himself\nsomewhat dry, asked whether they could get any lettuce to make him a salad;\nand hearing that there were the greatest and fairest in the country, for\nthey were as great as plum-trees or as walnut-trees, he would go thither\nhimself, and brought thence in his hand what he thought good, and withal\ncarried away the six pilgrims, who were in so great fear that they did not\ndare to speak nor cough.\n\nWashing them, therefore, first at the fountain, the pilgrims said one to\nanother softly, What shall we do?  We are almost drowned here amongst these\nlettuce, shall we speak?  But if we speak, he will kill us for spies.  And,\nas they were thus deliberating what to do, Gargantua put them with the\nlettuce into a platter of the house, as large as the huge tun of the White\nFriars of the Cistercian order; which done, with oil, vinegar, and salt, he\nate them up, to refresh himself a little before supper, and had already\nswallowed up five of the pilgrims, the sixth being in the platter, totally\nhid under a lettuce, except his bourdon or staff that appeared, and nothing\nelse.  Which Grangousier seeing, said to Gargantua, I think that is the\nhorn of a shell-snail, do not eat it.  Why not? said Gargantua, they are\ngood all this month:  which he no sooner said, but, drawing up the staff,\nand therewith taking up the pilgrim, he ate him very well, then drank a\nterrible draught of excellent white wine.  The pilgrims, thus devoured,\nmade shift to save themselves as well as they could, by withdrawing their\nbodies out of the reach of the grinders of his teeth, but could not escape\nfrom thinking they had been put in the lowest dungeon of a prison.  And\nwhen Gargantua whiffed the great draught, they thought to have been drowned\nin his mouth, and the flood of wine had almost carried them away into the\ngulf of his stomach.  Nevertheless, skipping with their bourdons, as St.\nMichael's palmers use to do, they sheltered themselves from the danger of\nthat inundation under the banks of his teeth.  But one of them by chance,\ngroping or sounding the country with his staff, to try whether they were in\nsafety or no, struck hard against the cleft of a hollow tooth, and hit the\nmandibulary sinew or nerve of the jaw, which put Gargantua to very great\npain, so that he began to cry for the rage that he felt.  To ease himself\ntherefore of his smarting ache, he called for his toothpicker, and rubbing\ntowards a young walnut-tree, where they lay skulking, unnestled you my\ngentlemen pilgrims.\n\nFor he caught one by the legs, another by the scrip, another by the pocket,\nanother by the scarf, another by the band of the breeches, and the poor\nfellow that had hurt him with the bourdon, him he hooked to him by the\ncodpiece, which snatch nevertheless did him a great deal of good, for it\npierced unto him a pocky botch he had in the groin, which grievously\ntormented him ever since they were past Ancenis.  The pilgrims, thus\ndislodged, ran away athwart the plain a pretty fast pace, and the pain\nceased, even just at the time when by Eudemon he was called to supper, for\nall was ready.  I will go then, said he, and piss away my misfortune; which\nhe did do in such a copious measure, that the urine taking away the feet\nfrom the pilgrims, they were carried along with the stream unto the bank of\na tuft of trees.  Upon which, as soon as they had taken footing, and that\nfor their self-preservation they had run a little out of the road, they on\na sudden fell all six, except Fourniller, into a trap that had been made to\ntake wolves by a train, out of which, nevertheless, they escaped by the\nindustry of the said Fourniller, who broke all the snares and ropes.  Being\ngone from thence, they lay all the rest of that night in a lodge near unto\nCoudray, where they were comforted in their miseries by the gracious words\nof one of their company, called Sweer-to-go, who showed them that this\nadventure had been foretold by the prophet David, Psalm.  Quum exsurgerent\nhomines in nos, forte vivos deglutissent nos; when we were eaten in the\nsalad, with salt, oil, and vinegar.  Quum irasceretur furor eorum in nos,\nforsitan aqua absorbuisset nos; when he drank the great draught.  Torrentem\npertransivit anima nostra; when the stream of his water carried us to the\nthicket.  Forsitan pertransisset anima nostra aquam intolerabilem; that is,\nthe water of his urine, the flood whereof, cutting our way, took our feet\nfrom us.  Benedictus Dominus qui non dedit nos in captionem dentibus eorum.\nAnima nostra sicut passer erepta est de laqueo venantium; when we fell in\nthe trap.  Laqueus contritus est, by Fourniller, et nos liberati sumus.\nAdjutorium nostrum, &c.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Monk was feasted by Gargantua, and of the jovial discourse they had\nat supper.\n\nWhen Gargantua was set down at table, after all of them had somewhat stayed\ntheir stomachs by a snatch or two of the first bits eaten heartily,\nGrangousier began to relate the source and cause of the war raised between\nhim and Picrochole; and came to tell how Friar John of the Funnels had\ntriumphed at the defence of the close of the abbey, and extolled him for\nhis valour above Camillus, Scipio, Pompey, Caesar, and Themistocles.  Then\nGargantua desired that he might be presently sent for, to the end that with\nhim they might consult of what was to be done.  Whereupon, by a joint\nconsent, his steward went for him, and brought him along merrily, with his\nstaff of the cross, upon Grangousier's mule.  When he was come, a thousand\nhuggings, a thousand embracements, a thousand good days were given.  Ha,\nFriar John, my friend Friar John, my brave cousin Friar John from the\ndevil!  Let me clip thee, my heart, about the neck; to me an armful.  I\nmust grip thee, my ballock, till thy back crack with it.  Come, my cod, let\nme coll thee till I kill thee.  And Friar John, the gladdest man in the\nworld, never was man made welcomer, never was any more courteously and\ngraciously received than Friar John.  Come, come, said Gargantua, a stool\nhere close by me at this end.  I am content, said the monk, seeing you will\nhave it so.  Some water, page; fill, my boy, fill; it is to refresh my\nliver.  Give me some, child, to gargle my throat withal.  Deposita cappa,\nsaid Gymnast, let us pull off this frock.  Ho, by G--, gentlemen, said the\nmonk, there is a chapter in Statutis Ordinis which opposeth my laying of it\ndown.  Pish! said Gymnast, a fig for your chapter!  This frock breaks both\nyour shoulders, put it off.  My friend, said the monk, let me alone with\nit; for, by G--, I'll drink the better that it is on.  It makes all my body\njocund.  If I should lay it aside, the waggish pages would cut to\nthemselves garters out of it, as I was once served at Coulaines.  And,\nwhich is worse, I shall lose my appetite.  But if in this habit I sit down\nat table, I will drink, by G--, both to thee and to thy horse, and so\ncourage, frolic, God save the company!  I have already supped, yet will I\neat never a whit the less for that; for I have a paved stomach, as hollow\nas a butt of malvoisie or St. Benedictus' boot (butt), and always open like\na lawyer's pouch.  Of all fishes but the tench take the wing of a partridge\nor the thigh of a nun.  Doth not he die like a good fellow that dies with a\nstiff catso?  Our prior loves exceedingly the white of a capon.  In that,\nsaid Gymnast, he doth not resemble the foxes; for of the capons, hens, and\npullets which they carry away they never eat the white.  Why? said the\nmonk.  Because, said Gymnast, they have no cooks to dress them; and, if\nthey be not competently made ready, they remain red and not white; the\nredness of meats being a token that they have not got enough of the fire,\nwhether by boiling, roasting, or otherwise, except the shrimps, lobsters,\ncrabs, and crayfishes, which are cardinalized with boiling.  By God's\nfeast-gazers, said the monk, the porter of our abbey then hath not his head\nwell boiled, for his eyes are as red as a mazer made of an alder-tree.  The\nthigh of this leveret is good for those that have the gout.  To the purpose\nof the truel,--what is the reason that the thighs of a gentlewoman are\nalways fresh and cool?  This problem, said Gargantua, is neither in\nAristotle, in Alexander Aphrodiseus, nor in Plutarch.  There are three\ncauses, said the monk, by which that place is naturally refreshed.  Primo,\nbecause the water runs all along by it.  Secundo, because it is a shady\nplace, obscure and dark, upon which the sun never shines.  And thirdly,\nbecause it is continually flabbelled, blown upon, and aired by the north\nwinds of the hole arstick, the fan of the smock, and flipflap of the\ncodpiece.  And lusty, my lads.  Some bousing liquor, page!  So! crack,\ncrack, crack.  O how good is God, that gives us of this excellent juice!  I\ncall him to witness, if I had been in the time of Jesus Christ, I would\nhave kept him from being taken by the Jews in the garden of Olivet.  And\nthe devil fail me, if I should have failed to cut off the hams of these\ngentlemen apostles who ran away so basely after they had well supped, and\nleft their good master in the lurch.  I hate that man worse than poison\nthat offers to run away when he should fight and lay stoutly about him.  Oh\nthat I were but King of France for fourscore or a hundred years!  By G--, I\nshould whip like curtail-dogs these runaways of Pavia.  A plague take them;\nwhy did they not choose rather to die there than to leave their good prince\nin that pinch and necessity?  Is it not better and more honourable to\nperish in fighting valiantly than to live in disgrace by a cowardly running\naway?  We are like to eat no great store of goslings this year; therefore,\nfriend, reach me some of that roasted pig there.\n\nDiavolo, is there no more must?  No more sweet wine?  Germinavit radix\nJesse.  Je renie ma vie, je meurs de soif; I renounce my life, I rage for\nthirst.  This wine is none of the worst.  What wine drink you at Paris?  I\ngive myself to the devil, if I did not once keep open house at Paris for\nall comers six months together.  Do you know Friar Claude of the high\nkilderkins?  Oh the good fellow that he is!  But I do not know what fly\nhath stung him of late, he is become so hard a student.  For my part, I\nstudy not at all.  In our abbey we never study for fear of the mumps, which\ndisease in horses is called the mourning in the chine.  Our late abbot was\nwont to say that it is a monstrous thing to see a learned monk.  By G--,\nmaster, my friend, Magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes.\nYou never saw so many hares as there are this year.  I could not anywhere\ncome by a goshawk nor tassel of falcon.  My Lord Belloniere promised me a\nlanner, but he wrote to me not long ago that he was become pursy.  The\npartridges will so multiply henceforth, that they will go near to eat up\nour ears.  I take no delight in the stalking-horse, for I catch such cold\nthat I am like to founder myself at that sport.  If I do not run, toil,\ntravel, and trot about, I am not well at ease.  True it is that in leaping\nover the hedges and bushes my frock leaves always some of its wool behind\nit.  I have recovered a dainty greyhound; I give him to the devil, if he\nsuffer a hare to escape him.  A groom was leading him to my Lord\nHuntlittle, and I robbed him of him.  Did I ill?  No, Friar John, said\nGymnast, no, by all the devils that are, no!  So, said the monk, do I\nattest these same devils so long as they last, or rather, virtue (of) G--,\nwhat could that gouty limpard have done with so fine a dog?  By the body of\nG--, he is better pleased when one presents him with a good yoke of oxen.\nHow now, said Ponocrates, you swear, Friar John.  It is only, said the\nmonk, but to grace and adorn my speech.  They are colours of a Ciceronian\nrhetoric.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy monks are the outcasts of the world; and wherefore some have bigger\nnoses than others.\n\nBy the faith of a Christian, said Eudemon, I do wonderfully dote and enter\nin a great ecstasy when I consider the honesty and good fellowship of this\nmonk, for he makes us here all merry.  How is it, then, that they exclude\nthe monks from all good companies, calling them feast-troublers, marrers of\nmirth, and disturbers of all civil conversation, as the bees drive away the\ndrones from their hives?  Ignavum fucos pecus, said Maro, a praesepibus\narcent.  Hereunto, answered Gargantua, there is nothing so true as that the\nfrock and cowl draw unto itself the opprobries, injuries, and maledictions\nof the world, just as the wind called Cecias attracts the clouds.  The\nperemptory reason is, because they eat the ordure and excrements of the\nworld, that is to say, the sins of the people, and, like dung-chewers and\nexcrementitious eaters, they are cast into the privies and secessive\nplaces, that is, the convents and abbeys, separated from political\nconversation, as the jakes and retreats of a house are.  But if you\nconceive how an ape in a family is always mocked and provokingly incensed,\nyou shall easily apprehend how monks are shunned of all men, both young and\nold.  The ape keeps not the house as a dog doth, he draws not in the plough\nas the ox, he yields neither milk nor wool as the sheep, he carrieth no\nburden as a horse doth.  That which he doth, is only to conskite, spoil,\nand defile all, which is the cause wherefore he hath of all men mocks,\nfrumperies, and bastinadoes.\n\nAfter the same manner a monk--I mean those lither, idle, lazy monks--doth\nnot labour and work, as do the peasant and artificer; doth not ward and\ndefend the country, as doth the man of war; cureth not the sick and\ndiseased, as the physician doth; doth neither preach nor teach, as do the\nevangelical doctors and schoolmasters; doth not import commodities and\nthings necessary for the commonwealth, as the merchant doth.  Therefore is\nit that by and of all men they are hooted at, hated, and abhorred.  Yea,\nbut, said Grangousier, they pray to God for us.  Nothing less, answered\nGargantua.  True it is, that with a tingle tangle jangling of bells they\ntrouble and disquiet all their neighbours about them.  Right, said the\nmonk; a mass, a matin, a vesper well rung, are half said.  They mumble out\ngreat store of legends and psalms, by them not at all understood; they say\nmany paternosters interlarded with Ave-Maries, without thinking upon or\napprehending the meaning of what it is they say, which truly I call mocking\nof God, and not prayers.  But so help them God, as they pray for us, and\nnot for being afraid to lose their victuals, their manchots, and good fat\npottage.  All true Christians, of all estates and conditions, in all places\nand at all times, send up their prayers to God, and the Mediator prayeth\nand intercedeth for them, and God is gracious to them.  Now such a one is\nour good Friar John; therefore every man desireth to have him in his\ncompany.  He is no bigot or hypocrite; he is not torn and divided betwixt\nreality and appearance; no wretch of a rugged and peevish disposition, but\nhonest, jovial, resolute, and a good fellow.  He travels, he labours, he\ndefends the oppressed, comforts the afflicted, helps the needy, and keeps\nthe close of the abbey.  Nay, said the monk, I do a great deal more than\nthat; for whilst we are in despatching our matins and anniversaries in the\nchoir, I make withal some crossbow-strings, polish glass bottles and bolts,\nI twist lines and weave purse nets wherein to catch coneys.  I am never\nidle.  But now, hither come, some drink, some drink here!  Bring the fruit.\nThese chestnuts are of the wood of Estrox, and with good new wine are able\nto make you a fine cracker and composer of bum-sonnets.  You are not as\nyet, it seems, well moistened in this house with the sweet wine and must.\nBy G--, I drink to all men freely, and at all fords, like a proctor or\npromoter's horse.  Friar John, said Gymnast, take away the snot that hangs\nat your nose.  Ha, ha, said the monk, am not I in danger of drowning,\nseeing I am in water even to the nose?  No, no, Quare?  Quia, though some\nwater come out from thence, there never goes in any; for it is well\nantidoted with pot-proof armour and syrup of the vine-leaf.\n\nOh, my friend, he that hath winter-boots made of such leather may boldly\nfish for oysters, for they will never take water.  What is the cause, said\nGargantua, that Friar John hath such a fair nose?  Because, said\nGrangousier, that God would have it so, who frameth us in such form and for\nsuch end as is most agreeable with his divine will, even as a potter\nfashioneth his vessels.  Because, said Ponocrates, he came with the first\nto the fair of noses, and therefore made choice of the fairest and the\ngreatest.  Pish, said the monk, that is not the reason of it, but,\naccording to the true monastical philosophy, it is because my nurse had\nsoft teats, by virtue whereof, whilst she gave me suck, my nose did sink in\nas in so much butter.  The hard breasts of nurses make children\nshort-nosed.  But hey, gay, Ad formam nasi cognoscitur ad te levavi.  I\nnever eat any confections, page, whilst I am at the bibbery.  Item, bring\nme rather some toasts.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Monk made Gargantua sleep, and of his hours and breviaries.\n\nSupper being ended, they consulted of the business in hand, and concluded\nthat about midnight they should fall unawares upon the enemy, to know what\nmanner of watch and ward they kept, and that in the meanwhile they should\ntake a little rest the better to refresh themselves.  But Gargantua could\nnot sleep by any means, on which side soever he turned himself.  Whereupon\nthe monk said to him, I never sleep soundly but when I am at sermon or\nprayers.  Let us therefore begin, you and I, the seven penitential psalms,\nto try whether you shall not quickly fall asleep.  The conceit pleased\nGargantua very well, and, beginning the first of these psalms, as soon as\nthey came to the words Beati quorum they fell asleep, both the one and the\nother.  But the monk, for his being formerly accustomed to the hour of\nclaustral matins, failed not to awake a little before midnight, and, being\nup himself, awaked all the rest, in singing aloud, and with a full clear\nvoice, the song:\n\n  Awake, O Reinian, ho, awake!\n    Awake, O Reinian, ho!\n  Get up, you no more sleep must take;\n    Get up, for we must go.\n\nWhen they were all roused and up, he said, My masters, it is a usual\nsaying, that we begin matins with coughing and supper with drinking.  Let\nus now, in doing clean contrarily, begin our matins with drinking, and at\nnight before supper we shall cough as hard as we can.  What, said\nGargantua, to drink so soon after sleep?  This is not to live according to\nthe diet and prescript rule of the physicians, for you ought first to scour\nand cleanse your stomach of all its superfluities and excrements.  Oh, well\nphysicked, said the monk; a hundred devils leap into my body, if there be\nnot more old drunkards than old physicians!  I have made this paction and\ncovenant with my appetite, that it always lieth down and goes to bed with\nmyself, for to that I every day give very good order; then the next morning\nit also riseth with me and gets up when I am awake.  Mind you your charges,\ngentlemen, or tend your cures as much as you will.  I will get me to my\ndrawer; in terms of falconry, my tiring.  What drawer or tiring do you\nmean? said Gargantua.  My breviary, said the monk, for just as the\nfalconers, before they feed their hawks, do make them draw at a hen's leg\nto purge their brains of phlegm and sharpen them to a good appetite, so, by\ntaking this merry little breviary in the morning, I scour all my lungs and\nam presently ready to drink.\n\nAfter what manner, said Gargantua, do you say these fair hours and prayers\nof yours?  After the manner of Whipfield (Fessecamp, and corruptly Fecan.),\nsaid the monk, by three psalms and three lessons, or nothing at all, he\nthat will.  I never tie myself to hours, prayers, and sacraments; for they\nare made for the man and not the man for them.  Therefore is it that I make\nmy prayers in fashion of stirrup-leathers; I shorten or lengthen them when\nI think good.  Brevis oratio penetrat caelos et longa potatio evacuat\nscyphos.  Where is that written?  By my faith, said Ponocrates, I cannot\ntell, my pillicock, but thou art more worth than gold.  Therein, said the\nmonk, I am like you; but, venite, apotemus.  Then made they ready store of\ncarbonadoes, or rashers on the coals, and good fat soups, or brewis with\nsippets; and the monk drank what he pleased.  Some kept him company, and\nthe rest did forbear, for their stomachs were not as yet opened.\nAfterwards every man began to arm and befit himself for the field. And they\narmed the monk against his will; for he desired no other armour for back\nand breast but his frock, nor any other weapon in his hand but the staff of\nthe cross.  Yet at their pleasure was he completely armed cap-a-pie, and\nmounted upon one of the best horses in the kingdom, with a good slashing\nshable by his side, together with Gargantua, Ponocrates, Gymnast, Eudemon,\nand five-and-twenty more of the most resolute and adventurous of\nGrangousier's house, all armed at proof with their lances in their hands,\nmounted like St. George, and everyone of them having an arquebusier behind\nhim.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Monk encouraged his fellow-champions, and how he hanged upon a\ntree.\n\nThus went out those valiant champions on their adventure, in full\nresolution to know what enterprise they should undertake, and what to take\nheed of and look well to in the day of the great and horrible battle.  And\nthe monk encouraged them, saying, My children, do not fear nor doubt, I\nwill conduct you safely.  God and Sanct Benedict be with us!  If I had\nstrength answerable to my courage, by's death, I would plume them for you\nlike ducks.  I fear nothing but the great ordnance; yet I know of a charm\nby way of prayer, which the subsexton of our abbey taught me, that will\npreserve a man from the violence of guns and all manner of fire-weapons and\nengines; but it will do me no good, because I do not believe it.\nNevertheless, I hope my staff of the cross shall this day play devilish\npranks amongst them.  By G--, whoever of our party shall offer to play the\nduck, and shrink when blows are a-dealing, I give myself to the devil, if I\ndo not make a monk of him in my stead, and hamper him within my frock,\nwhich is a sovereign cure against cowardice.  Did you never hear of my Lord\nMeurles his greyhound, which was not worth a straw in the fields?  He put a\nfrock about his neck:  by the body of G--, there was neither hare nor fox\nthat could escape him, and, which is more, he lined all the bitches in the\ncountry, though before that he was feeble-reined and ex frigidis et\nmaleficiatis.\n\nThe monk uttering these words in choler, as he passed under a walnut-tree,\nin his way towards the causey, he broached the vizor of his helmet on the\nstump of a great branch of the said tree.  Nevertheless, he set his spurs\nso fiercely to the horse, who was full of mettle and quick on the spur,\nthat he bounded forwards, and the monk going about to ungrapple his vizor,\nlet go his hold of the bridle, and so hanged by his hand upon the bough,\nwhilst his horse stole away from under him.  By this means was the monk\nleft hanging on the walnut-tree, and crying for help, murder, murder,\nswearing also that he was betrayed.  Eudemon perceived him first, and\ncalling Gargantua said, Sir, come and see Absalom hanging.  Gargantua,\nbeing come, considered the countenance of the monk, and in what posture he\nhanged; wherefore he said to Eudemon, You were mistaken in comparing him to\nAbsalom; for Absalom hung by his hair, but this shaveling monk hangeth by\nthe ears.  Help me, said the monk, in the devil's name; is this a time for\nyou to prate?  You seem to me to be like the decretalist preachers, who say\nthat whosoever shall see his neighbour in the danger of death, ought, upon\npain of trisulk excommunication, rather choose to admonish him to make his\nconfession to a priest, and put his conscience in the state of peace, than\notherwise to help and relieve him.\n\nAnd therefore when I shall see them fallen into a river, and ready to be\ndrowned, I shall make them a fair long sermon de contemptu mundi, et fuga\nseculi; and when they are stark dead, shall then go to their aid and\nsuccour in fishing after them.  Be quiet, said Gymnast, and stir not, my\nminion.  I am now coming to unhang thee and to set thee at freedom, for\nthou art a pretty little gentle monachus.  Monachus in claustro non valet\nova duo; sed quando est extra, bene valet triginta.  I have seen above five\nhundred hanged, but I never saw any have a better countenance in his\ndangling and pendilatory swagging.  Truly, if I had so good a one, I would\nwillingly hang thus all my lifetime.  What, said the monk, have you almost\ndone preaching?  Help me, in the name of God, seeing you will not in the\nname of the other spirit, or, by the habit which I wear, you shall repent\nit, tempore et loco praelibatis.\n\nThen Gymnast alighted from his horse, and, climbing up the walnut-tree,\nlifted up the monk with one hand by the gussets of his armour under the\narmpits, and with the other undid his vizor from the stump of the broken\nbranch; which done, he let him fall to the ground and himself after.  As\nsoon as the monk was down, he put off all his armour, and threw away one\npiece after another about the field, and, taking to him again his staff of\nthe cross, remounted up to his horse, which Eudemon had caught in his\nrunning away.  Then went they on merrily, riding along on the highway.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the scouts and fore-party of Picrochole were met with by Gargantua, and\nhow the Monk slew Captain Drawforth (Tirevant.), and then was taken\nprisoner by his enemies.\n\nPicrochole, at the relation of those who had escaped out of the broil and\ndefeat wherein Tripet was untriped, grew very angry that the devils should\nhave so run upon his men, and held all that night a counsel of war, at\nwhich Rashcalf and Touchfaucet (Hastiveau, Touquedillon.), concluded his\npower to be such that he was able to defeat all the devils of hell if they\nshould come to jostle with his forces.  This Picrochole did not fully\nbelieve, though he doubted not much of it.  Therefore sent he under the\ncommand and conduct of the Count Drawforth, for discovering of the country,\nthe number of sixteen hundred horsemen, all well mounted upon light horses\nfor skirmish and thoroughly besprinkled with holy water; and everyone for\ntheir field-mark or cognizance had the sign of a star in his scarf, to\nserve at all adventures in case they should happen to encounter with\ndevils, that by the virtue, as well of that Gregorian water as of the stars\nwhich they wore, they might make them disappear and evanish.\n\nIn this equipage they made an excursion upon the country till they came\nnear to the Vauguyon, which is the valley of Guyon, and to the spital, but\ncould never find anybody to speak unto; whereupon they returned a little\nback, and took occasion to pass above the aforesaid hospital to try what\nintelligence they could come by in those parts.  In which resolution riding\non, and by chance in a pastoral lodge or shepherd's cottage near to Coudray\nhitting upon the five pilgrims, they carried them way-bound and manacled,\nas if they had been spies, for all the exclamations, adjurations, and\nrequests that they could make.  Being come down from thence towards\nSeville, they were heard by Gargantua, who said then unto those that were\nwith him, Comrades and fellow-soldiers, we have here met with an encounter,\nand they are ten times in number more than we.  Shall we charge them or no?\nWhat a devil, said the monk, shall we do else?  Do you esteem men by their\nnumber rather than by their valour and prowess?  With this he cried out,\nCharge, devils, charge!  Which when the enemies heard, they thought\ncertainly that they had been very devils, and therefore even then began all\nof them to run away as hard as they could drive, Drawforth only excepted,\nwho immediately settled his lance on its rest, and therewith hit the monk\nwith all his force on the very middle of his breast, but, coming against\nhis horrific frock, the point of the iron being with the blow either broke\noff or blunted, it was in matter of execution as if you had struck against\nan anvil with a little wax-candle.\n\nThen did the monk with his staff of the cross give him such a sturdy thump\nand whirret betwixt his neck and shoulders, upon the acromion bone, that he\nmade him lose both sense and motion and fall down stone dead at his horse's\nfeet; and, seeing the sign of the star which he wore scarfwise, he said\nunto Gargantua, These men are but priests, which is but the beginning of a\nmonk; by St. John, I am a perfect monk, I will kill them to you like flies.\nThen ran he after them at a swift and full gallop till he overtook the\nrear, and felled them down like tree-leaves, striking athwart and alongst\nand every way.  Gymnast presently asked Gargantua if they should pursue\nthem.  To whom Gargantua answered, By no means; for, according to right\nmilitary discipline, you must never drive your enemy unto despair, for that\nsuch a strait doth multiply his force and increase his courage, which was\nbefore broken and cast down; neither is there any better help or outrage of\nrelief for men that are amazed, out of heart, toiled, and spent, than to\nhope for no favour at all.  How many victories have been taken out of the\nhands of the victors by the vanquished, when they would not rest satisfied\nwith reason, but attempt to put all to the sword, and totally to destroy\ntheir enemies, without leaving so much as one to carry home news of the\ndefeat of his fellows.  Open, therefore, unto your enemies all the gates\nand ways, and make to them a bridge of silver rather than fail, that you\nmay be rid of them.  Yea, but, said Gymnast, they have the monk.  Have they\nthe monk? said Gargantua.  Upon mine honour, then, it will prove to their\ncost.  But to prevent all dangers, let us not yet retreat, but halt here\nquietly as in an ambush; for I think I do already understand the policy and\njudgment of our enemies.  They are truly more directed by chance and mere\nfortune than by good advice and counsel.  In the meanwhile, whilst these\nmade a stop under the walnut-trees, the monk pursued on the chase, charging\nall he overtook, and giving quarter to none, until he met with a trooper\nwho carried behind him one of the poor pilgrims, and there would have\nrifled him.  The pilgrim, in hope of relief at the sight of the monk, cried\nout, Ha, my lord prior, my good friend, my lord prior, save me, I beseech\nyou, save me!  Which words being heard by those that rode in the van, they\ninstantly faced about, and seeing there was nobody but the monk that made\nthis great havoc and slaughter among them, they loaded him with blows as\nthick as they use to do an ass with wood.  But of all this he felt nothing,\nespecially when they struck upon his frock, his skin was so hard.  Then\nthey committed him to two of the marshal's men to keep, and, looking about,\nsaw nobody coming against them, whereupon they thought that Gargantua and\nhis party were fled.  Then was it that they rode as hard as they could\ntowards the walnut-trees to meet with them, and left the monk there all\nalone, with his two foresaid men to guard him.  Gargantua heard the noise\nand neighing of the horses, and said to his men, Comrades, I hear the track\nand beating of the enemy's horse-feet, and withal perceive that some of\nthem come in a troop and full body against us.  Let us rally and close\nhere, then set forward in order, and by this means we shall be able to\nreceive their charge to their loss and our honour.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Monk rid himself of his keepers, and how Picrochole's forlorn hope\nwas defeated.\n\nThe monk, seeing them break off thus without order, conjectured that they\nwere to set upon Gargantua and those that were with him, and was\nwonderfully grieved that he could not succour them.  Then considered he the\ncountenance of the two keepers in whose custody he was, who would have\nwillingly run after the troops to get some booty and plunder, and were\nalways looking towards the valley unto which they were going.  Farther, he\nsyllogized, saying, These men are but badly skilled in matters of war, for\nthey have not required my parole, neither have they taken my sword from me.\nSuddenly hereafter he drew his brackmard or horseman's sword, wherewith he\ngave the keeper which held him on the right side such a sound slash that he\ncut clean through the jugulary veins and the sphagitid or transparent\narteries of the neck, with the fore-part of the throat called the\ngargareon, even unto the two adenes, which are throat kernels; and,\nredoubling the blow, he opened the spinal marrow betwixt the second and\nthird vertebrae.  There fell down that keeper stark dead to the ground.\nThen the monk, reining his horse to the left, ran upon the other, who,\nseeing his fellow dead, and the monk to have the advantage of him, cried\nwith a loud voice, Ha, my lord prior, quarter; I yield, my lord prior,\nquarter; quarter, my good friend, my lord prior.  And the monk cried\nlikewise, My lord posterior, my friend, my lord posterior, you shall have\nit upon your posteriorums.  Ha, said the keeper, my lord prior, my minion,\nmy gentle lord prior, I pray God make you an abbot.  By the habit, said the\nmonk, which I wear, I will here make you a cardinal.  What! do you use to\npay ransoms to religious men?  You shall therefore have by-and-by a red hat\nof my giving.  And the fellow cried, Ha, my lord prior, my lord prior, my\nlord abbot that shall be, my lord cardinal, my lord all!  Ha, ha, hes, no,\nmy lord prior, my good little lord the prior, I yield, render and deliver\nmyself up to you.  And I deliver thee, said the monk, to all the devils in\nhell.  Then at one stroke he cut off his head, cutting his scalp upon the\ntemple-bones, and lifting up in the upper part of the skull the two\ntriangulary bones called sincipital, or the two bones bregmatis, together\nwith the sagittal commissure or dartlike seam which distinguisheth the\nright side of the head from the left, as also a great part of the coronal\nor forehead bone, by which terrible blow likewise he cut the two meninges\nor films which enwrap the brain, and made a deep wound in the brain's two\nposterior ventricles, and the cranium or skull abode hanging upon his\nshoulders by the skin of the pericranium behind, in form of a doctor's\nbonnet, black without and red within.  Thus fell he down also to the ground\nstark dead.\n\nAnd presently the monk gave his horse the spur, and kept the way that the\nenemy held, who had met with Gargantua and his companions in the broad\nhighway, and were so diminished of their number for the enormous slaughter\nthat Gargantua had made with his great tree amongst them, as also Gymnast,\nPonocrates, Eudemon, and the rest, that they began to retreat disorderly\nand in great haste, as men altogether affrighted and troubled in both sense\nand understanding, and as if they had seen the very proper species and form\nof death before their eyes; or rather, as when you see an ass with a brizze\nor gadbee under his tail, or fly that stings him, run hither and thither\nwithout keeping any path or way, throwing down his load to the ground,\nbreaking his bridle and reins, and taking no breath nor rest, and no man\ncan tell what ails him, for they see not anything touch him.  So fled these\npeople destitute of wit, without knowing any cause of flying, only pursued\nby a panic terror which in their minds they had conceived.  The monk,\nperceiving that their whole intent was to betake themselves to their heels,\nalighted from his horse and got upon a big large rock which was in the way,\nand with his great brackmard sword laid such load upon those runaways, and\nwith main strength fetching a compass with his arm without feigning or\nsparing, slew and overthrew so many that his sword broke in two pieces.\nThen thought he within himself that he had slain and killed sufficiently,\nand that the rest should escape to carry news.  Therefore he took up a\nbattle-axe of those that lay there dead, and got upon the rock again,\npassing his time to see the enemy thus flying and to tumble himself amongst\nthe dead bodies, only that he suffered none to carry pike, sword, lance,\nnor gun with him, and those who carried the pilgrims bound he made to\nalight, and gave their horses unto the said pilgrims, keeping them there\nwith him under the hedge, and also Touchfaucet, who was then his prisoner.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Monk carried along with him the Pilgrims, and of the good words\nthat Grangousier gave them.\n\nThis skirmish being ended, Gargantua retreated with his men, excepting the\nmonk, and about the dawning of the day they came unto Grangousier, who in\nhis bed was praying unto God for their safety and victory.  And seeing them\nall safe and sound, he embraced them lovingly, and asked what was become of\nthe monk.  Gargantua answered him that without doubt the enemies had the\nmonk.  Then have they mischief and ill luck, said Grangousier; which was\nvery true.  Therefore is it a common proverb to this day, to give a man the\nmonk, or, as in French, lui bailler le moine, when they would express the\ndoing unto one a mischief.  Then commanded he a good breakfast to be\nprovided for their refreshment.  When all was ready, they called Gargantua,\nbut he was so aggrieved that the monk was not to be heard of that he would\nneither eat nor drink.  In the meanwhile the monk comes, and from the gate\nof the outer court cries out aloud, Fresh wine, fresh wine, Gymnast my\nfriend!  Gymnast went out and saw that it was Friar John, who brought along\nwith him five pilgrims and Touchfaucet prisoners; whereupon Gargantua\nlikewise went forth to meet him, and all of them made him the best welcome\nthat possibly they could, and brought him before Grangousier, who asked him\nof all his adventures.  The monk told him all, both how he was taken, how\nhe rid himself of his keepers, of the slaughter he had made by the way, and\nhow he had rescued the pilgrims and brought along with him Captain\nTouchfaucet.  Then did they altogether fall to banqueting most merrily.  In\nthe meantime Grangousier asked the pilgrims what countrymen they were,\nwhence they came, and whither they went.  Sweer-to-go in the name of the\nrest answered, My sovereign lord, I am of Saint Genou in Berry, this man is\nof Palvau, this other is of Onzay, this of Argy, this of St. Nazarand, and\nthis man of Villebrenin.  We come from Saint Sebastian near Nantes, and are\nnow returning, as we best may, by easy journeys.  Yea, but, said\nGrangousier, what went you to do at Saint Sebastian?  We went, said\nSweer-to-go, to offer up unto that sanct our vows against the plague.  Ah,\npoor men! said Grangousier, do you think that the plague comes from Saint\nSebastian?  Yes, truly, answered Sweer-to-go, our preachers tell us so\nindeed.  But is it so, said Grangousier, do the false prophets teach you\nsuch abuses?  Do they thus blaspheme the sancts and holy men of God, as to\nmake them like unto the devils, who do nothing but hurt unto mankind,--as\nHomer writeth, that the plague was sent into the camp of the Greeks by\nApollo, and as the poets feign a great rabble of Vejoves and mischievous\ngods.  So did a certain cafard or dissembling religionary preach at Sinay,\nthat Saint Anthony sent the fire into men's legs, that Saint Eutropius made\nmen hydropic, Saint Clidas, fools, and that Saint Genou made them goutish.\nBut I punished him so exemplarily, though he called me heretic for it, that\nsince that time no such hypocritical rogue durst set his foot within my\nterritories.  And truly I wonder that your king should suffer them in their\nsermons to publish such scandalous doctrine in his dominions; for they\ndeserve to be chastised with greater severity than those who, by magical\nart, or any other device, have brought the pestilence into a country.  The\npest killeth but the bodies, but such abominable imposters empoison our\nvery souls.  As he spake these words, in came the monk very resolute, and\nasked them, Whence are you, you poor wretches?  Of Saint Genou, said they.\nAnd how, said the monk, does the Abbot Gulligut, the good drinker,--and the\nmonks, what cheer make they?  By G-- body, they'll have a fling at your\nwives, and breast them to some purpose, whilst you are upon your roaming\nrant and gadding pilgrimage.  Hin, hen, said Sweer-to-go, I am not afraid\nof mine, for he that shall see her by day will never break his neck to come\nto her in the night-time.  Yea, marry, said the monk, now you have hit it.\nLet her be as ugly as ever was Proserpina, she will once, by the Lord G--,\nbe overturned, and get her skin-coat shaken, if there dwell any monks near\nto her; for a good carpenter will make use of any kind of timber.  Let me\nbe peppered with the pox, if you find not all your wives with child at your\nreturn; for the very shadow of the steeple of an abbey is fruitful.  It is,\nsaid Gargantua, like the water of Nilus in Egypt, if you believe Strabo and\nPliny, Lib. 7, cap. 3.  What virtue will there be then, said the monk, in\ntheir bullets of concupiscence, their habits and their bodies?\n\nThen, said Grangousier, go your ways, poor men, in the name of God the\nCreator, to whom I pray to guide you perpetually, and henceforward be not\nso ready to undertake these idle and unprofitable journeys.  Look to your\nfamilies, labour every man in his vocation, instruct your children, and\nlive as the good apostle St. Paul directeth you; in doing whereof, God, his\nangels and sancts, will guard and protect you, and no evil or plague at any\ntime shall befall you.  Then Gargantua led them into the hall to take their\nrefection; but the pilgrims did nothing but sigh, and said to Gargantua, O\nhow happy is that land which hath such a man for their lord!  We have been\nmore edified and instructed by the talk which he had with us, than by all\nthe sermons that ever were preached in our town.  This is, said Gargantua,\nthat which Plato saith, Lib. 5 de Republ., that those commonwealths are\nhappy, whose rulers philosophate, and whose philosophers rule.  Then caused\nhe their wallets to be filled with victuals and their bottles with wine,\nand gave unto each of them a horse to ease them upon the way, together with\nsome pence to live by.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Grangousier did very kindly entertain Touchfaucet his prisoner.\n\nTouchfaucet was presented unto Grangousier, and by him examined upon the\nenterprise and attempt of Picrochole, what it was he could pretend to, or\naim at, by the rustling stir and tumultuary coil of this his sudden\ninvasion.  Whereunto he answered, that his end and purpose was to conquer\nall the country, if he could, for the injury done to his cake-bakers.  It\nis too great an undertaking, said Grangousier; and, as the proverb is, He\nthat grips too much, holds fast but little.  The time is not now as\nformerly, to conquer the kingdoms of our neighbour princes, and to build up\nour own greatness upon the loss of our nearest Christian Brother.  This\nimitation of the ancient Herculeses, Alexanders, Hannibals, Scipios,\nCaesars, and other such heroes, is quite contrary to the profession of the\ngospel of Christ, by which we are commanded to preserve, keep, rule, and\ngovern every man his own country and lands, and not in a hostile manner to\ninvade others; and that which heretofore the Barbars and Saracens called\nprowess and valour, we do now call robbing, thievery, and wickedness.  It\nwould have been more commendable in him to have contained himself within\nthe bounds of his own territories, royally governing them, than to insult\nand domineer in mine, pillaging and plundering everywhere like a most\nunmerciful enemy; for, by ruling his own with discretion, he might have\nincreased his greatness, but by robbing me he cannot escape destruction.\nGo your ways in the name of God, prosecute good enterprises, show your king\nwhat is amiss, and never counsel him with regard unto your own particular\nprofit, for the public loss will swallow up the private benefit.  As for\nyour ransom, I do freely remit it to you, and will that your arms and horse\nbe restored to you; so should good neighbours do, and ancient friends,\nseeing this our difference is not properly war.  As Plato, Lib. 5 de\nRepub., would not have it called war, but sedition, when the Greeks took up\narms against one another, and that therefore, when such combustions should\narise amongst them, his advice was to behave themselves in the managing of\nthem with all discretion and modesty.  Although you call it war, it is but\nsuperficial; it entereth not into the closet and inmost cabinet of our\nhearts.  For neither of us hath been wronged in his honour, nor is there\nany question betwixt us in the main, but only how to redress, by the bye,\nsome petty faults committed by our men,--I mean, both yours and ours,\nwhich, although you knew, you ought to let pass; for these quarrelsome\npersons deserve rather to be contemned than mentioned, especially seeing I\noffered them satisfaction according to the wrong.  God shall be the just\njudge of our variances, whom I beseech by death rather to take me out of\nthis life, and to permit my goods to perish and be destroyed before mine\neyes, than that by me or mine he should in any sort be wronged.  These\nwords uttered, he called the monk, and before them all thus spoke unto him,\nFriar John, my good friend, it is you that took prisoner the Captain\nTouchfaucet here present?  Sir, said the monk, seeing himself is here, and\nthat he is of the years of discretion, I had rather you should know it by\nhis confession than by any words of mine.  Then said Touchfaucet, My\nsovereign lord it is he indeed that took me, and I do therefore most freely\nyield myself his prisoner.  Have you put him to any ransom? said\nGrangousier to the monk.  No, said the monk, of that I take no care.  How\nmuch would you have for having taken him?  Nothing, nothing, said the monk;\nI am not swayed by that, nor do I regard it.  Then Grangousier commanded\nthat, in presence of Touchfaucet, should be delivered to the monk for\ntaking him the sum of three score and two thousand saluts (in English\nmoney, fifteen thousand and five hundred pounds), which was done, whilst\nthey made a collation or little banquet to the said Touchfaucet, of whom\nGrangousier asked if he would stay with him, or if he loved rather to\nreturn to his king.  Touchfaucet answered that he was content to take\nwhatever course he would advise him to.  Then, said Grangousier, return\nunto your king, and God be with you.\n\nThen he gave him an excellent sword of a Vienne blade, with a golden\nscabbard wrought with vine-branch-like flourishes, of fair goldsmith's\nwork, and a collar or neck-chain of gold, weighing seven hundred and two\nthousand marks (at eight ounces each), garnished with precious stones of\nthe finest sort, esteemed at a hundred and sixty thousand ducats, and ten\nthousand crowns more, as an honourable donative, by way of present.\n\nAfter this talk Touchfaucet got to his horse, and Gargantua for his safety\nallowed him the guard of thirty men-at-arms and six score archers to attend\nhim, under the conduct of Gymnast, to bring him even unto the gate of the\nrock Clermond, if there were need.  As soon as he was gone, the monk\nrestored unto Grangousier the three score and two thousand saluts which he\nhad received, saying, Sir, it is not as yet the time for you to give such\ngifts; stay till this war be at an end, for none can tell what accidents\nmay occur, and war begun without good provision of money beforehand for\ngoing through with it, is but as a breathing of strength, and blast that\nwill quickly pass away.  Coin is the sinews of war.  Well then, said\nGrangousier, at the end I will content you by some honest recompense, as\nalso all those who shall do me good service.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Grangousier sent for his legions, and how Touchfaucet slew Rashcalf,\nand was afterwards executed by the command of Picrochole.\n\nAbout this same time those of Besse, of the Old Market, of St. James'\nBourg, of the Draggage, of Parille, of the Rivers, of the rocks St. Pol, of\nthe Vaubreton, of Pautille, of the Brehemont, of Clainbridge, of Cravant,\nof Grammont, of the town at the Badgerholes, of Huymes, of Segre, of Husse,\nof St. Lovant, of Panzoust, of the Coldraux, of Verron, of Coulaines, of\nChose, of Varenes, of Bourgueil, of the Bouchard Island, of the Croullay,\nof Narsay, of Cande, of Montsoreau, and other bordering places, sent\nambassadors unto Grangousier, to tell him that they were advised of the\ngreat wrongs which Picrochole had done him, and, in regard of their ancient\nconfederacy, offered him what assistance they could afford, both in men,\nmoney, victuals, and ammunition, and other necessaries for war.  The money\nwhich by the joint agreement of them all was sent unto him, amounted to six\nscore and fourteen millions, two crowns and a half of pure gold.  The\nforces wherewith they did assist him did consist in fifteen thousand\ncuirassiers, two-and-thirty thousand light horsemen, four score and nine\nthousand dragoons, and a hundred-and-forty thousand volunteer adventurers.\nThese had with them eleven thousand and two hundred cannons, double\ncannons, long pieces of artillery called basilisks, and smaller sized ones\nknown by the name of spirols, besides the mortar-pieces and grenadoes.  Of\npioneers they had seven-and-forty thousand, all victualled and paid for six\nmonths and four days of advance.  Which offer Gargantua did not altogether\nrefuse, nor wholly accept of; but, giving them hearty thanks, said that he\nwould compose and order the war by such a device, that there should not be\nfound great need to put so many honest men to trouble in the managing of\nit; and therefore was content at that time to give order only for bringing\nalong the legions which he maintained in his ordinary garrison towns of the\nDeviniere, of Chavigny, of Gravot, and of the Quinquenais, amounting to the\nnumber of two thousand cuirassiers, three score and six thousand\nfoot-soldiers, six-and-twenty thousand dragoons, attended by two hundred\npieces of great ordnance, two-and-twenty thousand pioneers, and six thousand\nlight horsemen, all drawn up in troops, so well befitted and accommodated\nwith their commissaries, sutlers, farriers, harness-makers, and other such\nlike necessary members in a military camp, so fully instructed in the art of\nwarfare, so perfectly knowing and following their colours, so ready to hear\nand obey their captains, so nimble to run, so strong at their charging, so\nprudent in their adventures, and every day so well disciplined, that they\nseemed rather to be a concert of organ-pipes, or mutual concord of the\nwheels of a clock, than an infantry and cavalry, or army of soldiers.\n\nTouchfaucet immediately after his return presented himself before\nPicrochole, and related unto him at large all that he had done and seen,\nand at last endeavoured to persuade him with strong and forcible arguments\nto capitulate and make an agreement with Grangousier, whom he found to be\nthe honestest man in the world; saying further, that it was neither right\nnor reason thus to trouble his neighbours, of whom they had never received\nanything but good.  And in regard of the main point, that they should never\nbe able to go through stitch with that war, but to their great damage and\nmischief; for the forces of Picrochole were not so considerable but that\nGrangousier could easily overthrow them.\n\nHe had not well done speaking when Rashcalf said out aloud, Unhappy is that\nprince which is by such men served, who are so easily corrupted, as I know\nTouchfaucet is.  For I see his courage so changed that he had willingly\njoined with our enemies to fight against us and betray us, if they would\nhave received him; but as virtue is of all, both friends and foes, praised\nand esteemed, so is wickedness soon known and suspected, and although it\nhappen the enemies to make use thereof for their profit, yet have they\nalways the wicked and the traitors in abomination.\n\nTouchfaucet being at these words very impatient, drew out his sword, and\ntherewith ran Rashcalf through the body, a little under the nipple of his\nleft side, whereof he died presently, and pulling back his sword out of his\nbody said boldly, So let him perish that shall a faithful servant blame.\nPicrochole incontinently grew furious, and seeing Touchfaucet's new sword\nand his scabbard so richly diapered with flourishes of most excellent\nworkmanship, said, Did they give thee this weapon so feloniously therewith\nto kill before my face my so good friend Rashcalf?  Then immediately\ncommanded he his guard to hew him in pieces, which was instantly done, and\nthat so cruelly that the chamber was all dyed with blood.  Afterwards he\nappointed the corpse of Rashcalf to be honourably buried, and that of\nTouchfaucet to be cast over the walls into the ditch.\n\nThe news of these excessive violences were quickly spread through all the\narmy; whereupon many began to murmur against Picrochole, in so far that\nPinchpenny said to him, My sovereign lord, I know not what the issue of\nthis enterprise will be.  I see your men much dejected, and not well\nresolved in their minds, by considering that we are here very ill provided\nof victual, and that our number is already much diminished by three or four\nsallies.  Furthermore, great supplies and recruits come daily in to your\nenemies; but we so moulder away that, if we be once besieged, I do not see\nhow we can escape a total destruction.  Tush, pish, said Picrochole, you\nare like the Melun eels, you cry before they come to you.  Let them come,\nlet them come, if they dare.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua set upon Picrochole within the rock Clermond, and utterly\ndefeated the army of the said Picrochole.\n\nGargantua had the charge of the whole army, and his father Grangousier\nstayed in his castle, who, encouraging them with good words, promised great\nrewards unto those that should do any notable service.  Having thus set\nforward, as soon as they had gained the pass at the ford of Vede, with\nboats and bridges speedily made they passed over in a trice.  Then\nconsidering the situation of the town, which was on a high and advantageous\nplace, Gargantua thought fit to call his council, and pass that night in\ndeliberation upon what was to be done.  But Gymnast said unto him, My\nsovereign lord, such is the nature and complexion of the French, that they\nare worth nothing but at the first push.  Then are they more fierce than\ndevils.  But if they linger a little and be wearied with delays, they'll\nprove more faint and remiss than women.  My opinion is, therefore, that now\npresently, after your men have taken breath and some small refection, you\ngive order for a resolute assault, and that we storm them instantly.  His\nadvice was found very good, and for effectuating thereof he brought forth\nhis army into the plain field, and placed the reserves on the skirt or\nrising of a little hill.  The monk took along with him six companies of\nfoot and two hundred horsemen well armed, and with great diligence crossed\nthe marsh, and valiantly got upon the top of the green hillock even unto\nthe highway which leads to Loudun.  Whilst the assault was thus begun,\nPicrochole's men could not tell well what was best, to issue out and\nreceive the assailants, or keep within the town and not to stir.  Himself\nin the mean time, without deliberation, sallied forth in a rage with the\ncavalry of his guard, who were forthwith received and royally entertained\nwith great cannon-shot that fell upon them like hail from the high grounds\non which the artillery was planted.  Whereupon the Gargantuists betook\nthemselves unto the valleys, to give the ordnance leave to play and range\nwith the larger scope.\n\nThose of the town defended themselves as well as they could, but their shot\npassed over us without doing us any hurt at all.  Some of Picrochole's men\nthat had escaped our artillery set most fiercely upon our soldiers, but\nprevailed little; for they were all let in betwixt the files, and there\nknocked down to the ground, which their fellow-soldiers seeing, they would\nhave retreated, but the monk having seized upon the pass by the which they\nwere to return, they ran away and fled in all the disorder and confusion\nthat could be imagined.\n\nSome would have pursued after them and followed the chase, but the monk\nwithheld them, apprehending that in their pursuit the pursuers might lose\ntheir ranks, and so give occasion to the besieged to sally out of the town\nupon them.  Then staying there some space and none coming against him, he\nsent the Duke Phrontist to advise Gargantua to advance towards the hill\nupon the left hand, to hinder Picrochole's retreat at that gate; which\nGargantua did with all expedition, and sent thither four brigades under the\nconduct of Sebast, which had no sooner reached the top of the hill, but\nthey met Picrochole in the teeth, and those that were with him scattered.\n\nThen charged they upon them stoutly, yet were they much endamaged by those\nthat were upon the walls, who galled them with all manner of shot, both\nfrom the great ordnance, small guns, and bows.  Which Gargantua perceiving,\nhe went with a strong party to their relief, and with his artillery began\nto thunder so terribly upon that canton of the wall, and so long, that all\nthe strength within the town, to maintain and fill up the breach, was drawn\nthither.  The monk seeing that quarter which he kept besieged void of men\nand competent guards, and in a manner altogether naked and abandoned, did\nmost magnanimously on a sudden lead up his men towards the fort, and never\nleft it till he had got up upon it, knowing that such as come to the\nreserve in a conflict bring with them always more fear and terror than\nthose that deal about them with they hands in the fight.\n\nNevertheless, he gave no alarm till all his soldiers had got within the\nwall, except the two hundred horsemen, whom he left without to secure his\nentry.  Then did he give a most horrible shout, so did all these who were\nwith him, and immediately thereafter, without resistance, putting to the\nedge of the sword the guard that was at that gate, they opened it to the\nhorsemen, with whom most furiously they altogether ran towards the east\ngate, where all the hurlyburly was, and coming close upon them in the rear\noverthrew all their forces.\n\nThe besieged, seeing that the Gargantuists had won the town upon them, and\nthat they were like to be secure in no corner of it, submitted themselves\nunto the mercy of the monk, and asked for quarter, which the monk very\nnobly granted to them, yet made them lay down their arms; then, shutting\nthem up within churches, gave order to seize upon all the staves of the\ncrosses, and placed men at the doors to keep them from coming forth.  Then\nopening that east gate, he issued out to succour and assist Gargantua.  But\nPicrochole, thinking it had been some relief coming to him from the town,\nadventured more forwardly than before, and was upon the giving of a most\ndesperate home-charge, when Gargantua cried out, Ha, Friar John, my friend\nFriar John, you are come in a good hour.  Which unexpected accident so\naffrighted Picrochole and his men, that, giving all for lost, they betook\nthemselves to their heels, and fled on all hands.  Gargantua chased them\ntill they came near to Vaugaudry, killing and slaying all the way, and then\nsounded the retreat.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Picrochole in his flight fell into great misfortunes, and what\nGargantua did after the battle.\n\nPicrochole thus in despair fled towards the Bouchard Island, and in the way\nto Riviere his horse stumbled and fell down, whereat he on a sudden was so\nincensed, that he with his sword without more ado killed him in his choler;\nthen, not finding any that would remount him, he was about to have taken an\nass at the mill that was thereby; but the miller's men did so baste his\nbones and so soundly bethwack him that they made him both black and blue\nwith strokes; then stripping him of all his clothes, gave him a scurvy old\ncanvas jacket wherewith to cover his nakedness.  Thus went along this poor\ncholeric wretch, who, passing the water at Port-Huaulx, and relating his\nmisadventurous disasters, was foretold by an old Lourpidon hag that his\nkingdom should be restored to him at the coming of the Cocklicranes, which\nshe called Coquecigrues.  What is become of him since we cannot certainly\ntell, yet was I told that he is now a porter at Lyons, as testy and pettish\nin humour as ever he was before, and would be always with great lamentation\ninquiring at all strangers of the coming of the Cocklicranes, expecting\nassuredly, according to the old woman's prophecy, that at their coming he\nshall be re-established in his kingdom.  The first thing Gargantua did\nafter his return into the town was to call the muster-roll of his men,\nwhich when he had done, he found that there were very few either killed or\nwounded, only some few foot of Captain Tolmere's company, and Ponocrates,\nwho was shot with a musket-ball through the doublet.  Then he caused them\nall at and in their several posts and divisions to take a little\nrefreshment, which was very plenteously provided for them in the best drink\nand victuals that could be had for money, and gave order to the treasurers\nand commissaries of the army to pay for and defray that repast, and that\nthere should be no outrage at all nor abuse committed in the town, seeing\nit was his own.  And furthermore commanded, that immediately after the\nsoldiers had done with eating and drinking for that time sufficiently and\nto their own hearts' desire, a gathering should be beaten for bringing them\naltogether, to be drawn up on the piazza before the castle, there to\nreceive six months' pay completely.  All which was done.  After this, by\nhis direction, were brought before him in the said place all those that\nremained of Picrochole's party, unto whom, in the presence of the princes,\nnobles, and officers of his court and army, he spoke as followeth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGargantua's speech to the vanquished.\n\nOur forefathers and ancestors of all times have been of this nature and\ndisposition, that, upon the winning of a battle, they have chosen rather,\nfor a sign and memorial of their triumphs and victories, to erect trophies\nand monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by\narchitecture in the lands which they had conquered.  For they did hold in\ngreater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality\nthan the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the\ninjury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone.  You may very\nwell remember of the courtesy which by them was used towards the Bretons in\nthe battle of St. Aubin of Cormier and at the demolishing of Partenay.  You\nhave heard, and hearing admire, their gentle comportment towards those at\nthe barriers (the barbarians) of Spaniola, who had plundered, wasted, and\nransacked the maritime borders of Olone and Thalmondois.  All this\nhemisphere of the world was filled with the praises and congratulations\nwhich yourselves and your fathers made, when Alpharbal, King of Canarre,\nnot satisfied with his own fortunes, did most furiously invade the land of\nOnyx, and with cruel piracies molest all the Armoric Islands and confine\nregions of Britany.  Yet was he in a set naval fight justly taken and\nvanquished by my father, whom God preserve and protect.  But what?  Whereas\nother kings and emperors, yea, those who entitle themselves Catholics,\nwould have dealt roughly with him, kept him a close prisoner, and put him\nto an extreme high ransom, he entreated him very courteously, lodged him\nkindly with himself in his own palace, and out of his incredible mildness\nand gentle disposition sent him back with a safe conduct, laden with gifts,\nladen with favours, laden with all offices of friendship.  What fell out\nupon it?  Being returned into his country, he called a parliament, where\nall the princes and states of his kingdom being assembled, he showed them\nthe humanity which he had found in us, and therefore wished them to take\nsuch course by way of compensation therein as that the whole world might be\nedified by the example, as well of their honest graciousness to us as of\nour gracious honesty towards them.  The result hereof was, that it was\nvoted and decreed by an unanimous consent, that they should offer up\nentirely their lands, dominions, and kingdoms, to be disposed of by us\naccording to our pleasure.\n\nAlpharbal in his own person presently returned with nine thousand and\nthirty-eight great ships of burden, bringing with him the treasures, not\nonly of his house and royal lineage, but almost of all the country besides.\nFor he embarking himself, to set sail with a west-north-east wind, everyone\nin heaps did cast into the ship gold, silver, rings, jewels, spices, drugs,\nand aromatical perfumes, parrots, pelicans, monkeys, civet-cats,\nblack-spotted weasels, porcupines, &c.  He was accounted no good mother's\nson that did not cast in all the rare and precious things he had.\n\nBeing safely arrived, he came to my said father, and would have kissed his\nfeet.  That action was found too submissively low, and therefore was not\npermitted, but in exchange he was most cordially embraced.  He offered his\npresents; they were not received, because they were too excessive:  he\nyielded himself voluntarily a servant and vassal, and was content his whole\nposterity should be liable to the same bondage; this was not accepted of,\nbecause it seemed not equitable:  he surrendered, by virtue of the decree\nof his great parliamentary council, his whole countries and kingdoms to\nhim, offering the deed and conveyance, signed, sealed, and ratified by all\nthose that were concerned in it; this was altogether refused, and the\nparchments cast into the fire.  In end, this free goodwill and simple\nmeaning of the Canarians wrought such tenderness in my father's heart that\nhe could not abstain from shedding tears, and wept most profusely; then, by\nchoice words very congruously adapted, strove in what he could to diminish\nthe estimation of the good offices which he had done them, saying, that any\ncourtesy he had conferred upon them was not worth a rush, and what favour\nsoever he had showed them he was bound to do it.  But so much the more did\nAlpharbal augment the repute thereof.  What was the issue?  Whereas for his\nransom, in the greatest extremity of rigour and most tyrannical dealing,\ncould not have been exacted above twenty times a hundred thousand crowns,\nand his eldest sons detained as hostages till that sum had been paid, they\nmade themselves perpetual tributaries, and obliged to give us every year\ntwo millions of gold at four-and-twenty carats fine.  The first year we\nreceived the whole sum of two millions; the second year of their own accord\nthey paid freely to us three-and-twenty hundred thousand crowns; the third\nyear, six-and-twenty hundred thousand; the fourth year, three millions, and\ndo so increase it always out of their own goodwill that we shall be\nconstrained to forbid them to bring us any more.  This is the nature of\ngratitude and true thankfulness.  For time, which gnaws and diminisheth all\nthings else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of\nliberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous\nthinking of it and remembering it.\n\nBeing unwilling therefore any way to degenerate from the hereditary\nmildness and clemency of my parents, I do now forgive you, deliver you from\nall fines and imprisonments, fully release you, set you at liberty, and\nevery way make you as frank and free as ever you were before.  Moreover, at\nyour going out of the gate, you shall have every one of you three months'\npay to bring you home into your houses and families, and shall have a safe\nconvoy of six hundred cuirassiers and eight thousand foot under the conduct\nof Alexander, esquire of my body, that the clubmen of the country may not\ndo you any injury.  God be with you!  I am sorry from my heart that\nPicrochole is not here; for I would have given him to understand that this\nwar was undertaken against my will and without any hope to increase either\nmy goods or renown.  But seeing he is lost, and that no man can tell where\nnor how he went away, it is my will that his kingdom remain entire to his\nson; who, because he is too young, he not being yet full five years old,\nshall be brought up and instructed by the ancient princes and learned men\nof the kingdom.  And because a realm thus desolate may easily come to ruin,\nif the covetousness and avarice of those who by their places are obliged to\nadminister justice in it be not curbed and restrained, I ordain and will\nhave it so, that Ponocrates be overseer and superintendent above all his\ngovernors, with whatever power and authority is requisite thereto, and that\nhe be continually with the child until he find him able and capable to rule\nand govern by himself.\n\nNow I must tell you, that you are to understand how a too feeble and\ndissolute facility in pardoning evildoers giveth them occasion to commit\nwickedness afterwards more readily, upon this pernicious confidence of\nreceiving favour.  I consider that Moses, the meekest man that was in his\ntime upon the earth, did severely punish the mutinous and seditious people\nof Israel.  I consider likewise that Julius Caesar, who was so gracious an\nemperor that Cicero said of him that his fortune had nothing more excellent\nthan that he could, and his virtue nothing better than that he would always\nsave and pardon every man--he, notwithstanding all this, did in certain\nplaces most rigorously punish the authors of rebellion.  After the example\nof these good men, it is my will and pleasure that you deliver over unto me\nbefore you depart hence, first, that fine fellow Marquet, who was the prime\ncause, origin, and groundwork of this war by his vain presumption and\noverweening; secondly, his fellow cake-bakers, who were neglective in\nchecking and reprehending his idle hairbrained humour in the instant time;\nand lastly, all the councillors, captains, officers, and domestics of\nPicrochole, who had been incendiaries or fomenters of the war by provoking,\npraising, or counselling him to come out of his limits thus to trouble us.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the victorious Gargantuists were recompensed after the battle.\n\nWhen Gargantua had finished his speech, the seditious men whom he required\nwere delivered up unto him, except Swashbuckler, Dirt-tail, and Smalltrash,\nwho ran away six hours before the battle--one of them as far as to\nLainiel-neck at one course, another to the valley of Vire, and the third\neven unto Logroine, without looking back or taking breath by the way--and\ntwo of the cake-bakers who were slain in the fight.  Gargantua did them no\nother hurt but that he appointed them to pull at the presses of his\nprinting-house which he had newly set up.  Then those who died there he\ncaused to be honourably buried in Black-soile valley and Burn-hag field, and\ngave order that the wounded should be dressed and had care of in his great\nhospital or nosocome.  After this, considering the great prejudice done to\nthe town and its inhabitants, he reimbursed their charges and repaired all\nthe losses that by their confession upon oath could appear they had\nsustained; and, for their better defence and security in times coming\nagainst all sudden uproars and invasions, commanded a strong citadel to be\nbuilt there with a competent garrison to maintain it.  At his departure he\ndid very graciously thank all the soldiers of the brigades that had been at\nthis overthrow, and sent them back to their winter-quarters in their several\nstations and garrisons; the decumane legion only excepted, whom in the field\non that day he saw do some great exploit, and their captains also, whom he\nbrought along with himself unto Grangousier.\n\nAt the sight and coming of them, the good man was so joyful, that it is not\npossible fully to describe it.  He made them a feast the most magnificent,\nplentiful, and delicious that ever was seen since the time of the king\nAhasuerus.  At the taking up of the table he distributed amongst them his\nwhole cupboard of plate, which weighed eight hundred thousand and fourteen\nbezants (Each bezant is worth five pounds English money.) of gold, in great\nantique vessels, huge pots, large basins, big tasses, cups, goblets,\ncandlesticks, comfit-boxes, and other such plate, all of pure massy gold,\nbesides the precious stones, enamelling, and workmanship, which by all\nmen's estimation was more worth than the matter of the gold.  Then unto\nevery one of them out of his coffers caused he to be given the sum of\ntwelve hundred thousand crowns ready money.  And, further, he gave to each\nof them for ever and in perpetuity, unless he should happen to decease\nwithout heirs, such castles and neighbouring lands of his as were most\ncommodious for them.  To Ponocrates he gave the rock Clermond; to Gymnast,\nthe Coudray; to Eudemon, Montpensier; Rivau, to Tolmere, to Ithibolle,\nMontsoreau; to Acamas, Cande; Varenes, to Chironacte; Gravot, to Sebast;\nQuinquenais, to Alexander; Legre, to Sophrone, and so of his other places.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua caused to be built for the Monk the Abbey of Theleme.\n\nThere was left only the monk to provide for, whom Gargantua would have made\nAbbot of Seville, but he refused it.  He would have given him the Abbey of\nBourgueil, or of Sanct Florent, which was better, or both, if it pleased\nhim; but the monk gave him a very peremptory answer, that he would never\ntake upon him the charge nor government of monks.  For how shall I be able,\nsaid he, to rule over others, that have not full power and command of\nmyself?  If you think I have done you, or may hereafter do any acceptable\nservice, give me leave to found an abbey after my own mind and fancy.  The\nmotion pleased Gargantua very well, who thereupon offered him all the\ncountry of Theleme by the river of Loire till within two leagues of the\ngreat forest of Port-Huaulx.  The monk then requested Gargantua to\ninstitute his religious order contrary to all others.  First, then, said\nGargantua, you must not build a wall about your convent, for all other\nabbeys are strongly walled and mured about.  See, said the monk, and not\nwithout cause (seeing wall and mur signify but one and the same thing);\nwhere there is mur before and mur behind, there is store of murmur, envy,\nand mutual conspiracy.  Moreover, seeing there are certain convents in the\nworld whereof the custom is, if any woman come in, I mean chaste and honest\nwomen, they immediately sweep the ground which they have trod upon;\ntherefore was it ordained, that if any man or woman entered into religious\norders should by chance come within this new abbey, all the rooms should be\nthoroughly washed and cleansed through which they had passed.  And because\nin all other monasteries and nunneries all is compassed, limited, and\nregulated by hours, it was decreed that in this new structure there should\nbe neither clock nor dial, but that according to the opportunities and\nincident occasions all their hours should be disposed of; for, said\nGargantua, the greatest loss of time that I know is to count the hours.\nWhat good comes of it?  Nor can there be any greater dotage in the world\nthan for one to guide and direct his courses by the sound of a bell, and\nnot by his own judgment and discretion.\n\nItem, Because at that time they put no women into nunneries but such as\nwere either purblind, blinkards, lame, crooked, ill-favoured, misshapen,\nfools, senseless, spoiled, or corrupt; nor encloistered any men but those\nthat were either sickly, subject to defluxions, ill-bred louts, simple\nsots, or peevish trouble-houses.  But to the purpose, said the monk.  A\nwoman that is neither fair nor good, to what use serves she?  To make a nun\nof, said Gargantua.  Yea, said the monk, and to make shirts and smocks.\nTherefore was it ordained that into this religious order should be admitted\nno women that were not fair, well-featured, and of a sweet disposition; nor\nmen that were not comely, personable, and well conditioned.\n\nItem, Because in the convents of women men come not but underhand, privily,\nand by stealth, it was therefore enacted that in this house there shall be\nno women in case there be not men, nor men in case there be not women.\n\nItem, Because both men and women that are received into religious orders\nafter the expiring of their noviciate or probation year were constrained\nand forced perpetually to stay there all the days of their life, it was\ntherefore ordered that all whatever, men or women, admitted within this\nabbey, should have full leave to depart with peace and contentment\nwhensoever it should seem good to them so to do.\n\nItem, for that the religious men and women did ordinarily make three vows,\nto wit, those of chastity, poverty, and obedience, it was therefore\nconstituted and appointed that in this convent they might be honourably\nmarried, that they might be rich, and live at liberty.  In regard of the\nlegitimate time of the persons to be initiated, and years under and above\nwhich they were not capable of reception, the women were to be admitted\nfrom ten till fifteen, and the men from twelve till eighteen.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the abbey of the Thelemites was built and endowed.\n\nFor the fabric and furniture of the abbey Gargantua caused to be delivered\nout in ready money seven-and-twenty hundred thousand, eight hundred and\none-and-thirty of those golden rams of Berry which have a sheep stamped on\nthe one side and a flowered cross on the other; and for every year, until\nthe whole work were completed, he allotted threescore nine thousand crowns\nof the sun, and as many of the seven stars, to be charged all upon the\nreceipt of the custom.  For the foundation and maintenance thereof for\never, he settled a perpetual fee-farm-rent of three-and-twenty hundred,\nthree score and nine thousand, five hundred and fourteen rose nobles,\nexempted from all homage, fealty, service, or burden whatsoever, and\npayable every year at the gate of the abbey; and of this by letters patent\npassed a very good grant.  The architecture was in a figure hexagonal, and\nin such a fashion that in every one of the six corners there was built a\ngreat round tower of threescore foot in diameter, and were all of a like\nform and bigness.  Upon the north side ran along the river of Loire, on the\nbank whereof was situated the tower called Arctic.  Going towards the east,\nthere was another called Calaer,--the next following Anatole,--the next\nMesembrine,--the next Hesperia, and the last Criere.  Every tower was\ndistant from other the space of three hundred and twelve paces.  The whole\nedifice was everywhere six storeys high, reckoning the cellars underground\nfor one.  The second was arched after the fashion of a basket-handle; the\nrest were ceiled with pure wainscot, flourished with Flanders fretwork, in\nthe form of the foot of a lamp, and covered above with fine slates, with an\nendorsement of lead, carrying the antique figures of little puppets and\nanimals of all sorts, notably well suited to one another, and gilt,\ntogether with the gutters, which, jutting without the walls from betwixt\nthe crossbars in a diagonal figure, painted with gold and azure, reached to\nthe very ground, where they ended into great conduit-pipes, which carried\nall away unto the river from under the house.\n\nThis same building was a hundred times more sumptuous and magnificent than\never was Bonnivet, Chambourg, or Chantilly; for there were in it nine\nthousand, three hundred and two-and-thirty chambers, every one whereof had\na withdrawing-room, a handsome closet, a wardrobe, an oratory, and neat\npassage, leading into a great and spacious hall.  Between every tower in\nthe midst of the said body of building there was a pair of winding, such as\nwe now call lantern stairs, whereof the steps were part of porphyry, which\nis a dark red marble spotted with white, part of Numidian stone, which is a\nkind of yellowishly-streaked marble upon various colours, and part of\nserpentine marble, with light spots on a dark green ground, each of those\nsteps being two-and-twenty foot in length and three fingers thick, and the\njust number of twelve betwixt every rest, or, as we now term it,\nlanding-place.  In every resting-place were two fair antique arches where\nthe light came in:  and by those they went into a cabinet, made even with\nand of the breadth of the said winding, and the reascending above the roofs\nof the house ended conically in a pavilion.  By that vise or winding they\nentered on every side into a great hall, and from the halls into the\nchambers. From the Arctic tower unto the Criere were the fair great\nlibraries in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish,\nrespectively distributed in their several cantons, according to the\ndiversity of these languages.  In the midst there was a wonderful scalier or\nwinding-stair, the entry whereof was without the house, in a vault or arch\nsix fathom broad.  It was made in such symmetry and largeness that six\nmen-at-arms with their lances in their rests might together in a breast ride\nall up to the very top of all the palace.  From the tower Anatole to the\nMesembrine were fair spacious galleries, all coloured over and painted with\nthe ancient prowesses, histories, and descriptions of the world.  In the\nmidst thereof there was likewise such another ascent and gate as we said\nthere was on the river-side.  Upon that gate was written in great antique\nletters that which followeth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme.\n\nHere enter not vile bigots, hypocrites,\nExternally devoted apes, base snites,\nPuffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns,\nOr Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons:\nCursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts,\nSlipshod caffards, beggars pretending wants,\nFat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls,\nOut-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls,\nFomenters of divisions and debates,\nElsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits.\n\n  Your filthy trumperies\n  Stuffed with pernicious lies\n    (Not worth a bubble),\n    Would do but trouble\n  Our earthly paradise,\n  Your filthy trumperies.\n\nHere enter not attorneys, barristers,\nNor bridle-champing law-practitioners:\nClerks, commissaries, scribes, nor pharisees,\nWilful disturbers of the people's ease:\nJudges, destroyers, with an unjust breath,\nOf honest men, like dogs, even unto death.\nYour salary is at the gibbet-foot:\nGo drink there! for we do not here fly out\nOn those excessive courses, which may draw\nA waiting on your courts by suits in law.\n\n  Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling\n  Hence are exiled, and jangling.\n    Here we are very\n    Frolic and merry,\n  And free from all entangling,\n  Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling.\n\nHere enter not base pinching usurers,\nPelf-lickers, everlasting gatherers,\nGold-graspers, coin-gripers, gulpers of mists,\nNiggish deformed sots, who, though your chests\nVast sums of money should to you afford,\nWould ne'ertheless add more unto that hoard,\nAnd yet not be content,--you clunchfist dastards,\nInsatiable fiends, and Pluto's bastards,\nGreedy devourers, chichy sneakbill rogues,\nHell-mastiffs gnaw your bones, you ravenous dogs.\n\n  You beastly-looking fellows,\n  Reason doth plainly tell us\n    That we should not\n    To you allot\n  Room here, but at the gallows,\n  You beastly-looking fellows.\n\nHere enter not fond makers of demurs\nIn love adventures, peevish, jealous curs,\nSad pensive dotards, raisers of garboils,\nHags, goblins, ghosts, firebrands of household broils,\nNor drunkards, liars, cowards, cheaters, clowns,\nThieves, cannibals, faces o'ercast with frowns,\nNor lazy slugs, envious, covetous,\nNor blockish, cruel, nor too credulous,--\nHere mangy, pocky folks shall have no place,\nNo ugly lusks, nor persons of disgrace.\n\n  Grace, honour, praise, delight,\n  Here sojourn day and night.\n    Sound bodies lined\n    With a good mind,\n  Do here pursue with might\n  Grace, honour, praise, delight.\n\nHere enter you, and welcome from our hearts,\nAll noble sparks, endowed with gallant parts.\nThis is the glorious place, which bravely shall\nAfford wherewith to entertain you all.\nWere you a thousand, here you shall not want\nFor anything; for what you'll ask we'll grant.\nStay here, you lively, jovial, handsome, brisk,\nGay, witty, frolic, cheerful, merry, frisk,\nSpruce, jocund, courteous, furtherers of trades,\nAnd, in a word, all worthy gentle blades.\n\n  Blades of heroic breasts\n  Shall taste here of the feasts,\n    Both privily\n    And civilly\n  Of the celestial guests,\n  Blades of heroic breasts.\n\nHere enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true\nExpounders of the Scriptures old and new.\nWhose glosses do not blind our reason, but\nMake it to see the clearer, and who shut\nIts passages from hatred, avarice,\nPride, factions, covenants, and all sort of vice.\nCome, settle here a charitable faith,\nWhich neighbourly affection nourisheth.\nAnd whose light chaseth all corrupters hence,\nOf the blest word, from the aforesaid sense.\n\n  The holy sacred Word,\n  May it always afford\n    T' us all in common,\n    Both man and woman,\n  A spiritual shield and sword,\n  The holy sacred Word.\n\nHere enter you all ladies of high birth,\nDelicious, stately, charming, full of mirth,\nIngenious, lovely, miniard, proper, fair,\nMagnetic, graceful, splendid, pleasant, rare,\nObliging, sprightly, virtuous, young, solacious,\nKind, neat, quick, feat, bright, compt, ripe, choice, dear, precious.\nAlluring, courtly, comely, fine, complete,\nWise, personable, ravishing, and sweet,\nCome joys enjoy.  The Lord celestial\nHath given enough wherewith to please us all.\n\n  Gold give us, God forgive us,\n  And from all woes relieve us;\n    That we the treasure\n    May reap of pleasure,\n  And shun whate'er is grievous,\n  Gold give us, God forgive us.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat manner of dwelling the Thelemites had.\n\nIn the middle of the lower court there was a stately fountain of fair\nalabaster.  Upon the top thereof stood the three Graces, with their\ncornucopias, or horns of abundance, and did jet out the water at their\nbreasts, mouth, ears, eyes, and other open passages of the body.  The\ninside of the buildings in this lower court stood upon great pillars of\nchalcedony stone and porphyry marble made archways after a goodly antique\nfashion.  Within those were spacious galleries, long and large, adorned\nwith curious pictures, the horns of bucks and unicorns:  with rhinoceroses,\nwater-horses called hippopotames, the teeth and tusks of elephants, and\nother things well worth the beholding.  The lodging of the ladies, for so\nwe may call those gallant women, took up all from the tower Arctic unto the\ngate Mesembrine.  The men possessed the rest.  Before the said lodging of\nthe ladies, that they might have their recreation, between the two first\ntowers, on the outside, were placed the tiltyard, the barriers or lists for\ntournaments, the hippodrome or riding-court, the theatre or public\nplayhouse, and natatory or place to swim in, with most admirable baths in\nthree stages, situated above one another, well furnished with all necessary\naccommodation, and store of myrtle-water.  By the river-side was the fair\ngarden of pleasure, and in the midst of that the glorious labyrinth.\nBetween the two other towers were the courts for the tennis and the\nballoon.  Towards the tower Criere stood the orchard full of all\nfruit-trees, set and ranged in a quincuncial order.  At the end of that was\nthe great park, abounding with all sort of venison.  Betwixt the third\ncouple of towers were the butts and marks for shooting with a snapwork gun,\nan ordinary bow for common archery, or with a crossbow.  The office-houses\nwere without the tower Hesperia, of one storey high.  The stables were\nbeyond the offices, and before them stood the falconry, managed by\nostrich-keepers and falconers very expert in the art, and it was yearly\nsupplied and furnished by the Candians, Venetians, Sarmates, now called\nMuscoviters, with all sorts of most excellent hawks, eagles, gerfalcons,\ngoshawks, sacres, lanners, falcons, sparrowhawks, marlins, and other kinds\nof them, so gentle and perfectly well manned, that, flying of themselves\nsometimes from the castle for their own disport, they would not fail to\ncatch whatever they encountered.  The venery, where the beagles and hounds\nwere kept, was a little farther off, drawing towards the park.\n\nAll the halls, chambers, and closets or cabinets were richly hung with\ntapestry and hangings of divers sorts, according to the variety of the\nseasons of the year.  All the pavements and floors were covered with green\ncloth.  The beds were all embroidered.  In every back-chamber or\nwithdrawing-room there was a looking-glass of pure crystal set in a frame\nof fine gold, garnished all about with pearls, and was of such greatness\nthat it would represent to the full the whole lineaments and proportion of\nthe person that stood before it.  At the going out of the halls which\nbelong to the ladies' lodgings were the perfumers and trimmers through\nwhose hands the gallants passed when they were to visit the ladies.  Those\nsweet artificers did every morning furnish the ladies' chambers with the\nspirit of roses, orange-flower-water, and angelica; and to each of them\ngave a little precious casket vapouring forth the most odoriferous\nexhalations of the choicest aromatical scents.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the men and women of the religious order of Theleme were apparelled.\n\nThe ladies at the foundation of this order were apparelled after their own\npleasure and liking; but, since that of their own accord and free will they\nhave reformed themselves, their accoutrement is in manner as followeth.\nThey wore stockings of scarlet crimson, or ingrained purple dye, which\nreached just three inches above the knee, having a list beautified with\nexquisite embroideries and rare incisions of the cutter's art.  Their\ngarters were of the colour of their bracelets, and circled the knee a\nlittle both over and under.  Their shoes, pumps, and slippers were either\nof red, violet, or crimson-velvet, pinked and jagged like lobster waddles.\n\nNext to their smock they put on the pretty kirtle or vasquin of pure silk\ncamlet:  above that went the taffety or tabby farthingale, of white, red,\ntawny, grey, or of any other colour.  Above this taffety petticoat they had\nanother of cloth of tissue or brocade, embroidered with fine gold and\ninterlaced with needlework, or as they thought good, and according to the\ntemperature and disposition of the weather had their upper coats of satin,\ndamask, or velvet, and those either orange, tawny, green, ash-coloured,\nblue, yellow, bright red, crimson, or white, and so forth; or had them of\ncloth of gold, cloth of silver, or some other choice stuff, enriched with\npurl, or embroidered according to the dignity of the festival days and\ntimes wherein they wore them.\n\nTheir gowns, being still correspondent to the season, were either of cloth\nof gold frizzled with a silver-raised work; of red satin, covered with gold\npurl; of tabby, or taffety, white, blue, black, tawny, &c., of silk serge,\nsilk camlet, velvet, cloth of silver, silver tissue, cloth of gold, gold\nwire, figured velvet, or figured satin tinselled and overcast with golden\nthreads, in divers variously purfled draughts.\n\nIn the summer some days instead of gowns they wore light handsome mantles,\nmade either of the stuff of the aforesaid attire, or like Moresco rugs, of\nviolet velvet frizzled, with a raised work of gold upon silver purl, or\nwith a knotted cord-work of gold embroidery, everywhere garnished with\nlittle Indian pearls.  They always carried a fair panache, or plume of\nfeathers, of the colour of their muff, bravely adorned and tricked out with\nglistering spangles of gold.  In the winter time they had their taffety\ngowns of all colours, as above-named, and those lined with the rich\nfurrings of hind-wolves, or speckled lynxes, black-spotted weasels, martlet\nskins of Calabria, sables, and other costly furs of an inestimable value.\nTheir beads, rings, bracelets, collars, carcanets, and neck-chains were all\nof precious stones, such as carbuncles, rubies, baleus, diamonds,\nsapphires, emeralds, turquoises, garnets, agates, beryls, and excellent\nmargarites.  Their head-dressing also varied with the season of the year,\naccording to which they decked themselves.  In winter it was of the French\nfashion; in the spring, of the Spanish; in summer, of the fashion of\nTuscany, except only upon the holy days and Sundays, at which times they\nwere accoutred in the French mode, because they accounted it more\nhonourable and better befitting the garb of a matronal pudicity.\n\nThe men were apparelled after their fashion.  Their stockings were of\ntamine or of cloth serge, of white, black, scarlet, or some other ingrained\ncolour.  Their breeches were of velvet, of the same colour with their\nstockings, or very near, embroidered and cut according to their fancy.\nTheir doublet was of cloth of gold, of cloth of silver, of velvet, satin,\ndamask, taffeties, &c., of the same colours, cut, embroidered, and suitably\ntrimmed up in perfection.  The points were of silk of the same colours; the\ntags were of gold well enamelled.  Their coats and jerkins were of cloth of\ngold, cloth of silver, gold, tissue or velvet embroidered, as they thought\nfit.  Their gowns were every whit as costly as those of the ladies.  Their\ngirdles were of silks, of the colour of their doublets.  Every one had a\ngallant sword by his side, the hilt and handle whereof were gilt, and the\nscabbard of velvet, of the colour of his breeches, with a chape of gold,\nand pure goldsmith's work.  The dagger was of the same.  Their caps or\nbonnets were of black velvet, adorned with jewels and buttons of gold.\nUpon that they wore a white plume, most prettily and minion-like parted by\nso many rows of gold spangles, at the end whereof hung dangling in a more\nsparkling resplendency fair rubies, emeralds, diamonds, &c., but there was\nsuch a sympathy betwixt the gallants and the ladies, that every day they\nwere apparelled in the same livery.  And that they might not miss, there\nwere certain gentlemen appointed to tell the youths every morning what\nvestments the ladies would on that day wear:  for all was done according to\nthe pleasure of the ladies.  In these so handsome clothes, and habiliments\nso rich, think not that either one or other of either sex did waste any\ntime at all; for the masters of the wardrobes had all their raiments and\napparel so ready for every morning, and the chamber-ladies so well skilled,\nthat in a trice they would be dressed and completely in their clothes from\nhead to foot.  And to have those accoutrements with the more conveniency,\nthere was about the wood of Theleme a row of houses of the extent of half a\nleague, very neat and cleanly, wherein dwelt the goldsmiths, lapidaries,\njewellers, embroiderers, tailors, gold-drawers, velvet-weavers,\ntapestry-makers and upholsterers, who wrought there every one in his own\ntrade, and all for the aforesaid jolly friars and nuns of the new stamp.\nThey were furnished with matter and stuff from the hands of the Lord\nNausiclete, who every year brought them seven ships from the Perlas and\nCannibal Islands, laden with ingots of gold, with raw silk, with pearls and\nprecious stones. And if any margarites, called unions, began to grow old and\nlose somewhat of their natural whiteness and lustre, those with their art\nthey did renew by tendering them to eat to some pretty cocks, as they use to\ngive casting unto hawks.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Thelemites were governed, and of their manner of living.\n\nAll their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to\ntheir own free will and pleasure.  They rose out of their beds when they\nthought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to\nit and were disposed for it.  None did awake them, none did offer to\nconstrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had\nGargantua established it.  In all their rule and strictest tie of their\norder there was but this one clause to be observed,\n\nDo What Thou Wilt;\n\nbecause men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest\ncompanies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto\nvirtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour.\nThose same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought\nunder and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they\nformerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of\nservitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable\nwith the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is\ndenied us.\n\nBy this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation to do all of\nthem what they saw did please one.  If any of the gallants or ladies should\nsay, Let us drink, they would all drink.  If any one of them said, Let us\nplay, they all played.  If one said, Let us go a-walking into the fields\nthey went all.  If it were to go a-hawking or a-hunting, the ladies mounted\nupon dainty well-paced nags, seated in a stately palfrey saddle, carried on\ntheir lovely fists, miniardly begloved every one of them, either a\nsparrowhawk or a laneret or a marlin, and the young gallants carried the\nother kinds of hawks.  So nobly were they taught, that there was neither he\nnor she amongst them but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical\ninstruments, speak five or six several languages, and compose in them all\nvery quaintly, both in verse and prose.  Never were seen so valiant\nknights, so noble and worthy, so dexterous and skilful both on foot and\na-horse-back, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better\nhandling all manner of weapons than were there.  Never were seen ladies so\nproper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less froward, or more ready\nwith their hand and with their needle in every honest and free action\nbelonging to that sex, than were there.  For this reason, when the time\ncame that any man of the said abbey, either at the request of his parents,\nor for some other cause, had a mind to go out of it, he carried along with\nhim one of the ladies, namely, her whom he had before that chosen for his\nmistress, and (they) were married together.  And if they had formerly in\nTheleme lived in good devotion and amity, they did continue therein and\nincrease it to a greater height in their state of matrimony; and did\nentertain that mutual love till the very last day of their life, in no less\nvigour and fervency than at the very day of their wedding.  Here must not I\nforget to set down unto you a riddle which was found under the ground as\nthey were laying the foundation of the abbey, engraven in a copper plate,\nand it was thus as followeth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA prophetical Riddle.\n\nPoor mortals, who wait for a happy day,\nCheer up your hearts, and hear what I shall say:\nIf it be lawful firmly to believe\nThat the celestial bodies can us give\nWisdom to judge of things that are not yet;\nOr if from heaven such wisdom we may get\nAs may with confidence make us discourse\nOf years to come, their destiny and course;\nI to my hearers give to understand\nThat this next winter, though it be at hand,\nYea and before, there shall appear a race\nOf men who, loth to sit still in one place,\nShall boldly go before all people's eyes,\nSuborning men of divers qualities\nTo draw them unto covenants and sides,\nIn such a manner that, whate'er betides,\nThey'll move you, if you give them ear, no doubt,\nWith both your friends and kindred to fall out.\nThey'll make a vassal to gain-stand his lord,\nAnd children their own parents; in a word,\nAll reverence shall then be banished,\nNo true respect to other shall be had.\nThey'll say that every man should have his turn,\nBoth in his going forth and his return;\nAnd hereupon there shall arise such woes,\nSuch jarrings, and confused to's and fro's,\nThat never were in history such coils\nSet down as yet, such tumults and garboils.\nThen shall you many gallant men see by\nValour stirr'd up, and youthful fervency,\nWho, trusting too much in their hopeful time,\nLive but a while, and perish in their prime.\nNeither shall any, who this course shall run,\nLeave off the race which he hath once begun,\nTill they the heavens with noise by their contention\nHave fill'd, and with their steps the earth's dimension.\nThen those shall have no less authority,\nThat have no faith, than those that will not lie;\nFor all shall be governed by a rude,\nBase, ignorant, and foolish multitude;\nThe veriest lout of all shall be their judge,\nO horrible and dangerous deluge!\nDeluge I call it, and that for good reason,\nFor this shall be omitted in no season;\nNor shall the earth of this foul stir be free,\nTill suddenly you in great store shall see\nThe waters issue out, with whose streams the\nMost moderate of all shall moistened be,\nAnd justly too; because they did not spare\nThe flocks of beasts that innocentest are,\nBut did their sinews and their bowels take,\nNot to the gods a sacrifice to make,\nBut usually to serve themselves for sport:\nAnd now consider, I do you exhort,\nIn such commotions so continual,\nWhat rest can take the globe terrestrial?\nMost happy then are they, that can it hold,\nAnd use it carefully as precious gold,\nBy keeping it in gaol, whence it shall have\nNo help but him who being to it gave.\nAnd to increase his mournful accident,\nThe sun, before it set in th' occident,\nShall cease to dart upon it any light,\nMore than in an eclipse, or in the night,--\nSo that at once its favour shall be gone,\nAnd liberty with it be left alone.\nAnd yet, before it come to ruin thus,\nIts quaking shall be as impetuous\nAs Aetna's was when Titan's sons lay under,\nAnd yield, when lost, a fearful sound like thunder.\nInarime did not more quickly move,\nWhen Typheus did the vast huge hills remove,\nAnd for despite into the sea them threw.\n  Thus shall it then be lost by ways not few,\nAnd changed suddenly, when those that have it\nTo other men that after come shall leave it.\nThen shall it be high time to cease from this\nSo long, so great, so tedious exercise;\nFor the great waters told you now by me,\nWill make each think where his retreat shall be;\nAnd yet, before that they be clean disperst,\nYou may behold in th' air, where nought was erst,\nThe burning heat of a great flame to rise,\nLick up the water, and the enterprise.\n  It resteth after those things to declare,\nThat those shall sit content who chosen are,\nWith all good things, and with celestial man (ne,)\nAnd richly recompensed every man:\nThe others at the last all stripp'd shall be,\nThat after this great work all men may see,\nHow each shall have his due.  This is their lot;\nO he is worthy praise that shrinketh not!\n\nNo sooner was this enigmatical monument read over, but Gargantua, fetching\na very deep sigh, said unto those that stood by, It is not now only, I\nperceive, that people called to the faith of the gospel, and convinced with\nthe certainty of evangelical truths, are persecuted.  But happy is that man\nthat shall not be scandalized, but shall always continue to the end in\naiming at that mark which God by his dear Son hath set before us, without\nbeing distracted or diverted by his carnal affections and depraved nature.\n\nThe monk then said, What do you think in your conscience is meant and\nsignified by this riddle?  What? said Gargantua,--the progress and carrying\non of the divine truth.  By St. Goderan, said the monk, that is not my\nexposition.  It is the style of the prophet Merlin.  Make upon it as many\ngrave allegories and glosses as you will, and dote upon it you and the rest\nof the world as long as you please; for my part, I can conceive no other\nmeaning in it but a description of a set at tennis in dark and obscure\nterms.  The suborners of men are the makers of matches, which are commonly\nfriends.  After the two chases are made, he that was in the upper end of\nthe tennis-court goeth out, and the other cometh in.  They believe the\nfirst that saith the ball was over or under the line.  The waters are the\nheats that the players take till they sweat again.  The cords of the\nrackets are made of the guts of sheep or goats.  The globe terrestrial is\nthe tennis-ball.  After playing, when the game is done, they refresh\nthemselves before a clear fire, and change their shirts; and very willingly\nthey make all good cheer, but most merrily those that have gained.  And so,\nfarewell!\n\n\n\nEnd book 1\n\n\nTHE SECOND BOOK.\n\n\n\nFor the Reader.\n\nThe Reader here may be pleased to take notice that the copy of verses by\nthe title of 'Rablophila', premised to the first book of this translation,\nbeing but a kind of mock poem, in imitation of somewhat lately published\n(as to any indifferent observer will easily appear, by the false quantities\nin the Latin, the abusive strain of the English, and extravagant\nsubscription to both), and as such, by a friend of the translator's, at the\ndesire of some frolic gentlemen of his acquaintance, more for a trial of\nskill than prejudicacy to any, composed in his jollity to please their\nfancies, was only ordained to be prefixed to a dozen of books, and no more,\nthereby to save the labour of transcribing so many as were requisite for\nsatisfying the curiosity of a company of just that number; and that,\ntherefore, the charging of the whole impression with it is merely to be\nimputed to the negligence of the pressmen, who, receiving it about the\nlatter end of the night, were so eager before the next morning to afford\ncomplete books, that, as they began, they went on, without animadverting\nwhat was recommended to their discretion.  This is hoped will suffice to\nassure the ingenuous Reader that in no treatise of the translator's,\nwhether original or translatitious, shall willingly be offered the meanest\nrub to the reputation of any worthy gentleman, and that, however providence\ndispose of him, no misfortune shall be able to induce his mind to any\ncomplacency in the disparagement of another.\n\nAgain.\n\nThe Pentateuch of Rabelais mentioned in the title-page of the first book of\nthis translation being written originally in the French tongue (as it\ncomprehendeth some of its brusquest dialects), with so much ingeniosity and\nwit, that more impressions have been sold thereof in that language than of\nany other book that hath been set forth at any time within these fifteen\nhundred years; so difficult nevertheless to be turned into any other speech\nthat many prime spirits in most of the nations of Europe, since the year\n1573, which was fourscore years ago, after having attempted it, were\nconstrained with no small regret to give it over as a thing impossible to\nbe done, is now in its translation thus far advanced, and the remainder\nfaithfully undertaken with the same hand to be rendered into English by a\nperson of quality, who (though his lands be sequestered, his house\ngarrisoned, his other goods sold, and himself detained a prisoner of war at\nLondon, for his having been at Worcester fight) hath, at the most earnest\nentreaty of some of his especial friends well acquainted with his\ninclination to the performance of conducible singularities, promised,\nbesides his version of these two already published, very speedily to offer\nup unto this Isle of Britain the virginity of the translation of the other\nthree most admirable books of the aforesaid author; provided that by the\nplurality of judicious and understanding men it be not declared he hath\nalready proceeded too far, or that the continuation of the rigour whereby\nhe is dispossessed of all his both real and personal estate, by pressing\ntoo hard upon him, be not an impediment thereto, and to other more eminent\nundertakings of his, as hath been oftentimes very fully mentioned by the\nsaid translator in several original treatises of his own penning, lately by\nhim so numerously dispersed that there is scarce any, who being skilful in\nthe English idiom, or curious of any new ingenious invention, hath not\neither read them or heard of them.\n\n\n\nMr. Hugh Salel to Rabelais.\n\nIf profit mixed with pleasure may suffice\nT' extol an author's worth above the skies,\nThou certainly for both must praised be:\nI know it; for thy judgment hath in the\nContexture of this book set down such high\nContentments, mingled with utility,\nThat (as I think) I see Democritus\nLaughing at men as things ridiculous.\n    Insist in thy design; for, though we prove\n    Ungrate on earth, thy merit is above.\n\n\n\n\n\nMost illustrious and thrice valorous champions, gentlemen and others, who\nwillingly apply your minds to the entertainment of pretty conceits and\nhonest harmless knacks of wit; you have not long ago seen, read, and\nunderstood the great and inestimable Chronicle of the huge and mighty giant\nGargantua, and, like upright faithfullists, have firmly believed all to be\ntrue that is contained in them, and have very often passed your time with\nthem amongst honourable ladies and gentlewomen, telling them fair long\nstories, when you were out of all other talk, for which you are worthy of\ngreat praise and sempiternal memory.  And I do heartily wish that every man\nwould lay aside his own business, meddle no more with his profession nor\ntrade, and throw all affairs concerning himself behind his back, to attend\nthis wholly, without distracting or troubling his mind with anything else,\nuntil he have learned them without book; that if by chance the art of\nprinting should cease, or in case that in time to come all books should\nperish, every man might truly teach them unto his children, and deliver\nthem over to his successors and survivors from hand to hand as a religious\ncabal; for there is in it more profit than a rabble of great pocky\nloggerheads are able to discern, who surely understand far less in these\nlittle merriments than the fool Raclet did in the Institutions of\nJustinian.\n\nI have known great and mighty lords, and of those not a few, who, going\na-deer-hunting, or a-hawking after wild ducks, when the chase had not\nencountered with the blinks that were cast in her way to retard her course,\nor that the hawk did but plain and smoothly fly without moving her wings,\nperceiving the prey by force of flight to have gained bounds of her, have\nbeen much chafed and vexed, as you understand well enough; but the comfort\nunto which they had refuge, and that they might not take cold, was to\nrelate the inestimable deeds of the said Gargantua.  There are others in\nthe world--these are no flimflam stories, nor tales of a tub--who, being\nmuch troubled with the toothache, after they had spent their goods upon\nphysicians without receiving at all any ease of their pain, have found no\nmore ready remedy than to put the said Chronicles betwixt two pieces of\nlinen cloth made somewhat hot, and so apply them to the place that\nsmarteth, sinapizing them with a little powder of projection, otherwise\ncalled doribus.\n\nBut what shall I say of those poor men that are plagued with the pox and\nthe gout?  O how often have we seen them, even immediately after they were\nanointed and thoroughly greased, till their faces did glister like the\nkeyhole of a powdering tub, their teeth dance like the jacks of a pair of\nlittle organs or virginals when they are played upon, and that they foamed\nfrom their very throats like a boar which the mongrel mastiff-hounds have\ndriven in and overthrown amongst the toils,--what did they then?  All their\nconsolation was to have some page of the said jolly book read unto them.\nAnd we have seen those who have given themselves to a hundred puncheons of\nold devils, in case that they did not feel a manifest ease and assuagement\nof pain at the hearing of the said book read, even when they were kept in a\npurgatory of torment; no more nor less than women in travail use to find\ntheir sorrow abated when the life of St. Margaret is read unto them.  Is\nthis nothing?  Find me a book in any language, in any faculty or science\nwhatsoever, that hath such virtues, properties, and prerogatives, and I\nwill be content to pay you a quart of tripes.  No, my masters, no; it is\npeerless, incomparable, and not to be matched; and this am I resolved for\never to maintain even unto the fire exclusive.  And those that will\npertinaciously hold the contrary opinion, let them be accounted abusers,\npredestinators, impostors, and seducers of the people.  It is very true\nthat there are found in some gallant and stately books, worthy of high\nestimation, certain occult and hid properties; in the number of which are\nreckoned Whippot, Orlando Furioso, Robert the Devil, Fierabras, William\nwithout Fear, Huon of Bordeaux, Monteville, and Matabrune: but they are not\ncomparable to that which we speak of, and the world hath well known by\ninfallible experience the great emolument and utility which it hath\nreceived by this Gargantuine Chronicle, for the printers have sold more of\nthem in two months' time than there will be bought of Bibles in nine years.\n\nI therefore, your humble slave, being very willing to increase your solace\nand recreation yet a little more, do offer you for a present another book\nof the same stamp, only that it is a little more reasonable and worthy of\ncredit than the other was.  For think not, unless you wilfully will err\nagainst your knowledge, that I speak of it as the Jews do of the Law.  I\nwas not born under such a planet, neither did it ever befall me to lie, or\naffirm a thing for true that was not.  I speak of it like a lusty frolic\nonocrotary (Onocratal is a bird not much unlike a swan, which sings like an\nass's braying.), I should say crotenotary (Crotenotaire or notaire crotte,\ncroquenotaire or notaire croque are but allusions in derision of\nprotonotaire, which signifieth a pregnotary.) of the martyrized lovers, and\ncroquenotary of love.  Quod vidimus, testamur.  It is of the horrible and\ndreadful feats and prowesses of Pantagruel, whose menial servant I have\nbeen ever since I was a page, till this hour that by his leave I am\npermitted to visit my cow-country, and to know if any of my kindred there\nbe alive.\n\nAnd therefore, to make an end of this Prologue, even as I give myself to a\nhundred panniersful of fair devils, body and soul, tripes and guts, in case\nthat I lie so much as one single word in this whole history; after the like\nmanner, St. Anthony's fire burn you, Mahoom's disease whirl you, the\nsquinance with a stitch in your side and the wolf in your stomach truss\nyou, the bloody flux seize upon you, the cursed sharp inflammations of\nwild-fire, as slender and thin as cow's hair strengthened with quicksilver,\nenter into your fundament, and, like those of Sodom and Gomorrah, may you\nfall into sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case you do not firmly\nbelieve all that I shall relate unto you in this present Chronicle.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the original and antiquity of the great Pantagruel.\n\nIt will not be an idle nor unprofitable thing, seeing we are at leisure, to\nput you in mind of the fountain and original source whence is derived unto\nus the good Pantagruel.  For I see that all good historiographers have thus\nhandled their chronicles, not only the Arabians, Barbarians, and Latins,\nbut also the gentle Greeks, who were eternal drinkers.  You must therefore\nremark that at the beginning of the world--I speak of a long time; it is\nabove forty quarantains, or forty times forty nights, according to the\nsupputation of the ancient Druids--a little after that Abel was killed by\nhis brother Cain, the earth, imbrued with the blood of the just, was one\nyear so exceeding fertile in all those fruits which it usually produceth to\nus, and especially in medlars, that ever since throughout all ages it hath\nbeen called the year of the great medlars; for three of them did fill a\nbushel.  In it the kalends were found by the Grecian almanacks.  There was\nthat year nothing of the month of March in the time of Lent, and the middle\nof August was in May.  In the month of October, as I take it, or at least\nSeptember, that I may not err, for I will carefully take heed of that, was\nthe week so famous in the annals, which they call the week of the three\nThursdays; for it had three of them by means of their irregular leap-years,\ncalled Bissextiles, occasioned by the sun's having tripped and stumbled a\nlittle towards the left hand, like a debtor afraid of sergeants, coming\nright upon him to arrest him:  and the moon varied from her course above\nfive fathom, and there was manifestly seen the motion of trepidation in the\nfirmament of the fixed stars, called Aplanes, so that the middle Pleiade,\nleaving her fellows, declined towards the equinoctial, and the star named\nSpica left the constellation of the Virgin to withdraw herself towards the\nBalance, known by the name of Libra, which are cases very terrible, and\nmatters so hard and difficult that astrologians cannot set their teeth in\nthem; and indeed their teeth had been pretty long if they could have\nreached thither.\n\nHowever, account you it for a truth that everybody then did most heartily\neat of these medlars, for they were fair to the eye and in taste delicious.\nBut even as Noah, that holy man, to whom we are so much beholding, bound,\nand obliged, for that he planted to us the vine, from whence we have that\nnectarian, delicious, precious, heavenly, joyful, and deific liquor which\nthey call the piot or tiplage, was deceived in the drinking of it, for he\nwas ignorant of the great virtue and power thereof; so likewise the men and\nwomen of that time did delight much in the eating of that fair great fruit,\nbut divers and very different accidents did ensue thereupon; for there fell\nupon them all in their bodies a most terrible swelling, but not upon all in\nthe same place, for some were swollen in the belly, and their belly\nstrouted out big like a great tun, of whom it is written, Ventrem\nomnipotentem, who were all very honest men, and merry blades.  And of this\nrace came St. Fatgulch and Shrove Tuesday (Pansart, Mardigras.).  Others\ndid swell at the shoulders, who in that place were so crump and knobby that\nthey were therefore called Montifers, which is as much to say as\nHill-carriers, of whom you see some yet in the world, of divers sexes and\ndegrees.  Of this race came Aesop, some of whose excellent words and deeds\nyou have in writing.  Some other puffs did swell in length by the member\nwhich they call the labourer of nature, in such sort that it grew\nmarvellous long, fat, great, lusty, stirring, and crest-risen, in the\nantique fashion, so that they made use of it as of a girdle, winding it\nfive or six times about their waist:  but if it happened the foresaid\nmember to be in good case, spooming with a full sail bunt fair before the\nwind, then to have seen those strouting champions, you would have taken\nthem for men that had their lances settled on their rest to run at the ring\nor tilting whintam (quintain).  Of these, believe me, the race is utterly\nlost and quite extinct, as the women say; for they do lament continually\nthat there are none extant now of those great, &c.  You know the rest of\nthe song.  Others did grow in matter of ballocks so enormously that three\nof them would well fill a sack able to contain five quarters of wheat.\nFrom them are descended the ballocks of Lorraine, which never dwell in\ncodpieces, but fall down to the bottom of the breeches.  Others grew in the\nlegs, and to see them you would have said they had been cranes, or the\nreddish-long-billed-storklike-scrank-legged sea-fowls called flamans, or\nelse men walking upon stilts or scatches.  The little grammar-school boys,\nknown by the name of Grimos, called those leg-grown slangams Jambus, in\nallusion to the French word jambe, which signifieth a leg.  In others,\ntheir nose did grow so, that it seemed to be the beak of a limbeck, in\nevery part thereof most variously diapered with the twinkling sparkles of\ncrimson blisters budding forth, and purpled with pimples all enamelled with\nthickset wheals of a sanguine colour, bordered with gules; and such have\nyou seen the Canon or Prebend Panzoult, and Woodenfoot, the physician of\nAngiers.  Of which race there were few that looked the ptisane, but all of\nthem were perfect lovers of the pure Septembral juice.  Naso and Ovid had\ntheir extraction from thence, and all those of whom it is written, Ne\nreminiscaris.  Others grew in ears, which they had so big that out of one\nwould have been stuff enough got to make a doublet, a pair of breeches, and\na jacket, whilst with the other they might have covered themselves as with\na Spanish cloak:  and they say that in Bourbonnois this race remaineth yet.\nOthers grew in length of body, and of those came the Giants, and of them\nPantagruel.\n\nAnd the first was Chalbroth,\nWho begat Sarabroth,\nWho begat Faribroth,\nWho begat Hurtali, that was a brave eater of pottage, and reigned\n  in the time of the flood;\nWho begat Nembroth,\nWho begat Atlas, that with his shoulders kept the sky from falling;\nWho begat Goliah,\nWho begat Erix, that invented the hocus pocus plays of legerdemain;\nWho begat Titius,\nWho begat Eryon,\nWho begat Polyphemus,\nWho begat Cacus,\nWho begat Etion, the first man that ever had the pox, for not drinking\n  fresh in summer, as Bartachin witnesseth;\nWho begat Enceladus,\nWho begat Ceus,\nWho begat Tiphaeus,\nWho begat Alaeus,\nWho begat Othus,\nWho begat Aegeon,\nWho begat Briareus, that had a hundred hands;\nWho begat Porphyrio,\nWho begat Adamastor,\nWho begat Anteus,\nWho begat Agatho,\nWho begat Porus, against whom fought Alexander the Great;\nWho begat Aranthas,\nWho begat Gabbara, that was the first inventor of the drinking of\n  healths;\nWho begat Goliah of Secondille,\nWho begat Offot, that was terribly well nosed for drinking at the\n  barrel-head;\nWho begat Artachaeus,\nWho begat Oromedon,\nWho begat Gemmagog, the first inventor of Poulan shoes, which are\n  open on the foot and tied over the instep with a lachet;\nWho begat Sisyphus,\nWho begat the Titans, of whom Hercules was born;\nWho begat Enay, the most skilful man that ever was in matter of\n  taking the little worms (called cirons) out of the hands;\nWho begat Fierabras, that was vanquished by Oliver, peer of France\n  and Roland's comrade;\nWho begat Morgan, the first in the world that played at dice with\n  spectacles;\nWho begat Fracassus, of whom Merlin Coccaius hath written, and of\n  him was born Ferragus,\nWho begat Hapmouche, the first that ever invented the drying of\n  neat's tongues in the chimney; for, before that, people salted\n  them as they do now gammons of bacon;\nWho begat Bolivorax,\nWho begat Longis,\nWho begat Gayoffo, whose ballocks were of poplar, and his pr... of\n  the service or sorb-apple-tree;\nWho begat Maschefain,\nWho begat Bruslefer,\nWho begat Angoulevent,\nWho begat Galehaut, the inventor of flagons;\nWho begat Mirelangaut,\nWho begat Gallaffre,\nWho begat Falourdin,\nWho begat Roboast,\nWho begat Sortibrant of Conimbres,\nWho begat Brushant of Mommiere,\nWho begat Bruyer that was overcome by Ogier the Dane, peer of\n  France;\nWho begat Mabrun,\nWho begat Foutasnon,\nWho begat Haquelebac,\nWho begat Vitdegrain,\nWho begat Grangousier,\nWho begat Gargantua,\nWho begat the noble Pantagruel, my master.\n\nI know that, reading this passage, you will make a doubt within yourselves,\nand that grounded upon very good reason, which is this--how it is possible\nthat this relation can be true, seeing at the time of the flood all the\nworld was destroyed, except Noah and seven persons more with him in the\nark, into whose number Hurtali is not admitted.  Doubtless the demand is\nwell made and very apparent, but the answer shall satisfy you, or my wit is\nnot rightly caulked.  And because I was not at that time to tell you\nanything of my own fancy, I will bring unto you the authority of the\nMassorets, good honest fellows, true ballockeering blades and exact\nHebraical bagpipers, who affirm that verily the said Hurtali was not within\nthe ark of Noah, neither could he get in, for he was too big, but he sat\nastride upon it, with one leg on the one side and another on the other, as\nlittle children use to do upon their wooden horses; or as the great bull of\nBerne, which was killed at Marinian, did ride for his hackney the great\nmurdering piece called the canon-pevier, a pretty beast of a fair and\npleasant amble without all question.\n\nIn that posture, he, after God, saved the said ark from danger, for with\nhis legs he gave it the brangle that was needful, and with his foot turned\nit whither he pleased, as a ship answereth her rudder.  Those that were\nwithin sent him up victuals in abundance by a chimney, as people very\nthankfully acknowledging the good that he did them.  And sometimes they did\ntalk together as Icaromenippus did to Jupiter, according to the report of\nLucian.  Have you understood all this well?  Drink then one good draught\nwithout water, for if you believe it not,--no truly do I not, quoth she.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the nativity of the most dread and redoubted Pantagruel.\n\nGargantua at the age of four hundred fourscore forty and four years begat\nhis son Pantagruel, upon his wife named Badebec, daughter to the king of\nthe Amaurots in Utopia, who died in childbirth; for he was so wonderfully\ngreat and lumpish that he could not possibly come forth into the light of\nthe world without thus suffocating his mother.  But that we may fully\nunderstand the cause and reason of the name of Pantagruel which at his\nbaptism was given him, you are to remark that in that year there was so\ngreat drought over all the country of Africa that there passed thirty and\nsix months, three weeks, four days, thirteen hours and a little more\nwithout rain, but with a heat so vehement that the whole earth was parched\nand withered by it.  Neither was it more scorched and dried up with heat in\nthe days of Elijah than it was at that time; for there was not a tree to be\nseen that had either leaf or bloom upon it.  The grass was without verdure\nor greenness, the rivers were drained, the fountains dried up, the poor\nfishes, abandoned and forsaken by their proper element, wandering and\ncrying upon the ground most horribly.  The birds did fall down from the air\nfor want of moisture and dew wherewith to refresh them.  The wolves, foxes,\nharts, wild boars, fallow deer, hares, coneys, weasels, brocks, badgers,\nand other such beasts, were found dead in the fields with their mouths\nopen.  In respect of men, there was the pity, you should have seen them lay\nout their tongues like hares that have been run six hours.  Many did throw\nthemselves into the wells.  Others entered within a cow's belly to be in\nthe shade; those Homer calls Alibants.  All the country was idle, and could\ndo no virtue.  It was a most lamentable case to have seen the labour of\nmortals in defending themselves from the vehemency of this horrific\ndrought; for they had work enough to do to save the holy water in the\nchurches from being wasted; but there was such order taken by the counsel\nof my lords the cardinals and of our holy Father, that none did dare to\ntake above one lick.  Yet when anyone came into the church, you should have\nseen above twenty poor thirsty fellows hang upon him that was the\ndistributor of the water, and that with a wide open throat, gaping for some\nlittle drop, like the rich glutton in Luke, that might fall by, lest\nanything should be lost.  O how happy was he in that year who had a cool\ncellar under ground, well plenished with fresh wine!\n\nThe philosopher reports, in moving the question, Wherefore it is that the\nsea-water is salt, that at the time when Phoebus gave the government of his\nresplendent chariot to his son Phaeton, the said Phaeton, unskilful in the\nart, and not knowing how to keep the ecliptic line betwixt the two tropics\nof the latitude of the sun's course, strayed out of his way, and came so\nnear the earth that he dried up all the countries that were under it,\nburning a great part of the heavens which the philosophers call Via lactea,\nand the huffsnuffs St. James's way; although the most coped, lofty, and\nhigh-crested poets affirm that to be the place where Juno's milk fell when\nshe gave suck to Hercules.  The earth at that time was so excessively\nheated that it fell into an enormous sweat, yea, such a one as made it\nsweat out the sea, which is therefore salt, because all sweat is salt; and\nthis you cannot but confess to be true if you will taste of your own, or of\nthose that have the pox, when they are put into sweating, it is all one to\nme.\n\nJust such another case fell out this same year:  for on a certain Friday,\nwhen the whole people were bent upon their devotions, and had made goodly\nprocessions, with store of litanies, and fair preachings, and beseechings\nof God Almighty to look down with his eye of mercy upon their miserable and\ndisconsolate condition, there was even then visibly seen issue out of the\nground great drops of water, such as fall from a puff-bagged man in a top\nsweat, and the poor hoidens began to rejoice as if it had been a thing very\nprofitable unto them; for some said that there was not one drop of moisture\nin the air whence they might have any rain, and that the earth did supply\nthe default of that.  Other learned men said that it was a shower of the\nantipodes, as Seneca saith in his fourth book Quaestionum naturalium,\nspeaking of the source and spring of Nilus.  But they were deceived, for,\nthe procession being ended, when everyone went about to gather of this dew,\nand to drink of it with full bowls, they found that it was nothing but\npickle and the very brine of salt, more brackish in taste than the saltest\nwater of the sea.  And because in that very day Pantagruel was born, his\nfather gave him that name; for Panta in Greek is as much to say as all, and\nGruel in the Hagarene language doth signify thirsty, inferring hereby that\nat his birth the whole world was a-dry and thirsty, as likewise foreseeing\nthat he would be some day supreme lord and sovereign of the thirsty\nEthrappels, which was shown to him at that very same hour by a more evident\nsign.  For when his mother Badebec was in the bringing of him forth, and\nthat the midwives did wait to receive him, there came first out of her\nbelly three score and eight tregeneers, that is, salt-sellers, every one of\nthem leading in a halter a mule heavy laden with salt; after whom issued\nforth nine dromedaries, with great loads of gammons of bacon and dried\nneat's tongues on their backs.  Then followed seven camels loaded with\nlinks and chitterlings, hogs' puddings, and sausages.  After them came out\nfive great wains, full of leeks, garlic, onions, and chibots, drawn with\nfive-and-thirty strong cart-horses, which was six for every one, besides\nthe thiller.  At the sight hereof the said midwives were much amazed, yet\nsome of them said, Lo, here is good provision, and indeed we need it; for\nwe drink but lazily, as if our tongues walked on crutches, and not lustily\nlike Lansman Dutches.  Truly this is a good sign; there is nothing here but\nwhat is fit for us; these are the spurs of wine, that set it a-going.  As\nthey were tattling thus together after their own manner of chat, behold!\nout comes Pantagruel all hairy like a bear, whereupon one of them, inspired\nwith a prophetical spirit, said, This will be a terrible fellow; he is born\nwith all his hair; he is undoubtedly to do wonderful things, and if he live\nhe shall have age.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the grief wherewith Gargantua was moved at the decease of his wife\nBadebec.\n\nWhen Pantagruel was born, there was none more astonished and perplexed than\nwas his father Gargantua; for of the one side seeing his wife Badebec dead,\nand on the other side his son Pantagruel born, so fair and so great, he\nknew not what to say nor what to do.  And the doubt that troubled his brain\nwas to know whether he should cry for the death of his wife or laugh for\nthe joy of his son.  He was hinc inde choked with sophistical arguments,\nfor he framed them very well in modo et figura, but he could not resolve\nthem, remaining pestered and entangled by this means, like a mouse caught\nin a trap or kite snared in a gin.  Shall I weep? said he.  Yes, for why?\nMy so good wife is dead, who was the most this, the most that, that ever\nwas in the world.  Never shall I see her, never shall I recover such\nanother; it is unto me an inestimable loss!  O my good God, what had I done\nthat thou shouldest thus punish me?  Why didst thou not take me away before\nher, seeing for me to live without her is but to languish?  Ah, Badebec,\nBadebec, my minion, my dear heart, my sugar, my sweeting, my honey, my\nlittle c-- (yet it had in circumference full six acres, three rods, five\npoles, four yards, two foot, one inch and a half of good woodland measure),\nmy tender peggy, my codpiece darling, my bob and hit, my slipshoe-lovey,\nnever shall I see thee!  Ah, poor Pantagruel, thou hast lost thy good\nmother, thy sweet nurse, thy well-beloved lady!  O false death, how\ninjurious and despiteful hast thou been to me!  How malicious and\noutrageous have I found thee in taking her from me, my well-beloved wife,\nto whom immortality did of right belong!\n\nWith these words he did cry like a cow, but on a sudden fell a-laughing\nlike a calf, when Pantagruel came into his mind.  Ha, my little son, said\nhe, my childilolly, fedlifondy, dandlichucky, my ballocky, my pretty rogue!\nO how jolly thou art, and how much am I bound to my gracious God, that hath\nbeen pleased to bestow on me a son so fair, so spriteful, so lively, so\nsmiling, so pleasant, and so gentle!  Ho, ho, ho, ho, how glad I am!  Let\nus drink, ho, and put away melancholy!  Bring of the best, rinse the\nglasses, lay the cloth, drive out these dogs, blow this fire, light\ncandles, shut that door there, cut this bread in sippets for brewis, send\naway these poor folks in giving them what they ask, hold my gown.  I will\nstrip myself into my doublet (en cuerpo), to make the gossips merry, and\nkeep them company.\n\nAs he spake this, he heard the litanies and the mementos of the priests\nthat carried his wife to be buried, upon which he left the good purpose he\nwas in, and was suddenly ravished another way, saying, Lord God! must I\nagain contrist myself?  This grieves me.  I am no longer young, I grow old,\nthe weather is dangerous; I may perhaps take an ague, then shall I be\nfoiled, if not quite undone.  By the faith of a gentleman, it were better\nto cry less, and drink more.  My wife is dead, well, by G--! (da jurandi) I\nshall not raise her again by my crying:  she is well, she is in paradise at\nleast, if she be no higher:  she prayeth to God for us, she is happy, she\nis above the sense of our miseries, nor can our calamities reach her.  What\nthough she be dead, must not we also die?  The same debt which she hath\npaid hangs over our heads; nature will require it of us, and we must all of\nus some day taste of the same sauce.  Let her pass then, and the Lord\npreserve the survivors; for I must now cast about how to get another wife.\nBut I will tell you what you shall do, said he to the midwives, in France\ncalled wise women (where be they, good folks?  I cannot see them):  Go you\nto my wife's interment, and I will the while rock my son; for I find myself\nsomewhat altered and distempered, and should otherwise be in danger of\nfalling sick; but drink one good draught first, you will be the better for\nit.  And believe me, upon mine honour, they at his request went to her\nburial and funeral obsequies.  In the meanwhile, poor Gargantua staying at\nhome, and willing to have somewhat in remembrance of her to be engraven\nupon her tomb, made this epitaph in the manner as followeth.\n\n  Dead is the noble Badebec,\n  Who had a face like a rebeck;\n  A Spanish body, and a belly\n  Of Switzerland; she died, I tell ye,\n  In childbirth.  Pray to God, that her\n  He pardon wherein she did err.\n  Here lies her body, which did live\n  Free from all vice, as I believe,\n    And did decease at my bedside,\n    The year and day in which she died.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the infancy of Pantagruel.\n\nI find by the ancient historiographers and poets that divers have been born\nin this world after very strange manners, which would be too long to\nrepeat; read therefore the seventh chapter of Pliny, if you have so much\nleisure.  Yet have you never heard of any so wonderful as that of\nPantagruel; for it is a very difficult matter to believe, how in the little\ntime he was in his mother's belly he grew both in body and strength.  That\nwhich Hercules did was nothing, when in his cradle he slew two serpents,\nfor those serpents were but little and weak, but Pantagruel, being yet in\nthe cradle, did far more admirable things, and more to be amazed at.  I\npass by here the relation of how at every one of his meals he supped up the\nmilk of four thousand and six hundred cows, and how, to make him a skillet\nto boil his milk in, there were set a-work all the braziers of Somure in\nAnjou, of Villedieu in Normandy, and of Bramont in Lorraine.  And they\nserved in this whitepot-meat to him in a huge great bell, which is yet to\nbe seen in the city of Bourges in Berry, near the palace, but his teeth\nwere already so well grown, and so strengthened with vigour, that of the\nsaid bell he bit off a great morsel, as very plainly doth appear till this\nhour.\n\nOne day in the morning, when they would have made him suck one of his cows\n--for he never had any other nurse, as the history tells us--he got one of\nhis arms loose from the swaddling bands wherewith he was kept fast in the\ncradle, laid hold on the said cow under the left foreham, and grasping her\nto him ate up her udder and half of her paunch, with the liver and the\nkidneys, and had devoured all up if she had not cried out most horribly, as\nif the wolves had held her by the legs, at which noise company came in and\ntook away the said cow from Pantagruel.  Yet could they not so well do it\nbut that the quarter whereby he caught her was left in his hand, of which\nquarter he gulped up the flesh in a trice, even with as much ease as you\nwould eat a sausage, and that so greedily with desire of more, that, when\nthey would have taken away the bone from him, he swallowed it down whole,\nas a cormorant would do a little fish; and afterwards began fumblingly to\nsay, Good, good, good--for he could not yet speak plain--giving them to\nunderstand thereby that he had found it very good, and that he did lack but\nso much more.  Which when they saw that attended him, they bound him with\ngreat cable-ropes, like those that are made at Tain for the carriage of\nsalt to Lyons, or such as those are whereby the great French ship rides at\nanchor in the road of Newhaven in Normandy.  But, on a certain time, a\ngreat bear, which his father had bred, got loose, came towards him, began\nto lick his face, for his nurses had not thoroughly wiped his chaps, at\nwhich unexpected approach being on a sudden offended, he as lightly rid\nhimself of those great cables as Samson did of the hawser ropes wherewith\nthe Philistines had tied him, and, by your leave, takes me up my lord the\nbear, and tears him to you in pieces like a pullet, which served him for a\ngorgeful or good warm bit for that meal.\n\nWhereupon Gargantua, fearing lest the child should hurt himself, caused\nfour great chains of iron to be made to bind him, and so many strong wooden\narches unto his cradle, most firmly stocked and morticed in huge frames.\nOf those chains you have one at Rochelle, which they draw up at night\nbetwixt the two great towers of the haven.  Another is at Lyons,--a third\nat Angiers,--and the fourth was carried away by the devils to bind Lucifer,\nwho broke his chains in those days by reason of a colic that did\nextraordinarily torment him, taken with eating a sergeant's soul fried for\nhis breakfast.  And therefore you may believe that which Nicholas de Lyra\nsaith upon that place of the Psalter where it is written, Et Og Regem\nBasan, that the said Og, being yet little, was so strong and robustious,\nthat they were fain to bind him with chains of iron in his cradle.  Thus\ncontinued Pantagruel for a while very calm and quiet, for he was not able\nso easily to break those chains, especially having no room in the cradle to\ngive a swing with his arms.  But see what happened once upon a great\nholiday that his father Gargantua made a sumptuous banquet to all the\nprinces of his court.  I am apt to believe that the menial officers of the\nhouse were so embusied in waiting each on his proper service at the feast,\nthat nobody took care of poor Pantagruel, who was left a reculorum,\nbehindhand, all alone, and as forsaken.  What did he?  Hark what he did,\ngood people.  He strove and essayed to break the chains of the cradle with\nhis arms, but could not, for they were too strong for him.  Then did he\nkeep with his feet such a stamping stir, and so long, that at last he beat\nout the lower end of his cradle, which notwithstanding was made of a great\npost five foot in square; and as soon as he had gotten out his feet, he\nslid down as well as he could till he had got his soles to the ground, and\nthen with a mighty force he rose up, carrying his cradle upon his back,\nbound to him like a tortoise that crawls up against a wall; and to have\nseen him, you would have thought it had been a great carrick of five\nhundred tons upon one end.  In this manner he entered into the great hall\nwhere they were banqueting, and that very boldly, which did much affright\nthe company; yet, because his arms were tied in, he could not reach\nanything to eat, but with great pain stooped now and then a little to take\nwith the whole flat of his tongue some lick, good bit, or morsel.  Which\nwhen his father saw, he knew well enough that they had left him without\ngiving him anything to eat, and therefore commanded that he should be\nloosed from the said chains, by the counsel of the princes and lords there\npresent.  Besides that also the physicians of Gargantua said that, if they\ndid thus keep him in the cradle, he would be all his lifetime subject to\nthe stone.  When he was unchained, they made him to sit down, where, after\nhe had fed very well, he took his cradle and broke it into more than five\nhundred thousand pieces with one blow of his fist that he struck in the\nmidst of it, swearing that he would never come into it again.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the acts of the noble Pantagruel in his youthful age.\n\nThus grew Pantagruel from day to day, and to everyone's eye waxed more and\nmore in all his dimensions, which made his father to rejoice by a natural\naffection.  Therefore caused he to be made for him, whilst he was yet\nlittle, a pretty crossbow wherewith to shoot at small birds, which now they\ncall the great crossbow at Chantelle.  Then he sent him to the school to\nlearn, and to spend his youth in virtue.  In the prosecution of which\ndesign he came first to Poictiers, where, as he studied and profited very\nmuch, he saw that the scholars were oftentimes at leisure and knew not how\nto bestow their time, which moved him to take such compassion on them, that\none day he took from a long ledge of rocks, called there Passelourdin, a\nhuge great stone, of about twelve fathom square and fourteen handfuls\nthick, and with great ease set it upon four pillars in the midst of a\nfield, to no other end but that the said scholars, when they had nothing\nelse to do, might pass their time in getting up on that stone, and feast it\nwith store of gammons, pasties, and flagons, and carve their names upon it\nwith a knife, in token of which deed till this hour the stone is called the\nlifted stone.  And in remembrance hereof there is none entered into the\nregister and matricular book of the said university, or accounted capable\nof taking any degree therein, till he have first drunk in the caballine\nfountain of Croustelles, passed at Passelourdin, and got up upon the lifted\nstone.\n\nAfterwards, reading the delectable chronicles of his ancestors, he found\nthat Geoffrey of Lusignan, called Geoffrey with the great tooth,\ngrandfather to the cousin-in-law of the eldest sister of the aunt of the\nson-in-law of the uncle of the good daughter of his stepmother, was\ninterred at Maillezais; therefore one day he took campos (which is a little\nvacation from study to play a while), that he might give him a visit as\nunto an honest man.  And going from Poictiers with some of his companions,\nthey passed by the Guge (Leguge), visiting the noble Abbot Ardillon; then\nby Lusignan, by Sansay, by Celles, by Coolonges, by Fontenay-le-Comte,\nsaluting the learned Tiraqueau, and from thence arrived at Maillezais,\nwhere he went to see the sepulchre of the said Geoffrey with the great\ntooth; which made him somewhat afraid, looking upon the picture, whose\nlively draughts did set him forth in the representation of a man in an\nextreme fury, drawing his great Malchus falchion half way out of his\nscabbard.  When the reason hereof was demanded, the canons of the said\nplace told him that there was no other cause of it but that Pictoribus\natque Poetis, &c., that is to say, that painters and poets have liberty to\npaint and devise what they list after their own fancy.  But he was not\nsatisfied with their answer, and said, He is not thus painted without a\ncause, and I suspect that at his death there was some wrong done him,\nwhereof he requireth his kindred to take revenge.  I will inquire further\ninto it, and then do what shall be reasonable.  Then he returned not to\nPoictiers, but would take a view of the other universities of France.\nTherefore, going to Rochelle, he took shipping and arrived at Bordeaux,\nwhere he found no great exercise, only now and then he would see some\nmariners and lightermen a-wrestling on the quay or strand by the\nriver-side.  From thence he came to Toulouse, where he learned to dance very\nwell, and to play with the two-handed sword, as the fashion of the scholars\nof the said university is to bestir themselves in games whereof they may\nhave their hands full; but he stayed not long there when he saw that they\ndid cause burn their regents alive like red herring, saying, Now God forbid\nthat I should die this death! for I am by nature sufficiently dry already,\nwithout heating myself any further.\n\nHe went then to Montpellier, where he met with the good wives of Mirevaux,\nand good jovial company withal, and thought to have set himself to the\nstudy of physic; but he considered that that calling was too troublesome\nand melancholic, and that physicians did smell of glisters like old devils.\nTherefore he resolved he would study the laws; but seeing that there were\nbut three scald- and one bald-pated legist in that place, he departed from\nthence, and in his way made the bridge of Guard and the amphitheatre of\nNimes in less than three hours, which, nevertheless, seems to be a more\ndivine than human work.  After that he came to Avignon, where he was not\nabove three days before he fell in love; for the women there take great\ndelight in playing at the close-buttock game, because it is papal ground.\nWhich his tutor and pedagogue Epistemon perceiving, he drew him out of that\nplace, and brought him to Valence in the Dauphiny, where he saw no great\nmatter of recreation, only that the lubbers of the town did beat the\nscholars, which so incensed him with anger, that when, upon a certain very\nfair Sunday, the people being at their public dancing in the streets, and\none of the scholars offering to put himself into the ring to partake of\nthat sport, the foresaid lubberly fellows would not permit him the\nadmittance into their society, he, taking the scholar's part, so belaboured\nthem with blows, and laid such load upon them, that he drove them all\nbefore him, even to the brink of the river Rhone, and would have there\ndrowned them, but that they did squat to the ground, and there lay close a\nfull half-league under the river.  The hole is to be seen there yet.\n\nAfter that he departed from thence, and in three strides and one leap came\nto Angiers, where he found himself very well, and would have continued\nthere some space, but that the plague drove them away.  So from thence he\ncame to Bourges, where he studied a good long time, and profited very much\nin the faculty of the laws, and would sometimes say that the books of the\ncivil law were like unto a wonderfully precious, royal, and triumphant robe\nof cloth of gold edged with dirt; for in the world are no goodlier books to\nbe seen, more ornate, nor more eloquent than the texts of the Pandects, but\nthe bordering of them, that is to say, the gloss of Accursius, is so\nscurvy, vile, base, and unsavoury, that it is nothing but filthiness and\nvillainy.\n\nGoing from Bourges, he came to Orleans, where he found store of swaggering\nscholars that made him great entertainment at his coming, and with whom he\nlearned to play at tennis so well that he was a master at that game.  For\nthe students of the said place make a prime exercise of it; and sometimes\nthey carried him unto Cupid's houses of commerce (in that city termed\nislands, because of their being most ordinarily environed with other\nhouses, and not contiguous to any), there to recreate his person at the\nsport of poussavant, which the wenches of London call the ferkers in and\nin.  As for breaking his head with over-much study, he had an especial care\nnot to do it in any case, for fear of spoiling his eyes.  Which he the\nrather observed, for that it was told him by one of his teachers, there\ncalled regents, that the pain of the eyes was the most hurtful thing of any\nto the sight.  For this cause, when he one day was made a licentiate, or\ngraduate in law, one of the scholars of his acquaintance, who of learning\nhad not much more than his burden, though instead of that he could dance\nvery well and play at tennis, made the blazon and device of the licentiates\nin the said university, saying,\n\n  So you have in your hand a racket,\n  A tennis-ball in your cod-placket,\n  A Pandect law in your cap's tippet,\n  And that you have the skill to trip it\n  In a low dance, you will b' allowed\n  The grant of the licentiate's hood.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel met with a Limousin, who too affectedly did counterfeit the\nFrench language.\n\nUpon a certain day, I know not when, Pantagruel walking after supper with\nsome of his fellow-students without that gate of the city through which we\nenter on the road to Paris, encountered with a young spruce-like scholar\nthat was coming upon the same very way, and, after they had saluted one\nanother, asked him thus, My friend, from whence comest thou now?  The\nscholar answered him, From the alme, inclyte, and celebrate academy, which\nis vocitated Lutetia.  What is the meaning of this? said Pantagruel to one\nof his men.  It is, answered he, from Paris.  Thou comest from Paris then,\nsaid Pantagruel; and how do you spend your time there, you my masters the\nstudents of Paris?  The scholar answered, We transfretate the Sequan at the\ndilucul and crepuscul; we deambulate by the compites and quadrives of the\nurb; we despumate the Latial verbocination; and, like verisimilary\namorabons, we captat the benevolence of the omnijugal, omniform and\nomnigenal feminine sex.  Upon certain diecules we invisat the lupanares,\nand in a venerian ecstasy inculcate our veretres into the penitissime\nrecesses of the pudends of these amicabilissim meretricules.  Then do we\ncauponisate in the meritory taberns of the Pineapple, the Castle, the\nMagdalene, and the Mule, goodly vervecine spatules perforaminated with\npetrocile.  And if by fortune there be rarity or penury of pecune in our\nmarsupies, and that they be exhausted of ferruginean metal, for the shot we\ndimit our codices and oppignerat our vestments, whilst we prestolate the\ncoming of the tabellaries from the Penates and patriotic Lares.  To which\nPantagruel answered, What devilish language is this?  By the Lord, I think\nthou art some kind of heretick.  My lord, no, said the scholar; for\nlibentissimally, as soon as it illucesceth any minutule slice of the day, I\ndemigrate into one of these so well architected minsters, and there,\nirrorating myself with fair lustral water, I mumble off little parcels of\nsome missic precation of our sacrificuls, and, submurmurating my horary\nprecules, I elevate and absterge my anime from its nocturnal inquinations.\nI revere the Olympicols.  I latrially venere the supernal Astripotent.  I\ndilige and redame my proxims.  I observe the decalogical precepts, and,\naccording to the facultatule of my vires, I do not discede from them one\nlate unguicule.  Nevertheless, it is veriform, that because Mammona doth\nnot supergurgitate anything in my loculs, that I am somewhat rare and lent\nto supererogate the elemosynes to those egents that hostially queritate\ntheir stipe.\n\nPrut, tut, said Pantagruel, what doth this fool mean to say?  I think he is\nupon the forging of some diabolical tongue, and that enchanter-like he\nwould charm us.  To whom one of his men said, Without doubt, sir, this\nfellow would counterfeit the language of the Parisians, but he doth only\nflay the Latin, imagining by so doing that he doth highly Pindarize it in\nmost eloquent terms, and strongly conceiteth himself to be therefore a\ngreat orator in the French, because he disdaineth the common manner of\nspeaking.  To which Pantagruel said, Is it true?  The scholar answered, My\nworshipful lord, my genie is not apt nate to that which this flagitious\nnebulon saith, to excoriate the cut(ic)ule of our vernacular Gallic, but\nvice-versally I gnave opere, and by veles and rames enite to locupletate it\nwith the Latinicome redundance.  By G--, said Pantagruel, I will teach you\nto speak.  But first come hither, and tell me whence thou art.  To this the\nscholar answered, The primeval origin of my aves and ataves was indigenary\nof the Lemovic regions, where requiesceth the corpor of the hagiotat St.\nMartial.  I understand thee very well, said Pantagruel.  When all comes to\nall, thou art a Limousin, and thou wilt here by thy affected speech\ncounterfeit the Parisians.  Well now, come hither, I must show thee a new\ntrick, and handsomely give thee the combfeat.  With this he took him by the\nthroat, saying to him, Thou flayest the Latin; by St. John, I will make\nthee flay the fox, for I will now flay thee alive.  Then began the poor\nLimousin to cry, Haw, gwid maaster! haw, Laord, my halp, and St. Marshaw!\nhaw, I'm worried.  Haw, my thropple, the bean of my cragg is bruck!  Haw,\nfor gauad's seck lawt my lean, mawster; waw, waw, waw.  Now, said\nPantagruel, thou speakest naturally, and so let him go, for the poor\nLimousin had totally bewrayed and thoroughly conshit his breeches, which\nwere not deep and large enough, but round straight cannioned gregs, having\nin the seat a piece like a keeling's tail, and therefore in French called,\nde chausses a queue de merlus.  Then, said Pantagruel, St. Alipantin, what\ncivet?  Fie! to the devil with this turnip-eater, as he stinks! and so let\nhim go.  But this hug of Pantagruel's was such a terror to him all the days\nof his life, and took such deep impression in his fancy, that very often,\ndistracted with sudden affrightments, he would startle and say that\nPantagruel held him by the neck.  Besides that, it procured him a continual\ndrought and desire to drink, so that after some few years he died of the\ndeath Roland, in plain English called thirst, a work of divine vengeance,\nshowing us that which saith the philosopher and Aulus Gellius, that it\nbecometh us to speak according to the common language; and that we should,\nas said Octavian Augustus, strive to shun all strange and unknown terms\nwith as much heedfulness and circumspection as pilots of ships use to avoid\nthe rocks and banks in the sea.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel came to Paris, and of the choice books of the Library of St.\nVictor.\n\nAfter that Pantagruel had studied very well at Orleans, he resolved to see\nthe great University at Paris; but, before his departure, he was informed\nthat there was a huge big bell at St. Anian in the said town of Orleans,\nunder the ground, which had been there above two hundred and fourteen\nyears, for it was so great that they could not by any device get it so much\nas above the ground, although they used all the means that are found in\nVitruvius de Architectura, Albertus de Re Aedificatoria, Euclid, Theon,\nArchimedes, and Hero de Ingeniis; for all that was to no purpose.\nWherefore, condescending heartily to the humble request of the citizens and\ninhabitants of the said town, he determined to remove it to the tower that\nwas erected for it.  With that he came to the place where it was, and\nlifted it out of the ground with his little finger as easily as you would\nhave done a hawk's bell or bellwether's tingle-tangle; but, before he would\ncarry it to the foresaid tower or steeple appointed for it, he would needs\nmake some music with it about the town, and ring it alongst all the streets\nas he carried it in his hand, wherewith all the people were very glad.  But\nthere happened one great inconveniency, for with carrying it so, and\nringing it about the streets, all the good Orleans wine turned instantly,\nwaxed flat and was spoiled, which nobody there did perceive till the night\nfollowing; for every man found himself so altered and a-dry with drinking\nthese flat wines, that they did nothing but spit, and that as white as\nMalta cotton, saying, We have of the Pantagruel, and our very throats are\nsalted.  This done, he came to Paris with his retinue.  And at his entry\neveryone came out to see him--as you know well enough that the people of\nParis is sottish by nature, by B flat and B sharp--and beheld him with\ngreat astonishment, mixed with no less fear that he would carry away the\npalace into some other country, a remotis, and far from them, as his father\nformerly had done the great peal of bells at Our Lady's Church to tie about\nhis mare's neck.  Now after he had stayed there a pretty space, and studied\nvery well in all the seven liberal arts, he said it was a good town to live\nin, but not to die; for that the grave-digging rogues of St. Innocent used\nin frosty nights to warm their bums with dead men's bones.  In his abode\nthere he found the library of St. Victor a very stately and magnific one,\nespecially in some books which were there, of which followeth the Repertory\nand Catalogue, Et primo,\n\nThe for Godsake of Salvation.\nThe Codpiece of the Law.\nThe Slipshoe of the Decretals.\nThe Pomegranate of Vice.\nThe Clew-bottom of Theology.\nThe Duster or Foxtail-flap of Preachers, composed by Turlupin.\nThe Churning Ballock of the Valiant.\nThe Henbane of the Bishops.\nMarmotretus de baboonis et apis, cum Commento Dorbellis.\nDecretum Universitatis Parisiensis super gorgiasitate muliercularum\n  ad placitum.\nThe Apparition of Sancte Geltrude to a Nun of Poissy, being in\n  travail at the bringing forth of a child.\nArs honeste fartandi in societate, per Marcum Corvinum (Ortuinum).\nThe Mustard-pot of Penance.\nThe Gamashes, alias the Boots of Patience.\nFormicarium artium.\nDe brodiorum usu, et honestate quartandi, per Sylvestrem Prioratem\n  Jacobinum.\nThe Cosened or Gulled in Court.\nThe Frail of the Scriveners.\nThe Marriage-packet.\nThe Cruizy or Crucible of Contemplation.\nThe Flimflams of the Law.\nThe Prickle of Wine.\nThe Spur of Cheese.\nRuboffatorium (Decrotatorium) scholarium.\nTartaretus de modo cacandi.\nThe Bravades of Rome.\nBricot de Differentiis Browsarum.\nThe Tailpiece-Cushion, or Close-breech of Discipline.\nThe Cobbled Shoe of Humility.\nThe Trivet of good Thoughts.\nThe Kettle of Magnanimity.\nThe Cavilling Entanglements of Confessors.\nThe Snatchfare of the Curates.\nReverendi patris fratris Lubini, provincialis Bavardiae, de gulpendis\n  lardslicionibus libri tres.\nPasquilli Doctoris Marmorei, de capreolis cum artichoketa comedendis,\n  tempore Papali ab Ecclesia interdicto.\nThe Invention of the Holy Cross, personated by six wily Priests.\nThe Spectacles of Pilgrims bound for Rome.\nMajoris de modo faciendi puddinos.\nThe Bagpipe of the Prelates.\nBeda de optimitate triparum.\nThe Complaint of the Barristers upon the Reformation of Comfits.\nThe Furred Cat of the Solicitors and Attorneys.\nOf Peas and Bacon, cum Commento.\nThe Small Vales or Drinking Money of the Indulgences.\nPraeclarissimi juris utriusque Doctoris Maistre Pilloti, &c.,\n  Scrap-farthingi de botchandis glossae Accursianae Triflis repetitio\n  enucidi-luculidissima.\nStratagemata Francharchiaeri de Baniolet.\nCarlbumpkinus de Re Militari cum Figuris Tevoti.\nDe usu et utilitate flayandi equos et equas, authore Magistro nostro\n  de Quebecu.\nThe Sauciness of Country-Stewards.\nM.N. Rostocostojambedanesse de mustarda post prandium servienda,\n  libri quatuordecim, apostillati per M. Vaurillonis.\nThe Covillage or Wench-tribute of Promoters.\n(Jabolenus de Cosmographia Purgatorii.)\nQuaestio subtilissima, utrum Chimaera in vacuo bonbinans possit\n  comedere secundas intentiones; et fuit debatuta per decem\n  hebdomadas in Consilio Constantiensi.\nThe Bridle-champer of the Advocates.\nSmutchudlamenta Scoti.\nThe Rasping and Hard-scraping of the Cardinals.\nDe calcaribus removendis, Decades undecim, per M. Albericum de Rosata.\nEjusdem de castramentandis criminibus libri tres.\nThe Entrance of Anthony de Leve into the Territories of Brazil.\n(Marforii, bacalarii cubantis Romae) de peelandis aut unskinnandis\n  blurrandisque Cardinalium mulis.\nThe said Author's Apology against those who allege that the Pope's\n  mule doth eat but at set times.\nPrognosticatio quae incipit, Silvii Triquebille, balata per M.N., the\n  deep-dreaming gull Sion.\nBoudarini Episcopi de emulgentiarum profectibus Aeneades novem,\n  cum privilegio Papali ad triennium et postea non.\nThe Shitabranna of the Maids.\nThe Bald Arse or Peeled Breech of the Widows.\nThe Cowl or Capouch of the Monks.\nThe Mumbling Devotion of the Celestine Friars.\nThe Passage-toll of Beggarliness.\nThe Teeth-chatter or Gum-didder of Lubberly Lusks.\nThe Paring-shovel of the Theologues.\nThe Drench-horn of the Masters of Arts.\nThe Scullions of Olcam, the uninitiated Clerk.\nMagistri N. Lickdishetis, de garbellisiftationibus horarum canonicarum,\n  libri quadriginta.\nArsiversitatorium confratriarum, incerto authore.\nThe Gulsgoatony or Rasher of Cormorants and Ravenous Feeders.\nThe Rammishness of the Spaniards supergivuregondigaded by Friar Inigo.\nThe Muttering of Pitiful Wretches.\nDastardismus rerum Italicarum, authore Magistro Burnegad.\nR. Lullius de Batisfolagiis Principum.\nCalibistratorium caffardiae, authore M. Jacobo Hocstraten hereticometra.\nCodtickler de Magistro nostrandorum Magistro nostratorumque beuvetis,\n  libri octo galantissimi.\nThe Crackarades of Balists or stone-throwing Engines, Contrepate\n  Clerks, Scriveners, Brief-writers, Rapporters, and Papal\n  Bull-despatchers lately compiled by Regis.\nA perpetual Almanack for those that have the gout and the pox.\nManera sweepandi fornacellos per Mag. Eccium.\nThe Shable or Scimetar of Merchants.\nThe Pleasures of the Monachal Life.\nThe Hotchpot of Hypocrites.\nThe History of the Hobgoblins.\nThe Ragamuffinism of the pensionary maimed Soldiers.\nThe Gulling Fibs and Counterfeit shows of Commissaries.\nThe Litter of Treasurers.\nThe Juglingatorium of Sophisters.\nAntipericatametanaparbeugedamphicribrationes Toordicantium.\nThe Periwinkle of Ballad-makers.\nThe Push-forward of the Alchemists.\nThe Niddy-noddy of the Satchel-loaded Seekers, by Friar Bindfastatis.\nThe Shackles of Religion.\nThe Racket of Swag-waggers.\nThe Leaning-stock of old Age.\nThe Muzzle of Nobility.\nThe Ape's Paternoster.\nThe Crickets and Hawk's-bells of Devotion.\nThe Pot of the Ember-weeks.\nThe Mortar of the Politic Life.\nThe Flap of the Hermits.\nThe Riding-hood or Monterg of the Penitentiaries.\nThe Trictrac of the Knocking Friars.\nBlockheadodus, de vita et honestate bragadochiorum.\nLyrippii Sorbonici Moralisationes, per M. Lupoldum.\nThe Carrier-horse-bells of Travellers.\nThe Bibbings of the tippling Bishops.\nDolloporediones Doctorum Coloniensium adversus Reuclin.\nThe Cymbals of Ladies.\nThe Dunger's Martingale.\nWhirlingfriskorum Chasemarkerorum per Fratrem Crackwoodloguetis.\nThe Clouted Patches of a Stout Heart.\nThe Mummery of the Racket-keeping Robin-goodfellows.\nGerson, de auferibilitate Papae ab Ecclesia.\nThe Catalogue of the Nominated and Graduated Persons.\nJo. Dytebrodii, terribilitate excommunicationis libellus acephalos.\nIngeniositas invocandi diabolos et diabolas, per M. Guingolphum.\nThe Hotchpotch or Gallimaufry of the perpetually begging Friars.\nThe Morris-dance of the Heretics.\nThe Whinings of Cajetan.\nMuddisnout Doctoris Cherubici, de origine Roughfootedarum, et\n  Wryneckedorum ritibus, libri septem.\nSixty-nine fat Breviaries.\nThe Nightmare of the five Orders of Beggars.\nThe Skinnery of the new Start-ups extracted out of the fallow-butt,\n  incornifistibulated and plodded upon in the angelic sum.\nThe Raver and idle Talker in cases of Conscience.\nThe Fat Belly of the Presidents.\nThe Baffling Flouter of the Abbots.\nSutoris adversus eum qui vocaverat eum Slabsauceatorem, et quod\n  Slabsauceatores non sunt damnati ab Ecclesia.\nCacatorium medicorum.\nThe Chimney-sweeper of Astrology.\nCampi clysteriorum per paragraph C.\nThe Bumsquibcracker of Apothecaries.\nThe Kissbreech of Chirurgery.\nJustinianus de Whiteleperotis tollendis.\nAntidotarium animae.\nMerlinus Coccaius, de patria diabolorum.\nThe Practice of Iniquity, by Cleuraunes Sadden.\nThe Mirror of Baseness, by Radnecu Waldenses.\nThe Engrained Rogue, by Dwarsencas Eldenu.\nThe Merciless Cormorant, by Hoxinidno the Jew.\n\nOf which library some books are already printed, and the rest are now at\nthe press in this noble city of Tubingen.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel, being at Paris, received letters from his father Gargantua,\nand the copy of them.\n\nPantagruel studied very hard, as you may well conceive, and profited\naccordingly; for he had an excellent understanding and notable wit,\ntogether with a capacity in memory equal to the measure of twelve oil\nbudgets or butts of olives.  And, as he was there abiding one day, he\nreceived a letter from his father in manner as followeth.\n\nMost dear Son,--Amongst the gifts, graces, and prerogatives, with which the\nsovereign plasmator God Almighty hath endowed and adorned human nature at\nthe beginning, that seems to me most singular and excellent by which we may\nin a mortal state attain to a kind of immortality, and in the course of\nthis transitory life perpetuate our name and seed, which is done by a\nprogeny issued from us in the lawful bonds of matrimony.  Whereby that in\nsome measure is restored unto us which was taken from us by the sin of our\nfirst parents, to whom it was said that, because they had not obeyed the\ncommandment of God their Creator, they should die, and by death should be\nbrought to nought that so stately frame and plasmature wherein the man at\nfirst had been created.\n\nBut by this means of seminal propagation there (\"Which continueth\" in the\nold copy.) continueth in the children what was lost in the parents, and in\nthe grandchildren that which perished in their fathers, and so successively\nuntil the day of the last judgment, when Jesus Christ shall have rendered\nup to God the Father his kingdom in a peaceable condition, out of all\ndanger and contamination of sin; for then shall cease all generations and\ncorruptions, and the elements leave off their continual transmutations,\nseeing the so much desired peace shall be attained unto and enjoyed, and\nthat all things shall be brought to their end and period.  And, therefore,\nnot without just and reasonable cause do I give thanks to God my Saviour\nand Preserver, for that he hath enabled me to see my bald old age\nreflourish in thy youth; for when, at his good pleasure, who rules and\ngoverns all things, my soul shall leave this mortal habitation, I shall not\naccount myself wholly to die, but to pass from one place unto another,\nconsidering that, in and by that, I continue in my visible image living in\nthe world, visiting and conversing with people of honour, and other my good\nfriends, as I was wont to do.  Which conversation of mine, although it was\nnot without sin, because we are all of us trespassers, and therefore ought\ncontinually to beseech his divine majesty to blot our transgressions out of\nhis memory, yet was it, by the help and grace of God, without all manner of\nreproach before men.\n\nWherefore, if those qualities of the mind but shine in thee wherewith I am\nendowed, as in thee remaineth the perfect image of my body, thou wilt be\nesteemed by all men to be the perfect guardian and treasure of the\nimmortality of our name.  But, if otherwise, I shall truly take but small\npleasure to see it, considering that the lesser part of me, which is the\nbody, would abide in thee, and the best, to wit, that which is the soul,\nand by which our name continues blessed amongst men, would be degenerate\nand abastardized.  This I do not speak out of any distrust that I have of\nthy virtue, which I have heretofore already tried, but to encourage thee\nyet more earnestly to proceed from good to better.  And that which I now\nwrite unto thee is not so much that thou shouldst live in this virtuous\ncourse, as that thou shouldst rejoice in so living and having lived, and\ncheer up thyself with the like resolution in time to come; to the\nprosecution and accomplishment of which enterprise and generous undertaking\nthou mayst easily remember how that I have spared nothing, but have so\nhelped thee, as if I had had no other treasure in this world but to see\nthee once in my life completely well-bred and accomplished, as well in\nvirtue, honesty, and valour, as in all liberal knowledge and civility, and\nso to leave thee after my death as a mirror representing the person of me\nthy father, and if not so excellent, and such in deed as I do wish thee,\nyet such in my desire.\n\nBut although my deceased father of happy memory, Grangousier, had bent his\nbest endeavours to make me profit in all perfection and political\nknowledge, and that my labour and study was fully correspondent to, yea,\nwent beyond his desire, nevertheless, as thou mayest well understand, the\ntime then was not so proper and fit for learning as it is at present,\nneither had I plenty of such good masters as thou hast had.  For that time\nwas darksome, obscured with clouds of ignorance, and savouring a little of\nthe infelicity and calamity of the Goths, who had, wherever they set\nfooting, destroyed all good literature, which in my age hath by the divine\ngoodness been restored unto its former light and dignity, and that with\nsuch amendment and increase of the knowledge, that now hardly should I be\nadmitted unto the first form of the little grammar-schoolboys--I say, I,\nwho in my youthful days was, and that justly, reputed the most learned of\nthat age.  Which I do not speak in vain boasting, although I might lawfully\ndo it in writing unto thee--in verification whereof thou hast the authority\nof Marcus Tullius in his book of old age, and the sentence of Plutarch in\nthe book entitled How a man may praise himself without envy--but to give\nthee an emulous encouragement to strive yet further.\n\nNow is it that the minds of men are qualified with all manner of\ndiscipline, and the old sciences revived which for many ages were extinct.\nNow it is that the learned languages are to their pristine purity restored,\nviz., Greek, without which a man may be ashamed to account himself a\nscholar, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldaean, and Latin.  Printing likewise is now in\nuse, so elegant and so correct that better cannot be imagined, although it\nwas found out but in my time by divine inspiration, as by a diabolical\nsuggestion on the other side was the invention of ordnance.  All the world\nis full of knowing men, of most learned schoolmasters, and vast libraries;\nand it appears to me as a truth, that neither in Plato's time, nor\nCicero's, nor Papinian's, there was ever such conveniency for studying as\nwe see at this day there is.  Nor must any adventure henceforward to come\nin public, or present himself in company, that hath not been pretty well\npolished in the shop of Minerva.  I see robbers, hangmen, freebooters,\ntapsters, ostlers, and such like, of the very rubbish of the people, more\nlearned now than the doctors and preachers were in my time.\n\nWhat shall I say?  The very women and children have aspired to this praise\nand celestial manner of good learning.  Yet so it is that, in the age I am\nnow of, I have been constrained to learn the Greek tongue--which I\ncontemned not like Cato, but had not the leisure in my younger years to\nattend the study of it--and take much delight in the reading of Plutarch's\nMorals, the pleasant Dialogues of Plato, the Monuments of Pausanias, and\nthe Antiquities of Athenaeus, in waiting on the hour wherein God my Creator\nshall call me and command me to depart from this earth and transitory\npilgrimage.  Wherefore, my son, I admonish thee to employ thy youth to\nprofit as well as thou canst, both in thy studies and in virtue.  Thou art\nat Paris, where the laudable examples of many brave men may stir up thy\nmind to gallant actions, and hast likewise for thy tutor and pedagogue the\nlearned Epistemon, who by his lively and vocal documents may instruct thee\nin the arts and sciences.\n\nI intend, and will have it so, that thou learn the languages perfectly;\nfirst of all the Greek, as Quintilian will have it; secondly, the Latin;\nand then the Hebrew, for the Holy Scripture sake; and then the Chaldee and\nArabic likewise, and that thou frame thy style in Greek in imitation of\nPlato, and for the Latin after Cicero.  Let there be no history which thou\nshalt not have ready in thy memory; unto the prosecuting of which design,\nbooks of cosmography will be very conducible and help thee much.  Of the\nliberal arts of geometry, arithmetic, and music, I gave thee some taste\nwhen thou wert yet little, and not above five or six years old.  Proceed\nfurther in them, and learn the remainder if thou canst.  As for astronomy,\nstudy all the rules thereof.  Let pass, nevertheless, the divining and\njudicial astrology, and the art of Lullius, as being nothing else but plain\nabuses and vanities.  As for the civil law, of that I would have thee to\nknow the texts by heart, and then to confer them with philosophy.\n\nNow, in matter of the knowledge of the works of nature, I would have thee\nto study that exactly, and that so there be no sea, river, nor fountain, of\nwhich thou dost not know the fishes; all the fowls of the air; all the\nseveral kinds of shrubs and trees, whether in forests or orchards; all the\nsorts of herbs and flowers that grow upon the ground; all the various\nmetals that are hid within the bowels of the earth; together with all the\ndiversity of precious stones that are to be seen in the orient and south\nparts of the world.  Let nothing of all these be hidden from thee.  Then\nfail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian, and\nLatin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists; and by\nfrequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of the other world,\ncalled the microcosm, which is man.  And at some hours of the day apply thy\nmind to the study of the Holy Scriptures; first in Greek, the New\nTestament, with the Epistles of the Apostles; and then the Old Testament in\nHebrew.  In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of\nknowledge; for from henceforward, as thou growest great and becomest a man,\nthou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, thou must learn\nchivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, the better thereby to\ndefend my house and our friends, and to succour and protect them at all\ntheir needs against the invasion and assaults of evildoers.\n\nFurthermore, I will that very shortly thou try how much thou hast profited,\nwhich thou canst not better do than by maintaining publicly theses and\nconclusions in all arts against all persons whatsoever, and by haunting the\ncompany of learned men, both at Paris and otherwhere.  But because, as the\nwise man Solomon saith, Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and that\nknowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul, it behoveth thee\nto serve, to love, to fear God, and on him to cast all thy thoughts and all\nthy hope, and by faith formed in charity to cleave unto him, so that thou\nmayst never be separated from him by thy sins.  Suspect the abuses of the\nworld.  Set not thy heart upon vanity, for this life is transitory, but the\nWord of the Lord endureth for ever.  Be serviceable to all thy neighbours,\nand love them as thyself.  Reverence thy preceptors:  shun the conversation\nof those whom thou desirest not to resemble, and receive not in vain the\ngraces which God hath bestowed upon thee.  And, when thou shalt see that\nthou hast attained to all the knowledge that is to be acquired in that\npart, return unto me, that I may see thee and give thee my blessing before\nI die.  My son, the peace and grace of our Lord be with thee.  Amen.\n\n    Thy father Gargantua.\n\n  From Utopia the 17th day of the month of March.\n\nThese letters being received and read, Pantagruel plucked up his heart,\ntook a fresh courage to him, and was inflamed with a desire to profit in\nhis studies more than ever, so that if you had seen him, how he took pains,\nand how he advanced in learning, you would have said that the vivacity of\nhis spirit amidst the books was like a great fire amongst dry wood, so\nactive it was, vigorous and indefatigable.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel found Panurge, whom he loved all his lifetime.\n\nOne day, as Pantagruel was taking a walk without the city, towards St.\nAnthony's abbey, discoursing and philosophating with his own servants and\nsome other scholars, (he) met with a young man of very comely stature and\nsurpassing handsome in all the lineaments of his body, but in several parts\nthereof most pitifully wounded; in such bad equipage in matter of his\napparel, which was but tatters and rags, and every way so far out of order\nthat he seemed to have been a-fighting with mastiff-dogs, from whose fury\nhe had made an escape; or to say better, he looked, in the condition\nwherein he then was, like an apple-gatherer of the country of Perche.\n\nAs far off as Pantagruel saw him, he said to those that stood by, Do you\nsee that man there, who is a-coming hither upon the road from Charenton\nbridge?  By my faith, he is only poor in fortune; for I may assure you that\nby his physiognomy it appeareth that nature hath extracted him from some\nrich and noble race, and that too much curiosity hath thrown him upon\nadventures which possibly have reduced him to this indigence, want, and\npenury.  Now as he was just amongst them, Pantagruel said unto him, Let me\nentreat you, friend, that you may be pleased to stop here a little and\nanswer me to that which I shall ask you, and I am confident you will not\nthink your time ill bestowed; for I have an extreme desire, according to my\nability, to give you some supply in this distress wherein I see you are;\nbecause I do very much commiserate your case, which truly moves me to great\npity.  Therefore, my friend, tell me who you are; whence you come; whither\nyou go; what you desire; and what your name is.  The companion answered him\nin the German (The first edition reads \"Dutch.\") tongue, thus:\n\n'Junker, Gott geb euch gluck und heil.  Furwahr, lieber Junker, ich lasz\neuch wissen, das da ihr mich von fragt, ist ein arm und erbarmlich Ding,\nund wer viel darvon zu sagen, welches euch verdrussig zu horen, und mir zu\nerzelen wer, wiewol die Poeten und Oratorn vorzeiten haben gesagt in ihren\nSpruchen und Sentenzen, dasz die gedechtniss des Elends und Armuth\nvorlangst erlitten ist eine grosse Lust.'  My friend, said Pantagruel, I\nhave no skill in that gibberish of yours; therefore, if you would have us\nto understand you, speak to us in some other language.  Then did the droll\nanswer him thus:\n\n'Albarildim gotfano dechmin brin alabo dordio falbroth ringuam albaras.\nNin portzadikin almucatin milko prin alelmin en thoth dalheben ensouim;\nkuthim al dum alkatim nim broth dechoth porth min michais im endoth, pruch\ndalmaisoulum hol moth danfrihim lupaldas in voldemoth.  Nin hur diavosth\nmnarbotim dalgousch palfrapin duch im scoth pruch galeth dal chinon, min\nfoulchrich al conin brutathen doth dal prin.'  Do you understand none of\nthis? said Pantagruel to the company.  I believe, said Epistemon, that this\nis the language of the Antipodes, and such a hard one that the devil\nhimself knows not what to make of it.  Then said Pantagruel, Gossip, I know\nnot if the walls do comprehend the meaning of your words, but none of us\nhere doth so much as understand one syllable of them.  Then said my blade\nagain:\n\n'Signor mio, voi vedete per essempio, che la cornamusa non suona mai,\ns'ella non ha il ventre pieno.  Cosi io parimente non vi saprei contare le\nmie fortune, se prima il tribulato ventre non ha la solita refettione.  Al\nquale e adviso che le mani et li denti habbiano perso il loro ordine\nnaturale et del tutto annichilati.'  To which Epistemon answered, As much\nof the one as of the other, and nothing of either.  Then said Panurge:\n\n'Lord, if you be so virtuous of intelligence as you be naturally relieved\nto the body, you should have pity of me.  For nature hath made us equal,\nbut fortune hath some exalted and others deprived; nevertheless is virtue\noften deprived and the virtuous men despised; for before the last end none\nis good.'  (The following is the passage as it stands in the first edition.\nUrquhart seems to have rendered Rabelais' indifferent English into worse\nScotch, and this, with probably the use of contractions in his MS., or 'the\noddness' of handwriting which he owns to in his Logopandecteision (p.419,\nMait. Club. Edit.), has led to a chaotic jumble, which it is nearly\nimpossible to reduce to order.--Instead of any attempt to do so, it is here\ngiven verbatim: 'Lard gestholb besua virtuisbe intelligence:  ass yi body\nscalbisbe natural reloth cholb suld osme pety have; for natur hass visse\nequaly maide bot fortune sum exaiti hesse andoyis deprevit:  non yeless\niviss mou virtiuss deprevit, and virtuiss men decreviss for anen ye\nladeniss non quid.'  Here is a morsel for critical ingenuity to fix its\nteeth in.--M.)  Yet less, said Pantagruel.  Then said my jolly Panurge:\n\n'Jona andie guaussa goussy etan beharda er remedio beharde versela ysser\nlanda.  Anbat es otoy y es nausu ey nessassust gourray proposian ordine\nden.  Non yssena bayta facheria egabe gen herassy badia sadassu noura\nassia.  Aran hondavan gualde cydassu naydassuna.  Estou oussyc eg vinan\nsoury hien er darstura eguy harm.  Genicoa plasar vadu.'  Are you there,\nsaid Eudemon, Genicoa?  To this said Carpalim, St. Trinian's rammer\nunstitch your bum, for I had almost understood it.  Then answered Panurge:\n\n'Prust frest frinst sorgdmand strochdi drhds pag brlelang Gravot Chavigny\nPomardiere rusth pkaldracg Deviniere pres Nays.  Couille kalmuch monach\ndrupp del meupplist rincq drlnd dodelb up drent loch minc stz rinq jald de\nvins ders cordelis bur jocst stzampenards.'  Do you speak Christian, said\nEpistemon, or the buffoon language, otherwise called Patelinois?  Nay, it\nis the puzlatory tongue, said another, which some call Lanternois.  Then\nsaid Panurge:\n\n'Heere, ik en spreeke anders geen taele dan kersten taele:  my dunkt\nnoghtans, al en seg ik u niet een wordt, mynen noot verklaert genoegh wat\nik begeere:  geeft my uyt bermhertigheit yets waar van ik gevoet magh zyn.'\nTo which answered Pantagruel, As much of that.  Then said Panurge:\n\n'Sennor, de tanto hablar yo soy cansado, porque yo suplico a vuestra\nreverentia que mire a los preceptos evangelicos, para que ellos movan\nvuestra reverentia a lo que es de conscientia; y si ellos non bastaren,\npara mouer vuestra reverentia a piedad, yo suplico que mire a la piedad\nnatural, la qual yo creo que le movera como es de razon: y con esso non\ndigo mas.'  Truly, my friend, (said Pantagruel,) I doubt not but you can\nspeak divers languages; but tell us that which you would have us to do for\nyou in some tongue which you conceive we may understand.  Then said the\ncompanion:\n\n'Min Herre, endog ieg med ingen tunge talede, ligesom baern, oc uskellige\ncreatuure:  Mine klaedebon oc mit legoms magerhed uduiser alligeuel klarlig\nhuad ting mig best behof gioris, som er sandelig mad oc dricke:  Huorfor\nforbarme dig ofuer mig, oc befal at giue mig noguet, af huilcket ieg kand\nslyre min giaeendis mage, ligeruiis som mand Cerbero en suppe forsetter:\nSaa skalt du lefue laenge oc lycksalig.'  I think really, said Eusthenes,\nthat the Goths spoke thus of old, and that, if it pleased God, we would all\nof us speak so with our tails.  Then again said Panurge:\n\n'Adon, scalom lecha:  im ischar harob hal hebdeca bimeherah thithen li\nkikar lehem:  chanchat ub laah al Adonai cho nen ral.'  To which answered\nEpistemon, At this time have I understood him very well; for it is the\nHebrew tongue most rhetorically pronounced.  Then again said the gallant:\n\n'Despota tinyn panagathe, diati sy mi ouk artodotis? horas gar limo\nanaliscomenon eme athlion, ke en to metaxy me ouk eleis oudamos, zetis de\npar emou ha ou chre.  Ke homos philologi pantes homologousi tote logous te\nke remata peritta hyparchin, hopote pragma afto pasi delon esti.  Entha gar\nanankei monon logi isin, hina pragmata (hon peri amphisbetoumen), me\nprosphoros epiphenete.'  What?  Said Carpalim, Pantagruel's footman, It is\nGreek, I have understood him.  And how? hast thou dwelt any while in\nGreece?  Then said the droll again:\n\n'Agonou dont oussys vous desdagnez algorou:  nou den farou zamist vous\nmariston ulbrou, fousques voubrol tant bredaguez moupreton dengoulhoust,\ndaguez daguez non cropys fost pardonnoflist nougrou.  Agou paston tol\nnalprissys hourtou los echatonous, prou dhouquys brol pany gou den bascrou\nnoudous caguons goulfren goul oustaroppassou.'  (In this and the preceding\nspeeches of Panurge, the Paris Variorum Edition of 1823 has been followed\nin correcting Urquhart's text, which is full of inaccuracies.--M.)\nMethinks I understand him, said Pantagruel; for either it is the language\nof my country of Utopia, or sounds very like it.  And, as he was about to\nhave begun some purpose, the companion said:\n\n'Jam toties vos per sacra, perque deos deasque omnes obtestatus sum, ut si\nquae vos pietas permovet, egestatem meam solaremini, nec hilum proficio\nclamans et ejulans.  Sinite, quaeso, sinite, viri impii, quo me fata vocant\nabire; nec ultra vanis vestris interpellationibus obtundatis, memores\nveteris illius adagii, quo venter famelicus auriculis carere dicitur.'\nWell, my friend, said Pantagruel, but cannot you speak French?  That I can\ndo, sir, very well, said the companion, God be thanked.  It is my natural\nlanguage and mother tongue, for I was born and bred in my younger years in\nthe garden of France, to wit, Touraine.  Then, said Pantagruel, tell us\nwhat is your name, and from whence you are come; for, by my faith, I have\nalready stamped in my mind such a deep impression of love towards you,\nthat, if you will condescend unto my will, you shall not depart out of my\ncompany, and you and I shall make up another couple of friends such as\nAeneas and Achates were.  Sir, said the companion, my true and proper\nChristian name is Panurge, and now I come out of Turkey, to which country I\nwas carried away prisoner at that time when they went to Metelin with a\nmischief.  And willingly would I relate unto you my fortunes, which are\nmore wonderful than those of Ulysses were; but, seeing that it pleaseth you\nto retain me with you, I most heartily accept of the offer, protesting\nnever to leave you should you go to all the devils in hell.  We shall have\ntherefore more leisure at another time, and a fitter opportunity wherein to\nreport them; for at this present I am in a very urgent necessity to feed;\nmy teeth are sharp, my belly empty, my throat dry, and my stomach fierce\nand burning, all is ready.  If you will but set me to work, it will be as\ngood as a balsamum for sore eyes to see me gulch and raven it.  For God's\nsake, give order for it.  Then Pantagruel commanded that they should carry\nhim home and provide him good store of victuals; which being done, he ate\nvery well that evening, and, capon-like, went early to bed; then slept\nuntil dinner-time the next day, so that he made but three steps and one\nleap from the bed to the board.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel judged so equitably of a controversy, which was wonderfully\nobscure and difficult, that, by reason of his just decree therein, he was\nreputed to have a most admirable judgment.\n\nPantagruel, very well remembering his father's letter and admonitions,\nwould one day make trial of his knowledge.  Thereupon, in all the\ncarrefours, that is, throughout all the four quarters, streets, and corners\nof the city, he set up conclusions to the number of nine thousand seven\nhundred sixty and four, in all manner of learning, touching in them the\nhardest doubts that are in any science.  And first of all, in the Fodder\nStreet he held dispute against all the regents or fellows of colleges,\nartists or masters of arts, and orators, and did so gallantly that he\noverthrew them and set them all upon their tails.  He went afterwards to\nthe Sorbonne, where he maintained argument against all the theologians or\ndivines, for the space of six weeks, from four o'clock in the morning until\nsix in the evening, except an interval of two hours to refresh themselves\nand take their repast.  And at this were present the greatest part of the\nlords of the court, the masters of requests, presidents, counsellors, those\nof the accompts, secretaries, advocates, and others; as also the sheriffs\nof the said town, with the physicians and professors of the canon law.\nAmongst which, it is to be remarked, that the greatest part were stubborn\njades, and in their opinions obstinate; but he took such course with them\nthat, for all their ergoes and fallacies, he put their backs to the wall,\ngravelled them in the deepest questions, and made it visibly appear to the\nworld that, compared to him, they were but monkeys and a knot of muffled\ncalves.  Whereupon everybody began to keep a bustling noise and talk of his\nso marvellous knowledge, through all degrees of persons of both sexes, even\nto the very laundresses, brokers, roast-meat sellers, penknife makers, and\nothers, who, when he passed along in the street, would say, This is he! in\nwhich he took delight, as Demosthenes, the prince of Greek orators, did,\nwhen an old crouching wife, pointing at him with her fingers, said, That is\nthe man.\n\nNow at this same very time there was a process or suit in law depending in\ncourt between two great lords, of which one was called my Lord Kissbreech,\nplaintiff of one side, and the other my Lord Suckfist, defendant of the\nother; whose controversy was so high and difficult in law that the court of\nparliament could make nothing of it.  And therefore, by the commandment of\nthe king, there were assembled four of the greatest and most learned of all\nthe parliaments of France, together with the great council, and all the\nprincipal regents of the universities, not only of France, but of England\nalso and Italy, such as Jason, Philippus Decius, Petrus de Petronibus, and\na rabble of other old Rabbinists.  Who being thus met together, after they\nhad thereupon consulted for the space of six-and-forty weeks, finding that\nthey could not fasten their teeth in it, nor with such clearness understand\nthe case as that they might in any manner of way be able to right it, or\ntake up the difference betwixt the two aforesaid parties, it did so\ngrievously vex them that they most villainously conshit themselves for\nshame.  In this great extremity one amongst them, named Du Douhet, the\nlearnedest of all, and more expert and prudent than any of the rest, whilst\none day they were thus at their wits' end, all-to-be-dunced and\nphilogrobolized in their brains, said unto them, We have been here, my\nmasters, a good long space, without doing anything else than trifle away\nboth our time and money, and can nevertheless find neither brim nor bottom\nin this matter, for the more we study about it the less we understand\ntherein, which is a great shame and disgrace to us, and a heavy burden to\nour consciences; yea, such that in my opinion we shall not rid ourselves of\nit without dishonour, unless we take some other course; for we do nothing\nbut dote in our consultations.\n\nSee, therefore, what I have thought upon.  You have heard much talking of\nthat worthy personage named Master Pantagruel, who hath been found to be\nlearned above the capacity of this present age, by the proofs he gave in\nthose great disputations which he held publicly against all men.  My\nopinion is, that we send for him to confer with him about this business;\nfor never any man will encompass the bringing of it to an end if he do it\nnot.\n\nHereunto all the counsellors and doctors willingly agreed, and according to\nthat their result having instantly sent for him, they entreated him to be\npleased to canvass the process and sift it thoroughly, that, after a deep\nsearch and narrow examination of all the points thereof, he might forthwith\nmake the report unto them such as he shall think good in true and legal\nknowledge.  To this effect they delivered into his hands the bags wherein\nwere the writs and pancarts concerning that suit, which for bulk and weight\nwere almost enough to lade four great couillard or stoned asses. But\nPantagruel said unto them, Are the two lords between whom this debate and\nprocess is yet living?  It was answered him, Yes.  To what a devil, then,\nsaid he, serve so many paltry heaps and bundles of papers and copies which\nyou give me?  Is it not better to hear their controversy from their own\nmouths whilst they are face to face before us, than to read these vile\nfopperies, which are nothing but trumperies, deceits, diabolical cozenages\nof Cepola, pernicious slights and subversions of equity?  For I am sure\nthat you, and all those through whose hands this process has passed, have\nby your devices added what you could to it pro et contra in such sort that,\nalthough their difference perhaps was clear and easy enough to determine at\nfirst, you have obscured it and made it more intricate by the frivolous,\nsottish, unreasonable, and foolish reasons and opinions of Accursius,\nBaldus, Bartolus, de Castro, de Imola, Hippolytus, Panormo, Bertachin,\nAlexander, Curtius, and those other old mastiffs, who never understood the\nleast law of the Pandects, they being but mere blockheads and great tithe\ncalves, ignorant of all that which was needful for the understanding of the\nlaws; for, as it is most certain, they had not the knowledge either of the\nGreek or Latin tongue, but only of the Gothic and barbarian.  The laws,\nnevertheless, were first taken from the Greeks, according to the testimony\nof Ulpian, L. poster. de origine juris, which we likewise may perceive by\nthat all the laws are full of Greek words and sentences.  And then we find\nthat they are reduced into a Latin style the most elegant and ornate that\nwhole language is able to afford, without excepting that of any that ever\nwrote therein, nay, not of Sallust, Varro, Cicero, Seneca, Titus Livius,\nnor Quintilian.  How then could these old dotards be able to understand\naright the text of the laws who never in their time had looked upon a good\nLatin book, as doth evidently enough appear by the rudeness of their style,\nwhich is fitter for a chimney-sweeper, or for a cook or a scullion, than\nfor a jurisconsult and doctor in the laws?\n\nFurthermore, seeing the laws are excerpted out of the middle of moral and\nnatural philosophy, how should these fools have understood it, that have,\nby G--, studied less in philosophy than my mule?  In respect of human\nlearning and the knowledge of antiquities and history they were truly laden\nwith those faculties as a toad is with feathers.  And yet of all this the\nlaws are so full that without it they cannot be understood, as I intend\nmore fully to show unto you in a peculiar treatise which on that purpose I\nam about to publish.  Therefore, if you will that I take any meddling in\nthis process, first cause all these papers to be burnt; secondly, make the\ntwo gentlemen come personally before me, and afterwards, when I shall have\nheard them, I will tell you my opinion freely without any feignedness or\ndissimulation whatsoever.\n\nSome amongst them did contradict this motion, as you know that in all\ncompanies there are more fools than wise men, and that the greater part\nalways surmounts the better, as saith Titus Livius in speaking of the\nCarthaginians.  But the foresaid Du Douhet held the contrary opinion,\nmaintaining that Pantagruel had said well, and what was right, in affirming\nthat these records, bills of inquest, replies, rejoinders, exceptions,\ndepositions, and other such diableries of truth-entangling writs, were but\nengines wherewith to overthrow justice and unnecessarily to prolong such\nsuits as did depend before them; and that, therefore, the devil would carry\nthem all away to hell if they did not take another course and proceeded not\nin times coming according to the prescripts of evangelical and\nphilosophical equity.  In fine, all the papers were burnt, and the two\ngentlemen summoned and personally convented.  At whose appearance before\nthe court Pantagruel said unto them, Are you they that have this great\ndifference betwixt you?  Yes, my lord, said they.  Which of you, said\nPantagruel, is the plaintiff?  It is I, said my Lord Kissbreech.  Go to,\nthen, my friend, said he, and relate your matter unto me from point to\npoint, according to the real truth, or else, by cock's body, if I find you\nto lie so much as in one word, I will make you shorter by the head, and\ntake it from off your shoulders to show others by your example that in\njustice and judgment men ought to speak nothing but the truth.  Therefore\ntake heed you do not add nor impair anything in the narration of your case.\nBegin.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Lords of Kissbreech and Suckfist did plead before Pantagruel\nwithout an attorney.\n\nThen began Kissbreech in manner as followeth.  My lord, it is true that a\ngood woman of my house carried eggs to the market to sell.  Be covered,\nKissbreech, said Pantagruel.  Thanks to you, my lord, said the Lord\nKissbreech; but to the purpose.  There passed betwixt the two tropics the\nsum of threepence towards the zenith and a halfpenny, forasmuch as the\nRiphaean mountains had been that year oppressed with a great sterility of\ncounterfeit gudgeons and shows without substance, by means of the babbling\ntattle and fond fibs seditiously raised between the gibblegabblers and\nAccursian gibberish-mongers for the rebellion of the Switzers, who had\nassembled themselves to the full number of the bumbees and myrmidons to go\na-handsel-getting on the first day of the new year, at that very time when\nthey give brewis to the oxen and deliver the key of the coals to the\ncountry-girls for serving in of the oats to the dogs.  All the night long\nthey did nothing else, keeping their hands still upon the pot, but\ndespatch, both on foot and horseback, leaden-sealed writs or letters, to\nwit, papal commissions commonly called bulls, to stop the boats; for the\ntailors and seamsters would have made of the stolen shreds and clippings a\ngoodly sagbut to cover the face of the ocean, which then was great with\nchild of a potful of cabbage, according to the opinion of the\nhay-bundle-makers.  But the physicians said that by the urine they\ncould discern no manifest sign of the bustard's pace, nor how to eat\ndouble-tongued mattocks with mustard, unless the lords and gentlemen of the\ncourt should be pleased to give by B.mol express command to the pox not to\nrun about any longer in gleaning up of coppersmiths and tinkers; for the\njobbernolls had already a pretty good beginning in their dance of the\nBritish jig called the estrindore, to a perfect diapason, with one foot in\nthe fire, and their head in the middle, as goodman Ragot was wont to say.\n\nHa, my masters, God moderates all things, and disposeth of them at his\npleasure, so that against unlucky fortune a carter broke his frisking whip,\nwhich was all the wind-instrument he had.  This was done at his return from\nthe little paltry town, even then when Master Antitus of Cressplots was\nlicentiated, and had passed his degrees in all dullery and blockishness,\naccording to this sentence of the canonists, Beati Dunces, quoniam ipsi\nstumblaverunt.  But that which makes Lent to be so high, by St. Fiacre of\nBry, is for nothing else but that the Pentecost never comes but to my cost;\nyet, on afore there, ho! a little rain stills a great wind, and we must\nthink so, seeing that the sergeant hath propounded the matter so far above\nmy reach, that the clerks and secondaries could not with the benefit\nthereof lick their fingers, feathered with ganders, so orbicularly as they\nwere wont in other things to do.  And we do manifestly see that everyone\nacknowledgeth himself to be in the error wherewith another hath been\ncharged, reserving only those cases whereby we are obliged to take an\nocular inspection in a perspective glass of these things towards the place\nin the chimney where hangeth the sign of the wine of forty girths, which\nhave been always accounted very necessary for the number of twenty pannels\nand pack-saddles of the bankrupt protectionaries of five years' respite.\nHowsoever, at least, he that would not let fly the fowl before the\ncheesecakes ought in law to have discovered his reason why not, for the\nmemory is often lost with a wayward shoeing.  Well, God keep Theobald\nMitain from all danger!  Then said Pantagruel, Hold there!  Ho, my friend,\nsoft and fair, speak at leisure and soberly without putting yourself in\ncholer.  I understand the case,--go on.  Now then, my lord, said\nKissbreech, the foresaid good woman saying her gaudez and audi nos, could\nnot cover herself with a treacherous backblow, ascending by the wounds and\npassions of the privileges of the universities, unless by the virtue of a\nwarming-pan she had angelically fomented every part of her body in covering\nthem with a hedge of garden-beds; then giving in a swift unavoidable thirst\n(thrust) very near to the place where they sell the old rags whereof the\npainters of Flanders make great use when they are about neatly to clap on\nshoes on grasshoppers, locusts, cigals, and such like fly-fowls, so strange\nto us that I am wonderfully astonished why the world doth not lay, seeing\nit is so good to hatch.\n\nHere the Lord of Suckfist would have interrupted him and spoken somewhat,\nwhereupon Pantagruel said unto him, St! by St. Anthony's belly, doth it\nbecome thee to speak without command?  I sweat here with the extremity of\nlabour and exceeding toil I take to understand the proceeding of your\nmutual difference, and yet thou comest to trouble and disquiet me.  Peace,\nin the devil's name, peace.  Thou shalt be permitted to speak thy bellyful\nwhen this man hath done, and no sooner.  Go on, said he to Kissbreech;\nspeak calmly, and do not overheat yourself with too much haste.\n\nI perceiving, then, said Kissbreech, that the Pragmatical Sanction did make\nno mention of it, and that the holy Pope to everyone gave liberty to fart\nat his own ease, if that the blankets had no streaks wherein the liars were\nto be crossed with a ruffian-like crew, and, the rainbow being newly\nsharpened at Milan to bring forth larks, gave his full consent that the\ngood woman should tread down the heel of the hip-gut pangs, by virtue of a\nsolemn protestation put in by the little testiculated or codsted fishes,\nwhich, to tell the truth, were at that time very necessary for\nunderstanding the syntax and construction of old boots.  Therefore John\nCalf, her cousin gervais once removed with a log from the woodstack, very\nseriously advised her not to put herself into the hazard of quagswagging in\nthe lee, to be scoured with a buck of linen clothes till first she had\nkindled the paper.  This counsel she laid hold on, because he desired her\nto take nothing and throw out, for Non de ponte vadit, qui cum sapientia\ncadit.  Matters thus standing, seeing the masters of the chamber of\naccompts or members of that committee did not fully agree amongst\nthemselves in casting up the number of the Almany whistles, whereof were\nframed those spectacles for princes which have been lately printed at\nAntwerp, I must needs think that it makes a bad return of the writ, and\nthat the adverse party is not to be believed, in sacer verbo dotis.  For\nthat, having a great desire to obey the pleasure of the king, I armed\nmyself from toe to top with belly furniture, of the soles of good\nvenison-pasties, to go see how my grape-gatherers and vintagers had pinked\nand cut full of small holes their high-coped caps, to lecher it the better,\nand play at in and in.  And indeed the time was very dangerous in coming\nfrom the fair, in so far that many trained bowmen were cast at the muster\nand quite rejected, although the chimney-tops were high enough, according to\nthe proportion of the windgalls in the legs of horses, or of the malanders,\nwhich in the esteem of expert farriers is no better disease, or else the\nstory of Ronypatifam or Lamibaudichon, interpreted by some to be the tale of\na tub or of a roasted horse, savours of apocrypha, and is not an authentic\nhistory.  And by this means there was that year great abundance, throughout\nall the country of Artois, of tawny buzzing beetles, to the no small profit\nof the gentlemen-great-stick-faggot-carriers, when they did eat without\ndisdaining the cocklicranes, till their belly was like to crack with it\nagain.  As for my own part, such is my Christian charity towards my\nneighbours, that I could wish from my heart everyone had as good a voice; it\nwould make us play the better at the tennis and the balloon.  And truly, my\nlord, to express the real truth without dissimulation, I cannot but say that\nthose petty subtle devices which are found out in the etymologizing of\npattens would descend more easily into the river of Seine, to serve for ever\nat the millers' bridge upon the said water, as it was heretofore decreed by\nthe king of the Canarians, according to the sentence or judgment given\nthereupon, which is to be seen in the registry and records within the\nclerk's office of this house.\n\nAnd, therefore, my lord, I do most humbly require, that by your lordship\nthere may be said and declared upon the case what is reasonable, with\ncosts, damages, and interests.  Then said Pantagruel, My friend, is this\nall you have to say?  Kissbreech answered, Yes, my lord, for I have told\nall the tu autem, and have not varied at all upon mine honour in so much as\none single word.  You then, said Pantagruel, my Lord of Suckfist, say what\nyou will, and be brief, without omitting, nevertheless, anything that may\nserve to the purpose.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Lord of Suckfist pleaded before Pantagruel.\n\nThen began the Lord Suckfist in manner as followeth.  My lord, and you my\nmasters, if the iniquity of men were as easily seen in categorical judgment\nas we can discern flies in a milkpot, the world's four oxen had not been so\neaten up with rats, nor had so many ears upon the earth been nibbled away\nso scurvily.  For although all that my adversary hath spoken be of a very\nsoft and downy truth, in so much as concerns the letter and history of the\nfactum, yet nevertheless the crafty slights, cunning subtleties, sly\ncozenages, and little troubling entanglements are hid under the rosepot,\nthe common cloak and cover of all fraudulent deceits.\n\nShould I endure that, when I am eating my pottage equal with the best, and\nthat without either thinking or speaking any manner of ill, they rudely\ncome to vex, trouble, and perplex my brains with that antique proverb which\nsaith,\n\n  Who in his pottage-eating drinks will not,\n  When he is dead and buried, see one jot.\n\nAnd, good lady, how many great captains have we seen in the day of battle,\nwhen in open field the sacrament was distributed in luncheons of the\nsanctified bread of the confraternity, the more honestly to nod their\nheads, play on the lute, and crack with their tails, to make pretty little\nplatform leaps in keeping level by the ground?  But now the world is\nunshackled from the corners of the packs of Leicester.  One flies out\nlewdly and becomes debauched; another, likewise, five, four, and two, and\nthat at such random that, if the court take not some course therein, it\nwill make as bad a season in matter of gleaning this year as ever it made,\nor it will make goblets.  If any poor creature go to the stoves to\nilluminate his muzzle with a cowsherd or to buy winter-boots, and that the\nsergeants passing by, or those of the watch, happen to receive the\ndecoction of a clyster or the fecal matter of a close-stool upon their\nrustling-wrangling-clutter-keeping masterships, should any because of that\nmake bold to clip the shillings and testers and fry the wooden dishes?\nSometimes, when we think one thing, God does another; and when the sun is\nwholly set all beasts are in the shade.  Let me never be believed again, if\nI do not gallantly prove it by several people who have seen the light of\nthe day.\n\nIn the year thirty and six, buying a Dutch curtail, which was a middle-sized\nhorse, both high and short, of a wool good enough and dyed in grain, as the\ngoldsmiths assured me, although the notary put an &c. in it, I told really\nthat I was not a clerk of so much learning as to snatch at the moon with my\nteeth; but, as for the butter-firkin where Vulcanian deeds and evidences\nwere sealed, the rumour was, and the report thereof went current, that\nsalt-beef will make one find the way to the wine without a candle, though it\nwere hid in the bottom of a collier's sack, and that with his drawers on he\nwere mounted on a barbed horse furnished with a fronstal, and such arms,\nthighs, and leg-pieces as are requisite for the well frying and broiling of\na swaggering sauciness.  Here is a sheep's head, and it is well they make a\nproverb of this, that it is good to see black cows in burnt wood when one\nattains to the enjoyment of his love.  I had a consultation upon this point\nwith my masters the clerks, who for resolution concluded in frisesomorum\nthat there is nothing like to mowing in the summer, and sweeping clean away\nin water, well garnished with paper, ink, pens, and penknives, of Lyons upon\nthe river of Rhone, dolopym dolopof, tarabin tarabas, tut, prut, pish; for,\nincontinently after that armour begins to smell of garlic, the rust will go\nnear to eat the liver, not of him that wears it, and then do they nothing\nelse but withstand others' courses, and wryneckedly set up their bristles\n'gainst one another, in lightly passing over their afternoon's sleep, and\nthis is that which maketh salt so dear. My lords, believe not when the said\ngood woman had with birdlime caught the shoveler fowl, the better before a\nsergeant's witness to deliver the younger son's portion to him, that the\nsheep's pluck or hog's haslet did dodge and shrink back in the usurers'\npurses, or that there could be anything better to preserve one from the\ncannibals than to take a rope of onions, knit with three hundred turnips,\nand a little of a calf's chaldern of the best allay that the alchemists have\nprovided, (and) that they daub and do over with clay, as also calcinate and\nburn to dust these pantoufles, muff in muff out, mouflin mouflard, with the\nfine sauce of the juice of the rabble rout, whilst they hide themselves in\nsome petty mouldwarphole, saving always the little slices of bacon.  Now, if\nthe dice will not favour you with any other throw but ambes-ace and the\nchance of three at the great end, mark well the ace, then take me your dame,\nsettle her in a corner of the bed, and whisk me her up drilletrille, there,\nthere, toureloura la la; which when you have done, take a hearty draught of\nthe best, despicando grenovillibus, in despite of the frogs, whose fair\ncoarse bebuskined stockings shall be set apart for the little green geese or\nmewed goslings, which, fattened in a coop, take delight to sport themselves\nat the wagtail game, waiting for the beating of the metal and heating of the\nwax by the slavering drivellers of consolation.\n\nVery true it is, that the four oxen which are in debate, and whereof\nmention was made, were somewhat short in memory.  Nevertheless, to\nunderstand the game aright, they feared neither the cormorant nor mallard\nof Savoy, which put the good people of my country in great hope that their\nchildren some time should become very skilful in algorism.  Therefore is\nit, that by a law rubric and special sentence thereof, that we cannot fail\nto take the wolf if we make our hedges higher than the windmill, whereof\nsomewhat was spoken by the plaintiff.  But the great devil did envy it, and\nby that means put the High Dutches far behind, who played the devils in\nswilling down and tippling at the good liquor, trink, mein herr, trink,\ntrink, by two of my table-men in the corner-point I have gained the lurch.\nFor it is not probable, nor is there any appearance of truth in this\nsaying, that at Paris upon a little bridge the hen is proportionable, and\nwere they as copped and high-crested as marsh whoops, if veritably they did\nnot sacrifice the printer's pumpet-balls at Moreb, with a new edge set upon\nthem by text letters or those of a swift-writing hand, it is all one to me,\nso that the headband of the book breed not moths or worms in it.  And put\nthe case that, at the coupling together of the buckhounds, the little\npuppies shall have waxed proud before the notary could have given an\naccount of the serving of his writ by the cabalistic art, it will\nnecessarily follow, under correction of the better judgment of the court,\nthat six acres of meadow ground of the greatest breadth will make three\nbutts of fine ink, without paying ready money; considering that, at the\nfuneral of King Charles, we might have had the fathom in open market for\none and two, that is, deuce ace.  This I may affirm with a safe conscience,\nupon my oath of wool.\n\nAnd I see ordinarily in all good bagpipes, that, when they go to the\ncounterfeiting of the chirping of small birds, by swinging a broom three\ntimes about a chimney, and putting his name upon record, they do nothing\nbut bend a crossbow backwards, and wind a horn, if perhaps it be too hot,\nand that, by making it fast to a rope he was to draw, immediately after the\nsight of the letters, the cows were restored to him.  Such another sentence\nafter the homeliest manner was pronounced in the seventeenth year, because\nof the bad government of Louzefougarouse, whereunto it may please the court\nto have regard.  I desire to be rightly understood; for truly, I say not\nbut that in all equity, and with an upright conscience, those may very well\nbe dispossessed who drink holy water as one would do a weaver's shuttle,\nwhereof suppositories are made to those that will not resign, but on the\nterms of ell and tell and giving of one thing for another.  Tunc, my lords,\nquid juris pro minoribus?  For the common custom of the Salic law is such,\nthat the first incendiary or firebrand of sedition that flays the cow and\nwipes his nose in a full concert of music without blowing in the cobbler's\nstitches, should in the time of the nightmare sublimate the penury of his\nmember by moss gathered when people are like to founder themselves at the\nmess at midnight, to give the estrapade to these white wines of Anjou that\ndo the fear of the leg in lifting it by horsemen called the gambetta, and\nthat neck to neck after the fashion of Brittany, concluding as before with\ncosts, damages, and interests.\n\nAfter that the Lord of Suckfist had ended, Pantagruel said to the Lord of\nKissbreech, My friend, have you a mind to make any reply to what is said?\nNo, my lord, answered Kissbreech; for I have spoke all I intended, and\nnothing but the truth.  Therefore, put an end for God's sake to our\ndifference, for we are here at great charge.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel gave judgment upon the difference of the two lords.\n\nThen Pantagruel, rising up, assembled all the presidents, counsellors, and\ndoctors that were there, and said unto them, Come now, my masters, you have\nheard vivae vocis oraculo, the controversy that is in question; what do you\nthink of it?  They answered him, We have indeed heard it, but have not\nunderstood the devil so much as one circumstance of the case; and therefore\nwe beseech you, una voce, and in courtesy request you that you would give\nsentence as you think good, and, ex nunc prout ex tunc, we are satisfied\nwith it, and do ratify it with our full consents.  Well, my masters, said\nPantagruel, seeing you are so pleased, I will do it; but I do not truly\nfind the case so difficult as you make it.  Your paragraph Caton, the law\nFrater, the law Gallus, the law Quinque pedum, the law Vinum, the law Si\nDominus, the law Mater, the law Mulier bona, to the law Si quis, the law\nPomponius, the law Fundi, the law Emptor, the law Praetor, the law\nVenditor, and a great many others, are far more intricate in my opinion.\nAfter he had spoke this, he walked a turn or two about the hall, plodding\nvery profoundly, as one may think; for he did groan like an ass whilst they\ngirth him too hard, with the very intensiveness of considering how he was\nbound in conscience to do right to both parties, without varying or\naccepting of persons.  Then he returned, sat down, and began to pronounce\nsentence as followeth.\n\nHaving seen, heard, calculated, and well considered of the difference\nbetween the Lords of Kissbreech and Suckfist, the court saith unto them,\nthat in regard of the sudden quaking, shivering, and hoariness of the\nflickermouse, bravely declining from the estival solstice, to attempt by\nprivate means the surprisal of toyish trifles in those who are a little\nunwell for having taken a draught too much, through the lewd demeanour and\nvexation of the beetles that inhabit the diarodal (diarhomal) climate of an\nhypocritical ape on horseback, bending a crossbow backwards, the plaintiff\ntruly had just cause to calfet, or with oakum to stop the chinks of the\ngalleon which the good woman blew up with wind, having one foot shod and\nthe other bare, reimbursing and restoring to him, low and stiff in his\nconscience, as many bladder-nuts and wild pistaches as there is of hair in\neighteen cows, with as much for the embroiderer, and so much for that.  He\nis likewise declared innocent of the case privileged from the knapdardies,\ninto the danger whereof it was thought he had incurred; because he could\nnot jocundly and with fulness of freedom untruss and dung, by the decision\nof a pair of gloves perfumed with the scent of bum-gunshot at the\nwalnut-tree taper, as is usual in his country of Mirebalais.  Slacking,\ntherefore, the topsail, and letting go the bowline with the brazen bullets,\nwherewith the mariners did by way of protestation bake in pastemeat great\nstore of pulse interquilted with the dormouse, whose hawk's-bells were made\nwith a puntinaria, after the manner of Hungary or Flanders lace, and which\nhis brother-in-law carried in a pannier, lying near to three chevrons or\nbordered gules, whilst he was clean out of heart, drooping and crestfallen\nby the too narrow sifting, canvassing, and curious examining of the matter\nin the angularly doghole of nasty scoundrels, from whence we shoot at the\nvermiformal popinjay with the flap made of a foxtail.\n\nBut in that he chargeth the defendant that he was a botcher, cheese-eater,\nand trimmer of man's flesh embalmed, which in the arsiversy swagfall tumble\nwas not found true, as by the defendant was very well discussed.\n\nThe court, therefore, doth condemn and amerce him in three porringers of\ncurds, well cemented and closed together, shining like pearls, and\ncodpieced after the fashion of the country, to be paid unto the said\ndefendant about the middle of August in May.  But, on the other part, the\ndefendant shall be bound to furnish him with hay and stubble for stopping\nthe caltrops of his throat, troubled and impulregafized, with gabardines\ngarbled shufflingly, and friends as before, without costs and for cause.\n\nWhich sentence being pronounced, the two parties departed both contented\nwith the decree, which was a thing almost incredible.  For it never came to\npass since the great rain, nor shall the like occur in thirteen jubilees\nhereafter, that two parties contradictorily contending in judgment be\nequally satisfied and well pleased with the definitive sentence.  As for\nthe counsellors and other doctors in the law that were there present, they\nwere all so ravished with admiration at the more than human wisdom of\nPantagruel, which they did most clearly perceive to be in him by his so\naccurate decision of this so difficult and thorny cause, that their spirits\nwith the extremity of the rapture being elevated above the pitch of\nactuating the organs of the body, they fell into a trance and sudden\necstasy, wherein they stayed for the space of three long hours, and had\nbeen so as yet in that condition had not some good people fetched store of\nvinegar and rose-water to bring them again unto their former sense and\nunderstanding, for the which God be praised everywhere.  And so be it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge related the manner how he escaped out of the hands of the\nTurks.\n\nThe great wit and judgment of Pantagruel was immediately after this made\nknown unto all the world by setting forth his praises in print, and putting\nupon record this late wonderful proof he hath given thereof amongst the\nrolls of the crown and registers of the palace, in such sort that everybody\nbegan to say that Solomon, who by a probable guess only, without any\nfurther certainty, caused the child to be delivered to its own mother,\nshowed never in his time such a masterpiece of wisdom as the good\nPantagruel hath done.  Happy are we, therefore, that have him in our\ncountry.  And indeed they would have made him thereupon master of the\nrequests and president in the court; but he refused all, very graciously\nthanking them for their offer.  For, said he, there is too much slavery in\nthese offices, and very hardly can they be saved that do exercise them,\nconsidering the great corruption that is amongst men.  Which makes me\nbelieve, if the empty seats of angels be not filled with other kind of\npeople than those, we shall not have the final judgment these seven\nthousand, sixty and seven jubilees yet to come, and so Cusanus will be\ndeceived in his conjecture.  Remember that I have told you of it, and given\nyou fair advertisement in time and place convenient.\n\nBut if you have any hogsheads of good wine, I willingly will accept of a\npresent of that.  Which they very heartily did do, in sending him of the\nbest that was in the city, and he drank reasonably well, but poor Panurge\nbibbed and boused of it most villainously, for he was as dry as a\nred-herring, as lean as a rake, and, like a poor, lank, slender cat, walked\ngingerly as if he had trod upon eggs.  So that by someone being admonished,\nin the midst of his draught of a large deep bowl full of excellent claret\nwith these words--Fair and softly, gossip, you suck up as if you were mad\n--I give thee to the devil, said he; thou hast not found here thy little\ntippling sippers of Paris, that drink no more than the little bird called a\nspink or chaffinch, and never take in their beakful of liquor till they be\nbobbed on the tails after the manner of the sparrows.  O companion! if I\ncould mount up as well as I can get down, I had been long ere this above\nthe sphere of the moon with Empedocles.  But I cannot tell what a devil\nthis means.  This wine is so good and delicious, that the more I drink\nthereof the more I am athirst.  I believe that the shadow of my master\nPantagruel engendereth the altered and thirsty men, as the moon doth the\ncatarrhs and defluxions.  At which word the company began to laugh, which\nPantagruel perceiving, said, Panurge, what is that which moves you to laugh\nso?  Sir, said he, I was telling them that these devilish Turks are very\nunhappy in that they never drink one drop of wine, and that though there\nwere no other harm in all Mahomet's Alcoran, yet for this one base point of\nabstinence from wine which therein is commanded, I would not submit myself\nunto their law.  But now tell me, said Pantagruel, how you escaped out of\ntheir hands. By G--, sir, said Panurge, I will not lie to you in one word.\n\nThe rascally Turks had broached me upon a spit all larded like a rabbit,\nfor I was so dry and meagre that otherwise of my flesh they would have made\nbut very bad meat, and in this manner began to roast me alive.  As they\nwere thus roasting me, I recommended myself unto the divine grace, having\nin my mind the good St. Lawrence, and always hoped in God that he would\ndeliver me out of this torment.  Which came to pass, and that very\nstrangely.  For as I did commit myself with all my heart unto God, crying,\nLord God, help me!  Lord God, save me!  Lord God, take me out of this pain\nand hellish torture, wherein these traitorous dogs detain me for my\nsincerity in the maintenance of thy law!  The roaster or turnspit fell\nasleep by the divine will, or else by the virtue of some good Mercury, who\ncunningly brought Argus into a sleep for all his hundred eyes.  When I saw\nthat he did no longer turn me in roasting, I looked upon him, and perceived\nthat he was fast asleep.  Then took I up in my teeth a firebrand by the end\nwhere it was not burnt, and cast it into the lap of my roaster, and another\ndid I throw as well as I could under a field-couch that was placed near to\nthe chimney, wherein was the straw-bed of my master turnspit.  Presently\nthe fire took hold in the straw, and from the straw to the bed, and from\nthe bed to the loft, which was planked and ceiled with fir, after the\nfashion of the foot of a lamp.  But the best was, that the fire which I had\ncast into the lap of my paltry roaster burnt all his groin, and was\nbeginning to cease (seize) upon his cullions, when he became sensible of\nthe danger, for his smelling was not so bad but that he felt it sooner than\nhe could have seen daylight.  Then suddenly getting up, and in a great\namazement running to the window, he cried out to the streets as high as he\ncould, Dal baroth, dal baroth, dal baroth, which is as much to say as Fire,\nfire, fire.  Incontinently turning about, he came straight towards me to\nthrow me quite into the fire, and to that effect had already cut the ropes\nwherewith my hands were tied, and was undoing the cords from off my feet,\nwhen the master of the house hearing him cry Fire, and smelling the smoke\nfrom the very street where he was walking with some other Bashaws and\nMustaphas, ran with all the speed he had to save what he could, and to\ncarry away his jewels.  Yet such was his rage, before he could well resolve\nhow to go about it, that he caught the broach whereon I was spitted and\ntherewith killed my roaster stark dead, of which wound he died there for\nwant of government or otherwise; for he ran him in with the spit a little\nabove the navel, towards the right flank, till he pierced the third lappet\nof his liver, and the blow slanting upwards from the midriff or diaphragm,\nthrough which it had made penetration, the spit passed athwart the\npericardium or capsule of his heart, and came out above at his shoulders,\nbetwixt the spondyls or turning joints of the chine of the back and the\nleft homoplat, which we call the shoulder-blade.\n\nTrue it is, for I will not lie, that, in drawing the spit out of my body I\nfell to the ground near unto the andirons, and so by the fall took some\nhurt, which indeed had been greater, but that the lardons, or little slices\nof bacon wherewith I was stuck, kept off the blow.  My Bashaw then seeing\nthe case to be desperate, his house burnt without remission, and all his\ngoods lost, gave himself over unto all the devils in hell, calling upon\nsome of them by their names, Grilgoth, Astaroth, Rappalus, and Gribouillis,\nnine several times.  Which when I saw, I had above sixpence' worth of fear,\ndreading that the devils would come even then to carry away this fool, and,\nseeing me so near him, would perhaps snatch me up to.  I am already,\nthought I, half roasted, and my lardons will be the cause of my mischief;\nfor these devils are very liquorous of lardons, according to the authority\nwhich you have of the philosopher Jamblicus, and Murmault, in the Apology\nof Bossutis, adulterated pro magistros nostros.  But for my better security\nI made the sign of the cross, crying, Hageos, athanatos, ho theos, and none\ncame.  At which my rogue Bashaw being very much aggrieved would, in\ntranspiercing his heart with my spit, have killed himself, and to that\npurpose had set it against his breast, but it could not enter, because it\nwas not sharp enough.  Whereupon I perceiving that he was not like to work\nupon his body the effect which he intended, although he did not spare all\nthe force he had to thrust it forward, came up to him and said, Master\nBugrino, thou dost here but trifle away thy time, or rashly lose it, for\nthou wilt never kill thyself thus as thou doest.  Well, thou mayst hurt or\nbruise somewhat within thee, so as to make thee languish all thy lifetime\nmost pitifully amongst the hands of the chirurgeons; but if thou wilt be\ncounselled by me, I will kill thee clear outright, so that thou shalt not\nso much as feel it, and trust me, for I have killed a great many others,\nwho have found themselves very well after it.  Ha, my friend, said he, I\nprithee do so, and for thy pains I will give thee my codpiece (budget);\ntake, here it is, there are six hundred seraphs in it, and some fine\ndiamonds and most excellent rubies.  And where are they? said Epistemon.\nBy St. John, said Panurge, they are a good way hence, if they always keep\ngoing.  But where is the last year's snow?  This was the greatest care that\nVillon the Parisian poet took.  Make an end, said Pantagruel, that we may\nknow how thou didst dress thy Bashaw.  By the faith of an honest man, said\nPanurge, I do not lie in one word.  I swaddled him in a scurvy\nswathel-binding which I found lying there half burnt, and with my cords tied\nhim roister-like both hand and foot, in such sort that he was not able to\nwince; then passed my spit through his throat, and hanged him thereon,\nfastening the end thereof at two great hooks or crampirons, upon which they\ndid hang their halberds; and then, kindling a fair fire under him, did flame\nyou up my Milourt, as they use to do dry herrings in a chimney.  With this,\ntaking his budget and a little javelin that was upon the foresaid hooks, I\nran away a fair gallop-rake, and God he knows how I did smell my shoulder of\nmutton.\n\nWhen I was come down into the street, I found everybody come to put out the\nfire with store of water, and seeing me so half-roasted, they did naturally\npity my case, and threw all their water upon me, which, by a most joyful\nrefreshing of me, did me very much good.  Then did they present me with\nsome victuals, but I could not eat much, because they gave me nothing to\ndrink but water after their fashion.  Other hurt they did me none, only one\nlittle villainous Turkey knobbreasted rogue came thiefteously to snatch\naway some of my lardons, but I gave him such a sturdy thump and sound rap\non the fingers with all the weight of my javelin, that he came no more the\nsecond time.  Shortly after this there came towards me a pretty young\nCorinthian wench, who brought me a boxful of conserves, of round Mirabolan\nplums, called emblicks, and looked upon my poor robin with an eye of great\ncompassion, as it was flea-bitten and pinked with the sparkles of the fire\nfrom whence it came, for it reached no farther in length, believe me, than\nmy knees.  But note that this roasting cured me entirely of a sciatica,\nwhereunto I had been subject above seven years before, upon that side which\nmy roaster by falling asleep suffered to be burnt.\n\nNow, whilst they were thus busy about me, the fire triumphed, never ask\nhow?  For it took hold on above two thousand houses, which one of them\nespying cried out, saying, By Mahoom's belly, all the city is on fire, and\nwe do nevertheless stand gazing here, without offering to make any relief.\nUpon this everyone ran to save his own; for my part, I took my way towards\nthe gate.  When I was got upon the knap of a little hillock not far off, I\nturned me about as did Lot's wife, and, looking back, saw all the city\nburning in a fair fire, whereat I was so glad that I had almost beshit\nmyself for joy.  But God punished me well for it.  How? said Pantagruel.\nThus, said Panurge; for when with pleasure I beheld this jolly fire,\njesting with myself, and saying--Ha! poor flies, ha! poor mice, you will\nhave a bad winter of it this year; the fire is in your reeks, it is in your\nbed-straw--out come more than six, yea, more than thirteen hundred and\neleven dogs, great and small, altogether out of the town, flying away from\nthe fire.  At the first approach they ran all upon me, being carried on by\nthe scent of my lecherous half-roasted flesh, and had even then devoured me\nin a trice, if my good angel had not well inspired me with the instruction\nof a remedy very sovereign against the toothache.  And wherefore, said\nPantagruel, wert thou afraid of the toothache or pain of the teeth?  Wert\nthou not cured of thy rheums?  By Palm Sunday, said Panurge, is there any\ngreater pain of the teeth than when the dogs have you by the legs?  But on\na sudden, as my good angel directed me, I thought upon my lardons, and\nthrew them into the midst of the field amongst them.  Then did the dogs\nrun, and fight with one another at fair teeth which should have the\nlardons.  By this means they left me, and I left them also bustling with\nand hairing one another.  Thus did I escape frolic and lively, gramercy\nroastmeat and cookery.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge showed a very new way to build the walls of Paris.\n\nPantagruel one day, to refresh himself of his study, went a-walking towards\nSt. Marcel's suburbs, to see the extravagancy of the Gobeline building, and\nto taste of their spiced bread.  Panurge was with him, having always a\nflagon under his gown and a good slice of a gammon of bacon; for without\nthis he never went, saying that it was as a yeoman of the guard to him, to\npreserve his body from harm.  Other sword carried he none; and, when\nPantagruel would have given him one, he answered that he needed none, for\nthat it would but heat his milt.  Yea but, said Epistemon, if thou shouldst\nbe set upon, how wouldst thou defend thyself?  With great buskinades or\nbrodkin blows, answered he, provided thrusts were forbidden.  At their\nreturn, Panurge considered the walls of the city of Paris, and in derision\nsaid to Pantagruel, See what fair walls here are!  O how strong they are,\nand well fitted to keep geese in a mew or coop to fatten them!  By my\nbeard, they are competently scurvy for such a city as this is; for a cow\nwith one fart would go near to overthrow above six fathoms of them.  O my\nfriend, said Pantagruel, dost thou know what Agesilaus said when he was\nasked why the great city of Lacedaemon was not enclosed with walls?  Lo\nhere, said he, the walls of the city! in showing them the inhabitants and\ncitizens thereof, so strong, so well armed, and so expert in military\ndiscipline; signifying thereby that there is no wall but of bones, and that\ntowns and cities cannot have a surer wall nor better fortification than the\nprowess and virtue of the citizens and inhabitants.  So is this city so\nstrong, by the great number of warlike people that are in it, that they\ncare not for making any other walls.  Besides, whosoever would go about to\nwall it, as Strasbourg, Orleans, or Ferrara, would find it almost\nimpossible, the cost and charges would be so excessive.  Yea but, said\nPanurge, it is good, nevertheless, to have an outside of stone when we are\ninvaded by our enemies, were it but to ask, Who is below there?  As for the\nenormous expense which you say would be needful for undertaking the great\nwork of walling this city about, if the gentlemen of the town will be\npleased to give me a good rough cup of wine, I will show them a pretty,\nstrange, and new way, how they may build them good cheap.  How? said\nPantagruel.  Do not speak of it then, answered Panurge, and I will tell it\nyou.  I see that the sine quo nons, kallibistris, or contrapunctums of the\nwomen of this country are better cheap than stones.  Of them should the\nwalls be built, ranging them in good symmetry by the rules of architecture,\nand placing the largest in the first ranks, then sloping downwards\nridge-wise, like the back of an ass.  The middle-sized ones must be ranked\nnext, and last of all the least and smallest.  This done, there must be a\nfine little interlacing of them, like points of diamonds, as is to be seen\nin the great tower of Bourges, with a like number of the nudinnudos,\nnilnisistandos, and stiff bracmards, that dwell in amongst the claustral\ncodpieces.  What devil were able to overthrow such walls?  There is no metal\nlike it to resist blows, in so far that, if culverin-shot should come to\ngraze upon it, you would incontinently see distil from thence the blessed\nfruit of the great pox as small as rain.  Beware, in the name of the devils,\nand hold off.  Furthermore, no thunderbolt or lightning would fall upon it.\nFor why?  They are all either blest or consecrated.  I see but one\ninconveniency in it.  Ho, ho, ha, ha, ha! said Pantagruel, and what is that?\nIt is, that the flies would be so liquorish of them that you would wonder,\nand would quickly gather there together, and there leave their ordure and\nexcretions, and so all the work would be spoiled.  But see how that might be\nremedied:  they must be wiped and made rid of the flies with fair foxtails,\nor great good viedazes, which are ass-pizzles, of Provence.  And to this\npurpose I will tell you, as we go to supper, a brave example set down by\nFrater Lubinus, Libro de compotationibus mendicantium.\n\nIn the time that the beasts did speak, which is not yet three days since, a\npoor lion, walking through the forest of Bieure, and saying his own little\nprivate devotions, passed under a tree where there was a roguish collier\ngotten up to cut down wood, who, seeing the lion, cast his hatchet at him\nand wounded him enormously in one of his legs; whereupon the lion halting,\nhe so long toiled and turmoiled himself in roaming up and down the forest\nto find help, that at last he met with a carpenter, who willingly looked\nupon his wound, cleansed it as well as he could, and filled it with moss,\ntelling him that he must wipe his wound well that the flies might not do\ntheir excrements in it, whilst he should go search for some yarrow or\nmillefoil, commonly called the carpenter's herb.  The lion, being thus\nhealed, walked along in the forest at what time a sempiternous crone and\nold hag was picking up and gathering some sticks in the said forest, who,\nseeing the lion coming towards her, for fear fell down backwards, in such\nsort that the wind blew up her gown, coats, and smock, even as far as above\nher shoulders; which the lion perceiving, for pity ran to see whether she\nhad taken any hurt by the fall, and thereupon considering her how do you\ncall it, said, O poor woman, who hath thus wounded thee?  Which words when\nhe had spoken, he espied a fox, whom he called to come to him saying,\nGossip Reynard, hau, hither, hither, and for cause!  When the fox was come,\nhe said unto him, My gossip and friend, they have hurt this good woman here\nbetween the legs most villainously, and there is a manifest solution of\ncontinuity.  See how great a wound it is, even from the tail up to the\nnavel, in measure four, nay full five handfuls and a half.  This is the\nblow of a hatchet, I doubt me; it is an old wound, and therefore, that the\nflies may not get into it, wipe it lustily well and hard, I prithee, both\nwithin and without; thou hast a good tail, and long.  Wipe, my friend,\nwipe, I beseech thee, and in the meanwhile I will go get some moss to put\ninto it; for thus ought we to succour and help one another.  Wipe it hard,\nthus, my friend; wipe it well, for this wound must be often wiped,\notherwise the party cannot be at ease.  Go to, wipe well, my little gossip,\nwipe; God hath furnished thee with a tail; thou hast a long one, and of a\nbigness proportionable; wipe hard, and be not weary.  A good wiper, who, in\nwiping continually, wipeth with his wipard, by wasps shall never be\nwounded.  Wipe, my pretty minion; wipe, my little bully; I will not stay\nlong.  Then went he to get store of moss; and when he was a little way off,\nhe cried out in speaking to the fox thus, Wipe well still, gossip, wipe,\nand let it never grieve thee to wipe well, my little gossip; I will put\nthee into service to be wiper to Don Pedro de Castile; wipe, only wipe, and\nno more.  The poor fox wiped as hard as he could, here and there, within\nand without; but the false old trot did so fizzle and fist that she stunk\nlike a hundred devils, which put the poor fox to a great deal of ill ease,\nfor he knew not to what side to turn himself to escape the unsavoury\nperfume of this old woman's postern blasts.  And whilst to that effect he\nwas shifting hither and thither, without knowing how to shun the annoyance\nof those unwholesome gusts, he saw that behind there was yet another hole,\nnot so great as that which he did wipe, out of which came this filthy and\ninfectious air.  The lion at last returned, bringing with him of moss more\nthan eighteen packs would hold, and began to put into the wound with a\nstaff which he had provided for that purpose, and had already put in full\nsixteen packs and a half, at which he was amazed.  What a devil! said he,\nthis wound is very deep; it would hold above two cartloads of moss.  The\nfox, perceiving this, said unto the lion, O gossip lion, my friend, I pray\nthee do not put in all thy moss there; keep somewhat, for there is yet here\nanother little hole, that stinks like five hundred devils; I am almost\nchoked with the smell thereof, it is so pestiferous and empoisoning.\n\nThus must these walls be kept from the flies, and wages allowed to some for\nwiping of them.  Then said Pantagruel, How dost thou know that the privy\nparts of women are at such a cheap rate?  For in this city there are many\nvirtuous, honest, and chaste women besides the maids.  Et ubi prenus? said\nPanurge.  I will give you my opinion of it, and that upon certain and\nassured knowledge.  I do not brag that I have bumbasted four hundred and\nseventeen since I came into this city, though it be but nine days ago; but\nthis very morning I met with a good fellow, who, in a wallet such as\nAesop's was, carried two little girls of two or three years old at the\nmost, one before and the other behind.  He demanded alms of me, but I made\nhim answer that I had more cods than pence.  Afterwards I asked him, Good\nman, these two girls, are they maids?  Brother, said he, I have carried\nthem thus these two years, and in regard of her that is before, whom I see\ncontinually, in my opinion she is a virgin, nevertheless I will not put my\nfinger in the fire for it; as for her that is behind, doubtless I can say\nnothing.\n\nIndeed, said Pantagruel, thou art a gentle companion; I will have thee to\nbe apparelled in my livery.  And therefore caused him to be clothed most\ngallantly according to the fashion that then was, only that Panurge would\nhave the codpiece of his breeches three foot long, and in shape square, not\nround; which was done, and was well worth the seeing.  Oftentimes was he\nwont to say, that the world had not yet known the emolument and utility\nthat is in wearing great codpieces; but time would one day teach it them,\nas all things have been invented in time.  God keep from hurt, said he, the\ngood fellow whose long codpiece or braguet hath saved his life!  God keep\nfrom hurt him whose long braguet hath been worth to him in one day one\nhundred threescore thousand and nine crowns!  God keep from hurt him who by\nhis long braguet hath saved a whole city from dying by famine!  And, by G-,\nI will make a book of the commodity of long braguets when I shall have more\nleisure.  And indeed he composed a fair great book with figures, but it is\nnot printed as yet that I know of.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the qualities and conditions of Panurge.\n\nPanurge was of a middle stature, not too high nor too low, and had somewhat\nan aquiline nose, made like the handle of a razor.  He was at that time\nfive and thirty years old or thereabouts, fine to gild like a leaden\ndagger--for he was a notable cheater and coney-catcher--he was a very\ngallant and proper man of his person, only that he was a little lecherous,\nand naturally subject to a kind of disease which at that time they called\nlack of money--it is an incomparable grief, yet, notwithstanding, he had\nthree score and three tricks to come by it at his need, of which the most\nhonourable and most ordinary was in manner of thieving, secret purloining\nand filching, for he was a wicked lewd rogue, a cozener, drinker, roister,\nrover, and a very dissolute and debauched fellow, if there were any in\nParis; otherwise, and in all matters else, the best and most virtuous man\nin the world; and he was still contriving some plot, and devising mischief\nagainst the sergeants and the watch.\n\nAt one time he assembled three or four especial good hacksters and roaring\nboys, made them in the evening drink like Templars, afterwards led them\ntill they came under St. Genevieve, or about the college of Navarre, and,\nat the hour that the watch was coming up that way--which he knew by putting\nhis sword upon the pavement, and his ear by it, and, when he heard his\nsword shake, it was an infallible sign that the watch was near at that\ninstant--then he and his companions took a tumbrel or dung-cart, and gave\nit the brangle, hurling it with all their force down the hill, and so\noverthrew all the poor watchmen like pigs, and then ran away upon the other\nside; for in less than two days he knew all the streets, lanes, and\nturnings in Paris as well as his Deus det.\n\nAt another time he made in some fair place, where the said watch was to\npass, a train of gunpowder, and, at the very instant that they went along,\nset fire to it, and then made himself sport to see what good grace they had\nin running away, thinking that St. Anthony's fire had caught them by the\nlegs.  As for the poor masters of arts, he did persecute them above all\nothers.  When he encountered with any of them upon the street, he would not\nnever fail to put some trick or other upon them, sometimes putting the bit\nof a fried turd in their graduate hoods, at other times pinning on little\nfoxtails or hares'-ears behind them, or some such other roguish prank.  One\nday that they were appointed all to meet in the Fodder Street (Sorbonne),\nhe made a Borbonesa tart, or filthy and slovenly compound, made of store of\ngarlic, of assafoetida, of castoreum, of dogs' turds very warm, which he\nsteeped, tempered, and liquefied in the corrupt matter of pocky boils and\npestiferous botches; and, very early in the morning therewith anointed all\nthe pavement, in such sort that the devil could not have endured it, which\nmade all these good people there to lay up their gorges, and vomit what was\nupon their stomachs before all the world, as if they had flayed the fox;\nand ten or twelve of them died of the plague, fourteen became lepers,\neighteen grew lousy, and about seven and twenty had the pox, but he did not\ncare a button for it.  He commonly carried a whip under his gown, wherewith\nhe whipped without remission the pages whom he found carrying wine to their\nmasters, to make them mend their pace.  In his coat he had above six and\ntwenty little fobs and pockets always full; one with some lead-water, and a\nlittle knife as sharp as a glover's needle, wherewith he used to cut\npurses; another with some kind of bitter stuff, which he threw into the\neyes of those he met; another with clotburrs, penned with little geese' or\ncapon's feathers, which he cast upon the gowns and caps of honest people,\nand often made them fair horns, which they wore about all the city,\nsometimes all their life.  Very often, also, upon the women's French hoods\nwould he stick in the hind part somewhat made in the shape of a man's\nmember.  In another, he had a great many little horns full of fleas and\nlice, which he borrowed from the beggars of St. Innocent, and cast them\nwith small canes or quills to write with into the necks of the daintiest\ngentlewomen that he could find, yea, even in the church, for he never\nseated himself above in the choir, but always sat in the body of the church\namongst the women, both at mass, at vespers, and at sermon.  In another, he\nused to have good store of hooks and buckles, wherewith he would couple men\nand women together that sat in company close to one another, but especially\nthose that wore gowns of crimson taffeties, that, when they were about to\ngo away, they might rend all their gowns.  In another, he had a squib\nfurnished with tinder, matches, stones to strike fire, and all other\ntackling necessary for it.  In another, two or three burning glasses,\nwherewith he made both men and women sometimes mad, and in the church put\nthem quite out of countenance; for he said that there was but an\nantistrophe, or little more difference than of a literal inversion, between\na woman folle a la messe and molle a la fesse, that is, foolish at the mass\nand of a pliant buttock.\n\nIn another, he had a good deal of needles and thread, wherewith he did a\nthousand little devilish pranks.  One time, at the entry of the palace unto\nthe great hall, where a certain grey friar or cordelier was to say mass to\nthe counsellors, he did help to apparel him and put on his vestments, but\nin the accoutring of him he sewed on his alb, surplice, or stole, to his\ngown and shirt, and then withdrew himself when the said lords of the court\nor counsellors came to hear the said mass; but when it came to the Ite,\nmissa est, that the poor frater would have laid by his stole or surplice,\nas the fashion then was, he plucked off withal both his frock and shirt,\nwhich were well sewed together, and thereby stripping himself up to the\nvery shoulders showed his bel vedere to all the world, together with his\nDon Cypriano, which was no small one, as you may imagine.  And the friar\nstill kept haling, but so much the more did he discover himself and lay\nopen his back parts, till one of the lords of the court said, How now!\nwhat's the matter?  Will this fair father make us here an offering of his\ntail to kiss it?  Nay, St. Anthony's fire kiss it for us!  From thenceforth\nit was ordained that the poor fathers should never disrobe themselves any\nmore before the world, but in their vestry-room, or sextry, as they call\nit; especially in the presence of women, lest it should tempt them to the\nsin of longing and disordinate desire.  The people then asked why it was\nthe friars had so long and large genitories?  The said Panurge resolved the\nproblem very neatly, saying, That which makes asses to have such great ears\nis that their dams did put no biggins on their heads, as Alliaco mentioneth\nin his Suppositions.  By the like reason, that which makes the genitories\nor generation-tools of those so fair fraters so long is, for that they wear\nno bottomed breeches, and therefore their jolly member, having no\nimpediment, hangeth dangling at liberty as far as it can reach, with a\nwiggle-waggle down to their knees, as women carry their paternoster beads.\nand the cause wherefore they have it so correspondently great is, that in\nthis constant wig-wagging the humours of the body descend into the said\nmember.  For, according to the Legists, agitation and continual motion is\ncause of attraction.\n\nItem, he had another pocket full of itching powder, called stone-alum,\nwhereof he would cast some into the backs of those women whom he judged to\nbe most beautiful and stately, which did so ticklishly gall them, that some\nwould strip themselves in the open view of the world, and others dance like\na cock upon hot embers, or a drumstick on a tabor.  Others, again, ran\nabout the streets, and he would run after them.  To such as were in the\nstripping vein he would very civilly come to offer his attendance, and\ncover them with his cloak, like a courteous and very gracious man.\n\nItem, in another he had a little leather bottle full of old oil, wherewith,\nwhen he saw any man or woman in a rich new handsome suit, he would grease,\nsmutch, and spoil all the best parts of it under colour and pretence of\ntouching them, saying, This is good cloth; this is good satin; good\ntaffeties!  Madam, God give you all that your noble heart desireth!  You\nhave a new suit, pretty sir;--and you a new gown, sweet mistress;--God give\nyou joy of it, and maintain you in all prosperity!  And with this would lay\nhis hand upon their shoulder, at which touch such a villainous spot was\nleft behind, so enormously engraven to perpetuity in the very soul, body,\nand reputation, that the devil himself could never have taken it away.\nThen, upon his departing, he would say, Madam, take heed you do not fall,\nfor there is a filthy great hole before you, whereinto if you put your\nfoot, you will quite spoil yourself.\n\nAnother he had all full of euphorbium, very finely pulverized.  In that\npowder did he lay a fair handkerchief curiously wrought, which he had\nstolen from a pretty seamstress of the palace, in taking away a louse from\noff her bosom which he had put there himself, and, when he came into the\ncompany of some good ladies, he would trifle them into a discourse of some\nfine workmanship of bone-lace, then immediately put his hand into their\nbosom, asking them, And this work, is it of Flanders, or of Hainault? and\nthen drew out his handkerchief, and said, Hold, hold, look what work here\nis, it is of Foutignan or of Fontarabia, and shaking it hard at their nose,\nmade them sneeze for four hours without ceasing.  In the meanwhile he would\nfart like a horse, and the women would laugh and say, How now, do you fart,\nPanurge?  No, no, madam, said he, I do but tune my tail to the plain song\nof the music which you make with your nose.  In another he had a picklock,\na pelican, a crampiron, a crook, and some other iron tools, wherewith there\nwas no door nor coffer which he would not pick open.  He had another full\nof little cups, wherewith he played very artificially, for he had his\nfingers made to his hand, like those of Minerva or Arachne, and had\nheretofore cried treacle.  And when he changed a teston, cardecu, or any\nother piece of money, the changer had been more subtle than a fox if\nPanurge had not at every time made five or six sols (that is, some six or\nseven pence,) vanish away invisibly, openly, and manifestly, without making\nany hurt or lesion, whereof the changer should have felt nothing but the\nwind.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge gained the pardons, and married the old women, and of the suit\nin law which he had at Paris.\n\nOne day I found Panurge very much out of countenance, melancholic, and\nsilent; which made me suspect that he had no money; whereupon I said unto\nhim, Panurge, you are sick, as I do very well perceive by your physiognomy,\nand I know the disease.  You have a flux in your purse; but take no care.\nI have yet sevenpence halfpenny that never saw father nor mother, which\nshall not be wanting, no more than the pox, in your necessity.  Whereunto\nhe answered me, Well, well; for money one day I shall have but too much,\nfor I have a philosopher's stone which attracts money out of men's purses\nas the adamant doth iron.  But will you go with me to gain the pardons?\nsaid he.  By my faith, said I, I am no great pardon-taker in this world--if\nI shall be any such in the other, I cannot tell; yet let us go, in God's\nname; it is but one farthing more or less; But, said he, lend me then a\nfarthing upon interest.  No, no, said I; I will give it you freely, and\nfrom my heart.  Grates vobis dominos, said he.\n\nSo we went along, beginning at St. Gervase, and I got the pardons at the\nfirst box only, for in those matters very little contenteth me.  Then did I\nsay my small suffrages and the prayers of St. Brigid; but he gained them\nall at the boxes, and always gave money to everyone of the pardoners.  From\nthence we went to Our Lady's Church, to St. John's, to St. Anthony's, and\nso to the other churches, where there was a banquet (bank) of pardons.  For\nmy part, I gained no more of them, but he at all the boxes kissed the\nrelics, and gave at everyone.  To be brief, when we were returned, he\nbrought me to drink at the castle-tavern, and there showed me ten or twelve\nof his little bags full of money, at which I blessed myself, and made the\nsign of the cross, saying, Where have you recovered so much money in so\nlittle time?  Unto which he answered me that he had taken it out of the\nbasins of the pardons.  For in giving them the first farthing, said he, I\nput it in with such sleight of hand and so dexterously that it appeared to\nbe a threepence; thus with one hand I took threepence, ninepence, or\nsixpence at the least, and with the other as much, and so through all the\nchurches where we have been.  Yea but, said I, you damn yourself like a\nsnake, and are withal a thief and sacrilegious person.  True, said he, in\nyour opinion, but I am not of that mind; for the pardoners do give me it,\nwhen they say unto me in presenting the relics to kiss, Centuplum accipies,\nthat is, that for one penny I should take a hundred; for accipies is spoken\naccording to the manner of the Hebrews, who use the future tense instead of\nthe imperative, as you have in the law, Diliges Dominum, that is, Dilige.\nEven so, when the pardon-bearer says to me, Centuplum accipies, his meaning\nis, Centuplum accipe; and so doth Rabbi Kimy and Rabbi Aben Ezra expound\nit, and all the Massorets, et ibi Bartholus.  Moreover, Pope Sixtus gave me\nfifteen hundred francs of yearly pension, which in English money is a\nhundred and fifty pounds, upon his ecclesiastical revenues and treasure,\nfor having cured him of a cankerous botch, which did so torment him that he\nthought to have been a cripple by it all his life.  Thus I do pay myself at\nmy own hand, for otherwise I get nothing upon the said ecclesiastical\ntreasure.  Ho, my friend! said he, if thou didst know what advantage I\nmade, and how well I feathered my nest, by the Pope's bull of the crusade,\nthou wouldst wonder exceedingly.  It was worth to me above six thousand\nflorins, in English coin six hundred pounds.  And what a devil is become of\nthem? said I; for of that money thou hast not one halfpenny.  They returned\nfrom whence they came, said he; they did no more but change their master.\n\nBut I employed at least three thousand of them, that is, three hundred\npounds English, in marrying--not young virgins, for they find but too many\nhusbands--but great old sempiternous trots which had not so much as one\ntooth in their heads; and that out of the consideration I had that these\ngood old women had very well spent the time of their youth in playing at\nthe close-buttock game to all comers, serving the foremost first, till no\nman would have any more dealing with them.  And, by G--, I will have their\nskin-coat shaken once yet before they die.  By this means, to one I gave a\nhundred florins, to another six score, to another three hundred, according\nto that they were infamous, detestable, and abominable.  For, by how much\nthe more horrible and execrable they were, so much the more must I needs\nhave given them, otherwise the devil would not have jummed them.  Presently\nI went to some great and fat wood-porter, or such like, and did myself make\nthe match.  But, before I did show him the old hags, I made a fair muster\nto him of the crowns, saying, Good fellow, see what I will give thee if\nthou wilt but condescend to duffle, dinfredaille, or lecher it one good\ntime.  Then began the poor rogues to gape like old mules, and I caused to\nbe provided for them a banquet, with drink of the best, and store of\nspiceries, to put the old women in rut and heat of lust.  To be short, they\noccupied all, like good souls; only, to those that were horribly ugly and\nill-favoured, I caused their head to be put within a bag, to hide their\nface.\n\nBesides all this, I have lost a great deal in suits of law.  And what\nlawsuits couldst thou have? said I; thou hast neither house nor lands.  My\nfriend, said he, the gentlewomen of this city had found out, by the\ninstigation of the devil of hell, a manner of high-mounted bands and\nneckerchiefs for women, which did so closely cover their bosoms that men\ncould no more put their hands under.  For they had put the slit behind, and\nthose neckcloths were wholly shut before, whereat the poor sad\ncontemplative lovers were much discontented.  Upon a fair Tuesday I\npresented a petition to the court, making myself a party against the said\ngentlewomen, and showing the great interest that I pretended therein,\nprotesting that by the same reason I would cause the codpiece of my\nbreeches to be sewed behind, if the court would not take order for it.  In\nsum, the gentlewomen put in their defences, showing the grounds they went\nupon, and constituted their attorney for the prosecuting of the cause.  But\nI pursued them so vigorously, that by a sentence of the court it was\ndecreed those high neckcloths should be no longer worn if they were not a\nlittle cleft and open before; but it cost me a good sum of money.  I had\nanother very filthy and beastly process against the dung-farmer called\nMaster Fifi and his deputies, that they should no more read privily the\npipe, puncheon, nor quart of sentences, but in fair full day, and that in\nthe Fodder schools, in face of the Arrian (Artitian) sophisters, where I\nwas ordained to pay the charges, by reason of some clause mistaken in the\nrelation of the sergeant.  Another time I framed a complaint to the court\nagainst the mules of the presidents, counsellors, and others, tending to\nthis purpose, that, when in the lower court of the palace they left them to\nchamp on their bridles, some bibs were made for them (by the counsellors'\nwives), that with their drivelling they might not spoil the pavement; to\nthe end that the pages of the palace what play upon it with their dice, or\nat the game of coxbody, at their own ease, without spoiling their breeches\nat the knees.  And for this I had a fair decree, but it cost me dear.  Now\nreckon up what expense I was at in little banquets which from day to day I\nmade to the pages of the palace.  And to what end? said I.  My friend, said\nhe, thou hast no pastime at all in this world.  I have more than the king,\nand if thou wilt join thyself with me, we will do the devil together.  No,\nno, said I; by St. Adauras, that will I not, for thou wilt be hanged one\ntime or another.  And thou, said he, wilt be interred some time or other.\nNow which is most honourable, the air or the earth?  Ho, grosse pecore!\n\nWhilst the pages are at their banqueting, I keep their mules, and to\nsomeone I cut the stirrup-leather of the mounting side till it hang but by\na thin strap or thread, that when the great puffguts of the counsellor or\nsome other hath taken his swing to get up, he may fall flat on his side\nlike a pork, and so furnish the spectators with more than a hundred francs'\nworth of laughter.  But I laugh yet further to think how at his home-coming\nthe master-page is to be whipped like green rye, which makes me not to\nrepent what I have bestowed in feasting them.  In brief, he had, as I said\nbefore, three score and three ways to acquire money, but he had two hundred\nand fourteen to spend it, besides his drinking.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow a great scholar of England would have argued against Pantagruel, and\nwas overcome by Panurge.\n\nIn that same time a certain learned man named Thaumast, hearing the fame\nand renown of Pantagruel's incomparable knowledge, came out of his own\ncountry of England with an intent only to see him, to try thereby and prove\nwhether his knowledge in effect was so great as it was reported to be.  In\nthis resolution being arrived at Paris, he went forthwith unto the house of\nthe said Pantagruel, who was lodged in the palace of St. Denis, and was\nthen walking in the garden thereof with Panurge, philosophizing after the\nfashion of the Peripatetics.  At his first entrance he startled, and was\nalmost out of his wits for fear, seeing him so great and so tall.  Then did\nhe salute him courteously as the manner is, and said unto him, Very true it\nis, saith Plato the prince of philosophers, that if the image and knowledge\nof wisdom were corporeal and visible to the eyes of mortals, it would stir\nup all the world to admire her.  Which we may the rather believe that the\nvery bare report thereof, scattered in the air, if it happen to be received\ninto the ears of men, who, for being studious and lovers of virtuous things\nare called philosophers, doth not suffer them to sleep nor rest in quiet,\nbut so pricketh them up and sets them on fire to run unto the place where\nthe person is, in whom the said knowledge is said to have built her temple\nand uttered her oracles.  As it was manifestly shown unto us in the Queen\nof Sheba, who came from the utmost borders of the East and Persian Sea, to\nsee the order of Solomon's house and to hear his wisdom; in Anacharsis, who\ncame out of Scythia, even unto Athens, to see Solon; in Pythagoras, who\ntravelled far to visit the memphitical vaticinators; in Plato, who went a\ngreat way off to see the magicians of Egypt, and Architus of Tarentum; in\nApollonius Tyaneus, who went as far as unto Mount Caucasus, passed along\nthe Scythians, the Massagetes, the Indians, and sailed over the great river\nPhison, even to the Brachmans to see Hiarchus; as likewise unto Babylon,\nChaldea, Media, Assyria, Parthia, Syria, Phoenicia, Arabia, Palestina, and\nAlexandria, even unto Aethiopia, to see the Gymnosophists.  The like\nexample have we of Titus Livius, whom to see and hear divers studious\npersons came to Rome from the confines of France and Spain.  I dare not\nreckon myself in the number of those so excellent persons, but well would\nbe called studious, and a lover, not only of learning, but of learned men\nalso.  And indeed, having heard the report of your so inestimable\nknowledge, I have left my country, my friends, my kindred, and my house,\nand am come thus far, valuing at nothing the length of the way, the\ntediousness of the sea, nor strangeness of the land, and that only to see\nyou and to confer with you about some passages in philosophy, of geomancy,\nand of the cabalistic art, whereof I am doubtful and cannot satisfy my\nmind; which if you can resolve, I yield myself unto you for a slave\nhenceforward, together with all my posterity, for other gift have I none\nthat I can esteem a recompense sufficient for so great a favour.  I will\nreduce them into writing, and to-morrow publish them to all the learned men\nin the city, that we may dispute publicly before them.\n\nBut see in what manner I mean that we shall dispute.  I will not argue pro\net contra, as do the sottish sophisters of this town and other places.\nLikewise I will not dispute after the manner of the Academics by\ndeclamation; nor yet by numbers, as Pythagoras was wont to do, and as Picus\nde la Mirandula did of late at Rome.  But I will dispute by signs only\nwithout speaking, for the matters are so abstruse, hard, and arduous, that\nwords proceeding from the mouth of man will never be sufficient for\nunfolding of them to my liking.  May it, therefore, please your\nmagnificence to be there; it shall be at the great hall of Navarre at seven\no'clock in the morning.  When he had spoken these words, Pantagruel very\nhonourably said unto him:  Sir, of the graces that God hath bestowed upon\nme, I would not deny to communicate unto any man to my power.  For whatever\ncomes from him is good, and his pleasure is that it should be increased\nwhen we come amongst men worthy and fit to receive this celestial manna of\nhonest literature.  In which number, because that in this time, as I do\nalready very plainly perceive, thou holdest the first rank, I give thee\nnotice that at all hours thou shalt find me ready to condescend to every\none of thy requests according to my poor ability; although I ought rather\nto learn of thee than thou of me.  But, as thou hast protested, we will\nconfer of these doubts together, and will seek out the resolution, even\nunto the bottom of that undrainable well where Heraclitus says the truth\nlies hidden.  And I do highly commend the manner of arguing which thou hast\nproposed, to wit, by signs without speaking; for by this means thou and I\nshall understand one another well enough, and yet shall be free from this\nclapping of hands which these blockish sophisters make when any of the\narguers hath gotten the better of the argument.  Now to-morrow I will not\nfail to meet thee at the place and hour that thou hast appointed, but let\nme entreat thee that there be not any strife or uproar between us, and that\nwe seek not the honour and applause of men, but the truth only.  To which\nThaumast answered:  The Lord God maintain you in his favour and grace, and,\ninstead of my thankfulness to you, pour down his blessings upon you, for\nthat your highness and magnificent greatness hath not disdained to descend\nto the grant of the request of my poor baseness.  So farewell till\nto-morrow!  Farewell, said Pantagruel.\n\nGentlemen, you that read this present discourse, think not that ever men\nwere more elevated and transported in their thoughts than all this night\nwere both Thaumast and Pantagruel; for the said Thaumast said to the keeper\nof the house of Cluny, where he was lodged, that in all his life he had\nnever known himself so dry as he was that night.  I think, said he, that\nPantagruel held me by the throat.  Give order, I pray you, that we may have\nsome drink, and see that some fresh water be brought to us, to gargle my\npalate.  On the other side, Pantagruel stretched his wits as high as he\ncould, entering into very deep and serious meditations, and did nothing all\nthat night but dote upon and turn over the book of Beda, De numeris et\nsignis; Plotin's book, De inenarrabilibus; the book of Proclus, De magia;\nthe book of Artemidorus peri Oneirokritikon; of Anaxagoras, peri Zemeion;\nDinarius, peri Aphaton; the books of Philiston; Hipponax, peri\nAnekphoneton, and a rabble of others, so long, that Panurge said unto him:\n\nMy lord, leave all these thoughts and go to bed; for I perceive your\nspirits to be so troubled by a too intensive bending of them, that you may\neasily fall into some quotidian fever with this so excessive thinking and\nplodding.  But, having first drunk five and twenty or thirty good draughts,\nretire yourself and sleep your fill, for in the morning I will argue\nagainst and answer my master the Englishman, and if I drive him not ad\nmetam non loqui, then call me knave.  Yea but, said he, my friend Panurge,\nhe is marvellously learned; how wilt thou be able to answer him?  Very\nwell, answered Panurge; I pray you talk no more of it, but let me alone.\nIs any man so learned as the devils are?  No, indeed, said Pantagruel,\nwithout God's especial grace.  Yet for all that, said Panurge, I have\nargued against them, gravelled and blanked them in disputation, and laid\nthem so squat upon their tails that I have made them look like monkeys.\nTherefore be assured that to-morrow I will make this vain-glorious\nEnglishman to skite vinegar before all the world.  So Panurge spent the\nnight with tippling amongst the pages, and played away all the points of\nhis breeches at primus secundus and at peck point, in French called La\nVergette.  Yet, when the condescended on time was come, he failed not to\nconduct his master Pantagruel to the appointed place, unto which, believe\nme, there was neither great nor small in Paris but came, thinking with\nthemselves that this devilish Pantagruel, who had overthrown and vanquished\nin dispute all these doting fresh-water sophisters, would now get full\npayment and be tickled to some purpose.  For this Englishman is a terrible\nbustler and horrible coil-keeper.  We will see who will be conqueror, for\nhe never met with his match before.\n\nThus all being assembled, Thaumast stayed for them, and then, when\nPantagruel and Panurge came into the hall, all the schoolboys, professors\nof arts, senior sophisters, and bachelors began to clap their hands, as\ntheir scurvy custom is.  But Pantagruel cried out with a loud voice, as if\nit had been the sound of a double cannon, saying, Peace, with a devil to\nyou, peace!  By G--, you rogues, if you trouble me here, I will cut off the\nheads of everyone of you.  At which words they remained all daunted and\nastonished like so many ducks, and durst not do so much as cough, although\nthey had swallowed fifteen pounds of feathers.  Withal they grew so dry\nwith this only voice, that they laid out their tongues a full half foot\nbeyond their mouths, as if Pantagruel had salted all their throats.  Then\nbegan Panurge to speak, saying to the Englishman, Sir, are you come hither\nto dispute contentiously in those propositions you have set down, or,\notherwise, but to learn and know the truth?  To which answered Thaumast,\nSir, no other thing brought me hither but the great desire I had to learn\nand to know that of which I have doubted all my life long, and have neither\nfound book nor man able to content me in the resolution of those doubts\nwhich I have proposed.  And, as for disputing contentiously, I will not do\nit, for it is too base a thing, and therefore leave it to those sottish\nsophisters who in their disputes do not search for the truth, but for\ncontradiction only and debate.  Then said Panurge, If I, who am but a mean\nand inconsiderable disciple of my master my lord Pantagruel, content and\nsatisfy you in all and everything, it were a thing below my said master\nwherewith to trouble him.  Therefore is it fitter that he be chairman, and\nsit as a judge and moderator of our discourse and purpose, and give you\nsatisfaction in many things wherein perhaps I shall be wanting to your\nexpectation.  Truly, said Thaumast, it is very well said; begin then.  Now\nyou must note that Panurge had set at the end of his long codpiece a pretty\ntuft of red silk, as also of white, green, and blue, and within it had put\na fair orange.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge put to a nonplus the Englishman that argued by signs.\n\nEverybody then taking heed, and hearkening with great silence, the\nEnglishman lift up on high into the air his two hands severally, clunching\nin all the tops of his fingers together, after the manner which, a la\nChinonnese, they call the hen's arse, and struck the one hand on the other\nby the nails four several times.  Then he, opening them, struck the one\nwith the flat of the other till it yielded a clashing noise, and that only\nonce.  Again, in joining them as before, he struck twice, and afterwards\nfour times in opening them.  Then did he lay them joined, and extended the\none towards the other, as if he had been devoutly to send up his prayers\nunto God.  Panurge suddenly lifted up in the air his right hand, and put\nthe thumb thereof into the nostril of the same side, holding his four\nfingers straight out, and closed orderly in a parallel line to the point of\nhis nose, shutting the left eye wholly, and making the other wink with a\nprofound depression of the eyebrows and eyelids.  Then lifted he up his\nleft hand, with hard wringing and stretching forth his four fingers and\nelevating his thumb, which he held in a line directly correspondent to the\nsituation of his right hand, with the distance of a cubit and a half\nbetween them.  This done, in the same form he abased towards the ground\nabout the one and the other hand.  Lastly, he held them in the midst, as\naiming right at the Englishman's nose.  And if Mercury,--said the\nEnglishman.  There Panurge interrupted him, and said, You have spoken,\nMask.\n\nThen made the Englishman this sign.  His left hand all open he lifted up\ninto the air, then instantly shut into his fist the four fingers thereof,\nand his thumb extended at length he placed upon the gristle of his nose.\nPresently after, he lifted up his right hand all open, and all open abased\nand bent it downwards, putting the thumb thereof in the very place where\nthe little finger of the left hand did close in the fist, and the four\nright-hand fingers he softly moved in the air.  Then contrarily he did with\nthe right hand what he had done with the left, and with the left what he\nhad done with the right.\n\nPanurge, being not a whit amazed at this, drew out into the air his\ntrismegist codpiece with the left hand, and with his right drew forth a\ntruncheon of a white ox-rib, and two pieces of wood of a like form, one of\nblack ebony and the other of incarnation brasil, and put them betwixt the\nfingers of that hand in good symmetry; then, knocking them together, made\nsuch a noise as the lepers of Brittany use to do with their clappering\nclickets, yet better resounding and far more harmonious, and with his\ntongue contracted in his mouth did very merrily warble it, always looking\nfixedly upon the Englishman.  The divines, physicians, and chirurgeons that\nwere there thought that by this sign he would have inferred that the\nEnglishman was a leper.  The counsellors, lawyers, and decretalists\nconceived that by doing this he would have concluded some kind of mortal\nfelicity to consist in leprosy, as the Lord maintained heretofore.\n\nThe Englishman for all this was nothing daunted, but holding up his two\nhands in the air, kept them in such form that he closed the three\nmaster-fingers in his fist, and passing his thumbs through his indical or\nforemost and middle fingers, his auriculary or little fingers remained\nextended and stretched out, and so presented he them to Panurge.  Then\njoined he them so that the right thumb touched the left, and the left little\nfinger touched the right.  Hereat Panurge, without speaking one word, lift\nup his hands and made this sign.\n\nHe put the nail of the forefinger of his left hand to the nail of the thumb\nof the same, making in the middle of the distance as it were a buckle, and\nof his right hand shut up all the fingers into his fist, except the\nforefinger, which he often thrust in and out through the said two others of\nthe left hand.  Then stretched he out the forefinger and middle finger or\nmedical of his right hand, holding them asunder as much as he could, and\nthrusting them towards Thaumast.  Then did he put the thumb of his left\nhand upon the corner of his left eye, stretching out all his hand like the\nwing of a bird or the fin of a fish, and moving it very daintily this way\nand that way, he did as much with his right hand upon the corner of his\nright eye.  Thaumast began then to wax somewhat pale, and to tremble, and\nmade him this sign.\n\nWith the middle finger of his right hand he struck against the muscle of\nthe palm or pulp which is under the thumb.  Then put he the forefinger of\nthe right hand in the like buckle of the left, but he put it under, and not\nover, as Panurge did.  Then Panurge knocked one hand against another, and\nblowed in his palm, and put again the forefinger of his right hand into the\noverture or mouth of the left, pulling it often in and out.  Then held he\nout his chin, most intentively looking upon Thaumast.  The people there,\nwhich understood nothing in the other signs, knew very well that therein he\ndemanded, without speaking a word to Thaumast, What do you mean by that?\nIn effect, Thaumast then began to sweat great drops, and seemed to all the\nspectators a man strangely ravished in high contemplation.  Then he\nbethought himself, and put all the nails of his left hand against those of\nhis right, opening his fingers as if they had been semicircles, and with\nthis sign lift up his hands as high as he could.  Whereupon Panurge\npresently put the thumb of his right hand under his jaws, and the little\nfinger thereof in the mouth of the left hand, and in this posture made his\nteeth to sound very melodiously, the upper against the lower.  With this\nThaumast, with great toil and vexation of spirit, rose up, but in rising\nlet a great baker's fart, for the bran came after, and pissing withal very\nstrong vinegar, stunk like all the devils in hell.  The company began to\nstop their noses; for he had conskited himself with mere anguish and\nperplexity.  Then lifted he up his right hand, clunching it in such sort\nthat he brought the ends of all his fingers to meet together, and his left\nhand he laid flat upon his breast.  Whereat Panurge drew out his long\ncodpiece with his tuff, and stretched it forth a cubit and a half, holding\nit in the air with his right hand, and with his left took out his orange,\nand, casting it up into the air seven times, at the eighth he hid it in the\nfist of his right hand, holding it steadily up on high, and then began to\nshake his fair codpiece, showing it to Thaumast.\n\nAfter that, Thaumast began to puff up his two cheeks like a player on a\nbagpipe, and blew as if he had been to puff up a pig's bladder.  Whereupon\nPanurge put one finger of his left hand in his nockandrow, by some called\nSt. Patrick's hole, and with his mouth sucked in the air, in such a manner\nas when one eats oysters in the shell, or when we sup up our broth.  This\ndone, he opened his mouth somewhat, and struck his right hand flat upon it,\nmaking therewith a great and a deep sound, as if it came from the\nsuperficies of the midriff through the trachiartery or pipe of the lungs,\nand this he did for sixteen times; but Thaumast did always keep blowing\nlike a goose.  Then Panurge put the forefinger of his right hand into his\nmouth, pressing it very hard to the muscles thereof; then he drew it out,\nand withal made a great noise, as when little boys shoot pellets out of the\npot-cannons made of the hollow sticks of the branch of an alder-tree, and\nhe did it nine times.\n\nThen Thaumast cried out, Ha, my masters, a great secret!  With this he put\nin his hand up to the elbow, then drew out a dagger that he had, holding it\nby the point downwards.  Whereat Panurge took his long codpiece, and shook\nit as hard as he could against his thighs; then put his two hands entwined\nin manner of a comb upon his head, laying out his tongue as far as he was\nable, and turning his eyes in his head like a goat that is ready to die.\nHa, I understand, said Thaumast, but what? making such a sign that he put\nthe haft of his dagger against his breast, and upon the point thereof the\nflat of his hand, turning in a little the ends of his fingers.  Whereat\nPanurge held down his head on the left side, and put his middle finger into\nhis right ear, holding up his thumb bolt upright.  Then he crossed his two\narms upon his breast and coughed five times, and at the fifth time he\nstruck his right foot against the ground.  Then he lift up his left arm,\nand closing all his fingers into his fist, held his thumb against his\nforehead, striking with his right hand six times against his breast.  But\nThaumast, as not content therewith, put the thumb of his left hand upon the\ntop of his nose, shutting the rest of his said hand, whereupon Panurge set\nhis two master-fingers upon each side of his mouth, drawing it as much as\nhe was able, and widening it so that he showed all his teeth, and with his\ntwo thumbs plucked down his two eyelids very low, making therewith a very\nill-favoured countenance, as it seemed to the company.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Thaumast relateth the virtues and knowledge of Panurge.\n\nThen Panurge rose up, and, putting off his cap, did very kindly thank the\nsaid Panurge, and with a loud voice said unto all the people that were\nthere:  My lords, gentlemen, and others, at this time may I to some good\npurpose speak that evangelical word, Et ecce plus quam Salomon hic!  You\nhave here in your presence an incomparable treasure, that is, my lord\nPantagruel, whose great renown hath brought me hither, out of the very\nheart of England, to confer with him about the insoluble problems, both in\nmagic, alchemy, the cabal, geomancy, astrology, and philosophy, which I had\nin my mind.  But at present I am angry even with fame itself, which I think\nwas envious to him, for that it did not declare the thousandth part of the\nworth that indeed is in him.  You have seen how his disciple only hath\nsatisfied me, and hath told me more than I asked of him.  Besides, he hath\nopened unto me, and resolved other inestimable doubts, wherein I can assure\nyou he hath to me discovered the very true well, fountain, and abyss of the\nencyclopaedia of learning; yea, in such a sort that I did not think I\nshould ever have found a man that could have made his skill appear in so\nmuch as the first elements of that concerning which we disputed by signs,\nwithout speaking either word or half word.  But, in fine, I will reduce\ninto writing that which we have said and concluded, that the world may not\ntake them to be fooleries, and will thereafter cause them to be printed,\nthat everyone may learn as I have done.  Judge, then, what the master had\nbeen able to say, seeing the disciple hath done so valiantly; for, Non est\ndiscipulus super magistrum.  Howsoever, God be praised! and I do very\nhumbly thank you for the honour that you have done us at this act.  God\nreward you for it eternally!  The like thanks gave Pantagruel to all the\ncompany, and, going from thence, he carried Thaumast to dinner with him,\nand believe that they drank as much as their skins could hold, or, as the\nphrase is, with unbuttoned bellies (for in that age they made fast their\nbellies with buttons, as we do now the collars of our doublets or jerkins),\neven till they neither knew where they were nor whence they came.  Blessed\nLady, how they did carouse it, and pluck, as we say, at the kid's leather!\nAnd flagons to trot, and they to toot, Draw; give, page, some wine here;\nreach hither; fill with a devil, so!  There was not one but did drink five\nand twenty or thirty pipes.  Can you tell how?  Even sicut terra sine aqua;\nfor the weather was hot, and, besides that, they were very dry.  In matter\nof the exposition of the propositions set down by Thaumast, and the\nsignification of the signs which they used in their disputation, I would\nhave set them down for you according to their own relation, but I have been\ntold that Thaumast made a great book of it, imprinted at London, wherein he\nhath set down all, without omitting anything, and therefore at this time I\ndo pass by it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge was in love with a lady of Paris.\n\nPanurge began to be in great reputation in the city of Paris by means of\nthis disputation wherein he prevailed against the Englishman, and from\nthenceforth made his codpiece to be very useful to him.  To which effect he\nhad it pinked with pretty little embroideries after the Romanesca fashion.\nAnd the world did praise him publicly, in so far that there was a song made\nof him, which little children did use to sing when they were to fetch\nmustard.  He was withal made welcome in all companies of ladies and\ngentlewomen, so that at last he became presumptuous, and went about to\nbring to his lure one of the greatest ladies in the city.  And, indeed,\nleaving a rabble of long prologues and protestations, which ordinarily\nthese dolent contemplative lent-lovers make who never meddle with the\nflesh, one day he said unto her, Madam, it would be a very great benefit to\nthe commonwealth, delightful to you, honourable to your progeny, and\nnecessary for me, that I cover you for the propagating of my race, and\nbelieve it, for experience will teach it you.  The lady at this word thrust\nhim back above a hundred leagues, saying, You mischievous fool, is it for\nyou to talk thus unto me?  Whom do you think you have in hand?  Begone,\nnever to come in my sight again; for, if one thing were not, I would have\nyour legs and arms cut off.  Well, said he, that were all one to me, to\nwant both legs and arms, provided you and I had but one merry bout together\nat the brangle-buttock game; for herewithin is--in showing her his long\ncodpiece--Master John Thursday, who will play you such an antic that you\nshall feel the sweetness thereof even to the very marrow of your bones.  He\nis a gallant, and doth so well know how to find out all the corners,\ncreeks, and ingrained inmates in your carnal trap, that after him there\nneeds no broom, he'll sweep so well before, and leave nothing to his\nfollowers to work upon.  Whereunto the lady answered, Go, villain, go.  If\nyou speak to me one such word more, I will cry out and make you to be\nknocked down with blows.  Ha, said he, you are not so bad as you say--no,\nor else I am deceived in your physiognomy.  For sooner shall the earth\nmount up unto the heavens, and the highest heavens descend unto the hells,\nand all the course of nature be quite perverted, than that in so great\nbeauty and neatness as in you is there should be one drop of gall or\nmalice.  They say, indeed, that hardly shall a man ever see a fair woman\nthat is not also stubborn.  Yet that is spoke only of those vulgar\nbeauties; but yours is so excellent, so singular, and so heavenly, that I\nbelieve nature hath given it you as a paragon and masterpiece of her art,\nto make us know what she can do when she will employ all her skill and all\nher power.  There is nothing in you but honey, but sugar, but a sweet and\ncelestial manna.  To you it was to whom Paris ought to have adjudged the\ngolden apple, not to Venus, no, nor to Juno, nor to Minerva, for never was\nthere so much magnificence in Juno, so much wisdom in Minerva, nor so much\ncomeliness in Venus as there is in you.  O heavenly gods and goddesses!\nHow happy shall that man be to whom you will grant the favour to embrace\nher, to kiss her, and to rub his bacon with hers!  By G--, that shall be I,\nI know it well; for she loves me already her bellyful, I am sure of it, and\nso was I predestinated to it by the fairies.  And therefore, that we lose\nno time, put on, thrust out your gammons!--and would have embraced her, but\nshe made as if she would put out her head at the window to call her\nneighbours for help.  Then Panurge on a sudden ran out, and in his running\naway said, Madam, stay here till I come again; I will go call them myself;\ndo not you take so much pains.  Thus went he away, not much caring for the\nrepulse he had got, nor made he any whit the worse cheer for it.  The next\nday he came to the church at the time she went to mass.  At the door he\ngave her some of the holy water, bowing himself very low before her.\nAfterwards he kneeled down by her very familiarly and said unto her, Madam,\nknow that I am so amorous of you that I can neither piss nor dung for love.\nI do not know, lady, what you mean, but if I should take any hurt by it,\nhow much you would be to blame!  Go, said she, go!  I do not care; let me\nalone to say my prayers.  Ay but, said he, equivocate upon this:  a beau\nmont le viconte, or, to fair mount the prick-cunts.  I cannot, said she.\nIt is, said he, a beau con le vit monte, or to a fair c. . .the pr. .\n.mounts.  And upon this, pray to God to give you that which your noble\nheart desireth, and I pray you give me these paternosters.  Take them, said\nshe, and trouble me no longer.  This done, she would have taken off her\npaternosters, which were made of a kind of yellow stone called cestrin, and\nadorned with great spots of gold, but Panurge nimbly drew out one of his\nknives, wherewith he cut them off very handsomely, and whilst he was going\naway to carry them to the brokers, he said to her, Will you have my knife?\nNo, no, said she.  But, said he, to the purpose.  I am at your commandment,\nbody and goods, tripes and bowels.\n\nIn the meantime the lady was not very well content with the want of her\npaternosters, for they were one of her implements to keep her countenance\nby in the church; then thought with herself, This bold flouting roister is\nsome giddy, fantastical, light-headed fool of a strange country.  I shall\nnever recover my paternosters again.  What will my husband say?  He will no\ndoubt be angry with me.  But I will tell him that a thief hath cut them off\nfrom my hands in the church, which he will easily believe, seeing the end\nof the ribbon left at my girdle.  After dinner Panurge went to see her,\ncarrying in his sleeve a great purse full of palace-crowns, called\ncounters, and began to say unto her, Which of us two loveth other best, you\nme, or I you?  Whereunto she answered, As for me, I do not hate you; for,\nas God commands, I love all the world.  But to the purpose, said he; are\nnot you in love with me?  I have, said she, told you so many times already\nthat you should talk so no more to me, and if you speak of it again I will\nteach you that I am not one to be talked unto dishonestly.  Get you hence\npacking, and deliver me my paternosters, that my husband may not ask me for\nthem.\n\nHow now, madam, said he, your paternosters?  Nay, by mine oath, I will not\ndo so, but I will give you others.  Had you rather have them of gold well\nenamelled in great round knobs, or after the manner of love-knots, or,\notherwise, all massive, like great ingots, or if you had rather have them\nof ebony, of jacinth, or of grained gold, with the marks of fine\nturquoises, or of fair topazes, marked with fine sapphires, or of baleu\nrubies, with great marks of diamonds of eight and twenty squares?  No, no,\nall this is too little.  I know a fair bracelet of fine emeralds, marked\nwith spotted ambergris, and at the buckle a Persian pearl as big as an\norange.  It will not cost above five and twenty thousand ducats.  I will\nmake you a present of it, for I have ready coin enough,--and withal he made\na noise with his counters, as if they had been French crowns.\n\nWill you have a piece of velvet, either of the violet colour or of crimson\ndyed in grain, or a piece of broached or crimson satin?  Will you have\nchains, gold, tablets, rings?  You need no more but say, Yes; so far as\nfifty thousand ducats may reach, it is but as nothing to me.  By the virtue\nof which words he made the water come in her mouth; but she said unto him,\nNo, I thank you, I will have nothing of you.  By G--, said he, but I will\nhave somewhat of you; yet shall it be that which shall cost you nothing,\nneither shall you have a jot the less when you have given it.  Hold!\n--showing his long codpiece--this is Master John Goodfellow, that asks for\nlodging!--and with that would have embraced her; but she began to cry out,\nyet not very loud.  Then Panurge put off his counterfeit garb, changed his\nfalse visage, and said unto her, You will not then otherwise let me do a\nlittle?  A turd for you!  You do not deserve so much good, nor so much\nhonour; but, by G--, I will make the dogs ride you;--and with this he ran\naway as fast as he could, for fear of blows, whereof he was naturally\nfearful.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge served a Parisian lady a trick that pleased her not very well.\n\nNow you must note that the next day was the great festival of Corpus\nChristi, called the Sacre, wherein all women put on their best apparel, and\non that day the said lady was clothed in a rich gown of crimson satin,\nunder which she wore a very costly white velvet petticoat.\n\nThe day of the eve, called the vigil, Panurge searched so long of one side\nand another that he found a hot or salt bitch, which, when he had tied her\nwith his girdle, he led to his chamber and fed her very well all that day\nand night.  In the morning thereafter he killed her, and took that part of\nher which the Greek geomancers know, and cut it into several small pieces\nas small as he could.  Then, carrying it away as close as might be, he went\nto the place where the lady was to come along to follow the procession, as\nthe custom is upon the said holy day; and when she came in Panurge\nsprinkled some holy water on her, saluting her very courteously.  Then, a\nlittle while after she had said her petty devotions, he sat down close by\nher upon the same bench, and gave her this roundelay in writing, in manner\nas followeth.\n\n  A Roundelay.\n\n  For this one time, that I to you my love\n  Discovered, you did too cruel prove,\n  To send me packing, hopeless, and so soon,\n  Who never any wrong to you had done,\n  In any kind of action, word, or thought:\n  So that, if my suit liked you not, you ought\n  T' have spoke more civilly, and to this sense,\n  My friend, be pleased to depart from hence,\n    For this one time.\n\n  What hurt do I, to wish you to remark,\n  With favour and compassion, how a spark\n  Of your great beauty hath inflamed my heart\n  With deep affection, and that, for my part,\n  I only ask that you with me would dance\n  The brangle gay in feats of dalliance,\n    For this one time?\n\nAnd, as she was opening this paper to see what it was, Panurge very\npromptly and lightly scattered the drug that he had upon her in divers\nplaces, but especially in the plaits of her sleeves and of her gown.  Then\nsaid he unto her, Madam, the poor lovers are not always at ease.  As for\nme, I hope that those heavy nights, those pains and troubles, which I\nsuffer for love of you, shall be a deduction to me of so much pain in\npurgatory; yet, at the least, pray to God to give me patience in my misery.\nPanurge had no sooner spoke this but all the dogs that were in the church\ncame running to this lady with the smell of the drugs that he had strewed\nupon her, both small and great, big and little, all came, laying out their\nmember, smelling to her, and pissing everywhere upon her--it was the\ngreatest villainy in the world.  Panurge made the fashion of driving them\naway; then took his leave of her and withdrew himself into some chapel or\noratory of the said church to see the sport; for these villainous dogs did\ncompiss all her habiliments, and left none of her attire unbesprinkled with\ntheir staling; insomuch that a tall greyhound pissed upon her head, others\nin her sleeves, others on her crupper-piece, and the little ones pissed\nupon her pataines; so that all the women that were round about her had much\nado to save her.  Whereat Panurge very heartily laughing, he said to one of\nthe lords of the city, I believe that same lady is hot, or else that some\ngreyhound hath covered her lately.  And when he saw that all the dogs were\nflocking about her, yarring at the retardment of their access to her, and\nevery way keeping such a coil with her as they are wont to do about a proud\nor salt bitch, he forthwith departed from thence, and went to call\nPantagruel, not forgetting in his way alongst the streets through which he\nwent, where he found any dogs to give them a bang with his foot, saying,\nWill you not go with your fellows to the wedding?  Away, hence, avant,\navant, with a devil avant!  And being come home, he said to Pantagruel,\nMaster, I pray you come and see all the dogs of the country, how they are\nassembled about a lady, the fairest in the city, and would duffle and line\nher.  Whereunto Pantagruel willingly condescended, and saw the mystery,\nwhich he found very pretty and strange.  But the best was at the\nprocession, in which were seen above six hundred thousand and fourteen dogs\nabout her, which did very much trouble and molest her, and whithersoever\nshe passed, those dogs that came afresh, tracing her footsteps, followed\nher at the heels, and pissed in the way where her gown had touched.  All\nthe world stood gazing at this spectacle, considering the countenance of\nthose dogs, who, leaping up, got about her neck and spoiled all her\ngorgeous accoutrements, for the which she could find no remedy but to\nretire unto her house, which was a palace.  Thither she went, and the dogs\nafter her; she ran to hide herself, but the chambermaids could not abstain\nfrom laughing.  When she was entered into the house and had shut the door\nupon herself, all the dogs came running of half a league round, and did so\nwell bepiss the gate of her house that there they made a stream with their\nurine wherein a duck might have very well swimmed, and it is the same\ncurrent that now runs at St. Victor, in which Gobelin dyeth scarlet, for\nthe specifical virtue of these piss-dogs, as our master Doribus did\nheretofore preach publicly.  So may God help you, a mill would have ground\ncorn with it.  Yet not so much as those of Basacle at Toulouse.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel departed from Paris, hearing news that the Dipsodes had\ninvaded the land of the Amaurots; and the cause wherefore the leagues are\nso short in France.\n\nA little while after Pantagruel heard news that his father Gargantua had\nbeen translated into the land of the fairies by Morgue, as heretofore were\nOgier and Arthur; as also, (In the original edition it stands 'together,\nand that.'--M.) that the report of his translation being spread abroad, the\nDipsodes had issued out beyond their borders, with inroads had wasted a\ngreat part of Utopia, and at that very time had besieged the great city of\nthe Amaurots.  Whereupon departing from Paris without bidding any man\nfarewell, for the business required diligence, he came to Rouen.\n\nNow Pantagruel in his journey seeing that the leagues of that little\nterritory about Paris called France were very short in regard of those of\nother countries, demanded the cause and reason of it from Panurge, who told\nhim a story which Marotus of the Lac, monachus, set down in the Acts of the\nKings of Canarre, saying that in old times countries were not distinguished\ninto leagues, miles, furlongs, nor parasangs, until that King Pharamond\ndivided them, which was done in manner as followeth.  The said king chose\nat Paris a hundred fair, gallant, lusty, brisk young men, all resolute and\nbold adventurers in Cupid's duels, together with a hundred comely, pretty,\nhandsome, lovely and well-complexioned wenches of Picardy, all which he\ncaused to be well entertained and highly fed for the space of eight days.\nThen having called for them, he delivered to every one of the young men his\nwench, with store of money to defray their charges, and this injunction\nbesides, to go unto divers places here and there.  And wheresoever they\nshould biscot and thrum their wenches, that, they setting a stone there, it\nshould be accounted for a league.  Thus went away those brave fellows and\nsprightly blades most merrily, and because they were fresh and had been at\nrest, they very often jummed and fanfreluched almost at every field's end,\nand this is the cause why the leagues about Paris are so short.  But when\nthey had gone a great way, and were now as weary as poor devils, all the\noil in their lamps being almost spent, they did not chink and duffle so\noften, but contented themselves (I mean for the men's part) with one scurvy\npaltry bout in a day, and this is that which makes the leagues in Brittany,\nDelanes, Germany, and other more remote countries so long.  Other men give\nother reasons for it, but this seems to me of all other the best.  To which\nPantagruel willingly adhered.  Parting from Rouen, they arrived at\nHonfleur, where they took shipping, Pantagruel, Panurge, Epistemon,\nEusthenes, and Carpalin.\n\nIn which place, waiting for a favourable wind, and caulking their ship,\nhe received from a lady of Paris, which I (he) had formerly kept and\nentertained a good long time, a letter directed on the outside thus,\n--To the best beloved of the fair women, and least loyal of the valiant men\n--P.N.T.G.R.L.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA letter which a messenger brought to Pantagruel from a lady of Paris,\ntogether with the exposition of a posy written in a gold ring.\n\nWhen Pantagruel had read the superscription he was much amazed, and\ntherefore demanded of the said messenger the name of her that had sent it.\nThen opened he the letter, and found nothing written in it, nor otherwise\nenclosed, but only a gold ring, with a square table diamond.  Wondering at\nthis, he called Panurge to him, and showed him the case.  Whereupon Panurge\ntold him that the leaf of paper was written upon, but with such cunning and\nartifice that no man could see the writing at the first sight. Therefore,\nto find it out, he set it by the fire to see if it was made with sal\nammoniac soaked in water.  Then put he it into the water, to see if the\nletter was written with the juice of tithymalle.  After that he held it up\nagainst the candle, to see if it was written with the juice of white\nonions.\n\nThen he rubbed one part of it with oil of nuts, to see if it were not\nwritten with the lee of a fig-tree, and another part of it with the milk of\na woman giving suck to her eldest daughter, to see if it was written with\nthe blood of red toads or green earth-frogs.  Afterwards he rubbed one\ncorner with the ashes of a swallow's nest, to see if it were not written\nwith the dew that is found within the herb alcakengy, called the\nwinter-cherry.  He rubbed, after that, one end with ear-wax, to see if it\nwere not written with the gall of a raven.  Then did he dip it into vinegar,\nto try if it was not written with the juice of the garden spurge.  After\nthat he greased it with the fat of a bat or flittermouse, to see if it was\nnot written with the sperm of a whale, which some call ambergris.  Then put\nit very fairly into a basinful of fresh water, and forthwith took it out, to\nsee whether it were written with stone-alum.  But after all experiments,\nwhen he perceived that he could find out nothing, he called the messenger\nand asked him, Good fellow, the lady that sent thee hither, did she not give\nthee a staff to bring with thee? thinking that it had been according to the\nconceit whereof Aulus Gellius maketh mention.  And the messenger answered\nhim, No, sir.  Then Panurge would have caused his head to be shaven, to see\nwhether the lady had written upon his bald pate, with the hard lye whereof\nsoap is made, that which she meant; but, perceiving that his hair was very\nlong, he forbore, considering that it could not have grown to so great a\nlength in so short a time.\n\nThen he said to Pantagruel, Master, by the virtue of G--, I cannot tell\nwhat to do nor say in it.  For, to know whether there be anything written\nupon this or no, I have made use of a good part of that which Master\nFrancisco di Nianto, the Tuscan, sets down, who hath written the manner of\nreading letters that do not appear; that which Zoroastes published, Peri\ngrammaton acriton; and Calphurnius Bassus, De literis illegibilibus.  But I\ncan see nothing, nor do I believe that there is anything else in it than\nthe ring.  Let us, therefore, look upon it.  Which when they had done, they\nfound this in Hebrew written within, Lamach saba(ch)thani; whereupon they\ncalled Epistemon, and asked him what that meant.  To which he answered that\nthey were Hebrew words, signifying, Wherefore hast thou forsaken me?  Upon\nthat Panurge suddenly replied, I know the mystery.  Do you see this\ndiamond?  It is a false one.  This, then, is the exposition of that which\nthe lady means, Diamant faux, that is, false lover, why hast thou forsaken\nme?  Which interpretation Pantagruel presently understood, and withal\nremembering that at his departure he had not bid the lady farewell, he was\nvery sorry, and would fain have returned to Paris to make his peace with\nher.  But Epistemon put him in mind of Aeneas's departure from Dido, and\nthe saying of Heraclitus of Tarentum, That the ship being at anchor, when\nneed requireth we must cut the cable rather than lose time about untying of\nit,--and that he should lay aside all other thoughts to succour the city of\nhis nativity, which was then in danger.  And, indeed, within an hour after\nthat the wind arose at the north-north-west, wherewith they hoist sail, and\nput out, even into the main sea, so that within few days, passing by Porto\nSancto and by the Madeiras, they went ashore in the Canary Islands.\nParting from thence, they passed by Capobianco, by Senege, by Capoverde, by\nGambre, by Sagres, by Melli, by the Cap di Buona Speranza, and set ashore\nagain in the kingdom of Melinda.  Parting from thence, they sailed away\nwith a tramontane or northerly wind, passing by Meden, by Uti, by Uden, by\nGelasim, by the Isles of the Fairies, and alongst the kingdom of Achorie,\ntill at last they arrived at the port of Utopia, distant from the city of\nthe Amaurots three leagues and somewhat more.\n\nWhen they were ashore, and pretty well refreshed, Pantagruel said,\nGentlemen, the city is not far from hence; therefore, were it not amiss,\nbefore we set forward, to advise well what is to be done, that we be not\nlike the Athenians, who never took counsel until after the fact?  Are you\nresolved to live and die with me?  Yes, sir, said they all, and be as\nconfident of us as of your own fingers.  Well, said he, there is but one\nthing that keeps my mind in great doubt and suspense, which is this, that I\nknow not in what order nor of what number the enemy is that layeth siege to\nthe city; for, if I were certain of that, I should go forward and set on\nwith the better assurance.  Let us therefore consult together, and bethink\nourselves by what means we may come to this intelligence.  Whereunto they\nall said, Let us go thither and see, and stay you here for us; for this\nvery day, without further respite, do we make account to bring you a\ncertain report thereof.\n\nMyself, said Panurge, will undertake to enter into their camp, within the\nvery midst of their guards, unespied by their watch, and merrily feast and\nlecher it at their cost, without being known of any, to see the artillery\nand the tents of all the captains, and thrust myself in with a grave and\nmagnific carriage amongst all their troops and companies, without being\ndiscovered.  The devil would not be able to peck me out with all his\ncircumventions, for I am of the race of Zopyrus.\n\nAnd I, said Epistemon, know all the plots and strategems of the valiant\ncaptains and warlike champions of former ages, together with all the tricks\nand subtleties of the art of war.  I will go, and, though I be detected and\nrevealed, I will escape by making them believe of you whatever I please,\nfor I am of the race of Sinon.\n\nI, said Eusthenes, will enter and set upon them in their trenches, in spite\nof their sentries and all their guards; for I will tread upon their bellies\nand break their legs and arms, yea, though they were every whit as strong\nas the devil himself, for I am of the race of Hercules.\n\nAnd I, said Carpalin, will get in there if the birds can enter, for I am so\nnimble of body, and light withal, that I shall have leaped over their\ntrenches, and ran clean through all their camp, before that they perceive\nme; neither do I fear shot, nor arrow, nor horse, how swift soever, were he\nthe Pegasus of Perseus or Pacolet, being assured that I shall be able to\nmake a safe and sound escape before them all without any hurt.  I will\nundertake to walk upon the ears of corn or grass in the meadows, without\nmaking either of them do so much as bow under me, for I am of the race of\nCamilla the Amazon.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge, Carpalin, Eusthenes, and Epistemon, the gentlemen attendants\nof Pantagruel, vanquished and discomfited six hundred and threescore\nhorsemen very cunningly.\n\nAs he was speaking this, they perceived six hundred and threescore light\nhorsemen, gallantly mounted, who made an outroad thither to see what ship\nit was that was newly arrived in the harbour, and came in a full gallop to\ntake them if they had been able.  Then said Pantagruel, My lads, retire\nyourselves unto the ship; here are some of our enemies coming apace, but I\nwill kill them here before you like beasts, although they were ten times so\nmany; in the meantime, withdraw yourselves, and take your sport at it.\nThen answered Panurge, No, sir; there is no reason that you should do so,\nbut, on the contrary, retire you unto the ship, both you and the rest, for\nI alone will here discomfit them; but we must not linger; come, set\nforward.  Whereunto the others said, It is well advised, sir; withdraw\nyourself, and we will help Panurge here, so shall you know what we are able\nto do.  Then said Pantagruel, Well, I am content; but, if that you be too\nweak, I will not fail to come to your assistance.  With this Panurge took\ntwo great cables of the ship and tied them to the kemstock or capstan which\nwas on the deck towards the hatches, and fastened them in the ground,\nmaking a long circuit, the one further off, the other within that.  Then\nsaid he to Epistemon, Go aboard the ship, and, when I give you a call, turn\nabout the capstan upon the orlop diligently, drawing unto you the two\ncable-ropes; and said to Eusthenes and to Carpalin, My bullies, stay you\nhere, and offer yourselves freely to your enemies.  Do as they bid you, and\nmake as if you would yield unto them, but take heed you come not within the\ncompass of the ropes--be sure to keep yourselves free of them.  And\npresently he went aboard the ship, and took a bundle of straw and a barrel\nof gunpowder, strewed it round about the compass of the cords, and stood by\nwith a brand of fire or match lighted in his hand.  Presently came the\nhorsemen with great fury, and the foremost ran almost home to the ship,\nand, by reason of the slipperiness of the bank, they fell, they and their\nhorses, to the number of four and forty; which the rest seeing, came on,\nthinking that resistance had been made them at their arrival.  But Panurge\nsaid unto them, My masters, I believe that you have hurt yourselves; I pray\nyou pardon us, for it is not our fault, but the slipperiness of the\nsea-water that is always flowing; we submit ourselves to your good pleasure.\nSo said likewise his two other fellows, and Epistemon that was upon the\ndeck.  In the meantime Panurge withdrew himself, and seeing that they were\nall within the compass of the cables, and that his two companions were\nretired, making room for all those horses which came in a crowd, thronging\nupon the neck of one another to see the ship and such as were in it, cried\nout on a sudden to Epistemon, Draw, draw!  Then began Epistemon to wind\nabout the capstan, by doing whereof the two cables so entangled and\nempestered the legs of the horses, that they were all of them thrown down\nto the ground easily, together with their riders.  But they, seeing that,\ndrew their swords, and would have cut them; whereupon Panurge set fire to\nthe train, and there burnt them up all like damned souls, both men and\nhorses, not one escaping save one alone, who being mounted on a fleet\nTurkey courser, by mere speed in flight got himself out of the circle of\nthe ropes.  But when Carpalin perceived him, he ran after him with such\nnimbleness and celerity that he overtook him in less than a hundred paces;\nthen, leaping close behind him upon the crupper of his horse, clasped him\nin his arms, and brought him back to the ship.\n\nThis exploit being ended, Pantagruel was very jovial, and wondrously\ncommended the industry of these gentlemen, whom he called his\nfellow-soldiers, and made them refresh themselves and feed well and merrily\nupon the seashore, and drink heartily with their bellies upon the ground,\nand their prisoner with them, whom they admitted to that familiarity; only\nthat the poor devil was somewhat afraid that Pantagruel would have eaten him\nup whole, which, considering the wideness of his mouth and capacity of his\nthroat was no great matter for him to have done; for he could have done it\nas easily as you would eat a small comfit, he showing no more in his throat\nthan would a grain of millet-seed in the mouth of an ass.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel and his company were weary in eating still salt meats; and\nhow Carpalin went a-hunting to have some venison.\n\nThus as they talked and chatted together, Carpalin said, And, by the belly\nof St. Quenet, shall we never eat any venison?  This salt meat makes me\nhorribly dry.  I will go fetch you a quarter of one of those horses which\nwe have burnt; it is well roasted already.  As he was rising up to go about\nit, he perceived under the side of a wood a fair great roebuck, which was\ncome out of his fort, as I conceive, at the sight of Panurge's fire.  Him\ndid he pursue and run after with as much vigour and swiftness as if it had\nbeen a bolt out of a crossbow, and caught him in a moment; and whilst he\nwas in his course he with his hands took in the air four great bustards,\nseven bitterns, six and twenty grey partridges, two and thirty red-legged\nones, sixteen pheasants, nine woodcocks, nineteen herons, two and thirty\ncushats and ringdoves; and with his feet killed ten or twelve hares and\nrabbits, which were then at relief and pretty big withal, eighteen rails in\na knot together, with fifteen young wild-boars, two little beavers, and\nthree great foxes.  So, striking the kid with his falchion athwart the\nhead, he killed him, and, bearing him on his back, he in his return took up\nhis hares, rails, and young wild-boars, and, as far off as he could be\nheard, cried out and said, Panurge, my friend, vinegar, vinegar!  Then the\ngood Pantagruel, thinking he had fainted, commanded them to provide him\nsome vinegar; but Panurge knew well that there was some good prey in hands,\nand forthwith showed unto noble Pantagruel how he was bearing upon his back\na fair roebuck, and all his girdle bordered with hares.  Then immediately\ndid Epistemon make, in the name of the nine Muses, nine antique wooden\nspits.  Eusthenes did help to flay, and Panurge placed two great cuirassier\nsaddles in such sort that they served for andirons, and making their\nprisoner to be their cook, they roasted their venison by the fire wherein\nthe horsemen were burnt; and making great cheer with a good deal of\nvinegar, the devil a one of them did forbear from his victuals--it was a\ntriumphant and incomparable spectacle to see how they ravened and devoured.\nThen said Pantagruel, Would to God every one of you had two pairs of little\nanthem or sacring bells hanging at your chin, and that I had at mine the\ngreat clocks of Rennes, of Poictiers, of Tours, and of Cambray, to see what\na peal they would ring with the wagging of our chaps.  But, said Panurge,\nit were better we thought a little upon our business, and by what means we\nmight get the upper hand of our enemies.  That is well remembered, said\nPantagruel.  Therefore spoke he thus to the prisoner, My friend, tell us\nhere the truth, and do not lie to us at all, if thou wouldst not be flayed\nalive, for it is I that eat the little children.  Relate unto us at full\nthe order, the number, and the strength of the army.  To which the prisoner\nanswered, Sir, know for a truth that in the army there are three hundred\ngiants, all armed with armour of proof, and wonderful great.  Nevertheless,\nnot fully so great as you, except one that is their head, named Loupgarou,\nwho is armed from head to foot with cyclopical anvils.  Furthermore, one\nhundred three score and three thousand foot, all armed with the skins of\nhobgoblins, strong and valiant men; eleven thousand four hundred\nmen-at-arms or cuirassiers; three thousand six hundred double cannons, and\narquebusiers without number; four score and fourteen thousand pioneers; one\nhundred and fifty thousand whores, fair like goddesses--(That is for me,\nsaid Panurge)--whereof some are Amazons, some Lionnoises, others\nParisiennes, Taurangelles, Angevines, Poictevines, Normandes, and High\nDutch--there are of them of all countries and all languages.\n\nYea but, said Pantagruel, is the king there?  Yes, sir, said the prisoner;\nhe is there in person, and we call him Anarchus, king of the Dipsodes,\nwhich is as much to say as thirsty people, for you never saw men more\nthirsty, nor more willing to drink, and his tent is guarded by the giants.\nIt is enough, said Pantagruel.  Come, brave boys, are you resolved to go\nwith me?  To which Panurge answered, God confound him that leaves you!  I\nhave already bethought myself how I will kill them all like pigs, and so\nthe devil one leg of them shall escape.  But I am somewhat troubled about\none thing.  And what is that? said Pantagruel.  It is, said Panurge, how I\nshall be able to set forward to the justling and bragmardizing of all the\nwhores that be there this afternoon, in such sort that there escape not one\nunbumped by me, breasted and jummed after the ordinary fashion of man and\nwomen in the Venetian conflict.  Ha, ha, ha, ha, said Pantagruel.\n\nAnd Carpalin said:  The devil take these sink-holes, if, by G--, I do not\nbumbaste some one of them.  Then said Eusthenes:  What! shall not I have\nany, whose paces, since we came from Rouen, were never so well winded up as\nthat my needle could mount to ten or eleven o'clock, till now that I have\nit hard, stiff, and strong, like a hundred devils?  Truly, said Panurge,\nthou shalt have of the fattest, and of those that are most plump and in the\nbest case.\n\nHow now! said Epistemon; everyone shall ride, and I must lead the ass?  The\ndevil take him that will do so.  We will make use of the right of war, Qui\npotest capere, capiat.  No, no, said Panurge, but tie thine ass to a crook,\nand ride as the world doth.  And the good Pantagruel laughed at all this,\nand said unto them, You reckon without your host.  I am much afraid that,\nbefore it be night, I shall see you in such taking that you will have no\ngreat stomach to ride, but more like to be rode upon with sound blows of\npike and lance.  Baste, said Epistemon, enough of that!  I will not fail to\nbring them to you, either to roast or boil, to fry or put in paste.  They\nare not so many in number as were in the army of Xerxes, for he had thirty\nhundred thousand fighting-men, if you will believe Herodotus and Trogus\nPompeius, and yet Themistocles with a few men overthrew them all.  For\nGod's sake, take you no care for that.  Cobsminny, cobsminny, said Panurge;\nmy codpiece alone shall suffice to overthrow all the men; and my St.\nSweephole, that dwells within it, shall lay all the women squat upon their\nbacks.  Up then, my lads, said Pantagruel, and let us march along.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel set up one trophy in memorial of their valour, and Panurge\nanother in remembrance of the hares.  How Pantagruel likewise with his\nfarts begat little men, and with his fisgs little women; and how Panurge\nbroke a great staff over two glasses.\n\nBefore we depart hence, said Pantagruel, in remembrance of the exploit that\nyou have now performed I will in this place erect a fair trophy.  Then\nevery man amongst them, with great joy and fine little country songs, set\nup a huge big post, whereunto they hanged a great cuirassier saddle, the\nfronstal of a barbed horse, bridle-bosses, pulley-pieces for the knees,\nstirrup-leathers, spurs, stirrups, a coat of mail, a corslet tempered with\nsteel, a battle-axe, a strong, short, and sharp horseman's sword, a\ngauntlet, a horseman's mace, gushet-armour for the armpits, leg-harness,\nand a gorget, with all other furniture needful for the decorement of a\ntriumphant arch, in sign of a trophy.  And then Pantagruel, for an eternal\nmemorial, wrote this victorial ditton, as followeth:--\n\n  Here was the prowess made apparent of\n  Four brave and valiant champions of proof,\n  Who, without any arms but wit, at once,\n  Like Fabius, or the two Scipions,\n  Burnt in a fire six hundred and threescore\n  Crablice, strong rogues ne'er vanquished before.\n  By this each king may learn, rook, pawn, and knight,\n  That sleight is much more prevalent than might.\n\n    For victory,\n    As all men see,\n    Hangs on the ditty\n    Of that committee\n    Where the great God\n    Hath his abode.\n\n  Nor doth he it to strong and great men give,\n  But to his elect, as we must believe;\n  Therefore shall he obtain wealth and esteem,\n  Who thorough faith doth put his trust in him.\n\nWhilst Pantagruel was writing these foresaid verses, Panurge halved and\nfixed upon a great stake the horns of a roebuck, together with the skin and\nthe right forefoot thereof, the ears of three leverets, the chine of a\nconey, the jaws of a hare, the wings of two bustards, the feet of four\nqueest-doves, a bottle or borracho full of vinegar, a horn wherein to put\nsalt, a wooden spit, a larding stick, a scurvy kettle full of holes, a\ndripping-pan to make sauce in, an earthen salt-cellar, and a goblet of\nBeauvais.  Then, in imitation of Pantagruel's verses and trophy, wrote that\nwhich followeth:--\n\n  Here was it that four jovial blades sat down\n  To a profound carousing, and to crown\n  Their banquet with those wines which please best great\n  Bacchus, the monarch of their drinking state.\n  Then were the reins and furch of a young hare,\n  With salt and vinegar, displayed there,\n  Of which to snatch a bit or two at once\n  They all fell on like hungry scorpions.\n\n    For th' Inventories\n    Of Defensories\n    Say that in heat\n    We must drink neat\n    All out, and of\n    The choicest stuff.\n\n  But it is bad to eat of young hare's flesh,\n  Unless with vinegar we it refresh.\n  Receive this tenet, then, without control,\n  That vinegar of that meat is the soul.\n\nThen said Pantagruel, Come, my lads, let us begone! we have stayed here too\nlong about our victuals; for very seldom doth it fall out that the greatest\neaters do the most martial exploits.  There is no shadow like that of\nflying colours, no smoke like that of horses, no clattering like that of\narmour.  At this Epistemon began to smile, and said, There is no shadow\nlike that of the kitchen, no smoke like that of pasties, and no clattering\nlike that of goblets.  Unto which answered Panurge, There is no shadow like\nthat of curtains, no smoke like that of women's breasts, and no clattering\nlike that of ballocks.  Then forthwith rising up he gave a fart, a leap,\nand a whistle, and most joyfully cried out aloud, Ever live Pantagruel!\nWhen Pantagruel saw that, he would have done as much; but with the fart\nthat he let the earth trembled nine leagues about, wherewith and with the\ncorrupted air he begot above three and fifty thousand little men,\nill-favoured dwarfs, and with one fisg that he let he made as many little\nwomen, crouching down, as you shall see in divers places, which never grow\nbut like cow's tails, downwards, or, like the Limosin radishes, round.  How\nnow! said Panurge, are your farts so fertile and fruitful?  By G--, here be\nbrave farted men and fisgued women; let them be married together; they will\nbeget fine hornets and dorflies.  So did Pantagruel, and called them\npigmies.  Those he sent to live in an island thereby, where since that time\nthey are increased mightily.  But the cranes make war with them\ncontinually, against which they do most courageously defend themselves; for\nthese little ends of men and dandiprats (whom in Scotland they call\nwhiphandles and knots of a tar-barrel) are commonly very testy and\ncholeric; the physical reason whereof is, because their heart is near their\nspleen.\n\nAt this same time Panurge took two drinking glasses that were there, both\nof one bigness, and filled them with water up to the brim, and set one of\nthem upon one stool and the other upon another, placing them about one foot\nfrom one another.  Then he took the staff of a javelin, about five foot and\na half long, and put it upon the two glasses, so that the two ends of the\nstaff did come just to the brims of the glasses.  This done, he took a\ngreat stake or billet of wood, and said to Pantagruel and to the rest, My\nmasters, behold how easily we shall have the victory over our enemies; for\njust as I shall break this staff here upon these glasses, without either\nbreaking or crazing of them, nay, which is more, without spilling one drop\nof the water that is within them, even so shall we break the heads of our\nDipsodes without receiving any of us any wound or loss in our person or\ngoods.  But, that you may not think there is any witchcraft in this, hold!\nsaid he to Eusthenes, strike upon the midst as hard as thou canst with this\nlog.  Eusthenes did so, and the staff broke in two pieces, and not one drop\nof the water fell out of the glasses.  Then said he, I know a great many\nsuch other tricks; let us now therefore march boldly and with assurance.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel got the victory very strangely over the Dipsodes and the\nGiants.\n\nAfter all this talk, Pantagruel took the prisoner to him and sent him away,\nsaying, Go thou unto thy king in his camp, and tell him tidings of what\nthou hast seen, and let him resolve to feast me to-morrow about noon; for,\nas soon as my galleys shall come, which will be to-morrow at furthest, I\nwill prove unto him by eighteen hundred thousand fighting-men and seven\nthousand giants, all of them greater than I am, that he hath done foolishly\nand against reason thus to invade my country.  Wherein Pantagruel feigned\nthat he had an army at sea.  But the prisoner answered that he would yield\nhimself to be his slave, and that he was content never to return to his own\npeople, but rather with Pantagruel to fight against them, and for God's\nsake besought him that he might be permitted so to do.  Whereunto\nPantagruel would not give consent, but commanded him to depart thence\nspeedily and begone as he had told him, and to that effect gave him a\nboxful of euphorbium, together with some grains of the black chameleon\nthistle, steeped into aqua vitae, and made up into the condiment of a wet\nsucket, commanding him to carry it to his king, and to say unto him, that\nif he were able to eat one ounce of that without drinking after it, he\nmight then be able to resist him without any fear or apprehension of\ndanger.\n\nThe prisoner then besought him with joined hands that in the hour of the\nbattle he would have compassion upon him.  Whereat Pantagruel said unto\nhim, After that thou hast delivered all unto the king, put thy whole\nconfidence in God, and he will not forsake thee; because, although for my\npart I be mighty, as thou mayst see, and have an infinite number of men in\narms, I do nevertheless trust neither in my force nor in mine industry, but\nall my confidence is in God my protector, who doth never forsake those that\nin him do put their trust and confidence.  This done, the prisoner\nrequested him that he would afford him some reasonable composition for his\nransom.  To which Pantagruel answered, that his end was not to rob nor\nransom men, but to enrich them and reduce them to total liberty.  Go thy\nway, said he, in the peace of the living God, and never follow evil\ncompany, lest some mischief befall thee.  The prisoner being gone,\nPantagruel said to his men, Gentlemen, I have made this prisoner believe\nthat we have an army at sea; as also that we will not assault them till\nto-morrow at noon, to the end that they, doubting of the great arrival of\nour men, may spend this night in providing and strengthening themselves,\nbut in the meantime my intention is that we charge them about the hour\nof the first sleep.\n\nLet us leave Pantagruel here with his apostles, and speak of King Anarchus\nand his army.  When the prisoner was come he went unto the king and told\nhim how there was a great giant come, called Pantagruel, who had overthrown\nand made to be cruelly roasted all the six hundred and nine and fifty\nhorsemen, and he alone escaped to bring the news.  Besides that, he was\ncharged by the said giant to tell him that the next day, about noon, he\nmust make a dinner ready for him, for at that hour he was resolved to set\nupon him.  Then did he give him that box wherein were those confitures.\nBut as soon as he had swallowed down one spoonful of them, he was taken\nwith such a heat in the throat, together with an ulceration in the flap of\nthe top of the windpipe, that his tongue peeled with it in such sort that,\nfor all they could do unto him, he found no ease at all but by drinking\nonly without cessation; for as soon as ever he took the goblet from his\nhead, his tongue was on a fire, and therefore they did nothing but still\npour in wine into his throat with a funnel.  Which when his captains,\nbashaws, and guard of his body did see, they tasted of the same drugs to\ntry whether they were so thirst-procuring and alterative or no.  But it so\nbefell them as it had done their king, and they plied the flagon so well\nthat the noise ran throughout all the camp, how the prisoner was returned;\nthat the next day they were to have an assault; that the king and his\ncaptains did already prepare themselves for it, together with his guards,\nand that with carousing lustily and quaffing as hard as they could.  Every\nman, therefore, in the army began to tipple, ply the pot, swill and guzzle\nit as fast as they could.  In sum, they drunk so much, and so long, that\nthey fell asleep like pigs, all out of order throughout the whole camp.\n\nLet us now return to the good Pantagruel, and relate how he carried himself\nin this business.  Departing from the place of the trophies, he took the\nmast of their ship in his hand like a pilgrim's staff, and put within the\ntop of it two hundred and seven and thirty puncheons of white wine of\nAnjou, the rest was of Rouen, and tied up to his girdle the bark all full\nof salt, as easily as the lansquenets carry their little panniers, and so\nset onward on his way with his fellow-soldiers.  When he was come near to\nthe enemy's camp, Panurge said unto him, Sir, if you would do well, let\ndown this white wine of Anjou from the scuttle of the mast of the ship,\nthat we may all drink thereof, like Bretons.\n\nHereunto Pantagruel very willingly consented, and they drank so neat that\nthere was not so much as one poor drop left of two hundred and seven and\nthirty puncheons, except one boracho or leathern bottle of Tours which\nPanurge filled for himself, for he called that his vademecum, and some\nscurvy lees of wine in the bottom, which served him instead of vinegar.\nAfter they had whittled and curried the can pretty handsomely, Panurge gave\nPantagruel to eat some devilish drugs compounded of lithotripton, which is\na stone-dissolving ingredient, nephrocatarticon, that purgeth the reins,\nthe marmalade of quinces, called codiniac, a confection of cantharides,\nwhich are green flies breeding on the tops of olive-trees, and other kinds\nof diuretic or piss-procuring simples.  This done, Pantagruel said to\nCarpalin, Go into the city, scrambling like a cat against the wall, as you\ncan well do, and tell them that now presently they come out and charge\ntheir enemies as rudely as they can, and having said so, come down, taking\na lighted torch with you, wherewith you shall set on fire all the tents and\npavilions in the camp; then cry as loud as you are able with your great\nvoice, and then come away from thence.  Yea but, said Carpalin, were it not\ngood to cloy all their ordnance?  No, no, said Pantagruel, only blow up all\ntheir powder.  Carpalin, obeying him, departed suddenly and did as he was\nappointed by Pantagruel, and all the combatants came forth that were in the\ncity, and when he had set fire in the tents and pavilions, he passed so\nlightly through them, and so highly and profoundly did they snort and\nsleep, that they never perceived him.  He came to the place where their\nartillery was, and set their munition on fire.  But here was the danger.\nThe fire was so sudden that poor Carpalin had almost been burnt.  And had\nit not been for his wonderful agility he had been fried like a roasting\npig.  But he departed away so speedily that a bolt or arrow out of a\ncrossbow could not have had a swifter motion.  When he was clear of their\ntrenches, he shouted aloud, and cried out so dreadfully, and with such\namazement to the hearers, that it seemed all the devils of hell had been\nlet loose.  At which noise the enemies awaked, but can you tell how?  Even\nno less astonished than are monks at the ringing of the first peal to\nmatins, which in Lusonnois is called rub-ballock.\n\nIn the meantime Pantagruel began to sow the salt that he had in his bark,\nand because they slept with an open gaping mouth, he filled all their\nthroats with it, so that those poor wretches were by it made to cough like\nfoxes.  Ha, Pantagruel, how thou addest greater heat to the firebrand that\nis in us!  Suddenly Pantagruel had will to piss, by means of the drugs\nwhich Panurge had given him, and pissed amidst the camp so well and so\ncopiously that he drowned them all, and there was a particular deluge ten\nleagues round about, of such considerable depth that the history saith, if\nhis father's great mare had been there, and pissed likewise, it would\nundoubtedly have been a more enormous deluge than that of Deucalion; for\nshe did never piss but she made a river greater than is either the Rhone or\nthe Danube.  Which those that were come out of the city seeing, said, They\nare all cruelly slain; see how the blood runs along.  But they were\ndeceived in thinking Pantagruel's urine had been the blood of their\nenemies, for they could not see but by the light of the fire of the\npavilions and some small light of the moon.\n\nThe enemies, after that they were awaked, seeing on one side the fire in\nthe camp, and on the other the inundation of the urinal deluge, could not\ntell what to say nor what to think.  Some said that it was the end of the\nworld and the final judgment, which ought to be by fire.  Others again\nthought that the sea-gods, Neptune, Proteus, Triton, and the rest of them,\ndid persecute them, for that indeed they found it to be like sea-water and\nsalt.\n\nO who were able now condignly to relate how Pantagruel did demean himself\nagainst the three hundred giants!  O my Muse, my Calliope, my Thalia,\ninspire me at this time, restore unto me my spirits; for this is the\nlogical bridge of asses!  Here is the pitfall, here is the difficulty, to\nhave ability enough to express the horrible battle that was fought.  Ah,\nwould to God that I had now a bottle of the best wine that ever those drank\nwho shall read this so veridical history!\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel discomfited the three hundred giants armed with free-stone,\nand Loupgarou their captain.\n\nThe giants, seeing all their camp drowned, carried away their king Anarchus\nupon their backs as well as they could out of the fort, as Aeneas did to\nhis father Anchises, in the time of the conflagration of Troy.  When\nPanurge perceived them, he said to Pantagruel, Sir, yonder are the giants\ncoming forth against you; lay on them with your mast gallantly, like an old\nfencer; for now is the time that you must show yourself a brave man and an\nhonest.  And for our part we will not fail you.  I myself will kill to you\na good many boldly enough; for why, David killed Goliath very easily; and\nthen this great lecher, Eusthenes, who is stronger than four oxen, will not\nspare himself.  Be of good courage, therefore, and valiant; charge amongst\nthem with point and edge, and by all manner of means.  Well, said\nPantagruel, of courage I have more than for fifty francs, but let us be\nwise, for Hercules first never undertook against two.  That is well cacked,\nwell scummered, said Panurge; do you compare yourself with Hercules?  You\nhave, by G--, more strength in your teeth, and more scent in your bum, than\never Hercules had in all his body and soul.  So much is a man worth as he\nesteems himself.  Whilst they spake those words, behold! Loupgarou was come\nwith all his giants, who, seeing Pantagruel in a manner alone, was carried\naway with temerity and presumption, for hopes that he had to kill the good\nman.  Whereupon he said to his companions the giants, You wenchers of the\nlow country, by Mahoom! if any of you undertake to fight against these men\nhere, I will put you cruelly to death.  It is my will that you let me fight\nsingle.  In the meantime you shall have good sport to look upon us.\n\nThen all the other giants retired with their king to the place where the\nflagons stood, and Panurge and his comrades with them, who counterfeited\nthose that have had the pox, for he wreathed about his mouth, shrunk up his\nfingers, and with a harsh and hoarse voice said unto them, I forsake -od,\nfellow-soldiers, if I would have it to be believed that we make any war at\nall.  Give us somewhat to eat with you whilest our masters fight against\none another.  To this the king and giants jointly condescended, and\naccordingly made them to banquet with them.  In the meantime Panurge told\nthem the follies of Turpin, the examples of St. Nicholas, and the tale of a\ntub.  Loupgarou then set forward towards Pantagruel, with a mace all of\nsteel, and that of the best sort, weighing nine thousand seven hundred\nquintals and two quarterons, at the end whereof were thirteen pointed\ndiamonds, the least whereof was as big as the greatest bell of Our Lady's\nChurch at Paris--there might want perhaps the thickness of a nail, or at\nmost, that I may not lie, of the back of those knives which they call\ncutlugs or earcutters, but for a little off or on, more or less, it is no\nmatter--and it was enchanted in such sort that it could never break, but,\ncontrarily, all that it did touch did break immediately.  Thus, then, as he\napproached with great fierceness and pride of heart, Pantagruel, casting up\nhis eyes to heaven, recommended himself to God with all his soul, making\nsuch a vow as followeth.\n\nO thou Lord God, who hast always been my protector and my saviour! thou\nseest the distress wherein I am at this time.  Nothing brings me hither but\na natural zeal, which thou hast permitted unto mortals, to keep and defend\nthemselves, their wives and children, country and family, in case thy own\nproper cause were not in question, which is the faith; for in such a\nbusiness thou wilt have no coadjutors, only a catholic confession and\nservice of thy word, and hast forbidden us all arming and defence.  For\nthou art the Almighty, who in thine own cause, and where thine own business\nis taken to heart, canst defend it far beyond all that we can conceive,\nthou who hast thousand thousands of hundreds of millions of legions of\nangels, the least of which is able to kill all mortal men, and turn about\nthe heavens and earth at his pleasure, as heretofore it very plainly\nappeared in the army of Sennacherib.  If it may please thee, therefore, at\nthis time to assist me, as my whole trust and confidence is in thee alone,\nI vow unto thee, that in all countries whatsoever wherein I shall have any\npower or authority, whether in this of Utopia or elsewhere, I will cause\nthy holy gospel to be purely, simply, and entirely preached, so that the\nabuses of a rabble of hypocrites and false prophets, who by human\nconstitutions and depraved inventions have empoisoned all the world, shall\nbe quite exterminated from about me.\n\nThis vow was no sooner made, but there was heard a voice from heaven\nsaying, Hoc fac et vinces; that is to say, Do this, and thou shalt\novercome.  Then Pantagruel, seeing that Loupgarou with his mouth wide open\nwas drawing near to him, went against him boldly, and cried out as loud as\nhe was able, Thou diest, villain, thou diest! purposing by his horrible cry\nto make him afraid, according to the discipline of the Lacedaemonians.\nWithal, he immediately cast at him out of his bark, which he wore at his\ngirdle, eighteen cags and four bushels of salt, wherewith he filled both\nhis mouth, throat, nose, and eyes.  At this Loupgarou was so highly\nincensed that, most fiercely setting upon him, he thought even then with a\nblow of his mace to have beat out his brains.  But Pantagruel was very\nnimble, and had always a quick foot and a quick eye, and therefore with his\nleft foot did he step back one pace, yet not so nimbly but that the blow,\nfalling upon the bark, broke it in four thousand four score and six pieces,\nand threw all the rest of the salt about the ground.  Pantagruel, seeing\nthat, most gallantly displayed the vigour of his arms, and, according to\nthe art of the axe, gave him with the great end of his mast a homethrust a\nlittle above the breast; then, bringing along the blow to the left side,\nwith a slash struck him between the neck and shoulders.  After that,\nadvancing his right foot, he gave him a push upon the couillons with the\nupper end of his said mast, wherewith breaking the scuttle on the top\nthereof, he spilt three or four puncheons of wine that were left therein.\n\nUpon that Loupgarou thought that he had pierced his bladder, and that the\nwine that came forth had been his urine.  Pantagruel, being not content\nwith this, would have doubled it by a side-blow; but Loupgarou, lifting\nup his mace, advanced one step upon him, and with all his force would\nhave dashed it upon Pantagruel, wherein, to speak the truth, he so\nsprightfully carried himself, that, if God had not succoured the good\nPantagruel, he had been cloven from the top of his head to the bottom of\nhis milt.  But the blow glanced to the right side by the brisk nimbleness\nof Pantagruel, and his mace sank into the ground above threescore and\nthirteen foot, through a huge rock, out of which the fire did issue greater\nthan nine thousand and six tons.  Pantagruel, seeing him busy about\nplucking out his mace, which stuck in the ground between the rocks, ran\nupon him, and would have clean cut off his head, if by mischance his mast\nhad not touched a little against the stock of Loupgarou's mace, which was\nenchanted, as we have said before.  By this means his mast broke off about\nthree handfuls above his hand, whereat he stood amazed like a bell-founder,\nand cried out, Ah, Panurge, where art thou?  Panurge, seeing that, said to\nthe king and the giants, By G--, they will hurt one another if they be not\nparted.  But the giants were as merry as if they had been at a wedding.\nThen Carpalin would have risen from thence to help his master; but one of\nthe giants said unto him, By Golfarin, the nephew of Mahoom, if thou stir\nhence I will put thee in the bottom of my breeches instead of a\nsuppository, which cannot choose but do me good.  For in my belly I am very\ncostive, and cannot well cagar without gnashing my teeth and making many\nfilthy faces.  Then Pantagruel, thus destitute of a staff, took up the end\nof his mast, striking athwart and alongst upon the giant, but he did him no\nmore hurt than you would do with a fillip upon a smith's anvil.  In the\n(mean) time Loupgarou was drawing his mace out of the ground, and, having\nalready plucked it out, was ready therewith to have struck Pantagruel, who,\nbeing very quick in turning, avoided all his blows in taking only the\ndefensive part in hand, until on a sudden he saw that Loupgarou did\nthreaten him with these words, saying, Now, villain, will not I fail to\nchop thee as small as minced meat, and keep thee henceforth from ever\nmaking any more poor men athirst!  For then, without any more ado,\nPantagruel struck him such a blow with his foot against the belly that he\nmade him fall backwards, his heels over his head, and dragged him thus\nalong at flay-buttock above a flight-shot.  Then Loupgarou cried out,\nbleeding at the throat, Mahoom, Mahoom, Mahoom! at which noise all the\ngiants arose to succour him.  But Panurge said unto them, Gentlemen, do not\ngo, if will believe me, for our master is mad, and strikes athwart and\nalongst, he cares not where; he will do you a mischief.  But the giants\nmade no account of it, seeing that Pantagruel had never a staff.\n\nAnd when Pantagruel saw those giants approach very near unto him, he took\nLoupgarou by the two feet, and lift up his body like a pike in the air,\nwherewith, it being harnessed with anvils, he laid such heavy load amongst\nthose giants armed with free-stone, that, striking them down as a mason\ndoth little knobs of stones, there was not one of them that stood before\nhim whom he threw not flat to the ground.  And by the breaking of this\nstony armour there was made such a horrible rumble as put me in mind of the\nfall of the butter-tower of St. Stephen's at Bourges when it melted before\nthe sun.  Panurge, with Carpalin and Eusthenes, did cut in the mean time\nthe throats of those that were struck down, in such sort that there escaped\nnot one.  Pantagruel to any man's sight was like a mower, who with his\nscythe, which was Loupgarou, cut down the meadow grass, to wit, the giants;\nbut with this fencing of Pantagruel's Loupgarou lost his head, which\nhappened when Pantagruel struck down one whose name was Riflandouille, or\nPudding-plunderer, who was armed cap-a-pie with Grison stones, one chip\nwhereof splintering abroad cut off Epistemon's neck clean and fair.  For\notherwise the most part of them were but lightly armed with a kind of sandy\nbrittle stone, and the rest with slates.  At last, when he saw that they\nwere all dead, he threw the body of Loupgarou as hard as he could against\nthe city, where falling like a frog upon his belly in the great Piazza\nthereof, he with the said fall killed a singed he-cat, a wet she-cat, a\nfarting duck, and a bridled goose.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Epistemon, who had his head cut off, was finely healed by Panurge, and\nof the news which he brought from the devils, and of the damned people in\nhell.\n\nThis gigantal victory being ended, Pantagruel withdrew himself to the place\nof the flagons, and called for Panurge and the rest, who came unto him safe\nand sound, except Eusthenes, whom one of the giants had scratched a little\nin the face whilst he was about the cutting of his throat, and Epistemon,\nwho appeared not at all.  Whereat Pantagruel was so aggrieved that he would\nhave killed himself.  But Panurge said unto him, Nay, sir, stay a while,\nand we will search for him amongst the dead, and find out the truth of all.\nThus as they went seeking after him, they found him stark dead, with his\nhead between his arms all bloody.  Then Eusthenes cried out, Ah, cruel\ndeath! hast thou taken from me the perfectest amongst men?  At which words\nPantagruel rose up with the greatest grief that ever any man did see, and\nsaid to Panurge, Ha, my friend! the prophecy of your two glasses and the\njavelin staff was a great deal too deceitful.  But Panurge answered, My\ndear bullies all, weep not one drop more, for, he being yet all hot, I will\nmake him as sound as ever he was.  In saying this, he took the head and\nheld it warm foregainst his codpiece, that the wind might not enter into\nit.  Eusthenes and Carpalin carried the body to the place where they had\nbanqueted, not out of any hope that ever he would recover, but that\nPantagruel might see it.\n\nNevertheless Panurge gave him very good comfort, saying, If I do not heal\nhim, I will be content to lose my head, which is a fool's wager.  Leave\noff, therefore, crying, and help me.  Then cleansed he his neck very well\nwith pure white wine, and, after that, took his head, and into it synapised\nsome powder of diamerdis, which he always carried about him in one of his\nbags.  Afterwards he anointed it with I know not what ointment, and set it\non very just, vein against vein, sinew against sinew, and spondyle against\nspondyle, that he might not be wry-necked--for such people he mortally\nhated.  This done, he gave it round about some fifteen or sixteen stitches\nwith a needle that it might not fall off again; then, on all sides and\neverywhere, he put a little ointment on it, which he called resuscitative.\n\nSuddenly Epistemon began to breathe, then opened his eyes, yawned, sneezed,\nand afterwards let a great household fart.  Whereupon Panurge said, Now,\ncertainly, he is healed,--and therefore gave him to drink a large full\nglass of strong white wine, with a sugared toast.  In this fashion was\nEpistemon finely healed, only that he was somewhat hoarse for above three\nweeks together, and had a dry cough of which he could not be rid but by the\nforce of continual drinking.  And now he began to speak, and said that he\nhad seen the devil, had spoken with Lucifer familiarly, and had been very\nmerry in hell and in the Elysian fields, affirming very seriously before\nthem all that the devils were boon companions and merry fellows.  But, in\nrespect of the damned, he said he was very sorry that Panurge had so soon\ncalled him back into this world again; for, said he, I took wonderful\ndelight to see them.  How so? said Pantagruel.  Because they do not use\nthem there, said Epistemon, so badly as you think they do.  Their estate\nand condition of living is but only changed after a very strange manner;\nfor I saw Alexander the Great there amending and patching on clouts upon\nold breeches and stockings, whereby he got but a very poor living.\n\nXerxes was a crier of mustard.\nRomulus, a salter and patcher of pattens.\nNuma, a nailsmith.\nTarquin, a porter.\nPiso, a clownish swain.\nSylla, a ferryman.\nCyrus, a cowherd.\nThemistocles, a glass-maker.\nEpaminondas, a maker of mirrors or looking-glasses.\nBrutus and Cassius, surveyors or measurers of land.\nDemosthenes, a vine-dresser.\nCicero, a fire-kindler.\nFabius, a threader of beads.\nArtaxerxes, a rope-maker.\nAeneas, a miller.\nAchilles was a scaldpated maker of hay-bundles.\nAgamemnon, a lick-box.\nUlysses, a hay-mower.\nNestor, a door-keeper or forester.\nDarius, a gold-finder or jakes-farmer.\nAncus Martius, a ship-trimmer.\nCamillus, a foot-post.\nMarcellus, a sheller of beans.\nDrusus, a taker of money at the doors of playhouses.\nScipio Africanus, a crier of lee in a wooden slipper.\nAsdrubal, a lantern-maker.\nHannibal, a kettlemaker and seller of eggshells.\nPriamus, a seller of old clouts.\nLancelot of the Lake was a flayer of dead horses.\n\nAll the Knights of the Round Table were poor day-labourers, employed to row\nover the rivers of Cocytus, Phlegeton, Styx, Acheron, and Lethe, when my\nlords the devils had a mind to recreate themselves upon the water, as in\nthe like occasion are hired the boatmen at Lyons, the gondoliers of Venice,\nand oars at London.  But with this difference, that these poor knights have\nonly for their fare a bob or flirt on the nose, and in the evening a morsel\nof coarse mouldy bread.\n\nTrajan was a fisher of frogs.\nAntoninus, a lackey.\nCommodus, a jet-maker.\nPertinax, a peeler of walnuts.\nLucullus, a maker of rattles and hawks'-bells.\nJustinian, a pedlar.\nHector, a snap-sauce scullion.\nParis was a poor beggar.\nCambyses, a mule-driver.\n\nNero, a base blind fiddler, or player on that instrument which is called a\nwindbroach.  Fierabras was his serving-man, who did him a thousand\nmischievous tricks, and would make him eat of the brown bread and drink of\nthe turned wine when himself did both eat and drink of the best.\n\nJulius Caesar and Pompey were boat-wrights and tighters of ships.\n\nValentine and Orson did serve in the stoves of hell, and were sweat-rubbers\nin hot houses.\n\nGiglan and Govian (Gauvin) were poor swineherds.\n\nGeoffrey with the great tooth was a tinder-maker and seller of matches.\n\nGodfrey de Bouillon, a hood-maker.\nJason was a bracelet-maker.\nDon Pietro de Castille, a carrier of indulgences.\nMorgan, a beer-brewer.\nHuon of Bordeaux, a hooper of barrels.\nPyrrhus, a kitchen-scullion.\nAntiochus, a chimney-sweeper.\nOctavian, a scraper of parchment.\nNerva, a mariner.\n\nPope Julius was a crier of pudding-pies, but he left off wearing there his\ngreat buggerly beard.\n\nJohn of Paris was a greaser of boots.\nArthur of Britain, an ungreaser of caps.\nPerce-Forest, a carrier of faggots.\nPope Boniface the Eighth, a scummer of pots.\nPope Nicholas the Third, a maker of paper.\nPope Alexander, a ratcatcher.\nPope Sixtus, an anointer of those that have the pox.\n\nWhat, said Pantagruel, have they the pox there too?  Surely, said\nEpistemon, I never saw so many:  there are there, I think, above a hundred\nmillions; for believe, that those who have not had the pox in this world\nmust have it in the other.\n\nCotsbody, said Panurge, then I am free; for I have been as far as the hole\nof Gibraltar, reached unto the outmost bounds of Hercules, and gathered of\nthe ripest.\n\nOgier the Dane was a furbisher of armour.\nThe King Tigranes, a mender of thatched houses.\nGalien Restored, a taker of moldwarps.\nThe four sons of Aymon were all toothdrawers.\nPope Calixtus was a barber of a woman's sine qua non.\nPope Urban, a bacon-picker.\nMelusina was a kitchen drudge-wench.\nMatabrune, a laundress.\nCleopatra, a crier of onions.\nHelen, a broker for chambermaids.\nSemiramis, the beggars' lice-killer.\nDido did sell mushrooms.\nPenthesilea sold cresses.\nLucretia was an alehouse-keeper.\nHortensia, a spinstress.\nLivia, a grater of verdigris.\n\nAfter this manner, those that had been great lords and ladies here, got but\na poor scurvy wretched living there below.  And, on the contrary, the\nphilosophers and others, who in this world had been altogether indigent and\nwanting, were great lords there in their turn.  I saw Diogenes there strut\nit out most pompously, and in great magnificence, with a rich purple gown\non him, and a golden sceptre in his right hand.  And, which is more, he\nwould now and then make Alexander the Great mad, so enormously would he\nabuse him when he had not well patched his breeches; for he used to pay his\nskin with sound bastinadoes.  I saw Epictetus there, most gallantly\napparelled after the French fashion, sitting under a pleasant arbour, with\nstore of handsome gentlewomen, frolicking, drinking, dancing, and making\ngood cheer, with abundance of crowns of the sun.  Above the lattice were\nwritten these verses for his device:\n\n  To leap and dance, to sport and play,\n    And drink good wine both white and brown,\n  Or nothing else do all the day\n    But tell bags full of many a crown.\n\nWhen he saw me, he invited me to drink with him very courteously, and I\nbeing willing to be entreated, we tippled and chopined together most\ntheologically.  In the meantime came Cyrus to beg one farthing of him for\nthe honour of Mercury, therewith to buy a few onions for his supper.  No,\nno, said Epictetus, I do not use in my almsgiving to bestow farthings.\nHold, thou varlet, there's a crown for thee; be an honest man.  Cyrus was\nexceeding glad to have met with such a booty; but the other poor rogues,\nthe kings that are there below, as Alexander, Darius, and others, stole it\naway from him by night.  I saw Pathelin, the treasurer of Rhadamanthus,\nwho, in cheapening the pudding-pies that Pope Julius cried, asked him how\nmuch a dozen.  Three blanks, said the Pope.  Nay, said Pathelin, three\nblows with a cudgel.  Lay them down here, you rascal, and go fetch more.\nThe poor Pope went away weeping, who, when he came to his master, the\npie-maker, told him that they had taken away his pudding-pies.  Whereupon\nhis master gave him such a sound lash with an eel-skin, that his own would\nhave been worth nothing to make bag-pipe-bags of.  I saw Master John Le\nMaire there personate the Pope in such fashion that he made all the poor\nkings and popes of this world kiss his feet, and, taking great state upon\nhim, gave them his benediction, saying, Get the pardons, rogues, get the\npardons; they are good cheap.  I absolve you of bread and pottage, and\ndispense with you to be never good for anything.  Then, calling Caillet and\nTriboulet to him, he spoke these words, My lords the cardinals, despatch\ntheir bulls, to wit, to each of them a blow with a cudgel upon the reins.\nWhich accordingly was forthwith performed.  I heard Master Francis Villon\nask Xerxes, How much the mess of mustard?  A farthing, said Xerxes.  To\nwhich the said Villon answered, The pox take thee for a villain!  As much of\nsquare-eared wheat is not worth half that price, and now thou offerest to\nenhance the price of victuals.  With this he pissed in his pot, as the\nmustard-makers of Paris used to do.  I saw the trained bowman of the bathing\ntub, known by the name of the Francarcher de Baignolet, who, being one of\nthe trustees of the Inquisition, when he saw Perce-Forest making water\nagainst a wall in which was painted the fire of St. Anthony, declared him\nheretic, and would have caused him to be burnt alive had it not been for\nMorgant, who, for his proficiat and other small fees, gave him nine tuns of\nbeer.\n\nWell, said Pantagruel, reserve all these fair stories for another time,\nonly tell us how the usurers are there handled.  I saw them, said\nEpistemon, all very busily employed in seeking of rusty pins and old nails\nin the kennels of the streets, as you see poor wretched rogues do in this\nworld.  But the quintal, or hundredweight, of this old ironware is there\nvalued but at the price of a cantle of bread, and yet they have but a very\nbad despatch and riddance in the sale of it.  Thus the poor misers are\nsometimes three whole weeks without eating one morsel or crumb of bread,\nand yet work both day and night, looking for the fair to come.\nNevertheless, of all this labour, toil, and misery, they reckon nothing, so\ncursedly active they are in the prosecution of that their base calling, in\nhopes, at the end of the year, to earn some scurvy penny by it.\n\nCome, said Pantagruel, let us now make ourselves merry one bout, and drink,\nmy lads, I beseech you, for it is very good drinking all this month.  Then\ndid they uncase their flagons by heaps and dozens, and with their\nleaguer-provision made excellent good cheer.  But the poor King Anarchus\ncould not all this while settle himself towards any fit of mirth; whereupon\nPanurge said, Of what trade shall we make my lord the king here, that he may\nbe skilful in the art when he goes thither to sojourn amongst all the devils\nof hell?  Indeed, said Pantagruel, that was well advised of thee.  Do with\nhim what thou wilt, I give him to thee.  Gramercy, said Panurge, the present\nis not to be refused, and I love it from you.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel entered into the city of the Amaurots, and how Panurge\nmarried King Anarchus to an old lantern-carrying hag, and made him a crier\nof green sauce.\n\nAfter this wonderful victory, Pantagruel sent Carpalin unto the city of the\nAmaurots to declare and signify unto them how the King Anarchus was taken\nprisoner and all the enemies of the city overthrown.  Which news when they\nheard all the inhabitants of the city came forth to meet him in good order,\nand with a great triumphant pomp, conducting him with a heavenly joy into\nthe city, where innumerable bonfires were set on through all the parts\nthereof, and fair round tables, which were furnished with store of good\nvictuals, set out in the middle of the streets.  This was a renewing of the\ngolden age in the time of Saturn, so good was the cheer which then they\nmade.\n\nBut Pantagruel, having assembled the whole senate and common councilmen of\nthe town, said, My masters, we must now strike the iron whilst it is hot.\nIt is therefore my will that, before we frolic it any longer, we advise how\nto assault and take the whole kingdom of the Dipsodes.  To which effect let\nthose that will go with me provide themselves against to-morrow after\ndrinking, for then will I begin to march.  Not that I need any more men\nthan I have to help me to conquer it, for I could make it as sure that way\nas if I had it already; but I see this city is so full of inhabitants that\nthey scarce can turn in the streets.  I will, therefore, carry them as a\ncolony into Dipsody, and will give them all that country, which is fair,\nwealthy, fruitful, and pleasant, above all other countries in the world, as\nmany of you can tell who have been there heretofore.  Everyone of you,\ntherefore, that will go along, let him provide himself as I have said.\nThis counsel and resolution being published in the city, the next morning\nthere assembled in the piazza before the palace to the number of eighteen\nhundred fifty-six thousand and eleven, besides women and little children.\nThus began they to march straight into Dipsody, in such good order as did\nthe people of Israel when they departed out of Egypt to pass over the Red\nSea.\n\nBut before we proceed any further in this purpose, I will tell you how\nPanurge handled his prisoner the King Anarchus; for, having remembered that\nwhich Epistemon had related, how the kings and rich men in this world were\nused in the Elysian fields, and how they got their living there by base and\nignoble trades, he, therefore, one day apparelled his king in a pretty\nlittle canvas doublet, all jagged and pinked like the tippet of a light\nhorseman's cap, together with a pair of large mariner's breeches, and\nstockings without shoes,--For, said he, they would but spoil his sight,\n--and a little peach-coloured bonnet with a great capon's feather in it--I\nlie, for I think he had two--and a very handsome girdle of a sky-colour and\ngreen (in French called pers et vert), saying that such a livery did become\nhim well, for that he had always been perverse, and in this plight bringing\nhim before Pantagruel, said unto him, Do you know this roister?  No,\nindeed, said Pantagruel.  It is, said Panurge, my lord the king of the\nthree batches, or threadbare sovereign.  I intend to make him an honest\nman.  These devilish kings which we have here are but as so many calves;\nthey know nothing and are good for nothing but to do a thousand mischiefs\nto their poor subjects, and to trouble all the world with war for their\nunjust and detestable pleasure.  I will put him to a trade, and make him a\ncrier of green sauce.  Go to, begin and cry, Do you lack any green sauce?\nand the poor devil cried.  That is too low, said Panurge; then took him by\nthe ear, saying, Sing higher in Ge, sol, re, ut.  So, so poor devil, thou\nhast a good throat; thou wert never so happy as to be no longer king.  And\nPantagruel made himself merry with all this; for I dare boldly say that he\nwas the best little gaffer that was to be seen between this and the end of\na staff.  Thus was Anarchus made a good crier of green sauce.  Two days\nthereafter Panurge married him with an old lantern-carrying hag, and he\nhimself made the wedding with fine sheep's heads, brave haslets with\nmustard, gallant salligots with garlic, of which he sent five horseloads\nunto Pantagruel, which he ate up all, he found them so appetizing.\nAnd for their drink they had a kind of small well-watered wine, and some\nsorbapple-cider.  And, to make them dance, he hired a blind man that\nmade music to them with a wind-broach.\n\nAfter dinner he led them to the palace and showed them to Pantagruel, and\nsaid, pointing to the married woman, You need not fear that she will crack.\nWhy? said Pantagruel.  Because, said Panurge, she is well slit and broke up\nalready.  What do you mean by that? said Pantagruel.  Do not you see, said\nPanurge, that the chestnuts which are roasted in the fire, if they be whole\nthey crack as if they were mad, and, to keep them from cracking, they make\nan incision in them and slit them?  So this new bride is in her lower parts\nwell slit before, and therefore will not crack behind.\n\nPantagruel gave them a little lodge near the lower street and a mortar of\nstone wherein to bray and pound their sauce, and in this manner did they do\ntheir little business, he being as pretty a crier of green sauce as ever\nwas seen in the country of Utopia.  But I have been told since that his\nwife doth beat him like plaister, and the poor sot dare not defend himself,\nhe is so simple.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel with his tongue covered a whole army, and what the author\nsaw in his mouth.\n\nThus, as Pantagruel with all his army had entered into the country of the\nDipsodes, everyone was glad of it, and incontinently rendered themselves\nunto him, bringing him out of their own good wills the keys of all the\ncities where he went, the Almirods only excepted, who, being resolved to\nhold out against him, made answer to his heralds that they would not yield\nbut upon very honourable and good conditions.\n\nWhat! said Pantagruel, do they ask any better terms than the hand at the\npot and the glass in their fist?  Come, let us go sack them, and put them\nall to the sword.  Then did they put themselves in good order, as being\nfully determined to give an assault, but by the way, passing through a\nlarge field, they were overtaken with a great shower of rain, whereat they\nbegan to shiver and tremble, to crowd, press, and thrust close to one\nanother.  When Pantagruel saw that, he made their captains tell them that\nit was nothing, and that he saw well above the clouds that it would be\nnothing but a little dew; but, howsoever, that they should put themselves\nin order, and he would cover them.  Then did they put themselves in a close\norder, and stood as near to (each) other as they could, and Pantagruel drew\nout his tongue only half-way and covered them all, as a hen doth her\nchickens.  In the meantime, I, who relate to you these so veritable\nstories, hid myself under a burdock-leaf, which was not much less in\nlargeness than the arch of the bridge of Montrible, but when I saw them\nthus covered, I went towards them to shelter myself likewise; which I could\nnot do, for that they were so, as the saying is, At the yard's end there is\nno cloth left.  Then, as well as I could, I got upon it, and went along\nfull two leagues upon his tongue, and so long marched that at last I came\ninto his mouth.  But, O gods and goddesses! what did I see there?  Jupiter\nconfound me with his trisulc lightning if I lie!  I walked there as they do\nin Sophia (at) Constantinople, and saw there great rocks, like the\nmountains in Denmark--I believe that those were his teeth.  I saw also fair\nmeadows, large forests, great and strong cities not a jot less than Lyons\nor Poictiers.  The first man I met with there was a good honest fellow\nplanting coleworts, whereat being very much amazed, I asked him, My friend,\nwhat dost thou make here?  I plant coleworts, said he.  But how, and\nwherewith? said I.  Ha, sir, said he, everyone cannot have his ballocks as\nheavy as a mortar, neither can we be all rich.  Thus do I get my poor\nliving, and carry them to the market to sell in the city which is here\nbehind.  Jesus! said I, is there here a new world?  Sure, said he, it is\nnever a jot new, but it is commonly reported that, without this, there is\nan earth, whereof the inhabitants enjoy the light of a sun and a moon, and\nthat it is full of and replenished with very good commodities; but yet this\nis more ancient than that.  Yea but, said I, my friend, what is the name of\nthat city whither thou carriest thy coleworts to sell?  It is called\nAspharage, said he, and all the indwellers are Christians, very honest men,\nand will make you good cheer.  To be brief, I resolved to go thither.  Now,\nin my way, I met with a fellow that was lying in wait to catch pigeons, of\nwhom I asked, My friend, from whence come these pigeons?  Sir, said he,\nthey come from the other world.  Then I thought that, when Pantagruel\nyawned, the pigeons went into his mouth in whole flocks, thinking that it\nhad been a pigeon-house.\n\nThen I went into the city, which I found fair, very strong, and seated in a\ngood air; but at my entry the guard demanded of me my pass or ticket.\nWhereat I was much astonished, and asked them, My masters, is there any\ndanger of the plague here?  O Lord! said they, they die hard by here so\nfast that the cart runs about the streets.  Good God! said I, and where?\nWhereunto they answered that it was in Larynx and Pharynx, which are two\ngreat cities such as Rouen and Nantes, rich and of great trading.  And the\ncause of the plague was by a stinking and infectious exhalation which\nlately vapoured out of the abysms, whereof there have died above two and\ntwenty hundred and threescore thousand and sixteen persons within this\nsevennight.  Then I considered, calculated, and found that it was a rank\nand unsavoury breathing which came out of Pantagruel's stomach when he did\neat so much garlic, as we have aforesaid.\n\nParting from thence, I passed amongst the rocks, which were his teeth, and\nnever left walking till I got up on one of them; and there I found the\npleasantest places in the world, great large tennis-courts, fair galleries,\nsweet meadows, store of vines, and an infinite number of banqueting summer\nouthouses in the fields, after the Italian fashion, full of pleasure and\ndelight, where I stayed full four months, and never made better cheer in my\nlife as then.  After that I went down by the hinder teeth to come to the\nchaps.  But in the way I was robbed by thieves in a great forest that is in\nthe territory towards the ears.  Then, after a little further travelling, I\nfell upon a pretty petty village--truly I have forgot the name of it--where\nI was yet merrier than ever, and got some certain money to live by.  Can\nyou tell how?  By sleeping.  For there they hire men by the day to sleep,\nand they get by it sixpence a day, but they that can snort hard get at\nleast ninepence.  How I had been robbed in the valley I informed the\nsenators, who told me that, in very truth, the people of that side were bad\nlivers and naturally thievish, whereby I perceived well that, as we have\nwith us the countries Cisalpine and Transalpine, that is, behither and\nbeyond the mountains, so have they there the countries Cidentine and\nTradentine, that is, behither and beyond the teeth.  But it is far better\nliving on this side, and the air is purer.  Then I began to think that it\nis very true which is commonly said, that the one half of the world knoweth\nnot how the other half liveth; seeing none before myself had ever written\nof that country, wherein are above five-and-twenty kingdoms inhabited,\nbesides deserts, and a great arm of the sea.  Concerning which purpose I\nhave composed a great book, entitled, The History of the Throttias, because\nthey dwell in the throat of my master Pantagruel.\n\nAt last I was willing to return, and, passing by his beard, I cast myself\nupon his shoulders, and from thence slid down to the ground, and fell\nbefore him.  As soon as I was perceived by him, he asked me, Whence comest\nthou, Alcofribas?  I answered him, Out of your mouth, my lord.  And how\nlong hast thou been there? said he.  Since the time, said I, that you went\nagainst the Almirods.  That is about six months ago, said he.  And\nwherewith didst thou live?  What didst thou drink?  I answered, My lord, of\nthe same that you did, and of the daintiest morsels that passed through\nyour throat I took toll.  Yea but, said he, where didst thou shite?  In\nyour throat, my lord, said I.  Ha, ha! thou art a merry fellow, said he.\nWe have with the help of God conquered all the land of the Dipsodes; I will\ngive thee the Chastelleine, or Lairdship of Salmigondin.  Gramercy, my\nlord, said I, you gratify me beyond all that I have deserved of you.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel became sick, and the manner how he was recovered.\n\nA while after this the good Pantagruel fell sick, and had such an\nobstruction in his stomach that he could neither eat nor drink; and,\nbecause mischief seldom comes alone, a hot piss seized on him, which\ntormented him more than you would believe.  His physicians nevertheless\nhelped him very well, and with store of lenitives and diuretic drugs made\nhim piss away his pain.  His urine was so hot that since that time it is\nnot yet cold, and you have of it in divers places of France, according to\nthe course that it took, and they are called the hot baths, as--\n\n    At Coderets.\n    At Limous.\n    At Dast.\n    At Ballervie (Balleruc).\n    At Neric.\n  At Bourbonansie, and elsewhere in Italy.\n    At Mongros.\n    At Appone.\n  At Sancto Petro de Padua.\n    At St. Helen.\n    At Casa Nuova.\n  At St. Bartholomew, in the county of Boulogne.\n  At the Porrette, and a thousand other places.\n\nAnd I wonder much at a rabble of foolish philosophers and physicians, who\nspend their time in disputing whence the heat of the said waters cometh,\nwhether it be by reason of borax, or sulphur, or alum, or saltpetre, that\nis within the mine.  For they do nothing but dote, and better were it for\nthem to rub their arse against a thistle than to waste away their time thus\nin disputing of that whereof they know not the original; for the resolution\nis easy, neither need we to inquire any further than that the said baths\ncame by a hot piss of the good Pantagruel.\n\nNow to tell you after what manner he was cured of his principal disease.  I\nlet pass how for a minorative or gentle potion he took four hundred pound\nweight of colophoniac scammony, six score and eighteen cartloads of cassia,\nan eleven thousand and nine hundred pound weight of rhubarb, besides other\nconfuse jumblings of sundry drugs.  You must understand that by the advice\nof the physicians it was ordained that what did offend his stomach should\nbe taken away; and therefore they made seventeen great balls of copper,\neach whereof was bigger than that which is to be seen on the top of St.\nPeter's needle at Rome, and in such sort that they did open in the midst\nand shut with a spring.  Into one of them entered one of his men carrying a\nlantern and a torch lighted, and so Pantagruel swallowed him down like a\nlittle pill.  Into seven others went seven country-fellows, having every\none of them a shovel on his neck.  Into nine others entered nine\nwood-carriers, having each of them a basket hung at his neck, and so were\nthey swallowed down like pills.  When they were in his stomach, every one\nundid his spring, and came out of their cabins.  The first whereof was he\nthat carried the lantern, and so they fell more than half a league into a\nmost horrible gulf, more stinking and infectious than ever was Mephitis, or\nthe marshes of the Camerina, or the abominably unsavoury lake of Sorbona,\nwhereof Strabo maketh mention.  And had it not been that they had very well\nantidoted their stomach, heart, and wine-pot, which is called the noddle,\nthey had been altogether suffocated and choked with these detestable\nvapours.  O what a perfume!  O what an evaporation wherewith to bewray the\nmasks or mufflers of young mangy queans.  After that, with groping and\nsmelling they came near to the faecal matter and the corrupted humours.\nFinally, they found a montjoy or heap of ordure and filth.  Then fell the\npioneers to work to dig it up, and the rest with their shovels filled the\nbaskets; and when all was cleansed every one retired himself into his ball.\n\nThis done, Pantagruel enforcing himself to vomit, very easily brought them\nout, and they made no more show in his mouth than a fart in yours.  But,\nwhen they came merrily out of their pills, I thought upon the Grecians\ncoming out of the Trojan horse.  By this means was he healed and brought\nunto his former state and convalescence; and of these brazen pills, or\nrather copper balls, you have one at Orleans, upon the steeple of the Holy\nCross Church.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe conclusion of this present book, and the excuse of the author.\n\nNow, my masters, you have heard a beginning of the horrific history of my\nlord and master Pantagruel.  Here will I make an end of the first book.  My\nhead aches a little, and I perceive that the registers of my brain are\nsomewhat jumbled and disordered with this Septembral juice.  You shall have\nthe rest of the history at Frankfort mart next coming, and there shall you\nsee how Panurge was married and made a cuckold within a month after his\nwedding; how Pantagruel found out the philosopher's stone, the manner how\nhe found it, and the way how to use it; how he passed over the Caspian\nmountains, and how he sailed through the Atlantic sea, defeated the\nCannibals, and conquered the isles of Pearls; how he married the daughter\nof the King of India, called Presthan; how he fought against the devil and\nburnt up five chambers of hell, ransacked the great black chamber, threw\nProserpina into the fire, broke five teeth to Lucifer, and the horn that\nwas in his arse; how he visited the regions of the moon to know whether\nindeed the moon were not entire and whole, or if the women had three\nquarters of it in their heads, and a thousand other little merriments all\nveritable.  These are brave things truly.  Good night, gentlemen.\nPerdonate mi, and think not so much upon my faults that you forget your\nown.\n\nIf you say to me, Master, it would seem that you were not very wise in\nwriting to us these flimflam stories and pleasant fooleries; I answer you,\nthat you are not much wiser to spend your time in reading them.\nNevertheless, if you read them to make yourselves merry, as in manner of\npastime I wrote them, you and I both are far more worthy of pardon than a\ngreat rabble of squint-minded fellows, dissembling and counterfeit saints,\ndemure lookers, hypocrites, pretended zealots, tough friars, buskin-monks,\nand other such sects of men, who disguise themselves like masquers to\ndeceive the world.  For, whilst they give the common people to understand\nthat they are busied about nothing but contemplation and devotion in\nfastings and maceration of their sensuality--and that only to sustain and\naliment the small frailty of their humanity--it is so far otherwise that,\non the contrary, God knows what cheer they make; Et Curios simulant, sed\nBacchanalia vivunt.  You may read it in great letters in the colouring of\ntheir red snouts, and gulching bellies as big as a tun, unless it be when\nthey perfume themselves with sulphur.  As for their study, it is wholly\ntaken up in reading of Pantagruelian books, not so much to pass the time\nmerrily as to hurt someone or other mischievously, to wit, in articling,\nsole-articling, wry-neckifying, buttock-stirring, ballocking, and\ndiabliculating, that is, calumniating.  Wherein they are like unto the poor\nrogues of a village that are busy in stirring up and scraping in the ordure\nand filth of little children, in the season of cherries and guinds, and\nthat only to find the kernels, that they may sell them to the druggists to\nmake thereof pomander oil.  Fly from these men, abhor and hate them as much\nas I do, and upon my faith you will find yourselves the better for it.  And\nif you desire to be good Pantagruelists, that is to say, to live in peace,\njoy, health, making yourselves always merry, never trust those men that\nalways peep out at one hole.\n\nEnd of Book II.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK III.\n\n\nTHE THIRD BOOK\n\n\nFrancois Rabelais to the Soul of the Deceased Queen of Navarre.\n\n  Abstracted soul, ravished with ecstasies,\n  Gone back, and now familiar in the skies,\n  Thy former host, thy body, leaving quite,\n  Which to obey thee always took delight,--\n  Obsequious, ready,--now from motion free,\n  Senseless, and as it were in apathy,\n  Wouldst thou not issue forth for a short space,\n  From that divine, eternal, heavenly place,\n  To see the third part, in this earthy cell,\n  Of the brave acts of good Pantagruel?\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Author's Prologue.\n\nGood people, most illustrious drinkers, and you, thrice precious gouty\ngentlemen, did you ever see Diogenes, and cynic philosopher?  If you have\nseen him, you then had your eyes in your head, or I am very much out of my\nunderstanding and logical sense.  It is a gallant thing to see the\nclearness of (wine, gold,) the sun.  I'll be judged by the blind born so\nrenowned in the sacred Scriptures, who, having at his choice to ask\nwhatever he would from him who is Almighty, and whose word in an instant is\neffectually performed, asked nothing else but that he might see.  Item, you\nare not young, which is a competent quality for you to philosophate more\nthan physically in wine, not in vain, and henceforwards to be of the\nBacchic Council; to the end that, opining there, you may give your opinion\nfaithfully of the substance, colour, excellent odour, eminency, propriety,\nfaculty, virtue, and effectual dignity of the said blessed and desired\nliquor.\n\nIf you have not seen him, as I am easily induced to believe that you have\nnot, at least you have heard some talk of him.  For through the air, and\nthe whole extent of this hemisphere of the heavens, hath his report and\nfame, even until this present time, remained very memorable and renowned.\nThen all of you are derived from the Phrygian blood, if I be not deceived.\nIf you have not so many crowns as Midas had, yet have you something, I know\nnot what, of him, which the Persians of old esteemed more of in all their\notacusts, and which was more desired by the Emperor Antonine, and gave\noccasion thereafter to the Basilico at Rohan to be surnamed Goodly Ears.\nIf you have not heard of him, I will presently tell you a story to make\nyour wine relish.  Drink then,--so, to the purpose.  Hearken now whilst I\ngive you notice, to the end that you may not, like infidels, be by your\nsimplicity abused, that in his time he was a rare philosopher and the\ncheerfullest of a thousand.  If he had some imperfection, so have you, so\nhave we; for there is nothing, but God, that is perfect.  Yet so it was,\nthat by Alexander the Great, although he had Aristotle for his instructor\nand domestic, was he held in such estimation, that he wished, if he had not\nbeen Alexander, to have been Diogenes the Sinopian.\n\nWhen Philip, King of Macedon, enterprised the siege and ruin of Corinth,\nthe Corinthians having received certain intelligence by their spies that he\nwith a numerous army in battle-rank was coming against them, were all of\nthem, not without cause, most terribly afraid; and therefore were not\nneglective of their duty in doing their best endeavours to put themselves\nin a fit posture to resist his hostile approach and defend their own city.\n\nSome from the fields brought into the fortified places their movables,\nbestial, corn, wine, fruit, victuals, and other necessary provision.\n\nOthers did fortify and rampire their walls, set up little fortresses,\nbastions, squared ravelins, digged trenches, cleansed countermines, fenced\nthemselves with gabions, contrived platforms, emptied casemates, barricaded\nthe false brays, erected the cavaliers, repaired the counterscarps,\nplastered the curtains, lengthened ravelins, stopped parapets, morticed\nbarbacans, assured the portcullises, fastened the herses, sarasinesques,\nand cataracts, placed their sentries, and doubled their patrol.  Everyone\ndid watch and ward, and not one was exempted from carrying the basket.\nSome polished corslets, varnished backs and breasts, cleaned the\nheadpieces, mail-coats, brigandines, salads, helmets, morions, jacks,\ngushets, gorgets, hoguines, brassars, and cuissars, corslets, haubergeons,\nshields, bucklers, targets, greaves, gauntlets, and spurs.  Others made\nready bows, slings, crossbows, pellets, catapults, migrains or fire-balls,\nfirebrands, balists, scorpions, and other such warlike engines expugnatory\nand destructive to the Hellepolides.  They sharpened and prepared spears,\nstaves, pikes, brown bills, halberds, long hooks, lances, zagayes,\nquarterstaves, eelspears, partisans, troutstaves, clubs, battle-axes,\nmaces, darts, dartlets, glaives, javelins, javelots, and truncheons.  They\nset edges upon scimitars, cutlasses, badelairs, backswords, tucks, rapiers,\nbayonets, arrow-heads, dags, daggers, mandousians, poniards, whinyards,\nknives, skeans, shables, chipping knives, and raillons.\n\nEvery man exercised his weapon, every man scoured off the rust from his\nnatural hanger; nor was there a woman amongst them, though never so\nreserved or old, who made not her harness to be well furbished; as you know\nthe Corinthian women of old were reputed very courageous combatants.\n\nDiogenes seeing them all so warm at work, and himself not employed by the\nmagistrates in any business whatsoever, he did very seriously, for many\ndays together, without speaking one word, consider and contemplate the\ncountenance of his fellow-citizens.\n\nThen on a sudden, as if he had been roused up and inspired by a martial\nspirit, he girded his cloak scarfwise about his left arm, tucked up his\nsleeves to the elbow, trussed himself like a clown gathering apples, and,\ngiving to one of his old acquaintance his wallet, books, and opistographs,\naway went he out of town towards a little hill or promontory of Corinth\ncalled (the) Cranie; and there on the strand, a pretty level place, did he\nroll his jolly tub, which served him for a house to shelter him from the\ninjuries of the weather:  there, I say, in a great vehemency of spirit, did\nhe turn it, veer it, wheel it, whirl it, frisk it, jumble it, shuffle it,\nhuddle it, tumble it, hurry it, jolt it, justle it, overthrow it, evert it,\ninvert it, subvert it, overturn it, beat it, thwack it, bump it, batter it,\nknock it, thrust it, push it, jerk it, shock it, shake it, toss it, throw\nit, overthrow it, upside down, topsy-turvy, arsiturvy, tread it, trample\nit, stamp it, tap it, ting it, ring it, tingle it, towl it, sound it,\nresound it, stop it, shut it, unbung it, close it, unstopple it.  And then\nagain in a mighty bustle he bandied it, slubbered it, hacked it, whittled\nit, wayed it, darted it, hurled it, staggered it, reeled it, swinged it,\nbrangled it, tottered it, lifted it, heaved it, transformed it,\ntransfigured it, transposed it, transplaced it, reared it, raised it,\nhoised it, washed it, dighted it, cleansed it, rinsed it, nailed it,\nsettled it, fastened it, shackled it, fettered it, levelled it, blocked it,\ntugged it, tewed it, carried it, bedashed it, bewrayed it, parched it,\nmounted it, broached it, nicked it, notched it, bespattered it, decked it,\nadorned it, trimmed it, garnished it, gauged it, furnished it, bored it,\npierced it, trapped it, rumbled it, slid it down the hill, and precipitated\nit from the very height of the Cranie; then from the foot to the top (like\nanother Sisyphus with his stone) bore it up again, and every way so banged\nit and belaboured it that it was ten thousand to one he had not struck the\nbottom of it out.\n\nWhich when one of his friends had seen, and asked him why he did so toil\nhis body, perplex his spirit, and torment his tub, the philosopher's answer\nwas that, not being employed in any other charge by the Republic, he\nthought it expedient to thunder and storm it so tempestuously upon his tub,\nthat amongst a people so fervently busy and earnest at work he alone might\nnot seem a loitering slug and lazy fellow.  To the same purpose may I say\nof myself,\n\n  Though I be rid from fear,\n  I am not void of care.\n\nFor, perceiving no account to be made of me towards the discharge of a\ntrust of any great concernment, and considering that through all the parts\nof this most noble kingdom of France, both on this and on the other side of\nthe mountains, everyone is most diligently exercised and busied, some in\nthe fortifying of their own native country for its defence, others in the\nrepulsing of their enemies by an offensive war; and all this with a policy\nso excellent and such admirable order, so manifestly profitable for the\nfuture, whereby France shall have its frontiers most magnifically enlarged,\nand the French assured of a long and well-grounded peace, that very little\nwithholds me from the opinion of good Heraclitus, which affirmeth war to be\nthe father of all good things; and therefore do I believe that war is in\nLatin called bellum, not by antiphrasis, as some patchers of old rusty\nLatin would have us to think, because in war there is little beauty to be\nseen, but absolutely and simply; for that in war appeareth all that is good\nand graceful, and that by the wars is purged out all manner of wickedness\nand deformity.  For proof whereof the wise and pacific Solomon could no\nbetter represent the unspeakable perfection of the divine wisdom, than by\ncomparing it to the due disposure and ranking of an army in battle array,\nwell provided and ordered.\n\nTherefore, by reason of my weakness and inability, being reputed by my\ncompatriots unfit for the offensive part of warfare; and on the other side,\nbeing no way employed in matter of the defensive, although it had been but\nto carry burthens, fill ditches, or break clods, either whereof had been to\nme indifferent, I held it not a little disgraceful to be only an idle\nspectator of so many valorous, eloquent, and warlike persons, who in the\nview and sight of all Europe act this notable interlude or tragi-comedy,\nand not make some effort towards the performance of this, nothing at all\nremains for me to be done ('And not exert myself, and contribute thereto\nthis nothing, my all, which remained for me to do.'--Ozell.).  In my\nopinion, little honour is due to such as are mere lookers-on, liberal of\ntheir eyes, and of their crowns, and hide their silver; scratching their\nhead with one finger like grumbling puppies, gaping at the flies like tithe\ncalves; clapping down their ears like Arcadian asses at the melody of\nmusicians, who with their very countenances in the depth of silence express\ntheir consent to the prosopopoeia.  Having made this choice and election,\nit seemed to me that my exercise therein would be neither unprofitable nor\ntroublesome to any, whilst I should thus set a-going my Diogenical tub,\nwhich is all that is left me safe from the shipwreck of my former\nmisfortunes.\n\nAt this dingle dangle wagging of my tub, what would you have me to do?  By\nthe Virgin that tucks up her sleeve, I know not as yet.  Stay a little,\ntill I suck up a draught of this bottle; it is my true and only Helicon; it\nis my Caballine fountain; it is my sole enthusiasm.  Drinking thus, I\nmeditate, discourse, resolve, and conclude.  After that the epilogue is\nmade, I laugh, I write, I compose, and drink again.  Ennius drinking wrote,\nand writing drank.  Aeschylus, if Plutarch in his Symposiacs merit any\nfaith, drank composing, and drinking composed.  Homer never wrote fasting,\nand Cato never wrote till after he had drunk.  These passages I have\nbrought before you to the end you may not say that I lived without the\nexample of men well praised and better prized.  It is good and fresh\nenough, even as if you would say it is entering upon the second degree.\nGod, the good God Sabaoth, that is to say, the God of armies, be praised\nfor it eternally!  If you after the same manner would take one great\ndraught, or two little ones, whilst you have your gown about you, I truly\nfind no kind of inconveniency in it, provided you send up to God for all\nsome small scantling of thanks.\n\nSince then my luck or destiny is such as you have heard--for it is not for\neverybody to go to Corinth--I am fully resolved to be so little idle and\nunprofitable, that I will set myself to serve the one and the other sort of\npeople.  Amongst the diggers, pioneers, and rampire-builders, I will do as\ndid Neptune and Apollo at Troy under Laomedon, or as did Renault of\nMontauban in his latter days:  I will serve the masons, I'll set on the pot\nto boil for the bricklayers; and, whilst the minced meat is making ready at\nthe sound of my small pipe, I'll measure the muzzle of the musing dotards.\nThus did Amphion with the melody of his harp found, build, and finish the\ngreat and renowned city of Thebes.\n\nFor the use of the warriors I am about to broach of new my barrel to give\nthem a taste (which by two former volumes of mine, if by the deceitfulness\nand falsehood of printers they had not been jumbled, marred, and spoiled,\nyou would have very well relished), and draw unto them, of the growth of\nour own trippery pastimes, a gallant third part of a gallon, and\nconsequently a jolly cheerful quart of Pantagruelic sentences, which you\nmay lawfully call, if you please, Diogenical:  and shall have me, seeing I\ncannot be their fellow-soldier, for their faithful butler, refreshing and\ncheering, according to my little power, their return from the alarms of the\nenemy; as also for an indefatigable extoller of their martial exploits and\nglorious achievements.  I shall not fail therein, par lapathium acutum de\ndieu; if Mars fail not in Lent, which the cunning lecher, I warrant you,\nwill be loth to do.\n\nI remember nevertheless to have read, that Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, one\nday, amongst the many spoils and booties which by his victories he had\nacquired, presenting to the Egyptians, in the open view of the people, a\nBactrian camel all black, and a party-coloured slave, in such sort as that\nthe one half of his body was black and the other white, not in partition of\nbreadth by the diaphragma, as was that woman consecrated to the Indian\nVenus whom the Tyanean philosopher did see between the river Hydaspes and\nMount Caucasus, but in a perpendicular dimension of altitude; which were\nthings never before that seen in Egypt.  He expected by the show of these\nnovelties to win the love of the people.  But what happened thereupon?  At\nthe production of the camel they were all affrighted, and offended at the\nsight of the party-coloured man--some scoffed at him as a detestable\nmonster brought forth by the error of nature; in a word, of the hope which\nhe had to please these Egyptians, and by such means to increase the\naffection which they naturally bore him, he was altogether frustrate and\ndisappointed; understanding fully by their deportments that they took more\npleasure and delight in things that were proper, handsome, and perfect,\nthan in misshapen, monstrous, and ridiculous creatures.  Since which time\nhe had both the slave and the camel in such dislike, that very shortly\nthereafter, either through negligence, or for want of ordinary sustenance,\nthey did exchange their life with death.\n\nThis example putteth me in a suspense between hope and fear, misdoubting\nthat, for the contentment which I aim at, I will but reap what shall be\nmost distasteful to me:  my cake will be dough, and for my Venus I shall\nhave but some deformed puppy:  instead of serving them, I shall but vex\nthem, and offend them whom I purpose to exhilarate; resembling in this\ndubious adventure Euclion's cook, so renowned by Plautus in his Pot, and by\nAusonius in his Griphon, and by divers others; which cook, for having by\nhis scraping discovered a treasure, had his hide well curried.  Put the\ncase I get no anger by it, though formerly such things fell out, and the\nlike may occur again.  Yet, by Hercules! it will not.  So I perceive in\nthem all one and the same specifical form, and the like individual\nproperties, which our ancestors called Pantagruelism; by virtue whereof\nthey will bear with anything that floweth from a good, free, and loyal\nheart.  I have seen them ordinarily take goodwill in part of payment, and\nremain satisfied therewith when one was not able to do better.  Having\ndespatched this point, I return to my barrel.\n\nUp, my lads, to this wine, spare it not!  Drink, boys, and trowl it off at\nfull bowls!  If you do not think it good, let it alone.  I am not like\nthose officious and importunate sots, who by force, outrage, and violence,\nconstrain an easy good-natured fellow to whiffle, quaff, carouse, and what\nis worse.  All honest tipplers, all honest gouty men, all such as are\na-dry, coming to this little barrel of mine, need not drink thereof if it\nplease them not; but if they have a mind to it, and that the wine prove\nagreeable to the tastes of their worshipful worships, let them drink,\nfrankly, freely, and boldly, without paying anything, and welcome.  This is\nmy decree, my statute and ordinance.\n\nAnd let none fear there shall be any want of wine, as at the marriage of\nCana in Galilee; for how much soever you shall draw forth at the faucet, so\nmuch shall I tun in at the bung.  Thus shall the barrel remain\ninexhaustible; it hath a lively spring and perpetual current.  Such was the\nbeverage contained within the cup of Tantalus, which was figuratively\nrepresented amongst the Brachman sages.  Such was in Iberia the mountain of\nsalt so highly written of by Cato.  Such was the branch of gold consecrated\nto the subterranean goddess, which Virgil treats of so sublimely.  It is a\ntrue cornucopia of merriment and raillery.  If at any time it seem to you\nto be emptied to the very lees, yet shall it not for all that be drawn\nwholly dry.  Good hope remains there at the bottom, as in Pandora's bottle;\nand not despair, as in the puncheon of the Danaids.  Remark well what I\nhave said, and what manner of people they be whom I do invite; for, to the\nend that none be deceived, I, in imitation of Lucilius, who did protest\nthat he wrote only to his own Tarentines and Consentines, have not pierced\nthis vessel for any else but you honest men, who are drinkers of the first\nedition, and gouty blades of the highest degree.  The great dorophages,\nbribe-mongers, have on their hands occupation enough, and enough on the\nhooks for their venison.  There may they follow their prey; here is no\ngarbage for them.  You pettifoggers, garblers, and masters of chicanery,\nspeak not to me, I beseech you, in the name of, and for the reverence you\nbear to the four hips that engendered you and to the quickening peg which\nat that time conjoined them.  As for hypocrites, much less; although they\nwere all of them unsound in body, pockified, scurvy, furnished with\nunquenchable thirst and insatiable eating.  (And wherefore?)  Because\nindeed they are not of good but of evil, and of that evil from which we\ndaily pray to God to deliver us.  And albeit we see them sometimes\ncounterfeit devotion, yet never did old ape make pretty moppet.  Hence,\nmastiffs; dogs in a doublet, get you behind; aloof, villains, out of my\nsunshine; curs, to the devil!  Do you jog hither, wagging your tails, to\npant at my wine, and bepiss my barrel?  Look, here is the cudgel which\nDiogenes, in his last will, ordained to be set by him after his death, for\nbeating away, crushing the reins, and breaking the backs of these bustuary\nhobgoblins and Cerberian hellhounds.  Pack you hence, therefore, you\nhypocrites, to your sheep-dogs; get you gone, you dissemblers, to the\ndevil!  Hay!  What, are you there yet?  I renounce my part of Papimanie, if\nI snatch you, Grr, Grrr, Grrrrrr.  Avaunt, avaunt!  Will you not be gone?\nMay you never shit till you be soundly lashed with stirrup leather, never\npiss but by the strapado, nor be otherwise warmed than by the bastinado.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel transported a colony of Utopians into Dipsody.\n\nPantagruel, having wholly subdued the land of Dipsody, transported\nthereunto a colony of Utopians, to the number of 9,876,543,210 men, besides\nthe women and little children, artificers of all trades, and professors of\nall sciences, to people, cultivate, and improve that country, which\notherwise was ill inhabited, and in the greatest part thereof but a mere\ndesert and wilderness; and did transport them (not) so much for the\nexcessive multitude of men and women, which were in Utopia multiplied, for\nnumber, like grasshoppers upon the face of the land.  You understand well\nenough, nor is it needful further to explain it to you, that the Utopian\nmen had so rank and fruitful genitories, and that the Utopian women carried\nmatrixes so ample, so gluttonous, so tenaciously retentive, and so\narchitectonically cellulated, that at the end of every ninth month seven\nchildren at the least, what male what female, were brought forth by every\nmarried woman, in imitation of the people of Israel in Egypt, if Anthony\n(Nicholas) de Lyra be to be trusted.  Nor yet was this transplantation made\nso much for the fertility of the soil, the wholesomeness of the air, or\ncommodity of the country of Dipsody, as to retain that rebellious people\nwithin the bounds of their duty and obedience, by this new transport of his\nancient and most faithful subjects, who, from all time out of mind, never\nknew, acknowledged, owned, or served any other sovereign lord but him; and\nwho likewise, from the very instant of their birth, as soon as they were\nentered into this world, had, with the milk of their mothers and nurses,\nsucked in the sweetness, humanity, and mildness of his government, to which\nthey were all of them so nourished and habituated, that there was nothing\nsurer than that they would sooner abandon their lives than swerve from this\nsingular and primitive obedience naturally due to their prince,\nwhithersoever they should be dispersed or removed.\n\nAnd not only should they, and their children successively descending from\ntheir blood, be such, but also would keep and maintain in this same fealty\nand obsequious observance all the nations lately annexed to his empire;\nwhich so truly came to pass that therein he was not disappointed of his\nintent.  For if the Utopians were before their transplantation thither\ndutiful and faithful subjects, the Dipsodes, after some few days conversing\nwith them, were every whit as, if not more, loyal than they; and that by\nvirtue of I know not what natural fervency incident to all human creatures\nat the beginning of any labour wherein they take delight:  solemnly\nattesting the heavens and supreme intelligences of their being only sorry\nthat no sooner unto their knowledge had arrived the great renown of the\ngood Pantagruel.\n\nRemark therefore here, honest drinkers, that the manner of preserving and\nretaining countries newly conquered in obedience is not, as hath been the\nerroneous opinion of some tyrannical spirits to their own detriment and\ndishonour, to pillage, plunder, force, spoil, trouble, oppress, vex,\ndisquiet, ruin and destroy the people, ruling, governing and keeping them\nin awe with rods of iron; and, in a word, eating and devouring them, after\nthe fashion that Homer calls an unjust and wicked king, Demoboron, that is\nto say, a devourer of his people.\n\nI will not bring you to this purpose the testimony of ancient writers.  It\nshall suffice to put you in mind of what your fathers have seen thereof,\nand yourselves too, if you be not very babes.  Newborn, they must be given\nsuck to, rocked in a cradle, and dandled.  Trees newly planted must be\nsupported, underpropped, strengthened and defended against all tempests,\nmischiefs, injuries, and calamities.  And one lately saved from a long and\ndangerous sickness, and new upon his recovery, must be forborn, spared, and\ncherished, in such sort that they may harbour in their own breasts this\nopinion, that there is not in the world a king or a prince who does not\ndesire fewer enemies and more friends.  Thus Osiris, the great king of the\nEgyptians, conquered almost the whole earth, not so much by force of arms\nas by easing the people of their troubles, teaching them how to live well,\nand honestly giving them good laws, and using them with all possible\naffability, courtesy, gentleness, and liberality.  Therefore was he by all\nmen deservedly entitled the Great King Euergetes, that is to say,\nBenefactor, which style he obtained by virtue of the command of Jupiter to\n(one) Pamyla.\n\nAnd in effect, Hesiod, in his Hierarchy, placed the good demons (call them\nangels if you will, or geniuses,) as intercessors and mediators betwixt the\ngods and men, they being of a degree inferior to the gods, but superior to\nmen.  And for that through their hands the riches and benefits we get from\nheaven are dealt to us, and that they are continually doing us good and\nstill protecting us from evil, he saith that they exercise the offices of\nkings; because to do always good, and never ill, is an act most singularly\nroyal.\n\nJust such another was the emperor of the universe, Alexander the\nMacedonian.  After this manner was Hercules sovereign possessor of the\nwhole continent, relieving men from monstrous oppressions, exactions, and\ntyrannies; governing them with discretion, maintaining them in equity and\njustice, instructing them with seasonable policies and wholesome laws,\nconvenient for and suitable to the soil, climate, and disposition of the\ncountry, supplying what was wanting, abating what was superfluous, and\npardoning all that was past, with a sempiternal forgetfulness of all\npreceding offences, as was the amnesty of the Athenians, when by the\nprowess, valour, and industry of Thrasybulus the tyrants were\nexterminated; afterwards at Rome by Cicero exposed, and renewed under the\nEmperor Aurelian.  These are the philtres, allurements, iynges,\ninveiglements, baits, and enticements of love, by the means whereof that\nmay be peaceably revived which was painfully acquired.  Nor can a\nconqueror reign more happily, whether he be a monarch, emperor, king,\nprince, or philosopher, than by making his justice to second his valour.\nHis valour shows itself in victory and conquest; his justice will appear\nin the goodwill and affection of the people, when he maketh laws,\npublisheth ordinances, establisheth religion, and doth what is right to\neveryone, as the noble poet Virgil writes of Octavian Augustus:\n\n    Victorque volentes\n  Per populos dat jura.\n\nTherefore is it that Homer in his Iliads calleth a good prince and great\nking Kosmetora laon, that is, the ornament of the people.\n\nSuch was the consideration of Numa Pompilius, the second king of the\nRomans, a just politician and wise philosopher, when he ordained that to\ngod Terminus, on the day of his festival called Terminales, nothing should\nbe sacrificed that had died; teaching us thereby that the bounds, limits,\nand frontiers of kingdoms should be guarded, and preserved in peace, amity,\nand meekness, without polluting our hands with blood and robbery.  Who doth\notherwise, shall not only lose what he hath gained, but also be loaded with\nthis scandal and reproach, that he is an unjust and wicked purchaser, and\nhis acquests perish with him; Juxta illud, male parta, male dilabuntur.\nAnd although during his whole lifetime he should have peaceable possession\nthereof, yet if what hath been so acquired moulder away in the hands of his\nheirs, the same opprobry, scandal, and imputation will be charged upon the\ndefunct, and his memory remain accursed for his unjust and unwarrantable\nconquest; Juxta illud, de male quaesitis vix gaudet tertius haeres.\n\nRemark, likewise, gentlemen, you gouty feoffees, in this main point worthy\nof your observation, how by these means Pantagruel of one angel made two,\nwhich was a contingency opposite to the counsel of Charlemagne, who made\ntwo devils of one when he transplanted the Saxons into Flanders and the\nFlemings into Saxony.  For, not being able to keep in such subjection the\nSaxons, whose dominion he had joined to the empire, but that ever and anon\nthey would break forth into open rebellion if he should casually be drawn\ninto Spain or other remote kingdoms, he caused them to be brought unto his\nown country of Flanders, the inhabitants whereof did naturally obey him,\nand transported the Hainaults and Flemings, his ancient loving subjects,\ninto Saxony, not mistrusting their loyalty now that they were transplanted\ninto a strange land.  But it happened that the Saxons persisted in their\nrebellion and primitive obstinacy, and the Flemings dwelling in Saxony did\nimbibe the stubborn manners and conditions of the Saxons.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge was made Laird of Salmigondin in Dipsody, and did waste his\nrevenue before it came in.\n\nWhilst Pantagruel was giving order for the government of all Dipsody, he\nassigned to Panurge the lairdship of Salmigondin, which was yearly worth\n6,789,106,789 reals of certain rent, besides the uncertain revenue of the\nlocusts and periwinkles, amounting, one year with another, to the value of\n435,768, or 2,435,769 French crowns of Berry.  Sometimes it did amount to\n1,230,554,321 seraphs, when it was a good year, and that locusts and\nperiwinkles were in request; but that was not every year.\n\nNow his worship, the new laird, husbanded this his estate so providently\nwell and prudently, that in less than fourteen days he wasted and\ndilapidated all the certain and uncertain revenue of his lairdship for\nthree whole years.  Yet did not he properly dilapidate it, as you might\nsay, in founding of monasteries, building of churches, erecting of\ncolleges, and setting up of hospitals, or casting his bacon-flitches to the\ndogs; but spent it in a thousand little banquets and jolly collations,\nkeeping open house for all comers and goers; yea, to all good fellows,\nyoung girls, and pretty wenches; felling timber, burning great logs for the\nsale of the ashes, borrowing money beforehand, buying dear, selling cheap,\nand eating his corn, as it were, whilst it was but grass.\n\nPantagruel, being advertised of this his lavishness, was in good sooth no\nway offended at the matter, angry nor sorry; for I once told you, and again\ntell it you, that he was the best, little, great goodman that ever girded a\nsword to his side.  He took all things in good part, and interpreted every\naction to the best sense.  He never vexed nor disquieted himself with the\nleast pretence of dislike to anything, because he knew that he must have\nmost grossly abandoned the divine mansion of reason if he had permitted his\nmind to be never so little grieved, afflicted, or altered at any occasion\nwhatsoever.  For all the goods that the heaven covereth, and that the earth\ncontaineth, in all their dimensions of height, depth, breadth, and length,\nare not of so much worth as that we should for them disturb or disorder our\naffections, trouble or perplex our senses or spirits.\n\nHe drew only Panurge aside, and then, making to him a sweet remonstrance\nand mild admonition, very gently represented before him in strong\narguments, that, if he should continue in such an unthrifty course of\nliving, and not become a better mesnagier, it would prove altogether\nimpossible for him, or at least hugely difficult, at any time to make him\nrich.  Rich! answered Panurge; have you fixed your thoughts there?  Have\nyou undertaken the task to enrich me in this world?  Set your mind to live\nmerrily, in the name of God and good folks; let no other cark nor care be\nharboured within the sacrosanctified domicile of your celestial brain.  May\nthe calmness and tranquillity thereof be never incommodated with, or\novershadowed by any frowning clouds of sullen imaginations and displeasing\nannoyance!  For if you live joyful, merry, jocund, and glad, I cannot be\nbut rich enough.  Everybody cries up thrift, thrift, and good husbandry.\nBut many speak of Robin Hood that never shot in his bow, and talk of that\nvirtue of mesnagery who know not what belongs to it.  It is by me that they\nmust be advised.  From me, therefore, take this advertisement and\ninformation, that what is imputed to me for a vice hath been done in\nimitation of the university and parliament of Paris, places in which is to\nbe found the true spring and source of the lively idea of Pantheology and\nall manner of justice.  Let him be counted a heretic that doubteth thereof,\nand doth not firmly believe it.  Yet they in one day eat up their bishop,\nor the revenue of the bishopric--is it not all one?--for a whole year, yea,\nsometimes for two.  This is done on the day he makes his entry, and is\ninstalled.  Nor is there any place for an excuse; for he cannot avoid it,\nunless he would be hooted at and stoned for his parsimony.\n\nIt hath been also esteemed an act flowing from the habit of the four\ncardinal virtues.  Of prudence in borrowing money beforehand; for none\nknows what may fall out.  Who is able to tell if the world shall last yet\nthree years?  But although it should continue longer, is there any man so\nfoolish as to have the confidence to promise himself three years?\n\n  What fool so confident to say,\n  That he shall live one other day?\n\nOf commutative justice, in buying dear, I say, upon trust, and selling\ngoods cheap, that is, for ready money.  What says Cato in his Book of\nHusbandry to this purpose?  The father of a family, says he, must be a\nperpetual seller; by which means it is impossible but that at last he shall\nbecome rich, if he have of vendible ware enough still ready for sale.\n\nOf distributive justice it doth partake, in giving entertainment to good\n--remark, good--and gentle fellows, whom fortune had shipwrecked, like\nUlysses, upon the rock of a hungry stomach without provision of sustenance;\nand likewise to the good--remark, the good--and young wenches.  For,\naccording to the sentence of Hippocrates, Youth is impatient of hunger,\nchiefly if it be vigorous, lively, frolic, brisk, stirring, and bouncing.\nWhich wanton lasses willingly and heartily devote themselves to the\npleasure of honest men; and are in so far both Platonic and Ciceronian,\nthat they do acknowledge their being born into this world not to be for\nthemselves alone, but that in their proper persons their acquaintance may\nclaim one share, and their friends another.\n\nThe virtue of fortitude appears therein by the cutting down and\noverthrowing of the great trees, like a second Milo making havoc of the\ndark forest, which did serve only to furnish dens, caves, and shelter to\nwolves, wild boars, and foxes, and afford receptacles, withdrawing corners,\nand refuges to robbers, thieves, and murderers, lurking holes and skulking\nplaces for cutthroat assassinators, secret obscure shops for coiners of\nfalse money, and safe retreats for heretics, laying them even and level\nwith the plain champaign fields and pleasant heathy ground, at the sound of\nthe hautboys and bagpipes playing reeks with the high and stately timber,\nand preparing seats and benches for the eve of the dreadful day of\njudgment.\n\nI gave thereby proof of my temperance in eating my corn whilst it was but\ngrass, like a hermit feeding upon salads and roots, that, so affranchising\nmyself from the yoke of sensual appetites to the utter disclaiming of their\nsovereignty, I might the better reserve somewhat in store for the relief of\nthe lame, blind, crippled, maimed, needy, poor, and wanting wretches.\n\nIn taking this course I save the expense of the weed-grubbers, who gain\nmoney,--of the reapers in harvest-time, who drink lustily, and without\nwater,--of gleaners, who will expect their cakes and bannocks,--of\nthreshers, who leave no garlic, scallions, leeks, nor onions in our\ngardens, by the authority of Thestilis in Virgil,--and of the millers, who\nare generally thieves,--and of the bakers, who are little better.  Is this\nsmall saving or frugality?  Besides the mischief and damage of the\nfield-mice, the decay of barns, and the destruction usually made by\nweasels and other vermin.\n\nOf corn in the blade you may make good green sauce of a light concoction\nand easy digestion, which recreates the brain and exhilarates the animal\nspirits, rejoiceth the sight, openeth the appetite, delighteth the taste,\ncomforteth the heart, tickleth the tongue, cheereth the countenance,\nstriking a fresh and lively colour, strengthening the muscles, tempers the\nblood, disburdens the midriff, refresheth the liver, disobstructs the\nspleen, easeth the kidneys, suppleth the reins, quickens the joints of the\nback, cleanseth the urine-conduits, dilates the spermatic vessels, shortens\nthe cremasters, purgeth the bladder, puffeth up the genitories, correcteth\nthe prepuce, hardens the nut, and rectifies the member.  It will make you\nhave a current belly to trot, fart, dung, piss, sneeze, cough, spit, belch,\nspew, yawn, snuff, blow, breathe, snort, sweat, and set taut your Robin,\nwith a thousand other rare advantages.  I understand you very well, says\nPantagruel; you would thereby infer that those of a mean spirit and shallow\ncapacity have not the skill to spend much in a short time.  You are not the\nfirst in whose conceit that heresy hath entered.  Nero maintained it, and\nabove all mortals admired most his uncle Caius Caligula, for having in a\nfew days, by a most wonderfully pregnant invention, totally spent all the\ngoods and patrimony which Tiberius had left him.\n\nBut, instead of observing the sumptuous supper-curbing laws of the Romans\n--to wit, the Orchia, the Fannia, the Didia, the Licinia, the Cornelia,\nthe Lepidiana, the Antia, and of the Corinthians--by the which they were\ninhibited, under pain of great punishment, not to spend more in one year\nthan their annual revenue did amount to, you have offered up the oblation\nof Protervia, which was with the Romans such a sacrifice as the paschal\nlamb was amongst the Jews, wherein all that was eatable was to be eaten,\nand the remainder to be thrown into the fire, without reserving anything\nfor the next day.  I may very justly say of you, as Cato did of Albidius,\nwho after that he had by a most extravagant expense wasted all the means\nand possessions he had to one only house, he fairly set it on fire, that he\nmight the better say, Consummatum est.  Even just as since his time St.\nThomas Aquinas did, when he had eaten up the whole lamprey, although there\nwas no necessity in it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge praiseth the debtors and borrowers.\n\nBut, quoth Pantagruel, when will you be out of debt?  At the next ensuing\nterm of the Greek kalends, answered Panurge, when all the world shall be\ncontent, and that it be your fate to become your own heir.  The Lord forbid\nthat I should be out of debt, as if, indeed, I could not be trusted.  Who\nleaves not some leaven over night, will hardly have paste the next morning.\n\nBe still indebted to somebody or other, that there may be somebody always\nto pray for you, that the giver of all good things may grant unto you a\nblessed, long, and prosperous life; fearing, if fortune should deal crossly\nwith you, that it might be his chance to come short of being paid by you,\nhe will always speak good of you in every company, ever and anon purchase\nnew creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means you may make a\nshift by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and with other folk's earth fill\nup his ditch.  When of old, in the region of the Gauls, by the institution\nof the Druids, the servants, slaves, and bondmen were burnt quick at the\nfunerals and obsequies of their lords and masters, had not they fear\nenough, think you, that their lords and masters should die?  For, perforce,\nthey were to die with them for company.  Did not they incessantly send up\ntheir supplications to their great god Mercury, as likewise unto Dis, the\nfather of wealth, to lengthen out their days, and to preserve them long in\nhealth?  Were not they very careful to entertain them well, punctually to\nlook unto them, and to attend them faithfully and circumspectly?  For by\nthose means were they to live together at least until the hour of death.\nBelieve me, your creditors with a more fervent devotion will beseech\nAlmighty God to prolong your life, they being of nothing more afraid than\nthat you should die; for that they are more concerned for the sleeve than\nthe arm, and love silver better than their own lives.  As it evidently\nappeareth by the usurers of Landerousse, who not long since hanged\nthemselves because the price of the corn and wines was fallen by the return\nof a gracious season.  To this Pantagruel answering nothing, Panurge went\non in his discourse, saying, Truly and in good sooth, sir, when I ponder my\ndestiny aright, and think well upon it, you put me shrewdly to my plunges,\nand have me at a bay in twitting me with the reproach of my debts and\ncreditors.  And yet did I, in this only respect and consideration of being\na debtor, esteem myself worshipful, reverend, and formidable.  For against\nthe opinion of most philosophers, that of nothing ariseth nothing, yet,\nwithout having bottomed on so much as that which is called the First\nMatter, did I out of nothing become such (a) maker and creator, that I have\ncreated--what?--a gay number of fair and jolly creditors.  Nay, creditors,\nI will maintain it, even to the very fire itself exclusively, are fair and\ngoodly creatures.  Who lendeth nothing is an ugly and wicked creature, and\nan accursed imp of the infernal Old Nick.  And there is made--what?  Debts.\nA thing most precious and dainty, of great use and antiquity.  Debts, I\nsay, surmounting the number of syllables which may result from the\ncombinations of all the consonants, with each of the vowels heretofore\nprojected, reckoned, and calculated by the noble Xenocrates.  To judge of\nthe perfection of debtors by the numerosity of their creditors is the\nreadiest way for entering into the mysteries of practical arithmetic.\n\nYou can hardly imagine how glad I am, when every morning I perceive myself\nenvironed and surrounded with brigades of creditors--humble, fawning, and\nfull of their reverences.  And whilst I remark that, as I look more\nfavourably upon and give a cheerfuller countenance to one than to another,\nthe fellow thereupon buildeth a conceit that he shall be the first\ndespatched and the foremost in the date of payment, and he valueth my\nsmiles at the rate of ready money, it seemeth unto me that I then act and\npersonate the god of the passion of Saumure, accompanied with his angels\nand cherubims.\n\nThese are my flatterers, my soothers, my clawbacks, my smoothers, my\nparasites, my saluters, my givers of good-morrows, and perpetual orators;\nwhich makes me verily think that the supremest height of heroic virtue\ndescribed by Hesiod consisteth in being a debtor, wherein I held the first\ndegree in my commencement.  Which dignity, though all human creatures seem\nto aim at and aspire thereto, few nevertheless, because of the difficulties\nin the way and encumbrances of hard passages, are able to reach it, as is\neasily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing harboured in\nthe breast of everyone to be still creating more debts and new creditors.\n\nYet doth it not lie in the power of everyone to be a debtor.  To acquire\ncreditors is not at the disposure of each man's arbitrament.  You\nnevertheless would deprive me of this sublime felicity.  You ask me when I\nwill be out of debt.  Well, to go yet further on, and possibly worse in\nyour conceit, may Saint Bablin, the good saint, snatch me, if I have not\nall my lifetime held debt to be as a union or conjunction of the heavens\nwith the earth, and the whole cement whereby the race of mankind is kept\ntogether; yea, of such virtue and efficacy that, I say, the whole progeny\nof Adam would very suddenly perish without it.  Therefore, perhaps, I do\nnot think amiss, when I repute it to be the great soul of the universe,\nwhich, according to the opinion of the Academics, vivifieth all manner of\nthings.  In confirmation whereof, that you may the better believe it to be\nso, represent unto yourself, without any prejudicacy of spirit, in a clear\nand serene fancy, the idea and form of some other world than this; take, if\nyou please, and lay hold on the thirtieth of those which the philosopher\nMetrodorus did enumerate, wherein it is to be supposed there is no debtor\nor creditor, that is to say, a world without debts.\n\nThere amongst the planets will be no regular course, all will be in\ndisorder.  Jupiter, reckoning himself to be nothing indebted unto Saturn,\nwill go near to detrude him out of his sphere, and with the Homeric chain\nwill be like to hang up the intelligences, gods, heavens, demons, heroes,\ndevils, earth and sea, together with the other elements.  Saturn, no doubt,\ncombining with Mars will reduce that so disturbed world into a chaos of\nconfusion.\n\nMercury then would be no more subjected to the other planets; he would\nscorn to be any longer their Camillus, as he was of old termed in the\nEtrurian tongue.  For it is to be imagined that he is no way a debtor to\nthem.\n\nVenus will be no more venerable, because she shall have lent nothing.  The\nmoon will remain bloody and obscure.  For to what end should the sun impart\nunto her any of his light?  He owed her nothing.  Nor yet will the sun\nshine upon the earth, nor the stars send down any good influence, because\nthe terrestrial globe hath desisted from sending up their wonted\nnourishment by vapours and exhalations, wherewith Heraclitus said, the\nStoics proved, Cicero maintained, they were cherished and alimented.  There\nwould likewise be in such a world no manner of symbolization, alteration,\nnor transmutation amongst the elements; for the one will not esteem itself\nobliged to the other, as having borrowed nothing at all from it.  Earth\nthen will not become water, water will not be changed into air, of air will\nbe made no fire, and fire will afford no heat unto the earth; the earth\nwill produce nothing but monsters, Titans, giants; no rain will descend\nupon it, nor light shine thereon; no wind will blow there, nor will there\nbe in it any summer or harvest.  Lucifer will break loose, and issuing\nforth of the depth of hell, accompanied with his furies, fiends, and horned\ndevils, will go about to unnestle and drive out of heaven all the gods, as\nwell of the greater as of the lesser nations.  Such a world without lending\nwill be no better than a dog-kennel, a place of contention and wrangling,\nmore unruly and irregular than that of the rector of Paris; a devil of an\nhurlyburly, and more disordered confusion than that of the plagues of\nDouay.  Men will not then salute one another; it will be but lost labour to\nexpect aid or succour from any, or to cry fire, water, murder, for none\nwill put to their helping hand.  Why?  He lent no money, there is nothing\ndue to him.  Nobody is concerned in his burning, in his shipwreck, in his\nruin, or in his death; and that because he hitherto had lent nothing, and\nwould never thereafter have lent anything.  In short, Faith, Hope, and\nCharity would be quite banished from such a world--for men are born to\nrelieve and assist one another; and in their stead should succeed and be\nintroduced Defiance, Disdain, and Rancour, with the most execrable troop of\nall evils, all imprecations, and all miseries.  Whereupon you will think,\nand that not amiss, that Pandora had there spilt her unlucky bottle.  Men\nunto men will be wolves, hobthrushers, and goblins (as were Lycaon,\nBellerophon, Nebuchodonosor), plunderers, highway robbers, cutthroats,\nrapparees, murderers, poisoners, assassinators, lewd, wicked, malevolent,\npernicious haters, set against everybody, like to Ishmael, Metabus, or\nTimon the Athenian, who for that cause was named Misanthropos, in such\nsort that it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained\nin the air and bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support or\ntolerate a rascally rabble of people that will not lend.  These fellows, I\nvow, do I hate with a perfect hatred; and if, conform to the pattern of\nthis grievous, peevish, and perverse world which lendeth nothing, you\nfigure and liken the little world, which is man, you will find in him a\nterrible justling coil and clutter.  The head will not lend the sight of\nhis eyes to guide the feet and hands; the legs will refuse to bear up the\nbody; the hands will leave off working any more for the rest of the\nmembers; the heart will be weary of its continual motion for the beating of\nthe pulse, and will no longer lend his assistance; the lungs will withdraw\nthe use of their bellows; the liver will desist from convoying any more\nblood through the veins for the good of the whole; the bladder will not be\nindebted to the kidneys, so that the urine thereby will be totally stopped.\nThe brains, in the interim, considering this unnatural course, will fall\ninto a raving dotage, and withhold all feeling from the sinews and motion\nfrom the muscles.  Briefly, in such a world without order and array, owing\nnothing, lending nothing, and borrowing nothing, you would see a more\ndangerous conspiration than that which Aesop exposed in his Apologue.  Such\na world will perish undoubtedly; and not only perish, but perish very\nquickly.  Were it Aesculapius himself, his body would immediately rot, and\nthe chafing soul, full of indignation, take its flight to all the devils of\nhell after my money.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPanurge continueth his discourse in the praise of borrowers and lenders.\n\nOn the contrary, be pleased to represent unto your fancy another world,\nwherein everyone lendeth and everyone oweth, all are debtors and all\ncreditors.  O how great will that harmony be, which shall thereby result\nfrom the regular motions of the heavens!  Methinks I hear it every whit as\nwell as ever Plato did.  What sympathy will there be amongst the elements!\nO how delectable then unto nature will be our own works and productions!\nWhilst Ceres appeareth laden with corn, Bacchus with wines, Flora with\nflowers, Pomona with fruits, and Juno fair in a clear air, wholesome and\npleasant.  I lose myself in this high contemplation.\n\nThen will among the race of mankind peace, love, benevolence, fidelity,\ntranquillity, rest, banquets, feastings, joy, gladness, gold, silver,\nsingle money, chains, rings, with other ware and chaffer of that nature be\nfound to trot from hand to hand.  No suits at law, no wars, no strife,\ndebate, nor wrangling; none will be there a usurer, none will be there a\npinch-penny, a scrape-good wretch, or churlish hard-hearted refuser.  Good\nGod!  Will not this be the golden age in the reign of Saturn? the true idea\nof the Olympic regions, wherein all (other) virtues cease, charity alone\nruleth, governeth, domineereth, and triumpheth?  All will be fair and\ngoodly people there, all just and virtuous.\n\nO happy world!  O people of that world most happy!  Yea, thrice and four\ntimes blessed is that people!  I think in very deed that I am amongst them,\nand swear to you, by my good forsooth, that if this glorious aforesaid\nworld had a pope, abounding with cardinals, that so he might have the\nassociation of a sacred college, in the space of very few years you should\nbe sure to see the saints much thicker in the roll, more numerous,\nwonder-working and mirific, more services, more vows, more staves and\nwax-candles than are all those in the nine bishoprics of Britany, St. Yves\nonly excepted.  Consider, sir, I pray you, how the noble Patelin, having a\nmind to deify and extol even to the third heavens the father of William\nJosseaulme, said no more but this, And he did lend his goods to those who\nwere desirous of them.\n\nO the fine saying!  Now let our microcosm be fancied conform to this model\nin all its members; lending, borrowing, and owing, that is to say,\naccording to its own nature.  For nature hath not to any other end created\nman, but to owe, borrow, and lend; no greater is the harmony amongst the\nheavenly spheres than that which shall be found in its well-ordered policy.\nThe intention of the founder of this microcosm is, to have a soul therein\nto be entertained, which is lodged there, as a guest with its host, (that)\nit may live there for a while.  Life consisteth in blood, blood is the seat\nof the soul; therefore the chiefest work of the microcosm is, to be making\nblood continually.\n\nAt this forge are exercised all the members of the body; none is exempted\nfrom labour, each operates apart, and doth its proper office.  And such is\ntheir heirarchy, that perpetually the one borrows from the other, the one\nlends the other, and the one is the other's debtor.  The stuff and matter\nconvenient, which nature giveth to be turned into blood, is bread and wine.\nAll kind of nourishing victuals is understood to be comprehended in these\ntwo, and from hence in the Gothish tongue is called companage.  To find out\nthis meat and drink, to prepare and boil it, the hands are put to work, the\nfeet do walk and bear up the whole bulk of the corporal mass; the eyes\nguide and conduct all; the appetite in the orifice of the stomach, by means\nof (a) little sourish black humour, called melancholy, which is transmitted\nthereto from the milt, giveth warning to shut in the food.  The tongue doth\nmake the first essay, and tastes it; the teeth do chew it, and the stomach\ndoth receive, digest, and chylify it.  The mesaraic veins suck out of it\nwhat is good and fit, leaving behind the excrements, which are, through\nspecial conduits for that purpose, voided by an expulsive faculty.\nThereafter it is carried to the liver, where it being changed again, it by\nthe virtue of that new transmutation becomes blood.  What joy, conjecture\nyou, will then be found amongst those officers when they see this rivulet\nof gold, which is their sole restorative?  No greater is the joy of\nalchemists, when after long travail, toil, and expense they see in their\nfurnaces the transmutation.  Then is it that every member doth prepare\nitself, and strive anew to purify and to refine this treasure.  The kidneys\nthrough the emulgent veins draw that aquosity from thence which you call\nurine, and there send it away through the ureters to be slipped downwards;\nwhere, in a lower receptacle, and proper for it, to wit, the bladder, it is\nkept, and stayeth there until an opportunity to void it out in his due\ntime.  The spleen draweth from the blood its terrestrial part, viz., the\ngrounds, lees, or thick substance settled in the bottom thereof, which you\nterm melancholy.  The bottle of the gall subtracts from thence all the\nsuperfluous choler; whence it is brought to another shop or work-house to\nbe yet better purified and fined, that is, the heart, which by its\nagitation of diastolic and systolic motions so neatly subtilizeth and\ninflames it, that in the right side ventricle it is brought to perfection,\nand through the veins is sent to all the members.  Each parcel of the body\ndraws it then unto itself, and after its own fashion is cherished and\nalimented by it.  Feet, hands, thighs, arms, eyes, ears, back, breast, yea,\nall; and then it is, that who before were lenders, now become debtors.  The\nheart doth in its left side ventricle so thinnify the blood, that it\nthereby obtains the name of spiritual; which being sent through the\narteries to all the members of the body, serveth to warm and winnow the\nother blood which runneth through the veins.  The lights never cease with\nits lappets and bellows to cool and refresh it, in acknowledgment of which\ngood the heart, through the arterial vein, imparts unto it the choicest of\nits blood.  At last it is made so fine and subtle within the rete mirabile,\nthat thereafter those animal spirits are framed and composed of it, by\nmeans whereof the imagination, discourse, judgment, resolution,\ndeliberation, ratiocination, and memory have their rise, actings, and\noperations.\n\nCops body, I sink, I drown, I perish, I wander astray, and quite fly out of\nmyself when I enter into the consideration of the profound abyss of this\nworld, thus lending, thus owing.  Believe me, it is a divine thing to\nlend,--to owe, an heroic virtue.  Yet is not this all.  This little world\nthus lending, owing, and borrowing, is so good and charitable, that no\nsooner is the above-specified alimentation finished, but that it forthwith\nprojecteth, and hath already forecast, how it shall lend to those who are\nnot as yet born, and by that loan endeavour what it may to eternize itself,\nand multiply in images like the pattern, that is, children.  To this end\nevery member doth of the choicest and most precious of its nourishment pare\nand cut off a portion, then instantly despatcheth it downwards to that\nplace where nature hath prepared for it very fit vessels and receptacles,\nthrough which descending to the genitories by long ambages, circuits, and\nflexuosities, it receiveth a competent form, and rooms apt enough both in\nman and woman for the future conservation and perpetuating of human kind.\nAll this is done by loans and debts of the one unto the other; and hence\nhave we this word, the debt of marriage.  Nature doth reckon pain to the\nrefuser, with a most grievous vexation to his members and an outrageous\nfury amidst his senses.  But, on the other part, to the lender a set\nreward, accompanied with pleasure, joy, solace, mirth, and merry glee.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel altogether abhorreth the debtors and borrowers.\n\nI understand you very well, quoth Pantagruel, and take you to be very good\nat topics, and thoroughly affectioned to your own cause.  But preach it up,\nand patrocinate it, prattle on it, and defend it as much as you will, even\nfrom hence to the next Whitsuntide, if you please so to do, yet in the end\nyou will be astonished to find how you shall have gained no ground at all\nupon me, nor persuaded me by your fair speeches and smooth talk to enter\nnever so little into the thraldom of debt.  You shall owe to none, saith\nthe holy Apostle, anything save love, friendship, and a mutual benevolence.\n\nYou serve me here, I confess, with fine graphides and diatyposes,\ndescriptions and figures, which truly please me very well.  But let me tell\nyou, if you will represent unto your fancy an impudent blustering bully and\nan importunate borrower, entering afresh and newly into a town already\nadvertised of his manners, you shall find that at his ingress the citizens\nwill be more hideously affrighted and amazed, and in a greater terror and\nfear, dread, and trembling, than if the pest itself should step into it in\nthe very same garb and accoutrement wherein the Tyanean philosopher found\nit within the city of Ephesus.  And I am fully confirmed in the opinion,\nthat the Persians erred not when they said that the second vice was to lie,\nthe first being that of owing money.  For, in very truth, debts and lying\nare ordinarily joined together.  I will nevertheless not from hence infer\nthat none must owe anything or lend anything.  For who so rich can be that\nsometimes may not owe, or who can be so poor that sometimes may not lend?\n\nLet the occasion, notwithstanding, in that case, as Plato very wisely\nsayeth and ordaineth in his laws, be such that none be permitted to draw\nany water out of his neighbour's well until first they by continual digging\nand delving into their own proper ground shall have hit upon a kind of\npotter's earth, which is called ceramite, and there had found no source or\ndrop of water; for that sort of earth, by reason of its substance, which is\nfat, strong, firm, and close, so retaineth its humidity, that it doth not\neasily evaporate it by any outward excursion or evaporation.\n\nIn good sooth, it is a great shame to choose rather to be still borrowing\nin all places from everyone, than to work and win.  Then only in my\njudgment should one lend, when the diligent, toiling, and industrious\nperson is no longer able by his labour to make any purchase unto himself,\nor otherwise, when by mischance he hath suddenly fallen into an unexpected\nloss of his goods.\n\nHowsoever, let us leave this discourse, and from henceforwards do not hang\nupon creditors, nor tie yourself to them.  I make account for the time past\nto rid you freely of them, and from their bondage to deliver you.  The\nleast I should in this point, quoth Panurge, is to thank you, though it be\nthe most I can do.  And if gratitude and thanksgiving be to be estimated\nand prized by the affection of the benefactor, that is to be done\ninfinitely and sempiternally; for the love which you bear me of your own\naccord and free grace, without any merit of mine, goeth far beyond the\nreach of any price or value.  It transcends all weight, all number, all\nmeasure; it is endless and everlasting; therefore, should I offer to\ncommensurate and adjust it, either to the size and proportion of your own\nnoble and gracious deeds, or yet to the contentment and delight of the\nobliged receivers, I would come off but very faintly and flaggingly.  You\nhave verily done me a great deal of good, and multiplied your favours on me\nmore frequently than was fitting to one of my condition.  You have been\nmore bountiful towards me than I have deserved, and your courtesies have by\nfar surpassed the extent of my merits, I must needs confess it.  But it is\nnot, as you suppose, in the proposed matter.  For there it is not where I\nitch, it is not there where it fretteth, hurts, or vexeth me; for,\nhenceforth being quit and out of debt, what countenance will I be able to\nkeep?  You may imagine that it will become me very ill for the first month,\nbecause I have never hitherto been brought up or accustomed to it.  I am\nvery much afraid of it.  Furthermore, there shall not one hereafter, native\nof the country of Salmigondy, but he shall level the shot towards my nose.\nAll the back-cracking fellows of the world, in discharging of their postern\npetarades, use commonly to say, Voila pour les quittes, that is, For the\nquit.  My life will be of very short continuance, I do foresee it.  I\nrecommend to you the making of my epitaph; for I perceive I will die\nconfected in the very stench of farts.  If, at any time to come, by way of\nrestorative to such good women as shall happen to be troubled with the\ngrievous pain of the wind-colic, the ordinary medicaments prove nothing\neffectual, the mummy of all my befarted body will straight be as a present\nremedy appointed by the physicians; whereof they, taking any small modicum,\nit will incontinently for their ease afford them a rattle of bumshot, like\na sal of muskets.\n\nTherefore would I beseech you to leave me some few centuries of debts; as\nKing Louis the Eleventh, exempting from suits in law the Reverend Miles\nd'Illiers, Bishop of Chartres, was by the said bishop most earnestly\nsolicited to leave him some few for the exercise of his mind.  I had rather\ngive them all my revenue of the periwinkles, together with the other\nincomes of the locusts, albeit I should not thereby have any parcel abated\nfrom off the principal sums which I owe.  Let us waive this matter, quoth\nPantagruel, I have told it you over again.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy new married men were privileged from going to the wars.\n\nBut, in the interim, asked Panurge, by what law was it constituted,\nordained, and established, that such as should plant a new vineyard, those\nthat should build a new house, and the new married men, should be exempted\nand discharged from the duty of warfare for the first year?  By the law,\nanswered Pantagruel, of Moses.  Why, replied Panurge, the lately married?\nAs for the vine-planters, I am now too old to reflect on them; my\ncondition, at this present, induceth me to remain satisfied with the care\nof vintage, finishing and turning the grapes into wine.  Nor are these\npretty new builders of dead stones written or pricked down in my Book of\nLife.  It is all with live stones that I set up and erect the fabrics of my\narchitecture, to wit, men.  It was, according to my opinion, quoth\nPantagruel, to the end, first, that the fresh married folks should for the\nfirst year reap a full and complete fruition of their pleasures in their\nmutual exercise of the act of love, in such sort, that in waiting more at\nleisure on the production of posterity and propagating of their progeny,\nthey might the better increase their race and make provision of new heirs.\nThat if, in the years thereafter, the men should, upon their undergoing of\nsome military adventure, happen to be killed, their names and coats-of-arms\nmight continue with their children in the same families.  And next, that,\nthe wives thereby coming to know whether they were barren or fruitful--for\none year's trial, in regard of the maturity of age wherein of old they\nmarried, was held sufficient for the discovery--they might pitch the more\nsuitably, in case of their first husband's decease, upon a second match.\nThe fertile women to be wedded to those who desire to multiply their issue;\nand the sterile ones to such other mates, as, misregarding the storing of\ntheir own lineage, choose them only for their virtues, learning, genteel\nbehaviour, domestic consolation, management of the house, and matrimonial\nconveniences and comforts, and such like.  The preachers of Varennes, saith\nPanurge, detest and abhor the second marriages, as altogether foolish and\ndishonest.\n\nFoolish and dishonest? quoth Pantagruel.  A plague take such preachers!\nYea but, quoth Panurge, the like mischief also befall the Friar Charmer,\nwho, in a full auditory making a sermon at Pereilly, and therein\nabominating the reiteration of marriage and the entering again in the bonds\nof a nuptial tie, did swear and heartily give himself to the swiftest devil\nin hell, if he had not rather choose, and would much more willingly\nundertake the unmaidening or depucelating of a hundred virgins, than the\nsimple drudgery of one widow.  Truly I find your reason in that point right\ngood and strongly grounded.\n\nBut what would you think, if the cause why this exemption or immunity was\ngranted had no other foundation but that, during the whole space of the\nsaid first year, they so lustily bobbed it with their female consorts, as\nboth reason and equity require they should do, that they had drained and\nevacuated their spermatic vessels; and were become thereby altogether\nfeeble, weak, emasculated, drooping, and flaggingly pithless; yea, in such\nsort that they in the day of battle, like ducks which plunge over head and\nears, would sooner hide themselves behind the baggage, than, in the company\nof valiant fighters and daring military combatants, appear where stern\nBellona deals her blows and moves a bustling noise of thwacks and thumps?\nNor is it to be thought that, under the standard of Mars, they will so much\nas once strike a fair stroke, because their most considerable knocks have\nbeen already jerked and whirrited within the curtains of his sweetheart\nVenus.\n\nIn confirmation whereof, amongst other relics and monuments of antiquity,\nwe now as yet often see, that in all great houses, after the expiring of\nsome few days, these young married blades are readily sent away to visit\ntheir uncles, that in the absence of their wives reposing themselves a\nlittle they may recover their decayed strength by the recruit of a fresh\nsupply, the more vigorous to return again and face about to renew the\nduelling shock and conflict of an amorous dalliance, albeit for the greater\npart they have neither uncle nor aunt to go to.\n\nJust so did the King Crackart, after the battle of the Cornets, not cashier\nus (speaking properly), I mean me and the Quail-caller, but for our\nrefreshment remanded us to our houses; and he is as yet seeking after his\nown.  My grandfather's godmother was wont to say to me when I was a boy,--\n\n  Patenostres et oraisons\n  Sont pour ceux-la, qui les retiennent.\n  Ung fiffre en fenaisons\n  Est plus fort que deux qui en viennent.\n\n  Not orisons nor patenotres\n  Shall ever disorder my brain.\n  One cadet, to the field as he flutters,\n  Is worth two, when they end the campaign.\n\nThat which prompteth me to that opinion is, that the vine-planters did\nseldom eat of the grapes, or drink of the wine of their labour, till the\nfirst year was wholly elapsed.  During all which time also the builders did\nhardly inhabit their new-structured dwelling-places, for fear of dying\nsuffocated through want of respiration; as Galen hath most learnedly\nremarked, in the second book of the Difficulty of Breathing.  Under favour,\nsir, I have not asked this question without cause causing and reason truly\nvery ratiocinant.  Be not offended, I pray you.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge had a flea in his ear, and forbore to wear any longer his\nmagnificent codpiece.\n\nPanurge, the day thereafter, caused pierce his right ear after the Jewish\nfashion, and thereto clasped a little gold ring, of a ferny-like kind of\nworkmanship, in the beazil or collet whereof was set and enchased a flea;\nand, to the end you may be rid of all doubts, you are to know that the flea\nwas black.  O, what a brave thing it is, in every case and circumstance of\na matter, to be thoroughly well informed!  The sum of the expense hereof,\nbeing cast up, brought in, and laid down upon his council-board carpet, was\nfound to amount to no more quarterly than the charge of the nuptials of a\nHircanian tigress; even, as you would say, 600,000 maravedis.  At these\nvast costs and excessive disbursements, as soon as he perceived himself to\nbe out of debt, he fretted much; and afterwards, as tyrants and lawyers use\nto do, he nourished and fed her with the sweat and blood of his subjects\nand clients.\n\nHe then took four French ells of a coarse brown russet cloth, and therein\napparelling himself, as with a long, plain-seamed, and single-stitched\ngown, left off the wearing of his breeches, and tied a pair of spectacles\nto his cap.  In this equipage did he present himself before Pantagruel; to\nwhom this disguise appeared the more strange, that he did not, as before,\nsee that goodly, fair, and stately codpiece, which was the sole anchor of\nhope wherein he was wonted to rely, and last refuge he had midst all the\nwaves and boisterous billows which a stormy cloud in a cross fortune would\nraise up against him.  Honest Pantagruel, not understanding the mystery,\nasked him, by way of interrogatory, what he did intend to personate in that\nnew-fangled prosopopoeia.  I have, answered Panurge, a flea in mine ear,\nand have a mind to marry.  In a good time, quoth Pantagruel, you have told\nme joyful tidings.  Yet would not I hold a red-hot iron in my hand for all\nthe gladness of them.  But it is not the fashion of lovers to be accoutred\nin such dangling vestments, so as to have their shirts flagging down over\ntheir knees, without breeches, and with a long robe of a dark brown mingled\nhue, which is a colour never used in Talarian garments amongst any persons\nof honour, quality, or virtue.  If some heretical persons and schismatical\nsectaries have at any time formerly been so arrayed and clothed (though\nmany have imputed such a kind of dress to cosenage, cheat, imposture, and\nan affectation of tyranny upon credulous minds of the rude multitude), I\nwill nevertheless not blame them for it, nor in that point judge rashly or\nsinistrously of them.  Everyone overflowingly aboundeth in his own sense\nand fancy; yea, in things of a foreign consideration, altogether\nextrinsical and indifferent, which in and of themselves are neither\ncommendable nor bad, because they proceed not from the interior of the\nthoughts and heart, which is the shop of all good and evil; of goodness, if\nit be upright, and that its affections be regulated by the pure and clean\nspirit of righteousness; and, on the other side, of wickedness, if its\ninclinations, straying beyond the bounds of equity, be corrupted and\ndepraved by the malice and suggestions of the devil.  It is only the\nnovelty and new-fangledness thereof which I dislike, together with the\ncontempt of common custom and the fashion which is in use.\n\nThe colour, answered Panurge, is convenient, for it is conform to that\nof my council-board carpet; therefore will I henceforth hold me with it,\nand more narrowly and circumspectly than ever hitherto I have done look to\nmy affairs and business.  Seeing I am once out of debt, you never yet saw\nman more unpleasing than I will be, if God help me not.  Lo, here be my\nspectacles.  To see me afar off, you would readily say that it were Friar\n(John) Burgess.  I believe certainly that in the next ensuing year I shall\nonce more preach the Crusade.  Bounce, buckram.  Do you see this russet?\nDoubt not but there lurketh under it some hid property and occult virtue\nknown to very few in the world.  I did not take it on before this morning,\nand, nevertheless, am already in a rage of lust, mad after a wife, and\nvehemently hot upon untying the codpiece-point; I itch, I tingle, I\nwriggle, and long exceedingly to be married, that, without the danger of\ncudgel-blows, I may labour my female copes-mate with the hard push of a\nbull-horned devil.  O the provident and thrifty husband that I then will\nbe!  After my death, with all honour and respect due to my frugality, will\nthey burn the sacred bulk of my body, of purpose to preserve the ashes\nthereof, in memory of the choicest pattern that ever was of a perfectly\nwary and complete householder.  Cops body, this is not the carpet whereon\nmy treasurer shall be allowed to play false in his accounts with me, by\nsetting down an X for a V, or an L for an S.  For in that case should I\nmake a hail of fisticuffs to fly into his face.  Look upon me, sir, both\nbefore and behind,--it is made after the manner of a toga, which was the\nancient fashion of the Romans in time of peace.  I took the mode, shape,\nand form thereof in Trajan's Column at Rome, as also in the Triumphant Arch\nof Septimus Severus.  I am tired of the wars, weary of wearing buff-coats,\ncassocks, and hoquetons.  My shoulders are pitifully worn and bruised with\nthe carrying of harness.  Let armour cease, and the long robe bear sway!\nAt least it must be so for the whole space of the succeeding year, if I be\nmarried; as yesterday, by the Mosaic law, you evidenced.  In what\nconcerneth the breeches, my great-aunt Laurence did long ago tell me, that\nthe breeches were only ordained for the use of the codpiece, and to no\nother end; which I, upon a no less forcible consequence, give credit to\nevery whit, as well as to the saying of the fine fellow Galen, who in his\nninth book, Of the Use and Employment of our Members, allegeth that the\nhead was made for the eyes.  For nature might have placed our heads in our\nknees or elbows, but having beforehand determined that the eyes should\nserve to discover things from afar, she for the better enabling them to\nexecute their designed office, fixed them in the head, as on the top of a\nlong pole, in the most eminent part of all the body--no otherwise than we\nsee the phares, or high towers erected in the mouths of havens, that\nnavigators may the further off perceive with ease the lights of the nightly\nfires and lanterns.  And because I would gladly, for some short while, a\nyear at least, take a little rest and breathing time from the toilsome\nlabour of the military profession, that is to say, be married, I have\ndesisted from wearing any more a codpiece, and consequently have laid aside\nmy breeches.  For the codpiece is the principal and most especial piece of\narmour that a warrior doth carry; and therefore do I maintain even to the\nfire (exclusively, understand you me), that no Turks can properly be said\nto be armed men, in regard that codpieces are by their law forbidden to be\nworn.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy the codpiece is held to be the chief piece of armour amongst warriors.\n\nWill you maintain, quoth Pantagruel, that the codpiece is the chief piece\nof a military harness?  It is a new kind of doctrine, very paradoxical; for\nwe say, At spurs begins the arming of a man.  Sir, I maintain it, answered\nPanurge, and not wrongfully do I maintain it.  Behold how nature, having a\nfervent desire, after its production of plants, trees, shrubs, herbs,\nsponges, and plant-animals, to eternize and continue them unto all\nsuccession of ages (in their several kinds or sorts, at least, although the\nindividuals perish) unruinable, and in an everlasting being, hath most\ncuriously armed and fenced their buds, sprouts, shoots, and seeds, wherein\nthe above-mentioned perpetuity consisteth, by strengthening, covering,\nguarding, and fortifying them with an admirable industry, with husks,\ncases, scurfs and swads, hulls, cods, stones, films, cartels, shells, ears,\nrinds, barks, skins, ridges, and prickles, which serve them instead of\nstrong, fair, and natural codpieces.  As is manifestly apparent in pease,\nbeans, fasels, pomegranates, peaches, cottons, gourds, pumpions, melons,\ncorn, lemons, almonds, walnuts, filberts, and chestnuts; as likewise in all\nplants, slips, or sets whatsoever, wherein it is plainly and evidently\nseen, that the sperm and semence is more closely veiled, overshadowed,\ncorroborated, and thoroughly harnessed, than any other part, portion, or\nparcel of the whole.\n\nNature, nevertheless, did not after that manner provide for the\nsempiternizing of (the) human race; but, on the contrary, created man\nnaked, tender, and frail, without either offensive or defensive arms; and\nthat in the estate of innocence, in the first age of all, which was the\ngolden season; not as a plant, but living creature, born for peace, not\nwar, and brought forth into the world with an unquestionable right and\ntitle to the plenary fruition and enjoyment of all fruits and vegetables,\nas also to a certain calm and gentle rule and dominion over all kinds of\nbeasts, fowls, fishes, reptiles, and insects.  Yet afterwards it happening\nin the time of the iron age, under the reign of Jupiter, when, to the\nmultiplication of mischievous actions, wickedness and malice began to take\nroot and footing within the then perverted hearts of men, that the earth\nbegan to bring forth nettles, thistles, thorns, briars, and such other\nstubborn and rebellious vegetables to the nature of man.  Nor scarce was\nthere any animal which by a fatal disposition did not then revolt from him,\nand tacitly conspire and covenant with one another to serve him no longer,\nnor, in case of their ability to resist, to do him any manner of obedience,\nbut rather, to the uttermost of their power, to annoy him with all the hurt\nand harm they could.  The man, then, that he might maintain his primitive\nright and prerogative, and continue his sway and dominion over all, both\nvegetable and sensitive creatures, and knowing of a truth that he could not\nbe well accommodated as he ought without the servitude and subjection of\nseveral animals, bethought himself that of necessity he must needs put on\narms, and make provision of harness against wars and violence.  By the holy\nSaint Babingoose, cried out Pantagruel, you are become, since the last\nrain, a great lifrelofre,--philosopher, I should say.  Take notice, sir,\nquoth Panurge, when Dame Nature had prompted him to his own arming, what\npart of the body it was, where, by her inspiration, he clapped on the first\nharness.  It was forsooth by the double pluck of my little dog the ballock\nand good Senor Don Priapos Stabo-stando--which done, he was content, and\nsought no more.  This is certified by the testimony of the great Hebrew\ncaptain (and) philosopher Moses, who affirmeth that he fenced that member\nwith a brave and gallant codpiece, most exquisitely framed, and by right\ncurious devices of a notably pregnant invention made up and composed of\nfig-tree leaves, which by reason of their solid stiffness, incisory\nnotches, curled frizzling, sleeked smoothness, large ampleness, together\nwith their colour, smell, virtue, and faculty, were exceeding proper and\nfit for the covering and arming of the satchels of generation--the\nhideously big Lorraine cullions being from thence only excepted, which,\nswaggering down to the lowermost bottom of the breeches, cannot abide, for\nbeing quite out of all order and method, the stately fashion of the high\nand lofty codpiece; as is manifest by the noble Valentine Viardiere, whom I\nfound at Nancy, on the first day of May--the more flauntingly to\ngallantrize it afterwards--rubbing his ballocks, spread out upon a table\nafter the manner of a Spanish cloak.  Wherefore it is, that none should\nhenceforth say, who would not speak improperly, when any country bumpkin\nhieth to the wars, Have a care, my roister, of the wine-pot, that is, the\nskull, but, Have a care, my roister, of the milk-pot, that is, the\ntesticles.  By the whole rabble of the horned fiends of hell, the head\nbeing cut off, that single person only thereby dieth.  But, if the ballocks\nbe marred, the whole race of human kind would forthwith perish, and be lost\nfor ever.\n\nThis was the motive which incited the goodly writer Galen, Lib. 1. De\nSpermate, to aver with boldness that it were better, that is to say, a less\nevil, to have no heart at all than to be quite destitute of genitories; for\nthere is laid up, conserved, and put in store, as in a secessive repository\nand sacred warehouse, the semence and original source of the whole\noffspring of mankind.  Therefore would I be apt to believe, for less than a\nhundred francs, that those are the very same stones by means whereof\nDeucalion and Pyrrha restored the human race, in peopling with men and\nwomen the world, which a little before that had been drowned in the\noverflowing waves of a poetical deluge.  This stirred up the valiant\nJustinian, L. 4. De Cagotis tollendis, to collocate his Summum Bonum, in\nBraguibus, et Braguetis.  For this and other causes, the Lord Humphrey de\nMerville, following of his king to a certain warlike expedition, whilst he\nwas in trying upon his own person a new suit of armour, for of his old\nrusty harness he could make no more use, by reason that some few years\nsince the skin of his belly was a great way removed from his kidneys, his\nlady thereupon, in the profound musing of a contemplative spirit, very\nmaturely considering that he had but small care of the staff of love and\npacket of marriage, seeing he did no otherwise arm that part of the body\nthan with links of mail, advised him to shield, fence, and gabionate it\nwith a big tilting helmet which she had lying in her closet, to her\notherwise utterly unprofitable.  On this lady were penned these subsequent\nverses, which are extant in the third book of the Shitbrana of Paltry\nWenches.\n\n  When Yoland saw her spouse equipp'd for fight,\n  And, save the codpiece, all in armour dight,\n  My dear, she cried, why, pray, of all the rest\n  Is that exposed, you know I love the best?\n  Was she to blame for an ill-managed fear,--\n  Or rather pious, conscionable care?\n  Wise lady, she!  In hurlyburly fight,\n  Can any tell where random blows may light?\n\nLeave off then, sir, from being astonished, and wonder no more at this new\nmanner of decking and trimming up of myself as you now see me.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel whether he should marry, yea, or\nno.\n\nTo this Pantagruel replying nothing, Panurge prosecuted the discourse he\nhad already broached, and therewithal fetching, as from the bottom of his\nheart, a very deep sigh, said, My lord and master, you have heard the\ndesign I am upon, which is to marry, if by some disastrous mischance all\nthe holes in the world be not shut up, stopped, closed, and bushed.  I\nhumbly beseech you, for the affection which of a long time you have borne\nme, to give me your best advice therein.  Then, answered Pantagruel, seeing\nyou have so decreed, taken deliberation thereon, and that the matter is\nfully determined, what need is there of any further talk thereof, but\nforthwith to put it into execution what you have resolved?  Yea but, quoth\nPanurge, I would be loth to act anything therein without your counsel had\nthereto.  It is my judgment also, quoth Pantagruel, and I advise you to it.\nNevertheless, quoth Panurge, if I understood aright that it were much\nbetter for me to remain a bachelor as I am, than to run headlong upon new\nhairbrained undertakings of conjugal adventure, I would rather choose not\nto marry.  Quoth Pantagruel, Then do not marry.  Yea but, quoth Panurge,\nwould you have me so solitarily drive out the whole course of my life,\nwithout the comfort of a matrimonial consort?  You know it is written, Vae\nsoli! and a single person is never seen to reap the joy and solace that is\nfound with married folks.  Then marry, in the name of God, quoth\nPantagruel.  But if, quoth Panurge, my wife should make me a cuckold--as it\nis not unknown unto you, how this hath been a very plentiful year in the\nproduction of that kind of cattle--I would fly out, and grow impatient\nbeyond all measure and mean.  I love cuckolds with my heart, for they seem\nunto me to be of a right honest conversation, and I truly do very willingly\nfrequent their company; but should I die for it, I would not be one of\ntheir number.  That is a point for me of a too sore prickling point.  Then\ndo not marry, quoth Pantagruel, for without all controversy this sentence\nof Seneca is infallibly true, What thou to others shalt have done, others\nwill do the like to thee.  Do you, quoth Panurge, aver that without all\nexception?  Yes, truly, quoth Pantagruel, without all exception.  Ho, ho,\nsays Panurge, by the wrath of a little devil, his meaning is, either in\nthis world or in the other which is to come.  Yet seeing I can no more want\na wife than a blind man his staff--(for) the funnel must be in agitation,\nwithout which manner of occupation I cannot live--were it not a great deal\nbetter for me to apply and associate myself to some one honest, lovely, and\nvirtuous woman, than as I do, by a new change of females every day, run a\nhazard of being bastinadoed, or, which is worse, of the great pox, if not\nof both together.  For never--be it spoken by their husbands' leave and\nfavour--had I enjoyment yet of an honest woman.  Marry then, in God's name,\nquoth Pantagruel.  But if, quoth Panurge, it were the will of God, and that\nmy destiny did unluckily lead me to marry an honest woman who should beat\nme, I would be stored with more than two third parts of the patience of\nJob, if I were not stark mad by it, and quite distracted with such rugged\ndealings.  For it hath been told me that those exceeding honest women have\nordinarily very wicked head-pieces; therefore is it that their family\nlacketh not for good vinegar.  Yet in that case should it go worse with me,\nif I did not then in such sort bang her back and breast, so thumpingly\nbethwack her gillets, to wit, her arms, legs, head, lights, liver, and\nmilt, with her other entrails, and mangle, jag, and slash her coats so\nafter the cross-billet fashion that the greatest devil of hell should wait\nat the gate for the reception of her damnel soul.  I could make a shift for\nthis year to waive such molestation and disquiet, and be content to lay\naside that trouble, and not to be engaged in it.\n\nDo not marry then, answered Pantagruel.  Yea but, quoth Panurge,\nconsidering the condition wherein I now am, out of debt and unmarried; mark\nwhat I say, free from all debt, in an ill hour, for, were I deeply on the\nscore, my creditors would be but too careful of my paternity, but being\nquit, and not married, nobody will be so regardful of me, or carry towards\nme a love like that which is said to be in a conjugal affection.  And if by\nsome mishap I should fall sick, I would be looked to very waywardly.  The\nwise man saith, Where there is no woman--I mean the mother of a family and\nwife in the union of a lawful wedlock--the crazy and diseased are in danger\nof being ill used and of having much brabbling and strife about them; as by\nclear experience hath been made apparent in the persons of popes, legates,\ncardinals, bishops, abbots, priors, priests, and monks; but there, assure\nyourself, you shall not find me.  Marry then, in the name of God, answered\nPantagruel.  But if, quoth Panurge, being ill at ease, and possibly through\nthat distemper made unable to discharge the matrimonial duty that is\nincumbent to an active husband, my wife, impatient of that drooping\nsickness and faint-fits of a pining languishment, should abandon and\nprostitute herself to the embraces of another man, and not only then not\nhelp and assist me in my extremity and need, but withal flout at and make\nsport of that my grievous distress and calamity; or peradventure, which is\nworse, embezzle my goods and steal from me, as I have seen it oftentimes\nbefall unto the lot of many other men, it were enough to undo me utterly,\nto fill brimful the cup of my misfortune, and make me play the mad-pate\nreeks of Bedlam.  Do not marry then, quoth Pantagruel.  Yea but, said\nPanurge, I shall never by any other means come to have lawful sons and\ndaughters, in whom I may harbour some hope of perpetuating my name and\narms, and to whom also I may leave and bequeath my inheritances and\npurchased goods (of which latter sort you need not doubt but that in some\none or other of these mornings I will make a fair and goodly show), that so\nI may cheer up and make merry when otherwise I should be plunged into a\npeevish sullen mood of pensive sullenness, as I do perceive daily by the\ngentle and loving carriage of your kind and gracious father towards you; as\nall honest folks use to do at their own homes and private dwelling-houses.\nFor being free from debt, and yet not married, if casually I should fret\nand be angry, although the cause of my grief and displeasure were never so\njust, I am afraid, instead of consolation, that I should meet with nothing\nelse but scoffs, frumps, gibes, and mocks at my disastrous fortune.  Marry\nthen, in the name of God, quoth Pantagruel.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel representeth unto Panurge the difficulty of giving advice in\nthe matter of marriage; and to that purpose mentioneth somewhat of the\nHomeric and Virgilian lotteries.\n\nYour counsel, quoth Panurge, under your correction and favour, seemeth unto\nme not unlike to the song of Gammer Yea-by-nay.  It is full of sarcasms,\nmockeries, bitter taunts, nipping bobs, derisive quips, biting jerks, and\ncontradictory iterations, the one part destroying the other.  I know not,\nquoth Pantagruel, which of all my answers to lay hold on; for your\nproposals are so full of ifs and buts, that I can ground nothing on them,\nnor pitch upon any solid and positive determination satisfactory to what is\ndemanded by them.  Are not you assured within yourself of what you have a\nmind to?  The chief and main point of the whole matter lieth there.  All\nthe rest is merely casual, and totally dependeth upon the fatal disposition\nof the heavens.\n\nWe see some so happy in the fortune of this nuptial encounter, that their\nfamily shineth as it were with the radiant effulgency of an idea, model, or\nrepresentation of the joys of paradise; and perceive others, again, to be\nso unluckily matched in the conjugal yoke, that those very basest of devils\nwhich tempt the hermits that inhabit the deserts of Thebais and Montserrat\nare not more miserable than they.  It is therefore expedient, seeing you\nare resolved for once to take a trial of the state of marriage, that, with\nshut eyes, bowing your head, and kissing the ground, you put the business\nto a venture, and give it a fair hazard, in recommending the success of the\nresidue to the disposure of Almighty God.  It lieth not in my power to give\nyou any other manner of assurance, or otherwise to certify you of what\nshall ensue on this your undertaking.  Nevertheless, if it please you, this\nyou may do.  Bring hither Virgil's poems, that after having opened the\nbook, and with our fingers severed the leaves thereof three several times,\nwe may, according to the number agreed upon betwixt ourselves, explore the\nfuture hap of your intended marriage.  For frequently by a Homeric lottery\nhave many hit upon their destinies; as is testified in the person of\nSocrates, who, whilst he was in prison, hearing the recitation of this\nverse of Homer, said of Achilles in the Ninth of the Iliads--\n\n  Emati ke tritato Phthien eribolon ikoimen,\n\n  We, the third day, to fertile Pthia came--\n\nthereby foresaw that on the third subsequent day he was to die.  Of the\ntruth whereof he assured Aeschines; as Plato, in Critone, Cicero, in Primo,\nde Divinatione, Diogenes Laertius, and others, have to the full recorded in\ntheir works.  The like is also witnessed by Opilius Macrinus, to whom,\nbeing desirous to know if he should be the Roman emperor, befell, by chance\nof lot, this sentence in the Eighth of the Iliads--\n\n  O geron, e mala de se neoi teirousi machetai,\n  Ze de bin lelutai, chalepon de se geras opazei.\n\n  Dotard, new warriors urge thee to be gone.\n  Thy life decays, and old age weighs thee down.\n\nIn fact, he, being then somewhat ancient, had hardly enjoyed the\nsovereignty of the empire for the space of fourteen months, when by\nHeliogabalus, then both young and strong, he was dispossessed thereof,\nthrust out of all, and killed.  Brutus doth also bear witness of another\nexperiment of this nature, who willing, through this exploratory way by\nlot, to learn what the event and issue should be of the Pharsalian battle\nwherein he perished, he casually encountered on this verse, said of\nPatroclus in the Sixteenth of the Iliads--\n\n  Alla me moir oloe, kai Letous ektanen uios.\n\n  Fate, and Latona's son have shot me dead.\n\nAnd accordingly Apollo was the field-word in the dreadful day of that\nfight.  Divers notable things of old have likewise been foretold and known\nby casting of Virgilian lots; yea, in matters of no less importance than\nthe obtaining of the Roman empire, as it happened to Alexander Severus,\nwho, trying his fortune at the said kind of lottery, did hit upon this\nverse written in the Sixth of the Aeneids--\n\n  Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.\n\n  Know, Roman, that thy business is to reign.\n\nHe, within very few years thereafter, was effectually and in good earnest\ncreated and installed Roman emperor.  A semblable story thereto is related\nof Adrian, who, being hugely perplexed within himself out of a longing\nhumour to know in what account he was with the Emperor Trajan, and how\nlarge the measure of that affection was which he did bear unto him, had\nrecourse, after the manner above specified, to the Maronian lottery, which\nby haphazard tendered him these lines out of the Sixth of the Aeneids--\n\n  Quis procul ille autem, ramis insignis olivae\n  Sacra ferens?  Nosco crines incanaque menta\n  Regis Romani.\n\n  But who is he, conspicuous from afar,\n  With olive boughs, that doth his offerings bear?\n  By the white hair and beard I know him plain,\n  The Roman king.\n\nShortly thereafter was he adopted by Trajan, and succeeded to him in the\nempire.  Moreover, to the lot of the praiseworthy Emperor Claudius befell\nthis line of Virgil, written in the Sixth of his Aeneids--\n\n  Tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit aestas.\n\n  Whilst the third summer saw him reign, a king\n  In Latium.\n\nAnd in effect he did not reign above two years.  To the said Claudian also,\ninquiring concerning his brother Quintilius, whom he proposed as a\ncolleague with himself in the empire, happened the response following in\nthe Sixth of the Aeneids--\n\n  Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata.\n\n    Whom Fate let us see,\n  And would no longer suffer him to be.\n\nAnd it so fell out; for he was killed on the seventeenth day after he had\nattained unto the management of the imperial charge.  The very same lot,\nalso, with the like misluck, did betide the Emperor Gordian the younger.\nTo Claudius Albinus, being very solicitous to understand somewhat of his\nfuture adventures, did occur this saying, which is written in the Sixth of\nthe Aeneids--\n\n  Hic rem Romanam magno turbante tumultu\n  Sistet Eques, &c.\n\n  The Romans, boiling with tumultuous rage,\n  This warrior shall the dangerous storm assuage:\n  With victories he the Carthaginian mauls,\n  And with strong hand shall crush the rebel Gauls.\n\nLikewise, when the Emperor D. Claudius, Aurelian's predecessor, did with\ngreat eagerness research after the fate to come of his posterity, his hap\nwas to alight on this verse in the First of the Aeneids--\n\n  Hic ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono.\n\n  No bounds are to be set, no limits here.\n\nWhich was fulfilled by the goodly genealogical row of his race.  When Mr.\nPeter Amy did in like manner explore and make trial if he should escape the\nambush of the hobgoblins who lay in wait all-to-bemaul him, he fell upon\nthis verse in the Third of the Aeneids--\n\n  Heu! fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum!\n\n  Oh, flee the bloody land, the wicked shore!\n\nWhich counsel he obeying, safe and sound forthwith avoided all these\nambuscades.\n\nWere it not to shun prolixity, I could enumerate a thousand such like\nadventures, which, conform to the dictate and verdict of the verse, have by\nthat manner of lot-casting encounter befallen to the curious researchers of\nthem.  Do not you nevertheless imagine, lest you should be deluded, that I\nwould upon this kind of fortune-flinging proof infer an uncontrollable and\nnot to be gainsaid infallibility of truth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel showeth the trial of one's fortune by the throwing of dice\nto be unlawful.\n\nIt would be sooner done, quoth Panurge, and more expeditely, if we should\ntry the matter at the chance of three fair dice.  Quoth Pantagruel, That\nsort of lottery is deceitful, abusive, illicitous, and exceedingly\nscandalous.  Never trust in it.  The accursed book of the Recreation of\nDice was a great while ago excogitated in Achaia, near Bourre, by that\nancient enemy of mankind, the infernal calumniator, who, before the statue\nor massive image of the Bourraic Hercules, did of old, and doth in several\nplaces of the world as yet, make many simple souls to err and fall into his\nsnares.  You know how my father Gargantua hath forbidden it over all his\nkingdoms and dominions; how he hath caused burn the moulds and draughts\nthereof, and altogether suppressed, abolished, driven forth, and cast it\nout of the land, as a most dangerous plague and infection to any\nwell-polished state or commonwealth.  What I have told you of dice, I say\nthe same of the play at cockall.  It is a lottery of the like guile and\ndeceitfulness; and therefore do not for convincing of me allege in\nopposition to this my opinion, or bring in the example of the fortunate cast\nof Tiberius, within the fountain of Aponus, at the oracle of Gerion. These\nare the baited hooks by which the devil attracts and draweth unto him the\nfoolish souls of silly people into eternal perdition.\n\nNevertheless, to satisfy your humour in some measure, I am content you\nthrow three dice upon this table, that, according to the number of the\nblots which shall happen to be cast up, we may hit upon a verse of that\npage which in the setting open of the book you shall have pitched upon.\n\nHave you any dice in your pocket?  A whole bagful, answered Panurge.  That\nis provision against the devil, as is expounded by Merlin Coccaius, Lib.\n2. De Patria Diabolorum.  The devil would be sure to take me napping, and\nvery much at unawares, if he should find me without dice.  With this, the\nthree dice being taken out, produced, and thrown, they fell so pat upon the\nlower points that the cast was five, six, and five.  These are, quoth\nPanurge, sixteen in all.  Let us take the sixteenth line of the page.  The\nnumber pleaseth me very well; I hope we shall have a prosperous and happy\nchance.  May I be thrown amidst all the devils of hell, even as a great\nbowl cast athwart at a set of ninepins, or cannon-ball shot among a\nbattalion of foot, in case so many times I do not boult my future wife the\nfirst night of our marriage!  Of that, forsooth, I make no doubt at all,\nquoth Pantagruel.  You needed not to have rapped forth such a horrid\nimprecation, the sooner to procure credit for the performance of so small a\nbusiness, seeing possibly the first bout will be amiss, and that you know\nis usually at tennis called fifteen.  At the next justling turn you may\nreadily amend that fault, and so complete your reckoning of sixteen.  Is it\nso, quoth Panurge, that you understand the matter?  And must my words be\nthus interpreted?  Nay, believe me never yet was any solecism committed by\nthat valiant champion who often hath for me in Belly-dale stood sentry at\nthe hypogastrian cranny.  Did you ever hitherto find me in the\nconfraternity of the faulty?  Never, I trow; never, nor ever shall, for\never and a day.  I do the feat like a goodly friar or father confessor,\nwithout default.  And therein am I willing to be judged by the players.  He\nhad no sooner spoke these words than the works of Virgil were brought in.\nBut before the book was laid open, Panurge said to Pantagruel, My heart,\nlike the furch of a hart in a rut, doth beat within my breast.  Be pleased\nto feel and grope my pulse a little on this artery of my left arm. At its\nfrequent rise and fall you would say that they swinge and belabour me after\nthe manner of a probationer, posed and put to a peremptory trial in the\nexamination of his sufficiency for the discharge of the learned duty of a\ngraduate in some eminent degree in the college of the Sorbonists.\n\nBut would you not hold it expedient, before we proceed any further, that we\nshould invocate Hercules and the Tenetian goddesses who in the chamber of\nlots are said to rule, sit in judgment, and bear a presidential sway?\nNeither him nor them, answered Pantagruel; only open up the leaves of the\nbook with your fingers, and set your nails awork.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel doth explore by the Virgilian lottery what fortune Panurge\nshall have in his marriage.\n\nThen at the opening of the book in the sixteenth row of the lines of the\ndisclosed page did Panurge encounter upon this following verse:\n\n  Nec Deus hunc mensa, Dea nec dignata cubili est.\n\n  The god him from his table banished,\n  Nor would the goddess have him in her bed.\n\nThis response, quoth Pantagruel, maketh not very much for your benefit or\nadvantage; for it plainly signifies and denoteth that your wife shall be a\nstrumpet, and yourself by consequence a cuckold.  The goddess, whom you\nshall not find propitious nor favourable unto you, is Minerva, a most\nredoubtable and dreadful virgin, a powerful and fulminating goddess, an\nenemy to cuckolds and effeminate youngsters, to cuckold-makers and\nadulterers.  The god is Jupiter, a terrible and thunder-striking god from\nheaven.  And withal it is to be remarked, that, conform to the doctrine of\nthe ancient Etrurians, the manubes, for so did they call the darting hurls\nor slinging casts of the Vulcanian thunderbolts, did only appertain to her\nand to Jupiter her father capital.  This was verified in the conflagration\nof the ships of Ajax Oileus, nor doth this fulminating power belong to any\nother of the Olympic gods.  Men, therefore, stand not in such fear of them.\nMoreover, I will tell you, and you may take it as extracted out of the\nprofoundest mysteries of mythology, that, when the giants had enterprised\nthe waging of a war against the power of the celestial orbs, the gods at\nfirst did laugh at those attempts, and scorned such despicable enemies, who\nwere, in their conceit, not strong enough to cope in feats of warfare with\ntheir pages; but when they saw by the gigantine labour the high hill Pelion\nset on lofty Ossa, and that the mount Olympus was made shake to be erected\non the top of both, then was it that Jupiter held a parliament, or general\nconvention, wherein it was unanimously resolved upon and condescended to by\nall the gods, that they should worthily and valiantly stand to their\ndefence.  And because they had often seen battles lost by the cumbersome\nlets and disturbing encumbrances of women confusedly huddled in amongst\narmies, it was at that time decreed and enacted that they should expel and\ndrive out of heaven into Egypt and the confines of Nile that whole crew of\ngoddesses, disguised in the shapes of weasels, polecats, bats, shrew-mice,\nferrets, fulmarts, and other such like odd transformations; only Minerva\nwas reserved to participate with Jupiter in the horrific fulminating power,\nas being the goddess both of war and learning, of arts and arms, of counsel\nand despatch--a goddess armed from her birth, a goddess dreaded in heaven,\nin the air, by sea and land.  By the belly of Saint Buff, quoth Panurge,\nshould I be Vulcan, whom the poet blazons?  Nay, I am neither a cripple,\ncoiner of false money, nor smith, as he was.  My wife possibly will be as\ncomely and handsome as ever was his Venus, but not a whore like her, nor I\na cuckold like him.  The crook-legged slovenly slave made himself to be\ndeclared a cuckold by a definite sentence and judgment, in the open view of\nall the gods.  For this cause ought you to interpret the afore-mentioned\nverse quite contrary to what you have said.  This lot importeth that my\nwife will be honest, virtuous, chaste, loyal, and faithful; not armed,\nsurly, wayward, cross, giddy, humorous, heady, hairbrained, or extracted\nout of the brains, as was the goddess Pallas; nor shall this fair jolly\nJupiter be my co-rival.  He shall never dip his bread in my broth, though\nwe should sit together at one table.\n\nConsider his exploits and gallant actions.  He was the manifest ruffian,\nwencher, whoremonger, and most infamous cuckold-maker that ever breathed.\nHe did always lecher it like a boar, and no wonder, for he was fostered by\na sow in the Isle of Candia, if Agathocles the Babylonian be not a liar,\nand more rammishly lascivious than a buck; whence it is that he is said by\nothers to have been suckled and fed with the milk of the Amalthaean goat.\nBy the virtue of Acheron, he justled, bulled, and lastauriated in one day\nthe third part of the world, beasts and people, floods and mountains; that\nwas Europa.  For this grand subagitatory achievement the Ammonians caused\ndraw, delineate, and paint him in the figure and shape of a ram ramming,\nand horned ram.  But I know well enough how to shield and preserve myself\nfrom that horned champion.  He will not, trust me, have to deal in my\nperson with a sottish, dunsical Amphitryon, nor with a silly witless Argus,\nfor all his hundred spectacles, nor yet with the cowardly meacock Acrisius,\nthe simple goose-cap Lycus of Thebes, the doting blockhead Agenor, the\nphlegmatic pea-goose Aesop, rough-footed Lycaon, the luskish misshapen\nCorytus of Tuscany, nor with the large-backed and strong-reined Atlas.  Let\nhim alter, change, transform, and metamorphose himself into a hundred\nvarious shapes and figures, into a swan, a bull, a satyr, a shower of gold,\nor into a cuckoo, as he did when he unmaidened his sister Juno; into an\neagle, ram, or dove, as when he was enamoured of the virgin Phthia, who\nthen dwelt in the Aegean territory; into fire, a serpent, yea, even into a\nflea; into Epicurean and Democratical atoms, or, more\nMagistronostralistically, into those sly intentions of the mind, which in\nthe schools are called second notions,--I'll catch him in the nick, and\ntake him napping.  And would you know what I would do unto him?  Even that\nwhich to his father Coelum Saturn did--Seneca foretold it of me, and\nLactantius hath confirmed it--what the goddess Rhea did to Athis.  I would\nmake him two stone lighter, rid him of his Cyprian cymbals, and cut so\nclose and neatly by the breech, that there shall not remain thereof so much\nas one--, so cleanly would I shave him, and disable him for ever from being\nPope, for Testiculos non habet.  Hold there, said Pantagruel; ho, soft and\nfair, my lad!  Enough of that,--cast up, turn over the leaves, and try your\nfortune for the second time.  Then did he fall upon this ensuing verse:\n\n  Membra quatit, gelidusque coit formidine sanguis.\n\n  His joints and members quake, he becomes pale,\n  And sudden fear doth his cold blood congeal.\n\nThis importeth, quoth Pantagruel, that she will soundly bang your back and\nbelly.  Clean and quite contrary, answered Panurge; it is of me that he\nprognosticates, in saying that I will beat her like a tiger if she vex me.\nSir Martin Wagstaff will perform that office, and in default of a cudgel,\nthe devil gulp him, if I should not eat her up quick, as Candaul the Lydian\nking did his wife, whom he ravened and devoured.\n\nYou are very stout, says Pantagruel, and courageous; Hercules himself durst\nhardly adventure to scuffle with you in this your raging fury.  Nor is it\nstrange; for the Jan is worth two, and two in fight against Hercules are\ntoo too strong.  Am I a Jan? quoth Panurge.  No, no, answered Pantagruel.\nMy mind was only running upon the lurch and tricktrack.  Thereafter did he\nhit, at the third opening of the book, upon this verse:\n\n  Foemineo praedae, et spoliorum ardebat amore.\n\n  After the spoil and pillage, as in fire,\n  He burnt with a strong feminine desire.\n\nThis portendeth, quoth Pantagruel, that she will steal your goods, and rob\nyou.  Hence this, according to these three drawn lots, will be your future\ndestiny, I clearly see it,--you will be a cuckold, you will be beaten, and\nyou will be robbed.  Nay, it is quite otherwise, quoth Panurge; for it is\ncertain that this verse presageth that she will love me with a perfect\nliking.  Nor did the satyr-writing poet lie in proof hereof, when he\naffirmed that a woman, burning with extreme affection, takes sometimes\npleasure to steal from her sweetheart.  And what, I pray you?  A glove, a\npoint, or some such trifling toy of no importance, to make him keep a\ngentle kind of stirring in the research and quest thereof.  In like manner,\nthese small scolding debates and petty brabbling contentions, which\nfrequently we see spring up and for a certain space boil very hot betwixt a\ncouple of high-spirited lovers, are nothing else but recreative diversions\nfor their refreshment, spurs to and incentives of a more fervent amity than\never.  As, for example, we do sometimes see cutlers with hammers maul their\nfinest whetstones, therewith to sharpen their iron tools the better.  And\ntherefore do I think that these three lots make much for my advantage;\nwhich, if not, I from their sentence totally appeal.  There is no\nappellation, quoth Pantagruel, from the decrees of fate or destiny, of lot\nor chance; as is recorded by our ancient lawyers, witness Baldus, Lib. ult.\nCap. de Leg.  The reason hereof is, Fortune doth not acknowledge a\nsuperior, to whom an appeal may be made from her or any of her substitutes.\nAnd in this case the pupil cannot be restored to his right in full, as\nopenly by the said author is alleged in L. Ait Praetor, paragr. ult. ff. de\nminor.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel adviseth Panurge to try the future good or bad luck of his\nmarriage by dreams.\n\nNow, seeing we cannot agree together in the manner of expounding or\ninterpreting the sense of the Virgilian lots, let us bend our course\nanother way, and try a new sort of divination.  Of what kind? asked\nPanurge.  Of a good ancient and authentic fashion, answered Pantagruel; it\nis by dreams.  For in dreaming, such circumstances and conditions being\nthereto adhibited, as are clearly enough described by Hippocrates, in Lib.\nPeri ton enupnion, by Plato, Plotin, Iamblicus, Sinesius, Aristotle,\nXenophon, Galen, Plutarch, Artemidorus, Daldianus, Herophilus, Q. Calaber,\nTheocritus, Pliny, Athenaeus, and others, the soul doth oftentimes foresee\nwhat is to come.  How true this is, you may conceive by a very vulgar and\nfamiliar example; as when you see that at such a time as suckling babes,\nwell nourished, fed, and fostered with good milk, sleep soundly and\nprofoundly, the nurses in the interim get leave to sport themselves, and\nare licentiated to recreate their fancies at what range to them shall seem\nmost fitting and expedient, their presence, sedulity, and attendance on\nthe cradle being, during all that space, held unnecessary.  Even just so,\nwhen our body is at rest, that the concoction is everywhere accomplished,\nand that, till it awake, it lacks for nothing, our soul delighteth to\ndisport itself and is well pleased in that frolic to take a review of its\nnative country, which is the heavens, where it receiveth a most notable\nparticipation of its first beginning with an imbuement from its divine\nsource, and in contemplation of that infinite and intellectual sphere,\nwhereof the centre is everywhere, and the circumference in no place of the\nuniversal world, to wit, God, according to the doctrine of Hermes\nTrismegistus, to whom no new thing happeneth, whom nothing that is past\nescapeth, and unto whom all things are alike present, remarketh not only\nwhat is preterit and gone in the inferior course and agitation of sublunary\nmatters, but withal taketh notice what is to come; then bringing a relation\nof those future events unto the body of the outward senses and exterior\norgans, it is divulged abroad unto the hearing of others.  Whereupon the\nowner of that soul deserveth to be termed a vaticinator, or prophet.\nNevertheless, the truth is, that the soul is seldom able to report those\nthings in such sincerity as it hath seen them, by reason of the\nimperfection and frailty of the corporeal senses, which obstruct the\neffectuating of that office; even as the moon doth not communicate unto\nthis earth of ours that light which she receiveth from the sun with so much\nsplendour, heat, vigour, purity, and liveliness as it was given her.  Hence\nit is requisite for the better reading, explaining, and unfolding of these\nsomniatory vaticinations and predictions of that nature, that a dexterous,\nlearned, skilful, wise, industrious, expert, rational, and peremptory\nexpounder or interpreter be pitched upon, such a one as by the Greeks is\ncalled onirocrit, or oniropolist.  For this cause Heraclitus was wont to\nsay that nothing is by dreams revealed to us, that nothing is by dreams\nconcealed from us, and that only we thereby have a mystical signification\nand secret evidence of things to come, either for our own prosperous or\nunlucky fortune, or for the favourable or disastrous success of another.\nThe sacred Scriptures testify no less, and profane histories assure us of\nit, in both which are exposed to our view a thousand several kinds of\nstrange adventures, which have befallen pat according to the nature of the\ndream, and that as well to the party dreamer as to others.  The Atlantic\npeople, and those that inhabit the (is)land of Thasos, one of the Cyclades,\nare of this grand commodity deprived; for in their countries none yet ever\ndreamed.  Of this sort (were) Cleon of Daulia, Thrasymedes, and in our days\nthe learned Frenchman Villanovanus, neither of all which knew what dreaming\nwas.\n\nFail not therefore to-morrow, when the jolly and fair Aurora with her rosy\nfingers draweth aside the curtains of the night to drive away the sable\nshades of darkness, to bend your spirits wholly to the task of sleeping\nsound, and thereto apply yourself.  In the meanwhile you must denude your\nmind of every human passion or affection, such as are love and hatred, fear\nand hope, for as of old the great vaticinator, most famous and renowned\nprophet Proteus, was not able in his disguise or transformation into fire,\nwater, a tiger, a dragon, and other such like uncouth shapes and visors, to\npresage anything that was to come till he was restored to his own first\nnatural and kindly form; just so doth man; for, at his reception of the art\nof divination and faculty of prognosticating future things, that part in\nhim which is the most divine, to wit, the Nous, or Mens, must be calm,\npeaceable, untroubled, quiet, still, hushed, and not embusied or distracted\nwith foreign, soul-disturbing perturbations.  I am content, quoth Panurge.\nBut, I pray you, sir, must I this evening, ere I go to bed, eat much or\nlittle?  I do not ask this without cause.  For if I sup not well, large,\nround, and amply, my sleeping is not worth a forked turnip.  All the night\nlong I then but doze and rave, and in my slumbering fits talk idle\nnonsense, my thoughts being in a dull brown study, and as deep in their\ndumps as is my belly hollow.\n\nNot to sup, answered Pantagruel, were best for you, considering the state\nof your complexion and healthy constitution of your body.  A certain very\nancient prophet, named Amphiaraus, wished such as had a mind by dreams to\nbe imbued with any oracle, for four-and-twenty hours to taste no victuals,\nand to abstain from wine three days together.  Yet shall not you be put to\nsuch a sharp, hard, rigorous, and extreme sparing diet.  I am truly right\napt to believe that a man whose stomach is replete with various cheer, and\nin a manner surfeited with drinking, is hardly able to conceive aright of\nspiritual things; yet am not I of the opinion of those who, after long and\npertinacious fastings, think by such means to enter more profoundly into\nthe speculation of celestial mysteries.  You may very well remember how my\nfather Gargantua (whom here for honour sake I name) hath often told us that\nthe writings of abstinent, abstemious, and long-fasting hermits were every\nwhit as saltless, dry, jejune, and insipid as were their bodies when they\ndid compose them.  It is a most difficult thing for the spirits to be in a\ngood plight, serene and lively, when there is nothing in the body but a\nkind of voidness and inanity; seeing the philosophers with the physicians\njointly affirm that the spirits which are styled animal spring from, and\nhave their constant practice in and through the arterial blood, refined and\npurified to the life within the admirable net which, wonderfully framed,\nlieth under the ventricles and tunnels of the brain.  He gave us also the\nexample of the philosopher who, when he thought most seriously to have\nwithdrawn himself unto a solitary privacy, far from the rustling\nclutterments of the tumultuous and confused world, the better to improve\nhis theory, to contrive, comment, and ratiocinate, was, notwithstanding his\nuttermost endeavours to free himself from all untoward noises, surrounded\nand environed about so with the barking of curs, bawling of mastiffs,\nbleating of sheep, prating of parrots, tattling of jackdaws, grunting of\nswine, girning of boars, yelping of foxes, mewing of cats, cheeping of\nmice, squeaking of weasels, croaking of frogs, crowing of cocks, cackling\nof hens, calling of partridges, chanting of swans, chattering of jays,\npeeping of chickens, singing of larks, creaking of geese, chirping of\nswallows, clucking of moorfowls, cucking of cuckoos, bumbling of bees,\nrammage of hawks, chirming of linnets, croaking of ravens, screeching of\nowls, whicking of pigs, gushing of hogs, curring of pigeons, grumbling of\ncushat-doves, howling of panthers, curkling of quails, chirping of\nsparrows, crackling of crows, nuzzing of camels, wheening of whelps,\nbuzzing of dromedaries, mumbling of rabbits, cricking of ferrets, humming\nof wasps, mioling of tigers, bruzzing of bears, sussing of kitlings,\nclamouring of scarfs, whimpering of fulmarts, booing of buffaloes, warbling\nof nightingales, quavering of mavises, drintling of turkeys, coniating of\nstorks, frantling of peacocks, clattering of magpies, murmuring of\nstock-doves, crouting of cormorants, cigling of locusts, charming of\nbeagles, guarring of puppies, snarling of messens, rantling of rats,\nguerieting of apes, snuttering of monkeys, pioling of pelicans, quacking of\nducks, yelling of wolves, roaring of lions, neighing of horses, crying of\nelephants, hissing of serpents, and wailing of turtles, that he was much\nmore troubled than if he had been in the middle of the crowd at the fair of\nFontenay or Niort.  Just so is it with those who are tormented with the\ngrievous pangs of hunger.  The stomach begins to gnaw, and bark, as it were,\nthe eyes to look dim, and the veins, by greedily sucking some refection to\nthemselves from the proper substance of all the members of a fleshy\nconsistence, violently pull down and draw back that vagrant, roaming spirit,\ncareless and neglecting of his nurse and natural host, which is the body; as\nwhen a hawk upon the fist, willing to take her flight by a soaring aloft in\nthe open spacious air, is on a sudden drawn back by a leash tied to her\nfeet.\n\nTo this purpose also did he allege unto us the authority of Homer, the\nfather of all philosophy, who said that the Grecians did not put an end to\ntheir mournful mood for the death of Patroclus, the most intimate friend of\nAchilles, till hunger in a rage declared herself, and their bellies\nprotested to furnish no more tears unto their grief.  For from bodies\nemptied and macerated by long fasting there could not be such supply of\nmoisture and brackish drops as might be proper on that occasion.\n\nMediocrity at all times is commendable; nor in this case are you to abandon\nit.  You may take a little supper, but thereat must you not eat of a hare,\nnor of any other flesh.  You are likewise to abstain from beans, from the\npreak, by some called the polyp, as also from coleworts, cabbage, and all\nother such like windy victuals, which may endanger the troubling of your\nbrains and the dimming or casting a kind of mist over your animal spirits.\nFor, as a looking-glass cannot exhibit the semblance or representation of\nthe object set before it, and exposed to have its image to the life\nexpressed, if that the polished sleekedness thereof be darkened by gross\nbreathings, dampish vapours, and foggy, thick, infectious exhalations, even\nso the fancy cannot well receive the impression of the likeness of those\nthings which divination doth afford by dreams, if any way the body be\nannoyed or troubled with the fumish steam of meat which it had taken in a\nwhile before; because betwixt these two there still hath been a mutual\nsympathy and fellow-feeling of an indissolubly knit affection.  You shall\neat good Eusebian and Bergamot pears, one apple of the short-shank pippin\nkind, a parcel of the little plums of Tours, and some few cherries of the\ngrowth of my orchard.  Nor shall you need to fear that thereupon will ensue\ndoubtful dreams, fallacious, uncertain, and not to be trusted to, as by\nsome peripatetic philosophers hath been related; for that, say they, men do\nmore copiously in the season of harvest feed on fruitages than at any other\ntime.  The same is mystically taught us by the ancient prophets and poets,\nwho allege that all vain and deceitful dreams lie hid and in covert under\nthe leaves which are spread on the ground--by reason that the leaves fall\nfrom the trees in the autumnal quarter.  For the natural fervour which,\nabounding in ripe, fresh, recent fruits, cometh by the quickness of its\nebullition to be with ease evaporated into the animal parts of the dreaming\nperson--the experiment is obvious in most--is a pretty while before it be\nexpired, dissolved, and evanished.  As for your drink, you are to have it\nof the fair, pure water of my fountain.\n\nThe condition, quoth Panurge, is very hard.  Nevertheless, cost what price\nit will, or whatsoever come of it, I heartily condescend thereto;\nprotesting that I shall to-morrow break my fast betimes after my somniatory\nexercitations.  Furthermore, I recommend myself to Homer's two gates, to\nMorpheus, to Iselon, to Phantasus, and unto Phobetor.  If they in this my\ngreat need succour me and grant me that assistance which is fitting, I will\nin honour of them all erect a jolly, genteel altar, composed of the softest\ndown.  If I were now in Laconia, in the temple of Juno, betwixt Oetile and\nThalamis, she suddenly would disentangle my perplexity, resolve me of my\ndoubts, and cheer me up with fair and jovial dreams in a deep sleep.\n\nThen did he say thus unto Pantagruel:  Sir, were it not expedient for my\npurpose to put a branch or two of curious laurel betwixt the quilt and\nbolster of my bed, under the pillow on which my head must lean?  There is\nno need at all of that, quoth Pantagruel; for, besides that it is a thing\nvery superstitious, the cheat thereof hath been at large discovered unto us\nin the writings of Serapion, Ascalonites, Antiphon, Philochorus, Artemon,\nand Fulgentius Planciades.  I could say as much to you of the left shoulder\nof a crocodile, as also of a chameleon, without prejudice be it spoken to\nthe credit which is due to the opinion of old Democritus; and likewise of\nthe stone of the Bactrians, called Eumetrides, and of the Ammonian horn;\nfor so by the Aethiopians is termed a certain precious stone, coloured like\ngold, and in the fashion, shape, form, and proportion of a ram's horn, as\nthe horn of Jupiter Ammon is reported to have been:  they over and above\nassuredly affirming that the dreams of those who carry it about them are no\nless veritable and infallible than the truth of the divine oracles.  Nor is\nthis much unlike to what Homer and Virgil wrote of these two gates of\nsleep, to which you have been pleased to recommend the management of what\nyou have in hand.  The one is of ivory, which letteth in confused,\ndoubtful, and uncertain dreams; for through ivory, how small and slender\nsoever it be, we can see nothing, the density, opacity, and close\ncompactedness of its material parts hindering the penetration of the visual\nrays and the reception of the specieses of such things as are visible.  The\nother is of horn, at which an entry is made to sure and certain dreams,\neven as through horn, by reason of the diaphanous splendour and bright\ntransparency thereof, the species of all objects of the sight distinctly\npass, and so without confusion appear, that they are clearly seen.  Your\nmeaning is, and you would thereby infer, quoth Friar John, that the dreams\nof all horned cuckolds, of which number Panurge, by the help of God and his\nfuture wife, is without controversy to be one, are always true and\ninfallible.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPanurge's dream, with the interpretation thereof.\n\nAt seven o'clock of the next following morning Panurge did not fail to\npresent himself before Pantagruel, in whose chamber were at that time\nEpistemon, Friar John of the Funnels, Ponocrates, Eudemon, Carpalin, and\nothers, to whom, at the entry of Panurge, Pantagruel said, Lo! here cometh\nour dreamer.  That word, quoth Epistemon, in ancient times cost very much,\nand was dearly sold to the children of Jacob.  Then said Panurge, I have\nbeen plunged into my dumps so deeply, as if I had been lodged with Gaffer\nNoddy-cap.  Dreamed indeed I have, and that right lustily; but I could take\nalong with me no more thereof that I did goodly understand save only that I\nin my vision had a pretty, fair, young, gallant, handsome woman, who no\nless lovingly and kindly treated and entertained me, hugged, cherished,\ncockered, dandled, and made much of me, as if I had been another neat\ndilly-darling minion, like Adonis.  Never was man more glad than I was\nthen; my joy at that time was incomparable.  She flattered me, tickled me,\nstroked me, groped me, frizzled me, curled me, kissed me, embraced me, laid\nher hands about my neck, and now and then made jestingly pretty little\nhorns above my forehead.  I told her in the like disport, as I did play the\nfool with her, that she should rather place and fix them in a little below\nmine eyes, that I might see the better what I should stick at with them;\nfor, being so situated, Momus then would find no fault therewith, as he did\nonce with the position of the horns of bulls.  The wanton, toying girl,\nnotwithstanding any remonstrance of mine to the contrary, did always drive\nand thrust them further in; yet thereby, which to me seemed wonderful, she\ndid not do me any hurt at all.  A little after, though I know not how, I\nthought I was transformed into a tabor, and she into a chough.\n\nMy sleeping there being interrupted, I awaked in a start, angry,\ndispleased, perplexed, chafing, and very wroth.  There have you a large\nplatterful of dreams, make thereupon good cheer, and, if you please, spare\nnot to interpret them according to the understanding which you may have in\nthem.  Come, Carpalin, let us to breakfast.  To my sense and meaning, quoth\nPantagruel, if I have skill or knowledge in the art of divination by\ndreams, your wife will not really, and to the outward appearance of the\nworld, plant or set horns, and stick them fast in your forehead, after a\nvisible manner, as satyrs use to wear and carry them; but she will be so\nfar from preserving herself loyal in the discharge and observance of a\nconjugal duty, that, on the contrary, she will violate her plighted faith,\nbreak her marriage-oath, infringe all matrimonial ties, prostitute her body\nto the dalliance of other men, and so make you a cuckold.  This point is\nclearly and manifestly explained and expounded by Artemidorus just as I\nhave related it.  Nor will there be any metamorphosis or transmutation made\nof you into a drum or tabor, but you will surely be as soundly beaten as\never was tabor at a merry wedding.  Nor yet will she be changed into a\nchough, but will steal from you, chiefly in the night, as is the nature of\nthat thievish bird.  Hereby may you perceive your dreams to be in every jot\nconform and agreeable to the Virgilian lots.  A cuckold you will be, beaten\nand robbed.  Then cried out Father John with a loud voice, He tells the\ntruth; upon my conscience, thou wilt be a cuckold--an honest one, I warrant\nthee.  O the brave horns that will be borne by thee!  Ha, ha, ha!  Our good\nMaster de Cornibus.  God save thee, and shield thee!  Wilt thou be pleased\nto preach but two words of a sermon to us, and I will go through the parish\nchurch to gather up alms for the poor.\n\nYou are, quoth Panurge, very far mistaken in your interpretation; for the\nmatter is quite contrary to your sense thereof.  My dream presageth that I\nshall by marriage be stored with plenty of all manner of goods--the\nhornifying of me showing that I will possess a cornucopia, that Amalthaean\nhorn which is called the horn of abundance, whereof the fruition did still\nportend the wealth of the enjoyer.  You possibly will say that they are\nrather like to be satyr's horns; for you of these did make some mention.\nAmen, Amen, Fiat, fiatur, ad differentiam papae.  Thus shall I have my\ntouch-her-home still ready.  My staff of love, sempiternally in a good\ncase, will, satyr-like, be never toiled out--a thing which all men wish\nfor, and send up their prayers to that purpose, but such a thing as\nnevertheless is granted but to a few.  Hence doth it follow by a\nconsequence as clear as the sunbeams that I will never be in the danger of\nbeing made a cuckold, for the defect hereof is Causa sine qua non; yea, the\nsole cause, as many think, of making husbands cuckolds.  What makes poor\nscoundrel rogues to beg, I pray you?  Is it not because they have not\nenough at home wherewith to fill their bellies and their pokes?  What is it\nmakes the wolves to leave the woods?  Is it not the want of flesh meat?\nWhat maketh women whores?  You understand me well enough.  And herein may I\nvery well submit my opinion to the judgment of learned lawyers, presidents,\ncounsellors, advocates, procurers, attorneys, and other glossers and\ncommentators on the venerable rubric, De frigidis et maleficiatis.  You\nare, in truth, sir, as it seems to me (excuse my boldness if I have\ntransgressed), in a most palpable and absurd error to attribute my horns to\ncuckoldry.  Diana wears them on her head after the manner of a crescent.\nIs she a cucquean for that?  How the devil can she be cuckolded who never\nyet was married?  Speak somewhat more correctly, I beseech you, lest she,\nbeing offended, furnish you with a pair of horns shapen by the pattern of\nthose which she made for Actaeon.  The goodly Bacchus also carries horns,\n--Pan, Jupiter Ammon, with a great many others.  Are they all cuckolds?  If\nJove be a cuckold, Juno is a whore.  This follows by the figure metalepsis:\nas to call a child, in the presence of his father and mother, a bastard, or\nwhore's son, is tacitly and underboard no less than if he had said openly\nthe father is a cuckold and his wife a punk.  Let our discourse come nearer\nto the purpose.  The horns that my wife did make me are horns of abundance,\nplanted and grafted in my head for the increase and shooting up of all good\nthings.  This will I affirm for truth, upon my word, and pawn my faith and\ncredit both upon it.  As for the rest, I will be no less joyful, frolic,\nglad, cheerful, merry, jolly, and gamesome, than a well-bended tabor in the\nhands of a good drummer at a nuptial feast, still making a noise, still\nrolling, still buzzing and cracking.  Believe me, sir, in that consisteth\nnone of my least good fortunes.  And my wife will be jocund, feat, compt,\nneat, quaint, dainty, trim, tricked up, brisk, smirk, and smug, even as a\npretty little Cornish chough.  Who will not believe this, let hell or the\ngallows be the burden of his Christmas carol.\n\nI remark, quoth Pantagruel, the last point or particle which you did speak\nof, and, having seriously conferred it with the first, find that at the\nbeginning you were delighted with the sweetness of your dream; but in the\nend and final closure of it you startingly awaked, and on a sudden were\nforthwith vexed in choler and annoyed.  Yea, quoth Panurge, the reason of\nthat was because I had fasted too long.  Flatter not yourself, quoth\nPantagruel; all will go to ruin.  Know for a certain truth, that every\nsleep that endeth with a starting, and leaves the person irksome, grieved,\nand fretting, doth either signify a present evil, or otherwise presageth\nand portendeth a future imminent mishap.  To signify an evil, that is to\nsay, to show some sickness hardly curable, a kind of pestilentious or\nmalignant boil, botch, or sore, lying and lurking hid, occult, and latent\nwithin the very centre of the body, which many times doth by the means of\nsleep, whose nature is to reinforce and strengthen the faculty and virtue\nof concoction, being according to the theorems of physic to declare itself,\nand moves toward the outward superficies.  At this sad stirring is the\nsleeper's rest and ease disturbed and broken, whereof the first feeling and\nstinging smart admonisheth that he must patiently endure great pain and\ntrouble, and thereunto provide some remedy; as when we say proverbially, to\nincense hornets, to move a stinking puddle, and to awake a sleeping lion,\ninstead of these more usual expressions, and of a more familiar and plain\nmeaning, to provoke angry persons, to make a thing the worse by meddling\nwith it, and to irritate a testy choleric man when he is at quiet.  On the\nother part, to presage or foretell an evil, especially in what concerneth\nthe exploits of the soul in matter of somnial divinations, is as much to\nsay as that it giveth us to understand that some dismal fortune or\nmischance is destinated and prepared for us, which shortly will not fail to\ncome to pass.  A clear and evident example hereof is to be found in the\ndream and dreadful awaking of Hecuba, as likewise in that of Eurydice, the\nwife of Orpheus, neither of which was (no) sooner finished, saith Ennius,\nbut that incontinently thereafter they awaked in a start, and were\naffrighted horribly.  Thereupon these accidents ensued:  Hecuba had her\nhusband Priamus, together with her children, slain before her eyes, and saw\nthen the destruction of her country; and Eurydice died speedily thereafter\nin a most miserable manner.  Aeneas, dreaming that he spoke to Hector a\nlittle after his decease, did on a sudden in a great start awake, and was\nafraid.  Now hereupon did follow this event:  Troy that same night was\nspoiled, sacked, and burnt.  At another time the same Aeneas dreaming that\nhe saw his familiar geniuses and penates, in a ghastly fright and\nastonishment awaked, of which terror and amazement the issue was, that the\nvery next day subsequent, by a most horrible tempest on the sea, he was\nlike to have perished and been cast away.  Moreover, Turnus being prompted,\ninstigated, and stirred up by the fantastic vision of an infernal fury to\nenter into a bloody war against Aeneas, awaked in a start much troubled and\ndisquieted in spirit; in sequel whereof, after many notable and famous\nrouts, defeats, and discomfitures in open field, he came at last to be\nkilled in a single combat by the said Aeneas.  A thousand other instances I\ncould afford, if it were needful, of this matter.  Whilst I relate these\nstories of Aeneas, remark the saying of Fabius Pictor, who faithfully\naverred that nothing had at any time befallen unto, was done, or\nenterprised by him, whereof he preallably had not notice, and beforehand\nforeseen it to the full, by sure predictions altogether founded on the\noracles of somnial divination.  To this there is no want of pregnant\nreasons, no more than of examples.  For if repose and rest in sleeping be a\nspecial gift and favour of the gods, as is maintained by the philosophers,\nand by the poet attested in these lines,\n\n  Then sleep, that heavenly gift, came to refresh\n  Of human labourers the wearied flesh;\n\nsuch a gift or benefit can never finish or terminate in wrath and\nindignation without portending some unlucky fate and most disastrous\nfortune to ensue.  Otherwise it were a molestation, and not an ease; a\nscourge, and not a gift; at least, (not) proceeding from the gods above,\nbut from the infernal devils our enemies, according to the common vulgar\nsaying.\n\nSuppose the lord, father, or master of a family, sitting at a very\nsumptuous dinner, furnished with all manner of good cheer, and having at\nhis entry to the table his appetite sharp set upon his victuals, whereof\nthere was great plenty, should be seen rise in a start, and on a sudden\nfling out of his chair, abandoning his meat, frighted, appalled, and in a\nhorrid terror, who should not know the cause hereof would wonder, and be\nastonished exceedingly.  But what? he heard his male servants cry, Fire,\nfire, fire, fire! his serving-maids and women yell, Stop thief, stop thief!\nand all his children shout as loud as ever they could, Murder, O murder,\nmurder!  Then was it not high time for him to leave his banqueting, for\napplication of a remedy in haste, and to give speedy order for succouring\nof his distressed household?  Truly I remember that the Cabalists and\nMassorets, interpreters of the sacred Scriptures, in treating how with\nverity one might judge of evangelical apparitions (because oftentimes the\nangel of Satan is disguised and transfigured into an angel of light), said\nthat the difference of these two mainly did consist in this:  the\nfavourable and comforting angel useth in his appearing unto man at first to\nterrify and hugely affright him, but in the end he bringeth consolation,\nleaveth the person who hath seen him joyful, well-pleased, fully content,\nand satisfied; on the other side, the angel of perdition, that wicked,\ndevilish, and malignant spirit, at his appearance unto any person in the\nbeginning cheereth up the heart of his beholder, but at last forsakes him,\nand leaves him troubled, angry, and perplexed.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPanurge's excuse and exposition of the monastic mystery concerning powdered\nbeef.\n\nThe Lord save those who see, and do not hear! quoth Panurge.  I see you\nwell enough, but know not what it is that you have said.  The\nhunger-starved belly wanteth ears.  For lack of victuals, before God, I\nroar, bray, yell, and fume as in a furious madness.  I have performed too\nhard a task to-day, an extraordinary work indeed.  He shall be craftier, and\ndo far greater wonders than ever did Mr. Mush, who shall be able any more\nthis year to bring me on the stage of preparation for a dreaming verdict.\nFie! not to sup at all, that is the devil.  Pox take that fashion!  Come,\nFriar John, let us go break our fast; for, if I hit on such a round\nrefection in the morning as will serve thoroughly to fill the mill-hopper\nand hogs-hide of my stomach, and furnish it with meat and drink sufficient,\nthen at a pinch, as in the case of some extreme necessity which presseth, I\ncould make a shift that day to forbear dining.  But not to sup!  A plague\nrot that base custom, which is an error offensive to Nature!  That lady made\nthe day for exercise, to travel, work, wait on and labour in each his\nnegotiation and employment; and that we may with the more fervency and\nardour prosecute our business, she sets before us a clear burning candle, to\nwit, the sun's resplendency; and at night, when she begins to take the light\nfrom us, she thereby tacitly implies no less than if she would have spoken\nthus unto us:  My lads and lasses, all of you are good and honest folks, you\nhave wrought well to-day, toiled and turmoiled enough,--the night\napproacheth,--therefore cast off these moiling cares of yours, desist from\nall your swinking painful labours, and set your minds how to refresh your\nbodies in the renewing of their vigour with good bread, choice wine, and\nstore of wholesome meats; then may you take some sport and recreation, and\nafter that lie down and rest yourselves, that you may strongly, nimbly,\nlustily, and with the more alacrity to-morrow attend on your affairs as\nformerly.\n\nFalconers, in like manner, when they have fed their hawks, will not suffer\nthem to fly on a full gorge, but let them on a perch abide a little, that\nthey may rouse, bait, tower, and soar the better.  That good pope who was\nthe first institutor of fasting understood this well enough; for he\nordained that our fast should reach but to the hour of noon; all the\nremainder of that day was at our disposure, freely to eat and feed at any\ntime thereof.  In ancient times there were but few that dined, as you would\nsay, some church men, monks and canons; for they have little other\noccupation.  Each day is a festival unto them, who diligently heed the\nclaustral proverb, De missa ad mensam.  They do not use to linger and defer\ntheir sitting down and placing of themselves at table, only so long as they\nhave a mind in waiting for the coming of the abbot; so they fell to without\nceremony, terms, or conditions; and everybody supped, unless it were some\nvain, conceited, dreaming dotard.  Hence was a supper called coena, which\nshoweth that it is common to all sorts of people.  Thou knowest it well,\nFriar John.  Come, let us go, my dear friend, in the name of all the devils\nof the infernal regions, let us go.  The gnawings of my stomach in this\nrage of hunger are so tearing, that they make it bark like a mastiff.  Let\nus throw some bread and beef into his throat to pacify him, as once the\nsibyl did to Cerberus.  Thou likest best monastical brewis, the prime, the\nflower of the pot.  I am for the solid, principal verb that comes after\n--the good brown loaf, always accompanied with a round slice of the\nnine-lecture-powdered labourer.  I know thy meaning, answered Friar John;\nthis metaphor is extracted out of the claustral kettle.  The labourer is the\nox that hath wrought and done the labour; after the fashion of nine\nlectures, that is to say, most exquisitely well and thoroughly boiled.\nThese holy religious fathers, by a certain cabalistic institution of the\nancients, not written, but carefully by tradition conveyed from hand to\nhand, rising betimes to go to morning prayers, were wont to flourish that\ntheir matutinal devotion with some certain notable preambles before their\nentry into the church, viz., they dunged in the dungeries, pissed in the\npisseries, spit in the spitteries, melodiously coughed in the cougheries,\nand doted in their dotaries, that to the divine service they might not bring\nanything that was unclean or foul.  These things thus done, they very\nzealously made their repair to the Holy Chapel, for so was in their canting\nlanguage termed the convent kitchen, where they with no small earnestness\nhad care that the beef-pot should be put on the crook for the breakfast of\nthe religious brothers of our Lord and Saviour; and the fire they would\nkindle under the pot themselves.  Now, the matins consisting of nine\nlessons, (it) it was so incumbent on them, that must have risen the rather\nfor the more expedite despatching of them all.  The sooner that they rose,\nthe sharper was their appetite and the barkings of their stomachs, and the\ngnawings increased in the like proportion, and consequently made these godly\nmen thrice more a-hungered and athirst than when their matins were hemmed\nover only with three lessons.  The more betimes they rose, by the said\ncabal, the sooner was the beef-pot put on; the longer that the beef was on\nthe fire, the better it was boiled; the more it boiled, it was the tenderer;\nthe tenderer that it was, the less it troubled the teeth, delighted more the\npalate, less charged the stomach, and nourished our good religious men the\nmore substantially; which is the only end and prime intention of the first\nfounders, as appears by this, that they eat not to live, but live to eat,\nand in this world have nothing but their life.  Let us go, Panurge.\n\nNow have I understood thee, quoth Panurge, my plushcod friar, my caballine\nand claustral ballock.  I freely quit the costs, interest, and charges,\nseeing you have so egregiously commented upon the most especial chapter of\nthe culinary and monastic cabal.  Come along, my Carpalin, and you, Friar\nJohn, my leather-dresser.  Good morrow to you all, my good lords; I have\ndreamed too much to have so little.  Let us go.  Panurge had no sooner done\nspeaking than Epistemon with a loud voice said these words:  It is a very\nordinary and common thing amongst men to conceive, foresee, know, and\npresage the misfortune, bad luck, or disaster of another; but to have the\nunderstanding, providence, knowledge, and prediction of a man's own mishap\nis very scarce and rare to be found anywhere.  This is exceeding\njudiciously and prudently deciphered by Aesop in his Apologues, who there\naffirmeth that every man in the world carrieth about his neck a wallet, in\nthe fore-bag whereof were contained the faults and mischances of others\nalways exposed to his view and knowledge; and in the other scrip thereof,\nwhich hangs behind, are kept the bearer's proper transgressions and\ninauspicious adventures, at no time seen by him, nor thought upon, unless\nhe be a person that hath a favourable aspect from the heavens.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel adviseth Panurge to consult with the Sibyl of Panzoust.\n\nA little while thereafter Pantagruel sent for Panurge and said unto him,\nThe affection which I bear you being now inveterate and settled in my mind\nby a long continuance of time, prompteth me to the serious consideration of\nyour welfare and profit; in order whereto, remark what I have thought\nthereon.  It hath been told me that at Panzoust, near Crouly, dwelleth a\nvery famous sibyl, who is endowed with the skill of foretelling all things\nto come.  Take Epistemon in your company, repair towards her, and hear what\nshe will say unto you.  She is possibly, quoth Epistemon, some Canidia,\nSagana, or Pythonissa, either whereof with us is vulgarly called a witch,\n--I being the more easily induced to give credit to the truth of this\ncharacter of her, that the place of her abode is vilely stained with the\nabominable repute of abounding more with sorcerers and witches than ever\ndid the plains of Thessaly.  I should not, to my thinking, go thither\nwillingly, for that it seems to me a thing unwarrantable, and altogether\nforbidden in the law of Moses.  We are not Jews, quoth Pantagruel, nor is\nit a matter judiciously confessed by her, nor authentically proved by\nothers that she is a witch.  Let us for the present suspend our judgment,\nand defer till after your return from thence the sifting and garbling of\nthose niceties.  Do we know but that she may be an eleventh sibyl or a\nsecond Cassandra?  But although she were neither, and she did not merit the\nname or title of any of these renowned prophetesses, what hazard, in the\nname of God, do you run by offering to talk and confer with her of the\ninstant perplexity and perturbation of your thoughts?  Seeing especially,\nand which is most of all, she is, in the estimation of those that are\nacquainted with her, held to know more, and to be of a deeper reach of\nunderstanding, than is either customary to the country wherein she liveth\nor to the sex whereof she is.  What hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the\nlaudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, were it from a sot, a pot, a\nfool, a stool, a winter mitten, a truckle for a pulley, the lid of a\ngoldsmith's crucible, an oil-bottle, or old slipper?  You may remember to\nhave read, or heard at least, that Alexander the Great, immediately after\nhis having obtained a glorious victory over the King Darius in Arbela,\nrefused, in the presence of the splendid and illustrious courtiers that\nwere about him, to give audience to a poor certain despicable-like fellow,\nwho through the solicitations and mediation of some of his royal attendants\nwas admitted humbly to beg that grace and favour of him.  But sore did he\nrepent, although in vain, a thousand and ten thousand times thereafter, the\nsurly state which he then took upon him to the denial of so just a suit,\nthe grant whereof would have been worth unto him the value of a brace of\npotent cities.  He was indeed victorious in Persia, but withal so far\ndistant from Macedonia, his hereditary kingdom, that the joy of the one did\nnot expel the extreme grief which through occasion of the other he had\ninwardly conceived; for, not being able with all his power to find or\ninvent a convenient mean and expedient how to get or come by the certainty\nof any news from thence, both by reason of the huge remoteness of the\nplaces from one to another, as also because of the impeditive interposition\nof many great rivers, the interjacent obstacle of divers wild deserts, and\nobstructive interjection of sundry almost inaccessible mountains,--whilst\nhe was in this sad quandary and solicitous pensiveness, which, you may\nsuppose, could not be of a small vexation to him, considering that it was a\nmatter of no great difficulty to run over his whole native soil, possess\nhis country, seize on his kingdom, install a new king in the throne, and\nplant thereon foreign colonies, long before he could come to have any\nadvertisement of it:  for obviating the jeopardy of so dreadful\ninconveniency, and putting a fit remedy thereto, a certain Sidonian\nmerchant of a low stature but high fancy, very poor in show, and to the\noutward appearance of little or no account, having presented himself before\nhim, went about to affirm and declare that he had excogitated and hit upon\na ready mean and way by the which those of his territories at home should\ncome to the certain notice of his Indian victories, and himself be\nperfectly informed of the state and condition of Egypt and Macedonia within\nless than five days.  Whereupon the said Alexander, plunged into a sullen\nanimadvertency of mind, through his rash opinion of the improbability of\nperforming a so strange and impossible-like undertaking, dismissed the\nmerchant without giving ear to what he had to say, and vilified him.  What\ncould it have cost him to hearken unto what the honest man had invented and\ncontrived for his good?  What detriment, annoyance, damage, or loss could\nhe have undergone to listen to the discovery of that secret which the good\nfellow would have most willingly revealed unto him?  Nature, I am\npersuaded, did not without a cause frame our ears open, putting thereto no\ngate at all, nor shutting them up with any manner of enclosures, as she\nhath done unto the tongue, the eyes, and other such out-jetting parts of\nthe body.  The cause, as I imagine, is to the end that every day and every\nnight, and that continually, we may be ready to hear, and by a perpetual\nhearing apt to learn.  For, of all the senses, it is the fittest for the\nreception of the knowledge of arts, sciences, and disciplines; and it may\nbe that man was an angel, that is to say, a messenger sent from God, as\nRaphael was to Tobit.  Too suddenly did he contemn, despise, and misregard\nhim; but too long thereafter, by an untimely and too late repentance, did\nhe do penance for it.  You say very well, answered Epistemon, yet shall you\nnever for all that induce me to believe that it can tend any way to the\nadvantage or commodity of a man to take advice and counsel of a woman,\nnamely, of such a woman, and the woman of such a country.  Truly I have\nfound, quoth Panurge, a great deal of good in the counsel of women, chiefly\nin that of the old wives amongst them; for every time I consult with them I\nreadily get a stool or two extraordinary, to the great solace of my bumgut\npassage.  They are as sleuthhounds in the infallibility of their scent, and\nin their sayings no less sententious than the rubrics of the law.\nTherefore in my conceit it is not an improper kind of speech to call them\nsage or wise women.  In confirmation of which opinion of mine, the\ncustomary style of my language alloweth them the denomination of presage\nwomen.  The epithet of sage is due unto them because they are surpassing\ndexterous in the knowledge of most things.  And I give them the title of\npresage, for that they divinely foresee and certainly foretell future\ncontingencies and events of things to come.  Sometimes I call them not\nmaunettes, but monettes, from their wholesome monitions.  Whether it be so,\nask Pythagoras, Socrates, Empedocles, and our master Ortuinus.  I\nfurthermore praise and commend above the skies the ancient memorable\ninstitution of the pristine Germans, who ordained the responses and\ndocuments of old women to be highly extolled, most cordially reverenced,\nand prized at a rate in nothing inferior to the weight, test, and standard\nof the sanctuary.  And as they were respectfully prudent in receiving of\nthese sound advices, so by honouring and following them did they prove no\nless fortunate in the happy success of all their endeavours.  Witness the\nold wife Aurinia, and the good mother Velled, in the days of Vespasian.\nYou need not any way doubt but that feminine old age is always fructifying\nin qualities sublime--I would have said sibylline.  Let us go, by the help,\nlet us go, by the virtue of God, let us go.  Farewell, Friar John, I\nrecommend the care of my codpiece to you.  Well, quoth Epistemon, I will\nfollow you, with this protestation nevertheless, that if I happen to get a\nsure information, or otherwise find that she doth use any kind of charm or\nenchantment in her responses, it may not be imputed to me for a blame to\nleave you at the gate of her house, without accompanying you any further\nin.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge spoke to the Sibyl of Panzoust.\n\nTheir voyage was three days journeying.  On the third whereof was shown\nunto them the house of the vaticinatress standing on the knap or top of a\nhill, under a large and spacious walnut-tree.  Without great difficulty\nthey entered into that straw-thatched cottage, scurvily built, naughtily\nmovabled, and all besmoked.  It matters not, quoth Epistemon; Heraclitus,\nthe grand Scotist and tenebrous darksome philosopher, was nothing\nastonished at his introit into such a coarse and paltry habitation; for he\ndid usually show forth unto his sectators and disciples that the gods made\nas cheerfully their residence in these mean homely mansions as in sumptuous\nmagnific palaces, replenished with all manner of delight, pomp, and\npleasure.  I withal do really believe that the dwelling-place of the so\nfamous and renowned Hecate was just such another petty cell as this is,\nwhen she made a feast therein to the valiant Theseus; and that of no other\nbetter structure was the cot or cabin of Hyreus, or Oenopion, wherein\nJupiter, Neptune, and Mercury were not ashamed, all three together, to\nharbour and sojourn a whole night, and there to take a full and hearty\nrepast; for the payment of the shot they thankfully pissed Orion.  They\nfinding the ancient woman at a corner of her own chimney, Epistemon said,\nShe is indeed a true sibyl, and the lively portrait of one represented by\nthe Grei kaminoi of Homer.  The old hag was in a pitiful bad plight and\ncondition in matter of the outward state and complexion of her body, the\nragged and tattered equipage of her person in the point of accoutrement,\nand beggarly poor provision of fare for her diet and entertainment;\nfor she was ill apparelled, worse nourished, toothless, blear-eyed,\ncrook-shouldered, snotty, her nose still dropping, and herself still\ndrooping, faint, and pithless; whilst in this woefully wretched case she was\nmaking ready for her dinner porridge of wrinkled green coleworts, with a bit\nskin of yellow bacon, mixed with a twice-before-cooked sort of waterish,\nunsavoury broth, extracted out of bare and hollow bones.  Epistemon said,\nBy the cross of a groat, we are to blame, nor shall we get from her any\nresponse at all, for we have not brought along with us the branch of gold.\nI have, quoth Panurge, provided pretty well for that, for here I have it\nwithin my bag, in the substance of a gold ring, accompanied with some fair\npieces of small money.  No sooner were these words spoken, when Panurge\ncoming up towards her, after the ceremonial performance of a profound and\nhumble salutation, presented her with six neat's tongues dried in the smoke,\na great butter-pot full of fresh cheese, a borachio furnished with good\nbeverage, and a ram's cod stored with single pence, newly coined.  At last\nhe, with a low courtesy, put on her medical finger a pretty handsome golden\nring, whereinto was right artificially enchased a precious toadstone of\nBeausse.  This done, in few words and very succinctly, did he set open and\nexpose unto her the motive reason of his coming, most civilly and\ncourteously entreating her that she might be pleased to vouchsafe to give\nhim an ample and plenary intelligence concerning the future good luck of his\nintended marriage.\n\nThe old trot for a while remained silent, pensive, and grinning like a dog;\nthen, after she had set her withered breech upon the bottom of a bushel,\nshe took into her hands three old spindles, which when she had turned and\nwhirled betwixt her fingers very diversely and after several fashions, she\npried more narrowly into, by the trial of their points, the sharpest\nwhereof she retained in her hand, and threw the other two under a stone\ntrough.  After this she took a pair of yarn windles, which she nine times\nunintermittedly veered and frisked about; then at the ninth revolution or\nturn, without touching them any more, maturely perpending the manner of\ntheir motion, she very demurely waited on their repose and cessation from\nany further stirring.  In sequel whereof she pulled off one of her wooden\npattens, put her apron over her head, as a priest uses to do his amice when\nhe is going to sing mass, and with a kind of antique, gaudy, party-coloured\nstring knit it under her neck.  Being thus covered and muffled, she whiffed\noff a lusty good draught out of the borachio, took three several pence\nforth of the ramcod fob, put them into so many walnut-shells, which she set\ndown upon the bottom of a feather-pot, and then, after she had given them\nthree whisks of a broom besom athwart the chimney, casting into the fire\nhalf a bavin of long heather, together with a branch of dry laurel, she\nobserved with a very hush and coy silence in what form they did burn, and\nsaw that, although they were in a flame, they made no kind of noise or\ncrackling din.  Hereupon she gave a most hideous and horribly dreadful\nshout, muttering betwixt her teeth some few barbarous words of a strange\ntermination.\n\nThis so terrified Panurge that he forthwith said to Epistemon, The devil\nmince me into a gallimaufry if I do not tremble for fear!  I do not think\nbut that I am now enchanted; for she uttereth not her voice in the terms of\nany Christian language.  O look, I pray you, how she seemeth unto me to be\nby three full spans higher than she was when she began to hood herself with\nher apron.  What meaneth this restless wagging of her slouchy chaps?  What\ncan be the signification of the uneven shrugging of her hulchy shoulders?\nTo what end doth she quaver with her lips, like a monkey in the\ndismembering of a lobster?  My ears through horror glow; ah! how they\ntingle!  I think I hear the shrieking of Proserpina; the devils are\nbreaking loose to be all here.  O the foul, ugly, and deformed beasts!  Let\nus run away!  By the hook of God, I am like to die for fear!  I do not love\nthe devils; they vex me, and are unpleasant fellows.  Now let us fly, and\nbetake us to our heels.  Farewell, gammer; thanks and gramercy for your\ngoods!  I will not marry; no, believe me, I will not.  I fairly quit my\ninterest therein, and totally abandon and renounce it from this time\nforward, even as much as at present.  With this, as he endeavoured to make\nan escape out of the room, the old crone did anticipate his flight and make\nhim stop.  The way how she prevented him was this:  whilst in her hand she\nheld the spindle, she flung out to a back-yard close by her lodge, where,\nafter she had peeled off the barks of an old sycamore three several times,\nshe very summarily, upon eight leaves which dropped from thence, wrote with\nthe spindle-point some curt and briefly-couched verses, which she threw\ninto the air, then said unto them, Search after them if you will; find them\nif you can; the fatal destinies of your marriage are written in them.\n\nNo sooner had she done thus speaking than she did withdraw herself unto her\nlurking-hole, where on the upper seat of the porch she tucked up her gown,\nher coats, and smock, as high as her armpits, and gave them a full\ninspection of the nockandroe; which being perceived by Panurge, he said to\nEpistemon, God's bodikins, I see the sibyl's hole!  She suddenly then\nbolted the gate behind her, and was never since seen any more.  They\njointly ran in haste after the fallen and dispersed leaves, and gathered\nthem at last, though not without great labour and toil, for the wind had\nscattered them amongst the thorn-bushes of the valley.  When they had\nranged them each after other in their due places, they found out their\nsentence, as it is metrified in this octastich:\n\n  Thy fame upheld\n  (Properly, as corrected by Ozell:\n  Thy fame will be shell'd\n    By her, I trow.),\n    Even so, so:\n  And she with child\n    Of thee:  No.\n  Thy good end\n    Suck she shall,\n  And flay thee, friend,\n    But not all.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel and Panurge did diversely expound the verses of the Sibyl of\nPanzoust.\n\nThe leaves being thus collected and orderly disposed, Epistemon and Panurge\nreturned to Pantagruel's court, partly well pleased and other part\ndiscontented; glad for their being come back, and vexed for the trouble\nthey had sustained by the way, which they found to be craggy, rugged,\nstony, rough, and ill-adjusted.  They made an ample and full relation of\ntheir voyage unto Pantagruel, as likewise of the estate and condition of\nthe sibyl.  Then, having presented to him the leaves of the sycamore, they\nshow him the short and twattle verses that were written in them.\nPantagruel, having read and considered the whole sum and substance of the\nmatter, fetched from his heart a deep and heavy sigh; then said to Panurge,\nYou are now, forsooth, in a good taking, and have brought your hogs to a\nfine market.  The prophecy of the sibyl doth explain and lay out before us\nthe same very predictions which have been denoted, foretold, and presaged\nto us by the decree of the Virgilian lots and the verdict of your own\nproper dreams, to wit, that you shall be very much disgraced, shamed, and\ndiscredited by your wife; for that she will make you a cuckold in\nprostituting herself to others, being big with child by another than you,\n--will steal from you a great deal of your goods, and will beat you, scratch\nand bruise you, even to plucking the skin in a part from off you,--will\nleave the print of her blows in some member of your body.  You understand\nas much, answered Panurge, in the veritable interpretation and expounding\nof recent prophecies as a sow in the matter of spicery.  Be not offended,\nsir, I beseech you, that I speak thus boldly; for I find myself a little in\ncholer, and that not without cause, seeing it is the contrary that is true.\nTake heed, and give attentive ear unto my words.  The old wife said that,\nas the bean is not seen till first it be unhusked, and that its swad or\nhull be shelled and peeled from off it, so is it that my virtue and\ntranscendent worth will never come by the mouth of fame to be blazed abroad\nproportionable to the height, extent, and measure of the excellency\nthereof, until preallably I get a wife and make the full half of a married\ncouple.  How many times have I heard you say that the function of a\nmagistrate, or office of dignity, discovereth the merits, parts, and\nendowments of the person so advanced and promoted, and what is in him.\nThat is to say, we are then best able to judge aright of the deservings of\na man when he is called to the management of affairs; for when before he\nlived in a private condition, we could have no more certain knowledge of\nhim than of a bean within his husk.  And thus stands the first article\nexplained; otherwise, could you imagine that the good fame, repute, and\nestimation of an honest man should depend upon the tail of a whore?\n\nNow to the meaning of the second article!  My wife will be with child,\n--here lies the prime felicity of marriage,--but not of me.  Copsody, that I\ndo believe indeed!  It will be of a pretty little infant.  O how heartily I\nshall love it!  I do already dote upon it; for it will be my dainty feedle-\ndarling, my genteel dilly-minion.  From thenceforth no vexation, care, or\ngrief shall take such deep impression in my heart, how hugely great or\nvehement soever it otherwise appear, but that it shall evanish forthwith at\nthe sight of that my future babe, and at the hearing of the chat and\nprating of its childish gibberish.  And blessed be the old wife.  By my\ntruly, I have a mind to settle some good revenue or pension upon her out of\nthe readiest increase of the lands of my Salmigondinois; not an inconstant\nand uncertain rent-seek, like that of witless, giddy-headed bachelors, but\nsure and fixed, of the nature of the well-paid incomes of regenting\ndoctors.  If this interpretation doth not please you, think you my wife\nwill bear me in her flanks, conceive with me, and be of me delivered, as\nwomen use in childbed to bring forth their young ones; so as that it may be\nsaid, Panurge is a second Bacchus, he hath been twice born; he is re-born,\nas was Hippolytus,--as was Proteus, one time of Thetis, and secondly, of\nthe mother of the philosopher Apollonius,--as were the two Palici, near the\nflood Simaethos in Sicily.  His wife was big of child with him.  In him is\nrenewed and begun again the palintocy of the Megarians and the palingenesy\nof Democritus.  Fie upon such errors!  To hear stuff of that nature rends\nmine ears.\n\nThe words of the third article are:  She will suck me at my best end.  Why\nnot?  That pleaseth me right well.  You know the thing; I need not tell you\nthat it is my intercrural pudding with one end.  I swear and promise that,\nin what I can, I will preserve it sappy, full of juice, and as well\nvictualled for her use as may be.  She shall not suck me, I believe, in\nvain, nor be destitute of her allowance; there shall her justum both in\npeck and lippy be furnished to the full eternally.  You expound this\npassage allegorically, and interpret it to theft and larceny.  I love the\nexposition, and the allegory pleaseth me; but not according to the sense\nwhereto you stretch it.  It may be that the sincerity of the affection\nwhich you bear me moveth you to harbour in your breast those refractory\nthoughts concerning me, with a suspicion of my adversity to come.  We have\nthis saying from the learned, That a marvellously fearful thing is love,\nand that true love is never without fear.  But, sir, according to my\njudgment, you do understand both of and by yourself that here stealth\nsignifieth nothing else, no more than in a thousand other places of Greek\nand Latin, old and modern writings, but the sweet fruits of amorous\ndalliance, which Venus liketh best when reaped in secret, and culled by\nfervent lovers filchingly.  Why so, I prithee tell?  Because, when the feat\nof the loose-coat skirmish happeneth to be done underhand and privily,\nbetween two well-disposed, athwart the steps of a pair of stairs lurkingly,\nand in covert behind a suit of hangings, or close hid and trussed upon an\nunbound faggot, it is more pleasing to the Cyprian goddess, and to me also\n--I speak this without prejudice to any better or more sound opinion--than\nto perform that culbusting art after the Cynic manner, in the view of the\nclear sunshine, or in a rich tent, under a precious stately canopy, within\na glorious and sublime pavilion, or yet on a soft couch betwixt rich\ncurtains of cloth of gold, without affrightment, at long intermediate\nrespites, enjoying of pleasures and delights a bellyfull, at all great\nease, with a huge fly-flap fan of crimson satin and a bunch of feathers of\nsome East-Indian ostrich serving to give chase unto the flies all round\nabout; whilst, in the interim, the female picks her teeth with a stiff\nstraw picked even then from out of the bottom of the bed she lies on.  If\nyou be not content with this my exposition, are you of the mind that my\nwife will suck and sup me up as people use to gulp and swallow oysters out\nof the shell? or as the Cilician women, according to the testimony of\nDioscorides, were wont to do the grain of alkermes?  Assuredly that is an\nerror.  Who seizeth on it, doth neither gulch up nor swill down, but takes\naway what hath been packed up, catcheth, snatcheth, and plies the play of\nhey-pass, repass.\n\nThe fourth article doth imply that my wife will flay me, but not all.  O\nthe fine word!  You interpret this to beating strokes and blows.  Speak\nwisely.  Will you eat a pudding?  Sir, I beseech you to raise up your\nspirits above the low-sized pitch of earthly thoughts unto that height of\nsublime contemplation which reacheth to the apprehension of the mysteries\nand wonders of Dame Nature.  And here be pleased to condemn yourself, by a\nrenouncing of those errors which you have committed very grossly and\nsomewhat perversely in expounding the prophetic sayings of the holy sibyl.\nYet put the case (albeit I yield not to it) that, by the instigation of the\ndevil, my wife should go about to wrong me, make me a cuckold downwards to\nthe very breech, disgrace me otherwise, steal my goods from me, yea, and\nlay violently her hands upon me;--she nevertheless should fail of her\nattempts and not attain to the proposed end of her unreasonable\nundertakings.  The reason which induceth me hereto is grounded totally on\nthis last point, which is extracted from the profoundest privacies of a\nmonastic pantheology, as good Friar Arthur Wagtail told me once upon a\nMonday morning, as we were (if I have not forgot) eating a bushel of\ntrotter-pies; and I remember well it rained hard.  God give him the good\nmorrow!  The women at the beginning of the world, or a little after,\nconspired to flay the men quick, because they found the spirit of mankind\ninclined to domineer it, and bear rule over them upon the face of the whole\nearth; and, in pursuit of this their resolution, promised, confirmed,\nswore, and covenanted amongst them all, by the pure faith they owe to the\nnocturnal Sanct Rogero.  But O the vain enterprises of women!  O the great\nfragility of that sex feminine!  They did begin to flay the man, or peel\nhim (as says Catullus), at that member which of all the body they loved\nbest, to wit, the nervous and cavernous cane, and that above five thousand\nyears ago; yet have they not of that small part alone flayed any more till\nthis hour but the head.  In mere despite whereof the Jews snip off that\nparcel of the skin in circumcision, choosing far rather to be called\nclipyards, rascals, than to be flayed by women, as are other nations.  My\nwife, according to this female covenant, will flay it to me, if it be not\nso already.  I heartily grant my consent thereto, but will not give her\nleave to flay it all.  Nay, truly will I not, my noble king.\n\nYea but, quoth Epistemon, you say nothing of her most dreadful cries and\nexclamations when she and we both saw the laurel-bough burn without\nyielding any noise or crackling.  You know it is a very dismal omen, an\ninauspicious sign, unlucky indice, and token formidable, bad, disastrous,\nand most unhappy, as is certified by Propertius, Tibullus, the quick\nphilosopher Porphyrius, Eustathius on the Iliads of Homer, and by many\nothers.  Verily, verily, quoth Panurge, brave are the allegations which you\nbring me, and testimonies of two-footed calves.  These men were fools, as\nthey were poets; and dotards, as they were philosophers; full of folly, as\nthey were of philosophy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel praiseth the counsel of dumb men.\n\nPantagruel, when this discourse was ended, held for a pretty while his\npeace, seeming to be exceeding sad and pensive, then said to Panurge, The\nmalignant spirit misleads, beguileth, and seduceth you.  I have read that\nin times past the surest and most veritable oracles were not those which\neither were delivered in writing or uttered by word of mouth in speaking.\nFor many times, in their interpretation, right witty, learned, and\ningenious men have been deceived through amphibologies, equivoques, and\nobscurity of words, no less than by the brevity of their sentences.  For\nwhich cause Apollo, the god of vaticination, was surnamed Loxias.  Those\nwhich were represented then by signs and outward gestures were accounted\nthe truest and the most infallible.  Such was the opinion of Heraclitus.\nAnd Jupiter did himself in this manner give forth in Ammon frequently\npredictions.  Nor was he single in this practice; for Apollo did the like\namongst the Assyrians.  His prophesying thus unto those people moved them\nto paint him with a large long beard, and clothes beseeming an old settled\nperson of a most posed, staid, and grave behaviour; not naked, young, and\nbeardless, as he was portrayed most usually amongst the Grecians.  Let us\nmake trial of this kind of fatidicency; and go you take advice of some dumb\nperson without any speaking.  I am content, quoth Panurge.  But, says\nPantagruel, it were requisite that the dumb you consult with be such as\nhave been deaf from the hour of their nativity, and consequently dumb; for\nnone can be so lively, natural, and kindly dumb as he who never heard.\n\nHow is it, quoth Panurge, that you conceive this matter?  If you apprehend\nit so, that never any spoke who had not before heard the speech of others,\nI will from that antecedent bring you to infer very logically a most absurd\nand paradoxical conclusion.  But let it pass; I will not insist on it.  You\ndo not then believe what Herodotus wrote of two children, who, at the\nspecial command and appointment of Psammeticus, King of Egypt, having been\nkept in a petty country cottage, where they were nourished and entertained\nin a perpetual silence, did at last, after a certain long space of time,\npronounce this word Bec, which in the Phrygian language signifieth bread.\nNothing less, quoth Pantagruel, do I believe than that it is a mere abusing\nof our understandings to give credit to the words of those who say that\nthere is any such thing as a natural language.  All speeches have had their\nprimary origin from the arbitrary institutions, accords, and agreements of\nnations in their respective condescendments to what should be noted and\nbetokened by them.  An articulate voice, according to the dialecticians,\nhath naturally no signification at all; for that the sense and meaning\nthereof did totally depend upon the good will and pleasure of the first\ndeviser and imposer of it.  I do not tell you this without a cause; for\nBartholus, Lib. 5. de Verb. Oblig., very seriously reporteth that even in\nhis time there was in Eugubia one named Sir Nello de Gabrielis, who,\nalthough he by a sad mischance became altogether deaf, understood\nnevertheless everyone that talked in the Italian dialect howsoever he\nexpressed himself; and that only by looking on his external gestures, and\ncasting an attentive eye upon the divers motions of his lips and chaps.  I\nhave read, I remember also, in a very literate and eloquent author, that\nTyridates, King of Armenia, in the days of Nero, made a voyage to Rome,\nwhere he was received with great honour and solemnity, and with all manner\nof pomp and magnificence.  Yea, to the end there might be a sempiternal\namity and correspondence preserved betwixt him and the Roman senate, there\nwas no remarkable thing in the whole city which was not shown unto him.  At\nhis departure the emperor bestowed upon him many ample donatives of an\ninestimable value; and besides, the more entirely to testify his affection\ntowards him, heartily entreated him to be pleased to make choice of any\nwhatsoever thing in Rome was most agreeable to his fancy, with a promise\njuramentally confirmed that he should not be refused of his demand.\nThereupon, after a suitable return of thanks for a so gracious offer, he\nrequired a certain Jack-pudding whom he had seen to act his part most\negregiously upon the stage, and whose meaning, albeit he knew not what it\nwas he had spoken, he understood perfectly enough by the signs and\ngesticulations which he had made.  And for this suit of his, in that he\nasked nothing else, he gave this reason, that in the several wide and\nspacious dominions which were reduced under the sway and authority of his\nsovereign government, there were sundry countries and nations much\ndiffering from one another in language, with whom, whether he was to speak\nunto them or give any answer to their requests, he was always necessitated\nto make use of divers sorts of truchman and interpreters.  Now with this\nman alone, sufficient for supplying all their places, will that great\ninconveniency hereafter be totally removed; seeing he is such a fine\ngesticulator, and in the practice of chirology an artist so complete,\nexpert, and dexterous, that with his very fingers he doth speak.\nHowsoever, you are to pitch upon such a dumb one as is deaf by nature and\nfrom his birth; to the end that his gestures and signs may be the more\nvively and truly prophetic, and not counterfeit by the intermixture of some\nadulterate lustre and affectation.  Yet whether this dumb person shall be\nof the male or female sex is in your option, lieth at your discretion, and\naltogether dependeth on your own election.\n\nI would more willingly, quoth Panurge, consult with and be advised by a\ndumb woman, were it not that I am afraid of two things.  The first is, that\nthe greater part of women, whatever be that they see, do always represent\nunto their fancies, think, and imagine, that it hath some relation to the\nsugared entering of the goodly ithyphallos, and graffing in the cleft of\nthe overturned tree the quickset imp of the pin of copulation.  Whatever\nsigns, shows, or gestures we shall make, or whatever our behaviour,\ncarriage, or demeanour shall happen to be in their view and presence, they\nwill interpret the whole in reference to the act of androgynation and the\nculbutizing exercise, by which means we shall be abusively disappointed of\nour designs, in regard that she will take all our signs for nothing else\nbut tokens and representations of our desire to entice her unto the lists\nof a Cyprian combat or catsenconny skirmish.  Do you remember what happened\nat Rome two hundred and threescore years after the foundation thereof?  A\nyoung Roman gentleman encountering by chance, at the foot of Mount Celion,\nwith a beautiful Latin lady named Verona, who from her very cradle upwards\nhad always been both deaf and dumb, very civilly asked her, not without a\nchironomatic Italianizing of his demand, with various jectigation of his\nfingers and other gesticulations as yet customary amongst the speakers of\nthat country, what senators in her descent from the top of the hill she had\nmet with going up thither.  For you are to conceive that he, knowing no\nmore of her deafness than dumbness, was ignorant of both.  She in the\nmeantime, who neither heard nor understood so much as one word of what he\nhad said, straight imagined, by all that she could apprehend in the lovely\ngesture of his manual signs, that what he then required of her was what\nherself had a great mind to, even that which a young man doth naturally\ndesire of a woman.  Then was it that by signs, which in all occurrences of\nvenereal love are incomparably more attractive, valid, and efficacious than\nwords, she beckoned to him to come along with her to her house; which when\nhe had done, she drew him aside to a privy room, and then made a most\nlively alluring sign unto him to show that the game did please her.\nWhereupon, without any more advertisement, or so much as the uttering of\none word on either side, they fell to and bringuardized it lustily.\n\nThe other cause of my being averse from consulting with dumb women is, that\nto our signs they would make no answer at all, but suddenly fall backwards\nin a divarication posture, to intimate thereby unto us the reality of their\nconsent to the supposed motion of our tacit demands.  Or if they should\nchance to make any countersigns responsory to our propositions, they would\nprove so foolish, impertinent, and ridiculous, that by them ourselves\nshould easily judge their thoughts to have no excursion beyond the duffling\nacademy.  You know very well how at Brignoles, when the religious nun,\nSister Fatbum, was made big with child by the young Stiffly-stand-to't, her\npregnancy came to be known, and she cited by the abbess, and, in a full\nconvention of the convent, accused of incest.  Her excuse was that she did\nnot consent thereto, but that it was done by the violence and impetuous\nforce of the Friar Stiffly-stand-to't.  Hereto the abbess very austerely\nreplying, Thou naughty wicked girl, why didst thou not cry, A rape, a rape!\nthen should all of us have run to thy succour.  Her answer was that the\nrape was committed in the dortour, where she durst not cry because it was a\nplace of sempiternal silence.  But, quoth the abbess, thou roguish wench,\nwhy didst not thou then make some sign to those that were in the next\nchamber beside thee?  To this she answered that with her buttocks she made\na sign unto them as vigorously as she could, yet never one of them did so\nmuch as offer to come to her help and assistance.  But, quoth the abbess,\nthou scurvy baggage, why didst thou not tell it me immediately after the\nperpetration of the fact, that so we might orderly, regularly, and\ncanonically have accused him?  I would have done so, had the case been\nmine, for the clearer manifestation of mine innocency.  I truly, madam,\nwould have done the like with all my heart and soul, quoth Sister Fatbum,\nbut that fearing I should remain in sin, and in the hazard of eternal\ndamnation, if prevented by a sudden death, I did confess myself to the\nfather friar before he went out of the room, who, for my penance, enjoined\nme not to tell it, or reveal the matter unto any.  It were a most enormous\nand horrid offence, detestable before God and the angels, to reveal a\nconfession.  Such an abominable wickedness would have possibly brought down\nfire from heaven, wherewith to have burnt the whole nunnery, and sent us\nall headlong to the bottomless pit, to bear company with Korah, Dathan, and\nAbiram.\n\nYou will not, quoth Pantagruel, with all your jesting, make me laugh.  I\nknow that all the monks, friars, and nuns had rather violate and infringe\nthe highest of the commandments of God than break the least of their\nprovincial statutes.  Take you therefore Goatsnose, a man very fit for your\npresent purpose; for he is, and hath been, both dumb and deaf from the very\nremotest infancy of his childhood.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Goatsnose by signs maketh answer to Panurge.\n\nGoatsnose being sent for, came the day thereafter to Pantagruel's court; at\nhis arrival to which Panurge gave him a fat calf, the half of a hog, two\npuncheons of wine, one load of corn, and thirty francs of small money;\nthen, having brought him before Pantagruel, in presence of the gentlemen of\nthe bed-chamber he made this sign unto him.  He yawned a long time, and in\nyawning made without his mouth with the thumb of his right hand the figure\nof the Greek letter Tau by frequent reiterations.  Afterwards he lifted up\nhis eyes to heavenwards, then turned them in his head like a she-goat in\nthe painful fit of an absolute birth, in doing whereof he did cough and\nsigh exceeding heavily.  This done, after that he had made demonstration of\nthe want of his codpiece, he from under his shirt took his placket-racket\nin a full grip, making it therewithal clack very melodiously betwixt his\nthighs; then, no sooner had he with his body stooped a little forwards, and\nbowed his left knee, but that immediately thereupon holding both his arms\non his breast, in a loose faint-like posture, the one over the other, he\npaused awhile.  Goatsnose looked wistly upon him, and having heedfully\nenough viewed him all over, he lifted up into the air his left hand, the\nwhole fingers whereof he retained fistwise close together, except the thumb\nand the forefinger, whose nails he softly joined and coupled to one\nanother.  I understand, quoth Pantagruel, what he meaneth by that sign.  It\ndenotes marriage, and withal the number thirty, according to the profession\nof the Pythagoreans.  You will be married.  Thanks to you, quoth Panurge,\nin turning himself towards Goatsnose, my little sewer, pretty master's\nmate, dainty bailie, curious sergeant-marshal, and jolly catchpole-leader.\nThen did he lift higher up than before his said left hand, stretching out\nall the five fingers thereof, and severing them as wide from one another as\nhe possibly could get done.  Here, says Pantagruel, doth he more amply and\nfully insinuate unto us, by the token which he showeth forth of the quinary\nnumber, that you shall be married.  Yea, that you shall not only be\naffianced, betrothed, wedded, and married, but that you shall furthermore\ncohabit and live jollily and merrily with your wife; for Pythagoras called\nfive the nuptial number, which, together with marriage, signifieth the\nconsummation of matrimony, because it is composed of a ternary, the first\nof the odd, and binary, the first of the even numbers, as of a male and\nfemale knit and united together.  In very deed it was the fashion of old in\nthe city of Rome at marriage festivals to light five wax tapers; nor was it\npermitted to kindle any more at the magnific nuptials of the most potent\nand wealthy, nor yet any fewer at the penurious weddings of the poorest and\nmost abject of the world.  Moreover, in times past, the heathen or paynims\nimplored the assistance of five deities, or of one helpful, at least, in\nfive several good offices to those that were to be married.  Of this sort\nwere the nuptial Jove, Juno, president of the feast, the fair Venus, Pitho,\nthe goddess of eloquence and persuasion, and Diana, whose aid and succour\nwas required to the labour of child-bearing.  Then shouted Panurge, O the\ngentle Goatsnose, I will give him a farm near Cinais, and a windmill hard\nby Mirebalais!  Hereupon the dumb fellow sneezeth with an impetuous\nvehemency and huge concussion of the spirits of the whole body, withdrawing\nhimself in so doing with a jerking turn towards the left hand.  By the body\nof a fox new slain, quoth Pantagruel, what is that?  This maketh nothing\nfor your advantage; for he betokeneth thereby that your marriage will be\ninauspicious and unfortunate.  This sneezing, according to the doctrine of\nTerpsion, is the Socratic demon.  If done towards the right side, it\nimports and portendeth that boldly and with all assurance one may go\nwhither he will and do what he listeth, according to what deliberation he\nshall be pleased to have thereupon taken; his entries in the beginning,\nprogress in his proceedings, and success in the events and issues will be\nall lucky, good, and happy.  The quite contrary thereto is thereby implied\nand presaged if it be done towards the left.  You, quoth Panurge, do take\nalways the matter at the worst, and continually, like another Davus,\ncasteth in new disturbances and obstructions; nor ever yet did I know this\nold paltry Terpsion worthy of citation but in points only of cosenage and\nimposture.  Nevertheless, quoth Pantagruel, Cicero hath written I know not\nwhat to the same purpose in his Second Book of Divination.\n\nPanurge then, turning himself towards Goatsnose, made this sign unto him.\nHe inverted his eyelids upwards, wrenched his jaws from the right to the\nleft side, and drew forth his tongue half out of his mouth.  This done, he\nposited his left hand wholly open, the mid-finger wholly excepted, which\nwas perpendicularly placed upon the palm thereof, and set it just in the\nroom where his codpiece had been.  Then did he keep his right hand\naltogether shut up in a fist, save only the thumb, which he straight turned\nbackwards directly under the right armpit, and settled it afterwards on\nthat most eminent part of the buttocks which the Arabs call the Al-Katim.\nSuddenly thereafter he made this interchange:  he held his right hand after\nthe manner of the left, and posited it on the place wherein his codpiece\nsometime was, and retaining his left hand in the form and fashion of the\nright, he placed it upon his Al-Katim.  This altering of hands did he\nreiterate nine several times; at the last whereof he reseated his eyelids\ninto their own first natural position.  Then doing the like also with his\njaws and tongue, he did cast a squinting look upon Goatsnose, diddering and\nshivering his chaps, as apes use to do nowadays, and rabbits, whilst,\nalmost starved with hunger, they are eating oats in the sheaf.\n\nThen was it that Goatsnose, lifting up into the air his right hand wholly\nopen and displayed, put the thumb thereof, even close unto its first\narticulation, between the two third joints of the middle and ring fingers,\npressing about the said thumb thereof very hard with them both, and, whilst\nthe remanent joints were contracted and shrunk in towards the wrist, he\nstretched forth with as much straightness as he could the fore and little\nfingers.  That hand thus framed and disposed of he laid and posited upon\nPanurge's navel, moving withal continually the aforesaid thumb, and bearing\nup, supporting, or under-propping that hand upon the above-specified fore\nand little fingers, as upon two legs.  Thereafter did he make in this\nposture his hand by little and little, and by degrees and pauses,\nsuccessively to mount from athwart the belly to the stomach, from whence he\nmade it to ascend to the breast, even upwards to Panurge's neck, still\ngaining ground, till, having reached his chin, he had put within the\nconcave of his mouth his afore-mentioned thumb; then fiercely brandishing\nthe whole hand, which he made to rub and grate against his nose, he heaved\nit further up, and made the fashion as if with the thumb thereof he would\nhave put out his eyes.  With this Panurge grew a little angry, and went\nabout to withdraw and rid himself from this ruggedly untoward dumb devil.\nBut Goatsnose in the meantime, prosecuting the intended purpose of his\nprognosticatory response, touched very rudely, with the above-mentioned\nshaking thumb, now his eyes, then his forehead, and after that the borders\nand corners of his cap.  At last Panurge cried out, saying, Before God,\nmaster fool, if you do not let me alone, or that you will presume to vex me\nany more, you shall receive from the best hand I have a mask wherewith to\ncover your rascally scroundrel face, you paltry shitten varlet.  Then said\nFriar John, He is deaf, and doth not understand what thou sayest unto him.\nBulliballock, make sign to him of a hail of fisticuffs upon the muzzle.\n\nWhat the devil, quoth Panurge, means this busy restless fellow?  What is it\nthat this polypragmonetic ardelion to all the fiends of hell doth aim at?\nHe hath almost thrust out mine eyes, as if he had been to poach them in a\nskillet with butter and eggs.  By God, da jurandi, I will feast you with\nflirts and raps on the snout, interlarded with a double row of bobs and\nfinger-fillipings!  Then did he leave him in giving him by way of salvo a\nvolley of farts for his farewell.  Goatsnose, perceiving Panurge thus to\nslip away from him, got before him, and, by mere strength enforcing him to\nstand, made this sign unto him.  He let fall his right arm toward his knee\non the same side as low as he could, and, raising all the fingers of that\nhand into a close fist, passed his dexter thumb betwixt the foremost and\nmid fingers thereto belonging.  Then scrubbing and swingeing a little with\nhis left hand alongst and upon the uppermost in the very bough of the elbow\nof the said dexter arm, the whole cubit thereof, by leisure, fair and\nsoftly, at these thumpatory warnings, did raise and elevate itself even to\nthe elbow, and above it; on a sudden did he then let it fall down as low as\nbefore, and after that, at certain intervals and such spaces of time,\nraising and abasing it, he made a show thereof to Panurge.  This so\nincensed Panurge that he forthwith lifted his hand to have stricken him the\ndumb roister and given him a sound whirret on the ear, but that the respect\nand reverence which he carried to the presence of Pantagruel restrained his\ncholer and kept his fury within bounds and limits.  Then said Pantagruel,\nIf the bare signs now vex and trouble you, how much more grievously will\nyou be perplexed and disquieted with the real things which by them are\nrepresented and signified!  All truths agree and are consonant with one\nanother.  This dumb fellow prophesieth and foretelleth that you will be\nmarried, cuckolded, beaten, and robbed.  As for the marriage, quoth\nPanurge, I yield thereto, and acknowledge the verity of that point of his\nprediction; as for the rest, I utterly abjure and deny it:  and believe,\nsir, I beseech you, if it may please you so to do, that in the matter of\nwives and horses never any man was predestinated to a better fortune than\nI.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge consulteth with an old French poet, named Raminagrobis.\n\nI never thought, said Pantagruel, to have encountered with any man so\nheadstrong in his apprehensions, or in his opinions so wilful, as I have\nfound you to be and see you are.  Nevertheless, the better to clear and\nextricate your doubts, let us try all courses, and leave no stone unturned\nnor wind unsailed by.  Take good heed to what I am to say unto you.  The\nswans, which are fowls consecrated to Apollo, never chant but in the hour\nof their approaching death, especially in the Meander flood, which is a\nriver that runneth along some of the territories of Phrygia.  This I say,\nbecause Aelianus and Alexander Myndius write that they had seen several\nswans in other places die, but never heard any of them sing or chant before\ntheir death.  However, it passeth for current that the imminent death of a\nswan is presaged by his foregoing song, and that no swan dieth until\npreallably he have sung.\n\nAfter the same manner, poets, who are under the protection of Apollo, when\nthey are drawing near their latter end do ordinarily become prophets, and\nby the inspiration of that god sing sweetly in vaticinating things which\nare to come.  It hath been likewise told me frequently, that old decrepit\nmen upon the brinks of Charon's banks do usher their decease with a\ndisclosure all at ease, to those that are desirous of such informations, of\nthe determinate and assured truth of future accidents and contingencies.  I\nremember also that Aristophanes, in a certain comedy of his, calleth the\nold folks Sibyls, Eith o geron Zibullia.  For as when, being upon a pier by\nthe shore, we see afar off mariners, seafaring men, and other travellers\nalongst the curled waves of azure Thetis within their ships, we then\nconsider them in silence only, and seldom proceed any further than to wish\nthem a happy and prosperous arrival; but when they do approach near to the\nhaven, and come to wet their keels within their harbour, then both with\nwords and  gestures we salute them, and heartily congratulate their access\nsafe to the port wherein we are ourselves.  Just so the angels, heroes, and\ngood demons, according to the doctrine of the Platonics, when they see\nmortals drawing near unto the harbour of the grave, as the most sure and\ncalmest port of any, full of repose, ease, rest, tranquillity, free from\nthe  troubles and solicitudes of this tumultuous and tempestuous world; then\nis  it that they with alacrity hail and salute them, cherish and comfort\nthem, and, speaking to them lovingly, begin even then to bless them with\nilluminations, and to communicate unto them the abstrusest mysteries of\ndivination.  I will not offer here to confound your memory by quoting\nantique examples of Isaac, of Jacob, of Patroclus towards Hector, of Hector\ntowards Achilles, of Polymnestor towards Agamemnon, of Hecuba, of the\nRhodian renowned by Posidonius, of Calanus the Indian towards Alexander the\nGreat, of Orodes towards Mezentius, and of many others.  It shall suffice\nfor the present that I commemorate unto you the learned and valiant knight\nand cavalier William of Bellay, late Lord of Langey, who died on the Hill\nof Tarara, the 10th of January, in the climacteric year of his age, and of\nour supputation 1543, according to the Roman account.  The last three or\nfour hours of his life he did employ in the serious utterance of a very\npithy discourse, whilst with a clear judgment and spirit void of all\ntrouble he did foretell several important things, whereof a great deal is\ncome to pass, and the rest we wait for.  Howbeit, his prophecies did at\nthat time seem unto us somewhat strange, absurd, and unlikely, because\nthere did not then appear any sign of efficacy enough to engage our faith\nto the belief of what he did prognosticate.  We have here, near to the town\nof Villomere, a man that is both old and a poet, to wit, Raminagrobis, who\nto his second wife espoused my Lady Broadsow, on whom he begot the fair\nBasoche.  It hath been told me he is a-dying, and so near unto his latter\nend that he is almost upon the very last moment, point, and article thereof.\nRepair thither as fast as you can, and be ready to give an attentive ear to\nwhat he shall chant unto you.  It may be that you shall obtain from him what\nyou desire, and that Apollo will be pleased by his means to clear your\nscruples.  I am content, quoth Panurge.  Let us go thither, Epistemon, and\nthat both instantly and in all haste, lest otherwise his death prevent our\ncoming.  Wilt thou come along with us, Friar John?  Yes, that I will, quoth\nFriar John, right heartily to do thee a courtesy, my billy-ballocks; for I\nlove thee with the best of my milt and liver.\n\nThereupon, incontinently, without any further lingering, to the way they\nall three went, and quickly thereafter--for they made good speed--arriving\nat the poetical habitation, they found the jolly old man, albeit in the\nagony of his departure from this world, looking cheerfully, with an open\ncountenance, splendid aspect, and behaviour full of alacrity.  After that\nPanurge had very civilly saluted him, he in a free gift did present him\nwith a gold ring, which he even then put upon the medical finger of his\nleft hand, in the collet or bezel whereof was enchased an Oriental\nsapphire, very fair and large.  Then, in imitation of Socrates, did he make\nan oblation unto him of a fair white cock, which was no sooner set upon the\ntester of his bed, than that, with a high raised head and crest, lustily\nshaking his feather-coat, he crowed stentoriphonically loud.  This done,\nPanurge very courteously required of him that he would vouchsafe to favour\nhim with the grant and report of his sense and judgment touching the future\ndestiny of his intended marriage.  For answer hereto, when the honest old\nman had forthwith commanded pen, paper, and ink to be brought unto him, and\nthat he was at the same call conveniently served with all the three, he\nwrote these following verses:\n\n  Take, or not take her,\n    Off, or on:\n  Handy-dandy is your lot.\n  When her name you write, you blot.\n  'Tis undone, when all is done,\n  Ended e'er it was begun:\n  Hardly gallop, if you trot,\n  Set not forward when you run,\n  Nor be single, though alone,\n    Take, or not take her.\n\n  Before you eat, begin to fast;\n  For what shall be was never past.\n  Say, unsay, gainsay, save your breath:\n  Then wish at once her life and death.\n    Take, or not take her.\n\nThese lines he gave out of his own hands unto them, saying unto them, Go,\nmy lads, in peace! the great God of the highest heavens be your guardian\nand preserver! and do not offer any more to trouble or disquiet me with\nthis or any other business whatsoever.  I have this same very day, which is\nthe last both of May and of me, with a greal deal of labour, toil, and\ndifficulty, chased out of my house a rabble of filthy, unclean, and\nplaguily pestilentious rake-hells, black beasts, dusk, dun, white,\nash-coloured, speckled, and a foul vermin of other hues, whose obtrusive\nimportunity would not permit me to die at my own ease; for by fraudulent\nand deceitful pricklings, ravenous, harpy-like graspings, waspish\nstingings, and such-like unwelcome approaches, forged in the shop of I know\nnot what kind of insatiabilities, they went about to withdraw and call me\nout of those sweet thoughts wherein I was already beginning to repose\nmyself and acquiesce in the contemplation and vision, yea, almost in the\nvery touch and taste of the happiness and felicity which the good God hath\nprepared for his faithful saints and elect in the other life and state of\nimmortality.  Turn out of their courses and eschew them, step forth of\ntheir ways and do not resemble them; meanwhile, let me be no more troubled\nby you, but leave me now in silence, I beseech you.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge patrocinates and defendeth the Order of the Begging Friars.\n\nPanurge, at his issuing forth of Raminagrobis's chamber, said, as if he had\nbeen horribly affrighted, By the virtue of God, I believe that he is an\nheretic; the devil take me, if I do not! he doth so villainously rail at\nthe Mendicant Friars and Jacobins, who are the two hemispheres of the\nChristian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two\ncelivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish\nChurch, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish\nof this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised.  But what harm,\nin the devil's name, have these poor devils the Capuchins and Minims done\nunto him?  Are not these beggarly devils sufficiently wretched already?\nWho can imagine that these poor snakes, the very extracts of ichthyophagy,\nare not thoroughly enough besmoked and besmeared with misery, distress, and\ncalamity?  Dost thou think, Friar John, by thy faith, that he is in the\nstate of salvation?  He goeth, before God, as surely damned to thirty\nthousand basketsful of devils as a pruning-bill to the lopping of a\nvine-branch.  To revile with opprobrious speeches the good and courageous\nprops and pillars of the Church,--is that to be called a poetical fury?  I\ncannot rest satisfied with him; he sinneth grossly, and blasphemeth against\nthe true religion.  I am very much offended at his scandalizing words and\ncontumelious obloquy.  I do not care a straw, quoth Friar John, for what he\nhath said; for although everybody should twit and jerk them, it were but a\njust retaliation, seeing all persons are served by them with the like sauce:\ntherefore do I pretend no interest therein.  Let us see, nevertheless, what\nhe hath written.  Panurge very attentively read the paper which the old man\nhad penned; then said to his two fellow-travellers, The poor drinker doteth.\nHowsoever, I excuse him, for that I believe he is now drawing near to the\nend and final closure of his life.  Let us go make his epitaph.  By the\nanswer which he hath given us, I am not, I protest, one jot wiser than I\nwas.  Hearken here, Epistemon, my little bully, dost not thou hold him to be\nvery resolute in his responsory verdicts?  He is a witty, quick, and subtle\nsophister.  I will lay an even wager that he is a miscreant apostate.  By\nthe belly of a stalled ox, how careful he is not to be mistaken in his\nwords.  He answered but by disjunctives, therefore can it not be true which\nhe saith; for the verity of such-like propositions is inherent only in one\nof its two members.  O the cozening prattler that he is!  I wonder if\nSantiago of Bressure be one of these cogging shirks.  Such was of old, quoth\nEpistemon, the custom of the grand vaticinator and prophet Tiresias, who\nused always, by way of a preface, to say openly and plainly at the beginning\nof his divinations and predictions that what he was to tell would either\ncome to pass or not.  And such is truly the style of all prudently presaging\nprognosticators.  He was nevertheless, quoth Panurge, so unfortunately\nmisadventurous in the lot of his own destiny, that Juno thrust out both his\neyes.\n\nYes, answered Epistemon, and that merely out of a spite and spleen for\nhaving pronounced his award more veritable than she, upon the question\nwhich was merrily proposed by Jupiter.  But, quoth Panurge, what archdevil\nis it that hath possessed this Master Raminagrobis, that so unreasonably,\nand without any occasion, he should have so snappishly and bitterly\ninveighed against these poor honest fathers, Jacobins, Minors, and Minims?\nIt vexeth me grievously, I assure you; nor am I able to conceal my\nindignation.  He hath transgressed most enormously; his soul goeth\ninfallibly to thirty thousand panniersful of devils.  I understand you not,\nquoth Epistemon, and it disliketh me very much that you should so absurdly\nand perversely interpret that of the Friar Mendicants which by the harmless\npoet was spoken of black beasts, dun, and other sorts of other coloured\nanimals.  He is not in my opinion guilty of such a sophistical and\nfantastic allegory as by that phrase of his to have meant the Begging\nBrothers.  He in downright terms speaketh absolutely and properly of fleas,\npunies, hand worms, flies, gnats, and other such-like scurvy vermin,\nwhereof some are black, some dun, some ash-coloured, some tawny, and some\nbrown and dusky, all noisome, molesting, tyrannous, cumbersome, and\nunpleasant creatures, not only to sick and diseased folks, but to those\nalso who are of a sound, vigorous, and healthful temperament and\nconstitution.  It is not unlikely that he may have the ascarids, and the\nlumbrics, and worms within the entrails of his body.  Possibly doth he\nsuffer, as it is frequent and usual amongst the Egyptians, together with\nall those who inhabit the Erythraean confines, and dwell along the shores\nand coasts of the Red Sea, some sour prickings and smart stingings in his\narms and legs of those little speckled dragons which the Arabians call\nmeden.  You are to blame for offering to expound his words otherwise, and\nwrong the ingenuous poet, and outrageously abuse and miscall the said\nfraters, by an imputation of baseness undeservedly laid to their charge.\nWe still should, in such like discourses of fatiloquent soothsayers,\ninterpret all things to the best.  Will you teach me, quoth Panurge, how to\ndiscern flies among milk, or show your father the way how to beget\nchildren?  He is, by the virtue of God, an arrant heretic, a resolute,\nformal heretic; I say, a rooted, combustible heretic, one as fit to burn as\nthe little wooden clock at Rochelle.  His soul goeth to thirty thousand\ncartsful of devils.  Would you know whither?  Cocks-body, my friend,\nstraight under Proserpina's close-stool, to the very middle of the\nself-same infernal pan within which she, by an excrementitious evacuation,\nvoideth the faecal stuff of her stinking clysters, and that just upon the\nleft side of the great cauldron of three fathom height, hard by the claws\nand talons of Lucifer, in the very darkest of the passage which leadeth\ntowards the black chamber of Demogorgon.  O the villain!\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge maketh the motion of a return to Raminagrobis.\n\nLet us return, quoth Panurge, not ceasing, to the uttermost of our\nabilities, to ply him with wholesome admonitions for the furtherance of his\nsalvation.  Let us go back, for God's sake; let us go, in the name of God.\nIt will be a very meritorious work, and of great charity in us to deal so\nin the matter, and provide so well for him that, albeit he come to lose\nboth body and life, he may at least escape the risk and danger of the\neternal damnation of his soul.  We will by our holy persuasions bring him\nto a sense and feeling of his escapes, induce him to acknowledge his\nfaults, move him to a cordial repentance of his errors, and stir up in him\nsuch a sincere contrition of heart for his offences, as will prompt him\nwith all earnestness to cry mercy, and to beg pardon at the hands of the\ngood fathers, as well of the absent as of such as are present.  Whereupon\nwe will take instrument formally and authentically extended, to the end he\nbe not, after his decease, declared an heretic, and condemned, as were the\nhobgoblins of the provost's wife of Orleans, to the undergoing of such\npunishments, pains, and tortures as are due to and inflicted on those that\ninhabit the horrid cells of the infernal regions; and withal incline,\ninstigate, and persuade him to bequeath and leave in legacy (by way of an\namends and satisfaction for the outrage and injury done to those good\nreligious fathers throughout all the convents, cloisters, and monasteries\nof this province), many bribes, a great deal of mass-singing, store of\nobits, and that sempiternally, on the anniversary day of his decease, every\none of them all be furnished with a quintuple allowance, and that the great\nborachio replenished with the best liquor trudge apace along the tables, as\nwell of the young duckling monkitoes, lay brothers, and lowermost degree of\nthe abbey lubbards, as of the learned priests and reverend clerks,--the\nvery meanest of the novices and mitiants unto the order being equally\nadmitted to the benefit of those funerary and obsequial festivals with the\naged rectors and professed fathers.  This is the surest ordinary means\nwhereby from God he may obtain forgiveness.  Ho, ho, I am quite mistaken; I\ndigress from the purpose, and fly out of my discourse, as if my spirits\nwere a-wool-gathering.  The devil take me, if I go thither!  Virtue God!\nThe chamber is already full of devils.  O what a swinging, thwacking noise\nis now amongst them!  O the terrible coil that they keep!  Hearken, do you\nnot hear the rustling, thumping bustle of their strokes and blows, as they\nscuffle with one another, like true devils indeed, who shall gulp up the\nRaminagrobis soul, and be the first bringer of it, whilst it is hot, to\nMonsieur Lucifer?  Beware, and get you hence! for my part, I will not go\nthither.  The devil roast me if I go!  Who knows but that these hungry mad\ndevils may in the haste of their rage and fury of their impatience take a\nqui for a quo, and instead of Raminagrobis snatch up poor Panurge frank and\nfree?  Though formerly, when I was deep in debt, they always failed.  Get\nyou hence!  I will not go thither.  Before God, the very bare apprehension\nthereof is like to kill me.  To be in a place where there are greedy,\nfamished, and hunger-starved devils; amongst factious devils--amidst\ntrading and trafficking devils--O the Lord preserve me!  Get you hence!  I\ndare pawn my credit on it, that no Jacobin, Cordelier, Carmelite, Capuchin,\nTheatin, or Minim will bestow any personal presence at his interment.  The\nwiser they, because he hath ordained nothing for them in his latter will\nand testament.  The devil take me, if I go thither.  If he be damned, to\nhis own loss and hindrance be it.  What the deuce moved him to be so\nsnappish and depravedly bent against the good fathers of the true religion?\nWhy did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them quite out of his\nchamber, even in that very nick of time when he stood in greatest need of\nthe aid, suffrage, and assistance of their devout prayers and holy\nadmonitions?  Why did not he by testament leave them, at least, some jolly\nlumps and cantles of substantial meat, a parcel of cheek-puffing victuals,\nand a little belly-timber and provision for the guts of these poor folks,\nwho have nothing but their life in this world?  Let him go thither who\nwill, the devil take me if I go; for, if I should, the devil would not fail\nto snatch me up.  Cancro.  Ho, the pox!  Get you hence, Friar John!  Art\nthou content that thirty thousand wainload of devils should get away with\nthee at this same very instant?  If thou be, at my request do these three\nthings.  First, give me thy purse; for besides that thy money is marked\nwith crosses, and the cross is an enemy to charms, the same may befall to\nthee which not long ago happened to John Dodin, collector of the excise of\nCoudray, at the ford of Vede, when the soldiers broke the planks.  This\nmoneyed fellow, meeting at the very brink of the bank of the ford with\nFriar Adam Crankcod, a Franciscan observantin of Mirebeau, promised him a\nnew frock, provided that in the transporting of him over the water he would\nbear him upon his neck and shoulders, after the manner of carrying dead\ngoats; for he was a lusty, strong-limbed, sturdy rogue.  The condition\nbeing agreed upon, Friar Crankcod trusseth himself up to his very ballocks,\nand layeth upon his back, like a fair little Saint Christopher, the load of\nthe said supplicant Dodin, and so carried him gaily and with a good will,\nas Aeneas bore his father Anchises through the conflagration of Troy,\nsinging in the meanwhile a pretty Ave Maris Stella.  When they were in the\nvery deepest place of all the ford, a little above the master-wheel of the\nwater-mill, he asked if he had any coin about him.  Yes, quoth Dodin, a\nwhole bagful; and that he needed not to mistrust his ability in the\nperformance of the promise which he had made unto him concerning a new\nfrock.  How! quoth Friar Crankcod, thou knowest well enough that by the\nexpress rules, canons, and injunctions of our order we are forbidden to\ncarry on us any kind of money.  Thou art truly unhappy, for having made me\nin this point to commit a heinous trespass.  Why didst thou not leave thy\npurse with the miller?  Without fail thou shalt presently receive thy\nreward for it; and if ever hereafter I may but lay hold upon thee within\nthe limits of our chancel at Mirebeau, thou shalt have the Miserere even to\nthe Vitulos.  With this, suddenly discharging himself of his burden, he\nthrows me down your Dodin headlong.  Take example by this Dodin, my dear\nfriend Friar John, to the end that the devils may the better carry thee\naway at thine own ease.  Give me thy purse.  Carry no manner of cross upon\nthee.  Therein lieth an evident and manifestly apparent danger.  For if you\nhave any silver coined with a cross upon it, they will cast thee down\nheadlong upon some rocks, as the eagles use to do with the tortoises for\nthe breaking of their shells, as the bald pate of the poet Aeschylus can\nsufficiently bear witness.  Such a fall would hurt thee very sore, my sweet\nbully, and I would be sorry for it.  Or otherwise they will let thee fall\nand tumble down into the high swollen waves of some capacious sea, I know\nnot where; but, I warrant thee, far enough hence, as Icarus fell, which\nfrom thy name would afterwards get the denomination of the Funnelian Sea.\n\nSecondly, be out of debt.  For the devils carry a great liking to those\nthat are out of debt.  I have sore felt the experience thereof in mine own\nparticular; for now the lecherous varlets are always wooing me, courting\nme, and making much of me, which they never did when I was all to pieces.\nThe soul of one in debt is insipid, dry, and heretical altogether.\n\nThirdly, with the cowl and Domino de Grobis, return to Raminagrobis; and in\ncase, being thus qualified, thirty thousand boatsful of devils forthwith\ncome not to carry thee quite away, I shall be content to be at the charge\nof paying for the pint and faggot.  Now, if for the more security thou\nwouldst some associate to bear thee company, let not me be the comrade thou\nsearchest for; think not to get a fellow-traveller of me,--nay, do not.  I\nadvise thee for the best.  Get you hence; I will not go thither.  The devil\ntake me if I go.  Notwithstanding all the fright that you are in, quoth\nFriar John, I would not care so much as might possibly be expected I\nshould, if I once had but my sword in my hand.  Thou hast verily hit the\nnail on the head, quoth Panurge, and speakest like a learned doctor, subtle\nand well-skilled in the art of devilry.  At the time when I was a student\nin the University of Toulouse (Tolette), that same reverend father in the\ndevil, Picatrix, rector of the diabological faculty, was wont to tell us\nthat the devils did naturally fear the bright glancing of swords as much as\nthe splendour and light of the sun.  In confirmation of the verity whereof\nhe related this story, that Hercules, at his descent into hell to all the\ndevils of those regions, did not by half so much terrify them with his club\nand lion's skin as afterwards Aeneas did with his clear shining armour upon\nhim, and his sword in his hand well-furbished and unrusted, by the aid,\ncounsel, and assistance of the Sybilla Cumana.  That was perhaps the reason\nwhy the senior John Jacomo di Trivulcio, whilst he was a-dying at Chartres,\ncalled for his cutlass, and died with a drawn sword in his hand, laying\nabout him alongst and athwart around the bed and everywhere within his\nreach, like a stout, doughty, valorous and knight-like cavalier; by which\nresolute manner of fence he scared away and put to flight all the devils\nthat were then lying in wait for his soul at the passage of his death.\nWhen the Massorets and Cabalists are asked why it is that none of all the\ndevils do at any time enter into the terrestrial paradise? their answer\nhath been, is, and will be still, that there is a cherubin standing at the\ngate thereof with a flame-like glistering sword in his hand.  Although, to\nspeak in the true diabological sense or phrase of Toledo, I must needs\nconfess and acknowledge that veritably the devils cannot be killed or die\nby the stroke of a sword, I do nevertheless avow and maintain, according to\nthe doctrine of the said diabology, that they may suffer a solution of\ncontinuity (as if with thy shable thou shouldst cut athwart the flame of a\nburning fire, or the gross opacous exhalations of a thick and obscure\nsmoke), and cry out like very devils at their sense and feeling of this\ndissolution, which in real deed I must aver and affirm is devilishly\npainful, smarting, and dolorous.\n\nWhen thou seest the impetuous shock of two armies, and vehement violence of\nthe push in their horrid encounter with one another, dost thou think,\nBallockasso, that so horrible a noise as is heard there proceedeth from the\nvoice and shouts of men, the dashing and jolting of harness, the clattering\nand clashing of armies, the hacking and slashing of battle-axes, the\njustling and crashing of pikes, the bustling and breaking of lances, the\nclamour and shrieks of the wounded, the sound and din of drums, the\nclangour and shrillness of trumpets, the neighing and rushing in of horses,\nwith the fearful claps and thundering of all sorts of guns, from the double\ncannon to the pocket pistol inclusively?  I cannot goodly deny but that in\nthese various things which I have rehearsed there may be somewhat\noccasionative of the huge yell and tintamarre of the two engaged bodies.\nBut the most fearful and tumultuous coil and stir, the terriblest and most\nboisterous garboil and hurry, the chiefest rustling black santus of all,\nand most principal hurlyburly springeth from the grievously plangorous\nhowling and lowing of devils, who pell-mell, in a hand-over-head confusion,\nwaiting for the poor souls of the maimed and hurt soldiery, receive\nunawares some strokes with swords, and so by those means suffer a solution\nof and division in the continuity of their aerial and invisible substances;\nas if some lackey, snatching at the lard-slices stuck in a piece of roast\nmeat on the spit, should get from Mr. Greasyfist a good rap on the knuckles\nwith a cudgel.  They cry out and shout like devils, even as Mars did when\nhe was hurt by Diomedes at the siege of Troy, who, as Homer testifieth of\nhim, did then raise his voice more horrifically loud and sonoriferously\nhigh than ten thousand men together would have been able to do.  What\nmaketh all this for our present purpose?  I have been speaking here of\nwell-furbished armour and bright shining swords.  But so is it not, Friar\nJohn, with thy weapon; for by a long discontinuance of work, cessation from\nlabour, desisting from making it officiate, and putting it into that\npractice wherein it had been formerly accustomed, and, in a word, for want\nof occupation, it is, upon my faith, become more rusty than the key-hole of\nan old powdering-tub.  Therefore it is expedient that you do one of these\ntwo things:  either furbish your weapon bravely, and as it ought to be, or\notherwise have a care that, in the rusty case it is in, you do not presume\nto return to the house of Raminagrobis.  For my part, I vow I will not go\nthither.  The devil take me if I go.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge consulteth with Epistemon.\n\nHaving left the town of Villomere, as they were upon their return towards\nPantagruel, Panurge, in addressing his discourse to Epistemon, spoke thus:\nMy most ancient friend and gossip, thou seest the perplexity of my\nthoughts, and knowest many remedies for the removal thereof; art thou not\nable to help and succour me?  Epistemon, thereupon taking the speech in\nhand, represented unto Panurge how the open voice and common fame of the\nwhole country did run upon no other discourse but the derision and mockery\nof his new disguise; wherefore his counsel unto him was that he would in\nthe first place be pleased to make use of a little hellebore for the\npurging of his brain of that peccant humour which, through that extravagant\nand fantastic mummery of his, had furnished the people with a too just\noccasion of flouting and gibing, jeering and scoffing him, and that next he\nwould resume his ordinary fashion of accoutrement, and go apparelled as he\nwas wont to do.  I am, quoth Panurge, my dear gossip Epistemon, of a mind\nand resolution to marry, but am afraid of being a cuckold and to be\nunfortunate in my wedlock.  For this cause have I made a vow to young St.\nFrancis--who at Plessis-les-Tours is much reverenced of all women,\nearnestly cried unto by them, and with great devotion, for he was the first\nfounder of the confraternity of good men, whom they naturally covet,\naffect, and long for--to wear spectacles in my cap, and to carry no\ncodpiece in my breeches, until the present inquietude and perturbation of\nmy spirits be fully settled.\n\nTruly, quoth Epistemon, that is a pretty jolly vow of thirteen to a dozen.\nIt is a shame to you, and I wonder much at it, that you do not return unto\nyourself, and recall your senses from this their wild swerving and straying\nabroad to that rest and stillness which becomes a virtuous man.  This\nwhimsical conceit of yours brings me to the remembrance of a solemn promise\nmade by the shag-haired Argives, who, having in their controversy against\nthe Lacedaemonians for the territory of Thyrea, lost the battle which they\nhoped should have decided it for their advantage, vowed to carry never any\nhair on their heads till preallably they had recovered the loss of both\ntheir honour and lands.  As likewise to the memory of the vow of a pleasant\nSpaniard called Michael Doris, who vowed to carry in his hat a piece of the\nshin of his leg till he should be revenged of him who had struck it off.\nYet do not I know which of these two deserveth most to wear a green and\nyellow hood with a hare's ears tied to it, either the aforesaid\nvainglorious champion, or that Enguerrant, who having forgot the art and\nmanner of writing histories set down by the Samosatian philosopher, maketh\na most tediously long narrative and relation thereof.  For, at the first\nreading of such a profuse discourse, one would think it had been broached\nfor the introducing of a story of great importance and moment concerning\nthe waging of some formidable war, or the notable change and mutation of\npotent states and kingdoms; but, in conclusion, the world laugheth at the\ncapricious champion, at the Englishman who had affronted him, as also at\ntheir scribbler Enguerrant, more drivelling at the mouth than a mustard\npot.  The jest and scorn thereof is not unlike to that of the mountain of\nHorace, which by the poet was made to cry out and lament most enormously as\na woman in the pangs and labour of child-birth, at which deplorable and\nexorbitant cries and lamentations the whole neighbourhood being assembled\nin expectation to see some marvellous monstrous production, could at last\nperceive no other but the paltry, ridiculous mouse.\n\nYour mousing, quoth Panurge, will not make me leave my musing why folks\nshould be so frumpishly disposed, seeing I am certainly persuaded that some\nflout who merit to be flouted at; yet, as my vow imports, so will I do.  It\nis now a long time since, by Jupiter Philos (A mistake of the\ntranslator's.--M.), we did swear faith and amity to one another.  Give me\nyour advice, billy, and tell me your opinion freely, Should I marry or no?\nTruly, quoth Epistemon, the case is hazardous, and the danger so eminently\napparent that I find myself too weak and insufficient to give you a\npunctual and peremptory resolution therein; and if ever it was true that\njudgment is difficult in matters of the medicinal art, what was said by\nHippocrates of Lango, it is certainly so in this case.  True it is that in\nmy brain there are some rolling fancies, by means whereof somewhat may be\npitched upon of a seeming efficacy to the disentangling your mind of those\ndubious apprehensions wherewith it is perplexed; but they do not thoroughly\nsatisfy me.  Some of the Platonic sect affirm that whosoever is able to see\nhis proper genius may know his own destiny.  I understand not their\ndoctrine, nor do I think that you adhere to them; there is a palpable\nabuse.  I have seen the experience of it in a very curious gentleman of the\ncountry of Estangourre.  This is one of the points.  There is yet another\nnot much better.  If there were any authority now in the oracles of Jupiter\nAmmon; of Apollo in Lebadia, Delphos, Delos, Cyrra, Patara, Tegyres,\nPreneste, Lycia, Colophon, or in the Castalian Fountain; near Antiochia in\nSyria, between the Branchidians; of Bacchus in Dodona; of Mercury in\nPhares, near Patras; of Apis in Egypt; of Serapis in Canope; of Faunus in\nMenalia, and Albunea near Tivoli; of Tiresias in Orchomenus; of Mopsus in\nCilicia; of Orpheus in Lesbos, and of Trophonius in Leucadia; I would in\nthat case advise you, and possibly not, to go thither for their judgment\nconcerning the design and enterprise you have in hand.  But you know that\nthey are all of them become as dumb as so many fishes since the advent of\nthat Saviour King whose coming to this world hath made all oracles and\nprophecies to cease; as the approach of the sun's radiant beams expelleth\ngoblins, bugbears, hobthrushes, broams, screech-owl-mates, night-walking\nspirits, and tenebrions.  These now are gone; but although they were as yet\nin continuance and in the same power, rule, and request that formerly they\nwere, yet would not I counsel you to be too credulous in putting any trust\nin their responses.  Too many folks have been deceived thereby.  It stands\nfurthermore upon record how Agrippina did charge the fair Lollia with the\ncrime of having interrogated the oracle of Apollo Clarius, to understand if\nshe should be at any time married to the Emperor Claudius; for which cause\nshe was first banished, and thereafter put to a shameful and ignominious\ndeath.\n\nBut, saith Panurge, let us do better.  The Ogygian Islands are not far\ndistant from the haven of Sammalo.  Let us, after that we shall have spoken\nto our king, make a voyage thither.  In one of these four isles, to wit,\nthat which hath its primest aspect towards the sun setting, it is reported,\nand I have read in good antique and authentic authors, that there reside\nmany soothsayers, fortune-tellers, vaticinators, prophets, and diviners of\nthings to come; that Saturn inhabiteth that place, bound with fair chains\nof gold and within the concavity of a golden rock, being nourished with\ndivine ambrosia and nectar, which are daily in great store and abundance\ntransmitted to him from the heavens, by I do not well know what kind of\nfowls,--it may be that they are the same ravens which in the deserts are\nsaid to have fed St. Paul, the first hermit,--he very clearly foretelleth\nunto everyone who is desirous to be certified of the condition of his lot\nwhat his destiny will be, and what future chance the Fates have ordained\nfor him; for the Parcae, or Weird Sisters, do not twist, spin, or draw out\na thread, nor yet doth Jupiter perpend, project, or deliberate anything\nwhich the good old celestial father knoweth not to the full, even whilst he\nis asleep.  This will be a very summary abbreviation of our labour, if we\nbut hearken unto him a little upon the serious debate and canvassing of\nthis my perplexity.  That is, answered Epistemon, a gullery too evident, a\nplain abuse and fib too fabulous.  I will not go, not I; I will not go.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge consulteth with Herr Trippa.\n\nNevertheless, quoth Epistemon, continuing his discourse, I will tell you\nwhat you may do, if you believe me, before we return to our king.  Hard by\nhere, in the Brown-wheat (Bouchart) Island, dwelleth Herr Trippa.  You know\nhow by the arts of astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, metopomancy, and others\nof a like stuff and nature, he foretelleth all things to come; let us talk\na little, and confer with him about your business.  Of that, answered\nPanurge, I know nothing; but of this much concerning him I am assured, that\none day, and that not long since, whilst he was prating to the great king\nof celestial, sublime, and transcendent things, the lacqueys and footboys\nof the court, upon the upper steps of stairs between two doors, jumbled,\none after another, as often as they listed, his wife, who is passable fair,\nand a pretty snug hussy.  Thus he who seemed very clearly to see all\nheavenly and terrestrial things without spectacles, who discoursed boldly\nof adventures past, with great confidence opened up present cases and\naccidents, and stoutly professed the presaging of all future events and\ncontingencies, was not able, with all the skill and cunning that he had, to\nperceive the bumbasting of his wife, whom he reputed to be very chaste, and\nhath not till this hour got notice of anything to the contrary.  Yet let us\ngo to him, seeing you will have it so; for surely we can never learn too\nmuch.  They on the very next ensuing day came to Herr Trippa's lodging.\nPanurge, by way of donative, presented him with a long gown lined all\nthrough with wolf-skins, with a short sword mounted with a gilded hilt and\ncovered with a velvet scabbard, and with fifty good single angels; then in\na familiar and friendly way did he ask of him his opinion touching the\naffair.  At the very first Herr Trippa, looking on him very wistly in the\nface, said unto him:  Thou hast the metoposcopy and physiognomy of a\ncuckold,--I say, of a notorious and infamous cuckold.  With this, casting\nan eye upon Panurge's right hand in all the parts thereof, he said, This\nrugged draught which I see here, just under the mount of Jove, was never\nyet but in the hand of a cuckold.  Afterwards, he with a white lead pen\nswiftly and hastily drew a certain number of diverse kinds of points, which\nby rules of geomancy he coupled and joined together; then said:  Truth\nitself is not truer than that it is certain thou wilt be a cuckold a little\nafter thy marriage.  That being done, he asked of Panurge the horoscope of\nhis nativity, which was no sooner by Panurge tendered unto him, than that,\nerecting a figure, he very promptly and speedily formed and fashioned a\ncomplete fabric of the houses of heaven in all their parts, whereof when he\nhad considered the situation and the aspects in their triplicities, he\nfetched a deep sigh, and said:  I have clearly enough already discovered\nunto you the fate of your cuckoldry, which is unavoidable, you cannot\nescape it.  And here have I got of new a further assurance thereof, so that\nI may now hardily pronounce and affirm, without any scruple or hesitation\nat all, that thou wilt be a cuckold; that furthermore, thou wilt be beaten\nby thine own wife, and that she will purloin, filch and steal of thy goods\nfrom thee; for I find the seventh house, in all its aspects, of a malignant\ninfluence, and every one of the planets threatening thee with disgrace,\naccording as they stand seated towards one another, in relation to the\nhorned signs of Aries, Taurus, and Capricorn.  In the fourth house I find\nJupiter in a decadence, as also in a tetragonal aspect to Saturn,\nassociated with Mercury.  Thou wilt be soundly peppered, my good, honest\nfellow, I warrant thee.  I will be? answered Panurge.  A plague rot thee,\nthou old fool and doting sot, how graceless and unpleasant thou art!  When\nall cuckolds shall be at a general rendezvous, thou shouldst be their\nstandard-bearer.  But whence comes this ciron-worm betwixt these two\nfingers?  This Panurge said, putting the forefinger of his left hand\nbetwixt the fore and mid finger of the right, which he thrust out towards\nHerr Trippa, holding them open after the manner of two horns, and shutting\ninto his fist his thumb with the other fingers.  Then, in turning to\nEpistemon, he said:  Lo here the true Olus of Martial, who addicted and\ndevoted himself wholly to the observing the miseries, crosses, and\ncalamities of others, whilst his own wife, in the interim, did keep an open\nbawdy-house.  This varlet is poorer than ever was Irus, and yet he is\nproud, vaunting, arrogant, self-conceited, overweening, and more\ninsupportable than seventeen devils; in one word, Ptochalazon, which term\nof old was applied to the like beggarly strutting coxcombs.  Come, let us\nleave this madpash bedlam, this hairbrained fop, and give him leave to rave\nand dose his bellyful with his private and intimately acquainted devils,\nwho, if they were not the very worst of all infernal fiends, would never\nhave deigned to serve such a knavish barking cur as this is.  He hath not\nlearnt the first precept of philosophy, which is, Know thyself; for whilst\nhe braggeth and boasteth that he can discern the least mote in the eye of\nanother, he is not able to see the huge block that puts out the sight of\nboth his eyes.  This is such another Polypragmon as is by Plutarch\ndescribed.  He is of the nature of the Lamian witches, who in foreign\nplaces, in the houses of strangers, in public, and amongst the common\npeople, had a sharper and more piercing inspection into their affairs than\nany lynx, but at home in their own proper dwelling-mansions were blinder\nthan moldwarps, and saw nothing at all.  For their custom was, at their\nreturn from abroad, when they were by themselves in private, to take their\neyes out of their head, from whence they were as easily removable as a pair\nof spectacles from their nose, and to lay them up into a wooden slipper\nwhich for that purpose did hang behind the door of their lodging.\n\nPanurge had no sooner done speaking, when Herr Trippa took into his hand a\ntamarisk branch.  In this, quoth Epistemon, he doth very well, right, and\nlike an artist, for Nicander calleth it the divinatory tree.  Have you a\nmind, quoth Herr Trippa, to have the truth of the matter yet more fully and\namply disclosed unto you by pyromancy, by aeromancy, whereof Aristophanes\nin his Clouds maketh great estimation, by hydromancy, by lecanomancy, of\nold in prime request amongst the Assyrians, and thoroughly tried by\nHermolaus Barbarus.  Come hither, and I will show thee in this platterful\nof fair fountain-water thy future wife lechering and sercroupierizing it\nwith two swaggering ruffians, one after another.  Yea, but have a special\ncare, quoth Panurge, when thou comest to put thy nose within mine arse,\nthat thou forget not to pull off thy spectacles.  Herr Trippa, going on in\nhis discourse, said, By catoptromancy, likewise held in such account by the\nEmperor Didius Julianus, that by means thereof he ever and anon foresaw all\nthat which at any time did happen or befall unto him.  Thou shalt not need\nto put on thy spectacles, for in a mirror thou wilt see her as clearly and\nmanifestly nebrundiated and billibodring it, as if I should show it in the\nfountain of the temple of Minerva near Patras.  By coscinomancy, most\nreligiously observed of old amidst the ceremonies of the ancient Romans.\nLet us have a sieve and shears, and thou shalt see devils.  By\nalphitomancy, cried up by Theocritus in his Pharmaceutria.  By alentomancy,\nmixing the flour of wheat with oatmeal.  By astragalomancy, whereof I have\nthe plots and models all at hand ready for the purpose.  By tyromancy,\nwhereof we make some proof in a great Brehemont cheese which I here keep by\nme.  By giromancy, if thou shouldst turn round circles, thou mightest\nassure thyself from me that they would fall always on the wrong side.  By\nsternomancy, which maketh nothing for thy advantage, for thou hast an\nill-proportioned stomach.  By libanomancy, for the which we shall need but\na little frankincense.  By gastromancy, which kind of ventral fatiloquency\nwas for a long time together used in Ferrara by Lady Giacoma Rodogina, the\nEngastrimythian prophetess.  By cephalomancy, often practised amongst the\nHigh Germans in their boiling of an ass's head upon burning coals.  By\nceromancy, where, by the means of wax dissolved into water, thou shalt see\nthe figure, portrait, and lively representation of thy future wife, and of\nher fredin fredaliatory belly-thumping blades.  By capnomancy.  O the\ngallantest and most excellent of all secrets!  By axionomancy; we want only\na hatchet and a jet-stone to be laid together upon a quick fire of hot\nembers.  O how bravely Homer was versed in the practice hereof towards\nPenelope's suitors!  By onymancy; for that we have oil and wax.  By\ntephromancy.  Thou wilt see the ashes thus aloft dispersed exhibiting thy\nwife in a fine posture.  By botanomancy; for the nonce I have some few\nleaves in reserve.  By sicomancy; O divine art in fig-tree leaves!  By\nicthiomancy, in ancient times so celebrated, and put in use by Tiresias and\nPolydamas, with the like certainty of event as was tried of old at the\nDina-ditch within that grove consecrated to Apollo which is in the\nterritory of the Lycians.  By choiromancy; let us have a great many hogs,\nand thou shalt have the bladder of one of them.  By cheromancy, as the bean\nis found in the cake at the Epiphany vigil.  By anthropomancy, practised by\nthe Roman Emperor Heliogabalus.  It is somewhat irksome, but thou wilt\nendure it well enough, seeing thou art destinated to be a cuckold.  By a\nsibylline stichomancy.  By onomatomancy.  How do they call thee?\nChaw-turd, quoth Panurge.  Or yet by alectryomancy.  If I should here with\na compass draw a round, and in looking upon thee, and considering thy lot,\ndivide the circumference thereof into four-and-twenty equal parts, then\nform a several letter of the alphabet upon every one of them; and, lastly,\nposit a barleycorn or two upon each of these so disposed letters, I durst\npromise upon my faith and honesty that, if a young virgin cock be permitted\nto range alongst and athwart them, he should only eat the grains which are\nset and placed upon these letters, A. C.U.C.K.O.L.D. T.H.O.U. S.H.A.L.T.\nB.E.  And that as fatidically as, under the Emperor Valens, most\nperplexedly desirous to know the name of him who should be his successor to\nthe empire, the cock vacticinating and alectryomantic ate up the pickles\nthat were posited on the letters T.H.E.O.D.  Or, for the more certainty,\nwill you have a trial of your fortune by the art of aruspiciny, by augury,\nor by extispiciny?  By turdispiciny, quoth Panurge.  Or yet by the mystery\nof necromancy?  I will, if you please, suddenly set up again and revive\nsomeone lately deceased, as Apollonius of Tyane did to Achilles, and the\nPythoness in the presence of Saul; which body, so raised up and\nrequickened, will tell us the sum of all you shall require of him:  no more\nnor less than, at the invocation of Erictho, a certain defunct person\nforetold to Pompey the whole progress and issue of the fatal battle fought\nin the Pharsalian fields.  Or, if you be afraid of the dead, as commonly\nall cuckolds are, I will make use of the faculty of sciomancy.\n\nGo, get thee gone, quoth Panurge, thou frantic ass, to the devil, and be\nbuggered, filthy Bardachio that thou art, by some Albanian, for a\nsteeple-crowned hat.  Why the devil didst not thou counsel me as well to\nhold an emerald or the stone of a hyaena under my tongue, or to furnish and\nprovide myself with tongues of whoops, and hearts of green frogs, or to eat\nof the liver and milt of some dragon, to the end that by those means I\nmight, at the chanting and chirping of swans and other fowls, understand the\nsubstance of my future lot and destiny, as did of old the Arabians in the\ncountry of Mesopotamia?  Fifteen brace of devils seize upon the body and\nsoul of this horned renegado, miscreant cuckold, the enchanter, witch, and\nsorcerer of Antichrist to all the devils of hell!  Let us return towards our\nking.  I am sure he will not be well pleased with us if he once come to get\nnotice that we have been in the kennel of this muffled devil.  I repent my\nbeing come hither.  I would willingly dispense with a hundred nobles and\nfourteen yeomans, on condition that he who not long since did blow in the\nbottom of my breeches should instantly with his squirting spittle inluminate\nhis moustaches.  O Lord God now! how the villain hath besmoked me with\nvexation and anger, with charms and witchcraft, and with a terrible coil and\nstir of infernal and Tartarian devils!  The devil take him!  Say Amen, and\nlet us go drink.  I shall not have any appetite for my victuals, how good\ncheer soever I make, these two days to come,--hardly these four.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge consulteth with Friar John of the Funnels.\n\nPanurge was indeed very much troubled in mind and disquieted at the words\nof Herr Trippa, and therefore, as he passed by the little village of\nHuymes, after he had made his address to Friar John, in pecking at,\nrubbing, and scratching his own left ear, he said unto him, Keep me a\nlittle jovial and merry, my dear and sweet bully, for I find my brains\naltogether metagrabolized and confounded, and my spirits in a most dunsical\npuzzle at the bitter talk of this devilish, hellish, damned fool.  Hearken,\nmy dainty cod.\n\nMellow C.            Varnished C.      Resolute C.\nLead-coloured C.     Renowned C.       Cabbage-like C.\nKnurled C.           Matted C.         Courteous C.\nSuborned C.          Genitive C.       Fertile C.\nDesired C.           Gigantal C.       Whizzing C.\nStuffed C.           Oval C.           Neat C.\nSpeckled C.          Claustral C.      Common C.\nFinely metalled C.   Virile C.         Brisk C.\nArabian-like C.      Stayed C.         Quick C.\nTrussed-up Grey-     Massive C.        Bearlike C.\n  hound-like C.      Manual C.         Partitional C.\nMounted C.           Absolute C.       Patronymic C.\nSleeked C.           Well-set C.       Cockney C.\nDiapered C.          Gemel C.          Auromercuriated C.\nSpotted C.           Turkish C.        Robust C.\nMaster C.            Burning C.        Appetizing C.\nSeeded C.            Thwacking C.      Succourable C.\nLusty C.             Urgent C.         Redoubtable C.\nJupped C.            Handsome C.       Affable C.\nMilked C.            Prompt C.         Memorable C.\nCalfeted C.          Fortunate C.      Palpable C.\nRaised C.            Boxwood C.        Barbable C.\nOdd C.               Latten C.         Tragical C.\nSteeled C.           Unbridled C.      Transpontine C.\nStale C.             Hooked C.         Digestive C.\nOrange-tawny C.      Researched C.     Active C.\nEmbroidered C.       Encompassed C.    Vital C.\nGlazed C.            Strouting out C.  Magistral C.\nInterlarded C.       Jolly C.          Monachal C.\nBurgher-like C.      Lively C.         Subtle C.\nEmpowdered C.        Gerundive C.      Hammering C.\nEbonized C.          Franked C.        Clashing C.\nBrasiliated C.       Polished C.       Tingling C.\nOrganized C.         Powdered Beef C.  Usual C.\nPassable C.          Positive C.       Exquisite C.\nTrunkified C.        Spared C.         Trim C.\nFurious C.           Bold C.           Succulent C.\nPacked C.            Lascivious C.     Factious C.\nHooded C.            Gluttonous C.     Clammy C.\nFat C.               Boulting C.       New-vamped C.\nHigh-prized C.       Snorting C.       Improved C.\nRequisite C.         Pilfering C.      Malling C.\nLaycod C.            Shaking C.        Sounding C.\nHand-filling C.      Bobbing C.        Battled C.\nInsuperable C.       Chiveted C.       Burly C.\nAgreeable C.         Fumbling C.       Seditious C.\nFormidable C.        Topsyturvying C.  Wardian C.\nProfitable C.        Raging C.         Protective C.\nNotable C.           Piled up C.       Twinkling C.\nMusculous C.         Filled up C.      Able C.\nSubsidiary C.        Manly C.          Algoristical C.\nSatiric C.           Idle C.           Odoriferous C.\nRepercussive C.      Membrous C.       Pranked C.\nConvulsive C.        Strong C.         Jocund C.\nRestorative C.       Twin C.           Routing C.\nMasculinating C.     Belabouring C.    Purloining C.\nIncarnative C.       Gentle C.         Frolic C.\nSigillative C.       Stirring C.       Wagging C.\nSallying C.          Confident C.      Ruffling C.\nPlump C.             Nimble C.         Jumbling C.\nThundering C.        Roundheaded C.    Rumbling C.\nLechering C.         Figging C.        Thumping C.\nFulminating C.       Helpful C.        Bumping C.\nSparkling C.         Spruce C.         Cringeling C.\nRamming C.           Plucking C.       Berumpling C.\nLusty C.             Ramage C.         Jogging C.\nHousehold C.         Fine C.           Nobbing C.\nPretty C.            Fierce C.         Touzing C.\nAstrolabian C.       Brawny C.         Tumbling C.\nAlgebraical C.       Compt C.          Fambling C.\nVenust C.            Repaired C.       Overturning C.\nAromatizing C.       Soft C.           Shooting C.\nTricksy C.           Wild C.           Culeting C.\nPaillard C.          Renewed C.        Jagged C.\nGaillard C.          Quaint C.         Pinked C.\nBroaching C.         Starting C.       Arsiversing C.\nAddle C.             Fleshy C.         Polished C.\nSyndicated C.        Auxiliary C.      Slashed C.\nHamed C.             Stuffed C.        Clashing C.\nLeisurely C.         Well-fed C.       Wagging C.\nCut C.               Flourished C.     Scriplike C.\nSmooth C.            Fallow C.         Encremastered C.\nDepending C.         Sudden C.         Bouncing C.\nIndependent C.       Graspful C.       Levelling C.\nLingering C.         Swillpow C.       Fly-flap C.\nRapping C.           Crushing C.       Perinae-tegminal C.\nReverend C.          Creaking C.       Squat-couching C.\nNodding C.           Dilting C.        Short-hung C.\nDisseminating C.     Ready C.          The hypogastrian C.\nAffecting C.         Vigorous C.       Witness-bearing C.\nAffected C.          Skulking C.       Testigerous C.\nGrappled C.          Superlative C.    Instrumental C.\n\nMy harcabuzing cod and buttock-stirring ballock, Friar John, my friend, I\ndo carry a singular respect unto thee, and honour thee with all my heart.\nThy counsel I hold for a choice and delicate morsel; therefore have I\nreserved it for the last bit.  Give me thy advice freely, I beseech thee,\nShould I marry or no?  Friar John very merrily, and with a sprightly\ncheerfulness, made this answer to him:  Marry, in the devil's name.  Why\nnot?  What the devil else shouldst thou do but marry?  Take thee a wife,\nand furbish her harness to some tune.  Swinge her skin-coat as if thou wert\nbeating on stock-fish; and let the repercussion of thy clapper from her\nresounding metal make a noise as if a double peal of chiming-bells were\nhung at the cremasters of thy ballocks.  As I say marry, so do I understand\nthat thou shouldst fall to work as speedily as may be; yea, my meaning is\nthat thou oughtest to be so quick and forward therein, as on this same very\nday, before sunset, to cause proclaim thy banns of matrimony, and make\nprovision of bedsteads.  By the blood of a hog's-pudding, till when wouldst\nthou delay the acting of a husband's part?  Dost thou not know, and is it\nnot daily told unto thee, that the end of the world approacheth?  We are\nnearer it by three poles and half a fathom than we were two days ago.  The\nAntichrist is already born; at least it is so reported by many.  The truth\nis, that hitherto the effects of his wrath have not reached further than to\nthe scratching of his nurse and governesses.  His nails are not sharp\nenough as yet, nor have his claws attained to their full growth,--he is\nlittle.\n\n  Crescat; Nos qui vivimus, multiplicemur.\n\nIt is written so, and it is holy stuff, I warrant you; the truth whereof is\nlike to last as long as a sack of corn may be had for a penny, and a\npuncheon of pure wine for threepence.  Wouldst thou be content to be found\nwith thy genitories full in the day of judgment?  Dum venerit judicari?\nThou hast, quoth Panurge, a right, clear, and neat spirit, Friar John, my\nmetropolitan cod; thou speakst in very deed pertinently and to purpose.\nThat belike was the reason which moved Leander of Abydos in Asia, whilst he\nwas swimming through the Hellespontic sea to make a visit to his sweetheart\nHero of Sestus in Europe, to pray unto Neptune and all the other marine\ngods, thus:\n\n  Now, whilst I go, have pity on me,\n  And at my back returning drown me.\n\nHe was loth, it seems, to die with his cods overgorged.  He was to be\ncommended; therefore do I promise, that from henceforth no malefactor shall\nby justice be executed within my jurisdiction of Salmigondinois, who shall\nnot, for a day or two at least before, be permitted to culbut and\nforaminate onocrotalwise, that there remain not in all his vessels to write\na Greek Y.  Such a precious thing should not be foolishly cast away.  He\nwill perhaps therewith beget a male, and so depart the more contentedly out\nof this life, that he shall have left behind him one for one.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Friar John merrily and sportingly counselleth Panurge.\n\nBy Saint Rigomet, quoth Friar John, I do advise thee to nothing, my dear\nfriend Panurge, which I would not do myself were I in thy place.  Only have\na special care, and take good heed thou solder well together the joints of\nthe double-backed and two-bellied beast, and fortify thy nerves so\nstrongly, that there be no discontinuance in the knocks of the venerean\nthwacking, else thou art lost, poor soul.  For if there pass long intervals\nbetwixt the priapizing feats, and that thou make an intermission of too\nlarge a time, that will befall thee which betides the nurses if they desist\nfrom giving suck to children--they lose their milk; and if continually thou\ndo not hold thy aspersory tool in exercise, and keep thy mentul going, thy\nlacticinian nectar will be gone, and it will serve thee only as a pipe to\npiss out at, and thy cods for a wallet of lesser value than a beggar's\nscrip.  This is a certain truth I tell thee, friend, and doubt not of it;\nfor myself have seen the sad experiment thereof in many, who cannot now do\nwhat they would, because before they did not what they might have done:  Ex\ndesuetudine amittuntur privilegia.  Non-usage oftentimes destroys one's\nright, say the learned doctors of the law; therefore, my billy, entertain\nas well as possibly thou canst that hypogastrian lower sort of troglodytic\npeople, that their chief pleasure may be placed in the case of sempiternal\nlabouring.  Give order that henceforth they live not, like idle gentlemen,\nidly upon their rents and revenues, but that they may work for their\nlivelihood by breaking ground within the Paphian trenches.  Nay truly,\nanswered Panurge, Friar John, my left ballock, I will believe thee, for\nthou dealest plain with me, and fallest downright square upon the business,\nwithout going about the bush with frivolous circumstances and unnecessary\nreservations.  Thou with the splendour of a piercing wit hast dissipated\nall the lowering clouds of anxious apprehensions and suspicions which did\nintimidate and terrify me; therefore the heavens be pleased to grant to\nthee at all she-conflicts a stiff-standing fortune.  Well then, as thou\nhast said, so will I do; I will, in good faith, marry,--in that point there\nshall be no failing, I promise thee,--and shall have always by me pretty\ngirls clothed with the name of my wife's waiting-maids, that, lying under\nthy wings, thou mayest be night-protector of their sisterhood.\n\nLet this serve for the first part of the sermon.  Hearken, quoth Friar\nJohn, to the oracle of the bells of Varenes.  What say they?  I hear and\nunderstand them, quoth Panurge; their sound is, by my thirst, more\nuprightly fatidical than that of Jove's great kettles in Dodona.  Hearken!\nTake thee a wife, take thee a wife, and marry, marry, marry; for if thou\nmarry, thou shalt find good therein, herein, here in a wife thou shalt find\ngood; so marry, marry.  I will assure thee that I shall be married; all the\nelements invite and prompt me to it.  Let this word be to thee a brazen\nwall, by diffidence not to be broken through.  As for the second part of\nthis our doctrine,--thou seemest in some measure to mistrust the readiness\nof my paternity in the practising of my placket-racket within the\nAphrodisian tennis-court at all times fitting, as if the stiff god of\ngardens were not favourable to me.  I pray thee, favour me so much as to\nbelieve that I still have him at a beck, attending always my commandments,\ndocile, obedient, vigorous, and active in all things and everywhere, and\nnever stubborn or refractory to my will or pleasure.  I need no more but to\nlet go the reins, and slacken the leash, which is the belly-point, and when\nthe game is shown unto him, say, Hey, Jack, to thy booty! he will not fail\neven then to flesh himself upon his prey, and tuzzle it to some purpose.\nHereby you may perceive, although my future wife were as unsatiable and\ngluttonous in her voluptuousness and the delights of venery as ever was the\nEmpress Messalina, or yet the Marchioness (of Oincester) in England, and I\ndesire thee to give credit to it, that I lack not for what is requisite to\noverlay the stomach of her lust, but have wherewith aboundingly to please\nher.  I am not ignorant that Solomon said, who indeed of that matter\nspeaketh clerklike and learnedly,--as also how Aristotle after him declared\nfor a truth that, for the greater part, the lechery of a woman is ravenous\nand unsatisfiable.  Nevertheless, let such as are my friends who read those\npassages receive from me for a most real verity, that I for such a Jill\nhave a fit Jack; and that, if women's things cannot be satiated, I have an\ninstrument indefatigable,--an implement as copious in the giving as can in\ncraving be their vade mecums.  Do not here produce ancient examples of the\nparagons of paillardice, and offer to match with my testiculatory ability\nthe Priapaean prowess of the fabulous fornicators, Hercules, Proculus\nCaesar, and Mahomet, who in his Alkoran doth vaunt that in his cods he had\nthe vigour of three score bully ruffians; but let no zealous Christian\ntrust the rogue,--the filthy ribald rascal is a liar.  Nor shalt thou need\nto urge authorities, or bring forth the instance of the Indian prince of\nwhom Theophrastus, Plinius, and Athenaeus testify, that with the help of a\ncertain herb he was able, and had given frequent experiments thereof, to\ntoss his sinewy piece of generation in the act of carnal concupiscence\nabove three score and ten times in the space of four-and-twenty hours.  Of\nthat I believe nothing, the number is supposititious, and too prodigally\nfoisted in.  Give no faith unto it, I beseech thee, but prithee trust me in\nthis, and thy credulity therein shall not be wronged, for it is true, and\nprobatum est, that my pioneer of nature--the sacred ithyphallian champion\n--is of all stiff-intruding blades the primest.  Come hither, my ballocket,\nand hearken.  Didst thou ever see the monk of Castre's cowl?  When in any\nhouse it was laid down, whether openly in the view of all or covertly out\nof the sight of any, such was the ineffable virtue thereof for excitating\nand stirring up the people of both sexes unto lechery, that the whole\ninhabitants and indwellers, not only of that, but likewise of all the\ncircumjacent places thereto, within three leagues around it, did suddenly\nenter into rut, both beasts and folks, men and women, even to the dogs and\nhogs, rats and cats.\n\nI swear to thee that many times heretofore I have perceived and found in my\ncodpiece a certain kind of energy or efficacious virtue much more irregular\nand of a greater anomaly than what I have related.  I will not speak to\nthee either of house or cottage, nor of church or market, but only tell\nthee, that once at the representation of the Passion, which was acted at\nSaint Maxents, I had no sooner entered within the pit of the theatre, but\nthat forthwith, by the virtue and occult property of it, on a sudden all\nthat were there, both players and spectators, did fall into such an\nexorbitant temptation of lust, that there was not angel, man, devil, nor\ndeviless upon the place who would not then have bricollitched it with all\ntheir heart and soul.  The prompter forsook his copy, he who played\nMichael's part came down to rights, the devils issued out of hell and\ncarried along with them most of the pretty little girls that were there;\nyea, Lucifer got out of his fetters; in a word, seeing the huge disorder, I\ndisparked myself forth of that enclosed place, in imitation of Cato the\nCensor, who perceiving, by reason of his presence, the Floralian festivals\nout of order, withdrew himself.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Friar John comforteth Panurge in the doubtful matter of cuckoldry.\n\nI understand thee well enough, said Friar John; but time makes all things\nplain.  The most durable marble or porphyry is subject to old age and\ndecay.  Though for the present thou possibly be not weary of the exercise,\nyet is it like I will hear thee confess a few years hence that thy cods\nhang dangling downwards for want of a better truss.  I see thee waxing a\nlittle hoar-headed already.  Thy beard, by the distinction of grey, white,\ntawny, and black, hath to my thinking the resemblance of a map of the\nterrestrial globe or geographical chart.  Look attentively upon and take\ninspection of what I shall show unto thee.  Behold there Asia.  Here are\nTigris and Euphrates.  Lo there Afric.  Here is the mountain of the Moon,\n--yonder thou mayst perceive the fenny march of Nilus.  On this side lieth\nEurope.  Dost thou not see the Abbey of Theleme?  This little tuft, which\nis altogether white, is the Hyperborean Hills.  By the thirst of my\nthropple, friend, when snow is on the mountains, I say the head and the\nchin, there is not then any considerable heat to be expected in the valleys\nand low countries of the codpiece.  By the kibes of thy heels, quoth\nPanurge, thou dost not understand the topics.  When snow is on the tops of\nthe hills, lightning, thunder, tempest, whirlwinds, storms, hurricanes, and\nall the devils of hell rage in the valleys.  Wouldst thou see the\nexperience thereof, go to the territory of the Switzers and earnestly\nperpend with thyself there the situation of the lake of Wunderberlich,\nabout four leagues distant from Berne, on the Syon-side of the land.  Thou\ntwittest me with my grey hairs, yet considerest not how I am of the nature\nof leeks, which with a white head carry a green, fresh, straight, and\nvigorous tail.  The truth is, nevertheless (why should I deny it), that I\nnow and then discern in myself some indicative signs of old age.  Tell\nthis, I prithee, to nobody, but let it be kept very close and secret\nbetwixt us two; for I find the wine much sweeter now, more savoury to my\ntaste, and unto my palate of a better relish than formerly I was wont to\ndo; and withal, besides mine accustomed manner, I have a more dreadful\napprehension than I ever heretofore have had of lighting on bad wine.  Note\nand observe that this doth argue and portend I know not what of the west\nand occident of my time, and signifieth that the south and meridian of mine\nage is past.  But what then, my gentle companion?  That doth but betoken\nthat I will hereafter drink so much the more.  That is not, the devil hale\nit, the thing that I fear; nor is it there where my shoe pinches.  The\nthing that I doubt most, and have greatest reason to dread and suspect is,\nthat through some long absence of our King Pantagruel (to whom I must needs\nbear company should he go to all the devils of Barathrum), my future wife\nshall make me a cuckold.  This is, in truth, the long and short on't.  For\nI am by all those whom I have spoke to menaced and threatened with a horned\nfortune, and all of them affirm it is the lot to which from heaven I am\npredestinated.  Everyone, answered Friar John, that would be a cuckold is\nnot one.  If it be thy fate to be hereafter of the number of that horned\ncattle, then may I conclude with an Ergo, thy wife will be beautiful, and\nErgo, thou wilt be kindly used by her.  Likewise with this Ergo, thou shalt\nbe blessed with the fruition of many friends and well-willers.  And finally\nwith this other Ergo, thou shalt be saved and have a place in Paradise.\nThese are monachal topics and maxims of the cloister.  Thou mayst take more\nliberty to sin.  Thou shalt be more at ease than ever.  There will be never\nthe less left for thee, nothing diminished, but thy goods shall increase\nnotably.  And if so be it was preordinated for thee, wouldst thou be so\nimpious as not to acquiesce in thy destiny?  Speak, thou jaded cod.\n\nFaded C.           Louting C.            Appellant C.\nMouldy C.          Discouraged C.        Swagging C.\nMusty C.           Surfeited C.          Withered C.\nPaltry C.          Peevish C.            Broken-reined C.\nSenseless C.       Translated C.         Defective C.\nFoundered C.       Forlorn C.            Crestfallen C.\nDistempered C.     Unsavoury C.          Felled C.\nBewrayed C.        Worm-eaten C.         Fleeted C.\nInveigled C.       Overtoiled C.         Cloyed C.\nDangling C.        Miserable C.          Squeezed C.\nStupid C.          Steeped C.            Resty C.\nSeedless C.        Kneaded-with-cold-    Pounded C.\nSoaked C.            water C.            Loose C.\nColdish C.         Hacked C.             Fruitless C.\nPickled C.         Flaggy C.             Riven C.\nChurned C.         Scrubby C.            Pursy C.\nFilliped C.        Drained C.            Fusty C.\nSinglefied C.      Haled C.              Jadish C.\nBegrimed C.        Lolling C.            Fistulous C.\nWrinkled C.        Drenched C.           Languishing C.\nFainted C.         Burst C.              Maleficiated C.\nExtenuated C.      Stirred up C.         Hectic C.\nGrim C.            Mitred C.             Worn out C.\nWasted C.          Peddlingly furnished  Ill-favoured C.\nInflamed C.          C.                  Duncified C.\nUnhinged C.        Rusty C.              Macerated C.\nScurfy C.          Exhausted C.          Paralytic C.\nStraddling C.      Perplexed C.          Degraded C.\nPutrefied C.       Unhelved C.           Benumbed C.\nMaimed C.          Fizzled C.            Bat-like C.\nOverlechered C.    Leprous C.            Fart-shotten C.\nDruggely C.        Bruised C.            Sunburnt C.\nMitified C.        Spadonic C.           Pacified C.\nGoat-ridden C.     Boughty C.            Blunted C.\nWeakened C.        Mealy C.              Rankling tasted C.\nAss-ridden C.      Wrangling C.          Rooted out C.\nPuff-pasted C.     Gangrened C.          Costive C.\nSt. Anthonified C. Crust-risen C.        Hailed on C.\nUntriped C.        Ragged C.             Cuffed C.\nBlasted C.         Quelled C.            Buffeted C.\nCut off C.         Braggadocio C.        Whirreted C.\nBeveraged C.       Beggarly C.           Robbed C.\nScarified C.       Trepanned C.          Neglected C.\nDashed C.          Bedusked C.           Lame C.\nSlashed C.         Emasculated C.        Confused C.\nEnfeebled C.       Corked C.             Unsavoury C.\nWhore-hunting C.   Transparent C.        Overthrown C.\nDeteriorated C.    Vile C.               Boulted C.\nChill C.           Antedated C.          Trod under C.\nScrupulous C.      Chopped C.            Desolate C.\nCrazed C.          Pinked C.             Declining C.\nTasteless C.       Cup-glassified C.     Stinking C.\nSorrowful C.       Harsh C.              Crooked C.\nMurdered C.        Beaten C.             Brabbling C.\nMatachin-like C.   Barred C.             Rotten C.\nBesotted C.        Abandoned C.          Anxious C.\nCustomerless C.    Confounded C.         Clouted C.\nMinced C.          Loutish C.            Tired C.\nExulcerated C.     Borne down C.         Proud C.\nPatched C.         Sparred C.            Fractured C.\nStupified C.       Abashed C.            Melancholy C.\nAnnihilated C.     Unseasonable C.       Coxcombly C.\nSpent C.           Oppressed C.          Base C.\nFoiled C.          Grated C.             Bleaked C.\nAnguished C.       Falling away C.       Detested C.\nDisfigured C.      Smallcut C.           Diaphanous C.\nDisabled C.        Disordered C.         Unworthy C.\nForceless C.       Latticed C.           Checked C.\nCensured C.        Ruined C.             Mangled C.\nCut C.             Exasperated C.        Turned over C.\nRifled C.          Rejected C.           Harried C.\nUndone C.          Belammed C.           Flawed C.\nCorrected C.       Fabricitant C.        Froward C.\nSlit C.            Perused C.            Ugly C.\nSkittish C.        Emasculated C.        Drawn C.\nSpongy C.          Roughly handled C.    Riven C.\nBotched C.         Examined C.           Distasteful C.\nDejected C.        Cracked C.            Hanging C.\nJagged C.          Wayward C.            Broken C.\nPining C.          Haggled C.            Limber C.\nDeformed C.        Gleaning C.           Effeminate C.\nMischieved C.      Ill-favoured C.       Kindled C.\nCobbled C.         Pulled C.             Evacuated C.\nEmbased C.         Drooping C.           Grieved C.\nRansacked C.       Faint C.              Carking C.\nDespised C.        Parched C.            Disorderly C.\nMangy C.           Paltry C.             Empty C.\nAbased C.          Cankered C.           Disquieted C.\nSupine C.          Void C.               Besysted C.\nMended C.          Vexed C.              Confounded C.\nDismayed C.        Bestunk C.            Hooked C.\nDivorous C.        Winnowed C.           Unlucky C.\nWearied C.         Decayed C.            Sterile C.\nSad C.             Disastrous C.         Beshitten C.\nCross C.           Unhandsome C.         Appeased C.\nVain-glorious C.   Stummed C.            Caitiff C.\nPoor C.            Barren C.             Woeful C.\nBrown C.           Wretched C.           Unseemly C.\nShrunken C.        Feeble C.             Heavy C.\nAbhorred C.        Cast down C.          Weak C.\nTroubled C.        Stopped C.            Prostrated C.\nScornful C.        Kept under C.         Uncomely C.\nDishonest C.       Stubborn C.           Naughty C.\nReproved C.        Ground C.             Laid flat C.\nCocketed C.        Retchless C.          Suffocated C.\nFilthy C.          Weather-beaten C.     Held down C.\nShred C.           Flayed C.             Barked C.\nChawned C.         Bald C.               Hairless C.\nShort-winded C.    Tossed C.             Flamping C.\nBranchless C.      Flapping C.           Hooded C.\nChapped C.         Cleft C.              Wormy C.\nFailing C.         Meagre C.             Besysted (In his anxiety to swell\nhis catalogue as much as possible, Sir Thomas Urquhart has set down this\nword twice.) C.\nDeficient C.       Dumpified C.          Faulty C.\nLean C.            Suppressed C.         Bemealed C.\nConsumed C.        Hagged C.             Mortified C.\nUsed C.            Jawped C.             Scurvy C.\nPuzzled C.         Havocked C.           Bescabbed C.\nAllayed C.         Astonished C.         Torn C.\nSpoiled C.         Dulled C.             Subdued C.\nClagged C.         Slow C.               Sneaking C.\nPalsy-stricken C.  Plucked up C.         Bare C.\nAmazed C.          Constipated C.        Swart C.\nBedunsed C.        Blown C.              Smutched C.\nExtirpated C.      Blockified C.         Raised up C.\nBanged C.          Pommelled C.          Chopped C.\nStripped C.        All-to-bemauled C.    Flirted C.\nHoary C.           Fallen away C.        Blained C.\nBlotted C.         Stale C.              Rensy C.\nSunk in C.         Corrupted C.          Frowning C.\nGhastly C.         Beflowered C.         Limping C.\nUnpointed C.       Amated C.             Ravelled C.\nBeblistered C.     Blackish C.           Rammish C.\nWizened C.         Underlaid C.          Gaunt C.\nBeggar-plated C.   Loathing C.           Beskimmered C.\nDouf C.            Ill-filled C.         Scraggy C.\nClarty C.          Bobbed C.             Lank C.\nLumpish C.         Mated C.              Swashering C.\nAbject C.          Tawny C.              Moiling C.\nSide C.            Whealed C.            Swinking C.\nChoked up C.       Besmeared C.          Harried C.\nBackward C.        Hollow C.             Tugged C.\nProlix C.          Pantless C.           Towed C.\nSpotted C.         Guizened C.           Misused C.\nCrumpled C.        Demiss C.             Adamitical C.\nFrumpled C.        Refractory C.\n\nBallockatso to the devil, my dear friend Panurge, seeing it is so decreed\nby the gods, wouldst thou invert the course of the planets, and make them\nretrograde?  Wouldst thou disorder all the celestial spheres, blame the\nintelligences, blunt the spindles, joint the wherves, slander the spinning\nquills, reproach the bobbins, revile the clew-bottoms, and finally ravel\nand untwist all the threads of both the warp and the waft of the weird\nSister-Parcae?  What a pox to thy bones dost thou mean, stony cod?  Thou\nwouldst if thou couldst, a great deal worse than the giants of old intended\nto have done.  Come hither, billicullion.  Whether wouldst thou be jealous\nwithout cause, or be a cuckold and know nothing of it?  Neither the one nor\nthe other, quoth Panurge, would I choose to be.  But if I get an inkling of\nthe matter, I will provide well enough, or there shall not be one stick of\nwood within five hundred leagues about me whereof to make a cudgel.  In\ngood faith, Friar John, I speak now seriously unto thee, I think it will be\nmy best not to marry.  Hearken to what the bells do tell me, now that we\nare nearer to them!  Do not marry, marry not, not, not, not, not; marry,\nmarry not, not, not, not, not.  If thou marry, thou wilt miscarry, carry,\ncarry; thou'lt repent it, resent it, sent it!  If thou marry, thou a\ncuckold, a cou-cou-cuckoo, cou-cou-cuckold thou shalt be.  By the worthy\nwrath of God, I begin to be angry.  This campanilian oracle fretteth me to\nthe guts,--a March hare was never in such a chafe as I am.  O how I am\nvexed!  You monks and friars of the cowl-pated and hood-polled fraternity,\nhave you no remedy nor salve against this malady of graffing horns in\nheads?  Hath nature so abandoned humankind, and of her help left us so\ndestitute, that married men cannot know how to sail through the seas of\nthis mortal life and be safe from the whirlpools, quicksands, rocks, and\nbanks that lie alongst the coast of Cornwall.\n\nI will, said Friar John, show thee a way and teach thee an expedient by\nmeans whereof thy wife shall never make thee a cuckold without thy\nknowledge and thine own consent.  Do me the favour, I pray thee, quoth\nPanurge, my pretty, soft, downy cod; now tell it, billy, tell it, I beseech\nthee.  Take, quoth Friar John, Hans Carvel's ring upon thy finger, who was\nthe King of Melinda's chief jeweller.  Besides that this Hans Carvel had\nthe reputation of being very skilful and expert in the lapidary's\nprofession, he was a studious, learned, and ingenious man, a scientific\nperson, full of knowledge, a great philosopher, of a sound judgment, of a\nprime wit, good sense, clear spirited, an honest creature, courteous,\ncharitable, a giver of alms, and of a jovial humour, a boon companion, and\na merry blade, if ever there was any in the world.  He was somewhat\ngorbellied, had a little shake in his head, and was in effect unwieldy of\nhis body.  In his old age he took to wife the Bailiff of Concordat's\ndaughter, young, fair, jolly, gallant, spruce, frisk, brisk, neat, feat,\nsmirk, smug, compt, quaint, gay, fine, tricksy, trim, decent, proper,\ngraceful, handsome, beautiful, comely, and kind--a little too much--to her\nneighbours and acquaintance.\n\nHereupon it fell out, after the expiring of a scantling of weeks, that\nMaster Carvel became as jealous as a tiger, and entered into a very\nprofound suspicion that his new-married gixy did keep a-buttock-stirring\nwith others.  To prevent which inconveniency he did tell her many tragical\nstories of the total ruin of several kingdoms by adultery; did read unto\nher the legend of chaste wives; then made some lectures to her in the\npraise of the choice virtue of pudicity, and did present her with a book in\ncommendation of conjugal fidelity; wherein the wickedness of all licentious\nwomen was odiously detested; and withal he gave her a chain enriched with\npure oriental sapphires.  Notwithstanding all this, he found her always\nmore and more inclined to the reception of her neighbour copes-mates, that\nday by day his jealousy increased.  In sequel whereof, one night as he was\nlying by her, whilst in his sleep the rambling fancies of the lecherous\ndeportments of his wife did take up the cellules of his brain, he dreamt\nthat he encountered with the devil, to whom he had discovered to the full\nthe buzzing of his head and suspicion that his wife did tread her shoe\nawry.  The devil, he thought, in this perplexity did for his comfort give\nhim a ring, and therewithal did kindly put it on his middle finger, saying,\nHans Carvel, I give thee this ring,--whilst thou carriest it upon that\nfinger, thy wife shall never carnally be known by any other than thyself\nwithout thy special knowledge and consent.  Gramercy, quoth Hans Carvel, my\nlord devil, I renounce Mahomet if ever it shall come off my finger.  The\ndevil vanished, as is his custom; and then Hans Carvel, full of joy\nawaking, found that his middle finger was as far as it could reach within\nthe what-do-by-call-it of his wife.  I did forget to tell thee how his\nwife, as soon as she had felt the finger there, said, in recoiling her\nbuttocks, Off, yes, nay, tut, pish, tush, ay, lord, that is not the thing\nwhich should be put up in that place.  With this Hans Carvel thought that\nsome pilfering fellow was about to take the ring from him.  Is not this an\ninfallible and sovereign antidote?  Therefore, if thou wilt believe me, in\nimitation of this example never fail to have continually the ring of thy\nwife's commodity upon thy finger.  When that was said, their discourse and\ntheir way ended.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel convocated together a theologian, physician, lawyer, and\nphilosopher, for extricating Panurge out of the perplexity wherein he was.\n\nNo sooner were they come into the royal palace, but they to the full made\nreport unto Pantagruel of the success of their expedition, and showed him\nthe response of Raminagrobis.  When Pantagruel had read it over and over\nagain, the oftener he perused it being the better pleased therewith, he\nsaid, in addressing his speech to Panurge, I have not as yet seen any\nanswer framed to your demand which affordeth me more contentment.  For in\nthis his succinct copy of verses, he summarily and briefly, yet fully\nenough expresseth how he would have us to understand that everyone in the\nproject and enterprise of marriage ought to be his own carver, sole\narbitrator of his proper thoughts, and from himself alone take counsel in\nthe main and peremptory closure of what his determination should be, in\neither his assent to or dissent from it.  Such always hath been my opinion\nto you, and when at first you spoke thereof to me I truly told you this\nsame very thing; but tacitly you scorned my advice, and would not harbour\nit within your mind.  I know for certain, and therefore may I with the\ngreater confidence utter my conception of it, that philauty, or self-love,\nis that which blinds your judgment and deceiveth you.\n\nLet us do otherwise, and that is this:  Whatever we are, or have,\nconsisteth in three things--the soul, the body, and the goods.  Now, for\nthe preservation of these three, there are three sorts of learned men\nordained, each respectively to have care of that one which is recommended\nto his charge.  Theologues are appointed for the soul, physicians for the\nwelfare of the body, and lawyers for the safety of our goods.  Hence it is\nthat it is my resolution to have on Sunday next with me at dinner a divine,\na physician, and a lawyer, that with those three assembled thus together we\nmay in every point and particle confer at large of your perplexity.  By\nSaint Picot, answered Panurge, we never shall do any good that way, I see\nit already.  And you see yourself how the world is vilely abused, as when\nwith a foxtail one claps another's breech to cajole him.  We give our souls\nto keep to the theologues, who for the greater part are heretics.  Our\nbodies we commit to the physicians, who never themselves take any physic.\nAnd then we entrust our goods to the lawyers, who never go to law against\none another.  You speak like a courtier, quoth Pantagruel.  But the first\npoint of your assertion is to be denied; for we daily see how good\ntheologues make it their chief business, their whole and sole employment,\nby their deeds, their words, and writings, to extirpate errors and heresies\nout of the hearts of men, and in their stead profoundly plant the true and\nlively faith.  The second point you spoke of I commend; for, whereas the\nprofessors of the art of medicine give so good order to the prophylactic,\nor conservative part of their faculty, in what concerneth their proper\nhealths, that they stand in no need of making use of the other branch,\nwhich is the curative or therapeutic, by medicaments.  As for the third, I\ngrant it to be true, for learned advocates and counsellors at law are so\nmuch taken up with the affairs of others in their consultations, pleadings,\nand such-like patrocinations of those who are their clients, that they have\nno leisure to attend any controversies of their own.  Therefore, on the\nnext ensuing Sunday, let the divine be our godly Father Hippothadee, the\nphysician our honest Master Rondibilis, and our legist our friend\nBridlegoose.  Nor will it be (to my thinking) amiss, that we enter into the\nPythagoric field, and choose for an assistant to the three afore-named\ndoctors our ancient faithful acquaintance, the philosopher Trouillogan;\nespecially seeing a perfect philosopher, such as is Trouillogan, is able\npositively to resolve all whatsoever doubts you can propose.  Carpalin,\nhave you a care to have them here all four on Sunday next at dinner,\nwithout fail.\n\nI believe, quoth Epistemon, that throughout the whole country, in all the\ncorners thereof, you could not have pitched upon such other four.  Which I\nspeak not so much in regard of the most excellent qualifications and\naccomplishments wherewith all of them are endowed for the respective\ndischarge and management of each his own vocation and calling (wherein\nwithout all doubt or controversy they are the paragons of the land, and\nsurpass all others), as for that Rondibilis is married now, who before was\nnot,--Hippothadee was not before, nor is yet,--Bridlegoose was married\nonce, but is not now,--and Trouillogan is married now, who wedded was to\nanother wife before.  Sir, if it may stand with your good liking, I will\nease Carpalin of some parcel of his labour, and invite Bridlegoose myself,\nwith whom I of a long time have had a very intimate familiarity, and unto\nwhom I am to speak on the behalf of a pretty hopeful youth who now studieth\nat Toulouse, under the most learned virtuous doctor Boissonet.  Do what you\ndeem most expedient, quoth Pantagruel, and tell me if my recommendation can\nin anything be steadable for the promoval of the good of that youth, or\notherwise serve for bettering of the dignity and office of the worthy\nBoissonet, whom I do so love and respect for one of the ablest and most\nsufficient in his way that anywhere are extant.  Sir, I will use therein my\nbest endeavours, and heartily bestir myself about it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the theologue, Hippothadee, giveth counsel to Panurge in the matter and\nbusiness of his nuptial enterprise.\n\nThe dinner on the subsequent Sunday was no sooner made ready than that the\nafore-named invited guests gave thereto their appearance, all of them,\nBridlegoose only excepted, who was the deputy-governor of Fonsbeton.  At\nthe ushering in of the second service Panurge, making a low reverence,\nspake thus:  Gentlemen, the question I am to propound unto you shall be\nuttered in very few words--Should I marry or no?  If my doubt herein be not\nresolved by you, I shall hold it altogether insolvable, as are the\nInsolubilia de Aliaco; for all of you are elected, chosen, and culled out\nfrom amongst others, everyone in his own condition and quality, like so\nmany picked peas on a carpet.\n\nThe Father Hippothadee, in obedience to the bidding of Pantagruel, and with\nmuch courtesy to the company, answered exceeding modestly after this\nmanner:  My friend, you are pleased to ask counsel of us; but first you\nmust consult with yourself.  Do you find any trouble or disquiet in your\nbody by the importunate stings and pricklings of the flesh?  That I do,\nquoth Panurge, in a hugely strong and almost irresistible measure.  Be not\noffended, I beseech you, good father, at the freedom of my expression.  No\ntruly, friend, not I, quoth Hippothadee, there is no reason why I should be\ndispleased therewith.  But in this carnal strife and debate of yours have\nyou obtained from God the gift and special grace of continency?  In good\nfaith, not, quoth Panurge.  My counsel to you in that case, my friend, is\nthat you marry, quoth Hippothadee; for you should rather choose to marry\nonce than to burn still in fires of concupiscence.  Then Panurge, with a\njovial heart and a loud voice, cried out, That is spoke gallantly, without\ncircumbilivaginating about and about, and never hitting it in its centred\npoint.  Gramercy, my good father!  In truth I am resolved now to marry, and\nwithout fail I shall do it quickly.  I invite you to my wedding.  By the\nbody of a hen, we shall make good cheer, and be as merry as crickets.  You\nshall wear the bridegroom's colours, and, if we eat a goose, my wife shall\nnot roast it for me.  I will entreat you to lead up the first dance of the\nbridesmaids, if it may please you to do me so much favour and honour.\nThere resteth yet a small difficulty, a little scruple, yea, even less than\nnothing, whereof I humbly crave your resolution.  Shall I be a cuckold,\nfather, yea or no?  By no means, answered Hippothadee, will you be\ncuckolded, if it please God.  O the Lord help us now, quoth Panurge;\nwhither are we driven to, good folks?  To the conditionals, which,\naccording to the rules and precepts of the dialectic faculty, admit of all\ncontradictions and impossibilities.  If my Transalpine mule had wings, my\nTransalpine mule would fly, if it please God, I shall not be a cuckold; but\nI shall be a cuckold, if it please him.  Good God, if this were a condition\nwhich I knew how to prevent, my hopes should be as high as ever, nor would\nI despair.  But you here send me to God's privy council, to the closet of\nhis little pleasures.  You, my French countrymen, which is the way you take\nto go thither?\n\nMy honest father, I believe it will be your best not to come to my wedding.\nThe clutter and dingle-dangle noise of marriage guests will but disturb\nyou, and break the serious fancies of your brain.  You love repose, with\nsolitude and silence; I really believe you will not come.  And then you\ndance but indifferently, and would be out of countenance at the first\nentry.  I will send you some good things to your chamber, together with the\nbride's favour, and there you may drink our health, if it may stand with\nyour good liking.  My friend, quoth Hippothadee, take my words in the sense\nwherein I meant them, and do not misinterpret me.  When I tell you,--If it\nplease God,--do I to you any wrong therein?  Is it an ill expression?  Is\nit a blaspheming clause or reserve any way scandalous unto the world?  Do\nnot we thereby honour the Lord God Almighty, Creator, Protector, and\nConserver of all things?  Is not that a mean whereby we do acknowledge him\nto be the sole giver of all whatsoever is good?  Do not we in that manifest\nour faith that we believe all things to depend upon his infinite and\nincomprehensible bounty, and that without him nothing can be produced, nor\nafter its production be of any value, force, or power, without the\nconcurring aid and favour of his assisting grace?  Is it not a canonical\nand authentic exception, worthy to be premised to all our undertakings?  Is\nit not expedient that what we propose unto ourselves be still referred to\nwhat shall be disposed of by the sacred will of God, unto which all things\nmust acquiesce in the heavens as well as on the earth?  Is not that verily\na sanctifying of his holy name?  My friend, you shall not be a cuckold, if\nit please God, nor shall we need to despair of the knowledge of his good\nwill and pleasure herein, as if it were such an abstruse and mysteriously\nhidden secret that for the clear understanding thereof it were necessary to\nconsult with those of his celestial privy council, or expressly make a\nvoyage unto the empyrean chamber where order is given for the effectuating\nof his most holy pleasures.  The great God hath done us this good, that he\nhath declared and revealed them to us openly and plainly, and described\nthem in the Holy Bible.  There will you find that you shall never be a\ncuckold, that is to say, your wife shall never be a strumpet, if you make\nchoice of one of a commendable extraction, descended of honest parents, and\ninstructed in all piety and virtue--such a one as hath not at any time\nhaunted or frequented the company or conversation of those that are of\ncorrupt and depraved manners, one loving and fearing God, who taketh a\nsingular delight in drawing near to him by faith and the cordial observing\nof his sacred commandments--and finally, one who, standing in awe of the\nDivine Majesty of the Most High, will be loth to offend him and lose the\nfavourable kindness of his grace through any defect of faith or\ntransgression against the ordinances of his holy law, wherein adultery is\nmost rigorously forbidden and a close adherence to her husband alone most\nstrictly and severely enjoined; yea, in such sort that she is to cherish,\nserve, and love him above anything, next to God, that meriteth to be\nbeloved.  In the interim, for the better schooling of her in these\ninstructions, and that the wholesome doctrine of a matrimonial duty may\ntake the deeper root in her mind, you must needs carry yourself so on your\npart, and your behaviour is to be such, that you are to go before her in a\ngood example, by entertaining her unfeignedly with a conjugal amity, by\ncontinually approving yourself in all your words and actions a faithful and\ndiscreet husband; and by living, not only at home and privately with your\nown household and family, but in the face also of all men and open view of\nthe world, devoutly, virtuously, and chastely, as you would have her on her\nside to deport and to demean herself towards you, as becomes a godly,\nloyal, and respectful wife, who maketh conscience to keep inviolable the\ntie of a matrimonial oath.  For as that looking-glass is not the best which\nis most decked with gold and precious stones, but that which representeth\nto the eye the liveliest shapes of objects set before it, even so that wife\nshould not be most esteemed who richest is and of the noblest race, but she\nwho, fearing God, conforms herself nearest unto the humour of her husband.\n\nConsider how the moon doth not borrow her light from Jupiter, Mars,\nMercury, or any other of the planets, nor yet from any of those splendid\nstars which are set in the spangled firmament, but from her husband only,\nthe bright sun, which she receiveth from him more or less, according to the\nmanner of his aspect and variously bestowed eradiations.  Just so should\nyou be a pattern to your wife in virtue, goodly zeal, and true devotion,\nthat by your radiance in darting on her the aspect of an exemplary\ngoodness, she, in your imitation, may outshine the luminaries of all other\nwomen.  To this effect you daily must implore God's grace to the protection\nof you both.  You would have me then, quoth Panurge, twisting the whiskers\nof his beard on either side with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand,\nto espouse and take to wife the prudent frugal woman described by Solomon.\nWithout all doubt she is dead, and truly to my best remembrance I never saw\nher; the Lord forgive me!  Nevertheless, I thank you, father.  Eat this\nslice of marchpane, it will help your digestion; then shall you be\npresented with a cup of claret hippocras, which is right healthful and\nstomachal.  Let us proceed.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the physician Rondibilis counselleth Panurge.\n\nPanurge, continuing his discourse, said, The first word which was spoken by\nhim who gelded the lubberly, quaffing monks of Saussiniac, after that he\nhad unstoned Friar Cauldaureil, was this, To the rest.  In like manner, I\nsay, To the rest.  Therefore I beseech you, my good Master Rondibilis,\nshould I marry or not?  By the raking pace of my mule, quoth Rondibilis, I\nknow not what answer to make to this problem of yours.\n\nYou say that you feel in you the pricking stings of sensuality, by which\nyou are stirred up to venery.  I find in our faculty of medicine, and we\nhave founded our opinion therein upon the deliberate resolution and final\ndecision of the ancient Platonics, that carnal concupiscence is cooled and\nquelled five several ways.\n\nFirst, By the means of wine.  I shall easily believe that, quoth Friar\nJohn, for when I am well whittled with the juice of the grape I care for\nnothing else, so I may sleep.  When I say, quoth Rondibilis, that wine\nabateth lust, my meaning is, wine immoderately taken; for by intemperancy\nproceeding from the excessive drinking of strong liquor there is brought\nupon the body of such a swill-down boozer a chillness in the blood, a\nslackening in the sinews, a dissipation of the generative seed, a numbness\nand hebetation of the senses, with a perversive wryness and convulsion of\nthe muscles--all which are great lets and impediments to the act of\ngeneration.  Hence it is that Bacchus, the god of bibbers, tipplers, and\ndrunkards, is most commonly painted beardless and clad in a woman's habit,\nas a person altogether effeminate, or like a libbed eunuch.  Wine,\nnevertheless, taken moderately, worketh quite contrary effects, as is\nimplied by the old proverb, which saith that Venus takes cold when not\naccompanied with Ceres and Bacchus.  This opinion is of great antiquity, as\nappeareth by the testimony of Diodorus the Sicilian, and confirmed by\nPausanias, and universally held amongst the Lampsacians, that Don Priapus\nwas the son of Bacchus and Venus.\n\nSecondly, The fervency of lust is abated by certain drugs, plants, herbs,\nand roots, which make the taker cold, maleficiated, unfit for, and unable\nto perform the act of generation; as hath been often experimented in the\nwater-lily, heraclea, agnus castus, willow-twigs, hemp-stalks, woodbine,\nhoneysuckle, tamarisk, chaste tree, mandrake, bennet, keckbugloss, the skin\nof a hippopotam, and many other such, which, by convenient doses\nproportioned to the peccant humour and constitution of the patient, being\nduly and seasonably received within the body--what by their elementary\nvirtues on the one side and peculiar properties on the other--do either\nbenumb, mortify, and beclumpse with cold the prolific semence, or scatter\nand disperse the spirits which ought to have gone along with and conducted\nthe sperm to the places destined and appointed for its reception, or\nlastly, shut up, stop, and obstruct the ways, passages, and conduits\nthrough which the seed should have been expelled, evacuated, and ejected.\nWe have nevertheless of those ingredients which, being of a contrary\noperation, heat the blood, bend the nerves, unite the spirits, quicken the\nsenses, strengthen the muscles, and thereby rouse up, provoke, excite, and\nenable a man to the vigorous accomplishment of the feat of amorous\ndalliance.  I have no need of those, quoth Panurge, God be thanked, and\nyou, my good master.  Howsoever, I pray you, take no exception or offence\nat these my words; for what I have said was not out of any illwill I did\nbear to you, the Lord he knows.\n\nThirdly, The ardour of lechery is very much subdued and mated by frequent\nlabour and continual toiling.  For by painful exercises and laborious\nworking so great a dissolution is brought upon the whole body, that the\nblood, which runneth alongst the channels of the veins thereof for the\nnourishment and alimentation of each of its members, hath neither time,\nleisure, nor power to afford the seminal resudation, or superfluity of the\nthird concoction, which nature most carefully reserves for the conservation\nof the individual, whose preservation she more heedfully regardeth than the\npropagating of the species and the multiplication of humankind.  Whence it\nis that Diana is said to be chaste, because she is never idle, but always\nbusied about her hunting.  For the same reason was a camp or leaguer of old\ncalled castrum, as if they would have said castum; because the soldiers,\nwrestlers, runners, throwers of the bar, and other such-like athletic\nchampions as are usually seen in a military circumvallation, do incessantly\ntravail and turmoil, and are in a perpetual stir and agitation.  To this\npurpose Hippocrates also writeth in his book, De Aere, Aqua et Locis, that\nin his time there were people in Scythia as impotent as eunuchs in the\ndischarge of a venerean exploit, because that without any cessation, pause,\nor respite they were never from off horseback, or otherwise assiduously\nemployed in some troublesome and molesting drudgery.\n\nOn the other part, in opposition and repugnancy hereto, the philosophers\nsay that idleness is the mother of luxury.  When it was asked Ovid, Why\nAegisthus became an adulterer? he made no other answer but this, Because he\nwas idle.  Who were able to rid the world of loitering and laziness might\neasily frustrate and disappoint Cupid of all his designs, aims, engines,\nand devices, and so disable and appal him that his bow, quiver, and darts\nshould from thenceforth be a mere needless load and burden to him, for that\nit could not then lie in his power to strike or wound any of either sex\nwith all the arms he had.  He is not, I believe, so expert an archer as\nthat he can hit the cranes flying in the air, or yet the young stags\nskipping through the thickets, as the Parthians knew well how to do; that\nis to say, people moiling, stirring and hurrying up and down, restless, and\nwithout repose.  He must have those hushed, still, quiet, lying at a stay,\nlither, and full of ease, whom he is able, though his mother help him, to\ntouch, much less to pierce with all his arrows.  In confirmation hereof,\nTheophrastus, being asked on a time what kind of beast or thing he judged a\ntoyish, wanton love to be? he made answer, that it was a passion of idle\nand sluggish spirits.  From which pretty description of tickling\nlove-tricks that of Diogenes's hatching was not very discrepant, when he\ndefined lechery the occupation of folks destitute of all other occupation.\nFor this cause the Syconian engraver Canachus, being desirous to give us to\nunderstand that sloth, drowsiness, negligence, and laziness were the prime\nguardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not\nstanding, as other stone-cutters had used to do, but sitting.\n\nFourthly, The tickling pricks of incontinency are blunted by an eager\nstudy; for from thence proceedeth an incredible resolution of the spirits,\nthat oftentimes there do not remain so many behind as may suffice to push\nand thrust forwards the generative resudation to the places thereto\nappropriated, and therewithal inflate the cavernous nerve whose office is\nto ejaculate the moisture for the propagation of human progeny.  Lest you\nshould think it is not so, be pleased but to contemplate a little the form,\nfashion, and carriage of a man exceeding earnestly set upon some learned\nmeditation, and deeply plunged therein, and you shall see how all the\narteries of his brains are stretched forth and bent like the string of a\ncrossbow, the more promptly, dexterously, and copiously to suppeditate,\nfurnish, and supply him with store of spirits sufficient to replenish and\nfill up the ventricles, seats, tunnels, mansions, receptacles, and cellules\nof the common sense,--of the imagination, apprehension, and fancy,--of the\nratiocination, arguing, and resolution,--as likewise of the memory,\nrecordation, and remembrance; and with great alacrity, nimbleness, and\nagility to run, pass, and course from the one to the other, through those\npipes, windings, and conduits which to skilful anatomists are perceivable\nat the end of the wonderful net where all the arteries close in a\nterminating point; which arteries, taking their rise and origin from the\nleft capsule of the heart, bring through several circuits, ambages, and\nanfractuosities, the vital, to subtilize and refine them to the ethereal\npurity of animal spirits.  Nay, in such a studiously musing person you may\nespy so extravagant raptures of one as it were out of himself, that all his\nnatural faculties for that time will seem to be suspended from each their\nproper charge and office, and his exterior senses to be at a stand.  In a\nword, you cannot otherwise choose than think that he is by an extraordinary\necstasy quite transported out of what he was, or should be; and that\nSocrates did not speak improperly when he said that philosophy was nothing\nelse but a meditation upon death.  This possibly is the reason why\nDemocritus deprived himself of the sense of seeing, prizing at a much lower\nrate the loss of his sight than the diminution of his contemplations, which\nhe frequently had found disturbed by the vagrant, flying-out strayings of\nhis unsettled and roving eyes.  Therefore is it that Pallas, the goddess of\nwisdom, tutoress and guardianess of such as are diligently studious and\npainfully industrious, is, and hath been still accounted a virgin.  The\nMuses upon the same consideration are esteemed perpetual maids; and the\nGraces, for the like reason, have been held to continue in a sempiternal\npudicity.\n\nI remember to have read that Cupid, on a time being asked of his mother\nVenus why he did not assault and set upon the Muses, his answer was that he\nfound them so fair, so sweet, so fine, so neat, so wise, so learned, so\nmodest, so discreet, so courteous, so virtuous, and so continually busied\nand employed,--one in the speculation of the stars,--another in the\nsupputation of numbers,--the third in the dimension of geometrical\nquantities,--the fourth in the composition of heroic poems,--the fifth in\nthe jovial interludes of a comic strain,--the sixth in the stately gravity\nof a tragic vein,--the seventh in the melodious disposition of musical\nairs,--the eighth in the completest manner of writing histories and books\non all sorts of subjects,--and the ninth in the mysteries, secrets, and\ncuriosities of all sciences, faculties, disciplines, and arts whatsoever,\nwhether liberal or mechanic,--that approaching near unto them he unbended\nhis bow, shut his quiver, and extinguished his torch, through mere shame\nand fear that by mischance he might do them some hurt or prejudice.  Which\ndone, he thereafter put off the fillet wherewith his eyes were bound to\nlook them in the face, and to hear their melody and poetic odes.  There\ntook he the greatest pleasure in the world, that many times he was\ntransported with their beauty and pretty behaviour, and charmed asleep by\nthe harmony; so far was he from assaulting them or interrupting their\nstudies.  Under this article may be comprised what Hippocrates wrote in the\nafore-cited treatise concerning the Scythians; as also that in a book of\nhis entitled Of Breeding and Production, where he hath affirmed all such\nmen to be unfit for generation as have their parotid arteries cut--whose\nsituation is beside the ears--for the reason given already when I was\nspeaking of the resolution of the spirits and of that spiritual blood\nwhereof the arteries are the sole and proper receptacles, and that likewise\nhe doth maintain a large portion of the parastatic liquor to issue and\ndescend from the brains and backbone.\n\nFifthly, By the too frequent reiteration of the act of venery.  There did I\nwait for you, quoth Panurge, and shall willingly apply it to myself, whilst\nanyone that pleaseth may, for me, make use of any of the four preceding.\nThat is the very same thing, quoth Friar John, which Father Scyllino, Prior\nof Saint Victor at Marseilles, calleth by the name of maceration and taming\nof the flesh.  I am of the same opinion,--and so was the hermit of Saint\nRadegonde, a little above Chinon; for, quoth he, the hermits of Thebaide\ncan no more aptly or expediently macerate and bring down the pride of their\nbodies, daunt and mortify their lecherous sensuality, or depress and\novercome the stubbornness and rebellion of the flesh, than by duffling and\nfanfreluching it five-and-twenty or thirty times a day.  I see Panurge,\nquoth Rondibilis, neatly featured and proportioned in all the members of\nhis body, of a good temperament in his humours, well-complexioned in his\nspirits, of a competent age, in an opportune time, and of a reasonably\nforward mind to be married.  Truly, if he encounter with a wife of the like\nnature, temperament, and constitution, he may beget upon her children\nworthy of some transpontine monarchy; and the sooner he marry it will be\nthe better for him, and the more conducible for his profit if he would see\nand have his children in his own time well provided for.  Sir, my worthy\nmaster, quoth Panurge, I will do it, do not you doubt thereof, and that\nquickly enough, I warrant you.  Nevertheless, whilst you were busied in the\nuttering of your learned discourse, this flea which I have in mine ear hath\ntickled me more than ever.  I retain you in the number of my festival\nguests, and promise you that we shall not want for mirth and good cheer\nenough, yea, over and above the ordinary rate.  And, if it may please you,\ndesire your wife to come along with you, together with her she-friends and\nneighbours--that is to be understood--and there shall be fair play.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Rondibilis declareth cuckoldry to be naturally one of the appendances\nof marriage.\n\nThere remaineth as yet, quoth Panurge, going on in his discourse, one small\nscruple to be cleared.  You have seen heretofore, I doubt not, in the Roman\nstandards, S.P.Q.R., Si, Peu, Que, Rien.  Shall not I be a cuckold?  By the\nhaven of safety, cried out Rondibilis, what is this you ask of me?  If you\nshall be a cuckold?  My noble friend, I am married, and you are like to be\nso very speedily; therefore be pleased, from my experiment in the matter,\nto write in your brain with a steel pen this subsequent ditton, There is no\nmarried man who doth not run the hazard of being made a cuckold.  Cuckoldry\nnaturally attendeth marriage.  The shadow doth not more naturally follow\nthe body, than cuckoldry ensueth after marriage to place fair horns upon\nthe husbands' heads.\n\nAnd when you shall happen to hear any man pronounce these three words, He\nis married; if you then say he is, hath been, shall be, or may be a\ncuckold, you will not be accounted an unskilful artist in framing of true\nconsequences.  Tripes and bowels of all the devils, cries Panurge, what do\nyou tell me?  My dear friend, answered Rondibilis, as Hippocrates on a time\nwas in the very nick of setting forwards from Lango to Polystilo to visit\nthe philosopher Democritus, he wrote a familiar letter to his friend\nDionysius, wherein he desired him that he would, during the interval of his\nabsence, carry his wife to the house of her father and mother, who were an\nhonourable couple and of good repute; because I would not have her at my\nhome, said he, to make abode in solitude.  Yet, notwithstanding this her\nresidence beside her parents, do not fail, quoth he, with a most heedful\ncare and circumspection to pry into her ways, and to espy what places she\nshall go to with her mother, and who those be that shall repair unto her.\nNot, quoth he, that I do mistrust her virtue, or that I seem to have any\ndiffidence of her pudicity and chaste behaviour,--for of that I have\nfrequently had good and real proofs,--but I must freely tell you, She is a\nwoman.  There lies the suspicion.\n\nMy worthy friend, the nature of women is set forth before our eyes and\nrepresented to us by the moon, in divers other things as well as in this,\nthat they squat, skulk, constrain their own inclinations, and, with all the\ncunning they can, dissemble and play the hypocrite in the sight and\npresence of their husbands; who come no sooner to be out of the way, but\nthat forthwith they take their advantage, pass the time merrily, desist\nfrom all labour, frolic it, gad abroad, lay aside their counterfeit garb,\nand openly declare and manifest the interior of their dispositions, even as\nthe moon, when she is in conjunction with the sun, is neither seen in the\nheavens nor on the earth, but in her opposition, when remotest from him,\nshineth in her greatest fulness, and wholly appeareth in her brightest\nsplendour whilst it is night.  Thus women are but women.\n\nWhen I say womankind, I speak of a sex so frail, so variable, so\nchangeable, so fickle, inconstant, and imperfect, that in my opinion\nNature, under favour, nevertheless, of the prime honour and reverence which\nis due unto her, did in a manner mistake the road which she had traced\nformerly, and stray exceedingly from that excellence of providential\njudgment by the which she had created and formed all other things, when she\nbuilt, framed, and made up the woman.  And having thought upon it a hundred\nand five times, I know not what else to determine therein, save only that\nin the devising, hammering, forging, and composing of the woman she hath\nhad a much tenderer regard, and by a great deal more respectful heed to the\ndelightful consortship and sociable delectation of the man, than to the\nperfection and accomplishment of the individual womanishness or muliebrity.\nThe divine philosopher Plato was doubtful in what rank of living creatures\nto place and collocate them, whether amongst the rational animals, by\nelevating them to an upper seat in the specifical classis of humanity, or\nwith the irrational, by degrading them to a lower bench on the opposite\nside, of a brutal kind, and mere bestiality.  For nature hath posited in a\nprivy, secret, and intestine place of their bodies, a sort of member, by\nsome not impertinently termed an animal, which is not to be found in men.\nTherein sometimes are engendered certain humours so saltish, brackish,\nclammy, sharp, nipping, tearing, prickling, and most eagerly tickling, that\nby their stinging acrimony, rending nitrosity, figging itch, wriggling\nmordicancy, and smarting salsitude (for the said member is altogether\nsinewy and of a most quick and lively feeling), their whole body is shaken\nand ebrangled, their senses totally ravished and transported, the\noperations of their judgment and understanding utterly confounded, and all\ndisordinate passions and perturbations of the mind thoroughly and\nabsolutely allowed, admitted, and approved of; yea, in such sort that if\nnature had not been so favourable unto them as to have sprinkled their\nforehead with a little tincture of bashfulness and modesty, you should see\nthem in a so frantic mood run mad after lechery, and hie apace up and down\nwith haste and lust, in quest of and to fix some chamber-standard in their\nPaphian ground, that never did the Proetides, Mimallonides, nor Lyaean\nThyades deport themselves in the time of their bacchanalian festivals more\nshamelessly, or with a so affronted and brazen-faced impudency; because\nthis terrible animal is knit unto, and hath an union with all the chief and\nmost principal parts of the body, as to anatomists is evident.  Let it not\nhere be thought strange that I should call it an animal, seeing therein I\ndo no otherwise than follow and adhere to the doctrine of the academic and\nperipatetic philosophers.  For if a proper motion be a certain mark and\ninfallible token of the life and animation of the mover, as Aristotle\nwriteth, and that any such thing as moveth of itself ought to be held\nanimated and of a living nature, then assuredly Plato with very good reason\ndid give it the denomination of an animal, for that he perceived and\nobserved in it the proper and self-stirring motions of suffocation,\nprecipitation, corrugation, and of indignation so extremely violent, that\noftentimes by them is taken and removed from the woman all other sense and\nmoving whatsoever, as if she were in a swounding lipothymy, benumbing\nsyncope, epileptic, apoplectic palsy, and true resemblance of a pale-faced\ndeath.\n\nFurthermore, in the said member there is a manifest discerning faculty of\nscents and odours very perceptible to women, who feel it fly from what is\nrank and unsavoury, and follow fragrant and aromatic smells.  It is not\nunknown to me how Cl. Galen striveth with might and main to prove that\nthese are not proper and particular notions proceeding intrinsically from\nthe thing itself, but accidentally and by chance.  Nor hath it escaped my\nnotice how others of that sect have laboured hardly, yea, to the utmost of\ntheir abilities, to demonstrate that it is not a sensitive discerning or\nperception in it of the difference of wafts and smells, but merely a\nvarious manner of virtue and efficacy passing forth and flowing from the\ndiversity of odoriferous substances applied near unto it.  Nevertheless, if\nyou will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus's\nbalance the strength of their reasons and arguments, you shall find that\nthey, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like\nnature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious envy to check\nand reprehend their betters than for any design to make inquiry into the\nsolid truth.\n\nI will not launch my little skiff any further into the wide ocean of this\ndispute, only will I tell you that the praise and commendation is not mean\nand slender which is due to those honest and good women who, living\nchastely and without blame, have had the power and virtue to curb, range,\nand subdue that unbridled, heady, and wild animal to an obedient,\nsubmissive, and obsequious yielding unto reason.  Therefore here will I\nmake an end of my discourse thereon, when I shall have told you that the\nsaid animal being once satiated--if it be possible that it can be contented\nor satisfied--by that aliment which nature hath provided for it out of the\nepididymal storehouse of man, all its former and irregular and disordered\nmotions are at an end, laid, and assuaged, all its vehement and unruly\nlongings lulled, pacified, and quieted, and all the furious and raging\nlusts, appetites, and desires thereof appeased, calmed, and extinguished.\nFor this cause let it seem nothing strange unto you if we be in a perpetual\ndanger of being cuckolds, that is to say, such of us as have not\nwherewithal fully to satisfy the appetite and expectation of that voracious\nanimal.  Odds fish! quoth Panurge, have you no preventive cure in all your\nmedicinal art for hindering one's head to be horny-graffed at home whilst\nhis feet are plodding abroad?  Yes, that I have, my gallant friend,\nanswered Rondibilis, and that which is a sovereign remedy, whereof I\nfrequently make use myself; and, that you may the better relish, it is set\ndown and written in the book of a most famous author, whose renown is of a\nstanding of two thousand years.  Hearken and take good heed.  You are,\nquoth Panurge, by cockshobby, a right honest man, and I love you with all\nmy heart.  Eat a little of this quince-pie; it is very proper and\nconvenient for the shutting up of the orifice of the ventricle of the\nstomach, because of a kind of astringent stypticity which is in that sort\nof fruit, and is helpful to the first concoction.  But what? I think I\nspeak Latin before clerks.  Stay till I give you somewhat to drink out of\nthis Nestorian goblet.  Will you have another draught of white hippocras?\nBe not afraid of the squinzy, no.  There is neither squinant, ginger, nor\ngrains in it; only a little choice cinnamon, and some of the best refined\nsugar, with the delicious white wine of the growth of that vine which was\nset in the slips of the great sorbapple above the walnut-tree.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRondibilis the physician's cure of cuckoldry.\n\nAt that time, quoth Rondibilis, when Jupiter took a view of the state of\nhis Olympic house and family, and that he had made the calendar of all the\ngods and goddesses, appointing unto the festival of every one of them its\nproper day and season, establishing certain fixed places and stations for\nthe pronouncing of oracles and relief of travelling pilgrims, and ordaining\nvictims, immolations, and sacrifices suitable and correspondent to the\ndignity and nature of the worshipped and adored deity--Did not he do, asked\nPanurge, therein as Tintouille, the Bishop of Auxerre, is said once to have\ndone?  This noble prelate loved entirely the pure liquor of the grape, as\nevery honest and judicious man doth; therefore was it that he had an\nespecial care and regard to the bud of the vine-tree as to the\ngreat-grandfather of Bacchus.  But so it is, that for sundry years together\nhe saw a most pitiful havoc, desolation, and destruction made amongst the\nsprouts, shootings, buds, blossoms, and scions of the vines by hoary frost,\ndank fogs, hot mists, unseasonable colds, chill blasts, thick hail, and\nother calamitous chances of foul weather, happening, as he thought, by the\ndismal inauspiciousness of the holy days of St. George, St. Mary, St. Paul,\nSt. Eutrope, Holy Rood, the Ascension, and other festivals, in that time\nwhen the sun passeth under the sign of Taurus; and thereupon harboured in\nhis mind this opinion, that the afore-named saints were Saint\nHail-flingers, Saint Frost-senders, Saint Fog-mongers, and Saint Spoilers of\nthe Vine-buds.  For which cause he went about to have transmitted their\nfeasts from the spring to the winter, to be celebrated between Christmas and\nEpiphany, so the mother of the three kings called it, allowing them with all\nhonour and reverence the liberty then to freeze, hail, and rain as much as\nthey would; for that he knew that at such a time frost was rather profitable\nthan hurtful to the vine-buds, and in their steads to have placed the\nfestivals of St. Christopher, St. John the Baptist, St. Magdalene, St. Anne,\nSt. Domingo, and St. Lawrence; yea, and to have gone so far as to collocate\nand transpose the middle of August in and to the beginning of May, because\nduring the whole space of their solemnity there was so little danger of\nhoary frosts and cold mists, that no artificers are then held in greater\nrequest than the afforders of refrigerating inventions, makers of junkets,\nfit disposers of cooling shades, composers of green arbours, and refreshers\nof wine.\n\nJupiter, said Rondibilis, forgot the poor devil Cuckoldry, who was then in\nthe court at Paris very eagerly soliciting a peddling suit at law for one\nof his vassals and tenants.  Within some few days thereafter, I have forgot\nhow many, when he got full notice of the trick which in his absence was\ndone unto him, he instantly desisted from prosecuting legal processes in\nthe behalf of others, full of solicitude to pursue after his own business,\nlest he should be foreclosed, and thereupon he appeared personally at the\ntribunal of the great Jupiter, displayed before him the importance of his\npreceding merits, together with the acceptable services which in obedience\nto his commandments he had formerly performed; and therefore in all\nhumility begged of him that he would be pleased not to leave him alone\namongst all the sacred potentates, destitute and void of honour, reverence,\nsacrifices, and festival ceremonies.  To this petition Jupiter's answer was\nexcusatory, that all the places and offices of his house were bestowed.\nNevertheless, so importuned was he by the continual supplications of\nMonsieur Cuckoldry, that he, in fine, placed him in the rank, list, roll,\nrubric, and catalogue, and appointed honours, sacrifices, and festival\nrites to be observed on earth in great devotion, and tendered to him with\nsolemnity.  The feast, because there was no void, empty, nor vacant place\nin all the calendar, was to be celebrated jointly with, and on the same day\nthat had been consecrated to the goddess Jealousy.  His power and dominion\nshould be over married folks, especially such as had handsome wives.  His\nsacrifices were to be suspicion, diffidence, mistrust, a lowering pouting\nsullenness, watchings, wardings, researchings, plyings, explorations,\ntogether with the waylayings, ambushes, narrow observations, and malicious\ndoggings of the husband's scouts and espials of the most privy actions of\ntheir wives.  Herewithal every married man was expressly and rigorously\ncommanded to reverence, honour, and worship him, to celebrate and solemnize\nhis festival with twice more respect than that of any other saint or deity,\nand to immolate unto him with all sincerity and alacrity of heart the\nabove-mentioned sacrifices and oblations, under pain of severe censures,\nthreatenings, and comminations of these subsequent fines, mulcts,\namerciaments, penalties, and punishments to be inflicted on the\ndelinquents:  that Monsieur Cuckoldry should never be favourable nor\npropitious to them; that he should never help, aid, supply, succour, nor\ngrant them any subventitious furtherance, auxiliary suffrage, or\nadminiculary assistance; that he should never hold them in any reckoning,\naccount, or estimation; that he should never deign to enter within their\nhouses, neither at the doors, windows, nor any other place thereof; that he\nshould never haunt nor frequent their companies or conversations, how\nfrequently soever they should invocate him and call upon his name; and that\nnot only he should leave and abandon them to rot alone with their wives in\na sempiternal solitariness, without the benefit of the diversion of any\ncopes-mate or corrival at all, but should withal shun and eschew them, fly\nfrom them, and eternally forsake and reject them as impious heretics and\nsacrilegious persons, according to the accustomed manner of other gods\ntowards such as are too slack in offering up the duties and reverences\nwhich ought to be performed respectively to their divinities--as is\nevidently apparent in Bacchus towards negligent vine-dressers; in Ceres,\nagainst idle ploughmen and tillers of the ground; in Pomona, to unworthy\nfruiterers and costard-mongers; in Neptune, towards dissolute mariners and\nseafaring men, in Vulcan, towards loitering smiths and forgemen; and so\nthroughout the rest.  Now, on the contrary, this infallible promise was\nadded, that unto all those who should make a holy day of the above-recited\nfestival, and cease from all manner of worldly work and negotiation, lay\naside all their own most important occasions, and to be so retchless,\nheedless, and careless of what might concern the management of their proper\naffairs as to mind nothing else but a suspicious espying and prying into\nthe secret deportments of their wives, and how to coop, shut up, hold at\nunder, and deal cruelly and austerely with them by all the harshness and\nhardships that an implacable and every way inexorable jealousy can devise\nand suggest, conform to the sacred ordinances of the afore-mentioned\nsacrifices and oblations, he should be continually favourable to them,\nshould love them, sociably converse with them, should be day and night in\ntheir houses, and never leave them destitute of his presence.  Now I have\nsaid, and you have heard my cure.\n\nHa, ha, ha! quoth Carpalin, laughing; this is a remedy yet more apt and\nproper than Hans Carvel's ring.  The devil take me if I do not believe it!\nThe humour, inclination, and nature of women is like the thunder, whose\nforce in its bolt or otherwise burneth, bruiseth, and breaketh only hard,\nmassive, and resisting objects, without staying or stopping at soft, empty,\nand yielding matters.  For it pasheth into pieces the steel sword without\ndoing any hurt to the velvet scabbard which ensheatheth it.  It chrusheth\nalso and consumeth the bones without wounding or endamaging the flesh\nwherewith they are veiled and covered.  Just so it is that women for the\ngreater part never bend the contention, subtlety, and contradictory\ndisposition of their spirits unless it be to do what is prohibited and\nforbidden.\n\nVerily, quoth Hippothadee, some of our doctors aver for a truth that the\nfirst woman of the world, whom the Hebrews call Eve, had hardly been\ninduced or allured into the temptation of eating of the fruit of the Tree\nof Life if it had not been forbidden her so to do.  And that you may give\nthe more credit to the validity of this opinion, consider how the cautelous\nand wily tempter did commemorate unto her, for an antecedent to his\nenthymeme, the prohibition which was made to taste it, as being desirous to\ninfer from thence, It is forbidden thee; therefore thou shouldst eat of it,\nelse thou canst not be a woman.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow women ordinarily have the greatest longing after things prohibited.\n\nWhen I was, quoth Carpalin, a whoremaster at Orleans, the whole art of\nrhetoric, in all its tropes and figures, was not able to afford unto me a\ncolour or flourish of greater force and value, nor could I by any other\nform or manner of elocution pitch upon a more persuasive argument for\nbringing young beautiful married ladies into the snares of adultery,\nthrough alluring and enticing them to taste with me of amorous delights,\nthan with a lively sprightfulness to tell them in downright terms, and to\nremonstrate to them with a great show of detestation of a crime so horrid,\nhow their husbands were jealous.  This was none of my invention.  It is\nwritten, and we have laws, examples, reasons, and daily experiences\nconfirmative of the same.  If this belief once enter into their noddles,\ntheir husbands will infallibly be cuckolds; yea, by God, will they, without\nswearing, although they should do like Semiramis, Pasiphae, Egesta, the\nwomen of the Isle Mandez in Egypt, and other such-like queanish flirting\nharlots mentioned in the writings of Herodotus, Strabo, and such-like\npuppies.\n\nTruly, quoth Ponocrates, I have heard it related, and it hath been told me\nfor a verity, that Pope John XXII., passing on a day through the Abbey of\nToucherome, was in all humility required and besought by the abbess and\nother discreet mothers of the said convent to grant them an indulgence by\nmeans whereof they might confess themselves to one another, alleging that\nreligious women were subject to some petty secret slips and imperfections\nwhich would be a foul and burning shame for them to discover and to reveal\nto men, how sacerdotal soever their functions were; but that they would\nfreelier, more familiarly, and with greater cheerfulness, open to each\nother their offences, faults, and escapes under the seal of confession.\nThere is not anything, answered the pope, fitting for you to impetrate of\nme which I would not most willingly condescend unto; but I find one\ninconvenience.  You know confession should be kept secret, and women are\nnot able to do so.  Exceeding well, quoth they, most holy father, and much\nmore closely than the best of men.\n\nThe said pope on the very same day gave them in keeping a pretty box,\nwherein he purposely caused a little linnet to be put, willing them very\ngently and courteously to lock it up in some sure and hidden place, and\npromising them, by the faith of a pope, that he should yield to their\nrequest if they would keep secret what was enclosed within that deposited\nbox, enjoining them withal not to presume one way nor other, directly or\nindirectly, to go about the opening thereof, under pain of the highest\necclesiastical censure, eternal excommunication.  The prohibition was no\nsooner made but that they did all of them boil with a most ardent desire to\nknow and see what kind of thing it was that was within it.  They thought\nlong already that the pope was not gone, to the end they might jointly,\nwith the more leisure and ease, apply themselves to the box-opening\ncuriosity.\n\nThe holy father, after he had given them his benediction, retired and\nwithdrew himself to the pontifical lodgings of his own palace.  But he was\nhardly gone three steps from without the gates of their cloister when the\ngood ladies throngingly, and as in a huddled crowd, pressing hard on the\nbacks of one another, ran thrusting and shoving who should be first at the\nsetting open of the forbidden box and descrying of the quod latitat within.\n\nOn the very next day thereafter the pope made them another visit, of a full\ndesign, purpose, and intention, as they imagined, to despatch the grant of\ntheir sought and wished-for indulgence.  But before he would enter into any\nchat or communing with them, he commanded the casket to be brought unto\nhim.  It was done so accordingly; but, by your leave, the bird was no more\nthere.  Then was it that the pope did represent to their maternities how\nhard a matter and difficult it was for them to keep secrets revealed to\nthem in confession unmanifested to the ears of others, seeing for the space\nof four-and-twenty hours they were not able to lay up in secret a box which\nhe had highly recommended to their discretion, charge, and custody.\n\nWelcome, in good faith, my dear master, welcome!  It did me good to hear\nyou talk, the Lord be praised for all!  I do not remember to have seen you\nbefore now, since the last time that you acted at Montpellier with our\nancient friends, Anthony Saporra, Guy Bourguyer, Balthasar Noyer, Tolet,\nJohn Quentin, Francis Robinet, John Perdrier, and Francis Rabelais, the\nmoral comedy of him who had espoused and married a dumb wife.  I was there,\nquoth Epistemon.  The good honest man her husband was very earnestly urgent\nto have the fillet of her tongue untied, and would needs have her speak by\nany means.  At his desire some pains were taken on her, and partly by the\nindustry of the physician, other part by the expertness of the surgeon, the\nencyliglotte which she had under her tongue being cut, she spoke and spoke\nagain; yea, within a few hours she spoke so loud, so much, so fiercely, and\nso long, that her poor husband returned to the same physician for a recipe\nto make her hold her peace.  There are, quoth the physician, many proper\nremedies in our art to make dumb women speak, but there are none that ever\nI could learn therein to make them silent.  The only cure which I have\nfound out is their husband's deafness.  The wretch became within few weeks\nthereafter, by virtue of some drugs, charms, or enchantments which the\nphysician had prescribed unto him, so deaf that he could not have heard the\nthundering of nineteen hundred cannons at a salvo.  His wife perceiving\nthat indeed he was as deaf as a door-nail, and that her scolding was but in\nvain, sith that he heard her not, she grew stark mad.\n\nSome time after the doctor asked for his fee of the husband, who answered\nthat truly he was deaf, and so was not able to understand what the tenour\nof his demand might be.  Whereupon the leech bedusted him with a little, I\nknow not what, sort of powder, which rendered him a fool immediately, so\ngreat was the stultificating virtue of that strange kind of pulverized\ndose.  Then did this fool of a husband and his mad wife join together, and,\nfalling on the doctor and the surgeon, did so scratch, bethwack, and bang\nthem that they were left half dead upon the place, so furious were the\nblows which they received.  I never in my lifetime laughed so much as at\nthe acting of that buffoonery.\n\nLet us come to where we left off, quoth Panurge.  Your words, being\ntranslated from the clapper-dudgeons to plain English, do signify that it\nis not very inexpedient that I marry, and that I should not care for being\na cuckold.  You have there hit the nail on the head.  I believe, master\ndoctor, that on the day of my marriage you will be so much taken up with\nyour patients, or otherwise so seriously employed, that we shall not enjoy\nyour company.  Sir, I will heartily excuse your absence.\n\n  Stercus et urina medici sunt prandia prima.\n  Ex aliis paleas, ex istis collige grana.\n\nYou are mistaken, quoth Rondibilis, in the second verse of our distich, for\nit ought to run thus--\n\n  Nobis sunt signa, vobis sunt prandia digna.\n\nIf my wife at any time prove to be unwell and ill at ease, I will look upon\nthe water which she shall have made in an urinal glass, quoth Rondibilis,\ngrope her pulse, and see the disposition of her hypogaster, together with\nher umbilicary parts--according to the prescript rule of Hippocrates, 2.\nAph. 35--before I proceed any further in the cure of her distemper.  No,\nno, quoth Panurge, that will be but to little purpose.  Such a feat is for\nthe practice of us that are lawyers, who have the rubric, De ventre\ninspiciendo.  Do not therefore trouble yourself about it, master doctor; I\nwill provide for her a plaster of warm guts.  Do not neglect your more\nurgent occasions otherwhere for coming to my wedding.  I will send you some\nsupply of victuals to your own house, without putting you to the trouble of\ncoming abroad, and you shall always be my special friend.  With this,\napproaching somewhat nearer to him, he clapped into his hand, without the\nspeaking of so much as one word, four rose nobles.  Rondibilis did shut his\nfist upon them right kindly; yet, as if it had displeased him to make\nacceptance of such golden presents, he in a start, as if he had been wroth,\nsaid, He he, he, he, he! there was no need of anything; I thank you\nnevertheless.  From wicked folks I never get enough, and I from honest\npeople refuse nothing.  I shall be always, sir, at your command.  Provided\nthat I pay you well, quoth Panurge.  That, quoth Rondibilis, is understood.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the philosopher Trouillogan handleth the difficulty of marriage.\n\nAs this discourse was ended, Pantagruel said to the philosopher\nTrouillogan, Our loyal, honest, true, and trusty friend, the lamp from hand\nto hand is come to you.  It falleth to your turn to give an answer:  Should\nPanurge, pray you, marry, yea or no?  He should do both, quoth Trouillogan.\nWhat say you? asked Panurge.  That which you have heard, answered\nTrouillogan.  What have I heard? replied Panurge.  That which I have said,\nreplied Trouillogan.  Ha, ha, ha! are we come to that pass? quoth Panurge.\nLet it go nevertheless, I do not value it at a rush, seeing we can make no\nbetter of the game.  But howsoever tell me, Should I marry or no?  Neither\nthe one nor the other, answered Trouillogan.  The devil take me, quoth\nPanurge, if these odd answers do not make me dote, and may he snatch me\npresently away if I do understand you.  Stay awhile until I fasten these\nspectacles of mine on this left ear, that I may hear you better.  With this\nPantagruel perceived at the door of the great hall, which was that day\ntheir dining-room, Gargantua's little dog, whose name was Kyne; for so was\nToby's dog called, as is recorded.  Then did he say to these who were there\npresent, Our king is not far off,--let us all rise.\n\nThat word was scarcely sooner uttered, than that Gargantua with his royal\npresence graced that banqueting and stately hall.  Each of the guests arose\nto do their king that reverence and duty which became them.  After that\nGargantua had most affably saluted all the gentlemen there present, he\nsaid, Good friends, I beg this favour of you, and therein you will very\nmuch oblige me, that you leave not the places where you sate nor quit the\ndiscourse you were upon.  Let a chair be brought hither unto this end of\nthe table, and reach me a cupful of the strongest and best wine you have,\nthat I may drink to all the company.  You are, in faith, all welcome,\ngentlemen.  Now let me know what talk you were about.  To this Pantagruel\nanswered that at the beginning of the second service Panurge had proposed a\nproblematic theme, to wit, whether he should marry, or not marry? that\nFather Hippothadee and Doctor Rondibilis had already despatched their\nresolutions thereupon; and that, just as his majesty was coming in, the\nfaithful Trouillogan in the delivery of his opinion hath thus far\nproceeded, that when Panurge asked whether he ought to marry, yea or no? at\nfirst he made this answer, Both together.  When this same question was\nagain propounded, his second answer was, Neither the one nor the other.\nPanurge exclaimeth that those answers are full of repugnancies and\ncontradictions, protesting that he understands them not, nor what it is\nthat can be meant by them.  If I be not mistaken, quoth Gargantua, I\nunderstand it very well.  The answer is not unlike to that which was once\nmade by a philosopher in ancient times, who being interrogated if he had a\nwoman whom they named him to his wife?  I have her, quoth he, but she hath\nnot me,--possessing her, by her I am not possessed.  Such another answer,\nquoth Pantagruel, was once made by a certain bouncing wench of Sparta, who\nbeing asked if at any time she had had to do with a man? No, quoth she, but\nsometimes men have had to do with me.  Well then, quoth Rondibilis, let it\nbe a neuter in physic, as when we say a body is neuter, when it is neither\nsick nor healthful, and a mean in philosophy; that, by an abnegation of\nboth extremes, and this by the participation of the one and of the other.\nEven as when lukewarm water is said to be both hot and cold; or rather, as\nwhen time makes the partition, and equally divides betwixt the two, a while\nin the one, another while as long in the other opposite extremity.  The\nholy Apostle, quoth Hippothadee, seemeth, as I conceive, to have more\nclearly explained this point when he said, Those that are married, let them\nbe as if they were not married; and those that have wives, let them be as\nif they had no wives at all.  I thus interpret, quoth Pantagruel, the\nhaving and not having of a wife.  To have a wife is to have the use of her\nin such a way as nature hath ordained, which is for the aid, society, and\nsolace of man, and propagating of his race.  To have no wife is not to be\nuxorious, play the coward, and be lazy about her, and not for her sake to\ndistain the lustre of that affection which man owes to God, or yet for her\nto leave those offices and duties which he owes unto his country, unto his\nfriends and kindred, or for her to abandon and forsake his precious\nstudies, and other businesses of account, to wait still on her will, her\nbeck, and her buttocks.  If we be pleased in this sense to take having and\nnot having of a wife, we shall indeed find no repugnancy nor contradiction\nin the terms at all.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA continuation of the answer of the Ephectic and Pyrrhonian philosopher\nTrouillogan.\n\nYou speak wisely, quoth Panurge, if the moon were green cheese.  Such a\ntale once pissed my goose.  I do not think but that I am let down into that\ndark pit in the lowermost bottom whereof the truth was hid, according to\nthe saying of Heraclitus.  I see no whit at all, I hear nothing, understand\nas little, my senses are altogether dulled and blunted; truly I do very\nshrewdly suspect that I am enchanted.  I will now alter the former style of\nmy discourse, and talk to him in another strain.  Our trusty friend, stir\nnot, nor imburse any; but let us vary the chance, and speak without\ndisjunctives.  I see already that these loose and ill-joined members of an\nenunciation do vex, trouble, and perplex you.\n\n  Now go on, in the name of God!  Should I marry?\n\n  Trouillogan.  There is some likelihood therein.\n\n  Panurge.  But if I do not marry?\n\n  Trouil.  I see in that no inconvenience.\n\n  Pan.  You do not?\n\n  Trouil.  None, truly, if my eyes deceive me not.\n\n  Pan.  Yea, but I find more than five hundred.\n\n  Trouil.  Reckon them.\n\n  Pan.  This is an impropriety of speech, I confess; for I do no more\nthereby but take a certain for an uncertain number, and posit the\ndeterminate term for what is indeterminate.  When I say, therefore, five\nhundred, my meaning is many.\n\n  Trouil.  I hear you.\n\nPan.  Is it possible for me to live without a wife, in the name of all the\nsubterranean devils?\n\n  Trouil.  Away with these filthy beasts.\n\n  Pan.  Let it be, then, in the name of God; for my Salmigondinish people\nuse to say, To lie alone, without a wife, is certainly a brutish life.  And\nsuch a life also was it assevered to be by Dido in her lamentations.\n\n  Trouil.  At your command.\n\n  Pan.  By the pody cody, I have fished fair; where are we now?  But will\nyou tell me?  Shall I marry?\n\n  Trouil.  Perhaps.\n\n  Pan.  Shall I thrive or speed well withal?\n\n  Trouil.  According to the encounter.\n\n  Pan.  But if in my adventure I encounter aright, as I hope I will, shall\nI be fortunate?\n\n  Trouil.  Enough.\n\n  Pan.  Let us turn the clean contrary way, and brush our former words\nagainst the wool:  what if I encounter ill?\n\n  Trouil.  Then blame not me.\n\n  Pan.  But, of courtesy, be pleased to give me some advice.  I heartily\nbeseech you, what must I do?\n\n  Trouil.  Even what thou wilt.\n\n  Pan.  Wishy, washy; trolly, trolly.\n\n  Trouil.  Do not invocate the name of anything, I pray you.\n\n  Pan.  In the name of God, let it be so!  My actions shall be regulated by\nthe rule and square of your counsel.  What is it that you advise and\ncounsel me to do?\n\n  Trouil.  Nothing.\n\n  Pan.  Shall I marry?\n\n  Trouil.  I have no hand in it.\n\n  Pan.  Then shall I not marry?\n\n  Trouil.  I cannot help it.\n\n  Pan.  If I never marry, I shall never be a cuckold.\n\n  Trouil.  I thought so.\n\n  Pan.  But put the case that I be married.\n\n  Trouil.  Where shall we put it?\n\n  Pan.  Admit it be so, then, and take my meaning in that sense.\n\n  Trouil.  I am otherwise employed.\n\n  Pan.  By the death of a hog, and mother of a toad, O Lord! if I durst\nhazard upon a little fling at the swearing game, though privily and under\nthumb, it would lighten the burden of my heart and ease my lights and reins\nexceedingly.  A little patience nevertheless is requisite.  Well then, if I\nmarry, I shall be a cuckold.\n\n  Trouil.  One would say so.\n\n  Pan.  Yet if my wife prove a virtuous, wise, discreet, and chaste woman,\nI shall never be cuckolded.\n\n  Trouil.  I think you speak congruously.\n\n  Pan.  Hearken.\n\n  Trouil.  As much as you will.\n\n  Pan.  Will she be discreet and chaste?  This is the only point I would be\nresolved in.\n\n  Trouil.  I question it.\n\n  Pan.  You never saw her?\n\n  Trouil.  Not that I know of.\n\n  Pan.  Why do you then doubt of that which you know not?\n\n  Trouil.  For a cause.\n\n  Pan.  And if you should know her.\n\n  Trouil.  Yet more.\n\n  Pan.  Page, my pretty little darling, take here my cap,--I give it thee.\nHave a care you do not break the spectacles that are in it.  Go down to the\nlower court.  Swear there half an hour for me, and I shall in compensation\nof that favour swear hereafter for thee as much as thou wilt.  But who\nshall cuckold me?\n\n  Trouil.  Somebody.\n\n  Pan.  By the belly of the wooden horse at Troy, Master Somebody, I shall\nbang, belam thee, and claw thee well for thy labour.\n\n  Trouil.  You say so.\n\n  Pan.  Nay, nay, that Nick in the dark cellar, who hath no white in his\neye, carry me quite away with him if, in that case, whensoever I go abroad\nfrom the palace of my domestic residence, I do not, with as much\ncircumspection as they use to ring mares in our country to keep them from\nbeing sallied by stoned horses, clap a Bergamasco lock upon my wife.\n\n  Trouil.  Talk better.\n\n  Pan.  It is bien chien, chie chante, well cacked and cackled, shitten,\nand sung in matter of talk.  Let us resolve on somewhat.\n\n  Trouil.  I do not gainsay it.\n\n  Pan.  Have a little patience.  Seeing I cannot on this side draw any\nblood of you, I will try if with the lancet of my judgment I be able to\nbleed you in another vein.  Are you married, or are you not?\n\n  Trouil.  Neither the one nor the other, and both together.\n\n  Pan.  O the good God help us!  By the death of a buffle-ox, I sweat with\nthe toil and travail that I am put to, and find my digestion broke off,\ndisturbed, and interrupted, for all my phrenes, metaphrenes, and\ndiaphragms, back, belly, midriff, muscles, veins, and sinews are held in a\nsuspense and for a while discharged from their proper offices to stretch\nforth their several powers and abilities for incornifistibulating and\nlaying up into the hamper of my understanding your various sayings and\nanswers.\n\n  Trouil.  I shall be no hinderer thereof.\n\n  Pan.  Tush, for shame!  Our faithful friend, speak; are you married?\n\n  Trouil.  I think so.\n\n  Pan.  You were also married before you had this wife?\n\n  Trouil.  It is possible.\n\n  Pan.  Had you good luck in your first marriage?\n\n  Trouil.  It is not impossible.\n\n  Pan.  How thrive you with this second wife of yours?\n\n  Trouil.  Even as it pleaseth my fatal destiny.\n\n  Pan.  But what, in good earnest?  Tell me--do you prosper well with her?\n\n  Trouil.  It is likely.\n\n  Pan.  Come on, in the name of God.  I vow, by the burden of Saint\nChristopher, that I had rather undertake the fetching of a fart forth of\nthe belly of a dead ass than to draw out of you a positive and determinate\nresolution.  Yet shall I be sure at this time to have a snatch at you, and\nget my claws over you.  Our trusty friend, let us shame the devil of hell,\nand confess the verity.  Were you ever a cuckold?  I say, you who are here,\nand not that other you who playeth below in the tennis-court?\n\n  Trouil.  No, if it was not predestinated.\n\n  Pan.  By the flesh, blood, and body, I swear, reswear, forswear, abjure,\nand renounce, he evades and avoids, shifts, and escapes me, and quite slips\nand winds himself out of my grips and clutches.\n\nAt these words Gargantua arose and said, Praised be the good God in all\nthings, but especially for bringing the world into that height of\nrefinedness beyond what it was when I first came to be acquainted\ntherewith, that now the learnedst and most prudent philosophers are not\nashamed to be seen entering in at the porches and frontispieces of the\nschools of the Pyrrhonian, Aporrhetic, Sceptic, and Ephectic sects.\nBlessed be the holy name of God!  Veritably, it is like henceforth to be\nfound an enterprise of much more easy undertaking to catch lions by the\nneck, horses by the main, oxen by the horns, bulls by the muzzle, wolves by\nthe tail, goats by the beard, and flying birds by the feet, than to entrap\nsuch philosophers in their words.  Farewell, my worthy, dear, and honest\nfriends.\n\nWhen he had done thus speaking, he withdrew himself from the company.\nPantagruel and others with him would have followed and accompanied him, but\nhe would not permit them so to do.  No sooner was Gargantua departed out of\nthe banqueting-hall than that Pantagruel said to the invited guests:\nPlato's Timaeus, at the beginning always of a solemn festival convention,\nwas wont to count those that were called thereto.  We, on the contrary,\nshall at the closure and end of this treatment reckon up our number.  One,\ntwo, three; where is the fourth?  I miss my friend Bridlegoose.  Was not he\nsent for?  Epistemon answered that he had been at his house to bid and\ninvite him, but could not meet with him; for that a messenger from the\nparliament of Mirlingois, in Mirlingues, was come to him with a writ of\nsummons to cite and warn him personally to appear before the reverend\nsenators of the high court there, to vindicate and justify himself at the\nbar of the crime of prevarication laid to his charge, and to be\nperemptorily instanced against him in a certain decree, judgment, or\nsentence lately awarded, given, and pronounced by him; and that, therefore,\nhe had taken horse and departed in great haste from his own house, to the\nend that without peril or danger of falling into a default or contumacy he\nmight be the better able to keep the prefixed and appointed time.\n\nI will, quoth Pantagruel, understand how that matter goeth.  It is now\nabove forty years that he hath been constantly the judge of Fonsbeton,\nduring which space of time he hath given four thousand definitive\nsentences, of two thousand three hundred and nine whereof, although appeal\nwas made by the parties whom he had judicially condemned from his inferior\njudicatory to the supreme court of the parliament of Mirlingois, in\nMirlingues, they were all of them nevertheless confirmed, ratified, and\napproved of by an order, decree, and final sentence of the said sovereign\ncourt, to the casting of the appellants, and utter overthrow of the suits\nwherein they had been foiled at law, for ever and a day.  That now in his\nold age he should be personally summoned, who in all the foregoing time of\nhis life hath demeaned himself so unblamably in the discharge of the office\nand vocation he had been called unto, it cannot assuredly be that such a\nchange hath happened without some notorious misfortune and disaster.  I am\nresolved to help and assist him in equity and justice to the uttermost\nextent of my power and ability.  I know the malice, despite, and wickedness\nof the world to be so much more nowadays exasperated, increased, and\naggravated by what it was not long since, that the best cause that is, how\njust and equitable soever it be, standeth in great need to be succoured,\naided, and supported.  Therefore presently, from this very instant forth,\ndo I purpose, till I see the event and closure thereof, most heedfully to\nattend and wait upon it, for fear of some underhand tricky surprisal,\ncavilling pettifoggery, or fallacious quirks in law, to his detriment,\nhurt, or disadvantage.\n\nThen dinner being done, and the tables drawn and removed, when Pantagruel\nhad very cordially and affectionately thanked his invited guests for the\nfavour which he had enjoyed of their company, he presented them with\nseveral rich and costly gifts, such as jewels, rings set with precious\nstones, gold and silver vessels, with a great deal of other sort of plate\nbesides, and lastly, taking of them all his leave, retired himself into an\ninner chamber.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel persuaded Panurge to take counsel of a fool.\n\nWhen Pantagruel had withdrawn himself, he, by a little sloping window in\none of the galleries, perceived Panurge in a lobby not far from thence,\nwalking alone, with the gesture, carriage, and garb of a fond dotard,\nraving, wagging, and shaking his hands, dandling, lolling, and nodding with\nhis head, like a cow bellowing for her calf; and, having then called him\nnearer, spoke unto him thus:  You are at this present, as I think, not\nunlike to a mouse entangled in a snare, who the more that she goeth about\nto rid and unwind herself out of the gin wherein she is caught, by\nendeavouring to clear and deliver her feet from the pitch whereto they\nstick, the foulier she is bewrayed with it, and the more strongly pestered\ntherein.  Even so is it with you.  For the more that you labour, strive,\nand enforce yourself to disencumber and extricate your thoughts out of the\nimplicating involutions and fetterings of the grievous and lamentable gins\nand springs of anguish and perplexity, the greater difficulty there is in\nthe relieving of you, and you remain faster bound than ever.  Nor do I know\nfor the removal of this inconveniency any remedy but one.\n\nTake heed, I have often heard it said in a vulgar proverb, The wise may be\ninstructed by a fool.  Seeing the answers and responses of sage and\njudicious men have in no manner of way satisfied you, take advice of some\nfool, and possibly by so doing you may come to get that counsel which will\nbe agreeable to your own heart's desire and contentment.  You know how by\nthe advice and counsel and prediction of fools, many kings, princes,\nstates, and commonwealths have been preserved, several battles gained, and\ndivers doubts of a most perplexed intricacy resolved.  I am not so\ndiffident of your memory as to hold it needful to refresh it with a\nquotation of examples, nor do I so far undervalue your judgment but that I\nthink it will acquiesce in the reason of this my subsequent discourse.  As\nhe who narrowly takes heed to what concerns the dexterous management of his\nprivate affairs, domestic businesses, and those adoes which are confined\nwithin the strait-laced compass of one family, who is attentive, vigilant,\nand active in the economic rule of his own house, whose frugal spirit never\nstrays from home, who loseth no occasion whereby he may purchase to himself\nmore riches, and build up new heaps of treasure on his former wealth, and\nwho knows warily how to prevent the inconveniences of poverty, is called a\nworldly wise man, though perhaps in the second judgment of the\nintelligences which are above he be esteemed a fool,--so, on the contrary,\nis he most like, even in the thoughts of all celestial spirits, to be not\nonly sage, but to presage events to come by divine inspiration, who laying\nquite aside those cares which are conducible to his body or his fortunes,\nand, as it were, departing from himself, rids all his senses of terrene\naffections, and clears his fancies of those plodding studies which harbour\nin the minds of thriving men.  All which neglects of sublunary things are\nvulgarily imputed folly.  After this manner, the son of Picus, King of the\nLatins, the great soothsayer Faunus, was called Fatuus by the witless\nrabble of the common people.  The like we daily see practised amongst the\ncomic players, whose dramatic roles, in distribution of the personages,\nappoint the acting of the fool to him who is the wisest of the troop.  In\napprobation also of this fashion the mathematicians allow the very same\nhoroscope to princes and to sots.  Whereof a right pregnant instance by\nthem is given in the nativities of Aeneas and Choroebus; the latter of\nwhich two is by Euphorion said to have been a fool, and yet had with the\nformer the same aspects and heavenly genethliac influences.\n\nI shall not, I suppose, swerve much from the purpose in hand, if I relate\nunto you what John Andrew said upon the return of a papal writ, which was\ndirected to the mayor and burgesses of Rochelle, and after him by Panorme,\nupon the same pontifical canon; Barbatias on the Pandects, and recently by\nJason in his Councils, concerning Seyny John, the noted fool of Paris, and\nCaillet's fore great-grandfather.  The case is this.\n\nAt Paris, in the roastmeat cookery of the Petit Chastelet, before the\ncookshop of one of the roastmeat sellers of that lane, a certain hungry\nporter was eating his bread, after he had by parcels kept it a while above\nthe reek and steam of a fat goose on the spit, turning at a great fire, and\nfound it, so besmoked with the vapour, to be savoury; which the cook\nobserving, took no notice, till after having ravined his penny loaf,\nwhereof no morsel had been unsmokified, he was about decamping and going\naway.  But, by your leave, as the fellow thought to have departed thence\nshot-free, the master-cook laid hold upon him by the gorget, and demanded\npayment for the smoke of his roast meat.  The porter answered, that he had\nsustained no loss at all; that by what he had done there was no diminution\nmade of the flesh; that he had taken nothing of his, and that therefore he\nwas not indebted to him in anything.  As for the smoke in question, that,\nalthough he had not been there, it would howsoever have been evaporated;\nbesides, that before that time it had never been seen nor heard that\nroastmeat smoke was sold upon the streets of Paris.  The cook hereto\nreplied, that he was not obliged nor any way bound to feed and nourish for\nnought a porter whom he had never seen before with the smoke of his roast\nmeat, and thereupon swore that if he would not forthwith content and\nsatisfy him with present payment for the repast which he had thereby got,\nthat he would take his crooked staves from off his back; which, instead of\nhaving loads thereafter laid upon them, should serve for fuel to his\nkitchen fires.  Whilst he was going about so to do, and to have pulled them\nto him by one of the bottom rungs which he had caught in his hand, the\nsturdy porter got out of his grip, drew forth the knotty cudgel, and stood\nto his own defence.  The altercation waxed hot in words, which moved the\ngaping hoidens of the sottish Parisians to run from all parts thereabouts,\nto see what the issue would be of that babbling strife and contention.  In\nthe interim of this dispute, to very good purpose Seyny John, the fool and\ncitizen of Paris, happened to be there, whom the cook perceiving, said to\nthe porter, Wilt thou refer and submit unto the noble Seyny John the\ndecision of the difference and controversy which is betwixt us?  Yes, by\nthe blood of a goose, answered the porter, I am content.  Seyny John the\nfool, finding that the cook and porter had compromised the determination of\ntheir variance and debate to the discretion of his award and arbitrament,\nafter that the reasons on either side whereupon was grounded the mutual\nfierceness of their brawling jar had been to the full displayed and laid\nopen before him, commanded the porter to draw out of the fob of his belt a\npiece of money, if he had it.  Whereupon the porter immediately without\ndelay, in reverence to the authority of such a judicious umpire, put the\ntenth part of a silver Philip into his hand.  This little Philip Seyny John\ntook; then set it on his left shoulder, to try by feeling if it was of a\nsufficient weight.  After that, laying it on the palm of his hand, he made\nit ring and tingle, to understand by the ear if it was of a good alloy in\nthe metal whereof it was composed.  Thereafter he put it to the ball or\napple of his left eye, to explore by the sight if it was well stamped and\nmarked; all which being done, in a profound silence of the whole doltish\npeople who were there spectators of this pageantry, to the great hope of\nthe cook's and despair of the porter's prevalency in the suit that was in\nagitation, he finally caused the porter to make it sound several times upon\nthe stall of the cook's shop.  Then with a presidential majesty holding his\nbauble sceptre-like in his hand, muffling his head with a hood of marten\nskins, each side whereof had the resemblance of an ape's face sprucified up\nwith ears of pasted paper, and having about his neck a bucked ruff, raised,\nfurrowed, and ridged with pointing sticks of the shape and fashion of small\norgan pipes, he first with all the force of his lungs coughed two or three\ntimes, and then with an audible voice pronounced this following sentence:\nThe court declareth that the porter who ate his bread at the smoke of the\nroast, hath civilly paid the cook with the sound of his money.  And the\nsaid court ordaineth that everyone return to his own home, and attend his\nproper business, without cost and charges, and for a cause.  This verdict,\naward, and arbitrament of the Parisian fool did appear so equitable, yea,\nso admirable to the aforesaid doctors, that they very much doubted if the\nmatter had been brought before the sessions for justice of the said place,\nor that the judges of the Rota at Rome had been umpires therein, or yet\nthat the Areopagites themselves had been the deciders thereof, if by any\none part, or all of them together, it had been so judicially sententiated\nand awarded.  Therefore advise, if you will be counselled by a fool.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Triboulet is set forth and blazed by Pantagruel and Panurge.\n\nBy my soul, quoth Panurge, that overture pleaseth me exceedingly well.  I\nwill therefore lay hold thereon, and embrace it.  At the very motioning\nthereof my very right entrail seemeth to be widened and enlarged, which was\nbut just now hard-bound, contracted, and costive.  But as we have hitherto\nmade choice of the purest and most refined cream of wisdom and sapience for\nour counsel, so would I now have to preside and bear the prime sway in our\nconsultation as very a fool in the supreme degree.  Triboulet, quoth\nPantagruel, is completely foolish, as I conceive.  Yes, truly, answered\nPanurge, he is properly and totally a fool, a\n\n\n    Pantagruel.                        Panurge.\nFatal f.                           Jovial f.\nNatural f.                         Mercurial f.\nCelestial f.                       Lunatic f.\nErratic f.                         Ducal f.\nEccentric f.                       Common f.\nAethereal and Junonian f.          Lordly f.\nArctic f.                          Palatine f.\nHeroic f.                          Principal f.\nGenial f.                          Pretorian f.\nInconstant f.                      Elected f.\nEarthly f.                         Courtly f.\nSalacious and sporting f.          Primipilary f.\nJocund and wanton f.               Triumphant f.\nPimpled f.                         Vulgar f.\nFreckled f.                        Domestic f.\nBell-tinging f.                    Exemplary f.\nLaughing and lecherous f.          Rare outlandish f.\nNimming and filching f.            Satrapal f.\nUnpressed f.                       Civil f.\nFirst broached f.                  Popular f.\nAugustal f.                        Familiar f.\nCaesarine f.                       Notable f.\nImperial f.                        Favourized f.\nRoyal f.                           Latinized f.\nPatriarchal f.                     Ordinary f.\nOriginal f.                        Transcendent f.\nLoyal f.                           Rising f.\nEpiscopal f.                       Papal f.\nDoctoral f.                        Consistorian f.\nMonachal f.                        Conclavist f.\nFiscal f.                          Bullist f.\nExtravagant f.                     Synodal f.\nWrithed f.                         Doting and raving f.\nCanonical f.                       Singular and surpassing f.\nSuch another f.                    Special and excelling f.\nGraduated f.                       Metaphysical f.\nCommensal f.                       Scatical f.\nPrimolicentiated f.                Predicamental and categoric f.\nTrain-bearing f.                   Predicable and enunciatory f.\nSupererogating f.                  Decumane and superlative f.\nCollateral f.                      Dutiful and officious f.\nHaunch and side f.                 Optical and perspective f.\nNestling, ninny, and youngling f.  Algoristic f.\nFlitting, giddy, and unsteady f.   Algebraical f.\nBrancher, novice, and cockney f.   Cabalistical and Massoretical f.\nHaggard, cross, and froward f.     Talmudical f.\nGentle, mild, and tractable f.     Algamalized f.\nMail-coated f.                     Compendious f.\nPilfering and purloining f.        Abbreviated f.\nTail-grown f.                      Hyperbolical f.\nGrey peckled f.                    Anatomastical f.\nPleonasmical f.                    Allegorical f.\nCapital f.                         Tropological f.\nHair-brained f.                    Micher pincrust f.\nCordial f.                         Heteroclit f.\nIntimate f.                        Summist f.\nHepatic f.                         Abridging f.\nCupshotten and swilling f.         Morrish f.\nSplenetic f.                       Leaden-sealed f.\nWindy f.                           Mandatory f.\nLegitimate f.                      Compassionate f.\nAzymathal f.                       Titulary f.\nAlmicantarized f.                  Crouching, showking, ducking f.\nProportioned f.                    Grim, stern, harsh, and wayward f.\nChinnified f.                      Well-hung and timbered f.\nSwollen and puffed up f.           Ill-clawed, pounced, and pawed f.\nOvercockrifedlid and lified f.     Well-stoned f.\nCorallory f.                       Crabbed and unpleasing f.\nEastern f.                         Winded and untainted f.\nSublime f.                         Kitchen haunting f.\nCrimson f.                         Lofty and stately f.\nIngrained f.                       Spitrack f.\nCity f.                            Architrave f.\nBasely accoutred f.                Pedestal f.\nMast-headed f.                     Tetragonal f.\nModal f.                           Renowned f.\nSecond notial f.                   Rheumatic f.\nCheerful and buxom f.              Flaunting and braggadocio f.\nSolemn f.                          Egregious f.\nAnnual f.                          Humourous and capricious f.\nFestival f.                        Rude, gross, and absurd f.\nRecreative f.                      Large-measured f.\nBoorish and counterfeit f.         Babble f.\nPleasant f.                        Down-right f.\nPrivileged f.                      Broad-listed f.\nRustical f.                        Duncical-bearing f.\nProper and peculiar f.             Stale and over-worn f.\nEver ready f.                      Saucy and swaggering f.\nDiapasonal f.                      Full-bulked f.\nResolute f.                        Gallant and vainglorious f.\nHieroglyphical f.                  Gorgeous and gaudy f.\nAuthentic f.                       Continual and intermitting f.\nWorthy f.                          Rebasing and roundling f.\nPrecious f.                        Prototypal and precedenting f.\nFanatic f.                         Prating f.\nFantastical f.                     Catechetic f.\nSymphatic f.                       Cacodoxical f.\nPanic f.                           Meridional f.\nLimbecked and distilled f.         Nocturnal f.\nComportable f.                     Occidental f.\nWretched and heartless f.          Trifling f.\nFooded f.                          Astrological and figure-flinging f.\nThick and threefold f.             Genethliac and horoscopal f.\nDamasked f.                        Knavish f.\nFearney f.                         Idiot f.\nUnleavened f.                      Blockish f.\nBaritonant f.                      Beetle-headed f.\nPink and spot-powdered f.          Grotesque f.\nMusket-proof f.                    Impertinent f.\nPedantic f.                        Quarrelsome f.\nStrouting f.                       Unmannerly f.\nWood f.                            Captious and sophistical f.\nGreedy f.                          Soritic f.\nSenseless f.                       Catholoproton f.\nGodderlich f.                      Hoti and Dioti f.\nObstinate f.                       Alphos and Catati f.\nContradictory f.\nPedagogical f.\nDaft f.\nDrunken f.\nPeevish f.\nProdigal f.\nRash f.\nPlodding f.\n\n  Pantagruel.  If there was any reason why at Rome the Quirinal holiday of\nold was called the Feast of Fools, I know not why we may not for the like\ncause institute in France the Tribouletic Festivals, to be celebrated and\nsolemnized over all the land.\n\n  Panurge.  If all fools carried cruppers.\n\n  Pantagruel.  If he were the god Fatuus of whom we have already made\nmention, the husband of the goddess Fatua, his father would be Good Day,\nand his grandmother Good Even.\n\n  Panurge.  If all fools paced, albeit he be somewhat wry-legged, he would\noverlay at least a fathom at every rake.  Let us go toward him without any\nfurther lingering or delay; we shall have, no doubt, some fine resolution\nof him.  I am ready to go, and long for the issue of our progress\nimpatiently.  I must needs, quoth Pantagruel, according to my former\nresolution therein, be present at Bridlegoose's trial.  Nevertheless,\nwhilst I shall be upon my journey towards Mirelingues, which is on the\nother side of the river of Loire, I will despatch Carpalin to bring along\nwith him from Blois the fool Triboulet.  Then was Carpalin instantly sent\naway, and Pantagruel, at the same time attended by his domestics, Panurge,\nEpistemon, Ponocrates, Friar John, Gymnast, Ryzotomus, and others, marched\nforward on the high road to Mirelingues.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel was present at the trial of Judge Bridlegoose, who decided\ncauses and controversies in law by the chance and fortune of the dice.\n\nOn the day following, precisely at the hour appointed, Pantagruel came to\nMirelingues.  At his arrival the presidents, senators, and counsellors\nprayed him to do them the honour to enter in with them, to hear the\ndecision of all the causes, arguments, and reasons which Bridlegoose in his\nown defence would produce, why he had pronounced a certain sentence against\nthe subsidy-assessor, Toucheronde, which did not seem very equitable to\nthat centumviral court.  Pantagruel very willingly condescended to their\ndesire, and accordingly entering in, found Bridlegoose sitting within the\nmiddle of the enclosure of the said court of justice; who immediately upon\nthe coming of Pantagruel, accompanied with the senatorian members of that\nworshipful judicatory, arose, went to the bar, had his indictment read, and\nfor all his reasons, defences, and excuses, answered nothing else but that\nhe was become old, and that his sight of late was very much failed, and\nbecome dimmer than it was wont to be; instancing therewithal many miseries\nand calamities which old age bringeth along with it, and are concomitant to\nwrinkled elders; which not. per Archid. d. lxxxvi. c. tanta.  By reason of\nwhich infirmity he was not able so distinctly and clearly to discern the\npoints and blots of the dice as formerly he had been accustomed to do;\nwhence it might very well have happened, said he, as old dim-sighted Isaac\ntook Jacob for Esau, that I after the same manner, at the decision of\ncauses and controversies in law, should have been mistaken in taking a\nquatre for a cinque, or a trey for a deuce.  This I beseech your worships,\nquoth he, to take into your serious consideration, and to have the more\nfavourable opinion of my uprightness, notwithstanding the prevarication\nwhereof I am accused in the matter of Toucheronde's sentence, that at the\ntime of that decree's pronouncing I only had made use of my small dice; and\nyour worships, said he, know very well how by the most authentic rules of\nthe law it is provided that the imperfections of nature should never be\nimputed unto any for crimes and transgressions; as appeareth, ff. de re\nmilit. l. qui cum uno. ff. de reg.  Jur. l. fere. ff. de aedil. edict. per\ntotum. ff. de term. mod. l. Divus Adrianus, resolved by Lud. Rom. in l. si\nvero. ff. Sol. Matr.  And who would offer to do otherwise, should not\nthereby accuse the man, but nature, and the all-seeing providence of God,\nas is evident in l. Maximum Vitium, c. de lib. praeter.\n\nWhat kind of dice, quoth Trinquamelle, grand-president of the said court,\ndo you mean, my friend Bridlegoose?  The dice, quoth Bridlegoose, of\nsentences at law, decrees, and peremptory judgments, Alea Judiciorum,\nwhereof is written, Per Doct. 26. qu. 2. cap. sort. l. nec emptio ff. de\ncontrahend. empt. l. quod debetur. ff. de pecul. et ibi Bartol., and which\nyour worships do, as well as I, use, in this glorious sovereign court of\nyours.  So do all other righteous judges in their decision of processes and\nfinal determination of legal differences, observing that which hath been\nsaid thereof by D. Henri. Ferrandat, et not. gl. in c. fin. de sortil. et\nl. sed cum ambo. ff. de jud.  Ubi Docto.  Mark, that chance and fortune are\ngood, honest, profitable, and necessary for ending of and putting a final\nclosure to dissensions and debates in suits at law.  The same hath more\nclearly been declared by Bald. Bartol. et Alex. c. communia de leg. l. Si\nduo.  But how is it that you do these things? asked Trinquamelle.  I very\nbriefly, quoth Bridlegoose, shall answer you, according to the doctrine and\ninstructions of Leg. ampliorem para. in refutatoriis. c. de appel.; which\nis conform to what is said in Gloss l. 1. ff. quod met. causa.  Gaudent\nbrevitate moderni.  My practice is therein the same with that of your other\nworships, and as the custom of the judicatory requires, unto which our law\ncommandeth us to have regard, and by the rule thereof still to direct and\nregulate our actions and procedures; ut not. extra. de consuet. in c. ex\nliteris et ibi innoc.  For having well and exactly seen, surveyed,\noverlooked, reviewed, recognized, read, and read over again, turned and\ntossed over, seriously perused and examined the bills of complaint,\naccusations, impeachments, indictments, warnings, citations, summonings,\ncomparitions, appearances, mandates, commissions, delegations,\ninstructions, informations, inquests, preparatories, productions,\nevidences, proofs, allegations, depositions, cross speeches,\ncontradictions, supplications, requests, petitions, inquiries, instruments\nof the deposition of witnesses, rejoinders, replies, confirmations of\nformer assertions, duplies, triplies, answers to rejoinders, writings,\ndeeds, reproaches, disabling of exceptions taken, grievances, salvation\nbills, re-examination of witnesses, confronting of them together,\ndeclarations, denunciations, libels, certificates, royal missives, letters\nof appeal, letters of attorney, instruments of compulsion, delineatories,\nanticipatories, evocations, messages, dimissions, issues, exceptions,\ndilatory pleas, demurs, compositions, injunctions, reliefs, reports,\nreturns, confessions, acknowledgments, exploits, executions, and other\nsuch-like confects and spiceries, both at the one and the other side, as a\ngood judge ought to do, conform to what hath been noted thereupon.  Spec.\nde ordination. Paragr. 3. et Tit. de Offi. omn. jud. paragr. fin. et de\nrescriptis praesentat. parag. 1.--I posit on the end of a table in my\ncloset all the pokes and bags of the defendant, and then allow unto him the\nfirst hazard of the dice, according to the usual manner of your other\nworships.  And it is mentioned, l. favorabiliores. ff. de reg. jur. et in\ncap. cum sunt eod. tit. lib. 6, which saith, Quum sunt partium jura\nobscura, reo potius favendum est quam actori.  That being done, I\nthereafter lay down upon the other end of the same table the bags and\nsatchels of the plaintiff, as your other worships are accustomed to do,\nvisum visu, just over against one another; for Opposita juxta se posita\nclarius elucescunt:  ut not. in lib. 1. parag. Videamus. ff. de his qui\nsunt sui vel alieni juris, et in l. munerum. para. mixta ff. de mun. et\nhon.  Then do I likewise and semblably throw the dice for him, and\nforthwith livre him his chance.  But, quoth Trinquamelle, my friend, how\ncome you to know, understand, and resolve the obscurity of these various\nand seeming contrary passages in law, which are laid claim to by the\nsuitors and pleading parties?  Even just, quoth Bridlegoose, after the\nfashion of your other worships; to wit, when there are many bags on the one\nside and on the other, I then use my little small dice, after the customary\nmanner of your other worships, in obedience to the law, Semper in\nstipulationibus ff. de reg. jur.  And the law ver(s)ified versifieth that,\nEod. tit. Semper in obscuris quod minimum est sequimur; canonized in c. in\nobscuris. eod. tit. lib. 6.  I have other large great dice, fair and goodly\nones, which I employ in the fashion that your other worships use to do,\nwhen the matter is more plain, clear, and liquid, that is to say, when\nthere are fewer bags.  But when you have done all these fine things, quoth\nTrinquamelle, how do you, my friend, award your decrees, and pronounce\njudgment?  Even as your other worships, answered Bridlegoose; for I give\nout sentence in his favour unto whom hath befallen the best chance by dice,\njudiciary, tribunian, pretorial, what comes first.  So our laws command,\nff. qui pot. in pign. l. creditor, c. de consul. 1.  Et de regul. jur. in\n6.  Qui prior est tempore potior est jure.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Bridlegoose giveth reasons why he looked upon those law-actions which\nhe decided by the chance of the dice.\n\nYea but, quoth Trinquamelle, my friend, seeing it is by the lot, chance,\nand throw of the dice that you award your judgments and sentences, why do\nnot you livre up these fair throws and chances the very same day and hour,\nwithout any further procrastination or delay, that the controverting\nparty-pleaders appear before you?  To what use can those writings serve you,\nthose papers and other procedures contained in the bags and pokes of the\nlaw-suitors?  To the very same use, quoth Bridlegoose, that they serve your\nother worships.  They are behooveful unto me, and serve my turn in three\nthings very exquisite, requisite, and authentical.  First, for formality\nsake, the omission whereof, that it maketh all, whatever is done, to be of\nno force nor value, is excellently well proved, by Spec. 1. tit. de instr.\nedit. et tit. de rescript. praesent.  Besides that, it is not unknown to\nyou, who have had many more experiments thereof than I, how oftentimes, in\njudicial proceedings, the formalities utterly destroy the materialities and\nsubstances of the causes and matters agitated; for Forma mutata, mutatur\nsubstantia. ff. ad exhib. l. Julianus. ff. ad leg. Fal. l. si is qui\nquadraginta.  Et extra de decim. c. ad audientiam, et de celebrat. miss. c.\nin quadam.\n\nSecondly, they are useful and steadable to me, even as unto your other\nworships, in lieu of some other honest and healthful exercise.  The late\nMaster Othoman Vadet (Vadere), a prime physician, as you would say, Cod. de\nComit. et Archi. lib. 12, hath frequently told me that the lack and default\nof bodily exercise is the chief, if not the sole and only cause of the\nlittle health and short lives of all officers of justice, such as your\nworships and I am.  Which observation was singularly well before him noted\nand remarked by Bartholus in lib. 1. c. de sent. quae pro eo quod.\nTherefore it is that the practice of such-like exercitations is appointed\nto be laid hold on by your other worships, and consequently not to be\ndenied unto me, who am of the same profession; Quia accessorium naturam\nsequitur principalis. de reg. jur. l. 6. et l. cum principalis. et l. nihil\ndolo. ff. eod. tit. ff. de fide-juss. l. fide-juss. et extra de officio\ndeleg. cap. 1.  Let certain honest and recreative sports and plays of\ncorporeal exercises be allowed and approved of; and so far, (ff. de allus.\net aleat. l. solent. et authent.) ut omnes obed. in princ. coll. 7. et ff.\nde praescript. verb. l. si gratuitam et l. 1. cod. de spect. l. 11.  Such\nalso is the opinion of D. Thom, in secunda, secundae Q. I. 168.  Quoted in\nvery good purpose by D. Albert de Rosa, who fuit magnus practicus, and a\nsolemn doctor, as Barbatias attesteth in principiis consil.  Wherefore the\nreason is evidently and clearly deduced and set down before us in gloss. in\nprooemio. ff. par. ne autem tertii.\n\n  Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis.\n\nIn very deed, once, in the year a thousand four hundred fourscore and\nninth, having a business concerning the portion and inheritance of a\nyounger brother depending in the court and chamber of the four high\ntreasurers of France, whereinto as soon as ever I got leave to enter by a\npecuniary permission of the usher thereof,--as your other worships know\nvery well, that Pecuniae obediunt omnia, and there says Baldus, in l.\nsingularia. ff. si cert. pet. et Salic. in l. receptitia. Cod. de constit.\npecuni. et Card. in Clem. 1. de baptism.--I found them all recreating and\ndiverting themselves at the play called muss, either before or after\ndinner; to me, truly, it is a thing altogether indifferent whether of the\ntwo it was, provided that hic not., that the game of the muss is honest,\nhealthful, ancient, and lawful, a Muscho inventore, de quo cod. de petit.\nhaered. l. si post mortem. et Muscarii.  Such as play and sport it at the\nmuss are excusable in and by law, lib. 1. c. de excus. artific. lib. 10.\nAnd at the very same time was Master Tielman Picquet one of the players of\nthat game of muss.  There is nothing that I do better remember, for he\nlaughed heartily when his fellow-members of the aforesaid judicial chamber\nspoiled their caps in swingeing of his shoulders.  He, nevertheless, did\neven then say unto them, that the banging and flapping of him, to the waste\nand havoc of their caps, should not, at their return from the palace to\ntheir own houses, excuse them from their wives, Per. c. extra. de\npraesumpt. et ibi gloss.  Now, resolutorie loquendo, I should say,\naccording to the style and phrase of your other worships, that there is no\nexercise, sport, game, play, nor recreation in all this palatine, palatial,\nor parliamentary world, more aromatizing and fragrant than to empty and\nvoid bags and purses, turn over papers and writings, quote margins and\nbacks of scrolls and rolls, fill panniers, and take inspection of causes,\nEx. Bart. et Joan. de Pra. in l. falsa. de condit. et demonst. ff.\n\nThirdly, I consider, as your own worships use to do, that time ripeneth and\nbringeth all things to maturity, that by time everything cometh to be made\nmanifest and patent, and that time is the father of truth and virtue.\nGloss. in l. 1. cod. de servit. authent. de restit. et ea quae pa. et spec.\ntit. de requisit. cons.  Therefore is it that, after the manner and fashion\nof your other worships, I defer, protract, delay, prolong, intermit,\nsurcease, pause, linger, suspend, prorogate, drive out, wire-draw, and\nshift off the time of giving a definitive sentence, to the end that the\nsuit or process, being well fanned and winnowed, tossed and canvassed to\nand fro, narrowly, precisely, and nearly garbled, sifted, searched, and\nexamined, and on all hands exactly argued, disputed, and debated, may, by\nsuccession of time, come at last to its full ripeness and maturity.  By\nmeans whereof, when the fatal hazard of the dice ensueth thereupon, the\nparties cast or condemned by the said aleatory chance will with much\ngreater patience, and more mildly and gently, endure and bear up the\ndisastrous load of their misfortune, than if they had been sentenced at\ntheir first arrival unto the court, as not. gl. ff. de excus. tut. l. tria.\nonera.\n\n  Portatur leviter quod portat quisque libenter.\n\nOn the other part, to pass a decree or sentence when the action is raw,\ncrude, green, unripe, unprepared, as at the beginning, a danger would ensue\nof a no less inconveniency than that which the physicians have been wont to\nsay befalleth to him in whom an imposthume is pierced before it be ripe, or\nunto any other whose body is purged of a strong predominating humour before\nits digestion.  For as it is written, in authent. haec constit. in Innoc.\nde constit. princip., so is the same repeated in gloss. in c. caeterum.\nextra. de juram. calumn.  Quod medicamenta morbis exhibent, hoc jura\nnegotiis.  Nature furthermore admonisheth and teacheth us to gather and\nreap, eat and feed on fruits when they are ripe, and not before.  Instit.\nde rer. div. paragr. is ad quem et ff. de action. empt. l. Julianus.  To\nmarry likewise our daughters when they are ripe, and no sooner, ff. de\ndonation. inter vir. et uxor. l. cum hic status. paragr. si quis sponsam.\net 27 qu. 1. c. sicut dicit. gl.\n\n  Jam matura thoro plenis adoleverat annis\n  Virginitas.\n\nAnd, in a word, she instructeth us to do nothing of any considerable\nimportance, but in a full maturity and ripeness, 23. q. para ult. et 23. de\nc. ultimo.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Bridlegoose relateth the history of the reconcilers of parties at\nvariance in matters of law.\n\nI remember to the same purpose, quoth Bridlegoose, in continuing his\ndiscourse, that in the time when at Poictiers I was a student of law under\nBrocadium Juris, there was at Semerve one Peter Dandin, a very honest man,\ncareful labourer of the ground, fine singer in a church-desk, of good\nrepute and credit, and older than the most aged of all your worships; who\nwas wont to say that he had seen the great and goodly good man, the Council\nof Lateran, with his wide and broad-brimmed red hat.  As also, that he had\nbeheld and looked upon the fair and beautiful Pragmatical Sanction his\nwife, with her huge rosary or patenotrian chaplet of jet-beads hanging at a\nlarge sky-coloured ribbon.  This honest man compounded, atoned, and agreed\nmore differences, controversies, and variances at law than had been\ndetermined, voided, and finished during his time in the whole palace of\nPoictiers, in the auditory of Montmorillon, and in the town-house of the\nold Partenay.  This amicable disposition of his rendered him venerable and\nof great estimation, sway, power, and authority throughout all the\nneighbouring places of Chauvigny, Nouaille, Leguge, Vivonne, Mezeaux,\nEstables, and other bordering and circumjacent towns, villages, and\nhamlets.  All their debates were pacified by him; he put an end to their\nbrabbling suits at law and wrangling differences.  By his advice and\ncounsels were accords and reconcilements no less firmly made than if the\nverdict of a sovereign judge had been interposed therein, although, in very\ndeed, he was no judge at all, but a right honest man, as you may well\nconceive,--arg. in l. sed si unius. ff. de jure-jur. et de verbis\nobligatoriis l.continuus.  There was not a hog killed within three parishes\nof him whereof he had not some part of the haslet and puddings.  He was\nalmost every day invited either to a marriage banquet, christening feast,\nan uprising or women-churching treatment, a birthday's anniversary\nsolemnity, a merry frolic gossiping, or otherwise to some delicious\nentertainment in a tavern, to make some accord and agreement between\npersons at odds and in debate with one another.  Remark what I say; for he\nnever yet settled and compounded a difference betwixt any two at variance,\nbut he straight made the parties agreed and pacified to drink together as a\nsure and infallible token and symbol of a perfect and completely\nwell-cemented reconciliation, sign of a sound and sincere amity and proper\nmark of a new joy and gladness to follow thereupon,--Ut not. per (Doct.) ff.\nde peric. et com. rei vend. l. 1.  He had a son, whose name was Tenot\nDandin, a lusty, young, sturdy, frisking roister, so help me God! who\nlikewise, in imitation of his peace-making father, would have undertaken and\nmeddled with the making up of variances and deciding of controversies\nbetwixt disagreeing and contentious party-pleaders; as you know,\n\n  Saepe solet similis esse patri.\n  Et sequitur leviter filia matris iter.\n\nUt ait gloss. 6, quaest. 1. c. Si quis. gloss. de cons. dist. 5. c. 2. fin.\net est. not. per Doct. cod. de impub. et aliis substit. l. ult. et l.\nlegitime. ff. de stat. hom. gloss. in l. quod si nolit. ff. de aedil.\nedict. l. quisquis c. ad leg. Jul. Majest. Excipio filios a Moniali\nsusceptos ex Monacho. per glos. in c. impudicas. 27. quaestione. 1.  And\nsuch was his confidence to have no worse success than his father, he\nassumed unto himself the title of Law-strife-settler.  He was likewise in\nthese pacificatory negotiations so active and vigilant--for, Vigilantibus\njura subveniunt. ex l. pupillus. ff. quae in fraud. cred. et ibid. l. non\nenim. et instit. in prooem.--that when he had smelt, heard, and fully\nunderstood--ut ff.si quando paup. fec. l. Agaso. gloss. in verb. olfecit,\nid est, nasum ad culum posuit--and found that there was anywhere in the\ncountry a debatable matter at law, he would incontinently thrust in his\nadvice, and so forwardly intrude his opinion in the business, that he made\nno bones of making offer, and taking upon him to decide it, how difficult\nsoever it might happen to be, to the full contentment and satisfaction of\nboth parties.  It is written, Qui non laborat non manducat; and the said\ngl. ff. de damn. infect. l. quamvis, and Currere plus que le pas vetulam\ncompellit egestas. gloss. ff. de lib. agnosc. l. si quis. pro qua facit. l.\nsi plures. c. de cond. incert.  But so hugely great was his misfortune in\nthis his undertaking, that he never composed any difference, how little\nsoever you may imagine it might have been, but that, instead of reconciling\nthe parties at odds, he did incense, irritate, and exasperate them to a\nhigher point of dissension and enmity than ever they were at before.  Your\nworships know, I doubt not, that,\n\n  Sermo datur cunctis, animi sapientia paucis.\n\nGl. ff. de alien. jud. mut. caus. fa. lib.2.  This administered unto the\ntavern-keepers, wine-drawers, and vintners of Semerve an occasion to say,\nthat under him they had not in the space of a whole year so much\nreconciliation-wine, for so were they pleased to call the good wine of\nLeguge, as under his father they had done in one half-hour's time.  It\nhappened a little while thereafter that he made a most heavy regret thereof\nto his father, attributing the causes of his bad success in pacificatory\nenterprises to the perversity, stubbornness, froward, cross, and backward\ninclinations of the people of his time; roundly, boldly, and irreverently\nupbraiding, that if but a score of years before the world had been so\nwayward, obstinate, pervicacious, implacable, and out of all square, frame,\nand order as it was then, his father had never attained to and acquired the\nhonour and title of Strife-appeaser so irrefragably, inviolably, and\nirrevocably as he had done.  In doing whereof Tenot did heinously\ntransgress against the law which prohibiteth children to reproach the\nactions of their parents; per gl. et Bart. l. 3. paragr. si quis. ff. de\ncond. ob caus. et authent. de nupt. par. sed quod sancitum. col. 4.  To\nthis the honest old father answered thus:  My son Dandin, when Don Oportet\ntaketh place, this is the course which we must trace, gl. c. de appell. l.\neos etiam.  For the road that you went upon was not the way to the fuller's\nmill, nor in any part thereof was the form to be found wherein the hare did\nsit.  Thou hast not the skill and dexterity of settling and composing\ndifferences.  Why?  Because thou takest them at the beginning, in the very\ninfancy and bud as it were, when they are green, raw, and indigestible.\nYet I know handsomely and featly how to compose and settle them all.  Why?\nBecause I take them at their decadence, in their weaning, and when they are\npretty well digested.  So saith Gloss:\n\n  Dulcior est fructus post multa pericula ductus.\n\nL. non moriturus. c. de contrahend. et committ. stip.  Didst thou ever hear\nthe vulgar proverb, Happy is the physician whose coming is desired at the\ndeclension of a disease?  For the sickness being come to a crisis is then\nupon the decreasing hand, and drawing towards an end, although the\nphysician should not repair thither for the cure thereof; whereby, though\nnature wholly do the work, he bears away the palm and praise thereof.  My\npleaders, after the same manner, before I did interpose my judgment in the\nreconciling of them, were waxing faint in their contestations.  Their\naltercation heat was much abated, and, in declining from their former\nstrife, they of themselves inclined to a firm accommodation of their\ndifferences; because there wanted fuel to that fire of burning rancour and\ndespiteful wrangling whereof the lower sort of lawyers were the kindlers.\nThat is to say, their purses were emptied of coin, they had not a win in\ntheir fob, nor penny in their bag, wherewith to solicit and present their\nactions.\n\n  Deficiente pecu, deficit omne, nia.\n\nThere wanted then nothing but some brother to supply the place of a\nparanymph, brawl-broker, proxenete, or mediator, who, acting his part\ndexterously, should be the first broacher of the motion of an agreement,\nfor saving both the one and the other party from that hurtful and\npernicious shame whereof he could not have avoided the imputation when it\nshould have been said that he was the first who yielded and spoke of a\nreconcilement, and that therefore, his cause not being good, and being\nsensible where his shoe did pinch him, he was willing to break the ice, and\nmake the greater haste to prepare the way for a condescendment to an\namicable and friendly treaty.  Then was it that I came in pudding time,\nDandin, my son, nor is the fat of bacon more relishing to boiled peas than\nwas my verdict then agreeable to them.  This was my luck, my profit, and\ngood fortune.  I tell thee, my jolly son Dandin, that by this rule and\nmethod I could settle a firm peace, or at least clap up a cessation of arms\nand truce for many years to come, betwixt the Great King and the Venetian\nState, the Emperor and the Cantons of Switzerland, the English and the\nScots, and betwixt the Pope and the Ferrarians.  Shall I go yet further?\nYea, as I would have God to help me, betwixt the Turk and the Sophy, the\nTartars and the Muscoviters.  Remark well what I am to say unto thee.  I\nwould take them at that very instant nick of time when both those of the\none and the other side should be weary and tired of making war, when they\nhad voided and emptied their own cashes and coffers of all treasure and\ncoin, drained and exhausted the purses and bags of their subjects, sold and\nmortgaged their domains and proper inheritances, and totally wasted, spent,\nand consumed the munition, furniture, provision, and victuals that were\nnecessary for the continuance of a military expedition.  There I am sure,\nby God, or by his Mother, that, would they, would they not, in spite of all\ntheir teeths, they should be forced to have a little respite and breathing\ntime to moderate the fury and cruel rage of their ambitious aims.  This is\nthe doctrine in Gl. 37. d. c. si quando.\n\n  Odero, si potero; si non, invitus amabo.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow suits at law are bred at first, and how they come afterwards to their\nperfect growth.\n\nFor this cause, quoth Bridlegoose, going on in his discourse, I temporize\nand apply myself to the times, as your other worships use to do, waiting\npatiently for the maturity of the process, full growth and perfection\nthereof in all its members, to wit, the writings and the bags.  Arg. in l.\nsi major. c. commun. divid. et de cons. di. 1. c. solemnitates, et ibi gl.\nA suit in law at its production, birth, and first beginning, seemeth to me,\nas unto your other worships, shapeless, without form or fashion,\nincomplete, ugly and imperfect, even as a bear at his first coming into the\nworld hath neither hands, skin, hair, nor head, but is merely an inform,\nrude, and ill-favoured piece and lump of flesh, and would remain still so,\nif his dam, out of the abundance of her affection to her hopeful cub, did\nnot with much licking put his members into that figure and shape which\nnature had provided for those of an arctic and ursinal kind; ut not. Doct.\nff. ad l. Aquil. l. 3. in fin.  Just so do I see, as your other worships\ndo, processes and suits in law, at their first bringing forth, to be\nnumberless, without shape, deformed, and disfigured, for that then they\nconsist only of one or two writings, or copies of instruments, through\nwhich defect they appear unto me, as to your other worships, foul,\nloathsome, filthy, and misshapen beasts.  But when there are heaps of these\nlegiformal papers packed, piled, laid up together, impoked, insatchelled,\nand put up in bags, then is it that with a good reason we may term that\nsuit, to which, as pieces, parcels, parts, portions, and members thereof,\nthey do pertain and belong, well-formed and fashioned, big-limbed,\nstrong-set, and in all and each of its dimensions most completely membered.\nBecause forma dat esse. rei. l. si is qui. ff. ad leg.  Falcid. in c. cum\ndilecta. de rescript. Barbat. consil. 12. lib. 2, and before him, Baldus,\nin c. ult. extra. de consuet. et l. Julianus ad exhib. ff. et l. quaesitum.\nff. de leg. 3.  The manner is such as is set down in gl. p. quaest. 1. c.\nPaulus.\n\n  Debile principium melior fortuna sequetur.\n\nLike your other worships, also the sergeants, catchpoles, pursuivants,\nmessengers, summoners, apparitors, ushers, door-keepers, pettifoggers,\nattorneys, proctors, commissioners, justices of the peace, judge delegates,\narbitrators, overseers, sequestrators, advocates, inquisitors, jurors,\nsearchers, examiners, notaries, tabellions, scribes, scriveners, clerks,\npregnotaries, secondaries, and expedanean judges, de quibus tit. est. l. 3.\nc., by sucking very much, and that exceeding forcibly, and licking at the\npurses of the pleading parties, they, to the suits already begot and\nengendered, form, fashion, and frame head, feet, claws, talons, beaks,\nbills, teeth, hands, veins, sinews, arteries, muscles, humours, and so\nforth, through all the similary and dissimilary parts of the whole; which\nparts, particles, pendicles, and appurtenances are the law pokes and bags,\ngl. de cons. d. 4. c. accepisti.  Qualis vestis erit, talia corda gerit.\nHic notandum est, that in this respect the pleaders, litigants, and\nlaw-suitors are happier than the officers, ministers, and administrators of\njustice.  For beatius est dare quam accipere. ff. commun. l. 3. extra. de\ncelebr. Miss. c. cum Marthae. et 24. quaest. 1. cap. Od. gl.\n\n  Affectum dantis pensat censura tonantis.\n\nThus becometh the action or process by their care and industry to be of a\ncomplete and goodly bulk, well shaped, framed, formed, and fashioned\naccording to the canonical gloss.\n\n  Accipe, sume, cape, sunt verba placentia Papae.\n\nWhich speech hath been more clearly explained by Albert de Ros, in verbo\nRoma.\n\n  Roma manus rodit, quas rodere non valet, odit.\n  Dantes custodit, non dantes spernit, et odit.\n\nThe reason whereof is thought to be this:\n\n  Ad praesens ova cras pullis sunt meliora.\n\nut est gl. in l. quum hi. ff. de transact.  Nor is this all; for the\ninconvenience of the contrary is set down in gloss. c. de allu. l. fin.\n\n  Quum labor in damno est, crescit mortalis egestas.\n\nIn confirmation whereof we find that the true etymology and exposition of\nthe word process is purchase, viz. of good store of money to the lawyers,\nand of many pokes--id est, prou-sacks--to the pleaders, upon which subject\nwe have most celestial quips, gibes, and girds.\n\n  Ligitando jura crescunt; litigando jus acquiritur.\n\nItem gl. in cap. illud extrem. de praesumpt. et c. de prob. l. instrum. l.\nnon epistolis. l. non nudis.\n\n  Et si non prosunt singula, multa juvant.\n\nYea but, asked Trinquamelle, how do you proceed, my friend, in criminal\ncauses, the culpable and guilty party being taken and seized upon flagrante\ncrimine?  Even as your other worships use to do, answered Bridlegoose.\nFirst, I permit the plaintiff to depart from the court, enjoining him not\nto presume to return thither till he preallably should have taken a good\nsound and profound sleep, which is to serve for the prime entry and\nintroduction to the legal carrying on of the business.  In the next place,\na formal report is to be made to me of his having slept.  Thirdly, I issue\nforth a warrant to convene him before me.  Fourthly, he is to produce a\nsufficient and authentic attestation of his having thoroughly and entirely\nslept, conform to the Gloss. 37. Quest. 7. c. Si quis cum.\n\n  Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.\n\nBeing thus far advanced in the formality of the process, I find that this\nconsopiating act engendereth another act, whence ariseth the articulating\nof a member.  That again produceth a third act, fashionative of another\nmember; which third bringing forth a fourth, procreative of another act.\nNew members in a no fewer number are shapen and framed, one still breeding\nand begetting another--as, link after link, the coat of mail at length is\nmade--till thus, piece after piece, by little and little, by information\nupon information, the process be completely well formed and perfect in all\nhis members.  Finally, having proceeded this length, I have recourse to my\ndice, nor is it to be thought that this interruption, respite, or\ninterpellation is by me occasioned without very good reason inducing me\nthereunto, and a notable experience of a most convincing and irrefragable\nforce.\n\nI remember, on a time, that in the camp at Stockholm there was a certain\nGascon named Gratianauld, native of the town of Saint Sever, who having\nlost all his money at play, and consecutively being very angry thereat--as\nyou know, Pecunia est alter sanguis, ut ait Anto. de Burtio, in c.\naccedens. 2. extra ut lit. non contest. et Bald. in l. si tuis. c. de opt.\nleg. per tot.in l. advocati. c. de advoc. div. jud.  Pecunia est vita\nhominis et optimus fide-jussor in necessitatibus--did, at his coming forth\nof the gaming-house, in the presence of the whole company that was there,\nwith a very loud voice speak in his own language these following words:\nPao cap de bious hillots, que maux de pipes bous tresbire:  ares que de\npergudes sont les mires bingt, et quouatre bagnelles, ta pla donnerien\npics, trucs, et patacts, Sey degun de bous aulx, qui boille truquar ambe\niou a bels embis.  Finding that none would make him any answer, he passed\nfrom thence to that part of the leaguer where the huff-snuff, honder\nsponder, swashbuckling High Germans were, to whom he renewed these very\nterms, provoking them to fight with him; but all the return he had from\nthem to his stout challenge was only, Der Gasconner thut sich ausz mit ein\niedem zu schlagen, aber er ist geneigter zu stehlen, darum, liebe frawen,\nhabt sorg zu euerm hauszrath.  Finding also that none of that band of\nTeutonic soldiers offered himself to the combat, he passed to that quarter\nof the leaguer where the French freebooting adventurers were encamped, and\nreiterating unto them what he had before repeated to the Dutch warriors,\nchallenged them likewise to fight with him, and therewithal made some\npretty little Gasconado frisking gambols to oblige them the more cheerfully\nand gallantly to cope with him in the lists of a duellizing engagement; but\nno answer at all was made unto him.  Whereupon the Gascon, despairing of\nmeeting with any antagonists, departed from thence, and laying himself down\nnot far from the pavilions of the grand Christian cavalier Crissie, fell\nfast asleep.  When he had thoroughly slept an hour or two, another\nadventurous and all-hazarding blade of the forlorn hope of the lavishingly\nwasting gamesters, having also lost all his moneys, sallied forth with\nsword in his hand, of a firm resolution to fight with the aforesaid Gascon,\nseeing he had lost as well as he.\n\n  Ploratur lachrymis amissa pecunia veris,\n\nsaith the Gl. de poenitent. distinct. 3. c. sunt plures.  To this effect\nhaving made inquiry and search for him throughout the whole camp, and in\nsequel thereof found him asleep, he said unto him, Up, ho, good fellow, in\nthe name of all the devils of hell, rise up, rise up, get up!  I have lost\nmy money as well as thou hast done; let us therefore go fight lustily\ntogether, grapple and scuffle it to some purpose.  Thou mayest look and see\nthat my tuck is no longer than thy rapier.  The Gascon, altogether\nastonished at his unexpected provocation, without altering his former\ndialect spoke thus:  Cap de Saint Arnault, quau seys to you, qui me\nrebeillez?  Que mau de taberne te gire.  Ho Saint Siobe, cap de Gascoigne,\nta pla dormy jou, quand aquoest taquain me bingut estee.  The venturous\nroister inviteth him again to the duel, but the Gascon, without\ncondescending to his desire, said only this:  He paovret jou tesquinerie\nares, que son pla reposat.  Vayne un pauque te pausar com jou, peusse\ntruqueren.  Thus, in forgetting his loss, he forgot the eagerness which he\nhad to fight.  In conclusion, after that the other had likewise slept a\nlittle, they, instead of fighting, and possibly killing one another, went\njointly to a sutler's tent, where they drank together very amicably, each\nupon the pawn of his sword.  Thus by a little sleep was pacified the ardent\nfury of two warlike champions.  There, gossip, comes the golden word of\nJohn Andr. in cap. ult. de sent. et re. judic. l. sexto.\n\n  Sedendo, et dormiendo fit anima prudens.\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel excuseth Bridlegoose in the matter of sentencing actions at\nlaw by the chance of the dice.\n\nWith this Bridlegoose held his peace.  Whereupon Trinquamelle bid him\nwithdraw from the court--which accordingly was done--and then directed his\ndiscourse to Pantagruel after this manner:  It is fitting, most illustrious\nprince, not only by reason of the deep obligations wherein this present\nparliament, together with the whole marquisate of Mirelingues, stand bound\nto your royal highness for the innumerable benefits which, as effects of\nmere grace, they have received from your incomparable bounty, but for that\nexcellent wit also, prime judgment, and admirable learning wherewith\nAlmighty God, the giver of all good things, hath most richly qualified and\nendowed you, we tender and present unto you the decision of this new,\nstrange, and paradoxical case of Bridlegoose; who, in your presence, to\nyour both hearing and seeing, hath plainly confessed his final judging and\ndeterminating of suits of law by the mere chance and fortune of the dice.\nTherefore do we beseech you that you may be pleased to give sentence\ntherein as unto you shall seem most just and equitable.  To this Pantagruel\nanswered:  Gentlemen, it is not unknown to you how my condition is somewhat\nremote from the profession of deciding law controversies; yet, seeing you\nare pleased to do me the honour to put that task upon me, instead of\nundergoing the office of a judge I will become your humble supplicant.  I\nobserve, gentlemen, in this Bridlegoose several things which induce me to\nrepresent before you that it is my opinion he should be pardoned.  In the\nfirst place, his old age; secondly, his simplicity; to both which qualities\nour statute and common laws, civil and municipal together, allow many\nexcuses for any slips or escapes which, through the invincible imperfection\nof either, have been inconsiderately stumbled upon by a person so\nqualified.  Thirdly, gentlemen, I must needs display before you another\ncase, which in equity and justice maketh much for the advantage of\nBridlegoose, to wit, that this one, sole, and single fault of his ought to\nbe quite forgotten, abolished, and swallowed up by that immense and vast\nocean of just dooms and sentences which heretofore he hath given and\npronounced; his demeanours, for these forty years and upwards that he hath\nbeen a judge, having been so evenly balanced in the scales of uprightness,\nthat envy itself till now could not have been so impudent as to accuse and\ntwit him with any act worthy of a check or reprehension; as, if a drop of\nthe sea were thrown into the Loire, none could perceive or say that by this\nsingle drop the whole river should be salt and brackish.\n\nTruly, it seemeth unto me, that in the whole series of Bridlegoose's\njuridical decrees there hath been I know not what of extraordinary\nsavouring of the unspeakable benignity of God, that all those his preceding\nsentences, awards, and judgments, have been confirmed and approved of by\nyourselves in this your own venerable and sovereign court.  For it is\nusual, as you know well, with him whose ways are inscrutable, to manifest\nhis own ineffable glory in blunting the perspicacy of the eyes of the wise,\nin weakening the strength of potent oppressors, in depressing the pride of\nrich extortioners, and in erecting, comforting, protecting, supporting,\nupholding, and shoring up the poor, feeble, humble, silly, and foolish ones\nof the earth.  But, waiving all these matters, I shall only beseech you,\nnot by the obligations which you pretend to owe to my family, for which I\nthank you, but for that constant and unfeigned love and affection which you\nhave always found in me, both on this and on the other side of Loire, for\nthe maintenance and establishment of your places, offices, and dignities,\nthat for this one time you would pardon and forgive him upon these two\nconditions.  First, that he satisfy, or put a sufficient surety for the\nsatisfaction of the party wronged by the injustice of the sentence in\nquestion.  For the fulfilment of this article I will provide sufficiently.\nAnd, secondly, that for his subsidiary aid in the weighty charge of\nadministrating justice you would be pleased to appoint and assign unto him\nsome pretty little virtuous counsellor, younger, learneder, and wiser than\nhe, by the square and rule of whose advice he may regulate, guide, temper,\nand moderate in times coming all his judiciary procedures; or otherwise, if\nyou intend totally to depose him from his office, and to deprive him\naltogether of the state and dignity of a judge, I shall cordially entreat\nyou to make a present and free gift of him to me, who shall find in my\nkingdoms charges and employments enough wherewith to embusy him, for the\nbettering of his own fortunes and furtherance of my service.  In the\nmeantime, I implore the Creator, Saviour, and Sanctifier of all good\nthings, in his grace, mercy, and kindness, to preserve you all now and\nevermore, world without end.\n\nThese words thus spoken, Pantagruel, vailing his cap and making a leg with\nsuch a majestic garb as became a person of his paramount degree and\neminency, farewelled Trinquamelle, the president and master-speaker of that\nMirelinguesian parliament, took his leave of the whole court, and went out\nof the chamber; at the door whereof finding Panurge, Epistemon, Friar John,\nand others, he forthwith, attended by them, walked to the outer gate, where\nall of them immediately took horse to return towards Gargantua.  Pantagruel\nby the way related to them from point to point the manner of Bridlegoose's\nsententiating differences at law.  Friar John said that he had seen Peter\nDandin, and was acquainted with him at that time when he sojourned in the\nmonastery of Fontaine le Comte, under the noble Abbot Ardillon.  Gymnast\nlikewise affirmed that he was in the tent of the grand Christian cavalier\nDe Crissie, when the Gascon, after his sleep, made answer to the\nadventurer.  Panurge was somewhat incredulous in the matter of believing\nthat it was morally possible Bridlegoose should have been for such a long\nspace of time so continually fortunate in that aleatory way of deciding law\ndebates.  Epistemon said to Pantagruel, Such another story, not much unlike\nto that in all the circumstances thereof, is vulgarly reported of the\nprovost of Montlehery.  In good sooth, such a perpetuity of good luck is to\nbe wondered at.  To have hit right twice or thrice in a judgment so given\nby haphazard might have fallen out well enough, especially in controversies\nthat were ambiguous, intricate, abstruse, perplexed, and obscure.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel relateth a strange history of the perplexity of human\njudgment.\n\nSeeing you talk, quoth Pantagruel, of dark, difficult, hard, and knotty\ndebates, I will tell you of one controverted before Cneius Dolabella,\nproconsul in Asia.  The case was this.\n\nA wife in Smyrna had of her first husband a child named Abece.  He dying,\nshe, after the expiring of a year and day, married again, and to her second\nhusband bore a boy called Effege.  A pretty long time thereafter it\nhappened, as you know the affection of stepfathers and stepdams is very\nrare towards the children of the first fathers and mothers deceased, that\nthis husband, with the help of his son Effege, secretly, wittingly,\nwillingly, and treacherously murdered Abece.  The woman came no sooner to\nget information of the fact, but, that it might not go unpunished, she\ncaused kill them both, to revenge the death of her first son.  She was\napprehended and carried before Cneius Dolabella, in whose presence she,\nwithout dissembling anything, confessed all that was laid to her charge;\nyet alleged that she had both right and reason on her side for the killing\nof them.  Thus was the state of the question.  He found the business so\ndubious and intricate, that he knew not what to determine therein, nor\nwhich of the parties to incline to.  On the one hand, it was an execrable\ncrime to cut off at once both her second husband and her son.  On the other\nhand, the cause of the murder seemed to be so natural, as to be grounded\nupon the law of nations and the rational instinct of all the people of the\nworld, seeing they two together had feloniously and murderously destroyed\nher first son; not that they had been in any manner of way wronged,\noutraged, or injured by him, but out of an avaricious intent to possess his\ninheritance.  In this doubtful quandary and uncertainty what to pitch upon,\nhe sent to the Areopagites then sitting at Athens to learn and obtain their\nadvice and judgment.  That judicious senate, very sagely perpending the\nreasons of his perplexity, sent him word to summon her personally to\ncompear before him a precise hundred years thereafter, to answer to some\ninterrogatories touching certain points which were not contained in the\nverbal defence.  Which resolution of theirs did import that it was in their\nopinion a so difficult and inextricable matter that they knew not what to\nsay or judge therein.  Who had decided that plea by the chance and fortune\nof the dice, could not have erred nor awarded amiss on which side soever he\nhad passed his casting and condemnatory sentence.  If against the woman,\nshe deserved punishment for usurping sovereign authority by taking that\nvengeance at her own hand, the inflicting whereof was only competent to the\nsupreme power to administer justice in criminal cases.  If for her, the\njust resentment of a so atrocious injury done unto her, in murdering her\ninnocent son, did fully excuse and vindicate her of any trespass or offence\nabout that particular committed by her.  But this continuation of\nBridlegoose for so many years still hitting the nail on the head, never\nmissing the mark, and always judging aright, by the mere throwing of the\ndice and chance thereof, is that which most astonisheth and amazeth me.\n\nTo answer, quoth Pantagruel (Epistemon, says the English edition of 1694,\nfollowing the reading of the modern French editions.  Le Duchat has pointed\nout the mistake.--M.), categorically to that which you wonder at, I must\ningeniously confess and avow that I cannot; yet, conjecturally to guess at\nthe reason of it, I would refer the cause of that marvellously\nlong-continued happy success in the judiciary results of his definitive\nsentences to the favourable aspect of the heavens and benignity of the\nintelligences; who, out of their love to goodness, after having\ncontemplated the pure simplicity and sincere unfeignedness of Judge\nBridlegoose in the acknowledgment of his inabilities, did regulate that for\nhim by chance which by the profoundest act of his maturest deliberation he\nwas not able to reach unto.  That, likewise, which possibly made him to\ndiffide in his own skill and capacity, notwithstanding his being an expert\nand understanding lawyer, for anything that I know to the contrary, was the\nknowledge and experience which he had of the antinomies, contrarieties,\nantilogies, contradictions, traversings, and thwartings of laws, customs,\nedicts, statutes, orders, and ordinances, in which dangerous opposition,\nequity and justice being structured and founded on either of the opposite\nterms, and a gap being thereby opened for the ushering in of injustice and\niniquity through the various interpretations of self-ended lawyers, being\nassuredly persuaded that the infernal calumniator, who frequently\ntransformeth himself into the likeness of a messenger or angel of light,\nmaketh use of these cross glosses and expositions in the mouths and pens of\nhis ministers and servants, the perverse advocates, bribing judges,\nlaw-monging attorneys, prevaricating counsellors, and other such-like\nlaw-wresting members of a court of justice, to turn by those means black to\nwhite, green to grey, and what is straight to a crooked ply.  For the more\nexpedient doing whereof, these diabolical ministers make both the pleading\nparties believe that their cause is just and righteous; for it is well\nknown that there is no cause, how bad soever, which doth not find an\nadvocate to patrocinate and defend it,--else would there be no process in\nthe world, no suits at law, nor pleadings at the bar.  He did in these\nextremities, as I conceive, most humbly recommend the direction of his\njudicial proceedings to the upright judge of judges, God Almighty; did\nsubmit himself to the conduct and guideship of the blessed Spirit in the\nhazard and perplexity of the definitive sentence, and, by this aleatory\nlot, did as it were implore and explore the divine decree of his goodwill\nand pleasure, instead of that which we call the final judgment of a court.\nTo this effect, to the better attaining to his purpose, which was to judge\nrighteously, he did, in my opinion, throw and turn the dice, to the end\nthat by the providence aforesaid the best chance might fall to him whose\naction was uprightest, and backed with greatest reason.  In doing whereof\nhe did not stray from the sense of Talmudists, who say that there is so\nlittle harm in that manner of searching the truth, that in the anxiety and\nperplexedness of human wits God oftentimes manifesteth the secret pleasure\nof his divine will.\n\nFurthermore, I will neither think nor say, nor can I believe, that the\nunstraightness is so irregular, or the corruption so evident, of those of\nthe parliament of Mirelingois in Mirelingues, before whom Bridlegoose was\narraigned for prevarication, that they will maintain it to be a worse\npractice to have the decision of a suit at law referred to the chance and\nhazard of a throw of the dice, hab nab, or luck as it will, than to have it\nremitted to and passed by the determination of those whose hands are full\nof blood and hearts of wry affections.  Besides that, their principal\ndirection in all law matters comes to their hands from one Tribonian, a\nwicked, miscreant, barbarous, faithless and perfidious knave, so\npernicious, unjust, avaricious, and perverse in his ways, that it was his\nordinary custom to sell laws, edicts, declarations, constitutions, and\nordinances, as at an outroop or putsale, to him who offered most for them.\nThus did he shape measures for the pleaders, and cut their morsels to them\nby and out of these little parcels, fragments, bits, scantlings, and shreds\nof the law now in use, altogether concealing, suppressing, disannulling,\nand abolishing the remainder, which did make for the total law; fearing\nthat, if the whole law were made manifest and laid open to the knowledge of\nsuch as are interested in it, and the learned books of the ancient doctors\nof the law upon the exposition of the Twelve Tables and Praetorian Edicts,\nhis villainous pranks, naughtiness, and vile impiety should come to the\npublic notice of the world.  Therefore were it better, in my conceit, that\nis to say, less inconvenient, that parties at variance in any juridical\ncase should in the dark march upon caltrops than submit the determination\nof what is their right to such unhallowed sentences and horrible decrees;\nas Cato in his time wished and advised that every judiciary court should be\npaved with caltrops.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge taketh advice of Triboulet.\n\nOn the sixth day thereafter Pantagruel was returned home at the very same\nhour that Triboulet was by water come from Blois.  Panurge, at his arrival,\ngave him a hog's bladder puffed up with wind, and resounding because of the\nhard peas that were within it.  Moreover he did present him with a gilt\nwooden sword, a hollow budget made of a tortoise shell, an osier-wattled\nwicker-bottle full of Breton wine, and five-and-twenty apples of the\norchard of Blandureau.\n\nIf he be such a fool, quoth Carpalin, as to be won with apples, there is no\nmore wit in his pate than in the head of an ordinary cabbage.  Triboulet\ngirded the sword and scrip to his side, took the bladder in his hand, ate\nsome few of the apples, and drunk up all the wine.  Panurge very wistly and\nheedfully looking upon him said, I never yet saw a fool, and I have seen\nten thousand francs worth of that kind of cattle, who did not love to drink\nheartily, and by good long draughts.  When Triboulet had done with his\ndrinking, Panurge laid out before him and exposed the sum of the business\nwherein he was to require his advice, in eloquent and choicely-sorted\nterms, adorned with flourishes of rhetoric.  But, before he had altogether\ndone, Triboulet with his fist gave him a bouncing whirret between the\nshoulders, rendered back into his hand again the empty bottle, fillipped\nand flirted him in the nose with the hog's bladder, and lastly, for a final\nresolution, shaking and wagging his head strongly and disorderly, he\nanswered nothing else but this, By God, God, mad fool, beware the monk,\nBuzansay hornpipe!  These words thus finished, he slipped himself out of\nthe company, went aside, and, rattling the bladder, took a huge delight in\nthe melody of the rickling crackling noise of the peas.  After which time\nit lay not in the power of them all to draw out of his chaps the articulate\nsound of one syllable, insomuch that, when Panurge went about to\ninterrogate him further, Triboulet drew his wooden sword, and would have\nstuck him therewith.  I have fished fair now, quoth Panurge, and brought my\npigs to a fine market.  Have I not got a brave determination of all my\ndoubts, and a response in all things agreeable to the oracle that gave it?\nHe is a great fool, that is not to be denied, yet is he a greater fool who\nbrought him hither to me,--That bolt, quoth Carpalin, levels point-blank at\nme,--but of the three I am the greatest fool, who did impart the secret of\nmy thoughts to such an idiot ass and native ninny.\n\nWithout putting ourselves to any stir or trouble in the least, quoth\nPantagruel, let us maturely and seriously consider and perpend the gestures\nand speech which he hath made and uttered.  In them, veritably, quoth he,\nhave I remarked and observed some excellent and notable mysteries; yea, of\nsuch important worth and weight, that I shall never henceforth be\nastonished, nor think strange, why the Turks with a great deal of worship\nand reverence honour and respect natural fools equally with their primest\ndoctors, muftis, divines, and prophets.  Did not you take heed, quoth he, a\nlittle before he opened his mouth to speak, what a shogging, shaking, and\nwagging his head did keep?  By the approved doctrine of the ancient\nphilosophers, the customary ceremonies of the most expert magicians, and\nthe received opinions of the learnedest lawyers, such a brangling agitation\nand moving should by us all be judged to proceed from, and be quickened and\nsuscitated by the coming and inspiration of the prophetizing and fatidical\nspirit, which, entering briskly and on a sudden into a shallow receptacle\nof a debile substance (for, as you know, and as the proverb shows it, a\nlittle head containeth not much brains), was the cause of that commotion.\nThis is conform to what is avouched by the most skilful physicians, when\nthey affirm that shakings and tremblings fall upon the members of a human\nbody, partly because of the heaviness and violent impetuosity of the burden\nand load that is carried, and, other part, by reason of the weakness and\nimbecility that is in the virtue of the bearing organ.  A manifest example\nwhereof appeareth in those who, fasting, are not able to carry to their\nhead a great goblet full of wine without a trembling and a shaking in the\nhand that holds it.  This of old was accounted a prefiguration and mystical\npointing out of the Pythian divineress, who used always, before the\nuttering of a response from the oracle, to shake a branch of her domestic\nlaurel.  Lampridius also testifieth that the Emperor Heliogabalus, to\nacquire unto himself the reputation of a soothsayer, did, on several holy\ndays of prime solemnnity, in the presence of the fanatic rabble, make the\nhead of his idol by some slight within the body thereof publicly to shake.\nPlautus, in his Asinaria, declareth likewise, that Saurias, whithersoever\nhe walked, like one quite distracted of his wits kept such a furious\nlolling and mad-like shaking of his head, that he commonly affrighted those\nwho casually met with him in his way.  The said author in another place,\nshowing a reason why Charmides shook and brangled his head, assevered that\nhe was transported and in an ecstasy.  Catullus after the same manner\nmaketh mention, in his Berecynthia and Atys, of the place wherein the\nMenades, Bacchical women, she-priests of the Lyaean god, and demented\nprophetesses, carrying ivy boughs in their hands, did shake their heads.\nAs in the like case, amongst the Galli, the gelded priests of Cybele were\nwont to do in the celebrating of their festivals.  Whence, too, according\nto the sense of the ancient theologues, she herself has her denomination,\nfor kubistan signifieth to turn round, whirl about, shake the head, and\nplay the part of one that is wry-necked.\n\nSemblably Titus Livius writeth that, in the solemnization time of the\nBacchanalian holidays at Rome, both men and women seemed to prophetize and\nvaticinate, because of an affected kind of wagging of the head, shrugging\nof the shoulders, and jectigation of the whole body, which they used then\nmost punctually.  For the common voice of the philosophers, together with\nthe opinion of the people, asserteth for an irrefragable truth that\nvaticination is seldom by the heavens bestowed on any without the\nconcomitancy of a little frenzy and a head-shaking, not only when the said\npresaging virtue is infused, but when the person also therewith inspired\ndeclareth and manifesteth it unto others.  The learned lawyer Julian, being\nasked on a time if that slave might be truly esteemed to be healthful and\nin a good plight who had not only conversed with some furious, maniac, and\nenraged people, but in their company had also prophesied, yet without a\nnoddle-shaking concussion, answered that, seeing there was no head-wagging\nat the time of his predictions, he might be held for sound and compotent\nenough.  Is it not daily seen how schoolmasters, teachers, tutors, and\ninstructors of children shake the heads of their disciples, as one would do\na pot in holding it by the lugs, that by this erection, vellication,\nstretching, and pulling their ears, which, according to the doctrine of the\nsage Egyptians, is a member consecrated to the memory, they may stir them\nup to recollect their scattered thoughts, bring home those fancies of\ntheirs which perhaps have been extravagantly roaming abroad upon strange\nand uncouth objects, and totally range their judgments, which possibly by\ndisordinate affections have been made wild, to the rule and pattern of a\nwise, discreet, virtuous, and philosophical discipline.  All which Virgil\nacknowledgeth to be true, in the branglement of Apollo Cynthius.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret the words of Triboulet.\n\nHe says you are a fool.  And what kind of fool?  A mad fool, who in your\nold age would enslave yourself to the bondage of matrimony, and shut your\npleasures up within a wedlock whose key some ruffian carries in his\ncodpiece.  He says furthermore, Beware of the monk.  Upon mine honour, it\ngives me in my mind that you will be cuckolded by a monk.  Nay, I will\nengage mine honour, which is the most precious pawn I could have in my\npossession although I were sole and peaceable dominator over all Europe,\nAsia, and Africa, that, if you marry, you will surely be one of the horned\nbrotherhood of Vulcan.  Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to\nthe wise foolery of our morosoph Triboulet.  The other oracles and\nresponses did in the general prognosticate you a cuckold, without\ndescending so near to the point of a particular determination as to pitch\nupon what vocation amongst the several sorts of men he should profess who\nis to be the copesmate of your wife and hornifier of your proper self.\nThus noble Triboulet tells it us plainly, from whose words we may gather\nwith all ease imaginable that your cuckoldry is to be infamous, and so much\nthe more scandalous that your conjugal bed will be incestuously\ncontaminated with the filthiness of a monkery lecher.  Moreover, he says\nthat you will be the hornpipe of Buzansay, that is to say, well-horned,\nhornified, and cornuted.  And, as Triboulet's uncle asked from Louis the\nTwelfth, for a younger brother of his own who lived at Blois, the hornpipes\nof Buzansay, for the organ pipes, through the mistake of one word for\nanother, even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet,\nand honest wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud, loud,\nobstreperous, bawling, clamorous, and more unpleasant than any Buzansay\nhornpipe.  Consider withal how he flirted you on the nose with the bladder,\nand gave you a sound thumping blow with his fist upon the ridge of the\nback.  This denotates and presageth that you shall be banged, beaten, and\nfillipped by her, and that also she will steal of your goods from you, as\nyou stole the hog's bladder from the little boys of Vaubreton.\n\nFlat contrary, quoth Panurge;--not that I would impudently exempt myself\nfrom being a vassal in the territory of folly.  I hold of that\njurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it.  And why should I not?\nFor the whole world is foolish.  In the old Lorraine language, fou for tou,\nall and fool, were the same thing.  Besides, it is avouched by Solomon that\ninfinite is the number of fools.  From an infinity nothing can be deducted\nor abated, nor yet, by the testimony of Aristotle, can anything thereto be\nadded or subjoined.  Therefore were I a mad fool if, being a fool, I should\nnot hold myself a fool.  After the same manner of speaking, we may aver the\nnumber of the mad and enraged folks to be infinite.  Avicenna maketh no\nbones to assert that the several kinds of madness are infinite.  Though\nthis much of Triboulet's words tend little to my advantage, howbeit the\nprejudice which I sustain thereby be common with me to all other men, yet\nthe rest of his talk and gesture maketh altogether for me.  He said to my\nwife, Be wary of the monkey; that is as much as if she should be cheery,\nand take as much delight in a monkey as ever did the Lesbia of Catullus in\nher sparrow; who will for his recreation pass his time no less joyfully at\nthe exercise of snatching flies than heretofore did the merciless\nfly-catcher Domitian.  Withal he meant, by another part of his discourse,\nthat she should be of a jovial country-like humour, as gay and pleasing as a\nharmonious hornpipe of Saulieau or Buzansay.  The veridical Triboulet did\ntherein hint at what I liked well, as perfectly knowing the inclinations and\npropensions of my mind, my natural disposition, and the bias of my interior\npassions and affections.  For you may be assured that my humour is much\nbetter satisfied and contented with the pretty, frolic, rural, dishevelled\nshepherdesses, whose bums through their coarse canvas smocks smell of the\nclover grass of the field, than with those great ladies in magnific courts,\nwith their flandan top-knots and sultanas, their polvil, pastillos, and\ncosmetics.  The homely sound, likewise, of a rustical hornpipe is more\nagreeable to my ears than the curious warbling and musical quavering of\nlutes, theorbos, viols, rebecs, and violins.  He gave me a lusty rapping\nthwack on my back,--what then?  Let it pass, in the name and for the love of\nGod, as an abatement of and deduction from so much of my future pains in\npurgatory.  He did it not out of any evil intent.  He thought, belike, to\nhave hit some of the pages.  He is an honest fool, and an innocent\nchangeling.  It is a sin to harbour in the heart any bad conceit of him.  As\nfor myself, I heartily pardon him.  He flirted me on the nose.  In that\nthere is no harm; for it importeth nothing else but that betwixt my wife and\nme there will occur some toyish wanton tricks which usually happen to all\nnew-married folks.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel and Panurge resolved to make a visit to the oracle of the\nholy bottle.\n\nThere is as yet another point, quoth Panurge, which you have not at all\nconsidered on, although it be the chief and principal head of the matter.\nHe put the bottle in my hand and restored it me again.  How interpret you\nthat passage?  What is the meaning of that?  He possibly, quoth Pantagruel,\nsignifieth thereby that your wife will be such a drunkard as shall daily\ntake in her liquor kindly, and ply the pots and bottles apace.  Quite\notherwise, quoth Panurge; for the bottle was empty.  I swear to you, by the\nprickling brambly thorn of St. Fiacre in Brie, that our unique morosoph,\nwhom I formerly termed the lunatic Triboulet, referreth me, for attaining\nto the final resolution of my scruple, to the response-giving bottle.\nTherefore do I renew afresh the first vow which I made, and here in your\npresence protest and make oath, by Styx and Acheron, to carry still\nspectacles in my cap, and never to wear a codpiece in my breeches, until\nupon the enterprise in hand of my nuptial undertaking I shall have obtained\nan answer from the holy bottle.  I am acquainted with a prudent,\nunderstanding, and discreet gentleman, and besides a very good friend of\nmine, who knoweth the land, country, and place where its temple and oracle\nis built and posited.  He will guide and conduct us thither sure and\nsafely.  Let us go thither, I beseech you.  Deny me not, and say not nay;\nreject not the suit I make unto you, I entreat you.  I will be to you an\nAchates, a Damis, and heartily accompany you all along in the whole voyage,\nboth in your going forth and coming back.  I have of a long time known you\nto be a great lover of peregrination, desirous still to learn new things,\nand still to see what you had never seen before.\n\nVery willingly, quoth Pantagruel, I condescend to your request.  But before\nwe enter in upon our progress towards the accomplishment of so far a\njourney, replenished and fraught with eminent perils, full of innumerable\nhazards, and every way stored with evident and manifest dangers,--What\ndangers? quoth Panurge, interrupting him.  Dangers fly back, run from, and\nshun me whithersoever I go, seven leagues around, as in the presence of the\nsovereign a subordinate magistracy is eclipsed; or as clouds and darkness\nquite evanish at the bright coming of a radiant sun; or as all sores and\nsicknesses did suddenly depart at the approach of the body of St. Martin a\nQuande.  Nevertheless, quoth Pantagruel, before we adventure to set\nforwards on the road of our projected and intended voyage, some few points\nare to be discussed, expedited, and despatched.  First, let us send back\nTriboulet to Blois.  Which was instantly done, after that Pantagruel had\ngiven him a frieze coat.  Secondly, our design must be backed with the\nadvice and counsel of the king my father.  And, lastly, it is most needful\nand expedient for us that we search for and find out some sibyl to serve us\nfor a guide, truchman, and interpreter.  To this Panurge made answer, that\nhis friend Xenomanes would abundantly suffice for the plenary discharge and\nperformance of the sibyl's office; and that, furthermore, in passing\nthrough the Lanternatory revelling country, they should take along with\nthem a learned and profitable Lanternesse, which would be no less useful to\nthem in their voyage than was the sibyl to Aeneas in his descent to the\nElysian fields.  Carpalin, in the interim, as he was upon the conducting\naway of Triboulet, in his passing by hearkened a little to the discourse\nthey were upon; then spoke out, saying, Ho, Panurge, master freeman, take\nmy Lord Debitis at Calais alongst with you, for he is goud-fallot, a good\nfellow.  He will not forget those who have been debitors; these are\nLanternes.  Thus shall you not lack for both fallot and lanterne.  I may\nsafely with the little skill I have, quoth Pantagruel, prognosticate that\nby the way we shall engender no melancholy.  I clearly perceive it already.\nThe only thing that vexeth me is, that I cannot speak the Lanternatory\nlanguage.  I shall, answered Panurge, speak for you all.  I understand it\nevery whit as well as I do mine own maternal tongue; I have been no less\nused to it than to the vulgar French.\n\n  Briszmarg dalgotbrick nubstzne zos.\n  Isquebsz prusq:  albok crinqs zacbac.\n  Mizbe dilbarskz morp nipp stancz bos,\n  Strombtz, Panurge, walmap quost gruszbac.\n\nNow guess, friend Epistemon, what this is.  They are, quoth Epistemon,\nnames of errant devils, passant devils, and rampant devils.  These words of\nthine, dear friend of mine, are true, quoth Panurge; yet are they terms\nused in the language of the court of the Lanternish people.  By the way, as\nwe go upon our journey, I will make to thee a pretty little dictionary,\nwhich, notwithstanding, shall not last you much longer than a pair of new\nshoes.  Thou shalt have learned it sooner than thou canst perceive the\ndawning of the next subsequent morning.  What I have said in the foregoing\ntetrastich is thus translated out of the Lanternish tongue into our vulgar\ndialect:\n\n  All miseries attended me, whilst I\n  A lover was, and had no good thereby.\n  Of better luck the married people tell;\n  Panurge is one of those, and knows it well.\n\nThere is little more, then, quoth Pantagruel, to be done, but that we\nunderstand what the will of the king my father will be therein, and\npurchase his consent.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gargantua showeth that the children ought not to marry without the\nspecial knowledge and advice of their fathers and mothers.\n\nNo sooner had Pantagruel entered in at the door of the great hall of the\ncastle, than that he encountered full butt with the good honest Gargantua\ncoming forth from the council board, unto whom he made a succinct and\nsummary narrative of what had passed and occurred, worthy of his\nobservation, in his travels abroad, since their last interview; then,\nacquainting him with the design he had in hand, besought him that it might\nstand with his goodwill and pleasure to grant him leave to prosecute and go\nthrough-stitch with the enterprise which he had undertaken.  The good man\nGargantua, having in one hand two great bundles of petitions endorsed and\nanswered, and in the other some remembrancing notes and bills, to put him\nin mind of such other requests of supplicants, which, albeit presented, had\nnevertheless been neither read nor heard, he gave both to Ulric Gallet, his\nancient and faithful Master of Requests; then drew aside Pantagruel, and,\nwith a countenance more serene and jovial than customary, spoke to him\nthus:  I praise God, and have great reason so to do, my most dear son, that\nhe hath been pleased to entertain in you a constant inclination to virtuous\nactions.  I am well content that the voyage which you have motioned to me\nbe by you accomplished, but withal I could wish you would have a mind and\ndesire to marry, for that I see you are of competent years.  Panurge in the\nmeanwhile was in a readiness of preparing and providing for remedies,\nsalves, and cures against all such lets, obstacles, and impediments as he\ncould in the height of his fancy conceive might by Gargantua be cast in the\nway of their itinerary design.  Is it your pleasure, most dear father, that\nyou speak? answered Pantagruel.  For my part, I have not yet thought upon\nit.  In all this affair I wholly submit and rest in your good liking and\npaternal authority.  For I shall rather pray unto God that he would throw\nme down stark dead at your feet, in your pleasure, than that against your\npleasure I should be found married alive.  I never yet heard that by any\nlaw, whether sacred or profane, yea, amongst the rudest and most barbarous\nnations in the world, it was allowed and approved of that children may be\nsuffered and tolerated to marry at their own goodwill and pleasure, without\nthe knowledge, advice, or consent asked and had thereto of their fathers,\nmothers, and nearest kindred.  All legislators, everywhere upon the face of\nthe whole earth, have taken away and removed this licentious liberty from\nchildren, and totally reserved it to the discretion of the parents.\n\nMy dearly beloved son, quoth Gargantua, I believe you, and from my heart\nthank God for having endowed you with the grace of having both a perfect\nnotice of and entire liking to laudable and praiseworthy things; and that\nthrough the windows of your exterior senses he hath vouchsafed to transmit\nunto the interior faculties of your mind nothing but what is good and\nvirtuous.  For in my time there hath been found on the continent a certain\ncountry, wherein are I know not what kind of Pastophorian mole-catching\npriests, who, albeit averse from engaging their proper persons into a\nmatrimonial duty, like the pontifical flamens of Cybele in Phrygia, as if\nthey were capons, and not cocks full of lasciviousness, salacity, and\nwantonness, who yet have, nevertheless, in the matter of conjugal affairs,\ntaken upon them to prescribe laws and ordinances to married folks.  I\ncannot goodly determine what I should most abhor, detest, loathe, and\nabominate,--whether the tyrannical presumption of those dreaded sacerdotal\nmole-catchers, who, not being willing to contain and coop up themselves\nwithin the grates and trellises of their own mysterious temples, do deal\nin, meddle with, obtrude upon, and thrust their sickles into harvests of\nsecular businesses quite contrary and diametrically opposite to the\nquality, state, and condition of their callings, professions, and\nvocations; or the superstitious stupidity and senseless scrupulousness of\nmarried folks, who have yielded obedience, and submitted their bodies,\nfortunes, and estates to the discretion and authority of such odious,\nperverse, barbarous, and unreasonable laws.  Nor do they see that which is\nclearer than the light and splendour of the morning star,--how all these\nnuptial and connubial sanctions, statutes, and ordinances have been\ndecreed, made, and instituted for the sole benefit, profit, and advantage\nof the flaminal mysts and mysterious flamens, and nothing at all for the\ngood, utility, or emolument of the silly hoodwinked married people.  Which\nadministereth unto others a sufficient cause for rendering these churchmen\nsuspicious of iniquity, and of an unjust and fraudulent manner of dealing,\nno more to be connived at nor countenanced, after that it be well weighed\nin the scales of reason, than if with a reciprocal temerity the laics, by\nway of compensation, would impose laws to be followed and observed by those\nmysts and flamens, how they should behave themselves in the making and\nperformance of their rites and ceremonies, and after what manner they ought\nto proceed in the offering up and immolating of their various oblations,\nvictims, and sacrifices; seeing that, besides the decimation and\ntithe-haling of their goods, they cut off and take parings, shreddings, and\nclippings of the gain proceeding from the labour of their hands and sweat\nof their brows, therewith to entertain themselves the better.  Upon which\nconsideration, in my opinion, their injunctions and commands would not\nprove so pernicious and impertinent as those of the ecclesiastic power unto\nwhich they had tendered their blind obedience.  For, as you have very well\nsaid, there is no place in the world where, legally, a licence is granted\nto the children to marry without the advice and consent of their parents\nand kindred.  Nevertheless, by those wicked laws and mole-catching customs,\nwhereat there is a little hinted in what I have already spoken to you,\nthere is no scurvy, measly, leprous, or pocky ruffian, pander, knave,\nrogue, skellum, robber, or thief, pilloried, whipped, and burn-marked in\nhis own country for his crimes and felonies, who may not violently snatch\naway and ravish what maid soever he had a mind to pitch upon, how noble,\nhow fair, how rich, honest, and chaste soever she be, and that out of the\nhouse of her own father, in his own presence, from the bosom of her mother,\nand in the sight and despite of her friends and kindred looking on a so\nwoeful spectacle, provided that the rascal villain be so cunning as to\nassociate unto himself some mystical flamen, who, according to the covenant\nmade betwixt them two, shall be in hope some day to participate of the\nprey.\n\nCould the Goths, the Scyths, or Massagets do a worse or more cruel act to\nany of the inhabitants of a hostile city, when, after the loss of many of\ntheir most considerable commanders, the expense of a great deal of money,\nand a long siege, they shall have stormed and taken it by a violent and\nimpetuous assault?  May not these fathers and mothers, think you, be\nsorrowful and heavy-hearted when they see an unknown fellow, a vagabond\nstranger, a barbarous lout, a rude cur, rotten, fleshless, putrified,\nscraggy, boily, botchy, poor, a forlorn caitiff and miserable sneak, by an\nopen rapt snatch away before their own eyes their so fair, delicate, neat,\nwell-behavioured, richly-provided-for and healthful daughters, on whose\nbreeding and education they had spared no cost nor charges, by bringing\nthem up in an honest discipline to all the honourable and virtuous\nemployments becoming one of their sex descended of a noble parentage,\nhoping by those commendable and industrious means in an opportune and\nconvenient time to bestow them on the worthy sons of their well-deserving\nneighbours and ancient friends, who had nourished, entertained, taught,\ninstructed, and schooled their children with the same care and solicitude,\nto make them matches fit to attain to the felicity of a so happy marriage,\nthat from them might issue an offspring and progeny no less heirs to the\nlaudable endowments and exquisite qualifications of their parents, whom\nthey every way resemble, than to their personal and real estates, movables,\nand inheritances?  How doleful, trist, and plangorous would such a sight\nand pageantry prove unto them?  You shall not need to think that the\ncollachrymation of the Romans and their confederates at the decease of\nGermanicus Drusus was comparable to this lamentation of theirs?  Neither\nwould I have you to believe that the discomfort and anxiety of the\nLacedaemonians, when the Greek Helen, by the perfidiousness of the\nadulterous Trojan, Paris, was privily stolen away out of their country, was\ngreater or more pitiful than this ruthful and deplorable collugency of\ntheirs?  You may very well imagine that Ceres at the ravishment of her\ndaughter Proserpina was not more attristed, sad, nor mournful than they.\nTrust me, and your own reason, that the loss of Osiris was not so\nregrettable to Isis, nor did Venus so deplore the death of Adonis, nor yet\ndid Hercules so bewail the straying of Hylas, nor was the rapt of Polyxena\nmore throbbingly resented and condoled by Priamus and Hecuba, than this\naforesaid accident would be sympathetically bemoaned, grievous, ruthful,\nand anxious to the woefully desolate and disconsolate parents.\n\nNotwithstanding all this, the greater part of so vilely abused parents are\nso timorous and afraid of devils and hobgoblins, and so deeply plunged in\nsuperstition, that they dare not gainsay nor contradict, much less oppose\nand resist those unnatural and impious actions, when the mole-catcher hath\nbeen present at the perpetrating of the fact, and a party contractor and\ncovenanter in that detestable bargain.  What do they do then?  They\nwretchedly stay at their own miserable homes, destitute of their\nwell-beloved daughters, the fathers cursing the days and the hours wherein\nthey were married, and the mothers howling and crying that it was not their\nfortune to have brought forth abortive issues when they happened to be\ndelivered of such unfortunate girls, and in this pitiful plight spend at\nbest the remainder of their time with tears and weeping for those their\nchildren, of and from whom they expected, (and, with good reason, should\nhave obtained and reaped,) in these latter days of theirs, joy and comfort.\nOther parents there have been, so impatient of that affront and indignity\nput upon them and their families, that, transported with the extremity of\npassion, in a mad and frantic mood, through the vehemency of a grievous\nfury and raging sorrow, have drowned, hanged, killed, and otherwise put\nviolent hands on themselves.  Others, again, of that parental relation\nhave, upon the reception of the like injury, been of a more magnanimous and\nheroic spirit, who, in imitation and at the example of the children of\nJacob revenging upon the Sichemites the rapt of their sister Dinah, having\nfound the rascally ruffian in the association of his mystical mole-catcher\nclosely and in hugger-mugger conferring, parleying, and coming with their\ndaughters, for the suborning, corrupting, depraving, perverting, and\nenticing these innocent unexperienced maids unto filthy lewdnesses, have,\nwithout any further advisement on the matter, cut them instantly into\npieces, and thereupon forthwith thrown out upon the fields their so\ndismembered bodies, to serve for food unto the wolves and ravens.  Upon the\nchivalrous, bold, and courageous achievement of a so valiant, stout, and\nmanlike act, the other mole-catching symmysts have been so highly incensed,\nand have so chafed, fretted, and fumed thereat, that, bills of complaint\nand accusations having been in a most odious and detestable manner put in\nbefore the competent judges, the arm of secular authority hath with much\nimportunity and impetuosity been by them implored and required, they\nproudly contending that the servants of God would become contemptible if\nexemplary punishment were not speedily taken upon the persons of the\nperpetrators of such an enormous, horrid, sacrilegious, crying, heinous,\nand execrable crime.\n\nYet neither by natural equity, by the law of nations, nor by any imperial\nlaw whatsoever, hath there been found so much as one rubric, paragraph,\npoint, or tittle, by the which any kind of chastisement or correction hath\nbeen adjudged due to be inflicted upon any for their delinquency in that\nkind.  Reason opposeth, and nature is repugnant.  For there is no virtuous\nman in the world who both naturally and with good reason will not be more\nhugely troubled in mind, hearing of the news of the rapt, disgrace,\nignominy, and dishonour of his daughter, than of her death.  Now any man,\nfinding in hot blood one who with a forethought felony hath murdered his\ndaughter, may, without tying himself to the formalities and circumstances\nof a legal proceeding, kill him on a sudden and out of hand without\nincurring any hazard of being attainted and apprehended by the officers of\njustice for so doing.  What wonder is it then?  Or how little strange\nshould it appear to any rational man, if a lechering rogue, together with\nhis mole-catching abettor, be entrapped in the flagrant act of suborning\nhis daughter, and stealing her out of his house, though herself consent\nthereto, that the father in such a case of stain and infamy by them brought\nupon his family, should put them both to a shameful death, and cast their\ncarcasses upon dunghills to be devoured and eaten up by dogs and swine, or\notherwise fling them a little further off to the direption, tearing, and\nrending asunder of their joints and members by the wild beasts of the field\n(as unworthy to receive the gentle, the desired, the last kind embraces of\nthe great Alma Mater, the earth, commonly called burial).\n\nDearly beloved son, have an especial care that after my decease none of\nthese laws be received in any of your kingdoms; for whilst I breathe, by\nthe grace and assistance of God, I shall give good order.  Seeing,\ntherefore, you have totally referred unto my discretion the disposure of\nyou in marriage, I am fully of an opinion that I shall provide sufficiently\nwell for you in that point.  Make ready and prepare yourself for Panurge's\nvoyage.  Take along with you Epistemon, Friar John, and such others as you\nwill choose.  Do with my treasures what unto yourself shall seem most\nexpedient.  None of your actions, I promise you, can in any manner of way\ndisplease me.  Take out of my arsenal Thalasse whatsoever equipage,\nfurniture, or provision you please, together with such pilots, mariners,\nand truchmen as you have a mind to, and with the first fair and favourable\nwind set sail and make out to sea in the name of God our Saviour.  In the\nmeanwhile, during your absence, I shall not be neglective of providing a\nwife for you, nor of those preparations which are requisite to be made for\nthe more sumptuous solemnizing of your nuptials with a most splendid feast,\nif ever there was any in the world, since the days of Ahasuerus.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel did put himself in a readiness to go to sea; and of the herb\nnamed Pantagruelion.\n\nWithin very few days after that Pantagruel had taken his leave of the good\nGargantua, who devoutly prayed for his son's happy voyage, he arrived at\nthe seaport, near to Sammalo, accompanied with Panurge, Epistemon, Friar\nJohn of the Funnels, Abbot of Theleme, and others of the royal house,\nespecially with Xenomanes the great traveller and thwarter of dangerous\nways, who was come at the bidding and appointment of Panurge, of whose\ncastlewick of Salmigondin he did hold some petty inheritance by the tenure\nof a mesne fee.  Pantagruel, being come thither, prepared and made ready\nfor launching a fleet of ships, to the number of those which Ajax of\nSalamine had of old equipped in convoy of the Grecian soldiery against the\nTrojan state.  He likewise picked out for his use so many mariners, pilots,\nsailors, interpreters, artificers, officers, and soldiers, as he thought\nfitting, and therewithal made provision of so much victuals of all sorts,\nartillery, munition of divers kinds, clothes, moneys, and other such\nluggage, stuff, baggage, chaffer, and furniture, as he deemed needful for\ncarrying on the design of a so tedious, long, and perilous voyage.  Amongst\nother things, it was observed how he caused some of his vessels to be\nfraught and loaded with a great quantity of an herb of his called\nPantagruelion, not only of the green and raw sort of it, but of the\nconfected also, and of that which was notably well befitted for present use\nafter the fashion of conserves.  The herb Pantagruelion hath a little root\nsomewhat hard and rough, roundish, terminating in an obtuse and very blunt\npoint, and having some of its veins, strings, or filaments coloured with\nsome spots of white, never fixeth itself into the ground above the\nprofoundness almost of a cubit, or foot and a half.  From the root thereof\nproceedeth the only stalk, orbicular, cane-like, green without, whitish\nwithin, and hollow like the stem of smyrnium, olus atrum, beans, and\ngentian, full of long threads, straight, easy to be broken, jagged,\nsnipped, nicked, and notched a little after the manner of pillars and\ncolumns, slightly furrowed, chamfered, guttered, and channelled, and full\nof fibres, or hairs like strings, in which consisteth the chief value and\ndignity of the herb, especially in that part thereof which is termed mesa,\nas he would say the mean, and in that other, which hath got the\ndenomination of milasea.  Its height is commonly of five or six foot.  Yet\nsometimes it is of such a tall growth as doth surpass the length of a\nlance, but that is only when it meeteth with a sweet, easy, warm, wet, and\nwell-soaked soil--as is the ground of the territory of Olone, and that of\nRasea, near to Preneste in Sabinia--and that it want not for rain enough\nabout the season of the fishers' holidays and the estival solstice.  There\nare many trees whose height is by it very far exceeded, and you might call\nit dendromalache by the authority of Theophrastus.  The plant every year\nperisheth,--the tree neither in the trunk, root, bark, or boughs being\ndurable.\n\nFrom the stalk of this Pantagruelian plant there issue forth several large\nand great branches, whose leaves have thrice as much length as breadth,\nalways green, roughish, and rugged like the orcanet, or Spanish bugloss,\nhardish, slit round about like unto a sickle, or as the saxifragum, betony,\nand finally ending as it were in the points of a Macedonian spear, or of\nsuch a lancet as surgeons commonly make use of in their phlebotomizing\ntiltings.  The figure and shape of the leaves thereof is not much different\nfrom that of those of the ash-tree, or of agrimony; the herb itself being\nso like the Eupatorian plant that many skilful herbalists have called it\nthe Domestic Eupator, and the Eupator the Wild Pantagruelion.  These leaves\nare in equal and parallel distances spread around the stalk by the number\nin every rank either of five or seven, nature having so highly favoured and\ncherished this plant that she hath richly adorned it with these two odd,\ndivine, and mysterious numbers.  The smell thereof is somewhat strong, and\nnot very pleasing to nice, tender, and delicate noses.  The seed enclosed\ntherein mounteth up to the very top of its stalk, and a little above it.\n\nThis is a numerous herb; for there is no less abundance of it than of any\nother whatsoever.  Some of these plants are spherical, some rhomboid, and\nsome of an oblong shape, and all of those either black, bright-coloured, or\ntawny, rude to the touch, and mantled with a quickly-blasted-away coat, yet\nsuch a one as is of a delicious taste and savour to all shrill and\nsweetly-singing birds, such as linnets, goldfinches, larks, canary birds,\nyellow-hammers, and others of that airy chirping choir; but it would quite\nextinguish the natural heat and procreative virtue of the semence of any\nman who would eat much and often of it.  And although that of old amongst\nthe Greeks there was certain kinds of fritters and pancakes, buns and\ntarts, made thereof, which commonly for a liquorish daintiness were\npresented on the table after supper to delight the palate and make the wine\nrelish the better; yet is it of a difficult concoction, and offensive to\nthe stomach.  For it engendereth bad and unwholesome blood, and with its\nexorbitant heat woundeth them with grievous, hurtful, smart, and noisome\nvapours.  And, as in divers plants and trees there are two sexes, male and\nfemale, which is perceptible in laurels, palms, cypresses, oaks, holms, the\ndaffodil, mandrake, fern, the agaric, mushroom, birthwort, turpentine,\npennyroyal, peony, rose of the mount, and many other such like, even so in\nthis herb there is a male which beareth no flower at all, yet it is very\ncopious of and abundant in seed.  There is likewise in it a female, which\nhath great store and plenty of whitish flowers, serviceable to little or no\npurpose, nor doth it carry in it seed of any worth at all, at least\ncomparable to that of the male.  It hath also a larger leaf, and much\nsofter than that of the male, nor doth it altogether grow to so great a\nheight.  This Pantagruelion is to be sown at the first coming of the\nswallows, and is to be plucked out of the ground when the grasshoppers\nbegin to be a little hoarse.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the famous Pantagruelion ought to be prepared and wrought.\n\nThe herb Pantagruelion, in September, under the autumnal equinox, is\ndressed and prepared several ways, according to the various fancies of the\npeople and diversity of the climates wherein it groweth.  The first\ninstruction which Pantagruel gave concerning it was to divest and despoil\nthe stalk and stem thereof of all its flowers and seeds, to macerate and\nmortify it in pond, pool, or lake water, which is to be made run a little\nfor five days together (Properly--'lake water, which is to be made\nstagnant, not current, for five days together.'--M.) if the season be dry\nand the water hot, or for full nine or twelve days if the weather be\ncloudish and the water cold.  Then must it be parched before the sun till\nit be drained of its moisture.  After this it is in the shadow, where the\nsun shines not, to be peeled and its rind pulled off.  Then are the fibres\nand strings thereof to be parted, wherein, as we have already said,\nconsisteth its prime virtue, price, and efficacy, and severed from the\nwoody part thereof, which is unprofitable, and serveth hardly to any other\nuse than to make a clear and glistering blaze, to kindle the fire, and for\nthe play, pastime, and disport of little children, to blow up hogs'\nbladders and make them rattle.  Many times some use is made thereof by\ntippling sweet-lipped bibbers, who out of it frame quills and pipes,\nthrough which they with their liquor-attractive breath suck up the new\ndainty wine from the bung of the barrel.  Some modern Pantagruelists, to\nshun and avoid that manual labour which such a separating and partitional\nwork would of necessity require, employ certain cataractic instruments,\ncomposed and formed after the same manner that the froward, pettish, and\nangry Juno did hold the fingers of both her hands interwovenly clenched\ntogether when she would have hindered the childbirth delivery of Alcmena at\nthe nativity of Hercules; and athwart those cataracts they break and bruise\nto very trash the woody parcels, thereby to preserve the better the fibres,\nwhich are the precious and excellent parts.  In and with this sole\noperation do these acquiesce and are contented, who, contrary to the\nreceived opinion of the whole earth, and in a manner paradoxical to all\nphilosophers, gain their livelihoods backwards, and by recoiling.  But\nthose that love to hold it at a higher rate, and prize it according to its\nvalue, for their own greater profit do the very same which is told us of\nthe recreation of the three fatal sister Parcae, or of the nocturnal\nexercise of the noble Circe, or yet of the excuse which Penelope made to\nher fond wooing youngsters and effeminate courtiers during the long absence\nof her husband Ulysses.\n\nBy these means is this herb put into a way to display its inestimable\nvirtues, whereof I will discover a part; for to relate all is a thing\nimpossible to do.  I have already interpreted and exposed before you the\ndenomination thereof.  I find that plants have their names given and\nbestowed upon them after several ways.  Some got the name of him who first\nfound them out, knew them, sowed them, improved them by culture, qualified\nthem to tractability, and appropriated them to the uses and subserviences\nthey were fit for, as the Mercuriale from Mercury; Panacea from Panace, the\ndaughter of Aesculapius; Armois from Artemis, who is Diana; Eupatoria from\nthe king Eupator; Telephion from Telephus; Euphorbium from Euphorbus, King\nJuba's physician; Clymenos from Clymenus; Alcibiadium from Alcibiades;\nGentiane from Gentius, King of Sclavonia, and so forth, through a great\nmany other herbs or plants.  Truly, in ancient times this prerogative of\nimposing the inventor's name upon an herb found out by him was held in a so\ngreat account and estimation, that, as a controversy arose betwixt Neptune\nand Pallas from which of them two that land should receive its denomination\nwhich had been equally found out by them both together--though thereafter\nit was called and had the appellation of Athens, from Athene, which is\nMinerva--just so would Lynceus, King of Scythia, have treacherously slain\nthe young Triptolemus, whom Ceres had sent to show unto mankind the\ninvention of corn, which until then had been utterly unknown, to the end\nthat, after the murder of the messenger, whose death he made account to\nhave kept secret, he might, by imposing, with the less suspicion of false\ndealing, his own name upon the said found out seed, acquire unto himself an\nimmortal honour and glory for having been the inventor of a grain so\nprofitable and necessary to and for the use of human life.  For the\nwickedness of which treasonable attempt he was by Ceres transformed into\nthat wild beast which by some is called a lynx and by others an ounce.\nSuch also was the ambition of others upon the like occasion, as appeareth\nby that very sharp wars and of a long continuance have been made of old\nbetwixt some residentiary kings in Cappadocia upon this only debate, of\nwhose name a certain herb should have the appellation; by reason of which\ndifference, so troublesome and expensive to them all, it was by them called\nPolemonion, and by us for the same cause termed Make-bate.\n\nOther herbs and plants there are which retain the names of the countries\nfrom whence they were transported, as the Median apples from Media, where\nthey first grew; Punic apples from Punicia, that is to say, Carthage;\nLigusticum, which we call lovage, from Liguria, the coast of Genoa; Rhubarb\nfrom a flood in Barbary, as Ammianus attesteth, called Ru; Santonica from a\nregion of that name; Fenugreek from Greece; Gastanes from a country so\ncalled; Persicaria from Persia; Sabine from a territory of that\nappellation; Staechas from the Staechad Islands; Spica Celtica from the\nland of the Celtic Gauls, and so throughout a great many other, which were\ntedious to enumerate.  Some others, again, have obtained their\ndenominations by way of antiphrasis, or contrariety; as Absinth, because it\nis contrary to Psinthos, for it is bitter to the taste in drinking;\nHolosteon, as if it were all bones, whilst, on the contrary, there is no\nfrailer, tenderer, nor brittler herb in the whole production of nature than\nit.\n\nThere are some other sorts of herbs which have got their names from their\nvirtues and operations, as Aristolochia, because it helpeth women in\nchildbirth; Lichen, for that it cureth the disease of that name; Mallow,\nbecause it mollifieth; Callithricum, because it maketh the hair of a bright\ncolour; Alyssum, Ephemerum, Bechium, Nasturtium, Aneban (Henbane), and so\nforth through many more.\n\nOther some there are which have obtained their names from the admirable\nqualities that are found to be in them, as Heliotropium, which is the\nmarigold, because it followeth the sun, so that at the sun rising it\ndisplayeth and spreads itself out, at his ascending it mounteth, at his\ndeclining it waneth, and when he is set it is close shut; Adianton,\nbecause, although it grow near unto watery places, and albeit you should\nlet it lie in water a long time, it will nevertheless retain no moisture\nnor humidity; Hierachia, Eringium, and so throughout a great many more.\nThere are also a great many herbs and plants which have retained the very\nsame names of the men and women who have been metamorphosed and transformed\nin them, as from Daphne the laurel is called also Daphne; Myrrh from\nMyrrha, the daughter of Cinarus; Pythis from Pythis; Cinara, which is the\nartichoke, from one of that name; Narcissus, with Saffron, Smilax, and\ndivers others.\n\nMany herbs likewise have got their names of those things which they seem to\nhave some resemblance to; as Hippuris, because it hath the likeness of a\nhorse's tail; Alopecuris, because it representeth in similitude the tail of\na fox; Psyllion, from a flea which it resembleth; Delphinium, for that it\nis like a dolphin fish; Bugloss is so called because it is an herb like an\nox's tongue; Iris, so called because in its flowers it hath some\nresemblance of the rainbow; Myosota, because it is like the ear of a mouse;\nCoronopus, for that it is of the likeness of a crow's foot.  A great many\nother such there are, which here to recite were needless.  Furthermore, as\nthere are herbs and plants which have had their names from those of men, so\nby a reciprocal denomination have the surnames of many families taken their\norigin from them, as the Fabii, a fabis, beans; the Pisons, a pisis, peas;\nthe Lentuli from lentils; the Cicerons; a ciceribus, vel ciceris, a sort of\npulse called chickpease, and so forth.  In some plants and herbs the\nresemblance or likeness hath been taken from a higher mark or object, as\nwhen we say Venus' navel, Venus' hair, Venus' tub, Jupiter's beard,\nJupiter's eye, Mars' blood, the Hermodactyl or Mercury's fingers, which are\nall of them names of herbs, as there are a great many more of the like\nappellation.  Others, again, have received their denomination from their\nforms, such as the Trefoil, because it is three-leaved; Pentaphylon, for\nhaving five leaves; Serpolet, because it creepeth along the ground;\nHelxine, Petast, Myrobalon, which the Arabians called Been, as if you would\nsay an acorn, for it hath a kind of resemblance thereto, and withal is very\noily.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy it is called Pantagruelion, and of the admirable virtues thereof.\n\nBy such-like means of attaining to a denomination--the fabulous ways being\nonly from thence excepted, for the Lord forbid that we should make use of\nany fables in this a so veritable history--is this herb called\nPantagruelion, for Pantagruel was the inventor thereof.  I do not say of\nthe plant itself, but of a certain use which it serves for, exceeding\nodious and hateful to thieves and robbers, unto whom it is more contrarious\nand hurtful than the strangle-weed and chokefitch is to the flax, the\ncats-tail to the brakes, the sheave-grass to the mowers of hay, the fitches\nto the chickney-pease, the darnel to barley, the hatchet-fitch to the lentil\npulse, the antramium to the beans, tares to wheat, ivy to walls, the\nwater-lily to lecherous monks, the birchen rod to the scholars of the\ncollege of Navarre in Paris, colewort to the vine-tree, garlic to the\nloadstone, onions to the sight, fern-seed to women with child, willow-grain\nto vicious nuns, the yew-tree shade to those that sleep under it, wolfsbane\nto wolves and libbards, the smell of fig-tree to mad bulls, hemlock to\ngoslings, purslane to the teeth, or oil to trees.  For we have seen many of\nthose rogues, by virtue and right application of this herb, finish their\nlives short and long, after the manner of Phyllis, Queen of Thracia, of\nBonosus, Emperor of Rome, of Amata, King Latinus's wife, of Iphis,\nAutolycus, Lycambe, Arachne, Phaedra, Leda, Achius, King of Lydia, and many\nthousands more, who were chiefly angry and vexed at this disaster therein,\nthat, without being otherwise sick or evil-disposed in their bodies, by a\ntouch only of the Pantagruelion they came on a sudden to have the passage\nobstructed, and their pipes, through which were wont to bolt so many jolly\nsayings and to enter so many luscious morsels, stopped, more cleverly than\never could have done the squinancy.\n\nOthers have been heard most woefully to lament, at the very instant when\nAtropos was about to cut the thread of their life, that Pantagruel held\nthem by the gorge.  But, well-a-day, it was not Pantagruel; he never was an\nexecutioner.  It was the Pantagruelion, manufactured and fashioned into an\nhalter; and serving in the place and office of a cravat.  In that, verily,\nthey solecized and spoke improperly, unless you would excuse them by a\ntrope, which alloweth us to posit the inventor in the place of the thing\ninvented, as when Ceres is taken for bread, and Bacchus put instead of\nwine.  I swear to you here, by the good and frolic words which are to issue\nout of that wine-bottle which is a-cooling below in the copper vessel full\nof fountain water, that the noble Pantagruel never snatched any man by the\nthroat, unless it was such a one as was altogether careless and neglective\nof those obviating remedies which were preventive of the thirst to come.\n\nIt is also termed Pantagruelion by a similitude.  For Pantagruel, at the\nvery first minute of his birth, was no less tall than this herb is long\nwhereof I speak unto you, his measure having been then taken the more easy\nthat he was born in the season of the great drought, when they were busiest\nin the gathering of the said herb, to wit, at that time when Icarus's dog,\nwith his fiery bawling and barking at the sun, maketh the whole world\nTroglodytic, and enforceth people everywhere to hide themselves in dens and\nsubterranean caves.  It is likewise called Pantagruelion because of the\nnotable and singular qualities, virtues, and properties thereof.  For as\nPantagruel hath been the idea, pattern, prototype, and exemplary of all\njovial perfection and accomplishment--in the truth whereof I believe there\nis none of you gentlemen drinkers that putteth any question--so in this\nPantagruelion have I found so much efficacy and energy, so much\ncompleteness and excellency, so much exquisiteness and rarity, and so many\nadmirable effects and operations of a transcendent nature, that if the\nworth and virtue thereof had been known when those trees, by the relation\nof the prophet, made election of a wooden king to rule and govern over\nthem, it without all doubt would have carried away from all the rest the\nplurality of votes and suffrages.\n\nShall I yet say more?  If Oxylus, the son of Orius, had begotten this plant\nupon his sister Hamadryas, he had taken more delight in the value and\nperfection of it alone than in all his eight children, so highly renowned\nby our ablest mythologians that they have sedulously recommended their\nnames to the never-failing tuition of an eternal remembrance.  The eldest\nchild was a daughter, whose name was Vine; the next born was a boy, and his\nname was Fig-tree; the third was called Walnut-tree; the fourth Oak; the\nfifth Sorbapple-tree; the sixth Ash; the seventh Poplar, and the last had\nthe name of Elm, who was the greatest surgeon in his time.  I shall forbear\nto tell you how the juice or sap thereof, being poured and distilled within\nthe ears, killeth every kind of vermin that by any manner of putrefaction\ncometh to be bred and engendered there, and destroyeth also any whatsoever\nother animal that shall have entered in thereat.  If, likewise, you put a\nlittle of the said juice within a pail or bucket full of water, you shall\nsee the water instantly turn and grow thick therewith as if it were\nmilk-curds, whereof the virtue is so great that the water thus curded is a\npresent remedy for horses subject to the colic, and such as strike at their\nown flanks.  The root thereof well boiled mollifieth the joints, softeneth\nthe hardness of shrunk-in sinews, is every way comfortable to the nerves,\nand good against all cramps and convulsions, as likewise all cold and\nknotty gouts.  If you would speedily heal a burning, whether occasioned by\nwater or fire, apply thereto a little raw Pantagruelion, that is to say,\ntake it so as it cometh out of the ground, without bestowing any other\npreparation or composition upon it; but have a special care to change it\nfor some fresher in lieu thereof as soon as you shall find it waxing dry\nupon the sore.\n\nWithout this herb kitchens would be detested, the tables of dining-rooms\nabhorred, although there were great plenty and variety of most dainty and\nsumptuous dishes of meat set down upon them, and the choicest beds also,\nhow richly soever adorned with gold, silver, amber, ivory, porphyry, and\nthe mixture of most precious metals, would without it yield no delight or\npleasure to the reposers in them.  Without it millers could neither carry\nwheat, nor any other kind of corn to the mill, nor would they be able to\nbring back from thence flour, or any other sort of meal whatsoever.\nWithout it, how could the papers and writs of lawyers' clients be brought\nto the bar?  Seldom is the mortar, lime, or plaster brought to the\nworkhouse without it.  Without it, how should the water be got out of a\ndraw-well?  In what case would tabellions, notaries, copists, makers of\ncounterpanes, writers, clerks, secretaries, scriveners, and such-like\npersons be without it?  Were it not for it, what would become of the\ntoll-rates and rent-rolls?  Would not the noble art of printing perish\nwithout it?  Whereof could the chassis or paper-windows be made?  How should\nthe bells be rung?  The altars of Isis are adorned therewith, the\nPastophorian priests are therewith clad and accoutred, and whole human\nnature covered and wrapped therein at its first position and production in\nand into this world.  All the lanific trees of Seres, the bumbast and cotton\nbushes in the territories near the Persian Sea and Gulf of Bengala, the\nArabian swans, together with the plants of Malta, do not all the them\nclothe, attire, and apparel so many persons as this one herb alone.\nSoldiers are nowadays much better sheltered under it than they were in\nformer times, when they lay in tents covered with skins.  It overshadows the\ntheatres and amphitheatres from the heat of a scorching sun.  It begirdeth\nand encompasseth forests, chases, parks, copses, and groves, for the\npleasure of hunters.  It descendeth into the salt and fresh of both sea and\nriver-waters for the profit of fishers.  By it are boots of all sizes,\nbuskins, gamashes, brodkins, gambadoes, shoes, pumps, slippers, and every\ncobbled ware wrought and made steadable for the use of man.  By it the butt\nand rover-bows are strung, the crossbows bended, and the slings made fixed.\nAnd, as if it were an herb every whit as holy as the vervain, and reverenced\nby ghosts, spirits, hobgoblins, fiends, and phantoms, the bodies of deceased\nmen are never buried without it.\n\nI will proceed yet further.  By the means of this fine herb the invisible\nsubstances are visibly stopped, arrested, taken, detained, and\nprisoner-like committed to their receptive gaols.  Heavy and ponderous\nweights are by it heaved, lifted up, turned, veered, drawn, carried, and\nevery way moved quickly, nimbly, and easily, to the great profit and\nemolument of humankind.  When I perpend with myself these and such-like\nmarvellous effects of this wonderful herb, it seemeth strange unto me how\nthe invention of so useful a practice did escape through so many by-past\nages the knowledge of the ancient philosophers, considering the inestimable\nutility which from thence proceeded, and the immense labour which without it\nthey did undergo in their pristine elucubrations.  By virtue thereof,\nthrough the retention of some aerial gusts, are the huge rambarges, mighty\ngalleons, the large floats, the Chiliander, the Myriander ships launched\nfrom their stations and set a-going at the pleasure and arbitrament of their\nrulers, conders, and steersmen.  By the help thereof those remote nations\nwhom nature seemed so unwilling to have discovered to us, and so desirous to\nhave kept them still in abscondito and hidden from us, that the ways through\nwhich their countries were to be reached unto were not only totally unknown,\nbut judged also to be altogether impermeable and inaccessible, are now\narrived to us, and we to them.\n\nThose voyages outreached flights of birds and far surpassed the scope of\nfeathered fowls, how swift soever they had been on the wing, and\nnotwithstanding that advantage which they have of us in swimming through\nthe air.  Taproban hath seen the heaths of Lapland, and both the Javas and\nRiphaean mountains; wide distant Phebol shall see Theleme, and the\nIslanders drink of the flood Euphrates.  By it the chill-mouthed Boreas\nhath surveyed the parched mansions of the torrid Auster, and Eurus visited\nthe regions which Zephyrus hath under his command; yea, in such sort have\ninterviews been made by the assistance of this sacred herb, that, maugre\nlongitudes and latitudes, and all the variations of the zones, the\nPeriaecian people, and Antoecian, Amphiscian, Heteroscian, and Periscian\nhad oft rendered and received mutual visits to and from other, upon all the\nclimates.  These strange exploits bred such astonishment to the celestial\nintelligences, to all the marine and terrestrial gods, that they were on a\nsudden all afraid.  From which amazement, when they saw how, by means of\nthis blest Pantagruelion, the Arctic people looked upon the Antarctic,\nscoured the Atlantic Ocean, passed the tropics, pushed through the torrid\nzone, measured all the zodiac, sported under the equinoctial, having both\npoles level with their horizon, they judged it high time to call a council\nfor their own safety and preservation.\n\nThe Olympic gods, being all and each of them affrighted at the sight of\nsuch achievements, said:  Pantagruel hath shapen work enough for us, and\nput us more to a plunge and nearer our wits' end by this sole herb of his\nthan did of old the Aloidae by overturning mountains.  He very speedily is\nto be married, and shall have many children by his wife.  It lies not in\nour power to oppose this destiny; for it hath passed through the hands and\nspindles of the Fatal Sisters, necessity's inexorable daughters.  Who knows\nbut by his sons may be found out an herb of such another virtue and\nprodigious energy, as that by the aid thereof, in using it aright according\nto their father's skill, they may contrive a way for humankind to pierce\ninto the high aerian clouds, get up unto the springhead of the hail, take\nan inspection of the snowy sources, and shut and open as they please the\nsluices from whence proceed the floodgates of the rain; then, prosecuting\ntheir aethereal voyage, they may step in unto the lightning workhouse and\nshop, where all the thunderbolts are forged, where, seizing on the magazine\nof heaven and storehouse of our warlike fire-munition, they may discharge a\nbouncing peal or two of thundering ordnance for joy of their arrival to\nthese new supernal places, and, charging those tonitrual guns afresh, turn\nthe whole force of that artillery against ourselves wherein we most\nconfided.  Then is it like they will set forward to invade the territories\nof the Moon, whence, passing through both Mercury and Venus, the Sun will\nserve them for a torch, to show the way from Mars to Jupiter and Saturn.\nWe shall not then be able to resist the impetuosity of their intrusion, nor\nput a stoppage to their entering in at all, whatever regions, domiciles, or\nmansions of the spangled firmament they shall have any mind to see, to stay\nin, to travel through for their recreation.  All the celestial signs\ntogether, with the constellations of the fixed stars, will jointly be at\ntheir devotion then.  Some will take up their lodging at the Ram, some at\nthe Bull, and others at the Twins; some at the Crab, some at the Lion Inn,\nand others at the sign of the Virgin; some at the Balance, others at the\nScorpion, and others will be quartered at the Archer; some will be\nharboured at the Goat, some at the Water-pourer's sign, some at the Fishes;\nsome will lie at the Crown, some at the Harp, some at the Golden Eagle and\nthe Dolphin; some at the Flying Horse, some at the Ship, some at the great,\nsome at the little Bear; and so throughout the glistening hostelries of the\nwhole twinkling asteristic welkin.  There will be sojourners come from the\nearth, who, longing after the taste of the sweet cream, of their own\nskimming off, from the best milk of all the dairy of the Galaxy, will set\nthemselves at table down with us, drink of our nectar and ambrosia, and\ntake to their own beds at night for wives and concubines our fairest\ngoddesses, the only means whereby they can be deified.  A junto hereupon\nbeing convocated, the better to consult upon the manner of obviating a so\ndreadful danger, Jove, sitting in his presidential throne, asked the votes\nof all the other gods, which, after a profound deliberation amongst\nthemselves on all contingencies, they freely gave at last, and then\nresolved unanimously to withstand the shocks of all whatsoever sublunary\nassaults.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow a certain kind of Pantagruelion is of that nature that the fire is not\nable to consume it.\n\nI have already related to you great and admirable things; but, if you might\nbe induced to adventure upon the hazard of believing some other divinity of\nthis sacred Pantagruelion, I very willingly would tell it you.  Believe it,\nif you will, or otherwise, believe it not, I care not which of them you do,\nthey are both alike to me.  It shall be sufficient for my purpose to have\ntold you the truth, and the truth I will tell you.  But to enter in\nthereat, because it is of a knaggy, difficult, and rugged access, this is\nthe question which I ask of you.  If I had put within this bottle two\npints, the one of wine and the other of water, thoroughly and exactly\nmingled together, how would you unmix them?  After what manner would you go\nabout to sever them, and separate the one liquor from the other, in such\nsort that you render me the water apart, free from the wine, and the wine\nalso pure, without the intermixture of one drop of water, and both of them\nin the same measure, quantity, and taste that I had embottled them?  Or, to\nstate the question otherwise.  If your carmen and mariners, entrusted for\nthe provision of your houses with the bringing of a certain considerable\nnumber of tuns, puncheons, pipes, barrels, and hogsheads of Graves wine, or\nof the wine of Orleans, Beaune, and Mireveaux, should drink out the half,\nand afterwards with water fill up the other empty halves of the vessels as\nfull as before, as the Limosins use to do in their carriages by wains and\ncarts of the wines of Argenton and Sangaultier; after that, how would you\npart the water from the wine, and purify them both in such a case?  I\nunderstand you well enough.  Your meaning is, that I must do it with an ivy\nfunnel.  That is written, it is true, and the verity thereof explored by a\nthousand experiments; you have learned to do this feat before, I see it.\nBut those that have never known it, nor at any time have seen the like,\nwould hardly believe that it were possible.  Let us nevertheless proceed.\n\nBut put the case, we were now living in the age of Sylla, Marius, Caesar,\nand other such Roman emperors, or that we were in the time of our ancient\nDruids, whose custom was to burn and calcine the dead bodies of their\nparents and lords, and that you had a mind to drink the ashes or cinders of\nyour wives or fathers in the infused liquor of some good white-wine, as\nArtemisia drunk the dust and ashes of her husband Mausolus; or otherwise,\nthat you did determine to have them reserved in some fine urn or reliquary\npot; how would you save the ashes apart, and separate them from those other\ncinders and ashes into which the fuel of the funeral and bustuary fire hath\nbeen converted?  Answer, if you can.  By my figgins, I believe it will\ntrouble you so to do.\n\nWell, I will despatch, and tell you that, if you take of this celestial\nPantagruelion so much as is needful to cover the body of the defunct, and\nafter that you shall have enwrapped and bound therein as hard and closely\nas you can the corpse of the said deceased persons, and sewed up the\nfolding-sheet with thread of the same stuff, throw it into the fire, how\ngreat or ardent soever it be it matters not a straw, the fire through this\nPantagruelion will burn the body and reduce to ashes the bones thereof, and\nthe Pantagruelion shall be not only not consumed nor burnt, but also shall\nneither lose one atom of the ashes enclosed within it, nor receive one atom\nof the huge bustuary heap of ashes resulting from the blazing conflagration\nof things combustible laid round about it, but shall at last, when taken\nout of the fire, be fairer, whiter, and much cleaner than when you did put\nit in at first.  Therefore it is called Asbeston, which is as much to say\nas incombustible.  Great plenty is to be found thereof in Carpasia, as\nlikewise in the climate Dia Sienes, at very easy rates.  O how rare and\nadmirable a thing it is, that the fire which devoureth, consumeth, and\ndestroyeth all such things else, should cleanse, purge, and whiten this\nsole Pantagruelion Carpasian Asbeston!  If you mistrust the verity of this\nrelation, and demand for further confirmation of my assertion a visible\nsign, as the Jews and such incredulous infidels use to do, take a fresh\negg, and orbicularly, or rather ovally, enfold it within this divine\nPantagruelion.  When it is so wrapped up, put it in the hot embers of a\nfire, how great or ardent soever it be, and having left it there as long as\nyou will, you shall at last, at your taking it out of the fire, find the\negg roasted hard, and as it were burnt, without any alteration, change,\nmutation, or so much as a calefaction of the sacred Pantagruelion.  For\nless than a million of pounds sterling, modified, taken down, and\namoderated to the twelfth part of one fourpence halfpenny farthing, you are\nable to put it to a trial and make proof thereof.\n\nDo not think to overmatch me here, by paragoning with it in the way of a\nmore eminent comparison the Salamander.  That is a fib; for, albeit a\nlittle ordinary fire, such as is used in dining-rooms and chambers,\ngladden, cheer up, exhilarate, and quicken it, yet may I warrantably enough\nassure that in the flaming fire of a furnace it will, like any other\nanimated creature, be quickly suffocated, choked, consumed, and destroyed.\nWe have seen the experiment thereof, and Galen many ages ago hath clearly\ndemonstrated and confirmed it, Lib. 3, De temperamentis, and Dioscorides\nmaintaineth the same doctrine, Lib. 2.  Do not here instance in competition\nwith this sacred herb the feather alum or the wooden tower of Pyraeus,\nwhich Lucius Sylla was never able to get burnt; for that Archelaus,\ngovernor of the town for Mithridates, King of Pontus, had plastered it all\nover on the outside with the said alum.  Nor would I have you to compare\ntherewith the herb which Alexander Cornelius called Eonem, and said that it\nhad some resemblance with that oak which bears the mistletoe, and that it\ncould neither be consumed nor receive any manner of prejudice by fire nor\nby water, no more than the mistletoe, of which was built, said he, the so\nrenowned ship Argos.  Search where you please for those that will believe\nit.  I in that point desire to be excused.  Neither would I wish you to\nparallel therewith--although I cannot deny but that it is of a very\nmarvellous nature--that sort of tree which groweth alongst the mountains of\nBrianson and Ambrun, which produceth out of his root the good agaric.  From\nits body it yieldeth unto us a so excellent rosin, that Galen hath been\nbold to equal it to the turpentine.  Upon the delicate leaves thereof it\nretaineth for our use that sweet heavenly honey which is called the manna,\nand, although it be of a gummy, oily, fat, and greasy substance, it is,\nnotwithstanding, unconsumable by any fire.  It is in Greek and Latin called\nLarix.  The Alpinese name is Melze.  The Antenorides and Venetians term it\nLarege; which gave occasion to that castle in Piedmont to receive the\ndenomination of Larignum, by putting Julius Caesar to a stand at his return\nfrom amongst the Gauls.\n\nJulius Caesar commanded all the yeomen, boors, hinds, and other inhabitants\nin, near unto, and about the Alps and Piedmont, to bring all manner of\nvictuals and provision for an army to those places which on the military\nroad he had appointed to receive them for the use of his marching soldiery.\nTo which ordinance all of them were obedient, save only those as were\nwithin the garrison of Larignum, who, trusting in the natural strength of\nthe place, would not pay their contribution.  The emperor, purposing to\nchastise them for their refusal, caused his whole army to march straight\ntowards that castle, before the gate whereof was erected a tower built of\nhuge big spars and rafters of the larch-tree, fast bound together with pins\nand pegs of the same wood, and interchangeably laid on one another, after\nthe fashion of a pile or stack of timber, set up in the fabric thereof to\nsuch an apt and convenient height that from the parapet above the\nportcullis they thought with stones and levers to beat off and drive away\nsuch as should approach thereto.\n\nWhen Caesar had understood that the chief defence of those within the\ncastle did consist in stones and clubs, and that it was not an easy matter\nto sling, hurl, dart, throw, or cast them so far as to hinder the\napproaches, he forthwith commanded his men to throw great store of bavins,\nfaggots, and fascines round about the castle, and when they had made the\nheap of a competent height, to put them all in a fair fire; which was\nthereupon incontinently done.  The fire put amidst the faggots was so great\nand so high that it covered the whole castle, that they might well imagine\nthe tower would thereby be altogether burnt to dust, and demolished.\nNevertheless, contrary to all their hopes and expectations, when the flame\nceased, and that the faggots were quite burnt and consumed, the tower\nappeared as whole, sound, and entire as ever.  Caesar, after a serious\nconsideration had thereof, commanded a compass to be taken without the\ndistance of a stone cast from the castle round about it there, with ditches\nand entrenchments to form a blockade; which when the Larignans understood,\nthey rendered themselves upon terms.  And then by a relation from them it\nwas that Caesar learned the admirable nature and virtue of this wood, which\nof itself produceth neither fire, flame, nor coal, and would, therefore, in\nregard of that rare quality of incombustibility, have been admitted into\nthis rank and degree of a true Pantagruelional plant; and that so much the\nrather, for that Pantagruel directed that all the gates, doors, angiports,\nwindows, gutters, fretticed and embowed ceilings, cans, (cants?) and other\nwhatsoever wooden furniture in the abbey of Theleme, should be all\nmateriated of this kind of timber.  He likewise caused to cover therewith\nthe sterns, stems, cook-rooms or laps, hatches, decks, courses, bends, and\nwalls of his carricks, ships, galleons, galleys, brigantines, foists,\nfrigates, crears, barques, floats, pinks, pinnaces, hoys, ketches, capers,\nand other vessels of his Thalassian arsenal; were it not that the wood or\ntimber of the larch-tree, being put within a large and ample furnace full\nof huge vehemently flaming fire proceeding from the fuel of other sorts and\nkinds of wood, cometh at last to be corrupted, consumed, dissipated, and\ndestroyed, as are stones in a lime-kiln.  But this Pantagruelion Asbeston\nis rather by the fire renewed and cleansed than by the flames thereof\nconsumed or changed.  Therefore,\n\n  Arabians, Indians, Sabaeans,\n  Sing not, in hymns and Io Paeans,\n  Your incense, myrrh, or ebony.\n  Come here, a nobler plant to see,\n  And carry home, at any rate,\n  Some seed, that you may propagate.\n  If in your soil it takes, to heaven\n  A thousand thousand thanks be given;\n  And say with France, it goodly goes,\n  Where the Pantagruelion grows.\n\nEND OF BOOK III\n\n\nBOOK IV.\n\n\nTHE FOURTH BOOK\n\n\nThe Translator's Preface.\n\nReader,--I don't know what kind of a preface I must write to find thee\ncourteous, an epithet too often bestowed without a cause.  The author of\nthis work has been as sparing of what we call good nature, as most readers\nare nowadays.  So I am afraid his translator and commentator is not to\nexpect much more than has been showed them.  What's worse, there are but\ntwo sorts of taking prefaces, as there are but two kinds of prologues to\nplays; for Mr. Bays was doubtless in the right when he said that if thunder\nand lightning could not fright an audience into complaisance, the sight of\nthe poet with a rope about his neck might work them into pity.  Some,\nindeed, have bullied many of you into applause, and railed at your faults\nthat you might think them without any; and others, more safely, have spoken\nkindly of you, that you might think, or at least speak, as favourably of\nthem, and be flattered into patience.  Now, I fancy, there's nothing less\ndifficult to attempt than the first method; for, in this blessed age, 'tis\nas easy to find a bully without courage, as a whore without beauty, or a\nwriter without wit; though those qualifications are so necessary in their\nrespective professions.  The mischief is, that you seldom allow any to rail\nbesides yourselves, and cannot bear a pride which shocks your own.  As for\nwheedling you into a liking of a work, I must confess it seems the safest\nway; but though flattery pleases you well when it is particular, you hate\nit, as little concerning you, when it is general.  Then we knights of the\nquill are a stiff-necked generation, who as seldom care to seem to doubt\nthe worth of our writings, and their being liked, as we love to flatter\nmore than one at a time; and had rather draw our pens, and stand up for the\nbeauty of our works (as some arrant fools use to do for that of their\nmistresses) to the last drop of our ink.  And truly this submission, which\nsometimes wheedles you into pity, as seldom decoys you into love, as the\nawkward cringing of an antiquated fop, as moneyless as he is ugly, affects\nan experienced fair one.  Now we as little value your pity as a lover his\nmistress's, well satisfied that it is only a less uncivil way of dismissing\nus.  But what if neither of these two ways will work upon you, of which\ndoleful truth some of our playwrights stand so many living monuments?  Why,\nthen, truly I think on no other way at present but blending the two into\none; and, from this marriage of huffing and cringing, there will result a\nnew kind of careless medley, which, perhaps, will work upon both sorts of\nreaders, those who are to be hectored, and those whom we must creep to.  At\nleast, it is like to please by its novelty; and it will not be the first\nmonster that has pleased you when regular nature could not do it.\n\nIf uncommon worth, lively wit, and deep learning, wove into wholesome\nsatire, a bold, good, and vast design admirably pursued, truth set out in\nits true light, and a method how to arrive to its oracle, can recommend a\nwork, I am sure this has enough to please any reasonable man.  The three\nbooks published some time since, which are in a manner an entire work, were\nkindly received; yet, in the French, they come far short of these two,\nwhich are also entire pieces; for the satire is all general here, much more\nobvious, and consequently more entertaining.  Even my long explanatory\npreface was not thought improper.  Though I was so far from being allowed\ntime to make it methodical, that at first only a few pages were intended;\nyet as fast as they were printed I wrote on, till it proved at last like\none of those towns built little at first, then enlarged, where you see\npromiscuously an odd variety of all sorts of irregular buildings.  I hope\nthe remarks I give now will not please less; for, as I have translated the\nwork which they explain, I had more time to make them, though as little to\nwrite them.  It would be needless to give here a large account of my\nperformance; for, after all, you readers care no more for this or that\napology, or pretence of Mr. Translator, if the version does not please you,\nthan we do for a blundering cook's excuse after he has spoiled a good dish\nin the dressing.  Nor can the first pretend to much praise, besides that of\ngiving his author's sense in its full extent, and copying his style, if it\nis to be copied; since he has no share in the invention or disposition of\nwhat he translates.  Yet there was no small difficulty in doing Rabelais\njustice in that double respect; the obsolete words and turns of phrase, and\ndark subjects, often as darkly treated, make the sense hard to be\nunderstood even by a Frenchman, and it cannot be easy to give it the free\neasy air of an original; for even what seems most common talk in one\nlanguage, is what is often the most difficult to be made so in another; and\nHorace's thoughts of comedy may be well applied to this:\n\n  Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere\n  Sudoris minimum; sed habet commoedia tantum\n  Plus oneris, quanto veniae minus.\n\nFar be it from me, for all this, to value myself upon hitting the words of\ncant in which my drolling author is so luxuriant; for though such words\nhave stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself unhappy\nin having insensibly hoarded up so much gibberish and Billingsgate trash in\nmy memory; nor could I forbear asking of myself, as an Italian cardinal\nsaid on another account, D'onde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie?  Where\nthe devil didst thou rake up all these fripperies?\n\nIt was not less difficult to come up to the author's sublime expressions.\nNor would I have attempted such a task, but that I was ambitious of giving\na view of the most valuable work of the greatest genius of his age, to the\nMecaenas and best genius of this.  For I am not overfond of so ungrateful a\ntask as translating, and would rejoice to see less versions and more\noriginals; so the latter were not as bad as many of the first are, through\nwant of encouragement.  Some indeed have deservedly gained esteem by\ntranslating; yet not many condescend to translate, but such as cannot\ninvent; though to do the first well requires often as much genius as to do\nthe latter.\n\nI wish, reader, thou mayest be as willing to do my author justice, as I\nhave strove to do him right.  Yet, if thou art a brother of the quill, it\nis ten to one thou art too much in love with thy own dear productions to\nadmire those of one of thy trade.  However, I know three or four who have\nnot such a mighty opinion of themselves; but I'll not name them, lest I\nshould be obliged to place myself among them.  If thou art one of those\nwho, though they never write, criticise everyone that does; avaunt!--Thou\nart a professed enemy of mankind and of thyself, who wilt never be pleased\nnor let anybody be so, and knowest no better way to fame than by striving\nto lessen that of others; though wouldst thou write thou mightst be soon\nknown, even by the butterwomen, and fly through the world in bandboxes.  If\nthou art of the dissembling tribe, it is thy office to rail at those books\nwhich thou huggest in a corner.  If thou art one of those eavesdroppers,\nwho would have their moroseness be counted gravity, thou wilt condemn a\nmirth which thou art past relishing; and I know no other way to quit the\nscore than by writing (as like enough I may) something as dull, or duller\nthan thyself, if possible.  If thou art one of those critics in dressing,\nthose extempores of fortune, who, having lost a relation and got an estate,\nin an instant set up for wit and every extravagance, thou'lt either praise\nor discommend this book, according to the dictates of some less foolish\nthan thyself, perhaps of one of those who, being lodged at the sign of the\nbox and dice, will know better things than to recommend to thee a work\nwhich bids thee beware of his tricks.  This book might teach thee to leave\nthy follies; but some will say it does not signify much to some fools\nwhether they are so or not; for when was there a fool that thought himself\none?  If thou art one of those who would put themselves upon us for learned\nmen in Greek and Hebrew, yet are mere blockheads in English, and patch\ntogether old pieces of the ancients to get themselves clothes out of them,\nthou art too severely mauled in this work to like it.  Who then will? some\nwill cry.  Nay, besides these, many societies that make a great figure in\nthe world are reflected on in this book; which caused Rabelais to study to\nbe dark, and even bedaub it with many loose expressions, that he might not\nbe thought to have any other design than to droll; in a manner bewraying\nhis book that his enemies might not bite it.  Truly, though now the riddle\nis expounded, I would advise those who read it not to reflect on the\nauthor, lest he be thought to have been beforehand with them, and they be\nranked among those who have nothing to show for their honesty but their\nmoney, nothing for their religion but their dissembling, or a fat benefice,\nnothing for their wit but their dressing, for their nobility but their\ntitle, for their gentility but their sword, for their courage but their\nhuffing, for their preferment but their assurance, for their learning but\ntheir degrees, or for their gravity but their wrinkles or dulness.  They\nhad better laugh at one another here, as it is the custom of the world.\nLaughing is of all professions; the miser may hoard, the spendthrift\nsquander, the politician plot, the lawyer wrangle, and the gamester cheat;\nstill their main design is to be able to laugh at one another; and here\nthey may do it at a cheap and easy rate.  After all, should this work fail\nto please the greater number of readers, I am sure it cannot miss being\nliked by those who are for witty mirth and a chirping bottle; though not by\nthose solid sots who seem to have drudged all their youth long only that\nthey might enjoy the sweet blessing of getting drunk every night in their\nold age.  But those men of sense and honour who love truth and the good of\nmankind in general above all other things will undoubtedly countenance this\nwork.  I will not gravely insist upon its usefulness, having said enough of\nit in the preface (Motteux' Preface to vol. I of Rabelais, ed. 1694.) to\nthe first part.  I will only add, that as Homer in his Odyssey makes his\nhero wander ten years through most parts of the then known world, so\nRabelais, in a three months' voyage, makes Pantagruel take a view of almost\nall sorts of people and professions; with this difference, however, between\nthe ancient mythologist and the modern, that while the Odyssey has been\ncompared to a setting sun in respect to the Iliads, Rabelais' last work,\nwhich is this Voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle (by which he means truth)\nis justly thought his masterpiece, being wrote with more spirit, salt, and\nflame, than the first part of his works.  At near seventy years of age, his\ngenius, far from being drained, seemed to have acquired fresh vigour and\nnew graces the more it exerted itself; like those rivers which grow more\ndeep, large, majestic, and useful by their course.  Those who accuse the\nFrench of being as sparing of their wit as lavish of their words will find\nan Englishman in our author.  I must confess indeed that my countrymen and\nother southern nations temper the one with the other in a manner as they do\ntheir wine with water, often just dashing the latter with a little of the\nfirst.  Now here men love to drink their wine pure; nay, sometimes it will\nnot satisfy unless in its very quintessence, as in brandies; though an\nexcess of this betrays want of sobriety, as much as an excess of wit\nbetrays a want of judgment.  But I must conclude, lest I be justly taxed\nwith wanting both.  I will only add, that as every language has its\npeculiar graces, seldom or never to be acquired by a foreigner, I cannot\nthink I have given my author those of the English in every place; but as\nnone compelled me to write, I fear to ask a pardon which yet the generous\ntemper of this nation makes me hope to obtain.  Albinus, a Roman, who had\nwritten in Greek, desired in his preface to be forgiven his faults of\nlanguage; but Cato asked him in derision whether any had forced him to\nwrite in a tongue of which he was not an absolute master.  Lucullus wrote a\nhistory in the same tongue, and said he had scattered some false Greek in\nit to let the world know it was the work of a Roman.  I will not say as\nmuch of my writings, in which I study to be as little incorrect as the\nhurry of business and shortness of time will permit; but I may better say,\nas Tully did of the history of his consulship, which he also had written in\nGreek, that what errors may be found in the diction are crept in against my\nintent.  Indeed, Livius Andronicus and Terence, the one a Greek, the other\na Carthaginian, wrote successfully in Latin, and the latter is perhaps the\nmost perfect model of the purity and urbanity of that tongue; but I ought\nnot to hope for the success of those great men.  Yet am I ambitious of\nbeing as subservient to the useful diversion of the ingenious of this\nnation as I can, which I have endeavoured in this work, with hopes to\nattempt some greater tasks if ever I am happy enough to have more leisure.\nIn the meantime it will not displease me, if it is known that this is given\nby one who, though born and educated in France, has the love and veneration\nof a loyal subject for this nation, one who, by a fatality, which with many\nmore made him say,\n\n  Nos patriam fugimus et dulcia linquimus arva,\n\nis obliged to make the language of these happy regions as natural to him as\nhe can, and thankfully say with the rest, under this Protestant government,\n\n  Deus nobis haec otia fecit.\n\n\n\nThe Author's Epistle Dedicatory.\n\nTo the most Illustrious Prince and most Reverend Lord Odet, Cardinal de\nChastillon.\n\nYou know, most illustrious prince, how often I have been, and am daily\npressed and required by great numbers of eminent persons, to proceed in the\nPantagruelian fables; they tell me that many languishing, sick, and\ndisconsolate persons, perusing them, have deceived their grief, passed\ntheir time merrily, and been inspired with new joy and comfort.  I commonly\nanswer that I aimed not at glory and applause when I diverted myself with\nwriting, but only designed to give by my pen, to the absent who labour\nunder affliction, that little help which at all times I willingly strive to\ngive to the present that stand in need of my art and service.  Sometimes I\nat large relate to them how Hippocrates in several places, and particularly\nin lib. 6. Epidem., describing the institution of the physician his\ndisciple, and also Soranus of Ephesus, Oribasius, Galen, Hali Abbas, and\nother authors, have descended to particulars, in the prescription of his\nmotions, deportment, looks, countenance, gracefulness, civility,\ncleanliness of face, clothes, beard, hair, hands, mouth, even his very\nnails; as if he were to play the part of a lover in some comedy, or enter\nthe lists to fight some enemy.  And indeed the practice of physic is\nproperly enough compared by Hippocrates to a fight, and also to a farce\nacted between three persons, the patient, the physician, and the disease.\nWhich passage has sometimes put me in mind of Julia's saying to Augustus\nher father.  One day she came before him in a very gorgeous, loose,\nlascivious dress, which very much displeased him, though he did not much\ndiscover his discontent.  The next day she put on another, and in a modest\ngarb, such as the chaste Roman ladies wore, came into his presence.  The\nkind father could not then forbear expressing the pleasure which he took to\nsee her so much altered, and said to her:  Oh! how much more this garb\nbecomes and is commendable in the daughter of Augustus.  But she, having\nher excuse ready, answered:  This day, sir, I dressed myself to please my\nfather's eye; yesterday, to gratify that of my husband.  Thus disguised in\nlooks and garb, nay even, as formerly was the fashion, with a rich and\npleasant gown with four sleeves, which was called philonium according to\nPetrus Alexandrinus in 6. Epidem., a physician might answer to such as\nmight find the metamorphosis indecent:  Thus have I accoutred myself, not\nthat I am proud of appearing in such a dress, but for the sake of my\npatient, whom alone I wholly design to please, and no wise offend or\ndissatisfy.  There is also a passage in our father Hippocrates, in the book\nI have named, which causes some to sweat, dispute, and labour; not indeed\nto know whether the physician's frowning, discontented, and morose Catonian\nlook render the patient sad, and his joyful, serene, and pleasing\ncountenance rejoice him; for experience teaches us that this is most\ncertain; but whether such sensations of grief or pleasure are produced by\nthe apprehension of the patient observing his motions and qualities in his\nphysician, and drawing from thence conjectures of the end and catastrophe\nof his disease; as, by his pleasing look, joyful and desirable events, and\nby his sorrowful and unpleasing air, sad and dismal consequences; or\nwhether those sensations be produced by a transfusion of the serene or\ngloomy, aerial or terrestrial, joyful or melancholic spirits of the\nphysician into the person of the patient, as is the opinion of Plato,\nAverroes, and others.\n\nAbove all things, the forecited authors have given particular directions to\nphysicians about the words, discourse, and converse which they ought to\nhave with their patients; everyone aiming at one point, that is, to rejoice\nthem without offending God, and in no wise whatsoever to vex or displease\nthem.  Which causes Herophilus much to blame the physician Callianax, who,\nbeing asked by a patient of his, Shall I die? impudently made him this\nanswer:\n\n  Patroclus died, whom all allow\n  By much a better man than you.\n\nAnother, who had a mind to know the state of his distemper, asking him,\nafter our merry Patelin's way:  Well, doctor, does not my water tell you I\nshall die?  He foolishly answered, No; if Latona, the mother of those\nlovely twins, Phoebus and Diana, begot thee.  Galen, lib. 4, Comment. 6.\nEpidem., blames much also Quintus his tutor, who, a certain nobleman of\nRome, his patient, saying to him, You have been at breakfast, my master,\nyour breath smells of wine; answered arrogantly, Yours smells of fever;\nwhich is the better smell of the two, wine or a putrid fever?  But the\ncalumny of certain cannibals, misanthropes, perpetual eavesdroppers, has\nbeen so foul and excessive against me, that it had conquered my patience,\nand I had resolved not to write one jot more.  For the least of their\ndetractions were that my books are all stuffed with various heresies, of\nwhich, nevertheless, they could not show one single instance; much, indeed,\nof comical and facetious fooleries, neither offending God nor the king (and\ntruly I own they are the only subject and only theme of these books), but\nof heresy not a word, unless they interpreted wrong, and against all use of\nreason and common language, what I had rather suffer a thousand deaths, if\nit were possible, than have thought; as who should make bread to be stone,\na fish to be a serpent, and an egg to be a scorpion.  This, my lord,\nemboldened me once to tell you, as I was complaining of it in your\npresence, that if I did not esteem myself a better Christian than they show\nthemselves towards me, and if my life, writings, words, nay thoughts,\nbetrayed to me one single spark of heresy, or I should in a detestable\nmanner fall into the snares of the spirit of detraction, Diabolos, who, by\ntheir means, raises such crimes against me; I would then, like the phoenix,\ngather dry wood, kindle a fire, and burn myself in the midst of it.  You\nwere then pleased to say to me that King Francis, of eternal memory, had\nbeen made sensible of those false accusations; and that having caused my\nbooks (mine, I say, because several, false and infamous, have been wickedly\nlaid to me) to be carefully and distinctly read to him by the most learned\nand faithful anagnost in this kingdom, he had not found any passage\nsuspicious; and that he abhorred a certain envious, ignorant, hypocritical\ninformer, who grounded a mortal heresy on an n put instead of an m by the\ncarelessness of the printers.\n\nAs much was done by his son, our most gracious, virtuous, and blessed\nsovereign, Henry, whom Heaven long preserve! so that he granted you his\nroyal privilege and particular protection for me against my slandering\nadversaries.\n\nYou kindly condescended since to confirm me these happy news at Paris; and\nalso lately, when you visited my Lord Cardinal du Bellay, who, for the\nbenefit of his health, after a lingering distemper, was retired to St.\nMaur, that place (or rather paradise) of salubrity, serenity, conveniency,\nand all desirable country pleasures.\n\nThus, my lord, under so glorious a patronage, I am emboldened once more to\ndraw my pen, undaunted now and secure; with hopes that you will still prove\nto me, against the power of detraction, a second Gallic Hercules in\nlearning, prudence, and eloquence; an Alexicacos in virtue, power, and\nauthority; you, of whom I may truly say what the wise monarch Solomon saith\nof Moses, that great prophet and captain of Israel, Ecclesiast. 45:  A man\nfearing and loving God, who found favour in the sight of all flesh,\nwell-beloved both of God and man; whose memorial is blessed.  God made him\nlike to the glorious saints, and magnified him so, that his enemies stood in\nfear of him; and for him made wonders; made him glorious in the sight of\nkings, gave him a commandment for his people, and by him showed his light;\nhe sanctified him in his faithfulness and meekness, and chose him out of all\nmen.  By him he made us to hear his voice, and caused by him the law of life\nand knowledge to be given.\n\nAccordingly, if I shall be so happy as to hear anyone commend those merry\ncomposures, they shall be adjured by me to be obliged and pay their thanks\nto you alone, as also to offer their prayers to Heaven for the continuance\nand increase of your greatness; and to attribute no more to me than my\nhumble and ready obedience to your commands; for by your most honourable\nencouragement you at once have inspired me with spirit and with invention;\nand without you my heart had failed me, and the fountain-head of my animal\nspirits had been dry.  May the Lord keep you in his blessed mercy!\n\n               My Lord,\n\n  Your most humble, and most devoted Servant,\n\n                   Francis Rabelais, Physician.\n\n  Paris, this 28th of January, MDLII.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGood people, God save and keep you!  Where are you?  I can't see you:\nstay--I'll saddle my nose with spectacles--oh, oh! 'twill be fair anon:  I\nsee you.  Well, you have had a good vintage, they say:  this is no bad news\nto Frank, you may swear.  You have got an infallible cure against thirst:\nrarely performed of you, my friends!  You, your wives, children, friends,\nand families are in as good case as hearts can wish; it is well, it is as I\nwould have it:  God be praised for it, and if such be his will, may you\nlong be so.  For my part, I am thereabouts, thanks to his blessed goodness;\nand by the means of a little Pantagruelism (which you know is a certain\njollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune), you see me now hale and\ncheery, as sound as a bell, and ready to drink, if you will.  Would you\nknow why I'm thus, good people?  I will even give you a positive answer\n--Such is the Lord's will, which I obey and revere; it being said in his\nword, in great derision to the physician neglectful of his own health,\nPhysician, heal thyself.\n\nGalen had some knowledge of the Bible, and had conversed with the\nChristians of his time, as appears lib. 11. De Usu Partium; lib. 2. De\nDifferentiis Pulsuum, cap. 3, and ibid. lib. 3. cap. 2. and lib. De Rerum\nAffectibus (if it be Galen's).  Yet 'twas not for any such veneration of\nholy writ that he took care of his own health.  No, it was for fear of\nbeing twitted with the saying so well known among physicians:\n\n  Iatros allon autos elkesi bruon.\n\n  He boasts of healing poor and rich,\n  Yet is himself all over itch.\n\nThis made him boldly say, that he did not desire to be esteemed a\nphysician, if from his twenty-eighth year to his old age he had not lived\nin perfect health, except some ephemerous fevers, of which he soon rid\nhimself; yet he was not naturally of the soundest temper, his stomach being\nevidently bad.  Indeed, as he saith, lib. 5, De Sanitate tuenda, that\nphysician will hardly be thought very careful of the health of others who\nneglects his own.  Asclepiades boasted yet more than this; for he said that\nhe had articled with fortune not to be reputed a physician if he could be\nsaid to have been sick since he began to practise physic to his latter age,\nwhich he reached, lusty in all his members and victorious over fortune;\ntill at last the old gentleman unluckily tumbled down from the top of a\ncertain ill-propped and rotten staircase, and so there was an end of him.\n\nIf by some disaster health is fled from your worships to the right or to\nthe left, above or below, before or behind, within or without, far or near,\non this side or the other side, wheresoever it be, may you presently, with\nthe help of the Lord, meet with it.  Having found it, may you immediately\nclaim it, seize it, and secure it.  The law allows it; the king would have\nit so; nay, you have my advice for it.  Neither more nor less than the\nlaw-makers of old did fully empower a master to claim and seize his runaway\nservant wherever he might be found.  Odds-bodikins, is it not written and\nwarranted by the ancient customs of this noble, so rich, so flourishing\nrealm of France, that the dead seizes the quick?  See what has been\ndeclared very lately in that point by that learned, wise, courteous, humane\nand just civilian, Andrew Tiraqueau, one of the judges in the most\nhonourable court of Parliament at Paris.  Health is our life, as Ariphron\nthe Sicyonian wisely has it; without health life is not life, it is not\nliving life: abios bios, bios abiotos.  Without health life is only a\nlanguishment and an image of death.  Therefore, you that want your health,\nthat is to say, that are dead, seize the quick; secure life to yourselves,\nthat is to say, health.\n\nI have this hope in the Lord, that he will hear our supplications,\nconsidering with what faith and zeal we pray, and that he will grant this\nour wish because it is moderate and mean.  Mediocrity was held by the\nancient sages to be golden, that is to say, precious, praised by all men,\nand pleasing in all places.  Read the sacred Bible, you will find the\nprayers of those who asked moderately were never unanswered.  For example,\nlittle dapper Zaccheus, whose body and relics the monks of St. Garlick,\nnear Orleans, boast of having, and nickname him St. Sylvanus; he only\nwished to see our blessed Saviour near Jerusalem.  It was but a small\nrequest, and no more than anybody then might pretend to.  But alas! he was\nbut low-built; and one of so diminutive a size, among the crowd, could not\nso much as get a glimpse of him.  Well then he struts, stands on tiptoes,\nbustles, and bestirs his stumps, shoves and makes way, and with much ado\nclambers up a sycamore.  Upon this, the Lord, who knew his sincere\naffection, presented himself to his sight, and was not only seen by him,\nbut heard also; nay, what is more, he came to his house and blessed his\nfamily.\n\nOne of the sons of the prophets in Israel felling would near the river\nJordan, his hatchet forsook the helve and fell to the bottom of the river;\nso he prayed to have it again ('twas but a small request, mark ye me), and\nhaving a strong faith, he did not throw the hatchet after the helve, as\nsome spirits of contradiction say by way of scandalous blunder, but the\nhelve after the hatchet, as you all properly have it.  Presently two great\nmiracles were seen:  up springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water,\nand fixes itself to its old acquaintance the helve.  Now had he wished to\ncoach it to heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, to multiply in seed like\nAbraham, be as rich as Job, strong as Samson, and beautiful as Absalom,\nwould he have obtained it, d'ye think?  I' troth, my friends, I question it\nvery much.\n\nNow I talk of moderate wishes in point of hatchet (but harkee me, be sure\nyou don't forget when we ought to drink), I will tell you what is written\namong the apologues of wise Aesop the Frenchman.  I mean the Phrygian and\nTrojan, as Max. Planudes makes him; from which people, according to the\nmost faithful chroniclers, the noble French are descended.  Aelian writes\nthat he was of Thrace and Agathias, after Herodotus, that he was of Samos;\n'tis all one to Frank.\n\nIn his time lived a poor honest country fellow of Gravot, Tom Wellhung by\nname, a wood-cleaver by trade, who in that low drudgery made shift so to\npick up a sorry livelihood.  It happened that he lost his hatchet.  Now\ntell me who ever had more cause to be vexed than poor Tom?  Alas, his whole\nestate and life depended on his hatchet; by his hatchet he earned many a\nfair penny of the best woodmongers or log-merchants among whom he went\na-jobbing; for want of his hatchet he was like to starve; and had death but\nmet with him six days after without a hatchet, the grim fiend would have\nmowed him down in the twinkling of a bedstaff.  In this sad case he began\nto be in a heavy taking, and called upon Jupiter with the most eloquent\nprayers--for you know necessity was the mother of eloquence.  With the\nwhites of his eyes turned up towards heaven, down on his marrow-bones, his\narms reared high, his fingers stretched wide, and his head bare, the poor\nwretch without ceasing was roaring out, by way of litany, at every\nrepetition of his supplications, My hatchet, Lord Jupiter, my hatchet! my\nhatchet! only my hatchet, O Jupiter, or money to buy another, and nothing\nelse! alas, my poor hatchet!\n\nJupiter happened then to be holding a grand council about certain urgent\naffairs, and old gammer Cybele was just giving her opinion, or, if you\nwould rather have it so, it was young Phoebus the beau; but, in short,\nTom's outcries and lamentations were so loud that they were heard with no\nsmall amazement at the council-board, by the whole consistory of the gods.\nWhat a devil have we below, quoth Jupiter, that howls so horridly?  By the\nmud of Styx, have not we had all along, and have not we here still enough\nto do, to set to rights a world of damned puzzling businesses of\nconsequence?  We made an end of the fray between Presthan, King of Persia,\nand Soliman the Turkish emperor, we have stopped up the passages between\nthe Tartars and the Muscovites; answered the Xeriff's petition; done the\nsame to that of Golgots Rays; the state of Parma's despatched; so is that\nof Maidenburg, that of Mirandola, and that of Africa, that town on the\nMediterranean which we call Aphrodisium; Tripoli by carelessness has got a\nnew master; her hour was come.\n\nHere are the Gascons cursing and damning, demanding the restitution of\ntheir bells.\n\nIn yonder corner are the Saxons, Easterlings, Ostrogoths, and Germans,\nnations formerly invincible, but now aberkeids, bridled, curbed, and\nbrought under a paltry diminutive crippled fellow; they ask us revenge,\nrelief, restitution of their former good sense and ancient liberty.\n\nBut what shall we do with this same Ramus and this Galland, with a pox to\nthem, who, surrounded with a swarm of their scullions, blackguard\nragamuffins, sizars, vouchers, and stipulators, set together by the ears\nthe whole university of Paris?  I am in a sad quandary about it, and for\nthe heart's blood of me cannot tell yet with whom of the two to side.\n\nBoth seem to me notable fellows, and as true cods as ever pissed.  The one\nhas rose-nobles, I say fine and weighty ones; the other would gladly have\nsome too.  The one knows something; the other's no dunce.  The one loves\nthe better sort of men; the other's beloved by 'em.  The one is an old\ncunning fox; the other with tongue and pen, tooth and nail, falls foul on\nthe ancient orators and philosophers, and barks at them like a cur.\n\nWhat thinkest thou of it, say, thou bawdy Priapus?  I have found thy\ncounsel just before now, et habet tua mentula mentem.\n\nKing Jupiter, answered Priapus, standing up and taking off his cowl, his\nsnout uncased and reared up, fiery and stiffly propped, since you compare\nthe one to a yelping snarling cur and the other to sly Reynard the fox, my\nadvice is, with submission, that without fretting or puzzling your brains\nany further about 'em, without any more ado, even serve 'em both as, in the\ndays of yore, you did the dog and the fox.  How? asked Jupiter; when? who\nwere they? where was it?  You have a rare memory, for aught I see! returned\nPriapus.  This right worshipful father Bacchus, whom we have here nodding\nwith his crimson phiz, to be revenged on the Thebans had got a fairy fox,\nwho, whatever mischief he did, was never to be caught or wronged by any\nbeast that wore a head.\n\nThe noble Vulcan here present had framed a dog of Monesian brass, and with\nlong puffing and blowing put the spirit of life into him; he gave it to\nyou, you gave it your Miss Europa, Miss Europa gave it Minos, Minos gave it\nProcris, Procris gave it Cephalus.  He was also of the fairy kind; so that,\nlike the lawyers of our age, he was too hard for all other sorts of\ncreatures; nothing could scape the dog.  Now who should happen to meet but\nthese two?  What do you think they did?  Dog by his destiny was to take\nfox, and fox by his fate was not to be taken.\n\nThe case was brought before your council:  you protested that you would not\nact against the fates; and the fates were contradictory.  In short, the end\nand result of the matter was, that to reconcile two contradictions was an\nimpossibility in nature.  The very pang put you into a sweat; some drops of\nwhich happening to light on the earth, produced what the mortals call\ncauliflowers.  All our noble consistory, for want of a categorical\nresolution, were seized with such a horrid thirst, that above seventy-eight\nhogsheads of nectar were swilled down at that sitting.  At last you took my\nadvice, and transmogrified them into stones; and immediately got rid of\nyour perplexity, and a truce with thirst was proclaimed through this vast\nOlympus.  This was the year of flabby cods, near Teumessus, between Thebes\nand Chalcis.\n\nAfter this manner, it is my opinion that you should petrify this dog and\nthis fox.  The metamorphosis will not be incongruous; for they both bear\nthe name of Peter.  And because, according to the Limosin proverb, to make\nan oven's mouth there must be three stones, you may associate them with\nMaster Peter du Coignet, whom you formerly petrified for the same cause.\nThen those three dead pieces shall be put in an equilateral trigone\nsomewhere in the great temple at Paris--in the middle of the porch, if you\nwill--there to perform the office of extinguishers, and with their noses\nput out the lighted candles, torches, tapers, and flambeaux; since, while\nthey lived, they still lighted, ballock-like, the fire of faction,\ndivision, ballock sects, and wrangling among those idle bearded boys, the\nstudents.  And this will be an everlasting monument to show that those puny\nself-conceited pedants, ballock-framers, were rather contemned than\ncondemned by you.  Dixi, I have said my say.\n\nYou deal too kindly by them, said Jupiter, for aught I see, Monsieur\nPriapus.  You do not use to be so kind to everybody, let me tell you; for\nas they seek to eternize their names, it would be much better for them to\nbe thus changed into hard stones than to return to earth and putrefaction.\nBut now to other matters.  Yonder behind us, towards the Tuscan sea and the\nneighbourhood of Mount Apennine, do you see what tragedies are stirred up\nby certain topping ecclesiastical bullies?  This hot fit will last its\ntime, like the Limosins' ovens, and then will be cooled, but not so fast.\n\nWe shall have sport enough with it; but I foresee one inconveniency; for\nmethinks we have but little store of thunder ammunition since the time that\nyou, my fellow gods, for your pastime lavished them away to bombard new\nAntioch, by my particular permission; as since, after your example, the\nstout champions who had undertaken to hold the fortress of Dindenarois\nagainst all comers fairly wasted their powder with shooting at sparrows,\nand then, not having wherewith to defend themselves in time of need,\nvaliantly surrendered to the enemy, who were already packing up their awls,\nfull of madness and despair, and thought on nothing but a shameful retreat.\nTake care this be remedied, son Vulcan; rouse up your drowsy Cyclopes,\nAsteropes, Brontes, Arges, Polyphemus, Steropes, Pyracmon, and so forth,\nset them at work, and make them drink as they ought.\n\nNever spare liquor to such as are at hot work.  Now let us despatch this\nbawling fellow below.  You, Mercury, go see who it is, and know what he\nwants.  Mercury looked out at heaven's trapdoor, through which, as I am\ntold, they hear what is said here below.  By the way, one might well enough\nmistake it for the scuttle of a ship; though Icaromenippus said it was like\nthe mouth of a well.  The light-heeled deity saw that it was honest Tom,\nwho asked for his lost hatchet; and accordingly he made his report to the\nsynod.  Marry, said Jupiter, we are finely helped up, as if we had now\nnothing else to do here but to restore lost hatchets.  Well, he must have\nit then for all this, for so 'tis written in the Book of Fate (do you\nhear?), as well as if it was worth the whole duchy of Milan.  The truth is,\nthe fellow's hatchet is as much to him as a kingdom to a king.  Come, come,\nlet no more words be scattered about it; let him have his hatchet again.\n\nNow, let us make an end of the difference betwixt the Levites and\nmole-catchers of Landerousse.  Whereabouts were we?  Priapus was standing in\nthe chimney-corner, and having heard what Mercury had reported, said in a\nmost courteous and jovial manner:  King Jupiter, while by your order and\nparticular favour I was garden-keeper-general on earth, I observed that this\nword hatchet is equivocal to many things; for it signifies a certain\ninstrument by the means of which men fell and cleave timber.  It also\nsignifies (at least I am sure it did formerly) a female soundly and\nfrequently thumpthumpriggletickletwiddletobyed.  Thus I perceived that every\ncock of the game used to call his doxy his hatchet; for with that same tool\n(this he said lugging out and exhibiting his nine-inch knocker) they so\nstrongly and resolutely shove and drive in their helves, that the females\nremain free from a fear epidemical amongst their sex, viz., that from the\nbottom of the male's belly the instrument should dangle at his heel for want\nof such feminine props.  And I remember, for I have a member, and a memory\ntoo, ay, and a fine memory, large enough to fill a butter-firkin; I\nremember, I say, that one day of tubilustre (horn-fair) at the festivals of\ngoodman Vulcan in May, I heard Josquin Des Prez, Olkegan, Hobrecht,\nAgricola, Brumel, Camelin, Vigoris, De la Fage, Bruyer, Prioris, Seguin, De\nla Rue, Midy, Moulu, Mouton, Gascogne, Loyset, Compere, Penet, Fevin,\nRousee, Richard Fort, Rousseau, Consilion, Constantio Festi, Jacquet Bercan,\nmelodiously singing the following catch on a pleasant green:\n\n  Long John to bed went to his bride,\n  And laid a mallet by his side:\n  What means this mallet, John? saith she.\n  Why! 'tis to wedge thee home, quoth he.\n  Alas! cried she, the man's a fool:\n  What need you use a wooden tool?\n  When lusty John does to me come,\n  He never shoves but with his bum.\n\nNine Olympiads, and an intercalary year after (I have a rare member, I\nwould say memory; but I often make blunders in the symbolization and\ncolligance of those two words), I heard Adrian Villart, Gombert, Janequin,\nArcadet, Claudin, Certon, Manchicourt, Auxerre, Villiers, Sandrin, Sohier,\nHesdin, Morales, Passereau, Maille, Maillart, Jacotin, Heurteur, Verdelot,\nCarpentras, L'Heritier, Cadeac, Doublet, Vermont, Bouteiller, Lupi,\nPagnier, Millet, Du Moulin, Alaire, Maraut, Morpain, Gendre, and other\nmerry lovers of music, in a private garden, under some fine shady trees,\nround about a bulwark of flagons, gammons, pasties, with several coated\nquails, and laced mutton, waggishly singing:\n\n  Since tools without their hafts are useless lumber,\n  And hatchets without helves are of that number;\n  That one may go in t'other, and may match it,\n  I'll be the helve, and thou shalt be the hatchet.\n\nNow would I know what kind of hatchet this bawling Tom wants?  This threw\nall the venerable gods and goddesses into a fit of laughter, like any\nmicrocosm of flies; and even set limping Vulcan a-hopping and jumping\nsmoothly three or four times for the sake of his dear.  Come, come, said\nJupiter to Mercury, run down immediately, and cast at the poor fellow's\nfeet three hatchets:  his own, another of gold, and a third of massy\nsilver, all of one size; then having left it to his will to take his\nchoice, if he take his own, and be satisfied with it, give him the other\ntwo; if he take another, chop his head off with his own; and henceforth\nserve me all those losers of hatchets after that manner.  Having said this,\nJupiter, with an awkward turn of his head, like a jackanapes swallowing of\npills, made so dreadful a phiz that all the vast Olympus quaked again.\nHeaven's foot messenger, thanks to his low-crowned narrow-brimmed hat, his\nplume of feathers, heel-pieces, and running stick with pigeon wings, flings\nhimself out at heaven's wicket, through the idle deserts of the air, and in\na trice nimbly alights upon the earth, and throws at friend Tom's feet the\nthree hatchets, saying unto him:  Thou hast bawled long enough to be a-dry;\nthy prayers and request are granted by Jupiter:  see which of these three\nis thy hatchet, and take it away with thee.  Wellhung lifts up the golden\nhatchet, peeps upon it, and finds it very heavy; then staring on Mercury,\ncries, Codszouks, this is none of mine; I won't ha't:  the same he did with\nthe silver one, and said, 'Tis not this neither, you may e'en take them\nagain.  At last he takes up his own hatchet, examines the end of the helve,\nand finds his mark there; then, ravished with joy, like a fox that meets\nsome straggling poultry, and sneering from the tip of the nose, he cried,\nBy the mass, this is my hatchet, master god; if you will leave it me, I\nwill sacrifice to you a very good and huge pot of milk brimful, covered\nwith fine strawberries, next ides of May.\n\nHonest fellow, said Mercury, I leave it thee; take it; and because thou\nhast wished and chosen moderately in point of hatchet, by Jupiter's command\nI give thee these two others; thou hast now wherewith to make thyself rich:\nbe honest.  Honest Tom gave Mercury a whole cartload of thanks, and revered\nthe most great Jupiter.  His old hatchet he fastens close to his leathern\ngirdle, and girds it above his breech like Martin of Cambray; the two\nothers, being more heavy, he lays on his shoulder.  Thus he plods on,\ntrudging over the fields, keeping a good countenance amongst his neighbours\nand fellow-parishioners, with one merry saying or other after Patelin's\nway.  The next day, having put on a clean white jacket, he takes on his\nback the two precious hatchets and comes to Chinon, the famous city, noble\ncity, ancient city, yea, the first city in the world, according to the\njudgment and assertion of the most learned Massorets.  At Chinon he turned\nhis silver hatchet into fine testons, crown-pieces, and other white cash;\nhis golden hatchet into fine angels, curious ducats, substantial ridders,\nspankers, and rose-nobles; then with them purchases a good number of farms,\nbarns, houses, out-houses, thatched houses, stables, meadows, orchards,\nfields, vineyards, woods, arable lands, pastures, ponds, mills, gardens,\nnurseries, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, swine, hogs, asses, horses, hens,\ncocks, capons, chickens, geese, ganders, ducks, drakes, and a world of all\nother necessaries, and in a short time became the richest man in the\ncountry, nay, even richer than that limping scrape-good Maulevrier.  His\nbrother bumpkins, and the other yeomen and country-puts thereabouts,\nperceiving his good fortune, were not a little amazed, insomuch that their\nformer pity of poor Tom was soon changed into an envy of his so great and\nunexpected rise; and as they could not for their souls devise how this came\nabout, they made it their business to pry up and down, and lay their heads\ntogether, to inquire, seek, and inform themselves by what means, in what\nplace, on what day, what hour, how, why, and wherefore, he had come by this\ngreat treasure.\n\nAt last, hearing it was by losing his hatchet, Ha, ha! said they, was there\nno more to do but to lose a hatchet to make us rich?  Mum for that; 'tis as\neasy as pissing a bed, and will cost but little.  Are then at this time the\nrevolutions of the heavens, the constellations of the firmament, and\naspects of the planets such, that whosoever shall lose a hatchet shall\nimmediately grow rich?  Ha, ha, ha! by Jove, you shall e'en be lost, an't\nplease you, my dear hatchet.  With this they all fairly lost their hatchets\nout of hand.  The devil of one that had a hatchet left; he was not his\nmother's son that did not lose his hatchet.  No more was wood felled or\ncleaved in that country through want of hatchets.  Nay, the Aesopian\napologue even saith that certain petty country gents of the lower class,\nwho had sold Wellhung their little mill and little field to have\nwherewithal to make a figure at the next muster, having been told that his\ntreasure was come to him by that only means, sold the only badge of their\ngentility, their swords, to purchase hatchets to go lose them, as the silly\nclodpates did, in hopes to gain store of chink by that loss.\n\nYou would have truly sworn they had been a parcel of your petty spiritual\nusurers, Rome-bound, selling their all, and borrowing of others, to buy\nstore of mandates, a pennyworth of a new-made pope.\n\nNow they cried out and brayed, and prayed and bawled, and lamented, and\ninvoked Jupiter:  My hatchet! my hatchet!  Jupiter, my hatchet! on this\nside, My hatchet! on that side, My hatchet!  Ho, ho, ho, ho, Jupiter, my\nhatchet!  The air round about rung again with the cries and howlings of\nthese rascally losers of hatchets.\n\nMercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets; to each offering that which\nhe had lost, as also another of gold, and a third of silver.\n\nEvery he still was for that of gold, giving thanks in abundance to the\ngreat giver, Jupiter; but in the very nick of time that they bowed and\nstooped to take it from the ground, whip, in a trice, Mercury lopped off\ntheir heads, as Jupiter had commanded; and of heads thus cut off the number\nwas just equal to that of the lost hatchets.\n\nYou see how it is now; you see how it goes with those who in the simplicity\nof their hearts wish and desire with moderation.  Take warning by this, all\nyou greedy, fresh-water sharks, who scorn to wish for anything under ten\nthousand pounds; and do not for the future run on impudently, as I have\nsometimes heard you wishing, Would to God I had now one hundred\nseventy-eight millions of gold!  Oh! how I should tickle it off.  The deuce\non you, what more might a king, an emperor, or a pope wish for?  For that\nreason, indeed, you see that after you have made such hopeful wishes, all\nthe good that comes to you of it is the itch or the scab, and not a cross in\nyour breeches to scare the devil that tempts you to make these wishes:  no\nmore than those two mumpers, wishers after the custom of Paris; one of whom\nonly wished to have in good old gold as much as hath been spent, bought, and\nsold in Paris, since its first foundations were laid, to this hour; all of\nit valued at the price, sale, and rate of the dearest year in all that space\nof time.  Do you think the fellow was bashful?  Had he eaten sour plums\nunpeeled?  Were his teeth on edge, I pray you?  The other wished Our Lady's\nChurch brimful of steel needles, from the floor to the top of the roof, and\nto have as many ducats as might be crammed into as many bags as might be\nsewed with each and everyone of those needles, till they were all either\nbroke at the point or eye.  This is to wish with a vengeance!  What think\nyou of it?  What did they get by't, in your opinion?  Why at night both my\ngentlemen had kibed heels, a tetter in the chin, a churchyard cough in the\nlungs, a catarrh in the throat, a swingeing boil at the rump, and the devil\nof one musty crust of a brown george the poor dogs had to scour their\ngrinders with.  Wish therefore for mediocrity, and it shall be given unto\nyou, and over and above yet; that is to say, provided you bestir yourself\nmanfully, and do your best in the meantime.\n\nAy, but say you, God might as soon have given me seventy-eight thousand as\nthe thirteenth part of one half; for he is omnipotent, and a million of\ngold is no more to him than one farthing.  Oh, ho! pray tell me who taught\nyou to talk at this rate of the power and predestination of God, poor silly\npeople?  Peace, tush, st, st, st! fall down before his sacred face and own\nthe nothingness of your nothing.\n\nUpon this, O ye that labour under the affliction of the gout, I ground my\nhopes; firmly believing, that if so it pleases the divine goodness, you\nshall obtain health; since you wish and ask for nothing else, at least for\nthe present.  Well, stay yet a little longer with half an ounce of\npatience.\n\nThe Genoese do not use, like you, to be satisfied with wishing health\nalone, when after they have all the livelong morning been in a brown study,\ntalked, pondered, ruminated, and resolved in the counting-houses of whom\nand how they may squeeze the ready, and who by their craft must be hooked\nin, wheedled,  bubbled, sharped, overreached, and choused; they go to the\nexchange, and greet one another with a Sanita e guadagno, Messer! health\nand gain to you, sir!  Health alone will not go down with the greedy\ncurmudgeons; they over and above must wish for gain, with a pox to 'em; ay,\nand for the fine crowns, or scudi di Guadaigne; whence, heaven be praised!\nit happens many a time that the silly wishers and woulders are baulked, and\nget neither.\n\nNow, my lads, as you hope for good health, cough once aloud with lungs of\nleather; take me off three swingeing bumpers; prick up your ears; and you\nshall hear me tell wonders of the noble and good Pantagruel.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel went to sea to visit the oracle of Bacbuc, alias the Holy\nBottle.\n\nIn the month of June, on Vesta's holiday, the very numerical day on which\nBrutus, conquering Spain, taught its strutting dons to truckle under him,\nand that niggardly miser Crassus was routed and knocked on the head by the\nParthians, Pantagruel took his leave of the good Gargantua, his royal\nfather.  The old gentleman, according to the laudable custom of the\nprimitive Christians, devoutly prayed for the happy voyage of his son and\nhis whole company, and then they took shipping at the port of Thalassa.\nPantagruel had with him Panurge, Friar John des Entomeures, alias of the\nFunnels, Epistemon, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalin, cum multis\naliis, his ancient servants and domestics; also Xenomanes, the great\ntraveller, who had crossed so many dangerous roads, dikes, ponds, seas, and\nso forth, and was come some time before, having been sent for by Panurge.\n\nFor certain good causes and considerations him thereunto moving, he had\nleft with Gargantua, and marked out, in his great and universal\nhydrographical chart, the course which they were to steer to visit the\nOracle of the Holy Bottle Bacbuc.  The number of ships were such as I\ndescribed in the third book, convoyed by a like number of triremes, men of\nwar, galleons, and feluccas, well-rigged, caulked, and stored with a good\nquantity of Pantagruelion.\n\nAll the officers, droggermen, pilots, captains, mates, boatswains,\nmidshipmen, quartermasters, and sailors, met in the Thalamege, Pantagruel's\nprincipal flag-ship, which had in her stern for her ensign a huge large\nbottle, half silver well polished, the other half gold enamelled with\ncarnation; whereby it was easy to guess that white and red were the colours\nof the noble travellers, and that they went for the word of the Bottle.\n\nOn the stern of the second was a lantern like those of the ancients,\nindustriously made with diaphanous stone, implying that they were to pass\nby Lanternland.  The third ship had for her device a fine deep china ewer.\nThe fourth, a double-handed jar of gold, much like an ancient urn.  The\nfifth, a famous can made of sperm of emerald.  The sixth, a monk's mumping\nbottle made of the four metals together.  The seventh, an ebony funnel, all\nembossed and wrought with gold after the Tauchic manner.  The eighth, an\nivy goblet, very precious, inlaid with gold.  The ninth, a cup of fine\nObriz gold.  The tenth, a tumbler of aromatic agoloch (you call it lignum\naloes) edged with Cyprian gold, after the Azemine make.  The eleventh, a\ngolden vine-tub of mosaic work.  The twelfth, a runlet of unpolished gold,\ncovered with a small vine of large Indian pearl of Topiarian work.\nInsomuch that there was not a man, however in the dumps, musty,\nsour-looked, or melancholic he were, not even excepting that blubbering\nwhiner Heraclitus, had he been there, but seeing this noble convoy of ships\nand their devices, must have been seized with present gladness of heart,\nand, smiling at the conceit, have said that the travellers were all honest\ntopers, true pitcher-men, and have judged by a most sure prognostication\nthat their voyage, both outward and homeward-bound, would be performed in\nmirth and perfect health.\n\nIn the Thalamege, where was the general meeting, Pantagruel made a short\nbut sweet exhortation, wholly backed with authorities from Scripture upon\nnavigation; which being ended, with an audible voice prayers were said in\nthe presence and hearing of all the burghers of Thalassa, who had flocked\nto the mole to see them take shipping.  After the prayers was melodiously\nsung a psalm of the holy King David, which begins, When Israel went out of\nEgypt; and that being ended, tables were placed upon deck, and a feast\nspeedily served up. The Thalassians, who had also borne a chorus in the\npsalm, caused store of belly-timber to be brought out of their houses.  All\ndrank to them; they drank to all; which was the cause that none of the\nwhole company gave up what they had eaten, nor were sea-sick, with a pain\nat the head and stomach; which inconveniency they could not so easily have\nprevented by drinking, for some time before, salt water, either alone or\nmixed with wine; using quinces, citron peel, juice of pomegranates, sourish\nsweetmeats, fasting a long time, covering their stomachs with paper, or\nfollowing such other idle remedies as foolish physicians prescribe to those\nthat go to sea.\n\nHaving often renewed their tipplings, each mother's son retired on board\nhis own ship, and set sail all so fast with a merry gale at south-east; to\nwhich point of the compass the chief pilot, James Brayer by name, had\nshaped his course, and fixed all things accordingly.  For seeing that the\nOracle of the Holy Bottle lay near Cathay, in the Upper India, his advice,\nand that of Xenomanes also, was not to steer the course which the\nPortuguese use, while sailing through the torrid zone, and Cape Bona\nSperanza, at the south point of Africa, beyond the equinoctial line, and\nlosing sight of the northern pole, their guide, they make a prodigious long\nvoyage; but rather to keep as near the parallel of the said India as\npossible, and to tack to the westward of the said pole, so that winding\nunder the north, they might find themselves in the latitude of the port of\nOlone, without coming nearer it for fear of being shut up in the frozen\nsea; whereas, following this canonical turn, by the said parallel, they\nmust have that on the right to the eastward, which at their departure was\non their left.\n\nThis proved a much shorter cut; for without shipwreck, danger, or loss of\nmen, with uninterrupted good weather, except one day near the island of the\nMacreons, they performed in less than four months the voyage of Upper\nIndia, which the Portuguese, with a thousand inconveniences and innumerable\ndangers, can hardly complete in three years.  And it is my opinion, with\nsubmission to better judgments, that this course was perhaps steered by\nthose Indians who sailed to Germany, and were honourably received by the\nKing of the Swedes, while Quintus Metellus Celer was proconsul of the\nGauls; as Cornelius Nepos, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny after them tell us.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel bought many rarities in the island of Medamothy.\n\nThat day and the two following they neither discovered land nor anything\nnew; for they had formerly sailed that way:  but on the fourth they made an\nisland called Medamothy, of a fine and delightful prospect, by reason of\nthe vast number of lighthouses and high marble towers in its circuit, which\nis not less than that of Canada (sic).  Pantagruel, inquiring who governed\nthere, heard that it was King Philophanes, absent at that time upon account\nof the marriage of his brother Philotheamon with the infanta of the kingdom\nof Engys.\n\nHearing this, he went ashore in the harbour, and while every ship's crew\nwatered, passed his time in viewing divers pictures, pieces of tapestry,\nanimals, fishes, birds, and other exotic and foreign merchandises, which\nwere along the walks of the mole and in the markets of the port.  For it\nwas the third day of the great and famous fair of the place, to which the\nchief merchants of Africa and Asia resorted.  Out of these Friar John\nbought him two rare pictures; in one of which the face of a man that brings\nin an appeal was drawn to the life; and in the other a servant that wants a\nmaster, with every needful particular, action, countenance, look, gait,\nfeature, and deportment, being an original by Master Charles Charmois,\nprincipal painter to King Megistus; and he paid for them in the court\nfashion, with conge and grimace.  Panurge bought a large picture, copied\nand done from the needle-work formerly wrought by Philomela, showing to her\nsister Progne how her brother-in-law Tereus had by force handselled her\ncopyhold, and then cut out her tongue that she might not (as women will)\ntell tales.  I vow and swear by the handle of my paper lantern that it was\na gallant, a mirific, nay, a most admirable piece.  Nor do you think, I\npray you, that in it was the picture of a man playing the beast with two\nbacks with a female; this had been too silly and gross:  no, no; it was\nanother-guise thing, and much plainer.  You may, if you please, see it at\nTheleme, on the left hand as you go into the high gallery.  Epistemon\nbought another, wherein were painted to the life the ideas of Plato and the\natoms of Epicurus.  Rhizotome purchased another, wherein Echo was drawn to\nthe life.  Pantagruel caused to be bought, by Gymnast, the life and deeds\nof Achilles, in seventy-eight pieces of tapestry, four fathom long, and\nthree fathom broad, all of Phrygian silk, embossed with gold and silver;\nthe work beginning at the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, continuing to the\nbirth of Achilles; his youth, described by Statius Papinius; his warlike\nachievements, celebrated by Homer; his death and obsequies, written by Ovid\nand Quintus Calaber; and ending at the appearance of his ghost, and\nPolyxena's sacrifice, rehearsed by Euripides.\n\nHe also caused to be bought three fine young unicorns; one of them a male\nof a chestnut colour, and two grey dappled females; also a tarand, whom he\nbought of a Scythian of the Gelones' country.\n\nA tarand is an animal as big as a bullock, having a head like a stag, or a\nlittle bigger, two stately horns with large branches, cloven feet, hair\nlong like that of a furred Muscovite, I mean a bear, and a skin almost as\nhard as steel armour.  The Scythian said that there are but few tarands to\nbe found in Scythia, because it varieth its colour according to the\ndiversity of the places where it grazes and abides, and represents the\ncolour of the grass, plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, meadows, rocks, and\ngenerally of all things near which it comes.  It hath this common with the\nsea-pulp, or polypus, with the thoes, with the wolves of India, and with\nthe chameleon, which is a kind of a lizard so wonderful that Democritus\nhath written a whole book of its figure and anatomy, as also of its virtue\nand propriety in magic.  This I can affirm, that I have seen it change its\ncolour, not only at the approach of things that have a colour, but by its\nown voluntary impulse, according to its fear or other affections; as, for\nexample, upon a green carpet I have certainly seen it become green; but\nhaving remained there some time, it turned yellow, blue, tanned, and purple\nin course, in the same manner as you see a turkey-cock's comb change colour\naccording to its passions.  But what we find most surprising in this tarand\nis, that not only its face and skin, but also its hair could take whatever\ncolour was about it.  Near Panurge, with his kersey coat, its hair used to\nturn grey; near Pantagruel, with his scarlet mantle, its hair and skin grew\nred; near the pilot, dressed after the fashion of the Isiacs of Anubis in\nEgypt, its hair seemed all white, which two last colours the chameleons\ncannot borrow.\n\nWhen the creature was free from any fear or affection, the colour of its\nhair was just such as you see that of the asses of Meung.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel received a letter from his father Gargantua, and of the\nstrange way to have speedy news from far distant places.\n\nWhile Pantagruel was taken up with the purchase of those foreign animals,\nthe noise of ten guns and culverins, together with a loud and joyful cheer\nof all the fleet, was heard from the mole.  Pantagruel looked towards the\nhaven, and perceived that this was occasioned by the arrival of one of his\nfather Gargantua's celoces, or advice-boats, named the Chelidonia; because\non the stern of it was carved in Corinthian brass a sea-swallow, which is a\nfish as large as a dare-fish of Loire, all flesh, without scale, with\ncartilaginous wings (like a bat's) very long and broad, by the means of\nwhich I have seen them fly about three fathom above water, about a\nbow-shot.  At Marseilles 'tis called lendole.  And indeed that ship was as\nlight as a swallow, so that it rather seemed to fly on the sea than to\nsail.  Malicorne, Gargantua's esquire carver, was come in her, being sent\nexpressly by his master to have an account of his son's health and\ncircumstances, and to bring him credentials.  When Malicorne had saluted\nPantagruel, before the prince opened the letters, the first thing he said\nto him was, Have you here the Gozal, the heavenly messenger?  Yes, sir,\nsaid he; here it is swaddled up in this basket.  It was a grey pigeon,\ntaken out of Gargantua's dove-house, whose young ones were just hatched\nwhen the advice-boat was going off.\n\nIf any ill fortune had befallen Pantagruel, he would have fastened some\nblack ribbon to his feet; but because all things had succeeded happily\nhitherto, having caused it to be undressed, he tied to its feet a white\nribbon, and without any further delay let it loose.  The pigeon presently\nflew away, cutting the air with an incredible speed, as you know that there\nis no flight like a pigeon's, especially when it hath eggs or young ones,\nthrough the extreme care which nature hath fixed in it to relieve and be\nwith its young; insomuch that in less than two hours it compassed in the\nair the long tract which the advice-boat, with all her diligence, with oars\nand sails, and a fair wind, could not go through in less than three days\nand three nights; and was seen as it went into the dove-house in its nest.\nWhereupon Gargantua, hearing that it had the white ribbon on, was joyful\nand secure of his son's welfare.  This was the custom of the noble\nGargantua and Pantagruel when they would have speedy news of something of\ngreat concern; as the event of some battle, either by sea or land; the\nsurrendering or holding out of some strong place; the determination of some\ndifference of moment; the safe or unhappy delivery of some queen or great\nlady; the death or recovery of their sick friends or allies, and so forth.\nThey used to take the gozal, and had it carried from one to another by the\npost, to the places whence they desired to have news.  The gozal, bearing\neither a black or white ribbon, according to the occurrences and accidents,\nused to remove their doubts at its return, making in the space of one hour\nmore way through the air than thirty postboys could have done in one\nnatural day.  May not this be said to redeem and gain time with a\nvengeance, think you?  For the like service, therefore, you may believe as\na most true thing that in the dove-houses of their farms there were to be\nfound all the year long store of pigeons hatching eggs or rearing their\nyoung.  Which may be easily done in aviaries and voleries by the help of\nsaltpetre and the sacred herb vervain.\n\nThe gozal being let fly, Pantagruel perused his father Gargantua's letter,\nthe contents of which were as followeth:\n\nMy dearest Son,--The affection that naturally a father bears a beloved son\nis so much increased in me by reflecting on the particular gifts which by\nthe divine goodness have been heaped on thee, that since thy departure it\nhath often banished all other thoughts out of my mind, leaving my heart\nwholly possessed with fear lest some misfortune has attended thy voyage;\nfor thou knowest that fear was ever the attendant of true and sincere love.\nNow because, as Hesiod saith, A good beginning of anything is the half of\nit; or, Well begun's half done, according to the old saying; to free my\nmind from this anxiety I have expressly despatched Malicorne, that he may\ngive me a true account of thy health at the beginning of thy voyage.  For\nif it be good, and such as I wish it, I shall easily foresee the rest.\n\nI have met with some diverting books, which the bearer will deliver thee;\nthou mayest read them when thou wantest to unbend and ease thy mind from\nthy better studies.  He will also give thee at large the news at court.\nThe peace of the Lord be with thee.  Remember me to Panurge, Friar John,\nEpistemon, Xenomanes, Gymnast, and thy other principal domestics.  Dated at\nour paternal seat, this 13th day of June.\n\n            Thy father and friend, Gargantua.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel writ to his father Gargantua, and sent him several\ncuriosities.\n\nPantagruel, having perused the letter, had a long conference with the\nesquire Malicorne; insomuch that Panurge, at last interrupting them, asked\nhim, Pray, sir, when do you design to drink?  When shall we drink?  When\nshall the worshipful esquire drink?  What a devil! have you not talked long\nenough to drink?  It is a good motion, answered Pantagruel:  go, get us\nsomething ready at the next inn; I think 'tis the Centaur.  In the meantime\nhe writ to Gargantua as followeth, to be sent by the aforesaid esquire:\n\nMost gracious Father,--As our senses and animal faculties are more\ndiscomposed at the news of events unexpected, though desired (even to an\nimmediate dissolution of the soul from the body), than if those accidents\nhad been foreseen, so the coming of Malicorne hath much surprised and\ndisordered me.  For I had no hopes to see any of your servants, or to hear\nfrom you, before I had finished our voyage; and contented myself with the\ndear remembrance of your august majesty, deeply impressed in the hindmost\nventricle of my brain, often representing you to my mind.\n\nBut since you have made me happy beyond expectation by the perusal of your\ngracious letter, and the faith I have in your esquire hath revived my\nspirits by the news of your welfare, I am as it were compelled to do what\nformerly I did freely, that is, first to praise the blessed Redeemer, who\nby his divine goodness preserves you in this long enjoyment of perfect\nhealth; then to return you eternal thanks for the fervent affection which\nyou have for me your most humble son and unprofitable servant.\n\nFormerly a Roman, named Furnius, said to Augustus, who had received his\nfather into favour, and pardoned him after he had sided with Antony, that\nby that action the emperor had reduced him to this extremity, that for want\nof power to be grateful, both while he lived and after it, he should be\nobliged to be taxed with ingratitude.  So I may say, that the excess of\nyour fatherly affection drives me into such a strait, that I shall be\nforced to live and die ungrateful; unless that crime be redressed by the\nsentence of the Stoics, who say that there are three parts in a benefit,\nthe one of the giver, the other of the receiver, the third of the\nremunerator; and that the receiver rewards the giver when he freely\nreceives the benefit and always remembers it; as, on the contrary, that man\nis most ungrateful who despises and forgets a benefit.  Therefore, being\noverwhelmed with infinite favours, all proceeding from your extreme\ngoodness, and on the other side wholly incapable of making the smallest\nreturn, I hope at least to free myself from the imputation of ingratitude,\nsince they can never be blotted out of my mind; and my tongue shall never\ncease to own that to thank you as I ought transcends my capacity.\n\nAs for us, I have this assurance in the Lord's mercy and help, that the end\nof our voyage will be answerable to its beginning, and so it will be\nentirely performed in health and mirth.  I will not fail to set down in a\njournal a full account of our navigation, that at our return you may have\nan exact relation of the whole.\n\nI have found here a Scythian tarand, an animal strange and wonderful for\nthe variations of colour on its skin and hair, according to the distinction\nof neighbouring things; it is as tractable and easily kept as a lamb.  Be\npleased to accept of it.\n\nI also send you three young unicorns, which are the tamest of creatures.\n\nI have conferred with the esquire, and taught him how they must be fed.\nThese cannot graze on the ground by reason of the long horn on their\nforehead, but are forced to browse on fruit trees, or on proper racks, or\nto be fed by hand, with herbs, sheaves, apples, pears, barley, rye, and\nother fruits and roots, being placed before them.\n\nI am amazed that ancient writers should report them to be so wild, furious,\nand dangerous, and never seen alive; far from it, you will find that they\nare the mildest things in the world, provided they are not maliciously\noffended.  Likewise I send you the life and deeds of Achilles in curious\ntapestry; assuring you whatever rarities of animals, plants, birds, or\nprecious stones, and others, I shall be able to find and purchase in our\ntravels, shall be brought to you, God willing, whom I beseech, by his\nblessed grace, to preserve you.\n\nFrom Medamothy, this 15th of June.  Panurge, Friar John, Epistemon,\nZenomanes, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, and Carpalin, having most humbly\nkissed your hand, return your salute a thousand times.\n\n       Your most dutiful son and servant, Pantagruel.\n\nWhile Pantagruel was writing this letter, Malicorne was made welcome by all\nwith a thousand goodly good-morrows and how-d'ye's; they clung about him so\nthat I cannot tell you how much they made of him, how many humble services,\nhow many from my love and to my love were sent with him.  Pantagruel,\nhaving writ his letters, sat down at table with him, and afterwards\npresented him with a large chain of gold, weighing eight hundred crowns,\nbetween whose septenary links some large diamonds, rubies, emeralds,\nturquoise stones, and unions were alternately set in.  To each of his\nbark's crew he ordered to be given five hundred crowns.  To Gargantua, his\nfather, he sent the tarand covered with a cloth of satin, brocaded with\ngold, and the tapestry containing the life and deeds of Achilles, with the\nthree unicorns in friezed cloth of gold trappings; and so they left\nMedamothy--Malicorne to return to Gargantua, Pantagruel to proceed in his\nvoyage, during which Epistemon read to him the books which the esquire had\nbrought, and because he found them jovial and pleasant, I shall give you an\naccount of them, if you earnestly desire it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel met a ship with passengers returning from Lanternland.\n\nOn the fifth day we began already to wind by little and little about the\npole; going still farther from the equinoctial line, we discovered a\nmerchant-man to the windward of us.  The joy for this was not small on both\nsides; we in hopes to hear news from sea, and those in the merchant-man\nfrom land.  So we bore upon 'em, and coming up with them we hailed them;\nand finding them to be Frenchmen of Xaintonge, backed our sails and lay by\nto talk to them.  Pantagruel heard that they came from Lanternland; which\nadded to his joy, and that of the whole fleet.  We inquired about the state\nof that country, and the way of living of the Lanterns; and were told that\nabout the latter end of the following July was the time prefixed for the\nmeeting of the general chapter of the Lanterns; and that if we arrived\nthere at that time, as we might easily, we should see a handsome,\nhonourable, and jolly company of Lanterns; and that great preparations were\nmaking, as if they intended to lanternize there to the purpose.  We were\ntold also that if we touched at the great kingdom of Gebarim, we should be\nhonourably received and treated by the sovereign of that country, King\nOhabe, who, as well as all his subjects, speaks Touraine French.\n\nWhile we were listening to these news, Panurge fell out with one Dingdong,\na drover or sheep-merchant of Taillebourg.  The occasion of the fray was\nthus:\n\nThis same Dingdong, seeing Panurge without a codpiece, with his spectacles\nfastened to his cap, said to one of his comrades, Prithee, look, is there\nnot a fine medal of a cuckold?  Panurge, by reason of his spectacles, as\nyou may well think, heard more plainly by half with his ears than usually;\nwhich caused him (hearing this) to say to the saucy dealer in mutton, in a\nkind of a pet:\n\nHow the devil should I be one of the hornified fraternity, since I am not\nyet a brother of the marriage-noose, as thou art; as I guess by thy\nill-favoured phiz?\n\nYea, verily, quoth the grazier, I am married, and would not be otherwise\nfor all the pairs of spectacles in Europe; nay, not for all the magnifying\ngimcracks in Africa; for I have got me the cleverest, prettiest,\nhandsomest, properest, neatest, tightest, honestest, and soberest piece of\nwoman's flesh for my wife that is in all the whole country of Xaintonge;\nI'll say that for her, and a fart for all the rest.  I bring her home a\nfine eleven-inch-long branch of red coral for her Christmas-box.  What hast\nthou to do with it? what's that to thee? who art thou? whence comest thou,\nO dark lantern of Antichrist?  Answer, if thou art of God.  I ask thee, by\nthe way of question, said Panurge to him very seriously, if with the\nconsent and countenance of all the elements, I had gingumbobbed, codpieced,\nand thumpthumpriggledtickledtwiddled thy so clever, so pretty, so handsome,\nso proper, so neat, so tight, so honest, and so sober female importance,\ninsomuch that the stiff deity that has no forecast, Priapus (who dwells\nhere at liberty, all subjection of fastened codpieces, or bolts, bars, and\nlocks, abdicated), remained sticking in her natural Christmas-box in such a\nlamentable manner that it were never to come out, but eternally should\nstick there unless thou didst pull it out with thy teeth; what wouldst thou\ndo?  Wouldst thou everlastingly leave it there, or wouldst thou pluck it\nout with thy grinders?  Answer me, O thou ram of Mahomet, since thou art\none of the devil's gang.  I would, replied the sheepmonger, take thee such\na woundy cut on this spectacle-bearing lug of thine with my trusty bilbo as\nwould smite thee dead as a herring.  Thus, having taken pepper in the nose,\nhe was lugging out his sword, but, alas!--cursed cows have short horns,--it\nstuck in the scabbard; as you know that at sea cold iron will easily take\nrust by reason of the excessive and nitrous moisture.  Panurge, so smitten\nwith terror that his heart sunk down to his midriff, scoured off to\nPantagruel for help; but Friar John laid hand on his flashing scimitar that\nwas new ground, and would certainly have despatched Dingdong to rights, had\nnot the skipper and some of his passengers beseeched Pantagruel not to\nsuffer such an outrage to be committed on board his ship.  So the matter\nwas made up, and Panurge and his antagonist shaked fists, and drank in\ncourse to one another in token of a perfect reconciliation.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow, the fray being over, Panurge cheapened one of Dingdong's sheep.\n\nThis quarrel being hushed, Panurge tipped the wink upon Epistemon and Friar\nJohn, and taking them aside, Stand at some distance out of the way, said\nhe, and take your share of the following scene of mirth.  You shall have\nrare sport anon, if my cake be not dough, and my plot do but take.  Then\naddressing himself to the drover, he took off to him a bumper of good\nlantern wine.  The other pledged him briskly and courteously.  This done,\nPanurge earnestly entreated him to sell him one of his sheep.\n\nBut the other answered him, Is it come to that, friend and neighbour?\nWould you put tricks upon travellers?  Alas, how finely you love to play\nupon poor folk!  Nay, you seem a rare chapman, that's the truth on't.  Oh,\nwhat a mighty sheep-merchant you are!  In good faith, you look liker one of\nthe diving trade than a buyer of sheep.  Adzookers, what a blessing it\nwould be to have one's purse well lined with chink near your worship at a\ntripe-house when it begins to thaw!  Humph, humph, did not we know you\nwell, you might serve one a slippery trick!  Pray do but see, good people,\nwhat a mighty conjuror the fellow would be reckoned.  Patience, said\nPanurge; but waiving that, be so kind as to sell me one of your sheep.\nCome, how much?  What do you mean, master of mine? answered the other.\nThey are long-wool sheep; from these did Jason take his golden fleece.  The\ngold of the house of Burgundy was drawn from them.  Zwoons, man, they are\noriental sheep, topping sheep, fatted sheep, sheep of quality.  Be it so,\nsaid Panurge; but sell me one of them, I beseech you; and that for a cause,\npaying you ready money upon the nail, in good and lawful occidental current\ncash.  Wilt say how much?  Friend, neighbour, answered the seller of\nmutton, hark ye me a little, on the ear.\n\n  Panurge.  On which side you please; I hear you.\n\n  Dingdong.  You are going to Lanternland, they say.\n\n  Panurge.  Yea, verily.\n\n  Dingdong.  To see fashions?\n\n  Panurge.  Even so.\n\n  Dingdong.  And be merry?\n\n  Panurge.  And be merry.\n\n  Dingdong.  Your name is, as I take it, Robin Mutton?\n\n  Panurge.  As you please for that, sweet sir.\n\n  Dingdong.  Nay, without offence.\n\n  Panurge.  So I would have it.\n\n  Dingdong.  You are, as I take it, the king's jester; aren't you?\n\n  Panurge.  Ay, ay, anything.\n\n  Dingdong.  Give me your hand--humph, humph, you go to see fashions, you\nare the king's jester, your name is Robin Mutton!  Do you see this same\nram?  His name, too, is Robin.  Here, Robin, Robin, Robin!  Baea, baea,\nbaea.  Hath he not a rare voice?\n\n  Panurge.  Ay, marry has he, a very fine and harmonious voice.\n\n  Dingdong.  Well, this bargain shall be made between you and me, friend\nand neighbour; we will get a pair of scales, then you Robin Mutton shall be\nput into one of them, and Tup Robin into the other.  Now I will hold you a\npeck of Busch oysters that in weight, value, and price he shall outdo you,\nand you shall be found light in the very numerical manner as when you shall\nbe hanged and suspended.\n\nPatience, said Panurge; but you would do much for me and your whole\nposterity if you would chaffer with me for him, or some other of his\ninferiors.  I beg it of you; good your worship, be so kind.  Hark ye,\nfriend of mine, answered the other; with the fleece of these your fine\nRouen cloth is to be made; your Leominster superfine wool is mine arse to\nit; mere flock in comparison.  Of their skins the best cordovan will be\nmade, which shall be sold for Turkey and Montelimart, or for Spanish\nleather at least.  Of the guts shall be made fiddle and harp strings that\nwill sell as dear as if they came from Munican or Aquileia.  What do you\nthink on't, hah?  If you please, sell me one of them, said Panurge, and I\nwill be yours for ever.  Look, here's ready cash.  What's the price?  This\nhe said exhibiting his purse stuffed with new Henricuses.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhich if you read you'll find how Panurge bargained with Dingdong.\n\nNeighbour, my friend, answered Dingdong, they are meat for none but kings\nand princes; their flesh is so delicate, so savoury, and so dainty that one\nwould swear it melted in the mouth.  I bring them out of a country where\nthe very hogs, God be with us, live on nothing but myrobolans.  The sows in\nthe styes when they lie-in (saving the honour of this good company) are fed\nonly with orange-flowers.  But, said Panurge, drive a bargain with me for\none of them, and I will pay you for't like a king, upon the honest word of\na true Trojan; come, come, what do you ask?  Not so fast, Robin, answered\nthe trader; these sheep are lineally descended from the very family of the\nram that wafted Phryxus and Helle over the sea since called the Hellespont.\nA pox on't, said Panurge, you are clericus vel addiscens!  Ita is a\ncabbage, and vere a leek, answered the merchant.  But, rr, rrr, rrrr,\nrrrrr, hoh Robin, rr, rrrrrrr, you don't understand that gibberish, do you?\nNow I think on't, over all the fields where they piss, corn grows as fast\nas if the Lord had pissed there; they need neither be tilled nor dunged.\nBesides, man, your chemists extract the best saltpetre in the world out of\ntheir urine.  Nay, with their very dung (with reverence be it spoken) the\ndoctors in our country make pills that cure seventy-eight kinds of\ndiseases, the least of which is the evil of St. Eutropius of Xaintes, from\nwhich, good Lord, deliver us!  Now what do you think on't, neighbour, my\nfriend?  The truth is, they cost me money, that they do.  Cost what they\nwill, cried Panurge, trade with me for one of them, paying you well.  Our\nfriend, quoth the quacklike sheepman, do but mind the wonders of nature\nthat are found in those animals, even in a member which one would think\nwere of no use.  Take me but these horns, and bray them a little with an\niron pestle, or with an andiron, which you please, it is all one to me;\nthen bury them wherever you will, provided it be where the sun may shine,\nand water them frequently; in a few months I'll engage you will have the\nbest asparagus in the world, not even excepting those of Ravenna.  Now,\ncome and tell me whether the horns of your other knights of the bull's\nfeather have such a virtue and wonderful propriety?\n\nPatience, said Panurge.  I don't know whether you be a scholar or no,\npursued Dingdong; I have seen a world of scholars, I say great scholars,\nthat were cuckolds, I'll assure you.  But hark you me, if you were a\nscholar, you should know that in the most inferior members of those\nanimals, which are the feet, there is a bone, which is the heel, the\nastragalus, if you will have it so, wherewith, and with that of no other\ncreature breathing, except the Indian ass and the dorcades of Libya, they\nused in old times to play at the royal game of dice, whereat Augustus the\nemperor won above fifty thousand crowns one evening.  Now such cuckolds as\nyou will be hanged ere you get half so much at it.  Patience, said Panurge;\nbut let us despatch.  And when, my friend and neighbour, continued the\ncanting sheepseller, shall I have duly praised the inward members, the\nshoulders, the legs, the knuckles, the neck, the breast, the liver, the\nspleen, the tripes, the kidneys, the bladder, wherewith they make\nfootballs; the ribs, which serve in Pigmyland to make little crossbows to\npelt the cranes with cherry-stones; the head, which with a little brimstone\nserves to make a miraculous decoction to loosen and ease the belly of\ncostive dogs?  A turd on't, said the skipper to his preaching passenger,\nwhat a fiddle-faddle have we here?  There is too long a lecture by half:\nsell him if thou wilt; if thou won't, don't let the man lose more time.  I\nhate a gibble-gabble and a rimble-ramble talk.  I am for a man of brevity.\nI will, for your sake, replied the holder-forth; but then he shall give me\nthree livres, French money, for each pick and choose.  It is a woundy\nprice, cried Panurge; in our country I could have five, nay six, for the\nmoney; see that you do not overreach me, master.  You are not the first man\nwhom I have known to have fallen, even sometimes to the endangering, if not\nbreaking, of his own neck, for endeavouring to rise all at once.  A murrain\nseize thee for a blockheaded booby, cried the angry seller of sheep; by the\nworthy vow of Our Lady of Charroux, the worst in this flock is four times\nbetter than those which the Coraxians in Tuditania, a country of Spain,\nused to sell for a gold talent each; and how much dost thou think, thou\nHibernian fool, that a talent of gold was worth?  Sweet sir, you fall into\na passion, I see, returned Panurge; well, hold, here is your money.\nPanurge, having paid his money, chose him out of all the flock a fine\ntopping ram; and as he was hauling it along, crying out and bleating, all\nthe rest, hearing and bleating in concert, stared to see whither their\nbrother-ram should be carried.  In the meanwhile the drover was saying to\nhis shepherds:  Ah! how well the knave could choose him out a ram; the\nwhoreson has skill in cattle.  On my honest word, I reserved that very\npiece of flesh for the Lord of Cancale, well knowing his disposition; for\nthe good man is naturally overjoyed when he holds a good-sized handsome\nshoulder of mutton, instead of a left-handed racket, in one hand, with a\ngood sharp carver in the other.  God wot, how he belabours himself then.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge caused Dingdong and his sheep to be drowned in the sea.\n\nOn a sudden, you would wonder how the thing was so soon done--for my part I\ncannot tell you, for I had not leisure to mind it--our friend Panurge,\nwithout any further tittle-tattle, throws you his ram overboard into the\nmiddle of the sea, bleating and making a sad noise.  Upon this all the\nother sheep in the ship, crying and bleating in the same tone, made all the\nhaste they could to leap nimbly into the sea, one after another; and great\nwas the throng who should leap in first after their leader.  It was\nimpossible to hinder them; for you know that it is the nature of sheep\nalways to follow the first wheresoever it goes; which makes Aristotle, lib.\n9. De. Hist. Animal., mark them for the most silly and foolish animals in\nthe world.  Dingdong, at his wits' end, and stark staring mad, as a man who\nsaw his sheep destroy and drown themselves before his face, strove to\nhinder and keep them back with might and main; but all in vain:  they all\none after t'other frisked and jumped into the sea, and were lost.  At last\nhe laid hold on a huge sturdy one by the fleece, upon the deck of the ship,\nhoping to keep it back, and so save that and the rest; but the ram was so\nstrong that it proved too hard for him, and carried its master into the\nherring pond in spite of his teeth--where it is supposed he drank somewhat\nmore than his fill, so that he was drowned--in the same manner as one-eyed\nPolyphemus' sheep carried out of the den Ulysses and his companions.  The\nlike happened to the shepherds and all their gang, some laying hold on\ntheir beloved tup, this by the horns, t'other by the legs, a third by the\nrump, and others by the fleece; till in fine they were all of them forced\nto sea, and drowned like so many rats.  Panurge, on the gunnel of the ship,\nwith an oar in his hand, not to help them you may swear, but to keep them\nfrom swimming to the ship and saving themselves from drowning, preached and\ncanted to them all the while like any little Friar (Oliver) Maillard, or\nanother Friar John Burgess; laying before them rhetorical commonplaces\nconcerning the miseries of this life and the blessings and felicity of the\nnext; assuring them that the dead were much happier than the living in this\nvale of misery, and promised to erect a stately cenotaph and honorary tomb\nto every one of them on the highest summit of Mount Cenis at his return\nfrom Lanternland; wishing them, nevertheless, in case they were not yet\ndisposed to shake hands with this life, and did not like their salt liquor,\nthey might have the good luck to meet with some kind whale which might set\nthem ashore safe and sound on some blessed land of Gotham, after a famous\nexample.\n\nThe ship being cleared of Dingdong and his tups:  Is there ever another\nsheepish soul left lurking on board? cried Panurge.  Where are those of\nToby Lamb and Robin Ram that sleep while the rest are a-feeding?  Faith, I\ncan't tell myself.  This was an old coaster's trick.  What think'st of it,\nFriar John, hah?  Rarely performed, answered Friar John; only methinks that\nas formerly in war, on the day of battle, a double pay was commonly\npromised the soldiers for that day; for if they overcame, there was enough\nto pay them; and if they lost, it would have been shameful for them to\ndemand it, as the cowardly foresters did after the battle of Cerizoles;\nlikewise, my friend, you ought not to have paid your man, and the money had\nbeen saved.  A fart for the money, said Panurge; have I not had above fifty\nthousand pounds' worth of sport?  Come now, let's be gone; the wind is\nfair.  Hark you me, my friend John; never did man do me a good turn, but I\nreturned, or at least acknowledged it; no, I scorn to be ungrateful; I\nnever was, nor ever will be.  Never did man do me an ill one without rueing\nthe day that he did it, either in this world or the next.  I am not yet so\nmuch a fool neither.  Thou damn'st thyself like any old devil, quoth Friar\nJohn; it is written, Mihi vindictam, &c.  Matter of breviary, mark ye me\n(Motteux adds unnecessarily (by way of explanation), 'that's holy stuff.').\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel arrived at the island of Ennasin, and of the strange ways of\nbeing akin in that country.\n\nWe had still the wind at south-south-west, and had been a whole day without\nmaking land.  On the third day, at the flies' uprising (which, you know, is\nsome two or three hours after the sun's), we got sight of a triangular\nisland, very much like Sicily for its form and situation.  It was called\nthe Island of Alliances.\n\nThe people there are much like your carrot-pated Poitevins, save only that\nall of them, men, women, and children, have their noses shaped like an ace\nof clubs.  For that reason the ancient name of the country was Ennasin.\nThey were all akin, as the mayor of the place told us; at least they\nboasted so.\n\nYou people of the other world esteem it a wonderful thing that, out of the\nfamily of the Fabii at Rome, on a certain day, which was the 13th of\nFebruary, at a certain gate, which was the Porta Carmentalis, since named\nScelerata, formerly situated at the foot of the Capitol, between the\nTarpeian rock and the Tiber, marched out against the Veientes of Etruria\nthree hundred and six men bearing arms, all related to each other, with\nfive thousand other soldiers, every one of them their vassals, who were all\nslain near the river Cremera, that comes out of the lake of Beccano.  Now\nfrom this same country of Ennasin, in case of need, above three hundred\nthousand, all relations and of one family, might march out.  Their degrees\nof consanguinity and alliance are very strange; for being thus akin and\nallied to one another, we found that none was either father or mother,\nbrother or sister, uncle or aunt, nephew or niece, son-in-law or\ndaughter-in-law, godfather or godmother, to the other; unless, truly, a tall\nflat-nosed old fellow, who, as I perceived, called a little shitten-arsed\ngirl of three or four years old, father, and the child called him daughter.\n\nTheir distinction of degrees of kindred was thus:  a man used to call a\nwoman, my lean bit; the woman called him, my porpoise.  Those, said Friar\nJohn, must needs stink damnably of fish when they have rubbed their bacon\none with the other.  One, smiling on a young buxom baggage, said, Good\nmorrow, dear currycomb.  She, to return him his civility, said, The like to\nyou, my steed.  Ha! ha! ha! said Panurge, that is pretty well, in faith;\nfor indeed it stands her in good stead to currycomb this steed.  Another\ngreeted his buttock with a Farewell, my case.  She replied, Adieu, trial.\nBy St. Winifred's placket, cried Gymnast, this case has been often tried.\nAnother asked a she-friend of his, How is it, hatchet?  She answered him,\nAt your service, dear helve.  Odds belly, saith Carpalin, this helve and\nthis hatchet are well matched.  As we went on, I saw one who, calling his\nshe-relation, styled her my crumb, and she called him, my crust.\n\nQuoth one to a brisk, plump, juicy female, I am glad to see you, dear tap.\nSo am I to find you so merry, sweet spiggot, replied she.  One called a\nwench, his shovel; she called him, her peal:  one named his, my slipper;\nand she, my foot:  another, my boot; she, my shasoon.\n\nIn the same degree of kindred, one called his, my butter; she called him,\nmy eggs; and they were akin just like a dish of buttered eggs.  I heard one\ncall his, my tripe, and she him, my faggot.  Now I could not, for the\nheart's blood of me, pick out or discover what parentage, alliance,\naffinity, or consanguinity was between them, with reference to our custom;\nonly they told us that she was faggot's tripe.  (Tripe de fagot means the\nsmallest sticks in a faggot.)  Another, complimenting his convenient, said,\nYours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster.  I reckon,\nsaid Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster.  Another long-shanked ugly\nrogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a\nstrapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is't my top?  She was\nshort upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, my whip.\nBy St. Antony's hog, said Xenomanes, I believe so; for how can this whip be\nsufficient to lash this top?\n\nA college professor, well provided with cod, and powdered and prinked up,\nhaving a while discoursed with a great lady, taking his leave with these\nwords, Thank you, sweetmeat; she cried, There needs no thanks, sour-sauce.\nSaith Pantagruel, This is not altogether incongruous, for sweet meat must\nhave sour sauce.  A wooden loggerhead said to a young wench, It is long\nsince I saw you, bag; All the better, cried she, pipe.  Set them together,\nsaid Panurge, then blow in their arses, it will be a bagpipe.  We saw,\nafter that, a diminutive humpbacked gallant, pretty near us, taking leave\nof a she-relation of his, thus:  Fare thee well, friend hole; she\nreparteed, Save thee, friend peg.  Quoth Friar John, What could they say\nmore, were he all peg and she all hole?  But now would I give something to\nknow if every cranny of the hole can be stopped up with that same peg.\n\nA bawdy bachelor, talking with an old trout, was saying, Remember, rusty\ngun.  I will not fail, said she, scourer.  Do you reckon these two to be\nakin? said Pantagruel to the mayor.  I rather take them to be foes.  In our\ncountry a woman would take this as a mortal affront.  Good people of\nt'other world, replied the mayor, you have few such and so near relations\nas this gun and scourer are to one another; for they both come out of one\nshop.  What, was the shop their mother? quoth Panurge.  What mother, said\nthe mayor, does the man mean?  That must be some of your world's affinity;\nwe have here neither father nor mother.  Your little paltry fellows that\nlive on t'other side the water, poor rogues, booted with wisps of hay, may\nindeed have such; but we scorn it.  The good Pantagruel stood gazing and\nlistening; but at those words he had like to have lost all patience. (Here\nMotteux adds an aside--'os kai nun o Ermeneutes.  P.M.').\n\nHaving very exactly viewed the situation of the island and the way of\nliving of the Enassed nation, we went to take a cup of the creature at a\ntavern, where there happened to be a wedding after the manner of the\ncountry.  Bating that shocking custom, there was special good cheer.\n\nWhile we were there, a pleasant match was struck up betwixt a female called\nPear (a tight thing, as we thought, but by some, who knew better things,\nsaid to be quaggy and flabby), and a young soft male, called Cheese,\nsomewhat sandy.  (Many such matches have been, and they were formerly much\ncommended.)  In our country we say, Il ne fut onques tel mariage, qu'est de\nla poire et du fromage; there is no match like that made between the pear\nand the cheese; and in many other places good store of such bargains have\nbeen driven.  Besides, when the women are at their last prayers, it is to\nthis day a noted saying, that after cheese comes nothing.\n\nIn another room I saw them marrying an old greasy boot to a young pliable\nbuskin.  Pantagruel was told that young buskin took old boot to have and to\nhold because she was of special leather, in good case, and waxed, seared,\nliquored, and greased to the purpose, even though it had been for the\nfisherman that went to bed with his boots on.  In another room below, I saw\na young brogue taking a young slipper for better for worse; which, they\ntold us, was neither for the sake of her piety, parts, or person, but for\nthe fourth comprehensive p, portion; the spankers, spur-royals,\nrose-nobles, and other coriander seed with which she was quilted all over.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Chely, where he saw King St.\nPanigon.\n\nWe sailed right before the wind, which we had at west, leaving those odd\nalliancers with their ace-of-clubs snouts, and having taken height by the\nsun, stood in for Chely, a large, fruitful, wealthy, and well-peopled\nisland.  King St. Panigon, first of the name, reigned there, and, attended\nby the princes his sons and the nobles of his court, came as far as the\nport to receive Pantagruel, and conducted him to his palace; near the gate\nof which the queen, attended by the princesses her daughters and the court\nladies, received us.  Panigon directed her and all her retinue to salute\nPantagruel and his men with a kiss; for such was the civil custom of the\ncountry; and they were all fairly bussed accordingly, except Friar John,\nwho stepped aside and sneaked off among the king's officers.  Panigon used\nall the entreaties imaginable to persuade Pantagruel to tarry there that\nday and the next; but he would needs be gone, and excused himself upon the\nopportunity of wind and weather, which, being oftener desired than enjoyed,\nought not to be neglected when it comes.  Panigon, having heard these\nreasons, let us go, but first made us take off some five-and-twenty or\nthirty bumpers each.\n\nPantagruel, returning to the port, missed Friar John, and asked why he was\nnot with the rest of the company.  Panurge could not tell how to excuse\nhim, and would have gone back to the palace to call him, when Friar John\novertook them, and merrily cried, Long live the noble Panigon!  As I love\nmy belly, he minds good eating, and keeps a noble house and a dainty\nkitchen.  I have been there, boys.  Everything goes about by dozens.  I was\nin good hopes to have stuffed my puddings there like a monk.  What! always\nin a kitchen, friend? said Pantagruel.  By the belly of St. Cramcapon,\nquoth the friar, I understand the customs and ceremonies which are used\nthere much better than all the formal stuff, antique postures, and\nnonsensical fiddle-faddle that must be used with those women, magni magna,\nshittencumshita, cringes, grimaces, scrapes, bows, and congees; double\nhonours this way, triple salutes that way, the embrace, the grasp, the\nsqueeze, the hug, the leer, the smack, baso las manos de vostra merce, de\nvostra maesta.  You are most tarabin, tarabas, Stront; that's downright\nDutch.  Why all this ado?  I don't say but a man might be for a bit by the\nbye and away, to be doing as well as his neighbours; but this little nasty\ncringing and courtesying made me as mad as any March devil.  You talk of\nkissing ladies; by the worthy and sacred frock I wear, I seldom venture\nupon it, lest I be served as was the Lord of Guyercharois.  What was it?\nsaid Pantagruel; I know him.  He is one of the best friends I have.\n\nHe was invited to a sumptuous feast, said Friar John, by a relation and\nneighbour of his, together with all the gentlemen and ladies in the\nneighbourhood.  Now some of the latter expecting his coming, dressed the\npages in women's clothes, and finified them like any babies; then ordered\nthem to meet my lord at his coming near the drawbridge.  So the\ncomplimenting monsieur came, and there kissed the petticoated lads with\ngreat formality.  At last the ladies, who minded passages in the gallery,\nburst out with laughing, and made signs to the pages to take off their\ndress; which the good lord having observed, the devil a bit he durst make\nup to the true ladies to kiss them, but said, that since they had disguised\nthe pages, by his great grandfather's helmet, these were certainly the very\nfootmen and grooms still more cunningly disguised.  Odds fish, da jurandi,\nwhy do not we rather remove our humanities into some good warm kitchen of\nGod, that noble laboratory, and there admire the turning of the spits, the\nharmonious rattling of the jacks and fenders, criticise on the position of\nthe lard, the temperature of the pottages, the preparation for the dessert,\nand the order of the wine service?  Beati immaculati in via.  Matter of\nbreviary, my masters.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy monks love to be in kitchens.\n\nThis, said Epistemon, is spoke like a true monk; I mean like a right\nmonking monk, not a bemonked monastical monkling.  Truly you put me in mind\nof some passages that happened at Florence, some twenty years ago, in a\ncompany of studious travellers, fond of visiting the learned, and seeing\nthe antiquities of Italy, among whom I was.  As we viewed the situation and\nbeauty of Florence, the structure of the dome, the magnificence of the\nchurches and palaces, we strove to outdo one another in giving them their\ndue; when a certain monk of Amiens, Bernard Lardon by name, quite angry,\nscandalized, and out of all patience, told us, I don't know what the devil\nyou can find in this same town, that is so much cried up; for my part I\nhave looked and pored and stared as well as the best of you; I think my\neyesight is as clear as another body's, and what can one see after all?\nThere are fine houses, indeed and that's all.  But the cage does not feed\nthe birds.  God and Monsieur St. Bernard, our good patron, be with us! in\nall this same town I have not seen one poor lane of roasting cooks; and yet\nI have not a little looked about and sought for so necessary a part of a\ncommonwealth:  ay, and I dare assure you that I have pried up and down with\nthe exactness of an informer; as ready to number, both to the right and\nleft, how many, and on what side, we might find most roasting cooks, as a\nspy would be to reckon the bastions of a town.  Now at Amiens, in four,\nnay, five times less ground than we have trod in our contemplations, I\ncould have shown you above fourteen streets of roasting cooks, most\nancient, savoury, and aromatic.  I cannot imagine what kind of pleasure you\ncan have taken in gazing on the lions and Africans (so methinks you call\ntheir tigers) near the belfry, or in ogling the porcupines and estridges in\nthe Lord Philip Strozzi's palace.  Faith and truth I had rather see a good\nfat goose at the spit.  This porphyry, those marbles are fine; I say\nnothing to the contrary; but our cheesecakes at Amiens are far better in my\nmind.  These ancient statues are well made; I am willing to believe it;\nbut, by St. Ferreol of Abbeville, we have young wenches in our country\nwhich please me better a thousand times.\n\nWhat is the reason, asked Friar John, that monks are always to be found in\nkitchens, and kings, emperors, and popes are never there?  Is there not,\nsaid Rhizotome, some latent virtue and specific propriety hid in the\nkettles and pans, which, as the loadstone attracts iron, draws the monks\nthere, and cannot attract emperors, popes, or kings?  Or is it a natural\ninduction and inclination, fixed in the frocks and cowls, which of itself\nleads and forceth those good religious men into kitchens, whether they will\nor no?  He would speak of forms following matter, as Averroes calls them,\nanswered Epistemon.  Right, said Friar John.\n\nI will not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel; for it is somewhat\nticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily; but I\nwill tell you what I have heard.\n\nAntigonus, King of Macedon, one day coming into one of the tents, where his\ncooks used to dress his meat, and finding there poet Antagoras frying a\nconger, and holding the pan himself, merrily asked him, Pray, Mr. Poet, was\nHomer frying congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?  Antagoras\nreadily answered:  But do you think, sir, that when Agamemnon did them he\nmade it his business to know if any in his camp were frying congers?  The\nking thought it an indecency that a poet should be thus a-frying in a\nkitchen; and the poet let the king know that it was a more indecent thing\nfor a king to be found in such a place.  I'll clap another story upon the\nneck of this, quoth Panurge, and will tell you what Breton Villandry\nanswered one day to the Duke of Guise.\n\nThey were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against Charles\nthe Fifth, Breton, armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St.\nGeorge, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement.\nBlood and oons, answered Breton, I was there, and can prove it easily; nay,\neven where you, my lord, dared not have been.  The duke began to resent\nthis as too rash and saucy; but Breton easily appeased him, and set them\nall a-laughing.  Egad, my lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm's way; I was\nall the while with your page Jack, skulking in a certain place where you\nhad not dared hide your head as I did.  Thus discoursing, they got to their\nships, and left the island of Chely.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and of the strange way\nof living among the Catchpoles.\n\nSteering our course forwards the next day, we passed through Pettifogging,\na country all blurred and blotted, so that I could hardly tell what to make\non't.  There we saw some pettifoggers and catchpoles, rogues that will hang\ntheir father for a groat.  They neither invited us to eat or drink; but,\nwith a multiplied train of scrapes and cringes, said they were all at our\nservice for the Legem pone.\n\nOne of our droggermen related to Pantagruel their strange way of living,\ndiametrically opposed to that of our modern Romans; for at Rome a world of\nfolks get an honest livelihood by poisoning, drubbing, lambasting,\nstabbing, and murthering; but the catchpoles earn theirs by being thrashed;\nso that if they were long without a tight lambasting, the poor dogs with\ntheir wives and children would be starved.  This is just, quoth Panurge,\nlike those who, as Galen tells us, cannot erect the cavernous nerve towards\nthe equinoctial circle unless they are soundly flogged.  By St. Patrick's\nslipper, whoever should jerk me so, would soon, instead of setting me\nright, throw me off the saddle, in the devil's name.\n\nThe way is this, said the interpreter.  When a monk, levite, close-fisted\nusurer, or lawyer owes a grudge to some neighbouring gentleman, he sends to\nhim one of those catchpoles or apparitors, who nabs, or at least cites him,\nserves a writ or warrant upon him, thumps, abuses, and affronts him\nimpudently by natural instinct, and according to his pious instructions;\ninsomuch, that if the gentleman hath but any guts in his brains, and is not\nmore stupid than a gyrin frog, he will find himself obliged either to apply\na faggot-stick or his sword to the rascal's jobbernowl, give him the gentle\nlash, or make him cut a caper out at the window, by way of correction.\nThis done, Catchpole is rich for four months at least, as if bastinadoes\nwere his real harvest; for the monk, levite, usurer, or lawyer will reward\nhim roundly; and my gentleman must pay him such swingeing damages that his\nacres must bleed for it, and he be in danger of miserably rotting within a\nstone doublet, as if he had struck the king.\n\nQuoth Panurge, I know an excellent remedy against this used by the Lord of\nBasche.  What is it? said Pantagruel.  The Lord of Basche, said Panurge,\nwas a brave, honest, noble-spirited gentleman, who, at his return from the\nlong war in which the Duke of Ferrara, with the help of the French, bravely\ndefended himself against the fury of Pope Julius the Second, was every day\ncited, warned, and prosecuted at the suit and for the sport and fancy of\nthe fat prior of St. Louant.\n\nOne morning, as he was at breakfast with some of his domestics (for he\nloved to be sometimes among them) he sent for one Loire, his baker, and his\nspouse, and for one Oudart, the vicar of his parish, who was also his\nbutler, as the custom was then in France; then said to them before his\ngentlemen and other servants:  You all see how I am daily plagued with\nthese rascally catchpoles.  Truly, if you do not lend me your helping hand,\nI am finally resolved to leave the country, and go fight for the sultan, or\nthe devil, rather than be thus eternally teased.  Therefore, to be rid of\ntheir damned visits, hereafter, when any of them come here, be ready, you\nbaker and your wife, to make your personal appearance in my great hall, in\nyour wedding clothes, as if you were going to be affianced.  Here, take\nthese ducats, which I give you to keep you in a fitting garb.  As for you,\nSir Oudart, be sure you make your personal appearance there in your fine\nsurplice and stole, not forgetting your holy water, as if you were to wed\nthem.  Be you there also, Trudon, said he to his drummer, with your pipe\nand tabor.  The form of matrimony must be read, and the bride kissed; then\nall of you, as the witnesses used to do in this country, shall give one\nanother the remembrance of the wedding, which you know is to be a blow with\nyour fist, bidding the party struck remember the nuptials by that token.\nThis will but make you have the better stomach to your supper; but when you\ncome to the catchpole's turn, thrash him thrice and threefold, as you would\na sheaf of green corn; do not spare him; maul him, drub him, lambast him,\nswinge him off, I pray you.  Here, take these steel gauntlets, covered with\nkid.  Head, back, belly, and sides, give him blows innumerable; he that\ngives him most shall be my best friend.  Fear not to be called to an\naccount about it; I will stand by you; for the blows must seem to be given\nin jest, as it is customary among us at all weddings.\n\nAy, but how shall we know the catchpole? said the man of God.  All sorts of\npeople daily resort to this castle.  I have taken care of that, replied the\nlord.  When some fellow, either on foot, or on a scurvy jade, with a large\nbroad silver ring on his thumb, comes to the door, he is certainly a\ncatchpole; the porter having civilly let him in, shall ring the bell; then\nbe all ready, and come into the hall, to act the tragi-comedy whose plot I\nhave now laid for you.\n\nThat numerical day, as chance would have it, came an old fat ruddy\ncatchpole.  Having knocked at the gate, and then pissed, as most men will\ndo, the porter soon found him out, by his large greasy spatterdashes, his\njaded hollow-flanked mare, his bagful of writs and informations dangling at\nhis girdle, but, above all, by the large silver hoop on his left thumb.\n\nThe porter was civil to him, admitted him in kindly, and rung the bell\nbriskly. As soon as the baker and his wife heard it, they clapped on their\nbest clothes, and made their personal appearance in the hall, keeping their\ngravities like a new-made judge.  The dominie put on his surplice and\nstole, and as he came out of his office, met the catchpole, had him in\nthere, and made him suck his face a good while, while the gauntlets were\ndrawing on all hands; and then told him, You are come just in pudding-time;\nmy lord is in his right cue.  We shall feast like kings anon; here is to be\nswingeing doings; we have a wedding in the house; here, drink and cheer up;\npull away.\n\nWhile these two were at it hand-to-fist, Basche, seeing all his people in\nthe hall in their proper equipage, sends for the vicar.  Oudart comes with\nthe holy-water pot, followed by the catchpole, who, as he came into the\nhall, did not forget to make good store of awkward cringes, and then served\nBasche with a writ.  Basche gave him grimace for grimace, slipped an angel\ninto his mutton-fist, and prayed him to assist at the contract and\nceremony; which he did.  When it was ended, thumps and fisticuffs began to\nfly about among the assistants; but when it came to the catchpole's turn,\nthey all laid on him so unmercifully with their gauntlets that they at last\nsettled him, all stunned and battered, bruised and mortified, with one of\nhis eyes black and blue, eight ribs bruised, his brisket sunk in, his\nomoplates in four quarters, his under jawbone in three pieces; and all this\nin jest, and no harm done.  God wot how the levite belaboured him, hiding\nwithin the long sleeve of his canonical shirt his huge steel gauntlet lined\nwith ermine; for he was a strong-built ball, and an old dog at fisticuffs.\nThe catchpole, all of a bloody tiger-like stripe, with much ado crawled\nhome to L'Isle Bouchart, well pleased and edified, however, with Basche's\nkind reception; and, with the help of the good surgeons of the place, lived\nas long as you would have him.  From that time to this, not a word of the\nbusiness; the memory of it was lost with the sound of the bells that rung\nwith joy at his funeral.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow, like Master Francis Villon, the Lord of Basche commended his servants.\n\nThe catchpole being packed off on blind Sorrel--so he called his one-eyed\nmare--Basche sent for his lady, her women, and all his servants, into the\narbour of his garden; had wine brought, attended with good store of\npasties, hams, fruit, and other table-ammunition, for a nunchion; drank\nwith them joyfully, and then told them this story:\n\nMaster Francis Villon in his old age retired to St. Maxent in Poitou, under\nthe patronage of a good honest abbot of the place.  There to make sport for\nthe mob, he undertook to get the Passion acted, after the way, and in the\ndialect of the country.  The parts being distributed, the play having been\nrehearsed, and the stage prepared, he told the mayor and aldermen that the\nmystery might be ready after Niort fair, and that there only wanted\nproperties and necessaries, but chiefly clothes fit for the parts; so the\nmayor and his brethren took care to get them.\n\nVillon, to dress an old clownish father greybeard, who was to represent God\nthe father, begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan\nfriars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole.  Tickletoby refused\nhim, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden\nto give or lend anything to players.  Villon replied that the statute\nreached no farther than farces, drolls, antics, loose and dissolute games,\nand that he asked no more than what he had seen allowed at Brussels and\nother places.  Tickletoby notwithstanding peremptorily bid him provide\nhimself elsewhere if he would, and not to hope for anything out of his\nmonastical wardrobe.  Villon gave an account of this to the players, as of\na most abominable action; adding, that God would shortly revenge himself,\nand make an example of Tickletoby.\n\nThe Saturday following he had notice given him that Tickletoby, upon the\nfilly of the convent--so they call a young mare that was never leaped yet\n--was gone a-mumping to St. Ligarius, and would be back about two in the\nafternoon.  Knowing this, he made a cavalcade of his devils of the Passion\nthrough the town.  They were all rigged with wolves', calves', and rams'\nskins, laced and trimmed with sheep's heads, bull's feathers, and large\nkitchen tenterhooks, girt with broad leathern girdles, whereat hanged\ndangling huge cow-bells and horse-bells, which made a horrid din.  Some\nheld in their claws black sticks full of squibs and crackers; others had\nlong lighted pieces of wood, upon which, at the corner of every street,\nthey flung whole handfuls of rosin-dust, that made a terrible fire and\nsmoke.  Having thus led them about, to the great diversion of the mob and\nthe dreadful fear of little children, he finally carried them to an\nentertainment at a summer-house without the gate that leads to St.\nLigarius.\n\nAs they came near to the place, he espied Tickletoby afar off, coming home\nfrom mumping, and told them in macaronic verse:\n\n  Hic est de patria, natus, de gente belistra,\n  Qui solet antiqua bribas portare bisacco. (Motteux reads:\n\n  'Hic est mumpator natus de gente Cucowli,\n  Qui solet antiquo Scrappas portare bisacco.')\n\nA plague on his friarship, said the devils then; the lousy beggar would not\nlend a poor cope to the fatherly father; let us fright him.  Well said,\ncried Villon; but let us hide ourselves till he comes by, and then charge\nhim home briskly with your squibs and burning sticks.  Tickletoby being\ncome to the place, they all rushed on a sudden into the road to meet him,\nand in a frightful manner threw fire from all sides upon him and his filly\nfoal, ringing and tingling their bells, and howling like so many real\ndevils, Hho, hho, hho, hho, brrou, rrou, rrourrs, rrrourrs, hoo, hou, hou\nhho, hho, hhoi.  Friar Stephen, don't we play the devils rarely?  The filly\nwas soon scared out of her seven senses, and began to start, to funk it, to\nsquirt it, to trot it, to fart it, to bound it, to gallop it, to kick it,\nto spurn it, to calcitrate it, to wince it, to frisk it, to leap it, to\ncurvet it, with double jerks, and bum-motions; insomuch that she threw down\nTickletoby, though he held fast by the tree of the pack-saddle with might\nand main.  Now his straps and stirrups were of cord; and on the right side\nhis sandals were so entangled and twisted that he could not for the heart's\nblood of him get out his foot.  Thus he was dragged about by the filly\nthrough the road, scratching his bare breech all the way; she still\nmultiplying her kicks against him, and straying for fear over hedge and\nditch, insomuch that she trepanned his thick skull so that his cockle\nbrains were dashed out near the Osanna or high-cross.  Then his arms fell\nto pieces, one this way and the other that way; and even so were his legs\nserved at the same time.  Then she made a bloody havoc with his puddings;\nand being got to the convent, brought back only his right foot and twisted\nsandal, leaving them to guess what was become of the rest.\n\nVillon, seeing that things had succeeded as he intended, said to his\ndevils, You will act rarely, gentlemen devils, you will act rarely; I dare\nengage you'll top your parts.  I defy the devils of Saumur, Douay,\nMontmorillon, Langez, St. Espain, Angers; nay, by gad, even those of\nPoictiers, for all their bragging and vapouring, to match you.\n\nThus, friends, said Basche, I foresee that hereafter you will act rarely\nthis tragical farce, since the very first time you have so skilfully\nhampered, bethwacked, belammed, and bebumped the catchpole.  From this day\nI double your wages.  As for you, my dear, said he to his lady, make your\ngratifications as you please; you are my treasurer, you know.  For my part,\nfirst and foremost, I drink to you all.  Come on, box it about; it is good\nand cool.  In the second place, you, Mr. Steward, take this silver basin; I\ngive it you freely.  Then you, my gentlemen of the horse, take these two\nsilver-gilt cups, and let not the pages be horsewhipped these three months.\nMy dear, let them have my best white plumes of feathers, with the gold\nbuckles to them.  Sir Oudart, this silver flagon falls to your share; this\nother I give to the cooks.  To the valets de chambre I give this silver\nbasket; to the grooms, this silver-gilt boat; to the porter, these two\nplates; to the hostlers, these ten porringers.  Trudon, take you these\nsilver spoons and this sugar-box.  You, footman, take this large salt.\nServe me well, and I will remember you.  For, on the word of a gentleman, I\nhad rather bear in war one hundred blows on my helmet in the service of my\ncountry than be once cited by these knavish catchpoles merely to humour\nthis same gorbellied prior.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA further account of catchpoles who were drubbed at Basche's house.\n\nFour days after another young, long-shanked, raw-boned catchpole coming to\nserve Basche with a writ at the fat prior's request, was no sooner at the\ngate but the porter smelt him out and rung the bell; at whose second pull\nall the family understood the mystery.  Loire was kneading his dough; his\nwife was sifting meal; Oudart was toping in his office; the gentlemen were\nplaying at tennis; the Lord Basche at in-and-out with my lady; the\nwaiting-men and gentle-women at push-pin; the officers at lanterloo, and the\npages at hot-cockles, giving one another smart bangs.  They were all\nimmediately informed that a catchpole was housed.\n\nUpon this Oudart put on his sacerdotal, and Loire and his wife their\nnuptial badges; Trudon piped it, and then tabored it like mad; all made\nhaste to get ready, not forgetting the gauntlets.  Basche went into the\noutward yard; there the catchpole meeting him fell on his marrow-bones,\nbegged of him not to take it ill if he served him with a writ at the suit\nof the fat prior; and in a pathetic speech let him know that he was a\npublic person, a servant to the monking tribe, apparitor to the abbatial\nmitre, ready to do as much for him, nay, for the least of his servants,\nwhensoever he would employ and use him.\n\nNay, truly, said the lord, you shall not serve your writ till you have\ntasted some of my good Quinquenays wine, and been a witness to a wedding\nwhich we are to have this very minute.  Let him drink and refresh himself,\nadded he, turning towards the levitical butler, and then bring him into the\nhall.  After which, Catchpole, well stuffed and moistened, came with Oudart\nto the place where all the actors in the farce stood ready to begin.  The\nsight of their game set them a-laughing, and the messenger of mischief\ngrinned also for company's sake.  Then the mysterious words were muttered\nto and by the couple, their hands joined, the bride bussed, and all\nbesprinkled with holy water.  While they were bringing wine and kickshaws,\nthumps began to trot about by dozens.  The catchpole gave the levite\nseveral blows.  Oudart, who had his gauntlet hid under his canonical shirt,\ndraws it on like a mitten, and then, with his clenched fist, souse he fell\non the catchpole and mauled him like a devil; the junior gauntlets dropped\non him likewise like so many battering rams.  Remember the wedding by this,\nby that, by these blows, said they.  In short, they stroked him so to the\npurpose that he pissed blood out at mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, and was\nbruised, thwacked, battered, bebumped, and crippled at the back, neck,\nbreast, arms, and so forth.  Never did the bachelors at Avignon in carnival\ntime play more melodiously at raphe than was then played on the catchpole's\nmicrocosm.  At last down he fell.\n\nThey threw a great deal of wine on his snout, tied round the sleeve of his\ndoublet a fine yellow and green favour, and got him upon his snotty beast,\nand God knows how he got to L'Isle Bouchart; where I cannot truly tell you\nwhether he was dressed and looked after or no, both by his spouse and the\nable doctors of the country; for the thing never came to my ears.\n\nThe next day they had a third part to the same tune, because it did not\nappear by the lean catchpole's bag that he had served his writ.  So the fat\nprior sent a new catchpole, at the head of a brace of bums for his garde du\ncorps, to summon my lord.  The porter ringing the bell, the whole family\nwas overjoyed, knowing that it was another rogue.  Basche was at dinner\nwith his lady and the gentlemen; so he sent for the catchpole, made him sit\nby him, and the bums by the women, and made them eat till their bellies\ncracked with their breeches unbuttoned.  The fruit being served, the\ncatchpole arose from table, and before the bums cited Basche.  Basche\nkindly asked him for a copy of the warrant, which the other had got ready;\nhe then takes witness and a copy of the summons.  To the catchpole and his\nbums he ordered four ducats for civility money.  In the meantime all were\nwithdrawn for the farce.  So Trudon gave the alarm with his tabor.  Basche\ndesired the catchpole to stay and see one of his servants married, and\nwitness the contract of marriage, paying him his fee.  The catchpole\nslapdash was ready, took out his inkhorn, got paper immediately, and his\nbums by him.\n\nThen Loire came into the hall at one door, and his wife with the\ngentlewomen at another, in nuptial accoutrements.  Oudart, in\npontificalibus, takes them both by their hands, asketh them their will,\ngiveth them the matrimonial blessing, and was very liberal of holy water.\nThe contract written, signed, and registered, on one side was brought wine\nand comfits; on the other, white and orange-tawny-coloured favours were\ndistributed; on another, gauntlets privately handed about.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the ancient custom at nuptials is renewed by the catchpole.\n\nThe catchpole, having made shift to get down a swingeing sneaker of Breton\nwine, said to Basche, Pray, sir, what do you mean?  You do not give one\nanother the memento of the wedding.  By St. Joseph's wooden shoe, all good\ncustoms are forgot.  We find the form, but the hare is scampered; and the\nnest, but the birds are flown.  There are no true friends nowadays.  You\nsee how, in several churches, the ancient laudable custom of tippling on\naccount of the blessed saints O O, at Christmas, is come to nothing.  The\nworld is in its dotage, and doomsday is certainly coming all so fast.  Now\ncome on; the wedding, the wedding, the wedding; remember it by this.  This\nhe said, striking Basche and his lady; then her women and the levite.  Then\nthe tabor beat a point of war, and the gauntlets began to do their duty;\ninsomuch that the catchpole had his crown cracked in no less than nine\nplaces.  One of the bums had his right arm put out of joint, and the other\nhis upper jaw-bone or mandibule dislocated so that it hid half his chin,\nwith a denudation of the uvula, and sad loss of the molar, masticatory, and\ncanine teeth.  Then the tabor beat a retreat; the gauntlets were carefully\nhid in a trice, and sweetmeats afresh distributed to renew the mirth of the\ncompany.  So they all drank to one another, and especially to the catchpole\nand his bums.  But Oudart cursed and damned the wedding to the pit of hell,\ncomplaining that one of the bums had utterly disincornifistibulated his\nnether shoulder-blade.  Nevertheless, he scorned to be thought a flincher,\nand made shift to tope to him on the square.\n\nThe jawless bum shrugged up his shoulders, joined his hands, and by signs\nbegged his pardon; for speak he could not.  The sham bridegroom made his\nmoan, that the crippled bum had struck him such a horrid thump with his\nshoulder-of-mutton fist on the nether elbow that he was grown quite\nesperruquanchuzelubelouzerireliced down to his very heel, to the no small\nloss of mistress bride.\n\nBut what harm had poor I done? cried Trudon, hiding his left eye with his\nkerchief, and showing his tabor cracked on one side; they were not\nsatisfied with thus poaching, black and bluing, and\nmorrambouzevezengouzequoquemorgasacbaquevezinemaffreliding my poor eyes,\nbut they have also broke my harmless drum.  Drums indeed are commonly\nbeaten at weddings, and it is fit they should; but drummers are well\nentertained and never beaten.  Now let Beelzebub e'en take the drum, to\nmake his devilship a nightcap.  Brother, said the lame catchpole, never\nfret thyself; I will make thee a present of a fine, large, old patent,\nwhich I have here in my bag, to patch up thy drum, and for Madame St.\nAnn's sake I pray thee forgive us.  By Our Lady of Riviere, the blessed\ndame, I meant no more harm than the child unborn.  One of the equerries,\nwho, hopping and halting like a mumping cripple, mimicked the good limping\nLord de la Roche Posay, directed his discourse to the bum with the pouting\njaw, and told him:  What, Mr. Manhound, was it not enough thus to have\nmorcrocastebezasteverestegrigeligoscopapopondrillated us all in our upper\nmembers with your botched mittens, but you must also apply such\nmorderegripippiatabirofreluchamburelurecaquelurintimpaniments on our\nshinbones with the hard tops and extremities of your cobbled shoes.  Do\nyou call this children's play?  By the mass, 'tis no jest.  The bum,\nwringing his hands, seemed to beg his pardon, muttering with his tongue,\nMon, mon, mon, vrelon, von, von, like a dumb man.  The bride crying\nlaughed, and laughing cried, because the catchpole was not satisfied with\ndrubbing her without choice or distinction of members, but had also rudely\nroused and toused her, pulled off her topping, and not having the fear of\nher husband before his eyes, treacherously\ntrepignemanpenillorifrizonoufresterfumbled tumbled and squeezed her lower\nparts.  The devil go with it, said Basche; there was much need indeed that\nthis same Master King (this was the catchpole's name) should thus break my\nwife's back; however, I forgive him now; these are little nuptial\ncaresses. But this I plainly perceive, that he cited me like an angel, and\ndrubbed me like a devil.  He had something in him of Friar Thumpwell.\nCome, for all this, I must drink to him, and to you likewise, his trusty\nesquires.  But, said his lady, why hath he been so very liberal of his\nmanual kindness to me, without the least provocation?  I assure you, I by\nno means like it; but this I dare say for him, that he hath the hardest\nknuckles that ever I felt on my shoulders.  The steward held his left arm\nin a scarf, as if it had been rent and torn in twain.  I think it was the\ndevil, said he, that moved me to assist at these nuptials; shame on ill\nluck; I must needs be meddling with a pox, and now see what I have got by\nthe bargain, both my arms are wretchedly engoulevezinemassed and bruised.\nDo you call this a wedding?  By St. Bridget's tooth, I had rather be at\nthat of a Tom T--d-man.  This is, o' my word, even just such another feast\nas was that of the Lapithae, described by the philosopher of Samosata.\nOne of the bums had lost his tongue.  The other two, tho' they had more\nneed to complain, made their excuse as well as they could, protesting that\nthey had no ill design in this dumbfounding; begging that, for goodness\nsake, they would forgive them; and so, tho' they could hardly budge a\nfoot, or wag along, away they crawled.  About a mile from Basche's seat,\nthe catchpole found himself somewhat out of sorts.  The bums got to L'Isle\nBouchart, publicly saying that since they were born they had never seen an\nhonester gentleman than the Lord of Basche, or civiller people than his,\nand that they had never been at the like wedding (which I verily believe);\nbut that it was their own faults if they had been tickled off, and tossed\nabout from post to pillar, since themselves had began the beating.  So\nthey lived I cannot exactly tell you how many days after this.  But from\nthat time to this it was held for a certain truth that Basche's money was\nmore pestilential, mortal, and pernicious to the catchpoles and bums than\nwere formerly the aurum Tholosanum and the Sejan horse to those that\npossessed them.  Ever since this he lived quietly, and Basche's wedding\ngrew into a common proverb.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Friar John made trial of the nature of the catchpoles.\n\nThis story would seem pleasant enough, said Pantagruel, were we not to have\nalways the fear of God before our eyes.  It had been better, said\nEpistemon, if those gauntlets had fallen upon the fat prior.  Since he took\na pleasure in spending his money partly to vex Basche, partly to see those\ncatchpoles banged, good lusty thumps would have done well on his shaved\ncrown, considering the horrid concussions nowadays among those puny judges.\nWhat harm had done those poor devils the catchpoles?  This puts me in mind,\nsaid Pantagruel, of an ancient Roman named L. Neratius.  He was of noble\nblood, and for some time was rich; but had this tyrannical inclination,\nthat whenever he went out of doors he caused his servants to fill their\npockets with gold and silver, and meeting in the street your spruce\ngallants and better sort of beaux, without the least provocation, for his\nfancy, he used to strike them hard on the face with his fist; and\nimmediately after that, to appease them and hinder them from complaining to\nthe magistrates, he would give them as much money as satisfied them\naccording to the law of the twelve tables.  Thus he used to spend his\nrevenue, beating people for the price of his money.  By St. Bennet's sacred\nboot, quoth Friar John, I will know the truth of it presently.\n\nThis said, he went on shore, put his hand in his fob, and took out twenty\nducats; then said with a loud voice, in the hearing of a shoal of the\nnation of catchpoles, Who will earn twenty ducats for being beaten like the\ndevil?  Io, Io, Io, said they all; you will cripple us for ever, sir, that\nis most certain; but the money is tempting.  With this they were all\nthronging who should be first to be thus preciously beaten.  Friar John\nsingled him out of the whole knot of these rogues in grain, a red-snouted\ncatchpole, who upon his right thumb wore a thick broad silver hoop, wherein\nwas set a good large toadstone.  He had no sooner picked him out from the\nrest, but I perceived that they all muttered and grumbled; and I heard a\nyoung thin-jawed catchpole, a notable scholar, a pretty fellow at his pen,\nand, according to public report, much cried up for his honesty at Doctors'\nCommons, making his complaint and muttering because this same crimson phiz\ncarried away all the practice, and that if there were but a score and a\nhalf of bastinadoes to be got, he would certainly run away with eight and\ntwenty of them.  But all this was looked upon to be nothing but mere envy.\n\nFriar John so unmercifully thrashed, thumped, and belaboured Red-snout,\nback and belly, sides, legs, and arms, head, feet, and so forth, with the\nhome and frequently repeated application of one of the best members of a\nfaggot, that I took him to be a dead man; then he gave him the twenty\nducats, which made the dog get on his legs, pleased like a little king or\ntwo.  The rest were saying to Friar John, Sir, sir, brother devil, if it\nplease you to do us the favour to beat some of us for less money, we are\nall at your devilship's command, bags, papers, pens, and all.  Red-snout\ncried out against them, saying, with a loud voice, Body of me, you little\nprigs, will you offer to take the bread out of my mouth? will you take my\nbargain over my head? would you draw and inveigle from me my clients and\ncustomers?  Take notice, I summon you before the official this day\nsevennight; I will law and claw you like any old devil of Vauverd, that I\nwill--Then turning himself towards Friar John, with a smiling and joyful\nlook, he said to him, Reverend father in the devil, if you have found me a\ngood hide, and have a mind to divert yourself once more by beating your\nhumble servant, I will bate you half in half this time rather than lose\nyour custom; do not spare me, I beseech you; I am all, and more than all,\nyours, good Mr. Devil; head, lungs, tripes, guts, and garbage; and that at\na pennyworth, I'll assure you.  Friar John never heeded his proffers, but\neven left them.  The other catchpoles were making addresses to Panurge,\nEpistemon, Gymnast, and others, entreating them charitably to bestow upon\ntheir carcasses a small beating, for otherwise they were in danger of\nkeeping a long fast; but none of them had a stomach to it.  Some time\nafter, seeking fresh water for the ship's company, we met a couple of old\nfemale catchpoles of the place, miserably howling and weeping in concert.\nPantagruel had kept on board, and already had caused a retreat to be\nsounded.  Thinking that they might be related to the catchpole that was\nbastinadoed, we asked them the occasion of their grief.  They replied that\nthey had too much cause to weep; for that very hour, from an exalted triple\ntree, two of the honestest gentlemen in Catchpole-land had been made to cut\na caper on nothing.  Cut a caper on nothing, said Gymnast; my pages use to\ncut capers on the ground; to cut a caper on nothing should be hanging and\nchoking, or I am out.  Ay, ay, said Friar John; you speak of it like St.\nJohn de la Palisse.\n\nWe asked them why they treated these worthy persons with such a choking\nhempen salad.  They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools\nof the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish.  This is a very\nallegorical way of speaking, said Epistemon.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel came to the islands of Tohu and Bohu; and of the strange\ndeath of Wide-nostrils, the swallower of windmills.\n\nThat day Pantagruel came to the two islands of Tohu and Bohu, where the\ndevil a bit we could find anything to fry with.  For one Wide-nostrils,\na huge giant, had swallowed every individual pan, skillet, kettle,\nfrying-pan, dripping-pan, and brass and iron pot in the land, for want of\nwindmills, which were his daily food.  Whence it happened that somewhat\nbefore day, about the hour of his digestion, the greedy churl was taken\nvery ill with a kind of a surfeit, or crudity of stomach, occasioned, as\nthe physicians said, by the weakness of the concocting faculty of his\nstomach, naturally disposed to digest whole windmills at a gust, yet unable\nto consume perfectly the pans and skillets; though it had indeed pretty\nwell digested the kettles and pots, as they said they knew by the\nhypostases and eneoremes of four tubs of second-hand drink which he had\nevacuated at two different times that morning.  They made use of divers\nremedies, according to art, to give him ease; but all would not do; the\ndistemper prevailed over the remedies; insomuch that the famous\nWide-nostrils died that morning of so strange a death that I think you ought\nno longer to wonder at that of the poet Aeschylus.  It had been foretold him\nby the soothsayers that he would die on a certain day by the ruin of\nsomething that should fall on him.  The fatal day being come in its turn, he\nremoved himself out of town, far from all houses, trees, (rocks,) or any\nother things that can fall and endanger by their ruin; and strayed in a\nlarge field, trusting himself to the open sky; there very secure, as he\nthought, unless indeed the sky should happen to fall, which he held to be\nimpossible.  Yet they say that the larks are much afraid of it; for if it\nshould fall, they must all be taken.\n\nThe Celts that once lived near the Rhine--they are our noble valiant\nFrench--in ancient times were also afraid of the sky's falling; for being\nasked by Alexander the Great what they feared most in this world, hoping\nwell they would say that they feared none but him, considering his great\nachievements, they made answer that they feared nothing but the sky's\nfalling; however, not refusing to enter into a confederacy with so brave a\nking, if you believe Strabo, lib. 7, and Arrian, lib. I.\n\nPlutarch also, in his book of the face that appears on the body of the\nmoon, speaks of one Phenaces, who very much feared the moon should fall on\nthe earth, and pitied those that live under that planet, as the Aethiopians\nand Taprobanians, if so heavy a mass ever happened to fall on them, and\nwould have feared the like of heaven and earth had they not been duly\npropped up and borne by the Atlantic pillars, as the ancients believed,\naccording to Aristotle's testimony, lib. 5, Metaphys.  Notwithstanding all\nthis, poor Aeschylus was killed by the fall of the shell of a tortoise,\nwhich falling from betwixt the claws of an eagle high in the air, just on\nhis head, dashed out his brains.\n\nNeither ought you to wonder at the death of another poet, I mean old jolly\nAnacreon, who was choked with a grape-stone.  Nor at that of Fabius the\nRoman praetor, who was choked with a single goat's hair as he was supping\nup a porringer of milk.  Nor at the death of that bashful fool, who by\nholding in his wind, and for want of letting out a bum-gunshot, died\nsuddenly in the presence of the Emperor Claudius.  Nor at that of the\nItalian buried on the Via Flaminia at Rome, who in his epitaph complains\nthat the bite of a she-puss on his little finger was the cause of his\ndeath.  Nor of that of Q. Lecanius Bassus, who died suddenly of so small a\nprick with a needle on his left thumb that it could hardly be discerned.\nNor of Quenelault, a Norman physician, who died suddenly at Montpellier,\nmerely for having sideways took a worm out of his hand with a penknife.\nNor of Philomenes, whose servant having got him some new figs for the first\ncourse of his dinner, whilst he went to fetch wine, a straggling well-hung\nass got into the house, and seeing the figs on the table, without further\ninvitation soberly fell to.  Philomenes coming into the room and nicely\nobserving with what gravity the ass ate its dinner, said to the man, who\nwas come back, Since thou hast set figs here for this reverend guest of\nours to eat, methinks it is but reason thou also give him some of this wine\nto drink.  He had no sooner said this, but he was so excessively pleased,\nand fell into so exorbitant a fit of laughter, that the use of his spleen\ntook that of his breath utterly away, and he immediately died.  Nor of\nSpurius Saufeius, who died supping up a soft-boiled egg as he came out of a\nbath.  Nor of him who, as Boccaccio tells us, died suddenly by picking his\ngrinders with a sage-stalk.  Nor of Phillipot Placut, who being brisk and\nhale, fell dead as he was paying an old debt; which causes, perhaps, many\nnot to pay theirs, for fear of the like accident.  Nor of the painter\nZeuxis, who killed himself with laughing at the sight of the antique\njobbernowl of an old hag drawn by him.  Nor, in short, of a thousand more\nof which authors write, as Varrius, Pliny, Valerius, J. Baptista Fulgosus,\nand Bacabery the elder.  In short, Gaffer Wide-nostrils choked himself with\neating a huge lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven by the advice\nof physicians.\n\nThey likewise told us there that the King of Cullan in Bohu had routed the\ngrandees of King Mecloth, and made sad work with the fortresses of Belima.\n\nAfter this, we sailed by the islands of Nargues and Zargues; also by the\nislands of Teleniabin and Geleniabin, very fine and fruitful in ingredients\nfor clysters; and then by the islands of Enig and Evig, on whose account\nformerly the Landgrave of Hesse was swinged off with a vengeance.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel met with a great storm at sea.\n\nThe next day we espied nine sail that came spooning before the wind; they\nwere full of Dominicans, Jesuits, Capuchins, Hermits, Austins, Bernardins,\nEgnatins, Celestins, Theatins, Amadeans, Cordeliers, Carmelites, Minims,\nand the devil and all of other holy monks and friars, who were going to the\nCouncil of Chesil, to sift and garble some new articles of faith against\nthe new heretics.  Panurge was overjoyed to see them, being most certain of\ngood luck for that day and a long train of others.  So having courteously\nsaluted the blessed fathers, and recommended the salvation of his precious\nsoul to their devout prayers and private ejaculations, he caused\nseventy-eight dozen of Westphalia hams, units of pots of caviare, tens of\nBolonia sausages, hundreds of botargoes, and thousands of fine angels, for\nthe souls of the dead, to be thrown on board their ships.  Pantagruel seemed\nmetagrabolized, dozing, out of sorts, and as melancholic as a cat.  Friar\nJohn, who soon perceived it, was inquiring of him whence should come this\nunusual sadness; when the master, whose watch it was, observing the\nfluttering of the ancient above the poop, and seeing that it began to\novercast, judged that we should have wind; therefore he bid the boatswain\ncall all hands upon deck, officers, sailors, foremast-men, swabbers, and\ncabin-boys, and even the passengers; made them first settle their topsails,\ntake in their spritsail; then he cried, In with your topsails, lower the\nforesail, tallow under parrels, braid up close all them sails, strike your\ntopmasts to the cap, make all sure with your sheeps-feet, lash your guns\nfast.  All this was nimbly done.  Immediately it blowed a storm; the sea\nbegan to roar and swell mountain-high; the rut of the sea was great, the\nwaves breaking upon our ship's quarter; the north-west wind blustered and\noverblowed; boisterous gusts, dreadful clashing, and deadly scuds of wind\nwhistled through our yards and made our shrouds rattle again.  The thunder\ngrumbled so horridly that you would have thought heaven had been tumbling\nabout our ears; at the same time it lightened, rained, hailed; the sky lost\nits transparent hue, grew dusky, thick, and gloomy, so that we had no other\nlight than that of the flashes of lightning and rending of the clouds.  The\nhurricanes, flaws, and sudden whirlwinds began to make a flame about us by\nthe lightnings, fiery vapours, and other aerial ejaculations.  Oh, how our\nlooks were full of amazement and trouble, while the saucy winds did rudely\nlift up above us the mountainous waves of the main!  Believe me, it seemed\nto us a lively image of the chaos, where fire, air, sea, land, and all the\nelements were in a refractory confusion.  Poor Panurge having with the full\ncontents of the inside of his doublet plentifully fed the fish, greedy\nenough of such odious fare, sat on the deck all in a heap, with his nose and\narse together, most sadly cast down, moping and half dead; invoked and\ncalled to his assistance all the blessed he- and she-saints he could muster\nup; swore and vowed to confess in time and place convenient, and then bawled\nout frightfully, Steward, maitre d'hotel, see ho! my friend, my father, my\nuncle, prithee let us have a piece of powdered beef or pork; we shall drink\nbut too much anon, for aught I see.  Eat little and drink the more will\nhereafter be my motto, I fear.  Would to our dear Lord, and to our blessed,\nworthy, and sacred Lady, I were now, I say, this very minute of an hour,\nwell on shore, on terra firma, hale and easy.  O twice and thrice happy\nthose that plant cabbages!  O destinies, why did you not spin me for a\ncabbage-planter?  O how few are there to whom Jupiter hath been so\nfavourable as to predestinate them to plant cabbages!  They have always one\nfoot on the ground, and the other not far from it.  Dispute who will of\nfelicity and summum bonum, for my part whosoever plants cabbages is now, by\nmy decree, proclaimed most happy; for as good a reason as the philosopher\nPyrrho, being in the same danger, and seeing a hog near the shore eating\nsome scattered oats, declared it happy in two respects; first, because it\nhad plenty of oats, and besides that, was on shore.  Ha, for a divine and\nprincely habitation, commend me to the cows' floor.\n\nMurder!  This wave will sweep us away, blessed Saviour!  O my friends! a\nlittle vinegar.  I sweat again with mere agony.  Alas! the mizen-sail's\nsplit, the gallery's washed away, the masts are sprung, the\nmaintop-masthead dives into the sea; the keel is up to the sun; our shrouds\nare almost all broke, and blown away.  Alas! alas! where is our main course?\nAl is verlooren, by Godt! our topmast is run adrift.  Alas! who shall have\nthis wreck?  Friend, lend me here behind you one of these whales.  Your\nlantern is fallen, my lads.  Alas! do not let go the main-tack nor the\nbowline.  I hear the block crack; is it broke?  For the Lord's sake, let us\nhave the hull, and let all the rigging be damned.  Be, be, be, bous, bous,\nbous.  Look to the needle of your compass, I beseech you, good Sir\nAstrophil, and tell us, if you can, whence comes this storm.  My heart's\nsunk down below my midriff.  By my troth, I am in a sad fright, bou, bou,\nbou, bous, bous, I am lost for ever.  I conskite myself for mere madness and\nfear.  Bou, bou, bou, bou, Otto to to to to ti.  Bou, bou, bou, ou, ou, ou,\nbou, bou, bous.  I sink, I'm drowned, I'm gone, good people, I'm drowned.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat countenances Panurge and Friar John kept during the storm.\n\nPantagruel, having first implored the help of the great and Almighty\nDeliverer, and prayed publicly with fervent devotion, by the pilot's advice\nheld tightly the mast of the ship.  Friar John had stripped himself to his\nwaistcoat, to help the seamen.  Epistemon, Ponocrates, and the rest did as\nmuch.  Panurge alone sat on his breech upon deck, weeping and howling.\nFriar John espied him going on the quarter-deck, and said to him, Odzoons!\nPanurge the calf, Panurge the whiner, Panurge the brayer, would it not\nbecome thee much better to lend us here a helping hand than to lie lowing\nlike a cow, as thou dost, sitting on thy stones like a bald-breeched\nbaboon?  Be, be, be, bous, bous, bous, returned Panurge; Friar John, my\nfriend, my good father, I am drowning, my dear friend!  I drown!  I am a\ndead man, my dear father in God; I am a dead man, my friend; your cutting\nhanger cannot save me from this; alas! alas! we are above ela.  Above the\npitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.  Be, be, be, bou, bous.  Alas! we\nare now above g sol re ut.  I sink, I sink, ha, my father, my uncle, my\nall.  The water is got into my shoes by the collar; bous, bous, bous,\npaish, hu, hu, hu, he, he, he, ha, ha, I drown.  Alas! alas!  Hu, hu, hu,\nhu, hu, hu, hu, be, be, bous, bous, bobous, bobous, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho,\nalas! alas!  Now I am like your tumblers, my feet stand higher than my\nhead.  Would to heaven I were now with those good holy fathers bound for\nthe council whom we met this morning, so godly, so fat, so merry, so plump\nand comely.  Holos, bolos, holas, holas, alas!  This devilish wave (mea\nculpa Deus), I mean this wave of God, will sink our vessel.  Alas!  Friar\nJohn, my father, my friend, confession.  Here I am down on my knees;\nconfiteor; your holy blessing.  Come hither and be damned, thou pitiful\ndevil, and help us, said Friar John (who fell a-swearing and cursing like a\ntinker), in the name of thirty legions of black devils, come; will you\ncome?  Do not let us swear at this time, said Panurge; holy father, my\nfriend, do not swear, I beseech you; to-morrow as much as you please.\nHolos, holos, alas! our ship leaks.  I drown, alas, alas!  I will give\neighteen hundred thousand crowns to anyone that will set me on shore, all\nberayed and bedaubed as I am now.  If ever there was a man in my country in\nthe like pickle.  Confiteor, alas! a word or two of testament or codicil at\nleast.  A thousand devils seize the cuckoldy cow-hearted mongrel, cried\nFriar John.  Ods-belly, art thou talking here of making thy will now we are\nin danger, and it behoveth us to bestir our stumps lustily, or never?  Wilt\nthou come, ho devil?  Midshipman, my friend; O the rare lieutenant; here\nGymnast, here on the poop.  We are, by the mass, all beshit now; our light\nis out.  This is hastening to the devil as fast as it can.  Alas, bou, bou,\nbou, bou, bou, alas, alas, alas, alas! said Panurge; was it here we were\nborn to perish?  Oh! ho! good people, I drown, I die.  Consummatum est.  I\nam sped--Magna, gna, gna, said Friar John.  Fie upon him, how ugly the\nshitten howler looks.  Boy, younker, see hoyh.  Mind the pumps or the devil\nchoke thee.  Hast thou hurt thyself?  Zoons, here fasten it to one of these\nblocks.  On this side, in the devil's name, hay--so, my boy.  Ah, Friar\nJohn, said Panurge, good ghostly father, dear friend, don't let us swear,\nyou sin.  Oh, ho, oh, ho, be be be bous, bous, bhous, I sink, I die, my\nfriends.  I die in charity with all the world.  Farewell, in manus.  Bohus\nbohous, bhousowauswaus.  St. Michael of Aure!  St. Nicholas! now, now or\nnever, I here make you a solemn vow, and to our Saviour, that if you stand\nby me this time, I mean if you set me ashore out of this danger, I will\nbuild you a fine large little chapel or two, between Quande and Montsoreau,\nwhere neither cow nor calf shall feed.  Oh ho, oh ho.  Above eighteen\npailfuls or two of it are got down my gullet; bous, bhous, bhous, bhous,\nhow damned bitter and salt it is!  By the virtue, said Friar John, of the\nblood, the flesh, the belly, the head, if I hear thee again howling, thou\ncuckoldy cur, I'll maul thee worse than any sea-wolf.  Ods-fish, why don't\nwe take him up by the lugs and throw him overboard to the bottom of the\nsea?  Hear, sailor; ho, honest fellow.  Thus, thus, my friend, hold fast\nabove.  In truth, here is a sad lightning and thundering; I think that all\nthe devils are got loose; it is holiday with them; or else Madame\nProserpine is in child's labour:  all the devils dance a morrice.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the pilots were forsaking their ships in the greatest stress of\nweather.\n\n\nOh, said Panurge, you sin, Friar John, my former crony! former, I say, for\nat this time I am no more, you are no more.  It goes against my heart to\ntell it you; for I believe this swearing doth your spleen a great deal of\ngood; as it is a great ease to a wood-cleaver to cry hem at every blow, and\nas one who plays at ninepins is wonderfully helped if, when he hath not\nthrown his bowl right, and is like to make a bad cast, some ingenious\nstander-by leans and screws his body halfway about on that side which the\nbowl should have took to hit the pins.  Nevertheless, you offend, my sweet\nfriend.  But what do you think of eating some kind of cabirotadoes?\nWouldn't this secure us from this storm?  I have read that the ministers of\nthe gods Cabiri, so much celebrated by Orpheus, Apollonius, Pherecydes,\nStrabo, Pausanias, and Herodotus were always secure in time of storm.  He\ndotes, he raves, the poor devil!  A thousand, a million, nay, a hundred\nmillion of devils seize the hornified doddipole.  Lend's a hand here, hoh,\ntiger, wouldst thou?  Here, on the starboard side.  Ods-me, thou buffalo's\nhead stuffed with relics, what ape's paternoster art thou muttering and\nchattering here between thy teeth?  That devil of a sea-calf is the cause\nof all this storm, and is the only man who doth not lend a helping hand.\nBy G--, if I come near thee, I'll fetch thee out by the head and ears with\na vengeance, and chastise thee like any tempestative devil.  Here, mate, my\nlad, hold fast, till I have made a double knot.  O brave boy!  Would to\nheaven thou wert abbot of Talemouze, and that he that is were guardian of\nCroullay.  Hold, brother Ponocrates, you will hurt yourself, man.\nEpistemon, prithee stand off out of the hatchway.  Methinks I saw the\nthunder fall there but just now.  Con the ship, so ho--Mind your steerage.\nWell said, thus, thus, steady, keep her thus, get the longboat clear\n--steady.  Ods-fish, the beak-head is staved to pieces.  Grumble, devils,\nfart, belch, shite, a t--d o' the wave.  If this be weather, the devil's a\nram.  Nay, by G--, a little more would have washed me clear away into the\ncurrent.  I think all the legions of devils hold here their provincial\nchapter, or are polling, canvassing, and wrangling for the election of a\nnew rector.  Starboard; well said.  Take heed; have a care of your noddle,\nlad, in the devil's name.  So ho, starboard, starboard.  Be, be, be, bous,\nbous, bous, cried Panurge; bous, bous, be, be, be, bous, bous, I am lost.\nI see neither heaven nor earth; of the four elements we have here only fire\nand water left.  Bou, bou, bou, bous, bous, bous.  Would it were the\npleasure of the worthy divine bounty that I were at this present hour in\nthe close at Seuille, or at Innocent's the pastry-cook over against the\npainted wine-vault at Chinon, though I were to strip to my doublet, and\nbake the petti-pasties myself.\n\nHonest man, could not you throw me ashore? you can do a world of good\nthings, they say.  I give you all Salmigondinois, and my large shore full\nof whelks, cockles, and periwinkles, if, by your industry, I ever set foot\non firm ground.  Alas, alas!  I drown.  Harkee, my friends, since we cannot\nget safe into port, let us come to an anchor in some road, no matter\nwhither.  Drop all your anchors; let us be out of danger, I beseech you.\nHere, honest tar, get you into the chains, and heave the lead, an't please\nyou.  Let us know how many fathom water we are in.  Sound, friend, in the\nLord Harry's name.  Let us know whether a man might here drink easily\nwithout stooping.  I am apt to believe one might.  Helm a-lee, hoh, cried\nthe pilot.  Helm a-lee; a hand or two at the helm; about ships with her;\nhelm a-lee, helm a-lee.  Stand off from the leech of the sail.  Hoh! belay,\nhere make fast below; hoh, helm a-lee, lash sure the helm a-lee, and let\nher drive.  Is it come to that? said Pantagruel; our good Saviour then help\nus.  Let her lie under the sea, cried James Brahier, our chief mate; let\nher drive.  To prayers, to prayers; let all think on their souls, and fall\nto prayers; nor hope to escape but by a miracle.  Let us, said Panurge,\nmake some good pious kind of vow; alas, alas, alas! bou, bou, be, be, be,\nbous, bous, bous, oho, oho, oho, oho, let us make a pilgrim; come, come,\nlet every man club his penny towards it, come on.  Here, here, on this\nside, said Friar John, in the devil's name.  Let her drive, for the Lord's\nsake unhang the rudder; hoh, let her drive, let her drive, and let us\ndrink, I say, of the best and most cheering; d'ye hear, steward? produce,\nexhibit; for, d'ye see this, and all the rest will as well go to the devil\nout of hand.  A pox on that wind-broker Aeolus, with his fluster-blusters.\nSirrah, page, bring me here my drawer (for so he called his breviary); stay\na little here; haul, friend, thus.  Odzoons, here is a deal of hail and\nthunder to no purpose.  Hold fast above, I pray you.  When have we\nAll-saints day?  I believe it is the unholy holiday of all the devil's crew.\nAlas! said Panurge, Friar John damns himself here as black as buttermilk\nfor the nonce.  Oh, what a good friend I lose in him.  Alas, alas! this is\nanother gats-bout than last year's.  We are falling out of Scylla into\nCharybdis.  Oho! I drown.  Confiteor; one poor word or two by way of\ntestament, Friar John, my ghostly father; good Mr. Abstractor, my crony,\nmy Achates, Xenomanes, my all.  Alas! I drown; two words of testament here\nupon this ladder.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA continuation of the storm, with a short discourse on the subject of\nmaking testaments at sea.\n\nTo make one's last will, said Epistemon, at this time that we ought to\nbestir ourselves and help our seamen, on the penalty of being drowned,\nseems to me as idle and ridiculous a maggot as that of some of Caesar's\nmen, who, at their coming into the Gauls, were mightily busied in making\nwills and codicils; bemoaned their fortune and the absence of their spouses\nand friends at Rome, when it was absolutely necessary for them to run to\ntheir arms and use their utmost strength against Ariovistus their enemy.\n\nThis also is to be as silly as that jolt-headed loblolly of a carter, who,\nhaving laid his waggon fast in a slough, down on his marrow-bones was\ncalling on the strong-backed deity, Hercules, might and main, to help him\nat a dead lift, but all the while forgot to goad on his oxen and lay his\nshoulder to the wheels, as it behoved him; as if a Lord have mercy upon us\nalone would have got his cart out of the mire.\n\nWhat will it signify to make your will now? for either we shall come off or\ndrown for it.  If we 'scape, it will not signify a straw to us; for\ntestaments are of no value or authority but by the death of the testators.\nIf we are drowned, will it not be drowned too?  Prithee, who will transmit\nit to the executors?  Some kind wave will throw it ashore, like Ulysses,\nreplied Panurge; and some king's daughter, going to fetch a walk in the\nfresco, on the evening will find it, and take care to have it proved and\nfulfilled; nay, and have some stately cenotaph erected to my memory, as\nDido had to that of her goodman Sichaeus; Aeneas to Deiphobus, upon the\nTrojan shore, near Rhoete; Andromache to Hector, in the city of Buthrot;\nAristotle to Hermias and Eubulus; the Athenians to the poet Euripides; the\nRomans to Drusus in Germany, and to Alexander Severus, their emperor, in\nthe Gauls; Argentier to Callaischre; Xenocrates to Lysidices; Timares to\nhis son Teleutagoras; Eupolis and Aristodice to their son Theotimus;\nOnestus to Timocles; Callimachus to Sopolis, the son of Dioclides; Catullus\nto his brother; Statius to his father; Germain of Brie to Herve, the Breton\ntarpaulin.  Art thou mad, said Friar John, to run on at this rate?  Help,\nhere, in the name of five hundred thousand millions of cartloads of devils,\nhelp! may a shanker gnaw thy moustachios, and the three rows of pock-royals\nand cauliflowers cover thy bum and turd-barrel instead of breeches and\ncodpiece.  Codsooks, our ship is almost overset.  Ods-death, how shall we\nclear her? it is well if she do not founder.  What a devilish sea there\nruns!  She'll neither try nor hull; the sea will overtake her, so we shall\nnever 'scape; the devil 'scape me.  Then Pantagruel was heard to make a sad\nexclamation, saying, with a loud voice, Lord save us, we perish; yet not as\nwe would have it, but thy holy will be done.  The Lord and the blessed\nVirgin be with us, said Panurge.  Holos, alas, I drown; be be be bous, be\nbous, bous; in manus.  Good heavens, send me some dolphin to carry me safe\non shore, like a pretty little Arion.  I shall make shift to sound the\nharp, if it be not unstrung.  Let nineteen legions of black devils seize\nme, said Friar John.  (The Lord be with us! whispered Panurge, between his\nchattering teeth.)  If I come down to thee, I'll show thee to some purpose\nthat the badge of thy humanity dangles at a calf's breech, thou ragged,\nhorned, cuckoldy booby--mgna, mgnan, mgnan--come hither and help us, thou\ngreat weeping calf, or may thirty millions of devils leap on thee.  Wilt\nthou come, sea-calf?  Fie; how ugly the howling whelp looks.  What, always\nthe same ditty?  Come on now, my bonny drawer.  This he said, opening his\nbreviary.  Come forward, thou and I must be somewhat serious for a while;\nlet me peruse thee stiffly.  Beatus vir qui non abiit.  Pshaw, I know all\nthis by heart; let us see the legend of Mons. St. Nicholas.\n\n  Horrida tempestas montem turbavit acutum.\n\nTempest was a mighty flogger of lads at Mountagu College.  If pedants be\ndamned for whipping poor little innocent wretches their scholars, he is,\nupon my honour, by this time fixed within Ixion's wheel, lashing the\ncrop-eared, bobtailed cur that gives it motion.  If they are saved for\nhaving whipped innocent lads, he ought to be above the--\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAn end of the storm.\n\nShore, shore! cried Pantagruel.  Land to, my friends, I see land!  Pluck up\na good spirit, boys, 'tis within a kenning.  So! we are not far from a\nport.--I see the sky clearing up to the northwards.--Look to the\nsouth-east!  Courage, my hearts, said the pilot; now she'll bear the hullock\nof a sail; the sea is much smoother; some hands aloft to the maintop.  Put\nthe helm a-weather.  Steady! steady!  Haul your after-mizen bowlines.  Haul,\nhaul, haul!  Thus, thus, and no near.  Mind your steerage; bring your\nmain-tack aboard.  Clear your sheets; clear your bowlines; port, port.  Helm\na-lee.  Now to the sheet on the starboard side, thou son of a whore.  Thou\nart mightily pleased, honest fellow, quoth Friar John, with hearing make\nmention of thy mother.  Luff, luff, cried the quartermaster that conned the\nship, keep her full, luff the helm.  Luff.  It is, answered the steersman.\nKeep her thus.  Get the bonnets fixed.  Steady, steady.\n\nThat is well said, said Friar John now, this is something like a tansy.\nCome, come, come, children, be nimble.  Good.  Luff, luff, thus.  Helm\na-weather.  That's well said and thought on.  Methinks the storm is almost\nover.  It was high time, faith; however, the Lord be thanked.  Our devils\nbegin to scamper.  Out with all your sails.  Hoist your sails.  Hoist.\nThat is spoke like a man, hoist, hoist.  Here, a God's name, honest\nPonocrates; thou art a lusty fornicator; the whoreson will get none but\nboys.  Eusthenes, thou art a notable fellow.  Run up to the fore-topsail.\nThus, thus.  Well said, i' faith; thus, thus.  I dare not fear anything all\nthis while, for it is holiday.  Vea, vea, vea! huzza!  This shout of the\nseaman is not amiss, and pleases me, for it is holiday.  Keep her full\nthus.  Good.  Cheer up, my merry mates all, cried out Epistemon; I see\nalready Castor on the right.  Be, be, bous, bous, bous, said Panurge; I am\nmuch afraid it is the bitch Helen.  It is truly Mixarchagenas, returned\nEpistemon, if thou likest better that denomination, which the Argives give\nhim.  Ho, ho! I see land too; let her bear in with the harbour; I see a\ngood many people on the beach; I see a light on an obeliscolychny.  Shorten\nyour sails, said the pilot; fetch the sounding line; we must double that\npoint of land, and mind the sands.  We are clear of them, said the sailors.\nSoon after, Away she goes, quoth the pilot, and so doth the rest of our\nfleet; help came in good season.\n\nBy St. John, said Panurge, this is spoke somewhat like.  O the sweet word!\nthere is the soul of music in it.  Mgna, mgna, mgna, said Friar John; if\never thou taste a drop of it, let the devil's dam taste me, thou ballocky\ndevil.  Here, honest soul, here's a full sneaker of the very best.  Bring\nthe flagons; dost hear, Gymnast: and that same large pasty jambic,\ngammonic, as you will have it.  Take heed you pilot her in right.\n\nCheer up, cried out Pantagruel; cheer up, my boys; let us be ourselves\nagain.  Do you see yonder, close by our ship, two barks, three sloops, five\nships, eight pinks, four yawls, and six frigates making towards us, sent by\nthe good people of the neighbouring island to our relief?  But who is this\nUcalegon below, that cries and makes such a sad moan?  Were it not that I\nhold the mast firmly with both my hands, and keep it straighter than two\nhundred tacklings--I would--It is, said Friar John, that poor devil\nPanurge, who is troubled with a calf's ague; he quakes for fear when his\nbelly's full.  If, said Pantagruel, he hath been afraid during this\ndreadful hurricane and dangerous storm, provided (waiving that) he hath\ndone his part like a man, I do not value him a jot the less for it.  For as\nto fear in all encounters is the mark of a heavy and cowardly heart, as\nAgamemnon did, who for that reason is ignominiously taxed by Achilles with\nhaving dog's eyes and a stag's heart; so, not to fear when the case is\nevidently dreadful is a sign of want or smallness of judgment.  Now, if\nanything ought to be feared in this life, next to offending God, I will not\nsay it is death.  I will not meddle with the disputes of Socrates and the\nacademics, that death of itself is neither bad nor to be feared, but I will\naffirm that this kind of shipwreck is to be feared, or nothing is.  For, as\nHomer saith, it is a grievous, dreadful, and unnatural thing to perish at\nsea.  And indeed Aeneas, in the storm that took his fleet near Sicily, was\ngrieved that he had not died by the hand of the brave Diomedes, and said\nthat those were three, nay four times happy, who perished in the\nconflagration at Troy.  No man here hath lost his life, the Lord our\nSaviour be eternally praised for it! but in truth here is a ship sadly out\nof order.  Well, we must take care to have the damage repaired.  Take heed\nwe do not run aground and bulge her.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge played the good fellow when the storm was over.\n\nWhat cheer, ho, fore and aft? quoth Panurge.  Oh ho! all is well, the storm\nis over.  I beseech ye, be so kind as to let me be the first that is sent\non shore; for I would by all means a little untruss a point.  Shall I help\nyou still?  Here, let me see, I will coil this rope; I have plenty of\ncourage, and of fear as little as may be.  Give it me yonder, honest tar.\nNo, no, I have not a bit of fear.  Indeed, that same decumane wave that\ntook us fore and aft somewhat altered my pulse.  Down with your sails; well\nsaid.  How now, Friar John? you do nothing.  Is it time for us to drink\nnow?  Who can tell but St. Martin's running footman Belzebuth may still be\nhatching us some further mischief?  Shall I come and help you again?  Pork\nand peas choke me, if I do heartily repent, though too late, not having\nfollowed the doctrine of the good philosopher who tells us that to walk by\nthe sea and to navigate by the shore are very safe and pleasant things;\njust as 'tis to go on foot when we hold our horse by the bridle.  Ha! ha!\nha! by G--, all goes well.  Shall I help you here too?  Let me see, I will\ndo this as it should be, or the devil's in't.\n\nEpistemon, who had the inside of one of his hands all flayed and bloody,\nhaving held a tackling with might and main, hearing what Pantagruel had\nsaid, told him:  You may believe, my lord, I had my share of fear as well\nas Panurge; yet I spared no pains in lending my helping hand.  I considered\nthat, since by fatal and unavoidable necessity we must all die, it is the\nblessed will of God that we die this or that hour, and this or that kind of\ndeath.  Nevertheless, we ought to implore, invoke, pray, beseech, and\nsupplicate him; but we must not stop there; it behoveth us also to use our\nendeavours on our side, and, as the holy writ saith, to co-operate with\nhim.\n\nYou know what C. Flaminius, the consul, said when by Hannibal's policy he\nwas penned up near the lake of Peruse, alias Thrasymene.  Friends, said he\nto his soldiers, you must not hope to get out of this place barely by vows\nor prayers to the gods; no, 'tis by fortitude and strength we must escape\nand cut ourselves a way with the edge of our swords through the midst of\nour enemies.\n\nSallust likewise makes M. Portius Cato say this:  The help of the gods is\nnot obtained by idle vows and womanish complaints; 'tis by vigilance,\nlabour, and repeated endeavours that all things succeed according to our\nwishes and designs.  If a man in time of need and danger is negligent,\nheartless, and lazy, in vain he implores the gods; they are then justly\nangry and incensed against him.  The devil take me, said Friar John,--I'll\ngo his halves, quoth Panurge,--if the close of Seville had not been all\ngathered, vintaged, gleaned, and destroyed, if I had only sung contra\nhostium insidias (matter of breviary) like all the rest of the monking\ndevils, and had not bestirred myself to save the vineyard as I did,\ndespatching the truant picaroons of Lerne with the staff of the cross.\n\nLet her sink or swim a God's name, said Panurge, all's one to Friar John;\nhe doth nothing; his name is Friar John Do-little; for all he sees me here\na-sweating and puffing to help with all my might this honest tar, first of\nthe name.--Hark you me, dear soul, a word with you; but pray be not angry.\nHow thick do you judge the planks of our ship to be?  Some two good inches\nand upwards, returned the pilot; don't fear.  Ods-kilderkins, said Panurge,\nit seems then we are within two fingers' breadth of damnation.\n\nIs this one of the nine comforts of matrimony?  Ah, dear soul, you do well\nto measure the danger by the yard of fear.  For my part, I have none on't;\nmy name is William Dreadnought.  As for heart, I have more than enough\non't.  I mean none of your sheep's heart; but of wolf's heart--the courage\nof a bravo.  By the pavilion of Mars, I fear nothing but danger.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge was said to have been afraid without reason during the storm.\n\nGood morrow, gentlemen, said Panurge; good morrow to you all; you are in\nvery good health, thanks to heaven and yourselves; you are all heartily\nwelcome, and in good time.  Let us go on shore.--Here, coxswain, get the\nladder over the gunnel; man the sides; man the pinnace, and get her by the\nship's side.  Shall I lend you a hand here?  I am stark mad for want of\nbusiness, and would work like any two yokes of oxen.  Truly this is a fine\nplace, and these look like a very good people.  Children, do you want me\nstill in anything? do not spare the sweat of my body, for God's sake.\nAdam--that is, man--was made to labour and work, as the birds were made to\nfly.  Our Lord's will is that we get our bread with the sweat of our brows,\nnot idling and doing nothing, like this tatterdemalion of a monk here, this\nFriar Jack, who is fain to drink to hearten himself up, and dies for fear.\n--Rare weather.--I now find the answer of Anacharsis, the noble philosopher,\nvery proper.  Being asked what ship he reckoned the safest, he replied:\nThat which is in the harbour.  He made a yet better repartee, said\nPantagruel, when somebody inquiring which is greater, the number of the\nliving or that of the dead, he asked them amongst which of the two they\nreckoned those that are at sea, ingeniously implying that they are\ncontinually in danger of death, dying alive, and living die.  Portius Cato\nalso said that there were but three things of which he would repent:  if\never he had trusted his wife with his secret, if he had idled away a day,\nand if he had ever gone by sea to a place which he could visit by land.  By\nthis dignified frock of mine, said Friar John to Panurge, friend, thou hast\nbeen afraid during the storm without cause or reason; for thou wert not\nborn to be drowned, but rather to be hanged and exalted in the air, or to\nbe roasted in the midst of a jolly bonfire.  My lord, would you have a good\ncloak for the rain; leave me off your wolf and badger-skin mantle; let\nPanurge but be flayed, and cover yourself with his hide.  But do not come\nnear the fire, nor near your blacksmith's forges, a God's name; for in a\nmoment you will see it in ashes.  Yet be as long as you please in the rain,\nsnow, hail, nay, by the devil's maker, throw yourself or dive down to the\nvery bottom of the water, I'll engage you'll not be wet at all.  Have some\nwinter boots made of it, they'll never take in a drop of water; make\nbladders of it to lay under boys to teach them to swim, instead of corks,\nand they will learn without the least danger.  His skin, then, said\nPantagruel, should be like the herb called true maiden's hair, which never\ntakes wet nor moistness, but still keeps dry, though you lay it at the\nbottom of the water as long as you please; and for that reason is called\nAdiantos.\n\nFriend Panurge, said Friar John, I pray thee never be afraid of water; thy\nlife for mine thou art threatened with a contrary element.  Ay, ay, replied\nPanurge, but the devil's cooks dote sometimes, and are apt to make horrid\nblunders as well as others; often putting to boil in water what was\ndesigned to be roasted on the fire; like the head-cooks of our kitchen, who\noften lard partridges, queests, and stock-doves with intent to roast them,\none would think; but it happens sometimes that they e'en turn the\npartridges into the pot to be boiled with cabbages, the queests with leek\npottage, and the stock-doves with turnips.  But hark you me, good friends,\nI protest before this noble company, that as for the chapel which I vowed\nto Mons. St. Nicholas between Quande and Montsoreau, I honestly mean that\nit shall be a chapel of rose-water, which shall be where neither cow nor\ncalf shall be fed; for between you and I, I intend to throw it to the\nbottom of the water.  Here is a rare rogue for you, said Eusthenes; here is\na pure rogue, a rogue in grain, a rogue enough, a rogue and a half.  He is\nresolved to make good the Lombardic proverb, Passato el pericolo, gabbato\nel santo.\n\n  The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;\n  The devil was well, the devil a monk was he.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow, after the storm, Pantagruel went on shore in the islands of the\nMacreons.\n\nImmediately after we went ashore at the port of an island which they called\nthe island of the Macreons.  The good people of the place received us very\nhonourably.  An old Macrobius (so they called their eldest elderman)\ndesired Pantagruel to come to the town-house to refresh himself and eat\nsomething, but he would not budge a foot from the mole till all his men\nwere landed.  After he had seen them, he gave order that they should all\nchange clothes, and that some of all the stores in the fleet should be\nbrought on shore, that every ship's crew might live well; which was\naccordingly done, and God wot how well they all toped and caroused.  The\npeople of the place brought them provisions in abundance.  The\nPantagruelists returned them more; as the truth is, theirs were somewhat\ndamaged by the late storm.  When they had well stuffed the insides of their\ndoublets, Pantagruel desired everyone to lend their help to repair the\ndamage; which they readily did.  It was easy enough to refit there; for all\nthe inhabitants of the island were carpenters and all such handicrafts as\nare seen in the arsenal at Venice.  None but the largest island was\ninhabited, having three ports and ten parishes; the rest being overrun with\nwood and desert, much like the forest of Arden.  We entreated the old\nMacrobius to show us what was worth seeing in the island; which he did; and\nin the desert and dark forest we discovered several old ruined temples,\nobelisks, pyramids, monuments, and ancient tombs, with divers inscriptions\nand epitaphs; some of them in hieroglyphic characters; others in the Ionic\ndialect; some in the Arabic, Agarenian, Slavonian, and other tongues; of\nwhich Epistemon took an exact account.  In the interim, Panurge said to\nFriar John, Is this the island of the Macreons?  Macreon signifies in Greek\nan old man, or one much stricken in years.  What is that to me? said Friar\nJohn; how can I help it?  I was not in the country when they christened it.\nNow I think on't, quoth Panurge, I believe the name of mackerel (Motteux\nadds, between brackets,--'that's a Bawd in French.') was derived from it;\nfor procuring is the province of the old, as buttock-riggling is that of\nthe young.  Therefore I do not know but this may be the bawdy or Mackerel\nIsland, the original and prototype of the island of that name at Paris.\nLet's go and dredge for cock-oysters.  Old Macrobius asked, in the Ionic\ntongue, How, and by what industry and labour, Pantagruel got to their port\nthat day, there having been such blustering weather and such a dreadful\nstorm at sea.  Pantagruel told him that the Almighty Preserver of mankind\nhad regarded the simplicity and sincere affection of his servants, who did\nnot travel for gain or sordid profit, the sole design of their voyage being\na studious desire to know, see, and visit the Oracle of Bacbuc, and take\nthe word of the Bottle upon some difficulties offered by one of the\ncompany; nevertheless this had not been without great affliction and\nevident danger of shipwreck.  After that, he asked him what he judged to be\nthe cause of that terrible tempest, and if the adjacent seas were thus\nfrequently subject to storms; as in the ocean are the Ratz of Sammaieu,\nMaumusson, and in the Mediterranean sea the Gulf of Sataly, Montargentan,\nPiombino, Capo Melio in Laconia, the Straits of Gibraltar, Faro di Messina,\nand others.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the good Macrobius gave us an account of the mansion and decease of the\nheroes.\n\nThe good Macrobius then answered, Friendly strangers, this island is one of\nthe Sporades; not of your Sporades that lie in the Carpathian sea, but one\nof the Sporades of the ocean; in former times rich, frequented, wealthy,\npopulous, full of traffic, and in the dominions of the rulers of Britain,\nbut now, by course of time, and in these latter ages of the world, poor and\ndesolate, as you see.  In this dark forest, above seventy-eight thousand\nPersian leagues in compass, is the dwelling-place of the demons and heroes\nthat are grown old, and we believe that some one of them died yesterday;\nsince the comet which we saw for three days before together, shines no\nmore; and now it is likely that at his death there arose this horrible\nstorm; for while they are alive all happiness attends both this and the\nadjacent islands, and a settled calm and serenity.  At the death of every\none of them, we commonly hear in the forest loud and mournful groans, and\nthe whole land is infested with pestilence, earthquakes, inundations, and\nother calamities; the air with fogs and obscurity, and the sea with storms\nand hurricanes.  What you tell us seems to me likely enough, said\nPantagruel.  For as a torch or candle, as long as it hath life enough and\nis lighted, shines round about, disperses its light, delights those that\nare near it, yields them its service and clearness, and never causes any\npain or displeasure; but as soon as 'tis extinguished, its smoke and\nevaporation infects the air, offends the bystanders, and is noisome to all;\nso, as long as those noble and renowned souls inhabit their bodies, peace,\nprofit, pleasure, and honour never leave the places where they abide; but\nas soon as they leave them, both the continent and adjacent islands are\nannoyed with great commotions; in the air fogs, darkness, thunder, hail;\ntremblings, pulsations, agitations of the earth; storms and hurricanes at\nsea; together with sad complaints amongst the people, broaching of\nreligions, changes in governments, and ruins of commonwealths.\n\nWe had a sad instance of this lately, said Epistemon, at the death of that\nvaliant and learned knight, William du Bellay; during whose life France\nenjoyed so much happiness, that all the rest of the world looked upon it\nwith envy, sought friendship with it, and stood in awe of its power; but\nsoon after his decease it hath for a considerable time been the scorn of\nthe rest of the world.\n\nThus, said Pantagruel, Anchises being dead at Drepani in Sicily, Aeneas was\ndreadfully tossed and endangered by a storm; and perhaps for the same\nreason Herod, that tyrant and cruel King of Judaea, finding himself near\nthe pangs of a horrid kind of death--for he died of a phthiriasis, devoured\nby vermin and lice; as before him died L. Sylla, Pherecydes the Syrian, the\npreceptor of Pythagoras, the Greek poet Alcmaeon, and others--and\nforeseeing that the Jews would make bonfires at his death, caused all the\nnobles and magistrates to be summoned to his seraglio out of all the\ncities, towns, and castles of Judaea, fraudulently pretending that he had\nsome things of moment to impart to them.  They made their personal\nappearance; whereupon he caused them all to be shut up in the hippodrome of\nthe seraglio; then said to his sister Salome and Alexander her husband:  I\nam certain that the Jews will rejoice at my death; but if you will observe\nand perform what I tell you, my funeral shall be honourable, and there will\nbe a general mourning.  As soon as you see me dead, let my guards, to whom\nI have already given strict commission to that purpose, kill all the\nnoblemen and magistrates that are secured in the hippodrome.  By these\nmeans all Jewry shall, in spite of themselves, be obliged to mourn and\nlament, and foreigners will imagine it to be for my death, as if some\nheroic soul had left her body.  A desperate tyrant wished as much when he\nsaid, When I die, let earth and fire be mixed together; which was as good\nas to say, let the whole world perish.  Which saying the tyrant Nero\naltered, saying, While I live, as Suetonius affirms it.  This detestable\nsaying, of which Cicero, lib. De Finib., and Seneca, lib. 2, De Clementia,\nmake mention, is ascribed to the Emperor Tiberius by Dion Nicaeus and\nSuidas.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPantagruel's discourse of the decease of heroic souls; and of the dreadful\nprodigies that happened before the death of the late Lord de Langey.\n\nI would not, continued Pantagruel, have missed the storm that hath thus\ndisordered us, were I also to have missed the relation of these things told\nus by this good Macrobius.  Neither am I unwilling to believe what he said\nof a comet that appears in the sky some days before such a decease.  For\nsome of those souls are so noble, so precious, and so heroic that heaven\ngives us notice of their departing some days before it happens.  And as a\nprudent physician, seeing by some symptoms that his patient draws towards\nhis end, some days before gives notice of it to his wife, children,\nkindred, and friends, that, in that little time he hath yet to live, they\nmay admonish him to settle all things in his family, to tutor and instruct\nhis children as much as he can, recommend his relict to his friends in her\nwidowhood, and declare what he knows to be necessary about a provision for\nthe orphans; that he may not be surprised by death without making his will,\nand may take care of his soul and family; in the same manner the heavens,\nas it were joyful for the approaching reception of those blessed souls,\nseem to make bonfires by those comets and blazing meteors, which they at\nthe same time kindly design should prognosticate to us here that in a few\ndays one of those venerable souls is to leave her body and this terrestrial\nglobe.  Not altogether unlike this was what was formerly done at Athens by\nthe judges of the Areopagus.  For when they gave their verdict to cast or\nclear the culprits that were tried before them, they used certain notes\naccording to the substance of the sentences; by Theta signifying\ncondemnation to death; by T, absolution; by A, ampliation or a demur, when\nthe case was not sufficiently examined.  Thus having publicly set up those\nletters, they eased the relations and friends of the prisoners, and such\nothers as desired to know their doom, of their doubts.  Likewise by these\ncomets, as in ethereal characters, the heavens silently say to us, Make\nhaste, mortals, if you would know or learn of the blessed souls anything\nconcerning the public good or your private interest; for their catastrophe\nis near, which being past, you will vainly wish for them afterwards.\n\nThe good-natured heavens still do more; and that mankind may be declared\nunworthy of the enjoyment of those renowned souls, they fright and astonish\nus with prodigies, monsters, and other foreboding signs that thwart the\norder of nature.\n\nOf this we had an instance several days before the decease of the heroic\nsoul of the learned and valiant Chevalier de Langey, of whom you have\nalready spoken.  I remember it, said Epistemon; and my heart still trembles\nwithin me when I think on the many dreadful prodigies that we saw five or\nsix days before he died.  For the Lords D'Assier, Chemant, one-eyed Mailly,\nSt. Ayl, Villeneufue-la-Guyart, Master Gabriel, physician of Savillan,\nRabelais, Cohuau, Massuau, Majorici, Bullou, Cercu, alias Bourgmaistre,\nFrancis Proust, Ferron, Charles Girard, Francis Bourre, and many other\nfriends and servants to the deceased, all dismayed, gazed on each other\nwithout uttering one word; yet not without foreseeing that France would in\na short time be deprived of a knight so accomplished and necessary for its\nglory and protection, and that heaven claimed him again as its due.  By the\ntufted tip of my cowl, cried Friar John, I am e'en resolved to become a\nscholar before I die.  I have a pretty good headpiece of my own, you must\nown.  Now pray give me leave to ask you a civil question.  Can these same\nheroes or demigods you talk of die?  May I never be damned if I was not so\nmuch a lobcock as to believe they had been immortal, like so many fine\nangels.  Heaven forgive me! but this most reverend father, Macroby, tells\nus they die at last.  Not all, returned Pantagruel.\n\nThe Stoics held them all to be mortal, except one, who alone is immortal,\nimpassible, invisible.  Pindar plainly saith that there is no more thread,\nthat is to say, no more life, spun from the distaff and flax of the\nhard-hearted Fates for the goddesses Hamadryades than there is for those\ntrees that are preserved by them, which are good, sturdy, downright oaks;\nwhence they derived their original, according to the opinion of Callimachus\nand Pausanias in Phoci.  With whom concurs Martianus Capella.  As for the\ndemigods, fauns, satyrs, sylvans, hobgoblins, aegipanes, nymphs, heroes, and\ndemons, several men have, from the total sum, which is the result of the\ndivers ages calculated by Hesiod, reckoned their life to be 9720 years; that\nsum consisting of four special numbers orderly arising from one, the same\nadded together and multiplied by four every way amounts to forty; these\nforties, being reduced into triangles by five times, make up the total of\nthe aforesaid number.  See Plutarch, in his book about the Cessation of\nOracles.\n\nThis, said Friar John, is not matter of breviary; I may believe as little\nor as much of it as you and I please.  I believe, said Pantagruel, that all\nintellectual souls are exempted from Atropos's scissors.  They are all\nimmortal, whether they be of angels, or demons, or human; yet I will tell\nyou a story concerning this that is very strange, but is written and\naffirmed by several learned historians.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel related a very sad story of the death of the heroes.\n\nEpitherses, the father of Aemilian the rhetorician, sailing from Greece to\nItaly in a ship freighted with divers goods and passengers, at night the\nwind failed 'em near the Echinades, some islands that lie between the Morea\nand Tunis, and the vessel was driven near Paxos.  When they were got\nthither, some of the passengers being asleep, others awake, the rest eating\nand drinking, a voice was heard that called aloud, Thamous! which cry\nsurprised them all.  This same Thamous was their pilot, an Egyptian by\nbirth, but known by name only to some few travellers.  The voice was heard\na second time calling Thamous, in a frightful tone; and none making answer,\nbut trembling and remaining silent, the voice was heard a third time, more\ndreadful than before.\n\nThis caused Thamous to answer:  Here am I; what dost thou call me for?\nWhat wilt thou have me do?  Then the voice, louder than before, bid him\npublish when he should come to Palodes, that the great god Pan was dead.\n\nEpitherses related that all the mariners and passengers, having heard this,\nwere extremely amazed and frighted; and that, consulting among themselves\nwhether they had best conceal or divulge what the voice had enjoined,\nThamous said his advice was that if they happened to have a fair wind they\nshould proceed without mentioning a word on't, but if they chanced to be\nbecalmed he would publish what he had heard.  Now when they were near\nPalodes they had no wind, neither were they in any current.  Thamous then\ngetting up on the top of the ship's forecastle, and casting his eyes on the\nshore, said that he had been commanded to proclaim that the great god Pan\nwas dead.  The words were hardly out of his mouth, when deep groans, great\nlamentations, and doleful shrieks, not of one person, but of many together,\nwere heard from the land.\n\nThe news of this--many being present then--was soon spread at Rome;\ninsomuch that Tiberius, who was then emperor, sent for this Thamous, and\nhaving heard him gave credit to his words.  And inquiring of the learned in\nhis court and at Rome who was that Pan, he found by their relation that he\nwas the son of Mercury and Penelope, as Herodotus and Cicero in his third\nbook of the Nature of the Gods had written before.\n\nFor my part, I understand it of that great Saviour of the faithful who was\nshamefully put to death at Jerusalem by the envy and wickedness of the\ndoctors, priests, and monks of the Mosaic law.  And methinks my\ninterpretation is not improper; for he may lawfully be said in the Greek\ntongue to be Pan, since he is our all.  For all that we are, all that we\nlive, all that we have, all that we hope, is him, by him, from him, and in\nhim.  He is the good Pan, the great shepherd, who, as the loving shepherd\nCorydon affirms, hath not only a tender love and affection for his sheep,\nbut also for their shepherds.  At his death, complaints, sighs, fears, and\nlamentations were spread through the whole fabric of the universe, whether\nheavens, land, sea, or hell.\n\nThe time also concurs with this interpretation of mine; for this most good,\nmost mighty Pan, our only Saviour, died near Jerusalem during the reign of\nTiberius Caesar.\n\nPantagruel, having ended this discourse, remained silent and full of\ncontemplation.  A little while after we saw the tears flow out of his eyes\nas big as ostrich's eggs.  God take me presently if I tell you one single\nsyllable of a lie in the matter.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel sailed by the Sneaking Island, where Shrovetide reigned.\n\nThe jovial fleet being refitted and repaired, new stores taken in, the\nMacreons over and above satisfied and pleased with the money spent there by\nPantagruel, our men in better humour than they used to be, if possible, we\nmerrily put to sea the next day, near sunset, with a delicious fresh gale.\n\nXenomanes showed us afar off the Sneaking Island, where reigned Shrovetide,\nof whom Pantagruel had heard much talk formerly; for that reason he would\ngladly have seen him in person, had not Xenomanes advised him to the\ncontrary; first, because this would have been much out of our way, and then\nfor the lean cheer which he told us was to be found at that prince's court,\nand indeed all over the island.\n\nYou can see nothing there for your money, said he, but a huge greedy-guts,\na tall woundy swallower of hot wardens and mussels; a long-shanked\nmole-catcher; an overgrown bottler of hay; a mossy-chinned demi-giant, with\na double shaven crown, of lantern breed; a very great loitering noddy-peaked\nyoungster, banner-bearer to the fish-eating tribe, dictator of mustard-land,\nflogger of little children, calciner of ashes, father and foster-father to\nphysicians, swarming with pardons, indulgences, and stations; a very honest\nman; a good catholic, and as brimful of devotion as ever he can hold.\n\nHe weeps the three-fourth parts of the day, and never assists at any\nweddings; but, give the devil his due, he is the most industrious\nlarding-stick and skewer-maker in forty kingdoms.\n\nAbout six years ago, as I passed by Sneaking-land, I brought home a large\nskewer from thence, and made a present of it to the butchers of Quande, who\nset a great value upon them, and that for a cause.  Some time or other, if\never we live to come back to our own country, I will show you two of them\nfastened on the great church porch.  His usual food is pickled coats of\nmail, salt helmets and head-pieces, and salt sallets; which sometimes makes\nhim piss pins and needles.  As for his clothing, 'tis comical enough o'\nconscience, both for make and colour; for he wears grey and cold, nothing\nbefore, and nought behind, with the sleeves of the same.\n\nYou will do me a kindness, said Pantagruel, if, as you have described his\nclothes, food, actions, and pastimes, you will also give me an account of\nhis shape and disposition in all his parts.  Prithee do, dear cod, said\nFriar John, for I have found him in my breviary, and then follow the\nmovable holy days.  With all my heart, answered Xenomanes; we may chance to\nhear more of him as we touch at the Wild Island, the dominions of the squab\nChitterlings, his enemies, against whom he is eternally at odds; and were\nit not for the help of the noble Carnival, their protector and good\nneighbour, this meagre-looked lozelly Shrovetide would long before this\nhave made sad work among them, and rooted them out of their habitation.\nAre these same Chitterlings, said Friar John, male or female, angels or\nmortals, women or maids?  They are, replied Xenomanes, females in sex,\nmortal in kind, some of them maids, others not.  The devil have me, said\nFriar John, if I ben't for them.  What a shameful disorder in nature, is it\nnot, to make war against women?  Let's go back and hack the villain to\npieces.  What! meddle with Shrovetide? cried Panurge, in the name of\nBeelzebub, I am not yet so weary of my life.  No, I'm not yet so mad as\nthat comes to.  Quid juris?  Suppose we should find ourselves pent up\nbetween the Chitterlings and Shrovetide? between the anvil and the hammers?\nShankers and buboes! stand off! godzooks, let us make the best of our way.\nI bid you good night, sweet Mr. Shrovetide; I recommend to you the\nChitterlings, and pray don't forget the puddings.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Shrovetide is anatomized and described by Xenomanes.\n\nAs for the inward parts of Shrovetide, said Xenomanes; his brain is (at\nleast, it was in my time) in bigness, colours, substance, and strength,\nmuch like the left cod of a he hand-worm.\n\nThe ventricles of his said brain,     The stomach, like a belt.\n  like an auger.                      The pylorus, like a pitchfork.\nThe worm-like excrescence, like       The windpipe, like an oyster-\n  a Christmas-box.                      knife.\nThe membranes, like a monk's          The throat, like a pincushion\n  cowl.                                 stuffed with oakum.\nThe funnel, like a mason's chisel.    The lungs, like a prebend's\nThe fornix, like a casket.              fur-gown.\nThe glandula pinealis, like a bag-    The heart, like a cope.\n  pipe.                               The mediastine, like an earthen\nThe rete mirabile, like a gutter.       cup.\nThe dug-like processus, like a        The pleura, like a crow's bill.\n  patch.                              The arteries, like a watch-coat.\nThe tympanums, like a whirli-         The midriff, like a montero-cap.\n  gig.                                The liver, like a double-tongued\nThe rocky bones, like a goose-          mattock.\n  wing.                               The veins, like a sash-window.\nThe nape of the neck, like a paper    The spleen, like a catcall.\n  lantern.                            The guts, like a trammel.\nThe nerves, like a pipkin.            The gall, like a cooper's adze.\nThe uvula, like a sackbut.            The entrails, like a gauntlet.\nThe palate, like a mitten.            The mesentery, like an abbot's\nThe spittle, like a shuttle.            mitre.\nThe almonds, like a telescope.        The hungry gut, like a button.\nThe bridge of his nose, like a        The blind gut, like a breastplate.\n  wheelbarrow.                        The colon, like a bridle.\nThe head of the larynx, like a        The arse-gut, like a monk's\n  vintage-basket.                       leathern bottle.\nThe kidneys, like a trowel.           The ligaments, like a tinker's\nThe loins, like a padlock.              budget.\nThe ureters, like a pothook.          The bones, like three-cornered\nThe emulgent veins, like two            cheesecakes.\n  gilliflowers.                       The marrow, like a wallet.\nThe spermatic vessels, like a         The cartilages, like a field-\n  cully-mully-puff.                           tortoise, alias a mole.\nThe parastata, like an inkpot.        The glandules in the mouth, like\nThe bladder, like a stone-bow.          a pruning-knife.\nThe neck, like a mill-clapper.        The animal spirits, like swingeing\nThe mirach, or lower parts of the       fisticuffs.\n  belly, like a high-crowned hat.     The blood-fermenting, like a\nThe siphach, or its inner rind,         multiplication of flirts on the\n  like a wooden cuff.                   nose.\nThe muscles, like a pair of bellows.  The urine, like a figpecker.\nThe tendons, like a hawking-          The sperm, like a hundred\n  glove.                                ten-penny nails.\n\nAnd his nurse told me, that being married to Mid-lent, he only begot a good\nnumber of local adverbs and certain double fasts.\n\nHis memory he had like a scarf.       His undertakings, like the ballast\nHis common sense, like a buzzing        of a galleon.\n  of bees.                            His understanding, like a torn\nHis imagination, like the chime         breviary.\n  of a set of bells.                  His notions, like snails crawling\nHis thoughts, like a flight of star-    out of strawberries.\n  lings.                              His will, like three filberts in a\nHis conscience, like the unnest-        porringer.\n  ling of a parcel of young           His desire, like six trusses of hay.\n  herons.                             His judgment, like a shoeing-\nHis deliberations, like a set of        horn.\n  organs.                             His discretion, like the truckle of\nHis repentance, like the carriage       a pulley.\n  of a double cannon.                 His reason, like a cricket.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShrovetide's outward parts anatomized.\n\nShrovetide, continued Xenomanes, is somewhat better proportioned in his\noutward parts, excepting the seven ribs which he had over and above the\ncommon shape of men.\n\nHis toes were like a virginal on     The peritoneum, or caul wherein\n  an organ.                            his bowels were wrapped, like\nHis nails, like a gimlet.              a billiard-table.\nHis feet, like a guitar.             His back, like an overgrown rack-\nHis heels, like a club.                bent crossbow.\nThe soles of his feet, like a cru-   The vertebrae, or joints of his\n  cible.                               backbone, like a bagpipe.\nHis legs, like a hawk's lure.        His ribs, like a spinning-wheel.\nHis knees, like a joint-stool.       His brisket, like a canopy.\nHis thighs, like a steel cap.        His shoulder-blades, like a mortar.\nHis hips, like a wimble.             His breast, like a game at nine-\nHis belly as big as a tun, buttoned    pins.\n  after the old fashion, with a      His paps, like a hornpipe.\n  girdle riding over the middle      His armpits, like a chequer.\n  of his bosom.                      His shoulders, like a hand-barrow.\nHis navel, like a cymbal.            His arms, like a riding-hood.\nHis groin, like a minced pie.        His fingers, like a brotherhood's\nHis member, like a slipper.            andirons.\nHis purse, like an oil cruet.        The fibulae, or lesser bones of his\nHis genitals, like a joiner's planer.  legs, like a pair of stilts.\nTheir erecting muscles, like a       His shin-bones, like sickles.\n  racket.                            His elbows, like a mouse-trap.\nThe perineum, like a flageolet.      His hands, like a curry-comb.\nHis arse-hole, like a crystal look-  His neck, like a talboy.\n  ing-glass.                         His throat, like a felt to distil hip-\nHis bum, like a harrow.                pocras.\nThe knob in his throat, like a       His loins, like a butter-pot.\n  barrel, where hanged two           His jaws, like a caudle cup.\n  brazen wens, very fine and         His teeth, like a hunter's staff.\n  harmonious, in the shape of an       Of such colt's teeth as his,\n  hourglass.                           you will find one at Colonges\nHis beard, like a lantern.             les Royaux in Poitou, and\nHis chin, like a mushroom.             two at La Brosse in Xaintonge,\nHis ears, like a pair of gloves.       on the cellar door.\nHis nose, like a buskin.             His tongue, like a jew's-harp.\nHis nostrils, like a forehead cloth. His mouth, like a horse-cloth.\nHis eyebrows, like a dripping-pan.   His face embroidered like a mule's\nOn his left brow was a mark of         pack-saddle.\n  the shape and bigness of an        His head contrived like a still.\n  urinal.                            His skull, like a pouch.\nHis eyelids, like a fiddle.          The suturae, or seams of his skull,\nHis eyes, like a comb-box.             like the annulus piscatoris, or\nHis optic nerves, like a tinder-       the fisher's signet.\n  box.                               His skin, like a gabardine.\nHis forehead, like a false cup.      His epidermis, or outward skin,\nHis temples, like the cock of a        like a bolting-cloth.\n  cistern.                           His hair, like a scrubbing-brush.\nHis cheeks, like a pair of wooden    His fur, such as above said.\n  shoes.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA continuation of Shrovetide's countenance.\n\n'Tis a wonderful thing, continued Xenomanes, to hear and see the state of\nShrovetide.\n\nIf he chanced to spit, it was whole  When he trembled, it was large\n  basketsful of goldfinches.           venison pasties.\nIf he blowed his nose, it was        When he did sweat, it was old\n  pickled grigs.                       ling with butter sauce.\nWhen he wept, it was ducks with      When he belched, it was bushels\n  onion sauce.                         of oysters.\nWhen he sneezed, it was whole        When he muttered, it was lawyers'\n  tubfuls of mustard.                  revels.\nWhen he coughed, it was boxes        When he hopped about, it was\n  of marmalade.                        letters of licence and protec-\nWhen he sobbed, it was water-          tions.\n  cresses.                           When he stepped back, it was\nWhen he yawned, it was potfuls         sea cockle-shells.\n  of pickled peas.                   When he slabbered, it was com-\nWhen he sighed, it was dried           mon ovens.\n  neats' tongues.                    When he was hoarse, it was an\nWhen he whistled, it was a whole       entry of morrice-dancers.\n  scuttleful of green apes.          When he broke wind, it was dun\nWhen he snored, it was a whole         cows' leather spatterdashes.\n  panful of fried beans.             When he funked, it was washed-\nWhen he frowned, it was soused         leather boots.\n  hogs' feet.                        When he scratched himself, it\nWhen he spoke, it was coarse           was new proclamations.\n  brown russet cloth; so little      When he sung, it was peas in\n  it was like crimson silk, with       cods.\n  which Parisatis desired that       When he evacuated, it was mush-\n  the words of such as spoke to        rooms and morilles.\n  her son Cyrus, King of Persia,     When he puffed, it was cabbages\n  should be interwoven.                with oil, alias caules amb'olif.\nWhen he blowed, it was indulg-       When he talked, it was the last\n  ence money-boxes.                    year's snow.\nWhen he winked, it was buttered      When he dreamt, it was of a\n  buns.                                cock and a bull.\nWhen he grumbled, it was March       When he gave nothing, so much\n  cats.                                for the bearer.\nWhen he nodded, it was iron-         If he thought to himself, it was\n  bound waggons.                       whimsies and maggots.\nWhen he made mouths, it was          If he dozed, it was leases of lands.\n  broken staves.\n\nWhat is yet more strange, he used to work doing nothing, and did nothing\nthough he worked; caroused sleeping, and slept carousing, with his eyes\nopen, like the hares in our country, for fear of being taken napping by the\nChitterlings, his inveterate enemies; biting he laughed, and laughing bit;\neat nothing fasting, and fasted eating nothing; mumbled upon suspicion,\ndrank by imagination, swam on the tops of high steeples, dried his clothes\nin ponds and rivers, fished in the air, and there used to catch decumane\nlobsters; hunted at the bottom of the herring-pond, and caught there\nibexes, stamboucs, chamois, and other wild goats; used to put out the eyes\nof all the crows which he took sneakingly; feared nothing but his own\nshadow and the cries of fat kids; used to gad abroad some days, like a\ntruant schoolboy; played with the ropes of bells on festival days of\nsaints; made a mallet of his fist, and writ on hairy parchment\nprognostications and almanacks with his huge pin-case.\n\nIs that the gentleman? said Friar John.  He is my man; this is the very\nfellow I looked for.  I will send him a challenge immediately.  This is,\nsaid Pantagruel, a strange and monstrous sort of man, if I may call him a\nman.  You put me in mind of the form and looks of Amodunt and Dissonance.\nHow were they made? said Friar John.  May I be peeled like a raw onion if\never I heard a word of them.  I'll tell you what I read of them in some\nancient apologues, replied Pantagruel.\n\nPhysis--that is to say, Nature--at her first burthen begat Beauty and\nHarmony without carnal copulation, being of herself very fruitful and\nprolific.  Antiphysis, who ever was the counter part of Nature,\nimmediately, out of a malicious spite against her for her beautiful and\nhonourable productions, in opposition begot Amodunt and Dissonance by\ncopulation with Tellumon.  Their heads were round like a football, and not\ngently flatted on both sides, like the common shape of men.  Their ears\nstood pricked up like those of asses; their eyes, as hard as those of\ncrabs, and without brows, stared out of their heads, fixed on bones like\nthose of our heels; their feet were round like tennis-balls; their arms and\nhands turned backwards towards their shoulders; and they walked on their\nheads, continually turning round like a ball, topsy-turvy, heels over head.\n\nYet--as you know that apes esteem their young the handsomest in the world\n--Antiphysis extolled her offspring, and strove to prove that their shape\nwas handsomer and neater than that of the children of Physis, saying that\nthus to have spherical heads and feet, and walk in a circular manner,\nwheeling round, had something in it of the perfection of the divine power,\nwhich makes all beings eternally turn in that fashion; and that to have our\nfeet uppermost, and the head below them, was to imitate the Creator of the\nuniverse; the hair being like the roots, and the legs like the branches of\nman; for trees are better planted by their roots than they could be by their\nbranches.  By this demonstration she implied that her children were much\nmore to be praised for being like a standing tree, than those of Physis,\nthat made a figure of a tree upside down.  As for the arms and hands, she\npretended to prove that they were more justly turned towards the shoulders,\nbecause that part of the body ought not to be without defence, while the\nforepart is duly fenced with teeth, which a man cannot only use to chew, but\nalso to defend himself against those things that offend him. Thus, by the\ntestimony and astipulation of the brute beasts, she drew all the witless\nherd and mob of fools into her opinion, and was admired by all brainless and\nnonsensical people.\n\nSince that, she begot the hypocritical tribes of eavesdropping dissemblers,\nsuperstitious pope-mongers, and priest-ridden bigots, the frantic\nPistolets, (the demoniacal Calvins, impostors of Geneva,) the scrapers of\nbenefices, apparitors with the devil in them, and other grinders and\nsqueezers of livings, herb-stinking hermits, gulligutted dunces of the\ncowl, church vermin, false zealots, devourers of the substance of men, and\nmany more other deformed and ill-favoured monsters, made in spite of\nnature.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel discovered a monstrous physeter, or whirlpool, near the Wild\nIsland.\n\nAbout sunset, coming near the Wild Island, Pantagruel spied afar off a huge\nmonstrous physeter (a sort of whale, which some call a whirlpool), that\ncame right upon us, neighing, snorting, raised above the waves higher than\nour main-tops, and spouting water all the way into the air before itself,\nlike a large river falling from a mountain.  Pantagruel showed it to the\npilot and to Xenomanes.\n\nBy the pilot's advice the trumpets of the Thalamege were sounded to warn\nall the fleet to stand close and look to themselves.  This alarm being\ngiven, all the ships, galleons, frigates, brigantines, according to their\nnaval discipline, placed themselves in the order and figure of an Y\n(upsilon), the letter of Pythagoras, as cranes do in their flight, and like\nan acute angle, in whose cone and basis the Thalamege placed herself ready\nto fight smartly.  Friar John with the grenadiers got on the forecastle.\n\nPoor Panurge began to cry and howl worse than ever.  Babille-babou, said\nhe, shrugging up his shoulders, quivering all over with fear, there will be\nthe devil upon dun.  This is a worse business than that t'other day.  Let\nus fly, let us fly; old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan, described by\nthe noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.  It will swallow us\nall, ships and men, shag, rag, and bobtail, like a dose of pills.  Alas! it\nwill make no more of us, and we shall hold no more room in its hellish\njaws, than a sugarplum in an ass's throat.  Look, look, 'tis upon us; let\nus wheel off, whip it away, and get ashore.  I believe 'tis the very\nindividual sea-monster that was formerly designed to devour Andromeda; we\nare all undone.  Oh! for some valiant Perseus here now to kill the dog.\n\nI'll do its business presently, said Pantagruel; fear nothing.  Ods-belly,\nsaid Panurge, remove the cause of my fear then.  When the devil would you\nhave a man be afraid but when there is so much cause?  If your destiny be\nsuch as Friar John was saying a while ago, replied Pantagruel, you ought to\nbe afraid of Pyroeis, Eous, Aethon, and Phlegon, the sun's coach-horses,\nthat breathe fire at the nostrils; and not of physeters, that spout nothing\nbut water at the snout and mouth.  Their water will not endanger your life;\nand that element will rather save and preserve than hurt or endanger you.\n\nAy, ay, trust to that, and hang me, quoth Panurge; yours is a very pretty\nfancy.  Ods-fish! did I not give you a sufficient account of the elements'\ntransmutation, and the blunders that are made of roast for boiled, and\nboiled for roast?  Alas! here 'tis; I'll go hide myself below.  We are dead\nmen, every mother's son of us.  I see upon our main-top that merciless hag\nAtropos, with her scissors new ground, ready to cut our threads all at one\nsnip.  Oh! how dreadful and abominable thou art; thou hast drowned a good\nmany beside us, who never made their brags of it.  Did it but spout good,\nbrisk, dainty, delicious white wine, instead of this damned bitter salt\nwater, one might better bear with it, and there would be some cause to be\npatient; like that English lord, who being doomed to die, and had leave to\nchoose what kind of death he would, chose to be drowned in a butt of\nmalmsey.  Here it is.  Oh, oh! devil!  Sathanas!  Leviathan!  I cannot\nabide to look upon thee, thou art so abominably ugly.  Go to the bar, go\ntake the pettifoggers.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the monstrous physeter was slain by Pantagruel.\n\nThe physeter, coming between the ships and the galleons, threw water by\nwhole tuns upon them, as if it had been the cataracts of the Nile in\nEthiopia.  On the other side, arrows, darts, gleaves, javelins, spears,\nharping-irons, and partizans, flew upon it like hail.  Friar John did not\nspare himself in it.  Panurge was half dead for fear.  The artillery roared\nand thundered like mad, and seemed to gall it in good earnest, but did but\nlittle good; for the great iron and brass cannon-shot entering its skin\nseemed to melt like tiles in the sun.\n\nPantagruel then, considering the weight and exigency of the matter,\nstretched out his arms and showed what he could do.  You tell us, and it is\nrecorded, that Commudus, the Roman emperor, could shoot with a bow so\ndexterously that at a good distance he would let fly an arrow through a\nchild's fingers and never touch them.  You also tell us of an Indian\narcher, who lived when Alexander the Great conquered India, and was so\nskilful in drawing the bow, that at a considerable distance he would shoot\nhis arrows through a ring, though they were three cubits long, and their\niron so large and weighty that with them he used to pierce steel cutlasses,\nthick shields, steel breastplates, and generally what he did hit, how firm,\nresisting, hard, and strong soever it were.  You also tell us wonders of\nthe industry of the ancient Franks, who were preferred to all others in\npoint of archery; and when they hunted either black or dun beasts, used to\nrub the head of their arrows with hellebore, because the flesh of the\nvenison struck with such an arrow was more tender, dainty, wholesome, and\ndelicious--paring off, nevertheless, the part that was touched round about.\nYou also talk of the Parthians, who used to shoot backwards more\ndexterously than other nations forwards; and also celebrate the skill of\nthe Scythians in that art, who sent once to Darius, King of Persia, an\nambassador that made him a present of a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five\narrows, without speaking one word; and being asked what those presents\nmeant, and if he had commission to say anything, answered that he had not;\nwhich puzzled and gravelled Darius very much, till Gobrias, one of the\nseven captains that had killed the magi, explained it, saying to Darius:\nBy these gifts and offerings the Scythians silently tell you that except\nthe Persians like birds fly up to heaven, or like mice hide themselves near\nthe centre of the earth, or like frogs dive to the very bottom of ponds and\nlakes, they shall be destroyed by the power and arrows of the Scythians.\n\nThe noble Pantagruel was, without comparison, more admirable yet in the art\nof shooting and darting; for with his dreadful piles and darts, nearly\nresembling the huge beams that support the bridges of Nantes, Saumur,\nBergerac, and at Paris the millers' and the changers' bridges, in length,\nsize, weight, and iron-work, he at a mile's distance would open an oyster\nand never touch the edges; he would snuff a candle without putting it out;\nwould shoot a magpie in the eye; take off a boot's under-sole, or a\nriding-hood's lining, without soiling them a bit; turn over every leaf\nof Friar John's breviary, one after another, and not tear one.\n\nWith such darts, of which there was good store in the ship, at the first\nblow he ran the physeter in at the forehead so furiously that he pierced\nboth its jaws and tongue; so that from that time to this it no more opened\nits guttural trapdoor, nor drew and spouted water.  At the second blow he\nput out its right eye, and at the third its left; and we had all the\npleasure to see the physeter bearing those three horns in its forehead,\nsomewhat leaning forwards in an equilateral triangle.\n\nMeanwhile it turned about to and fro, staggering and straying like one\nstunned, blinded, and taking his leave of the world.  Pantagruel, not\nsatisfied with this, let fly another dart, which took the monster under the\ntail likewise sloping; then with three other on the chine, in a\nperpendicular line, divided its flank from the tail to the snout at an\nequal distance.  Then he larded it with fifty on one side, and after that,\nto make even work, he darted as many on its other side; so that the body of\nthe physeter seemed like the hulk of a galleon with three masts, joined by\na competent dimension of its beams, as if they had been the ribs and\nchain-wales of the keel; which was a pleasant sight.  The physeter then\ngiving up the ghost, turned itself upon its back, as all dead fishes do; and\nbeing thus overturned, with the beams and darts upside down in the sea, it\nseemed a scolopendra or centipede, as that serpent is described by the\nancient sage Nicander.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel went on shore in the Wild Island, the ancient abode of the\nChitterlings.\n\nThe boat's crew of the ship Lantern towed the physeter ashore on the\nneighbouring shore, which happened to be the Wild Island, to make an\nanatomical dissection of its body and save the fat of its kidneys, which,\nthey said, was very useful and necessary for the cure of a certain\ndistemper, which they called want of money.  As for Pantagruel, he took no\nmanner of notice of the monster; for he had seen many such, nay, bigger, in\nthe Gallic ocean.  Yet he condescended to land in the Wild Island, to dry\nand refresh some of his men (whom the physeter had wetted and bedaubed), at\na small desert seaport towards the south, seated near a fine pleasant\ngrove, out of which flowed a delicious brook of fresh, clear, and purling\nwater.  Here they pitched their tents and set up their kitchens; nor did\nthey spare fuel.\n\nEveryone having shifted as they thought fit, Friar John rang the bell, and\nthe cloth was immediately laid, and supper brought in.  Pantagruel eating\ncheerfully with his men, much about the second course perceived certain\nlittle sly Chitterlings clambering up a high tree near the pantry, as still\nas so many mice.  Which made him ask Xenomanes what kind of creatures these\nwere, taking them for squirrels, weasels, martins, or ermines.  They are\nChitterlings, replied Xenomanes.  This is the Wild Island of which I spoke\nto you this morning; there hath been an irreconcilable war this long time\nbetween them and Shrovetide, their malicious and ancient enemy.  I believe\nthat the noise of the guns which we fired at the physeter hath alarmed\nthem, and made them fear their enemy was come with his forces to surprise\nthem, or lay the island waste, as he hath often attempted to do; though he\nstill came off but bluely, by reason of the care and vigilance of the\nChitterlings, who (as Dido said to Aeneas's companions that would have\nlanded at Carthage without her leave or knowledge) were forced to watch and\nstand upon their guard, considering the malice of their enemy and the\nneighbourhood of his territories.\n\nPray, dear friend, said Pantagruel, if you find that by some honest means\nwe may bring this war to an end, and reconcile them together, give me\nnotice of it; I will use my endeavours in it with all my heart, and spare\nnothing on my side to moderate and accommodate the points in dispute\nbetween both parties.\n\nThat's impossible at this time, answered Xenomanes.  About four years ago,\npassing incognito by this country, I endeavoured to make a peace, or at\nleast a long truce among them; and I had certainly brought them to be good\nfriends and neighbours if both one and the other parties would have yielded\nto one single article.  Shrovetide would not include in the treaty of peace\nthe wild puddings nor the highland sausages, their ancient gossips and\nconfederates.  The Chitterlings demanded that the fort of Cacques might be\nunder their government, as is the Castle of Sullouoir, and that a parcel of\nI don't know what stinking villains, murderers, robbers, that held it then,\nshould be expelled.  But they could not agree in this, and the terms that\nwere offered seemed too hard to either party.  So the treaty broke off, and\nnothing was done.  Nevertheless, they became less severe, and gentler\nenemies than they were before; but since the denunciation of the national\nCouncil of Chesil, whereby they were roughly handled, hampered, and cited;\nwhereby also Shrovetide was declared filthy, beshitten, and berayed, in\ncase he made any league or agreement with them; they are grown wonderfully\ninveterate, incensed, and obstinate against one another, and there is no\nway to remedy it.  You might sooner reconcile cats and rats, or hounds and\nhares together.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the wild Chitterlings laid an ambuscado for Pantagruel.\n\nWhile Xenomanes was saying this, Friar John spied twenty or thirty young\nslender-shaped Chitterlings posting as fast as they could towards their\ntown, citadel, castle, and fort of Chimney, and said to Pantagruel, I smell\na rat; there will be here the devil upon two sticks, or I am much out.\nThese worshipful Chitterlings may chance to mistake you for Shrovetide,\nthough you are not a bit like him.  Let us once in our lives leave our\njunketing for a while, and put ourselves in a posture to give 'em a\nbellyful of fighting, if they would be at that sport.  There can be no\nfalse Latin in this, said Xenomanes; Chitterlings are still Chitterlings,\nalways double-hearted and treacherous.\n\nPantagruel then arose from table to visit and scour the thicket, and\nreturned presently; having discovered, on the left, an ambuscade of squab\nChitterlings; and on the right, about half a league from thence, a large\nbody of huge giant-like armed Chitterlings ranged in battalia along a\nlittle hill, and marching furiously towards us at the sound of bagpipes,\nsheep's paunches, and bladders, the merry fifes and drums, trumpets, and\nclarions, hoping to catch us as Moss caught his mare.  By the conjecture of\nseventy-eight standards which we told, we guessed their number to be two\nand forty thousand, at a modest computation.\n\nTheir order, proud gait, and resolute looks made us judge that they were\nnone of your raw, paltry links, but old warlike Chitterlings and Sausages.\nFrom the foremost ranks to the colours they were all armed cap-a-pie with\nsmall arms, as we reckoned them at a distance, yet very sharp and\ncase-hardened.  Their right and left wings were lined with a great number of\nforest puddings, heavy pattipans, and horse sausages, all of them tall and\nproper islanders, banditti, and wild.\n\nPantagruel was very much daunted, and not without cause; though Epistemon\ntold him that it might be the use and custom of the Chitterlingonians to\nwelcome and receive thus in arms their foreign friends, as the noble kings\nof France are received and saluted at their first coming into the chief\ncities of the kingdom after their advancement to the crown.  Perhaps, said\nhe, it may be the usual guard of the queen of the place, who, having notice\ngiven her by the junior Chitterlings of the forlorn hope whom you saw on\nthe tree, of the arrival of your fine and pompous fleet, hath judged that\nit was without doubt some rich and potent prince, and is come to visit you\nin person.\n\nPantagruel, little trusting to this, called a council, to have their advice\nat large in this doubtful case.  He briefly showed them how this way of\nreception with arms had often, under colour of compliment and friendship,\nbeen fatal.  Thus, said he, the Emperor Antonius Caracalla at one time\ndestroyed the citizens of Alexandria, and at another time cut off the\nattendants of Artabanus, King of Persia, under colour of marrying his\ndaughter, which, by the way, did not pass unpunished, for a while after\nthis cost him his life.\n\nThus Jacob's children destroyed the Sichemites, to revenge the rape of\ntheir sister Dinah.  By such another hypocritical trick Gallienus, the\nRoman emperor, put to death the military men in Constantinople.  Thus,\nunder colour of friendship, Antonius enticed Artavasdes, King of Armenia;\nthen, having caused him to be bound in heavy chains and shackled, at last\nput him to death.\n\nWe find a thousand such instances in history; and King Charles VI. is\njustly commended for his prudence to this day, in that, coming back\nvictorious over the Ghenters and other Flemings to his good city of Paris,\nand when he came to Bourget, a league from thence, hearing that the\ncitizens with their mallets--whence they got the name of Maillotins--were\nmarched out of town in battalia, twenty thousand strong, he would not go\ninto the town till they had laid down their arms and retired to their\nrespective homes; though they protested to him that they had taken arms\nwith no other design than to receive him with the greater demonstration of\nhonour and respect.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel sent for Colonel Maul-chitterling and Colonel Cut-pudding;\nwith a discourse well worth your hearing about the names of places and\npersons.\n\nThe resolution of the council was that, let things be how they would, it\nbehoved the Pantagruelists to stand upon their guard.  Therefore Carpalin\nand Gymnast were ordered by Pantagruel to go for the soldiers that were on\nboard the Cup galley, under the command of Colonel Maul-chitterling, and\nthose on board the Vine-tub frigate, under the command of Colonel\nCut-pudding the younger.  I will ease Gymnast of that trouble, said Panurge,\nwho wanted to be upon the run; you may have occasion for him here.  By\nthis worthy frock of mine, quoth Friar John, thou hast a mind to slip thy\nneck out of the collar and absent thyself from the fight, thou\nwhite-livered son of a dunghill!  Upon my virginity thou wilt never come\nback. Well, there can be no great loss in thee; for thou wouldst do nothing\nhere but howl, bray, weep, and dishearten the good soldiers.  I will\ncertainly come back, said Panurge, Friar John, my ghostly father, and\nspeedily too; do but take care that these plaguy Chitterlings do not board\nour ships. All the while you will be a-fighting I will pray heartily for\nyour victory, after the example of the valiant captain and guide of the\npeople of Israel, Moses. Having said this, he wheeled off.\n\nThen said Epistemon to Pantagruel:  The denomination of these two colonels\nof yours, Maul-chitterling and Cut-pudding, promiseth us assurance,\nsuccess, and victory, if those Chitterlings should chance to set upon us.\nYou take it rightly, said Pantagruel, and it pleaseth me to see you foresee\nand prognosticate our victory by the names of our colonels.\n\nThis way of foretelling by names is not new; it was in old times celebrated\nand religiously observed by the Pythagoreans.  Several great princes and\nemperors have formerly made good use of it.  Octavianus Augustus, second\nemperor of the Romans, meeting on a day a country fellow named Eutychus\n--that is, fortunate--driving an ass named Nicon--that is, in Greek,\nVictorian--moved by the signification of the ass's and ass-driver's names,\nremained assured of all prosperity and victory.\n\nThe Emperor Vespasian being once all alone at prayers in the temple of\nSerapis, at the sight and unexpected coming of a certain servant of his\nnamed Basilides--that is, royal--whom he had left sick a great way behind,\ntook hopes and assurance of obtaining the empire of the Romans.  Regilian\nwas chosen emperor by the soldiers for no other reason but the\nsignification of his name.  See the Cratylus of the divine Plato.  (By my\nthirst, I will read it, said Rhizotome; I hear you so often quote it.)  See\nhow the Pythagoreans, by reason of the names and numbers, conclude that\nPatroclus was to fall by the hand of Hector; Hector by Achilles; Achilles\nby Paris; Paris by Philoctetes.  I am quite lost in my understanding when I\nreflect upon the admirable invention of Pythagoras, who by the number,\neither even or odd, of the syllables of every name, would tell you of what\nside a man was lame, hulch-backed, blind, gouty, troubled with the palsy,\npleurisy, or any other distemper incident to humankind; allotting even\nnumbers to the left (Motteux reads--'even numbers to the Right, and odd\nones to the Left.'), and odd ones to the right side of the body.\n\nIndeed, said Epistemon, I saw this way of syllabizing tried at Xaintes at a\ngeneral procession, in the presence of that good, virtuous, learned and\njust president, Brian Vallee, Lord of Douhait.  When there went by a man or\nwoman that was either lame, blind of one eye, or humpbacked, he had an\naccount brought him of his or her name; and if the syllables of the name\nwere of an odd number, immediately, without seeing the persons, he declared\nthem to be deformed, blind, lame, or crooked of the right side; and of the\nleft, if they were even in number; and such indeed we ever found them.\n\nBy this syllabical invention, said Pantagruel, the learned have affirmed\nthat Achilles kneeling was wounded by the arrow of Paris in the right heel,\nfor his name is of odd syllables (here we ought to observe that the\nancients used to kneel the right foot); and that Venus was also wounded\nbefore Troy in the left hand, for her name in Greek is Aphrodite, of four\nsyllables; Vulcan lamed of his left foot for the same reason; Philip, King\nof Macedon, and Hannibal, blind of the right eye; not to speak of\nsciaticas, broken bellies, and hemicranias, which may be distinguished by\nthis Pythagorean reason.\n\nBut returning to names:  do but consider how Alexander the Great, son of\nKing Philip, of whom we spoke just now, compassed his undertaking merely by\nthe interpretation of a name.  He had besieged the strong city of Tyre, and\nfor several weeks battered it with all his power; but all in vain.  His\nengines and attempts were still baffled by the Tyrians, which made him\nfinally resolve to raise the siege, to his great grief; foreseeing the\ngreat stain which such a shameful retreat would be to his reputation.  In\nthis anxiety and agitation of mind he fell asleep and dreamed that a satyr\nwas come into his tent, capering, skipping, and tripping it up and down,\nwith his goatish hoofs, and that he strove to lay hold on him.  But the\nsatyr still slipped from him, till at last, having penned him up into a\ncorner, he took him.  With this he awoke, and telling his dream to the\nphilosophers and sages of his court, they let him know that it was a\npromise of victory from the gods, and that he should soon be master of\nTyre; the word satyros divided in two being sa Tyros, and signifying Tyre\nis thine; and in truth, at the next onset, he took the town by storm, and\nby a complete victory reduced that stubborn people to subjection.\n\nOn the other hand, see how, by the signification of one word, Pompey fell\ninto despair.  Being overcome by Caesar at the battle of Pharsalia, he had\nno other way left to escape but by flight; which attempting by sea, he\narrived near the island of Cyprus, and perceived on the shore near the city\nof Paphos a beautiful and stately palace; now asking the pilot what was the\nname of it, he told him that it was called kakobasilea, that is, evil king;\nwhich struck such a dread and terror in him that he fell into despair, as\nbeing assured of losing shortly his life; insomuch that his complaints,\nsighs, and groans were heard by the mariners and other passengers.  And\nindeed, a while after, a certain strange peasant, called Achillas, cut off\nhis head.\n\nTo all these examples might be added what happened to L. Paulus Emilius\nwhen the senate elected him imperator, that is, chief of the army which\nthey sent against Perses, King of Macedon.  That evening returning home to\nprepare for his expedition, and kissing a little daughter of his called\nTrasia, she seemed somewhat sad to him.  What is the matter, said he, my\nchicken?  Why is my Trasia thus sad and melancholy?  Daddy, replied the\nchild, Persa is dead.  This was the name of a little bitch which she loved\nmightily.  Hearing this, Paulus took assurance of a victory over Perses.\n\nIf time would permit us to discourse of the sacred Hebrew writ, we might\nfind a hundred noted passages evidently showing how religiously they\nobserved proper names and their significations.\n\nHe had hardly ended this discourse, when the two colonels arrived with\ntheir soldiers, all well armed and resolute.  Pantagruel made them a short\nspeech, entreating them to behave themselves bravely in case they were\nattacked; for he could not yet believe that the Chitterlings were so\ntreacherous; but he bade them by no means to give the first offence, giving\nthem Carnival for the watchword.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Chitterlings are not to be slighted by men.\n\nYou shake your empty noddles now, jolly topers, and do not believe what I\ntell you here, any more than if it were some tale of a tub.  Well, well, I\ncannot help it.  Believe it if you will; if you won't, let it alone.  For\nmy part, I very well know what I say.  It was in the Wild Island, in our\nvoyage to the Holy Bottle.  I tell you the time and place; what would you\nhave more?  I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient\ngiants that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa,\nand set among those the shady Olympus, to dash out the gods' brains,\nunnestle them, and scour their heavenly lodgings.  Theirs was no small\nstrength, you may well think, and yet they were nothing but Chitterlings\nfrom the waist downwards, or at least serpents, not to tell a lie for the\nmatter.\n\nThe serpent that tempted Eve, too, was of the Chitterling kind, and yet it\nis recorded of him that he was more subtle than any beast of the field.\nEven so are Chitterlings.  Nay, to this very hour they hold in some\nuniversities that this same tempter was the Chitterling called Ithyphallus,\ninto which was transformed bawdy Priapus, arch-seducer of females in\nparadise, that is, a garden, in Greek.\n\nPray now tell me who can tell but that the Swiss, now so bold and warlike,\nwere formerly Chitterlings?  For my part, I would not take my oath to the\ncontrary.  The Himantopodes, a nation very famous in Ethiopia, according to\nPliny's description, are Chitterlings, and nothing else.  If all this will\nnot satisfy your worships, or remove your incredulity, I would have you\nforthwith (I mean drinking first, that nothing be done rashly) visit\nLusignan, Parthenay, Vouant, Mervant, and Ponzauges in Poitou.  There you\nwill find a cloud of witnesses, not of your affidavit-men of the right\nstamp, but credible time out of mind, that will take their corporal oath,\non Rigome's knuckle-bone, that Melusina their founder or foundress, which\nyou please, was woman from the head to the prick-purse, and thence\ndownwards was a serpentine Chitterling, or if you'll have it otherwise, a\nChitterlingdized serpent.  She nevertheless had a genteel and noble gait,\nimitated to this very day by your hop-merchants of Brittany, in their\npaspie and country dances.\n\nWhat do you think was the cause of Erichthonius's being the first inventor\nof coaches, litters, and chariots?  Nothing but because Vulcan had begot\nhim with Chitterlingdized legs, which to hide he chose to ride in a litter,\nrather than on horseback; for Chitterlings were not yet in esteem at that\ntime.\n\nThe Scythian nymph, Ora, was likewise half woman and half Chitterling, and\nyet seemed so beautiful to Jupiter that nothing could serve him but he must\ngive her a touch of his godship's kindness; and accordingly he had a brave\nboy by her, called Colaxes; and therefore I would have you leave off\nshaking your empty noddles at this, as if it were a story, and firmly\nbelieve that nothing is truer than the gospel.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Friar John joined with the cooks to fight the Chitterlings.\n\nFriar John seeing these furious Chitterlings thus boldly march up, said to\nPantagruel, Here will be a rare battle of hobby-horses, a pretty kind of\npuppet-show fight, for aught I see.  Oh! what mighty honour and wonderful\nglory will attend our victory!  I would have you only be a bare spectator\nof this fight, and for anything else leave me and my men to deal with them.\nWhat men? said Pantagruel.  Matter of breviary, replied Friar John.  How\ncame Potiphar, who was head-cook of Pharaoh's kitchens, he that bought\nJoseph, and whom the said Joseph might have made a cuckold if he had not\nbeen a Joseph; how came he, I say, to be made general of all the horse in\nthe kingdom of Egypt?  Why was Nabuzardan, King Nebuchadnezzar's head-cook,\nchosen to the exclusion of all other captains to besiege and destroy\nJerusalem?  I hear you, replied Pantagruel.  By St. Christopher's whiskers,\nsaid Friar John, I dare lay a wager that it was because they had formerly\nengaged Chitterlings, or men as little valued; whom to rout, conquer, and\ndestroy, cooks are without comparison more fit than cuirassiers and\ngendarmes armed at all points, or all the horse and foot in the world.\n\nYou put me in mind, said Pantagruel, of what is written amongst the\nfacetious and merry sayings of Cicero.  During the more than civil wars\nbetween Caesar and Pompey, though he was much courted by the first, he\nnaturally leaned more to the side of the latter.  Now one day hearing that\nthe Pompeians in a certain rencontre had lost a great many men, he took a\nfancy to visit their camp.  There he perceived little strength, less\ncourage, but much disorder.  From that time, foreseeing that things would\ngo ill with them, as it since happened, he began to banter now one and then\nanother, and be very free of his cutting jests; so some of Pompey's\ncaptains, playing the good fellows to show their assurance, told him, Do\nyou see how many eagles we have yet?  (They were then the device of the\nRomans in war.)  They might be of use to you, replied Cicero, if you had to\ndo with magpies.\n\nThus, seeing we are to fight Chitterlings, pursued Pantagruel, you infer\nthence that it is a culinary war, and have a mind to join with the cooks.\nWell, do as you please, I'll stay here in the meantime, and wait for the\nevent of the rumpus.\n\nFriar John went that very moment among the sutlers, into the cooks' tents,\nand told them in a pleasing manner:  I must see you crowned with honour and\ntriumph this day, my lads; to your arms are reserved such achievements as\nnever yet were performed within the memory of man.  Ods-belly, do they make\nnothing of the valiant cooks?  Let us go fight yonder fornicating\nChitterlings!  I'll be your captain.  But first let's drink, boys.  Come\non! let us be of good cheer.  Noble captain, returned the kitchen tribe,\nthis was spoken like yourself; bravely offered.  Huzza! we are all at your\nexcellency's command, and we live and die by you.  Live, live, said Friar\nJohn, a God's name; but die by no means.  That is the Chitterlings' lot;\nthey shall have their bellyful of it.  Come on then, let us put ourselves\nin order; Nabuzardan's the word.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Friar John fitted up the sow; and of the valiant cooks that went into\nit.\n\nThen, by Friar John's order, the engineers and their workmen fitted up the\ngreat sow that was in the ship Leathern Bottle.  It was a wonderful\nmachine, so contrived that, by means of large engines that were round about\nit in rows, it throw'd forked iron bars and four-squared steel bolts; and\nin its hold two hundred men at least could easily fight, and be sheltered.\nIt was made after the model of the sow of Riole, by the means of which\nBergerac was retaken from the English in the reign of Charles the Sixth.\n\nHere are the names of the noble and valiant cooks who went into the sow, as\nthe Greeks did into the Trojan horse:\n\nSour-sauce.        Crisp-pig.         Carbonado.\nSweet-meat.        Greasy-slouch.     Sop-in-pan.\nGreedy-gut.        Fat-gut.           Pick-fowl.\nLiquorice-chops.   Bray-mortar.       Mustard-pot.\nSoused-pork.       Lick-sauce.        Hog's-haslet.\nSlap-sauce.        Hog's-foot.        Chopped-phiz.\nCock-broth.        Hodge-podge.       Gallimaufry.\nSlipslop.\n\nAll these noble cooks in their coat-of-arms did bear, in a field gules, a\nlarding-pin vert, charged with a chevron argent.\n\nLard, hog's-lard.  Pinch-lard.        Snatch-lard.\nNibble-lard.       Top-lard.          Gnaw-lard.\nFilch-lard.        Pick-lard.         Scrape-lard.\nFat-lard.          Save-lard.         Chew-lard.\n\nGaillard (by syncope) born near Rambouillet.  The said culinary doctor's\nname was Gaillardlard, in the same manner as you use to say idolatrous for\nidololatrous.\n\nStiff-lard.        Cut-lard.          Waste-lard.\nWatch-lard.        Mince-lard.        Ogle-lard.\nSweet-lard.        Dainty-lard.       Weigh-lard.\nEat-lard.          Fresh-lard.        Gulch-lard.\nSnap-lard.         Rusty-lard.        Eye-lard.\nCatch-lard.\n\nNames unknown among the Marranes and Jews.\n\nBallocky.          Thirsty.           Porridge-pot.\nPick-sallat.       Kitchen-stuff.     Lick-dish.\nBroil-rasher.      Verjuice.          Salt-gullet.\nConey-skin.        Save-dripping.     Snail-dresser.\nDainty-chops.      Watercress.        Soup-monger.\nPie-wright.        Scrape-turnip.     Brewis-belly.\nPudding-pan.       Trivet.            Chine-picker.\nToss-pot.          Monsieur Ragout.   Suck-gravy.\nMustard-sauce.     Crack-pipkin.      Macaroon.\nClaret-sauce.      Scrape-pot.        Skewer-maker.\nSwill-broth.\n\nSmell-smock.  He was afterwards taken from the kitchen and removed to\nchamber-practice, for the service of the noble Cardinal Hunt-venison.\n\nRot-roast.         Hog's gullet.      Fox-tail.\nDish-clout.        Sirloin.           Fly-flap.\nSave-suet.         Spit-mutton.       Old Grizzle.\nFire-fumbler.      Fritter-frier.     Ruff-belly.\nPillicock.         Flesh-smith.       Saffron-sauce.\nLong-tool.         Cram-gut.          Strutting-tom.\nPrick-pride.       Tuzzy-mussy.       Slashed-snout.\nPrick-madam.       Jacket-liner.      Smutty-face.\nPricket.           Guzzle-drink.\n\nMondam, that first invented madam's sauce, and for that discovery was thus\ncalled in the Scotch-French dialect.\n\nLoblolly.          Sloven.            Trencher-man.\nSlabber-chops.     Swallow-pitcher.   Goodman Goosecap.\nScum-pot.          Wafer-monger.      Munch-turnip.\nGully-guts.        Snap-gobbet.       Pudding-bag.\nRinse-pot.         Scurvy-phiz.       Pig-sticker.\nDrink-spiller.\n\nRobert.  He invented Robert's sauce, so good and necessary for roasted\nconeys, ducks, fresh pork, poached eggs, salt fish, and a thousand other\nsuch dishes.\n\nCold-eel.          Frying-pan.        Big-snout.\nThornback.         Man of dough.      Lick-finger.\nGurnard.           Sauce-doctor.      Tit-bit.\nGrumbling-gut.     Waste-butter.      Sauce-box.\nAlms-scrip.        Shitbreech.        All-fours.\nTaste-all.         Thick-brawn.       Whimwham.\nScrap-merchant.    Tom T--d.          Baste-roast.\nBelly-timberman.   Mouldy-crust.      Gaping-hoyden.\nHashee.            Hasty.             Calf's-pluck.\nFrig-palate.       Red-herring.       Leather-breeches.\nPowdering-tub.     Cheesecake.\n\nAll these noble cooks went into the sow, merry, cheery, hale, brisk, old\ndogs at mischief, and ready to fight stoutly.  Friar John ever and anon\nwaving his huge scimitar, brought up the rear, and double-locked the doors\non the inside.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel broke the Chitterlings at the knees.\n\nThe Chitterlings advanced so near that Pantagruel perceived that they\nstretched their arms and already began to charge their lances, which caused\nhim to send Gymnast to know what they meant, and why they thus, without the\nleast provocation, came to fall upon their old trusty friends, who had\nneither said nor done the least ill thing to them.  Gymnast being advanced\nnear their front, bowed very low, and said to them as loud as ever he\ncould:  We are friends, we are friends; all, all of us your friends, yours,\nand at your command; we are for Carnival, your old confederate.  Some have\nsince told me that he mistook, and said cavernal instead of carnival.\n\nWhatever it was, the word was no sooner out of his mouth but a huge little\nsquab Sausage, starting out of the front of their main body, would have\ngriped him by the collar.  By the helmet of Mars, said Gymnast, I will\nswallow thee; but thou shalt only come in in chips and slices; for, big as\nthou art, thou couldst never come in whole.  This spoke, he lugs out his\ntrusty sword, Kiss-mine-arse (so he called it) with both his fists, and cut\nthe Sausage in twain.  Bless me, how fat the foul thief was! it puts me in\nmind of the huge bull of Berne, that was slain at Marignan when the drunken\nSwiss were so mauled there.  Believe me, it had little less than four\ninches' lard on its paunch.\n\nThe Sausage's job being done, a crowd of others flew upon Gymnast, and had\nmost scurvily dragged him down when Pantagruel with his men came up to his\nrelief.  Then began the martial fray, higgledy-piggledy.  Maul-chitterling\ndid maul chitterlings; Cut-pudding did cut puddings; Pantagruel did break\nthe Chitterlings at the knees; Friar John played at least in sight within\nhis sow, viewing and observing all things; when the Pattipans that lay in\nambuscade most furiously sallied out upon Pantagruel.\n\nFriar John, who lay snug all this while, by that time perceiving the rout\nand hurlyburly, set open the doors of his sow and sallied out with his\nmerry Greeks, some of them armed with iron spits, others with andirons,\nracks, fire-shovels, frying-pans, kettles, grid-irons, oven forks, tongs,\ndripping pans, brooms, iron pots, mortars, pestles, all in battle array,\nlike so many housebreakers, hallooing and roaring out all together most\nfrightfully, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan.  Thus shouting and hooting\nthey fought like dragons, and charged through the Pattipans and Sausages.\nThe Chitterlings perceiving this fresh reinforcement, and that the others\nwould be too hard for 'em, betook themselves to their heels, scampering off\nwith full speed, as if the devil had come for them.  Friar John, with an\niron crow, knocked them down as fast as hops; his men, too, were not\nsparing on their side.  Oh, what a woeful sight it was! the field was all\nover strewed with heaps of dead or wounded Chitterlings; and history\nrelates that had not heaven had a hand in it, the Chitterling tribe had\nbeen totally routed out of the world by the culinary champions.  But there\nhappened a wonderful thing, you may believe as little or as much of it as\nyou please.\n\nFrom the north flew towards us a huge, fat, thick, grizzly swine, with long\nand large wings, like those of a windmill; its plumes red crimson, like\nthose of a phenicoptere (which in Languedoc they call flaman); its eyes\nwere red, and flaming like a carbuncle; its ears green, like a Prasin\nemerald; its teeth like a topaz; its tail long and black, like jet; its\nfeet white, diaphanous and transparent like a diamond, somewhat broad, and\nof the splay kind, like those of geese, and as Queen Dick's used to be at\nToulouse in the days of yore.  About its neck it wore a gold collar, round\nwhich were some Ionian characters, whereof I could pick out but two words,\nUS ATHENAN, hog-teaching Minerva.\n\nThe sky was clear before; but at that monster's appearance it changed so\nmightily for the worse that we were all amazed at it.  As soon as the\nChitterlings perceived the flying hog, down they all threw their weapons\nand fell on their knees, lifting up their hands joined together, without\nspeaking one word, in a posture of adoration.  Friar John and his party\nkept on mincing, felling, braining, mangling, and spitting the Chitterlings\nlike mad; but Pantagruel sounded a retreat, and all hostility ceased.\n\nThe monster having several times hovered backwards and forwards between the\ntwo armies, with a tail-shot voided above twenty-seven butts of mustard on\nthe ground; then flew away through the air, crying all the while, Carnival,\nCarnival, Carnival.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel held a treaty with Niphleseth, Queen of the Chitterlings.\n\nThe monster being out of sight, and the two armies remaining silent,\nPantagruel demanded a parley with the lady Niphleseth, Queen of the\nChitterlings, who was in her chariot by the standards; and it was easily\ngranted.  The queen alighted, courteously received Pantagruel, and was glad\nto see him.  Pantagruel complained to her of this breach of peace; but she\ncivilly made her excuse, telling him that a false information had caused\nall this mischief; her spies having brought her word that Shrovetide, their\nmortal foe, was landed, and spent his time in examining the urine of\nphyseters.\n\nShe therefore entreated him to pardon them their offence, telling him that\nsir-reverence was sooner found in Chitterlings than gall; and offering, for\nherself and all her successors, to hold of him and his the whole island and\ncountry; to obey him in all his commands, be friends to his friends, and\nfoes to his foes; and also to send every year, as an acknowledgment of\ntheir homage, a tribute of seventy-eight thousand royal Chitterlings, to\nserve him at his first course at table six months in the year; which was\npunctually performed.  For the next day she sent the aforesaid quantity of\nroyal Chitterlings to the good Gargantua, under the conduct of young\nNiphleseth, infanta of the island.\n\nThe good Gargantua made a present of them to the great King of Paris.  But\nby change of air, and for want of mustard (the natural balsam and restorer\nof Chitterlings), most of them died.  By the great king's particular grant\nthey were buried in heaps in a part of Paris to this day called La Rue\npavee d'Andouilles, the street paved with Chitterlings.  At the request of\nthe ladies at his court young Niphleseth was preserved, honourably used,\nand since that married to heart's content; and was the mother of many\nchildren, for which heaven be praised.\n\nPantagruel civilly thanked the queen, forgave all offences, refused the\noffer she had made of her country, and gave her a pretty little knife.\nAfter that he asked several nice questions concerning the apparition of\nthat flying hog.  She answered that it was the idea of Carnival, their\ntutelary god in time of war, first founder and original of all the\nChitterling race; for which reason he resembled a hog, for Chitterlings\ndrew their extraction from hogs.\n\nPantagruel asking to what purpose and curative indication he had voided so\nmuch mustard on the earth, the queen replied that mustard was their\nsanc-greal and celestial balsam, of which, laying but a little in the wounds\nof the fallen Chitterlings, in a very short time the wounded were healed and\nthe dead restored to life.  Pantagruel held no further discourse with the\nqueen, but retired a-shipboard.  The like did all the boon companions, with\ntheir implements of destruction and their huge sow.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel went into the island of Ruach.\n\nTwo days after we arrived at the island of Ruach; and I swear to you, by\nthe celestial hen and chickens, that I found the way of living of the\npeople so strange and wonderful that I can't, for the heart's blood of me,\nhalf tell it you.  They live on nothing but wind, eat nothing but wind, and\ndrink nothing but wind.  They have no other houses but weathercocks.  They\nsow no other seeds but the three sorts of windflowers, rue, and herbs that\nmay make one break wind to the purpose; these scour them off carefully.\nThe common sort of people to feed themselves make use of feather, paper, or\nlinen fans, according to their abilities.  As for the rich, they live by\nthe means of windmills.\n\nWhen they would have some noble treat, the tables are spread under one or\ntwo windmills.  There they feast as merry as beggars, and during the meal\ntheir whole talk is commonly of the goodness, excellency, salubrity, and\nrarity of winds; as you, jolly topers, in your cups philosophize and argue\nupon wines.  The one praises the south-east, the other the south-west; this\nthe west and by south, and this the east and by north; another the west,\nand another the east; and so of the rest.  As for lovers and amorous\nsparks, no gale for them like a smock-gale.  For the sick they use bellows\nas we use clysters among us.\n\nOh! said to me a little diminutive swollen bubble, that I had now but a\nbladderful of that same Languedoc wind which they call Cierce.  The famous\nphysician, Scurron, passing one day by this country, was telling us that it\nis so strong that it will make nothing of overturning a loaded waggon.  Oh!\nwhat good would it not do my Oedipodic leg.  The biggest are not the best;\nbut, said Panurge, rather would I had here a large butt of that same good\nLanguedoc wine that grows at Mirevaux, Canteperdrix, and Frontignan.\n\nI saw a good likely sort of a man there, much resembling Ventrose, tearing\nand fuming in a grievous fret with a tall burly groom and a pimping little\npage of his, laying them on, like the devil, with a buskin.  Not knowing\nthe cause of his anger, at first I thought that all this was by the\ndoctor's advice, as being a thing very healthy to the master to be in a\npassion and to his man to be banged for it.  But at last I heard him taxing\nhis man with stealing from him, like a rogue as he was, the better half of\na large leathern bag of an excellent southerly wind, which he had carefully\nlaid up, like a hidden reserve, against the cold weather.\n\nThey neither exonerate, dung, piss, nor spit in that island; but, to make\namends, they belch, fizzle, funk, and give tail-shots in abundance.  They\nare troubled with all manner of distempers; and, indeed, all distempers are\nengendered and proceed from ventosities, as Hippocrates demonstrates, lib.\nDe Flatibus.  But the most epidemical among them is the wind-cholic.  The\nremedies which they use are large clysters, whereby they void store of\nwindiness.  They all die of dropsies and tympanies, the men farting and the\nwomen fizzling; so that their soul takes her leave at the back-door.\n\nSome time after, walking in the island, we met three hairbrained airy\nfellows, who seemed mightily puffed up, and went to take their pastime and\nview the plovers, who live on the same diet as themselves, and abound in\nthe island.  I observed that, as your true topers when they travel carry\nflasks, leathern bottles, and small runlets along with them, so each of\nthem had at his girdle a pretty little pair of bellows.  If they happened\nto want wind, by the help of those pretty bellows they immediately drew\nsome, fresh and cool, by attraction and reciprocal expulsion; for, as you\nwell know, wind essentially defined is nothing but fluctuating and agitated\nair.\n\nA while after, we were commanded, in the king's name, not to receive for\nthree hours any man or woman of the country on board our ships; some having\nstolen from him a rousing fart, of the very individual wind which old\ngoodman Aeolus the snorer gave Ulysses to conduct his ship whenever it\nshould happen to be becalmed.  Which fart the king kept religiously, like\nanother sanc-greal, and performed a world of wonderful cures with it in\nmany dangerous diseases, letting loose and distributing to the patient only\nas much of it as might frame a virginal fart; which is, if you must know,\nwhat our sanctimonials, alias nuns, in their dialect call ringing\nbackwards.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow small rain lays a high wind.\n\nPantagruel commended their government and way of living, and said to their\nhypenemian mayor:  If you approve Epicurus's opinion, placing the summum\nbonum in pleasure (I mean pleasure that's easy and free from toil), I\nesteem you happy; for your food being wind, costs you little or nothing,\nsince you need but blow.  True, sir, returned the mayor; but, alas! nothing\nis perfect here below; for too often when we are at table, feeding on some\ngood blessed wind of God as on celestial manna, merry as so many friars,\ndown drops on a sudden some small rain, which lays our wind, and so robs us\nof it.  Thus many a meal's lost for want of meat.\n\nJust so, quoth Panurge, Jenin Toss-pot of Quinquenais, evacuating some wine\nof his own burning on his wife's posteriors, laid the ill-fumed wind that\nblowed out of their centre as out of some magisterial Aeolipile.  Here is a\nkind of a whim on that subject which I made formerly:\n\n  One evening when Toss-pot had been at his butts,\n  And Joan his fat spouse crammed with turnips her guts,\n  Together they pigged, nor did drink so besot him\n  But he did what was done when his daddy begot him.\n  Now when to recruit he'd fain have been snoring,\n  Joan's back-door was filthily puffing and roaring;\n  So for spite he bepissed her, and quickly did find\n  That a very small rain lays a very high wind.\n\nWe are also plagued yearly with a very great calamity, cried the mayor; for\na giant called Wide-nostrils, who lives in the island of Tohu, comes hither\nevery spring to purge, by the advice of his physicians, and swallows us,\nlike so many pills, a great number of windmills, and of bellows also, at\nwhich his mouth waters exceedingly.\n\nNow this is a sad mortification to us here, who are fain to fast over three\nor four whole Lents every year for this, besides certain petty Lents, ember\nweeks, and other orison and starving tides.  And have you no remedy for\nthis? asked Pantagruel.  By the advice of our Mezarims, replied the mayor,\nabout the time that he uses to give us a visit, we garrison our windmills\nwith good store of cocks and hens.  The first time that the greedy thief\nswallowed them, they had like to have done his business at once; for they\ncrowed and cackled in his maw, and fluttered up and down athwart and along\nin his stomach, which threw the glutton into a lipothymy cardiac passion\nand dreadful and dangerous convulsions, as if some serpent, creeping in at\nhis mouth, had been frisking in his stomach.\n\nHere is a comparative as altogether incongruous and impertinent, cried\nFriar John, interrupting them; for I have formerly heard that if a serpent\nchance to get into a man's stomach it will not do him the least hurt, but\nwill immediately get out if you do but hang the patient by the heels and\nlay a panful of warm milk near his mouth.  You were told this, said\nPantagruel, and so were those who gave you this account; but none ever saw\nor read of such a cure.  On the contrary, Hippocrates, in his fifth book of\nEpidem, writes that such a case happening in his time the patient presently\ndied of a spasm and convulsion.\n\nBesides the cocks and hens, said the mayor, continuing his story, all the\nfoxes in the country whipped into Wide-nostril's mouth, posting after the\npoultry; which made such a stir with Reynard at their heels, that he\ngrievously fell into fits each minute of an hour.\n\nAt last, by the advice of a Baden enchanter, at the time of the paroxysm he\nused to flay a fox by way of antidote and counter-poison.  Since that he\ntook better advice, and eases himself with taking a clyster made with a\ndecoction of wheat and barley corns, and of livers of goslings; to the\nfirst of which the poultry run, and the foxes to the latter.  Besides, he\nswallows some of your badgers or fox-dogs by the way of pills and boluses.\nThis is our misfortune.\n\nCease to fear, good people, cried Pantagruel; this huge Wide-nostrils, this\nsame swallower of windmills, is no more, I will assure you; he died, being\nstifled and choked with a lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven,\nby the advice of his physicians.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel went ashore in the island of Pope-Figland.\n\nThe next morning we arrived at the island of Pope-figs; formerly a rich and\nfree people, called the Gaillardets, but now, alas! miserably poor, and\nunder the yoke of the Papimen.  The occasion of it was this:\n\nOn a certain yearly high holiday, the burgomaster, syndics, and topping\nrabbies of the Gaillardets chanced to go into the neighbouring island\nPapimany to see the festival and pass away the time.  Now one of them\nhaving espied the pope's picture (with the sight of which, according to a\nlaudable custom, the people were blessed on high-offering holidays), made\nmouths at it, and cried, A fig for it! as a sign of manifest contempt and\nderision.  To be revenged of this affront, the Papimen, some days after,\nwithout giving the others the least warning, took arms, and surprised,\ndestroyed, and ruined the whole island of the Gaillardets; putting the men\nto the sword, and sparing none but the women and children, and those too\nonly on condition to do what the inhabitants of Milan were condemned to by\nthe Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.\n\nThese had rebelled against him in his absence, and ignominiously turned the\nempress out of the city, mounting her a-horseback on a mule called Thacor,\nwith her breech foremost towards the old jaded mule's head, and her face\nturned towards the crupper.  Now Frederick being returned, mastered them,\nand caused so careful a search to be made that he found out and got the\nfamous mule Thacor.  Then the hangman by his order clapped a fig into the\nmule's jimcrack, in the presence of the enslaved cits that were brought\ninto the middle of the great market-place, and proclaimed in the emperor's\nname, with trumpets, that whosoever of them would save his own life should\npublicly pull the fig out with his teeth, and after that put it in again in\nthe very individual cranny whence he had draw'd it without using his hands,\nand that whoever refused to do this should presently swing for it and die\nin his shoes.  Some sturdy fools, standing upon their punctilio, chose\nhonourably to be hanged rather than submit to so shameful and abominable a\ndisgrace; and others, less nice in point of ceremony, took heart of grace,\nand even resolved to have at the fig, and a fig for't, rather than make a\nworse figure with a hempen collar, and die in the air at so short warning.\nAccordingly, when they had neatly picked out the fig with their teeth from\nold Thacor's snatch-blatch, they plainly showed it the headsman, saying,\nEcco lo fico, Behold the fig!\n\nBy the same ignominy the rest of these poor distressed Gaillardets saved\ntheir bacon, becoming tributaries and slaves, and the name of Pope-figs was\ngiven them, because they said, A fig for the pope's image.  Since this, the\npoor wretches never prospered, but every year the devil was at their doors,\nand they were plagued with hail, storms, famine, and all manner of woes, as\nan everlasting punishment for the sin of their ancestors and relations.\nPerceiving the misery and calamity of that generation, we did not care to\ngo further up into the country, contenting ourselves with going into a\nlittle chapel near the haven to take some holy water.  It was dilapidated\nand ruined, wanting also a cover--like Saint Peter at Rome.  When we were\nin, as we dipped our fingers in the sanctified cistern, we spied in the\nmiddle of that holy pickle a fellow muffled up with stoles, all under\nwater, like a diving duck, except the tip of his snout to draw his breath.\nAbout him stood three priests, true shavelings, clean shorn and polled, who\nwere muttering strange words to the devils out of a conjuring book.\n\nPantagruel was not a little amazed at this, and inquiring what kind of\nsport these were at, was told that for three years last past the plague had\nso dreadfully raged in the island that the better half of it had been\nutterly depopulated, and the lands lay fallow and unoccupied.  Now, the\nmortality being over, this same fellow who had crept into the holy tub,\nhaving a large piece of ground, chanced to be sowing it with white winter\nwheat at the very minute of an hour that a kind of a silly sucking devil,\nwho could not yet write or read, or hail and thunder, unless it were on\nparsley or coleworts, and got leave of his master Lucifer to go into this\nisland of Pope-figs, where the devils were very familiar with the men and\nwomen, and often went to take their pastime.\n\nThis same devil being got thither, directed his discourse to the\nhusbandman, and asked him what he was doing.  The poor man told him that he\nwas sowing the ground with corn to help him to subsist the next year.  Ay,\nbut the ground is none of thine, Mr. Plough-jobber, cried the devil, but\nmine; for since the time that you mocked the pope all this land has been\nproscribed, adjudged, and abandoned to us.  However, to sow corn is not my\nprovince; therefore I will give thee leave to sow the field, that is to\nsay, provided we share the profit.  I will, replied the farmer.  I mean,\nsaid the devil, that of what the land shall bear, two lots shall be made,\none of what shall grow above ground, the other of what shall be covered\nwith earth.  The right of choosing belongs to me; for I am a devil of noble\nand ancient race; thou art a base clown.  I therefore choose what shall lie\nunder ground, take thou what shall be above.  When dost thou reckon to\nreap, hah?  About the middle of July, quoth the farmer.  Well, said the\ndevil, I'll not fail thee then; in the meantime, slave as thou oughtest.\nWork, clown, work.  I am going to tempt to the pleasing sin of whoring the\nnuns of Dryfart, the sham saints of the cowl, and the gluttonish crew.  I\nam more than sure of these.  They need but meet, and the job is done; true\nfire and tinder, touch and take; down falls nun, and up gets friar.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow a junior devil was fooled by a husbandman of Pope-Figland.\n\nIn the middle of July the devil came to the place aforesaid with all his\ncrew at his heels, a whole choir of the younger fry of hell; and having met\nthe farmer, said to him, Well, clodpate, how hast thou done since I went?\nThou and I must share the concern.  Ay, master devil, quoth the clown; it\nis but reason we should.  Then he and his men began to cut and reap the\ncorn; and, on the other side, the devil's imps fell to work, grubbing up\nand pulling out the stubble by the root.\n\nThe countryman had his corn thrashed, winnowed it, put in into sacks, and\nwent with it to market.  The same did the devil's servants, and sat them\ndown there by the man to sell their straw.  The countryman sold off his\ncorn at a good rate, and with the money filled an old kind of a demi-buskin\nwhich was fastened to his girdle.  But the devil a sou the devils took; far\nfrom taking handsel, they were flouted and jeered by the country louts.\n\nMarket being over, quoth the devil to the farmer, Well, clown, thou hast\nchoused me once, it is thy fault; chouse me twice, 'twill be mine.  Nay,\ngood sir devil, replied the farmer; how can I be said to have choused you,\nsince it was your worship that chose first?  The truth is, that by this\ntrick you thought to cheat me, hoping that nothing would spring out of the\nearth for my share, and that you should find whole underground the corn\nwhich I had sowed, and with it tempt the poor and needy, the close\nhypocrite, or the covetous griper; thus making them fall into your snares.\nBut troth, you must e'en go to school yet; you are no conjurer, for aught I\nsee; for the corn that was sow'd is dead and rotten, its corruption having\ncaused the generation of that which you saw me sell.  So you chose the\nworst, and therefore are cursed in the gospel.  Well, talk no more of it,\nquoth the devil; what canst thou sow our field with for next year?  If a\nman would make the best of it, answered the ploughman, 'twere fit he sow it\nwith radish.  Now, cried the devil, thou talkest like an honest fellow,\nbumpkin.  Well, sow me good store of radish, I'll see and keep them safe\nfrom storms, and will not hail a bit on them.  But hark ye me, this time I\nbespeak for my share what shall be above ground; what's under shall be\nthine.  Drudge on, looby, drudge on.  I am going to tempt heretics; their\nsouls are dainty victuals when broiled in rashers and well powdered.  My\nLord Lucifer has the griping in the guts; they'll make a dainty warm dish\nfor his honour's maw.\n\nWhen the season of radishes was come, our devil failed not to meet in the\nfield, with a train of rascally underlings, all waiting devils, and finding\nthere the farmer and his men, he began to cut and gather the leaves of the\nradishes.  After him the farmer with his spade dug up the radishes, and\nclapped them up into pouches.  This done, the devil, the farmer, and their\ngangs, hied them to market, and there the farmer presently made good money\nof his radishes; but the poor devil took nothing; nay, what was worse, he\nwas made a common laughing-stock by the gaping hoidens.  I see thou hast\nplayed me a scurvy trick, thou villainous fellow, cried the angry devil; at\nlast I am fully resolved even to make an end of the business betwixt thee\nand myself about the ground, and these shall be the terms:  we will\nclapperclaw each other, and whoever of us two shall first cry Hold, shall\nquit his share of the field, which shall wholly belong to the conqueror.  I\nfix the time for this trial of skill on this day seven-night; assure\nthyself that I'll claw thee off like a devil.  I was going to tempt your\nfornicators, bailiffs, perplexers of causes, scriveners, forgers of deeds,\ntwo-handed counsellors, prevaricating solicitors, and other such vermin;\nbut they were so civil as to send me word by an interpreter that they are\nall mine already.  Besides, our master Lucifer is so cloyed with their\nsouls that he often sends them back to the smutty scullions and slovenly\ndevils of his kitchen, and they scarce go down with them, unless now and\nthen, when they are high-seasoned.\n\nSome say there is no breakfast like a student's, no dinner like a lawyer's,\nno afternoon's nunchion like a vine-dresser's, no supper like a\ntradesman's, no second supper like a serving-wench's, and none of these\nmeals equal to a frockified hobgoblin's.  All this is true enough.\nAccordingly, at my Lord Lucifer's first course, hobgoblins, alias imps in\ncowls, are a standing dish.  He willingly used to breakfast on students;\nbut, alas!  I do not know by what ill luck they have of late years joined\nthe Holy Bible to their studies; so the devil a one we can get down among\nus; and I verily believe that unless the hypocrites of the tribe of Levi\nhelp us in it, taking from the enlightened book-mongers their St. Paul,\neither by threats, revilings, force, violence, fire, and faggot, we shall\nnot be able to hook in any more of them to nibble at below.  He dines\ncommonly on counsellors, mischief-mongers, multipliers of lawsuits, such as\nwrest and pervert right and law and grind and fleece the poor; he never\nfears to want any of these.  But who can endure to be wedded to a dish?\n\nHe said t'other day, at a full chapter, that he had a great mind to eat the\nsoul of one of the fraternity of the cowl that had forgot to speak for\nhimself in his sermon, and he promised double pay and a large pension to\nanyone that should bring him such a titbit piping hot.  We all went\na-hunting after such a rarity, but came home without the prey; for they all\nadmonish the good women to remember their convent.  As for afternoon\nnunchions, he has left them off since he was so woefully griped with the\ncolic; his fosterers, sutlers, charcoal-men, and boiling cooks having been\nsadly mauled and peppered off in the northern countries.\n\nHis high devilship sups very well on tradesmen, usurers, apothecaries,\ncheats, coiners, and adulterers of wares.  Now and then, when he is on the\nmerry pin, his second supper is of serving-wenches who, after they have by\nstealth soaked their faces with their master's good liquor, fill up the\nvessel with it at second hand, or with other stinking water.\n\nWell, drudge on, boor, drudge on; I am going to tempt the students of\nTrebisonde to leave father and mother, forego for ever the established and\ncommon rule of living, disclaim and free themselves from obeying their\nlawful sovereign's edicts, live in absolute liberty, proudly despise\neveryone, laugh at all mankind, and taking the fine jovial little cap of\npoetic licence, become so many pretty hobgoblins.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the devil was deceived by an old woman of Pope-Figland.\n\nThe country lob trudged home very much concerned and thoughtful, you may\nswear; insomuch that his good woman, seeing him thus look moping, weened\nthat something had been stolen from him at market; but when she had heard\nthe cause of his affliction and seen his budget well lined with coin, she\nbade him be of good cheer, assuring him that he would be never the worse\nfor the scratching bout in question; wishing him only to leave her to\nmanage that business, and not trouble his head about it; for she had\nalready contrived how to bring him off cleverly.  Let the worst come to the\nworst, said the husbandman, it will be but a scratch; for I'll yield at the\nfirst stroke, and quit the field.  Quit a fart, replied the wife; he shall\nhave none of the field.  Rely upon me, and be quiet; let me alone to deal\nwith him.  You say he is a pimping little devil, that is enough; I will\nsoon make him give up the field, I will warrant you.  Indeed, had he been a\ngreat devil, it had been somewhat.\n\nThe day that we landed in the island happened to be that which the devil\nhad fixed for the combat.  Now the countryman having, like a good Catholic,\nvery fairly confessed himself, and received betimes in the morning, by the\nadvice of the vicar had hid himself, all but the snout, in the holy-water\npot, in the posture in which we found him; and just as they were telling us\nthis story, news came that the old woman had fooled the devil and gained\nthe field.  You may not be sorry, perhaps, to hear how this happened.\n\nThe devil, you must know, came to the poor man's door, and rapping there,\ncried, So ho! ho, the house! ho, clodpate! where art thou?  Come out with a\nvengeance; come out with a wannion; come out and be damned; now for\nclawing.  Then briskly and resolutely entering the house, and not finding\nthe countryman there, he spied his wife lying on the ground, piteously\nweeping and howling.  What is the matter? asked the devil.  Where is he?\nwhat does he?  Oh! that I knew where he is, replied threescore and five;\nthe wicked rogue, the butcherly dog, the murderer!  He has spoiled me; I am\nundone; I die of what he has done me.  How, cried the devil, what is it?\nI'll tickle him off for you by-and-by.  Alas! cried the old dissembler, he\ntold me, the butcher, the tyrant, the tearer of devils told me that he had\nmade a match to scratch with you this day, and to try his claws he did but\njust touch me with his little finger here betwixt the legs, and has spoiled\nme for ever.  Oh! I am a dead woman; I shall never be myself again; do but\nsee!  Nay, and besides, he talked of going to the smith's to have his\npounces sharpened and pointed.  Alas! you are undone, Mr. Devil; good sir,\nscamper quickly, I am sure he won't stay; save yourself, I beseech you.\nWhile she said this she uncovered herself up to the chin, after the manner\nin which the Persian women met their children who fled from the fight, and\nplainly showed her what do ye call them.  The frightened devil, seeing the\nenormous solution of the continuity in all its dimensions, blessed himself,\nand cried out, Mahon, Demiourgon, Megaera, Alecto, Persephone! 'slife,\ncatch me here when he comes!  I am gone! 'sdeath, what a gash!  I resign\nhim the field.\n\nHaving heard the catastrophe of the story, we retired a-shipboard, not\nbeing willing to stay there any longer.  Pantagruel gave to the poor's box\nof the fabric of the church eighteen thousand good royals, in commiseration\nof the poverty of the people and the calamity of the place.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Papimany.\n\nHaving left the desolate island of the Pope-figs, we sailed for the space\nof a day very fairly and merrily, and made the blessed island of Papimany.\nAs soon as we had dropt anchor in the road, before we had well moored our\nship with ground-tackle, four persons in different garbs rowed towards us\nin a skiff.  One of them was dressed like a monk in his frock,\ndraggle-tailed, and booted; the other like a falconer, with a lure, and a\nlong-winged hawk on his fist; the third like a solicitor, with a large bag,\nfull of informations, subpoenas, breviates, bills, writs, cases, and other\nimplements of pettifogging; the fourth looked like one of your vine-barbers\nabout Ocleans, with a jaunty pair of canvas trousers, a dosser, and a\npruning knife at his girdle.\n\nAs soon as the boat had clapped them on board, they all with one voice\nasked, Have you seen him, good passengers, have you seen him?  Who? asked\nPantagruel.  You know who, answered they.  Who is it? asked Friar John.\n'Sblood and 'ounds, I'll thrash him thick and threefold.  This he said\nthinking that they inquired after some robber, murderer, or church-breaker.\nOh, wonderful! cried the four; do not you foreign people know the one?\nSirs, replied Epistemon, we do not understand those terms; but if you will\nbe pleased to let us know who you mean, we will tell you the truth of the\nmatter without any more ado.  We mean, said they, he that is.  Did you ever\nsee him?  He that is, returned Pantagruel, according to our theological\ndoctrine, is God, who said to Moses, I am that I am.  We never saw him, nor\ncan he be beheld by mortal eyes.  We mean nothing less than that supreme\nGod who rules in heaven, replied they; we mean the god on earth.  Did you\never see him?  Upon my honour, replied Carpalin, they mean the pope.  Ay,\nay, answered Panurge; yea, verily, gentlemen, I have seen three of them,\nwhose sight has not much bettered me.  How! cried they, our sacred\ndecretals inform us that there never is more than one living.  I mean\nsuccessively, one after the other, returned Panurge; otherwise I never saw\nmore than one at a time.\n\nO thrice and four times happy people! cried they; you are welcome, and more\nthan double welcome!  They then kneeled down before us and would have\nkissed our feet, but we would not suffer it, telling them that should the\npope come thither in his own person, 'tis all they could do to him.  No,\ncertainly, answered they, for we have already resolved upon the matter.  We\nwould kiss his bare arse without boggling at it, and eke his two pounders;\nfor he has a pair of them, the holy father, that he has; we find it so by\nour fine decretals, otherwise he could not be pope.  So that, according to\nour subtle decretaline philosophy, this is a necessary consequence:  he is\npope; therefore he has genitories, and should genitories no more be found\nin the world, the world could no more have a pope.\n\nWhile they were talking thus, Pantagruel inquired of one of the coxswain's\ncrew who those persons were.  He answered that they were the four estates\nof the island, and added that we should be made as welcome as princes,\nsince we had seen the pope.  Panurge having been acquainted with this by\nPantagruel, said to him in his ear, I swear and vow, sir, 'tis even so; he\nthat has patience may compass anything.  Seeing the pope had done us no\ngood; now, in the devil's name, 'twill do us a great deal.  We then went\nashore, and the whole country, men, women, and children, came to meet us as\nin a solemn procession.  Our four estates cried out to them with a loud\nvoice, They have seen him! they have seen him! they have seen him!  That\nproclamation being made, all the mob kneeled before us, lifting up their\nhands towards heaven, and crying, O happy men!  O most happy! and this\nacclamation lasted above a quarter of an hour.\n\nThen came the Busby (!) of the place, with all his pedagogues, ushers, and\nschoolboys, whom he magisterially flogged, as they used to whip children in\nour country formerly when some criminal was hanged, that they might\nremember it.  This displeased Pantagruel, who said to them, Gentlemen, if\nyou do not leave off whipping these poor children, I am gone.  The people\nwere amazed, hearing his stentorian voice; and I saw a little hump with\nlong fingers say to the hypodidascal, What, in the name of wonder! do all\nthose that see the pope grow as tall as yon huge fellow that threatens us?\nAh! how I shall think time long till I have seen him too, that I may grow\nand look as big.  In short, the acclamations were so great that Homenas (so\nthey called their bishop) hastened thither on an unbridled mule with green\ntrappings, attended by his apposts (as they said) and his supposts, or\nofficers bearing crosses, banners, standards, canopies, torches, holy-water\npots, &c.  He too wanted to kiss our feet (as the good Christian Valfinier\ndid to Pope Clement), saying that one of their hypothetes, that's one of\nthe scavengers, scourers, and commentators of their holy decretals, had\nwritten that, in the same manner as the Messiah, so long and so much\nexpected by the Jews, at last appeared among them; so, on some happy day of\nGod, the pope would come into that island; and that, while they waited for\nthat blessed time, if any who had seen him at Rome or elsewhere chanced to\ncome among them, they should be sure to make much of them, feast them\nplentifully, and treat them with a great deal of reverence.  However, we\ncivilly desired to be excused.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Homenas, Bishop of Papimany, showed us the Uranopet decretals.\n\nHomenas then said to us:  'Tis enjoined us by our holy decretals to visit\nchurches first and taverns after.  Therefore, not to decline that fine\ninstitution, let us go to church; we will afterwards go and feast\nourselves.  Man of God, quoth Friar John, do you go before, we'll follow\nyou.  You spoke in the matter properly, and like a good Christian; 'tis\nlong since we saw any such.  For my part, this rejoices my mind very much,\nand I verily believe that I shall have the better stomach after it.  Well,\n'tis a happy thing to meet with good men!  Being come near the gate of the\nchurch, we spied a huge thick book, gilt, and covered all over with\nprecious stones, as rubies, emeralds, (diamonds,) and pearls, more, or at\nleast as valuable as those which Augustus consecrated to Jupiter\nCapitolinus.  This book hanged in the air, being fastened with two thick\nchains of gold to the zoophore of the porch.  We looked on it and admired\nit.  As for Pantagruel, he handled it and dandled it and turned it as he\npleased, for he could reach it without straining; and he protested that\nwhenever he touched it, he was seized with a pleasant tickling at his\nfingers' end, new life and activity in his arms, and a violent temptation\nin his mind to beat one or two sergeants, or such officers, provided they\nwere not of the shaveling kind.  Homenas then said to us, The law was\nformerly given to the Jews by Moses, written by God himself.  At Delphos,\nbefore the portal of Apollo's temple, this sentence, GNOTHI SEAUTON, was\nfound written with a divine hand.  And some time after it, EI was also\nseen, and as divinely written and transmitted from heaven. Cybele's image\nwas brought out of heaven, into a field called Pessinunt, in Phrygia; so\nwas that of Diana to Tauris, if you will believe Euripides; the oriflamme,\nor holy standard, was transmitted out of heaven to the noble and most\nChristian kings of France, to fight against the unbelievers.  In the reign\nof Numa Pompilius, second King of the Romans, the famous copper buckler\ncalled Ancile was seen to descend from heaven.  At Acropolis, near Athens,\nMinerva's statue formerly fell from the empyreal heaven.  In like manner\nthe sacred decretals which you see were written with the hand of an angel\nof the cherubim kind.  You outlandish people will hardly believe this, I\nfear.  Little enough, of conscience, said Panurge.  And then, continued\nHomenas, they were miraculously transmitted to us here from the very heaven\nof heavens; in the same manner as the river Nile is called Diipetes by\nHomer, the father of all philosophy--the holy decretals always excepted.\nNow, because you have seen the pope, their evangelist and everlasting\nprotector, we will give you leave to see and kiss them on the inside, if\nyou think meet.  But then you must fast three days before, and canonically\nconfess; nicely and strictly mustering up and inventorizing your sins,\ngreat and small, so thick that one single circumstance of them may not\nescape you; as our holy decretals, which you see, direct.  This will take\nup some time.  Man of God, answered Panurge, we have seen and descried\ndecrees, and eke decretals enough o' conscience; some on paper, other on\nparchment, fine and gay like any painted paper lantern, some on vellum,\nsome in manuscript, and others in print; so you need not take half these\npains to show us these.  We'll take the goodwill for the deed, and thank\nyou as much as if we had.  Ay, marry, said Homenas, but you never saw these\nthat are angelically written.  Those in your country are only transcripts\nfrom ours; as we find it written by one of our old decretaline scholiasts.\nFor me, do not spare me; I do not value the labour, so I may serve you.  Do\nbut tell me whether you will be confessed and fast only three short little\ndays of God?  As for shriving, answered Panurge, there can be no great harm\nin't; but this same fasting, master of mine, will hardly down with us at\nthis time, for we have so very much overfasted ourselves at sea that the\nspiders have spun their cobwebs over our grinders.  Do but look on this\ngood Friar John des Entomeures (Homenas then courteously demi-clipped him\nabout the neck), some moss is growing in his throat for want of bestirring\nand exercising his chaps.  He speaks the truth, vouched Friar John; I have\nso much fasted that I'm almost grown hump-shouldered.  Come, then, let's go\ninto the church, said Homenas; and pray forgive us if for the present we do\nnot sing you a fine high mass.  The hour of midday is past, and after it\nour sacred decretals forbid us to sing mass, I mean your high and lawful\nmass.  But I'll say a low and dry one for you.  I had rather have one\nmoistened with some good Anjou wine, cried Panurge; fall to, fall to your\nlow mass, and despatch.  Ods-bodikins, quoth Friar John, it frets me to the\nguts that I must have an empty stomach at this time of day; for, had I\neaten a good breakfast and fed like a monk, if he should chance to sing us\nthe Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, I had then brought thither bread and\nwine for the traits passes (those that are gone before).  Well, patience;\npull away, and save tide; short and sweet, I pray you, and this for a\ncause.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Homenas showed us the archetype, or representation of a pope.\n\nMass being mumbled over, Homenas took a huge bundle of keys out of a trunk\nnear the head altar, and put thirty-two of them into so many keyholes; put\nback so many springs; then with fourteen more mastered so many padlocks,\nand at last opened an iron window strongly barred above the said altar.\nThis being done, in token of great mystery he covered himself with wet\nsackcloth, and drawing a curtain of crimson satin, showed us an image\ndaubed over, coarsely enough, to my thinking; then he touched it with a\npretty long stick, and made us all kiss the part of the stick that had\ntouched the image.  After this he said unto us, What think you of this\nimage?  It is the likeness of a pope, answered Pantagruel; I know it by the\ntriple crown, his furred amice, his rochet, and his slipper.  You are in\nthe right, said Homenas; it is the idea of that same good god on earth\nwhose coming we devoutly await, and whom we hope one day to see in this\ncountry.  O happy, wished-for, and much-expected day! and happy, most happy\nyou, whose propitious stars have so favoured you as to let you see the\nliving and real face of this good god on earth! by the single sight of\nwhose picture we obtain full remission of all the sins which we remember\nthat we have committed, as also a third part and eighteen quarantaines of\nthe sins which we have forgot; and indeed we only see it on high annual\nholidays.\n\nThis caused Pantagruel to say that it was a work like those which Daedalus\nused to make, since, though it were deformed and ill drawn, nevertheless\nsome divine energy, in point of pardons, lay hid and concealed in it.\nThus, said Friar John, at Seuille, the rascally beggars being one evening\non a solemn holiday at supper in the spital, one bragged of having got six\nblancs, or twopence halfpenny; another eight liards, or twopence; a third,\nseven caroluses, or sixpence; but an old mumper made his vaunts of having\ngot three testons, or five shillings.  Ah, but, cried his comrades, thou\nhast a leg of God; as if, continued Friar John, some divine virtue could\nlie hid in a stinking ulcerated rotten shank.  Pray, said Pantagruel, when\nyou are for telling us some such nauseous tale, be so kind as not to forget\nto provide a basin, Friar John; I'll assure you, I had much ado to forbear\nbringing up my breakfast.  Fie! I wonder a man of your coat is not ashamed\nto use thus the sacred name of God in speaking of things so filthy and\nabominable! fie, I say.  If among your monking tribes such an abuse of\nwords is allowed, I beseech you leave it there, and do not let it come out\nof the cloisters.  Physicians, said Epistemon, thus attribute a kind of\ndivinity to some diseases.  Nero also extolled mushrooms, and, in a Greek\nproverb, termed them divine food, because with them he had poisoned\nClaudius his predecessor.  But methinks, gentlemen, this same picture is\nnot over-like our late popes.  For I have seen them, not with their\npallium, amice, or rochet on, but with helmets on their heads, more like\nthe top of a Persian turban; and while the Christian commonwealth was in\npeace, they alone were most furiously and cruelly making war.  This must\nhave been then, returned Homenas, against the rebellious, heretical\nProtestants; reprobates who are disobedient to the holiness of this good\ngod on earth.  'Tis not only lawful for him to do so, but it is enjoined\nhim by the sacred decretals; and if any dare transgress one single iota\nagainst their commands, whether they be emperors, kings, dukes, princes, or\ncommonwealths, he is immediately to pursue them with fire and sword, strip\nthem of all their goods, take their kingdoms from them, proscribe them,\nanathematize them, and destroy not only their bodies, those of their\nchildren, relations, and others, but damn also their souls to the very\nbottom of the most hot and burning cauldron in hell.  Here, in the devil's\nname, said Panurge, the people are no heretics; such as was our\nRaminagrobis, and as they are in Germany and England.  You are Christians\nof the best edition, all picked and culled, for aught I see.  Ay, marry are\nwe, returned Homenas, and for that reason we shall all be saved.  Now let\nus go and bless ourselves with holy water, and then to dinner.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTable-talk in praise of the decretals.\n\nNow, topers, pray observe that while Homenas was saying his dry mass, three\ncollectors, or licensed beggars of the church, each of them with a large\nbasin, went round among the people, with a loud voice:  Pray remember the\nblessed men who have seen his face.  As we came out of the temple they\nbrought their basins brimful of Papimany chink to Homenas, who told us that\nit was plentifully to feast with; and that, of this contribution and\nvoluntary tax, one part should be laid out in good drinking, another in\ngood eating, and the remainder in both, according to an admirable\nexposition hidden in a corner of their holy decretals; which was performed\nto a T, and that at a noted tavern not much unlike that of Will's at\nAmiens.  Believe me, we tickled it off there with copious cramming and\nnumerous swilling.\n\nI made two notable observations at that dinner:  the one, that there was\nnot one dish served up, whether of cabrittas, capons, hogs (of which latter\nthere is great plenty in Papimany), pigeons, coneys, leverets, turkeys, or\nothers, without abundance of magistral stuff; the other, that every course,\nand the fruit also, were served up by unmarried females of the place, tight\nlasses, I'll assure you, waggish, fair, good-conditioned, and comely,\nspruce, and fit for business.  They were all clad in fine long white albs,\nwith two girts; their hair interwoven with narrow tape and purple ribbon,\nstuck with roses, gillyflowers, marjoram, daffadowndillies, thyme, and\nother sweet flowers.\n\nAt every cadence they invited us to drink and bang it about, dropping us\nneat and genteel courtesies; nor was the sight of them unwelcome to all the\ncompany; and as for Friar John, he leered on them sideways, like a cur that\nsteals a capon.  When the first course was taken off, the females\nmelodiously sung us an epode in the praise of the sacrosanct decretals; and\nthen the second course being served up, Homenas, joyful and cheery, said to\none of the she-butlers, Light here, Clerica.  Immediately one of the girls\nbrought him a tall-boy brimful of extravagant wine.  He took fast hold of\nit, and fetching a deep sigh, said to Pantagruel, My lord, and you, my good\nfriends, here's t'ye, with all my heart; you are all very welcome.  When he\nhad tipped that off, and given the tall-boy to the pretty creature, he\nlifted up his voice and said, O most holy decretals, how good is good wine\nfound through your means!  This is the best jest we have had yet, observed\nPanurge.  But it would still be a better, said Pantagruel, if they could\nturn bad wine into good.\n\nO seraphic Sextum! continued Homenas, how necessary are you not to the\nsalvation of poor mortals!  O cherubic Clementinae! how perfectly the\nperfect institution of a true Christian is contained and described in you!\nO angelical Extravagantes! how many poor souls that wander up and down in\nmortal bodies through this vale of misery would perish were it not for you!\nWhen, ah! when shall this special gift of grace be bestowed on mankind, as\nto lay aside all other studies and concerns, to use you, to peruse you, to\nunderstand you, to know you by heart, to practise you, to incorporate you,\nto turn you into blood, and incentre you into the deepest ventricles of\ntheir brains, the inmost marrow of their bones, and most intricate\nlabyrinth of their arteries?  Then, ah! then, and no sooner than then, nor\notherwise than thus, shall the world be happy!  While the old man was thus\nrunning on, Epistemon rose and softly said to Panurge:  For want of a\nclose-stool, I must even leave you for a moment or two; this stuff has\nunbunged the orifice of my mustard-barrel; but I'll not tarry long.\n\nThen, ah! then, continued Homenas, no hail, frost, ice, snow, overflowing,\nor vis major; then plenty of all earthly goods here below.  Then\nuninterrupted and eternal peace through the universe, an end of all wars,\nplunderings, drudgeries, robbing, assassinates, unless it be to destroy\nthese cursed rebels the heretics.  Oh! then, rejoicing, cheerfulness,\njollity, solace, sports, and delicious pleasures, over the face of the\nearth.  Oh! what great learning, inestimable erudition, and god-like\nprecepts are knit, linked, rivetted, and mortised in the divine chapters of\nthese eternal decretals!\n\nOh! how wonderfully, if you read but one demi-canon, short paragraph, or\nsingle observation of these sacrosanct decretals, how wonderfully, I say,\ndo you not perceive to kindle in your hearts a furnace of divine love,\ncharity towards your neighbour (provided he be no heretic), bold contempt\nof all casual and sublunary things, firm content in all your affections,\nand ecstatic elevation of soul even to the third heaven.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA continuation of the miracles caused by the decretals.\n\nWisely, brother Timothy, quoth Panurge, did am, did am; he says blew; but,\nfor my part, I believe as little of it as I can.  For one day by chance I\nhappened to read a chapter of them at Poictiers, at the most\ndecretalipotent Scotch doctor's, and old Nick turn me into bumfodder, if\nthis did not make me so hide-bound and costive, that for four or five days\nI hardly scumbered one poor butt of sir-reverence; and that, too, was full\nas dry and hard, I protest, as Catullus tells us were those of his\nneighbour Furius:\n\n  Nec toto decies cacas in anno,\n  Atque id durius est faba, et lapillis:\n  Quod tu si manibus teras, fricesque,\n  Non unquam digitum inquinare posses.\n\nOh, ho! cried Homenas; by'r lady, it may be you were then in the state of\nmortal sin, my friend.  Well turned, cried Panurge; this was a new strain,\negad.\n\nOne day, said Friar John, at Seuille, I had applied to my posteriors, by\nway of hind-towel, a leaf of an old Clementinae which our rent-gatherer,\nJohn Guimard, had thrown out into the green of our cloister.  Now the devil\nbroil me like a black pudding, if I wasn't so abominably plagued with\nchaps, chawns, and piles at the fundament, that the orifice of my poor\nnockandroe was in a most woeful pickle for I don't know how long.  By'r our\nlady, cried Homenas, it was a plain punishment of God for the sin that you\nhad committed in beraying that sacred book, which you ought rather to have\nkissed and adored; I say with an adoration of latria, or of hyperdulia at\nleast.  The Panormitan never told a lie in the matter.\n\nSaith Ponocrates:  At Montpelier, John Chouart having bought of the monks\nof St. Olary a delicate set of decretals, written on fine large parchment\nof Lamballe, to beat gold between the leaves, not so much as a piece that\nwas beaten in them came to good, but all were dilacerated and spoiled.\nMark this! cried Homenas; 'twas a divine punishment and vengeance.\n\nAt Mans, said Eudemon, Francis Cornu, apothecary, had turned an old set of\nExtravagantes into waste paper.  May I never stir, if whatever was lapped\nup in them was not immediately corrupted, rotten, and spoiled; incense,\npepper, cloves, cinnamon, saffron, wax, cassia, rhubarb, tamarinds, all\ndrugs and spices, were lost without exception.  Mark, mark, quoth Homenas,\nan effect of divine justice!  This comes of putting the sacred Scriptures\nto such profane uses.\n\nAt Paris, said Carpalin, Snip Groignet the tailor had turned an old\nClementinae into patterns and measures, and all the clothes that were cut\non them were utterly spoiled and lost; gowns, hoods, cloaks, cassocks,\njerkins, jackets, waistcoats, capes, doublets, petticoats, corps de robes,\nfarthingales, and so forth.  Snip, thinking to cut a hood, would cut you\nout a codpiece; instead of a cassock he would make you a high-crowned hat;\nfor a waistcoat he'd shape you out a rochet; on the pattern of a doublet\nhe'd make you a thing like a frying-pan.  Then his journeymen having\nstitched it up did jag it and pink it at the bottom, and so it looked like\na pan to fry chestnuts.  Instead of a cape he made a buskin; for a\nfarthingale he shaped a montero cap; and thinking to make a cloak, he'd cut\nout a pair of your big out-strouting Swiss breeches, with panes like the\noutside of a tabor.  Insomuch that Snip was condemned to make good the\nstuffs to all his customers; and to this day poor Cabbage's hair grows\nthrough his hood and his arse through his pocket-holes.  Mark, an effect of\nheavenly wrath and vengeance! cried Homenas.\n\nAt Cahusac, said Gymnast, a match being made by the lords of Estissac and\nViscount Lausun to shoot at a mark, Perotou had taken to pieces a set of\ndecretals and set one of the leaves for the white to shoot at.  Now I sell,\nnay, I give and bequeath for ever and aye, the mould of my doublet to\nfifteen hundred hampers full of black devils, if ever any archer in the\ncountry (though they are singular marksmen in Guienne) could hit the white.\nNot the least bit of the holy scribble was contaminated or touched; nay,\nand Sansornin the elder, who held stakes, swore to us, figues dioures, hard\nfigs (his greatest oath), that he had openly, visibly, and manifestly seen\nthe bolt of Carquelin moving right to the round circle in the middle of the\nwhite; and that just on the point, when it was going to hit and enter, it\nhad gone aside above seven foot and four inches wide of it towards the\nbakehouse.\n\nMiracle! cried Homenas, miracle! miracle!  Clerica, come wench, light,\nlight here.  Here's to you all, gentlemen; I vow you seem to me very sound\nChristians.  While he said this, the maidens began to snicker at his elbow,\ngrinning, giggling, and twittering among themselves.  Friar John began to\npaw, neigh, and whinny at the snout's end, as one ready to leap, or at\nleast to play the ass, and get up and ride tantivy to the devil like a\nbeggar on horseback.\n\nMethinks, said Pantagruel, a man might have been more out of danger near\nthe white of which Gymnast spoke than was formerly Diogenes near another.\nHow is that? asked Homenas; what was it?  Was he one of our decretalists?\nRarely fallen in again, egad, said Epistemon, returning from stool; I see\nhe will hook his decretals in, though by the head and shoulders.\n\nDiogenes, said Pantagruel, one day for pastime went to see some archers\nthat shot at butts, one of whom was so unskilful, that when it was his turn\nto shoot all the bystanders went aside, lest he should mistake them for the\nmark.  Diogenes had seen him shoot extremely wide of it; so when the other\nwas taking aim a second time, and the people removed at a great distance to\nthe right and left of the white, he placed himself close by the mark,\nholding that place to be the safest, and that so bad an archer would\ncertainly rather hit any other.\n\nOne of the Lord d'Estissac's pages at last found out the charm, pursued\nGymnast, and by his advice Perotou put in another white made up of some\npapers of Pouillac's lawsuit, and then everyone shot cleverly.\n\nAt Landerousse, said Rhizotome, at John Delif's wedding were very great\ndoings, as 'twas then the custom of the country.  After supper several\nfarces, interludes, and comical scenes were acted; they had also several\nmorris-dancers with bells and tabors, and divers sorts of masks and mummers\nwere let in.  My schoolfellows and I, to grace the festival to the best of\nour power (for fine white and purple liveries had been given to all of us\nin the morning), contrived a merry mask with store of cockle-shells, shells\nof snails, periwinkles, and such other.  Then for want of cuckoo-pint, or\npriest-pintle, lousebur, clote, and paper, we made ourselves false faces\nwith the leaves of an old Sextum that had been thrown by and lay there for\nanyone that would take it up, cutting out holes for the eyes, nose, and\nmouth.  Now, did you ever hear the like since you were born?  When we had\nplayed our little boyish antic tricks, and came to take off our sham faces,\nwe appeared more hideous and ugly than the little devils that acted the\nPassion at Douay; for our faces were utterly spoiled at the places which\nhad been touched by those leaves.  One had there the small-pox; another,\nGod's token, or the plague-spot; a third, the crinckums; a fourth, the\nmeasles; a fifth, botches, pushes, and carbuncles; in short, he came off\nthe least hurt who only lost his teeth by the bargain.  Miracle! bawled out\nHomenas, miracle!\n\nHold, hold! cried Rhizotome; it is not yet time to clap.  My sister Kate\nand my sister Ren had put the crepines of their hoods, their ruffles,\nsnuffekins, and neck-ruffs new washed, starched, and ironed, into that very\nbook of decretals; for, you must know, it was covered with thick boards and\nhad strong clasps.  Now, by the virtue of God--Hold, interrupted Homenas,\nwhat god do you mean?  There is but one, answered Rhizotome.  In heaven, I\ngrant, replied Homenas; but we have another here on earth, do you see?  Ay,\nmarry have we, said Rhizotome; but on my soul I protest I had quite forgot\nit.  Well then, by the virtue of god the pope, their pinners, neck-ruffs,\nbib, coifs, and other linen turned as black as a charcoal-man's sack.\nMiracle! cried Homenas.  Here, Clerica, light me here; and prithee, girl,\nobserve these rare stories.  How comes it to pass then, asked Friar John,\nthat people say,\n\n  Ever since decrees had tails,\n  And gendarmes lugged heavy mails,\n  Since each monk would have a horse,\n  All went here from bad to worse.\n\nI understand you, answered Homenas; this is one of the quirks and little\nsatires of the new-fangled heretics.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow by the virtue of the decretals, gold is subtilely drawn out of France\nto Rome.\n\nI would, said Epistemon, it had cost me a pint of the best tripe that ever\ncan enter into gut, so we had but compared with the original the dreadful\nchapters, Execrabilis, De multa, Si plures; De annatis per totum; Nisi\nessent; Cum ad monasterium; Quod delectio; Mandatum; and certain others,\nthat draw every year out of France to Rome four hundred thousand ducats and\nmore.\n\nDo you make nothing of this? asked Homenas.  Though, methinks, after all,\nit is but little, if we consider that France, the most Christian, is the\nonly nurse the see of Rome has.  However, find me in the whole world a\nbook, whether of philosophy, physic, law, mathematics, or other humane\nlearning, nay, even, by my God, of the Holy Scripture itself, will draw as\nmuch money thence?  None, none, psha, tush, blurt, pish; none can.  You may\nlook till your eyes drop out of your head, nay, till doomsday in the\nafternoon, before you can find another of that energy; I'll pass my word\nfor that.\n\nYet these devilish heretics refuse to learn and know it.  Burn 'em, tear\n'em, nip 'em with hot pincers, drown 'em, hang 'em, spit 'em at the\nbunghole, pelt 'em, paut 'em, bruise 'em, beat 'em, cripple 'em, dismember\n'em, cut 'em, gut 'em, bowel 'em, paunch 'em, thrash 'em, slash 'em, gash\n'em, chop 'em, slice 'em, slit 'em, carve 'em, saw 'em, bethwack 'em, pare\n'em, hack 'em, hew 'em, mince 'em, flay 'em, boil 'em, broil 'em, roast\n'em, toast 'em, bake 'em, fry 'em, crucify 'em, crush 'em, squeeze 'em,\ngrind 'em, batter 'em, burst 'em, quarter 'em, unlimb 'em, behump 'em,\nbethump 'em, belam 'em, belabour 'em, pepper 'em, spitchcock 'em, and\ncarbonade 'em on gridirons, these wicked heretics! decretalifuges,\ndecretalicides, worse than homicides, worse than patricides,\ndecretalictones of the devil of hell.\n\nAs for you other good people, I must earnestly pray and beseech you to\nbelieve no other thing, to think on, say, undertake, or do no other thing,\nthan what's contained in our sacred decretals and their corollaries, this\nfine Sextum, these fine Clementinae, these fine Extravagantes.  O deific\nbooks!  So shall you enjoy glory, honour, exaltation, wealth, dignities,\nand preferments in this world; be revered and dreaded by all, preferred,\nelected, and chosen above all men.\n\nFor there is not under the cope of heaven a condition of men out of which\nyou'll find persons fitter to do and handle all things than those who by\ndivine prescience, eternal predestination, have applied themselves to the\nstudy of the holy decretals.\n\nWould you choose a worthy emperor, a good captain, a fit general in time of\nwar, one that can well foresee all inconveniences, avoid all dangers,\nbriskly and bravely bring his men on to a breach or attack, still be on\nsure grounds, always overcome without loss of his men, and know how to make\na good use of his victory?  Take me a decretist.  No, no, I mean a\ndecretalist.  Ho, the foul blunder, whispered Epistemon.\n\nWould you, in time of peace, find a man capable of wisely governing the\nstate of a commonwealth, of a kingdom, of an empire, of a monarchy;\nsufficient to maintain the clergy, nobility, senate, and commons in wealth,\nfriendship, unity, obedience, virtue, and honesty?  Take a decretalist.\n\nWould you find a man who, by his exemplary life, eloquence, and pious\nadmonitions, may in a short time, without effusion of human blood, conquer\nthe Holy Land, and bring over to the holy Church the misbelieving Turks,\nJews, Tartars, Muscovites, Mamelukes, and Sarrabonites?  Take me a\ndecretalist.\n\nWhat makes, in many countries, the people rebellious and depraved, pages\nsaucy and mischievous, students sottish and duncical?  Nothing but that\ntheir governors and tutors were not decretalists.\n\nBut what, on your conscience, was it, do you think, that established,\nconfirmed, and authorized those fine religious orders with whom you see the\nChristian world everywhere adorned, graced, and illustrated, as the\nfirmament is with its glorious stars?  The holy decretals.\n\nWhat was it that founded, underpropped, and fixed, and now maintains,\nnourishes, and feeds the devout monks and friars in convents, monasteries,\nand abbeys; so that did they not daily and mightily pray without ceasing,\nthe world would be in evident danger of returning to its primitive chaos?\nThe sacred decretals.\n\nWhat makes and daily increases the famous and celebrated patrimony of St.\nPeter in plenty of all temporal, corporeal, and spiritual blessings?  The\nholy decretals.\n\nWhat made the holy apostolic see and pope of Rome, in all times, and at\nthis present, so dreadful in the universe, that all kings, emperors,\npotentates, and lords, willing, nilling, must depend upon him, hold of him,\nbe crowned, confirmed, and authorized by him, come thither to strike sail,\nbuckle, and fall down before his holy slipper, whose picture you have seen?\nThe mighty decretals of God.\n\nI will discover you a great secret.  The universities of your world have\ncommonly a book, either open or shut, in their arms and devices; what book\ndo you think it is?  Truly, I do not know, answered Pantagruel; I never\nread it.  It is the decretals, said Homenas, without which the privileges\nof all universities would soon be lost.  You must own that I have taught\nyou this; ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!\n\nHere Homenas began to belch, to fart, to funk, to laugh, to slaver, and to\nsweat; and then he gave his huge greasy four-cornered cap to one of the\nlasses, who clapped it on her pretty head with a great deal of joy, after\nshe had lovingly bussed it, as a sure token that she should be first\nmarried.  Vivat, cried Epistemon, fifat, bibat, pipat.\n\nO apocalyptic secret! continued Homenas; light, light, Clerica; light here\nwith double lanterns.  Now for the fruit, virgins.\n\nI was saying, then, that giving yourselves thus wholly to the study of the\nholy decretals, you will gain wealth and honour in this world.  I add, that\nin the next you will infallibly be saved in the blessed kingdom of heaven,\nwhose keys are given to our good god and decretaliarch.  O my good god,\nwhom I adore and never saw, by thy special grace open unto us, at the point\nof death at least, this most sacred treasure of our holy Mother Church,\nwhose protector, preserver, butler, chief-larder, administrator, and\ndisposer thou art; and take care, I beseech thee, O lord, that the precious\nworks of supererogation, the goodly pardons, do not fail us in time of\nneed; so that the devils may not find an opportunity to gripe our precious\nsouls, and the dreadful jaws of hell may not swallow us.  If we must pass\nthrough purgatory thy will be done.  It is in thy power to draw us out of\nit when thou pleasest.  Here Homenas began to shed huge hot briny tears, to\nbeat his breast, and kiss his thumbs in the shape of a cross.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Homenas gave Pantagruel some bon-Christian pears.\n\nEpistemon, Friar John, and Panurge, seeing this doleful catastrophe, began,\nunder the cover of their napkins, to cry Meeow, meeow, meeow; feigning to\nwipe their eyes all the while as if they had wept.  The wenches were doubly\ndiligent, and brought brimmers of Clementine wine to every one, besides\nstore of sweetmeats; and thus the feasting was revived.\n\nBefore we arose from table, Homenas gave us a great quantity of fair large\npears, saying, Here, my good friends, these are singular good pears.  You\nwill find none such anywhere else, I dare warrant.  Every soil bears not\neverything, you know.  India alone boasts black ebony; the best incense is\nproduced in Sabaea; the sphragitid earth at Lemnos; so this island is the\nonly place where such fine pears grow.  You may, if you please, make\nseminaries with their pippins in your country.\n\nI like their taste extremely, said Pantagruel.  If they were sliced, and\nput into a pan on the fire with wine and sugar, I fancy they would be very\nwholesome meat for the sick, as well as for the healthy.  Pray what do you\ncall 'em?  No otherwise than you have heard, replied Homenas.  We are a\nplain downright sort of people, as God would have it, and call figs, figs;\nplums, plums; and pears, pears.  Truly, said Pantagruel, if I live to go\nhome--which I hope will be speedily, God willing--I'll set off and graff\nsome in my garden in Touraine, by the banks of the Loire, and will call\nthem bon-Christian or good-Christian pears, for I never saw better\nChristians than are these good Papimans.  I would like him two to one\nbetter yet, said Friar John, would he but give us two or three cartloads of\nyon buxom lasses.  Why, what would you do with them? cried Homenas.  Quoth\nFriar John, No harm, only bleed the kind-hearted souls straight between the\ntwo great toes with certain clever lancets of the right stamp; by which\noperation good Christian children would be inoculated upon them, and the\nbreed be multiplied in our country, in which there are not many over-good,\nthe more's the pity.\n\nNay, verily, replied Homenas, we cannot do this; for you would make them\ntread their shoes awry, crack their pipkins, and spoil their shapes.  You\nlove mutton, I see; you will run at sheep.  I know you by that same nose\nand hair of yours, though I never saw your face before.  Alas! alas! how\nkind you are!  And would you indeed damn your precious soul?  Our decretals\nforbid this.  Ah, I wish you had them at your finger's-end.  Patience, said\nFriar John; but, si tu non vis dare, praesta, quaesumus.  Matter of\nbreviary.  As for that, I defy all the world, and I fear no man that wears\na head and a hood, though he were a crystalline, I mean a decretaline\ndoctor.\n\nDinner being over, we took our leave of the right reverend Homenas, and of\nall the good people, humbly giving thanks; and, to make them amends for\ntheir kind entertainment, promised them that, at our coming to Rome, we\nwould make our applications so effectually to the pope that he would\nspeedily be sure to come to visit them in person.  After this we went\no'board.\n\nPantagruel, by an act of generosity, and as an acknowledgment of the sight\nof the pope's picture, gave Homenas nine pieces of double friezed cloth of\ngold to be set before the grates of the window.  He also caused the church\nbox for its repairs and fabric to be quite filled with double crowns of\ngold; and ordered nine hundred and fourteen angels to be delivered to each\nof the lasses who had waited at table, to buy them husbands when they could\nget them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel, being at sea, heard various unfrozen words.\n\nWhen we were at sea, junketting, tippling, discoursing, and telling\nstories, Pantagruel rose and stood up to look out; then asked us, Do you\nhear nothing, gentlemen?  Methinks I hear some people talking in the air,\nyet I can see nobody.  Hark!  According to his command we listened, and\nwith full ears sucked in the air as some of you suck oysters, to find if we\ncould hear some sound scattered through the sky; and to lose none of it,\nlike the Emperor Antoninus some of us laid their hands hollow next to their\nears; but all this would not do, nor could we hear any voice.  Yet\nPantagruel continued to assure us he heard various voices in the air, some\nof men, and some of women.\n\nAt last we began to fancy that we also heard something, or at least that\nour ears tingled; and the more we listened, the plainer we discerned the\nvoices, so as to distinguish articulate sounds.  This mightily frightened\nus, and not without cause; since we could see nothing, yet heard such\nvarious sounds and voices of men, women, children, horses, &c., insomuch\nthat Panurge cried out, Cods-belly, there is no fooling with the devil; we\nare all beshit, let's fly.  There is some ambuscado hereabouts.  Friar\nJohn, art thou here my love?  I pray thee, stay by me, old boy.  Hast thou\ngot thy swindging tool?  See that it do not stick in thy scabbard; thou\nnever scourest it half as it should be.  We are undone.  Hark!  They are\nguns, gad judge me.  Let's fly, I do not say with hands and feet, as Brutus\nsaid at the battle of Pharsalia; I say, with sails and oars.  Let's whip it\naway.  I never find myself to have a bit of courage at sea; in cellars and\nelsewhere I have more than enough.  Let's fly and save our bacon.  I do not\nsay this for any fear that I have; for I dread nothing but danger, that I\ndon't; I always say it that shouldn't.  The free archer of Baignolet said\nas much.  Let us hazard nothing, therefore, I say, lest we come off bluely.\nTack about, helm a-lee, thou son of a bachelor.  Would I were now well in\nQuinquenais, though I were never to marry.  Haste away, let's make all the\nsail we can.  They'll be too hard for us; we are not able to cope with\nthem; they are ten to our one, I'll warrant you.  Nay, and they are on\ntheir dunghill, while we do not know the country.  They will be the death\nof us.  We'll lose no honour by flying.  Demosthenes saith that the man\nthat runs away may fight another day.  At least let us retreat to the\nleeward.  Helm a-lee; bring the main-tack aboard, haul the bowlines, hoist\nthe top-gallants.  We are all dead men; get off, in the devil's name, get\noff.\n\nPantagruel, hearing the sad outcry which Panurge made, said, Who talks of\nflying?  Let's first see who they are; perhaps they may be friends.  I can\ndiscover nobody yet, though I can see a hundred miles round me.  But let's\nconsider a little.  I have read that a philosopher named Petron was of\nopinion that there were several worlds that touched each other in an\nequilateral triangle; in whose centre, he said, was the dwelling of truth;\nand that the words, ideas, copies, and images of all things past and to\ncome resided there; round which was the age; and that with success of time\npart of them used to fall on mankind like rheums and mildews, just as the\ndew fell on Gideon's fleece, till the age was fulfilled.\n\nI also remember, continued he, that Aristotle affirms Homer's words to be\nflying, moving, and consequently animated.  Besides, Antiphanes said that\nPlato's philosophy was like words which, being spoken in some country\nduring a hard winter, are immediately congealed, frozen up, and not heard;\nfor what Plato taught young lads could hardly be understood by them when\nthey were grown old.  Now, continued he, we should philosophize and search\nwhether this be not the place where those words are thawed.\n\nYou would wonder very much should this be the head and lyre of Orpheus.\nWhen the Thracian women had torn him to pieces they threw his head and lyre\ninto the river Hebrus, down which they floated to the Euxine sea as far as\nthe island of Lesbos; the head continually uttering a doleful song, as it\nwere lamenting the death of Orpheus, and the lyre, with the wind's impulse\nmoving its strings and harmoniously accompanying the voice.  Let's see if\nwe cannot discover them hereabouts.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow among the frozen words Pantagruel found some odd ones.\n\nThe skipper made answer:  Be not afraid, my lord; we are on the confines of\nthe Frozen Sea, on which, about the beginning of last winter, happened a\ngreat and bloody fight between the Arimaspians and the Nephelibates.  Then\nthe words and cries of men and women, the hacking, slashing, and hewing of\nbattle-axes, the shocking, knocking, and jolting of armours and harnesses,\nthe neighing of horses, and all other martial din and noise, froze in the\nair; and now, the rigour of the winter being over, by the succeeding\nserenity and warmth of the weather they melt and are heard.\n\nBy jingo, quoth Panurge, the man talks somewhat like.  I believe him.  But\ncouldn't we see some of 'em?  I think I have read that, on the edge of the\nmountain on which Moses received the Judaic law, the people saw the voices\nsensibly.  Here, here, said Pantagruel, here are some that are not yet\nthawed.  He then threw us on the deck whole handfuls of frozen words, which\nseemed to us like your rough sugar-plums, of many colours, like those used\nin heraldry; some words gules (this means also jests and merry sayings),\nsome vert, some azure, some black, some or (this means also fair words);\nand when we had somewhat warmed them between our hands, they melted like\nsnow, and we really heard them, but could not understand them, for it was a\nbarbarous gibberish.  One of them only, that was pretty big, having been\nwarmed between Friar John's hands, gave a sound much like that of chestnuts\nwhen they are thrown into the fire without being first cut, which made us\nall start.  This was the report of a field-piece in its time, cried Friar\nJohn.\n\nPanurge prayed Pantagruel to give him some more; but Pantagruel told him\nthat to give words was the part of a lover.  Sell me some then, I pray you,\ncried Panurge.  That's the part of a lawyer, returned Pantagruel.  I would\nsooner sell you silence, though at a dearer rate; as Demosthenes formerly\nsold it by the means of his argentangina, or silver squinsy.\n\nHowever, he threw three or four handfuls of them on the deck; among which I\nperceived some very sharp words, and some bloody words, which the pilot\nsaid used sometimes to go back and recoil to the place whence they came,\nbut it was with a slit weasand.  We also saw some terrible words, and some\nothers not very pleasant to the eye.\n\nWhen they had been all melted together, we heard a strange noise, hin, hin,\nhin, hin, his, tick, tock, taack, bredelinbrededack, frr, frr, frr, bou,\nbou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, track, track, trr, trr, trr, trrr,\ntrrrrrr, on, on, on, on, on, on, ououououon, gog, magog, and I do not know\nwhat other barbarous words, which the pilot said were the noise made by the\ncharging squadrons, the shock and neighing of horses.\n\nThen we heard some large ones go off like drums and fifes, and others like\nclarions and trumpets.  Believe me, we had very good sport with them.  I\nwould fain have saved some merry odd words, and have preserved them in oil,\nas ice and snow are kept, and between clean straw.  But Pantagruel would\nnot let me, saying that 'tis a folly to hoard up what we are never like to\nwant or have always at hand, odd, quaint, merry, and fat words of gules\nnever being scarce among all good and jovial Pantagruelists.\n\nPanurge somewhat vexed Friar John, and put him in the pouts; for he took\nhim at his word while he dreamed of nothing less.  This caused the friar to\nthreaten him with such a piece of revenge as was put upon G. Jousseaume,\nwho having taken the merry Patelin at his word when he had overbid himself\nin some cloth, was afterwards fairly taken by the horns like a bullock by\nhis jovial chapman, whom he took at his word like a man.  Panurge, well\nknowing that threatened folks live long, bobbed and made mouths at him in\ntoken of derision, then cried, Would I had here the word of the Holy\nBottle, without being thus obliged to go further in pilgrimage to her.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel went ashore at the dwelling of Gaster, the first master of\narts in the world.\n\nThat day Pantagruel went ashore in an island which, for situation and\ngovernor, may be said not to have its fellow.  When you just come into it,\nyou find it rugged, craggy, and barren, unpleasant to the eye, painful to\nthe feet, and almost as inaccessible as the mountain of Dauphine, which is\nsomewhat like a toadstool, and was never climbed as any can remember by any\nbut Doyac, who had the charge of King Charles the Eighth's train of\nartillery.\n\nThis same Doyac with strange tools and engines gained that mountain's top,\nand there he found an old ram.  It puzzled many a wise head to guess how it\ngot thither.  Some said that some eagle or great horncoot, having carried\nit thither while it was yet a lambkin, it had got away and saved itself\namong the bushes.\n\nAs for us, having with much toil and sweat overcome the difficult ways at\nthe entrance, we found the top of the mountain so fertile, healthful, and\npleasant, that I thought I was then in the true garden of Eden, or earthly\nparadise, about whose situation our good theologues are in such a quandary\nand keep such a pother.\n\nAs for Pantagruel, he said that here was the seat of Arete--that is as much\nas to say, virtue--described by Hesiod.  This, however, with submission to\nbetter judgments.  The ruler of this place was one Master Gaster, the first\nmaster of arts in this world.  For, if you believe that fire is the great\nmaster of arts, as Tully writes, you very much wrong him and yourself;\nalas! Tully never believed this.  On the other side, if you fancy Mercury\nto be the first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old,\nyou are mightily beside the mark.  The satirist's sentence, that affirms\nMaster Gaster to be the master of all arts, is true.  With him peacefully\nresided old goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of the ninety-nine\nMuses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, formerly begot Love, that noble\nchild, the mediator of heaven and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio.\n\nWe were all obliged to pay our homage and swear allegiance to that mighty\nsovereign; for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible;\nyou cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him anything.\n\nHe does not hear; and as the Egyptians said that Harpocrates, the god of\nsilence, named Sigalion in Greek, was astome, that is, without a mouth, so\nGaster was created without ears, even like the image of Jupiter in Candia.\n\nHe only speaks by signs, but those signs are more readily obeyed by\neveryone than the statutes of senates or commands of monarchs.  Neither\nwill he admit the least let or delay in his summons.  You say that when a\nlion roars all the beasts at a considerable distance round about, as far as\nhis roar can be heard, are seized with a shivering.  This is written, it is\ntrue, I have seen it. I assure you that at Master Gaster's command the very\nheavens tremble, and all the earth shakes.  His command is called, Do this\nor die.  Needs must when the devil drives; there's no gainsaying of it.\n\nThe pilot was telling us how, on a certain time, after the manner of the\nmembers that mutinied against the belly, as Aesop describes it, the whole\nkingdom of the Somates went off into a direct faction against Gaster,\nresolving to throw off his yoke; but they soon found their mistake, and\nmost humbly submitted, for otherwise they had all been famished.\n\nWhat company soever he is in, none dispute with him for precedence or\nsuperiority; he still goes first, though kings, emperors, or even the pope,\nwere there.  So he held the first place at the council of Basle; though\nsome will tell you that the council was tumultuous by the contention and\nambition of many for priority.\n\nEveryone is busied and labours to serve him, and indeed, to make amends for\nthis, he does this good to mankind, as to invent for them all arts,\nmachines, trades, engines, and crafts; he even instructs brutes in arts\nwhich are against their nature, making poets of ravens, jackdaws,\nchattering jays, parrots, and starlings, and poetesses of magpies, teaching\nthem to utter human language, speak, and sing; and all for the gut.  He\nreclaims and tames eagles, gerfalcons, falcons gentle, sakers, lanners,\ngoshawks, sparrowhawks, merlins, haggards, passengers, wild rapacious\nbirds; so that, setting them free in the air whenever he thinks fit, as\nhigh and as long as he pleases, he keeps them suspended, straying, flying,\nhovering, and courting him above the clouds.  Then on a sudden he makes\nthem stoop, and come down amain from heaven next to the ground; and all for\nthe gut.\n\nElephants, lions, rhinoceroses, bears, horses, mares, and dogs, he teaches\nto dance, prance, vault, fight, swim, hide themselves, fetch and carry what\nhe pleases; and all for the gut.\n\nSalt and fresh-water fish, whales, and the monsters of the main, he brings\nthem up from the bottom of the deep; wolves he forces out of the woods,\nbears out of the rocks, foxes out of their holes, and serpents out of the\nground, and all for the gut.\n\nIn short, he is so unruly, that in his rage he devours all men and beasts;\nas was seen among the Vascons, when Q. Metellus besieged them in the\nSertorian wars, among the Saguntines besieged by Hannibal; among the Jews\nbesieged by the Romans, and six hundred more; and all for the gut.  When\nhis regent Penia takes a progress, wherever she moves all senates are shut\nup, all statutes repealed, all orders and proclamations vain; she knows,\nobeys, and has no law.  All shun her, in every place choosing rather to\nexpose themselves to shipwreck at sea, and venture through fire, rocks,\ncaves, and precipices, than be seized by that most dreadful tormentor.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow, at the court of the master of ingenuity, Pantagruel detested the\nEngastrimythes and the Gastrolaters.\n\nAt the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two\nsorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much\ndetested.  The first were called Engastrimythes; the others, Gastrolaters.\n\nThe first pretended to be descended of the ancient race of Eurycles, and\nfor this brought the authority of Aristophanes in his comedy called the\nWasps; whence of old they were called Euryclians, as Plato writes, and\nPlutarch in his book of the Cessation of Oracles.  In the holy decrees, 26,\nqu. 3, they are styled Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in\nIonian by Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid., as men who speak from\nthe belly.  Sophocles calls them Sternomantes.  These were soothsayers,\nenchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give\nanswers from the mouth, but from the belly.\n\nSuch a one, about the year of our Lord 1513, was Jacoba Rodogina, an\nItalian woman of mean extract; from whose belly we, as well as an infinite\nnumber of others at Ferrara and elsewhere, have often heard the voice of\nthe evil spirit speak, low, feeble, and small, indeed, but yet very\ndistinct, articulate, and intelligible, when she was sent for out of\ncuriosity by the lords and princes of the Cisalpine Gaul.  To remove all\nmanner of doubt, and be assured that this was not a trick, they used to\nhave her stripped stark naked, and caused her mouth and nose to be stopped.\nThis evil spirit would be called Curled-pate, or Cincinnatulo, seeming\npleased when any called him by that name, at which he was always ready to\nanswer.  If any spoke to him of things past or present, he gave pertinent\nanswers, sometimes to the amazement of the hearers; but if of things to\ncome, then the devil was gravelled, and used to lie as fast as a dog can\ntrot.  Nay, sometimes he seemed to own his ignorance, instead of an answer\nletting out a rousing fart, or muttering some words with barbarous and\nuncouth inflexions, and not to be understood.\n\nAs for the Gastrolaters, they stuck close to one another in knots and\ngangs.  Some of them merry, wanton, and soft as so many milk-sops; others\nlouring, grim, dogged, demure, and crabbed; all idle, mortal foes to\nbusiness, spending half their time in sleeping and the rest in doing\nnothing, a rent-charge and dead unnecessary weight on the earth, as Hesiod\nsaith; afraid, as we judged, of offending or lessening their paunch.\nOthers were masked, disguised, and so oddly dressed that it would have done\nyou good to have seen them.\n\nThere's a saying, and several ancient sages write, that the skill of nature\nappears wonderful in the pleasure which she seems to have taken in the\nconfiguration of sea-shells, so great is their variety in figures, colours,\nstreaks, and inimitable shapes.  I protest the variety we perceived in the\ndresses of the gastrolatrous coquillons was not less.  They all owned\nGaster for their supreme god, adored him as a god, offered him sacrifices\nas to their omnipotent deity, owned no other god, served, loved, and\nhonoured him above all things.\n\nYou would have thought that the holy apostle spoke of those when he said\n(Phil. chap. 3), Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you\neven weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ:  whose end is\ndestruction, whose God is their belly.  Pantagruel compared them to the\nCyclops Polyphemus, whom Euripides brings in speaking thus:  I only\nsacrifice to myself--not to the gods--and to this belly of mine, the\ngreatest of all the gods.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the ridiculous statue Manduce; and how and what the Gastrolaters\nsacrifice to their ventripotent god.\n\nWhile we fed our eyes with the sight of the phizzes and actions of these\nlounging gulligutted Gastrolaters, we on a sudden heard the sound of a\nmusical instrument called a bell; at which all of them placed themselves in\nrank and file as for some mighty battle, everyone according to his office,\ndegree, and seniority.\n\nIn this order they moved towards Master Gaster, after a plump, young,\nlusty, gorbellied fellow, who on a long staff fairly gilt carried a wooden\nstatue, grossly carved, and as scurvily daubed over with paint; such a one\nas Plautus, Juvenal, and Pomp. Festus describe it.  At Lyons during the\nCarnival it is called Maschecroute or Gnawcrust; they call'd this Manduce.\n\nIt was a monstrous, ridiculous, hideous figure, fit to fright little\nchildren; its eyes were bigger than its belly, and its head larger than all\nthe rest of its body; well mouth-cloven however, having a goodly pair of\nwide, broad jaws, lined with two rows of teeth, upper tier and under tier,\nwhich, by the magic of a small twine hid in the hollow part of the golden\nstaff, were made to clash, clatter, and rattle dreadfully one against\nanother; as they do at Metz with St. Clement's dragon.\n\nComing near the Gastrolaters I saw they were followed by a great number of\nfat waiters and tenders, laden with baskets, dossers, hampers, dishes,\nwallets, pots, and kettles.  Then, under the conduct of Manduce, and\nsinging I do not know what dithyrambics, crepalocomes, and epenons, opening\ntheir baskets and pots, they offered their god:\n\nWhite hippocras,         Fricassees, nine       Cold loins of veal,\n  with dry toasts.         sorts.                 with spice.\nWhite bread.             Monastical brewis.     Zinziberine.\nBrown bread.             Gravy soup.            Beatille pies.\nCarbonadoes, six         Hotch-pots.            Brewis.\n  sorts.                 Soft bread.            Marrow-bones, toast,\nBrawn.                   Household bread.         and cabbage.\nSweetbreads.             Capirotadoes.          Hashes.\n\nEternal drink intermixed.  Brisk delicate white wine led the van; claret\nand champagne followed, cool, nay, as cold as the very ice, I say, filled\nand offered in large silver cups.  Then they offered:\n\nChitterlings, gar-       Chines and peas.       Hams.\n  nished with mus-       Hog's haslets.         Brawn heads.\n  tard.                  Scotch collops.        Powdered venison,\nSausages.                Puddings.                with turnips.\nNeats' tongues.          Cervelats.             Pickled olives.\nHung beef.               Bologna sausages.\n\nAll this associated with sempiternal liquor.  Then they housed within his\nmuzzle:\n\nLegs of mutton, with     Ribs of pork, with     Caponets.\n  shallots.                onion sauce.         Caviare and toast.\nOlias.                   Roast capons, basted   Fawns, deer.\nLumber pies, with          with their own       Hares, leverets.\n  hot sauce.               dripping.            Plovers.\nPartridges and young     Flamingoes.            Herons, and young\n  partridges.            Cygnets.                 herons.\nDwarf-herons.            A reinforcement of     Olives.\nTeals.                     vinegar intermixed.  Thrushes.\nDuckers.                 Venison pasties.       Young sea-ravens.\nBitterns.                Lark pies.             Geese, goslings.\nShovellers.              Dormice pies.          Queests.\nCurlews.                 Cabretto pasties.      Widgeons.\nWood-hens.               Roebuck pasties.       Mavises.\nCoots, with leeks.       Pigeon pies.           Grouses.\nFat kids.                Kid pasties.           Turtles.\nShoulders of mutton,     Capon pies.            Doe-coneys.\n  with capers.           Bacon pies.            Hedgehogs.\nSirloins of beef.        Soused hog's feet.     Snites.\nBreasts of veal.         Fried pasty-crust.     Then large puffs.\nPheasants and phea-      Forced capons.         Thistle-finches.\n  sant poots.            Parmesan cheese.       Whore's farts.\nPeacocks.                Red and pale hip-      Fritters.\nStorks.                    pocras.              Cakes, sixteen sorts.\nWoodcocks.               Gold-peaches.          Crisp wafers.\nSnipes.                  Artichokes.            Quince tarts.\nOrtolans.                Dry and wet sweet-     Curds and cream.\nTurkey cocks, hen          meats, seventy-      Whipped cream.\n  turkeys, and turkey      eight sorts.         Preserved mirabo-\n  poots.                 Boiled hens, and fat     lans.\nStock-doves, and           capons marinated.    Jellies.\n  wood-culvers.          Pullets, with eggs.    Welsh barrapyclids.\nPigs, with wine sauce.   Chickens.              Macaroons.\nBlackbirds, ousels, and  Rabbits, and sucking   Tarts, twenty sorts.\n  rails.                   rabbits.             Lemon cream, rasp-\nMoorhens.                Quails, and young        berry cream, &c.\nBustards, and bustard      quails.              Comfits, one hundred\n  poots.                 Pigeons, squabs, and     colours.\nFig-peckers.               squeakers.           Cream wafers.\nYoung Guinea hens.       Fieldfares.            Cream cheese.\n\nVinegar brought up the rear to wash the mouth, and for fear of the squinsy;\nalso toasts to scour the grinders.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat the Gastrolaters sacrificed to their god on interlarded fish-days.\n\nPantagruel did not like this pack of rascally scoundrels with their\nmanifold kitchen sacrifices, and would have been gone had not Epistemon\nprevailed with him to stay and see the end of the farce.  He then asked the\nskipper what the idle lobcocks used to sacrifice to their gorbellied god on\ninterlarded fish-days.  For his first course, said the skipper, they gave\nhim:\n\nCaviare.                  tops, bishop's-cods,    Red herrings.\nBotargoes.                celery, chives, ram-    Pilchards.\nFresh butter.             pions, jew's-ears (a    Anchovies.\nPease soup.               sort of mushrooms       Fry of tunny.\nSpinach.                  that sprout out of      Cauliflowers.\nFresh herrings, full      old elders), spara-     Beans.\n  roed.                   gus, wood-bind,         Salt salmon.\nSalads, a hundred         and a world of          Pickled grigs.\n  varieties, of cres-     others.                 Oysters in the shell.\n  ses, sodden hop-\n\nThen he must drink, or the devil would gripe him at the throat; this,\ntherefore, they take care to prevent, and nothing is wanting.  Which being\ndone, they give him lampreys with hippocras sauce:\n\nGurnards.               Thornbacks.             Fried oysters.\nSalmon trouts.          Sleeves.                Cockles.\nBarbels, great and      Sturgeons.              Prawns.\n  small.                Sheath-fish.            Smelts.\nRoaches.                Mackerels.              Rock-fish.\nCockerels.              Maids.                  Gracious lords.\nMinnows.                Plaice.                 Sword-fish.\nSkate-fish.             Sharplings.             Soles.\nLamprels.               Tunnies.                Mussels.\nJegs.                   Silver eels.            Lobsters.\nPickerels.              Chevins.                Great prawns.\nGolden carps.           Crayfish.               Dace.\nBurbates.               Pallours.               Bleaks.\nSalmons.                Shrimps.                Tenches.\nSalmon-peels.           Congers.                Ombres.\nDolphins.               Porpoises.              Fresh cods.\nBarn trouts.            Bases.                  Dried melwels.\nMiller's-thumbs.        Shads.                  Darefish.\nPrecks.                 Murenes, a sort of      Fausens, and grigs.\nBret-fish.                lampreys.             Eel-pouts.\nFlounders.              Graylings.              Tortoises.\nSea-nettles.            Smys.                   Serpents, i.e. wood-\nMullets.                Turbots.                  eels.\nGudgeons.               Trout, not above a      Dories.\nDabs and sandings.        foot long.            Moor-game.\nHaddocks.               Salmons.                Perches.\nCarps.                  Meagers.                Loaches.\nPikes.                  Sea-breams.             Crab-fish.\nBottitoes.              Halibuts.               Snails and whelks.\nRochets.                Dog's tongue, or kind   Frogs.\nSea-bears.                fool.\n\nIf, when he had crammed all this down his guttural trapdoor, he did not\nimmediately make the fish swim again in his paunch, death would pack him\noff in a trice.  Special care is taken to antidote his godship with\nvine-tree syrup.  Then is sacrificed to him haberdines, poor-jack,\nminglemangled, mismashed, &c.\n\nEggs fried, beaten,       sliced, roasted in     Green-fish.\n  buttered, poached,      the embers, tossed     Sea-batts.\n  hardened, boiled,       in the chimney, &c.    Cod's sounds.\n  broiled, stewed,      Stock-fish.              Sea-pikes.\n\nWhich to concoct and digest the more easily, vinegar is multiplied.  For\nthe latter part of their sacrifices they offer:\n\nRice milk, and hasty    Stewed prunes, and       Raisins.\n  pudding.                baked bullace.         Dates.\nButtered wheat, and     Pistachios, or fistic    Chestnut and wal-\n  flummery.               nuts.                    nuts.\nWater-gruel, and        Figs.                    Filberts.\n  milk-porridge.        Almond butter.           Parsnips.\nFrumenty and bonny      Skirret root.            Artichokes.\n  clamber.              White-pot.\n              Perpetuity of soaking with the whole.\n\nIt was none of their fault, I will assure you, if this same god of theirs\nwas not publicly, preciously, and plentifully served in the sacrifices,\nbetter yet than Heliogabalus's idol; nay, more than Bel and the Dragon in\nBabylon, under King Belshazzar.  Yet Gaster had the manners to own that he\nwas no god, but a poor, vile, wretched creature.  And as King Antigonus,\nfirst of the name, when one Hermodotus (as poets will flatter, especially\nprinces) in some of his fustian dubbed him a god, and made the sun adopt\nhim for his son, said to him:  My lasanophore (or, in plain English, my\ngroom of the close-stool) can give thee the lie; so Master Gaster very\ncivilly used to send back his bigoted worshippers to his close-stool, to\nsee, smell, taste, philosophize, and examine what kind of divinity they\ncould pick out of his sir-reverence.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gaster invented means to get and preserve corn.\n\nThose gastrolatrous hobgoblins being withdrawn, Pantagruel carefully minded\nthe famous master of arts, Gaster.  You know that, by the institution of\nnature, bread has been assigned him for provision and food; and that, as an\naddition to this blessing, he should never want the means to get bread.\n\nAccordingly, from the beginning he invented the smith's art, and husbandry\nto manure the ground, that it might yield him corn; he invented arms and\nthe art of war to defend corn; physic and astronomy, with other parts of\nmathematics which might be useful to keep corn a great number of years in\nsafety from the injuries of the air, beasts, robbers, and purloiners; he\ninvented water, wind, and handmills, and a thousand other engines to grind\ncorn and to turn it into meal; leaven to make the dough ferment, and the\nuse of salt to give it a savour; for he knew that nothing bred more\ndiseases than heavy, unleavened, unsavoury bread.\n\nHe found a way to get fire to bake it; hour-glasses, dials, and clocks to\nmark the time of its baking; and as some countries wanted corn, he\ncontrived means to convey some out of one country into another.\n\nHe had the wit to pimp for asses and mares, animals of different species,\nthat they might copulate for the generation of a third, which we call\nmules, more strong and fit for hard service than the other two.  He\ninvented carts and waggons to draw him along with greater ease; and as seas\nand rivers hindered his progress, he devised boats, galleys, and ships (to\nthe astonishment of the elements) to waft him over to barbarous, unknown,\nand far distant nations, thence to bring, or thither to carry corn.\n\nBesides, seeing that when he had tilled the ground, some years the corn\nperished in it for want of rain in due season, in others rotted or was\ndrowned by its excess, sometimes spoiled by hail, eat by worms in the ear,\nor beaten down by storms, and so his stock was destroyed on the ground; we\nwere told that ever since the days of yore he has found out a way to\nconjure the rain down from heaven only with cutting certain grass, common\nenough in the field, yet known to very few, some of which was then shown\nus.  I took it to be the same as the plant, one of whose boughs being\ndipped by Jove's priest in the Agrian fountain on the Lycian mountain in\nArcadia, in time of drought raised vapours which gathered into clouds, and\nthen dissolved into rain that kindly moistened the whole country.\n\nOur master of arts was also said to have found a way to keep the rain up in\nthe air, and make it to fall into the sea; also to annihilate the hail,\nsuppress the winds, and remove storms as the Methanensians of Troezene used\nto do.  And as in the fields thieves and plunderers sometimes stole and\ntook by force the corn and bread which others had toiled to get, he\ninvented the art of building towns, forts, and castles, to hoard and secure\nthat staff of life.  On the other hand, finding none in the fields, and\nhearing that it was hoarded up and secured in towns, forts, and castles,\nand watched with more care than ever were the golden pippins of the\nHesperides, he turned engineer, and found ways to beat, storm, and demolish\nforts and castles with machines and warlike thunderbolts, battering-rams,\nballists, and catapults, whose shapes were shown to us, not over-well\nunderstood by our engineers, architects, and other disciples of Vitruvius;\nas Master Philibert de l'Orme, King Megistus's principal architect, has\nowned to us.\n\nAnd seeing that sometimes all these tools of destruction were baffled by\nthe cunning subtlety or the subtle cunning (which you please) of\nfortifiers, he lately invented cannons, field-pieces, culverins, bombards,\nbasiliskos, murdering instruments that dart iron, leaden, and brazen balls,\nsome of them outweighing huge anvils.  This by the means of a most dreadful\npowder, whose hellish compound and effect has even amazed nature, and made\nher own herself outdone by art, the Oxydracian thunders, hails, and storms\nby which the people of that name immediately destroyed their enemies in the\nfield being but mere potguns to these.  For one of our great guns when used\nis more dreadful, more terrible, more diabolical, and maims, tears, breaks,\nslays, mows down, and sweeps away more men, and causes a greater\nconsternation and destruction than a hundred thunderbolts.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gaster invented an art to avoid being hurt or touched by cannon-balls.\n\nGaster having secured himself with his corn within strongholds, has\nsometimes been attacked by enemies; his fortresses, by that thrice\nthreefold cursed instrument, levelled and destroyed; his dearly beloved\ncorn and bread snatched out of his mouth and sacked by a titanic force;\ntherefore he then sought means to preserve his walls, bastions, rampiers,\nand sconces from cannon-shot, and to hinder the bullets from hitting him,\nstopping them in their flight, or at least from doing him or the besieged\nwalls any damage.  He showed us a trial of this which has been since used\nby Fronton, and is now common among the pastimes and harmless recreations\nof the Thelemites.  I will tell you how he went to work, and pray for the\nfuture be a little more ready to believe what Plutarch affirms to have\ntried.  Suppose a herd of goats were all scampering as if the devil drove\nthem, do but put a bit of eringo into the mouth of the hindmost nanny, and\nthey will all stop stock still in the time you can tell three.\n\nThus Gaster, having caused a brass falcon to be charged with a sufficient\nquantity of gunpowder well purged from its sulphur, and curiously made up\nwith fine camphor, he then had a suitable ball put into the piece, with\ntwenty-four little pellets like hail-shot, some round, some pearl fashion;\nthen taking his aim and levelling it at a page of his, as if he would have\nhit him on the breast.  About sixty strides off the piece, halfway between\nit and the page in a right line, he hanged on a gibbet by a rope a very\nlarge siderite or iron-like stone, otherwise called herculean, formerly\nfound on Ida in Phrygia by one Magnes, as Nicander writes, and commonly\ncalled loadstone; then he gave fire to the prime on the piece's touch-hole,\nwhich in an instant consuming the powder, the ball and hail-shot were with\nincredible violence and swiftness hurried out of the gun at its muzzle,\nthat the air might penetrate to its chamber, where otherwise would have\nbeen a vacuum, which nature abhors so much, that this universal machine,\nheaven, air, land, and sea, would sooner return to the primitive chaos than\nadmit the least void anywhere.  Now the ball and small shot, which\nthreatened the page with no less than quick destruction, lost their\nimpetuosity and remained suspended and hovering round the stone; nor did\nany of them, notwithstanding the fury with which they rushed, reach the\npage.\n\nMaster Gaster could do more than all this yet, if you will believe me; for\nhe invented a way how to cause bullets to fly backwards, and recoil on\nthose that sent them with as great a force, and in the very numerical\nparallel for which the guns were planted.  And indeed, why should he have\nthought this difficult? seeing the herb ethiopis opens all locks\nwhatsoever, and an echinus or remora, a silly weakly fish, in spite of all\nthe winds that blow from the thirty-two points of the compass, will in the\nmidst of a hurricane make you the biggest first-rate remain stock still, as\nif she were becalmed or the blustering tribe had blown their last.  Nay,\nand with the flesh of that fish, preserved with salt, you may fish gold out\nof the deepest well that was ever sounded with a plummet; for it will\ncertainly draw up the precious metal, since Democritus affirmed it.\nTheophrastus believed and experienced that there was an herb at whose\nsingle touch an iron wedge, though never so far driven into a huge log of\nthe hardest wood that is, would presently come out; and it is this same\nherb your hickways, alias woodpeckers, use, when with some mighty axe\nanyone stops up the hole of their nests, which they industriously dig and\nmake in the trunk of some sturdy tree.  Since stags and hinds, when deeply\nwounded with darts, arrows, and bolts, if they do but meet the herb called\ndittany, which is common in Candia, and eat a little of it, presently the\nshafts come out and all is well again; even as kind Venus cured her beloved\nbyblow Aeneas when he was wounded on the right thigh with an arrow by\nJuturna, Turnus's sister.  Since the very wind of laurels, fig-trees, or\nsea-calves makes the thunder sheer off insomuch that it never strikes them.\nSince at the sight of a ram, mad elephants recover their former senses.\nSince mad bulls coming near wild fig-trees, called caprifici, grow tame,\nand will not budge a foot, as if they had the cramp.  Since the venomous\nrage of vipers is assuaged if you but touch them with a beechen bough.\nSince also Euphorion writes that in the isle of Samos, before Juno's temple\nwas built there, he has seen some beasts called neades, whose voice made\nthe neighbouring places gape and sink into a chasm and abyss.  In short,\nsince elders grow of a more pleasing sound, and fitter to make flutes, in\nsuch places where the crowing of cocks is not heard, as the ancient sages\nhave writ and Theophrastus relates; as if the crowing of a cock dulled,\nflattened, and perverted the wood of the elder, as it is said to astonish\nand stupify with fear that strong and resolute animal, a lion.  I know that\nsome have understood this of wild elder, that grows so far from towns or\nvillages that the crowing of cocks cannot reach near it; and doubtless that\nsort ought to be preferred to the stenching common elder that grows about\ndecayed and ruined places; but others have understood this in a higher\nsense, not literal, but allegorical, according to the method of the\nPythagoreans, as when it was said that Mercury's statue could not be made\nof every sort of wood; to which sentence they gave this sense, that God is\nnot to be worshipped in a vulgar form, but in a chosen and religious\nmanner.  In the same manner, by this elder which grows far from places\nwhere cocks are heard, the ancients meant that the wise and studious ought\nnot to give their minds to trivial or vulgar music, but to that which is\ncelestial, divine, angelical, more abstracted, and brought from remoter\nparts, that is, from a region where the crowing of cocks is not heard; for,\nto denote a solitary and unfrequented place, we say cocks are never heard\nto crow there.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel fell asleep near the island of Chaneph, and of the problems\nproposed to be solved when he waked.\n\nThe next day, merrily pursuing our voyage, we came in sight of the island\nof Chaneph, where Pantagruel's ship could not arrive, the wind chopping\nabout, and then failing us so that we were becalmed, and could hardly get\nahead, tacking about from starboard to larboard, and larboard to starboard,\nthough to our sails we added drabblers.\n\nWith this accident we were all out of sorts, moping, drooping,\nmetagrabolized, as dull as dun in the mire, in C sol fa ut flat, out of\ntune, off the hinges, and I-don't-know-howish, without caring to speak one\nsingle syllable to each other.\n\nPantagruel was taking a nap, slumbering and nodding on the quarter-deck by\nthe cuddy, with an Heliodorus in his hand; for still it was his custom to\nsleep better by book than by heart.\n\nEpistemon was conjuring, with his astrolabe, to know what latitude we were\nin.\n\nFriar John was got into the cook-room, examining, by the ascendant of the\nspits and the horoscope of ragouts and fricassees, what time of day it\nmight then be.\n\nPanurge (sweet baby!) held a stalk of Pantagruelions, alias hemp, next his\ntongue, and with it made pretty bubbles and bladders.\n\nGymnast was making tooth-pickers with lentisk.\n\nPonocrates, dozing, dozed, and dreaming, dreamed; tickled himself to make\nhimself laugh, and with one finger scratched his noddle where it did not\nitch.\n\nCarpalin, with a nutshell and a trencher of verne (that's a card in\nGascony), was making a pretty little merry windmill, cutting the card\nlongways into four slips, and fastening them with a pin to the convex of\nthe nut, and its concave to the tarred side of the gunnel of the ship.\n\nEusthenes, bestriding one of the guns, was playing on it with his fingers\nas if it had been a trump-marine.\n\nRhizotome, with the soft coat of a field tortoise, alias ycleped a mole,\nwas making himself a velvet purse.\n\nXenomanes was patching up an old weather-beaten lantern with a hawk's\njesses.\n\nOur pilot (good man!) was pulling maggots out of the seamen's noses.\n\nAt last Friar John, returning from the forecastle, perceived that\nPantagruel was awake.  Then breaking this obstinate silence, he briskly and\ncheerfully asked him how a man should kill time, and raise good weather,\nduring a calm at sea.\n\nPanurge, whose belly thought his throat cut, backed the motion presently,\nand asked for a pill to purge melancholy.\n\nEpistemon also came on, and asked how a man might be ready to bepiss\nhimself with laughing when he has no heart to be merry.\n\nGymnast, arising, demanded a remedy for a dimness of eyes.\n\nPonocrates, after he had a while rubbed his noddle and shaken his ears,\nasked how one might avoid dog-sleep.  Hold! cried Pantagruel, the\nPeripatetics have wisely made a rule that all problems, questions, and\ndoubts which are offered to be solved ought to be certain, clear, and\nintelligible.  What do you mean by dog-sleep?  I mean, answered Ponocrates,\nto sleep fasting in the sun at noonday, as the dogs do.\n\nRhizotome, who lay stooping on the pump, raised his drowsy head, and lazily\nyawning, by natural sympathy set almost everyone in the ship a-yawning too;\nthen he asked for a remedy against oscitations and gapings.\n\nXenomanes, half puzzled, and tired out with new-vamping his antiquated\nlantern, asked how the hold of the stomach might be so well ballasted and\nfreighted from the keel to the main hatch, with stores well stowed, that\nour human vessels might not heel or be walt, but well trimmed and stiff.\n\nCarpalin, twirling his diminutive windmill, asked how many motions are to\nbe felt in nature before a gentleman may be said to be hungry.\n\nEusthenes, hearing them talk, came from between decks, and from the capstan\ncalled out to know why a man that is fasting, bit by a serpent also\nfasting, is in greater danger of death than when man and serpent have eat\ntheir breakfasts;--why a man's fasting-spittle is poisonous to serpents and\nvenomous creatures.\n\nOne single solution may serve for all your problems, gentlemen, answered\nPantagruel; and one single medicine for all such symptoms and accidents.\nMy answer shall be short, not to tire you with a long needless train of\npedantic cant.  The belly has no ears, nor is it to be filled with fair\nwords; you shall be answered to content by signs and gestures.  As formerly\nat Rome, Tarquin the Proud, its last king, sent an answer by signs to his\nson Sextus, who was among the Gabii at Gabii.  (Saying this, he pulled the\nstring of a little bell, and Friar John hurried away to the cook-room.)\nThe son having sent his father a messenger to know how he might bring the\nGabii under a close subjection, the king, mistrusting the messenger, made\nhim no answer, and only took him into his privy garden, and in his presence\nwith his sword lopped off the heads of the tall poppies that were there.\nThe express returned without any other despatch, yet having related to the\nprince what he had seen his father do, he easily understood that by those\nsigns he advised him to cut off the heads of the chief men in the town, the\nbetter to keep under the rest of the people.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel gave no answer to the problems.\n\nPantagruel then asked what sort of people dwelt in that damned island.\nThey are, answered Xenomanes, all hypocrites, holy mountebanks, tumblers of\nbeads, mumblers of ave-marias, spiritual comedians, sham saints, hermits,\nall of them poor rogues who, like the hermit of Lormont between Blaye and\nBordeaux, live wholly on alms given them by passengers.  Catch me there if\nyou can, cried Panurge; may the devil's head-cook conjure my bumgut into a\npair of bellows if ever you find me among them!  Hermits, sham saints,\nliving forms of mortification, holy mountebanks, avaunt! in the name of\nyour father Satan, get out of my sight!  When the devil's a hog, you shall\neat bacon.  I shall not forget yet awhile our fat Concilipetes of Chesil.\nO that Beelzebub and Astaroth had counselled them to hang themselves out of\nthe way, and they had done't! we had not then suffered so much by devilish\nstorms as we did for having seen 'em.  Hark ye me, dear rogue, Xenomanes,\nmy friend, I prithee are these hermits, hypocrites, and eavesdroppers maids\nor married?  Is there anything of the feminine gender among them?  Could a\nbody hypocritically take there a small hypocritical touch?  Will they lie\nbackwards, and let out their fore-rooms?  There's a fine question to be\nasked, cried Pantagruel.  Yes, yes, answered Xenomanes; you may find there\nmany goodly hypocritesses, jolly spiritual actresses, kind hermitesses,\nwomen that have a plaguy deal of religion; then there's the copies of 'em,\nlittle hypocritillons, sham sanctitos, and hermitillons.  Foh! away with\nthem, cried Friar John; a young saint, an old devil!  (Mark this, an old\nsaying, and as true a one as, a young whore, an old saint.)  Were there not\nsuch, continued Xenomanes, the isle of Chaneph, for want of a\nmultiplication of progeny, had long ere this been desert and desolate.\n\nPantagruel sent them by Gymnast in the pinnace seventy-eight thousand fine\npretty little gold half-crowns, of those that are marked with a lantern.\nAfter this he asked, What's o'clock?  Past nine, answered Epistemon.  It is\nthen the best time to go to dinner, said Pantagruel; for the sacred line so\ncelebrated by Aristophanes in his play called Concionatrices is at hand,\nnever failing when the shadow is decempedal.\n\nFormerly, among the Persians, dinner-time was at a set hour only for kings;\nas for all others, their appetite and their belly was their clock; when\nthat chimed, they thought it time to go to dinner.  So we find in Plautus a\ncertain parasite making a heavy do, and sadly railing at the inventors of\nhour-glasses and dials as being unnecessary things, there being no clock\nmore regular than the belly.\n\nDiogenes being asked at what times a man ought to eat, answered, The rich\nwhen he is hungry, the poor when he has anything to eat.  Physicians more\nproperly say that the canonical hours are,\n\n  To rise at five, to dine at nine,\n  To sup at five, to sleep at nine.\n\nThe famous king Petosiris's magic was different,--Here the officers for the\ngut came in, and got ready the tables and cupboards; laid the cloth, whose\nsight and pleasant smell were very comfortable; and brought plates,\nnapkins, salts, tankards, flagons, tall-boys, ewers, tumblers, cups,\ngoblets, basins, and cisterns.\n\nFriar John, at the head of the stewards, sewers, yeomen of the pantry, and\nof the mouth, tasters, carvers, cupbearers, and cupboard-keepers, brought\nfour stately pasties, so huge that they put me in mind of the four bastions\nat Turin.  Ods-fish, how manfully did they storm them!  What havoc did they\nmake with the long train of dishes that came after them!  How bravely did\nthey stand to their pan-puddings, and paid off their dust!  How merrily did\nthey soak their noses!\n\nThe fruit was not yet brought in, when a fresh gale at west and by north\nbegan to fill the main-course, mizen-sail, fore-sail, tops, and\ntop-gallants; for which blessing they all sung divers hymns of thanks and\npraise.\n\nWhen the fruit was on the table, Pantagruel asked, Now tell me, gentlemen,\nare your doubts fully resolved or no?  I gape and yawn no more, answered\nRhizotome.  I sleep no longer like a dog, said Ponocrates.  I have cleared\nmy eyesight, said Gymnast.  I have broke my fast, said Eusthenes; so that\nfor this whole day I shall be secure from the danger of my spittle.\n\nAsps.             Black wag leg-flies.  Domeses.\nAmphisbenes.      Spanish flies.        Dryinades.\nAnerudutes.       Catoblepes.           Dragons.\nAbedissimons.     Horned snakes.        Elopes.\nAlhartrafz.       Caterpillars.         Enhydrides.\nAmmobates.        Crocodiles.           Falvises.\nApimaos.          Toads.                Galeotes.\nAlhatrabans.      Nightmares.           Harmenes.\nAractes.          Mad dogs.             Handons.\nAsterions.        Colotes.              Icles.\nAlcharates.       Cychriodes.           Jarraries.\nArges.            Cafezates.            Ilicines.\nSpiders.          Cauhares.             Pharaoh's mice.\nStarry lizards.   Snakes.               Kesudures.\nAttelabes.        Cuhersks, two-        Sea-hares.\nAscalabotes.        tongued adders.     Chalcidic newts.\nHaemorrhoids.     Amphibious ser-       Footed serpents.\nBasilisks.          pents.              Manticores.\nFitches.          Cenchres.             Molures.\nSucking water-    Cockatrices.          Mouse-serpents.\n  snakes.         Dipsades.             Shrew-mice.\nMiliares.         Salamanders.          Stinkfish.\nMegalaunes.       Slowworms.            Stuphes.\nSpitting-asps.    Stellions.            Sabrins.\nPorphyri.         Scorpenes.            Blood-sucking flies.\nPareades.         Scorpions.            Hornfretters.\nPhalanges.        Hornworms.            Scolopendres.\nPenphredons.      Scalavotins.          Tarantulas.\nPinetree-worms.   Solofuidars.          Blind worms.\nRuteles.          Deaf-asps.            Tetragnathias.\nWorms.            Horseleeches.         Teristales.\nRhagions.         Salt-haters.          Vipers, &c.\nRhaganes.         Rot-serpents.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel passed the time with his servants.\n\nIn what hierarchy of such venomous creatures do you place Panurge's future\nspouse? asked Friar John.  Art thou speaking ill of women, cried Panurge,\nthou mangy scoundrel, thou sorry, noddy-peaked shaveling monk?  By the\ncenomanic paunch and gixy, said Epistemon, Euripides has written, and makes\nAndromache say it, that by industry, and the help of the gods, men had\nfound remedies against all poisonous creatures; but none was yet found\nagainst a bad wife.\n\nThis flaunting Euripides, cried Panurge, was gabbling against women every\nfoot, and therefore was devoured by dogs, as a judgment from above; as\nAristophanes observes.  Let's go on.  Let him speak that is next.  I can\nleak now like any stone-horse, said then Epistemon.  I am, said Xenomanes,\nfull as an egg and round as a hoop; my ship's hold can hold no more, and\nwill now make shift to bear a steady sail.  Said Carpalin, A truce with\nthirst, a truce with hunger; they are strong, but wine and meat are\nstronger.  I'm no more in the dumps cried Panurge; my heart's a pound\nlighter.  I'm in the right cue now, as brisk as a body-louse, and as merry\nas a beggar.  For my part, I know what I do when I drink; and it is a true\nthing (though 'tis in your Euripides) that is said by that jolly toper\nSilenus of blessed memory, that--\n\n  The man's emphatically mad,\n  Who drinks the best, yet can be sad.\n\nWe must not fail to return our humble and hearty thanks to the Being who,\nwith this good bread, this cool delicious wine, these good meats and rare\ndainties, removes from our bodies and minds these pains and perturbations,\nand at the same time fills us with pleasure and with food.\n\nBut methinks, sir, you did not give an answer to Friar John's question;\nwhich, as I take it, was how to raise good weather.  Since you ask no more\nthan this easy question, answered Pantagruel, I'll strive to give you\nsatisfaction; and some other time we'll talk of the rest of the problems,\nif you will.\n\nWell then, Friar John asked how good weather might be raised.  Have we not\nraised it?  Look up and see our full topsails.  Hark how the wind whistles\nthrough the shrouds, what a stiff gale it blows.  Observe the rattling of\nthe tacklings, and see the sheets that fasten the mainsail behind; the\nforce of the wind puts them upon the stretch.  While we passed our time\nmerrily, the dull weather also passed away; and while we raised the glasses\nto our mouths, we also raised the wind by a secret sympathy in nature.\n\nThus Atlas and Hercules clubbed to raise and underprop the falling sky, if\nyou'll believe the wise mythologists, but they raised it some half an inch\ntoo high, Atlas to entertain his guest Hercules more pleasantly, and\nHercules to make himself amends for the thirst which some time before had\ntormented him in the deserts of Africa.  Your good father, said Friar John,\ninterrupting him, takes care to free many people from such an\ninconveniency; for I have been told by many venerable doctors that his\nchief-butler, Turelupin, saves above eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly\nto make servants, and all comers and goers, drink before they are a-dry.\nAs the camels and dromedaries of a caravan, continued Pantagruel, use to\ndrink for the thirst that's past, for the present, and for that to come, so\ndid Hercules; and being thus excessively raised, this gave new motion to\nthe sky, which is that of titubation and trepidation, about which our\ncrackbrained astrologers make such a pother.  This, said Panurge, makes the\nsaying good:\n\n  While jolly companions carouse it together,\n  A fig for the storm, it gives way to good weather.\n\nNay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only\nshortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not\nlike Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our\nfasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when\nhe has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than\nliving.  However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their\nmorning's draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the\nhorses will perform the better, and that a spur in the head is worth two in\nthe flank; or, in the same horse dialect--\n\n  That a cup in the pate\n  Is a mile in the gate.\n\nDon't you know that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus\nabove all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric\ndialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering\nflight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring\nBacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a\npitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly\nparts become soft and pliant.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of\nGanabim.\n\nThis fair wind and as fine talk brought us in sight of a high land, which\nPantagruel discovering afar off, showed it Xenomanes, and asked him, Do you\nsee yonder to the leeward a high rock with two tops, much like Mount\nParnassus in Phocis?  I do plainly, answered Xenomanes; 'tis the isle of\nGanabim.  Have you a mind to go ashore there?  No, returned Pantagruel.\nYou do well, indeed, said Xenomanes; for there is nothing worth seeing in\nthe place.  The people are all thieves; yet there is the finest fountain in\nthe world, and a very large forest towards the right top of the mountain.\nYour fleet may take in wood and water there.\n\nHe that spoke last, spoke well, quoth Panurge; let us not by any means be\nso mad as to go among a parcel of thieves and sharpers.  You may take my\nword for't, this place is just such another as, to my knowledge, formerly\nwere the islands of Sark and Herm, between the smaller and the greater\nBritain; such as was the Poneropolis of Philip in Thrace; islands of\nthieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than\nraw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the\ncollege of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol's common-side.\nAs you love yourself, do not go among 'em.  If you go you'll come off but\nbluely, if you come off at all.  If you will not believe me, at least\nbelieve what the good and wise Xenomanes tells you; for may I never stir if\nthey are not worse than the very cannibals; they would certainly eat us\nalive.  Do not go among 'em, I pray you; it were safer to take a journey to\nhell.  Hark! by Cod's body, I hear 'em ringing the alarm-bell most\ndreadfully, as the Gascons about Bordeaux used formerly to do against the\ncommissaries and officers for the tax on salt, or my ears tingle.  Let's\nsheer off.\n\nBelieve me, sir, said Friar John, let's rather land; we will rid the world\nof that vermin, and inn there for nothing.  Old Nick go with thee for me,\nquoth Panurge.  This rash hairbrained devil of a friar fears nothing, but\nventures and runs on like a mad devil as he is, and cares not a rush what\nbecomes of others; as if everyone was a monk, like his friarship.  A pox on\ngrinning honour, say I.  Go to, returned the friar, thou mangy noddy-peak!\nthou forlorn druggle-headed sneaksby! and may a million of black devils\nanatomize thy cockle brain.  The hen-hearted rascal is so cowardly that he\nberays himself for fear every day.  If thou art so afraid, dunghill, do not\ngo; stay here and be hanged; or go and hide thy loggerhead under Madam\nProserpine's petticoat.\n\nPanurge hearing this, his breech began to make buttons; so he slunk in in\nan instant, and went to hide his head down in the bread-room among the\nmusty biscuits and the orts and scraps of broken bread.\n\nPantagruel in the meantime said to the rest:  I feel a pressing retraction\nin my soul, which like a voice admonishes me not to land there.  Whenever I\nhave felt such a motion within me I have found myself happy in avoiding\nwhat it directed me to shun, or in undertaking what it prompted me to do;\nand I never had occasion to repent following its dictates.\n\nAs much, said Epistemon, is related of the daemon of Socrates, so\ncelebrated among the Academics.  Well then, sir, said Friar John, while the\nship's crew water have you a mind to have good sport?  Panurge is got down\nsomewhere in the hold, where he is crept into some corner, and lurks like a\nmouse in a cranny.  Let 'em give the word for the gunner to fire yon gun\nover the round-house on the poop; this will serve to salute the Muses of\nthis Anti-parnassus; besides, the powder does but decay in it.  You are in\nthe right, said Pantagruel; here, give the word for the gunner.\n\nThe gunner immediately came, and was ordered by Pantagruel to fire that\ngun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done.  The\ngunners of the other ships, frigates, galleons, and galleys of the fleet,\nhearing us fire, gave every one a gun to the island; which made such a\nhorrid noise that you would have sworn heaven had been tumbling about our\nears.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge cat Rodilardus, which\nhe took for a puny devil.\n\nPanurge, like a wild, addle-pated, giddy-goat, sallies out of the\nbread-room in his shirt, with nothing else about him but one of his\nstockings, half on, half off, about his heel, like a rough-footed pigeon;\nhis hair and beard all bepowdered with crumbs of bread in which he had been\nover head and ears, and a huge and mighty puss partly wrapped up in his\nother stocking.  In this equipage, his chaps moving like a monkey's who's\na-louse-hunting, his eyes staring like a dead pig's, his teeth chattering,\nand his bum quivering, the poor dog fled to Friar John, who was then sitting\nby the chain-wales of the starboard side of the ship, and prayed him\nheartily to take pity on him and keep him in the safeguard of his trusty\nbilbo; swearing, by his share of Papimany, that he had seen all hell broke\nloose.\n\nWoe is me, my Jacky, cried he, my dear Johnny, my old crony, my brother, my\nghostly father! all the devils keep holiday, all the devils keep their\nfeast to-day, man.  Pork and peas choke me if ever thou sawest such\npreparations in thy life for an infernal feast.  Dost thou see the smoke of\nhell's kitchens?  (This he said, showing him the smoke of the gunpowder\nabove the ships.)  Thou never sawest so many damned souls since thou wast\nborn; and so fair, so bewitching they seem, that one would swear they are\nStygian ambrosia.  I thought at first, God forgive me! that they had been\nEnglish souls; and I don't know but that this morning the isle of Horses,\nnear Scotland, was sacked, with all the English who had surprised it, by\nthe lords of Termes and Essay.\n\nFriar John, at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of\nsmell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk;\nwhich made him turn Panurge about, and then he saw that his shirt was\ndismally bepawed and berayed with fresh sir-reverence.  The retentive\nfaculty of the nerve which restrains the muscle called sphincter ('tis the\narse-hole, an it please you) was relaxated by the violence of the fear\nwhich he had been in during his fantastic visions.  Add to this the\nthundering noise of the shooting, which seems more dreadful between decks\nthan above.  Nor ought you to wonder at such a mishap; for one of the\nsymptoms and accidents of fear is, that it often opens the wicket of the\ncupboard wherein second-hand meat is kept for a time.  Let's illustrate\nthis noble theme with some examples.\n\nMesser Pantolfe de la Cassina of Siena, riding post from Rome, came to\nChambery, and alighting at honest Vinet's took one of the pitchforks in the\nstable; then turning to the innkeeper, said to him, Da Roma in qua io non\nson andato del corpo.  Di gratia piglia in mano questa forcha, et fa mi\npaura.  (I have not had a stool since I left Rome.  I pray thee take this\npitchfork and fright me.)  Vinet took it, and made several offers as if he\nwould in good earnest have hit the signor, but all in vain; so the Sienese\nsaid to him, Si tu non fai altramente, tu non fai nulla; pero sforzati di\nadoperarli piu guagliardamente.  (If thou dost not go another way to work,\nthou hadst as good do nothing; therefore try to bestir thyself more\nbriskly.)  With this, Vinet lent him such a swinging stoater with the\npitchfork souse between the neck and the collar of his jerkin, that down\nfell signor on the ground arsyversy, with his spindle shanks wide\nstraggling over his poll.  Then mine host sputtering, with a full-mouthed\nlaugh, said to his guest, By Beelzebub's bumgut, much good may it do you,\nSignore Italiano.  Take notice this is datum Camberiaci, given at Chambery.\n'Twas well the Sienese had untrussed his points and let down his drawers;\nfor this physic worked with him as soon as he took it, and as copious was\nthe evacuation as that of nine buffaloes and fourteen missificating\narch-lubbers.  Which operation being over, the mannerly Sienese courteously\ngave mine host a whole bushel of thanks, saying to him, Io ti ringratio, bel\nmessere; cosi facendo tu m' ai esparmiata la speza d'un servitiale.  (I\nthank thee, good landlord; by this thou hast e'en saved me the expense of a\nclyster.)\n\nI'll give you another example of Edward V., King of England.  Master\nFrancis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his\nfavour as to be privy to all his household affairs.  One day the king,\nbeing on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to\nhim, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings?  I have none\nof their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool.\nOds-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health\nyour highness is!  How carefully your learned doctor, Thomas Linacre, looks\nafter you!  He saw that now you grow old you are inclined to be somewhat\ncostive, and every day were fain to have an apothecary, I mean a suppository\nor clyster, thrust into your royal nockandroe; so he has, much to the\npurpose, induced you to place here the arms of France; for the very sight of\nthem puts you into such a dreadful fright that you immediately let fly as\nmuch as would come from eighteen squattering bonasi of Paeonia.  And if they\nwere painted in other parts of your house, by jingo, you would presently\nconskite yourself wherever you saw them.  Nay, had you but here a picture of\nthe great oriflamme of France, ods-bodikins, your tripes and bowels would be\nin no small danger of dropping out at the orifice of your posteriors.  But\nhenh, henh, atque iterum henh.\n\n  A silly cockney am I not,\n    As ever did from Paris come?\n  And with a rope and sliding knot\n    My neck shall know what weighs my bum.\n\nA cockney of short reach, I say, shallow of judgment and judging shallowly,\nto wonder that you should cause your points to be untrussed in your chamber\nbefore you come into this closet.  By'r lady, at first I thought your\nclose-stool had stood behind the hangings of your bed; otherwise it seemed\nvery odd to me you should untruss so far from the place of evacuation.  But\nnow I find I was a gull, a wittol, a woodcock, a mere ninny, a dolt-head, a\nnoddy, a changeling, a calf-lolly, a doddipoll.  You do wisely, by the\nmass, you do wisely; for had you not been ready to clap your hind face on\nthe mustard-pot as soon as you came within sight of these arms--mark ye me,\ncop's body--the bottom of your breeches had supplied the office of a\nclose-stool.\n\nFriar John, stopping the handle of his face with his left hand, did, with\nthe forefinger of the right, point out Panurge's shirt to Pantagruel, who,\nseeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring,\nberayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not\nchoose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this\ncat?  With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think\nit had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking\ninstead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as\nthievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done.  The devil\ntake Tybert!  I feel it has all bepinked my poor hide, and drawn on it to\nthe life I don't know how many lobsters' whiskers.  With this he threw his\nboar-cat down.\n\nGo, go, said Pantagruel, be bathed and cleaned, calm your fears, put on a\nclean shift, and then your clothes.  What! do you think I am afraid? cried\nPanurge.  Not I, I protest.  By the testicles of Hercules, I am more\nhearty, bold, and stout, though I say it that should not, than if I had\nswallowed as many flies as are put into plumcakes and other paste at Paris\nfrom Midsummer to Christmas.  But what's this?  Hah! oh, ho! how the devil\ncame I by this?  Do you call this what the cat left in the malt, filth,\ndirt, dung, dejection, faecal matter, excrement, stercoration,\nsir-reverence, ordure, second-hand meats, fumets, stronts, scybal, or\nspyrathe? 'Tis Hibernian saffron, I protest.  Hah, hah, hah! 'tis Irish\nsaffron, by Shaint Pautrick, and so much for this time.  Selah.  Let's\ndrink.\n\n\n\n\nIndefatigable topers, and you, thrice precious martyrs of the smock, give\nme leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly\nstriking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed.  Pray, why\nis it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in\nthe days of yore?  Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard,\njolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose\ncockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool.  Now would I know whether\nyou would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically\nmay, that formerly men were fools and in this generation are grown wise?\nHow many and what dispositions made them fools?  How many and what\ndispositions were wanting to make 'em wise?  Why were they fools?  How\nshould they be wise?  Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly\nfools?  How did you find that they are now wise?  Who the devil made 'em\nfools?  Who a God's name made 'em wise?  Who d'ye think are most, those\nthat loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise?  How long has it\nbeen wise?  How long otherwise?  Whence proceeded the foregoing folly?\nWhence the following wisdom?  Why did the old folly end now, and no later?\nWhy did the modern wisdom begin now, and no sooner?  What were we the worse\nfor the former folly?  What the better for the succeeding wisdom?  How\nshould the ancient folly be come to nothing?  How should this same new\nwisdom be started up and established?\n\nNow answer me, an't please you.  I dare not adjure you in stronger terms,\nreverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least\nuneasy.  Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.\nBe cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five\nbumpers of the best, while I make a halt at the first part of the sermon;\nthen answer my question.  If you are not for me, avaunt! avoid, Satan!  For\nI swear by my great-grandmother's placket (and that's a horrid oath), that\nif you don't help me to solve that puzzling problem, I will, nay, I already\ndo repent having proposed it; for still I must remain nettled and\ngravelled, and a devil a bit I know how to get off.  Well, what say you?\nI'faith, I begin to smell you out.  You are not yet disposed to give me an\nanswer; nor I neither, by these whiskers.  Yet to give some light into the\nbusiness, I'll e'en tell you what had been anciently foretold in the matter\nby a venerable doctor, who, being moved by the spirit in a prophetic vein,\nwrote a book ycleped the Prelatical Bagpipe.  What d'ye think the old\nfornicator saith?  Hearken, you old noddies, hearken now or never.\n\n  The jubilee's year, when all like fools were shorn,\n  Is about thirty supernumerary.\n  O want of veneration! fools they seemed,\n  But, persevering, with long breves, at last\n  No more they shall be gaping greedy fools.\n  For they shall shell the shrub's delicious fruit,\n  Whose flower they in the spring so much had feared.\n\nNow you have it, what do you make on't?  The seer is ancient, the style\nlaconic, the sentences dark like those of Scotus, though they treat of\nmatters dark enough in themselves.  The best commentators on that good\nfather take the jubilee after the thirtieth to be the years that are\nincluded in this present age till 1550 (there being but one jubilee every\nfifty years).  Men shall no longer be thought fools next green peas season.\n\nThe fools, whose number, as Solomon certifies, is infinite, shall go to pot\nlike a parcel of mad bedlamites as they are; and all manner of folly shall\nhave an end, that being also numberless, according to Avicenna, maniae\ninfinitae sunt species.  Having been driven back and hidden towards the\ncentre during the rigour of the winter, 'tis now to be seen on the surface,\nand buds out like the trees.  This is as plain as a nose in a man's face;\nyou know it by experience; you see it.  And it was formerly found out by\nthat great good man Hippocrates, Aphorism Verae etenim maniae, &c.  This\nworld therefore wisifying itself, shall no longer dread the flower and\nblossoms of every coming spring, that is, as you may piously believe,\nbumper in hand and tears in eyes, in the woeful time of Lent, which used to\nkeep them company.\n\nWhole cartloads of books that seemed florid, flourishing, and flowery, gay,\nand gaudy as so many butterflies, but in the main were tiresome, dull,\nsoporiferous, irksome, mischievous, crabbed, knotty, puzzling, and dark as\nthose of whining Heraclitus, as unintelligible as the numbers of\nPythagoras, that king of the bean, according to Horace; those books, I say,\nhave seen their best days and shall soon come to nothing, being delivered\nto the executing worms and merciless petty chandlers; such was their\ndestiny, and to this they were predestinated.\n\nIn their stead beans in cod are started up; that is, these merry and\nfructifying Pantagruelian books, so much sought nowadays in expectation of\nthe following jubilee's period; to the study of which writings all people\nhave given their minds, and accordingly have gained the name of wise.\n\nNow I think I have fairly solved and resolved your problem; then reform,\nand be the better for it.  Hem once or twice like hearts of oak; stand to\nyour pan-puddings, and take me off your bumpers, nine go-downs, and huzza!\nsince we are like to have a good vintage, and misers hang themselves.  Oh!\nthey will cost me an estate in hempen collars if fair weather hold.  For I\nhereby promise to furnish them with twice as much as will do their business\non free cost, as often as they will take the pains to dance at a rope's end\nprovidently to save charges, to the no small disappointment of the finisher\nof the law.\n\nNow, my friends, that you may put in for a share of this new wisdom, and\nshake off the antiquated folly this very moment, scratch me out of your\nscrolls and quite discard the symbol of the old philosopher with the golden\nthigh, by which he has forbidden you to eat beans; for you may take it for\na truth granted among all professors in the science of good eating, that he\nenjoined you not to taste of them only with the same kind intent that a\ncertain fresh-water physician had when he did forbid to Amer, late Lord of\nCamelotiere, kinsman to the lawyer of that name, the wing of the partridge,\nthe rump of the chicken, and the neck of the pigeon, saying, Ala mala,\nrumpum dubium, collum bonum, pelle remota.  For the duncical dog-leech was\nso selfish as to reserve them for his own dainty chops, and allowed his\npoor patients little more than the bare bones to pick, lest they should\noverload their squeamish stomachs.\n\nTo the heathen philosopher succeeded a pack of Capuchins, monks who forbid\nus the use of beans, that is, Pantagruelian books.  They seem to follow the\nexample of Philoxenus and Gnatho, one of whom was a Sicilian of fulsome\nmemory, the ancient master-builders of their monastic cram-gut\nvoluptuousness, who, when some dainty bit was served up at a feast,\nfilthily used to spit on it, that none but their nasty selves might have\nthe stomach to eat of it, though their liquorish chops watered never so\nmuch after it.\n\nSo those hideous, snotty, phthisicky, eaves-dropping, musty, moving forms\nof mortification, both in public and private, curse those dainty books, and\nlike toads spit their venom upon them.\n\nNow, though we have in our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse\nand prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and\ntrumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous\nforegoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my\nplain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans,\nrather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent\norators.  And thus I am prouder of acting the clown, or any other\nunder-part, among the many ingenious actors in that noble play, than of\nherding among those mutes, who, like so many shadows and ciphers, only serve\nto fill up the house and make up a number, gaping and yawning at the flies,\nand pricking up their lugs, like so many Arcadian asses, at the striking up\nof the music; thus silently giving to understand that their fopships are\ntickled in the right place.\n\nHaving taken this resolution, I thought it would not be amiss to move my\nDiogenical tub, that you might not accuse me of living without example.  I\nsee a swarm of our modern poets and orators, your Colinets, Marots,\nDrouets, Saint Gelais, Salels, Masuels, and many more, who, having\ncommenced masters in Apollo's academy on Mount Parnassus, and drunk\nbrimmers at the Caballin fountain among the nine merry Muses, have raised\nour vulgar tongue, and made it a noble and everlasting structure.  Their\nworks are all Parian marble, alabaster, porphyry, and royal cement; they\ntreat of nothing but heroic deeds, mighty things, grave and difficult\nmatters, and this in a crimson, alamode, rhetorical style.  Their writings\nare all divine nectar, rich, racy, sparkling, delicate, and luscious wine.\nNor does our sex wholly engross this honour; ladies have had their share of\nthe glory; one of them, of the royal blood of France, whom it were a\nprofanation but to name here, surprises the age at once by the transcendent\nand inventive genius in her writings and the admirable graces of her style.\nImitate those great examples if you can; for my part I cannot.  Everyone,\nyou know, cannot go to Corinth.  When Solomon built the temple, all could\nnot give gold by handfuls.\n\nSince then 'tis not in my power to improve our architecture as much as\nthey, I am e'en resolved to do like Renault of Montauban:  I'll wait on the\nmasons, set on the pot for the masons, cook for the stone-cutters; and\nsince it was not my good luck to be cut out for one of them, I will live\nand die the admirer of their divine writings.\n\nAs for you, little envious prigs, snarling bastards, puny critics, you'll\nsoon have railed your last; go hang yourselves, and choose you out some\nwell-spread oak, under whose shade you may swing in state, to the\nadmiration of the gaping mob; you shall never want rope enough.  While I\nhere solemnly protest before my Helicon, in the presence of my nine\nmistresses the Muses, that if I live yet the age of a dog, eked out with\nthat of three crows, sound wind and limbs, like the old Hebrew captain\nMoses, Xenophilus the musician, and Demonax the philosopher, by arguments\nno ways impertinent, and reasons not to be disputed, I will prove, in the\nteeth of a parcel of brokers and retailers of ancient rhapsodies and such\nmouldy trash, that our vulgar tongue is not so mean, silly, inept, poor,\nbarren, and contemptible as they pretend.  Nor ought I to be afraid of I\nknow not what botchers of old threadbare stuff, a hundred and a hundred\ntimes clouted up and pieced together; wretched bunglers that can do nothing\nbut new-vamp old rusty saws; beggarly scavengers that rake even the\nmuddiest canals of antiquity for scraps and bits of Latin as insignificant\nas they are often uncertain.  Beseeching our grandees of Witland that, as\nwhen formerly Apollo had distributed all the treasures of his poetical\nexchequer to his favourites, little hulchbacked Aesop got for himself the\noffice of apologue-monger; in the same manner, since I do not aspire\nhigher, they would not deny me that of puny rhyparographer, or riffraff\nfollower of the sect of Pyreicus.\n\nI dare swear they will grant me this; for they are all so kind, so\ngood-natured, and so generous, that they'll ne'er boggle at so small a\nrequest. Therefore, both dry and hungry souls, pot and trenchermen, fully\nenjoying those books, perusing, quoting them in their merry conventicles,\nand observing the great mysteries of which they treat, shall gain a singular\nprofit and fame; as in the like case was done by Alexander the Great with\nthe books of prime philosophy composed by Aristotle.\n\nO rare! belly on belly! what swillers, what twisters will there be!\n\nThen be sure all you that take care not to die of the pip, be sure, I say,\nyou take my advice, and stock yourselves with good store of such books as\nsoon as you meet with them at the booksellers; and do not only shell those\nbeans, but e'en swallow them down like an opiate cordial, and let them be\nin you; I say, let them be within you; then you shall find, my beloved,\nwhat good they do to all clever shellers of beans.\n\nHere is a good handsome basketful of them, which I here lay before your\nworships; they were gathered in the very individual garden whence the\nformer came.  So I beseech you, reverend sirs, with as much respect as was\never paid by dedicating author, to accept of the gift, in hopes of somewhat\nbetter against next visit the swallows give us.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island, and of the noise that we\nheard.\n\nPursuing our voyage, we sailed three days without discovering anything; on\nthe fourth we made land.  Our pilot told us that it was the Ringing Island,\nand indeed we heard a kind of a confused and often repeated noise, that\nseemed to us at a great distance not unlike the sound of great,\nmiddle-sized, and little bells rung all at once, as 'tis customary at Paris,\nTours, Gergeau, Nantes, and elsewhere on high holidays; and the nearer we\ncame to the land the louder we heard that jangling.\n\nSome of us doubted that it was the Dodonian kettle, or the portico called\nHeptaphone in Olympia, or the eternal humming of the colossus raised on\nMemnon's tomb in Thebes of Egypt, or the horrid din that used formerly to\nbe heard about a tomb at Lipara, one of the Aeolian islands.  But this did\nnot square with chorography.\n\nI do not know, said Pantagruel, but that some swarms of bees hereabouts may\nbe taking a ramble in the air, and so the neighbourhood make this\ndingle-dangle with pans, kettles, and basins, the corybantine cymbals of\nCybele, grandmother of the gods, to call them back.  Let's hearken.  When we\nwere nearer, among the everlasting ringing of these indefatigable bells we\nheard the singing, as we thought, of some men.  For this reason, before we\noffered to land on the Ringing Island, Pantagruel was of opinion that we\nshould go in the pinnace to a small rock, near which we discovered an\nhermitage and a little garden.  There we found a diminutive old hermit,\nwhose name was Braguibus, born at Glenay.  He gave us a full account of all\nthe jangling, and regaled us after a strange sort of fashion--four livelong\ndays did he make us fast, assuring us that we should not be admitted into\nthe Ringing Island otherwise, because it was then one of the four fasting,\nor ember weeks.  As I love my belly, quoth Panurge, I by no means understand\nthis riddle.  Methinks this should rather be one of the four windy weeks;\nfor while we fast we are only puffed up with wind.  Pray now, good father\nhermit, have not you here some other pastime besides fasting? Methinks it is\nsomewhat of the leanest; we might well enough be without so many palace\nholidays and those fasting times of yours.  In my Donatus, quoth Friar John,\nI could find yet but three times or tenses, the preterit, the present, and\nthe future; doubtless here the fourth ought to be a work of supererogation.\nThat time or tense, said Epistemon, is aorist, derived from the\npreter-imperfect tense of the Greeks, admitted in war (?) and odd cases.\nPatience perforce is a remedy for a mad dog.  Saith the hermit:  It is, as I\ntold you, fatal to go against this; whosoever does it is a rank heretic, and\nwants nothing but fire and faggot, that's certain.  To deal plainly with\nyou, my dear pater, cried Panurge, being at sea, I much more fear being wet\nthan being warm, and being drowned than being burned.\n\nWell, however, let us fast, a God's name; yet I have fasted so long that it\nhas quite undermined my flesh, and I fear that at last the bastions of this\nbodily fort of mine will fall to ruin.  Besides, I am much more afraid of\nvexing you in this same trade of fasting; for the devil a bit I understand\nanything in it, and it becomes me very scurvily, as several people have\ntold me, and I am apt to believe them.  For my part, I have no great\nstomach to fasting; for alas! it is as easy as pissing a bed, and a trade\nof which anybody may set up; there needs no tools.  I am much more inclined\nnot to fast for the future; for to do so there is some stock required, and\nsome tools are set a-work.  No matter, since you are so steadfast, and\nwould have us fast, let us fast as fast as we can, and then breakfast in\nthe name of famine.  Now we are come to these esurial idle days.  I vow I\nhad quite put them out of my head long ago.  If we must fast, said\nPantagruel, I see no other remedy but to get rid of it as soon as we can,\nas we would out of a bad way.  I'll in that space of time somewhat look\nover my papers, and examine whether the marine study be as good as ours at\nland.  For Plato, to describe a silly, raw, ignorant fellow, compares him\nto those that are bred on shipboard, as we would do one bred up in a\nbarrel, who never saw anything but through the bung-hole.\n\nTo tell you the short and the long of the matter, our fasting was most\nhideous and terrible; for the first day we fasted on fisticuffs, the second\nat cudgels, the third at sharps, and the fourth at blood and wounds:  such\nwas the order of the fairies.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines, who were become\nbirds.\n\nHaving fasted as aforesaid, the hermit gave us a letter for one whom he\ncalled Albian Camar, Master Aedituus of the Ringing Island; but Panurge\ngreeting him called him Master Antitus.  He was a little queer old fellow,\nbald-pated, with a snout whereat you might easily have lighted a\ncard-match, and a phiz as red as a cardinal's cap.  He made us all very\nwelcome, upon the hermit's recommendation, hearing that we had fasted, as I\nhave told you.\n\nWhen we had well stuffed our puddings, he gave us an account of what was\nremarkable in the island, affirming that it had been at first inhabited by\nthe Siticines; but that, according to the course of nature--as all things,\nyou know, are subject to change--they were become birds.\n\nThere I had a full account of all that Atteius Capito, Paulus, Marcellus,\nA. Gellius, Athenaeus, Suidas, Ammonius, and others had writ of the\nSiticines and Sicinnists; and then we thought we might as easily believe\nthe transmutations of Nectymene, Progne, Itys, Alcyone, Antigone, Tereus,\nand other birds.  Nor did we think it more reasonable to doubt of the\ntransmogrification of the Macrobian children into swans, or that of the men\nof Pallene in Thrace into birds, as soon as they had bathed themselves in\nthe Tritonic lake.  After this the devil a word could we get out of him but\nof birds and cages.\n\nThe cages were spacious, costly, magnificent, and of an admirable\narchitecture.  The birds were large, fine, and neat accordingly, looking as\nlike the men in my country as one pea does like another; for they ate and\ndrank like men, muted like men, endued or digested like men, farted like\nmen, but stunk like devils; slept, billed, and trod their females like men,\nbut somewhat oftener:  in short, had you seen and examined them from top to\ntoe, you would have laid your head to a turnip that they had been mere men.\nHowever, they were nothing less, as Master Aedituus told us; assuring us,\nat the same time, that they were neither secular nor laic; and the truth\nis, the diversity of their feathers and plumes did not a little puzzle us.\n\nSome of them were all over as white as swans, others as black as crows,\nmany as grey as owls, others black and white like magpies, some all red\nlike red-birds, and others purple and white like some pigeons.  He called\nthe males clerg-hawks, monk-hawks, priest-hawks, abbot-hawks, bish-hawks,\ncardin-hawks, and one pope-hawk, who is a species by himself.  He called\nthe females clerg-kites, nun-kites, priest-kites, abbess-kites, bish-kites,\ncardin-kites, and pope-kites.\n\nHowever, said he, as hornets and drones will get among the bees, and there\ndo nothing but buzz, eat, and spoil everything; so, for these last three\nhundred years, a vast swarm of bigottelloes flocked, I do not know how,\namong these goodly birds every fifth full moon, and have bemuted, berayed,\nand conskited the whole island.  They are so hard-favoured and monstrous\nthat none can abide them.  For their wry necks make a figure like a crooked\nbillet; their paws are hairy, like those of rough-footed pigeons; their\nclaws and pounces, belly and breech, like those of the Stymphalid harpies.\nNor is it possible to root them out, for if you get rid of one, straight\nfour-and-twenty new ones fly thither.\n\nThere had been need of another monster-hunter such as was Hercules; for\nFriar John had like to have run distracted about it, so much he was nettled\nand puzzled in the matter.  As for the good Pantagruel, he was even served\nas was Messer Priapus, contemplating the sacrifices of Ceres, for want of\nskin.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow there is but one pope-hawk in the Ringing Island.\n\nWe then asked Master Aedituus why there was but one pope-hawk among such\nvenerable birds multiplied in all their species.  He answered that such was\nthe first institution and fatal destiny of the stars that the clerg-hawks\nbegot the priest-hawks and monk-hawks without carnal copulation, as some\nbees are born of a young bull; the priest-hawks begat the bish-hawks, the\nbish-hawks the stately cardin-hawks, and the stately cardin-hawks, if they\nlive long enough, at last come to be pope-hawk.\n\nOf this last kind there never is more than one at a time, as in a beehive\nthere is but one king, and in the world is but one sun.\n\nWhen the pope-hawk dies, another arises in his stead out of the whole brood\nof cardin-hawks, that is, as you must understand it all along, without\ncarnal copulation.  So that there is in that species an individual unity,\nwith a perpetuity of succession, neither more or less than in the Arabian\nphoenix.\n\n'Tis true that, about two thousand seven hundred and sixty moons ago, two\npope-hawks were seen upon the face of the earth; but then you never saw in\nyour lives such a woeful rout and hurly-burly as was all over this island.\nFor all these same birds did so peck, clapperclaw, and maul one another all\nthat time, that there was the devil and all to do, and the island was in a\nfair way of being left without inhabitants.  Some stood up for this\npope-hawk, some for t'other.  Some, struck with a dumbness, were as mute as\nso many fishes; the devil a note was to be got out of them; part of the\nmerry bells here were as silent as if they had lost their tongues, I mean\ntheir clappers.\n\nDuring these troublesome times they called to their assistance the\nemperors, kings, dukes, earls, barons, and commonwealths of the world that\nlive on t'other side the water; nor was this schism and sedition at an end\ntill one of them died, and the plurality was reduced to a unity.\n\nWe then asked what moved those birds to be thus continually chanting and\nsinging.  He answered that it was the bells that hung on the top of their\ncages.  Then he said to us, Will you have me make these monk-hawks whom you\nsee bardocuculated with a bag such as you use to still brandy, sing like\nany woodlarks?  Pray do, said we.  He then gave half-a-dozen pulls to a\nlittle rope, which caused a diminutive bell to give so many ting-tangs; and\npresently a parcel of monk-hawks ran to him as if the devil had drove 'em,\nand fell a-singing like mad.\n\nPray, master, cried Panurge, if I also rang this bell could I make those\nother birds yonder, with red-herring-coloured feathers, sing?  Ay, marry\nwould you, returned Aedituus.  With this Panurge hanged himself (by the\nhands, I mean) at the bell-rope's end, and no sooner made it speak but\nthose smoked birds hied them thither and began to lift up their voices and\nmake a sort of untowardly hoarse noise, which I grudge to call singing.\nAedituus indeed told us that they fed on nothing but fish, like the herns\nand cormorants of the world, and that they were a fifth kind of cucullati\nnewly stamped.\n\nHe added that he had been told by Robert Valbringue, who lately passed that\nway in his return from Africa, that a sixth kind was to fly hither out of\nhand, which he called capus-hawks, more grum, vinegar-faced, brain-sick,\nfroward, and loathsome than any kind whatsoever in the whole island.\nAfrica, said Pantagruel, still uses to produce some new and monstrous\nthing.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the birds of the Ringing Island were all passengers.\n\nSince you have told us, said Pantagruel, how the pope-hawk is begot by the\ncardin-hawks, the cardin-hawks by the bish-hawks, and the bish-hawks by the\npriest-hawks, and the priest-hawks by the clerg-hawks, I would gladly know\nwhence you have these same clerg-hawks.  They are all of them passengers,\nor travelling birds, returned Aedituus, and come hither from t'other world;\npart out of a vast country called Want-o'-bread, the rest out of another\ntoward the west, which they style Too-many-of-'em.  From these two\ncountries flock hither, every year, whole legions of these clerg-hawks,\nleaving their fathers, mothers, friends, and relations.\n\nThis happens when there are too many children, whether male or female, in\nsome good family of the latter country; insomuch that the house would come\nto nothing if the paternal estate were shared among them all (as reason\nrequires, nature directs, and God commands).  For this cause parents use to\nrid themselves of that inconveniency by packing off the younger fry, and\nforcing them to seek their fortune in this isle Bossart (Crooked Island).\nI suppose he means L'Isle Bouchart, near Chinon, cried Panurge.  No,\nreplied t'other, I mean Bossart (Crooked), for there is not one in ten\namong them but is either crooked, crippled, blinking, limping,\nill-favoured, deformed, or an unprofitable load to the earth.\n\n'Twas quite otherwise among the heathens, said Pantagruel, when they used\nto receive a maiden among the number of vestals; for Leo Antistius affirms\nthat it was absolutely forbidden to admit a virgin into that order if she\nhad any vice in her soul or defect in her body, though it were but the\nsmallest spot on any part of it.  I can hardly believe, continued Aedituus,\nthat their dams on t'other side the water go nine months with them; for\nthey cannot endure them nine years, nay, scarce seven sometimes, in the\nhouse, but by putting only a shirt over the other clothes of the young\nurchins, and lopping off I don't well know how many hairs from their\ncrowns, mumbling certain apostrophized and expiatory words, they visibly,\nopenly, and plainly, by a Pythagorical metempsychosis, without the least\nhurt, transmogrify them into such birds as you now see; much after the\nfashion of the Egyptian heathens, who used to constitute their isiacs by\nshaving them and making them put on certain linostoles, or surplices.\nHowever, I don't know, my good friends, but that these she-things, whether\nclerg-kites, monk-kites, and abbess-kites, instead of singing pleasant\nverses and charisteres, such as used to be sung to Oromasis by Zoroaster's\ninstitution, may be bellowing out such catarates and scythropys (cursed\nlamentable and wretched imprecations) as were usually offered to the\nArimanian demon; being thus in devotion for their kind friends and\nrelations that transformed them into birds, whether when they were maids,\nor thornbacks, in their prime, or at their last prayers.\n\nBut the greatest numbers of our birds came out of Want-o'-bread, which,\nthough a barren country, where the days are of a most tedious lingering\nlength, overstocks this whole island with the lower class of birds.  For\nhither fly the asapheis that inhabit that land, either when they are in\ndanger of passing their time scurvily for want of belly-timber, being\nunable, or, what's more likely, unwilling to take heart of grace and follow\nsome honest lawful calling, or too proud-hearted and lazy to go to service\nin some sober family.  The same is done by your frantic inamoradoes, who,\nwhen crossed in their wild desires, grow stark staring mad, and choose this\nlife suggested to them by their despair, too cowardly to make them swing,\nlike their brother Iphis of doleful memory.  There is another sort, that\nis, your gaol-birds, who, having done some rogue's trick or other heinous\nvillainy, and being sought up and down to be trussed up and made to ride\nthe two or three-legged mare that groans for them, warily scour off and\ncome here to save their bacon; because all these sorts of birds are here\nprovided for, and grow in an instant as fat as hogs, though they came as\nlean as rakes; for having the benefit of the clergy, they are as safe as\nthieves in a mill within this sanctuary.\n\nBut, asked Pantagruel, do these birds never return to the world where they\nwere hatched?  Some do, answered Aedituus; formerly very few, very seldom,\nvery late, and very unwillingly; however, since some certain eclipses, by\nthe virtue of the celestial constellations, a great crowd of them fled back\nto the world.  Nor do we fret or vex ourselves a jot about it; for those\nthat stay wisely sing, The fewer the better cheer; and all those that fly\naway, first cast off their feathers here among these nettles and briars.\n\nAccordingly we found some thrown by there; and as we looked up and down, we\nchanced to light on what some people will hardly thank us for having\ndiscovered; and thereby hangs a tale.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the dumb Knight-hawks of the Ringing Island.\n\nThese words were scarce out of his mouth when some five-and-twenty or\nthirty birds flew towards us; they were of a hue and feather like which we\nhad not seen anything in the whole island.  Their plumes were as changeable\nas the skin of the chameleon, and the flower of tripolion, or teucrion.\nThey had all under the left wing a mark like two diameters dividing a\ncircle into equal parts, or, if you had rather have it so, like a\nperpendicular line falling on a right line.  The marks which each of them\nbore were much of the same shape, but of different colours; for some were\nwhite, others green, some red, others purple, and some blue.  Who are\nthose? asked Panurge; and how do you call them?  They are mongrels, quoth\nAedituus.\n\nWe call them knight-hawks, and they have a great number of rich\ncommanderies (fat livings) in your world.  Good your worship, said I, make\nthem give us a song, an't please you, that we may know how they sing.  They\nscorn your words, cried Aedituus; they are none of your singing-birds; but,\nto make amends, they feed as much as the best two of them all.  Pray where\nare their hens? where are their females? said I.  They have none, answered\nAedituus.  How comes it to pass then, asked Panurge, that they are thus\nbescabbed, bescurfed, all embroidered o'er the phiz with carbuncles,\npushes, and pock-royals, some of which undermine the handles of their\nfaces?  This same fashionable and illustrious disease, quoth Aedituus, is\ncommon among that kind of birds, because they are pretty apt to be tossed\non the salt deep.\n\nHe then acquainted us with the occasion of their coming.  This next to us,\nsaid he, looks so wistfully upon you to see whether he may not find among\nyour company a stately gaudy kind of huge dreadful birds of prey, which yet\nare so untoward that they ne'er could be brought to the lure nor to perch\non the glove.  They tell us that there are such in your world, and that\nsome of them have goodly garters below the knee with an inscription about\nthem which condemns him (qui mal y pense) who shall think ill of it to be\nberayed and conskited.  Others are said to wear the devil in a string\nbefore their paunches; and others a ram's skin.  All that's true enough,\ngood Master Aedituus, quoth Panurge; but we have not the honour to be\nacquainted with their knightships.\n\nCome on, cried Aedituus in a merry mood, we have had chat enough o'\nconscience! let's e'en go drink.  And eat, quoth Panurge.  Eat, replied\nAedituus, and drink bravely, old boy; twist like plough-jobbers and swill\nlike tinkers.  Pull away and save tide, for nothing is so dear and precious\nas time; therefore we will be sure to put it to a good use.\n\nHe would fain have carried us first to bathe in the bagnios of the\ncardin-hawks, which are goodly delicious places, and have us licked over\nwith precious ointments by the alyptes, alias rubbers, as soon as we should\ncome out of the bath.  But Pantagruel told him that he could drink but too\nmuch without that.  He then led us into a spacious delicate refectory, or\nfratery-room, and told us:  Braguibus the hermit made you fast four days\ntogether; now, contrariwise, I'll make you eat and drink of the best four\ndays through stitch before you budge from this place.  But hark ye me, cried\nPanurge, may not we take a nap in the mean time?  Ay, ay, answered Aedituus;\nthat is as you shall think good; for he that sleeps, drinks. Good Lord! how\nwe lived! what good bub! what dainty cheer!  O what a honest cod was this\nsame Aedituus!\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the birds are crammed in the Ringing Island.\n\nPantagruel looked I don't know howish, and seemed not very well pleased\nwith the four days' junketting which Aedituus enjoined us.  Aedituus, who\nsoon found it out, said to him, You know, sir, that seven days before\nwinter, and seven days after, there is no storm at sea; for then the\nelements are still out of respect for the halcyons, or king-fishers, birds\nsacred to Thetis, which then lay their eggs and hatch their young near the\nshore.  Now here the sea makes itself amends for this long calm; and\nwhenever any foreigners come hither it grows boisterous and stormy for four\ndays together.  We can give no other reason for it but that it is a piece\nof its civility, that those who come among us may stay whether they will or\nno, and be copiously feasted all the while with the incomes of the ringing.\nTherefore pray don't think your time lost; for, willing, nilling, you'll be\nforced to stay, unless you are resolved to encounter Juno, Neptune, Doris,\nAeolus, and his fluster-busters, and, in short, all the pack of ill-natured\nleft-handed godlings and vejoves.  Do but resolve to be cheery, and fall-to\nbriskly.\n\nAfter we had pretty well stayed our stomachs with some tight snatches,\nFriar John said to Aedituus, For aught I see, you have none but a parcel of\nbirds and cages in this island of yours, and the devil a bit of one of them\nall that sets his hand to the plough, or tills the land whose fat he\ndevours; their whole business is to be frolic, to chirp it, to whistle it,\nto warble it, tossing it, and roar it merrily night and day.  Pray then, if\nI may be so bold, whence comes this plenty and overflowing of all dainty\nbits and good things which we see among you?  From all the other world,\nreturned Aedituus, if you except some part of the northern regions, who of\nlate years have stirred up the jakes.  Mum! they may chance ere long to rue\nthe day they did so; their cows shall have porridge, and their dogs oats;\nthere will be work made among them, that there will.  Come, a fig for't,\nlet's drink.  But pray what countrymen are you?  Touraine is our country,\nanswered Panurge.  Cod so, cried Aedituus, you were not then hatched of an\nill bird, I will say that for you, since the blessed Touraine is your\nmother; for from thence there comes hither every year such a vast store of\ngood things, that we were told by some folks of the place that happened to\ntouch at this island, that your Duke of Touraine's income will not afford\nhim to eat his bellyful of beans and bacon (a good dish spoiled between\nMoses and Pythagoras) because his predecessors have been more than liberal\nto these most holy birds of ours, that we might here munch it, twist it,\ncram it, gorge it, craw it, riot it, junket it, and tickle it off, stuffing\nour puddings with dainty pheasants, partridges, pullets with eggs, fat\ncapons of Loudunois, and all sorts of venison and wild fowl.  Come, box it\nabout; tope on, my friends.  Pray do you see yon jolly birds that are\nperched together, how fat, how plump, and in good case they look, with the\nincome that Touraine yields us!  And in faith they sing rarely for their\ngood founders, that is the truth on't.  You never saw any Arcadian birds\nmumble more fairly than they do over a dish when they see these two gilt\nbatons, or when I ring for them those great bells that you see above their\ncages.  Drink on, sirs, whip it away.  Verily, friends, 'tis very fine\ndrinking to-day, and so 'tis every day o' the week; then drink on, toss it\nabout, here's to you with all my soul.  You are most heartily welcome;\nnever spare it, I pray you; fear not we should ever want good bub and\nbelly-timber; for, look here, though the sky were of brass, and the earth\nof iron, we should not want wherewithal to stuff the gut, though they were\nto continue so seven or eight years longer than the famine in Egypt.  Let\nus then, with brotherly love and charity, refresh ourselves here with the\ncreature.\n\nWoons, man, cried Panurge, what a rare time you have on't in this world!\nPsha, returned Aedituus, this is nothing to what we shall have in t'other;\nthe Elysian fields will be the least that can fall to our lot.  Come, in\nthe meantime let us drink here; come, here's to thee, old fuddlecap.\n\nYour first Siticines, said I, were superlatively wise in devising thus a\nmeans for you to compass whatever all men naturally covet so much, and so\nfew, or, to speak more properly, none can enjoy together--I mean, a\nparadise in this life, and another in the next.  Sure you were born wrapt\nin your mother's smickets!  O happy creatures!  O more than men!  Would I\nhad the luck to fare like you!  (Motteux inserts Chapter XVI. after Chapter\nVI.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge related to Master Aedituus the fable of the horse and the ass.\n\nWhen we had crammed and crammed again, Aedituus took us into a chamber that\nwas well furnished, hung with tapestry, and finely gilt.  Thither he caused\nto be brought store of mirobolans, cashou, green ginger preserved, with\nplenty of hippocras, and delicious wine.  With those antidotes, that were\nlike a sweet Lethe, he invited us to forget the hardships of our voyage;\nand at the same time he sent plenty of provisions on board our ship that\nrid in the harbour.  After this, we e'en jogged to bed for that night; but\nthe devil a bit poor pilgarlic could sleep one wink--the everlasting\njingle-jangle of the bells kept me awake whether I would or no.\n\nAbout midnight Aedituus came to wake us that we might drink.  He himself\nshowed us the way, saying:  You men of t'other world say that ignorance is\nthe mother of all evil, and so far you are right; yet for all that you do\nnot take the least care to get rid of it, but still plod on, and live in\nit, with it, and by it; for which a plaguy deal of mischief lights on you\nevery day, and you are right enough served--you are perpetually ailing\nsomewhat, making a moan, and never right.  It is what I was ruminating upon\njust now.  And, indeed, ignorance keeps you here fastened in bed, just as\nthat bully-rock Mars was detained by Vulcan's art; for all the while you do\nnot mind that you ought to spare some of your rest, and be as lavish as you\ncan of the goods of this famous island.  Come, come, you should have eaten\nthree breakfasts already; and take this from me for a certain truth, that\nif you would consume the mouth-ammunition of this island, you must rise\nbetimes; eat them, they multiply; spare them, they diminish.\n\nFor example, mow a field in due season, and the grass will grow thicker and\nbetter; don't mow it, and in a short time 'twill be floored with moss.\nLet's drink, and drink again, my friends; come, let's all carouse it.  The\nleanest of our birds are now singing to us all; we'll drink to them, if you\nplease.  Let's take off one, two, three, nine bumpers.  Non zelus, sed\ncaritas.\n\nWhen day, peeping in the east, made the sky turn from black to red like a\nboiling lobster, he waked us again to take a dish of monastical brewis.\nFrom that time we made but one meal, that only lasted the whole day; so\nthat I cannot well tell how I may call it, whether dinner, supper,\nnunchion, or after-supper; only, to get a stomach, we took a turn or two in\nthe island, to see and hear the blessed singing-birds.\n\nAt night Panurge said to Aedituus:  Give me leave, sweet sir, to tell you a\nmerry story of something that happened some three and twenty moons ago in\nthe country of Chastelleraud.\n\nOne day in April, a certain gentleman's groom, Roger by name, was walking\nhis master's horses in some fallow ground.  There 'twas his good fortune to\nfind a pretty shepherdess feeding her bleating sheep and harmless lambkins\non the brow of a neighbouring mountain, in the shade of an adjacent grove;\nnear her, some frisking kids tripped it over a green carpet of nature's own\nspreading, and, to complete the landscape, there stood an ass.  Roger, who\nwas a wag, had a dish of chat with her, and after some ifs, ands, and buts,\nhems and heighs on her side, got her in the mind to get up behind him, to\ngo and see his stable, and there take a bit by the bye in a civil way.\nWhile they were holding a parley, the horse, directing his discourse to the\nass (for all brute beasts spoke that year in divers places), whispered\nthese words in his ear:  Poor ass, how I pity thee! thou slavest like any\nhack, I read it on thy crupper.  Thou dost well, however, since God has\ncreated thee to serve mankind; thou art a very honest ass, but not to be\nbetter rubbed down, currycombed, trapped, and fed than thou art, seems to\nme indeed to be too hard a lot.  Alas! thou art all rough-coated, in ill\nplight, jaded, foundered, crestfallen, and drooping, like a mooting duck,\nand feedest here on nothing but coarse grass, or briars and thistles.\nTherefore do but pace it along with me, and thou shalt see how we noble\nsteeds, made by nature for war, are treated.  Come, thou'lt lose nothing by\ncoming; I'll get thee a taste of my fare.  I' troth, sir, I can but love\nyou and thank you, returned the ass; I'll wait on you, good Mr. Steed.\nMethinks, gaffer ass, you might as well have said Sir Grandpaw Steed.  O!\ncry mercy, good Sir Grandpaw, returned the ass; we country clowns are\nsomewhat gross, and apt to knock words out of joint.  However, an't please\nyou, I will come after your worship at some distance, lest for taking this\nrun my side should chance to be firked and curried with a vengeance, as it\nis but too often, the more is my sorrow.\n\nThe shepherdess being got behind Roger, the ass followed, fully resolved to\nbait like a prince with Roger's steed; but when they got to the stable, the\ngroom, who spied the grave animal, ordered one of his underlings to welcome\nhim with a pitchfork and currycomb him with a cudgel.  The ass, who heard\nthis, recommended himself mentally to the god Neptune, and was packing off,\nthinking and syllogizing within himself thus:  Had not I been an ass, I had\nnot come here among great lords, when I must needs be sensible that I was\nonly made for the use of the small vulgar.  Aesop had given me a fair\nwarning of this in one of his fables.  Well, I must e'en scamper or take\nwhat follows.  With this he fell a-trotting, and wincing, and yerking, and\ncalcitrating, alias kicking, and farting, and funking, and curvetting, and\nbounding, and springing, and galloping full drive, as if the devil had come\nfor him in propria persona.\n\nThe shepherdess, who saw her ass scour off, told Roger that it was her\ncattle, and desired he might be kindly used, or else she would not stir her\nfoot over the threshold.  Friend Roger no sooner knew this but he ordered\nhim to be fetched in, and that my master's horses should rather chop straw\nfor a week together than my mistress's beast should want his bellyful of\ncorn.\n\nThe most difficult point was to get him back; for in vain the youngsters\ncomplimented and coaxed him to come.  I dare not, said the ass; I am\nbashful.  And the more they strove by fair means to bring him with them,\nthe more the stubborn thing was untoward, and flew out at the heels;\ninsomuch that they might have been there to this hour, had not his mistress\nadvised them to toss oats in a sieve or in a blanket, and call him; which\nwas done, and made him wheel about and say, Oats, with a witness! oats\nshall go to pot.  Adveniat; oats will do, there's evidence in the case; but\nnone of the rubbing down, none of the firking.  Thus melodiously singing\n(for, as you know, that Arcadian bird's note is very harmonious) he came to\nthe young gentleman of the horse, alias black garb, who brought him to the\nstable.\n\nWhen he was there, they placed him next to the great horse his friend,\nrubbed him down, currycombed him, laid clean straw under him up to the\nchin, and there he lay at rack and manger, the first stuffed with sweet\nhay, the latter with oats; which when the horse's valet-dear-chambre\nsifted, he clapped down his lugs, to tell them by signs that he could eat\nit but too well without sifting, and that he did not deserve so great an\nhonour.\n\nWhen they had well fed, quoth the horse to the ass;  Well, poor ass, how is\nit with thee now?  How dost thou like this fare?  Thou wert so nice at\nfirst, a body had much ado to get thee hither.  By the fig, answered the\nass, which, one of our ancestors eating, Philemon died laughing, this is\nall sheer ambrosia, good Sir Grandpaw; but what would you have an ass say?\nMethinks all this is yet but half cheer.  Don't your worships here now and\nthen use to take a leap?  What leaping dost thou mean? asked the horse; the\ndevil leap thee! dost thou take me for an ass?  In troth, Sir Grandpaw,\nquoth the ass, I am somewhat of a blockhead, you know, and cannot, for the\nheart's blood of me, learn so fast the court way of speaking of you\ngentlemen horses; I mean, don't you stallionize it sometimes here among\nyour mettled fillies?  Tush, whispered the horse, speak lower; for, by\nBucephalus, if the grooms but hear thee they will maul and belam thee\nthrice and threefold, so that thou wilt have but little stomach to a\nleaping bout.  Cod so, man, we dare not so much as grow stiff at the tip of\nthe lowermost snout, though it were but to leak or so, for fear of being\njerked and paid out of our lechery.  As for anything else, we are as happy\nas our master, and perhaps more.  By this packsaddle, my old acquaintance,\nquoth the ass, I have done with you; a fart for thy litter and hay, and a\nfart for thy oats; give me the thistles of our fields, since there we leap\nwhen we list.  Eat less, and leap more, I say; it is meat, drink, and cloth\nto us.  Ah! friend Grandpaw, it would do thy heart good to see us at a\nfair, when we hold our provincial chapter!  Oh! how we leap it, while our\nmistresses are selling their goslings and other poultry!  With this they\nparted.  Dixi; I have done.\n\nPanurge then held his peace.  Pantagruel would have had him to have gone on\nto the end of the chapter; but Aedituus said, A word to the wise is enough;\nI can pick out the meaning of that fable, and know who is that ass, and who\nthe horse; but you are a bashful youth, I perceive.  Well, know that\nthere's nothing for you here; scatter no words.  Yet, returned Panurge, I\nsaw but even now a pretty kind of a cooing abbess-kite as white as a dove,\nand her I had rather ride than lead.  May I never stir if she is not a\ndainty bit, and very well worth a sin or two.  Heaven forgive me! I meant\nno more harm in it than you; may the harm I meant in it befall me\npresently.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow with much ado we got a sight of the pope-hawk.\n\nOur junketting and banqueting held on at the same rate the third day as the\ntwo former.  Pantagruel then earnestly desired to see the pope-hawk; but\nAedituus told him it was not such an easy matter to get a sight of him.\nHow, asked Pantagruel, has he Plato's helmet on his crown, Gyges's ring on\nhis pounces, or a chameleon on his breast, to make him invisible when he\npleases?  No, sir, returned Aedituus; but he is naturally of pretty\ndifficult access.  However, I'll see and take care that you may see him, if\npossible.  With this he left us piddling; then within a quarter of an hour\ncame back, and told us the pope-hawk is now to be seen.  So he led us,\nwithout the least noise, directly to the cage wherein he sat drooping, with\nhis feathers staring about him, attended by a brace of little cardin-hawks\nand six lusty fusty bish-hawks.\n\nPanurge stared at him like a dead pig, examining exactly his figure, size,\nand motions.  Then with a loud voice he said, A curse light on the hatcher\nof the ill bird; o' my word, this is a filthy whoop-hooper.  Tush, speak\nsoftly, said Aedituus; by G--, he has a pair of ears, as formerly Michael\nde Matiscones remarked.  What then? returned Panurge; so hath a whoopcat.\nSo, said Aedituus; if he but hear you speak such another blasphemous word,\nyou had as good be damned.  Do you see that basin yonder in his cage?  Out\nof it shall sally thunderbolts and lightnings, storms, bulls, and the devil\nand all, that will sink you down to Peg Trantum's, an hundred fathom under\nground.  It were better to drink and be merry, quoth Friar John.\n\nPanurge was still feeding his eyes with the sight of the pope-hawk and his\nattendants, when somewhere under his cage he perceived a madge-howlet.\nWith this he cried out, By the devil's maker, master, there's roguery in\nthe case; they put tricks upon travellers here more than anywhere else, and\nwould make us believe that a t--d's a sugarloaf.  What damned cozening,\ngulling, and coney-catching have we here!  Do you see this madge-howlet?\nBy Minerva, we are all beshit.  Odsoons, said Aedituus, speak softly, I\ntell you.  It is no madge-howlet, no she-thing on my honest word; but a\nmale, and a noble bird.\n\nMay we not hear the pope-hawk sing? asked Pantagruel.  I dare not promise\nthat, returned Aedituus; for he only sings and eats at his own hours.  So\ndon't I, quoth Panurge; poor pilgarlic is fain to make everybody's time his\nown; if they have time, I find time.  Come, then, let us go drink, if you\nwill.  Now this is something like a tansy, said Aedituus; you begin to talk\nsomewhat like; still speak in that fashion, and I'll secure you from being\nthought a heretic.  Come on, I am of your mind.\n\nAs we went back to have t'other fuddling bout, we spied an old green-headed\nbish-hawk, who sat moping with his mate and three jolly bittern attendants,\nall snoring under an arbour.  Near the old cuff stood a buxom abbess-kite\nthat sung like any linnet; and we were so mightily tickled with her singing\nthat I vow and swear we could have wished all our members but one turned\ninto ears, to have had more of the melody.  Quoth Panurge, This pretty\ncherubim of cherubims is here breaking her head with chanting to this huge,\nfat, ugly face, who lies grunting all the while like a hog as he is.  I\nwill make him change his note presently, in the devil's name.  With this he\nrang a bell that hung over the bish-hawk's head; but though he rang and\nrang again, the devil a bit bish-hawk would hear; the louder the sound, the\nlouder his snoring.  There was no making him sing.  By G--, quoth Panurge,\nyou old buzzard, if you won't sing by fair means, you shall by foul.\nHaving said this, he took up one of St. Stephen's loaves, alias a stone,\nand was going to hit him with it about the middle.  But Aedituus cried to\nhim, Hold, hold, honest friend! strike, wound, poison, kill, and murder all\nthe kings and princes in the world, by treachery or how thou wilt, and as\nsoon as thou wouldst unnestle the angels from their cockloft.  Pope-hawk\nwill pardon thee all this.  But never be so mad as to meddle with these\nsacred birds, as much as thou lovest the profit, welfare, and life not only\nof thyself, and thy friends and relations alive or dead, but also of those\nthat may be born hereafter to the thousandth generation; for so long thou\nwouldst entail misery upon them.  Do but look upon that basin.  Catso! let\nus rather drink, then, quoth Panurge.  He that spoke last, spoke well, Mr.\nAntitus, quoth Friar John; while we are looking on these devilish birds we\ndo nothing but blaspheme; and while we are taking a cup we do nothing but\npraise God.  Come on, then, let's go drink; how well that word sounds!\n\nThe third day (after we had drank, as you must understand) Aedituus\ndismissed us.  We made him a present of a pretty little Perguois knife,\nwhich he took more kindly than Artaxerxes did the cup of cold water that\nwas given him by a clown.  He most courteously thanked us, and sent all\nsorts of provisions aboard our ships, wished us a prosperous voyage and\nsuccess in our undertakings, and made us promise and swear by Jupiter of\nstone to come back by his territories.  Finally he said to us, Friends,\npray note that there are many more stones in the world than men; take care\nyou don't forget it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we arrived at the island of Tools.\n\n\nHaving well ballasted the holds of our human vessels, we weighed anchor,\nhoised up sail, stowed the boats, set the land, and stood for the offing\nwith a fair loom gale, and for more haste unpareled the mizen-yard, and\nlaunched it and the sail over the lee-quarter, and fitted gyves to keep it\nsteady, and boomed it out; so in three days we made the island of Tools,\nthat is altogether uninhabited.  We saw there a great number of trees which\nbore mattocks, pickaxes, crows, weeding-hooks, scythes, sickles, spades,\ntrowels, hatchets, hedging-bills, saws, adzes, bills, axes, shears,\npincers, bolts, piercers, augers, and wimbles.\n\nOthers bore dags, daggers, poniards, bayonets, square-bladed tucks,\nstilettoes, poniardoes, skeans, penknives, puncheons, bodkins, swords,\nrapiers, back-swords, cutlasses, scimitars, hangers, falchions, glaives,\nraillons, whittles, and whinyards.\n\nWhoever would have any of these needed but to shake the tree, and\nimmediately they dropped down as thick as hops, like so many ripe plums;\nnay, what's more, they fell on a kind of grass called scabbard, and\nsheathed themselves in it cleverly.  But when they came down, there was\nneed of taking care lest they happened to touch the head, feet, or other\nparts of the body.  For they fell with the point downwards, and in they\nstuck, or slit the continuum of some member, or lopped it off like a twig;\neither of which generally was enough to have killed a man, though he were a\nhundred years old, and worth as many thousand spankers, spur-royals, and\nrose-nobles.\n\nUnder some other trees, whose names I cannot justly tell you, I saw some\ncertain sorts of weeds that grew and sprouted like pikes, lances, javelins,\njavelots, darts, dartlets, halberds, boar-spears, eel-spears, partizans,\ntridents, prongs, trout-staves, spears, half-pikes, and hunting-staves.  As\nthey sprouted up and chanced to touch the tree, straight they met with\ntheir heads, points, and blades, each suitable to its kind, made ready for\nthem by the trees over them, as soon as every individual wood was grown up,\nfit for its steel; even like the children's coats, that are made for them\nas soon as they can wear them and you wean them of their swaddling clothes.\nNor do you mutter, I pray you, at what Plato, Anaxagoras, and Democritus\nhave said.  Ods-fish! they were none of your lower-form gimcracks, were\nthey?\n\nThose trees seemed to us terrestrial animals, in no wise so different from\nbrute beasts as not to have skin, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments,\nnerves, cartilages, kernels, bones, marrow, humours, matrices, brains, and\narticulations; for they certainly have some, since Theophrastus will have\nit so.  But in this point they differed from other animals, that their\nheads, that is, the part of their trunks next to the root, are downwards;\ntheir hair, that is, their roots, in the earth; and their feet, that is,\ntheir branches, upside down; as if a man should stand on his head with\noutstretched legs.  And as you, battered sinners, on whom Venus has\nbestowed something to remember her, feel the approach of rains, winds,\ncold, and every change of weather, at your ischiatic legs and your\nomoplates, by means of the perpetual almanack which she has fixed there; so\nthese trees have notice given them, by certain sensations which they have\nat their roots, stocks, gums, paps, or marrow, of the growth of the staves\nunder them, and accordingly they prepare suitable points and blades for\nthem beforehand.  Yet as all things, except God, are sometimes subject to\nerror, nature itself not free from it when it produceth monstrous things,\nlikewise I observed something amiss in these trees.  For a half-pike that\ngrew up high enough to reach the branches of one of these instrumentiferous\ntrees, happened no sooner to touch them but, instead of being joined to an\niron head, it impaled a stubbed broom at the fundament.  Well, no matter,\n'twill serve to sweep the chimney.  Thus a partizan met with a pair of\ngarden shears.  Come, all's good for something; 'twill serve to nip off\nlittle twigs and destroy caterpillars.  The staff of a halberd got the\nblade of a scythe, which made it look like a hermaphrodite.\nHappy-be-lucky, 'tis all a case; 'twill serve for some mower.  Oh, 'tis a\ngreat blessing to put our trust in the Lord!  As we went back to our ships I\nspied behind I don't know what bush, I don't know what folks, doing I don't\nknow what business, in I don't know what posture, scouring I don't know what\ntools, in I don't know what manner, and I don't know what place.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel arrived at the island of Sharping.\n\nWe left the island of Tools to pursue our voyage, and the next day stood in\nfor the island of Sharping, the true image of Fontainebleau, for the land\nis so very lean that the bones, that is, the rocks, shoot through its skin.\nBesides, 'tis sandy, barren, unhealthy, and unpleasant.  Our pilot showed\nus there two little square rocks which had eight equal points in the shape\nof a cube.  They were so white that I might have mistaken them for\nalabaster or snow, had he not assured us they were made of bone.\n\nHe told us that twenty chance devils very much feared in our country dwelt\nthere in six different storeys, and that the biggest twins or braces of\nthem were called sixes, and the smallest ambs-ace; the rest cinques,\nquatres, treys, and deuces.  When they were conjured up, otherwise coupled,\nthey were called either sice cinque, sice quatre, sice trey, sice deuce,\nand sice ace; or cinque quatre, cinque trey, and so forth.  I made there a\nshrewd observation.  Would you know what 'tis, gamesters?  'Tis that there\nare very few of you in the world but what call upon and invoke the devils.\nFor the dice are no sooner thrown on the board, and the greedy gazing\nsparks have hardly said, Two sixes, Frank; but Six devils damn it! cry as\nmany of them.  If ambs-ace; then, A brace of devils broil me! will they\nsay.  Quatre-deuce, Tom; The deuce take it! cries another.  And so on to\nthe end of the chapter.  Nay, they don't forget sometimes to call the black\ncloven-footed gentlemen by their Christian names and surnames; and what is\nstranger yet, they use them as their greatest cronies, and make them so\noften the executors of their wills, not only giving themselves, but\neverybody and everything, to the devil, that there's no doubt but he takes\ncare to seize, soon or late, what's so zealously bequeathed him.  Indeed,\n'tis true Lucifer does not always immediately appear by his lawful\nattorneys; but, alas! 'tis not for want of goodwill; he is really to be\nexcused for his delay; for what the devil would you have a devil do?  He\nand his black guards are then at some other places, according to the\npriority of the persons that call on them; therefore, pray let none be so\nventuresome as to think that the devils are deaf and blind.\n\nHe then told us that more wrecks had happened about those square rocks, and\na greater loss of body and goods, than about all the Syrtes, Scyllas and\nCharybdes, Sirens, Strophades, and gulfs in the universe.  I had not much\nado to believe it, remembering that formerly, among the wise Egyptians,\nNeptune was described in hieroglyphics for the first cube, Apollo by an\nace, Diana by a deuce, Minerva by seven, and so forth.\n\nHe also told us that there was a phial of sanc-greal, a most divine thing,\nand known to a few.  Panurge did so sweeten up the syndics of the place\nthat they blessed us with the sight of 't; but it was with three times more\npother and ado, with more formalities and antic tricks, than they show the\npandects of Justinian at Florence, or the holy Veronica at Rome.  I never\nsaw such a sight of flambeaux, torches, and hagios, sanctified tapers,\nrush-lights, and farthing candles in my whole life.  After all, that which\nwas shown us was only the ill-faced countenance of a roasted coney.\n\nAll that we saw there worth speaking of was a good face set upon an ill\ngame, and the shells of the two eggs formerly laid up and hatched by Leda,\nout of which came Castor and Pollux, fair Helen's brothers.  These same\nsyndics sold us a piece of 'em for a song, I mean, for a morsel of bread.\nBefore we went we bought a parcel of hats and caps of the manufacture of\nthe place, which, I fear, will turn to no very good account; nor are those\nwho shall take 'em off our hands more likely to commend their wearing.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we passed through the wicket inhabited by Gripe-men-all, Archduke of\nthe Furred Law-cats.\n\nFrom thence Condemnation was passed by us.  'Tis another damned barren\nisland, whereat none for the world cared to touch.  Then we went through\nthe wicket; but Pantagruel had no mind to bear us company, and 'twas well\nhe did not, for we were nabbed there, and clapped into lob's-pound by order\nof Gripe-men-all, Archduke of the Furred Law-cats, because one of our\ncompany would ha' put upon a sergeant some hats of the Sharping Island.\n\nThe Furred Law-cats are most terrible and dreadful monsters, they devour\nlittle children, and trample over marble stones.  Pray tell me, noble\ntopers, do they not deserve to have their snouts slit?  The hair of their\nhides doesn't lie outward, but inwards, and every mother's son of 'em for\nhis device wears a gaping pouch, but not all in the same manner; for some\nwear it tied to their neck scarfwise, others upon the breech, some on the\npaunch, others on the side, and all for a cause, with reason and mystery.\nThey have claws so very strong, long, and sharp that nothing can get from\n'em that is once fast between their clutches.  Sometimes they cover their\nheads with mortar-like caps, at other times with mortified caparisons.\n\nAs we entered their den, said a common mumper, to whom we had given half a\nteston, Worshipful culprits, God send you a good deliverance!  Examine\nwell, said he, the countenance of these stout props and pillars of this\ncatch-coin law and iniquity; and pray observe, that if you still live but\nsix olympiads, and the age of two dogs more, you'll see these Furred\nLaw-cats lords of all Europe, and in peaceful possession of all the estates\nand dominions belonging to it; unless, by divine providence, what's got over\nthe devil's back is spent under his belly, or the goods which they unjustly\nget perish with their prodigal heirs.  Take this from an honest beggar.\n\nAmong 'em reigns the sixth essence; by the means of which they gripe all,\ndevour all, conskite all, burn all, draw all, hang all, quarter all, behead\nall, murder all, imprison all, waste all, and ruin all, without the least\nnotice of right or wrong; for among them vice is called virtue; wickedness,\npiety; treason, loyalty; robbery, justice.  Plunder is their motto, and\nwhen acted by them is approved by all men, except the heretics; and all\nthis they do because they dare; their authority is sovereign and\nirrefragable.  For a sign of the truth of what I tell you, you'll find that\nthere the mangers are above the racks.  Remember hereafter that a fool told\nyou this; and if ever plague, famine, war, fire, earthquakes, inundations,\nor other judgments befall the world, do not attribute 'em to the aspects\nand conjunctions of the malevolent planets; to the abuses of the court of\nRomania, or the tyranny of secular kings and princes; to the impostures of\nthe false zealots of the cowl, heretical bigots, false prophets, and\nbroachers of sects; to the villainy of griping usurers, clippers, and\ncoiners; or to the ignorance, impudence, and imprudence of physicians,\nsurgeons, and apothecaries; nor to the lewdness of adulteresses and\ndestroyers of by-blows; but charge them all, wholly and solely, to the\ninexpressible, incredible, and inestimable wickedness and ruin which is\ncontinually hatched, brewed, and practised in the den or shop of those\nFurred Law-cats.  Yet 'tis no more known in the world than the cabala of\nthe Jews, the more's the pity; and therefore 'tis not detested, chastised,\nand punished as 'tis fit it should be.  But should all their villainy be\nonce displayed in its true colours and exposed to the people, there never\nwas, is, nor will be any spokesman so sweet-mouthed, whose fine colloguing\ntongue could save 'em; nor any law so rigorous and draconic that could\npunish 'em as they deserve; nor yet any magistrate so powerful as to hinder\ntheir being burnt alive in their coneyburrows without mercy.  Even their\nown furred kittlings, friends, and relations would abominate 'em.\n\nFor this reason, as Hannibal was solemnly sworn by his father Amilcar to\npursue the Romans with the utmost hatred as long as ever he lived, so my\nlate father has enjoined me to remain here without, till God Almighty's\nthunder reduce them there within to ashes, like other presumptuous Titans,\nprofane wretches, and opposers of God; since mankind is so inured to their\noppressions that they either do not remember, foresee, or have a sense of\nthe woes and miseries which they have caused; or, if they have, either will\nnot, dare not, or cannot root 'em out.\n\nHow, said Panurge, say you so?  Catch me there and hang me!  Damme, let's\nmarch off!  This noble beggar has scared me worse than thunder in autumn\n(Motteux gives 'than the thunder would do them.').  Upon this we were\nfiling off; but, alas! we found ourselves trapped--the door was\ndouble-locked and barricadoed.  Some messengers of ill news told us it was\nfull as easy to get in there as into hell, and no less hard to get out.  Ay,\nthere indeed lay the difficulty, for there is no getting loose without a\npass and discharge in due course from the bench.  This for no other reason\nthan because folks go easier out of a church than out of a sponging-house,\nand because they could not have our company when they would.  The worst on't\nwas when we got through the wicket; for we were carried, to get out our pass\nor discharge, before a more dreadful monster than ever was read of in the\nlegends of knight-errantry.  They called him Gripe-men-all.  I can't tell\nwhat to compare it to better than to a Chimaera, a Sphinx, a Cerberus; or to\nthe image of Osiris, as the Egyptians represented him, with three heads, one\nof a roaring lion, t'other of a fawning cur, and the last of a howling,\nprowling wolf, twisted about with a dragon biting his tail, surrounded with\nfiery rays.  His hands were full of gore, his talons like those of the\nharpies, his snout like a hawk's bill, his fangs or tusks like those of an\novergrown brindled wild boar; his eyes were flaming like the jaws of hell,\nall covered with mortars interlaced with pestles, and nothing of his arms\nwas to be seen but his clutches.  His hutch, and that of the warren-cats his\ncollaterals, was a long, spick-and-span new rack, a-top of which (as the\nmumper told us) some large stately mangers were fixed in the reverse.  Over\nthe chief seat was the picture of an old woman holding the case or scabbard\nof a sickle in her right hand, a pair of scales in her left, with spectacles\non her nose; the cups or scales of the balance were a pair of velvet\npouches, the one full of bullion, which overpoised t'other, empty and long,\nhoisted higher than the middle of the beam.  I'm of opinion it was the true\neffigies of Justice Gripe-men-all; far different from the institution of the\nancient Thebans, who set up the statues of their dicasts without hands, in\nmarble, silver, or gold, according to their merit, even after their death.\n\nWhen we made our personal appearance before him, a sort of I don't know\nwhat men, all clothed with I don't know what bags and pouches, with long\nscrolls in their clutches, made us sit down upon a cricket (such as\ncriminals sit on when tried in France).  Quoth Panurge to 'em, Good my\nlords, I'm very well as I am; I'd as lief stand, an't please you.  Besides,\nthis same stool is somewhat of the lowest for a man that has new breeches\nand a short doublet.  Sit you down, said Gripe-men-all again, and look that\nyou don't make the court bid you twice.  Now, continued he, the earth shall\nimmediately open its jaws and swallow you up to quick damnation if you\ndon't answer as you should.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Gripe-men-all propounded a riddle to us.\n\nWhen we were sat, Gripe-men-all, in the middle of his furred cats, called\nto us in a hoarse dreadful voice, Well, come on, give me presently--an\nanswer.  Well, come on, muttered Panurge between his teeth, give, give me\npresently--a comforting dram.  Hearken to the court, continued\nGripe-men-all.\n\n                An Enigma.\n\n  A young tight thing, as fair as may be,\n  Without a dad conceived a baby,\n  And brought him forth without the pother\n  In labour made by teeming mother.\n  Yet the cursed brat feared not to gripe her,\n  But gnawed, for haste, her sides like viper.\n  Then the black upstart boldly sallies,\n  And walks and flies o'er hills and valleys.\n  Many fantastic sons of wisdom,\n  Amazed, foresaw their own in his doom;\n  And thought like an old Grecian noddy,\n  A human spirit moved his body.\n\nGive, give me out of hand--an answer to this riddle, quoth Gripe-men-all.\nGive, give me--leave to tell you, good, good my lord, answered Panurge,\nthat if I had but a sphinx at home, as Verres one of your precursors had, I\nmight then solve your enigma presently.  But verily, good my lord, I was\nnot there; and, as I hope to be saved, am as innocent in the matter as the\nchild unborn.  Foh, give me--a better answer, cried Gripe-men-all; or, by\ngold, this shall not serve your turn.  I'll not be paid in such coin; if\nyou have nothing better to offer, I'll let your rascalship know that it had\nbeen better for you to have fallen into Lucifer's own clutches than into\nours.  Dost thou see 'em here, sirrah? hah? and dost thou prate here of thy\nbeing innocent, as if thou couldst be delivered from our racks and tortures\nfor being so?  Give me--Patience! thou widgeon.  Our laws are like cobwebs;\nyour silly little flies are stopped, caught, and destroyed therein, but\nyour stronger ones break them, and force and carry them which way they\nplease.  Likewise, don't think we are so mad as to set up our nets to snap\nup your great robbers and tyrants.  No, they are somewhat too hard for us,\nthere's no meddling with them; for they would make no more of us than we\nmake of the little ones.  But you paltry, silly, innocent wretches must\nmake us amends; and, by gold, we will innocentize your fopship with a\nwannion, you never were so innocentized in your days; the devil shall sing\nmass among ye.\n\nFriar John, hearing him run on at that mad rate, had no longer the power to\nremain silent, but cried to him, Heigh-day!  Prithee, Mr. Devil in a coif,\nwouldst thou have a man tell thee more than he knows?  Hasn't the fellow\ntold you he does not know a word of the business?  His name is Twyford.\nA plague rot you! won't truth serve your turns?  Why, how now,\nMr. Prate-apace, cried Gripe-men-all, taking him short, marry come up, who\nmade you so saucy as to open your lips before you were spoken to?  Give me\n--Patience!  By gold! this is the first time since I have reigned that\nanyone has had the impudence to speak before he was bidden.  How came this\nmad fellow to break loose?  (Villain, thou liest, said Friar John, without\nstirring his lips.)  Sirrah, sirrah, continued Gripe-men-all, I doubt thou\nwilt have business enough on thy hands when it comes to thy turn to answer.\n(Damme, thou liest, said Friar John, silently.)  Dost thou think, continued\nmy lord, thou art in the wilderness of your foolish university, wrangling\nand bawling among the idle, wandering searchers and hunters after truth? By\ngold, we have here other fish to fry; we go another gate's-way to work, that\nwe do.  By gold, people here must give categorical answers to what they\ndon't know.  By gold, they must confess they have done those things which\nthey have not nor ought to have done.  By gold, they must protest that they\nknow what they never knew in their lives; and, after all, patience perforce\nmust be their only remedy, as well as a mad dog's.  Here silly geese are\nplucked, yet cackle not.  Sirrah, give me--an account whether you had a\nletter of attorney, or whether you were feed or no, that you offered to bawl\nin another man's cause?  I see you had no authority to speak, and I may\nchance to have you wed to something you won't like.  Oh, you devils, cried\nFriar John, proto-devils, panto-devils, you would wed a monk, would you?  Ho\nhu! ho hu!  A heretic! a heretic!  I'll give thee out for a rank heretic.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge solved Gripe-men-all's riddle.\n\nGripe-men-all, as if he had not heard what Friar John said, directed his\ndiscourse to Panurge, saying to him, Well, what have you to say for\nyourself, Mr. Rogue-enough, hah?  Give, give me out of hand--an answer.\nSay? quoth Panurge; why, what would you have me say?  I say that we are\ndamnably beshit, since you give no heed at all to the equity of the plea,\nand the devil sings among you.  Let this answer serve for all, I beseech\nyou, and let us go out about our business; I am no longer able to hold out,\nas gad shall judge me.\n\nGo to, go to, cried Gripe-men-all; when did you ever hear that for these\nthree hundred years last past anybody ever got out of this weel without\nleaving something of his behind him?  No, no, get out of the trap if you\ncan without losing leather, life, or at least some hair, and you will have\ndone more than ever was done yet.  For why, this would bring the wisdom of\nthe court into question, as if we had took you up for nothing, and dealt\nwrongfully by you.  Well, by hook or by crook, we must have something out\nof you.  Look ye, it is a folly to make a rout for a fart and ado; one word\nis as good as twenty.  I have no more to say to thee, but that, as thou\nlikest thy former entertainment, thou wilt tell me more of the next; for it\nwill go ten times worse with thee unless, by gold, you give me--a solution\nto the riddle I propounded.  Give, give--it, without any more ado.\n\nBy gold, quoth Panurge, 'tis a black mite or weevil which is born of a\nwhite bean, and sallies out at the hole which he makes gnawing it; the mite\nbeing turned into a kind of fly, sometimes walks and sometimes flies over\nhills and dales.  Now Pythagoras, the philosopher, and his sect, besides\nmany others, wondering at its birth in such a place (which makes some argue\nfor equivocal generation), thought that by a metempsychosis the body of\nthat insect was the lodging of a human soul.  Now, were you men here, after\nyour welcomed death, according to his opinion, your souls would most\ncertainly enter into the body of mites or weevils; for in your present\nstate of life you are good for nothing in the world but to gnaw, bite, eat,\nand devour all things, so in the next you'll e'en gnaw and devour your\nmother's very sides, as the vipers do.  Now, by gold, I think I have fairly\nsolved and resolved your riddle.\n\nMay my bauble be turned into a nutcracker, quoth Friar John, if I could not\nalmost find in my heart to wish that what comes out at my bunghole were\nbeans, that these evil weevils might feed as they deserve.\n\nPanurge then, without any more ado, threw a large leathern purse stuffed\nwith gold crowns (ecus au soleil) among them.\n\nThe Furred Law-cats no sooner heard the jingling of the chink but they all\nbegan to bestir their claws, like a parcel of fiddlers running a division;\nand then fell to't, squimble, squamble, catch that catch can.  They all\nsaid aloud, These are the fees, these are the gloves; now, this is somewhat\nlike a tansy.  Oh! 'twas a pretty trial, a sweet trial, a dainty trial.  O'\nmy word, they did not starve the cause.  These are none of your snivelling\nforma pauperis's; no, they are noble clients, gentlemen every inch of them.\nBy gold, it is gold, quoth Panurge, good old gold, I'll assure you.\n\nSaith Gripe-men-all, The court, upon a full hearing (of the gold, quoth\nPanurge), and weighty reasons given, finds the prisoners not guilty, and\naccordingly orders them to be discharged out of custody, paying their fees.\nNow, gentlemen, proceed, go forwards, said he to us; we have not so much of\nthe devil in us as we have of his hue; though we are stout, we are\nmerciful.\n\nAs we came out at the wicket, we were conducted to the port by a detachment\nof certain highland griffins, scribere cum dashoes, who advised us before\nwe came to our ships not to offer to leave the place until we had made the\nusual presents, first to the Lady Gripe-men-all, then to all the Furred\nLaw-pusses; otherwise we must return to the place from whence we came.\nWell, well, said Friar John, we'll fumble in our fobs, examine every one of\nus his concern, and e'en give the women their due; we'll ne'er boggle or\nstick out on that account; as we tickled the men in the palm, we'll tickle\nthe women in the right place.  Pray, gentlemen, added they, don't forget to\nleave somewhat behind you for us poor devils to drink your healths.  O\nlawd! never fear, answered Friar John, I don't remember that I ever went\nanywhere yet where the poor devils are not remembered and encouraged.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Furred Law-cats live on corruption.\n\nFriar John had hardly said those words ere he perceived seventy-eight\ngalleys and frigates just arriving at the port.  So he hied him thither to\nlearn some news; and as he asked what goods they had o' board, he soon\nfound that their whole cargo was venison, hares, capons, turkeys, pigs,\nswine, bacon, kids, calves, hens, ducks, teals, geese, and other poultry\nand wildfowl.\n\nHe also spied among these some pieces of velvet, satin, and damask.  This\nmade him ask the new-comers whither and to whom they were going to carry\nthose dainty goods.  They answered that they were for Gripe-men-all and the\nFurred Law-cats.\n\nPray, asked he, what is the true name of all these things in your country\nlanguage?  Corruption, they replied.  If they live on corruption, said the\nfriar, they will perish with their generation.  May the devil be damned, I\nhave it now:  their fathers devoured the good gentlemen who, according to\ntheir state of life, used to go much a-hunting and hawking, to be the\nbetter inured to toil in time of war; for hunting is an image of a martial\nlife, and Xenophon was much in the right of it when he affirmed that\nhunting had yielded a great number of excellent warriors, as well as the\nTrojan horse.  For my part, I am no scholar; I have it but by hearsay, yet\nI believe it.  Now the souls of those brave fellows, according to\nGripe-men-all's riddle, after their decease enter into wild boars, stags,\nroebucks, herns, and such other creatures which they loved, and in quest of\nwhich they went while they were men; and these Furred Law-cats, having\nfirst destroyed and devoured their castles, lands, demesnes, possessions,\nrents, and revenues, are still seeking to have their blood and soul in\nanother life.  What an honest fellow was that same mumper who had\nforewarned us of all these things, and bid us take notice of the mangers\nabove the racks!\n\nBut, said Panurge to the new-comers, how do you come by all this venison?\nMethinks the great king has issued out a proclamation strictly inhibiting\nthe destroying of stags, does, wild boars, roebucks, or other royal game,\non pain of death.  All this is true enough, answered one for the rest, but\nthe great king is so good and gracious, you must know, and these Furred\nLaw-cats so curst and cruel, so mad, and thirsting after Christian blood,\nthat we have less cause to fear in trespassing against that mighty\nsovereign's commands than reason to hope to live if we do not continually\nstop the mouths of these Furred Law-cats with such bribes and corruption.\nBesides, added he, to-morrow Gripe-men-all marries a furred law-puss of his\nto a high and mighty double-furred law-tybert.  Formerly we used to call\nthem chop-hay; but alas! they are not such neat creatures now as to eat\nany, or chew the cud.  We call them chop-hares, chop-partridges,\nchop-woodcocks, chop-pheasants, chop-pullets, chop-venison, chop-coneys,\nchop-pigs, for they scorn to feed on coarser meat.  A t--d for their chops,\ncried Friar John, next year we'll have 'em called chop-dung, chop-stront,\nchop-filth.\n\nWould you take my advice? added he to the company.  What is it? answered\nwe.  Let's do two things, returned he.  First, let us secure all this\nvenison and wild fowl--I mean, paying well for them; for my part, I am but\ntoo much tired already with our salt meat, it heats my flanks so horribly.\nIn the next place, let's go back to the wicket, and destroy all these\ndevilish Furred Law-cats.  For my part, quoth Panurge, I know better\nthings; catch me there, and hang me.  No, I am somewhat more inclined to be\nfearful than bold; I love to sleep in a whole skin.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Friar John talks of rooting out the Furred Law-cats.\n\nVirtue of the frock, quoth Friar John, what kind of voyage are we making?\nA shitten one, o' my word; the devil of anything we do but fizzling,\nfarting, funking, squattering, dozing, raving, and doing nothing.\nOds-belly, 'tisn't in my nature to lie idle; I mortally hate it.  Unless I\nam doing some heroic feat every foot, I can't sleep one wink o' nights.\nDamn it, did you then take me along with you for your chaplain, to sing mass\nand shrive you?  By Maundy Thursday, the first of ye all that comes to me on\nsuch an account shall be fitted; for the only penance I'll enjoin shall be,\nthat he immediately throw himself headlong overboard into the sea like a\nbase cowhearted son of ten fathers.  This in deduction of the pains of\npurgatory.\n\nWhat made Hercules such a famous fellow, d'ye think?  Nothing but that\nwhile he travelled he still made it his business to rid the world of\ntyrannies, errors, dangers, and drudgeries; he still put to death all\nrobbers, all monsters, all venomous serpents and hurtful creatures.  Why\nthen do we not follow his example, doing as he did in the countries through\nwhich we pass?  He destroyed the Stymphalides, the Lernaean hydra, Cacus,\nAntheus, the Centaurs, and what not; I am no clericus, those that are such\ntell me so.\n\nIn imitation of that noble by-blow, let's destroy and root out these wicked\nFurred Law-cats, that are a kind of ravenous devils; thus we shall remove\nall manner of tyranny out of the land.  Mawmet's tutor swallow me body and\nsoul, tripes and guts, if I would stay to ask your help or advice in the\nmatter were I but as strong as he was.  Come, he that would be thought a\ngentleman, let him storm a town; well, then, shall we go?  I dare swear\nwe'll do their business for them with a wet finger; they'll bear it, never\nfear; since they could swallow down more foul language that came from us\nthan ten sows and their babies could swill hogwash.  Damn 'em, they don't\nvalue all the ill words or dishonour in the world at a rush, so they but\nget the coin into their purses, though they were to have it in a shitten\nclout.  Come, we may chance to kill 'em all, as Hercules would have done\nhad they lived in his time.  We only want to be set to work by another\nEurystheus, and nothing else for the present, unless it be what I heartily\nwish them, that Jupiter may give 'em a short visit, only some two or three\nhours long, and walk among their lordships in the same equipage that\nattended him when he came last to his Miss Semele, jolly Bacchus's mother.\n\n'Tis a very great mercy, quoth Panurge, that you have got out of their\nclutches.  For my part, I have no stomach to go there again; I'm hardly\ncome to myself yet, so scared and appalled I was.  My hair still stands up\nan end when I think on't; and most damnably troubled I was there, for three\nvery weighty reasons.  First, because I was troubled.  Secondly, because I\nwas troubled.  Thirdly and lastly, because I was troubled.  Hearken to me a\nlittle on thy right side, Friar John, my left cod, since thou'lt not hear\nat the other.  Whenever the maggot bites thee to take a trip down to hell\nand visit the tribunal of Minos, Aeacus, Rhadamanthus, (and Dis,) do but\ntell me, and I'll be sure to bear thee company, and never leave thee as\nlong as my name's Panurge, but will wade over Acheron, Styx, and Cocytus,\ndrink whole bumpers of Lethe's water--though I mortally hate that element\n--and even pay thy passage to that bawling, cross-grained ferryman, Charon.\nBut as for the damned wicket, if thou art so weary of thy life as to go\nthither again, thou mayst e'en look for somebody else to bear thee company,\nfor I'll not move one step that way; e'en rest satisfied with this positive\nanswer.  By my good will I'll not stir a foot to go thither as long as I\nlive, any more than Calpe will come over to Abyla (Here Motteux adds the\nfollowing note:  'Calpe is a mountain in Spain that faces another, called\nAbyla, in Mauritania, both said to have been severed by Hercules.').  Was\nUlysses so mad as to go back into the Cyclop's cave to fetch his sword?\nNo, marry was he not.  Now I have left nothing behind me at the wicket\nthrough forgetfulness; why then should I think of going thither?\n\nWell, quoth Friar John, as good sit still as rise up and fall; what cannot\nbe cured must be endured.  But, prithee, let's hear one another speak.\nCome, wert thou not a wise doctor to fling away a whole purse of gold on\nthose mangy scoundrels?  Ha!  A squinsy choke thee! we were too rich, were\nwe?  Had it not been enough to have thrown the hell-hounds a few cropped\npieces of white cash?\n\nHow could I help it? returned Panurge.  Did you not see how Gripe-men-all\nheld his gaping velvet pouch, and every moment roared and bellowed, By\ngold, give me out of hand; by gold, give, give, give me presently?  Now,\nthought I to myself, we shall never come off scot-free.  I'll e'en stop\ntheir mouths with gold, that the wicket may be opened, and we may get out;\nthe sooner the better.  And I judged that lousy silver would not do the\nbusiness; for, d'ye see, velvet pouches do not use to gape for little\npaltry clipt silver and small cash; no, they are made for gold, my friend\nJohn; that they are, my dainty cod.  Ah! when thou hast been larded,\nbasted, and roasted, as I was, thou wilt hardly talk at this rate, I doubt.\nBut now what is to be done?  We are enjoined by them to go forwards.\n\nThe scabby slabberdegullions still waited for us at the port, expecting to\nbe greased in the fist as well as their masters.  Now when they perceived\nthat we were ready to put to sea, they came to Friar John and begged that\nwe would not forget to gratify the apparitors before we went off, according\nto the assessment for the fees at our discharge.  Hell and damnation! cried\nFriar John; are ye here still, ye bloodhounds, ye citing, scribbling imps\nof Satan?  Rot you, am I not vexed enough already, but you must have the\nimpudence to come and plague me, ye scurvy fly-catchers you?  By\ncob's-body, I'll gratify your ruffianships as you deserve; I'll apparitorize\nyou presently with a wannion, that I will.  With this, he lugged out his\nslashing cutlass, and in a mighty heat came out of the ship to cut the\ncozening varlets into steaks, but they scampered away and got out of sight\nin a trice.\n\nHowever, there was somewhat more to do, for some of our sailors, having got\nleave of Pantagruel to go ashore while we were had before Gripe-men-all,\nhad been at a tavern near the haven to make much of themselves, and roar\nit, as seamen will do when they come into some port.  Now I don't know\nwhether they had paid their reckoning to the full or no, but, however it\nwas, an old fat hostess, meeting Friar John on the quay, was making a\nwoeful complaint before a sergeant, son-in-law to one of the furred\nlaw-cats, and a brace of bums, his assistants.\n\nThe friar, who did not much care to be tired with their impertinent\nprating, said to them, Harkee me, ye lubberly gnat-snappers! do ye presume\nto say that our seamen are not honest men?  I'll maintain they are, ye\ndotterels, and will prove it to your brazen faces, by justice--I mean, this\ntrusty piece of cold iron by my side.  With this he lugged it out and\nflourished with it.  The forlorn lobcocks soon showed him their backs,\nbetaking themselves to their heels; but the old fusty landlady kept her\nground, swearing like any butter-whore that the tarpaulins were very honest\ncods, but that they only forgot to pay for the bed on which they had lain\nafter dinner, and she asked fivepence, French money, for the said bed.  May\nI never sup, said the friar, if it be not dog-cheap; they are sorry guests\nand unkind customers, that they are; they do not know when they have a\npennyworth, and will not always meet with such bargains.  Come, I myself\nwill pay you the money, but I would willingly see it first.\n\nThe hostess immediately took him home with her, and showed him the bed, and\nhaving praised it for all its good qualifications, said that she thought as\ntimes went she was not out of the way in asking fivepence for it.  Friar\nJohn then gave her the fivepence; and she no sooner turned her back but he\npresently began to rip up the ticking of the feather-bed and bolster, and\nthrew all the feathers out at the window.  In the meantime the old hag came\ndown and roared out for help, crying out murder to set all the\nneighbourhood in an uproar.  Yet she also fell to gathering the feathers\nthat flew up and down in the air, being scattered by the wind.  Friar John\nlet her bawl on, and, without any further ado, marched off with the\nblanket, quilt, and both the sheets, which he brought aboard undiscovered,\nfor the air was darkened with the feathers, as it uses sometimes to be with\nsnow.  He gave them away to the sailors; then said to Pantagruel that beds\nwere much cheaper at that place than in Chinnonois, though we have there\nthe famous geese of Pautile; for the old beldam had asked him but fivepence\nfor a bed which in Chinnonois had been worth about twelve francs.  (As soon\nas Friar John and the rest of the company were embarked, Pantagruel set\nsail.  But there arose a south-east wind, which blew so vehemently they\nlost their way, and in a manner going back to the country of the Furred\nLaw-cats, they entered into a huge gulf, where the sea ran so high and\nterrible that the shipboy on the top of the mast cried out he again saw the\nhabitation of Gripe-men-all; upon which Panurge, frightened almost out of\nhis wits, roared out, Dear master, in spite of the wind and waves, change\nyour course, and turn the ship's head about.  O my friend, let us come no\nmore into that cursed country where I left my purse.  So the wind carried\nthem near an island, where however they did not dare at first to land, but\nentered about a mile off.  (Motteux omitted this passage altogether in the\nedition of 1694.  It was restored by Ozell in the edition of 1738.))\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Pantagruel came to the island of the Apedefers, or Ignoramuses, with\nlong claws and crooked paws, and of terrible adventures and monsters there.\n\nAs soon as we had cast anchor and had moored the ship, the pinnace was put\nover the ship's side and manned by the coxswain's crew.  When the good\nPantagruel had prayed publicly, and given thanks to the Lord that had\ndelivered him from so great a danger, he stepped into it with his whole\ncompany to go on shore, which was no ways difficult to do, for, as the sea\nwas calm and the winds laid, they soon got to the cliffs.  When they were\nset on shore, Epistemon, who was admiring the situation of the place and\nthe strange shape of the rocks, discovered some of the natives.  The first\nhe met had on a short purple gown, a doublet cut in panes, like a Spanish\nleather jerkin, half sleeves of satin, and the upper part of them leather,\na coif like a black pot tipped with tin.  He was a good likely sort of a\nbody, and his name, as we heard afterwards, was Double-fee.  Epistemon\nasked him how they called those strange craggy rocks and deep valleys.  He\ntold them it was a colony brought out of Attorneyland, and called Process,\nand that if we forded the river somewhat further beyond the rocks we should\ncome into the island of the Apedefers.  By the memory of the decretals,\nsaid Friar John, tell us, I pray you, what you honest men here live on?\nCould not a man take a chirping bottle with you to taste your wine?  I can\nsee nothing among you but parchment, ink-horns, and pens.  We live on\nnothing else, returned Double-fee; and all who live in this place must come\nthrough my hands.  How, quoth Panurge, are you a shaver, then?  Do you\nfleece 'em?  Ay, ay, their purse, answered Double-fee; nothing else.  By\nthe foot of Pharaoh, cried Panurge, the devil a sou will you get of me.\nHowever, sweet sir, be so kind as to show an honest man the way to those\nApedefers, or ignorant people, for I come from the land of the learned,\nwhere I did not learn over much.\n\nStill talking on, they got to the island of the Apedefers, for they were\nsoon got over the ford.  Pantagruel was not a little taken up with admiring\nthe structure and habitation of the people of the place.  For they live in\na swingeing wine-press, fifty steps up to it.  You must know there are some\nof all sorts, little, great, private, middle-sized, and so forth.  You go\nthrough a large peristyle, alias a long entry set about with pillars, in\nwhich you see, in a kind of landscape, the ruins of almost the whole world,\nbesides so many great robbers' gibbets, so many gallows and racks, that\n'tis enough to fright you out of your seven senses.  Double-fee perceiving\nthat Pantagruel was taken up with contemplating those things, Let us go\nfurther, sir, said he to him; all this is nothing yet.  Nothing, quotha,\ncried Friar John; by the soul of my overheated codpiece, friend Panurge and\nI here shake and quiver for mere hunger.  I had rather be drinking than\nstaring at these ruins.  Pray come along, sir, said Double-fee.  He then\nled us into a little wine-press that lay backwards in a blind corner, and\nwas called Pithies in the language of the country.  You need not ask\nwhether Master John and Panurge made much of their sweet selves there; it\nis enough that I tell you there was no want of Bolognia sausages, turkey\npoots, capons, bustards, malmsey, and all other sorts of good belly-timber,\nvery well dressed.\n\nA pimping son of ten fathers, who, for want of a better, did the office of\na butler, seeing that Friar John had cast a sheep's eye at a choice bottle\nthat stood near a cupboard by itself, at some distance from the rest of the\nbottellic magazine, like a jack-in-an-office said to Pantagruel, Sir, I\nperceive that one of your men here is making love to this bottle.  He ogles\nit, and would fain caress it; but I beg that none offer to meddle with it;\nfor it is reserved for their worships.  How, cried Panurge, there are some\ngrandees here then, I see.  It is vintage time with you, I perceive.\n\nThen Double-fee led us up to a private staircase, and showed us into a\nroom, whence, without being seen, out at a loophole we could see their\nworships in the great wine-press, where none could be admitted without\ntheir leave.  Their worships, as he called them, were about a score of\nfusty crack-ropes and gallow-clappers, or rather more, all posted before a\nbar, and staring at each other like so many dead pigs.  Their paws were as\nlong as a crane's foot, and their claws four-and-twenty inches long at\nleast; for you must know they are enjoined never to pare off the least chip\nof them, so that they grow as crooked as a Welsh hook or a hedging-bill.\n\nWe saw a swingeing bunch of grapes that are gathered and squeezed in that\ncountry, brought in by them.  As soon as it was laid down, they clapped it\ninto the press, and there was not a bit of it out of which each of them did\nnot squeeze some oil of gold; insomuch that the poor grape was tried with a\nwitness, and brought off so drained and picked, and so dry, that there was\nnot the least moisture, juice, or substance left in it; for they had\npressed out its very quintessence.\n\nDouble-fee told us they had not often such huge bunches; but, let the worst\ncome to the worst, they were sure never to be without others in their\npress.  But hark you me, master of mine, asked Panurge, have they not some\nof different growth?  Ay, marry have they, quoth Double-fee.  Do you see\nhere this little bunch, to which they are going to give t'other wrench?  It\nis of tithe-growth, you must know; they crushed, wrung, squeezed and\nstrained out the very heart's blood of it but the other day; but it did not\nbleed freely; the oil came hard, and smelt of the priest's chest; so that\nthey found there was not much good to be got out of it.  Why then, said\nPantagruel, do they put it again into the press?  Only, answered\nDouble-fee, for fear there should still lurk some juice among the husks and\nhullings in the mother of the grape.  The devil be damned! cried Friar\nJohn; do you call these same folks illiterate lobcocks and duncical\ndoddipolls?  May I be broiled like a red herring if I do not think they are\nwise enough to skin a flint and draw oil out of a brick wall.  So they are,\nsaid Double-fee; for they sometimes put castles, parks, and forests into\nthe press, and out of them all extract aurum potabile.  You mean portabile,\nI suppose, cried Epistemon, such as may be borne.  I mean as I said,\nreplied Double-fee, potabile, such as may be drunk; for it makes them drink\nmany a good bottle more than otherwise they should.\n\nBut I cannot better satisfy you as to the growth of the vine-tree sirup\nthat is here squeezed out of grapes, than in desiring you to look yonder in\nthat back-yard, where you will see above a thousand different growths that\nlie waiting to be squeezed every moment.  Here are some of the public and\nsome of the private growth; some of the builders' fortifications, loans,\ngifts, and gratuities, escheats, forfeitures, fines, and recoveries, penal\nstatutes, crown lands, and demesne, privy purse, post-offices, offerings,\nlordships of manors, and a world of other growths, for which we want names.\nPray, quoth Epistemon, tell me of what growth is that great one, with all\nthose little grapelings about it.  Oh, oh! returned Double-fee, that plump\none is of the treasury, the very best growth in the whole country.\nWhenever anyone of that growth is squeezed, there is not one of their\nworships but gets juice enough of it to soak his nose six months together.\nWhen their worships were up, Pantagruel desired Double-fee to take us into\nthat great wine-press, which he readily did.  As soon as we were in,\nEpistemon, who understood all sorts of tongues, began to show us many\ndevices on the press, which was large and fine, and made of the wood of the\ncross--at least Double-fee told us so.  On each part of it were names of\neverything in the language of the country.  The spindle of the press was\ncalled receipt; the trough, cost and damages; the hole for the vice-pin,\nstate; the side-boards, money paid into the office; the great beam, respite\nof homage; the branches, radietur; the side-beams, recuperetur; the fats,\nignoramus; the two-handled basket, the rolls; the treading-place,\nacquittance; the dossers, validation; the panniers, authentic decrees; the\npailes, potentials; the funnels, quietus est.\n\nBy the Queen of the Chitterlings, quoth Panurge, all the hieroglyphics of\nEgypt are mine a-- to this jargon.  Why! here are a parcel of words full as\nanalogous as chalk and cheese, or a cat and a cart-wheel!  But why,\nprithee, dear Double-fee, do they call these worshipful dons of yours\nignorant fellows?  Only, said Double-fee, because they neither are, nor\nought to be, clerks, and all must be ignorant as to what they transact\nhere; nor is there to be any other reason given, but, The court hath said\nit; The court will have it so; The court has decreed it.  Cop's body, quoth\nPantagruel, they might full as well have called 'em necessity; for\nnecessity has no law.\n\nFrom thence, as he was leading us to see a thousand little puny presses, we\nspied another paltry bar, about which sat four are five ignorant waspish\nchurls, of so testy, fuming a temper, (like an ass with squibs and crackers\ntied to its tail,) and so ready to take pepper in the nose for yea and nay,\nthat a dog would not have lived with 'em.  They were hard at it with the\nlees and dregs of the grapes, which they gripped over and over again, might\nand main, with their clenched fists.  They were called contractors in the\nlanguage of the country.  These are the ugliest, misshapen, grim-looking\nscrubs, said Friar John, that ever were beheld, with or without spectacles.\nThen we passed by an infinite number of little pimping wine-presses all\nfull of vintage-mongers, who were picking, examining, and raking the grapes\nwith some instruments called bills-of-charge.\n\nFinally we came into a hall downstairs, where we saw an overgrown cursed\nmangy cur with a pair of heads, a wolf's belly, and claws like the devil of\nhell.  The son of a bitch was fed with costs, for he lived on a\nmultiplicity of fine amonds and amerciaments by order of their worships, to\neach of whom the monster was worth more than the best farm in the land.  In\ntheir tongue of ignorance they called him Twofold.  His dam lay by him, and\nher hair and shape was like her whelp's, only she had four heads, two male\nand two female, and her name was Fourfold.  She was certainly the most\ncursed and dangerous creature of the place, except her grandam, which we\nsaw, and had been kept locked up in a dungeon time out of mind, and her\nname was Refusing-of-fees.\n\nFriar John, who had always twenty yards of gut ready empty to swallow a\ngallimaufry of lawyers, began to be somewhat out of humour, and desired\nPantagruel to remember he had not dined, and bring Double-fee along with\nhim.  So away we went, and as we marched out at the back-gate whom should\nwe meet but an old piece of mortality in chains.  He was half ignorant and\nhalf learned, like an hermaphrodite of Satan.  The fellow was all\ncaparisoned with spectacles as a tortoise is with shells, and lived on\nnothing but a sort of food which, in their gibberish, was called appeals.\nPantagruel asked Double-fee of what breed was that prothonotary, and what\nname they gave him.  Double-fee told us that time out of mind he had been\nkept there in chains, to the great grief of their worships, who starved\nhim, and his name was Review.  By the pope's sanctified two-pounders, cried\nFriar John, I do not much wonder at the meagre cheer which this old chuff\nfinds among their worships.  Do but look a little on the weather-beaten\nscratch-toby, friend Panurge; by the sacred tip of my cowl, I'll lay five\npounds to a hazel-nut the foul thief has the very looks of Gripe-me-now.\nThese same fellows here, ignorant as they be, are as sharp and knowing as\nother folk.  But were it my case, I would send him packing with a squib in\nhis breech like a rogue as he is.  By my oriental barnacles, quoth Panurge,\nhonest friar, thou art in the right; for if we but examine that treacherous\nReview's ill-favoured phiz, we find that the filthy snudge is yet more\nmischievous and ignorant than these ignorant wretches here, since they\n(honest dunces) grapple and glean with as little harm and pother as they\ncan, without any long fiddle-cum-farts or tantalizing in the case; nor do\nthey dally and demur in your suit, but in two or three words, whip-stitch,\nin a trice, they finish the vintage of the close, bating you all these\ndamned tedious interlocutories, examinations, and appointments which fret\nto the heart's blood your furred law-cats.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we went forwards, and how Panurge had like to have been killed.\n\nWe put to sea that very moment, steering our course forwards, and gave\nPantagruel a full account of our adventures, which so deeply struck him\nwith compassion that he wrote some elegies on that subject to divert\nhimself during the voyage.  When we were safe in the port we took some\nrefreshment, and took in fresh water and wood.  The people of the place,\nwho had the countenance of jolly fellows and boon companions, were all of\nthem forward folks, bloated and puffed up with fat.  And we saw some who\nslashed and pinked their skins to open a passage to the fat, that it might\nswell out at the slits and gashes which they made; neither more nor less\nthan the shit-breech fellows in our country bepink and cut open their\nbreeches that the taffety on the inside may stand out and be puffed up.\nThey said that what they did was not out of pride or ostentation, but\nbecause otherwise their skins would not hold them without much pain.\nHaving thus slashed their skin, they used to grow much bigger, like the\nyoung trees on whose barks the gardeners make incisions that they may grow\nthe better.\n\nNear the haven there was a tavern, which forwards seemed very fine and\nstately.  We repaired thither, and found it filled with people of the\nforward nation, of all ages, sexes, and conditions; so that we thought some\nnotable feast or other was getting ready, but we were told that all that\nthrong were invited to the bursting of mine host, which caused all his\nfriends and relations to hasten thither.\n\nWe did not understand that jargon, and therefore thought in that country by\nthat bursting they meant some merry meeting or other, as we do in ours by\nbetrothing, wedding, groaning, christening, churching (of women), shearing\n(of sheep), reaping (of corn, or harvest-home), and many other junketting\nbouts that end in -ing.  But we soon heard that there was no such matter in\nhand.\n\nThe master of the house, you must know, had been a good fellow in his time,\nloved heartily to wind up his bottom, to bang the pitcher, and lick his\ndish.  He used to be a very fair swallower of gravy soup, a notable\naccountant in matter of hours, and his whole life was one continual dinner,\nlike mine host at Rouillac (in Perigord).  But now, having farted out much\nfat for ten years together, according to the custom of the country, he was\ndrawing towards his bursting hour; for neither the inner thin kell\nwherewith the entrails are covered, nor his skin that had been jagged and\nmangled so many years, were able to hold and enclose his guts any longer,\nor hinder them from forcing their way out.  Pray, quoth Panurge, is there\nno remedy, no help for the poor man, good people?  Why don't you swaddle\nhim round with good tight girths, or secure his natural tub with a strong\nsorb-apple-tree hoop?  Nay, why don't you iron-bind him, if needs be?  This\nwould keep the man from flying out and bursting.  The word was not yet out\nof his mouth when we heard something give a loud report, as if a huge\nsturdy oak had been split in two.  Then some of the neighbours told us that\nthe bursting was over, and that the clap or crack which we heard was the\nlast fart, and so there was an end of mine host.\n\nThis made me call to mind a saying of the venerable abbot of Castilliers,\nthe very same who never cared to hump his chambermaids but when he was in\npontificalibus.  That pious person, being much dunned, teased, and\nimportuned by his relations to resign his abbey in his old age, said and\nprofessed that he would not strip till he was ready to go to bed, and that\nthe last fart which his reverend paternity was to utter should be the fart\nof an abbot.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow our ships were stranded, and we were relieved by some people that were\nsubject to Queen Whims (qui tenoient de la Quinte).\n\nWe weighed and set sail with a merry westerly gale.  When about seven\nleagues off (twenty-two miles) some gusts or scuds of wind suddenly arose,\nand the wind veering and shifting from point to point, was, as they say,\nlike an old woman's breech, at no certainty; so we first got our starboard\ntacks aboard, and hauled off our lee-sheets.  Then the gusts increased, and\nby fits blowed all at once from several quarters, yet we neither settled\nnor braided up close our sails, but only let fly the sheets, not to go\nagainst the master of the ship's direction; and thus having let go amain,\nlest we should spend our topsails, or the ship's quick-side should lie in\nthe water and she be overset, we lay by and run adrift; that is, in a\nlandloper's phrase, we temporized it.  For he assured us that, as these\ngusts and whirlwinds would not do us much good, so they could not do us\nmuch harm, considering their easiness and pleasant strife, as also the\nclearness of the sky and calmness of the current.  So that we were to\nobserve the philosopher's rule, bear and forbear; that is, trim, or go\naccording to the time.\n\nHowever, these whirlwinds and gusts lasted so long that we persuaded the\nmaster to let us go and lie at trie with our main course; that is, to haul\nthe tack aboard, the sheet close aft, the bowline set up, and the helm tied\nclose aboard; so, after a stormy gale of wind, we broke through the\nwhirlwind.  But it was like falling into Scylla to avoid Charybdis (out of\nthe frying-pan into the fire).  For we had not sailed a league ere our\nships were stranded upon some sands such as are the flats of St. Maixent.\n\nAll our company seemed mightily disturbed except Friar John, who was not a\njot daunted, and with sweet sugar-plum words comforted now one and then\nanother, giving them hopes of speedy assistance from above, and telling\nthem that he had seen Castor at the main-yardarm.  Oh! that I were but now\nashore, cried Panurge, that is all I wish for myself at present, and that\nyou who like the sea so well had each man of you two hundred thousand\ncrowns.  I would fairly let you set up shop on these sands, and would get a\nfat calf dressed and a hundred of faggots (i.e. bottles of wine) cooled for\nyou against you come ashore.  I freely consent never to mount a wife, so\nyou but set me ashore and mount me on a horse, that I may go home.  No\nmatter for a servant, I will be contented to serve myself; I am never\nbetter treated than when I am without a man.  Faith, old Plautus was in the\nright on't when he said the more servants the more crosses; for such they\nare, even supposing they could want what they all have but too much of, a\ntongue, that most busy, dangerous, and pernicious member of servants.\nAccordingly, 'twas for their sakes alone that the racks and tortures for\nconfession were invented, though some foreign civilians in our time have\ndrawn alogical and unreasonable consequences from it.\n\nThat very moment we spied a sail that made towards us.  When it was close\nby us, we soon knew what was the lading of the ship and who was aboard of\nher.  She was full freighted with drums.  I was acquainted with many of the\npassengers that came in her, who were most of 'em of good families; among\nthe rest Harry Cotiral, an old toast, who had got a swinging ass's\ntouch-tripe (penis) fastened to his waist, as the good women's beads are to their\ngirdle.  In his left hand he held an old overgrown greasy foul cap, such as\nyour scald-pated fellows wear, and in the right a huge cabbage-stump.\n\nAs soon as he saw me he was overjoyed, and bawled out to me, What cheer,\nho?  How dost like me now?  Behold the true Algamana (this he said showing\nme the ass's tickle-gizzard).  This doctor's cap is my true elixir; and\nthis (continued he, shaking the cabbage-stump in his fist) is lunaria\nmajor, you old noddy.  I have 'em, old boy, I have 'em; we'll make 'em when\nthou'rt come back.  But pray, father, said I, whence come you?  Whither are\nyou bound?  What's your lading?  Have you smelt the salt deep?  To these\nfour questions he answered, From Queen Whims; for Touraine; alchemy; to the\nvery bottom.\n\nWhom have you got o' board? said I.  Said he, Astrologers, fortune-tellers,\nalchemists, rhymers, poets, painters, projectors, mathematicians,\nwatchmakers, sing-songs, musicianers, and the devil and all of others that\nare subject to Queen Whims (Motteux gives the following footnote:--'La\nQuinte, This means a fantastic Humour, Maggots, or a foolish Giddiness of\nBrains; and also, a fifth, or the Proportion of Five in music, &c.').  They\nhave very fair legible patents to show for't, as anybody may see.  Panurge\nhad no sooner heard this but he was upon the high-rope, and began to rail\nat them like mad.  What o' devil d'ye mean, cried he, to sit idly here like\na pack of loitering sneaksbies, and see us stranded, while you may help us,\nand tow us off into the current?  A plague o' your whims! you can make all\nthings whatsoever, they say, so much as good weather and little children;\nyet won't make haste to fasten some hawsers and cables, and get us off.  I\nwas just coming to set you afloat, quoth Harry Cotiral; by Trismegistus,\nI'll clear you in a trice.  With this he caused 7,532,810 huge drums to be\nunheaded on one side, and set that open side so that it faced the end of\nthe streamers and pendants; and having fastened them to good tacklings and\nour ship's head to the stern of theirs, with cables fastened to the bits\nabaft the manger in the ship's loof, they towed us off ground at one pull\nso easily and pleasantly that you'd have wondered at it had you been there.\nFor the dub-a-dub rattling of the drums, with the soft noise of the gravel\nwhich murmuring disputed us our way, and the merry cheers and huzzas of the\nsailors, made an harmony almost as good as that of the heavenly bodies when\nthey roll and are whirled round their spheres, which rattling of the\ncelestial wheels Plato said he heard some nights in his sleep.\n\nWe scorned to be behindhand with 'em in civility, and gratefully gave 'em\nstore of our sausages and chitterlings, with which we filled their drums;\nand we were just a-hoisting two-and-sixty hogsheads of wine out of the\nhold, when two huge whirlpools with great fury made towards their ship,\nspouting more water than is in the river Vienne (Vigenne) from Chinon to\nSaumur; to make short, all their drums, all their sails, their concerns,\nand themselves were soused, and their very hose were watered by the collar.\n\nPanurge was so overjoyed, seeing this, and laughed so heartily, that he was\nforced to hold his sides, and it set him into a fit of the colic for two\nhours and more.  I had a mind, quoth he, to make the dogs drink, and those\nhonest whirlpools, egad, have saved me that labour and that cost.  There's\nsauce for them; ariston men udor.  Water is good, saith a poet; let 'em\nPindarize upon't.  They never cared for fresh water but to wash their hands\nor their glasses.  This good salt water will stand 'em in good stead for\nwant of sal ammoniac and nitre in Geber's kitchen.\n\nWe could not hold any further discourse with 'em; for the former whirlwind\nhindered our ship from feeling the helm.  The pilot advised us\nhenceforwards to let her run adrift and follow the stream, not busying\nourselves with anything, but making much of our carcasses.  For our only\nway to arrive safe at the queendom of Whims was to trust to the whirlwind\nand be led by the current.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy.\n\nWe did as he directed us for about twelve hours, and on the third day the\nsky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of\nMateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence.\n\nWe met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military\nmen that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first\nbecause they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked\nus whence we came.\n\nCousin, quoth Panurge to him that asked the question, we are of Touraine,\nand come from France, being ambitious of paying our respects to the Lady\nQuintessence and visit this famous realm of Entelechy.\n\nWhat do you say? cried they; do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy?  Truly,\ntruly, sweet cousins, quoth Panurge, we are a silly sort of grout-headed\nlobcocks, an't please you; be so kind as to forgive us if we chance to\nknock words out of joint.  As for anything else, we are downright honest\nfellows and true hearts.\n\nWe have not asked you this question without a cause, said they; for a great\nnumber of others who have passed this way from your country of Touraine\nseemed as mere jolt-headed doddipolls as ever were scored o'er the coxcomb,\nyet spoke as correct as other folks.  But there has been here from other\ncountries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as\nmoody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would\nserve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against\nus at their coming; and much they got by it after all.  Troth, we e'en\nfitted them and clawed 'em off with a vengeance, for all they looked so big\nand so grum.\n\nPray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you\ndo not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking,\ndisputing, and writing of our sovereign lady?  There was much need that\nyour Tully, the consul, should go and leave the care of his commonwealth to\nbusy himself idly about her; and after him your Diogenes Laertius, the\nbiographer, and your Theodorus Gaza, the philosopher, and your Argiropilus,\nthe emperor, and your Bessario, the cardinal, and your Politian, the\npedant, and your Budaeus, the judge, and your Lascaris, the ambassador, and\nthe devil and all of those you call lovers of wisdom; whose number, it\nseems, was not thought great enough already, but lately your Scaliger,\nBigot, Chambrier, Francis Fleury, and I cannot tell how many such other\njunior sneaking fly-blows must take upon 'em to increase it.\n\nA squinsy gripe the cod's-headed changelings at the swallow and eke at the\ncover-weasel; we shall make 'em--But the deuce take 'em!  (They flatter the\ndevil here, and smoothify his name, quoth Panurge, between his teeth.)  You\ndon't come here, continued the captain, to uphold 'em in their folly; you\nhave no commission from 'em to this effect; well then, we will talk no more\non't.\n\nAristotle, that first of men and peerless pattern of all philosophy, was\nour sovereign lady's godfather, and wisely and properly gave her the name\nof Entelechy.  Her true name then is Entelechy, and may he be in tail\nbeshit, and entail a shit-a-bed faculty and nothing else on his family, who\ndares call her by any other name; for whoever he is, he does her wrong, and\nis a very impudent person.  You are heartily welcome, gentlemen.  With\nthis they colled and clipped us about the neck, which was no small comfort\nto us, I'll assure you.\n\nPanurge then whispered me, Fellow-traveller, quoth he, hast thou not been\nsomewhat afraid this bout?  A little, said I.  To tell you the truth of it,\nquoth he, never were the Ephraimites in a greater fear and quandary when\nthe Gileadites killed and drowned them for saying sibboleth instead of\nshibboleth; and among friends, let me tell you that perhaps there is not a\nman in the whole country of Beauce but might easily have stopped my\nbunghole with a cartload of hay.\n\nThe captain afterwards took us to the queen's palace, leading us silently\nwith great formality.  Pantagruel would have said something to him, but the\nother, not being able to come up to his height, wished for a ladder or a\nvery long pair of stilts; then said, Patience, if it were our sovereign\nlady's will, we would be as tall as you; well, we shall when she pleases.\n\nIn the first galleries we saw great numbers of sick persons, differently\nplaced according to their maladies.  The leprous were apart; those that\nwere poisoned on one side; those that had got the plague on another; those\nthat had the pox in the first rank, and the rest accordingly.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Quintessence cured the sick with a song.\n\nThe captain showed us the queen, attended with her ladies and gentlemen, in\nthe second gallery.  She looked young, though she was at least eighteen\nhundred years old, and was handsome, slender, and as fine as a queen, that\nis, as hands could make her.  He then said to us:  It is not yet a fit time\nto speak to the queen; be you but mindful of her doings in the meanwhile.\n\nYou have kings in your world that fantastically pretend to cure some\ncertain diseases, as, for example, scrofula or wens, swelled throats,\nnicknamed the king's evil, and quartan agues, only with a touch; now our\nqueen cures all manner of diseases without so much as touching the sick,\nbut barely with a song, according to the nature of the distemper.  He then\nshowed us a set of organs, and said that when it was touched by her those\nmiraculous cures were performed.  The organ was indeed the strangest that\never eyes beheld; for the pipes were of cassia fistula in the cod; the top\nand cornice of guiacum; the bellows of rhubarb; the pedas of turbith, and\nthe clavier or keys of scammony.\n\nWhile we were examining this wonderful new make of an organ, the leprous\nwere brought in by her abstractors, spodizators, masticators, pregustics,\ntabachins, chachanins, neemanins, rabrebans, nercins, rozuins, nebidins,\ntearins, segamions, perarons, chasinins, sarins, soteins, aboth, enilins,\narchasdarpenins, mebins, chabourins, and other officers, for whom I want\nnames; so she played 'em I don't know what sort of a tune or song, and they\nwere all immediately cured.\n\nThen those who were poisoned were had in, and she had no sooner given them\na song but they began to find a use for their legs, and up they got.  Then\ncame on the deaf, the blind, and the dumb, and they too were restored to\ntheir lost faculties and senses with the same remedy; which did so\nstrangely amaze us (and not without reason, I think) that down we fell on\nour faces, remaining prostrate, like men ravished in ecstasy, and were not\nable to utter one word through the excess of our admiration, till she came,\nand having touched Pantagruel with a fine fragrant nosegay of white roses\nwhich she held in her hand, thus made us recover our senses and get up.\nThen she made us the following speech in byssin words, such as Parisatis\ndesired should be spoken to her son Cyrus, or at least of crimson alamode:\n\nThe probity that scintillizes in the superfices of your persons informs my\nratiocinating faculty, in a most stupendous manner, of the radiant virtues\nlatent within the precious caskets and ventricles of your minds.  For,\ncontemplating the mellifluous suavity of your thrice discreet reverences,\nit is impossible not to be persuaded with facility that neither your\naffections nor your intellects are vitiated with any defect or privation of\nliberal and exalted sciences.  Far from it, all must judge that in you are\nlodged a cornucopia and encyclopaedia, an unmeasurable profundity of\nknowledge in the most peregrine and sublime disciplines, so frequently the\nadmiration, and so rarely the concomitants of the imperite vulgar.  This\ngently compels me, who in preceding times indefatigably kept my private\naffections absolutely subjugated, to condescend to make my application to\nyou in the trivial phrase of the plebeian world, and assure you that you\nare well, more than most heartily welcome.\n\nI have no hand at making of speeches, quoth Panurge to me privately;\nprithee, man, make answer to her for us, if thou canst.  This would not\nwork with me, however; neither did Pantagruel return a word.  So that Queen\nWhims, or Queen Quintessence (which you please), perceiving that we stood\nas mute as fishes, said:  Your taciturnity speaks you not only disciples of\nPythagoras, from whom the venerable antiquity of my progenitors in\nsuccessive propagation was emaned and derives its original, but also\ndiscovers, that through the revolution of many retrograde moons, you have\nin Egypt pressed the extremities of your fingers with the hard tenants of\nyour mouths, and scalptized your heads with frequent applications of your\nunguicules.  In the school of Pythagoras, taciturnity was the symbol of\nabstracted and superlative knowledge, and the silence of the Egyptians was\nagnited as an expressive manner of divine adoration; this caused the\npontiffs of Hierapolis to sacrifice to the great deity in silence,\nimpercussively, without any vociferous or obstreperous sound.  My design is\nnot to enter into a privation of gratitude towards you, but by a vivacious\nformality, though matter were to abstract itself from me, excentricate to\nyou my cogitations.\n\nHaving spoken this, she only said to her officers, Tabachins, a panacea;\nand straight they desired us not to take it amiss if the queen did not\ninvite us to dine with her; for she never ate anything at dinner but some\ncategories, jecabots, emnins, dimions, abstractions, harborins, chelemins,\nsecond intentions, carradoths, antitheses, metempsychoses, transcendent\nprolepsies, and such other light food.\n\nThen they took us into a little closet lined through with alarums, where we\nwere treated God knows how.  It is said that Jupiter writes whatever is\ntransacted in the world on the dipthera or skin of the Amalthaean goat that\nsuckled him in Crete, which pelt served him instead of a shield against the\nTitans, whence he was nicknamed Aegiochos.  Now, as I hate to drink water,\nbrother topers, I protest it would be impossible to make eighteen goatskins\nhold the description of all the good meat they brought before us, though it\nwere written in characters as small as those in which were penned Homer's\nIliads, which Tully tells us he saw enclosed in a nutshell.\n\nFor my part, had I one hundred mouths, as many tongues, a voice of iron, a\nheart of oak, and lungs of leather, together with the mellifluous abundance\nof Plato, yet I never could give you a full account of a third part of a\nsecond of the whole.\n\nPantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic\nword used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said\nto her tabachins, A panacea; just as Lucullus used to say, In Apollo, when\nhe designed to give his friends a singular treat; though sometimes they\ntook him at unawares, as, among the rest, Cicero and Hortensius sometimes\nused to do.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Queen passed her time after dinner.\n\nWhen we had dined, a chachanin led us into the queen's hall, and there we\nsaw how, after dinner, with the ladies and the princes of her court, she\nused to sift, searce, bolt, range, and pass away time with a fine large\nwhite and blue silk sieve.  We also perceived how they revived ancient\nsports, diverting themselves together at--\n\n1.  Cordax.      6.  Phrygia.        11.  Monogas.\n2.  Emmelia.     7.  Thracia.        12.  Terminalia.\n3.  Sicinnia.    8.  Calabrisme.     13.  Floralia.\n4.  Jambics.     9.  Molossia.       14.  Pyrrhice.\n5.  Persica.    10.  Cernophorum.    15.  (Nicatism.)\n            And a thousand other dances.\n\n(Motteux has the following footnote:--'1. A sort of country-dance.  2. A\nstill tragic dance.  3. Dancing and singing used at funerals.  4. Cutting\nsarcasms and lampoons.  5. The Persian dance.  6. Tunes, whose measure\ninspired men with a kind of divine fury.  7. The Thracian movement.  8.\nSmutty verses.  9. A measure to which the Molossi of Epirus danced a\ncertain morrice.  10. A dance with bowls or pots in their hands.  11. A\nsong where one sings alone.  12. Sports at the holidays of the god of\nbounds.  13. Dancing naked at Flora's holidays.  14. The Trojan dance in\narmour.')\n\nAfterwards she gave orders that they should show us the apartments and\ncuriosities in her palace.  Accordingly we saw there such new, strange, and\nwonderful things, that I am still ravished in admiration every time I think\nof't.  However, nothing surprised us more than what was done by the\ngentlemen of her household, abstractors, parazons, nebidins, spodizators,\nand others, who freely and without the least dissembling told us that the\nqueen their mistress did all impossible things, and cured men of incurable\ndiseases; and they, her officers, used to do the rest.\n\nI saw there a young parazon cure many of the new consumption, I mean the\npox, though they were never so peppered.  Had it been the rankest Roan ague\n(Anglice, the Covent-garden gout), 'twas all one to him; touching only\ntheir dentiform vertebrae thrice with a piece of a wooden shoe, he made\nthem as wholesome as so many sucking-pigs.\n\nAnother did thoroughly cure folks of dropsies, tympanies, ascites, and\nhyposarcides, striking them on the belly nine times with a Tenedian\nhatchet, without any solution of the continuum.\n\nAnother cured all manner of fevers and agues on the spot, only with hanging\na fox-tail on the left side of the patient's girdle.\n\nOne removed the toothache only with washing thrice the root of the aching\ntooth with elder-vinegar, and letting it dry half-an-hour in the sun.\n\nAnother the gout, whether hot or cold, natural or accidental, by barely\nmaking the gouty person shut his mouth and open his eyes.\n\nI saw another ease nine gentlemen of St. Francis's distemper ('A\nconsumption in the pocket, or want of money; those of St. Francis's order\nmust carry none about 'em.'--Motteux.) in a very short space of time,\nhaving clapped a rope about their necks, at the end of which hung a box\nwith ten thousand gold crowns in't.\n\nOne with a wonderful engine threw the houses out at the windows, by which\nmeans they were purged of all pestilential air.\n\nAnother cured all the three kinds of hectics, the tabid, atrophes, and\nemaciated, without bathing, Tabian milk, dropax, alias depilatory, or other\nsuch medicaments, only turning the consumptive for three months into monks;\nand he assured me that if they did not grow fat and plump in a monastic way\nof living, they never would be fattened in this world, either by nature or\nby art.\n\nI saw another surrounded with a crowd of two sorts of women.  Some were\nyoung, quaint, clever, neat, pretty, juicy, tight, brisk, buxom, proper,\nkind-hearted, and as right as my leg, to any man's thinking.  The rest were\nold, weather-beaten, over-ridden, toothless, blear-eyed, tough, wrinkled,\nshrivelled, tawny, mouldy, phthisicky, decrepit hags, beldams, and walking\ncarcasses.  We were told that his office was to cast anew those she-pieces\nof antiquity, and make them such as the pretty creatures whom we saw, who\nhad been made young again that day, recovering at once the beauty, shape,\nsize, and disposition which they enjoyed at sixteen; except their heels,\nthat were now much shorter than in their former youth.\n\nThis made them yet more apt to fall backwards whenever any man happened to\ntouch 'em, than they had been before.  As for their counterparts, the old\nmother-scratch-tobies, they most devoutly waited for the blessed hour when\nthe batch that was in the oven was to be drawn, that they might have their\nturns, and in a mighty haste they were pulling and hauling the man like\nmad, telling him that 'tis the most grievous and intolerable thing in\nnature for the tail to be on fire and the head to scare away those who\nshould quench it.\n\nThe officer had his hands full, never wanting patients; neither did his\nplace bring him in little, you may swear.  Pantagruel asked him whether he\ncould also make old men young again.  He said he could not.  But the way to\nmake them new men was to get 'em to cohabit with a new-cast female; for\nthis they caught that fifth kind of crinckams, which some call pellade, in\nGreek, ophiasis, that makes them cast off their old hair and skin, just as\nthe serpents do, and thus their youth is renewed like the Arabian\nphoenix's.  This is the true fountain of youth, for there the old and\ndecrepit become young, active, and lusty.\n\nJust so, as Euripides tells us, Iolaus was transmogrified; and thus Phaon,\nfor whom kind-hearted Sappho run wild, grew young again, for Venus's use;\nso Tithon by Aurora's means; so Aeson by Medea, and Jason also, who, if\nyou'll believe Pherecides and Simonides, was new-vamped and dyed by that\nwitch; and so were the nurses of jolly Bacchus, and their husbands, as\nAeschylus relates.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Queen Whims' officers were employed; and how the said lady retained us\namong her abstractors.\n\nI then saw a great number of the queen's officers, who made blackamoors\nwhite as fast as hops, just rubbing their bellies with the bottom of a\npannier.\n\nOthers, with three couples of foxes in one yoke, ploughed a sandy shore,\nand did not lose their seed.\n\nOthers washed burnt tiles, and made them lose their colour.\n\nOthers extracted water out of pumice-stones, braying them a good while in a\nmortar, and changed their substance.\n\nOthers sheared asses, and thus got long fleece wool.\n\nOthers gathered barberries and figs off of thistles.\n\nOthers stroked he-goats by the dugs, and saved their milk in a sieve; and\nmuch they got by it.\n\n(Others washed asses' heads without losing their soap.)\n\nOthers taught cows to dance, and did not lose their fiddling.\n\nOthers pitched nets to catch the wind, and took cock-lobsters in them.\n\nI saw a spodizator, who very artificially got farts out of a dead ass, and\nsold 'em for fivepence an ell.\n\nAnother did putrefy beetles.  O the dainty food!\n\nPoor Panurge fairly cast up his accounts, and gave up his halfpenny (i.e.\nvomited), seeing an archasdarpenin who laid a huge plenty of chamber lye to\nputrefy in horsedung, mishmashed with abundance of Christian sir-reverence.\nPugh, fie upon him, nasty dog!  However, he told us that with this sacred\ndistillation he watered kings and princes, and made their sweet lives a\nfathom or two the longer.\n\nOthers built churches to jump over the steeples.\n\nOthers set carts before the horses, and began to flay eels at the tail;\nneither did the eels cry before they were hurt, like those of Melun.\n\nOthers out of nothing made great things, and made great things return to\nnothing.\n\nOthers cut fire into steaks with a knife, and drew water with a fish-net.\n\nOthers made chalk of cheese, and honey of a dog's t--d.\n\nWe saw a knot of others, about a baker's dozen in number, tippling under an\narbour.  They toped out of jolly bottomless cups four sorts of cool,\nsparkling, pure, delicious, vine-tree sirup, which went down like mother's\nmilk; and healths and bumpers flew about like lightning.  We were told that\nthese true philosophers were fairly multiplying the stars by drinking till\nthe seven were fourteen, as brawny Hercules did with Atlas.\n\nOthers made a virtue of necessity, and the best of a bad market, which\nseemed to me a very good piece of work.\n\nOthers made alchemy (i.e. sir-reverence) with their teeth, and clapping\ntheir hind retort to the recipient, made scurvy faces, and then squeezed.\n\nOthers, in a large grass plot, exactly measured how far the fleas could go\nat a hop, a step, and jump; and told us that this was exceedingly useful\nfor the ruling of kingdoms, the conduct of armies, and the administration\nof commonwealths; and that Socrates, who first got philosophy out of\nheaven, and from idling and trifling made it profitable and of moment, used\nto spend half his philosophizing time in measuring the leaps of fleas, as\nAristophanes the quintessential affirms.\n\nI saw two gibroins by themselves keeping watch on the top of a tower, and\nwe were told they guarded the moon from the wolves.\n\nIn a blind corner I met four more very hot at it, and ready to go to\nloggerheads.  I asked what was the cause of the stir and ado, the mighty\ncoil and pother they made.  And I heard that for four livelong days those\noverwise roisters had been at it ding-dong, disputing on three high, more\nthan metaphysical propositions, promising themselves mountains of gold by\nsolving them.  The first was concerning a he-ass's shadow; the second, of\nthe smoke of a lantern; and the third of goat's hair, whether it were wool\nor no.  We heard that they did not think it a bit strange that two\ncontradictions in mode, form, figure, and time should be true; though I\nwill warrant the sophists of Paris had rather be unchristened than own so\nmuch.\n\nWhile we were admiring all those men's wonderful doings, the evening star\nalready twinkling, the queen (God bless her!) appeared, attended with her\ncourt, and again amazed and dazzled us.  She perceived it, and said to us:\n\nWhat occasions the aberrations of human cogitations through the perplexing\nlabyrinths and abysses of admiration, is not the source of the effects,\nwhich sagacious mortals visibly experience to be the consequential result\nof natural causes.  'Tis the novelty of the experiment which makes\nimpressions on their conceptive, cogitative faculties; that do not previse\nthe facility of the operation adequately, with a subact and sedate\nintellection, associated with diligent and congruous study.  Consequently\nlet all manner of perturbation abdicate the ventricles of your brains, if\nanyone has invaded them while they were contemplating what is transacted by\nmy domestic ministers.  Be spectators and auditors of every particular\nphenomenon and every individual proposition within the extent of my\nmansion; satiate yourselves with all that can fall here under the\nconsideration of your visual or auscultating powers, and thus emancipate\nyourselves from the servitude of crassous ignorance.  And that you may be\ninduced to apprehend how sincerely I desire this in consideration of the\nstudious cupidity that so demonstratively emicates at your external organs,\nfrom this present particle of time I retain you as my abstractors.  Geber,\nmy principal Tabachin, shall register and initiate you at your departing.\n\nWe humbly thanked her queenship without saying a word, accepting of the\nnoble office she conferred on us.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Queen was served at dinner, and of her way of eating.\n\nQueen Whims after this said to her gentlemen:  The orifice of the\nventricle, that ordinary embassador for the alimentation of all members,\nwhether superior or inferior, importunes us to restore, by the apposition\nof idoneous sustenance, what was dissipated by the internal calidity's\naction on the radical humidity.  Therefore spodizators, gesinins, memains,\nand parazons, be not culpable of dilatory protractions in the apposition of\nevery re-roborating species, but rather let them pullulate and superabound\non the tables.  As for you, nobilissim praegustators, and my gentilissim\nmasticators, your frequently experimented industry, internected with\nperdiligent sedulity and sedulous perdiligence, continually adjuvates you\nto perficiate all things in so expeditious a manner that there is no\nnecessity of exciting in you a cupidity to consummate them.  Therefore I\ncan only suggest to you still to operate as you are assuefacted\nindefatigably to operate.\n\nHaving made this fine speech, she retired for a while with part of her\nwomen, and we were told that 'twas to bathe, as the ancients did more\ncommonly than we use nowadays to wash our hands before we eat.  The tables\nwere soon placed, the cloth spread, and then the queen sat down.  She ate\nnothing but celestial ambrosia, and drank nothing but divine nectar.  As\nfor the lords and ladies that were there, they, as well as we, fared on as\nrare, costly, and dainty dishes as ever Apicius wot or dreamed of in his\nlife.\n\nWhen we were as round as hoops, and as full as eggs, with stuffing the gut,\nan olla podrida ('Some call it an Olio.  Rabelais Pot-pourry.'--Motteux.)\nwas set before us to force hunger to come to terms with us, in case it had\nnot granted us a truce; and such a huge vast thing it was that the plate\nwhich Pythius Althius gave King Darius would hardly have covered it.  The\nolla consisted of several sorts of pottages, salads, fricassees,\nsaugrenees, cabirotadoes, roast and boiled meat, carbonadoes, swingeing\npieces of powdered beef, good old hams, dainty somates, cakes, tarts, a\nworld of curds after the Moorish way, fresh cheese, jellies, and fruit of\nall sorts.  All this seemed to me good and dainty; however, the sight of it\nmade me sigh; for alas! I could not taste a bit on't, so full I had filled\nmy puddings before, and a bellyful is a bellyful you know.  Yet I must tell\nyou what I saw that seemed to me odd enough o' conscience; 'twas some\npasties in paste; and what should those pasties in paste be, d'ye think,\nbut pasties in pots?  At the bottom I perceived store of dice, cards,\ntarots ('Great cards on which many different things are figured.'\n--Motteux.), luettes ('Pieces of ivory to play withal.'--Motteux.),\nchessmen, and chequers, besides full bowls of gold crowns, for those who had\na mind to have a game or two and try their chance.  Under this I saw a jolly\ncompany of mules in stately trappings, with velvet footcloths, and a troop\nof ambling nags, some for men and some for women; besides I don't know how\nmany litters all lined with velvet, and some coaches of Ferrara make; all\nthis for those who had a mind to take the air.\n\nThis did not seem strange to me; but if anything did 'twas certainly the\nqueen's way of eating, and truly 'twas very new, and very odd; for she\nchewed nothing, the good lady; not but that she had good sound teeth, and\nher meat required to be masticated, but such was her highness's custom.\nWhen her praegustators had tasted the meat, her masticators took it and\nchewed it most nobly; for their dainty chops and gullets were lined through\nwith crimson satin, with little welts and gold purls, and their teeth were\nof delicate white ivory.  Thus, when they had chewed the meat ready for her\nhighness's maw, they poured it down her throat through a funnel of fine\ngold, and so on to her craw.  For that reason they told us she never\nvisited a close-stool but by proxy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow there was a ball in the manner of a tournament, at which Queen Whims\nwas present.\n\nAfter supper there was a ball in the form of a tilt or a tournament, not\nonly worth seeing, but also never to be forgotten.  First, the floor of the\nhall was covered with a large piece of velveted white and yellow chequered\ntapestry, each chequer exactly square, and three full spans in breadth.\n\nThen thirty-two young persons came into the hall; sixteen of them arrayed\nin cloth of gold, and of these eight were young nymphs such as the ancients\ndescribed Diana's attendants; the other eight were a king, a queen, two\nwardens of the castle, two knights, and two archers.  Those of the other\nband were clad in cloth of silver.\n\nThey posted themselves on the tapestry in the following manner:  the kings\non the last line on the fourth square; so that the golden king was on a\nwhite square, and the silvered king on a yellow square, and each queen by\nher king; the golden queen on a yellow square, and the silvered queen on a\nwhite one:  and on each side stood the archers to guide their kings and\nqueens; by the archers the knights, and the wardens by them.  In the next\nrow before 'em stood the eight nymphs; and between the two bands of nymphs\nfour rows of squares stood empty.\n\nEach band had its musicians, eight on each side, dressed in its livery; the\none with orange-coloured damask, the other with white; and all played on\ndifferent instruments most melodiously and harmoniously, still varying in\ntime and measure as the figure of the dance required.  This seemed to me an\nadmirable thing, considering the numerous diversity of steps, back-steps,\nbounds, rebounds, jerks, paces, leaps, skips, turns, coupes, hops,\nleadings, risings, meetings, flights, ambuscadoes, moves, and removes.\n\nI was also at a loss when I strove to comprehend how the dancers could so\nsuddenly know what every different note meant; for they no sooner heard\nthis or that sound but they placed themselves in the place which was\ndenoted by the music, though their motions were all different.  For the\nnymphs that stood in the first file, as if they designed to begin the\nfight, marched straight forwards to their enemies from square to square,\nunless it were the first step, at which they were free to move over two\nsteps at once.  They alone never fall back (which is not very natural to\nother nymphs), and if any of them is so lucky as to advance to the opposite\nking's row, she is immediately crowned queen of her king, and after that\nmoves with the same state and in the same manner as the queen; but till\nthat happens they never strike their enemies but forwards, and obliquely in\na diagonal line.  However, they make it not their chief business to take\ntheir foes; for, if they did, they would leave their queen exposed to the\nadverse parties, who then might take her.\n\nThe kings move and take their enemies on all sides square-ways, and only\nstep from a white square into a yellow one, and vice versa, except at their\nfirst step the rank should want other officers than the wardens; for then\nthey can set 'em in their place, and retire by him.\n\nThe queens take a greater liberty than any of the rest; for they move\nbackwards and forwards all manner of ways, in a straight line as far as\nthey please, provided the place be not filled with one of her own party,\nand diagonally also, keeping to the colour on which she stands.\n\nThe archers move backwards or forwards, far and near, never changing the\ncolour on which they stand.  The knights move and take in a lineal manner,\nstepping over one square, though a friend or foe stand upon it, posting\nthemselves on the second square to the right or left, from one colour to\nanother, which is very unwelcome to the adverse party, and ought to be\ncarefully observed, for they take at unawares.\n\nThe wardens move and take to the right or left, before or behind them, like\nthe kings, and can advance as far as they find places empty; which liberty\nthe kings take not.\n\nThe law which both sides observe is, at the end of the fight, to besiege\nand enclose the king of either party, so that he may not be able to move;\nand being reduced to that extremity, the battle is over, and he loses the\nday.\n\nNow, to avoid this, there is none of either sex of each party but is\nwilling to sacrifice his or her life, and they begin to take one another on\nall sides in time, as soon as the music strikes up.  When anyone takes a\nprisoner, he makes his honours, and striking him gently in the hand, puts\nhim out of the field and combat, and encamps where he stood.\n\nIf one of the kings chance to stand where he might be taken, it is not\nlawful for any of his adversaries that had discovered him to lay hold on\nhim; far from it, they are strictly enjoined humbly to pay him their\nrespects, and give him notice, saying, God preserve you, sir! that his\nofficers may relieve and cover him, or he may remove, if unhappily he could\nnot be relieved.  However, he is not to be taken, but greeted with a\nGood-morrow, the others bending the knee; and thus the tournament uses\nto end.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the thirty-two persons at the ball fought.\n\nThe two companies having taken their stations, the music struck up, and\nwith a martial sound, which had something of horrid in it, like a point of\nwar, roused and alarmed both parties, who now began to shiver, and then\nsoon were warmed with warlike rage; and having got in readiness to fight\ndesperately, impatient of delay stood waiting for the charge.\n\nThen the music of the silvered band ceased playing, and the instruments of\nthe golden side alone were heard, which denoted that the golden party\nattacked.  Accordingly, a new movement was played for the onset, and we saw\nthe nymph who stood before the queen turn to the left towards her king, as\nit were to ask leave to fight; and thus saluting her company at the same\ntime, she moved two squares forwards, and saluted the adverse party.\n\nNow the music of the golden brigade ceased playing, and their antagonists\nbegan again.  I ought to have told you that the nymph who began by saluting\nher company, had by that formality also given them to understand that they\nwere to fall on.  She was saluted by them in the same manner, with a full\nturn to the left, except the queen, who went aside towards her king to the\nright; and the same manner of salutation was observed on both sides during\nthe whole ball.\n\nThe silvered nymph that stood before her queen likewise moved as soon as\nthe music of her party sounded a charge; her salutations, and those of her\nside, were to the right, and her queen's to the left.  She moved in the\nsecond square forwards, and saluted her antagonists, facing the first\ngolden nymph; so that there was not any distance between them, and you\nwould have thought they two had been going to fight; but they only strike\nsideways.\n\nTheir comrades, whether silvered or golden, followed 'em in an intercalary\nfigure, and seemed to skirmish a while, till the golden nymph who had first\nentered the lists, striking a silvered nymph in the hand on the right, put\nher out of the field, and set herself in her place.  But soon the music\nplaying a new measure, she was struck by a silvered archer, who after that\nwas obliged himself to retire.  A silvered knight then sallied out, and the\ngolden queen posted herself before her king.\n\nThen the silvered king, dreading the golden queen's fury, removed to the\nright, to the place where his warden stood, which seemed to him strong and\nwell guarded.\n\nThe two knights on the left, whether golden or silvered, marched up, and on\neither side took up many nymphs who could not retreat; principally the\ngolden knight, who made this his whole business; but the silvered knight\nhad greater designs, dissembling all along, and even sometimes not taking a\nnymph when he could have done it, still moving on till he was come up to\nthe main body of the enemies in such a manner that he saluted their king\nwith a God save you, sir!\n\nThe whole golden brigade quaked for fear and anger, those words giving\nnotice of their king's danger; not but that they could soon relieve him,\nbut because their king being thus saluted they were to lose their warden on\nthe right wing without any hopes of a recovery.  Then the golden king\nretired to the left, and the silvered knight took the golden warden, which\nwas a mighty loss to that party.  However, they resolved to be revenged,\nand surrounded the knight that he might not escape.  He tried to get off,\nbehaving himself with a great deal of gallantry, and his friends did what\nthey could to save him; but at last he fell into the golden queen's hands,\nand was carried off.\n\nHer forces, not yet satisfied, having lost one of her best men, with more\nfury than conduct moved about, and did much mischief among their enemies.\nThe silvered party warily dissembled, watching their opportunity to be even\nwith them, and presented one of their nymphs to the golden queen, having\nlaid an ambuscado; so that the nymph being taken, a golden archer had like\nto have seized the silvered queen.  Then the golden knight undertakes to\ntake the silvered king and queen, and says, Good-morrow!  Then the silvered\narcher salutes them, and was taken by a golden nymph, and she herself by a\nsilvered one.\n\nThe fight was obstinate and sharp.  The wardens left their posts, and\nadvanced to relieve their friends.  The battle was doubtful, and victory\nhovered over both armies.  Now the silvered host charge and break through\ntheir enemy's ranks as far as the golden king's tent, and now they are\nbeaten back.  The golden queen distinguishes herself from the rest by her\nmighty achievements still more than by her garb and dignity; for at once\nshe takes an archer, and, going sideways, seizes a silvered warden.  Which\nthing the silvered queen perceiving, she came forwards, and, rushing on\nwith equal bravery, takes the last golden warden and some nymphs.  The two\nqueens fought a long while hand to hand; now striving to take each other by\nsurprise, then to save themselves, and sometimes to guard their kings.\nFinally, the golden queen took the silvered queen; but presently after she\nherself was taken by the silvered archer.\n\nThen the silvered king had only three nymphs, an archer, and a warden left,\nand the golden only three nymphs and the right knight, which made them\nfight more slowly and warily than before.  The two kings seemed to mourn\nfor the loss of their loving queens, and only studied and endeavoured to\nget new ones out of all their nymphs to be raised to that dignity, and thus\nbe married to them.  This made them excite those brave nymphs to strive to\nreach the farthest rank, where stood the king of the contrary party,\npromising them certainly to have them crowned if they could do this.  The\ngolden nymphs were beforehand with the others, and out of their number was\ncreated a queen, who was dressed in royal robes, and had a crown set on her\nhead.  You need not doubt the silvered nymphs made also what haste they\ncould to be queens.  One of them was within a step of the coronation place,\nbut there the golden knight lay ready to intercept her, so that she could\ngo no further.\n\nThe new golden queen, resolved to show herself valiant and worthy of her\nadvancement to the crown, achieved great feats of arms.  But in the\nmeantime the silvered knight takes the golden warden who guarded the camp;\nand thus there was a new silvered queen, who, like the other, strove to\nexcel in heroic deeds at the beginning of her reign.  Thus the fight grew\nhotter than before.  A thousand stratagems, charges, rallyings, retreats,\nand attacks were tried on both sides; till at last the silvered queen,\nhaving by stealth advanced as far as the golden king's tent, cried, God\nsave you, sir!  Now none but his new queen could relieve him; so she\nbravely came and exposed herself to the utmost extremity to deliver him out\nof it.  Then the silvered warden with his queen reduced the golden king to\nsuch a stress that, to save himself, he was forced to lose his queen; but\nthe golden king took him at last.  However, the rest of the golden party\nwere soon taken; and that king being left alone, the silvered party made\nhim a low bow, crying, Good morrow, sir! which denoted that the silvered\nking had got the day.\n\nThis being heard, the music of both parties loudly proclaimed the victory.\nAnd thus the first battle ended to the unspeakable joy of all the\nspectators.\n\nAfter this the two brigades took their former stations, and began to tilt a\nsecond time, much as they had done before, only the music played somewhat\nfaster than at the first battle, and the motions were altogether different.\nI saw the golden queen sally out one of the first, with an archer and a\nknight, as it were angry at the former defeat, and she had like to have\nfallen upon the silvered king in his tent among his officers; but having\nbeen baulked in her attempt, she skirmished briskly, and overthrew so many\nsilvered nymphs and officers that it was a most amazing sight.  You would\nhave sworn she had been another Penthesilea; for she behaved herself with\nas much bravery as that Amazonian queen did at Troy.\n\nBut this havoc did not last long; for the silvered party, exasperated by\ntheir loss, resolved to perish or stop her progress; and having posted an\narcher in ambuscado on a distant angle, together with a knight-errant, her\nhighness fell into their hands and was carried out of the field.  The rest\nwere soon routed after the taking of their queen, who, without doubt, from\nthat time resolved to be more wary and keep near her king, without\nventuring so far amidst her enemies unless with more force to defend her.\nThus the silvered brigade once more got the victory.\n\nThis did not dishearten or deject the golden party; far from it.  They soon\nappeared again in the field to face their enemies; and being posted as\nbefore, both the armies seemed more resolute and cheerful than ever.  Now\nthe martial concert began, and the music was above a hemiole the quicker,\naccording to the warlike Phrygian mode, such as was invented by Marsyas.\n\nThen our combatants began to wheel about, and charge with such a swiftness\nthat in an instant they made four moves, besides the usual salutations.  So\nthat they were continually in action, flying, hovering, jumping, vaulting,\ncurvetting, with petauristical turns and motions, and often intermingled.\n\nSeeing them then turn about on one foot after they had made their honours,\nwe compared them to your tops or gigs, such as boys use to whip about,\nmaking them turn round so swiftly that they sleep, as they call it, and\nmotion cannot be perceived, but resembles rest, its contrary; so that if\nyou make a point or mark on some part of one of those gigs, 'twill be\nperceived not as a point, but a continual line, in a most divine manner, as\nCusanus has wisely observed.\n\nWhile they were thus warmly engaged, we heard continually the claps and\nepisemapsies which those of the two bands reiterated at the taking of their\nenemies; and this, joined to the variety of their motions and music, would\nhave forced smiles out of the most severe Cato, the never-laughing Crassus,\nthe Athenian man-hater, Timon; nay, even whining Heraclitus, though he\nabhorred laughing, the action that is most peculiar to man.  For who could\nhave forborne? seeing those young warriors, with their nymphs and queens,\nso briskly and gracefully advance, retire, jump, leap, skip, spring, fly,\nvault, caper, move to the right, to the left, every way still in time, so\nswiftly, and yet so dexterously, that they never touched one another but\nmethodically.\n\nAs the number of the combatants lessened, the pleasure of the spectators\nincreased; for the stratagems and motions of the remaining forces were more\nsingular.  I shall only add that this pleasing entertainment charmed us to\nsuch a degree that our minds were ravished with admiration and delight, and\nthe martial harmony moved our souls so powerfully that we easily believed\nwhat is said of Ismenias's having excited Alexander to rise from table and\nrun to his arms, with such a warlike melody.  At last the golden king\nremained master of the field; and while we were minding those dances, Queen\nWhims vanished, so that we saw her no more from that day to this.\n\nThen Geber's michelots conducted us, and we were set down among her\nabstractors, as her queenship had commanded.  After that we returned to the\nport of Mateotechny, and thence straight aboard our ships; for the wind was\nfair, and had we not hoisted out of hand, we could hardly have got off in\nthree quarters of a moon in the wane.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we came to the island of Odes, where the ways go up and down.\n\nWe sailed before the wind, between a pair of courses, and in two days made\nthe island of Odes, at which place we saw a very strange thing.  The ways\nthere are animals; so true is Aristotle's saying, that all self-moving\nthings are animals.  Now the ways walk there.  Ergo, they are then animals.\nSome of them are strange unknown ways, like those of the planets; others\nare highways, crossways, and byways.  I perceived that the travellers and\ninhabitants of that country asked, Whither does this way go?  Whither does\nthat way go?  Some answered, Between Midy and Fevrolles, to the parish\nchurch, to the city, to the river, and so forth.  Being thus in their right\nway, they used to reach their journey's end without any further trouble,\njust like those who go by water from Lyons to Avignon or Arles.\n\nNow, as you know that nothing is perfect here below, we heard there was a\nsort of people whom they called highwaymen, waybeaters, and makers of\ninroads in roads; and that the poor ways were sadly afraid of them, and\nshunned them as you do robbers.  For these used to waylay them, as people\nlay trains for wolves, and set gins for woodcocks.  I saw one who was taken\nup with a lord chief justice's warrant for having unjustly, and in spite of\nPallas, taken the schoolway, which is the longest.  Another boasted that he\nhad fairly taken his shortest, and that doing so he first compassed his\ndesign.  Thus, Carpalin, meeting once Epistemon looking upon a wall with\nhis fiddle-diddle, or live urinal, in his hand, to make a little maid's\nwater, cried that he did not wonder now how the other came to be still the\nfirst at Pantagruel's levee, since he held his shortest and least used.\n\nI found Bourges highway among these.  It went with the deliberation of an\nabbot, but was made to scamper at the approach of some waggoners, who\nthreatened to have it trampled under their horses' feet, and make their\nwaggons run over it, as Tullia's chariot did over her father's body.\n\nI also espied there the old way between Peronne and St. Quentin, which\nseemed to me a very good, honest, plain way, as smooth as a carpet, and as\ngood as ever was trod upon by shoe of leather.\n\nAmong the rocks I knew again the good old way to La Ferrare, mounted on a\nhuge bear.  This at a distance would have put me in mind of St. Jerome's\npicture, had but the bear been a lion; for the poor way was all mortified,\nand wore a long hoary beard uncombed and entangled, which looked like the\npicture of winter, or at least like a white-frosted bush.\n\nOn that way were store of beads or rosaries, coarsely made of wild\npine-tree; and it seemed kneeling, not standing, nor lying flat; but its\nsides and middle were beaten with huge stones, insomuch that it proved to us\nat once an object of fear and pity.\n\nWhile we were examining it, a runner, bachelor of the place, took us aside,\nand showing us a white smooth way, somewhat filled with straw, said,\nHenceforth, gentlemen, do not reject the opinion of Thales the Milesian,\nwho said that water is the beginning of all things, nor that of Homer, who\ntells us that all things derive their original from the ocean; for this\nsame way which you see here had its beginning from water, and is to return\nwhence she came before two months come to an end; now carts are driven here\nwhere boats used to be rowed.\n\nTruly, said Pantagruel, you tell us no news; we see five hundred such\nchanges, and more, every year, in our world.  Then reflecting on the\ndifferent manner of going of those moving ways, he told us he believed that\nPhilolaus and Aristarchus had philosophized in this island, and that\nSeleucus (Motteux reads--'that some, indeed, were of opinion.'), indeed,\nwas of opinion the earth turns round about its poles, and not the heavens,\nwhatever we may think to the contrary; as, when we are on the river Loire,\nwe think the trees and the shore moves, though this is only an effect of\nour boat's motion.\n\nAs we went back to our ships, we saw three waylayers, who, having been\ntaken in ambuscado, were going to be broken on the wheel; and a huge\nfornicator was burned with a lingering fire for beating a way and breaking\none of its sides; we were told it was the way of the banks of the Nile in\nEgypt.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we came to the island of Sandals; and of the order of Semiquaver\nFriars.\n\nThence we went to the island of Sandals, whose inhabitants live on nothing\nbut ling-broth.  However, we were very kindly received and entertained by\nBenius the Third, king of the island, who, after he had made us drink, took\nus with him to show us a spick-and-span new monastery which he had\ncontrived for the Semiquaver Friars; so he called the religious men whom he\nhad there.  For he said that on t'other side the water lived friars who\nstyled themselves her sweet ladyship's most humble servants.  Item, the\ngoodly Friar-minors, who are semibreves of bulls; the smoked-herring tribe\nof Minim Friars; then the Crotchet Friars.  So that these diminutives could\nbe no more than Semiquavers.  By the statutes, bulls, and patents of Queen\nWhims, they were all dressed like so many house-burners, except that, as in\nAnjou your bricklayers use to quilt their knees when they tile houses, so\nthese holy friars had usually quilted bellies, and thick quilted paunches\nwere among them in much repute.  Their codpieces were cut slipper-fashion,\nand every monk among them wore two--one sewed before and another behind\n--reporting that some certain dreadful mysteries were duly represented by\nthis duplicity of codpieces.\n\nThey wore shoes as round as basins, in imitation of those who inhabit the\nsandy sea.  Their chins were close-shaved, and their feet iron-shod; and to\nshow they did not value fortune, Benius made them shave and poll the hind\npart of their polls as bare as a bird's arse, from the crown to the\nshoulder-blades; but they had leave to let their hair grow before, from the\ntwo triangular bones in the upper part of the skull.\n\nThus did they not value fortune a button, and cared no more for the goods\nof this world than you or I do for hanging.  And to show how much they\ndefied that blind jilt, all of them wore, not in their hands like her, but\nat their waist, instead of beads, sharp razors, which they used to\nnew-grind twice a day and set thrice a night.\n\nEach of them had a round ball on their feet, because Fortune is said to\nhave one under hers.\n\nThe flap of their cowls hanged forward, and not backwards, like those of\nothers.  Thus none could see their noses, and they laughed without fear\nboth at fortune and the fortunate; neither more nor less than our ladies\nlaugh at barefaced trulls when they have those mufflers on which they call\nmasks, and which were formerly much more properly called charity, because\nthey cover a multitude of sins.\n\nThe hind part of their faces were always uncovered, as are our faces, which\nmade them either go with their belly or the arse foremost, which they\npleased.  When their hind face went forwards, you would have sworn this had\nbeen their natural gait, as well on account of their round shoes as of the\ndouble codpiece, and their face behind, which was as bare as the back of my\nhand, and coarsely daubed over with two eyes and a mouth, such as you see\non some Indian nuts.  Now, if they offered to waddle along with their\nbellies forwards, you would have thought they were then playing at\nblindman's buff.  May I never be hanged if 'twas not a comical sight.\n\nTheir way of living was thus:  about owl-light they charitably began to\nboot and spur one another.  This being done, the least thing they did was\nto sleep and snore; and thus sleeping, they had barnacles on the handles of\ntheir faces, or spectacles at most.\n\nYou may swear we did not a little wonder at this odd fancy; but they\nsatisfied us presently, telling us that the day of judgment is to take\nmankind napping; therefore, to show they did not refuse to make their\npersonal appearance as fortune's darlings use to do, they were always thus\nbooted and spurred, ready to mount whenever the trumpet should sound.\n\nAt noon, as soon as the clock struck, they used to awake.  You must know\nthat their clock-bell, church-bells, and refectory-bells were all made\naccording to the pontial device, that is, quilted with the finest down, and\ntheir clappers of fox-tails.\n\nHaving then made shift to get up at noon, they pulled off their boots, and\nthose that wanted to speak with a maid, alias piss, pissed; those that\nwanted to scumber, scumbered; and those that wanted to sneeze, sneezed.\nBut all, whether they would or no (poor gentlemen!), were obliged largely\nand plentifully to yawn; and this was their first breakfast (O rigorous\nstatute!).  Methought 'twas very comical to observe their transactions;\nfor, having laid their boots and spurs on a rack, they went into the\ncloisters.  There they curiously washed their hands and mouths; then sat\nthem down on a long bench, and picked their teeth till the provost gave the\nsignal, whistling through his fingers; then every he stretched out his jaws\nas much as he could, and they gaped and yawned for about half-an-hour,\nsometimes more, sometimes less, according as the prior judged the breakfast\nto be suitable to the day.\n\nAfter that they went in procession, two banners being carried before them,\nin one of which was the picture of Virtue, and that of Fortune in the\nother.  The last went before, carried by a semi-quavering friar, at whose\nheels was another, with the shadow or image of Virtue in one hand and an\nholy-water sprinkle in the other--I mean of that holy mercurial water which\nOvid describes in his Fasti.  And as the preceding Semiquaver rang a\nhandbell, this shaked the sprinkle with his fist.  With that says\nPantagruel, This order contradicts the rule which Tully and the academics\nprescribed, that Virtue ought to go before, and Fortune follow.  But they\ntold us they did as they ought, seeing their design was to breech, lash,\nand bethwack Fortune.\n\nDuring the processions they trilled and quavered most melodiously betwixt\ntheir teeth I do not know what antiphones, or chantings, by turns.  For my\npart, 'twas all Hebrew-Greek to me, the devil a word I could pick out on't;\nat last, pricking up my ears, and intensely listening, I perceived they\nonly sang with the tip of theirs.  Oh, what a rare harmony it was!  How\nwell 'twas tuned to the sound of their bells!  You'll never find these to\njar, that you won't.  Pantagruel made a notable observation upon the\nprocessions; for says he, Have you seen and observed the policy of these\nSemiquavers?  To make an end of their procession they went out at one of\ntheir church doors and came in at the other; they took a deal of care not\nto come in at the place whereat they went out.  On my honour, these are a\nsubtle sort of people, quoth Panurge; they have as much wit as three folks,\ntwo fools and a madman; they are as wise as the calf that ran nine miles to\nsuck a bull, and when he came there 'twas a steer.  This subtlety and\nwisdom of theirs, cried Friar John, is borrowed from the occult philosophy.\nMay I be gutted like an oyster if I can tell what to make on't.  Then the\nmore 'tis to be feared, said Pantagruel; for subtlety suspected, subtlety\nforeseen, subtlety found out, loses the essence and very name of subtlety,\nand only gains that of blockishness.  They are not such fools as you take\nthem to be; they have more tricks than are good, I doubt.\n\nAfter the procession they went sluggingly into the fratery-room, by the way\nof walk and healthful exercise, and there kneeled under the tables, leaning\ntheir breasts on lanterns.  While they were in that posture, in came a huge\nSandal, with a pitchfork in his hand, who used to baste, rib-roast,\nswaddle, and swinge them well-favouredly, as they said, and in truth\ntreated them after a fashion.  They began their meal as you end yours, with\ncheese, and ended it with mustard and lettuce, as Martial tells us the\nancients did.  Afterwards a platterful of mustard was brought before every\none of them, and thus they made good the proverb, After meat comes mustard.\n\n      Their diet was this:\n\nO' Sundays they stuffed their puddings with puddings, chitterlings, links,\nBologna sausages, forced-meats, liverings, hogs' haslets, young quails, and\nteals.  You must also always add cheese for the first course, and mustard\nfor the last.\n\nO' Mondays they were crammed with peas and pork, cum commento, and\ninterlineary glosses.\n\nO' Tuesdays they used to twist store of holy-bread, cakes, buns, puffs,\nlenten loaves, jumbles, and biscuits.\n\nO' Wednesdays my gentlemen had fine sheep's heads, calves' heads, and\nbrocks' heads, of which there's no want in that country.\n\nO' Thursdays they guzzled down seven sorts of porridge, not forgetting\nmustard.\n\nO' Fridays they munched nothing but services or sorb-apples; neither were\nthese full ripe, as I guessed by their complexion.\n\nO' Saturdays they gnawed bones; not that they were poor or needy, for every\nmother's son of them had a very good fat belly-benefice.\n\nAs for their drink, 'twas an antifortunal; thus they called I don't know\nwhat sort of a liquor of the place.\n\nWhen they wanted to eat or drink, they turned down the back-points or flaps\nof their cowls forwards below their chins, and that served 'em instead of\ngorgets or slabbering-bibs.\n\nWhen they had well dined, they prayed rarely all in quavers and shakes; and\nthe rest of the day, expecting the day of judgment, they were taken up with\nacts of charity, and particularly--\n\nO' Sundays, rubbers at cuffs.\n\nO' Mondays, lending each other flirts and fillips on the nose.\n\nO' Tuesdays, clapperclawing one another.\n\nO' Wednesdays, sniting and fly-flapping.\n\nO' Thursdays, worming and pumping.\n\nO' Fridays, tickling.\n\nO' Saturdays, jerking and firking one another.\n\nSuch was their diet when they resided in the convent, and if the prior of\nthe monk-house sent any of them abroad, then they were strictly enjoined\nneither to touch nor eat any manner of fish as long as they were on sea or\nrivers, and to abstain from all manner of flesh whenever they were at land,\nthat everyone might be convinced that, while they enjoyed the object, they\ndenied themselves the power, and even the desire, and were no more moved\nwith it than the Marpesian rock.\n\nAll this was done with proper antiphones, still sung and chanted by ear, as\nwe have already observed.\n\nWhen the sun went to bed, they fairly booted and spurred each other as\nbefore, and having clapped on their barnacles e'en jogged to bed too.  At\nmidnight the Sandal came to them, and up they got, and having well whetted\nand set their razors, and been a-processioning, they clapped the tables\nover themselves, and like wire-drawers under their work fell to it as\naforesaid.\n\nFriar John des Entoumeures, having shrewdly observed these jolly Semiquaver\nFriars, and had a full account of their statutes, lost all patience, and\ncried out aloud:  Bounce tail, and God ha' mercy guts; if every fool should\nwear a bauble, fuel would be dear.  A plague rot it, we must know how many\nfarts go to an ounce.  Would Priapus were here, as he used to be at the\nnocturnal festivals in Crete, that I might see him play backwards, and\nwriggle and shake to the purpose.  Ay, ay, this is the world, and t'other\nis the country; may I never piss if this be not an antichthonian land, and\nour very antipodes.  In Germany they pull down monasteries and unfrockify\nthe monks; here they go quite kam, and act clean contrary to others,\nsetting new ones up, against the hair.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Panurge asked a Semiquaver Friar many questions, and was only answered\nin monosyllables.\n\nPanurge, who had since been wholly taken up with staring at these royal\nSemiquavers, at last pulled one of them by the sleeve, who was as lean as a\nrake, and asked him,--\n\nHearkee me, Friar Quaver, Semiquaver, Demisemiquavering quaver, where is\nthe punk?\n\nThe Friar, pointing downwards, answered, There.\n\nPan.  Pray, have you many?  Fri.  Few.\n\nPan.  How many scores have you?  Fri.  One.\n\nPan.  How many would you have?  Fri.  Five.\n\nPan.  Where do you hide 'em?  Fri.  Here.\n\nPan.  I suppose they are not all of one age; but, pray, how is their shape?\nFri.  Straight.\n\nPan.  Their complexion?  Fri.  Clear.\n\nPan.  Their hair?  Fri.  Fair.\n\nPan.  Their eyes?  Fri.  Black.\n\nPan.  Their features?  Fri.  Good.\n\nPan.  Their brows?  Fri.  Small.\n\nPan.  Their graces?  Fri.  Ripe.\n\nPan.  Their looks?  Fri.  Free.\n\nPan.  Their feet?  Fri.  Flat.\n\nPan.  Their heels?  Fri.  Short.\n\nPan.  Their lower parts?  Fri.  Rare.\n\nPan.  And their arms?  Fri.  Long.\n\nPan.  What do they wear on their hands?  Fri.  Gloves.\n\nPan.  What sort of rings on their fingers?  Fri.  Gold.\n\nPan.  What rigging do you keep 'em in?  Fri.  Cloth.\n\nPan.  What sort of cloth is it?  Fri.  New.\n\nPan.  What colour?  Fri.  Sky.\n\nPan.  What kind of cloth is it?  Fri.  Fine.\n\nPan.  What caps do they wear?  Fri.  Blue.\n\nPan.  What's the colour of their stockings?  Fri.  Red.\n\nPan.  What wear they on their feet?  Fri.  Pumps.\n\nPan.  How do they use to be?  Fri.  Foul.\n\nPan.  How do they use to walk?  Fri.  Fast.\n\nPan.  Now let us talk of the kitchen, I mean that of the harlots, and\nwithout going hand over head let's a little examine things by particulars.\nWhat is in their kitchens?  Fri.  Fire.\n\nPan.  What fuel feeds it?  Fri.  Wood.\n\nPan.  What sort of wood is't?  Fri.  Dry.\n\nPan.  And of what kind of trees?  Fri.  Yews.\n\nPan.  What are the faggots and brushes of?  Fri.  Holm.\n\nPan.  What wood d'ye burn in your chambers?  Fri.  Pine.\n\nPan.  And of what other trees?  Fri.  Lime.\n\nPan.  Hearkee me; as for the buttocks, I'll go your halves.  Pray, how do\nyou feed 'em?  Fri.  Well.\n\nPan.  First, what do they eat?  Fri.  Bread.\n\nPan.  Of what complexion?  Fri.  White.\n\nPan.  And what else?  Fri.  Meat.\n\nPan.  How do they love it dressed?  Fri.  Roast.\n\nPan.  What sort of porridge?  Fri.  None.\n\nPan.  Are they for pies and tarts?  Fri.  Much.\n\nPan.  Then I'm their man.  Will fish go down with them?  Fri.  Well.\n\nPan.  And what else?  Fri.  Eggs.\n\nPan.  How do they like 'em?  Fri.  Boiled.\n\nPan.  How must they be done?  Fri.  Hard.\n\nPan.  Is this all they have?  Fri.  No.\n\nPan.  What have they besides, then?  Fri.  Beef.\n\nPan.  And what else?  Fri.  Pork.\n\nPan.  And what more?  Fri.  Geese.\n\nPan.  What then?  Fri.  Ducks.\n\nPan.  And what besides?  Fri.  Cocks.\n\nPan.  What do they season their meat with?  Fri.  Salt.\n\nPan.  What sauce are they most dainty for?  Fri.  Must.\n\nPan.  What's their last course?  Fri.  Rice.\n\nPan.  And what else?  Fri.  Milk.\n\nPan.  What besides?  Fri.  Peas.\n\nPan.  What sort?  Fri.  Green.\n\nPan.  What do they boil with 'em?  Fri.  Pork.\n\nPan.  What fruit do they eat?  Fri.  Good.\n\nPan.  How?  Fri.  Raw.\n\nPan.  What do they end with?  Fri.  Nuts.\n\nPan.  How do they drink?  Fri.  Neat.\n\nPan.  What liquor?  Fri.  Wine.\n\nPan.  What sort?  Fri.  White.\n\nPan.  In winter?  Fri.  Strong.\n\nPan.  In the spring.  Fri.  Brisk.\n\nPan.  In summer?  Fri.  Cool.\n\nPan.  In autumn?  Fri.  New.\n\nButtock of a monk! cried Friar John; how plump these plaguy trulls, these\narch Semiquavering strumpets, must be!  That damned cattle are so high fed\nthat they must needs be high-mettled, and ready to wince and give two ups\nfor one go-down when anyone offers to ride them below the crupper.\n\nPrithee, Friar John, quoth Panurge, hold thy prating tongue; stay till I\nhave done.\n\nTill what time do the doxies sit up?  Fri.  Night.\n\nPan.  When do they get up?  Fri.  Late.\n\nPan.  May I ride on a horse that was foaled of an acorn, if this be not as\nhonest a cod as ever the ground went upon, and as grave as an old gate-post\ninto the bargain.  Would to the blessed St. Semiquaver, and the blessed\nworthy virgin St. Semiquavera, he were lord chief president (justice) of\nParis!  Ods-bodikins, how he'd despatch!  With what expedition would he\nbring disputes to an upshot!  What an abbreviator and clawer off of\nlawsuits, reconciler of differences, examiner and fumbler of bags, peruser\nof bills, scribbler of rough drafts, and engrosser of deeds would he not\nmake!  Well, friar, spare your breath to cool your porridge.  Come, let's\nnow talk with deliberation, fairly and softly, as lawyers go to heaven.\nLet's know how you victual the venereal camp.  How is the snatchblatch?\nFri.  Rough.\n\nPan.  How is the gateway?  Fri.  Free.\n\nPan.  And how is it within?  Fri.  Deep.\n\nPan.  I mean, what weather is it there?  Fri.  Hot.\n\nPan.  What shadows the brooks?  Fri.  Groves.\n\nPan.  Of what's the colour of the twigs?  Fri.  Red.\n\nPan.  And that of the old?  Fri.  Grey.\n\nPan.  How are you when you shake?  Fri.  Brisk.\n\nPan.  How is their motion?  Fri.  Quick.\n\nPan.  Would you have them vault or wriggle more?  Fri.  Less.\n\nPan.  What kind of tools are yours?  Fri.  Big.\n\nPan.  And in their helves?  Fri.  Round.\n\nPan.  Of what colour is the tip?  Fri.  Red.\n\nPan.  When they've even used, how are they?  Fri.  Shrunk.\n\nPan.  How much weighs each bag of tools?  Fri.  Pounds.\n\nPan.  How hang your pouches?  Fri.  Tight.\n\nPan.  How are they when you've done?  Fri.  Lank.\n\nPan.  Now, by the oath you have taken, tell me, when you have a mind to\ncohabit, how you throw 'em?  Fri.  Down.\n\nPan.  And what do they say then?  Fri.  Fie.\n\nPan.  However, like maids, they say nay, and take it; and speak the less,\nbut think the more, minding the work in hand; do they not?  Fri.  True.\n\nPan.  Do they get you bairns?  Fri.  None.\n\nPan.  How do you pig together?  Fri.  Bare.\n\nPan.  Remember you're upon your oath, and tell me justly and bona fide how\nmany times a day you monk it?  Fri.  Six.\n\nPan.  How many bouts a-nights?  Fri.  Ten.\n\nCatso, quoth Friar John, the poor fornicating brother is bashful, and\nsticks at sixteen, as if that were his stint.  Right, quoth Panurge, but\ncouldst thou keep pace with him, Friar John, my dainty cod?  May the\ndevil's dam suck my teat if he does not look as if he had got a blow over\nthe nose with a Naples cowl-staff.\n\nPan.  Pray, Friar Shakewell, does your whole fraternity quaver and shake at\nthat rate?  Fri.  All.\n\nPan.  Who of them is the best cock o' the game?  Fri.  I.\n\nPan.  Do you never commit dry-bobs or flashes in the pan?  Fri.  None.\n\nPan.  I blush like any black dog, and could be as testy as an old cook when\nI think on all this; it passes my understanding.  But, pray, when you have\nbeen pumped dry one day, what have you got the next?  Fri.  More.\n\nPan.  By Priapus, they have the Indian herb of which Theophrastus spoke, or\nI'm much out.  But, hearkee me, thou man of brevity, should some\nimpediment, honestly or otherwise, impair your talents and cause your\nbenevolence to lessen, how would it fare with you, then?  Fri.  Ill.\n\nPan.  What would the wenches do?  Fri.  Rail.\n\nPan.  What if you skipped, and let 'em fast a whole day?  Fri.  Worse.\n\nPan.  What do you give 'em then?  Fri.  Thwacks.\n\nPan.  What do they say to this?  Fri.  Bawl.\n\nPan.  And what else?  Fri.  Curse.\n\nPan.  How do you correct 'em?  Fri.  Hard.\n\nPan.  What do you get out of 'em then?  Fri.  Blood.\n\nPan.  How's their complexion then?  Fri.  Odd.\n\nPan.  What do they mend it with?  Fri.  Paint.\n\nPan.  Then what do they do?  Fri.  Fawn.\n\nPan.  By the oath you have taken, tell me truly what time of the year do\nyou do it least in?  Fri.  Now (August.).\n\nPan.  What season do you do it best in?  Fri.  March.\n\nPan.  How is your performance the rest of the year?  Fri.  Brisk.\n\nThen quoth Panurge, sneering, Of all, and of all, commend me to Ball; this\nis the friar of the world for my money.  You've heard how short, concise,\nand compendious he is in his answers.  Nothing is to be got out of him but\nmonosyllables.  By jingo, I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.\n\nDamn him, cried Friar John, that's as true as I am his uncle.  The dog\nyelps at another gate's rate when he is among his bitches; there he is\npolysyllable enough, my life for yours.  You talk of making three bites of\na cherry!  God send fools more wit and us more money!  May I be doomed to\nfast a whole day if I don't verily believe he would not make above two\nbites of a shoulder of mutton and one swoop of a whole pottle of wine.\nZoons, do but see how down o' the mouth the cur looks!  He's nothing but\nskin and bones; he has pissed his tallow.\n\nTruly, truly, quoth Epistemon, this rascally monastical vermin all over the\nworld mind nothing but their gut, and are as ravenous as any kites, and\nthen, forsooth, they tell us they've nothing but food and raiment in this\nworld.  'Sdeath, what more have kings and princes?\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent.\n\nPray did you observe, continued Epistemon, how this damned ill-favoured\nSemiquaver mentioned March as the best month for caterwauling?  True, said\nPantagruel; yet Lent and March always go together, and the first was\ninstituted to macerate and bring down our pampered flesh, to weaken and\nsubdue its lusts, to curb and assuage the venereal rage.\n\nBy this, said Epistemon, you may guess what kind of a pope it was who first\nenjoined it to be kept, since this filthy wooden-shoed Semiquaver owns that\nhis spoon is never oftener nor deeper in the porringer of lechery than in\nLent.  Add to this the evident reasons given by all good and learned\nphysicians, affirming that throughout the whole year no food is eaten that\ncan prompt mankind to lascivious acts more than at that time.\n\nAs, for example, beans, peas, phasels, or long-peason, ciches, onions,\nnuts, oysters, herrings, salt-meats, garum (a kind of anchovy), and salads\nwholly made up of venereous herbs and fruits, as--\n\nRocket,         Parsley,        Hop-buds,\nNose-smart,     Rampions,       Figs,\nTaragon,        Poppy,          Rice,\nCresses,        Celery,         Raisins, and others.\n\nIt would not a little surprise you, said Pantagruel, should a man tell you\nthat the good pope who first ordered the keeping of Lent, perceiving that\nat that time o' year the natural heat (from the centre of the body, whither\nit was retired during the winter's cold) diffuses itself, as the sap does\nin trees, through the circumference of the members, did therefore in a\nmanner prescribe that sort of diet to forward the propagation of mankind.\nWhat makes me think so, is that by the registers of christenings at Touars\nit appears that more children are born in October and November than in the\nother ten months of the year, and reckoning backwards 'twill be easily\nfound that they were all made, conceived, and begotten in Lent.\n\nI listen to you with both my ears, quoth Friar John, and that with no small\npleasure, I'll assure you.  But I must tell you that the vicar of Jambert\nascribed this copious prolification of the women, not to that sort of food\nthat we chiefly eat in Lent, but to the little licensed stooping mumpers,\nyour little booted Lent-preachers, your little draggle-tailed father\nconfessors, who during all that time of their reign damn all husbands that\nrun astray three fathom and a half below the very lowest pit of hell.  So\nthe silly cod's-headed brothers of the noose dare not then stumble any more\nat the truckle-bed, to the no small discomfort of their maids, and are even\nforced, poor souls, to take up with their own bodily wives.  Dixi; I have\ndone.\n\nYou may descant on the institution of Lent as much as you please, cried\nEpistemon; so many men so many minds; but certainly all the physicians will\nbe against its being suppressed, though I think that time is at hand.  I\nknow they will, and have heard 'em say were it not for Lent their art would\nsoon fall into contempt, and they'd get nothing, for hardly anybody would\nbe sick.\n\nAll distempers are sowed in lent; 'tis the true seminary and native bed of\nall diseases; nor does it only weaken and putrefy bodies, but it also makes\nsouls mad and uneasy.  For then the devils do their best, and drive a\nsubtle trade, and the tribe of canting dissemblers come out of their holes.\n'Tis then term-time with your cucullated pieces of formality that have one\nface to God and another to the devil; and a wretched clutter they make with\ntheir sessions, stations, pardons, syntereses, confessions, whippings,\nanathematizations, and much prayer with as little devotion.  However, I'll\nnot offer to infer from this that the Arimaspians are better than we are in\nthat point; yet I speak to the purpose.\n\nWell, quoth Panurge to the Semiquaver friar, who happened to be by, dear\nbumbasting, shaking, trilling, quavering cod, what thinkest thou of this\nfellow?  Is he a rank heretic?  Fri.  Much.\n\nPan.  Ought he not to be singed?  Fri.  Well.\n\nPan.  As soon as may be?  Fri.  Right.\n\nPan.  Should not he be scalded first?  Fri.  No.\n\nPan.  How then, should he be roasted?  Fri.  Quick.\n\nPan.  Till at last he be?  Fri.  Dead.\n\nPan.  What has he made you?  Fri.  Mad.\n\nPan.  What d'ye take him to be?  Fri.  Damned.\n\nPan.  What place is he to go to?  Fri.  Hell.\n\nPan.  But, first, how would you have 'em served here?  Fri.  Burnt.\n\nPan.  Some have been served so?  Fri.  Store.\n\nPan.  That were heretics?  Fri.  Less.\n\nPan.  And the number of those that are to be warmed thus hereafter is?\nFri.  Great.\n\nPan.  How many of 'em do you intend to save?  Fri.  None.\n\nPan.  So you'd have them burned?  Fri.  All.\n\nI wonder, said Epistemon to Panurge, what pleasure you can find in talking\nthus with this lousy tatterdemalion of a monk.  I vow, did I not know you\nwell, I might be ready to think you had no more wit in your head than he\nhas in both his shoulders.  Come, come, scatter no words, returned Panurge;\neveryone as they like, as the woman said when she kissed her cow.  I wish I\nmight carry him to Gargantua; when I'm married he might be my wife's fool.\nAnd make you one, cried Epistemon.  Well said, quoth Friar John.  Now, poor\nPanurge, take that along with thee, thou'rt e'en fitted; 'tis a plain case\nthou'lt never escape wearing the bull's feather; thy wife will be as common\nas the highway, that's certain.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we came to the land of Satin.\n\nHaving pleased ourselves with observing that new order of Semiquaver\nFriars, we set sail, and in three days our skipper made the finest and most\ndelightful island that ever was seen.  He called it the island of Frieze,\nfor all the ways were of frieze.\n\nIn that island is the land of Satin, so celebrated by our court pages.  Its\ntrees and herbage never lose their leaves or flowers, and are all damask\nand flowered velvet.  As for the beasts and birds, they are all of tapestry\nwork.  There we saw many beasts, birds on trees, of the same colour,\nbigness, and shape of those in our country; with this difference, however,\nthat these did eat nothing, and never sung or bit like ours; and we also\nsaw there many sorts of creatures which we never had seen before.\n\nAmong the rest, several elephants in various postures; twelve of which were\nthe six males and six females that were brought to Rome by their governor\nin the time of Germanicus, Tiberius's nephew.  Some of them were learned\nelephants, some musicians, others philosophers, dancers, and showers of\ntricks; and all sat down at table in good order, silently eating and\ndrinking like so many fathers in a fratery-room.\n\nWith their snouts or proboscises, some two cubits long, they draw up water\nfor their own drinking, and take hold of palm leaves, plums, and all manner\nof edibles, using them offensively or defensively as we do our fists; with\nthem tossing men high into the air in fight, and making them burst with\nlaughing when they come to the ground.\n\nThey have joints (in their legs), whatever some men, who doubtless never\nsaw any but painted, may have written to the contrary.  Between their teeth\nthey have two huge horns; thus Juba called 'em, and Pausanias tells us they\nare not teeth, but horns; however, Philostratus will have 'em to be teeth,\nand not horns.  'Tis all one to me, provided you will be pleased to own\nthem to be true ivory.  These are some three or four cubits long, and are\nfixed in the upper jawbone, and consequently not in the lowermost.  If you\nhearken to those who will tell you to the contrary, you will find yourself\ndamnably mistaken, for that's a lie with a latchet; though 'twere Aelian,\nthat long-bow man, that told you so, never believe him, for he lies as fast\nas a dog can trot.  'Twas in this very island that Pliny, his brother\ntell-truth, had seen some elephants dance on the rope with bells, and whip\nover the tables, presto, begone, while people were at feasts, without so\nmuch as touching the toping topers or the topers toping.\n\nI saw a rhinoceros there, just such a one as Harry Clerberg had formerly\nshowed me.  Methought it was not much unlike a certain boar which I had\nformerly seen at Limoges, except the sharp horn on its snout, that was\nabout a cubit long; by the means of which that animal dares encounter with\nan elephant, that is sometimes killed with its point thrust into its belly,\nwhich is its most tender and defenceless part.\n\nI saw there two and thirty unicorns.  They are a curst sort of creatures,\nmuch resembling a fine horse, unless it be that their heads are like a\nstag's, their feet like an elephant's, their tails like a wild boar's, and\nout of each of their foreheads sprouts out a sharp black horn, some six or\nseven feet long; commonly it dangles down like a turkey-cock's comb.  When\na unicorn has a mind to fight, or put it to any other use, what does it do\nbut make it stand, and then 'tis as straight as an arrow.\n\nI saw one of them, which was attended with a throng of other wild beasts,\npurify a fountain with its horn.  With that Panurge told me that his\nprancer, alias his nimble-wimble, was like the unicorn, not altogether in\nlength indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified\npools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and\ndrank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water\ntheir nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities,\ngonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who\nventure to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his\nnervous horn he removed all the infection that might be lurking in some\nblind cranny of the mephitic sweet-scented hole.\n\nWell, quoth Friar John, when you are sped, that is, when you are married,\nwe will make a trial of this on thy spouse, merely for charity sake, since\nyou are pleased to give us so beneficial an instruction.\n\nAy, ay, returned Panurge, and then immediately I'll give you a pretty\ngentle aggregative pill of God, made up of two and twenty kind stabs with a\ndagger, after the Caesarian way.  Catso, cried Friar John, I had rather\ntake off a bumper of good cool wine.\n\nI saw there the golden fleece formerly conquered by Jason, and can assure\nyou, on the word of an honest man, that those who have said it was not a\nfleece but a golden pippin, because melon signifies both an apple and a\nsheep, were utterly mistaken.\n\nI saw also a chameleon, such as Aristotle describes it, and like that which\nhad been formerly shown me by Charles Maris, a famous physician of the\nnoble city of Lyons on the Rhone; and the said chameleon lived on air just\nas the other did.\n\nI saw three hydras, like those I had formerly seen.  They are a kind of\nserpent, with seven different heads.\n\nI saw also fourteen phoenixes.  I had read in many authors that there was\nbut one in the whole world in every century; but, if I may presume to speak\nmy mind, I declare that those who said this had never seen any, unless it\nwere in the land of Tapestry; though 'twere vouched by Claudian or\nLactantius Firmianus.\n\nI saw the skin of Apuleius's golden ass.\n\nI saw three hundred and nine pelicans.\n\nItem, six thousand and sixteen Seleucid birds marching in battalia, and\npicking up straggling grasshoppers in cornfields.\n\nItem, some cynamologi, argatiles, caprimulgi, thynnunculs, onocrotals, or\nbitterns, with their wide swallows, stymphalides, harpies, panthers,\ndorcasses, or bucks, cemades, cynocephalises, satyrs, cartasans, tarands,\nuri, monopses, or bonasi, neades, steras, marmosets, or monkeys, bugles,\nmusimons, byturoses, ophyri, screech-owls, goblins, fairies, and griffins.\n\nI saw Mid-Lent o' horseback, with Mid-August and Mid-March holding its\nstirrups.\n\nI saw some mankind wolves, centaurs, tigers, leopards, hyenas,\ncamelopardals, and orixes, or huge wild goats with sharp horns.\n\nI saw a remora, a little fish called echineis by the Greeks, and near it a\ntall ship that did not get ahead an inch, though she was in the offing with\ntop and top-gallants spread before the wind.  I am somewhat inclined to\nbelieve that 'twas the very numerical ship in which Periander the tyrant\nhappened to be when it was stopped by such a little fish in spite of wind\nand tide.  It was in this land of Satin, and in no other, that Mutianus had\nseen one of them.\n\nFriar John told us that in the days of yore two sorts of fishes used to\nabound in our courts of judicature, and rotted the bodies and tormented the\nsouls of those who were at law, whether noble or of mean descent, high or\nlow, rich or poor:  the first were your April fish or mackerel (pimps,\npanders, and bawds); the others your beneficial remoras, that is, the\neternity of lawsuits, the needless lets that keep 'em undecided.\n\nI saw some sphynges, some raphes, some ounces, and some cepphi, whose\nfore-feet are like hands and their hind-feet like man's.\n\nAlso some crocutas and some eali as big as sea-horses, with elephants'\ntails, boars' jaws and tusks, and horns as pliant as an ass's ears.\n\nThe crocutas, most fleet animals, as big as our asses of Mirebalais, have\nnecks, tails, and breasts like a lion's, legs like a stag's, have mouths up\nto the ears, and but two teeth, one above and one below; they speak with\nhuman voices, but when they do they say nothing.\n\nSome people say that none e'er saw an eyrie, or nest of sakers; if you'll\nbelieve me, I saw no less than eleven, and I'm sure I reckoned right.\n\nI saw some left-handed halberds, which were the first that I had ever seen.\n\nI saw some manticores, a most strange sort of creatures, which have the\nbody of a lion, red hair, a face and ears like a man's, three rows of teeth\nwhich close together as if you joined your hands with your fingers between\neach other; they have a sting in their tails like a scorpion's, and a very\nmelodious voice.\n\nI saw some catablepases, a sort of serpents, whose bodies are small, but\ntheir heads large, without any proportion, so that they've much ado to lift\nthem up; and their eyes are so infectious that whoever sees 'em dies upon\nthe spot, as if he had seen a basilisk.\n\nI saw some beasts with two backs, and those seemed to me the merriest\ncreatures in the world.  They were most nimble at wriggling the buttocks,\nand more diligent in tail-wagging than any water-wagtails, perpetually\njogging and shaking their double rumps.\n\nI saw there some milched crawfish, creatures that I never had heard of\nbefore in my life.  These moved in very good order, and 'twould have done\nyour heart good to have seen 'em.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a school of vouching.\n\nWe went a little higher up into the country of Tapestry, and saw the\nMediterranean Sea open to the right and left down to the very bottom; just\nas the Red Sea very fairly left its bed at the Arabian Gulf to make a lane\nfor the Jews when they left Egypt.\n\nThere I found Triton winding his silver shell instead of a horn, and also\nGlaucus, Proteus, Nereus, and a thousand other godlings and sea monsters.\n\nI also saw an infinite number of fish of all kinds, dancing, flying,\nvaulting, fighting, eating, breathing, billing, shoving, milting, spawning,\nhunting, fishing, skirmishing, lying in ambuscado, making truces,\ncheapening, bargaining, swearing, and sporting.\n\nIn a blind corner we saw Aristotle holding a lantern in the posture in\nwhich the hermit uses to be drawn near St. Christopher, watching, prying,\nthinking, and setting everything down.\n\nBehind him stood a pack of other philosophers, like so many bums by a\nhead-bailiff, as Appian, Heliodorus, Athenaeus, Porphyrius, Pancrates,\nArcadian, Numenius, Possidonius, Ovidius, Oppianus, Olympius, Seleucus,\nLeonides, Agathocles, Theophrastus, Damostratus, Mutianus, Nymphodorus,\nAelian, and five hundred other such plodding dons, who were full of\nbusiness, yet had little to do; like Chrysippus or Aristarchus of Soli, who\nfor eight-and-fifty years together did nothing in the world but examine the\nstate and concerns of bees.\n\nI spied Peter Gilles among these, with a urinal in his hand, narrowly\nwatching the water of those goodly fishes.\n\nWhen we had long beheld everything in this land of Satin, Pantagruel said,\nI have sufficiently fed my eyes, but my belly is empty all this while, and\nchimes to let me know 'tis time to go to dinner.  Let's take care of the\nbody lest the soul abdicate it; and to this effect let's taste some of\nthese anacampserotes ('An herb, the touching of which is said to reconcile\nlovers.'--Motteux.) that hang over our heads.  Psha, cried one, they are\nmere trash, stark naught, o' my word; they're good for nothing.\n\nI then went to pluck some mirobolans off of a piece of tapestry whereon\nthey hung, but the devil a bit I could chew or swallow 'em; and had you had\nthem betwixt your teeth you would have sworn they had been thrown silk;\nthere was no manner of savour in 'em.\n\nOne might be apt to think Heliogabalus had taken a hint from thence, to\nfeast those whom he had caused to fast a long time, promising them a\nsumptuous, plentiful, and imperial feast after it; for all the treat used\nto amount to no more than several sorts of meat in wax, marble,\nearthenware, painted and figured tablecloths.\n\nWhile we were looking up and down to find some more substantial food, we\nheard a loud various noise, like that of paper-mills (or women bucking of\nlinen); so with all speed we went to the place whence the noise came, where\nwe found a diminutive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow, called Hearsay.\nHis mouth was slit up to his ears, and in it were seven tongues, each of\nthem cleft into seven parts.  However, he chattered, tattled, and prated\nwith all the seven at once, of different matters, and in divers languages.\n\nHe had as many ears all over his head and the rest of his body as Argus\nformerly had eyes, and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his\nlegs.\n\nAbout him stood an innumerable number of men and women, gaping, listening,\nand hearing very intensely.  Among 'em I observed some who strutted like\ncrows in a gutter, and principally a very handsome bodied man in the face,\nwho held then a map of the world, and with little aphorisms compendiously\nexplained everything to 'em; so that those men of happy memories grew\nlearned in a trice, and would most fluently talk with you of a world of\nprodigious things, the hundredth part of which would take up a man's whole\nlife to be fully known.\n\nAmong the rest they descanted with great prolixity on the pyramids and\nhieroglyphics of Egypt, of the Nile, of Babylon, of the Troglodytes, the\nHymantopodes, or crump-footed nation, the Blemiae, people that wear their\nheads in the middle of their breasts, the Pigmies, the Cannibals, the\nHyperborei and their mountains, the Egypanes with their goat's feet, and\nthe devil and all of others; every individual word of it by hearsay.\n\nI am much mistaken if I did not see among them Herodotus, Pliny, Solinus,\nBerosus, Philostratus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and God knows how many other\nantiquaries.\n\nThen Albert, the great Jacobin friar, Peter Tesmoin, alias Witness, Pope\nPius the Second, Volaterranus, Paulus Jovius the valiant, Jemmy Cartier,\nChaton the Armenian, Marco Polo the Venetian, Ludovico Romano, Pedro\nAliares, and forty cartloads of other modern historians, lurking behind a\npiece of tapestry, where they were at it ding-dong, privately scribbling\nthe Lord knows what, and making rare work of it; and all by hearsay.\n\nBehind another piece of tapestry (on which Naboth and Susanna's accusers\nwere fairly represented), I saw close by Hearsay, good store of men of the\ncountry of Perce and Maine, notable students, and young enough.\n\nI asked what sort of study they applied themselves to; and was told that\nfrom their youth they learned to be evidences, affidavit-men, and vouchers,\nand were instructed in the art of swearing; in which they soon became such\nproficients, that when they left that country, and went back into their\nown, they set up for themselves and very honestly lived by their trade of\nevidencing, positively giving their testimony of all things whatsoever to\nthose who feed them most roundly to do a job of journey-work for them; and\nall this by hearsay.\n\nYou may think what you will of it; but I can assure you they gave some of\nus corners of their cakes, and we merrily helped to empty their hogsheads.\nThen, in a friendly manner, they advised us to be as sparing of truth as\npossibly we could if ever we had a mind to get court preferment.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we came in sight of Lantern-land.\n\nHaving been but scurvily entertained in the land of Satin, we went o'\nboard, and having set sail, in four days came near the coast of\nLantern-land.  We then saw certain little hovering fires on the sea.\n\nFor my part, I did not take them to be lanterns, but rather thought they\nwere fishes which lolled their flaming tongues on the surface of the sea,\nor lampyrides, which some call cicindelas, or glowworms, shining there as\nripe barley does o' nights in my country.\n\nBut the skipper satisfied us that they were the lanterns of the watch, or,\nmore properly, lighthouses, set up in many places round the precinct of the\nplace to discover the land, and for the safe piloting in of some outlandish\nlanterns, which, like good Franciscan and Jacobin friars, were coming to\nmake their personal appearance at the provincial chapter.\n\nHowever, some of us were somewhat suspicious that these fires were the\nforerunners of some storm, but the skipper assured us again they were not.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we landed at the port of the Lychnobii, and came to Lantern-land.\n\n\nSoon after we arrived at the port of Lantern-land, where Pantagruel\ndiscovered on a high tower the lantern of Rochelle, that stood us in good\nstead, for it cast a great light.  We also saw the lantern of Pharos, that\nof Nauplion, and that of Acropolis at Athens, sacred to Pallas.\n\nNear the port there's a little hamlet inhabited by the Lychnobii, that live\nby lanterns, as the gulligutted friars in our country live by nuns; they\nare studious people, and as honest men as ever shit in a trumpet.\nDemosthenes had formerly lanternized there.\n\nWe were conducted from that place to the palace by three obeliscolichnys\n('A kind of beacons.'--Motteux.), military guards of the port, with\nhigh-crowned hats, whom we acquainted with the cause of our voyage, and our\ndesign, which was to desire the queen of the country to grant us a lantern\nto light and conduct us during our voyage to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle.\n\nThey promised to assist us in this, and added that we could never have come\nin a better time, for then the lanterns held their provincial chapter.\n\nWhen we came to the royal palace we had audience of her highness the Queen\nof Lantern-land, being introduced by two lanterns of honour, that of\nAristophanes and that of Cleanthes (Motteux adds here--'Mistresses of the\nceremonies.').  Panurge in a few words acquainted her with the causes of\nour voyage, and she received us with great demonstrations of friendship,\ndesiring us to come to her at supper-time that we might more easily make\nchoice of one to be our guide; which pleased us extremely.  We did not fail\nto observe intensely everything we could see, as the garbs, motions, and\ndeportment of the queen's subjects, principally the manner after which she\nwas served.\n\nThe bright queen was dressed in virgin crystal of Tutia wrought damaskwise,\nand beset with large diamonds.\n\nThe lanterns of the royal blood were clad partly with bastard-diamonds,\npartly with diaphanous stones; the rest with horn, paper, and oiled cloth.\n\nThe cresset-lights took place according to the antiquity and lustre of\ntheir families.\n\nAn earthen dark-lantern, shaped like a pot, notwithstanding this took place\nof some of the first quality; at which I wondered much, till I was told it\nwas that of Epictetus, for which three thousand drachmas had been formerly\nrefused.\n\nMartial's polymix lantern (Motteux gives a footnote:--'A lamp with many\nwicks, or a branch'd candlestick with many springs coming out of it, that\nsupply all the branches with oil.') made a very good figure there.  I took\nparticular notice of its dress, and more yet of the lychnosimity formerly\nconsecrated by Canopa, the daughter of Tisias.\n\nI saw the lantern pensile formerly taken out of the temple of Apollo\nPalatinus at Thebes, and afterwards by Alexander the Great (carried to the\ntown of Cymos).  (The words in brackets have been omitted by Motteux.)\n\nI saw another that distinguished itself from the rest by a bushy tuft of\ncrimson silk on its head.  I was told 'twas that of Bartolus, the lantern\nof the civilians.\n\nTwo others were very remarkable for glister-pouches that dangled at their\nwaist.  We were told that one was the greater light and the other the\nlesser light of the apothecaries.\n\nWhen 'twas supper-time, the queen's highness first sat down, and then the\nlady lanterns, according to their rank and dignity.  For the first course\nthey were all served with large Christmas candles, except the queen, who\nwas served with a hugeous, thick, stiff, flaming taper of white wax,\nsomewhat red towards the tip; and the royal family, as also the provincial\nlantern of Mirebalais, who were served with nutlights; and the provincial\nof Lower Poitou, with an armed candle.\n\nAfter that, God wot, what a glorious light they gave with their wicks!  I\ndo not say all, for you must except a parcel of junior lanterns, under the\ngovernment of a high and mighty one.  These did not cast a light like the\nrest, but seemed to me dimmer than any long-snuff farthing candle whose\ntallow has been half melted away in a hothouse.\n\nAfter supper we withdrew to take some rest, and the next day the queen made\nus choose one of the most illustrious lanterns to guide us; after which we\ntook our leave.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle.\n\nOur glorious lantern lighting and directing us to heart's content, we at\nlast arrived at the desired island where was the Oracle of the Bottle.  As\nsoon as friend Panurge landed, he nimbly cut a caper with one leg for joy,\nand cried to Pantagruel, Now we are where we have wished ourselves long\nago.  This is the place we've been seeking with such toil and labour.  He\nthen made a compliment to our lantern, who desired us to be of good cheer,\nand not be daunted or dismayed whatever we might chance to see.\n\nTo come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle we were to go through a large\nvineyard, in which were all sorts of vines, as the Falernian, Malvoisian,\nthe Muscadine, those of Taige, Beaune, Mirevaux, Orleans, Picardent,\nArbois, Coussi, Anjou, Grave, Corsica, Vierron, Nerac, and others.  This\nvineyard was formerly planted by the good Bacchus, with so great a blessing\nthat it yields leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round, like the\norange trees at Suraine.\n\nOur magnificent lantern ordered every one of us to eat three grapes, to put\nsome vine-leaves in his shoes, and take a vine-branch in his left hand.\n\nAt the end of the close we went under an arch built after the manner of\nthose of the ancients.  The trophies of a toper were curiously carved on\nit.\n\nFirst, on one side was to be seen a long train of flagons, leathern\nbottles, flasks, cans, glass bottles, barrels, nipperkins, pint pots, quart\npots, pottles, gallons, and old-fashioned semaises (swingeing wooden pots,\nsuch as those out of which the Germans fill their glasses); these hung on a\nshady arbour.\n\nOn another side was store of garlic, onions, shallots, hams, botargos,\ncaviare, biscuits, neat's tongues, old cheese, and such like comfits, very\nartificially interwoven, and packed together with vine-stocks.\n\nOn another were a hundred sorts of drinking glasses, cups, cisterns, ewers,\nfalse cups, tumblers, bowls, mazers, mugs, jugs, goblets, talboys, and such\nother Bacchic artillery.\n\nOn the frontispiece of the triumphal arch, under the zoophore, was the\nfollowing couplet:\n\n  You who presume to move this way,\n  Get a good lantern, lest you stray.\n\nWe took special care of that, cried Pantagruel when he had read them; for\nthere is not a better or a more divine lantern than ours in all\nLantern-land.\n\nThis arch ended at a fine large round alley covered over with the interlaid\nbranches of vines, loaded and adorned with clusters of five hundred\ndifferent colours, and of as many various shapes, not natural, but due to\nthe skill of agriculture; some were golden, others bluish, tawny, azure,\nwhite, black, green, purple, streaked with many colours, long, round,\ntriangular, cod-like, hairy, great-headed, and grassy.  That pleasant alley\nended at three old ivy-trees, verdant, and all loaden with rings.  Our\nenlightened lantern directed us to make ourselves hats with some of their\nleaves, and cover our heads wholly with them, which was immediately done.\n\nJupiter's priestess, said Pantagruel, in former days would not like us have\nwalked under this arbour.  There was a mystical reason, answered our most\nperspicuous lantern, that would have hindered her; for had she gone under\nit, the wine, or the grapes of which 'tis made, that's the same thing, had\nbeen over her head, and then she would have seemed overtopped and mastered\nby wine.  Which implies that priests, and all persons who devote themselves\nto the contemplation of divine things, ought to keep their minds sedate and\ncalm, and avoid whatever might disturb and discompose their tranquillity,\nwhich nothing is more apt to do than drunkenness.\n\nYou also, continued our lantern, could not come into the Holy Bottle's\npresence, after you have gone through this arch, did not that noble\npriestess Bacbuc first see your shoes full of vine-leaves; which action is\ndiametrically opposite to the other, and signifies that you despise wine,\nand having mastered it, as it were, tread it under foot.\n\nI am no scholar, quoth Friar John, for which I'm heartily sorry, yet I find\nby my breviary that in the Revelation a woman was seen with the moon under\nher feet, which was a most wonderful sight.  Now, as Bigot explained it to\nme, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women; for\nthey have all the moon at their heads, and consequently their brains are\nalways troubled with a lunacy.  This makes me willing to believe what you\nsaid, dear Madam Lantern.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we went underground to come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle, and how\nChinon is the oldest city in the world.\n\nWe went underground through a plastered vault, on which was coarsely\npainted a dance of women and satyrs waiting on old Silenus, who was\ngrinning o' horseback on his ass.  This made me say to Pantagruel, that\nthis entry put me in mind of the painted cellar in the oldest city in the\nworld, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place.\n\nWhich is the oldest city in the world? asked Pantagruel.  'Tis Chinon, sir,\nor Cainon in Touraine, said I.  I know, returned Pantagruel, where Chinon\nlies, and the painted cellar also, having myself drunk there many a glass\nof cool wine; neither do I doubt but that Chinon is an ancient town\n--witness its blazon.  I own 'tis said twice or thrice:\n\n      Chinon,\n    Little town,\n    Great renown,\n    On old stone\n    Long has stood;\n  There's the Vienne, if you look down;\n  If you look up, there's the wood.\n\nBut how, continued he, can you make it out that 'tis the oldest city in the\nworld?  Where did you find this written?  I have found it in the sacred\nwrit, said I, that Cain was the first that built a town; we may then\nreasonably conjecture that from his name he gave it that of Cainon.  Thus,\nafter his example, most other founders of towns have given them their\nnames:  Athena, that's Minerva in Greek, to Athens; Alexander to\nAlexandria; Constantine to Constantinople; Pompey to Pompeiopolis in\nCilicia; Adrian to Adrianople; Canaan, to the Canaanites; Saba, to the\nSabaeans; Assur, to the Assyrians; and so Ptolemais, Caesarea, Tiberias,\nand Herodium in Judaea got their names.\n\nWhile we were thus talking, there came to us the great flask whom our\nlantern called the philosopher, her holiness the Bottle's governor.  He was\nattended with a troop of the temple-guards, all French bottles in wicker\narmour; and seeing us with our javelins wrapped with ivy, with our\nillustrious lantern, whom he knew, he desired us to come in with all manner\nof safety, and ordered we should be immediately conducted to the Princess\nBacbuc, the Bottle's lady of honour, and priestess of all the mysteries;\nwhich was done.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge's fear.\n\nWe went down one marble step under ground, where there was a resting, or,\nas our workmen call it, a landing-place; then, turning to the left, we went\ndown two other steps, where there was another resting-place; after that we\ncame to three other steps, turning about, and met a third; and the like at\nfour steps which we met afterwards.  There quoth Panurge, Is it here?  How\nmany steps have you told? asked our magnificent lantern.  One, two, three,\nfour, answered Pantagruel.  How much is that? asked she.  Ten, returned he.\nMultiply that, said she, according to the same Pythagorical tetrad.  That\nis, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, cried Pantagruel.  How much is the whole?\nsaid she.  One hundred, answered Pantagruel.  Add, continued she, the first\ncube--that's eight.  At the end of that fatal number you'll find the temple\ngate; and pray observe, this is the true psychogony of Plato, so celebrated\nby the Academics, yet so little understood; one moiety of which consists of\nthe unity of the two first numbers full of two square and two cubic\nnumbers.  We then went down those numerical stairs, all under ground, and I\ncan assure you, in the first place, that our legs stood us in good stead;\nfor had it not been for 'em, we had rolled just like so many hogsheads into\na vault.  Secondly, our radiant lantern gave us just so much light as is in\nSt. Patrick's hole in Ireland, or Trophonius's pit in Boeotia; which caused\nPanurge to say to her, after we had got down some seventy-eight steps:\n\nDear madam, with a sorrowful, aching heart, I most humbly beseech your\nlanternship to lead us back.  May I be led to hell if I be not half dead\nwith fear; my heart is sunk down into my hose; I am afraid I shall make\nbuttered eggs in my breeches.  I freely consent never to marry.  You have\ngiven yourself too much trouble on my account.  The Lord shall reward you\nin his great rewarder; neither will I be ungrateful when I come out of this\ncave of Troglodytes.  Let's go back, I pray you.  I'm very much afraid this\nis Taenarus, the low way to hell, and methinks I already hear Cerberus\nbark.  Hark! I hear the cur, or my ears tingle.  I have no manner of\nkindness for the dog, for there never is a greater toothache than when dogs\nbite us by the shins.  And if this be only Trophonius's pit, the lemures,\nhobthrushes, and goblins will certainly swallow us alive, just as they\ndevoured formerly one of Demetrius's halberdiers for want of bridles.  Art\nthou here, Friar John?  Prithee, dear, dear cod, stay by me; I'm almost\ndead with fear.  Hast thou got thy bilbo?  Alas! poor pilgarlic's\ndefenceless.  I'm a naked man, thou knowest; let's go back.  Zoons, fear\nnothing, cried Friar John; I'm by thee, and have thee fast by the collar;\neighteen devils shan't get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed.\nNever did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart.\nHeaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the\nfields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to\nthis day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight\nNeptune's two bastards.  But whither are we bound?  Are we a-going to the\nlittle children's limbo?  By Pluto, they'll bepaw and conskite us all.  Or\nare we going to hell for orders?  By cob's body, I'll hamper, bethwack, and\nbelabour all the devils, now I have some vine-leaves in my shoes.  Thou\nshalt see me lay about me like mad, old boy.  Which way? where the devil\nare they?  I fear nothing but their damned horns; but cuckoldy Panurge's\nbull-feather will altogether secure me from 'em.  Lo! in a prophetic spirit\nI already see him, like another Actaeon, horned, horny, hornified.\nPrithee, quoth Panurge, take heed thyself, dear frater, lest, till monks\nhave leave to marry, thou weddest something thou dostn't like, as some\ncat-o'-nine-tails or the quartan ague; if thou dost, may I never come safe\nand sound out of this hypogeum, this subterranean cave, if I don't tup and\nram that disease merely for the sake of making thee a cornuted, corniferous\nproperty; otherwise I fancy the quartan ague is but an indifferent\nbedfellow.  I remember Gripe-men-all threatened to wed thee to some such\nthing; for which thou calledest him heretic.\n\nHere our splendid lantern interrupted them, letting us know this was the\nplace where we were to have a taste of the creature, and be silent; bidding\nus not despair of having the word of the Bottle before we went back, since\nwe had lined our shoes with vine-leaves.\n\nCome on then, cried Panurge, let's charge through and through all the\ndevils of hell; we can but perish, and that's soon done.  However, I\nthought to have reserved my life for some mighty battle.  Move, move, move\nforwards; I am as stout as Hercules, my breeches are full of courage; my\nheart trembles a little, I own, but that's only an effect of the coldness\nand dampness of this vault; 'tis neither fear nor ague.  Come on, move on,\npiss, pish, push on.  My name's William Dreadnought.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves.\n\nAfter we were got down the steps, we came to a portal of fine jasper, of\nDoric order, on whose front we read this sentence in the finest gold,\nEN OINO ALETHEIA--that is, In wine truth.  The gates were of\nCorinthian-like brass, massy, wrought with little vine-branches, finely\nembossed and engraven, and were equally joined and closed together in their\nmortise without padlock, key-chain, or tie whatsoever.  Where they joined,\nthere hanged an Indian loadstone as big as an Egyptian bean, set in gold,\nhaving two points, hexagonal, in a right line; and on each side, towards the\nwall, hung a handful of scordium (garlic germander).\n\nThere our noble lantern desired us not to take it amiss that she went no\nfarther with us, leaving us wholly to the conduct of the priestess Bacbuc;\nfor she herself was not allowed to go in, for certain causes rather to be\nconcealed than revealed to mortals.  However, she advised us to be resolute\nand secure, and to trust to her for the return.  She then pulled the\nloadstone that hung at the folding of the gates, and threw it into a silver\nbox fixed for that purpose; which done, from the threshold of each gate she\ndrew a twine of crimson silk about nine feet long, by which the scordium\nhung, and having fastened it to two gold buckles that hung at the sides,\nshe withdrew.\n\nImmediately the gates flew open without being touched; not with a creaking\nor loud harsh noise like that made by heavy brazen gates, but with a soft\npleasing murmur that resounded through the arches of the temple.\n\nPantagruel soon knew the cause of it, having discovered a small cylinder or\nroller that joined the gates over the threshold, and, turning like them\ntowards the wall on a hard well-polished ophites stone, with rubbing and\nrolling caused that harmonious murmur.\n\nI wondered how the gates thus opened of themselves to the right and left,\nand after we were all got in, I cast my eye between the gates and the wall\nto endeavour to know how this happened; for one would have thought our kind\nlantern had put between the gates the herb aethiopis, which they say opens\nsome things that are shut.  But I perceived that the parts of the gates\nthat joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said\ngates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a\nbluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple\nwall.  Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel\nplates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn;\nhowever, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was\nremoved, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of\nscordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens\nthe magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue.\n\nOn the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic\nverse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters:\n\n  Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.\n\n  Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws.\n\nThe following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the\nleft:\n\n    ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOf the Temple's admirable pavement.\n\nWhen I had read those inscriptions, I admired the beauty of the temple, and\nparticularly the disposition of its pavement, with which no work that is\nnow, or has been under the cope of heaven, can justly be compared; not that\nof the Temple of Fortune at Praeneste in Sylla's time, or the pavement of\nthe Greeks, called asarotum, laid by Sosistratus at Pergamus.  For this\nhere was wholly in compartments of precious stones, all in their natural\ncolours: one of red jasper, most charmingly spotted; another of ophites; a\nthird of porphyry; a fourth of lycophthalmy, a stone of four different\ncolours, powdered with sparks of gold as small as atoms; a fifth of agate,\nstreaked here and there with small milk-coloured waves; a sixth of costly\nchalcedony or onyx-stone; and another of green jasper, with certain red and\nyellowish veins.  And all these were disposed in a diagonal line.\n\nAt the portico some small stones were inlaid and evenly joined on the\nfloor, all in their native colours, to embellish the design of the figures;\nand they were ordered in such a manner that you would have thought some\nvine-leaves and branches had been carelessly strewed on the pavement; for\nin some places they were thick, and thin in others.  That inlaying was very\nwonderful everywhere.  Here were seen, as it were in the shade, some snails\ncrawling on the grapes; there, little lizards running on the branches.  On\nthis side were grapes that seemed yet greenish; on another, some clusters\nthat seemed full ripe, so like the true that they could as easily have\ndeceived starlings and other birds as those which Zeuxis drew.\n\nNay, we ourselves were deceived; for where the artist seemed to have\nstrewed the vine-branches thickest, we could not forbear walking with great\nstrides lest we should entangle our feet, just as people go over an unequal\nstony place.\n\nI then cast my eyes on the roof and walls of the temple, that were all\npargetted with porphyry and mosaic work, which from the left side at the\ncoming in most admirably represented the battle in which the good Bacchus\noverthrew the Indians; as followeth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow we saw Bacchus's army drawn up in battalia in mosaic work.\n\nAt the beginning, divers towns, hamlets, castles, fortresses, and forests\nwere seen in flames; and several mad and loose women, who furiously ripped\nup and tore live calves, sheep, and lambs limb from limb, and devoured\ntheir flesh.  There we learned how Bacchus, at his coming into India,\ndestroyed all things with fire and sword.\n\nNotwithstanding this, he was so despised by the Indians that they did not\nthink it worth their while to stop his progress, having been certainly\ninformed by their spies that his camp was destitute of warriors, and that\nhe had only with him a crew of drunken females, a low-built, old,\neffeminate, sottish fellow, continually addled, and as drunk as a\nwheelbarrow, with a pack of young clownish doddipolls, stark naked, always\nskipping and frisking up and down, with tails and horns like those of young\nkids.\n\nFor this reason the Indians had resolved to let them go through their\ncountry without the least opposition, esteeming a victory over such enemies\nmore dishonourable than glorious.\n\nIn the meantime Bacchus marched on, burning everything; for, as you know,\nfire and thunder are his paternal arms, Jupiter having saluted his mother\nSemele with his thunder, so that his maternal house was ruined by fire.\nBacchus also caused a great deal of blood to be spilt; which, when he is\nroused and angered, principally in war, is as natural to him as to make\nsome in time of peace.\n\nThus the plains of the island of Samos are called Panema, which signifies\nbloody, because Bacchus there overtook the Amazons, who fled from the\ncountry of Ephesus, and there let 'em blood, so that they all died of\nphlebotomy.  This may give you a better insight into the meaning of an\nancient proverb than Aristotle has done in his problems, viz., Why 'twas\nformerly said, Neither eat nor sow any mint in time of war.  The reason is,\nthat blows are given then without any distinction of parts or persons, and\nif a man that's wounded has that day handled or eaten any mint, 'tis\nimpossible, or at least very hard, to stanch his blood.\n\nAfter this, Bacchus was seen marching in battalia, riding in a stately\nchariot drawn by six young leopards.  He looked as young as a child, to\nshow that all good topers never grow old.  He was as red as a cherry, or a\ncherub, which you please, and had no more hair on his chin than there's in\nthe inside of my hand.  His forehead was graced with pointed horns, above\nwhich he wore a fine crown or garland of vine-leaves and grapes, and a\nmitre of crimson velvet, having also gilt buskins on.\n\nHe had not one man with him that looked like a man; his guards and all his\nforces consisted wholly of Bassarides, Evantes, Euhyades, Edonides,\nTrietherides, Ogygiae, Mimallonides, Maenades, Thyades, and Bacchae,\nfrantic, raving, raging, furious, mad women, begirt with live snakes and\nserpents instead of girdles, dishevelled, their hair flowing about their\nshoulders, with garlands of vine-branches instead of forehead-cloths, clad\nwith stag's or goat's skins, and armed with torches, javelins, spears, and\nhalberds whose ends were like pineapples.  Besides, they had certain small\nlight bucklers that gave a loud sound if you touched 'em never so little,\nand these served them instead of drums.  They were just seventy-nine\nthousand two hundred and twenty-seven.\n\nSilenus, who led the van, was one on whom Bacchus relied very much, having\nformerly had many proofs of his valour and conduct.  He was a diminutive,\nstooping, palsied, plump, gorbellied old fellow, with a swingeing pair of\nstiff-standing lugs of his own, a sharp Roman nose, large rough eyebrows,\nmounted on a well-hung ass.  In his fist he held a staff to lean upon, and\nalso bravely to fight whenever he had occasion to alight; and he was\ndressed in a woman's yellow gown.  His followers were all young, wild,\nclownish people, as hornified as so many kids and as fell as so many\ntigers, naked, and perpetually singing and dancing country-dances.  They\nwere called tityri and satyrs, and were in all eighty-five thousand one\nhundred and thirty-three.\n\nPan, who brought up the rear, was a monstrous sort of a thing; for his\nlower parts were like a goat's, his thighs hairy, and his horns bolt\nupright; a crimson fiery phiz, and a beard that was none of the shortest.\nHe was a bold, stout, daring, desperate fellow, very apt to take pepper in\nthe nose for yea and nay.\n\nIn his left hand he held a pipe, and a crooked stick in his right.  His\nforces consisted also wholly of satyrs, aegipanes, agripanes, sylvans,\nfauns, lemures, lares, elves, and hobgoblins, and their number was\nseventy-eight thousand one hundred and fourteen.  The signal or word\ncommon to all the army was Evohe.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the battle in which the good Bacchus overthrew the Indians was\nrepresented in mosaic work.\n\nIn the next place we saw the representation of the good Bacchus's\nengagement with the Indians.  Silenus, who led the van, was sweating,\npuffing, and blowing, belabouring his ass most grievously.  The ass\ndreadfully opened its wide jaws, drove away the flies that plagued it,\nwinced, flounced, went back, and bestirred itself in a most terrible\nmanner, as if some damned gad-bee had stung it at the breech.\n\nThe satyrs, captains, sergeants, and corporals of companies, sounding the\norgies with cornets, in a furious manner went round the army, skipping,\ncapering, bounding, jerking, farting, flying out at heels, kicking and\nprancing like mad, encouraging their companions to fight bravely; and all\nthe delineated army cried out Evohe!\n\nFirst, the Maenades charged the Indians with dreadful shouts, and a horrid\ndin of their brazen drums and bucklers; the air rung again all around, as\nthe mosaic work well expressed it.  And pray for the future don't so much\nadmire Apelles, Aristides the Theban, and others who drew claps of thunder,\nlightnings, winds, words, manners, and spirits.\n\nWe then saw the Indian army, who had at last taken the field to prevent the\ndevastation of the rest of their country.  In the front were the elephants,\nwith castles well garrisoned on their backs.  But the army and themselves\nwere put into disorder; the dreadful cries of the Bacchae having filled\nthem with consternation, and those huge animals turned tail and trampled on\nthe men of their party.\n\nThere you might have seen gaffer Silenus on his ass, putting on as hard as\nhe could, striking athwart and alongst, and laying about him lustily with\nhis staff after the old fashion of fencing.  His ass was prancing and\nmaking after the elephants, gaping and martially braying, as it were to\nsound a charge, as he did when formerly in the Bacchanalian feasts he waked\nthe nymph Lottis, when Priapus, full of priapism, had a mind to priapize\nwhile the pretty creature was taking a nap.\n\nThere you might have seen Pan frisk it with his goatish shanks about the\nMaenades, and with his rustic pipe excite them to behave themselves like\nMaenades.\n\nA little further you might have blessed your eyes with the sight of a young\nsatyr who led seventeen kings his prisoners; and a Bacchis, who with her\nsnakes hauled along no less than two and forty captains; a little faun, who\ncarried a whole dozen of standards taken from the enemy; and goodman\nBacchus on his chariot, riding to and fro fearless of danger, making much\nof his dear carcass, and cheerfully toping to all his merry friends.\n\nFinally, we saw the representation of his triumph, which was thus:  first,\nhis chariot was wholly lined with ivy gathered on the mountain Meros; this\nfor its scarcity, which you know raises the price of everything, and\nprincipally of those leaves in India.  In this Alexander the Great followed\nhis example at his Indian triumph.  The chariot was drawn by elephants\njoined together, wherein he was imitated by Pompey the Great at Rome in his\nAfrican triumph.  The good Bacchus was seen drinking out of a mighty urn,\nwhich action Marius aped after his victory over the Cimbri near Aix in\nProvence.  All his army were crowned with ivy; their javelins, bucklers,\nand drums were also wholly covered with it; there was not so much as\nSilenus's ass but was betrapped with it.\n\nThe Indian kings were fastened with chains of gold close by the wheels of\nthe chariot.  All the company marched in pomp with unspeakable joy, loaded\nwith an infinite number of trophies, pageants, and spoils, playing and\nsinging merry epiniciums, songs of triumph, and also rural lays and\ndithyrambs.\n\nAt the farthest end was a prospect of the land of Egypt; the Nile with its\ncrocodiles, marmosets, ibides, monkeys, trochiloses, or wrens, ichneumons,\nor Pharoah's mice, hippopotami, or sea-horses, and other creatures, its\nguests and neighbours.  Bacchus was moving towards that country under the\nconduct of a couple of horned beasts, on one of which was written in gold,\nApis, and Osiris on the other; because no ox or cow had been seen in Egypt\ntill Bacchus came thither.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the temple was illuminated with a wonderful lamp.\n\nBefore I proceed to the description of the Bottle, I'll give you that of an\nadmirable lamp that dispensed so large a light over all the temple that,\nthough it lay underground, we could distinguish every object as clearly as\nabove it at noonday.\n\nIn the middle of the roof was fixed a ring of massive gold, as thick as my\nclenched fist.  Three chains somewhat less, most curiously wrought, hung\nabout two feet and a half below it, and in a triangle supported a round\nplate of fine gold whose diameter or breadth did not exceed two cubits and\nhalf a span.  There were four holes in it, in each of which an empty ball\nwas fastened, hollow within, and open o' top, like a little lamp; its\ncircumference about two hands' breadth.  Each ball was of precious stone;\none an amethyst, another an African carbuncle, the third an opal, and the\nfourth an anthracites.  They were full of burning water five times\ndistilled in a serpentine limbec, and inconsumptible, like the oil formerly\nput into Pallas' golden lamp at Acropolis of Athens by Callimachus.  In\neach of them was a flaming wick, partly of asbestine flax, as of old in the\ntemple of Jupiter Ammon, such as those which Cleombrotus, a most studious\nphilosopher, saw, and partly of Carpasian flax (Ozell's correction.\nMotteux reads, 'which Cleombrotus, a most studious philosopher, and\nPandelinus of Carpasium had, which were,' &c.), which were rather renewed\nthan consumed by the fire.\n\nAbout two foot and a half below that gold plate, the three chains were\nfastened to three handles that were fixed to a large round lamp of most\npure crystal, whose diameter was a cubit and a half, and opened about two\nhands' breadths o' top; by which open place a vessel of the same crystal,\nshaped somewhat like the lower part of a gourd-like limbec, or an urinal,\nwas put at the bottom of the great lamp, with such a quantity of the\nafore-mentioned burning water, that the flame of the asbestine wick reached\nthe centre of the great lamp.  This made all its spherical body seem to burn\nand be in a flame, because the fire was just at the centre and middle point,\nso that it was not more easy to fix the eye on it than on the disc of the\nsun, the matter being wonderfully bright and shining, and the work most\ntransparent and dazzling by the reflection of the various colours of the\nprecious stones whereof the four small lamps above the main lamp were made,\nand their lustre was still variously glittering all over the temple. Then\nthis wandering light being darted on the polished marble and agate with\nwhich all the inside of the temple was pargetted, our eyes were entertained\nwith a sight of all the admirable colours which the rainbow can boast when\nthe sun darts his fiery rays on some dropping clouds.\n\nThe design of the lamp was admirable in itself, but, in my opinion, what\nadded much to the beauty of the whole, was that round the body of the\ncrystal lamp there was carved in cataglyphic work a lively and pleasant\nbattle of naked boys, mounted on little hobby-horses, with little whirligig\nlances and shields that seemed made of vine-branches with grapes on them;\ntheir postures generally were very different, and their childish strife and\nmotions were so ingeniously expressed that art equalled nature in every\nproportion and action.  Neither did this seem engraved, but rather hewed\nout and embossed in relief, or at least like grotesque, which, by the\nartist's skill, has the appearance of the roundness of the object it\nrepresents.  This was partly the effect of the various and most charming\nlight, which, flowing out of the lamp, filled the carved places with its\nglorious rays.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n('This and the next chapter make really but one, tho' Mr.\nMotteux has made two of them; the first of which contains but eight lines,\naccording to him, and ends at the words fantastic fountain.'--Ozell.).\n\nHow the Priestess Bacbuc showed us a fantastic fountain in the temple, and\nhow the fountain-water had the taste of wine, according to the imagination\nof those who drank of it.\n\nWhile we were admiring this incomparable lamp and the stupendous structure\nof the temple, the venerable priestess Bacbuc and her attendants came to us\nwith jolly smiling looks, and seeing us duly accoutred, without the least\ndifficulty took us into the middle of the temple, where, just under the\naforesaid lamp, was the fine fantastic fountain.  She then ordered some\ncups, goblets, and talboys of gold, silver, and crystal to be brought, and\nkindly invited us to drink of the liquor that sprung there, which we\nreadily did; for, to say the truth, this fantastic fountain was very\ninviting, and its materials and workmanship more precious, rare, and\nadmirable than anything Plato ever dreamt of in limbo.\n\nIts basis or groundwork was of most pure and limpid alabaster, and its\nheight somewhat more than three spans, being a regular heptagon on the\noutside, with its stylobates or footsteps, arulets, cymasults or blunt\ntops, and Doric undulations about it.  It was exactly round within.  On the\nmiddle point of each angle brink stood a pillar orbiculated in form of\nivory or alabaster solid rings.  These were seven in number, according to\nthe number of the angles (This sentence, restored by Ozell, is omitted by\nMotteux.).\n\nEach pillar's length from the basis to the architraves was near seven\nhands, taking an exact dimension of its diameter through the centre of its\ncircumference and inward roundness; and it was so disposed that, casting\nour eyes behind one of them, whatever its cube might be, to view its\nopposite, we found that the pyramidal cone of our visual line ended at the\nsaid centre, and there, by the two opposites, formed an equilateral\ntriangle whose two lines divided the pillar into two equal parts.\n\nThat which we had a mind to measure, going from one side to another, two\npillars over, at the first third part of the distance between them, was met\nby their lowermost and fundamental line, which, in a consult line drawn as\nfar as the universal centre, equally divided, gave, in a just partition,\nthe distance of the seven opposite pillars in a right line, beginning at\nthe obtuse angle on the brink, as you know that an angle is always found\nplaced between two others in all angular figures odd in number.\n\nThis tacitly gave us to understand that seven semidiameters are in\ngeometrical proportion, compass, and distance somewhat less than the\ncircumference of a circle, from the figure of which they are extracted;\nthat is to say, three whole parts, with an eighth and a half, a little\nmore, or a seventh and a half, a little less, according to the instructions\ngiven us of old by Euclid, Aristotle, Archimedes, and others.\n\nThe first pillar, I mean that which faced the temple gate, was of azure,\nsky-coloured sapphire.\n\nThe second, of hyacinth, a precious stone exactly of the colour of the\nflower into which Ajax's choleric blood was transformed; the Greek letters\nA I being seen on it in many places.\n\nThe third, an anachite diamond, as bright and glittering as lightning.\n\nThe fourth, a masculine ruby balas (peach-coloured) amethystizing, its\nflame and lustre ending in violet or purple like an amethyst.\n\nThe fifth, an emerald, above five hundred and fifty times more precious\nthan that of Serapis in the labyrinth of the Egyptians, and more verdant\nand shining than those that were fixed, instead of eyes, in the marble\nlion's head near King Hermias's tomb.\n\nThe sixth, of agate, more admirable and various in the distinctions of its\nveins, clouds, and colours than that which Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, so\nmightily esteemed.\n\nThe seventh, of syenites, transparent, of the colour of a beryl and the\nclear hue of Hymetian honey; and within it the moon was seen, such as we\nsee it in the sky, silent, full, new, and in the wane.\n\nThese stones were assigned to the seven heavenly planets by the ancient\nChaldaeans; and that the meanest capacities might be informed of this, just\nat the central perpendicular line, on the chapter of the first pillar,\nwhich was of sapphire, stood the image of Saturn in elutian (Motteux reads\n'Eliacim.') lead, with his scythe in his hand, and at his feet a crane of\ngold, very artfully enamelled, according to the native hue of the saturnine\nbird.\n\nOn the second, which was of hyacinth, towards the left, Jupiter was seen in\njovetian brass, and on his breast an eagle of gold enamelled to the life.\n\nOn the third was Phoebus of the purest gold, and a white cock in his right\nhand.\n\nOn the fourth was Mars in Corinthian brass, and a lion at his feet.\n\nOn the fifth was Venus in copper, the metal of which Aristonides made\nAthamas's statue, that expressed in a blushing whiteness his confusion at\nthe sight of his son Learchus, who died at his feet of a fall.\n\nOn the sixth was Mercury in hydrargyre.  I would have said quicksilver, had\nit not been fixed, malleable, and unmovable.  That nimble deity had a stork\nat his feet.\n\nOn the seventh was the Moon in silver, with a greyhound at her feet.\n\nThe size of these statues was somewhat more than a third part of the\npillars on which they stood, and they were so admirably wrought according\nto mathematical proportion that Polycletus's canon could hardly have stood\nin competition with them.\n\nThe bases of the pillars, the chapters, the architraves, zoophores, and\ncornices were Phrygian work of massive gold, purer and finer than any that\nis found in the rivers Leede near Montpellier, Ganges in India, Po in\nItaly, Hebrus in Thrace, Tagus in Spain, and Pactolus in Lydia.\n\nThe small arches between the pillars were of the same precious stone of\nwhich the pillars next to them were.  Thus, that arch was of sapphire which\nended at the hyacinth pillar, and that was of hyacinth which went towards\nthe diamond, and so on.\n\nAbove the arches and chapters of the pillars, on the inward front, a cupola\nwas raised to cover the fountain.  It was surrounded by the planetary\nstatues, heptagonal at the bottom, and spherical o' top, and of crystal so\npure, transparent, well-polished, whole and uniform in all its parts,\nwithout veins, clouds, flaws, or streaks, that Xenocrates never saw such a\none in his life.\n\nWithin it were seen the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve months of\nthe year, with their properties, the two equinoxes, the ecliptic line, with\nsome of the most remarkable fixed stars about the antartic pole and\nelsewhere, so curiously engraven that I fancied them to be the workmanship\nof King Necepsus, or Petosiris, the ancient mathematician.\n\nOn the top of the cupola, just over the centre of the fountain, were three\nnoble long pearls, all of one size, pear fashion, perfectly imitating a\ntear, and so joined together as to represent a flower-de-luce or lily, each\nof the flowers seeming above a hand's breadth.  A carbuncle jetted out of\nits calyx or cup as big as an ostrich's egg, cut seven square (that number\nso beloved of nature), and so prodigiously glorious that the sight of it\nhad like to have made us blind, for the fiery sun or the pointed lightning\nare not more dazzling and unsufferably bright.\n\nNow, were some judicious appraisers to judge of the value of this\nincomparable fountain, and the lamp of which we have spoke, they would\nundoubtedly affirm it exceeds that of all the treasures and curiosities in\nEurope, Asia, and Africa put together.  For that carbuncle alone would have\ndarkened the pantarbe of Iarchus (Motteux reads 'Joachas.') the Indian\nmagician, with as much ease as the sun outshines and dims the stars with\nhis meridian rays.\n\nNor let Cleopatra, that Egyptian queen, boast of her pair of pendants,\nthose two pearls, one of which she caused to be dissolved in vinegar, in\nthe presence of Antony the Triumvir, her gallant.\n\nOr let Pompeia Plautina be proud of her dress covered all over with\nemeralds and pearls curiously intermixed, she who attracted the eyes of all\nRome, and was said to be the pit and magazine of the conquering robbers of\nthe universe.\n\nThe fountain had three tubes or channels of right pearl, seated in three\nequilateral angles already mentioned, extended on the margin, and those\nchannels proceeded in a snail-like line, winding equally on both sides.\n\nWe looked on them a while, and had cast our eyes on another side, when\nBacbuc directed us to watch the water.  We then heard a most harmonious\nsound, yet somewhat stopped by starts, far distant, and subterranean, by\nwhich means it was still more pleasing than if it had been free,\nuninterrupted, and near us, so that our minds were as agreeably entertained\nthrough our ears with that charming melody as they were through the windows\nof our eyes with those delightful objects.\n\nBacbuc then said, Your philosophers will not allow that motion is begot by\nthe power of figures; look here, and see the contrary.  By that single\nsnail-like motion, equally divided as you see, and a fivefold infoliature,\nmovable at every inward meeting, such as is the vena cava where it enters\ninto the right ventricle of the heart; just so is the flowing of this\nfountain, and by it a harmony ascends as high as your world's ocean.\n\nShe then ordered her attendants to make us drink; and, to tell you the\ntruth of the matter as near as possible, we are not, heaven be praised! of\nthe nature of a drove of calf-lollies, who (as your sparrows can't feed\nunless you bob them on the tail) must be rib-roasted with tough crabtree\nand firked into a stomach, or at least into an humour to eat or drink.  No,\nwe know better things, and scorn to scorn any man's civility who civilly\ninvites us to a drinking bout.  Bacbuc asked us then how we liked our tiff.\nWe answered that it seemed to us good harmless sober Adam's liquor, fit to\nkeep a man in the right way, and, in a word, mere element; more cool and\nclear than Argyrontes in Aetolia, Peneus in Thessaly, Axius in Mygdonia, or\nCydnus in Cilicia, a tempting sight of whose cool silver stream caused\nAlexander to prefer the short-lived pleasure of bathing himself in it to\nthe inconveniences which he could not but foresee would attend so\nill-termed an action.\n\nThis, said Bacbuc, comes of not considering with ourselves, or\nunderstanding the motions of the musculous tongue, when the drink glides on\nit in its way to the stomach.  Tell me, noble strangers, are your throats\nlined, paved, or enamelled, as formerly was that of Pithyllus, nicknamed\nTheutes, that you can have missed the taste, relish, and flavour of this\ndivine liquor?  Here, said she, turning towards her gentlewomen, bring my\nscrubbing-brushes, you know which, to scrape, rake, and clear their\npalates.\n\nThey brought immediately some stately, swingeing, jolly hams, fine\nsubstantial neat's tongues, good hung-beef, pure and delicate botargos,\nvenison, sausages, and such other gullet-sweepers.  And, to comply with her\ninvitation, we crammed and twisted till we owned ourselves thoroughly cured\nof thirst, which before did damnably plague us.\n\nWe are told, continued she, that formerly a learned and valiant Hebrew\nchief, leading his people through the deserts, where they were in danger of\nbeing famished, obtained of God some manna, whose taste was to them, by\nimagination, such as that of meat was to them before in reality; thus,\ndrinking of this miraculous liquor, you'll find it taste like any wine that\nyou shall fancy you drink.  Come, then, fancy and drink.  We did so, and\nPanurge had no sooner whipped off his brimmer but he cried, By Noah's open\nshop, 'tis vin de Beaune, better than ever was yet tipped over tongue, or\nmay ninety-six devils swallow me.  Oh! that to keep its taste the longer,\nwe gentlemen topers had but necks some three cubits long or so, as\nPhiloxenus desired to have, or, at least, like a crane's, as Melanthius\nwished his.\n\nOn the faith of true lanterners, quoth Friar John, 'tis gallant, sparkling\nGreek wine.  Now, for God's sake, sweetheart, do but teach me how the devil\nyou make it.  It seems to me Mirevaux wine, said Pantagruel; for before I\ndrank I supposed it to be such.  Nothing can be misliked in it, but that\n'tis cold; colder, I say, than the very ice; colder than the Nonacrian and\nDercean (Motteux reads 'Deraen.') water, or the Conthoporian (Motteux,\n'Conthopian.') spring at Corinth, that froze up the stomach and nutritive\nparts of those that drank of it.\n\nDrink once, twice, or thrice more, said Bacbuc, still changing your\nimagination, and you shall find its taste and flavour to be exactly that on\nwhich you shall have pitched.  Then never presume to say that anything is\nimpossible to God.  We never offered to say such a thing, said I; far from\nit, we maintain he is omnipotent.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow the Priestess Bacbuc equipped Panurge in order to have the word of the\nBottle.\n\nWhen we had thus chatted and tippled, Bacbuc asked, Who of you here would\nhave the word of the Bottle?  I, your most humble little funnel, an't\nplease you, quoth Panurge.  Friend, saith she, I have but one thing to tell\nyou, which is, that when you come to the Oracle, you take care to hearken\nand hear the word only with one ear.  This, cried Friar John, is wine of\none ear, as Frenchmen call it.\n\nShe then wrapped him up in a gaberdine, bound his noddle with a goodly\nclean biggin, clapped over it a felt such as those through which hippocras\nis distilled, at the bottom of which, instead of a cowl, she put three\nobelisks, made him draw on a pair of old-fashioned codpieces instead of\nmittens, girded him about with three bagpipes bound together, bathed his\njobbernowl thrice in the fountain; then threw a handful of meal on his\nphiz, fixed three cock's feathers on the right side of the hippocratical\nfelt, made him take a jaunt nine times round the fountain, caused him to\ntake three little leaps and to bump his a-- seven times against the ground,\nrepeating I don't know what kind of conjurations all the while in the\nTuscan tongue, and ever and anon reading in a ritual or book of ceremonies,\ncarried after her by one of her mystagogues.\n\nFor my part, may I never stir if I don't really believe that neither Numa\nPompilius, the second King of the Romans, nor the Cerites of Tuscia, and\nthe old Hebrew captain ever instituted so many ceremonies as I then saw\nperformed; nor were ever half so many religious forms used by the\nsoothsayers of Memphis in Egypt to Apis, or by the Euboeans, at Rhamnus\n(Motteux gives 'or by the Embrians, or at Rhamnus.'), to Rhamnusia, or to\nJupiter Ammon, or to Feronia.\n\nWhen she had thus accoutred my gentleman, she took him out of our company,\nand led him out of the temple, through a golden gate on the right, into a\nround chapel made of transparent speculary stones, by whose solid clearness\nthe sun's light shined there through the precipice of the rock without any\nwindows or other entrance, and so easily and fully dispersed itself through\nthe greater temple that the light seemed rather to spring out of it than to\nflow into it.\n\nThe workmanship was not less rare than that of the sacred temple at\nRavenna, or that in the island of Chemnis in Egypt.  Nor must I forget to\ntell you that the work of that round chapel was contrived with such a\nsymmetry that its diameter was just the height of the vault.\n\nIn the middle of it was an heptagonal fountain of fine alabaster most\nartfully wrought, full of water, which was so clear that it might have\npassed for element in its purity and singleness.  The sacred Bottle was in\nit to the middle, clad in pure fine crystal of an oval shape, except its\nmuzzle, which was somewhat wider than was consistent with that figure.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Bacbuc, the high-priestess, brought Panurge before the Holy Bottle.\n\nThere the noble priestess Bacbuc made Panurge stoop and kiss the brink of\nthe fountain; then bade him rise and dance three ithymbi ('Dances in the\nhonour of Bacchus.'--Motteux.).  Which done, she ordered him to sit down\nbetween two stools placed there for that purpose, his arse upon the ground.\nThen she opened her ceremonial book, and, whispering in his left ear, made\nhim sing an epileny, inserted here in the figure of the bottle.\n\n    Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep\n  Do's ten thousand Secrets keep,\n  With attentive Ear I wait;\n  Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate.\n  Soul of Joy!  Like Bacchus, we\n  More than India gain by thee.\n  Truths unborn thy Juice reveals,\n  Which Futurity conceals.\n  Antidote to Frauds and Lies,\n  Wine, that mounts us to the Skies,\n  May thy Father Noah's Brood\n  Like him drown, but in thy Flood.\n  Speak, so may the Liquid Mine\n  Of Rubies, or of Diamonds shine.\n    Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep\n  Do's ten thousand Secrets keep,\n  With attentive Ear I wait;\n  Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate.\n\nWhen Panurge had sung, Bacbuc threw I don't know what into the fountain,\nand straight its water began to boil in good earnest, just for the world as\ndoth the great monastical pot at Bourgueil when 'tis high holiday there.\nFriend Panurge was listening with one ear, and Bacbuc kneeled by him, when\nsuch a kind of humming was heard out of the Bottle as is made by a swarm of\nbees bred in the flesh of a young bull killed and dressed according to\nAristaeus's art, or such as is made when a bolt flies out of a crossbow, or\nwhen a shower falls on a sudden in summer.  Immediately after this was\nheard the word Trinc.  By cob's body, cried Panurge, 'tis broken, or\ncracked at least, not to tell a lie for the matter; for even so do crystal\nbottles speak in our country when they burst near the fire.\n\nBacbuc arose, and gently taking Panurge under the arms, said, Friend, offer\nyour thanks to indulgent heaven, as reason requires.  You have soon had the\nword of the Goddess-Bottle; and the kindest, most favourable, and certain\nword of answer that I ever yet heard her give since I officiated here at\nher most sacred oracle.  Rise, let us go to the chapter, in whose gloss\nthat fine word is explained.  With all my heart, quoth Panurge; by jingo, I\nam just as wise as I was last year.  Light, where's the book?  Turn it\nover, where's the chapter?  Let's see this merry gloss.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Bacbuc explained the word of the Goddess-Bottle.\n\nBacbuc having thrown I don't know what into the fountain, straight the\nwater ceased to boil; and then she took Panurge into the greater temple, in\nthe central place, where there was the enlivening fountain.\n\nThere she took out a hugeous silver book, in the shape of a half-tierce, or\nhogshead, of sentences, and, having filled it at the fountain, said to him,\nThe philosophers, preachers, and doctors of your world feed you up with\nfine words and cant at the ears; now, here we really incorporate our\nprecepts at the mouth.  Therefore I'll not say to you, read this chapter,\nsee this gloss; no, I say to you, taste me this fine chapter, swallow me\nthis rare gloss.  Formerly an ancient prophet of the Jewish nation ate a\nbook and became a clerk even to the very teeth!  Now will I have you drink\none, that you may be a clerk to your very liver.  Here, open your\nmandibules.\n\nPanurge gaping as wide as his jaws would stretch, Bacbuc took the silver\nbook--at least we took it for a real book, for it looked just for the world\nlike a breviary--but in truth it was a breviary, a flask of right Falernian\nwine as it came from the grape, which she made him swallow every drop.\n\nBy Bacchus, quoth Panurge, this was a notable chapter, a most authentic\ngloss, o' my word.  Is this all that the trismegistian Bottle's word means?\nI' troth, I like it extremely; it went down like mother's milk.  Nothing\nmore, returned Bacbuc; for Trinc is a panomphean word, that is, a word\nunderstood, used and celebrated by all nations, and signifies drink.\n\nSome say in your world that sack is a word used in all tongues, and justly\nadmitted in the same sense among all nations; for, as Aesop's fable hath\nit, all men are born with a sack at the neck, naturally needy and begging\nof each other; neither can the most powerful king be without the help of\nother men, or can anyone that's poor subsist without the rich, though he be\nnever so proud and insolent; as, for example, Hippias the philosopher, who\nboasted he could do everything.  Much less can anyone make shift without\ndrink than without a sack.  Therefore here we hold not that laughing, but\nthat drinking is the distinguishing character of man.  I don't say\ndrinking, taking that word singly and absolutely in the strictest sense;\nno, beasts then might put in for a share; I mean drinking cool delicious\nwine.  For you must know, my beloved, that by wine we become divine;\nneither can there be a surer argument or a less deceitful divination.  Your\n('Varro.'--Motteux) academics assert the same when they make the etymology\nof wine, which the Greeks call OINOS, to be from vis, strength, virtue,\nand power; for 'tis in its power to fill the soul with all truth, learning,\nand philosophy.\n\nIf you observe what is written in Ionic letters on the temple gate, you may\nhave understood that truth is in wine.  The Goddess-Bottle therefore\ndirects you to that divine liquor; be yourself the expounder of your\nundertaking.\n\nIt is impossible, said Pantagruel to Panurge, to speak more to the purpose\nthan does this true priestess; you may remember I told you as much when you\nfirst spoke to me about it.\n\nTrinc then:  what says your heart, elevated by Bacchic enthusiasm?\n\nWith this quoth Panurge:\n\n  Trinc, trinc; by Bacchus, let us tope,\n  And tope again; for, now I hope\n  To see some brawny, juicy rump\n  Well tickled with my carnal stump.\n  Ere long, my friends, I shall be wedded,\n  Sure as my trap-stick has a red-head;\n  And my sweet wife shall hold the combat\n  Long as my baws can on her bum beat.\n  O what a battle of a-- fighting\n  Will there be, which I much delight in!\n  What pleasing pains then shall I take\n  To keep myself and spouse awake!\n  All heart and juice, I'll up and ride,\n  And make a duchess of my bride.\n  Sing Io paean! loudly sing\n  To Hymen, who all joys will bring.\n  Well, Friar John, I'll take my oath,\n  This oracle is full of troth;\n  Intelligible truth it bears,\n  More certain than the sieve and shears.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The story of Gargantua and Pantagruel is told over the course of five books. In the framework of the first book, it is implied that the book has been recently discovered, recently as in the mid-16th century, and that a scholar has been hired to translate the found manuscript. Within this first book, the narrator introduces the main character, Gargantua, who is literally a giant. Readers discover that Gargantua was born through his mother's ear, and that during his childhood he was a clever albeit crude little boy. His father sends his son to be educated, but Gargantua's first bout with education proves fruitless, for his father hired ill-equipped tutors. Fortunately, his father finds a better tutor, Ponocrates, and it is Ponocrates who turns Gargantua from an unintelligent, ill-mannered young twerp into a brilliant, disciplined, genteel man. Shortly after his transformation, Gargantua's homelands are invaded by Picrochole's armies. Gargantua, joined by his tutor, Ponocrates, and his group of friends, including Eudemon and Gymnast, set off to go to war. Gargantua's giant size, as well as the massive size of his horse, add to the comedy of the satire, but his size also aids in his ability to conquer his enemies. After they win their first battle, Gargantua and his companions hear about another man, Friar John, who defended his abbey from Picrochole's forces with nothing more than a large wooden cross fashioned into a bludgeoning weapon. Gargantua and his companions meet with Friar John and welcome him into their ranks. They all then continue to battle Picrochole's armies and gain their victory over him and his forces. The second book tells the story of Gargantua's son, Pantagruel, who, like his father, is also an actual giant. In a form similar to that of the first book, the second book shows the reader how young Pantagruel was born, how his mother died in childbirth, and how Pantagruel was raised by his father. Since Gargantua worked hard at being a well-educated man, he made sure that his son also pursued knowledge, so he hired Epistemon to be his son's tutor. With the assistance of Epistemon, Pantagruel traveled throughout Europe, going to different colleges and libraries to advance his studies. Along the way, Pantagruel meets with Panurge, a young man supposedly of noble birth and who had been recently captured and tortured by the Turks. Pantagruel and his companions find Panurge shortly after he has escaped his Turkish captors, so Pantagruel and his companions take Panurge under their care and welcome him into their entourage. Panurge remains as one of Pantagruel's closest companions throughout the entire series. Although Pantagruel believes that Panurge is a noble man, whenever Pantagruel is not around, the narrator shows Panurge as a lying, cheating, womanizing, con artist. Panurge has countless numbers of schemes that make him money, yet he spends his money faster than he can make it, so he is always broke. He pulls several vicious pranks on the townspeople, but he makes sure to do so in secret. Besides the narrator, who claims to be a servant of Pantagruel, no one seems to accuse or hold Panurge responsible for his heinous actions. Meanwhile, Pantagruel's homelands are invaded by the Dipsodes, and his father, Gargantua, is out of country and unable to act. Therefore, Pantagruel and all his entourage go to defend Pantagruel's lands. Even Friar John and some of Gargantua's friends from the first book join Pantagruel in the fray. Although their forces are much smaller than those of the Dipsodes, Pantagruel and his companions use clever trickery and the element of surprise to win their battles. Like his father, Pantagruel also uses his enormous size as a giant to help him win the day. The final battle includes Pantagruel fighting another giant, Loupgarou, who uses an enchanted mace. Their fight is epic, but eventually Pantagruel wins over Loupgarou, and then Pantagruel uses Loupgarou's body to bludgeon the lesser giants in Loupgarou's army. Pantagruel and his armies win over the Dipsodes, and Pantagruel gives the King of the Dipsodes over to Panurge as his prisoner. Pantagruel then relocates the refugees of his land into the land of the Dipsodes, which he claims for his own country. Using a much different tone and structure than the first two books, the third book is more of a philosophical debate than anything else. The main conversation occurs between Pantagruel and Panurge. After the war with the Dipsodes, Pantagruel has made Panurge Lord over those lands, so Panurge has far more access to money than he has ever had before. Nevertheless, he spends his newly acquired wealth way too quickly and even borrows against his future wealth. Pantagruel disagrees with the act of borrowing, and he even tells Panurge that he should consider changing his ways. Panurge defends the act of borrowing, and explains that the only way he knows he is loved in this life is by how well his debtors follow him. At some point, though, Panurge finds himself completely debt-free, and as a result he decides that he wants to get married. This leads to the main discussion of the book, which is whether marriage leads to cuckoldry. Panurge feels a desperate need to get married, but he cannot bear the thought of being cuckolded. He seeks counsel from all of his friends as well as with a witch, a master of divination, a dying man, a deaf man, a fool, a religious scholar, a doctor, a philosopher, and a lawyer. Many of the answers he receives, however, are unclear and require translation. Whenever Pantagruel translates the answers, he comes to the same answer over and over again, which is that Panurge will be cuckolded, beaten, and robbed. Panurge disagrees with Pantagruel every time, and claims that he can translate the answers to mean the exact opposite. Thus, the two friends spend the entire book arguing over the meaning to the answers they receive from the other parties. Finally, they decide they must find a way to have a definitive answer, so they agree to set out on a voyage to the mythical Oracle of the Holy Bottle. Pantagruel gets permission from his father, Gargantua, to set forth on this mission. Gargantua even tells his son to bring along Friar John and whatever other companions or supplies they need for the adventure. Thus the end of the third book leaves all the characters preparing for their odyssey to strange and distant lands. The fourth and the fifth books could almost be read as one book, since they both catalog the adventures that Pantagruel, Panurge, and their companions face on the voyage to the oracle. Nearly every few chapters within these books describe a different island or group of people that Pantagruel and his companions encounter. Practically every group is allegorical. The Furred Law Cats, for instance, represent the corrupt legal system, and the Papimen people represent fanatical Catholics. Throughout the voyage, the ship nearly sinks during several storms. During the storms, Panurge's character development takes a radical turn. Although in the second book Panurge was a witty and maniacal mastermind, in the fourth and fifth books, the storms and the troubles at sea turn Panurge into a weeping coward, afraid of his own shadow. Friar John chastises Panurge for his cowardice at nearly every turn. The wise and all-knowing Pantagruel, on the other hand, refuses to see or even acknowledge the cowardice of his companion. It is only at the end of the fourth book, after Panurge has soiled himself and mistaken the ship's cat for a demon, that Pantagruel finally acknowledges how Panurge has unresolved issues. Pantagruel does not chastise Panurge, but his tolerance for his friend's behavior has certainly been affected. After meeting all manner of people and weathering storm after storm, they all finally arrive in Lantern Land, which is where the oracle is supposed to be located. Once on land, they ask permission from the Queen of Lantern Land to visit the oracle. She grants them permission and provides them with a guide. The guide takes them to the site of the oracle and leads them all below ground, down a spiral staircase, and to the gates of the oracle's temple. The guide leaves them at the gates, but she instructs Pantagruel and his companions to advance through the gates and meet with the priestess of the oracle, Bacbuc. After arriving inside the temple, Bacbuc and her handmaidens welcome Pantagruel and his companions. Bacbuc also lets them drink from the magical fountain before she prepares Panurge to hear the answer he seeks through the Goddess-Bottle. Bacbuc dresses Panurge in strange clothing, makes him jump and dance around the temple, and then she finally takes him to the fountain of the Goddess-Bottle where he hears the answer \"Trinc.\" At first the answer makes no sense to Panurge, but Bacbuc explains that he must refer to the book to know the meaning of the word. She explains that he must drink the book, and the book is some sort of magic potion. Upon drinking the book, Panurge gains special knowledge that temporarily leaves him only able to speak in nothing but rhymed verse. In his rhymes, he reveals that he will get married, that he will keep his wife happy, and that he will be merry all his days. He also chides Friar John and claims that Friar John will never be happy, for as a member of the clergy he cannot get married and therefore cannot achieve Paradise in the afterlife. Although Pantagruel and Friar John do not read/drink the book themselves, they too become temporarily unable to speak in anything but rhymed verse. As they rhyme, Pantagruel tells Friar John to let Panurge say what he will, implying that Panurge's newfound knowledge is nothing more than the words of a fool. Nonetheless, Panurge believes his own words to be true, and as such he praises the power of the oracle. The fifth book ends with priestess Bacbuc explaining that just as the temple is hidden deep underground, so too can the truth often be found beneath the surface.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "44747", "title": "The Red and the Black", "text": "CHAPTER I\n\nA SMALL TOWN\n\n\n    Put thousands together less bad,\n    But the cage less gay.--_Hobbes_.\n\n\nThe little town of Verrieres can pass for one of the prettiest in\nFranche-Comte. Its white houses with their pointed red-tiled roofs\nstretch along the slope of a hill, whose slightest undulations are\nmarked by groups of vigorous chestnuts. The Doubs flows to within some\nhundred feet above its fortifications, which were built long ago by the\nSpaniards, and are now in ruins.\n\nVerrieres is sheltered on the north by a high mountain which is one of\nthe branches of the Jura. The jagged peaks of the Verra are covered\nwith snow from the beginning of the October frosts. A torrent which\nrushes down from the mountains traverses Verrieres before throwing\nitself into the Doubs, and supplies the motive power for a great number\nof saw mills. The industry is very simple, and secures a certain\nprosperity to the majority of the inhabitants who are more peasant than\nbourgeois. It is not, however, the wood saws which have enriched this\nlittle town. It is the manufacture of painted tiles, called Mulhouse\ntiles, that is responsible for that general affluence which has caused\nthe facades of nearly all the houses in Verrieres to be rebuilt since\nthe fall of Napoleon.\n\nOne has scarcely entered the town, before one is stunned by the din of\na strident machine of terrifying aspect. Twenty heavy hammers which\nfall with a noise that makes the paved floor tremble, are lifted\nup by a wheel set in motion by the torrent. Each of these hammers\nmanufactures every day I don't know how many thousands of nails. The\nlittle pieces of iron which are rapidly transformed into nails by these\nenormous hammers, are put in position by fresh pretty young girls. This\nlabour so rough at first sight is one of the industries which most\nsurprises the traveller who penetrates for the first time the mountains\nwhich separate France and Helvetia. If when he enters Verrieres, the\ntraveller asks who owns this fine nail factory which deafens everybody\nwho goes up the Grande-Rue, he is answered in a drawling tone \"Eh!\nit belongs to M. the Mayor.\"\n\nAnd if the traveller stops a few minutes in that Grande-Rue of\nVerrieres which goes on an upward incline from the bank of the Doubs to\nnearly as far as the summit of the hill, it is a hundred to one that he\nwill see a big man with a busy and important air.\n\nWhen he comes in sight all hats are quickly taken off. His hair is\ngrizzled and he is dressed in grey. He is a Knight of several Orders,\nhas a large forehead and an aquiline nose, and if you take him all\nround, his features are not devoid of certain regularity. One might\neven think on the first inspection that it combines with the dignity\nof the village mayor that particular kind of comfortableness which is\nappropriate to the age of forty-eight or fifty. But soon the traveller\nfrom Paris will be shocked by a certain air of self-satisfaction and\nself-complacency mingled with an almost indefinable narrowness and lack\nof inspiration. One realises at last that this man's talent is limited\nto seeing that he is paid exactly what he is owed, and in paying his\nown debts at the latest possible moment.\n\nSuch is M. de Renal, the mayor of Verrieres. After having crossed the\nroad with a solemn step, he enters the mayoral residence and disappears\nfrom the eye of the traveller. But if the latter continues to walk\na hundred steps further up, he will perceive a house with a fairly\nfine appearance, with some magnificent gardens behind an iron grill\nbelonging to the house. Beyond that is an horizon line formed by the\nhills of Burgundy, which seem ideally made to delight the eyes. This\nview causes the traveller to forget that pestilential atmosphere of\npetty money-grubbing by which he is beginning to be suffocated.\n\nHe is told that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It is to the\nprofits which he has made out of his big nail factory that the mayor\nof Verrieres owes this fine residence of hewn stone which he is just\nfinishing. His family is said to be Spanish and ancient, and is alleged\nto have been established in the country well before the conquest of\nLouis XIV.\n\nSince 1815, he blushes at being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor\nof Verrieres. The terraced walls of this magnificent garden which\ndescends to the Doubs, plateau by plateau, also represent the reward\nof M. de Renal's proficiency in the iron-trade. Do not expect to find\nin France those picturesque gardens which surround the manufacturing\ntowns of Germany, like Leipsic, Frankfurt and Nurenburgh, etc. The\nmore walls you build in Franche-Comte and the more you fortify your\nestate with piles of stone, the more claim you will acquire on the\nrespect of your neighbours. Another reason for the admiration due to\nM. de Renal's gardens and their numerous walls, is the fact that he\nhas purchased, through sheer power of the purse, certain small parcels\nof the ground on which they stand. That saw-mill, for instance, whose\nsingular position on the banks of the Doubs struck you when you entered\nVerrieres, and where you notice the name of SOREL written in gigantic\ncharacters on the chief beam of the roof, used to occupy six years\nago that precise space on which is now reared the wall of the fourth\nterrace in M. de Renal's gardens.\n\nProud man that he was, the mayor had none the less to negotiate with\nthat tough, stubborn peasant, old Sorel. He had to pay him in good\nsolid golden louis before he could induce him to transfer his workshop\nelsewhere. As to the _public_ stream which supplied the motive power\nfor the saw-mill, M. de Renal obtained its diversion, thanks to the\ninfluence which he enjoyed at Paris. This favour was accorded him after\nthe election of 182-.\n\nHe gave Sorel four acres for every one he had previously held, five\nhundred yards lower down on the banks of the Doubs. Although this\nposition was much more advantageous for his pine-plank trade, father\nSorel (as he is called since he has become rich) knew how to exploit\nthe impatience and _mania for landed ownership_ which animated his\nneighbour to the tune of six thousand francs.\n\nIt is true that this arrangement was criticised by the wiseacres of the\nlocality. One day, it was on a Sunday four years later, as M. de Renal\nwas coming back from church in his mayor's uniform, he saw old Sorel\nsmiling at him, as he stared at him some distance away surrounded by\nhis three sons. That smile threw a fatal flood of light into the soul\nof the mayor. From that time on, he is of opinion that he could have\nobtained the exchange at a cheaper rate.\n\nIn order to win the public esteem of Verrieres it is essential that,\nthough you should build as many walls as you can, you should not adopt\nsome plan imported from Italy by those masons who cross the passes\nof the Jura in the spring on their way to Paris. Such an innovation\nwould bring down upon the head of the imprudent builder an eternal\nreputation for _wrongheadedness_, and he will be lost for ever in the\nsight of those wise, well-balanced people who dispense public esteem in\nFranche-Comte.\n\nAs a matter of fact, these prudent people exercise in the place the\nmost offensive despotism. It is by reason of this awful word, that\nanyone who has lived in that great republic which is called Paris,\nfinds living in little towns quite intolerable. The tyranny of public\nopinion (and what public opinion!) is as _stupid_ in the little towns\nof France as in the United States of America.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nA MAYOR\n\n\n        Importance! What is it, sir after all? The respect of\n        fools, the wonder of children, the envy of the rich, the\n        contempt of the wise man.--_Barnave_\n\n\nHappily for the reputation of M. de Renal as an administrator an\nimmense wall of support was necessary for the public promenade which\ngoes along the hill, a hundred steps above the course of the Doubs.\nThis admirable position secures for the promenade one of the most\npicturesque views in the whole of France. But the rain water used to\nmake furrows in the walk every spring, caused ditches to appear, and\nrendered it generally impracticable. This nuisance, which was felt\nby the whole town, put M. de Renal in the happy position of being\ncompelled to immortalise his administration by building a wall twenty\nfeet high and thirty to forty yards long.\n\nThe parapet of this wall, which occasioned M. de Renal three journeys\nto Paris (for the last Minister of the Interior but one had declared\nhimself the mortal enemy of the promenade of Verrieres), is now raised\nto a height of four feet above the ground, and as though to defy all\nministers whether past or present, it is at present adorned with tiles\nof hewn stone.\n\nHow many times have my looks plunged into the valley of the Doubs, as I\nthought of the Paris balls which I had abandoned on the previous night,\nand leant my breast against the great blocks of stone, whose beautiful\ngrey almost verged on blue. Beyond the left bank, there wind five\nor six valleys, at the bottom of which I could see quite distinctly\nseveral small streams. There is a view of them falling into the Doubs,\nafter a series of cascades. The sun is very warm in these mountains.\nWhen it beats straight down, the pensive traveller on the terrace\nfinds shelter under some magnificent plane trees. They owe their rapid\ngrowth and their fine verdure with its almost bluish shade to the new\nsoil, which M. the mayor has had placed behind his immense wall of\nsupport for (in spite of the opposition of the Municipal Council) he\nhas enlarged the promenade by more than six feet (and although he is an\nUltra and I am a Liberal, I praise him for it), and that is why both in\nhis opinion and in that of M. Valenod, the fortunate Director of the\nworkhouse of Verrieres, this terrace can brook comparison with that of\nSaint-Germain en Laye.\n\nI find personally only one thing at which to cavil in the COURS DE LA\nFIDELITE, (this official name is to be read in fifteen to twenty places\non those immortal tiles which earned M. de Renal an extra cross.) The\ngrievance I find in the Cours de la Fidelite is the barbarous manner in\nwhich the authorities have cut these vigorous plane trees and clipped\nthem to the quick. In fact they really resemble with their dwarfed,\nrounded and flattened heads the most vulgar plants of the vegetable\ngarden, while they are really capable of attaining the magnificent\ndevelopment of the English plane trees. But the wish of M. the mayor\nis despotic, and all the trees belonging to the municipality are\nruthlessly pruned twice a year. The local Liberals suggest, but they\nare probably exaggerating, that the hand of the official gardener\nhas become much more severe, since M. the Vicar Maslon started\nappropriating the clippings. This young ecclesiastic was sent to\nBesancon some years ago to keep watch on the abbe Chelan and some cures\nin the neighbouring districts. An old Surgeon-Major of Napoleon's\nItalian Army, who was living in retirement at Verrieres, and who had\nbeen in his time described by M. the mayor as both a Jacobin and a\nBonapartiste, dared to complain to the mayor one day of the periodical\nmutilation of these fine trees.\n\n\"I like the shade,\" answered M. de Renal, with just a tinge of that\nhauteur which becomes a mayor when he is talking to a surgeon, who is\na member of the Legion of Honour. \"I like the shade, I have _my_ trees\nclipped in order to give shade, and I cannot conceive that a tree can\nhave any other purpose, provided of course _it is not bringing in any\nprofit_, like the useful walnut tree.\"\n\nThis is the great word which is all decisive at Verrieres. \"BRINGING IN\nPROFIT,\" this word alone sums up the habitual trend of thought of more\nthan three-quarters of the inhabitants.\n\n_Bringing in profit_ is the consideration which decides everything in\nthis little town which you thought so pretty. The stranger who arrives\nin the town is fascinated by the beauty of the fresh deep valleys which\nsurround it, and he imagines at first that the inhabitants have an\nappreciation of the beautiful. They talk only too frequently of the\nbeauty of their country, and it cannot be denied that they lay great\nstress on it, but the reason is that it attracts a number of strangers,\nwhose money enriches the inn-keepers, a process which _brings in\nprofit_ to the town, owing to the machinery of the octroi.\n\nIt was on a fine, autumn day that M. de Renal was taking a promenade\non the Cours de la Fidelite with his wife on his arm. While listening\nto her husband (who was talking in a somewhat solemn manner) Madame de\nRenal followed anxiously with her eyes the movements of three little\nboys. The eldest, who might have been eleven years old, went too\nfrequently near the parapet and looked as though he was going to climb\nup it. A sweet voice then pronounced the name of Adolphe and the child\ngave up his ambitious project. Madame de Renal seemed a woman of thirty\nyears of age but still fairly pretty.\n\n\"He may be sorry for it, may this fine gentleman from Paris,\" said\nM. de Renal, with an offended air and a face even paler than usual.\n\"I am not without a few friends at court!\" But though I want to\ntalk to you about the provinces for two hundred pages, I lack the\nrequisite barbarity to make you undergo all the long-windedness and\ncircumlocutions of a provincial dialogue.\n\nThis fine gentleman from Paris, who was so odious to the mayor of\nVerrieres, was no other than the M. Appert, who had two days previously\nmanaged to find his way not only into the prison and workhouse of\nVerrieres, but also into the hospital, which was gratuitously conducted\nby the mayor and the principal proprietors of the district.\n\n\"But,\" said Madame de Renal timidly, \"what harm can this Paris\ngentleman do you, since you administer the poor fund with the utmost\nscrupulous honesty?\"\n\n\"He only comes to _throw_ blame and afterwards he will get some\narticles into the Liberal press.\"\n\n\"You never read them, my dear.\"\n\n\"But they always talk to us about those Jacobin articles, all that\ndistracts us and prevents us from doing good.[1] Personally, I shall\nnever forgive the cure.\"\n\n[1] Historically true.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE POOR FUND\n\n\n        A virtuous cure who does not intrigue is a providence\n        for the village.--_Fleury_\n\n\nIt should be mentioned that the cure of Verrieres, an old man of\nninety, who owed to the bracing mountain air an iron constitution and\nan iron character, had the right to visit the prison, the hospital and\nthe workhouse at any hour. It had been at precisely six o'clock in the\nmorning that M. Appert, who had a Paris recommendation to the cure,\nhad been shrewd enough to arrive at a little inquisitive town. He had\nimmediately gone on to the cure's house.\n\nThe cure Chelan became pensive as he read the letter written to him by\nthe M. le Marquis de La Mole, Peer of France, and the richest landed\nproprietor of the province.\n\n\"I am old and beloved here,\" he said to himself in a whisper, \"they\nwould not dare!\" Then he suddenly turned to the gentleman from Paris,\nwith eyes, which in spite of his great age, shone with that sacred fire\nwhich betokens the delight of doing a fine but slightly dangerous act.\n\n\"Come with me, sir,\" he said, \"but please do not express any opinion of\nthe things which we shall see, in the presence of the jailer, and above\nall not in the presence of the superintendents of the workhouse.\"\n\nM. Appert realised that he had to do with a man of spirit. He followed\nthe venerable cure, visited the hospital and workhouse, put a lot of\nquestions, but in spite of somewhat extraordinary answers, did not\nindulge in the slightest expression of censure.\n\nThis visit lasted several hours; the cure invited M. Appert to dine,\nbut the latter made the excuse of having some letters to write; as a\nmatter of fact, he did not wish to compromise his generous companion to\nany further extent. About three o'clock these gentlemen went to finish\ntheir inspection of the workhouse and then returned to the prison.\nThere they found the jailer by the gate, a kind of giant, six feet\nhigh, with bow legs. His ignoble face had become hideous by reason of\nhis terror.\n\n\"Ah, monsieur,\" he said to the cure as soon as he saw him, \"is not the\ngentleman whom I see there, M. Appert?\"\n\n\"What does that matter?\" said the cure.\n\n\"The reason is that I received yesterday the most specific orders, and\nM. the Prefect sent a message by a gendarme who must have galloped\nduring the whole of the night, that M. Appert was not to be allowed in\nthe prisons.\"\n\n\"I can tell you, M. Noiroud,\" said the cure, \"that the traveller who is\nwith me is M. Appert, but do you or do you not admit that I have the\nright to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night accompanied\nby anybody I choose?\"\n\n\"Yes, M. the cure,\" said the jailer in a low voice, lowering his head\nlike a bull-dog, induced to a grudging obedience by fear of the stick,\n\"only, M. the cure, I have a wife and children, and shall be turned out\nif they inform against me. I only have my place to live on.\"\n\n\"I, too, should be sorry enough to lose mine,\" answered the good cure,\nwith increasing emotion in his voice.\n\n\"What a difference!\" answered the jailer keenly. \"As for you, M. le\ncure, we all know that you have eight hundred francs a year, good solid\nmoney.\"\n\nSuch were the facts which, commented upon and exaggerated in twenty\ndifferent ways, had been agitating for the last two days all the odious\npassions of the little town of Verrieres.\n\nAt the present time they served as the text for the little discussion\nwhich M. de Renal was having with his wife. He had visited the cure\nearlier in the morning accompanied by M. Valenod, the director of the\nworkhouse, in order to convey their most emphatic displeasure. M.\nChelan had no protector, and felt all the weight of their words.\n\n\"Well, gentlemen, I shall be the third cure of eighty years of age who\nhas been turned out in this district. I have been here for fifty-six\nyears. I have baptized nearly all the inhabitants of the town, which\nwas only a hamlet when I came to it. Every day I marry young people\nwhose grandparents I have married in days gone by. Verrieres is my\nfamily, but I said to myself when I saw the stranger, 'This man from\nParis may as a matter of fact be a Liberal, there are only too many of\nthem about, but what harm can he do to our poor and to our prisoners?'\"\n\nThe reproaches of M. de Renal, and above all, those of M. Valenod, the\ndirector of the workhouse, became more and more animated.\n\n\"Well, gentlemen, turn me out then,\" the old cure exclaimed in a\ntrembling voice; \"I shall still continue to live in the district. As\nyou know, I inherited forty-eight years ago a piece of land that brings\nin eight hundred francs a year; I shall live on that income. I do not\nsave anything out of my living, gentlemen; and that is perhaps why,\nwhen you talk to me about it, I am not particularly frightened.\"\n\nM. de Renal always got on very well with his wife, but he did not know\nwhat to answer when she timidly repeated the phrase of M. le cure,\n\"What harm can this Paris gentleman do the prisoners?\" He was on the\npoint of quite losing his temper when she gave a cry. Her second son\nhad mounted the parapet of the terrace wall and was running along it,\nalthough the wall was raised to a height of more than twenty feet above\nthe vineyard on the other side. The fear of frightening her son and\nmaking him fall prevented Madame de Renal speaking to him. But at last\nthe child, who was smiling at his own pluck, looked at his mother, saw\nher pallor, jumped down on to the walk and ran to her. He was well\nscolded.\n\nThis little event changed the course of the conversation.\n\n\"I really mean to take Sorel, the son of the sawyer, into the house,\"\nsaid M. de Renal; \"he will look after the children, who are getting too\nnaughty for us to manage. He is a young priest, or as good as one, a\ngood Latin scholar, and will make the children get on. According to the\ncure, he has a steady character. I will give him three hundred francs a\nyear and his board. I have some doubts as to his morality, for he used\nto be the favourite of that old Surgeon-Major, Member of the Legion of\nHonour, who went to board with the Sorels, on the pretext that he was\ntheir cousin. It is quite possible that that man was really simply a\nsecret agent of the Liberals. He said that the mountain air did his\nasthma good, but that is something which has never been proved. He\nhas gone through all _Buonaparte's_ campaigns in Italy, and had even,\nit was said, voted against the Empire in the plebiscite. This Liberal\ntaught the Sorel boy Latin, and left him a number of books which he had\nbrought with him. Of course, in the ordinary way, I should have never\nthought of allowing a carpenter's son to come into contact with our\nchildren, but the cure told me, the very day before the scene which\nhas just estranged us for ever, that Sorel has been studying theology\nfor three years with the intention of entering a seminary. He is,\nconsequently, not a Liberal, and he certainly is a good Latin scholar.\n\n\"This arrangement will be convenient in more than one way,\" continued\nM. de Renal, looking at his wife with a diplomatic air. \"That Valenod\nis proud enough of his two fine Norman horses which he has just bought\nfor his carriage, but he hasn't a tutor for his children.\"\n\n\"He might take this one away from us.\"\n\n\"You approve of my plan, then?\" said M. de Renal, thanking his wife\nwith a smile for the excellent idea which she had just had. \"Well,\nthat's settled.\"\n\n\"Good gracious, my dear, how quickly you make up your mind!\"\n\n\"It is because I'm a man of character, as the cure found out right\nenough. Don't let us deceive ourselves; we are surrounded by Liberals\nin this place. All those cloth merchants are jealous of me, I am\ncertain of it; two or three are becoming rich men. Well, I should\nrather fancy it for them to see M. de Renal's children pass along the\nstreet as they go out for their walk, escorted by _their tutor_. It\nwill impress people. My grandfather often used to tell us that he had\na tutor when he was young. It may run me into a hundred crowns, but\nthat ought to be looked upon as an expense necessary for keeping up our\nposition.\"\n\nThis sudden resolution left Madame de Renal quite pensive. She was\na big, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of the country, to\nuse the local expression. She had a certain air of simplicity and\nyouthfulness in her deportment. This naive grace, with its innocence\nand its vivacity, might even have recalled to a Parisian some\nsuggestion of the sweets he had left behind him. If she had realised\nthis particular phase of her success, Madame de Renal would have been\nquite ashamed of it. All coquetry, all affectation, were absolutely\nalien to her temperament. M. Valenod, the rich director of the\nworkhouse, had the reputation of having paid her court, a fact which\nhad cast a singular glamour over her virtue; for this M. Valenod, a\nbig young man with a square, sturdy frame, florid face, and big, black\nwhiskers, was one of those coarse, blustering, and noisy people who\npass in the provinces for a \"fine man.\"\n\nMadame de Renal, who had a very shy, and apparently a very uneven\ntemperament, was particularly shocked by M. Valenod's lack of repose,\nand by his boisterous loudness. Her aloofness from what, in the\nVerrieres' jargon, was called \"having a good time,\" had earned her the\nreputation of being very proud of her birth. In fact, she never thought\nabout it, but she had been extremely glad to find the inhabitants of\nthe town visit her less frequently. We shall not deny that she passed\nfor a fool in the eyes of _their_ good ladies because she did not\nwheedle her husband, and allowed herself to miss the most splendid\nopportunities of getting fine hats from Paris or Besancon. Provided she\nwas allowed to wander in her beautiful garden, she never complained.\nShe was a naive soul, who had never educated herself up to the point\nof judging her husband and confessing to herself that he bored her.\nShe supposed, without actually formulating the thought, that there was\nno greater sweetness in the relationship between husband and wife than\nshe herself had experienced. She loved M. de Renal most when he talked\nabout his projects for their children. The elder he had destined for\nthe army, the second for the law, and the third for the Church. To sum\nup, she found M. de Renal much less boring than all the other men of\nher acquaintance.\n\nThis conjugal opinion was quite sound. The Mayor of Verrieres had a\nreputation for wit, and above all, a reputation for good form, on\nthe strength of half-a-dozen \"chestnuts\" which he had inherited from\nan uncle. Old Captain de Renal had served, before the Revolution, in\nthe infantry regiment of M. the Duke of Orleans, and was admitted\nto the Prince's salons when he went to Paris. He had seen Madame de\nMontesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, M. Ducret, the inventor, of the\nPalais-Royal. These personages would crop up only too frequently in M.\nde Renal's anecdotes. He found it, however, more and more of a strain\nto remember stories which required such delicacy in the telling, and\nfor some time past it had only been on great occasions that he would\ntrot out his anecdotes concerning the House of Orleans. As, moreover,\nhe was extremely polite, except on money matters, he passed, and justly\nso, for the most aristocratic personage in Verrieres.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nA FATHER AND A SON\n\n\n    E sara mia colpa\n    Se cosi e?\n                  --_Machiavelli_.\n\n\n\"My wife really has a head on her shoulders,\" said the mayor of\nVerrieres at six o'clock the following morning, as he went down to the\nsaw-mill of Father Sorel. \"It had never occurred to me that if I do not\ntake little Abbe Sorel, who, they say, knows Latin like an angel, that\nrestless spirit, the director of the workhouse, might have the same\nidea and snatch him away from me, though of course I told her that it\nhad, in order to preserve my proper superiority. And how smugly, to be\nsure, would he talk about his children's tutor!... The question is,\nonce the tutor's mine, shall he wear the cassock?\"\n\nM. de Renal was absorbed in this problem when he saw a peasant in the\ndistance, a man nearly six feet tall, who since dawn had apparently\nbeen occupied in measuring some pieces of wood which had been put\ndown alongside the Doubs on the towing-path. The peasant did not look\nparticularly pleased when he saw M. the Mayor approach, as these pieces\nof wood obstructed the road, and had been placed there in breach of the\nrules.\n\nFather Sorel (for it was he) was very surprised, and even more pleased\nat the singular offer which M. de Renal made him for his son Julien.\nNone the less, he listened to it with that air of sulky discontent and\napathy which the subtle inhabitants of these mountains know so well\nhow to assume. Slaves as they have been since the time of the Spanish\nConquest, they still preserve this feature, which is also found in the\ncharacter of the Egyptian fellah.\n\nSorel's answer was at first simply a long-winded recitation of\nall the formulas of respect which he knew by heart. While he was\nrepeating these empty words with an uneasy smile, which accentuated\nall the natural disingenuousness, if not, indeed, knavishness of his\nphysiognomy, the active mind of the old peasant tried to discover what\nreason could induce so important a man to take into his house his\ngood-for-nothing of a son. He was very dissatisfied with Julien, and\nit was for Julien that M. de Renal offered the undreamt-of salary of\n300 fcs. a year, with board and even clothing. This latter claim, which\nFather Sorel had had the genius to spring upon the mayor, had been\ngranted with equal suddenness by M. de Renal.\n\nThis demand made an impression on the mayor. It is clear, he said to\nhimself, that since Sorel is not beside himself with delight over my\nproposal, as in the ordinary way he ought to be, he must have had\noffers made to him elsewhere, and whom could they have come from, if\nnot from Valenod. It was in vain that M. de Renal pressed Sorel to\nclinch the matter then and there. The old peasant, astute man that\nhe was, stubbornly refused to do so. He wanted, he said, to consult\nhis son, as if in the provinces, forsooth, a rich father consulted a\npenniless son for any other reason than as a mere matter of form.\n\nA water saw-mill consists of a shed by the side of a stream. The roof\nis supported by a framework resting on four large timber pillars. A\nsaw can be seen going up and down at a height of eight to ten feet in\nthe middle of the shed, while a piece of wood is propelled against\nthis saw by a very simple mechanism. It is a wheel whose motive-power\nis supplied by the stream, which sets in motion this double piece of\nmechanism, the mechanism of the saw which goes up and down, and the\nmechanism which gently pushes the piece of wood towards the saw, which\ncuts it up into planks.\n\nApproaching his workshop, Father Sorel called Julien in his stentorian\nvoice; nobody answered. He only saw his giant elder sons, who, armed\nwith heavy axes, were cutting up the pine planks which they had to\ncarry to the saw. They were engrossed in following exactly the black\nmark traced on each piece of wood, from which every blow of their axes\nthrew off enormous shavings. They did not hear their father's voice.\nThe latter made his way towards the shed. He entered it and looked in\nvain for Julien in the place where he ought to have been by the side of\nthe saw. He saw him five or six feet higher up, sitting astride one of\nthe rafters of the roof. Instead of watching attentively the action of\nthe machinery, Julien was reading. Nothing was more anti-pathetic to\nold Sorel. He might possibly have forgiven Julien his puny physique,\nill adapted as it was to manual labour, and different as it was from\nthat of his elder brothers; but he hated this reading mania. He could\nnot read himself.\n\nIt was in vain that he called Julien two or three times. It was the\nyoung man's concentration on his book, rather than the din made by the\nsaw, which prevented him from hearing his father's terrible voice. At\nlast the latter, in spite of his age, jumped nimbly on to the tree\nthat was undergoing the action of the saw, and from there on to the\ncross-bar that supported the roof. A violent blow made the book which\nJulien held, go flying into the stream; a second blow on the head,\nequally violent, which took the form of a box on the ears, made him\nlose his balance. He was on the point of falling twelve or fifteen feet\nlower down into the middle of the levers of the running machinery which\nwould have cut him to pieces, but his father caught him as he fell, in\nhis left hand.\n\n\"So that's it, is it, lazy bones! always going to read your damned\nbooks are you, when you're keeping watch on the saw? You read them in\nthe evening if you want to, when you go to play the fool at the cure's,\nthat's the proper time.\"\n\nAlthough stunned by the force of the blow and bleeding profusely,\nJulien went back to his official post by the side of the saw. He had\ntears in his eyes, less by reason of the physical pain than on account\nof the loss of his beloved book.\n\n\"Get down, you beast, when I am talking to you,\" the noise of the\nmachinery prevented Julien from hearing this order. His father, who had\ngone down did not wish to give himself the trouble of climbing up on to\nthe machinery again, and went to fetch a long fork used for bringing\ndown nuts, with which he struck him on the shoulder. Julien had\nscarcely reached the ground, when old Sorel chased him roughly in front\nof him and pushed him roughly towards the house. \"God knows what he is\ngoing to do with me,\" said the young man to himself. As he passed, he\nlooked sorrowfully into the stream into which his book had fallen, it\nwas the one that he held dearest of all, the _Memorial of St. Helena_.\n\nHe had purple cheeks and downcast eyes. He was a young man of eighteen\nto nineteen years old, and of puny appearance, with irregular but\ndelicate features, and an aquiline nose. The big black eyes which\nbetokened in their tranquil moments a temperament at once fiery and\nreflective were at the present moment animated by an expression of\nthe most ferocious hate. Dark chestnut hair, which came low down over\nhis brow, made his forehead appear small and gave him a sinister look\nduring his angry moods. It is doubtful if any face out of all the\ninnumerable varieties of the human physiognomy was ever distinguished\nby a more arresting individuality.\n\nA supple well-knit figure, indicated agility rather than strength. His\nair of extreme pensiveness and his great pallor had given his father\nthe idea that he would not live, or that if he did, it would only be to\nbe a burden to his family. The butt of the whole house, he hated his\nbrothers and his father. He was regularly beaten in the Sunday sports\nin the public square.\n\nA little less than a year ago his pretty face had begun to win him some\nsympathy among the young girls. Universally despised as a weakling,\nJulien had adored that old Surgeon-Major, who had one day dared to talk\nto the mayor on the subject of the plane trees.\n\nThis Surgeon had sometimes paid Father Sorel for taking his son for\na day, and had taught him Latin and History, that is to say the 1796\nCampaign in Italy which was all the history he knew. When he died, he\nhad bequeathed his Cross of the Legion of Honour, his arrears of half\npay, and thirty or forty volumes, of which the most precious had just\nfallen into the public stream, which had been diverted owing to the\ninfluence of M. the Mayor.\n\nScarcely had he entered the house, when Julien felt his shoulder\ngripped by his father's powerful hand; he trembled, expecting some\nblows.\n\n\"Answer me without lying,\" cried the harsh voice of the old peasant in\nhis ears, while his hand turned him round and round, like a child's\nhand turns round a lead soldier. The big black eyes of Julien filled\nwith tears, and were confronted by the small grey eyes of the old\ncarpenter, who looked as if he meant to read to the very bottom of his\nsoul.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nA NEGOTIATION\n\n\n    Cunctando restituit rem.--_Ennius_.\n\n\n\"Answer me without lies, if you can, you damned dog, how did you get to\nknow Madame de Renal? When did you speak to her?\"\n\n\"I have never spoken to her,\" answered Julien, \"I have only seen that\nlady in church.\"\n\n\"You must have looked at her, you impudent rascal.\"\n\n\"Not once! you know, I only see God in church,\" answered Julien, with\na little hypocritical air, well suited, so he thought, to keep off the\nparental claws.\n\n\"None the less there's something that does not meet the eye,\" answered\nthe cunning peasant. He was then silent for a moment. \"But I shall\nnever get anything out of you, you damned hypocrite,\" he went on. \"As a\nmatter of fact, I am going to get rid of you, and my saw-mill will go\nall the better for it. You have nobbled the curate, or somebody else,\nwho has got you a good place. Run along and pack your traps, and I\nwill take you to M. de Renal's, where you are going to be tutor to his\nchildren.\"\n\n\"What shall I get for that?\"\n\n\"Board, clothing, and three hundred francs salary.\"\n\n\"I do not want to be a servant.\"\n\n\"Who's talking of being a servant, you brute, do you think I want my\nson to be a servant?\"\n\n\"But with whom shall I have my meals?\"\n\nThis question discomforted old Sorel, who felt he might possibly commit\nsome imprudence if he went on talking. He burst out against Julien,\nflung insult after insult at him, accused him of gluttony, and left him\nto go and consult his other sons.\n\nJulien saw them afterwards, each one leaning on his axe and holding\ncounsel. Having looked at them for a long time, Julien saw that he\ncould find out nothing, and went and stationed himself on the other\nside of the saw in order to avoid being surprised. He wanted to think\nover this unexpected piece of news, which changed his whole life,\nbut he felt himself unable to consider the matter prudently, his\nimagination being concentrated in wondering what he would see in M. de\nRenal's fine mansion.\n\n\"I must give all that up,\" he said to himself, \"rather than let myself\nbe reduced to eating with the servants. My father would like to force\nme to it. I would rather die. I have fifteen francs and eight sous of\nsavings. I will run away to-night; I will go across country by paths\nwhere there are no gendarmes to be feared, and in two days I shall be\nat Besancon. I will enlist as a soldier there, and, if necessary, I\nwill cross into Switzerland. But in that case, no more advancement, it\nwill be all up with my being a priest, that fine career which may lead\nto anything.\"\n\nThis abhorrence of eating with the servants was not really natural to\nJulien; he would have done things quite, if not more, disagreeable in\norder to get on. He derived this repugnance from the _Confessions_\nof Rousseau. It was the only book by whose help his imagination\nendeavoured to construct the world. The collection of the Bulletins of\nthe Grand Army, and the _Memorial of St. Helena_ completed his Koran.\nHe would have died for these three works. He never believed in any\nother. To use a phrase of the old Surgeon-Major, he regarded all the\nother books in the world as packs of lies, written by rogues in order\nto get on.\n\nJulien possessed both a fiery soul and one of those astonishing\nmemories which are so often combined with stupidity.\n\nIn order to win over the old cure Chelan, on whose good grace he\nrealized that his future prospects depended, he had learnt by heart the\nNew Testament in Latin. He also knew M. de Maistre's book on The Pope,\nand believed in one as little as he did in the other.\n\nSorel and his son avoided talking to each other to-day as though by\nmutual consent. In the evening Julien went to take his theology lesson\nat the cure's, but he did not consider that it was prudent to say\nanything to him about the strange proposal which had been made to his\nfather. \"It is possibly a trap,\" he said to himself, \"I must pretend\nthat I have forgotten all about it.\"\n\nEarly next morning, M. de Renal had old Sorel summoned to him.\nHe eventually arrived, after keeping M. de Renal waiting for an\nhour-and-a-half, and made, as he entered the room, a hundred apologies\ninterspersed with as many bows. After having run the gauntlet of all\nkinds of objections, Sorel was given to understand that his son would\nhave his meals with the master and mistress of the house, and that\nhe would eat alone in a room with the children on the days when they\nhad company. The more clearly Sorel realized the genuine eagerness of\nM. the Mayor, the more difficulties he felt inclined to raise. Being\nmoreover full of mistrust and astonishment, he asked to see the room\nwhere his son would sleep. It was a big room, quite decently furnished,\ninto which the servants were already engaged in carrying the beds of\nthe three children.\n\nThis circumstance explained a lot to the old peasant. He asked\nimmediately, with quite an air of assurance, to see the suit which\nwould be given to his son. M. de Renal opened his desk and took out one\nhundred francs.\n\n\"Your son will go to M. Durand, the draper, with this money and will\nget a complete black suit.\"\n\n\"And even supposing I take him away from you,\" said the peasant, who\nhad suddenly forgotten all his respectful formalities, \"will he still\nkeep this black suit?\"\n\n\"Certainly!\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Sorel, in a drawling voice, \"all that remains to do is to\nagree on just one thing, the money which you will give him.\"\n\n\"What!\" exclaimed M. de Renal, indignantly, \"we agreed on that\nyesterday. I shall give him three hundred francs, I think that is a\nlot, and probably too much.\"\n\n\"That is your offer and I do not deny it,\" said old Sorel, speaking\nstill very slowly; and by a stroke of genius which will only astonish\nthose who do not know the Franche-Comte peasants, he fixed his eyes on\nM. de Renal and added, \"We shall get better terms elsewhere.\"\n\nThe Mayor's face exhibited the utmost consternation at these words. He\npulled himself together however and after a cunning conversation of\ntwo hours' length, where every single word on both sides was carefully\nweighed, the subtlety of the peasant scored a victory over the subtlety\nof the rich man, whose livelihood was not so dependent on his faculty\nof cunning. All the numerous stipulations which were to regulate\nJulien's new existence were duly formulated. Not only was his salary\nfixed at four hundred francs, but they were to be paid in advance on\nthe first of each month.\n\n\"Very well, I will give him thirty-five francs,\" said M. de Renal.\n\n\"I am quite sure,\" said the peasant, in a fawning voice, \"that a rich,\ngenerous man like the M. mayor would go as far as thirty-six francs, to\nmake up a good round sum.\"\n\n\"Agreed!\" said M. de Renal, \"but let this be final.\" For the moment his\ntemper gave him a tone of genuine firmness. The peasant saw that it\nwould not do to go any further.\n\nThen, on his side, M. de Renal managed to score. He absolutely refused\nto give old Sorel, who was very anxious to receive it on behalf of his\nson, the thirty-six francs for the first month. It had occurred to M.\nde Renal that he would have to tell his wife the figure which he had\ncut throughout these negotiations.\n\n\"Hand me back the hundred francs which I gave you,\" he said sharply.\n\"M. Durand owes me something, I will go with your son to see about a\nblack cloth suit.\"\n\nAfter this manifestation of firmness, Sorel had the prudence to return\nto his respectful formulas; they took a good quarter of an hour.\nFinally, seeing that there was nothing more to be gained, he took his\nleave. He finished his last bow with these words:\n\n\"I will send my son to the Chateau.\" The Mayor's officials called his\nhouse by this designation when they wanted to humour him.\n\nWhen he got back to his workshop, it was in vain that Sorel sought his\nson. Suspicious of what might happen, Julien had gone out in the middle\nof the night. He wished to place his Cross of the Legion of Honour and\nhis books in a place of safety. He had taken everything to a young\nwood-merchant named Fouque, who was a friend of his, and who lived in\nthe high mountain which commands Verrieres.\n\n\"God knows, you damned lazy bones,\" said his father to him when he\nre-appeared, \"if you will ever be sufficiently honourable to pay me\nback the price of your board which I have been advancing to you for so\nmany years. Take your rags and clear out to M. the Mayor's.\"\n\nJulien was astonished at not being beaten and hastened to leave. He\nhad scarcely got out of sight of his terrible father when he slackened\nhis pace. He considered that it would assist the role played by his\nhypocrisy to go and say a prayer in the church.\n\nThe word hypocrisy surprises you? The soul of the peasant had had to go\nthrough a great deal before arriving at this horrible word.\n\nJulien had seen in the days of his early childhood certain Dragoons\nof the 6th[1] with long white cloaks and hats covered with long black\nplumed helmets who were returning from Italy, and tied up their horses\nto the grilled window of his father's house. The sight had made him mad\non the military profession. Later on he had listened with ecstasy to\nthe narrations of the battles of Lodi, Arcola and Rivoli with which the\nold surgeon-major had regaled him. He observed the ardent gaze which\nthe old man used to direct towards his cross.\n\nBut when Julien was fourteen years of age they commenced to build a\nchurch at Verrieres which, in view of the smallness of the town, has\nsome claim to be called magnificent. There were four marble columns in\nparticular, the sight of which impressed Julien. They became celebrated\nin the district owing to the mortal hate which they raised between\nthe Justice of the Peace and the young vicar who had been sent from\nBesancon and who passed for a spy of the congregation. The Justice of\nthe Peace was on the point of losing his place, so said the public\nopinion at any rate. Had he not dared to have a difference with the\npriest who went every fortnight to Besancon; where he saw, so they\nsaid, my Lord the Bishop.\n\nIn the meanwhile the Justice of the Peace, who was the father of a\nnumerous family, gave several sentences which seemed unjust: all these\nsentences were inflicted on those of the inhabitants who read the\n\"_Constitutionnel_.\" The right party triumphed. It is true it was only a\nquestion of sums of three or five francs, but one of these little fines\nhad to be paid by a nail-maker, who was god-father to Julien. This man\nexclaimed in his anger \"What a change! and to think that for more than\ntwenty years the Justice of the Peace has passed for an honest man.\"\n\nThe Surgeon-Major, Julien's friend, died. Suddenly Julien left off\ntalking about Napoleon. He announced his intention of becoming a\npriest, and was always to be seen in his father's workshop occupied\nin learning by heart the Latin Bible which the cure had lent him. The\ngood old man was astonished at his progress, and passed whole evenings\nin teaching him theology. In his society Julien did not manifest other\nthan pious sentiments. Who could not possibly guess that beneath this\ngirlish face, so pale and so sweet, lurked the unbreakable resolution\nto risk a thousand deaths rather than fail to make his fortune. Making\nhis fortune primarily meant to Julien getting out of Verrieres: he\nabhorred his native country; everything that he saw there froze his\nimagination.\n\nHe had had moments of exultation since his earliest childhood. He would\nthen dream with gusto of being presented one day to the pretty women\nof Paris. He would manage to attract their attention by some dazzling\nfeat: why should he not be loved by one of them just as Buonaparte,\nwhen still poor, had been loved by the brilliant Madame de Beauharnais.\nFor many years past Julien had scarcely passed a single year of his\nlife without reminding himself that Buonaparte, the obscure and\npenniless lieutenant, had made himself master of the whole world by the\npower of his sword. This idea consoled him for his misfortune, which\nhe considered to be great, and rendered such joyful moments as he had\ndoubly intense.\n\nThe building of the church and the sentences pronounced by the Justice\nof the Peace suddenly enlightened him. An idea came to him which made\nhim almost mad for some weeks, and finally took complete possession of\nhim with all the magic that a first idea possesses for a passionate\nsoul which believes that it is original.\n\n\"At the time when Buonaparte got himself talked about, France was\nfrightened of being invaded; military distinction was necessary and\nfashionable. Nowadays, one sees priests of forty with salaries of\n100,000 francs, that is to say, three times as much as Napoleon's\nfamous generals of a division. They need persons to assist them. Look\nat that Justice of the Peace, such a good sort and such an honest man\nup to the present and so old too; he sacrifices his honour through the\nfear of incurring the displeasure of a young vicar of thirty. I must be\na priest.\"\n\nOn one occasion, in the middle of his new-found piety (he had already\nbeen studying theology for two years), he was betrayed by a sudden\nburst of fire which consumed his soul. It was at M. Chelan's. The\ngood cure had invited him to a dinner of priests, and he actually let\nhimself praise Napoleon with enthusiasm. He bound his right arm over\nhis breast, pretending that he had dislocated it in moving a trunk of a\npine-tree and carried it for two months in that painful position. After\nthis painful penance, he forgave himself. This is the young man of\neighteen with a puny physique, and scarcely looking more than seventeen\nat the outside, who entered the magnificent church of Verrieres\ncarrying a little parcel under his arm.\n\nHe found it gloomy and deserted. All the transepts in the building had\nbeen covered with crimson cloth in celebration of a feast. The result\nwas that the sun's rays produced an effect of dazzling light of the\nmost impressive and religious character. Julien shuddered. Finding\nhimself alone in the church, he established himself in the pew which\nhad the most magnificent appearance. It bore the arms of M. de Renal.\n\nJulien noticed a piece of printed paper spread out on the stool, which\nwas apparently intended to be read, he cast his eyes over it and\nsaw:--\"_Details of the execution and the last moments of Louis Jenrel,\nexecuted at Besancon the...._\" The paper was torn. The two first words\nof a line were legible on the back, they were, \"_The First Step_.\"\n\n\"Who could have put this paper there?\" said Julien. \"Poor fellow!\" he\nadded with a sigh, \"the last syllable of his name is the same as mine,\"\nand he crumpled up the paper. As he left, Julien thought he saw blood\nnear the Host, it was holy water which the priests had been sprinkling\non it, the reflection of the red curtains which covered the windows\nmade it look like blood.\n\nFinally, Julien felt ashamed of his secret terror. \"Am I going to play\nthe coward,\" he said to himself: \"_To Arms!_\" This phrase, repeated so\noften in the old Surgeon-Major's battle stories, symbolized heroism to\nJulien. He got up rapidly and walked to M. de Renal's house. As soon\nas he saw it twenty yards in front of him he was seized, in spite of\nhis fine resolution, with an overwhelming timidity. The iron grill was\nopen. He thought it was magnificent. He had to go inside.\n\nJulien was not the only person whose heart was troubled by his arrival\nin the house. The extreme timidity of Madame de Renal was fluttered\nwhen she thought of this stranger whose functions would necessitate\nhis coming between her and her children. She was accustomed to seeing\nher sons sleep in her own room. She had shed many tears that morning,\nwhen she had seen their beds carried into the apartment intended for\nthe tutor. It was in vain that she asked her husband to have the bed of\nStanislas-Xavier, the youngest, carried back into her room.\n\nWomanly delicacy was carried in Madame de Renal to the point of excess.\nShe conjured up in her imagination the most disagreeable personage, who\nwas coarse, badly groomed and encharged with the duty of scolding her\nchildren simply because he happened to know Latin, and only too ready\nto flog her sons for their ignorance of that barbarous language.\n\n\n[1] The author was sub-lieutenant in the 6th Dragoons in 1800.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nENNUI\n\n\n    Non so piu cosa son\n    Cosa facio.\n                     MOZART (_Figaro_).\n\n\nMadame de Renal was going out of the salon by the folding window which\nopened on to the garden with that vivacity and grace which was natural\nto her when she was free from human observation, when she noticed a\nyoung peasant near the entrance gate. He was still almost a child,\nextremely pale, and looked as though he had been crying. He was in a\nwhite shirt and had under his arm a perfectly new suit of violet frieze.\n\nThe little peasant's complexion was so white and his eyes were so soft,\nthat Madame de Renal's somewhat romantic spirit thought at first that\nit might be a young girl in disguise, who had come to ask some favour\nof the M. the Mayor. She took pity on this poor creature, who had\nstopped at the entrance of the door, and who apparently did not dare\nto raise its hand to the bell. Madame de Renal approached, forgetting\nfor the moment the bitter chagrin occasioned by the tutor's arrival.\nJulien, who was turned towards the gate, did not see her advance. He\ntrembled when a soft voice said quite close to his ear:\n\n\"What do you want here, my child.\"\n\nJulien turned round sharply and was so struck by Madame de Renal's\nlook, full of graciousness as it was, that up to a certain point he\nforgot to be nervous. Overcome by her beauty he soon forgot everything,\neven what he had come for. Madame de Renal repeated her question.\n\n\"I have come here to be tutor, Madame,\" he said at last, quite ashamed\nof his tears which he was drying as best as he could.\n\nMadame de Renal remained silent. They had a view of each other at close\nrange. Julien had never seen a human being so well-dressed, and above\nall he had never seen a woman with so dazzling a complexion speak to\nhim at all softly. Madame de Renal observed the big tears which had\nlingered on the cheeks of the young peasant, those cheeks which had\nbeen so pale and were now so pink. Soon she began to laugh with all the\nmad gaiety of a young girl, she made fun of herself, and was unable to\nrealise the extent of her happiness. So this was that tutor whom she\nhad imagined a dirty, badly dressed priest, who was coming to scold and\nflog her children.\n\n\"What! Monsieur,\" she said to him at last, \"you know Latin?\"\n\nThe word \"Monsieur\" astonished Julien so much that he reflected for a\nmoment.\n\n\"Yes, Madame,\" he said timidly.\n\nMadame de Renal was so happy that she plucked up the courage to say to\nJulien, \"You will not scold the poor children too much?\"\n\n\"I scold them!\" said Julien in astonishment; \"why should I?\"\n\n\"You won't, will you, Monsieur,\" she added after a little silence, in\na soft voice whose emotion became more and more intense. \"You will be\nnice to them, you promise me?\"\n\nTo hear himself called \"Monsieur\" again in all seriousness by so well\ndressed a lady was beyond all Julien's expectations. He had always said\nto himself in all the castles of Spain that he had built in his youth,\nthat no real lady would ever condescend to talk to him except when he\nhad a fine uniform. Madame de Renal, on her side, was completely taken\nin by Julien's beautiful complexion, his big black eyes, and his pretty\nhair, which was more than usually curly, because he had just plunged\nhis head into the basin of the public fountain in order to refresh\nhimself. She was over-joyed to find that this sinister tutor, whom\nshe had feared to find so harsh and severe to her children, had, as a\nmatter of fact, the timid manner of a girl. The contrast between her\nfears and what she now saw, proved a great event for Madame de Renal's\npeaceful temperament. Finally, she recovered from her surprise. She\nwas astonished to find herself at the gate of her own house talking in\nthis way and at such close quarters to this young and somewhat scantily\ndressed man.\n\n\"Let us go in, Monsieur,\" she said to him with a certain air of\nembarrassment.\n\nDuring Madame de Renal's whole life she had never been so deeply moved\nby such a sense of pure pleasure. Never had so gracious a vision\nfollowed in the wake of her disconcerting fears. So these pretty\nchildren of whom she took such care were not after all to fall into\nthe hands of a dirty grumbling priest. She had scarcely entered the\nvestibule when she turned round towards Julien, who was following her\ntrembling. His astonishment at the sight of so fine a house proved but\nan additional charm in Madame de Renal's eyes. She could not believe\nher own eyes. It seemed to her, above all, that the tutor ought to have\na black suit.\n\n\"But is it true, Monsieur,\" she said to him, stopping once again, and\nin mortal fear that she had made a mistake, so happy had her discovery\nmade her. \"Is it true that you know Latin?\" These words offended\nJulien's pride, and dissipated the charming atmosphere which he had\nbeen enjoying for the last quarter of an hour.\n\n\"Yes, Madame,\" he said, trying to assume an air of coldness, \"I know\nLatin as well as the cure, who has been good enough to say sometimes\nthat I know it even better.\"\n\nMadame de Renal thought that Julien looked extremely wicked. He had\nstopped two paces from her. She approached and said to him in a whisper:\n\n\"You won't beat my children the first few days, will you, even if they\ndo not know their lessons?\"\n\nThe softness and almost supplication of so beautiful a lady made Julien\nsuddenly forget what he owed to his reputation as a Latinist. Madame de\nRenal's face was close to his own. He smelt the perfume of a woman's\nsummer clothing, a quite astonishing experience for a poor peasant.\nJulien blushed extremely, and said with a sigh in a faltering voice:\n\n\"Fear nothing, Madame, I will obey you in everything.\"\n\nIt was only now, when her anxiety about her children had been relieved\nonce and for all, that Madame de Renal was struck by Julien's extreme\nbeauty. The comparative effeminancy of his features and his air of\nextreme embarrassment did not seem in any way ridiculous to a woman who\nwas herself extremely timid. The male air, which is usually considered\nessential to a man's beauty, would have terrified her.\n\n\"How old are you, sir,\" she said to Julien.\n\n\"Nearly nineteen.\"\n\n\"My elder son is eleven,\" went on Madame de Renal, who had completely\nrecovered her confidence. \"He will be almost a chum for you. You will\ntalk sensibly to him. His father started beating him once. The child\nwas ill for a whole week, and yet it was only a little tap.\"\n\nWhat a difference between him and me, thought Julien. Why, it was only\nyesterday that my father beat me. How happy these rich people are.\nMadame de Renal, who had already begun to observe the fine nuances of\nthe workings in the tutor's mind, took this fit of sadness for timidity\nand tried to encourage him.\n\n\"What is your name, Monsieur?\" she said to him, with an accent and\na graciousness whose charm Julien appreciated without being able to\nexplain.\n\n\"I am called Julien Sorel, Madame. I feel nervous of entering a strange\nhouse for the first time in my life. I have need of your protection\nand I want you to make many allowances for me during the first few\ndays. I have never been to the college, I was too poor. I have never\nspoken to anyone else except my cousin who was Surgeon-Major, Member\nof the Legion of Honour, and M. the cure Chelan. He will give you a\ngood account of me. My brothers always used to beat me, and you must\nnot believe them if they speak badly of me to you. You must forgive my\nfaults, Madame. I shall always mean everything for the best.\"\n\nJulien had regained his confidence during this long speech. He was\nexamining Madame de Renal. Perfect grace works wonders when it is\nnatural to the character, and above all, when the person whom it\nadorns never thinks of trying to affect it. Julien, who was quite a\nconnoisseur in feminine beauty, would have sworn at this particular\nmoment that she was not more than twenty. The rash idea of kissing her\nhand immediately occurred to him. He soon became frightened of his\nidea. A minute later he said to himself, it will be an act of cowardice\nif I do not carry out an action which may be useful to me, and lessen\nthe contempt which this fine lady probably has for a poor workman just\ntaken away from the saw-mill. Possibly Julien was a little encouraged\nthrough having heard some young girls repeat on Sundays during the last\nsix months the words \"pretty boy.\"\n\nDuring this internal debate, Madame de Renal was giving him two or\nthree hints on the way to commence handling the children. The strain\nJulien was putting on himself made him once more very pale. He said\nwith an air of constraint.\n\n\"I will never beat your children, Madame. I swear it before God.\" In\nsaying this, he dared to take Madame de Renal's hand and carry it\nto his lips. She was astonished at this act, and after reflecting,\nbecame shocked. As the weather was very warm, her arm was quite bare\nunderneath the shawl, and Julien's movement in carrying her hand to his\nlips entirely uncovered it. After a few moments she scolded herself. It\nseemed to her that her anger had not been quick enough.\n\nM. de Renal, who had heard voices, came out of his study, and assuming\nthe same air of paternal majesty with which he celebrated marriages at\nthe mayoral office, said to Julien:\n\n\"It is essential for me to have a few words with you before my children\nsee you.\" He made Julien enter a room and insisted on his wife being\npresent, although she wished to leave them alone. Having closed the\ndoor M. Renal sat down.\n\n\"M. the cure has told me that you are a worthy person, and everybody\nhere will treat you with respect. If I am satisfied with you I will\nlater on help you in having a little establishment of your own. I do\nnot wish you to see either anything more of your relatives or your\nfriends. Their tone is bound to be prejudicial to my children. Here are\nthirty-six francs for the first month, but I insist on your word not to\ngive a sou of this money to your father.\"\n\nM. de Renal was piqued against the old man for having proved the\nshrewder bargainer.\n\n\"Now, Monsieur, for I have given orders for everybody here to call you\nMonsieur, and you will appreciate the advantage of having entered the\nhouse of real gentle folk, now, Monsieur, it is not becoming for the\nchildren to see you in a jacket.\" \"Have the servants seen him?\" said M.\nde Renal to his wife.\n\n\"No, my dear,\" she answered, with an air of deep pensiveness.\n\n\"All the better. Put this on,\" he said to the surprised young man,\ngiving him a frock-coat of his own. \"Let us now go to M. Durand's the\ndraper.\"\n\nWhen M. de Renal came back with the new tutor in his black suit more\nthan an hour later, he found his wife still seated in the same place.\nShe felt calmed by Julien's presence. When she examined him she forgot\nto be frightened of him. Julien was not thinking about her at all. In\nspite of all his distrust of destiny and mankind, his soul at this\nmoment was as simple as that of a child. It seemed as though he had\nlived through years since the moment, three hours ago, when he had been\nall atremble in the church. He noticed Madame de Renal's frigid manner\nand realised that she was very angry, because he had dared to kiss her\nhand. But the proud consciousness which was given to him by the feel\nof clothes so different from those which he usually wore, transported\nhim so violently and he had so great a desire to conceal his\nexultation, that all his movements were marked by a certain spasmodic\nirresponsibility. Madame de Renal looked at him with astonishment.\n\n\"Monsieur,\" said M. de Renal to him, \"dignity above all is necessary if\nyou wish to be respected by my children.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" answered Julien, \"I feel awkward in my new clothes. I am a poor\npeasant and have never wore anything but jackets. If you allow it, I\nwill retire to my room.\"\n\n\"What do you think of this 'acquisition?'\" said M. de Renal to his wife.\n\nMadame de Renal concealed the truth from her husband, obeying an almost\ninstinctive impulse which she certainly did not own to herself.\n\n\"I am not as fascinated as you are by this little peasant. Your favours\nwill result in his not being able to keep his place, and you will have\nto send him back before the month is out.\"\n\n\"Oh, well! we'll send him back then, he cannot run me into more than\na hundred francs, and Verrieres will have got used to seeing M. de\nRenal's children with a tutor. That result would not have been achieved\nif I had allowed Julien to wear a workman's clothes. If I do send him\nback, I shall of course keep the complete black suit which I have just\nordered at the draper's. All he will keep is the ready-made suit which\nI have just put him into at the the tailor's.\"\n\nThe hour that Julien spent in his room seemed only a minute to Madame\nde Renal. The children who had been told about their new tutor began\nto overwhelm their mother with questions. Eventually Julien appeared.\nHe was quite another man. It would be incorrect to say that he was\ngrave--he was the very incarnation of gravity. He was introduced to\nthe children and spoke to them in a manner that astonished M. de Renal\nhimself.\n\n\"I am here, gentlemen, he said, as he finished his speech, to teach\nyou Latin. You know what it means to recite a lesson. Here is the Holy\nBible, he said, showing them a small volume in thirty-two mo., bound in\nblack. It deals especially with the history of our Lord Jesus Christ\nand is the part which is called the New Testament. I shall often make\nyou recite your lesson, but do you make me now recite mine.\"\n\nAdolphe, the eldest of the children, had taken up the book. \"Open it\nanywhere you like,\" went on Julien and tell me the first word of any\nverse, \"I will then recite by heart that sacred book which governs our\nconduct towards the whole world, until you stop me.\"\n\nAdolphe opened the book and read a word, and Julien recited the whole\nof the page as easily as though he had been talking French. M. de Renal\nlooked at his wife with an air of triumph The children, seeing the\nastonishment of their parents, opened their eyes wide. A servant came\nto the door of the drawing-room; Julien went on talking Latin. The\nservant first remained motionless, and then disappeared. Soon Madame's\nhouse-maid, together with the cook, arrived at the door. Adolphe had\nalready opened the book at eight different places, while Julien went\non reciting all the time with the same facility. \"Great heavens!\" said\nthe cook, a good and devout girl, quite aloud, \"what a pretty little\npriest!\" M. de Renal's self-esteem became uneasy. Instead of thinking\nof examining the tutor, his mind was concentrated in racking his memory\nfor some other Latin words. Eventually he managed to spout a phrase of\nHorace. Julien knew no other Latin except his Bible. He answered with a\nfrown. \"The holy ministry to which I destine myself has forbidden me to\nread so profane a poet.\"\n\nM. de Renal quoted quite a large number of alleged verses from Horace.\nHe explained to his children who Horace was, but the admiring children,\nscarcely attended to what he was saying: they were looking at Julien.\n\nThe servants were still at the door. Julien thought that he ought to\nprolong the test--\"M. Stanislas-Xavier also,\" he said to the youngest\nof the children, \"must give me a passage from the holy book.\"\n\nLittle Stanislas, who was quite flattered, read indifferently the first\nword of a verse, and Julien said the whole page.\n\nTo put the finishing touch on M. de Renal's triumph, M. Valenod, the\nowner of the fine Norman horses, and M. Charcot de Maugiron, the\nsub-prefect of the district came in when Julien was reciting. This\nscene earned for Julien the title of Monsieur; even the servants did\nnot dare to refuse it to him.\n\nThat evening all Verrieres flocked to M. de Renal's to see the prodigy.\nJulien answered everybody in a gloomy manner and kept his own distance.\nHis fame spread so rapidly in the town that a few hours afterwards\nM. de Renal, fearing that he would be taken away by somebody else,\nproposed to that he should sign an engagement for two years.\n\n\"No, Monsieur,\" Julien answered coldly, \"if you wished to dismiss me, I\nshould have to go. An engagement which binds me without involving you\nin any obligation is not an equal one and I refuse it.\"\n\nJulien played his cards so well, that in less than a month of his\narrival at the house, M. de Renal himself respected him. As the cure\nhad quarrelled with both M. de Renal and M. Valenod, there was no one\nwho could betray Julien's old passion for Napoleon. He always spoke of\nNapoleon with abhorrence.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES\n\n\n        They only manage to touch the heart by wounding it.--_A\n        Modern_.\n\n\nThe children adored him, but he did not like them in the least. His\nthoughts were elsewhere. But nothing which the little brats ever did\nmade him lose his patience. Cold, just and impassive, and none the less\nliked, inasmuch his arrival had more or less driven ennui out of the\nhouse, he was a good tutor. As for himself, he felt nothing but hate\nand abhorrence for that good society into which he had been admitted;\nadmitted, it is true at the bottom of the table, a circumstance which\nperhaps explained his hate and his abhorrence. There were certain\n'full-dress' dinners at which he was scarcely able to control his\nhate for everything that surrounded him. One St. Louis feast day in\nparticular, when M. Valenod was monopolizing the conversation of M.\nde Renal, Julien was on the point of betraying himself. He escaped\ninto the garden on the pretext of finding the children. \"What praise\nof honesty,\" he exclaimed. \"One would say that was the only virtue,\nand yet think how they respect and grovel before a man who has almost\ndoubled and trebled his fortune since he has administered the poor\nfund. I would bet anything that he makes a profit even out of the\nmonies which are intended for the foundlings of these poor creatures\nwhose misery is even more sacred than that of others. Oh, Monsters!\nMonsters! And I too, am a kind of foundling, hated as I am by my\nfather, my brothers, and all my family.\"\n\nSome days before the feast of St. Louis, when Julien was taking a\nsolitary walk and reciting his breviary in the little wood called\nthe Belvedere, which dominates the _Cours de la Fidelite_, he had\nendeavoured in vain to avoid his two brothers whom he saw coming along\nin the distance by a lonely path. The jealousy of these coarse workmen\nhad been provoked to such a pitch by their brother's fine black suit,\nby his air of extreme respectability, and by the sincere contempt which\nhe had for them, that they had beaten him until he had fainted and was\nbleeding all over.\n\nMadame de Renal, who was taking a walk with M. de Renal and the\nsub-prefect, happened to arrive in the little wood. She saw Julien\nlying on the ground and thought that he was dead. She was so overcome\nthat she made M. Valenod jealous.\n\nHis alarm was premature. Julien found Madame de Renal very pretty, but\nhe hated her on account of her beauty, for that had been the first\ndanger which had almost stopped his career.\n\nHe talked to her as little as possible, in order to make her forget the\ntransport which had induced him to kiss her hand on the first day.\n\nMadame de Renal's housemaid, Elisa, had lost no time in falling\nin love with the young tutor. She often talked about him to her\nmistress. Elisa's love had earned for Julien the hatred of one of the\nmen-servants. One day he heard the man saying to Elisa, \"You haven't\na word for me now that this dirty tutor has entered the household.\"\nThe insult was undeserved, but Julien with the instinctive vanity of a\npretty boy redoubled his care of his personal appearance. M. Valenod's\nhate also increased. He said publicly, that it was not becoming for a\nyoung abbe to be such a fop.\n\nMadame de Renal observed that Julien talked more frequently than usual\nto Mademoiselle Elisa. She learnt that the reason of these interviews\nwas the poverty of Julien's extremely small wardrobe. He had so little\nlinen that he was obliged to have it very frequently washed outside the\nhouse, and it was in these little matters that Elisa was useful to him.\nMadame de Renal was touched by this extreme poverty which she had never\nsuspected before. She was anxious to make him presents, but she did not\ndare to do so. This inner conflict was the first painful emotion that\nJulien had caused her. Till then Julien's name had been synonymous with\na pure and quite intellectual joy. Tormented by the idea of Julien's\npoverty, Madame de Renal spoke to her husband about giving him some\nlinen for a present.\n\n\"What nonsense,\" he answered, \"the very idea of giving presents to a\nman with whom we are perfectly satisfied and who is a good servant. It\nwill only be if he is remiss that we shall have to stimulate his zeal.\"\n\nMadame de Renal felt humiliated by this way of looking at things,\nthough she would never have noticed it in the days before Julien's\narrival. She never looked at the young abbe's attire, with its\ncombination of simplicity and absolute cleanliness, without saying to\nherself, \"The poor boy, how can he manage?\"\n\nLittle by little, instead of being shocked by all Julien's\ndeficiencies, she pitied him for them.\n\nMadame de Renal was one of those provincial women whom one is apt\nto take for fools during the first fortnight of acquaintanceship.\nShe had no experience of the world and never bothered to keep up the\nconversation. Nature had given her a refined and fastidious soul,\nwhile that instinct for happiness which is innate in all human beings\ncaused her, as a rule, to pay no attention to the acts of the coarse\npersons in whose midst chance had thrown her. If she had received the\nslightest education, she would have been noticeable for the spontaneity\nand vivacity of her mind, but being an heiress, she had been brought\nup in a Convent of Nuns, who were passionate devotees of the _Sacred\nHeart of Jesus_ and animated by a violent hate for the French as being\nthe enemies of the Jesuits. Madame de Renal had had enough sense to\nforget quickly all the nonsense which she had learned at the convent,\nbut had substituted nothing for it, and in the long run knew nothing.\nThe flatteries which had been lavished on her when still a child, by\nreason of the great fortune of which she was the heiress, and a decided\ntendency to passionate devotion, had given her quite an inner life of\nher own. In spite of her pose of perfect affability and her elimination\nof her individual will which was cited as a model example by all the\nhusbands in Verrieres and which made M. de Renal feel very proud, the\nmoods of her mind were usually dictated by a spirit of the most haughty\ndiscontent.\n\nMany a princess who has become a bye-word for pride has given\ninfinitely more attention to what her courtiers have been doing around\nher than did this apparently gentle and demure woman to anything which\nher husband either said or did. Up to the time of Julien's arrival she\nhad never really troubled about anything except her children. Their\nlittle maladies, their troubles, their little joys, occupied all the\nsensibility of that soul, who, during her whole life, had adored no one\nbut God, when she had been at the Sacred Heart of Besancon.\n\nA feverish attack of one of her sons would affect her almost as deeply\nas if the child had died, though she would not deign to confide\nin anyone. A burst of coarse laughter, a shrug of the shoulders,\naccompanied by some platitude on the folly of women, had been the only\nwelcome her husband had vouchsafed to those confidences about her\ntroubles, which the need of unburdening herself had induced her to make\nduring the first years of their marriage. Jokes of this kind, and above\nall, when they were directed at her children's ailments, were exquisite\ntorture to Madame de Renal. And these jokes were all she found to take\nthe place of those exaggerated sugary flatteries with which she had\nbeen regaled at the Jesuit Convent where she had passed her youth. Her\neducation had been given her by suffering. Too proud even to talk to\nher friend, Madame Derville, about troubles of this kind, she imagined\nthat all men were like her husband, M. Valenod, and the sub-prefect,\nM. Charcot de Maugiron. Coarseness, and the most brutal callousness to\neverything except financial gain, precedence, or orders, together with\nblind hate of every argument to which they objected, seemed to her as\nnatural to the male sex as wearing boots and felt hats.\n\nAfter many years, Madame de Renal had still failed to acclimatize\nherself to those monied people in whose society she had to live.\n\nHence the success of the little peasant Julien. She found in the\nsympathy of this proud and noble soul a sweet enjoyment which had all\nthe glamour and fascination of novelty.\n\nMadame de Renal soon forgave him that extreme ignorance, which\nconstituted but an additional charm, and the roughness of his manner\nwhich she succeeded in correcting. She thought that he was worth\nlistening to, even when the conversation turned on the most ordinary\nevents, even in fact when it was only a question of a poor dog which\nhad been crushed as he crossed the street by a peasant's cart going\nat a trot. The sight of the dog's pain made her husband indulge in\nhis coarse laugh, while she noticed Julien frown, with his fine black\neyebrows which were so beautifully arched.\n\nLittle by little, it seemed to her that generosity, nobility of soul\nand humanity were to be found in nobody else except this young abbe.\nShe felt for him all the sympathy and even all the admiration which\nthose virtues excite in well-born souls.\n\nIf the scene had been Paris, Julien's position towards Madame de Renal\nwould have been soon simplified. But at Paris, love is a creature of\nnovels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would soon have found\nthe elucidation of their position in three or four novels, and even\nin the couplets of the Gymnase Theatre. The novels which have traced\nout for them the part they would play, and showed them the model which\nthey were to imitate, and Julien would sooner or later have been forced\nby his vanity to follow that model, even though it had given him no\npleasure and had perhaps actually gone against the grain.\n\nIf the scene had been laid in a small town in Aveyron or the Pyrenees,\nthe slightest episode would have been rendered crucial by the fiery\ncondition of the atmosphere. But under our more gloomy skies, a poor\nyoung man who is only ambitious because his natural refinement makes\nhim feel the necessity of some of those joys which only money can give,\ncan see every day a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, is\nabsorbed in her children, and never goes to novels for her examples of\nconduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens gradually, in the\nprovinces where there is far more naturalness.\n\nMadame de Renal was often overcome to the point of tears when she\nthought of the young tutor's poverty. Julien surprised her one day\nactually crying.\n\n\"Oh Madame! has any misfortune happened to you?\"\n\n\"No, my friend,\" she answered, \"call the children, let us go for a\nwalk.\"\n\nShe took his arm and leant on it in a manner that struck Julien as\nsingular. It was the first time she had called Julien \"My friend.\"\n\nTowards the end of the walk, Julien noticed that she was blushing\nviolently. She slackened her pace.\n\n\"You have no doubt heard,\" she said, without looking at him, \"that I\nam the only heiress of a very rich aunt who lives at Besancon. She\nloads me with presents.... My sons are getting on so wonderfully that\nI should like to ask you to accept a small present as a token of my\ngratitude. It is only a matter of a few louis to enable you to get\nsome linen. But--\" she added, blushing still more, and she left off\nspeaking--\n\n\"But what, Madame?\" said Julien.\n\n\"It is unnecessary,\" she went on lowering her head, \"to mention this to\nmy husband.\"\n\n\"I may not be big, Madame, but I am not mean,\" answered Julien,\nstopping, and drawing himself up to his full height, with his\neyes shining with rage, \"and this is what you have not realised\nsufficiently. I should be lower than a menial if I were to put myself\nin the position of concealing from M de. Renal anything at all having\nto do with my money.\"\n\nMadame de Renal was thunderstruck.\n\n\"The Mayor,\" went on Julien, \"has given me on five occasions sums of\nthirty-six francs since I have been living in his house. I am ready\nto show any account-book to M. de Renal and anyone else, even to M.\nValenod who hates me.\"\n\nAs the result of this outburst, Madame de Renal remained pale and\nnervous, and the walk ended without either one or the other finding any\npretext for renewing the conversation. Julien's proud heart had found\nit more and more impossible to love Madame de Renal.\n\nAs for her, she respected him, she admired him, and she had been\nscolded by him. Under the pretext of making up for the involuntary\nhumiliation which she had caused him, she indulged in acts of the most\ntender solicitude. The novelty of these attentions made Madame de\nRenal happy for eight days. Their effect was to appease to some extent\nJulien's anger. He was far from seeing anything in them in the nature\nof a fancy for himself personally.\n\n\"That is just what rich people are,\" he said to himself--\"they snub you\nand then they think they can make up for everything by a few monkey\ntricks.\"\n\nMadame de Renal's heart was too full, and at the same time too\ninnocent, for her not too tell her husband, in spite of her resolutions\nnot to do so, about the offer she had made to Julien, and the manner in\nwhich she had been rebuffed.\n\n\"How on earth,\" answered M. de Renal, keenly piqued, \"could you put\nup with a refusal on the part of a servant,\"--and, when Madame de\nRenal protested against the word \"Servant,\" \"I am using, madam, the\nwords of the late Prince of Conde, when he presented his Chamberlains\nto his new wife. 'All these people' he said 'are servants.' I have\nalso read you this passage from the Memoirs of Besenval, a book which\nis indispensable on all questions of etiquette. 'Every person, not\na gentleman, who lives in your house and receives a salary is your\nservant.' I'll go and say a few words to M. Julien and give him a\nhundred francs.\"\n\n\"Oh, my dear,\" said Madame De Renal trembling, \"I hope you won't do it\nbefore the servants!\"\n\n\"Yes, they might be jealous and rightly so,\" said her husband as he\ntook his leave, thinking of the greatness of the sum.\n\nMadame de Renal fell on a chair almost fainting in her anguish. He is\ngoing to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault! She felt an abhorrence\nfor her husband and hid her face in her hands. She resolved that\nhenceforth she would never make any more confidences.\n\nWhen she saw Julien again she was trembling all over. Her chest was so\ncramped that she could not succeed in pronouncing a single word. In her\nembarrassment she took his hands and pressed them.\n\n\"Well, my friend,\" she said to him at last, \"are you satisfied with my\nhusband?\"\n\n\"How could I be otherwise,\" answered Julien, with a bitter smile, \"he\nhas given me a hundred francs.\"\n\nMadame de Renal looked at him doubtfully.\n\n\"Give me your arm,\" she said at last, with a courageous intonation that\nJulien had not heard before.\n\nShe dared to go as far as the shop of the bookseller of Verrieres, in\nspite of his awful reputation for Liberalism. In the shop she chose\nten louis worth of books for a present for her sons. But these books\nwere those which she knew Julien was wanting. She insisted on each\nchild writing his name then and there in the bookseller's shop in\nthose books which fell to his lot. While Madame de Renal was rejoicing\nover the kind reparation which she had had the courage to make to\nJulien, the latter was overwhelmed with astonishment at the quantity\nof books which he saw at the bookseller's. He had never dared to enter\nso profane a place. His heart was palpitating. Instead of trying to\nguess what was passing in Madame de Renal's heart he pondered deeply\nover the means by which a young theological student could procure\nsome of those books. Eventually it occurred to him that it would be\npossible, with tact, to persuade M. de Renal that one of the proper\nsubjects of his sons' curriculum would be the history of the celebrated\ngentlemen who had been born in the province. After a month of careful\npreparation Julien witnessed the success of this idea. The success was\nso great that he actually dared to risk mentioning to M. de Renal in\nconversation, a matter which the noble mayor found disagreeable from\nquite another point of view. The suggestion was to contribute to the\nfortune of a Liberal by taking a subscription at the bookseller's. M.\nde Renal agreed that it would be wise to give his elder son a first\nhand acquaintance with many works which he would hear mentioned in\nconversation when he went to the Military School.\n\nBut Julien saw that the mayor had determined to go no further. He\nsuspected some secret reason but could not guess it.\n\n\"I was thinking, sir,\" he said to him one day, \"that it would be highly\nundesirable for the name of so good a gentleman as a Renal to appear on\na bookseller's dirty ledger.\" M. de Renal's face cleared.\n\n\"It would also be a black mark,\" continued Julien in a more humble\ntone, \"against a poor theology student if it ever leaked out that his\nname had been on the ledger of a bookseller who let out books. The\nLiberals might go so far as to accuse me of having asked for the most\ninfamous books. Who knows if they will not even go so far as to write\nthe titles of those perverse volumes after my name?\" But Julien was\ngetting off the track. He noticed that the Mayor's physiognomy was\nre-assuming its expression of embarrassment and displeasure. Julien was\nsilent. \"I have caught my man,\" he said to himself.\n\nIt so happened that a few days afterwards the elder of the children\nasked Julien, in M. de Renal's presence, about a book which had been\nadvertised in the _Quotidienne_.\n\n\"In order to prevent the Jacobin Party having the slightest pretext for\na score,\" said the young tutor, \"and yet give me the means of answering\nM. de Adolphe's question, you can make your most menial servant take\nout a subscription at the booksellers.\"\n\n\"That's not a bad idea,\" said M. de Renal, who was obviously very\ndelighted.\n\n\"You will have to stipulate all the same,\" said Julien in that solemn\nand almost melancholy manner which suits some people so well when they\nsee the realization of matters which they have desired for a long time\npast, \"you will have to stipulate that the servant should not take out\nany novels. Those dangerous books, once they got into the house, might\ncorrupt Madame de Renal's maids, and even the servant himself.\"\n\n\"You are forgetting the political pamphlets,\" went on M. de Renal with\nan important air. He was anxious to conceal the admiration with which\nthe cunning \"middle course\" devised by his children's tutor had filled\nhim.\n\nIn this way Julien's life was made up of a series of little acts of\ndiplomacy, and their success gave him far more food for thought than\nthe marked manifestation of favouritism which he could have read at any\ntime in Madame de Renal's heart, had he so wished.\n\nThe psychological position in which he had found himself all his\nlife was renewed again in the mayor of Verrieres' house. Here in the\nsame way as at his father's saw-mill, he deeply despised the people\nwith whom he lived, and was hated by them. He saw every day in the\nconversation of the sub-perfect, M. Valenod and the other friends of\nthe family, about things which had just taken place under their very\neyes, how little ideas corresponded to reality. If an action seemed to\nJulien worthy of admiration, it was precisely that very action which\nwould bring down upon itself the censure of the people with whom he\nlived. His inner mental reply always was, \"What beasts or what fools!\"\nThe joke was that, in spite of all his pride, he often understood\nabsolutely nothing what they were talking about.\n\nThroughout his whole life he had only spoken sincerely to the old\nSurgeon-Major.\n\nThe few ideas he had were about Buonaparte's Italian Campaigns or else\nsurgery. His youthful courage revelled in the circumstantial details of\nthe most terrible operations. He said to himself.\n\n\"I should not have flinched.\"\n\nThe first time that Madame de Renal tried to enter into conversation\nindependently of the children's education, he began to talk of surgical\noperations. She grew pale and asked him to leave off. Julien knew\nnothing beyond that.\n\nSo it came about that, though he passed his life in Madame de Renal's\ncompany, the most singular silence would reign between them as soon as\nthey were alone.\n\nWhen he was in the salon, she noticed in his eyes, in spite of all the\nhumbleness of his demeanour, an air of intellectual superiority towards\neveryone who came to visit her. If she found herself alone with him for\na single moment, she saw that he was palpably embarrassed. This made\nher feel uneasy, for her woman's instinct caused her to realise that\nthis embarrassment was not inspired by any tenderness.\n\nOwing to some mysterious idea, derived from some tale of good society,\nsuch as the old Surgeon-Major had seen it, Julien felt humiliated\nwhenever the conversation languished on any occasion when he found\nhimself in a woman's society, as though the particular pause were his\nown special fault. This sensation was a hundred times more painful in\n_tete-a-tete_. His imagination, full as it was of the most extravagant\nand most Spanish ideas of what a man ought to say when he is alone\nwith a woman, only suggested to the troubled youth things which were\nabsolutely impossible. His soul was in the clouds. Nevertheless he was\nunable to emerge from this most humiliating silence. Consequently,\nduring his long walks with Madame de Renal and the children, the\nseverity of his manner was accentuated by the poignancy of his\nsufferings. He despised himself terribly. If, by any luck, he made\nhimself speak, he came out with the most absurd things. To put the\nfinishing touch on his misery, he saw his own absurdity and exaggerated\nits extent, but what he did not see was the expression in his eyes,\nwhich were so beautiful and betokened so ardent a soul, that like good\nactors, they sometimes gave charm to something which is really devoid\nof it.\n\nMadame de Renal noticed that when he was alone with her he never\nchanced to say a good thing except when he was taken out of himself\nby some unexpected event, and consequently forgot to try and turn a\ncompliment. As the friends of the house did not spoil her by regaling\nher with new and brilliant ideas, she enjoyed with delight all the\nflashes of Julien's intellect.\n\nAfter the fall of Napoleon, every appearance of gallantry has been\nseverely exiled from provincial etiquette. People are frightened of\nlosing their jobs. All rascals look to the religious order for support,\nand hypocrisy has made firm progress even among the Liberal classes.\nOne's ennui is doubled. The only pleasures left are reading and\nagriculture.\n\nMadame de Renal, the rich heiress of a devout aunt, and married at\nsixteen to a respectable gentleman, had never felt or seen in her whole\nlife anything that had the slightest resemblance in the whole world\nto love. Her confessor, the good cure Chelan, had once mentioned love\nto her, in discussing the advances of M. de Valenod, and had drawn so\nloathsome a picture of the passion that the word now stood to her for\nnothing but the most abject debauchery. She had regarded love, such\nas she had come across it, in the very small number of novels with\nwhich chance had made her acquainted, as an exception if not indeed as\nsomething absolutely abnormal. It was, thanks to this ignorance, that\nMadame de Renal, although incessantly absorbed in Julien, was perfectly\nhappy, and never thought of reproaching herself in the slightest.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nLITTLE EPISODES\n\n\n    \"Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,\n    And stolen glances sweeter for the theft,\n    And burning blushes, though for no transgression.\"\n                                 _Don Juan_, c. I, st. 74.\n\n\nIt was only when Madame de Renal began to think of her maid Elisa\nthat there was some slight change in that angelic sweetness which she\nowed both to her natural character and her actual happiness. The girl\nhad come into a fortune, went to confess herself to the cure Chelan\nand confessed to him her plan of marrying Julien. The cure was truly\nrejoiced at his friend's good fortune, but he was extremely surprised\nwhen Julien resolutely informed him that Mademoiselle Elisa's offer\ncould not suit him.\n\n\"Beware, my friend, of what is passing within your heart,\" said the\ncure with a frown, \"I congratulate you on your mission, if that is the\nonly reason why you despise a more than ample fortune. It is fifty-six\nyears since I was first cure of Verrieres, and yet I shall be turned\nout, according to all appearances. I am distressed by it, and yet my\nincome amounts to eight hundred francs. I inform you of this detail so\nthat you may not be under any illusions as to what awaits you in your\ncareer as a priest. If you think of paying court to the men who enjoy\npower, your eternal damnation is assured. You may make your fortune,\nbut you will have to do harm to the poor, flatter the sub-prefect,\nthe mayor, the man who enjoys prestige, and pander to his passion;\nthis conduct, which in the world is called knowledge of life, is not\nabsolutely incompatible with salvation so far as a layman is concerned;\nbut in our career we have to make a choice; it is a question of making\none's fortune either in this world or the next; there is no middle\ncourse. Come, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days with\na definite answer. I am pained to detect that there is at the bottom\nof your character a sombre passion which is far from indicating to me\nthat moderation and that perfect renunciation of earthly advantages so\nnecessary for a priest; I augur well of your intellect, but allow me to\ntell you,\" added the good cure with tears in his eyes, \"I tremble for\nyour salvation in your career as a priest.\"\n\nJulien was ashamed of his emotion; he found himself loved for the first\ntime in his life; he wept with delight; and went to hide his tears in\nthe great woods behind Verrieres.\n\n\"Why am I in this position?\" he said to himself at last, \"I feel that\nI would give my life a hundred times over for this good cure Chelan,\nand he has just proved to me that I am nothing more than a fool. It\nis especially necessary for me to deceive him, and he manages to find\nme out. The secret ardour which he refers to is my plan of making my\nfortune. He thinks I am unworthy of being a priest, that too, just when\nI was imagining that my sacrifice of fifty louis would give him the\nvery highest idea of my piety and devotion to my mission.\"\n\n\"In future,\" continued Julien, \"I will only reckon on those elements in\nmy character which I have tested. Who could have told me that I should\nfind any pleasure in shedding tears? How I should like some one to\nconvince me that I am simply a fool!\"\n\nThree days later, Julien found the excuse with which he ought to have\nbeen prepared on the first day; the excuse was a piece of calumny, but\nwhat did it matter? He confessed to the cure, with a great deal of\nhesitation, that he had been persuaded from the suggested union by a\nreason he could not explain, inasmuch as it tended to damage a third\nparty. This was equivalent to impeaching Elisa's conduct. M. Chelan\nfound that his manner betrayed a certain worldly fire which was very\ndifferent from that which ought to have animated a young acolyte.\n\n\"My friend,\" he said to him again, \"be a good country citizen,\nrespected and educated, rather than a priest without a true mission.\"\n\nSo far as words were concerned, Julien answered these new remonstrances\nvery well. He managed to find the words which a young and ardent\nseminarist would have employed, but the tone in which he pronounced\nthem, together with the thinly concealed fire which blazed in his eye,\nalarmed M. Chelan.\n\nYou must not have too bad an opinion of Julien's prospects. He\ninvented with correctness all the words suitable to a prudent and\ncunning hypocrisy. It was not bad for his age. As for his tone and his\ngestures, he had spent his life with country people; he had never been\ngiven an opportunity of seeing great models. Consequently, as soon as\nhe was given a chance of getting near such gentlemen, his gestures\nbecame as admirable as his words.\n\nMadame de Renal was astonished that her maid's new fortune did not\nmake her more happy. She saw her repeatedly going to the cure and\ncoming back with tears in her eyes. At last Elisa talked to her of her\nmarriage.\n\nMadame de Renal thought she was ill. A kind of fever prevented her from\nsleeping. She only lived when either her maid or Julien were in sight.\nShe was unable to think of anything except them and the happiness\nwhich they would find in their home. Her imagination depicted in the\nmost fascinating colours the poverty of the little house, where they\nwere to live on their income of fifty louis a year. Julien could quite\nwell become an advocate at Bray, the sub-prefecture, two leagues from\nVerrieres. In that case she would see him sometimes. Madame de Renal\nsincerely believed she would go mad. She said so to her husband and\nfinally fell ill. That very evening when her maid was attending her,\nshe noticed that the girl was crying. She abhorred Elisa at that\nmoment, and started to scold her; she then begged her pardon. Elisa's\ntears redoubled. She said if her mistress would allow her, she would\ntell her all her unhappiness.\n\n\"Tell me,\" answered Madame de Renal.\n\n\"Well, Madame, he refuses me, some wicked people must have spoken badly\nabout me. He believes them.\"\n\n\"Who refuses you?\" said Madame de Renal, scarcely breathing.\n\n\"Who else, Madame, but M. Julien,\" answered the maid sobbing. \"M. the\ncure had been unable to overcome his resistance, for M. the cure thinks\nthat he ought not to refuse an honest girl on the pretext that she\nhas been a maid. After all, M. Julien's father is nothing more than\na carpenter, and how did he himself earn his living before he was at\nMadame's?\"\n\nMadame de Renal stopped listening; her excessive happiness had almost\ndeprived her of her reason. She made the girl repeat several times\nthe assurance that Julien had refused her, with a positiveness which\nshut the door on the possibility of his coming round to a more prudent\ndecision.\n\n\"I will make a last attempt,\" she said to her maid. \"I will speak to M.\nJulien.\"\n\nThe following day, after breakfast, Madame de Renal indulged in the\ndelightful luxury of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's\nhand and fortune stubbornly refused for a whole hour.\n\nJulien gradually emerged from his cautiously worded answers, and\nfinished by answering with spirit Madame de Renal's good advice. She\ncould not help being overcome by the torrent of happiness which, after\nso many days of despair, now inundated her soul. She felt quite ill.\nWhen she had recovered and was comfortably in her own room she sent\neveryone away. She was profoundly astonished.\n\n\"Can I be in love with Julien?\" she finally said to herself. This\ndiscovery, which at any other time would have plunged her into remorse\nand the deepest agitation, now only produced the effect of a singular,\nbut as it were, indifferent spectacle. Her soul was exhausted by all\nthat she had just gone through, and had no more sensibility to passion\nleft.\n\nMadame de Renal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when she\nwoke up she did not frighten herself so much as she ought to have. She\nwas too happy to be able to see anything wrong in anything. Naive and\ninnocent as she was, this worthy provincial woman had never tortured\nher soul in her endeavours to extract from it a little sensibility to\nsome new shade of sentiment or unhappiness. Entirely absorbed as she\nhad been before Julien's arrival with that mass of work which falls\nto the lot of a good mistress of a household away from Paris, Madame\nde Renal thought of passion in the same way in which we think of a\nlottery: a certain deception, a happiness sought after by fools.\n\nThe dinner bell rang. Madame de Renal blushed violently. She heard the\nvoice of Julien who was bringing in the children. Having grown somewhat\nadroit since her falling in love, she complained of an awful headache\nin order to explain her redness.\n\n\"That's just like what all women are,\" answered M. de Renal with a\ncoarse laugh. \"Those machines have always got something or other to be\nput right.\"\n\nAlthough she was accustomed to this type of wit, Madame de Renal was\nshocked by the tone of voice. In order to distract herself, she looked\nat Julien's physiognomy; he would have pleased her at this particular\nmoment, even if he had been the ugliest man imaginable.\n\nM. de Renal, who always made a point of copying the habits of the\ngentry of the court, established himself at Vergy in the first fine\ndays of the spring; this is the village rendered celebrated by the\ntragic adventure of Gabrielle. A hundred paces from the picturesque\nruin of the old Gothic church, M. de Renal owns an old chateau with its\nfour towers and a garden designed like the one in the Tuileries with\na great many edging verges of box and avenues of chestnut trees which\nare cut twice in the year. An adjacent field, crowded with apple trees,\nserved for a promenade. Eight or ten magnificent walnut trees were at\nthe end of the orchard. Their immense foliage went as high as perhaps\neighty feet.\n\n\"Each of these cursed walnut trees,\" M. de Renal was in the habit of\nsaying, whenever his wife admired them, \"costs me the harvest of at\nleast half an acre; corn cannot grow under their shade.\"\n\nMadame de Renal found the sight of the country novel: her admiration\nreached the point of enthusiasm. The sentiment by which she was\nanimated gave her both ideas and resolution. M. de Renal had returned\nto the town, for mayoral business, two days after their arrival in\nVergy. But Madame de Renal engaged workmen at her own expense. Julien\nhad given her the idea of a little sanded path which was to go round\nthe orchard and under the big walnut trees, and render it possible\nfor the children to take their walk in the very earliest hours of the\nmorning without getting their feet wet from the dew. This idea was put\ninto execution within twenty-four hours of its being conceived. Madame\nde Renal gaily spent the whole day with Julien in supervising the\nworkmen.\n\nWhen the Mayor of Verrieres came back from the town he was very\nsurprised to find the avenue completed. His arrival surprised Madame\nde Renal as well. She had forgotten his existence. For two months\nhe talked with irritation about the boldness involved in making so\nimportant a repair without consulting him, but Madame de Renal had had\nit executed at her own expense, a fact which somewhat consoled him.\n\nShe spent her days in running about the orchard with her children,\nand in catching butterflies. They had made big hoods of clear gauze\nwith which they caught the poor _lepidoptera_. This is the barbarous\nname which Julien taught Madame de Renal. For she had had M. Godart's\nfine work ordered from Besancon, and Julien used to tell her about the\nstrange habits of the creatures.\n\nThey ruthlessly transfixed them by means of pins in a great cardboard\nbox which Julien had prepared.\n\nMadame de Renal and Julien had at last a topic of conversation; he was\nno longer exposed to the awful torture that had been occasioned by\ntheir moments of silence.\n\nThey talked incessantly and with extreme interest, though always about\nvery innocent matters. This gay, full, active life, pleased the fancy\nof everyone, except Mademoiselle Elisa who found herself overworked.\nMadame had never taken so much trouble with her dress, even at carnival\ntime, when there is a ball at Verrieres, she would say; she changes her\ngowns two or three times a day.\n\nAs it is not our intention to flatter anyone, we do not propose to\ndeny that Madame de Renal, who had a superb skin, arranged her gowns\nin such a way as to leave her arms and her bosom very exposed. She was\nextremely well made, and this style of dress suited her delightfully.\n\n\"You have never been _so young_, Madame,\" her Verrieres friends would\nsay to her, when they came to dinner at Vergy (this is one of the local\nexpressions).\n\nIt is a singular thing, and one which few amongst us will believe, but\nMadame de Renal had no specific object in taking so much trouble. She\nfound pleasure in it and spent all the time which she did not pass in\nhunting butterflies with the children and Julien, in working with Elisa\nat making gowns, without giving the matter a further thought. Her only\nexpedition to Verrieres was caused by her desire to buy some new summer\ngowns which had just come from Mulhouse.\n\nShe brought back to Vergy a young woman who was a relative of hers.\nSince her marriage, Madame de Renal had gradually become attached to\nMadame Derville, who had once been her school mate at the _Sacre Coeur_.\n\nMadame Derville laughed a great deal at what she called her cousin's\nmad ideas: \"I would never have thought of them alone,\" she said. When\nMadame de Renal was with her husband, she was ashamed of those sudden\nideas, which, are called sallies in Paris, and thought them quite\nsilly: but Madame Derville's presence gave her courage. She would start\nto telling her her thoughts in a timid voice, but after the ladies\nhad been alone for a long time, Madame de Renal's brain became more\nanimated, and a long morning spent together by the two friends passed\nlike a second, and left them in the best of spirits. On this particular\njourney, however, the acute Madame Derville thought her cousin much\nless merry, but much more happy than usual.\n\nJulien, on his side, had since coming to the country lived like an\nabsolute child, and been as happy as his pupils in running after\nthe butterflies. After so long a period of constraint and wary\ndiplomacy, he was at last alone and far from human observation; he\nwas instinctively free from any apprehension on the score of Madame\nde Renal, and abandoned himself to the sheer pleasure of being alive,\nwhich is so keen at so young an age, especially among the most\nbeautiful mountains in the world.\n\nEver since Madame Derville's arrival, Julien thought that she was his\nfriend; he took the first opportunity of showing her the view from the\nend of the new avenue, under the walnut tree; as a matter of fact it is\nequal, if not superior, to the most wonderful views that Switzerland\nand the Italian lakes can offer. If you ascend the steep slope which\ncommences some paces from there, you soon arrive at great precipices\nfringed by oak forests, which almost jut on to the river. It was to the\npeaked summits of these rocks that Julien, who was now happy, free, and\nking of the household into the bargain, would take the two friends, and\nenjoy their admiration these sublime views.\n\n\"To me it's like Mozart's music,\" Madame Derville would say.\n\nThe country around Verrieres had been spoilt for Julien by the jealousy\nof his brothers and the presence of a tyranous and angry father. He\nwas free from these bitter memories at Vergy; for the first time in\nhis life, he failed to see an enemy. When, as frequently happened, M.\nde Renal was in town, he ventured to read; soon, instead of reading at\nnight time, a procedure, moreover, which involved carefully hiding his\nlamp at the bottom of a flower-pot turned upside down, he was able to\nindulge in sleep; in the day, however, in the intervals between the\nchildren's lessons, he would come among these rocks with that book\nwhich was the one guide of his conduct and object of his enthusiasm. He\nfound in it simultaneously happiness, ecstasy and consolation for his\nmoments of discouragement.\n\nCertain remarks of Napoleon about women, several discussions about the\nmerits of the novels which were fashionable in his reign, furnished him\nnow for the first time with some ideas which any other young man of his\nage would have had for a long time.\n\nThe dog days arrived. They started the habit of spending the evenings\nunder an immense pine tree some yards from the house. The darkness was\nprofound. One evening, Julien was speaking and gesticulating, enjoying\nto the full the pleasure of being at his best when talking to young\nwomen; in one of his gestures, he touched the hand of Madame de Renal\nwhich was leaning on the back of one of those chairs of painted wood,\nwhich are so frequently to be seen in gardens.\n\nThe hand was quickly removed, but Julien thought it a point of duty\nto secure that that hand should not be removed when he touched it.\nThe idea of a duty to be performed and the consciousness of his\nstultification, or rather of his social inferiority, if he should fail\nin achieving it, immediately banished all pleasure from his heart.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nAN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY\n\n\n        M. Guerin's Dido, a charming sketch!--_Strombeck_.\n\n\nHis expression was singular when he saw Madame de Renal the next\nday; he watched her like an enemy with whom he would have to fight a\nduel. These looks, which were so different from those of the previous\nevening, made Madame de Renal lose her head; she had been kind to him\nand he appeared angry. She could not take her eyes off his.\n\nMadame Derville's presence allowed Julien to devote less time to\nconversation, and more time to thinking about what he had in his mind.\nHis one object all this day was to fortify himself by reading the\ninspired book that gave strength to his soul.\n\nHe considerably curtailed the children's lessons, and when Madame de\nRenal's presence had effectually brought him back to the pursuit of his\nambition, he decided that she absolutely must allow her hand to rest in\nhis that evening.\n\nThe setting of the sun which brought the crucial moment nearer and\nnearer made Julien's heart beat in a strange way. Night came. He\nnoticed with a joy, which took an immense weight off his heart, that\nit was going to be very dark. The sky, which was laden with big clouds\nthat had been brought along by a sultry wind, seemed to herald a storm.\nThe two friends went for their walk very late. All they did that night\nstruck Julien as strange. They were enjoying that hour which seems to\ngive certain refined souls an increased pleasure in loving.\n\nAt last they sat down, Madame de Renal beside Julien, and Madame\nDerville near her friend. Engrossed as he was by the attempt which\nhe was going to make, Julien could think of nothing to say. The\nconversation languished.\n\n\"Shall I be as nervous and miserable over my first duel?\" said Julien\nto himself; for he was too suspicious both of himself and of others,\nnot to realise his own mental state.\n\nIn his mortal anguish, he would have preferred any danger whatsoever.\nHow many times did he not wish some matter to crop up which would\nnecessitate Madame de Renal going into the house and leaving the\ngarden! The violent strain on Julien's nerves was too great for his\nvoice not to be considerably changed; soon Madame de Renal's voice\nbecame nervous as well, but Julien did not notice it. The awful battle\nraging between duty and timidity was too painful, for him to be in a\nposition to observe anything outside himself. A quarter to ten had\njust struck on the chateau clock without his having ventured anything.\nJulien was indignant at his own cowardice, and said to himself, \"at\nthe exact moment when ten o'clock strikes, I will perform what I have\nresolved to do all through the day, or I will go up to my room and blow\nout my brains.\"\n\nAfter a final moment of expectation and anxiety, during which Julien\nwas rendered almost beside himself by his excessive emotion, ten\no'clock struck from the clock over his head. Each stroke of the fatal\nclock reverberated in his bosom, and caused an almost physical pang.\n\nFinally, when the last stroke of ten was still reverberating, he\nstretched out his hand and took Madame de Renal's, who immediately\nwithdrew it. Julien, scarcely knowing what he was doing, seized it\nagain. In spite of his own excitement, he could not help being struck\nby the icy coldness of the hand which he was taking; he pressed it\nconvulsively; a last effort was made to take it away, but in the end\nthe hand remained in his.\n\nHis soul was inundated with happiness, not that he loved Madame de\nRenal, but an awful torture had just ended. He thought it necessary\nto say something, to avoid Madame Derville noticing anything. His\nvoice was now strong and ringing. Madame de Renal's, on the contrary,\nbetrayed so much emotion that her friend thought she was ill, and\nsuggested her going in. Julien scented danger, \"if Madame de Renal goes\nback to the salon, I shall relapse into the awful state in which I have\nbeen all day. I have held the hand far too short a time for it really\nto count as the scoring of an actual advantage.\"\n\nAt the moment when Madame Derville was repeating her suggestion to\ngo back to the salon, Julien squeezed vigorously the hand that was\nabandoned to him.\n\nMadame de Renal, who had started to get up, sat down again and said in\na faint voice,\n\n\"I feel a little ill, as a matter of fact, but the open air is doing me\ngood.\"\n\nThese words confirmed Julien's happiness, which at the present moment\nwas extreme; he spoke, he forgot to pose, and appeared the most\ncharming man in the world to the two friends who were listening to him.\nNevertheless, there was a slight lack of courage in all this eloquence\nwhich had suddenly come upon him. He was mortally afraid that Madame\nDerville would get tired of the wind before the storm, which was\nbeginning to rise, and want to go back alone into the salon. He would\nthen have remained _tete-a-tete_ with Madame de Renal. He had had,\nalmost by accident that blind courage which is sufficient for action;\nbut he felt that it was out of his power to speak the simplest word to\nMadame de Renal. He was certain that, however slight her reproaches\nmight be, he would nevertheless be worsted, and that the advantage he\nhad just won would be destroyed.\n\nLuckily for him on this evening, his moving and emphatic speeches found\nfavour with Madame Derville, who very often found him as clumsy as a\nchild and not at all amusing. As for Madame de Renal, with her hand in\nJulien's, she did not have a thought; she simply allowed herself to go\non living.\n\nThe hours spent under this great pine tree, planted by by Charles the\nBold according to the local tradition, were a real period of happiness.\nShe listened with delight to the soughing of the wind in the thick\nfoliage of the pine tree and to the noise of some stray drops which\nwere beginning to fall upon the leaves which were lowest down. Julien\nfailed to notice one circumstance which, if he had, would have quickly\nreassured him; Madame de Renal, who had been obliged to take away her\nhand, because she had got up to help her cousin to pick up a flower-pot\nwhich the wind had knocked over at her feet, had scarcely sat down\nagain before she gave him her hand with scarcely any difficulty and as\nthough it had already been a pre-arranged thing between them.\n\nMidnight had struck a long time ago; it was at last necessary to leave\nthe garden; they separated. Madame de Renal swept away as she was, by\nthe happiness of loving, was so completely ignorant of the world that\nshe scarcely reproached herself at all. Her happiness deprived her of\nher sleep. A leaden sleep overwhelmed Julien who was mortally fatigued\nby the battle which timidity and pride had waged in his heart all\nthrough the day.\n\nHe was called at five o'clock on the following day and scarcely gave\nMadame de Renal a single thought.\n\nHe had accomplished his duty, and a heroic duty too. The consciousness\nof this filled him with happiness; he locked himself in his room, and\nabandoned himself with quite a new pleasure to reading exploits of his\nhero.\n\nWhen the breakfast bell sounded, the reading of the Bulletins of the\nGreat Army had made him forget all his advantages of the previous day.\nHe said to himself flippantly, as he went down to the salon, \"I must\ntell that woman that I am in love with her.\" Instead of those looks\nbrimful of pleasure which he was expecting to meet, he found the stern\nvisage of M. de Renal, who had arrived from Verrieres two hours ago,\nand did not conceal his dissatisfaction at Julien's having passed the\nwhole morning without attending to the children. Nothing could have\nbeen more sordid than this self-important man when he was in a bad\ntemper and thought that he could safely show it.\n\nEach harsh word of her husband pierced Madame de Renal's heart.\n\nAs for Julien, he was so plunged in his ecstasy, and still so engrossed\nby the great events which had been passing before his eyes for several\nhours, that he had some difficulty at first in bringing his attention\nsufficiently down to listen to the harsh remarks which M. de Renal was\naddressing to him. He said to him at last, rather abruptly,\n\n\"I was ill.\"\n\nThe tone of this answer would have stung a much less sensitive man than\nthe mayor of Verrieres. He half thought of answering Julien by turning\nhim out of the house straight away. He was only restrained by the\nmaxim which he had prescribed for himself, of never hurrying unduly in\nbusiness matters.\n\n\"The young fool,\" he said to himself shortly afterwards, \"has won a\nkind of reputation in my house. That man Valenod may take him into his\nfamily, or he may quite well marry Elisa, and in either case, he will\nbe able to have the laugh of me in his heart.\"\n\nIn spite of the wisdom of these reflections, M. de Renal's\ndissatisfaction did not fail to vent itself any the less by a string\nof coarse insults which gradually irritated Julien. Madame de Renal\nwas on the point of bursting into tears. Breakfast was scarcely over,\nwhen she asked Julien to give her his arm for a walk. She leaned on him\naffectionately. Julien could only answer all that Madame de Renal said\nto him by whispering.\n\n\"_That's what rich people are like!_\"\n\nM. de Renal was walking quite close to them; his presence increased\nJulien's anger. He suddenly noticed that Madame de Renal was leaning on\nhis arm in a manner which was somewhat marked. This horrified him, and\nhe pushed her violently away and disengaged his arm.\n\nLuckily, M. de Renal did not see this new piece of impertinence; it was\nonly noticed by Madame Derville. Her friend burst into tears. M. de\nRenal now started to chase away by a shower of stones a little peasant\ngirl who had taken a private path crossing a corner of the orchard.\n\"Monsieur Julien, restrain yourself, I pray you. Remember that we all\nhave our moments of temper,\" said madame Derville rapidly.\n\nJulien looked at her coldly with eyes in which the most supreme\ncontempt was depicted.\n\nThis look astonished Madame Derville, and it would have surprised\nher even more if she had appreciated its real expression; she would\nhave read in it something like a vague hope of the most atrocious\nvengeance. It is, no doubt, such moments of humiliation which have made\nRobespierres.\n\n\"Your Julien is very violent; he frightens me,\" said Madame Derville to\nher friend, in a low voice.\n\n\"He is right to be angry,\" she answered. \"What does it matter if\nhe does pass a morning without speaking to the children, after the\nastonishing progress which he has made them make. One must admit that\nmen are very hard.\"\n\nFor the first time in her life Madame de Renal experienced a kind\nof desire for vengeance against her husband. The extreme hatred of\nthe rich by which Julien was animated was on the point of exploding.\nLuckily, M. de Renal called his gardener, and remained occupied\nwith him in barring by faggots of thorns the private road through\nthe orchard. Julien did not vouchsafe any answer to the kindly\nconsideration of which he was the object during all the rest of the\nwalk. M. de Renal had scarcely gone away before the two friends made\nthe excuse of being fatigued, and each asked him for an arm.\n\nWalking as he did between these two women whose extreme nervousness\nfilled their cheeks with a blushing embarrassment, the haughty pallor\nand sombre, resolute air of Julien formed a strange contrast. He\ndespised these women and all tender sentiments.\n\n\"What!\" he said to himself, \"not even an income of five hundred francs\nto finish my studies! Ah! how I should like to send them packing.\"\n\nAnd absorbed as he was by these stern ideas, such few courteous words\nof his two friends as he deigned to take the trouble to understand,\ndispleased him as devoid of sense, silly, feeble, in a word--feminine.\n\nAs the result of speaking for the sake of speaking and of endeavouring\nto keep the conversation alive, it came about that Madame de Renal\nmentioned that her husband had come from Verrieres because he had made\na bargain for the May straw with one of his farmers. (In this district\nit is the May straw with which the bed mattresses are filled).\n\n\"My husband will not rejoin us,\" added Madame de Renal; \"he will occupy\nhimself with finishing the re-stuffing of the house mattresses with\nthe help of the gardener and his valet. He has put the May straw this\nmorning in all the beds on the first storey; he is now at the second.\"\n\nJulien changed colour. He looked at Madame de Renal in a singular way,\nand soon managed somehow to take her on one side, doubling his pace.\nMadame Derville allowed them to get ahead.\n\n\"Save my life,\" said Julien to Madame de Renal; \"only you can do it,\nfor you know that the valet hates me desperately. I must confess to\nyou, madame, that I have a portrait. I have hidden it in the mattress\nof my bed.\"\n\nAt these words Madame de Renal in her turn became pale.\n\n\"Only you, Madame, are able at this moment to go into my room, feel\nabout without their noticing in the corner of the mattress; it\nis nearest the window. You will find a small, round box of black\ncardboard, very glossy.\"\n\n\"Does it contain a portrait?\" said Madame de Renal, scarcely able to\nhold herself upright.\n\nJulien noticed her air of discouragement, and at once proceeded to\nexploit it.\n\n\"I have a second favour to ask you, madame. I entreat you not to look\nat that portrait; it is my secret.\"\n\n\"It is a secret,\" repeated Madame de Renal in a faint voice.\n\nBut though she had been brought up among people who are proud of their\nfortune and appreciative of nothing except money, love had already\ninstilled generosity into her soul. Truly wounded as she was, it was\nwith an air of the most simple devotion that Madame de Renal asked\nJulien the questions necessary to enable her to fulfil her commission.\n\n\"So\" she said to him as she went away, \"it is a little round box of\nblack cardboard, very glossy.\"\n\n\"Yes, Madame,\" answered Julien, with that hardness which danger gives\nto men.\n\nShe ascended the second storey of the chateau as pale as though she had\nbeen going to her death. Her misery was completed by the sensation that\nshe was on the verge of falling ill, but the necessity of doing Julien\na service restored her strength.\n\n\"I must have that box,\" she said to herself, as she doubled her pace.\n\nShe heard her husband speaking to the valet in Julien's very room.\nHappily, they passed into the children's room. She lifted up the\nmattress, and plunged her hand into the stuffing so violently that she\nbruised her fingers. But, though she was very sensitive to slight pain\nof this kind, she was not conscious of it now, for she felt almost\nsimultaneously the smooth surface of the cardboard box. She seized it\nand disappeared.\n\nShe had scarcely recovered from the fear of being surprised by her\nhusband than the horror with which this box inspired her came within an\nace of positively making her feel ill.\n\n\"So Julien is in love, and I hold here the portrait of the woman whom\nhe loves!\"\n\nSeated on the chair in the ante-chamber of his apartment, Madame\nde Renal fell a prey to all the horrors of jealousy. Her extreme\nignorance, moreover, was useful to her at this juncture; her\nastonishment mitigated her grief. Julien seized the box without\nthanking her or saying a single word, and ran into his room, where\nhe lit a fire and immediately burnt it. He was pale and in a state\nof collapse. He exaggerated the extent of the danger which he had\nundergone.\n\n\"Finding Napoleon's portrait,\" he said to himself, \"in the possession\nof a man who professes so great a hate for the usurper! Found, too,\nby M. de Renal, who is so great an _ultra_, and is now in a state of\nirritation, and, to complete my imprudence, lines written in my own\nhandwriting on the white cardboard behind the portrait, lines, too,\nwhich can leave no doubt on the score of my excessive admiration. And\neach of these transports of love is dated. There was one the day before\nyesterday.\"\n\n\"All my reputation collapsed and shattered in a moment,\" said Julien\nto himself as he watched the box burn, \"and my reputation is my only\nasset. It is all I have to live by--and what a life to, by heaven!\"\n\nAn hour afterwards, this fatigue, together with the pity which he felt\nfor himself made him inclined to be more tender. He met Madame de Renal\nand took her hand, which he kissed with more sincerity than he had\never done before. She blushed with happiness and almost simultaneously\nrebuffed Julien with all the anger of jealousy. Julien's pride which\nhad been so recently wounded made him act foolishly at this juncture.\nHe saw in Madame de Renal nothing but a rich woman, he disdainfully let\nher hand fall and went away. He went and walked about meditatively in\nthe garden. Soon a bitter smile appeared on his lips.\n\n\"Here I am walking about as serenely as a man who is master of his own\ntime. I am not bothering about the children! I am exposing myself to M.\nde Renal's humiliating remarks, and he will be quite right.\" He ran to\nthe children's room. The caresses of the youngest child, whom he loved\nvery much, somewhat calmed his agony.\n\n\"He does not despise me yet,\" thought Julien. But he soon reproached\nhimself for this alleviation of his agony as though it were a new\nweakness. The children caress me just in the same way in which they\nwould caress the young hunting-hound which was bought yesterday.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nA GREAT HEART AND A SMALL FORTUNE\n\n\n    But passion most disembles, yet betrays,\n    Even by its darkness, as the blackest sky\n    Foretells the heaviest tempest.\n                           _Don Juan_, c. 4, st. 75.\n\n\nM. De Renal was going through all the rooms in the chateau, and he came\nback into the children's room with the servants who were bringing back\nthe stuffings of the mattresses. The sudden entry of this man had the\neffect on Julien of the drop of water which makes the pot overflow.\n\nLooking paler and more sinister than usual, he rushed towards him. M.\nde Renal stopped and looked at his servants.\n\n\"Monsieur,\" said Julien to him, \"Do you think your children would have\nmade the progress they have made with me with any other tutor? If you\nanswer 'No,'\" continued Julien so quickly that M. de Renal did not have\ntime to speak, \"how dare you reproach me with neglecting them?\"\n\nM. de Renal, who had scarcely recovered from his fright, concluded from\nthe strange tone he saw this little peasant assume, that he had some\nadvantageous offer in his pocket, and that he was going to leave him.\n\nThe more he spoke the more Julien's anger increased, \"I can live\nwithout you, Monsieur,\" he added.\n\n\"I am really sorry to see you so upset,\" answered M. de Renal\nshuddering a little. The servants were ten yards off engaged in making\nthe beds.\n\n\"That is not what I mean, Monsieur,\" replied Julien quite beside\nhimself. \"Think of the infamous words that you have addressed to me,\nand before women too.\"\n\nM. de Renal understood only too well what Julien was asking, and a\npainful conflict tore his soul. It happened that Julien, who was really\nmad with rage, cried out,\n\n\"I know where to go, Monsieur, when I leave your house.\"\n\nAt these words M. de Renal saw Julien installed with M. Valenod. \"Well,\nsir,\" he said at last with a sigh, just as though he had called in\na surgeon to perform the most painful operation, \"I accede to your\nrequest. I will give you fifty francs a month. Starting from the day\nafter to-morrow which is the first of the month.\"\n\nJulien wanted to laugh, and stood there dumbfounded. All his anger had\nvanished.\n\n\"I do not despise the brute enough,\" he said to himself. \"I have no\ndoubt that that is the greatest apology that so base a soul can make.\"\n\nThe children who had listened to this scene with gaping mouths, ran\ninto the garden to tell their mother that M. Julien was very angry, but\nthat he was going to have fifty francs a month.\n\nJulien followed them as a matter of habit without even looking at M. de\nRenal whom he left in a considerable state of irritation.\n\n\"That makes one hundred and sixty-eight francs,\" said the mayor to\nhimself, \"that M. Valenod has cost me. I must absolutely speak a few\nstrong words to him about his contract to provide for the foundlings.\"\n\nA minute afterwards Julien found himself opposite M. de Renal.\n\n\"I want to speak to M. Chelan on a matter of conscience. I have the\nhonour to inform you that I shall be absent some hours.\"\n\n\"Why, my dear Julien,\" said M. de Renal smiling with the falsest\nexpression possible, \"take the whole day, and to-morrow too if you\nlike, my good friend. Take the gardener's horse to go to Verrieres.\"\n\n\"He is on the very point,\" said M. de Renal to himself, \"of giving an\nanswer to Valenod. He has promised me nothing, but I must let this\nhot-headed young man have time to cool down.\"\n\nJulien quickly went away, and went up into the great forest, through\nwhich one can manage to get from Vergy to Verrieres. He did not wish\nto arrive at M. Chelan's at once. Far from wishing to cramp himself in\na new pose of hypocrisy he needed to see clear in his own soul, and to\ngive audience to the crowd of sentiments which were agitating him.\n\n\"I have won a battle,\" he said to himself, as soon as he saw that he\nwas well in the forest, and far from all human gaze. \"So I have won a\nbattle.\"\n\nThis expression shed a rosy light on his situation, and restored him to\nsome serenity.\n\n\"Here I am with a salary of fifty francs a month, M. de Renal must be\nprecious afraid, but what of?\"\n\nThis meditation about what could have put fear into the heart of that\nhappy, powerful man against whom he had been boiling with rage only\nan hour back, completed the restoration to serenity of Julien's soul.\nHe was almost able to enjoy for a moment the delightful beauty of the\nwoods amidst which he was walking. Enormous blocks of bare rocks had\nfallen down long ago in the middle of the forest by the mountain side.\nGreat cedars towered almost as high as these rocks whose shade caused a\ndelicious freshness within three yards of places where the heat of the\nsun's rays would have made it impossible to rest.\n\nJulien took breath for a moment in the shade of these great rocks,\nand then he began again to climb. Traversing a narrow path that was\nscarcely marked, and was only used by the goat herds, he soon found\nhimself standing upon an immense rock with the complete certainty of\nbeing far away from all mankind. This physical position made him smile.\nIt symbolised to him the position he was burning to attain in the moral\nsphere. The pure air of these lovely mountains filled his soul with\nserenity and even with joy. The mayor of Verrieres still continued to\ntypify in his eyes all the wealth and all the arrogance of the earth;\nbut Julien felt that the hatred that had just thrilled him had nothing\npersonal about it in spite of all the violence which he had manifested.\nIf he had left off seeing M. de Renal he would in eight days have\nforgotten him, his castle, his dogs, his children and all his family.\n\"I forced him, I don't know how, to make the greatest sacrifice. What?\nmore than fifty crowns a year, and only a minute before I managed to\nextricate myself from the greatest danger; so there are two victories\nin one day. The second one is devoid of merit, I must find out the why\nand the wherefore. But these laborious researches are for to-morrow.\"\n\nStanding up on his great rock, Julien looked at the sky which was all\nafire with an August sun. The grasshoppers sang in the field about the\nrock; when they held their peace there was universal silence around\nhim. He saw twenty leagues of country at his feet. He noticed from\ntime to time some hawk, which launching off from the great rocks over\nhis head was describing in silence its immense circles. Julien's eye\nfollowed the bird of prey mechanically. Its tranquil powerful movements\nstruck him. He envied that strength, that isolation.\n\n\"Would Napoleon's destiny be one day his?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nAN EVENING\n\n\n    Yet Julia's very coldness still was kind,\n    And tremulously gently her small hand\n    Withdrew itself from his, but left behind\n    A little pressure, thrilling, and so bland,\n    And slight, so very slight that to the mind,\n    'Twas but a doubt.\n                        _Don Juan_, c. I. st, 71.\n\n\nIt was necessary, however, to put in an appearance at Verrieres. As\nJulien left the cure house he was fortunate enough to meet M. Valenod,\nwhom he hastened to tell of the increase in his salary.\n\nOn returning to Vergy, Julien waited till night had fallen before going\ndown into the garden. His soul was fatigued by the great number of\nviolent emotions which had agitated him during the day. \"What shall I\nsay to them?\" he reflected anxiously, as he thought about the ladies.\nHe was far from realising that his soul was just in a mood to discuss\nthose trivial circumstances which usually monopolise all feminine\ninterests. Julien was often unintelligible to Madame Derville, and even\nto her friend, and he in his turn only half understood all that they\nsaid to him. Such was the effect of the force and, if I may venture to\nuse such language, the greatness of the transports of passion which\noverwhelmed the soul of this ambitious youth. In this singular being it\nwas storm nearly every day.\n\nAs he entered the garden this evening, Julien was inclined to take an\ninterest in what the pretty cousins were thinking. They were waiting\nfor him impatiently. He took his accustomed seat next to Madame de\nRenal. The darkness soon became profound. He attempted to take hold of\na white hand which he had seen some time near him, as it leant on the\nback of a chair. Some hesitation was shewn, but eventually the hand was\nwithdrawn in a manner which indicated displeasure. Julien was inclined\nto give up the attempt as a bad job, and to continue his conversation\nquite gaily, when he heard M. de Renal approaching.\n\nThe coarse words he had uttered in the morning were still ringing in\nJulien's ears. \"Would not taking possession of his wife's hand in his\nvery presence,\" he said to himself, \"be a good way of scoring off that\ncreature who has all that life can give him. Yes! I will do it. I, the\nvery man for whom he has evidenced so great a contempt.\"\n\nFrom that moment the tranquillity which was so alien to Julien's real\ncharacter quickly disappeared. He was obsessed by an anxious desire\nthat Madame de Renal should abandon her hand to him.\n\nM. de Renal was talking politics with vehemence; two or three\ncommercial men in Verrieres had been growing distinctly richer than he\nwas, and were going to annoy him over the elections. Madame Derville\nwas listening to him. Irritated by these tirades, Julien brought his\nchair nearer Madame de Renal. All his movements were concealed by the\ndarkness. He dared to put his hand very near to the pretty arm which\nwas left uncovered by the dress. He was troubled and had lost control\nof his mind. He brought his face near to that pretty arm and dared to\nput his lips on it.\n\nMadame de Renal shuddered. Her husband was four paces away. She\nhastened to give her hand to Julien, and at the same time to push him\nback a little. As M. de Renal was continuing his insults against those\nne'er-do-wells and Jacobins who were growing so rich, Julien covered\nthe hand which had been abandoned to him with kisses, which were either\nreally passionate or at any rate seemed so to Madame de Renal. But\nthe poor woman had already had the proofs on that same fatal day that\nthe man whom she adored, without owning it to herself, loved another!\nDuring the whole time Julien had been absent she had been the prey to\nan extreme unhappiness which had made her reflect.\n\n\"What,\" she said to herself, \"Am I going to love, am I going to be in\nlove? Am I, a married woman, going to fall in love? But,\" she said to\nherself, \"I have never felt for my husband this dark madness, which\nnever permits of my keeping Julien out of my thoughts. After all, he\nis only a child who is full of respect for me. This madness will be\nfleeting. In what way do the sentiments which I may have for this young\nman concern my husband? M. de Renal would be bored by the conversations\nwhich I have with Julien on imaginative subjects. As for him, he simply\nthinks of his business. I am not taking anything away from him to give\nto Julien.\"\n\nNo hypocrisy had sullied the purity of that naive soul, now swept away\nby a passion such as it had never felt before. She deceived herself,\nbut without knowing it. But none the less, a certain instinct of virtue\nwas alarmed. Such were the combats which were agitating her when\nJulien appeared in the garden. She heard him speak and almost at the\nsame moment she saw him sit down by her side. Her soul was as it were\ntransported by this charming happiness which had for the last fortnight\nsurprised her even more than it had allured. Everything was novel for\nher. None the less, she said to herself after some moments, \"the mere\npresence of Julien is quite enough to blot out all his wrongs.\" She was\nfrightened; it was then that she took away her hand.\n\nHis passionate kisses, the like of which she had never received before,\nmade her forget that perhaps he loved another woman. Soon he was no\nlonger guilty in her eyes. The cessation of that poignant pain which\nsuspicion had engendered and the presence of a happiness that she had\nnever even dreamt of, gave her ecstasies of love and of mad gaiety.\nThe evening was charming for everyone, except the mayor of Verrieres,\nwho was unable to forget his _parvenu_ manufacturers. Julien left off\nthinking about his black ambition, or about those plans of his which\nwere so difficult to accomplish. For the first time in his life he was\nled away by the power of beauty. Lost in a sweetly vague reverie, quite\nalien to his character, and softly pressing that hand, which he thought\nideally pretty, he half listened to the rustle of the leaves of the\npine trees, swept by the light night breeze, and to the dogs of the\nmill on the Doubs, who barked in the distance.\n\nBut this emotion was one of pleasure and not passion. As he entered his\nroom, he only thought of one happiness, that of taking up again his\nfavourite book. When one is twenty the idea of the world and the figure\nto be cut in it dominate everything.\n\nHe soon, however, laid down the book. As the result of thinking of the\nvictories of Napoleon, he had seen a new element in his own victory.\n\"Yes,\" he said to himself, \"I have won a battle. I must exploit it. I\nmust crush the pride of that proud gentleman while he is in retreat.\nThat would be real Napoleon. I must ask him for three days' holiday to\ngo and see my friend Fouque. If he refuses me I will threaten to give\nhim notice, but he will yield the point.\"\n\nMadame de Renal could not sleep a wink. It seemed as though, until this\nmoment, she had never lived. She was unable to distract her thoughts\nfrom the happiness of feeling Julian cover her hand with his burning\nkisses.\n\nSuddenly the awful word adultery came into her mind. All the\nloathesomeness with which the vilest debauchery can invest sensual love\npresented itself to her imagination. These ideas essayed to pollute the\ndivinely tender image which she was fashioning of Julien, and of the\nhappiness of loving him. The future began to be painted in terrible\ncolours. She began to regard herself as contemptible.\n\nThat moment was awful. Her soul was arriving in unknown countries.\nDuring the evening she had tasted a novel happiness. Now she found\nherself suddenly plunged in an atrocious unhappiness. She had never\nhad any idea of such sufferings; they troubled her reason. She thought\nfor a moment of confessing to her husband that she was apprehensive\nof loving Julien. It would be an opportunity of speaking of him.\nFortunately her memory threw up a maxim which her aunt had once given\nher on the eve of her marriage. The maxim dealt with the danger of\nmaking confidences to a husband, for a husband is after all a master.\nShe wrung her hands in the excess of her grief. She was driven this way\nand that by clashing and painful ideas. At one moment she feared that\nshe was not loved. The next the awful idea of crime tortured her, as\nmuch as if she had to be exposed in the pillory on the following day in\nthe public square of Verrieres, with a placard to explain her adultery\nto the populace.\n\nMadame de Renal had no experience of life. Even in the full possession\nof her faculties, and when fully exercising her reason, she would never\nhave appreciated any distinction between being guilty in the eyes of\nGod, and finding herself publicly overwhelmed with the crudest marks of\nuniversal contempt.\n\nWhen the awful idea of adultery, and of all the disgrace which in her\nview that crime brought in its train, left her some rest, she began to\ndream of the sweetness of living innocently with Julien as in the days\nthat had gone by.\n\nShe found herself confronted with the horrible idea that Julien loved\nanother woman. She still saw his pallor when he had feared to lose\nher portrait, or to compromise her by exposing it to view. For the\nfirst time she had caught fear on that tranquil and noble visage. He\nhad never shewn such emotion to her or her children. This additional\nanguish reached the maximum of unhappiness which the human soul is\ncapable of enduring. Unconsciously, Madame de Renal uttered cries which\nwoke up her maid. Suddenly she saw the brightness of a light appear\nnear her bed, and recognized Elisa. \"Is it you he loves?\" she exclaimed\nin her delirium.\n\nFortunately, the maid was so astonished by the terrible trouble in\nwhich she found her mistress that she paid no attention to this\nsingular expression. Madame de Renal appreciated her imprudence.\n\"I have the fever,\" she said to her, \"and I think I am a little\ndelirious.\" Completely woken up by the necessity of controlling\nherself, she became less unhappy. Reason regained that supreme control\nwhich the semi-somnolent state had taken away. To free herself from her\nmaid's continual stare, she ordered her maid to read the paper, and\nit was as she listened to the monotonous voice of this girl, reading\na long article from the _Quotidienne_ that Madame de Renal made the\nvirtuous resolution to treat Julien with absolute coldness when she saw\nhim again.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nA JOURNEY\n\n\n        Elegant people are to be found in Paris. People of\n        character may exist in the provinces.--Sieyes\n\n\nAt five o'clock the following day, before Madame de Renal was visible,\nJulien obtained a three days' holiday from her husband. Contrary to his\nexpectation Julien found himself desirous of seeing her again. He kept\nthinking of that pretty hand of hers. He went down into the garden, but\nMadame de Renal kept him waiting for a long time. But if Julien had\nloved her, he would have seen her forehead glued to the pane behind the\nhalf-closed blinds on the first floor. She was looking at him. Finally,\nin spite of her resolutions, she decided to go into the garden. Her\nhabitual pallor had been succeeded by more lively hues. This woman,\nsimple as she was, was manifestly agitated; a sentiment of constraint,\nand even of anger, altered that expression of profound serenity which\nseemed, as it were, to be above all the vulgar interests of life and\ngave so much charm to that divine face.\n\nJulien approached her with eagerness, admiring those beautiful arms\nwhich were just visible through a hastily donned shawl. The freshness\nof the morning air seemed to accentuate still more the brilliance of\nher complexion which the agitation of the past night rendered all the\nmore susceptible to all impressions. This demure and pathetic beauty,\nwhich was, at the same time, full of thoughts which are never found in\nthe inferior classes, seemed to reveal to Julien a faculty in his own\nsoul which he had never before realised. Engrossed in his admiration of\nthe charms on which his his greedy gaze was riveted, Julien took for\ngranted the friendly welcome which he was expecting to receive. He was\nall the more astonished at the icy coldness which she endeavoured to\nmanifest to him, and through which he thought he could even distinguish\nthe intention of putting him in his place.\n\nThe smile of pleasure died away from his lips as he remembered his\nrank in society, especially from the point of view of a rich and noble\nheiress. In a single moment his face exhibited nothing but haughtiness\nand anger against himself. He felt violently disgusted that he could\nhave put off his departure for more than an hour, simply to receive so\nhumiliating a welcome.\n\n\"It is only a fool,\" he said to himself, \"who is angry with others; a\nstone falls because it is heavy. Am I going to be a child all my life?\nHow on earth is it that I manage to contract the charming habit of\nshowing my real self to those people simply in return for their money?\nIf I want to win their respect and that of my own self, I must shew\nthem that it is simply a business transaction between my poverty and\ntheir wealth, but that my heart is a thousand leagues away from their\ninsolence, and is situated in too high a sphere to be affected by their\npetty marks of favour or disdain.\"\n\nWhile these feelings were crowding the soul of the young tutor, his\nmobile features assumed an expression of ferocity and injured pride.\nMadame de Renal was extremely troubled. The virtuous coldness that she\nhad meant to put into her welcome was succeeded by an expression of\ninterest--an interest animated by all the surprise brought about by\nthe sudden change which she had just seen. The empty morning platitudes\nabout their health and the fineness of the day suddenly dried up.\nJulien's judgment was disturbed by no passion, and he soon found a\nmeans of manifesting to Madame de Renal how light was the friendly\nrelationship that he considered existed between them. He said nothing\nto her about the little journey that he was going to make; saluted her,\nand went away.\n\nAs she watched him go, she was overwhelmed by the sombre haughtiness\nwhich she read in that look which had been so gracious the previous\nevening. Her eldest son ran up from the bottom of the garden, and said\nas he kissed her,\n\n\"We have a holiday, M. Julien is going on a journey.\"\n\nAt these words, Madame de Renal felt seized by a deadly coldness. She\nwas unhappy by reason of her virtue, and even more unhappy by reason of\nher weakness.\n\nThis new event engrossed her imagination, and she was transported far\nbeyond the good resolutions which she owed to the awful night she had\njust passed. It was not now a question of resisting that charming\nlover, but of losing him for ever.\n\nIt was necessary to appear at breakfast. To complete her anguish, M. de\nRenal and Madame Derville talked of nothing but Julien's departure. The\nmayor of Verrieres had noticed something unusual in the firm tone in\nwhich he had asked for a holiday.\n\n\"That little peasant has no doubt got somebody else's offer up his\nsleeve, but that somebody else, even though it's M. Valenod, is bound\nto be a little discouraged by the sum of six hundred francs, which the\nannual salary now tots up to. He must have asked yesterday at Verrieres\nfor a period of three days to think it over, and our little gentleman\nruns off to the mountains this morning so as not to be obliged to give\nme an answer. Think of having to reckon with a wretched workman who\nputs on airs, but that's what we've come to.\"\n\n\"If my husband, who does not know how deeply he has wounded Julien,\nthinks that he will leave us, what can I think myself?\" said Madame de\nRenal to herself. \"Yes, that is all decided.\" In order to be able at\nany rate to be free to cry, and to avoid answering Madame Derville's\nquestions, she pleaded an awful headache, and went to bed.\n\n\"That's what women are,\" repeated M. de Renal, \"there is always\nsomething out of order in those complicated machines,\" and he went off\njeering.\n\nWhile Madame de Renal was a prey to all the poignancy of the terrible\npassion in which chance had involved her, Julien went merrily on his\nway, surrounded by the most beautiful views that mountain scenery\ncan offer. He had to cross the great chain north of Vergy. The path\nwhich he followed rose gradually among the big beech woods, and ran\ninto infinite spirals on the slope of the high mountain which forms\nthe northern boundary of the Doubs valley. Soon the traveller's view,\nas he passed over the lower slopes bounding the course of the Doubs\ntowards the south, extends as far as the fertile plains of Burgundy and\nBeaujolais. However insensible was the soul of this ambitious youth to\nthis kind of beauty, he could not help stopping from time to time to\nlook at a spectacle at once so vast and so impressive.\n\nFinally, he reached the summit of the great mountain, near which\nhe had to pass in order to arrive by this cross-country route at\nthe solitary valley where lived his friend Fouque, the young wood\nmerchant. Julien was in no hurry to see him; either him, or any other\nhuman being. Hidden like a bird of prey amid the bare rocks which\ncrowned the great mountain, he could see a long way off anyone coming\nnear him. He discovered a little grotto in the middle of the almost\nvertical slope of one of the rocks. He found a way to it, and was soon\nensconced in this retreat. \"Here,\" he said, \"with eyes brilliant with\njoy, men cannot hurt me.\" It occurred to him to indulge in the pleasure\nof writing down those thoughts of his which were so dangerous to him\neverywhere else. A square stone served him for a desk; his pen flew. He\nsaw nothing of what was around him. He noticed at last that the sun was\nsetting behind the distant mountains of Beaujolais.\n\n\"Why shouldn't I pass the night here?\" he said to himself. \"I have\nbread, and I am free.\" He felt a spiritual exultation at the sound of\nthat great word. The necessity of playing the hypocrite resulted in his\nnot being free, even at Fouque's. Leaning his head on his two hands,\nJulien stayed in the grotto, more happy than he had ever been in his\nlife, thrilled by his dreams, and by the bliss of his freedom. Without\nrealising it, he saw all the rays of the twilight become successively\nextinguished. Surrounded by this immense obscurity, his soul wandered\ninto the contemplation of what he imagined that he would one day meet\nin Paris. First it was a woman, much more beautiful and possessed of a\nmuch more refined temperament than anything he could have found in the\nprovinces. He loved with passion, and was loved. If he separated from\nher for some instants, it was only to cover himself with glory, and to\ndeserve to be loved still more.\n\nA young man brought up in the environment of the sad truths of Paris\nsociety, would, on reaching this point in his romance, even if we\nassume him possessed of Julien's imagination, have been brought back\nto himself by the cold irony of the situation. Great deeds would have\ndisappeared from out his ken together with hope of achieving them and\nhave been succeeded by the platitude. \"If one leave one's mistress\none runs alas! the risk of being deceived two or three times a day.\"\nBut the young peasant saw nothing but the lack of opportunity between\nhimself and the most heroic feats.\n\nBut a deep night had succeeded the day, and there were still two\nleagues to walk before he could descend to the cabin in which Fouque\nlived. Before leaving the little cave, Julien made a light and\ncarefully burnt all that he had written. He quite astonished his friend\nwhen he knocked at his door at one o'clock in the morning. He found\nFouque engaged in making up his accounts. He was a young man of high\nstature, rather badly made, with big, hard features, a never-ending\nnose, and a large fund of good nature concealed beneath this repulsive\nappearance.\n\n\"Have you quarelled with M. de Renal then that you turn up unexpectedly\nlike this?\" Julien told him, but in a suitable way, the events of the\nprevious day.\n\n\"Stay with me,\" said Fouque to him. \"I see that you know M. de Renal,\nM. Valenod, the sub-prefect Maugron, the cure Chelan. You have\nunderstood the subtleties of the character of those people. So there\nyou are then, quite qualified to attend auctions. You know arithmetic\nbetter than I do; you will keep my accounts; I make a lot in my\nbusiness. The impossibility of doing everything myself, and the fear\nof taking a rascal for my partner prevents me daily from undertaking\nexcellent business. It's scarcely a month since I put Michaud de\nSaint-Amand, whom I haven't seen for six years, and whom I ran across\nat the sale at Pontarlier in the way of making six thousand francs. Why\nshouldn't it have been you who made those six thousand francs, or at\nany rate three thousand. For if I had had you with me that day, I would\nhave raised the bidding for that lot of timber and everybody else would\nsoon have run away. Be my partner.\"\n\nThis offer upset Julien. It spoilt the train of his mad dreams. Fouque\nshowed his accounts to Julien during the whole of the supper--which the\ntwo friends prepared themselves like the Homeric heroes (for Fouque\nlived alone) and proved to him all the advantages offered by his timber\nbusiness. Fouque had the highest opinion of the gifts and character of\nJulien.\n\nWhen, finally, the latter was alone in his little room of pinewood, he\nsaid to himself: \"It is true I can make some thousands of francs here\nand then take up with advantage the profession of a soldier, or of a\npriest, according to the fashion then prevalent in France. The little\nhoard that I shall have amassed will remove all petty difficulties. In\nthe solitude of this mountain I shall have dissipated to some extent my\nawful ignorance of so many of the things which make up the life of all\nthose men of fashion. But Fouque has given up all thoughts of marriage,\nand at the same time keeps telling me that solitude makes him unhappy.\nIt is clear that if he takes a partner who has no capital to put into\nhis business, he does so in the hopes of getting a companion who will\nnever leave him.\"\n\n\"Shall I deceive my friend,\" exclaimed Julien petulantly. This being\nwho found hypocrisy and complete callousness his ordinary means of\nself-preservation could not, on this occasion, endure the idea of the\nslightest lack of delicate feeling towards a man whom he loved.\n\nBut suddenly Julien was happy. He had a reason for a refusal. What!\nShall I be coward enough to waste seven or eight years. I shall get to\ntwenty-eight in that way! But at that age Bonaparte had achieved his\ngreatest feats. When I shall have made in obscurity a little money by\nfrequenting timber sales, and earning the good graces of some rascally\nunder-strappers who will guarantee that I shall still have the sacred\nfire with which one makes a name for oneself?\n\nThe following morning, Julien with considerable sangfroid, said in\nanswer to the good Fouque, who regarded the matter of the partnership\nas settled, that his vocation for the holy ministry of the altars would\nnot permit him to accept it. Fouque did not return to the subject.\n\n\"But just think,\" he repeated to him, \"I'll make you my partner, or if\nyou prefer it, I'll give you four thousand francs a year, and you want\nto return to that M. de Renal of yours, who despises you like the mud\non his shoes. When you have got two hundred louis in front of you, what\nis to prevent you from entering the seminary? I'll go further: I will\nundertake to procure for you the best living in the district, for,\"\nadded Fouque, lowering his voice, I supply firewood to M. le ----, M.\nle ----, M. ----. I provide them with first quality oak, but they only\npay me for plain wood, but never was money better invested.\n\nNothing could conquer Julien's vocation. Fouque finished by thinking\nhim a little mad. The third day, in the early morning, Julien left his\nfriend, and passed the day amongst the rocks of the great mountain. He\nfound his little cave again, but he had no longer peace of mind. His\nfriend's offers had robbed him of it. He found himself, not between\nvice and virtue, like Hercules, but between mediocrity coupled with\nan assured prosperity, and all the heroic dreams of his youth. \"So I\nhave not got real determination after all,\" he said to himself, and it\nwas his doubt on this score which pained him the most. \"I am not of\nthe stuff of which great men are made, because I fear that eight years\nspent in earning a livelihood will deprive me of that sublime energy\nwhich inspires the accomplishment of extraordinary feats.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nTHE OPEN WORK STOCKINGS\n\n\n        A novel: a mirror which one takes out on one's walk\n        along the high road.--_Saint-Real_.\n\n\nWhen Julien perceived the picturesque ruins of the old church at Vergy,\nhe noticed that he had not given a single thought to Madame de Renal\nsince the day before yesterday. The other day, when I took my leave,\nthat woman made me realise the infinite distance which separated us;\nshe treated me like a labourer's son. No doubt she wished to signify\nher repentance for having allowed me to hold her hand the evening\nbefore.\n\n... It is, however very pretty, is that hand. What a charm, what a\nnobility is there in that woman's expression!\n\nThe possibility of making a fortune with Fouque gave a certain facility\nto Julien's logic. It was not spoilt quite so frequently by the\nirritation and the keen consciousness of his poverty and low estate in\nthe eyes of the world. Placed as it were on a high promontory, he was\nable to exercise his judgment, and had a commanding view, so to speak,\nof both extreme poverty and that competence which he still called\nwealth. He was far from judging his position really philosophically,\nbut he had enough penetration to feel different after this little\njourney into the mountain.\n\nHe was struck with the extreme uneasiness with which Madame de Renal\nlistened to the brief account which she had asked for of his journey.\nFouque had had plans of marriage, and unhappy love affairs, and long\nconfidences on this subject had formed the staple of the two friends'\nconversation. Having found happiness too soon, Fouque had realised\nthat he was not the only one who was loved. All these accounts had\nastonished Julien. He had learnt many new things. His solitary life of\nimagination and suspicion had kept him remote from anything which could\nenlighten him.\n\nDuring his absence, life had been nothing for Madame de Renal but a\nseries of tortures, which, though different, were all unbearable. She\nwas really ill.\n\n\"Now mind,\" said Madame Derville to her when she saw Julien arrive,\n\"you don't go into the garden this evening in your weak state; the damp\nair will make your complaint twice as bad.\"\n\nMadame Derville was surprised to see that her friend, who was always\nscolded by M. de Renal by reason of the excessive simplicity of her\ndress, had just got some open-work stockings and some charming little\nshoes which had come from Paris. For three days Madame de Renal's only\ndistraction had been to cut out a summer dress of a pretty little\nmaterial which was very fashionable, and get it made with express speed\nby Elisa. This dress could scarcely have been finished a few moments\nbefore Julien's arrival, but Madame de Renal put it on immediately. Her\nfriend had no longer any doubt. \"She loves,\" unhappy woman, said Madame\nDerville to herself. She understood all the strange symptoms of the\nmalady.\n\nShe saw her speak to Julien. The most violent blush was succeeded by\npallor. Anxiety was depicted in her eyes, which were riveted on those\nof the young tutor. Madame de Renal expected every minute that he would\ngive an explanation of his conduct, and announce that he was either\ngoing to leave the house or stay there. Julien carefully avoided that\nsubject, and did not even think of it. After terrible struggles, Madame\nde Renal eventually dared to say to him in a trembling voice that\nmirrored all her passion:\n\n\"Are you going to leave your pupils to take another place?\"\n\nJulien was struck by Madame de Renal's hesitating voice and look.\n\"That woman loves me,\" he said to himself! \"But after this temporary\nmoment of weakness, for which her pride is no doubt reproaching her,\nand as soon as she has ceased fearing that I shall leave, she will be\nas haughty as ever.\" This view of their mutual position passed through\nJulien's mind as rapidly as a flash of lightning. He answered with some\nhesitation,\n\n\"I shall be extremely distressed to leave children who are so nice\nand so well-born, but perhaps it will be necessary. One has duties to\noneself as well.\"\n\nAs he pronounced the expression, \"well-born\" (it was one of those\naristocratic phrases which Julien had recently learnt), he became\nanimated by a profound feeling of antipathy.\n\n\"I am not well-born,\" he said to himself, \"in that woman's eyes.\"\n\nAs Madame de Renal listened to him, she admired his genius and his\nbeauty, and the hinted possibility of his departure pierced her\nheart. All her friends at Verrieres who had come to dine at Vergy\nduring Julien's absence had complimented her almost jealously on the\nastonishing man whom her husband had had the good fortune to unearth.\nIt was not that they understood anything about the progress of\nchildren. The feat of knowing his Bible by heart, and what is more, of\nknowing it in Latin, had struck the inhabitants of Verrieres with an\nadmiration which will last perhaps a century.\n\nJulien, who never spoke to anyone, was ignorant of all this. If Madame\nde Renal had possessed the slightest presence of mind, she would have\ncomplimented him on the reputation which he had won, and Julien's\npride, once satisfied, he would have been sweet and amiable towards\nher, especially as he thought her new dress charming. Madame de Renal\nwas also pleased with her pretty dress, and with what Julien had\nsaid to her about it, and wanted to walk round the garden. But she\nsoon confessed that she was incapable of walking. She had taken the\ntraveller's arm, and the contact of that arm, far from increasing her\nstrength, deprived her of it completely.\n\nIt was night. They had scarcely sat down before Julien, availing\nhimself of his old privilege, dared to bring his lips near his pretty\nneighbour's arm, and to take her hand. He kept thinking of the boldness\nwhich Fouque had exhibited with his mistresses and not of Madame de\nRenal; the word \"well-born\" was still heavy on his heart. He felt his\nhand pressed, but experienced no pleasure. So far from his being proud,\nor even grateful for the sentiment that Madame de Renal was betraying\nthat evening by only too evident signs, he was almost insensible to\nher beauty, her elegance, and her freshness. Purity of soul, and the\nabsence of all hateful emotion, doubtless prolong the duration of\nyouth. It is the face which ages first with the majority of women.\n\nJulien sulked all the evening. Up to the present he had only been angry\nwith the social order, but from that time that Fouque had offered him\nan ignoble means of obtaining a competency, he was irritated with\nhimself. Julien was so engrossed in his thoughts, that, although from\ntime to time he said a few words to the ladies, he eventually let go\nMadame de Renal's hand without noticing it. This action overwhelmed the\nsoul of the poor woman. She saw in it her whole fate.\n\nIf she had been certain of Julien's affection, her virtue would\npossibly have found strength to resist him. But trembling lest she\nshould lose him for ever, she was distracted by her passion to\nthe point of taking again Julien's hand, which he had left in his\nabsent-mindedness leaning on the back of the chair. This action woke up\nthis ambitious youth; he would have liked to have had for witnesses all\nthose proud nobles who had regarded him at meals, when he was at the\nbottom of the table with the children, with so condescending a smile.\n\"That woman cannot despise me; in that case,\" he said to himself. \"I\nought to shew my appreciation of her beauty. I owe it to myself to be\nher lover.\" That idea would not have occurred to him before the naive\nconfidences which his friend had made.\n\nThe sudden resolution which he had just made formed an agreeable\ndistraction. He kept saying to himself, \"I must have one of those two\nwomen;\" he realised that he would have very much preferred to have\npaid court to Madame Derville. It was not that she was more agreeable,\nbut that she had always seen him as the tutor distinguished by his\nknowledge, and not as the journeyman carpenter with his cloth jacket\nfolded under his arm as he had first appeared to Madame de Renal.\n\nIt was precisely as a young workman, blushing up to the whites of his\neyes, standing by the door of the house and not daring to ring, that he\nmade the most alluring appeal to Madame de Renal's imagination.\n\nAs he went on reviewing his position, Julien saw that the conquest of\nMadame Derville, who had probably noticed the taste which Madame de\nRenal was manifesting for him, was out of the question. He was thus\nbrought back to the latter lady. \"What do I know of the character of\nthat woman?\" said Julien to himself. \"Only this: before my journey, I\nused to take her hand, and she used to take it away. To-day, I take my\nhand away, and she seizes and presses it. A fine opportunity to pay her\nback all the contempt she had had for me. God knows how many lovers she\nhas had, probably she is only deciding in my favour by reason of the\neasiness of assignations.\"\n\nSuch, alas, is the misfortune of an excessive civilisation. The soul\nof a young man of twenty, possessed of any education, is a thousand\nleagues away from that _abandon_ without which love is frequently but\nthe most tedious of duties.\n\n\"I owe it all the more to myself,\" went on the petty vanity of Julien,\n\"to succeed with that woman, by reason of the fact that if I ever make\na fortune, and I am reproached by anyone with my menial position as a\ntutor, I shall then be able to give out that it was love which got me\nthe post.\"\n\nJulien again took his hand away from Madame de Renal, and then took her\nhand again and pressed it. As they went back to the drawing-room about\nmidnight, Madame de Renal said to him in a whisper.\n\n\"You are leaving us, you are going?\"\n\nJulien answered with a sigh.\n\n\"I absolutely must leave, for I love you passionately. It is wrong\n... how wrong indeed for a young priest?\" Madame de Renal leant upon\nhis arm, and with so much abandon that her cheek felt the warmth of\nJulien's.\n\nThe nights of these two persons were quite different. Madame de\nRenal was exalted by the ecstacies of the highest moral pleasure. A\ncoquettish young girl, who loves early in life, gets habituated to\nthe trouble of love, and when she reaches the age of real passion,\nfinds the charm of novelty lacking. As Madame de Renal had never read\nany novels, all the refinements of her happiness were new to her. No\nmournful truth came to chill her, not even the spectre of the future.\nShe imagined herself as happy in ten years' time as she was at the\npresent moment. Even the idea of virtue and of her sworn fidelity to M.\nde Renal, which had agitated her some days past, now presented itself\nin vain, and was sent about its business like an importunate visitor.\n\"I will never grant anything to Julien,\" said Madame de Renal; \"we will\nlive in the future like we have been living for the last month. He\nshall be a friend.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nTHE ENGLISH SCISSORS\n\n\n        A young girl of sixteen had a pink complexion, and yet\n        used red rouge.--_Polidori_.\n\n\nFouque's offer had, as a matter of fact, taken away all Julien's\nhappiness; he could not make up his mind to any definite course. \"Alas!\nperhaps I am lacking in character. I should have been a bad soldier of\nNapoleon. At least,\" he added, \"my little intrigue with the mistress of\nthe house will distract me a little.\"\n\nHappily for him, even in this little subordinate incident, his inner\nemotions quite failed to correspond with his flippant words. He was\nfrightened of Madame de Renal because of her pretty dress. In his\neyes, that dress was a vanguard of Paris. His pride refused to leave\nanything to chance and the inspiration of the moment. He made himself\na very minute plan of campaign, moulded on the confidences of Fouque,\nand a little that he had read about love in the Bible. As he was very\nnervous, though he did not admit it to himself, he wrote down this plan.\n\nMadame de Renal was alone with him for a moment in the drawing-room on\nthe following morning.\n\n\"Have you no other name except Julien,\" she said.\n\nOur hero was at a loss to answer so nattering a question. This\ncircumstance had not been anticipated in his plan. If he had not been\nstupid enough to have made a plan, Julien's quick wit would have served\nhim well, and the surprise would only have intensified the quickness of\nhis perception.\n\nHe was clumsy, and exaggerated his clumsiness, Madame de Renal quickly\nforgave him. She attributed it to a charming frankness. And an air of\nfrankness was the very thing which in her view was just lacking in this\nman who was acknowledged to have so much genius.\n\n\"That little tutor of yours inspires me with a great deal of\nsuspicion,\" said Madame Derville to her sometimes. \"I think he looks as\nif he were always thinking, and he never acts without calculation. He\nis a sly fox.\"\n\nJulien remained profoundly humiliated by the misfortune of not having\nknown what answer to make to Madame de Renal.\n\n\"A man like I am ought to make up for this check!\" and seizing the\nmoment when they were passing from one room to another, he thought it\nwas his duty to give Madame de Renal a kiss.\n\nNothing could have been less tactful, nothing less agreeable, and\nnothing more imprudent both for him and for her. They were within\nan inch of being noticed. Madame de Renal thought him mad. She was\nfrightened, and above all, shocked. This stupidity reminded her of M.\nValenod.\n\n\"What would happen to me,\" she said to herself, \"if I were alone with\nhim?\" All her virtue returned, because her love was waning.\n\nShe so arranged it that one of her children always remained with her.\nJulien found the day very tedious, and passed it entirely in clumsily\nputting into operation his plan of seduction. He did not look at Madame\nde Renal on a single occasion without that look having a reason, but\nnevertheless he was not sufficiently stupid to fail to see that he was\nnot succeeding at all in being amiable, and was succeeding even less in\nbeing fascinating.\n\nMadame de Renal did not recover from her astonishment at finding him\nso awkward and at the same time so bold. \"It is the timidity of love\nin men of intellect,\" she said to herself with an inexpressible joy.\n\"Could it be possible that he had never been loved by my rival?\"\n\nAfter breakfast Madame de Renal went back to the drawing-room to\nreceive the visit of M. Charcot de Maugiron, the sub-prefect of Bray.\nShe was working at a little frame of fancy-work some distance from the\nground. Madame Derville was at her side; that was how she was placed\nwhen our hero thought it suitable to advance his boot in the full\nlight and press the pretty foot of Madame de Renal, whose open-work\nstockings, and pretty Paris shoe were evidently attracting the looks of\nthe gallant sub-prefect.\n\nMadame de Renal was very much afraid, and let fall her scissors, her\nball of wool and her needles, so that Julien's movement could be passed\nfor a clumsy effort, intended to prevent the fall of the scissors,\nwhich presumably he had seen slide. Fortunately, these little scissors\nof English steel were broken, and Madame de Renal did not spare her\nregrets that Julien had not succeeded in getting nearer to her. \"You\nnoticed them falling before I did--you could have prevented it,\ninstead, all your zealousness only succeeding in giving me a very big\nkick.\" All this took in the sub-perfect, but not Madame Derville. \"That\npretty boy has very silly manners,\" she thought. The social code of a\nprovincial capital never forgives this kind of lapse.\n\nMadame de Renal found an opportunity of saying to Julien, \"Be prudent,\nI order you.\"\n\nJulien appreciated his own clumsiness. He was upset. He deliberated\nwith himself for a long time, in order to ascertain whether or not he\nought to be angry at the expression \"I order you.\" He was silly enough\nto think she might have said \"I order you,\" if it were some question\nconcerning the children's education, but in answering my love she puts\nme on an equality. It is impossible to love without equality ... and\nall his mind ran riot in making common-places on equality. He angrily\nrepeated to himself that verse of Corneille which Madame Derville had\ntaught him some days before.\n\n                                      \"L'amour\n        les egalites, et ne les cherche pas.\"\n\nJulien who had never had a mistress in his whole life, but yet insisted\non playing the role of a Don Juan, made a shocking fool of himself all\nday. He had only one sensible idea. Bored with himself and Madame de\nRenal, he viewed with apprehension the advance of the evening when he\nwould have to sit by her side in the darkness of the garden. He told M.\nde Renal that he was going to Verrieres to see the cure. He left after\ndinner, and only came back in the night.\n\nAt Verrieres Julien found M. Chelan occupied in moving. He had just\nbeen deprived of his living; the curate Maslon was replacing him.\nJulien helped the good cure, and it occurred to him to write to Fouque\nthat the irresistible mission which he felt for the holy ministry had\npreviously prevented him from accepting his kind offer, but that he had\njust seen an instance of injustice, and that perhaps it would be safer\nnot to enter into Holy Orders.\n\nJulien congratulated himself on his subtlety in exploiting the\ndismissal of the cure of Verrieres so as to leave himself a loop-hole\nfor returning to commerce in the event of a gloomy prudence routing the\nspirit of heroism from his mind.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nTHE COCK'S SONG\n\n    Amour en latin faict amour;\n    Or done provient d'amour la mart,\n    Et, par avant, souley qui moreq,\n    Deuil, plours, pieges, forfailz, remord.\n                                     BLASON D'AMOUR.\n\n\nIf Julien had possessed a little of that adroitness on which he so\ngratuitously plumed himself, he could have congratulated himself the\nfollowing day on the effect produced by his journey to Verrieres. His\nabsence had caused his clumsiness to be forgotten. But on that day\nalso he was rather sulky. He had a ludicrous idea in the evening, and\nwith singular courage he communicated it to Madame de Renal. They had\nscarcely sat down in the garden before Julien brought his mouth near\nMadame de Renal's ear without waiting till it was sufficiently dark and\nat the risk of compromising her terribly, said to her,\n\n\"Madame, to-night, at two o'clock, I shall go into your room, I must\ntell you something.\"\n\nJulien trembled lest his request should be granted. His rakish pose\nweighed him down so terribly that if he could have followed his own\ninclination he would have returned to his room for several days and\nrefrained from seeing the ladies any more. He realised that he had\nspoiled by his clever conduct of last evening all the bright prospects\nof the day that had just passed, and was at his wits' end what to do.\n\nMadame de Renal answered the impertinent declaration which Julien had\ndared to make to her with indignation which was real and in no way\nexaggerated. He thought he could see contempt in her curt reply. The\nexpression \"for shame,\" had certainly occurred in that whispered answer.\n\nJulien went to the children's room under the pretext of having\nsomething to say to them, and on his return he placed himself beside\nMadame Derville and very far from Madame de Renal. He thus deprived\nhimself of all possibility of taking her hand. The conversation was\nserious, and Julien acquitted himself very well, apart from a few\nmoments of silence during which he was cudgelling his brains.\n\n\"Why can't I invent some pretty manoeuvre,\" he said to himself which\nwill force Madame de Renal to vouchsafe to me those unambiguous signs\nof tenderness which a few days ago made me think that she was mine.\n\nJulien was extremely disconcerted by the almost desperate plight\nto which he had brought his affairs. Nothing, however, would have\nembarrassed him more than success.\n\nWhen they separated at midnight, his pessimism made him think that\nhe enjoyed Madame Derville's contempt, and that probably he stood no\nbetter with Madame de Renal.\n\nFeeling in a very bad temper and very humiliated, Julien did not sleep.\nHe was leagues away from the idea of giving up all intriguing and\nplanning, and of living from day to day with Madame de Renal, and of\nbeing contented like a child with the happiness brought by every day.\n\nHe racked his brains inventing clever manoeuvres, which an instant\nafterwards he found absurd, and, to put it shortly, was very unhappy\nwhen two o'clock rang from the castle clock.\n\nThe noise woke him up like the cock's crow woke up St. Peter. The most\npainful episode was now timed to begin--he had not given a thought to\nhis impertinent proposition, since the moment when he had made it and\nit had been so badly received.\n\n\"I have told her that I will go to her at two o'clock,\" he said to\nhimself as he got up, \"I may be inexperienced and coarse, as the son\nof a peasant naturally would be. Madame Derville has given me to\nunderstand as much, but at any rate, I will not be weak.\"\n\nJulien had reason to congratulate himself on his courage, for he had\nnever put his self-control to so painful a test. As he opened his door,\nhe was trembling to such an extent that his knees gave way under him,\nand he was forced to lean against the wall.\n\nHe was without shoes; he went and listened at M. de Renal's door, and\ncould hear his snoring. He was disconsolate, he had no longer any\nexcuse for not going to her room. But, Great Heaven! What was he to do\nthere? He had no plan, and even if he had had one, he felt himself so\nnervous that he would have been incapable of carrying it out.\n\nEventually, suffering a thousand times more than if he had been walking\nto his death, he entered the little corridor that led to Madame de\nRenal's room. He opened the door with a trembling hand and made a\nfrightful noise.\n\nThere was light; a night light was burning on the mantelpiece. He\nhad not expected this new misfortune. As she saw him enter, Madame\nde Renal got quickly out of bed. \"Wretch,\" she cried. There was a\nlittle confusion. Julien forgot his useless plans, and turned to his\nnatural role. To fail to please so charming a woman appeared to him the\ngreatest of misfortunes. His only answer to her reproaches was to throw\nhimself at her feet while he kissed her knees. As she was speaking to\nhim with extreme harshness, he burst into tears.\n\nWhen Julien came out of Madame de Renal's room some hours afterwards,\none could have said, adopting the conventional language of the novel,\nthat there was nothing left to be desired. In fact, he owed to the love\nhe had inspired, and to the unexpected impression which her alluring\ncharms had produced upon him, a victory to which his own clumsy tactics\nwould never have led him.\n\nBut victim that he was of a distorted pride, he pretended even in\nthe sweetest moments to play the role of a man accustomed to the\nsubjugation of women: he made incredible but deliberate efforts to\nspoil his natural charm. Instead of watching the transports which he\nwas bringing into existence, and those pangs of remorse which only set\ntheir keenness into fuller relief, the idea of duty was continually\nbefore his eyes. He feared a frightful remorse, and eternal ridicule,\nif he departed from the ideal model he proposed to follow. In a word,\nthe very quality which made Julien into a superior being was precisely\nthat which prevented him from savouring the happiness which was placed\nwithin his grasp. It's like the case of a young girl of sixteen with a\ncharming complexion who is mad enough to put on rouge before going to a\nball.\n\nMortally terrified by the apparition of Julien, Madame de Renal was\nsoon a prey to the most cruel alarm. The prayers and despair of Julien\ntroubled her keenly.\n\nEven when there was nothing left for her to refuse him she pushed\nJulien away from her with a genuine indignation, and straightway threw\nherself into his arms. There was no plan apparent in all this conduct.\nShe thought herself eternally damned, and tried to hide from herself\nthe sight of hell by loading Julien with the wildest caresses. In a\nword, nothing would have been lacking in our hero's happiness, not even\nan ardent sensibility in the woman whom he had just captured, if he had\nonly known how to enjoy it. Julien's departure did not in any way bring\nto an end those ecstacies which thrilled her in spite of herself, and\nthose troubles of remorse which lacerated her.\n\n\"My God! being happy--being loved, is that all it comes to?\" This was\nJulien's first thought as he entered his room. He was a prey to the\nastonishment and nervous anxiety of the man who has just obtained\nwhat he has long desired. He has been accustomed to desire, and has\nno longer anything to desire, and nevertheless has no memories. Like\na soldier coming back from parade. Julien was absorbed in rehearsing\nthe details of his conduct. \"Have I failed in nothing which I owe to\nmyself? Have I played my part well?\"\n\nAnd what a part! the part of a man accustomed to be brilliant with\nwomen.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nTHE DAY AFTER\n\n\n    He turned his lips to hers and with his hand\n    Called back the tangles of her wandering hair.\n                               _Don Juan,_ c. I, st. 170.\n\n\nHappily for Julien's fame, Madame de Renal had been too agitated and\ntoo astonished to appreciate the stupidity of the man who had in a\nsingle moment become the whole to world her.\n\n\"Oh, my God!\" she said to herself, as she pressed him to retire when\nshe saw the dawn break, \"if my husband has heard the noise, I am lost.\"\nJulien, who had had the time to make up some phrases, remembered this\none,\n\n\"Would you regret your life?\"\n\n\"Oh, very much at a moment like this, but I should not regret having\nknown you.\"\n\nJulien thought it incumbent on his dignity to go back to his room in\nbroad daylight and with deliberate imprudence.\n\nThe continuous attention with which he kept on studying his slightest\nactions with the absurd idea of appearing a man of experience had only\none advantage. When he saw Madame de Renal again at breakfast his\nconduct was a masterpiece of prudence.\n\nAs for her, she could not look at him without blushing up to the eyes,\nand could not live a moment without looking at him. She realised her\nown nervousness, and her efforts to hide it redoubled. Julien only\nlifted his eyes towards her once. At first Madame de Renal admired\nhis prudence: soon seeing that this single look was not repealed, she\nbecame alarmed. \"Could it be that he does not love me?\" she said to\nherself. \"Alas! I am quite old for him. I am ten years older than he\nis.\"\n\nAs she passed from the dining-room to the garden, she pressed Julien's\nhand. In the surprise caused by so singular a mark of love, he regarded\nher with passion, for he had thought her very pretty over breakfast,\nand while keeping his eyes downcast he had passed his time in thinking\nof the details of her charms. This look consoled Madame de Renal. It\ndid not take away all her anxiety, but her anxiety tended to take away\nnearly completely all her remorse towards her husband.\n\nThe husband had noticed nothing at breakfast. It was not so with\nMadame Derville. She thought she saw Madame de Renal on the point of\nsuccumbing. During the whole day her bold and incisive friendship\nregaled her cousin with those innuendoes which were intended to paint\nin hideous colours the dangers she was running.\n\nMadame de Renal was burning to find herself alone with Julien. She\nwished to ask him if he still loved her. In spite of the unalterable\nsweetness of her character, she was several times on the point of\nnotifying her friend how officious she was.\n\nMadame Derville arranged things so adroitly that evening in the garden,\nthat she found herself placed between Madame de Renal and Julien.\nMadame de Renal, who had thought in her imagination how delicious it\nwould be to press Julien's hand and carry it to her lips, was not able\nto address a single word to him.\n\nThis hitch increased her agitation. She was devoured by one pang of\nremorse. She had so scolded Julien for his imprudence in coming to her\nroom on the preceding night, that she trembled lest he should not come\nto-night. She left the garden early and went and ensconced herself in\nher room, but not being able to control her impatience, she went and\nglued her ear to Julien's door. In spite of the uncertainty and passion\nwhich devoured her, she did not dare to enter. This action seemed\nto her the greatest possible meanness, for it forms the basis of a\nprovincial proverb.\n\nThe servants had not yet all gone to bed. Prudence at last compelled\nher to return to her room. Two hours of waiting were two centuries of\ntorture.\n\nJulien was too faithful to what he called his duty to fail to\naccomplish stage by stage what he had mapped out for himself.\n\nAs one o'clock struck, he escaped softly from his room, assured himself\nthat the master of the house was soundly asleep, and appeared in Madame\nde Renal's room. To-night he experienced more happiness by the side of\nhis love, for he thought less constantly about the part he had to play.\nHe had eyes to see, and ears to hear. What Madame de Renal said to him\nabout his age contributed to give him some assurance.\n\n\"Alas! I am ten years older than you. How can you love me?\" she\nrepeated vaguely, because the idea oppressed her.\n\nJulien could not realise her happiness, but he saw that it was genuine\nand he forgot almost entirely his own fear of being ridiculous.\n\nThe foolish thought that he was regarded as an inferior, by reason of\nhis obscure birth, disappeared also. As Julien's transports reassured\nhis timid mistress, she regained a little of her happiness, and of her\npower to judge her lover. Happily, he had not, on this occasion, that\nartificial air which had made the assignation of the previous night a\ntriumph rather than a pleasure. If she had realised his concentration\non playing a part that melancholy discovery would have taken away all\nher happiness for ever. She could only have seen in it the result of\nthe difference in their ages.\n\nAlthough Madame de Renal had never thought of the theories of love,\ndifference in age is next to difference in fortune, one of the great\ncommonplaces of provincial witticisms, whenever love is the topic of\nconversation.\n\nIn a few days Julien surrendered himself with all the ardour of his\nage, and was desperately in love.\n\n\"One must own,\" he said to himself, \"that she has an angelic kindness\nof soul, and no one in the world is prettier.\"\n\nHe had almost completely given up playing a part. In a moment of\nabandon, he even confessed to her all his nervousness. This confidence\nraised the passion which he was inspiring to its zenith. \"And I have no\nlucky rival after all,\" said Madame de Renal to herself with delight.\nShe ventured to question him on the portrait in which he used to be so\ninterested. Julien swore to her that it was that of a man.\n\nWhen Madame de Renal had enough presence of mind left to reflect, she\ndid not recover from her astonishment that so great a happiness could\nexist; and that she had never had anything of.\n\n\"Oh,\" she said to herself, \"if I had only known Julien ten years ago\nwhen I was still considered pretty.\"\n\nJulien was far from having thoughts like these. His love was still\nakin to ambition. It was the joy of possessing, poor, unfortunate and\ndespised as he was, so beautiful a woman. His acts of devotion, and his\necstacies at the sight of his mistress's charms finished by reassuring\nher a little with regard to the difference of age. If she had possessed\na little of that knowledge of life which the woman of thirty has\nenjoyed in the more civilised of countries for quite a long time, she\nwould have trembled for the duration of a love, which only seemed to\nthrive on novelty and the intoxication of a young man's vanity. In\nthose moments when he forgot his ambition, Julien admired ecstatically\neven the hats and even the dresses of Madame de Renal. He could not\nsate himself with the pleasure of smelling their perfume. He would open\nher mirrored cupboard, and remain hours on end admiring the beauty and\nthe order of everything that he found there. His love leaned on him and\nlooked at him. He was looking at those jewels and those dresses which\nhad had been her wedding presents.\n\n\"I might have married a man like that,\" thought Madame de Renal\nsometimes. \"What a fiery soul! What a delightful life one would have\nwith him?\"\n\nAs for Julien, he had never been so near to those terrible instruments\nof feminine artillery. \"It is impossible,\" he said to himself \"for\nthere to be anything more beautiful in Paris.\" He could find no flaw\nin his happiness. The sincere admiration and ecstacies of his mistress\nwould frequently make him forget that silly pose which had rendered\nhim so stiff and almost ridiculous during the first moments of the\nintrigue. There were moments where, in spite of his habitual hypocrisy,\nhe found an extreme delight in confessing to this great lady who\nadmired him, his ignorance of a crowd of little usages. His mistress's\nrank seemed to lift him above himself. Madame de Renal, on her side,\nwould find the sweetest thrill of intellectual voluptuousness in thus\ninstructing in a number of little things this young man who was so full\nof genius, and who was looked upon by everyone as destined one day to\ngo so far. Even the sub-prefect and M. Valenod could not help admiring\nhim. She thought it made them less foolish. As for Madame Derville, she\nwas very far from being in a position to express the same sentiments.\nRendered desperate by what she thought she divined, and seeing that\nher good advice was becoming offensive to a woman who had literally\nlost her head, she left Vergy without giving the explanation, which\nher friend carefully refrained from asking. Madame de Renal shed a few\ntears for her, and soon found her happiness greater than ever. As a\nresult of her departure, she found herself alone with her lover nearly\nthe whole day.\n\nJulien abandoned himself all the more to the delightful society of his\nsweetheart, since, whenever he was alone, Fouque's fatal proposition\nstill continued to agitate him. During the first days of his novel life\nthere were moments when the man who had never loved, who had never been\nloved by anyone, would find so delicious a pleasure in being sincere,\nthat he was on the point of confessing to Madame de Renal that ambition\nwhich up to then had been the very essence of his existence. He would\nhave liked to have been able to consult her on the strange temptation\nwhich Fouque's offer held out to him, but a little episode rendered any\nfrankness impossible.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nTHE FIRST DEPUTY\n\n    Oh, how this spring of love resembleth\n    The uncertain glory of an April day,\n    Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,\n    And by and by a cloud takes all away.\n                   _Two Gentlemen of Verona._\n\n\nOne evening when the sun was setting, and he was sitting near his love,\nat the bottom of the orchard, far from all intruders, he meditated\ndeeply. \"Will such sweet moments\" he said to himself \"last for ever?\"\nHis soul was engrossed in the difficulty of deciding on a calling. He\nlamented that great attack of unhappiness which comes at the end of\nchildhood and spoils the first years of youth in those who are not rich.\n\n\"Ah!\" he exclaimed, \"was not Napoleon the heaven-sent saviour for young\nFrenchmen? Who is to replace him? What will those unfortunate youths\ndo without him, who, even though they are richer than I am, have only\njust the few crowns necessary to procure an education for themselves,\nbut have not at the age of twenty enough money to buy a man and advance\nthemselves in their career.\" \"Whatever one does,\" he added, with a deep\nsigh, \"this fatal memory will always prevent our being happy.\"\n\nHe suddenly saw Madame de Renal frown. She assumed a cold and\ndisdainful air. She thought his way of looking at things typical of a\nservant. Brought up as she was with the idea that she was very rich,\nshe took it for granted that Julien was so also. She loved him a\nthousand times more than life and set no store by money.\n\nJulien was far from guessing these ideas, but that frown brought him\nback to earth. He had sufficient presence of mind to manipulate his\nphrases, and to give the noble lady who was sitting so near him on the\ngrass seat to understand that the words he had just repeated had been\nheard by him during his journey to his friend the wood merchant. It was\nthe logic of infidels.\n\n\"Well, have nothing to do with those people,\" said Madame de Renal,\nstill keeping a little of that icy air which had suddenly succeeded an\nexpression of the warmest tenderness.\n\nThis frown, or rather his remorse for his own imprudence, was the\nfirst check to the illusion which was transporting Julien. He said to\nhimself, \"She is good and sweet, she has a great fancy for me, but she\nhas been brought up in the enemy's camp. They must be particularly\nafraid of that class of men of spirit who, after a good education, have\nnot enough money to take up a career. What would become of those nobles\nif we had an opportunity of fighting them with equal arms. Suppose me,\nfor example, mayor of Verrieres, and as well meaning and honest as M.\nde Renal is at bottom. What short shrift I should make of the vicaire,\nM. Valenod and all their jobberies! How justice would triumph in\nVerrieres. It is not their talents which would stop me. They are always\nfumbling about.\"\n\nThat day Julien's happiness almost became permanent. Our hero lacked\nthe power of daring to be sincere. He ought to have had the courage to\nhave given battle, and on the spot; Madame de Renal had been astonished\nby Julien's phrase, because the men in her circle kept on repeating\nthat the return of Robespierre was essentially possible by reason of\nthose over-educated young persons of the lower classes. Madame de\nRenal's coldness lasted a longish time, and struck Julien as marked.\nThe reason was that the fear that she had said something in some way or\nother disagreeable to him, succeeded her annoyance for his own breach\nof taste. This unhappiness was vividly reflected in those features\nwhich looked so pure and so naive when she was happy and away from\nintruders.\n\nJulien no longer dared to surrender himself to his dreams. Growing\ncalmer and less infatuated, he considered that it was imprudent to go\nand see Madame de Renal in her room. It was better for her to come to\nhim. If a servant noticed her going about the house, a dozen different\nexcuses could explain it.\n\nBut this arrangement had also its inconveniences. Julien had received\nfrom Fouque some books, which he, as a theology student would never\nhave dared to ask for in a bookshop. He only dared to open them at\nnight. He would often have found it much more convenient not to be\ninterrupted by a visit, the very waiting for which had even on the\nevening before the little scene in the orchard completely destroyed his\nmood for reading.\n\nHe had Madame de Renal to thank for understanding books in quite a new\nway. He had dared to question her on a number of little things, the\nignorance of which cuts quite short the intellectual progress of any\nyoung man born out of society, however much natural genius one may\nchoose to ascribe to him.\n\nThis education given through sheer love by a woman who was extremely\nignorant, was a piece of luck. Julien managed to get a clear insight\ninto society such as it is to-day. His mind was not bewildered by the\nnarration of what it had been once, two thousand years ago, or even\nsixty years ago, in the time of Voltaire and Louis XV. The scales fell\nfrom his eyes to his inexpressible joy, and he understood at last what\nwas going on in Verrieres.\n\nIn the first place there were the very complicated intrigues which\nhad been woven for the last two years around the prefect of Besancon.\nThey were backed up by letters from Paris, written by the cream of\nthe aristocracy. The scheme was to make M. de Moirod (he was the most\ndevout man in the district) the first and not the second deputy of the\nmayor of Verrieres.\n\nHe had for a competitor a very rich manufacturer whom it was essential\nto push back into the place of second deputy.\n\nJulien understood at last the innuendoes which he had surprised,\nwhen the high society of the locality used to come and dine at M. de\nRenal's. This privileged society was deeply concerned with the choice\nof a first deputy, while the rest of the town, and above all, the\nLiberals, did not even suspect its possibility. The factor which made\nthe matter important was that, as everybody knows, the east side of the\nmain street of Verrieres has to be put more than nine feet back since\nthat street has become a royal route.\n\nNow if M. de Moirod, who had three houses liable to have their frontage\nput back, succeeded in becoming first deputy and consequently mayor in\nthe event of M. de Renal being elected to the chamber, he would shut\nhis eyes, and it would be possible to make little imperceptible repairs\nin the houses projecting on to the public road, as the result of which\nthey would last a hundred years. In spite of the great piety and proved\nintegrity of M. de Moirod, everyone was certain that he would prove\namenable, because he had a great many children. Among the houses liable\nto have their frontage put back nine belonged to the cream of Verrieres\nsociety.\n\nIn Julien's eyes this intrigue was much more important than the history\nof the battle of Fontenoy, whose name he now came across for the first\ntime in one of the books which Fouque had sent him. There had been\nmany things which had astonished Julien since the time five years ago\nwhen he had started going to the cure's in the evening. But discretion\nand humility of spirit being the primary qualities of a theological\nstudent, it had always been impossible for him to put questions.\n\nOne day Madame de Renal was giving an order to her husband's valet who\nwas Julien's enemy.\n\n\"But, Madame, to-day is the last Friday in the month,\" the man answered\nin a rather strange manner.\n\n\"Go,\" said Madame de Renal.\n\n\"Well,\" said Julien, \"I suppose he's going to go to that corn shop\nwhich was once a church, and has recently been restored to religion,\nbut what is he going to do there? That's one of the mysteries which I\nhave never been able to fathom.\"\n\n\"It's a very literary institution, but a very curious one,\" answered\nMadame de Renal. \"Women are not admitted to it. All I know is, that\neverybody uses the second person singular. This servant, for instance,\nwill go and meet M. Valenod there, and the haughty prig will not be\na bit offended at hearing himself addressed by Saint-Jean in that\nfamiliar way, and will answer him in the same way. If you are keen on\nknowing what takes place, I will ask M. de Maugiron and M. Valenod\nfor details. We pay twenty francs for each servant, to prevent their\ncutting our throats one fine day.\"\n\nTime flew. The memory of his mistress's charms distracted Julien from\nhis black ambition. The necessity of refraining from mentioning gloomy\nor intellectual topics since they both belonged to opposing parties,\nadded, without his suspecting it, to the happiness which he owed her,\nand to the dominion which she acquired over him.\n\nOn the occasions when the presence of the precocious children reduced\nthem to speaking the language of cold reason, Julien looking at her\nwith eyes sparkling with love, would listen with complete docility to\nher explanations of the world as it is. Frequently, in the middle of an\naccount of some cunning piece of jobbery, with reference to a road or\na contract, Madame de Renal's mind would suddenly wander to the very\npoint of delirium. Julien found it necessary to scold her. She indulged\nwhen with him in the same intimate gestures which she used with her\nown children. The fact was that there were days when she deceived\nherself that she loved him like her own child. Had she not repeatedly\nto answer his naive questions about a thousand simple things that a\nwell-born child of fifteen knows quite well? An instant afterwards\nshe would admire him like her master. His genius would even go so far\nas to frighten her. She thought she should see more clearly every day\nthe future great man in this young abbe. She saw him Pope; she saw him\nfirst minister like Richelieu. \"Shall I live long enough to see you in\nyour glory?\" she said to Julien. \"There is room for a great man; church\nand state have need of one.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nA KING AT VERRIERES\n\n\n    Do you not deserve to be thrown aside like a plebeian\n    corpse which has no soul and whose blood flows no\n    longer in its veins.\n                   _Sermon of the Bishop at the Chapel of Saint Clement_.\n\n\nOn the 3rd of September at ten o'clock in the evening, a gendarme woke\nup the whole of Verrieres by galloping up the main street. He brought\nthe news that His Majesty the King of ---- would arrive the following\nSunday, and it was already Tuesday. The prefect authorised, that is to\nsay, demanded the forming of a guard of honour. They were to exhibit\nall possible pomp. An express messenger was sent to Vergy. M. de Renal\narrived during the night and found the town in a commotion. Each\nindividual had his own pretensions; those who were less busy hired\nbalconies to see the King.\n\nWho was to command the Guard of Honour? M. de Renal at once realised\nhow essential it was in the interests of the houses liable to have\ntheir frontage put back that M. de Moirod should have the command.\nThat might entitle him to the post of first deputy-mayor. There was\nnothing to say against the devoutness of M. de Moirod. It brooked\nno comparison, but he had never sat on a horse. He was a man of\nthirty-six, timid in every way, and equally frightened of falling and\nof looking ridiculous. The mayor had summoned him as early as five\no'clock in the morning.\n\n\"You see, monsieur, I ask your advice, as though you already occupy\nthat post to which all the people on the right side want to carry you.\nIn this unhappy town, manufacturers are prospering, the Liberal party\nis becoming possessed of millions, it aspires to power; it will manage\nto exploit everything to its own ends. Let us consult the interests of\nthe king, the interest of the monarchy, and above all, the interest of\nour holy religion. Who do you think, monsieur, could be entrusted with\nthe command of the guard of honour?\"\n\nIn spite of the terrible fear with which horses inspired him, M. de\nMoirod finished by accepting this honour like a martyr. \"I shall know\nhow to take the right tone,\" he said to the mayor. There was scarcely\ntime enough to get ready the uniforms which had served seven years ago\non the occasion of the passage of a prince of the blood.\n\nAt seven o'clock, Madame de Renal arrived at Vergy with Julien and\nthe children. She found her drawing room filled with Liberal ladies\nwho preached the union of all parties and had come to beg her to urge\nher husband to grant a place to theirs in the guard of honour. One of\nthem actually asserted that if her husband was not chosen he would go\nbankrupt out of chagrin. Madame de Renal quickly got rid of all these\npeople. She seemed very engrossed.\n\nJulien was astonished, and what was more, angry that she should make\na mystery of what was disturbing her, \"I had anticipated it,\" he said\nbitterly to himself. \"Her love is being over-shadowed by the happiness\nof receiving a King in her house. All this hubbub overcomes her. She\nwill love me once more when the ideas of her caste no longer trouble\nher brain.\"\n\nAn astonishing fact, he only loved her the more.\n\nThe decorators began to fill the house. He watched a long time for the\nopportunity to exchange a few words. He eventually found her as she was\ncoming out of his own room, carrying one of his suits. They were alone.\nHe tried to speak to her. She ran away, refusing to listen to him. \"I\nam an absolute fool to love a woman like that, whose ambition renders\nher as mad as her husband.\"\n\nShe was madder. One of her great wishes which she had never confessed\nto Julien for fear of shocking him, was to see him leave off, if only\nfor one day, his gloomy black suit. With an adroitness which was truly\nadmirable in so ingenuous a woman, she secured first from M. de Moirod,\nand subsequently, from M. the sub-perfect de Maugiron, an assurance\nthat Julien should be nominated a guard of honour in preference to five\nor six young people, the sons of very well-off manufacturers, of whom\ntwo at least, were models of piety. M. de Valenod, who reckoned on\nlending his carriage to the prettiest women in the town, and on showing\noff his fine Norman steeds, consented to let Julien (the being he hated\nmost in the whole world) have one of his horses. But all the guards of\nhonour, either possessed or had borrowed, one of those pretty sky-blue\nuniforms, with two silver colonel epaulettes, which had shone seven\nyears ago. Madame de Renal wanted a new uniform, and she only had four\ndays in which to send to Besancon and get from there the uniform, the\narms, the hat, etc., everything necessary for a Guard of Honour. The\nmost delightful part of it was that she thought it imprudent to get\nJulien's uniform made at Verrieres. She wanted to surprise both him and\nthe town.\n\nHaving settled the questions of the guards of honour, and of the public\nwelcome finished, the mayor had now to organise a great religious\nceremony. The King of ---- did not wish to pass through Verrieres\nwithout visiting the famous relic of St. Clement, which is kept at\nBray-le-Haut barely a league from the town. The authorities wanted\nto have a numerous attendance of the clergy, but this matter was the\nmost difficult to arrange. M. Maslon, the new cure, wanted to avoid at\nany price the presence of M. Chelan. It was in vain that M. de Renal\ntried to represent to him that it would be imprudent to do so. M. the\nMarquis de La Mole whose ancestors had been governors of the province\nfor so many generations, had been chosen to accompany the King of ----.\nHe had known the abbe Chelan for thirty years. He would certainly ask\nnews of him when he arrived at Verrieres, and if he found him disgraced\nhe was the very man to go and route him out in the little house to\nwhich he had retired, accompanied by all the escort that he had at his\ndisposition. What a rebuff that would be?\n\n\"I shall be disgraced both here and at Besancon,\" answered the abbe\nMaslon, \"if he appears among my clergy. A Jansenist, by the Lord.\"\n\n\"Whatever you can say, my dear abbe,\" replied M. de Renal, \"I'll never\nexpose the administration of Verrieres to receiving such an affront\nfrom M. de la Mole. You do not know him. He is orthodox enough at\nCourt, but here in the provinces, he is a satirical wit and cynic,\nwhose only object is to make people uncomfortable. He is capable of\ncovering us with ridicule in the eyes of the Liberals, simply in order\nto amuse himself.\"\n\nIt was only on the night between the Saturday and the Sunday, after\nthree whole days of negotiations that the pride of the abbe Maslon bent\nbefore the fear of the mayor, which was now changing into courage. It\nwas necessary to write a honeyed letter to the abbe Chelan, begging\nhim to be present at the ceremony in connection with the relic of\nBray-le-Haut, if of course, his great age and his infirmity allowed him\nto do so. M. Chelan asked for and obtained a letter of invitation for\nJulien, who was to accompany him as his sub-deacon.\n\nFrom the beginning of the Sunday morning, thousands of peasants began\nto arrive from the neighbouring mountains, and to inundate the streets\nof Verrieres. It was the finest sunshine. Finally, about three o'clock,\na thrill swept through all this crowd. A great fire had been perceived\non a rock two leagues from Verrieres. This signal announced that the\nking had just entered the territory of the department. At the same\ntime, the sound of all the bells and the repeated volleys from an old\nSpanish cannon which belonged to the town, testified to its joy at\nthis great event. Half the population climbed on to the roofs. All the\nwomen were on the balconies. The guard of honour started to march, The\nbrilliant uniforms were universally admired; everybody recognised a\nrelative or a friend. They made fun of the timidity of M. de Moirod,\nwhose prudent hand was ready every single minute to catch hold of his\nsaddle-bow. But one remark resulted in all the others being forgotten;\nthe first cavalier in the ninth line was a very pretty, slim boy, who\nwas not recognised at first. He soon created a general sensation, as\nsome uttered a cry of indignation, and others were dumbfounded with\nastonishment. They recognised in this young man, who was sitting one\nof the Norman horses of M. Valenod, little Sorel, the carpenter's son.\nThere was a unanimous out-cry against the mayor, above all on the part\nof the Liberals. What, because this little labourer, who masqueraded as\nan abbe, was tutor to his brats, he had the audacity to nominate him\nguard of honour to the prejudice of rich manufacturers like so-and-so\nand so-and-so! \"Those gentlemen,\" said a banker's wife, \"ought to put\nthat insolent gutter-boy in his proper place.\"\n\n\"He is cunning and carries a sabre,\" answered her neighbour. \"He would\nbe dastardly enough to slash them in the face.\"\n\nThe conversation of aristocratic society was more dangerous. The ladies\nbegan to ask each other if the mayor alone was responsible for this\ngrave impropriety. Speaking generally, they did justice to his contempt\nfor lack of birth.\n\nJulien was the happiest of men, while he was the subject of so much\nconversation. Bold by nature, he sat a horse better than the majority\nof the young men of this mountain town. He saw that, in the eyes of the\nwomen, he was the topic of interest.\n\nHis epaulettes were more brilliant than those of the others, because\nthey were new. His horse pranced at every moment. He reached the zenith\nof joy.\n\nHis happiness was unbounded when, as they passed by the old rampart,\nthe noise of the little cannon made his horse prance outside the line.\nBy a great piece of luck he did not fall; from that moment he felt\nhimself a hero. He was one of Napoleon's officers of artillery, and was\ncharging a battery.\n\nOne person was happier than he. She had first seen him pass from one\nof the folding windows in the Hotel de Ville. Then taking her carriage\nand rapidly making a long detour, she arrived in time to shudder when\nhis horse took him outside the line. Finally she put her carriage to\nthe gallop, left by another gate of the town, succeeded in rejoining\nthe route by which the King was to pass, and was able to follow the\nGuard of Honour at twenty paces distance in the midst of a noble dust.\nSix thousand peasants cried \"Long live the King,\" when the mayor had\nthe honour to harangue his Majesty. An hour afterwards, when all the\nspeeches had been listened to, and the King was going to enter the\ntown, the little cannon began again to discharge its spasmodic volleys.\nBut an accident ensued, the victim being, not one of the cannoneers who\nhad proved their mettle at Leipsic and at Montreuil, but the future\ndeputy-mayor, M. de Moirod. His horse gently laid him in the one heap\nof mud on the high road, a somewhat scandalous circumstance, inasmuch\nas it was necessary to extricate him to allow the King to pass. His\nMajesty alighted at the fine new church, which was decked out to-day\nwith all its crimson curtains. The King was due to dine, and then\nafterwards take his carriage again and go and pay his respects to the\ncelebrated relic of Saint Clement. Scarcely was the King in the church\nthan Julien galloped towards the house of M. de Renal. Once there\nhe doffed with a sigh his fine sky-blue uniform, his sabre and his\nepaulettes, to put on again his shabby little black suit. He mounted\nhis horse again, and in a few moments was at Bray-le-Haut, which was\non the summit of a very pretty hill. \"Enthusiasm is responsible for\nthese numbers of peasants,\" thought Julien. It was impossible to move\na step at Verrieres, and here there were more than ten thousand round\nthis ancient abbey. Half ruined by the vandalism of the Revolution,\nit had been magnificently restored since the Restoration, and people\nwere already beginning to talk of miracles. Julien rejoined the abbe\nChelan, who scolded him roundly and gave him a cassock and a surplice.\nHe dressed quickly and followed M. Chelan, who was going to pay a call\non the young bishop of Agde. He was a nephew of M. de la Mole, who had\nbeen recently nominated, and had been charged with the duty of showing\nthe relic to the King. But the bishop was not to be found.\n\nThe clergy began to get impatient. It was awaiting its chief in the\nsombre Gothic cloister of the ancient abbey. Twenty-four cures had\nbeen brought together so as to represent the ancient chapter of\nBray-le-Haut, which before 1789 consisted of twenty-four canons. The\ncures, having deplored the bishop's youth for three-quarters of an\nhour, thought it fitting for their senior to visit Monseigneur to\napprise him that the King was on the point of arriving, and that it was\ntime to betake himself to the choir. The great age of M. Chelan gave\nhim the seniority. In spite of the bad temper which he was manifesting\nto Julien, he signed him to follow. Julien was wearing his surplice\nwith distinction. By means of some trick or other of ecclesiastical\ndress, he had made his fine curling hair very flat, but by a\nforgetfulness, which redoubled the anger of M. Chelan, the spurs of the\nGuard of Honour could be seen below the long folds of his cassock.\n\nWhen they arrived at the bishop's apartment, the tall lackeys with\ntheir lace-frills scarcely deigned to answer the old cure to the effect\nthat Monseigneur was not receiving. They made fun of him when he tried\nto explain that in his capacity of senior member of the chapter of\nBray-le-Haut, he had the privilege of being admitted at any time to the\nofficiating bishop.\n\nJulien's haughty temper was shocked by the lackeys' insolence. He\nstarted to traverse the corridors of the ancient abbey, and to shake\nall the doors which he found. A very small one yielded to his efforts,\nand he found himself in a cell in the midst of Monseigneur's valets,\nwho were dressed in black suits with chains on their necks. His hurried\nmanner made these gentlemen think that he had been sent by the bishop,\nand they let him pass. He went some steps further on, and found himself\nin an immense Gothic hall, which was extremely dark, and completely\nwainscotted in black oak. The ogive windows had all been walled in\nwith brick except one. There was nothing to disguise the coarseness\nof this masonry, which offered a melancholy contrast to the ancient\nmagnificence of the woodwork. The two great sides of this hall, so\ncelebrated among Burgundian antiquaries, and built by the Duke, Charles\nthe Bold, about 1470 in expiation of some sin, were adorned with richly\nsculptured wooden stalls. All the mysteries of the Apocalypse were to\nbe seen portrayed in wood of different colours.\n\nThis melancholy magnificence, debased as it was by the sight of the\nbare bricks and the plaster (which was still quite white) affected\nJulien. He stopped in silence. He saw at the other extremity of the\nhall, near the one window which let in the daylight, a movable mahogany\nmirror. A young man in a violet robe and a lace surplice, but with his\nhead bare, was standing still three paces from the glass. This piece\nof furniture seemed strange in a place like this, and had doubtless\nbeen only brought there on the previous day. Julien thought that the\nyoung man had the appearance of being irritated. He was solemnly giving\nbenedictions with his right hand close to the mirror.\n\n\"What can this mean,\" he thought. \"Is this young priest performing some\npreliminary ceremony? Perhaps he is the bishop's secretary. He will be\nas insolent as the lackeys. Never mind though! Let us try.\" He advanced\nand traversed somewhat slowly the length of the hall, with his gaze\nfixed all the time on the one window, and looking at the young man who\ncontinued without any intermission bestowing slowly an infinite number\nof blessings.\n\nThe nearer he approached the better he could distinguish his angry\nmanner. The richness of the lace surplice stopped Julien in spite of\nhimself some paces in front of the mirror. \"It is my duty to speak,\" he\nsaid to himself at last. But the beauty of the hall had moved him, and\nhe was already upset by the harsh words he anticipated.\n\nThe young man saw him in the mirror, turned round, and suddenly\ndiscarding his angry manner, said to him in the gentlest tone,\n\n\"Well, Monsieur, has it been arranged at last?\"\n\nJulien was dumbfounded. As the young man began to turn towards him,\nJulien saw the pectoral cross on his breast. It was the bishop of Agde.\n\"As young as that,\" thought Julien. \"At most six or eight years older\nthan I am!\"\n\nHe was ashamed of his spurs.\n\n\"Monseigneur,\" he said at last, \"I am sent by M. Chelan, the senior of\nthe chapter.\"\n\n\"Ah, he has been well recommended to me,\" said the bishop in a polished\ntone which doubled Julien's delight, \"But I beg your pardon, Monsieur,\nI mistook you for the person who was to bring me my mitre. It was badly\npacked at Paris. The silver cloth towards the top has been terribly\nspoiled. It will look awful,\" ended the young bishop sadly, \"And\nbesides, I am being kept waiting.\"\n\n\"Monseigneur, I will go and fetch the mitre if your grace will let me.\"\n\nJulien's fine eyes did their work.\n\n\"Go, Monsieur,\" answered the bishop, with charming politeness. \"I need\nit immediately. I am grieved to keep the gentlemen of the chapter\nwaiting.\"\n\nWhen Julien reached the centre of the hall, he turned round towards the\nbishop, and saw that he had again commenced giving benedictions.\n\n\"What can it be?\" Julien asked himself. \"No doubt it is a necessary\necclesiastical preliminary for the ceremony which is to take place.\"\nWhen he reached the cell in which the valets were congregated, he\nsaw the mitre in their hands. These gentlemen succumbed in spite of\nthemselves to his imperious look, and gave him Monseigneur's mitre.\n\nHe felt proud to carry it. As he crossed the hall he walked slowly. He\nheld it with reverence. He found the bishop seated before the glass,\nbut from time to time, his right hand, although fatigued, still gave a\nblessing. Julien helped him to adjust his mitre. The bishop shook his\nhead.\n\n\"Ah! it will keep on,\" he said to Julien with an air of satisfaction.\n\"Do you mind going a little way off?\"\n\nThen the bishop went very quickly to the centre of the room, then\napproached the mirror, again resumed his angry manner, and gravely\nbegan to give blessings.\n\nJulien was motionless with astonishment. He was tempted to understand,\nbut did not dare. The bishop stopped, and suddenly abandoning his grave\nmanner looked at him and said:\n\n\"What do you think of my mitre, monsieur, is it on right?\"\n\n\"Quite right, Monseigneur.\"\n\n\"It is not too far back? That would look a little silly, but I mustn't\non the other hand wear it down over the eyes like an officer's shako.\"\n\n\"It seems to me to be on quite right.\"\n\n\"The King of ---- is accustomed to a venerable clergy who are doubtless\nvery solemn. I should not like to appear lacking in dignity, especially\nby reason of my youth.\"\n\nAnd the bishop started again to walk about and give benedictions.\n\n\"It is quite clear,\" said Julien, daring to understand at last, \"He is\npractising giving his benediction.\"\n\n\"I am ready,\" the bishop said after a few moments. \"Go, Monsieur, and\nadvise the senior and the gentlemen of the chapter.\"\n\nSoon M. Chelan, followed by the two oldest cures, entered by a big\nmagnificently sculptured door, which Julien had not previously noticed.\nBut this time he remained in his place quite at the back, and was only\nable to see the bishop over the shoulders of ecclesiastics who were\npressing at the door in crowds.\n\nThe bishop began slowly to traverse the hall. When he reached the\nthreshold, the cures formed themselves into a procession. After a short\nmoment of confusion, the procession began to march intoning the psalm.\nThe bishop, who was between M. Chelan and a very old cure, was the last\nto advance. Julien being in attendance on the abbe Chelan managed to\nget quite near Monseigneur. They followed the long corridors of the\nabbey of Bray-le-Haut. In spite of the brilliant sun they were dark and\ndamp. They arrived finally at the portico of the cloister. Julien was\ndumbfounded with admiration for so fine a ceremony. His emotions were\ndivided between thoughts of his own ambition which had been reawakened\nby the bishop's youth and thoughts of the latter's refinement and\nexquisite politeness. This politeness was quite different to that of M.\nde Renal, even on his good days. \"The higher you lift yourself towards\nthe first rank of society,\" said Julien to himself, \"the more charming\nmanners you find.\"\n\nThey entered the church by a side door; suddenly an awful noise made\nthe ancient walls echo. Julien thought they were going to crumble. It\nwas the little piece of artillery again. It had been drawn at a gallop\nby eight horses and had just arrived. Immediately on its arrival it had\nbeen run out by the Leipsic cannoneers and fired five shots a minute as\nthough the Prussians had been the target.\n\nBut this admirable noise no longer produced any effect on Julien. He no\nlonger thought of Napoleon and military glory. \"To be bishop of Agde so\nyoung,\" he thought. \"But where is Agde? How much does it bring in? Two\nor three hundred thousand francs, perhaps.\"\n\nMonseigneur's lackeys appeared with a magnificent canopy. M. Chelan\ntook one of the poles, but as a matter of fact it was Julien who\ncarried it. The bishop took his place underneath. He had really\nsucceeded in looking old; and our hero's admiration was now quite\nunbounded. \"What can't one accomplish with skill,\" he thought.\n\nThe king entered. Julien had the good fortune to see him at close\nquarters. The bishop began to harangue him with unction, without\nforgetting a little nuance of very polite anxiety for his Majesty.\nWe will not repeat a description of the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut.\nThey filled all the columns of the journals of the department for a\nfortnight on end. Julien learnt from the bishop that the king was\ndescended from Charles the Bold.\n\nAt a later date, it was one of Julien's duties to check the accounts\nof the cost of this ceremony. M. de la Mole, who had succeeded in\nprocuring a bishopric for his nephew, had wished to do him the favour\nof being himself responsible for all the expenses. The ceremony alone\nof Bray-le-Haute cost three thousand eight hundred francs.\n\nAfter the speech of the bishop, and the answer of the king, his\nMajesty took up a position underneath the canopy, and then knelt very\ndevoutly on a cushion near the altar. The choir was surrounded by\nstalls, and the stalls were raised two steps from the pavement. It\nwas at the bottom of these steps that Julien sat at the feet of M.\nde Chelan almost like a train-bearer sitting next to his cardinal in\nthe Sixtine chapel at Rome. There was a _Te Deum_, floods of incense,\ninnumerable volleys of musketry and artillery; the peasants were drunk\nwith happiness and piety. A day like this undoes the work of a hundred\nnumbers of the Jacobin papers.\n\nJulien was six paces from the king, who was really praying with\ndevotion. He noticed for the first time a little man with a witty\nexpression, who wore an almost plain suit. But he had a sky-blue ribbon\nover this very simple suit. He was nearer the king than many other\nlords, whose clothes were embroidered with gold to such an extent that,\nto use Julien's expression, it was impossible to see the cloth. He\nlearnt some minutes later that it was Monsieur de la Mole. He thought\nhe looked haughty, and even insolent.\n\n\"I'm sure this marquis is not so polite as my pretty bishop,\" he\nthought. \"Ah, the ecclesiastical calling makes men mild and good. But\nthe king has come to venerate the relic, and I don't see a trace of the\nrelic. Where has Saint Clement got to?\"\n\nA little priest who sat next to him informed him that the venerable\nrelic was at the top of the building in a _chapelle ardente_.\n\n\"What is a _chapelle ardente_,\" said Julien to himself.\n\nBut he was reluctant to ask the meaning of this word. He redoubled his\nattention.\n\nThe etiquette on the occasion of a visit of a sovereign prince is\nthat the canons do not accompany the bishop. But, as he started on\nhis march to the _chapelle ardente_, my lord bishop of Agde called\nthe abbe Chelan. Julien dared to follow him. Having climbed up a long\nstaircase, they reached an extremely small door whose Gothic frame\nwas magnificently gilded. This work looked as though it had been\nconstructed the day before.\n\nTwenty-four young girls belonging to the most distinguished families in\nVerrieres were assembled in front of the door. The bishop knelt down\nin the midst of these pretty maidens before he opened the door. While\nhe was praying aloud, they seemed unable to exhaust their admiration\nfor his fine lace, his gracious mien, and his young and gentle face.\nThis spectacle deprived our hero of his last remnants of reason. At\nthis moment he would have fought for the Inquisition, and with a good\nconscience. The door suddenly opened. The little chapel was blazing\nwith light. More than a thousand candles could be seen before the\naltar, divided into eight lines and separated from each other by\nbouquets of flowers. The suave odour of the purest incense eddied\nout from the door of the sanctuary. The chapel, which had been newly\ngilded, was extremely small but very high. Julien noticed that there\nwere candles more than fifteen feet high upon the altar. The young\ngirls could not restrain a cry of admiration. Only the twenty-four\nyoung girls, the two cures and Julien had been admitted into the little\nvestibule of the chapel. Soon the king arrived, followed by Monsieur\nde la Mole and his great Chamberlain. The guards themselves remained\noutside kneeling and presenting arms.\n\nHis Majesty precipitated, rather than threw himself, on to the stool.\nIt was only then that Julien, who was keeping close to the gilded\ndoor, perceived over the bare arm of a young girl, the charming statue\nof St. Clement. It was hidden under the altar, and bore the dress of\na young Roman soldier. It had a large wound on its neck, from which\nthe blood seemed to flow. The artist had surpassed himself. The eyes,\nwhich though dying were full of grace, were half closed. A budding\nmoustache adored that charming mouth which, though half closed, seemed\nnotwithstanding to be praying. The young girl next to Julien wept warm\ntears at the sight. One of her tears fell on Julien's hand.\n\nAfter a moment of prayer in the profoundest silence, that was only\nbroken by the distant sound of the bells of all the villages within a\nradius of ten leagues, the bishop of Agde asked the king's permission\nto speak. He finished a short but very touching speech with a passage,\nthe very simplicity of which assured its effectiveness:\n\n\"Never forget, young Christian women, that you have seen one of the\ngreatest kings of the world on his knees before the servants of\nthis Almighty and terrible God. These servants, feeble, persecuted,\nassassinated as they were on earth, as you can see by the still\nbleeding wounds of Saint Clement, will triumph in Heaven. You will\nremember them, my young Christian women, will you not, this day for\never, and will detest the infidel. You will be for ever faithful to\nthis God who is so great, so terrible, but so good?\"\n\nWith these words the bishop rose authoritatively.\n\n\"You promise me?\" he said, lifting up his arm with an inspired air.\n\n\"We promise,\" said the young girls melting into tears.\n\n\"I accept your promise in the name of the terrible God,\" added the\nbishop in a thunderous voice, and the ceremony was at an end.\n\nThe king himself was crying. It was only a long time afterwards that\nJulien had sufficient self-possession to enquire \"where were the bones\nof the Saint that had been sent from Rome to Philip the Good, Duke of\nBurgundy?\" He was told that they were hidden in the charming waxen\nfigure.\n\nHis Majesty deigned to allow the young ladies who had accompanied him\ninto the chapel to wear a red ribbon on which were embroidered these\nwords, \"HATE OF THE INFIDEL. PERPETUAL ADORATION.\"\n\nMonsieur de la Mole had ten thousand bottles of wine distributed among\nthe peasants. In the evening at Verrieres, the Liberals made a point of\nhaving illuminations which were a hundred times better than those of\nthe Royalists. Before leaving, the king paid a visit to M. de Moirod.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nTHINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING\n\n\n    The grotesqueness of every-day events conceals the real\n           unhappiness of the passions.--_Barnave_.\n\nAs he was replacing the usual furniture in the room which M. de la\nMole had occupied, Julien found a piece of very strong paper folded in\nfour. He read at the bottom of the first page \"To His Excellency M.\nle Marquis de la Mole, peer of France, Chevalier of the Orders of the\nKing, etc. etc.\" It was a petition in the rough hand-writing of a cook.\n\n        \"Monsieur le Marquis, I have had religious principles\n        all my life. I was in Lyons exposed to the bombs at\n        the time of the siege, in '93 of execrable memory. I\n        communicate, I go to Mass every Sunday in the parochial\n        church. I have never missed the paschal duty, even in\n        '93 of execrable memory. My cook used to keep servants\n        before the revolution, my cook fasts on Fridays. I am\n        universally respected in Verrieres, and I venture to\n        say I deserve to be so. I walk under the canopy in the\n        processions at the side of the cure and of the mayor. On\n        great occasions I carry a big candle, bought at my own\n        expense.\n\n        \"I ask Monsieur the marquis for the lottery appointment\n        of Verrieres, which in one way or another is bound to\n        be vacant shortly as the beneficiary is very ill, and\n        moreover votes on the wrong side at elections, etc. De\n        Cholin.\"\n\nIn the margin of this petition was a recommendation signed \"de Moirod\"\nwhich began with this line, \"I have had the honour, the worthy person\nwho makes this request.\"\n\n\"So even that imbecile de Cholin shows me the way to go about things,\"\nsaid Julien to himself.\n\nEight days after the passage of the King of ---- through Verrieres,\nthe one question which predominated over the innumerable falsehoods,\nfoolish conjectures, and ridiculous discussions, etc., etc., which had\nhad successively for their object the king, the Marquis de la Mole,\nthe ten thousand bottles of wine, the fall of poor de Moirod, who,\nhoping to win a cross, only left his room a week after his fall, was\nthe absolute indecency of having _foisted_ Julien Sorel, a carpenter's\nson, into the Guard of Honour. You should have heard on this point the\nrich manufacturers of printed calico, the very persons who used to bawl\nthemselves hoarse in preaching equality, morning and evening in the\ncafe. That haughty woman, Madame de Renal, was of course responsible\nfor this abomination. The reason? The fine eyes and fresh complexion of\nthe little abbe Sorel explained everything else.\n\nA short time after their return to Vergy, Stanislas, the youngest of\nthe children, caught the fever; Madame de Renal was suddenly attacked\nby an awful remorse. For the first time she reproached herself for her\nlove with some logic. She seemed to understand as though by a miracle\nthe enormity of the sin into which she had let herself be swept. Up to\nthat moment, although deeply religious, she had never thought of the\ngreatness of her crime in the eyes of God.\n\nIn former times she had loved God passionately in the Convent of\nthe Sacred Heart; in the present circumstances, she feared him with\nequal intensity. The struggles which lacerated her soul were all the\nmore awful in that her fear was quite irrational. Julien found that\nthe least argument irritated instead of soothing her. She saw in the\nillness the language of hell. Moreover, Julien was himself very fond of\nthe little Stanislas.\n\nIt soon assumed a serious character. Then incessant remorse deprived\nMadame de Renal of even her power of sleep. She ensconced herself in a\ngloomy silence: if she had opened her mouth, it would only have been to\nconfess her crime to God and mankind.\n\n\"I urge you,\" said Julien to her, as soon as they got alone, \"not to\nspeak to anyone. Let me be the sole confidant of your sufferings. If\nyou still love me, do not speak. Your words will not be able to take\naway our Stanislas' fever.\" But his consolations produced no effect.\nHe did not know that Madame de Renal had got it into her head that, in\norder to appease the wrath of a jealous God, it was necessary either to\nhate Julien, or let her son die. It was because she felt she could not\nhate her lover that she was so unhappy.\n\n\"Fly from me,\" she said one day to Julien. \"In the name of God leave\nthis house. It is your presence here which kills my son. God punishes\nme,\" she added in a low voice. \"He is just. I admire his fairness.\nMy crime is awful, and I was living without remorse,\" she exclaimed.\n\"That was the first sign of my desertion of God: I ought to be doubly\npunished.\"\n\nJulien was profoundly touched. He could see in this neither hypocrisy\nnor exaggeration. \"She thinks that she is killing her son by loving me,\nand all the same the unhappy woman loves me more than her son. I cannot\ndoubt it. It is remorse for that which is killing her. Those sentiments\nof hers have real greatness. But how could I have inspired such a love,\nI who am so poor, so badly-educated, so ignorant, and sometimes so\ncoarse in my manners?\"\n\nOne night the child was extremely ill. At about two o'clock in the\nmorning, M. de Renal came to see it. The child consumed by fever, and\nextremely flushed, could not recognise its father. Suddenly Madame de\nRenal threw herself at her husband's feet; Julien saw that she was\ngoing to confess everything and ruin herself for ever.\n\nFortunately this extraordinary proceeding annoyed M. de Renal.\n\n\"Adieu! Adieu!\" he said, going away.\n\n\"No, listen to me,\" cried his wife on her knees before him, trying to\nhold him back. \"Hear the whole truth. It is I who am killing my son. I\ngave him life, and I am taking it back. Heaven is punishing me. In the\neyes of God I am guilty of murder. It is necessary that I should ruin\nand humiliate myself. Perhaps that sacrifice will appease the the Lord.\"\n\nIf M. de Renal had been a man of any imagination, he would then have\nrealized everything.\n\n\"Romantic nonsense,\" he cried, moving his wife away as she tried to\nembrace his knees. \"All that is romantic nonsense! Julien, go and fetch\nthe doctor at daybreak,\" and he went back to bed. Madame de Renal fell\non her knees half-fainting, repelling Julien's help with a hysterical\ngesture.\n\nJulien was astonished.\n\n\"So this is what adultery is,\" he said to himself. \"Is it possible\nthat those scoundrels of priests should be right, that they who commit\nso many sins themselves should have the privilege of knowing the true\ntheory of sin? How droll!\"\n\nFor twenty minutes after M. de Renal had gone back to bed, Julien saw\nthe woman he loved with her head resting on her son's little bed,\nmotionless, and almost unconscious. \"There,\" he said to himself, \"is\na woman of superior temperament brought to the depths of unhappiness\nsimply because she has known me.\"\n\n\"Time moves quickly. What can I do for her? I must make up my mind. I\nhave not got simply myself to consider now. What do I care for men and\ntheir buffooneries? What can I do for her? Leave her? But I should be\nleaving her alone and a prey to the most awful grief. That automaton\nof a husband is more harm to her than good. He is so coarse that he is\nbound to speak harshly to her. She may go mad and throw herself out of\nthe window.\"\n\n\"If I leave her, if I cease to watch over her, she will confess\neverything, and who knows, in spite of the legacy which she is bound to\nbring him, he will create a scandal. She may confess everything (great\nGod) to that scoundrel of an abbe who makes the illness of a child\nof six an excuse for not budging from this house, and not without a\npurpose either. In her grief and her fear of God, she forgets all she\nknows of the man; she only sees the priest.\"\n\n\"Go away,\" said Madame de Renal suddenly to him, opening her eyes.\n\n\"I would give my life a thousand times to know what could be of most\nuse to you,\" answered Julien. \"I have never loved you so much, my dear\nangel, or rather it is only from this last moment that I begin to adore\nyou as you deserve to be adored. What would become of me far from you,\nand with the consciousness that you are unhappy owing to what I have\ndone? But don't let my suffering come into the matter. I will go--yes,\nmy love! But if I leave you, dear; if I cease to watch over you, to be\nincessantly between you and your husband, you will tell him everything.\nYou will ruin yourself. Remember that he will hound you out of his\nhouse in disgrace. Besancon will talk of the scandal. You will be said\nto be absolutely in the wrong. You will never lift up your head again\nafter that shame.\"\n\n\"That's what I ask,\" she cried, standing up. \"I shall suffer, so much\nthe better.\"\n\n\"But you will also make him unhappy through that awful scandal.\"\n\n\"But I shall be humiliating myself, throwing myself into the mire, and\nby those means, perhaps, I shall save my son. Such a humiliation in the\neyes of all is perhaps to be regarded as a public penitence. So far as\nmy weak judgment goes, is it not the greatest sacrifice that I can make\nto God?--perhaps He will deign to accept my humiliation, and to leave\nme my son. Show me another sacrifice which is more painful and I will\nrush to it.\"\n\n\"Let me punish myself. I too am guilty. Do you wish me to retire to the\nTrappist Monastery? The austerity of that life may appease your God.\nOh, heaven, why cannot I take Stanislas's illness upon myself?\"\n\n\"Ah, do you love him then,\" said Madame de Renal, getting up and\nthrowing herself in his arms.\n\nAt the same time she repelled him with horror.\n\n\"I believe you! I believe you! Oh, my one friend,\" she cried falling on\nher knees again. \"Why are you not the father of Stanislas? In that case\nit would not be a terrible sin to love you more than your son.\"\n\n\"Won't you allow me to stay and love you henceforth like a brother? It\nis the only rational atonement. It may appease the wrath of the Most\nHigh.\"\n\n\"Am I,\" she cried, getting up and taking Julien's head between her two\nhands, and holding it some distance from her. \"Am I to love you as if\nyou were a brother? Is it in my power to love you like that?\" Julien\nmelted into tears.\n\n\"I will obey you,\" he said, falling at her feet. \"I will obey you in\nwhatever you order me. That is all there is left for me to do. My mind\nis struck with blindness. I do not see any course to take. If I leave\nyou you will tell your husband everything. You will ruin yourself\nand him as well. He will never be nominated deputy after incurring\nsuch ridicule. If I stay, you will think I am the cause of your son's\ndeath, and you will die of grief. Do you wish to try the effect of my\ndeparture. If you wish, I will punish myself for our sin by leaving you\nfor eight days. I will pass them in any retreat you like. In the abbey\nof Bray-le-Haut, for instance. But swear that you will say nothing to\nyour husband during my absence. Remember that if you speak I shall\nnever be able to come back.\"\n\nShe promised and he left, but was called back at the end of two days.\n\n\"It is impossible for me to keep my oath without you. I shall speak to\nmy husband if you are not constantly there to enjoin me to silence by\nyour looks. Every hour of this abominable life seems to last a day.\"\n\nFinally heaven had pity on this unfortunate mother. Little by little\nStanislas got out of danger. But the ice was broken. Her reason had\nrealised the extent of her sin. She could not recover her equilibrium\nagain. Her pangs of remorse remained, and were what they ought to have\nbeen in so sincere a heart. Her life was heaven and hell: hell when she\ndid not see Julien; heaven when she was at his feet.\n\n\"I do not deceive myself any more,\" she would say to him, even during\nthe moments when she dared to surrender herself to his full love. \"I\nam damned, irrevocably damned. You are young, heaven may forgive you,\nbut I, I am damned. I know it by a certain sign. I am afraid, who would\nnot be afraid at the sight of hell? but at the bottom of my heart I\ndo not repent at all. I would commit my sin over again if I had the\nopportunity. If heaven will only forbear to punish me in this world and\nthrough my children, I shall have more than I deserve. But you, at any\nrate, my Julien,\" she would cry at other moments, \"are you happy? Do\nyou think I love you enough?\"\n\nThe suspiciousness and morbid pride of Julien, who needed, above all,\na self-sacrificing love, altogether vanished when he saw at every hour\nof the day so great and indisputable a sacrifice. He adored Madame\nde Renal. \"It makes no difference her being noble, and my being a\nlabourer's son. She loves me.... she does not regard me as a valet\ncharged with the functions of a lover.\" That fear once dismissed,\nJulien fell into all the madness of love, into all its deadly\nuncertainties.\n\n\"At any rate,\" she would cry, seeing his doubts of her love, \"let me\nfeel quite happy during the three days we still have together. Let us\nmake haste; perhaps to-morrow will be too late. If heaven strikes me\nthrough my children, it will be in vain that I shall try only to live\nto love you, and to be blind to the fact that it is my crime which has\nkilled them. I could not survive that blow. Even if I wished I could\nnot; I should go mad.\"\n\n\"Ah, if only I could take your sin on myself as you so generously\noffered to take Stanislas' burning fever!\"\n\nThis great moral crisis changed the character of the sentiment\nwhich united Julien and his mistress. His love was no longer simply\nadmiration for her beauty, and the pride of possessing her.\n\nHenceforth their happiness was of a quite superior character. The flame\nwhich consumed them was more intense. They had transports filled with\nmadness. Judged by the worldly standard their happiness would have\nappeared intensified. But they no longer found that delicious serenity,\nthat cloudless happiness, that facile joy of the first period of their\nlove, when Madame de Renal's only fear was that Julien did not love her\nenough. Their happiness had at times the complexion of crime.\n\nIn their happiest and apparently their most tranquil moments, Madame\nde Renal would suddenly cry out, \"Oh, great God, I see hell,\" as she\npressed Julien's hand with a convulsive grasp. \"What horrible tortures!\nI have well deserved them.\" She grasped him and hung on to him like ivy\nonto a wall.\n\nJulien would try in vain to calm that agitated soul. She would take his\nhand, cover it with kisses. Then, relapsing into a gloomy reverie, she\nwould say, \"Hell itself would be a blessing for me. I should still have\nsome days to pass with him on this earth, but hell on earth, the death\nof my children. Still, perhaps my crime will be forgiven me at that\nprice. Oh, great God, do not grant me my pardon at so great a price.\nThese poor children have in no way transgressed against You. I, I am\nthe only culprit. I love a man who is not my husband.\"\n\nJulien subsequently saw Madame de Renal attain what were apparently\nmoments of tranquillity. She was endeavouring to control herself;\nshe did not wish to poison the life of the man she loved. They found\nthe days pass with the rapidity of lightning amid these alternating\nmoods of love, remorse, and voluptuousness. Julien lost the habit of\nreflecting.\n\nMademoiselle Elisa went to attend to a little lawsuit which she had at\nVerrieres. She found Valenod very piqued against Julien. She hated the\ntutor and would often speak about him.\n\n\"You will ruin me, Monsieur, if I tell the truth,\" she said one day to\nValenod. \"All masters have an understanding amongst themselves with\nregard to matters of importance. There are certain disclosures which\npoor servants are never forgiven.\"\n\nAfter these stereotyped phrases, which his curiosity managed to cut\nshort, Monsieur Valenod received some information extremely mortifying\nto his self-conceit.\n\nThis woman, who was the most distinguished in the district, the woman\non whom he had lavished so much attention in the last six years, and\nmade no secret of it, more was the pity, this woman who was so proud,\nwhose disdain had put him to the blush times without number, had just\ntaken for her lover a little workman masquerading as a tutor. And to\nfill the cup of his jealousy, Madame de Renal adored that lover.\n\n\"And,\" added the housemaid with a sigh, \"Julien did not put himself out\nat all to make his conquest, his manner was as cold as ever, even with\nMadame.\"\n\nElisa had only become certain in the country, but she believed that\nthis intrigue dated from much further back. \"That is no doubt the\nreason,\" she added spitefully, \"why he refused to marry me. And to\nthink what a fool I was when I went to consult Madame de Renal and\nbegged her to speak to the tutor.\"\n\nThe very same evening, M. de Renal received from the town, together\nwith his paper, a long anonymous letter which apprised him in the\ngreatest detail of what was taking place in his house. Julien saw him\npale as he read this letter written on blue paper, and look at him\nwith a malicious expression. During all that evening the mayor failed\nto throw off his trouble. It was in vain that Julien paid him court by\nasking for explanations about the genealogy of the best families in\nBurgundy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nANONYMOUS LETTERS\n\n\n    Do not give dalliance\n    Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw\n    To the fire i' the blood.--_Tempest_.\n\n\nAs they left the drawing-room about midnight, Julien had time to say to\nhis love,\n\n\"Don't let us see each other to-night. Your husband has suspicions. I\nwould swear that that big letter he read with a sigh was an anonymous\nletter.\"\n\nFortunately, Julien locked himself into his room. Madame de Renal had\nthe mad idea that this warning was only a pretext for not seeing her.\nShe absolutely lost her head, and came to his door at the accustomed\nhour. Julien, who had heard the noise in the corridor, immediately blew\nout his lamp. Someone was trying to open the door. Was it Madame de\nRenal? Was it a jealous husband?\n\nVery early next morning the cook, who liked Julien, brought him a book,\non the cover of which he read these words written in Italian: _Guardate\nalla pagina_ 130.\n\nJulien shuddered at the imprudence, looked for page 130, and found\npinned to it the following letter hastily written, bathed with tears,\nand full of spelling mistakes. Madame de Renal was usually very\ncorrect. He was touched by this circumstance, and somewhat forgot the\nawfulness of the indiscretion.\n\n        \"So you did not want to receive me to-night? There are\n        moments when I think that I have never read down to the\n        depths of your soul. Your looks frighten me. I am afraid\n        of you. Great God! perhaps you have never loved me? In\n        that case let my husband discover my love, and shut me\n        up in a prison in the country far away from my children.\n        Perhaps God wills it so. I shall die soon, but you will\n        have proved yourself a monster.\n\n        \"Do you not love me? Are you tired of my fits of folly\n        and of remorse, you wicked man? Do you wish to ruin me?\n        I will show you an easy way. Go and show this letter to\n        all Verrieres, or rather show it to M. Valenod. Tell him\n        that I love you, nay, do not utter such a blasphemy,\n        tell him I adore you, that it was only on the day I saw\n        you that my life commenced; that even in the maddest\n        moments of my youth I never even dreamt of the happiness\n        that I owe to you, that I have sacrificed my life to\n        you and that I am sacrificing my soul. You know that\n        I am sacrificing much more. But does that man know\n        the meaning of sacrifice? Tell him, I say, simply to\n        irritate him, that I will defy all evil tongues, that\n        the only misfortune for me in the whole world would\n        be to witness any change in the only man who holds me\n        to life. What a happiness it would be to me to lose\n        my life, to offer it up as a sacrifice and to have no\n        longer any fear for my children.\n\n        \"Have no doubt about it, dear one, if it is an\n        anonymous letter, it comes from that odious being who\n        has persecuted me for the last six years with his loud\n        voice, his stories about his jumps on horseback, his\n        fatuity, and the never ending catalogue of all his\n        advantages.\n\n        \"Is there an anonymous letter? I should like to discuss\n        that question with you, you wicked man; but no, you\n        acted rightly. Clasping you in my arms perhaps for the\n        last time, I should never have been able to argue as\n        coldly as I do, now that I am alone. From this moment\n        our happiness will no longer be so easy. Will that be a\n        vexation for you? Yes, on those days when you haven't\n        received some amusing book from M. Fouque. The sacrifice\n        is made; to-morrow, whether there is or whether there is\n        not any anonymous letter, I myself will tell my husband\n        I have received an anonymous letter and that it is\n        necessary to give you a golden bridge at once, find some\n        honourable excuse, and send you back to your parents\n        without delay.\n\n        \"Alas, dear one, we are going to be separated for a\n        fortnight, perhaps a month! Go, I will do you justice,\n        you will suffer as much as I, but anyway, this is the\n        only means of disposing of this anonymous letter. It is\n        not the first that my husband has received, and on my\n        score too. Alas! how I used to laugh over them!\n\n        \"My one aim is to make my husband think that the letter\n        comes from M. Valenod; I have no doubt that he is\n        its author. If you leave the house, make a point of\n        establishing yourself at Verrieres; I will manage that\n        my husband should think of passing a fortnight there\n        in order to prove to the fools there was no coldness\n        between him and me. Once at Verrieres, establish ties of\n        friendship with everyone, even with the Liberals. I am\n        sure that all their ladies will seek you out.\n\n        \"Do not quarrel with M. Valenod, or cut off his ears,\n        as you said you would one day. Try, on the contrary, to\n        ingratiate yourself with him. The essential point is\n        that it should be notorious in Verrieres that you are\n        going to enter the household either of Valenod or of\n        someone else to take charge of the children's education.\n\n        \"That is what my husband will never put up with. If he\n        does feel bound to resign himself to it, well, at any\n        rate, you will be living in Verrieres and I shall be\n        seeing you sometimes. My children, who love you so much,\n        will go and see you. Great God! I feel that I love my\n        children all the more because they love you. How is\n        all this going to end? I am wandering.... Anyway you\n        understand your line of conduct. Be nice, polite, but\n        not in any way disdainful to those coarse persons. I\n        ask you on my knees; they will be the arbiters of our\n        fate. Do not fear for a moment but that, so far as you\n        are concerned, my husband will conform to what public\n        opinion lays down for him.\n\n        \"It is you who will supply me with the anonymous letter.\n        Equip yourself with patience and a pair of scissors, cut\n        out from a book the words which you will see, then stick\n        them with the mouth-glue on to the leaf of loose paper\n        which I am sending you. It comes to me from M. Valenod.\n        Be on your guard against a search in your room; burn the\n        pages of the book which you are going to mutilate. If\n        you do not find the words ready-made, have the patience\n        to form them letter by letter. I have made the anonymous\n        letter too short.\n\n\n        ANONYMOUS LETTER.\n\n\n        'MADAME,\n\n        All your little goings-on are known, but the persons\n        interested in stopping have been warned. I have still\n        sufficient friendship left for you to urge you to cease\n        all relations with the little peasant. If you are\n        sensible enough to do this, your husband will believe\n        that the notification he has received is misleading, and\n        he will be left in his illusion. Remember that I have\n        your secret; tremble, unhappy woman, you must now _walk\n        straight_ before me.'\n\n\n        \"As soon as you have finished glueing together the\n        words that make up this letter (have you recognised the\n        director's special style of speech) leave the house, I\n        will meet you.\n\n        \"I will go into the village and come back with a\n        troubled face. As a matter of fact I shall be very much\n        troubled. Great God! What a risk I run, and all because\n        you thought you guessed an anonymous letter. Finally,\n        looking very much upset, I shall give this letter to my\n        husband and say that an unknown man handed it to me. As\n        for you, go for a walk with the children, on the road to\n        the great woods, and do not come back before dinner-time.\n\n        \"You will be able to see the tower of the dovecot from\n        the top of the rocks. If things go well for us, I\n        will place a white handkerchief there, in case of the\n        contrary, there will be nothing at all.\n\n        \"Ungrateful man, will not your heart find out some means\n        of telling me that you love me before you leave for that\n        walk. Whatever happens, be certain of one thing: I shall\n        never survive our final separation by a single day.\n        Oh, you bad mother! but what is the use of my writing\n        those two words, dear Julien? I do not feel them, at\n        this moment I can only think of you. I have only written\n        them so as not to be blamed by you, but what is the good\n        of deception now that I find myself face to face with\n        losing you? Yes, let my soul seem monstrous to you,\n        but do not let me lie to the man whom I adore. I have\n        already deceived only too much in this life of mine. Go!\n        I forgive you if you love me no more. I have not the\n        time to read over my letter. It is a small thing in my\n        eyes to pay for the happy days that I have just passed\n        in your arms with the price of my life. You know that\n        they will cost me more.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI\n\nDIALOGUE WITH A MASTER\n\n\n     Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we;\n     For such as we are made of, such we be.--_Twelfth Night_.\n\n\nIt was with a childish pleasure that for a whole hour Julien put the\nwords together. As he came out of his room, he met his pupils with\ntheir mother. She took the letter with a simplicity and a courage whose\ncalmness terrified him.\n\n\"Is the mouth-glue dry enough yet?\" she asked him.\n\n\"And is this the woman who was so maddened by remorse?\" he thought.\n\"What are her plans at this moment?\" He was too proud to ask her, but\nshe had never perhaps pleased him more.\n\n\"If this turns out badly,\" she added with the same coolness, \"I shall\nbe deprived of everything. Take charge of this, and bury it in some\nplace of the mountain. It will perhaps one day be my only resource.\"\n\nShe gave him a glass case in red morocco filled with gold and some\ndiamonds.\n\n\"Now go,\" she said to him.\n\nShe kissed the children, embracing the youngest twice. Julien remained\nmotionless. She left him at a rapid pace without looking at him.\n\nFrom the moment that M. de Renal had opened the anonymous letter his\nlife had been awful. He had not been so agitated since a duel which he\nhad just missed having in 1816, and to do him justice, the prospect of\nreceiving a bullet would have made him less unhappy. He scrutinised the\nletter from every standpoint. \"Is that not a woman's handwriting?\" he\nsaid to himself. In that case, what woman had written it? He reviewed\nall those whom he knew at Verrieres without being able to fix his\nsuspicions on any one. Could a man have dictated that letter? Who\nwas that man? Equal uncertainty on this point. The majority of his\nacquaintances were jealous of him, and, no doubt, hated him. \"I must\nconsult my wife,\" he said to himself through habit, as he got up from\nthe arm-chair in which he had collapsed.\n\n\"Great God!\" he said aloud before he got up, striking his head, \"it is\nshe above all of whom I must be distrustful. At the present moment she\nis my enemy,\" and tears came into his eyes through sheer anger.\n\nBy a poetic justice for that hardness of heart which constitutes the\nprovincial idea of shrewdness, the two men whom M. de Renal feared the\nmost at the present moment were his two most intimate friends.\n\n\"I have ten friends perhaps after those,\" and he passed them in review,\ngauging the degree of consolation which he could get from each one.\n\"All of them, all of them,\" he exclaimed in a rage, \"will derive the\nmost supreme pleasure from my awful experience.\"\n\nAs luck would have it, he thought himself envied, and not without\nreason. Apart from his superb town mansion in which the king of ----\nhad recently spent the night, and thus conferred on it an enduring\nhonour, he had decorated his chateau at Vergy extremely well. The\nfacade was painted white and the windows adorned with fine green\nshutters. He was consoled for a moment by the thought of this\nmagnificence. The fact was that this chateau was seen from three or\nfour leagues off, to the great prejudice of all the country houses or\nso-called chateaux of the neighbourhood, which had been left in the\nhumble grey colour given them by time.\n\nThere was one of his friends on whose pity and whose tears M. de Renal\ncould count, the churchwarden of the parish; but he was an idiot who\ncried at everything. This man, however, was his only resource. \"What\nunhappiness is comparable to mine,\" he exclaimed with rage. \"What\nisolation!\"\n\n\"Is it possible?\" said this truly pitiable man to himself. \"Is it\npossible that I have no friend in my misfortune of whom I can ask\nadvice? for my mind is wandering, I feel it. Oh, Falcoz! oh, Ducros!\"\nhe exclaimed with bitterness. Those were the names of two friends of\nhis childhood whom he had dropped owing to his snobbery in 1814. They\nwere not noble, and he had wished to change the footing of equality on\nwhich they had been living with him since their childhood.\n\nOne of them, Falcoz, a paper-merchant of Verrieres, and a man of\nintellect and spirit, had bought a printing press in the chief town of\nthe department and undertaken the production of a journal. The priestly\ncongregation had resolved to ruin him; his journal had been condemned,\nand he had been deprived of his printer's diploma. In these sad\ncircumstances he ventured to write to M. de Renal for the first time\nfor ten years. The mayor of Verrieres thought it his duty to answer\nin the old Roman style: \"If the King's Minister were to do me the\nhonour of consulting me, I should say to him, ruin ruthlessly all the\nprovincial printers, and make printing a monopoly like tobacco.\" M. de\nRenal was horrified to remember the terms of this letter to an intimate\nfriend whom all Verrieres had once admired, \"Who would have said that\nI, with my rank, my fortune, my decorations, would ever come to regret\nit?\" It was in these transports of rage, directed now against himself,\nnow against all his surroundings, that he passed an awful night; but,\nfortunately, it never occurred to him to spy on his wife.\n\n\"I am accustomed to Louise,\" he said to himself, \"she knows all my\naffairs. If I were free to marry to-morrow, I should not find anyone to\ntake her place.\" Then he began to plume himself on the idea that his\nwife was innocent. This point of view did not require any manifestation\nof character, and suited him much better. \"How many calumniated women\nhas one not seen?\"\n\n\"But,\" he suddenly exclaimed, as he walked about feverishly, \"shall I\nput up with her making a fool of me with her lover as though I were\na man of no account, some mere ragamuffin? Is all Verrieres to make\nmerry over my complaisance? What have they not said about Charmier\n(he was a husband in the district who was notoriously deceived)? Was\nthere not a smile on every lip at the mention of his name? He is a good\nadvocate, but whoever said anything about his talent for speaking? 'Oh,\nCharmier,' they say, 'Bernard's Charmier,' he is thus designated by the\nname of the man who disgraces him.\"\n\n\"I have no daughter, thank heaven,\" M. de Renal would say at other\ntimes, \"and the way in which I am going to punish the mother will\nconsequently not be so harmful to my children's household. I could\nsurprise this little peasant with my wife and kill them both; in that\ncase the tragedy of the situation would perhaps do away with the\ngrotesque element.\" This idea appealed to him. He followed it up in all\nits details. \"The penal code is on my side, and whatever happens our\ncongregation and my friends on the jury will save me.\" He examined his\nhunting-knife which was quite sharp, but the idea of blood frightened\nhim.\n\n\"I could thrash this insolent tutor within an inch of his life and\nhound him out of the house; but what a sensation that would make in\nVerrieres and even over the whole department! After Falcoz' journal had\nbeen condemned, and when its chief editor left prison, I had a hand\nin making him lose his place of six hundred francs a year. They say\nthat this scribbler has dared to show himself again in Besancon. He\nmay lampoon me adroitly and in such a way that it will be impossible\nto bring him up before the courts. Bring him up before the courts!\nThe insolent wretch will insinuate in a thousand and one ways that he\nhas spoken the truth. A well-born man who keeps his place like I do,\nis hated by all the plebeians. I shall see my name in all those awful\nParis papers. Oh, my God, what depths. To see the ancient name of\nRenal plunged in the mire of ridicule. If I ever travel I shall have\nto change my name. What! abandon that name which is my glory and my\nstrength. Could anything be worse than that?\n\n\"If I do not kill my wife but turn her out in disgrace, she has her\naunt in Besancon who is going to hand all her fortune over to her.\nMy wife will go and live in Paris with Julien. It will be known at\nVerrieres, and I shall be taken for a dupe.\" The unhappy man then\nnoticed from the paleness of the lamplight that the dawn was beginning\nto appear. He went to get a little fresh air in the garden. At this\nmoment he had almost determined to make no scandal, particularly in\nview of the fact that a scandal would overwhelm with joy all his good\nfriends in Verrieres.\n\nThe promenade in the garden calmed him a little. \"No,\" he exclaimed,\n\"I shall not deprive myself of my wife, she is too useful to me.\" He\nimagined with horror what his house would be without his wife. The only\nrelative he had was the Marquise of R---- old, stupid, and malicious.\n\nA very sensible idea occurred to him, but its execution required a\nstrength of character considerably superior to the small amount of\ncharacter which the poor man possessed. \"If I keep my wife,\" he said\nto himself, \"I know what I shall do one day; on some occasion when\nshe makes me lose patience, I shall reproach her with her guilt. She\nis proud, we shall quarrel, and all this will happen before she has\ninherited her aunt's fortune. And how they will all make fun of me\nthen! My wife loves her children, the result will be that everything\nwill go to them. But as for me, I shall be the laughing-stock of\nVerrieres. 'What,' they will say, 'he could not even manage to revenge\nhimself on his wife!' Would it not be better to leave it and verify\nnothing? In that case I tie my hands, and cannot afterwards reproach\nher with anything.\"\n\nAn instant afterwards M. de Renal, once more a prey to wounded vanity,\nset himself laboriously to recollect all the methods of procedure\nmentioned in the billiard-room of the _Casino_ or the _Nobles' Club_ in\nVerrieres, when some fine talker interrupted the pool to divert himself\nat the expense of some deceived husband. How cruel these pleasantries\nappeared to him at the present moment!\n\n\"My God, why is my wife not dead! then I should be impregnable against\nridicule. Why am I not a widower? I should go and pass six months in\nParis in the best society. After this moment of happiness occasioned\nby the idea of widowerhood, his imagination reverted to the means of\nassuring himself of the truth. Should he put a slight layer of bran\nbefore the door of Julien's room at midnight after everyone had gone to\nbed? He would see the impression of the feet in the following morning.\n\n\"But that's no good,\" he suddenly exclaimed with rage. \"That\ninquisitive Elisa will notice it, and they will soon know all over the\nhouse that I am jealous.\"\n\nIn another _Casino_ tale a husband had assured himself of his\nmisfortune by tying a hair with a little wax so that it shut the door\nof the gallant as effectually as a seal.\n\nAfter so many hours of uncertainty this means of clearing up his fate\nseemed to him emphatically the best, and he was thinking of availing\nhimself of it when, in one of the turnings of the avenue he met the\nvery woman whom he would like to have seen dead. She was coming back\nfrom the village. She had gone to hear mass in the church of Vergy.\nA tradition, extremely doubtful in the eyes of the cold philosopher,\nbut in which she believed, alleges that the little church was once the\nchapel of the chateau of the Lord of Vergy. This idea obsessed Madame\nde Renal all the time in the church that she had counted on spending in\nprayer. She kept on imagining to herself the spectacle of her husband\nkilling Julien when out hunting as though by accident, and then making\nher eat his heart in the evening.\n\n\"My fate,\" she said to herself, \"depends on what he will think when\nhe listens to me. It may be I shall never get another opportunity\nof speaking to him after this fatal quarter of an hour. He is not a\nreasonable person who is governed by his intellect. In that case, with\nthe help of my weak intelligence, I could anticipate what he will do or\nsay. He will decide our common fate. He has the power. But this fate\ndepends on my adroitness, on my skill in directing the ideas of this\ncrank, who is blinded by his rage and unable to see half of what takes\nplace. Great God! I need talent and coolness, where shall I get it?\"\n\nShe regained her calmness as though by magic, and she entered the\ngarden and saw her husband in the distance. His dishevelled hair and\ndisordered dress showed that he had not slept.\n\nShe gave him a letter with a broken seal but folded. As for him,\nwithout opening it, he gazed at his wife with the eyes of a madman.\n\n\"Here's an abominable thing,\" she said to him, \"which an evil-looking\nman who makes out that he knows you and is under an obligation to you,\nhanded to me as I was passing behind the notary's garden. I insist on\none thing and that is that you send back this M. Julien to his parents\nand without delay.\" Madame de Renal hastened to say these words,\nperhaps a little before the psychological moment, in order to free\nherself from the awful prospect of having to say them.\n\nShe was seized with joy on seeing that which she was occasioning to her\nhusband. She realised from the fixed stare which he was rivetting on\nher that Julien had surmised rightly.\n\n\"What a genius he is to be so brilliantly diplomatic instead of\nsuccumbing to so real a misfortune,\" she thought. \"He will go very far\nin the future! Alas, his successes will only make him forget me.\"\n\nThis little act of admiration for the man whom she adored quite cured\nher of her trouble.\n\nShe congratulated herself on her tactics. \"I have not been unworthy of\nJulien,\" she said to herself with a sweet and secret pleasure.\n\nM. de Renal kept examining the second anonymous letter which the\nreader may remember was composed of printed words glued on to a paper\nverging on blue. He did not say a word for fear of giving himself away.\n\"They still make fun of me in every possible way,\" said M. de Renal\nto himself, overwhelmed with exhaustion. \"Still more new insults to\nexamine and all the time on account of my wife.\" He was on the point\nof heaping on her the coarsest insults. He was barely checked by the\nprospects of the Besancon legacy. Consumed by the need of venting his\nfeelings on something, he crumpled up the paper of the second anonymous\nletter and began to walk about with huge strides. He needed to get\naway from his wife. A few moments afterwards he came back to her in a\nquieter frame of mind.\n\n\"The thing is to take some definite line and send Julien away,\" she\nsaid immediately, \"after all it is only a labourer's son. You will\ncompensate him by a few crowns and besides he is clever and will easily\nmanage to find a place, with M. Valenod for example, or with the\nsub-prefect De Maugiron who both have children. In that way you will\nnot be doing him any wrong....\" \"There you go talking like the fool\nthat you are,\" exclaimed M. de Renal in a terrible voice. \"How can one\nhope that a woman will show any good sense? You never bother yourself\nabout common sense. How can you ever get to know anything? Your\nindifference and your idleness give you no energy except for hunting\nthose miserable butterflies, which we are unfortunate to have in our\nhouses.\"\n\nMadame de Renal let him speak and he spoke for a long time. _He was\nworking off his anger_, to use the local expression.\n\n\"Monsieur,\" she answered him at last, \"I speak as a woman who has\nbeen outraged in her honour, that is to say, in what she holds most\nprecious.\"\n\nMadame de Renal preserved an unalterable sang-froid during all this\npainful conversation on the result of which depended the possibility of\nstill living under the same roof as Julien. She sought for the ideas\nwhich she thought most adapted to guide her husband's blind anger\ninto a safe channel. She had been insensible to all the insulting\nimputations which he had addressed to her. She was not listening to\nthem, she was then thinking about Julien. \"Will he be pleased with me?\"\n\n\"This little peasant whom we have loaded with attentions, and even with\npresents, may be innocent,\" she said to him at last, \"but he is none\nthe less the occasion of the first affront that I have ever received.\nMonsieur, when I read this abominable paper, I vowed to myself that\neither he or I should leave your house.\"\n\n\"Do you want to make a scandal so as to dishonour me and yourself as\nwell? You will make things hum in Verrieres I can assure you.\"\n\n\"It is true, the degree of prosperity in which your prudent management\nhas succeeded in placing you yourself, your family and the town is the\nsubject of general envy.... Well, I will urge Julien to ask you for\na holiday to go and spend the month with that wood-merchant of the\nmountains, a fit friend to be sure for this little labourer.\"\n\n\"Mind you do nothing at all,\" resumed M. de Renal with a fair amount of\ntranquillity. \"I particularly insist on your not speaking to him. You\nwill put him into a temper and make him quarrel with me. You know to\nwhat extent this little gentleman is always spoiling for a quarrel.\"\n\n\"That young man has no tact,\" resumed Madame de Renal. \"He may be\nlearned, you know all about that, but at bottom he is only a peasant.\nFor my own part I never thought much of him since he refused to\nmarry Elisa. It was an assured fortune; and that on the pretext that\nsometimes she had made secret visits to M. Valenod.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said M. de Renal, lifting up his eyebrows inordinately. \"What,\ndid Julien tell you that?\"\n\n\"Not exactly, he always talked of the vocation which calls him to the\nholy ministry, but believe me, the first vocation for those lower-class\npeople is getting their bread and butter. He gave me to understand that\nhe was quite aware of her secret visits.\"\n\n\"And I--I was ignorant,\" exclaimed M. de Renal, growing as angry as\nbefore and accentuating his words. \"Things take place in my house which\nI know nothing about.... What! has there been anything between Elisa\nand Valenod?\"\n\n\"Oh, that's old history, my dear,\" said Madame de Renal with a smile,\n\"and perhaps no harm has come of it. It was at the time when your good\nfriend Valenod would not have minded their thinking at Verrieres that a\nperfectly platonic little affection was growing up between him and me.\"\n\n\"I had that idea once myself,\" exclaimed M. de Renal, furiously\nstriking his head as he progressed from discovery to discovery, \"and\nyou told me nothing about it.\"\n\n\"Should one set two friends by the ears on account of a little fit of\nvanity on the part of our dear director? What society woman has not had\naddressed to her a few letters which were both extremely witty and even\na little gallant?\"\n\n\"He has written to you?\"\n\n\"He writes a great deal.\"\n\n\"Show me those letters at once, I order you,\" and M. de Renal pulled\nhimself up to his six feet.\n\n\"I will do nothing of the kind,\" he was answered with a sweetness\nverging on indifference. \"I will show you them one day when you are in\na better frame of mind.\"\n\n\"This very instant, odds life,\" exclaimed M. de Renal, transported with\nrage and yet happier than he had been for twelve hours.\n\n\"Will you swear to me,\" said Madame de Renal quite gravely, \"never to\nquarrel with the director of the workhouse about these letters?\"\n\n\"Quarrel or no quarrel, I can take those foundlings away from him,\nbut,\" he continued furiously, \"I want those letters at once. Where are\nthey?\"\n\n\"In a drawer in my secretary, but I shall certainly not give you the\nkey.\"\n\n\"I'll manage to break it,\" he cried, running towards his wife's room.\n\nHe did break in fact with a bar of iron a costly secretary of veined\nmahogany which came from Paris and which he had often been accustomed\nto wipe with the nap of his coat, when he thought he had detected a\nspot.\n\nMadame de Renal had climbed up at a run the hundred and twenty steps\nof the dovecot. She tied the corner of a white handkerchief to one of\nthe bars of iron of the little window. She was the happiest of women.\nWith tears in her eyes she looked towards the great mountain forest.\n\"Doubtless,\" she said to herself, \"Julien is watching for this happy\nsignal.\"\n\nShe listened attentively for a long time and then she cursed the\nmonotonous noise of the grasshopper and the song of the birds. \"Had it\nnot been for that importunate noise, a cry of joy starting from the big\nrocks could have arrived here.\" Her greedy eye devoured that immense\nslope of dark verdure which was as level as a meadow.\n\n\"Why isn't he clever enough,\" she said to herself, quite overcome, \"to\ninvent some signal to tell me that his happiness is equal to mine?\" She\nonly came down from the dovecot when she was frightened of her husband\ncoming there to look for her.\n\nShe found him furious. He was perusing the soothing phrases of M. de\nValenod and reading them with an emotion to which they were but little\nused.\n\n\"I always come back to the same idea,\" said Madame de Renal seizing\na moment when a pause in her husband's ejaculations gave her the\npossibility of getting heard. \"It is necessary for Julien to travel.\nWhatever talent he may have for Latin, he is only a peasant after all,\noften coarse and lacking in tact. Thinking to be polite, he addresses\ninflated compliments to me every day, which are in bad taste. He learns\nthem by heart out of some novel or other.\"\n\n\"He never reads one,\" exclaimed M. de Renal. \"I am assured of it. Do\nyou think that I am the master of a house who is so blind as to be\nignorant of what takes place in his own home.\"\n\n\"Well, if he doesn't read these droll compliments anywhere, he invents\nthem, and that's all the worse so far as he is concerned. He must have\ntalked about me in this tone in Verrieres and perhaps without going so\nfar,\" said Madame Renal with the idea of making a discovery, \"he may\nhave talked in the same strain to Elisa, which is almost the same as if\nhe had said it to M. Valenod.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" exclaimed M. de Renal, shaking the table and the room with one of\nthe most violent raps ever made by a human fist. \"The anonymous printed\nletter and Valenod's letters are written on the same paper.\"\n\n\"At last,\" thought Madame de Renal. She pretended to be overwhelmed\nat this discovery, and without having the courage to add a single\nword, went and sat down some way off on the divan at the bottom of the\ndrawing-room.\n\nFrom this point the battle was won. She had a great deal of trouble in\npreventing M. de Renal from going to speak to the supposed author of\nthe anonymous letter. \"What, can't you see that making a scene with M.\nValenod without sufficient proof would be the most signal mistake? You\nare envied, Monsieur, and who is responsible? Your talents: your wise\nmanagement, your tasteful buildings, the dowry which I have brought\nyou, and above all, the substantial legacy which we are entitled to\nhope for from my good aunt, a legacy, the importance of which is\ninordinately exaggerated, have made you into the first person in\nVerrieres.\"\n\n\"You are forgetting my birth,\" said M. de Renal, smiling a little.\n\n\"You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province,\"\nreplied Madame de Renal emphatically. \"If the king were free and could\ngive birth its proper due, you would no doubt figure in the Chamber of\nPeers, etc. And being in this magnificent position, you yet wish to\ngive the envious a fact to take hold of.\"\n\n\"To speak about this anonymous letter to M. Valenod is equivalent\nto proclaiming over the whole of Verrieres, nay, over the whole of\nBesancon, over the whole province that this little bourgeois who has\nbeen admitted perhaps imprudently to intimacy _with a Renal_, has\nmanaged to offend him. At the time when those letters which you have\njust taken prove that I have reciprocated M. Valenod's love, you ought\nto kill me. I should have deserved it a hundred times over, but not to\nshow him your anger. Remember that all our neighbours are only waiting\nfor an excuse to revenge themselves for your superiority. Remember that\nin 1816 you had a hand in certain arrests.\n\n\"I think that you show neither consideration nor love for me,\"\nexclaimed M. de Renal with all the bitterness evoked by such a memory,\n\"and I was not made a peer.\"\n\n\"I am thinking, my dear,\" resumed Madame de Renal with a smile, \"that\nI shall be richer than you are, that I have been your companion for\ntwelve years, and that by virtue of those qualifications I am entitled\nto have a voice in the council and, above all, in to-day's business. If\nyou prefer M. Julien to me,\" she added, with a touch of temper which\nwas but thinly disguised, \"I am ready to go and pass a winter with my\naunt.\" These words proved a lucky shot. They possessed a firmness which\nendeavoured to clothe itself with courtesy. It decided M. de Renal, but\nfollowing the provincial custom, he still thought for a long time, and\nwent again over all his arguments; his wife let him speak. There was\nstill a touch of anger in his intonation. Finally two hours of futile\nrant exhausted the strength of a man who had been subject during the\nwhole night to a continuous fit of anger. He determined on the line of\nconduct he was going to follow with regard to M. Valenod, Julien and\neven Elisa.\n\nMadame de Renal was on the point once or twice during this great scene\nof feeling some sympathy for the very real unhappiness of the man\nwho had been so dear to her for twelve years. But true passions are\nselfish. Besides she was expecting him every instant to mention the\nanonymous letter which he had received the day before and he did not\nmention it. In order to feel quite safe, Madame de Renal wanted to know\nthe ideas which the letter had succeeding in suggesting to the man on\nwhom her fate depended, for, in the provinces the husbands are the\nmasters of public opinion. A husband who complains covers himself with\nridicule, an inconvenience which becomes no less dangerous in France\nwith each succeeding year; but if he refuses to provide his wife with\nmoney, she falls to the status of a labouring woman at fifteen sous a\nday, while the virtuous souls have scruples about employing her.\n\nAn odalisque in the seraglio can love the Sultan with all her might.\nHe is all-powerful and she has no hope of stealing his authority by\na series of little subtleties. The master's vengeance is terrible\nand bloody but martial and generous; a dagger thrust finishes\neverything. But it is by stabbing her with public contempt that a\nnineteenth-century husband kills his wife. It is by shutting against\nher the doors of all the drawing-rooms.\n\nWhen Madame de Renal returned to her room, her feeling of danger was\nvividly awakened. She was shocked by the disorder in which she found\nit. The locks of all the pretty little boxes had been broken. Many\nplanks in the floor had been lifted up. \"He would have no pity on me,\"\nshe said to herself. \"To think of his spoiling like this, this coloured\nwood floor which he likes so much; he gets red with rage whenever one\nof his children comes into it with wet shoes, and now it is spoilt for\never.\" The spectacle of this violence immediately banished the last\nscruples which she was entertaining with respect to that victory which\nshe had won only too rapidly.\n\nJulien came back with the children a little before the dinner-bell.\nMadame de Renal said to him very drily at dessert when the servant had\nleft the room:\n\n\"You have told me about your wish to go and spend a fortnight at\nVerrieres. M. de Renal is kind enough to give you a holiday. You can\nleave as soon as you like, but the childrens' exercises will be sent to\nyou every day so that they do not waste their time.\"\n\n\"I shall certainly not allow you more than a week,\" said M. de Renal in\na very bitter tone. Julien thought his visage betrayed the anxiety of a\nman who was seriously harassed.\n\n\"He has not yet decided what line to take,\" he said to his love during\na moment when they were alone together in the drawing-room.\n\nMadame de Renal rapidly recounted to him all she had done since the\nmorning.\n\n\"The details are for to-night,\" she added with a smile.\n\n\"Feminine perversity,\" thought Julien, \"What can be the pleasure, what\ncan be the instinct which induces them to deceive us.\"\n\n\"I think you are both enlightened and at the same time blinded by your\nlove,\" he said to her with some coldness. \"Your conduct to-day has been\nadmirable, but is it prudent for us to try and see each other to-night?\nThis house is paved with enemies. Just think of Elisa's passionate\nhatred for me.\"\n\n\"That hate is very like the passionate indifference which you no doubt\nhave for me.\"\n\n\"Even if I were indifferent I ought to save you from the peril in which\nI have plunged you. If chance so wills it that M. de Renal should speak\nto Elisa, she can acquaint him with everything in a single word. What\nis to prevent him from hiding near my room fully armed?\"\n\n\"What, not even courage?\" said Madame de Renal, with all the\nhaughtiness of a scion of nobility.\n\n\"I will never demean myself to speak about my courage,\" said Julien,\ncoldly, \"it would be mean to do so. Let the world judge by the facts.\nBut,\" he added, taking her hand, \"you have no idea how devoted I am to\nyou and how over-joyed I am of being able to say good-bye to you before\nthis cruel separation.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXII\n\nMANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830\n\n\n     Speech has been given to man to conceal his thought.\n                                             _R.P. Malagrida_.\n\n\nJulien had scarcely arrived at Verrieres before he reproached himself\nwith his injustice towards Madame de Renal. \"I should have despised\nher for a weakling of a woman if she had not had the strength to go\nthrough with her scene with M. de Renal. But she has acquitted herself\nlike a diplomatist and I sympathise with the defeat of the man who is\nmy enemy. There is a bourgeois prejudice in my action; my vanity is\noffended because M. de Renal is a man. Men form a vast and illustrious\nbody to which I have the honour to belong. I am nothing but a fool.\" M.\nChelan had refused the magnificent apartments which the most important\nLiberals in the district had offered him, when his loss of his living\nhad necessitated his leaving the parsonage. The two rooms which he had\nrented were littered with his books. Julien, wishing to show Verrieres\nwhat a priest could do, went and fetched a dozen pinewood planks from\nhis father, carried them on his back all along the Grande-Rue, borrowed\nsome tools from an old comrade and soon built a kind of book-case in\nwhich he arranged M. Chelan's books.\n\n\"I thought you were corrupted by the vanity of the world,\" said the\nold man to him as he cried with joy, \"but this is something which well\nredeems all the childishness of that brilliant Guard of Honour uniform\nwhich has made you so many enemies.\"\n\nM. de Renal had ordered Julien to stay at his house. No one suspected\nwhat had taken place. The third day after his arrival Julien saw no\nless a personage than M. the sub-prefect de Maugiron come all the way\nup the stairs to his room. It was only after two long hours of fatuous\ngossip and long-winded lamentations about the wickedness of man, the\nlack of honesty among the people entrusted with the administration\nof the public funds, the dangers of his poor France, etc. etc., that\nJulien was at last vouchsafed a glimpse of the object of the visit.\nThey were already on the landing of the staircase and the poor half\ndisgraced tutor was escorting with all proper deference the future\nprefect of some prosperous department, when the latter was pleased to\ntake an interest in Julien's fortune, to praise his moderation in money\nmatters, etc., etc. Finally M. de Maugiron, embracing him in the most\npaternal way, proposed that he should leave M. de Renal and enter the\nhousehold of an official who had children to educate and who, like King\nPhilippe, thanked Heaven not so much that they had been granted to him,\nbut for the fact that they had been born in the same neighbourhood as\nM. Julien. Their tutor would enjoy a salary of 800 francs, payable\nnot from month to month, which is not at all aristocratic, said M. de\nMaugiron, but quarterly and always in advance.\n\nIt was Julien's turn now. After he had been bored for an hour and a\nhalf by waiting for what he had to say, his answer was perfect and,\nabove all, as long as a bishop's charge. It suggested everything and\nyet said nothing clearly. It showed at the same time respect for M.\nde Renal, veneration for the public of Verrieres and gratitude to the\ndistinguished sub-prefect. The sub-prefect, astonished at finding\nhim more Jesuitical than himself, tried in vain to obtain something\ndefinite. Julien was delighted, seized the opportunity to practise, and\nstarted his answer all over again in different language. Never has an\neloquent minister who wished to make the most of the end of a session\nwhen the Chamber really seemed desirous of waking up, said less in more\nwords.\n\nM. de Maugiron had scarcely left before Julien began to laugh like\na madman. In order to exploit his Jesuitical smartness, he wrote a\nnine-page letter to M. de Renal in which he gave him an account of all\nthat had been said to him and humbly asked his advice. \"But the old\nscoundrel has not told me the name of the person who is making the\noffer. It is bound to be M. Valenod who, no doubt, sees in my exile at\nVerrieres the result of his anonymous letter.\"\n\nHaving sent off his despatch and feeling as satisfied as a hunter who\nat six o'clock in the morning on a fine autumn day, comes out into\na plain that abounds with game, he went out to go and ask advice of\nM. Chelan. But before he had arrived at the good cure's, providence,\nwishing to shower favours upon him, threw in his path M. de Valenod,\nto whom he owned quite freely that his heart was torn in two; a poor\nlad such as he was owed an exclusive devotion to the vocation to which\nit had pleased Heaven to call him. But vocation was not everything in\nthis base world. In order to work worthily at the vine of the Lord,\nand to be not totally unworthy of so many worthy colleagues, it was\nnecessary to be educated; it was necessary to spend two expensive years\nat the seminary of Besancon; saving consequently became an imperative\nnecessity, and was certainly much easier with a salary of eight hundred\nfrancs paid quarterly than with six hundred francs which one received\nmonthly. On the other hand, did not Heaven, by placing him by the side\nof the young de Renals, and especially by inspiring him with a special\ndevotion to them, seem to indicate that it was not proper to abandon\nthat education for another one.\n\nJulien reached such a degree of perfection in that particular kind of\neloquence which has succeeded the drastic quickness of the empire, that\nhe finished by boring himself with the sound of his own words.\n\nOn reaching home he found a valet of M. Valenod in full livery who had\nbeen looking for him all over the town, with a card inviting him to\ndinner for that same day.\n\nJulien had never been in that man's house. Only a few days before\nhe had been thinking of nothing but the means of giving him a sound\nthrashing without getting into trouble with the police. Although\nthe time of the dinner was one o'clock, Julien thought it was more\ndeferential to present himself at half-past twelve at the office of M.\nthe director of the workhouse. He found him parading his importance in\nthe middle of a lot of despatch boxes. His large black whiskers, his\nenormous quantity of hair, his Greek bonnet placed across the top of\nhis head, his immense pipe, his embroidered slippers, the big chains\nof gold crossed all over his breast, and the whole stock-in-trade of\na provincial financier who considers himself prosperous, failed to\nimpose on Julien in the least: They only made him think the more of the\nthrashing which he owed him.\n\nHe asked for the honour of being introduced to Madame Valenod. She\nwas dressing and was unable to receive him. By way of compensation he\nhad the privilege of witnessing the toilet of M. the director of the\nworkhouse. They subsequently went into the apartment of Madame Valenod,\nwho introduced her children to him with tears in her eyes. This lady\nwas one of the most important in Verrieres, had a big face like a\nman's, on which she had put rouge in honour of this great function. She\ndisplayed all the maternal pathos of which she was capable.\n\nJulien thought all the time of Madame de Renal. His distrust made him\nonly susceptible to those associations which are called up by their\nopposites, but he was then affected to the verge of breaking down.\nThis tendency was increased by the sight of the house of the director\nof the workhouse. He was shown over it. Everything in it was new and\nmagnificent, and he was told the price of every article of furniture.\nBut Julien detected a certain element of sordidness, which smacked of\nstolen money into the bargain. Everybody in it, down to the servants,\nhad the air of setting his face in advance against contempt.\n\nThe collector of taxes, the superintendent of indirect taxes, the\nofficer of gendarmerie, and two or three other public officials arrived\nwith their wives. They were followed by some rich Liberals. Dinner was\nannounced. It occurred to Julien, who was already feeling upset, that\nthere were some poor prisoners on the other side of the dining-room\nwall, and that an illicit profit had perhaps been made over their\nrations of meat in order to purchase all that garish luxury with which\nthey were trying to overwhelm him.\n\n\"Perhaps they are hungry at this very minute,\" he said to himself. He\nfelt a choking in his throat. He found it impossible to eat and almost\nimpossible to speak. Matters became much worse a quarter of an hour\nafterwards; they heard in the distance some refrains of a popular song\nthat was, it must be confessed, a little vulgar, which was being sung\nby one of the inmates. M. Valenod gave a look to one of his liveried\nservants who disappeared and soon there was no more singing to be\nheard. At that moment a valet offered Julien some Rhine wine in a green\nglass and Madame Valenod made a point of asking him to note that this\nwine cost nine francs a bottle in the market. Julien held up his green\nglass and said to M. Valenod,\n\n\"They are not singing that wretched song any more.\"\n\n\"Zounds, I should think not,\" answered the triumphant governor. \"I have\nmade the rascals keep quiet.\"\n\nThese words were too much for Julien. He had the manners of his new\nposition, but he had not yet assimilated its spirit. In spite of all\nhis hypocrisy and its frequent practice, he felt a big tear drip down\nhis cheek.\n\nHe tried to hide it in the green glass, but he found it absolutely\nimpossible to do justice to the Rhine wine. \"Preventing singing he said\nto himself: Oh, my God, and you suffer it.\"\n\nFortunately nobody noticed his ill-bred emotion. The collector of\ntaxes had struck up a royalist song. \"So this,\" reflected Julien's\nconscience during the hubbub of the refrain which was sung in chorus,\n\"is the sordid prosperity which you will eventually reach, and you will\nonly enjoy it under these conditions and in company like this. You\nwill, perhaps, have a post worth twenty thousand francs; but while you\ngorge yourself on meat, you will have to prevent a poor prisoner from\nsinging; you will give dinners with the money which you have stolen out\nof his miserable rations and during your dinners he will be still more\nwretched. Oh, Napoleon, how sweet it was to climb to fortune in your\nway through the dangers of a battle, but to think of aggravating the\npain of the unfortunate in this cowardly way.\"\n\nI own that the weakness which Julien had been manifesting in this\nsoliloquy gives me a poor opinion of him. He is worthy of being the\naccomplice of those kid-gloved conspirators who purport to change the\nwhole essence of a great country's existence, without wishing to have\non their conscience the most trivial scratch.\n\nJulien was sharply brought back to his role. He had not been invited to\ndine in such good company simply to moon dreamily and say nothing.\n\nA retired manufacturer of cotton prints, a corresponding member of the\nAcademy of Besancon and of that of Uzes, spoke to him from the other\nend of the table and asked him if what was said everywhere about his\nastonishing progress in the study of the New Testament was really true.\n\nA profound silence was suddenly inaugurated. A New Testament in Latin\nwas found as though by magic in the possession of the learned member\nof the two Academies. After Julien had answered, part of a sentence\nin Latin was read at random. Julien then recited. His memory proved\nfaithful and the prodigy was admired with all the boisterous energy of\nthe end of dinner. Julien looked at the flushed faces of the ladies. A\ngood many were not so plain. He recognised the wife of the collector,\nwho was a fine singer.\n\n\"I am ashamed, as a matter of fact, to talk Latin so long before these\nladies,\" he said, turning his eyes on her. \"If M. Rubigneau,\" that was\nthe name of the member of the two Academies, \"will be kind enough to\nread a Latin sentence at random instead of answering by following the\nLatin text, I will try to translate it impromptu.\" This second test\ncompleted his glory.\n\nSeveral Liberals were there, who, though rich, were none the less the\nhappy fathers of children capable of obtaining scholarships, and had\nconsequently been suddenly converted at the last mission. In spite of\nthis diplomatic step, M. de Renal had never been willing to receive\nthem in his house. These worthy people, who only knew Julien by name\nand from having seen him on horseback on the day of the king of ----'s\nentry, were his most noisy admirers. \"When will those fools get tired\nof listening to this Biblical language, which they don't understand in\nthe least,\" he thought. But, on the contrary, that language amused them\nby its strangeness and made them smile. But Julien got tired.\n\nAs six o'clock struck he got up gravely and talked about a chapter in\nLigorio's New Theology which he had to learn by heart to recite on the\nfollowing day to M. Chelan, \"for,\" he added pleasantly, \"my business is\nto get lessons said by heart to me, and to say them by heart myself.\"\n\nThere was much laughter and admiration; such is the kind of wit which\nis customary in Verrieres. Julien had already got up and in spite of\netiquette everybody got up as well, so great is the dominion exercised\nby genius. Madame Valenod kept him for another quarter of an hour. He\nreally must hear her children recite their catechisms. They made the\nmost absurd mistakes which he alone noticed. He was careful not to\npoint them out. \"What ignorance of the first principles of religion,\"\nhe thought. Finally he bowed and thought he could get away; but they\ninsisted on his trying a fable of La Fontaine.\n\n\"That author is quite immoral,\" said Julien to Madame Valenod. A\ncertain fable on Messire Jean Chouart dares to pour ridicule on\nall that we hold most venerable. He is shrewdly blamed by the best\ncommentators. Before Julien left he received four or five invitations\nto dinner. \"This young man is an honour to the department,\" cried all\nthe guests in chorus. They even went so far as to talk of a pension\nvoted out of the municipal funds to put him in the position of\ncontinuing his studies at Paris.\n\nWhile this rash idea was resounding through the dining-room Julien\nhad swiftly reached the front door. \"You scum, you scum,\" he cried,\nthree or four times in succession in a low voice as he indulged in the\npleasure of breathing in the fresh air.\n\nHe felt quite an aristocrat at this moment, though he was the very\nman who had been shocked for so long a period by the haughty smile of\ndisdainful superiority which he detected behind all the courtesies\naddressed to him at M. de Renal's. He could not help realising the\nextreme difference. Why let us even forget the fact of its being money\nstolen from the poor inmates, he said to himself as he went away, let\nus forget also their stopping the singing. M. de Renal would never\nthink of telling his guests the price of each bottle of wine with\nwhich he regales them, and as for this M. Valenod, and his chronic\ncataloguing of his various belongings, he cannot talk of his house, his\nestate, etc., in the presence of his wife without saying, \"Your house,\nyour estate.\"\n\nThis lady, who was apparently so keenly alive to the delights of\ndecorum, had just had an awful scene during the dinner with a servant\nwho had broken a wine-glass and spoilt one of her dozens; and the\nservant too had answered her back with the utmost insolence.\n\n\"What a collection,\" said Julien to himself; \"I would not live like\nthey do were they to give me half of all they steal. I shall give\nmyself away one fine day. I should not be able to restrain myself from\nexpressing the disgust with which they inspire one.\"\n\nIt was necessary, however, to obey Madame de Renal's injunction and be\npresent at several dinners of the same kind. Julien was the fashion; he\nwas forgiven his Guard of Honour uniform, or rather that indiscretion\nwas the real cause of his successes. Soon the only question in\nVerrieres was whether M. de Renal or M. the director of the workhouse\nwould be the victor in the struggle for the clever young man. These\ngentlemen formed, together with M. Maslon, a triumvirate which had\ntyrannised over the town for a number of years. People were jealous of\nthe mayor, and the Liberals had good cause for complaint, but, after\nall, he was noble and born for a superior position, while M. Valenod's\nfather had not left him six hundred francs a year. His career had\nnecessitated a transition from pitying the shabby green suit which had\nbeen so notorious in his youth, to envying the Norman horses, his gold\nchains, his Paris clothes, his whole present prosperity.\n\nJulien thought that he had discovered one honest man in the whirlpool\nof this novel world. He was a geometrist named Gros, and had the\nreputation of being a Jacobin. Julien, who had vowed to say nothing\nbut that which he disbelieved himself, was obliged to watch himself\ncarefully when speaking to M. Gros. He received big packets of\nexercises from Vergy. He was advised to visit his father frequently,\nand he fulfilled his unpleasant duty. In a word he was patching his\nreputation together pretty well, when he was thoroughly surprised to\nfind himself woken up one morning by two hands held over his eyes.\n\nIt was Madame de Renal who had made a trip to the town, and who,\nrunning up the stairs four at a time while she left her children\nplaying with a pet rabbit, had reached Julien's room a moment before\nher sons. This moment was delicious but very short: Madame de Renal\nhad disappeared when the children arrived with the rabbit which\nthey wanted to show to their friend. Julien gave them all a hearty\nwelcome, including the rabbit. He seemed at home again. He felt that\nhe loved these children and that he enjoyed gossiping with them. He\nwas astonished at the sweetness of their voices, at the simplicity\nand dignity of their little ways; he felt he needed to purge his\nimagination of all the vulgar practices and all the unpleasantnesses\namong which he had been living in Verrieres. For there everyone was\nalways frightened of being scored off, and luxury and poverty were at\ndaggers drawn.\n\nThe people with whom he would dine would enter into confidences over\nthe joint which were as humiliating for themselves as they were\nnauseating to the hearer.\n\n\"You others, who are nobles, you are right to be proud,\" he said to\nMadame de Renal, as he gave her an account of all the dinners which he\nhad put up with.\n\n\"You're the fashion then,\" and she laughed heartily as she thought of\nthe rouge which Madame Valenod thought herself obliged to put on each\ntime she expected Julien. \"I think she has designs on your heart,\" she\nadded.\n\nThe breakfast was delicious. The presence of the children, though\napparently embarrassing, increased as a matter of fact the happiness of\nthe party. The poor children did not know how to give expression to the\njoy at seeing Julien again. The servants had not failed to tell them\nthat he had been offered two hundred francs a year more to educate the\nlittle Valenods.\n\nStanislas-Xavier, who was still pale from his illness, suddenly asked\nhis mother in the middle of the breakfast, the value of his silver\ncover and of the goblet in which he was drinking.\n\n\"Why do you want to know that?\"\n\n\"I want to sell them to give the price to M. Julien so that he shan't\nbe _done_ if he stays with us.\"\n\nJulien kissed him with tears in his eyes. His mother wept\nunrestrainedly, for Julien took Stanislas on his knees and explained to\nhim that he should not use the word \"done\" which, when employed in that\nmeaning was an expression only fit for the servants' hall. Seeing the\npleasure which he was giving to Madame de Renal, he tried to explain\nthe meaning of being \"done\" by picturesque illustrations which amused\nthe children.\n\n\"I understand,\" said Stanislas, \"it's like the crow who is silly enough\nto let his cheese fall and be taken by the fox who has been playing the\nflatterer.\"\n\nMadame de Renal felt mad with joy and covered her children with kisses,\na process which involved her leaning a little on Julien.\n\nSuddenly the door opened. It was M. de Renal. His severe and\ndiscontented expression contrasted strangely with the sweet joy\nwhich his presence dissipated. Madame de Renal grew pale, she felt\nherself incapable of denying anything. Julien seized command of the\nconversation and commenced telling M. the mayor in a loud voice the\nincident of the silver goblet which Stanislas wanted to sell. He was\nquite certain this story would not be appreciated. M. de Renal first\nof all frowned mechanically at the mere mention of money. Any allusion\nto that mineral, he was accustomed to say, is always a prelude to some\ndemand made upon my purse. But this was something more than a mere\nmoney matter. His suspicions were increased. The air of happiness which\nanimated his family during his absence was not calculated to smooth\nmatters over with a man who was a prey to so touchy a vanity. \"Yes,\nyes,\" he said, as his wife started to praise to him the combined grace\nand cleverness of the way in which Julien gave ideas to his pupils. \"I\nknow, he renders me hateful to my own children. It is easy enough for\nhim to make himself a hundred times more loveable to them than I am\nmyself, though after all, I am the master. In this century everything\ntends to make _legitimate_ authority unpopular. Poor France!\"\n\nMadame de Renal had not stopped to examine the fine shades of the\nwelcome which her husband gave her. She had just caught a glimpse of\nthe possibility of spending twelve hours with Julien. She had a lot of\npurchases to make in the town and declared that she positively insisted\nin going to dine at the tavern. She stuck to her idea in spite of all\nher husband's protests and remonstrances. The children were delighted\nwith the mere word tavern, which our modern prudery denounces with so\nmuch gusto.\n\nM. de Renal left his wife in the first draper's shop which she entered\nand went to pay some visits. He came back more morose than he had\nbeen in the morning. He was convinced that the whole town was busy\nwith himself and Julien. As a matter of fact no one had yet given him\nany inkling as to the more offensive part of the public gossip. Those\nitems which had been repeated to M. the mayor dealt exclusively with\nthe question of whether Julien would remain with him with six hundred\nfrancs, or would accept the eight hundred francs offered by M. the\ndirector of the workhouse.\n\nThe director, when he met M. de Renal in society, gave him the cold\nshoulder. These tactics were not without cleverness. There is no\nimpulsiveness in the provinces. Sensations are so rare there that they\nare never allowed to be wasted.\n\nM. le Valenod was what is called a hundred miles from Paris a _faraud_;\nthat means a coarse imprudent type of man. His triumphant existence\nsince 1815 had consolidated his natural qualities. He reigned, so\nto say, in Verrieres subject to the orders of M. de Renal; but as\nhe was much more energetic, was ashamed of nothing, had a finger in\neverything, and was always going about writing and speaking, and\nwas oblivious of all snubs, he had, although without any personal\npretensions, eventually come to equal the mayor in reputation in the\neyes of the ecclesiastical authorities. M. Valenod had, as it were,\nsaid to the local tradesmen \"Give me the two biggest fools among your\nnumber;\" to the men of law \"Show me the two greatest dunces;\" to the\nsanitary officials \"Point out to me the two biggest charlatans.\" When\nhe had thus collected the most impudent members of each separate\ncalling, he had practically said to them, \"Let us reign together.\"\n\nThe manners of those people were offensive to M. de Renal. The\ncoarseness of Valenod took offence at nothing, not even the frequency\nwith which the little abbe Maslon would give the lie to him in public.\n\nBut in the middle of all this prosperity M. Valenod found it necessary\nto reassure himself by a number of petty acts of insolence on the\nscore of the crude truths which he well realised that everybody was\njustified in addressing to him. His activity had redoubled since the\nfears which the visit of M. Appert had left him. He had made three\njourneys to Besancon. He wrote several letters by each courier; he sent\nothers by unknown men who came to his house at nightfall. Perhaps he\nhad been wrong in securing the dismissal of the old cure Chelan. For\nthis piece of vindictiveness had resulted in his being considered an\nextremely malicious man by several pious women of good birth. Besides,\nthe rendering of this service had placed him in absolute dependence\non M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair from whom he received some strange\ncommissions. He had reached this point in his intrigues when he had\nyielded to the pleasure of writing an anonymous letter, and thus\nincreasing his embarrassment. His wife declared to him that she wanted\nto have Julien in her house; her vanity was intoxicated with the idea.\n\nSuch being his position M. Valenod imagined in advance a decisive\nscene with his old colleague M. de Renal. The latter might address\nto him some harsh words, which he would not mind much; but he might\nwrite to Besancon and even to Paris. Some minister's cousin might\nsuddenly fall down on Verrieres and take over the workhouse. Valenod\nthought of coming to terms with the Liberals. It was for that purpose\nthat several of them had been invited to the dinner when Julien was\npresent. He would have obtained powerful support against the mayor but\nthe elections might supervene, and it was only too evident that the\ndirectorship of the workhouse was inconsistent with voting on the wrong\nside. Madame de Renal had made a shrewd guess at this intrigue, and\nwhile she explained it to Julien as he gave her his arm to pass from\none shop to another, they found themselves gradually taken as far as\nthe _Cours de la Fidelite_ where they spent several hours nearly as\ntranquil as those at Vergy.\n\nAt the same time M. Valenod was trying to put off a definite crisis\nwith his old patron by himself assuming the aggressive. These tactics\nsucceeded on this particular day, but aggravated the mayor's bad\ntemper. Never has vanity at close grips with all the harshness and\nmeanness of a pettifogging love of money reduced a man to a more sorry\ncondition than that of M. de Renal when he entered the tavern. The\nchildren, on the other hand, had never been more joyful and more merry.\nThis contrast put the finishing touch on his pique.\n\n\"So far as I can see I am not wanted in my family,\" he said as he\nentered in a tone which he meant to be impressive.\n\nFor answer, his wife took him on one side and declared that it was\nessential to send Julien away. The hours of happiness which she had\njust enjoyed had given her again the ease and firmness of demeanour\nnecessary to follow out the plan of campaign which she had been\nhatching for a fortnight. The finishing touch to the trouble of the\npoor mayor of Verrieres was the fact that he knew that they joked\npublicly in the town about his love for cash. Valenod was as generous\nas a thief, and on his side had acquitted himself brilliantly in the\nlast five or six collections for the Brotherhood of St. Joseph, the\ncongregation of the Virgin, the congregation of the Holy Sacrament,\netc., etc.\n\nM. de Renal's name had been seen more than once at the bottom of the\nlist of gentlefolk of Verrieres, and the surrounding neighbourhood\nwho were adroitly classified in the list of the collecting brethren\naccording to the amount of their offerings. It was in vain that he said\nthat he was _not making money_. The clergy stands no nonsense in such\nmatters.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIII\n\nSORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL\n\n\n        Il piacere di alzar la testa tutto l'anno, e ben pagato\n        da certi quarti d'ora che bisogna passar.--_Casti_.\n\n\nLet us leave this petty man to his petty fears; why did he take a man\nof spirit into his household when he needed someone with the soul\nof a valet? Why can't he select his staff? The ordinary trend of\nthe nineteenth century is that when a noble and powerful individual\nencounters a man of spirit, he kills him, exiles him and imprisons him,\nor so humiliates him that the other is foolish enough to die of grief.\nIn this country it so happens that it is not merely the man of spirit\nwho suffers. The great misfortunes of the little towns of France and of\nrepresentative governments, like that of New York, is that they find\nit impossible to forget the existence of individuals like M. de Renal.\nIt is these men who make public opinion in a town of twenty thousand\ninhabitants, and public opinion is terrible in a country which has a\ncharter of liberty. A man, though of a naturally noble and generous\ndisposition, who would have been your friend in the natural course of\nevents, but who happens to live a hundred leagues off, judges you by\nthe public opinion of your town which is made by those fools who have\nchanced to be born noble, rich and conservative. Unhappy is the man who\ndistinguishes himself.\n\nImmediately after dinner they left for Vergy, but the next day but\none Julien saw the whole family return to Verrieres. An hour had not\npassed before he discovered to his great surprise that Madame de Renal\nhad some mystery up her sleeve. Whenever he came into the room she\nwould break off her conversation with her husband and would almost\nseem to desire that he should go away. Julien did not need to be given\nthis hint twice. He became cold and reserved. Madame de Renal noticed\nit and did not ask for an explanation. \"Is she going to give me a\nsuccessor,\" thought Julien. \"And to think of her being so familiar\nwith me the day before yesterday, but that is how these great ladies\nare said to act. It's just like kings. One never gets any more warning\nthan the disgraced minister who enters his house to find his letter of\ndismissal.\" Julien noticed that these conversations which left off so\nabruptly at his approach, often dealt with a big house which belonged\nto the municipality of Verrieres, a house which though old was large\nand commodious and situated opposite the church in the most busy\ncommercial district of the town. \"What connection can there be between\nthis house and a new lover,\" said Julien to himself. In his chagrin he\nrepeated to himself the pretty verses of Francis I. which seemed novel\nto him, for Madame de Renal had only taught him them a month before:\n\n    Souvent femme varie\n    Bien fol est qui s'y fie.\n\nM. de Renal took the mail to Besancon. This journey was a matter of two\nhours. He seemed extremely harassed. On his return he threw a big grey\npaper parcel on the table.\n\n\"Here's that silly business,\" he said to his wife. An hour afterwards\nJulien saw the bill-poster carrying the big parcel. He followed him\neagerly. \"I shall learn the secret at the first street corner.\" He\nwaited impatiently behind the bill-poster who was smearing the back of\nthe poster with his big brush. It had scarcely been put in its place\nbefore Julien's curiosity saw the detailed announcement of the putting\nup for public auction of that big old house whose name had figured so\nfrequently in M. de Renal's conversations with his wife. The auction of\nthe lease was announced for to-morrow at two o'clock in the Town Hall\nafter the extinction of the third fire. Julien was very disappointed.\nHe found the time a little short. How could there be time to apprise\nall the other would-be purchasers. But, moreover, the bill, which was\ndated a fortnight back, and which he read again in its entirety in\nthree distinct places, taught him nothing.\n\nHe went to visit the house which was to let. The porter, who had not\nseen him approach, was saying mysteriously to a neighbour:\n\n\"Pooh, pooh, waste of time. M. Maslon has promised him that he shall\nhave it for three hundred francs; and, as the mayor kicked, he has been\nsummoned to the bishop's palace by M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair.\"\n\nJulien's arrival seemed very much to disconcert the two friends who\ndid not say another word. Julien made a point of being present at the\nauction of the lease.\n\nThere was a crowd in the badly-lighted hall, but everybody kept\nquizzing each other in quite a singular way. All eyes were fixed on a\ntable where Julien perceived three little lighted candle-ends on a tin\nplate. The usher was crying out \"Three hundred francs, gentlemen.\"\n\n\"Three hundred francs, that's a bit too thick,\" said a man to his\nneighbour in a low voice. Julien was between the two of them. \"It's\nworth more than eight hundred, I will raise the bidding.\" \"It's cutting\noff your nose to spite your face. What will you gain by putting M.\nMaslon, M. Valenod, the Bishop, this terrible Grand Vicar de Frilair\nand the whole gang on your track.\"\n\n\"Three hundred and twenty francs,\" shouted out the other.\n\n\"Damned brute,\" answered his neighbour. \"Why here we have a spy of the\nmayor,\" he added, designating Julien.\n\nJulien turned sharply round to punish this remark, but the two,\nFranc-comtois, were no longer paying any attention to him. Their\ncoolness gave him back his own. At that moment the last candle-end\nwent out and the usher's drawling voice awarded the house to M. de St.\nGiraud of the office of the prefecture of ---- for a term of nine years\nand for a rent of 320 francs.\n\nAs soon as the mayor had left the hall, the gossip began again.\n\n\"Here's thirty francs that Grogeot's recklessness is landing the\nmunicipality in for,\" said one--\"But,\" answered another, \"M. de Saint\nGiraud will revenge himself on Grogeot.\"\n\n\"How monstrous,\" said a big man on Julien's left. \"A house which I\nmyself would have given eight hundred francs for my factory, and I\nwould have got a good bargain.\"\n\n\"Pooh!\" answered a young manufacturer, \"doesn't M. de St. Giraud belong\nto the congregation? Haven't his four children got scholarships? poor\nman! The community of Verrieres must give him five hundred francs over\nand above his salary, that is all.\"\n\n\"And to say that the mayor was not able to stop it,\" remarked a third.\n\"For he's an ultra he is, I'm glad to say, but he doesn't steal.\"\n\n\"Doesn't he?\" answered another. \"Suppose it's simply a mere game of\n'snap'[1] then. Everything goes into a big common purse, and everything\nis divided up at the end of the year. But here's that little Sorel,\nlet's go away.\"\n\nJulien got home in a very bad temper. He found Madame de Renal very sad.\n\n\"You come from the auction?\" she said to him.\n\n\"Yes, madam, where I had the honour of passing for a spy of M. the\nMayor.\"\n\n\"If he had taken my advice, he would have gone on a journey.\"\n\nAt this moment Monsieur de Renal appeared: he looked very dismal. The\ndinner passed without a single word. Monsieur de Renal ordered Julien\nto follow the children to Vergy.\n\nMadame de Renal endeavoured to console her husband.\n\n\"You ought to be used to it, my dear.\"\n\nThat evening they were seated in silence around the domestic hearth.\nThe crackle of the burnt pinewood was their only distraction. It\nwas one of those moments of silence which happen in the most united\nfamilies. One of the children cried out gaily,\n\n\"Somebody's ringing, somebody's ringing!\"\n\n\"Zounds! supposing it's Monsieur de Saint Giraud who has come under\nthe pretext of thanking me,\" exclaimed the mayor. \"I will give him a\ndressing down. It is outrageous. It is Valenod to whom he'll feel under\nan obligation, and it is I who get compromised. What shall I say if\nthose damned Jacobin journalists get hold of this anecdote, and turn me\ninto a M. Nonante Cinque.\"\n\nA very good-looking man, with big black whiskers, entered at this\nmoment, preceded by the servant.\n\n\"Monsieur the mayor, I am Signor Geronimo. Here is a letter which M.\nthe Chevalier de Beauvoisis, who is attached to the Embassy of Naples,\ngave me for you on my departure. That is only nine days ago, added\nSignor Geronimo, gaily looking at Madame de Renal. Your cousin, and my\ngood friend, Signor de Beauvoisis says that you know Italian, Madame.\"\n\nThe Neapolitan's good humour changed this gloomy evening into a very\ngay one. Madame de Renal insisted upon giving him supper. She put the\nwhole house on the go. She wanted to free Julien at any price from the\nimputation of espionage which she had heard already twice that day.\n\nSignor Geronimo was an excellent singer, excellent company, and had\nvery gay qualities which, at any rate in France, are hardly compatible\nwith each other. After dinner he sang a little duet with Madame de\nRenal, and told some charming tales. At one o'clock in the morning the\nchildren protested, when Julien suggested that they should go to bed.\n\n\"Another of those stories,\" said the eldest.\n\n\"It is my own, Signorino,\" answered Signor Geronimo.\n\n\"Eight years ago I was, like you, a young pupil of the Naples\nConservatoire. I mean I was your age, but I did not have the honour to\nbe the son of the distinguished mayor of the pretty town of Verrieres.\"\nThis phrase made M. de Renal sigh, and look at his wife.\n\n\"Signor Zingarelli,\" continued the young singer, somewhat exaggerating\nhis action, and thus making the children burst into laughter, \"Signor\nZingarelli was an excellent though severe master. He is not popular at\nthe Conservatoire, but he insists on the pretence being kept up that he\nis. I went out as often as I could. I used to go to the little Theatre\nde San Carlino, where I used to hear divine music. But heavens! the\nquestion was to scrape together the eight sous which were the price of\nadmission to the parterre? An enormous sum,\" he said, looking at the\nchildren and watching them laugh. \"Signor Giovannone, director of the\nSan Carlino, heard me sing. I was sixteen. 'That child is a treasure,'\nhe said.\n\n\"'Would you like me to engage you, my dear boy?' he said.\n\n\"'And how much will you give me?'\n\n\"'Forty ducats a month.' That is one hundred and sixty francs,\ngentlemen. I thought the gates of heaven had opened.\n\n\"'But,' I said to Giovannone, 'how shall I get the strict Zingarelli to\nlet me go out?'\n\n\"'_Lascia fare a me_.'\"\n\n\"Leave it to me,\" exclaimed the eldest of the children.\n\n\"Quite right, my young sir. Signor Giovannone he says to me, 'First\nsign this little piece of paper, my dear friend.' I sign.\n\n\"He gives me three ducats. I had never seen so much money. Then he told\nme what I had to do.\n\n\"Next day I asked the terrible Zingarelli for an audience. His old\nvalet ushered me in.\n\n\"'What do you want of me, you naughty boy?' said Zingarelli.\n\n\"'Maestro,' I said, 'I repent of all my faults. I will never go out of\nthe Conservatoire by passing through the iron grill. I will redouble my\ndiligence.'\n\n\"'If I were not frightened of spoiling the finest bass voice I have\never heard, I would put you in prison for a fortnight on bread and\nwater, you rascal.'\n\n\"'Maestro,' I answered, 'I will be the model boy of the whole school,\n_credete a me_, but I would ask one favour of you. If anyone comes and\nasks permission for me to sing outside, refuse. As a favour, please say\nthat you cannot let me.'\n\n\"'And who the devil do you think is going to ask for a ne'er-do-well\nlike you? Do you think I should ever allow you to leave the\nConservatoire? Do you want to make fun of me? Clear out! Clear out!' he\nsaid, trying to give me a kick, 'or look out for prison and dry bread.'\"\n\nOne thing astonished Julien. The solitary weeks passed at Verrieres in\nde Renal's house had been a period of happiness for him. He had only\nexperienced revulsions and sad thoughts at the dinners to which he had\nbeen invited. And was he not able to read, write and reflect, without\nbeing distracted, in this solitary house? He was not distracted every\nmoment from his brilliant reveries by the cruel necessity of studying\nthe movement of a false soul in order to deceive it by intrigue and\nhypocrisy.\n\n\"To think of happiness being so near to me--the expense of a life\nlike that is small enough. I could have my choice of either marrying\nMademoiselle Elisa or of entering into partnership with Fouque. But it\nis only the traveller who has just scaled a steep mountain and sits\ndown on the summit who finds a perfect pleasure in resting. Would he be\nhappy if he had to rest all the time?\"\n\nMadame de Renal's mind had now reached a state of desperation. In spite\nof her resolutions, she had explained to Julien all the details of the\nauction. \"He will make me forget all my oaths!\" she thought.\n\nShe would have sacrificed her life without hesitation to save that\nof her husband if she had seen him in danger. She was one of those\nnoble, romantic souls who find a source of perpetual remorse equal to\nthat occasioned by the actual perpetration of a crime, in seeing the\npossibility of a generous action and not doing it. None the less, there\nwere deadly days when she was not able to banish the imagination of\nthe excessive happiness which she would enjoy if she suddenly became a\nwidow, and were able to marry Julien.\n\nHe loved her sons much more than their father did; in spite of his\nstrict justice they were devoted to him. She quite realised that if\nshe married Julien, it would be necessary to leave that Vergy, whose\nshades were so dear to her. She pictured herself living at Paris, and\ncontinuing to give her sons an education which would make them admired\nby everyone. Her children, herself, and Julien! They would be all\nperfectly happy!\n\nStrange result of marriage such as the nineteenth century has made it!\nThe boredom of matrimonial life makes love fade away inevitably, when\nlove has preceded the marriage. But none the less, said a philosopher,\nmarried life soon reduces those people who are sufficiently rich\nnot to have to work, to a sense of being utterly bored by all quiet\nenjoyments. And among women, it is only arid souls whom it does not\npredispose to love.\n\nThe philosopher's reflection makes me excuse Madame de Renal, but she\nwas not excused in Verrieres, and without her suspecting it, the whole\ntown found its sole topic of interest in the scandal of her intrigue.\nAs a result of this great affair, the autumn was less boring than usual.\n\nThe autumn and part of the winter passed very quickly. It was necessary\nto leave the woods of Vergy. Good Verrieres society began to be\nindignant at the fact that its anathemas made so little impression on\nMonsieur de Renal. Within eight days, several serious personages who\nmade up for their habitual gravity of demeanour by their pleasure in\nfulfilling missions of this kind, gave him the most cruel suspicions,\nat the same time utilising the most measured terms.\n\nM. Valenod, who was playing a deep game, had placed Elisa in an\naristocratic family of great repute, where there were five women.\nElisa, fearing, so she said, not to find a place during the winter, had\nonly asked from this family about two-thirds of what she had received\nin the house of the mayor. The girl hit upon the excellent idea of\ngoing to confession at the same time to both the old cure Chelan,\nand also to the new one, so as to tell both of them in detail about\nJulien's amours.\n\nThe day after his arrival, the abbe Chelan summoned Julien to him at\nsix o'clock in the morning.\n\n\"I ask you nothing,\" he said. \"I beg you, and if needs be I insist,\nthat you either leave for the Seminary of Besancon, or for your friend\nFouque, who is always ready to provide you with a splendid future. I\nhave seen to everything and have arranged everything, but you must\nleave, and not come back to Verrieres for a year.\"\n\nJulien did not answer. He was considering whether his honour ought to\nregard itself offended at the trouble which Chelan, who, after all, was\nnot his father, had taken on his behalf.\n\n\"I shall have the honour of seeing you again to-morrow at the same\nhour,\" he said finally to the cure.\n\nChelan, who reckoned on carrying so young a man by storm, talked a\ngreat deal. Julien, cloaked in the most complete humbleness, both of\ndemeanour and expression, did not open his lips.\n\nEventually he left, and ran to warn Madame de Renal whom he found in\ndespair. Her husband had just spoken to her with a certain amount of\nfrankness. The weakness of his character found support in the prospect\nof the legacy, and had decided him to treat her as perfectly innocent.\nHe had just confessed to her the strange state in which he had found\npublic opinion in Verrieres. The public was wrong; it had been misled\nby jealous tongues. But, after all, what was one to do?\n\nMadame de Renal was, for the moment, under the illusion that Julien\nwould accept the offer of Valenod and stay at Verrieres. But she was no\nlonger the simple, timid woman that she had been the preceding year.\nHer fatal passion and remorse had enlightened her. She soon realised\nthe painful truth (while at the same time she listened to her husband),\nthat at any rate a temporary separation had become essential.\n\nWhen he is far from me, Julien will revert to those ambitious projects\nwhich are so natural when one has no money. And I, Great God! I am so\nrich, and my riches are so useless for my happiness. He will forget\nme. Loveable as he is, he will be loved, and he will love. You unhappy\nwoman. What can I complain of? Heaven is just. I was not virtuous\nenough to leave off the crime. Fate robs me of my judgment. I could\neasily have bribed Elisa if I had wanted to; nothing was easier. I did\nnot take the trouble to reflect for a moment. The mad imagination of\nlove absorbed all my time. I am ruined.\n\nWhen Julien apprised Madame de Renal of the terrible news of his\ndeparture, he was struck with one thing. He did not find her put\nforward any selfish objections. She was evidently making efforts not to\ncry.\n\n\"We have need of firmness, my dear.\" She cut off a strand of her hair.\n\"I do no know what I shall do,\" she said to him, \"but promise me if I\ndie, never to forget my children. Whether you are far or near, try to\nmake them into honest men. If there is a new revolution, all the nobles\nwill have their throats cut. Their father will probably emigrate,\nbecause of that peasant on the roof who got killed. Watch over my\nfamily. Give me your hand. Adieu, my dear. These are our last moments.\nHaving made this great sacrifice, I hope I shall have the courage to\nconsider my reputation in public.\"\n\nJulien had been expecting despair. The simplicity of this farewell\ntouched him.\n\n\"No, I am not going to receive your farewell like this. I will leave\nyou now, as you yourself wish it. But three days after my departure I\nwill come back to see you at night.\"\n\nMadame de Renal's life was changed. So Julien really loved her, since\nof his own accord he had thought of seeing her again. Her awful grief\nbecame changed into one of the keenest transports of joy which she had\nfelt in her whole life. Everything became easy for her. The certainty\nof seeing her lover deprived these last moments of their poignancy.\nFrom that moment, both Madame de Renal's demeanour and the expression\nof her face were noble, firm, and perfectly dignified.\n\nM. de Renal soon came back. He was beside himself. He eventually\nmentioned to his wife the anonymous letter which he had received two\nmonths before.\n\n\"I will take it to the Casino, and shew everybody that it has been sent\nby that brute Valenod, whom I took out of the gutter and made into one\nof the richest tradesmen in Verrieres. I will disgrace him publicly,\nand then I will fight him. This is too much.\"\n\n\"Great Heavens! I may become a widow,\" thought Madame de Renal, and\nalmost at the same time she said to herself,\n\n\"If I do not, as I certainly can, prevent this duel, I shall be the\nmurderess of my own husband.\"\n\nShe had never expended so much skill in honoring his vanity. Within\ntwo hours she made him see, and always by virtue of reasons which he\ndiscovered himself, that it was necessary to show more friendship than\never to M. Valenod, and even to take Elisa back into the household.\n\nMadame de Renal had need of courage to bring herself to see again the\ngirl who was the cause of her unhappiness. But this idea was one of\nJulien's. Finally, having been put on the track three or four times,\nM. de Renal arrived spontaneously at the conclusion, disagreeable\nthough it was from the financial standpoint, that the most painful\nthing that could happen to him would be that Julien, in the middle of\nthe effervescence of popular gossip throughout Verrieres, should stay\nin the town as the tutor of Valenod's children. It was obviously to\nJulien's interest to accept the offer of the director of the workhouse.\nConversely, it was essential for M. de Renal's prestige that Julien\nshould leave Verrieres to enter the seminary of Besancon or that of\nDijon. But how to make him decide on that course? And then how is he\ngoing to live?\n\nM. de Renal, seeing a monetary sacrifice looming in the distance,\nwas in deeper despair than his wife. As for her, she felt after this\ninterview in the position of a man of spirit who, tired of life, has\ntaken a dose of stramonium. He only acts mechanically so to speak, and\ntakes no longer any interest in anything. In this way, Louis XIV. came\nto say on his death-bed, \"When I was king.\" An admirable epigram.\n\nNext morning, M. de Renal received quite early an anonymous letter.\nIt was written in a most insulting style, and the coarsest words\napplicable to his position occurred on every line. It was the work of\nsome jealous subordinate. This letter made him think again of fighting\na duel with Valenod. Soon his courage went as far as the idea of\nimmediate action. He left the house alone, went to the armourer's and\ngot some pistols which he loaded.\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" he said to himself, \"even though the strict\nadministration of the Emperor Napoleon were to become fashionable\nagain, I should not have one sou's worth of jobbery to reproach myself\nwith; at the outside, I have shut my eyes, and I have some good letters\nin my desk which authorise me to do so.\"\n\nMadame de Renal was terrified by her husband's cold anger. It recalled\nto her the fatal idea of widowhood which she had so much trouble in\nrepelling. She closeted herself with him. For several hours she talked\nto him in vain. The new anonymous letter had decided him. Finally she\nsucceeded in transforming the courage which had decided him to box\nValenod's ears, into the courage of offering six hundred francs to\nJulien, which would keep him for one year in a seminary.\n\nM. de Renal cursed a thousand times the day that he had had the\nill-starred idea of taking a tutor into his house, and forgot the\nanonymous letter.\n\nHe consoled himself a little by an idea which he did not tell his\nwife. With the exercise of some skill, and by exploiting the romantic\nideas of the young man, he hoped to be able to induce him to refuse M.\nValenod's offer at a cheaper price.\n\nMadame de Renal had much more trouble in proving to Julien that\ninasmuch as he was sacrificing the post of six hundred francs a year\nin order to enable her husband to keep up appearances, he need have no\nshame about accepting the compensation. But Julien would say each time,\n\"I have never thought for a moment of accepting that offer. You have\nmade me so used to a refined life that the coarseness of those people\nwould kill me.\"\n\nCruel necessity bent Julien's will with its iron hand. His pride gave\nhim the illusion that he only accepted the sum offered by M. de Renal\nas a loan, and induced him to give him a promissory note, repayable in\nfive years with interest.\n\nMadame de Renal had, of course, many thousands of francs which had been\nconcealed in the little mountain cave.\n\nShe offered them to him all a tremble, feeling only too keenly that\nthey would be angrily refused.\n\n\"Do you wish,\" said Julien to her, \"to make the memory of our love\nloathsome?\"\n\nFinally Julien left Verrieres. M. de Renal was very happy, but when\nthe fatal moment came to accept money from him the sacrifice proved\nbeyond Julien's strength. He refused point blank. M. de Renal embraced\nhim around the neck with tears in his eyes. Julien had asked him for\na testimonial of good conduct, and his enthusiasm could find no terms\nmagnificent enough in which to extol his conduct.\n\nOur hero had five louis of savings and he reckoned on asking Fouque for\nan equal sum.\n\nHe was very moved. But one league from Verrieres, where he left so much\nthat was dear to him, he only thought of the happiness of seeing the\ncapital of a great military town like Besancon.\n\nDuring the short absence of three days, Madame de Renal was the victim\nof one of the cruellest deceptions to which love is liable. Her life\nwas tolerable, because between her and extreme unhappiness there was\nstill that last interview which she was to have with Julien.\n\nFinally during the night of the third day, she heard from a distance\nthe preconcerted signal. Julien, having passed through a thousand\ndangers, appeared before her. In this moment she only had one\nthought--\"I see him for the last time.\" Instead of answering the\nendearments of her lover, she seemed more dead than alive. If she\nforced herself to tell him that she loved him, she said it with an\nembarrassed air which almost proved the contrary. Nothing could rid her\nof the cruel idea of eternal separation. The suspicious Julien thought\nfor the moment that he was already forgotten. His pointed remarks to\nthis effect were only answered by great tears which flowed down in\nsilence, and by some hysterical pressings of the hand.\n\n\"But,\" Julien would answer his mistress's cold protestations, \"Great\nHeavens! How can you expect me to believe you? You would show one\nhundred times more sincere affection to Madame Derville to a mere\nacquaintance.\"\n\nMadame de Renal was petrified, and at a loss for an answer.\n\n\"It is impossible to be more unhappy. I hope I am going to die. I feel\nmy heart turn to ice.\"\n\nThose were the longest answers which he could obtain.\n\nWhen the approach of day rendered it necessary for him to leave Madame\nde Renal, her tears completely ceased. She saw him tie a knotted rope\nto the window without saying a word, and without returning her kisses.\nIt was in vain that Julien said to her.\n\n\"So now we have reached the state of affairs which you wished for\nso much. Henceforward you will live without remorse. The slightest\nindisposition of your children will no longer make you see them in the\ntomb.\"\n\n\"I am sorry that you cannot kiss Stanislas,\" she said coldly.\n\nJulien finished by being profoundly impressed by the cold embraces of\nthis living corpse. He could think of nothing else for several leagues.\nHis soul was overwhelmed, and before passing the mountain, and while\nhe could still see the church tower of Verrieres he turned round\nfrequently.\n\n\n[1] C'est pigeon qui vole. A reference to a contemporary animal game\nwith a pun on the word \"vole.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIV\n\nA CAPITAL\n\n\n        What a noise, what busy people! What ideas for the\n        future in a brain of twenty! What distraction offered by\n        love.--_Barnave_.\n\n\nFinally he saw some black walls near a distant mountain. It was the\ncitadel of Besancon. \"How different it would be for me,\" he said\nwith a sigh, \"if I were arriving at this noble military town to be\nsub-lieutenant in one of the regiments entrusted with its defence.\"\nBesancon is not only one of the prettiest towns in France, it abounds\nin people of spirit and brains. But Julien was only a little peasant,\nand had no means of approaching distinguished people.\n\nHe had taken a civilian suit at Fouque's, and it was in this dress that\nhe passed the drawbridge. Steeped as he was in the history of the siege\nof 1674, he wished to see the ramparts of the citadel before shutting\nhimself up in the seminary. He was within an ace two or three times\nof getting himself arrested by the sentinel. He was penetrating into\nplaces which military genius forbids the public to enter, in order to\nsell twelve or fifteen francs worth of corn every year.\n\nThe height of the walls, the depth of the ditches, the terrible aspect\nof the cannons had been engrossing him for several hours when he passed\nbefore the great cafe on the boulevard. He was motionless with wonder;\nit was in vain that he read the word _cafe_, written in big characters\nabove the two immense doors. He could not believe his eyes. He made an\neffort to overcome his timidity. He dared to enter, and found himself\nin a hall twenty or thirty yards long, and with a ceiling at least\ntwenty feet high. To-day, everything had a fascination for him.\n\nTwo games of billiards were in progress. The waiters were crying out\nthe scores. The players ran round the tables encumbered by spectators.\nClouds of tobacco smoke came from everybody's mouth, and enveloped them\nin a blue haze. The high stature of these men, their rounded shoulders,\ntheir heavy gait, their enormous whiskers, the long tailed coats which\ncovered them, everything combined to attract Julien's attention. These\nnoble children of the antique Bisontium only spoke at the top of their\nvoice. They gave themselves terrible martial airs. Julien stood still\nand admired them. He kept thinking of the immensity and magnificence\nof a great capital like Besancon. He felt absolutely devoid of the\nrequisite courage to ask one of those haughty looking gentlemen, who\nwere crying out the billiard scores, for a cup of coffee.\n\nBut the young lady at the bar had noticed the charming face of this\nyoung civilian from the country, who had stopped three feet from\nthe stove with his little parcel under his arm, and was looking at\nthe fine white plaster bust of the king. This young lady, a big\n_Franc-comtoise_, very well made, and dressed with the elegance\nsuitable to the prestige of the cafe, had already said two or three\ntimes in a little voice not intended to be heard by any one except\nJulien, \"Monsieur, Monsieur.\" Julien's eyes encountered big blue eyes\nfull of tenderness, and saw that he was the person who was being spoken\nto.\n\nHe sharply approached the bar and the pretty girl, as though he had\nbeen marching towards the enemy. In this great manoeuvre the parcel fell.\n\nWhat pity will not our provincial inspire in the young lycee scholars\nof Paris, who, at the early age of fifteen, know already how to enter\na cafe with so distinguished an air? But these children who have such\nstyle at fifteen turn commonplace at eighteen. The impassioned timidity\nwhich is met with in the provinces, sometimes manages to master its own\nnervousness, and thus trains the will. \"I must tell her the truth,\"\nthought Julien, who was becoming courageous by dint of conquering his\ntimidity as he approached this pretty girl, who deigned to address him.\n\n\"Madame, this is the first time in my life that I have come to\nBesancon. I should like to have some bread and a cup of coffee in\nreturn for payment.\"\n\nThe young lady smiled a little, and then blushed. She feared the ironic\nattention and the jests of the billiard players might be turned against\nthis pretty young man. He would be frightened and would not appear\nthere again.\n\n\"Sit here near me,\" she said to him, showing him a marble table almost\ncompletely hidden by the enormous mahogany counter which extended into\nthe hall.\n\nThe young lady leant over the counter, and had thus an opportunity of\ndisplaying a superb figure. Julien noticed it. All his ideas changed.\nThe pretty young lady had just placed before him a cup, some sugar, and\na little roll. She hesitated to call a waiter for the coffee, as she\nrealised that his arrival would put an end to her _tete-a-tete_ with\nJulien.\n\nJulien was pensively comparing this blonde and merry beauty with\ncertain memories which would often thrill him. The thought of the\npassion of which he had been the object, nearly freed him from all\nhis timidity. The pretty young woman had only one moment to save the\nsituation. She read it in Julien's looks.\n\n\"This pipe smoke makes you cough; come and have breakfast to-morrow\nbefore eight o'clock in the morning. I am practically alone then.\"\n\n\"What is your name?\" said Julien, with the caressing smile of happy\ntimidity.\n\n\"Amanda Binet.\"\n\n\"Will you allow me to send you within an hour's time a little parcel\nabout as big as this?\"\n\nThe beautiful Amanda reflected a little.\n\n\"I am watched. What you ask may compromise me. All the same, I will\nwrite my address on a card, which you will put on your parcel. Send it\nboldly to me.\"\n\n\"My name is Julien Sorel,\" said the young man. \"I have neither\nrelatives nor acquaintances at Besancon.\"\n\n\"Ah, I understand,\" she said joyfully. \"You come to study law.\"\n\n\"Alas, no,\" answered Julien, \"I am being sent to the Seminary.\"\n\nThe most complete discouragement damped Amanda's features. She called\na waiter. She had courage now. The waiter poured out some coffee for\nJulien without looking at him.\n\nAmanda was receiving money at the counter. Julien was proud of having\ndared to speak: a dispute was going on at one of the billiard tables.\nThe cries and the protests of the players resounded over the immense\nhall, and made a din which astonished Julien. Amanda was dreamy, and\nkept her eyes lowered.\n\n\"If you like, Mademoiselle,\" he said to her suddenly with assurance, \"I\nwill say that I am your cousin.\"\n\nThis little air of authority pleased Amanda. \"He's not a mere nobody,\"\nshe thought. She spoke to him very quickly, without looking at him,\nbecause her eye was occupied in seeing if anybody was coming near the\ncounter.\n\n\"I come from Genlis, near Dijon. Say that you are also from Genlis and\nare my mother's cousin.\"\n\n\"I shall not fail to do so.\"\n\n\"All the gentlemen who go to the Seminary pass here before the cafe\nevery Thursday in the summer at five o'clock.\"\n\n\"If you think of me when I am passing, have a bunch of violets in your\nhand.\"\n\nAmanda looked at him with an astonished air. This look changed Julien's\ncourage into audacity. Nevertheless, he reddened considerably, as he\nsaid to her. \"I feel that I love you with the most violent love.\"\n\n\"Speak in lower tones,\" she said to him with a frightened air.\n\nJulien was trying to recollect phrases out of a volume of the _Nouvelle\nHeloise_ which he had found at Vergy. His memory served him in good\nstead. For ten minutes he recited the _Nouvelle Heloise_ to the\ndelighted Mademoiselle Amanda. He was happy on the strength of his own\nbravery, when suddenly the beautiful Franc-contoise assumed an icy\nair. One of her lovers had appeared at the cafe door. He approached\nthe bar, whistling, and swaggering his shoulders. He looked at Julien.\nThe latter's imagination, which always indulged in extremes, suddenly\nbrimmed over with ideas of a duel. He paled greatly, put down his\ncup, assumed an assured demeanour, and considered his rival very\nattentively. As this rival lowered his head, while he familiarly poured\nout on the counter a glass of brandy for himself, Amanda ordered Julien\nwith a look to lower his eyes. He obeyed, and for two minutes kept\nmotionless in his place, pale, resolute, and only thinking of what was\ngoing to happen. He was truly happy at this moment. The rival had been\nastonished by Julien's eyes. Gulping down his glass of brandy, he said\na few words to Amanda, placed his two hands in the pockets of his big\ntail coat, and approached the billiard table, whistling, and looking at\nJulien. The latter got up transported with rage, but he did not know\nwhat to do in order to be offensive. He put down his little parcel, and\nwalked towards the billiard table with all the swagger he could muster.\n\nIt was in vain that prudence said to him, \"but your ecclesiastical\ncareer will be ruined by a duel immediately on top of your arrival at\nBesancon.\"\n\n\"What does it matter. It shall never be said that I let an insolent\nfellow go scot free.\"\n\nAmanda saw his courage. It contrasted prettily with the simplicity of\nhis manners. She instantly preferred him to the big young man with the\ntail coat. She got up, and while appearing to be following with her eye\nsomebody who was passing in the street, she went and quickly placed\nherself between him and the billiard table.\n\n\"Take care not to look askance at that gentleman. He is my\nbrother-in-law.\"\n\n\"What does it matter? He looked at me.\"\n\n\"Do you want to make me unhappy? No doubt he looked at you, why it may\nbe he is going to speak to you. I told him that you were a relative of\nmy mother, and that you had arrived from Genlis. He is a Franc-contois,\nand has never gone beyond Doleon the Burgundy Road, so say what you\nlike and fear nothing.\"\n\nJulien was still hesitating. Her barmaid's imagination furnished her\nwith an abundance of lies, and she quickly added.\n\n\"No doubt he looked at you, but it was at a moment when he was asking\nme who you were. He is a man who is boorish with everyone. He did not\nmean to insult you.\"\n\nJulien's eye followed the pretended brother-in-law. He saw him buy a\nticket for the pool, which they were playing at the further of the\ntwo billiard tables. Julien heard his loud voice shouting out in a\nthreatening tone, \"My turn to play.\"\n\nHe passed sharply before Madame Amanda, and took a step towards the\nbilliard table. Amanda seized him by the arm.\n\n\"Come and pay me first,\" she said to him.\n\n\"That is right,\" thought Julien. \"She is frightened that I shall leave\nwithout paying.\" Amanda was as agitated as he was, and very red. She\ngave him the change as slowly as she could, while she repeated to him,\nin a low voice,\n\n\"Leave the cafe this instant, or I shall love you no more, and yet I do\nlove you very much.\"\n\nJulien did go out, but slowly. \"Am I not in duty bound,\" he repeated\nto himself, \"to go and stare at that coarse person in my turn?\" This\nuncertainty kept him on the boulevard in the front of the cafe for an\nhour; he kept looking if his man was coming out. He did not come out,\nand Julien went away.\n\nHe had only been at Besancon some hours, and already he had overcome\none pang of remorse. The old surgeon-major had formerly given him some\nfencing lessons, in spite of his gout. That was all the science which\nJulien could enlist in the service of his anger. But this embarrassment\nwould have been nothing if he had only known how to vent his temper\notherwise than by the giving of a blow, for if it had come to a matter\nof fisticuffs, his enormous rival would have beaten him and then\ncleared out.\n\n\"There is not much difference between a seminary and a prison,\" said\nJulien to himself, \"for a poor devil like me, without protectors and\nwithout money. I must leave my civilian clothes in some inn, where I\ncan put my black suit on again. If I ever manage to get out of the\nseminary for a few hours, I shall be able to see Mdlle. Amanda again in\nmy lay clothes.\" This reasoning was all very fine. Though Julien passed\nin front of all the inns, he did not dare to enter a single one.\n\nFinally, as he was passing again before the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, his\nanxious eyes encountered those of a big woman, still fairly young, with\na high colour, and a gay and happy air. He approached her and told his\nstory.\n\n\"Certainly, my pretty little abbe,\" said the hostess of the\nAmbassadeurs to him, \"I will keep your lay clothes for you, and I will\neven have them regularly brushed. In weather like this, it is not good\nto leave a suit of cloth without touching it.\" She took a key, and\nconducted him herself to a room, and advised him to make out a note of\nwhat he was leaving.\n\n\"Good heavens. How well you look like that, M. the abbe Sorel,\" said\nthe big woman to him when he came down to the kitchen. I will go and\nget a good dinner served up to you, and she added in a low voice, \"It\nwill only cost twenty sous instead of the fifty which everybody else\npays, for one must really take care of your little purse strings.\"\n\n\"I have ten louis,\" Julien replied with certain pride.\n\n\"Oh, great heavens,\" answered the good hostess in alarm. \"Don't talk\nso loud, there are quite a lot of bad characters in Besancon. They'll\nsteal all that from you in less than no time, and above all, never go\ninto the cafe s, they are filled with bad characters.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said Julien, to whom those words gave food for thought.\n\n\"Don't go anywhere else, except to my place. I will make coffee for\nyou. Remember that you will always find a friend here, and a good\ndinner for twenty sous. So now you understand, I hope. Go and sit down\nat table, I will serve you myself.\"\n\n\"I shan't be able to eat,\" said Julien to her. \"I am too upset. I am\ngoing to enter the seminary, as I leave you.\" The good woman, would not\nallow him to leave before she had filled his pockets with provisions.\nFinally Julien took his road towards the terrible place. The hostess\nwas standing at the threshold, and showed him the way.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXV\n\nTHE SEMINARY\n\n\n        Three hundred and thirty-six dinners at eighty-five\n        centimes. Three hundred and thirty-six suppers at fifty\n        centimes. Chocolate to those who are entitled to it. How\n        much profit can be made on the contract?--_Valenod of\n        Besancon_.\n\n\nHe saw in the distance the iron gilt cross on the door. He approached\nslowly. His legs seemed to give way beneath him. \"So here is this hell\nupon earth which I shall be unable to leave.\"\n\nFinally he made up his mind to ring. The noise of the bell reverberated\nas though through a solitude. At the end of ten minutes a pale man,\nclothed in black, came and opened the door. Julien looked at him, and\nimmediately lowered his eyes. This porter had a singular physiognomy.\nThe green projecting pupils of his eyes were as round as those of a\ncat. The straight lines of his eyebrows betokened the impossibility of\nany sympathy. His thin lips came round in a semicircle over projecting\nteeth. None the less, his physiognomy did not so much betoken crime\nas rather that perfect callousness which is so much more terrifying\nto the young. The one sentiment which Julien's rapid gaze surmised in\nthis long and devout face was a profound contempt for every topic of\nconversation which did not deal with things celestial. Julien raised\nhis eyes with an effort, and in a voice rendered quavering by the\nbeating of his heart explained that he desired to speak to M. Pirard,\nthe director of the Seminary. Without saying a word the man in black\nsigned to him to follow. They ascended two stories by a large staircase\nwith a wooden rail, whose warped stairs inclined to the side opposite\nthe wall, and seemed on the point of falling. A little door with a\nbig cemetery cross of white wood painted black at the top was opened\nwith difficulty, and the porter made him enter a dark low room, whose\nwhitewashed walls were decorated with two big pictures blackened by\nage. In this room Julien was left alone. He was overwhelmed. His heart\nwas beating violently. He would have been happy to have ventured to\ncry. A silence of death reigned over the whole house.\n\nAt the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed a whole day to him,\nthe sinister looking porter reappeared on the threshold of a door at\nthe other end of the room, and without vouchsafing a word, signed to\nhim to advance. He entered into a room even larger than the first,\nand very badly lighted. The walls also were whitened, but there was\nno furniture. Only in a corner near the door Julien saw as he passed\na white wooden bed, two straw chairs, and a little pinewood armchair\nwithout any cushions. He perceived at the other end of the room, near a\nsmall window with yellow panes decorated with badly kept flower vases,\na man seated at a table, and covered with a dilapidated cassock. He\nappeared to be in a temper, and took one after the other a number of\nlittle squares of paper, which he arranged on his table after he had\nwritten some words on them. He did not notice Julien's presence. The\nlatter did not move, but kept standing near the centre of the room in\nthe place where the porter, who had gone out and shut the door, had\nleft him.\n\nTen minutes passed in this way: the badly dressed man kept on writing\nall the time. Julien's emotion and terror were so great that he thought\nhe was on the point of falling. A philosopher would have said, possibly\nwrongly, \"It is a violent impression made by ugliness on a soul\nintended by nature to love the beautiful.\"\n\nThe man who was writing lifted up his head. Julien only perceived it\nafter a moment had passed, and even after seeing it, he still remained\nmotionless, as though struck dead by the terrible look of which he\nwas the victim. Julien's troubled eyes just managed to make out a\nlong face, all covered with red blotches except the forehead, which\nmanifested a mortal pallor. Two little black eyes, calculated to\nterrify the most courageous, shone between these red cheeks and that\nwhite forehead. The vast area of his forehead was bounded by thick,\nflat, jet black hair.\n\n\"Will you come near, yes or no?\" said the man at last, impatiently.\n\nJulien advanced with an uneasy step, and at last, paler than he had\never been in his life and on the point of falling, stopped three paces\nfrom the little white wooden table which was covered with the squares\nof paper.\n\n\"Nearer,\" said the man.\n\nJulien advanced still further, holding out his hand, as though trying\nto lean on something.\n\n\"Your name?\"\n\n\"Julien Sorel.\"\n\n\"You are certainly very late,\" said the man to him, as he rivetted\nagain on him that terrible gaze.\n\nJulien could not endure this look. Holding out his hand as though to\nsupport himself, he fell all his length along the floor.\n\nThe man rang. Julien had only lost the use of his eyes and the power of\nmovement. He heard steps approaching.\n\nHe was lifted up and placed on the little armchair of white wood. He\nheard the terrible man saying to the porter,\n\n\"He has had an epileptic fit apparently, and this is the finishing\ntouch.\"\n\nWhen Julien was able to open his eyes, the man with the red face was\ngoing on with his writing. The porter had disappeared. \"I must have\ncourage,\" said our hero to himself, \"and above all, hide what I feel.\"\nHe felt violently sick. \"If anything happens to me, God knows what they\nwill think of me.\"\n\nFinally the man stopped writing and looked sideways at Julien.\n\n\"Are you in a fit state to answer me?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" said Julien in an enfeebled voice.\n\n\"Ah, that's fortunate.\"\n\nThe man in black had half got up, and was looking impatiently for a\nletter in the drawer of his pinewood table, which opened with a grind.\nHe found it, sat down slowly, and looking again at Julien in a manner\ncalculated to suck out of him the little life which he still possessed,\nsaid,\n\n\"You have been recommended to me by M. Chelan. He was the best cure in\nthe diocese; he was an upright man if there ever was one, and my friend\nfor thirty years.\"\n\n\"Oh. It's to M. Pirard then that I have the honour of speaking?\" said\nJulien in a dying voice.\n\n\"Apparently,\" replied the director of the seminary, as he looked at him\ndisagreeably.\n\nThe glitter of his little eyes doubled and was followed by an\ninvoluntary movement of the muscles of the corner of the mouth. It\nwas the physiognomy of the tiger savouring in advance the pleasure of\ndevouring its prey.\n\n\"Chelan's letter is short,\" he said, as though speaking to himself.\n\"_Intelligenti pauca_. In the present time it is impossible to write\ntoo little.\" He read aloud:--\n\n        \"I recommend to you Julien Sorel of this parish, whom\n        I baptized nearly twenty years ago, the son of a rich\n        carpenter who gives him nothing. Julien will be a\n        remarkable worker in the vineyard of the Lord. He lacks\n        neither memory nor intelligence; he has some faculty\n        for reflection. Will he persevere in his calling? Is he\n        sincere?\"\n\n\"Sincere,\" repeated the abbe Pirard with an astonished air, looking at\nJulien. But the abbe's look was already less devoid of all humanity.\n\"Sincere,\" he repeated, lowering his voice, and resuming his reading:--\n\n        \"I ask you for a stipend for Julien Sorel. He will earn\n        it by passing the necessary examinations. I have taught\n        him a little theology, that old and good theology of the\n        Bossuets, the Arnaults, and the Fleury's. If the person\n        does not suit you, send him back to me. The director\n        of the workhouse, whom you know well, offers him eight\n        hundred to be tutor to his children. My inner self is\n        tranquil, thanks to God. I am accustoming myself to the\n        terrible blow, 'Vale et me ama.'\"\n\nThe abbe Pirard, speaking more slowly as he read the signature,\npronounced with a sigh the word, \"Chelan.\"\n\n\"He is tranquil,\" he said, \"in fact his righteousness deserves such a\nrecompense. May God grant it to me in such a case.\" He looked up to\nheaven and made the sign of the cross. At the sight of that sacred sign\nJulien felt an alleviation of the profound horror which had frozen him\nsince his entry into the house.\n\n\"I have here three hundred and twenty-one aspirants for the most holy\nstate,\" said the abbe Pirard at last, in a tone, which though severe,\nwas not malicious; \"only seven or eight have been recommended to me by\nsuch men as the abbe Chelan; so you will be the ninth of these among\nthe three hundred and twenty-one. But my protection means neither\nfavour nor weakness, it means doubled care, and doubled severity\nagainst vice. Go and lock that door.\"\n\nJulian made an effort to walk, and managed not to fall. He noticed that\na little window near the entrance door looked out on to the country.\nHe saw the trees; that sight did him as much good as the sight of old\nfriends.\n\n\"'Loquerisne linquam latinam?'\" (Do you speak Latin?) said the abbe\nPirard to him as he came back.\n\n\"'Ita, pater optime,'\" (Yes, excellent Father) answered Julien,\nrecovering himself a little. But it was certain that nobody in the\nworld had ever appeared to him less excellent than had M. Pirard for\nthe last half hour.\n\nThe conversation continued in Latin. The expression in the abbe's eyes\nsoftened. Julien regained some self-possession. \"How weak I am,\" he\nthought, \"to let myself be imposed on by these appearances of virtue.\nThe man is probably nothing more than a rascal, like M. Maslon,\" and\nJulien congratulated himself on having hidden nearly all his money in\nhis boots.\n\nThe abbe Pirard examined Julien in theology; he was surprised at\nthe extent of his knowledge, but his astonishment increased when he\nquestioned him in particular on sacred scriptures. But when it came to\nquestions of the doctrines of the Fathers, he perceived that Julien\nscarcely even knew the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustin, Saint\nBonaventure, Saint Basile, etc., etc.\n\n\"As a matter of fact,\" thought the abbe Pirard, \"this is simply that\nfatal tendency to Protestantism for which I have always reproached\nChelan. A profound, and only too profound knowledge of the Holy\nScriptures.\"\n\n(Julien had just started speaking to him, without being questioned on\nthe point, about the real time when Genesis, the Pentateuch, etc., has\nbeen written).\n\n\"To what does this never-ending reasoning over the Holy Scriptures lead\nto?\" thought the abbe Pirard, \"if not to self-examination, that is to\nsay, the most awful Protestantism. And by the side of this imprudent\nknowledge, nothing about the Fathers to compensate for that tendency.\"\n\nBut the astonishment of the director of the seminary was quite\nunbounded when having questioned Julien about the authority of the\nPope, and expecting to hear the maxims of the ancient Gallican Church,\nthe young man recited to him the whole book of M. de Maistre \"Strange\nman, that Chelan,\" thought the abbe Pirard. \"Did he show him the book\nsimply to teach him to make fun of it?\"\n\nIt was in vain that he questioned Julien and endeavoured to guess if\nhe seriously believed in the doctrine of M. de Maistre. The young man\nonly answered what he had learnt by heart. From this moment Julien was\nreally happy. He felt that he was master of himself. After a very long\nexamination, it seemed to him that M. Pirard's severity towards him was\nonly affected. Indeed, the director of the seminary would have embraced\nJulien in the name of logic, for he found so much clearness, precision\nand lucidity in his answers, had it not been for the principles of\naustere gravity towards his theology pupils which he had inculcated in\nhimself for the last fifteen years.\n\n\"Here we have a bold and healthy mind,\" he said to himself, \"but corpus\ndebile\" (the body is weak).\n\n\"Do you often fall like that?\" he said to Julien in French, pointing\nwith his finger to the floor.\n\n\"It's the first time in my life. The porter's face unnerved me,\" added\nJulien, blushing like a child. The abbe Pirard almost smiled.\n\n\"That's the result of vain worldly pomp. You are apparently accustomed\nto smiling faces, those veritable theatres of falsehood. Truth is\naustere, Monsieur, but is not our task down here also austere? You must\nbe careful that your conscience guards against that weakness of yours,\ntoo much sensibility to vain external graces.\"\n\n\"If you had not been recommended to me,\" said the abbe Pirard, resuming\nthe Latin language with an obvious pleasure, \"If you had not been\nrecommended by a man, by the abbe Chelan, I would talk to you the vain\nlanguage of that world, to which it would appear you are only too well\naccustomed. I would tell you that the full stipend which you solicit\nis the most difficult thing in the world to obtain. But the fifty-six\nyears which the abbe Chelan has spent in apostolic work have stood him\nin poor stead if he cannot dispose of a stipend at the seminary.\"\n\nAfter these words, the abbe Pirard recommended Julien not to enter any\nsecret society or congregation without his consent.\n\n\"I give you my word of honour,\" said Julien, with all an honest man's\nexpansion of heart. The director of the seminary smiled for the first\ntime.\n\n\"That expression is not used here,\" he said to him. \"It is too\nreminiscent of that vain honour of worldly people, which leads them to\nso many errors and often to so many crimes. You owe me obedience by\nvirtue of paragraph seventeen of the bull Unam Eccesiam of St. Pius the\nFifth. I am your ecclesiastical superior. To hear in this house, my\ndear son, is to obey. How much money, have you?\"\n\n(\"So here we are,\" said Julien to himself, \"that was the reason of the\n'my very dear son').\"\n\n\"Thirty-five francs, my father.\"\n\n\"Write out carefully how you use that money. You will have to give me\nan account of it.\"\n\nThis painful audience had lasted three hours. Julien summoned the\nporter.\n\n\"Go and install Julien Sorel in cell No. 103,\" said the abbe Pirard to\nthe man.\n\nAs a great favour he let Julien have a place all to himself. \"Carry his\nbox there,\" he added.\n\nJulien lowered his eyes, and recognised his box just in front of him.\nHe had been looking at it for three hours and had not recognised it.\n\nAs he arrived at No. 103, which was a little room eight feet square on\nthe top story of the house, Julien noticed that it looked out on to the\nramparts, and he perceived beyond them the pretty plain which the Doubs\ndivides from the town.\n\n\"What a charming view!\" exclaimed Julien. In speaking like this he did\nnot feel what the words actually expressed. The violent sensations\nwhich he had experienced during the short time that he had been at\nBesancon had absolutely exhausted his strength. He sat down near the\nwindow on the one wooden chair in the cell, and fell at once into a\nprofound sleep. He did not hear either the supper bell or the bell for\nbenediction. They had forgotten him. When the first rays of the sun\nwoke him up the following morning, he found himself lying on the floor.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVI\n\nTHE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK\n\n\n        I am alone in the world. No one deigns to spare me\n        a thought. All those whom I see make their fortune,\n        have an insolence and hardness of heart which I do not\n        feel in myself. They hate me by reason of kindness\n        and good-humour. Oh, I shall die soon, either from\n        starvation or the unhappiness of seeing men so hard of\n        heart.--_Young_.\n\n\nHe hastened to brush his clothes and run down. He was late. Instead of\ntrying to justify himself Julien crossed his arms over his breast.\n\n\"Peccavi pater optime (I have sinned, I confess my fault, oh, my\nfather),\" he said with a contrite air.\n\nThis first speech was a great success. The clever ones among the\nseminarists saw that they had to deal with a man who knew something\nabout the elements of the profession. The recreation hour arrived, and\nJulien saw that he was the object of general curiosity, but he only\nmanifested reserved silence. Following the maxims he had laid down for\nhimself, he considered his three hundred and twenty-one comrades as\nenemies. The most dangerous of all in his eyes was the abbe Pirard. A\nfew days afterwards Julien had to choose a confessor, and was given a\nlist.\n\n\"Great heavens! what do they take me for?\" he said to himself. \"Do they\nthink I don't understand what's what?\" Then he chose the abbe Pirard.\n\nThis step proved decisive without his suspecting it.\n\nA little seminarist, who was quite young and a native of Verrieres, and\nwho had declared himself his friend since the first day, informed him\nthat he would probably have acted more prudently if he had chosen M.\nCastanede, the sub-director of the seminary.\n\n\"The abbe Castanede is the enemy of Pirard, who is suspected of\nJansenism,\" added the little seminarist in a whisper. All the first\nsteps of our hero were, in spite of the prudence on which he plumed\nhimself, as much mistakes as his choice of a confessor. Misled as he\nwas by all the self-confidence of a man of imagination, he took his\nprojects for facts, and believed that he was a consummate hypocrite.\nHis folly went so far as to reproach himself for his success in this\nkind of weakness.\n\n\"Alas, it is my only weapon,\" he said to himself. \"At another period I\nshould have earned my livelihood by eloquent deeds in the face of the\nenemy.\"\n\nSatisfied as he was with his own conduct, Julien looked around him. He\nfound everywhere the appearance of the purest virtue.\n\nEight or ten seminarists lived in the odour of sanctity, and had\nvisions like Saint Theresa, and Saint Francis, when he received his\nstigmata on Mount _Vernia_ in the Appenines. But it was a great secret\nand their friends concealed it. These poor young people who had\nvisions were always in the infirmary. A hundred others combined an\nindefatigable application to a robust faith. They worked till they fell\nill, but without learning much. Two or three were distinguished by a\nreal talent, amongst others a student of the name of Chazel, but both\nthey and Julien felt mutually unsympathetic.\n\nThe rest of these three hundred and twenty-one seminarists consisted\nexclusively of coarse persons, who were by no means sure of\nunderstanding the Latin words which they kept on repeating the livelong\nday. Nearly all were the sons of peasants, and they preferred to gain\ntheir livelihood by reciting some Latin words than by ploughing the\nearth. It was after this examination of his colleagues that Julien,\nduring the first few days, promised himself a speedy success.\n\n\"Intelligent people are needed in every service,\" he said to himself,\n\"for, after all, there is work to be done. I should have been a\nsergeant under Napoleon. I shall be a grand vicar among these future\ncures.\"\n\n\"All these poor devils,\" he added, \"manual labourers as they have been\nsince their childhood, have lived on curded milk and black bread up\ntill they arrived here. They would only eat meat five or six times a\nyear in their hovels. Like the Roman soldiers who used to find war the\ntime of rest, these poor peasants are enchanted with the delights of\nthe seminary.\"\n\nJulien could never read anything in their gloomy eyes but the\nsatisfaction of physical craving after dinner, and the expectation\nof sensual pleasure before the meal. Such were the people among whom\nJulien had to distinguish himself; but the fact which he did not know,\nand which they refrained from telling him, was that coming out first\nin the different courses of dogma, ecclesiastical history, etc., etc.,\nwhich are taken at the seminary, constituted in their eyes, neither\nmore nor less than a splendid sin.\n\nSince the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at\nbottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the\npopular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France\nseems to have realised that books are its real enemies. It is the\nsubmissive heart which counts for everything in its eyes. It suspects,\nand rightly so, any success in studies, even sacred ones. What is to\nprevent a superior man from crossing over to the opposite side like\nSieyes or Gregory. The trembling Church clings on to the Pope as its\none chance of safety. The Pope alone is in a position to attempt to\nparalyse all personal self-examination, and to make an impression by\nmeans of the pompous piety of his court ceremonial on the bored and\nmorbid spirit of fashionable society.\n\nJulien, as he began to get some glimpse of these various truths,\nwhich are none the less in total contradiction to all the official\npronouncements of any seminary, fell into a profound melancholy. He\nworked a great deal and rapidly succeeded in learning things which were\nextremely useful to a priest, extremely false in his own eyes, and\ndevoid of the slightest interest for him. He felt there was nothing\nelse to do.\n\n\"Am I then forgotten by the whole world,\" he thought. He did not know\nthat M. Pirard had received and thrown into the fire several letters\nwith the Dijon stamp in which the most lively passion would pierce\nthrough the most formal conventionalism of style. \"This love seems to\nbe fought by great attacks of remorse. All the better,\" thought the\nabbe Pirard. \"At any rate this lad has not loved an infidel woman.\"\n\nOne day the abbe Pirard opened a letter which seemed half-blotted out\nby tears. It was an adieu for ever. \"At last,\" said the writer to\nJulien, \"Heaven has granted me the grace of hating, not the author of\nmy fall, but my fall itself. The sacrifice has been made, dear one, not\nwithout tears as you see. The safety of those to whom I must devote\nmy life, and whom you love so much, is the decisive factor. A just\nbut terrible God will no longer see His way to avenge on them their\nmother's crimes. Adieu, Julien. Be just towards all men.\" The end of\nthe letter was nearly entirely illegible. The writer gave an address at\nDijon, but at the same time expressed the hope that Julien would not\nanswer, or at any rate would employ language which a reformed woman\ncould read without blushing. Julien's melancholy, aggravated by the\nmediocre nourishment which the contractor who gave dinners at thirteen\ncentimes per head supplied to the seminary, began to affect his health,\nwhen Fouque suddenly appeared in his room one morning.\n\n\"I have been able to get in at last. I have duly been five times to\nBesancon in order to see you. Could never get in. I put someone by the\ndoor to watch. Why the devil don't you ever go out?\"\n\n\"It is a test which I have imposed on myself.\"\n\n\"I find you greatly changed, but here you are again. I have just\nlearned from a couple of good five franc pieces that I was only a fool\nnot to have offered them on my first journey.\"\n\nThe conversation of the two friends went on for ever. Julien changed\ncolour when Fouque said to him,\n\n\"Do you know, by the by, that your pupils' mother has become positively\ndevout.\"\n\nAnd he began to talk in that off-hand manner which makes so singular an\nimpression on the passionate soul, whose dearest interests are being\ndestroyed without the speaker having the faintest suspicion of it.\n\n\"Yes, my friend, the most exalted devoutness. She is said to make\npilgrimages. But to the eternal shame of the abbe Maslon, who has\nplayed the spy so long on that poor M. Chelan, Madame de Renal would\nhave nothing to do with him. She goes to confession to Dijon or\nBesancon.\"\n\n\"She goes to Besancon,\" said Julien, flushing all over his forehead.\n\n\"Pretty often,\" said Fouque in a questioning manner.\n\n\"Have you got any _Constitutionnels_ on you?\"\n\n\"What do you say?\" replied Fouque.\n\n\"I'm asking if you've got any _Constitutionnels_?\" went on Julien\nin the quietest tone imaginable. \"They cost thirty sous a number here.\"\n\n\"What!\" exclaimed Fouque. \"Liberals even in the seminary! Poor France,\"\nhe added, assuming the abbe Maslon's hypocritical voice and sugary tone.\n\nThis visit would have made a deep impression on our hero, if he had not\nbeen put on the track of an important discovery by some words addressed\nto him the following day by the little seminarist from Verrieres.\nJulien's conduct since he had been at the seminary had been nothing but\na series of false steps. He began to make bitter fun of himself.\n\nIn point of fact the important actions in his life had been cleverly\nmanaged, but he was careless about details, and cleverness in a\nseminary consists in attention to details. Consequently, he had already\nthe reputation among his comrades of being a _strong-minded person._ He\nhad been betrayed by a number of little actions.\n\nHe had been convicted in their eyes of this enormity, _he thought and\njudged for himself_ instead of blindly following authority and example.\nThe abbe Pirard had been no help to him. He had not spoken to him\non a single occasion apart from the confessional, and even there he\nlistened more than he spoke. Matters would have been very different if\nhe had chosen the abbe Castanede. The moment that Julien realised his\nfolly, he ceased to be bored. He wished to know the whole extent of the\nevil, and to effect this emerged a little from that haughty obstinate\nsilence with which he had scrupulously rebuffed his comrades. It was\nnow that they took their revenge on him. His advances were welcomed by\na contempt verging on derision. He realised that there had not been one\nsingle hour from the time of his entry into the seminary, particularly\nduring recreation time, which had not resulted in affecting him one\nway or another, which had not increased the number of his enemies, or\nwon for him the goodwill of some seminarist who was either sincerely\nvirtuous or of a fibre slightly less coarse than that of the others.\nThe evil to repair was infinite, and the task very difficult.\nHenceforth, Julien's attention was always on guard. The problem before\nhim was to map out a new character for himself.\n\nThe moving of his eyes for example, occasioned him a great deal of\ntrouble. It is with good reason that they are carried lowered in these\nplaces.\n\n\"How presumptuous I was at Verrieres,\" said Julien to himself. \"I\nthought I lived; I was only preparing for life, and here I am at last\nin the world such as I shall find it, until my part comes to an end,\nsurrounded by real enemies. What immense difficulties,\" he added,\n\"are involved in keeping up this hypocrisy every single minute. It is\nenough to put the labours of Hercules into the shade. The Hercules of\nmodern times is the Pope Sixtus Quintus, who deceived by his modesty\nfifteen years on end forty Cardinals who had seen the liveliness and\nhaughtiness of his whole youth.\n\n\"So knowledge is nothing here,\" he said to himself with disgust.\n\"Progress in doctrine, in sacred history, etc., only seem to count.\nEverything said on those subjects is only intended to entrap fools like\nme. Alas my only merit consists in my rapid progress, and in the way in\nwhich I grasp all their nonsense. Do they really value those things at\ntheir true worth? Do they judge them like I do. And I had the stupidity\nto be proud of my quickness. The only result of my coming out top has\nbeen to give me inveterate enemies. Chazel, who really knows more than\nI do, always throws some blunder in his compositions which gets him put\nback to the fiftieth place. If he comes out first, it is only because\nhe is absent-minded. O how useful would one word, just one word, of M.\nPirard, have been to me.\"\n\nAs soon as Julien was disillusioned, the long exercises in ascetic\npiety, such as the attendances in the chapel five times a week, the\nintonation of hymns at the chapel of the Sacre Coeur, etc., etc.,\nwhich had previously seemed to him so deadly boring, became his most\ninteresting opportunities for action. Thanks to a severe introspection,\nand above all, by trying not to overdo his methods, Julien did not\nattempt at the outset to perform significant actions (that is to say,\nactions which are proof of a certain Christian perfection) like those\nseminarists who served as a model to the rest.\n\nSeminarists have a special way, even of eating a poached egg, which\nbetokens progress in the devout life.\n\nThe reader who smiles at this will perhaps be good enough to remember\nall the mistakes which the abbe Delille made over the eating of an egg\nwhen he was invited to breakfast with a lady of the Court of Louis XVI.\n\nJulien first tried to arrive at the state of _non culpa_, that is\nto say the state of the young seminarist whose demeanour and manner\nof moving his arms, eyes, etc. while in fact without any trace of\nworldliness, do not yet indicate that the person is entirely absorbed\nby the conception of the other world, and the idea of the pure\nnothingness of this one.\n\nJulien incessantly found such phrases as these charcoaled on the walls\nof the corridors. \"What are sixty years of ordeals balanced against\nan eternity of delights or any eternity of boiling oil in hell?\" He\ndespised them no longer. He realised that it was necessary to have them\nincessantly before his eyes. \"What am I going to do all my life,\" he\nsaid to himself. \"I shall sell to the faithful a place in heaven. How\nam I going to make that place visible to their eyes? By the difference\nbetween my appearance and that of a layman.\"\n\nAfter several months of absolutely unremitting application, Julien\nstill had the appearance of thinking. The way in which he would move\nhis eyes and hold his mouth did not betoken that implicit faith which\nis ready to believe everything and undergo everything, even at the cost\nof martyrdom. Julien saw with anger that he was surpassed in this by\nthe coarsest peasants. There was good reason for their not appearing\nfull of thought.\n\nWhat pains did he not take to acquire that facial expression of blindly\nfervent faith which is found so frequently in the Italian convents,\nand of which Le Guerchin has left such perfect models in his Church\npictures for the benefit of us laymen.\n\nOn feast-days, the seminarists were regaled with sausages and cabbage.\nJulien's table neighbours observed that he did not appreciate this\nhappiness. That was looked upon as one of his paramount crimes.\nHis comrades saw in this a most odious trait, and the most foolish\nhypocrisy. Nothing made him more enemies.\n\n\"Look at this bourgeois, look at this stuck-up person,\" they would\nsay, \"who pretends to despise the best rations there are, sausages and\ncabbage, shame on the villain! The haughty wretch, he is damned for\never.\"\n\n\"Alas, these young peasants, who are my comrades, find their ignorance\nan immense advantage,\" Julien would exclaim in his moments of\ndiscouragement. \"The professor has not got to deliver them on their\narrival at the seminary from that awful number of worldly ideas which I\nbrought into it, and which they read on my face whatever I do.\"\n\nJulien watched with an attention bordering on envy the coarsest of the\nlittle peasants who arrived at the seminary. From the moment when they\nwere made to doff their shabby jackets to don the black robe, their\neducation consisted of an immense and limitless respect for _hard\nliquid cash_ as they say in Franche-Comte.\n\nThat is the consecrated and heroic way of expressing the sublime idea\nof current money.\n\nThese seminarists, like the heroes in Voltaire's novels, found their\nhappiness in dining well. Julien discovered in nearly all of them\nan innate respect for the man who wears a suit of good cloth. This\nsentiment appreciates the distributive justice, which is given us at\nour courts, at its value or even above its true value. \"What can one\ngain,\" they would often repeat among themselves, \"by having a law suit\nwith 'a big man?'\"\n\nThat is the expression current in the valleys of the Jura to express\na rich man. One can judge of their respect for the richest entity\nof all--the government. Failure to smile deferentially at the mere\nname of M. the Prefect is regarded as an imprudence in the eyes of\nthe Franche-Comte peasant, and imprudence in poor people is quickly\npunished by lack of bread.\n\nAfter having been almost suffocated at first by his feeling of\ncontempt, Julien eventually experienced a feeling of pity; it often\nhappened that the fathers of most of his comrades would enter their\nhovel in winter evenings and fail to find there either bread, chestnuts\nor potatoes.\n\n\"What is there astonishing then?\" Julien would say to himself, \"if in\ntheir eyes the happy man is in the first place the one who has just had\na good dinner, and in the second place the one who possesses a good\nsuit? My comrades have a lasting vocation, that is to say, they see\nin the ecclesiastical calling a long continuance of the happiness of\ndining well and having a warm suit.\"\n\nJulien happened to hear a young imaginative seminarist say to his\ncompanion.\n\n\"Why shouldn't I become Pope like Sixtus Quintus who kept pigs?\"\n\n\"They only make Italians Popes,\" answered his friend. \"But they will\ncertainly draw lots amongst us for the great vicarships, canonries and\nperhaps bishoprics. M. P---- Bishop of Chalons, is the son of a cooper.\nThat's what my father is.\"\n\nOne day, in the middle of a theology lesson, the Abbe Pirard summoned\nJulien to him. The young fellow was delighted to leave the dark, moral\natmosphere in which he had been plunged. Julien received from the\ndirector the same welcome which had frightened him so much on the first\nday of his entry.\n\n\"Explain to me what is written on this playing card?\" he said, looking\nat him in a way calculated to make him sink into the earth.\n\nJulien read:\n\n\"Amanda Binet of the Giraffe Cafe before eight o'clock. Say you're from\nGenlis, and my mother's cousin.\"\n\nJulien realised the immense danger. The spies of the abbe Castanede had\nstolen the address.\n\n\"I was trembling with fear the day I came here,\" he answered, looking\nat the abbe Pirard's forehead, for he could not endure that terrible\ngaze. \"M. Chelan told me that this is a place of informers and\nmischief-makers of all kinds, and that spying and tale-bearing by one\ncomrade on another was encouraged by the authorities. Heaven wishes it\nto be so, so as to show life such as it is to the young priests, and\nfill them with disgust for the world and all its pomps.\"\n\n\"And it's to me that you make these fine speeches,\" said the abbe\nPirard furiously. \"You young villain.\"\n\n\"My brothers used to beat me at Verrieres,\" answered Julien coldly,\n\"When they had occasion to be jealous of me.\"\n\n\"Indeed, indeed,\" exclaimed M. Pirard, almost beside himself.\n\nJulien went on with his story without being in the least intimidated:--\n\n\"The day of my arrival at Besancon I was hungry, and I entered a\ncafe. My spirit was full of revulsion for so profane a place, but I\nthought that my breakfast would cost me less than at an inn. A lady,\nwho seemed to be the mistress of the establishment, took pity on my\ninexperience. 'Besancon is full of bad characters,' she said to me. 'I\nfear something will happen to you, sir. If some mishap should occur to\nyou, have recourse to me and send to my house before eight o'clock. If\nthe porters of the seminary refuse to execute your errand, say you are\nmy cousin and a native of Genlis.'\"\n\n\"I will have all this chatter verified,\" exclaimed the abbe Pirard,\nunable to stand still, and walking about the room.\n\n\"Back to the cell.\"\n\nThe abbe followed Julien and locked him in. The latter immediately\nbegan to examine his trunk, at the bottom of which the fatal cards had\nbeen so carefully hidden. Nothing was missing in the trunk, but several\nthings had been disarranged. Nevertheless, he had never been without\nthe key. What luck that, during the whole time of my blindness, said\nJulien to himself, I never availed myself of the permission to go out\nthat Monsieur Castanede would offer me so frequently, with a kindness\nwhich I now understand. Perhaps I should have had the weakness to have\nchanged my clothes and gone to see the fair Amanda, and then I should\nhave been ruined. When they gave up hope of exploiting that piece of\ninformation for the accomplishment of his ruin, they had used it to\ninform against him. Two hours afterwards the director summoned him.\n\n\"You did not lie,\" he said to him, with a less severe look, \"but\nkeeping an address like that is an indiscretion of a gravity which you\nare unable to realise. Unhappy child! It may perhaps do you harm in ten\nyears' time.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVII\n\nFIRST EXPERIENCE OF LIFE\n\n\n        The present time, Great God! is the ark of the Lord;\n        cursed be he who touches it.--_Diderot_.\n\n\nThe reader will kindly excuse us if we give very few clear and definite\nfacts concerning this period of Julien's life. It is not that we\nlack facts; quite the contrary. But it may be that what he saw in\nthe seminary is too black for the medium colour which the author\nhas endeavoured to preserve throughout these pages. Those of our\ncontemporaries who have suffered from certain things cannot remember\nthem without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that\nof reading a tale.\n\nJulien achieved scant success in his essays at hypocritical gestures.\nHe experienced moments of disgust, and even of complete discouragement.\nHe was not a success, even in a a vile career. The slightest help\nfrom outside would have sufficed to have given him heart again, for\nthe difficulty to overcome was not very great, but he was alone, like\na derelict ship in the middle of the ocean. \"And when I do succeed,\"\nhe would say to himself, \"think of having to pass a whole lifetime in\nsuch awful company, gluttons who have no thought but for the large\nomelette which they will guzzle at dinner-time, or persons like the\nabbe Castanede, who finds no crime too black! They will attain power,\nbut, great heavens! at what cost.\n\n\"The will of man is powerful, I read it everywhere, but is it enough to\novercome so great a disgust? The task of all the great men was easy by\ncomparison. However terrible was the danger, they found it fine, and\nwho can realise, except myself, the ugliness of my surroundings?\"\n\nThis moment was the most trying in his whole life. It would have been\nso easy for him to have enlisted in one of the fine regiments at the\ngarrison of Besancon. He could have become a Latin master. He needed so\nlittle for his subsistence, but in that case no more career, no more\nfuture for his imagination. It was equivalent to death. Here is one of\nhis sad days in detail:\n\n\"I have so often presumed to congratulate myself on being different\nfrom the other young peasants! Well, I have lived enough to realise\nthat _difference engenders hate_,\" he said to himself one morning.\nThis great truth had just been borne in upon him by one of his most\nirritating failures. He had been working for eight days at teaching a\npupil who lived in an odour of sanctity. He used to go out with him\ninto the courtyard and listen submissively to pieces of fatuity enough\nto send one to sleep standing. Suddenly the weather turned stormy. The\nthunder growled, and the holy pupil exclaimed as he roughly pushed him\naway.\n\n\"Listen! Everyone for himself in this world. I don't want to be burned\nby the thunder. God may strike you with lightning like a blasphemer,\nlike a Voltaire.\"\n\n\"I deserve to be drowned if I go to sleep during the storm,\" exclaimed\nJulien, with his teeth clenched with rage, and with his eyes opened\ntowards the sky now furrowed by the lightning. \"Let us try the conquest\nof some other rogue.\"\n\nThe bell rang for the abbe Castanede's course of sacred history. That\nday the abbe Castanede was teaching those young peasants already\nso frightened by their father's hardships and poverty, that the\nGovernment, that entity so terrible in their eyes, possessed no real\nand legitimate power except by virtue of the delegation of God's vicar\non earth.\n\n\"Render yourselves worthy, by the holiness of your life and by your\nobedience, of the benevolence of the Pope. Be _like a stick in his\nhands_,\" he added, \"and you will obtain a superb position, where you\nwill be far from all control, and enjoy the King's commands, a position\nfrom which you cannot be removed, and where one-third of the salary\nis paid by the Government, while the faithful who are moulded by your\npreaching pay the other two-thirds.\"\n\nCastanede stopped in the courtyard after he left the lesson-room. \"It\nis particularly appropriate to say of a cure,\" he said to the pupils\nwho formed a ring round him, \"that the place is worth as much as the\nman is worth. I myself have known parishes in the mountains where the\nsurplice fees were worth more than that of many town livings. There was\nquite as much money, without counting the fat capons, the eggs, fresh\nbutter, and a thousand and one pleasant details, and there the cure is\nindisputably the first man. There is not a good meal to which he is not\ninvited, feted, etc.\"\n\nCastanede had scarcely gone back to his room before the pupils split up\ninto knots. Julien did not form part of any of them; he was left out\nlike a black sheep. He saw in every knot a pupil tossing a coin in the\nair, and if he managed to guess right in this game of heads or tails,\nhis comrades would decide that he would soon have one of those fat\nlivings.\n\nAnecdotes ensued. A certain young priest, who had scarcely been\nordained a year, had given a tame rabbit to the maidservant of an old\ncure, and had succeeded in being asked to be his curate. In a few\nmonths afterwards, for the cure had quickly died, he had replaced him\nin that excellent living. Another had succeeded in getting himself\ndesignated as a successor to a very rich town living, by being present\nat all the meals of an old, paralytic cure, and by dexterously carving\nhis poultry. The seminarists, like all young people, exaggerated the\neffect of those little devices, which have an element of originality,\nand which strike the imagination.\n\n\"I must take part in these conversations,\" said Julien to himself. When\nthey did not talk about sausages and good livings, the conversation ran\non the worldly aspect of ecclesiastical doctrine, on the differences of\nbishops and prefects, of mayors and cures. Julien caught sight of the\nconception of a second god, but of a god who was much more formidable\nand much more powerful than the other one. That second god was the\nPope. They said among themselves, in a low voice, however, and when\nthey were quite sure that they would not be heard by Pirard, that\nthe reason for the Pope not taking the trouble of nominating all the\nprefects and mayors of France, was that he had entrusted that duty to\nthe King of France by entitling him a senior son of the Church.\n\nIt was about this time that Julien thought he could exploit, for the\nbenefit of his own reputation, his knowledge of De Maistre's book\non the Pope. In point of fact, he did astonish his comrades, but it\nwas only another misfortune. He displeased them by expounding their\nown opinions better than they could themselves. Chelan had acted as\nimprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the\nhabit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words,\nbut he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the\nperson of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is\noffensive.\n\nJulien's command of language added consequently a new crime to his\nscore. By dint of thinking about him, his colleagues succeeded in\nexpressing the horror with which he would inspire them by a single\nexpression; they nicknamed him Martin Luther, \"particularly,\" they\nsaid, \"because of that infernal logic which makes him so proud.\"\n\nSeveral young seminarists had a fresher complexion than Julien, and\ncould pass as better-looking, but he had white hands, and was unable to\nconceal certain refined habits of personal cleanliness. This advantage\nproved a disadvantage in the gloomy house in which chance had cast\nhim. The dirty peasants among whom he lived asserted that he had very\nabandoned morals. We fear that we may weary our reader by a narration\nof the thousand and one misfortunes of our hero. The most vigorous of\nhis comrades, for example, wanted to start the custom of beating him.\nHe was obliged to arm himself with an iron compass, and to indicate,\nthough by signs, that he would make use of it. Signs cannot figure in a\nspy's report to such good advantage as words.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVIII\n\nA PROCESSION\n\n\n        All hearts were moved. The presence of God seemed to\n        have descended into these narrow Gothic streets that\n        stretched in every direction, and were sanded by the\n        care of the faithful.--_Young_.\n\n\nIt was in vain that Julien pretended to be petty and stupid. He could\nnot please; he was too different. Yet all these professors, he said to\nhimself, are very clever people, men in a thousand. Why do they not\nlike my humility? Only one seemed to take advantage of his readiness\nto believe everything, and apparently to swallow everything. This was\nthe abbe Chas-Bernard, the director of the ceremonies of the cathedral,\nwhere, for the last fifteen years, he had been given occasion to hope\nfor a canonry. While waiting, he taught homiletics at the seminary.\nDuring the period of Julien's blindness, this class was one of those in\nwhich he most frequently came out top. The abbe Chas had used this as\nan opportunity to manifest some friendship to him, and when the class\nbroke up, he would be glad to take him by the arm for some turns in the\ngarden.\n\n\"What is he getting at,\" Julien would say to himself. He noticed\nwith astonishment that, for hours on end, the abbe would talk to him\nabout the ornaments possessed by the cathedral. It had seventeen lace\nchasubles, besides the mourning vestments. A lot was hoped from the old\nwife of the judge de Rubempre. This lady, who was ninety years of age,\nhad kept for at least seventy years her wedding dress of superb Lyons\nmaterial, embroidered with gold.\n\n\"Imagine, my friend,\" the abbe Chas would say, stopping abruptly, and\nstaring with amazement, \"that this material keeps quite stiff. There\nis so much gold in it. It is generally thought in Besancon that the\nwill of the judge's wife will result in the cathedral treasure being\nincreased by more than ten chasubles, without counting four or five\ncapes for the great feast. I will go further,\" said the abbe Chas,\nlowering his voice, \"I have reasons for thinking the judge's wife will\nleave us her magnificent silver gilt candlesticks, supposed to have\nbeen bought in Italy by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, whose\nfavourite minister was one of the good lady's ancestors.\"\n\n\"But what is the fellow getting at with all this old clothes business,\"\nthought Julien. \"These adroit preliminaries have been going on for\ncenturies, and nothing comes of them. He must be very suspicious of me.\nHe is cleverer than all the others, whose secret aim can be guessed so\neasily in a fortnight. I understand. He must have been suffering for\nfifteen years from mortified ambition.\"\n\nJulien was summoned one evening in the middle of the fencing lesson to\nthe abbe Pirard, who said to him.\n\n\"To-morrow is the feast of Corpus Domini (the Fete Dieu) the abbe\nChas-Bernard needs you to help him to decorate the cathedral. Go and\nobey.\" The abbe Pirard called him back and added sympathetically. \"It\ndepends on you whether you will utilise the occasion to go into the\ntown.\"\n\n\"Incedo per ignes,\" answered Julien. (I have secret enemies).\n\nJulien went to the cathedral next morning with downcast eyes. The sight\nof the streets and the activity which was beginning to prevail in the\ntown did him good. In all quarters they were extending the fronts of\nthe houses for the procession.\n\nAll the time that he had passed in the seminary seemed to him no more\nthan a moment. His thoughts were of Vergy, and of the pretty Amanda\nwhom he might perhaps meet, for her cafe was not very far off. He saw\nin the distance the abbe Chas-Bernard on the threshold of his beloved\ncathedral. He was a big man with a jovial face and a frank air. To-day\nhe looked triumphant. \"I was expecting you, my dear son,\" he cried as\nsoon as he saw Julien in the distance. \"Be welcome. This day's duty\nwill be protracted and arduous. Let us fortify ourselves by a first\nbreakfast. We will have the second at ten o'clock during high mass.\"\n\n\"I do not wish, sir,\" said Julien to him gravely, \"to be alone for a\nsingle instant. Deign to observe,\" he added, showing him the clock over\ntheir heads, \"that I have arrived at one minute to five.\"\n\n\"So those little rascals at the seminary frightened you. It is very\ngood of you to think of them,\" said the abbe. \"But is the road less\nbeautiful because there are thorns in the hedges which border it.\nTravellers go on their way, and leave the wicked thorns to wait in vain\nwhere they are. And now to work my dear friend, to work.\"\n\nThe abbe Chas was right in saying that the task would be arduous. There\nhad been a great funeral ceremony at the cathedral the previous day.\nThey had not been able to make any preparations. They had consequently\nonly one morning for dressing all the Gothic pillars which constitute\nthe three naves with a kind of red damask cloth ascending to a height\nof thirty feet. The Bishop had fetched by mail four decorators from\nParis, but these gentry were not able to do everything, and far from\ngiving any encouragement to the clumsiness of the Besancon colleagues,\nthey made it twice as great by making fun of them.\n\nJulien saw that he would have to climb the ladder himself. His agility\nserved him in good stead. He undertook the direction of the decorators\nfrom town. The Abbe Chas was delighted as he watched him flit from\nladder to ladder. When all the pillars were dressed in damask, five\nenormous bouquets of feathers had to be placed on the great baldachin\nabove the grand altar. A rich coping of gilded wood was supported by\neight big straight columns of Italian marble, but to reach the centre\nof the baldachin above the tabernacle involved walking over an old\nwooden cornice which was forty feet high and possibly worm-eaten.\n\nThe sight of this difficult crossing had extinguished the gaiety of the\nParisian decorators, which up till then had been so brilliant. They\nlooked at it from down below, argued a great deal, but did not go up.\nJulien seized hold of the bouquets of feathers and climbed the ladder\nat a run. He placed it neatly on the crown-shaped ornament in the\ncentre of the baldachin. When he came down the ladder again, the abbe\nChas-Bernard embraced him in his arms.\n\n\"Optime\" exclaimed the good priest, \"I will tell this to Monseigneur.\"\n\nBreakfast at ten o'clock was very gay. The abbe Chas had never seen his\nchurch look so beautiful.\n\n\"Dear disciple,\" he said to Julien. \"My mother used to let out chairs\nin this venerable building, so I have been brought up in this great\nedifice. The Terror of Robespierre ruined us, but when I was eight\nyears old, that was my age then, I used to serve masses in private\nhouses, so you see I got my meals on mass-days. Nobody could fold a\nchasuble better than I could, and I never cut the fringes. After the\nre-establishment of public worship by Napoleon, I had the good fortune\nto direct everything in this venerable metropolis. Five times a year do\nmy eyes see it adorned with these fine ornaments. But it has never been\nso resplendent, and the damask breadths have never been so well tied or\nso close to the pillars as they are to-day.\"\n\n\"So he is going to tell me his secret at last,\" said Julien. \"Now he is\ngoing to talk about himself. He is expanding.\" But nothing imprudent\nwas said by the man in spite of his evident exaltation.\n\n\"All the same he has worked a great deal,\" said Julien to himself.\n\"He is happy. What a man! What an example for me! He really takes the\ncake.\" (This was a vulgar phrase which he had learned from the old\nsurgeon).\n\nAs the sanctus of high mass sounded, Julien wanted to take a surplice\nto follow the bishop in the superb procession. \"And the thieves, my\nfriend! And the thieves,\" exclaimed the abbe Chas. \"Have you forgotten\nthem? The procession will go out, but we will watch, will you and I.\nWe shall be very lucky if we get off with the loss of a couple of ells\nof this fine lace which surrounds the base of the pillars. It is a\ngift of Madame de Rubempre. It comes from her great-grandfather the\nfamous Count. It is made of real gold, my friend,\" added the abbe in\na whisper, and with evident exaltation. \"And all genuine. I entrust\nyou with the watching of the north wing. Do not leave it. I will keep\nthe south wing and the great nave for myself. Keep an eye on the\nconfessional. It is there that the women accomplices of the thieves\nalways spy. Look out for the moment when we turn our backs.\"\n\nAs he finished speaking, a quarter to twelve struck. Immediately\nafterwards the sound of the great clock was heard. It rang a full peal.\nThese full solemn sounds affected Julien. His imagination was no longer\nturned to things earthly. The perfume of the incense and of the rose\nleaves thrown before the holy sacrament by little children disguised as\nSt. John increased his exaltation.\n\nLogically the grave sounds of the bell should only have recalled to\nJulien's mind the thought of the labour of twenty men paid fifty-four\ncentimes each, and possibly helped by fifteen or twenty faithful souls.\nLogically, he ought to have thought of the wear and tear of the cords\nand of the framework and of the danger of the clock itself, which\nfalls down every two centuries, and to have considered the means of\ndiminishing the salary of the bell-ringers, or of paying them by some\nindulgence or other grace dispensed from the treasures of the Church\nwithout diminishing its purse.\n\nJulien's soul exalted by these sounds with all their virile fulness,\ninstead of making these wise reflections, wandered in the realm\nof imagination. He will never turn out a good priest or a good\nadministrator. Souls which get thrilled so easily are at the best\nonly capable of producing an artist. At this moment the presumption\nof Julien bursts out into full view. Perhaps fifty of his comrades\nin the seminary made attentive to the realities of life by their own\nunpopularity and the Jacobinism which they are taught to see hiding\nbehind every hedge, would have had no other thought suggested by the\ngreat bell of the cathedral except the wages of the ringers. They would\nhave analysed with the genius of Bareme whether the intensity of the\nemotion produced among the public was worth the money which was given\nto the ringers. If Julien had only tried to think of the material\ninterests of the cathedral, his imagination would have transcended its\nactual object and thought of economizing forty francs on the fabric\nand have lost the opportunity of avoiding an expense of twenty-five\ncentimes.\n\nWhile the procession slowly traversed Besancon on the finest day\nimaginable, and stopped at the brilliant altar-stations put up by the\nauthorities, the church remained in profound silence. There prevailed a\nsemi-obscurity, an agreeable freshness. It was still perfumed with the\nfragrance of flowers and incense.\n\nThe silence, the deep solitude, the freshness of the long naves\nsweetened Julien's reverie. He did not fear being troubled by the\nabbe Chas, who was engaged in another part of the building. His soul\nhad almost abandoned its mortal tenement, which was pacing slowly the\nnorth wing which had been trusted to his surveillance. He was all the\nmore tranquil when he had assured himself that there was no one in the\nconfessional except some devout women. His eyes looked in front of him\nseeing nothing.\n\nHis reverie was almost broken by the sight of two well-dressed women,\none in the Confessional, and the other on a chair quite near her. He\nlooked without seeing, but noticed, however, either by reason of some\nvague appreciation of his duties or admiration for the aristocratic\nbut simple dress of the ladies, that there was no priest in the\nConfessional.\n\n\"It is singular,\" he thought, \"that if these fair ladies are devout,\nthey are not kneeling before some altar, or that if they are in society\nthey have not an advantageous position in the first row of some\nbalcony. How well cut that dress is! How graceful!\"\n\nHe slackened his pace to try and look at them. The lady who was\nkneeling in the Confessional turned her head a little hearing the noise\nof Julien's step in this solemn place. Suddenly she gave a loud cry,\nand felt ill.\n\nAs the lady collapsed and fell backwards on her knees, her friend who\nwas near her hastened to help her. At the same time Julien saw the\nshoulders of the lady who was falling backwards. His eyes were struck\nby a twisted necklace of fine, big pearls, which he knew well. What\nwere his emotions when he recognised the hair of Madame de Renal? It\nwas she! The lady who was trying to prevent her from falling was Madame\nDerville. Julien was beside himself and hastened to their side. Madame\nde Renal's fall would perhaps have carried her friend along with her,\nif Julien had not supported them. He saw the head of Madame de Renal,\npale and entirely devoid of consciousness floating on his shoulder. He\nhelped Madame Derville to lean that charming head up against a straw\nchair. He knelt down.\n\nMadame Derville turned round and recognised him.\n\n\"Away, monsieur, away!\" she said to him, in a tone of the most lively\nanger. \"Above all, do not let her see you again. The sight of you would\nbe sure to horrify her. She was so happy before you came. Your conduct\nis atrocious. Flee! Take yourself off if you have any shame left.\"\n\nThese words were spoken with so much authority, and Julien felt so\nweak, that he did take himself off. \"She always hated me,\" he said to\nhimself, thinking of Madame Derville. At the same moment the nasal\nchanting of the first priests in the procession which was now coming\nback resounded in the church. The abbe Chas-Bernard called Julien, who\nat first did not hear him, several times. He came at last and took his\narm behind a pillar where Julien had taken refuge more dead than alive.\nHe wanted to present him to the Bishop.\n\n\"Are you feeling well, my child?\" said the abbe to him, seeing him so\npale, and almost incapable of walking. \"You have worked too much.\" The\nabbe gave him his arm. \"Come, sit down behind me here, on the little\nseat of the dispenser of holy water; I will hide you.\"\n\nThey were now beside the main door.\n\n\"Calm yourself. We have still a good twenty minutes before Monseigneur\nappears. Try and pull yourself together. I will lift you up when he\npasses, for in spite of my age, I am strong and vigorous.\"\n\nJulien was trembling so violently when the Bishop passed, that the abbe\nChas gave up the idea of presenting him.\n\n\"Do not take it too much to heart,\" he said. \"I will find another\nopportunity.\"\n\nThe same evening he had six pounds of candles which had been saved, he\nsaid, by Julien's carefulness, and by the promptness with which he had\nextinguished them, carried to the seminary chapel. Nothing could have\nbeen nearer the truth. The poor boy was extinguished himself. He had\nnot had a single thought after meeting Madame de Renal.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIX\n\nTHE FIRST PROMOTION\n\n\n    He knew his age, he knew his department, and he is rich.\n                                               _The Forerunner_.\n\n\nJulien had not emerged from the deep reverie in which the episode in\nthe cathedral had plunged him, when the severe abbe Pirard summoned him.\n\n\"M. the abbe Chas-Bernard has just written in your favour. I am on\nthe whole sufficiently satisfied with your conduct. You are extremely\nimprudent and irresponsible without outward signs of it. However, up\nto the present, you have proved yourself possessed of a good and even\ngenerous heart. Your intellect is superior. Taking it all round, I see\nin you a spark which one must not neglect.\n\n\"I am on the point of leaving this house after fifteen years of work.\nMy crime is that I have left the seminarists to their free will, and\nthat I have neither protected nor served that secret society of which\nyou spoke to me at the Confessional. I wish to do something for you\nbefore I leave. I would have done so two months earlier, for you\ndeserve it, had it not been for the information laid against you as\nthe result of the finding in your trunk of Amanda Binet's address. I\nwill make you New and Old Testament tutor. Julien was transported with\ngratitude and evolved the idea of throwing himself on his knees and\nthanking God. He yielded to a truer impulse, and approaching the abbe\nPirard, took his hand and pressed it to his lips.\n\n\"What is the meaning of this?\" exclaimed the director angrily, but\nJulien's eyes said even more than his act.\n\nThe abbe Pirard looked at him in astonishment, after the manner of a\nman who has long lost the habit of encountering refined emotions. The\nattention deceived the director. His voice altered.\n\n\"Well yes, my child, I am attached to you. Heaven knows that I have\nbeen so in spite of myself. I ought to show neither hate nor love to\nanyone. I see in you something which offends the vulgar. Jealousy and\ncalumny will pursue you in whatever place Providence may place you.\nYour comrades will never behold you without hate, and if they pretend\nto like you, it will only be to betray you with greater certainty. For\nthis there is only one remedy. Seek help only from God, who, to punish\nyou for your presumption, has cursed you with the inevitable hatred\nof your comrades. Let your conduct be pure. That is the only resource\nwhich I can see for you. If you love truth with an irresistible\nembrace, your enemies will sooner or later be confounded.\"\n\nIt had been so long since Julien had heard a friendly voice that he\nmust be forgiven a weakness. He burst out into tears.\n\nThe abbe Pirard held out his arms to him. This moment was very sweet\nto both of them. Julien was mad with joy. This promotion was the first\nwhich he had obtained. The advantages were immense. To realise them one\nmust have been condemned to pass months on end without an instant's\nsolitude, and in immediate contact with comrades who were at the best\nimportunate, and for the most part insupportable. Their cries alone\nwould have sufficed to disorganise a delicate constitution. The noise\nand joy of these peasants, well-fed and well-clothed as they were,\ncould only find a vent for itself, or believe in its own completeness\nwhen they were shouting with all the strength of their lungs.\n\nNow Julien dined alone, or nearly an hour later than the other\nseminarists. He had a key of the garden and could walk in it when no\none else was there.\n\nJulien was astonished to perceive that he was now hated less. He, on\nthe contrary, had been expecting that their hate would become twice as\nintense. That secret desire of his that he should not be spoken to,\nwhich had been only too manifest before, and had earned him so many\nenemies, was no longer looked upon as a sign of ridiculous haughtiness.\nIt became, in the eyes of the coarse beings who surrounded him, a just\nappreciation of his own dignity. The hatred of him sensibly diminished,\nabove all among the youngest of his comrades, who were now his pupils,\nand whom he treated with much politeness. Gradually he obtained his own\nfollowing. It became looked upon as bad form to call him Martin Luther.\n\nBut what is the good of enumerating his friends and his enemies? The\nwhole business is squalid, and all the more squalid in proportion to\nthe truth of the picture. And yet the clergy supply the only teachers\nof morals which the people have. What would happen to the people\nwithout them? Will the paper ever replace the cure?\n\nSince Julien's new dignity, the director of the seminary made a point\nof never speaking to him without witnesses. These tactics were prudent,\nboth for the master and for the pupil, but above all it was meant for\na test. The invariable principle of that severe Jansenist Pirard was\nthis--\"if a man has merit in your eyes, put obstacles in the way of\nall he desires, and of everything which he undertakes. If the merit is\nreal, he will manage to overthrow or get round those obstacles.\"\n\nIt was the hunting season. It had occurred to Fouque to send a stag\nand a boar to the seminary as though they came from Julien's parents.\nThe dead animals were put down on the floor between the kitchen and\nthe refectory. It was there that they were seen by all the seminarists\non their way to dinner. They constituted a great attraction for their\ncuriosity. The boar, dead though it was, made the youngest ones feel\nfrightened. They touched its tusks. They talked of nothing else for a\nwhole week.\n\nThis gift, which raised Julien's family to the level of that class\nof society which deserves respect, struck a deadly blow at all\njealousy. He enjoyed a superiority, consecrated by fortune. Chazel,\nthe most distinguished of the seminarists, made advances to him, and\nalways reproached him for not having previously apprised them of his\nparents' position and had thus involved them in treating money without\nsufficient respect. A conscription took place, from which Julien, in\nhis capacity as seminarist, was exempt. This circumstance affected him\nprofoundly. \"So there is just passed for ever that moment which, twenty\nyears earlier, would have seen my heroic life begin. He was walking\nalone in the seminary garden. He heard the masons who were walling up\nthe cloister walls talking between themselves.\n\n\"Yes, we must go. There's the new conscription. When _the other_ was\nalive it was good business. A mason could become an officer then, could\nbecome a general then. One has seen such things.\"\n\n\"You go and see now. It's only the ragamuffins who leave for the army.\nAny one _who has anything_ stays in the country here.\"\n\n\"The man who is born wretched stays wretched, and there you are.\"\n\n\"I say, is it true what they say, that the other is dead?\" put in the\nthird mason.\n\n\"Oh well, it's the '_big men_' who say that, you see. The other one\nmade them afraid.\"\n\n\"What a difference. How the fortification went ahead in his time. And\nto think of his being betrayed by his own marshals.\"\n\nThis conversation consoled Julien a little. As he went away, he\nrepeated with a sigh:\n\n\"_Le seul roi dont le peuple a garde la memoire._\"\n\nThe time for the examination arrived. Julien answered brilliantly. He\nsaw that Chazel endeavoured to exhibit all his knowledge. On the first\nday the examiners, nominated by the famous Grand Vicar de Frilair, were\nvery irritated at always having to put first, or at any rate second,\non their list, that Julien Sorel, who had been designated to them as\nthe Benjamin of the Abbe Pirard. There were bets in the seminary that\nJulien would come out first in the final list of the examination, a\nprivilege which carried with it the honour of dining with my Lord\nBishop. But at the end of a sitting, dealing with the fathers of the\nChurch, an adroit examiner, having first interrogated Julien on Saint\nJerome and his passion for Cicero, went on to speak about Horace,\nVirgil and other profane authors. Julien had learnt by heart a great\nnumber of passages from these authors without his comrades' knowledge.\nSwept away by his successes, he forgot the place where he was, and\nrecited in paraphrase with spirit several odes of Horace at the\nrepeated request of the examiner. Having for twenty minutes given him\nenough rope to hang himself, the examiner changed his expression, and\nbitterly reproached him for the time he had wasted on these profane\nstudies, and the useless or criminal ideas which he had got into his\nhead.\n\n\"I am a fool, sir. You are right,\" said Julien modestly, realising the\nadroit stratagem of which he was the victim.\n\nThis examiner's dodge was considered dirty, even at the seminary, but\nthis did not prevent the abbe de Frilair, that adroit individual who\nhad so cleverly organised the machinery of the Besancon congregation,\nand whose despatches to Paris put fear into the hearts of judges,\nprefect, and even the generals of the garrison, from placing with\nhis powerful hand the number 198 against Julien's name. He enjoyed\nsubjecting his enemy, Pirard the Jansenist, to this mortification.\n\nHis chief object for the last ten years had been to deprive him of the\nheadship of the seminary. The abbe, who had himself followed the plan\nwhich he had indicated to Julien, was sincere, pious, devoted to his\nduties and devoid of intrigue, but heaven in its anger had given him\nthat bilious temperament which is by nature so deeply sensitive to\ninsults and to hate. None of the insults which were addressed to him\nwas wasted on his burning soul. He would have handed in his resignation\na hundred times over, but he believed that he was useful in the place\nwhere Providence had set him. \"I prevent the progress of Jesuitism and\nIdolatry,\" he said to himself.\n\nAt the time of the examinations, it was perhaps nearly two months\nsince he had spoken to Julien, and nevertheless, he was ill for eight\ndays when, on receipt of the official letter announcing the result of\nthe competition, he saw the number 198 placed beside the name of that\npupil whom he regarded as the glory of his town. This stern character\nfound his only consolation in concentrating all his surveillance on\nJulien. He was delighted that he discovered in him neither anger, nor\nvindictiveness, nor discouragement.\n\nJulien felt a thrill some months afterwards when he received a letter.\nIt bore the Paris post-mark. Madame de Renal is remembering her\npromises at last, he thought. A gentleman who signed himself Paul\nSorel, and who said that he was his relative, sent him a letter of\ncredit for five hundred francs. The writer went on to add that if\nJulien went on to study successfully the good Latin authors, a similar\nsum would be sent to him every year.\n\n\"It is she. It is her kindness,\" said Julien to himself, feeling quite\novercome. \"She wishes to console me. But why not a single word of\naffection?\"\n\nHe was making a mistake in regard to this letter, for Madame de Renal,\nunder the influence of her friend, Madame Derville, was abandoning\nherself absolutely to profound remorse. She would often think, in\nspite of herself, of that singular being, the meeting with whom had\nrevolutionized her life. But she carefully refrained from writing to\nhim.\n\nIf we were to talk the terminology of the seminary, we would be able\nto recognise a miracle in the sending of these five hundred francs and\nto say that heaven was making use of Monsieur de Frilair himself in\norder to give this gift to Julien. Twelve years previously the abbe de\nFrilair had arrived in Besancon with an extremely exiguous portmanteau,\nwhich, according to the story, contained all his fortune. He was now\none of the richest proprietors of the department. In the course of his\nprosperity, he had bought the one half of an estate, while the other\nhalf had been inherited by Monsieur de la Mole. Consequently there was\na great lawsuit between these two personages.\n\nM. le Marquis de la Mole felt that, in spite of his brilliant life at\nParis and the offices which he held at Court, it would be dangerous to\nfight at Besancon against the Grand Vicar, who was reputed to make and\nunmake prefects.\n\nInstead of soliciting a present of fifty thousand francs which could\nhave been smuggled into the budget under some name or other, and of\nthrowing up this miserable lawsuit with the abbe Frilair over a matter\nof fifty thousand francs, the marquis lost his temper. He thought\nhe was in the right, absolutely in the right. Moreover, if one is\npermitted to say so, who is the judge who has not got a son, or at any\nrate a cousin to push in the world?\n\nIn order to enlighten the blindest minds the abbe de Frilair took\nthe carriage of my Lord the Bishop eight days after the first decree\nwhich he obtained, and went himself to convey the cross of the Legion\nof Honour to his advocate. M. de la Mole, a little dumbfounded at\nthe demeanour of the other side, and appreciating also that his own\nadvocates were slackening their efforts, asked advice of the abbe\nChelan, who put him in communication with M. Pirard.\n\nAt the period of our story the relations between these two men had\nlasted for several years. The abbe Pirard imported into this affair\nhis characteristic passion. Being in constant touch with the Marquis's\nadvocates, he studied his case, and finding it just, he became quite\nopenly the solicitor of M. de la Mole against the all-powerful Grand\nVicar. The latter felt outraged by such insolence, and on the part of a\nlittle Jansenist into the bargain.\n\n\"See what this Court nobility who pretend to be so powerful really\nare,\" would say the abbe de Frilair to his intimates. M. de la Mole has\nnot even sent a miserable cross to his agent at Besancon, and will let\nhim be tamely turned out. None the less, so they write me, this noble\npeer never lets a week go by without going to show off his blue ribbon\nin the drawing-room of the Keeper of Seal, whoever it may be.\n\nIn spite of all the energy of the abbe Pirard, and although M. de la\nMole was always on the best of terms with the minister of justice, and\nabove all with his officials, the best that he could achieve after six\ncareful years was not to lose his lawsuit right out. Being as he was\nin ceaseless correspondence with the abbe Pirard in connection with an\naffair in which they were both passionately interested, the Marquis\ncame to appreciate the abbe's particular kind of intellect. Little by\nlittle, and in spite of the immense distance in their social positions,\ntheir correspondence assumed the tone of friendship. The abbe Pirard\ntold the Marquis that they wanted to heap insults upon him till he\nshould be forced to hand in his resignation. In his anger against what,\nin his opinion, was the infamous stratagem employed against Julien, he\nnarrated his history to the Marquis.\n\nAlthough extremely rich, this great lord was by no means miserly. He\nhad never been able to prevail on the abbe Pirard to accept even the\nreimbursement of the postal expenses occasioned by the lawsuit. He\nseized the opportunity of sending five hundred francs to his favourite\npupil. M. de la Mole himself took the trouble of writing the covering\nletter. This gave the abbe food for thought. One day the latter\nreceived a little note which requested him to go immediately on an\nurgent matter to an inn on the outskirts of Besancon. He found there\nthe steward of M. de la Mole.\n\n\"M. le Marquis has instructed me to bring you his carriage,\" said the\nman to him. \"He hopes that after you have read this letter you will\nfind it convenient to leave for Paris in four or five days. I will\nemploy the time in the meanwhile in asking you to be good enough to\nshow me the estates of M. le Marquis in the Franche-Comte, so that I\ncan go over them.\"\n\nThe letter was short:--\n\n        \"Rid yourself, my good sir, of all the chicanery of the\n        provinces and come and breathe the peaceful atmosphere\n        of Paris. I send you my carriage which has orders to\n        await your decision for four days. I will await you\n        myself at Paris until Tuesday. You only require to say\n        so, monsieur, to accept in your own name one of the best\n        livings in the environs of Paris. The richest of your\n        future parishioners has never seen you, but is more\n        devoted than you can possibly think: he is the Marquis\n        de la Mole.\"\n\nWithout having suspected it, the stern abbe Pirard loved this seminary,\npeopled as it was by his enemies, but to which for the past fifteen\nyears he had devoted all his thoughts. M. de la Mole's letter had\nthe effect on him of the visit of the surgeon come to perform a\ndifficult but necessary operation. His dismissal was certain. He made\nan appointment with the steward for three days later. For forty-eight\nhours he was in a fever of uncertainty. Finally he wrote to the M. de\nla Mole, and composed for my Lord the Bishop a letter, a masterpiece of\necclesiastical style, although it was a little long; it would have been\ndifficult to have found more unimpeachable phrases, and ones breathing\na more sincere respect. And nevertheless, this letter, intended as it\nwas to get M. de Frilair into trouble with his patron, gave utterance\nto all the serious matters of complaint, and even descended to the\nlittle squalid intrigues which, having been endured with resignation\nfor six years, were forcing the abbe Pirard to leave the diocese.\n\nThey stole his firewood, they poisoned his dog, etc., etc.\n\nHaving finished this letter he had Julien called. Like all the other\nseminarists, he was sleeping at eight o'clock in the evening.\n\n\"You know where the Bishop's Palace is,\" he said to him in good\nclassical Latin. \"Take this letter to my Lord. I will not hide from\nyou that I am sending you into the midst of the wolves. Be all ears\nand eyes. Let there be no lies in your answers, but realise that the\nman questioning you will possibly experience a real joy in being able\nto hurt you. I am very pleased, my child, at being able to give you\nthis experience before I leave you, for I do not hide from you that the\nletter which you are bearing is my resignation.\"\n\nJulien stood motionless. He loved the abbe Pirard. It was in vain that\nprudence said to him,\n\n\"After this honest man's departure the Sacre-Coeur party will disgrace\nme and perhaps expel me.\"\n\nHe could not think of himself. He was embarrassed by a phrase which he\nwas trying to turn in a polite way, but as a matter of fact he found\nhimself without the brains to do so.\n\n\"Well, my friend, are you not going?\"\n\n\"Is it because they say, monsieur,\" answered Julian timidly, \"that you\nhave put nothing on one side during your long administration. I have\nsix hundred francs.\"\n\nHis tears prevented him from continuing.\n\n\"_That also will be noticed,_\" said the ex-director of the seminary\ncoldly. \"Go to the Palace. It is getting late.\"\n\nChance would so have it that on that evening, the abbe de Frilair\nwas on duty in the salon of the Palace. My lord was dining with the\nprefect, so it was to M. de Frilair himself that Julien, though he did\nnot know it, handed the letter.\n\nJulien was astonished to see this abbe boldly open the letter which was\naddressed to the Bishop. The face of the Grand Vicar soon expressed\nsurprise, tinged with a lively pleasure, and became twice as grave\nas before. Julien, struck with his good appearance, found time to\nscrutinise him while he was reading. This face would have possessed\nmore dignity had it not been for the extreme subtlety which appeared\nin some features, and would have gone to the fact of actually denoting\nfalseness if the possessor of this fine countenance had ceased\nto school it for a single minute. The very prominent nose formed\na perfectly straight line and unfortunately gave to an otherwise\ndistinguished profile, a curious resemblance to the physiognomy of\na fox. Otherwise this abbe, who appeared so engrossed with Monsieur\nPirard's resignation, was dressed with an elegance which Julien had\nnever seen before in any priest and which pleased him exceedingly.\n\nIt was only later that Julien knew in what the special talent of the\nabbe de Frilair really consisted. He knew how to amuse his bishop,\nan amiable old man made for Paris life, and who looked upon Besancon\nas exile. This Bishop had very bad sight, and was passionately fond\nof fish. The abbe de Frilair used to take the bones out of the fish\nwhich was served to my Lord. Julien looked silently at the abbe who\nwas rereading the resignation when the door suddenly opened with a\nnoise. A richly dressed lackey passed in rapidly. Julien had only\ntime to turn round towards the door. He perceived a little old man\nwearing a pectoral cross. He prostrated himself. The Bishop addressed a\nbenevolent smile to him and passed on. The handsome abbe followed him\nand Julien was left alone in the salon, and was able to admire at his\nleisure its pious magnificence.\n\nThe Bishop of Besancon, a man whose spirit had been tried but\nnot broken by the long miseries of the emigration, was more than\nseventy-five years old and concerned himself infinitely little with\nwhat might happen in ten years' time.\n\n\"Who is that clever-looking seminarist I think I saw as I passed?\" said\nthe Bishop. \"Oughtn't they to be in bed according to my regulations.\"\n\n\"That one is very wide-awake I assure you, my Lord, and he brings\ngreat news. It is the resignation of the only Jansenist residing in\nyour diocese, that terrible abbe Pirard realises at last that we mean\nbusiness.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the Bishop with a laugh. \"I challenge you to replace him\nwith any man of equal worth, and to show you how much I prize that man,\nI will invite him to dinner for to-morrow.\"\n\nThe Grand Vicar tried to slide in a few words concerning the choice of\na successor. The prelate, who was little disposed to talk business,\nsaid to him.\n\n\"Before we install the other, let us get to know a little of the\ncircumstances under which the present one is going. Fetch me this\nseminarist. The truth is in the mouth of children.\"\n\nJulien was summoned. \"I shall find myself between two inquisitors,\"\nhe thought. He had never felt more courageous. At the moment when he\nentered, two valets, better dressed than M. Valenod himself, were\nundressing my lord. That prelate thought he ought to question Julien\non his studies before questioning him about M. Pirard. He talked a\nlittle theology, and was astonished. He soon came to the humanities,\nto Virgil, to Horace, to Cicero. \"It was those names,\" thought Julien,\nthat earned me my number 198. I have nothing to lose. Let us try\nand shine. He succeeded. The prelate, who was an excellent humanist\nhimself, was delighted.\n\nAt the prefect's dinner, a young girl who was justly celebrated,\nhad recited the poem of the Madeleine. He was in the mood to talk\nliterature, and very quickly forgot the abbe Pirard and his affairs\nto discuss with the seminarist whether Horace was rich or poor. The\nprelate quoted several odes, but sometimes his memory was sluggish,\nand then Julien would recite with modesty the whole ode: the fact\nwhich struck the bishop was that Julien never deviated from the\nconversational tone. He spoke his twenty or thirty Latin verses as\nthough he had been speaking of what was taking place in his own\nseminary. They talked for a long time of Virgil, or Cicero, and the\nprelate could not help complimenting the young seminarist. \"You could\nnot have studied better.\"\n\n\"My Lord,\" said Julien, \"your seminary can offer you 197 much less\nunworthy of your high esteem.\"\n\n\"How is that?\" said the Prelate astonished by the number.\n\n\"I can support by official proof just what I have had the honour of\nsaying before my lord. I obtained the number 198 at the seminary's\nannual examination by giving accurate answers to the very questions\nwhich are earning me at the present moment my lord's approbation.\n\n\"Ah, it is the Benjamin of the abbe Pirard,\" said the Bishop with a\nlaugh, as he looked at M. de Frilair. \"We should have been prepared\nfor this. But it is fair fighting. Did you not have to be woken up, my\nfriend,\" he said, addressing himself to Julien. \"To be sent here?\"\n\n\"Yes, my Lord. I have only been out of the seminary alone once in my\nlife to go and help M. the abbe Chas-Bernard decorate the cathedral on\nCorpus Christi day.\n\n\"Optime,\" said the Bishop. \"So, it is you who showed proof of so much\ncourage by placing the bouquets of feathers on the baldachin. They\nmake me shudder. They make me fear that they will cost some man his\nlife. You will go far, my friend, but I do not wish to cut short your\nbrilliant career by making you die of hunger.\"\n\nAnd by the order of the Bishop, biscuits and wine were brought in, to\nwhich Julien did honour, and the abbe de Frilair, who knew that his\nBishop liked to see people eat gaily and with a good appetite, even\ngreater honour.\n\nThe prelate, more and more satisfied with the end of his evening,\ntalked for a moment of ecclesiastical history. He saw that Julien did\nnot understand. The prelate passed on to the moral condition of the\nRoman Empire under the system of the Emperor Constantine. The end of\npaganism had been accompanied by that state of anxiety and of doubt\nwhich afflicts sad and jaded spirits in the nineteenth century. My Lord\nnoticed Julien's ignorance of almost the very name of Tacitus. To the\nastonishment of the prelate, Julien answered frankly that that author\nwas not to be found in the seminary library.\n\n\"I am truly very glad,\" said the Bishop gaily, \"You relieve me of an\nembarrassment. I have been trying for the last five minutes to find a\nway of thanking you for the charming evening which you have given me in\na way that I could certainly never have expected. I did not anticipate\nfinding a teacher in a pupil in my seminary. Although the gift is not\nunduly canonical, I want to give you a Tacitus.\" The prelate had eight\nvolumes in a superior binding fetched for him, and insisted on writing\nhimself on the title page of the first volume a Latin compliment to\nJulien Sorel. The Bishop plumed himself on his fine Latinity. He\nfinished by saying to him in a serious tone, which completely clashed\nwith the rest of the conversation.\n\n\"Young man, if you are good, you will have one day the best living in\nmy diocese, and one not a hundred leagues from my episcopal palace, but\nyou must be good.\"\n\nLaden with his volumes, Julien left the palace in a state of great\nastonishment as midnight was striking.\n\nMy Lord had not said a word to him about the abbe Pirard. Julien was\nparticularly astonished by the Bishop's extreme politeness. He had had\nno conception of such an urbanity in form combined with so natural an\nair of dignity. Julien was especially struck by the contrast on seeing\nagain the gloomy abbe Pirard, who was impatiently awaiting him.\n\n\"Quid tibi dixerunt (What have they said to you)?\" he cried out to him\nin a loud voice as soon as he saw him in the distance. \"Speak French,\nand repeat my Lord's own words without either adding or subtracting\nanything,\" said the ex-Director of the seminary in his harsh tone,\nand with his particularly inelegant manners, as Julien got slightly\nconfused in translating into Latin the speeches of the Bishop.\n\n\"What a strange present on the part of the Bishop to a young\nseminarist,\" he ventured to say as he turned over the leaves of the\nsuperb Tacitus, whose gilt edges seemed to horrify him.\n\nTwo o'clock was already striking when he allowed his favourite pupil to\nretire to his room after an extremely detailed account.\n\n\"Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus,\" he said to him. \"Where\nis my Lord Bishop's compliment? This Latin line will serve as your\nlightning-conductor in this house after my departure.\"\n\nErit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo querens quem devoret.\n(For my successor will be to you, my son, like a ravening lion seeking\nsomeone to devour).\n\nThe following morning Julien noticed a certain strangeness in\nthe manner in which his comrades spoke to him. It only made him\nmore reserved. \"This,\" he thought, \"is the result of M. Pirard's\nresignation. It is known over the whole house, and I pass for his\nfavourite. There ought logically to be an insult in their demeanour.\"\nBut he could not detect it. On the contrary, there was an absence of\nhate in the eyes of all those he met along the corridors. \"What is the\nmeaning of this? It is doubtless a trap. Let us play a wary game.\"\n\nFinally the little seminarist said to him with a laugh,\n\n\"Cornelii Taciti opera omnia (complete works of Tacitus).\"\n\nOn hearing these words, they all congratulated Julien enviously, not\nonly on the magnificent present which he had received from my lord, but\nalso on the two hours' conversation with which he had been honoured.\nThey knew even its minutest details. From that moment envy ceased\ncompletely. They courted him basely. The abbe Castanede, who had\nmanifested towards him the most extreme insolence the very day before,\ncame and took his arm and invited him to breakfast.\n\nBy some fatality in Julien's character, while the insolence of these\ncoarse creatures had occasioned him great pain, their baseness afforded\nhim disgust, but no pleasure.\n\nTowards mid-day the abbe Pirard took leave of his pupils, but not\nbefore addressing to them a severe admonition.\n\n\"Do you wish for the honours of the world,\" he said to them. \"For all\nthe social advantages, for the pleasure of commanding pleasures, of\nsetting the laws at defiance, and the pleasure of being insolent with\nimpunity to all? Or do you wish for your eternal salvation? The most\nbackward of you have only got to open your eyes to distinguish the true\nways.\"\n\nHe had scarcely left before the devotees of the _Sacre Coeur de Jesus_\nwent into the chapel to intone a Te Deum. Nobody in the seminary took\nthe ex-director's admonition seriously.\n\n\"He shows a great deal of temper because he is losing his job,\" was\nwhat was said in every quarter.\n\nNot a single seminarist was simple enough to believe in the voluntary\nresignation of a position which put him into such close touch with the\nbig contractors.\n\nThe abbe Pirard went and established himself in the finest inn at\nBesancon, and making an excuse of business which he had not got,\ninsisted on passing a couple of days there. The Bishop had invited\nhim to dinner, and in order to chaff his Grand Vicar de Frilair,\nendeavoured to make him shine. They were at dessert when the\nextraordinary intelligence arrived from Paris that the abbe Pirard had\nbeen appointed to the magnificent living of N. ---- four leagues from\nParis. The good prelate congratulated him upon it. He saw in the whole\naffair a piece of good play which put him in a good temper and gave him\nthe highest opinion of the abbe's talents. He gave him a magnificent\nLatin certificate, and enjoined silence on the abbe de Frilair, who was\nventuring to remonstrate.\n\nThe same evening, my Lord conveyed his admiration to the Marquise de\nRubempre. This was great news for fine Besancon society. They abandoned\nthemselves to all kinds of conjectures over this extraordinary favour.\nThey already saw the abbe Pirard a Bishop. The more subtle brains\nthought M. de la Mole was a minister, and indulged on this day in\nsmiles at the imperious airs that M. the abbe de Frilair adopted in\nsociety.\n\nThe following day the abbe Pirard was almost mobbed in the streets,\nand the tradesmen came to their shop doors when he went to solicit an\ninterview with the judges who had had to try the Marquis's lawsuit. For\nthe first time in his life he was politely received by them. The stern\nJansenist, indignant as he was with all that he saw, worked long with\nthe advocates whom he had chosen for the Marquis de la Mole, and left\nfor Paris. He was weak enough to tell two or three college friends who\naccompanied him to the carriage whose armorial bearings they admired,\nthat after having administered the Seminary for fifteen years he was\nleaving Besancon with five hundred and twenty francs of savings. His\nfriends kissed him with tears in their eyes, and said to each other,\n\n\"The good abbe could have spared himself that lie. It is really too\nridiculous.\"\n\nThe vulgar, blinded as they are by the love of money, were\nconstitutionally incapable of understanding that it was in his own\nsincerity that the abbe Pirard had found the necessary strength to\nfight for six years against Marie Alacoque, the _Sacre Coeur de Jesus_,\nthe Jesuits and his Bishop.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXX\n\nAN AMBITIOUS MAN\n\n\n    There is only one nobility, the title of duke; a marquis is\n    ridiculous; the word duke makes one turn round.\n                                       _Edinburgh Review_.\n\n\nThe Marquis de la Mole received the abbe Pirard without any of those\naristocratic mannerisms whose very politeness is at the same time so\nimpertinent to one who understands them. It would have been a waste of\ntime, and the Marquis was sufficiently expeditious in big affairs to\nhave no time to lose.\n\nHe had been intriguing for six months to get both the king and people\nto accept a minister who, as a matter of gratitude, was to make him a\nDuke. The Marquis had been asking his Besancon advocate for years on\nend for a clear and precise summary of his Franche-Comte lawsuits. How\ncould the celebrated advocate explain to him what he did not understand\nhimself? The little square of paper which the abbe handed him explained\nthe whole matter.\n\n\"My dear abbe,\" said the Marquis to him, having got through in less\nthan five minutes all polite formulae of personal questions. \"My dear\nabbe, in the midst of my pretended prosperity I lack the time to occupy\nmyself seriously with two little matters which are rather important,\nmy family and my affairs. I manage the fortune of my house on a large\nscale. I can carry it far. I manage my pleasures, and that is the first\nconsideration in my eyes,\" he added, as he saw a look of astonishment\nin the abbe Pirard's eyes. Although a man of common sense, the abbe was\nsurprised to hear a man talk so frankly about his pleasures.\n\n\"Work doubtless exists in Paris,\" continued the great lord, \"but it is\nperched on the fifth story, and as soon as I take anyone up, he takes\nan apartment on the second floor, and his wife starts a day at home;\nthe result is no more work and no more efforts except either to be, or\nappear to be, a society man. That is the only thing they bother about,\nas soon as they have got their bread and butter.\n\n\"For my lawsuits, yes, for every single one of them, I have, to put it\nplainly, advocates who quarrel to death. One died of consumption the\nday before yesterday. Taking my business all round, would you believe,\nmonsieur, that for three years I have given up all hope of finding a\nman who deigns, during the time he is acting as my clerk, to give a\nlittle serious thought to what he is doing. Besides, all this is only a\npreliminary.\n\n\"I respect you and would venture to add that, although I only see you\nfor the first time to-day, I like you. Will you be my secretary at a\nsalary of eight hundred francs or even double. I shall still be the\ngainer by it, I swear to you, and I will manage to reserve that fine\nliving for you for the day when we shall no longer be able to agree.\"\nThe abbe refused, but the genuine embarrassment in which he saw the\nMarquis suggested an idea to him towards the end of the conversation.\n\n\"I have left in the depths of my seminary a poor young man who, if I\nmistake not, will be harshly persecuted. If he were only a simple monk\nhe would be already _in pace_. So far this young man only knows Latin\nand the Holy Scriptures, but it is not impossible that he will one day\nexhibit great talent, either for preaching or the guiding of souls. I\ndo not know what he will do, but he has the sacred fire. He may go far.\nI thought of giving him to our Bishop, if we had ever had one who was a\nlittle of your way of considering men and things.\"\n\n\"What is your young man's extraction?\" said the Marquis.\n\n\"He is said to be the son of a carpenter in our mountains. I rather\nbelieve he is the natural son of some rich man. I have seen him receive\nan anonymous or pseudonymous letter with a bill for five hundred\nfrancs.\"\n\n\"Oh, it is Julien Sorel,\" said the Marquis.\n\n\"How do you know his name?\" said the abbe, in astonishment, reddening\nat his question.\n\n\"That's what I'm not going to tell you,\" answered the Marquis.\n\n\"Well,\" replied the abbe, \"you might try making him your secretary. He\nhas energy. He has a logical mind. In a word, it's worth trying.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" said the Marquis. \"But would he be the kind of man to allow\nhis palm to be greased by the Prefect of Police or any one else and\nthen spy on me? That is only my objection.\"\n\nAfter hearing the favourable assurances of the abbe Pirard, the Marquis\ntook a thousand franc note.\n\n\"Send this journey money to Julien Sorel. Let him come to me.\"\n\n\"One sees at once,\" said the abbe Pirard, \"that you live in Paris.\nYou do not know the tyranny which weighs us poor provincials down,\nand particularly those priests who are not friendly to the Jesuits.\nThey will refuse to let Julien Sorel leave. They will manage to cloak\nthemselves in the most clever excuses. They will answer me that he is\nill, that his letters were lost in the post, etc., etc.\"\n\n\"I will get a letter from the minister to the Bishop, one of these\ndays,\" answered the Marquis.\n\n\"I was forgetting to warn you of one thing,\" said the abbe. \"This young\nman, though of low birth, has a high spirit. He will be of no use if\nyou madden his pride. You will make him stupid.\"\n\n\"That pleases me,\" said the Marquis. \"I will make him my son's comrade.\nWill that be enough for you?\"\n\nSome time afterwards, Julien received a letter in an unknown writing,\nand bearing the Chelon postmark. He found in it a draft on a Besancon\nmerchant, and instructions to present himself at Paris without delay.\nThe letter was signed in a fictitious name, but Julien had felt a\nthrill in opening it. A leaf of a tree had fallen down at his feet. It\nwas the agreed signal between himself and the abbe Pirard.\n\nWithin an hour's time, Julien was summoned to the Bishop's Palace,\nwhere he found himself welcomed with a quite paternal benevolence. My\nlord quoted Horace and at the same time complimented him very adroitly\non the exalted destiny which awaited him in Paris in such a way as\nto elicit an explanation by way of thanks. Julien was unable to say\nanything, simply because he did not know anything, and my Lord showed\nhim much consideration. One of the little priests in the bishopric\nwrote to the mayor, who hastened to bring in person a signed passport,\nwhere the name of the traveller had been left in blank.\n\nBefore midnight of the same evening, Julien was at Fouque's. His\nfriend's shrewd mind was more astonished than pleased with the future\nwhich seemed to await his friend.\n\n\"You will finish up,\" said that Liberal voter, \"with a place in the\nGovernment, which will compel you to take some step which will be\ncalumniated. It will only be by your own disgrace that I shall have\nnews of you. Remember that, even from the financial standpoint, it is\nbetter to earn a hundred louis in a good timber business, of which\none is his own master, than to receive four thousand francs from a\nGovernment, even though it were that of King Solomon.\"\n\nJulien saw nothing in this except the pettiness of spirit of a country\nbourgeois. At last he was going to make an appearance in the theatre of\ngreat events. Everything was over-shadowed in his eyes by the happiness\nof going to Paris, which he imagined to be populated by people of\nintellect, full of intrigues and full of hypocrisy, but as polite as\nthe Bishop of Besancon and the Bishop of Agde. He represented to his\nfriend that he was deprived of any free choice in the matter by the\nabbe Pirard's letter.'\n\nThe following day he arrived at Verrieres about noon. He felt the\nhappiest of men for he counted on seeing Madame de Renal again. He\nwent first to his protector the good abbe Chelan. He met with a severe\nwelcome.\n\n\"Do you think you are under any obligation to me?\" said M. Chelan to\nhim, without answering his greeting. \"You will take breakfast with me.\nDuring that time I will have a horse hired for you and you will leave\nVerrieres without seeing anyone.\"\n\n\"Hearing is obeying,\" answered Julien with a demeanour smacking of\nthe seminary, and the only questions now discussed were theology and\nclassical Latin.\n\nHe mounted his horse, rode a league, and then perceiving a wood and\nnot seeing any one who could notice him enter, he plunged into it.\nAt sunset, he sent away the horse. Later, he entered the cottage of\na peasant, who consented to sell him a ladder and to follow him with\nit to the little wood which commands the _Cours de la Fidelite_ at\nVerrieres.\n\n\"I have been following a poor mutineer of a conscript ... or a\nsmuggler,\" said the peasant as he took leave of him, \"but what does\nit matter? My ladder has been well paid for, and I myself have done a\nthing or two in that line.\"\n\nThe night was very black. Towards one o'clock in the morning, Julien,\nladen with his ladder, entered Verrieres. He descended as soon as he\ncould into the bed of the stream, which is banked within two walls, and\ntraverses M. de Renal's magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet.\nJulien easily climbed up the ladder. \"How will the watch dogs welcome\nme,\" he thought. \"It all turns on that.\" The dogs barked and galloped\ntowards him, but he whistled softly and they came and caressed him.\nThen climbing from terrace to terrace he easily managed, although all\nthe grills were shut, to get as far as the window of Madame de Renal's\nbedroom which, on the garden side, was only eight or six feet above the\nground. There was a little heart shaped opening in the shutters which\nJulien knew well. To his great disappointment, this little opening was\nnot illuminated by the flare of a little night-light inside.\n\n\"Good God,\" he said to himself. \"This room is not occupied by Madame de\nRenal. Where can she be sleeping? The family must be at Verrieres since\nI have found the dogs here, but I might meet M. de Renal himself, or\neven a stranger in this room without a light, and then what a scandal!\"\nThe most prudent course was to retreat, but this idea horrified Julien.\n\n\"If it's a stranger, I will run away for all I'm worth, and leave my\nladder behind me, but if it is she, what a welcome awaits me! I can\nwell imagine that she has fallen into a mood of penitence and the most\nexalted piety, but after all, she still has some remembrance of me,\nsince she has written to me.\" This bit of reasoning decided him.\n\nWith a beating heart, but resolved none the less to see her or perish\nin the attempt, he threw some little pebbles against the shutter.\nNo answer. He leaned his long ladder beside the window, and himself\nknocked on the shutter, at first softly, and then more strongly.\n\"However dark it is, they may still shoot me,\" thought Julien. This\nidea made the mad adventure simply a question of bravery.\n\n\"This room is not being slept in to-night,\" he thought, \"or whatever\nperson might be there would have woken up by now. So far as it is\nconcerned, therefore, no further precautions are needed. I must only\ntry not to be heard by the persons sleeping in the other rooms.\"\n\nHe descended, placed his ladder against one of the shutters, climbed\nup again, and placing his hand through the heart-shaped opening, was\nfortunate enough to find pretty quickly the wire which is attached to\nthe hook which closed the shutter. He pulled this wire. It was with an\nineffable joy that he felt that the shutter was no longer held back,\nand yielded to his effort.\n\nI must open it bit by bit and let her recognise my voice. He opened the\nshutter enough to pass his head through it, while he repeated in a low\nvoice, \"It's a friend.\"\n\nHe pricked up his ears and assured himself that nothing disturbed the\nprofound silence of the room, but there could be no doubt about it,\nthere was no light, even half-extinguished, on the mantelpiece. It was\na very bad sign.\n\n\"Look out for the gun-shot,\" he reflected a little, then he ventured\nto knock against the window with his finger. No answer. He knocked\nharder. I must finish it one way or another, even if I have to break\nthe window. When he was knocking very hard, he thought he could catch\na glimpse through the darkness of something like a white shadow that\nwas crossing the room. At last there was no doubt about it. He saw a\nshadow which appeared to advance with extreme slowness. Suddenly he saw\na cheek placed against the pane to which his eye was glued.\n\nHe shuddered and went away a little, but the night was so black that\nhe could not, even at this distance, distinguish if it were Madame de\nRenal. He was frightened of her crying out at first in alarm. He heard\nthe dogs prowling and growling around the foot of the ladder. \"It is\nI,\" he repeated fairly loudly. \"A friend.\"\n\nNo answer. The white phantom had disappeared.\n\n\"Deign to open to me. I must speak to you. I am too unhappy.\" And he\nknocked hard enough to break the pane.\n\nA crisp sound followed. The casement fastening of the window yielded.\nHe pushed the casement and leaped lightly into the room.\n\nThe white phantom flitted away from him. He took hold of its arms. It\nwas a woman. All his ideas of courage vanished. \"If it is she, what is\nshe going to say?\" What were his emotions when a little cry gave him to\nunderstand, that it was Madame de Renal?\n\nHe clasped her in his arms. She trembled and scarcely had the strength\nto push him away.\n\n\"Unhappy man. What are you doing?\" Her agonised voice could scarcely\narticulate the words.\n\nJulien thought that her voice rang with the most genuine indignation.\n\n\"I have come to see you after a cruel separation of more than fourteen\nmonths.\"\n\n\"Go away, leave me at once. Oh, M. Chelan, why did you prevent me\nwriting to him? I could then have foreseen this horror.\" She pushed\nhim away with a truly extraordinary strength. \"Heaven has deigned to\nenlighten me,\" she repeated in a broken voice. \"Go away! Flee!\"\n\n\"After fourteen months of unhappiness I shall certainly not leave you\nwithout a word. I want to know all you have done. Yes, I have loved\nyou enough to deserve this confidence. I want to know everything.\"\nThis authoritative tone dominated Madame de Renal's heart in spite of\nherself. Julien, who was hugging her passionately and resisting her\nefforts to get loose, left off clasping her in his arms. This reassured\nMadame de Renal a little.\n\n\"I will take away the ladder,\" he said, \"to prevent it compromising\nus in case some servant should be awakened by the noise, and go on a\nround.\"\n\n\"Oh leave me, leave me!\" she cried with an admirable anger. \"What\ndo men matter to me! It is God who sees the awful scene you are now\nmaking. You are abusing meanly the sentiments which I had for you but\nhave no longer. Do you hear, Monsieur Julien?\"\n\nHe took away the ladder very slowly so as not to make a noise.\n\n\"Is your husband in town, dear,\" he said to her not in order to defy\nher but as a sheer matter of habit.\n\n\"Don't talk to me like that, I beg you, or I will call my husband. I\nfeel only too guilty in not having sent you away before. I pity you,\"\nshe said to him, trying to wound his, as she well knew, irritable pride.\n\nThis refusal of all endearments, this abrupt way of breaking so tender\na tie which he thought still subsisted, carried the transports of\nJulien's love to the point of delirium.\n\n\"What! is it possible you do not love me?\" he said to her, with one of\nthose accents that come straight from the heart and impose a severe\nstrain on the cold equanimity of the listener.\n\nShe did not answer. As for him, he wept bitterly.\n\nIn fact he had no longer the strength to speak.\n\n\"So I am completely forgotten by the one being who ever loved me, what\nis the good of living on henceforth?\" As soon as he had no longer to\nfear the danger of meeting a man all his courage had left him; his\nheart now contained no emotion except that of love.\n\nHe wept for a long time in silence.\n\nHe took her hand; she tried to take it away, and after a few almost\nconvulsive moments, surrendered it to him. It was extremely dark; they\nwere both sitting on Madame de Renal's bed.\n\n\"What a change from fourteen months ago,\" thought Julien, and his tears\nredoubled. \"So absence is really bound to destroy all human sentiments.\"\n\n\"Deign to tell me what has happened to you?\" Julien said at last.\n\n\"My follies,\" answered Madame de Renal in a hard voice whose frigid\nintonation contained in it a certain element of reproach, \"were no\ndoubt known in the town when you left, your conduct was so imprudent.\nSome time afterwards when I was in despair the venerable Chelan came to\nsee me. He tried in vain for a long time to obtain a confession. One\nday he took me to that church at Dijon where I made my first communion.\nIn that place he ventured to speak himself----\" Madame de Renal\nwas interrupted by her tears. \"What a moment of shame. I confessed\neverything. The good man was gracious enough not to overwhelm me with\nthe weight of his indignation. He grieved with me. During that time I\nused to write letters to you every day which I never ventured to send.\nI hid them carefully and when I was more than usually unhappy I shut\nmyself up in my room and read over my letters.\"\n\n\"At last M. Chelan induced me to hand them over to him, some of them\nwritten a little more discreetly were sent to you, you never answered.\"\n\n\"I never received any letters from you, I swear!\"\n\n\"Great heavens! Who can have intercepted them? Imagine my grief until\nthe day I saw you in the cathedral. I did not know if you were still\nalive.\"\n\n\"God granted me the grace of understanding how much I was sinning\ntowards Him, towards my children, towards my husband,\" went on Madame\nde Renal. \"He never loved me in the way that I then thought that you\nhad loved me.\"\n\nJulien rushed into her arms, as a matter of fact without any particular\npurpose and feeling quite beside himself. But Madame de Renal repelled\nhim and continued fairly firmly.\n\n\"My venerable friend, M. Chelan, made me understand that in marrying I\nhad plighted all my affections, even those which I did not then know,\nand which I had never felt before a certain fatal attachment ... after\nthe great sacrifice of the letters that were so dear to me, my life has\nflowed on, if not happily, at any rate calmly. Do not disturb it. Be\na friend to me, my best friend.\" Julien covered her hand with kisses.\nShe perceived he was still crying. \"Do not cry, you pain me so much.\nTell me, in your turn, what you have been doing,\" Julien was unable\nto speak. \"I want to know the life you lead at the seminary,\" she\nrepeated. \"And then you will go.\"\n\nWithout thinking about what he was saying Julien spoke of the\nnumberless intrigues and jealousies which he had first encountered, and\nthen of the great serenity of his life after he had been made a tutor.\n\n\"It was then,\" he added, \"that after a long silence which was no doubt\nintended to make me realise what I see only too clearly to-day, that\nyou no longer loved me and that I had become a matter of indifference\nto you....\"\n\nMadame de Renal wrung her hands.\n\n\"It was then that you sent me the sum of five hundred francs.\"\n\n\"Never,\" said Madame de Renal.\n\n\"It was a letter stamped Paris and signed Paul Sorel so as to avert\nsuspicion.\"\n\nThere was a little discussion about how the letter could possibly have\noriginated.\n\nThe psychological situation was altered. Without knowing it Julien had\nabandoned his solemn tone; they were now once more on the footing of a\ntender affection. It was so dark that they did not see each other but\nthe tone of their voices was eloquent of everything. Julien clasped\nhis arm round his love's waist. This movement had its dangers. She\ntried to put Julien's arms away from her; at this juncture he cleverly\ndiverted her attention by an interesting detail in his story. The arm\nwas practically forgotten and remained in its present position.\n\nAfter many conjectures as to the origin of the five hundred francs\nletter, Julien took up his story. He regained a little of his\nself-control as he spoke of his past life, which compared with what he\nwas now experiencing interested him so little. His attention was now\nconcentrated on the final outcome of of his visit. \"You will have to\ngo,\" were the curt words he heard from time to time.\n\n\"What a disgrace for me if I am dismissed. My remorse will embitter all\nmy life,\" he said to himself, \"she will never write to me. God knows\nwhen I shall come back to this part of the country.\" From this moment\nJulien's heart became rapidly oblivious of all the heavenly delights of\nhis present position.\n\nSeated as he was close to a woman whom he adored and practically\nclasping her in his arms in this room, the scene of his former\nhappiness, amid a deep obscurity, seeing quite clearly as he did that\nshe had just started crying, and feeling that she was sobbing from the\nheaving of her chest, he was unfortunate enough to turn into a cold\ndiplomatist, nearly as cold as in those days when in the courtyard\nof the seminary he found himself the butt of some malicious joke on\nthe part of one of his comrades who was stronger than he was. Julien\nprotracted his story by talking of his unhappy life since his departure\nfrom Verrieres.\n\n\"So,\" said Madame de Renal to herself, \"after a year's absence and\ndeprived almost entirely of all tokens of memory while I myself was\nforgetting him, he only thought of the happy days that he had had in\nVerrieres.\" Her sobs redoubled. Julien saw the success of his story.\nHe realised that he must play his last card. He abruptly mentioned a\nletter he had just received from Paris.\n\n\"I have taken leave of my Lord Bishop.\"\n\n\"What! you are not going back to Besancon? You are leaving us for ever?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Julien resolutely, \"yes, I am leaving a country where I\nhave been forgotten even by the woman whom I loved more than anyone in\nmy life; I am leaving it and I shall never see it again. I am going to\nParis.\"\n\n\"You are going to Paris, dear,\" exclaimed Madame de Renal.\n\nHer voice was almost choked by her tears and showed the extremity of\nher trouble. Julien had need of this encouragement. He was on the point\nof executing a manoeuvre which might decide everything against him; and\nup to the time of this exclamation he could not tell what effect he was\nproducing as he was unable to see. He no longer hesitated. The fear of\nremorse gave him complete control over himself. He coldly added as he\ngot up.\n\n\"Yes, madame, I leave you for ever. May you be happy. Adieu.\"\n\nHe moved some steps towards the window. He began to open it. Madame de\nRenal rushed to him and threw herself into his arms. So it was in this\nway that, after a dialogue lasting three hours, Julien obtained what he\ndesired so passionately during the first two hours.\n\nMadame de Renal's return to her tender feelings and this overshadowing\nof her remorse would have been a divine happiness had they come a\nlittle earlier; but, as they had been obtained by artifice, they were\nsimply a pleasure. Julien insisted on lighting the night-light in spite\nof his mistress's opposition.\n\n\"Do you wish me then,\" he said to her \"to have no recollection of\nhaving seen you. Is the love in those charming eyes to be lost to me\nfor ever? Is the whiteness of that pretty hand to remain invisible?\nRemember that perhaps I am leaving you for a very long time.\"\n\nMadame de Renal could refuse him nothing. His argument made her melt\ninto tears. But the dawn was beginning to throw into sharp relief the\noutlines of the pine trees on the mountain east of Verrieres. Instead\nof going away Julien, drunk with pleasure, asked Madame de Renal to let\nhim pass the day in her room and leave the following night.\n\n\"And why not?\" she answered. \"This fatal relapse robs me of all my\nrespect and will mar all my life,\" and she pressed him to her heart.\n\"My husband is no longer the same; he has suspicions, he believes I led\nhim the way I wanted in all this business, and shows great irritation\nagainst me. If he hears the slightest noise I shall be ruined, he will\nhound me out like the unhappy woman that I am.\"\n\n\"Ah here we have a phrase of M. Chelan's,\" said Julien \"you would not\nhave talked like that before my cruel departure to the seminary; in\nthose days you used to love me.\"\n\nJulien was rewarded for the frigidity which he put into those words. He\nsaw his love suddenly forget the danger which her husband's presence\ncompelled her to run, in thinking of the much greater danger of seeing\nJulien doubt her love. The daylight grew rapidly brighter and vividly\nilluminated the room. Julien savoured once more all the deliciousness\nof pride, when he saw this charming woman in his arms and almost at his\nfeet, the only woman whom he had ever loved, and who had been entirely\nabsorbed only a few hours before by her fear of a terrible God and her\ndevotion to her duties. Resolutions, fortified by a year's persuasion,\nhad failed to hold out against his courage.\n\nThey soon heard a noise in the house. A matter that Madame de Renal had\nnot thought of began to trouble her.\n\n\"That wicked Elisa will come into the room. What are we to do with this\nenormous ladder?\" she said to her sweetheart, \"where are we to hide it?\nI will take it to the loft,\" she exclaimed suddenly half playfully.\n\n\"But you will have to pass through the servants' room,\" said Julien in\nastonishment.\n\n\"I will leave the ladder in the corridor and will call the servant and\nsend him on an errand.\"\n\n\"Think of some explanation to have ready in the event of a servant\npassing the ladder and noticing it in the corridor.\"\n\n\"Yes, my angel,\" said Madame de Renal giving him a kiss \"as for you,\ndear, remember to hide under the bed pretty quickly if Elisa enters\nhere during my absence.\"\n\nJulien was astonished by this sudden gaiety--\"So\" he thought, \"the\napproach of a real danger instead of troubling her gives her back\nher spirits before she forgets her remorse. Truly a superior woman.\nYes, that's a heart over which it is glorious to reign.\" Julien was\ntransported with delight.\n\nMadame de Renal took the ladder, which was obviously too heavy for her.\nJulien went to her help. He was admiring that elegant figure which was\nso far from betokening any strength when she suddenly seized the ladder\nwithout assistance and took it up as if it had been a chair. She took\nit rapidly into the corridor of the third storey where she laid it\nalongside the wall. She called a servant, and in order to give him time\nto dress himself, went up into the dovecot.\n\nFive minutes later, when she came back to the corridor, she found no\nsigns of the ladder. What had happened to it? If Julien had been out\nof the house she would not have minded the danger in the least. But\nsupposing her husband were to see the ladder just now, the incident\nmight be awful. Madame de Renal ran all over the house.\n\nMadame de Renal finally discovered the ladder under the roof where the\nservant had carried it and even hid it.\n\n\"What does it matter what happens in twenty-four hours,\" she thought,\n\"when Julien will be gone?\"\n\nShe had a vague idea that she ought to take leave of life but what\nmattered her duty? He was restored to her after a separation which she\nhad thought eternal. She was seeing him again and the efforts he had\nmade to reach her showed the extent of his love.\n\n\"What shall I say to my husband,\" she said to him. \"If the servant\ntells him he found this ladder?\" She was pensive for a moment. \"They\nwill need twenty-four hours to discover the peasant who sold it\nto you.\" And she threw herself into Julien's arms and clasped him\nconvulsively.\n\n\"Oh, if I could only die like this,\" she cried covering him with\nkisses. \"But you mustn't die of starvation,\" she said with a smile.\n\n\"Come, I will first hide you in Madame Derville's room which is always\nlocked.\" She went and watched at the other end of the corridor and\nJulien ran in. \"Mind you don't try and open if any one knocks,\" she\nsaid as she locked him in. \"Anyway it would only be a frolic of the\nchildren as they play together.\"\n\n\"Get them to come into the garden under the window,\" said Julien, \"so\nthat I may have the pleasure of seeing them. Make them speak.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" cried Madame de Renal to him as she went away. She soon\nreturned with oranges, biscuits and a bottle of Malaga wine. She had\nnot been able to steal any bread.\n\n\"What is your husband doing?\" said Julien.\n\n\"He is writing out the figures of the bargains he is going to make with\nthe peasants.\"\n\nBut eight o'clock had struck and they were making a lot of noise in the\nhouse. If Madame de Renal failed to put in an appearance, they would\nlook for her all over the house. She was obliged to leave him. Soon she\ncame back, in defiance of all prudence, bringing him a cup of coffee.\nShe was frightened lest he should die of starvation.\n\nShe managed after breakfast to bring the children under the window of\nMadame Derville's room. He thought they had grown a great deal, but\nthey had begun to look common, or else his ideas had changed. Madame de\nRenal spoke to them about Julien. The elder answered in an affectionate\ntone and regretted his old tutor, but he found that the younger\nchildren had almost forgotten him.\n\nM. de Renal did not go out that morning; he was going up and downstairs\nincessantly engaged in bargaining with some peasants to whom he was\nselling potatoes.\n\nMadame de Renal did not have an instant to give to her prisoner until\ndinner-time. When the bell had been rung and dinner had been served,\nit occurred to her to steal a plate of warm soup for him. As she\nnoiselessly approached the door of the room which he occupied, she\nfound herself face to face with the servant who had hid the ladder\nin the morning. At the time he too was going noiselessly along the\ncorridor, as though listening for something. The servant took himself\noff in some confusion.\n\nMadame de Renal boldly entered Julien's room. The news of this\nencounter made him shudder.\n\n\"You are frightened,\" she said to him, \"but I would brave all the\ndangers in the world without flinching. There is only one thing I fear,\nand that is the moment when I shall be alone after you have left,\" and\nshe left him and ran downstairs.\n\n\"Ah,\" thought Julien ecstatically, \"remorse is the only danger which\nthis sublime soul is afraid of.\"\n\nAt last evening came. Monsieur de Renal went to the Casino.\n\nHis wife had given out that she was suffering from an awful headache.\nShe went to her room, hastened to dismiss Elisa and quickly got up in\norder to let Julien out.\n\nHe was literally starving. Madame de Renal went to the pantry to fetch\nsome bread. Julien heard a loud cry. Madame de Renal came back and told\nhim that when she went to the dark pantry and got near the cupboard\nwhere they kept the bread, she had touched a woman's arm as she\nstretched out her hand. It was Elisa who had uttered the cry Julien had\nheard.\n\n\"What was she doing there?\"\n\n\"Stealing some sweets or else spying on us,\" said Madame de Renal with\ncomplete indifference, \"but luckily I found a pie and a big loaf of\nbread.\"\n\n\"But what have you got there?\" said Julien pointing to the pockets of\nher apron.\n\nMadame de Renal had forgotten that they had been filled with bread\nsince dinner.\n\nJulien clasped her in his arms with the most lively passion. She had\nnever seemed to him so beautiful. \"I could not meet a woman of greater\ncharacter even at Paris,\" he said confusedly to himself. She combined\nall the clumsiness of a woman who was but little accustomed to paying\nattentions of this kind, with all the genuine courage of a person who\nis only afraid of dangers of quite a different sphere and quite a\ndifferent kind of awfulness.\n\nWhile Julien was enjoying his supper with a hearty appetite and his\nsweetheart was rallying him on the simplicity of the meal, the door of\nthe room was suddenly shaken violently. It was M. de Renal.\n\n\"Why have you shut yourself in?\" he cried to her.\n\nJulien had only just time to slip under the sofa.\n\nOn any ordinary day Madame de Renal would have been upset by this\nquestion which was put with true conjugal harshness; but she realised\nthat M. de Renal had only to bend down a little to notice Julien, for\nM. de Renal had flung himself into the chair opposite the sofa which\nJulien had been sitting in one moment before.\n\nHer headache served as an excuse for everything. While her husband on\nhis side went into a long-winded account of the billiards pool which he\nhad won at Casino, \"yes, to be sure a nineteen franc pool,\" he added.\nShe noticed Julien's hat on a chair three paces in front of them.\nHer self-possession became twice as great, she began to undress, and\nrapidly passing one minute behind her husband threw her dress over the\nchair with the hat on it.\n\nAt last M. de Renal left. She begged Julien to start over again his\naccount of his life at the Seminary. \"I was not listening to you\nyesterday all the time you were speaking, I was only thinking of\nprevailing on myself to send you away.\"\n\nShe was the personification of indiscretion. They talked very loud and\nabout two o'clock in the morning they were interrupted by a violent\nknock at the door. It was M. de Renal again.\n\n\"Open quickly, there are thieves in the house!\" he said. \"Saint Jean\nfound their ladder this morning.\"\n\n\"This is the end of everything,\" cried Madame de Renal, throwing\nherself into Julien's arms. \"He will kill both of us, he doesn't\nbelieve there are any thieves. I will die in your arms, and be more\nhappy in my death than I ever was in my life.\" She made no attempt to\nanswer her husband who was beginning to lose his temper, but started\nkissing Julien passionately.\n\n\"Save Stanislas's mother,\" he said to her with an imperious look. \"I\nwill jump down into the courtyard through the lavatory window, and\nescape in the garden; the dogs have recognised me. Make my clothes into\na parcel and throw them into the garden as soon as you can. In the\nmeanwhile let him break the door down. But above all, no confession, I\nforbid you to confess, it is better that he should suspect rather than\nbe certain.\"\n\n\"You will kill yourself as you jump!\" was her only answer and her only\nanxiety.\n\nShe went with him to the lavatory window; she then took sufficient time\nto hide his clothes. She finally opened the door to her husband who was\nboiling with rage. He looked in the room and in the lavatory without\nsaying a word and disappeared. Julien's clothes were thrown down to\nhim; he seized them and ran rapidly towards the bottom of the garden in\nthe direction of the Doubs.\n\nAs he was running he heard a bullet whistle past him, and heard at the\nsame time the report of a gun.\n\n\"It is not M. de Renal,\" he thought, \"he's far too bad a shot.\" The\ndogs ran silently at his side, the second shot apparently broke the paw\nof one dog, for he began to whine piteously. Julien jumped the wall of\nthe terrace, did fifty paces under cover, and began to fly in another\ndirection. He heard voices calling and had a distinct view of his enemy\nthe servant firing a gun; a farmer also began to shoot away from the\nother side of the garden. Julien had already reached the bank of the\nDoubs where he dressed himself.\n\nAn hour later he was a league from Verrieres on the Geneva road. \"If\nthey had suspicions,\" thought Julien, \"they will look for me on the\nParis road.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXI\n\nTHE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY\n\n     O rus quando ego te aspiciam?--_Horace_\n\n\n\"You've no doubt come to wait for the Paris mail, Monsieur,\" said the\nhost of an inn where he had stopped to breakfast.\n\n\"To-day or to-morrow, it matters little,\" said Julien.\n\nThe mail arrived while he was still posing as indifferent. There were\ntwo free places.\n\n\"Why! it's you my poor Falcoz,\" said the traveller who was coming from\nthe Geneva side to the one who was getting in at the same time as\nJulien.\n\n\"I thought you were settled in the outskirts of Lyons,\" said Falcoz,\n\"in a delicious valley near the Rhone.\"\n\n\"Nicely settled! I am running away.\"\n\n\"What! you are running away? you Saint Giraud! Have you, who look so\nvirtuous, committed some crime?\" said Falcoz with a smile.\n\n\"On my faith it comes to the same thing. I am running away from the\nabominable life which one leads in the provinces. I like the freshness\nof the woods and the country tranquillity, as you know. You have often\naccused me of being romantic. I don't want to hear politics talked as\nlong as I live, and politics are hounding me out.\"\n\n\"But what party do you belong to?\"\n\n\"To none and that's what ruins me. That's all there is to be said\nabout my political life--I like music and painting. A good book is\nan event for me. I am going to be forty-four. How much longer have I\ngot to live? Fifteen--twenty--thirty years at the outside. Well, I\nwant the ministers in thirty years' time to be a little cleverer than\nthose of to-day but quite as honest. The history of England serves as\na mirror for our own future. There will always be a king who will try\nto increase his prerogative. The ambition of becoming a deputy, the\nfame of Mirabeau and the hundreds of thousand francs which he won for\nhimself will always prevent the rich people in the province from going\nto sleep: they will call that being Liberal and loving the people. The\ndesire of becoming a peer or a gentleman of the chamber will always win\nover the ultras. On the ship of state every one is anxious to take over\nthe steering because it is well paid. Will there be never a poor little\nplace for the simple passenger?\"\n\n\"Is it the last elections which are forcing you out of the province?\"\n\n\"My misfortune goes further back. Four years ago I was forty and\npossessed 500,000 francs. I am four years older to-day and probably\n50,000 francs to the bad, as I shall lose that sum on the sale of my\nchateau of Monfleury in a superb position near the Rhone.\n\n\"At Paris I was tired of that perpetual comedy which is rendered\nobligatory by what you call nineteenth-century civilisation. I thirsted\nfor good nature and simplicity. I bought an estate in the mountains\nnear the Rhine, there was no more beautiful place under the heavens.\n\n\"The village clergyman and the gentry of the locality pay me court for\nsix months; I invite them to dinner; I have left Paris, I tell them, so\nas to avoid talking politics or hearing politics talked for the rest of\nmy life. As you know I do not subscribe to any paper, the less letters\nthe postman brought me the happier I was.\n\n\"That did not suit the vicar's book. I was soon the victim of a\nthousand unreasonable requests, annoyances, etc. I wished to give two\nor three hundred francs a year to the poor, I was asked to give it\nto the Paris associations, that of Saint Joseph, that of the Virgin,\netc. I refused. I was then insulted in a hundred ways. I was foolish\nenough to be upset by it. I could not go out in the morning to enjoy\nthe beauty of our mountain without finding some annoyance which\ndistracted me from my reveries and recalled unpleasantly both men and\ntheir wickedness. On the Rogation processions, for instance whose\nchanting I enjoy (it is probably a Greek melody) they will not bless\nmy fields because, says the clergyman, they belong to an infidel. A\ncow dies belonging to a devout old peasant woman. She says the reason\nis the neighbourhood of a pond which belongs to my infidel self, a\nphilosopher coming from Paris, and eight days afterwards I find my\nfish in agonies poisoned by lime. Intrigue in all its forms envelops\nme. The justice of the peace, who is an honest man, but frightened of\nlosing his place, always decides against me. The peace of the country\nproved a hell for me. Once they saw that I was abandoned by the vicar,\nthe head of the village congregation, and that I was not supported by\nthe retired captain who was the head of the Liberals they all fell upon\nme, down to the mason whom I had supported for a year, down to the very\nwheel-wright who wanted to cheat me with impunity over the repairing of\nmy ploughs.\n\n\"In order to find some support, and to win at any rate some of my law\nsuits I became a Liberal, but, as you say, those damned elections come\nalong. They asked me for my vote.\"\n\n\"For an unknown man?\"\n\n\"Not at all, for a man whom I knew only too well. I refused. It was\nterribly imprudent. From that moment I had the Liberals on my hands as\nwell, and my position became intolerable. I believe that if the vicar\nhad got it into his head to accuse me of assassinating my servant,\nthere would be twenty witnesses of the two parties who would swear that\nthey had seen me committing the crime.\"\n\n\"You mean to say you want to live in the country without pandering\nto the passions of your neighbours, without even listening to their\ngossip. What a mistake!\"\n\n\"It is rectified at last. Monfleury is for sale. I will lose 50,000\nfrancs if necessary, but I am over-joyed I am leaving that hell of\nhypocrisy and annoyance. I am going to look for solitude and rustic\npeace in the only place where those things are to be found in France,\non a fourth storey looking on to the Champs-Elysees; and, moreover, I\nam actually deliberating if I shall not commence my political career by\ngiving consecrated bread to the parish in the Roule quarter.\"\n\n\"All this would not have happened under Bonaparte,\" said Falcoz with\neyes shining with rage and sorrow.\n\n\"Very good, but why didn't your Bonaparte manage to keep his position?\nEverything which I suffer to-day is his work.\"\n\nAt this point Julien's attention was redoubled. He had realised from\nthe first word that the Bonapartist Falcoz was the old boyhood friend\nof M. de Renal, who had been repudiated by him in 1816, and that the\nphilosopher Saint-Giraud must be the brother of that chief of the\nprefecture of----who managed to get the houses of the municipality\nknocked down to him at a cheap price.\n\n\"And all this is the work of your Bonaparte. An honest man, aged forty,\nand possessed of five hundred thousand francs however inoffensive he\nis, cannot settle in the provinces and find peace there; those priests\nand nobles of his will turn him out.\"\n\n\"Oh don't talk evil of him,\" exclaimed Falcoz. \"France was never so\nhigh in the esteem of the nations as during the thirteen years of his\nreign; then every single act was great.\"\n\n\"Your emperor, devil take him,\" replied the man of forty-four, \"was\nonly great on his battle fields and when he reorganised the finances\nabout 1802. What is the meaning of all his conduct since then? What\nwith his chamberlains, his pomp, and his receptions in the Tuileries,\nhe has simply provided a new edition of all the monarchical tomfoolery.\nIt was a revised edition and might possibly have lasted for a century\nor two. The nobles and the priests wish to go back to the old one, but\nthey did not have the iron hand necessary to impose it on the public.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's just how an old printer would talk.\"\n\n\"Who has turned me out of my estate?\" continued the printer, angrily.\n\"The priests, whom Napoleon called back by his Concordat instead\nof treating them like the State treats doctors, barristers, and\nastronomers, simply seeing in them ordinary citizens, and not bothering\nabout the particular calling by which they are trying to earn their\nlivelihood. Should we be saddled with these insolent gentlemen today,\nif your Bonaparte had not created barons and counts? No, they were out\nof fashion. Next to the priests, it's the little country nobility who\nhave annoyed me the most, and compelled me to become a Liberal.\"\n\nThe conversation was endless. The theme will occupy France for another\nhalf-century. As Saint-Giraud kept always repeating that it was\nimpossible to live in the provinces, Julien timidly suggested the case\nof M. de Renal.\n\n\"Zounds, young man, you're a nice one,\" exclaimed Falcoz. \"He turned\nspider so as not to be fly, and a terrible spider into the bargain.\nBut I see that he is beaten by that man Valenod. Do you know that\nscoundrel? He's the villain of the piece. What will your M. de Renal\nsay if he sees himself turned out one of these fine days, and Valenod\nput in his place?\"\n\n\"He will be left to brood over his crimes,\" said Saint-Giraud. \"Do\nyou know Verrieres, young man? Well, Bonaparte, heaven confound him!\nBonaparte and his monarchical tomfoolery rendered possible the reign\nof the Renals and the Chelans, which brought about the reign of the\nValenods and the Maslons.\"\n\nThis conversation, with its gloomy politics, astonished Julien and\ndistracted him from his delicious reveries.\n\nHe appreciated but little the first sight of Paris as perceived in the\ndistance. The castles in the air he had built about his future had to\nstruggle with the still present memory of the twenty-four hours that\nhe had just passed in Verrieres. He vowed that he would never abandon\nhis mistress's children, and that he would leave everything in order\nto protect them, if the impertinence of the priests brought about a\nrepublic and the persecution of the nobles.\n\nWhat would have happened on the night of his arrival in Verrieres if,\nat the moment when he had leant his ladder against the casement of\nMadame de Renal's bedroom he had found that room occupied by a stranger\nor by M. de Renal?\n\nBut how delicious, too, had been those first two hours when his\nsweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him away and he had\npleaded his cause, sitting down by her in the darkness! A soul like\nJulien's is haunted by such memories for a lifetime. The rest of the\ninterview was already becoming merged in the first period of their\nlove, fourteen months previous.\n\nJulien was awakened from his deep meditation by the stopping of the\ncoach. They had just entered the courtyard of the Post in the Rue\nRousseau. \"I want to go to La Malmaison,\" he said to a cabriolet which\napproached.\n\n\"At this time, Monsieur--what for?\"\n\n\"What's that got to do with you? Get on.\"\n\nEvery real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in my view,\npassions are ridiculous at Paris, where one's neighbour always insists\non one's considering him a great deal. I shall refrain from recounting\nJulien's ecstasy at La Malmaison. He wept. What! in spite of those\nwretched white walls, built this very year, which cut the path up into\nbits? Yes, monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to\nchoose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison.\n\nIn the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to the\ntheatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition.\n\nA deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He was only\naffected by the monuments left behind by his hero.\n\n\"So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy. Here reign the\nprotectors of the abbe de Frilair.\" On the evening of the third day\nhis curiosity got the better of his plan of seeing everything before\npresenting himself to the abbe Pirard. The abbe explained to him coldly\nthe kind of life which he was to expect at M. de la Mole's.\n\n\"If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some months you will\ngo back to the seminary, but not in disgrace. You will live in the\nhouse of the marquis, who is one of the greatest seigneurs of France.\nYou will wear black, but like a man who is in mourning, and not like\nan ecclesiastic. I insist on your following your theological studies\nthree days a week in a seminary where I will introduce you. Every day\nat twelve o'clock you will establish yourself in the marquis's library;\nhe counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning his\nlawsuits and other matters. The marquis will scribble on the margin\nof each letter he gets the kind of answer which is required. I have\nassured him that at the end of three months you will be so competent to\ndraft the answers, that out of every dozen you hand to the marquis for\nsignature, he will be able to sign eight or nine. In the evening, at\neight o'clock, you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free.\n\n\"It may be,\" continued the abbe Pirard, \"that some old lady or some\nsmooth-voiced man will hint at immense advantages, or will crudely\noffer you gold, to show him the letters which the marquis has received.\"\n\n\"Ah, monsieur,\" exclaimed Julien, blushing.\n\n\"It is singular,\" said the abbe with a bitter smile, \"that poor as\nyou are, and after a year at a seminary, you still have any of this\nvirtuous indignation left. You must have been very blind.\"\n\n\"Can it be that blood will tell,\" muttered the abbe in a whisper, as\nthough speaking to himself. \"The singular thing is,\" he added, looking\nat Julien, \"that the marquis knows you--I don't know how. He will give\nyou a salary of a hundred louis to commence with. He is a man who only\nacts by his whim. That is his weakness. He will quarrel with you about\nthe most childish matters. If he is satisfied, your wages may rise in\nconsequence up to eight thousand francs.\n\n\"But you realise,\" went on the abbe, sourly, \"that he is not giving\nyou all this money simply on account of your personal charm. The thing\nis to prove yourself useful. If I were in your place I would talk very\nlittle, and I would never talk about what I know nothing about.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" said the abbe, \"I have made some enquiries for you. I was\nforgetting M. de la Mole's family. He has two children--a daughter and\na son of nineteen, eminently elegant--the kind of madman who never\nknows to-day what he will do to-morrow. He has spirit and valour; he\nhas been through the Spanish war. The marquis hopes, I don't know why,\nthat you will become a friend of the young count Norbert. I told him\nthat you were a great classic, and possibly he reckons on your teaching\nhis son some ready-made phrases about Cicero and Virgil.\n\n\"If I were you, I should never allow that handsome young man to make\nfun of me, and before I accepted his advances, which you will find\nperfectly polite but a little ironical, I would make him repeat them\nmore than once.\n\n\"I will not hide from you the fact that the young count de La Mole is\nbound to despise you at first, because you are nothing more than a\nlittle bourgeois. His grandfather belonged to the court, and had the\nhonour of having his head cut off in the Place de Greve on the 26th\nApril, 1574, on account of a political intrigue.\n\n\"As for you, you are the son of a carpenter of Verrieres, and what\nis more, in receipt of his father's wages. Ponder well over these\ndifferences, and look up the family history in Moreri. All the\nflatterers who dine at their house make from time to time what they\ncall delicate allusions to it.\n\n\"Be careful of how you answer the pleasantries of M. the count de La\nMole, chief of a squadron of hussars, and a future peer of France, and\ndon't come and complain to me later on.\"\n\n\"It seems to me,\" said Julien, blushing violently, \"that I ought not\neven to answer a man who despises me.\"\n\n\"You have no idea of his contempt. It will only manifest itself by\ninflated compliments. If you were a fool, you might be taken in by it.\nIf you want to make your fortune, you ought to let yourself be taken in\nby it.\"\n\n\"Shall I be looked upon as ungrateful,\" said Julien, \"if I return to my\nlittle cell Number 108 when I find that all this no longer suits me?\"\n\n\"All the toadies of the house will no doubt calumniate you,\" said the\nabbe, \"but I myself will come to the rescue. Adsum qui feci. I will say\nthat I am responsible for that resolution.\"\n\nJulien was overwhelmed by the bitter and almost vindictive tone which\nhe noticed in M. Pirard; that tone completely infected his last answer.\n\nThe fact is that the abbe had a conscientious scruple about loving\nJulien, and it was with a kind of religious fear that he took so direct\na part in another's life.\n\n\"You will also see,\" he added with the same bad grace, as though\naccomplishing a painful duty, \"you also will see Madame the marquise\nde La Mole. She is a big blonde woman about forty, devout, perfectly\npolite, and even more insignificant. She is the daughter of the old\nDuke de Chaulnes so well known for his aristocratic prejudices. This\ngreat lady is a kind of synopsis in high relief of all the fundamental\ncharacteristics of women of her rank. She does not conceal for her own\npart that the possession of ancestors who went through the crusades\nis the sole advantage which she respects. Money only comes a long way\nafterwards. Does that astonish you? We are no longer in the provinces,\nmy friend.\n\n\"You will see many great lords in her salon talk about our princes in\na tone of singular flippancy. As for Madame de la Mole, she lowers her\nvoice out of respect every time she mentions the name of a Prince, and\nabove all the name of a Princess. I would not advise you to say in her\nhearing that Philip II. or Henry VII. were monsters. They were kings, a\nfact which gives them indisputable rights to the respect of creatures\nwithout birth like you and me. Nevertheless,\" added M. Pirard, \"we are\npriests, for she will take you for one; that being our capacity, she\nconsiders us as spiritual valets necessary for her salvation.\"\n\n\"Monsieur,\" said Julien, \"I do not think I shall be long at Paris.\"\n\n\"Good, but remember that no man of our class can make his fortune\nexcept through the great lords. With that indefinable element in your\ncharacter, at any rate I think it is, you will be persecuted if you\ndo not make your fortune. There is no middle course for you, make no\nmistake about it; people see that they do not give you pleasure when\nthey speak to you; in a social country like this you are condemned to\nunhappiness if you do not succeed in winning respect.\"\n\n\"What would have become of you at Besancon without this whim of the\nmarquis de la Mole? One day you will realise the extraordinary extent\nof what he has done for you, and if you are not a monster you will be\neternally grateful to him and his family. How many poor abbes more\nlearned than you have lived years at Paris on the fifteen sous they\ngot for their mass and their ten sous they got for their dissertations\nin the Sorbonne. Remember what I told you last winter about the first\nyears of that bad man Cardinal Dubois. Are you proud enough by chance\nto think yourself more talented than he was?\n\n\"Take, for instance, a quiet and average man like myself; I reckoned\non dying in my seminary. I was childish enough to get attached to\nit. Well I was on the point of being turned out, when I handed in\nmy resignation. You know what my fortune consisted of. I had five\nhundred and twenty francs capital neither more nor less, not a friend,\nscarcely two or three acquaintances. M. de la Mole, whom I had never\nseen, extricated me from that quandary. He only had to say the word\nand I was given a living where the parishioners are well-to-do people\nabove all crude vices, and where the income puts me to shame, it is so\ndisproportionate to my work. I refrained from talking to you all this\ntime simply to enable you to find your level a bit.\n\n\"One word more, I have the misfortune to be irritable. It is possible\nthat you and I will cease to be on speaking terms.\n\n\"If the airs of the marquise or the spiteful pleasantries of her son\nmake the house absolutely intolerable for you I advise you to finish\nyour studies in some seminary thirty leagues from Paris and rather\nnorth than south. There is more civilisation in the north, and, he\nadded lowering his voice, I must admit that the nearness of the Paris\npapers puts fear into our petty tyrants.\n\n\"If we continue to find pleasure in each other's society and if the\nmarquis's house does not suit you, I will offer you the post of my\ncurate, and will go equal shares with you in what I get from the\nliving. I owe you that and even more, he added interrupting Julien's\nthanks, for the extraordinary offer which you made me at Besancon. If\ninstead of having five hundred and twenty francs I had had nothing you\nwould have saved me.\"\n\nThe abbe's voice had lost its tone of cruelty, Julien was ashamed to\nfeel tears in his eyes. He was desperately anxious to throw himself\ninto his friend's arms. He could not help saying to him in the most\nmanly manner he could assume:\n\n\"I was hated by my father from the cradle; it was one of my great\nmisfortunes, but I shall no longer complain of my luck, I have found\nanother father in you, monsieur.\"\n\n\"That is good, that is good,\" said the embarrassed abbe, then suddenly\nremembering quite appropriately a seminary platitude \"you must never\nsay luck, my child, always say providence.\"\n\nThe fiacre stopped. The coachman lifted up the bronze knocker of an\nimmense door. It was the Hotel de la Mole, and to prevent the passers\nby having any doubt on the subject these words could be read in black\nmarble over the door.\n\nThis affectation displeased Julien. \"They are so frightened of the\nJacobins. They see a Robespierre and his tumbril behind every head.\nTheir panic is often gloriously grotesque and they advertise their\nhouse like this so that in the event of a rising the rabble can\nrecognise it and loot it.\" He communicated his thought to the abbe\nPirard.\n\n\"Yes, poor child, you will soon be my curate. What a dreadful idea you\nhave got into your head.\"\n\n\"Nothing could be simpler,\" said Julien.\n\nThe gravity of the porter, and above all, the cleanness of the the\ncourt, struck him with admiration. It was fine sunshine. \"What\nmagnificent architecture,\" he said to his friend. The hotel in question\nwas one of those buildings of the Faubourg Saint-Germain with a flat\nfacade built about the time of Voltaire's death. At no other period had\nfashion and beauty been so far from one another.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXII\n\nENTRY INTO SOCIETY\n\n\n        Ludicrous and pathetic memory: the first drawing-room\n        where one appeared alone and without support at the\n        age of eighteen! the look of a woman sufficed to\n        intimidate me. The more I wished to please the more\n        clumsy I became. I evolved the most unfounded ideas\n        about everything. I would either abandon myself without\n        any reason, or I would regard a man as an enemy simply\n        because he had looked at me with a serious air; but\n        all the same, in the middle of the unhappiness of\n        my timidity, how beautiful did I find a beautiful\n        day--_Kant_.\n\n\nJulien stopped in amazement in the middle of the courtyard. \"Pull\nyourself together,\" said the abbe Pirard. \"You get horrible ideas into\nyour head, besides you are only a child. What has happened to the\nnil mirari of Horace (no enthusiasm) remember that when they see you\nestablished here this crowd of lackeys will make fun of you. They will\nsee in you an equal who has been unjustly placed above them; and, under\na masquerade of good advice and a desire to help you, they will try to\nmake you fall into some gross blunder.\"\n\n\"Let them do their worst,\" said Julien biting his lip, and he became as\ndistrustful as ever.\n\nThe salons on the first storey which our gentlemen went through before\nreaching the marquis' study, would have seemed to you, my reader, as\ngloomy as they were magnificent. If they had been given to you just as\nthey were, you would have refused to live in them. This was the domain\nof yawning and melancholy reasoning. They redoubled Julien's rapture.\n\"How can any one be unhappy?\" he thought, \"who lives in so splendid an\nabode.\"\n\nFinally our gentlemen arrived at the ugliest rooms in this superb\nsuite. There was scarcely any light. They found there a little keen\nman with a lively eye and a blonde wig. The abbe turned round\nto Julien and presented him. It was the marquis. Julien had much\ndifficulty in recognising him, he found his manner was so polite.\nIt was no longer the grand seigneur with that haughty manner of the\nabbey of Bray-le-Haut. Julien thought that his wig had much too many\nhairs. As the result of this opinion he was not at all intimidated.\nThe descendant of the friend of Henry III. seemed to him at first of\na rather insignificant appearance. He was extremely thin and very\nrestless, but he soon noticed that the marquis had a politeness which\nwas even more pleasant to his listener than that of the Bishop of\nBesancon himself. The audience only lasted three minutes. As they went\nout the abbe said to Julien,\n\n\"You looked at the marquis just as you would have looked at a picture.\nI am not a great expert in what these people here call politeness. You\nwill soon know more about it than I do, but really the boldness of your\nlooks seemed scarcely polite.\"\n\nThey had got back into the fiacre. The driver stopped near the\nboulevard; the abbe ushered Julien into a suite of large rooms. Julien\nnoticed that there was no furniture. He was looking at the magnificent\ngilded clock representing a subject which he thought very indecent,\nwhen a very elegant gentleman approached him with a smiling air. Julien\nbowed slightly.\n\nThe gentleman smiled and put his hand on his shoulder. Julien shuddered\nand leapt back, he reddened with rage. The abbe Pirard, in spite of his\ngravity, laughed till the tears came into his eyes. The gentleman was a\ntailor.\n\n\"I give you your liberty for two days,\" said the abbe as they went\nout. \"You cannot be introduced before then to Madame de la Mole. Any\none else would watch over you as if you were a young girl during these\nfirst few moments of your life in this new Babylon. Get ruined at once\nif you have got to be ruined, and I will be rid of my own weakness of\nbeing fond of you. The day after to-morrow this tailor will bring you\ntwo suits, you will give the man who tries them on five francs. Apart\nfrom that don't let these Parisians hear the sound of your voice. If\nyou say a word they will manage somehow to make fun of you. They have a\ntalent for it. Come and see me the day after to-morrow at noon.... Go\nand ruin yourself.... I was forgetting, go and order boots and a hat at\nthese addresses.\"\n\nJulien scrutinised the handwriting of the addresses.\n\n\"It's the marquis's hand,\" said the abbe; \"he is an energetic man who\nforesees everything, and prefers doing to ordering. He is taking you\ninto his house, so that you may spare him that kind of trouble. Will\nyou have enough brains to execute efficiently all the instructions\nwhich he will give you with scarcely a word of explanation? The future\nwill show, look after yourself.\"\n\nJulien entered the shops indicated by the addresses without saying a\nsingle word. He observed that he was received with respect, and that\nthe bootmaker as he wrote his name down in the ledger put M. de Sorel.\n\nWhen he was in the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise a very obliging\ngentleman, and what is more, one who was Liberal in his views,\nsuggested that he should show Julien the tomb of Marshal Ney which a\nsagacious statecraft had deprived of the honour of an epitaph, but when\nhe left this Liberal, who with tears in his eyes almost clasped him in\nhis arms, Julien was without his watch. Enriched by this experience two\ndays afterwards he presented himself to the abbe Pirard, who looked at\nhim for a long time.\n\n\"Perhaps you are going to become a fop,\" said the abbe to him severely.\nJulien looked like a very young man in full mourning; as a matter of\nfact, he looked very well, but the good abbe was too provincial himself\nto see that Julien still carried his shoulders in that particular way\nwhich signifies in the provinces both elegance and importance. When the\nmarquis saw Julien his opinion of his graces differed so radically from\nthat of the good abbe as he said,\n\n\"Would you have any objection to M. le Sorel taking some dancing\nlessons?\"\n\nThe abbe was thunderstruck.\n\n\"No,\" he answered at last. \"Julien is not a priest.\"\n\nThe marquis went up the steps of a little secret staircase two at a\ntime, and installed our hero in a pretty attic which looked out on the\nbig garden of the hotel. He asked him how many shirts he had got at the\nlinen drapers.\n\n\"Two,\" answered Julien, intimidated at seeing so great a lord\ncondescend to such details.\n\n\"Very good,\" replied the marquis quite seriously, and with a certain\ncurt imperiousness which gave Julien food for thought. \"Very good, get\ntwenty-two more shirts. Here are your first quarter's wages.\"\n\nAs he went down from the attic the marquis called an old man. \"Arsene,\"\nhe said to him, \"you will serve M. Sorel.\" A few minutes afterwards\nJulien found himself alone in a magnificent library. It was a delicious\nmoment. To prevent his emotion being discovered he went and hid in\na little dark corner. From there he contemplated with rapture the\nbrilliant backs of the books. \"I shall be able to read all these,\" he\nsaid to himself. \"How can I fail to like it here? M. de Renal would\nhave thought himself dishonoured for ever by doing one-hundredth part\nof what the Marquis de la Mole has just done for me.\n\n\"But let me have a look at the copies I have to make.\" Having finished\nthis work Julien ventured to approach the books. He almost went mad\nwith joy as he opened an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the\ndoor of the library to avoid being surprised. He then indulged in the\nluxury of opening each of the eighty volumes. They were magnificently\nbound and were the masterpiece of the best binder in London. It was\neven more than was required to raise Julien's admiration to the maximum.\n\nAn hour afterwards the marquis came in and was surprised to notice that\nJulien spelt cela with two \"ll\" cella. \"Is all that the abbe told me of\nhis knowledge simply a fairy tale?\" The marquis was greatly discouraged\nand gently said to him,\n\n\"You are not sure of your spelling?\"\n\n\"That is true,\" said Julien without thinking in the least of the\ninjustice that he was doing to himself. He was overcome by the kindness\nof the marquis which recalled to him through sheer force of contrast\nthe superciliousness of M. de Renal.\n\n\"This trial of the little Franc-comtois abbe is waste of time,\" thought\nthe marquis, \"but I had such great need of a reliable man.\"\n\n\"You spell cela with one 'l,'\" said the marquis to him, \"and when you\nhave finished your copies look the words whose spelling you are not\nsure of up in the dictionary.\"\n\nThe marquis sent for him at six o'clock. He looked at Julien's boots\nwith manifest pain. \"I am sorry for a mistake I made. I did not tell\nyou that you must dress every day at half-past five.\"\n\nJulien looked at him but did not understand.\n\n\"I mean to say put on stockings. Arsene will remind you. To-day I will\nmake your apologies.\"\n\nAs he finished the sentence M. de la Mole escorted Julien into a salon\nresplendent with gilding. On similar occasions M. de Renal always made\na point of doubling his pace so as to have the privilege of being the\nfirst to pass the threshold. His former employer's petty vanity caused\nJulien to tread on the marquis's feet and hurt him a great deal because\nof his gout. \"So he is clumsy to the bargain,\" he said to himself. He\npresented him to a woman of high stature and of imposing appearance.\nIt was the marquise. Julien thought that her manner was impertinent,\nand that she was a little like Madame de Maugiron, the wife of the\nsub-prefect of the arrondissement of Verrieres when she was present\nat the Saint-Charles dinner. Rendered somewhat nervous by the extreme\nmagnificence of the salon Julien did not hear what M. de la Mole was\nsaying. The marquise scarcely deigned to look at him. There were\nseveral men there, among whom Julien recognised with an inexpressible\npleasure the young bishop of Agde who had deigned to speak to him some\nmonths before at the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. This young prelate was\ndoubtless frightened by the tender look which the timidity of Julien\nfixed on him, and did not bother to recognise \"the provincial.\"\n\nThe men assembled in this salon seemed to Julien to have a certain\nelement of gloom and constraint. Conversation takes place in a low\nvoice in Paris and little details are not exaggerated.\n\nA handsome young man with moustaches, came in about half-past six. He\nwas very pale, and had a very small head.\n\n\"You always keep us waiting\" said the marquise, as he kissed her hand.\n\nJulien realised that it was the Count de la Mole. From the very first\nhe thought he was charming.\n\n\"Is it possible,\" he said to himself \"that this is the man whose\noffensive jests are going to drive me out of the house.\"\n\nAs the result of scrutinising count Norbert, Julien noticed that he\nwas in boots and spurs. \"And I have got to be in shoes just like\nan inferior apparently.\" They sat down at table, Julien heard the\nmarquise raising her voice a little and saying something severe. Almost\nsimultaneously he noticed an extremely blonde and very well developed\nyoung person who had just sat down opposite him. Nevertheless she\nmade no appeal to him. Looking at her attentively he thought that he\nhad never seen such beautiful eyes, although they betokened a great\ncoldness of soul. Subsequently Julien thought that, though they\nlooked bored and sceptical, they were conscious of the duty of being\nimpressive. \"Madame de Renal of course had very fine eyes\" he said to\nhimself, \"she used to be universally complimented on them, but they had\nnothing in common with these.\" Julien did not know enough of society\nto appreciate that it was the fire of repartee which from time to time\ngave their brilliancy to the eyes of Mademoiselle Mathilde (for that\nwas the name he heard her called by). When Madame de Renal's eyes\nbecame animated, it was with the fire of passion, or as the result of a\ngenerous indignation on hearing of some evil deed. Towards the end of\nthe meal Julien found a word to express Mademoiselle de la Mole's type\nof beauty. Her eyes are scintillating, he said to himself. Apart from\nher eyes she was cruelly like her mother, whom he liked less and less,\nand he ceased looking at her. By way of compensation he thought Count\nNorbert admirable in every respect. Julien was so fascinated that the\nidea never occurred to him of being jealous, and hating him because he\nwas richer and of nobler birth than he was himself.\n\nJulien thought that the marquis looked bored.\n\nAbout the second course he said to his son: \"Norbert, I ask all your\ngood offices for M. Julien Sorel, whom I have just taken into my staff\nand of whom I hope to make a man _si cella se peut_.\"\n\n\"He is my secretary,\" said the marquis to his neighbour, \"and he spells\ncela with two ll's.\" Everybody looked at Julien, who bowed to Norbert\nin a manner that was slightly too marked, but speaking generally they\nwere satisfied with his expression.\n\nThe marquis must have spoken about the kind of education which Julien\nhad received for one of the guests tackled him on Horace. \"It was\njust by talking about Horace that I succeeded with the bishop of\nBesancon,\" said Julien to himself. Apparently that is the only author\nthey know. From that instant he was master of himself. This transition\nwas rendered easy because he had just decided that he would never look\nupon Madamoiselle de la Mole as a woman after his own taste. Since the\nseminary he had the lowest opinion of men, and was not to be easily\nintimidated by them. He would have enjoyed all his self-possession if\nthe dining-room had been furnished with less magnificence. It was,\nas a matter of fact, two mirrors each eight feet high in which he\nwould look from time to time at the man who was speaking to him about\nHorace, which continued to impress him. His phrases were not too long\nfor a provincial, he had fine eyes whose brilliancy was doubled by his\nquavering timidity, or by his happy bashfulness when he had given a\ngood answer. They found him pleasant. This kind of examination gave\na little interest to a solemn dinner. The marquis signed to Julien's\nquestioner to press him sharply. \"Can he possibly know something?\" he\nthought.\n\nJulien answered and thought out new ideas. He lost sufficient of his\nnervousness, not indeed to exhibit any wit, for that is impossible\nfor any one ignorant of the special language which is used in Paris,\nbut to show himself possessed of ideas which, though presented out of\nplace and ungracefully, were yet original. They saw that he knew Latin\nperfectly.\n\nJulien's adversary was a member of the Academy Inscriptions who chanced\nto know Latin. He found Julien a very good humanist, was not frightened\nof making him feel uncomfortable, and really tried to embarrass him. In\nthe heat of the controversy Julien eventually forgot the magnificent\nfurniture of the dining-room. He managed to expound theories concerning\nthe Latin poets which his questioner had never read of anywhere. Like\nan honest man, he gave the young secretary all due credit for them.\nAs luck would have it, they started a discussion on the question\nof whether Horace was poor or rich, a good humoured and careless\nvoluptuary who made verses to amuse himself, like Chapelle the friend\nof Moliere and de la Fontaine, or a poor devil of a poet laureate who\nwrote odes for the king's birthday like Southey, the accuser of Lord\nByron. They talked about the state of society under Augustus and under\nGeorge IV. At both periods the aristocracy was all-powerful, but,\nwhile at Rome it was despoiled of its power by Maecenas who was only a\nsimple knight, it had in England reduced George IV practically to the\nposition of a Venetian doge. This discussion seemed to lift the marquis\nout of that state of bored torpor in which he had been plunged at the\nbeginning of the dinner.\n\nJulien found meaningless such modern names as Southey, Lord Byron,\nand George IV, which he now heard pronounced for the first time. But\nevery one noticed that whenever the conversation dealt with events that\nhad taken place in Rome and about which knowledge could be obtained\nby a perusal of the works of Horace, Martial or Tacitus, etc., he\nshowed an indisputable superiority. Julien coolly appropriated several\nideas which he had learnt from the bishop of Besancon in the historic\nconversation which he had had with that prelate. These ideas were not\nthe least appreciated.\n\nWhen every one was tired of talking about poets the marquise, who\nalways made it a rule to admire whatever amused her husband, deigned\nto look at Julien. \"Perhaps an educated man lies hid beneath the\nclumsy manners of this young abbe,\" said the Academician who happened\nto be near the marquise. Julien caught a few words of what he said.\nReady-made phrases suited the intellect of the mistress of the house\nquite well. She adopted this one about Julien, and was very pleased\nwith herself for having invited the academician to dinner. \"He has\namused M. de la Mole\" she thought.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIII\n\nTHE FIRST STEPS\n\n\n        This immense valley, filled with brilliant lights and so\n        many thousands of men dazzles my sight. No one knows me.\n        All are superior to me. I lose my head. _Poemi dell' av.\n        REINA_.\n\nJulien was copying letters in the library very early the next day\nwhen Mademoiselle Mathilde came in by a little dummy door very well\nmasked by the backs of the books. While Julien was admiring the\ndevice, Mademoiselle Mathilde seemed astonished and somewhat annoyed\nat finding him there: Julien saw that she was in curl-papers and had\na hard, haughty, and masculine expression. Mademoiselle de la Mole\nhad the habit of surreptitiously stealing books from her father's\nlibrary. Julien's presence rendered this morning's journey abortive,\na fact which annoyed her all the more as she had come to fetch the\nsecond volume of Voltaire's _Princess of Babylon_, a worthy climax to\none of the most eminently monarchical and religious educations which\nthe convent of the Sacred Heart had ever provided. This poor girl of\nnineteen already required some element of spiciness in order to get up\nan interest in a novel.\n\nCount Norbert put in an appearance in the library about three o'clock.\nHe had come to study a paper so as to be able to talk politics in the\nevening, and was very glad to meet Julien, whose existence he had\nforgotten. He was charming, and offered him a ride on horseback.\n\n\"My father will excuse us until dinner.\"\n\nJulien appreciated the us and thought it charming.\n\n\"Great heavens! M. le Comte,\" said Julien, \"if it were a question of\nfelling an eighty-foot tree or hewing it out and making it into planks\nI would acquit myself all right, I daresay, but as for riding a horse,\nI haven't done such a thing six times in my life.\"\n\n\"Well, this will be the seventh,\" said Norbert.\n\nAs a matter of fact, Julien remembered the king of ----'s entry into\nVerrieres, and thought he rode extremely well. But as they were\nreturning from the Bois de Boulogne he fell right in the middle of the\nRue du Bac, as he suddenly tried to get out of the way of a cabriolet,\nand was spattered all over with mud. It was lucky that he had two\nsuits. The marquis, wishing to favour him with a few words at dinner,\nasked him for news of his excursion. Norbert began immediately to\nanswer him in general terms.\n\n\"M. le Comte is extremely kind to me,\" answered Julien. \"I thank him\nfor it, and I fully appreciate it. He was good enough to have the\nquietest and prettiest horse given to me, but after all he could\nnot tie me on to it, and owing to the lack of that precaution, I\nhad a fall right in the middle of that long street near the bridge.\nMadame Mathilde made a futile effort to hide a burst of laughter, and\nsubsequently was indiscreet enough to ask for details. Julien acquitted\nhimself with much simplicity. He had grace without knowing it.\n\n\"I prophesy favourably about that little priest,\" said the marquis to\nthe academician. \"Think of a provincial being simple over a matter like\nthat. Such a thing has never been witnessed before, and will never be\nwitnessed again; and what is more, he describes his misfortune before\nladies.\"\n\nJulien put his listeners so thoroughly at their ease over his\nmisfortune that at the end of the dinner, when the general conversation\nhad gone off on to another subject, Mademoiselle Mathilde asked her\nbrother some questions over the details of the unfortunate occurrence.\nAs she put numerous questions, and as Julien met her eyes several\ntimes, he ventured to answer himself, although the questions had not\nbeen addressed to him, and all three of them finished up by laughing\njust as though they had all been inhabitants of some village in the\ndepths of a forest.\n\nOn the following day Julien attended two theology lectures, and then\ncame back to copy out about twenty letters. He found a young man, who\nthough very carefully dressed, had a mean appearance and an envious\nexpression, established near him in the library.\n\nThe marquis entered, \"What are you doing here, M. Tanbeau?\" he said\nseverely to the new-comer.\n\n\"I thought--\" answered the young man, with a base smile.\n\n\"No, monsieur, you thought nothing of the kind. This is a try-on, but\nit is an unfortunate one.\"\n\nYoung Tanbeau got up in a rage and disappeared. He was a nephew of the\nacademician who was a friend of Madame de la Mole, and intended to take\nup the profession of letters. The academician had induced the marquis\nto take him as a secretary. Tanbeau used to work in a separate room,\nbut having heard of the favour that was vouchsafed to Julien he wished\nto share it, and he had gone this morning and established his desk in\nthe library.\n\nAt four o'clock Julien ventured, after a little hesitation, to present\nhimself to Count Norbert. The latter was on the point of going riding,\nand being a man of perfect politeness felt embarrassed.\n\n\"I think,\" he said to Julien, \"that you had better go to the riding\nschool, and after a few weeks, I shall be charmed to ride with you.\"\n\n\"I should like to have the honour of thanking you for the kindness\nwhich you have shewn me. Believe me, monsieur,\" added Julien very\nseriously, \"that I appreciate all I owe you. If your horse has not been\nhurt by the reason of my clumsiness of yesterday, and if it is free I\nshould like to ride it this afternoon.\"\n\n\"Well, upon my word, my dear Sorel, you do so at your own risk and\nperil; kindly assume that I have put forth all the objections required\nby prudence. As a matter of fact it is four o'clock, we have no time to\nlose.\"\n\nAs soon as Julien was on horseback, he said to the young count, \"What\nmust one do not to fall off?\"\n\n\"Lots of things,\" answered Norbert, bursting into laughter. \"Keep your\nbody back for instance.\"\n\nJulien put his horse to the trot. They were at the Place Louis XVI.\n\n\"Oh, you foolhardy youngster,\" said Norbert \"there are too many\ncarriages here, and they are driven by careless drivers into the\nbargain. Once you are on the ground their tilburies will run over your\nbody, they will not risk spoiling their horses' mouths by pulling up\nshort.\"\n\nNorbert saw Julien twenty times on the point of tumbling, but in the\nend the excursion finished without misadventure. As they came back the\nyoung count said to his sister,\n\n\"Allow me to introduce a dashing dare-devil.\"\n\nWhen he talked to his father over the dinner from one end of the table\nto the other, he did justice to Julien's courage. It was the only\nthing one could possibly praise about his style of riding. The young\ncount had heard in the morning the men who groomed the horses in the\ncourtyard making Julien's fall an opportunity for the most outrageous\njokes at his expense.\n\nIn spite of so much kindness Julien soon felt himself completely\nisolated in this family. All their customs seemed strange to him, and\nhe was cognizant of none of them. His blunders were the delight of the\nvalets.\n\nThe abbe Pirard had left for his living. \"If Julien is a weak reed,\nlet him perish. If he is a man of spirit, let him get out of his\ndifficulties all alone,\" he thought.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIV\n\nTHE HOTEL DE LA MOLE\n\n\n        What is he doing here? Will he like it there? Will he\n        try to please?--_Ronsard_.\n\n\nIf everything in the aristocratic salon of the Hotel de la Mole seemed\nstrange to Julien, that pale young man in his black suit seemed in his\nturn very strange to those persons who deigned to notice him. Madame de\nla Mole suggested to her husband that he should send him off on some\nbusiness on those days when they had certain persons to dinner.\n\n\"I wish to carry the experiment to its logical conclusion,\" answered\nthe marquis. \"The abbe Pirard contends that we are wrong in crushing\nthe self-respect of the people whom we allow around us. _One can only\nlean on what resists_. The only thing against this man is his unknown\nface, apart from that he is a deaf mute.\"\n\n\"If I am to know my way about,\" said Julien to himself. \"I must write\ndown the names of the persons whom I see come to the salon together\nwith a few words on their character.\"\n\nHe put at the head of the list five or six friends of the house who\ntook every opportunity of paying court to him, believing that he was\nprotected by a whim of the marquis. They were poor dull devils. But it\nmust be said in praise of this class of men, such as they are found\nto-day in the salons of the aristocracy, that every one did not find\nthem equally tame. One of them was now allowing himself to be bullied\nby the marquis, who was venting his irritation at a harsh remark which\nhad been addressed to him by the marquise.\n\nThe masters of the house were too proud or too prone to boredom; they\nwere too much used to finding their only distraction in the addressing\nof insults, to enable them to expect true friends. But, except on\nrainy days and in rare moments of savage boredom, they always showed\nthemselves perfectly polite.\n\nIf the five or six toadies who manifested so paternal an affection\ntowards Julien had deserted the Hotel de la Mole, the marquise would\nhave been exposed to long spells of solitude, and in the eyes of women\nof that class, solitude is awful, it is the symbol of _disgrace_.\n\nThe marquis was charming to his wife. He saw that her salon was\nsufficiently furnished, though not with peers, for he did not think his\nnew colleagues were sufficiently noble to come to his house as friends,\nor sufficiently amusing to be admitted as inferiors.\n\nIt was only later that Julien fathomed these secrets. The governing\npolicy of a household, though it forms the staple of conversation in\nbourgeois families, is only alluded to in families of the class of that\nof the marquis in moments of distress. So paramount even in this bored\ncentury is the necessity of amusing one's self, that even on the days\nof dinner-parties the marquis had scarcely left the salon before all\nthe guests ran away. Provided that one did not make any jests about\neither God or the priests or the king or the persons in office, or the\nartists who enjoyed the favour of the court, or of anything that was\nestablished, provided that one did not praise either Beranger or the\nopposition papers, or Voltaire or Rousseau or anything which involved\nany element of free speech, provided that above all that one never\ntalked politics, one could discuss everything with freedom.\n\nThere is no income of a hundred thousand crowns a year and no blue\nribbon which could sustain a contest against such a code of salon\netiquette.\n\nThe slightest live idea appeared a crudity. In spite of the prevailing\ngood form, perfect politeness, and desire to please, _ennui_ was\nvisible in every face. The young people who came to pay their calls\nwere frightened of speaking of anything which might make them suspected\nof thinking or of betraying that they had read something prohibited,\nand relapsed into silence after a few elegant phrases about Rossini and\nthe weather.\n\nJulien noticed that the conversation was usually kept alive by two\nviscounts and five barons whom M. de la Mole had known at the time of\nthe emigration. These gentlemen enjoyed an income of from six to eight\nhundred thousand francs. Four swore by the _Quotidienne_ and three\nby the _Gazette de France_. One of them had every day some anecdote\nto tell about the Chateau, in which he made lavish use of the word\n_admirable_. Julien noticed that he had five crosses, the others as a\nrule only had three.\n\nBy way of compensation six footmen in livery were to be seen in the\nante-room, and during the whole evening ices or tea were served every\nquarter-of-an-hour, while about midnight there was a kind of supper\nwith champagne.\n\nThis was the reason that sometimes induced Julien to stay till the\nend. Apart from this he could scarcely understand why any one could\nbring himself to take seriously the ordinary conversation in this\nmagnificently gilded salon. Sometimes he would look at the talkers to\nsee if they themselves were not making fun of what they were saying.\n\"My M. de Maistre, whom I know by heart,\" he thought, \"has put it a\nhundred times better, and all the same he is pretty boring.\"\n\nJulien was not the only one to appreciate this stifling moral\natmosphere. Some consoled themselves by taking a great quantity of\nices, others by the pleasure of saying all the rest of the evening, \"I\nhave just come from the Hotel de la Mole where I learnt that Russia,\netc.\"\n\nJulien learnt from one of the toadies that scarcely six months ago\nmadame de la Mole had rewarded more than twenty years of assiduous\nattention by promoting the poor baron Le Bourguignon, who had been a\nsub-prefect since the restoration, to the rank of prefect.\n\nThis great event had whetted the zeal of all these gentlemen.\nPreviously there were few things to which they would have objected,\nnow they objected to nothing. There was rarely any overt lack of\nconsideration, but Julien had already caught at meals two or three\nlittle short dialogues between the marquis and his wife which were\ncruel to those who were seated near them. These noble personages did\nnot conceal their sincere contempt for everyone who was not sprung\nfrom people who were entitled to ride in the carriages of the king.\nJulien noticed that the word crusade was the only word which gave their\nface an expression of deep seriousness akin to respect. Their ordinary\nrespect had always a touch of condescension. In the middle of this\nmagnificence and this boredom Julien was interested in nothing except\nM. de la Mole. He was delighted to hear him protest one day that he\nhad had nothing to do with the promotion of that poor Le Bourguignon,\nit was an attention to the marquise. Julien knew the truth from the\nabbe Pirard.\n\nThe abbe was working in the marquis's library with Julien one morning\nat the eternal de Frilair lawsuit.\n\n\"Monsieur,\" said Julien suddenly, \"is dining every day with madame la\nmarquise one of my duties or a special favour that they show to me?\"\n\n\"It's a special honour,\" replied the scandalised abbe. \"M. the\nAcademician, who has been cultivating the family for fifteen years, has\nnever been able to obtain so much for his M. Tanbeau.\"\n\n\"I find it, sir, the most painful part of my employment. I was less\nbored at the seminary. Some times I see even mademoiselle de la Mole\nyawn, and yet she ought to be accustomed to the social charms of the\nfriends of the house. I am frightened of falling asleep. As a favour,\nobtain permission for me to go and get a forty sous' dinner in some\nobscure inn.\"\n\nThe abbe who was a true snob, was very appreciative of the honour of\ndining with a great lord. While he was endeavouring to get Julien to\nunderstand this point of view a slight noise made them turn round.\nJulien saw mademoiselle de la Mole listening. He reddened. She had come\nto fetch a book and had heard everything. She began to entertain some\nrespect for Julien. \"He has not been born servile,\" she thought, \"like\nthat old abbe. Heavens, how ugly he is.\"\n\nAt dinner Julien did not venture to look at mademoiselle de la Mole\nbut she was kind enough to speak to him. They were expecting a lot\nof visitors that day and she asked him to stay. The young girls of\nParis are not at all fond of persons of a certain age, especially when\nthey are slovenly. Julien did not need much penetration to realise\nthat the colleagues of M. le Bourguignon who remained in the salon\nhad the privilege of being the ordinary butt of mademoiselle de la\nMole's jokes. On this particular day, whether or not by reason of some\naffectation on her part, she proved cruel to bores.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole was the centre of a little knot which used to\nform nearly every evening behind the marquise's immense arm-chair.\nThere were to be found there the marquis de Croisenois, the comte\nde Caylus, the vicomte de Luz and two or three other young officers,\nthe friends of Norbert or his sister. These gentlemen used to sit\ndown on a large blue sofa. At the end of the sofa, opposite the part\nwhere the brilliant Mathilde was sitting, Julien sat in silence on a\nlittle, rather low straw chair. This modest position was envied by all\nthe toadies; Norbert kept his father's young secretary in countenance\nby speaking to him, or mentioning him by name once or twice in the\nevening. On this particular occasion mademoiselle de la Mole asked him\nwhat was the height of the mountain on which the citadel of Besancon\nis planted. Julien had never any idea if this mountain was higher or\nlower than Montmartre. He often laughed heartily at what was said in\nthis little knot, but he felt himself incapable of inventing anything\nanalagous. It was like a strange language which he understood but could\nnot speak.\n\nOn this particular day Matilde's friends manifested a continuous\nhostility to the visitors who came into the vast salon. The friends of\nthe house were the favoured victims at first, inasmuch as they were\nbetter known. You can form your opinion as to whether Julien paid\nattention; everything interested him, both the substance of things and\nthe manner of making fun of them.\n\n\"And there is M. Descoulis,\" said Matilde; \"he doesn't wear a wig any\nmore. Does he want to get a prefectship through sheer force of genius?\nHe is displaying that bald forehead which he says is filled with lofty\nthoughts.\"\n\n\"He is a man who knows the whole world,\" said the marquis de\nCroisenois. \"He also goes to my uncle the cardinal's. He is capable of\ncultivating a falsehood with each of his friends for years on end, and\nhe has two or three hundred friends. He knows how to nurse friendship,\nthat is his talent. He will go out, just as you see him, in the worst\nwinter weather, and be at the door of one of his friends by seven\no'clock in the morning.\n\n\"He quarrels from time to time and he writes seven or eight letters\nfor each quarrel. Then he has a reconciliation and he writes seven or\neight letters to express his bursts of friendship. But he shines most\nbrilliantly in the frank and sincere expansiveness of the honest man\nwho keeps nothing up his sleeve. This manoeuvre is brought into play\nwhen he has some favour to ask. One of my uncle's grand vicars is very\ngood at telling the life of M. Descoulis since the restoration. I will\nbring him to you.\"\n\n\"Bah! I don't believe all that, it's professional jealousy among the\nlower classes,\" said the comte de Caylus.\n\n\"M. Descoulis will live in history,\" replied the marquis. \"He brought\nabout the restoration together with the abbe de Pradt and messieurs de\nTalleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo.\"\n\n\"That man has handled millions,\" said Norbert, \"and I can't conceive\nwhy he should come here to swallow my father's epigrams which are\nfrequently atrocious. 'How many times have you betrayed your friends,\nmy dear Descoulis?' he shouted at him one day from one end of the table\nto the other.\"\n\n\"But is it true that he has played the traitor?\" asked mademoiselle de\nla Mole. \"Who has not played the traitor?\"\n\n\"Why!\" said the comte de Caylus to Norbert, \"do you have that\ncelebrated Liberal, M. Sainclair, in your house. What the devil's he\ncome here for? I must go up to him and speak to him and make him speak.\nHe is said to be so clever.\"\n\n\"But how will your mother receive him?\" said M. de Croisenois. \"He has\nsuch extravagant, generous and independent ideas.\"\n\n\"Look,\" said mademoiselle de la Mole, \"look at the independent man who\nbows down to the ground to M. Descoulis while he grabs hold of his\nhand. I almost thought he was going to put it to his lips.\"\n\n\"Descoulis must stand better with the powers that be than we thought,\"\nanswered M. de Croisenois.\n\n\"Sainclair comes here in order to get into the academy,\" said Norbert.\n\"See how he bows to the baron L----, Croisenois.\"\n\n\"It would be less base to kneel down,\" replied M. de Luz.\n\n\"My dear Sorel,\" said Norbert, \"you are extremely smart, but you come\nfrom the mountains. Mind you never bow like that great poet is doing,\neven to God the Father.\"\n\n\"Ah there's a really witty man, M. the Baron Baton,\" said mademoiselle\nde la Mole, imitating a little the voice of the flunkey who had just\nannounced him.\n\n\"I think that even your servants make fun of him. What a name Baron\nBaton,\" said M. de Caylus.\n\n\"What's in a name?\" he said to us the other day, went on Matilde.\n\"Imagine the Duke de Bouillon announced for the first time. So far as I\nam concerned the public only need to get used to me.\"\n\n\"Julien left the vicinity of the sofa.\"\n\nStill insufficiently appreciative of the charming subtleties of a\ndelicate raillery to laugh at a joke, he considered that a jest ought\nto have some logical foundation. He saw nothing in these young peoples'\nconversation except a vein of universal scandal-mongering and was\nshocked by it. His provincial or English prudery went so far as to\ndetect envy in it, though in this he was certainly mistaken.\n\n\"Count Norbert,\" he said to himself, \"who has had to make three drafts\nfor a twenty-line letter to his colonel would be only too glad to have\nwritten once in his whole life one page as good as M. Sainclair.\"\n\nJulien approached successively the several groups and attracted no\nattention by reason of his lack of importance. He followed the Baron\nBaton from a distance and tried to hear him.\n\nThis witty man appeared nervous and Julien did not see him recover\nhis equanimity before he had hit upon three or four stinging phrases.\nJulien thought that this kind of wit had great need of space.\n\nThe Baron could not make epigrams. He needed at least four sentences of\nsix lines each, in order to be brilliant.\n\n\"That man argues, he does not talk,\" said someone behind Julien. He\nturned round and reddened with pleasure when he heard the name of the\ncomte Chalvet. He was the subtlest man of the century. Julien had often\nfound his name in the _Memorial of St. Helena_ and in the portions of\nhistory dictated by Napoleon. The diction of comte Chalvet was laconic,\nhis phrases were flashes of lightning--just, vivid, deep. If he talked\nabout any matter the conversation immediately made a step forward; he\nimported facts into it; it was a pleasure to hear him. In politics,\nhowever, he was a brazen cynic.\n\n\"I am independent, I am,\" he was saying to a gentleman with three\nstars, of whom apparently he was making fun. \"Why insist on my having\nto-day the same opinion I had six weeks ago. In that case my opinion\nwould be my master.\"\n\nFour grave young men who were standing round scowled; these gentlemen\ndid not like flippancy. The comte saw that he had gone too far. Luckily\nhe perceived the honest M. Balland, a veritable hypocrite of honesty.\nThe count began to talk to him; people closed up, for they realised\nthat poor Balland was going to be the next victim.\n\nM. Balland, although he was horribly ugly and his first steps in the\nworld were almost unmentionable, had by dint of his morals and his\nmorality married a very rich wife who had died; he subsequently married\na second very rich one who was never seen in society. He enjoyed, in\nall humility, an income of sixty thousand francs, and had his own\nflatterers. Comte Chalvet talked to him pitilessly about all this.\nThere was soon a circle of thirty persons around them. Everybody was\nsmiling, including the solemn young men who were the hope of the\ncentury.\n\n\"Why does he come to M. de la Mole where he is obviously only a\nlaughing stock?\" thought Julien. He approached the abbe Pirard to ask\nhim.\n\nM. Balland made his escape.\n\n\"Good,\" said Norbert, \"there is one of the spies of my father gone;\nthere is only the little limping Napier left.\"\n\n\"Can that be the key of the riddle?\" thought Julien, \"but if so, why\ndoes the marquis receive M. Balland?\"\n\nThe stern abbe Pirard was scowling in a corner of the salon listening\nto the lackeys announcing the names.\n\n\"This is nothing more than a den,\" he was saying like another Basil, \"I\nsee none but shady people come in.\"\n\nAs a matter of fact the severe abbe did not know what constitutes\nhigh society. But his friends the Jansenites, had given him some very\nprecise notions about those men who only get into society by reason\nof their extreme subtlety in the service of all parties, or of their\nmonstrous wealth. For some minutes that evening he answered Julien's\neager questions fully and freely, and then suddenly stopped short\ngrieved at having always to say ill of every one, and thinking he was\nguilty of a sin. Bilious Jansenist as he was, and believing as he did\nin the duty of Christian charity, his life was a perpetual conflict.\n\n\"How strange that abbe Pirard looks,\" said mademoiselle de la Mole, as\nJulien came near the sofa.\n\nJulien felt irritated, but she was right all the same. M. Pirard was\nunquestionably the most honest man in the salon, but his pimply face,\nwhich was suffering from the stings of conscience, made him look\nhideous at this particular moment. \"Trust physiognomy after this,\"\nthought Julien, \"it is only when the delicate conscience of the abbe\nPirard is reproaching him for some trifling lapse that he looks so\nawful; while the expression of that notorious spy Napier shows a pure\nand tranquil happiness.\" The abbe Pirard, however, had made great\nconcessions to his party. He had taken a servant, and was very well\ndressed.\n\nJulien noticed something strange in the salon, it was that all eyes\nwere being turned towards the door, and there was a semi silence. The\nflunkey was announcing the famous Barron Tolly, who had just become\npublicly conspicuous by reason of the elections. Julien came forward\nand had a very good view of him. The baron had been the president of\nan electoral college; he had the brilliant idea of spiriting away\nthe little squares of paper which contained the votes of one of the\nparties. But to make up for it he replaced them by an equal number of\nother little pieces of paper containing a name agreeable to himself.\nThis drastic manoeuvre had been noticed by some of the voters, who had\nmade an immediate point of congratulating the Baron de Tolly. The good\nfellow was still pale from this great business. Malicious persons had\npronounced the word galleys. M. de la Mole received him coldly. The\npoor Baron made his escape.\n\n\"If he leaves us so quickly it's to go to M. Comte's,\"[1] said Comte\nChalvet and everyone laughed.\n\nLittle Tanbeau was trying to win his spurs by talking to some silent\nnoblemen and some intriguers who, though shady, were all men of wit,\nand were on this particular night in great force in M. de la Mole's\nsalon (for he was mentioned for a place in the ministry). If he had not\nyet any subtlety of perception he made up for it as one will see by the\nenergy of his words.\n\n\"Why not sentence that man to ten years' imprisonment,\" he was saying\nat the moment when Julien approached his knot. \"Those reptiles should\nbe confined in the bottom of a dungeon, they ought to languish to death\nin gaol, otherwise their venom will grow and become more dangerous.\nWhat is the good of sentencing him to a fine of a thousand crowns? He\nis poor, so be it, all the better, but his party will pay for him. What\nthe case required was a five hundred francs fine and ten years in a\ndungeon.\"\n\n\"Well to be sure, who is the monster they are speaking about?\" thought\nJulien who was viewing with amazement the vehement tone and hysterical\ngestures of his colleague. At this moment the thin, drawn, little face\nof the academician's nephew was hideous. Julien soon learnt that they\nwere talking of the greatest poet of the century.\n\n\"You monster,\" Julien exclaimed half aloud, while tears of generosity\nmoistened his eyes. \"You little rascal,\" he thought, \"I will pay you\nout for this.\"\n\n\"Yet,\" he thought, \"those are the unborn hopes of the party of which\nthe marquis is one of the chiefs. How many crosses and how many\nsinecures would that celebrated man whom he is now defaming have\naccumulated if he had sold himself--I won't say to the mediocre\nministry of M. de Nerval--but to one of those reasonably honest\nministries which we have seen follow each other in succession.\"\n\nThe abbe Pirard motioned to Julien from some distance off; M. de la\nMole had just said something to him. But when Julien, who was listening\nat the moment with downcast eyes to the lamentations of the bishop,\nhad at length got free and was able to get near his friend, he found\nhim monopolised by the abominable little Tanbeau. The little beast\nhated him as the cause of Julien's favour with the marquis, and was now\nmaking up to him.\n\n\"_When will death deliver us from that aged rottenness_,\" it was in\nthese words of a biblical energy that the little man of letters was\nnow talking of the venerable Lord Holland. His merit consisted in an\nexcellent knowledge of the biography of living men, and he had just\nmade a rapid review of all the men who could aspire to some influence\nunder the reign of the new King of England.\n\nThe abbe Pirard passed in to an adjacent salon. Julien followed him.\n\n\"I warn you the marquis does not like scribblers, it is his only\nprejudice. Know Latin and Greek if you can manage it, the history of\nthe Egyptians, Persians, etc., he will honour and protect you as a\nlearned man. But don't write a page of French, especially on serious\nmatters which are above your position in society, or he will call you\na scribbler and take you for a scoundrel. How is it that living as you\ndo in the hotel of a great lord you don't know the Duke de Castries'\nepigram on Alembert and Rousseau: 'the fellow wants to reason about\neverything and hasn't got an income of a thousand crowns'!\"\n\n\"Everything leaks out here,\" thought Julien, \"just like the seminary.\"\nHe had written eight or six fairly drastic pages. It was a kind of\nhistorical eulogy of the old surgeon-major who had, he said, made a man\nof him. \"The little note book,\" said Julien to himself, \"has always\nbeen locked.\" He went up to his room, burnt his manuscript and returned\nto the salon. The brilliant scoundrels had left it, only the men with\nthe stars were left.\n\nSeven or eight very aristocratic ladies, very devout, very affected,\nand of from thirty to thirty-five years of age, were grouped round\nthe table that the servants had just brought in ready served. The\nbrilliant marechale de Fervaques came in apologising for the lateness\nof the hour. It was more than midnight: she went and sat down near\nthe marquise. Julien was deeply touched, she had the eyes and the\nexpression of madame de Renal.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole's circle was still full of people. She was\nengaged with her friends in making fun of the unfortunate comte de\nThaler. He was the only son of that celebrated Jew who was famous for\nthe riches that he had won by lending money to kings to make war on the\npeoples.\n\nThe Jew had just died leaving his son an income of one hundred thousand\ncrowns a month, and a name that was only too well known. This strange\nposition required either a simple character or force of will power.\n\nUnfortunately the comte was simply a fellow who was inflated by all\nkinds of pretensions which had been suggested to him by all his toadies.\n\nM. de Caylus asserted that they had induced him to make up his mind to\nask for the hand of mademoiselle de la Mole, to whom the marquis de\nCroisenois, who would be a duke with a hundred thousand francs a year,\nwas paying his attentions.\n\n\"Oh, do not accuse him of having a mind,\" said Norbert pitifully.\n\nWill-power was what the poor comte de Thaler lacked most of all. So\nfar as this side of his character went he was worthy of being a king.\nHe would take council from everybody, but he never had the courage to\nfollow any advice to the bitter end.\n\n\"His physiognomy would be sufficient in itself,\" mademoiselle de la\nMole was fond of saying, \"to have inspired her with a holy joy.\" It\nwas a singular mixture of anxiety and disappointment, but from time to\ntime one could distinguish gusts of self-importance, and above all that\ntrenchant tone suited to the richest man in France, especially when he\nhad nothing to be ashamed of in his personal appearance and was not yet\nthirty-six. \"He is timidly insolent,\" M. de Croisenois would say. The\ncomte de Caylus, Norbert, and two or three moustachioed young people\nmade fun of him to their heart's content without him suspecting it, and\nfinally packed him off as one o'clock struck.\n\n\"Are those your famous Arab horses waiting for you at the door in this\nawful weather?\" said Norbert to him.\n\n\"No, it is a new pair which are much cheaper,\" said M. de Thaler. \"The\nhorse on the left cost me five thousand francs, while the one on the\nright is only worth one hundred louis, but I would ask you to believe\nme when I say that I only have him out at night. His trot you see is\nexactly like the other ones.\"\n\nNorbert's remark made the comte think it was good form for a man like\nhim to make a hobby of his horses, and that he must not let them get\nwet. He went away, and the other gentleman left a minute afterwards\nmaking fun of him all the time. \"So,\" thought Julien as he heard them\nlaugh on the staircase, \"I have the privilege of seeing the exact\nopposite of my own situation. I have not got twenty louis a year and I\nfound myself side by side with a man who has twenty louis an hour and\nthey made fun of him. Seeing a sight like that cures one of envy.\"\n\n\n[1] celebrated conjuror.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXV\n\nSENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY\n\n\n        An idea which has any life in it seems like a crudity,\n        so accustomed are they to colourless expression. Woe to\n        him who introduces new ideas into his conversation!\n                                          --_Faublas_.\n\n\nThis was the stage Julien had reached, when after several months of\nprobation the steward of the household handed him the third quarter of\nhis wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted him with the administration of\nhis estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys\nthere. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the\nfamous lawsuit with the abbe de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed him.\n\nOn the data of the short notes which the marquis would scribble on the\nmargin of all the various paper which were addressed to him, Julien\nwould compose answers which were nearly all signed.\n\nAt the Theology School his professors complained of his lack of\nindustry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of their most\ndistinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as it was with all\nthe ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed Julien of that fresh\ncomplexion which he had brought from the provinces. His pallor\nconstituted one of his merits in the eyes of his comrades, the young\nseminarist; he found them much less malicious, much less ready to bow\ndown to a silver crown than those of Besancon; they thought he was\nconsumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.\n\nJulien fearing that he might meet people during his rides on horseback,\nhad given out that this exercise had been prescribed by the doctors.\nThe abbe Pirard had taken him into several Jansenist Societies. Julien\nwas astonished; the idea of religion was indissolubly connected in his\nmind with the ideas of hypocrisy and covetousness. He admired those\naustere pious men who never gave a thought to their income. Several\nJansenists became friendly with him and would give him advice. A new\nworld opened before him. At the Jansenists he got to know a comte\nAltamira, who was nearly six feet high, was a Liberal, a believer, and\nhad been condemned to death in his own country. He was struck by the\nstrange contrast of devoutness and love of liberty.\n\nJulien's relations with the young comte had become cool. Norbert\nhad thought that he answered the jokes of his friends with too much\nsharpness. Julien had committed one or two breaches of social etiquette\nand vowed to himself that he would never speak to mademoiselle\nMathilde. They were always perfectly polite to him in the Hotel de\nla Mole but he felt himself quite lost. His provincial common sense\nexplained this result by the vulgar proverb _Tout beau tout nouveau_.\n\nHe gradually came to have a little more penetration than during his\nfirst days, or it may have been that the first glamour of Parisian\nurbanity had passed off. As soon as he left off working, he fell a prey\nto a mortal boredom. He was experiencing the withering effects of that\nadmirable politeness so typical of good society, which is so perfectly\nmodulated to every degree of the social hierarchy.\n\nNo doubt the provinces can be reproached with a commonness and lack of\npolish in their tone; but they show a certain amount of passion, when\nthey answer you. Julien's self-respect was never wounded at the Hotel\nde la Mole, but he often felt at the end of the day as though he would\nlike to cry. A cafe-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in\nyou if you happen to have some accident as you enter his cafe, but if\nthis accident has everything about it which is disagreeable to your\nvanity, he will repeat ten times in succession the very word which\ntortures you, as he tells you how sorry he is. At Paris they make a\npoint of laughing in secret, but you always remain a stranger.\n\nWe pass in silence over a number of little episodes which would have\nmade Julien ridiculous, if he had not been to some extent above\nridicule. A foolish sensibility resulted in his committing innumerable\nacts of bad taste. All his pleasures were precautions; he practiced\npistol shooting every day, he was one of the promising pupils of the\nmost famous maitres d'armes. As soon as he had an instant to himself,\ninstead of employing it in reading as he did before, he would rush\noff to the riding school and ask for the most vicious horses. When he\nwent out with the master of the riding school he was almost invariably\nthrown.\n\nThe marquis found him convenient by reason of his persistent industry,\nhis silence and his intelligence, and gradually took him into his\nconfidence with regard to all his affairs, which were in any way\ndifficult to unravel. The marquis was a sagacious business man on all\nthose occasions when his lofty ambition gave him some respite; having\nspecial information within his reach, he would speculate successfully\non the Exchange. He would buy mansions and forests; but he would easily\nlose his temper. He would give away hundreds of louis, and would go\nto law for a few hundred francs. Rich men with a lofty spirit have\nrecourse to business not so much for results as for distraction. The\nmarquis needed a chief of staff who would put all his money affairs\ninto clear and lucid order. Madame de la Mole, although of so even a\ncharacter, sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies have a horror\nof those unexpected incidents which are produced by a sensitive\ncharacter; they constitute the opposite pole of etiquette. On two or\nthree occasions the marquis took his part. \"If he is ridiculous in your\nsalon, he triumphs in his office.\" Julien on his side thought he had\ncaught the marquise's secret. She deigned to manifest an interest in\neverything the minute the Baron de la Joumate was announced. He was a\ncold individual with an expressionless physiognomy. He was tall, thin,\nugly, very well dressed, passed his life in his chateau, and generally\nspeaking said nothing about anything. Such was his outlook on life.\nMadame de la Mole would have been happy for the first time in her life\nif she could have made him her daughter's husband.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVI\n\nPRONUNCIATION\n\n\n        If fatuity is pardonable it is in one's first youth,\n        for it is then the exaggeration of an amiable thing. It\n        needs an air of love, gaiety, nonchalance. But fatuity\n        coupled with self-importance; fatuity with a solemn and\n        self-sufficient manner! This extravagance of stupidity\n        was reserved for the XIXth century. Such are the persons\n        who want to unchain the _hydra of revolutions_!--LE\n        JOHANNISBURG, _Pamphlet_.\n\nConsidering that he was a new arrival who was too disdainful to put any\nquestions, Julien did not fall into unduly great mistakes. One day when\nhe was forced into a cafe in the Rue St. Honore by a sudden shower,\na big man in a beaver coat, surprised by his gloomy look, looked at\nhim in return just as mademoiselle Amanda's lover had done before at\nBesancon.\n\nJulien had reproached himself too often for having endured the other\ninsult to put up with this stare. He asked for an explanation. The\nman in the tail-coat immediately addressed him in the lowest and most\ninsulting language. All the people in the cafe surrounded them. The\npassers-by stopped before the door. Julien always carried some little\npistols as a matter of precaution. His hand was grasping them nervously\nin his pocket. Nevertheless he behaved wisely and confined himself to\nrepeating to his man \"Monsieur, your address, I despise you.\"\n\nThe persistency in which he kept repeating these six words eventually\nimpressed the crowd.\n\n\"By Jove, the other who's talking all to himself ought to give him\nhis address,\" they exclaimed. The man in the tail-coat hearing this\nrepeated several times, flung five or six cards in Julien's face.\n\nFortunately none of them hit him in the face; he had mentally resolved\nnot to use his pistols except in the event of his being hit. The man\nwent away, though not without turning round from time to time to shake\nhis fist and hurl insults at him.\n\nJulien was bathed in sweat. \"So,\" he said angrily to himself, \"the\nmeanest of mankind has it in his power to affect me as much as this.\nHow am I to kill so humiliating a sensitiveness?\"\n\nWhere was he to find a second? He did not have a single friend. He had\nseveral acquaintances, but they all regularly left him after six weeks\nof social intercourse. \"I am unsociable,\" he thought, and \"I am now\ncruelly punished for it.\" Finally it occurred to him to rout out an old\nlieutenant of the 96th, named Lievin, a poor devil with whom he often\nused to fence. Julien was frank with him.\n\n\"I am quite willing to be your second,\" said Lievin, \"but on one\ncondition. If you fail to wound your man you will fight with me\nstraight away.\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" said Julien quite delighted; and they went to find M. de\nBeauvoisis at the address indicated on his card at the end of the\nFaubourg Saint Germain.\n\nIt was seven o'clock in the morning. It was only when he was being\nushered in, that Julien thought that it might quite well be the young\nrelation of Madame de Renal, who had once been employed at the Rome\nor Naples Embassy, and who had given the singer Geronimo a letter of\nintroduction.\n\nJulien gave one of the cards which had been flung at him the previous\nevening together with one of his own to a tall valet.\n\nHe and his second were kept waiting for a good three-quarters of\nan hour. Eventually they were ushered in to a elegantly furnished\napartment. They found there a tall young man who was dressed like a\ndoll. His features presented the perfection and the lack of expression\nof Greek beauty. His head, which was remarkably straight, had the\nfinest blonde hair. It was dressed with great care and not a single\nhair was out of place.\n\n\"It was to have his hair done like this, that is why this damned\nfop has kept us waiting,\" thought the lieutenant of the 96th. The\nvariegated dressing gown, the morning trousers, everything down to the\nembroidered slippers was correct. He was marvellously well-groomed.\nHis blank and aristocratic physiognomy betokened rare and orthodox\nideas; the ideal of a Metternichian diplomatist. Napoleon as well did\nnot like to have in his entourage officers who thought.\n\nJulien, to whom his lieutenant of the 96th had explained, that keeping\nhim waiting was an additional insult after having thrown his card\nso rudely in his face, entered brusquely M. de Beauvoisis' room. He\nintended to be insolent, but at the same time to exhibit good form.\n\nJulien was so astonished by the niceness of M. de Beauvoisis'\nmanners and by the combination of formality, self-importance, and\nself-satisfaction in his demeanour, by the admirable elegance of\neverything that surrounded him, that he abandoned immediately all\nidea of being insolent. It was not his man of the day before. His\nastonishment was so great at meeting so distinguished a person, instead\nof the rude creature whom he was looking for, that he could not find a\nsingle word to say. He presented one of the cards which had been thrown\nat him.\n\n\"That's my name,\" said the young diplomat, not at all impressed by\nJulien's black suit at seven o'clock in the morning, \"but I do not\nunderstand the honour.\"\n\nHis manner of pronouncing these last words revived a little of Julien's\nbad temper.\n\n\"I have come to fight you, monsieur,\" and he explained in a few words\nthe whole matter.\n\nM. Charles de Beauvoisis, after mature reflection, was fairly satisfied\nwith the cut of Julien's black suit.\n\n\"It comes from Staub, that's clear,\" he said to himself, as he heard\nhim speak. \"That waistcoat is in good taste. Those boots are all right,\nbut on the other hand just think of wearing a black suit in the early\nmorning! It must be to have a better chance of not being hit,\" said the\nchevalier de Beauvoisis to himself.\n\nAfter he had given himself this explanation he became again perfectly\npolite to Julien, and almost treated him as an equal. The conversation\nwas fairly lengthy, for the matter was a delicate one, but eventually\nJulien could not refuse to acknowledge the actual facts. The perfectly\nmannered young man before him did not bear any resemblance to the\nvulgar fellow who had insulted him the previous day.\n\nJulien felt an invincible repugnance towards him. He noted the\nself-sufficiency of the chevalier de Beauvoisis, for that was the name\nby which he had referred to himself, shocked as he was when Julien\ncalled him simply \"Monsieur.\"\n\nHe admired his gravity which, though tinged with a certain modest\nfatuity, he never abandoned for a single moment. He was astonished at\nhis singular manner of moving his tongue as he pronounced his words,\nbut after all, this did not present the slightest excuse for picking a\nquarrel.\n\nThe young diplomatist very graciously offered to fight, but the\nex-lieutenant of the 96th, who had been sitting down for an hour with\nhis legs wide apart, his hands on his thigh, and his elbows stuck out,\ndecided that his friend, monsieur de Sorel, was not the kind to go and\npick a quarrel with a man because someone else had stolen that man's\nvisiting cards.\n\nJulien went out in a very bad temper. The chevalier de Beauvoisis'\ncarriage was waiting for him in the courtyard before the steps. By\nchance Julien raised his eyes and recognised in the coachman his man of\nthe day before.\n\nSeeing him, catching hold of him by his big jacket, tumbling him down\nfrom his seat, and horse-whipping him thoroughly took scarcely a moment.\n\nTwo lackeys tried to defend their comrade. Julien received some blows\nfrom their fists. At the same moment, he cocked one of his little\npistols and fired on them. They took to flight. All this took about a\nminute.\n\nThe chevalier de Beauvoisis descended the staircase with the most\npleasing gravity, repeating with his lordly pronunciation, \"What is\nthis, what is this.\" He was manifestly very curious, but his diplomatic\nimportance would not allow him to evince any greater interest.\n\nWhen he knew what it was all about, a certain haughtiness tried to\nassert itself in that expression of slightly playful nonchalance which\nshould never leave a diplomatist's face.\n\nThe lieutenant of the 96th began to realise that M. de Beauvoisis was\nanxious to fight. He was also diplomatic enough to wish to reserve for\nhis friend the advantage of taking the initiative.\n\n\"This time,\" he exclaimed, \"there is ground for duel.\"\n\n\"I think there's enough,\" answered the diplomat.\n\n\"Turn that rascal out,\" he said to his lackeys. \"Let someone else get\nup.\"\n\nThe door of the carriage was open. The chevalier insisted on doing\nthe honours to Julien and his friend. They sent for a friend of M. de\nBeauvoisis, who chose them a quiet place. The conversation on their\nway went as a matter of fact very well indeed. The only extraordinary\nfeature was the diplomatist in a dressing-gown.\n\n\"These gentlemen, although very noble, are by no means as boring,\"\nthought Julien, \"as the people who come and dine at M. de la Mole's,\nand I can see why,\" he added a moment afterwards. \"They allow\nthemselves to be indecent.\" They talked about the dancers that the\npublic had distinguished with its favour at the ballet presented\nthe night before. The two gentlemen alluded to some spicy anecdotes\nof which Julien and his second, the lieutenant of the 96th, were\nabsolutely ignorant.\n\nJulien was not stupid enough to pretend to know them. He confessed his\nignorance with a good grace. This frankness pleased the chevalier's\nfriend. He told him these stories with the greatest detail and\nextremely well.\n\nOne thing astonished Julien inordinately. The carriage was pulled up\nfor a moment by an altar which was being built in the middle of the\nstreet for the procession of Corpus Christi Day. The two gentlemen\nindulged in the luxury of several jests. According to them, the cure\nwas the son of an archbishop. Such a joke would never have been heard\nin the house of M. de la Mole, who was trying to be made a duke. The\nduel was over in a minute. Julien got a ball in his arm. They bandaged\nit with handkerchiefs which they wetted with brandy, and the chevalier\nde Beauvoisis requested Julien with great politeness to allow him to\ntake him home in the same carriage that had brought him. When Julien\ngave the name of M. de la Mole's hotel, the young diplomat and his\nfriend exchanged looks. Julien's fiacre was here, but they found these\ngentlemen's conversation more entertaining than that of the good\nlieutenant of the 96th.\n\n\"By Jove, so a duel is only that,\" thought Julien. \"What luck I found\nthat coachman again. How unhappy I should have been if I had had to put\nup with that insult as well.\" The amusing conversation had scarcely\nbeen interrupted. Julien realised that the affectation of diplomatists\nis good for something.\n\n\"So ennui,\" he said himself, \"is not a necessary incident of\nconversation among well-born people. These gentlemen make fun of the\nCorpus Christi procession and dare to tell extremely obscene anecdotes,\nand what is more, with picturesque details. The only thing they really\nlack is the ability to discuss politics logically, and that lack is\nmore than compensated by their graceful tone, and the perfect aptness\nof their expressions.\" Julien experienced a lively inclination for\nthem. \"How happy I should be to see them often.\"\n\nThey had scarcely taken leave of each other before the chevalier de\nBeauvoisis had enquiries made. They were not brilliant.\n\nHe was very curious to know his man. Could he decently pay a call on\nhim? The little information he had succeeded in obtaining from him was\nnot of an encouraging character.\n\n\"Oh, this is awful,\" he said to his second. \"I can't possibly own up\nto having fought a duel with a mere secretary of M. de la Mole, simply\nbecause my coachman stole my visiting cards.\"\n\n\"There is no doubt that all this may make you look ridiculous.\"\n\nThat very evening the chevalier de Beauvoisis and his friend said\neverywhere that this M. Sorel who was, moreover, quite a charming young\nman, was a natural son of an intimate friend of the marquis de la Mole.\nThis statement was readily accepted. Once it was established, the young\ndiplomatist and friend deigned to call several times on Julien during\nthe fortnight. Julien owned to them that he had only been to the Opera\nonce in his life. \"That is awful,\" said one, \"that is the only place\none does go to. Your first visit must be when they are playing the\n'_Comte Ory_.'\"\n\nThe chevalier de Beauvoisis introduced him at the opera to the famous\nsinger Geronimo, who was then enjoying an immense success.\n\nJulien almost paid court to the chevalier. His mixture of self-respect,\nmysterious self-importance, and fatuous youthfulness fascinated him.\nThe chevalier, for example, would stammer a little, simply because he\nhad the honour of seeing frequently a very noble lord who had this\ndefect. Julien had never before found combined in one and the same\nperson the drollery which amuses, and those perfect manners which\nshould be the object of a poor provincial's imitation.\n\nHe was seen at the opera with the chevalier de Beauvoisis. This\nassociation got him talked about.\n\n\"Well,\" said M. de la Mole to him one day, \"so here you are, the\nnatural son of a rich gentleman of Franche-Comte, an intimate friend of\nmine.\"\n\nThe marquis cut Julien short as he started to protest that he had not\nin any way contributed to obtaining any credence for this rumour.\n\n\"M. de Beauvoisis did not fancy having fought a duel with the son of a\ncarpenter.\"\n\n\"I know it, I know it,\" said M. de la Mole. \"It is my business now to\ngive some consistency to this story which rather suits me. But I have\none favour to ask of you, which will only cost you a bare half-hour of\nyour time. Go and watch every opera day at half-past eleven all the\npeople in society coming out in the vestibule. I still see you have\ncertain provincial mannerisms. You must rid yourself of them. Besides\nit would do no harm to know, at any rate by sight, some of the great\npersonages to whom I may one day send you on a commission. Call in at\nthe box office to get identified. Admission has been secured for you.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVII\n\nAN ATTACK OF GOUT\n\n\n     And I got advancement, not on my merit, but because my\n                master had the gout.--_Bertolotti_.\n\nThe reader is perhaps surprised by this free and almost friendly tone.\nWe had forgotten to say that the marquis had been confined to his house\nfor six weeks by the gout.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole and her mother were at Hyeres near the\nmarquise's mother. The comte Norbert only saw his father at stray\nmoments. They got on very well, but had nothing to say to each other.\nM. de la Mole, reduced to Julien's society, was astonished to find that\nhe possessed ideas. He made him read the papers to him. Soon the young\nsecretary was competent to pick out the interesting passages. There was\na new paper which the marquis abhorred. He had sworn never to read it,\nand spoke about it every day. Julien laughed. In his irritation against\nthe present time, the marquis made him read Livy aloud. The improvised\ntranslation of the Latin text amused him. The marquis said one day\nin that tone of excessive politeness which frequently tried Julien's\npatience,\n\n\"Allow me to present you with a blue suit, my dear Sorel. When you find\nit convenient to wear it and to come and see me, I shall look upon you\nas the younger brother of the comte de Chaulnes, that is to say, the\nson of my friend the old Duke.\"\n\nJulien did not quite gather what it was all about, but he tried a visit\nin the blue suit that very evening. The marquis treated him like an\nequal. Julien had a spirit capable of appreciating true politeness, but\nhe had no idea of nuances. Before this freak of the marquis's he would\nhave sworn that it was impossible for him to have been treated with\nmore consideration. \"What an admirable talent,\" said Julien to himself.\nWhen he got up to go, the marquis apologised for not being able to\naccompany him by reason of his gout.\n\nJulien was preoccupied by this strange idea. \"Perhaps he is making fun\nof me,\" he thought. He went to ask advice of the abbe Pirard, who being\nless polite than the marquis, made no other answer except to whistle\nand change the subject.\n\nJulien presented himself to the marquis the next morning in his black\nsuit, with his letter case and his letters for signature. He was\nreceived in the old way, but when he wore the blue suit that evening,\nthe marquis's tone was quite different, and absolutely as polite as on\nthe previous day.\n\n\"As you are not exactly bored,\" said the marquis to him, \"by these\nvisits which you are kind enough to pay to a poor old man, you must\ntell him about all the little incidents of your life, but you must\nbe frank and think of nothing except narrating them clearly and in\nan amusing way. For one must amuse oneself,\" continued the marquis.\n\"That's the only reality in life. I can't have my life saved in a\nbattle every day, or get a present of a million francs every day, but\nif I had Rivarol here by my sofa he would rid me every day of an hour\nof suffering and boredom. I saw a lot of him at Hamburg during the\nemigration.\"\n\nAnd the marquis told Julien the stories of Rivarol and the inhabitants\nof Hamburg who needed the combined efforts of four individuals to\nunderstand an epigram. M. de la Mole, being reduced to the society of\nthis little abbe, tried to teach him. He put Julien's pride on its\nmettle. As he was asked to speak the truth, Julien resolved to tell\neverything, but to suppress two things, his fanatical admiration for\nthe name which irritated the marquis, and that complete scepticism,\nwhich was not particularly appropriate to a prospective cure. His\nlittle affair with the chevalier de Beauvoisis came in very handy. The\nmarquis laughed till the tears came into his eyes at the scene in the\ncafe in the Rue St. Honore with the coachman who had loaded him with\nsordid insults. The occasion was marked by a complete frankness between\nthe marquis and the protege.\n\nM. de la Mole became interested in this singular character. At the\nbeginning he had encouraged Julian's droll blunders in order to enjoy\nlaughing at them. Soon he found it more interesting to correct very\ngently this young man's false outlook on life.\n\n\"All other provincials who come to Paris admire everything,\"\nthought the marquis. \"This one hates everything. They have too much\naffectation; he has not affectation enough; and fools take him for a\nfool.\"\n\nThe attack of gout was protracted by the great winter cold and lasted\nsome months.\n\n\"One gets quite attached to a fine spaniel,\" thought the marquis. \"Why\nshould I be so ashamed of being attached to this little abbe? He is\noriginal. I treat him as a son. Well, where's the bother? The whim, if\nit lasts, will cost me a diamond and five hundred louis in my will.\"\nOnce the marquis had realised his protege's strength of character, he\nentrusted him with some new business every day.\n\nJulien noticed with alarm that this great lord would often give him\ninconsistent orders with regard to the same matter.\n\nThat might compromise him seriously. Julien now made a point whenever\nhe worked with him, of bringing a register with him in which he wrote\nhis instructions which the marquis initialled. Julien had now a clerk\nwho would transcribe the instructions relating to each matter in a\nseparate book. This book also contained a copy of all the letters.\n\nThis idea seemed at first absolutely boring and ridiculous, but in two\nmonths the marquis appreciated its advantages. Julien suggested to him\nthat he should take a clerk out of a banker's who was to keep proper\nbook-keeping accounts of all the receipts and of all the expenses of\nthe estates which Julien had been charged to administer.\n\nThese measures so enlightened the marquis as to his own affairs that\nhe could indulge the pleasure of undertaking two or three speculations\nwithout the help of his nominee who always robbed him.\n\n\"Take three thousand francs for yourself,\" he said one day to his young\nsteward.\n\n\"Monsieur, I should lay myself open to calumny.\"\n\n\"What do you want then?\" retorted the marquis irritably.\n\n\"Perhaps you will be kind enough to make out a statement of account and\nenter it in your own hand in the book. That order will give me a sum of\n3,000 francs. Besides it's M. the abbe Pirard who had the idea of all\nthis exactness in accounts.\" The marquis wrote out his instructions in\nthe register with the bored air of the Marquis de Moncade listening to\nthe accounts of his steward M. Poisson.\n\nBusiness was never talked when Julien appeared in the evening in\nhis blue suit. The kindness of the marquis was so flattering to the\nself-respect of our hero, which was always morbidly sensitive, that\nin spite of himself, he soon came to feel a kind of attachment for\nthis nice old man. It is not that Julien was a man of sensibility\nas the phrase is understood at Paris, but he was not a monster, and\nno one since the death of the old major had talked to him with so\nmuch kindness. He observed that the marquis showed a politeness and\nconsideration for his own personal feelings which he had never found in\nthe old surgeon. He now realised that the surgeon was much prouder of\nhis cross than was the marquis of his blue ribbon. The marquis's father\nhad been a great lord.\n\nOne day, at the end of a morning audience for the transaction of\nbusiness, when the black suit was worn, Julien happened to amuse the\nmarquis who kept him for a couple of hours, and insisted on giving him\nsome banknotes which his nominee had just brought from the house.\n\n\"I hope M. le Marquis, that I am not deviating from the profound\nrespect which I owe you, if I beg you to allow me to say a word.\"\n\n\"Speak, my friend.\"\n\n\"M. le Marquis will deign to allow me to refuse this gift. It is not\nmeant for the man in the black suit, and it would completely spoil\nthose manners which you have kindly put up with in the man in the blue\nsuit.\" He saluted with much respect and went out without looking at his\nemployer.\n\nThis incident amused the marquis. He told it in the evening to the abbe\nPirard.\n\n\"I must confess one thing to you, my dear abbe. I know Julien's birth,\nand I authorise you not to regard this confidence as a secret.\"\n\nHis conduct this morning is noble, thought the marquis, so I will\nennoble him myself.\n\nSome time afterwards the marquis was able to go out.\n\n\"Go and pass a couple of months at London,\" he said to Julien.\n\"Ordinary and special couriers will bring you the letters I have\nreceived, together with my notes. You will write out the answers and\nsend them back to me, putting each letter inside the answer. I have\nascertained that the delay will be no more than five days.\"\n\nAs he took the post down the Calais route, Julien was astonished at the\ntriviality of the alleged business on which he had been sent.\n\nWe will say nothing about the feeling of hate and almost horror with\nwhich he touched English soil. His mad passion for Bonaparte is already\nknown. He saw in every officer a Sir Hudson Low, in every great\nnoble a Lord Bathurst, ordering the infamies of St. Helena and being\nrecompensed by six years of office.\n\nAt London he really got to know the meaning of sublime fatuity. He had\nstruck up a friendship with some young Russian nobles who initiated him.\n\n\"Your future is assured, my dear Sorel,\" they said to him. \"You\nnaturally have that cold demeanour, _a thousand leagues away from the\nsensation one has at the moment_, that we have been making such efforts\nto acquire.\"\n\n\"You have not understood your century,\" said the Prince Korasoff to\nhim. \"Always do the opposite of what is expected of you. On my honour\nthere you have the sole religion of the period. Don't be foolish or\naffected, for then follies and affectations will be expected of you,\nand the maxim will not longer prove true.\"\n\nJulien covered himself with glory one day in the Salon of the Duke\nof Fitz-Folke who had invited him to dinner together with the Prince\nKorasoff. They waited for an hour. The way in which Julien conducted\nhimself in the middle of twenty people who were waiting is still quoted\nas a precedent among the young secretaries of the London Embassy. His\ndemeanour was unimpeachable.\n\nIn spite of his friends, the dandies, he made a point of seeing the\ncelebrated Philip Vane, the one philosopher that England has had\nsince Locke. He found him finishing his seventh year in prison. The\naristocracy doesn't joke in this country, thought Julien. Moreover Vane\nis disgraced, calumniated, etc.\n\nJulien found him in cheery spirits. The rage of the aristocracy\nprevented him from being bored. \"There's the only merry man I've seen\nin England,\" thought Julien to himself, as he left the prison.\n\n\"The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God,\" Vane had\nsaid to him.\n\nWe suppress the rest of the system as being cynical.\n\n\"What amusing notion do you bring me from England?\" said M. la Mole to\nhim on his return. He was silent. \"What notion do you bring me, amusing\nor otherwise?\" repeated the marquis sharply.\n\n\"In the first place,\" said Julien, \"The sanest Englishman is mad one\nhour every day. He is visited by the Demon of Suicide who is the local\nGod.\n\n\"In the second place, intellect and genius lose twenty-five per cent.\nof their value when they disembark in England.\n\n\"In the third place, nothing in the world is so beautiful, so\nadmirable, so touching, as the English landscapes.\"\n\n\"Now it is my turn,\" said the marquis.\n\n\"In the first place, why do you go and say at the ball at the Russian\nAmbassador's that there were three hundred thousand young men of twenty\nin France who passionately desire war? Do you think that is nice for\nthe kings?\"\n\n\"One doesn't know what to do when talking to great diplomats,\" said\nJulien. \"They have a mania for starting serious discussions. If one\nconfines oneself to the commonplaces of the papers, one is taken for a\nfool. If one indulges in some original truth, they are astonished and\nat a loss for an answer, and get you informed by the first Secretary\nof the Embassy at seven o'clock next day that your conduct has been\nunbecoming.\"\n\n\"Not bad,\" said the marquis laughing. \"Anyway I will wager Monsieur\nDeep-one that you have not guessed what you went to do in England.\"\n\n\"Pardon me,\" answered Julien. \"I went there to dine once a week with\nthe king's ambassador, who is the most polite of men.\"\n\n\"You went to fetch this cross you see here,\" said the marquis to him.\n\"I do not want to make you leave off your black suit, and I have got\naccustomed to the more amusing tone I have assumed with the man who\nwears the blue suit. So understand this until further orders. When I\nsee this cross, you will be my friend, the Duke of Chaulne's younger\nson, who has been employed in the diplomatic service the last six\nmonths without having any idea of it. Observe,\" added the marquis\nvery seriously, cutting short all manifestations of thanks, \"that I\ndo not want you to forget your place. That is always a mistake and a\nmisfortune both for patron and for dependent. When my lawsuits bore\nyou, or when you no longer suit me, I will ask a good living like that\nof our good friend the abbe Pirard's for you, and nothing more,\" added\nthe marquis dryly. This put Julien's pride at its ease. He talked much\nmore. He did not so frequently think himself insulted and aimed at by\nthose phrases which are susceptible of some interpretation which is\nscarcely polite, and which anybody may give utterance to in the course\nof an animated conversation.\n\nThis cross earned him a singular visit. It was that of the baron de\nValenod, who came to Paris to thank the Minister for his barony, and\narrive at an understanding with him. He was going to be nominated mayor\nof Verrieres, and to supersede M. de Renal.\n\nJulien did not fail to smile to himself when M. Valenod gave him to\nunderstand that they had just found out that M. de Renal was a Jacobin.\nThe fact was that the new baron was the ministerial candidate at the\nelection for which they were all getting ready, and that it was M. de\nRenal who was the Liberal candidate at the great electoral college of\nthe department, which was, in fact, very ultra.\n\nIt was in vain that Julien tried to learn something about madame de\nRenal. The baron seemed to remember their former rivalry, and was\nimpenetrable. He concluded by canvassing Julien for his father's vote\nat the election which was going to take place. Julien promised to write.\n\n\"You ought, monsieur le Chevalier, to present me to M. the marquis de\nla Mole.\"\n\n\"I ought, as a matter of fact,\" thought Julien. \"But a rascal like\nthat!\"\n\n\"As a matter of fact,\" he answered, \"I am too small a personage in the\nHotel de la Mole to take it upon myself to introduce anyone.\" Julien\ntold the marquis everything. In the evening he described Valenod's\npretensions, as well as his deeds and feats since 1814.\n\n\"Not only will you present the new baron to me,\" replied de la Mole,\nvery seriously, \"but I will invite him to dinner for the day after\nto-morrow. He will be one of our new prefects.\"\n\n\"If that is the case, I ask for my father the post of director of the\nworkhouse,\" answered Julien, coldly.\n\n\"With pleasure,\" answered the marquis gaily. \"It shall be granted. I\nwas expecting a lecture. You are getting on.\"\n\nM. de Valenod informed Julien that the manager of the lottery office at\nVerrieres had just died. Julien thought it humorous to give that place\nto M. de Cholin, the old dotard whose petition he had once picked up in\nde la Mole's room. The marquis laughed heartily at the petition, which\nJulien recited as he made him sign the letter which requested that\nappointment of the minister of finance.\n\nM. de Cholin had scarcely been nominated, when Julien learnt that that\npost had been asked by the department for the celebrated geometrician,\nmonsieur Gros. That generous man had an income of only 1400 francs, and\nevery year had lent 600 to the late manager who had just died, to help\nhim bring up his family.\n\nJulien was astonished at what he had done.\n\n\"That's nothing,\" he said to himself. \"It will be necessary to commit\nseveral other injustices if I mean to get on, and also to conceal them\nbeneath pretty, sentimental speeches. Poor monsieur Gros! It is he who\ndeserves the cross. It is I who have it, and I ought to conform to the\nspirit of the Government which gives it me.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVIII\n\nWHAT IS THE DECORATION WHICH CONFERS DISTINCTION?\n\n\n    \"Thy water refreshes me not,\" said the transformed genie.\n    \"'Tis nevertheless the freshest well in all Diar-Bekir\"--_Pellico_.\n\n\nOne day Julien had just returned from the charming estate of Villequier\non the banks of the Seine, which was the especial subject of M. de la\nMole's interest because it was the only one of all his properties which\nhad belonged to the celebrated Boniface de la Mole.\n\nHe found the marquise and her daughter, who had just come back from\nHyeres, in the hotel. Julien was a dandy now, and understood the art of\nParis life. He manifested a perfect coldness towards mademoiselle de la\nMole. He seemed to have retained no recollection of the day when she\nhad asked him so gaily for details of his fall from his horse.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole thought that he had grown taller and paler.\nThere was no longer anything of the provincial in his figure or his\nappearance. It was not so with his conversation. Too much of the\nserious and too much of the positive element were still noticeable. In\nspite of these sober qualities, his conversation, thanks to his pride,\nwas destitute of any trace of the subordinate. One simply felt that\nthere were still too many things which he took seriously. But one saw\nthat he was the kind of man to stick to his guns.\n\n\"He lacks lightness of touch, but not brains,\" said mademoiselle de la\nMole to her father, as she rallied him on the cross that he had given\nJulien. \"My brother has been asking you for it for sixteen months, and\nhe is a La Mole.\"\n\n\"Yes, but Julien has surprises, and that's what the de la Mole, whom\nyou were referring to, has never been guilty of.\"\n\nM. the duc de Retz was announced.\n\nMathilde felt herself seized by an irresistible attack of yawning. She\nknew so well the old gildings and the old habitues of her father's\nsalon. She conjured up an absolutely boring picture of the life which\nshe was going to take up at Paris, and yet, when at Hyeres, she had\nregretted Paris.\n\n\"And yet I am nineteen,\" she thought. \"That's the age of happiness, say\nall those gilt-edged ninnies.\"\n\nShe looked at eight or ten new volumes of poetry which had accumulated\non the table in the salon during her journey in Provence. She had the\nmisfortune to have more brains than M.M. de Croisnois, de Caylus, de\nLuz, and her other friends. She anticipated all that they were going to\ntell her about the fine sky of Provence, poetry, the South, etc., etc.\n\nThese fine eyes, which were the home of the deepest ennui, and worse\nstill, of the despair of ever finding pleasure, lingered on Julien. At\nany rate, he was not exactly like the others.\n\n\"Monsieur Sorel,\" she said, in that short, sharp voice, destitute of\nall femininity, which is so frequent among young women of the upper\nclass.\n\n\"Monsieur Sorel, are you coming to-night to M. de Retz's ball?\"\n\n\"Mademoiselle, I have not had the honour of being presented to M. the\nduke.\" (One would have said that these words and that title seared the\nmouth of the proud provincial).\n\n\"He asked my brother to take you there, and if you go, you could\ntell me some details about the Villequier estate. We are thinking of\ngoing there in the spring, and I would like to know if the chateau is\nhabitable, and if the neighbouring places are as pretty as they say.\nThere are so many unmerited reputations.\"\n\nJulien did not answer.\n\n\"Come to the ball with my brother,\" she added, very dryly. Julien bowed\nrespectfully.\n\n\"So I owe my due to the members of the family, even in the middle of a\nball. Am I not paid to be their business man?\" His bad temper added,\n\"God knows, moreover, if what I tell the daughter will not put out the\nplans of the father, brother, and mother. It is just like the court of\na sovereign prince. You have to be absolutely negative, and yet give no\none any right to complain.\"\n\n\"How that big girl displeases me!\" he thought, as he watched the walk\nof Mademoiselle de la Mole, whom her mother had called to present to\nseveral women friends of hers. She exaggerates all the fashions. Her\ndress almost falls down to her shoulders, she is even paler than before\nshe went away. How nondescript her hair has grown as the result of\nbeing blonde! You would say that the light passed through it.\n\nWhat a haughty way of bowing and of looking at you! What queenly\ngestures! Mademoiselle de la Mole had just called her brother at the\nmoment when he was leaving the salon.\n\nThe comte de Norbert approached Julien.\n\n\"My dear Sorel,\" he said to him. \"Where would you like me to pick you\nup to-night for Monsieur's ball. He expressly asked me to bring you.\"\n\n\"I know well whom I have to thank for so much kindness,\" answered\nJulien bowing to the ground.\n\nHis bad temper, being unable to find anything to lay hold of in the\npolite and almost sympathetic tone in which Norbert had spoken to\nhim, set itself to work on the answer he had made to that courteous\ninvitation. He detected in it a trace of subservience.\n\nWhen he arrived at the ball in the evening, he was struck with the\nmagnificence of the Hotel de Retz. The courtyard at the entrance was\ncovered with an immense tent of crimson with golden stars. Nothing\ncould have been more elegant. Beyond the tent, the court had been\ntransformed into a wood of orange trees and of pink laurels in full\nflower. As they had been careful to bury the vases sufficiently deep,\nthe laurel trees and the orange trees appeared to come straight out of\nthe ground. The road which the carriages traversed was sanded.\n\nAll this seemed extraordinary to our provincial. He had never had any\nidea of such magnificence. In a single instant his thrilled imagination\nhad left his bad temper a thousand leagues behind. In the carriage on\ntheir way to the ball Norbert had been happy, while he saw everything\nin black colours. They had scarcely entered the courtyard before the\nroles changed.\n\nNorbert was only struck by a few details which, in the midst of all\nthat magnificence, had not been able to be attended to. He calculated\nthe expense of each item, and Julien remarked that the nearer he got\nto a sum total, the more jealous and bad-tempered he appeared.\n\nAs for himself, he was fascinated and full of admiration when he\nreached the first of the salons where they were dancing. His emotion\nwas so great that it almost made him nervous. There was a crush at the\ndoor of the second salon, and the crowd was so great that he found it\nimpossible to advance. The decorations of the second salon presented\nthe Alhambra of Grenada.\n\n\"That's the queen of the ball one must admit,\" said a young man with a\nmoustache whose shoulder stuck into Julien's chest.\n\n\"Mademoiselle Formant who has been the prettiest all the winter,\nrealises that she will have to go down to the second place. See how\nstrange she looks.\"\n\n\"In truth she is straining every nerve to please. Just look at that\ngracious smile now that she is doing the figure in that quadrille all\nalone. On my honour it is unique.\"\n\n\"Mademoiselle de la Mole looks as if she controlled the pleasure which\nshe derives from her triumph, of which she is perfectly conscious. One\nmight say that she fears to please anyone who talks to her.\"\n\n\"Very good. That is the art of alluring.\"\n\nJulien vainly endeavoured to catch sight of the alluring woman. Seven\nor eight men who were taller than he prevented him from seeing her.\n\n\"There is quite a lot of coquetry in that noble reserve,\" said the\nyoung man with a moustache.\n\n\"And in those big blue eyes, which are lowered so slowly when one would\nthink they were on the point of betraying themselves,\" answered his\nneighbour. \"On my faith, nothing could be cleverer.\"\n\n\"See the pretty Formant looking quite common next to her,\" said the\nfirst.\n\n\"That air of reserve means how much sweetness would I spend on you if\nyou were the man who was worthy of me.\"\n\n\"And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde,\" said the first man.\n\"Some sovereign prince, handsome, witty, well-made, a hero in war, and\ntwenty years old at the most.\"\n\n\"The natural son of the Emperor of Russia ... who would be made a\nsovereign in honour of his marriage, or quite simply the comte de\nThaler, who looks like a dressed-up peasant.\"\n\nThe door was free, and Julien could go in.\n\n\"Since these puppets consider her so remarkable, it is worth while\nfor me to study her,\" he thought. \"I shall then understand what these\npeople regard as perfection.\"\n\nAs his eyes were trying to find her, Mathilde looked at him. \"My duty\ncalls me,\" said Julien to himself. But it was only his expression which\nwas bad-humoured.\n\nHis curiosity made him advance with a pleasure which the extremely low\ncut dress on Mathilde's shoulder very quickly accentuated, in a manner\nwhich was scarcely flattering for his own self-respect. \"Her beauty has\nyouth,\" he thought. Five or six people, whom Julien recognised as those\nwho had been speaking at the door were between her and him.\n\n\"Now, Monsieur, you have been here all the winter,\" she said to him.\n\"Is it not true that this is the finest ball of the season.\"\n\nHe did not answer.\n\n\"This quadrille of Coulon's strikes me as admirable, and those ladies\ndance it perfectly.\" The young men turned round to see who was the\nhappy man, an answer from whom was positively insisted on. The answer\nwas not encouraging.\n\n\"I shall not be able to be a good judge, mademoiselle, I pass my life\nin writing. This is the first ball of this magnificence which I have\never seen.\"\n\nThe young men with moustaches were scandalised.\n\n\"You are a wise man, Monsieur Sorel,\" came the answer with a more\nmarked interest. \"You look upon all these balls, all these festivities,\nlike a philosopher, like J. J. Rousseau. All these follies astonish\nwithout alluring you.\"\n\nJulien's imagination had just hit upon an epigram which banished all\nillusions from his mind. His mouth assumed the expression of a perhaps\nslightly exaggerated disdain.\n\n\"J. J. Rousseau,\" he answered, \"is in my view only a fool when he takes\nit upon himself to criticise society. He did not understand it, and\nhe went into it with the spirit of a lackey who has risen above his\nstation.\"\n\n\"He wrote the _Contrat Social_,\" answered Mathilde reverently.\n\n\"While he preaches the Republic, and the overthrow of monarchical\ndignities, the parvenu was intoxicated with happiness if a duke would\ngo out of his way after dinner to one of his friends.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, the Duke of Luxembourg at Montmorency, used to accompany a\nCoindet from the neighbourhood of Paris,\" went on Mademoiselle de\nla Mole, with all the pleasure and enthusiasm of her first flush of\npedantry. She was intoxicated with her knowledge, almost like the\nacademician who discovered the existence of King Feretrius.\n\nJulien's look was still penetrating and severe. Mathilde had had\na moment's enthusiasm. Her partner's coldness disconcerted her\nprofoundly. She was all the more astonished, as it was she who was\naccustomed to produce that particular effect on others.\n\nAt this moment the marquis de Croisenois was advancing eagerly towards\nmademoiselle de la Mole. He was for a moment three yards away from her.\nHe was unable to get closer because of the crowd. He smiled at the\nobstacle. The young marquise de Rouvray was near her. She was a cousin\nof Mathilde. She was giving her arm to her husband who had only married\nher a fortnight ago. The marquis de Rouvray, who was also very young,\nhad all the love which seizes a man who, having contracted a marriage\nof convenience exclusively arranged by the notaries, finds a person who\nis ideally pretty. M. de Rouvray would be a duke on the death of a very\nold uncle.\n\nWhile the marquis de Croisenois was struggling to get through the\ncrowd, and smiling at Mathilde she fixed her big divinely blue eyes\non him and his neighbours. \"Could anything be flatter,\" she said to\nherself. \"There is Croisenois who wants to marry me, he is gentle and\npolite, he has perfect manners like M. de Rouvray. If they did not\nbore, those gentlemen would be quite charming. He too, would accompany\nme to the ball with that smug limited expression. One year after the\nmarriage I shall have my carriage, my horses, my dresses, my chateau\ntwenty leagues from Paris. All this would be as nice as possible, and\nenough to make a Countess de Roiville, for example, die of envy and\nafterwards--\"\n\nMathilde bored herself in anticipation. The marquis de Croisenois\nmanaged to approach her and spoke to her, but she was dreaming and\ndid not listen to him. The noise of his words began to get mixed\nwith the buzz of the ball. Her eye mechanically followed Julien who\nhad gone away, with an air which, though respectful, was yet proud\nand discontented. She noticed in a corner far from the moving crowd,\nthe comte Altamira who had been condemned to death in his own country\nand whom the reader knows already. One of his relatives had married a\nPrince de Conti in the reign of Louis XIV. This historical fact was\nsome protection against the police of the congregation.\n\n\"I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,\" said\nMathilde. \"It is the only thing which cannot be bought.\"\n\n\"Why, that's an epigram, I just said, what a pity it did not come at a\nmoment when I could have reaped all the credit for it.\" Mathilde had\ntoo much taste to work into the conversation a prepared epigram but\nat the same time she was too vain not to be extremely pleased with\nherself. A happy expression succeeded the palpable boredom of her face.\nThe marquis de Croisenois, who had never left off talking, saw a chance\nof success and waxed twice as eloquent.\n\n\"What objection could a caviller find with my epigram,\" said Mathilde\nto herself. \"I would answer my critic in this way: The title of baron\nor vicomte is to be bought; a cross, why it is a gift. My brother\nhas just got one. What has he done? A promotion, why that can be\nobtained by being ten years in a garrison or have the minister of war\nfor a relative, and you'll be a chief of a squadron like Norbert. A\ngreat fortune! That's rather more difficult, and consequently more\nmeritorious. It is really quite funny. It's the opposite of what\nthe books say. Well, to win a fortune why you marry M. Rothschild's\ndaughter. Really my epigram is quite deep. Being condemned to death is\nstill the one privilege which one has never thought of canvassing.\"\n\n\"Do you know the comte Altamira,\" she said to M. de Croisenois.\n\nHer thoughts seemed to have been so far away, and this question had\nso little connection with all that the poor marquis had been saying\nfor the last five minutes, that his good temper was ruffled. He was\nnevertheless a man of wit and celebrated for being so.\n\n\"Mathilde is eccentric,\" he thought, \"that's a nuisance, but she will\ngive her husband such a fine social position. I don't know how the\nmarquis de la Mole manages. He is connected with all that is best in\nall parties. He is a man who is bound to come out on top. And, besides,\nthis eccentricity of Mathilde's may pass for genius. Genius when allied\nwith good birth and a large fortune, so far from being ridiculous, is\nhighly distinguished. She has wit, moreover, when she wants to, that\nmixture in fact of brains, character, and ready wit which constitute\nperfection.\"\n\nAs it is difficult to do two things at the same time, the marquis\nanswered Mathilde with a vacant expression as though he were reciting a\nlesson.\n\n\"Who does not know that poor Altamira?\" and he told her the history of\nhis conspiracy, abortive, ridiculous and absurd.\n\n\"Very absurd,\" said Mathilde as if she were talking to herself, \"but he\nhas done something. I want to see a man; bring him to me,\" she said to\nthe scandalized marquis.\n\nComte Altamira was one of the most avowed admirers of mademoiselle de\nla Mole's haughty and impertinent manner. In his opinion she was one of\nthe most beautiful persons in Paris.\n\n\"How fine she would be on a throne,\" he said to M. de Croisenois; and\nmade no demur at being taken up to Mathilde.\n\nThere are a good number of people in society who would like to\nestablish the fact that nothing is in such bad form as a conspiracy, in\nthe nineteenth century; it smacks of Jacobinism. And what could be more\nsordid than unsuccessful Jacobinism.\n\nMathilde's expression made fun a little of Altamira and M. de\nCroisenois, but she listened to him with pleasure.\n\n\"A conspirator at a ball, what a pretty contrast,\" she thought. She\nthought that this man with his black moustache looked like a lion at\nrest, but she soon perceived that his mind had only one point of view:\n_utility, admiration for utility_.\n\nThe young comte thought nothing worthy his attention except what tended\nto give his country two chamber government. He left Mathilde, who was\nthe prettiest person at the ball, with alacrity, because he saw a\nPeruvian general come in. Desparing of Europe such as M. de Metternich\nhad arranged it, poor Altamira had been reduced to thinking that when\nthe States of South America had become strong and powerful they could\nrestore to Europe the liberty which Mirabeau has given it.\n\nA crowd of moustachised young men had approached Mathilde. She realized\nthat Altamira had not felt allured, and was piqued by his departure.\nShe saw his black eye gleam as he talked to the Peruvian general.\nMademoiselle de la Mole looked at the young Frenchmen with that\nprofound seriousness which none of her rivals could imitate, \"which\nof them,\" she thought, \"could get himself condemned to death, even\nsupposing he had a favourable opportunity?\"\n\nThis singular look flattered those who were not very intelligent, but\ndisconcerted the others. They feared the discharge of some stinging\nepigram that would be difficult to answer.\n\n\"Good birth vouchsafes a hundred qualities whose absence would offend\nme. I see as much in the case of Julien,\" thought Mathilde, \"but it\nwithers up those qualities of soul which make a man get condemned to\ndeath.\"\n\nAt that moment some one was saying near her: \"Comte Altamira is the\nsecond son of the Prince of San Nazaro-Pimentel; it was a Pimentel who\ntried to save Conradin, was beheaded in 1268. It is one of the noblest\nfamilies in Naples.\"\n\n\"So,\" said Mathilde to herself, \"what a pretty proof this is of my\nmaxim, that good birth deprives a man of that force of character\nin default of which a man does not get condemned to death. I seem\ndoomed to reason falsely to-night. Since I am only a woman like any\nother, well I must dance.\" She yielded to the solicitations of M. de\nCroisenois who had been asking for a gallop for the last hour. To\ndistract herself from her failure in philosophy, Mathilde made a point\nof being perfectly fascinating. M. de Croisenois was enchanted. But\nneither the dance nor her wish to please one of the handsomest men at\ncourt, nor anything at all, succeeded in distracting Mathilde. She\ncould not possibly have been more of a success. She was the queen of\nthe ball. She coldly appreciated the fact.\n\n\"What a blank life I shall pass with a person like Croisenois,\" she\nsaid to herself as he took her back to her place an hour afterwards.\n\"What pleasure do I get,\" she added sadly, \"if after an absence of\nsix months I find myself at a ball which all the women of Paris were\nmad with jealousy to go to? And what is more I am surrounded by the\nhomage of an ideally constituted circle of society. The only bourgeois\nare some peers and perhaps one or two Juliens. And yet,\" she added\nwith increasing sadness, \"what advantages has not fate bestowed upon\nme! Distinction, fortune, youth, everything except happiness. My most\ndubious advantages are the very ones they have been speaking to me\nabout all the evening. Wit, I believe I have it, because I obviously\nfrighten everyone. If they venture to tackle a serious subject, they\nwill arrive after five minutes of conversation and as though they had\nmade a great discovery at a conclusion which we have been repeating to\nthem for the last hour. I am beautiful, I have that advantage for which\nmadame de Stael would have sacrificed everything, and yet I'm dying of\nboredom. Shall I have reason to be less bored when I have changed my\nname for that of the marquis de Croisenois?\n\n\"My God though,\" she added, while she almost felt as if she would like\nto cry, \"isn't he really quite perfect? He's a paragon of the education\nof the age; you can't look at him without his finding something\ncharming and even witty to say to you; he is brave. But that Sorel is\nstrange,\" she said to herself, and the expression of her eyes changed\nfrom melancholy to anger. \"I told him that I had something to say to\nhim and he hasn't deigned to reappear.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIX\n\nTHE BALL\n\n\n        The luxurious dresses, the glitter of the candles; all\n        those pretty arms and fine shoulders; the bouquets,\n        the intoxicating strains of Rossini, the paintings of\n        Ciceri. I am beside myself.--_Journeys of Useri_.\n\n\n\"You are in a bad temper,\" said the marquise de la Mole to her; \"let me\ncaution you, it is ungracious at a ball.\"\n\n\"I only have a headache,\" answered Mathilde disdainfully, \"it is too\nhot here.\"\n\nAt this moment the old Baron Tolly became ill and fell down, as though\nto justify mademoiselle de la Mole's remark. They were obliged to carry\nhim away. They talked about apoplexy. It was a disagreeable incident.\n\nMathilde did not bother much about it.\n\nShe made a point of never looking at old men, or at anyone who had the\nreputation of being bad company.\n\nShe danced in order to escape the conversation about the apoplexy,\nwhich was not apoplexy inasmuch as the baron put in an appearance the\nfollowing day.\n\n\"But Sorel does not come,\" she said to herself after she had danced.\nShe was almost looking round for him when she found him in another\nsalon. Astonishing, but he seemed to have lost that impassive coldness\nthat was so natural to him; he no longer looked English.\n\n\"He is talking to comte Altamira who was sentenced to death,\" said\nMathilde to herself. \"His eye is full of a sombre fire; he looks like a\nprince in disguise; his haughtiness has become twice as pronounced.\"\n\nJulien came back to where she was, still talking to Altamira. She\nlooked at Altamira fixedly, studying his features in order to trace\nthose lofty qualities which can earn a man the honour of being\ncondemned to death.\n\n\"Yes,\" he was saying to comte Altamira as he passed by her, \"Danton was\na real man.\"\n\n\"Heavens can he be a Danton?\" said Mathilde to herself, \"but he has\nso noble a face, and that Danton was so horribly ugly, a butcher I\nbelieve.\" Julien was still fairly near her. She did not hesitate to\ncall him; she had the consciousness and the pride of putting a question\nthat was unusual for a young girl.\n\n\"Was not Danton a butcher?\" she said to him.\n\n\"Yes, in the eyes of certain persons,\" Julien answered her with the\nmost thinly disguised expression of contempt. His eyes were still\nardent from his conversation with Altamira, \"but unfortunately for\nthe people of good birth he was an advocate at Mery-sur-Seine, that\nis to say, mademoiselle,\" he added maliciously, \"he began like many\npeers whom I see here. It was true that Danton laboured under a great\ndisadvantage in the eyes of beauty; he was ugly.\"\n\nThese last few words were spoken rapidly in an extraordinary and indeed\nvery discourteous manner.\n\nJulien waited for a moment, leaning slightly forward and with an air of\nproud humility. He seemed to be saying, \"I am paid to answer you and I\nlive on my pay.\" He did not deign to look up at Mathilde. She looked\nlike his slave with her fine eyes open abnormally wide and fixed on\nhim. Finally as the silence continued he looked at her, like a valet\nlooking at his master to receive orders. Although his eyes met the full\ngaze of Mathilde which were fixed on him all the time with a strange\nexpression, he went away with a marked eagerness.\n\n\"To think of a man who is as handsome as he is,\" said Mathilde to\nherself as she emerged from her reverie, \"praising ugliness in such a\nway, he is not like Caylus or Croisenois. This Sorel has something like\nmy father's look when he goes to a fancy dress ball as Napoleon.\" She\nhad completely forgotten Danton. \"Yes, I am decidedly bored to-night.\"\nShe took her brother's arm and to his great disgust made him take\nher round the ball-room. The idea occurred to her of following the\nconversation between Julien and the man who had been condemned to\ndeath.\n\nThe crowd was enormous. She managed to find them, however, at the\nmoment when two yards in front of her Altamira was going near a\ndumb-waiter to take an ice. He was talking to Julien with his body half\nturned round. He saw an arm in an embroidered coat which was taking an\nice close by. The embroidery seemed to attract his attention. He turned\nround to look at the person to whom the arm belonged. His noble and yet\nsimple eyes immediately assumed a slightly disdainful expression.\n\n\"You see that man,\" he said to Julien in a low voice; \"that is the\nPrince of Araceli Ambassador of ----. He asked M. de Nerval, your\nMinister for Foreign Affairs, for my extradition this morning. See,\nthere he is over there playing whist. Monsieur de Nerval is willing\nenough to give me up, for we gave up two or three conspirators to you\nin 1816. If I am given up to my king I shall be hanged in twenty-four\nhours. It will be one of those handsome moustachioed gentlemen who will\narrest me.\"\n\n\"The wretches!\" exclaimed Julien half aloud.\n\nMathilde did not lose a syllable of their conversation. Her ennui had\nvanished.\n\n\"They are not scoundrels,\" replied Count Altamira. \"I talk to you about\nmyself in order to give you a vivid impression. Look at the Prince of\nAraceli. He casts his eyes on his golden fleece every five minutes; he\ncannot get over the pleasure of seeing that decoration on his breast.\nIn reality the poor man is really an anachronism. The fleece was a\nsignal honour a hundred years ago, but he would have been nowhere\nnear it in those days. But nowadays, so far as people of birth are\nconcerned, you have to be an Araceli to be delighted with it. He had a\nwhole town hanged in order to get it.\"\n\n\"Is that the price he had to pay?\" said Julien anxiously.\n\n\"Not exactly,\" answered Altamira coldly, \"he probably had about thirty\nrich landed proprietors in his district who had the reputation of being\nLiberals thrown into the river.\"\n\n\"What a monster!\" pursued Julien.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole who was leaning her head forward with keenest\ninterest was so near him that her beautiful hair almost touched his\nshoulder.\n\n\"You are very young,\" answered Altamira. \"I was telling you that I had\na married sister in Provence. She is still pretty, good and gentle; she\nis an excellent mother, performs all her duties faithfully, is pious\nbut not a bigot.\"\n\n\"What is he driving at?\" thought mademoiselle de la Mole.\n\n\"She is happy,\" continued the comte Altamira; \"she was so in 1815. I\nwas then in hiding at her house on her estate near the Antibes. Well\nthe moment she learnt of marshall Ney's execution she began to dance.\"\n\n\"Is it possible?\" said Julien, thunderstruck.\n\n\"It's party spirit,\" replied Altamira. \"There are no longer any real\npassions in the nineteenth century: that's why one is so bored in\nFrance. People commit acts of the greatest cruelty, but without any\nfeeling of cruelty.\"\n\n\"So much the worse,\" said Julien, \"when one does commit a crime one\nought at least to take pleasure in committing it; that's the only good\nthing they have about them and that's the only way in which they have\nthe slightest justification.\"\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole had entirely forgotten what she owed to herself\nand placed herself completely between Altamira and Julien. Her brother,\nwho was giving her his arm, and was accustomed to obey her, was\nlooking at another part of the room, and in order to keep himself in\ncountenance was pretending to be stopped by the crowd.\n\n\"You are right,\" Altamira went on, \"one takes pleasure in nothing one\ndoes, and one does not remember it: this applies even to crimes. I can\nshow you perhaps ten men in this ballroom who have been convicted of\nmurder. They have forgotten all about it and everybody else as well.\"\n\n\"Many are moved to the point of tears if their dog breaks a paw.\nWhen you throw flowers on their grave at Pere-la-Chaise, as you say\nso humorously in Paris, we learn they united all the virtues of the\nknights of chivalry, and we speak about the noble feats of their\ngreat-grandfather who lived in the reign of Henri IV. If, in spite of\nthe good offices of the Prince de Araceli, I escape hanging and I ever\nmanage to enjoy the use of my money in Paris, I will get you to dine\nwith eight or ten of these respected and callous murderers.\n\n\"At that dinner you and I will be the only ones whose blood is pure,\nbut I shall be despised and almost hated as a monster, while you will\nbe simply despised as a man of the people who has pushed his way into\ngood society.\"\n\n\"Nothing could be truer,\" said mademoiselle de la Mole.\n\nAltamira looked at her in astonishment; but Julien did not deign to\nlook at her.\n\n\"Observe that the revolution, at whose head I found myself,\" continued\nthe comte Altamira, \"only failed for the one reason that I would not\ncut off three heads and distribute among our partisans seven or eight\nmillions which happened to be in a box of which I happened to have the\nkey. My king, who is burning to have me hanged to-day, and who called\nme by my christian name before the rebellion, would have given me the\ngreat ribbon of his order if I had had those three heads cut off and\nhad had the money in those boxes distributed; for I should have had at\nleast a semi-success and my country would have had a charta like ----.\nSo wags the world; it's a game of chess.\"\n\n\"At that time,\" answered Julien with a fiery eye, \"you did not know the\ngame; now....\"\n\n\"You mean I would have the heads cut off, and I would not be a\nGirondin, as you said I was the other day? I will give you your\nanswer,\" said Altamira sadly, \"when you have killed a man in a duel--a\nfar less ugly matter than having him put to death by an executioner.\"\n\n\"Upon my word,\" said Julien, \"the end justifies the means. If instead\nof being an insignificant man I had some power I would have three men\nhanged in order to save four men's lives.\"\n\nHis eyes expressed the fire of his own conscience; they met the eyes of\nmademoiselle de la Mole who was close by him, and their contempt, so\nfar from changing into politeness seemed to redouble.\n\nShe was deeply shocked; but she found herself unable to forget Julien;\nshe dragged her brother away and went off in a temper.\n\n\"I must take some punch and dance a lot,\" she said to herself. \"I will\npick out the best partner and cut some figure at any price. Good, there\nis that celebrated cynic, the comte de Fervaques.\" She accepted his\ninvitation; they danced. \"The question is,\" she thought, \"which of us\ntwo will be the more impertinent, but in order to make absolute fun\nof him, I must get him to talk.\" Soon all the other members of the\nquadrille were dancing as a matter of formality, they did not want to\nlose any of Mathilde's cutting reparte. M. de Fervaques felt uneasy and\nas he could only find elegant expressions instead of ideas, began to\nscowl. Mathilde, who was in a bad temper was cruel, and made an enemy\nof him. She danced till daylight and then went home terribly tired.\nBut when she was in the carriage the little vitality she had left, was\nstill employed in making her sad and unhappy. She had been despised by\nJulien and could not despise him.\n\nJulien was at the zenith of his happiness. He was enchanted without\nhis knowing it by the music, the flowers, the pretty women, the\ngeneral elegance, and above all by his own imagination which dreamt of\ndistinctions for himself and of liberty for all.\n\n\"What a fine ball,\" he said to the comte. \"Nothing is lacking.\"\n\n\"Thought is lacking\" answered Altamira, and his face betrayed that\ncontempt which is only more deadly from the very fact that a manifest\neffort is being made to hide it as a matter of politeness.\n\n\"You are right, monsieur the comte, there isn't any thought at all, let\nalone enough to make a conspiracy.\"\n\n\"I am here because of my name, but thought is hated in your salons.\nThought must not soar above the level of the point of a Vaudeville\ncouplet: it is then rewarded. But as for your man who thinks, if he\nshows energy and originality we call him a cynic. Was not that name\ngiven by one of your judges to Courier. You put him in prison as\nwell as Beranger. The priestly congregation hands over to the police\neveryone who is worth anything amongst you individually; and good\nsociety applauds.\n\n\"The fact is your effete society prizes conventionalism above\neverything else. You will never get beyond military bravery. You will\nhave Murats, never Washingtons. I can see nothing in France except\nvanity. A man who goes on speaking on the spur of the moment may easily\ncome to make an imprudent witticism and the master of the house thinks\nhimself insulted.\"\n\nAs he was saying this, the carriage in which the comte was seeing\nJulien home stopped before the Hotel de la Mole. Julien was in love\nwith his conspirator. Altamira had paid him this great compliment which\nwas evidently the expression of a sound conviction. \"You have not got\nthe French flippancy and you understand the principle of _utility_.\"\nIt happened that Julien had seen the day before _Marino Faliero_, a\ntragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.\n\n\"Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those noble\nVenetians?\" said our rebellious plebeian to himself, \"and yet those\nare the people whose nobility goes back to the year seven hundred, a\ncentury before Charlemagne, while the cream of the nobility at M. de\nRitz's ball to-night only goes back, and that rather lamely, to the\nthirteenth century. Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose\nbirth makes so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.\n\n\"A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social caprice.\nThere, a man takes for his crest the rank that is given him by the way\nin which he faces death. The intellect itself loses some of its power.\n\n\"What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the Valenods and the\nRenals? Not even a deputy for the Public Prosecutor.\n\n\"What am I saying? He would have sold himself to the priests, he\nwould have been a minister, for after all the great Danton did steal.\nMirabeau also sold himself. Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise\nhe would have been stopped short in his career by poverty like\nPichegru. Only La Fayette refrained from stealing. Ought one to steal,\nought one to sell oneself?\" thought Julien. This question pulled him up\nshort. He passed the rest of the night in reading the history of the\nrevolution.\n\nWhen he wrote his letters in the library the following day, his mind\nwas still concentrated on his conversation with count Altamira.\n\n\"As a matter of fact,\" he said to himself after a long reverie, \"If the\nSpanish Liberals had not injured their nation by crimes they would not\nhave been cleared out as easily as they were.\n\n\"They were haughty, talkative children--just like I am!\" he suddenly\nexclaimed as though waking up with a start.\n\n\"What difficulty have I surmounted that entitles me to judge such\ndevils who, once alive, dared to begin to act. I am like a man who\nexclaims at the close of a meal, 'I won't dine to-morrow; but that\nwon't prevent me from feeling as strong and merry like I do to-day.'\nWho knows what one feels when one is half-way through a great action?\"\n\nThese lofty thoughts were disturbed by the unexpected arrival in\nthe library of mademoiselle de la Mole. He was so animated by his\nadmiration for the great qualities of such invincibles as Danton,\nMirabeau, and Carnot that, though he fixed his eyes on mademoiselle de\nla Mole, he neither gave her a thought nor bowed to her, and scarcely\neven saw her. When finally his big, open eyes realized her presence,\ntheir expression vanished. Mademoiselle de la Mole noticed it with\nbitterness.\n\nIt was in vain that she asked him for Vely's History of France which\nwas on the highest shelf, and thus necessitated Julien going to fetch\nthe longer of the two ladders. Julien had brought the ladder and had\nfetched the volume and given it to her, but had not yet been able to\ngive her a single thought. As he was taking the ladder back he hit\nin his hurry one of the glass panes in the library with his elbow;\nthe noise of the glass falling on the floor finally brought him to\nhimself. He hastened to apologise to mademoiselle de la Mole. He tried\nto be polite and was certainly nothing more. Mathilde saw clearly that\nshe had disturbed him, and that he would have preferred to have gone\non thinking about what he had been engrossed in before her arrival,\nto speaking to her. After looking at him for some time she went\nslowly away. Julien watched her walk. He enjoyed the contrast of her\npresent dress with the elegant magnificence of the previous night. The\ndifference between the two expressions was equally striking. The young\ngirl who had been so haughty at the Duke de Retz's ball, had, at the\npresent moment, an almost plaintive expression. \"As a matter of fact,\"\nsaid Julien to himself, \"that black dress makes the beauty of her\nfigure all the more striking. She has a queenly carriage; but why is\nshe in mourning?\"\n\n\"If I ask someone the reason for this mourning, they will think I am\nputting my foot in it again.\" Julien had now quite emerged from the\ndepth of his enthusiasm. \"I must read over again all the letters I have\nwritten this morning. God knows how many missed out words and blunders\nI shall find. As he was forcing himself to concentrate his mind on the\nfirst of these letters he heard the rustle of a silk dress near him.\nHe suddenly turned round, mademoiselle de la Mole was two yards from\nhis table, she was smiling. This second interruption put Julien into a\nbad temper. Mathilde had just fully realized that she meant nothing to\nthis young man. Her smile was intended to hide her embarrassment; she\nsucceeded in doing so.\n\n\"You are evidently thinking of something very interesting, Monsieur\nSorel. Is it not some curious anecdote about that conspiracy which\nis responsible for comte Altamira being in Paris? Tell me what it is\nabout, I am burning to know. I will be discreet, I swear it.\" She was\nastonished at hearing herself utter these words. What! was she asking a\nfavour of an inferior! Her embarrassment increased, and she added with\na little touch of flippancy,\n\n\"What has managed to turn such a usually cold person as yourself, into\nan inspired being, a kind of Michael Angelo prophet?\"\n\nThis sharp and indiscreet question wounded Julien deeply, and rendered\nhim madder than ever.\n\n\"Was Danton right in stealing?\" he said to her brusquely in a manner\nthat grew more and more surly. \"Ought the revolutionaries of Piedmont\nand of Spain to have injured the people by crimes? To have given all\nthe places in the army and all the orders to undeserving persons? Would\nnot the persons who wore these orders have feared the return of the\nking? Ought they to have allowed the treasure of Turin to be looted?\nIn a word, mademoiselle,\" he said, coming near her with a terrifying\nexpression, \"ought the man who wishes to chase ignorance and crime from\nthe world to pass like the whirlwind and do evil indiscriminately?\"\n\nMathilde felt frightened, was unable to stand his look, and retreated a\ncouples of paces. She looked at him a moment, and then ashamed of her\nown fear, left the library with a light step.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XL\n\nQUEEN MARGUERITE\n\n\n        Love! In what madness do you not manage to make us find\n        pleasure!\n                                      Letters of a Portuguese Nun.\n\n\nJulien reread his letters. \"How ridiculous I must have appeared in the\neyes of that Parisian doll,\" he said to himself when the dinner-bell\nrang. \"How foolish to have really told her what I was thinking! Perhaps\nit was not so foolish. Telling the truth on that occasion was worthy of\nme. Why did she come to question me on personal matters? That question\nwas indiscreet on her part. She broke the convention. My thoughts about\nDanton are not part of the sacrifice which her father pays me to make.\"\n\nWhen he came into the dining-room Julien's thoughts were distracted\nfrom his bad temper by mademoiselle de la Mole's mourning which was all\nthe more striking because none of the other members of the family were\nin black.\n\nAfter dinner he felt completely rid of the feeling which had obsessed\nhim all day. Fortunately the academician who knew Latin was at dinner.\n\"That's the man who will make the least fun of me,\" said Julien to\nhimself, \"if, as I surmise, my question about mademoiselle de la Mole's\nmourning is in bad taste.\"\n\nMathilde was looking at him with a singular expression. \"So this is the\ncoquetry of the women of this part of the country, just as madame de\nRenal described it to me,\" said Julien to himself. \"I was not nice to\nher this morning. I did not humour her caprice of talking to me. I got\nup in value in her eyes. The Devil doubtless is no loser by it.\n\n\"Later on her haughty disdain will manage to revenge herself. I defy\nher to do her worst. What a contrast with what I have lost! What\ncharming naturalness? What naivety! I used to know her thoughts before\nshe did herself. I used to see them come into existence. The only rival\nshe had in her heart was the fear of her childrens' death. It was a\nreasonable, natural feeling to me, and even though I suffered from it I\nfound it charming. I have been a fool. The ideas I had in my head about\nParis prevented me from appreciating that sublime woman.\n\n\"Great God what a contrast and what do I find here? Arid, haughty\nvanity: all the fine shades of wounded egotism and nothing more.\"\n\nThey got up from table. \"I must not let my academician get snapped up,\"\nsaid Julien to himself. He went up to him as they were passing into the\ngarden, assumed an air of soft submissiveness and shared in his fury\nagainst the success of Hernani.\n\n\"If only we were still in the days of _lettres de cachet_!\" he said.\n\n\"Then he would not have dared,\" exclaimed the academician with a\ngesture worthy of Talma.\n\nJulien quoted some words from Virgil's Georgics in reference to a\nflower and expressed the opinion that nothing was equal to the abbe\nDelille's verses. In a word he flattered the academician in every\npossible way. He then said to him with the utmost indifference, \"I\nsuppose mademoiselle de la Mole has inherited something from some uncle\nfor whom she is in mourning.\"\n\n\"What! you belong to the house?\" said the academician stopping short,\n\"and you do not know her folly? As a matter of fact it is strange her\nmother should allow her to do such things, but between ourselves, they\ndo not shine in this household exactly by their force of character.\nMademoiselle's share has to do for all of them, and governs them.\nTo-day is the thirtieth of April!\" and the academician stopped and\nlooked meaningly at Julien. Julien smiled with the most knowing\nexpression he could master. \"What connection can there be between\nruling a household, wearing a black dress, and the thirtieth April?\" he\nsaid to himself. \"I must be even sillier than I thought.\"\n\n\"I must confess....\" he said to the academician while he continued to\nquestion him with his look. \"Let us take a turn round the garden,\"\nsaid the academician delighted at seeing an opportunity of telling a\nlong and well-turned story.\n\n\"What! is it really possible you do not know what happened on the 30th\nApril, 1574?\"\n\n\"And where?\" said Julien in astonishment.\n\n\"At the place de Greve.\"\n\nJulien was extremely astonished that these words did not supply him\nwith the key. His curiosity and his expectation of a tragic interest\nwhich would be in such harmony with his own character gave his eyes\nthat brilliance which the teller of a story likes to see so much in\nthe person who is listening to him. The academician was delighted at\nfinding a virgin ear, and narrated at length to Julien how Boniface de\nla Mole, the handsomest young man of this century together with Annibal\nde Coconasso, his friend, a gentleman of Piedmont, had been beheaded on\nthe 30th April, 1574. La Mole was the adored lover of Queen Marguerite\nof Navarre and \"observe,\" continued the academician, \"that mademoiselle\nde La Mole's full name is Mathilde Marguerite. La Mole was at the same\ntime a favourite of the Duke d'Alencon and the intimate friend of\nhis mistress's husband, the King of Navarre, subsequently Henri IV.\nOn Shrove Tuesday of that year 1574, the court happened to be at St.\nGermain with the poor king Charles IX. who was dying. La Mole wished\nto rescue his friends the princes, whom Queen Catherine of Medici was\nkeeping prisoner in her Court. He advanced two hundred cavalry under\nthe walls of St. Germain; the Duke d'Alencon was frightened and La Mole\nwas thrown to the executioner.\n\n\"But the thing which affects mademoiselle Mathilde, and what she has\nadmitted to me herself seven or eight years ago when she was twelve,\nis a head! a head!----and the academician lifted up his eyes to the\nheavens. What struck her in this political catastrophe, was the hiding\nof Queen Marguerite de Navarre in a house in the place de Greve and\nher then asking for her lover's head. At midnight on the following day\nshe took that head in her carriage and went and buried it herself in a\nchapel at the foot of the hill at Montmartre.\"\n\n\"Impossible?\" cried Julien really moved.\n\n\"Mademoiselle Mathilde despises her brother because, as you see, he\ndoes not bother one whit about this ancient history, and never wears\nmourning on the thirtieth of April. It is since the time of this\ncelebrated execution and in order to recall the intimate friendship\nof La Mole for the said Coconasso, who Italian that he was, bore\nthe name of Annibal that all the men of that family bear that name.\nAnd,\" added the academician lowering his voice, \"this Coconasso was,\naccording to Charles IX. himself, one of the cruellest assassins of the\ntwenty-fourth August, 1572. But how is it possible, my dear Sorel, that\nyou should be ignorant of these things--you who take your meals with\nthe family.\"\n\n\"So that is why mademoiselle de la Mole twice called her brother\nAnnibal at dinner. I thought I had heard wrong.\"\n\n\"It was a reproach. It is strange that the marquise should allow such\nfollies. The husband of that great girl will have a fine time of it.\"\n\nThis remark was followed by five or six satiric phrases. Julien was\nshocked by the joy which shone in the academician's eyes. \"We are just\na couple of servants,\" he thought, \"engaged in talking scandal about\nour masters. But I ought not to be astonished at anything this academy\nman does.\"\n\nJulien had surprised him on his knees one day before the marquise de\nla Mole; he was asking her for a tobacco receivership for a nephew in\nthe provinces. In the evening a little chambermaid of mademoiselle de\nla Mole, who was paying court to Julien, just as Elisa had used to do,\ngave him to understand that her mistress's mourning was very far from\nbeing worn simply to attract attention. This eccentricity was rooted in\nher character. She really loved that la Mole, the beloved lover of the\nmost witty queen of the century, who had died through trying to set his\nfriends at liberty--and what friends! The first prince of the blood and\nHenri IV.\n\nAccustomed as he had been to the perfect naturalness which shone\nthroughout madame de Renal's whole demeanour, Julien could not help\nfinding all the women of Paris affected, and, though by no means of a\nmorose disposition, found nothing to say to them. Mademoiselle de la\nMole was an exception.\n\nHe now began to cease taking for coldness of heart that kind of beauty\nwhich attaches importance to a noble bearing. He had long conversations\nwith mademoiselle de la Mole, who would sometimes walk with him in\nthe garden after dinner. She told him one day that she was reading\nthe History of D'Aubigne and also Brantome. \"Strange books to read,\"\nthought Julien; \"and the marquis does not allow her to read Walter\nScott's novels!\"\n\nShe told him one day, with that pleased brilliancy in her eyes, which\nis the real test of genuine admiration, about a characteristic act of a\nyoung woman of the reign of Henry III., which she had just read in the\nmemoirs of L'Etoile. Finding her husband unfaithful she stabbed him.\n\nJulien's vanity was nattered. A person who was surrounded by so much\nhomage, and who governed the whole house, according to the academician,\ndeigned to talk to him on a footing almost resembling friendship.\n\n\"I made a mistake,\" thought Julien soon afterwards. \"This is not\nfamiliarity, I am simply the confidante of a tragedy, she needs to\nspeak to someone. I pass in this family for a man of learning. I will\ngo and read Brantome, D'Aubigne, L'Etoile. I shall then be able to\nchallenge some of the anecdotes which madame de la Mole speaks to me\nabout. I want to leave off this role of the passive confidante.\"\n\nHis conversations with this young girl, whose demeanour was so\nimpressive and yet so easy, gradually became more interesting. He\nforgot his grim role of the rebel plebian. He found her well-informed\nand even logical. Her opinions in the gardens were very different to\nthose which she owned to in the salon. Sometimes she exhibited an\nenthusiasm and a frankness which were in absolute contrast to her usual\ncold haughtiness.\n\n\"The wars of the League were the heroic days of France,\" she said\nto him one day, with eyes shining with enthusiasm. \"Then everyone\nfought to gain something which he desired, for the sake of his party's\ntriumph, and not just in order to win a cross as in the days of your\nemperor. Admit that there was then less egotism and less pettiness. I\nlove that century.\"\n\n\"And Boniface de la Mole was the hero of it,\" he said to her.\n\n\"At least he was loved in a way that it is perhaps sweet to be loved.\nWhat woman alive now would not be horrified at touching the head of her\ndecapitated lover?\"\n\nMadame de la Mole called her daughter. To be effective hypocrisy\nought to hide itself, yet Julien had half confided his admiration for\nNapoleon to mademoiselle de la Mole.\n\nJulien remained alone in the garden. \"That is the immense advantage\nthey have over us,\" he said to himself. \"Their ancestors lift them\nabove vulgar sentiments, and they have not got always to be thinking\nabout their subsistence! What misery,\" he added bitterly. \"I am not\nworthy to discuss these great matters. My life is nothing more than a\nseries of hypocrisies because I have not got a thousand francs a year\nwith which to buy my bread and butter.\"\n\nMathilde came running back. \"What are you dreaming about, monsieur?\"\nshe said to him.\n\nJulien was tired of despising himself. Through sheer pride he frankly\ntold her his thoughts. He blushed a great deal while talking to such\na person about his own poverty. He tried to make it as plain as he\ncould that he was not asking for anything. Mathilde never thought\nhim so handsome; she detected in him an expression of frankness and\nsensitiveness which he often lacked.\n\nWithin a month of this episode Julien was pensively walking in the\ngarden of the hotel; but his face had no longer the hardness and\nphilosophic superciliousness which the chronic consciousness of his\ninferior position had used to write upon it. He had just escorted\nmademoiselle de la Mole to the door of the salon. She said she had hurt\nher foot while running with her brother.\n\n\"She leaned on my arm in a very singular way,\" said Julien to himself.\n\"Am I a coxcomb, or is it true that she has taken a fancy to me? She\nlistens to me so gently, even when I confess to her all the sufferings\nof my pride! She too, who is so haughty to everyone! They would be\nvery astonished in the salon if they saw that expression of hers. It\nis quite certain that she does not show anyone else such sweetness and\ngoodness.\"\n\nJulien endeavoured not to exaggerate this singular friendship. He\nhimself compared it to an armed truce. When they met again each day,\nthey almost seemed before they took up the almost intimate tone of the\nprevious day to ask themselves \"are we going to be friends or enemies\nto-day?\" Julien had realised that to allow himself to be insulted\nwith impunity even once by this haughty girl would mean the loss of\neverything. \"If I have got to quarrel would it not be better that it\nshould be straight away in defending the rights of my own pride,\nthan in parrying the expressions of contempt which would follow the\nslightest abandonment of my duty to my own self-respect?\"\n\nOn many occasions, on days when she was in a bad temper Mathilde, tried\nto play the great lady with him. These attempts were extremely subtle,\nbut Julien rebuffed them roughly.\n\nOne day he brusquely interrupted her. \"Has mademoiselle de la Mole any\norders to give her father's secretary?\" he said to her. \"If so he must\nlisten to her orders, and execute them, but apart from that he has not\na single word to say to her. He is not paid to tell her his thoughts.\"\n\nThis kind of life, together with the singular surmises which it\noccasioned, dissipated the boredom which he had been accustomed to\nexperience in that magnificent salon, where everyone was afraid, and\nwhere any kind of jest was in bad form.\n\n\"It would be humorous if she loved me but whether she loves me or\nnot,\" went on Julien, \"I have for my confidential friend a girl of\nspirit before whom I see the whole household quake, while the marquis\nde Croisenois does so more than anyone else. Yes, to be sure, that\nsame young man who is so polite, so gentle, and so brave, and who has\ncombined all those advantages of birth and fortune a single one of\nwhich would put my heart at rest--he is madly in love with her, he\nought to marry her. How many letters has M. de la Mole made me write\nto the two notaries in order to arrange the contract? And I, though I\nam an absolute inferior when I have my pen in my hand, why, I triumph\nover that young man two hours afterwards in this very garden; for,\nafter all, her preference is striking and direct. Perhaps she hates\nhim because she sees in him a future husband. She is haughty enough\nfor that. As for her kindness to me, I receive it in my capacity of\nconfidential servant.\n\n\"But no, I am either mad or she is making advances to me; the colder\nand more respectful I show myself to her, the more she runs after me.\nIt may be a deliberate piece of affectation; but I see her eyes become\nanimated when I appear unexpectedly. Can the women of Paris manage to\nact to such an extent. What does it matter to me! I have appearances in\nmy favour, let us enjoy appearances. Heavens, how beautiful she is!\nHow I like her great blue eyes when I see them at close quarters, and\nthey look at me in the way they often do? What a difference between\nthis spring and that of last year, when I lived an unhappy life among\nthree hundred dirty malicious hypocrites, and only kept myself afloat\nthrough sheer force of character, I was almost as malicious as they\nwere.\"\n\n\"That young girl is making fun of me,\" Julien would think in his\nsuspicious days. \"She is acting in concert with her brother to make\na fool of me. But she seems to have an absolute contempt for her\nbrother's lack of energy. He is brave and that is all. He has not a\nthought which dares to deviate from the conventional. It is always\nI who have to take up the cudgels in his defence. A young girl of\nnineteen! Can one at that age act up faithfully every second of the\nday to the part which one has determined to play. On the other hand\nwhenever mademoiselle de la Mole fixes her eyes on me with a singular\nexpression comte Norbert always goes away. I think that suspicious.\nOught he not to be indignant at his sister singling out a servant of\nher household? For that is how I heard the Duke de Chaulnes speak about\nme. This recollection caused anger to supersede every other emotion. It\nis simply a fashion for old fashioned phraseology on the part of the\neccentric duke?\"\n\n\"Well, she is pretty!\" continued Julien with a tigerish expression, \"I\nwill have her, I will then go away, and woe to him who disturbs me in\nmy flight.\"\n\nThis idea became Julien's sole preoccupation. He could not think of\nanything else. His days passed like hours.\n\nEvery moment when he tried to concentrate on some important matter\nhis mind became a blank, and he would wake up a quarter of an hour\nafterwards with a beating heart and an anxious mind, brooding over this\nidea \"does she love me?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLI\n\nA YOUNG GIRL'S DOMINION\n\n\n        I admire her beauty but I fear her intellect.--_Merimee_.\n\n\nIf Julien had employed the time which he spent in exaggerating\nMatilde's beauty or in working himself up into a rage against that\nfamily haughtiness which she was forgetting for his sake in examining\nwhat was going on in the salon, he would have understood the secret of\nher dominion over all that surrounded her.\n\nWhen anyone displeased mademoiselle de La Mole she managed to punish\nthe offender by a jest which was so guarded, so well chosen, so polite\nand so neatly timed, that the more the victim thought about it, the\nsorer grew the wound. She gradually became positively terrible to\nwounded vanity. As she attached no value to many things which the\nrest of her family very seriously wanted, she always struck them as\nself-possessed. The salons of the aristocracy are nice enough to brag\nabout when you leave them, but that is all; mere politeness alone only\ncounts for something in its own right during the first few days. Julien\nexperienced this after the first fascination and the first astonishment\nhad passed off. \"Politeness,\" he said to himself \"is nothing but the\nabsence of that bad temper which would be occasioned by bad manners.\"\nMathilde was frequently bored; perhaps she would have been bored\nanywhere. She then found a real distraction and real pleasure in\nsharpening an epigram.\n\nIt was perhaps in order to have more amusing victims than her great\nrelations, the academician and the five or six other men of inferior\nclass who paid her court, that she had given encouragement to the\nmarquis de Croisenois, the comte Caylus and two or three other young\nmen of the highest rank. They simply represented new subjects for\nepigrams.\n\nWe will admit with reluctance, for we are fond of Mathilde, that she\nhad received many letters from several of them and had sometimes\nanswered them. We hasten to add that this person constitutes an\nexception to the manners of the century. Lack of prudence is not\ngenerally the fault with which the pupils of the noble convent of the\nSacred Heart can be reproached.\n\nOne day the marquis de Croisenois returned to Mathilde a fairly\ncompromising letter which she had written the previous night. He\nthought that he was thereby advancing his cause a great deal by taking\nthis highly prudent step. But the very imprudence of her correspondence\nwas the very element in it Mathilde liked. Her pleasure was to stake\nher fate. She did not speak to him again for six weeks.\n\nShe amused herself with the letters of these young men, but in her view\nthey were all like each other. It was invariably a case of the most\nprofound, the most melancholy, passion.\n\n\"They all represent the same perfect man, ready to leave for\nPalestine,\" she exclaimed to her cousin. \"Can you conceive of anything\nmore insipid? So these are the letters I am going to receive all my\nlife! There can only be a change every twenty years according to the\nkind of vogue which happens to be fashionable. They must have had more\ncolour in them in the days of the Empire. In those days all these young\nsociety men had seen or accomplished feats which really had an element\nof greatness. The Duke of N---- my uncle was at Wagram.\"\n\n\"What brains do you need to deal a sabre blow? And when they have had\nthe luck to do that they talk of it so often!\" said mademoiselle de\nSainte-Heredite, Mathilde's cousin.\n\n\"Well, those tales give me pleasure. Being in a real battle, a battle\nof Napoleon, where six thousand soldiers were killed, why, that's proof\nof courage. Exposing one's self to danger elevates the soul and saves\nit from the boredom in which my poor admirers seem to be sunk; and that\nboredom is contagious. Which of them ever thought of doing anything\nextraordinary? They are trying to win my hand, a pretty business to\nbe sure! I am rich and my father will procure advancement for his\nson-in-law. Well! I hope he'll manage to find someone who is a little\nbit amusing.\"\n\nMathilde's keen, sharp and picturesque view of life spoilt her language\nas one sees. An expression of hers would often constitute a blemish\nin the eyes of her polished friends. If she had been less fashionable\nthey would almost have owned that her manner of speaking was, from the\nstandpoint of feminine delicacy, to some extent unduly coloured.\n\nShe, on her side, was very unjust towards the handsome cavaliers who\nfill the Bois de Boulogne. She envisaged the future not with terror,\nthat would have been a vivid emotion, but with a disgust which was very\nrare at her age.\n\nWhat could she desire? Fortune, good birth, wit, beauty, according to\nwhat the world said, and according to what she believed, all these\nthings had been lavished upon her by the hands of chance.\n\nSo this was the state of mind of the most envied heiress of the\nfaubourg Saint-Germain when she began to find pleasure in walking with\nJulien. She was astonished at his pride; she admired the ability of the\nlittle bourgeois. \"He will manage to get made a bishop like the abbe\nMouray,\" she said to herself.\n\nSoon the sincere and unaffected opposition with which our hero received\nseveral of her ideas filled her mind; she continued to think about\nit, she told her friend the slightest details of the conversation,\nbut thought that she would never succeed in fully rendering all their\nmeaning.\n\nAn idea suddenly flashed across her; \"I have the happiness of loving,\"\nshe said to herself one day with an incredible ecstasy of joy. \"I am in\nlove, I am in love, it is clear! Where can a young, witty and beautiful\ngirl of my own age find sensations if not in love? It is no good. I\nshall never feel any love for Croisenois, Caylus, and _tutti quanti_.\nThey are unimpeachable, perhaps too unimpeachable; any way they bore\nme.\"\n\nShe rehearsed in her mind all the descriptions of passion which she\nhad read in _Manon Lescaut_, the _Nouvelle Heloise_, the _Letters of\na Portuguese Nun_, etc., etc. It was only a question of course of the\ngrand passion; light love was unworthy of a girl of her age and birth.\nShe vouchsafed the name of love to that heroic sentiment which was met\nwith in France in the time of Henri III. and Bassompierre. That love\ndid not basely yield to obstacles, but, far from it, inspired great\ndeeds. \"How unfortunate for me that there is not a real court like that\nof Catherine de' Medici or of Louis XIII. I feel equal to the boldest\nand greatest actions. What would I not make of a king who was a man of\nspirit like Louis XIII. if he were sighing at my feet! I would take\nhim to the Vendee, as the Baron de Tolly is so fond of saying, and\nfrom that base he would re-conquer his kingdom; then no more about a\ncharter--and Julien would help me. What does he lack? name and fortune.\nHe will make a name, he will win a fortune.\n\n\"Croisenois lacks nothing, and he will never be anything else all his\nlife but a duke who is half 'ultra' and half Liberal, an undecided\nbeing who never goes to extremes and consequently always plays second\nfiddle.\n\n\"What great action is not an extreme at the moment when it is\nundertaken? It is only after accomplishment that it seems possible to\ncommonplace individuals. Yes, it is love with all its miracles which\nis going to reign over my heart; I feel as much from the fire which is\nthrilling me. Heaven owed me this boon. It will not then have lavished\nin vain all its bounties on one single person. My happiness will be\nworthy of me. Each day will no longer be the cold replica of the day\nbefore. There is grandeur and audacity in the very fact of daring to\nlove a man, placed so far beneath me by his social position. Let us see\nwhat happens, will he continue to deserve me? I will abandon him at the\nfirst sign of weakness which I detect. A girl of my birth and of that\nmediaeval temperament which they are good enough to ascribe to me (she\nwas quoting from her father) must not behave like a fool.\n\n\"But should I not be behaving like a fool if I were to love the marquis\nde Croisenois? I should simply have a new edition over again of that\nhappiness enjoyed by my girl cousins which I so utterly despise. I\nalready know everything the poor marquis would say to me and every\nanswer I should make. What's the good of a love which makes one\nyawn? One might as well be in a nunnery. I shall have a celebration\nof the signing of a contract just like my younger cousin when the\ngrandparents all break down, provided of course that they are not\nannoyed by some condition introduced into the contract at the eleventh\nhour by the notary on the other side.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLII\n\nIS HE A DANTON?\n\n\n        The need of anxiety. These words summed up the character\n        of my aunt, the beautiful Marguerite de Valois, who was\n        soon to marry the King of Navarre whom we see reigning\n        at present in France under the name of Henry IV. The\n        need of staking something was the key to the character\n        of this charming princess; hence her quarrels and\n        reconciliations with her brothers from the time when she\n        was sixteen. Now, what can a young girl stake? The most\n        precious thing she has: her reputation, the esteem of a\n        lifetime.\n                        _Memoirs of the Duke d' Angouleme._\n                        _the natural son of Charles IX_.\n\n\n\"There is no contract to sign for Julien and me, there is no notary;\neverything is on the heroic plane, everything is the child of chance.\nApart from the noble birth which he lacks, it is the love of Marguerite\nde Valois for the young La Mole, the most distinguished man of the\ntime, over again. Is it my fault that the young men of the court are\nsuch great advocates of the conventional, and turn pale at the mere\nidea of the slightest adventure which is a little out of the ordinary?\nA little journey in Greece or Africa represents the highest pitch of\ntheir audacity, and moreover they can only march in troops. As soon as\nthey find themselves alone they are frightened, not of the Bedouin's\nlance, but of ridicule and that fear makes them mad.\n\n\"My little Julien on the other hand only likes to act alone. This\nunique person never thinks for a minute of seeking help or support in\nothers! He despises others, and that is why I do not despise him.\n\n\"If Julien were noble as well as poor, my love would simply be a vulgar\npiece of stupidity, a sheer mesalliance; I would have nothing to do\nwith it; it would be absolutely devoid of the characteristic traits of\ngrand passion--the immensity of the difficulty to be overcome and the\nblack uncertainty cf the result.\"\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole was so engrossed in these pretty arguments that\nwithout realising what she was doing, she praised Julien to the marquis\nde Croisenois and her brother on the following day. Her eloquence went\nso far that it provoked them.\n\n\"You be careful of this young man who has so much energy,\" exclaimed\nher brother; \"if we have another revolution he will have us all\nguillotined.\"\n\nShe was careful not to answer, but hastened to rally her brother and\nthe marquis de Croisenois on the apprehension which energy caused them.\n\"It is at bottom simply the fear of meeting the unexpected, the fear of\nbeing non-plussed in the presence of the unexpected--\"\n\n\"Always, always, gentlemen, the fear of ridicule, a monster which had\nthe misfortune to die in 1816.\"\n\n\"Ridicule has ceased to exist in a country where there are two\nparties,\" M. de la Mole was fond of saying.\n\nHis daughter had understood the idea.\n\n\"So, gentlemen,\" she would say to Julien's enemies, \"you will be\nfrightened all your life and you will be told afterwards,\n\n          \"Ce n'etait pas un loup, ce n'en etait que l'ombre.\"\n\nMatilde soon left them. Her brother's words horrified her; they\noccasioned her much anxiety, but the day afterwards she regarded them\nas tantamount to the highest praise.\n\n\"His energy frightens them in this age where all energy is dead. I will\ntell him my brother's phrase. I want to see what answer he will make.\nBut I will choose one of the moments when his eyes are shining. Then he\nwill not be able to lie to me.\n\n\"He must be a Danton!\" she added after a long and vague reverie. \"Well,\nsuppose the revolution begins again, what figures will Croisenois and\nmy brother cut then? It is settled in advance: Sublime resignation.\nThey will be heroic sheep who will allow their throats to be cut\nwithout saying a word. Their one fear when they die will still be the\nfear of being bad form. If a Jacobin came to arrest my little Julien he\nwould blow his brains out, however small a chance he had of escaping.\nHe is not frightened of doing anything in bad form.\"\n\nThese last words made her pensive; they recalled painful memories and\ndeprived her of all her boldness. These words reminded her of the jests\nof MM. de Caylus, Croisenois, de Luz and her brother; these gentlemen\njoined in censuring Julien for his priestly demeanour, which they said\nwas humble and hypocritical.\n\n\"But,\" she went on suddenly with her eyes gleaming with joy, \"the very\nbitterness and the very frequency of their jests prove in spite of\nthemselves that he is the most distinguished man whom we have seen this\nwinter. What matter his defects and the things which they make fun of?\nHe has the element of greatness and they are shocked by it. Yes, they,\nthe very men who are so good and so charitable in other matters. It is\na fact that he is poor and that he has studied in order to be a priest;\nthey are the heads of a squadron and never had any need of studying;\nthey found it less trouble.\n\n\"In spite of all the handicap of his everlasting black suit and of that\npriestly expression which he must wear, poor boy, if he isn't to die of\nhunger, his merit frightens them, nothing could be clearer. And as for\nthat priest-like expression, why he no longer has it after we have been\nalone for some moments, and after those gentlemen have evolved what\nthey imagine to be a subtle and impromptu epigram, is not their first\nlook towards Julien? I have often noticed it. And yet they know well\nthat he never speaks to them unless he is questioned. I am the only one\nwhom he speaks to. He thinks I have a lofty soul. He only answers the\npoints they raise sufficiently to be polite. He immediately reverts\ninto respectfulness. But with me he will discuss things for whole\nhours, he is not certain of his ideas so long as I find the slightest\nobjection to them. There has not been a single rifle-shot fired all\nthis winter; words have been the only means of attracting attention.\nWell, my father, who is a superior man and will carry the fortunes of\nour house very far, respects Julien. Every one else hates him, no one\ndespises him except my mother's devout friends.\"\n\nThe Comte de Caylus had or pretended to have a great passion for\nhorses; he passed his life in his stables and often breakfasted there.\nThis great passion, together with his habit of never laughing, won for\nhim much respect among his friends: he was the eagle of the little\ncircle.\n\nAs soon as they had reassembled the following day behind madame de la\nMole's armchair, M. de Caylus, supported by Croisenois and by Norbert,\nbegan in Julien's absence to attack sharply the high opinion which\nMathilde entertained for Julien. He did this without any provocation,\nand almost the very minute that he caught sight of mademoiselle de la\nMole. She tumbled to the subtlety immediately and was delighted with it.\n\n\"So there they are all leagued together,\" she said to herself, \"against\na man of genius who has not ten louis a year to bless himself with and\nwho cannot answer them except in so far as he is questioned. They are\nfrightened of him, black coat and all. But how would things stand if he\nhad epaulettes?\"\n\nShe had never been more brilliant, hardly had Caylus and his allies\nopened their attack than she riddled them with sarcastic jests. When\nthe fire of these brilliant officers was at length extinguished she\nsaid to M. de Caylus,\n\n\"Suppose that some gentleman in the Franche-Comte mountains finds out\nto-morrow that Julien is his natural son and gives him a name and\nsome thousands of francs, why in six months he will be an officer of\nhussars like you, gentlemen, in six weeks he will have moustaches like\nyou gentlemen. And then his greatness of character will no longer be\nan object of ridicule. I shall then see you reduced, monsieur the\nfuture duke, to this stale and bad argument, the superiority of the\ncourt nobility over the provincial nobility. But where will you be\nif I choose to push you to extremities and am mischievous enough to\nmake Julien's father a Spanish duke, who was a prisoner of war at\nBesancon in the time of Napoleon, and who out of conscientious scruples\nacknowledges him on his death bed?\" MM. de Caylus, and de Croisenois\nfound all these assumptions of illegitimacy in rather bad taste. That\nwas all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.\n\nHis sister's words were so clear that Norbert, in spite of his\nsubmissiveness, assumed a solemn air, which one must admit did not\nharmonise very well with his amiable, smiling face. He ventured to say\na few words.\n\n\"Are you ill? my dear,\" answered Mathilde with a little air of\nseriousness. \"You must be very bad to answer jests by moralizing.\"\n\n\"Moralizing from you! Are you soliciting a job as prefect?\"\n\nMathilde soon forgot the irritation of the comte de Caylus, the bad\ntemper of Norbert, and the taciturn despair of M. de Croisenois. She\nhad to decide one way or the other a fatal question which had just\nseized upon her soul.\n\n\"Julien is sincere enough with me,\" she said to herself, \"a man at\nhis age, in a inferior position, and rendered unhappy as he is by an\nextraordinary ambition, must have need of a woman friend. I am perhaps\nthat friend, but I see no sign of love in him. Taking into account the\naudacity of his character he would surely have spoken to me about his\nlove.\"\n\nThis uncertainty and this discussion with herself which henceforth\nmonopolised Mathilde's time, and in connection with which she found new\narguments each time that Julien spoke to her, completely routed those\nfits of boredom to which she had been so liable.\n\nDaughter as she was of a man of intellect who might become a minister,\nmademoiselle de la Mole had been when in the convent of the Sacred\nHeart, the object of the most excessive flattery. This misfortune can\nnever be compensated for. She had been persuaded that by reason of all\nher advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than\nany one else. This is the cause of the boredom of princes and of all\ntheir follies.\n\nMathilde had not escaped the deadly influence of this idea. However\nintelligent one may be, one cannot at the age of ten be on one's guard\nagainst the flatteries of a whole convent, which are apparently so well\nfounded.\n\nFrom the moment that she had decided that she loved Julien, she\nwas no longer bored. She congratulated herself every day on having\ndeliberately decided to indulge in a grand passion. \"This amusement\nis very dangerous,\" she thought. \"All the better, all the better, a\nthousand times. Without a grand passion I should be languishing in\nboredom during the finest time of my life, the years from sixteen\nto twenty. I have already wasted my finest years: all my pleasure\nconsisted in being obliged to listen to the silly arguments of my\nmother's friends who when at Coblentz in 1792 were not quite so strict,\nso they say, as their words of to-day.\"\n\nIt was while Mathilde was a prey to these great fits of uncertainty\nthat Julien was baffled by those long looks of hers which lingered upon\nhim. He noticed, no doubt, an increased frigidity in the manner of\ncomte Norbert, and a fresh touch of haughtiness in the manner of MM. de\nCaylus, de Luz and de Croisenois. He was accustomed to that. He would\nsometimes be their victim in this way at the end of an evening when, in\nview of the position he occupied, he had been unduly brilliant. Had it\nnot been for the especial welcome with which Mathilde would greet him,\nand the curiosity with which all this society inspired him, he would\nhave avoided following these brilliant moustachioed young men into the\ngarden, when they accompanied mademoiselle de La Mole there, in the\nhour after dinner.\n\n\"Yes,\" Julien would say to himself, \"it is impossible for me to deceive\nmyself, mademoiselle de la Mole looks at me in a very singular way.\nBut even when her fine blue open eyes are fixed on me, wide open with\nthe most abandon, I always detect behind them an element of scrutiny,\nself-possession and malice. Is it possible that this may be love? But\nhow different to madame de Renal's looks!\"\n\nOne evening after dinner Julien, who had followed M. de la Mole into\nhis study, was rapidly walking back to the garden. He approached\nMathilde's circle without any warning, and caught some words pronounced\nin a very loud voice. She was teasing her brother. Julien heard his\nname distinctly pronounced twice. He appeared. There was immediately\na profound silence and abortive efforts were made to dissipate it.\nMademoiselle de la Mole and her brother were too animated to find\nanother topic of conversation. MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz,\nand one of their friends, manifested an icy coldness to Julien. He went\naway.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIII\n\nA PLOT\n\n\n        Disconnected remarks, casual meetings, become\n        transformed in the eyes of an imaginative man into\n        the most convincing proofs, if he has any fire in his\n        temperament.--_Schiller_.\n\n\nThe following day he again caught Norbert and his sister talking about\nhim. A funereal silence was established on his arrival as on the\nprevious day. His suspicions were now unbounded. \"Can these charming\nyoung people have started to make fun of me? I must own this is much\nmore probable, much more natural than any suggested passion on the part\nof mademoiselle de La Mole for a poor devil of a secretary. In the\nfirst place, have those people got any passions at all? Mystification\nis their strong point. They are jealous of my poor little superiority\nin speaking. Being jealous again is one of their weaknesses. On that\nbasis everything is explicable. Mademoiselle de La Mole simply wants to\npersuade me that she is marking me out for special favour in order to\nshow me off to her betrothed?\"\n\nThis cruel suspicion completely changed Julien's psychological\ncondition. The idea found in his heart a budding love which it had no\ndifficulty in destroying. This love was only founded on Mathilde's rare\nbeauty, or rather on her queenly manners and her admirable dresses.\nJulien was still a parvenu in this respect. We are assured that there\nis nothing equal to a pretty society women for dazzling a peasant\nwho is at the same time a man of intellect, when he is admitted to\nfirst class society. It had not been Mathilde's character which had\ngiven Julien food for dreams in the days that had just passed. He had\nsufficient sense to realise that he knew nothing about her character.\nAll he saw of it might be merely superficial.\n\nFor instance, Mathilde would not have missed mass on Sunday for\nanything in the world. She accompanied her mother there nearly every\ntime. If when in the salon of the Hotel de La Mole some indiscreet man\nforgot where he was, and indulged in the remotest allusion to any jest\nagainst the real or supposed interests of Church or State, Mathilde\nimmediately assumed an icy seriousness. Her previously arch expression\nre-assumed all the impassive haughtiness of an old family portrait.\n\nBut Julien had assured himself that she always had one or two of\nVoltaire's most philosophic volumes in her room. He himself would\noften steal some tomes of that fine edition which was so magnificently\nbound. By moving each volume a little distance from the one next to it\nhe managed to hide the absence of the one he took away, but he soon\nnoticed that someone else was reading Voltaire. He had recourse to a\ntrick worthy of the seminary and placed some pieces of hair on those\nvolumes which he thought were likely to interest mademoiselle de La\nMole. They disappeared for whole weeks.\n\nM. de La Mole had lost patience with his bookseller, who always sent\nhim all the spurious memoirs, and had instructed Julien to buy all the\nnew books, which were at all stimulating. But in order to prevent the\npoison spreading over the household, the secretary was ordered to place\nthe books in a little book-case that stood in the marquis's own room.\nHe was soon quite certain that although the new books were hostile to\nthe interests of both State and Church, they very quickly disappeared.\nIt was certainly not Norbert who read them.\n\nJulien attached undue importance to this discovery, and attributed to\nmademoiselle de la Mole a Machiavellian role. This seeming depravity\nconstituted a charm in his eyes, the one moral charm, in fact, which\nshe possessed. He was led into this extravagance by his boredom with\nhypocrisy and moral platitudes.\n\nIt was more a case of his exciting his own imagination than of his\nbeing swept away by his love.\n\nIt was only after he had abandoned himself to reveries about the\nelegance of mademoiselle de la Mole's figure, the excellent taste\nof he dress, the whiteness of her hand, the beauty of her arm, the\n_disinvoltura_ of all her movements, that he began to find himself in\nlove. Then in order to complete the charm he thought her a Catherine\nde' Medici. Nothing was too deep or too criminal for the character\nwhich he ascribed to her. She was the ideal of the Maslons, the\nFrilairs, and the Castanedes whom he had admired so much in his youth.\nTo put it shortly, she represented in his eyes the Paris ideal.\n\nCould anything possibly be more humorous than believing in the depth or\nin the depravity of the Parisian character?\n\nIt is impossible that this _trio_ is making fun of me thought Julien.\nThe reader knows little of his character if he has not begun already\nto imagine his cold and gloomy expression when he answered Mathilde's\nlooks. A bitter irony rebuffed those assurances of friendship which the\nastonished mademoiselle de la Mole ventured to hazard on two or three\noccasions.\n\nPiqued by this sudden eccentricity, the heart of this young girl,\nthough naturally cold, bored and intellectual, became as impassioned as\nit was naturally capable of being. But there was also a large element\nof pride in Mathilde's character, and the birth of a sentiment which\nmade all her happiness dependent on another, was accompanied by a\ngloomy melancholy.\n\nJulien had derived sufficient advantage from his stay in Paris to\nappreciate that this was not the frigid melancholy of ennui. Instead\nof being keen as she had been on at homes, theatres, and all kinds of\ndistractions, she now shunned them.\n\nMusic sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, yet Julien, who\nalways made a point of being present when the audience came out of the\nOpera, noticed that she made a point of getting taken there as often\nas she could. He thought he noticed that she had lost a little of that\nbrilliant neatness of touch which used to be manifest in everything\nshe did. She would sometimes answer her friends with jests rendered\npositively outrageous through the sheer force of their stinging energy.\nHe thought that she made a special butt of the marquis de Croisenois.\nThat young man must be desperately in love with money not to give the\ngo-by to that girl, however rich she maybe, thought Julien. And as for\nhimself, indignant at these outrages on masculine self-respect, he\nredoubled his frigidity towards her. Sometimes he went so far as to\nanswer her with scant courtesy.\n\nIn spite of his resolution not to become the dupe of Mathilde's signs\nof interest, these manifestations were so palpable on certain days, and\nJulien, whose eyes were beginning to be opened, began to find her so\npretty, that he was sometimes embarrassed.\n\n\"These young people of society will score in the long run by their\nskill and their coolness over my inexperience,\" he said to himself. \"I\nmust leave and put an end to all this.\" The marquis had just entrusted\nhim with the administration of a number of small estates and houses\nwhich he possessed in Lower Languedoc. A journey was necessary; M. de\nla Mole reluctantly consented. Julien had become his other self, except\nin those matters which concerned his political career.\n\n\"So, when we come to balance the account,\" Julien said to himself,\nas he prepared his departure, \"they have not caught me. Whether the\njests that mademoiselle de la Mole made to those gentlemen are real,\nor whether they were only intended to inspire me with confidence, they\nhave simply amused me.\n\n\"If there is no conspiracy against the carpenter's son, mademoiselle de\nla Mole is an enigma, but at any rate, she is quite as much an enigma\nfor the marquis de Croisenois as she is to me. Yesterday, for instance,\nher bad temper was very real, and I had the pleasure of seeing her\nsnub, thanks to her favour for me, a young man who is as noble and as\nrich as I am a poor scoundrel of a plebeian. That is my finest triumph;\nit will divert me in my post-chaise as I traverse the Languedoc plains.\"\n\nHe had kept his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew, even better than\nhe did himself, that he was going to leave Paris the following day for\na long time. She developed a maddening headache, which was rendered\nworse by the stuffy salon. She walked a great deal in the garden, and\npersecuted Norbert, the marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz, and\nsome other young men who had dined at the Hotel de la Mole, to such an\nextent by her mordant witticisms, that she drove them to take their\nleave. She kept looking at Julien in a strange way.\n\n\"Perhaps that look is a pose,\" thought Julien, \"but how about that\nhurried breathing and all that agitation? Bah,\" he said to himself,\n\"who am I to judge of such things? We are dealing with the cream of\nParisian sublimity and subtlety. As for that hurried breathing which\nwas on the point of affecting me, she no doubt studied it with Leontine\nFay, whom she likes so much.\"\n\nThey were left alone; the conversation was obviously languishing. \"No,\nJulien has no feeling for me,\" said Mathilde to herself, in a state of\nreal unhappiness.\n\nAs he was taking leave of her she took his arm violently.\n\n\"You will receive a letter from me this evening,\" she said to him in a\nvoice that was so changed that its tone was scarcely recognisable.\n\nThis circumstance affected Julien immediately.\n\n\"My father,\" she continued, \"has a proper regard for the services you\nrender him. You must not leave to-morrow; find an excuse.\" And she ran\naway.\n\nHer figure was charming. It was impossible to have a prettier foot. She\nran with a grace which fascinated Julien, but will the reader guess\nwhat he began to think about after she had finally left him? He felt\nwounded by the imperious tone with which she had said the words, \"you\nmust.\" Louis XV. too, when on his death-bed, had been keenly irritated\nby the words \"you must,\" which had been tactlessly pronounced by his\nfirst physician, and yet Louis XV. was not a parvenu.\n\nAn hour afterwards a footman gave Julien a letter. It was quite simply\na declaration of love.\n\n\"The style is too affected,\" said Julien to himself, as he endeavoured\nto control by his literary criticism the joy which was spreading over\nhis cheeks and forcing him to smile in spite of himself.\n\nAt last his passionate exultation was too strong to be controlled. \"So\nI,\" he suddenly exclaimed, \"I, the poor peasant, get a declaration of\nlove from a great lady.\"\n\n\"As for myself, I haven't done so badly,\" he added, restraining his\njoy as much as he could. \"I have managed to preserve my self-respect.\nI did not say that I loved her.\" He began to study the formation of\nthe letters. Mademoiselle de la Mole had a pretty little English\nhandwriting. He needed some concrete occupation to distract him from a\njoy which verged on delirium.\n\n\"Your departure forces me to speak.... I could not bear not to see you\nagain.\"\n\nA thought had just struck Julien like a new discovery. It interrupted\nhis examination of Mathilde's letter, and redoubled his joy. \"So I\nscore over the marquis de Croisenois,\" he exclaimed. \"Yes, I who could\nonly talk seriously! And he is so handsome. He has a moustache and a\ncharming uniform. He always manages to say something witty and clever\njust at the psychological moment.\"\n\nJulien experienced a delightful minute. He was wandering at random in\nthe garden, mad with happiness.\n\nAfterwards he went up to his desk, and had himself ushered in to the\nmarquis de la Mole, who was fortunately still in. He showed him several\nstamped papers which had come from Normandy, and had no difficulty\nin convincing him that he was obliged to put off his departure for\nLanguedoc in order to look after the Normandy lawsuits.\n\n\"I am very glad that you are not going,\" said the marquis to him, when\nthey had finished talking business. \"I like seeing you.\" Julien went\nout; the words irritated him.\n\n\"And I--I am going to seduce his daughter! and perhaps render\nimpossible that marriage with the marquis de Croisenois to which the\nmarquis looks forward with such delight. If he does not get made a\nduke, at any rate his daughter will have a coronet.\" Julien thought of\nleaving for Languedoc in spite of Mathilde's letter, and in spite of\nthe explanation he had just given to the marquis. This flash of virtue\nquickly disappeared.\n\n\"How kind it is of me,\" he said to himself, \"me ... a plebeian, takes\npity on a family of this rank! Yes, me, whom the duke of Chaulnes\ncalls a servant! How does the marquis manage to increase his immense\nfortune? By selling stock when he picks up information at the castle\nthat there will be a panic of a _coup d'etat_ on the following day.\nAnd shall I, who have been flung down into the lowest class by a cruel\nprovidence--I, whom providence has given a noble heart but not an\nincome of a thousand francs, that is to say, not enough to buy bread\nwith, literally not enough to buy bread with--shall I refuse a pleasure\nthat presents itself? A limpid fountain which will quench my thirst in\nthis scorching desert of mediocrity which I am traversing with such\ndifficulty! Upon my word, I am not such a fool! Each man for himself in\nthat desert of egoism which is called life.\"\n\nAnd he remembered certain disdainful looks which madame de la Mole, and\nespecially her lady friends, had favoured him with.\n\nThe pleasure of scoring over the marquis de Croisenois completed the\nrout of this echo of virtue.\n\n\"How I should like to make him angry,\" said Julien. \"With what\nconfidence would I give him a sword thrust now!\" And he went through\nthe segoon thrust. \"Up till now I have been a mere usher, who exploited\nbasely the little courage he had. After this letter I am his equal.\n\n\"Yes,\" he slowly said to himself, with an infinite pleasure, \"the\nmerits of the marquis and myself have been weighed in the balance, and\nit is the poor carpenter from the Jura who turns the scale.\n\n\"Good!\" he exclaimed, \"this is how I shall sign my answer. Don't\nimagine, mademoiselle de la Mole, that I am forgetting my place. I will\nmake you realise and fully appreciate that it is for a carpenter's son\nthat you are betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois who\nfollowed St. Louis to the Crusade.\"\n\nJulien was unable to control his joy. He was obliged to go down into\nthe garden. He had locked himself in his room, but he found it too\nnarrow to breathe in.\n\n\"To think of it being me, the poor peasant from the Jura,\" he kept\non repeating to himself, \"to think of it being me who am eternally\ncondemned to wear this gloomy black suit! Alas twenty years ago I would\nhave worn a uniform like they do! In those days a man like me either\ngot killed or became a general at thirty-six. The letter which he held\nclenched in his hand gave him a heroic pose and stature. Nowadays, it\nis true, if one sticks to this black suit, one gets at forty an income\nof a hundred thousand francs and the blue ribbon like my lord bishop of\nBeauvais.\n\n\"Well,\" he said to himself with a Mephistophelian smile, \"I have more\nbrains than they. I am shrewd enough to choose the uniform of my\ncentury. And he felt a quickening of his ambition and of his attachment\nto his ecclesiastical dress. What cardinals of even lower birth than\nmine have not succeeded in governing! My compatriot Granvelle, for\ninstance.\"\n\nJulien's agitation became gradually calmed! Prudence emerged to the\ntop. He said to himself like his master Tartuffe whose part he knew by\nheart:\n\n    Je puis croire ces mots, un artifice honnete.\n    *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *\n    Je ne me firai point a des propos si doux,\n    Qu'un peu de ses faveurs apres quoi je soupire\n    Ne vienne m'assurer tout ce qu'ils m'ont pudire.\n                                  _Tartuffe, act iv. Scene v_.\n\n\"Tartuffe, too, was ruined by a woman, and he was as good as most\nmen.... My answer may be shown.... and the way out of that is this,\" he\nadded pronouncing his words slowly with an intonation of deliberate and\nrestrained ferocity. \"We will begin by quoting the most vivid passages\nfrom the letter of the sublime Mathilde.\"\n\n\"Quite so, but M. de Croisenois' lackeys will hurl themselves upon me\nand snatch the original away.\"\n\n\"No, they won't, for I am well armed, and as we know I am accustomed to\nfiring on lackeys.\"\n\n\"Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself upon me. He\nhas been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill him, or wound him, good,\nthat's what they want. I shall be thrown into prison legally. I shall\nbe had up in the police court and the judges will send me with all\njustice and all equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company\nin Poissy. There I shall be landed in the middle of four hundred\nscoundrels.... And am I to have the slightest pity on these people,\"\nhe exclaimed getting up impetuously! \"Do they show any to persons of\nthe third estate when they have them in their power!\" With these words\nhis gratitude to M. de la Mole, which had been in spite of himself\ntorturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last.\n\n\"Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Machiavellian trick, the abbe\nMaslon or M. Castanede of the seminary could not have done better. You\nwill take the provocative letter away from me and I shall exemplify the\nsecond volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar.\"\n\n\"One moment, gentlemen, I will send the fatal letter in a well-sealed\npacket to M. the abbe Pirard to take care of. He's an honest man, a\nJansenist, and consequently incorruptible. Yes, but he will open the\nletters.... Fouque is the man to whom I must send it.\"\n\nWe must admit that Julien's expression was awful, his countenance\nghastly; it breathed unmitigated criminality. It represented the\nunhappy man at war with all society.\n\n\"To arms,\" exclaimed Julien. And he bounded up the flight of steps\nof the hotel with one stride. He entered the stall of the street\nscrivener; he frightened him. \"Copy this,\" he said, giving him\nmademoiselle de la Mole's letter.\n\nWhile the scrivener was working, he himself wrote to Fouque. He asked\nhim to take care of a valuable deposit. \"But he said to himself,\"\nbreaking in upon his train of thought, \"the secret service of the\npost-office will open my letter, and will give you gentlemen the one\nyou are looking for ... not quite, gentlemen.\" He went and bought an\nenormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skillfully hid Mathilde's\nletter in the cover, and packed it all up. His parcel left by the\ndiligence addressed to one of Fouque's workmen, whose name was known to\nnobody at Paris.\n\nThis done, he returned to the Hotel de la Mole, joyous and buoyant.\n\nNow it's our turn he exclaimed as he locked himself into the room and\nthrew off his coat.\n\n\"What! mademoiselle,\" he wrote to Mathilde, \"is it mademoiselle de la\nMole who gets Arsene her father's lackey to hand an only too flattering\nletter to a poor carpenter from the Jura, in order no doubt to make\nfun of his simplicity?\" And he copied out the most explicit phrases in\nthe letter which he had just received. His own letter would have done\nhonour to the diplomatic prudence of M. the Chevalier de Beauvoisis.\nIt was still only ten o'clock when Julien entered the Italian opera,\nintoxicated with happiness and that feeling of his own power which was\nso novel for a poor devil like him. He heard his friend Geronimo sing.\nMusic had never exalted him to such a pitch.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIV\n\nA YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS\n\n\n        What perplexity! What sleepless nights! Great God. Am I\n        going to make myself contemptible? He will despise me\n        himself. But he is leaving, he is going away.\n                                    _Alfred de Musset_\n\n\nMathilde had not written without a struggle. Whatever might have been\nthe beginning of her interest in Julien, it soon dominated that pride\nwhich had reigned unchallenged in her heart since she had begun to know\nherself. This cold and haughty soul was swept away for the first time\nby a sentiment of passion, but if this passion dominated her pride,\nit still kept faithfully to the habits of that pride. Two months of\nstruggles and new sensations had transformed, so to speak her whole\nmoral life.\n\nMathilde thought she was in sight of happiness. This vista,\nirresistible as it is for those who combine a superior intellect with\na courageous soul, had to struggle for a long time against her self\nrespect and all her vulgar duties. One day she went into her mother's\nroom at seven o'clock in the morning and asked permission to take\nrefuge in Villequier. The marquise did not even deign to answer her,\nand advised her to go back to bed. This was the last effort of vulgar\nprudence and respect for tradition.\n\nThe fear of doing wrong and of offending those ideas which the\nCaylus's, the de Luz's, the Croisenois' held for sacred had little\npower over her soul. She considered such creatures incapable of\nunderstanding her. She would have consulted them, if it had been a\nmatter of buying a carriage or an estate. Her real fear was that Julien\nwas displeased with her.\n\n\"Perhaps he, too, has only the appearance of a superior man?\"\n\nShe abhorred lack of character; that was her one objection to the\nhandsome young men who surrounded her. The more they made elegant\nfun of everything which deviated from the prevailing mode, or which\nconformed to it but indifferently, the lower they fell in her eyes.\n\nThey were brave and that was all. \"And after all in what way were they\nbrave?\" she said to herself. \"In duels, but the duel is nothing more\nthan a formality. The whole thing is mapped out beforehand, even the\ncorrect thing to say when you fall. Stretched on the turf, and with\nyour hand on your heart, you must vouchsafe a generous forgiveness to\nthe adversary, and a few words for a fair lady, who is often imaginary,\nor if she does exist, will go to a ball on the day of your death for\nfear of arousing suspicion.\"\n\n\"One braves danger at the head of a squadron brilliant with steel, but\nhow about that danger which is solitary, strange, unforeseen and really\nugly.\"\n\n\"Alas,\" said Mathilde to herself, \"it was at the court of Henri III.\nthat men who were great both by character and by birth were to be\nfound! Yes! If Julien had served at Jarnac or Moncontour, I should no\nlonger doubt. In those days of strength and vigour Frenchmen were not\ndolls. The day of the battle was almost the one which presented the\nfewest problems.\"\n\nTheir life was not imprisoned, like an Egyptian mummy in a covering\nwhich was common to all, and always the same. \"Yes,\" she added, \"there\nwas more real courage in going home alone at eleven o'clock in the\nevening when one came out of the Hotel de Soissons where Catherine\nde' Medici lived than there is nowadays in running over to Algiers.\nA man's life was then a series of hazards. Nowadays civilisation has\nbanished hazard. There are no more surprises. If anything new appears\nin any idea there are not sufficient epigrams to immortalise it, but if\nanything new appears in actual life, our panic reaches the lowest depth\nof cowardice. Whatever folly panic makes us commit is excused. What a\ndegenerate and boring age! What would Boniface de la Mole have said\nif, lifting his cut-off head out of the tomb, he had seen seventeen of\nhis descendants allow themselves to be caught like sheep in 1793 in\norder to be guillotined two days afterwards! Death was certain, but it\nwould have been bad form to have defended themselves and to have killed\nat least one or two Jacobins. Yes! in the heroic days of France, in\nthe age of Boniface de la Mole, Julien would have been the chief of\na squadron, while my brother would have been the young priest with\ndecorous manners, with wisdom in his eyes and reason on his lips.\" Some\nmonths previously Mathilde had given up all hope of meeting any being\nwho was a little different from the common pattern. She had found some\nhappiness in allowing herself to write to some young society men. This\nrash procedure, which was so unbecoming and so imprudent in a young\ngirl, might have disgraced her in the eyes of M. de Croisenois, the\nDuke de Chaulnes, his father, and the whole Hotel de Chaulnes, who on\nseeing the projected marriage broken off would have wanted to know the\nreason. At that time Mathilde had been unable to sleep on those days\nwhen she had written one of her letters. But those letters were only\nanswers. But now she ventured to declare her own love. She wrote first\n(what a terrible word!) to a man of the lowest social grade.\n\nThis circumstance rendered her eternal disgrace quite inevitable in the\nevent of detection. Who of the women who visited her mother would have\ndared to take her part? What official excuse could be evolved which\ncould successfully cope with the awful contempt of society.\n\nBesides speaking was awful enough, but writing! \"There are some\nthings which are not written!\" Napoleon had exclaimed on learning of\nthe capitulation of Baylen. And it was Julien who had told her that\nepigram, as though giving her a lesson that was to come in useful\nsubsequently.\n\nBut all this was comparatively unimportant, Mathilde's anguish had\nother causes. Forgetting the terrible effect it would produce on\nsociety, and the ineffable blot on her scutcheon that would follow such\nan outrage on her own caste, Mathilde was going to write to a person\nof a very different character to the Croisenois', the de Luz's, the\nCaylus's.\n\nShe would have been frightened at the depth and mystery in Julien's\ncharacter, even if she had merely entered into a conventional\nacquaintance with him. And she was going to make him her lover, perhaps\nher master.\n\n\"What will his pretensions not be, if he is ever in a position to do\neverything with me? Well! I shall say, like Medea: _Au milieu de tant\nde perils il me reste Moi_.\" She believed that Julien had no respect\nfor nobility of blood. What was more, he probably did not love her.\n\nIn these last moments of awful doubt her feminine pride suggested to\nher certain ideas. \"Everything is bound to be extraordinary in the life\nof a girl like me,\" exclaimed Mathilde impatiently. The pride, which\nhad been drilled into her since her cradle, began to struggle with her\nvirtue. It was at this moment that Julien's departure precipitated\neverything.\n\n(Such characters are luckily very rare.)\n\nVery late in the evening, Julien was malicious enough to have a very\nheavy trunk taken down to the porter's lodge. He called the valet, who\nwas courting mademoiselle de la Mole's chambermaid, to move it. \"This\nmanoeuvre cannot result in anything,\" he said to himself, \"but if it\ndoes succeed, she will think that I have gone.\" Very tickled by this\nhumorous thought, he fell asleep. Mathilde did not sleep a wink.\n\nJulien left the hotel very early the next morning without being seen,\nbut he came back before eight o'clock.\n\nHe had scarcely entered the library before M. de la Mole appeared\non the threshold. He handed her his answer. He thought that it was\nhis duty to speak to her, it was certainly perfectly feasible, but\nmademoiselle de la Mole would not listen to him and disappeared. Julien\nwas delighted. He did not know what to say.\n\n\"If all this is not a put up job with comte Norbert, it is clear that\nit is my cold looks which have kindled the strange love which this\naristocratic girl chooses to entertain for me. I should be really\ntoo much of a fool if I ever allowed myself to take a fancy to that\nbig blonde doll.\" This train of reasoning left him colder and more\ncalculating than he had ever been.\n\n\"In the battle for which we are preparing,\" he added, \"pride of birth\nwill be like a high hill which constitutes a military position between\nher and me. That must be the field of the manoeuvres. I made a great\nmistake in staying in Paris; this postponing of my departure cheapens\nand exposes me, if all this is simply a trick. What danger was there in\nleaving? If they were making fun of me, I was making fun of them. If\nher interest for me was in any way real, I was making that interest a\nhundred times more intense.\"\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole's letter had given Julien's vanity so keen a\npleasure, that wreathed as he was in smiles at his good fortune he had\nforgotten to think seriously about the propriety of leaving.\n\nIt was one of the fatal elements of his character to be extremely\nsensitive to his own weaknesses. He was extremely upset by this one,\nand had almost forgotten the incredible victory which had preceded this\nslight check, when about nine o'clock mademoiselle de la Mole appeared\non the threshold of the library, flung him a letter and ran away.\n\n\"So this is going to be the romance by letters,\" he said as he picked\nit up. \"The enemy makes a false move; I will reply by coldness and\nvirtue.\"\n\nHe was asked with a poignancy which merely increased his inner gaiety\nto give a definite answer. He indulged in the pleasure of mystifying\nthose persons who he thought wanted to make fun of him for two pages,\nand it was out of humour again that he announced towards the end of his\nanswer his definite departure on the following morning.\n\n\"The garden will be a useful place to hand her the letter,\" he thought\nafter he had finished it, and he went there. He looked at the window of\nmademoiselle de la Mole's room.\n\nIt was on the first storey, next to her mother's apartment, but there\nwas a large ground floor.\n\nThis latter was so high that, as Julien walked under the avenue\nof pines with his letter in his hands, he could not be seen from\nmademoiselle de la Mole's window. The dome formed by the well clipped\npines intercepted the view. \"What!\" said Julien to himself angrily,\n\"another indiscretion! If they have really begun making fun of me,\nshowing myself with a letter is playing into my enemy's hands.\"\n\nNorbert's room was exactly above his sister's and if Julien came out\nfrom under the dome formed by the clipped branches of the pine, the\ncomte and his friend could follow all his movements.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole appeared behind her window; he half showed his\nletter; she lowered her head, then Julien ran up to his own room and\nmet accidentally on the main staircase the fair Mathilde, who seized\nthe letter with complete self-possession and smiling eyes.\n\n\"What passion there was in the eyes of that poor madame de Renal,\" said\nJulien to himself, \"when she ventured to receive a letter from me,\neven after six months of intimate relationship! I don't think she ever\nlooked at me with smiling eyes in her whole life.\"\n\nHe did not formulate so precisely the rest of his answer; was he\nperhaps ashamed of the triviality of the motive which were actuating\nhim?\n\n\"But how different too,\" he went on to think, \"are her elegant morning\ndress and her distinguished appearance! A man of taste on seeing\nmademoiselle de la Mole thirty yards off would infer the position which\nshe occupies in society. That is what can be called a specific merit.\"\n\nIn spite of all this humorousness, Julien was not yet quite honest with\nhimself; madame de Renal had no marquis de Croisenois to sacrifice to\nhim. His only rival was that grotesque sub-prefect, M. Charcot, who\nassumed the name of Maugiron, because there were no Maugirons left in\nFrance.\n\nAt five o'clock Julien received a third letter. It was thrown to him\nfrom the library door. Mademoiselle de la Mole ran away again. \"What\na mania for writing,\" he said to himself with a laugh, \"when one can\ntalk so easily. The enemy wants my letters, that is clear, and many of\nthem.\" He did not hurry to open this one. \"More elegant phrases,\" he\nthought; but he paled as he read it. There were only eight lines.\n\n\"I need to speak to you; I must speak to you this evening. Be in\nthe garden at the moment when one o'clock is striking. Take the big\ngardeners' ladder near the well; place it against my window, and climb\nup to my room. It is moonlight; never mind.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLV\n\nIS IT A PLOT?\n\n\nOh, how cruel is the interval between the conception\nand the execution of a great project. What vain fears,\nwhat fits of irresolution! It is a matter of life and\ndeath--even more is at stake honour!--_Schiller_.\n\n\n\"This is getting serious,\" thought Julien, \"and a little too clear,\"\nhe added after thinking a little. \"Why to be sure! This fine young\nlady can talk to me in the library with a freedom which, thank heaven,\nis absolutely complete; the marquis, frightened as he is that I show\nhim accounts, never sets foot in it. Why! M. de la Mole and the comte\nNorbert, the only persons who ever come here, are absent nearly the\nwhole day, and the sublime Mathilde for whom a sovereign prince\nwould not be too noble a suitor, wants me to commit an abominable\nindiscretion.\n\n\"It is clear they want to ruin me, or at the least make fun of me.\nFirst they wanted to ruin me by my own letters; they happen to be\ndiscreet; well, they want some act which is clearer than daylight.\nThese handsome little gentlemen think I am too silly or too conceited.\nThe devil! To think of climbing like this up a ladder to a storey\ntwenty-five feet high in the finest moonlight. They would have time to\nsee me, even from the neighbouring houses. I shall cut a pretty figure\nto be sure on my ladder!\" Julien went up to his room again and began\nto pack his trunk whistling. He had decided to leave and not even to\nanswer.\n\nBut this wise resolution did not give him peace of mind. \"If by\nchance,\" he suddenly said to himself after he had closed his trunk,\n\"Mathilde is in good faith, why then I cut the figure of an arrant\ncoward in her eyes. I have no birth myself, so I need great qualities\nattested straight away by speaking actions--money down--no charitable\ncredit.\"\n\nHe spent a quarter-of-an-hour in reflecting. \"What is the good of\ndenying it?\" he said at last. \"She will think me a coward. I shall lose\nnot only the most brilliant person in high society, as they all said at\nM. the duke de Retz's ball, but also the heavenly pleasure of seeing\nthe marquis de Croisenois, the son of a duke, who will be one day a\nduke himself, sacrificed to me. A charming young man who has all the\nqualities I lack. A happy wit, birth, fortune....\n\n\"This regret will haunt me all my life, not on her account, 'there are\nso many mistresses!... but there is only one honour!' says old don\nDiego. And here am I clearly and palpably shrinking from the first\ndanger that presents itself; for the duel with M. de Beauvoisis was\nsimply a joke. This is quite different. A servant may fire at me point\nblank, but that is the least danger; I may be disgraced.\n\n\"This is getting serious, my boy,\" he added with a Gascon gaiety and\naccent. \"Honour is at stake. A poor devil flung by chance into as low a\ngrade as I am will never find such an opportunity again. I shall have\nmy conquests, but they will be inferior ones....\"\n\nHe reflected for a long time, he walked up and down hurriedly, and\nthen from time to time would suddenly stop. A magnificent marble bust\nof cardinal de Richelieu had been placed in his room. It attracted his\ngaze in spite of himself. This bust seemed to look at him severely as\nthough reproaching him with the lack of that audacity which ought to be\nso natural to the French character. \"Would I have hesitated in your age\ngreat man?\"\n\n\"At the worst,\" said Julien to himself, \"suppose all this is a trap,\nit is pretty black and pretty compromising for a young girl. They know\nthat I am not the man to hold my tongue. They will therefore have to\nkill me. That was right enough in 1574 in the days of Boniface de la\nMole, but nobody today would ever have the pluck. They are not the same\nmen. Mademoiselle de la Mole is the object of so much jealousy. Four\nhundred salons would ring with her disgrace to-morrow, and how pleased\nthey would all be.\n\n\"The servants gossip among themselves about marked the favours of\nwhich I am the recipient. I know it, I have heard them....\n\n\"On the other hand they're her letters. They may think that I have\nthem on me. They may surprise me in her room and take them from me. I\nshall have to deal with two, three, or four men. How can I tell? But\nwhere are they going to find these men? Where are they to find discreet\nsubordinates in Paris? Justice frightens them.... By God! It may be the\nCaylus's, the Croisenois', the de Luz's themselves. The idea of the\nludicrous figure I should cut in the middle of them at the particular\nminute may have attracted them. Look out for the fate of Abelard, M.\nthe secretary.\n\n\"Well, by heaven, I'll mark you. I'll strike at your faces like Caesar's\nsoldiers at Pharsalia. As for the letters, I can put them in a safe\nplace.\"\n\nJulien copied out the two last, hid them in a fine volume of Voltaire\nin the library and himself took the originals to the post.\n\n\"What folly am I going to rush into,\" he said to himself with surprise\nand terror when he returned. He had been a quarter of an hour without\ncontemplating what he was to do on this coming night.\n\n\"But if I refuse, I am bound to despise myself afterwards. This matter\nwill always occasion me great doubt during my whole life, and to a man\nlike me such doubts are the most poignant unhappiness. Did I not feel\nlike that for Amanda's lover! I think I would find it easier to forgive\nmyself for a perfectly clear crime; once admitted, I could leave off\nthinking of it.\n\n\"Why! I shall have been the rival of a man who bears one of the finest\nnames in France, and then out of pure light-heartedness, declared\nmyself his inferior! After all, it is cowardly not to go; these words\nclinch everything,\" exclaimed Julien as he got up ... \"besides she is\nquite pretty.\"\n\n\"If this is not a piece of treachery, what a folly is she not\ncommitting for my sake. If it's a piece of mystification, by heaven,\ngentlemen, it only depends on me to turn the jest into earnest and that\nI will do.\n\n\"But supposing they tie my hands together at the moment I enter the\nroom: they may have placed some ingenious machine there.\n\n\"It's like a duel,\" he said to himself with a laugh. \"Everyone makes\na full parade, says my _maitre d'armes_, but the good God, who wishes\nthe thing to end, makes one of them forget to parry. Besides, here's\nsomething to answer them with.\" He drew his pistols out of his pocket,\nand although the priming was shining, he renewed it.\n\nThere was still several hours to wait. Julien wrote to Fouque in order\nto have something to do. \"My friend, do not open the enclosed letter\nexcept in the event of an accident, if you hear that something strange\nhas happened to me. In that case blot out the proper names in the\nmanuscript which I am sending you, make eight copies of it, and send\nit to the papers of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyons, Brussels, etc. Ten\ndays later have the manuscript printed, send the first copy to M. the\nmarquis de la Mole, and a fortnight after that throw the other copies\nat night into the streets of Verrieres.\"\n\nJulien made this little memoir in defence of his position as little\ncompromising as possible for mademoiselle de la Mole. Fouque was only\nto open it in the event of an accident. It was put in the form of a\nstory, but in fact it exactly described his situation.\n\nJulien had just fastened his packet when the dinner bell rang. It made\nhis heart beat. His imagination was distracted by the story which he\nhad just composed, and fell a prey to tragic presentiments. He saw\nhimself seized by servants, trussed, and taken into a cellar with a gag\nin his mouth. A servant was stationed there, who never let him out of\nsight, and if the family honour required that the adventure should have\na tragic end, it was easy to finish everything with those poisons which\nleave no trace. They could then say that he had died of an illness and\nwould carry his dead body back into his room.\n\nThrilled like a dramatic author by his own story, Julien was really\nafraid when he entered the dining-room. He looked at all those liveried\nservants--he studied their faces. \"Which ones are chosen for to-night's\nexpedition?\" he said to himself. \"The memories of the court of Henri\nIII. are so vivid in this family, and so often recalled, that if they\nthink they have been insulted they will show more resolution than other\npersons of the same rank.\" He looked at mademoiselle de la Mole in\norder to read the family plans in her eyes; she was pale and looked\nquite middle-aged. He thought that she had never looked so great: she\nwas really handsome and imposing; he almost fell in love with her.\n\"_Pallida morte futura_,\" he said to himself (her pallor indicates\nher great plans). It was in vain that after dinner he made a point of\nwalking for a long time in the garden, mademoiselle did not appear.\nSpeaking to her at that moment would have lifted a great weight off his\nheart.\n\nWhy not admit it? he was afraid. As he had resolved to act, he was not\nashamed to abandon himself to this emotion. \"So long as I show the\nnecessary courage at the actual moment,\" he said to himself, \"what\ndoes it matter what I feel at this particular moment?\" He went to\nreconnoitre the situation and find out the weight of the ladder.\n\n\"This is an instrument,\" he said to himself with a smile, \"which I am\nfated to use both here and at Verrieres. What a difference! In those\ndays,\" he added with a sigh, \"I was not obliged to distrust the person\nfor whom I exposed myself to danger. What a difference also in the\ndanger!\"\n\n\"There would have been no dishonour for me if I had been killed in M.\nde Renal's gardens. It would have been easy to have made my death into\na mystery. But here all kinds of abominable scandal will be talked in\nthe salons of the Hotel de Chaulnes, the Hotel de Caylus, de Retz,\netc., everywhere in fact. I shall go down to posterity as a monster.\"\n\n\"For two or three years,\" he went on with a laugh, making fun of\nhimself; but the idea paralysed him. \"And how am I going to manage to\nget justified? Suppose that Fouque does print my posthumous pamphlet,\nit will only be taken for an additional infamy. Why! I get received\ninto a house, and I reward the hospitality which I have received,\nthe kindness with which I have been loaded by printing a pamphlet\nabout what has happened and attacking the honour of women! Nay! I'd a\nthousand times rather be duped.\"\n\nThe evening was awful.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVI\n\nONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING\n\n\n        This garden was very big, it had been planned a\n        few years ago in perfect taste. But the trees were\n        more than a century old. It had a certain rustic\n        atmosphere.--_Massinger_.\n\n\nHe was going to write a countermanding letter to Fouque when eleven\no'clock struck. He noisily turned the lock of the door of his room as\nthough he had locked himself in. He went with a sleuth-like step to\nobserve what was happening over the house, especially on the fourth\nstorey where the servants slept. There was nothing unusual. One of\nmadame de la Mole's chambermaids was giving an entertainment, the\nservants were taking punch with much gaiety. \"Those who laugh like\nthat,\" thought Julien, \"cannot be participating in the nocturnal\nexpedition; if they were, they would be more serious.\"\n\nEventually he stationed himself in an obscure corner of the garden. \"If\ntheir plan is to hide themselves from the servants of the house, they\nwill despatch the persons whom they have told off to surprise me over\nthe garden wall.\n\n\"If M. de Croisenois shows any sense of proportion in this matter, he\nis bound to find it less compromising for the young person, whom he\nwishes to make his wife if he has me surprised before I enter her room.\"\n\nHe made a military and extremely detailed reconnaissance. \"My honour is\nat stake,\" he thought. \"If I tumble into some pitfall it will not be an\nexcuse in my own eyes to say, 'I never thought of it.'\"\n\nThe weather was desperately serene. About eleven o'clock the moon rose,\nat half-past twelve it completely illuminated the facade of the hotel\nlooking out upon the garden.\n\n\"She is mad,\" Julien said to himself. As one o'clock struck there\nwas still a light in comte Norbert's windows. Julien had never been\nso frightened in his life, he only saw the dangers of the enterprise\nand had no enthusiasm at all. He went and took the immense ladder,\nwaited five minutes to give her time to tell him not to go, and five\nminutes after one placed the ladder against Mathilde's window. He\nmounted softly, pistol in hand, astonished at not being attacked. As he\napproached the window it opened noiselessly.\n\n\"So there you are, monsieur,\" said Mathilde to him with considerable\nemotion. \"I have been following your movements for the last hour.\"\n\nJulien was very much embarrassed. He did not know how to conduct\nhimself. He did not feel at all in love. He thought in his\nembarrassment that he ought to be venturesome. He tried to kiss\nMathilde.\n\n\"For shame,\" she said to him, pushing him away.\n\nExtremely glad at being rebuffed, he hastened to look round him. The\nmoon was so brilliant that the shadows which it made in mademoiselle de\nla Mole's room were black. \"It's quite possible for men to be concealed\nwithout my seeing them,\" he thought.\n\n\"What have you got in your pocket at the side of your coat?\" Mathilde\nsaid to him, delighted at finding something to talk about. She was\nsuffering strangely; all those sentiments of reserve and timidity which\nwere so natural to a girl of good birth, had reasserted their dominion\nand were torturing her.\n\n\"I have all kinds of arms and pistols,\" answered Julien equally glad at\nhaving something to say.\n\n\"You must take the ladder away,\" said Mathilde.\n\n\"It is very big, and may break the windows of the salon down below or\nthe room on the ground floor.\"\n\n\"You must not break the windows,\" replied Mathilde making a vain effort\nto assume an ordinary conversational tone; \"it seems to me you can\nlower the ladder by tying a cord to the first rung. I have always a\nsupply of cords at hand.\"\n\n\"So this is a woman in love,\" thought Julien. \"She actually dares to\nsay that she is in love. So much self-possession and such shrewdness in\ntaking precautions are sufficient indications that I am not triumphing\nover M. de Croisenois as I foolishly believed, but that I am simply\nsucceeding him. As a matter of fact, what does it matter to me? Do I\nlove her? I am triumphing over the marquis in so far as he would be\nvery angry at having a successor, and angrier still at that successor\nbeing myself. How haughtily he looked at me this evening in the Cafe\nTortoni when he pretended not to recognise me! And how maliciously he\nbowed to me afterwards, when he could not get out of it.\"\n\nJulien had tied the cord to the last rung of the ladder. He lowered it\nsoftly and leant far out of the balcony in order to avoid its touching\nthe window pane. \"A fine opportunity to kill me,\" he thought, \"if\nanyone is hidden in Mathilde's room;\" but a profound silence continued\nto reign everywhere.\n\nThe ladder touched the ground. Julien succeeded in laying it on the\nborder of the exotic flowers along side the wall.\n\n\"What will my mother say,\" said Mathilde, \"when she sees her beautiful\nplants all crushed? You must throw down the cord,\" she added with great\nself-possession. \"If it were noticed going up to the balcony, it would\nbe a difficult circumstance to explain.\"\n\n\"And how am I to get away?\" said Julien in a jesting tone affecting the\nCreole accent. (One of the chambermaids of the household had been born\nin Saint-Domingo.)\n\n\"You? Why you will leave by the door,\" said Mathilde, delighted at the\nidea.\n\n\"Ah! how worthy this man is of all my love,\" she thought.\n\nJulien had just let the cord fall into the garden; Mathilde grasped\nhis arm. He thought he had been seized by an enemy and turned round\nsharply, drawing a dagger. She had thought that she had heard a window\nopening. They remained motionless and scarcely breathed. The moonlight\nlit up everything. The noise was not renewed and there was no more\ncause for anxiety.\n\nThen their embarrassment began again; it was great on both sides.\nJulien assured himself that the door was completely locked; he thought\nof looking under the bed, but he did not dare; \"they might have\nstationed one or two lackeys there.\" Finally he feared that he might\nreproach himself in the future for this lack of prudence, and did\nlook. Mathilde had fallen into all the anguish of the most extreme\ntimidity. She was horrified at her position.\n\n\"What have you done with my letters?\" she said at last.\n\n\"What a good opportunity to upset these gentlemen, if they are\neavesdropping, and thus avoiding the battle,\" thought Julien.\n\n\"The first is hid in a big Protestant Bible, which last night's\ndiligence is taking far away from here.\"\n\nHe spoke very distinctly as he went into these details, so as to be\nheard by any persons who might be concealed in two large mahogany\ncupboards which he had not dared to inspect.\n\n\"The other two are in the post and are bound for the same destination\nas the first.\"\n\n\"Heavens, why all these precautions?\" said Mathilde in alarm.\n\n\"What is the good of my lying?\" thought Julien, and he confessed all\nhis suspicions.\n\n\"So that's the cause for the coldness of your letters, dear,\" exclaimed\nMathilde in a tone of madness rather than of tenderness.\n\nJulien did not notice that nuance. The endearment made him lose his\nhead, or at any rate his suspicions vanished. He dared to clasp in his\narms that beautiful girl who inspired him with such respect. He was\nonly partially rebuffed. He fell back on his memory as he had once at\nBesancon with Armanda Binet, and recited by heart several of the finest\nphrases out of the _Nouvelle Heloise_.\n\n\"You have the heart of a man,\" was the answer she made without\nlistening too attentively to his phrases; \"I wanted to test your\ncourage, I confess it. Your first suspicions and your resolutions show\nyou even more intrepid, dear, than I had believed.\"\n\nMathilde had to make an effort to call him \"dear,\" and was evidently\npaying more attention to this strange method of speech than to\nthe substance of what she was saying. Being called \"dear\" without\nany tenderness in the tone afforded no pleasure to Julien; he was\nastonished at not being happy, and eventually fell back on his\nreasoning in order to be so. He saw that he was respected by this proud\nyoung girl who never gave undeserved praise; by means of this reasoning\nhe managed to enjoy the happiness of satisfied vanity. It was not,\nit was true, that soulful pleasure which he had sometimes found with\nmadame de Renal. There was no element of tenderness in the feelings\nof these first few minutes. It was the keen happiness of a gratified\nambition, and Julien was, above all, ambitious. He talked again of\nthe people whom he had suspected and of the precautions which he had\ndevised. As he spoke, he thought of the best means of exploiting his\nvictory.\n\nMathilde was still very embarrassed and seemed paralysed by the\nsteps which she had taken. She appeared delighted to find a topic\nof conversation. They talked of how they were to see each other\nagain. Julien extracted a delicious joy from the consciousness of\nthe intelligence and the courage, of which he again proved himself\npossessed during this discussion. They had to reckon with extremely\nsharp people, the little Tanbeau was certainly a spy, but Mathilde and\nhimself as well had their share of cleverness.\n\nWhat was easier than to meet in the library, and there make all\narrangements?\n\n\"I can appear in all parts of the hotel,\" added Julien, \"without\nrousing suspicion almost, in fact, in madame de la Mole's own room.\"\nIt was absolutely necessary to go through it in order to reach her\ndaughter's room. If Mathilde thought it preferable for him always to\ncome by a ladder, then he would expose himself to that paltry danger\nwith a heart intoxicated with joy.\n\nAs she listened to him speaking, Mathilde was shocked by this air of\ntriumph. \"So he is my master,\" she said to herself, she was already a\nprey to remorse. Her reason was horrified at the signal folly which she\nhad just committed. If she had had the power she would have annihilated\nboth herself and Julien. When for a few moments she managed by sheer\nwill-power to silence her pangs of remorse, she was rendered very\nunhappy by her timidity and wounded shame. She had quite failed to\nforesee the awful plight in which she now found herself.\n\n\"I must speak to him, however,\" she said at last. \"That is the proper\nthing to do. One does talk to one's lover.\" And then with a view of\naccomplishing a duty, and with a tenderness which was manifested rather\nin the words which she employed than in the inflection of her voice,\nshe recounted various resolutions which she had made concerning him\nduring the last few days.\n\nShe had decided that if he should dare to come to her room by the help\nof the gardener's ladder according to his instructions, she would be\nentirely his. But never were such tender passages spoken in a more\npolite and frigid tone. Up to the present this assignation had been\nicy. It was enough to make one hate the name of love. What a lesson\nin morality for a young and imprudent girl! Is it worth while to ruin\none's future for moments such as this?\n\nAfter long fits of hesitation which a superficial observer might have\nmistaken for the result of the most emphatic hate (so great is the\ndifficulty which a woman's self-respect finds in yielding even to so\nfirm a will as hers) Mathilde became eventually a charming mistress.\n\nIn point of fact, these ecstasies were a little artificial. Passionate\nlove was still more the model which they imitated than a real actuality.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole thought she was fulfilling a duty towards\nherself and towards her lover. \"The poor boy,\" she said to herself,\n\"has shewn a consummate bravery. He deserves to be happy or it is\nreally I who will be shewing a lack of character.\" But she would have\nbeen glad to have redeemed the cruel necessity in which she found\nherself even at the price of an eternity of unhappiness.\n\nIn spite of the awful violence she was doing to herself she was\ncompletely mistress of her words.\n\nNo regret and no reproach spoiled that night which Julien found\nextraordinary rather than happy. Great heavens! what a difference to\nhis last twenty-four hours' stay in Verrieres. These fine Paris manners\nmanage to spoil everything, even love, he said to himself, quite\nunjustly.\n\nHe abandoned himself to these reflections as he stood upright in one of\nthe great mahogany cupboards into which he had been put at the sign of\nthe first sounds of movement in the neighbouring apartment, which was\nmadame de la Mole's. Mathilde followed her mother to mass, the servants\nsoon left the apartment and Julien easily escaped before they came back\nto finish their work.\n\nHe mounted a horse and tried to find the most solitary spots in one\nof the forests near Paris. He was more astonished than happy. The\nhappiness which filled his soul from time to time resembled that of a\nyoung sub-lieutenant who as the result of some surprising feat has just\nbeen made a full-fledged colonel by the commander-in-chief; he felt\nhimself lifted up to an immense height. Everything which was above him\nthe day before was now on a level with him or even below him. Little\nby little Julien's happiness increased in proportion as he got further\naway from Paris.\n\nIf there was no tenderness in his soul, the reason was that, however\nstrange it may appear to say so, Mathilde had in everything she had\ndone, simply accomplished a duty. The only thing she had not foreseen\nin all the events of that night, was the shame and unhappiness which\nshe had experienced instead of that absolute felicity which is found in\nnovels.\n\n\"Can I have made a mistake, and not be in love with him?\" she said to\nherself.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVII\n\nAN OLD SWORD\n\n\nI now mean to be serious; it is time\nSince laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious.\nA jest at vice by virtues called a crime.\n                             _Don Juan, c. xiii._\n\n\nShe did not appear at dinner. She came for a minute into the salon in\nthe evening, but did not look at Julien. He considered this behaviour\nstrange, \"but,\" he thought, \"I do not know their usages. She will give\nme some good reason for all this.\" None the less he was a prey to\nthe most extreme curiosity; he studied the expression of Mathilde's\nfeatures; he was bound to own to himself that she looked cold and\nmalicious. It was evidently not the same woman who on the proceeding\nnight had had, or pretended to have, transports of happiness which were\ntoo extravagant to be genuine.\n\nThe day after, and the subsequent day she showed the same coldness;\nshe did not look at him, she did not notice his existence. Julien was\ndevoured by the keenest anxiety and was a thousand leagues removed from\nthat feeling of triumph which had been his only emotion on the first\nday. \"Can it be by chance,\" he said to himself, \"a return to virtue?\"\nBut this was a very bourgeois word to apply to the haughty Mathilde.\n\n\"Placed in an ordinary position in life she would disbelieve in\nreligion,\" thought Julien, \"she only likes it in so far as it is very\nuseful to the interests of her class.\"\n\nBut perhaps she may as a mere matter of delicacy be keenly reproaching\nherself for the mistake which she has committed. Julien believed that\nhe was her first lover.\n\n\"But,\" he said to himself at other moments, \"I must admit that there is\nno trace of naivety, simplicity, or tenderness in her own demeanour;\nI have never seen her more haughty, can she despise me? It would be\nworthy of her to reproach herself simply because of my low birth, for\nwhat she has done for me.\"\n\nWhile Julien, full of those preconceived ideas which he had found in\nbooks and in his memories of Verrieres, was chasing the phantom of a\ntender mistress, who from the minute when she has made her lover happy\nno longer thinks of her own existence, Mathilde's vanity was infuriated\nagainst him.\n\nAs for the last two months she had no longer been bored, she was not\nfrightened of boredom; consequently, without being able to have the\nslightest suspicion of it, Julien had lost his greatest advantage.\n\n\"I have given myself a master,\" said mademoiselle de la Mole to\nherself, a prey to the blackest sorrow. \"Luckily he is honour itself,\nbut if I offend his vanity, he will revenge himself by making known\nthe nature of our relations.\" Mathilde had never had a lover, and\nthough passing through a stage of life which affords some tender\nillusions even to the coldest souls, she fell a prey to the most bitter\nreflections.\n\n\"He has an immense dominion over me since his reign is one of terror,\nand he is capable, if I provoke him, of punishing me with an awful\npenalty.\" This idea alone was enough to induce mademoiselle de la\nMole to insult him. Courage was the primary quality in her character.\nThe only thing which could give her any thrill and cure her from a\nfundamental and chronically recurring ennui was the idea that she was\nstaking her entire existence on a single throw.\n\nAs mademoiselle de la Mole obstinately refused to look at him, Julien\non the third day in spite of her evident objection, followed her into\nthe billiard-room after dinner.\n\n\"Well, sir, you think you have acquired some very strong rights over\nme?\" she said to him with scarcely controlled anger, \"since you venture\nto speak to me, in spite of my very clearly manifested wish? Do you\nknow that no one in the world has had such effrontery?\"\n\nThe dialogue of these two lovers was incomparably humourous. Without\nsuspecting it, they were animated by mutual sentiments of the most\nvivid hate. As neither the one nor the other had a meekly patient\ncharacter, while they were both disciples of good form, they soon came\nto informing each other quite clearly that they would break for ever.\n\n\"I swear eternal secrecy to you,\" said Julien. \"I should like to add\nthat I would never address a single word to you, were it not that a\nmarked change might perhaps jeopardise your reputation.\" He saluted\nrespectfully and left.\n\nHe accomplished easily enough what he believed to be a duty; he was\nvery far from thinking himself much in love with mademoiselle de la\nMole. He had certainly not loved her three days before, when he had\nbeen hidden in the big mahogany cupboard. But the moment that he found\nhimself estranged from her for ever his mood underwent a complete and\nrapid change.\n\nHis memory tortured him by going over the least details in that night,\nwhich had as a matter of fact left him so cold. In the very night that\nfollowed this announcement of a final rupture, Julien almost went mad\nat being obliged to own to himself that he loved mademoiselle de la\nMole.\n\nThis discovery was followed by awful struggles: all his emotions were\noverwhelmed.\n\nTwo days later, instead of being haughty towards M. de Croisenois, he\ncould have almost burst out into tears and embraced him.\n\nHis habituation to unhappiness gave him a gleam of commonsense, he\ndecided to leave for Languedoc, packed his trunk and went to the post.\n\nHe felt he would faint, when on arriving at the office of the mails, he\nwas told that by a singular chance there was a place in the Toulouse\nmail. He booked it and returned to the Hotel de la Mole to announce his\ndeparture to the marquis.\n\nM. de la Mole had gone out. More dead than alive Julien went into\nthe library to wait for him. What was his emotion when he found\nmademoiselle de la Mole there.\n\nAs she saw him come, she assumed a malicious expression which it was\nimpossible to mistake.\n\nIn his unhappiness and surprise Julien lost his head and was weak\nenough to say to her in a tone of the most heartfelt tenderness. \"So\nyou love me no more.\"\n\n\"I am horrified at having given myself to the first man who came\nalong,\" said Mathilde crying with rage against herself.\n\n\"The first man who came along,\" cried Julien, and he made for an old\nmediaeval sword which was kept in the library as a curiosity.\n\nHis grief--which he thought was at its maximum at the moment when he\nhad spoken to mademoiselle de la Mole--had been rendered a hundred\ntimes more intense by the tears of shame which he saw her shedding.\n\nHe would have been the happiest of men if he had been able to kill her.\n\nWhen he was on the point of drawing the sword with some difficulty from\nits ancient scabbard, Mathilde, rendered happy by so novel a sensation,\nadvanced proudly towards him, her tears were dry.\n\nThe thought of his benefactor--the marquis de la Mole--presented\nitself vividly to Julien. \"Shall I kill his daughter?\" he said to\nhimself, \"how horrible.\" He made a movement to throw down the sword.\n\"She will certainly,\" he thought, \"burst out laughing at the sight of\nsuch a melodramatic pose:\" that idea was responsible for his regaining\nall his self-possession. He looked curiously at the blade of the old\nsword as though he had been looking for some spot of rust, then put it\nback in the scabbard and replaced it with the utmost tranquillity on\nthe gilt bronze nail from which it hung.\n\nThe whole manoeuvre, which towards the end was very slow, lasted quite\na minute; mademoiselle de la Mole looked at him in astonishment. \"So\nI have been on the verge of being killed by my lover,\" she said to\nherself.\n\nThis idea transported her into the palmiest days of the age of Charles\nIX. and of Henri III.\n\nShe stood motionless before Julien, who had just replaced the sword;\nshe looked at him with eyes whose hatred had disappeared. It must be\nowned that she was very fascinating at this moment, certainly no woman\nlooked less like a Parisian doll (this expression symbolised Julien's\ngreat objection to the women of this city).\n\n\"I shall relapse into some weakness for him,\" thought Mathilde; \"it\nis quite likely that he will think himself my lord and master after a\nrelapse like that at the very moment that I have been talking to him so\nfirmly.\" She ran away.\n\n\"By heaven, she is pretty said Julien as he watched her run and that's\nthe creature who threw herself into my arms with so much passion\nscarcely a week ago ... and to think that those moments will never\ncome back? And that it's my fault, to think of my being lacking\nin appreciation at the very moment when I was doing something so\nextraordinarily interesting! I must own that I was born with a very\ndull and unfortunate character.\"\n\nThe marquis appeared; Julien hastened to announce his departure.\n\n\"Where to?\" said M. de la Mole.\n\n\"For Languedoc.\"\n\n\"No, if you please, you are reserved for higher destinies. If you leave\nit will be for the North.... In military phraseology I actually confine\nyou in the hotel. You will compel me to be never more than two or three\nhours away. I may have need of you at any moment.\"\n\nJulien bowed and retired without a word, leaving the marquis in a state\nof great astonishment. He was incapable of speaking. He shut himself\nup in his room. He was there free to exaggerate to himself all the\nawfulness of his fate.\n\n\"So,\" he thought, \"I cannot even get away. God knows how many days\nthe marquis will keep me in Paris. Great God, what will become of me,\nand not a friend whom I can consult? The abbe Pirard will never let\nme finish my first sentence, while the comte Altamira will propose\nenlisting me in some conspiracy. And yet I am mad; I feel it, I am mad.\nWho will be able to guide me, what will become of me?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVIII\n\nCRUEL MOMENTS\n\n\n        And she confesses it to me! She goes into even\n        the smallest details! Her beautiful eyes fixed on\n        mine, and describes the love which she felt for\n        another.--_Schiller_.\n\n\nThe delighted mademoiselle de la Mole thought of nothing but the\nhappiness of having been nearly killed. She went so far as to say to\nherself, \"he is worthy of being my master since he was on the point of\nkilling me. How many handsome young society men would have to be melted\ntogether before they were capable of so passionate a transport.\"\n\n\"I must admit that he was very handsome at the time when he climbed up\non the chair to replace the sword in the same picturesque position in\nwhich the decorator hung it! After all it was not so foolish of me to\nlove him.\"\n\nIf at that moment some honourable means of reconciliation had presented\nitself, she would have embraced it with pleasure. Julien locked in his\nroom was a prey to the most violent despair. He thought in his madness\nof throwing himself at her feet. If instead of hiding himself in an out\nof the way place, he had wandered about the garden of the hotel so as\nto keep within reach of any opportunity, he would perhaps have changed\nin a single moment his awful unhappiness into the keenest happiness.\n\nBut the tact for whose lack we are now reproaching him would have been\nincompatible with that sublime seizure of the sword, which at the\npresent time rendered him so handsome in the eyes of mademoiselle de\nla Mole. This whim in Julien's favour lasted the whole day; Mathilde\nconjured up a charming image of the short moments during which she had\nloved him: she regretted them.\n\n\"As a matter of fact,\" she said to herself, \"my passion for this poor\nboy can from his point of view only have lasted from one hour after\nmidnight when I saw him arrive by his ladder with all his pistols in\nhis coat pocket, till eight o'clock in the morning. It was a quarter of\nan hour after that as I listened to mass at Sainte-Valere that I began\nto think that he might very well try to terrify me into obedience.\"\n\nAfter dinner mademoiselle de la Mole, so far from avoiding Julien,\nspoke to him and made him promise to follow her into the garden. He\nobeyed. It was a new experience.\n\nWithout suspecting it Mathilde was yielding to the love which she was\nnow feeling for him again. She found an extreme pleasure in walking by\nhis side, and she looked curiously at those hands which had seized the\nsword to kill her that very morning.\n\nAfter such an action, after all that had taken place, some of the\nformer conversation was out of the question.\n\nMathilde gradually began to talk confidentially to him about the\nstate of her heart. She found a singular pleasure in this kind of\nconversation, she even went so far as to describe to him the fleeting\nmoments of enthusiasm which she had experienced for M. de Croisenois,\nfor M. de Caylus----\n\n\"What! M. de Caylus as well!\" exclaimed Julien, and all the jealousy of\na discarded lover burst out in those words, Mathilde thought as much,\nbut did not feel at all insulted.\n\nShe continued torturing Julien by describing her former sentiments with\nthe most picturesque detail and the accent of the most intimate truth.\nHe saw that she was portraying what she had in her mind's eye. He had\nthe pain of noticing that as she spoke she made new discoveries in her\nown heart.\n\nThe unhappiness of jealousy could not be carried further.\n\nIt is cruel enough to suspect that a rival is loved, but there is no\ndoubt that to hear the woman one adores confess in detail the love\nwhich rivals inspires, is the utmost limit of anguish.\n\nOh, how great a punishment was there now for those impulses of pride\nwhich had induced Julien to place himself as superior to the Caylus\nand the Croisenois! How deeply did he feel his own unhappiness as he\nexaggerated to himself their most petty advantages. With what hearty\ngood faith he despised himself.\n\nMathilde struck him as adorable. All words are weak to express his\nexcessive admiration. As he walked beside her he looked surreptitiously\nat her hands, her arms, her queenly bearing. He was so completely\novercome by love and unhappiness as to be on the point of falling at\nher feet and crying \"pity.\"\n\n\"Yes, and that person who is so beautiful, who is so superior to\neverything and who loved me once, will doubtless soon love M. de\nCaylus.\"\n\nJulien could have no doubts of mademoiselle de la Mole's sincerity,\nthe accent of truth was only too palpable in everything she said. In\norder that nothing might be wanting to complete his unhappiness there\nwere moments when, as a result of thinking about the sentiments which\nshe had once experienced for M. de Caylus, Mathilde came to talk of\nhim, as though she loved him at the present time. She certainly put an\ninflection of love into her voice. Julien distinguished it clearly.\n\nHe would have suffered less if his bosom had been filled inside with\nmolten lead. Plunged as he was in this abyss of unhappiness how could\nthe poor boy have guessed that it was simply because she was talking to\nhim, that mademoiselle de la Mole found so much pleasure in recalling\nthose weaknesses of love which she had formerly experienced for M. de\nCaylus or M. de Luz.\n\nWords fail to express Julien's anguish. He listened to these detailed\nconfidences of the love she had experienced for others in that very\navenue of pines where he had waited so few days ago for one o'clock\nto strike that he might invade her room. No human being can undergo a\ngreater degree of unhappiness.\n\nThis kind of familiar cruelty lasted for eight long days. Mathilde\nsometimes seemed to seek opportunities of speaking to him and sometimes\nnot to avoid them; and the one topic of conversation to which they both\nseemed to revert with a kind of cruel pleasure, was the description of\nthe sentiments she had felt for others. She told him about the letters\nwhich she had written, she remembered their very words, she recited\nwhole sentences by heart.\n\nShe seemed during these last days to be envisaging Julien with a kind\nof malicious joy. She found a keen enjoyment in his pangs.\n\nOne sees that Julien had no experience of life; he had not even read\nany novels. If he had been a little less awkward and he had coolly said\nto the young girl, whom he adored so much and who had been giving him\nsuch strange confidences: \"admit that though I am not worth as much as\nall these gentlemen, I am none the less the man whom you loved,\" she\nwould perhaps have been happy at being at thus guessed; at any rate\nsuccess would have entirely depended on the grace with which Julien had\nexpressed the idea, and on the moment which he had chosen to do so. In\nany case he would have extricated himself well and advantageously from\na situation which Mathilde was beginning to find monotonous.\n\n\"And you love me no longer, me, who adores you!\" said Julien to her one\nday, overcome by love and unhappiness. This piece of folly was perhaps\nthe greatest which he could have committed. These words immediately\ndestroyed all the pleasure which mademoiselle de la Mole found in\ntalking to him about the state of her heart. She was beginning to be\nsurprised that he did not, after what had happened, take offence at\nwhat she told him. She had even gone so far as to imagine at the very\nmoment when he made that foolish remark that perhaps he did not love\nher any more. \"His pride has doubtless extinguished his love,\" she was\nsaying to herself. \"He is not the man to sit still and see people like\nCaylus, de Luz, Croisenois whom he admits are so superior, preferred to\nhim. No, I shall never see him at my feet again.\"\n\nJulien had often in the naivety of his unhappiness, during the previous\ndays praised sincerely the brilliant qualities of these gentlemen; he\nwould even go so far as to exaggerate them. This nuance had not escaped\nmademoiselle de la Mole, she was astonished by it, but did not guess\nits reason. Julien's frenzied soul, in praising a rival whom he thought\nwas loved, was sympathising with his happiness.\n\nThese frank but stupid words changed everything in a single moment;\nconfident that she was loved, Mathilde despised him utterly.\n\nShe was walking with him when he made his ill-timed remark; she left\nhim, and her parting look expressed the most awful contempt. She\nreturned to the salon and did not look at him again during the whole\nevening. This contempt monopolised her mind the following day. The\nimpulse which during the last week had made her find so much pleasure\nin treating Julien as her most intimate friend was out of the question;\nthe very sight of him was disagreeable. The sensation Mathilde felt\nreached the point of disgust; nothing can express the extreme contempt\nwhich she experienced when her eyes fell upon him.\n\nJulien had understood nothing of the history of Mathilde's heart during\nthe last week, but he distinguished the contempt. He had the good sense\nonly to appear before her on the rarest possible occasions, and never\nlooked at her.\n\nBut it was not without a mortal anguish that he, as it were, deprived\nhimself of her presence. He thought he felt his unhappiness increasing\nstill further. \"The courage of a man's heart cannot be carried\nfurther,\" he said to himself. He passed his life seated at a little\nwindow at the top of the hotel; the blind was carefully closed, and\nfrom here at any rate he could see mademoiselle de la Mole when she\nappeared in the garden.\n\nWhat were his emotions when he saw her walking after dinner with M. de\nCaylus, M. de Luz, or some other for whom she had confessed to him some\nformer amorous weakness!\n\nJulien had no idea that unhappiness could be so intense; he was on\nthe point of shouting out. This firm soul was at last completely\noverwhelmed.\n\nThinking about anything else except mademoiselle de la Mole had become\nodious to him; he became incapable of writing the simplest letters.\n\n\"You are mad,\" the marquis said to him.\n\nJulien was frightened that his secret might be guessed, talked\nabout illness and succeeded in being believed. Fortunately for him\nthe marquis rallied him at dinner about his next journey; Mathilde\nunderstood that it might be a very long one. It was now several days\nthat Julien had avoided her, and the brilliant young men who had all\nthat this pale sombre being she had once loved was lacking, had no\nlonger the power of drawing her out of her reverie.\n\n\"An ordinary girl,\" she said to herself, \"would have sought out the man\nshe preferred among those young people who are the cynosure of a salon;\nbut one of the characteristics of genius is not to drive its thoughts\nover the rut traced by the vulgar.\n\n\"Why, if I were the companion of a man like Julien, who only lacks the\nfortune that I possess, I should be continually exciting attention, I\nshould not pass through life unnoticed. Far from incessantly fearing\na revolution like my cousins who are so frightened of the people that\nthey have not the pluck to scold a postillion who drives them badly, I\nshould be certain of playing a role and a great role, for the man whom\nI have chosen has a character and a boundless ambition. What does he\nlack? Friends, money? I will give them him.\" But she treated Julien in\nher thought as an inferior being whose love one could win whenever one\nwanted.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIX\n\nTHE OPERA BOUFFE\n\n\n    How the spring of love resembleth\n    The uncertain glory of an April day,\n    Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,\n    And by and by a cloud takes all away.--_Shakespeare_.\n\n\nEngrossed by thoughts of her future and the singular role which\nshe hoped to play, Mathilde soon came to miss the dry metaphysical\nconversations which she had often had with Julien. Fatigued by\nthese lofty thoughts she would sometimes also miss those moments of\nhappiness which she had found by his side; these last memories were not\nunattended by remorse which at certain times even overwhelmed her.\n\n\"But one may have a weakness,\" she said to herself, \"a girl like I am\nshould only forget herself for a man of real merit; they will not say\nthat it is his pretty moustache or his skill in horsemanship which have\nfascinated me, but rather his deep discussions on the future of France\nand his ideas on the analogy between the events which are going to\nburst upon us and the English revolution of 1688.\"\n\n\"I have been seduced,\" she answered in her remorse. \"I am a weak\nwoman, but at least I have not been led astray like a doll by exterior\nadvantages.\"\n\n\"If there is a revolution why should not Julien Sorel play the role of\nRoland and I the role of Madame Roland? I prefer that part to Madame de\nStael's; the immorality of my conduct will constitute an obstacle in\nthis age of ours. I will certainly not let them reproach me with an act\nof weakness; I should die of shame.\"\n\nMathilde's reveries were not all as grave, one must admit, as the\nthoughts which we have just transcribed.\n\nShe would look at Julien and find a charming grace in his slightest\naction.\n\n\"I have doubtless,\" she would say, \"succeeded in destroying in him the\nvery faintest idea he had of any one else's rights.\"\n\n\"The air of unhappiness and deep passion with which the poor boy\ndeclared his love to me eight days ago proves it; I must own it was\nvery extraordinary of me to manifest anger at words in which there\nshone so much respect and so much of passion. Am I not his real wife?\nThose words of his were quite natural, and I must admit, were really\nvery nice. Julien still continued to love me, even after those eternal\nconversations in which I had only spoken to him (cruelly enough I\nadmit), about those weaknesses of love which the boredom of the life\nI lead had inspired me for those young society men of whom he is so\njealous. Ah, if he only knew what little danger I have to fear from\nthem; how withered and stereotyped they seem to me in comparison with\nhim.\"\n\nWhile indulging in these reflections Mathilde made a random pencil\nsketch of a profile on a page of her album. One of the profiles she\nhad just finished surprised and delighted her. It had a striking\nresemblance to Julien. \"It is the voice of heaven. That's one of the\nmiracles of love,\" she cried ecstatically; \"Without suspecting it, I\nhave drawn his portrait.\"\n\nShe fled to her room, shut herself up in it, and with much application\nmade strenuous endeavours to draw Julien's portrait, but she was unable\nto succeed; the profile she had traced at random still remained the\nmost like him. Mathilde was delighted with it. She saw in it a palpable\nproof of the grand passion.\n\nShe only left her album very late when the marquise had her called to\ngo to the Italian Opera. Her one idea was to catch sight of Julien, so\nthat she might get her mother to request him to keep them company.\n\nHe did not appear, and the ladies had only ordinary vulgar creatures in\ntheir box. During the first act of the opera, Mathilde dreamt of the\nman she loved with all the ecstasies of the most vivid passion; but a\nlove-maxim in the second act sung it must be owned to a melody worthy\nof Cimarosa pierced her heart. The heroine of the opera said \"You must\npunish me for the excessive adoration which I feel for him. I love him\ntoo much.\"\n\nFrom the moment that Mathilde heard this sublime song everything in\nthe world ceased to exist. She was spoken to, she did not answer; her\nmother reprimanded her, she could scarcely bring herself to look at\nher. Her ecstasy reached a state of exultation and passion analogous\nto the most violent transports which Julien had felt for her for some\ndays. The divinely graceful melody to which the maxim, which seemed\nto have such a striking application to her own position, was sung,\nengrossed all the minutes when she was not actually thinking of Julien.\nThanks to her love for music she was on this particular evening like\nmadame de Renal always was, when she thought of Julien. Love of the\nhead has doubtless more intelligence than true love, but it only has\nmoments of enthusiasm. It knows itself too well, it sits in judgment on\nitself incessantly; far from distracting thought it is made by sheer\nforce of thought.\n\nOn returning home Mathilde, in spite of madame de la Mole's\nremonstrances, pretended to have a fever and spent a part of the night\nin going over this melody on her piano. She sang the words of the\ncelebrated air which had so fascinated her:--\n\n     Devo punirmi, devo punirmi.\n     Se troppo amai, etc.\n\nAs the result of this night of madness, she imagined that she had\nsucceeded in triumphing over her love. This page will be prejudicial\nin more than one way to the unfortunate author. Frigid souls will\naccuse him of indecency. But the young ladies who shine in the Paris\nsalons have no right to feel insulted at the supposition that one of\ntheir number might be liable to those transports of madness which have\nbeen degrading the character of Mathilde. That character is purely\nimaginary, and is even drawn quite differently from that social code\nwhich will guarantee so distinguished a place in the world's history to\nnineteenth century civilization.\n\nThe young girls who have adorned this winter's balls are certainly not\nlacking in prudence.\n\nI do not think either that they can be accused of being unduly scornful\nof a brilliant fortune, horses, fine estates and all the guarantees\nof a pleasant position in society. Far from finding these advantages\nsimply equivalent to boredom, they usually concentrate on them their\nmost constant desires and and devote to them such passion as their\nhearts possess.\n\nNor again is it love which is the dominant principle in the career of\nyoung men who, like Julien, are gifted with some talent; they attach\nthemselves with an irresistible grip to some coterie, and when the\ncoterie succeeds all the good things of society are rained upon them.\nWoe to the studious man who belongs to no coterie, even his smallest\nand most doubtful successes will constitute a grievance, and lofty\nvirtue will rob him and triumph. Yes, monsieur, a novel is a mirror\nwhich goes out on a highway. Sometimes it reflects the azure of the\nheavens, sometimes the mire of the pools of mud on the way, and the\nman who carries this mirror in his knapsack is forsooth to be accused\nby you of being immoral! His mirror shows the mire, and you accuse the\nmirror! Rather accuse the main road where the mud is, or rather the\ninspector of roads who allows the water to accumulate and the mud to\nform.\n\nNow that it is quite understood that Mathilde's character is impossible\nin our own age, which is as discreet as it is virtuous, I am less\nfrightened of offence by continuing the history of the follies of this\ncharming girl.\n\nDuring the whole of the following day she looked out for opportunities\nof convincing herself of her triumph over her mad passion. Her great\naim was to displease Julien in everything; but not one of his movements\nescaped her.\n\nJulien was too unhappy, and above all too agitated to appreciate so\ncomplicated a stratagem of passion. Still less was he capable of\nseeing how favourable it really was to him. He was duped by it. His\nunhappiness had perhaps never been so extreme. His actions were so\nlittle controlled by his intellect that if some mournful philosopher\nhad said to him, \"Think how to exploit as quickly as you can those\nsymptoms which promise to be favourable to you. In this kind of\nhead-love which is seen at Paris, the same mood cannot last more than\ntwo days,\" he would not have understood him. But however ecstatic he\nmight feel, Julien was a man of honour. Discretion was his first duty.\nHe appreciated it. Asking advice, describing his agony to the first\nman who came along would have constituted a happiness analogous to\nthat of the unhappy man who, when traversing a burning desert receives\nfrom heaven a drop of icy water. He realised the danger, was frightened\nof answering an indiscreet question by a torrent of tears, and shut\nhimself up in his own room.\n\nHe saw Mathilde walking in the garden for a long time. When she at last\nleft it, he went down there and approached the rose bush from which she\nhad taken a flower.\n\nThe night was dark and he could abandon himself to his unhappiness\nwithout fear of being seen. It was obvious to him that mademoiselle de\nla Mole loved one of those young officers with whom she had chatted so\ngaily. She had loved him, but she had realised his little merit, \"and\nas a matter of fact I had very little,\" Julien said to himself with\nfull conviction. \"Taking me all round I am a very dull, vulgar person,\nvery boring to others and quite unbearable to myself.\" He was mortally\ndisgusted with all his good qualities, and with all the things which he\nhad once loved so enthusiastically; and it was when his imagination was\nin this distorted condition that he undertook to judge life by means of\nits aid. This mistake is typical of a superior man.\n\nThe idea of suicide presented itself to him several times; the idea was\nfull of charm, and like a delicious rest; because it was the glass of\niced water offered to the wretch dying of thirst and heat in the desert.\n\n\"My death will increase the contempt she has for me,\" he exclaimed.\n\"What a memory I should leave her.\"\n\nCourage is the only resource of a human being who has fallen into this\nlast abyss of unhappiness. Julien did not have sufficient genius to say\nto himself, \"I must dare,\" but as he looked at the window of Mathilde's\nroom he saw through the blinds that she was putting out her light. He\nconjured up that charming room which he had seen, alas! once in his\nwhole life. His imagination did not go any further.\n\nOne o'clock struck. Hearing the stroke of the clock and saying to\nhimself, \"I will climb up the ladder,\" scarcely took a moment.\n\nIt was the flash of genius, good reasons crowded on his mind. \"May I be\nmore fortunate than before,\" he said to himself. He ran to the ladder.\nThe gardener had chained it up. With the help of the cock of one of\nhis little pistols which he broke, Julien, who for the time being was\nanimated by a superhuman force, twisted one of the links of the chain\nwhich held the ladder. He was master of it in a few minutes, and placed\nit against Mathilde's window.\n\n\"She will be angry and riddle me with scornful words! What does it\nmatter? I will give her a kiss, one last kiss. I will go up to my room\nand kill myself ... my lips will touch her cheek before I die.\"\n\nHe flew up the ladder and knocked at the blind; Mathilde heard him\nafter some minutes and tried to open the blind but the ladder was in\nthe way. Julien hung to the iron hook intending to keep the blind open,\nand at the imminent risk of falling down, gave the ladder a violent\nshake which moved it a little. Mathilde was able to open the blind.\n\nHe threw himself into the window more dead than alive.\n\n\"So it is you, dear,\" she said as she rushed into his arms.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe excess of Julien's happiness was indescribable. Mathilde's almost\nequalled his own.\n\nShe talked against herself to him and denounced herself.\n\n\"Punish me for my awful pride,\" she said to him, clasping him in her\narms so tightly as almost to choke him. \"You are my master, dear, I\nam your slave. I must ask your pardon on my knees for having tried to\nrebel.\" She left his arms to fall at his feet. \"Yes,\" she said to him,\nstill intoxicated with happiness and with love, \"you are my master,\nreign over me for ever. When your slave tries to revolt, punish her\nseverely.\"\n\nIn another moment she tore herself from his arms, and lit a candle,\nand it was only by a supreme effort that Julien could prevent her from\ncutting off a whole tress of her hair.\n\n\"I want to remind myself,\" she said to him, \"that I am your handmaid.\nIf I am ever led astray again by my abominable pride, show me this hair\nand say, 'It is not a question of the emotion which your soul may be\nfeeling at present, you have sworn to obey, obey on your honour.'\"\n\nBut it is wiser to suppress the description of so intense a transport\nof delirious happiness.\n\nJulien's unselfishness was equal to his happiness. \"I must go down by\nthe ladder,\" he said to Mathilde, when he saw the dawn of day appear\nfrom the quarter of the east over the distant chimneys beyond the\ngarden. \"The sacrifice that I impose on myself is worthy of you. I\ndeprive myself of some hours of the most astonishing happiness that a\nhuman soul can savour, but it is a sacrifice I make for the sake of\nyour reputation. If you know my heart you will appreciate how violent\nis the strain to which I am putting myself. Will you always be to me\nwhat you are now? But honour speaks, it suffices. Let me tell you that\nsince our last interview, thieves have not been the only object of\nsuspicion. M. de la Mole has set a guard in the garden. M. Croisenois\nis surrounded by spies: they know what he does every night.\"\n\nMathilde burst out laughing at this idea. Her mother and a chamber-maid\nwere woken up, they suddenly began to speak to her through the door.\nJulien looked at her, she grew pale as she scolded the chamber-maid,\nand she did not deign to speak to her mother. \"But suppose they think\nof opening the window, they will see the ladder,\" Julien said to her.\n\nHe clasped her again in his arms, rushed on to the ladder, and slid,\nrather than climbed down; he was on the ground in a moment.\n\nThree seconds after the ladder was in the avenue of pines, and\nMathilde's honour was saved. Julien returned to his room and found that\nhe was bleeding and almost naked. He had wounded himself in sliding\ndown in that dare-devil way.\n\nExtreme happiness had made him regain all the energy of his character.\nIf twenty men had presented themselves it would have proved at this\nmoment only an additional pleasure to have attacked them unaided.\nHappily his military prowess was not put to the proof. He laid the\nladder in its usual place and replaced the chain which held it. He did\nnot forget to efface the mark which the ladder had left on the bed of\nexotic flowers under Mathilde's window.\n\nAs he was moving his hand over the soft ground in the darkness and\nsatisfying himself that the mark had entirely disappeared, he felt\nsomething fall down on his hands. It was a whole tress of Mathilde's\nhair which she had cut off and thrown down to him.\n\nShe was at the window.\n\n\"That's what your servant sends you,\" she said to him in a fairly loud\nvoice, \"It is the sign of eternal gratitude. I renounce the exercise of\nmy reason, be my master.\"\n\nJulien was quite overcome and was on the point of going to fetch the\nladder again and climbing back into her room. Finally reason prevailed.\n\nGetting back into the hotel from the garden was not easy. He succeeded\nin forcing the door of a cellar. Once in the house he was obliged to\nbreak through the door of his room as silently as possible. In his\nagitation he had left in the little room which he had just abandoned so\nrapidly, the key which was in the pocket of his coat. \"I only hope she\nthinks of hiding that fatal trophy,\" he thought.\n\nFinally fatigue prevailed over happiness, and as the sun was rising he\nfell into a deep sleep.\n\nThe breakfast bell only just managed to wake him up. He appeared in the\ndining-room. Shortly afterwards Mathilde came in. Julien's pride felt\ndeliciously flattered as he saw the love which shone in the eyes of\nthis beautiful creature who was surrounded by so much homage; but soon\nhis discretion had occasion to be alarmed.\n\nMaking an excuse of the little time that she had had to do her hair,\nMathilde had arranged it in such a way that Julien could see at the\nfirst glance the full extent of the sacrifice that she had made for his\nsake, by cutting off her hair on the previous night.\n\nIf it had been possible to spoil so beautiful a face by anything\nwhatsoever, Mathilde would have succeeded in doing it. A whole tress\nof her beautiful blonde hair was cut off to within half an inch of the\nscalp.\n\nMathilde's whole manner during breakfast was in keeping with this\ninitial imprudence. One might have said that she had made a specific\npoint of trying to inform the whole world of her mad passion for\nJulien. Happily on this particular day M. de la Mole and the marquis\nwere very much concerned about an approaching bestowal of \"blue\nribbons\" which was going to take place, and in which M. de Chaulnes was\nnot comprised. Towards the end of the meal, Mathilde, who was talking\nto Julien, happened to call him \"My Master.\" He blushed up to the\nwhites of his eyes.\n\nMathilde was not left alone for an instant that day, whether by chance\nor the deliberate policy of madame de la Mole. In the evening when she\npassed from the dining-room into the salon, however, she managed to say\nto Julien: \"You may be thinking I am making an excuse, but mamma has\njust decided that one of her women is to spend the night in my room.\"\n\nThis day passed with lightning rapidity. Julien was at the zenith of\nhappiness. At seven o'clock in the morning of the following day he\ninstalled himself in the library. He hoped the mademoiselle de la Mole\nwould deign to appear there; he had written her an interminable letter.\nHe only saw her several hours afterwards at breakfast. Her hair was\ndone to-day with the very greatest care; a marvellous art had managed\nto hide the place where the hair had been cut. She looked at Julien\nonce or twice, but her eyes were polite and calm, and there was no\nquestion of calling him \"My Master.\"\n\nJulien's astonishment prevented him from breathing--Mathilde was\nreproaching herself for all she had done for him. After mature\nreflection, she had come to the conclusion that he was a person who,\nthough not absolutely commonplace, was yet not sufficiently different\nfrom the common ruck to deserve all the strange follies that she\nhad ventured for his sake. To sum up she did not give love a single\nthought; on this particular day she was tired of loving.\n\nAs for Julien, his emotions were those of a child of sixteen. He was a\nsuccessive prey to awful doubt, astonishment and despair during this\nbreakfast which he thought would never end.\n\nAs soon as he could decently get up from the table, he flew rather than\nran to the stable, saddled his horse himself, and galloped off. \"I\nmust kill my heart through sheer force of physical fatigue,\" he said\nto himself as he galloped through the Meudon woods. \"What have I done,\nwhat have I said to deserve a disgrace like this?\"\n\n\"I must do nothing and say nothing to-day,\" he thought as he re-entered\nthe hotel. \"I must be as dead physically as I am morally.\" Julien saw\nnothing any more, it was only his corpse which kept moving.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER L\n\nTHE JAPANESE VASE\n\n\n        His heart does not first realise the full extremity of\n        his unhappiness: he is more troubled than moved. But as\n        reason returns he feels the depth of his misfortune. All\n        the pleasures of life seem to have been destroyed, he\n        can only feel the sharp barbs of a lacerating despair.\n        But what is the use of talking of physical pain? What\n        pain which is only felt by the body can be compared to\n        this pain?--_Jean Paul_.\n\n\nThe dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress: he found\nMathilde in the salon. She was pressing her brother and M. de\nCroisenois to promise her that they would not go and spend the evening\nat Suresnes with madame the marechale de Fervaques.\n\nIt would have been difficult to have shown herself more amiable or\nfascinating to them. M. de Luz, de Caylus and several of their friends\ncame in after dinner. One would have said that mademoiselle de la Mole\nhad commenced again to cultivate the most scrupulous conventionality\nat the same time as her sisterly affection. Although the weather was\ndelightful this evening, she refused to go out into the garden, and\ninsisted on their all staying near the arm-chair where madame de la\nMole was sitting. The blue sofa was the centre of the group as it had\nbeen in the winter.\n\nMathilde was out of temper with the garden, or at any rate she found it\nabsolutely boring: it was bound up with the memory of Julien.\n\nUnhappiness blunts the edge of the intellect. Our hero had the bad\ntaste to stop by that little straw chair which had formerly witnessed\nhis most brilliant triumphs. To-day none spoke to him, his presence\nseemed to be unnoticed, and worse than that. Those of mademoiselle de\nla Mole's friends who were sitting near him at the end of the sofa,\nmade a point of somehow or other turning their back on him, at any rate\nhe thought so.\n\n\"It is a court disgrace,\" he thought. He tried to study for a moment\nthe people who were endeavouring to overwhelm him with their contempt.\nM. de Luz had an important post in the King's suite, the result of\nwhich was that the handsome officer began every conversation with\nevery listener who came along by telling him this special piece of\ninformation. His uncle had started at seven o'clock for St. Cloud\nand reckoned on spending the night there. This detail was introduced\nwith all the appearance of good nature but it never failed to be\nworked in. As Julien scrutinized M. de Croisenois with a stern gaze of\nunhappiness, he observed that this good amiable young man attributed\na great influence to occult causes. He even went so far as to become\nmelancholy and out of temper if he saw an event of the slightest\nimportance ascribed to a simple and perfectly natural cause.\n\n\"There is an element of madness in this,\" Julien said to himself.\nThis man's character has a striking analogy with that of the Emperor\nAlexander, such as the Prince Korasoff described it to me. During the\nfirst year of his stay in Paris poor Julien, fresh from the seminary\nand dazzled by the graces of all these amiable young people, whom he\nfound so novel, had felt bound to admire them. Their true character was\nonly beginning to become outlined in his eyes.\n\n\"I am playing an undignified role here,\" he suddenly thought. The\nquestion was, how he could leave the little straw chair without undue\nawkwardness. He wanted to invent something, and tried to extract some\nnovel excuse from an imagination which was otherwise engrossed. He was\ncompelled to fall back on his memory, which was, it must be owned,\nsomewhat poor in resources of this kind.\n\nThe poor boy was still very much out of his element, and could not have\nexhibited a more complete and noticeable awkwardness when he got up to\nleave the salon. His misery was only too palpable in his whole manner.\nHe had been playing, for the last three quarters of an hour, the role\nof an officious inferior from whom one does not take the trouble to\nhide what one really thinks.\n\nThe critical observations he had just made on his rivals prevented\nhim, however, from taking his own unhappiness too tragically. His pride\ncould take support in what had taken place the previous day. \"Whatever\nmay be their advantages over me,\" he thought, as he went into the\ngarden alone, \"Mathilde has never been to a single one of them what,\ntwice in my life, she has deigned to be to me!\" His penetration did not\ngo further. He absolutely failed to appreciate the character of the\nextraordinary person whom chance had just made the supreme mistress of\nall his happiness.\n\nHe tried, on the following day, to make himself and his horse dead\ntired with fatigue. He made no attempt in the evening to go near the\nblue sofa to which Mathilde remained constant. He noticed that comte\nNorbert did not even deign to look at him when he met him about the\nhouse. \"He must be doing something very much against the grain,\" he\nthought; \"he is naturally so polite.\"\n\nSleep would have been a happiness to Julien. In spite of his physical\nfatigue, memories which were only too seductive commenced to invade his\nimagination. He had not the genius to see that, inasmuch as his long\nrides on horseback over forests on the outskirts of Paris only affected\nhim, and had no affect at all on Mathilde's heart or mind, he was\nconsequently leaving his eventual destiny to the caprice of chance. He\nthought that one thing would give his pain an infinite relief: it would\nbe to speak to Mathilde. Yet what would he venture to say to her?\n\nHe was dreaming deeply about this at seven o'clock one morning when he\nsuddenly saw her enter the library.\n\n\"I know, monsieur, that you are anxious to speak to me.\"\n\n\"Great heavens! who told you?\"\n\n\"I know, anyway; that is enough. If you are dishonourable, you can\nruin me, or at least try to. But this danger, which I do not believe\nto be real, will certainly not prevent me from being sincere. I do\nnot love you any more, monsieur, I have been led astray by my foolish\nimagination.\"\n\nDistracted by love and unhappiness, as a result of this terrible blow,\nJulien tried to justify himself. Nothing could have been more absurd.\nDoes one make any excuses for failure to please? But reason had no\nlonger any control over his actions. A blind instinct urged him to get\nthe determination of his fate postponed. He thought that, so long as\nhe kept on speaking, all could not be over. Mathilde had not listened\nto his words; their sound irritated her. She could not conceive how he\ncould have the audacity to interrupt her.\n\nShe was rendered equally unhappy this morning by remorseful virtue and\nremorseful pride. She felt to some extent pulverised by the idea of\nhaving given a little abbe, who was the son of a peasant, rights over\nher. \"It is almost,\" she said to herself, in those moments when she\nexaggerated her own misfortune, \"as though I had a weakness for one of\nmy footmen to reproach myself with.\" In bold, proud natures there is\nonly one step from anger against themselves to wrath against others. In\nthese cases the very transports of fury constitute a vivid pleasure.\n\nIn a single minute mademoiselle de la Mole reached the point of loading\nJulien with the signs of the most extreme contempt. She had infinite\nwit, and this wit was always triumphant in the art of torturing vanity\nand wounding it cruelly.\n\nFor the first time in his life Julien found himself subjected to\nthe energy of a superior intellect, which was animated against him\nby the most violent hate. Far from having at present the slightest\nthought of defending himself, he came to despise himself. Hearing\nhimself overwhelmed with such marks of contempt which were so cleverly\ncalculated to destroy any good opinion that he might have of himself,\nhe thought that Mathilde was right, and that she did not say enough.\n\nAs for her, she found it deliciously gratifying to her pride to punish\nin this way both herself and him for the adoration that she had felt\nsome days previously.\n\nShe did not have to invent and improvise the cruel remarks which she\naddressed to him with so much gusto.\n\nAll she had to do was to repeat what the advocate of the other side had\nbeen saying against her love in her own heart for the last eight days.\n\nEach word intensified a hundredfold Julien's awful unhappiness. He\nwanted to run away, but mademoiselle de la Mole took hold of his arm\nauthoritatively.\n\n\"Be good enough to remark,\" he said to her, \"that you are talking very\nloud. You will be heard in the next room.\"\n\n\"What does it matter?\" mademoiselle de la Mole answered haughtily. \"Who\nwill dare to say they have heard me? I want to cure your miserable\nvanity once and for all of any ideas you may have indulged in on my\naccount.\"\n\nWhen Julien was allowed to leave the library he was so astonished\nthat he was less sensitive to his unhappiness. \"She does not love me\nany more,\" he repeated to himself, speaking aloud as though to teach\nhimself how he stood. \"It seems that she has loved me eight or ten\ndays, but I shall love her all my life.\"\n\n\"Is it really possible she was nothing to me, nothing to my heart so\nfew days back?\"\n\nMathilde's heart was inundated by the joy of satisfied pride. So she\nhad been able to break with him for ever! So complete a triumph over so\nstrong an inclination rendered her completely happy. \"So this little\ngentleman will understand, once and for all, that he has not, and will\nnever have, any dominion over me.\" She was so happy that in reality she\nceased to love at this particular moment.\n\nIn a less passionate being than Julien love would have become\nimpossible after a scene of such awful humiliation. Without deviating\nfor a single minute from the requirements of her own self-respect,\nmademoiselle de la Mole had addressed to him some of those unpleasant\nremarks which are so well thought out that they may seem true, even\nwhen remembered in cold blood.\n\nThe conclusion which Julien drew in the first moment of so surprising a\nscene, was that Mathilde was infinitely proud. He firmly believed that\nall was over between them for ever, and none the less, he was awkward\nand nervous towards her at breakfast on the following day. This was a\nfault from which up to now he had been exempt.\n\nBoth in small things as in big it was his habit to know what he ought\nand wanted to do, and he used to act accordingly.\n\nThe same day after breakfast madame de la Mole asked him for a fairly\nrare, seditious pamphlet which her cure had surreptitiously brought her\nin the morning, and Julien, as he took it from a bracket, knocked over\na blue porcelain vase which was as ugly as it could possibly be.\n\nMadame de la Mole got up, uttering a cry of distress, and proceeded to\ncontemplate at close quarters the ruins of her beloved vase. \"It was\nold Japanese,\" she said. \"It came to me from my great aunt, the abbess\nof Chelles. It was a present from the Dutch to the Regent, the Duke of\nOrleans, who had given it to his daughter....\"\n\nMathilde had followed her mother's movements, and felt delighted at\nseeing that the blue vase, that she had thought horribly ugly, was\nbroken. Julien was taciturn, and not unduly upset. He saw mademoiselle\nde la Mole quite near him.\n\n\"This vase,\" he said to her, \"has been destroyed for ever. The same is\nthe case with the sentiment which was once master of my heart. I would\nask you to accept my apologies for all the pieces of madness which it\nhas made me commit.\" And he went out.\n\n\"One would really say,\" said madame de la Mole, as he went out of the\nroom, \"that this M. Sorel is quite proud of what he has just done.\"\n\nThese words went right home to Mathilde's heart. \"It is true,\" she\nsaid to herself; \"my mother has guessed right. That is the sentiment\nwhich animates him.\" It was only then that she ceased rejoicing over\nyesterday's scene. \"Well, it is all over,\" she said to herself, with\nan apparent calm. \"It is a great lesson, anyway. It is an awful and\nhumiliating mistake! It is enough to make me prudent all the rest of my\nlife.\"\n\n\"Why didn't I speak the truth?\" thought Julien. \"Why am I still\ntortured by the love which I once had for that mad woman?\"\n\nFar, however, from being extinguished as he had hoped it would be, his\nlove grew more and more rapidly. \"She is mad, it is true,\" he said\nto himself. \"Is she any the less adorable for that? Is it possible\nfor anyone to be prettier? Is not mademoiselle de la Mole the ideal\nquintessence of all the most vivid pleasures of the most elegant\ncivilisation?\" These memories of a bygone happiness seized hold of\nJulien's mind, and quickly proceeded to destroy all the work of his\nreason.\n\nIt is in vain that reason wrestles with memories of this character. Its\nstern struggles only increase the fascination.\n\nTwenty-four hours after the breaking of the Japanese vase, Julien was\nunquestionably one of the most unhappy men in the world.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LI\n\nTHE SECRET NOTE\n\n\n        I have seen everything I relate, and if I may have made\n        a mistake when I saw it, I am certainly not deceiving\n        you in telling you of it.\n                                      _Letter to the author_.\n\n\nThe marquis summoned him; M. de la Mole looked rejuvenated, his eye was\nbrilliant.\n\n\"Let us discuss your memory a little,\" he said to Julien, \"it is said\nto be prodigious. Could you learn four pages by heart and go and say\nthem at London, but without altering a single word?\"\n\nThe marquis was irritably fingering, the day's _Quotidienne_, and was\ntrying in vain to hide an extreme seriousness which Julien had never\nnoticed in him before, even when discussing the Frilair lawsuit.\n\nJulien had already learned sufficient manners to appreciate that he\nought to appear completely taken in by the lightness of tone which was\nbeing manifested.\n\n\"This number of the _Quotidienne_ is not very amusing possibly, but if\nM. the marquis will allow me, I shall do myself the honour to-morrow\nmorning of reciting it to him from beginning to end.\"\n\n\"What, even the advertisements?\"\n\n\"Quite accurately and without leaving out a word.\"\n\n\"You give me your word?\" replied the marquis with sudden gravity.\n\n\"Yes, monsieur; the only thing which could upset my memory is the fear\nof breaking my promise.\"\n\n\"The fact is, I forgot to put this question to you yesterday: I am\nnot going to ask for your oath never to repeat what you are going to\nhear. I know you too well to insult you like that. I have answered for\nyou. I am going to take you into a salon where a dozen persons will he\nassembled. You will make a note of what each one says.\n\n\"Do not be uneasy. It will not be a confused conversation by any means.\nEach one will speak in his turn, though not necessarily in an orderly\nmanner,\" added the marquis falling back into that light, subtle manner\nwhich was so natural to him. \"While we are talking, you will write out\ntwenty pages and will come back here with me, and we will get those\ntwenty pages down to four, and those are the four pages you will recite\nto me to-morrow morning instead of the four pages of the _Quotidienne_.\nYou will leave immediately afterwards. You must post about like a\nyoung man travelling on pleasure. Your aim will be to avoid attracting\nattention. You will arrive at the house of a great personage. You will\nthere need more skill. Your business will then be to take in all his\nentourage, for among his secretaries and his servants are some people\nwho have sold themselves to our enemies, and who spy on our travelling\nagents in order to intercept them.\n\n\"You will have an insignificant letter of introduction. At the moment\nhis Excellency looks at you, you will take out this watch of mine,\nwhich I will lend you for the journey. Wear it now, it will be so much\ndone; at any rate give me yours.\n\n\"The duke himself will be good enough to write at your dictation the\nfour pages you have learnt by heart.\n\n\"Having done this, but not earlier, mind you, you can, if his\nExcellency questions you, tell him about the meeting at which you are\nnow going to be present.\n\n\"You will be prevented from boring yourself on the journey between\nParis and the minister's residence by the thought that there are people\nwho would like nothing better than to fire a shot at M. the abbe Sorel.\nIn that case that gentleman's mission will be finished, and I see a\ngreat delay, for how are we to know of your death, my dear friend? Even\nyour zeal cannot go to the length of informing us of it.\n\n\"Run straight away and buy a complete suit,\" went on the marquis\nseriously. \"Dress in the fashion of two years ago. To-night you must\nlook somewhat badly groomed. When you travel, on the other hand, you\nwill be as usual. Does this surprise you? Does your suspiciousness\nguess the secret? Yes, my friend, one of the venerable personages you\nare going to hear deliver his opinion, is perfectly capable of giving\ninformation as the result of which you stand a very good chance of\nbeing given at least opium some fine evening in some good inn where you\nwill have asked for supper.\"\n\n\"It is better,\" said Julien, \"to do an extra thirty leagues and not\ntake the direct road. It is a case of Rome, I suppose....\" The marquis\nassumed an expression of extreme haughtiness and dissatisfaction which\nJulien had never seen him wear since Bray-le-Haut.\n\n\"That is what you will know, monsieur, when I think it proper to tell\nyou. I do not like questions.\"\n\n\"That was not one,\" answered Julien eagerly. \"I swear, monsieur, I was\nthinking quite aloud. My mind was trying to find out the safest route.\"\n\n\"Yes, it seems your mind was a very long way off. Remember that an\nemissary, and particularly one of your age should not appear to be a\nman who forces confidences.\"\n\nJulien was very mortified; he was in the wrong. His vanity tried to\nfind an excuse and did not find one.\n\n\"You understand,\" added monsieur de la Mole, \"that one always falls\nback on one's heart when one has committed some mistake.\"\n\nAn hour afterwards Julien was in the marquis's ante-chamber. He looked\nquite like a servant with his old clothes, a tie of a dubious white,\nand a certain touch of the usher in his whole appearance. The marquis\nburst out laughing as he saw him, and it was only then that Julien's\njustification was complete.\n\n\"If this young man betrays me,\" said M. de la Mole to himself, \"whom is\none to trust? And yet, when one acts, one must trust someone. My son\nand his brilliant friends of the same calibre have as much courage and\nloyalty as a hundred thousand men. If it were necessary to fight, they\nwould die on the steps of the throne. They know everything--except\nwhat one needs in emergency. Devil take me if I can find a single one\namong them who can learn four pages by heart and do a hundred leagues\nwithout being tracked down. Norbert would know how to sell his life as\ndearly as his grandfathers did. But any conscript could do as much.\"\n\nThe marquis fell into a profound reverie. \"As for selling one's life\ntoo,\" he said with a sigh, \"perhaps this Sorel would manage it quite as\nwell as he could.\n\n\"Let us get into the carriage,\" said the marquis as though to chase\naway an unwanted idea.\n\n\"Monsieur,\" said Julien, \"while they were getting this suit ready for\nme, I learnt the first page of to-days _Quotidienne_ by heart.\"\n\nThe marquis took the paper. Julien recited it without making a single\nmistake. \"Good,\" said the marquis, who this night felt very diplomatic.\n\"During the time he takes over this our young man will not notice the\nstreets through which we are passing.\"\n\nThey arrived in a big salon that looked melancholy enough and was\npartly upholstered in green velvet. In the middle of the room\na scowling lackey had just placed a big dining-table which he\nsubsequently changed into a writing-table by means of an immense green\ninkstained tablecloth which had been plundered from some minister.\n\nThe master of the house was an enormous man whose name was not\npronounced. Julien thought he had the appearance and eloquence of a\nman who ruminated. At a sign from the marquis, Julien had remained at\nthe lower end of the table. In order to keep himself in countenance,\nhe began to cut quills. He counted out of the corner of his eye seven\nvisitors, but Julien could only see their backs. Two seemed to him\nto be speaking to M. de la Mole on a footing of equality, the others\nseemed more or less respectful.\n\nA new person entered without being announced. \"This is strange,\"\nthought Julien. \"People are not announced in this salon. Is this\nprecaution taken in my honour?\" Everybody got up to welcome the new\narrival. He wore the same extremely distinguished decoration as three\nof the other persons who were in the salon. They talked fairly low. In\nendeavouring to form an opinion of the new comer, Julien was reduced to\nseeing what he could learn from his features and his appearance. He was\nshort and thick-set. He had a high colour and a brilliant eye and an\nexpression that looked like a malignant boar, and nothing else.\n\nJulien's attention was partly distracted by the almost immediate\narrival of a very different kind of person. It was a tall very thin\nman who wore three or four waistcoats. His eye was caressing, his\ndemeanour polite.\n\n\"He looks exactly like the old bishop of Besancon,\" thought Julien.\nThis man evidently belonged to the church, was apparently not more than\nfifty to fifty-five years of age, and no one could have looked more\npaternal than he did.\n\nThe young bishop of Agde appeared. He looked very astonished when,\nin making a scrutiny of those present, his gaze fell upon Julien. He\nhad not spoken to him since the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. His look of\nsurprise embarrassed and irritated Julien. \"What!\" he said to himself,\n\"will knowing a man always turn out unfortunate for me? I don't feel\nthe least bit intimidated by all those great lords whom I have never\nseen, but the look of that young bishop freezes me. I must admit that I\nam a very strange and very unhappy person.\"\n\nAn extremely swarthy little man entered noisily soon afterwards and\nstarted talking as soon as he reached the door. He had a yellow\ncomplexion and looked a little mad. As soon as this ruthless talker\narrived, the others formed themselves into knots with the apparent\nobject of avoiding the bother of listening to him.\n\nAs they went away from the mantelpiece they came near the lower end\nof the table where Julien was placed. His countenance became more and\nmore embarrassed, for whatever efforts he made, he could not avoid\nhearing, and in spite of all his lack of experience he appreciated\nall the moment of the things which they were discussing with such\ncomplete frankness, and the importance which the high personages whom\nhe apparently had under his observation must attach to their being kept\nsecret.\n\nJulien had already cut twenty quills as slowly as possible; this\ndistraction would shortly be no longer available. He looked in vain at\nM. de la Mole's eyes for an order; the marquis had forgotten him.\n\n\"What I am doing is ridiculous,\" he said to himself as he cut his\nquills, \"but persons with so mediocre an appearance and who are\nhandling such great interests either for themselves or for others must\nbe extremely liable to take offence. My unfortunate look has a certain\nquestioning and scarcely respectful expression, which will doubtless\nirritate them. But if I palpably lower my eyes I shall look as if I\nwere picking up every word they said.\"\n\nHis embarrassment was extreme, he was listening to strange things.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LII\n\nTHE DISCUSSION\n\n\n        The republic:--For one man to day who will sacrifice\n        everything for the public welfare, there are thousands\n        and millions who think of nothing except their\n        enjoyments and their vanity. One is requested in Paris\n        by reason of the qualities not of one's self but of\n        one's carriage.\n                                        --NAPOLEON, Memorial.\n\n\nThe footman rushed in saying \"Monsieur the duke de ----\"\n\n\"Hold your tongue, you are just a fool,\" said the duke as he entered.\nHe spoke these words so well, and with so much majesty, that Julien\ncould not help thinking this great person's accomplishments were\nlimited to the science of snubbing a lackey. Julien raised his\neyes and immediately lowered them. He had so fully appreciated the\nsignificance of the new arrival that he feared that his look might be\nan indiscretion.\n\nThe duke was a man of fifty dressed like a dandy and with a jerky\nwalk. He had a narrow head with a large nose and a face that jutted\nforward; it would have been difficult to have looked at the same time\nmore insignificant. His arrival was the signal for the opening of the\nmeeting.\n\nJulien was sharply interrupted in his physiognomical observations by\nde la Mole's voice. \"I present to you M. the abbe Sorel,\" said the\nMarquis. \"He is gifted with an astonishing memory; it is scarcely an\nhour ago since I spoke to him of the mission by which he might be\nhonoured, and he has learned the first page of the _Quotidienne_ by\nheart in order to give proof of his memory.\"\n\n\"Ah! foreign news of that poor N--\" said the master of the house. He\ntook up the paper eagerly and looked at Julien in a manner rendered\nhumorous by its own self-importance. \"Speak, monsieur,\" he said to him.\n\nThe silence was profound, all eyes were fixed on Julien. He recited\nso well that the duke said at the end of twenty lines, \"That is\nenough.\" The little man who looked like a boar sat down. He was the\npresident, for he had scarcely taken his place before he showed Julien\na card-table and signed to him to bring it near him. Julien established\nhimself at it with writing materials. He counted twelve persons seated\nround the green table cloth.\n\n\"M. Sorel,\" said the Duke, \"retire into next room, you will be called.\"\n\nThe master of the house began to look very anxious. \"The shutters\nare not shut,\" he said to his neighbour in a semi-whisper. \"It is no\ngood looking out of the window,\" he stupidly cried to Julien--\"so\nhere I am more or less mixed up in a conspiracy,\" thought the latter.\n\"Fortunately it is not one of those which lead to the Place-de-Greve.\nEven though there were danger, I owe this and even more to the marquis,\nand should be glad to be given the chance of making up for all the\nsorrow which my madness may one day occasion him.\"\n\nWhile thinking of his own madness and his own unhappiness he regarded\nthe place where he was, in such a way as to imprint it upon his memory\nfor ever. He then remembered for the first time that he had never heard\nthe lackey tell the name of the street, and that the marquis had taken\na fiacre which he never did in the ordinary way. Julien was left to\nhis own reflections for a long time. He was in a salon upholstered in\nred velvet with large pieces of gold lace. A large ivory crucifix was\non the console-table and a gilt-edged, magnificently bound copy of M.\nde Maistre's book _The Pope_ was on the mantelpiece. Julien opened it\nso as not to appear to be eavesdropping. From time to time they talked\nloudly in the next room. At last the door was opened and he was called\nin.\n\n\"Remember, gentlemen,\" the president was saying \"that from this moment\nwe are talking in the presence of the duke of ----. This gentleman,\"\nhe said, pointing to Julien, \"is a young acolyte devoted to our sacred\ncause who by the aid of his marvellous memory will repeat quite easily\nour very slightest words.\"\n\n\"It is your turn to speak, Monsieur,\" he said pointing to the paternal\nlooking personage who wore three or four waistcoats. Julien thought it\nwould have been more natural to have called him the gentleman in the\nwaistcoats. He took some paper and wrote a great deal.\n\n(At this juncture the author would have liked to have put a page of\ndots. \"That,\" said his publisher, \"would be clumsy and in the case of\nso light a work clumsiness is death.\"\n\n\"Politics,\" replies the author, \"is a stone tied round the neck of\nliterature which submerges it in less than six months. Politics in the\nmidst of imaginative matter is like a pistol shot in the middle of a\nconcert. The noise is racking without being energetic. It does not\nharmonise with the sound of any instrument. These politics will give\nmortal offence to one half of the readers and will bore the other half,\nwho will have already read the ideas in question as set out in the\nmorning paper in its own drastic manner.\"\n\n\"If your characters don't talk politics,\" replied the publisher, \"they\ncease to be Frenchmen of 1830, and your book is no longer a mirror as\nyou claim?\")\n\nJulien's record ran to twenty-six pages. Here is a very diluted\nextract, for it has been necessary to adopt the invariable practice of\nsuppressing those ludicrous passages, whose violence would have seemed\neither offensive or intolerable (see the _Gazette des Tribunaux_).\n\nThe man with the waistcoats and the paternal expression (he was perhaps\na bishop) often smiled and then his eyes, which were surrounded with\na floating forest of eyebrows, assumed a singular brilliance and an\nunusually decided expression. This personage whom they made speak first\nbefore the duke (\"but what duke is it?\" thought Julien to himself) with\nthe apparent object of expounding various points of view and fulfilling\nthe functions of an advocate-general, appeared to Julien to fall into\nthe uncertainty and lack of definiteness with which those officials\nare so often taxed. During the course of the discussion the duke went\nso far as to reproach him on this score. After several sentences of\nmorality and indulgent philosophy the man in the waistcoats said,\n\n\"Noble England, under the guiding hand of a great man, the immortal\nPitt, has spent forty milliards of francs in opposing the revolution.\nIf this meeting will allow me to treat so melancholy a subject with\nsome frankness, England fails to realise sufficiently that in dealing\nwith a man like Buonaparte, especially when they have nothing to\noppose him with, except a bundle of good intentions there is nothing\ndecisive except personal methods.\"\n\n\"Ah! praising assassination again!\" said the master of the house\nanxiously.\n\n\"Spare us your sentimental sermons,\" cried the president angrily. His\nboarlike eye shone with a savage brilliance. \"Go on,\" he said to the\nman with the waistcoats. The cheeks and the forehead of the president\nbecame purple.\n\n\"Noble England,\" replied the advocate-general, \"is crushed to-day:\nfor each Englishman before paying for his own bread is obliged to pay\nthe interest on forty milliards of francs which were used against the\nJacobins. She has no more Pitt.\"\n\n\"She has the Duke of Wellington,\" said a military personage looking\nvery important.\n\n\"Please, gentlemen, silence,\" exclaimed the president. \"If we are still\ngoing to dispute, there was no point in having M. Sorel in.\"\n\n\"We know that monsieur has many ideas,\" said the duke irritably,\nlooking at the interrupter who was an old Napoleonic general. Julien\nsaw that these words contained some personal and very offensive\nallusion. Everybody smiled, the turncoat general appeared beside\nhimself with rage.\n\n\"There is no longer a Pitt, gentlemen,\" went on the speaker with all\nthe despondency of a man who has given up all hope of bringing his\nlisteners to reason. \"If there were a new Pitt in England, you would\nnot dupe a nation twice over by the same means.\"\n\n\"That's why a victorious general, a Buonaparte, will be henceforward\nimpossible in France,\" exclaimed the military interrupter.\n\nOn this occasion neither the president nor the duke ventured to get\nangry, though Julien thought he read in their eyes that they would\nvery much like to have done so. They lowered their eyes, and the duke\ncontented himself with sighing in quite an audible manner. But the\nspeaker was put upon his mettle.\n\n\"My audience is eager for me to finish,\" he said vigorously, completely\ndiscarding that smiling politeness and that balanced diction that\nJulien thought had expressed his character so well. \"It is eager for\nme to finish, it is not grateful to me for the efforts I am making to\noffend nobody's ears, however long they may be. Well, gentlemen, I will\nbe brief.\n\n\"I will tell you in quite common words: England has not got a sou with\nwhich to help the good cause. If Pitt himself were to come back he\nwould never succeed with all his genius in duping the small English\nlandowners, for they know that the short Waterloo campaign alone cost\nthem a milliard of francs. As you like clear phrases,\" continued the\nspeaker, becoming more and more animated, \"I will say this to you: Help\nyourselves, for England has not got a guinea left to help you with,\nand when England does not pay, Austria, Russia and Prussia--who will\nonly have courage but have no money--cannot launch more than one or two\ncampaigns against France.\n\n\"One may hope that the young soldiers who will be recruited by the\nJacobins will be beaten in the first campaign, and possibly in the\nsecond; but, even though I seem a revolutionary in your prejudiced\neyes, in the third campaign--in the third campaign I say--you will have\nthe soldiers of 1794 who were no longer the soldiers enlisted in 1792.\"\n\nAt this point interruption broke out simultaneously from three or four\nquarters.\n\n\"Monsieur,\" said the president to Julien, \"Go and make a precis in the\nnext room of the beginning of the report which you have written out.\"\n\nJulien went out to his great regret. The speaker was just dealing\nwith the question of probabilities which formed the usual subject\nfor his meditations. \"They are frightened of my making fun of them,\"\nhe thought. When he was called back, M. de la Mole was saying with a\nseriousness which seemed quite humorous to Julien who knew him so well,\n\n\"Yes, gentlemen, one finds the phrase, 'is it god, table or tub?'\nespecially applicable to this unhappy people. '_It is god_' exclaims\nthe writer of fables. It is to you, gentlemen, that this noble and\nprofound phrase seems to apply. Act on your own initiative, and noble\nFrance will appear again, almost such as our ancestors made her, and as\nour own eyes have seen her before the death of Louis XVI.\n\n\"England execrates disgraceful Jacobinism as much as we do, or at any\nrate her noble lords do. Without English gold, Austria and Prussia\nwould only be able to give battle two or three times. Would that be\nsufficient to ensure a successful occupation like the one which M. de\nRichelieu so foolishly failed to exploit in 1817? I do not think so.\"\n\nAt this point there was an interruption which was stifled by the hushes\nof the whole room. It came again from the old Imperial general who\nwanted the blue ribbon and wished to figure among the authors of the\nsecret note.\n\n\"I do not think so,\" replied M. de la Mole, after the uproar had\nsubsided. He laid stress on the \"I\" with an insolence which charmed\nJulien.\n\n\"That's a pretty piece of acting,\" he said to himself, as he made his\npen almost keep pace with the marquis' words.\n\nM. de la Mole annihilated the twenty campaigns of the turncoat with a\nwell turned phrase.\n\n\"It is not only on foreign powers,\" continued the marquis in a more\neven tone, \"on whom we shall be able to rely for a new military\noccupation. All those young men who write inflammatory articles\nin the _Globe_ will provide you with three or four thousand young\ncaptains among whom you may find men with the genius, but not the good\nintentions of a Kleber, a Hoche, a Jourdan, a Pichegru.\"\n\n\"We did not know how to glorify him,\" said the president. \"He should\nhave been immortalized.\"\n\n\"Finally, it is necessary for France to have two parties,\" went on M.\nde la Mole; \"but two parties not merely in name, but with clear-cut\nlines of cleavage. Let us realise what has got to be crushed. On\nthe one hand the journalists and the electors, in a word, public\nopinion; youth and all that admire it. While it is stupefying itself\nwith the noise of its own vain words, we have certain advantages of\nadministrating the expenditure of the budget.\"\n\nAt this point there was another interruption.\n\n\"As for you, monsieur,\" said M. de la Mole to the interrupter, with an\nadmirable haughtiness and ease of manner, \"you do not spend, if the\nwords chokes you, but you devour the forty thousand francs put down to\nyou in the State budget, and the eighty thousand which you receive from\nthe civil list.\"\n\n\"Well, monsieur, since you force me to it, I will be bold enough to\ntake you for an example. Like your noble ancestors, who followed Saint\nLouis to the crusade, you ought in return for those hundred and twenty\nthousand francs to show us at any rate a regiment; a company, why, what\nam I saying? say half a company, even if it only had fifty men, ready\nto fight and devoted to the good cause to the point of risking their\nlives in its service. You have nothing but lackeys, who in the event of\na rebellion would frighten you yourselves.\"\n\n\"Throne, Church, Nobility are liable to perish to-morrow, gentlemen,\nso long as you refrain from creating in each department a force of\nfive hundred devoted men, devoted I mean, not only with all the French\ncourage, but with all the Spanish constancy.\n\n\"Half of this force ought to be composed of our children, our nephews,\nof real gentlemen, in fact. Each of them will have beside him not a\nlittle talkative bourgeois ready to hoist the tricolor cockade, if 1815\nturns up again, but a good, frank and simple peasant like Cathelineau.\nOur gentleman will have educated him, it will be his own foster brother\nif it is possible. Let each of us sacrifice the fifth of his income in\norder to form this little devoted force of five hundred men in each\ndepartment. Then you will be able to reckon on a foreign occupation.\nThe foreign soldier will never penetrate even as far as Dijon if he\nis not certain of finding five hundred friendly soldiers in each\ndepartment.\n\n\"The foreign kings will only listen to you when you are in a position\nto announce to them that you have twenty thousand gentlemen ready to\ntake up arms in order to open to them the gates of France. The service\nis troublesome, you say. Gentlemen, it is the only way of saving our\nlives. There is war to the death between the liberty of the press and\nour existence as gentlemen. Become manufacturers, become peasants, or\ntake up your guns. Be timid if you like, but do not be stupid. Open\nyour eyes.\n\n\"'_Form your battalions_,' I would say to you in the words of the\nJacobin songs. Some noble Gustavus Adolphus will then be found who,\ntouched by the imminent peril of the monarchical principle, will make\na dash three hundred leagues from his own country, and will do for\nyou what Gustavus did for the Protestant princes. Do you want to go\non talking without acting? In fifty years' time there will be only\npresidents or republics in Europe and not one king, and with those\nthree letters R. O. I. you will see the last of the priests and the\ngentlemen. I can see nothing but candidates paying court to squalid\nmajorities.\n\n\"It is no use your saying that at the present time France has not\na single accredited general who is universally known and loved,\nthat the army is only known and organised in the interests of the\nthrone and the church, and that it has been deprived of all its old\ntroopers, while each of the Prussian and Austrian regiments count fifty\nnon-commissioned officers who have seen fire.\n\n\"Two hundred thousand young men of the middle classes are spoiling for\nwar--\"\n\n\"A truce to disagreeable truths,\" said a grave personage in a pompous\ntone. He was apparently a very high ecclesiastical dignitary, for M.\nde la Mole smiled pleasantly, instead of getting angry, a circumstance\nwhich greatly impressed Julien.\n\n\"A truce to unpleasant truths, let us resume, gentlemen. The man who\nneeds to have a gangrened leg cut off would be ill advised to say to\nhis surgeon, 'this disease is very healthy.' If I may use the metaphor,\ngentlemen, the noble duke of ---- is our surgeon.\"\n\n\"So the great words have at last been uttered,\" thought Julien. \"It is\ntowards the ---- that I shall gallop to-night.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIII\n\nTHE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY\n\n\n        The first law of every being, is to preserve itself and\n        live. You sow hemlock, and expect to see ears of corn\n        ripen.--_Machiavelli_.\n\n\nThe great personage continued. One could see that he knew his subject.\nHe proceeded to expound the following great truths with a soft and\ntempered eloquence with which Julien was inordinately delighted:--\n\n\"1. England has not a guinea to help us with; economy and Hume are\nthe fashion there. Even the saints will not give us any money, and M.\nBrougham will make fun of us.\n\n\"2. The impossibility of getting the kings of Europe to embark on more\nthan two campaigns without English gold; two campaigns will not be\nenough to dispose of the middle classes.\n\n\"3. The necessity of forming an armed party in France. Without this,\nthe monarchical principle in Europe will not risk even two campaigns.\n\n\"The fourth point which I venture to suggest to you, as self-evident,\nis this:\n\n\"The impossibility of forming an armed party in France without the\nclergy. I am bold enough to tell you this because I will prove it to\nyou, gentlemen. You must make every sacrifice for the clergy.\n\n\"Firstly, because as it is occupied with its mission by day and by\nnight, and guided by highly capable men established far from these\nstorms at three hundred leagues from your frontiers----\"\n\n\"Ah, Rome, Rome!\" exclaimed the master of the house.\n\n\"Yes, monsieur, Rome,\" replied the Cardinal haughtily. \"Whatever more\nor less ingenious jokes may have been the fashion when you were young,\nI have no hesitation in saying that in 1830 it is only the clergy,\nunder the guidance of Rome, who has the ear of the lower classes.\n\n\"Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by\ntheir chiefs, and the people--who after all provide soldiers--will be\nmore touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in\nthe whole world.\" (This personality provoked some murmurs.)\n\n\"The clergy has a genius superior to yours,\" went on the cardinal\nraising his voice. \"All the progress that has been made towards this\nessential point of having an armed party in France has been made by\nus.\" At this juncture facts were introduced. \"Who used eighty thousand\nrifles in Vendee?\" etc., etc.\n\n\"So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless. At\nthe first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that\nthere is no money to be had except for the cure. At bottom France\ndoes not believe, and she loves war. Whoever gives her war will be\ndoubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as\nstarving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of\npride--the men of France--from the menace of foreign intervention.\"\n\nThe cardinal had a favourable hearing. \"M. de Nerval,\" he said, \"will\nhave to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose.\"\n\nAt these words everybody got up and talked at the same time. \"I will be\nsent away again,\" thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had\nforgotten both the presence and existence of Julien.\n\nAll eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised. It was M. de\nNerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at M. the duc de Retz's\nball.\n\nThe disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they talk of the\nChamber. At the end of a long quarter of an hour a little quiet was\nestablished.\n\nThen M. de Nerval got up and said in an apostolic tone and a singular\nvoice:\n\n\"I will not go so far as to say that I do not set great store on being\na minister.\n\n\"It has been demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my name will double\nthe forces of the Jacobins by making many moderates divide against\nus. I should therefore be willing to retire; but the ways of the Lord\nare only visible to a small number; but,\" he added, looking fixedly\nat the cardinal, \"I have a mission. Heaven has said: 'You will either\nloose your head on the scaffold or you will re-establish the monarchy\nof France and reduce the Chambers to the condition of the parliament of\nLouis XV.,' and that, gentlemen, I shall do.\"\n\nHe finished his speech, sat down, and there was a long silence.\n\n\"What a good actor,\" thought Julien. He made his usual mistake of\nascribing too much intelligence to the people. Excited by the debates\nof so lively an evening, and above all by the sincerity of the\ndiscussion, M. de Nerval did at this moment believe in his mission.\nThis man had great courage, but at the same time no sense.\n\nDuring the silence that followed the impressive words, \"I shall do it,\"\nmidnight struck. Julien thought that the striking of the clock had in\nit a certain element of funereal majesty. He felt moved.\n\nThe discussion was soon resumed with increasing energy, and above all\nwith an incredible naivety. \"These people will have me poisoned,\"\nthought Julien at times. \"How can they say such things before a\nplebian.\"\n\nThey were still talking when two o'clock struck. The master of the\nhouse had been sleeping for some time. M. de la Mole was obliged to\nring for new candles. M. de Nerval, the minister, had left at the\nquarter to two, but not without having repeatedly studied Julien's face\nin a mirror which was at the minister's side. His departure had seemed\nto put everybody at their ease.\n\nWhile they were bringing new candles, the man in the waistcoats,\nwhispered to his neighbour: \"God knows what that man will say to the\nking. He may throw ridicule upon us and spoil our future.\"\n\n\"One must own that he must possess an unusual self-assurance, not to\nsay impudence, to put in an appearance here There were signs of it\nbefore he became a minister; but a portfolio changes everything and\nswamps all a man's interests; he must have felt its effect.\"\n\nThe minister had scarcely left before the general of Buonaparte closed\nhis eyes. He now talked of his health and his wounds, consulted his\nwatch, and went away.\n\n\"I will wager,\" said the man in the waistcoats, \"that the general is\nrunning after the minister; he will apologise for having been here and\npretend that he is our leader.\"\n\n\"Let us now deliberate, gentlemen,\" said the president, after the\nsleepy servants had finished bringing and lighting new candles. \"Let us\nleave off trying to persuade each other. Let us think of the contents\nof the note which will be read by our friends outside in forty-eight\nhours from now. We have heard ministers spoken of. Now that M. de\nNerval has left us, we are at liberty to say 'what we do care for\nministers.'\"\n\nThe cardinal gave a subtle smile of approval.\n\n\"Nothing is easier it seems to me than summing up our position,\" said\nthe young bishop of Agde, with the restrained concentrated fire of the\nmost exalted fanaticism. He had kept silent up to this time; his eye,\nwhich Julien had noticed as being soft and calm at the beginning, had\nbecome fiery during the first hour of the discussion. His soul was now\nbubbling over like lava from Vesuvius.\n\n\"England only made one mistake from 1806 to 1814,\" he said, \"and that\nwas in not taking direct and personal measures against Napoleon. As\nsoon as that man had made dukes and chamberlains, as soon as he had\nre-established the throne, the mission that God had entrusted to him\nwas finished. The only thing to do with him was to sacrifice him.\nThe scriptures teach us in more than one place how to make an end of\ntyrants\" (at this point there were several Latin quotations).\n\n\"To-day, gentlemen, it is not a man who has to be sacrificed, it\nis Paris. What is the use of arming your five hundred men in each\ndepartment, a hazardous and interminable enterprise? What is the good\nof involving France in a matter which is personal to Paris? Paris alone\nhas done the evil, with its journals and it salons. Let the new Babylon\nperish.\n\n\"We must bring to an end the conflict between the church and Paris.\nSuch a catastrophe would even be in the worldly interests of the\nthrone. Why did not Paris dare to whisper a word under Buonaparte? Ask\nthe cannon of Saint-Roch?\"\n\nJulien did not leave with M. de la Mole before three o'clock in the\nmorning.\n\nThe marquis seemed tired and ashamed. For the first time in his life\nin conversation with Julien, his tone was plaintive. He asked him for\nhis word never to reveal the excesses of zeal, that was his expression,\nof which chance had just made him a witness. \"Only mention it to our\nforeign friend, if he seriously insists on knowing what our young\nmadmen are like. What does it matter to them if a state is overthrown,\nthey will become cardinals and will take refuge in Rome. As for us, we\nshall be massacred by the peasants in our chateaus.\"\n\nThe secret note into which the marquis condensed Julien's full report\nof twenty-six pages was not ready before a quarter to five.\n\n\"I am dead tired,\" said the marquis, \"as is quite obvious from the lack\nof clearness at the end of this note; I am more dissatisfied with it\nthan with anything I ever did in my whole life. Look here, my friend,\"\nhe added, \"go and rest for some hours, and as I am frightened you might\nbe kidnapped, I shall lock you up in your room.\"\n\nThe marquis took Julien on the following day to a lonely chateau at a\ngood distance from Paris. There were strange guests there whom Julien\nthought were priests. He was given a passport which was made out in a\nfictitious name, but indicated the real destination of his journey,\nwhich he had always pretended not to know. He got into a carriage alone.\n\nThe marquis had no anxiety on the score of his memory. Julien\nhad recited the secret note to him several times but he was very\napprehensive of his being intercepted.\n\n\"Above all, mind you look like a coxcomb who is simply travelling to\nkill time,\" he said affectionately to him when he was leaving the\nsalon. \"Perhaps there was more than one treacherous brother in this\nevening's meeting.\"\n\nThe journey was quick and very melancholy. Julien had scarcely got\nout of the marquis's sight before he forgot his secret note and his\nmission, and only thought about Mathilde's disdain.\n\nAt a village some leagues beyond Metz, the postmaster came and told him\nthat there were no horses. It was ten o'clock in the evening. Julien\nwas very annoyed and asked for supper. He walked in front of the door\nand gradually without being noticed passed into the stable-yard. He did\nnot see any horses there.\n\n\"That man looked strange though,\" thought Julien to himself. \"He was\nscrutinizing me with his brutal eyes.\"\n\nAs one sees he was beginning to be slightly sceptical of all he heard.\nHe thought of escaping after supper, and in order to learn at any rate\nsomething about the surrounding country, he left his room to go and\nwarm himself at the kitchen fire. He was overjoyed to find there the\ncelebrated singer, signor Geronimo.\n\nThe Neopolitan was ensconced in an armchair which he had had brought\nnear the fire. He was groaning aloud, and was speaking more to himself\nthan to the twenty dumbfounded German peasants who surrounded him.\n\n\"Those people will be my ruin,\" he cried to Julien, \"I have promised to\nsing to-morrow at Mayence. Seven sovereign princes have gone there to\nhear me. Let us go and take the air,\" he added, meaningly.\n\nWhen he had gone a hundred yards down the road, and it was impossible\nto be overheard, he said to Julien:\n\n\"Do you know the real truth, the postmaster is a scoundrel. When I went\nout for a walk I gave twenty sous to a little ragamuffin who told me\neverything. There are twelve horses in the stable at the other end of\nthe village. They want to stop some courier.\"\n\n\"Really,\" said Julien innocently.\n\nDiscovering the fraud was not enough; the thing was to get away, but\nGeronimo and his friends could not succeed in doing this.\n\n\"Let us wait for daybreak,\" said the singer at last, \"they are\nmistrustful of us. It is perhaps you or me whom they suspect. We will\norder a good breakfast to-morrow morning, we will go for a walk while\nthey are getting it ready, we will then escape, we will hire horses,\nand gain the next station.\"\n\n\"And how about your luggage?\" said Julien, who thought perhaps Geronimo\nhimself might have been sent to intercept him. They had to have supper\nand go to bed. Julien was still in his first sleep when he was woken\nup with a start by the voices of two persons who were speaking in his\nroom with utmost freedom.\n\nHe recognised the postmaster armed with a dark lantern. The light was\nturned on the carriage-seat which Julien had had taken up into his\nroom. Beside the postmaster was a man who was calmly searching the open\nseat. Julien could see nothing except the sleeves of his coat which\nwere black and very tight.\n\n\"It's a cassock,\" he said to himself and he softly seized the little\npistol which he had placed under his pillow.\n\n\"Don't be frightened of his waking up, cure,\" said the postmaster, \"the\nwine that has been served him was the stuff prepared by yourself.\"\n\n\"I can't find any trace of papers,\" answered the cure. \"A lot of linen\nand essences, pommades, and vanities. It's a young man of the world\non pleasure bent. The other one who effects an Italian accent is more\nlikely to be the emissary.\"\n\nThe men approached Julien to search the pockets of his travelling coat.\nHe felt very tempted to kill them for thieves. Nothing could be safer\nin its consequences. He was very desirous of doing so.... \"I should\nonly be a fool,\" he said to himself, \"I should compromise my mission.\"\n\"He is not a diplomatist,\" said the priest after searching his coat. He\nwent away and did well to do so.\n\n\"It will be a bad business for him,\" Julien was saying to himself, \"if\nhe touches me in my bed. He may have quite well come to stab me, and I\nwon't put up with that.\"\n\nThe cure turned his head, Julien half opened his eyes. He was\ninordinately astonished, he was the abbe Castanede. As a matter of\nfact, although these two persons had made a point of talking in a\nfairly low voice, he had thought from the first that he recognised one\nof the voices. Julien was seized with an inordinate desire to purge the\nearth of one of its most cowardly villains; \"But my mission,\" he said\nto himself.\n\nThe cure and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour afterwards\nJulien pretended to have just woken up. He called out and woke up the\nwhole house.\n\n\"I am poisoned,\" he exclaimed, \"I am suffering horribly!\" He wanted an\nexcuse to go to Geronimo's help. He found him half suffocated by the\nlaudanum that had been contained in the wine.\n\nJulien had been apprehensive of some trick of this character and had\nsupped on some chocolate which he had brought from Paris. He could not\nwake Geronimo up sufficiently to induce him to leave.\n\n\"If they were to give me the whole kingdom of Naples,\" said the singer,\n\"I would not now give up the pleasure of sleeping.\"\n\n\"But the seven sovereign princes?\"\n\n\"Let them wait.\"\n\nJulien left alone, and arrived at the house of the great personage\nwithout other incident. He wasted a whole morning in vainly soliciting\nan audience. Fortunately about four o'clock the duke wanted to take\nthe air. Julien saw him go out on foot and he did not hesitate\nto ask him for alms. When at two yards' distance from the great\npersonage he pulled out the Marquis de la Mole's watch and exhibited\nit ostentatiously. \"_Follow me at a distance_,\" said the man without\nlooking at him.\n\nAt a quarter of a league's distance the duke suddenly entered a little\n_coffee-house_. It was in a room of this low class inn that Julien had\nthe honour of reciting his four pages to the duke. When he had finished\nhe was told to \"_start again and go more slowly_.\"\n\nThe prince took notes. \"Reach the next posting station on foot. Leave\nyour luggage and your carriage here. Get to Strasbourg as best you can\nand at half-past twelve on the twenty-second of the month (it was at\npresent the tenth) come to this same coffee-house. Do not leave for\nhalf-an-hour. Silence!\"\n\nThese were the only words which Julien heard. They sufficed to inspire\nhim with the highest admiration. \"That is the way,\" he thought, \"that\nreal business is done; what would this great statesman say if he were\nto listen to the impassioned ranters heard three days ago?\"\n\nJulien took two days to reach Strasbourg. He thought he would have\nnothing to do there. He made a great detour. \"If that devil of an abbe\nCastanede has recognised me he is not the kind of man to loose track\nof me easily.... And how he would revel in making a fool of me, and\ncausing my mission to fail.\"\n\nFortunately the abbe Castanede, who was chief of the congregational\npolice on all the northern frontier had not recognised him. And the\nStrasbourg Jesuits, although very zealous, never gave a thought to\nobserving Julien, who with his cross and his blue tail-coat looked\nlike a young military man, very much engrossed in his own personal\nappearance.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIV\n\nSTRASBOURG\n\n\n        Fascination! Love gives thee all his love, energy and\n        all his power of suffering unhappiness. It is only\n        his enchanting pleasures, his sweet delights, which\n        are outside thy sphere. When I saw her sleep I was\n        made to say \"With all her angelic beauty and her sweet\n        weaknesses she is absolutely mine! There she is, quite\n        in my power, such as Heaven made her in its pity in\n        order to ravish a man's heart.\"--_Ode of Schiller_.\n\n\nJulien was compelled to spend eight days in Strasbourg and tried to\ndistract himself by thoughts of military glory and patriotic devotion.\nWas he in love then? he could not tell, he only felt in his tortured\nsoul that Mathilde was the absolute mistress both of his happiness\nand of his imagination. He needed all the energy of his character\nto keep himself from sinking into despair. It was out of his power\nto think of anything unconnected with mademoiselle de la Mole. His\nambition and his simple personal successes had formerly distracted him\nfrom the sentiments which madame de Renal had inspired. Mathilde was\nall-absorbing; she loomed large over his whole future.\n\nJulien saw failure in every phase of that future. This same individual\nwhom we remember to have been so presumptuous and haughty at Verrieres,\nhad fallen into an excess of grotesque modesty.\n\nThree days ago he would only have been too pleased to have killed the\nabbe Castanede, and now, at Strasbourg, if a child had picked a quarrel\nwith him he would have thought the child was in the right. In thinking\nagain about the adversaries and enemies whom he had met in his life he\nalways thought that he, Julien, had been in the wrong. The fact was\nthat the same powerful imagination which had formerly been continuously\nemployed in painting a successful future in the most brilliant colours\nhad now been transformed into his implacable enemy.\n\nThe absolute solicitude of a traveller's life increased the ascendancy\nof this sinister imagination. What a boon a friend would have been!\nBut Julien said to himself, \"Is there a single heart which beats with\naffection for me? And even if I did have a friend, would not honour\nenjoin me to eternal silence?\"\n\nHe was riding gloomily in the outskirts of Kehl; it is a market town\non the banks of the Rhine and immortalised by Desaix and Gouvion\nSaint-Cyr. A German peasant showed him the little brooks, roads and\nislands of the Rhine, which have acquired a name through the courage of\nthese great generals. Julien was guiding his horse with his left hand,\nwhile he held unfolded in his right the superb map which adorns the\n_Memoirs of the Marshal Saint Cyr_. A merry exclamation made him lift\nhis head.\n\nIt was the Prince Korasoff, that London friend of his, who had\ninitiated him some months before into the elementary rules of high\nfatuity. Faithful to his great art, Korasoff, who had just arrived at\nStrasbourg, had been one hour in Kehl and had never read a single line\nin his whole life about the siege of 1796, began to explain it all to\nJulien. The German peasant looked at him in astonishment; for he knew\nenough French to appreciate the enormous blunders which the prince was\nmaking. Julien was a thousand leagues away from the peasant's thoughts.\nHe was looking in astonishment at the handsome young man and admiring\nhis grace in sitting a horse.\n\n\"What a lucky temperament,\" he said to himself, \"and how his trousers\nsuit him and how elegantly his hair is cut! Alas, if I had been like\nhim, it might have been that she would not have come to dislike me\nafter loving me for three days.\"\n\nWhen the prince had finished his siege of Kehl, he said to Julien,\n\"You look like a Trappist, you are carrying to excess that principle\nof gravity which I enjoined upon you in London. A melancholy manner\ncannot be good form. What is wanted is an air of boredom. If you are\nmelancholy, it is because you lack something, because you have failed\nin something.\"\n\n\"That means showing one's own inferiority; if, on the other hand you\nare bored, it is only what has made an unsuccessful attempt to please\nyou, which is inferior. So realise, my dear friend, the enormity of\nyour mistake.\"\n\nJulien tossed a crown to the gaping peasant who was listening to them.\n\n\"Good,\" said the prince, \"that shows grace and a noble disdain, very\ngood!\" And he put his horse to the gallop. Full of a stupid admiration,\nJulien followed him.\n\n\"Ah! if I have been like that, she would not have preferred Croisenois\nto me!\" The more his reason was offended by the grotesque affectations\nof the prince the more he despised himself for not having them. It was\nimpossible for self-disgust to be carried further.\n\nThe prince still finding him distinctly melancholy, said to him as they\nre-entered Strasbourg, \"Come, my dear fellow, have you lost all your\nmoney, or perhaps you are in love with some little actress.\n\n\"The Russians copy French manners, but always at an interval of fifty\nyears. They have now reached the age of Louis XV.\"\n\nThese jests about love brought the tears to Julien's eyes. \"Why should\nI not consult this charming man,\" he suddenly said to himself.\n\n\"Well, yes, my dear friend,\" he said to the prince, \"you see in me a\nman who is very much in love and jilted into the bargain. A charming\nwoman who lives in a neighbouring town has left me stranded here after\nthree passionate days, and the change kills me.\"\n\nUsing fictitious names, he described to the prince Mathilde's conduct\nand character.\n\n\"You need not finish,\" said Korasoff. \"In order to give you confidence\nin your doctor, I will finish the story you have confided to me. This\nyoung woman's husband enjoys an enormous income, or even more probably,\nshe belongs herself to the high nobility of the district. She must be\nproud about something.\"\n\nJulien nodded his head, he had no longer the courage to speak. \"Very\ngood,\" said the prince, \"here are three fairly bitter pills that you\nwill take without delay.\n\n\"1. See madame ----. What is her name, any way?\"\n\n\"Madame de Dubois.\"\n\n\"What a name!\" said the prince bursting into laughter. \"But forgive me,\nyou find it sublime. Your tactics must be to see Madame de Dubois every\nday; above all do not appear to be cold and piqued. Remember the great\nprinciple of your century: be the opposite of what is expected. Be\nexactly as you were the week before you were honoured by her favours.\"\n\n\"Ah! I was calm enough then,\" exclaimed Julien in despair, \"I thought I\nwas taking pity on her....\"\n\n\"The moth is burning itself at the candle,\" continued the prince using\na metaphor as old as the world.\n\n\"1. You will see her every day.\n\n\"2. You will pay court to a woman in her own set, but without\nmanifesting a passion, do you understand? I do not disguise from\nyou that your role is difficult; you are playing a part, and if she\nrealises you are playing it you are lost.\"\n\n\"She has so much intelligence and I have so little, I shall be lost,\"\nsaid Julien sadly.\n\n\"No, you are only more in love than I thought. Madame de Dubois is\npreoccupied with herself as are all women who have been favoured\nby heaven either with too much pedigree or too much money. She\ncontemplates herself instead of contemplating you, consequently she\ndoes not know you. During the two or three fits of love into which she\nmanaged to work herself for your especial benefit, she saw in you the\nhero of her dreams, and not the man you really are.\n\n\"But, deuce take it, this is elementary, my dear Sorel, are you an\nabsolute novice?\n\n\"Oddslife! Let us go into this shop. Look at that charming black\ncravat, one would say it was made by John Anderson of Burlington\nStreet. Be kind enough to take it and throw far away that awful black\ncord which you are wearing round your neck.\"\n\n\"And now,\" continued the prince as they came out of the shop of the\nfirst hosier of Strasbourg, \"what is the society in which madame de\nDubois lives? Great God, what a name, don't be angry, my dear Sorel, I\ncan't help it.... Now, whom are you going to pay court to?\"\n\n\"To an absolute prude, the daughter of an immensely rich\nstocking-merchant. She has the finest eyes in the world and they please\nme infinitely; she doubtless holds the highest place in the society\nof the district, but in the midst of all her greatness she blushes\nand becomes positively confused if anyone starts talking about trade\nor shops. And, unfortunately, her father was one of the best known\nmerchants in Strasbourg.\"\n\n\"So,\" said the prince with a laugh, \"you are sure that when one talks\nabout trade your fair lady thinks about herself and not about you. This\nsilly weakness is divine and extremely useful, it will prevent you\nfrom yielding to a single moment's folly when near her sparkling eyes.\nSuccess is assured.\"\n\nJulien was thinking of madame the marechale de Fervaques who often\ncame to the Hotel de la Mole. She was a beautiful foreigner who had\nmarried the marechal a year before his death. The one object of her\nwhole life seemed to be to make people forget that she was the daughter\nof a manufacturer. In order to cut some figure in Paris she had placed\nherself at the head of the party of piety.\n\nJulien sincerely admired the prince; what would he not have given to\nhave possessed his affectations! The conversation between the two\nfriends was interminable. Korasoff was delighted: No Frenchman had ever\nlistened to him for so long. \"So I have succeeded at last,\" said the\nprince to himself complacently, \"in getting a proper hearing and that\ntoo through giving lessons to my master.\"\n\n\"So we are quite agreed,\" he repeated to Julien for the tenth time.\n\"When you talk to the young beauty, I mean the daughter of the\nStrasbourg stocking merchant in the presence of madame de Dubois, not\na trace of passion. But on the other hand be ardently passionate when\nyou write. Reading a well-written love-letter is a prude's supremest\npleasure. It is a moment of relaxation. She leaves off posing and dares\nto listen to her own heart; consequently two letters a day.\"\n\n\"Never, never,\" said Julien despondently, \"I would rather be ground in\na mortar than make up three phrases. I am a corpse, my dear fellow,\nhope nothing from me. Let me die by the road side.\"\n\n\"And who is talking about making up phrases? I have got six volumes\nof copied-out love-letters in my bag. I have letters to suit every\nvariation of feminine character, including the most highly virtuous.\nDid not Kalisky pay court at Richmond-on-the-Thames at three leagues\nfrom London, you know, to the prettiest Quakeress in the whole of\nEngland?\"\n\nJulien was less unhappy when he left his friend at two o'clock in the\nmorning.\n\nThe prince summoned a copyist on the following day, and two days\nafterwards Julien was the possessor of fifty-three carefully numbered\nlove-letters intended for the most sublime and the most melancholy\nvirtue.\n\n\"The reason why there is not fifty-four,\" said the prince \"is because\nKalisky allowed himself to be dismissed. But what does it matter to\nyou, if you are badly treated by the stocking-merchant's daughter since\nyou only wish to produce an impression upon madame de Dubois' heart.\"\n\nThey went out riding every day, the prince was mad on Julien. Not\nknowing how else to manifest his sudden friendship, he finished up by\noffering him the hand of one of his cousins, a rich Moscow heiress;\n\"and once married,\" he added, \"my influence and that cross of yours\nwill get you made a Colonel within two years.\"\n\n\"But that cross was not given me by Napoleon, far from it.\"\n\n\"What does it matter?\" said the prince, \"didn't he invent it. It is\nstill the first in Europe by a long way.\"\n\nJulien was on the point of accepting; but his duty called him back to\nthe great personage. When he left Korasoff he promised to write. He\nreceived the answer to the secret note which he had brought, and posted\ntowards Paris; but he had scarcely been alone for two successive days\nbefore leaving France, and Mathilde seemed a worse punishment than\ndeath. \"I will not marry the millions Korasoff offers me,\" he said to\nhimself, \"and I will follow his advice.\n\n\"After all the art of seduction is his speciality. He has thought about\nnothing else except that alone for more than fifteen years, for he is\nnow thirty.\n\n\"One can't say that he lacks intelligence; he is subtle and cunning;\nenthusiasm and poetry are impossible in such a character. He is an\nattorney: an additional reason for his not making a mistake.\n\n\"I must do it, I will pay court to madame de Fervaques.\n\n\"It is very likely she will bore me a little, but I will look at her\nbeautiful eyes which are so like those other eyes which have loved me\nmore than anyone in the world.\n\n\"She is a foreigner; she is a new character to observe.\n\n\"I feel mad, and as though I were going to the devil. I must follow the\nadvice of a friend and not trust myself.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LV\n\nTHE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE\n\n\n        But if I take this pleasure with so much prudence\n        and circumspection I shall no longer find it a\n        pleasure.--_Lope de Vega_.\n\n\nAs soon as our hero had returned to Paris and had come out of the\nstudy of the marquis de La Mole, who seemed very displeased with the\ndespatches that were given him, he rushed off for the comte Altamira.\nThis noble foreigner combined with the advantage of having once been\ncondemned to death a very grave demeanour together with the good\nfortune of a devout temperament; these two qualities, and more than\nanything, the comte's high birth, made an especial appeal to madame de\nFervaques who saw a lot of him.\n\nJulien solemnly confessed to him that he was very much in love with her.\n\n\"Her virtue is the purest and the highest,\" answered Altamira, \"only it\nis a little Jesuitical and dogmatic.\n\n\"There are days when, though I understand each of the expressions which\nshe makes use of, I never understand the whole sentence. She often\nmakes me think that I do not know French as well as I am said to. But\nyour acquaintance with her will get you talked about; it will give you\nweight in the world. But let us go to Bustos,\" said Count Altamira\nwho had a methodical turn of mind; \"he once paid court to madame la\nmarechale.\"\n\nDon Diego Bustos had the matter explained to him at length, while he\nsaid nothing, like a barrister in his chambers. He had a big monk-like\nface with black moustaches and an inimitable gravity; he was, however,\na good carbonaro.\n\n\"I understand,\" he said to Julien at last. \"Has the marechale de\nFervaques had lovers, or has she not? Have you consequently any hope\nof success? That is the question. I don't mind telling you, for my own\npart, that I have failed. Now that I am no more piqued I reason it out\nto myself in this way; she is often bad tempered, and as I will tell\nyou in a minute, she is quite vindictive.\n\n\"I fail to detect in her that bilious temperament which is the sign of\ngenius, and shows as it were a veneer of passion over all its actions.\nOn the contrary, she owes her rare beauty and her fresh complexion to\nthe phlegmatic, tranquil character of the Dutch.\"\n\nJulien began to lose patience with the phlegmatic slowness of the\nimperturbable Spaniard; he could not help giving vent to some\nmonosyllables from time to time.\n\n\"Will you listen to me?\" Don Diego Bustos gravely said to him.\n\n\"Forgive the _furia franchese_; I am all ears,\" said Julien.\n\n\"The marechale de Fervaques then is a great hater; she persecutes\nruthlessly people she has never seen--advocates, poor devils of men of\nletters who have composed songs like Colle, you know?\n\n    \"J'ai la marotte\n     D'aimer Marote, etc.\"\n\nAnd Julien had to put up with the whole quotation.\n\nThe Spaniard was very pleased to get a chance of singing in French.\n\nThat divine song was never listened to more impatiently. When it was\nfinished Don Diego said--\"The marechale procured the dismissal of the\nauthor of the song:\n\n    \"Un jour l'amour au cabaret.\"\n\nJulien shuddered lest he should want to sing it. He contented himself\nwith analysing it. As a matter of fact, it was blasphemous and somewhat\nindecent.\n\n\"When the marechale become enraged against that song,\" said Don Diego,\n\"I remarked to her that a woman of her rank ought not to read all the\nstupid things that are published. Whatever progress piety and gravity\nmay make France will always have a cabaret literature.\n\n\"'Be careful,' I said to madame de Fervaques when she had succeeded\nin depriving the author, a poor devil on half-pay, of a place worth\neighteen hundred francs a year, 'you have attacked this rhymster with\nyour own arms, he may answer you with his rhymes; he will make a song\nabout virtue. The gilded salons will be on your side; but people who\nlike to laugh will repeat his epigrams.' Do you know, monsieur, what\nthe marechale answered? 'Let all Paris come and see me walking to my\nmartyrdom for the sake of the Lord. It will be a new spectacle for\nFrance. The people will learn to respect the quality. It will be the\nfinest day of my life.' Her eyes never looked finer.\"\n\n\"And she has superb ones,\" exclaimed Julien.\n\n\"I see that you are in love. Further,\" went on Don Diego Bustos\ngravely, \"she has not the bilious constitution which causes\nvindictiveness. If, however, she likes to do harm, it is because she is\nunhappy, I suspect some secret misfortune. May it not be quite well a\ncase of prude tired of her role?\"\n\nThe Spaniard looked at him in silence for a good minute.\n\n\"That's the whole point,\" he added gravely, \"and that's what may give\nyou ground for some hope. I have often reflected about it during the\ntwo years that I was her very humble servant. All your future, my\namorous sir, depends on this great problem. Is she a prude tired of her\nrole and only malicious because she is unhappy?\"\n\n\"Or,\" said Altamira emerging at last from his deep silence, \"can it be\nas I have said twenty times before, simply a case of French vanity; the\nmemory of her father, the celebrated cloth merchant, constitutes the\nunhappiness of this frigid melancholy nature. The only happiness she\ncould find would be to live in Toledo and to be tortured by a confessor\nwho would show her hell wide open every day.\"\n\n\"Altamira informs me you are one of us,\" said Don Diego, whose\ndemeanour was growing graver and graver to Julien as he went out. \"You\nwill help us one day in re-winning our liberty, so I would like to help\nyou in this little amusement. It is right that you should know the\nmarechale's style; here are four letters in her hand-writing.\"\n\n\"I will copy them out,\" exclaimed Julien, \"and bring them back to you.\"\n\n\"And you will never let anyone know a word of what we have been\nsaying.\"\n\n\"Never, on my honour,\" cried Julien.\n\n\"Well, God help you,\" added the Spaniard, and he silently escorted\nAltamira and Julien as far as the staircase.\n\nThis somewhat amused our hero; he was on the point of smiling. \"So\nwe have the devout Altamira,\" he said to himself, \"aiding me in an\nadulterous enterprise.\"\n\nDuring Don Diego's solemn conversation Julien had been attentive to the\nhours struck by the clock of the Hotel d'Aligre.\n\nThe dinner hour was drawing near, he was going to see Mathilde again.\nHe went in and dressed with much care.\n\n\"Mistake No. 1,\" he said to himself as he descended the staircase: \"I\nmust follow the prince's instructions to the letter.\"\n\nHe went up to his room again and put on a travelling suit which was as\nsimple as it could be. \"All I have to do now,\" he thought, \"is to keep\ncontrol of my expression.\" It was only half-past five and they dined at\nsix. He thought of going down to the salon which he found deserted. He\nwas moved to the point of tears at the sight of the blue sofa. \"I must\nmake an end of this foolish sensitiveness,\" he said angrily, \"it will\nbetray me.\" He took up a paper in order to keep himself in countenance\nand passed three or four times from the salon into the garden.\n\nIt was only when he was well concealed by a large oak and was trembling\nall over, that he ventured to raise his eyes at mademoiselle de la\nMole's window. It was hermetically sealed; he was on the point of\nfainting and remained for a long time leaning against the oak; then\nwith a staggering step he went to have another look at the gardener's\nladder.\n\nThe chain which he had once forced asunder--in, alas, such different\ncircumstances--had not yet been repaired. Carried away by a moment of\nmadness, Julien pressed it to his lips.\n\nAfter having wandered about for a long time between the salon and the\ngarden, Julien felt horribly tired; he was now feeling acutely the\neffects of a first success. My eyes will be expressionless and will not\nbetray me! The guests gradually arrived in the salon; the door never\nopened without instilling anxiety into Julien's heart.\n\nThey sat down at table. Mademoiselle de la Mole, always faithful to her\nhabit of keeping people waiting, eventually appeared. She blushed a\ngreat deal on seeing Julien, she had not been told of his arrival. In\naccordance with Prince Korasoff's recommendation, Julien looked at his\nhands. They were trembling. Troubled though he was beyond words by this\ndiscovery, he was sufficiently happy to look merely tired.\n\nM. de la Mole sang his praises. The marquise spoke to him a minute\nafterwards and complimented him on his tired appearance. Julien said to\nhimself at every minute, \"I ought not to look too much at mademoiselle\nde la Mole, I ought not to avoid looking at her too much either. I must\nappear as I was eight days before my unhappiness----\" He had occasion\nto be satisfied with his success and remained in the salon. Paying\nattention for the first time to the mistress of the house, he made\nevery effort to make the visitors speak and to keep the conversation\nalive.\n\nHis politeness was rewarded; madame la marechale de Fervaques was\nannounced about eight o'clock. Julien retired and shortly afterwards\nappeared dressed with the greatest care. Madame de la Mole was\ninfinitely grateful to him for this mark of respect and made a point\nof manifesting her satisfaction by telling madame de Fervaques about\nhis journey. Julien established himself near the marechale in such a\nposition that Mathilde could not notice his eyes. In this position he\nlavished in accordance with all the rules in the art of love, the most\nabject admiration on madame de Fervaques. The first of the 53 letters\nwith which Prince Korasoff had presented him commenced with a tirade on\nthis sentiment.\n\nThe marechale announced that she was going to the Opera-Bouffe. Julien\nrushed there. He ran across the Chevalier de Beauvoisis who took him\ninto a box occupied by Messieurs the Gentlemen of the Chamber, just\nnext to madame de Fervaques's box. Julien constantly looked at her. \"I\nmust keep a siege-journal,\" he said to himself as he went back to the\nhotel, \"otherwise I shall forget my attacks.\" He wrote two or three\npages on this boring theme, and in this way achieved the admirable\nresult of scarcely thinking at all about mademoiselle de la Mole.\n\nMathilde had almost forgotten him during his journey. \"He is simply\na commonplace person after all,\" she thought, \"his name will always\nrecall to me the greatest mistake in my life. I must honestly go back\nto all my ideas about prudence and honour; a woman who forgets them has\neverything to lose.\" She showed herself inclined to allow the contract\nwith the marquis de Croisenois, which had been prepared so long ago, to\nbe at last concluded. He was mad with joy; he would have been very much\nastonished had he been told that there was an element of resignation at\nthe bottom of those feelings of Mathilde which made him so proud.\n\nAll mademoiselle de la Mole's ideas changed when she saw Julien. \"As a\nmatter of fact he is my husband,\" she said to herself. \"If I am sincere\nin my return to sensible notions, he is clearly the man I ought to\nmarry.\"\n\nShe was expecting importunities and airs of unhappiness on the part of\nJulien; she commenced rehearsing her answers, for he would doubtless\ntry to address some words to her when they left the dinner table. Far\nfrom that he remained stubbornly in the salon and did not even look in\nthe direction of the garden, though God knows what pain that caused him!\n\n\"It is better to have this explanation out all at once,\" thought\nmademoiselle de la Mole; she went into the garden alone, Julien did not\nappear. Mathilde went and walked near the salon window. She found him\nvery much occupied in describing to madame de Fervaques the old ruined\nchateau which crown the banks along the Rhine and invest them with so\nmuch atmosphere. He was beginning to acquit himself with some credit\nin that sentimental picturesque jargon which is called wit in certain\nsalons. Prince Korasoff would have been very proud if he had been at\nParis. This evening was exactly what he had predicted.\n\nHe would have approved the line of conduct which Julien followed on the\nsubsequent days.\n\nAn intrigue among the members of the secret government was going to\nbestow a few blue ribbons; madame marechale de Fervaques was insisting\non her great uncle being made a chevalier of the order. The marquis de\nla Mole had the same pretensions for his father-in-law; they joined\nforces and the marechale came to the Hotel de la Mole nearly every day.\nIt was from her that Julien learned that the marquis was going to be\na minister. He was offering to the _Camarilla_ a very ingenious plan\nfor the annihilation of the charter within three years without any\ndisturbance.\n\nIf M. de la Mole became a minister, Julien could hope for a bishopric:\nbut all these important interests seemed to be veiled and hazy. His\nimagination only perceived them very vaguely, and so to speak, in\nthe far distance. The awful unhappiness which was making him into a\nmadman could find no other interest in life except the character of his\nrelations with mademoiselle de la Mole. He calculated that after five\nor six careful years he would manage to get himself loved again.\n\nThis cold brain had been reduced, as one sees, to a state of complete\ndisorder. Out of all the qualities which had formerly distinguished\nhim, all that remained was a little firmness. He was literally faithful\nto the line of conduct which prince Korasoff had dictated, and placed\nhimself every evening near madame Fervaques' armchair, but he found it\nimpossible to think of a word to say to her.\n\nThe strain of making Mathilde think that he had recovered exhausted his\nwhole moral force, and when he was with the marechale he seemed almost\nlifeless; even his eyes had lost all their fire, as in cases of extreme\nphysical suffering.\n\nAs madame de la Mole's views were invariably a counterpart of the\nopinions of that husband of hers who could make her into a Duchess, she\nhad been singing Julien's praises for some days.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVI\n\nMORAL LOVE\n\n\n    There also was of course in Adeline\n    That calm patrician polish in the address,\n    Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line\n    Of anything which Nature would express;\n    Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine.\n    At least his manner suffers not to guess\n    That anything he views can greatly please.\n                            _Don Juan, c. xiii. st._ 84.\n\n\n\"There is an element of madness in all this family's way of looking at\nthings,\" thought the marechale; \"they are infatuated with their young\nabbe, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his\neyes are fine enough, it is true.\"\n\nJulien, on his side, found in the marechale's manners an almost perfect\ninstance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness;\nand, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of\nany violent emotion. Madame de Fervaques would have been as much\nscandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as\nby a lack of dignity towards one's inferiors. She would have regarded\nthe slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness\nwhich puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a\nperson of high rank owed to herself. Her great happiness was to talk of\nthe king's last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke\nde Saint Simon, especially the genealogical part.\n\nJulien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame\nde Fervaques' particular style of beauty. He got there in advance, but\nwas careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde.\n\nAstonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding himself from\nher, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near\nthe marechale's armchair. Julien had a fairly close view of her over\nmadame de Fervaques' hat.\n\nThose eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and\nthen hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and\ntalked very well.\n\nHe was speaking to the marechale, but his one aim was to produce an\nimpression upon Mathilde's soul. He became so animated that eventually\nmadame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said.\n\nThis was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by\nsome phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the\nmarechale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior\nmen whose mission it was to regenerate the age.\n\n\"Since he has bad enough taste,\" said mademoiselle de la Mole, \"to talk\nso long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques, I shall not listen to\nhim any more.\" She kept her resolution during the whole latter part of\nthe evening, although she had difficulty in doing so.\n\nAt midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accompany her to\nher room, madame de la Mole stopped on the staircase to enter into an\nexhaustive eulogy of Julien. Mathilde ended by losing her temper. She\ncould not get to sleep. She felt calmed by this thought: \"the very\nthings which I despise in a man may none the less constitute a great\nmerit in the eyes of the marechale.\"\n\nAs for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy; his eyes\nchanced to fall on the Russian leather portfolio in which prince\nKorasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters which he had presented\nto him. Julien saw a note at the bottom of the first letter: No. 1 is\nsent eight days after the first meeting.\n\n\"I am behind hand,\" exclaimed Julien. \"It is quite a long time since I\nmet madame de Fervaques.\" He immediately began to copy out this first\nlove letter. It was a homily packed with moral platitudes and deadly\ndull. Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at the second page.\n\nSome hours afterwards he was surprised to see the broad daylight as he\nlent on his desk. The most painful moments in his life were those when\nhe woke up every morning to realise his unhappiness. On this particular\nday he finished copying out his letter in a state verging on laughter.\n\"Is it possible,\" he said to himself, \"that there ever lived a young\nman who actually wrote like that.\" He counted several sentences of nine\nlines each. At the bottom of the original he noticed a pencilled note.\n\"These letters are delivered personally, on horseback, black cravat,\nblue tail-coat. You give the letter to the porter with a contrite air;\nexpression of profound melancholy. If you notice any chambermaid, dry\nyour eyes furtively and speak to her.\"\n\nAll this was duly carried out.\n\n\"I am taking a very bold course!\" thought Julien as he came out of the\nHotel de Fervaques, \"but all the worse for Korasoff. To think of daring\nto write to so virtuous a celebrity. I shall be treated with the utmost\ncontempt, and nothing will amuse me more. It is really the only comedy\nthat I can in any way appreciate. Yes, it will amuse me to load with\nridicule that odious creature whom I call myself. If I believed in\nmyself, I would commit some crime to distract myself.\"\n\nThe moment when Julien brought his horse back to the stable was the\nhappiest he had experienced for a whole month. Korasoff had expressly\nforbidden him to look at the mistress who had left him, on any pretext\nwhatsoever. But the step of that horse, which she knew so well, and\nJulien's way of knocking on the stable door with his riding-whip to\ncall a man, sometimes attracted Mathilde to behind the window-curtain.\nThe muslin was so light that Julien could see through it. By looking\nunder the brim of his hat in a certain way, he could get a view of\nMathilde's figure without seeing her eyes. \"Consequently,\" he said to\nhimself, \"she cannot see mine, and that is not really looking at her.\"\n\nIn the evening madame de Fervaques behaved towards him, exactly as\nthough she had never received the philosophic mystical and religious\ndissertation which he had given to her porter in the morning with so\nmelancholy an air. Chance had shown Julien on the preceding day how\nto be eloquent; he placed himself in such a position that he could\nsee Mathilde's eyes. She, on her side, left the blue sofa a minute\nafter the marechale's arrival; this involved abandoning her usual\nassociates. M. de Croisenois seemed overwhelmed by this new caprice:\nhis palpable grief alleviated the awfulness of Julien's agony.\n\nThis unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an angel, and\ninasmuch as a certain element of self-appreciation will insinuate\nitself even into those hearts which serve as a temple for the\nmost august virtue, the marechale said to herself as she got into\nher carriage, \"Madame de la Mole is right, this young priest has\ndistinction. My presence must have overawed him at first. As a matter\nof fact, the whole tone of this house is very frivolous; I can see\nnothing but instances of virtue helped by oldness, and standing in\ngreat need of the chills of age. This young man must have managed to\nappreciate the difference; he writes well, but I fear very much that\nthis request of his in his letter for me to enlighten him with my\nadvice, is really nothing less than an, as yet, unconscious sentiment.\n\n\"Nevertheless how many conversions have begun like that! What makes me\nconsider this a good omen is the difference between his style and that\nof the young people whose letters I have had an opportunity of seeing.\nOne cannot avoid recognising unction, profound seriousness, and much\nconviction in the prose of this young acolyte; he has no doubt the\nsweet virtue of a Massillon.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVII\n\nTHE FINEST PLACES IN THE CHURCH\n\n\n    Services! talents! merits! bah! belong to a coterie.\n                                               _Telemaque_.\n\n\nThe idea of a bishopric had thus become associated with the idea of\nJulien in the mind of a woman, who would sooner or later have at her\ndisposal the finest places in the Church of France. This idea had not\nstruck Julien at all; at the present time his thoughts were strictly\nlimited to his actual unhappiness. Everything tended to intensify\nit. The sight of his room, for instance, had become unbearable. When\nhe came back in the evening with his candle, each piece of furniture\nand each little ornament seemed to become articulate, and to announce\nharshly some new phase of his unhappiness.\n\n\"I have a hard task before me today,\" he said to himself as he came in\nwith a vivacity which he had not experienced for a long time; \"let us\nhope that the second letter will be as boring as the first.\"\n\nIt was more so. What he was copying seemed so absurd that he finished\nup by transcribing it line for line without thinking of the sense.\n\n\"It is even more bombastic,\" he said to himself, \"than those official\ndocuments of the treaty of Munster which my professor of diplomacy made\nme copy out at London.\"\n\nIt was only then that he remembered madame de Fervaque's letters which\nhe had forgotten to give back to the grave Spaniard Don Diego Bustos.\nHe found them. They were really almost as nonsensical as those of\nthe young Russian nobleman. Their vagueness was unlimited. It meant\neverything and nothing. \"It's the AEolian harp of style,\" thought\nJulien. \"The only real thing I see in the middle of all these lofty\nthoughts about annihilation, death, infinity, etc., is an abominable\nfear of ridicule.\"\n\nThe monologue which we have just condensed was repeated for fifteen\ndays on end. Falling off to sleep as he copied out a sort of commentary\non the Apocalypse, going with a melancholy expression to deliver it\nthe following day, taking his horse back to the stable in the hope\nof catching sight of Mathilde's dress, working, going in the evening\nto the opera on those evenings when madame de Fervaques did not come\nto the Hotel de la Mole, such were the monotonous events in Julien's\nlife. His life had more interest, when madame la Fervaques visited the\nmarquise; he could then catch a glimpse of Mathilde's eyes underneath\na feather of the marechale's hat, and he would wax eloquent. His\npicturesque and sentimental phrases began to assume a style, which was\nboth more striking and more elegant.\n\nHe quite realised that what he said was absurd in Mathilde's eyes, but\nhe wished to impress her by the elegance of his diction. \"The falser my\nspeeches are the more I ought to please,\" thought Julien, and he then\nhad the abominable audacity to exaggerate certain elements in his own\ncharacter. He soon appreciated that to avoid appearing vulgar in the\neyes of the marechale it was necessary to eschew simple and rational\nideas. He would continue on these lines, or would cut short his grand\neloquence according as he saw appreciation or indifference in the eyes\nof the two great ladies whom he had set out to please.\n\nTaking it all round, his life was less awful than when his days were\npassed in inaction.\n\n\"But,\" he said to himself one evening, \"here I am copying out the\nfifteenth of these abominable dissertations; the first fourteen have\nbeen duly delivered to the marechale's porter. I shall have the honour\nof filling all the drawers in her escritoire. And yet she treats me\nas though I never wrote. What can be the end of all this? Will my\nconstancy bore her as much as it does me? I must admit that that\nRussian friend of Korasoff's who was in love with the pretty Quakeress\nof Richmond, was a terrible man in his time; no one could be more\noverwhelming.\"\n\nLike all mediocre individuals, who chance to come into contact with the\nmanoeuvres of a great general, Julien understood nothing of the attack\nexecuted by the young Russian on the heart of the young English girl.\nThe only purpose of the first forty letters was to secure forgiveness\nfor the boldness of writing at all. The sweet person, who perhaps lived\na life of inordinate boredom, had to be induced to contract the habit\nof receiving letters, which were perhaps a little less insipid than her\neveryday life.\n\nOne morning a letter was delivered to Julien. He recognised the arms\nof madame la Fervaques, and broke the seal with an eagerness which\nwould have seemed impossible to him some days before. It was only an\ninvitation to dinner.\n\nHe rushed to prince Korasoffs instructions. Unfortunately the young\nRussian had taken it into his head to be as flippant as Dorat, just\nwhen he should have been simple and intelligible! Julien was not able\nto form any idea of the moral position which he ought to take up at the\nmarechale's dinner.\n\nThe salon was extremely magnificent and decorated like the gallery de\nDiane in the Tuileries with panelled oil-paintings.\n\nThere were some light spots on these pictures. Julien learnt later that\nthe mistress of the house had thought the subject somewhat lacking in\ndecency and that she had had the pictures corrected. \"What a moral\ncentury!\" he thought.\n\nHe noticed in this salon three of the persons who had been present\nat the drawing up of the secret note. One of them, my lord bishop of\n---- the marechale's uncle had the disposition of the ecclesiastical\npatronage, and could, it was said, refuse his niece nothing. \"What\nimmense progress I have made,\" said Julien to himself with a melancholy\nsmile, \"and how indifferent I am to it. Here I am dining with the\nfamous bishop of ----.\"\n\nThe dinner was mediocre and the conversation wearisome.\n\n\"It's like the small talk in a bad book,\" thought Julien. \"All the\ngreatest subjects of human thought are proudly tackled. After listening\nfor three minutes one asks oneself which is greater--the speaker's\nbombast, or his abominable ignorance?\"\n\nThe reader has doubtless forgotten the little man of letters named\nTanbeau, who was the nephew of the Academician, and intended to be\nprofessor, who seemed entrusted with the task of poisoning the salon of\nthe Hotel de la Mole with his base calumnies.\n\nIt was this little man who gave Julien the first inkling that though,\nmadame de Fervaques did not answer, she might quite well take an\nindulgent view of the sentiment which dictated them. M. Tanbeau's\nsinister soul was lacerated by the thought of Julien's success; \"but\nsince, on the other hand, a man of merit cannot be in two places at the\nsame time any more than a fool,\" said the future professor to himself,\n\"if Sorel becomes the lover of the sublime marechale, she will obtain\nsome lucrative position for him in the church, and I shall be rid of\nhim in the Hotel de la Mole.\"\n\nM. the abbe Pirard addressed long sermons to Julien concerning his\nsuccess at the hotel de Fervaques. There was a sectarian jealousy\nbetween the austere Jansenist and the salon of the virtuous marechale\nwhich was Jesuitical, reactionary, and monarchical.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVIII\n\nMANON LESCAUT\n\n\n        Accordingly once he was thoroughly convinced of the\n        asinine stupidity of the prior, he would usually succeed\n        well enough by calling white black, and black white.\n        _Lichtenberg_.\n\n\nThe Russian instructions peremptorily forbade the writer from ever\ncontradicting in conversation the recipient of the letters. No pretext\ncould excuse any deviation from the role of that most ecstatic\nadmiration. The letters were always based on that hypothesis.\n\nOne evening at the opera, when in madame de Fervaques' box, Julien\nspoke of the ballet of _Manon Lescaut_ in the most enthusiastic terms.\nHis only reason for talking in that strain was the fact that he thought\nit insignificant.\n\nThe marechale said that the ballet was very inferior to the abbe\nPrevost's novel.\n\n\"The idea,\" thought Julien, both surprised and amused, \"of so highly\nvirtuous a person praising a novel! Madame de Fervaques used to profess\ntwo or three times a week the most absolute contempt for those writers,\nwho, by means of their insipid works, try to corrupt a youth which is,\nalas! only too inclined to the errors of the senses.\"\n\n\"_Manon Lescaut_\" continued the marechale, \"is said to be one of the\nbest of this immoral and dangerous type of book. The weaknesses and the\ndeserved anguish of a criminal heart are, they say, portrayed with a\ntruth which is not lacking in depth; a fact which does not prevent your\nBonaparte from stating at St. Helena that it is simply a novel written\nfor lackeys.\"\n\nThe word Bonaparte restored to Julien all the activity of his mind.\n\"They have tried to ruin me with the marechale; they have told her of\nmy enthusiasm for Napoleon. This fact has sufficiently piqued her to\nmake her yield to the temptation to make me feel it.\" This discovery\namused him all the evening, and rendered him amusing. As he took leave\nof the marechale in the vestibule of the opera, she said to him,\n\"Remember, monsieur, one must not like Bonaparte if you like me; at\nthe best he can only be accepted as a necessity imposed by Providence.\nBesides, the man did not have a sufficiently supple soul to appreciate\nmasterpieces of art.\"\n\n\"When you like me,\" Julien kept on repeating to himself, \"that means\nnothing or means everything. Here we have mysteries of language which\nare beyond us poor provincials.\" And he thought a great deal about\nmadame de Renal, as he copied out an immense letter destined for the\nmarechale.\n\n\"How is it,\" she said to him the following day, with an assumed\nindifference which he thought was clumsily assumed, \"that you talk to\nme about London and Richmond in a letter which you wrote last night, I\nthink, when you came back from the opera?\"\n\nJulien was very embarrassed. He had copied line by line without\nthinking about what he was writing, and had apparently forgotten to\nsubstitute Paris and Saint Cloud for the words London and Richmond\nwhich occurred in the original. He commenced two or three sentences,\nbut found it impossible to finish them. He felt on the point of\nsuccumbing to a fit of idiotic laughter. Finally by picking his words\nhe succeeded in formulating this inspiration: \"Exalted as I was by the\ndiscussion of the most sublime and greatest interests of the human\nsoul, my own soul may have been somewhat absent in my letter to you.\"\n\n\"I am making an impression,\" he said to himself, \"so I can spare myself\nthe boredom of the rest of the evening.\" He left the Hotel de Fervaques\nat a run. In the evening he had another look at the original of the\nletter which he had copied out on the previous night, and soon came to\nthe fatal place where the young Russian made mention of London and of\nRichmond. Julien was very astonished to find this letter almost tender.\n\nIt had been the contrast between the apparent lightness of his\nconversation, and the sublime and almost apocalyptic profundity of\nhis letters which had marked him out for favour. The marechale was\nparticularly pleased by the longness of the sentences; this was very\nfar from being that sprightly style which that immoral man Voltaire\nhad brought into fashion. Although our hero made every possible human\neffort to eliminate from his conversation any symptom of good sense, it\nstill preserved a certain anti-monarchical and blasphemous tinge which\ndid not escape madame de Fervaques. Surrounded as she was by persons\nwho, though eminently moral, had very often not a single idea during a\nwhole evening, this lady was profoundly struck by anything resembling\na novelty, but at the same time she thought she owed it to herself to\nbe offended by it. She called this defect: Keeping the imprint of the\nlightness of the age.\n\nBut such salons are only worth observing when one has a favour to\nprocure. The reader doubtless shares all the ennui of the colourless\nlife which Julien was leading. This period represents the steppes of\nour journey.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole needed to exercise her self-control to avoid\nthinking of Julien during the whole period filled by the de Fervaques\nepisode. Her soul was a prey to violent battles; sometimes she piqued\nherself on despising that melancholy young man, but his conversation\ncaptivated her in spite of herself. She was particularly astonished by\nhis absolute falseness. He did not say a single word to the marechale\nwhich was not a lie, or at any rate, an abominable travesty of his own\nway of thinking, which Mathilde knew so perfectly in every phase. This\nMachiavellianism impressed her. \"What subtlety,\" she said to herself.\n\"What a difference between the bombastic coxcombs, or the common\nrascals like Tanbeau who talk in the same strain.\"\n\nNevertheless Julien went through awful days. It was only to accomplish\nthe most painful of duties that he put in a daily appearance in the\nmarechale's salon.\n\nThe strain of playing a part ended by depriving his mind of all its\nstrength. As he crossed each night the immense courtyard of the Hotel\nde Fervaques, it was only through sheer force in character and logic\nthat he succeeded in keeping a little above the level of despair.\n\n\"I overcame despair at the seminary,\" he said, \"yet what an awful\nprospect I had then. I was then either going to make my fortune or\ncome to grief just as I am now. I found myself obliged to pass all my\nlife in intimate association with the most contemptible and disgusting\nthings in the whole world. The following spring, just eleven short\nmonths later, I was perhaps the happiest of all young people of my own\nage.\"\n\nBut very often all this fine logic proved unavailing against the awful\nreality. He saw Mathilde every day at breakfast and at dinner. He knew\nfrom the numerous letters which de la Mole dictated to him that she was\non the eve of marrying de Croisenois. This charming man already called\ntwice a day at the Hotel de la Mole; the jealous eye of a jilted lover\nwas alive to every one of his movements. When he thought he had noticed\nthat mademoiselle de la Mole was beginning to encourage her intended,\nJulien could not help looking tenderly at his pistols as he went up to\nhis room.\n\n\"Ah,\" he said to himself, \"would it not be much wiser to take the marks\nout of my linen and to go into some solitary forest twenty leagues from\nParis to put an end to this atrocious life? I should be unknown in the\ndistrict, my death would remain a secret for a fortnight, and who would\nbother about me after a fortnight?\"\n\nThis reasoning was very logical. But on the following day a glimpse of\nMathilde's arm between the sleeve of her dress and her glove sufficed\nto plunge our young philosopher into memories which, though agonising,\nnone the less gave him a hold on life. \"Well,\" he said to himself, \"I\nwill follow this Russian plan to the end. How will it all finish?\"\n\n\"So far as the marechale is concerned, after I have copied out these\nfifty-three letters, I shall not write any others.\n\n\"As for Mathilde, these six weeks of painful acting will either leave\nher anger unchanged, or will win me a moment of reconciliation. Great\nGod! I should die of happiness.\" And he could not finish his train of\nthought.\n\nAfter a long reverie he succeeded in taking up the thread of his\nargument. \"In that case,\" he said to himself, \"I should win one day of\nhappiness, and after that her cruelties which are based, alas, on my\nlack of ability to please her will recommence. I should have nothing\nleft to do, I should be ruined and lost for ever. With such a character\nas hers what guarantee can she give me? Alas! My manners are no doubt\nlacking in elegance, and my style of speech is heavy and monotonous.\nGreat God, why am I myself?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIX\n\nENNUI\n\n\n        Sacrificing one's self to one's passions, let it pass;\n        but sacrificing one's self to passions which one has not\n        got! Oh! melancholy nineteenth century!\n                                            _Girodet_.\n\n\nMadame de Fervaques had begun reading Julien's long letters without any\npleasure, but she now began to think about them; one thing, however,\ngrieved her. \"What a pity that M. Sorel was not a real priest! He could\nthen be admitted to a kind of intimacy; but in view of that cross,\nand that almost lay dress, one is exposed to cruel questions and what\nis one to answer?\" She did not finish the train of thought, \"Some\nmalicious woman friend may think, and even spread it about that he is\nsome lower middle-class cousin or other, a relative of my father, some\ntradesman who has been decorated by the National Guard.\" Up to the\ntime which she had seen Julien, madame de Fervaque's greatest pleasure\nhad been writing the word marechale after her name. Consequently a\nmorbid parvenu vanity, which was ready to take umbrage at everything,\ncombatted the awakening of her interest in him. \"It would be so easy\nfor me,\" said the marechale, \"to make him a grand vicar in some diocese\nnear Paris! but plain M. Sorel, and what is more, a man who is the\nsecretary of M. de la Mole! It is heart-breaking.\"\n\nFor the first time in her life this soul, which was afraid of\neverything, was moved by an interest which was alien to its own\npretensions to rank and superiority. Her old porter noticed that\nwhenever he brought a letter from this handsome young man, who always\nlooked so sad, he was certain to see that absent, discontented\nexpression, which the marechale always made a point of assuming on the\nentry of any of her servants, immediately disappear. The boredom of a\nmode of life whose ambitions were concentrated on impressing the public\nwithout her having at heart any real faculty of enjoyment for that kind\nof success, had become so intolerable since she had begun to think of\nJulien that, all that was necessary to prevent her chambermaids being\nbullied for a whole day, was that their mistress should have passed\nan hour in the society of this strange young man on the evening of\nthe preceding day. His budding credit was proof against very cleverly\nwritten anonymous letters. It was in vain that Tanbeau supplied M. de\nLuz, de Croisenois, de Caylus, with two or three very clever calumnies\nwhich these gentlemen were only too glad to spread, without making\ntoo many enquiries of the actual truth of the charges. The marechale,\nwhose temperament was not calculated to be proof against these vulgar\nexpedients related her doubts to Mathilde, and was always consoled by\nher.\n\nOne day, madame de Fervaques, after having asked three times if there\nwere any letters for her, suddenly decided to answer Julien. It was a\ncase of the triumph of ennui. On reaching the second letter in his name\nthe marechale almost felt herself pulled up sharp by the unbecomingness\nof writing with her own hand so vulgar an address as to M. Sorel, care\nof M. le Marquis de la Mole.\n\n\"You must bring me envelopes with your address on,\" she said very drily\nto Julien in the evening. \"Here I am appointed lover and valet in one,\"\nthought Julien, and he bowed, amused himself by wrinkling his face up\nlike Arsene, the old valet of the marquis.\n\nHe brought the envelopes that very evening, and he received the third\nletter very early on the following day: he read five or six lines at\nthe beginning, and two or three towards the end. There were four pages\nof a small and very close writing. The lady gradually developed the\nsweet habit of writing nearly every day. Julien answered by faithful\ncopies of the Russian letters; and such is the advantage of the\nbombastic style that madame de Fervaques was not a bit astonished by\nthe lack of connection between his answers and her letters. How gravely\nirritated would her pride have been if the little Tanbeau who had\nconstituted himself a voluntary spy on all Julien's movements had been\nable to have informed her that all these letters were left unsealed and\nthrown haphazard into Julien's drawer.\n\nOne morning the porter was bringing into the library a letter to him\nfrom the marechale. Mathilde met the man, saw the letter together with\nthe address in Julien's handwriting. She entered the library as the\nporter was leaving it, the letter was still on the edge of the table.\nJulien was very busy with his work and had not yet put it in his drawer.\n\n\"I cannot endure this,\" exclaimed Mathilde, as she took possession\nof the letter, \"you are completely forgetting me, me your wife, your\nconduct is awful, monsieur.\"\n\nAt these words her pride, shocked by the awful unseemliness of her\nproceeding, prevented her from speaking. She burst into tears, and soon\nseemed to Julien scarcely able to breathe.\n\nJulien was so surprised and embarrassed that he did not fully\nappreciate how ideally fortunate this scene was for himself. He helped\nMathilde to sit down; she almost abandoned herself in his arms.\n\nThe first minute in which he noticed this movement, he felt an extreme\njoy. Immediately afterwards, he thought of Korasoff: \"I may lose\neverything by a single word.\"\n\nThe strain of carrying out his tactics was so great that his arms\nstiffened. \"I dare not even allow myself to press this supple, charming\nframe to my heart, or she will despise me or treat me badly. What an\nawful character!\" And while he cursed Mathilde's character, he loved\nher a hundred times more. He thought he had a queen in his arms.\n\nJulien's impassive coldness intensified the anguished pride which was\nlacerating the soul of mademoiselle de la Mole. She was far from having\nthe necessary self-possession to try and read in his eyes what he felt\nfor her at that particular moment. She could not make up her mind to\nlook at him. She trembled lest she might encounter a contemptuous\nexpression.\n\nSeated motionless on the library divan, with her head turned in the\nopposite direction to Julien, she was a prey to the most poignant\nanguish that pride and love can inflict upon a human soul. What an\nawful step had she just slipped into taking! \"It has been reserved\nfor me, unhappy woman that I am, to see my most unbecoming advances\nrebuffed! and rebuffed by whom?\" added her maddened and wounded pride;\n\"rebuffed by a servant of my father's! That's more than I will put up\nwith,\" she said aloud, and rising in a fury, she opened the drawer of\nJulien's table, which was two yards in front of her.\n\nShe stood petrified with horror when she saw eight or ten unopened\nletters, completely like the one the porter had just brought up. She\nrecognised Julien's handwriting, though more or less disguised, on all\nthe addresses.\n\n\"So,\" she cried, quite beside herself, \"you are not only on good terms\nwith her, but you actually despise her. You, a nobody, despise madame\nla marechale de Fervaques!\"\n\n\"Oh, forgive me, my dear,\" she added, throwing herself on her knees;\n\"despise me if you wish, but love me. I cannot live without your love.\"\nAnd she fell down in a dead faint.\n\n\"So our proud lady is lying at my feet,\" said Julien to himself.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LX\n\nA BOX AT THE BOUFFES\n\n\n   As the blackest sky\nForetells the heaviest tempest\n               _Don Juan, c._ 1. _st_.76.\n\n\nIn the midst of these great transports Julien felt more surprised than\nhappy. Mathilde's abuse proved to him the shrewdness of the Russian\ntactics. \"'Few words, few deeds,' that is my one method of salvation.\"\nHe picked up Mathilde, and without saying a word, put her back on the\ndivan. She was gradually being overcome by tears.\n\nIn order to keep herself in countenance, she took madame de Fervaques'\nletters in her hands, and slowly broke the seals. She gave a noticeable\nnervous movement when she recognised the marechale's handwriting. She\nturned over the pages of these letters without reading them. Most of\nthem were six pages.\n\n\"At least answer me,\" Mathilde said at last, in the most supplicatory\ntone, but without daring to look at Julien: \"You know how proud I am.\nIt is the misfortune of my position, and of my temperament, too, I\nconfess. Has madame de Fervaques robbed me of your heart? Has she made\nthe sacrifices to which my fatal love swept me?\"\n\nA dismal silence was all Julien's answer. \"By what right,\" he thought,\n\"does she ask me to commit an indiscretion unworthy of an honest man?\"\nMathilde tried to read the letters; her eyes were so wet with tears\nthat it was impossible for her to do so. She had been unhappy for a\nmonth past, but this haughty soul had been very far from owning its own\nfeelings even to itself. Chance alone had brought about this explosion.\nFor one instant jealousy and love had won a victory over pride. She\nwas sitting on the divan, and very near him. He saw her hair and her\nalabaster neck. For a moment he forgot all he owed to himself. He\npassed his arm around her waist, and clasped her almost to his breast.\n\nShe slowly turned her head towards him. He was astonished by the\nextreme anguish in her eyes. There was not a trace of their usual\nexpression.\n\nJulien felt his strength desert him. So great was the deadly pain of\nthe courageous feat which he was imposing on himself.\n\n\"Those eyes will soon express nothing but the coldest disdain,\" said\nJulien to himself, \"if I allow myself to be swept away by the happiness\nof loving her.\" She, however, kept repeatedly assuring him at this\nmoment, in a hushed voice, and in words which she had scarcely the\nstrength to finish, of all her remorse for those steps which her\ninordinate pride had dictated.\n\n\"I, too, have pride,\" said Julien to her, in a scarcely articulate\nvoice, while his features portrayed the lowest depths of physical\nprostration.\n\nMathilde turned round sharply towards him. Hearing his voice was a\nhappiness which she had given up hoping. At this moment her only\nthought of her haughtiness was to curse it. She would have liked to\nhave found out some abnormal and incredible actions, in order to prove\nto him the extent to which she adored him and detested herself.\n\n\"That pride is probably the reason,\" continued Julien, \"why you singled\nme out for a moment. My present courageous and manly firmness is\ncertainly the reason why you respect me. I may entertain love for the\nmarechale.\"\n\nMathilde shuddered; a strange expression came into her eyes. She was\ngoing to hear her sentence pronounced. This shudder did not escape\nJulien. He felt his courage weaken.\n\n\"Ah,\" he said to himself, as he listened to the sound of the vain words\nwhich his mouth was articulating, as he thought it were some strange\nsound, \"if I could only cover those pale cheeks with kisses without\nyour feeling it.\"\n\n\"I may entertain love for the marechale,\" he continued, while his voice\nbecame weaker and weaker, \"but I certainly have no definite proof of\nher interest in me.\"\n\nMathilde looked at him. He supported that look. He hoped, at any rate,\nthat his expression had not betrayed him. He felt himself bathed in a\nlove that penetrated even into the most secret recesses of his heart.\nHe had never adored her so much; he was almost as mad as Mathilde. If\nshe had mustered sufficient self-possession and courage to manoeuvre, he\nwould have abandoned all his play-acting, and fallen at her feet. He\nhad sufficient strength to manage to continue speaking: \"Ah, Korasoff,\"\nhe exclaimed mentally, \"why are you not here? How I need a word from\nyou to guide me in my conduct.\" During this time his voice was saying,\n\n\"In default of any other sentiment, gratitude would be sufficient to\nattach me to the marechale. She has been indulgent to me; she has\nconsoled me when I have been despised. I cannot put unlimited faith\nin certain appearances which are, no doubt, extremely flattering, but\npossibly very fleeting.\"\n\n\"Oh, my God!\" exclaimed Mathilde.\n\n\"Well, what guarantee will you give me?\" replied Julien with a sharp,\nfirm intonation, which seemed to abandon for a moment the prudent forms\nof diplomacy. \"What guarantee, what god will warrant that the position\nto which you seem inclined to restore me at the present moment will\nlast more than two days?\"\n\n\"The excess of my love, and my unhappiness if you do not love me,\" she\nsaid to him, taking his hands and turning towards him.\n\nThe spasmodic movement which she had just made had slightly displaced\nher tippet; Julien caught a view of her charming shoulders. Her\nslightly dishevelled hair recalled a delicious memory....\n\nHe was on the point of succumbing. \"One imprudent word,\" he said to\nhimself, \"and I have to start all over again that long series of days\nwhich I have passed in despair. Madame de Renal used to find reasons\nfor doing what her heart dictated. This young girl of high society\nnever allows her heart to be moved except when she has proved to\nherself by sound logic that it ought to be moved.\"\n\nHe saw this proof in the twinkling of an eye, and in the twinkling\nof an eye too, he regained his courage. He took away his hands which\nMathilde was pressing in her own, and moved a little away from her with\na marked respect.\n\nHuman courage could not go further. He then busied himself with\nputting together madame de Fervaque's letters which were spread out on\nthe divan, and it was with all the appearance of extreme politeness\nthat he cruelly exploited the psychological moment by adding,\n\n\"Mademoiselle de la Mole will allow me to reflect over all this.\" He\nwent rapidly away and left the library; she heard him shut all the\ndoors one after the other.\n\n\"The monster is not the least bit troubled,\" she said to herself. \"But\nwhat am I saying? Monster? He is wise, prudent, good. It is I myself\nwho have committed more wrong than one can imagine.\"\n\nThis point of view lasted. Mathilde was almost happy today, for she\ngave herself up to love unreservedly. One would have said that this\nsoul had never been disturbed by pride (and what pride!)\n\nShe shuddered with horror when a lackey announced madame le Fervaques\ninto the salon in the evening. The man's voice struck her as sinister.\nShe could not endure the sight of the marechale, and stopped suddenly.\nJulien who had felt little pride over his painful victory, had feared\nto face her, and had not dined at the Hotel de la Mole.\n\nHis love and his happiness rapidly increased in proportion to the time\nthat elapsed from the moment of the battle. He was blaming himself\nalready. \"How could I resist her?\" he said to himself. \"Suppose she\nwere to go and leave off loving me! One single moment may change that\nhaughty soul, and I must admit that I have treated her awfully.\"\n\nIn the evening he felt that it was absolutely necessary to put in\nan appearance at the Bouffes in madame de Fervaques' box. She had\nexpressly invited him. Mathilde would be bound to know of his presence\nor his discourteous absence. In spite of the clearness of this logic,\nhe could not at the beginning of the evening bring himself to plunge\ninto society. By speaking he would lose half his happiness. Ten o'clock\nstruck and it was absolutely necessary to show himself. Luckily he\nfound the marechale's box packed with women, and was relegated to a\nplace near the door where he was completely hidden by the hats. This\nposition saved him from looking ridiculous; Caroline's divine notes of\ndespair in the _Matrimonio Segreto_ made him burst into tears. Madame\nde Fervaques saw these tears. They represented so great a contrast\nwith the masculine firmness of his usual expression that the soul\nof the old-fashioned lady, saturated as it had been for many years\nwith all the corroding acid of parvenu haughtiness, was none the less\ntouched. Such remnants of a woman's heart as she still possessed\nimpelled her to speak: she wanted to enjoy the sound of his voice at\nthis moment.\n\n\"Have you seen the de la Mole ladies?\" she said to him. \"They are\nin the third tier.\" Julien immediately craned out over the theatre,\nleaning politely enough on the front of the box. He saw Mathilde; her\neyes were shining with tears.\n\n\"And yet it is not their Opera day,\" thought Julien; \"how eager she\nmust be!\"\n\nMathilde had prevailed on her mother to come to the Bouffes in spite\nof the inconveniently high tier of the box, which a lady friend of the\nfamily had hastened to offer her. She wanted to see if Julien would\npass the evening with the marechale.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXI\n\nFRIGHTEN HER\n\n\n        So this is the fine miracle of your civilisation; you\n        have turned love into an ordinary business.--_Barnave_.\n\n\nJulien rushed into madame de la Mole's box. His eyes first met the\ntearful eyes of Mathilde; she was crying without reserve. There were\nonly insignificant personages present, the friend who had leant her\nbox, and some men whom she knew. Mathilde placed her hand on Julien's;\nshe seemed to have forgotten all fear of her mother. Almost stifled as\nshe was by her tears, she said nothing but this one word: \"Guarantees!\"\n\n\"So long as I don't speak to her,\" said Julien to himself. He was\nhimself very moved, and concealed his eyes with his hand as best\nhe could under the pretext of avoiding the dazzling light of the\nthird tier of boxes. \"If I speak she may suspect the excess of my\nemotion, the sound of my voice will betray me. All may yet be lost.\"\nHis struggles were more painful than they had been in the morning,\nhis soul had had the time to become moved. He had been frightened at\nseeing Mathilde piqued with vanity. Intoxicated as he was with love and\npleasure he resolved not to speak.\n\nIn my view this is one of the finest traits in his character, an\nindividual capable of such an effort of self-control may go far si\n_fata sinant_.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole insisted on taking Julien back to the hotel.\nLuckily it was raining a great deal, but the marquise had him placed\nopposite her, talked to him incessantly, and prevented him saying a\nsingle word to her daughter. One might have thought that the marquise\nwas nursing Julien's happiness for him; no longer fearing to lose\neverything through his excessive emotion, he madly abandoned himself to\nhis happiness.\n\nShall I dare to say that when he went back to his room Julien fell\non his knees and covered with kisses the love letters which prince\nKorasoff had given him.\n\n\"How much I owe you, great man,\" he exclaimed in his madness. Little\nby little he regained his self-possession. He compared himself to a\ngeneral who had just won a great battle. \"My advantage is definite and\nimmense,\" he said to himself, \"but what will happen to-morrow? One\ninstant may ruin everything.\"\n\nWith a passionate gesture he opened the _Memoirs_ which Napoleon had\ndictated at St. Helena and for two long hours forced himself to read\nthem. Only his eyes read; no matter, he made himself do it. During this\nsingular reading his head and his heart rose to the most exalted level\nand worked unconsciously. \"Her heart is very different from madame de\nRenal's,\" he said to himself, but he did not go further.\n\n\"Frighten her!\" he suddenly exclaimed, hurling away the book. \"The\nenemy will only obey me in so far as I frighten him, but then he will\nnot dare to show contempt for me.\"\n\nIntoxicated with joy he walked up and down his little room. In point of\nfact his happiness was based rather on pride than on love.\n\n\"Frighten her!\" he repeated proudly, and he had cause to be proud.\n\n\"Madame de Renal always doubted even in her happiest moments if my\nlove was equal to her own. In this case I have to subjugate a demon,\nconsequently I must subjugate her.\" He knew quite well that Mathilde\nwould be in the library at eight o'clock in the morning of the\nfollowing day. He did not appear before nine o'clock. He was burning\nwith love, but his head dominated his heart.\n\nScarcely a single minute passed without his repeating to himself. \"Keep\nher obsessed by this great doubt. Does he love me?\" Her own brilliant\nposition, together with the flattery of all who speak to her, tend a\nlittle too much to make her reassure herself.\n\nHe found her sitting on the divan pale and calm, but apparently\ncompletely incapable of making a single movement. She held out her\nhand,\n\n\"Dear one, it is true I have offended you, perhaps you are angry with\nme.\"\n\nJulien had not been expecting this simple tone. He was on the point of\nbetraying himself.\n\n\"You want guarantees, my dear, she added after a silence which she had\nhoped would be broken. Take me away, let us leave for London. I shall\nbe ruined, dishonoured for ever.\" She had the courage to take her hand\naway from Julien to cover her eyes with it.\n\nAll her feelings of reserve and feminine virtue had come back into her\nsoul. \"Well, dishonour me,\" she said at last with a sigh, \"that will be\na guarantee.\"\n\n\"I was happy yesterday, because I had the courage to be severe with\nmyself,\" thought Julien. After a short silence he had sufficient\ncontrol over his heart to say in an icy tone,\n\n\"Once we are on the road to London, once you are dishonoured, to employ\nyour own expression, who will answer that you will still love me? that\nmy very presence in the post-chaise will not seem importunate? I am not\na monster; to have ruined your reputation will only make me still more\nunhappy. It is not your position in society which is the obstacle, it\nis unfortunately your own character. Can you yourself guarantee that\nyou will love me for eight days?\"\n\n\"Ah! let her love me for eight days, just eight days,\" whispered\nJulien to himself, \"and I will die of happiness. What do I care for\nthe future, what do I care for life? And yet if I wish that divine\nhappiness can commence this very minute, it only depends on me.\"\n\nMathilde saw that he was pensive.\n\n\"So I am completely unworthy of you,\" she said to him, taking his hand.\n\nJulien kissed her, but at the same time the iron hand of duty gripped\nhis heart. If she sees how much I adore her I shall lose her. And\nbefore leaving her arms, he had reassumed all that dignity which is\nproper to a man.\n\nHe managed on this and the following days to conceal his inordinate\nhappiness. There were moments when he even refused himself the pleasure\nof clasping her in his arms. At other times the delirium of happiness\nprevailed over all the counsels of prudence.\n\nHe had been accustomed to station himself near a bower of honeysuckle\nin the garden arranged in such a way so as to conceal the ladder when\nhe had looked up at Mathilde's blind in the distance, and lamented her\ninconstancy. A very big oak tree was quite near, and the trunk of that\ntree prevented him from being seen by the indiscreet.\n\nAs he passed with Mathilde over this very place which recalled his\nexcessive unhappiness so vividly, the contrast between his former\ndespair and his present happiness proved too much for his character.\nTears inundated his eyes, and he carried his sweetheart's hand to his\nlips: \"It was here I used to live in my thoughts of you, it was from\nhere that I used to look at that blind, and waited whole hours for the\nhappy moment when I would see that hand open it.\"\n\nHis weakness was unreserved. He portrayed the extremity of his former\ndespair in genuine colours which could not possibly have been invented.\nShort interjections testified to that present happiness which had put\nan end to that awful agony.\n\n\"My God, what am I doing?\" thought Julien, suddenly recovering himself.\n\"I am ruining myself.\"\n\nIn his excessive alarm he thought that he already detected a diminution\nof the love in mademoiselle de la Mole's eyes. It was an illusion, but\nJulien's face suddenly changed its expression and became overspread\nby a mortal pallor. His eyes lost their fire, and an expression of\nhaughtiness touched with malice soon succeeded to his look of the most\ngenuine and unreserved love.\n\n\"But what is the matter with you, my dear,\" said Mathilde to him, both\ntenderly and anxiously.\n\n\"I am lying,\" said Julien irritably, \"and I am lying to you. I am\nreproaching myself for it, and yet God knows that I respect you\nsufficiently not to lie to you. You love me, you are devoted to me, and\nI have no need of praises in order to please you.\"\n\n\"Great heavens! are all the charming things you have been telling me\nfor the last two minutes mere phrases?\"\n\n\"And I reproach myself for it keenly, dear one. I once made them up for\na woman who loved me, and bored me--it is the weakness of my character.\nI denounce myself to you, forgive me.\"\n\nBitter tears streamed over Mathilde's cheeks.\n\n\"As soon as some trifle offends me and throws me back on my\nmeditation,\" continued Julien, \"my abominable memory, which I curse at\nthis very minute, offers me a resource, and I abuse it.\"\n\n\"So I must have slipped, without knowing it, into some action which has\ndispleased you,\" said Mathilde with a charming simplicity.\n\n\"I remember one day that when you passed near this honeysuckle you\npicked a flower, M. de Luz took it from you and you let him keep it. I\nwas two paces away.\"\n\n\"M. de Luz? It is impossible,\" replied Mathilde with all her natural\nhaughtiness. \"I do not do things like that.\"\n\n\"I am sure of it,\" Julien replied sharply.\n\n\"Well, my dear, it is true,\" said Mathilde, as she sadly lowered her\neyes. She knew positively that many months had elapsed since she had\nallowed M. de Luz to do such a thing.\n\nJulien looked at her with ineffable tenderness, \"No,\" he said to\nhimself, \"she does not love me less.\"\n\nIn the evening she rallied him with a laugh on his fancy for madame de\nFervaques. \"Think of a bourgeois loving a parvenu, those are perhaps\nthe only type of hearts that my Julien cannot make mad with love. She\nhas made you into a real dandy,\" she said playing with his hair.\n\nDuring the period when he thought himself scorned by Mathilde, Julien\nhad become one of the best dressed men in Paris. He had, moreover,\na further advantage over other dandies, in as much as once he had\nfinished dressing he never gave a further thought to his appearance.\n\nOne thing still piqued Mathilde, Julien continued to copy out the\nRussian letters and send them to the marechale.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXII\n\nTHE TIGER\n\n\n        Alas, why these things and not other\n        things?--_Beaumarchais_.\n\n\nAn English traveller tells of the intimacy in which he lived with a\ntiger. He had trained it and would caress it, but he always kept a\ncocked pistol on his table.\n\nJulien only abandoned himself to the fulness of his happiness in those\nmoments when Mathilde could not read the expression in his eyes. He\nscrupulously performed his duty of addressing some harsh word to her\nfrom time to time.\n\nWhen Mathilde's sweetness, which he noticed with some surprise,\ntogether with the completeness of her devotion were on the point of\ndepriving him of all self-control, he was courageous enough to leave\nher suddenly.\n\nMathilde loved for the first time in her life.\n\nLife had previously always dragged along at a tortoise pace, but now it\nflew.\n\nAs, however, her pride required to find a vent in some way or other,\nshe wished to expose herself to all the dangers in which her love could\ninvolve her. It was Julien who was prudent, and it was only when it was\na question of danger that she did not follow her own inclination; but\nsubmissive, and almost humble as she was when with him, she only showed\nadditional haughtiness to everyone in the house who came near her,\nwhether relatives or friends.\n\nIn the evening she would call Julien to her in the salon in the\npresence of sixty people, and have a long and private conversation with\nhim.\n\nThe little Tanbeau installed himself one day close to them. She\nrequested him to go and fetch from the library the volume of Smollet\nwhich deals with the revolution of 1688, and when he hesitated, added\nwith an expression of insulting haughtiness, which was a veritable balm\nto Julien's soul, \"Don't hurry.\"\n\n\"Have you noticed that little monster's expression?\" he said to her.\n\n\"His uncle has been in attendance in this salon for ten or twelve\nyears, otherwise I would have had him packed off immediately.\"\n\nHer behaviour towards MM. de Croisenois, de Luz, etc., though outwardly\nperfectly polite, was in reality scarcely less provocative. Mathilde\nkeenly reproached herself for all the confidential remarks about them\nwhich she had formerly made to Julien, and all the more so since she\ndid not dare to confess that she had exaggerated to him the, in fact,\nalmost absolutely innocent manifestations of interest of which these\ngentlemen had been the objects. In spite of her best resolutions her\nwomanly pride invariably prevented her from saying to Julien, \"It was\nbecause I was talking to you that I found a pleasure in describing my\nweakness in not drawing my hand away, when M. de Croisenois had placed\nhis on a marble table and had just touched it.\"\n\nBut now, as soon as one of these gentlemen had been speaking to her for\nsome moments, she found she had a question to put to Julien, and she\nmade this an excuse for keeping him by her side.\n\nShe discovered that she was _enceinte_ and joyfully informed Julien of\nthe fact.\n\n\"Do you doubt me now? Is it not a guarantee? I am your wife for ever.\"\n\nThis announcement struck Julien with profound astonishment. He was on\nthe point of forgetting the governing principle of his conduct. How am\nI to be deliberately cold and insulting towards this poor young girl,\nwho is ruining herself for my sake. And if she looked at all ill,\nhe could not, even on those days when the terrible voice of wisdom\nmade itself heard, find the courage to address to her one of those\nharsh remarks which his experience had found so indispensable to the\npreservation of their love.\n\n\"I will write to my father,\" said Mathilde to him one day, \"he is\nmore than a father to me, he is a friend; that being so, I think it\nunworthy both of you and of myself to try and deceive him, even for a\nsingle minute.\"\n\n\"Great heavens, what are you going to do?\" said Julien in alarm.\n\n\"My duty,\" she answered with eyes shining with joy.\n\nShe thought she was showing more nobility than her lover.\n\n\"But he will pack me off in disgrace.\"\n\n\"It is his right to do so, we must respect it. I will give you my arm,\nand we will go out by the front door in full daylight.\"\n\nJulien was thunderstruck and requested her to put it off for a week.\n\n\"I cannot,\" she answered, \"it is the voice of honour, I have seen my\nduty, I must follow it, and follow it at once.\"\n\n\"Well, I order you to put it off,\" said Julien at last. \"Your honour\nis safe for the present. I am your husband. The position of us will be\nchanged by this momentous step. I too am within my rights. To-day is\nTuesday, next Tuesday is the duke de Retz's at home; when M. de la Mole\ncomes home in the evening the porter will give him the fatal letter.\nHis only thought is to make you a duchess, I am sure of it. Think of\nhis unhappiness.\"\n\n\"You mean, think of his vengeance?\"\n\n\"It may be that I pity my benefactor, and am grieved at injuring him,\nbut I do not fear, and shall never fear anyone.\"\n\nMathilde yielded. This was the first occasion, since she had informed\nJulien of her condition, that he had spoken to her authoritatively.\nShe had never loved him so much. The tender part of his soul had\nfound happiness in seizing on Mathilde's condition as an excuse\nfor refraining from his cruel remarks to her. The question of the\nconfession to M. de la Mole deeply moved him. Was he going to be\nseparated from Mathilde? And, however grieved she would be to see him\ngo, would she have a thought for him after his departure?\n\nHe was almost equally horrified by the thought of the justified\nreproaches which the marquis might address to him.\n\nIn the evening he confessed to Mathilde the second reason for his\nanxiety, and then led away by his love, confessed the first as well.\n\nShe changed colour. \"Would it really make you unhappy,\" she said to\nhim, \"to pass six months far away from me?\"\n\n\"Infinitely so. It is the only thing in the world which terrifies me.\"\n\nMathilde was very happy. Julien had played his part so assiduously that\nhe had succeeded in making her think that she was the one of the two\nwho loved the more.\n\nThe fatal Tuesday arrived. When the marquis came in at midnight he\nfound a letter addressed to him, which was only to be opened himself\nwhen no one was there:--\n\n        \"My father,\n\n        \"All social ties have been broken between us, only those\n        of nature remain. Next to my husband, you are and always\n        will be the being I shall always hold most dear. My\n        eyes are full of tears, I am thinking of the pain that\n        I am causing you, but if my shame was to be prevented\n        from becoming public, and you were to be given time to\n        reflect and act, I could not postpone any longer the\n        confession that I owe you. If your affection for me,\n        which I know is extremely deep, is good enough to grant\n        me a small allowance, I will go and settle with my\n        husband anywhere you like, in Switzerland, for instance.\n        His name is so obscure that no one would recognize\n        in Madame Sorel, the daughter-in-law of a Verrieres\n        carpenter, your daughter. That is the name which I have\n        so much difficulty in writing. I fear your wrath against\n        Julien, it seems so justified. I shall not be a duchess,\n        my father; but I knew it when I loved him; for I was\n        the one who loved him first, it was I who seduced him.\n        I have inherited from you too lofty a soul to fix my\n        attention on what either is or appears to be vulgar. It\n        is in vain that I thought of M. Croisenois with a view\n        to pleasing you. Why did you place real merit under my\n        eyes? You told me yourself on my return from Hyeres,\n        'that young Sorel is the one person who amuses me,' the\n        poor boy is as grieved as I am if it is possible, at the\n        pain this letter will give you. I cannot prevent you\n        being irritated as a father, but love me as a friend.\n\n        \"Julien respected me. If he sometimes spoke to me,\n        it was only by reason of his deep gratitude towards\n        yourself, for the natural dignity of his character\n        induces him to keep to his official capacity in any\n        answers he may make to anyone who is so much above\n        him. He has a keen and instinctive appreciation of the\n        difference of social rank. It was I (I confess it with a\n        blush to my best friend, and I shall never make such a\n        confession to anyone else) who clasped his arm one day\n        in the garden.\n\n        \"Why need you be irritated with him, after twenty-four\n        hours have elapsed? My own lapse is irreparable. If you\n        insist on it, the assurance of his profound respect and\n        of his desperate grief at having displeased you, can\n        be conveyed to you through me. You need not see him at\n        all, but I shall go and join him wherever he wishes.\n        It is his right and it is my duty. He is the father of\n        my child. If your kindness will go so far as to grant\n        us six thousand francs to live on, I will receive it\n        with gratitude; if not, Julien reckons on establishing\n        himself at Besancon, where he will set up as a Latin and\n        literature master. However low may have been the station\n        from which he springs, I am certain he will raise\n        himself. With him I do not fear obscurity. If there is\n        a revolution, I am sure that he will play a prime part.\n        Can you say as much for any of those who have asked\n        for my hand? They have fine estates, you say. I cannot\n        consider that circumstance a reason for admiring them.\n        My Julien would attain a high position, even under the\n        present regime, if he had a million and my father's\n        protection....\"\n\nMathilde, who knew that the marquis was a man who always abandoned\nhimself to his first impulse, had written eight pages.\n\n\"What am I to do?\" said Julien to himself while M. de la Mole was\nreading this letter. \"Where is (first) my duty; (second) my interest?\nMy debt to him is immense. Without him I should have been a menial\nscoundrel, and not even enough of a scoundrel to be hated and\npersecuted by the others. He has made me a man of the world. The\nvillainous acts which I now have to do are (first) less frequent;\n(second) less mean. That is more than as if he had given me a million.\nI am indebted to him for this cross and the reputation of having\nrendered those alleged diplomatic services, which have lifted me out of\nthe ruck.\n\n\"If he himself were writing instructions for my conduct, what would he\nprescribe?\"\n\nJulien was sharply interrupted by M. de la Mole's old valet. \"The\nmarquis wants to see you at once, dressed or not dressed.\" The valet\nadded in a low voice, as he walked by Julien's side, \"He is beside\nhimself: look out!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXIII\n\nTHE HELL OF WEAKNESS\n\n\n        A clumsy lapidary, in cutting this diamond, deprived\n        it of some of its most brilliant facets. In the middle\n        ages, nay, even under Richelieu, the Frenchman had\n        _force of will_.--_Mirabeau_.\n\n\nJulien found the marquis furious. For perhaps the first time in his\nlife this nobleman showed bad form. He loaded Julien with all the\ninsults that came to his lips. Our hero was astonished, and his\npatience was tried, but his gratitude remained unshaken.\n\n\"The poor man now sees the annihilation, in a single minute, of all\nthe fine plans which he has long cherished in his heart. But I owe it\nto him to answer. My silence tends to increase his anger.\" The part of\nTartuffe supplied the answer;\n\n\"I am not an angel.... I served you well; you paid me generously.... I\nwas grateful, but I am twenty-two.... Only you and that charming person\nunderstood my thoughts in this household.\"\n\n\"Monster,\" exclaimed the marquis. \"Charming! Charming, to be sure! The\nday when you found her charming you ought to have fled.\"\n\n\"I tried to. It was then that I asked permission to leave for\nLanguedoc.\"\n\nTired of stampeding about and overcome by his grief, the marquis threw\nhimself into an arm-chair. Julien heard him whispering to himself, \"No,\nno, he is not a wicked man.\"\n\n\"No, I am not, towards you,\" exclaimed Julien, falling on his knees.\nBut he felt extremely ashamed of this manifestation, and very quickly\ngot up again.\n\nThe marquis was really transported. When he saw this movement, he\nbegan again to load him with abominable insults, which were worthy of\nthe driver of a fiacre. The novelty of these oaths perhaps acted as a\ndistraction.\n\n\"What! is my daughter to go by the name of madame Sorel? What! is my\ndaughter not to be a duchess?\" Each time that these two ideas presented\nthemselves in all their clearness M. de la Mole was a prey to torture,\nand lost all power over the movements of his mind.\n\nJulien was afraid of being beaten.\n\nIn his lucid intervals, when he was beginning to get accustomed to his\nunhappiness, the marquis addressed to Julien reproaches which were\nreasonable enough. \"You should have fled, sir,\" he said to him. \"Your\nduty was to flee. You are the lowest of men.\"\n\nJulien approached the table and wrote:\n\n        \"I have found my life unbearable for a long time; I am\n        putting an end to it. I request monsieur the marquis to\n        accept my apologies (together with the expression of my\n        infinite gratitude) for any embarrassment that may be\n        occasioned by my death in his hotel.\"\n\n\"Kindly run your eye over this paper, M. the marquis,\" said Julien.\n\"Kill me, or have me killed by your valet. It is one o'clock in the\nmorning. I will go and walk in the garden in the direction of the wall\nat the bottom.\"\n\n\"Go to the devil,\" cried the marquis, as he went away.\n\n\"I understand,\" thought Julien. \"He would not be sorry if I were to\nspare his valet the trouble of killing me....\n\n\"Let him kill me, if he likes; it is a satisfaction which I offer\nhim.... But, by heaven, I love life. I owe it to my son.\"\n\nThis idea, which had not previously presented itself with so much\ndefiniteness to his imagination, completely engrossed him during his\nwalk after the first few minutes which he had spent thinking about his\ndanger.\n\nThis novel interest turned him into a prudent man. \"I need advice as to\nhow to behave towards this infuriated man.... He is devoid of reason;\nhe is capable of everything. Fouque is too far away; besides, he would\nnot understand the emotions of a heart like the marquis's.\"\n\n\"Count Altamira ... am I certain of eternal silence? My request\nfor advice must not be a fresh step which will raise still further\ncomplications. Alas! I have no one left but the gloomy abbe Pirard. His\nmind is crabbed by Jansenism.... A damned Jesuit would know the world,\nand would be more in my line. M. Pirard is capable of beating me at the\nvery mention of my crime.\"\n\nThe genius of Tartuffe came to Julien's help. \"Well, I will go and\nconfess to him.\" This was his final resolution after having walked\nabout in the garden for two good hours. He no longer thought about\nbeing surprised by a gun shot. He was feeling sleepy.\n\nVery early the next day, Julien was several leagues away from Paris\nand knocked at the door of the severe Jansenist. He found to his great\nastonishment that he was not unduly surprised at his confidence.\n\n\"I ought perhaps to reproach myself,\" said the abbe, who seemed more\nanxious than irritated. \"I thought I guessed that love. My affection\nfor you, my unhappy boy, prevented me from warning the father.\"\n\n\"What will he do?\" said Julien keenly.\n\nAt that moment he loved the abbe, and would have found a scene between\nthem very painful.\n\n\"I see three alternatives,\" continued Julien.\n\n\"M. de la Mole can have me put to death,\" and he mentioned the suicide\nletter which he had left with the Marquis; (2) \"He can get Count\nNorbert to challenge me to a duel, and shoot at me point blank.\"\n\n\"You would accept?\" said the abbe furiously as he got up.\n\n\"You do not let me finish. I should certainly never fire upon my\nbenefactor's son. (3) He can send me away. If he says go to Edinburgh\nor New York, I will obey him. They can then conceal mademoiselle de la\nMole's condition, but I will never allow them to suppress my son.\"\n\n\"Have no doubt about it, that will be the first thought of that\ndepraved man.\"\n\nAt Paris, Mathilde was in despair. She had seen her father about seven\no'clock. He had shown her Julien's letter. She feared that he might\nhave considered it noble to put an end to his life; \"and without my\npermission?\" she said to herself with a pain due solely to her anger.\n\n\"If he dies I shall die,\" she said to her father. \"It will be you\nwho will be the cause of his death.... Perhaps you will rejoice at\nit but I swear by his shades that I shall at once go into mourning,\nand shall publicly appear as _Madame the widow Sorel_, I shall send\nout my invitations, you can count on it.... You will find me neither\npusillanimous nor cowardly.\"\n\nHer love went to the point of madness. M. de la Mole was flabbergasted\nin his turn.\n\nHe began to regard what had happened with a certain amount of logic.\nMathilde did not appear at breakfast. The marquis felt an immense\nweight off his mind, and was particularly flattered when he noticed\nthat she had said nothing to her mother.\n\nJulien was dismounting from his horse. Mathilde had him called and\nthrew herself into his arms almost beneath the very eyes of her\nchambermaid. Julien was not very appreciative of this transport. He had\ncome away from his long consultation with the abbe Pirard in a very\ndiplomatic and calculating mood. The calculation of possibilities had\nkilled his imagination. Mathilde told him, with tears in her eyes, that\nshe had read his suicide letter.\n\n\"My father may change his mind; do me the favour of leaving for\nVillequier this very minute. Mount your horse again, and leave the\nhotel before they get up from table.\"\n\nWhen Julien's coldness and astonishment showed no sign of abatement,\nshe burst into tears.\n\n\"Let me manage our affairs,\" she exclaimed ecstatically, as she clasped\nhim in her arms. \"You know, dear, it is not of my own free will that\nI separate from you. Write under cover to my maid. Address it in a\nstrange hand-writing, I will write volumes to you. Adieu, flee.\"\n\nThis last word wounded Julien, but he none the less obeyed. \"It will\nbe fatal,\" he thought \"if, in their most gracious moments these\naristocrats manage to shock me.\"\n\nMathilde firmly opposed all her father's prudent plans. She would\nnot open negotiations on any other basis except this. She was to be\nMadame Sorel, and was either to live with her husband in poverty in\nSwitzerland, or with her father in Paris. She rejected absolutely the\nsuggestion of a secret accouchement. \"In that case I should begin to\nbe confronted with a prospect of calumny and dishonour. I shall go\ntravelling with my husband two months after the marriage, and it will\nbe easy to pretend that my son was born at a proper time.\"\n\nThis firmness though at first received with violent fits of anger,\neventually made the marquis hesitate.\n\n\"Here,\" he said to his daughter in a moment of emotion, \"is a gift of\nten thousand francs a year. Send it to your Julien, and let him quickly\nmake it impossible for me to retract it.\"\n\nIn order to obey Mathilde, whose imperious temper he well knew, Julien\nhad travelled forty useless leagues; he was superintending the accounts\nof the farmers at Villequier. This act of benevolence on the part of\nthe marquis occasioned his return. He went and asked asylum of the abbe\nPirard, who had become Mathilde's most useful ally during his absence.\nEvery time that he was questioned by the marquis, he would prove to him\nthat any other course except public marriage would be a crime in the\neyes of God.\n\n\"And happily,\" added the abbe, \"worldly wisdom is in this instance in\nagreement with religion. Could one, in view of Mdlle. de la Mole's\npassionate character, rely for a minute on her keeping any secret which\nshe did not herself wish to preserve? If one does not reconcile oneself\nto the frankness of a public marriage, society will concern itself much\nlonger with this strange mesalliance__. Everything must be said all\nat once without either the appearance or the reality of the slightest\nmystery.\"\n\n\"It is true,\" said the marquis pensively.\n\nTwo or three friends of M. de la Mole were of the same opinion as the\nabbe Pirard. The great obstacle in their view was Mathilde's decided\ncharacter. But in spite of all these fine arguments the marquis's soul\ncould not reconcile itself to giving up all hopes of a coronet for his\ndaughter.\n\nHe ransacked his memory and his imagination for all the variations of\nknavery and duplicity which had been feasible in his youth. Yielding to\nnecessity and having fear of the law seemed absurd and humiliating for\na man in his position. He was paying dearly now for the luxury of those\nenchanting dreams concerning the future of his cherished daughter in\nwhich he had indulged for the last ten years.\n\n\"Who could have anticipated it?\" he said to himself. \"A girl of so\nproud a character, of so lofty a disposition, who is even prouder than\nI am of the name she bears? A girl whose hand has already been asked\nfor by all the cream of the nobility of France.\"\n\n\"We must give up all faith in prudence. This age is made to confound\neverything. We are marching towards chaos.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXIV\n\nA MAN OF INTELLECT\n\n\n        The prefect said to himself as he rode along the highway\n        on horseback, \"why should I not be a minister, a\n        president of the council, a duke? This is how I should\n        make war.... By these means I should have all the\n        reformers put in irons.\"--_The Globe_.\n\n\nNo argument will succeed in destroying the paramount influence of ten\nyears of agreeable dreaming. The marquis thought it illogical to be\nangry, but could not bring himself to forgive. \"If only this Julien\ncould die by accident,\" he sometimes said to himself. It was in this\nway that his depressed imagination found a certain relief in running\nafter the most absurd chimaeras. They paralysed the influence of the\nwise arguments of the abbe Pirard. A month went by in this way without\nnegotiations advancing one single stage.\n\nThe marquis had in this family matter, just as he had in politics,\nbrilliant ideas over which he would be enthusiastic for two or three\ndays. And then a line of tactics would fail to please him because it\nwas based on sound arguments, while arguments only found favour in his\neyes in so far as they were based on his favourite plan. He would work\nfor three days with all the ardour and enthusiasm of a poet on bringing\nmatters to a certain stage; on the following day he would not give it a\nthought.\n\nJulien was at first disconcerted by the slowness of the marquis;\nbut, after some weeks, he began to surmise that M. de La Mole had no\ndefinite plan with regard to this matter. Madame de La Mole and the\nwhole household believed that Julien was travelling in the provinces\nin connection with the administration of the estates; he was in hiding\nin the parsonage of the abbe Pirard and saw Mathilde every day;\nevery morning she would spend an hour with her father, but they would\nsometimes go for weeks on end without talking of the matter which\nengrossed all their thoughts.\n\n\"I don't want to know where the man is,\" said the marquis to her one\nday. \"Send him this letter.\" Mathilde read:\n\n\"The Languedoc estates bring in 20,600 francs. I give 10,600 francs to\nmy daughter, and 10,000 francs to M. Julien Sorel. It is understood\nthat I give the actual estates. Tell the notary to draw up two separate\ndeeds of gift, and to bring them to me to-morrow, after this there are\nto be no more relations between us. Ah, Monsieur, could I have expected\nall this? The marquis de La Mole.\"\n\n\"I thank you very much,\" said Mathilde gaily. \"We will go and settle in\nthe Chateau d'Aiguillon, between Agen and Marmande. The country is said\nto be as beautiful as Italy.\"\n\nThis gift was an extreme surprise to Julien. He was no longer the cold,\nsevere man whom we have hitherto known. His thoughts were engrossed in\nadvance by his son's destiny. This unexpected fortune, substantial as\nit was for a man as poor as himself, made him ambitious. He pictured\na time when both his wife and himself would have an income of 36,000\nfrancs. As for Mathilde, all her emotions were concentrated on her\nadoration for her husband, for that was the name by which her pride\ninsisted on calling Julien. Her one great ambition was to secure the\nrecognition of her marriage. She passed her time in exaggerating to\nherself the consummate prudence which she had manifested in linking her\nfate to that of a superior man. The idea of personal merit became a\npositive craze with her.\n\nJulien's almost continuous absence, coupled with the complications of\nbusiness matters and the little time available in which to talk love,\ncompleted the good effect produced by the wise tactics which Julien had\npreviously discovered.\n\nMathilde finished by losing patience at seeing so little of the man\nwhom she had come really to love.\n\nIn a moment of irritation she wrote to her father and commenced her\nletter like Othello:\n\n\"My very choice is sufficient proof that I have preferred Julien to all\nthe advantages which society offered to the daughter of the marquis\nde la Mole. Such pleasures, based as they are on prestige and petty\nvanity mean nothing to me. It is now nearly six weeks since I have\nlived separated from my husband. That is sufficient to manifest my\nrespect for yourself. Before next Thursday I shall leave the paternal\nhouse. Your acts of kindness have enriched us. No one knows my secret\nexcept the venerable abbe Pirard. I shall go to him: he will marry us,\nand an hour after the ceremony we shall be on the road to Languedoc,\nand we will never appear again in Paris except by your instructions.\nBut what cuts me to the quick is that all this will provide the subject\nmatter for piquant anecdotes against me and against yourself. May not\nthe epigrams of a foolish public compel our excellent Norbert to pick a\nquarrel with Julien, under such circumstances I know I should have no\ncontrol over him. We should discover in his soul the mark of the rebel\nplebian. Oh father, I entreat you on my knees, come and be present at\nmy marriage in M. Pirard's church next Thursday. It will blunt the\nsting of malignant scandal and will guarantee the life's happiness of\nyour only daughter, and of that of my husband, etc., etc.\"\n\nThis letter threw the marquis's soul into a strange embarrassment.\nHe must at last take a definite line. All his little habits: all his\nvulgar friends had lost their influence.\n\nIn these strange circumstances the great lines of his character,\nwhich had been formed by the events of his youth, reassumed all their\noriginal force. The misfortunes of the emigration had made him into\nan imaginative man. After having enjoyed for two years an immense\nfortune and all the distinctions of the court, 1790 had flung him into\nthe awful miseries of the emigration. This hard schooling had changed\nthe character of a spirit of twenty-two. In essence, he was not so\nmuch dominated by his present riches as encamped in their midst. But\nthat very imagination which had preserved his soul from the taint of\navarice, had made him a victim of a mad passion for seeing his daughter\ndecorated by a fine title.\n\nDuring the six weeks which had just elapsed, the marquis had felt at\ntimes impelled by a caprice for making Julien rich. He considered\npoverty mean, humiliating for himself, M. de la Mole, and impossible\nin his daughter's husband; he was ready to lavish money. On the next\nday his imagination would go off on another tack, and he would think\nthat Julien would read between the lines of this financial generosity,\nchange his name, exile himself to America, and write to Mathilde that\nhe was dead for her. M. de la Mole imagined this letter written, and\nwent so far as to follow its effect on his daughter's character.\n\nThe day when he was awakened from these highly youthful dreams by\nMathilde's actual letter after he had been thinking for along time\nof killing Julien or securing his disappearance he was dreaming of\nbuilding up a brilliant position for him. He would make him take the\nname of one of his estates, and why should he not make him inherit a\npeerage? His father-in-law, M. the duke de Chaulnes, had, since the\ndeath of his own son in Spain, frequently spoken to him about his\ndesire to transmit his title to Norbert....\n\n\"One cannot help owning that Julien has a singular aptitude for\naffairs, had boldness, and is possibly even brilliant,\" said the\nmarquis to himself ... \"but I detect at the root of his character a\ncertain element which alarms me. He produces the same impression upon\neveryone, consequently there must be something real in it,\" and the\nmore difficult this reality was to seize hold of, the more it alarmed\nthe imaginative mind of the old marquis.\n\n\"My daughter expressed the same point very neatly the other day (in a\nsuppressed letter).\n\n\"Julien has not joined any salon or any coterie. He has nothing to\nsupport himself against me, and has absolutely no resource if I abandon\nhim. Now is that ignorance of the actual state of society? I have said\nto him two or three times, the only real and profitable candidature is\nthe candidature of the salons.\n\n\"No, he has not the adroit, cunning genius of an attorney who never\nloses a minute or an opportunity. He is very far from being a character\nlike Louis XL. On the other hand, I have seen him quote the most\nungenerous maxims ... it is beyond me. Can it be that he simply repeats\nthese maxims in order to use them as a _dam_ against his passions?\n\n\"However, one thing comes to the surface; he cannot bear contempt,\nthat's my hold on him.\n\n\"He has not, it is true, the religious reverence for high birth. He\ndoes not instinctively respect us.... That is wrong; but after all,\nthe only things which are supposed to make the soul of a seminary\nstudent impatient are lack of enjoyment and lack of money. He is quite\ndifferent, and cannot stand contempt at any price.\"\n\nPressed as he was by his daughter's letter, M. de la Mole realised the\nnecessity for making up his mind. \"After all, the great question is\nthis:--Did Julien's audacity go to the point of setting out to make\nadvances to my daughter because he knows I love her more than anything\nelse in the world, and because I have an income of a hundred thousand\ncrowns?\"\n\nMathilde protests to the contrary.... \"No, monsieur Julien, that is a\npoint on which I am not going to be under any illusion.\n\n\"Is it really a case of spontaneous and authentic love? or is it just\na vulgar desire to raise himself to a fine position? Mathilde is\nfar-seeing; she appreciated from the first that this suspicion might\nruin him with me--hence that confession of hers. It was she who took\nupon herself to love him the first.\n\n\"The idea of a girl of so proud a character so far forgetting herself\nas to make physical advances! To think of pressing his arm in the\ngarden in the evening! How horrible! As though there were not a hundred\nother less unseemly ways of notifying him that he was the object of her\nfavour.\n\n\"_Qui s'excuse s'accuse_; I distrust Mathilde.\" The marquis's reasoning\nwas more conclusive to-day than it was usually. Nevertheless, force\nof habit prevailed, and he resolved to gain time by writing to his\ndaughter, for a correspondence was being carried on between one wing\nof the hotel and the other. M. de la Mole did not dare to discuss\nmatters with Mathilde and to see her face to face. He was frightened of\nclinching the whole matter by yielding suddenly.\n\n        \"Mind you commit no new acts of madness; here is\n        a commission of lieutenant of Hussars for M. the\n        chevalier, Julien Sorel de la Vernaye. You see what I\n        am doing for him. Do not irritate me. Do not question\n        me. Let him leave within twenty-four hours and present\n        himself at Strasbourg where his regiment is. Here is an\n        order on my banker. Obey me.\"\n\nMathilde's love and joy were unlimited. She wished to profit by her\nvictory and immediately replied.\n\n        \"If M. de la Vernaye knew all that you are good enough\n        to do for him, he would be overwhelmed with gratitude\n        and be at your feet. But amidst all this generosity, my\n        father has forgotten me; your daughter's honour is in\n        peril. An indiscretion may produce an everlasting blot\n        which an income of twenty thousand crowns could not\n        put right. I will only send the commission to M. de la\n        Vernaye if you give me your word that my marriage will\n        be publicly celebrated at Villequier in the course of\n        next month. Shortly after that period, which I entreat\n        you not to prolong, your daughter will only be able to\n        appear in public under the name of Madame de la Vernaye.\n        How I thank you, dear papa, for having saved me from the\n        name of Sorel, etc., etc.\"\n\nThe reply was unexpected:\n\n        \"Obey or I retract everything. Tremble, you imprudent\n        young girl. I do not yet know what your Julien is,\n        and you yourself know less than I. Let him leave for\n        Strasbourg, and try to act straightly. I will notify him\n        from here of my wishes within a fortnight.\"\n\nMathilde was astonished by this firm answer. _I do not know Julien_.\nThese words threw her into a reverie which soon finished in the most\nfascinating suppositions; but she believed in their truth. My Julien's\nintellect is not clothed in the petty mean uniform of the salons, and\nmy father refuses to believe in his superiority by reason of the very\nfact which proves it.\n\nAll the same, if I do not obey this whim of his, I see the possibility\nof a public scene; a scandal would lower my position in society, and\nmight render me less fascinating in Julien's eyes. After the scandal\n... ten years of poverty; and the only thing which can prevent marrying\nfor merit becoming ridiculous is the most brilliant wealth. If I live\nfar away from my father, he is old and may forget me.... Norbert will\nmarry some clever, charming woman; old Louis XIV. was seduced by the\nduchess of Burgundy.\n\nShe decided to obey, but refrained from communicating her father's\nletter to Julien. It might perhaps have been that ferocious character\ndriven to some act of madness.\n\nJulien's joy was unlimited when she informed him in the evening that\nhe was a lieutenant of Hussars. Its extent can be imagined from the\nfact that this had constituted the ambition of his whole life, and\nalso from the passion which he now had for his son. The change of name\nstruck him with astonishment.\n\n\"After all,\" he thought, \"I have got to the end of my romance, and I\ndeserve all the credit. I have managed to win the love of that monster\nof pride,\" he added, looking at Mathilde. \"Her father cannot live\nwithout her, nor she without me.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXV\n\nA STORM\n\n\n        My God, give me mediocrity.--_Mirabeau_.\n\n\nHis mind was engrossed; he only half answered the eager tenderness that\nshe showed to him. He remained gloomy and taciturn. He had never seemed\nso great and so adorable in Mathilde's eyes. She was apprehensive of\nsome subtle twist of his pride which would spoil the whole situation.\n\nShe saw the abbe Pirard come to the hotel nearly every morning. Might\nnot Julien have divined something of her father's intentions through\nhim? Might not the marquis himself have written to him in a momentary\ncaprice. What was the explanation of Julien's stern manner following on\nso great a happiness? She did not dare to question.\n\nShe did not _dare_--she--Mathilde! From that moment her feelings for\nJulien contained a certain vague and unexpected element which was\nalmost panic. This arid soul experienced all the passion possible in\nan individual who has been brought up amid that excessive civilisation\nwhich Paris so much admires.\n\nEarly on the following day Julien was at the house of the abbe Pirard.\nSome post-horses were arriving in the courtyard with a dilapidated\nchaise which had been hired at a neighbouring station.\n\n\"A vehicle like that is out of fashion,\" said the stern abbe to him\nmorosely. \"Here are twenty thousand francs which M. de la Mole makes\nyou a gift of. He insists on your spending them within a year, but\nat the same time wants you to try to look as little ridiculous as\npossible.\" (The priest regarded flinging away so substantial a sum on a\nyoung man as simply an opportunity for sin).\n\n\"The marquis adds this: 'M. Julien de la Vernaye will have received\nthis money from his father, whom it is needless to call by any other\nname. M. de la Vernaye will perhaps think it proper to give a present\nto M. Sorel, a carpenter of Verrieres, who cared for him in his\nchildhood....' I can undertake that commission,\" added the abbe. \"I\nhave at last prevailed upon M. de la Mole to come to a settlement with\nthat Jesuit, the abbe de Frilair. His influence is unquestionably too\nmuch for us. The complete recognition of your high birth on the part\nof this man, who is in fact the governor of B---- will be one of the\nunwritten terms of the arrangement.\" Julien could no longer control his\necstasy. He embraced the abbe. He saw himself recognised.\n\n\"For shame,\" said M. Pirard, pushing him away. \"What is the meaning of\nthis worldly vanity? As for Sorel and his sons, I will offer them in my\nown name a yearly allowance of five hundred francs, which will be paid\nto each of them as long as I am satisfied with them.\"\n\nJulien was already cold and haughty. He expressed his thanks, but in\nthe vaguest terms which bound him to nothing. \"Could it be possible,\"\nhe said to himself, \"that I am the natural son of some great nobleman\nwho was exiled to our mountains by the terrible Napoleon?\" This idea\nseemed less and less improbable every minute.... \"My hatred of my\nfather would be a proof of this.... In that case, I should not be an\nunnatural monster after all.\"\n\nA few days after this soliloquy the Fifteenth Regiment of Hussars,\nwhich was one of the most brilliant in the army, was being reviewed on\nthe parade ground of Strasbourg. M. the chevalier de La Vernaye sat\nthe finest horse in Alsace, which had cost him six thousand francs. He\nwas received as a lieutenant, though he had never been sub-lieutenant\nexcept on the rolls of a regiment of which he had never heard.\n\nHis impassive manner, his stern and almost malicious eyes, his pallor,\nand his invariable self-possession, founded his reputation from\nthe very first day. Shortly afterwards his perfect and calculated\npoliteness, and his skill at shooting and fencing, of which, though\nwithout any undue ostentation, he made his comrades aware, did away\nwith all idea of making fun of him openly. After hesitating for five\nor six days, the public opinion of the regiment declared itself in his\nfavour.\n\n\"This young man has everything,\" said the facetious old officers,\n\"except youth.\"\n\nJulien wrote from Strasbourg to the old cure of Verrieres, M. Chelan,\nwho was now verging on extreme old age.\n\n\"You will have learnt, with a joy of which I have no doubt, of the\nevents which have induced my family to enrich me. Here are five hundred\nfrancs which I request you to distribute quietly, and without any\nmention of my name, among those unfortunate ones who are now poor as I\nmyself was once, and whom you will doubtless help as you once helped\nme.\"\n\nJulien was intoxicated with ambition, and not with vanity. He\nnevertheless devoted a great part of his time to attending to his\nexternal appearance. His horses, his uniform, his orderlies' liveries,\nwere all kept with a correctness which would have done credit to the\npunctiliousness of a great English nobleman. He had scarcely been made\na lieutenant as a matter of favour (and that only two days ago) than\nhe began to calculate that if he was to become commander-in-chief\nat thirty, like all the great generals, then he must be more than a\nlieutenant at twenty-three at the latest. He thought about nothing\nexcept fame and his son.\n\nIt was in the midst of the ecstasies of the most reinless ambition that\nhe was surprised by the arrival of a young valet from the Hotel de la\nMole, who had come with a letter.\n\n\"All is lost,\" wrote Mathilde to him: \"Rush here as quickly as\npossible, sacrifice everything, desert if necessary. As soon as you\nhave arrived, wait for me in a fiacre near the little garden door,\nnear No. ---- of the street ---- I will come and speak to you: I shall\nperhaps be able to introduce you into the garden. All is lost, and I am\nafraid there is no way out; count on me; you will find me staunch and\nfirm in adversity. I love you.\"\n\nA few minutes afterwards, Julien obtained a furlough from the colonel,\nand left Strasbourg at full gallop. But the awful anxiety which\ndevoured him did not allow him to continue this method of travel beyond\nMetz. He flung himself into a post-chaise, and arrived with an almost\nincredible rapidity at the indicated spot, near the little garden door\nof the Hotel de la Mole. The door opened, and Mathilde, oblivious of\nall human conventions, rushed into his arms. Fortunately, it was only\nfive o'clock in the morning, and the street was still deserted.\n\n\"All is lost. My father, fearing my tears, left Thursday night. Nobody\nknows where for? But here is his letter: read it.\" She climbed into the\nfiacre with Julien.\n\n\"I could forgive everything except the plan of seducing you because\nyou are rich. That, unhappy girl, is the awful truth. I give you my\nword of honour that I will never consent to a marriage with that man.\nI will guarantee him an income of 10,000 francs if he will live far\naway beyond the French frontiers, or better still, in America. Read the\nletter which I have just received in answer to the enquiries which I\nhave made. The impudent scoundrel had himself requested me to write to\nmadame de Renal. I will never read a single line you write concerning\nthat man. I feel a horror for both Paris and yourself. I urge you to\ncover what is bound to happen with the utmost secrecy. Be frank, have\nnothing more to do with the vile man, and you will find again the\nfather you have lost.\"\n\n\"Where is Madame de Renal's letter?\" said Julien coldly.\n\n\"Here it is. I did not want to shew it to you before you were prepared\nfor it.\"\n\n\n        LETTER\n\n        \"My duties to the sacred cause of religion and morality,\n        oblige me, monsieur, to take the painful course which I\n        have just done with regard to yourself: an infallible\n        principle orders me to do harm to my neighbour at the\n        present moment, but only in order to avoid an even\n        greater scandal. My sentiment of duty must overcome\n        the pain which I experience. It is only too true,\n        monsieur, that the conduct of the person about whom you\n        ask me to tell you the whole truth may seem incredible\n        or even honest. It may possibly be considered proper\n        to hide or to disguise part of the truth: that would\n        be in accordance with both prudence and religion. But\n        the conduct about which you desire information has\n        been in fact reprehensible to the last degree, and\n        more than I can say. Poor and greedy as the man is, it\n        is only by the aid of the most consummate hypocrisy,\n        and by seducing a weak and unhappy woman, that he has\n        endeavoured to make a career for himself and become\n        someone in the world. It is part of my painful duty to\n        add that I am obliged to believe that M. Julien has no\n        religious principles. I am driven conscientiously to\n        think that one of his methods of obtaining success in\n        any household is to try to seduce the woman who commands\n        the principal influence. His one great object, in spite\n        of his show of disinterestedness, and his stock-in-trade\n        of phrases out of novels, is to succeed in doing what he\n        likes with the master of the household and his fortune.\n        He leaves behind him unhappiness and eternal remorse,\n        etc., etc., etc.\"\n\nThis extremely long letter, which was almost blotted out by tears, was\ncertainly in madame de Renal's handwriting; it was even written with\nmore than ordinary care.\n\n\"I cannot blame M. de la Mole,\" said Julien, \"after he had finished it.\nHe is just and prudent. What father would give his beloved daughter to\nsuch a man? Adieu!\" Julien jumped out of the fiacre and rushed to his\npost-chaise, which had stopped at the end of the street. Mathilde, whom\nhe had apparently forgotten, took a few steps as though to follow him,\nbut the looks she received from the tradesmen, who were coming out on\nthe thresholds of their shops, and who knew who she was, forced her to\nreturn precipitately to the garden.\n\nJulien had left for Verrieres. During that rapid journey he was unable\nto write to Mathilde as he had intended. His hand could only form\nillegible characters on the paper.\n\nHe arrived at Verrieres on a Sunday morning. He entered the shop of the\nlocal gunsmith, who overwhelmed him with congratulations on his recent\ngood fortune. It constituted the news of the locality.\n\nJulien had much difficulty in making him understand that he wanted a\npair of pistols. At his request the gunsmith loaded the pistols.\n\nThe three peals sounded; it is a well-known signal in the villages of\nFrance, and after the various ringings in the morning announces the\nimmediate commencement of Mass.\n\nJulien entered the new church of Verrieres. All the lofty windows of\nthe building were veiled with crimson curtains. Julien found himself\nsome spaces behind the pew of madame de Renal. It seemed to him that\nshe was praying fervently The sight of the woman whom he had loved so\nmuch made Julien's arm tremble so violently that he was at first unable\nto execute his project. \"I cannot,\" he said to himself. \"It is a\nphysical impossibility.\"\n\nAt that moment the young priest, who was officiating at the Mass, rang\nthe bell for the elevation of the host. Madame de Renal lowered her\nhead, which, for a moment became entirely hidden by the folds of her\nshawl. Julien did not see her features so distinctly: he aimed a pistol\nshot at her, and missed her: he aimed a second shot, she fell.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXVI\n\nSAD DETAILS\n\n\n        Do not expect any weakness on my part. I have avenged\n        myself. I have deserved death, and here I am. Pray for\n        my soul.--_Schiller_\n\n\nJulien remained motionless. He saw nothing more. When he recovered\nhimself a little he noticed all the faithful rushing from the church.\nThe priest had left the altar. Julien started fairly slowly to follow\nsome women who were going away with loud screams. A woman who was\ntrying to get away more quickly than the others, pushed him roughly. He\nfell. His feet got entangled with a chair, knocked over by the crowd;\nwhen he got up, he felt his neck gripped. A gendarme, in full uniform,\nwas arresting him. Julien tried mechanically to have recourse to his\nlittle pistol; but a second gendarme pinioned his arms.\n\nHe was taken to the prison. They went into a room where irons were put\non his hands. He was left alone. The door was doubly locked on him. All\nthis was done very quickly, and he scarcely appreciated it at all.\n\n\"Yes, upon my word, all is over,\" he said aloud as he recovered\nhimself. \"Yes, the guillotine in a fortnight ... or killing myself\nhere.\"\n\nHis reasoning did not go any further. His head felt as though it had\nbeen seized in some violent grip. He looked round to see if anyone was\nholding him. After some moments he fell into a deep sleep.\n\nMadame de Renal was not mortally wounded. The first bullet had pierced\nher hat. The second had been fired as she was turning round. The\nbullet had struck her on the shoulder, and, astonishing to relate,\nhad ricocheted from off the shoulder bone (which it had, however,\nbroken) against a gothic pillar, from which it had loosened an enormous\nsplinter of stone.\n\nWhen, after a long and painful bandaging, the solemn surgeon said to\nmadame de Renal, \"I answer for your life as I would for my own,\" she\nwas profoundly grieved.\n\nShe had been sincerely desirous of death for a long time. The letter\nwhich she had written to M. de la Mole in accordance with the\ninjunctions of her present confessor, had proved the final blow to a\ncreature already weakened by an only too permanent unhappiness. This\nunhappiness was caused by Julien's absence; but she, for her own part,\ncalled it remorse. Her director, a young ecclesiastic, who was both\nvirtuous and enthusiastic, and had recently come to Dijon, made no\nmistake as to its nature.\n\n\"Dying in this way, though not by my own hand, is very far from being\na sin,\" thought madame de Renal. \"God will perhaps forgive me for\nrejoicing over my death.\" She did not dare to add, \"and dying by\nJulien's hand puts the last touch on my happiness.\"\n\nShe had scarcely been rid of the presence of the surgeon and of all the\ncrowd of friends that had rushed to see her, than she called her maid,\nElisa. \"The gaoler,\" she said to her with a violent blush, \"is a cruel\nman. He will doubtless ill-treat him, thinking to please me by doing\nso.... I cannot bear that idea. Could you not go, as though on your own\naccount, and give the gaoler this little packet which contains some\nlouis. You will tell him that religion forbids him to treat him badly,\nabove all, he must not go and speak about the sending of this money.\"\n\nIt was this circumstance, which we have just mentioned, that Julien had\nto thank for the humanity of the gaoler of Verrieres. It was still the\nsame M. Noiraud, that ideal official, whom he remembered as being so\nfinely alarmed by M. Appert's presence.\n\nA judge appeared in the prison. \"I occasioned death by premeditation,\"\nsaid Julien to him. \"I bought the pistols and had them loaded at\nso-and-so's, a gunsmith. Article 1342 of the penal code is clear. I\ndeserve death, and I expect it.\" Astonished at this kind of answer, the\njudge started to multiply his questions, with a view of the accused\ncontradicting himself in his answers.\n\n\"Don't you see,\" said Julien to him with a smile, \"that I am making\nmyself out as guilty as you can possibly desire? Go away, monsieur, you\nwill not fail to catch the quarry you are pursuing. You will have the\npleasure to condemn me. Spare me your presence.\"\n\n\"I have an irksome duty to perform,\" thought Julien. \"I must write to\nmademoiselle de la Mole:--\"\n\n        \"I have avenged myself,\" he said to her. \"Unfortunately,\n        my name will appear in the papers, and I shall not be\n        able to escape from the world incognito. I shall die\n        in two months' time. My revenge was ghastly, like the\n        pain of being separated from you. From this moment I\n        forbid myself to write or pronounce your name. Never\n        speak of me even to my son; silence is the only way of\n        honouring me. To the ordinary commonplace man, I shall\n        represent a common assassin. Allow me the luxury of the\n        truth at this supreme moment; you will forget me. This\n        great catastrophe of which I advise you not to say a\n        single word to a single living person, will exhaust,\n        for several years to come, all that romantic and unduly\n        adventurous element which I have detected in your\n        character. You were intended by nature to live among the\n        heroes of the middle ages; exhibit their firm character.\n        Let what has to happen take place in secret and without\n        your being compromised. You will assume a false name,\n        and you will confide in no one. If you absolutely need a\n        friend's help, I bequeath the abbe Pirard to you.\n\n        \"Do not talk to anyone else, particularly to the people\n        of your own class--the de Luz's, the Caylus's.\n\n        \"A year after my death, marry M. de Croisenois; I\n        command you as your husband. Do not write to me at all,\n        I shall not answer. Though in my view, much less wicked\n        than Iago, I am going to say, like him: 'From this time\n        forth, I never will speack word.'[1]\n\n        \"I shall never be seen to speak or write again. You will\n        have received my final words and my final expressions of\n        adoration.\n\n                                                         \"J. S.\"\n\nIt was only after he had despatched this letter and had recovered\nhimself a little, that Julien felt for the first time extremely\nunhappy. Those momentous words, I shall die, meant the successive\ntearing out of his heart of each individual hope and ambition.\nDeath, in itself, was not horrible in his eyes. His whole life had\nbeen nothing but a long preparation for unhappiness, and he had\nmade a point of not losing sight of what is considered the greatest\nunhappiness of all.\n\n\"Come then,\" he said to himself; \"if I had to fight a duel in a couple\nof months, with an expert duellist, should I be weak enough to think\nabout it incessantly with panic in my soul?\"\n\nHe passed more than an hour in trying to analyze himself thoroughly on\nthis score.\n\nWhen he saw clear in his own soul, and the truth appeared before his\neyes with as much definiteness as one of the pillars of his prison, he\nthought about remorse.\n\n\"Why should I have any? I have been atrociously injured; I have\nkilled--I deserve death, but that is all. I die after having squared my\naccount with humanity. I do not leave any obligation unfulfilled. I owe\nnothing to anybody; there is nothing shameful about my death, except\nthe instrument of it; that alone, it is true, is simply sufficient to\ndisgrace me in the eyes of the bourgeois of Verrieres; but from the\nintellectual standpoint, what could be more contemptible than they? I\nhave one means of winning their consideration; by flinging pieces of\ngold to the people as I go to the scaffold. If my memory is linked with\nthe idea of gold, they will always look upon it as resplendent.\"\n\nAfter this chain of reasoning, which after a minute's reflection seemed\nto him self-evident, Julien said to himself, \"I have nothing left to do\nin the world,\" and fell into a deep sleep.\n\nAbout 9 o'clock in the evening the gaoler woke him up as he brought in\nhis supper.\n\n\"What are they saying in Verrieres?\"\n\n\"M. Julien, the oath which I took before the crucifix in the 'Royal\nCourtyard,' on the day when I was installed in my place, obliges me to\nsilence.\"\n\nHe was silent, but remained. Julien was amused by the sight of this\nvulgar hypocrisy. I must make him, he thought, wait a long time for the\nfive francs which he wants to sell his conscience for.\n\nWhen the gaoler saw him finish his meal without making any attempt to\ncorrupt him, he said in a soft and perfidious voice:\n\n\"The affection which I have for you, M. Julien, compels me to speak.\nAlthough they say that it is contrary to the interests of justice,\nbecause it may assist you in preparing your defence. M. Julien you are\na good fellow at heart, and you will be very glad to learn that madame\nde Renal is better.\"\n\n\"What! she is not dead?\" exclaimed Julien, beside himself.\n\n\"What, you know nothing?\" said the gaoler, with a stupid air which soon\nturned into exultant cupidity. \"It would be very proper, monsieur, for\nyou to give something to the surgeon, who, so far as law and justice\ngo, ought not to have spoken. But in order to please you, monsieur, I\nwent to him, and he told me everything.\"\n\n\"Anyway, the wound is not mortal,\" said Julien to him impatiently, \"you\nanswer for it on your life?\"\n\nThe gaoler, who was a giant six feet tall, was frightened and retired\ntowards the door. Julien saw that he was adopting bad tactics for\ngetting at the truth. He sat down again and flung a napoleon to M.\nNoiraud.\n\nAs the man's story proved to Julien more and more conclusively that\nmadame de Renal's wound was not mortal, he felt himself overcome by\ntears. \"Leave me,\" he said brusquely.\n\nThe gaoler obeyed. Scarcely had the door shut, than Julien exclaimed:\n\"Great God, she is not dead,\" and he fell on his knees, shedding hot\ntears.\n\nIn this supreme moment he was a believer. What mattered the hypocrisies\nof the priests? Could they abate one whit of the truth and sublimity of\nthe idea of God?\n\nIt was only then that Julien began to repent of the crime that he had\ncommitted. By a coincidence, which prevented him falling into despair,\nit was only at the present moment that the condition of physical\nirritation and semi-madness, in which he had been plunged since his\ndeparture from Paris for Verrieres came to an end.\n\nHis tears had a generous source. He had no doubt about the condemnation\nwhich awaited him.\n\n\"So she will live,\" he said to himself. \"She will live to forgive me\nand love me.\"\n\nVery late the next morning the gaoler woke him up and said, \"You must\nhave a famous spirit, M. Julien. I have come in twice, but I did not\nwant to wake you up. Here are two bottles of excellent wine which our\ncure, M. Maslon, has sent you.\"\n\n\"What, is that scoundrel still here?\" said Julien.\n\n\"Yes, monsieur,\" said the gaoler, lowering his voice. \"But do not talk\nso loud, it may do you harm.\"\n\nJulien laughed heartily.\n\n\"At the stage I have reached, my friend, you alone can do me harm in\nthe event of your ceasing to be kind and tender. You will be well\npaid,\" said Julien, changing his tone and reverting to his imperious\nmanner. This manner was immediately justified by the gift of a piece of\nmoney.\n\nM. Noiraud related again, with the greatest detail, everything he\nhad learnt about madame de Renal, but he did not make any mention of\nmademoiselle Elisa's visit.\n\nThe man was as base and servile as it was possible to be. An idea\ncrossed Julien's mind. \"This kind of misshapen giant cannot earn more\nthan three or four hundred francs, for his prison is not at all full.\nI can guarantee him ten thousand francs, if he will escape with me\nto Switzerland. The difficulty will be in persuading him of my good\nfaith.\" The idea of the long conversation he would need to have with so\nvile a person filled Julien with disgust. He thought of something else.\n\nIn the evening the time had passed. A post-chaise had come to pick him\nup at midnight. He was very pleased with his travelling companions, the\ngendarmes. When he arrived at the prison of Besancon in the morning\nthey were kind enough to place him in the upper storey of a Gothic\nturret. He judged the architecture to be of the beginning of the\nfourteenth century. He admired its fascinating grace and lightness.\nThrough a narrow space between two walls, beyond the deep court, there\nopened a superb vista.\n\nOn the following day there was an interrogation, after which he was\nleft in peace for several days. His soul was calm. He found his affair\na perfectly simple one. \"I meant to kill. I deserve to be killed.\"\n\nHis thoughts did not linger any further over this line of reasoning.\nAs for the sentence, the disagreeableness of appearing in public,\nthe defence, he considered all this as slight embarrassment, irksome\nformalities, which it would be time enough to consider on the actual\nday. The actual moment of death did not seize hold of his mind either.\n\"I will think about it after the sentence.\" Life was no longer boring,\nhe was envisaging everything from a new point of view, he had no longer\nany ambition. He rarely thought about mademoiselle de la Mole. His\npassion of remorse engrossed him a great deal, and often conjured up\nthe image of madame de Renal, particularly during the silence of the\nnight, which in this high turret was only disturbed by the song of the\nosprey.\n\nHe thanked heaven that he had not inflicted a mortal wound.\n\"Astonishing,\" he said to himself, \"I thought that she had destroyed my\nfuture happiness for ever by her letter to M. de la Mole, and here am\nI, less than a fortnight after the date of that letter, not giving a\nsingle thought to all the things that engrossed me then. An income of\ntwo or three thousand francs, on which to live quietly in a mountain\ndistrict, like Vergy.... I was happy then.... I did not realise my\nhappiness.\"\n\nAt other moments he would jump up from his chair. \"If I had mortally\nwounded madame de Renal, I would have killed myself.... I need to feel\ncertain of that so as not to horrify myself.\"\n\n\"Kill myself? That's the great question,\" he said to himself. \"Oh,\nthose judges, those fiends of red tape, who would hang their best\ncitizen in order to win the cross.... At any rate, I should escape from\ntheir control and from the bad French of their insults, which the local\npaper will call eloquence.\"\n\n\"I still have five or six weeks, more or less to live.... Kill myself.\nNo, not for a minute,\" he said to himself after some days, \"Napoleon\nwent on living.\"\n\n\"Besides, I find life pleasant, this place is quiet, I am not troubled\nwith bores,\" he added with a smile, and he began to make out a list of\nthe books which he wanted to order from Paris.\n\n\n[1] Stendhal's bad spelling is here reproduced.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXVII\n\nA TURRET\n\n\n        The tomb of a friend.--_Sterne_.\n\n\nHe heard a loud noise in the corridor. It was not the time when the\ngaoler usually came up to his prison. The osprey flew away with a\nshriek. The door opened, and the venerable cure Chelan threw himself\ninto his arms. He was trembling all over and had his stick in his hands.\n\n\"Great God! Is it possible, my child--I ought to say monster?\"\n\nThe good old man could not add a single word. Julien was afraid he\nwould fall down. He was obliged to lead him to a chair. The hand of\ntime lay heavy on this man who had once been so active. He seemed to\nJulien the mere shadow of his former self.\n\nWhen he had regained his breath, he said, \"It was only the day before\nyesterday that I received your letter from Strasbourg with your five\nhundred francs for the poor of Verrieres. They brought it to me in\nthe mountains at Liveru where I am living in retirement with my\nnephew Jean. Yesterday I learnt of the catastrophe.... Heavens, is it\npossible?\" And the old man left off weeping. He did not seem to have\nany ideas left, but added mechanically, \"You will have need of your\nfive hundred francs, I will bring them back to you.\"\n\n\"I need to see you, my father,\" exclaimed Julien, really touched. \"I\nhave money, anyway.\"\n\nBut he could not obtain any coherent answer. From time to time, M.\nChelan shed some tears which coursed silently down his cheeks. He then\nlooked at Julien, and was quite dazed when he saw him kiss his hands\nand carry them to his lips. That face which had once been so vivid,\nand which had once portrayed with such vigour the most noble emotions\nwas now sunk in a perpetual apathy. A kind of peasant came soon to\nfetch the old man. \"You must not fatigue him,\" he said to Julien, who\nunderstood that he was the nephew. This visit left Julien plunged in a\ncruel unhappiness which found no vent in tears. Everything seemed to\nhim gloomy and disconsolate. He felt his heart frozen in his bosom.\n\nThis moment was the cruellest which he had experienced since the\ncrime. He had just seen death and seen it in all its ugliness. All his\nillusions about greatness of soul and nobility of character had been\ndissipated like a cloud before the hurricane.\n\nThis awful plight lasted several hours. After moral poisoning, physical\nremedies and champagne are necessary. Julien would have considered\nhimself a coward to have resorted to them. \"What a fool I am,\" he\nexclaimed, towards the end of the horrible day that he had spent\nentirely in walking up and down his narrow turret. \"It's only, if I\nhad been going to die like anybody else, that the sight of that poor\nold man would have had any right to have thrown me into this awful fit\nof sadness: but a rapid death in the flower of my age simply puts me\nbeyond the reach of such awful senility.\"\n\nIn spite of all his argumentation, Julien felt as touched as any\nweak-minded person would have been, and consequently felt unhappy\nas the result of the visit. He no longer had any element of rugged\ngreatness, or any Roman virtue. Death appeared to him at a great height\nand seemed a less easy proposition.\n\n\"This is what I shall take for my thermometer,\" he said to himself.\n\"To-night I am ten degrees below the courage requisite for\nguillotine-point level. I had that courage this morning. Anyway, what\ndoes it matter so long as it comes back to me at the necessary moment?\"\nThis thermometer idea amused him and finally managed to distract him.\n\nWhen he woke up the next day he was ashamed of the previous day. \"My\nhappiness and peace of mind are at stake.\" He almost made up his mind\nto write to the Procureur-General to request that no one should be\nadmitted to see him. \"And how about Fouque,\" he thought? \"If he takes\nit upon himself to come to Besancon, his grief will be immense.\"\nIt had perhaps been two months since he had given Fouque a thought.\n\"I was a great fool at Strasbourg. My thoughts did not go beyond my\ncoat-collar. He was much engrossed by the memory of Fouque, which\nleft him more and more touched. He walked nervously about. Here I\nam, clearly twenty degrees below death point.... If this weakness\nincreases, it will be better for me to kill myself. What joy for the\nabbe Maslon, and the Valenods, if I die like an usher.\"\n\nFouque arrived. The good, simple man, was distracted by grief. His one\nidea, so far as he had any at all, was to sell all he possessed in\norder to bribe the gaoler and secure Julien's escape. He talked to him\nat length of M. de Lavalette's escape.\n\n\"You pain me,\" Julien said to him. \"M. de Lavalette was innocent--I\nam guilty. Though you did not mean to, you made me think of the\ndifference....\"\n\n\"But is it true? What? were you going to sell all you possessed?\" said\nJulien, suddenly becoming mistrustful and observant.\n\nFouque was delighted at seeing his friend answer his obsessing idea,\nand detailed at length, and within a hundred francs, what he would get\nfor each of his properties.\n\n\"What a sublime effort for a small country land-owner,\" thought Julien.\n\"He is ready to sacrifice for me the fruits of all the economies, and\nall the little semi-swindling tricks which I used to be ashamed of when\nI saw him practice them.\"\n\n\"None of the handsome young people whom I saw in the Hotel de la Mole,\nand who read Rene, would have any of his ridiculous weaknesses: but,\nexcept those who are very young and who have also inherited riches\nand are ignorant of the value of money, which of all those handsome\nParisians would be capable of such a sacrifice?\"\n\nAll Fouque's mistakes in French and all his common gestures seemed to\ndisappear. He threw himself into his arms. Never have the provinces\nin comparison with Paris received so fine a tribute. Fouque was so\ndelighted with the momentary enthusiasm which he read in his friend's\neyes that he took it for consent to the flight.\n\nThis view of the sublime recalled to Julien all the strength that the\napparition of M. Chelan had made him lose. He was still very young;\nbut in my view he was a fine specimen. Instead of his character passing\nfrom tenderness to cunning, as is the case with the majority of men,\nage would have given him that kindness of heart which is easily melted\n... but what avail these vain prophecies.\n\nThe interrogations became more frequent in spite of all the efforts\nof Julien, who always endeavoured by his answers to shorten the whole\nmatter.\n\n\"I killed, or at any rate, I wished to occasion death, and I did so\nwith premeditation,\" he would repeat every day. But the judge was\na pedant above everything. Julien's confessions had no effect in\ncurtailing the interrogations. The judge's conceit was wounded. Julien\ndid not know that they had wanted to transfer him into an awful cell,\nand that it was only, thanks to Fouque's efforts, that he was allowed\nto keep his pretty room at the top of a hundred and eighty steps.\n\nM. the abbe de Frilair was one of the important customers who entrusted\nFouque with the purveying of their firewood. The good tradesmen managed\nto reach the all powerful grand vicar. M. de Frilair informed him,\nto his unspeakable delight, that he was so touched by Julien's good\nqualities, and by the services which he had formerly rendered to the\nseminary, that he intended to recommend him to the judges. Fouque\nthought he saw a hope of saving his friend, and as he went out, bowing\ndown to the ground, requested M. the grand vicar, to distribute a sum\nof ten louis in masses to entreat the acquittal of the accused.\n\nFouque was making a strange mistake. M. de Frilair was very far from\nbeing a Valenod. He refused, and even tried to make the good peasant\nunderstand that he would do better to keep his money. Seeing that it\nwas impossible to be clear without being indiscreet, he advised him to\ngive that sum as alms for the use of the poor prisoners, who, in point\nof fact, were destitute of everything.\n\n\"This Julien is a singular person, his action is unintelligible,\"\nthought M. de Frilair, \"and I ought to find nothing unintelligible.\nPerhaps it will be possible to make a martyr of him.... In any case,\nI shall get to the bottom of the matter, and shall perhaps find an\nopportunity of putting fear into the heart of that madame de Renal\nwho has no respect for us, and at the bottom detests me.... Perhaps\nI might be able to utilise all this as a means of a brilliant\nreconciliation with M. de la Mole, who has a weakness for the little\nseminarist.\"\n\nThe settlement of the lawsuit had been signed some weeks previously,\nand the abbe Pirard had left Besancon after having duly mentioned\nJulien's mysterious birth, on the very day when the unhappy man tried\nto assassinate madame de Renal in the church of Verrieres.\n\nThere was only one disagreeable event between himself and his death\nwhich Julien anticipated. He consulted Fouque concerning his idea\nof writing to M. the Procureur-General asking to be exempt from all\nvisits. This horror at the sight of a father, above all at a moment\nlike this, deeply shocked the honest middle-class heart of the wood\nmerchant.\n\nHe thought he understood why so many people had a passionate hatred for\nhis friend. He concealed his feelings out of respect for misfortune.\n\n\"In any case,\" he answered coldly, \"such an order for privacy would not\nbe applied to your father.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXVIII\n\nA POWERFUL MAN\n\n\n        But her proceedings are so mysterious and her figure is\n        so elegant! Who can she be?--_Schiller_.\n\n\nThe doors of the turret opened very early on the following day.\n\n\"Oh! good God,\" he thought, \"here's my father! What an unpleasant\nscene!\"\n\nAt the same time a woman dressed like a peasant rushed into his arms.\nHe had difficulty in recognising her. It was mademoiselle de la Mole.\n\n\"You wicked man! Your letter only told me where you were. As for what\nyou call your crime, but which is really nothing more or less than a\nnoble vengeance, which shews me all the loftiness of the heart which\nbeats within your bosom, I only got to know of it at Verrieres.\"\n\nIn spite of all his prejudices against mademoiselle de la Mole,\nprejudices moreover which he had not owned to himself quite frankly,\nJulien found her extremely pretty. It was impossible not to recognise\nboth in what she had done and what she had said, a noble disinterested\nfeeling far above the level of anything that a petty vulgar soul would\nhave dared to do? He thought that he still loved a queen, and after a\nfew moments said to her with a remarkable nobility both of thought and\nof elocution,\n\n\"I sketched out the future very clearly. After my death I intended to\nremarry you to M. de Croisenois, who will officially of course then\nmarry a widow. The noble but slightly romantic soul of this charming\nwidow, who will have been brought back to the cult of vulgar prudence\nby an astonishing and singular event which played in her life a part\nas great as it was tragic, will deign to appreciate the very real\nmerit of the young marquis. You will resign yourself to be happy with\nordinary worldly happiness, prestige, riches, high rank. But, dear\nMathilde, if your arrival at Besancon is suspected, it will be a mortal\nblow for M. de la Mole, and that is what I shall never forgive myself.\nI have already caused him so much sorrow. The academician will say that\nhe has nursed a serpent in his bosom.\n\n\"I must confess that I little expected so much cold reason and so much\nsolicitude for the future,\" said mademoiselle de la Mole, slightly\nannoyed. \"My maid who is almost as prudent as you are, took a passport\nfor herself, and I posted here under the name of madam Michelet.\"\n\n\"And did madame Michelet find it so easy to get to see me?\"\n\n\"Ah! you are still the same superior man whom I chose to favour. I\nstarted by offering a hundred francs to one of the judge's secretaries,\nwho alleged at first that my admission into this turret was impossible.\nBut once he had got the money the worthy man kept me waiting, raised\nobjections, and I thought that he meant to rob me--\" She stopped.\n\n\"Well?\" said Julien.\n\n\"Do not be angry, my little Julien,\" she said, kissing him. \"I was\nobliged to tell my name to the secretary, who took me for a young\nworking girl from Paris in love with handsome Julien. As a matter of\nfact those are his actual expressions. I swore to him, my dear, that I\nwas your wife, and I shall have a permit to see you every day.\"\n\n\"Nothing could be madder,\" thought Julien, \"but I could not help it.\nAfter all, M. de la Mole is so great a nobleman that public opinion\nwill manage to find an excuse for the young colonel who will marry\nsuch a charming widow. My death will atone for everything;\" and he\nabandoned himself with delight to Mathilde's love. It was madness, it\nwas greatness of soul, it was the most remarkable thing possible. She\nseriously suggested that she should kill herself with him.\n\nAfter these first transports, when she had had her fill of the\nhappiness of seeing Julien, a keen curiosity suddenly invaded her soul.\nShe began to scrutinize her lover, and found him considerably above\nthe plane which she had anticipated. Boniface de La Mole seemed to be\nbrought to life again, but on a more heroic scale.\n\nMathilde saw the first advocates of the locality, and offended them by\noffering gold too crudely, but they finished by accepting.\n\nShe promptly came to the conclusion that so far as dubious and far\nreaching intrigues were concerned, everything depended at Besancon on\nM. the abbe de Frilair.\n\nShe found at first overwhelming difficulties in obtaining an interview\nwith the all-powerful leader of the congregation under the obscure name\nof madame Michelet. But the rumour of the beauty of a young dressmaker,\nwho was madly in love, and had come from Paris to Besancon to console\nthe young abbe Julien Sorel, spread over the town.\n\nMathilde walked about the Besancon streets alone: she hoped not to be\nrecognised. In any case, she thought it would be of some use to her\ncause if she produced a great impression on the people. She thought, in\nher madness, of making them rebel in order to save Julien as he walked\nto his death. Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was dressed simply\nand in a way suitable to a woman in mourning, she was dressed in fact\nin such a way as to attract every one's attention.\n\nShe was the object of everyone's notice at Besancon when she obtained\nan audience of M. de Frilair after a week spent in soliciting it.\n\nIn spite of all her courage, the idea of an influential leader of the\ncongregation, and the idea of deep and calculating criminality, were so\nassociated with each other in her mind, that she trembled as she rang\nthe bell at the door of the bishop's palace. She could scarcely walk\nwhen she had to go up the staircase, which led to the apartment of the\nfirst grand Vicar. The solitude of the episcopal palace chilled her. \"I\nmight sit down in an armchair, and the armchair might grip my arms: I\nshould then disappear. Whom could my maid ask for? The captain of the\ngendarmerie will take care to do nothing. I am isolated in this great\ntown.\"\n\nAfter her first look at the apartment, mademoiselle de la Mole felt\nreassured. In the first place, the lackey who had opened the door to\nher had on a very elegant livery. The salon in which she was asked to\nwait displayed that refined and delicate luxury which differs so much\nfrom crude magnificence, and which is only found in the best houses in\nParis. As soon as she noticed M. de Frilair coming towards her with\nquite a paternal air, all her ideas of his criminality disappeared. She\ndid not even find on his handsome face the impress of that drastic and\nsomewhat savage courage which is so anti-pathetic to Paris society.\nThe half-smile which animated the features of the priest, who was\nall-powerful at Besancon, betokened the well-bred man, the learned\nprelate, the clever administrator. Mathilde felt herself at Paris.\n\nIt was the work of a few minutes for M. de Frilair to induce Mathilde\nto confess to him that she was the daughter of his powerful opponent,\nthe marquis de la Mole.\n\n\"As a matter of fact, I am not Madame Michelet,\" she said, reassuming\nall the haughtiness of her natural demeanour, \"and this confession\ncosts me but little since I have come to consult you, monsieur, on the\npossibility of procuring the escape of M. de la Vernaye. Moreover, he\nis only guilty of a piece of folly; the woman whom he shot at is well;\nand, in the second place, I can put down fifty-thousand francs straight\naway for the purpose of bribing the officials, and pledge myself for\ntwice that sum. Finally, my gratitude and the gratitude of my family\nwill be ready to do absolutely anything for the man who has saved M. de\nla Vernaye.\"\n\nM. de Frilair seemed astonished at the name. Mathilde shewed him\nseveral letters from the Minister of War, addressed to M. Julien Sorel\nde la Vernaye.\n\n\"You see, monsieur, that my father took upon himself the responsibility\nof his career. I married him secretly, my father was desirous that he\nshould be a superior officer before the notification of this marriage,\nwhich, after all, is somewhat singular for a de la Mole.\"\n\nMathilde noticed that M. de Frilair's expression of goodwill and mild\ncheerfulness was rapidly vanishing in proportion as he made certain\nimportant discoveries. His face exhibited a subtlety tinged with deep\nperfidiousness, the abbe had doubts, he was slowly re-reading the\nofficial documents.\n\n\"What can I get out of these strange confidences?\" he said to himself.\n\"Here I am suddenly thrown into intimate relations with a friend of\nthe celebrated marechale de Fervaques, who is the all-powerful niece\nof my lord, bishop of ---- who can make one a bishop of France. What\nI looked upon as an extremely distant possibility presents itself\nunexpectedly. This may lead me to the goal of all my hopes.\"\n\nMathilde was at first alarmed by the sudden change in the expression\nof this powerful man, with whom she was alone in a secluded room. \"But\ncome,\" she said to herself soon afterwards. \"Would it not have been\nmore unfortunate if I had made no impression at all on the cold egoism\nof a priest who was already sated with power and enjoyment?\"\n\nDazzled at the sight of this rapid and unexpected path of reaching the\nepiscopate which now disclosed itself to him, and astonished as he was\nby Mathilde's genius, M. de Frilair ceased for a moment to be on his\nguard. Mademoiselle de la Mole saw him almost at her feet, tingling\nwith ambition, and trembling nervously.\n\n\"Everything is cleared up,\" she thought. \"Madame de Fervaques' friend\nwill find nothing impossible in this town.\" In spite of a sentiment\nof still painful jealousy she had sufficient courage to explain that\nJulien was the intimate friend of the marechale, and met my lord the\nbishop of ---- nearly every day.\n\n\"If you were to draw by ballot four or five times in succession a\nlist of thirty-six jurymen from out the principal inhabitants of this\ndepartment,\" said the grand Vicar, emphasizing his words, and with a\nhard, ambitious expression in his eyes, \"I should not feel inclined to\ncongratulate myself, if I could not reckon on eight or ten friends who\nwould be the most intelligent of the lot in each list. I can always\nmanage in nearly every case to get more than a sufficient majority to\nsecure a condemnation, so you see, mademoiselle, how easy it is for me\nto secure a conviction.\" The abbe stopped short as though astonished\nby the sound of his own words; he was admitting things which are never\nsaid to the profane. But he in his turn dumbfounded Mathilde when he\ninformed her that the special feature in Julien's strange adventure\nwhich astonished and interested Besancon society, was that he had\nformerly inspired Madame de Renal with a grand passion and reciprocated\nit for a long time. M. de Frilair had no difficulty in perceiving the\nextreme trouble which his story produced.\n\n\"I have my revenge,\" he thought. \"After all it's a way of managing\nthis decided young person. I was afraid that I should not succeed.\" Her\ndistinguished and intractable appearance intensified in his eyes the\ncharm of the rare beauty whom he now saw practically entreating him. He\nregained all his self-possession--and he did not hesitate to move the\ndagger about in her heart.\n\n\"I should not be at all surprised,\" he said to her lightly, \"if we\nwere to learn that it was owing to jealousy that M. Sorel fired two\npistol shots at the woman he once loved so much. Of course she must\nhave consoled herself and for some time she has been seeing extremely\nfrequently a certain abbe Marquinot of Dijon, a kind of Jansenist, and\nas immoral as all Jansenists are.\"\n\nM. de Frilair experienced the voluptuous pleasure of torturing at\nhis leisure the heart of this beautiful girl whose weakness he had\nsurprised.\n\n\"Why,\" he added, as he fixed his ardent eyes upon Mathilde, \"should\nM. Sorel have chosen the church, if it were not for the reason that\nhis rival was celebrating mass in it at that very moment? Everyone\nattributes an infinite amount of intelligence and an even greater\namount of prudence to the fortunate man who is the object of your\ninterest. What would have been simpler than to hide himself in the\ngarden of M. de Renal which he knows so well. Once there he could put\nthe woman of whom he was jealous to death with the practical certainty\nof being neither seen, caught, nor suspected.\"\n\nThis apparently sound train of reasoning eventually made Mathilde\nloose all self-possession. Her haughty soul steeped in all that arid\nprudence, which passes in high society for the true psychology of the\nhuman heart, was not of the type to be at all quick in appreciating\nthat joy of scorning all prudence, which an ardent soul can find so\nkeen. In the high classes of Paris society in which Mathilde had lived,\nit is only rarely that passion can divest itself of prudence, and\npeople always make a point of throwing themselves out of windows from\nthe fifth storey.\n\nAt last the abbe de Frilair was sure of his power over her. He gave\nMathilde to understand (and he was doubtless lying) that he could do\nwhat he liked with the public official who was entrusted with the\nconduct of Julien's prosecution. After the thirty-six jurymen for the\nsessions had been chosen by ballot, he would approach at least thirty\njurymen directly and personally.\n\nIf M. de Frilair had not thought Mathilde so pretty, he would not have\nspoken so clearly before the fifth or sixth interview.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXIX\n\nTHE INTRIGUE\n\n\n        Castres 1676--A brother has just murdered his sister\n        in the house next to mine. This gentleman had already\n        been guilty of one murder. His father saved his life by\n        causing five-hundred crowns to be distributed among the\n        councillors.--_Locke: Journey in France_.\n\n\nWhen she left the bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to\ndespatch a courier to madame de Fervaques. The fear of compromising\nherself did not stop her for a moment. She entreated her rival to\nobtain for M. de Frilair an autograph letter from the bishop of ----.\nShe went as far as to entreat her to come herself to Besancon with all\nspeed. This was an heroic act on the part of a proud and jealous soul.\n\nActing on Fouque's advice, she had had the discretion to refrain from\nmentioning the steps she had taken for Julien. Her presence troubled\nhim enough without that. A better man when face to face with death than\nhe had ever been during his life, he had remorse not only towards M. de\nla Mole, but also towards Mathilde.\n\n\"Come,\" he said to himself, \"there are times when I feel absent-minded\nand even bored by her society. She is ruining herself on my account,\nand this is how I reward her. Am I really a scoundrel?\" This question\nwould have bothered him but little in the days when he was ambitious.\nIn those days he looked upon failure as the only disgrace.\n\nHis moral discomfort when with Mathilde was proportionately emphasized\nby the fact that he inspired her at this time with the maddest and most\nextraordinary passion. She talked of nothing but the strange sacrifices\nthat she was ready to make in order to save him.\n\nExalted as she was by a sentiment on which she plumed herself, to the\ncomplete subordination of her pride, she would have liked not to have\nlet a single minute of her life go by without filling it with some\nextraordinary act. The strangest projects, and ones involving her in\nthe utmost danger, supplied the topics of her long interviews with\nJulien. The well-paid gaolers allowed her to reign over the prison.\nMathilde's ideas were not limited by the sacrifice of her reputation.\nShe would have thought nothing of making her condition known to society\nat large. Throwing herself on her knees before the king's carriage\nas it galloped along, in order to ask for Julien's pardon, and thus\nattracting the attention of the prince, at the risk of being crushed\na thousand times over, was one of the least fantastic dreams in which\nthis exalted and courageous imagination chose to indulge. She was\ncertain of being admitted into the reserved portion of the park of St.\nCloud, through those friends of hers who were employed at the king's\ncourt.\n\nJulien thought himself somewhat unworthy of so much devotion. As a\nmatter of fact, he was tired of heroism. A simple, naive, and almost\ntimid tenderness was what would have appealed to him, while Mathilde's\nhaughty soul, on the other hand, always required the idea of a public\nand an audience.\n\nIn the midst of all her anguish and all her fears for the life of\nthat lover whom she was unwilling to survive, she felt a secret need\nof astonishing the public by the extravagance of her love and the\nsublimity of her actions.\n\nJulien felt irritated at not finding himself touched by all this\nheroism. What would he have felt if he had known of all the mad ideas\nwith which Mathilde overwhelmed the devoted but eminently logical and\nlimited spirit of the good Fouque?\n\nHe did not know what to find fault with in Mathilde's devotion. For\nhe, too, would have sacrificed all his fortune, and have exposed his\nlife to the greatest risks in order to save Julien. He was dumbfounded\nby the quantity of gold which Mathilde flung away. During the first\ndays Fouque, who had all the provincial's respect for money, was much\nimpressed by the sums she spent in this way.\n\nHe at last discovered that mademoiselle de la Mole's projects\nfrequently varied, and he was greatly relieved at finding a word with\nwhich to express his blame for a character whom he found so exhausting.\nShe was changeable. There is only a step from this epithet to that of\nwrong-headed, the greatest term of opprobrium known to the provinces.\n\n\"It is singular,\" said Julien to himself, as Mathilde was going out\nof his prison one day, \"that I should be so insensible at being the\nobject of so keen a passion! And two months ago I adored her! I have,\nof course, read that the approach of death makes one lose interest\nin everything, but it is awful to feel oneself ungrateful, and not\nto be able to change. Am I an egoist, then?\" He addressed the most\nhumiliating reproaches to himself on this score.\n\nAmbition was dead in his heart; another passion had arisen from its\nashes. He called it remorse at having assassinated madame de Renal.\n\nAs a matter of fact, he loved her to the point of distraction. He\nexperienced a singular happiness on these occasions when, being left\nabsolutely alone, and without being afraid of being interrupted, he\ncould surrender himself completely to the memory of the happy days\nwhich he had once passed at Verrieres, or at Vergy. The slightest\nincidents of these days, which had fleeted away only too rapidly,\npossessed an irresistible freshness and charm. He never gave a thought\nto his Paris successes; they bored him.\n\nThese moods, which became intensified with every succeeding day, were\npartly guessed by the jealous Mathilde. She realised very clearly that\nshe had to struggle against his love of solitude. Sometimes, with\nterror in her heart, she uttered madame de Renal's name.\n\nShe saw Julien quiver. Henceforth her passion had neither bounds nor\nlimit.\n\n\"If he dies, I will die after him,\" she said to herself in all good\nfaith. \"What will the Paris salons say when they see a girl of my own\nrank carry her adoration for a lover who is condemned to death to such\na pitch as this? For sentiments like these you must go back to the age\nof the heroes. It was loves of this kind which thrilled the hearts of\nthe century of Charles IX. and Henri III.\"\n\nIn the midst of her keenest transports, when she was clasping Julien's\nhead against her heart, she would say to herself with horror, \"What!\nis this charming head doomed to fall? Well,\" she added, inflamed by\na not unhappy heroism, \"these lips of mine, which are now pressing\nagainst this pretty hair, will be icy cold less than twenty-four hours\nafterwards.\"\n\nThoughts of the awful voluptuousness of such heroic moments gripped\nher in a compelling embrace. The idea of suicide, absorbing enough\nin itself, entered that haughty soul (to which, up to the present it\nhad been so utterly alien), and soon reigned over it with an absolute\ndominion.\n\n\"No, the blood of my ancestors has not grown tepid in descending to\nme,\" said Mathilde proudly to herself.\n\n\"I have a favour to ask of you,\" said her lover to her one day. \"Put\nyour child out to nurse at Verrieres. Madame de Renal will look after\nthe nurse.\"\n\n\"Those words of yours are very harsh.\" And Mathilde paled.\n\n\"It is true, and I ask your pardon a thousand times,\" exclaimed Julien,\nemerging from his reverie, and clasping her in his arms.\n\nAfter having dried his tears, he reverted to his original idea, but\nwith greater tact. He had given a twist of melancholy philosophy to the\nconversation. He talked of that future of his which was so soon going\nto close. \"One must admit, dear one, that passions are an accident in\nlife, but such accidents only occur in superior souls.... My son's\ndeath would be in reality a happiness for your own proud family, and\nall the servants will realize as much. Neglect will be the lot of that\nchild of shame and unhappiness. I hope that, at a time which I do not\nwish to fix, but which nevertheless I am courageous enough to imagine,\nyou will obey my last advice: you will marry the marquis de Croisenois.\"\n\n\"What? Dishonoured?\"\n\n\"Dishonour cannot attach to a name such as yours. You will be a widow,\nand the widow of a madman--that is all. I will go further--my crime\nwill confer no dishonour, since it had no money motive. Perhaps when\nthe time comes for your marriage, some philosophic legislator will have\nso far prevailed on the prejudice of his contemporaries as to have\nsecured the suppression of the death penalty. Then some friendly voice\nwill say, by way of giving an instance: 'Why, madame de la Mole's first\nhusband was a madman, but not a wicked man or a criminal. It was absurd\nto have his head cut off.' So my memory will not be infamous in any\nway--at least, after a certain time.... Your position in society, your\nfortune, and, if you will allow me to say so, your genius, will make M.\nde Croisenois, once he is your husband, play a part which he would have\nnever managed to secure unaided. He only possesses birth and bravery,\nand those qualities alone, though they constituted an accomplished man\nin 1729, are an anachronism a century later on, and only give rise to\nunwarranted pretensions. You need other things if you are to place\nyourself at the head of the youth of France.\"\n\n\"You will take all the help of your firm and enterprising character\nto the political party which you will make your husband join. You may\nbe able to be a successor to the Chevreuses and the Longuevilles of\nthe Fronde--but then, dear one, the divine fire which animates you\nat present will have grown a little tepid. Allow me to tell you,\" he\nadded, \"after many other preparatory phrases, that in fifteen years'\ntime you will look upon the love you once had for me as a madness,\nwhich though excusable, was a piece of madness all the same.\"\n\nHe stopped suddenly and became meditative. He found himself again\nconfronted with the idea which shocked Mathilde so much: \"In fifteen\nyears, madame de Renal will adore my son and you will have forgotten\nhim.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXX\n\nTRANQUILITY\n\n\n        It is because I was foolish then that I am wise to-day.\n        Oh thou philosopher who seest nothing except the actual\n        instant. How short-sighted are thy views! Thine eye\n        is not adapted to follow the subterranean work of the\n        passions.--_M. Goethe_.\n\n\nThis conversation was interrupted by an interrogation followed by\na conference with the advocate entrusted with the defence. These\nmoments were the only absolutely unpleasant ones in a life made up of\nnonchalance and tender reveries.\n\n\"There is murder, and murder with premeditation,\" said Julien to the\njudge as he had done to the advocate, \"I am sorry, gentlemen, he added\nwith a smile, that this reduces your functions to a very small compass.\"\n\n\"After all,\" said Julien to himself, when he had managed to rid\nhimself of those two persons, \"I must really be brave, and apparently\nbraver than those two men. They regard that duel with an unfortunate\ntermination, which I can only seriously bother myself about on the\nactual day, as the greatest of evils and the arch-terror.\"\n\n\"The fact is that I have known a much greater unhappiness,\" continued\nJulien, as he went on philosophising with himself. \"I suffered far\nmore acutely during my first journey to Strasbourg, when I thought I\nwas abandoned by Mathilde--and to think that I desired so passionately\nthat same perfect intimacy which to-day leaves me so cold--as a matter\nof fact I am more happy alone than when that handsome girl shares my\nsolitude.\"\n\nThe advocate, who was a red-tape pedant, thought him mad, and believed,\nwith the public, that it was jealousy which had lead him to take up\nthe pistol. He ventured one day to give Julien to understand that\nthis contention, whether true or false, would be an excellent way of\npleading. But the accused man became in a single minute a passionate\nand drastic individual.\n\n\"As you value your life, monsieur,\" exclaimed Julien, quite beside\nhimself, \"mind you never put forward such an abominable lie.\" The\ncautious advocate was for a moment afraid of being assassinated.\n\nHe was preparing his case because the decisive moment was drawing near.\nThe only topic of conversation in Besancon, and all the department, was\nthe _cause celebre_. Julien did not know of this circumstance. He had\nrequested his friends never to talk to him about that kind of thing.\n\nOn this particular day, Fouque and Mathilde had tried to inform him\nof certain rumours which in their view were calculated to give hope.\nJulien had stopped them at the very first word.\n\n\"Leave me my ideal life. Your pettifogging troubles and details of\npractical life all more or less jar on me and bring me down from my\nheaven. One dies as best one can: but I wish to chose my own way of\nthinking about death. What do I care for other people? My relations\nwith other people will be sharply cut short. Be kind enough not to talk\nto me any more about those people. Seeing the judge and the advocate is\nmore than enough.\"\n\n\"As a matter of fact,\" he said to himself, \"it seems that I am fated\nto die dreaming. An obscure creature like myself, who is certain to be\nforgotten within a fortnight, would be very silly, one must admit, to\ngo and play a part. It is nevertheless singular that I never knew so\nmuch about the art of enjoying life, as since I have seen its end so\nnear me.\"\n\nHe passed his last day in promenading upon the narrow terrace at the\ntop of the turret, smoking some excellent cigars which Mathilde had\nhad fetched from Holland by a courier. He had no suspicion that his\nappearance was waited for each day by all the telescopes in the town.\nHis thoughts were at Vergy. He never spoke to Fouque about madame de\nRenal, but his friend told him two or three times that she was rapidly\nrecovering, and these words reverberated in his heart.\n\nWhile Julien's soul was nearly all the time wholly in the realm\nof ideas, Mathilde, who, as befits an aristocratic spirit, had\noccupied herself with concrete things, had managed to make the\ndirect and intimate correspondence between madame de Fervaques and\nM. de Frilair progress so far that the great word bishopric had been\nalready pronounced. The venerable prelate, who was entrusted with the\ndistribution of the benefices, added in a postscript to one of his\nniece's letters, \"This poor Sorel is only a lunatic. I hope he will be\nrestored to us.\"\n\nAt the sight of these lines, M. de Frilair felt transported. He had no\ndoubts about saving Julien.\n\n\"But for this Jacobin law which has ordered the formation of an\nunending panel of jurymen, and which has no other real object, except\nto deprive well-born people of all their influence,\" he said to\nMathilde on the eve of the balloting for the thirty-six jurymen of the\nsession, \"I would have answered for the verdict. I certainly managed to\nget the cure N---- acquitted.\"\n\nWhen the names were selected by ballot on the following day, M. de\nFrilair experienced a genuine pleasure in finding that they contained\nfive members of the Besancon congregation and that amongst those who\nwere strangers to the town were the names of MM. Valenod, de Moirod,\nde Cholin. I can answer for these eight jurymen he said to Mathilde.\nThe first five are mere machines, Valenod is my agent: Moirod owes me\neverything: de Cholin is an imbecile who is frightened of everything.\n\nThe journal published the names of the jurymen throughout the\ndepartment, and to her husband's unspeakable terror, madame de Renal\nwished to go to Besancon. All that M. de Renal could prevail on her\nto promise was that she would not leave her bed so as to avoid the\nunpleasantness of being called to give evidence. \"You do not understand\nmy position,\" said the former mayor of Verrieres. \"I am now said to\nbe disloyal and a Liberal. No doubt that scoundrel Valenod and M. de\nFrilair will get the procureur-general and the judges to do all they\ncan to cause me unpleasantness.\"\n\nMadame de Renal found no difficulty in yielding to her husband's\norders. \"If I appear at the assize court,\" she said to herself, \"I\nshould seem as if I were asking for vengeance.\" In spite of all the\npromises she had made to the director of her conscience and to her\nhusband that she would be discreet, she had scarcely arrived at\nBesancon before she wrote with her own hand to each of the thirty-six\njurymen:--\n\n\"I shall not appear on the day of the trial, monsieur, because my\npresence might be prejudicial to M. Sorel's case. I only desire one\nthing in the world, and that I desire passionately--for him to be\nsaved. Have no doubt about it, the awful idea that I am the cause of an\ninnocent man being led to his death would poison the rest of my life\nand would no doubt curtail it. How can you condemn him to death while I\ncontinue to live? No, there is no doubt about it, society has no right\nto take away a man's life, and above all, the life of a being like\nJulien Sorel. Everyone at Verrieres knew that there were moments when\nhe was quite distracted. This poor young man has some powerful enemies,\nbut even among his enemies, (and how many has he not got?) who is there\nwho casts any doubt on his admirable talents and his deep knowledge?\nThe man whom you are going to try, monsieur, is not an ordinary person.\nFor a period of nearly eighteen months we all knew him as a devout and\nwell behaved student. Two or three times in the year he was seized by\nfits of melancholy that went to the point of distraction. The whole\ntown of Verrieres, all our neighbours at Vergy, where we live in the\nfine weather, my whole family, and monsieur the sub-prefect himself\nwill render justice to his exemplary piety. He knows all the Holy Bible\nby heart. Would a blasphemer have spent years of study in learning the\nSacred Book. My sons will have the honour of presenting you with this\nletter, they are children. Be good enough to question them, monsieur,\nthey will give you all the details concerning this poor young man which\nare necessary to convince you of how barbarous it would be to condemn\nhim. Far from revenging me, you would be putting me to death.\n\n\"What can his enemies argue against this? The wound, which was the\nresult of one of those moments of madness, which my children themselves\nused to remark in their tutor, is so little dangerous than in less\nthan two months it has allowed me to take the post from Verrieres to\nBesancon. If I learn, monsieur, that you show the slightest hesitation\nin releasing so innocent a person from the barbarity of the law, I will\nleave my bed, where I am only kept by my husband's express orders, and\nI will go and throw myself at your feet. Bring in a verdict, monsieur,\nthat the premeditation has not been made out, and you will not have an\ninnocent man's blood on your head, etc.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXI\n\nTHE TRIAL\n\n\n        The country will remember this celebrated case for\n        a long time. The interest in the accused amounted\n        to an agitation. The reason was that his crime was\n        astonishing, and yet not atrocious. Even if it had been,\n        this young man was so handsome. His brilliant career,\n        that came to an end so early in his life, intensified\n        the pathos. \"Will they condemn him?\" the women asked of\n        the men of their acquaintance, and they could be seen to\n        grow pale as they waited for the answer.--_Sainte Beuve_.\n\n\nThe day that madame de Renal and Mathilde feared so much arrived at\nlast.\n\nTheir terror was intensified by the strange appearance of the town,\nwhich had its emotional effect even upon Fouque's sturdy soul. All the\nprovince had rushed to Besancon to see the trial of this romantic case.\n\nThere had been no room left in the inns for some days. M. the president\nof the assizes, was besieged by requests for tickets; all the ladies\nin the town wanted to be present at the trial. Julien's portrait was\nhawked about the streets, etc., etc.\n\nMathilde was keeping in reserve for this supreme moment a complete\nautograph letter from my lord, bishop of ----. This prelate, who\ngoverned the Church of France and created its bishops, was good enough\nto ask for Julien's acquittal. On the eve of the trial, Mathilde took\nthis letter to the all-powerful grand vicar.\n\nWhen she was going away in tears at the end of the interview, M.\nde Frilair at last emerged from his diplomatic reserve and almost\nshewed some emotion himself. \"I will be responsible for the jury's\nverdict,\" he said to her. \"Out of the twelve persons charged with the\ninvestigation of whether your friend's crime is made out, and above\nall, whether there was premeditation, I can count six friends who are\ndevoted to my fortunes, and I have given them to understand that they\nhave it in their power to promote me to the episcopate. Baron Valenod,\nwhom I have made mayor of Verrieres, can do just as he likes with two\nof his officials, MM. de Moirod, and de Cholin. As a matter of fact,\nfate has given us for this business two jurymen of extremely loose\nviews; but, although ultra-Liberals, they are faithful to my orders on\ngreat occasions, and I have requested them to vote like M. Valenod.\nI have learnt that a sixth juryman, a manufacturer, who is immensely\nrich, and a garrulous Liberal into the bargain, has secret aspirations\nfor a contract with the War Office, and doubtless he would not like to\ndisplease me. I have had him told that M. de Valenod knows my final\ninjunctions.\"\n\n\"And who is this M. Valenod?\" said Mathilde, anxiously.\n\n\"If you knew him, you could not doubt our success. He is an audacious\nspeaker, coarse, impudent, with a natural gift for managing fools. 1814\nsaw him in low water, and I am going to make a prefect of him. He is\ncapable of beating the other jurymen if they do not vote his way.\"\n\nMathilde felt a little reassured.\n\nAnother discussion awaited her in the evening. To avoid the\nprolongation of an unpleasant scene, the result of which, in his view,\nwas absolutely certain, Julien had resolved not to make a speech.\n\n\"My advocate will speak,\" he said to Mathilde. \"I shall figure too long\nanyway as a laughing-stock to all my enemies. These provincials have\nbeen shocked by the rapidity of my success, for which I have to thank\nyou, and believe me, there is not one of them who does not desire my\nconviction, though he would be quite ready to cry like an idiot when I\nam taken to my death.\"\n\n\"They desire to see you humiliated. That is only too true,\" answered\nMathilde, \"but I do not think they are at all cruel. My presence at\nBesancon, and the sight of my sufferings have interested all the women;\nyour handsome face will do the rest. If you say a few words to your\njudges, the whole audience will be on your side, etc., etc.\"\n\nAt nine o'clock on the following day, when Julien left his prison\nfor the great hall of the Palais de Justice, the gendarmes had much\ndifficulty in driving away the immense crowd that was packed in the\ncourtyard. Julien had slept well. He was very calm, and experienced no\nother sentiment except a sense of philosophic pity towards that crowd\nof jealous creatures who were going to applaud his death sentence,\nthough without cruelty. He was very surprised when, having been\ndetained in the middle of the crowd more than a quarter of an hour,\nhe was obliged to admit that his presence affected the public with\na tender pity. He did not hear a single unpleasant remark. \"These\nprovincials are less evil than I thought,\" he said to himself.\n\nAs he entered the courtroom, he was struck by the elegance of the\narchitecture. It was real Gothic, with a number of pretty little\ncolumns hewn out of stone with the utmost care. He thought himself in\nEngland.\n\nBut his attention was soon engrossed by twelve or fifteen pretty\nwomen, who sat exactly opposite the prisoner's seat and filled the\nthree balconies above the judges and the jury. As he turned round\ntowards the public, he saw that the circular gallery that dominated the\namphitheatre was filled with women, the majority were young and seemed\nvery pretty, their eyes were shining and full of interest. The crowd\nwas enormous throughout the rest of the room. People were knocking\nagainst the door, and the janitors could not obtain silence.\n\nWhen all the eyes that were looking for Julien observed where he was,\nand saw him occupying the slightly raised place which is reserved for\nthe prisoner, he was greeted by a murmur of astonishment and tender\ninterest.\n\nYou would have taken him for under twenty on this day. He was dressed\nvery simply, but with a perfect grace. His hair and his forehead were\ncharming. Mathilde had insisted on officiating personally at his\ntoilette. Julien's pallor was extreme. Scarcely was he seated in this\nplace than he heard people say all over the room, \"Great heavens! how\nyoung he is!... But he's quite a child!... He is much better than his\nportrait.\"\n\n\"Prisoner,\" said the gendarme who was sitting on his right, \"do you see\nthose six ladies in that balcony?\" The gendarme pointed out a little\ngallery that jutted out over the amphitheatre where the jury were\nplaced. \"That's madame, the prefect's wife,\" continued the gendarme.\n\"Next to her, madame the marquise de M----. She likes you well: I have\nheard her speak to the judge of first instance. Next to her is madame\nDerville.\"\n\n\"Madame Derville!\" exclaimed Julien, and a vivid blush spread over his\nforehead. \"When she leaves here,\" he thought, \"she will write to madame\nde Renal.\" He was ignorant of madame de Renal's arrival at Besancon.\nThe witnesses were quickly heard. After the first words of the opening\nof the prosecution by the advocate-general, two of the ladies in the\nlittle balcony just opposite Julien burst into tears. Julien noticed\nthat madame Derville did not break down at all. He remarked, however,\nthat she was very red.\n\nThe advocate-general was indulging in melodrama in bad French over the\nbarbarity of the crime that had been perpetrated. Julien noticed that\nmadame Derville's neighbours seemed to manifest a keen disapproval.\nSeveral jurors, who were apparently acquainted with the ladies, spoke\nto them and seemed to reassure them. \"So far as it goes, that is\ncertainly a good omen,\" thought Julien.\n\nUp to the present, he had felt himself steeped in an unadulterated\ncontempt for all the persons who were present at the trial. This\nsentiment of disgust was intensified by the stale eloquence of\nthe advocate-general. But the coldness of Julien's soul gradually\ndisappeared before the marks of interest of which he was evidently the\nobject.\n\nHe was satisfied with the sturdy demeanour of his advocate. \"No\nphrases,\" he said to him in a whisper, as he was about to commence his\nspeech.\n\n\"All the bombast which our opponent has stolen from Bossuet and\nlavished upon you,\" said the advocate, \"has done you good.\"\n\nAs a matter of fact, he had scarcely spoken for five minutes before\npractically all the women had their handkerchiefs in their hands. The\nadvocate was encouraged, and addressed some extremely strong remarks\nto the jury. Julien shuddered. He felt on the point of breaking into\ntears. \"My God,\" he thought, \"what would my enemies say?\"\n\nHe was on the point of succumbing to the emotion which was overcoming\nhim, when, luckily for him, he surprised an insolent look from M. the\nbaron de Valenod.\n\n\"That rogue's eyes are gleaming,\" he said to himself \"What a triumph\nfor that base soul! If my crime had only produced this one result, it\nwould be my duty to curse it. God knows what he will say about it to\nmadame de Renal.\"\n\nThis idea effaced all others. Shortly afterwards Julien was brought\nback to reality by the public's manifestation of applause. The advocate\nhad just finished his speech. Julien remembered that it was good form\nto shake hands with him. The time had passed rapidly.\n\nThey brought in refreshments for the advocate and the prisoner. It was\nonly then that Julien was struck by the fact that none of the women had\nleft the audience to go and get dinner.\n\n\"Upon my word, I am dying of hunger,\" said the advocate. \"And you?\"\n\n\"I, too,\" answered Julien.\n\n\"See, there's madame, the prefect's wife, who is also getting her\ndinner,\" said the advocate, as he pointed out the little balcony. \"Keep\nup your courage; everything is going all right.\" The court sat again.\n\nMidnight struck as the president was summing up. The president was\nobliged to pause in his remarks. Amid the silence and the anxiety of\nall present, the reverberation of the clock filled the hall.\n\n\"So my last day is now beginning,\" thought Julien. He soon felt\ninflamed by the idea of his duty. Up to the present he had controlled\nhis emotion and had kept his resolution not to speak. When the\npresident of the assizes asked him if he had anything to add, he got\nup. He saw in front of him the eyes of madame Derville, which seemed\nvery brilliant in the artificial light. \"Can she by any chance be\ncrying?\" he thought.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury!\n\n\"I am induced to speak by my fear of that contempt which I thought,\nat the very moment of my death, I should be able to defy. Gentlemen,\nI have not the honour of belonging to your class. You behold in me a\npeasant who has rebelled against the meanness of his fortune.\n\n\"I do not ask you for any pardon,\" continued Julien, with a firmer\nnote in his voice. \"I am under no illusions. Death awaits me; it\nwill be just. I have brought myself to make an attempt on the life\nof the woman who is most worthy of all reverence and all respect.\nMadame de Renal was a mother to me. My crime was atrocious, and it\nwas premeditated. Consequently, I have deserved death, gentlemen of\nthe jury. But even if I were not so guilty, I see among you men who,\nwithout a thought for any pity that may be due to my youth, would like\nto use me as a means for punishing and discouraging for ever that class\nof young man who, though born in an inferior class, and to some extent\noppressed by poverty, have none the less been fortunate enough to\nobtain a good education, and bold enough to mix with what the pride of\nthe rich calls Society.\n\n\"That is my crime, gentlemen, and it will be punished with even more\nseverity, inasmuch as, in fact, I am very far from being judged by my\npeers. I do not see on the jury benches any peasant who has made money,\nbut only indignant bourgeois....\"\n\nJulien talked in this strain for twenty minutes. He said everything\nhe had on his mind. The advocate-general, who aspired to the favours\nof the aristocracy, writhed in his seat. But in spite of the somewhat\nabstract turn which Julien had given to his speech, all the women\nburst out into tears. Even madame Derville put her handkerchief to\nher eyes. Before finishing, Julien alluded again to the fact of his\npremeditation, to his repentance, and to the respect and unbounded\nfilial admiration which, in happier days, he had entertained for madame\nde Renal.... Madame Derville gave a cry and fainted.\n\nOne o'clock was striking when the jury retired to their room. None of\nthe women had left their places; several men had tears in their eyes.\nThe conversations were at first very animated, but, as there was a\ndelay in the verdict of the jury, their general fatigue gradually began\nto invest the gathering with an atmosphere of calm. It was a solemn\nmoment; the lights grew less brilliant. Julien, who was very tired,\nheard people around him debating the question of whether this delay was\na good or a bad omen. He was pleased to see that all the wishes were\nfor him. The jury did not come back, and yet not a woman left the court.\n\nWhen two o'clock had struck, a great movement was heard. The little\ndoor of the jury room opened. M. the baron de Valenod advanced with\na slow and melodramatic step. He was followed by all the jurors. He\ncoughed, and then declared on his soul and conscience that the jury's\nunanimous verdict was that Julien Sorel was guilty of murder, and of\nmurder with premeditation. This verdict involved the death penalty,\nwhich was pronounced a moment afterwards. Julien looked at his watch,\nand remembered M. de Lavalette. It was a quarter past two. \"To-day is\nFriday,\" he thought.\n\n\"Yes, but this day is lucky for the Valenod who has got me\nconvicted.... I am watched too well for Mathilde to manage to save me\nlike madame de Lavalette saved her husband.... So in three days' time,\nat this very hour, I shall know what view to take about the great\nperhaps.\"\n\nAt this moment he heard a cry and was called back to the things of this\nworld. The women around him were sobbing: he saw that all faces were\nturned towards a little gallery built into the crowning of a Gothic\npilaster. He knew later that Mathilde had concealed herself there. As\nthe cry was not repeated, everybody began to look at Julien again, as\nthe gendarmes were trying to get him through the crowd.\n\n\"Let us try not to give that villain Valenod any chance of laughing\nat me,\" thought Julien. \"With what a contrite sycophantic expression\nhe pronounced the verdict which entails the death penalty, while that\npoor president of the assizes, although he has been a judge for years\nand years, had tears in his eyes as he sentenced me. What a joy the\nValenod must find in revenging himself for our former rivalry for\nmadame de Renal's favors! ... So I shall never see her again! The thing\nis finished.... A last good-bye between us is impossible--I feel it....\nHow happy I should have been to have told her all the horror I feel for\nmy crime!\n\n\"Mere words. I consider myself justly convicted.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXII[1]\n\n\nWhen Julien was taken back to prison he had been taken into a room\nintended for those who were condemned to death. Although a man who in\nthe usual way would notice the most petty details, he had quite failed\nto observe that he had not been taken up to his turret. He was thinking\nof what he would say to madame de Renal if he had the happiness of\nseeing her before the final moment. He thought that she would break\ninto what he was saying and was anxious to be able to express his\nabsolute repentance with his very first words. \"How can I convince her\nthat I love her alone after committing an action like that? For after\nall, it was either out of ambition, or out of love for Mathilde, that I\nwanted to kill her.\"\n\nAs he went to bed, he came across sheets of a rough coarse material.\n\"Ah! I am in the condemned cell, he said to himself. That is right.\n\n\"Comte Altamira used to tell me that Danton, on the eve of his death,\nwould say in his loud voice: 'it is singular but you cannot conjugate\nthe verb guillotine in all its tenses: of course you can say, I shall\nbe guillotined, thou shalt be guillotined, but you don't say, I have\nbeen guillotined.'\n\n\"Why not?\" went on Julien, \"if there is another life.... Upon my word,\nit will be all up with me if I find the God of the Christians there: He\nis a tyrant, and as such, he is full of ideas of vengeance: his Bible\nspeaks of nothing but atrocious punishment. I never liked him--I could\nnever get myself to believe that anyone really liked him. He has no\npity (and he remembered several passages in the Bible) he will punish\nme atrociously.\n\n\"But supposing I find Fenelon's God: He will perhaps say to me: 'Much\nforgiveness will be vouchsafed to thee, inasmuch as thou hast loved\nmuch.'\n\n\"Have I loved much? Ah! I loved madame de Renal, but my conduct has\nbeen atrocious. In that, as in other cases, simple modest merit was\nabandoned for the sake of what was brilliant.\n\n\"But still, what fine prospects? Colonel of Hussars, if we had had a\nwar: secretary of a legation during peace: then ambassador ... for\nI should soon have picked up politics ... and even if I had been an\nidiot, would the marquis de la Mole's son-in-law have had any rivalry\nto fear? All my stupidities have been forgiven, or rather, counted\nas merits. A man of merit, then, and living in the grandest style at\nVienna or London.\n\n\"Not exactly, monsieur. Guillotined in three days' time.\"\n\nJulien laughed heartily at this sally of his wit. \"As a matter of fact,\nman has two beings within him, he thought. Who the devil can have\nthought of such a sinister notion?\"\n\n\"Well, yes, my friend: guillotined in three days,\" he answered the\ninterruptor. \"M. de Cholin will hire a window and share the expense\nwith the abbe Maslon. Well, which of those two worthy personages\nwill rob the other over the price paid for hiring that window?\" The\nfollowing passage from Rotrou's \"Venceslas\" suddenly came back into his\nmind:--\n\n              LADISLAS\n    .................Mon ame est toute prete.\n    THE KING, _father of Ladislas_.\n    L'echafaud l'est aussi: portez-y-votre tete.\n\n\"A good repartee\" he thought, as he went to sleep. He was awakened in\nthe morning by someone catching hold of him violently.\n\n\"What! already,\" said Julien, opening his haggard eyes. He thought he\nwas already in the executioner's hands.\n\nIt was Mathilde. \"Luckily, she has not understood me.\" This reflection\nrestored all his self possession. He found Mathilde as changed as\nthough she had gone through a six months' illness: she was really not\nrecognisable.\n\n\"That infamous Frilair has betrayed me,\" she said to him, wringing her\nhands. Her fury prevented her from crying.\n\n\"Was I not fine when I made my speech yesterday?\" answered Julien. \"I\nwas improvising for the first time in my life! It is true that it is to\nbe feared that it will also be the last.\"\n\nAt this moment, Julien was playing on Mathilde's character with all\nthe self-possession of a clever pianist, whose fingers are on the\ninstrument.... \"It is true,\" he added, \"that I lack the advantage of a\ndistinguished birth, but Mathilde's great soul has lifted her lover up\nto her own level. Do you think that Boniface de la Mole would have cut\na better figure before his judges?\"\n\nOn this particular day, Mathilde was as unaffectedly tender as a poor\ngirl living in a fifth storey. But she failed to extract from him any\nsimpler remark. He was paying her back without knowing it for all the\ntorture she had frequently inflicted on him.\n\n\"The sources of the Nile are unknown,\" said Julien to himself: \"it has\nnot been vouchsafed to the human eye to see the king of rivers as a\nsimple brook: similarly, no human eye shall see Julien weak. In the\nfirst place because he is not so. But I have a heart which it is easy\nto touch. The most commonplace words, if said in a genuine tone, can\nmake my voice broken and even cause me to shed tears. How often have\nfrigid characters not despised me for this weakness. They thought that\nI was asking a favour: that is what I cannot put up with.\n\n\"It is said that when at the foot of the scaffold, Danton was affected\nby the thought of his wife: but Danton had given strength to a nation\nof coxcombs and prevented the enemy from reaching Paris.... I alone\nknow what I should have been able to do.... I represent to the others\nat the very outside, simply A PERHAPS.\n\n\"If madame de Renal had been here in my cell instead of Mathilde,\nshould I have been able to have answered for myself? The extremity of\nmy despair and my repentance would have been taken for a craven fear of\ndeath by the Valenods and all the patricians of the locality. They are\nso proud, are those feeble spirits, whom their pecuniary position puts\nabove temptation! 'You see what it is to be born a carpenter's son,'\nM. de Moirod and de Cholin doubtless said after having condemned me to\ndeath! 'A man can learn to be learned and clever, but the qualities of\nthe heart--the qualities of the heart cannot be learnt.' Even in the\ncase of this poor Mathilde, who is crying now, or rather, who cannot\ncry,\" he said to himself, as he looked at her red eyes.... And he\nclasped her in his arms: the sight of a genuine grief made him forget\nthe sequence of his logic.... \"She has perhaps cried all the night,\" he\nsaid to himself, \"but how ashamed she will be of this memory on some\nfuture day! She will regard herself as having been led astray in her\nfirst youth by a plebeian's low view of life.... Le Croisenois is weak\nenough to marry her, and upon my word, he will do well to do so. She\nwill make him play a part.\"\n\n    \"Du droit qu'un esprit ferme et vaste en ses desseins\n    A sur l'esprit grossier des vulgaires humaines.\"\n\n\"Ah! that's really humorous; since I have been doomed to die, all the\nverses I ever knew in my life are coming back into my memory. It must\nbe a sign of demoralisation.\"\n\nMathilde kept on repeating in a choked voice: \"He is there in the next\nroom.\" At last he paid attention to what she was saying. \"Her voice is\nweak,\" he thought, \"but all the imperiousness of her character comes\nout in her intonation. She lowers her voice in order to avoid getting\nangry.\"\n\n\"And who is there?\" he said, gently.\n\n\"The advocate, to get you to sign your appeal.\"\n\n\"I shall not appeal.\"\n\n\"What! you will not appeal,\" she said, getting up, with her eyes\nsparkling with rage. \"And why, if you please?\"\n\n\"Because I feel at the present time that I have the courage to die\nwithout giving people occasion to laugh too much at my expense. And\nwho will guarantee that I shall be in so sound a frame of mind in two\nmonths' time, after living for a long time in this damp cell? I foresee\ninterviews with the priests, with my father. I can imagine nothing more\nunpleasant. Let's die.\"\n\nThis unexpected opposition awakened all the haughtiness of Mathilde's\ncharacter. She had not managed to see the abbe de Frilair before the\ntime when visitors were admitted to the cells in the Besancon prison.\nHer fury vented itself on Julien. She adored him, and nevertheless she\nexhibited for a good quarter of an hour in her invective against his,\nJulien's, character, and her regret at having ever loved him, the\nsame haughty soul which had formerly overwhelmed him with such cutting\ninsults in the library of the Hotel de la Mole.\n\n\"In justice to the glory of your stock, Heaven should have had you born\na man,\" he said to her.\n\n\"But as for myself,\" he thought, \"I should be very foolish to go on\nliving for two more months in this disgusting place, to serve as a\nbutt for all the infamous humiliations which the patrician party can\ndevise,[2] and having the outburst of this mad woman for my only\nconsolation.... Well, the morning after to-morrow I shall fight a duel\nwith a man known for his self-possession and his remarkable skill ...\nhis very remarkable skill,\" said the Mephistophelian part of him; \"he\nnever makes a miss. Well, so be it--good.\" (Mathilde continued to wax\neloquent). \"No, not for a minute,\" he said to himself, \"I shall not\nappeal.\"\n\nHaving made this resolution, he fell into meditation....\n\n\"The courier will bring the paper at six o'clock as usual, as he\npasses; at eight o'clock, after M. de Renal has finished reading it,\nElisa will go on tiptoe and place it on her bed. Later on she will wake\nup; suddenly, as she reads it she will become troubled; her pretty\nhands will tremble; she will go on reading down to these words: _At\nfive minutes past ten he had ceased to exist_.\n\n\"She will shed hot tears, I know her; it will matter nothing that I\ntried to assassinate her--all will be forgotten, and the person whose\nlife I wished to take will be the only one who will sincerely lament my\ndeath.\n\n\"Ah, that's a good paradox,\" he thought, and he thought about nothing\nexcept madame de Renal during the good quarter of an hour which the\nscene Mathilde was making still lasted. In spite of himself, and though\nhe made frequent answers to what Mathilde was saying, he could not take\nhis mind away from the thought of the bedroom at Verrieres. He saw the\nBesancon Gazette on the counterpane of orange taffeta; he saw that\nwhite hand clutching at it convulsively. He saw madame de Renal cry....\nHe followed the path of every tear over her charming face.\n\nMademoiselle de la Mole, being unable to get anything out of Julien,\nasked the advocate to come in. Fortunately, he was an old captain of\nthe Italian army of 1796, where he had been a comrade of Manuel.\n\nHe opposed the condemned man's resolution as a matter of form. Wishing\nto treat him with respect, Julien explained all his reasons.\n\n\"Upon my word, I can understand a man taking the view you do,\" said\nM. Felix Vaneau (that was the advocate's name) to him at last. \"But\nyou have three full days in which to appeal, and it is my duty to come\nback every day. If a volcano were to open under the prison between now\nand two months' time you would be saved. You might die of illness,\" he\nsaid, looking at Julien.\n\nJulien pressed his hand--\"I thank you, you are a good fellow. I will\nthink it over.\"\n\nAnd when Mathilde eventually left with the advocate, he felt much more\naffection for the advocate than for her.\n\n\n[1] There is no heading to this and the following chapters in the\noriginal.--TRANSL.\n\n[2] The speaker is a Jacobin.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXIII\n\n\nWhen he was deep asleep an hour afterwards, he was woken up by feeling\ntears flow over his hand. \"Oh, it is Mathilde again,\" he thought, only\nhalf awake. \"She has come again, faithful to her tactics of attacking\nmy resolution by her sentimentalism.\" Bored by the prospect of this\nnew scene of hackneyed pathos he did not open his eyes. The verses of\nBelphgor, as he ran away from his wife, came into his mind. He heard a\nstrange sigh. He opened his eyes. It was madame de Renal.\n\n\"Ah, so I see you again before I die, or is it an illusion,\" he\nexclaimed as he threw himself at her feet.\n\n\"But, forgive me, madame, you must look upon me as a mere murderer,\" he\nsaid, immediately, as he recovered himself.\n\n\"Monsieur, I have come to entreat you to appeal; I know you do not want\nto....\" her sobs choked her; she was unable to speak.\n\n\"Deign to forgive me.\"\n\n\"If you want me to forgive you,\" she said to him, getting up and\nthrowing herself into his arms, \"appeal immediately against your death\nsentence.\"\n\nJulien covered her with kisses.\n\n\"Will you come and see me every day during those two months?\"\n\n\"I swear it--every day, unless my husband forbids me.\"\n\n\"I will sign it,\" exclaimed Julien.\n\n\"What! you really forgive me! Is it possible?\"\n\nHe clasped her in his arms; he was mad. She gave a little cry.\n\n\"It is nothing,\" she said to him. \"You hurt me.\"\n\n\"Your shoulder,\" exclaimed Julien, bursting into tears. He drew back\na little, and covered her hands with kisses of fire. \"Who could\nhave prophesied this, dear, the last time I saw you in your room at\nVerrieres?\"\n\n\"Who could have prophesied then that I should write that infamous\nletter to M. de la Mole?\"\n\n\"Know that I have always loved you, and that I have never loved anyone\nbut you.\"\n\n\"Is it possible?\" cried Madame de Renal, who was delighted in her turn.\nShe leant on Julien, who was on his knees, and they cried silently for\na long time.\n\nJulien had never experienced moments like this at any period of his\nwhole life.\n\n\"And how about that young madame Michelet?\" said Madame de Renal, a\nlong time afterwards when they were able to speak. \"Or rather, that\nmademoiselle de la Mole? for I am really beginning to believe in that\nstrange romance.\"\n\n\"It is only superficially true,\" answered Julien. \"She is my wife, but\nshe is not my mistress.\"\n\nAfter interrupting each other a hundred times over, they managed with\ngreat difficulty to explain to each other what they did not know. The\nletter written to M. de la Mole had been drafted by the young priest\nwho directed Madame de Renal's conscience, and had been subsequently\ncopied by her, \"What a horrible thing religion has made me do,\" she\nsaid to him, \"and even so I softened the most awful passages in the\nletter.\"\n\nJulien's ecstatic happiness proved the fulness of her forgiveness. He\nhad never been so mad with love.\n\n\"And yet I regard myself as devout,\" madame de Renal went on to say to\nhim in the ensuing conversation. \"I believe sincerely in God! I equally\nbelieve, and I even have full proof of it, that the crime which I am\ncommitting is an awful one, and yet the very minute I see you, even\nafter you have fired two pistol shots at me--\" and at this point, in\nspite of her resistance, Julien covered her with kisses.\n\n\"Leave me alone,\" she continued, \"I want to argue with you, I am\nfrightened lest I should forget.... The very minute I see you all my\nduties disappear. I have nothing but love for you, dear, or rather, the\nword love is too weak. I feel for you what I ought only to feel for\nGod; a mixture of respect, love, obedience.... As a matter of fact, I\ndon't know what you inspire me with.... If you were to tell me to stab\nthe gaoler with a knife, the crime would be committed before I had\ngiven it a thought. Explain this very clearly to me before I leave you.\nI want to see down to the bottom of my heart; for we shall take leave\nof each other in two months.... By the bye, shall we take leave of each\nother?\" she said to him with a smile.\n\n\"I take back my words,\" exclaimed Julien, getting up, \"I shall not\nappeal from my death sentence, if you try, either by poison, knife,\npistol, charcoal, or any other means whatsoever, to put an end to your\nlife, or make any attempt upon it.\"\n\nMadame de Renal's expression suddenly changed. The most lively\ntenderness was succeeded by a mood of deep meditation.\n\n\"Supposing we were to die at once,\" she said to him.\n\n\"Who knows what one will find in the other life,\" answered Julien,\n\"perhaps torment, perhaps nothing at all. Cannot we pass two delicious\nmonths together? Two months means a good many days. I shall never have\nbeen so happy.\"\n\n\"You will never have been so happy?\"\n\n\"Never,\" repeated Julien ecstatically, \"and I am talking to you just as\nI should talk to myself. May God save me from exaggerating.\"\n\n\"Words like that are a command,\" she said with a timid melancholy smile.\n\n\"Well, you will swear by the love you have for me, to make no attempt\neither direct or indirect, upon your life ... remember,\" he added,\n\"that you must live for my son, whom Mathilde will hand over to lackeys\nas soon as she is marquise de Croisenois.\"\n\n\"I swear,\" she answered coldly, \"but I want to take away your notice\nof appeal, drawn and signed by yourself. I will go myself to M. the\nprocureur-general.\"\n\n\"Be careful, you will compromise yourself.\"\n\n\"After having taken the step of coming to see you in your prison, I\nshall be a heroine of local scandal for Besancon, and the whole of\nFranche-Comte,\" she said very dejectedly. \"I have crossed the bounds of\naustere modesty.... I am a woman who has lost her honour; it is true\nthat it is for your sake....\"\n\nHer tone was so sad that Julien embraced her with a happiness which was\nquite novel to him. It was no longer the intoxication of love, it was\nextreme gratitude. He had just realised for the first time the full\nextent of the sacrifice which she had made for him.\n\nSome charitable soul, no doubt informed M. de Renal of the long visits\nwhich his wife paid to Julien's prison; for at the end of three days\nhe sent her his carriage with the express order to return to Verrieres\nimmediately.\n\nThis cruel separation had been a bad beginning for Julien's day. He\nwas informed two or three hours later that a certain intriguing priest\n(who had, however, never managed to make any headway among the Jesuits\nof Besancon) had, since the morning, established himself in the street\noutside the prison gates. It was raining a great deal, and the man out\nthere was pretending to play the martyr. Julien was in a weak mood, and\nthis piece of stupidity annoyed him deeply.\n\nIn the morning, he had already refused this priest's visit, but the man\nhad taken it into his head to confess Julien, and to win a name for\nhimself among the young women of Besancon by all the confidences which\nhe would pretend to have received from him.\n\nHe declared in a loud voice that he would pass the day and the night by\nthe prison gates. \"God has sent me to touch the heart of this apostate\n...\" and the lower classes, who are always curious to see a scene,\nbegan to make a crowd.\n\n\"Yes, my brothers,\" he said to them, \"I will pass the day here and the\nnight, as well as all the days and all the nights which will follow.\nThe Holy Ghost has spoken to me. I am commissioned from above; I am the\nman who must save the soul of young Sorel. Do you join in my prayers,\netc.\"\n\nJulien had a horror of scandal, and of anything which could attract\nattention to him. He thought of seizing the opportunity of escaping\nfrom the world incognito; but he had some hope of seeing madame de\nRenal again, and he was desperately in love.\n\nThe prison gates were situated in one of the most populous streets. His\nsoul was tortured by the idea of this filthy priest attracting a crowd\nand creating a scandal--\"and doubtless he is repeating my name at every\nsingle minute!\" This moment was more painful than death.\n\nHe called the turnkey who was devoted to him, and sent sent him two or\nthree times at intervals of one hour to see if the priest was still by\nthe prison gates.\n\n\"Monsieur,\" said the turnkey to him on each occasion, \"he is on both\nhis knees in the mud; he is praying at the top of his voice, and saying\nlitanies for your soul.\n\n\"The impudent fellow,\" thought Julien. At this moment he actually heard\na dull buzz. It was the responses of the people to the litanies. His\npatience was strained to the utmost when he saw the turnkey himself\nmove his lips while he repeated the Latin words.\n\n\"They are beginning to say,\" added the turnkey, \"that you must have a\nvery hardened heart to refuse the help of this holy man.\"\n\n\"Oh my country, how barbarous you still are!\" exclaimed Julien, beside\nhimself with anger. And he continued his train of thought aloud,\nwithout giving a thought to the turn-key's presence.\n\n\"The man wants an article in the paper about him, and that's a way in\nwhich he will certainly get it.\n\n\"Oh you cursed provincials! At Paris I should not be subjected to all\nthese annoyances. There they are more skilled in their charlatanism.\n\n\"Show in the holy priest,\" he said at last to the turnkey, and great\nstreams of sweat flowed down his forehead. The turnkey made the sign of\nthe cross and went out rejoicing.\n\nThe holy priest turned out to be very ugly, he was even dirtier than he\nwas ugly. The cold rain intensified the obscurity and dampness of the\ncell. The priest wanted to embrace Julien, and began to wax pathetic as\nhe spoke to him. The basest hypocrisy was only too palpable; Julien had\nnever been so angry in his whole life.\n\nA quarter of an hour after the priest had come in Julien felt an\nabsolute coward. Death appeared horrible to him for the first time. He\nbegan to think about the state of decomposition which his body would be\nin two days after the execution, etc., etc.\n\nHe was on the point of betraying himself by some sign of weakness or\nthrowing himself on the priest and strangling him with his chain, when\nit occurred to him to beg the holy man to go and say a good forty franc\nmass for him on that very day.\n\nIt was twelve o'clock, so the priest took himself off.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXIV\n\n\nAs soon as he had gone out Julien wept desperately and for a long time.\nHe gradually admitted to himself that if madame de Renal had been at\nBesancon he would have confessed his weakness to her. The moment when\nhe was regretting the absence of this beloved woman he heard Mathilde's\nstep.\n\n\"The worst evil of being in prison,\" he thought \"is one's inability to\nclose one's door.\" All Mathilde said only irritated him.\n\nShe told him that M. de Valenod had had his nomination to the\nprefectship in his pocket on the day of his trial, and had consequently\ndared to defy M. de Frilair and give himself the pleasure of condemning\nhim to death.\n\n\"Why did your friend take it into his head,\" M. de Frilair just said\nto me, \"to awaken and attack the petty vanity of that bourgeois\naristocracy. Why talk about caste? He pointed out to them what they\nought to do in their own political interest; the fools had not been\ngiving it a thought and were quite ready to weep. That caste interest\nintervened and blinded their eyes to the horror of condemning a man to\ndeath. One must admit that M. Sorel is very inexperienced. If we do not\nsucceed in saving him by a petition for a reprieve, his death will be a\nkind of suicide.\"\n\nMathilde was careful not to tell Julien a matter concerning which she\nhad now no longer any doubts; it was that the abbe de Frilair seeing\nthat Julien was ruined, had thought that it would further his ambitious\nprojects to try and become his successor.\n\n\"Go and listen to a mass for me,\" he said to Mathilde, almost beside\nhimself with vexation and impotent rage, and leave me a moment in\npeace. Mathilde who was already very jealous of madame de Renal's\nvisits and who had just learned of her departure realised the cause of\nJulien's bad temper and burst into tears.\n\nHer grief was real; Julien saw this and was only the more irritated. He\nhad a crying need of solitude, and how was he to get it?\n\nEventually Mathilde, after having tried to melt him by every possible\nargument, left him alone. But almost at the same moment, Fouque\npresented himself.\n\n\"I need to be alone,\" he said, to this faithful friend, and as he saw\nhim hesitate: \"I am composing a memorial for my petition for pardon ...\none thing more ... do me a favour, and never speak to me about death.\nIf I have need of any especial services on that day, let me be the\nfirst to speak to you about it.\"\n\nWhen Julien had eventually procured solitude, he found himself more\nprostrate and more cowardly than he had been before. The little force\nwhich this enfeebled soul still possessed had all been spent in\nconcealing his condition from mademoiselle de la Mole.\n\nTowards the evening he found consolation in this idea.\n\n\"If at the very moment this morning, when death seemed so ugly to\nme, I had been given notice of my execution, the public eye would\nhave acted as a spur to glory, my demeanour would perhaps have had a\ncertain stiffness about it, like a nervous fop entering a salon. A few\npenetrating people, if there are any amongst these provincial might\nhave managed to divine my weakness.... But no one would have seen it.\"\n\nAnd he felt relieved of part of his unhappiness. \"I am a coward at this\nvery moment,\" he sang to himself, \"but no one will know it.\"\n\nAn even more unpleasant episode awaited him on the following day. His\nfather had been announcing that he would come and see him for some time\npast: the old white-haired carpenter appeared in Julien's cell before\nhe woke up.\n\nJulien felt weak, he was anticipating the most unpleasant reproaches.\nHis painful emotion was intensified by the fact that on this particular\nmorning he felt a keen remorse for not loving his father.\n\n\"Chance placed us next to each other in the world,\" he said to himself,\nwhile the turnkey was putting the cell a little in order, \"and we have\npractically done each other all the harm we possibly could. He has come\nto administer the final blow at the moment of my death.\"\n\nAs soon as they were without witnesses, the old man commenced his stern\nreproaches.\n\nJulien could not restrain his tears. \"What an unworthy weakness,\" he\nsaid to himself querulously. \"He will go about everywhere exaggerating\nmy lack of courage: what a triumph for the Valenod, and for all the\nfatuous hypocrites who rule in Verrieres! They are very great in\nFrance, they combine all the social advantages. But hitherto, I could\nat any rate say to myself, it is true they are in receipt of money, and\nthat all the honours lavished on them, but I have a noble heart.\n\n\"But here is a witness whom everyone will believe, and who will testify\nto the whole of Verrieres that I shewed weakness when confronted with\ndeath, and who will exaggerate it into the bargain! I shall be taken\nfor a coward in an ordeal which comes home to all!\"\n\nJulien was nearly desperate. He did not know how to get rid of his\nfather. He felt it absolutely beyond his strength to invent a ruse\ncapable of deceiving so shrewd an old man.\n\nHis mind rapidly reviewed all the alternatives. \"I have saved some\nmoney,\" he suddenly exclaimed.\n\nThis inspiration produced a change in the expression of the old man and\nin Julien's own condition.\n\n\"How ought I to dispose of it?\" continued Julien more quietly. The\nresult had freed him from any feeling of inferiority.\n\nThe old carpenter was burning not to let the money slip by him, but\nit seemed that Julien wanted to leave part of it to his brothers. He\ntalked at length and with animation. Julien felt cynical.\n\n\"Well, the Lord has given me a message with regard to my will. I will\ngive a thousand francs to each of my brothers and the rest to you.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" said the old man. \"The rest is due to me: but since God\nhas been gracious enough to touch your heart, your debts ought to be\npaid if you wish to die like a good Christian. There are, moreover, the\nexpenses of your board and your education, which I advanced to you,\nbut which you are not thinking of.\"\n\n\"Such is paternal love,\" repeated Julien to himself, dejectedly, when\nhe was at last alone. Soon the gaoler appeared.\n\n\"Monsieur, I always bring my visitors a good bottle of champagne after\nnear relations have come to see them. It is a little dear, six francs a\nbottle, but it rejoices the heart.\"\n\n\"Bring three glasses,\" said Julien to him, with a childish eagerness,\n\"and bring in two of the prisoners whom I have heard walking about\nin the corridor.\" The gaoler brought two men into him who had once\nbeen condemned to the gallows, and had now been convicted of the same\noffence again, and were preparing to return to penal servitude. They\nwere very cheerful scoundrels, and really very remarkable by reason of\ntheir subtlety, their courage, and their coolness.\n\n\"If you give me twenty francs,\" said one of them to Julien, \"I will\ntell you the story of my life in detail. It's rich.\"\n\n\"But you will lie,\" said Julien.\n\n\"Not me,\" he answered, \"my friend there, who is jealous of my twenty\nfrancs will give me away if I say anything untrue.\"\n\nHis history was atrocious. It was evidence of a courageous heart which\nhad only one passion--that of money.\n\nAfter their departure Julien was no longer the same man. All his anger\nwith himself had disappeared. The awful grief which had been poisoned\nand rendered more acute by the weakness of which he had been a victim\nsince madame de Renal's departure had turned to melancholy.\n\n\"If I had been less taken in by appearances,\" he said to himself, \"I\nwould have had a better chance of seeing that the Paris salons are full\nof honest men like my father, or clever scoundrels like those felons.\nThey are right. The men in the salons never get up in the morning with\nthis poignant thought in their minds, how am I going to get my dinner?\nThey boast about their honesty and when they are summoned on the jury,\nthey take pride in convicting the man who has stolen a silver dish\nbecause he felt starving.\n\n\"But if there is a court, and it's a question of losing or winning a\nportfolio, my worthy salon people will commit crimes exactly similar to\nthose, which the need of getting a dinner inspired those two felons to\nperpetrate.\n\n\"There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing\nmore than a silly anachronism well worthy of the advocate-general who\nharried me the other day, and whose grandfather was enriched by one of\nthe confiscations of Louis XIV. There is no such thing as right, except\nwhen there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment.\n\n\"Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the\nlion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it\nin one word, need. No, the people whom the world honours are merely\nvillains who have had the good fortune not to have been caught\nred-handed. The prosecutor whom society put on my track was enriched by\nan infamous act. I have committed a murder, and I am justly condemned,\nbut the Valenod who has condemned me, is by reason alone of that very\ndeed, a hundred times more harmful to society.\n\n\"Well,\" added Julien sadly but not angrily, \"in spite of his avarice,\nmy father is worth more than all those men. He never loved me.\nThe disgrace I bring upon him by an infamous death has proved the\nlast straw. That fear of lacking money, that distorted view of the\nwickedness of mankind, which is called avarice, make him find a\ntremendous consolation and sense of security in a sum of three or four\nhundred louis, which I have been able to leave him. Some Sunday, after\ndinner, he will shew his gold to all the envious men in Verrieres.\n'Which of you would not be delighted to have a son guillotined at a\nprice like this,' will be the message they will read in his eyes.\"\n\nThis philosophy might be true, but it was of such a character as to\nmake him wish for death. In this way five long days went by. He was\npolite and gentle to Mathilde, whom he saw was exasperated by the\nmost violent jealousy. One evening Julien seriously thought of taking\nhis own life. His soul was demoralised by the deep unhappiness in\nwhich madame de Renal's departure had thrown him. He could no longer\nfind pleasure in anything, either in real life or in the sphere of\nthe imagination. Lack of exercise began to affect his health, and\nto produce in him all the weakness and exaltation of a young German\nstudent. He began to lose that virile disdain which repels with a\ndrastic oath certain undignified ideas which besiege the soul of the\nunhappy.\n\n\"I loved truth.... Where is it? Hypocrisy everywhere or at any rate\ncharlatanism. Even in the most virtuous, even in the greatest,\" and his\nlips assumed an expression of disgust. \"No, man cannot trust man.\"\n\n\"Madame de ---- when she was making a collection for her poor orphans,\nused to tell me that such and such a prince had just given ten louis, a\nsheer lie. But what am I talking about. Napoleon at St. Helena ... Pure\ncharlatanism like the proclamation in favour of the king of Rome.\n\n\"Great God! If a man like that at a time when misfortune ought to\nsummon him sternly to his duty will sink to charlatanism, what is one\nto expect from the rest of the human species?\"\n\n\"Where is truth? In religion. Yes,\" he added, with a bitter smile\nof utter contempt. \"In the mouth of the Maslons, the Frilairs, the\nCastanedes--perhaps in that true Christianity whose priests were not\npaid any more than were the apostles. But St. Paul was paid by the\npleasure of commanding, speaking, getting himself talked about.\"\n\n\"Oh, if there were only a true religion. Fool that I am. I see a Gothic\ncathedral and venerable stained-glass windows, and my weak heart\nconjures up the priest to fit the scene. My soul would understand him,\nmy soul has need of him. I only find a nincompoop with dirty hair.\nAbout as comforting as a chevalier de Beauvoisis.\n\n\"But a true priest, a Massillon, a Fenelon. Massillon sacrificed\nDubois. Saint-Simon's memoirs have spoilt the illusion of Fenelon, but\nhe was a true priest anyway. In those days, tender souls could have a\nplace in the world where they could meet together. We should not then\nhave been isolated. That good priest would have talked to us of God.\nBut what God? Not the one of the Bible, a cruel petty despot, full of\nvindictiveness, but the God of Voltaire, just, good, infinite.\"\n\nHe was troubled by all the memories of that Bible which he knew by\nheart. \"But how on earth, when the deity is three people all at the\nsame time, is one to believe in the great name of GOD, after the\nfrightful way in which our priests have abused it.\"\n\n\"Living alone. What a torture.\"\n\n\"I am growing mad and unreasonable,\" said Julien to himself, striking\nhis forehead. \"I am alone here in this cell, but I have not lived\nalone on earth. I had the powerful idea of duty. The duty which rightly\nor wrongly I laid down for myself, has been to me like the trunk of a\nsolid tree which I could lean on during the storm, I stumbled, I was\nagitated. After all I was only a man, but I was not swept away.\n\n\"It must be the damp air of this cell which made me think of being\nalone.\n\n\"Why should I still play the hypocrite by cursing hypocrisy? It is\nneither death, nor the cell, nor the damp air, but madame de Renal's\nabsence which prostrates me. If, in order to see her at Verrieres, I\nhad to live whole weeks at Verrieres concealed in the cellars of her\nhouse, would I complain?\"\n\n\"The influence of my contemporaries wins the day,\" he said aloud, with\na bitter laugh. \"Though I am talking to myself and within an ace of\ndeath, I still play the hypocrite. Oh you nineteenth century! A hunter\nfires a gun shot in the forest, his quarry falls, he hastens forward\nto seize it. His foot knocks against a two-foot anthill, knocks down\nthe dwelling place of the ants, and scatters the ants and their eggs\nfar and wide. The most philosophic among the ants will never be able to\nunderstand that black, gigantic and terrifying body, the hunter's boot,\nwhich suddenly invaded their home with incredible rapidity, preceded by\na frightful noise, and accompanied by flashes of reddish fire.\"\n\n\"In the same way, death, life and eternity, are very simple things for\nanyone who has organs sufficiently vast to conceive them. An ephemeral\nfly is born at nine o'clock in the morning in the long summer days, to\ndie at five o'clock in the evening. How is it to understand the word\n'night'?\"\n\n\"Give it five more hours of existence, and it will see night, and\nunderstand its meaning.\"\n\n\"So, in my case, I shall die at the age of twenty-three. Give me five\nmore years of life in order to live with madame de Renal.\"\n\nHe began to laugh like Mephistopheles. How foolish to debate these\ngreat problems.\n\n\"(1). I am as hypocritical as though there were someone there to listen\nto me.\n\n\"(2). I am forgetting to live and to love when I have so few days left\nto live. Alas, madame de Renal is absent; perhaps her husband will\nnot let her come back to Besancon any more, to go on compromising her\nhonour.\"\n\n\"That is what makes me lonely, and not the absence of a God who is\njust, good and omnipotent, devoid of malice, and in no wise greedy of\nvengeance.\"\n\n\"Oh, if He did exist. Alas I should fall at His feet. I have deserved\ndeath, I should say to Him, but oh Thou great God, good God, indulgent\nGod, give me back her whom I love!\"\n\nBy this time the night was far advanced. After an hour or two of\npeaceful sleep, Fouque arrived.\n\nJulien felt strongly resolute, like a man who sees to the bottom of his\nsoul.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXV\n\n\n\"I cannot play such a trick on that poor abbe Chas-Bernard, as to\nsummon him,\" he said to Fouque: \"it would prevent him from dining for\nthree whole days.--But try and find some Jansenist who is a friend of\nM. Pirard.\"\n\nFouque was impatiently waiting for this suggestion. Julien acquitted\nhimself becomingly of all the duty a man owes to provincial opinion.\nThanks to M. the abbe de Frilair, and in spite of his bad choice of a\nconfessor, Julien enjoyed in his cell the protection of the priestly\ncongregation; with a little more diplomacy he might have managed to\nescape. But the bad air of the cell produced its effect, and his\nstrength of mind diminished. But this only intensified his happiness at\nmadame de Renal's return.\n\n\"My first duty is towards you, my dear,\" she said as she embraced him;\n\"I have run away from Verrieres.\"\n\nJulien felt no petty vanity in his relations with her, and told her all\nhis weaknesses. She was good and charming to him.\n\nIn the evening she had scarcely left the prison before she made the\npriest, who had clung on to Julien like a veritable prey, go to her\naunt's: as his only object was to win prestige among the young women\nwho belonged to good Besancon society, madame de Renal easily prevailed\nupon him to go and perform a novena at the abbey of Bray-le-Haut.\n\nNo words can do justice to the madness and extravagance of Julien's\nlove.\n\nBy means of gold, and by using and abusing the influence of her aunt,\nwho was devout, rich and well-known, madame de Renal managed to see him\ntwice a day.\n\nAt this news, Mathilde's jealousy reached a pitch of positive madness.\nM. de Frilair had confessed to her that all his influence did not go\nso far as to admit of flouting the conventions by allowing her to\nsee her sweetheart more than once every day. Mathilde had madame de\nRenal followed so as to know the smallest thing she did. M. de Frilair\nexhausted all the resources of an extremely clever intellect in order\nto prove to her that Julien was unworthy of her.\n\nPlunged though she was in all these torments, she only loved him the\nmore, and made a horrible scene nearly every day.\n\nJulien wished, with all his might, to behave to the very end like an\nhonourable man towards this poor young girl whom he had so strangely\ncompromised, but the reckless love which he felt for madame de Renal\nswept him away at every single minute. When he could not manage to\npersuade Mathilde of the innocence of her rival's visits by all his\nthin excuses, he would say to himself: \"at any rate the end of the\ndrama ought to be quite near. The very fact of not being able to lie\nbetter will be an excuse for me.\"\n\nMademoiselle de La Mole learnt of the death of the marquis de\nCroisenois. The rich M. de Thaler had indulged in some unpleasant\nremarks concerning Mathilde's disappearance: M. de Croisenois went\nand asked him to recant them: M. de Thaler showed him some anonymous\nletters which had been sent to him, and which were full of details so\nartfully put together that the poor marquis could not help catching a\nglimpse of the truth.\n\nM. de Thaler indulged in some jests which were devoid of all taste.\nMaddened by anger and unhappiness, M. de Croisenois demanded such\nunqualified satisfaction, that the millionaire preferred to fight a\nduel. Stupidity triumphed, and one of the most lovable of men met with\nhis death before he was twenty-four.\n\nThis death produced a strange and morbid impression on Julien's\ndemoralised soul.\n\n\"Poor Croisenois,\" he said to Mathilde, \"really behaved very reasonably\nand very honourably towards us; he had ample ground for hating me and\npicking a quarrel with me, by reason of your indiscretion in your\nmother's salon; for the hatred which follows on contempt is usually\nfrenzied.\"\n\nM. de Croisenois' death changed all Julien's ideas concerning\nMathilde's future. He spent several days in proving to her that she\nought to accept the hand of M. de Luz. \"He is a nervous man, not too\nmuch of a Jesuit, and will doubtless be a candidate,\" he said to her.\n\"He has a more sinister and persevering ambition than poor Croisenois,\nand as there has never been a dukedom in his family, he will be only\ntoo glad to marry Julien Sorel's widow.\"\n\n\"A widow, though, who scorns the grand passions,\" answered Mathilde\ncoldly, \"for she has lived long enough to see her lover prefer to\nher after six months another woman who was the origin of all their\nunhappiness.\"\n\n\"You are unjust! Madame de Renal's visits will furnish my advocate\nat Paris, who is endeavouring to procure my pardon, with the subject\nmatter for some sensational phrases; he will depict the murderer\nhonoured by the attention of his victim. That may produce an\nimpression, and perhaps some day or other, you will see me provide the\nplot of some melodrama or other, etc., etc.\"\n\nA furious and impotent jealousy, a prolonged and hopeless unhappiness\n(for even supposing Julien was saved, how was she to win back his\nheart?), coupled with her shame and anguish at loving this unfaithful\nlover more than ever had plunged mademoiselle de la Mole into a gloomy\nsilence, from which all the careful assiduity of M. de Frilair was as\nlittle able to draw her as the rugged frankness of Fouque.\n\nAs for Julien, except in those moments which were taken up by\nMathilde's presence, he lived on love with scarcely a thought for the\nfuture.\n\n\"In former days,\" Julien said to her, \"when I might have been so happy,\nduring our walks in the wood of Vergy, a frenzied ambition swept my\nsoul into the realms of imagination. Instead of pressing to my heart\nthat charming arm which is so near my lips, the thoughts of my future\ntook me away from you; I was engaged in countless combats which I\nshould have to sustain in order to lay the foundations of a colossal\nfortune. No, I should have died without knowing what happiness was if\nyou had not come to see me in this prison.\"\n\nTwo episodes ruffled this tranquil life. Julien's confessor, Jansenist\nthough he was, was not proof against an intrigue of the Jesuits, and\nbecame their tool without knowing it.\n\nHe came to tell him one day that unless he meant to fall into the awful\nsin of suicide, he ought to take every possible step to procure his\npardon. Consequently, as the clergy have a great deal of influence with\nthe minister of Justice at Paris, an easy means presented itself; he\nought to become converted with all publicity.\n\n\"With publicity,\" repeated Julien. \"Ha, Ha! I have caught you at it--I\nhave caught you as well, my father, playing a part like any missionary.\"\n\n\"Your youth,\" replied the Jansenist gravely, \"the interesting\nappearance which Providence has given you, the still unsolved mystery\nof the motive for your crime, the heroic steps which mademoiselle de\nla Mole has so freely taken on your behalf, everything, up to the\nsurprising affection which your victim manifests towards you, has\ncontributed to make you the hero of the young women of Besancon.\nThey have forgotten everything, even politics, on your account. Your\nconversion will reverberate in their hearts and will leave behind it a\ndeep impression. You can be of considerable use to religion, and I was\nabout to hesitate for the trivial reason that in a similar circumstance\nthe Jesuits would follow a similar course. But if I did, even in the\none case which has escaped their greedy clutches they would still be\nexercising their mischief. The tears which your conversation will\ncause to be shed will annul the poisonous effect of ten editions of\nVoltaire's works.\"\n\n\"And what will be left for me,\" answered Julien, coldly, \"if I despise\nmyself? I have been ambitious; I do not mean to blame myself in any\nway. Further, I have acted in accordance with the code of the age. Now\nI am living from day to day. But I should make myself very unhappy\nif I were to yield to what the locality would regard as a piece of\ncowardice....\"\n\nMadame de Renal was responsible for the other episode which affected\nJulien in quite another way. Some intriguing woman friend or other had\nmanaged to persuade this naive and timid soul that it was her duty\nto leave for St. Cloud, and go and throw herself at the feet of King\nCharles X.\n\nShe had made the sacrifice of separating from Julien, and after\na strain as great as that, she no longer thought anything of the\nunpleasantness of making an exhibition of herself, though in former\ntimes she would have thought that worse than death.\n\n\"I will go to the king. I will confess freely that you are my lover.\nThe life of a man, and of a man like Julien, too, ought to prevail over\nevery consideration. I will tell him that it was because of jealousy\nthat you made an attempt upon my life. There are numerous instances of\npoor young people who have been saved in such a case by the clemency of\nthe jury or of the king.\"\n\n\"I will leave off seeing you; I will shut myself up in my prison,\"\nexclaimed Julien, \"and you can be quite certain that if you do not\npromise me to take no step which will make a public exhibition of us\nboth, I will kill myself in despair the day afterwards. This idea of\ngoing to Paris is not your own. Tell me the name of the intriguing\nwoman who suggested it to you.\n\n\"Let us be happy during the small number of days of this short life.\nLet us hide our existence; my crime was only too self-evident.\nMademoiselle de la Mole enjoys all possible influence at Paris. Take\nit from me that she has done all that is humanly possible. Here in\nthe provinces I have all the men of wealth and prestige against me.\nYour conduct will still further aggravate those rich and essentially\nmoderate people to whom life comes so easy.... Let us not give the\nMaslons, the Valenods, and the thousand other people who are worth more\nthan they, anything to laugh about.\"\n\nJulien came to find the bad air of the cell unbearable. Fortunately,\nnature was rejoicing in a fine sunshine on the day when they announced\nto him that he would have to die, and he was in a courageous vein.\nHe found walking in the open air as delicious a sensation as the\nnavigator, who has been at sea for a long time, finds walking on the\nground. \"Come on, everything is going all right,\" he said to himself.\n\"I am not lacking in courage.\"\n\nHis head had never looked so poetical as at that moment when it was on\nthe point of falling. The sweet minutes which he had formerly spent in\nthe woods of Vergy crowded back upon his mind with extreme force.\n\nEverything went off simply, decorously, and without any affectation on\nhis part.\n\nTwo days before he had said to Fouque: \"I cannot guarantee not to\nshow some emotion. This dense, squalid cell gives me fits of fever in\nwhich I do not recognise myself, but fear?--no! I shall not be seen to\nflinch.\"\n\nHe had made his arrangements in advance for Fouque to take Mathilde and\nmadame de Renal away on the morning of his last day.\n\n\"Drive them away in the same carriage,\" he had said. \"Do you see that\nthe post-horses do not leave off galloping. They will either fall into\neach other's arms, or manifest towards each other a mortal hatred.\nIn either case the poor women will have something to distract them a\nlittle from their awful grief.\"\n\nJulien had made madame de Renal swear that she would live to look after\nMathilde's son.\n\n\"Who knows? Perhaps we have still some sensations after our death,\" he\nhad said one day to Fouque. \"I should like to rest, for rest is the\nright word, in that little grotto in the great mountain which dominates\nVerrieres. Many a time, as I have told you, I have spent the night\nalone in that grotto, and as my gaze would plunge far and wide over the\nrichest provinces of France, ambition would inflame my heart. In those\ndays it was my passion.... Anyway, I hold that grotto dear, and one\ncannot dispute that its situation might well arouse the desires of the\nphilosopher's soul.... Well, you know! those good priests of Besancon\nwill make money out of everything. If you know how to manage it, they\nwill sell you my mortal remains.\"\n\nFouque succeeded in this melancholy business. He was passing the night\nalone in his room by his friend's body when, to his great surprise, he\nsaw Mathilde come in. A few hours before he had left her ten leagues\nfrom Besancon. Her face and eyes looked distraught.\n\n\"I want to see him,\" she said.\n\nFouque had not the courage either to speak or get up. He pointed with\nhis finger to a big blue cloak on the floor; there was wrapped in it\nall that remained of Julien.\n\nShe threw herself on her knees. The memory of Boniface de la Mole, and\nof Marguerite of Navarre gave her, no doubt, a superhuman courage. Her\ntrembling hands undid the cloak. Fouque turned away his eyes.\n\nHe heard Mathilde walking feverishly about the room. She lit several\ncandles. When Fouque could bring himself to look at her, she had placed\nJulien's head on a little marble table in front of her, and was kissing\nit on the forehead.\n\nMathilde followed her lover to the tomb which he had chosen. A great\nnumber of priests convoyed the bier, and, alone in her draped carriage,\nwithout anyone knowing it, she carried on her knees the head of the man\nwhom she had loved so much.\n\nWhen they arrived in this way at the most elevated peak of the high\nmountains of the Jura, twenty priests celebrated the service of the\ndead in the middle of the night in this little grotto, which was\nmagnificently illuminated by a countless number of wax candles.\nAttracted by this strange and singular ceremony, all the inhabitants\nof the little mountain villages which the funeral had passed through,\nfollowed it.\n\nMathilde appeared in their midst in long mourning garments, and had\nseveral thousands of five-franc pieces thrown to them at the end of the\nservice.\n\nWhen she was left alone with Fouque, she insisted on burying her\nlover's head with her own hands. Fouque nearly went mad with grief.\n\nMathilde took care that this wild grotto should be decorated with\nmarble monuments that had been sculpted in Italy at great expense.\n\nMadame de Renal kept her promise. She did not try to make any attempt\nupon her life; but she died embracing her children, three days after\nJulien.\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "shmoop", "text": "Julien Sorel is just a poor carpenter's son. His love of reading has given him all kinds of grand ideas about becoming a great man. The only problem is that Julien is living in early 19th-century France following the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. The country is basically run by an unquestioned king and a bunch of superficial elites who wouldn't know honor if it slapped them in the face. Julien catches a break when he's hired to be a tutor for the children of the wealthy Monsieur de Renal, mayor of Verrieres. Julien has an affair with de Renal's wife and has to leave town to go to priest's school to avoid the scandal. While at the seminary, he gets another new job as a personal secretary for the Marquis de La Mole, one of the most influential men in Paris. Julien goes to live with the Marquis, but is quickly disillusioned by how superficial and boring life in the upper-class parts of Paris can be. No one says anything with any conviction and the world is just filled with a bunch of snarky social climbers. Julien forms a romantic relationship with the Marquis' beautiful daughter Mathilde. The problem is that both he and Mathilde only want what they can't have, and this creates a certain love-hate dance between them. Acting on the advice of a Russian friend, Julien beats Mathilde at her own love games and secures her affection. She also reveals to him that she's pregnant with his child. The two decide to get married. Mathilde's dad is furious that Mathilde wants to marry a peasant, but he eventually agrees and gives Julien everything he'll need to live as a wealthy man. Unfortunately, the Marquis withdraws his support for the wedding when he receives a letter from Julien's old flame, Madame de Renal. Madame's letter says that Julien is a dastardly opportunist who only seduced Mathilde to climb the social ladder. After losing his father-in-law's trust and respect, Julien travels back to his hometown of Verrieres and shoots Madame de Renal. She lives, but he's imprisoned and sentenced to death anyway. Julien makes sure to use his last days in the limelight to criticize France and all of its hypocrisy. He is then beheaded and everyone in France goes back to their insincere, superficial lives.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "cliffnotes", "text": "M. de Renal, ultra mayor of the small provincial town of Verrieres, hires Julien Sorel, a young peasant who aspires to the priesthood, as tutor for his children. The hiring of Julien is calculated to enhance Renal's prestige among the wealthy liberals. Julien, ambitious and amoral, had hoped to pursue a military career but has decided to enter the priesthood as the most likely means to success. He chooses hypocrisy as his weapon in his encounter with society. He sees his position as tutor as the first step in his ascension, which will culminate, he hopes, in Parisian aristocracy. Mme. de Renal innocently falls in love with Julien after he has lived in the Renal country home for some time. When Julien discovers that he is loved, he decides that he will seduce Mme. de Renal as an expression of the scorn he feels for her husband. His plan of seduction would have failed miserably, so awkwardly does he execute it, were Mme. de Renal not hopelessly in love with him. Succumbing to Julien's natural charm, which he displays in unguarded moments, Mme. de Renal becomes, in fact, Julien's mistress. She educates him socially and in the local political intrigues. She succeeds in having Julien awarded a much coveted place in the guard of honor on the occasion of a visit by Charles X. Their love affair is idyllic until one of the Renals' sons falls gravely ill, which Mme. de Renal interprets as divine punishment for her adultery. Soon M. de Renal receives an anonymous letter accusing Julien of having seduced his wife. Mme. de Renal succeeds in duping her husband into believing that the accusation is false. She convinces him that the letter comes from Valenod, Renal's rival and assistant, who has attempted in the past to court Mme. de Renal. Her husband believes her because he is comfortably established and is horrified at the thought of a scandal. In order to quiet the rumors, Julien moves into the Renals' townhouse in Verrieres. Because of his brilliant reputation as a tutor, he is invited to dinner by Valenod, who would hope to hire Julien as the tutor for his own children. A servant girl from the Renal household, also in love with Julien but spurned by him, denounces the lovers to the former village priest, Chelan, who insists that Julien leave Verrieres to enter the seminary in Besancon. Through Chelan's influence with Pirard, rector of the seminary, Julien is awarded a scholarship. Julien's affair with Mme. de Renal is temporarily ended, but he visits her room for a final rendezvous. Julien's first attempts to succeed as a student meet with failure because he excels as a scholar, and the Church's reactionary influence that prevails in the seminary requires of its future priests docility and intellectual conformity in mediocrity. Julien's superiority, however, is appreciated by Rector Pirard, who makes Julien his protege. One day as Julien is assisting in the decoration of the Besancon cathedral, he encounters Mme. de Renal, who promptly faints at the sight of him. Pirard obtains a position for Julien as secretary to a powerful aristocrat in Paris, the Marquis de La Mole, to whom Pirard has been of invaluable assistance in a lawsuit. Pirard also leaves Besancon for a comfortable parish in Paris. Before going to Paris, Julien pays a last visit to Mme. de Renal, presenting himself at her window late at night. At first rebuffed by his mistress' virtue, Julien artfully destroys her resistance by announcing that his departure for Paris is imminent and that they will never see each other again. Mme. de Renal acquiesces and Julien remains hidden to spend the following day with her. Book II finds Julien in Paris as secretary to the Marquis de La Mole. Soon Julien makes his services indispensable to his employer, although his provincial manners and inexperience in high society cause him constant embarrassment. The marquis' proud daughter, Mathilde, takes an interest in Julien when she overhears the latter denouncing the sterility of the Mole's salon. Mathilde is bored with the convention and barrenness of the aristocracy of which she is a part. She is in need of diversion, and Julien will provide it for her. The marquis finds Julien's intelligence and wit very refreshing, and ultimately Julien becomes almost a son to the marquis. The latter sends Julien to London on a diplomatic mission in order that he may gain experience and as a pretext to have Julien awarded a decoration. At the behest of Mathilde, Julien attends a ball, where he makes the acquaintance of a liberal aristocrat condemned to die. Mathilde is the most sought-after beauty of the season, but Julien hardly notices her, so inspired is he by the hero he has met. Mathilde, on the other hand, sees in Julien a reincarnation of her illustrious ancestor, Boniface de La Mole, a queen's lover who was beheaded. Mathilde falls in love with Julien. Julien is unable to decide if he is loved or if Mathilde and her brother and their friends are trying to make of him a dupe. Julien's attempt to leave Paris on a business trip for the marquis moves Mathilde to a declaration of love. Julien, still distrustful, takes precautions to safeguard his reputation, sending Mathilde's avowal to his friend, Fouque. Alleging another business trip, Julien receives an invitation from Mathilde to visit her in her room late at night. Still convinced that he is being tricked, Julien nonetheless appears at the appointed hour, and after much mutual embarrassment, Mathilde becomes his mistress. Mathilde now fears that she has given herself a master, and she repents of having compromised herself. Julien discovers that he is desperately in love with Mathilde, but her ardor has cooled. Unfortunately for Julien, Mathilde is only capable of loving him when she thinks that she is not loved by him. When in a moment of anger Julien one day appears to threaten her life, she is in love again. Their second rendezvous occurs, but Mathilde again repents immediately after. Julien, tormented by passion, is called upon by the marquis to serve as secretary at a secret meeting of reactionary aristocrats and to deliver a secret message to London. Successfully fulfilling his mission, Julien then goes to Strasbourg, where he meets a former acquaintance from London, who advises him how to reawaken Mathilde's love by jealousy. Julien returns to Paris to execute his plan, choosing a prude to court by means of love letters furnished to him by his friend. Mathilde responds to the stratagem, but Julien realizes that to keep her love alive he must love her at a distance. Mathilde is pregnant, and after the marquis' rage has subsided at the announcement of this news, the latter finally agrees to obtain an army commission for Julien and to encourage his career. Julien occupies his new post in Strasbourg but receives word from Mathilde to return to Paris, that all is lost. In checking on Julien's past, the marquis has learned from Mme. de Renal, in a letter dictated by her confessor, that Julien is an opportunist who succeeds by seducing women. Learning this, Julien hurries to Verrieres, arms himself, and shoots Mme. de Renal at church. Imprisoned and awaiting trial for attempted murder, Julien is visited by Mathilde, who attempts to negotiate his acquittal with the Jesuits. Julien is resigned to die and in the solitude of his prison cell discovers that he is still in love with Mme. de Renal, whom he had only wounded, and that his love for Mathilde has disappeared. During the trial, in spite of his resolution not to speak in his own defense, Julien informs the court that he is not being tried for attempted murder but for having attempted to rise above his social class. The jury finds Julien guilty and he is sentenced to be guillotined. During his last days in prison, Julien finds peace and happiness in his reflections and through the reunion with Mme. de Renal, who visits him daily. Julien faces death courageously, and after the execution, Mathilde, in a re-enactment of a scene from the Mole family history, furtively steals Julien's severed head and lovingly buries it with her own hands. Mme. de Renal follows Julien in death.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "M. de Renal, the mayor of the provincial town Verrieres, hires Julien Sorel to be his children's tutor. Julien is only a carpenter's son, but dreams of following in the footsteps of his hero, Napoleon. However, in Julien's time, men gain power in the Church and not in the army. Even though he is training to become a priest, Julien decides to seduce the mayor's wife, Mme. de Renal, because he thinks that it is his duty. They become lovers, but M. Valenod, the mayor's political adversary, finds out about the affair and begins to spread rumors. M. de Renal is profoundly embarrassed, but his wife convinces him that the rumors are false. M. Chelan, the town priest and Julien's mentor, sends him to the Besancon seminary to avoid any further scandal. The director of the seminary, M. Pirard, likes Julien and encourages him to become a great priest. Julien does very well at the seminary, but only because he wants to make a fortune and succeed in French society. The other priests at the seminary are not aware of Julien's hypocrisy, but are jealous of his intelligence. M. Pirard is disgusted with the political involvement of the Church and resigns. His aristocratic benefactor, the Marquis de la Mole, wants M. Pirard to be his personal secretary in Paris, but M. Pirard tells him to hire Julien instead. Julien is both enthralled and repulsed by Parisian society at the same time. He tries to fit in among the nobles but they treat him as a social inferior. However, the Marquis's daughter, Mathilde, falls in love with Julien and they become lovers. When Mathilde gets pregnant and tells the Marquis about her affair, he is furious, but soon ennobles Julien so Mathilde can marry him. Julien finally has the aristocratic title he always wanted. But Mme. de Renal sends the Marquis a letter denouncing Julien as a womanizer only concerned with making his fortune. The Marquis then refuses to let Mathilde marry Julien, who furiously returns to Verrieres and shoots Mme. de Renal. She survives, but Julien is sentenced to death anyway. Mme. de Renal forgives Julien and dies of love three days after his execution.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "14328", "title": "The Consolation of Philosophy", "text": "<CHAPTER>\nBOOK I. SONG I. BOETHIUS' COMPLAINT.\n\n\n    Who wrought my studious numbers\n      Smoothly once in happier days,\n    Now perforce in tears and sadness\n      Learn a mournful strain to raise.\n    Lo, the Muses, grief-dishevelled,\n      Guide my pen and voice my woe;\n    Down their cheeks unfeigned the tear drops\n      To my sad complainings flow!\n    These alone in danger's hour\n      Faithful found, have dared attend\n    On the footsteps of the exile\n      To his lonely journey's end.\n    These that were the pride and pleasure\n      Of my youth and high estate\n    Still remain the only solace\n      Of the old man's mournful fate.\n    Old? Ah yes; swift, ere I knew it,\n      By these sorrows on me pressed\n    Age hath come; lo, Grief hath bid me\n      Wear the garb that fits her best.\n    O'er my head untimely sprinkled\n      These white hairs my woes proclaim,\n    And the skin hangs loose and shrivelled\n      On this sorrow-shrunken frame.\n    Blest is death that intervenes not\n      In the sweet, sweet years of peace,\n    But unto the broken-hearted,\n      When they call him, brings release!\n    Yet Death passes by the wretched,\n      Shuts his ear and slumbers deep;\n    Will not heed the cry of anguish,\n      Will not close the eyes that weep.\n    For, while yet inconstant Fortune\n      Poured her gifts and all was bright,\n    Death's dark hour had all but whelmed me\n      In the gloom of endless night.\n    Now, because misfortune's shadow\n      Hath o'erclouded that false face,\n    Cruel Life still halts and lingers,\n      Though I loathe his weary race.\n    Friends, why did ye once so lightly\n      Vaunt me happy among men?\n    Surely he who so hath fallen\n      Was not firmly founded then.\n\n\nWhile I was thus mutely pondering within myself, and recording my\nsorrowful complainings with my pen, it seemed to me that there appeared\nabove my head a woman of a countenance exceeding venerable. Her eyes\nwere bright as fire, and of a more than human keenness; her complexion\nwas lively, her vigour showed no trace of enfeeblement; and yet her\nyears were right full, and she plainly seemed not of our age and time.\nHer stature was difficult to judge. At one moment it exceeded not the\ncommon height, at another her forehead seemed to strike the sky; and\nwhenever she raised her head higher, she began to pierce within the very\nheavens, and to baffle the eyes of them that looked upon her. Her\ngarments were of an imperishable fabric, wrought with the finest threads\nand of the most delicate workmanship; and these, as her own lips\nafterwards assured me, she had herself woven with her own hands. The\nbeauty of this vesture had been somewhat tarnished by age and neglect,\nand wore that dingy look which marble contracts from exposure. On the\nlower-most edge was inwoven the Greek letter [Greek: P], on the topmost\nthe letter [Greek: Th],[A] and between the two were to be seen steps,\nlike a staircase, from the lower to the upper letter. This robe,\nmoreover, had been torn by the hands of violent persons, who had each\nsnatched away what he could clutch.[B] Her right hand held a note-book;\nin her left she bore a staff. And when she saw the Muses of Poesie\nstanding by my bedside, dictating the words of my lamentations, she was\nmoved awhile to wrath, and her eyes flashed sternly. 'Who,' said she,\n'has allowed yon play-acting wantons to approach this sick man--these\nwho, so far from giving medicine to heal his malady, even feed it with\nsweet poison? These it is who kill the rich crop of reason with the\nbarren thorns of passion, who accustom men's minds to disease, instead\nof setting them free. Now, were it some common man whom your allurements\nwere seducing, as is usually your way, I should be less indignant. On\nsuch a one I should not have spent my pains for naught. But this is one\nnurtured in the Eleatic and Academic philosophies. Nay, get ye gone, ye\nsirens, whose sweetness lasteth not; leave him for my muses to tend and\nheal!' At these words of upbraiding, the whole band, in deepened\nsadness, with downcast eyes, and blushes that confessed their shame,\ndolefully left the chamber.\n\nBut I, because my sight was dimmed with much weeping, and I could not\ntell who was this woman of authority so commanding--I was dumfoundered,\nand, with my gaze fastened on the earth, continued silently to await\nwhat she might do next. Then she drew near me and sat on the edge of my\ncouch, and, looking into my face all heavy with grief and fixed in\nsadness on the ground, she bewailed in these words the disorder of my\nmind:\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[A] [Greek: P] (P) stands for the Political life, the life of action;\n[Greek: Th] (Th) for the Theoretical life, the life of thought.\n\n[B] The Stoic, Epicurean, and other philosophical sects, which Boethius\nregards as heterodox. See also below, ch. iii., p. 14.\n\n\nSONG II. HIS DESPONDENCY.\n\n\n    Alas! in what abyss his mind\n      Is plunged, how wildly tossed!\n    Still, still towards the outer night\n      She sinks, her true light lost,\n    As oft as, lashed tumultuously\n    By earth-born blasts, care's waves rise high.\n\n    Yet once he ranged the open heavens,\n      The sun's bright pathway tracked;\n    Watched how the cold moon waxed and waned;\n      Nor rested, till there lacked\n    To his wide ken no star that steers\n    Amid the maze of circling spheres.\n\n    The causes why the blusterous winds\n      Vex ocean's tranquil face,\n    Whose hand doth turn the stable globe,\n      Or why his even race\n    From out the ruddy east the sun\n    Unto the western waves doth run:\n\n    What is it tempers cunningly\n      The placid hours of spring,\n    So that it blossoms with the rose\n      For earth's engarlanding:\n    Who loads the year's maturer prime\n    With clustered grapes in autumn time:\n\n    All this he knew--thus ever strove\n      Deep Nature's lore to guess.\n    Now, reft of reason's light, he lies,\n      And bonds his neck oppress;\n    While by the heavy load constrained,\n    His eyes to this dull earth are chained.\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\n'But the time,' said she, 'calls rather for healing than for\nlamentation.' Then, with her eyes bent full upon me, 'Art thou that\nman,' she cries, 'who, erstwhile fed with the milk and reared upon the\nnourishment which is mine to give, had grown up to the full vigour of a\nmanly spirit? And yet I had bestowed such armour on thee as would have\nproved an invincible defence, hadst thou not first cast it away. Dost\nthou know me? Why art thou silent? Is it shame or amazement that hath\nstruck thee dumb? Would it were shame; but, as I see, a stupor hath\nseized upon thee.' Then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but\nmute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with\nher hand, and said: 'There is no danger; these are the symptoms of\nlethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. For awhile he has\nforgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first\nrecognises me. And that he may do so, let me now wipe his eyes that are\nclouded with a mist of mortal things.' Thereat, with a fold of her robe,\nshe dried my eyes all swimming with tears.\n\n\n\nSONG III. THE MISTS DISPELLED.\n\n\n    Then the gloom of night was scattered,\n      Sight returned unto mine eyes.\n    So, when haply rainy Caurus\n      Rolls the storm-clouds through the skies,\n    Hidden is the sun; all heaven\n      Is obscured in starless night.\n    But if, in wild onset sweeping,\n      Boreas frees day's prisoned light,\n    All suddenly the radiant god outstreams,\n    And strikes our dazzled eyesight with his beams.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nEven so the clouds of my melancholy were broken up. I saw the clear sky,\nand regained the power to recognise the face of my physician.\nAccordingly, when I had lifted my eyes and fixed my gaze upon her, I\nbeheld my nurse, Philosophy, whose halls I had frequented from my youth\nup.\n\n'Ah! why,' I cried, 'mistress of all excellence, hast thou come down\nfrom on high, and entered the solitude of this my exile? Is it that\nthou, too, even as I, mayst be persecuted with false accusations?'\n\n'Could I desert thee, child,' said she, 'and not lighten the burden\nwhich thou hast taken upon thee through the hatred of my name, by\nsharing this trouble? Even forgetting that it were not lawful for\nPhilosophy to leave companionless the way of the innocent, should I,\nthinkest thou, fear to incur reproach, or shrink from it, as though\nsome strange new thing had befallen? Thinkest thou that now, for the\nfirst time in an evil age, Wisdom hath been assailed by peril? Did I not\noften in days of old, before my servant Plato lived, wage stern warfare\nwith the rashness of folly? In his lifetime, too, Socrates, his master,\nwon with my aid the victory of an unjust death. And when, one after the\nother, the Epicurean herd, the Stoic, and the rest, each of them as far\nas in them lay, went about to seize the heritage he left, and were\ndragging me off protesting and resisting, as their booty, they tore in\npieces the garment which I had woven with my own hands, and, clutching\nthe torn pieces, went off, believing that the whole of me had passed\ninto their possession. And some of them, because some traces of my\nvesture were seen upon them, were destroyed through the mistake of the\nlewd multitude, who falsely deemed them to be my disciples. It may be\nthou knowest not of the banishment of Anaxagoras, of the poison draught\nof Socrates, nor of Zeno's torturing, because these things happened in\na distant country; yet mightest thou have learnt the fate of Arrius, of\nSeneca, of Soranus, whose stories are neither old nor unknown to fame.\nThese men were brought to destruction for no other reason than that,\nsettled as they were in my principles, their lives were a manifest\ncontrast to the ways of the wicked. So there is nothing thou shouldst\nwonder at, if on the seas of this life we are tossed by storm-blasts,\nseeing that we have made it our chiefest aim to refuse compliance with\nevil-doers. And though, maybe, the host of the wicked is many in number,\nyet is it contemptible, since it is under no leadership, but is hurried\nhither and thither at the blind driving of mad error. And if at times\nand seasons they set in array against us, and fall on in overwhelming\nstrength, our leader draws off her forces into the citadel while they\nare busy plundering the useless baggage. But we from our vantage ground,\nsafe from all this wild work, laugh to see them making prize of the most\nvalueless of things, protected by a bulwark which aggressive folly may\nnot aspire to reach.'\n\n\n\nSONG IV. NOTHING CAN SUBDUE VIRTUE.\n\n\n    Whoso calm, serene, sedate,\n    Sets his foot on haughty fate;\n    Firm and steadfast, come what will,\n    Keeps his mien unconquered still;\n    Him the rage of furious seas,\n    Tossing high wild menaces,\n    Nor the flames from smoky forges\n    That Vesuvius disgorges,\n    Nor the bolt that from the sky\n    Smites the tower, can terrify.\n    Why, then, shouldst thou feel affright\n    At the tyrant's weakling might?\n    Dread him not, nor fear no harm,\n    And thou shall his rage disarm;\n    But who to hope or fear gives way--\n    Lost his bosom's rightful sway--\n    He hath cast away his shield,\n    Like a coward fled the field;\n    He hath forged all unaware\n    Fetters his own neck must bear!\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\n'Dost thou understand?' she asks. Do my words sink into thy mind? Or art\nthou dull \"as the ass to the sound of the lyre\"? Why dost thou weep? Why\ndo tears stream from thy eyes?\n\n    '\"Speak out, hide it not in thy heart.\"\n\nIf thou lookest for the physician's help, thou must needs disclose thy\nwound.'\n\nThen I, gathering together what strength I could, began: 'Is there still\nneed of telling? Is not the cruelty of fortune against me plain enough?\nDoth not the very aspect of this place move thee? Is this the library,\nthe room which thou hadst chosen as thy constant resort in my home, the\nplace where we so often sat together and held discourse of all things in\nheaven and earth? Was my garb and mien like this when I explored with\nthee nature's hid secrets, and thou didst trace for me with thy wand\nthe courses of the stars, moulding the while my character and the whole\nconduct of my life after the pattern of the celestial order? Is this the\nrecompense of my obedience? Yet thou hast enjoined by Plato's mouth the\nmaxim, \"that states would be happy, either if philosophers ruled them,\nor if it should so befall that their rulers would turn philosophers.\" By\nhis mouth likewise thou didst point out this imperative reason why\nphilosophers should enter public life, to wit, lest, if the reins of\ngovernment be left to unprincipled and profligate citizens, trouble and\ndestruction should come upon the good. Following these precepts, I have\ntried to apply in the business of public administration the principles\nwhich I learnt from thee in leisured seclusion. Thou art my witness and\nthat divinity who hath implanted thee in the hearts of the wise, that I\nbrought to my duties no aim but zeal for the public good. For this cause\nI have become involved in bitter and irreconcilable feuds, and, as\nhappens inevitably, if a man holds fast to the independence of\nconscience, I have had to think nothing of giving offence to the\npowerful in the cause of justice. How often have I encountered and\nbalked Conigastus in his assaults on the fortunes of the weak? How often\nhave I thwarted Trigguilla, steward of the king's household, even when\nhis villainous schemes were as good as accomplished? How often have I\nrisked my position and influence to protect poor wretches from the false\ncharges innumerable with which they were for ever being harassed by the\ngreed and license of the barbarians? No one has ever drawn me aside from\njustice to oppression. When ruin was overtaking the fortunes of the\nprovincials through the combined pressure of private rapine and public\ntaxation, I grieved no less than the sufferers. When at a season of\ngrievous scarcity a forced sale, disastrous as it was unjustifiable, was\nproclaimed, and threatened to overwhelm Campania with starvation, I\nembarked on a struggle with the praetorian prefect in the public\ninterest, I fought the case at the king's judgment-seat, and succeeded\nin preventing the enforcement of the sale. I rescued the consular\nPaulinus from the gaping jaws of the court bloodhounds, who in their\ncovetous hopes had already made short work of his wealth. To save\nAlbinus, who was of the same exalted rank, from the penalties of a\nprejudged charge, I exposed myself to the hatred of Cyprian, the\ninformer.\n\n'Thinkest thou I had laid up for myself store of enmities enough? Well,\nwith the rest of my countrymen, at any rate, my safety should have been\nassured, since my love of justice had left me no hope of security at\ncourt. Yet who was it brought the charges by which I have been struck\ndown? Why, one of my accusers is Basil, who, after being dismissed from\nthe king's household, was driven by his debts to lodge an information\nagainst my name. There is Opilio, there is Gaudentius, men who for many\nand various offences the king's sentence had condemned to banishment;\nand when they declined to obey, and sought to save themselves by taking\nsanctuary, the king, as soon as he heard of it, decreed that, if they\ndid not depart from the city of Ravenna within a prescribed time, they\nshould be branded on the forehead and expelled. What would exceed the\nrigour of this severity? And yet on that same day these very men lodged\nan information against me, and the information was admitted. Just\nHeaven! had I deserved this by my way of life? Did it make them fit\naccusers that my condemnation was a foregone conclusion? Has fortune no\nshame--if not at the accusation of the innocent, at least for the\nvileness of the accusers? Perhaps thou wonderest what is the sum of the\ncharges laid against me? I wished, they say, to save the senate. But\nhow? I am accused of hindering an informer from producing evidence to\nprove the senate guilty of treason. Tell me, then, what is thy counsel,\nO my mistress. Shall I deny the charge, lest I bring shame on thee? But\nI did wish it, and I shall never cease to wish it. Shall I admit it?\nThen the work of thwarting the informer will come to an end. Shall I\ncall the wish for the preservation of that illustrious house a crime?\nOf a truth the senate, by its decrees concerning me, has made it such!\nBut blind folly, though it deceive itself with false names, cannot alter\nthe true merits of things, and, mindful of the precept of Socrates, I do\nnot think it right either to keep the truth concealed or allow falsehood\nto pass. But this, however it may be, I leave to thy judgment and to the\nverdict of the discerning. Moreover, lest the course of events and the\ntrue facts should be hidden from posterity, I have myself committed to\nwriting an account of the transaction.\n\n'What need to speak of the forged letters by which an attempt is made to\nprove that I hoped for the freedom of Rome? Their falsity would have\nbeen manifest, if I had been allowed to use the confession of the\ninformers themselves, evidence which has in all matters the most\nconvincing force. Why, what hope of freedom is left to us? Would there\nwere any! I should have answered with the epigram of Canius when\nCaligula declared him to have been cognisant of a conspiracy against\nhim. \"If I had known,\" said he, \"thou shouldst never have known.\" Grief\nhath not so blunted my perceptions in this matter that I should complain\nbecause impious wretches contrive their villainies against the virtuous,\nbut at their achievement of their hopes I do exceedingly marvel. For\nevil purposes are, perchance, due to the imperfection of human nature;\nthat it should be possible for scoundrels to carry out their worst\nschemes against the innocent, while God beholdeth, is verily monstrous.\nFor this cause, not without reason, one of thy disciples asked, \"If God\nexists, whence comes evil? Yet whence comes good, if He exists not?\"\nHowever, it might well be that wretches who seek the blood of all honest\nmen and of the whole senate should wish to destroy me also, whom they\nsaw to be a bulwark of the senate and all honest men. But did I deserve\nsuch a fate from the Fathers also? Thou rememberest, methinks--since\nthou didst ever stand by my side to direct what I should do or say--thou\nrememberest, I say, how at Verona, when the king, eager for the general\ndestruction, was bent on implicating the whole senatorial order in the\ncharge of treason brought against Albinus, with what indifference to my\nown peril I maintained the innocence of its members, one and all. Thou\nknowest that what I say is the truth, and that I have never boasted of\nmy good deeds in a spirit of self-praise. For whenever a man by\nproclaiming his good deeds receives the recompense of fame, he\ndiminishes in a measure the secret reward of a good conscience. What\nissues have overtaken my innocency thou seest. Instead of reaping the\nrewards of true virtue, I undergo the penalties of a guilt falsely laid\nto my charge--nay, more than this; never did an open confession of guilt\ncause such unanimous severity among the assessors, but that some\nconsideration, either of the mere frailty of human nature, or of\nfortune's universal instability, availed to soften the verdict of some\nfew. Had I been accused of a design to fire the temples, to slaughter\nthe priests with impious sword, of plotting the massacre of all honest\nmen, I should yet have been produced in court, and only punished on due\nconfession or conviction. Now for my too great zeal towards the senate I\nhave been condemned to outlawry and death, unheard and undefended, at a\ndistance of near five hundred miles away.[C] Oh, my judges, well do ye\ndeserve that no one should hereafter be convicted of a fault like mine!\n\n'Yet even my very accusers saw how honourable was the charge they\nbrought against me, and, in order to overlay it with some shadow of\nguilt, they falsely asserted that in the pursuit of my ambition I had\nstained my conscience with sacrilegious acts. And yet thy spirit,\nindwelling in me, had driven from the chamber of my soul all lust of\nearthly success, and with thine eye ever upon me, there could be no\nplace left for sacrilege. For thou didst daily repeat in my ear and\ninstil into my mind the Pythagorean maxim, \"Follow after God.\" It was\nnot likely, then, that I should covet the assistance of the vilest\nspirits, when thou wert moulding me to such an excellence as should\nconform me to the likeness of God. Again, the innocency of the inner\nsanctuary of my home, the company of friends of the highest probity, a\nfather-in-law revered at once for his pure character and his active\nbeneficence, shield me from the very suspicion of sacrilege.\nYet--atrocious as it is--they even draw credence for this charge from\n_thee_; I am like to be thought implicated in wickedness on this very\naccount, that I am imbued with _thy_ teachings and stablished in _thy_\nways. So it is not enough that my devotion to thee should profit me\nnothing, but thou also must be assailed by reason of the odium which I\nhave incurred. Verily this is the very crown of my misfortunes, that\nmen's opinions for the most part look not to real merit, but to the\nevent; and only recognise foresight where Fortune has crowned the issue\nwith her approval. Whereby it comes to pass that reputation is the first\nof all things to abandon the unfortunate. I remember with chagrin how\nperverse is popular report, how various and discordant men's judgments.\nThis only will I say, that the most crushing of misfortune's burdens is,\nthat as soon as a charge is fastened upon the unhappy, they are believed\nto have deserved their sufferings. I, for my part, who have been\nbanished from all life's blessings, stripped of my honours, stained in\nrepute, am punished for well-doing.\n\n'And now methinks I see the villainous dens of the wicked surging with\njoy and gladness, all the most recklessly unscrupulous threatening a new\ncrop of lying informations, the good prostrate with terror at my danger,\nevery ruffian incited by impunity to new daring and to success by the\nprofits of audacity, the guiltless not only robbed of their peace of\nmind, but even of all means of defence. Wherefore I would fain cry out:\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[C] The distance from Rome to Pavia, the place of Boethius'\nimprisonment, is 455 Roman miles.\n\n\n\nSONG V. BOETHIUS' PRAYER.\n\n\n    'Builder of yon starry dome,\n      Thou that whirlest, throned eternal,\n    Heaven's swift globe, and, as they roam,\n      Guid'st the stars by laws supernal:\n        So in full-sphered splendour dight\n        Cynthia dims the lamps of night,\n      But unto the orb fraternal\n        Closer drawn,[D] doth lose her light.\n\n    'Who at fall of eventide,\n      Hesper, his cold radiance showeth,\n    Lucifer his beams doth hide,\n      Paling as the sun's light groweth,\n        Brief, while winter's frost holds sway,\n        By thy will the space of day;\n      Swift, when summer's fervour gloweth,\n        Speed the hours of night away.\n\n    'Thou dost rule the changing year:\n      When rude Boreas oppresses,\n    Fall the leaves; they reappear,\n      Wooed by Zephyr's soft caresses.\n        Fields that Sirius burns deep grown\n        By Arcturus' watch were sown:\n      Each the reign of law confesses,\n        Keeps the place that is his own.\n\n    'Sovereign Ruler, Lord of all!\n      Can it be that Thou disdainest\n    Only man? 'Gainst him, poor thrall,\n      Wanton Fortune plays her vainest.\n        Guilt's deserved punishment\n        Falleth on the innocent;\n      High uplifted, the profanest\n        On the just their malice vent.\n\n    'Virtue cowers in dark retreats,\n      Crime's foul stain the righteous beareth,\n    Perjury and false deceits\n      Hurt not him the wrong who dareth;\n        But whene'er the wicked trust\n        In ill strength to work their lust,\n      Kings, whom nations' awe declareth\n        Mighty, grovel in the dust.\n\n    'Look, oh look upon this earth,\n      Thou who on law's sure foundation\n    Framedst all! Have we no worth,\n      We poor men, of all creation?\n        Sore we toss on fortune's tide;\n        Master, bid the waves subside!\n      And earth's ways with consummation\n        Of Thy heaven's order guide!'\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[D] The moon is regarded as farthest from the sun at the full, and, as\nshe wanes, approaching gradually nearer.\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\nWhen I had poured out my griefs in this long and unbroken strain of\nlamentation, she, with calm countenance, and in no wise disturbed at my\ncomplainings, thus spake:\n\n'When I saw thee sorrowful, in tears, I straightway knew thee wretched\nand an exile. But how far distant that exile I should not know, had not\nthine own speech revealed it. Yet how far indeed from thy country hast\nthou, not been banished, but rather hast strayed; or, if thou wilt have\nit banishment, hast banished thyself! For no one else could ever\nlawfully have had this power over thee. Now, if thou wilt call to mind\nfrom what country thou art sprung, it is not ruled, as once was the\nAthenian polity, by the sovereignty of the multitude, but \"one is its\nRuler, one its King,\" who takes delight in the number of His citizens,\nnot in their banishment; to submit to whose governance and to obey\nwhose ordinances is perfect freedom. Art thou ignorant of that most\nancient law of this thy country, whereby it is decreed that no one\nwhatsoever, who hath chosen to fix there his dwelling, may be sent into\nexile? For truly there is no fear that one who is encompassed by its\nramparts and defences should deserve to be exiled. But he who has ceased\nto wish to dwell therein, he likewise ceases to deserve to do so. And so\nit is not so much the aspect of this place which moves me, as thy\naspect; not so much the library walls set off with glass and ivory which\nI miss, as the chamber of thy mind, wherein I once placed, not books,\nbut that which gives books their value, the doctrines which my books\ncontain. Now, what thou hast said of thy services to the commonweal is\ntrue, only too little compared with the greatness of thy deservings. The\nthings laid to thy charge whereof thou hast spoken, whether such as\nredound to thy credit, or mere false accusations, are publicly known. As\nfor the crimes and deceits of the informers, thou hast rightly deemed\nit fitting to pass them over lightly, because the popular voice hath\nbetter and more fully pronounced upon them. Thou hast bitterly\ncomplained of the injustice of the senate. Thou hast grieved over my\ncalumniation, and likewise hast lamented the damage to my good name.\nFinally, thine indignation blazed forth against fortune; thou hast\ncomplained of the unfairness with which thy merits have been\nrecompensed. Last of all thy frantic muse framed a prayer that the peace\nwhich reigns in heaven might rule earth also. But since a throng of\ntumultuous passions hath assailed thy soul, since thou art distraught\nwith anger, pain, and grief, strong remedies are not proper for thee in\nthis thy present mood. And so for a time I will use milder methods, that\nthe tumours which have grown hard through the influx of disturbing\npassion may be softened by gentle treatment, till they can bear the\nforce of sharper remedies.'\n\n\n\nSONG VI. ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR NEEDFUL ORDER\n\n\n    He who to th' unwilling furrows\n      Gives the generous grain,\n    When the Crab with baleful fervours\n      Scorches all the plain;\n    He shall find his garner bare,\n    Acorns for his scanty fare.\n\n    Go not forth to cull sweet violets\n      From the purpled steep,\n    While the furious blasts of winter\n      Through the valleys sweep;\n    Nor the grape o'erhasty bring\n    To the press in days of spring.\n\n    For to each thing God hath given\n      Its appointed time;\n    No perplexing change permits He\n      In His plan sublime.\n    So who quits the order due\n    Shall a luckless issue rue.\n\n\nVI.\n\n\n'First, then, wilt thou suffer me by a few questions to make some\nattempt to test the state of thy mind, that I may learn in what way to\nset about thy cure?'\n\n'Ask what thou wilt,' said I, 'for I will answer whatever questions thou\nchoosest to put.'\n\nThen said she: 'This world of ours--thinkest thou it is governed\nhaphazard and fortuitously, or believest thou that there is in it any\nrational guidance?'\n\n'Nay,' said I, 'in no wise may I deem that such fixed motions can be\ndetermined by random hazard, but I know that God, the Creator, presideth\nover His work, nor will the day ever come that shall drive me from\nholding fast the truth of this belief.'\n\n'Yes,' said she; 'thou didst even but now affirm it in song, lamenting\nthat men alone had no portion in the divine care. As to the rest, thou\nwert unshaken in the belief that they were ruled by reason. Yet I\nmarvel exceedingly how, in spite of thy firm hold on this opinion, thou\nart fallen into sickness. But let us probe more deeply: something or\nother is missing, I think. Now, tell me, since thou doubtest not that\nGod governs the world, dost thou perceive by what means He rules it?'\n\n'I scarcely understand what thou meanest,' I said, 'much less can I\nanswer thy question.'\n\n'Did I not say truly that something is missing, whereby, as through a\nbreach in the ramparts, disease hath crept in to disturb thy mind? But,\ntell me, dost thou remember the universal end towards which the aim of\nall nature is directed?'\n\n'I once heard,' said I, 'but sorrow hath dulled my recollection.'\n\n'And yet thou knowest whence all things have proceeded.'\n\n'Yes, that I know,' said I, 'and have answered that it is from God.'\n\n'Yet how is it possible that thou knowest not what is the end of\nexistence, when thou dost understand its source and origin? However,\nthese disturbances of mind have force to shake a man's position, but\ncannot pluck him up and root him altogether out of himself. But answer\nthis also, I pray thee: rememberest thou that thou art a man?'\n\n'How should I not?' said I.\n\n'Then, canst thou say what man is?'\n\n'Is this thy question: Whether I know myself for a being endowed with\nreason and subject to death? Surely I do acknowledge myself such.'\n\nThen she: 'Dost know nothing else that thou art?'\n\n'Nothing.'\n\n'Now,' said she, 'I know another cause of thy disease, one, too, of\ngrave moment. Thou hast ceased to know thy own nature. So, then, I have\nmade full discovery both of the causes of thy sickness and the means of\nrestoring thy health. It is because forgetfulness of thyself hath\nbewildered thy mind that thou hast bewailed thee as an exile, as one\nstripped of the blessings that were his; it is because thou knowest not\nthe end of existence that thou deemest abominable and wicked men to be\nhappy and powerful; while, because thou hast forgotten by what means the\nearth is governed, thou deemest that fortune's changes ebb and flow\nwithout the restraint of a guiding hand. These are serious enough to\ncause not sickness only, but even death; but, thanks be to the Author of\nour health, the light of nature hath not yet left thee utterly. In thy\ntrue judgment concerning the world's government, in that thou believest\nit subject, not to the random drift of chance, but to divine reason, we\nhave the divine spark from which thy recovery may be hoped. Have, then,\nno fear; from these weak embers the vital heat shall once more be\nkindled within thee. But seeing that it is not yet time for strong\nremedies, and that the mind is manifestly so constituted that when it\ncasts off true opinions it straightway puts on false, wherefrom arises a\ncloud of confusion that disturbs its true vision, I will now try and\ndisperse these mists by mild and soothing application, that so the\ndarkness of misleading passion may be scattered, and thou mayst come to\ndiscern the splendour of the true light.'\n\n\n\nSONG VII. THE PERTURBATIONS OF PASSION.\n\n\n    Stars shed no light\n      Through the black night,\n        When the clouds hide;\n    And the lashed wave,\n      If the winds rave\n        O'er ocean's tide,--\n\n    Though once serene\n      As day's fair sheen,--\n        Soon fouled and spoiled\n    By the storm's spite,\n      Shows to the sight\n        Turbid and soiled.\n\n    Oft the fair rill,\n      Down the steep hill\n        Seaward that strays,\n    Some tumbled block\n      Of fallen rock\n        Hinders and stays.\n\n    Then art thou fain\n      Clear and most plain\n        Truth to discern,\n    In the right way\n      Firmly to stay,\n        Nor from it turn?\n\n    Joy, hope and fear\n      Suffer not near,\n        Drive grief away:\n    Shackled and blind\n      And lost is the mind\n        Where these have sway.\n\n\n\n\n</CHAPTER>\nBOOK II.\n\nTHE VANITY OF FORTUNE'S GIFTS\n\n\n     Summary\n\n     CH. I. Philosophy reproves Boethius for the foolishness of his\n     complaints against Fortune. Her very nature is caprice.--CH. II.\n     Philosophy in Fortune's name replies to Boethius' reproaches, and\n     proves that the gifts of Fortune are hers to give and to take\n     away.--CH. III. Boethius falls back upon his present sense of\n     misery. Philosophy reminds him of the brilliancy of his former\n     fortunes.--CH. IV. Boethius objects that the memory of past\n     happiness is the bitterest portion of the lot of the unhappy.\n     Philosophy shows that much is still left for which he may be\n     thankful. None enjoy perfect satisfaction with their lot. But\n     happiness depends not on anything which Fortune can give. It is to\n     be sought within.--CH. V. All the gifts of Fortune are external;\n     they can never truly be our own. Man cannot find his good in\n     worldly possessions. Riches bring anxiety and trouble.--CH. VI.\n     High place without virtue is an evil, not a good. Power is an empty\n     name.--CH. VII. Fame is a thing of little account when compared\n     with the immensity of the Universe and the endlessness of\n     Time.--CH. VIII. One service only can Fortune do, when she reveals\n     her own nature and distinguishes true friends from false.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<CHAPTER>\nBOOK II. I.\n\n\nThereafter for awhile she remained silent; and when she had restored my\nflagging attention by a moderate pause in her discourse, she thus began:\n'If I have thoroughly ascertained the character and causes of thy\nsickness, thou art pining with regretful longing for thy former fortune.\nIt is the change, as thou deemest, of this fortune that hath so wrought\nupon thy mind. Well do I understand that Siren's manifold wiles, the\nfatal charm of the friendship she pretends for her victims, so long as\nshe is scheming to entrap them--how she unexpectedly abandons them and\nleaves them overwhelmed with insupportable grief. Bethink thee of her\nnature, character, and deserts, and thou wilt soon acknowledge that in\nher thou hast neither possessed, nor hast thou lost, aught of any worth.\nMethinks I need not spend much pains in bringing this to thy mind,\nsince, even when she was still with thee, even while she was caressing\nthee, thou usedst to assail her in manly terms, to rebuke her, with\nmaxims drawn from my holy treasure-house. But all sudden changes of\ncircumstances bring inevitably a certain commotion of spirit. Thus it\nhath come to pass that thou also for awhile hast been parted from thy\nmind's tranquillity. But it is time for thee to take and drain a\ndraught, soft and pleasant to the taste, which, as it penetrates within,\nmay prepare the way for stronger potions. Wherefore I call to my aid the\nsweet persuasiveness of Rhetoric, who then only walketh in the right way\nwhen she forsakes not my instructions, and Music, my handmaid, I bid to\njoin with her singing, now in lighter, now in graver strain.\n\n'What is it, then, poor mortal, that hath cast thee into lamentation and\nmourning? Some strange, unwonted sight, methinks, have thine eyes seen.\nThou deemest Fortune to have changed towards thee; thou mistakest. Such\never were her ways, ever such her nature. Rather in her very mutability\nhath she preserved towards thee her true constancy. Such was she when\nshe loaded thee with caresses, when she deluded thee with the\nallurements of a false happiness. Thou hast found out how changeful is\nthe face of the blind goddess. She who still veils herself from others\nhath fully discovered to thee her whole character. If thou likest her,\ntake her as she is, and do not complain. If thou abhorrest her perfidy,\nturn from her in disdain, renounce her, for baneful are her delusions.\nThe very thing which is now the cause of thy great grief ought to have\nbrought thee tranquillity. Thou hast been forsaken by one of whom no one\ncan be sure that she will not forsake him. Or dost thou indeed set value\non a happiness that is certain to depart? Again I ask, Is Fortune's\npresence dear to thee if she cannot be trusted to stay, and though she\nwill bring sorrow when she is gone? Why, if she cannot be kept at\npleasure, and if her flight overwhelms with calamity, what is this\nfleeting visitant but a token of coming trouble? Truly it is not enough\nto look only at what lies before the eyes; wisdom gauges the issues of\nthings, and this same mutability, with its two aspects, makes the\nthreats of Fortune void of terror, and her caresses little to be\ndesired. Finally, thou oughtest to bear with whatever takes place within\nthe boundaries of Fortune's demesne, when thou hast placed thy head\nbeneath her yoke. But if thou wishest to impose a law of staying and\ndeparting on her whom thou hast of thine own accord chosen for thy\nmistress, art thou not acting wrongfully, art thou not embittering by\nimpatience a lot which thou canst not alter? Didst thou commit thy sails\nto the winds, thou wouldst voyage not whither thy intention was to go,\nbut whither the winds drave thee; didst thou entrust thy seed to the\nfields, thou wouldst set off the fruitful years against the barren. Thou\nhast resigned thyself to the sway of Fortune; thou must submit to thy\nmistress's caprices. What! art thou verily striving to stay the swing\nof the revolving wheel? Oh, stupidest of mortals, if it takes to\nstanding still, it ceases to be the wheel of Fortune.'\n\n\n\nSONG I. FORTUNE'S MALICE.\n\n\n    Mad Fortune sweeps along in wanton pride,\n    Uncertain as Euripus' surging tide;\n    Now tramples mighty kings beneath her feet;\n    Now sets the conquered in the victor's seat.\n    She heedeth not the wail of hapless woe,\n    But mocks the griefs that from her mischief flow.\n    Such is her sport; so proveth she her power;\n    And great the marvel, when in one brief hour\n    She shows her darling lifted high in bliss,\n    Then headlong plunged in misery's abyss.\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\n'Now I would fain also reason with thee a little in Fortune's own words.\nDo thou observe whether her contentions be just. \"Man,\" she might say,\n\"why dost thou pursue me with thy daily complainings? What wrong have I\ndone thee? What goods of thine have I taken from thee? Choose an thou\nwilt a judge, and let us dispute before him concerning the rightful\nownership of wealth and rank. If thou succeedest in showing that any one\nof these things is the true property of mortal man, I freely grant those\nthings to be thine which thou claimest. When nature brought thee forth\nout of thy mother's womb, I took thee, naked and destitute as thou wast,\nI cherished thee with my substance, and, in the partiality of my favour\nfor thee, I brought thee up somewhat too indulgently, and this it is\nwhich now makes thee rebellious against me. I surrounded thee with a\nroyal abundance of all those things that are in my power. Now it is my\npleasure to draw back my hand. Thou hast reason to thank me for the use\nof what was not thine own; thou hast no right to complain, as if thou\nhadst lost what was wholly thine. Why, then, dost bemoan thyself? I have\ndone thee no violence. Wealth, honour, and all such things are placed\nunder my control. My handmaidens know their mistress; with me they come,\nand at my going they depart. I might boldly affirm that if those things\nthe loss of which thou lamentest had been thine, thou couldst never have\nlost them. Am I alone to be forbidden to do what I will with my own?\nUnrebuked, the skies now reveal the brightness of day, now shroud the\ndaylight in the darkness of night; the year may now engarland the face\nof the earth with flowers and fruits, now disfigure it with storms and\ncold. The sea is permitted to invite with smooth and tranquil surface\nto-day, to-morrow to roughen with wave and storm. Shall man's insatiate\ngreed bind _me_ to a constancy foreign to my character? This is my art,\nthis the game I never cease to play. I turn the wheel that spins. I\ndelight to see the high come down and the low ascend. Mount up, if thou\nwilt, but only on condition that thou wilt not think it a hardship to\ncome down when the rules of my game require it. Wert thou ignorant of my\ncharacter? Didst not know how Croesus, King of the Lydians, erstwhile\nthe dreaded rival of Cyrus, was afterwards pitiably consigned to the\nflame of the pyre, and only saved by a shower sent from heaven? Has it\n'scaped thee how Paullus paid a meed of pious tears to the misfortunes\nof King Perseus, his prisoner? What else do tragedies make such woeful\noutcry over save the overthrow of kingdoms by the indiscriminate strokes\nof Fortune? Didst thou not learn in thy childhood how there stand at the\nthreshold of Zeus 'two jars,' 'the one full of blessings, the other of\ncalamities'? How if thou hast drawn over-liberally from the good jar?\nWhat if not even now have I departed wholly from thee? What if this very\nmutability of mine is a just ground for hoping better things? But listen\nnow, and cease to let thy heart consume away with fretfulness, nor\nexpect to live on thine own terms in a realm that is common to all.'\n\n\n\nSONG II. MAN'S COVETOUSNESS.\n\n\n    What though Plenty pour her gifts\n      With a lavish hand,\n    Numberless as are the stars,\n      Countless as the sand,\n    Will the race of man, content,\n    Cease to murmur and lament?\n\n    Nay, though God, all-bounteous, give\n      Gold at man's desire--\n    Honours, rank, and fame--content\n      Not a whit is nigher;\n    But an all-devouring greed\n    Yawns with ever-widening need.\n\n    Then what bounds can e'er restrain\n      This wild lust of having,\n    When with each new bounty fed\n      Grows the frantic craving?\n    He is never rich whose fear\n    Sees grim Want forever near.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\n'If Fortune should plead thus against thee, assuredly thou wouldst not\nhave one word to offer in reply; or, if thou canst find any\njustification of thy complainings, thou must show what it is. I will\ngive thee space to speak.'\n\nThen said I: 'Verily, thy pleas are plausible--yea, steeped in the\nhoneyed sweetness of music and rhetoric. But their charm lasts only\nwhile they are sounding in the ear; the sense of his misfortunes lies\ndeeper in the heart of the wretched. So, when the sound ceases to\nvibrate upon the air, the heart's indwelling sorrow is felt with renewed\nbitterness.'\n\nThen said she: 'It is indeed as thou sayest, for we have not yet come to\nthe curing of thy sickness; as yet these are but lenitives conducing to\nthe treatment of a malady hitherto obstinate. The remedies which go deep\nI will apply in due season. Nevertheless, to deprecate thy\ndetermination to be thought wretched, I ask thee, Hast thou forgotten\nthe extent and bounds of thy felicity? I say nothing of how, when\norphaned and desolate, thou wast taken into the care of illustrious men;\nhow thou wast chosen for alliance with the highest in the state--and\neven before thou wert bound to their house by marriage, wert already\ndear to their love--which is the most precious of all ties. Did not all\npronounce thee most happy in the virtues of thy wife, the splendid\nhonours of her father, and the blessing of male issue? I pass over--for\nI care not to speak of blessings in which others also have shared--the\ndistinctions often denied to age which thou enjoyedst in thy youth. I\nchoose rather to come to the unparalleled culmination of thy good\nfortune. If the fruition of any earthly success has weight in the scale\nof happiness, can the memory of that splendour be swept away by any\nrising flood of troubles? That day when thou didst see thy two sons ride\nforth from home joint consuls, followed by a train of senators, and\nwelcomed by the good-will of the people; when these two sat in curule\nchairs in the Senate-house, and thou by thy panegyric on the king didst\nearn the fame of eloquence and ability; when in the Circus, seated\nbetween the two consuls, thou didst glut the multitude thronging around\nwith the triumphal largesses for which they looked--methinks thou didst\ncozen Fortune while she caressed thee, and made thee her darling. Thou\ndidst bear off a boon which she had never before granted to any private\nperson. Art thou, then, minded to cast up a reckoning with Fortune? Now\nfor the first time she has turned a jealous glance upon thee. If thou\ncompare the extent and bounds of thy blessings and misfortunes, thou\ncanst not deny that thou art still fortunate. Or if thou esteem not\nthyself favoured by Fortune in that thy then seeming prosperity hath\ndeparted, deem not thyself wretched, since what thou now believest to be\ncalamitous passeth also. What! art thou but now come suddenly and a\nstranger to the scene of this life? Thinkest thou there is any stability\nin human affairs, when man himself vanishes away in the swift course of\ntime? It is true that there is little trust that the gifts of chance\nwill abide; yet the last day of life is in a manner the death of all\nremaining Fortune. What difference, then, thinkest thou, is there,\nwhether thou leavest her by dying, or she leave thee by fleeing away?'\n\n\n\nSONG III. ALL PASSES.\n\n\n    When, in rosy chariot drawn,\n    Phoebus 'gins to light the dawn,\n    By his flaming beams assailed,\n    Every glimmering star is paled.\n    When the grove, by Zephyrs fed,\n    With rose-blossom blushes red;--\n    Doth rude Auster breathe thereon,\n    Bare it stands, its glory gone.\n    Smooth and tranquil lies the deep\n    While the winds are hushed in sleep.\n    Soon, when angry tempests lash,\n    Wild and high the billows dash.\n    Thus if Nature's changing face\n    Holds not still a moment's space,\n    Fleeting deem man's fortunes; deem\n    Bliss as transient as a dream.\n    One law only standeth fast:\n    Things created may not last.\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nThen said I: 'True are thine admonishings, thou nurse of all excellence;\nnor can I deny the wonder of my fortune's swift career. Yet it is this\nwhich chafes me the more cruelly in the recalling. For truly in adverse\nfortune the worst sting of misery is to _have been_ happy.'\n\n'Well,' said she, 'if thou art paying the penalty of a mistaken belief,\nthou canst not rightly impute the fault to circumstances. If it is the\nfelicity which Fortune gives that moves thee--mere name though it\nbe--come reckon up with me how rich thou art in the number and\nweightiness of thy blessings. Then if, by the blessing of Providence,\nthou hast still preserved unto thee safe and inviolate that which,\nhowsoever thou mightest reckon thy fortune, thou wouldst have thought\nthy most precious possession, what right hast thou to talk of\nill-fortune whilst keeping all Fortune's better gifts? Yet Symmachus,\nthy wife's father--a man whose splendid character does honour to the\nhuman race--is safe and unharmed; and while he bewails thy wrongs, this\nrare nature, in whom wisdom and virtue are so nobly blended, is himself\nout of danger--a boon thou wouldst have been quick to purchase at the\nprice of life itself. Thy wife yet lives, with her gentle disposition,\nher peerless modesty and virtue--this the epitome of all her graces,\nthat she is the true daughter of her sire--she lives, I say, and for thy\nsake only preserves the breath of life, though she loathes it, and pines\naway in grief and tears for thy absence, wherein, if in naught else, I\nwould allow some marring of thy felicity. What shall I say of thy sons\nand their consular dignity--how in them, so far as may be in youths of\ntheir age, the example of their father's and grandfather's character\nshines out? Since, then, the chief care of mortal man is to preserve his\nlife, how happy art thou, couldst thou but recognise thy blessings, who\npossessest even now what no one doubts to be dearer than life!\nWherefore, now dry thy tears. Fortune's hate hath not involved all thy\ndear ones; the stress of the storm that has assailed thee is not beyond\nmeasure intolerable, since there are anchors still holding firm which\nsuffer thee not to lack either consolation in the present or hope for\nthe future.'\n\n'I pray that they still may hold. For while they still remain, however\nthings may go, I shall ride out the storm. Yet thou seest how much is\nshorn of the splendour of my fortunes.'\n\n'We are gaining a little ground,' said she, 'if there is something in\nthy lot wherewith thou art not yet altogether discontented. But I cannot\nstomach thy daintiness when thou complainest with such violence of grief\nand anxiety because thy happiness falls short of completeness. Why, who\nenjoys such settled felicity as not to have some quarrel with the\ncircumstances of his lot? A troublous matter are the conditions of human\nbliss; either they are never realized in full, or never stay\npermanently. One has abundant riches, but is shamed by his ignoble\nbirth. Another is conspicuous for his nobility, but through the\nembarrassments of poverty would prefer to be obscure. A third, richly\nendowed with both, laments the loneliness of an unwedded life. Another,\nthough happily married, is doomed to childlessness, and nurses his\nwealth for a stranger to inherit. Yet another, blest with children,\nmournfully bewails the misdeeds of son or daughter. Wherefore, it is not\neasy for anyone to be at perfect peace with the circumstances of his\nlot. There lurks in each several portion something which they who\nexperience it not know nothing of, but which makes the sufferer wince.\nBesides, the more favoured a man is by Fortune, the more fastidiously\nsensitive is he; and, unless all things answer to his whim, he is\noverwhelmed by the most trifling misfortunes, because utterly unschooled\nin adversity. So petty are the trifles which rob the most fortunate of\nperfect happiness! How many are there, dost thou imagine, who would\nthink themselves nigh heaven, if but a small portion from the wreck of\nthy fortune should fall to them? This very place which thou callest\nexile is to them that dwell therein their native land. So true is it\nthat nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so, and conversely every\nlot is happy if borne with equanimity. Who is so blest by Fortune as not\nto wish to change his state, if once he gives rein to a rebellious\nspirit? With how many bitternesses is the sweetness of human felicity\nblent! And even if that sweetness seem to him to bring delight in the\nenjoying, yet he cannot keep it from departing when it will. How\nmanifestly wretched, then, is the bliss of earthly fortune, which lasts\nnot for ever with those whose temper is equable, and can give no perfect\nsatisfaction to the anxious-minded!\n\n'Why, then, ye children of mortality, seek ye from without that\nhappiness whose seat is only within us? Error and ignorance bewilder\nyou. I will show thee, in brief, the hinge on which perfect happiness\nturns. Is there anything more precious to thee than thyself? Nothing,\nthou wilt say. If, then, thou art master of thyself, thou wilt possess\nthat which thou wilt never be willing to lose, and which Fortune cannot\ntake from thee. And that thou mayst see that happiness cannot possibly\nconsist in these things which are the sport of chance, reflect that, if\nhappiness is the highest good of a creature living in accordance with\nreason, and if a thing which can in any wise be reft away is not the\nhighest good, since that which cannot be taken away is better than it,\nit is plain that Fortune cannot aspire to bestow happiness by reason of\nits instability. And, besides, a man borne along by this transitory\nfelicity must either know or not know its unstability. If he knows not,\nhow poor is a happiness which depends on the blindness of ignorance! If\nhe knows it, he needs must fear to lose a happiness whose loss he\nbelieves to be possible. Wherefore, a never-ceasing fear suffers him not\nto be happy. Or does he count the possibility of this loss a trifling\nmatter? Insignificant, then, must be the good whose loss can be borne so\nequably. And, further, I know thee to be one settled in the belief that\nthe souls of men certainly die not with them, and convinced thereof by\nnumerous proofs; it is clear also that the felicity which Fortune\nbestows is brought to an end with the death of the body: therefore, it\ncannot be doubted but that, if happiness is conferred in this way, the\nwhole human race sinks into misery when death brings the close of all.\nBut if we know that many have sought the joy of happiness not through\ndeath only, but also through pain and suffering, how can life make men\nhappy by its presence when it makes them not wretched by its loss?'\n\n\n\nSONG IV. THE GOLDEN MEAN.\n\n\n    Who founded firm and sure\n    Would ever live secure,\n    In spite of storm and blast\n    Immovable and fast;\n    Whoso would fain deride\n    The ocean's threatening tide;--\n    His dwelling should not seek\n    On sands or mountain-peak.\n    Upon the mountain's height\n    The storm-winds wreak their spite:\n    The shifting sands disdain\n    Their burden to sustain.\n    Do thou these perils flee,\n    Fair though the prospect be,\n    And fix thy resting-place\n    On some low rock's sure base.\n    Then, though the tempests roar,\n    Seas thunder on the shore,\n    Thou in thy stronghold blest\n    And undisturbed shalt rest;\n    Live all thy days serene,\n    And mock the heavens' spleen.\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\n'But since my reasonings begin to work a soothing effect within thy\nmind, methinks I may resort to remedies somewhat stronger. Come,\nsuppose, now, the gifts of Fortune were not fleeting and transitory,\nwhat is there in them capable of ever becoming truly thine, or which\ndoes not lose value when looked at steadily and fairly weighed in the\nbalance? Are riches, I pray thee, precious either through thy nature or\nin their own? What are they but mere gold and heaps of money? Yet these\nfine things show their quality better in the spending than in the\nhoarding; for I suppose 'tis plain that greed Alva's makes men hateful,\nwhile liberality brings fame. But that which is transferred to another\ncannot remain in one's own possession; and if that be so, then money is\nonly precious when it is given away, and, by being transferred to\nothers, ceases to be one's own. Again, if all the money in the world\nwere heaped up in one man's possession, all others would be made poor.\nSound fills the ears of many at the same time without being broken into\nparts, but your riches cannot pass to many without being lessened in the\nprocess. And when this happens, they must needs impoverish those whom\nthey leave. How poor and cramped a thing, then, is riches, which more\nthan one cannot possess as an unbroken whole, which falls not to any one\nman's lot without the impoverishment of everyone else! Or is it the\nglitter of gems that allures the eye? Yet, how rarely excellent soever\nmay be their splendour, remember the flashing light is in the jewels,\nnot in the man. Indeed, I greatly marvel at men's admiration of them;\nfor what can rightly seem beautiful to a being endowed with life and\nreason, if it lack the movement and structure of life? And although such\nthings do in the end take on them more beauty from their Maker's care\nand their own brilliancy, still they in no wise merit your admiration\nsince their excellence is set at a lower grade than your own.\n\n'Does the beauty of the fields delight you? Surely, yes; it is a\nbeautiful part of a right beautiful whole. Fitly indeed do we at times\nenjoy the serene calm of the sea, admire the sky, the stars, the moon,\nthe sun. Yet is any of these thy concern? Dost thou venture to boast\nthyself of the beauty of any one of them? Art _thou_ decked with\nspring's flowers? is it _thy_ fertility that swelleth in the fruits of\nautumn? Why art thou moved with empty transports? why embracest thou an\nalien excellence as thine own? Never will fortune make thine that which\nthe nature of things has excluded from thy ownership. Doubtless the\nfruits of the earth are given for the sustenance of living creatures.\nBut if thou art content to supply thy wants so far as suffices nature,\nthere is no need to resort to fortune's bounty. Nature is content with\nfew things, and with a very little of these. If thou art minded to force\nsuperfluities upon her when she is satisfied, that which thou addest\nwill prove either unpleasant or harmful. But, now, thou thinkest it\nfine to shine in raiment of divers colours; yet--if, indeed, there is\nany pleasure in the sight of such things--it is the texture or the\nartist's skill which I shall admire.\n\n'Or perhaps it is a long train of servants that makes thee happy? Why,\nif they behave viciously, they are a ruinous burden to thy house, and\nexceeding dangerous to their own master; while if they are honest, how\ncanst thou count other men's virtue in the sum of thy possessions? From\nall which 'tis plainly proved that not one of these things which thou\nreckonest in the number of thy possessions is really thine. And if there\nis in them no beauty to be desired, why shouldst thou either grieve for\ntheir loss or find joy in their continued possession? While if they are\nbeautiful in their own nature, what is that to thee? They would have\nbeen not less pleasing in themselves, though never included among thy\npossessions. For they derive not their preciousness from being counted\nin thy riches, but rather thou hast chosen to count them in thy riches\nbecause they seemed to thee precious.\n\n'Then, what seek ye by all this noisy outcry about fortune? To chase\naway poverty, I ween, by means of abundance. And yet ye find the result\njust contrary. Why, this varied array of precious furniture needs more\naccessories for its protection; it is a true saying that they want most\nwho possess most, and, conversely, they want very little who measure\ntheir abundance by nature's requirements, not by the superfluity of vain\ndisplay. Have ye no good of your own implanted within you, that ye seek\nyour good in things external and separate? Is the nature of things so\nreversed that a creature divine by right of reason can in no other way\nbe splendid in his own eyes save by the possession of lifeless chattels?\nYet, while other things are content with their own, ye who in your\nintellect are God-like seek from the lowest of things adornment for a\nnature of supreme excellence, and perceive not how great a wrong ye do\nyour Maker. His will was that mankind should excel all things on earth.\nYe thrust down your worth beneath the lowest of things. For if that in\nwhich each thing finds its good is plainly more precious than that whose\ngood it is, by your own estimation ye put yourselves below the vilest of\nthings, when ye deem these vile things to be your good: nor does this\nfall out undeservedly. Indeed, man is so constituted that he then only\nexcels other things when he knows himself; but he is brought lower than\nthe beasts if he lose this self-knowledge. For that other creatures\nshould be ignorant of themselves is natural; in man it shows as a\ndefect. How extravagant, then, is this error of yours, in thinking that\nanything can be embellished by adornments not its own. It cannot be. For\nif such accessories add any lustre, it is the accessories that get the\npraise, while that which they veil and cover remains in its pristine\nugliness. And again I say, That is no _good_, which injures its\npossessor. Is this untrue? No, quite true, thou sayest. And yet riches\nhave often hurt those that possessed them, since the worst of men, who\nare all the more covetous by reason of their wickedness, think none but\nthemselves worthy to possess all the gold and gems the world contains.\nSo thou, who now dreadest pike and sword, mightest have trolled a carol\n\"in the robber's face,\" hadst thou entered the road of life with empty\npockets. Oh, wondrous blessedness of perishable wealth, whose\nacquisition robs thee of security!'\n\n\n\nSONG V. THE FORMER AGE.\n\n\n    Too blest the former age, their life\n      Who in the fields contented led,\n    And still, by luxury unspoiled,\n      On frugal acorns sparely fed.\n\n    No skill was theirs the luscious grape\n      With honey's sweetness to confuse;\n    Nor China's soft and sheeny silks\n      T' empurple with brave Tyrian hues.\n\n    The grass their wholesome couch, their drink\n      The stream, their roof the pine's tall shade;\n    Not theirs to cleave the deep, nor seek\n      In strange far lands the spoils of trade.\n\n    The trump of war was heard not yet,\n      Nor soiled the fields by bloodshed's stain;\n    For why should war's fierce madness arm\n      When strife brought wound, but brought not gain?\n\n    Ah! would our hearts might still return\n      To following in those ancient ways.\n    Alas! the greed of getting glows\n      More fierce than Etna's fiery blaze.\n\n    Woe, woe for him, whoe'er it was,\n      Who first gold's hidden store revealed,\n    And--perilous treasure-trove--dug out\n      The gems that fain would be concealed!\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\n'What now shall I say of rank and power, whereby, because ye know not\ntrue power and dignity, ye hope to reach the sky? Yet, when rank and\npower have fallen to the worst of men, did ever an Etna, belching forth\nflame and fiery deluge, work such mischief? Verily, as I think, thou\ndost remember how thine ancestors sought to abolish the consular power,\nwhich had been the foundation of their liberties, on account of the\noverweening pride of the consuls, and how for that self-same pride they\nhad already abolished the kingly title! And if, as happens but rarely,\nthese prerogatives are conferred on virtuous men, it is only the virtue\nof those who exercise them that pleases. So it appears that honour\ncometh not to virtue from rank, but to rank from virtue. Look, too, at\nthe nature of that power which ye find so attractive and glorious! Do ye\nnever consider, ye creatures of earth, what ye are, and over whom ye\nexercise your fancied lordship? Suppose, now, that in the mouse tribe\nthere should rise up one claiming rights and powers for himself above\nthe rest, would ye not laugh consumedly? Yet if thou lookest to his body\nalone, what creature canst thou find more feeble than man, who\noftentimes is killed by the bite of a fly, or by some insect creeping\ninto the inner passage of his system! Yet what rights can one exercise\nover another, save only as regards the body, and that which is lower\nthan the body--I mean fortune? What! wilt thou bind with thy mandates\nthe free spirit? Canst thou force from its due tranquillity the mind\nthat is firmly composed by reason? A tyrant thought to drive a man of\nfree birth to reveal his accomplices in a conspiracy, but the prisoner\nbit off his tongue and threw it into the furious tyrant's face; thus,\nthe tortures which the tyrant thought the instrument of his cruelty the\nsage made an opportunity for heroism. Moreover, what is there that one\nman can do to another which he himself may not have to undergo in his\nturn? We are told that Busiris, who used to kill his guests, was himself\nslain by his guest, Hercules. Regulus had thrown into bonds many of the\nCarthaginians whom he had taken in war; soon after he himself submitted\nhis hands to the chains of the vanquished. Then, thinkest thou that man\nhath any power who cannot prevent another's being able to do to him what\nhe himself can do to others?\n\n'Besides, if there were any element of natural and proper good in rank\nand power, they would never come to the utterly bad, since opposites are\nnot wont to be associated. Nature brooks not the union of contraries.\nSo, seeing there is no doubt that wicked wretches are oftentimes set in\nhigh places, it is also clear that things which suffer association with\nthe worst of men cannot be good in their own nature. Indeed, this\njudgment may with some reason be passed concerning all the gifts of\nfortune which fall so plentifully to all the most wicked. This ought\nalso to be considered here, I think: No one doubts a man to be brave in\nwhom he has observed a brave spirit residing. It is plain that one who\nis endowed with speed is swift-footed. So also music makes men musical,\nthe healing art physicians, rhetoric public speakers. For each of these\nhas naturally its own proper working; there is no confusion with the\neffects of contrary things--nay, even of itself it rejects what is\nincompatible. And yet wealth cannot extinguish insatiable greed, nor has\npower ever made him master of himself whom vicious lusts kept bound in\nindissoluble fetters; dignity conferred on the wicked not only fails to\nmake them worthy, but contrarily reveals and displays their\nunworthiness. Why does it so happen? Because ye take pleasure in calling\nby false names things whose nature is quite incongruous thereto--by\nnames which are easily proved false by the very effects of the things\nthemselves; even so it is; these riches, that power, this dignity, are\nnone of them rightly so called. Finally, we may draw the same conclusion\nconcerning the whole sphere of Fortune, within which there is plainly\nnothing to be truly desired, nothing of intrinsic excellence; for she\nneither always joins herself to the good, nor does she make good men of\nthose to whom she is united.'\n\n\n\nSONG VI. NERO'S INFAMY.\n\n\n    We know what mischief dire he wrought--\n      Rome fired, the Fathers slain--\n    Whose hand with brother's slaughter wet\n      A mother's blood did stain.\n\n    No pitying tear his cheek bedewed,\n      As on the corse he gazed;\n    That mother's beauty, once so fair,\n      A critic's voice appraised.\n\n    Yet far and wide, from East to West,\n      His sway the nations own;\n    And scorching South and icy North\n      Obey his will alone.\n\n    Did, then, high power a curb impose\n      On Nero's phrenzied will?\n    Ah, woe when to the evil heart\n      Is joined the sword to kill!\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n\nThen said I: 'Thou knowest thyself that ambition for worldly success\nhath but little swayed me. Yet I have desired opportunity for action,\nlest virtue, in default of exercise, should languish away.'\n\nThen she: 'This is that \"last infirmity\" which is able to allure minds\nwhich, though of noble quality, have not yet been moulded to any\nexquisite refinement by the perfecting of the virtues--I mean, the love\nof glory--and fame for high services rendered to the commonweal. And yet\nconsider with me how poor and unsubstantial a thing this glory is! The\nwhole of this earth's globe, as thou hast learnt from the demonstration\nof astronomy, compared with the expanse of heaven, is found no bigger\nthan a point; that is to say, if measured by the vastness of heaven's\nsphere, it is held to occupy absolutely no space at all. Now, of this so\ninsignificant portion of the universe, it is about a fourth part, as\nPtolemy's proofs have taught us, which is inhabited by living creatures\nknown to us. If from this fourth part you take away in thought all that\nis usurped by seas and marshes, or lies a vast waste of waterless\ndesert, barely is an exceeding narrow area left for human habitation.\nYou, then, who are shut in and prisoned in this merest fraction of a\npoint's space, do ye take thought for the blazoning of your fame, for\nthe spreading abroad of your renown? Why, what amplitude or magnificence\nhas glory when confined to such narrow and petty limits?\n\n'Besides, the straitened bounds of this scant dwelling-place are\ninhabited by many nations differing widely in speech, in usages, in mode\nof life; to many of these, from the difficulty of travel, from\ndiversities of speech, from want of commercial intercourse, the fame not\nonly of individual men, but even of cities, is unable to reach. Why, in\nCicero's days, as he himself somewhere points out, the fame of the Roman\nRepublic had not yet crossed the Caucasus, and yet by that time her\nname had grown formidable to the Parthians and other nations of those\nparts. Seest thou, then, how narrow, how confined, is the glory ye take\npains to spread abroad and extend! Can the fame of a single Roman\npenetrate where the glory of the Roman name fails to pass? Moreover, the\ncustoms and institutions of different races agree not together, so that\nwhat is deemed praise worthy in one country is thought punishable in\nanother. Wherefore, if any love the applause of fame, it shall not\nprofit him to publish his name among many peoples. Then, each must be\ncontent to have the range of his glory limited to his own people; the\nsplendid immortality of fame must be confined within the bounds of a\nsingle race.\n\n'Once more, how many of high renown in their own times have been lost in\noblivion for want of a record! Indeed, of what avail are written records\neven, which, with their authors, are overtaken by the dimness of age\nafter a somewhat longer time? But ye, when ye think on future fame,\nfancy it an immortality that ye are begetting for yourselves. Why, if\nthou scannest the infinite spaces of eternity, what room hast thou left\nfor rejoicing in the durability of thy name? Verily, if a single\nmoment's space be compared with ten thousand years, it has a certain\nrelative duration, however little, since each period is definite. But\nthis same number of years--ay, and a number many times as great--cannot\neven be compared with endless duration; for, indeed, finite periods may\nin a sort be compared one with another, but a finite and an infinite\nnever. So it comes to pass that fame, though it extend to ever so wide a\nspace of years, if it be compared to never-lessening eternity, seems not\nshort-lived merely, but altogether nothing. But as for you, ye know not\nhow to act aright, unless it be to court the popular breeze, and win the\nempty applause of the multitude--nay, ye abandon the superlative worth\nof conscience and virtue, and ask a recompense from the poor words of\nothers. Let me tell thee how wittily one did mock the shallowness of\nthis sort of arrogance. A certain man assailed one who had put on the\nname of philosopher as a cloak to pride and vain-glory, not for the\npractice of real virtue, and added: \"Now shall I know if thou art a\nphilosopher if thou bearest reproaches calmly and patiently.\" The other\nfor awhile affected to be patient, and, having endured to be abused,\ncried out derisively: \"_Now_, do you see that I am a philosopher?\" The\nother, with biting sarcasm, retorted: \"I should have hadst thou held thy\npeace.\" Moreover, what concern have choice spirits--for it is of such\nmen we speak, men who seek glory by virtue--what concern, I say, have\nthese with fame after the dissolution of the body in death's last hour?\nFor if men die wholly--which our reasonings forbid us to believe--there\nis no such thing as glory at all, since he to whom the glory is said to\nbelong is altogether non-existent. But if the mind, conscious of its own\nrectitude, is released from its earthly prison, and seeks heaven in free\nflight, doth it not despise all earthly things when it rejoices in its\ndeliverance from earthly bonds, and enters upon the joys of heaven?'\n\n\n\nSONG VII. GLORY MAY NOT LAST.\n\n\n    Oh, let him, who pants for glory's guerdon,\n      Deeming glory all in all,\n    Look and see how wide the heaven expandeth,\n      Earth's enclosing bounds how small!\n\n    Shame it is, if your proud-swelling glory\n      May not fill this narrow room!\n    Why, then, strive so vainly, oh, ye proud ones!\n      To escape your mortal doom?\n\n    Though your name, to distant regions bruited,\n      O'er the earth be widely spread,\n    Though full many a lofty-sounding title\n      On your house its lustre shed,\n\n    Death at all this pomp and glory spurneth\n      When his hour draweth nigh,\n    Shrouds alike th' exalted and the humble,\n      Levels lowest and most high.\n\n    Where are now the bones of stanch Fabricius?\n      Brutus, Cato--where are they?\n    Lingering fame, with a few graven letters,\n      Doth their empty name display.\n\n    But to know the great dead is not given\n      From a gilded name alone;\n    Nay, ye all alike must lie forgotten,\n      'Tis not _you_ that fame makes known.\n\n    Fondly do ye deem life's little hour\n      Lengthened by fame's mortal breath;\n    There but waits you--when this, too, is taken--\n      At the last a second death.\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\n\n'But that thou mayst not think that I wage implacable warfare against\nFortune, I own there is a time when the deceitful goddess serves men\nwell--I mean when she reveals herself, uncovers her face, and confesses\nher true character. Perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning. Strange\nis the thing I am trying to express, and for this cause I can scarce\nfind words to make clear my thought. For truly I believe that Ill\nFortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune. For Good Fortune, when\nshe wears the guise of happiness, and most seems to caress, is always\nlying; Ill Fortune is always truthful, since, in changing, she shows her\ninconstancy. The one deceives, the other teaches; the one enchains the\nminds of those who enjoy her favour by the semblance of delusive good,\nthe other delivers them by the knowledge of the frail nature of\nhappiness. Accordingly, thou mayst see the one fickle, shifting as the\nbreeze, and ever self-deceived; the other sober-minded, alert, and wary,\nby reason of the very discipline of adversity. Finally, Good Fortune, by\nher allurements, draws men far from the true good; Ill Fortune ofttimes\ndraws men back to true good with grappling-irons. Again, should it be\nesteemed a trifling boon, thinkest thou, that this cruel, this odious\nFortune hath discovered to thee the hearts of thy faithful friends--that\nother hid from thee alike the faces of the true friends and of the\nfalse, but in departing she hath taken away _her_ friends, and left thee\n_thine_? What price wouldst thou not have given for this service in the\nfulness of thy prosperity when thou seemedst to thyself fortunate?\nCease, then, to seek the wealth thou hast lost, since in true friends\nthou hast found the most precious of all riches.'\n\n\n\nSONG VIII. LOVE IS LORD OF ALL.\n\n\n    Why are Nature's changes bound\n    To a fixed and ordered round?\n    What to leagued peace hath bent\n    Every warring element?\n    Wherefore doth the rosy morn\n    Rise on Phoebus' car upborne?\n    Why should Phoebe rule the night,\n    Led by Hesper's guiding light?\n    What the power that doth restrain\n    In his place the restless main,\n    That within fixed bounds he keeps,\n    Nor o'er earth in deluge sweeps?\n    Love it is that holds the chains,\n    Love o'er sea and earth that reigns;\n    Love--whom else but sovereign Love?--\n    Love, high lord in heaven above!\n    Yet should he his care remit,\n    All that now so close is knit\n    In sweet love and holy peace,\n    Would no more from conflict cease,\n    But with strife's rude shock and jar\n    All the world's fair fabric mar.\n\n    Tribes and nations Love unites\n    By just treaty's sacred rites;\n    Wedlock's bonds he sanctifies\n    By affection's softest ties.\n    Love appointeth, as is due,\n    Faithful laws to comrades true--\n    Love, all-sovereign Love!--oh, then,\n    Ye are blest, ye sons of men,\n    If the love that rules the sky\n    In your hearts is throned on high!\n\n\n\n</CHAPTER>\n\nBOOK III.\n\nTRUE HAPPINESS AND FALSE.\n\n\n     SUMMARY\n\n     CH. I. Boethius beseeches Philosophy to continue. She promises to\n     lead him to true happiness.--CH. II. Happiness is the one end which\n     all created beings seek. They aim variously at (_a_) wealth, or\n     (_b_) rank, or (_c_) sovereignty, or (_d_) glory, or (_e_)\n     pleasure, because they think thereby to attain either (_a_)\n     contentment, (_b_) reverence, (_c_) power, (_d_) renown, or (_e_)\n     gladness of heart, in one or other of which they severally imagine\n     happiness to consist.--CH. III. Philosophy proceeds to consider\n     whether happiness can really be secured in any of these ways, (_a_)\n     So far from bringing contentment, riches only add to men's\n     wants.--CH. IV. (_b_) High position cannot of itself win respect.\n     Titles command no reverence in distant and barbarous lands. They\n     even fall into contempt through lapse of time.--CH. V. (_c_)\n     Sovereignty cannot even bestow safety. History tells of the\n     downfall of kings and their ministers. Tyrants go in fear of their\n     lives. --CH. VI. (_d_) Fame conferred on the unworthy is but\n     disgrace. The splendour of noble birth is not a man's own, but his\n     ancestors'.--CH. VII. (_e_) Pleasure begins in the restlessness of\n     desire, and ends in repentance. Even the pure pleasures of home may\n     turn to gall and bitterness.--CH. VIII. All fail, then, to give\n     what they promise. There is, moreover, some accompanying evil\n     involved in each of these aims. Beauty and bodily strength are\n     likewise of little worth. In strength man is surpassed by the\n     brutes; beauty is but outward show.--CH. IX. The source of men's\n     error in following these phantoms of good is that _they break up\n     and separate that which is in its nature one and indivisible_.\n     Contentment, power, reverence, renown, and joy are essentially\n     bound up one with the other, and, if they are to be attained at\n     all, must be attained _together_. True happiness, if it can be\n     found, will include them all. But it cannot be found among the\n     perishable things hitherto considered.--CH. X. Such a happiness\n     necessarily exists. Its seat is in God. Nay, God is very happiness,\n     and in a manner, therefore, the happy man partakes also of the\n     Divine nature. All other ends are relative to this good, since they\n     are all pursued only for the sake of good; it is _good_ which is\n     the sole ultimate end. And since the sole end is also happiness, it\n     is plain that this good and happiness are in essence the same.--CH.\n     XI. Unity is another aspect of goodness. Now, all things subsist so\n     long only as they preserve the unity of their being; when they lose\n     this unity, they perish. But the bent of nature forces all things\n     (plants and inanimate things, as well as animals) to strive to\n     continue in life. Therefore, all things desire unity, for unity is\n     essential to life. But unity and goodness were shown to be the\n     same. Therefore, good is proved to be the end towards which the\n     whole universe tends.[E]--CH. XII. Boethius acknowledges that he is\n     but recollecting truths he once knew. Philosophy goes on to show\n     that it is goodness also by which the whole world is governed.[F]\n     Boethius professes compunction for his former folly. But the\n     paradox of evil is introduced, and he is once more perplexed.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[E] This solves the second of the points left in doubt at the end of bk.\ni., ch. vi.\n\n[F] This solves the third. No distinct account is given of the first,\nbut an answer may be gathered from the general argument of bks. ii.,\niii., and iv.\n\n\n\n\n<CHAPTER>\nBOOK III. I.\n\n\nShe ceased, but I stood fixed by the sweetness of the song in wonderment\nand eager expectation, my ears still strained to listen. And then after\na little I said: 'Thou sovereign solace of the stricken soul, what\nrefreshment hast thou brought me, no less by the sweetness of thy\nsinging than by the weightiness of thy discourse! Verily, I think not\nthat I shall hereafter be unequal to the blows of Fortune. Wherefore, I\nno longer dread the remedies which thou saidst were something too severe\nfor my strength; nay, rather, I am eager to hear of them and call for\nthem with all vehemence.'\n\nThen said she: 'I marked thee fastening upon my words silently and\nintently, and I expected, or--to speak more truly--I myself brought\nabout in thee, this state of mind. What now remains is of such sort that\nto the taste indeed it is biting, but when received within it turns to\nsweetness. But whereas thou dost profess thyself desirous of hearing,\nwith what ardour wouldst thou not burn didst thou but perceive whither\nit is my task to lead thee!'\n\n'Whither?' said I.\n\n'To true felicity,' said she, 'which even now thy spirit sees in dreams,\nbut cannot behold in very truth, while thine eyes are engrossed with\nsemblances.'\n\nThen said I: 'I beseech thee, do thou show to me her true shape without\na moment's loss.'\n\n'Gladly will I, for thy sake,' said she. 'But first I will try to sketch\nin words, and describe a cause which is more familiar to thee, that,\nwhen thou hast viewed this carefully, thou mayst turn thy eyes the other\nway, and recognise the beauty of true happiness.'\n\n\n\nSONG I. THE THORNS OF ERROR.\n\n\n    Who fain would sow the fallow field,\n      And see the growing corn,\n    Must first remove the useless weeds,\n      The bramble and the thorn.\n\n    After ill savour, honey's taste\n      Is to the mouth more sweet;\n    After the storm, the twinkling stars\n      The eyes more cheerly greet.\n\n    When night hath past, the bright dawn comes\n      In car of rosy hue;\n    So drive the false bliss from thy mind,\n      And thou shall see the true.\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nFor a little space she remained in a fixed gaze, withdrawn, as it were,\ninto the august chamber of her mind; then she thus began:\n\n'All mortal creatures in those anxious aims which find employment in so\nmany varied pursuits, though they take many paths, yet strive to reach\none goal--the goal of happiness. Now, _the good_ is that which, when a\nman hath got, he can lack nothing further. This it is which is the\nsupreme good of all, containing within itself all particular good; so\nthat if anything is still wanting thereto, this cannot be the supreme\ngood, since something would be left outside which might be desired. 'Tis\nclear, then, that happiness is a state perfected by the assembling\ntogether of all good things. To this state, as we have said, all men try\nto attain, but by different paths. For the desire of the true good is\nnaturally implanted in the minds of men; only error leads them aside out\nof the way in pursuit of the false. Some, deeming it the highest good to\nwant for nothing, spare no pains to attain affluence; others, judging\nthe good to be that to which respect is most worthily paid, strive to\nwin the reverence of their fellow-citizens by the attainment of official\ndignity. Some there are who fix the chief good in supreme power; these\neither wish themselves to enjoy sovereignty, or try to attach themselves\nto those who have it. Those, again, who think renown to be something of\nsupreme excellence are in haste to spread abroad the glory of their name\neither through the arts of war or of peace. A great many measure the\nattainment of good by joy and gladness of heart; these think it the\nheight of happiness to give themselves over to pleasure. Others there\nare, again, who interchange the ends and means one with the other in\ntheir aims; for instance, some want riches for the sake of pleasure and\npower, some covet power either for the sake of money or in order to\nbring renown to their name. So it is on these ends, then, that the aim\nof human acts and wishes is centred, and on others like to these--for\ninstance, noble birth and popularity, which seem to compass a certain\nrenown; wife and children, which are sought for the sweetness of their\npossession; while as for friendship, the most sacred kind indeed is\ncounted in the category of virtue, not of fortune; but other kinds are\nentered upon for the sake of power or of enjoyment. And as for bodily\nexcellences, it is obvious that they are to be ranged with the above.\nFor strength and stature surely manifest power; beauty and fleetness of\nfoot bring celebrity; health brings pleasure. It is plain, then, that\nthe only object sought for in all these ways is _happiness_. For that\nwhich each seeks in preference to all else, that is in his judgment the\nsupreme good. And we have defined the supreme good to be happiness.\nTherefore, that state which each wishes in preference to all others is\nin his judgment happy.\n\n'Thou hast, then, set before thine eyes something like a scheme of human\nhappiness--wealth, rank, power, glory, pleasure. Now Epicurus, from a\nsole regard to these considerations, with some consistency concluded the\nhighest good to be pleasure, because all the other objects seem to bring\nsome delight to the soul. But to return to human pursuits and aims:\nman's mind seeks to recover its proper good, in spite of the mistiness\nof its recollection, but, like a drunken man, knows not by what path to\nreturn home. Think you they are wrong who strive to escape want? Nay,\ntruly there is nothing which can so well complete happiness as a state\nabounding in all good things, needing nothing from outside, but wholly\nself-sufficing. Do they fall into error who deem that which is best to\nbe also best deserving to receive the homage of reverence? Not at all.\nThat cannot possibly be vile and contemptible, to attain which the\nendeavours of nearly all mankind are directed. Then, is power not to be\nreckoned in the category of good? Why, can that which is plainly more\nefficacious than anything else be esteemed a thing feeble and void of\nstrength? Or is renown to be thought of no account? Nay, it cannot be\nignored that the highest renown is constantly associated with the\nhighest excellence. And what need is there to say that happiness is not\nhaunted by care and gloom, nor exposed to trouble and vexation, since\nthat is a condition we ask of the very least of things, from the\npossession and enjoyment of which we expect delight? So, then, these are\nthe blessings men wish to win; they want riches, rank, sovereignty,\nglory, pleasure, because they believe that by these means they will\nsecure independence, reverence, power, renown, and joy of heart.\nTherefore, it is _the good_ which men seek by such divers courses; and\nherein is easily shown the might of Nature's power, since, although\nopinions are so various and discordant, yet they agree in cherishing\n_good_ as the end.'\n\n\n\nSONG II. THE BENT OF NATURE.\n\n\n    How the might of Nature sways\n    All the world in ordered ways,\n    How resistless laws control\n    Each least portion of the whole--\n    Fain would I in sounding verse\n    On my pliant strings rehearse.\n\n    Lo, the lion captive ta'en\n    Meekly wears his gilded chain;\n    Yet though he by hand be fed,\n    Though a master's whip he dread,\n    If but once the taste of gore\n    Whet his cruel lips once more,\n    Straight his slumbering fierceness wakes,\n    With one roar his bonds he breaks,\n    And first wreaks his vengeful force\n    On his trainer's mangled corse.\n\n    And the woodland songster, pent\n    In forlorn imprisonment,\n    Though a mistress' lavish care\n    Store of honeyed sweets prepare;\n    Yet, if in his narrow cage,\n    As he hops from bar to bar,\n    He should spy the woods afar,\n    Cool with sheltering foliage,\n    All these dainties he will spurn,\n    To the woods his heart will turn;\n    Only for the woods he longs,\n    Pipes the woods in all his songs.\n\n    To rude force the sapling bends,\n    While the hand its pressure lends;\n    If the hand its pressure slack,\n    Straight the supple wood springs back.\n    Phoebus in the western main\n    Sinks; but swift his car again\n    By a secret path is borne\n    To the wonted gates of morn.\n\n    Thus are all things seen to yearn\n    In due time for due return;\n    And no order fixed may stay,\n    Save which in th' appointed way\n    Joins the end to the beginning\n    In a steady cycle spinning.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\n'Ye, too, creatures of earth, have some glimmering of your origin,\nhowever faint, and though in a vision dim and clouded, yet in some wise,\nnotwithstanding, ye discern the true end of happiness, and so the aim of\nnature leads you thither--to that true good--while error in many forms\nleads you astray therefrom. For reflect whether men are able to win\nhappiness by those means through which they think to reach the proposed\nend. Truly, if either wealth, rank, or any of the rest, bring with them\nanything of such sort as seems to have nothing wanting to it that is\ngood, we, too, acknowledge that some are made happy by the acquisition\nof these things. But if they are not able to fulfil their promises, and,\nmoreover, lack many good things, is not the happiness men seek in them\nclearly discovered to be a false show? Therefore do I first ask thee\nthyself, who but lately wert living in affluence, amid all that\nabundance of wealth, was thy mind never troubled in consequence of some\nwrong done to thee?'\n\n'Nay,' said I, 'I cannot ever remember a time when my mind was so\ncompletely at peace as not to feel the pang of some uneasiness.'\n\n'Was it not because either something was absent which thou wouldst not\nhave absent, or present which thou wouldst have away?'\n\n'Yes,' said I.\n\n'Then, thou didst want the presence of the one, the absence of the\nother?'\n\n'Admitted.'\n\n'But a man lacks that of which he is in want?'\n\n'He does.'\n\n'And he who lacks something is not in all points self-sufficing?'\n\n'No; certainly not,' said I.\n\n'So wert thou, then, in the plenitude of thy wealth, supporting this\ninsufficiency?'\n\n'I must have been.'\n\n'Wealth, then, cannot make its possessor independent and free from all\nwant, yet this was what it seemed to promise. Moreover, I think this\nalso well deserves to be considered--that there is nothing in the\nspecial nature of money to hinder its being taken away from those who\npossess it against their will.'\n\n'I admit it.'\n\n'Why, of course, when every day the stronger wrests it from the weaker\nwithout his consent. Else, whence come lawsuits, except in seeking to\nrecover moneys which have been taken away against their owner's will by\nforce or fraud?'\n\n'True,' said I.\n\n'Then, everyone will need some extraneous means of protection to keep\nhis money safe.'\n\n'Who can venture to deny it?'\n\n'Yet he would not, unless he possessed the money which it is possible to\nlose.'\n\n'No; he certainly would not.'\n\n'Then, we have worked round to an opposite conclusion: the wealth which\nwas thought to make a man independent rather puts him in need of further\nprotection. How in the world, then, can want be driven away by riches?\nCannot the rich feel hunger? Cannot they thirst? Are not the limbs of\nthe wealthy sensitive to the winter's cold? \"But,\" thou wilt say, \"the\nrich have the wherewithal to sate their hunger, the means to get rid of\nthirst and cold.\" True enough; want can thus be soothed by riches,\nwholly removed it cannot be. For if this ever-gaping, ever-craving want\nis glutted by wealth, it needs must be that the want itself which can be\nso glutted still remains. I do not speak of how very little suffices for\nnature, and how for avarice nothing is enough. Wherefore, if wealth\ncannot get rid of want, and makes new wants of its own, how can ye\nbelieve that it bestows independence?'\n\n\n\nSONG III. THE INSATIABLENESS OF AVARICE.\n\n\n    Though the covetous grown wealthy\n      See his piles of gold rise high;\n    Though he gather store of treasure\n      That can never satisfy;\n    Though with pearls his gorget blazes,\n      Rarest that the ocean yields;\n    Though a hundred head of oxen\n      Travail in his ample fields;\n    Ne'er shall carking care forsake him\n      While he draws this vital breath,\n    And his riches go not with him,\n      When his eyes are closed in death.\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\n'Well, but official dignity clothes him to whom it comes with honour and\nreverence! Have, then, offices of state such power as to plant virtue in\nthe minds of their possessors, and drive out vice? Nay, they are rather\nwont to signalize iniquity than to chase it away, and hence arises our\nindignation that honours so often fall to the most iniquitous of men.\nAccordingly, Catullus calls Nonius an \"ulcer-spot,\" though \"sitting in\nthe curule chair.\" Dost not see what infamy high position brings upon\nthe bad? Surely their unworthiness will be less conspicuous if their\nrank does not draw upon them the public notice! In thy own case, wouldst\nthou ever have been induced by all these perils to think of sharing\noffice with Decoratus, since thou hast discerned in him the spirit of a\nrascally parasite and informer? No; we cannot deem men worthy of\nreverence on account of their office, whom we deem unworthy of the\noffice itself. But didst thou see a man endued with wisdom, couldst thou\nsuppose him not worthy of reverence, nor of that wisdom with which he\nwas endued?'\n\n'No; certainly not.'\n\n'There is in Virtue a dignity of her own which she forthwith passes over\nto those to whom she is united. And since public honours cannot do this,\nit is clear that they do not possess the true beauty of dignity. And\nhere this well deserves to be noticed--that if a man is the more scorned\nin proportion as he is despised by a greater number, high position not\nonly fails to win reverence for the wicked, but even loads them the more\nwith contempt by drawing more attention to them. But not without\nretribution; for the wicked pay back a return in kind to the dignities\nthey put on by the pollution of their touch. Perhaps, too, another\nconsideration may teach thee to confess that true reverence cannot come\nthrough these counterfeit dignities. It is this: If one who had been\nmany times consul chanced to visit barbaric lands, would his office win\nhim the reverence of the barbarians? And yet if reverence were the\nnatural effect of dignities, they would not forego their proper function\nin any part of the world, even as fire never anywhere fails to give\nforth heat. But since this effect is not due to their own efficacy, but\nis attached to them by the mistaken opinion of mankind, they disappear\nstraightway when they are set before those who do not esteem them\ndignities. Thus the case stands with foreign peoples. But does their\nrepute last for ever, even in the land of their origin? Why, the\nprefecture, which was once a great power, is now an empty name--a burden\nmerely on the senator's fortune; the commissioner of the public corn\nsupply was once a personage--now what is more contemptible than this\noffice? For, as we said just now, that which hath no true comeliness of\nits own now receives, now loses, lustre at the caprice of those who have\nto do with it. So, then, if dignities cannot win men reverence, if they\nare actually sullied by the contamination of the wicked, if they lose\ntheir splendour through time's changes, if they come into contempt\nmerely for lack of public estimation, what precious beauty have they in\nthemselves, much less to give to others?'\n\n\n\nSONG IV. DISGRACE OF HONOURS CONFERRED BY A TYRANT.\n\n\n    Though royal purple soothes his pride,\n      And snowy pearls his neck adorn,\n    Nero in all his riot lives\n      The mark of universal scorn.\n\n    Yet he on reverend heads conferred\n      Th' inglorious honours of the state.\n    Shall we, then, deem them truly blessed\n      Whom such preferment hath made great?\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\n'Well, then, does sovereignty and the intimacy of kings prove able to\nconfer power? Why, surely does not the happiness of kings endure for\never? And yet antiquity is full of examples, and these days also, of\nkings whose happiness has turned into calamity. How glorious a power,\nwhich is not even found effectual for its own preservation! But if\nhappiness has its source in sovereign power, is not happiness\ndiminished, and misery inflicted in its stead, in so far as that power\nfalls short of completeness? Yet, however widely human sovereignty be\nextended, there must still be more peoples left, over whom each several\nking holds no sway. Now, at whatever point the power on which happiness\ndepends ceases, here powerlessness steals in and makes wretchedness; so,\nby this way of reckoning, there must needs be a balance of wretchedness\nin the lot of the king. The tyrant who had made trial of the perils of\nhis condition figured the fears that haunt a throne under the image of a\nsword hanging over a man's head.[G] What sort of power, then, is this\nwhich cannot drive away the gnawings of anxiety, or shun the stings of\nterror? Fain would they themselves have lived secure, but they cannot;\nthen they boast about their power! Dost thou count him to possess power\nwhom thou seest to wish what he cannot bring to pass? Dost thou count\nhim to possess power who encompasses himself with a body-guard, who\nfears those he terrifies more than they fear him, who, to keep up the\nsemblance of power, is himself at the mercy of his slaves? Need I say\nanything of the friends of kings, when I show royal dominion itself so\nutterly and miserably weak--why ofttimes the royal power in its\nplenitude brings them low, ofttimes involves them in its fall? Nero\ndrove his friend and preceptor, Seneca, to the choice of the manner of\nhis death. Antoninus exposed Papinianus, who was long powerful at\ncourt, to the swords of the soldiery. Yet each of these was willing to\nrenounce his power. Seneca tried to surrender his wealth also to Nero,\nand go into retirement; but neither achieved his purpose. When they\ntottered, their very greatness dragged them down. What manner of thing,\nthen, is this power which keeps men in fear while they possess it--which\nwhen thou art fain to keep, thou art not safe, and when thou desirest to\nlay it aside thou canst not rid thyself of? Are friends any protection\nwho have been attached by fortune, not by virtue? Nay; him whom good\nfortune has made a friend, ill fortune will make an enemy. And what\nplague is more effectual to do hurt than a foe of one's own household?'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[G] The sword of Damocles.\n\n\nSONG V. SELF-MASTERY.\n\n\n    Who on power sets his aim,\n    First must his own spirit tame;\n    He must shun his neck to thrust\n    'Neath th' unholy yoke of lust.\n    For, though India's far-off land\n    Bow before his wide command,\n    Utmost Thule homage pay--\n    If he cannot drive away\n    Haunting care and black distress,\n    In his power, he's powerless.\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\n'Again, how misleading, how base, a thing ofttimes is glory! Well does\nthe tragic poet exclaim:\n\n    '\"Oh, fond Repute, how many a time and oft\n    Hast them raised high in pride the base-born churl!\"\n\nFor many have won a great name through the mistaken beliefs of the\nmultitude--and what can be imagined more shameful than that? Nay, they\nwho are praised falsely must needs themselves blush at their own\npraises! And even when praise is won by merit, still, how does it add to\nthe good conscience of the wise man who measures his good not by popular\nrepute, but by the truth of inner conviction? And if at all it does seem\na fair thing to get this same renown spread abroad, it follows that any\nfailure so to spread it is held foul. But if, as I set forth but now,\nthere must needs be many tribes and peoples whom the fame of any single\nman cannot reach, it follows that he whom thou esteemest glorious seems\nall inglorious in a neighbouring quarter of the globe. As to popular\nfavour, I do not think it even worthy of mention in this place, since it\nnever cometh of judgment, and never lasteth steadily.\n\n'Then, again, who does not see how empty, how foolish, is the fame of\nnoble birth? Why, if the nobility is based on renown, the renown is\nanother's! For, truly, nobility seems to be a sort of reputation coming\nfrom the merits of ancestors. But if it is the praise which brings\nrenown, of necessity it is they who are praised that are famous.\nWherefore, the fame of another clothes thee not with splendour if thou\nhast none of thine own. So, if there is any excellence in nobility of\nbirth, methinks it is this alone--that it would seem to impose upon the\nnobly born the obligation not to degenerate from the virtue of their\nancestors.'\n\n\n\nSONG VI. TRUE NOBILITY.\n\n\n    All men are of one kindred stock, though scattered far and wide;\n    For one is Father of us all--one doth for all provide.\n    He gave the sun his golden beams, the moon her silver horn;\n    He set mankind upon the earth, as stars the heavens adorn.\n    He shut a soul--a heaven-born soul--within the body's frame;\n    The noble origin he gave each mortal wight may claim.\n    Why boast ye, then, so loud of race and high ancestral line?\n    If ye behold your being's source, and God's supreme design,\n    None is degenerate, none base, unless by taint of sin\n    And cherished vice he foully stain his heavenly origin.\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n\n'Then, what shall I say of the pleasures of the body? The lust thereof\nis full of uneasiness; the sating, of repentance. What sicknesses, what\nintolerable pains, are they wont to bring on the bodies of those who\nenjoy them--the fruits of iniquity, as it were! Now, what sweetness the\nstimulus of pleasure may have I do not know. But that the issues of\npleasure are painful everyone may understand who chooses to recall the\nmemory of his own fleshly lusts. Nay, if these can make happiness, there\nis no reason why the beasts also should not be happy, since all their\nefforts are eagerly set upon satisfying the bodily wants. I know,\nindeed, that the sweetness of wife and children should be right comely,\nyet only too true to nature is what was said of one--that he found in\nhis sons his tormentors. And how galling such a contingency would be, I\nmust needs put thee in mind, since thou hast never in any wise suffered\nsuch experiences, nor art thou now under any uneasiness. In such a case,\nI agree with my servant Euripides, who said that a man without children\nwas fortunate in his misfortune.'[H]\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[H] Paley translates the lines in Euripides' 'Andromache': 'They [the\nchildless] are indeed spared from much pain and sorrow, but their\nsupposed happiness is after all but wretchedness.' Euripides' meaning is\ntherefore really just the reverse of that which Boethius makes it. See\nEuripides, 'Andromache,' Il. 418-420.\n\n\n\nSONG VII. PLEASURE'S STING.\n\n\n        This is the way of Pleasure:\n    She stings them that despoil her;\n    And, like the winged toiler\n        Who's lost her honeyed treasure,\n      She flies, but leaves her smart\n      Deep-rankling in the heart.\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\n\n'It is beyond doubt, then, that these paths do not lead to happiness;\nthey cannot guide anyone to the promised goal. Now, I will very briefly\nshow what serious evils are involved in following them. Just consider.\nIs it thy endeavour to heap up money? Why, thou must wrest it from its\npresent possessor! Art thou minded to put on the splendour of official\ndignity? Thou must beg from those who have the giving of it; thou who\ncovetest to outvie others in honour must lower thyself to the humble\nposture of petition. Dost thou long for power? Thou must face perils,\nfor thou wilt be at the mercy of thy subjects' plots. Is glory thy aim?\nThou art lured on through all manner of hardships, and there is an end\nto thy peace of mind. Art fain to lead a life of pleasure? Yet who does\nnot scorn and contemn one who is the slave of the weakest and vilest of\nthings--the body? Again, on how slight and perishable a possession do\nthey rely who set before themselves bodily excellences! Can ye ever\nsurpass the elephant in bulk or the bull in strength? Can ye excel the\ntiger in swiftness? Look upon the infinitude, the solidity, the swift\nmotion, of the heavens, and for once cease to admire things mean and\nworthless. And yet the heavens are not so much to be admired on this\naccount as for the reason which guides them. Then, how transient is the\nlustre of beauty! how soon gone!--more fleeting than the fading bloom of\nspring flowers. And yet if, as Aristotle says, men should see with the\neyes of Lynceus, so that their sight might pierce through obstructions,\nwould not that body of Alcibiades, so gloriously fair in outward\nseeming, appear altogether loathsome when all its inward parts lay open\nto the view? Therefore, it is not thy own nature that makes thee seem\nbeautiful, but the weakness of the eyes that see thee. Yet prize as\nunduly as ye will that body's excellences; so long as ye know that this\nthat ye admire, whatever its worth, can be dissolved away by the feeble\nflame of a three days' fever. From all which considerations we may\nconclude as a whole, that these things which cannot make good the\nadvantages they promise, which are never made perfect by the assemblage\nof all good things--these neither lead as by-ways to happiness, nor\nthemselves make men completely happy.'\n\n\n\nSONG VIII. HUMAN FOLLY.\n\n\n      Alas! how wide astray\n    Doth Ignorance these wretched mortals lead\n      From Truth's own way!\n      For not on leafy stems\n    Do ye within the green wood look for gold,\n      Nor strip the vine for gems;\n\n      Your nets ye do not spread\n    Upon the hill-tops, that the groaning board\n      With fish be furnished;\n      If ye are fain to chase\n    The bounding goat, ye sweep not in vain search\n      The ocean's ruffled face.\n\n      The sea's far depths they know,\n    Each hidden nook, wherein the waves o'erwash\n      The pearl as white as snow;\n      Where lurks the Tyrian shell,\n    Where fish and prickly urchins do abound,\n      All this they know full well.\n\n      But not to know or care\n    Where hidden lies the good all hearts desire--\n      This blindness they can bear;\n      With gaze on earth low-bent,\n    They seek for that which reacheth far beyond\n      The starry firmament.\n\n      What curse shall I call down\n    On hearts so dull? May they the race still run\n      For wealth and high renown!\n      And when with much ado\n    The false good they have grasped--ah, then too late!--\n      May they discern the true!\n\n\n\nIX.\n\n\n'This much may well suffice to set forth the form of false happiness; if\nthis is now clear to thine eyes, the next step is to show what true\nhappiness is.'\n\n'Indeed,' said I, 'I see clearly enough that neither is independence to\nbe found in wealth, nor power in sovereignty, nor reverence in\ndignities, nor fame in glory, nor true joy in pleasures.'\n\n'Hast thou discerned also the causes why this is so?'\n\n'I seem to have some inkling, but I should like to learn more at large\nfrom thee.'\n\n'Why, truly the reason is hard at hand. _That which is simple and\nindivisible by nature human error separates_, and transforms from the\ntrue and perfect to the false and imperfect. Dost thou imagine that\nwhich lacketh nothing can want power?'\n\n'Certainly not.'\n\n'Right; for if there is any feebleness of strength in anything, in this\nthere must necessarily be need of external protection.'\n\n'That is so.'\n\n'Accordingly, the nature of independence and power is one and the same.'\n\n'It seems so.'\n\n'Well, but dost think that anything of such a nature as this can be\nlooked upon with contempt, or is it rather of all things most worthy of\nveneration?'\n\n'Nay; there can be no doubt as to that.'\n\n'Let us, then, add reverence to independence and power, and conclude\nthese three to be one.'\n\n'We must if we will acknowledge the truth.'\n\n'Thinkest thou, then, this combination of qualities to be obscure and\nwithout distinction, or rather famous in all renown? Just consider: can\nthat want renown which has been agreed to be lacking in nothing, to be\nsupreme in power, and right worthy of honour, for the reason that it\ncannot bestow this upon itself, and so comes to appear somewhat poor in\nesteem?'\n\n'I cannot but acknowledge that, being what it is, this union of\nqualities is also right famous.'\n\n'It follows, then, that we must admit that renown is not different from\nthe other three.'\n\n'It does,' said I.\n\n'That, then, which needs nothing outside itself, which can accomplish\nall things in its own strength, which enjoys fame and compels reverence,\nmust not this evidently be also fully crowned with joy?'\n\n'In sooth, I cannot conceive,' said I, 'how any sadness can find\nentrance into such a state; wherefore I must needs acknowledge it full\nof joy--at least, if our former conclusions are to hold.'\n\n'Then, for the same reasons, this also is necessary--that independence,\npower, renown, reverence, and sweetness of delight, are different only\nin name, but in substance differ no wise one from the other.'\n\n'It is,' said I.\n\n'This, then, which is one, and simple by nature, human perversity\nseparates, and, in trying to win a part of that which has no parts,\nfails to attain not only that portion (since there are no portions), but\nalso the whole, to which it does not dream of aspiring.'\n\n'How so?' said I.\n\n'He who, to escape want, seeks riches, gives himself no concern about\npower; he prefers a mean and low estate, and also denies himself many\npleasures dear to nature to avoid losing the money which he has gained.\nBut at this rate he does not even attain to independence--a weakling\nvoid of strength, vexed by distresses, mean and despised, and buried in\nobscurity. He, again, who thirsts alone for power squanders his wealth,\ndespises pleasure, and thinks fame and rank alike worthless without\npower. But thou seest in how many ways his state also is defective.\nSometimes it happens that he lacks necessaries, that he is gnawed by\nanxieties, and, since he cannot rid himself of these inconveniences,\neven ceases to have that power which was his whole end and aim. In like\nmanner may we cast up the reckoning in case of rank, of glory, or of\npleasure. For since each one of these severally is identical with the\nrest, whosoever seeks any one of them without the others does not even\nlay hold of that one which he makes his aim.'\n\n'Well,' said I, 'what then?'\n\n'Suppose anyone desire to obtain them together, he does indeed wish for\nhappiness as a whole; but will he find it in these things which, as we\nhave proved, are unable to bestow what they promise?'\n\n'Nay; by no means,' said I.\n\n'Then, happiness must certainly not be sought in these things which\nseverally are believed to afford some one of the blessings most to be\ndesired.'\n\n'They must not, I admit. No conclusion could be more true.'\n\n'So, then, the form and the causes of false happiness are set before\nthine eyes. Now turn thy gaze to the other side; there thou wilt\nstraightway see the true happiness I promised.'\n\n'Yea, indeed, 'tis plain to the blind.' said I. 'Thou didst point it out\neven now in seeking to unfold the causes of the false. For, unless I am\nmistaken, that is true and perfect happiness which crowns one with the\nunion of independence, power, reverence, renown, and joy. And to prove\nto thee with how deep an insight I have listened--since all these are\nthe same--that which can truly bestow one of them I know to be without\ndoubt full and complete happiness.'\n\n'Happy art thou, my scholar, in this thy conviction; only one thing\nshouldst thou add.'\n\n'What is that?' said I.\n\n'Is there aught, thinkest thou, amid these mortal and perishable things\nwhich can produce a state such as this?'\n\n'Nay, surely not; and this thou hast so amply demonstrated that no word\nmore is needed.'\n\n'Well, then, these things seem to give to mortals shadows of the true\ngood, or some kind of imperfect good; but the true and perfect good they\ncannot bestow.'\n\n'Even so,' said I.\n\n'Since, then, thou hast learnt what that true happiness is, and what men\nfalsely call happiness, it now remains that thou shouldst learn from\nwhat source to seek this.'\n\n'Yes; to this I have long been eagerly looking forward.'\n\n'Well, since, as Plato maintains in the \"Timaeus,\" we ought even in the\nmost trivial matters to implore the Divine protection, what thinkest\nthou should we now do in order to deserve to find the seat of that\nhighest good?'\n\n'We must invoke the Father of all things,' said I; 'for without this no\nenterprise sets out from a right beginning.'\n\n'Thou sayest well,' said she; and forthwith lifted up her voice and\nsang:\n\n\n\nSONG IX. INVOCATION.\n\n[I] \n\n\n    Maker of earth and sky, from age to age\n    Who rul'st the world by reason; at whose word\n    Time issues from Eternity's abyss:\n    To all that moves the source of movement, fixed\n    Thyself and moveless. Thee no cause impelled\n    Extrinsic this proportioned frame to shape\n    From shapeless matter; but, deep-set within\n    Thy inmost being, the form of perfect good,\n    From envy free; and Thou didst mould the whole\n    To that supernal pattern. Beauteous\n    The world in Thee thus imaged, being Thyself\n\n\n    Most beautiful. So Thou the work didst fashion\n    In that fair likeness, bidding it put on\n    Perfection through the exquisite perfectness\n    Of every part's contrivance. Thou dost bind\n    The elements in balanced harmony,\n    So that the hot and cold, the moist and dry,\n    Contend not; nor the pure fire leaping up\n    Escape, or weight of waters whelm the earth.\n\n    Thou joinest and diffusest through the whole,\n    Linking accordantly its several parts,\n    A soul of threefold nature, moving all.\n    This, cleft in twain, and in two circles gathered,\n    Speeds in a path that on itself returns,\n    Encompassing mind's limits, and conforms\n    The heavens to her true semblance. Lesser souls\n    And lesser lives by a like ordinance\n    Thou sendest forth, each to its starry car\n    Affixing, and dost strew them far and wide\n    O'er earth and heaven. These by a law benign\n    Thou biddest turn again, and render back\n    To thee their fires. Oh, grant, almighty Father,\n    Grant us on reason's wing to soar aloft\n    To heaven's exalted height; grant us to see\n    The fount of good; grant us, the true light found,\n    To fix our steadfast eyes in vision clear\n    On Thee. Disperse the heavy mists of earth,\n    And shine in Thine own splendour. For Thou art\n    The true serenity and perfect rest\n    Of every pious soul--to see Thy face,\n    The end and the beginning--One the guide,\n    The traveller, the pathway, and the goal.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[I] The substance of this poem is taken from Plato's 'Timaeus,' 29-42.\nSee Jowett, vol. iii., pp. 448-462 (third edition).\n\n\n\nX.\n\n\n'Since now thou hast seen what is the form of the imperfect good, and\nwhat the form of the perfect also, methinks I should next show in what\nmanner this perfection of felicity is built up. And here I conceive it\nproper to inquire, first, whether any excellence, such as thou hast\nlately defined, can exist in the nature of things, lest we be deceived\nby an empty fiction of thought to which no true reality answers. But it\ncannot be denied that such does exist, and is, as it were, the source of\nall things good. For everything which is called imperfect is spoken of\nas imperfect by reason of the privation of some perfection; so it comes\nto pass that, whenever imperfection is found in any particular, there\nmust necessarily be a perfection in respect of that particular also. For\nwere there no such perfection, it is utterly inconceivable how that\nso-called _im_perfection should come into existence. Nature does not\nmake a beginning with things mutilated and imperfect; she starts with\nwhat is whole and perfect, and falls away later to these feeble and\ninferior productions. So if there is, as we showed before, a happiness\nof a frail and imperfect kind, it cannot be doubted but there is also a\nhappiness substantial and perfect.'\n\n'Most true is thy conclusion, and most sure,' said I.\n\n'Next to consider where the dwelling-place of this happiness may be. The\ncommon belief of all mankind agrees that God, the supreme of all things,\nis good. For since nothing can be imagined better than God, how can we\ndoubt Him to be good than whom there is nothing better? Now, reason\nshows God to be good in such wise as to prove that in Him is perfect\ngood. For were it not so, He would not be supreme of all things; for\nthere would be something else more excellent, possessed of perfect good,\nwhich would seem to have the advantage in priority and dignity, since it\nhas clearly appeared that all perfect things are prior to those less\ncomplete. Wherefore, lest we fall into an infinite regression, we must\nacknowledge the supreme God to be full of supreme and perfect good. But\nwe have determined that true happiness is the perfect good; therefore\ntrue happiness must dwell in the supreme Deity.'\n\n'I accept thy reasonings,' said I; 'they cannot in any wise be\ndisputed.'\n\n'But, come, see how strictly and incontrovertibly thou mayst prove this\nour assertion that the supreme Godhead hath fullest possession of the\nhighest good.'\n\n'In what way, pray?' said I.\n\n'Do not rashly suppose that He who is the Father of all things hath\nreceived that highest good of which He is said to be possessed either\nfrom some external source, or hath it as a natural endowment in such\nsort that thou mightest consider the essence of the happiness possessed,\nand of the God who possesses it, distinct and different. For if thou\ndeemest it received from without, thou mayst esteem that which gives\nmore excellent than that which has received. But Him we most worthily\nacknowledge to be the most supremely excellent of all things. If,\nhowever, it is in Him by nature, yet is logically distinct, the thought\nis inconceivable, since we are speaking of God, who is supreme of all\nthings. Who was there to join these distinct essences? Finally, when one\nthing is different from another, the things so conceived as distinct\ncannot be identical. Therefore that which of its own nature is distinct\nfrom the highest good is not itself the highest good--an impious thought\nof Him than whom, 'tis plain, nothing can be more excellent. For\nuniversally nothing can be better in nature than the source from which\nit has come; therefore on most true grounds of reason would I conclude\nthat which is the source of all things to be in its own essence the\nhighest good.'\n\n'And most justly,' said I.\n\n'But the highest good has been admitted to be happiness.'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Then,' said she, 'it is necessary to acknowledge that God is very\nhappiness.'\n\n'Yes,' said I; 'I cannot gainsay my former admissions, and I see clearly\nthat this is a necessary inference therefrom.'\n\n'Reflect, also,' said she, 'whether the same conclusion is not further\nconfirmed by considering that there cannot be two supreme goods distinct\none from the other. For the goods which are different clearly cannot be\nseverally each what the other is: wherefore neither of the two can be\nperfect, since to either the other is wanting; but since it is not\nperfect, it cannot manifestly be the supreme good. By no means, then,\ncan goods which are supreme be different one from the other. But we have\nconcluded that both happiness and God are the supreme good; wherefore\nthat which is highest Divinity must also itself necessarily be supreme\nhappiness.'\n\n'No conclusion,' said I, 'could be truer to fact, nor more soundly\nreasoned out, nor more worthy of God.'\n\n'Then, further,' said she, 'just as geometricians are wont to draw\ninferences from their demonstrations to which they give the name\n\"deductions,\" so will I add here a sort of corollary. For since men\nbecome happy by the acquisition of happiness, while happiness is very\nGodship, it is manifest that they become happy by the acquisition of\nGodship. But as by the acquisition of justice men become just, and wise\nby the acquisition of wisdom, so by parity of reasoning by acquiring\nGodship they must of necessity become gods. So every man who is happy is\na god; and though in nature God is One only, yet there is nothing to\nhinder that very many should be gods by participation in that nature.'\n\n'A fair conclusion, and a precious,' said I, 'deduction or corollary, by\nwhichever name thou wilt call it.'\n\n'And yet,' said she, 'not one whit fairer than this which reason\npersuades us to add.'\n\n'Why, what?' said I.\n\n'Why, seeing happiness has many particulars included under it, should\nall these be regarded as forming one body of happiness, as it were, made\nup of various parts, or is there some one of them which forms the full\nessence of happiness, while all the rest are relative to this?'\n\n'I would thou wouldst unfold the whole matter to me at large.'\n\n'We judge happiness to be good, do we not?'\n\n'Yea, the supreme good.'\n\n'And this superlative applies to all; for this same happiness is\nadjudged to be the completest independence, the highest power,\nreverence, renown, and pleasure.'\n\n'What then?'\n\n'Are all these goods--independence, power, and the rest--to be deemed\nmembers of happiness, as it were, or are they all relative to good as to\ntheir summit and crown?'\n\n'I understand the problem, but I desire to hear how thou wouldst solve\nit.'\n\n'Well, then, listen to the determination of the matter. Were all these\nmembers composing happiness, they would differ severally one from the\nother. For this is the nature of parts--that by their difference they\ncompose one body. All these, however, have been proved to be the same;\ntherefore they cannot possibly be members, otherwise happiness will seem\nto be built up out of one member, which cannot be.'\n\n'There can be no doubt as to that,' said I; 'but I am impatient to hear\nwhat remains.'\n\n'Why, it is manifest that all the others are relative to the good. For\nthe very reason why independence is sought is that it is judged good,\nand so power also, because it is believed to be good. The same, too, may\nbe supposed of reverence, of renown, and of pleasant delight. Good,\nthen, is the sum and source of all desirable things. That which has not\nin itself any good, either in reality or in semblance, can in no wise be\ndesired. Contrariwise, even things which by nature are not good are\ndesired as if they were truly good, if they seem to be so. Whereby it\ncomes to pass that goodness is rightly believed to be the sum and hinge\nand cause of all things desirable. Now, that for the sake of which\nanything is desired itself seems to be most wished for. For instance, if\nanyone wishes to ride for the sake of health, he does not so much wish\nfor the exercise of riding as the benefit of his health. Since, then,\nall things are sought for the sake of the good, it is not these so much\nas good itself that is sought by all. But that on account of which all\nother things are wished for was, we agreed, happiness; wherefore thus\nalso it appears that it is happiness alone which is sought. From all\nwhich it is transparently clear that the essence of absolute good and of\nhappiness is one and the same.'\n\n'I cannot see how anyone can dissent from these conclusions.'\n\n'But we have also proved that God and true happiness are one and the\nsame.'\n\n'Yes,' said I.\n\n'Then we can safely conclude, also, that God's essence is seated in\nabsolute good, and nowhere else.'\n\n\n\nSONG X. THE TRUE LIGHT.\n\n\n    Hither come, all ye whose minds\n    Lust with rosy fetters binds--\n    Lust to bondage hard compelling\n    Th' earthy souls that are his dwelling--\n    Here shall be your labour's close;\n    Here your haven of repose.\n    Come, to your one refuge press;\n    Wide it stands to all distress!\n\n    Not the glint of yellow gold\n    Down bright Hermus' current rolled;\n    Not the Tagus' precious sands,\n    Nor in far-off scorching lands\n    All the radiant gems that hide\n    Under Indus' storied tide--\n    Emerald green and glistering white--\n    Can illume our feeble sight;\n    But they rather leave the mind\n    In its native darkness blind.\n    For the fairest beams they shed\n    In earth's lowest depths were fed;\n    But the splendour that supplies\n    Strength and vigour to the skies,\n    And the universe controls,\n    Shunneth dark and ruined souls.\n    He who once hath seen _this_ light\n    Will not call the sunbeam bright.\n\n\n\nXI.\n\n\n'I quite agree,' said I, 'truly all thy reasonings hold admirably\ntogether.'\n\nThen said she: 'What value wouldst thou put upon the boon shouldst thou\ncome to the knowledge of the absolute good?'\n\n'Oh, an infinite,' said I, 'if only I were so blest as to learn to know\nGod also who is the good.'\n\n'Yet this will I make clear to thee on truest grounds of reason, if only\nour recent conclusions stand fast.'\n\n'They will.'\n\n'Have we not shown that those things which most men desire are not true\nand perfect good precisely for this cause--that they differ severally\none from another, and, seeing that one is wanting to another, they\ncannot bestow full and absolute good; but that they become the true good\nwhen they are gathered, as it were, into one form and agency, so that\nthat which is independence is likewise power, reverence, renown, and\npleasant delight, and unless they are all one and the same, they have no\nclaim to be counted among things desirable?'\n\n'Yes; this was clearly proved, and cannot in any wise be doubted.'\n\n'Now, when things are far from being good while they are different, but\nbecome good as soon as they are one, is it not true that these become\ngood by acquiring unity?'\n\n'It seems so,' said I.\n\n'But dost not thou allow that all which is good is good by participation\nin goodness?'\n\n'It is.'\n\n'Then, thou must on similar grounds admit that unity and goodness are\nthe same; for when the effects of things in their natural working differ\nnot, their essence is one and the same.'\n\n'There is no denying it.'\n\n'Now, dost thou know,' said she, 'that all which is abides and subsists\nso long as it continues one, but so soon as it ceases to be one it\nperishes and falls to pieces?'\n\n'In what way?'\n\n'Why, take animals, for example. When soul and body come together, and\ncontinue in one, this is, we say, a living creature; but when this unity\nis broken by the separation of these two, the creature dies, and is\nclearly no longer living. The body also, while it remains in one form by\nthe joining together of its members, presents a human appearance; but if\nthe separation and dispersal of the parts break up the body's unity, it\nceases to be what it was. And if we extend our survey to all other\nthings, without doubt it will manifestly appear that each several thing\nsubsists while it is one, but when it ceases to be one perishes.'\n\n'Yes; when I consider further, I see it to be even as thou sayest.'\n\n'Well, is there aught,' said she, 'which, in so far as it acts\nconformably to nature, abandons the wish for life, and desires to come\nto death and corruption?'\n\n'Looking to living creatures, which have some faults of choice, I find\nnone that, without external compulsion, forego the will to live, and of\ntheir own accord hasten to destruction. For every creature diligently\npursues the end of self-preservation, and shuns death and destruction!\nAs to herbs and trees, and inanimate things generally, I am altogether\nin doubt what to think.'\n\n'And yet there is no possibility of question about this either, since\nthou seest how herbs and trees grow in places suitable for them, where,\nas far as their nature admits, they cannot quickly wither and die. Some\nspring up in the plains, others in the mountains; some grow in marshes,\nothers cling to rocks; and others, again, find a fertile soil in the\nbarren sands; and if you try to transplant these elsewhere, they wither\naway. Nature gives to each the soil that suits it, and uses her\ndiligence to prevent any of them dying, so long as it is possible for\nthem to continue alive. Why do they all draw their nourishment from\nroots as from a mouth dipped into the earth, and distribute the strong\nbark over the pith? Why are all the softer parts like the pith deeply\nencased within, while the external parts have the strong texture of\nwood, and outside of all is the bark to resist the weather's\ninclemency, like a champion stout in endurance? Again, how great is\nnature's diligence to secure universal propagation by multiplying seed!\nWho does not know all these to be contrivances, not only for the present\nmaintenance of a species, but for its lasting continuance, generation\nafter generation, for ever? And do not also the things believed\ninanimate on like grounds of reason seek each what is proper to itself?\nWhy do the flames shoot lightly upward, while the earth presses downward\nwith its weight, if it is not that these motions and situations are\nsuitable to their respective natures? Moreover, each several thing is\npreserved by that which is agreeable to its nature, even as it is\ndestroyed by things inimical. Things solid like stones resist\ndisintegration by the close adhesion of their parts. Things fluid like\nair and water yield easily to what divides them, but swiftly flow back\nand mingle with those parts from which they have been severed, while\nfire, again, refuses to be cut at all. And we are not now treating of\nthe voluntary motions of an intelligent soul, but of the drift of\nnature. Even so is it that we digest our food without thinking about it,\nand draw our breath unconsciously in sleep; nay, even in living\ncreatures the love of life cometh not of conscious will, but from the\nprinciples of nature. For oftentimes in the stress of circumstances will\nchooses the death which nature shrinks from; and contrarily, in spite of\nnatural appetite, will restrains that work of reproduction by which\nalone the persistence of perishable creatures is maintained. So entirely\ndoes this love of self come from drift of nature, not from animal\nimpulse. Providence has furnished things with this most cogent reason\nfor continuance: they must desire life, so long as it is naturally\npossible for them to continue living. Wherefore in no way mayst thou\ndoubt but that things naturally aim at continuance of existence, and\nshun destruction.'\n\n'I confess,' said I, 'that what I lately thought uncertain, I now\nperceive to be indubitably clear.'\n\n'Now, that which seeks to subsist and continue desires to be one; for if\nits oneness be gone, its very existence cannot continue.'\n\n'True,' said I.\n\n'All things, then, desire to be one.'\n\n'I agree.'\n\n'But we have proved that one is the very same thing as good.'\n\n'We have.'\n\n'All things, then, seek the good; indeed, you may express the fact by\ndefining good as that which all desire.'\n\n'Nothing could be more truly thought out. Either there is no single end\nto which all things are relative, or else the end to which all things\nuniversally hasten must be the highest good of all.'\n\nThen she: 'Exceedingly do I rejoice, dear pupil; thine eye is now fixed\non the very central mark of truth. Moreover, herein is revealed that of\nwhich thou didst erstwhile profess thyself ignorant.'\n\n'What is that?' said I.\n\n'The end and aim of the whole universe. Surely it is that which is\ndesired of all; and, since we have concluded the good to be such, we\nought to acknowledge the end and aim of the whole universe to be \"the\ngood.\"'\n\n\n\nSONG XI. REMINISCENCE.\n\n[J]\n\n\n    Who truth pursues, who from false ways\n      His heedful steps would keep,\n    By inward light must search within\n      In meditation deep;\n    All outward bent he must repress\n    His soul's true treasure to possess.\n\n    Then all that error's mists obscured\n      Shall shine more clear than light,\n    This fleshly frame's oblivious weight\n      Hath quenched not reason quite;\n    The germs of truth still lie within,\n    Whence we by learning all may win.\n\n    Else how could ye the answer due\n      Untaught to questions give,\n    Were't not that deep within the soul\n      Truth's secret sparks do live?\n    If Plato's teaching erreth not,\n    We learn but that we have forgot.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[J] The doctrine of Reminiscence--_i.e._, that all learning is really\nrecollection--is set forth at length by Plato in the 'Meno,' 81-86, and\nthe 'Phaedo,' 72-76. See Jowett, vol. ii., pp. 40-47 and 213-218.\n\n\nXII.\n\n\nThen said I: 'With all my heart I agree with Plato; indeed, this is now\nthe second time that these things have been brought back to my\nmind--first I lost them through the clogging contact of the body; then\nafter through the stress of heavy grief.'\n\nThen she continued: 'If thou wilt reflect upon thy former admissions, it\nwill not be long before thou dost also recollect that of which erstwhile\nthou didst confess thyself ignorant.'\n\n'What is that?' said I.\n\n'The principles of the world's government,' said she.\n\n'Yes; I remember my confession, and, although I now anticipate what thou\nintendest, I have a desire to hear the argument plainly set forth.'\n\n'Awhile ago thou deemedst it beyond all doubt that God doth govern the\nworld.'\n\n'I do not think it doubtful now, nor shall I ever; and by what reasons\nI am brought to this assurance I will briefly set forth. This world\ncould never have taken shape as a single system out of parts so diverse\nand opposite were it not that there is One who joins together these so\ndiverse things. And when it had once come together, the very diversity\nof natures would have dissevered it and torn it asunder in universal\ndiscord were there not One who keeps together what He has joined. Nor\nwould the order of nature proceed so regularly, nor could its course\nexhibit motions so fixed in respect of position, time, range, efficacy,\nand character, unless there were One who, Himself abiding, disposed\nthese various vicissitudes of change. This power, whatsoever it be,\nwhereby they remain as they were created, and are kept in motion, I call\nby the name which all recognise--God.'\n\nThen said she: 'Seeing that such is thy belief, it will cost me little\ntrouble, I think, to enable thee to win happiness, and return in safety\nto thy own country. But let us give our attention to the task that we\nhave set before ourselves. Have we not counted independence in the\ncategory of happiness, and agreed that God is absolute happiness?'\n\n'Truly, we have.'\n\n'Then, He will need no external assistance for the ruling of the world.\nOtherwise, if He stands in need of aught, He will not possess complete\nindependence.'\n\n'That is necessarily so,' said I.\n\n'Then, by His own power alone He disposes all things.'\n\n'It cannot be denied.'\n\n'Now, God was proved to be absolute good.'\n\n'Yes; I remember.'\n\n'Then, He disposes all things by the agency of good, if it be true that\n_He_ rules all things by His own power whom we have agreed to be good;\nand He is, as it were, the rudder and helm by which the world's\nmechanism is kept steady and in order.'\n\n'Heartily do I agree; and, indeed, I anticipated what thou wouldst say,\nthough it may be in feeble surmise only.'\n\n'I well believe it,' said she; 'for, as I think, thou now bringest to\nthe search eyes quicker in discerning truth; but what I shall say next\nis no less plain and easy to see.'\n\n'What is it?' said I.\n\n'Why,' said she, 'since God is rightly believed to govern all things\nwith the rudder of goodness, and since all things do likewise, as I have\ntaught, haste towards good by the very aim of nature, can it be doubted\nthat His governance is willingly accepted, and that all submit\nthemselves to the sway of the Disposer as conformed and attempered to\nHis rule?'\n\n'Necessarily so,' said I; 'no rule would seem happy if it were a yoke\nimposed on reluctant wills, and not the safe-keeping of obedient\nsubjects.'\n\n'There is nothing, then, which, while it follows nature, endeavours to\nresist good.'\n\n'No; nothing.'\n\n'But if anything should, will it have the least success against Him whom\nwe rightly agreed to be supreme Lord of happiness?'\n\n'It would be utterly impotent.'\n\n'There is nothing, then, which has either the will or the power to\noppose this supreme good.'\n\n'No; I think not.'\n\n'So, then,' said she, 'it is the supreme good which rules in strength,\nand graciously disposes all things.'\n\nThen said I: 'How delighted am I at thy reasonings, and the conclusion\nto which thou hast brought them, but most of all at these very words\nwhich thou usest! I am now at last ashamed of the folly that so sorely\nvexed me.'\n\n'Thou hast heard the story of the giants assailing heaven; but a\nbeneficent strength disposed of them also, as they deserved. But shall\nwe submit our arguments to the shock of mutual collision?--it may be\nfrom the impact some fair spark of truth may be struck out.'\n\n'If it be thy good pleasure,' said I.\n\n'No one can doubt that God is all-powerful.'\n\n'No one at all can question it who thinks consistently.'\n\n'Now, there is nothing which One who is all-powerful cannot do.'\n\n'Nothing.'\n\n'But can God do evil, then?'\n\n'Nay; by no means.'\n\n'Then, evil is nothing,' said she, 'since He to whom nothing is\nimpossible is unable to do evil.'\n\n'Art thou mocking me,' said I, 'weaving a labyrinth of tangled\narguments, now seeming to begin where thou didst end, and now to end\nwhere thou didst begin, or dost thou build up some wondrous circle of\nDivine simplicity? For, truly, a little before thou didst begin with\nhappiness, and say it was the supreme good, and didst declare it to be\nseated in the supreme Godhead. God Himself, too, thou didst affirm to be\nsupreme good and all-complete happiness; and from this thou didst go on\nto add, as by the way, the proof that no one would be happy unless he\nwere likewise God. Again, thou didst say that the very form of good was\nthe essence both of God and of happiness, and didst teach that the\nabsolute One was the absolute good which was sought by universal nature.\nThou didst maintain, also, that God rules the universe by the governance\nof goodness, that all things obey Him willingly, and that evil has no\nexistence in nature. And all this thou didst unfold without the help of\nassumptions from without, but by inherent and proper proofs, drawing\ncredence one from the other.'\n\nThen answered she: 'Far is it from me to mock thee; nay, by the blessing\nof God, whom we lately addressed in prayer, we have achieved the most\nimportant of all objects. For such is the form of the Divine essence,\nthat neither can it pass into things external, nor take up anything\nexternal into itself; but, as Parmenides says of it,\n\n    '\"In body like to a sphere on all sides perfectly rounded,\"\n\nit rolls the restless orb of the universe, keeping itself motionless the\nwhile. And if I have also employed reasonings not drawn from without,\nbut lying within the compass of our subject, there is no cause for thee\nto marvel, since thou hast learnt on Plato's authority that words ought\nto be akin to the matter of which they treat.'\n\n\n\nSONG XII. ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.\n\n\n    Blest he whose feet have stood\n    Beside the fount of good;\n    Blest he whose will could break\n    Earth's chains for wisdom's sake!\n\n    The Thracian bard, 'tis said,\n    Mourned his dear consort dead;\n    To hear the plaintive strain\n    The woods moved in his train,\n    And the stream ceased to flow,\n    Held by so soft a woe;\n    The deer without dismay\n    Beside the lion lay;\n    The hound, by song subdued,\n    No more the hare pursued,\n    But the pang unassuaged\n    In his own bosom raged.\n    The music that could calm\n    All else brought him no balm.\n    Chiding the powers immortal,\n    He came unto Hell's portal;\n    There breathed all tender things\n    Upon his sounding strings,\n    Each rhapsody high-wrought\n    His goddess-mother taught--\n    All he from grief could borrow\n    And love redoubling sorrow,\n    Till, as the echoes waken,\n    All Taenarus is shaken;\n    Whilst he to ruth persuades\n    The monarch of the shades\n    With dulcet prayer. Spell-bound,\n    The triple-headed hound\n    At sounds so strangely sweet\n    Falls crouching at his feet.\n    The dread Avengers, too,\n    That guilty minds pursue\n    With ever-haunting fears,\n    Are all dissolved in tears.\n    Ixion, on his wheel,\n    A respite brief doth feel;\n    For, lo! the wheel stands still.\n    And, while those sad notes thrill,\n    Thirst-maddened Tantalus\n    Listens, oblivious\n    Of the stream's mockery\n    And his long agony.\n    The vulture, too, doth spare\n    Some little while to tear\n    At Tityus' rent side,\n    Sated and pacified.\n\n    At length the shadowy king,\n    His sorrows pitying,\n    'He hath prevailed!' cried;\n    'We give him back his bride!\n    To him she shall belong,\n    As guerdon of his song.\n    One sole condition yet\n    Upon the boon is set:\n    Let him not turn his eyes\n    To view his hard-won prize,\n    Till they securely pass\n    The gates of Hell.' Alas!\n    What law can lovers move?\n    A higher law is love!\n    For Orpheus--woe is me!--\n    On his Eurydice--\n    Day's threshold all but won--\n    Looked, lost, and was undone!\n\n    Ye who the light pursue,\n    This story is for you,\n    Who seek to find a way\n    Unto the clearer day.\n    If on the darkness past\n    One backward look ye cast,\n    Your weak and wandering eyes\n    Have lost the matchless prize.\n\n\n\n</CHAPTER>\nBOOK IV.\n\nGOOD AND ILL FORTUNE.\n\n\n     SUMMARY.\n\n     CH. I. The mystery of the seeming moral confusion. Philosophy\n     engages to make this plain, and to fulfil her former promise to the\n     full.--CH. II. Accordingly, (a) she first expounds the paradox that\n     the good alone have power, the bad are altogether powerless.--CH.\n     III. (b) The righteous never lack their reward, nor the wicked\n     their punishment.--CH. IV. (c) The wicked are more unhappy when\n     they accomplish their desires than when they fail to attain them.\n     (d) Evil-doers are more fortunate when they expiate their crimes by\n     suffering punishment than when they escape unpunished. (e) The\n     wrong-doer is more wretched than he who suffers injury.--CH. V.\n     Boethius still cannot understand why the distribution of happiness\n     and misery to the righteous and the wicked seems the result of\n     chance. Philosophy replies that this only seems so because we do\n     not understand the principles of God's moral governance.--CH. VI.\n     The distinction of Fate and Providence. The apparent moral\n     confusion is due to our ignorance of the secret counsels of God's\n     providence. If we possessed the key, we should see how all things\n     are guided to good.--CH. VII. Thus all fortune is good fortune; for\n     it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is\n     either useful or just.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<CHAPTER>\nBOOK IV. I.\n\n\nSoftly and sweetly Philosophy sang these verses to the end without\nlosing aught of the dignity of her expression or the seriousness of her\ntones; then, forasmuch as I was as yet unable to forget my deeply-seated\nsorrow, just as she was about to say something further, I broke in and\ncried: 'O thou guide into the way of true light, all that thy voice hath\nuttered from the beginning even unto now has manifestly seemed to me at\nonce divine contemplated in itself, and by the force of thy arguments\nplaced beyond the possibility of overthrow. Moreover, these truths have\nnot been altogether unfamiliar to me heretofore, though because of\nindignation at my wrongs they have for a time been forgotten. But, lo!\nherein is the very chiefest cause of my grief--that, while there exists\na good ruler of the universe, it is possible that evil should be at all,\nstill more that it should go unpunished. Surely thou must see how\ndeservedly this of itself provokes astonishment. But a yet greater\nmarvel follows: While wickedness reigns and flourishes, virtue not only\nlacks its reward, but is even thrust down and trampled under the feet of\nthe wicked, and suffers punishment in the place of crime. That this\nshould happen under the rule of a God who knows all things and can do\nall things, but wills only the good, cannot be sufficiently wondered at\nnor sufficiently lamented.'\n\nThen said she: 'It would indeed be infinitely astounding, and of all\nmonstrous things most horrible, if, as thou esteemest, in the\nwell-ordered home of so great a householder, the base vessels should be\nheld in honour, the precious left to neglect. But it is not so. For if\nwe hold unshaken those conclusions which we lately reached, thou shall\nlearn that, by the will of Him of whose realm we are speaking, the good\nare always strong, the bad always weak and impotent; that vices never go\nunpunished, nor virtues unrewarded; that good fortune ever befalls the\ngood, and ill fortune the bad, and much more of the sort, which shall\nhush thy murmurings, and stablish thee in the strong assurance of\nconviction. And since by my late instructions thou hast seen the form of\nhappiness, hast learnt, too, the seat where it is to be found, all due\npreliminaries being discharged, I will now show thee the road which will\nlead thee home. Wings, also, will I fasten to thy mind wherewith thou\nmayst soar aloft, that so, all disturbing doubts removed, thou mayst\nreturn safe to thy country, under my guidance, in the path I will show\nthee, and by the means which I furnish.'\n\n\n\nSONG I. THE SOUL'S FLIGHT.\n\n\n    Wings are mine; above the pole\n      Far aloft I soar.\n    Clothed with these, my nimble soul\n      Scorns earth's hated shore,\n    Cleaves the skies upon the wind,\n    Sees the clouds left far behind.\n\n    Soon the glowing point she nears,\n      Where the heavens rotate,\n    Follows through the starry spheres\n      Phoebus' course, or straight\n    Takes for comrade 'mid the stars\n    Saturn cold or glittering Mars;\n\n    Thus each circling orb explores\n      Through Night's stole that peers;\n    Then, when all are numbered, soars\n      Far beyond the spheres,\n    Mounting heaven's supremest height\n    To the very Fount of light.\n\n    There the Sovereign of the world\n      His calm sway maintains;\n    As the globe is onward whirled\n      Guides the chariot reins,\n    And in splendour glittering\n    Reigns the universal King.\n\n    Hither if thy wandering feet\n      Find at last a way,\n    Here thy long-lost home thou'lt greet:\n      'Dear lost land,' thou'lt say,\n    'Though from thee I've wandered wide,\n    Hence I came, here will abide.'\n\n    Yet if ever thou art fain\n      Visitant to be\n    Of earth's gloomy night again,\n      Surely thou wilt see\n    Tyrants whom the nations fear\n    Dwell in hapless exile here.\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nThen said I: 'Verily, wondrous great are thy promises; yet I do not\ndoubt but thou canst make them good: only keep me not in suspense after\nraising such hopes.'\n\n'Learn, then, first,' said she, 'how that power ever waits upon the\ngood, while the bad are left wholly destitute of strength.[K] Of these\ntruths the one proves the other; for since good and evil are contraries,\nif it is made plain that good is power, the feebleness of evil is\nclearly seen, and, conversely, if the frail nature of evil is made\nmanifest, the strength of good is thereby known. However, to win ampler\ncredence for my conclusion, I will pursue both paths, and draw\nconfirmation for my statements first in one way and then in the other.\n\n'The carrying out of any human action depends upon two things--to wit,\nwill and power; if either be wanting, nothing can be accomplished. For\nif the will be lacking, no attempt at all is made to do what is not\nwilled; whereas if there be no power, the will is all in vain. And so,\nif thou seest any man wishing to attain some end, yet utterly failing to\nattain it, thou canst not doubt that he lacked the power of getting what\nhe wished for.'\n\n'Why, certainly not; there is no denying it.'\n\n'Canst thou, then, doubt that he whom thou seest to have accomplished\nwhat he willed had also the power to accomplish it?'\n\n'Of course not.'\n\n'Then, in respect of what he can accomplish a man is to be reckoned\nstrong, in respect of what he cannot accomplish weak?'\n\n'Granted,' said I.\n\n'Then, dost thou remember that, by our former reasonings, it was\nconcluded that the whole aim of man's will, though the means of pursuit\nvary, is set intently upon happiness?'\n\n'I do remember that this, too, was proved.'\n\n'Dost thou also call to mind how happiness is absolute good, and\ntherefore that, when happiness is sought, it is good which is in all\ncases the object of desire?'\n\n'Nay, I do not so much call to mind as keep it fixed in my memory.'\n\n'Then, all men, good and bad alike, with one indistinguishable purpose\nstrive to reach good?'\n\n'Yes, that follows.'\n\n'But it is certain that by the attainment of good men become good?'\n\n'It is.'\n\n'Then, do the good attain their object?'\n\n'It seems so.'\n\n'But if the bad were to attain the good which is _their_ object, they\ncould not be bad?'\n\n'No.'\n\n'Then, since both seek good, but while the one sort attain it, the other\nattain it not, is there any doubt that the good are endued with power,\nwhile they who are bad are weak?'\n\n'If any doubt it, he is incapable of reflecting on the nature of things,\nor the consequences involved in reasoning.'\n\n'Again, supposing there are two things to which the same function is\nprescribed in the course of nature, and one of these successfully\naccomplishes the function by natural action, the other is altogether\nincapable of that natural action, instead of which, in a way other than\nis agreeable to its nature, it--I will not say fulfils its function, but\nfeigns to fulfil it: which of these two would in thy view be the\nstronger?'\n\n'I guess thy meaning, but I pray thee let me hear thee more at large.'\n\n'Walking is man's natural motion, is it not?'\n\n'Certainly.'\n\n'Thou dost not doubt, I suppose, that it is natural for the feet to\ndischarge this function?'\n\n'No; surely I do not.'\n\n'Now, if one man who is able to use his feet walks, and another to whom\nthe natural use of his feet is wanting tries to walk on his hands,\nwhich of the two wouldst thou rightly esteem the stronger?'\n\n'Go on,' said I; 'no one can question but that he who has the natural\ncapacity has more strength than he who has it not.'\n\n'Now, the supreme good is set up as the end alike for the bad and for\nthe good; but the good seek it through the natural action of the\nvirtues, whereas the bad try to attain this same good through all manner\nof concupiscence, which is not the natural way of attaining good. Or\ndost thou think otherwise?'\n\n'Nay; rather, one further consequence is clear to me: for from my\nadmissions it must needs follow that the good have power, and the bad\nare impotent.'\n\n'Thou anticipatest rightly, and that as physicians reckon is a sign that\nnature is set working, and is throwing off the disease. But, since I see\nthee so ready at understanding, I will heap proof on proof. Look how\nmanifest is the extremity of vicious men's weakness; they cannot even\nreach that goal to which the aim of nature leads and almost constrains\nthem. What if they were left without this mighty, this well-nigh\nirresistible help of nature's guidance! Consider also how momentous is\nthe powerlessness which incapacitates the wicked. Not light or\ntrivial[L] are the prizes which they contend for, but which they cannot\nwin or hold; nay, their failure concerns the very sum and crown of\nthings. Poor wretches! they fail to compass even that for which they\ntoil day and night. Herein also the strength of the good conspicuously\nappears. For just as thou wouldst judge him to be the strongest walker\nwhose legs could carry him to a point beyond which no further advance\nwas possible, so must thou needs account him strong in power who so\nattains the end of his desires that nothing further to be desired lies\nbeyond. Whence follows the obvious conclusion that they who are wicked\nare seen likewise to be wholly destitute of strength. For why do they\nforsake virtue and follow vice? Is it from ignorance of what is good?\nWell, what is more weak and feeble than the blindness of ignorance? Do\nthey know what they ought to follow, but lust drives them aside out of\nthe way? If it be so, they are still frail by reason of their\nincontinence, for they cannot fight against vice. Or do they knowingly\nand wilfully forsake the good and turn aside to vice? Why, at this rate,\nthey not only cease to have power, but cease to be at all. For they who\nforsake the common end of all things that are, they likewise also cease\nto be at all. Now, to some it may seem strange that we should assert\nthat the bad, who form the greater part of mankind, do not exist. But\nthe fact is so. I do not, indeed, deny that they who are bad are bad,\nbut that they _are_ in an unqualified and absolute sense I deny. Just as\nwe call a corpse a dead man, but cannot call it simply \"man,\" so I would\nallow the vicious to be bad, but that they _are_ in an absolute sense I\ncannot allow. That only _is_ which maintains its place and keeps its\nnature; whatever falls away from this forsakes the existence which is\nessential to its nature. \"But,\" thou wilt say, \"the bad have an\nability.\" Nor do I wish to deny it; only this ability of theirs comes\nnot from strength, but from impotence. For their ability is to do evil,\nwhich would have had no efficacy at all if they could have continued in\nthe performance of good. So this ability of theirs proves them still\nmore plainly to have no power. For if, as we concluded just now, evil is\nnothing, 'tis clear that the wicked can effect nothing, since they are\nonly able to do evil.'\n\n''Tis evident.'\n\n'And that thou mayst understand what is the precise force of this power,\nwe determined, did we not, awhile back, that nothing has more power than\nsupreme good?'\n\n'We did,' said I.\n\n'But that same highest good cannot do evil?'\n\n'Certainly not.'\n\n'Is there anyone, then, who thinks that men are able to do all things?'\n\n'None but a madman.'\n\n'Yet they are able to do evil?'\n\n'Ay; would they could not!'\n\n'Since, then, he who can do only good is omnipotent, while they who can\ndo evil also are not omnipotent, it is manifest that they who can do\nevil have less power. There is this also: we have shown that all power\nis to be reckoned among things desirable, and that all desirable things\nare referred to good as to a kind of consummation of their nature. But\nthe ability to commit crime cannot be referred to the good; therefore it\nis not a thing to be desired. And yet all power is desirable; it is\nclear, then, that ability to do evil is not power. From all which\nconsiderations appeareth the power of the good, and the indubitable\nweakness of the bad, and it is clear that Plato's judgment was true; the\nwise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their\nown hearts' lust, but can _not_ accomplish what they would. For they go\non in their wilfulness fancying they will attain what they wish for in\nthe paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since\nshameful deeds lead not to happiness.'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[K] The paradoxes in this chapter and chapter iv. are taken from Plato's\n'Gorgias.' See Jowett, vol. ii., pp. 348-366, and also pp. 400, 401\n('Gorgias,' 466-479, and 508, 509).\n\n[L]\n\n'No trivial game is here; the strife Is waged for Turnus' own dear\nlife.'\n\n_Conington_.\n\nSee Virgil, AEneid,' xii. 764, 745: _cf_. 'Iliad,' xxii. 159-162.\n\n\n\nSONG II. THE BONDAGE OF PASSION.\n\n\n    When high-enthroned the monarch sits, resplendent in the pride\n    Of purple robes, while flashing steel guards him on every side;\n    When baleful terrors on his brow with frowning menace lower,\n    And Passion shakes his labouring breast--how dreadful seems his power!\n    But if the vesture of his state from such a one thou tear,\n    Thou'lt see what load of secret bonds this lord of earth doth wear.\n    Lust's poison rankles; o'er his mind rage sweeps in tempest rude;\n    Sorrow his spirit vexes sore, and empty hopes delude.\n    Then thou'lt confess: one hapless wretch, whom many lords oppress,\n    Does never what he would, but lives in thraldom's helplessness.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\n'Thou seest, then, in what foulness unrighteous deeds are sunk, with\nwhat splendour righteousness shines. Whereby it is manifest that\ngoodness never lacks its reward, nor crime its punishment. For, verily,\nin all manner of transactions that for the sake of which the particular\naction is done may justly be accounted the reward of that action, even\nas the wreath for the sake of which the race is run is the reward\noffered for running. Now, we have shown happiness to be that very good\nfor the sake of which all things are done. Absolute good, then, is\noffered as the common prize, as it were, of all human actions. But,\ntruly, this is a reward from which it is impossible to separate the good\nman, for one who is without good cannot properly be called good at all;\nwherefore righteous dealing never misses its reward. Rage the wicked,\nthen, never so violently, the crown shall not fall from the head of the\nwise, nor wither. Verily, other men's unrighteousness cannot pluck from\nrighteous souls their proper glory. Were the reward in which the soul of\nthe righteous delighteth received from without, then might it be taken\naway by him who gave it, or some other; but since it is conferred by his\nown righteousness, then only will he lose his prize when he has ceased\nto be righteous. Lastly, since every prize is desired because it is\nbelieved to be good, who can account him who possesses good to be\nwithout reward? And what a prize, the fairest and grandest of all! For\nremember the corollary which I chiefly insisted on a little while back,\nand reason thus: Since absolute good is happiness, 'tis clear that all\nthe good must be happy for the very reason that they are good. But it\nwas agreed that those who are happy are gods. So, then, the prize of the\ngood is one which no time may impair, no man's power lessen, no man's\nunrighteousness tarnish; 'tis very Godship. And this being so, the wise\nman cannot doubt that punishment is inseparable from the bad. For since\ngood and bad, and likewise reward and punishment, are contraries, it\nnecessarily follows that, corresponding to all that we see accrue as\nreward of the good, there is some penalty attached as punishment of\nevil. As, then, righteousness itself is the reward of the righteous, so\nwickedness itself is the punishment of the unrighteous. Now, no one who\nis visited with punishment doubts that he is visited with evil.\nAccordingly, if they were but willing to weigh their own case, could\n_they_ think themselves free from punishment whom wickedness, worst of\nall evils, has not only touched, but deeply tainted?\n\n'See, also, from the opposite standpoint--the standpoint of the\ngood--what a penalty attends upon the wicked. Thou didst learn a little\nsince that whatever is is one, and that unity itself is good.\nAccordingly, by this way of reckoning, whatever falls away from goodness\nceases to be; whence it comes to pass that the bad cease to be what they\nwere, while only the outward aspect is still left to show they have been\nmen. Wherefore, by their perversion to badness, they have lost their\ntrue human nature. Further, since righteousness alone can raise men\nabove the level of humanity, it must needs be that unrighteousness\ndegrades below man's level those whom it has cast out of man's estate.\nIt results, then, that thou canst not consider him human whom thou seest\ntransformed by vice. The violent despoiler of other men's goods,\nenflamed with covetousness, surely resembles a wolf. A bold and restless\nspirit, ever wrangling in law-courts, is like some yelping cur. The\nsecret schemer, taking pleasure in fraud and stealth, is own brother to\nthe fox. The passionate man, phrenzied with rage, we might believe to be\nanimated with the soul of a lion. The coward and runaway, afraid where\nno fear is, may be likened to the timid deer. He who is sunk in\nignorance and stupidity lives like a dull ass. He who is light and\ninconstant, never holding long to one thing, is for all the world like a\nbird. He who wallows in foul and unclean lusts is sunk in the pleasures\nof a filthy hog. So it comes to pass that he who by forsaking\nrighteousness ceases to be a man cannot pass into a Godlike condition,\nbut actually turns into a brute beast.'\n\n\n\nSONG III. CIRCE'S CUP.\n\n\n    Th' Ithacan discreet,\n    And all his storm-tossed fleet,\n    Far o'er the ocean wave\n    The winds of heaven drave--\n    Drave to the mystic isle,\n    Where dwelleth in her guile\n    That fair and faithless one,\n    The daughter of the Sun.\n    There for the stranger crew\n    With cunning spells she knew\n    To mix th' enchanted cup.\n    For whoso drinks it up,\n    Must suffer hideous change\n    To monstrous shapes and strange.\n    One like a boar appears;\n    This his huge form uprears,\n    Mighty in bulk and limb--\n    An Afric lion--grim\n    With claw and fang. Confessed\n    A wolf, this, sore distressed\n    When he would weep, doth howl;\n    And, strangely tame, these prowl\n    The Indian tiger's mates.\n\n    And though in such sore straits,\n    The pity of the god\n    Who bears the mystic rod\n    Had power the chieftain brave\n    From her fell arts to save;\n    His comrades, unrestrained,\n    The fatal goblet drained.\n    All now with low-bent head,\n    Like swine, on acorns fed;\n    Man's speech and form were reft,\n    No human feature left;\n    But steadfast still, the mind,\n    Unaltered, unresigned,\n    The monstrous change bewailed.\n\n    How little, then, availed\n    The potencies of ill!\n    These herbs, this baneful skill,\n    May change each outward part,\n    But cannot touch the heart.\n    In its true home, deep-set,\n    Man's spirit liveth yet.\n    _Those_ poisons are more fell,\n    More potent to expel\n    Man from his high estate,\n    Which subtly penetrate,\n    And leave the body whole,\n    But deep infect the soul.\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nThen said I: 'This is very true. I see that the vicious, though they\nkeep the outward form of man, are rightly said to be changed into beasts\nin respect of their spiritual nature; but, inasmuch as their cruel and\npolluted minds vent their rage in the destruction of the good, I would\nthis license were not permitted to them.'\n\n'Nor is it,' said she, 'as shall be shown in the fitting place. Yet if\nthat license which thou believest to be permitted to them were taken\naway, the punishment of the wicked would be in great part remitted. For\nverily, incredible as it may seem to some, it needs must be that the bad\nare more unfortunate when they have accomplished their desires than if\nthey are unable to get them fulfilled. If it is wretched to will evil,\nto have been able to accomplish evil is more wretched; for without the\npower the wretched will would fail of effect. Accordingly, those whom\nthou seest to will, to be able to accomplish, and to accomplish crime,\nmust needs be the victims of a threefold wretchedness, since each one of\nthese states has its own measure of wretchedness.'\n\n'Yes,' said I; 'yet I earnestly wish they might speedily be quit of this\nmisfortune by losing the ability to accomplish crime.'\n\n'They will lose it,' said she, 'sooner than perchance thou wishest, or\nthey themselves think likely; since, verily, within the narrow bounds of\nour brief life there is nothing so late in coming that anyone, least of\nall an immortal spirit, should deem it long to wait for. Their great\nexpectations, the lofty fabric of their crimes, is oft overthrown by a\nsudden and unlooked-for ending, and this but sets a limit to their\nmisery. For if wickedness makes men wretched, he is necessarily more\nwretched who is wicked for a longer time; and were it not that death, at\nall events, puts an end to the evil doings of the wicked, I should\naccount them wretched to the last degree. Indeed, if we have formed true\nconclusions about the ill fortune of wickedness, that wretchedness is\nplainly infinite which is doomed to be eternal.'\n\nThen said I: 'A wonderful inference, and difficult to grant; but I see\nthat it agrees entirely with our previous conclusions.'\n\n'Thou art right,' said she; 'but if anyone finds it hard to admit the\nconclusion, he ought in fairness either to prove some falsity in the\npremises, or to show that the combination of propositions does not\nadequately enforce the necessity of the conclusion; otherwise, if the\npremises be granted, nothing whatever can be said against the inference\nof the conclusion. And here is another statement which seems not less\nwonderful, but on the premises assumed is equally necessary.'\n\n'What is that?'\n\n'The wicked are happier in undergoing punishment than if no penalty of\njustice chasten them. And I am not now meaning what might occur to\nanyone--that bad character is amended by retribution, and is brought\ninto the right path by the terror of punishment, or that it serves as an\nexample to warn others to avoid transgression; but I believe that in\nanother way the wicked are more unfortunate when they go unpunished,\neven though no account be taken of amendment, and no regard be paid to\nexample.'\n\n'Why, what other way is there beside these?' said I.\n\nThen said she: 'Have we not agreed that the good are happy, and the evil\nwretched?'\n\n'Yes,' said I.\n\n'Now, if,' said she, 'to one in affliction there be given along with his\nmisery some good thing, is he not happier than one whose misery is\nmisery pure and simple without admixture of any good?'\n\n'It would seem so.'\n\n'But if to one thus wretched, one destitute of all good, some further\nevil be added besides those which make him wretched, is he not to be\njudged far more unhappy than he whose ill fortune is alleviated by some\nshare of good?'\n\n'It could scarcely be otherwise.'\n\n'Surely, then, the wicked, when they are punished, have a good thing\nadded to them--to wit, the punishment which by the law of justice is\ngood; and likewise, when they escape punishment, a new evil attaches to\nthem in that very freedom from punishment which thou hast rightly\nacknowledged to be an evil in the case of the unrighteous.'\n\n'I cannot deny it.'\n\n'Then, the wicked are far more unhappy when indulged with an unjust\nfreedom from punishment than when punished by a just retribution. Now,\nit is manifest that it is just for the wicked to be punished, and for\nthem to escape unpunished is unjust.'\n\n'Why, who would venture to deny it?'\n\n'This, too, no one can possibly deny--that all which is just is good,\nand, conversely, all which is unjust is bad.'\n\nThen I answered: 'These inferences do indeed follow from what we lately\nconcluded; but tell me,' said I, 'dost thou take no account of the\npunishment of the soul after the death of the body?'\n\n'Nay, truly,' said she, 'great are these penalties, some of them\ninflicted, I imagine, in the severity of retribution, others in the\nmercy of purification. But it is not my present purpose to speak of\nthese. So far, my aim hath been to make thee recognise that the power of\nthe bad which shocked thee so exceedingly is no power; to make thee see\nthat those of whose freedom from punishment thou didst complain are\nnever without the proper penalties of their unrighteousness; to teach\nthee that the license which thou prayedst might soon come to an end is\nnot long-enduring; that it would be more unhappy if it lasted longer,\nmost unhappy of all if it lasted for ever; thereafter that the\nunrighteous are more wretched if unjustly let go without punishment than\nif punished by a just retribution--from which point of view it follows\nthat the wicked are afflicted with more severe penalties just when they\nare supposed to escape punishment.'\n\nThen said I: 'While I follow thy reasonings, I am deeply impressed with\ntheir truth; but if I turn to the common convictions of men, I find few\nwho will even listen to such arguments, let alone admit them to be\ncredible.'\n\n'True,' said she; 'they cannot lift eyes accustomed to darkness to the\nlight of clear truth, and are like those birds whose vision night\nillumines and day blinds; for while they regard, not the order of the\nuniverse, but their own dispositions of mind, they think the license to\ncommit crime, and the escape from punishment, to be fortunate. But mark\nthe ordinance of eternal law. Hast thou fashioned thy soul to the\nlikeness of the better, thou hast no need of a judge to award the\nprize--by thine own act hast thou raised thyself in the scale of\nexcellence; hast thou perverted thy affections to baser things, look not\nfor punishment from one without thee--thine own act hath degraded thee,\nand thrust thee down. Even so, if alternately thou turn thy gaze upon\nthe vile earth and upon the heavens, though all without thee stand\nstill, by the mere laws of sight thou seemest now sunk in the mire, now\nsoaring among the stars. But the common herd regards not these things.\nWhat, then? Shall we go over to those whom we have shown to be like\nbrute beasts? Why, suppose, now, one who had quite lost his sight\nshould likewise forget that he had ever possessed the faculty of vision,\nand should imagine that nothing was wanting in him to human perfection,\nshould we deem those who saw as well as ever blind? Why, they will not\neven assent to this, either--that they who do wrong are more wretched\nthan those who suffer wrong, though the proof of this rests on grounds\nof reason no less strong.'\n\n'Let me hear these same reasons,' said I.\n\n'Wouldst thou deny that every wicked man deserves punishment?'\n\n'I would not, certainly.'\n\n'And that those who are wicked are unhappy is clear in manifold ways?'\n\n'Yes,' I replied.\n\n'Thou dost not doubt, then, that those who deserve punishment are\nwretched?'\n\n'Agreed,' said I.\n\n'So, then, if thou wert sitting in judgment, on whom wouldst thou decree\nthe infliction of punishment--on him who had done the wrong, or on him\nwho had suffered it?'\n\n'Without doubt, I would compensate the sufferer at the cost of the doer\nof the wrong.'\n\n'Then, the injurer would seem more wretched than the injured?'\n\n'Yes; it follows. And so for this and other reasons resting on the same\nground, inasmuch as baseness of its own nature makes men wretched, it is\nplain that a wrong involves the misery of the doer, not of the\nsufferer.'\n\n'And yet,' says she, 'the practice of the law-courts is just the\nopposite: advocates try to arouse the commiseration of the judges for\nthose who have endured some grievous and cruel wrong; whereas pity is\nrather due to the criminal, who ought to be brought to the judgment-seat\nby his accusers in a spirit not of anger, but of compassion and\nkindness, as a sick man to the physician, to have the ulcer of his fault\ncut away by punishment. Whereby the business of the advocate would\neither wholly come to a standstill, or, did men prefer to make it\nserviceable to mankind, would be restricted to the practice of\naccusation. The wicked themselves also, if through some chink or cranny\nthey were permitted to behold the virtue they have forsaken, and were to\nsee that by the pains of punishment they would rid themselves of the\nuncleanness of their vices, and win in exchange the recompense of\nrighteousness, they would no longer think these sufferings pains; they\nwould refuse the help of advocates, and would commit themselves wholly\ninto the hands of their accusers and judges. Whence it comes to pass\nthat for the wise no place is left for hatred; only the most foolish\nwould hate the good, and to hate the bad is unreasonable. For if vicious\npropensity is, as it were, a disease of the soul like bodily sickness,\neven as we account the sick in body by no means deserving of hate, but\nrather of pity, so, and much more, should they be pitied whose minds are\nassailed by wickedness, which is more frightful than any sickness.'\n\n\n\nSONG IV. THE UNREASONABLENESS OF HATRED.\n\n\n      Why all this furious strife? Oh, why\n    With rash and wilful hand provoke death's destined day?\n      If death ye seek--lo! Death is nigh,\n    Not of their master's will those coursers swift delay!\n\n      The wild beasts vent on man their rage,\n    Yet 'gainst their brothers' lives men point the murderous steel;\n      Unjust and cruel wars they wage,\n    And haste with flying darts the death to meet or deal.\n\n      No right nor reason can they show;\n    'Tis but because their lands and laws are not the same.\n      Wouldst _thou_ give each his due; then know\n    Thy love the good must have, the bad thy pity claim.\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\nOn this I said: 'I see how there is a happiness and misery founded on\nthe actual deserts of the righteous and the wicked. Nevertheless, I\nwonder in myself whether there is not some good and evil in fortune as\nthe vulgar understand it. Surely, no sensible man would rather be\nexiled, poor and disgraced, than dwell prosperously in his own country,\npowerful, wealthy, and high in honour. Indeed, the work of wisdom is\nmore clear and manifest in its operation when the happiness of rulers is\nsomehow passed on to the people around them, especially considering that\nthe prison, the law, and the other pains of legal punishment are\nproperly due only to mischievous citizens on whose account they were\noriginally instituted. Accordingly, I do exceedingly marvel why all this\nis completely reversed--why the good are harassed with the penalties due\nto crime, and the bad carry off the rewards of virtue; and I long to\nhear from thee what reason may be found for so unjust a state of\ndisorder. For assuredly I should wonder less if I could believe that all\nthings are the confused result of chance. But now my belief in God's\ngovernance doth add amazement to amazement. For, seeing that He\nsometimes assigns fair fortune to the good and harsh fortune to the bad,\nand then again deals harshly with the good, and grants to the bad their\nhearts' desire, how does this differ from chance, unless some reason is\ndiscovered for it all?'\n\n'Nay; it is not wonderful,' said she, 'if all should be thought random\nand confused when the principle of order is not known. And though thou\nknowest not the causes on which this great system depends, yet forasmuch\nas a good ruler governs the world, doubt not for thy part that all is\nrightly done.'\n\n\n\nSONG V. WONDER AND IGNORANCE.\n\n\n    Who knoweth not how near the pole\n      Bootes' course doth go,\n    Must marvel by what heavenly law\n      He moves his Wain so slow;\n    Why late he plunges 'neath the main,\n    And swiftly lights his beams again.\n\n    When the full-orbed moon grows pale\n      In the mid course of night,\n    And suddenly the stars shine forth\n      That languished in her light,\n    Th' astonied nations stand at gaze,\n    And beat the air in wild amaze.[M]\n\n    None marvels why upon the shore\n      The storm-lashed breakers beat,\n    Nor why the frost-bound glaciers melt\n      At summer's fervent heat;\n    For here the cause seems plain and clear,\n    Only what's dark and hid we fear.\n\n    Weak-minded folly magnifies\n      All that is rare and strange,\n    And the dull herd's o'erwhelmed with awe\n      At unexpected change.\n    But wonder leaves enlightened minds,\n    When ignorance no longer blinds.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[M] To frighten away the monster swallowing the moon. The superstition\nwas once common. See Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' pp. 296-302.\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\n'True,' said I; 'but, since it is thy office to unfold the hidden cause\nof things, and explain principles veiled in darkness, inform me, I pray\nthee, of thine own conclusions in this matter, since the marvel of it is\nwhat more than aught else disturbs my mind.'\n\nA smile played one moment upon her lips as she replied: 'Thou callest me\nto the greatest of all subjects of inquiry, a task for which the most\nexhaustive treatment barely suffices. Such is its nature that, as fast\nas one doubt is cut away, innumerable others spring up like Hydra's\nheads, nor could we set any limit to their renewal did we not apply the\nmind's living fire to suppress them. For there come within its scope the\nquestions of the essential simplicity of providence, of the order of\nfate, of unforeseen chance, of the Divine knowledge and predestination,\nand of the freedom of the will. How heavy is the weight of all this\nthou canst judge for thyself. But, inasmuch as to know these things also\nis part of the treatment of thy malady, we will try to give them some\nconsideration, despite the restrictions of the narrow limits of our\ntime. Moreover, thou must for a time dispense with the pleasures of\nmusic and song, if so be that thou findest any delight therein, whilst I\nweave together the connected train of reasons in proper order.'\n\n'As thou wilt,' said I.\n\nThen, as if making a new beginning, she thus discoursed: 'The coming\ninto being of all things, the whole course of development in things that\nchange, every sort of thing that moves in any wise, receives its due\ncause, order, and form from the steadfastness of the Divine mind. This\nmind, calm in the citadel of its own essential simplicity, has decreed\nthat the method of its rule shall be manifold. Viewed in the very purity\nof the Divine intelligence, this method is called _providence_; but\nviewed in regard to those things which it moves and disposes, it is\nwhat the ancients called _fate_. That these two are different will\neasily be clear to anyone who passes in review their respective\nefficacies. Providence is the Divine reason itself, seated in the\nSupreme Being, which disposes all things; fate is the disposition\ninherent in all things which move, through which providence joins all\nthings in their proper order. Providence embraces all things, however\ndifferent, however infinite; fate sets in motion separately individual\nthings, and assigns to them severally their position, form, and time.\n\n'So the unfolding of this temporal order unified into the foreview of\nthe Divine mind is providence, while the same unity broken up and\nunfolded in time is fate. And although these are different, yet is there\na dependence between them; for the order of destiny issues from the\nessential simplicity of providence. For as the artificer, forming in his\nmind beforehand the idea of the thing to be made, carries out his\ndesign, and develops from moment to moment what he had before seen in a\nsingle instant as a whole, so God in His providence ordains all things\nas parts of a single unchanging whole, but carries out these very\nordinances by fate in a time of manifold unity. So whether fate is\naccomplished by Divine spirits as the ministers of providence, or by a\nsoul, or by the service of all nature--whether by the celestial motion\nof the stars, by the efficacy of angels, or by the many-sided cunning of\ndemons--whether by all or by some of these the destined series is woven,\nthis, at least, is manifest: that providence is the fixed and simple\nform of destined events, fate their shifting series in order of time, as\nby the disposal of the Divine simplicity they are to take place. Whereby\nit is that all things which are under fate are subjected also to\nprovidence, on which fate itself is dependent; whereas certain things\nwhich are set under providence are above the chain of fate--viz., those\nthings which by their nearness to the primal Divinity are steadfastly\nfixed, and lie outside the order of fate's movements. For as the\ninnermost of several circles revolving round the same centre approaches\nthe simplicity of the midmost point, and is, as it were, a pivot round\nwhich the exterior circles turn, while the outermost, whirled in ampler\norbit, takes in a wider and wider sweep of space in proportion to its\ndeparture from the indivisible unity of the centre--while, further,\nwhatever joins and allies itself to the centre is narrowed to a like\nsimplicity, and no longer expands vaguely into space--even so whatsoever\ndeparts widely from primal mind is involved more deeply in the meshes of\nfate, and things are free from fate in proportion as they seek to come\nnearer to that central pivot; while if aught cleaves close to supreme\nmind in its absolute fixity, this, too, being free from movement, rises\nabove fate's necessity. Therefore, as is reasoning to pure intelligence,\nas that which is generated to that which is, time to eternity, a circle\nto its centre, so is the shifting series of fate to the steadfastness\nand simplicity of providence.\n\n'It is this causal series which moves heaven and the stars, attempers\nthe elements to mutual accord, and again in turn transforms them into\nnew combinations; _this_ which renews the series of all things that are\nborn and die through like successions of germ and birth; it is _its_\noperation which binds the destinies of men by an indissoluble nexus of\ncausality, and, since it issues in the beginning from unalterable\nprovidence, these destinies also must of necessity be immutable.\nAccordingly, the world is ruled for the best if this unity abiding in\nthe Divine mind puts forth an inflexible order of causes. And this\norder, by its intrinsic immutability, restricts things mutable which\notherwise would ebb and flow at random. And so it happens that, although\nto you, who are not altogether capable of understanding this order, all\nthings seem confused and disordered, nevertheless there is everywhere an\nappointed limit which guides all things to good. Verily, nothing can be\ndone for the sake of evil even by the wicked themselves; for, as we\nabundantly proved, they seek good, but are drawn out of the way by\nperverse error; far less can this order which sets out from the supreme\ncentre of good turn aside anywhither from the way in which it began.\n\n'\"Yet what confusion,\" thou wilt say, \"can be more unrighteous than that\nprosperity and adversity should indifferently befall the good, what\nthey like and what they loathe come alternately to the bad!\" Yes; but\nhave men in real life such soundness of mind that their judgments of\nrighteousness and wickedness must necessarily correspond with facts?\nWhy, on this very point their verdicts conflict, and those whom some\ndeem worthy of reward, others deem worthy of punishment. Yet granted\nthere were one who could rightly distinguish the good and bad, yet would\nhe be able to look into the soul's inmost constitution, as it were, if\nwe may borrow an expression used of the body? The marvel here is not\nunlike that which astonishes one who does not know why in health sweet\nthings suit some constitutions, and bitter others, or why some sick men\nare best alleviated by mild remedies, others by severe. But the\nphysician who distinguishes the precise conditions and characteristics\nof health and sickness does not marvel. Now, the health of the soul is\nnothing but righteousness, and vice is its sickness. God, the guide and\nphysician of the mind, it is who preserves the good and banishes the\nbad. And He looks forth from the lofty watch-tower of His providence,\nperceives what is suited to each, and assigns what He knows to be\nsuitable.\n\n'This, then, is what that extraordinary mystery of the order of destiny\ncomes to--that something is done by one who knows, whereat the ignorant\nare astonished. But let us consider a few instances whereby appears what\nis the competency of human reason to fathom the Divine unsearchableness.\nHere is one whom thou deemest the perfection of justice and scrupulous\nintegrity; to all-knowing Providence it seems far otherwise. We all know\nour Lucan's admonition that it was the winning cause that found favour\nwith the gods, the beaten cause with Cato. So, shouldst thou see\nanything in this world happening differently from thy expectation, doubt\nnot but events are rightly ordered; it is in thy judgment that there is\nperverse confusion.\n\n'Grant, however, there be somewhere found one of so happy a character\nthat God and man alike agree in their judgments about him; yet is he\nsomewhat infirm in strength of mind. It may be, if he fall into\nadversity, he will cease to practise that innocency which has failed to\nsecure his fortune. Therefore, God's wise dispensation spares him whom\nadversity might make worse, will not let him suffer who is ill fitted\nfor endurance. Another there is perfect in all virtue, so holy and nigh\nto God that providence judges it unlawful that aught untoward should\nbefall him; nay, doth not even permit him to be afflicted with bodily\ndisease. As one more excellent than I[N] hath said:\n\n    '\"The very body of the holy saint\n    Is built of purest ether.\"\n\nOften it happens that the governance is given to the good that a\nrestraint may be put upon superfluity of wickedness. To others\nprovidence assigns some mixed lot suited to their spiritual nature; some\nit will plague lest they grow rank through long prosperity; others it\nwill suffer to be vexed with sore afflictions to confirm their virtues\nby the exercise and practice of patience. Some fear overmuch what they\nhave strength to bear; others despise overmuch that to which their\nstrength is unequal. All these it brings to the test of their true self\nthrough misfortune. Some also have bought a name revered to future ages\nat the price of a glorious death; some by invincible constancy under\ntheir sufferings have afforded an example to others that virtue cannot\nbe overcome by calamity--all which things, without doubt, come to pass\nrightly and in due order, and to the benefit of those to whom they are\nseen to happen.\n\n'As to the other side of the marvel, that the bad now meet with\naffliction, now get their hearts' desire, this, too, springs from the\nsame causes. As to the afflictions, of course no one marvels, because\nall hold the wicked to be ill deserving. The truth is, their punishments\nboth frighten others from crime, and amend those on whom they are\ninflicted; while their prosperity is a powerful sermon to the good, what\njudgments they ought to pass on good fortune of this kind, which often\nattends the wicked so assiduously.\n\n'There is another object which may, I believe, be attained in such\ncases: there is one, perhaps, whose nature is so reckless and violent\nthat poverty would drive him more desperately into crime. _His_ disorder\nprovidence relieves by allowing him to amass money. Such a one, in the\nuneasiness of a conscience stained with guilt, while he contrasts his\ncharacter with his fortune, perchance grows alarmed lest he should come\nto mourn the loss of that whose possession is so pleasant to him. He\nwill, then, reform his ways, and through the fear of losing his fortune\nhe forsakes his iniquity. Some, through a prosperity unworthily borne,\nhave been hurled headlong to ruin; to some the power of the sword has\nbeen committed, to the end that the good may be tried by discipline, and\nthe bad punished. For while there can be no peace between the righteous\nand the wicked, neither can the wicked agree among themselves. How\nshould they, when each is at variance with himself, because his vices\nrend his conscience, and ofttimes they do things which, when they are\ndone, they judge ought not to have been done. Hence it is that this\nsupreme providence brings to pass this notable marvel--that the bad make\nthe bad good. For some, when they see the injustice which they\nthemselves suffer at the hands of evil-doers, are inflamed with\ndetestation of the offenders, and, in the endeavour to be unlike those\nwhom they hate, return to the ways of virtue. It is the Divine power\nalone to which things evil are also good, in that, by putting them to\nsuitable use, it bringeth them in the end to some good issue. For order\nin some way or other embraceth all things, so that even that which has\ndeparted from the appointed laws of the order, nevertheless falleth\nwithin _an_ order, though _another_ order, that nothing in the realm of\nprovidence may be left to haphazard. But\n\n     '\"Hard were the task, as a god, to recount all, nothing omitting.\"\n\nNor, truly, is it lawful for man to compass in thought all the mechanism\nof the Divine work, or set it forth in speech. Let us be content to\nhave apprehended this only--that God, the creator of universal nature,\nlikewise disposeth all things, and guides them to good; and while He\nstudies to preserve in likeness to Himself all that He has created, He\nbanishes all evil from the borders of His commonweal through the links\nof fatal necessity. Whereby it comes to pass that, if thou look to\ndisposing providence, thou wilt nowhere find the evils which are\nbelieved so to abound on earth.\n\n'But I see thou hast long been burdened with the weight of the subject,\nand fatigued with the prolixity of the argument, and now lookest for\nsome refreshment of sweet poesy. Listen, then, and may the draught so\nrestore thee that thou wilt bend thy mind more resolutely to what\nremains.'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[N] Parmenides. Boethius seems to forget for the moment that Philosophy\nis speaking.\n\n\n\nSONG VI. THE UNIVERSAL AIM.\n\n\n    Wouldst thou with unclouded mind\n    View the laws by God designed,\n    Lift thy steadfast gaze on high\n    To the starry canopy;\n    See in rightful league of love\n    All the constellations move.\n    Fiery Sol, in full career,\n    Ne'er obstructs cold Phoebe's sphere;\n    When the Bear, at heaven's height,\n    Wheels his coursers' rapid flight,\n    Though he sees the starry train\n    Sinking in the western main,\n    He repines not, nor desires\n    In the flood to quench his fires.\n\n    In true sequence, as decreed,\n    Daily morn and eve succeed;\n    Vesper brings the shades of night,\n    Lucifer the morning light.\n    Love, in alternation due,\n    Still the cycle doth renew,\n    And discordant strife is driven\n    From the starry realm of heaven.\n    Thus, in wondrous amity,\n    Warring elements agree;\n    Hot and cold, and moist and dry,\n    Lay their ancient quarrel by;\n    High the flickering flame ascends,\n    Downward earth for ever tends.\n\n    So the year in spring's mild hours\n    Loads the air with scent of flowers;\n    Summer paints the golden grain;\n    Then, when autumn comes again,\n    Bright with fruit the orchards glow;\n    Winter brings the rain and snow.\n    Thus the seasons' fixed progression,\n    Tempered in a due succession,\n    Nourishes and brings to birth\n    All that lives and breathes on earth.\n    Then, soon run life's little day,\n    All it brought it takes away.\n\n    But One sits and guides the reins,\n    He who made and all sustains;\n    King and Lord and Fountain-head,\n    Judge most holy, Law most dread;\n    Now impels and now keeps back,\n    Holds each waverer in the track.\n    Else, were once the power withheld\n    That the circling spheres compelled\n    In their orbits to revolve,\n    This world's order would dissolve,\n    And th' harmonious whole would all\n    In one hideous ruin fall.\n\n    But through this connected frame\n    Runs one universal aim;\n    Towards the Good do all things tend,\n    Many paths, but one the end.\n    For naught lasts, unless it turns\n    Backward in its course, and yearns\n    To that Source to flow again\n    Whence its being first was ta'en.\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n\n'Dost thou, then, see the consequence of all that we have said?'\n\n'Nay; what consequence?'\n\n'That absolutely every fortune is good fortune.'\n\n'And how can that be?' said I.\n\n'Attend,' said she. 'Since every fortune, welcome and unwelcome alike,\nhas for its object the reward or trial of the good, and the punishing or\namending of the bad, every fortune must be good, since it is either just\nor useful.'\n\n'The reasoning is exceeding true,' said I, 'the conclusion, so long as I\nreflect upon the providence and fate of which thou hast taught me, based\non a strong foundation. Yet, with thy leave, we will count it among\nthose which just now thou didst set down as paradoxical.'\n\n'And why so?' said she.\n\n'Because ordinary speech is apt to assert, and that frequently, that\nsome men's fortune is bad.'\n\n'Shall we, then, for awhile approach more nearly to the language of the\nvulgar, that we may not seem to have departed too far from the usages of\nmen?'\n\n'At thy good pleasure,' said I.\n\n'That which advantageth thou callest good, dost thou not?'\n\n'Certainly.'\n\n'And that which either tries or amends advantageth?'\n\n'Granted.'\n\n'Is good, then?'\n\n'Of course.'\n\n'Well, this is _their_ case who have attained virtue and wage war with\nadversity, or turn from vice and lay hold on the path of virtue.'\n\n'I cannot deny it.'\n\n'What of the good fortune which is given as reward of the good--do the\nvulgar adjudge it bad?'\n\n'Anything but that; they deem it to be the best, as indeed it is.'\n\n'What, then, of that which remains, which, though it is harsh, puts the\nrestraint of just punishment on the bad--does popular opinion deem it\ngood?'\n\n'Nay; of all that can be imagined, it is accounted the most miserable.'\n\n'Observe, then, if, in following popular opinion, we have not ended in a\nconclusion quite paradoxical.'\n\n'How so?' said I.\n\n'Why, it results from our admissions that of all who have attained, or\nare advancing in, or are aiming at virtue, the fortune is in every case\ngood, while for those who remain in their wickedness fortune is always\nutterly bad.'\n\n'It is true,' said I; 'yet no one dare acknowledge it.'\n\n'Wherefore,' said she, 'the wise man ought not to take it ill, if ever\nhe is involved in one of fortune's conflicts, any more than it becomes a\nbrave soldier to be offended when at any time the trumpet sounds for\nbattle. The time of trial is the express opportunity for the one to win\nglory, for the other to perfect his wisdom. Hence, indeed, virtue gets\nits name, because, relying on its own efficacy, it yieldeth not to\nadversity. And ye who have taken your stand on virtue's steep ascent,\nit is not for you to be dissolved in delights or enfeebled by pleasure;\nye close in conflict--yea, in conflict most sharp--with all fortune's\nvicissitudes, lest ye suffer foul fortune to overwhelm or fair fortune\nto corrupt you. Hold the mean with all your strength. Whatever falls\nshort of this, or goes beyond, is fraught with scorn of happiness, and\nmisses the reward of toil. It rests with you to make your fortune what\nyou will. Verily, every harsh-seeming fortune, unless it either\ndisciplines or amends, is punishment.'\n\n\n\nSONG VII. THE HERO'S PATH.\n\n\n    Ten years a tedious warfare raged,\n      Ere Ilium's smoking ruins paid\n      For wedlock stained and faith betrayed,\n    And great Atrides' wrath assuaged.\n\n    But when heaven's anger asked a life,\n      And baffling winds his course withstood,\n      The king put off his fatherhood,\n    And slew his child with priestly knife.\n\n    When by the cavern's glimmering light\n      His comrades dear Odysseus saw\n      In the huge Cyclops' hideous maw\n    Engulfed, he wept the piteous sight.\n\n    But blinded soon, and wild with pain--\n      In bitter tears and sore annoy--\n      For that foul feast's unholy joy\n    Grim Polyphemus paid again.\n\n    His labours for Alcides win\n      A name of glory far and wide;\n      He tamed the Centaur's haughty pride,\n    And from the lion reft his skin.\n\n    The foul birds with sure darts he slew;\n      The golden fruit he stole--in vain\n      The dragon's watch; with triple chain\n    From hell's depths Cerberus he drew.\n\n    With their fierce lord's own flesh he fed\n      The wild steeds; Hydra overcame\n      With fire. 'Neath his own waves in shame\n    Maimed Achelous hid his head.\n\n    Huge Cacus for his crimes was slain;\n      On Libya's sands Antaeus hurled;\n      The shoulders that upheld the world\n    The great boar's dribbled spume did stain.\n\n    Last toil of all--his might sustained\n      The ball of heaven, nor did he bend\n      Beneath; this toil, his labour's end,\n    The prize of heaven's high glory gained.\n\n    Brave hearts, press on! Lo, heavenward lead\n      These bright examples! From the fight\n      Turn not your backs in coward flight;\n    Earth's conflict won, the stars your meed!\n\n\n\n\n</CHAPTER>\nBOOK V.\n\nFREE WILL AND GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE.\n\n\n     SUMMARY.\n\n     CH. I. Boethius asks if there is really any such thing as chance.\n     Philosophy answers, in conformity with Aristotle's definition\n     (Phys., II. iv.), that chance is merely relative to human purpose,\n     and that what seems fortuitous really depends on a more subtle form\n     of causation.--CH. II. Has man, then, any freedom, if the reign of\n     law is thus absolute? Freedom of choice, replies Philosophy, is a\n     necessary attribute of reason. Man has a measure of freedom, though\n     a less perfect freedom than divine natures.--CH. III. But how can\n     man's freedom be reconciled with God's absolute foreknowledge? If\n     God's foreknowledge be certain, it seems to exclude the possibility\n     of man's free will. But if man has no freedom of choice, it\n     follows that rewards and punishments are unjust as well as useless;\n     that merit and demerit are mere names; that God is the cause of\n     men's wickednesses; that prayer is meaningless.--CH. IV. The\n     explanation is that man's reasoning faculties are not adequate to\n     the apprehension of the ways of God's foreknowledge. If we could\n     know, as He knows, all that is most perplexing in this problem\n     would be made plain. For knowledge depends not on the nature of the\n     thing known, but on the faculty of the knower.--CH. V. Now, where\n     our senses conflict with our reason, we defer the judgment of the\n     lower faculty to the judgment of the higher. Our present perplexity\n     arises from our viewing God's foreknowledge from the standpoint of\n     human reason. We must try and rise to the higher standpoint of\n     God's immediate intuition.--CH. VI. To understand this higher form\n     of cognition, we must consider God's nature. God is eternal.\n     Eternity is more than mere everlasting duration. Accordingly, His\n     knowledge surveys past and future in the timelessness of an eternal\n     present. His foreseeing is seeing. Yet this foreseeing does not in\n     itself impose necessity, any more than our seeing things happen\n     makes their happening necessary. We may, however, if we please,\n     distinguish two necessities--one absolute, the other conditional on\n     knowledge. In this conditional sense alone do the things which God\n     foresees necessarily come to pass. But this kind of necessity\n     affects not the nature of things. It leaves the reality of free\n     will unimpaired, and the evils feared do not ensue. Our\n     responsibility is great, since all that we do is done in the sight\n     of all-seeing Providence.\n\n\n\n\n</CHAPTER>\n\n\n<CHAPTER>\nBOOK V. I.\n\n\nShe ceased, and was about to pass on in her discourse to the exposition\nof other matters, when I break in and say: 'Excellent is thine\nexhortation, and such as well beseemeth thy high authority; but I am\neven now experiencing one of the many difficulties which, as thou saidst\nbut now, beset the question of providence. I want to know whether thou\ndeemest that there is any such thing as chance at all, and, if so, what\nit is.'\n\nThen she made answer: 'I am anxious to fulfil my promise completely, and\nopen to thee a way of return to thy native land. As for these matters,\nthough very useful to know, they are yet a little removed from the path\nof our design, and I fear lest digressions should fatigue thee, and thou\nshouldst find thyself unequal to completing the direct journey to our\ngoal.'\n\n'Have no fear for that,' said I. 'It is rest to me to learn, where\nlearning brings delight so exquisite, especially when thy argument has\nbeen built up on all sides with undoubted conviction, and no place is\nleft for uncertainty in what follows.'\n\nShe made answer: 'I will accede to thy request;' and forthwith she thus\nbegan: 'If chance be defined as a result produced by random movement\nwithout any link of causal connection, I roundly affirm that there is no\nsuch thing as chance at all, and consider the word to be altogether\nwithout meaning, except as a symbol of the thing designated. What place\ncan be left for random action, when God constraineth all things to\norder? For \"ex nihilo nihil\" is sound doctrine which none of the\nancients gainsaid, although they used it of material substance, not of\nthe efficient principle; this they laid down as a kind of basis for all\ntheir reasonings concerning nature. Now, if a thing arise without\ncauses, it will appear to have arisen from nothing. But if this cannot\nbe, neither is it possible for there to be chance in accordance with the\ndefinition just given.'\n\n'Well,' said I, 'is there, then, nothing which can properly be called\nchance or accident, or is there something to which these names are\nappropriate, though its nature is dark to the vulgar?'\n\n'Our good Aristotle,' says she, 'has defined it concisely in his\n\"Physics,\" and closely in accordance with the truth.'\n\n'How, pray?' said I.\n\n'Thus,' says she: 'Whenever something is done for the sake of a\nparticular end, and for certain reasons some other result than that\ndesigned ensues, this is called chance; for instance, if a man is\ndigging the earth for tillage, and finds a mass of buried gold. Now,\nsuch a find is regarded as accidental; yet it is not \"ex nihilo,\" for it\nhas its proper causes, the unforeseen and unexpected concurrence of\nwhich has brought the chance about. For had not the cultivator been\ndigging, had not the man who hid the money buried it in that precise\nspot, the gold would not have been found. These, then, are the reasons\nwhy the find is a chance one, in that it results from causes which met\ntogether and concurred, not from any intention on the part of the\ndiscoverer. Since neither he who buried the gold nor he who worked in\nthe field _intended_ that the money should be found, but, as I said, it\n_happened_ by coincidence that one dug where the other buried the\ntreasure. We may, then, define chance as being an unexpected result\nflowing from a concurrence of causes where the several factors had some\ndefinite end. But the meeting and concurrence of these causes arises\nfrom that inevitable chain of order which, flowing from the\nfountain-head of Providence, disposes all things in their due time and\nplace.'\n\n\n\nSONG I.\n\nCHANCE.\n\n\n    In the rugged Persian highlands,\n      Where the masters of the bow\n    Skill to feign a flight, and, fleeing,\n      Hurl their darts and pierce the foe;\n    There the Tigris and Euphrates\n      At one source[O] their waters blend,\n    Soon to draw apart, and plainward\n      Each its separate way to wend.\n    When once more their waters mingle\n      In a channel deep and wide,\n    All the flotsam comes together\n      That is borne upon the tide:\n    Ships, and trunks of trees, uprooted\n      In the torrent's wild career,\n    Meet, as 'mid the swirling waters\n      Chance their random way may steer.\n    Yet the shelving of the channel\n      And the flowing water's force\n    Guides each movement, and determines\n      Every floating fragment's course.\n    Thus, where'er the drift of hazard\n      Seems most unrestrained to flow,\n    Chance herself is reined and bitted,\n      And the curb of law doth know.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[O] This is not, of course, literally true, though the Tigris and\nEuphrates rise in the same mountain district.\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\n'I am following needfully,' said I, 'and I agree that it is as thou\nsayest. But in this series of linked causes is there any freedom left to\nour will, or does the chain of fate bind also the very motions of our\nsouls?'\n\n'There is freedom,' said she; 'nor, indeed, can any creature be\nrational, unless he be endowed with free will. For that which hath the\nnatural use of reason has the faculty of discriminative judgment, and of\nitself distinguishes what is to be shunned or desired. Now, everyone\nseeks what he judges desirable, and avoids what he thinks should be\nshunned. Wherefore, beings endowed with reason possess also the faculty\nof free choice and refusal. But I suppose this faculty not equal alike\nin all. The higher Divine essences possess a clear-sighted judgment, an\nuncorrupt will, and an effective power of accomplishing their wishes.\nHuman souls must needs be comparatively free while they abide in the\ncontemplation of the Divine mind, less free when they pass into bodily\nform, and still less, again, when they are enwrapped in earthly members.\nBut when they are given over to vices, and fall from the possession of\ntheir proper reason, then indeed their condition is utter slavery. For\nwhen they let their gaze fall from the light of highest truth to the\nlower world where darkness reigns, soon ignorance blinds their vision;\nthey are disturbed by baneful affections, by yielding and assenting to\nwhich they help to promote the slavery in which they are involved, and\nare in a manner led captive by reason of their very liberty. Yet He who\nseeth all things from eternity beholdeth these things with the eyes of\nHis providence, and assigneth to each what is predestined for it by its\nmerits:\n\n     '\"All things surveying, all things overhearing.'\"\n\n\n\nSONG II.\n\nTHE TRUE SUN.\n\n\n    Homer with mellifluous tongue\n    Phoebus' glorious light hath sung,\n      Hymning high his praise;\n      Yet _his_ feeble rays\n    Ocean's hollows may not brighten,\n    Nor earth's central gloom enlighten.\n\n    But the might of Him, who skilled\n    This great universe to build,\n      Is not thus confined;\n      Not earth's solid rind,\n    Nor night's blackest canopy,\n    Baffle His all-seeing eye.\n\n    All that is, hath been, shall be,\n    In one glance's compass, He\n      Limitless descries;\n      And, save His, no eyes\n    All the world survey--no, none!\n    _Him_, then, truly name the Sun.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nThen said I: 'But now I am once more perplexed by a problem yet more\ndifficult.'\n\n'And what is that?' said she; 'yet, in truth, I can guess what it is\nthat troubles you.'\n\n'It seems,' said I, 'too much of a paradox and a contradiction that God\nshould know all things, and yet there should be free will. For if God\nforesees everything, and can in no wise be deceived, that which\nprovidence foresees to be about to happen must necessarily come to pass.\nWherefore, if from eternity He foreknows not only what men will do, but\nalso their designs and purposes, there can be no freedom of the will,\nseeing that nothing can be done, nor can any sort of purpose be\nentertained, save such as a Divine providence, incapable of being\ndeceived, has perceived beforehand. For if the issues can be turned\naside to some other end than that foreseen by providence, there will not\nthen be any sure foreknowledge of the future, but uncertain conjecture\ninstead, and to think this of God I deem impiety.\n\n'Moreover, I do not approve the reasoning by which some think to solve\nthis puzzle. For they say that it is not because God has foreseen the\ncoming of an event that _therefore_ it is sure to come to pass, but,\nconversely, because something is about to come to pass, it cannot be\nhidden from Divine providence; and accordingly the necessity passes to\nthe opposite side, and it is not that what is foreseen must necessarily\ncome to pass, but that what is about to come to pass must necessarily be\nforeseen. But this is just as if the matter in debate were, which is\ncause and which effect--whether foreknowledge of the future cause of the\nnecessity, or the necessity of the future of the foreknowledge. But we\nneed not be at the pains of demonstrating that, whatsoever be the order\nof the causal sequence, the occurrence of things foreseen is necessary,\neven though the foreknowledge of future events does not in itself\nimpose upon them the necessity of their occurrence. For example, if a\nman be seated, the supposition of his being seated is necessarily true;\nand, conversely, if the supposition of his being seated is true, because\nhe is really seated, he must necessarily be sitting. So, in either case,\nthere is some necessity involved--in this latter case, the necessity of\nthe fact; in the former, of the truth of the statement. But in both\ncases the sitter is not therefore seated because the opinion is true,\nbut rather the opinion is true because antecedently he was sitting as a\nmatter of fact. Thus, though the cause of the truth of the opinion comes\nfrom the other side,[P] yet there is a necessity on both sides alike. We\ncan obviously reason similarly in the case of providence and the future.\nEven if future events are foreseen because they are about to happen, and\ndo not come to pass because they are foreseen, still, all the same,\nthere is a necessity, both that they should be foreseen by God as about\nto come to pass, and that when they are foreseen they should happen, and\nthis is sufficient for the destruction of free will. However, it is\npreposterous to speak of the occurrence of events in time as the cause\nof eternal foreknowledge. And yet if we believe that God foresees future\nevents because they are about to come to pass, what is it but to think\nthat the occurrence of events is the cause of His supreme providence?\nFurther, just as when I _know_ that anything is, that thing\n_necessarily_ is, so when I know that anything will be, it will\n_necessarily_ be. It follows, then, that things foreknown come to pass\ninevitably.\n\n'Lastly, to think of a thing as being in any way other than what it is,\nis not only not knowledge, but it is false opinion widely different from\nthe truth of knowledge. Consequently, if anything is about to be, and\nyet its occurrence is not certain and necessary, how can anyone foreknow\nthat it will occur? For just as knowledge itself is free from all\nadmixture of falsity, so any conception drawn from knowledge cannot be\nother than as it is conceived. For this, indeed, is the cause why\nknowledge is free from falsehood, because of necessity each thing must\ncorrespond exactly with the knowledge which grasps its nature. In what\nway, then, are we to suppose that God foreknows these uncertainties as\nabout to come to pass? For if He thinks of events which possibly may not\nhappen at all as inevitably destined to come to pass, He is deceived;\nand this it is not only impious to believe, but even so much as to\nexpress in words. If, on the other hand, He sees them in the future as\nthey are in such a sense as to know that they may equally come to pass\nor not, what sort of foreknowledge is this which comprehends nothing\ncertain nor fixed? What better is this than the absurd vaticination of\nTeiresias?\n\n      '\"Whate'er I say\n    Shall either come to pass--or not.\"\n\nIn that case, too, in what would Divine providence surpass human opinion\nif it holds for uncertain things the occurrence of which is uncertain,\neven as men do? But if at that perfectly sure Fountain-head of all\nthings no shadow of uncertainty can possibly be found, then the\noccurrence of those things which He has surely foreknown as coming is\ncertain. Wherefore there can be no freedom in human actions and designs;\nbut the Divine mind, which foresees all things without possibility of\nmistake, ties and binds them down to one only issue. But this admission\nonce made, what an upset of human affairs manifestly ensues! Vainly are\nrewards and punishments proposed for the good and bad, since no free and\nvoluntary motion of the will has deserved either one or the other; nay,\nthe punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous, which is\nnow esteemed the perfection of justice, will seem the most flagrant\ninjustice, since men are determined either way not by their own proper\nvolition, but by the necessity of what must surely be. And therefore\nneither virtue nor vice is anything, but rather good and ill desert are\nconfounded together without distinction. Moreover, seeing that the whole\ncourse of events is deduced from providence, and nothing is left free to\nhuman design, it comes to pass that our vices also are referred to the\nAuthor of all good--a thought than which none more abominable can\npossibly be conceived. Again, no ground is left for hope or prayer,\nsince how can we hope for blessings, or pray for mercy, when every\nobject of desire depends upon the links of an unalterable chain of\ncausation? Gone, then, is the one means of intercourse between God and\nman--the communion of hope and prayer--if it be true that we ever earn\nthe inestimable recompense of the Divine favour at the price of a due\nhumility; for this is the one way whereby men seem able to hold\ncommunion with God, and are joined to that unapproachable light by the\nvery act of supplication, even before they obtain their petitions. Then,\nsince these things can scarcely be believed to have any efficacy, if the\nnecessity of future events be admitted, what means will there be whereby\nwe may be brought near and cleave to Him who is the supreme Head of all?\nWherefore it needs must be that the human race, even as thou didst\nerstwhile declare in song, parted and dissevered from its Source, should\nfall to ruin.'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[P] _I.e._, the necessity of the truth of the statement from the fact.\n\n\n\nSONG III. TRUTH'S PARADOXES.\n\n\n\n\n    Why does a strange discordance break\n      The ordered scheme's fair harmony?\n    Hath God decreed 'twixt truth and truth\n      There may such lasting warfare be,\n    That truths, each severally plain,\n    We strive to reconcile in vain?\n\n    Or is the discord not in truth,\n      Since truth is self consistent ever?\n    But, close in fleshly wrappings held,\n      The blinded mind of man can never\n    Discern--so faint her taper shines--\n    The subtle chain that all combines?\n\n    Ah! then why burns man's restless mind\n      Truth's hidden portals to unclose?\n    Knows he already what he seeks?\n      Why toil to seek it, if he knows?\n    Yet, haply if he knoweth not,\n    Why blindly seek he knows not what?[Q]\n\n\n    Who for a good he knows not sighs?\n      Who can an unknown end pursue?\n    How find? How e'en when haply found\n      Hail that strange form he never knew?\n    Or is it that man's inmost soul\n    Once knew each part and knew the whole?\n\n    Now, though by fleshly vapours dimmed,\n      Not all forgot her visions past;\n    For while the several parts are lost,\n      To the one whole she cleaveth fast;\n    Whence he who yearns the truth to find\n    Is neither sound of sight nor blind.\n\n    For neither does he know in full,\n      Nor is he reft of knowledge quite;\n    But, holding still to what is left,\n      He gropes in the uncertain light,\n    And by the part that still survives\n    To win back all he bravely strives.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Q] Compare Plato, 'Meno,' 80; Jowett, vol. ii., pp. 39, 40.\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nThen said she: 'This debate about providence is an old one, and is\nvigorously discussed by Cicero in his \"Divination\"; thou also hast long\nand earnestly pondered the problem, yet no one has had diligence and\nperseverance enough to find a solution. And the reason of this obscurity\nis that the movement of human reasoning cannot cope with the simplicity\nof the Divine foreknowledge; for if a conception of its nature could in\nany wise be framed, no shadow of uncertainty would remain. With a view\nof making this at last clear and plain, I will begin by considering the\narguments by which thou art swayed. First, I inquire into the reasons\nwhy thou art dissatisfied with the solution proposed, which is to the\neffect that, seeing the fact of foreknowledge is not thought the cause\nof the necessity of future events, foreknowledge is not to be deemed any\nhindrance to the freedom of the will. Now, surely the sole ground on\nwhich thou arguest the necessity of the future is that things which are\nforeknown cannot fail to come to pass. But if, as thou wert ready to\nacknowledge just now, the fact of foreknowledge imposes no necessity on\nthings future, what reason is there for supposing the results of\nvoluntary action constrained to a fixed issue? Suppose, for the sake of\nargument, and to see what follows, we assume that there is no\nforeknowledge. Are willed actions, then, tied down to any necessity in\n_this_ case?'\n\n'Certainly not.'\n\n'Let us assume foreknowledge again, but without its involving any actual\nnecessity; the freedom of the will, I imagine, will remain in complete\nintegrity. But thou wilt say that, even although the foreknowledge is\nnot the necessity of the future event's occurrence, yet it is a sign\nthat it will necessarily happen. Granted; but in this case it is plain\nthat, even if there had been no foreknowledge, the issues would have\nbeen inevitably certain. For a sign only indicates something which is,\ndoes not bring to pass that of which it is the sign. We require to show\nbeforehand that all things, without exception, happen of necessity in\norder that a preconception may be a sign of this necessity. Otherwise,\nif there is no such universal necessity, neither can any preconception\nbe a sign of a necessity which exists not. Manifestly, too, a proof\nestablished on firm grounds of reason must be drawn not from signs and\nloose general arguments, but from suitable and necessary causes. But how\ncan it be that things foreseen should ever fail to come to pass? Why,\nthis is to suppose us to believe that the events which providence\nforesees to be coming were not about to happen, instead of our supposing\nthat, although they should come to pass, yet there was no necessity\ninvolved in their own nature compelling their occurrence. Take an\nillustration that will help to convey my meaning. There are many things\nwhich we see taking place before our eyes--the movements of charioteers,\nfor instance, in guiding and turning their cars, and so on. Now, is any\none of these movements compelled by any necessity?'\n\n'No; certainly not. There would be no efficacy in skill if all motions\ntook place perforce.'\n\n'Then, things which in taking place are free from any necessity as to\ntheir being in the present must also, before they take place, be about\nto happen without necessity. Wherefore there are things which will come\nto pass, the occurrence of which is perfectly free from necessity. At\nall events, I imagine that no one will deny that things now taking place\nwere about to come to pass before they were actually happening. Such\nthings, however much foreknown, are in their occurrence _free_. For even\nas knowledge of things present imports no necessity into things that are\ntaking place, so foreknowledge of the future imports none into things\nthat are about to come. But this, thou wilt say, is the very point in\ndispute--whether any foreknowing is possible of things whose occurrence\nis not necessary. For here there seems to thee a contradiction, and, if\nthey are foreseen, their necessity follows; whereas if there is no\nnecessity, they can by no means be foreknown; and thou thinkest that\nnothing can be grasped as known unless it is certain, but if things\nwhose occurrence is uncertain are foreknown as certain, this is the very\nmist of opinion, not the truth of knowledge. For to think of things\notherwise than as they are, thou believest to be incompatible with the\nsoundness of knowledge.\n\n'Now, the cause of the mistake is this--that men think that all\nknowledge is cognized purely by the nature and efficacy of the thing\nknown. Whereas the case is the very reverse: all that is known is\ngrasped not conformably to its own efficacy, but rather conformably to\nthe faculty of the knower. An example will make this clear: the\nroundness of a body is recognised in one way by sight, in another by\ntouch. Sight looks upon it from a distance as a whole by a simultaneous\nreflection of rays; touch grasps the roundness piecemeal, by contact and\nattachment to the surface, and by actual movement round the periphery\nitself. Man himself, likewise, is viewed in one way by Sense, in another\nby Imagination, in another way, again, by Thought, in another by pure\nIntelligence. Sense judges figure clothed in material substance,\nImagination figure alone without matter. Thought transcends this again,\nand by its contemplation of universals considers the type itself which\nis contained in the individual. The eye of Intelligence is yet more\nexalted; for overpassing the sphere of the universal, it will behold\nabsolute form itself by the pure force of the mind's vision. Wherein the\nmain point to be considered is this: the higher faculty of comprehension\nembraces the lower, while the lower cannot rise to the higher. For Sense\nhas no efficacy beyond matter, nor can Imagination behold universal\nideas, nor Thought embrace pure form; but Intelligence, looking down, as\nit were, from its higher standpoint in its intuition of form,\ndiscriminates also the several elements which underlie it; but it\ncomprehends them in the same way as it comprehends that form itself,\nwhich could be cognized by no other than itself. For it cognizes the\nuniversal of Thought, the figure of Imagination, and the matter of\nSense, without employing Thought, Imagination, or Sense, but surveying\nall things, so to speak, under the aspect of pure form by a single flash\nof intuition. Thought also, in considering the universal, embraces\nimages and sense-impressions without resorting to Imagination or Sense.\nFor it is Thought which has thus defined the universal from its\nconceptual point of view: \"Man is a two-legged animal endowed with\nreason.\" This is indeed a universal notion, yet no one is ignorant that\nthe _thing_ is imaginable and presentable to Sense, because Thought\nconsiders it not by Imagination or Sense, but by means of rational\nconception. Imagination, too, though its faculty of viewing and forming\nrepresentations is founded upon the senses, nevertheless surveys\nsense-impressions without calling in Sense, not in the way of\nSense-perception, but of Imagination. See'st thou, then, how all things\nin cognizing use rather their own faculty than the faculty of the things\nwhich they cognize? Nor is this strange; for since every judgment is the\nact of the judge, it is necessary that each should accomplish its task\nby its own, not by another's power.'\n\n\n\nSONG IV. A PSYCHOLOGICAL FALLACY.\n\n[R]\n\n\n    From the Porch's murky depths\n      Comes a doctrine sage,\n    That doth liken living mind\n      To a written page;\n    Since all knowledge comes through\n      Sense,\n    Graven by Experience.\n\n    'As,' say they, 'the pen its marks\n      Curiously doth trace\n    On the smooth unsullied white\n      Of the paper's face,\n    So do outer things impress\n    Images on consciousness.'\n\n    But if verily the mind\n      Thus all passive lies;\n    If no living power within\n      Its own force supplies;\n    If it but reflect again,\n    Like a glass, things false and vain--\n\n\n    Whence the wondrous faculty\n      That perceives and knows,\n    That in one fair ordered scheme\n      Doth the world dispose;\n    Grasps each whole that Sense presents,\n    Or breaks into elements?\n\n    So divides and recombines,\n      And in changeful wise\n    Now to low descends, and now\n      To the height doth rise;\n    Last in inward swift review\n    Strictly sifts the false and true?\n\n    Of these ample potencies\n      Fitter cause, I ween,\n    Were Mind's self than marks impressed\n      By the outer scene.\n    Yet the body through the sense\n    Stirs the soul's intelligence.\n\n    When light flashes on the eye,\n      Or sound strikes the ear,\n    Mind aroused to due response\n      Makes the message clear;\n    And the dumb external signs\n    With the hidden forms combines.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[R] A criticism of the doctrine of the mind as a blank sheet of paper on\nwhich experience writes, as held by the Stoics in anticipation of Locke.\nSee Zeller, 'Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics,' Reichel's translation,\np. 76.\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\n'Now, although in the case of bodies endowed with sentiency the\nqualities of external objects affect the sense-organs, and the activity\nof mind is preceded by a bodily affection which calls forth the mind's\naction upon itself, and stimulates the forms till that moment lying\ninactive within, yet, I say, if in these bodies endowed with sentiency\nthe mind is not inscribed by mere passive affection, but of its own\nefficacy discriminates the impressions furnished to the body, how much\nmore do intelligences free from all bodily affections employ in their\ndiscrimination their own mental activities instead of conforming to\nexternal objects? So on these principles various modes of cognition\nbelong to distinct and different substances. For to creatures void of\nmotive power--shell-fish and other such creatures which cling to rocks\nand grow there--belongs Sense alone, void of all other modes of gaining\nknowledge; to beasts endowed with movement, in whom some capacity of\nseeking and shunning seems to have arisen, Imagination also. Thought\npertains only to the human race, as Intelligence to Divinity alone;\nhence it follows that that form of knowledge exceeds the rest which of\nits own nature cognizes not only its proper object, but the objects of\nthe other forms of knowledge also. But what if Sense and Imagination\nwere to gainsay Thought, and declare that universal which Thought deems\nitself to behold to be nothing? For the object of Sense and Imagination\ncannot be universal; so that either the judgment of Reason is true and\nthere is no sense-object, or, since they know full well that many\nobjects are presented to Sense and Imagination, the conception of\nReason, which looks on that which is perceived by Sense and particular\nas if it were a something \"universal,\" is empty of content. Suppose,\nfurther, that Reason maintains in reply that it does indeed contemplate\nthe object of both Sense and Imagination under the form of\nuniversality, while Sense and Imagination cannot aspire to the\nknowledge of the universal, since their cognizance cannot go beyond\nbodily figures, and that in the cognition of reality we ought rather to\ntrust the stronger and more perfect faculty of judgment. In a dispute of\nthis sort, should not we, in whom is planted the faculty of reasoning as\nwell as of imagining and perceiving, espouse the cause of Reason?\n\n'In like manner is it that human reason thinks that Divine Intelligence\ncannot see the future except after the fashion in which its own\nknowledge is obtained. For thy contention is, if events do not appear to\ninvolve certain and necessary issues, they cannot be foreseen as\ncertainly about to come to pass. There is, then, no foreknowledge of\nsuch events; or, if we can ever bring ourselves to believe that there\nis, there can be nothing which does not happen of necessity. If,\nhowever, we could have some part in the judgment of the Divine mind,\neven as we participate in Reason, we should think it perfectly just that\nhuman Reason should submit itself to the Divine mind, no less than we\njudged that Imagination and Sense ought to yield to Reason. Wherefore\nlet us soar, if we can, to the heights of that Supreme Intelligence; for\nthere Reason will see what in itself it cannot look upon; and that is in\nwhat way things whose occurrence is not certain may yet be seen in a\nsure and definite foreknowledge; and that this foreknowledge is not\nconjecture, but rather knowledge in its supreme simplicity, free of all\nlimits and restrictions.'\n\n\n\nSONG V. THE UPWARD LOOK.\n\n\n    In what divers shapes and fashions do the creatures great and small\n    Over wide earth's teeming surface skim, or scud, or walk, or crawl!\n    Some with elongated body sweep the ground, and, as they move,\n    Trail perforce with writhing belly in the dust a sinuous groove;\n    Some, on light wing upward soaring, swiftly do the winds divide,\n    And through heaven's ample spaces in free motion smoothly glide;\n    These earth's solid surface pressing, with firm paces onward rove,\n    Ranging through the verdant meadows, crouching in the woodland grove.\n    Great and wondrous is their variance! Yet in all the head low-bent\n    Dulls the soul and blunts the senses, though their forms be different.\n    Man alone, erect, aspiring, lifts his forehead to the skies,\n    And in upright posture steadfast seems earth's baseness to despise.\n    If with earth not all besotted, to this parable give ear,\n    Thou whose gaze is fixed on heaven, who thy face on high dost rear:\n    Lift thy soul, too, heavenward; haply lest it stain its heavenly worth,\n    And thine eyes alone look upward, while thy mind cleaves to the earth!\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\n'Since, then, as we lately proved, everything that is known is cognized\nnot in accordance with its own nature, but in accordance with the nature\nof the faculty that comprehends it, let us now contemplate, as far as\nlawful, the character of the Divine essence, that we may be able to\nunderstand also the nature of its knowledge.\n\n'God is eternal; in this judgment all rational beings agree. Let us,\nthen, consider what eternity is. For this word carries with it a\nrevelation alike of the Divine nature and of the Divine knowledge. Now,\neternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single\nmoment. What this is becomes more clear and manifest from a comparison\nwith things temporal. For whatever lives in time is a present proceeding\nfrom the past to the future, and there is nothing set in time which can\nembrace the whole space of its life together. To-morrow's state it\ngrasps not yet, while it has already lost yesterday's; nay, even in the\nlife of to-day ye live no longer than one brief transitory moment.\nWhatever, therefore, is subject to the condition of time, although, as\nAristotle deemed of the world, it never have either beginning or end,\nand its life be stretched to the whole extent of time's infinity, it yet\nis not such as rightly to be thought eternal. For it does not include\nand embrace the whole space of infinite life at once, but has no present\nhold on things to come, not yet accomplished. Accordingly, that which\nincludes and possesses the whole fulness of unending life at once, from\nwhich nothing future is absent, from which nothing past has escaped,\nthis is rightly called eternal; this must of necessity be ever present\nto itself in full self-possession, and hold the infinity of movable time\nin an abiding present. Wherefore they deem not rightly who imagine that\non Plato's principles the created world is made co-eternal with the\nCreator, because they are told that he believed the world to have had\nno beginning in time,[S] and to be destined never to come to an end. For\nit is one thing for existence to be endlessly prolonged, which was what\nPlato ascribed to the world, another for the whole of an endless life to\nbe embraced in the present, which is manifestly a property peculiar to\nthe Divine mind. Nor need God appear earlier in mere duration of time to\ncreated things, but only prior in the unique simplicity of His nature.\nFor the infinite progression of things in time copies this immediate\nexistence in the present of the changeless life, and when it cannot\nsucceed in equalling it, declines from movelessness into motion, and\nfalls away from the simplicity of a perpetual present to the infinite\nduration of the future and the past; and since it cannot possess the\nwhole fulness of its life together, for the very reason that in a manner\nit never ceases to be, it seems, up to a certain point, to rival that\nwhich it cannot complete and express by attaching itself indifferently\nto any present moment of time, however swift and brief; and since this\nbears some resemblance to that ever-abiding present, it bestows on\neverything to which it is assigned the semblance of existence. But since\nit cannot abide, it hurries along the infinite path of time, and the\nresult has been that it continues by ceaseless movement the life the\ncompleteness of which it could not embrace while it stood still. So, if\nwe are minded to give things their right names, we shall follow Plato in\nsaying that God indeed is eternal, but the world everlasting.\n\n'Since, then, every mode of judgment comprehends its objects conformably\nto its own nature, and since God abides for ever in an eternal present,\nHis knowledge, also transcending all movement of time, dwells in the\nsimplicity of its own changeless present, and, embracing the whole\ninfinite sweep of the past and of the future, contemplates all that\nfalls within its simple cognition as if it were now taking place. And\ntherefore, if thou wilt carefully consider that immediate presentment\nwhereby it discriminates all things, thou wilt more rightly deem it not\nforeknowledge as of something future, but knowledge of a moment that\nnever passes. For this cause the name chosen to describe it is not\nprevision, but providence, because, since utterly removed in nature from\nthings mean and trivial, its outlook embraces all things as from some\nlofty height. Why, then, dost thou insist that the things which are\nsurveyed by the Divine eye are involved in necessity, whereas clearly\nmen impose no necessity on things which they see? Does the act of vision\nadd any necessity to the things which thou seest before thy eyes?'\n\n'Assuredly not.'\n\n'And yet, if we may without unfitness compare God's present and man's,\njust as ye see certain things in this your temporary present, so does He\nsee all things in His eternal present. Wherefore this Divine\nanticipation changes not the natures and properties of things, and it\nbeholds things present before it, just as they will hereafter come to\npass in time. Nor does it confound things in its judgment, but in the\none mental view distinguishes alike what will come necessarily and what\nwithout necessity. For even as ye, when at one and the same time ye see\na man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the sky, distinguish\nbetween the two, though one glance embraces both, and judge the former\nvoluntary, the latter necessary action: so also the Divine vision in its\nuniversal range of view does in no wise confuse the characters of the\nthings which are present to its regard, though future in respect of\ntime. Whence it follows that when it perceives that something will come\ninto existence, and yet is perfectly aware that this is unbound by any\nnecessity, its apprehension is not opinion, but rather knowledge based\non truth. And if to this thou sayest that what God sees to be about to\ncome to pass cannot fail to come to pass, and that what cannot fail to\ncome to pass happens of necessity, and wilt tie me down to this word\nnecessity, I will acknowledge that thou affirmest a most solid truth,\nbut one which scarcely anyone can approach to who has not made the\nDivine his special study. For my answer would be that the same future\nevent is necessary from the standpoint of Divine knowledge, but when\nconsidered in its own nature it seems absolutely free and unfettered.\nSo, then, there are two necessities--one simple, as that men are\nnecessarily mortal; the other conditioned, as that, if you know that\nsomeone is walking, he must necessarily be walking. For that which is\nknown cannot indeed be otherwise than as it is known to be, and yet this\nfact by no means carries with it that other simple necessity. For the\nformer necessity is not imposed by the thing's own proper nature, but by\nthe addition of a condition. No necessity compels one who is voluntarily\nwalking to go forward, although it is necessary for him to go forward at\nthe moment of walking. In the same way, then, if Providence sees\nanything as present, that must necessarily be, though it is bound by no\nnecessity of nature. Now, God views as present those coming events which\nhappen of free will. These, accordingly, from the standpoint of the\nDivine vision are made necessary conditionally on the Divine\ncognizance; viewed, however, in themselves, they desist not from the\nabsolute freedom naturally theirs. Accordingly, without doubt, all\nthings will come to pass which God foreknows as about to happen, but of\nthese certain proceed of free will; and though these happen, yet by the\nfact of their existence they do not lose their proper nature, in virtue\nof which before they happened it was really possible that they might not\nhave come to pass.\n\n'What difference, then, does the denial of necessity make, since,\nthrough their being conditioned by Divine knowledge, they come to pass\nas if they were in all respects under the compulsion of necessity? This\ndifference, surely, which we saw in the case of the instances I formerly\ntook, the sun's rising and the man's walking; which at the moment of\ntheir occurrence could not but be taking place, and yet one of them\nbefore it took place was necessarily obliged to be, while the other was\nnot so at all. So likewise the things which to God are present without\ndoubt exist, but some of them come from the necessity of things, others\nfrom the power of the agent. Quite rightly, then, have we said that\nthese things are necessary if viewed from the standpoint of the Divine\nknowledge; but if they are considered in themselves, they are free from\nthe bonds of necessity, even as everything which is accessible to sense,\nregarded from the standpoint of Thought, is universal, but viewed in its\nown nature particular. \"But,\" thou wilt say, \"if it is in my power to\nchange my purpose, I shall make void providence, since I shall perchance\nchange something which comes within its foreknowledge.\" My answer is:\nThou canst indeed turn aside thy purpose; but since the truth of\nprovidence is ever at hand to see that thou canst, and whether thou\ndost, and whither thou turnest thyself, thou canst not avoid the Divine\nforeknowledge, even as thou canst not escape the sight of a present\nspectator, although of thy free will thou turn thyself to various\nactions. Wilt thou, then, say: \"Shall the Divine knowledge be changed at\nmy discretion, so that, when I will this or that, providence changes its\nknowledge correspondingly?\"\n\n'Surely not.'\n\n'True, for the Divine vision anticipates all that is coming, and\ntransforms and reduces it to the form of its own present knowledge, and\nvaries not, as thou deemest, in its foreknowledge, alternating to this\nor that, but in a single flash it forestalls and includes thy mutations\nwithout altering. And this ever-present comprehension and survey of all\nthings God has received, not from the issue of future events, but from\nthe simplicity of His own nature. Hereby also is resolved the objection\nwhich a little while ago gave thee offence--that our doings in the\nfuture were spoken of as if supplying the cause of God's knowledge. For\nthis faculty of knowledge, embracing all things in its immediate\ncognizance, has itself fixed the bounds of all things, yet itself owes\nnothing to what comes after.\n\n'And all this being so, the freedom of man's will stands unshaken, and\nlaws are not unrighteous, since their rewards and punishments are held\nforth to wills unbound by any necessity. God, who foreknoweth all\nthings, still looks down from above, and the ever-present eternity of\nHis vision concurs with the future character of all our acts, and\ndispenseth to the good rewards, to the bad punishments. Our hopes and\nprayers also are not fixed on God in vain, and when they are rightly\ndirected cannot fail of effect. Therefore, withstand vice, practise\nvirtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to\nHeaven. Great is the necessity of righteousness laid upon you if ye will\nnot hide it from yourselves, seeing that all your actions are done\nbefore the eyes of a Judge who seeth all things.'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[S] Plato expressly states the opposite in the 'Timaeus' (28B), though\npossibly there the account of the beginning of the world in time is to\nbe understood figuratively, not literally. See Jowett, vol. iii., pp.\n448, 449 (3rd edit.).\n\n\n\n\n</CHAPTER>\n\n\n<CHAPTER>\nEPILOGUE.\n\n\nWithin a short time of writing 'The Consolation of Philosophy,' Boethius\ndied by a cruel death. As to the manner of his death there is some\nuncertainty. According to one account, he was cut down by the swords of\nthe soldiers before the very judgment-seat of Theodoric; according to\nanother, a cord was first fastened round his forehead, and tightened\ntill 'his eyes started'; he was then killed with a club.\n\n_Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London_\n\n</CHAPTER>\n\n\n\nREFERENCES TO QUOTATIONS IN THE TEXT.\n\nBk. I., ch. iv., p. 17, l. 6: 'Iliad,' I. 363.\n\n  \"     ch. iv., p. 18, l. 7: Plato, 'Republic,'\n        V. 473, D; Jowett, vol. iii., pp. 170, 171\n        (3rd edit.).\n\n  \"     ch. iv., p. 22, l. 6: Plato, 'Republic,'\n        I. 347, C; Jowett, III., p. 25.\n\n  \"     ch. v., p. 30, l. 19: 'Iliad,' II., 204, 205.\n\nBk. II., ch. ii., p. 50, l. 21: 'Iliad.' XXIV.\n         527, 528.\n\n  \"      ch. vii., p. 78, l. 25: Cicero, 'De\n         Republica,' VI. 20, in the 'Somnium\n         Scipionis.'\n\nBk. III., ch. iv., p. 106, l. 10: Catullus, LII., 2.\n\n  \"       ch. vi., p. 114, l. 4: Euripides, 'Andromache,'\n          319, 320.\n\n  \"       ch. ix., p. 129, l. 3: Plato, 'Timaeus,'\n          27, C; Jowett, vol. iii., p. 448.\n\n  \"       ch. xii., p. 157, l. 14: Quoted Plato,\n          'Sophistes,' 244, E; Jowett, vol. iv.,\n          p. 374.\n\n  \"       ch. xii., p. 157, l. 22: Plato, 'Timaeus,'\n          29, B; Jowett, vol. iii., p. 449.\n\nBk. IV., ch. vi., p. 206, l. 17: Lucan, 'Pharsalia,'\n         I. 126.\n\n  \"      ch. vi., p. 210, l. 23: 'Iliad,' XII. 176.\n\nBk. V., ch. i., p. 227,l. 16: Aristotle, 'Physics,'\n        II. v. 5.\n\n  \"     ch. iii., p. 238, l. 20: Horace, 'Satires,'\n        II. v. 59.\n\n  \"     ch. iv., p. 243, l. 3: Cicero, 'De Divinatione,'\n        II. 7, 8.\n\n  \"     ch. vi., p. 258, l. 8: Aristotle, 'De\n        Caelo,' II. 1.\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The Consolation of Philosophy is a short work of literature, written in the form of a prosimetrical apocalyptic dialogue . It contains five Books, which are written in a combination of prose and verse. The dialogue is between Ancius Boethius, a prominent and learned official of the Roman Empire, and the person of Philosophy. The work opens with a scene between Boethius and the Muses of Poetry, who are attending him in his sorrow while he writes poetry of his woe. They are interrupted by the entrance of a strange and otherwordly-looking lady, Lady Philosophy. She explains that she has come to him in his hour of need, for he suffers from the sickness of being far too attached to material and earthly things. While Boethius protests that he is the victim of injustice, Lady Philosophy begins his \"cure\" by showing him the error of his ways. She begins by explaining that the vagaries of Fortune visit everyone, and he is by no means the worst of her victims. Even though he is imprisoned and due for execution, he has still the faculties of his mind and soul to comfort him. She explains that the gifts of Fortune were never his at all, but merely lent to him and taken away as easily as they were given. Health, wealth, honor, and power are things that never truly belong to any human being, and are visited on them by the wheel of fortune and quickly snatched away. Therefore it is unwise to become attached to any temporal thing. The \"cure\" continues as Boethius begins to see the logic of Philosophy's argument. They continue their dialogue and discuss the nature of earthly goods, and how they are not the path to true happiness. The thing the temporal world considers good, says Philosophy, are only inferior decorations on the ultimate earthly good, the soul and the intellectual capacity of humanity. Boethius offers a partial proof for God, a negative one based on the inadequacy of earthly attainments to satisfy the desire for perfect happiness . Therefore, since all humanity desires it, the standard for perfect happiness must exist, and that self-sufficient, powerful, and revered being who has attained perfect happiness is God. Evil has no substance, according to Philosophy, because it cannot participate in the ultimate pursuit of mankind: the supreme good. Therefore people who inflict their wickedness on the good are not truly powerful, since they have no capacity to stop the good people's attainment of the one thing that matters. God orders the world through Providence, and the order of things that happen on earth is called Fate. Though people on earth cannot understand the ways of Providence, they must nevertheless accept whatever Fate sends, for all fortune, good or bad, is good. Bad fortune can instruct the recipient in the ways of virtue, and, often is better for the soul. God does not interfere with free will, Philosophy concludes. Though God knows all things past and present, this knowledge doesn't preclude the freedom of choice of human beings. God's knowledge is not like our knowledge, and doesn't happen over a period of time. God had one act of knowing the world, and in that act knew all things, including all the free choices of all the people throughout the entire history of the world. Finally, Boethius, through this long conversation with Philosophy, has been comforted. Philosophy leaves him with the advice to cultivate virtue, for the Heavenly Judge sees all things.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "174", "title": "The Picture of Dorian Gray", "text": "\nThe studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light\nsummer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through\nthe open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate\nperfume of the pink-flowering thorn.\n\nFrom the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was\nlying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry\nWotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured\nblossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to\nbear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then\nthe fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long\ntussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,\nproducing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of\nthose pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of\nan art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of\nswiftness and motion.  The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their\nway through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous\ninsistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine,\nseemed to make the stillness more oppressive.  The dim roar of London\nwas like the bourdon note of a distant organ.\n\nIn the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the\nfull-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty,\nand in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist\nhimself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago\ncaused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many\nstrange conjectures.\n\nAs the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so\nskilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his\nface, and seemed about to linger there.  But he suddenly started up,\nand closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he\nsought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he\nfeared he might awake.\n\n\"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,\" said\nLord Henry languidly.  \"You must certainly send it next year to the\nGrosvenor.  The Academy is too large and too vulgar.  Whenever I have\ngone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been\nable to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that\nI have not been able to see the people, which was worse.  The Grosvenor\nis really the only place.\"\n\n\"I don't think I shall send it anywhere,\" he answered, tossing his head\nback in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at\nOxford.  \"No, I won't send it anywhere.\"\n\nLord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through\nthe thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls\nfrom his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette.  \"Not send it anywhere?  My\ndear fellow, why?  Have you any reason?  What odd chaps you painters\nare!  You do anything in the world to gain a reputation.  As soon as\nyou have one, you seem to want to throw it away.  It is silly of you,\nfor there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,\nand that is not being talked about.  A portrait like this would set you\nfar above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite\njealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.\"\n\n\"I know you will laugh at me,\" he replied, \"but I really can't exhibit\nit.  I have put too much of myself into it.\"\n\nLord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.\n\n\"Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.\"\n\n\"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you\nwere so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with\nyour rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young\nAdonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why,\nmy dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you--well, of course you have an\nintellectual expression and all that.  But beauty, real beauty, ends\nwhere an intellectual expression begins.  Intellect is in itself a mode\nof exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.  The moment one\nsits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something\nhorrid.  Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions.\nHow perfectly hideous they are!  Except, of course, in the Church.  But\nthen in the Church they don't think.  A bishop keeps on saying at the\nage of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen,\nand as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.\nYour mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but\nwhose picture really fascinates me, never thinks.  I feel quite sure of\nthat.  He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be always\nhere in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in\nsummer when we want something to chill our intelligence.  Don't flatter\nyourself, Basil:  you are not in the least like him.\"\n\n\"You don't understand me, Harry,\" answered the artist.  \"Of course I am\nnot like him.  I know that perfectly well.  Indeed, I should be sorry\nto look like him.  You shrug your shoulders?  I am telling you the\ntruth.  There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual\ndistinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the\nfaltering steps of kings.  It is better not to be different from one's\nfellows.  The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world.\nThey can sit at their ease and gape at the play.  If they know nothing\nof victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.  They\nlive as we all should live--undisturbed, indifferent, and without\ndisquiet.  They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it\nfrom alien hands.  Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they\nare--my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks--we\nshall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.\"\n\n\"Dorian Gray?  Is that his name?\" asked Lord Henry, walking across the\nstudio towards Basil Hallward.\n\n\"Yes, that is his name.  I didn't intend to tell it to you.\"\n\n\"But why not?\"\n\n\"Oh, I can't explain.  When I like people immensely, I never tell their\nnames to any one.  It is like surrendering a part of them.  I have\ngrown to love secrecy.  It seems to be the one thing that can make\nmodern life mysterious or marvellous to us.  The commonest thing is\ndelightful if one only hides it.  When I leave town now I never tell my\npeople where I am going.  If I did, I would lose all my pleasure.  It\nis a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great\ndeal of romance into one's life.  I suppose you think me awfully\nfoolish about it?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" answered Lord Henry, \"not at all, my dear Basil.  You\nseem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that\nit makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.  I\nnever know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing.\nWhen we meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go\ndown to the Duke's--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the\nmost serious faces.  My wife is very good at it--much better, in fact,\nthan I am.  She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do.\nBut when she does find me out, she makes no row at all.  I sometimes\nwish she would; but she merely laughs at me.\"\n\n\"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,\" said Basil\nHallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden.  \"I\nbelieve that you are really a very good husband, but that you are\nthoroughly ashamed of your own virtues.  You are an extraordinary\nfellow.  You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing.\nYour cynicism is simply a pose.\"\n\n\"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,\"\ncried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the\ngarden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that\nstood in the shade of a tall laurel bush.  The sunlight slipped over\nthe polished leaves.  In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.\n\nAfter a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch.  \"I am afraid I must be\ngoing, Basil,\" he murmured, \"and before I go, I insist on your\nanswering a question I put to you some time ago.\"\n\n\"What is that?\" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.\n\n\"You know quite well.\"\n\n\"I do not, Harry.\"\n\n\"Well, I will tell you what it is.  I want you to explain to me why you\nwon't exhibit Dorian Gray's picture.  I want the real reason.\"\n\n\"I told you the real reason.\"\n\n\"No, you did not.  You said it was because there was too much of\nyourself in it.  Now, that is childish.\"\n\n\"Harry,\" said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, \"every\nportrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not\nof the sitter.  The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion.  It is\nnot he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on\nthe coloured canvas, reveals himself.  The reason I will not exhibit\nthis picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of\nmy own soul.\"\n\nLord Henry laughed.  \"And what is that?\" he asked.\n\n\"I will tell you,\" said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity came\nover his face.\n\n\"I am all expectation, Basil,\" continued his companion, glancing at him.\n\n\"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry,\" answered the painter;\n\"and I am afraid you will hardly understand it.  Perhaps you will\nhardly believe it.\"\n\nLord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from\nthe grass and examined it.  \"I am quite sure I shall understand it,\" he\nreplied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered disk,\n\"and as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it\nis quite incredible.\"\n\nThe wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy\nlilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the\nlanguid air.  A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a\nblue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze\nwings.  Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart\nbeating, and wondered what was coming.\n\n\"The story is simply this,\" said the painter after some time.  \"Two\nmonths ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know we poor\nartists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to\nremind the public that we are not savages.  With an evening coat and a\nwhite tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain\na reputation for being civilized.  Well, after I had been in the room\nabout ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious\nacademicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at\nme.  I turned half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time.\nWhen our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale.  A curious sensation\nof terror came over me.  I knew that I had come face to face with some\none whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to\ndo so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art\nitself.  I did not want any external influence in my life.  You know\nyourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature.  I have always been my\nown master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray.\nThen--but I don't know how to explain it to you.  Something seemed to\ntell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life.  I had\na strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and\nexquisite sorrows.  I grew afraid and turned to quit the room.  It was\nnot conscience that made me do so:  it was a sort of cowardice.  I take\nno credit to myself for trying to escape.\"\n\n\"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil.\nConscience is the trade-name of the firm.  That is all.\"\n\n\"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either.\nHowever, whatever was my motive--and it may have been pride, for I used\nto be very proud--I certainly struggled to the door.  There, of course,\nI stumbled against Lady Brandon.  'You are not going to run away so\nsoon, Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out.  You know her curiously shrill\nvoice?\"\n\n\"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,\" said Lord Henry,\npulling the daisy to bits with his long nervous fingers.\n\n\"I could not get rid of her.  She brought me up to royalties, and\npeople with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras\nand parrot noses.  She spoke of me as her dearest friend.  I had only\nmet her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me.  I\nbelieve some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at\nleast had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the\nnineteenth-century standard of immortality.  Suddenly I found myself\nface to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely\nstirred me.  We were quite close, almost touching.  Our eyes met again.\nIt was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him.\nPerhaps it was not so reckless, after all.  It was simply inevitable.\nWe would have spoken to each other without any introduction.  I am sure\nof that.  Dorian told me so afterwards.  He, too, felt that we were\ndestined to know each other.\"\n\n\"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?\" asked his\ncompanion.  \"I know she goes in for giving a rapid _precis_ of all her\nguests.  I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old\ngentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my\near, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to\neverybody in the room, the most astounding details.  I simply fled.  I\nlike to find out people for myself.  But Lady Brandon treats her guests\nexactly as an auctioneer treats his goods.  She either explains them\nentirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants\nto know.\"\n\n\"Poor Lady Brandon!  You are hard on her, Harry!\" said Hallward\nlistlessly.\n\n\"My dear fellow, she tried to found a _salon_, and only succeeded in\nopening a restaurant.  How could I admire her?  But tell me, what did\nshe say about Mr. Dorian Gray?\"\n\n\"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely\ninseparable.  Quite forget what he does--afraid he--doesn't do\nanything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear Mr.\nGray?'  Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at\nonce.\"\n\n\"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far\nthe best ending for one,\" said the young lord, plucking another daisy.\n\nHallward shook his head.  \"You don't understand what friendship is,\nHarry,\" he murmured--\"or what enmity is, for that matter.  You like\nevery one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.\"\n\n\"How horribly unjust of you!\" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back\nand looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of\nglossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the\nsummer sky.  \"Yes; horribly unjust of you.  I make a great difference\nbetween people.  I choose my friends for their good looks, my\nacquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good\nintellects.  A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.\nI have not got one who is a fool.  They are all men of some\nintellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.  Is that\nvery vain of me?  I think it is rather vain.\"\n\n\"I should think it was, Harry.  But according to your category I must\nbe merely an acquaintance.\"\n\n\"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance.\"\n\n\"And much less than a friend.  A sort of brother, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Oh, brothers!  I don't care for brothers.  My elder brother won't die,\nand my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.\"\n\n\"Harry!\" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.\n\n\"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious.  But I can't help detesting my\nrelations.  I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand\nother people having the same faults as ourselves.  I quite sympathize\nwith the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices\nof the upper orders.  The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and\nimmorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of\nus makes an ass of himself, he is poaching on their preserves.  When\npoor Southwark got into the divorce court, their indignation was quite\nmagnificent.  And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the\nproletariat live correctly.\"\n\n\"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is\nmore, Harry, I feel sure you don't either.\"\n\nLord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his\npatent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane.  \"How English you are\nBasil!  That is the second time you have made that observation.  If one\nputs forward an idea to a true Englishman--always a rash thing to\ndo--he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong.\nThe only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes\nit oneself.  Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do\nwith the sincerity of the man who expresses it.  Indeed, the\nprobabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely\nintellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured\nby either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.  However, I don't\npropose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you.  I\nlike persons better than principles, and I like persons with no\nprinciples better than anything else in the world.  Tell me more about\nMr. Dorian Gray.  How often do you see him?\"\n\n\"Every day.  I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day.  He is\nabsolutely necessary to me.\"\n\n\"How extraordinary!  I thought you would never care for anything but\nyour art.\"\n\n\"He is all my art to me now,\" said the painter gravely.  \"I sometimes\nthink, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the\nworld's history.  The first is the appearance of a new medium for art,\nand the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also.\nWhat the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of\nAntinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will\nsome day be to me.  It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from\nhim, sketch from him.  Of course, I have done all that.  But he is much\nmore to me than a model or a sitter.  I won't tell you that I am\ndissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such\nthat art cannot express it.  There is nothing that art cannot express,\nand I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good\nwork, is the best work of my life.  But in some curious way--I wonder\nwill you understand me?--his personality has suggested to me an\nentirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style.  I see\nthings differently, I think of them differently.  I can now recreate\nlife in a way that was hidden from me before.  'A dream of form in days\nof thought'--who is it who says that?  I forget; but it is what Dorian\nGray has been to me.  The merely visible presence of this lad--for he\nseems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over\ntwenty--his merely visible presence--ah!  I wonder can you realize all\nthat that means?  Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh\nschool, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic\nspirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.  The harmony of\nsoul and body--how much that is!  We in our madness have separated the\ntwo, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is\nvoid.  Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me!  You remember\nthat landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price\nbut which I would not part with?  It is one of the best things I have\never done.  And why is it so?  Because, while I was painting it, Dorian\nGray sat beside me.  Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and\nfor the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I\nhad always looked for and always missed.\"\n\n\"Basil, this is extraordinary!  I must see Dorian Gray.\"\n\nHallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden.  After\nsome time he came back.  \"Harry,\" he said, \"Dorian Gray is to me simply\na motive in art.  You might see nothing in him.  I see everything in\nhim.  He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is\nthere.  He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner.  I find\nhim in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of\ncertain colours.  That is all.\"\n\n\"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?\" asked Lord Henry.\n\n\"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of\nall this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never\ncared to speak to him.  He knows nothing about it.  He shall never know\nanything about it.  But the world might guess it, and I will not bare\nmy soul to their shallow prying eyes.  My heart shall never be put\nunder their microscope.  There is too much of myself in the thing,\nHarry--too much of myself!\"\n\n\"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are.  They know how useful passion\nis for publication.  Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.\"\n\n\"I hate them for it,\" cried Hallward.  \"An artist should create\nbeautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.  We\nlive in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of\nautobiography.  We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.  Some day I\nwill show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall\nnever see my portrait of Dorian Gray.\"\n\n\"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you.  It is only\nthe intellectually lost who ever argue.  Tell me, is Dorian Gray very\nfond of you?\"\n\nThe painter considered for a few moments.  \"He likes me,\" he answered\nafter a pause; \"I know he likes me.  Of course I flatter him\ndreadfully.  I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I\nknow I shall be sorry for having said.  As a rule, he is charming to\nme, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things.  Now and\nthen, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real\ndelight in giving me pain.  Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away\nmy whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put\nin his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a\nsummer's day.\"\n\n\"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger,\" murmured Lord Henry.\n\"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will.  It is a sad thing to think\nof, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty.  That\naccounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate\nourselves.  In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have\nsomething that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and\nfacts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.  The thoroughly\nwell-informed man--that is the modern ideal.  And the mind of the\nthoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing.  It is like a\n_bric-a-brac_ shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above\nits proper value.  I think you will tire first, all the same.  Some day\nyou will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little\nout of drawing, or you won't like his tone of colour, or something.\nYou will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think\nthat he has behaved very badly to you.  The next time he calls, you\nwill be perfectly cold and indifferent.  It will be a great pity, for\nit will alter you.  What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance\nof art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind\nis that it leaves one so unromantic.\"\n\n\"Harry, don't talk like that.  As long as I live, the personality of\nDorian Gray will dominate me.  You can't feel what I feel.  You change\ntoo often.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it.  Those who are\nfaithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who\nknow love's tragedies.\"  And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty\nsilver case and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and\nsatisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase.  There was\na rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy,\nand the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like\nswallows.  How pleasant it was in the garden!  And how delightful other\npeople's emotions were!--much more delightful than their ideas, it\nseemed to him.  One's own soul, and the passions of one's\nfriends--those were the fascinating things in life.  He pictured to\nhimself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed\nby staying so long with Basil Hallward.  Had he gone to his aunt's, he\nwould have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the whole\nconversation would have been about the feeding of the poor and the\nnecessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the\nimportance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity\nin their own lives.  The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift,\nand the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.  It was\ncharming to have escaped all that!  As he thought of his aunt, an idea\nseemed to strike him.  He turned to Hallward and said, \"My dear fellow,\nI have just remembered.\"\n\n\"Remembered what, Harry?\"\n\n\"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray.\"\n\n\"Where was it?\" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.\n\n\"Don't look so angry, Basil.  It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha's.  She\ntold me she had discovered a wonderful young man who was going to help\nher in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray.  I am bound to\nstate that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no\nappreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not.  She said\nthat he was very earnest and had a beautiful nature.  I at once\npictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly\nfreckled, and tramping about on huge feet.  I wish I had known it was\nyour friend.\"\n\n\"I am very glad you didn't, Harry.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I don't want you to meet him.\"\n\n\"You don't want me to meet him?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir,\" said the butler, coming into\nthe garden.\n\n\"You must introduce me now,\" cried Lord Henry, laughing.\n\nThe painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.\n\"Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker:  I shall be in in a few moments.\" The\nman bowed and went up the walk.\n\nThen he looked at Lord Henry.  \"Dorian Gray is my dearest friend,\" he\nsaid.  \"He has a simple and a beautiful nature.  Your aunt was quite\nright in what she said of him.  Don't spoil him.  Don't try to\ninfluence him.  Your influence would be bad.  The world is wide, and\nhas many marvellous people in it.  Don't take away from me the one\nperson who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses:  my life as an\nartist depends on him.  Mind, Harry, I trust you.\"  He spoke very\nslowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will.\n\n\"What nonsense you talk!\" said Lord Henry, smiling, and taking Hallward\nby the arm, he almost led him into the house.\n\n\n\n\n\nAs they entered they saw Dorian Gray.  He was seated at the piano, with\nhis back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann's\n\"Forest Scenes.\"  \"You must lend me these, Basil,\" he cried.  \"I want\nto learn them.  They are perfectly charming.\"\n\n\"That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian.\"\n\n\"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of\nmyself,\" answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool in a\nwilful, petulant manner.  When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint\nblush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up.  \"I beg your\npardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had any one with you.\"\n\n\"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine.  I\nhave just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you\nhave spoiled everything.\"\n\n\"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray,\" said Lord\nHenry, stepping forward and extending his hand.  \"My aunt has often\nspoken to me about you.  You are one of her favourites, and, I am\nafraid, one of her victims also.\"\n\n\"I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present,\" answered Dorian with a\nfunny look of penitence.  \"I promised to go to a club in Whitechapel\nwith her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it.  We were to\nhave played a duet together--three duets, I believe.  I don't know what\nshe will say to me.  I am far too frightened to call.\"\n\n\"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt.  She is quite devoted to you.\nAnd I don't think it really matters about your not being there.  The\naudience probably thought it was a duet.  When Aunt Agatha sits down to\nthe piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people.\"\n\n\"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me,\" answered Dorian,\nlaughing.\n\nLord Henry looked at him.  Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome,\nwith his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp\ngold hair.  There was something in his face that made one trust him at\nonce.  All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's\npassionate purity.  One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from\nthe world.  No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.\n\n\"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray--far too\ncharming.\" And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and opened\nhis cigarette-case.\n\nThe painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes\nready.  He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last\nremark, he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said,\n\"Harry, I want to finish this picture to-day. Would you think it\nawfully rude of me if I asked you to go away?\"\n\nLord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray.  \"Am I to go, Mr. Gray?\"\nhe asked.\n\n\"Oh, please don't, Lord Henry.  I see that Basil is in one of his sulky\nmoods, and I can't bear him when he sulks.  Besides, I want you to tell\nme why I should not go in for philanthropy.\"\n\n\"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray.  It is so tedious a\nsubject that one would have to talk seriously about it.  But I\ncertainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop.  You\ndon't really mind, Basil, do you?  You have often told me that you\nliked your sitters to have some one to chat to.\"\n\nHallward bit his lip.  \"If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.\nDorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself.\"\n\nLord Henry took up his hat and gloves.  \"You are very pressing, Basil,\nbut I am afraid I must go.  I have promised to meet a man at the\nOrleans.  Good-bye, Mr. Gray.  Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon\nStreet.  I am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when\nyou are coming.  I should be sorry to miss you.\"\n\n\"Basil,\" cried Dorian Gray, \"if Lord Henry Wotton goes, I shall go,\ntoo.  You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is\nhorribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant.  Ask\nhim to stay.  I insist upon it.\"\n\n\"Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me,\" said Hallward,\ngazing intently at his picture.  \"It is quite true, I never talk when I\nam working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious\nfor my unfortunate sitters.  I beg you to stay.\"\n\n\"But what about my man at the Orleans?\"\n\nThe painter laughed.  \"I don't think there will be any difficulty about\nthat.  Sit down again, Harry.  And now, Dorian, get up on the platform,\nand don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry\nsays.  He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the\nsingle exception of myself.\"\n\nDorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek\nmartyr, and made a little _moue_ of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he\nhad rather taken a fancy.  He was so unlike Basil.  They made a\ndelightful contrast.  And he had such a beautiful voice.  After a few\nmoments he said to him, \"Have you really a very bad influence, Lord\nHenry?  As bad as Basil says?\"\n\n\"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray.  All influence\nis immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul.  He does\nnot think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions.  His\nvirtues are not real to him.  His sins, if there are such things as\nsins, are borrowed.  He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an\nactor of a part that has not been written for him.  The aim of life is\nself-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each\nof us is here for.  People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.  They\nhave forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to\none's self.  Of course, they are charitable.  They feed the hungry and\nclothe the beggar.  But their own souls starve, and are naked.  Courage\nhas gone out of our race.  Perhaps we never really had it.  The terror\nof society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is\nthe secret of religion--these are the two things that govern us.  And\nyet--\"\n\n\"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good\nboy,\" said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look\nhad come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.\n\n\"And yet,\" continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with\nthat graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of\nhim, and that he had even in his Eton days, \"I believe that if one man\nwere to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to\nevery feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I\nbelieve that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we\nwould forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the\nHellenic ideal--to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it\nmay be.  But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself.  The\nmutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial\nthat mars our lives.  We are punished for our refusals.  Every impulse\nthat we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.  The body\nsins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of\npurification.  Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure,\nor the luxury of a regret.  The only way to get rid of a temptation is\nto yield to it.  Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for\nthe things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its\nmonstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.  It has been said that\nthe great events of the world take place in the brain.  It is in the\nbrain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place\nalso.  You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your\nrose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid,\nthoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping\ndreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame--\"\n\n\"Stop!\" faltered Dorian Gray, \"stop! you bewilder me.  I don't know\nwhat to say.  There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it.  Don't\nspeak.  Let me think.  Or, rather, let me try not to think.\"\n\nFor nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and\neyes strangely bright.  He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh\ninfluences were at work within him.  Yet they seemed to him to have\ncome really from himself.  The few words that Basil's friend had said\nto him--words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in\nthem--had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before,\nbut that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.\n\nMusic had stirred him like that.  Music had troubled him many times.\nBut music was not articulate.  It was not a new world, but rather\nanother chaos, that it created in us.  Words!  Mere words!  How\nterrible they were!  How clear, and vivid, and cruel!  One could not\nescape from them.  And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!  They\nseemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to\nhave a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute.  Mere\nwords!  Was there anything so real as words?\n\nYes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood.\nHe understood them now.  Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him.\nIt seemed to him that he had been walking in fire.  Why had he not\nknown it?\n\nWith his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him.  He knew the precise\npsychological moment when to say nothing.  He felt intensely\ninterested.  He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had\nproduced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen,\na book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he\nwondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience.\nHe had merely shot an arrow into the air.  Had it hit the mark?  How\nfascinating the lad was!\n\nHallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had\nthe true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes\nonly from strength.  He was unconscious of the silence.\n\n\"Basil, I am tired of standing,\" cried Dorian Gray suddenly.  \"I must\ngo out and sit in the garden.  The air is stifling here.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I am so sorry.  When I am painting, I can't think of\nanything else.  But you never sat better.  You were perfectly still.\nAnd I have caught the effect I wanted--the half-parted lips and the\nbright look in the eyes.  I don't know what Harry has been saying to\nyou, but he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression.\nI suppose he has been paying you compliments.  You mustn't believe a\nword that he says.\"\n\n\"He has certainly not been paying me compliments.  Perhaps that is the\nreason that I don't believe anything he has told me.\"\n\n\"You know you believe it all,\" said Lord Henry, looking at him with his\ndreamy languorous eyes.  \"I will go out to the garden with you.  It is\nhorribly hot in the studio.  Basil, let us have something iced to\ndrink, something with strawberries in it.\"\n\n\"Certainly, Harry.  Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will\ntell him what you want.  I have got to work up this background, so I\nwill join you later on.  Don't keep Dorian too long.  I have never been\nin better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my\nmasterpiece.  It is my masterpiece as it stands.\"\n\nLord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his\nface in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their\nperfume as if it had been wine.  He came close to him and put his hand\nupon his shoulder.  \"You are quite right to do that,\" he murmured.\n\"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the\nsenses but the soul.\"\n\nThe lad started and drew back.  He was bareheaded, and the leaves had\ntossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads.\nThere was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are\nsuddenly awakened.  His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some\nhidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.\n\n\"Yes,\" continued Lord Henry, \"that is one of the great secrets of\nlife--to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means\nof the soul.  You are a wonderful creation.  You know more than you\nthink you know, just as you know less than you want to know.\"\n\nDorian Gray frowned and turned his head away.  He could not help liking\nthe tall, graceful young man who was standing by him.  His romantic,\nolive-coloured face and worn expression interested him.  There was\nsomething in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating.\nHis cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm.  They\nmoved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their\nown.  But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid.  Why had\nit been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?  He had known\nBasil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never\naltered him.  Suddenly there had come some one across his life who\nseemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery.  And, yet, what was\nthere to be afraid of?  He was not a schoolboy or a girl.  It was\nabsurd to be frightened.\n\n\"Let us go and sit in the shade,\" said Lord Henry.  \"Parker has brought\nout the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you will be\nquite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again.  You really must\nnot allow yourself to become sunburnt.  It would be unbecoming.\"\n\n\"What can it matter?\" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on\nthe seat at the end of the garden.\n\n\"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing\nworth having.\"\n\n\"I don't feel that, Lord Henry.\"\n\n\"No, you don't feel it now.  Some day, when you are old and wrinkled\nand ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and\npassion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you\nwill feel it terribly.  Now, wherever you go, you charm the world.\nWill it always be so? ... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr.\nGray.  Don't frown.  You have.  And beauty is a form of genius--is\nhigher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.  It is of the\ngreat facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the\nreflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon.  It\ncannot be questioned.  It has its divine right of sovereignty.  It\nmakes princes of those who have it.  You smile?  Ah! when you have lost\nit you won't smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only\nsuperficial.  That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as\nthought is.  To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders.  It is only\nshallow people who do not judge by appearances.  The true mystery of\nthe world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, the\ngods have been good to you.  But what the gods give they quickly take\naway.  You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly,\nand fully.  When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then\nyou will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or\nhave to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of\nyour past will make more bitter than defeats.  Every month as it wanes\nbrings you nearer to something dreadful.  Time is jealous of you, and\nwars against your lilies and your roses.  You will become sallow, and\nhollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.  You will suffer horribly.... Ah!\nrealize your youth while you have it.  Don't squander the gold of your\ndays, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure,\nor giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar.\nThese are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age.  Live!  Live\nthe wonderful life that is in you!  Let nothing be lost upon you.  Be\nalways searching for new sensations.  Be afraid of nothing.... A new\nHedonism--that is what our century wants.  You might be its visible\nsymbol.  With your personality there is nothing you could not do.  The\nworld belongs to you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that\nyou were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really\nmight be.  There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must\ntell you something about yourself.  I thought how tragic it would be if\nyou were wasted.  For there is such a little time that your youth will\nlast--such a little time.  The common hill-flowers wither, but they\nblossom again.  The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now.\nIn a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after\nyear the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars.  But we\nnever get back our youth.  The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty\nbecomes sluggish.  Our limbs fail, our senses rot.  We degenerate into\nhideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were\ntoo much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the\ncourage to yield to.  Youth!  Youth!  There is absolutely nothing in\nthe world but youth!\"\n\nDorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering.  The spray of lilac fell\nfrom his hand upon the gravel.  A furry bee came and buzzed round it\nfor a moment.  Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated\nglobe of the tiny blossoms.  He watched it with that strange interest\nin trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import\nmake us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we\ncannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays\nsudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield.  After a time the\nbee flew away.  He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian\nconvolvulus.  The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to\nand fro.\n\nSuddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made\nstaccato signs for them to come in.  They turned to each other and\nsmiled.\n\n\"I am waiting,\" he cried.  \"Do come in.  The light is quite perfect,\nand you can bring your drinks.\"\n\nThey rose up and sauntered down the walk together.  Two green-and-white\nbutterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of\nthe garden a thrush began to sing.\n\n\"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray,\" said Lord Henry, looking at\nhim.\n\n\"Yes, I am glad now.  I wonder shall I always be glad?\"\n\n\"Always!  That is a dreadful word.  It makes me shudder when I hear it.\nWomen are so fond of using it.  They spoil every romance by trying to\nmake it last for ever.  It is a meaningless word, too.  The only\ndifference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice\nlasts a little longer.\"\n\nAs they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's\narm.  \"In that case, let our friendship be a caprice,\" he murmured,\nflushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and\nresumed his pose.\n\nLord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him.\nThe sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that\nbroke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back\nto look at his work from a distance.  In the slanting beams that\nstreamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden.  The\nheavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything.\n\nAfter about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for\na long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture,\nbiting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning.  \"It is quite\nfinished,\" he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in\nlong vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.\n\nLord Henry came over and examined the picture.  It was certainly a\nwonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.\n\n\"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly,\" he said.  \"It is the\nfinest portrait of modern times.  Mr. Gray, come over and look at\nyourself.\"\n\nThe lad started, as if awakened from some dream.\n\n\"Is it really finished?\" he murmured, stepping down from the platform.\n\n\"Quite finished,\" said the painter.  \"And you have sat splendidly\nto-day. I am awfully obliged to you.\"\n\n\"That is entirely due to me,\" broke in Lord Henry.  \"Isn't it, Mr.\nGray?\"\n\nDorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture\nand turned towards it.  When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks\nflushed for a moment with pleasure.  A look of joy came into his eyes,\nas if he had recognized himself for the first time.  He stood there\nmotionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to\nhim, but not catching the meaning of his words.  The sense of his own\nbeauty came on him like a revelation.  He had never felt it before.\nBasil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the\ncharming exaggeration of friendship.  He had listened to them, laughed\nat them, forgotten them.  They had not influenced his nature.  Then had\ncome Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his\nterrible warning of its brevity.  That had stirred him at the time, and\nnow, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full\nreality of the description flashed across him.  Yes, there would be a\nday when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and\ncolourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed.  The scarlet\nwould pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair.  The\nlife that was to make his soul would mar his body.  He would become\ndreadful, hideous, and uncouth.\n\nAs he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a\nknife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver.  His eyes\ndeepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears.  He felt\nas if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.\n\n\"Don't you like it?\" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the\nlad's silence, not understanding what it meant.\n\n\"Of course he likes it,\" said Lord Henry.  \"Who wouldn't like it?  It\nis one of the greatest things in modern art.  I will give you anything\nyou like to ask for it.  I must have it.\"\n\n\"It is not my property, Harry.\"\n\n\"Whose property is it?\"\n\n\"Dorian's, of course,\" answered the painter.\n\n\"He is a very lucky fellow.\"\n\n\"How sad it is!\" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon\nhis own portrait.  \"How sad it is!  I shall grow old, and horrible, and\ndreadful.  But this picture will remain always young.  It will never be\nolder than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other\nway!  If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was\nto grow old!  For that--for that--I would give everything!  Yes, there\nis nothing in the whole world I would not give!  I would give my soul\nfor that!\"\n\n\"You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil,\" cried Lord\nHenry, laughing.  \"It would be rather hard lines on your work.\"\n\n\"I should object very strongly, Harry,\" said Hallward.\n\nDorian Gray turned and looked at him.  \"I believe you would, Basil.\nYou like your art better than your friends.  I am no more to you than a\ngreen bronze figure.  Hardly as much, I dare say.\"\n\nThe painter stared in amazement.  It was so unlike Dorian to speak like\nthat.  What had happened?  He seemed quite angry.  His face was flushed\nand his cheeks burning.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued, \"I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your\nsilver Faun.  You will like them always.  How long will you like me?\nTill I have my first wrinkle, I suppose.  I know, now, that when one\nloses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything.\nYour picture has taught me that.  Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right.\nYouth is the only thing worth having.  When I find that I am growing\nold, I shall kill myself.\"\n\nHallward turned pale and caught his hand.  \"Dorian!  Dorian!\" he cried,\n\"don't talk like that.  I have never had such a friend as you, and I\nshall never have such another.  You are not jealous of material things,\nare you?--you who are finer than any of them!\"\n\n\"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.  I am jealous of\nthe portrait you have painted of me.  Why should it keep what I must\nlose?  Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives\nsomething to it.  Oh, if it were only the other way!  If the picture\ncould change, and I could be always what I am now!  Why did you paint\nit?  It will mock me some day--mock me horribly!\"  The hot tears welled\ninto his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the\ndivan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.\n\n\"This is your doing, Harry,\" said the painter bitterly.\n\nLord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  \"It is the real Dorian Gray--that\nis all.\"\n\n\"It is not.\"\n\n\"If it is not, what have I to do with it?\"\n\n\"You should have gone away when I asked you,\" he muttered.\n\n\"I stayed when you asked me,\" was Lord Henry's answer.\n\n\"Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between\nyou both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever\ndone, and I will destroy it.  What is it but canvas and colour?  I will\nnot let it come across our three lives and mar them.\"\n\nDorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid\nface and tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal\npainting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window.  What\nwas he doing there?  His fingers were straying about among the litter\nof tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something.  Yes, it was for\nthe long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel.  He had\nfound it at last.  He was going to rip up the canvas.\n\nWith a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to\nHallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of\nthe studio.  \"Don't, Basil, don't!\" he cried.  \"It would be murder!\"\n\n\"I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian,\" said the painter\ncoldly when he had recovered from his surprise.  \"I never thought you\nwould.\"\n\n\"Appreciate it?  I am in love with it, Basil.  It is part of myself.  I\nfeel that.\"\n\n\"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and\nsent home.  Then you can do what you like with yourself.\" And he walked\nacross the room and rang the bell for tea.  \"You will have tea, of\ncourse, Dorian?  And so will you, Harry?  Or do you object to such\nsimple pleasures?\"\n\n\"I adore simple pleasures,\" said Lord Henry.  \"They are the last refuge\nof the complex.  But I don't like scenes, except on the stage.  What\nabsurd fellows you are, both of you!  I wonder who it was defined man\nas a rational animal.  It was the most premature definition ever given.\nMan is many things, but he is not rational.  I am glad he is not, after\nall--though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture.  You\nhad much better let me have it, Basil.  This silly boy doesn't really\nwant it, and I really do.\"\n\n\"If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!\"\ncried Dorian Gray; \"and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy.\"\n\n\"You know the picture is yours, Dorian.  I gave it to you before it\nexisted.\"\n\n\"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you\ndon't really object to being reminded that you are extremely young.\"\n\n\"I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry.\"\n\n\"Ah! this morning!  You have lived since then.\"\n\nThere came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden\ntea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table.  There was a\nrattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn.\nTwo globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page.  Dorian Gray\nwent over and poured out the tea.  The two men sauntered languidly to\nthe table and examined what was under the covers.\n\n\"Let us go to the theatre to-night,\" said Lord Henry.  \"There is sure\nto be something on, somewhere.  I have promised to dine at White's, but\nit is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I\nam ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a\nsubsequent engagement.  I think that would be a rather nice excuse:  it\nwould have all the surprise of candour.\"\n\n\"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes,\" muttered Hallward.\n\"And, when one has them on, they are so horrid.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Lord Henry dreamily, \"the costume of the nineteenth\ncentury is detestable.  It is so sombre, so depressing.  Sin is the\nonly real colour-element left in modern life.\"\n\n\"You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.\"\n\n\"Before which Dorian?  The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the\none in the picture?\"\n\n\"Before either.\"\n\n\"I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,\" said the\nlad.\n\n\"Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?\"\n\n\"I can't, really.  I would sooner not.  I have a lot of work to do.\"\n\n\"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.\"\n\n\"I should like that awfully.\"\n\nThe painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture.\n\"I shall stay with the real Dorian,\" he said, sadly.\n\n\"Is it the real Dorian?\" cried the original of the portrait, strolling\nacross to him.  \"Am I really like that?\"\n\n\"Yes; you are just like that.\"\n\n\"How wonderful, Basil!\"\n\n\"At least you are like it in appearance.  But it will never alter,\"\nsighed Hallward.  \"That is something.\"\n\n\"What a fuss people make about fidelity!\" exclaimed Lord Henry.  \"Why,\neven in love it is purely a question for physiology.  It has nothing to\ndo with our own will.  Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old\nmen want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.\"\n\n\"Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian,\" said Hallward.  \"Stop and\ndine with me.\"\n\n\"I can't, Basil.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him.\"\n\n\"He won't like you the better for keeping your promises.  He always\nbreaks his own.  I beg you not to go.\"\n\nDorian Gray laughed and shook his head.\n\n\"I entreat you.\"\n\nThe lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them\nfrom the tea-table with an amused smile.\n\n\"I must go, Basil,\" he answered.\n\n\"Very well,\" said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his cup on\nthe tray.  \"It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had\nbetter lose no time.  Good-bye, Harry.  Good-bye, Dorian.  Come and see\nme soon.  Come to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"You won't forget?\"\n\n\"No, of course not,\" cried Dorian.\n\n\"And ... Harry!\"\n\n\"Yes, Basil?\"\n\n\"Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning.\"\n\n\"I have forgotten it.\"\n\n\"I trust you.\"\n\n\"I wish I could trust myself,\" said Lord Henry, laughing.  \"Come, Mr.\nGray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place.\nGood-bye, Basil.  It has been a most interesting afternoon.\"\n\nAs the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a\nsofa, and a look of pain came into his face.\n\n\n\n\n\nAt half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon\nStreet over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial\nif somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called\nselfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was\nconsidered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him.\nHis father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young\nand Prim unthought of, but had retired from the diplomatic service in a\ncapricious moment of annoyance on not being offered the Embassy at\nParis, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by\nreason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his dispatches,\nand his inordinate passion for pleasure.  The son, who had been his\nfather's secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat\nfoolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months\nlater to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great\naristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.  He had two large town\nhouses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, and\ntook most of his meals at his club.  He paid some attention to the\nmanagement of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself\nfor this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of\nhaving coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of\nburning wood on his own hearth.  In politics he was a Tory, except when\nthe Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them\nfor being a pack of Radicals.  He was a hero to his valet, who bullied\nhim, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn.\nOnly England could have produced him, and he always said that the\ncountry was going to the dogs.  His principles were out of date, but\nthere was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.\n\nWhen Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough\nshooting-coat, smoking a cheroot and grumbling over _The Times_.  \"Well,\nHarry,\" said the old gentleman, \"what brings you out so early?  I\nthought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till\nfive.\"\n\n\"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George.  I want to get\nsomething out of you.\"\n\n\"Money, I suppose,\" said Lord Fermor, making a wry face.  \"Well, sit\ndown and tell me all about it.  Young people, nowadays, imagine that\nmoney is everything.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; \"and\nwhen they grow older they know it.  But I don't want money.  It is only\npeople who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay\nmine.  Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly\nupon it.  Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor's tradesmen, and\nconsequently they never bother me.  What I want is information:  not\nuseful information, of course; useless information.\"\n\n\"Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue Book, Harry,\nalthough those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense.  When I was in\nthe Diplomatic, things were much better.  But I hear they let them in\nnow by examination.  What can you expect?  Examinations, sir, are pure\nhumbug from beginning to end.  If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite\nenough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.\"\n\n\"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue Books, Uncle George,\" said\nLord Henry languidly.\n\n\"Mr. Dorian Gray?  Who is he?\" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy\nwhite eyebrows.\n\n\"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George.  Or rather, I know\nwho he is.  He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson.  His mother was a\nDevereux, Lady Margaret Devereux.  I want you to tell me about his\nmother.  What was she like?  Whom did she marry?  You have known nearly\neverybody in your time, so you might have known her.  I am very much\ninterested in Mr. Gray at present.  I have only just met him.\"\n\n\"Kelso's grandson!\" echoed the old gentleman.  \"Kelso's grandson! ...\nOf course.... I knew his mother intimately.  I believe I was at her\nchristening.  She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret\nDevereux, and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless\nyoung fellow--a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or\nsomething of that kind.  Certainly.  I remember the whole thing as if\nit happened yesterday.  The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few\nmonths after the marriage.  There was an ugly story about it.  They\nsaid Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult\nhis son-in-law in public--paid him, sir, to do it, paid him--and that\nthe fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon.  The thing was\nhushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some\ntime afterwards.  He brought his daughter back with him, I was told,\nand she never spoke to him again.  Oh, yes; it was a bad business.  The\ngirl died, too, died within a year.  So she left a son, did she?  I had\nforgotten that.  What sort of boy is he?  If he is like his mother, he\nmust be a good-looking chap.\"\n\n\"He is very good-looking,\" assented Lord Henry.\n\n\"I hope he will fall into proper hands,\" continued the old man.  \"He\nshould have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso did the right thing\nby him.  His mother had money, too.  All the Selby property came to\nher, through her grandfather.  Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him\na mean dog.  He was, too.  Came to Madrid once when I was there.  Egad,\nI was ashamed of him.  The Queen used to ask me about the English noble\nwho was always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares.  They\nmade quite a story of it.  I didn't dare show my face at Court for a\nmonth.  I hope he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" answered Lord Henry.  \"I fancy that the boy will be\nwell off.  He is not of age yet.  He has Selby, I know.  He told me so.\nAnd ... his mother was very beautiful?\"\n\n\"Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw,\nHarry.  What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could\nunderstand.  She could have married anybody she chose.  Carlington was\nmad after her.  She was romantic, though.  All the women of that family\nwere.  The men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful.\nCarlington went on his knees to her.  Told me so himself.  She laughed\nat him, and there wasn't a girl in London at the time who wasn't after\nhim.  And by the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is\nthis humbug your father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an\nAmerican?  Ain't English girls good enough for him?\"\n\n\"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George.\"\n\n\"I'll back English women against the world, Harry,\" said Lord Fermor,\nstriking the table with his fist.\n\n\"The betting is on the Americans.\"\n\n\"They don't last, I am told,\" muttered his uncle.\n\n\"A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a\nsteeplechase.  They take things flying.  I don't think Dartmoor has a\nchance.\"\n\n\"Who are her people?\" grumbled the old gentleman.  \"Has she got any?\"\n\nLord Henry shook his head.  \"American girls are as clever at concealing\ntheir parents, as English women are at concealing their past,\" he said,\nrising to go.\n\n\"They are pork-packers, I suppose?\"\n\n\"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake.  I am told that\npork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after\npolitics.\"\n\n\"Is she pretty?\"\n\n\"She behaves as if she was beautiful.  Most American women do.  It is\nthe secret of their charm.\"\n\n\"Why can't these American women stay in their own country?  They are\nalways telling us that it is the paradise for women.\"\n\n\"It is.  That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively\nanxious to get out of it,\" said Lord Henry.  \"Good-bye, Uncle George.\nI shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer.  Thanks for giving me\nthe information I wanted.  I always like to know everything about my\nnew friends, and nothing about my old ones.\"\n\n\"Where are you lunching, Harry?\"\n\n\"At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray.  He is her latest\n_protege_.\"\n\n\"Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with\nher charity appeals.  I am sick of them.  Why, the good woman thinks\nthat I have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads.\"\n\n\"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect.\nPhilanthropic people lose all sense of humanity.  It is their\ndistinguishing characteristic.\"\n\nThe old gentleman growled approvingly and rang the bell for his\nservant.  Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street\nand turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley Square.\n\nSo that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage.  Crudely as it had\nbeen told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a\nstrange, almost modern romance.  A beautiful woman risking everything\nfor a mad passion.  A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a\nhideous, treacherous crime.  Months of voiceless agony, and then a\nchild born in pain.  The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to\nsolitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man.  Yes; it was an\ninteresting background.  It posed the lad, made him more perfect, as it\nwere.  Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something\ntragic.  Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might\nblow.... And how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as\nwith startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat\nopposite to him at the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer\nrose the wakening wonder of his face.  Talking to him was like playing\nupon an exquisite violin.  He answered to every touch and thrill of the\nbow.... There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of\ninfluence.  No other activity was like it.  To project one's soul into\nsome gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's\nown intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of\npassion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though\nit were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in\nthat--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited\nand vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and\ngrossly common in its aims.... He was a marvellous type, too, this lad,\nwhom by so curious a chance he had met in Basil's studio, or could be\nfashioned into a marvellous type, at any rate.  Grace was his, and the\nwhite purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for\nus.  There was nothing that one could not do with him.  He could be\nmade a Titan or a toy.  What a pity it was that such beauty was\ndestined to fade! ...  And Basil?  From a psychological point of view,\nhow interesting he was!  The new manner in art, the fresh mode of\nlooking at life, suggested so strangely by the merely visible presence\nof one who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit that dwelt in\ndim woodland, and walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing\nherself, Dryadlike and not afraid, because in his soul who sought for\nher there had been wakened that wonderful vision to which alone are\nwonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things\nbecoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value,\nas though they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect\nform whose shadow they made real:  how strange it all was!  He\nremembered something like it in history.  Was it not Plato, that artist\nin thought, who had first analyzed it?  Was it not Buonarotti who had\ncarved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our own\ncentury it was strange.... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray\nwhat, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned\nthe wonderful portrait.  He would seek to dominate him--had already,\nindeed, half done so.  He would make that wonderful spirit his own.\nThere was something fascinating in this son of love and death.\n\nSuddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses.  He found that he had\npassed his aunt's some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back.\nWhen he entered the somewhat sombre hall, the butler told him that they\nhad gone in to lunch.  He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick and\npassed into the dining-room.\n\n\"Late as usual, Harry,\" cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.\n\nHe invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to\nher, looked round to see who was there.  Dorian bowed to him shyly from\nthe end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek.\nOpposite was the Duchess of Harley, a lady of admirable good-nature and\ngood temper, much liked by every one who knew her, and of those ample\narchitectural proportions that in women who are not duchesses are\ndescribed by contemporary historians as stoutness.  Next to her sat, on\nher right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, who\nfollowed his leader in public life and in private life followed the\nbest cooks, dining with the Tories and thinking with the Liberals, in\naccordance with a wise and well-known rule.  The post on her left was\noccupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable\ncharm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence,\nhaving, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he\nhad to say before he was thirty.  His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur,\none of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so\ndreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book.\nFortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most\nintelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a ministerial statement\nin the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely\nearnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once\nhimself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of\nthem ever quite escape.\n\n\"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry,\" cried the duchess,\nnodding pleasantly to him across the table.  \"Do you think he will\nreally marry this fascinating young person?\"\n\n\"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess.\"\n\n\"How dreadful!\" exclaimed Lady Agatha.  \"Really, some one should\ninterfere.\"\n\n\"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American\ndry-goods store,\" said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.\n\n\"My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas.\"\n\n\"Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?\" asked the duchess, raising\nher large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.\n\n\"American novels,\" answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail.\n\nThe duchess looked puzzled.\n\n\"Don't mind him, my dear,\" whispered Lady Agatha.  \"He never means\nanything that he says.\"\n\n\"When America was discovered,\" said the Radical member--and he began to\ngive some wearisome facts.  Like all people who try to exhaust a\nsubject, he exhausted his listeners.  The duchess sighed and exercised\nher privilege of interruption.  \"I wish to goodness it never had been\ndiscovered at all!\" she exclaimed.  \"Really, our girls have no chance\nnowadays.  It is most unfair.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered,\" said Mr.\nErskine; \"I myself would say that it had merely been detected.\"\n\n\"Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants,\" answered the\nduchess vaguely.  \"I must confess that most of them are extremely\npretty.  And they dress well, too.  They get all their dresses in\nParis.  I wish I could afford to do the same.\"\n\n\"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,\" chuckled Sir\nThomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.\n\n\"Really!  And where do bad Americans go to when they die?\" inquired the\nduchess.\n\n\"They go to America,\" murmured Lord Henry.\n\nSir Thomas frowned.  \"I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced\nagainst that great country,\" he said to Lady Agatha.  \"I have travelled\nall over it in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters,\nare extremely civil.  I assure you that it is an education to visit it.\"\n\n\"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?\" asked Mr.\nErskine plaintively.  \"I don't feel up to the journey.\"\n\nSir Thomas waved his hand.  \"Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on\nhis shelves. We practical men like to see things, not to read about\nthem. The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are\nabsolutely reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing\ncharacteristic. Yes, Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I\nassure you there is no nonsense about the Americans.\"\n\n\"How dreadful!\" cried Lord Henry.  \"I can stand brute force, but brute\nreason is quite unbearable.  There is something unfair about its use.\nIt is hitting below the intellect.\"\n\n\"I do not understand you,\" said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.\n\n\"I do, Lord Henry,\" murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.\n\n\"Paradoxes are all very well in their way....\" rejoined the baronet.\n\n\"Was that a paradox?\" asked Mr. Erskine.  \"I did not think so.  Perhaps\nit was.  Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth.  To test\nreality we must see it on the tight rope.  When the verities become\nacrobats, we can judge them.\"\n\n\"Dear me!\" said Lady Agatha, \"how you men argue!  I am sure I never can\nmake out what you are talking about.  Oh!  Harry, I am quite vexed with\nyou.  Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up\nthe East End?  I assure you he would be quite invaluable.  They would\nlove his playing.\"\n\n\"I want him to play to me,\" cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked\ndown the table and caught a bright answering glance.\n\n\"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel,\" continued Lady Agatha.\n\n\"I can sympathize with everything except suffering,\" said Lord Henry,\nshrugging his shoulders.  \"I cannot sympathize with that.  It is too\nugly, too horrible, too distressing.  There is something terribly\nmorbid in the modern sympathy with pain.  One should sympathize with\nthe colour, the beauty, the joy of life.  The less said about life's\nsores, the better.\"\n\n\"Still, the East End is a very important problem,\" remarked Sir Thomas\nwith a grave shake of the head.\n\n\"Quite so,\" answered the young lord.  \"It is the problem of slavery,\nand we try to solve it by amusing the slaves.\"\n\nThe politician looked at him keenly.  \"What change do you propose,\nthen?\" he asked.\n\nLord Henry laughed.  \"I don't desire to change anything in England\nexcept the weather,\" he answered.  \"I am quite content with philosophic\ncontemplation.  But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt\nthrough an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should\nappeal to science to put us straight.  The advantage of the emotions is\nthat they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is\nnot emotional.\"\n\n\"But we have such grave responsibilities,\" ventured Mrs. Vandeleur\ntimidly.\n\n\"Terribly grave,\" echoed Lady Agatha.\n\nLord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine.  \"Humanity takes itself too\nseriously.  It is the world's original sin.  If the caveman had known\nhow to laugh, history would have been different.\"\n\n\"You are really very comforting,\" warbled the duchess.  \"I have always\nfelt rather guilty when I came to see your dear aunt, for I take no\ninterest at all in the East End.  For the future I shall be able to\nlook her in the face without a blush.\"\n\n\"A blush is very becoming, Duchess,\" remarked Lord Henry.\n\n\"Only when one is young,\" she answered.  \"When an old woman like myself\nblushes, it is a very bad sign.  Ah!  Lord Henry, I wish you would tell\nme how to become young again.\"\n\nHe thought for a moment.  \"Can you remember any great error that you\ncommitted in your early days, Duchess?\" he asked, looking at her across\nthe table.\n\n\"A great many, I fear,\" she cried.\n\n\"Then commit them over again,\" he said gravely.  \"To get back one's\nyouth, one has merely to repeat one's follies.\"\n\n\"A delightful theory!\" she exclaimed.  \"I must put it into practice.\"\n\n\"A dangerous theory!\" came from Sir Thomas's tight lips.  Lady Agatha\nshook her head, but could not help being amused.  Mr. Erskine listened.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued, \"that is one of the great secrets of life.\nNowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and\ndiscover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are\none's mistakes.\"\n\nA laugh ran round the table.\n\nHe played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and\ntransformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent\nwith fancy and winged it with paradox.  The praise of folly, as he went\non, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and\ncatching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her\nwine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the\nhills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober.  Facts fled\nbefore her like frightened forest things.  Her white feet trod the huge\npress at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round\nher bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over\nthe vat's black, dripping, sloping sides.  It was an extraordinary\nimprovisation.  He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him,\nand the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose\ntemperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and\nto lend colour to his imagination.  He was brilliant, fantastic,\nirresponsible.  He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they\nfollowed his pipe, laughing.  Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him,\nbut sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips\nand wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.\n\nAt last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room\nin the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was\nwaiting.  She wrung her hands in mock despair.  \"How annoying!\" she\ncried.  \"I must go.  I have to call for my husband at the club, to take\nhim to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be\nin the chair.  If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't\nhave a scene in this bonnet.  It is far too fragile.  A harsh word\nwould ruin it.  No, I must go, dear Agatha.  Good-bye, Lord Henry, you\nare quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing.  I am sure I don't\nknow what to say about your views.  You must come and dine with us some\nnight.  Tuesday?  Are you disengaged Tuesday?\"\n\n\"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess,\" said Lord Henry with a\nbow.\n\n\"Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you,\" she cried; \"so mind you\ncome\"; and she swept out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the\nother ladies.\n\nWhen Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking\na chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm.\n\n\"You talk books away,\" he said; \"why don't you write one?\"\n\n\"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine.  I\nshould like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely\nas a Persian carpet and as unreal.  But there is no literary public in\nEngland for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias.\nOf all people in the world the English have the least sense of the\nbeauty of literature.\"\n\n\"I fear you are right,\" answered Mr. Erskine.  \"I myself used to have\nliterary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago.  And now, my dear\nyoung friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you\nreally meant all that you said to us at lunch?\"\n\n\"I quite forget what I said,\" smiled Lord Henry.  \"Was it all very bad?\"\n\n\"Very bad indeed.  In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if\nanything happens to our good duchess, we shall all look on you as being\nprimarily responsible.  But I should like to talk to you about life.\nThe generation into which I was born was tedious.  Some day, when you\nare tired of London, come down to Treadley and expound to me your\nphilosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate\nenough to possess.\"\n\n\"I shall be charmed.  A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege.\nIt has a perfect host, and a perfect library.\"\n\n\"You will complete it,\" answered the old gentleman with a courteous\nbow.  \"And now I must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt.  I am due at\nthe Athenaeum.  It is the hour when we sleep there.\"\n\n\"All of you, Mr. Erskine?\"\n\n\"Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English\nAcademy of Letters.\"\n\nLord Henry laughed and rose.  \"I am going to the park,\" he cried.\n\nAs he was passing out of the door, Dorian Gray touched him on the arm.\n\"Let me come with you,\" he murmured.\n\n\"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him,\"\nanswered Lord Henry.\n\n\"I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must come with you.  Do\nlet me.  And you will promise to talk to me all the time?  No one talks\nso wonderfully as you do.\"\n\n\"Ah!  I have talked quite enough for to-day,\" said Lord Henry, smiling.\n\"All I want now is to look at life.  You may come and look at it with\nme, if you care to.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nOne afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious\narm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in Mayfair.  It\nwas, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled\nwainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling\nof raised plasterwork, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk,\nlong-fringed Persian rugs.  On a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette\nby Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of Les Cent Nouvelles, bound for\nMargaret of Valois by Clovis Eve and powdered with the gilt daisies\nthat Queen had selected for her device.  Some large blue china jars and\nparrot-tulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the small\nleaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a\nsummer day in London.\n\nLord Henry had not yet come in.  He was always late on principle, his\nprinciple being that punctuality is the thief of time.  So the lad was\nlooking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages\nof an elaborately illustrated edition of Manon Lescaut that he had\nfound in one of the book-cases. The formal monotonous ticking of the\nLouis Quatorze clock annoyed him.  Once or twice he thought of going\naway.\n\nAt last he heard a step outside, and the door opened.  \"How late you\nare, Harry!\" he murmured.\n\n\"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray,\" answered a shrill voice.\n\nHe glanced quickly round and rose to his feet.  \"I beg your pardon.  I\nthought--\"\n\n\"You thought it was my husband.  It is only his wife.  You must let me\nintroduce myself.  I know you quite well by your photographs.  I think\nmy husband has got seventeen of them.\"\n\n\"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?\"\n\n\"Well, eighteen, then.  And I saw you with him the other night at the\nopera.\"  She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her\nvague forget-me-not eyes.  She was a curious woman, whose dresses\nalways looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a\ntempest.  She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion\nwas never returned, she had kept all her illusions.  She tried to look\npicturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy.  Her name was\nVictoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.\n\n\"That was at Lohengrin, Lady Henry, I think?\"\n\n\"Yes; it was at dear Lohengrin.  I like Wagner's music better than\nanybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other\npeople hearing what one says.  That is a great advantage, don't you\nthink so, Mr. Gray?\"\n\nThe same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her\nfingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.\n\nDorian smiled and shook his head:  \"I am afraid I don't think so, Lady\nHenry.  I never talk during music--at least, during good music.  If one\nhears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.\"\n\n\"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray?  I always hear\nHarry's views from his friends.  It is the only way I get to know of\nthem.  But you must not think I don't like good music.  I adore it, but\nI am afraid of it.  It makes me too romantic.  I have simply worshipped\npianists--two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me.  I don't know what\nit is about them.  Perhaps it is that they are foreigners.  They all\nare, ain't they?  Even those that are born in England become foreigners\nafter a time, don't they?  It is so clever of them, and such a\ncompliment to art.  Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it?  You have\nnever been to any of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray?  You must come.  I\ncan't afford orchids, but I spare no expense in foreigners.  They make\none's rooms look so picturesque.  But here is Harry!  Harry, I came in\nto look for you, to ask you something--I forget what it was--and I\nfound Mr. Gray here.  We have had such a pleasant chat about music.  We\nhave quite the same ideas.  No; I think our ideas are quite different.\nBut he has been most pleasant.  I am so glad I've seen him.\"\n\n\"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed,\" said Lord Henry, elevating his\ndark, crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused\nsmile.  \"So sorry I am late, Dorian.  I went to look after a piece of\nold brocade in Wardour Street and had to bargain for hours for it.\nNowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.\"\n\n\"I am afraid I must be going,\" exclaimed Lady Henry, breaking an\nawkward silence with her silly sudden laugh.  \"I have promised to drive\nwith the duchess.  Good-bye, Mr. Gray.  Good-bye, Harry.  You are\ndining out, I suppose?  So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady\nThornbury's.\"\n\n\"I dare say, my dear,\" said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her\nas, looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the\nrain, she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of\nfrangipanni.  Then he lit a cigarette and flung himself down on the\nsofa.\n\n\"Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian,\" he said after a\nfew puffs.\n\n\"Why, Harry?\"\n\n\"Because they are so sentimental.\"\n\n\"But I like sentimental people.\"\n\n\"Never marry at all, Dorian.  Men marry because they are tired; women,\nbecause they are curious:  both are disappointed.\"\n\n\"I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry.  I am too much in love.\nThat is one of your aphorisms.  I am putting it into practice, as I do\neverything that you say.\"\n\n\"Who are you in love with?\" asked Lord Henry after a pause.\n\n\"With an actress,\" said Dorian Gray, blushing.\n\nLord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  \"That is a rather commonplace\n_debut_.\"\n\n\"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry.\"\n\n\"Who is she?\"\n\n\"Her name is Sibyl Vane.\"\n\n\"Never heard of her.\"\n\n\"No one has.  People will some day, however.  She is a genius.\"\n\n\"My dear boy, no woman is a genius.  Women are a decorative sex.  They\nnever have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.  Women\nrepresent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the\ntriumph of mind over morals.\"\n\n\"Harry, how can you?\"\n\n\"My dear Dorian, it is quite true.  I am analysing women at present, so\nI ought to know.  The subject is not so abstruse as I thought it was.\nI find that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain\nand the coloured.  The plain women are very useful.  If you want to\ngain a reputation for respectability, you have merely to take them down\nto supper.  The other women are very charming.  They commit one\nmistake, however.  They paint in order to try and look young.  Our\ngrandmothers painted in order to try and talk brilliantly.  _Rouge_ and\n_esprit_ used to go together.  That is all over now.  As long as a woman\ncan look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly\nsatisfied.  As for conversation, there are only five women in London\nworth talking to, and two of these can't be admitted into decent\nsociety.  However, tell me about your genius.  How long have you known\nher?\"\n\n\"Ah!  Harry, your views terrify me.\"\n\n\"Never mind that.  How long have you known her?\"\n\n\"About three weeks.\"\n\n\"And where did you come across her?\"\n\n\"I will tell you, Harry, but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it.\nAfter all, it never would have happened if I had not met you.  You\nfilled me with a wild desire to know everything about life.  For days\nafter I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins.  As I lounged\nin the park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one\nwho passed me and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they\nled.  Some of them fascinated me.  Others filled me with terror.  There\nwas an exquisite poison in the air.  I had a passion for sensations....\nWell, one evening about seven o'clock, I determined to go out in search\nof some adventure.  I felt that this grey monstrous London of ours,\nwith its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins,\nas you once phrased it, must have something in store for me.  I fancied\na thousand things.  The mere danger gave me a sense of delight.  I\nremembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we\nfirst dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret\nof life.  I don't know what I expected, but I went out and wandered\neastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black\ngrassless squares.  About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little\ntheatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills.  A hideous\nJew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was\nstanding at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar.  He had greasy\nringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled\nshirt. 'Have a box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off\nhis hat with an air of gorgeous servility.  There was something about\nhim, Harry, that amused me.  He was such a monster.  You will laugh at\nme, I know, but I really went in and paid a whole guinea for the\nstage-box. To the present day I can't make out why I did so; and yet if\nI hadn't--my dear Harry, if I hadn't--I should have missed the greatest\nromance of my life.  I see you are laughing.  It is horrid of you!\"\n\n\"I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you.  But you\nshould not say the greatest romance of your life.  You should say the\nfirst romance of your life.  You will always be loved, and you will\nalways be in love with love.  A _grande passion_ is the privilege of\npeople who have nothing to do.  That is the one use of the idle classes\nof a country.  Don't be afraid.  There are exquisite things in store\nfor you.  This is merely the beginning.\"\n\n\"Do you think my nature so shallow?\" cried Dorian Gray angrily.\n\n\"No; I think your nature so deep.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really\nthe shallow people.  What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity,\nI call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.\nFaithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life\nof the intellect--simply a confession of failure.  Faithfulness!  I\nmust analyse it some day.  The passion for property is in it.  There\nare many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that\nothers might pick them up.  But I don't want to interrupt you.  Go on\nwith your story.\"\n\n\"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a\nvulgar drop-scene staring me in the face.  I looked out from behind the\ncurtain and surveyed the house.  It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and\ncornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. The gallery and pit were\nfairly full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and\nthere was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the\ndress-circle.  Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there\nwas a terrible consumption of nuts going on.\"\n\n\"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British drama.\"\n\n\"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing.  I began to wonder\nwhat on earth I should do when I caught sight of the play-bill.  What\ndo you think the play was, Harry?\"\n\n\"I should think 'The Idiot Boy', or 'Dumb but Innocent'.  Our fathers\nused to like that sort of piece, I believe.  The longer I live, Dorian,\nthe more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is\nnot good enough for us.  In art, as in politics, _les grandperes ont\ntoujours tort_.\"\n\n\"This play was good enough for us, Harry.  It was Romeo and Juliet.  I\nmust admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare\ndone in such a wretched hole of a place.  Still, I felt interested, in\na sort of way.  At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act.\nThere was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat\nat a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the\ndrop-scene was drawn up and the play began.  Romeo was a stout elderly\ngentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure\nlike a beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad.  He was played by the\nlow-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on most\nfriendly terms with the pit.  They were both as grotesque as the\nscenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a country-booth. But\nJuliet!  Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a\nlittle, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of\ndark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were\nlike the petals of a rose.  She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen\nin my life.  You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that\nbeauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears.  I tell you,\nHarry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came\nacross me.  And her voice--I never heard such a voice.  It was very low\nat first, with deep mellow notes that seemed to fall singly upon one's\near.  Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a\ndistant hautboy.  In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy\nthat one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing.  There\nwere moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins.  You\nknow how a voice can stir one.  Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane\nare two things that I shall never forget.  When I close my eyes, I hear\nthem, and each of them says something different.  I don't know which to\nfollow.  Why should I not love her?  Harry, I do love her.  She is\neverything to me in life.  Night after night I go to see her play.  One\nevening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen.  I have\nseen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from\nher lover's lips.  I have watched her wandering through the forest of\nArden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap.\nShe has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and\ngiven him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste of.  She has been\ninnocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reedlike\nthroat.  I have seen her in every age and in every costume.  Ordinary\nwomen never appeal to one's imagination.  They are limited to their\ncentury.  No glamour ever transfigures them.  One knows their minds as\neasily as one knows their bonnets.  One can always find them.  There is\nno mystery in any of them.  They ride in the park in the morning and\nchatter at tea-parties in the afternoon.  They have their stereotyped\nsmile and their fashionable manner.  They are quite obvious.  But an\nactress!  How different an actress is!  Harry! why didn't you tell me\nthat the only thing worth loving is an actress?\"\n\n\"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces.\"\n\n\"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces.  There is an extraordinary\ncharm in them, sometimes,\" said Lord Henry.\n\n\"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane.\"\n\n\"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian.  All through your life\nyou will tell me everything you do.\"\n\n\"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true.  I cannot help telling you things.\nYou have a curious influence over me.  If I ever did a crime, I would\ncome and confess it to you.  You would understand me.\"\n\n\"People like you--the wilful sunbeams of life--don't commit crimes,\nDorian.  But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same.  And\nnow tell me--reach me the matches, like a good boy--thanks--what are\nyour actual relations with Sibyl Vane?\"\n\nDorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.\n\"Harry!  Sibyl Vane is sacred!\"\n\n\"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian,\" said\nLord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice.  \"But why\nshould you be annoyed?  I suppose she will belong to you some day.\nWhen one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one\nalways ends by deceiving others.  That is what the world calls a\nromance.  You know her, at any rate, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Of course I know her.  On the first night I was at the theatre, the\nhorrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over and\noffered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her.  I was\nfurious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds\nof years and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in Verona.  I\nthink, from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the\nimpression that I had taken too much champagne, or something.\"\n\n\"I am not surprised.\"\n\n\"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers.  I told him I\nnever even read them.  He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and\nconfided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy\nagainst him, and that they were every one of them to be bought.\"\n\n\"I should not wonder if he was quite right there.  But, on the other\nhand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all\nexpensive.\"\n\n\"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means,\" laughed Dorian.\n\"By this time, however, the lights were being put out in the theatre,\nand I had to go.  He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly\nrecommended.  I declined.  The next night, of course, I arrived at the\nplace again.  When he saw me, he made me a low bow and assured me that\nI was a munificent patron of art.  He was a most offensive brute,\nthough he had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare.  He told me\nonce, with an air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely\ndue to 'The Bard,' as he insisted on calling him.  He seemed to think\nit a distinction.\"\n\n\"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian--a great distinction.  Most\npeople become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose\nof life.  To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.  But when\ndid you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?\"\n\n\"The third night.  She had been playing Rosalind.  I could not help\ngoing round.  I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at\nme--at least I fancied that she had.  The old Jew was persistent.  He\nseemed determined to take me behind, so I consented.  It was curious my\nnot wanting to know her, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"No; I don't think so.\"\n\n\"My dear Harry, why?\"\n\n\"I will tell you some other time.  Now I want to know about the girl.\"\n\n\"Sibyl?  Oh, she was so shy and so gentle.  There is something of a\nchild about her.  Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told\nher what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious\nof her power.  I think we were both rather nervous.  The old Jew stood\ngrinning at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate\nspeeches about us both, while we stood looking at each other like\nchildren.  He would insist on calling me 'My Lord,' so I had to assure\nSibyl that I was not anything of the kind.  She said quite simply to\nme, 'You look more like a prince.  I must call you Prince Charming.'\"\n\n\"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments.\"\n\n\"You don't understand her, Harry.  She regarded me merely as a person\nin a play.  She knows nothing of life.  She lives with her mother, a\nfaded tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta\ndressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen\nbetter days.\"\n\n\"I know that look.  It depresses me,\" murmured Lord Henry, examining\nhis rings.\n\n\"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest\nme.\"\n\n\"You were quite right.  There is always something infinitely mean about\nother people's tragedies.\"\n\n\"Sibyl is the only thing I care about.  What is it to me where she came\nfrom?  From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and\nentirely divine.  Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every\nnight she is more marvellous.\"\n\n\"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now.  I\nthought you must have some curious romance on hand.  You have; but it\nis not quite what I expected.\"\n\n\"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have\nbeen to the opera with you several times,\" said Dorian, opening his\nblue eyes in wonder.\n\n\"You always come dreadfully late.\"\n\n\"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play,\" he cried, \"even if it is\nonly for a single act.  I get hungry for her presence; and when I think\nof the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I\nam filled with awe.\"\n\n\"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?\"\n\nHe shook his head.  \"To-night she is Imogen,\" he answered, \"and\nto-morrow night she will be Juliet.\"\n\n\"When is she Sibyl Vane?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"I congratulate you.\"\n\n\"How horrid you are!  She is all the great heroines of the world in\none.  She is more than an individual.  You laugh, but I tell you she\nhas genius.  I love her, and I must make her love me.  You, who know\nall the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me!  I\nwant to make Romeo jealous.  I want the dead lovers of the world to\nhear our laughter and grow sad.  I want a breath of our passion to stir\ntheir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.  My God,\nHarry, how I worship her!\"  He was walking up and down the room as he\nspoke.  Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks.  He was terribly\nexcited.\n\nLord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure.  How different\nhe was now from the shy frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward's\nstudio!  His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of\nscarlet flame.  Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his soul, and\ndesire had come to meet it on the way.\n\n\"And what do you propose to do?\" said Lord Henry at last.\n\n\"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act.  I\nhave not the slightest fear of the result.  You are certain to\nacknowledge her genius.  Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands.\nShe is bound to him for three years--at least for two years and eight\nmonths--from the present time.  I shall have to pay him something, of\ncourse.  When all that is settled, I shall take a West End theatre and\nbring her out properly.  She will make the world as mad as she has made\nme.\"\n\n\"That would be impossible, my dear boy.\"\n\n\"Yes, she will.  She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in\nher, but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it\nis personalities, not principles, that move the age.\"\n\n\"Well, what night shall we go?\"\n\n\"Let me see.  To-day is Tuesday.  Let us fix to-morrow. She plays\nJuliet to-morrow.\"\n\n\"All right.  The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil.\"\n\n\"Not eight, Harry, please.  Half-past six.  We must be there before the\ncurtain rises.  You must see her in the first act, where she meets\nRomeo.\"\n\n\"Half-past six!  What an hour!  It will be like having a meat-tea, or\nreading an English novel.  It must be seven.  No gentleman dines before\nseven.  Shall you see Basil between this and then?  Or shall I write to\nhim?\"\n\n\"Dear Basil!  I have not laid eyes on him for a week.  It is rather\nhorrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful\nframe, specially designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous\nof the picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit\nthat I delight in it.  Perhaps you had better write to him.  I don't\nwant to see him alone.  He says things that annoy me.  He gives me good\nadvice.\"\n\nLord Henry smiled.  \"People are very fond of giving away what they need\nmost themselves.  It is what I call the depth of generosity.\"\n\n\"Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit\nof a Philistine.  Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered\nthat.\"\n\n\"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his\nwork.  The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his\nprejudices, his principles, and his common sense.  The only artists I\nhave ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists.  Good\nartists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly\nuninteresting in what they are.  A great poet, a really great poet, is\nthe most unpoetical of all creatures.  But inferior poets are\nabsolutely fascinating.  The worse their rhymes are, the more\npicturesque they look.  The mere fact of having published a book of\nsecond-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible.  He lives the\npoetry that he cannot write.  The others write the poetry that they\ndare not realize.\"\n\n\"I wonder is that really so, Harry?\" said Dorian Gray, putting some\nperfume on his handkerchief out of a large, gold-topped bottle that\nstood on the table.  \"It must be, if you say it.  And now I am off.\nImogen is waiting for me.  Don't forget about to-morrow. Good-bye.\"\n\nAs he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began\nto think.  Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as\nDorian Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else caused\nhim not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy.  He was pleased by\nit.  It made him a more interesting study.  He had been always\nenthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary\nsubject-matter of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no\nimport.  And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by\nvivisecting others.  Human life--that appeared to him the one thing\nworth investigating.  Compared to it there was nothing else of any\nvalue.  It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of\npain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass,\nnor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the\nimagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.  There\nwere poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken\nof them.  There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through\nthem if one sought to understand their nature.  And, yet, what a great\nreward one received!  How wonderful the whole world became to one!  To\nnote the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life\nof the intellect--to observe where they met, and where they separated,\nat what point they were in unison, and at what point they were at\ndiscord--there was a delight in that!  What matter what the cost was?\nOne could never pay too high a price for any sensation.\n\nHe was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his\nbrown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his, musical\nwords said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned\nto this white girl and bowed in worship before her.  To a large extent\nthe lad was his own creation.  He had made him premature.  That was\nsomething.  Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its\nsecrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were\nrevealed before the veil was drawn away.  Sometimes this was the effect\nof art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately\nwith the passions and the intellect.  But now and then a complex\npersonality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed,\nin its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces,\njust as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.\n\nYes, the lad was premature.  He was gathering his harvest while it was\nyet spring.  The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was\nbecoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him.  With his\nbeautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at.\nIt was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end.  He was like\none of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem\nto be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty,\nand whose wounds are like red roses.\n\nSoul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were!  There was\nanimalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.\nThe senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade.  Who could\nsay where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began?\nHow shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists!\nAnd yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various\nschools!  Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin?  Or was the\nbody really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought?  The separation of\nspirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter\nwas a mystery also.\n\nHe began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a\nscience that each little spring of life would be revealed to us.  As it\nwas, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others.\nExperience was of no ethical value.  It was merely the name men gave to\ntheir mistakes.  Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of\nwarning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation\nof character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow\nand showed us what to avoid.  But there was no motive power in\nexperience.  It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself.\nAll that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same\nas our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we\nwould do many times, and with joy.\n\nIt was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by\nwhich one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and\ncertainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to\npromise rich and fruitful results.  His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane\nwas a psychological phenomenon of no small interest.  There was no\ndoubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire\nfor new experiences, yet it was not a simple, but rather a very complex\npassion.  What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of\nboyhood had been transformed by the workings of the imagination,\nchanged into something that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from\nsense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous.  It was the\npassions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most\nstrongly over us.  Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we\nwere conscious.  It often happened that when we thought we were\nexperimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.\n\nWhile Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the\ndoor, and his valet entered and reminded him it was time to dress for\ndinner.  He got up and looked out into the street.  The sunset had\nsmitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite.\nThe panes glowed like plates of heated metal.  The sky above was like a\nfaded rose.  He thought of his friend's young fiery-coloured life and\nwondered how it was all going to end.\n\nWhen he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a telegram\nlying on the hall table.  He opened it and found it was from Dorian\nGray.  It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl\nVane.\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Mother, Mother, I am so happy!\" whispered the girl, burying her face\nin the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back turned to\nthe shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their\ndingy sitting-room contained.  \"I am so happy!\" she repeated, \"and you\nmust be happy, too!\"\n\nMrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuth-whitened hands on her\ndaughter's head.  \"Happy!\" she echoed, \"I am only happy, Sibyl, when I\nsee you act.  You must not think of anything but your acting.  Mr.\nIsaacs has been very good to us, and we owe him money.\"\n\nThe girl looked up and pouted.  \"Money, Mother?\" she cried, \"what does\nmoney matter?  Love is more than money.\"\n\n\"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts and to\nget a proper outfit for James.  You must not forget that, Sibyl.  Fifty\npounds is a very large sum.  Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate.\"\n\n\"He is not a gentleman, Mother, and I hate the way he talks to me,\"\nsaid the girl, rising to her feet and going over to the window.\n\n\"I don't know how we could manage without him,\" answered the elder\nwoman querulously.\n\nSibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed.  \"We don't want him any more,\nMother.  Prince Charming rules life for us now.\" Then she paused.  A\nrose shook in her blood and shadowed her cheeks.  Quick breath parted\nthe petals of her lips.  They trembled.  Some southern wind of passion\nswept over her and stirred the dainty folds of her dress.  \"I love\nhim,\" she said simply.\n\n\"Foolish child! foolish child!\" was the parrot-phrase flung in answer.\nThe waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the\nwords.\n\nThe girl laughed again.  The joy of a caged bird was in her voice.  Her\neyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed for a\nmoment, as though to hide their secret.  When they opened, the mist of\na dream had passed across them.\n\nThin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at\nprudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name\nof common sense.  She did not listen.  She was free in her prison of\npassion.  Her prince, Prince Charming, was with her.  She had called on\nmemory to remake him.  She had sent her soul to search for him, and it\nhad brought him back.  His kiss burned again upon her mouth.  Her\neyelids were warm with his breath.\n\nThen wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery.  This\nyoung man might be rich.  If so, marriage should be thought of.\nAgainst the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning.  The\narrows of craft shot by her.  She saw the thin lips moving, and smiled.\n\nSuddenly she felt the need to speak.  The wordy silence troubled her.\n\"Mother, Mother,\" she cried, \"why does he love me so much?  I know why\nI love him.  I love him because he is like what love himself should be.\nBut what does he see in me?  I am not worthy of him.  And yet--why, I\ncannot tell--though I feel so much beneath him, I don't feel humble.  I\nfeel proud, terribly proud.  Mother, did you love my father as I love\nPrince Charming?\"\n\nThe elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her\ncheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain.  Sybil rushed\nto her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her.  \"Forgive me,\nMother.  I know it pains you to talk about our father.  But it only\npains you because you loved him so much.  Don't look so sad.  I am as\nhappy to-day as you were twenty years ago.  Ah! let me be happy for\never!\"\n\n\"My child, you are far too young to think of falling in love.  Besides,\nwhat do you know of this young man?  You don't even know his name.  The\nwhole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when James is going away\nto Australia, and I have so much to think of, I must say that you\nshould have shown more consideration.  However, as I said before, if he\nis rich ...\"\n\n\"Ah!  Mother, Mother, let me be happy!\"\n\nMrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false theatrical\ngestures that so often become a mode of second nature to a\nstage-player, clasped her in her arms.  At this moment, the door opened\nand a young lad with rough brown hair came into the room.  He was\nthick-set of figure, and his hands and feet were large and somewhat\nclumsy in movement.  He was not so finely bred as his sister.  One\nwould hardly have guessed the close relationship that existed between\nthem.  Mrs. Vane fixed her eyes on him and intensified her smile.  She\nmentally elevated her son to the dignity of an audience.  She felt sure\nthat the _tableau_ was interesting.\n\n\"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think,\" said the\nlad with a good-natured grumble.\n\n\"Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim,\" she cried.  \"You are a\ndreadful old bear.\"  And she ran across the room and hugged him.\n\nJames Vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness.  \"I want you\nto come out with me for a walk, Sibyl.  I don't suppose I shall ever\nsee this horrid London again.  I am sure I don't want to.\"\n\n\"My son, don't say such dreadful things,\" murmured Mrs. Vane, taking up\na tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it.  She\nfelt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group.  It would\nhave increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation.\n\n\"Why not, Mother?  I mean it.\"\n\n\"You pain me, my son.  I trust you will return from Australia in a\nposition of affluence.  I believe there is no society of any kind in\nthe Colonies--nothing that I would call society--so when you have made\nyour fortune, you must come back and assert yourself in London.\"\n\n\"Society!\" muttered the lad.  \"I don't want to know anything about\nthat.  I should like to make some money to take you and Sibyl off the\nstage.  I hate it.\"\n\n\"Oh, Jim!\" said Sibyl, laughing, \"how unkind of you!  But are you\nreally going for a walk with me?  That will be nice!  I was afraid you\nwere going to say good-bye to some of your friends--to Tom Hardy, who\ngave you that hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who makes fun of you for\nsmoking it.  It is very sweet of you to let me have your last\nafternoon.  Where shall we go?  Let us go to the park.\"\n\n\"I am too shabby,\" he answered, frowning.  \"Only swell people go to the\npark.\"\n\n\"Nonsense, Jim,\" she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.\n\nHe hesitated for a moment.  \"Very well,\" he said at last, \"but don't be\ntoo long dressing.\"  She danced out of the door.  One could hear her\nsinging as she ran upstairs.  Her little feet pattered overhead.\n\nHe walked up and down the room two or three times.  Then he turned to\nthe still figure in the chair.  \"Mother, are my things ready?\" he asked.\n\n\"Quite ready, James,\" she answered, keeping her eyes on her work.  For\nsome months past she had felt ill at ease when she was alone with this\nrough stern son of hers.  Her shallow secret nature was troubled when\ntheir eyes met.  She used to wonder if he suspected anything.  The\nsilence, for he made no other observation, became intolerable to her.\nShe began to complain.  Women defend themselves by attacking, just as\nthey attack by sudden and strange surrenders.  \"I hope you will be\ncontented, James, with your sea-faring life,\" she said.  \"You must\nremember that it is your own choice.  You might have entered a\nsolicitor's office.  Solicitors are a very respectable class, and in\nthe country often dine with the best families.\"\n\n\"I hate offices, and I hate clerks,\" he replied.  \"But you are quite\nright.  I have chosen my own life.  All I say is, watch over Sibyl.\nDon't let her come to any harm.  Mother, you must watch over her.\"\n\n\"James, you really talk very strangely.  Of course I watch over Sibyl.\"\n\n\"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre and goes behind to\ntalk to her.  Is that right?  What about that?\"\n\n\"You are speaking about things you don't understand, James.  In the\nprofession we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying\nattention.  I myself used to receive many bouquets at one time.  That\nwas when acting was really understood.  As for Sibyl, I do not know at\npresent whether her attachment is serious or not.  But there is no\ndoubt that the young man in question is a perfect gentleman.  He is\nalways most polite to me.  Besides, he has the appearance of being\nrich, and the flowers he sends are lovely.\"\n\n\"You don't know his name, though,\" said the lad harshly.\n\n\"No,\" answered his mother with a placid expression in her face.  \"He\nhas not yet revealed his real name.  I think it is quite romantic of\nhim.  He is probably a member of the aristocracy.\"\n\nJames Vane bit his lip.  \"Watch over Sibyl, Mother,\" he cried, \"watch\nover her.\"\n\n\"My son, you distress me very much.  Sibyl is always under my special\ncare.  Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why\nshe should not contract an alliance with him.  I trust he is one of the\naristocracy.  He has all the appearance of it, I must say.  It might be\na most brilliant marriage for Sibyl.  They would make a charming\ncouple.  His good looks are really quite remarkable; everybody notices\nthem.\"\n\nThe lad muttered something to himself and drummed on the window-pane\nwith his coarse fingers.  He had just turned round to say something\nwhen the door opened and Sibyl ran in.\n\n\"How serious you both are!\" she cried.  \"What is the matter?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" he answered.  \"I suppose one must be serious sometimes.\nGood-bye, Mother; I will have my dinner at five o'clock. Everything is\npacked, except my shirts, so you need not trouble.\"\n\n\"Good-bye, my son,\" she answered with a bow of strained stateliness.\n\nShe was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, and\nthere was something in his look that had made her feel afraid.\n\n\"Kiss me, Mother,\" said the girl.  Her flowerlike lips touched the\nwithered cheek and warmed its frost.\n\n\"My child! my child!\" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in\nsearch of an imaginary gallery.\n\n\"Come, Sibyl,\" said her brother impatiently.  He hated his mother's\naffectations.\n\nThey went out into the flickering, wind-blown sunlight and strolled\ndown the dreary Euston Road.  The passersby glanced in wonder at the\nsullen heavy youth who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the\ncompany of such a graceful, refined-looking girl.  He was like a common\ngardener walking with a rose.\n\nJim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of\nsome stranger.  He had that dislike of being stared at, which comes on\ngeniuses late in life and never leaves the commonplace.  Sibyl,\nhowever, was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing.  Her\nlove was trembling in laughter on her lips.  She was thinking of Prince\nCharming, and, that she might think of him all the more, she did not\ntalk of him, but prattled on about the ship in which Jim was going to\nsail, about the gold he was certain to find, about the wonderful\nheiress whose life he was to save from the wicked, red-shirted\nbushrangers.  For he was not to remain a sailor, or a supercargo, or\nwhatever he was going to be.  Oh, no!  A sailor's existence was\ndreadful.  Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship, with the hoarse,\nhump-backed waves trying to get in, and a black wind blowing the masts\ndown and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands!  He was to\nleave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite good-bye to the captain,\nand go off at once to the gold-fields. Before a week was over he was to\ncome across a large nugget of pure gold, the largest nugget that had\never been discovered, and bring it down to the coast in a waggon\nguarded by six mounted policemen.  The bushrangers were to attack them\nthree times, and be defeated with immense slaughter.  Or, no.  He was\nnot to go to the gold-fields at all.  They were horrid places, where\nmen got intoxicated, and shot each other in bar-rooms, and used bad\nlanguage.  He was to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one evening, as he was\nriding home, he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off by a\nrobber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her.  Of course,\nshe would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would get\nmarried, and come home, and live in an immense house in London.  Yes,\nthere were delightful things in store for him.  But he must be very\ngood, and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly.  She was\nonly a year older than he was, but she knew so much more of life.  He\nmust be sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and to say his\nprayers each night before he went to sleep.  God was very good, and\nwould watch over him.  She would pray for him, too, and in a few years\nhe would come back quite rich and happy.\n\nThe lad listened sulkily to her and made no answer.  He was heart-sick\nat leaving home.\n\nYet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose.\nInexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense of the danger\nof Sibyl's position.  This young dandy who was making love to her could\nmean her no good.  He was a gentleman, and he hated him for that, hated\nhim through some curious race-instinct for which he could not account,\nand which for that reason was all the more dominant within him.  He was\nconscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother's nature,\nand in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl's happiness.\nChildren begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge\nthem; sometimes they forgive them.\n\nHis mother!  He had something on his mind to ask of her, something that\nhe had brooded on for many months of silence.  A chance phrase that he\nhad heard at the theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his ears\none night as he waited at the stage-door, had set loose a train of\nhorrible thoughts.  He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a\nhunting-crop across his face.  His brows knit together into a wedge-like\nfurrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his underlip.\n\n\"You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim,\" cried Sibyl, \"and I\nam making the most delightful plans for your future.  Do say something.\"\n\n\"What do you want me to say?\"\n\n\"Oh! that you will be a good boy and not forget us,\" she answered,\nsmiling at him.\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders.  \"You are more likely to forget me than I am\nto forget you, Sibyl.\"\n\nShe flushed.  \"What do you mean, Jim?\" she asked.\n\n\"You have a new friend, I hear.  Who is he?  Why have you not told me\nabout him?  He means you no good.\"\n\n\"Stop, Jim!\" she exclaimed.  \"You must not say anything against him.  I\nlove him.\"\n\n\"Why, you don't even know his name,\" answered the lad.  \"Who is he?  I\nhave a right to know.\"\n\n\"He is called Prince Charming.  Don't you like the name.  Oh! you silly\nboy! you should never forget it.  If you only saw him, you would think\nhim the most wonderful person in the world.  Some day you will meet\nhim--when you come back from Australia.  You will like him so much.\nEverybody likes him, and I ... love him.  I wish you could come to the\ntheatre to-night. He is going to be there, and I am to play Juliet.\nOh! how I shall play it!  Fancy, Jim, to be in love and play Juliet!\nTo have him sitting there!  To play for his delight!  I am afraid I may\nfrighten the company, frighten or enthrall them.  To be in love is to\nsurpass one's self.  Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting 'genius'\nto his loafers at the bar.  He has preached me as a dogma; to-night he\nwill announce me as a revelation.  I feel it.  And it is all his, his\nonly, Prince Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces.  But I am\npoor beside him.  Poor?  What does that matter?  When poverty creeps in\nat the door, love flies in through the window.  Our proverbs want\nrewriting.  They were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time\nfor me, I think, a very dance of blossoms in blue skies.\"\n\n\"He is a gentleman,\" said the lad sullenly.\n\n\"A prince!\" she cried musically.  \"What more do you want?\"\n\n\"He wants to enslave you.\"\n\n\"I shudder at the thought of being free.\"\n\n\"I want you to beware of him.\"\n\n\"To see him is to worship him; to know him is to trust him.\"\n\n\"Sibyl, you are mad about him.\"\n\nShe laughed and took his arm.  \"You dear old Jim, you talk as if you\nwere a hundred.  Some day you will be in love yourself.  Then you will\nknow what it is.  Don't look so sulky.  Surely you should be glad to\nthink that, though you are going away, you leave me happier than I have\never been before.  Life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and\ndifficult.  But it will be different now.  You are going to a new\nworld, and I have found one.  Here are two chairs; let us sit down and\nsee the smart people go by.\"\n\nThey took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers.  The tulip-beds\nacross the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire.  A white\ndust--tremulous cloud of orris-root it seemed--hung in the panting air.\nThe brightly coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous\nbutterflies.\n\nShe made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects.  He\nspoke slowly and with effort.  They passed words to each other as\nplayers at a game pass counters.  Sibyl felt oppressed.  She could not\ncommunicate her joy.  A faint smile curving that sullen mouth was all\nthe echo she could win.  After some time she became silent.  Suddenly\nshe caught a glimpse of golden hair and laughing lips, and in an open\ncarriage with two ladies Dorian Gray drove past.\n\nShe started to her feet.  \"There he is!\" she cried.\n\n\"Who?\" said Jim Vane.\n\n\"Prince Charming,\" she answered, looking after the victoria.\n\nHe jumped up and seized her roughly by the arm.  \"Show him to me.\nWhich is he?  Point him out.  I must see him!\" he exclaimed; but at\nthat moment the Duke of Berwick's four-in-hand came between, and when\nit had left the space clear, the carriage had swept out of the park.\n\n\"He is gone,\" murmured Sibyl sadly.  \"I wish you had seen him.\"\n\n\"I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does\nyou any wrong, I shall kill him.\"\n\nShe looked at him in horror.  He repeated his words.  They cut the air\nlike a dagger.  The people round began to gape.  A lady standing close\nto her tittered.\n\n\"Come away, Jim; come away,\" she whispered.  He followed her doggedly\nas she passed through the crowd.  He felt glad at what he had said.\n\nWhen they reached the Achilles Statue, she turned round.  There was\npity in her eyes that became laughter on her lips.  She shook her head\nat him.  \"You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy,\nthat is all.  How can you say such horrible things?  You don't know\nwhat you are talking about.  You are simply jealous and unkind.  Ah!  I\nwish you would fall in love.  Love makes people good, and what you said\nwas wicked.\"\n\n\"I am sixteen,\" he answered, \"and I know what I am about.  Mother is no\nhelp to you.  She doesn't understand how to look after you.  I wish now\nthat I was not going to Australia at all.  I have a great mind to chuck\nthe whole thing up.  I would, if my articles hadn't been signed.\"\n\n\"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim.  You are like one of the heroes of those\nsilly melodramas Mother used to be so fond of acting in.  I am not\ngoing to quarrel with you.  I have seen him, and oh! to see him is\nperfect happiness.  We won't quarrel.  I know you would never harm any\none I love, would you?\"\n\n\"Not as long as you love him, I suppose,\" was the sullen answer.\n\n\"I shall love him for ever!\" she cried.\n\n\"And he?\"\n\n\"For ever, too!\"\n\n\"He had better.\"\n\nShe shrank from him.  Then she laughed and put her hand on his arm.  He\nwas merely a boy.\n\nAt the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close to\ntheir shabby home in the Euston Road.  It was after five o'clock, and\nSibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting.  Jim\ninsisted that she should do so.  He said that he would sooner part with\nher when their mother was not present.  She would be sure to make a\nscene, and he detested scenes of every kind.\n\nIn Sybil's own room they parted.  There was jealousy in the lad's\nheart, and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed\nto him, had come between them.  Yet, when her arms were flung round his\nneck, and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and kissed\nher with real affection.  There were tears in his eyes as he went\ndownstairs.\n\nHis mother was waiting for him below.  She grumbled at his\nunpunctuality, as he entered.  He made no answer, but sat down to his\nmeagre meal.  The flies buzzed round the table and crawled over the\nstained cloth.  Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of\nstreet-cabs, he could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that\nwas left to him.\n\nAfter some time, he thrust away his plate and put his head in his\nhands.  He felt that he had a right to know.  It should have been told\nto him before, if it was as he suspected.  Leaden with fear, his mother\nwatched him.  Words dropped mechanically from her lips.  A tattered\nlace handkerchief twitched in her fingers.  When the clock struck six,\nhe got up and went to the door.  Then he turned back and looked at her.\nTheir eyes met.  In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy.  It enraged\nhim.\n\n\"Mother, I have something to ask you,\" he said.  Her eyes wandered\nvaguely about the room.  She made no answer.  \"Tell me the truth.  I\nhave a right to know.  Were you married to my father?\"\n\nShe heaved a deep sigh.  It was a sigh of relief.  The terrible moment,\nthe moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded,\nhad come at last, and yet she felt no terror.  Indeed, in some measure\nit was a disappointment to her.  The vulgar directness of the question\ncalled for a direct answer.  The situation had not been gradually led\nup to.  It was crude.  It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.\n\n\"No,\" she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.\n\n\"My father was a scoundrel then!\" cried the lad, clenching his fists.\n\nShe shook her head.  \"I knew he was not free.  We loved each other very\nmuch.  If he had lived, he would have made provision for us.  Don't\nspeak against him, my son.  He was your father, and a gentleman.\nIndeed, he was highly connected.\"\n\nAn oath broke from his lips.  \"I don't care for myself,\" he exclaimed,\n\"but don't let Sibyl.... It is a gentleman, isn't it, who is in love\nwith her, or says he is?  Highly connected, too, I suppose.\"\n\nFor a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman.  Her\nhead drooped.  She wiped her eyes with shaking hands.  \"Sibyl has a\nmother,\" she murmured; \"I had none.\"\n\nThe lad was touched.  He went towards her, and stooping down, he kissed\nher.  \"I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about my father,\" he\nsaid, \"but I could not help it.  I must go now.  Good-bye. Don't forget\nthat you will have only one child now to look after, and believe me\nthat if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him\ndown, and kill him like a dog.  I swear it.\"\n\nThe exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture that\naccompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem more vivid\nto her.  She was familiar with the atmosphere.  She breathed more\nfreely, and for the first time for many months she really admired her\nson.  She would have liked to have continued the scene on the same\nemotional scale, but he cut her short.  Trunks had to be carried down\nand mufflers looked for.  The lodging-house drudge bustled in and out.\nThere was the bargaining with the cabman.  The moment was lost in\nvulgar details.  It was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that\nshe waved the tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her son\ndrove away.  She was conscious that a great opportunity had been\nwasted.  She consoled herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt\nher life would be, now that she had only one child to look after.  She\nremembered the phrase.  It had pleased her.  Of the threat she said\nnothing.  It was vividly and dramatically expressed.  She felt that\nthey would all laugh at it some day.\n\n\n\n\n\n\"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?\" said Lord Henry that\nevening as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol\nwhere dinner had been laid for three.\n\n\"No, Harry,\" answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the bowing\nwaiter.  \"What is it?  Nothing about politics, I hope!  They don't\ninterest me.  There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons\nworth painting, though many of them would be the better for a little\nwhitewashing.\"\n\n\"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married,\" said Lord Henry, watching him\nas he spoke.\n\nHallward started and then frowned.  \"Dorian engaged to be married!\" he\ncried.  \"Impossible!\"\n\n\"It is perfectly true.\"\n\n\"To whom?\"\n\n\"To some little actress or other.\"\n\n\"I can't believe it.  Dorian is far too sensible.\"\n\n\"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear\nBasil.\"\n\n\"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry.\"\n\n\"Except in America,\" rejoined Lord Henry languidly.  \"But I didn't say\nhe was married.  I said he was engaged to be married.  There is a great\ndifference.  I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have\nno recollection at all of being engaged.  I am inclined to think that I\nnever was engaged.\"\n\n\"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth.  It would be\nabsurd for him to marry so much beneath him.\"\n\n\"If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil.  He is\nsure to do it, then.  Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it\nis always from the noblest motives.\"\n\n\"I hope the girl is good, Harry.  I don't want to see Dorian tied to\nsome vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his\nintellect.\"\n\n\"Oh, she is better than good--she is beautiful,\" murmured Lord Henry,\nsipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. \"Dorian says she is\nbeautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind.  Your\nportrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal\nappearance of other people.  It has had that excellent effect, amongst\nothers.  We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his\nappointment.\"\n\n\"Are you serious?\"\n\n\"Quite serious, Basil.  I should be miserable if I thought I should\never be more serious than I am at the present moment.\"\n\n\"But do you approve of it, Harry?\" asked the painter, walking up and\ndown the room and biting his lip.  \"You can't approve of it, possibly.\nIt is some silly infatuation.\"\n\n\"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now.  It is an absurd\nattitude to take towards life.  We are not sent into the world to air\nour moral prejudices.  I never take any notice of what common people\nsay, and I never interfere with what charming people do.  If a\npersonality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality\nselects is absolutely delightful to me.  Dorian Gray falls in love with\na beautiful girl who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her.  Why not?\nIf he wedded Messalina, he would be none the less interesting.  You\nknow I am not a champion of marriage.  The real drawback to marriage is\nthat it makes one unselfish.  And unselfish people are colourless.\nThey lack individuality.  Still, there are certain temperaments that\nmarriage makes more complex.  They retain their egotism, and add to it\nmany other egos.  They are forced to have more than one life.  They\nbecome more highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should\nfancy, the object of man's existence.  Besides, every experience is of\nvalue, and whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an\nexperience.  I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife,\npassionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become\nfascinated by some one else.  He would be a wonderful study.\"\n\n\"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't.\nIf Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than\nyourself.  You are much better than you pretend to be.\"\n\nLord Henry laughed.  \"The reason we all like to think so well of others\nis that we are all afraid for ourselves.  The basis of optimism is\nsheer terror.  We think that we are generous because we credit our\nneighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a\nbenefit to us.  We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account,\nand find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare\nour pockets.  I mean everything that I have said.  I have the greatest\ncontempt for optimism.  As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but\none whose growth is arrested.  If you want to mar a nature, you have\nmerely to reform it.  As for marriage, of course that would be silly,\nbut there are other and more interesting bonds between men and women.\nI will certainly encourage them.  They have the charm of being\nfashionable.  But here is Dorian himself.  He will tell you more than I\ncan.\"\n\n\"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!\" said the\nlad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings and\nshaking each of his friends by the hand in turn.  \"I have never been so\nhappy.  Of course, it is sudden--all really delightful things are.  And\nyet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my\nlife.\" He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked\nextraordinarily handsome.\n\n\"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian,\" said Hallward, \"but I\ndon't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement.\nYou let Harry know.\"\n\n\"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner,\" broke in Lord\nHenry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder and smiling as he spoke.\n\"Come, let us sit down and try what the new _chef_ here is like, and then\nyou will tell us how it all came about.\"\n\n\"There is really not much to tell,\" cried Dorian as they took their\nseats at the small round table.  \"What happened was simply this.  After\nI left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that\nlittle Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and\nwent down at eight o'clock to the theatre.  Sibyl was playing Rosalind.\nOf course, the scenery was dreadful and the Orlando absurd.  But Sibyl!\nYou should have seen her!  When she came on in her boy's clothes, she\nwas perfectly wonderful.  She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with\ncinnamon sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered hose, a dainty little\ngreen cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak\nlined with dull red.  She had never seemed to me more exquisite.  She\nhad all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in\nyour studio, Basil.  Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves\nround a pale rose.  As for her acting--well, you shall see her\nto-night. She is simply a born artist.  I sat in the dingy box\nabsolutely enthralled.  I forgot that I was in London and in the\nnineteenth century.  I was away with my love in a forest that no man\nhad ever seen.  After the performance was over, I went behind and spoke\nto her.  As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes\na look that I had never seen there before.  My lips moved towards hers.\nWe kissed each other.  I can't describe to you what I felt at that\nmoment.  It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one\nperfect point of rose-coloured joy.  She trembled all over and shook\nlike a white narcissus.  Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed\nmy hands.  I feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can't help\nit.  Of course, our engagement is a dead secret.  She has not even told\nher own mother.  I don't know what my guardians will say.  Lord Radley\nis sure to be furious.  I don't care.  I shall be of age in less than a\nyear, and then I can do what I like.  I have been right, Basil, haven't\nI, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare's\nplays?  Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their\nsecret in my ear.  I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and\nkissed Juliet on the mouth.\"\n\n\"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right,\" said Hallward slowly.\n\n\"Have you seen her to-day?\" asked Lord Henry.\n\nDorian Gray shook his head.  \"I left her in the forest of Arden; I\nshall find her in an orchard in Verona.\"\n\nLord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner.  \"At what\nparticular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian?  And what\ndid she say in answer?  Perhaps you forgot all about it.\"\n\n\"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did\nnot make any formal proposal.  I told her that I loved her, and she\nsaid she was not worthy to be my wife.  Not worthy!  Why, the whole\nworld is nothing to me compared with her.\"\n\n\"Women are wonderfully practical,\" murmured Lord Henry, \"much more\npractical than we are.  In situations of that kind we often forget to\nsay anything about marriage, and they always remind us.\"\n\nHallward laid his hand upon his arm.  \"Don't, Harry.  You have annoyed\nDorian.  He is not like other men.  He would never bring misery upon\nany one.  His nature is too fine for that.\"\n\nLord Henry looked across the table.  \"Dorian is never annoyed with me,\"\nhe answered.  \"I asked the question for the best reason possible, for\nthe only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any\nquestion--simple curiosity.  I have a theory that it is always the\nwomen who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women.  Except,\nof course, in middle-class life.  But then the middle classes are not\nmodern.\"\n\nDorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head.  \"You are quite incorrigible,\nHarry; but I don't mind.  It is impossible to be angry with you.  When\nyou see Sibyl Vane, you will feel that the man who could wrong her\nwould be a beast, a beast without a heart.  I cannot understand how any\none can wish to shame the thing he loves.  I love Sibyl Vane.  I want\nto place her on a pedestal of gold and to see the world worship the\nwoman who is mine.  What is marriage?  An irrevocable vow.  You mock at\nit for that.  Ah! don't mock.  It is an irrevocable vow that I want to\ntake.  Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.  When I\nam with her, I regret all that you have taught me.  I become different\nfrom what you have known me to be.  I am changed, and the mere touch of\nSibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating,\npoisonous, delightful theories.\"\n\n\"And those are ...?\" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad.\n\n\"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories\nabout pleasure.  All your theories, in fact, Harry.\"\n\n\"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about,\" he answered\nin his slow melodious voice.  \"But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory\nas my own.  It belongs to Nature, not to me.  Pleasure is Nature's\ntest, her sign of approval.  When we are happy, we are always good, but\nwhen we are good, we are not always happy.\"\n\n\"Ah! but what do you mean by good?\" cried Basil Hallward.\n\n\"Yes,\" echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord\nHenry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the\ncentre of the table, \"what do you mean by good, Harry?\"\n\n\"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self,\" he replied, touching\nthe thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers.\n\"Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.  One's own\nlife--that is the important thing.  As for the lives of one's\nneighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt\none's moral views about them, but they are not one's concern.  Besides,\nindividualism has really the higher aim.  Modern morality consists in\naccepting the standard of one's age.  I consider that for any man of\nculture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest\nimmorality.\"\n\n\"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a\nterrible price for doing so?\" suggested the painter.\n\n\"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays.  I should fancy that\nthe real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but\nself-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege\nof the rich.\"\n\n\"One has to pay in other ways but money.\"\n\n\"What sort of ways, Basil?\"\n\n\"Oh!  I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in ... well, in the\nconsciousness of degradation.\"\n\nLord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  \"My dear fellow, mediaeval art is\ncharming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date.  One can use them in\nfiction, of course.  But then the only things that one can use in\nfiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact.  Believe me,\nno civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever\nknows what a pleasure is.\"\n\n\"I know what pleasure is,\" cried Dorian Gray.  \"It is to adore some\none.\"\n\n\"That is certainly better than being adored,\" he answered, toying with\nsome fruits.  \"Being adored is a nuisance.  Women treat us just as\nhumanity treats its gods.  They worship us, and are always bothering us\nto do something for them.\"\n\n\"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to\nus,\" murmured the lad gravely.  \"They create love in our natures.  They\nhave a right to demand it back.\"\n\n\"That is quite true, Dorian,\" cried Hallward.\n\n\"Nothing is ever quite true,\" said Lord Henry.\n\n\"This is,\" interrupted Dorian.  \"You must admit, Harry, that women give\nto men the very gold of their lives.\"\n\n\"Possibly,\" he sighed, \"but they invariably want it back in such very\nsmall change.  That is the worry.  Women, as some witty Frenchman once\nput it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always\nprevent us from carrying them out.\"\n\n\"Harry, you are dreadful!  I don't know why I like you so much.\"\n\n\"You will always like me, Dorian,\" he replied.  \"Will you have some\ncoffee, you fellows?  Waiter, bring coffee, and _fine-champagne_, and\nsome cigarettes.  No, don't mind the cigarettes--I have some.  Basil, I\ncan't allow you to smoke cigars.  You must have a cigarette.  A\ncigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure.  It is exquisite,\nand it leaves one unsatisfied.  What more can one want?  Yes, Dorian,\nyou will always be fond of me.  I represent to you all the sins you\nhave never had the courage to commit.\"\n\n\"What nonsense you talk, Harry!\" cried the lad, taking a light from a\nfire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.\n\"Let us go down to the theatre.  When Sibyl comes on the stage you will\nhave a new ideal of life.  She will represent something to you that you\nhave never known.\"\n\n\"I have known everything,\" said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his\neyes, \"but I am always ready for a new emotion.  I am afraid, however,\nthat, for me at any rate, there is no such thing.  Still, your\nwonderful girl may thrill me.  I love acting.  It is so much more real\nthan life.  Let us go.  Dorian, you will come with me.  I am so sorry,\nBasil, but there is only room for two in the brougham.  You must follow\nus in a hansom.\"\n\nThey got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing.  The\npainter was silent and preoccupied.  There was a gloom over him.  He\ncould not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better\nthan many other things that might have happened.  After a few minutes,\nthey all passed downstairs.  He drove off by himself, as had been\narranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in\nfront of him.  A strange sense of loss came over him.  He felt that\nDorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the\npast.  Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the\ncrowded flaring streets became blurred to his eyes.  When the cab drew\nup at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.\n\n\n\n\n\nFor some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat\nJew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with\nan oily tremulous smile.  He escorted them to their box with a sort of\npompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top\nof his voice.  Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever.  He felt as if\nhe had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban.  Lord\nHenry, upon the other hand, rather liked him.  At least he declared he\ndid, and insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring him that he\nwas proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone\nbankrupt over a poet.  Hallward amused himself with watching the faces\nin the pit.  The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight\nflamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire.  The youths\nin the gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them\nover the side.  They talked to each other across the theatre and shared\ntheir oranges with the tawdry girls who sat beside them.  Some women\nwere laughing in the pit.  Their voices were horribly shrill and\ndiscordant.  The sound of the popping of corks came from the bar.\n\n\"What a place to find one's divinity in!\" said Lord Henry.\n\n\"Yes!\" answered Dorian Gray.  \"It was here I found her, and she is\ndivine beyond all living things.  When she acts, you will forget\neverything.  These common rough people, with their coarse faces and\nbrutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage.  They\nsit silently and watch her.  They weep and laugh as she wills them to\ndo.  She makes them as responsive as a violin.  She spiritualizes them,\nand one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self.\"\n\n\"The same flesh and blood as one's self!  Oh, I hope not!\" exclaimed\nLord Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his\nopera-glass.\n\n\"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian,\" said the painter.  \"I\nunderstand what you mean, and I believe in this girl.  Any one you love\nmust be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must\nbe fine and noble.  To spiritualize one's age--that is something worth\ndoing.  If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without\none, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have\nbeen sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and\nlend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of\nall your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.  This\nmarriage is quite right.  I did not think so at first, but I admit it\nnow.  The gods made Sibyl Vane for you.  Without her you would have\nbeen incomplete.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Basil,\" answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand.  \"I knew that\nyou would understand me.  Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me.  But\nhere is the orchestra.  It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for\nabout five minutes.  Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl\nto whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything\nthat is good in me.\"\n\nA quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of\napplause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage.  Yes, she was certainly\nlovely to look at--one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,\nthat he had ever seen.  There was something of the fawn in her shy\ngrace and startled eyes.  A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a\nmirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded\nenthusiastic house.  She stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed\nto tremble.  Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.\nMotionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her.\nLord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, \"Charming! charming!\"\n\nThe scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's\ndress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends.  The band, such\nas it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began.  Through\nthe crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a\ncreature from a finer world.  Her body swayed, while she danced, as a\nplant sways in the water.  The curves of her throat were the curves of\na white lily.  Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.\n\nYet she was curiously listless.  She showed no sign of joy when her\neyes rested on Romeo.  The few words she had to speak--\n\n    Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,\n        Which mannerly devotion shows in this;\n    For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,\n        And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss--\n\nwith the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly\nartificial manner.  The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view\nof tone it was absolutely false.  It was wrong in colour.  It took away\nall the life from the verse.  It made the passion unreal.\n\nDorian Gray grew pale as he watched her.  He was puzzled and anxious.\nNeither of his friends dared to say anything to him.  She seemed to\nthem to be absolutely incompetent.  They were horribly disappointed.\n\nYet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of\nthe second act.  They waited for that.  If she failed there, there was\nnothing in her.\n\nShe looked charming as she came out in the moonlight.  That could not\nbe denied.  But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew\nworse as she went on.  Her gestures became absurdly artificial.  She\noveremphasized everything that she had to say.  The beautiful passage--\n\n    Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,\n    Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek\n    For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night--\n\nwas declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been\ntaught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she\nleaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines--\n\n        Although I joy in thee,\n    I have no joy of this contract to-night:\n    It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;\n    Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be\n    Ere one can say, \"It lightens.\"  Sweet, good-night!\n    This bud of love by summer's ripening breath\n    May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet--\n\nshe spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was\nnot nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely\nself-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.\n\nEven the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their\ninterest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and\nto whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the\ndress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was\nthe girl herself.\n\nWhen the second act was over, there came a storm of hisses, and Lord\nHenry got up from his chair and put on his coat.  \"She is quite\nbeautiful, Dorian,\" he said, \"but she can't act.  Let us go.\"\n\n\"I am going to see the play through,\" answered the lad, in a hard\nbitter voice.  \"I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an\nevening, Harry.  I apologize to you both.\"\n\n\"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill,\" interrupted\nHallward.  \"We will come some other night.\"\n\n\"I wish she were ill,\" he rejoined.  \"But she seems to me to be simply\ncallous and cold.  She has entirely altered.  Last night she was a\ngreat artist.  This evening she is merely a commonplace mediocre\nactress.\"\n\n\"Don't talk like that about any one you love, Dorian.  Love is a more\nwonderful thing than art.\"\n\n\"They are both simply forms of imitation,\" remarked Lord Henry.  \"But\ndo let us go.  Dorian, you must not stay here any longer.  It is not\ngood for one's morals to see bad acting.  Besides, I don't suppose you\nwill want your wife to act, so what does it matter if she plays Juliet\nlike a wooden doll?  She is very lovely, and if she knows as little\nabout life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful\nexperience.  There are only two kinds of people who are really\nfascinating--people who know absolutely everything, and people who know\nabsolutely nothing.  Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic!\nThe secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is\nunbecoming.  Come to the club with Basil and myself.  We will smoke\ncigarettes and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane.  She is beautiful.\nWhat more can you want?\"\n\n\"Go away, Harry,\" cried the lad.  \"I want to be alone.  Basil, you must\ngo.  Ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?\"  The hot tears came\nto his eyes.  His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, he\nleaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.\n\n\"Let us go, Basil,\" said Lord Henry with a strange tenderness in his\nvoice, and the two young men passed out together.\n\nA few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose\non the third act.  Dorian Gray went back to his seat.  He looked pale,\nand proud, and indifferent.  The play dragged on, and seemed\ninterminable.  Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots\nand laughing.  The whole thing was a _fiasco_.  The last act was played\nto almost empty benches.  The curtain went down on a titter and some\ngroans.\n\nAs soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the\ngreenroom.  The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph\non her face.  Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire.  There was a\nradiance about her.  Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of\ntheir own.\n\nWhen he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy\ncame over her.  \"How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!\" she cried.\n\n\"Horribly!\" he answered, gazing at her in amazement.  \"Horribly!  It\nwas dreadful.  Are you ill?  You have no idea what it was.  You have no\nidea what I suffered.\"\n\nThe girl smiled.  \"Dorian,\" she answered, lingering over his name with\nlong-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to\nthe red petals of her mouth.  \"Dorian, you should have understood.  But\nyou understand now, don't you?\"\n\n\"Understand what?\" he asked, angrily.\n\n\"Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad.  Why I shall\nnever act well again.\"\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders.  \"You are ill, I suppose.  When you are ill\nyou shouldn't act.  You make yourself ridiculous.  My friends were\nbored.  I was bored.\"\n\nShe seemed not to listen to him.  She was transfigured with joy.  An\necstasy of happiness dominated her.\n\n\"Dorian, Dorian,\" she cried, \"before I knew you, acting was the one\nreality of my life.  It was only in the theatre that I lived.  I\nthought that it was all true.  I was Rosalind one night and Portia the\nother.  The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia\nwere mine also.  I believed in everything.  The common people who acted\nwith me seemed to me to be godlike.  The painted scenes were my world.\nI knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real.  You came--oh, my\nbeautiful love!--and you freed my soul from prison.  You taught me what\nreality really is.  To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw\nthrough the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in\nwhich I had always played.  To-night, for the first time, I became\nconscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the\nmoonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and\nthat the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not\nwhat I wanted to say.  You had brought me something higher, something\nof which all art is but a reflection.  You had made me understand what\nlove really is.  My love!  My love!  Prince Charming!  Prince of life!\nI have grown sick of shadows.  You are more to me than all art can ever\nbe.  What have I to do with the puppets of a play?  When I came on\nto-night, I could not understand how it was that everything had gone\nfrom me.  I thought that I was going to be wonderful.  I found that I\ncould do nothing.  Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant.\nThe knowledge was exquisite to me.  I heard them hissing, and I smiled.\nWhat could they know of love such as ours?  Take me away, Dorian--take\nme away with you, where we can be quite alone.  I hate the stage.  I\nmight mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot mimic one that\nburns me like fire.  Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand now what it\nsignifies?  Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me to\nplay at being in love.  You have made me see that.\"\n\nHe flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face.  \"You have\nkilled my love,\" he muttered.\n\nShe looked at him in wonder and laughed.  He made no answer.  She came\nacross to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair.  She knelt\ndown and pressed his hands to her lips.  He drew them away, and a\nshudder ran through him.\n\nThen he leaped up and went to the door.  \"Yes,\" he cried, \"you have\nkilled my love.  You used to stir my imagination.  Now you don't even\nstir my curiosity.  You simply produce no effect.  I loved you because\nyou were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you\nrealized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the\nshadows of art.  You have thrown it all away.  You are shallow and\nstupid.  My God! how mad I was to love you!  What a fool I have been!\nYou are nothing to me now.  I will never see you again.  I will never\nthink of you.  I will never mention your name.  You don't know what you\nwere to me, once.  Why, once ... Oh, I can't bear to think of it!  I\nwish I had never laid eyes upon you!  You have spoiled the romance of\nmy life.  How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!\nWithout your art, you are nothing.  I would have made you famous,\nsplendid, magnificent.  The world would have worshipped you, and you\nwould have borne my name.  What are you now?  A third-rate actress with\na pretty face.\"\n\nThe girl grew white, and trembled.  She clenched her hands together,\nand her voice seemed to catch in her throat.  \"You are not serious,\nDorian?\" she murmured.  \"You are acting.\"\n\n\"Acting!  I leave that to you.  You do it so well,\" he answered\nbitterly.\n\nShe rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her\nface, came across the room to him.  She put her hand upon his arm and\nlooked into his eyes.  He thrust her back.  \"Don't touch me!\" he cried.\n\nA low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay\nthere like a trampled flower.  \"Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!\" she\nwhispered.  \"I am so sorry I didn't act well.  I was thinking of you\nall the time.  But I will try--indeed, I will try.  It came so suddenly\nacross me, my love for you.  I think I should never have known it if\nyou had not kissed me--if we had not kissed each other.  Kiss me again,\nmy love.  Don't go away from me.  I couldn't bear it.  Oh! don't go\naway from me.  My brother ... No; never mind.  He didn't mean it.  He\nwas in jest.... But you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will\nwork so hard and try to improve.  Don't be cruel to me, because I love\nyou better than anything in the world.  After all, it is only once that\nI have not pleased you.  But you are quite right, Dorian.  I should\nhave shown myself more of an artist.  It was foolish of me, and yet I\ncouldn't help it.  Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me.\" A fit of\npassionate sobbing choked her.  She crouched on the floor like a\nwounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at\nher, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain.  There is\nalways something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has\nceased to love.  Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic.\nHer tears and sobs annoyed him.\n\n\"I am going,\" he said at last in his calm clear voice.  \"I don't wish\nto be unkind, but I can't see you again.  You have disappointed me.\"\n\nShe wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer.  Her little\nhands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him.  He\nturned on his heel and left the room.  In a few moments he was out of\nthe theatre.\n\nWhere he went to he hardly knew.  He remembered wandering through dimly\nlit streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking\nhouses.  Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after\nhim.  Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves\nlike monstrous apes.  He had seen grotesque children huddled upon\ndoor-steps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.\n\nAs the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent Garden.\nThe darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed\nitself into a perfect pearl.  Huge carts filled with nodding lilies\nrumbled slowly down the polished empty street.  The air was heavy with\nthe perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an\nanodyne for his pain.  He followed into the market and watched the men\nunloading their waggons.  A white-smocked carter offered him some\ncherries.  He thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept any money\nfor them, and began to eat them listlessly.  They had been plucked at\nmidnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them.  A long\nline of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red\nroses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge,\njade-green piles of vegetables.  Under the portico, with its grey,\nsun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls,\nwaiting for the auction to be over.  Others crowded round the swinging\ndoors of the coffee-house in the piazza.  The heavy cart-horses slipped\nand stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.\nSome of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks.  Iris-necked\nand pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.\n\nAfter a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home.  For a few\nmoments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent\nsquare, with its blank, close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds.\nThe sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like\nsilver against it.  From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke\nwas rising.  It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.\n\nIn the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, that\nhung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of entrance,\nlights were still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals\nof flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire.  He turned them out and,\nhaving thrown his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library\ntowards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the\nground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had\ndecorated for himself and hung with some curious Renaissance tapestries\nthat had been discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal.  As\nhe was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait\nBasil Hallward had painted of him.  He started back as if in surprise.\nThen he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled.  After he\nhad taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate.\nFinally, he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it.  In\nthe dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk\nblinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed.  The\nexpression looked different.  One would have said that there was a\ntouch of cruelty in the mouth.  It was certainly strange.\n\nHe turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind.  The\nbright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky\ncorners, where they lay shuddering.  But the strange expression that he\nhad noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be\nmore intensified even.  The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the\nlines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking\ninto a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.\n\nHe winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory\nCupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, glanced hurriedly\ninto its polished depths.  No line like that warped his red lips.  What\ndid it mean?\n\nHe rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it\nagain.  There were no signs of any change when he looked into the\nactual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression\nhad altered.  It was not a mere fancy of his own.  The thing was\nhorribly apparent.\n\nHe threw himself into a chair and began to think.  Suddenly there\nflashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the\nday the picture had been finished.  Yes, he remembered it perfectly.\nHe had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the\nportrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the\nface on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that\nthe painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and\nthought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness\nof his then just conscious boyhood.  Surely his wish had not been\nfulfilled?  Such things were impossible.  It seemed monstrous even to\nthink of them.  And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the\ntouch of cruelty in the mouth.\n\nCruelty!  Had he been cruel?  It was the girl's fault, not his.  He had\ndreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he\nhad thought her great.  Then she had disappointed him.  She had been\nshallow and unworthy.  And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over\nhim, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little\nchild.  He remembered with what callousness he had watched her.  Why\nhad he been made like that?  Why had such a soul been given to him?\nBut he had suffered also.  During the three terrible hours that the\nplay had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of\ntorture.  His life was well worth hers.  She had marred him for a\nmoment, if he had wounded her for an age.  Besides, women were better\nsuited to bear sorrow than men.  They lived on their emotions.  They\nonly thought of their emotions.  When they took lovers, it was merely\nto have some one with whom they could have scenes.  Lord Henry had told\nhim that, and Lord Henry knew what women were.  Why should he trouble\nabout Sibyl Vane?  She was nothing to him now.\n\nBut the picture?  What was he to say of that?  It held the secret of\nhis life, and told his story.  It had taught him to love his own\nbeauty.  Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?  Would he ever look\nat it again?\n\nNo; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses.  The\nhorrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it.\nSuddenly there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that\nmakes men mad.  The picture had not changed.  It was folly to think so.\n\nYet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel\nsmile.  Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight.  Its blue eyes\nmet his own.  A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the\npainted image of himself, came over him.  It had altered already, and\nwould alter more.  Its gold would wither into grey.  Its red and white\nroses would die.  For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck\nand wreck its fairness.  But he would not sin.  The picture, changed or\nunchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience.  He would\nresist temptation.  He would not see Lord Henry any more--would not, at\nany rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil\nHallward's garden had first stirred within him the passion for\nimpossible things.  He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends,\nmarry her, try to love her again.  Yes, it was his duty to do so.  She\nmust have suffered more than he had.  Poor child!  He had been selfish\nand cruel to her.  The fascination that she had exercised over him\nwould return.  They would be happy together.  His life with her would\nbe beautiful and pure.\n\nHe got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front of the\nportrait, shuddering as he glanced at it.  \"How horrible!\" he murmured\nto himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it.  When he\nstepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath.  The fresh morning\nair seemed to drive away all his sombre passions.  He thought only of\nSibyl.  A faint echo of his love came back to him.  He repeated her\nname over and over again.  The birds that were singing in the\ndew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was long past noon when he awoke.  His valet had crept several times\non tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered\nwhat made his young master sleep so late.  Finally his bell sounded,\nand Victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on\na small tray of old Sevres china, and drew back the olive-satin\ncurtains, with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the\nthree tall windows.\n\n\"Monsieur has well slept this morning,\" he said, smiling.\n\n\"What o'clock is it, Victor?\" asked Dorian Gray drowsily.\n\n\"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur.\"\n\nHow late it was!  He sat up, and having sipped some tea, turned over\nhis letters.  One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by\nhand that morning.  He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside.\nThe others he opened listlessly.  They contained the usual collection\nof cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes\nof charity concerts, and the like that are showered on fashionable\nyoung men every morning during the season.  There was a rather heavy\nbill for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set that he had not yet\nhad the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely\nold-fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when\nunnecessary things are our only necessities; and there were several\nvery courteously worded communications from Jermyn Street money-lenders\noffering to advance any sum of money at a moment's notice and at the\nmost reasonable rates of interest.\n\nAfter about ten minutes he got up, and throwing on an elaborate\ndressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the\nonyx-paved bathroom.  The cool water refreshed him after his long\nsleep.  He seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through.  A\ndim sense of having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once\nor twice, but there was the unreality of a dream about it.\n\nAs soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a\nlight French breakfast that had been laid out for him on a small round\ntable close to the open window.  It was an exquisite day.  The warm air\nseemed laden with spices.  A bee flew in and buzzed round the\nblue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before\nhim.  He felt perfectly happy.\n\nSuddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the\nportrait, and he started.\n\n\"Too cold for Monsieur?\" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the\ntable.  \"I shut the window?\"\n\nDorian shook his head.  \"I am not cold,\" he murmured.\n\nWas it all true?  Had the portrait really changed?  Or had it been\nsimply his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where\nthere had been a look of joy?  Surely a painted canvas could not alter?\nThe thing was absurd.  It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day.\nIt would make him smile.\n\nAnd, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing!  First in\nthe dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of\ncruelty round the warped lips.  He almost dreaded his valet leaving the\nroom.  He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the\nportrait.  He was afraid of certainty.  When the coffee and cigarettes\nhad been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to\ntell him to remain.  As the door was closing behind him, he called him\nback.  The man stood waiting for his orders.  Dorian looked at him for\na moment.  \"I am not at home to any one, Victor,\" he said with a sigh.\nThe man bowed and retired.\n\nThen he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on\na luxuriously cushioned couch that stood facing the screen.  The screen\nwas an old one, of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a\nrather florid Louis-Quatorze pattern.  He scanned it curiously,\nwondering if ever before it had concealed the secret of a man's life.\n\nShould he move it aside, after all?  Why not let it stay there?  What\nwas the use of knowing? If the thing was true, it was terrible.  If it\nwas not true, why trouble about it?  But what if, by some fate or\ndeadlier chance, eyes other than his spied behind and saw the horrible\nchange?  What should he do if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at\nhis own picture?  Basil would be sure to do that.  No; the thing had to\nbe examined, and at once.  Anything would be better than this dreadful\nstate of doubt.\n\nHe got up and locked both doors.  At least he would be alone when he\nlooked upon the mask of his shame.  Then he drew the screen aside and\nsaw himself face to face.  It was perfectly true.  The portrait had\naltered.\n\nAs he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he\nfound himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost\nscientific interest.  That such a change should have taken place was\nincredible to him.  And yet it was a fact.  Was there some subtle\naffinity between the chemical atoms that shaped themselves into form\nand colour on the canvas and the soul that was within him?  Could it be\nthat what that soul thought, they realized?--that what it dreamed, they\nmade true?  Or was there some other, more terrible reason?  He\nshuddered, and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there,\ngazing at the picture in sickened horror.\n\nOne thing, however, he felt that it had done for him.  It had made him\nconscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane.  It was not\ntoo late to make reparation for that.  She could still be his wife.\nHis unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would\nbe transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil\nHallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would\nbe to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the\nfear of God to us all.  There were opiates for remorse, drugs that\ncould lull the moral sense to sleep.  But here was a visible symbol of\nthe degradation of sin.  Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men\nbrought upon their souls.\n\nThree o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double\nchime, but Dorian Gray did not stir.  He was trying to gather up the\nscarlet threads of life and to weave them into a pattern; to find his\nway through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was\nwandering.  He did not know what to do, or what to think.  Finally, he\nwent over to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had\nloved, imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself of madness.  He\ncovered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of\npain.  There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we\nfeel that no one else has a right to blame us.  It is the confession,\nnot the priest, that gives us absolution.  When Dorian had finished the\nletter, he felt that he had been forgiven.\n\nSuddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's\nvoice outside.  \"My dear boy, I must see you.  Let me in at once.  I\ncan't bear your shutting yourself up like this.\"\n\nHe made no answer at first, but remained quite still.  The knocking\nstill continued and grew louder.  Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry\nin, and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel\nwith him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was\ninevitable.  He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture,\nand unlocked the door.\n\n\"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian,\" said Lord Henry as he entered.\n\"But you must not think too much about it.\"\n\n\"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?\" asked the lad.\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair and slowly\npulling off his yellow gloves.  \"It is dreadful, from one point of\nview, but it was not your fault.  Tell me, did you go behind and see\nher, after the play was over?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I felt sure you had.  Did you make a scene with her?\"\n\n\"I was brutal, Harry--perfectly brutal.  But it is all right now.  I am\nnot sorry for anything that has happened.  It has taught me to know\nmyself better.\"\n\n\"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way!  I was afraid I\nwould find you plunged in remorse and tearing that nice curly hair of\nyours.\"\n\n\"I have got through all that,\" said Dorian, shaking his head and\nsmiling.  \"I am perfectly happy now.  I know what conscience is, to\nbegin with.  It is not what you told me it was.  It is the divinest\nthing in us.  Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more--at least not before\nme.  I want to be good.  I can't bear the idea of my soul being\nhideous.\"\n\n\"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian!  I congratulate you\non it.  But how are you going to begin?\"\n\n\"By marrying Sibyl Vane.\"\n\n\"Marrying Sibyl Vane!\" cried Lord Henry, standing up and looking at him\nin perplexed amazement.  \"But, my dear Dorian--\"\n\n\"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say.  Something dreadful\nabout marriage.  Don't say it.  Don't ever say things of that kind to\nme again.  Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me.  I am not going to\nbreak my word to her.  She is to be my wife.\"\n\n\"Your wife!  Dorian! ... Didn't you get my letter?  I wrote to you this\nmorning, and sent the note down by my own man.\"\n\n\"Your letter?  Oh, yes, I remember.  I have not read it yet, Harry.  I\nwas afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like.  You\ncut life to pieces with your epigrams.\"\n\n\"You know nothing then?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\nLord Henry walked across the room, and sitting down by Dorian Gray,\ntook both his hands in his own and held them tightly.  \"Dorian,\" he\nsaid, \"my letter--don't be frightened--was to tell you that Sibyl Vane\nis dead.\"\n\nA cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,\ntearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp.  \"Dead!  Sibyl dead!\nIt is not true!  It is a horrible lie!  How dare you say it?\"\n\n\"It is quite true, Dorian,\" said Lord Henry, gravely.  \"It is in all\nthe morning papers.  I wrote down to you to ask you not to see any one\ntill I came.  There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must\nnot be mixed up in it.  Things like that make a man fashionable in\nParis.  But in London people are so prejudiced.  Here, one should never\nmake one's _debut_ with a scandal.  One should reserve that to give an\ninterest to one's old age.  I suppose they don't know your name at the\ntheatre?  If they don't, it is all right.  Did any one see you going\nround to her room?  That is an important point.\"\n\nDorian did not answer for a few moments.  He was dazed with horror.\nFinally he stammered, in a stifled voice, \"Harry, did you say an\ninquest?  What did you mean by that?  Did Sibyl--? Oh, Harry, I can't\nbear it!  But be quick.  Tell me everything at once.\"\n\n\"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put\nin that way to the public.  It seems that as she was leaving the\ntheatre with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had\nforgotten something upstairs.  They waited some time for her, but she\ndid not come down again.  They ultimately found her lying dead on the\nfloor of her dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake,\nsome dreadful thing they use at theatres.  I don't know what it was,\nbut it had either prussic acid or white lead in it.  I should fancy it\nwas prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously.\"\n\n\"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!\" cried the lad.\n\n\"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed\nup in it.  I see by _The Standard_ that she was seventeen.  I should have\nthought she was almost younger than that.  She looked such a child, and\nseemed to know so little about acting.  Dorian, you mustn't let this\nthing get on your nerves.  You must come and dine with me, and\nafterwards we will look in at the opera.  It is a Patti night, and\neverybody will be there.  You can come to my sister's box.  She has got\nsome smart women with her.\"\n\n\"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane,\" said Dorian Gray, half to himself,\n\"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife.\nYet the roses are not less lovely for all that.  The birds sing just as\nhappily in my garden.  And to-night I am to dine with you, and then go\non to the opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards.  How\nextraordinarily dramatic life is!  If I had read all this in a book,\nHarry, I think I would have wept over it.  Somehow, now that it has\nhappened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.\nHere is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my\nlife.  Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been\naddressed to a dead girl.  Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent\npeople we call the dead?  Sibyl!  Can she feel, or know, or listen?\nOh, Harry, how I loved her once!  It seems years ago to me now.  She\nwas everything to me.  Then came that dreadful night--was it really\nonly last night?--when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke.\nShe explained it all to me.  It was terribly pathetic.  But I was not\nmoved a bit.  I thought her shallow.  Suddenly something happened that\nmade me afraid.  I can't tell you what it was, but it was terrible.  I\nsaid I would go back to her.  I felt I had done wrong.  And now she is\ndead.  My God!  My God!  Harry, what shall I do?  You don't know the\ndanger I am in, and there is nothing to keep me straight.  She would\nhave done that for me.  She had no right to kill herself.  It was\nselfish of her.\"\n\n\"My dear Dorian,\" answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his case\nand producing a gold-latten matchbox, \"the only way a woman can ever\nreform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible\ninterest in life.  If you had married this girl, you would have been\nwretched.  Of course, you would have treated her kindly.  One can\nalways be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.  But she would\nhave soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her.  And\nwhen a woman finds that out about her husband, she either becomes\ndreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's\nhusband has to pay for.  I say nothing about the social mistake, which\nwould have been abject--which, of course, I would not have allowed--but\nI assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been an\nabsolute failure.\"\n\n\"I suppose it would,\" muttered the lad, walking up and down the room\nand looking horribly pale.  \"But I thought it was my duty.  It is not\nmy fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was\nright.  I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good\nresolutions--that they are always made too late.  Mine certainly were.\"\n\n\"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific\nlaws.  Their origin is pure vanity.  Their result is absolutely _nil_.\nThey give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions\nthat have a certain charm for the weak.  That is all that can be said\nfor them.  They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they\nhave no account.\"\n\n\"Harry,\" cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him,\n\"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to?  I\ndon't think I am heartless.  Do you?\"\n\n\"You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be\nentitled to give yourself that name, Dorian,\" answered Lord Henry with\nhis sweet melancholy smile.\n\nThe lad frowned.  \"I don't like that explanation, Harry,\" he rejoined,\n\"but I am glad you don't think I am heartless.  I am nothing of the\nkind.  I know I am not.  And yet I must admit that this thing that has\nhappened does not affect me as it should.  It seems to me to be simply\nlike a wonderful ending to a wonderful play.  It has all the terrible\nbeauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but\nby which I have not been wounded.\"\n\n\"It is an interesting question,\" said Lord Henry, who found an\nexquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism, \"an\nextremely interesting question.  I fancy that the true explanation is\nthis:  It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such\nan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their\nabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack\nof style.  They affect us just as vulgarity affects us.  They give us\nan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.\nSometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of\nbeauty crosses our lives.  If these elements of beauty are real, the\nwhole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect.  Suddenly\nwe find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the\nplay.  Or rather we are both.  We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder\nof the spectacle enthralls us.  In the present case, what is it that\nhas really happened?  Some one has killed herself for love of you.  I\nwish that I had ever had such an experience.  It would have made me in\nlove with love for the rest of my life.  The people who have adored\nme--there have not been very many, but there have been some--have\nalways insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them,\nor they to care for me.  They have become stout and tedious, and when I\nmeet them, they go in at once for reminiscences.  That awful memory of\nwoman!  What a fearful thing it is!  And what an utter intellectual\nstagnation it reveals!  One should absorb the colour of life, but one\nshould never remember its details.  Details are always vulgar.\"\n\n\"I must sow poppies in my garden,\" sighed Dorian.\n\n\"There is no necessity,\" rejoined his companion.  \"Life has always\npoppies in her hands.  Of course, now and then things linger.  I once\nwore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic\nmourning for a romance that would not die.  Ultimately, however, it did\ndie.  I forget what killed it.  I think it was her proposing to\nsacrifice the whole world for me.  That is always a dreadful moment.\nIt fills one with the terror of eternity.  Well--would you believe\nit?--a week ago, at Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner\nnext the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole\nthing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future.  I had\nburied my romance in a bed of asphodel.  She dragged it out again and\nassured me that I had spoiled her life.  I am bound to state that she\nate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety.  But what a lack\nof taste she showed!  The one charm of the past is that it is the past.\nBut women never know when the curtain has fallen.  They always want a\nsixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over,\nthey propose to continue it.  If they were allowed their own way, every\ncomedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in\na farce.  They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of\nart.  You are more fortunate than I am.  I assure you, Dorian, that not\none of the women I have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane\ndid for you.  Ordinary women always console themselves.  Some of them\ndo it by going in for sentimental colours.  Never trust a woman who\nwears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who\nis fond of pink ribbons.  It always means that they have a history.\nOthers find a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good\nqualities of their husbands.  They flaunt their conjugal felicity in\none's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.  Religion\nconsoles some.  Its mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation, a\nwoman once told me, and I can quite understand it.  Besides, nothing\nmakes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.  Conscience makes\negotists of us all.  Yes; there is really no end to the consolations\nthat women find in modern life.  Indeed, I have not mentioned the most\nimportant one.\"\n\n\"What is that, Harry?\" said the lad listlessly.\n\n\"Oh, the obvious consolation.  Taking some one else's admirer when one\nloses one's own.  In good society that always whitewashes a woman.  But\nreally, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the\nwomen one meets!  There is something to me quite beautiful about her\ndeath.  I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen.\nThey make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with,\nsuch as romance, passion, and love.\"\n\n\"I was terribly cruel to her.  You forget that.\"\n\n\"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more\nthan anything else.  They have wonderfully primitive instincts.  We\nhave emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their\nmasters, all the same.  They love being dominated.  I am sure you were\nsplendid.  I have never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can\nfancy how delightful you looked.  And, after all, you said something to\nme the day before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely\nfanciful, but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key\nto everything.\"\n\n\"What was that, Harry?\"\n\n\"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of\nromance--that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that\nif she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen.\"\n\n\"She will never come to life again now,\" muttered the lad, burying his\nface in his hands.\n\n\"No, she will never come to life.  She has played her last part.  But\nyou must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply\nas a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful\nscene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur.  The girl never really\nlived, and so she has never really died.  To you at least she was\nalways a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and\nleft them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's\nmusic sounded richer and more full of joy.  The moment she touched\nactual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away.\nMourn for Ophelia, if you like.  Put ashes on your head because\nCordelia was strangled.  Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of\nBrabantio died.  But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane.  She was\nless real than they are.\"\n\nThere was a silence.  The evening darkened in the room.  Noiselessly,\nand with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden.  The\ncolours faded wearily out of things.\n\nAfter some time Dorian Gray looked up.  \"You have explained me to\nmyself, Harry,\" he murmured with something of a sigh of relief.  \"I\nfelt all that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I\ncould not express it to myself.  How well you know me!  But we will not\ntalk again of what has happened.  It has been a marvellous experience.\nThat is all.  I wonder if life has still in store for me anything as\nmarvellous.\"\n\n\"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian.  There is nothing that\nyou, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do.\"\n\n\"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled?  What\nthen?\"\n\n\"Ah, then,\" said Lord Henry, rising to go, \"then, my dear Dorian, you\nwould have to fight for your victories.  As it is, they are brought to\nyou.  No, you must keep your good looks.  We live in an age that reads\ntoo much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.  We\ncannot spare you.  And now you had better dress and drive down to the\nclub.  We are rather late, as it is.\"\n\n\"I think I shall join you at the opera, Harry.  I feel too tired to eat\nanything.  What is the number of your sister's box?\"\n\n\"Twenty-seven, I believe.  It is on the grand tier.  You will see her\nname on the door.  But I am sorry you won't come and dine.\"\n\n\"I don't feel up to it,\" said Dorian listlessly.  \"But I am awfully\nobliged to you for all that you have said to me.  You are certainly my\nbest friend.  No one has ever understood me as you have.\"\n\n\"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian,\" answered Lord\nHenry, shaking him by the hand.  \"Good-bye. I shall see you before\nnine-thirty, I hope.  Remember, Patti is singing.\"\n\nAs he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, and in\na few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down.\nHe waited impatiently for him to go.  The man seemed to take an\ninterminable time over everything.\n\nAs soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and drew it back.  No;\nthere was no further change in the picture.  It had received the news\nof Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself.  It was\nconscious of the events of life as they occurred.  The vicious cruelty\nthat marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the\nvery moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was.  Or\nwas it indifferent to results?  Did it merely take cognizance of what\npassed within the soul?  He wondered, and hoped that some day he would\nsee the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he\nhoped it.\n\nPoor Sibyl!  What a romance it had all been!  She had often mimicked\ndeath on the stage.  Then Death himself had touched her and taken her\nwith him.  How had she played that dreadful last scene?  Had she cursed\nhim, as she died?  No; she had died for love of him, and love would\nalways be a sacrament to him now.  She had atoned for everything by the\nsacrifice she had made of her life.  He would not think any more of\nwhat she had made him go through, on that horrible night at the\ntheatre.  When he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic\nfigure sent on to the world's stage to show the supreme reality of\nlove.  A wonderful tragic figure?  Tears came to his eyes as he\nremembered her childlike look, and winsome fanciful ways, and shy\ntremulous grace.  He brushed them away hastily and looked again at the\npicture.\n\nHe felt that the time had really come for making his choice.  Or had\nhis choice already been made?  Yes, life had decided that for\nhim--life, and his own infinite curiosity about life.  Eternal youth,\ninfinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder\nsins--he was to have all these things.  The portrait was to bear the\nburden of his shame: that was all.\n\nA feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that\nwas in store for the fair face on the canvas.  Once, in boyish mockery\nof Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips\nthat now smiled so cruelly at him.  Morning after morning he had sat\nbefore the portrait wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as\nit seemed to him at times.  Was it to alter now with every mood to\nwhich he yielded?  Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to\nbe hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that\nhad so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair?\nThe pity of it! the pity of it!\n\nFor a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that\nexisted between him and the picture might cease.  It had changed in\nanswer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain\nunchanged.  And yet, who, that knew anything about life, would\nsurrender the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that\nchance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?\nBesides, was it really under his control?  Had it indeed been prayer\nthat had produced the substitution?  Might there not be some curious\nscientific reason for it all?  If thought could exercise its influence\nupon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon\ndead and inorganic things?  Nay, without thought or conscious desire,\nmight not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods\nand passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?\nBut the reason was of no importance.  He would never again tempt by a\nprayer any terrible power.  If the picture was to alter, it was to\nalter.  That was all.  Why inquire too closely into it?\n\nFor there would be a real pleasure in watching it.  He would be able to\nfollow his mind into its secret places.  This portrait would be to him\nthe most magical of mirrors.  As it had revealed to him his own body,\nso it would reveal to him his own soul.  And when winter came upon it,\nhe would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of\nsummer.  When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid\nmask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood.\nNot one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade.  Not one pulse of\nhis life would ever weaken.  Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be\nstrong, and fleet, and joyous.  What did it matter what happened to the\ncoloured image on the canvas?  He would be safe.  That was everything.\n\nHe drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture,\nsmiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was\nalready waiting for him.  An hour later he was at the opera, and Lord\nHenry was leaning over his chair.\n\n\n\n\n\nAs he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown\ninto the room.\n\n\"I am so glad I have found you, Dorian,\" he said gravely.  \"I called\nlast night, and they told me you were at the opera.  Of course, I knew\nthat was impossible.  But I wish you had left word where you had really\ngone to.  I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy\nmight be followed by another.  I think you might have telegraphed for\nme when you heard of it first.  I read of it quite by chance in a late\nedition of _The Globe_ that I picked up at the club.  I came here at once\nand was miserable at not finding you.  I can't tell you how\nheart-broken I am about the whole thing.  I know what you must suffer.\nBut where were you?  Did you go down and see the girl's mother?  For a\nmoment I thought of following you there.  They gave the address in the\npaper.  Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn't it?  But I was afraid of\nintruding upon a sorrow that I could not lighten.  Poor woman!  What a\nstate she must be in!  And her only child, too!  What did she say about\nit all?\"\n\n\"My dear Basil, how do I know?\" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some\npale-yellow wine from a delicate, gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass\nand looking dreadfully bored.  \"I was at the opera.  You should have\ncome on there.  I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister, for the first\ntime.  We were in her box.  She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang\ndivinely.  Don't talk about horrid subjects.  If one doesn't talk about\na thing, it has never happened.  It is simply expression, as Harry\nsays, that gives reality to things.  I may mention that she was not the\nwoman's only child.  There is a son, a charming fellow, I believe.  But\nhe is not on the stage.  He is a sailor, or something.  And now, tell\nme about yourself and what you are painting.\"\n\n\"You went to the opera?\" said Hallward, speaking very slowly and with a\nstrained touch of pain in his voice.  \"You went to the opera while\nSibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging?  You can talk to me\nof other women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before\nthe girl you loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in?  Why,\nman, there are horrors in store for that little white body of hers!\"\n\n\"Stop, Basil!  I won't hear it!\" cried Dorian, leaping to his feet.\n\"You must not tell me about things.  What is done is done.  What is\npast is past.\"\n\n\"You call yesterday the past?\"\n\n\"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it?  It is only\nshallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion.  A man who\nis master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a\npleasure.  I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions.  I want to\nuse them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.\"\n\n\"Dorian, this is horrible!  Something has changed you completely.  You\nlook exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come\ndown to my studio to sit for his picture.  But you were simple,\nnatural, and affectionate then.  You were the most unspoiled creature\nin the whole world.  Now, I don't know what has come over you.  You\ntalk as if you had no heart, no pity in you.  It is all Harry's\ninfluence.  I see that.\"\n\nThe lad flushed up and, going to the window, looked out for a few\nmoments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden.  \"I owe a great\ndeal to Harry, Basil,\" he said at last, \"more than I owe to you.  You\nonly taught me to be vain.\"\n\n\"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian--or shall be some day.\"\n\n\"I don't know what you mean, Basil,\" he exclaimed, turning round.  \"I\ndon't know what you want.  What do you want?\"\n\n\"I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint,\" said the artist sadly.\n\n\"Basil,\" said the lad, going over to him and putting his hand on his\nshoulder, \"you have come too late.  Yesterday, when I heard that Sibyl\nVane had killed herself--\"\n\n\"Killed herself!  Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?\" cried\nHallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.\n\n\"My dear Basil!  Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident?  Of\ncourse she killed herself.\"\n\nThe elder man buried his face in his hands.  \"How fearful,\" he\nmuttered, and a shudder ran through him.\n\n\"No,\" said Dorian Gray, \"there is nothing fearful about it.  It is one\nof the great romantic tragedies of the age.  As a rule, people who act\nlead the most commonplace lives.  They are good husbands, or faithful\nwives, or something tedious.  You know what I mean--middle-class virtue\nand all that kind of thing.  How different Sibyl was!  She lived her\nfinest tragedy.  She was always a heroine.  The last night she\nplayed--the night you saw her--she acted badly because she had known\nthe reality of love.  When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet\nmight have died.  She passed again into the sphere of art.  There is\nsomething of the martyr about her.  Her death has all the pathetic\nuselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty.  But, as I was saying,\nyou must not think I have not suffered.  If you had come in yesterday\nat a particular moment--about half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to\nsix--you would have found me in tears.  Even Harry, who was here, who\nbrought me the news, in fact, had no idea what I was going through.  I\nsuffered immensely.  Then it passed away.  I cannot repeat an emotion.\nNo one can, except sentimentalists.  And you are awfully unjust, Basil.\nYou come down here to console me.  That is charming of you.  You find\nme consoled, and you are furious.  How like a sympathetic person!  You\nremind me of a story Harry told me about a certain philanthropist who\nspent twenty years of his life in trying to get some grievance\nredressed, or some unjust law altered--I forget exactly what it was.\nFinally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment.  He\nhad absolutely nothing to do, almost died of _ennui_, and became a\nconfirmed misanthrope.  And besides, my dear old Basil, if you really\nwant to console me, teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to\nsee it from a proper artistic point of view.  Was it not Gautier who\nused to write about _la consolation des arts_?  I remember picking up a\nlittle vellum-covered book in your studio one day and chancing on that\ndelightful phrase.  Well, I am not like that young man you told me of\nwhen we were down at Marlow together, the young man who used to say\nthat yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life.  I\nlove beautiful things that one can touch and handle.  Old brocades,\ngreen bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings,\nluxury, pomp--there is much to be got from all these.  But the artistic\ntemperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more to\nme.  To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to\nescape the suffering of life.  I know you are surprised at my talking\nto you like this.  You have not realized how I have developed.  I was a\nschoolboy when you knew me.  I am a man now.  I have new passions, new\nthoughts, new ideas.  I am different, but you must not like me less.  I\nam changed, but you must always be my friend.  Of course, I am very\nfond of Harry.  But I know that you are better than he is.  You are not\nstronger--you are too much afraid of life--but you are better.  And how\nhappy we used to be together!  Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel\nwith me.  I am what I am.  There is nothing more to be said.\"\n\nThe painter felt strangely moved.  The lad was infinitely dear to him,\nand his personality had been the great turning point in his art.  He\ncould not bear the idea of reproaching him any more.  After all, his\nindifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away.  There\nwas so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble.\n\n\"Well, Dorian,\" he said at length, with a sad smile, \"I won't speak to\nyou again about this horrible thing, after to-day.  I only trust your\nname won't be mentioned in connection with it.  The inquest is to take\nplace this afternoon.  Have they summoned you?\"\n\nDorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face at\nthe mention of the word \"inquest.\"  There was something so crude and\nvulgar about everything of the kind.  \"They don't know my name,\" he\nanswered.\n\n\"But surely she did?\"\n\n\"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned\nto any one.  She told me once that they were all rather curious to\nlearn who I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince\nCharming.  It was pretty of her.  You must do me a drawing of Sibyl,\nBasil.  I should like to have something more of her than the memory of\na few kisses and some broken pathetic words.\"\n\n\"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you.  But you\nmust come and sit to me yourself again.  I can't get on without you.\"\n\n\"I can never sit to you again, Basil.  It is impossible!\" he exclaimed,\nstarting back.\n\nThe painter stared at him.  \"My dear boy, what nonsense!\" he cried.\n\"Do you mean to say you don't like what I did of you?  Where is it?\nWhy have you pulled the screen in front of it?  Let me look at it.  It\nis the best thing I have ever done.  Do take the screen away, Dorian.\nIt is simply disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that.  I\nfelt the room looked different as I came in.\"\n\n\"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil.  You don't imagine I let\nhim arrange my room for me?  He settles my flowers for me\nsometimes--that is all.  No; I did it myself.  The light was too strong\non the portrait.\"\n\n\"Too strong!  Surely not, my dear fellow?  It is an admirable place for\nit.  Let me see it.\"  And Hallward walked towards the corner of the\nroom.\n\nA cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed between\nthe painter and the screen.  \"Basil,\" he said, looking very pale, \"you\nmust not look at it.  I don't wish you to.\"\n\n\"Not look at my own work!  You are not serious.  Why shouldn't I look\nat it?\" exclaimed Hallward, laughing.\n\n\"If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will never\nspeak to you again as long as I live.  I am quite serious.  I don't\noffer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any.  But, remember,\nif you touch this screen, everything is over between us.\"\n\nHallward was thunderstruck.  He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute\namazement.  He had never seen him like this before.  The lad was\nactually pallid with rage.  His hands were clenched, and the pupils of\nhis eyes were like disks of blue fire.  He was trembling all over.\n\n\"Dorian!\"\n\n\"Don't speak!\"\n\n\"But what is the matter?  Of course I won't look at it if you don't\nwant me to,\" he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel and going over\ntowards the window.  \"But, really, it seems rather absurd that I\nshouldn't see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in\nParis in the autumn.  I shall probably have to give it another coat of\nvarnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?\"\n\n\"To exhibit it!  You want to exhibit it?\" exclaimed Dorian Gray, a\nstrange sense of terror creeping over him.  Was the world going to be\nshown his secret?  Were people to gape at the mystery of his life?\nThat was impossible.  Something--he did not know what--had to be done\nat once.\n\n\"Yes; I don't suppose you will object to that.  Georges Petit is going\nto collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de\nSeze, which will open the first week in October.  The portrait will\nonly be away a month.  I should think you could easily spare it for\nthat time.  In fact, you are sure to be out of town.  And if you keep\nit always behind a screen, you can't care much about it.\"\n\nDorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead.  There were beads of\nperspiration there.  He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible\ndanger.  \"You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it,\" he\ncried.  \"Why have you changed your mind?  You people who go in for\nbeing consistent have just as many moods as others have.  The only\ndifference is that your moods are rather meaningless.  You can't have\nforgotten that you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world\nwould induce you to send it to any exhibition.  You told Harry exactly\nthe same thing.\" He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into\nhis eyes.  He remembered that Lord Henry had said to him once, half\nseriously and half in jest, \"If you want to have a strange quarter of\nan hour, get Basil to tell you why he won't exhibit your picture.  He\ntold me why he wouldn't, and it was a revelation to me.\"  Yes, perhaps\nBasil, too, had his secret.  He would ask him and try.\n\n\"Basil,\" he said, coming over quite close and looking him straight in\nthe face, \"we have each of us a secret.  Let me know yours, and I shall\ntell you mine.  What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my\npicture?\"\n\nThe painter shuddered in spite of himself.  \"Dorian, if I told you, you\nmight like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me.  I\ncould not bear your doing either of those two things.  If you wish me\nnever to look at your picture again, I am content.  I have always you\nto look at.  If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden\nfrom the world, I am satisfied.  Your friendship is dearer to me than\nany fame or reputation.\"\n\n\"No, Basil, you must tell me,\" insisted Dorian Gray.  \"I think I have a\nright to know.\"  His feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity\nhad taken its place.  He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's\nmystery.\n\n\"Let us sit down, Dorian,\" said the painter, looking troubled.  \"Let us\nsit down.  And just answer me one question.  Have you noticed in the\npicture something curious?--something that probably at first did not\nstrike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?\"\n\n\"Basil!\" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling\nhands and gazing at him with wild startled eyes.\n\n\"I see you did.  Don't speak.  Wait till you hear what I have to say.\nDorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most\nextraordinary influence over me.  I was dominated, soul, brain, and\npower, by you.  You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen\nideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.  I\nworshipped you.  I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke.  I\nwanted to have you all to myself.  I was only happy when I was with\nyou.  When you were away from me, you were still present in my art....\nOf course, I never let you know anything about this.  It would have\nbeen impossible.  You would not have understood it.  I hardly\nunderstood it myself.  I only knew that I had seen perfection face to\nface, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes--too\nwonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril\nof losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them....  Weeks and\nweeks went on, and I grew more and more absorbed in you.  Then came a\nnew development.  I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour, and as\nAdonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boar-spear. Crowned with\nheavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of Adrian's barge, gazing\nacross the green turbid Nile.  You had leaned over the still pool of\nsome Greek woodland and seen in the water's silent silver the marvel of\nyour own face.  And it had all been what art should be--unconscious,\nideal, and remote.  One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I\ndetermined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are,\nnot in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own\ntime.  Whether it was the realism of the method, or the mere wonder of\nyour own personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or\nveil, I cannot tell.  But I know that as I worked at it, every flake\nand film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret.  I grew afraid\nthat others would know of my idolatry.  I felt, Dorian, that I had told\ntoo much, that I had put too much of myself into it.  Then it was that\nI resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited.  You were a\nlittle annoyed; but then you did not realize all that it meant to me.\nHarry, to whom I talked about it, laughed at me.  But I did not mind\nthat.  When the picture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt\nthat I was right.... Well, after a few days the thing left my studio,\nand as soon as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its\npresence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I\nhad seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking\nand that I could paint.  Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a\nmistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really\nshown in the work one creates.  Art is always more abstract than we\nfancy.  Form and colour tell us of form and colour--that is all.  It\noften seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than\nit ever reveals him.  And so when I got this offer from Paris, I\ndetermined to make your portrait the principal thing in my exhibition.\nIt never occurred to me that you would refuse.  I see now that you were\nright.  The picture cannot be shown.  You must not be angry with me,\nDorian, for what I have told you.  As I said to Harry, once, you are\nmade to be worshipped.\"\n\nDorian Gray drew a long breath.  The colour came back to his cheeks,\nand a smile played about his lips.  The peril was over.  He was safe\nfor the time.  Yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the\npainter who had just made this strange confession to him, and wondered\nif he himself would ever be so dominated by the personality of a\nfriend.  Lord Henry had the charm of being very dangerous.  But that\nwas all.  He was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of.\nWould there ever be some one who would fill him with a strange\nidolatry?  Was that one of the things that life had in store?\n\n\"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian,\" said Hallward, \"that you should\nhave seen this in the portrait.  Did you really see it?\"\n\n\"I saw something in it,\" he answered, \"something that seemed to me very\ncurious.\"\n\n\"Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?\"\n\nDorian shook his head.  \"You must not ask me that, Basil.  I could not\npossibly let you stand in front of that picture.\"\n\n\"You will some day, surely?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps you are right.  And now good-bye, Dorian.  You have been\nthe one person in my life who has really influenced my art.  Whatever I\nhave done that is good, I owe to you.  Ah! you don't know what it cost\nme to tell you all that I have told you.\"\n\n\"My dear Basil,\" said Dorian, \"what have you told me?  Simply that you\nfelt that you admired me too much.  That is not even a compliment.\"\n\n\"It was not intended as a compliment.  It was a confession.  Now that I\nhave made it, something seems to have gone out of me.  Perhaps one\nshould never put one's worship into words.\"\n\n\"It was a very disappointing confession.\"\n\n\"Why, what did you expect, Dorian?  You didn't see anything else in the\npicture, did you?  There was nothing else to see?\"\n\n\"No; there was nothing else to see.  Why do you ask?  But you mustn't\ntalk about worship.  It is foolish.  You and I are friends, Basil, and\nwe must always remain so.\"\n\n\"You have got Harry,\" said the painter sadly.\n\n\"Oh, Harry!\" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter.  \"Harry spends\nhis days in saying what is incredible and his evenings in doing what is\nimprobable.  Just the sort of life I would like to lead.  But still I\ndon't think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble.  I would sooner\ngo to you, Basil.\"\n\n\"You will sit to me again?\"\n\n\"Impossible!\"\n\n\"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian.  No man comes\nacross two ideal things.  Few come across one.\"\n\n\"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.\nThere is something fatal about a portrait.  It has a life of its own.\nI will come and have tea with you.  That will be just as pleasant.\"\n\n\"Pleasanter for you, I am afraid,\" murmured Hallward regretfully.  \"And\nnow good-bye. I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once\nagain.  But that can't be helped.  I quite understand what you feel\nabout it.\"\n\nAs he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself.  Poor Basil!  How\nlittle he knew of the true reason!  And how strange it was that,\ninstead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had\nsucceeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend!  How\nmuch that strange confession explained to him!  The painter's absurd\nfits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his\ncurious reticences--he understood them all now, and he felt sorry.\nThere seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured\nby romance.\n\nHe sighed and touched the bell.  The portrait must be hidden away at\nall costs.  He could not run such a risk of discovery again.  It had\nbeen mad of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour,\nin a room to which any of his friends had access.\n\n\n\n\n\nWhen his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly and wondered if\nhe had thought of peering behind the screen.  The man was quite\nimpassive and waited for his orders.  Dorian lit a cigarette and walked\nover to the glass and glanced into it.  He could see the reflection of\nVictor's face perfectly.  It was like a placid mask of servility.\nThere was nothing to be afraid of, there.  Yet he thought it best to be\non his guard.\n\nSpeaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-keeper that he\nwanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to\nsend two of his men round at once.  It seemed to him that as the man\nleft the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen.  Or was\nthat merely his own fancy?\n\nAfter a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread\nmittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library.  He\nasked her for the key of the schoolroom.\n\n\"The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?\" she exclaimed.  \"Why, it is full of\ndust.  I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it.\nIt is not fit for you to see, sir.  It is not, indeed.\"\n\n\"I don't want it put straight, Leaf.  I only want the key.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it.  Why, it\nhasn't been opened for nearly five years--not since his lordship died.\"\n\nHe winced at the mention of his grandfather.  He had hateful memories\nof him.  \"That does not matter,\" he answered.  \"I simply want to see\nthe place--that is all.  Give me the key.\"\n\n\"And here is the key, sir,\" said the old lady, going over the contents\nof her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands.  \"Here is the key.  I'll\nhave it off the bunch in a moment.  But you don't think of living up\nthere, sir, and you so comfortable here?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" he cried petulantly.  \"Thank you, Leaf.  That will do.\"\n\nShe lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of\nthe household.  He sighed and told her to manage things as she thought\nbest.  She left the room, wreathed in smiles.\n\nAs the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round\nthe room.  His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily\nembroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century\nVenetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.\nYes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in.  It had perhaps\nserved often as a pall for the dead.  Now it was to hide something that\nhad a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death\nitself--something that would breed horrors and yet would never die.\nWhat the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image\non the canvas.  They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace.  They\nwould defile it and make it shameful.  And yet the thing would still\nlive on.  It would be always alive.\n\nHe shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil\nthe true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away.  Basil\nwould have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still\nmore poisonous influences that came from his own temperament.  The love\nthat he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was\nnot noble and intellectual.  It was not that mere physical admiration\nof beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses\ntire.  It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and\nWinckelmann, and Shakespeare himself.  Yes, Basil could have saved him.\nBut it was too late now.  The past could always be annihilated.\nRegret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that.  But the future was\ninevitable.  There were passions in him that would find their terrible\noutlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.\n\nHe took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that\ncovered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen.\nWas the face on the canvas viler than before?  It seemed to him that it\nwas unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified.  Gold hair,\nblue eyes, and rose-red lips--they all were there.  It was simply the\nexpression that had altered.  That was horrible in its cruelty.\nCompared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's\nreproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!--how shallow, and of what little\naccount!  His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and\ncalling him to judgement.  A look of pain came across him, and he flung\nthe rich pall over the picture.  As he did so, a knock came to the\ndoor.  He passed out as his servant entered.\n\n\"The persons are here, Monsieur.\"\n\nHe felt that the man must be got rid of at once.  He must not be\nallowed to know where the picture was being taken to.  There was\nsomething sly about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes.\nSitting down at the writing-table he scribbled a note to Lord Henry,\nasking him to send him round something to read and reminding him that\nthey were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening.\n\n\"Wait for an answer,\" he said, handing it to him, \"and show the men in\nhere.\"\n\nIn two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard\nhimself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in\nwith a somewhat rough-looking young assistant.  Mr. Hubbard was a\nflorid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was\nconsiderably tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the\nartists who dealt with him.  As a rule, he never left his shop.  He\nwaited for people to come to him.  But he always made an exception in\nfavour of Dorian Gray.  There was something about Dorian that charmed\neverybody.  It was a pleasure even to see him.\n\n\"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?\" he said, rubbing his fat freckled\nhands.  \"I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in\nperson.  I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir.  Picked it up at a\nsale.  Old Florentine.  Came from Fonthill, I believe.  Admirably\nsuited for a religious subject, Mr. Gray.\"\n\n\"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.\nHubbard.  I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--though I\ndon't go in much at present for religious art--but to-day I only want a\npicture carried to the top of the house for me.  It is rather heavy, so\nI thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men.\"\n\n\"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray.  I am delighted to be of any service to\nyou.  Which is the work of art, sir?\"\n\n\"This,\" replied Dorian, moving the screen back.  \"Can you move it,\ncovering and all, just as it is?  I don't want it to get scratched\ngoing upstairs.\"\n\n\"There will be no difficulty, sir,\" said the genial frame-maker,\nbeginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from\nthe long brass chains by which it was suspended.  \"And, now, where\nshall we carry it to, Mr. Gray?\"\n\n\"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me.\nOr perhaps you had better go in front.  I am afraid it is right at the\ntop of the house.  We will go up by the front staircase, as it is\nwider.\"\n\nHe held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and\nbegan the ascent.  The elaborate character of the frame had made the\npicture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious\nprotests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike\nof seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it\nso as to help them.\n\n\"Something of a load to carry, sir,\" gasped the little man when they\nreached the top landing.  And he wiped his shiny forehead.\n\n\"I am afraid it is rather heavy,\" murmured Dorian as he unlocked the\ndoor that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious\nsecret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.\n\nHe had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed,\nsince he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then\nas a study when he grew somewhat older.  It was a large,\nwell-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord\nKelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness\nto his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and\ndesired to keep at a distance.  It appeared to Dorian to have but\nlittle changed.  There was the huge Italian _cassone_, with its\nfantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which\nhe had so often hidden himself as a boy.  There the satinwood book-case\nfilled with his dog-eared schoolbooks.  On the wall behind it was\nhanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen\nwere playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by,\ncarrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists.  How well he\nremembered it all!  Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to\nhim as he looked round.  He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish\nlife, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait\nwas to be hidden away.  How little he had thought, in those dead days,\nof all that was in store for him!\n\nBut there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as\nthis.  He had the key, and no one else could enter it.  Beneath its\npurple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden,\nand unclean.  What did it matter?  No one could see it.  He himself\nwould not see it.  Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his\nsoul?  He kept his youth--that was enough.  And, besides, might not\nhis nature grow finer, after all?  There was no reason that the future\nshould be so full of shame.  Some love might come across his life, and\npurify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already\nstirring in spirit and in flesh--those curious unpictured sins whose\nvery mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm.  Perhaps, some\nday, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive\nmouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.\n\nNo; that was impossible.  Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing\nupon the canvas was growing old.  It might escape the hideousness of\nsin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it.  The cheeks would\nbecome hollow or flaccid.  Yellow crow's feet would creep round the\nfading eyes and make them horrible.  The hair would lose its\nbrightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross,\nas the mouths of old men are.  There would be the wrinkled throat, the\ncold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the\ngrandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood.  The picture\nhad to be concealed.  There was no help for it.\n\n\"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please,\" he said, wearily, turning round.\n\"I am sorry I kept you so long.  I was thinking of something else.\"\n\n\"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray,\" answered the frame-maker, who\nwas still gasping for breath.  \"Where shall we put it, sir?\"\n\n\"Oh, anywhere.  Here:  this will do.  I don't want to have it hung up.\nJust lean it against the wall.  Thanks.\"\n\n\"Might one look at the work of art, sir?\"\n\nDorian started.  \"It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard,\" he said,\nkeeping his eye on the man.  He felt ready to leap upon him and fling\nhim to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that\nconcealed the secret of his life.  \"I shan't trouble you any more now.\nI am much obliged for your kindness in coming round.\"\n\n\"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray.  Ever ready to do anything for you,\nsir.\" And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant,\nwho glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough\nuncomely face.  He had never seen any one so marvellous.\n\nWhen the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door\nand put the key in his pocket.  He felt safe now.  No one would ever\nlook upon the horrible thing.  No eye but his would ever see his shame.\n\nOn reaching the library, he found that it was just after five o'clock\nand that the tea had been already brought up.  On a little table of\ndark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from Lady\nRadley, his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid who had\nspent the preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry,\nand beside it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn\nand the edges soiled.  A copy of the third edition of _The St. James's\nGazette_ had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had\nreturned.  He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were\nleaving the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.\nHe would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed it already,\nwhile he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set\nback, and a blank space was visible on the wall.  Perhaps some night he\nmight find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the\nroom.  It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house.  He had\nheard of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some\nservant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked\nup a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower\nor a shred of crumpled lace.\n\nHe sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's\nnote.  It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper,\nand a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at\neight-fifteen. He opened _The St. James's_ languidly, and looked through\nit.  A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye.  It drew\nattention to the following paragraph:\n\n\nINQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the Bell\nTavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of\nSibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre,\nHolborn.  A verdict of death by misadventure was returned.\nConsiderable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who\nwas greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of\nDr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased.\n\n\nHe frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across the room and\nflung the pieces away.  How ugly it all was!  And how horribly real\nugliness made things!  He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for\nhaving sent him the report.  And it was certainly stupid of him to have\nmarked it with red pencil.  Victor might have read it.  The man knew\nmore than enough English for that.\n\nPerhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something.  And, yet,\nwhat did it matter?  What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's\ndeath?  There was nothing to fear.  Dorian Gray had not killed her.\n\nHis eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him.  What was\nit, he wondered.  He went towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal\nstand that had always looked to him like the work of some strange\nEgyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung\nhimself into an arm-chair and began to turn over the leaves.  After a\nfew minutes he became absorbed.  It was the strangest book that he had\never read.  It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the\ndelicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb\nshow before him.  Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly\nmade real to him.  Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually\nrevealed.\n\nIt was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being,\nindeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who\nspent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the\npassions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his\nown, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through\nwhich the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere\nartificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,\nas much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.  The\nstyle in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid\nand obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical\nexpressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work\nof some of the finest artists of the French school of _Symbolistes_.\nThere were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in\ncolour.  The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical\nphilosophy.  One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the\nspiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions\nof a modern sinner.  It was a poisonous book.  The heavy odour of\nincense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain.  The\nmere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so\nfull as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated,\nproduced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter,\na form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of\nthe falling day and creeping shadows.\n\nCloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed\nthrough the windows.  He read on by its wan light till he could read no\nmore.  Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the\nlateness of the hour, he got up, and going into the next room, placed\nthe book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his\nbedside and began to dress for dinner.\n\nIt was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found\nLord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.\n\n\"I am so sorry, Harry,\" he cried, \"but really it is entirely your\nfault.  That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the\ntime was going.\"\n\n\"Yes, I thought you would like it,\" replied his host, rising from his\nchair.\n\n\"I didn't say I liked it, Harry.  I said it fascinated me.  There is a\ngreat difference.\"\n\n\"Ah, you have discovered that?\" murmured Lord Henry.  And they passed\ninto the dining-room.\n\n\n\n\n\nFor years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of\nthis book.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never\nsought to free himself from it.  He procured from Paris no less than\nnine large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in\ndifferent colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the\nchanging fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have\nalmost entirely lost control.  The hero, the wonderful young Parisian\nin whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely\nblended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself.  And,\nindeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own\nlife, written before he had lived it.\n\nIn one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero.  He\nnever knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhat\ngrotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still\nwater which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was\noccasioned by the sudden decay of a beau that had once, apparently,\nbeen so remarkable.  It was with an almost cruel joy--and perhaps in\nnearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its\nplace--that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its\nreally tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow and\ndespair of one who had himself lost what in others, and the world, he\nhad most dearly valued.\n\nFor the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and\nmany others besides him, seemed never to leave him.  Even those who had\nheard the most evil things against him--and from time to time strange\nrumours about his mode of life crept through London and became the\nchatter of the clubs--could not believe anything to his dishonour when\nthey saw him.  He had always the look of one who had kept himself\nunspotted from the world.  Men who talked grossly became silent when\nDorian Gray entered the room.  There was something in the purity of his\nface that rebuked them.  His mere presence seemed to recall to them the\nmemory of the innocence that they had tarnished.  They wondered how one\nso charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an\nage that was at once sordid and sensual.\n\nOften, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged\nabsences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were\nhis friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep\nupstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left\nhim now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil\nHallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on\nthe canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him\nfrom the polished glass.  The very sharpness of the contrast used to\nquicken his sense of pleasure.  He grew more and more enamoured of his\nown beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.\nHe would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and\nterrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead\nor crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which\nwere the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.  He would\nplace his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture,\nand smile.  He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.\n\nThere were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own\ndelicately scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little\nill-famed tavern near the docks which, under an assumed name and in\ndisguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he\nhad brought upon his soul with a pity that was all the more poignant\nbecause it was purely selfish.  But moments such as these were rare.\nThat curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as\nthey sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase\nwith gratification.  The more he knew, the more he desired to know.  He\nhad mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.\n\nYet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to\nsociety.  Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each\nWednesday evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the\nworld his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the\nday to charm his guests with the wonders of their art.  His little\ndinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were\nnoted as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited,\nas for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with\nits subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered\ncloths, and antique plate of gold and silver.  Indeed, there were many,\nespecially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw,\nin Dorian Gray the true realization of a type of which they had often\ndreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of\nthe real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and\nperfect manner of a citizen of the world.  To them he seemed to be of\nthe company of those whom Dante describes as having sought to \"make\nthemselves perfect by the worship of beauty.\"  Like Gautier, he was one\nfor whom \"the visible world existed.\"\n\nAnd, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the\narts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.\nFashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment\nuniversal, and dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert\nthe absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for\nhim.  His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to\ntime he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of\nthe Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in\neverything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of\nhis graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.\n\nFor, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost\nimmediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a\nsubtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the\nLondon of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the\nSatyricon once had been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be\nsomething more than a mere _arbiter elegantiarum_, to be consulted on the\nwearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a\ncane.  He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have\nits reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the\nspiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.\n\nThe worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been\ndecried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and\nsensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are\nconscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence.\nBut it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had\nnever been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal\nmerely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or\nto kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a\nnew spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the\ndominant characteristic.  As he looked back upon man moving through\nhistory, he was haunted by a feeling of loss.  So much had been\nsurrendered! and to such little purpose!  There had been mad wilful\nrejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose\norigin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more\nterrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance,\nthey had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out\nthe anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving to\nthe hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.\n\nYes:  there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism\nthat was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely\npuritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival.  It was\nto have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to\naccept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any\nmode of passionate experience.  Its aim, indeed, was to be experience\nitself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might\nbe.  Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar\nprofligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing.  But it was to\nteach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is\nitself but a moment.\n\nThere are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either\nafter one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of\ndeath, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through\nthe chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality\nitself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,\nand that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one\nmight fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled\nwith the malady of reverie.  Gradually white fingers creep through the\ncurtains, and they appear to tremble.  In black fantastic shapes, dumb\nshadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there.  Outside,\nthere is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men\ngoing forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down\nfrom the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it\nfeared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from\nher purple cave.  Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by\ndegrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we\nwatch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.  The wan\nmirrors get back their mimic life.  The flameless tapers stand where we\nhad left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been\nstudying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the\nletter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often.\nNothing seems to us changed.  Out of the unreal shadows of the night\ncomes back the real life that we had known.  We have to resume it where\nwe had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the\nnecessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of\nstereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids\nmight open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in\nthe darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh\nshapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in\nwhich the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate,\nin no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of\njoy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.\n\nIt was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray\nto be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life; and in his\nsearch for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and\npossess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he\nwould often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really\nalien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and\nthen, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his\nintellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that\nis not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that,\nindeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition\nof it.\n\nIt was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman\nCatholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great\nattraction for him.  The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all\nthe sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb\nrejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity\nof its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it\nsought to symbolize.  He loved to kneel down on the cold marble\npavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly\nand with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or\nraising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid\nwafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the \"_panis\ncaelestis_,\" the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the\nPassion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his\nbreast for his sins.  The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their\nlace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their\nsubtle fascination for him.  As he passed out, he used to look with\nwonder at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of\none of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn\ngrating the true story of their lives.\n\nBut he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual\ndevelopment by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of\nmistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable\nfor the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which\nthere are no stars and the moon is in travail.  Mysticism, with its\nmarvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle\nantinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a\nseason; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of\nthe _Darwinismus_ movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in\ntracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the\nbrain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of\nthe absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions,\nmorbid or healthy, normal or diseased.  Yet, as has been said of him\nbefore, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance\ncompared with life itself.  He felt keenly conscious of how barren all\nintellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.\nHe knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual\nmysteries to reveal.\n\nAnd so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their\nmanufacture, distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums\nfrom the East.  He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not\nits counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their\ntrue relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one\nmystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets\nthat woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the\nbrain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often\nto elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several\ninfluences of sweet-smelling roots and scented, pollen-laden flowers;\nof aromatic balms and of dark and fragrant woods; of spikenard, that\nsickens; of hovenia, that makes men mad; and of aloes, that are said to\nbe able to expel melancholy from the soul.\n\nAt another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long\nlatticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of\nolive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad\ngipsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave, yellow-shawled\nTunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while\ngrinning Negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums and, crouching\nupon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of\nreed or brass and charmed--or feigned to charm--great hooded snakes and\nhorrible horned adders.  The harsh intervals and shrill discords of\nbarbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's\nbeautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell\nunheeded on his ear.  He collected together from all parts of the world\nthe strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of\ndead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact\nwith Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them.  He had\nthe mysterious _juruparis_ of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not\nallowed to look at and that even youths may not see till they have been\nsubjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the\nPeruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human\nbones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chile, and the sonorous green\njaspers that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular\nsweetness.  He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when\nthey were shaken; the long _clarin_ of the Mexicans, into which the\nperformer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the\nharsh _ture_ of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who\nsit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a\ndistance of three leagues; the _teponaztli_, that has two vibrating\ntongues of wood and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an\nelastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the _yotl_-bells of\nthe Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge\ncylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the\none that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican\ntemple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a\ndescription.  The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated\nhim, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that art, like\nNature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous\nvoices.  Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his\nbox at the opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt\npleasure to \"Tannhauser\" and seeing in the prelude to that great work\nof art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.\n\nOn one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a\ncostume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered\nwith five hundred and sixty pearls.  This taste enthralled him for\nyears, and, indeed, may be said never to have left him.  He would often\nspend a whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various\nstones that he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that\nturns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver,\nthe pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,\ncarbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed stars, flame-red\ncinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their\nalternate layers of ruby and sapphire.  He loved the red gold of the\nsunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow\nof the milky opal.  He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of\nextraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise _de la\nvieille roche_ that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.\n\nHe discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels.  In Alphonso's\nClericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real\njacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of\nEmathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes \"with\ncollars of real emeralds growing on their backs.\" There was a gem in\nthe brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and \"by the exhibition\nof golden letters and a scarlet robe\" the monster could be thrown into\na magical sleep and slain.  According to the great alchemist, Pierre de\nBoniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India\nmade him eloquent.  The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth\nprovoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine.  The\ngarnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her\ncolour.  The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus,\nthat discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.\nLeonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a\nnewly killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison.  The\nbezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm\nthat could cure the plague.  In the nests of Arabian birds was the\naspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any\ndanger by fire.\n\nThe King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,\nas the ceremony of his coronation.  The gates of the palace of John the\nPriest were \"made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake\ninwrought, so that no man might bring poison within.\" Over the gable\nwere \"two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles,\" so that the\ngold might shine by day and the carbuncles by night.  In Lodge's\nstrange romance 'A Margarite of America', it was stated that in the\nchamber of the queen one could behold \"all the chaste ladies of the\nworld, inchased out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of\nchrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults.\" Marco Polo\nhad seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the\nmouths of the dead.  A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that\nthe diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned\nfor seven moons over its loss.  When the Huns lured the king into the\ngreat pit, he flung it away--Procopius tells the story--nor was it ever\nfound again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight\nof gold pieces for it.  The King of Malabar had shown to a certain\nVenetian a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god\nthat he worshipped.\n\nWhen the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII of\nFrance, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome,\nand his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.\nCharles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and\ntwenty-one diamonds.  Richard II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand\nmarks, which was covered with balas rubies.  Hall described Henry VIII,\non his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing \"a\njacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other\nrich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses.\"\nThe favourites of James I wore ear-rings of emeralds set in gold\nfiligrane.  Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour\nstudded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with\nturquoise-stones, and a skull-cap _parseme_ with pearls.  Henry II wore\njewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with\ntwelve rubies and fifty-two great orients.  The ducal hat of Charles\nthe Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with\npear-shaped pearls and studded with sapphires.\n\nHow exquisite life had once been!  How gorgeous in its pomp and\ndecoration!  Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.\n\nThen he turned his attention to embroideries and to the tapestries that\nperformed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the northern\nnations of Europe.  As he investigated the subject--and he always had\nan extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment\nin whatever he took up--he was almost saddened by the reflection of the\nruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things.  He, at any\nrate, had escaped that.  Summer followed summer, and the yellow\njonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the\nstory of their shame, but he was unchanged.  No winter marred his face\nor stained his flowerlike bloom.  How different it was with material\nthings!  Where had they passed to?  Where was the great crocus-coloured\nrobe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked\nby brown girls for the pleasure of Athena?  Where the huge velarium\nthat Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail\nof purple on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a\nchariot drawn by white, gilt-reined steeds?  He longed to see the\ncurious table-napkins wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were\ndisplayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast;\nthe mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden\nbees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of\nPontus and were figured with \"lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests,\nrocks, hunters--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature\"; and\nthe coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which\nwere embroidered the verses of a song beginning \"_Madame, je suis tout\njoyeux_,\" the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold\nthread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four\npearls.  He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims\nfor the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was decorated with \"thirteen\nhundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the\nking's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings\nwere similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked\nin gold.\"  Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed made for her of\nblack velvet powdered with crescents and suns.  Its curtains were of\ndamask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver\nground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it\nstood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black\nvelvet upon cloth of silver.  Louis XIV had gold embroidered caryatides\nfifteen feet high in his apartment.  The state bed of Sobieski, King of\nPoland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with\nverses from the Koran.  Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully\nchased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions.  It\nhad been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of\nMohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.\n\nAnd so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite\nspecimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting\nthe dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates and\nstitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that\nfrom their transparency are known in the East as \"woven air,\" and\n\"running water,\" and \"evening dew\"; strange figured cloths from Java;\nelaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair\nblue silks and wrought with _fleurs-de-lis_, birds and images; veils of\n_lacis_ worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish\nvelvets; Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese _Foukousas_,\nwith their green-toned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds.\n\nHe had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed\nhe had for everything connected with the service of the Church.  In the\nlong cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house, he had\nstored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the\nraiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and\nfine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by\nthe suffering that she seeks for and wounded by self-inflicted pain.\nHe possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask,\nfigured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in\nsix-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the\npine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided\ninto panels representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the\ncoronation of the Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood.\nThis was Italian work of the fifteenth century.  Another cope was of\ngreen velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves,\nfrom which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which\nwere picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals.  The morse\nbore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work.  The orphreys were\nwoven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with\nmedallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian.\nHe had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold\nbrocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with\nrepresentations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, and\nembroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of\nwhite satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins\nand _fleurs-de-lis_; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and\nmany corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria.  In the mystic offices to\nwhich such things were put, there was something that quickened his\nimagination.\n\nFor these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely\nhouse, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he\ncould escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times\nto be almost too great to be borne.  Upon the walls of the lonely\nlocked room where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with\nhis own hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him\nthe real degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the\npurple-and-gold pall as a curtain.  For weeks he would not go there,\nwould forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart,\nhis wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence.\nThen, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to\ndreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,\nuntil he was driven away.  On his return he would sit in front of the\npicture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other\ntimes, with that pride of individualism that is half the\nfascination of sin, and smiling with secret pleasure at the misshapen\nshadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own.\n\nAfter a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and\ngave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as\nwell as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more\nthan once spent the winter.  He hated to be separated from the picture\nthat was such a part of his life, and was also afraid that during his\nabsence some one might gain access to the room, in spite of the\nelaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.\n\nHe was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing.  It was true\nthat the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness\nof the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn\nfrom that?  He would laugh at any one who tried to taunt him.  He had\nnot painted it.  What was it to him how vile and full of shame it\nlooked?  Even if he told them, would they believe it?\n\nYet he was afraid.  Sometimes when he was down at his great house in\nNottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank\nwho were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton\nluxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, he would suddenly\nleave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door had not\nbeen tampered with and that the picture was still there.  What if it\nshould be stolen?  The mere thought made him cold with horror.  Surely\nthe world would know his secret then.  Perhaps the world already\nsuspected it.\n\nFor, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.\nHe was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth\nand social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was\nsaid that on one occasion, when he was brought by a friend into the\nsmoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another\ngentleman got up in a marked manner and went out.  Curious stories\nbecame current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year.  It\nwas rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a\nlow den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with\nthieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade.  His\nextraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear\nagain in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass\nhim with a sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though\nthey were determined to discover his secret.\n\nOf such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice,\nand in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his\ncharming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth\nthat seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer\nto the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about\nhim.  It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most\nintimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him.  Women who had\nwildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and\nset convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or\nhorror if Dorian Gray entered the room.\n\nYet these whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of many his\nstrange and dangerous charm.  His great wealth was a certain element of\nsecurity.  Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to\nbelieve anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and\nfascinating.  It feels instinctively that manners are of more\nimportance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability\nis of much less value than the possession of a good _chef_.  And, after\nall, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has\ngiven one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private\nlife.  Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold _entrees_, as\nLord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject, and there is\npossibly a good deal to be said for his view.  For the canons of good\nsociety are, or should be, the same as the canons of art.  Form is\nabsolutely essential to it.  It should have the dignity of a ceremony,\nas well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of\na romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful\nto us.  Is insincerity such a terrible thing?  I think not.  It is\nmerely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.\n\nSuch, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion.  He used to wonder at the\nshallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing\nsimple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence.  To him, man was a\nbeing with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform\ncreature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and\npassion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies\nof the dead.  He loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery\nof his country house and look at the various portraits of those whose\nblood flowed in his veins.  Here was Philip Herbert, described by\nFrancis Osborne, in his Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and\nKing James, as one who was \"caressed by the Court for his handsome\nface, which kept him not long company.\"  Was it young Herbert's life\nthat he sometimes led?  Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body\nto body till it had reached his own?  Was it some dim sense of that\nruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause,\ngive utterance, in Basil Hallward's studio, to the mad prayer that had\nso changed his life?  Here, in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled\nsurcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard,\nwith his silver-and-black armour piled at his feet.  What had this\nman's legacy been?  Had the lover of Giovanna of Naples bequeathed him\nsome inheritance of sin and shame?  Were his own actions merely the\ndreams that the dead man had not dared to realize?  Here, from the\nfading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl\nstomacher, and pink slashed sleeves.  A flower was in her right hand,\nand her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses.  On\na table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple.  There were large\ngreen rosettes upon her little pointed shoes.  He knew her life, and\nthe strange stories that were told about her lovers.  Had he something\nof her temperament in him?  These oval, heavy-lidded eyes seemed to\nlook curiously at him.  What of George Willoughby, with his powdered\nhair and fantastic patches?  How evil he looked!  The face was\nsaturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with\ndisdain.  Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that\nwere so overladen with rings.  He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth\ncentury, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars.  What of the\nsecond Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince Regent in his\nwildest days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs.\nFitzherbert?  How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls\nand insolent pose!  What passions had he bequeathed?  The world had\nlooked upon him as infamous.  He had led the orgies at Carlton House.\nThe star of the Garter glittered upon his breast.  Beside him hung the\nportrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black.  Her blood,\nalso, stirred within him.  How curious it all seemed!  And his mother\nwith her Lady Hamilton face and her moist, wine-dashed lips--he knew\nwhat he had got from her.  He had got from her his beauty, and his\npassion for the beauty of others.  She laughed at him in her loose\nBacchante dress.  There were vine leaves in her hair.  The purple\nspilled from the cup she was holding.  The carnations of the painting\nhad withered, but the eyes were still wonderful in their depth and\nbrilliancy of colour.  They seemed to follow him wherever he went.\n\nYet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race,\nnearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly\nwith an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.  There\nwere times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history\nwas merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act\nand circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it\nhad been in his brain and in his passions.  He felt that he had known\nthem all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the\nstage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of\nsubtlety.  It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had\nbeen his own.\n\nThe hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had\nhimself known this curious fancy.  In the seventh chapter he tells how,\ncrowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as\nTiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of\nElephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and the\nflute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had\ncaroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in\nan ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had\nwandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round\nwith haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his\ndays, and sick with that ennui, that terrible _taedium vitae_, that comes\non those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear\nemerald at the red shambles of the circus and then, in a litter of\npearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the\nStreet of Pomegranates to a House of Gold and heard men cry on Nero\nCaesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with\ncolours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon\nfrom Carthage and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.\n\nOver and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the\ntwo chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious\ntapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and\nbeautiful forms of those whom vice and blood and weariness had made\nmonstrous or mad:  Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife and\npainted her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death\nfrom the dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as\nPaul the Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of\nFormosus, and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was\nbought at the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used\nhounds to chase living men and whose murdered body was covered with\nroses by a harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse,\nwith Fratricide riding beside him and his mantle stained with the blood\nof Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence,\nchild and minion of Sixtus IV, whose beauty was equalled only by his\ndebauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white\nand crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy\nthat he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose\nmelancholy could be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a\npassion for red blood, as other men have for red wine--the son of the\nFiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when\ngambling with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery\ntook the name of Innocent and into whose torpid veins the blood of\nthree lads was infused by a Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the\nlover of Isotta and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome\nas the enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and\ngave poison to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a\nshameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles\nVI, who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a leper had warned\nhim of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his brain had\nsickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards\npainted with the images of love and death and madness; and, in his\ntrimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto\nBaglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page,\nand whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow\npiazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep,\nand Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him.\n\nThere was a horrible fascination in them all.  He saw them at night,\nand they troubled his imagination in the day.  The Renaissance knew of\nstrange manners of poisoning--poisoning by a helmet and a lighted\ntorch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander\nand by an amber chain.  Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book.  There\nwere moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he\ncould realize his conception of the beautiful.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth\nbirthday, as he often remembered afterwards.\n\nHe was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he\nhad been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold\nand foggy.  At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street,\na man passed him in the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of\nhis grey ulster turned up.  He had a bag in his hand.  Dorian\nrecognized him.  It was Basil Hallward.  A strange sense of fear, for\nwhich he could not account, came over him.  He made no sign of\nrecognition and went on quickly in the direction of his own house.\n\nBut Hallward had seen him.  Dorian heard him first stopping on the\npavement and then hurrying after him.  In a few moments, his hand was\non his arm.\n\n\"Dorian!  What an extraordinary piece of luck!  I have been waiting for\nyou in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on\nyour tired servant and told him to go to bed, as he let me out.  I am\noff to Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see\nyou before I left.  I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as\nyou passed me.  But I wasn't quite sure.  Didn't you recognize me?\"\n\n\"In this fog, my dear Basil?  Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor\nSquare.  I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel\nat all certain about it.  I am sorry you are going away, as I have not\nseen you for ages.  But I suppose you will be back soon?\"\n\n\"No:  I am going to be out of England for six months.  I intend to take\na studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have finished a great\npicture I have in my head.  However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to\ntalk.  Here we are at your door.  Let me come in for a moment.  I have\nsomething to say to you.\"\n\n\"I shall be charmed.  But won't you miss your train?\" said Dorian Gray\nlanguidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his\nlatch-key.\n\nThe lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his\nwatch.  \"I have heaps of time,\" he answered.  \"The train doesn't go\ntill twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven.  In fact, I was on my\nway to the club to look for you, when I met you.  You see, I shan't\nhave any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things.  All I\nhave with me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty\nminutes.\"\n\nDorian looked at him and smiled.  \"What a way for a fashionable painter\nto travel!  A Gladstone bag and an ulster!  Come in, or the fog will\nget into the house.  And mind you don't talk about anything serious.\nNothing is serious nowadays.  At least nothing should be.\"\n\nHallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the\nlibrary.  There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open\nhearth.  The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case\nstood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on\na little marqueterie table.\n\n\"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian.  He gave me\neverything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes.  He is\na most hospitable creature.  I like him much better than the Frenchman\nyou used to have.  What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?\"\n\nDorian shrugged his shoulders.  \"I believe he married Lady Radley's\nmaid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.\nAnglomania is very fashionable over there now, I hear.  It seems silly\nof the French, doesn't it?  But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad\nservant.  I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about.  One\noften imagines things that are quite absurd.  He was really very\ndevoted to me and seemed quite sorry when he went away.  Have another\nbrandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take\nhock-and-seltzer myself.  There is sure to be some in the next room.\"\n\n\"Thanks, I won't have anything more,\" said the painter, taking his cap\nand coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the\ncorner.  \"And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.\nDon't frown like that.  You make it so much more difficult for me.\"\n\n\"What is it all about?\" cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging\nhimself down on the sofa.  \"I hope it is not about myself.  I am tired\nof myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.\"\n\n\"It is about yourself,\" answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, \"and\nI must say it to you.  I shall only keep you half an hour.\"\n\nDorian sighed and lit a cigarette.  \"Half an hour!\" he murmured.\n\n\"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own\nsake that I am speaking.  I think it right that you should know that\nthe most dreadful things are being said against you in London.\"\n\n\"I don't wish to know anything about them.  I love scandals about other\npeople, but scandals about myself don't interest me.  They have not got\nthe charm of novelty.\"\n\n\"They must interest you, Dorian.  Every gentleman is interested in his\ngood name.  You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and\ndegraded.  Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all\nthat kind of thing.  But position and wealth are not everything.  Mind\nyou, I don't believe these rumours at all.  At least, I can't believe\nthem when I see you.  Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's\nface.  It cannot be concealed.  People talk sometimes of secret vices.\nThere are no such things.  If a wretched man has a vice, it shows\nitself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the\nmoulding of his hands even.  Somebody--I won't mention his name, but\nyou know him--came to me last year to have his portrait done.  I had\nnever seen him before, and had never heard anything about him at the\ntime, though I have heard a good deal since.  He offered an extravagant\nprice.  I refused him.  There was something in the shape of his fingers\nthat I hated.  I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied\nabout him.  His life is dreadful.  But you, Dorian, with your pure,\nbright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth--I can't\nbelieve anything against you.  And yet I see you very seldom, and you\nnever come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I\nhear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I\ndon't know what to say.  Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of\nBerwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it?  Why is it that so\nmany gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to\ntheirs?  You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley.  I met him at dinner\nlast week.  Your name happened to come up in conversation, in\nconnection with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the\nDudley.  Staveley curled his lip and said that you might have the most\nartistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl\nshould be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the\nsame room with.  I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked\nhim what he meant.  He told me.  He told me right out before everybody.\nIt was horrible!  Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?  There\nwas that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide.  You were\nhis great friend.  There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England\nwith a tarnished name.  You and he were inseparable.  What about Adrian\nSingleton and his dreadful end?  What about Lord Kent's only son and\nhis career?  I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street.  He\nseemed broken with shame and sorrow.  What about the young Duke of\nPerth?  What sort of life has he got now?  What gentleman would\nassociate with him?\"\n\n\"Stop, Basil.  You are talking about things of which you know nothing,\"\nsaid Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt\nin his voice.  \"You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it.\nIt is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows\nanything about mine.  With such blood as he has in his veins, how could\nhis record be clean?  You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth.\nDid I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery?  If Kent's\nsilly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me?  If\nAdrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his\nkeeper?  I know how people chatter in England.  The middle classes air\ntheir moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper\nabout what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try\nand pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with\nthe people they slander.  In this country, it is enough for a man to\nhave distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.\nAnd what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead\nthemselves?  My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land\nof the hypocrite.\"\n\n\"Dorian,\" cried Hallward, \"that is not the question.  England is bad\nenough I know, and English society is all wrong.  That is the reason\nwhy I want you to be fine.  You have not been fine.  One has a right to\njudge of a man by the effect he has over his friends.  Yours seem to\nlose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity.  You have filled them\nwith a madness for pleasure.  They have gone down into the depths.  You\nled them there.  Yes:  you led them there, and yet you can smile, as\nyou are smiling now.  And there is worse behind.  I know you and Harry\nare inseparable.  Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should\nnot have made his sister's name a by-word.\"\n\n\"Take care, Basil.  You go too far.\"\n\n\"I must speak, and you must listen.  You shall listen.  When you met\nLady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her.  Is there\na single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the\npark?  Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her.  Then\nthere are other stories--stories that you have been seen creeping at\ndawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest\ndens in London.  Are they true?  Can they be true?  When I first heard\nthem, I laughed.  I hear them now, and they make me shudder.  What\nabout your country-house and the life that is led there?  Dorian, you\ndon't know what is said about you.  I won't tell you that I don't want\nto preach to you.  I remember Harry saying once that every man who\nturned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began by\nsaying that, and then proceeded to break his word.  I do want to preach\nto you.  I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect\nyou.  I want you to have a clean name and a fair record.  I want you to\nget rid of the dreadful people you associate with.  Don't shrug your\nshoulders like that.  Don't be so indifferent.  You have a wonderful\ninfluence.  Let it be for good, not for evil.  They say that you\ncorrupt every one with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite\nsufficient for you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow\nafter.  I don't know whether it is so or not.  How should I know?  But\nit is said of you.  I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt.\nLord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.  He showed me\na letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in\nher villa at Mentone.  Your name was implicated in the most terrible\nconfession I ever read.  I told him that it was absurd--that I knew you\nthoroughly and that you were incapable of anything of the kind.  Know\nyou?  I wonder do I know you?  Before I could answer that, I should\nhave to see your soul.\"\n\n\"To see my soul!\" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and\nturning almost white from fear.\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his\nvoice, \"to see your soul.  But only God can do that.\"\n\nA bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man.  \"You\nshall see it yourself, to-night!\" he cried, seizing a lamp from the\ntable.  \"Come:  it is your own handiwork.  Why shouldn't you look at\nit?  You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose.\nNobody would believe you.  If they did believe you, they would like me\nall the better for it.  I know the age better than you do, though you\nwill prate about it so tediously.  Come, I tell you.  You have\nchattered enough about corruption.  Now you shall look on it face to\nface.\"\n\nThere was the madness of pride in every word he uttered.  He stamped\nhis foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner.  He felt a\nterrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret,\nand that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of\nall his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the\nhideous memory of what he had done.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly into\nhis stern eyes, \"I shall show you my soul.  You shall see the thing\nthat you fancy only God can see.\"\n\nHallward started back.  \"This is blasphemy, Dorian!\" he cried.  \"You\nmust not say things like that.  They are horrible, and they don't mean\nanything.\"\n\n\"You think so?\"  He laughed again.\n\n\"I know so.  As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your\ngood.  You know I have been always a stanch friend to you.\"\n\n\"Don't touch me.  Finish what you have to say.\"\n\nA twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face.  He paused for\na moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him.  After all, what\nright had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray?  If he had done a\ntithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered!\nThen he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and\nstood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and\ntheir throbbing cores of flame.\n\n\"I am waiting, Basil,\" said the young man in a hard clear voice.\n\nHe turned round.  \"What I have to say is this,\" he cried.  \"You must\ngive me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against\nyou.  If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to\nend, I shall believe you.  Deny them, Dorian, deny them!  Can't you see\nwhat I am going through?  My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and\ncorrupt, and shameful.\"\n\nDorian Gray smiled.  There was a curl of contempt in his lips.  \"Come\nupstairs, Basil,\" he said quietly.  \"I keep a diary of my life from day\nto day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written.  I shall\nshow it to you if you come with me.\"\n\n\"I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it.  I see I have missed my\ntrain.  That makes no matter.  I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to\nread anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question.\"\n\n\"That shall be given to you upstairs.  I could not give it here.  You\nwill not have to read long.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nHe passed out of the room and began the ascent, Basil Hallward\nfollowing close behind.  They walked softly, as men do instinctively at\nnight.  The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase.  A\nrising wind made some of the windows rattle.\n\nWhen they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the\nfloor, and taking out the key, turned it in the lock.  \"You insist on\nknowing, Basil?\" he asked in a low voice.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I am delighted,\" he answered, smiling.  Then he added, somewhat\nharshly, \"You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know\neverything about me.  You have had more to do with my life than you\nthink\"; and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in.  A\ncold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in\na flame of murky orange.  He shuddered.  \"Shut the door behind you,\" he\nwhispered, as he placed the lamp on the table.\n\nHallward glanced round him with a puzzled expression.  The room looked\nas if it had not been lived in for years.  A faded Flemish tapestry, a\ncurtained picture, an old Italian _cassone_, and an almost empty\nbook-case--that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and\na table.  As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was\nstanding on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was covered\nwith dust and that the carpet was in holes.  A mouse ran scuffling\nbehind the wainscoting.  There was a damp odour of mildew.\n\n\"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil?  Draw that\ncurtain back, and you will see mine.\"\n\nThe voice that spoke was cold and cruel.  \"You are mad, Dorian, or\nplaying a part,\" muttered Hallward, frowning.\n\n\"You won't? Then I must do it myself,\" said the young man, and he tore\nthe curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground.\n\nAn exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the\ndim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him.  There was\nsomething in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.\nGood heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at!\nThe horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that\nmarvellous beauty.  There was still some gold in the thinning hair and\nsome scarlet on the sensual mouth.  The sodden eyes had kept something\nof the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet\ncompletely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat.\nYes, it was Dorian himself.  But who had done it?  He seemed to\nrecognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design.  The\nidea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid.  He seized the lighted candle,\nand held it to the picture.  In the left-hand corner was his own name,\ntraced in long letters of bright vermilion.\n\nIt was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire.  He had never\ndone that.  Still, it was his own picture.  He knew it, and he felt as\nif his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice.  His\nown picture!  What did it mean?  Why had it altered?  He turned and\nlooked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man.  His mouth twitched,\nand his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate.  He passed his hand\nacross his forehead.  It was dank with clammy sweat.\n\nThe young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with\nthat strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are\nabsorbed in a play when some great artist is acting.  There was neither\nreal sorrow in it nor real joy.  There was simply the passion of the\nspectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes.  He had taken\nthe flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.\n\n\"What does this mean?\" cried Hallward, at last.  His own voice sounded\nshrill and curious in his ears.\n\n\"Years ago, when I was a boy,\" said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in\nhis hand, \"you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my\ngood looks.  One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who\nexplained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me\nthat revealed to me the wonder of beauty.  In a mad moment that, even\nnow, I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you\nwould call it a prayer....\"\n\n\"I remember it!  Oh, how well I remember it!  No! the thing is\nimpossible.  The room is damp.  Mildew has got into the canvas.  The\npaints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them.  I tell you the\nthing is impossible.\"\n\n\"Ah, what is impossible?\" murmured the young man, going over to the\nwindow and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.\n\n\"You told me you had destroyed it.\"\n\n\"I was wrong.  It has destroyed me.\"\n\n\"I don't believe it is my picture.\"\n\n\"Can't you see your ideal in it?\" said Dorian bitterly.\n\n\"My ideal, as you call it...\"\n\n\"As you called it.\"\n\n\"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful.  You were to me such\nan ideal as I shall never meet again.  This is the face of a satyr.\"\n\n\"It is the face of my soul.\"\n\n\"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped!  It has the eyes of a\ndevil.\"\n\n\"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil,\" cried Dorian with a\nwild gesture of despair.\n\nHallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it.  \"My God!  If it\nis true,\" he exclaimed, \"and this is what you have done with your life,\nwhy, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you\nto be!\" He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it.  The\nsurface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it.  It was\nfrom within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come.\nThrough some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were\nslowly eating the thing away.  The rotting of a corpse in a watery\ngrave was not so fearful.\n\nHis hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor and\nlay there sputtering.  He placed his foot on it and put it out.  Then\nhe flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table\nand buried his face in his hands.\n\n\"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson!  What an awful lesson!\" There was no\nanswer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window.  \"Pray,\nDorian, pray,\" he murmured.  \"What is it that one was taught to say in\none's boyhood?  'Lead us not into temptation.  Forgive us our sins.\nWash away our iniquities.'  Let us say that together.  The prayer of\nyour pride has been answered.  The prayer of your repentance will be\nanswered also.  I worshipped you too much.  I am punished for it.  You\nworshipped yourself too much.  We are both punished.\"\n\nDorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at him with tear-dimmed\neyes.  \"It is too late, Basil,\" he faltered.\n\n\"It is never too late, Dorian.  Let us kneel down and try if we cannot\nremember a prayer.  Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be\nas scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow'?\"\n\n\"Those words mean nothing to me now.\"\n\n\"Hush!  Don't say that.  You have done enough evil in your life.  My\nGod!  Don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?\"\n\nDorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable\nfeeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had\nbeen suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his\near by those grinning lips.  The mad passions of a hunted animal\nstirred within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table,\nmore than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything.  He glanced\nwildly around.  Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest\nthat faced him.  His eye fell on it.  He knew what it was.  It was a\nknife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord,\nand had forgotten to take away with him.  He moved slowly towards it,\npassing Hallward as he did so.  As soon as he got behind him, he seized\nit and turned round.  Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going\nto rise.  He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that\nis behind the ear, crushing the man's head down on the table and\nstabbing again and again.\n\nThere was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of some one choking\nwith blood.  Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively,\nwaving grotesque, stiff-fingered hands in the air.  He stabbed him\ntwice more, but the man did not move.  Something began to trickle on\nthe floor.  He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down.  Then\nhe threw the knife on the table, and listened.\n\nHe could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet.  He\nopened the door and went out on the landing.  The house was absolutely\nquiet.  No one was about.  For a few seconds he stood bending over the\nbalustrade and peering down into the black seething well of darkness.\nThen he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in\nas he did so.\n\nThe thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with\nbowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms.  Had it not been\nfor the red jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that was\nslowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was\nsimply asleep.\n\nHow quickly it had all been done!  He felt strangely calm, and walking\nover to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony.  The wind\nhad blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's\ntail, starred with myriads of golden eyes.  He looked down and saw the\npoliceman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on\nthe doors of the silent houses.  The crimson spot of a prowling hansom\ngleamed at the corner and then vanished.  A woman in a fluttering shawl\nwas creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went.  Now and\nthen she stopped and peered back.  Once, she began to sing in a hoarse\nvoice.  The policeman strolled over and said something to her.  She\nstumbled away, laughing.  A bitter blast swept across the square.  The\ngas-lamps flickered and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their\nblack iron branches to and fro.  He shivered and went back, closing the\nwindow behind him.\n\nHaving reached the door, he turned the key and opened it.  He did not\neven glance at the murdered man.  He felt that the secret of the whole\nthing was not to realize the situation.  The friend who had painted the\nfatal portrait to which all his misery had been due had gone out of his\nlife.  That was enough.\n\nThen he remembered the lamp.  It was a rather curious one of Moorish\nworkmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished\nsteel, and studded with coarse turquoises.  Perhaps it might be missed\nby his servant, and questions would be asked.  He hesitated for a\nmoment, then he turned back and took it from the table.  He could not\nhelp seeing the dead thing.  How still it was!  How horribly white the\nlong hands looked!  It was like a dreadful wax image.\n\nHaving locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs.  The\nwoodwork creaked and seemed to cry out as if in pain.  He stopped\nseveral times and waited.  No:  everything was still.  It was merely\nthe sound of his own footsteps.\n\nWhen he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner.\nThey must be hidden away somewhere.  He unlocked a secret press that\nwas in the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious\ndisguises, and put them into it.  He could easily burn them afterwards.\nThen he pulled out his watch.  It was twenty minutes to two.\n\nHe sat down and began to think.  Every year--every month, almost--men\nwere strangled in England for what he had done.  There had been a\nmadness of murder in the air.  Some red star had come too close to the\nearth.... And yet, what evidence was there against him?  Basil Hallward\nhad left the house at eleven.  No one had seen him come in again.  Most\nof the servants were at Selby Royal.  His valet had gone to bed....\nParis!  Yes.  It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight\ntrain, as he had intended.  With his curious reserved habits, it would\nbe months before any suspicions would be roused.  Months!  Everything\ncould be destroyed long before then.\n\nA sudden thought struck him.  He put on his fur coat and hat and went\nout into the hall.  There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of\nthe policeman on the pavement outside and seeing the flash of the\nbull's-eye reflected in the window.  He waited and held his breath.\n\nAfter a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, shutting\nthe door very gently behind him.  Then he began ringing the bell.  In\nabout five minutes his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very\ndrowsy.\n\n\"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,\" he said, stepping in;\n\"but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?\"\n\n\"Ten minutes past two, sir,\" answered the man, looking at the clock and\nblinking.\n\n\"Ten minutes past two?  How horribly late!  You must wake me at nine\nto-morrow. I have some work to do.\"\n\n\"All right, sir.\"\n\n\"Did any one call this evening?\"\n\n\"Mr. Hallward, sir.  He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away\nto catch his train.\"\n\n\"Oh!  I am sorry I didn't see him.  Did he leave any message?\"\n\n\"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not\nfind you at the club.\"\n\n\"That will do, Francis.  Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow.\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\nThe man shambled down the passage in his slippers.\n\nDorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed into the\nlibrary.  For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room,\nbiting his lip and thinking.  Then he took down the Blue Book from one\nof the shelves and began to turn over the leaves.  \"Alan Campbell, 152,\nHertford Street, Mayfair.\"  Yes; that was the man he wanted.\n\n\n\n\n\nAt nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of\nchocolate on a tray and opened the shutters.  Dorian was sleeping quite\npeacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his\ncheek.  He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.\n\nThe man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as\nhe opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he\nhad been lost in some delightful dream.  Yet he had not dreamed at all.\nHis night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain.\nBut youth smiles without any reason.  It is one of its chiefest charms.\n\nHe turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his\nchocolate.  The mellow November sun came streaming into the room.  The\nsky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air.  It was\nalmost like a morning in May.\n\nGradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent,\nblood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there\nwith terrible distinctness.  He winced at the memory of all that he had\nsuffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for\nBasil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came\nback to him, and he grew cold with passion.  The dead man was still\nsitting there, too, and in the sunlight now.  How horrible that was!\nSuch hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.\n\nHe felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken\nor grow mad.  There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory\nthan in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride\nmore than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of\njoy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the\nsenses.  But this was not one of them.  It was a thing to be driven out\nof the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might\nstrangle one itself.\n\nWhen the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and\nthen got up hastily and dressed himself with even more than his usual\ncare, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and\nscarf-pin and changing his rings more than once.  He spent a long time\nalso over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet\nabout some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the\nservants at Selby, and going through his correspondence.  At some of\nthe letters, he smiled.  Three of them bored him.  One he read several\ntimes over and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his\nface.  \"That awful thing, a woman's memory!\" as Lord Henry had once\nsaid.\n\nAfter he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly\nwith a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the\ntable, sat down and wrote two letters.  One he put in his pocket, the\nother he handed to the valet.\n\n\"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell\nis out of town, get his address.\"\n\nAs soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and began sketching upon a\npiece of paper, drawing first flowers and bits of architecture, and\nthen human faces.  Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew\nseemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward.  He frowned, and\ngetting up, went over to the book-case and took out a volume at hazard.\nHe was determined that he would not think about what had happened until\nit became absolutely necessary that he should do so.\n\nWhen he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page\nof the book.  It was Gautier's Emaux et Camees, Charpentier's\nJapanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching.  The binding was\nof citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted\npomegranates.  It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton.  As he\nturned over the pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of\nLacenaire, the cold yellow hand \"_du supplice encore mal lavee_,\" with\nits downy red hairs and its \"_doigts de faune_.\"  He glanced at his own\nwhite taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and\npassed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:\n\n     Sur une gamme chromatique,\n       Le sein de perles ruisselant,\n     La Venus de l'Adriatique\n       Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.\n\n     Les domes, sur l'azur des ondes\n       Suivant la phrase au pur contour,\n     S'enflent comme des gorges rondes\n       Que souleve un soupir d'amour.\n\n     L'esquif aborde et me depose,\n       Jetant son amarre au pilier,\n     Devant une facade rose,\n       Sur le marbre d'un escalier.\n\n\nHow exquisite they were!  As one read them, one seemed to be floating\ndown the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black\ngondola with silver prow and trailing curtains.  The mere lines looked\nto him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as\none pushes out to the Lido.  The sudden flashes of colour reminded him\nof the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the\ntall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through\nthe dim, dust-stained arcades.  Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he\nkept saying over and over to himself:\n\n     \"Devant une facade rose,\n        Sur le marbre d'un escalier.\"\n\nThe whole of Venice was in those two lines.  He remembered the autumn\nthat he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to\nmad delightful follies.  There was romance in every place.  But Venice,\nlike Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true\nromantic, background was everything, or almost everything.  Basil had\nbeen with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret.  Poor\nBasil!  What a horrible way for a man to die!\n\nHe sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget.  He read\nof the swallows that fly in and out of the little _cafe_ at Smyrna where\nthe Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants\nsmoke their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he\nread of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of\ngranite in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot,\nlotus-covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and\nwhite vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles with small beryl eyes\nthat crawl over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those\nverses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that\ncurious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the \"_monstre\ncharmant_\" that couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre.  But after a\ntime the book fell from his hand.  He grew nervous, and a horrible fit\nof terror came over him.  What if Alan Campbell should be out of\nEngland?  Days would elapse before he could come back.  Perhaps he\nmight refuse to come.  What could he do then?  Every moment was of\nvital importance.\n\nThey had been great friends once, five years before--almost\ninseparable, indeed.  Then the intimacy had come suddenly to an end.\nWhen they met in society now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled:  Alan\nCampbell never did.\n\nHe was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real\nappreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of the\nbeauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian.  His\ndominant intellectual passion was for science.  At Cambridge he had\nspent a great deal of his time working in the laboratory, and had taken\na good class in the Natural Science Tripos of his year.  Indeed, he was\nstill devoted to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his\nown in which he used to shut himself up all day long, greatly to the\nannoyance of his mother, who had set her heart on his standing for\nParliament and had a vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up\nprescriptions.  He was an excellent musician, however, as well, and\nplayed both the violin and the piano better than most amateurs.  In\nfact, it was music that had first brought him and Dorian Gray\ntogether--music and that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to\nbe able to exercise whenever he wished--and, indeed, exercised often\nwithout being conscious of it.  They had met at Lady Berkshire's the\nnight that Rubinstein played there, and after that used to be always\nseen together at the opera and wherever good music was going on.  For\neighteen months their intimacy lasted.  Campbell was always either at\nSelby Royal or in Grosvenor Square.  To him, as to many others, Dorian\nGray was the type of everything that is wonderful and fascinating in\nlife.  Whether or not a quarrel had taken place between them no one\never knew.  But suddenly people remarked that they scarcely spoke when\nthey met and that Campbell seemed always to go away early from any\nparty at which Dorian Gray was present.  He had changed, too--was\nstrangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike hearing\nmusic, and would never himself play, giving as his excuse, when he was\ncalled upon, that he was so absorbed in science that he had no time\nleft in which to practise.  And this was certainly true.  Every day he\nseemed to become more interested in biology, and his name appeared once\nor twice in some of the scientific reviews in connection with certain\ncurious experiments.\n\nThis was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for.  Every second he kept\nglancing at the clock.  As the minutes went by he became horribly\nagitated.  At last he got up and began to pace up and down the room,\nlooking like a beautiful caged thing.  He took long stealthy strides.\nHis hands were curiously cold.\n\nThe suspense became unbearable.  Time seemed to him to be crawling with\nfeet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the\njagged edge of some black cleft of precipice.  He knew what was waiting\nfor him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands\nhis burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight\nand driven the eyeballs back into their cave.  It was useless.  The\nbrain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made\ngrotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,\ndanced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving\nmasks.  Then, suddenly, time stopped for him.  Yes:  that blind,\nslow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being\ndead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its\ngrave, and showed it to him.  He stared at it.  Its very horror made\nhim stone.\n\nAt last the door opened and his servant entered.  He turned glazed eyes\nupon him.\n\n\"Mr. Campbell, sir,\" said the man.\n\nA sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back\nto his cheeks.\n\n\"Ask him to come in at once, Francis.\"  He felt that he was himself\nagain.  His mood of cowardice had passed away.\n\nThe man bowed and retired.  In a few moments, Alan Campbell walked in,\nlooking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his\ncoal-black hair and dark eyebrows.\n\n\"Alan!  This is kind of you.  I thank you for coming.\"\n\n\"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray.  But you said it\nwas a matter of life and death.\"  His voice was hard and cold.  He\nspoke with slow deliberation.  There was a look of contempt in the\nsteady searching gaze that he turned on Dorian.  He kept his hands in\nthe pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the\ngesture with which he had been greeted.\n\n\"Yes:  it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one\nperson.  Sit down.\"\n\nCampbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him.\nThe two men's eyes met.  In Dorian's there was infinite pity.  He knew\nthat what he was going to do was dreadful.\n\nAfter a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very\nquietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he\nhad sent for, \"Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room\nto which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table.\nHe has been dead ten hours now.  Don't stir, and don't look at me like\nthat.  Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do\nnot concern you.  What you have to do is this--\"\n\n\"Stop, Gray.  I don't want to know anything further.  Whether what you\nhave told me is true or not true doesn't concern me.  I entirely\ndecline to be mixed up in your life.  Keep your horrible secrets to\nyourself.  They don't interest me any more.\"\n\n\"Alan, they will have to interest you.  This one will have to interest\nyou.  I am awfully sorry for you, Alan.  But I can't help myself.  You\nare the one man who is able to save me.  I am forced to bring you into\nthe matter.  I have no option.  Alan, you are scientific.  You know\nabout chemistry and things of that kind.  You have made experiments.\nWhat you have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs--to\ndestroy it so that not a vestige of it will be left.  Nobody saw this\nperson come into the house.  Indeed, at the present moment he is\nsupposed to be in Paris.  He will not be missed for months.  When he is\nmissed, there must be no trace of him found here.  You, Alan, you must\nchange him, and everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes\nthat I may scatter in the air.\"\n\n\"You are mad, Dorian.\"\n\n\"Ah!  I was waiting for you to call me Dorian.\"\n\n\"You are mad, I tell you--mad to imagine that I would raise a finger to\nhelp you, mad to make this monstrous confession.  I will have nothing\nto do with this matter, whatever it is.  Do you think I am going to\nperil my reputation for you?  What is it to me what devil's work you\nare up to?\"\n\n\"It was suicide, Alan.\"\n\n\"I am glad of that.  But who drove him to it?  You, I should fancy.\"\n\n\"Do you still refuse to do this for me?\"\n\n\"Of course I refuse.  I will have absolutely nothing to do with it.  I\ndon't care what shame comes on you.  You deserve it all.  I should not\nbe sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced.  How dare you ask\nme, of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror?  I should\nhave thought you knew more about people's characters.  Your friend Lord\nHenry Wotton can't have taught you much about psychology, whatever else\nhe has taught you.  Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you.\nYou have come to the wrong man.  Go to some of your friends.  Don't\ncome to me.\"\n\n\"Alan, it was murder.  I killed him.  You don't know what he had made\nme suffer.  Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or\nthe marring of it than poor Harry has had.  He may not have intended\nit, the result was the same.\"\n\n\"Murder!  Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to?  I shall not\ninform upon you.  It is not my business.  Besides, without my stirring\nin the matter, you are certain to be arrested.  Nobody ever commits a\ncrime without doing something stupid.  But I will have nothing to do\nwith it.\"\n\n\"You must have something to do with it.  Wait, wait a moment; listen to\nme.  Only listen, Alan.  All I ask of you is to perform a certain\nscientific experiment.  You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the\nhorrors that you do there don't affect you.  If in some hideous\ndissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a\nleaden table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow\nthrough, you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject.  You\nwould not turn a hair.  You would not believe that you were doing\nanything wrong.  On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were\nbenefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the\nworld, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind.\nWhat I want you to do is merely what you have often done before.\nIndeed, to destroy a body must be far less horrible than what you are\naccustomed to work at.  And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence\nagainst me.  If it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be\ndiscovered unless you help me.\"\n\n\"I have no desire to help you.  You forget that.  I am simply\nindifferent to the whole thing.  It has nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\"Alan, I entreat you.  Think of the position I am in.  Just before you\ncame I almost fainted with terror.  You may know terror yourself some\nday.  No! don't think of that.  Look at the matter purely from the\nscientific point of view.  You don't inquire where the dead things on\nwhich you experiment come from.  Don't inquire now.  I have told you\ntoo much as it is.  But I beg of you to do this.  We were friends once,\nAlan.\"\n\n\"Don't speak about those days, Dorian--they are dead.\"\n\n\"The dead linger sometimes.  The man upstairs will not go away.  He is\nsitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms.  Alan!\nAlan!  If you don't come to my assistance, I am ruined.  Why, they will\nhang me, Alan!  Don't you understand?  They will hang me for what I\nhave done.\"\n\n\"There is no good in prolonging this scene.  I absolutely refuse to do\nanything in the matter.  It is insane of you to ask me.\"\n\n\"You refuse?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I entreat you, Alan.\"\n\n\"It is useless.\"\n\nThe same look of pity came into Dorian Gray's eyes.  Then he stretched\nout his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it.  He\nread it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the\ntable.  Having done this, he got up and went over to the window.\n\nCampbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and\nopened it.  As he read it, his face became ghastly pale and he fell\nback in his chair.  A horrible sense of sickness came over him.  He\nfelt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.\n\nAfter two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round and\ncame and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.\n\n\"I am so sorry for you, Alan,\" he murmured, \"but you leave me no\nalternative.  I have a letter written already.  Here it is.  You see\nthe address.  If you don't help me, I must send it.  If you don't help\nme, I will send it.  You know what the result will be.  But you are\ngoing to help me.  It is impossible for you to refuse now.  I tried to\nspare you.  You will do me the justice to admit that.  You were stern,\nharsh, offensive.  You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat\nme--no living man, at any rate.  I bore it all.  Now it is for me to\ndictate terms.\"\n\nCampbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.\n\n\"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan.  You know what they are.\nThe thing is quite simple.  Come, don't work yourself into this fever.\nThe thing has to be done.  Face it, and do it.\"\n\nA groan broke from Campbell's lips and he shivered all over.  The\nticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing\ntime into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be\nborne.  He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his\nforehead, as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already\ncome upon him.  The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead.\nIt was intolerable.  It seemed to crush him.\n\n\"Come, Alan, you must decide at once.\"\n\n\"I cannot do it,\" he said, mechanically, as though words could alter\nthings.\n\n\"You must.  You have no choice.  Don't delay.\"\n\nHe hesitated a moment.  \"Is there a fire in the room upstairs?\"\n\n\"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos.\"\n\n\"I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory.\"\n\n\"No, Alan, you must not leave the house.  Write out on a sheet of\nnotepaper what you want and my servant will take a cab and bring the\nthings back to you.\"\n\nCampbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope\nto his assistant.  Dorian took the note up and read it carefully.  Then\nhe rang the bell and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as\nsoon as possible and to bring the things with him.\n\nAs the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and having got up\nfrom the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with a\nkind of ague.  For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke.  A\nfly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was\nlike the beat of a hammer.\n\nAs the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and looking at Dorian\nGray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears.  There was something in\nthe purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him.\n\"You are infamous, absolutely infamous!\" he muttered.\n\n\"Hush, Alan.  You have saved my life,\" said Dorian.\n\n\"Your life?  Good heavens! what a life that is!  You have gone from\ncorruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime.  In\ndoing what I am going to do--what you force me to do--it is not of your\nlife that I am thinking.\"\n\n\"Ah, Alan,\" murmured Dorian with a sigh, \"I wish you had a thousandth\npart of the pity for me that I have for you.\" He turned away as he\nspoke and stood looking out at the garden.  Campbell made no answer.\n\nAfter about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant\nentered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil\nof steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously shaped iron clamps.\n\n\"Shall I leave the things here, sir?\" he asked Campbell.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Dorian.  \"And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another\nerrand for you.  What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies\nSelby with orchids?\"\n\n\"Harden, sir.\"\n\n\"Yes--Harden.  You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden\npersonally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered,\nand to have as few white ones as possible.  In fact, I don't want any\nwhite ones.  It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty\nplace--otherwise I wouldn't bother you about it.\"\n\n\"No trouble, sir.  At what time shall I be back?\"\n\nDorian looked at Campbell.  \"How long will your experiment take, Alan?\"\nhe said in a calm indifferent voice.  The presence of a third person in\nthe room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.\n\nCampbell frowned and bit his lip.  \"It will take about five hours,\" he\nanswered.\n\n\"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven,\nFrancis.  Or stay:  just leave my things out for dressing.  You can\nhave the evening to yourself.  I am not dining at home, so I shall not\nwant you.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir,\" said the man, leaving the room.\n\n\"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost.  How heavy this chest is!\nI'll take it for you.  You bring the other things.\"  He spoke rapidly\nand in an authoritative manner.  Campbell felt dominated by him.  They\nleft the room together.\n\nWhen they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned\nit in the lock.  Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his\neyes.  He shuddered.  \"I don't think I can go in, Alan,\" he murmured.\n\n\"It is nothing to me.  I don't require you,\" said Campbell coldly.\n\nDorian half opened the door.  As he did so, he saw the face of his\nportrait leering in the sunlight.  On the floor in front of it the torn\ncurtain was lying.  He remembered that the night before he had\nforgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas,\nand was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder.\n\nWhat was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on\none of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood?  How horrible\nit was!--more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the\nsilent thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing\nwhose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that\nit had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.\n\nHe heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with\nhalf-closed eyes and averted head, walked quickly in, determined that\nhe would not look even once upon the dead man.  Then, stooping down and\ntaking up the gold-and-purple hanging, he flung it right over the\npicture.\n\nThere he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed\nthemselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him.  He heard\nCampbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other\nthings that he had required for his dreadful work.  He began to wonder\nif he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had\nthought of each other.\n\n\"Leave me now,\" said a stern voice behind him.\n\nHe turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been\nthrust back into the chair and that Campbell was gazing into a\nglistening yellow face.  As he was going downstairs, he heard the key\nbeing turned in the lock.\n\nIt was long after seven when Campbell came back into the library.  He\nwas pale, but absolutely calm.  \"I have done what you asked me to do,\"\nhe muttered. \"And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other again.\"\n\n\"You have saved me from ruin, Alan.  I cannot forget that,\" said Dorian\nsimply.\n\nAs soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs.  There was a horrible\nsmell of nitric acid in the room.  But the thing that had been sitting\nat the table was gone.\n\n\n\n\n\nThat evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large\nbutton-hole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady\nNarborough's drawing-room by bowing servants.  His forehead was\nthrobbing with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his\nmanner as he bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as\never.  Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to\nplay a part.  Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could\nhave believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any\ntragedy of our age.  Those finely shaped fingers could never have\nclutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God\nand goodness.  He himself could not help wondering at the calm of his\ndemeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a\ndouble life.\n\nIt was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, who\nwas a very clever woman with what Lord Henry used to describe as the\nremains of really remarkable ugliness.  She had proved an excellent\nwife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her\nhusband properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed,\nand married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she\ndevoted herself now to the pleasures of French fiction, French cookery,\nand French _esprit_ when she could get it.\n\nDorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him that\nshe was extremely glad she had not met him in early life.  \"I know, my\ndear, I should have fallen madly in love with you,\" she used to say,\n\"and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake.  It is most\nfortunate that you were not thought of at the time.  As it was, our\nbonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to\nraise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody.\nHowever, that was all Narborough's fault.  He was dreadfully\nshort-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who\nnever sees anything.\"\n\nHer guests this evening were rather tedious.  The fact was, as she\nexplained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married\ndaughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make\nmatters worse, had actually brought her husband with her.  \"I think it\nis most unkind of her, my dear,\" she whispered.  \"Of course I go and\nstay with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old\nwoman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake\nthem up.  You don't know what an existence they lead down there.  It is\npure unadulterated country life.  They get up early, because they have\nso much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to\nthink about.  There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since\nthe time of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep\nafter dinner.  You shan't sit next either of them.  You shall sit by me\nand amuse me.\"\n\nDorian murmured a graceful compliment and looked round the room.  Yes:\nit was certainly a tedious party.  Two of the people he had never seen\nbefore, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those\nmiddle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies,\nbut are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an\noverdressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always\ntrying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to\nher great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against\nher; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp and\nVenetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy\ndull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces that, once\nseen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked,\nwhite-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the\nimpression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of\nideas.\n\nHe was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the\ngreat ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the\nmauve-draped mantelshelf, exclaimed:  \"How horrid of Henry Wotton to be\nso late!  I sent round to him this morning on chance and he promised\nfaithfully not to disappoint me.\"\n\nIt was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door\nopened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some\ninsincere apology, he ceased to feel bored.\n\nBut at dinner he could not eat anything.  Plate after plate went away\nuntasted.  Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called \"an\ninsult to poor Adolphe, who invented the _menu_ specially for you,\" and\nnow and then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence\nand abstracted manner.  From time to time the butler filled his glass\nwith champagne.  He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase.\n\n\"Dorian,\" said Lord Henry at last, as the _chaud-froid_ was being handed\nround, \"what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out of\nsorts.\"\n\n\"I believe he is in love,\" cried Lady Narborough, \"and that he is\nafraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous.  He is quite right.  I\ncertainly should.\"\n\n\"Dear Lady Narborough,\" murmured Dorian, smiling, \"I have not been in\nlove for a whole week--not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town.\"\n\n\"How you men can fall in love with that woman!\" exclaimed the old lady.\n\"I really cannot understand it.\"\n\n\"It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl,\nLady Narborough,\" said Lord Henry.  \"She is the one link between us and\nyour short frocks.\"\n\n\"She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry.  But I\nremember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how _decolletee_\nshe was then.\"\n\n\"She is still _decolletee_,\" he answered, taking an olive in his long\nfingers; \"and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an\n_edition de luxe_ of a bad French novel.  She is really wonderful, and\nfull of surprises.  Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary.\nWhen her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.\"\n\n\"How can you, Harry!\" cried Dorian.\n\n\"It is a most romantic explanation,\" laughed the hostess.  \"But her\nthird husband, Lord Henry!  You don't mean to say Ferrol is the fourth?\"\n\n\"Certainly, Lady Narborough.\"\n\n\"I don't believe a word of it.\"\n\n\"Well, ask Mr. Gray.  He is one of her most intimate friends.\"\n\n\"Is it true, Mr. Gray?\"\n\n\"She assures me so, Lady Narborough,\" said Dorian.  \"I asked her\nwhether, like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and\nhung at her girdle.  She told me she didn't, because none of them had\nhad any hearts at all.\"\n\n\"Four husbands!  Upon my word that is _trop de zele_.\"\n\n\"_Trop d'audace_, I tell her,\" said Dorian.\n\n\"Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear.  And what is Ferrol\nlike?  I don't know him.\"\n\n\"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,\"\nsaid Lord Henry, sipping his wine.\n\nLady Narborough hit him with her fan.  \"Lord Henry, I am not at all\nsurprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked.\"\n\n\"But what world says that?\" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows.\n\"It can only be the next world.  This world and I are on excellent\nterms.\"\n\n\"Everybody I know says you are very wicked,\" cried the old lady,\nshaking her head.\n\nLord Henry looked serious for some moments.  \"It is perfectly\nmonstrous,\" he said, at last, \"the way people go about nowadays saying\nthings against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely\ntrue.\"\n\n\"Isn't he incorrigible?\" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair.\n\n\"I hope so,\" said his hostess, laughing.  \"But really, if you all\nworship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry\nagain so as to be in the fashion.\"\n\n\"You will never marry again, Lady Narborough,\" broke in Lord Henry.\n\"You were far too happy.  When a woman marries again, it is because she\ndetested her first husband.  When a man marries again, it is because he\nadored his first wife.  Women try their luck; men risk theirs.\"\n\n\"Narborough wasn't perfect,\" cried the old lady.\n\n\"If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady,\" was the\nrejoinder.  \"Women love us for our defects.  If we have enough of them,\nthey will forgive us everything, even our intellects.  You will never\nask me to dinner again after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough,\nbut it is quite true.\"\n\n\"Of course it is true, Lord Henry.  If we women did not love you for\nyour defects, where would you all be?  Not one of you would ever be\nmarried.  You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors.  Not, however,\nthat that would alter you much.  Nowadays all the married men live like\nbachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.\"\n\n\"_Fin de siecle_,\" murmured Lord Henry.\n\n\"_Fin du globe_,\" answered his hostess.\n\n\"I wish it were _fin du globe_,\" said Dorian with a sigh.  \"Life is a\ngreat disappointment.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear,\" cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, \"don't\ntell me that you have exhausted life.  When a man says that one knows\nthat life has exhausted him.  Lord Henry is very wicked, and I\nsometimes wish that I had been; but you are made to be good--you look\nso good.  I must find you a nice wife.  Lord Henry, don't you think\nthat Mr. Gray should get married?\"\n\n\"I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough,\" said Lord Henry with a\nbow.\n\n\"Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him.  I shall go\nthrough Debrett carefully to-night and draw out a list of all the\neligible young ladies.\"\n\n\"With their ages, Lady Narborough?\" asked Dorian.\n\n\"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited.  But nothing must be done\nin a hurry.  I want it to be what _The Morning Post_ calls a suitable\nalliance, and I want you both to be happy.\"\n\n\"What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!\" exclaimed Lord\nHenry.  \"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love\nher.\"\n\n\"Ah! what a cynic you are!\" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair\nand nodding to Lady Ruxton.  \"You must come and dine with me soon\nagain.  You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir\nAndrew prescribes for me.  You must tell me what people you would like\nto meet, though.  I want it to be a delightful gathering.\"\n\n\"I like men who have a future and women who have a past,\" he answered.\n\"Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?\"\n\n\"I fear so,\" she said, laughing, as she stood up.  \"A thousand pardons,\nmy dear Lady Ruxton,\" she added, \"I didn't see you hadn't finished your\ncigarette.\"\n\n\"Never mind, Lady Narborough.  I smoke a great deal too much.  I am\ngoing to limit myself, for the future.\"\n\n\"Pray don't, Lady Ruxton,\" said Lord Henry.  \"Moderation is a fatal\nthing.  Enough is as bad as a meal.  More than enough is as good as a\nfeast.\"\n\nLady Ruxton glanced at him curiously.  \"You must come and explain that\nto me some afternoon, Lord Henry.  It sounds a fascinating theory,\" she\nmurmured, as she swept out of the room.\n\n\"Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal,\"\ncried Lady Narborough from the door.  \"If you do, we are sure to\nsquabble upstairs.\"\n\nThe men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the\ntable and came up to the top.  Dorian Gray changed his seat and went\nand sat by Lord Henry.  Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about\nthe situation in the House of Commons.  He guffawed at his adversaries.\nThe word _doctrinaire_--word full of terror to the British\nmind--reappeared from time to time between his explosions.  An\nalliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.  He hoisted the\nUnion Jack on the pinnacles of thought.  The inherited stupidity of the\nrace--sound English common sense he jovially termed it--was shown to be\nthe proper bulwark for society.\n\nA smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at\nDorian.\n\n\"Are you better, my dear fellow?\" he asked.  \"You seemed rather out of\nsorts at dinner.\"\n\n\"I am quite well, Harry.  I am tired.  That is all.\"\n\n\"You were charming last night.  The little duchess is quite devoted to\nyou.  She tells me she is going down to Selby.\"\n\n\"She has promised to come on the twentieth.\"\n\n\"Is Monmouth to be there, too?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, Harry.\"\n\n\"He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her.  She is very\nclever, too clever for a woman.  She lacks the indefinable charm of\nweakness.  It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image\nprecious.  Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay.\nWhite porcelain feet, if you like.  They have been through the fire,\nand what fire does not destroy, it hardens.  She has had experiences.\"\n\n\"How long has she been married?\" asked Dorian.\n\n\"An eternity, she tells me.  I believe, according to the peerage, it is\nten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity,\nwith time thrown in.  Who else is coming?\"\n\n\"Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey\nClouston, the usual set.  I have asked Lord Grotrian.\"\n\n\"I like him,\" said Lord Henry.  \"A great many people don't, but I find\nhim charming.  He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by\nbeing always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type.\"\n\n\"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry.  He may have to go to\nMonte Carlo with his father.\"\n\n\"Ah! what a nuisance people's people are!  Try and make him come.  By\nthe way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night.  You left before\neleven.  What did you do afterwards?  Did you go straight home?\"\n\nDorian glanced at him hurriedly and frowned.\n\n\"No, Harry,\" he said at last, \"I did not get home till nearly three.\"\n\n\"Did you go to the club?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he answered.  Then he bit his lip.  \"No, I don't mean that.  I\ndidn't go to the club.  I walked about.  I forget what I did.... How\ninquisitive you are, Harry!  You always want to know what one has been\ndoing.  I always want to forget what I have been doing.  I came in at\nhalf-past two, if you wish to know the exact time.  I had left my\nlatch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in.  If you want any\ncorroborative evidence on the subject, you can ask him.\"\n\nLord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  \"My dear fellow, as if I cared!\nLet us go up to the drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman.\nSomething has happened to you, Dorian.  Tell me what it is.  You are\nnot yourself to-night.\"\n\n\"Don't mind me, Harry.  I am irritable, and out of temper.  I shall\ncome round and see you to-morrow, or next day.  Make my excuses to Lady\nNarborough.  I shan't go upstairs.  I shall go home.  I must go home.\"\n\n\"All right, Dorian.  I dare say I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time.\nThe duchess is coming.\"\n\n\"I will try to be there, Harry,\" he said, leaving the room.  As he\ndrove back to his own house, he was conscious that the sense of terror\nhe thought he had strangled had come back to him.  Lord Henry's casual\nquestioning had made him lose his nerve for the moment, and he wanted\nhis nerve still.  Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed.  He\nwinced.  He hated the idea of even touching them.\n\nYet it had to be done.  He realized that, and when he had locked the\ndoor of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had\nthrust Basil Hallward's coat and bag.  A huge fire was blazing.  He\npiled another log on it.  The smell of the singeing clothes and burning\nleather was horrible.  It took him three-quarters of an hour to consume\neverything.  At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some\nAlgerian pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and\nforehead with a cool musk-scented vinegar.\n\nSuddenly he started.  His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed\nnervously at his underlip.  Between two of the windows stood a large\nFlorentine cabinet, made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and blue\nlapis.  He watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate\nand make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet\nalmost loathed.  His breath quickened.  A mad craving came over him.\nHe lit a cigarette and then threw it away.  His eyelids drooped till\nthe long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek.  But he still watched\nthe cabinet.  At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been\nlying, went over to it, and having unlocked it, touched some hidden\nspring.  A triangular drawer passed slowly out.  His fingers moved\ninstinctively towards it, dipped in, and closed on something.  It was a\nsmall Chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought,\nthe sides patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with\nround crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads.  He opened it.\nInside was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and\npersistent.\n\nHe hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his\nface.  Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly\nhot, he drew himself up and glanced at the clock.  It was twenty\nminutes to twelve.  He put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as\nhe did so, and went into his bedroom.\n\nAs midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray,\ndressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept\nquietly out of his house.  In Bond Street he found a hansom with a good\nhorse.  He hailed it and in a low voice gave the driver an address.\n\nThe man shook his head.  \"It is too far for me,\" he muttered.\n\n\"Here is a sovereign for you,\" said Dorian.  \"You shall have another if\nyou drive fast.\"\n\n\"All right, sir,\" answered the man, \"you will be there in an hour,\" and\nafter his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove rapidly\ntowards the river.\n\n\n\n\n\nA cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly\nin the dripping mist.  The public-houses were just closing, and dim men\nand women were clustering in broken groups round their doors.  From\nsome of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter.  In others,\ndrunkards brawled and screamed.\n\nLying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian\nGray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and\nnow and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said\nto him on the first day they had met, \"To cure the soul by means of the\nsenses, and the senses by means of the soul.\"  Yes, that was the\nsecret.  He had often tried it, and would try it again now.  There were\nopium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the\nmemory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were\nnew.\n\nThe moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull.  From time to time a\nhuge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it.  The\ngas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy.  Once the\nman lost his way and had to drive back half a mile.  A steam rose from\nthe horse as it splashed up the puddles.  The sidewindows of the hansom\nwere clogged with a grey-flannel mist.\n\n\"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of\nthe soul!\"  How the words rang in his ears!  His soul, certainly, was\nsick to death.  Was it true that the senses could cure it?  Innocent\nblood had been spilled.  What could atone for that?  Ah! for that there\nwas no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness\nwas possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing\nout, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one.\nIndeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done?  Who\nhad made him a judge over others?  He had said things that were\ndreadful, horrible, not to be endured.\n\nOn and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each\nstep.  He thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster.\nThe hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him.  His throat burned\nand his delicate hands twitched nervously together.  He struck at the\nhorse madly with his stick.  The driver laughed and whipped up.  He\nlaughed in answer, and the man was silent.\n\nThe way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some\nsprawling spider.  The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist\nthickened, he felt afraid.\n\nThen they passed by lonely brickfields.  The fog was lighter here, and\nhe could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange,\nfanlike tongues of fire.  A dog barked as they went by, and far away in\nthe darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed.  The horse stumbled in a\nrut, then swerved aside and broke into a gallop.\n\nAfter some time they left the clay road and rattled again over\nrough-paven streets.  Most of the windows were dark, but now and then\nfantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind.  He\nwatched them curiously.  They moved like monstrous marionettes and made\ngestures like live things.  He hated them.  A dull rage was in his\nheart.  As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from\nan open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred\nyards.  The driver beat at them with his whip.\n\nIt is said that passion makes one think in a circle.  Certainly with\nhideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped\nthose subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in\nthem the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by\nintellectual approval, passions that without such justification would\nstill have dominated his temper.  From cell to cell of his brain crept\nthe one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all\nman's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre.\nUgliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real,\nbecame dear to him now for that very reason.  Ugliness was the one\nreality.  The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of\ndisordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more\nvivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious\nshapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song.  They were what he needed\nfor forgetfulness.  In three days he would be free.\n\nSuddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane.  Over\nthe low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black\nmasts of ships.  Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the\nyards.\n\n\"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?\" he asked huskily through the\ntrap.\n\nDorian started and peered round.  \"This will do,\" he answered, and\nhaving got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had\npromised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay.  Here and\nthere a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman.  The\nlight shook and splintered in the puddles.  A red glare came from an\noutward-bound steamer that was coaling.  The slimy pavement looked like\na wet mackintosh.\n\nHe hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he\nwas being followed.  In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small\nshabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories.  In one of\nthe top-windows stood a lamp.  He stopped and gave a peculiar knock.\n\nAfter a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain being\nunhooked.  The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a\nword to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the\nshadow as he passed.  At the end of the hall hung a tattered green\ncurtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him\nin from the street.  He dragged it aside and entered a long low room\nwhich looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill\nflaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that\nfaced them, were ranged round the walls.  Greasy reflectors of ribbed\ntin backed them, making quivering disks of light.  The floor was\ncovered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud,\nand stained with dark rings of spilled liquor.  Some Malays were\ncrouching by a little charcoal stove, playing with bone counters and\nshowing their white teeth as they chattered.  In one corner, with his\nhead buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the\ntawdrily painted bar that ran across one complete side stood two\nhaggard women, mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his\ncoat with an expression of disgust.  \"He thinks he's got red ants on\nhim,\" laughed one of them, as Dorian passed by.  The man looked at her\nin terror and began to whimper.\n\nAt the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a\ndarkened chamber.  As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the\nheavy odour of opium met him.  He heaved a deep breath, and his\nnostrils quivered with pleasure.  When he entered, a young man with\nsmooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin\npipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner.\n\n\"You here, Adrian?\" muttered Dorian.\n\n\"Where else should I be?\" he answered, listlessly.  \"None of the chaps\nwill speak to me now.\"\n\n\"I thought you had left England.\"\n\n\"Darlington is not going to do anything.  My brother paid the bill at\nlast.  George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care,\" he added\nwith a sigh.  \"As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends.\nI think I have had too many friends.\"\n\nDorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such\nfantastic postures on the ragged mattresses.  The twisted limbs, the\ngaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him.  He knew in\nwhat strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were\nteaching them the secret of some new joy.  They were better off than he\nwas.  He was prisoned in thought.  Memory, like a horrible malady, was\neating his soul away.  From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of\nBasil Hallward looking at him.  Yet he felt he could not stay.  The\npresence of Adrian Singleton troubled him.  He wanted to be where no\none would know who he was.  He wanted to escape from himself.\n\n\"I am going on to the other place,\" he said after a pause.\n\n\"On the wharf?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"That mad-cat is sure to be there.  They won't have her in this place\nnow.\"\n\nDorian shrugged his shoulders.  \"I am sick of women who love one.\nWomen who hate one are much more interesting.  Besides, the stuff is\nbetter.\"\n\n\"Much the same.\"\n\n\"I like it better.  Come and have something to drink.  I must have\nsomething.\"\n\n\"I don't want anything,\" murmured the young man.\n\n\"Never mind.\"\n\nAdrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar.  A\nhalf-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous\ngreeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of\nthem.  The women sidled up and began to chatter.  Dorian turned his\nback on them and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.\n\nA crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of\nthe women.  \"We are very proud to-night,\" she sneered.\n\n\"For God's sake don't talk to me,\" cried Dorian, stamping his foot on\nthe ground.  \"What do you want?  Money?  Here it is.  Don't ever talk\nto me again.\"\n\nTwo red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then\nflickered out and left them dull and glazed.  She tossed her head and\nraked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers.  Her companion\nwatched her enviously.\n\n\"It's no use,\" sighed Adrian Singleton.  \"I don't care to go back.\nWhat does it matter?  I am quite happy here.\"\n\n\"You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?\" said Dorian,\nafter a pause.\n\n\"Perhaps.\"\n\n\"Good night, then.\"\n\n\"Good night,\" answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping\nhis parched mouth with a handkerchief.\n\nDorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face.  As he drew\nthe curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the\nwoman who had taken his money.  \"There goes the devil's bargain!\" she\nhiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.\n\n\"Curse you!\" he answered, \"don't call me that.\"\n\nShe snapped her fingers.  \"Prince Charming is what you like to be\ncalled, ain't it?\" she yelled after him.\n\nThe drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly\nround.  The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear.  He\nrushed out as if in pursuit.\n\nDorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain.  His\nmeeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered\nif the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as\nBasil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult.  He bit his\nlip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad.  Yet, after all, what did\nit matter to him?  One's days were too brief to take the burden of\nanother's errors on one's shoulders.  Each man lived his own life and\npaid his own price for living it.  The only pity was one had to pay so\noften for a single fault.  One had to pay over and over again, indeed.\nIn her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.\n\nThere are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or\nfor what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of\nthe body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful\nimpulses.  Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their\nwill.  They move to their terrible end as automatons move.  Choice is\ntaken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at\nall, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its\ncharm.  For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are\nsins of disobedience.  When that high spirit, that morning star of\nevil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.\n\nCallous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for\nrebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but\nas he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a\nshort cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself\nsuddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself,\nhe was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his\nthroat.\n\nHe struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the\ntightening fingers away.  In a second he heard the click of a revolver,\nand saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head,\nand the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him.\n\n\"What do you want?\" he gasped.\n\n\"Keep quiet,\" said the man.  \"If you stir, I shoot you.\"\n\n\"You are mad.  What have I done to you?\"\n\n\"You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane,\" was the answer, \"and Sibyl Vane\nwas my sister.  She killed herself.  I know it.  Her death is at your\ndoor.  I swore I would kill you in return.  For years I have sought\nyou.  I had no clue, no trace.  The two people who could have described\nyou were dead.  I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call\nyou.  I heard it to-night by chance.  Make your peace with God, for\nto-night you are going to die.\"\n\nDorian Gray grew sick with fear.  \"I never knew her,\" he stammered.  \"I\nnever heard of her.  You are mad.\"\n\n\"You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you\nare going to die.\"  There was a horrible moment.  Dorian did not know\nwhat to say or do.  \"Down on your knees!\" growled the man.  \"I give you\none minute to make your peace--no more.  I go on board to-night for\nIndia, and I must do my job first.  One minute.  That's all.\"\n\nDorian's arms fell to his side.  Paralysed with terror, he did not know\nwhat to do.  Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain.  \"Stop,\" he\ncried.  \"How long ago is it since your sister died?  Quick, tell me!\"\n\n\"Eighteen years,\" said the man.  \"Why do you ask me?  What do years\nmatter?\"\n\n\"Eighteen years,\" laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his\nvoice.  \"Eighteen years!  Set me under the lamp and look at my face!\"\n\nJames Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant.\nThen he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.\n\nDim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him\nthe hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face\nof the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the\nunstained purity of youth.  He seemed little more than a lad of twenty\nsummers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been\nwhen they had parted so many years ago.  It was obvious that this was\nnot the man who had destroyed her life.\n\nHe loosened his hold and reeled back.  \"My God! my God!\" he cried, \"and\nI would have murdered you!\"\n\nDorian Gray drew a long breath.  \"You have been on the brink of\ncommitting a terrible crime, my man,\" he said, looking at him sternly.\n\"Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own\nhands.\"\n\n\"Forgive me, sir,\" muttered James Vane.  \"I was deceived.  A chance\nword I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track.\"\n\n\"You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into\ntrouble,\" said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down the\nstreet.\n\nJames Vane stood on the pavement in horror.  He was trembling from head\nto foot.  After a little while, a black shadow that had been creeping\nalong the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him\nwith stealthy footsteps.  He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked\nround with a start.  It was one of the women who had been drinking at\nthe bar.\n\n\"Why didn't you kill him?\" she hissed out, putting haggard face quite\nclose to his.  \"I knew you were following him when you rushed out from\nDaly's. You fool!  You should have killed him.  He has lots of money,\nand he's as bad as bad.\"\n\n\"He is not the man I am looking for,\" he answered, \"and I want no man's\nmoney.  I want a man's life.  The man whose life I want must be nearly\nforty now.  This one is little more than a boy.  Thank God, I have not\ngot his blood upon my hands.\"\n\nThe woman gave a bitter laugh.  \"Little more than a boy!\" she sneered.\n\"Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me\nwhat I am.\"\n\n\"You lie!\" cried James Vane.\n\nShe raised her hand up to heaven.  \"Before God I am telling the truth,\"\nshe cried.\n\n\"Before God?\"\n\n\"Strike me dumb if it ain't so.  He is the worst one that comes here.\nThey say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face.  It's nigh\non eighteen years since I met him.  He hasn't changed much since then.\nI have, though,\" she added, with a sickly leer.\n\n\"You swear this?\"\n\n\"I swear it,\" came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth.  \"But don't give\nme away to him,\" she whined; \"I am afraid of him.  Let me have some\nmoney for my night's lodging.\"\n\nHe broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street,\nbut Dorian Gray had disappeared.  When he looked back, the woman had\nvanished also.\n\n\n\n\n\nA week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby\nRoyal, talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband,\na jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests.  It was tea-time,\nand the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that stood on the\ntable lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at\nwhich the duchess was presiding.  Her white hands were moving daintily\namong the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that\nDorian had whispered to her.  Lord Henry was lying back in a\nsilk-draped wicker chair, looking at them.  On a peach-coloured divan\nsat Lady Narborough, pretending to listen to the duke's description of\nthe last Brazilian beetle that he had added to his collection.  Three\nyoung men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of\nthe women.  The house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were\nmore expected to arrive on the next day.\n\n\"What are you two talking about?\" said Lord Henry, strolling over to\nthe table and putting his cup down.  \"I hope Dorian has told you about\nmy plan for rechristening everything, Gladys.  It is a delightful idea.\"\n\n\"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry,\" rejoined the duchess,\nlooking up at him with her wonderful eyes.  \"I am quite satisfied with\nmy own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his.\"\n\n\"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world.  They are\nboth perfect.  I was thinking chiefly of flowers.  Yesterday I cut an\norchid, for my button-hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as\neffective as the seven deadly sins.  In a thoughtless moment I asked\none of the gardeners what it was called.  He told me it was a fine\nspecimen of _Robinsoniana_, or something dreadful of that kind.  It is a\nsad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to\nthings.  Names are everything.  I never quarrel with actions.  My one\nquarrel is with words.  That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in\nliterature.  The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled\nto use one.  It is the only thing he is fit for.\"\n\n\"Then what should we call you, Harry?\" she asked.\n\n\"His name is Prince Paradox,\" said Dorian.\n\n\"I recognize him in a flash,\" exclaimed the duchess.\n\n\"I won't hear of it,\" laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair.  \"From\na label there is no escape!  I refuse the title.\"\n\n\"Royalties may not abdicate,\" fell as a warning from pretty lips.\n\n\"You wish me to defend my throne, then?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I give the truths of to-morrow.\"\n\n\"I prefer the mistakes of to-day,\" she answered.\n\n\"You disarm me, Gladys,\" he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood.\n\n\"Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear.\"\n\n\"I never tilt against beauty,\" he said, with a wave of his hand.\n\n\"That is your error, Harry, believe me.  You value beauty far too much.\"\n\n\"How can you say that?  I admit that I think that it is better to be\nbeautiful than to be good.  But on the other hand, no one is more ready\nthan I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.\"\n\n\"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?\" cried the duchess.\n\"What becomes of your simile about the orchid?\"\n\n\"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys.  You, as a good\nTory, must not underrate them.  Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly\nvirtues have made our England what she is.\"\n\n\"You don't like your country, then?\" she asked.\n\n\"I live in it.\"\n\n\"That you may censure it the better.\"\n\n\"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?\" he inquired.\n\n\"What do they say of us?\"\n\n\"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop.\"\n\n\"Is that yours, Harry?\"\n\n\"I give it to you.\"\n\n\"I could not use it.  It is too true.\"\n\n\"You need not be afraid.  Our countrymen never recognize a description.\"\n\n\"They are practical.\"\n\n\"They are more cunning than practical.  When they make up their ledger,\nthey balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.\"\n\n\"Still, we have done great things.\"\n\n\"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys.\"\n\n\"We have carried their burden.\"\n\n\"Only as far as the Stock Exchange.\"\n\nShe shook her head.  \"I believe in the race,\" she cried.\n\n\"It represents the survival of the pushing.\"\n\n\"It has development.\"\n\n\"Decay fascinates me more.\"\n\n\"What of art?\" she asked.\n\n\"It is a malady.\"\n\n\"Love?\"\n\n\"An illusion.\"\n\n\"Religion?\"\n\n\"The fashionable substitute for belief.\"\n\n\"You are a sceptic.\"\n\n\"Never!  Scepticism is the beginning of faith.\"\n\n\"What are you?\"\n\n\"To define is to limit.\"\n\n\"Give me a clue.\"\n\n\"Threads snap.  You would lose your way in the labyrinth.\"\n\n\"You bewilder me.  Let us talk of some one else.\"\n\n\"Our host is a delightful topic.  Years ago he was christened Prince\nCharming.\"\n\n\"Ah! don't remind me of that,\" cried Dorian Gray.\n\n\"Our host is rather horrid this evening,\" answered the duchess,\ncolouring.  \"I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely\nscientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern\nbutterfly.\"\n\n\"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess,\" laughed Dorian.\n\n\"Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with me.\"\n\n\"And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?\"\n\n\"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you.  Usually because\nI come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that I must be dressed by\nhalf-past eight.\"\n\n\"How unreasonable of her!  You should give her warning.\"\n\n\"I daren't, Mr. Gray.  Why, she invents hats for me.  You remember the\none I wore at Lady Hilstone's garden-party?  You don't, but it is nice\nof you to pretend that you do.  Well, she made it out of nothing.  All\ngood hats are made out of nothing.\"\n\n\"Like all good reputations, Gladys,\" interrupted Lord Henry.  \"Every\neffect that one produces gives one an enemy.  To be popular one must be\na mediocrity.\"\n\n\"Not with women,\" said the duchess, shaking her head; \"and women rule\nthe world.  I assure you we can't bear mediocrities.  We women, as some\none says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if\nyou ever love at all.\"\n\n\"It seems to me that we never do anything else,\" murmured Dorian.\n\n\"Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray,\" answered the duchess with\nmock sadness.\n\n\"My dear Gladys!\" cried Lord Henry.  \"How can you say that?  Romance\nlives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.\nBesides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.\nDifference of object does not alter singleness of passion.  It merely\nintensifies it.  We can have in life but one great experience at best,\nand the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as\npossible.\"\n\n\"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?\" asked the duchess after\na pause.\n\n\"Especially when one has been wounded by it,\" answered Lord Henry.\n\nThe duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious expression\nin her eyes.  \"What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?\" she inquired.\n\nDorian hesitated for a moment.  Then he threw his head back and\nlaughed.  \"I always agree with Harry, Duchess.\"\n\n\"Even when he is wrong?\"\n\n\"Harry is never wrong, Duchess.\"\n\n\"And does his philosophy make you happy?\"\n\n\"I have never searched for happiness.  Who wants happiness?  I have\nsearched for pleasure.\"\n\n\"And found it, Mr. Gray?\"\n\n\"Often.  Too often.\"\n\nThe duchess sighed.  \"I am searching for peace,\" she said, \"and if I\ndon't go and dress, I shall have none this evening.\"\n\n\"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess,\" cried Dorian, starting to his\nfeet and walking down the conservatory.\n\n\"You are flirting disgracefully with him,\" said Lord Henry to his\ncousin.  \"You had better take care.  He is very fascinating.\"\n\n\"If he were not, there would be no battle.\"\n\n\"Greek meets Greek, then?\"\n\n\"I am on the side of the Trojans.  They fought for a woman.\"\n\n\"They were defeated.\"\n\n\"There are worse things than capture,\" she answered.\n\n\"You gallop with a loose rein.\"\n\n\"Pace gives life,\" was the _riposte_.\n\n\"I shall write it in my diary to-night.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"That a burnt child loves the fire.\"\n\n\"I am not even singed.  My wings are untouched.\"\n\n\"You use them for everything, except flight.\"\n\n\"Courage has passed from men to women.  It is a new experience for us.\"\n\n\"You have a rival.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\nHe laughed.  \"Lady Narborough,\" he whispered.  \"She perfectly adores\nhim.\"\n\n\"You fill me with apprehension.  The appeal to antiquity is fatal to us\nwho are romanticists.\"\n\n\"Romanticists!  You have all the methods of science.\"\n\n\"Men have educated us.\"\n\n\"But not explained you.\"\n\n\"Describe us as a sex,\" was her challenge.\n\n\"Sphinxes without secrets.\"\n\nShe looked at him, smiling.  \"How long Mr. Gray is!\" she said.  \"Let us\ngo and help him.  I have not yet told him the colour of my frock.\"\n\n\"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys.\"\n\n\"That would be a premature surrender.\"\n\n\"Romantic art begins with its climax.\"\n\n\"I must keep an opportunity for retreat.\"\n\n\"In the Parthian manner?\"\n\n\"They found safety in the desert.  I could not do that.\"\n\n\"Women are not always allowed a choice,\" he answered, but hardly had he\nfinished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came\na stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall.  Everybody\nstarted up.  The duchess stood motionless in horror.  And with fear in\nhis eyes, Lord Henry rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian\nGray lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a deathlike swoon.\n\nHe was carried at once into the blue drawing-room and laid upon one of\nthe sofas.  After a short time, he came to himself and looked round\nwith a dazed expression.\n\n\"What has happened?\" he asked.  \"Oh!  I remember.  Am I safe here,\nHarry?\" He began to tremble.\n\n\"My dear Dorian,\" answered Lord Henry, \"you merely fainted.  That was\nall.  You must have overtired yourself.  You had better not come down\nto dinner.  I will take your place.\"\n\n\"No, I will come down,\" he said, struggling to his feet.  \"I would\nrather come down.  I must not be alone.\"\n\nHe went to his room and dressed.  There was a wild recklessness of\ngaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of\nterror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the\nwindow of the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the\nface of James Vane watching him.\n\n\n\n\n\nThe next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the\ntime in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet\nindifferent to life itself.  The consciousness of being hunted, snared,\ntracked down, had begun to dominate him.  If the tapestry did but\ntremble in the wind, he shook.  The dead leaves that were blown against\nthe leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild\nregrets.  When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face\npeering through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to\nlay its hand upon his heart.\n\nBut perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of\nthe night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him.  Actual\nlife was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the\nimagination.  It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet\nof sin.  It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen\nbrood.  In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor\nthe good rewarded.  Success was given to the strong, failure thrust\nupon the weak.  That was all.  Besides, had any stranger been prowling\nround the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the\nkeepers.  Had any foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, the\ngardeners would have reported it.  Yes, it had been merely fancy.\nSibyl Vane's brother had not come back to kill him.  He had sailed away\nin his ship to founder in some winter sea.  From him, at any rate, he\nwas safe.  Why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he\nwas.  The mask of youth had saved him.\n\nAnd yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think\nthat conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them\nvisible form, and make them move before one!  What sort of life would\nhis be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from\nsilent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear\nas he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep!\nAs the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and\nthe air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder.  Oh! in what a\nwild hour of madness he had killed his friend!  How ghastly the mere\nmemory of the scene!  He saw it all again.  Each hideous detail came\nback to him with added horror.  Out of the black cave of time, terrible\nand swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin.  When Lord Henry\ncame in at six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will\nbreak.\n\nIt was not till the third day that he ventured to go out.  There was\nsomething in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that\nseemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life.  But\nit was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had\ncaused the change.  His own nature had revolted against the excess of\nanguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm.\nWith subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so.  Their\nstrong passions must either bruise or bend.  They either slay the man,\nor themselves die.  Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on.  The\nloves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.\nBesides, he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of a\nterror-stricken imagination, and looked back now on his fears with\nsomething of pity and not a little of contempt.\n\nAfter breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden\nand then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The crisp\nfrost lay like salt upon the grass.  The sky was an inverted cup of\nblue metal.  A thin film of ice bordered the flat, reed-grown lake.\n\nAt the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey\nClouston, the duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of\nhis gun.  He jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take\nthe mare home, made his way towards his guest through the withered\nbracken and rough undergrowth.\n\n\"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?\" he asked.\n\n\"Not very good, Dorian.  I think most of the birds have gone to the\nopen.  I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new\nground.\"\n\nDorian strolled along by his side.  The keen aromatic air, the brown\nand red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the\nbeaters ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns\nthat followed, fascinated him and filled him with a sense of delightful\nfreedom.  He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the\nhigh indifference of joy.\n\nSuddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front\nof them, with black-tipped ears erect and long hinder limbs throwing it\nforward, started a hare.  It bolted for a thicket of alders.  Sir\nGeoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the\nanimal's grace of movement that strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he\ncried out at once, \"Don't shoot it, Geoffrey.  Let it live.\"\n\n\"What nonsense, Dorian!\" laughed his companion, and as the hare bounded\ninto the thicket, he fired.  There were two cries heard, the cry of a\nhare in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is\nworse.\n\n\"Good heavens!  I have hit a beater!\" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey.  \"What an\nass the man was to get in front of the guns!  Stop shooting there!\" he\ncalled out at the top of his voice.  \"A man is hurt.\"\n\nThe head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.\n\n\"Where, sir?  Where is he?\" he shouted.  At the same time, the firing\nceased along the line.\n\n\"Here,\" answered Sir Geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the thicket.\n\"Why on earth don't you keep your men back?  Spoiled my shooting for\nthe day.\"\n\nDorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the\nlithe swinging branches aside.  In a few moments they emerged, dragging\na body after them into the sunlight.  He turned away in horror.  It\nseemed to him that misfortune followed wherever he went.  He heard Sir\nGeoffrey ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of\nthe keeper.  The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with\nfaces.  There was the trampling of myriad feet and the low buzz of\nvoices.  A great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the\nboughs overhead.\n\nAfter a few moments--that were to him, in his perturbed state, like\nendless hours of pain--he felt a hand laid on his shoulder.  He started\nand looked round.\n\n\"Dorian,\" said Lord Henry, \"I had better tell them that the shooting is\nstopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on.\"\n\n\"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry,\" he answered bitterly.  \"The\nwhole thing is hideous and cruel.  Is the man ...?\"\n\nHe could not finish the sentence.\n\n\"I am afraid so,\" rejoined Lord Henry.  \"He got the whole charge of\nshot in his chest.  He must have died almost instantaneously.  Come;\nlet us go home.\"\n\nThey walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly\nfifty yards without speaking.  Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry and\nsaid, with a heavy sigh, \"It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen.\"\n\n\"What is?\" asked Lord Henry.  \"Oh! this accident, I suppose.  My dear\nfellow, it can't be helped.  It was the man's own fault.  Why did he\nget in front of the guns?  Besides, it is nothing to us.  It is rather\nawkward for Geoffrey, of course.  It does not do to pepper beaters.  It\nmakes people think that one is a wild shot.  And Geoffrey is not; he\nshoots very straight.  But there is no use talking about the matter.\"\n\nDorian shook his head.  \"It is a bad omen, Harry.  I feel as if\nsomething horrible were going to happen to some of us.  To myself,\nperhaps,\" he added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of\npain.\n\nThe elder man laughed.  \"The only horrible thing in the world is _ennui_,\nDorian.  That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.  But we\nare not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering\nabout this thing at dinner.  I must tell them that the subject is to be\ntabooed.  As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen.  Destiny\ndoes not send us heralds.  She is too wise or too cruel for that.\nBesides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian?  You have\neverything in the world that a man can want.  There is no one who would\nnot be delighted to change places with you.\"\n\n\"There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry.  Don't\nlaugh like that.  I am telling you the truth.  The wretched peasant who\nhas just died is better off than I am.  I have no terror of death.  It\nis the coming of death that terrifies me.  Its monstrous wings seem to\nwheel in the leaden air around me.  Good heavens! don't you see a man\nmoving behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?\"\n\nLord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand\nwas pointing.  \"Yes,\" he said, smiling, \"I see the gardener waiting for\nyou.  I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on\nthe table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow!  You\nmust come and see my doctor, when we get back to town.\"\n\nDorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching.  The\nman touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating\nmanner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master.\n\"Her Grace told me to wait for an answer,\" he murmured.\n\nDorian put the letter into his pocket.  \"Tell her Grace that I am\ncoming in,\" he said, coldly.  The man turned round and went rapidly in\nthe direction of the house.\n\n\"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!\" laughed Lord Henry.\n\"It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most.  A woman will\nflirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.\"\n\n\"How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry!  In the present\ninstance, you are quite astray.  I like the duchess very much, but I\ndon't love her.\"\n\n\"And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you\nare excellently matched.\"\n\n\"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for\nscandal.\"\n\n\"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty,\" said Lord Henry,\nlighting a cigarette.\n\n\"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram.\"\n\n\"The world goes to the altar of its own accord,\" was the answer.\n\n\"I wish I could love,\" cried Dorian Gray with a deep note of pathos in\nhis voice.  \"But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the\ndesire.  I am too much concentrated on myself.  My own personality has\nbecome a burden to me.  I want to escape, to go away, to forget.  It\nwas silly of me to come down here at all.  I think I shall send a wire\nto Harvey to have the yacht got ready.  On a yacht one is safe.\"\n\n\"Safe from what, Dorian?  You are in some trouble.  Why not tell me\nwhat it is?  You know I would help you.\"\n\n\"I can't tell you, Harry,\" he answered sadly.  \"And I dare say it is\nonly a fancy of mine.  This unfortunate accident has upset me.  I have\na horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me.\"\n\n\"What nonsense!\"\n\n\"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it.  Ah! here is the duchess,\nlooking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown.  You see we have come back,\nDuchess.\"\n\n\"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray,\" she answered.  \"Poor Geoffrey is\nterribly upset.  And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare.\nHow curious!\"\n\n\"Yes, it was very curious.  I don't know what made me say it.  Some\nwhim, I suppose.  It looked the loveliest of little live things.  But I\nam sorry they told you about the man.  It is a hideous subject.\"\n\n\"It is an annoying subject,\" broke in Lord Henry.  \"It has no\npsychological value at all.  Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on\npurpose, how interesting he would be!  I should like to know some one\nwho had committed a real murder.\"\n\n\"How horrid of you, Harry!\" cried the duchess.  \"Isn't it, Mr. Gray?\nHarry, Mr. Gray is ill again.  He is going to faint.\"\n\nDorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled.  \"It is nothing,\nDuchess,\" he murmured; \"my nerves are dreadfully out of order.  That is\nall.  I am afraid I walked too far this morning.  I didn't hear what\nHarry said.  Was it very bad?  You must tell me some other time.  I\nthink I must go and lie down.  You will excuse me, won't you?\"\n\nThey had reached the great flight of steps that led from the\nconservatory on to the terrace.  As the glass door closed behind\nDorian, Lord Henry turned and looked at the duchess with his slumberous\neyes.  \"Are you very much in love with him?\" he asked.\n\nShe did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape.\n\"I wish I knew,\" she said at last.\n\nHe shook his head.  \"Knowledge would be fatal.  It is the uncertainty\nthat charms one.  A mist makes things wonderful.\"\n\n\"One may lose one's way.\"\n\n\"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.\"\n\n\"What is that?\"\n\n\"Disillusion.\"\n\n\"It was my _debut_ in life,\" she sighed.\n\n\"It came to you crowned.\"\n\n\"I am tired of strawberry leaves.\"\n\n\"They become you.\"\n\n\"Only in public.\"\n\n\"You would miss them,\" said Lord Henry.\n\n\"I will not part with a petal.\"\n\n\"Monmouth has ears.\"\n\n\"Old age is dull of hearing.\"\n\n\"Has he never been jealous?\"\n\n\"I wish he had been.\"\n\nHe glanced about as if in search of something.  \"What are you looking\nfor?\" she inquired.\n\n\"The button from your foil,\" he answered.  \"You have dropped it.\"\n\nShe laughed.  \"I have still the mask.\"\n\n\"It makes your eyes lovelier,\" was his reply.\n\nShe laughed again.  Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet\nfruit.\n\nUpstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror\nin every tingling fibre of his body.  Life had suddenly become too\nhideous a burden for him to bear.  The dreadful death of the unlucky\nbeater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to\npre-figure death for himself also.  He had nearly swooned at what Lord\nHenry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.\n\nAt five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to\npack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham\nat the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another\nnight at Selby Royal.  It was an ill-omened place.  Death walked there\nin the sunlight.  The grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.\n\nThen he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to\ntown to consult his doctor and asking him to entertain his guests in\nhis absence.  As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to\nthe door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see\nhim.  He frowned and bit his lip.  \"Send him in,\" he muttered, after\nsome moments' hesitation.\n\nAs soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a\ndrawer and spread it out before him.\n\n\"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this\nmorning, Thornton?\" he said, taking up a pen.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" answered the gamekeeper.\n\n\"Was the poor fellow married?  Had he any people dependent on him?\"\nasked Dorian, looking bored.  \"If so, I should not like them to be left\nin want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary.\"\n\n\"We don't know who he is, sir.  That is what I took the liberty of\ncoming to you about.\"\n\n\"Don't know who he is?\" said Dorian, listlessly.  \"What do you mean?\nWasn't he one of your men?\"\n\n\"No, sir.  Never saw him before.  Seems like a sailor, sir.\"\n\nThe pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart\nhad suddenly stopped beating.  \"A sailor?\" he cried out.  \"Did you say\na sailor?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.  He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on\nboth arms, and that kind of thing.\"\n\n\"Was there anything found on him?\" said Dorian, leaning forward and\nlooking at the man with startled eyes.  \"Anything that would tell his\nname?\"\n\n\"Some money, sir--not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of any\nkind.  A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor we\nthink.\"\n\nDorian started to his feet.  A terrible hope fluttered past him.  He\nclutched at it madly.  \"Where is the body?\" he exclaimed.  \"Quick!  I\nmust see it at once.\"\n\n\"It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir.  The folk don't like\nto have that sort of thing in their houses.  They say a corpse brings\nbad luck.\"\n\n\"The Home Farm!  Go there at once and meet me.  Tell one of the grooms\nto bring my horse round.  No. Never mind.  I'll go to the stables\nmyself.  It will save time.\"\n\nIn less than a quarter of an hour, Dorian Gray was galloping down the\nlong avenue as hard as he could go.  The trees seemed to sweep past him\nin spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his\npath.  Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him.\nHe lashed her across the neck with his crop.  She cleft the dusky air\nlike an arrow.  The stones flew from her hoofs.\n\nAt last he reached the Home Farm.  Two men were loitering in the yard.\nHe leaped from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them.  In the\nfarthest stable a light was glimmering.  Something seemed to tell him\nthat the body was there, and he hurried to the door and put his hand\nupon the latch.\n\nThere he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a\ndiscovery that would either make or mar his life.  Then he thrust the\ndoor open and entered.\n\nOn a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man\ndressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers.  A spotted\nhandkerchief had been placed over the face.  A coarse candle, stuck in\na bottle, sputtered beside it.\n\nDorian Gray shuddered.  He felt that his could not be the hand to take\nthe handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants to\ncome to him.\n\n\"Take that thing off the face.  I wish to see it,\" he said, clutching\nat the door-post for support.\n\nWhen the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward.  A cry of joy\nbroke from his lips.  The man who had been shot in the thicket was\nJames Vane.\n\nHe stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body.  As he rode\nhome, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.\n\n\n\n\n\n\"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good,\" cried\nLord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled\nwith rose-water. \"You are quite perfect.  Pray, don't change.\"\n\nDorian Gray shook his head.  \"No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful\nthings in my life.  I am not going to do any more.  I began my good\nactions yesterday.\"\n\n\"Where were you yesterday?\"\n\n\"In the country, Harry.  I was staying at a little inn by myself.\"\n\n\"My dear boy,\" said Lord Henry, smiling, \"anybody can be good in the\ncountry.  There are no temptations there.  That is the reason why\npeople who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized.\nCivilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to.  There are\nonly two ways by which man can reach it.  One is by being cultured, the\nother by being corrupt.  Country people have no opportunity of being\neither, so they stagnate.\"\n\n\"Culture and corruption,\" echoed Dorian.  \"I have known something of\nboth.  It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found\ntogether.  For I have a new ideal, Harry.  I am going to alter.  I\nthink I have altered.\"\n\n\"You have not yet told me what your good action was.  Or did you say\nyou had done more than one?\" asked his companion as he spilled into his\nplate a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries and, through a\nperforated, shell-shaped spoon, snowed white sugar upon them.\n\n\"I can tell you, Harry.  It is not a story I could tell to any one\nelse.  I spared somebody.  It sounds vain, but you understand what I\nmean.  She was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane.  I\nthink it was that which first attracted me to her.  You remember Sibyl,\ndon't you?  How long ago that seems!  Well, Hetty was not one of our\nown class, of course.  She was simply a girl in a village.  But I\nreally loved her.  I am quite sure that I loved her.  All during this\nwonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and see her\ntwo or three times a week.  Yesterday she met me in a little orchard.\nThe apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was\nlaughing.  We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn.\nSuddenly I determined to leave her as flowerlike as I had found her.\"\n\n\"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill\nof real pleasure, Dorian,\" interrupted Lord Henry.  \"But I can finish\nyour idyll for you.  You gave her good advice and broke her heart.\nThat was the beginning of your reformation.\"\n\n\"Harry, you are horrible!  You mustn't say these dreadful things.\nHetty's heart is not broken.  Of course, she cried and all that.  But\nthere is no disgrace upon her.  She can live, like Perdita, in her\ngarden of mint and marigold.\"\n\n\"And weep over a faithless Florizel,\" said Lord Henry, laughing, as he\nleaned back in his chair.  \"My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously\nboyish moods.  Do you think this girl will ever be really content now\nwith any one of her own rank?  I suppose she will be married some day\nto a rough carter or a grinning ploughman.  Well, the fact of having\nmet you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she\nwill be wretched.  From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I\nthink much of your great renunciation.  Even as a beginning, it is\npoor.  Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the\npresent moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies\nround her, like Ophelia?\"\n\n\"I can't bear this, Harry!  You mock at everything, and then suggest\nthe most serious tragedies.  I am sorry I told you now.  I don't care\nwhat you say to me.  I know I was right in acting as I did.  Poor\nHetty!  As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at\nthe window, like a spray of jasmine.  Don't let us talk about it any\nmore, and don't try to persuade me that the first good action I have\ndone for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever\nknown, is really a sort of sin.  I want to be better.  I am going to be\nbetter.  Tell me something about yourself.  What is going on in town?\nI have not been to the club for days.\"\n\n\"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance.\"\n\n\"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time,\" said\nDorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly.\n\n\"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and\nthe British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having\nmore than one topic every three months.  They have been very fortunate\nlately, however.  They have had my own divorce-case and Alan Campbell's\nsuicide.  Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.\nScotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left\nfor Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor\nBasil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris\nat all.  I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has\nbeen seen in San Francisco.  It is an odd thing, but every one who\ndisappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.  It must be a\ndelightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.\"\n\n\"What do you think has happened to Basil?\" asked Dorian, holding up his\nBurgundy against the light and wondering how it was that he could\ndiscuss the matter so calmly.\n\n\"I have not the slightest idea.  If Basil chooses to hide himself, it\nis no business of mine.  If he is dead, I don't want to think about\nhim.  Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me.  I hate it.\"\n\n\"Why?\" said the younger man wearily.\n\n\"Because,\" said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt\ntrellis of an open vinaigrette box, \"one can survive everything\nnowadays except that.  Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in\nthe nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.  Let us have our\ncoffee in the music-room, Dorian.  You must play Chopin to me.  The man\nwith whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely.  Poor Victoria!\nI was very fond of her.  The house is rather lonely without her.  Of\ncourse, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit.  But then one\nregrets the loss even of one's worst habits.  Perhaps one regrets them\nthe most.  They are such an essential part of one's personality.\"\n\nDorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the next\nroom, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white\nand black ivory of the keys.  After the coffee had been brought in, he\nstopped, and looking over at Lord Henry, said, \"Harry, did it ever\noccur to you that Basil was murdered?\"\n\nLord Henry yawned.  \"Basil was very popular, and always wore a\nWaterbury watch.  Why should he have been murdered?  He was not clever\nenough to have enemies.  Of course, he had a wonderful genius for\npainting.  But a man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as\npossible.  Basil was really rather dull.  He only interested me once,\nand that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration\nfor you and that you were the dominant motive of his art.\"\n\n\"I was very fond of Basil,\" said Dorian with a note of sadness in his\nvoice.  \"But don't people say that he was murdered?\"\n\n\"Oh, some of the papers do.  It does not seem to me to be at all\nprobable.  I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not\nthe sort of man to have gone to them.  He had no curiosity.  It was his\nchief defect.\"\n\n\"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?\"\nsaid the younger man.  He watched him intently after he had spoken.\n\n\"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that\ndoesn't suit you.  All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.\nIt is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder.  I am sorry if I hurt\nyour vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true.  Crime belongs\nexclusively to the lower orders.  I don't blame them in the smallest\ndegree.  I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us,\nsimply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.\"\n\n\"A method of procuring sensations?  Do you think, then, that a man who\nhas once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?\nDon't tell me that.\"\n\n\"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often,\" cried Lord\nHenry, laughing.  \"That is one of the most important secrets of life.\nI should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake.  One should\nnever do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.  But let us\npass from poor Basil.  I wish I could believe that he had come to such\na really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't. I dare say he fell\ninto the Seine off an omnibus and that the conductor hushed up the\nscandal.  Yes:  I should fancy that was his end.  I see him lying now\non his back under those dull-green waters, with the heavy barges\nfloating over him and long weeds catching in his hair.  Do you know, I\ndon't think he would have done much more good work.  During the last\nten years his painting had gone off very much.\"\n\nDorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began\nto stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large, grey-plumaged\nbird with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo\nperch.  As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf\nof crinkled lids over black, glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards\nand forwards.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief out of\nhis pocket; \"his painting had quite gone off.  It seemed to me to have\nlost something.  It had lost an ideal.  When you and he ceased to be\ngreat friends, he ceased to be a great artist.  What was it separated\nyou?  I suppose he bored you.  If so, he never forgave you.  It's a\nhabit bores have.  By the way, what has become of that wonderful\nportrait he did of you?  I don't think I have ever seen it since he\nfinished it.  Oh!  I remember your telling me years ago that you had\nsent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the\nway.  You never got it back?  What a pity! it was really a\nmasterpiece.  I remember I wanted to buy it.  I wish I had now.  It\nbelonged to Basil's best period.  Since then, his work was that curious\nmixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man\nto be called a representative British artist.  Did you advertise for\nit?  You should.\"\n\n\"I forget,\" said Dorian.  \"I suppose I did.  But I never really liked\nit.  I am sorry I sat for it.  The memory of the thing is hateful to\nme.  Why do you talk of it?  It used to remind me of those curious\nlines in some play--Hamlet, I think--how do they run?--\n\n    \"Like the painting of a sorrow,\n     A face without a heart.\"\n\nYes:  that is what it was like.\"\n\nLord Henry laughed.  \"If a man treats life artistically, his brain is\nhis heart,\" he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.\n\nDorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano.\n\"'Like the painting of a sorrow,'\" he repeated, \"'a face without a\nheart.'\"\n\nThe elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes.  \"By\nthe way, Dorian,\" he said after a pause, \"'what does it profit a man if\nhe gain the whole world and lose--how does the quotation run?--his own\nsoul'?\"\n\nThe music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend.\n\"Why do you ask me that, Harry?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow,\" said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise,\n\"I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.\nThat is all.  I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by\nthe Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people\nlistening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the\nman yelling out that question to his audience.  It struck me as being\nrather dramatic.  London is very rich in curious effects of that kind.\nA wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly\nwhite faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful\nphrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very\ngood in its way, quite a suggestion.  I thought of telling the prophet\nthat art had a soul, but that man had not.  I am afraid, however, he\nwould not have understood me.\"\n\n\"Don't, Harry.  The soul is a terrible reality.  It can be bought, and\nsold, and bartered away.  It can be poisoned, or made perfect.  There\nis a soul in each one of us.  I know it.\"\n\n\"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?\"\n\n\"Quite sure.\"\n\n\"Ah! then it must be an illusion.  The things one feels absolutely\ncertain about are never true.  That is the fatality of faith, and the\nlesson of romance.  How grave you are!  Don't be so serious.  What have\nyou or I to do with the superstitions of our age?  No:  we have given\nup our belief in the soul.  Play me something.  Play me a nocturne,\nDorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept\nyour youth.  You must have some secret.  I am only ten years older than\nyou are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow.  You are really\nwonderful, Dorian.  You have never looked more charming than you do\nto-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first.  You were rather\ncheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary.  You have changed, of\ncourse, but not in appearance.  I wish you would tell me your secret.\nTo get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take\nexercise, get up early, or be respectable.  Youth!  There is nothing\nlike it.  It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.  The only\npeople to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much\nyounger than myself.  They seem in front of me.  Life has revealed to\nthem her latest wonder.  As for the aged, I always contradict the aged.\nI do it on principle.  If you ask them their opinion on something that\nhappened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in\n1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew\nabsolutely nothing.  How lovely that thing you are playing is!  I\nwonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the\nvilla and the salt spray dashing against the panes?  It is marvellously\nromantic.  What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that\nis not imitative!  Don't stop.  I want music to-night. It seems to me\nthat you are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you.\nI have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of.  The\ntragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.  I am\namazed sometimes at my own sincerity.  Ah, Dorian, how happy you are!\nWhat an exquisite life you have had!  You have drunk deeply of\neverything.  You have crushed the grapes against your palate.  Nothing\nhas been hidden from you.  And it has all been to you no more than the\nsound of music.  It has not marred you.  You are still the same.\"\n\n\"I am not the same, Harry.\"\n\n\"Yes, you are the same.  I wonder what the rest of your life will be.\nDon't spoil it by renunciations.  At present you are a perfect type.\nDon't make yourself incomplete.  You are quite flawless now.  You need\nnot shake your head:  you know you are.  Besides, Dorian, don't deceive\nyourself.  Life is not governed by will or intention.  Life is a\nquestion of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which\nthought hides itself and passion has its dreams.  You may fancy\nyourself safe and think yourself strong.  But a chance tone of colour\nin a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once\nloved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten\npoem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music\nthat you had ceased to play--I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things\nlike these that our lives depend.  Browning writes about that\nsomewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us.  There are\nmoments when the odour of _lilas blanc_ passes suddenly across me, and I\nhave to live the strangest month of my life over again.  I wish I could\nchange places with you, Dorian.  The world has cried out against us\nboth, but it has always worshipped you.  It always will worship you.\nYou are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is\nafraid it has found.  I am so glad that you have never done anything,\nnever carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything\noutside of yourself!  Life has been your art.  You have set yourself to\nmusic.  Your days are your sonnets.\"\n\nDorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair.\n\"Yes, life has been exquisite,\" he murmured, \"but I am not going to\nhave the same life, Harry.  And you must not say these extravagant\nthings to me.  You don't know everything about me.  I think that if you\ndid, even you would turn from me.  You laugh.  Don't laugh.\"\n\n\"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian?  Go back and give me the\nnocturne over again.  Look at that great, honey-coloured moon that\nhangs in the dusky air.  She is waiting for you to charm her, and if\nyou play she will come closer to the earth.  You won't?  Let us go to\nthe club, then.  It has been a charming evening, and we must end it\ncharmingly.  There is some one at White's who wants immensely to know\nyou--young Lord Poole, Bournemouth's eldest son.  He has already copied\nyour neckties, and has begged me to introduce him to you.  He is quite\ndelightful and rather reminds me of you.\"\n\n\"I hope not,\" said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes.  \"But I am tired\nto-night, Harry.  I shan't go to the club.  It is nearly eleven, and I\nwant to go to bed early.\"\n\n\"Do stay.  You have never played so well as to-night. There was\nsomething in your touch that was wonderful.  It had more expression\nthan I had ever heard from it before.\"\n\n\"It is because I am going to be good,\" he answered, smiling.  \"I am a\nlittle changed already.\"\n\n\"You cannot change to me, Dorian,\" said Lord Henry.  \"You and I will\nalways be friends.\"\n\n\"Yet you poisoned me with a book once.  I should not forgive that.\nHarry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one.  It\ndoes harm.\"\n\n\"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize.  You will soon be\ngoing about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people\nagainst all the sins of which you have grown tired.  You are much too\ndelightful to do that.  Besides, it is no use.  You and I are what we\nare, and will be what we will be.  As for being poisoned by a book,\nthere is no such thing as that.  Art has no influence upon action.  It\nannihilates the desire to act.  It is superbly sterile.  The books that\nthe world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.\nThat is all.  But we won't discuss literature.  Come round to-morrow. I\nam going to ride at eleven.  We might go together, and I will take you\nto lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome.  She is a charming woman, and\nwants to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying.\nMind you come.  Or shall we lunch with our little duchess?  She says\nshe never sees you now.  Perhaps you are tired of Gladys?  I thought\nyou would be.  Her clever tongue gets on one's nerves.  Well, in any\ncase, be here at eleven.\"\n\n\"Must I really come, Harry?\"\n\n\"Certainly.  The park is quite lovely now.  I don't think there have\nbeen such lilacs since the year I met you.\"\n\n\"Very well.  I shall be here at eleven,\" said Dorian.  \"Good night,\nHarry.\"  As he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment, as if he\nhad something more to say.  Then he sighed and went out.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and\ndid not even put his silk scarf round his throat.  As he strolled home,\nsmoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him.  He\nheard one of them whisper to the other, \"That is Dorian Gray.\" He\nremembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared\nat, or talked about.  He was tired of hearing his own name now.  Half\nthe charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was\nthat no one knew who he was.  He had often told the girl whom he had\nlured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him.  He had\ntold her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him and\nanswered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly.  What a\nlaugh she had!--just like a thrush singing.  And how pretty she had\nbeen in her cotton dresses and her large hats!  She knew nothing, but\nshe had everything that he had lost.\n\nWhen he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him.  He sent\nhim to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and\nbegan to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him.\n\nWas it really true that one could never change?  He felt a wild longing\nfor the unstained purity of his boyhood--his rose-white boyhood, as\nLord Henry had once called it.  He knew that he had tarnished himself,\nfilled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he\nhad been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible\njoy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own, it had\nbeen the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to\nshame.  But was it all irretrievable?  Was there no hope for him?\n\nAh! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that\nthe portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the\nunsullied splendour of eternal youth!  All his failure had been due to\nthat.  Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure\nswift penalty along with it.  There was purification in punishment.\nNot \"Forgive us our sins\" but \"Smite us for our iniquities\" should be\nthe prayer of man to a most just God.\n\nThe curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many\nyears ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids\nlaughed round it as of old.  He took it up, as he had done on that\nnight of horror when he had first noted the change in the fatal\npicture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished\nshield.  Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a\nmad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: \"The world is changed\nbecause you are made of ivory and gold.  The curves of your lips\nrewrite history.\"  The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated\nthem over and over to himself.  Then he loathed his own beauty, and\nflinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters\nbeneath his heel.  It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty\nand the youth that he had prayed for.  But for those two things, his\nlife might have been free from stain.  His beauty had been to him but a\nmask, his youth but a mockery.  What was youth at best?  A green, an\nunripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.  Why had he\nworn its livery?  Youth had spoiled him.\n\nIt was better not to think of the past.  Nothing could alter that.  It\nwas of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think.  James\nVane was hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard.  Alan Campbell\nhad shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the\nsecret that he had been forced to know.  The excitement, such as it\nwas, over Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away.  It was\nalready waning.  He was perfectly safe there.  Nor, indeed, was it the\ndeath of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind.  It was the\nliving death of his own soul that troubled him.  Basil had painted the\nportrait that had marred his life.  He could not forgive him that.  It\nwas the portrait that had done everything.  Basil had said things to\nhim that were unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience.  The\nmurder had been simply the madness of a moment.  As for Alan Campbell,\nhis suicide had been his own act.  He had chosen to do it.  It was\nnothing to him.\n\nA new life!  That was what he wanted.  That was what he was waiting\nfor.  Surely he had begun it already.  He had spared one innocent\nthing, at any rate.  He would never again tempt innocence.  He would be\ngood.\n\nAs he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in\nthe locked room had changed.  Surely it was not still so horrible as it\nhad been?  Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel\nevery sign of evil passion from the face.  Perhaps the signs of evil\nhad already gone away.  He would go and look.\n\nHe took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs.  As he unbarred the\ndoor, a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face\nand lingered for a moment about his lips.  Yes, he would be good, and\nthe hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror\nto him.  He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already.\n\nHe went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and\ndragged the purple hanging from the portrait.  A cry of pain and\nindignation broke from him.  He could see no change, save that in the\neyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of\nthe hypocrite.  The thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if\npossible, than before--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed\nbrighter, and more like blood newly spilled.  Then he trembled.  Had it\nbeen merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed?  Or the\ndesire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking\nlaugh?  Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things\nfiner than we are ourselves?  Or, perhaps, all these?  And why was the\nred stain larger than it had been?  It seemed to have crept like a\nhorrible disease over the wrinkled fingers.  There was blood on the\npainted feet, as though the thing had dripped--blood even on the hand\nthat had not held the knife.  Confess?  Did it mean that he was to\nconfess?  To give himself up and be put to death?  He laughed.  He felt\nthat the idea was monstrous.  Besides, even if he did confess, who\nwould believe him?  There was no trace of the murdered man anywhere.\nEverything belonging to him had been destroyed.  He himself had burned\nwhat had been below-stairs. The world would simply say that he was mad.\nThey would shut him up if he persisted in his story.... Yet it was\nhis duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and to make public\natonement.  There was a God who called upon men to tell their sins to\nearth as well as to heaven.  Nothing that he could do would cleanse him\ntill he had told his own sin.  His sin?  He shrugged his shoulders.\nThe death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him.  He was thinking\nof Hetty Merton.  For it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul\nthat he was looking at.  Vanity?  Curiosity?  Hypocrisy?  Had there\nbeen nothing more in his renunciation than that?  There had been\nsomething more.  At least he thought so.  But who could tell? ... No.\nThere had been nothing more.  Through vanity he had spared her.  In\nhypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness.  For curiosity's sake he\nhad tried the denial of self.  He recognized that now.\n\nBut this murder--was it to dog him all his life?  Was he always to be\nburdened by his past?  Was he really to confess?  Never.  There was\nonly one bit of evidence left against him.  The picture itself--that\nwas evidence.  He would destroy it.  Why had he kept it so long?  Once\nit had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old.  Of\nlate he had felt no such pleasure.  It had kept him awake at night.\nWhen he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes\nshould look upon it.  It had brought melancholy across his passions.\nIts mere memory had marred many moments of joy.  It had been like\nconscience to him.  Yes, it had been conscience.  He would destroy it.\n\nHe looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward.  He\nhad cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it.  It\nwas bright, and glistened.  As it had killed the painter, so it would\nkill the painter's work, and all that that meant.  It would kill the\npast, and when that was dead, he would be free.  It would kill this\nmonstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at\npeace.  He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.\n\nThere was a cry heard, and a crash.  The cry was so horrible in its\nagony that the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms.\nTwo gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and looked\nup at the great house.  They walked on till they met a policeman and\nbrought him back.  The man rang the bell several times, but there was\nno answer.  Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was\nall dark.  After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico\nand watched.\n\n\"Whose house is that, Constable?\" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.\n\n\"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir,\" answered the policeman.\n\nThey looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered.  One of\nthem was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.\n\nInside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics\nwere talking in low whispers to each other.  Old Mrs. Leaf was crying\nand wringing her hands.  Francis was as pale as death.\n\nAfter about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the\nfootmen and crept upstairs.  They knocked, but there was no reply.\nThey called out.  Everything was still.  Finally, after vainly trying\nto force the door, they got on the roof and dropped down on to the\nbalcony.  The windows yielded easily--their bolts were old.\n\nWhen they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait\nof their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his\nexquisite youth and beauty.  Lying on the floor was a dead man, in\nevening dress, with a knife in his heart.  He was withered, wrinkled,\nand loathsome of visage.  It was not till they had examined the rings\nthat they recognized who it was.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "Dorian Gray meets Lord Henry Wotton at the studio of Basil Hallward, who is using Dorian as a model for his latest painting. Lord Henry tells Dorian about his epicurean views on life, and convinces him of the value of beauty above all other things. The young and impressionable Dorian is greatly moved by Lord Henry's words. When Basil shows them the newly completed painting, Dorian is flooded with awe at the sight of his own image, and is overwhelmed by his fear that his youth and beauty will fade. He becomes jealous that the picture will be beautiful forever while he is destined to wither and age. He passionately wishes that it could be the other way around. Lord Henry is fascinated with Dorian's innocence as much as Dorian is impressed by Henry's cynically sensual outlook on life. They become fast friends, to Basil's dismay. He fears that Henry will be a corrupting influence on the young, innocent Dorian, whom he adores. Dorian and Lord Henry become fast friends, often dining together and attending the same social functions. Henry's influence has a profound effect on the young man, who soon adopts Henry's views as his own, abandoning ethical restraints and seeing life in terms of pleasure and sensuality. Dorian falls in love with the beautiful Sibyl Vane, a poor but talented young Shakespearean actress. They are engaged to be married until Dorian brings Henry and Basil to a performance, where her acting is uncharacteristically - and inexplicably - terrible. Dorian confronts Sibyl backstage, and she tells him that since she is now truly in love, she no longer believes in acting. Disgusted and offended, Dorian breaks off their engagement and leaves her sobbing on the floor. When he returns home, he discovers that the figure in his portrait now bears a slightly different, more contemptuous facial expression. Dorian awakens late the next day feeling guilty for his treatment of Sibyl, and writes an impassioned love letter begging her forgiveness. Soon, however, Lord Henry arrives, and informs Dorian that Sibyl committed suicide last night. Dorian is shocked and wracked with guilt, but Henry convinces him to view the event artistically, saying that the superb melodrama of her death is a thing to be admired. Succumbing to the older man's suggestion, Dorian decides that he need not feel guilty, especially since his enchanted portrait will now bear his guilt for him. The picture will serve as his conscience, allowing him to live freely. When Basil visits Dorian to console him, he is appalled at his friend's apathy towards Sibyl's death. Dorian is unapologetic and annoyed by Basil's adulation of him. Paranoid that someone might discover the secret of the painting, and therefore the true nature of his soul, Dorian hides the image in his attic. Over the next several years, Dorian's face remains young and innocent, despite his many selfish affairs and scandals. He is an extremely popular socialite, admired for his fine taste and revered as a fashionable trend-setter. The picture, however, continues to age, and grows more unattractive with each foul deed. Dorian cannot keep himself from looking at the picture periodically, but he is appalled by it, and is only truly happy when he manages to forget its existence. He immerses himself in various obsessions, studying mysticism, jewelry, music, and ancient tapestries. These interests, however, are all merely distractions that allow him to forget the hideousness of his true soul. One night, Basil visits Dorian to confront him about all of the terrible rumors he has heard. The painter wants to believe that his friend is stll a good person. Dorian decides to show him the portrait so that he can see the true degradation of his soul, but when Basil sees it he is horrified, and urges his friend to repent for his sins. Basil's reaction enrages Dorian, and he murders the artist with a knife. To dispose of the body, he blackmails an estranged acquaintance, Alan Campbell, a chemist who is able to burn the body in the attic's fireplace. Alan has already been driven into isolation by Dorian's corrupting influence, and this action eventually compels him to commit suicide. Not long after, Dorian visits an opium den and is attacked by James Vane, Sibyl's brother, who has sworn revenge on the man that drove his sister to suicide. 18 years have passed since the event, however, yet Dorian still looks like a 20-year-old youth. James thinks that he is mistaken, and Dorian escapes before his would-be murderer learns the truth. Over the next several days Dorian lives in fear, sure that James is searching for him. While hunting one day, Dorian's friend Geoffrey accidentally shoots a man hiding on Dorian's property. This stranger is revealed to be James Vane. Dorian is overcome with relief, but cannot escape the fact that four deaths now weigh on his conscience. Deciding to change his life for the better, Dorian commits a good deed by refusing to corrupt a young girl who has fallen in love with him. He checks the portrait, hoping to find that it has changed for the better, but when he realizes that the only thing that has changed is the new, hypocritical smirk on the wrinkled face, he realizes that even his effort to save his soul was driven by vanity. In a fit of despair, he decides to destroy the picture with the same knife that he used to kill Basil, its creator. Downstairs, Dorian's servants hear a shriek, and rush upstairs to find their master dead on the floor, the knife plunged into his own chest. Dorian's youthful countenance is gone, and his servants are only able to recognize him by the jewelry on his fingers.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of one beautiful, innocent young man's seduction, moral corruption, and eventual downfall. And, oh yeah: it's also the story of a really creepy painting. We meet our three central characters at the beginning of the book, when painter Basil Hallward and his close friend, Lord Henry Wotton, are discussing the subject of Basil's newest painting, a gorgeous young thing named Dorian Gray. Basil and Henry discuss just how perfectly perfect Dorian is--he's totally innocent and completely good, as well as being the most beautiful guy ever to walk the earth. Lord Henry wants to meet this mysterious boy, but Basil doesn't want him to; for some reason, he's afraid of what will happen to Dorian if Lord Henry digs his claws into him. However, Lord Henry gets his wish--Dorian shows up that very afternoon, and, over the course of the day, Henry manages to totally change Dorian's perspective on the world. From that point on, Dorian's previously innocent point of view is dramatically different--he begins to see life as Lord Henry does, as a succession of pleasures in which questions of good and evil are irrelevant.Basil finishes his portrait of Dorian, and gives it to the young man, who keeps it in his home, where he can admire his own beauty. Lord Henry continues to exert his influence over Dorian, to Basil's dismay. Dorian grows more and more distant from Basil, his former best friend, and develops his own interests. One of these interests is Sybil Vane, a young, exceptionally beautiful, exceptionally talented--and exceptionally poor--actress. Though she's stuck performing in a terrible, third-rate theatre, she's a truly remarkable artist, and her talent and beauty win over Dorian. He falls dramatically in love with her, and she with him. For a moment, it seems like everything will turn out wonderfully. However, this is just the beginning of Dorian's story. Once he and Sybil are engaged, her talent suddenly disappears--she's so overcome with her passionate love for Dorian that none of her roles on stage seem important to her anymore. This destroys Dorian's love for her, and he brutally dumps her. Back home, he notices a something different in his portrait--it looks somehow crueler. In the meanwhile, the distraught Sybil commits suicide, just as Dorian decides to return to her and take back his terrible words.Sybil's suicide changes everything. At first, Dorian feels horrible... but he rather quickly changes his tune. On Lord Henry's suggestion, Dorian reads a mysterious \"yellow book,\" a decadent French novel that makes him reevaluate his whole belief system. The protagonist of the book lives his life in pursuit of sensual pleasures, which intrigues Dorian. From this moment on, Dorian is a changed man.Dorian starts to live as hedonistically as his wicked mentor, Lord Henry, does. The only thing that documents this turn for the worst is the portrait, which alarmingly begins to exhibit the inward corruption of Dorian's soul; the beautiful image changes, revealing new scars and physical flaws with each of Dorian's dastardly actions. As years pass, the man in the picture grows more and more hideous, as Dorian himself stays unnaturally young and beautiful. Rumors start to spread about the various people whose lives Dorian has ruined, and his formerly good reputation is destroyed.On Dorian's 38th birthday, he encounters Basil, who desperately asks his former friend if all the horrifying rumors about him are true. Dorian finally snaps and shows Basil the portrait, in which the horrible truth about his wicked nature is revealed. Basil recoils, and begs Dorian to pray for forgiveness. In response, Dorian murders Basil, stabbing him brutally. He blackmails another of his former friends into disposing of the body.Dorian retreats to an opium den after dealing with all of the evidence, where he encounters an enemy he didn't know he had--Sybil Vane's brother, James. Through a rather complicated turn of events, James ends up dead. Dorian isn't directly responsible, but it's yet another death to add to Dorian's tally of life-wrecking disasters.Dorian is relieved that his enemy is out of the way, but this event sparks a kind of mid-life crisis: he begins to wonder if his vile but enjoyable lifestyle is worth it. He actually does a good deed, by deciding not to corrupt a young girl he's got the hots for, which makes him question his past actions even more. Seeking some kind of reassurance, Dorian talks to Lord Henry, who's not any help at all, unsurprisingly. Dorian even practically admits to murdering Basil, but Henry laughs it off and doesn't believe him.That night, Dorian returns home in a pensive mood. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he hates his own beauty and breaks the mirror. Again, he vows to be good, but we find out that his various crimes don't really haunt him, because he doesn't consider them his fault. Instead, he selfishly wants to be good so that the painting will become beautiful again. Heartened by this thought, he goes up to see if his recent good deed has improved the painting. In fact, it only looks worse. Frustrated, Dorian decides to destroy the picture, the visible evidence of his dreadful crimes, and the closest thing to a conscience he has. Dorian slashes at the painting with the same knife that killed Basil, trying to destroy the work as he did the artist.A tremendous crash and a terrible cry alert the servants that something very, very bad has happened-- it's even audible outside the house. Finally, they go upstairs to check it out, and are horrified by what they find: a portrait of their master, as beautiful as ever, hangs on the wall, and a mysterious, grotesquely hideous dead man is lying on the floor with a knife in his heart. Upon close examination, the rings on the dead man's hand identify him as Dorian Gray.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "cliffnotes", "text": "In his London studio, artist Basil Hallward puts the finishing touches on his latest portrait, that of a young man. Although Lord Henry, who is visiting with Basil, asks about the young man's identity, Basil declines to answer, noting his preference for secrecy. Basil never intends to exhibit the painting, because if he did, it would bare the deepest feelings in his soul. However, Basil lets slip that the subject of the portrait is Dorian Gray, who shortly thereafter pays the two men a house call. Lord Henry immediately begins to influence Dorian, suggesting that he should treasure and guard his youth and beauty while he has them, because they will soon fade. Terrified of aging, Dorian wishes he could trade his soul to stay as young as he looks in the portrait; a short while later, he again wishes that he could stay young while the image in the painting aged. The portrait thus begins to take on a life-like existence; in fact, Basil's threat to burn the portrait is likened to \"murder\" and Basil prefers the company of the portrait to the real Dorian. Dorian falls in love with a young actress, Sibyl Vane, a woman he barely knows. She plays a different woman at each night's performance, earning the label of \"genius\" from Dorian, who is as smitten with her acting more than with her personality. They become engaged, much to the surprise of Lord Henry and Basil. The sweet, wholesome Sibyl discusses her engagement with her family. Because her mother is indebted to the theatre manager, Mr. Isaacs, for fifty pounds, she is against the marriage unless Dorian is wealthy; they do not know that he is. Sibyl's angry brother, James, is leaving for Australia, but he vows to kill Dorian if he wrongs his sister in any way. James also confronts his mother about gossip he has heard -- that his mother and deceased father never married, which Mrs. Vane admits is true. Dorian attends a performance of Sibyl's with Lord Henry and Basil, but the performance is terrible. Sibyl tells Dorian she can no longer act, because he has shown her a beautiful reality. Dorian is disgusted by her poor acting, because her performances were what drew him to her; he dismisses her and returns home. To his surprise, the portrait shows marks of cruelty around the mouth, lines that do not show on Dorian's face. He begins to suspect that his wish is coming true, so he vows to be good so that both he and the portrait can remain young. He, therefore, intends to apologize to Sibyl the next day and makes to marry her after all. However, he is too late: Sibyl commits suicide at the theatre that night. Dorian first feels responsibility for her death, but then views it both as wonderful entertainment and a selfish act on her part. Lord Henry tries to keep Dorian's name out of the scandal. Dorian and Lord Henry spend the evening at the opera. The next morning, Basil arrives and expresses concern for Dorian, given the events of the previous day. Dorian, however, is completely unconcerned about Sibyl or her family; he wants to talk only of happy subjects. The next day, he covers his portrait and moves it to the attic, to which Dorian has the only key. He then settles in to read a yellow book sent by Lord Henry; the book becomes Dorian's blueprint for life. Several years pass, and Dorian lives a hedonistic life according to the guidelines established by Lord Henry and the yellow book. While the face in the portrait has turned ugly, Dorian remains young, beautiful, and innocent. People talk about Dorian's \"madness of pleasure\" and his dreadful influence on the people around him, but that is of no consequence to him. Finally, when he is thirty-eight years old, Dorian shows the portrait to Basil, who begs Dorian to repent of his sin and ask that the wish be revoked. Instead, Dorian kills Basil and hides his body. Blackmailing his old friend Alan Campbell, Dorian is able to dispose of Basil's body. An hour later, Dorian attends a party, but is bored and distracted. He then heads for an opium den and, out on the street, meets Sibyl's younger brother, who has been waiting for an opportunity to harm Dorian for nearly twenty years. Dorian makes a case for mistaken identity when he claims to have the face of a twenty-year-old and cannot be the man James is looking for. A woman in the street reveals that Dorian \"sold himself to the devil for a pretty face,\" so James again pursues Dorian. At his country estate one week later, Dorian entertains guests but believes James in hunting him. Dorian soon learns, however, that a man accidentally killed in a hunting accident is James, and so he feels safe. The novel concludes six months later. Dorian and Lord Henry dine, and talk turns serious -- Dorian talks of Basil, and Lord Henry reflects on a sermon he heard the previous Sunday while walking in the park. Lord Henry also inquires about the secret of Dorian's youth, which Dorian dismisses. Dorian then asks Lord Henry never to give the yellow book to anyone else. That evening, while Dorian examines the portrait, he decides to destroy it with the knife used to murder Basil. Soon after, Dorian's servants and a police officer find an old, ugly man lying dead on the ground in front of a portrait of a young and innocent Dorian.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "In the stately London home of his aunt, Lady Brandon, the well-known artist Basil Hallward meets Dorian Gray. Dorian is a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man who immediately captures Basil's artistic imagination. Dorian sits for several portraits, and Basil often depicts him as an ancient Greek hero or a mythological figure. When the novel opens, the artist is completing his first portrait of Dorian as he truly is, but, as he admits to his friend Lord Henry Wotton, the painting disappoints him because it reveals too much of his feeling for his subject. Lord Henry, a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth, beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure, disagrees, claiming that the portrait is Basil's masterpiece. Dorian arrives at the studio, and Basil reluctantly introduces him to Lord Henry, who he fears will have a damaging influence on the impressionable, young Dorian. Basil's fears are well founded; before the end of their first conversation, Lord Henry upsets Dorian with a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth. Worried that these, his most impressive characteristics, are fading day by day, Dorian curses his portrait, which he believes will one day remind him of the beauty he will have lost. In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting could bear the burden of age and infamy, allowing him to stay forever young. After Dorian's outbursts, Lord Henry reaffirms his desire to own the portrait; however, Basil insists the portrait belongs to Dorian. Over the next few weeks, Lord Henry's influence over Dorian grows stronger. The youth becomes a disciple of the \"new Hedonism\" and proposes to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress who performs in a theater in London's slums. He adores her acting; she, in turn, refers to him as \"Prince Charming\" and refuses to heed the warnings of her brother, James Vane, that Dorian is no good for her. Overcome by her emotions for Dorian, Sibyl decides that she can no longer act, wondering how she can pretend to love on the stage now that she has experienced the real thing. Dorian, who loves Sibyl because of her ability to act, cruelly breaks his engagement with her. After doing so, he returns home to notice that his face in Basil's portrait of him has changed: it now sneers. Frightened that his wish for his likeness in the painting to bear the ill effects of his behavior has come true and that his sins will be recorded on the canvas, he resolves to make amends with Sibyl the next day. The following afternoon, however, Lord Henry brings news that Sibyl has killed herself. At Lord Henry's urging, Dorian decides to consider her death a sort of artistic triumph--she personified tragedy--and to put the matter behind him. Meanwhile, Dorian hides his portrait in a remote upper room of his house, where no one other than he can watch its transformation. Lord Henry gives Dorian a book that describes the wicked exploits of a nineteenth-century Frenchman; it becomes Dorian's bible as he sinks ever deeper into a life of sin and corruption. He lives a life devoted to garnering new experiences and sensations with no regard for conventional standards of morality or the consequences of his actions. Eighteen years pass. Dorian's reputation suffers in circles of polite London society, where rumors spread regarding his scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept him because he remains young and beautiful. The figure in the painting, however, grows increasingly wizened and hideous. On a dark, foggy night, Basil Hallward arrives at Dorian's home to confront him about the rumors that plague his reputation. The two argue, and Dorian eventually offers Basil a look at his soul. He shows Basil the now-hideous portrait, and Hallward, horrified, begs him to repent. Dorian claims it is too late for penance and kills Basil in a fit of rage. In order to dispose of the body, Dorian employs the help of an estranged friend, a doctor, whom he blackmails. The night after the murder, Dorian makes his way to an opium den, where he encounters James Vane, who attempts to avenge Sibyl's death. Dorian escapes to his country estate. While entertaining guests, he notices James Vane peering in through a window, and he becomes wracked by fear and guilt. When a hunting party accidentally shoots and kills Vane, Dorian feels safe again. He resolves to amend his life but cannot muster the courage to confess his crimes, and the painting now reveals his supposed desire to repent for what it is--hypocrisy. In a fury, Dorian picks up the knife he used to stab Basil Hallward and attempts to destroy the painting. There is a crash, and his servants enter to find the portrait, unharmed, showing Dorian Gray as a beautiful young man. On the floor lies the body of their master--an old man, horribly wrinkled and disfigured, with a knife plunged into his heart.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "5658", "title": "Lord Jim", "text": "He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he\nadvanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head\nforward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging\nbull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of\ndogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed\na necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at\nanybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white\nfrom shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his\nliving as ship-chandler's water-clerk he was very popular.\n\nA water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun,\nbut he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practically.\nHis work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other\nwater-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain\ncheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the\nship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but\nwithout ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things\nthat are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything\nto make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her\ncable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where\nher commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never\nseen before. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars,\nwriting implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of\nwelcome that melts the salt of a three months' passage out of a seaman's\nheart. The connection thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship remains\nin harbour, by the daily visits of the water-clerk. To the captain he\nis faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience\nof Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon\ncompanion. Later on the bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane\noccupation. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk\nwho possesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of having\nbeen brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money\nand some humouring. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring\nas would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with black\ningratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. To his\nemployers the reasons he gave were obviously inadequate. They said\n'Confounded fool!' as soon as his back was turned. This was their\ncriticism on his exquisite sensibility.\n\nTo the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships\nhe was just Jim--nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he\nwas anxious that it should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had\nas many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a\nfact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave\nsuddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to\nanother--generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a\nseaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is\ngood for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good\norder towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but\ninevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in\nBombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of\nthese halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his\nkeen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports\nand white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle\nvillage, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a\nword to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as\none might say--Lord Jim.\n\nOriginally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders of fine\nmerchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim's father\npossessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the\nrighteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind\nof those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. The\nlittle church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a\nragged screen of leaves. It had stood there for centuries, but the trees\naround probably remembered the laying of the first stone. Below, the\nred front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of\ngrass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back,\na paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses\ntacked along a wall of bricks. The living had belonged to the family for\ngenerations; but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of\nlight holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself,\nhe was sent at once to a 'training-ship for officers of the mercantile\nmarine.'\n\nHe learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant\nyards. He was generally liked. He had the third place in navigation\nand pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having a steady head with an\nexcellent physique, he was very smart aloft. His station was in the\nfore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a\nman destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude\nof roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered\non the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose\nperpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and\nbelching out smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships departing,\nthe broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats\nfloating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the\ndistance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure.\n\nOn the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget\nhimself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light\nliterature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting\naway masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a\nlonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs\nin search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on\ntropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat\nupon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example\nof devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book.\n\n'Something's up. Come along.'\n\nHe leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Above\ncould be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got\nthrough the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded.\n\nIt was the dusk of a winter's day. The gale had freshened since noon,\nstopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a\nhurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing\nover the ocean. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided,\nand between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide,\nthe small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless\nbuildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching\nponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and\nsmothered in sprays. The next gust seemed to blow all this away. The\nair was full of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a\nfurious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of\nearth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath\nin awe. He stood still. It seemed to him he was whirled around.\n\nHe was jostled. 'Man the cutter!' Boys rushed past him. A coaster\nrunning in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor, and one\nof the ship's instructors had seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered\non the rails, clustered round the davits. 'Collision. Just ahead of us.\nMr. Symons saw it.' A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and\nhe caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings\nquivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty\nrigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea.\n'Lower away!' He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail,\nand rushed after her. He heard a splash. 'Let go; clear the falls!' He\nleaned over. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter\ncould be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind,\nthat for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship.\nA yelling voice in her reached him faintly: 'Keep stroke, you young\nwhelps, if you want to save anybody! Keep stroke!' And suddenly she\nlifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke\nthe spell cast upon her by the wind and tide.\n\nJim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. 'Too late, youngster.' The captain\nof the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the\npoint of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious\ndefeat in his eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically. 'Better luck\nnext time. This will teach you to be smart.'\n\nA shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing back half full of\nwater, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards.\nThe tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible\nto Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace.\nNow he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for\nthe gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so--better than\nanybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Nevertheless he brooded apart\nthat evening while the bowman of the cutter--a boy with a face like\na girl's and big grey eyes--was the hero of the lower deck. Eager\nquestioners crowded round him. He narrated: 'I just saw his head\nbobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. It caught in his\nbreeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old\nSymons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped.\nOld Symons is a fine old chap. I don't mind a bit him being grumpy with\nus. He swore at me all the time he held my leg, but that was only his\nway of telling me to stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully\nexcitable--isn't he? No--not the little fair chap--the other, the big\none with a beard. When we pulled him in he groaned, \"Oh, my leg! oh,\nmy leg!\" and turned up his eyes. Fancy such a big chap fainting like\na girl. Would any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook?--I\nwouldn't. It went into his leg so far.' He showed the boat-hook, which\nhe had carried below for the purpose, and produced a sensation. 'No,\nsilly! It was not his flesh that held him--his breeches did. Lots of\nblood, of course.'\n\nJim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered to\na heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with\nthe brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking\nunfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was\nrather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement\nhad served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge more than those who\nhad done the work. When all men flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone\nwould know how to deal with the spurious menace of wind and seas. He\nknew what to think of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible.\nHe could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of\na staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of\nboys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and\nin a sense of many-sided courage.\n\n\nAfter two years of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so\nwell known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure.\nHe made many voyages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between\nsky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the\nsea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but\nwhose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. This reward eluded\nhim. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing,\ndisenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Besides, his\nprospects were good. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a\nthorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he\nbecame chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by\nthose events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of\na man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal\nthe quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not\nonly to others but also to himself.\n\nOnly once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in\nthe anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people\nmight think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and\ngales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of\nfacts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which\nforces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication\nof accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose\nof malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty\nthat means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his\nfatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to\nannihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is\npriceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which\nmeans to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by\nthe simple and appalling act of taking his life.\n\nJim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his\nScottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle\nto me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched on his back,\ndazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an\nabyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid\nmoments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has\nthe imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and\nImagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated,\nsinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing\nbut the disorder of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the\nmidst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on\ndeck. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip\nhim bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the\nunintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such\nsensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost.\nThen fine weather returned, and he thought no more about It.\n\nHis lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an\nEastern port he had to go to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he\nwas left behind.\n\nThere were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser\nof a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind\nof railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by\nsome mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and\nindulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil\nservant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each other\nthe story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in\npyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word.\nThe hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the\nwindows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness\nof the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the\nEastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite\nrepose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the\nthickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of\npalms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare\nto the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by\nfestal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling\na holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead\nand the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as\nthe horizon.\n\nDirectly he could walk without a stick, he descended into the town to\nlook for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered just then, and,\nwhile waiting, he associated naturally with the men of his calling in\nthe port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but\nseldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the\ntemper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live\nin a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of\ncivilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the\nonly event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable\ncertitude of achievement. The majority were men who, like himself,\nthrown there by some accident, had remained as officers of country\nships. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder\nconditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They\nwere attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They\nloved short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the\ndistinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work,\nand led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal,\nalways on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs,\nhalf-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy\nenough. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got\ncharge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had\nan easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the\nSiamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in\ntheir persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the\ndetermination to lounge safely through existence.\n\nTo Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more\nunsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found a fascination\nin the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on\nsuch a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original\ndisdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up\nthe idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna.\n\nThe Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a\ngreyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She\nwas owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort\nof renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly\nhis native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck's\nvictorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a\n'blood-and-iron' air,' combined with a purple nose and a red moustache.\nAfter she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred\npilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with\nsteam up alongside a wooden jetty.\n\nThey streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by\nfaith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp\nand shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and\nwhen clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed\nforward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner\nrecesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing\ninto crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the\nrim. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections\nand memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south\nand from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths,\ndescending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in\nsmall canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting\nstrange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They\ncame from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from\nvillages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left their forests,\ntheir clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity,\ntheir poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their\nfathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with\nrags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men\npressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes\nglancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid\nwomen muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of\nsoiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of\nan exacting belief.\n\n'Look at dese cattle,' said the German skipper to his new chief mate.\n\nAn Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. He walked slowly\naboard, handsome and grave in his white gown and large turban. A string\nof servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and\nbacked away from the wharf.\n\nShe was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the\nanchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the\nshadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. The\nArab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by sea.\nHe invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His\nblessing on men's toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the\nsteamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern\nof the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on\na treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in\nderision of her errand of faith.\n\nShe cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, continued on her way through\nthe 'One-degree' passage. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a\nserene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor\nof sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all\nimpulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of\nthat sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir,\nwithout a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The\nPatna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth,\nunrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the\nwater a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of\na track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.\n\nEvery morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the\nprogress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly\nat the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon,\npouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the\nmen, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea\nevening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her\nadvancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from\nthe human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from\nstem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone\nrevealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the\nocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one\ninto the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake\nof the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her\nsteadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if\nscorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.\n\nThe nights descended on her like a benediction.\n\nA marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with\nthe serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance\nof everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the\nwest, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the\nArabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended\nits perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The propeller\nturned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme\nof a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of\nwater, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within\ntheir straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting\nin a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that,\nleft behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the\npassage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last\ninto the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the\nmoving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre.\n\nJim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded\nsafety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like\nthe certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother's\nface. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men\nand to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron\nshell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept\non mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark\ncorners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their\nheads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent\nforearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the\ndecrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death's brother.\n\nA draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed\nsteadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over\nthe rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung\nshort here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles\nof light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration\nof the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand\nwith silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent\nback, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself\nto the knife. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with\nheavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they\nhad on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept,\nwith drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over\ntheir ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his\nshoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a\nboy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly\nextended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece\nof white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the\nArab's belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken\noutlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of\nvague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a\ndeck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword\nleaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. The\npatent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke\nfor every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Above the mass of\nsleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a\ntroubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the\ndepths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a\nfurnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious\nthings below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high\nhull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare\nmasts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the\ninaccessible serenity of the sky.\n\nJim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to\nhis own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming\nabout the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the\nunattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. The only\nshadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from\nthe funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in\nthe air. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each\nside of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval\nof light thrown out by the binnacle. Now and then a hand, with black\nfingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes,\nappeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily\nin the grooves of the barrel. Jim would glance at the compass, would\nglance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his\njoints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess\nof well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the\npeace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end\nof his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged\nout with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the\nsteering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea\npresented a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to\na stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of\nthe waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the\nship's position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and\nthe straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course\nof the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of\nsalvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp\nend touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship's\nspar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. 'How steady she goes,'\nthought Jim with wonder, with something like gratitude for this high\npeace of sea and sky. At such times his thoughts would be full of\nvalorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary\nachievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its\nhidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness,\nthey passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away\nwith them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded\nconfidence in itself. There was nothing he could not face. He was so\npleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes\nahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of\nthe wake drawn as straight by the ship's keel upon the sea as the black\nline drawn by the pencil upon the chart.\n\nThe ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold\nventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch\nwas near. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to\npart from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his\nthoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor\nrunning through every limb as though all the blood in his body had\nturned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and\nwith his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half awake,\nthe left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung\nhis big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There was\nsomething obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. His bared breast\nglistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his\nsleep. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead,\nresembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the\nfold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge\nof his jaw. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but\nthe odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a\nrevealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation\nof everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own\nhearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the\nsights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the\nair that fills our lungs.\n\nThe thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost\nitself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond\nthe sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented\nglitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of\nthe half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. The\nship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the\nsenses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through\nthe dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and\ncalm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. 'Hot is no name\nfor it down below,' said a voice.\n\nJim smiled without looking round. The skipper presented an unmoved\nbreadth of back: it was the renegade's trick to appear pointedly unaware\nof your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a\ndevouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon\nthat came like a gush from a sewer. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt;\nthe second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with\ndamp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his\ncomplaints. The sailors had a good time of it up here, and what was the\nuse of them in the world he would be blowed if he could see. The poor\ndevils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could\nvery well do the rest too; by gosh they--'Shut up!' growled the German\nstolidly. 'Oh yes! Shut up--and when anything goes wrong you fly to\nus, don't you?' went on the other. He was more than half cooked, he\nexpected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because\nthese last three days he had passed through a fine course of training\nfor the place where the bad boys go when they die--b'gosh, he\nhad--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below.\nThe durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and\nbanged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made\nhim risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse\nof a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more\nthan _he_ could tell. He must have been born reckless, b'gosh.\nHe . . . 'Where did you get drink?' inquired the German, very savage; but\nmotionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a\nman cut out of a block of fat. Jim went on smiling at the retreating\nhorizon; his heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was\ncontemplating his own superiority. 'Drink!' repeated the engineer with\namiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy\nfigure with flexible legs. 'Not from you, captain. You're far too mean,\nb'gosh. You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of\nschnapps. That's what you Germans call economy. Penny wise, pound\nfoolish.' He became sentimental. The chief had given him a four-finger\nnip about ten o'clock--'only one, s'elp me!'--good old chief; but as to\ngetting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn't do\nit. Not it. Not to-night anyhow. He was sleeping sweetly like a little\nchild, with a bottle of prime brandy under his pillow. From the thick\nthroat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the\nsound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious\nfeather in a faint stir of air. He and the chief engineer had been\ncronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old\nChinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into\nthe venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. The quay-side opinion in the\nPatna's home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation\n'had done together pretty well everything you can think of.' Outwardly\nthey were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy\ncurves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the\nhead of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an\nindifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. He had been stranded out East\nsomewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he probably\ndid not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause\nof his shipwreck. He had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly\nout of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been so much\nworse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace\nof misfortune. Then, steam navigation expanding in these seas and men\nof his craft being scarce at first, he had 'got on' after a sort. He\nwas eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was 'an old\nstager out here.' When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his\nclothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus\naround the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored\ntobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long,\nwith the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy\nfrom the hazy glimpse of a truth. He was usually anything but free with\nhis private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his\nprinciples, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what\nwith the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff,\nhad become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. The fury of the New South\nWales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim,\nfaintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could\nget below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a\ngun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic\nadventure; they weren't bad chaps though. Even the skipper himself . . .\nHis gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued\ngurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was\ntoo pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. The\nquality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but\nthey could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was\ndifferent. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life\nwas easy and he was too sure of himself--too sure of himself to . . .\nThe line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet\nwas thinner than a thread in a spider's web.\n\nThe second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the consideration\nof his finances and of his courage.\n\n'Who's drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won't do. You ought to know by\nthis time the chief ain't free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk,\nb'gosh. I've never been the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain't\nmade yet that would make _me_ drunk. I could drink liquid fire against\nyour whisky peg for peg, b'gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. If I\nthought I was drunk I would jump overboard--do away with myself, b'gosh.\nI would! Straight! And I won't go off the bridge. Where do you expect\nme to take the air on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that vermin\ndown there? Likely--ain't it! And I am not afraid of anything you can\ndo.'\n\nThe German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little\nwithout a word.\n\n'I don't know what fear is,' pursued the engineer, with the enthusiasm\nof sincere conviction. 'I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin' work\nin this rotten hooker, b'gosh! And a jolly good thing for you that there\nare some of us about the world that aren't afraid of their lives, or\nwhere would you be--you and this old thing here with her plates like\nbrown paper--brown paper, s'elp me? It's all very fine for you--you\nget a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about\nme--what do I get? A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and\nfind yourself. I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who\nwouldn't chuck a dratted job like this? 'Tain't safe, s'elp me, it\nain't! Only I am one of them fearless fellows . . .'\n\nHe let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in\nthe air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in\nprolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better\nemphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he\nhad been clubbed from behind. He said 'Damn!' as he tumbled; an instant\nof silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered\nforward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff\nand still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Then they\nlooked upwards at the stars.\n\nWhat had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the\nearth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and\nsuddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably\ninsecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning\ndestruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed\nagain into a vague heap. This heap said 'What's that?' in the muffled\naccents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder\ninfinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration,\npassed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had\ngrowled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel\nglittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed\non the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few\ninches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become\npliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the\nsmooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise\nof thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a\nnarrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air.\n\n\n\nA month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed questions,\ntried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said, speaking\nof the ship: 'She went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling\nover a stick.' The illustration was good: the questions were aiming at\nfacts, and the official Inquiry was being held in the police court of an\nEastern port. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks\nin a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and\nfro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him\nout of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces\nattentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows\nupon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice.\nIt was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only\nsound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that\nextorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain\nwithin his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the\nterrible questioning of one's conscience. Outside the court the sun\nblazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the\nshame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. The\nface of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at\nhim deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. The\nlight of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads\nand shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct in the\nhalf-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed composed of\nstaring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him,\nas if facts could explain anything!\n\n'After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash,\nsay a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward\nand ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from\nthe force of the blow?' asked the assessor sitting to the left. He had\na thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on\nthe desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with\nthoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in\nhis seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his\nfinger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in\nthe roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his\narms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side\nof his inkstand.\n\n'I did not,' said Jim. 'I was told to call no one and to make no noise\nfor fear of creating a panic. I thought the precaution reasonable. I\ntook one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward.\nAfter opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. I lowered\nthen the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak\nwas more than half full of water already. I knew then there must be a\nbig hole below the water-line.' He paused.\n\n'Yes,' said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad;\nhis fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise.\n\n'I did not think of danger just then. I might have been a little\nstartled: all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly. I\nknew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead\nseparating the forepeak from the forehold. I went back to tell the\ncaptain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the\nbridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he thought his left arm was\nbroken; he had slipped on the top step when getting down while I was\nforward. He exclaimed, \"My God! That rotten bulkhead'll give way in a\nminute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead.\"\nHe pushed me away with his right arm and ran before me up the ladder,\nshouting as he climbed. His left arm hung by his side. I followed up in\ntime to see the captain rush at him and knock him down flat on his back.\nHe did not strike him again: he stood bending over him and speaking\nangrily but quite low. I fancy he was asking him why the devil he didn't\ngo and stop the engines, instead of making a row about it on deck. I\nheard him say, \"Get up! Run! fly!\" He swore also. The engineer slid down\nthe starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine-room\ncompanion which was on the port side. He moaned as he ran. . . .'\n\nHe spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he\ncould have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for\nthe better information of these men who wanted facts. After his first\nfeeling of revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous\nprecision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the\nappalling face of things. The facts those men were so eager to know had\nbeen visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in\nspace and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton\nsteamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that\nhad features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be\nremembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible,\na directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent\nsoul in a detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This\nhad not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost\nimportance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted to go on\ntalking for truth's sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his\nutterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the\nserried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off\nfrom the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself\nimprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round,\ndistracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place\nto scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape.\nThis awful activity of mind made him hesitate at times in his\nspeech. . . .\n\n'The captain kept on moving here and there on the bridge; he seemed calm\nenough, only he stumbled several times; and once as I stood speaking to\nhim he walked right into me as though he had been stone-blind. He made\nno definite answer to what I had to tell. He mumbled to himself; all I\nheard of it were a few words that sounded like \"confounded steam!\" and\n\"infernal steam!\"--something about steam. I thought . . .'\n\nHe was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut short his\nspeech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely discouraged and\nweary. He was coming to that, he was coming to that--and now, checked\nbrutally, he had to answer by yes or no. He answered truthfully by a\ncurt 'Yes, I did'; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy\neyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed\nwithin him. He was made to answer another question so much to the point\nand so useless, then waited again. His mouth was tastelessly dry, as\nthough he had been eating dust, then salt and bitter as after a drink\nof sea-water. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his tongue over parched\nlips, felt a shiver run down his back. The big assessor had dropped his\neyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes\nof the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with\nkindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered\nnear the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair,\nhe rested his temple in the palm of his hand. The wind of the punkahs\neddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in\nvoluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in\ndrill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding\ntheir round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the\ncourt peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and\nfro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless\nas ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers.\n\nJim's eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a\nwhite man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded,\nbut with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and clear. Jim\nanswered another question and was tempted to cry out, 'What's the good\nof this! what's the good!' He tapped with his foot slightly, bit his\nlip, and looked away over the heads. He met the eyes of the white man.\nThe glance directed at him was not the fascinated stare of the others.\nIt was an act of intelligent volition. Jim between two questions forgot\nhimself so far as to find leisure for a thought. This fellow--ran the\nthought--looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past\nmy shoulder. He had come across that man before--in the street perhaps.\nHe was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days,\nhe had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless\nconverse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a\nwayfarer lost in a wilderness. At present he was answering questions\nthat did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether\nhe would ever again speak out as long as he lived. The sound of his own\ntruthful statements confirmed his deliberate opinion that speech was\nof no use to him any longer. That man there seemed to be aware of his\nhopeless difficulty. Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as\nafter a final parting.\n\nAnd later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed\nhimself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail\nand audibly.\n\nPerhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless\nfoliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery\ncigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent\nlistener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and\nexpanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in\nprofound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes\novershadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very\nfirst word uttered Marlow's body, extended at rest in the seat, would\nbecome very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the\nlapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past.\n\n\n\n\n\n'Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,' he would say, 'and to this day I\nhaven't left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each of\nus has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of\nus has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because I don't\nlike to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--the devil,\nI mean. I haven't seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial\nevidence. He is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in\nfor that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry\nthing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn't think a mangy, native tyke\nwould be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate's\ncourt, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly\ndiabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with\nhard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues\nat the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth,\nI had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I\ndidn't have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my\nown soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be\nthus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns\nas the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in\nthis valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of\nconfessions. Then why? Can't tell--unless it be to make time pass away\nafter dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and\nin consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous\noccupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves,\n\"Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk.\"\n\n'Talk? So be it. And it's easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a\ngood spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent\ncigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would\nmake the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to\npick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every\nirremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in\nthe end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to\nexpect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Of course there\nare men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner\nhour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some\nfable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end\nis told--even if there happens to be any end to it.\n\n'My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know\nthat everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the\naffair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable\nmessage came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious,\nbecause it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about\nas naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked\nof nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my\nstate-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering\nabout the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea,\nby favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some\nacquaintance, and the first remark would be, \"Did you ever hear of\nanything to beat this?\" and according to his kind the man would smile\ncynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers\nwould accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their\nminds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for\na harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour\noffice, at every ship-broker's, at your agent's, from whites, from\nnatives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on\nthe stone steps as you went up--by Jove! There was some indignation, not\na few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them,\nyou know. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion\nthat whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic\nas well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing\nin the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men\nwalking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where that\nqueer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself,\n\"Here they are!\"\n\n'There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one\nmuch larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed\nwith a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line\nsteamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. There could be no\nmistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance:\nthe fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good\nold earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come\nacross him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was\nabusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking\nhimself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh's back-shop,\ntill De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much\nas the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little\nleathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, \"Business is\nbusiness, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!\"\n\n'I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurrying on a little in\nadvance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk in a\nstartling way. He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking\non hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled\nsleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a\npair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody's cast-off\npith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a\nmanilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like\nthat hasn't the ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes.\nVery well. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed\nwithin three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on\npelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or\nreport, or whatever you like to call it.\n\n'It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to the principal\nshipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story\ngoes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to\nhis chief clerk. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little\nPortuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the\nhop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a\npiece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One\nvoyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my\nsea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn't,\nyou know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to\nperquisites quite touched my heart. It was so strong as to be almost\nbeautiful. The race--the two races rather--and the climate . . .\nHowever, never mind. I know where I have a friend for life.\n\n'Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official\nmorality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his\nback, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and\nenormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in\nstriped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space\nin the office. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an\nappreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still\nwondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been\ntransported in front of his desk. The archway from the ante-room was\ncrowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and\ncrew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost\nclimbing on each other's backs. Quite a riot. By that time the fellow\nhad managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with\nslight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that\nfor some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition\nwanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and\nlittle by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of\nthe Patna case. He says that as soon as he understood who it was before\nhim he felt quite unwell--Archie is so sympathetic and easily upset--but\npulled himself together and shouted \"Stop! I can't listen to you. You\nmust go to the Master Attendant. I can't possibly listen to you. Captain\nElliot is the man you want to see. This way, this way.\" He jumped\nup, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him,\nsurprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private\noffice some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like\na frightened bullock. \"Look here! what's up? Let go! Look here!\" Archie\nflung open the door without knocking. \"The master of the Patna, sir,\"\nhe shouts. \"Go in, captain.\" He saw the old man lift his head from some\nwriting so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and\nfled to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature:\nbut he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he\ncouldn't collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of\nhis own name. Archie's the most sensitive shipping-master in the two\nhemispheres. He declares he felt as though he had thrown a man to a\nhungry lion. No doubt the noise was great. I heard it down below, and I\nhave every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as\nfar as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had a great stock of words and\ncould shout--and didn't mind who he shouted at either. He would have\nshouted at the Viceroy himself. As he used to tell me: \"I am as high as\nI can get; my pension is safe. I've a few pounds laid by, and if they\ndon't like my notions of duty I would just as soon go home as not. I am\nan old man, and I have always spoken my mind. All I care for now is to\nsee my girls married before I die.\" He was a little crazy on that\npoint. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him\namazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their\nmatrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble,\nbecause, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. However,\nthat morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to\ncarry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah!\nejected him again.\n\n'Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste\nand stand still on the outer steps. He had stopped close to me for the\npurpose of profound meditation: his large purple cheeks quivered. He\nwas biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed\nlook. The other three chaps that had landed with him made a little group\nwaiting at some distance. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap\nwith his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat,\nas dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey\nmoustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. The\nthird was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his\npockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking\ntogether earnestly. He stared across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle\ngharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the\ngroup, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave\nhimself up to the critical examination of his toes. The young chap,\nmaking no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the\nsunshine. This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and\nunapproachable as only the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed,\nclean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone\non; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I\nwas as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of\nme by false pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I thought\nto myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt\nas though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer\nmortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because\nhis duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a\nflying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him\nthere apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? He seemed\nready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about\nthe behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale\nthat was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official\ninquiry. \"That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound,\" said the\ncaptain of the Patna. I can't tell whether he recognised me--I rather\nthink he did; but at any rate our glances met. He glared--I smiled;\nhound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open\nwindow. \"Did he?\" I said from some strange inability to hold my tongue.\nHe nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his\nhead and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--\"Bah! the\nPacific is big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I\nknow where there's plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt\nin Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .\" He paused reflectively, while without\neffort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was \"aguaindt\"\nwith in those places. I won't make a secret of it that I had been\n\"aguaindt\" with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when\na man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. I've\nknown such a time, and, what's more, I shan't now pretend to pull a long\nface over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from\nwant of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other\nequally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more\namusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask\nto sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from\ncowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate\nreasons.\n\n'\"You Englishmen are all rogues,\" went on my patriotic Flensborg or\nStettin Australian. I really don't recollect now what decent little\nport on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that\nprecious bird. \"What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better\nthan other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me.\" His\nthick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it\ntrembled from head to foot. \"That's what you English always make--make\na tam' fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your\ntam' country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don't want the\ncertificate. A man like me don't want your verfluchte certificate. I\nshpit on it.\" He spat. \"I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,\" he cried,\nfretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from\nsome invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away\nfrom that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his bullet head\npositively smoked. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away:\ncuriosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see\nthe effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands\nin pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the\ngrass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel\nwith the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is\nready. That's how he looked, and it was odious. I waited to see him\noverwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an\nimpaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand\nwhat I mean. Nothing more awful than to watch a man who has been found\nout, not in a crime but in a more than criminal weakness. The commonest\nsort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense;\nit is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of\nthe world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness\nthat may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully\nscorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one\nof us is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called\nnames, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well\nsurvive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! And\nthere are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of\nus are totally and completely undone. I watched the youngster there.\nI liked his appearance; I knew his appearance; he came from the right\nplace; he was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his\nkind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very\nexistence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage.\nI don't mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of\ncourage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in\nthe face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without\npose--a power of resistance, don't you see, ungracious if you like, but\npriceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and\ninward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption\nof men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the\ncontagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Hang ideas! They are\ntramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking\na little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief\nin a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently\nand would like to die easy!\n\n'This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so\ntypical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and\nleft of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of\nintelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. He was the\nkind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge\nof the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. I say I would,\nand I ought to know. Haven't I turned out youngsters enough in my time,\nfor the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft\nwhose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet\nmust be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the\ncomponent part of every waking thought--till it is present in every\ndream of their young sleep! The sea has been good to me, but when I\nremember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now\nand some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don't\nthink I have done badly by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet\nthat before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate\nwould overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice\nspeaking above my hat would ask: \"Don't you remember me, sir? Why!\nlittle So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage.\" And I\nwould remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of\nthis chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very\nquiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides\nout gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged\nfather who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the\nmorning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays\ntoo long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all\nto say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl,\n\"Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. There's a\ngentleman wants to get ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got\ncarried off to Talcahuano, didn't you? Now's your time; easy does\nit. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there.\" The tugs, smoking\nlike the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury;\nthe gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has\nshied his umbrella after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of\nsacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks\nnothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick\nbefore next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little\nmysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live\nor die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this\nfool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his\nback slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy\nvoice: \"Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so.\"\n\n'I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least\nyou had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and I have\nwinced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone\nto bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump.\nDon't I remember the little So-and-so's! I tell you I ought to know the\nright kind of looks. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on\nthe strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and,\nby Jove! it wouldn't have been safe. There are depths of horror in that\nthought. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some\ninfernal alloy in his metal. How much? The least thing--the least\ndrop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made\nyou--standing there with his don't-care-hang air--he made you wonder\nwhether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass.\n\n'I couldn't believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for\nthe honour of the craft. The other two no-account chaps spotted their\ncaptain, and began to move slowly towards us. They chatted together as\nthey strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been\nvisible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other--might have been\nexchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw that with one of them it was a\ncase of a broken arm; and as to the long individual with grey moustaches\nhe was the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious\npersonality. They were nobodies. They approached. The skipper gazed\nin an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an\nunnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an\nunknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting,\nopened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his\npuffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to\nstrike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he\nwent off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the\ndoor-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to\nsee the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. The driver,\nshaken out of his meditation over the sole of his foot, displayed at\nonce all the signs of intense terror, and held with both hands, looking\nround from his box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his\nconveyance. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the\ncrimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs,\nthe immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the\nwhole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's\nsense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those\ngrotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever.\nHe disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box\non wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only\nsank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind\nrattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his\nhead hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring,\nfurious, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious\nflourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. He roared\nat him to be off, to go on. Where? Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver\nlashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop.\nWhere? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to\ndisport himself in, and I did not hear the precise address. A snorting\npony snatched him into \"Ewigkeit\" in the twinkling of an eye, and I\nnever saw him again; and, what's more, I don't know of anybody that ever\nhad a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside\na ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother\nof dust. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly\nenough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for\nnever again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a\nlackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. The Pacific is\nindeed big; but whether he found a place for a display of his talents\nin it or not, the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on a\nbroomstick. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after\nthe carriage, bleating, \"Captain! I say, Captain! I sa-a-ay!\"--but after\na few steps stopped short, hung his head, and walked back slowly. At the\nsharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where he stood.\nHe made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in\nthe new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight.\n\n'All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am\ntrying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of\nvisual impressions. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie\nto look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the\nscene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and\nvery full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the\nprincipal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy\nimportance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent\naltercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who\nturned out to be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn't going to be\nordered about--\"not he, b'gosh.\" He wouldn't be terrified with a pack\nof lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. He was not going to be\nbullied by \"no object of that sort,\" if the story were true \"ever so\"!\nHe bawled his wish, his desire, his determination to go to bed. \"If you\nweren't a God-forsaken Portuguee,\" I heard him yell, \"you would know\nthat the hospital is the right place for me.\" He pushed the fist of\nhis sound arm under the other's nose; a crowd began to collect; the\nhalf-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to\nexplain his intentions. I went away without waiting to see the end.\n\n'But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and\ngoing there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry,\nI saw in the white men's ward that little chap tossing on his back, with\nhis arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the\nother one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also\nfound his way there. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during\nthe quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not\nto look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his\ndistress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani's billiard-room\nand grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who\nhad known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other\nplaces, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and\nshut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous\nhovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal\nsafety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time\nafter (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price\nof some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking\nany questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very\nmany years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny\nchest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears:\n\"Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!\" What was the precise\nnature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may,\nhe had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a\nchair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster\non the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker\nwith such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of\nthe third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found\nhimself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes.\nHe burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy\nlittle stairway, landed bodily on Mariani's stomach, picked himself up,\nand bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off\na garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were\ncarrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but\nwhen I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean\nbronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow,\nlike the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not\nbeen for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of\nhis glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently\nbehind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to\nindulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the\nfamous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into\nthe deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me\nno more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a\ncommunity of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of\nconduct, I can't explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you\nlike; but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps,\nunconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and\nredeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an\nexcuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the\nlaying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man's creation, of the\nuneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and\nmore chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign\npower enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing\nto stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good\nlittle quiet villainies; it's the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe\nin a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own\nsake that I wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young\nfellow whom I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a\ntouch of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of\nhis weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint of a\ndestructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had resembled\nhis youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. I was,\nand no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at\nthis distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my\nimbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady\ninvalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must have been\npretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent\nand friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as\nany decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a\ndelicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly;\nI did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not\nfurious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance,\nhis redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor\niniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated\nPatna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and\nsaid: \"Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down.\" I\nmade ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added\nsmoothly, \"She was full of reptiles.\"\n\n'This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror\nbehind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine\nwistfully. \"They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look\nat her sinking,\" he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded\nalarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was\nno snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the\nperspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty\niron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown\nand gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my\ninteresting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed\nmy shoulder. \"Only my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my\neyesight. That's why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick\nenough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and\nsang out together--like this.\" . . . A wolfish howl searched the very\nrecesses of my soul. \"Oh! make 'im dry up,\" whined the accident case\nirritably. \"You don't believe me, I suppose,\" went on the other, with\nan air of ineffable conceit. \"I tell you there are no such eyes as mine\nthis side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed.\"\n\n'Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so.\n\"What can you see?\" he asked. \"Nothing,\" I said, feeling awfully ashamed\nof myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt.\n\"Just so,\" he said, \"but if I were to look I could see--there's no eyes\nlike mine, I tell you.\" Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his\neagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. \"Millions\nof pink toads. There's no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It's\nworse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke\nmy pipe all day long. Why don't they give me back my pipe? I would get\na smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They've\ngot to be watched, you know.\" He winked facetiously. The perspiration\ndripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the\nafternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff\nfolds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the\ncovers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all\nalong the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the\ntropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter's gale in an old\nbarn at home. \"Don't you let him start his hollering, mister,\" hailed\nfrom afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came\nringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The\nclawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. \"The ship\nwas full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,\"\nhe whispered with extreme rapidity. \"All pink. All pink--as big as\nmastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their\nugly mouths. Ough! Ough!\" Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed\nunder the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let\ngo my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled\ntensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the\nspectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face\nof an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed\nbefore my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable\ncaution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--\"Ssh! what are they\ndoing now down there?\" he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic\nprecautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a\nlurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. \"They are all asleep,\"\nI answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That's what he wanted\nto hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long\nbreath. \"Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them\nbrutes. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There's too many of\nthem, and she won't swim more than ten minutes.\" He panted again. \"Hurry\nup,\" he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: \"They are all\nawake--millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait!\nI'll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!\" An\ninterminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in\nthe distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his\nbandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the\nvista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I\nconfessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out\nthrough one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The\nhowl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and\nsuddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended\nthe bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my\ndistracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons\nwho was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. \"Been to see your man,\nCaptain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no\nnotion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we've got the chief\nengineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.'s of the worst\nkind. He has been drinking hard in that Greek's or Italian's grog-shop\nfor three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy\na day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I\nshould think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious\npart is there's some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to\nfind out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium.\nTraditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn't. Good old\ntradition's at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are batrachian.\nHa! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case\nof jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don't you know, after such a\nfestive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of\nthe tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking\nold boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever met--medically, of course.\nWon't you?\"\n\n'I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest,\nbut now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook\nhands in a hurry. \"I say,\" he cried after me; \"he can't attend that\ninquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?\"\n\n'\"Not in the least,\" I called back from the gateway.'\n\n'The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry was not\nadjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law, and it\nwas well attended because of its human interest, no doubt. There was no\nincertitude as to facts--as to the one material fact, I mean. How the\nPatna came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the court did not\nexpect to find out; and in the whole audience there was not a man who\ncared. Yet, as I've told you, all the sailors in the port attended, and\nthe waterside business was fully represented. Whether they knew it or\nnot, the interest that drew them here was purely psychological--the\nexpectation of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power,\nthe horror, of human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be\ndisclosed. The examination of the only man able and willing to face\nit was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of\nquestions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on\nan iron box, were the object to find out what's inside. However, an\nofficial inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the\nfundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair.\n\n'The young chap could have told them, and, though that very thing\nwas the thing that interested the audience, the questions put to him\nnecessarily led him away from what to me, for instance, would have\nbeen the only truth worth knowing. You can't expect the constituted\nauthorities to inquire into the state of a man's soul--or is it only of\nhis liver? Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and\nfrankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not\nmuch good for anything else. I don't mean to imply these fellows were\nstupid. The magistrate was very patient. One of the assessors was a\nsailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition.\nBrierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some of you must have heard of Big\nBrierly--the captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line. That's the\nman.\n\n'He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him. He had never\nin his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap,\nnever a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky\nfellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust.\nAt thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern\ntrade--and, what's more, he thought a lot of what he had. There was\nnothing like it in the world, and I suppose if you had asked him\npoint-blank he would have confessed that in his opinion there was not\nsuch another commander. The choice had fallen upon the right man. The\nrest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa\nwere rather poor creatures. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued\nships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the\nunderwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from\nsome foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. He was\nacutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough,\nthough some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn't stand him at\nany price. I haven't the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my\nsuperior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West, you could not\nhave ignored your inferiority in his presence--but I couldn't get up any\nreal sentiment of offence. He did not despise me for anything I could\nhelp, for anything I was--don't you know? I was a negligible quantity\nsimply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague\nBrierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold\nchronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the\nexcellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed\nof an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and\nworship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never\nwas such a man loved thus by such a dog. No doubt, to have all this\nforced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was\nassociated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of\nother more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his\ngood-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite\nand attractive in the man. I have never defined to myself this\nattraction, but there were moments when I envied him. The sting of life\ncould do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the\nsmooth face of a rock. This was enviable. As I looked at him, flanking\non one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the\ninquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a\nsurface as hard as granite. He committed suicide very soon after.\n\n'No wonder Jim's case bored him, and while I thought with something\nakin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the young man under\nexamination, he was probably holding silent inquiry into his own case.\nThe verdict must have been of unmitigated guilt, and he took the secret\nof the evidence with him in that leap into the sea. If I understand\nanything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of\nthose trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which\na man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am\nin a position to know that it wasn't money, and it wasn't drink, and it\nwasn't woman. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of\nthe inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward\npassage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he had\nsuddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open wide for his\nreception.\n\n'Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate\nsailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with\nhis commander the surliest chief officer I've ever seen, would tell the\nstory with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came on deck in\nthe morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room. \"It was ten\nminutes to four,\" he said, \"and the middle watch was not relieved yet of\ncourse. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking to the second mate, and\ncalled me in. I was loth to go, and that's the truth, Captain Marlow--I\ncouldn't stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never\nknow what a man is made of. He had been promoted over too many heads,\nnot counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel\nsmall, nothing but by the way he said 'Good morning.' I never addressed\nhim, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do\nto keep a civil tongue in my head.\" (He flattered himself there. I often\nwondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half\na voyage.) \"I've a wife and children,\" he went on, \"and I had been ten\nyears in the Company, always expecting the next command--more fool I.\nSays he, just like this: 'Come in here, Mr. Jones,' in that swagger\nvoice of his--'Come in here, Mr. Jones.' In I went. 'We'll lay down her\nposition,' says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand.\nBy the standing orders, the officer going off duty would have done that\nat the end of his watch. However, I said nothing, and looked on while he\nmarked off the ship's position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and\nthe time. I can see him this moment writing his neat figures: seventeen,\neight, four A.M. The year would be written in red ink at the top of\nthe chart. He never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly\ndidn't. I've the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down\nat the mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me.\n'Thirty-two miles more as she goes,' says he, 'and then we shall be\nclear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.'\n\n'\"We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage. I said,\n'All right, sir,' wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to\ncall him before altering the course anyhow. Just then eight bells were\nstruck: we came out on the bridge, and the second mate before going off\nmentions in the usual way--'Seventy-one on the log.' Captain Brierly\nlooks at the compass and then all round. It was dark and clear, and\nall the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes.\nSuddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh: 'I am going aft, and\nshall set the log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no\nmistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe.\nLet's see--the correction on the log is six per cent. additive; say,\nthen, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to\nstarboard at once. No use losing any distance--is there?' I had never\nheard him talk so much at a stretch, and to no purpose as it seemed\nto me. I said nothing. He went down the ladder, and the dog, that was\nalways at his heels whenever he moved, night or day, followed,\nsliding nose first, after him. I heard his boot-heels tap, tap on the\nafter-deck, then he stopped and spoke to the dog--'Go back, Rover. On\nthe bridge, boy! Go on--get.' Then he calls out to me from the dark,\n'Shut that dog up in the chart-room, Mr. Jones--will you?'\n\n'\"This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. These are\nthe last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir.\"\nAt this point the old chap's voice got quite unsteady. \"He was afraid\nthe poor brute would jump after him, don't you see?\" he pursued with\na quaver. \"Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he--would you\nbelieve it?--he put a drop of oil in it too. There was the oil-feeder\nwhere he left it near by. The boat-swain's mate got the hose along aft\nto wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on\nthe bridge--'Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,' he says. 'There's a\nfunny thing. I don't like to touch it.' It was Captain Brierly's gold\nchronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain.\n\n'\"As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew, sir. My\nlegs got soft under me. It was as if I had seen him go over; and I could\ntell how far behind he was left too. The taffrail-log marked eighteen\nmiles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round\nthe mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help him down, I suppose; but,\nLord! what's four iron pins to a powerful man like Captain Brierly.\nMaybe his confidence in himself was just shook a bit at the last. That's\nthe only sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but\nI am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try to swim a\nstroke, the same as he would have had pluck enough to keep up all day\nlong on the bare chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir.\nHe was second to none--if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He\nhad written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and the\nother to me. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--I had\nbeen in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end of hints\nas to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I should keep the\ncommand of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would to a favourite son,\nCaptain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years his senior and had\ntasted salt water before he was fairly breeched. In his letter to the\nowners--it was left open for me to see--he said that he had always done\nhis duty by them--up to that moment--and even now he was not betraying\ntheir confidence, since he was leaving the ship to as competent a seaman\nas could be found--meaning me, sir, meaning me! He told them that if\nthe last act of his life didn't take away all his credit with them, they\nwould give weight to my faithful service and to his warm recommendation,\nwhen about to fill the vacancy made by his death. And much more like\nthis, sir. I couldn't believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all over,\"\nwent on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something\nin the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula.\n\"You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only to give an unlucky\nman a last show to get on. What with the shock of him going in this\nawful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was\nnearly off my chump for a week. But no fear. The captain of the Pelion\nwas shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay,\nsir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. 'Aw--I\nam--aw--your new captain, Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.' He was drowned in\nscent--fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look\nI gave him that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural\ndisappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got\nthe promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of\ncourse--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Says I, 'Don't\nyou mind old Jones, sir; dam' his soul, he's used to it.' I could see\ndirectly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first\ntiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and\nthat in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy\nshow. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held my\npeace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something. Up\nhe jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little\nfighting-cock. 'You'll find you have a different person to deal with\nthan the late Captain Brierly.' 'I've found it,' says I, very glum, but\npretending to be mighty busy with my steak. 'You are an old ruffian,\nMister--aw--Jones; and what's more, you are known for an old ruffian\nin the employ,' he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers stood about\nlistening with their mouths stretched from ear to ear. 'I may be a hard\ncase,' answers I, 'but I ain't so far gone as to put up with the sight\nof you sitting in Captain Brierly's chair.' With that I lay down my\nknife and fork. 'You would like to sit in it yourself--that's where the\nshoe pinches,' he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and\nwas on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the\nstevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift--on shore--after ten years'\nservice--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles\noff depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir!\nI chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his\nnight-glasses--here they are; and he wished me to take care of the\ndog--here he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Where's the captain, Rover?\"\nThe dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate\nbark, and crept under the table.\n\n'All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board\nthat nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite\nby a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally\ncalled him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before\nthe occupation days. The old chap snuffled on--\n\n'\"Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there's no other\nplace on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in\nreply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing! Perhaps they\ndid not want to know.\"\n\n'The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a\nred cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of\nthat fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a\nveil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly's remembered figure, the\nposthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which\nhad almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Almost! Perhaps\nwholly. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take\nof his own suicide?\n\n'\"Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you think?\" asked\nJones, pressing his palms together. \"Why? It beats me! Why?\" He slapped\nhis low and wrinkled forehead. \"If he had been poor and old and in\ndebt--and never a show--or else mad. But he wasn't of the kind that\ngoes mad, not he. You trust me. What a mate don't know about his skipper\nisn't worth knowing. Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit\nhere sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz.\nThere was some reason.\"\n\n'\"You may depend on it, Captain Jones,\" said I, \"it wasn't anything that\nwould have disturbed much either of us two,\" I said; and then, as if\na light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones\nfound a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me\ndolefully: \"Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of\nourselves.\"\n\n'Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is\ntinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. I\nspoke with him for the last time during the progress of the inquiry. It\nwas after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street.\nHe was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his\nusual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly\ncool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his\ninterlocutor had been a rather good joke. \"They caught me for that\ninquiry, you see,\" he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon\nthe inconveniences of daily attendance in court. \"And goodness knows how\nlong it will last. Three days, I suppose.\" I heard him out in silence;\nin my then opinion it was a way as good as another of putting on side.\n\"What's the use of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine,\" he\npursued hotly. I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me\nwith a sort of pent-up violence. \"I feel like a fool all the time.\" I\nlooked up at him. This was going very far--for Brierly--when talking of\nBrierly. He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it\na slight tug. \"Why are we tormenting that young chap?\" he asked. This\nquestion chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine\nthat, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered\nat once, \"Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.\" I was\nastonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance,\nwhich ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said angrily, \"Why, yes.\nCan't he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared out? What does he\nexpect to happen? Nothing can save him. He's done for.\" We walked on\nin silence a few steps. \"Why eat all that dirt?\" he exclaimed, with an\noriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can\nfind a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. I wondered greatly at the\ndirection of his thoughts, but now I strongly suspect it was strictly in\ncharacter: at bottom poor Brierly must have been thinking of himself.\nI pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have\nfeathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the\nmeans of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was\nkeeping him in the Sailors' Home for the time being, and probably he\nhadn't a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some money\nto run away. \"Does it? Not always,\" he said, with a bitter laugh, and\nto some further remark of mine--\"Well, then, let him creep twenty feet\nunderground and stay there! By heavens! _I_ would.\" I don't know why his\ntone provoked me, and I said, \"There is a kind of courage in facing\nit out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away nobody would\ntrouble to run after him.\" \"Courage be hanged!\" growled Brierly. \"That\nsort of courage is of no use to keep a man straight, and I don't care\na snap for such courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice\nnow--of softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if\nyou put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out\nearly to-morrow morning. The fellow's a gentleman if he ain't fit to\nbe touched--he will understand. He must! This infernal publicity is too\nshocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs,\nlascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that's enough to burn a man\nto ashes with shame. This is abominable. Why, Marlow, don't you think,\ndon't you feel, that this is abominable; don't you now--come--as a\nseaman? If he went away all this would stop at once.\" Brierly said these\nwords with a most unusual animation, and made as if to reach after his\npocket-book. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice\nof these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance.\n\"And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose,\" he pronounced angrily. I\nsaid that's what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard me\nout, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of\nmy individuality, to push me away into the crowd. \"The worst of it,\" he\nsaid, \"is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity; you don't think\nenough of what you are supposed to be.\"\n\n'We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped opposite the\nharbour office, in sight of the very spot from which the immense captain\nof the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a\nhurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: \"This is a disgrace. We've got all\nkinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we\nmust preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many\ntinkers going about loose. We are trusted. Do you understand?--trusted!\nFrankly, I don't care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of\nAsia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo\nof old rags in bales. We aren't an organised body of men, and the only\nthing that holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency.\nSuch an affair destroys one's confidence. A man may go pretty near\nthrough his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip.\nBut when the call comes . . . Aha! . . . If I . . .\"\n\n'He broke off, and in a changed tone, \"I'll give you two hundred rupees\nnow, Marlow, and you just talk to that chap. Confound him! I wish he had\nnever come out here. Fact is, I rather think some of my people know his.\nThe old man's a parson, and I remember now I met him once when staying\nwith my cousin in Essex last year. If I am not mistaken, the old\nchap seemed rather to fancy his sailor son. Horrible. I can't do it\nmyself--but you . . .\"\n\n'Thus, apropos of Jim, I had a glimpse of the real Brierly a few days\nbefore he committed his reality and his sham together to the keeping of\nthe sea. Of course I declined to meddle. The tone of this last \"but\nyou\" (poor Brierly couldn't help it), that seemed to imply I was no\nmore noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the proposal with\nindignation, and on account of that provocation, or for some other\nreason, I became positive in my mind that the inquiry was a severe\npunishment to that Jim, and that his facing it--practically of his own\nfree will--was a redeeming feature in his abominable case. I hadn't been\nso sure of it before. Brierly went off in a huff. At the time his state\nof mind was more of a mystery to me than it is now.\n\n'Next day, coming into court late, I sat by myself. Of course I could\nnot forget the conversation I had with Brierly, and now I had them both\nunder my eyes. The demeanour of one suggested gloomy impudence and of\nthe other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude might not have been\ntruer than the other, and I was aware that one was not true. Brierly was\nnot bored--he was exasperated; and if so, then Jim might not have been\nimpudent. According to my theory he was not. I imagined he was hopeless.\nThen it was that our glances met. They met, and the look he gave me was\ndiscouraging of any intention I might have had to speak to him. Upon\neither hypothesis--insolence or despair--I felt I could be of no use to\nhim. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very soon after that\nexchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the next day. The\nwhite men began to troop out at once. Jim had been told to stand down\nsome time before, and was able to leave amongst the first. I saw his\nbroad shoulders and his head outlined in the light of the door, and\nwhile I made my way slowly out talking with some one--some stranger who\nhad addressed me casually--I could see him from within the court-room\nresting both elbows on the balustrade of the verandah and turning his\nback on the small stream of people trickling down the few steps. There\nwas a murmur of voices and a shuffle of boots.\n\n'The next case was that of assault and battery committed upon a\nmoney-lender, I believe; and the defendant--a venerable villager with a\nstraight white beard--sat on a mat just outside the door with his sons,\ndaughters, sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think, half the\npopulation of his village besides, squatting or standing around him. A\nslim dark woman, with part of her back and one black shoulder bared,\nand with a thin gold ring in her nose, suddenly began to talk in a\nhigh-pitched, shrewish tone. The man with me instinctively looked up\nat her. We were then just through the door, passing behind Jim's burly\nback.\n\n'Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog with them, I don't\nknow. Anyhow, a dog was there, weaving himself in and out amongst\npeople's legs in that mute stealthy way native dogs have, and my\ncompanion stumbled over him. The dog leaped away without a sound; the\nman, raising his voice a little, said with a slow laugh, \"Look at that\nwretched cur,\" and directly afterwards we became separated by a lot of\npeople pushing in. I stood back for a moment against the wall while the\nstranger managed to get down the steps and disappeared. I saw Jim spin\nround. He made a step forward and barred my way. We were alone; he\nglared at me with an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware I was\nbeing held up, so to speak, as if in a wood. The verandah was empty by\nthen, the noise and movement in court had ceased: a great silence fell\nupon the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice\nbegan to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak in\nat the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.\n\n'\"Did you speak to me?\" asked Jim very low, and bending forward, not so\nmuch towards me but at me, if you know what I mean. I said \"No\" at once.\nSomething in the sound of that quiet tone of his warned me to be on my\ndefence. I watched him. It was very much like a meeting in a wood, only\nmore uncertain in its issue, since he could possibly want neither my\nmoney nor my life--nothing that I could simply give up or defend with\na clear conscience. \"You say you didn't,\" he said, very sombre. \"But I\nheard.\" \"Some mistake,\" I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking\nmy eyes off him. To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky\nbefore a clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the\ndoom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.\n\n'\"As far as I know, I haven't opened my lips in your hearing,\" I\naffirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a little angry, too, at the\nabsurdity of this encounter. It strikes me now I have never in my life\nbeen so near a beating--I mean it literally; a beating with fists. I\nsuppose I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in the\nair. Not that he was actively threatening me. On the contrary, he was\nstrangely passive--don't you know? but he was lowering, and, though not\nexceptionally big, he looked generally fit to demolish a wall. The\nmost reassuring symptom I noticed was a kind of slow and ponderous\nhesitation, which I took as a tribute to the evident sincerity of my\nmanner and of my tone. We faced each other. In the court the assault\ncase was proceeding. I caught the words: \"Well--buffalo--stick--in the\ngreatness of my fear. . . .\"\n\n'\"What did you mean by staring at me all the morning?\" said Jim at last.\nHe looked up and looked down again. \"Did you expect us all to sit with\ndowncast eyes out of regard for your susceptibilities?\" I retorted\nsharply. I was not going to submit meekly to any of his nonsense. He\nraised his eyes again, and this time continued to look me straight\nin the face. \"No. That's all right,\" he pronounced with an air of\ndeliberating with himself upon the truth of this statement--\"that's all\nright. I am going through with that. Only\"--and there he spoke a little\nfaster--\"I won't let any man call me names outside this court. There was\na fellow with you. You spoke to him--oh yes--I know; 'tis all very fine.\nYou spoke to him, but you meant me to hear. . . .\"\n\n'I assured him he was under some extraordinary delusion. I had no\nconception how it came about. \"You thought I would be afraid to resent\nthis,\" he said, with just a faint tinge of bitterness. I was interested\nenough to discern the slightest shades of expression, but I was not in\nthe least enlightened; yet I don't know what in these words, or perhaps\njust the intonation of that phrase, induced me suddenly to make all\npossible allowances for him. I ceased to be annoyed at my unexpected\npredicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I\nhad an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate\nnature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as\none is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence.\nThe funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations\nof the higher order I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to\nthe possibility--nay, likelihood--of this encounter ending in some\ndisreputable brawl which could not possibly be explained, and would make\nme ridiculous. I did not hanker after a three days' celebrity as the man\nwho got a black eye or something of the sort from the mate of the Patna.\nHe, in all probability, did not care what he did, or at any rate would\nbe fully justified in his own eyes. It took no magician to see he was\namazingly angry about something, for all his quiet and even torpid\ndemeanour. I don't deny I was extremely desirous to pacify him at all\ncosts, had I only known what to do. But I didn't know, as you may well\nimagine. It was a blackness without a single gleam. We confronted each\nother in silence. He hung fire for about fifteen seconds, then made a\nstep nearer, and I made ready to ward off a blow, though I don't think I\nmoved a muscle. \"If you were as big as two men and as strong as six,\"\nhe said very softly, \"I would tell you what I think of you. You . . .\"\n\"Stop!\" I exclaimed. This checked him for a second. \"Before you tell me\nwhat you think of me,\" I went on quickly, \"will you kindly tell me what\nit is I've said or done?\" During the pause that ensued he surveyed me\nwith indignation, while I made supernatural efforts of memory, in which\nI was hindered by the oriental voice within the court-room expostulating\nwith impassioned volubility against a charge of falsehood. Then we spoke\nalmost together. \"I will soon show you I am not,\" he said, in a tone\nsuggestive of a crisis. \"I declare I don't know,\" I protested earnestly\nat the same time. He tried to crush me by the scorn of his glance.\n\"Now that you see I am not afraid you try to crawl out of it,\" he said.\n\"Who's a cur now--hey?\" Then, at last, I understood.\n\n'He had been scanning my features as though looking for a place where\nhe would plant his fist. \"I will allow no man,\" . . . he mumbled\nthreateningly. It was, indeed, a hideous mistake; he had given himself\naway utterly. I can't give you an idea how shocked I was. I suppose he\nsaw some reflection of my feelings in my face, because his expression\nchanged just a little. \"Good God!\" I stammered, \"you don't think\nI . . .\" \"But I am sure I've heard,\" he persisted, raising his voice for\nthe first time since the beginning of this deplorable scene. Then with a\nshade of disdain he added, \"It wasn't you, then? Very well; I'll find\nthe other.\" \"Don't be a fool,\" I cried in exasperation; \"it wasn't that\nat all.\" \"I've heard,\" he said again with an unshaken and sombre\nperseverance.\n\n'There may be those who could have laughed at his pertinacity; I didn't.\nOh, I didn't! There had never been a man so mercilessly shown up by\nhis own natural impulse. A single word had stripped him of his\ndiscretion--of that discretion which is more necessary to the decencies\nof our inner being than clothing is to the decorum of our body. \"Don't\nbe a fool,\" I repeated. \"But the other man said it, you don't deny\nthat?\" he pronounced distinctly, and looking in my face without\nflinching. \"No, I don't deny,\" said I, returning his gaze. At last his\neyes followed downwards the direction of my pointing finger. He appeared\nat first uncomprehending, then confounded, and at last amazed and scared\nas though a dog had been a monster and he had never seen a dog before.\n\"Nobody dreamt of insulting you,\" I said.\n\n'He contemplated the wretched animal, that moved no more than an effigy:\nit sat with ears pricked and its sharp muzzle pointed into the doorway,\nand suddenly snapped at a fly like a piece of mechanism.\n\n'I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened\nsuddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead, spread to\nthe roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely crimson, and even\nthe clear blue of his eyes was darkened many shades by the rush of blood\nto his head. His lips pouted a little, trembling as though he had been\non the point of bursting into tears. I perceived he was incapable\nof pronouncing a word from the excess of his humiliation. From\ndisappointment too--who knows? Perhaps he looked forward to that\nhammering he was going to give me for rehabilitation, for appeasement?\nWho can tell what relief he expected from this chance of a row? He\nwas naive enough to expect anything; but he had given himself away for\nnothing in this case. He had been frank with himself--let alone\nwith me--in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective\nrefutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an\ninarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a\nblow on the head. It was pitiful.\n\n'I didn't catch up again with him till well outside the gate. I had even\nto trot a bit at the last, but when, out of breath at his elbow, I taxed\nhim with running away, he said, \"Never!\" and at once turned at bay. I\nexplained I never meant to say he was running away from _me_. \"From no\nman--from not a single man on earth,\" he affirmed with a stubborn mien.\nI forbore to point out the one obvious exception which would hold good\nfor the bravest of us; I thought he would find out by himself very soon.\nHe looked at me patiently while I was thinking of something to say, but\nI could find nothing on the spur of the moment, and he began to walk on.\nI kept up, and anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn't\nthink of leaving him under a false impression of my--of my--I stammered.\nThe stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish\nit, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the\nlogic of their construction. My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He\ncut it short by saying, with courteous placidity that argued an\nimmense power of self-control or else a wonderful elasticity of\nspirits--\"Altogether my mistake.\" I marvelled greatly at this\nexpression: he might have been alluding to some trifling occurrence.\nHadn't he understood its deplorable meaning? \"You may well forgive me,\"\nhe continued, and went on a little moodily, \"All these staring people in\ncourt seemed such fools that--that it might have been as I supposed.\"\n\n'This opened suddenly a new view of him to my wonder. I looked at him\ncuriously and met his unabashed and impenetrable eyes. \"I can't put up\nwith this kind of thing,\" he said, very simply, \"and I don't mean to. In\ncourt it's different; I've got to stand that--and I can do it too.\"\n\n'I don't pretend I understood him. The views he let me have of himself\nwere like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog--bits\nof vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected idea of the general\naspect of a country. They fed one's curiosity without satisfying it;\nthey were no good for purposes of orientation. Upon the whole he was\nmisleading. That's how I summed him up to myself after he left me late\nin the evening. I had been staying at the Malabar House for a few days,\nand on my pressing invitation he dined with me there.'\n\n'An outward-bound mail-boat had come in that afternoon, and the\nbig dining-room of the hotel was more than half full of people with\na-hundred-pounds-round-the-world tickets in their pockets. There were\nmarried couples looking domesticated and bored with each other in the\nmidst of their travels; there were small parties and large parties,\nand lone individuals dining solemnly or feasting boisterously, but all\nthinking, conversing, joking, or scowling as was their wont at home;\nand just as intelligently receptive of new impressions as their trunks\nupstairs. Henceforth they would be labelled as having passed through\nthis and that place, and so would be their luggage. They would cherish\nthis distinction of their persons, and preserve the gummed tickets on\ntheir portmanteaus as documentary evidence, as the only permanent trace\nof their improving enterprise. The dark-faced servants tripped without\nnoise over the vast and polished floor; now and then a girl's laugh\nwould be heard, as innocent and empty as her mind, or, in a sudden hush\nof crockery, a few words in an affected drawl from some wit embroidering\nfor the benefit of a grinning tableful the last funny story of shipboard\nscandal. Two nomadic old maids, dressed up to kill, worked acrimoniously\nthrough the bill of fare, whispering to each other with faded lips,\nwooden-faced and bizarre, like two sumptuous scarecrows. A little wine\nopened Jim's heart and loosened his tongue. His appetite was good, too,\nI noticed. He seemed to have buried somewhere the opening episode of\nour acquaintance. It was like a thing of which there would be no more\nquestion in this world. And all the time I had before me these blue,\nboyish eyes looking straight into mine, this young face, these capable\nshoulders, the open bronzed forehead with a white line under the roots\nof clustering fair hair, this appearance appealing at sight to all\nmy sympathies: this frank aspect, the artless smile, the youthful\nseriousness. He was of the right sort; he was one of us. He talked\nsoberly, with a sort of composed unreserve, and with a quiet bearing\nthat might have been the outcome of manly self-control, of impudence, of\ncallousness, of a colossal unconsciousness, of a gigantic deception. Who\ncan tell! From our tone we might have been discussing a third person,\na football match, last year's weather. My mind floated in a sea of\nconjectures till the turn of the conversation enabled me, without being\noffensive, to remark that, upon the whole, this inquiry must have been\npretty trying to him. He darted his arm across the tablecloth, and\nclutching my hand by the side of my plate, glared fixedly. I was\nstartled. \"It must be awfully hard,\" I stammered, confused by this\ndisplay of speechless feeling. \"It is--hell,\" he burst out in a muffled\nvoice.\n\n'This movement and these words caused two well-groomed male\nglobe-trotters at a neighbouring table to look up in alarm from their\niced pudding. I rose, and we passed into the front gallery for coffee\nand cigars.\n\n'On little octagon tables candles burned in glass globes; clumps of\nstiff-leaved plants separated sets of cosy wicker chairs; and between\nthe pairs of columns, whose reddish shafts caught in a long row the\nsheen from the tall windows, the night, glittering and sombre, seemed\nto hang like a splendid drapery. The riding lights of ships winked afar\nlike setting stars, and the hills across the roadstead resembled rounded\nblack masses of arrested thunder-clouds.\n\n'\"I couldn't clear out,\" Jim began. \"The skipper did--that's all very\nwell for him. I couldn't, and I wouldn't. They all got out of it in one\nway or another, but it wouldn't do for me.\"\n\n'I listened with concentrated attention, not daring to stir in my chair;\nI wanted to know--and to this day I don't know, I can only guess. He\nwould be confident and depressed all in the same breath, as if some\nconviction of innate blamelessness had checked the truth writhing within\nhim at every turn. He began by saying, in the tone in which a man would\nadmit his inability to jump a twenty-foot wall, that he could never\ngo home now; and this declaration recalled to my mind what Brierly had\nsaid, \"that the old parson in Essex seemed to fancy his sailor son not a\nlittle.\"\n\n'I can't tell you whether Jim knew he was especially \"fancied,\" but the\ntone of his references to \"my Dad\" was calculated to give me a notion\nthat the good old rural dean was about the finest man that ever had been\nworried by the cares of a large family since the beginning of the world.\nThis, though never stated, was implied with an anxiety that there should\nbe no mistake about it, which was really very true and charming, but\nadded a poignant sense of lives far off to the other elements of the\nstory. \"He has seen it all in the home papers by this time,\" said Jim.\n\"I can never face the poor old chap.\" I did not dare to lift my eyes\nat this till I heard him add, \"I could never explain. He wouldn't\nunderstand.\" Then I looked up. He was smoking reflectively, and after\na moment, rousing himself, began to talk again. He discovered at once\na desire that I should not confound him with his partners in--in crime,\nlet us call it. He was not one of them; he was altogether of another\nsort. I gave no sign of dissent. I had no intention, for the sake of\nbarren truth, to rob him of the smallest particle of any saving grace\nthat would come in his way. I didn't know how much of it he believed\nhimself. I didn't know what he was playing up to--if he was playing up\nto anything at all--and I suspect he did not know either; for it is my\nbelief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape\nfrom the grim shadow of self-knowledge. I made no sound all the time\nhe was wondering what he had better do after \"that stupid inquiry was\nover.\"\n\n'Apparently he shared Brierly's contemptuous opinion of these\nproceedings ordained by law. He would not know where to turn, he\nconfessed, clearly thinking aloud rather than talking to me. Certificate\ngone, career broken, no money to get away, no work that he could obtain\nas far as he could see. At home he could perhaps get something; but it\nmeant going to his people for help, and that he would not do. He\nsaw nothing for it but ship before the mast--could get perhaps a\nquartermaster's billet in some steamer. Would do for a quartermaster.\n. . . \"Do you think you would?\" I asked pitilessly. He jumped up, and\ngoing to the stone balustrade looked out into the night. In a moment he\nwas back, towering above my chair with his youthful face clouded yet by\nthe pain of a conquered emotion. He had understood very well I did not\ndoubt his ability to steer a ship. In a voice that quavered a bit he\nasked me why did I say that? I had been \"no end kind\" to him. I had not\neven laughed at him when--here he began to mumble--\"that mistake, you\nknow--made a confounded ass of myself.\" I broke in by saying rather\nwarmly that for me such a mistake was not a matter to laugh at. He sat\ndown and drank deliberately some coffee, emptying the small cup to the\nlast drop. \"That does not mean I admit for a moment the cap fitted,\"\nhe declared distinctly. \"No?\" I said. \"No,\" he affirmed with quiet\ndecision. \"Do you know what _you_ would have done? Do you? And you\ndon't think yourself\" . . . he gulped something . . . \"you don't think\nyourself a--a--cur?\"\n\n'And with this--upon my honour!--he looked up at me inquisitively. It\nwas a question it appears--a bona fide question! However, he didn't wait\nfor an answer. Before I could recover he went on, with his eyes straight\nbefore him, as if reading off something written on the body of the\nnight. \"It is all in being ready. I wasn't; not--not then. I don't want\nto excuse myself; but I would like to explain--I would like somebody to\nunderstand--somebody--one person at least! You! Why not you?\"\n\n'It was solemn, and a little ridiculous too, as they always are, those\nstruggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what\nhis moral identity should be, this precious notion of a convention, only\none of the rules of the game, nothing more, but all the same so terribly\neffective by its assumption of unlimited power over natural instincts,\nby the awful penalties of its failure. He began his story quietly\nenough. On board that Dale Line steamer that had picked up these four\nfloating in a boat upon the discreet sunset glow of the sea, they had\nbeen after the first day looked askance upon. The fat skipper told some\nstory, the others had been silent, and at first it had been accepted.\nYou don't cross-examine poor castaways you had the good luck to save,\nif not from cruel death, then at least from cruel suffering. Afterwards,\nwith time to think it over, it might have struck the officers of the\nAvondale that there was \"something fishy\" in the affair; but of course\nthey would keep their doubts to themselves. They had picked up the\ncaptain, the mate, and two engineers of the steamer Patna sunk at sea,\nand that, very properly, was enough for them. I did not ask Jim about\nthe nature of his feelings during the ten days he spent on board. From\nthe way he narrated that part I was at liberty to infer he was partly\nstunned by the discovery he had made--the discovery about himself--and\nno doubt was at work trying to explain it away to the only man who\nwas capable of appreciating all its tremendous magnitude. You must\nunderstand he did not try to minimise its importance. Of that I am sure;\nand therein lies his distinction. As to what sensations he experienced\nwhen he got ashore and heard the unforeseen conclusion of the tale in\nwhich he had taken such a pitiful part, he told me nothing of them, and\nit is difficult to imagine.\n\n'I wonder whether he felt the ground cut from under his feet? I wonder?\nBut no doubt he managed to get a fresh foothold very soon. He was ashore\na whole fortnight waiting in the Sailors' Home, and as there were six or\nseven men staying there at the time, I had heard of him a little.\nTheir languid opinion seemed to be that, in addition to his other\nshortcomings, he was a sulky brute. He had passed these days on the\nverandah, buried in a long chair, and coming out of his place of\nsepulture only at meal-times or late at night, when he wandered on the\nquays all by himself, detached from his surroundings, irresolute and\nsilent, like a ghost without a home to haunt. \"I don't think I've spoken\nthree words to a living soul in all that time,\" he said, making me very\nsorry for him; and directly he added, \"One of these fellows would have\nbeen sure to blurt out something I had made up my mind not to put up\nwith, and I didn't want a row. No! Not then. I was too--too . . . I\nhad no heart for it.\" \"So that bulkhead held out after all,\" I remarked\ncheerfully. \"Yes,\" he murmured, \"it held. And yet I swear to you I felt\nit bulge under my hand.\" \"It's extraordinary what strains old iron will\nstand sometimes,\" I said. Thrown back in his seat, his legs stiffly out\nand arms hanging down, he nodded slightly several times. You could not\nconceive a sadder spectacle. Suddenly he lifted his head; he sat up;\nhe slapped his thigh. \"Ah! what a chance missed! My God! what a chance\nmissed!\" he blazed out, but the ring of the last \"missed\" resembled a\ncry wrung out by pain.\n\n'He was silent again with a still, far-away look of fierce yearning\nafter that missed distinction, with his nostrils for an instant dilated,\nsniffing the intoxicating breath of that wasted opportunity. If you\nthink I was either surprised or shocked you do me an injustice in more\nways than one! Ah, he was an imaginative beggar! He would give himself\naway; he would give himself up. I could see in his glance darted into\nthe night all his inner being carried on, projected headlong into the\nfanciful realm of recklessly heroic aspirations. He had no leisure to\nregret what he had lost, he was so wholly and naturally concerned for\nwhat he had failed to obtain. He was very far away from me who watched\nhim across three feet of space. With every instant he was penetrating\ndeeper into the impossible world of romantic achievements. He got to\nthe heart of it at last! A strange look of beatitude overspread his\nfeatures, his eyes sparkled in the light of the candle burning between\nus; he positively smiled! He had penetrated to the very heart--to\nthe very heart. It was an ecstatic smile that your faces--or mine\neither--will never wear, my dear boys. I whisked him back by saying, \"If\nyou had stuck to the ship, you mean!\"\n\n'He turned upon me, his eyes suddenly amazed and full of pain, with a\nbewildered, startled, suffering face, as though he had tumbled down\nfrom a star. Neither you nor I will ever look like this on any man. He\nshuddered profoundly, as if a cold finger-tip had touched his heart.\nLast of all he sighed.\n\n'I was not in a merciful mood. He provoked one by his contradictory\nindiscretions. \"It is unfortunate you didn't know beforehand!\" I\nsaid with every unkind intention; but the perfidious shaft fell\nharmless--dropped at his feet like a spent arrow, as it were, and he did\nnot think of picking it up. Perhaps he had not even seen it. Presently,\nlolling at ease, he said, \"Dash it all! I tell you it bulged. I was\nholding up my lamp along the angle-iron in the lower deck when a\nflake of rust as big as the palm of my hand fell off the plate, all of\nitself.\" He passed his hand over his forehead. \"The thing stirred and\njumped off like something alive while I was looking at it.\" \"That made\nyou feel pretty bad,\" I observed casually. \"Do you suppose,\" he said,\n\"that I was thinking of myself, with a hundred and sixty people at my\nback, all fast asleep in that fore-'tween-deck alone--and more of them\naft; more on the deck--sleeping--knowing nothing about it--three times\nas many as there were boats for, even if there had been time? I expected\nto see the iron open out as I stood there and the rush of water going\nover them as they lay. . . . What could I do--what?\"\n\n'I can easily picture him to myself in the peopled gloom of the\ncavernous place, with the light of the globe-lamp falling on a small\nportion of the bulkhead that had the weight of the ocean on the other\nside, and the breathing of unconscious sleepers in his ears. I can see\nhim glaring at the iron, startled by the falling rust, overburdened by\nthe knowledge of an imminent death. This, I gathered, was the second\ntime he had been sent forward by that skipper of his, who, I rather\nthink, wanted to keep him away from the bridge. He told me that his\nfirst impulse was to shout and straightway make all those people\nleap out of sleep into terror; but such an overwhelming sense of his\nhelplessness came over him that he was not able to produce a sound. This\nis, I suppose, what people mean by the tongue cleaving to the roof of\nthe mouth. \"Too dry,\" was the concise expression he used in reference to\nthis state. Without a sound, then, he scrambled out on deck through\nthe number one hatch. A windsail rigged down there swung against him\naccidentally, and he remembered that the light touch of the canvas on\nhis face nearly knocked him off the hatchway ladder.\n\n'He confessed that his knees wobbled a good deal as he stood on the\nforedeck looking at another sleeping crowd. The engines having been\nstopped by that time, the steam was blowing off. Its deep rumble made\nthe whole night vibrate like a bass string. The ship trembled to it.\n\n'He saw here and there a head lifted off a mat, a vague form uprise in\nsitting posture, listen sleepily for a moment, sink down again into the\nbillowy confusion of boxes, steam-winches, ventilators. He was aware\nall these people did not know enough to take intelligent notice of\nthat strange noise. The ship of iron, the men with white faces, all the\nsights, all the sounds, everything on board to that ignorant and pious\nmultitude was strange alike, and as trustworthy as it would for ever\nremain incomprehensible. It occurred to him that the fact was fortunate.\nThe idea of it was simply terrible.\n\n'You must remember he believed, as any other man would have done in\nhis place, that the ship would go down at any moment; the bulging,\nrust-eaten plates that kept back the ocean, fatally must give way, all\nat once like an undermined dam, and let in a sudden and overwhelming\nflood. He stood still looking at these recumbent bodies, a doomed man\naware of his fate, surveying the silent company of the dead. They _were_\ndead! Nothing could save them! There were boats enough for half of them\nperhaps, but there was no time. No time! No time! It did not seem worth\nwhile to open his lips, to stir hand or foot. Before he could shout\nthree words, or make three steps, he would be floundering in a sea\nwhitened awfully by the desperate struggles of human beings, clamorous\nwith the distress of cries for help. There was no help. He imagined\nwhat would happen perfectly; he went through it all motionless by the\nhatchway with the lamp in his hand--he went through it to the very last\nharrowing detail. I think he went through it again while he was telling\nme these things he could not tell the court.\n\n'\"I saw as clearly as I see you now that there was nothing I could do.\nIt seemed to take all life out of my limbs. I thought I might just as\nwell stand where I was and wait. I did not think I had many\nseconds. . . .\" Suddenly the steam ceased blowing off. The noise, he\nremarked, had been distracting, but the silence at once became\nintolerably oppressive.\n\n'\"I thought I would choke before I got drowned,\" he said.\n\n'He protested he did not think of saving himself. The only distinct\nthought formed, vanishing, and re-forming in his brain, was: eight\nhundred people and seven boats; eight hundred people and seven boats.\n\n'\"Somebody was speaking aloud inside my head,\" he said a little wildly.\n\"Eight hundred people and seven boats--and no time! Just think of it.\"\nHe leaned towards me across the little table, and I tried to avoid his\nstare. \"Do you think I was afraid of death?\" he asked in a voice very\nfierce and low. He brought down his open hand with a bang that made the\ncoffee-cups dance. \"I am ready to swear I was not--I was not. . . . By\nGod--no!\" He hitched himself upright and crossed his arms; his chin fell\non his breast.\n\n'The soft clashes of crockery reached us faintly through the high\nwindows. There was a burst of voices, and several men came out in high\ngood-humour into the gallery. They were exchanging jocular reminiscences\nof the donkeys in Cairo. A pale anxious youth stepping softly on long\nlegs was being chaffed by a strutting and rubicund globe-trotter about\nhis purchases in the bazaar. \"No, really--do you think I've been done\nto that extent?\" he inquired very earnest and deliberate. The band moved\naway, dropping into chairs as they went; matches flared, illuminating\nfor a second faces without the ghost of an expression and the flat glaze\nof white shirt-fronts; the hum of many conversations animated with the\nardour of feasting sounded to me absurd and infinitely remote.\n\n'\"Some of the crew were sleeping on the number one hatch within reach of\nmy arm,\" began Jim again.\n\n'You must know they kept Kalashee watch in that ship, all hands sleeping\nthrough the night, and only the reliefs of quartermasters and look-out\nmen being called. He was tempted to grip and shake the shoulder of the\nnearest lascar, but he didn't. Something held his arms down along his\nsides. He was not afraid--oh no! only he just couldn't--that's all. He\nwas not afraid of death perhaps, but I'll tell you what, he was afraid\nof the emergency. His confounded imagination had evoked for him all\nthe horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams, boats\nswamped--all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea he had ever\nheard of. He might have been resigned to die but I suspect he wanted\nto die without added terrors, quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance. A\ncertain readiness to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom\nthat you meet men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of\nresolution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last; the desire\nof peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last it conquers the\nvery desire of life. Which of us here has not observed this, or maybe\nexperienced something of that feeling in his own person--this extreme\nweariness of emotions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest?\nThose striving with unreasonable forces know it well,--the shipwrecked\ncastaways in boats, wanderers lost in a desert, men battling against the\nunthinking might of nature, or the stupid brutality of crowds.'\n\n\n\n\n'How long he stood stock-still by the hatch expecting every moment to\nfeel the ship dip under his feet and the rush of water take him at the\nback and toss him like a chip, I cannot say. Not very long--two minutes\nperhaps. A couple of men he could not make out began to converse\ndrowsily, and also, he could not tell where, he detected a curious\nnoise of shuffling feet. Above these faint sounds there was that awful\nstillness preceding a catastrophe, that trying silence of the moment\nbefore the crash; then it came into his head that perhaps he would have\ntime to rush along and cut all the lanyards of the gripes, so that the\nboats would float as the ship went down.\n\n'The Patna had a long bridge, and all the boats were up there, four on\none side and three on the other--the smallest of them on the port-side\nand nearly abreast of the steering gear. He assured me, with evident\nanxiety to be believed, that he had been most careful to keep them ready\nfor instant service. He knew his duty. I dare say he was a good enough\nmate as far as that went. \"I always believed in being prepared for the\nworst,\" he commented, staring anxiously in my face. I nodded my approval\nof the sound principle, averting my eyes before the subtle unsoundness\nof the man.\n\n'He started unsteadily to run. He had to step over legs, avoid stumbling\nagainst the heads. Suddenly some one caught hold of his coat from below,\nand a distressed voice spoke under his elbow. The light of the lamp he\ncarried in his right hand fell upon an upturned dark face whose eyes\nentreated him together with the voice. He had picked up enough of the\nlanguage to understand the word water, repeated several times in a tone\nof insistence, of prayer, almost of despair. He gave a jerk to get away,\nand felt an arm embrace his leg.\n\n'\"The beggar clung to me like a drowning man,\" he said impressively.\n\"Water, water! What water did he mean? What did he know? As calmly as\nI could I ordered him to let go. He was stopping me, time was pressing,\nother men began to stir; I wanted time--time to cut the boats adrift.\nHe got hold of my hand now, and I felt that he would begin to shout. It\nflashed upon me it was enough to start a panic, and I hauled off with\nmy free arm and slung the lamp in his face. The glass jingled, the light\nwent out, but the blow made him let go, and I ran off--I wanted to get\nat the boats; I wanted to get at the boats. He leaped after me from\nbehind. I turned on him. He would not keep quiet; he tried to shout; I\nhad half throttled him before I made out what he wanted. He wanted some\nwater--water to drink; they were on strict allowance, you know, and\nhe had with him a young boy I had noticed several times. His child was\nsick--and thirsty. He had caught sight of me as I passed by, and was\nbegging for a little water. That's all. We were under the bridge, in\nthe dark. He kept on snatching at my wrists; there was no getting rid of\nhim. I dashed into my berth, grabbed my water-bottle, and thrust it into\nhis hands. He vanished. I didn't find out till then how much I was in\nwant of a drink myself.\" He leaned on one elbow with a hand over his\neyes.\n\n'I felt a creepy sensation all down my backbone; there was something\npeculiar in all this. The fingers of the hand that shaded his brow\ntrembled slightly. He broke the short silence.\n\n'\"These things happen only once to a man and . . . Ah! well! When I got\non the bridge at last the beggars were getting one of the boats off the\nchocks. A boat! I was running up the ladder when a heavy blow fell on\nmy shoulder, just missing my head. It didn't stop me, and the chief\nengineer--they had got him out of his bunk by then--raised the\nboat-stretcher again. Somehow I had no mind to be surprised at anything.\nAll this seemed natural--and awful--and awful. I dodged that miserable\nmaniac, lifted him off the deck as though he had been a little child,\nand he started whispering in my arms: 'Don't! don't! I thought you were\none of them niggers.' I flung him away, he skidded along the bridge and\nknocked the legs from under the little chap--the second. The skipper,\nbusy about the boat, looked round and came at me head down, growling\nlike a wild beast. I flinched no more than a stone. I was as solid\nstanding there as this,\" he tapped lightly with his knuckles the wall\nbeside his chair. \"It was as though I had heard it all, seen it all,\ngone through it all twenty times already. I wasn't afraid of them. I\ndrew back my fist and he stopped short, muttering--\n\n'\"'Ah! it's you. Lend a hand quick.'\n\n'\"That's what he said. Quick! As if anybody could be quick enough.\n'Aren't you going to do something?' I asked. 'Yes. Clear out,' he\nsnarled over his shoulder.\n\n'\"I don't think I understood then what he meant. The other two had\npicked themselves up by that time, and they rushed together to the boat.\nThey tramped, they wheezed, they shoved, they cursed the boat, the ship,\neach other--cursed me. All in mutters. I didn't move, I didn't speak.\nI watched the slant of the ship. She was as still as if landed on the\nblocks in a dry dock--only she was like this,\" He held up his hand,\npalm under, the tips of the fingers inclined downwards. \"Like this,\" he\nrepeated. \"I could see the line of the horizon before me, as clear as a\nbell, above her stem-head; I could see the water far off there black\nand sparkling, and still--still as a-pond, deadly still, more still than\never sea was before--more still than I could bear to look at. Have you\nwatched a ship floating head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old\niron too rotten to stand being shored up? Have you? Oh yes, shored up? I\nthought of that--I thought of every mortal thing; but can you shore up a\nbulkhead in five minutes--or in fifty for that matter? Where was I going\nto get men that would go down below? And the timber--the timber! Would\nyou have had the courage to swing the maul for the first blow if you\nhad seen that bulkhead? Don't say you would: you had not seen it; nobody\nwould. Hang it--to do a thing like that you must believe there is a\nchance, one in a thousand, at least, some ghost of a chance; and you\nwould not have believed. Nobody would have believed. You think me a\ncur for standing there, but what would you have done? What! You can't\ntell--nobody can tell. One must have time to turn round. What would you\nhave me do? Where was the kindness in making crazy with fright all those\npeople I could not save single-handed--that nothing could save? Look\nhere! As true as I sit on this chair before you . . .\"\n\n'He drew quick breaths at every few words and shot quick glances at my\nface, as though in his anguish he were watchful of the effect. He was\nnot speaking to me, he was only speaking before me, in a dispute with\nan invisible personality, an antagonistic and inseparable partner of his\nexistence--another possessor of his soul. These were issues beyond the\ncompetency of a court of inquiry: it was a subtle and momentous quarrel\nas to the true essence of life, and did not want a judge. He wanted\nan ally, a helper, an accomplice. I felt the risk I ran of being\ncircumvented, blinded, decoyed, bullied, perhaps, into taking a definite\npart in a dispute impossible of decision if one had to be fair to all\nthe phantoms in possession--to the reputable that had its claims and\nto the disreputable that had its exigencies. I can't explain to you who\nhaven't seen him and who hear his words only at second hand the mixed\nnature of my feelings. It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend\nthe Inconceivable--and I know of nothing to compare with the discomfort\nof such a sensation. I was made to look at the convention that lurks in\nall truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to\nall sides at once--to the side turned perpetually to the light of day,\nand to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon,\nexists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light\nfalling at times on the edge. He swayed me. I own to it, I own up. The\noccasion was obscure, insignificant--what you will: a lost youngster,\none in a million--but then he was one of us; an incident as completely\ndevoid of importance as the flooding of an ant-heap, and yet the mystery\nof his attitude got hold of me as though he had been an individual\nin the forefront of his kind, as if the obscure truth involved were\nmomentous enough to affect mankind's conception of itself. . . .'\n\nMarlow paused to put new life into his expiring cheroot, seemed to\nforget all about the story, and abruptly began again.\n\n'My fault of course. One has no business really to get interested. It's\na weakness of mine. His was of another kind. My weakness consists in not\nhaving a discriminating eye for the incidental--for the externals--no\neye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next man.\nNext man--that's it. I have met so many men,' he pursued, with momentary\nsadness--'met them too with a certain--certain--impact, let us say; like\nthis fellow, for instance--and in each case all I could see was merely\nthe human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be\nbetter than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me, I can\nassure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But\nI never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! it's a\nfailing; it's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too\nindolent for whist--and a story. . . .'\n\nHe paused again to wait for an encouraging remark, perhaps, but nobody\nspoke; only the host, as if reluctantly performing a duty, murmured--\n\n'You are so subtle, Marlow.'\n\n'Who? I?' said Marlow in a low voice. 'Oh no! But _he_ was; and try as I\nmay for the success of this yarn, I am missing innumerable shades--they\nwere so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words. Because he\ncomplicated matters by being so simple, too--the simplest poor\ndevil! . . . By Jove! he was amazing. There he sat telling me that just\nas I saw him before my eyes he wouldn't be afraid to face anything--and\nbelieving in it too. I tell you it was fabulously innocent and it was\nenormous, enormous! I watched him covertly, just as though I had\nsuspected him of an intention to take a jolly good rise out of me. He\nwas confident that, on the square, \"on the square, mind!\" there was\nnothing he couldn't meet. Ever since he had been \"so high\"--\"quite a\nlittle chap,\" he had been preparing himself for all the difficulties\nthat can beset one on land and water. He confessed proudly to this kind\nof foresight. He had been elaborating dangers and defences, expecting\nthe worst, rehearsing his best. He must have led a most exalted\nexistence. Can you fancy it? A succession of adventures, so much glory,\nsuch a victorious progress! and the deep sense of his sagacity crowning\nevery day of his inner life. He forgot himself; his eyes shone; and with\nevery word my heart, searched by the light of his absurdity, was growing\nheavier in my breast. I had no mind to laugh, and lest I should smile I\nmade for myself a stolid face. He gave signs of irritation.\n\n'\"It is always the unexpected that happens,\" I said in a propitiatory\ntone. My obtuseness provoked him into a contemptuous \"Pshaw!\" I suppose\nhe meant that the unexpected couldn't touch him; nothing less than the\nunconceivable itself could get over his perfect state of preparation. He\nhad been taken unawares--and he whispered to himself a malediction upon\nthe waters and the firmament, upon the ship, upon the men. Everything\nhad betrayed him! He had been tricked into that sort of high-minded\nresignation which prevented him lifting as much as his little finger,\nwhile these others who had a very clear perception of the actual\nnecessity were tumbling against each other and sweating desperately over\nthat boat business. Something had gone wrong there at the last moment.\nIt appears that in their flurry they had contrived in some mysterious\nway to get the sliding bolt of the foremost boat-chock jammed tight, and\nforthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds over the deadly\nnature of that accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce\nindustry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that floated\nquietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time for the\nfreeing of that boat, grovelling on all-fours, standing up in despair,\ntugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill,\nready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by\nthe fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and\ncold-eyed taskmaster. Oh yes! It must have been a pretty sight. He\nsaw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and bitterness; he had a\nminute knowledge of it by means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because\nhe swore to me he had remained apart without a glance at them and at the\nboat--without one single glance. And I believe him. I should think he\nwas too busy watching the threatening slant of the ship, the suspended\nmenace discovered in the midst of the most perfect security--fascinated\nby the sword hanging by a hair over his imaginative head.\n\n'Nothing in the world moved before his eyes, and he could depict to\nhimself without hindrance the sudden swing upwards of the dark sky-line,\nthe sudden tilt up of the vast plain of the sea, the swift still rise,\nthe brutal fling, the grasp of the abyss, the struggle without hope, the\nstarlight closing over his head for ever like the vault of a tomb--the\nrevolt of his young life--the black end. He could! By Jove! who\ncouldn't? And you must remember he was a finished artist in that\npeculiar way, he was a gifted poor devil with the faculty of swift and\nforestalling vision. The sights it showed him had turned him into cold\nstone from the soles of his feet to the nape of his neck; but there\nwas a hot dance of thoughts in his head, a dance of lame, blind, mute\nthoughts--a whirl of awful cripples. Didn't I tell you he confessed\nhimself before me as though I had the power to bind and to loose? He\nburrowed deep, deep, in the hope of my absolution, which would have been\nof no good to him. This was one of those cases which no solemn deception\ncan palliate, where no man can help; where his very Maker seems to\nabandon a sinner to his own devices.\n\n'He stood on the starboard side of the bridge, as far as he could get\nfrom the struggle for the boat, which went on with the agitation\nof madness and the stealthiness of a conspiracy. The two Malays had\nmeantime remained holding to the wheel. Just picture to yourselves\nthe actors in that, thank God! unique, episode of the sea, four beside\nthemselves with fierce and secret exertions, and three looking on in\ncomplete immobility, above the awnings covering the profound ignorance\nof hundreds of human beings, with their weariness, with their dreams,\nwith their hopes, arrested, held by an invisible hand on the brink of\nannihilation. For that they were so, makes no doubt to me: given the\nstate of the ship, this was the deadliest possible description of\naccident that could happen. These beggars by the boat had every reason\nto go distracted with funk. Frankly, had I been there, I would not have\ngiven as much as a counterfeit farthing for the ship's chance to keep\nabove water to the end of each successive second. And still she\nfloated! These sleeping pilgrims were destined to accomplish their\nwhole pilgrimage to the bitterness of some other end. It was as if the\nOmnipotence whose mercy they confessed had needed their humble testimony\non earth for a while longer, and had looked down to make a sign,\n\"Thou shalt not!\" to the ocean. Their escape would trouble me as a\nprodigiously inexplicable event, did I not know how tough old iron can\nbe--as tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then,\nworn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life. Not the least\nwonder of these twenty minutes, to my mind, is the behaviour of the two\nhelmsmen. They were amongst the native batch of all sorts brought over\nfrom Aden to give evidence at the inquiry. One of them, labouring under\nintense bashfulness, was very young, and with his smooth, yellow,\ncheery countenance looked even younger than he was. I remember perfectly\nBrierly asking him, through the interpreter, what he thought of it at\nthe time, and the interpreter, after a short colloquy, turning to the\ncourt with an important air--\n\n'\"He says he thought nothing.\"\n\n'The other, with patient blinking eyes, a blue cotton handkerchief,\nfaded with much washing, bound with a smart twist over a lot of grey\nwisps, his face shrunk into grim hollows, his brown skin made darker by\na mesh of wrinkles, explained that he had a knowledge of some evil thing\nbefalling the ship, but there had been no order; he could not remember\nan order; why should he leave the helm? To some further questions he\njerked back his spare shoulders, and declared it never came into his\nmind then that the white men were about to leave the ship through\nfear of death. He did not believe it now. There might have been secret\nreasons. He wagged his old chin knowingly. Aha! secret reasons. He was\na man of great experience, and he wanted _that_ white Tuan to know--he\nturned towards Brierly, who didn't raise his head--that he had acquired\na knowledge of many things by serving white men on the sea for a great\nnumber of years--and, suddenly, with shaky excitement he poured upon\nour spellbound attention a lot of queer-sounding names, names of\ndead-and-gone skippers, names of forgotten country ships, names of\nfamiliar and distorted sound, as if the hand of dumb time had been at\nwork on them for ages. They stopped him at last. A silence fell upon\nthe court,--a silence that remained unbroken for at least a minute, and\npassed gently into a deep murmur. This episode was the sensation of\nthe second day's proceedings--affecting all the audience, affecting\neverybody except Jim, who was sitting moodily at the end of the first\nbench, and never looked up at this extraordinary and damning witness\nthat seemed possessed of some mysterious theory of defence.\n\n'So these two lascars stuck to the helm of that ship without\nsteerage-way, where death would have found them if such had been their\ndestiny. The whites did not give them half a glance, had probably\nforgotten their existence. Assuredly Jim did not remember it. He\nremembered he could do nothing; he could do nothing, now he was alone.\nThere was nothing to do but to sink with the ship. No use making a\ndisturbance about it. Was there? He waited upstanding, without a sound,\nstiffened in the idea of some sort of heroic discretion. The first\nengineer ran cautiously across the bridge to tug at his sleeve.\n\n'\"Come and help! For God's sake, come and help!\"\n\n'He ran back to the boat on the points of his toes, and returned\ndirectly to worry at his sleeve, begging and cursing at the same time.\n\n'\"I believe he would have kissed my hands,\" said Jim savagely, \"and,\nnext moment, he starts foaming and whispering in my face, 'If I had\nthe time I would like to crack your skull for you.' I pushed him away.\nSuddenly he caught hold of me round the neck. Damn him! I hit him. I\nhit out without looking. 'Won't you save your own life--you infernal\ncoward?' he sobs. Coward! He called me an infernal coward! Ha! ha! ha!\nha! He called me--ha! ha! ha! . . .\"\n\n'He had thrown himself back and was shaking with laughter. I had never\nin my life heard anything so bitter as that noise. It fell like a blight\non all the merriment about donkeys, pyramids, bazaars, or what not.\nAlong the whole dim length of the gallery the voices dropped, the pale\nblotches of faces turned our way with one accord, and the silence\nbecame so profound that the clear tinkle of a teaspoon falling on\nthe tesselated floor of the verandah rang out like a tiny and silvery\nscream.\n\n'\"You mustn't laugh like this, with all these people about,\" I\nremonstrated. \"It isn't nice for them, you know.\"\n\n'He gave no sign of having heard at first, but after a while, with a\nstare that, missing me altogether, seemed to probe the heart of some\nawful vision, he muttered carelessly--\"Oh! they'll think I am drunk.\"\n\n'And after that you would have thought from his appearance he would\nnever make a sound again. But--no fear! He could no more stop telling\nnow than he could have stopped living by the mere exertion of his will.'\n\n\n\n\n'\"I was saying to myself, 'Sink--curse you! Sink!'\" These were the\nwords with which he began again. He wanted it over. He was severely left\nalone, and he formulated in his head this address to the ship in a\ntone of imprecation, while at the same time he enjoyed the privilege of\nwitnessing scenes--as far as I can judge--of low comedy. They were still\nat that bolt. The skipper was ordering, \"Get under and try to lift\"; and\nthe others naturally shirked. You understand that to be squeezed flat\nunder the keel of a boat wasn't a desirable position to be caught in if\nthe ship went down suddenly. \"Why don't you--you the strongest?\" whined\nthe little engineer. \"Gott-for-dam! I am too thick,\" spluttered the\nskipper in despair. It was funny enough to make angels weep. They stood\nidle for a moment, and suddenly the chief engineer rushed again at Jim.\n\n'\"Come and help, man! Are you mad to throw your only chance away? Come\nand help, man! Man! Look there--look!\"\n\n'And at last Jim looked astern where the other pointed with maniacal\ninsistence. He saw a silent black squall which had eaten up already\none-third of the sky. You know how these squalls come up there about\nthat time of the year. First you see a darkening of the horizon--no\nmore; then a cloud rises opaque like a wall. A straight edge of vapour\nlined with sickly whitish gleams flies up from the southwest, swallowing\nthe stars in whole constellations; its shadow flies over the waters, and\nconfounds sea and sky into one abyss of obscurity. And all is still.\nNo thunder, no wind, no sound; not a flicker of lightning. Then in\nthe tenebrous immensity a livid arch appears; a swell or two like\nundulations of the very darkness run past, and suddenly, wind and rain\nstrike together with a peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through\nsomething solid. Such a cloud had come up while they weren't looking.\nThey had just noticed it, and were perfectly justified in surmising\nthat if in absolute stillness there was some chance for the ship to keep\nafloat a few minutes longer, the least disturbance of the sea would make\nan end of her instantly. Her first nod to the swell that precedes the\nburst of such a squall would be also her last, would become a plunge,\nwould, so to speak, be prolonged into a long dive, down, down to the\nbottom. Hence these new capers of their fright, these new antics in\nwhich they displayed their extreme aversion to die.\n\n'\"It was black, black,\" pursued Jim with moody steadiness. \"It had\nsneaked upon us from behind. The infernal thing! I suppose there had\nbeen at the back of my head some hope yet. I don't know. But that was\nall over anyhow. It maddened me to see myself caught like this. I was\nangry, as though I had been trapped. I _was_ trapped! The night was hot,\ntoo, I remember. Not a breath of air.\"\n\n'He remembered so well that, gasping in the chair, he seemed to sweat\nand choke before my eyes. No doubt it maddened him; it knocked him over\nafresh--in a manner of speaking--but it made him also remember that\nimportant purpose which had sent him rushing on that bridge only to slip\nclean out of his mind. He had intended to cut the lifeboats clear of the\nship. He whipped out his knife and went to work slashing as though he\nhad seen nothing, had heard nothing, had known of no one on board. They\nthought him hopelessly wrong-headed and crazy, but dared not protest\nnoisily against this useless loss of time. When he had done he returned\nto the very same spot from which he had started. The chief was there,\nready with a clutch at him to whisper close to his head, scathingly, as\nthough he wanted to bite his ear--\n\n'\"You silly fool! do you think you'll get the ghost of a show when all\nthat lot of brutes is in the water? Why, they will batter your head for\nyou from these boats.\"\n\n'He wrung his hands, ignored, at Jim's elbow. The skipper kept up a\nnervous shuffle in one place and mumbled, \"Hammer! hammer! Mein Gott!\nGet a hammer.\"\n\n'The little engineer whimpered like a child, but, broken arm and all,\nhe turned out the least craven of the lot as it seems, and, actually,\nmustered enough pluck to run an errand to the engine-room. No trifle, it\nmust be owned in fairness to him. Jim told me he darted desperate looks\nlike a cornered man, gave one low wail, and dashed off. He was back\ninstantly clambering, hammer in hand, and without a pause flung himself\nat the bolt. The others gave up Jim at once and ran off to assist.\nHe heard the tap, tap of the hammer, the sound of the released chock\nfalling over. The boat was clear. Only then he turned to look--only\nthen. But he kept his distance--he kept his distance. He wanted me to\nknow he had kept his distance; that there was nothing in common between\nhim and these men--who had the hammer. Nothing whatever. It is more than\nprobable he thought himself cut off from them by a space that could\nnot be traversed, by an obstacle that could not be overcome, by a chasm\nwithout bottom. He was as far as he could get from them--the whole\nbreadth of the ship.\n\n'His feet were glued to that remote spot and his eyes to their\nindistinct group bowed together and swaying strangely in the common\ntorment of fear. A hand-lamp lashed to a stanchion above a little table\nrigged up on the bridge--the Patna had no chart-room amidships--threw a\nlight on their labouring shoulders, on their arched and bobbing backs.\nThey pushed at the bow of the boat; they pushed out into the night; they\npushed, and would no more look back at him. They had given him up as if\nindeed he had been too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to\nbe worth an appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to\nlook back upon his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention.\nThe boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for\nan encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their\nself-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate\nexertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit for knockabout clowns\nin a farce. They pushed with their hands, with their heads, they pushed\nfor dear life with all the weight of their bodies, they pushed with all\nthe might of their souls--only no sooner had they succeeded in canting\nthe stem clear of the davit than they would leave off like one man and\nstart a wild scramble into her. As a natural consequence the boat would\nswing in abruptly, driving them back, helpless and jostling against each\nother. They would stand nonplussed for a while, exchanging in fierce\nwhispers all the infamous names they could call to mind, and go at it\nagain. Three times this occurred. He described it to me with morose\nthoughtfulness. He hadn't lost a single movement of that comic business.\n\"I loathed them. I hated them. I had to look at all that,\" he said\nwithout emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely watchful glance. \"Was ever\nthere any one so shamefully tried?\"\n\n'He took his head in his hands for a moment, like a man driven to\ndistraction by some unspeakable outrage. These were things he could not\nexplain to the court--and not even to me; but I would have been little\nfitted for the reception of his confidences had I not been able at times\nto understand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon\nhis fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and\nvile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal--a\ndegradation of funny grimaces in the approach of death or dishonour.\n\n'He related facts which I have not forgotten, but at this distance of\ntime I couldn't recall his very words: I only remember that he managed\nwonderfully to convey the brooding rancour of his mind into the bare\nrecital of events. Twice, he told me, he shut his eyes in the certitude\nthat the end was upon him already, and twice he had to open them again.\nEach time he noted the darkening of the great stillness. The shadow of\nthe silent cloud had fallen upon the ship from the zenith, and seemed\nto have extinguished every sound of her teeming life. He could no longer\nhear the voices under the awnings. He told me that each time he closed\nhis eyes a flash of thought showed him that crowd of bodies, laid out\nfor death, as plain as daylight. When he opened them, it was to see the\ndim struggle of four men fighting like mad with a stubborn boat. \"They\nwould fall back before it time after time, stand swearing at each other,\nand suddenly make another rush in a bunch. . . . Enough to make you\ndie laughing,\" he commented with downcast eyes; then raising them for a\nmoment to my face with a dismal smile, \"I ought to have a merry life\nof it, by God! for I shall see that funny sight a good many times yet\nbefore I die.\" His eyes fell again. \"See and hear. . . . See and hear,\"\nhe repeated twice, at long intervals, filled by vacant staring.\n\n'He roused himself.\n\n'\"I made up my mind to keep my eyes shut,\" he said, \"and I couldn't. I\ncouldn't, and I don't care who knows it. Let them go through that kind\nof thing before they talk. Just let them--and do better--that's all. The\nsecond time my eyelids flew open and my mouth too. I had felt the\nship move. She just dipped her bows--and lifted them gently--and slow!\neverlastingly slow; and ever so little. She hadn't done that much for\ndays. The cloud had raced ahead, and this first swell seemed to travel\nupon a sea of lead. There was no life in that stir. It managed, though,\nto knock over something in my head. What would you have done? You are\nsure of yourself--aren't you? What would you do if you felt now--this\nminute--the house here move, just move a little under your chair. Leap!\nBy heavens! you would take one spring from where you sit and land in\nthat clump of bushes yonder.\"\n\n'He flung his arm out at the night beyond the stone balustrade. I held\nmy peace. He looked at me very steadily, very severe. There could be no\nmistake: I was being bullied now, and it behoved me to make no sign lest\nby a gesture or a word I should be drawn into a fatal admission about\nmyself which would have had some bearing on the case. I was not disposed\nto take any risk of that sort. Don't forget I had him before me, and\nreally he was too much like one of us not to be dangerous. But if you\nwant to know I don't mind telling you that I did, with a rapid glance,\nestimate the distance to the mass of denser blackness in the middle of\nthe grass-plot before the verandah. He exaggerated. I would have landed\nshort by several feet--and that's the only thing of which I am fairly\ncertain.\n\n'The last moment had come, as he thought, and he did not move. His feet\nremained glued to the planks if his thoughts were knocking about loose\nin his head. It was at this moment too that he saw one of the men around\nthe boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the air with raised arms,\ntotter and collapse. He didn't exactly fall, he only slid gently into a\nsitting posture, all hunched up, and with his shoulders propped against\nthe side of the engine-room skylight. \"That was the donkey-man.\nA haggard, white-faced chap with a ragged moustache. Acted third\nengineer,\" he explained.\n\n'\"Dead,\" I said. We had heard something of that in court.\n\n'\"So they say,\" he pronounced with sombre indifference. \"Of course I\nnever knew. Weak heart. The man had been complaining of being out of\nsorts for some time before. Excitement. Over-exertion. Devil only knows.\nHa! ha! ha! It was easy to see he did not want to die either. Droll,\nisn't it? May I be shot if he hadn't been fooled into killing himself!\nFooled--neither more nor less. Fooled into it, by heavens! just as\nI . . . Ah! If he had only kept still; if he had only told them to go to\nthe devil when they came to rush him out of his bunk because the ship\nwas sinking! If he had only stood by with his hands in his pockets and\ncalled them names!\"\n\n'He got up, shook his fist, glared at me, and sat down.\n\n'\"A chance missed, eh?\" I murmured.\n\n'\"Why don't you laugh?\" he said. \"A joke hatched in hell. Weak\nheart! . . . I wish sometimes mine had been.\"\n\n'This irritated me. \"Do you?\" I exclaimed with deep-rooted irony. \"Yes!\nCan't _you_ understand?\" he cried. \"I don't know what more you could\nwish for,\" I said angrily. He gave me an utterly uncomprehending glance.\nThis shaft had also gone wide of the mark, and he was not the man to\nbother about stray arrows. Upon my word, he was too unsuspecting; he was\nnot fair game. I was glad that my missile had been thrown away,--that he\nhad not even heard the twang of the bow.\n\n'Of course he could not know at the time the man was dead. The next\nminute--his last on board--was crowded with a tumult of events and\nsensations which beat about him like the sea upon a rock. I use the\nsimile advisedly, because from his relation I am forced to believe\nhe had preserved through it all a strange illusion of passiveness, as\nthough he had not acted but had suffered himself to be handled by the\ninfernal powers who had selected him for the victim of their practical\njoke. The first thing that came to him was the grinding surge of the\nheavy davits swinging out at last--a jar which seemed to enter his body\nfrom the deck through the soles of his feet, and travel up his spine to\nthe crown of his head. Then, the squall being very near now, another\nand a heavier swell lifted the passive hull in a threatening heave that\nchecked his breath, while his brain and his heart together were pierced\nas with daggers by panic-stricken screams. \"Let go! For God's sake,\nlet go! Let go! She's going.\" Following upon that the boat-falls ripped\nthrough the blocks, and a lot of men began to talk in startled tones\nunder the awnings. \"When these beggars did break out, their yelps were\nenough to wake the dead,\" he said. Next, after the splashing shock\nof the boat literally dropped in the water, came the hollow noises of\nstamping and tumbling in her, mingled with confused shouts: \"Unhook!\nUnhook! Shove! Unhook! Shove for your life! Here's the squall down on\nus. . . .\" He heard, high above his head, the faint muttering of the\nwind; he heard below his feet a cry of pain. A lost voice alongside\nstarted cursing a swivel hook. The ship began to buzz fore and aft\nlike a disturbed hive, and, as quietly as he was telling me of all\nthis--because just then he was very quiet in attitude, in face, in\nvoice--he went on to say without the slightest warning as it were, \"I\nstumbled over his legs.\"\n\n'This was the first I heard of his having moved at all. I could not\nrestrain a grunt of surprise. Something had started him off at last, but\nof the exact moment, of the cause that tore him out of his immobility,\nhe knew no more than the uprooted tree knows of the wind that laid it\nlow. All this had come to him: the sounds, the sights, the legs of the\ndead man--by Jove! The infernal joke was being crammed devilishly down\nhis throat, but--look you--he was not going to admit of any sort of\nswallowing motion in his gullet. It's extraordinary how he could cast\nupon you the spirit of his illusion. I listened as if to a tale of black\nmagic at work upon a corpse.\n\n'\"He went over sideways, very gently, and this is the last thing I\nremember seeing on board,\" he continued. \"I did not care what he did.\nIt looked as though he were picking himself up: I thought he was picking\nhimself up, of course: I expected him to bolt past me over the rail and\ndrop into the boat after the others. I could hear them knocking about\ndown there, and a voice as if crying up a shaft called out 'George!'\nThen three voices together raised a yell. They came to me separately:\none bleated, another screamed, one howled. Ough!\"\n\n'He shivered a little, and I beheld him rise slowly as if a steady\nhand from above had been pulling him out of the chair by his hair. Up,\nslowly--to his full height, and when his knees had locked stiff the hand\nlet him go, and he swayed a little on his feet. There was a suggestion\nof awful stillness in his face, in his movements, in his very voice when\nhe said \"They shouted\"--and involuntarily I pricked up my ears for\nthe ghost of that shout that would be heard directly through the false\neffect of silence. \"There were eight hundred people in that ship,\" he\nsaid, impaling me to the back of my seat with an awful blank stare.\n\"Eight hundred living people, and they were yelling after the one dead\nman to come down and be saved. 'Jump, George! Jump! Oh, jump!' I stood\nby with my hand on the davit. I was very quiet. It had come over pitch\ndark. You could see neither sky nor sea. I heard the boat alongside go\nbump, bump, and not another sound down there for a while, but the ship\nunder me was full of talking noises. Suddenly the skipper howled 'Mein\nGott! The squall! The squall! Shove off!' With the first hiss of rain,\nand the first gust of wind, they screamed, 'Jump, George! We'll catch\nyou! Jump!' The ship began a slow plunge; the rain swept over her like\na broken sea; my cap flew off my head; my breath was driven back into\nmy throat. I heard as if I had been on the top of a tower another wild\nscreech, 'Geo-o-o-orge! Oh, jump!' She was going down, down, head first\nunder me. . . .\"\n\n'He raised his hand deliberately to his face, and made picking motions\nwith his fingers as though he had been bothered with cobwebs, and\nafterwards he looked into the open palm for quite half a second before\nhe blurted out--\n\n'\"I had jumped . . .\" He checked himself, averted his gaze. . . . \"It\nseems,\" he added.\n\n'His clear blue eyes turned to me with a piteous stare, and looking at\nhim standing before me, dumfounded and hurt, I was oppressed by a sad\nsense of resigned wisdom, mingled with the amused and profound pity of\nan old man helpless before a childish disaster.\n\n'\"Looks like it,\" I muttered.\n\n'\"I knew nothing about it till I looked up,\" he explained hastily. And\nthat's possible, too. You had to listen to him as you would to a small\nboy in trouble. He didn't know. It had happened somehow. It would never\nhappen again. He had landed partly on somebody and fallen across a\nthwart. He felt as though all his ribs on his left side must be broken;\nthen he rolled over, and saw vaguely the ship he had deserted uprising\nabove him, with the red side-light glowing large in the rain like a fire\non the brow of a hill seen through a mist. \"She seemed higher than a\nwall; she loomed like a cliff over the boat . . . I wished I could die,\"\nhe cried. \"There was no going back. It was as if I had jumped into a\nwell--into an everlasting deep hole. . . .\"'\n\n\n\n'He locked his fingers together and tore them apart. Nothing could be\nmore true: he had indeed jumped into an everlasting deep hole. He had\ntumbled from a height he could never scale again. By that time the boat\nhad gone driving forward past the bows. It was too dark just then\nfor them to see each other, and, moreover, they were blinded and half\ndrowned with rain. He told me it was like being swept by a flood through\na cavern. They turned their backs to the squall; the skipper, it seems,\ngot an oar over the stern to keep the boat before it, and for two or\nthree minutes the end of the world had come through a deluge in a pitchy\nblackness. The sea hissed \"like twenty thousand kettles.\" That's his\nsimile, not mine. I fancy there was not much wind after the first gust;\nand he himself had admitted at the inquiry that the sea never got up\nthat night to any extent. He crouched down in the bows and stole a\nfurtive glance back. He saw just one yellow gleam of the mast-head light\nhigh up and blurred like a last star ready to dissolve. \"It terrified me\nto see it still there,\" he said. That's what he said. What terrified him\nwas the thought that the drowning was not over yet. No doubt he wanted\nto be done with that abomination as quickly as possible. Nobody in the\nboat made a sound. In the dark she seemed to fly, but of course she\ncould not have had much way. Then the shower swept ahead, and the great,\ndistracting, hissing noise followed the rain into distance and died out.\nThere was nothing to be heard then but the slight wash about the boat's\nsides. Somebody's teeth were chattering violently. A hand touched his\nback. A faint voice said, \"You there?\" Another cried out shakily,\n\"She's gone!\" and they all stood up together to look astern. They saw no\nlights. All was black. A thin cold drizzle was driving into their faces.\nThe boat lurched slightly. The teeth chattered faster, stopped, and\nbegan again twice before the man could master his shiver sufficiently to\nsay, \"Ju-ju-st in ti-ti-me. . . . Brrrr.\" He recognised the voice of the\nchief engineer saying surlily, \"I saw her go down. I happened to turn my\nhead.\" The wind had dropped almost completely.\n\n'They watched in the dark with their heads half turned to windward as if\nexpecting to hear cries. At first he was thankful the night had covered\nup the scene before his eyes, and then to know of it and yet to have\nseen and heard nothing appeared somehow the culminating point of an\nawful misfortune. \"Strange, isn't it?\" he murmured, interrupting himself\nin his disjointed narrative.\n\n'It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had an unconscious\nconviction that the reality could not be half as bad, not half as\nanguishing, appalling, and vengeful as the created terror of his\nimagination. I believe that, in this first moment, his heart was wrung\nwith all the suffering, that his soul knew the accumulated savour of all\nthe fear, all the horror, all the despair of eight hundred human beings\npounced upon in the night by a sudden and violent death, else why should\nhe have said, \"It seemed to me that I must jump out of that accursed\nboat and swim back to see--half a mile--more--any distance--to the very\nspot . . .\"? Why this impulse? Do you see the significance? Why back to\nthe very spot? Why not drown alongside--if he meant drowning? Why back\nto the very spot, to see--as if his imagination had to be soothed by the\nassurance that all was over before death could bring relief? I defy any\none of you to offer another explanation. It was one of those bizarre and\nexciting glimpses through the fog. It was an extraordinary disclosure.\nHe let it out as the most natural thing one could say. He fought down\nthat impulse and then he became conscious of the silence. He mentioned\nthis to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite\nimmensity still as death around these saved, palpitating lives.\n\"You might have heard a pin drop in the boat,\" he said with a queer\ncontraction of his lips, like a man trying to master his sensibilities\nwhile relating some extremely moving fact. A silence! God alone, who had\nwilled him as he was, knows what he made of it in his heart. \"I didn't\nthink any spot on earth could be so still,\" he said. \"You couldn't\ndistinguish the sea from the sky; there was nothing to see and nothing\nto hear. Not a glimmer, not a shape, not a sound. You could have\nbelieved that every bit of dry land had gone to the bottom; that every\nman on earth but I and these beggars in the boat had got drowned.\" He\nleaned over the table with his knuckles propped amongst coffee-cups,\nliqueur-glasses, cigar-ends. \"I seemed to believe it. Everything was\ngone and--all was over . . .\" he fetched a deep sigh . . . \"with me.\"'\n\nMarlow sat up abruptly and flung away his cheroot with force. It made\na darting red trail like a toy rocket fired through the drapery of\ncreepers. Nobody stirred.\n\n'Hey, what do you think of it?' he cried with sudden animation. 'Wasn't\nhe true to himself, wasn't he? His saved life was over for want of\nground under his feet, for want of sights for his eyes, for want of\nvoices in his ears. Annihilation--hey! And all the time it was only a\nclouded sky, a sea that did not break, the air that did not stir. Only a\nnight; only a silence.\n\n'It lasted for a while, and then they were suddenly and unanimously\nmoved to make a noise over their escape. \"I knew from the first she\nwould go.\" \"Not a minute too soon.\" \"A narrow squeak, b'gosh!\" He said\nnothing, but the breeze that had dropped came back, a gentle draught\nfreshened steadily, and the sea joined its murmuring voice to this\ntalkative reaction succeeding the dumb moments of awe. She was gone! She\nwas gone! Not a doubt of it. Nobody could have helped. They repeated the\nsame words over and over again as though they couldn't stop themselves.\nNever doubted she would go. The lights were gone. No mistake. The\nlights were gone. Couldn't expect anything else. She had to go. . . . He\nnoticed that they talked as though they had left behind them nothing but\nan empty ship. They concluded she would not have been long when she once\nstarted. It seemed to cause them some sort of satisfaction. They assured\neach other that she couldn't have been long about it--\"Just shot down\nlike a flat-iron.\" The chief engineer declared that the mast-head light\nat the moment of sinking seemed to drop \"like a lighted match you throw\ndown.\" At this the second laughed hysterically. \"I am g-g-glad, I am\ngla-a-a-d.\" His teeth went on \"like an electric rattle,\" said Jim,\n\"and all at once he began to cry. He wept and blubbered like a child,\ncatching his breath and sobbing 'Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!' He would\nbe quiet for a while and start suddenly, 'Oh, my poor arm! oh, my poor\na-a-a-arm!' I felt I could knock him down. Some of them sat in the\nstern-sheets. I could just make out their shapes. Voices came to me,\nmumble, mumble, grunt, grunt. All this seemed very hard to bear. I was\ncold too. And I could do nothing. I thought that if I moved I would have\nto go over the side and . . .\"\n\n'His hand groped stealthily, came in contact with a liqueur-glass, and\nwas withdrawn suddenly as if it had touched a red-hot coal. I pushed the\nbottle slightly. \"Won't you have some more?\" I asked. He looked at me\nangrily. \"Don't you think I can tell you what there is to tell without\nscrewing myself up?\" he asked. The squad of globe-trotters had gone to\nbed. We were alone but for a vague white form erect in the shadow, that,\nbeing looked at, cringed forward, hesitated, backed away silently. It\nwas getting late, but I did not hurry my guest.\n\n'In the midst of his forlorn state he heard his companions begin to\nabuse some one. \"What kept you from jumping, you lunatic?\" said a\nscolding voice. The chief engineer left the stern-sheets, and could\nbe heard clambering forward as if with hostile intentions against \"the\ngreatest idiot that ever was.\" The skipper shouted with rasping effort\noffensive epithets from where he sat at the oar. He lifted his head\nat that uproar, and heard the name \"George,\" while a hand in the dark\nstruck him on the breast. \"What have you got to say for yourself, you\nfool?\" queried somebody, with a sort of virtuous fury. \"They were after\nme,\" he said. \"They were abusing me--abusing me . . . by the name of\nGeorge.\"\n\n'He paused to stare, tried to smile, turned his eyes away and went on.\n\"That little second puts his head right under my nose, 'Why, it's that\nblasted mate!' 'What!' howls the skipper from the other end of the boat.\n'No!' shrieks the chief. And he too stooped to look at my face.\"\n\n'The wind had left the boat suddenly. The rain began to fall again, and\nthe soft, uninterrupted, a little mysterious sound with which the sea\nreceives a shower arose on all sides in the night. \"They were too taken\naback to say anything more at first,\" he narrated steadily, \"and what\ncould I have to say to them?\" He faltered for a moment, and made an\neffort to go on. \"They called me horrible names.\" His voice, sinking to\na whisper, now and then would leap up suddenly, hardened by the passion\nof scorn, as though he had been talking of secret abominations. \"Never\nmind what they called me,\" he said grimly. \"I could hear hate in their\nvoices. A good thing too. They could not forgive me for being in that\nboat. They hated it. It made them mad. . . .\" He laughed short. . . .\n\"But it kept me from--Look! I was sitting with my arms crossed, on the\ngunwale! . . .\" He perched himself smartly on the edge of the table and\ncrossed his arms. . . . \"Like this--see? One little tilt backwards and\nI would have been gone--after the others. One little tilt--the least\nbit--the least bit.\" He frowned, and tapping his forehead with the tip\nof his middle finger, \"It was there all the time,\" he said impressively.\n\"All the time--that notion. And the rain--cold, thick, cold as melted\nsnow--colder--on my thin cotton clothes--I'll never be so cold again in\nmy life, I know. And the sky was black too--all black. Not a star, not\na light anywhere. Nothing outside that confounded boat and those two\nyapping before me like a couple of mean mongrels at a tree'd thief. Yap!\nyap! 'What you doing here? You're a fine sort! Too much of a bloomin'\ngentleman to put your hand to it. Come out of your trance, did you? To\nsneak in? Did you?' Yap! yap! 'You ain't fit to live!' Yap! yap! Two of\nthem together trying to out-bark each other. The other would bay from\nthe stern through the rain--couldn't see him--couldn't make it out--some\nof his filthy jargon. Yap! yap! Bow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Yap! yap! It was sweet\nto hear them; it kept me alive, I tell you. It saved my life. At it they\nwent, as if trying to drive me overboard with the noise! . . . 'I wonder\nyou had pluck enough to jump. You ain't wanted here. If I had known who\nit was, I would have tipped you over--you skunk! What have you done with\nthe other? Where did you get the pluck to jump--you coward? What's to\nprevent us three from firing you overboard?' . . . They were out of\nbreath; the shower passed away upon the sea. Then nothing. There was\nnothing round the boat, not even a sound. Wanted to see me overboard,\ndid they? Upon my soul! I think they would have had their wish if they\nhad only kept quiet. Fire me overboard! Would they? 'Try,' I said. 'I\nwould for twopence.' 'Too good for you,' they screeched together. It was\nso dark that it was only when one or the other of them moved that I was\nquite sure of seeing him. By heavens! I only wish they had tried.\"\n\n'I couldn't help exclaiming, \"What an extraordinary affair!\"\n\n'\"Not bad--eh?\" he said, as if in some sort astounded. \"They pretended\nto think I had done away with that donkey-man for some reason or other.\nWhy should I? And how the devil was I to know? Didn't I get somehow\ninto that boat? into that boat--I . . .\" The muscles round his lips\ncontracted into an unconscious grimace that tore through the mask of his\nusual expression--something violent, short-lived and illuminating like\na twist of lightning that admits the eye for an instant into the secret\nconvolutions of a cloud. \"I did. I was plainly there with them--wasn't\nI? Isn't it awful a man should be driven to do a thing like that--and be\nresponsible? What did I know about their George they were howling after?\nI remembered I had seen him curled up on the deck. 'Murdering coward!'\nthe chief kept on calling me. He didn't seem able to remember any other\ntwo words. I didn't care, only his noise began to worry me. 'Shut up,' I\nsaid. At that he collected himself for a confounded screech. 'You killed\nhim! You killed him!' 'No,' I shouted, 'but I will kill you directly.' I\njumped up, and he fell backwards over a thwart with an awful loud thump.\nI don't know why. Too dark. Tried to step back I suppose. I stood still\nfacing aft, and the wretched little second began to whine, 'You\nain't going to hit a chap with a broken arm--and you call yourself a\ngentleman, too.' I heard a heavy tramp--one--two--and wheezy grunting.\nThe other beast was coming at me, clattering his oar over the stern. I\nsaw him moving, big, big--as you see a man in a mist, in a dream. 'Come\non,' I cried. I would have tumbled him over like a bale of shakings. He\nstopped, muttered to himself, and went back. Perhaps he had heard the\nwind. I didn't. It was the last heavy gust we had. He went back to his\noar. I was sorry. I would have tried to--to . . .\"\n\n'He opened and closed his curved fingers, and his hands had an eager and\ncruel flutter. \"Steady, steady,\" I murmured.\n\n'\"Eh? What? I am not excited,\" he remonstrated, awfully hurt, and with\na convulsive jerk of his elbow knocked over the cognac bottle. I started\nforward, scraping my chair. He bounced off the table as if a mine had\nbeen exploded behind his back, and half turned before he alighted,\ncrouching on his feet to show me a startled pair of eyes and a face\nwhite about the nostrils. A look of intense annoyance succeeded.\n\"Awfully sorry. How clumsy of me!\" he mumbled, very vexed, while the\npungent odour of spilt alcohol enveloped us suddenly with an atmosphere\nof a low drinking-bout in the cool, pure darkness of the night. The\nlights had been put out in the dining-hall; our candle glimmered\nsolitary in the long gallery, and the columns had turned black from\npediment to capital. On the vivid stars the high corner of the Harbour\nOffice stood out distinct across the Esplanade, as though the sombre\npile had glided nearer to see and hear.\n\n'He assumed an air of indifference.\n\n'\"I dare say I am less calm now than I was then. I was ready for\nanything. These were trifles. . . .\"\n\n'\"You had a lively time of it in that boat,\" I remarked\n\n'\"I was ready,\" he repeated. \"After the ship's lights had gone, anything\nmight have happened in that boat--anything in the world--and the world\nno wiser. I felt this, and I was pleased. It was just dark enough too.\nWe were like men walled up quick in a roomy grave. No concern with\nanything on earth. Nobody to pass an opinion. Nothing mattered.\" For the\nthird time during this conversation he laughed harshly, but there was\nno one about to suspect him of being only drunk. \"No fear, no law, no\nsounds, no eyes--not even our own, till--till sunrise at least.\"\n\n'I was struck by the suggestive truth of his words. There is something\npeculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea. Over the lives borne from\nunder the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.\nWhen your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world\nthat made you, restrained you, took care of you. It is as if the souls\nof men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set\nfree for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination. Of course, as\nwith belief, thought, love, hate, conviction, or even the visual aspect\nof material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are men, and\nin this one there was something abject which made the isolation more\ncomplete--there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off\nmore completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had\nnever undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were\nexasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on\nthem his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal\nrevenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust\na boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the\nbottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was part of\nthe burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea that\nthey did not come to blows. It was all threats, all a terribly effective\nfeint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the tremendous disdain\nof the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph,\nare perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of men. I asked, after\nwaiting for a while, \"Well, what happened?\" A futile question. I knew\ntoo much already to hope for the grace of a single uplifting touch, for\nthe favour of hinted madness, of shadowed horror. \"Nothing,\" he said. \"I\nmeant business, but they meant noise only. Nothing happened.\"\n\n'And the rising sun found him just as he had jumped up first in the bows\nof the boat. What a persistence of readiness! He had been holding the\ntiller in his hand, too, all the night. They had dropped the rudder\noverboard while attempting to ship it, and I suppose the tiller got\nkicked forward somehow while they were rushing up and down that boat\ntrying to do all sorts of things at once so as to get clear of the\nside. It was a long heavy piece of hard wood, and apparently he had been\nclutching it for six hours or so. If you don't call that being ready!\nCan you imagine him, silent and on his feet half the night, his face to\nthe gusts of rain, staring at sombre forms watchful of vague movements,\nstraining his ears to catch rare low murmurs in the stern-sheets!\nFirmness of courage or effort of fear? What do you think? And the\nendurance is undeniable too. Six hours more or less on the defensive;\nsix hours of alert immobility while the boat drove slowly or floated\narrested, according to the caprice of the wind; while the sea, calmed,\nslept at last; while the clouds passed above his head; while the sky\nfrom an immensity lustreless and black, diminished to a sombre and\nlustrous vault, scintillated with a greater brilliance, faded to the\neast, paled at the zenith; while the dark shapes blotting the low\nstars astern got outlines, relief became shoulders, heads, faces,\nfeatures,--confronted him with dreary stares, had dishevelled hair, torn\nclothes, blinked red eyelids at the white dawn. \"They looked as though\nthey had been knocking about drunk in gutters for a week,\" he described\ngraphically; and then he muttered something about the sunrise being of a\nkind that foretells a calm day. You know that sailor habit of referring\nto the weather in every connection. And on my side his few mumbled words\nwere enough to make me see the lower limb of the sun clearing the\nline of the horizon, the tremble of a vast ripple running over all the\nvisible expanse of the sea, as if the waters had shuddered, giving birth\nto the globe of light, while the last puff of the breeze would stir the\nair in a sigh of relief.\n\n'\"They sat in the stern shoulder to shoulder, with the skipper in the\nmiddle, like three dirty owls, and stared at me,\" I heard him say\nwith an intention of hate that distilled a corrosive virtue into the\ncommonplace words like a drop of powerful poison falling into a glass\nof water; but my thoughts dwelt upon that sunrise. I could imagine\nunder the pellucid emptiness of the sky these four men imprisoned in the\nsolitude of the sea, the lonely sun, regardless of the speck of life,\nascending the clear curve of the heaven as if to gaze ardently from a\ngreater height at his own splendour reflected in the still ocean. \"They\ncalled out to me from aft,\" said Jim, \"as though we had been chums\ntogether. I heard them. They were begging me to be sensible and drop\nthat 'blooming piece of wood.' Why _would_ I carry on so? They hadn't\ndone me any harm--had they? There had been no harm. . . . No harm!\"\n\n'His face crimsoned as though he could not get rid of the air in his\nlungs.\n\n'\"No harm!\" he burst out. \"I leave it to you. You can understand. Can't\nyou? You see it--don't you? No harm! Good God! What more could they have\ndone? Oh yes, I know very well--I jumped. Certainly. I jumped! I told\nyou I jumped; but I tell you they were too much for any man. It was\ntheir doing as plainly as if they had reached up with a boat-hook and\npulled me over. Can't you see it? You must see it. Come. Speak--straight\nout.\"\n\n'His uneasy eyes fastened upon mine, questioned, begged, challenged,\nentreated. For the life of me I couldn't help murmuring, \"You've been\ntried.\" \"More than is fair,\" he caught up swiftly. \"I wasn't given half\na chance--with a gang like that. And now they were friendly--oh, so\ndamnably friendly! Chums, shipmates. All in the same boat. Make the best\nof it. They hadn't meant anything. They didn't care a hang for George.\nGeorge had gone back to his berth for something at the last moment and\ngot caught. The man was a manifest fool. Very sad, of course. . . .\nTheir eyes looked at me; their lips moved; they wagged their heads at\nthe other end of the boat--three of them; they beckoned--to me. Why\nnot? Hadn't I jumped? I said nothing. There are no words for the sort of\nthings I wanted to say. If I had opened my lips just then I would have\nsimply howled like an animal. I was asking myself when I would wake up.\nThey urged me aloud to come aft and hear quietly what the skipper had to\nsay. We were sure to be picked up before the evening--right in the track\nof all the Canal traffic; there was smoke to the north-west now.\n\n'\"It gave me an awful shock to see this faint, faint blur, this low\ntrail of brown mist through which you could see the boundary of sea and\nsky. I called out to them that I could hear very well where I was. The\nskipper started swearing, as hoarse as a crow. He wasn't going to talk\nat the top of his voice for _my_ accommodation. 'Are you afraid they\nwill hear you on shore?' I asked. He glared as if he would have liked to\nclaw me to pieces. The chief engineer advised him to humour me. He\nsaid I wasn't right in my head yet. The other rose astern, like a thick\npillar of flesh--and talked--talked. . . .\"\n\n'Jim remained thoughtful. \"Well?\" I said. \"What did I care what story\nthey agreed to make up?\" he cried recklessly. \"They could tell what they\njolly well liked. It was their business. I knew the story. Nothing\nthey could make people believe could alter it for me. I let him talk,\nargue--talk, argue. He went on and on and on. Suddenly I felt my legs\ngive way under me. I was sick, tired--tired to death. I let fall the\ntiller, turned my back on them, and sat down on the foremost thwart. I\nhad enough. They called to me to know if I understood--wasn't it true,\nevery word of it? It was true, by God! after their fashion. I did not\nturn my head. I heard them palavering together. 'The silly ass won't say\nanything.' 'Oh, he understands well enough.' 'Let him be; he will be all\nright.' 'What can he do?' What could I do? Weren't we all in the same\nboat? I tried to be deaf. The smoke had disappeared to the northward.\nIt was a dead calm. They had a drink from the water-breaker, and I drank\ntoo. Afterwards they made a great business of spreading the boat-sail\nover the gunwales. Would I keep a look-out? They crept under, out of my\nsight, thank God! I felt weary, weary, done up, as if I hadn't had one\nhour's sleep since the day I was born. I couldn't see the water for the\nglitter of the sunshine. From time to time one of them would creep out,\nstand up to take a look all round, and get under again. I could hear\nspells of snoring below the sail. Some of them could sleep. One of them\nat least. I couldn't! All was light, light, and the boat seemed to be\nfalling through it. Now and then I would feel quite surprised to find\nmyself sitting on a thwart. . . .\"\n\n'He began to walk with measured steps to and fro before my chair, one\nhand in his trousers-pocket, his head bent thoughtfully, and his right\narm at long intervals raised for a gesture that seemed to put out of his\nway an invisible intruder.\n\n'\"I suppose you think I was going mad,\" he began in a changed tone. \"And\nwell you may, if you remember I had lost my cap. The sun crept all the\nway from east to west over my bare head, but that day I could not come\nto any harm, I suppose. The sun could not make me mad. . . .\" His right\narm put aside the idea of madness. . . . \"Neither could it kill\nme. . . .\" Again his arm repulsed a shadow. . . . \"_That_ rested with\nme.\"\n\n'\"Did it?\" I said, inexpressibly amazed at this new turn, and I looked\nat him with the same sort of feeling I might be fairly conceived to\nexperience had he, after spinning round on his heel, presented an\naltogether new face.\n\n'\"I didn't get brain fever, I did not drop dead either,\" he went on. \"I\ndidn't bother myself at all about the sun over my head. I was thinking\nas coolly as any man that ever sat thinking in the shade. That greasy\nbeast of a skipper poked his big cropped head from under the canvas\nand screwed his fishy eyes up at me. 'Donnerwetter! you will die,' he\ngrowled, and drew in like a turtle. I had seen him. I had heard him. He\ndidn't interrupt me. I was thinking just then that I wouldn't.\"\n\n'He tried to sound my thought with an attentive glance dropped on me\nin passing. \"Do you mean to say you had been deliberating with yourself\nwhether you would die?\" I asked in as impenetrable a tone as I could\ncommand. He nodded without stopping. \"Yes, it had come to that as I sat\nthere alone,\" he said. He passed on a few steps to the imaginary end\nof his beat, and when he flung round to come back both his hands were\nthrust deep into his pockets. He stopped short in front of my chair and\nlooked down. \"Don't you believe it?\" he inquired with tense curiosity.\nI was moved to make a solemn declaration of my readiness to believe\nimplicitly anything he thought fit to tell me.'\n\n\n'He heard me out with his head on one side, and I had another glimpse\nthrough a rent in the mist in which he moved and had his being. The dim\ncandle spluttered within the ball of glass, and that was all I had to\nsee him by; at his back was the dark night with the clear stars, whose\ndistant glitter disposed in retreating planes lured the eye into the\ndepths of a greater darkness; and yet a mysterious light seemed to show\nme his boyish head, as if in that moment the youth within him had, for\na moment, glowed and expired. \"You are an awful good sort to listen like\nthis,\" he said. \"It does me good. You don't know what it is to me. You\ndon't\" . . . words seemed to fail him. It was a distinct glimpse. He was\na youngster of the sort you like to see about you; of the sort you like\nto imagine yourself to have been; of the sort whose appearance claims\nthe fellowship of these illusions you had thought gone out, extinct,\ncold, and which, as if rekindled at the approach of another flame, give\na flutter deep, deep down somewhere, give a flutter of light . . . of\nheat! . . . Yes; I had a glimpse of him then . . . and it was not the\nlast of that kind. . . . \"You don't know what it is for a fellow in my\nposition to be believed--make a clean breast of it to an elder man. It\nis so difficult--so awfully unfair--so hard to understand.\"\n\n'The mists were closing again. I don't know how old I appeared to\nhim--and how much wise. Not half as old as I felt just then; not half\nas uselessly wise as I knew myself to be. Surely in no other craft as in\nthat of the sea do the hearts of those already launched to sink or swim\ngo out so much to the youth on the brink, looking with shining eyes upon\nthat glitter of the vast surface which is only a reflection of his\nown glances full of fire. There is such magnificent vagueness in\nthe expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such a glorious\nindefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own\nand only reward. What we get--well, we won't talk of that; but can one\nof us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life is the illusion more\nwide of reality--in no other is the beginning _all_ illusion--the\ndisenchantment more swift--the subjugation more complete. Hadn't we all\ncommenced with the same desire, ended with the same knowledge, carried\nthe memory of the same cherished glamour through the sordid days of\nimprecation? What wonder that when some heavy prod gets home the bond\nis found to be close; that besides the fellowship of the craft there is\nfelt the strength of a wider feeling--the feeling that binds a man to a\nchild. He was there before me, believing that age and wisdom can find\na remedy against the pain of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a\nyoung fellow in a scrape that is the very devil of a scrape, the sort\nof scrape greybeards wag at solemnly while they hide a smile. And he\nhad been deliberating upon death--confound him! He had found that to\nmeditate about because he thought he had saved his life, while all its\nglamour had gone with the ship in the night. What more natural! It\nwas tragic enough and funny enough in all conscience to call aloud for\ncompassion, and in what was I better than the rest of us to refuse him\nmy pity? And even as I looked at him the mists rolled into the rent, and\nhis voice spoke--\n\n'\"I was so lost, you know. It was the sort of thing one does not expect\nto happen to one. It was not like a fight, for instance.\"\n\n'\"It was not,\" I admitted. He appeared changed, as if he had suddenly\nmatured.\n\n'\"One couldn't be sure,\" he muttered.\n\n'\"Ah! You were not sure,\" I said, and was placated by the sound of\na faint sigh that passed between us like the flight of a bird in the\nnight.\n\n'\"Well, I wasn't,\" he said courageously. \"It was something like that\nwretched story they made up. It was not a lie--but it wasn't truth all\nthe same. It was something. . . . One knows a downright lie. There was\nnot the thickness of a sheet of paper between the right and the wrong of\nthis affair.\"\n\n'\"How much more did you want?\" I asked; but I think I spoke so low that\nhe did not catch what I said. He had advanced his argument as though\nlife had been a network of paths separated by chasms. His voice sounded\nreasonable.\n\n'\"Suppose I had not--I mean to say, suppose I had stuck to the ship?\nWell. How much longer? Say a minute--half a minute. Come. In thirty\nseconds, as it seemed certain then, I would have been overboard; and do\nyou think I would not have laid hold of the first thing that came in my\nway--oar, life-buoy, grating--anything? Wouldn't you?\"\n\n'\"And be saved,\" I interjected.\n\n'\"I would have meant to be,\" he retorted. \"And that's more than I meant\nwhen I\" . . . he shivered as if about to swallow some nauseous\ndrug . . . \"jumped,\" he pronounced with a convulsive effort, whose\nstress, as if propagated by the waves of the air, made my body stir a\nlittle in the chair. He fixed me with lowering eyes. \"Don't you believe\nme?\" he cried. \"I swear! . . . Confound it! You got me here to talk,\nand . . . You must! . . . You said you would believe.\" \"Of course I do,\"\nI protested, in a matter-of-fact tone which produced a calming effect.\n\"Forgive me,\" he said. \"Of course I wouldn't have talked to you about\nall this if you had not been a gentleman. I ought to have known . . . I\nam--I am--a gentleman too . . .\" \"Yes, yes,\" I said hastily. He was\nlooking me squarely in the face, and withdrew his gaze slowly. \"Now you\nunderstand why I didn't after all . . . didn't go out in that way. I\nwasn't going to be frightened at what I had done. And, anyhow, if I had\nstuck to the ship I would have done my best to be saved. Men have been\nknown to float for hours--in the open sea--and be picked up not much the\nworse for it. I might have lasted it out better than many others.\nThere's nothing the matter with my heart.\" He withdrew his right fist\nfrom his pocket, and the blow he struck on his chest resounded like a\nmuffled detonation in the night.\n\n'\"No,\" I said. He meditated, with his legs slightly apart and his\nchin sunk. \"A hair's-breadth,\" he muttered. \"Not the breadth of a hair\nbetween this and that. And at the time . . .\"\n\n'\"It is difficult to see a hair at midnight,\" I put in, a little\nviciously I fear. Don't you see what I mean by the solidarity of the\ncraft? I was aggrieved against him, as though he had cheated me--me!--of\na splendid opportunity to keep up the illusion of my beginnings, as\nthough he had robbed our common life of the last spark of its glamour.\n\"And so you cleared out--at once.\"\n\n'\"Jumped,\" he corrected me incisively. \"Jumped--mind!\" he repeated, and\nI wondered at the evident but obscure intention. \"Well, yes! Perhaps I\ncould not see then. But I had plenty of time and any amount of light\nin that boat. And I could think, too. Nobody would know, of course, but\nthis did not make it any easier for me. You've got to believe that, too.\nI did not want all this talk. . . . No . . . Yes . . . I won't\nlie . . . I wanted it: it is the very thing I wanted--there. Do you\nthink you or anybody could have made me if I . . . I am--I am not afraid\nto tell. And I wasn't afraid to think either. I looked it in the face. I\nwasn't going to run away. At first--at night, if it hadn't been for\nthose fellows I might have . . . No! by heavens! I was not going to give\nthem that satisfaction. They had done enough. They made up a story, and\nbelieved it for all I know. But I knew the truth, and I would live it\ndown--alone, with myself. I wasn't going to give in to such a beastly\nunfair thing. What did it prove after all? I was confoundedly cut up.\nSick of life--to tell you the truth; but what would have been the good\nto shirk it--in--in--that way? That was not the way. I believe--I\nbelieve it would have--it would have ended--nothing.\"\n\n'He had been walking up and down, but with the last word he turned short\nat me.\n\n'\"What do _you_ believe?\" he asked with violence. A pause ensued, and\nsuddenly I felt myself overcome by a profound and hopeless fatigue, as\nthough his voice had startled me out of a dream of wandering through\nempty spaces whose immensity had harassed my soul and exhausted my body.\n\n'\". . . Would have ended nothing,\" he muttered over me obstinately,\nafter a little while. \"No! the proper thing was to face it out--alone\nfor myself--wait for another chance--find out . . .\"'\n\n\n'All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach. The mist\nof his feelings shifted between us, as if disturbed by his struggles,\nand in the rifts of the immaterial veil he would appear to my staring\neyes distinct of form and pregnant with vague appeal like a symbolic\nfigure in a picture. The chill air of the night seemed to lie on my\nlimbs as heavy as a slab of marble.\n\n'\"I see,\" I murmured, more to prove to myself that I could break my\nstate of numbness than for any other reason.\n\n'\"The Avondale picked us up just before sunset,\" he remarked moodily.\n\"Steamed right straight for us. We had only to sit and wait.\"\n\n'After a long interval, he said, \"They told their story.\" And again\nthere was that oppressive silence. \"Then only I knew what it was I had\nmade up my mind to,\" he added.\n\n'\"You said nothing,\" I whispered.\n\n'\"What could I say?\" he asked, in the same low tone. . . . \"Shock\nslight. Stopped the ship. Ascertained the damage. Took measures to get\nthe boats out without creating a panic. As the first boat was lowered\nship went down in a squall. Sank like lead. . . . What could be more\nclear\" . . . he hung his head . . . \"and more awful?\" His lips quivered\nwhile he looked straight into my eyes. \"I had jumped--hadn't I?\" he\nasked, dismayed. \"That's what I had to live down. The story didn't\nmatter.\" . . . He clasped his hands for an instant, glanced right and\nleft into the gloom: \"It was like cheating the dead,\" he stammered.\n\n'\"And there were no dead,\" I said.\n\n'He went away from me at this. That is the only way I can describe it.\nIn a moment I saw his back close to the balustrade. He stood there for\nsome time, as if admiring the purity and the peace of the night. Some\nflowering-shrub in the garden below spread its powerful scent through\nthe damp air. He returned to me with hasty steps.\n\n'\"And that did not matter,\" he said, as stubbornly as you please.\n\n'\"Perhaps not,\" I admitted. I began to have a notion he was too much for\nme. After all, what did _I_ know?\n\n'\"Dead or not dead, I could not get clear,\" he said. \"I had to live;\nhadn't I?\"\n\n'\"Well, yes--if you take it in that way,\" I mumbled.\n\n'\"I was glad, of course,\" he threw out carelessly, with his mind fixed\non something else. \"The exposure,\" he pronounced slowly, and lifted\nhis head. \"Do you know what was my first thought when I heard? I was\nrelieved. I was relieved to learn that those shouts--did I tell you I\nhad heard shouts? No? Well, I did. Shouts for help . . . blown along\nwith the drizzle. Imagination, I suppose. And yet I can hardly . . . How\nstupid. . . . The others did not. I asked them afterwards. They all\nsaid No. No? And I was hearing them even then! I might have known--but\nI didn't think--I only listened. Very faint screams--day after day. Then\nthat little half-caste chap here came up and spoke to me. 'The\nPatna . . . French gunboat . . . towed successfully to Aden . . .\nInvestigation . . . Marine Office . . . Sailors' Home . . . arrangements\nmade for your board and lodging!' I walked along with him, and I enjoyed\nthe silence. So there had been no shouting. Imagination. I had to\nbelieve him. I could hear nothing any more. I wonder how long I could\nhave stood it. It was getting worse, too . . . I mean--louder.\" 'He fell\ninto thought.\n\n'\"And I had heard nothing! Well--so be it. But the lights! The lights\ndid go! We did not see them. They were not there. If they had been, I\nwould have swam back--I would have gone back and shouted alongside--I\nwould have begged them to take me on board. . . . I would have had my\nchance. . . . You doubt me? . . . How do you know how I felt? . . . What\nright have you to doubt? . . . I very nearly did it as it was--do you\nunderstand?\" His voice fell. \"There was not a glimmer--not a glimmer,\"\nhe protested mournfully. \"Don't you understand that if there had been,\nyou would not have seen me here? You see me--and you doubt.\"\n\n'I shook my head negatively. This question of the lights being lost\nsight of when the boat could not have been more than a quarter of a mile\nfrom the ship was a matter for much discussion. Jim stuck to it that\nthere was nothing to be seen after the first shower had cleared away;\nand the others had affirmed the same thing to the officers of the\nAvondale. Of course people shook their heads and smiled. One old skipper\nwho sat near me in court tickled my ear with his white beard to murmur,\n\"Of course they would lie.\" As a matter of fact nobody lied; not even\nthe chief engineer with his story of the mast-head light dropping like a\nmatch you throw down. Not consciously, at least. A man with his liver in\nsuch a state might very well have seen a floating spark in the corner of\nhis eye when stealing a hurried glance over his shoulder. They had seen\nno light of any sort though they were well within range, and they could\nonly explain this in one way: the ship had gone down. It was obvious\nand comforting. The foreseen fact coming so swiftly had justified their\nhaste. No wonder they did not cast about for any other explanation. Yet\nthe true one was very simple, and as soon as Brierly suggested it the\ncourt ceased to bother about the question. If you remember, the ship had\nbeen stopped, and was lying with her head on the course steered through\nthe night, with her stern canted high and her bows brought low down in\nthe water through the filling of the fore-compartment. Being thus out of\ntrim, when the squall struck her a little on the quarter, she swung head\nto wind as sharply as though she had been at anchor. By this change in\nher position all her lights were in a very few moments shut off from\nthe boat to leeward. It may very well be that, had they been seen, they\nwould have had the effect of a mute appeal--that their glimmer lost in\nthe darkness of the cloud would have had the mysterious power of the\nhuman glance that can awaken the feelings of remorse and pity. It would\nhave said, \"I am here--still here\" . . . and what more can the eye of\nthe most forsaken of human beings say? But she turned her back on them\nas if in disdain of their fate: she had swung round, burdened, to glare\nstubbornly at the new danger of the open sea which she so strangely\nsurvived to end her days in a breaking-up yard, as if it had been her\nrecorded fate to die obscurely under the blows of many hammers. What\nwere the various ends their destiny provided for the pilgrims I am\nunable to say; but the immediate future brought, at about nine o'clock\nnext morning, a French gunboat homeward bound from Reunion. The report\nof her commander was public property. He had swept a little out of\nhis course to ascertain what was the matter with that steamer floating\ndangerously by the head upon a still and hazy sea. There was an ensign,\nunion down, flying at her main gaff (the serang had the sense to make a\nsignal of distress at daylight); but the cooks were preparing the food\nin the cooking-boxes forward as usual. The decks were packed as close\nas a sheep-pen: there were people perched all along the rails, jammed on\nthe bridge in a solid mass; hundreds of eyes stared, and not a sound was\nheard when the gunboat ranged abreast, as if all that multitude of lips\nhad been sealed by a spell.\n\n'The Frenchman hailed, could get no intelligible reply, and after\nascertaining through his binoculars that the crowd on deck did not look\nplague-stricken, decided to send a boat. Two officers came on board,\nlistened to the serang, tried to talk with the Arab, couldn't make head\nor tail of it: but of course the nature of the emergency was obvious\nenough. They were also very much struck by discovering a white man, dead\nand curled up peacefully on the bridge. \"Fort intrigues par ce cadavre,\"\nas I was informed a long time after by an elderly French lieutenant whom\nI came across one afternoon in Sydney, by the merest chance, in a sort\nof cafe, and who remembered the affair perfectly. Indeed this affair,\nI may notice in passing, had an extraordinary power of defying the\nshortness of memories and the length of time: it seemed to live, with\na sort of uncanny vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their\ntongues. I've had the questionable pleasure of meeting it often, years\nafterwards, thousands of miles away, emerging from the remotest possible\ntalk, coming to the surface of the most distant allusions. Has it not\nturned up to-night between us? And I am the only seaman here. I am the\nonly one to whom it is a memory. And yet it has made its way out! But if\ntwo men who, unknown to each other, knew of this affair met accidentally\non any spot of this earth, the thing would pop up between them as sure\nas fate, before they parted. I had never seen that Frenchman before, and\nat the end of an hour we had done with each other for life: he did not\nseem particularly talkative either; he was a quiet, massive chap in a\ncreased uniform, sitting drowsily over a tumbler half full of some\ndark liquid. His shoulder-straps were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved\ncheeks were large and sallow; he looked like a man who would be given\nto taking snuff--don't you know? I won't say he did; but the habit would\nhave fitted that kind of man. It all began by his handing me a number of\nHome News, which I didn't want, across the marble table. I said \"Merci.\"\nWe exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly, before\nI knew how it had come about, we were in the midst of it, and he was\ntelling me how much they had been \"intrigued by that corpse.\" It turned\nout he had been one of the boarding officers.\n\n'In the establishment where we sat one could get a variety of foreign\ndrinks which were kept for the visiting naval officers, and he took a\nsip of the dark medical-looking stuff, which probably was nothing more\nnasty than cassis a l'eau, and glancing with one eye into the tumbler,\nshook his head slightly. \"Impossible de comprendre--vous concevez,\" he\nsaid, with a curious mixture of unconcern and thoughtfulness. I could\nvery easily conceive how impossible it had been for them to understand.\nNobody in the gunboat knew enough English to get hold of the story as\ntold by the serang. There was a good deal of noise, too, round the two\nofficers. \"They crowded upon us. There was a circle round that dead\nman (autour de ce mort),\" he described. \"One had to attend to the most\npressing. These people were beginning to agitate themselves--Parbleu!\nA mob like that--don't you see?\" he interjected with philosophic\nindulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the\nsafest thing was to leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at.\nThey got two hawsers on board promptly (en toute hale) and took the\nPatna in tow--stern foremost at that--which, under the circumstances,\nwas not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of the water to\nbe of any great use for steering, and this manoeuvre eased the strain on\nthe bulkhead, whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded\nthe greatest care (exigeait les plus grands menagements). I could not\nhelp thinking that my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of\nthese arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active,\nand he was seamanlike too, in a way, though as he sat there, with his\nthick fingers clasped lightly on his stomach, he reminded you of one\nof those snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are poured the\nsins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations, on whose faces\nthe placid and simple expression is like a veil thrown over the mystery\nof pain and distress. He ought to have had a threadbare black soutane\nbuttoned smoothly up to his ample chin, instead of a frock-coat with\nshoulder-straps and brass buttons. His broad bosom heaved regularly\nwhile he went on telling me that it had been the very devil of a job,\nas doubtless (sans doute) I could figure to myself in my quality of a\nseaman (en votre qualite de marin). At the end of the period he inclined\nhis body slightly towards me, and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the\nair to escape with a gentle hiss. \"Luckily,\" he continued, \"the sea was\nlevel like this table, and there was no more wind than there is here.\"\n. . . The place struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy, and very hot;\nmy face burned as though I had been young enough to be embarrassed and\nblushing. They had directed their course, he pursued, to the nearest\nEnglish port \"naturellement,\" where their responsibility ceased, \"Dieu\nmerci.\" . . . He blew out his flat cheeks a little. . . . \"Because,\nmind you (notez bien), all the time of towing we had two quartermasters\nstationed with axes by the hawsers, to cut us clear of our tow in case\nshe . . .\" He fluttered downwards his heavy eyelids, making his meaning\nas plain as possible. . . . \"What would you! One does what one can\n(on fait ce qu'on peut),\" and for a moment he managed to invest\nhis ponderous immobility with an air of resignation. \"Two\nquartermasters--thirty hours--always there. Two!\" he repeated, lifting\nup his right hand a little, and exhibiting two fingers. This was\nabsolutely the first gesture I saw him make. It gave me the opportunity\nto \"note\" a starred scar on the back of his hand--effect of a gunshot\nclearly; and, as if my sight had been made more acute by this discovery,\nI perceived also the seam of an old wound, beginning a little below the\ntemple and going out of sight under the short grey hair at the side of\nhis head--the graze of a spear or the cut of a sabre. He clasped his\nhands on his stomach again. \"I remained on board that--that--my memory\nis going (s'en va). Ah! Patt-na. C'est bien ca. Patt-na. Merci. It is\ndroll how one forgets. I stayed on that ship thirty hours. . . .\"\n\n'\"You did!\" I exclaimed. Still gazing at his hands, he pursed his lips a\nlittle, but this time made no hissing sound. \"It was judged proper,\" he\nsaid, lifting his eyebrows dispassionately, \"that one of the officers\nshould remain to keep an eye open (pour ouvrir l'oeil)\" . . . he sighed\nidly . . . \"and for communicating by signals with the towing ship--do\nyou see?--and so on. For the rest, it was my opinion too. We made our\nboats ready to drop over--and I also on that ship took measures. . . .\nEnfin! One has done one's possible. It was a delicate position. Thirty\nhours! They prepared me some food. As for the wine--go and whistle for\nit--not a drop.\" In some extraordinary way, without any marked change in\nhis inert attitude and in the placid expression of his face, he managed\nto convey the idea of profound disgust. \"I--you know--when it comes to\neating without my glass of wine--I am nowhere.\"\n\n'I was afraid he would enlarge upon the grievance, for though he didn't\nstir a limb or twitch a feature, he made one aware how much he was\nirritated by the recollection. But he seemed to forget all about it.\nThey delivered their charge to the \"port authorities,\" as he expressed\nit. He was struck by the calmness with which it had been received. \"One\nmight have thought they had such a droll find (drole de trouvaille)\nbrought them every day. You are extraordinary--you others,\" he\ncommented, with his back propped against the wall, and looking himself\nas incapable of an emotional display as a sack of meal. There happened\nto be a man-of-war and an Indian Marine steamer in the harbour at the\ntime, and he did not conceal his admiration of the efficient manner in\nwhich the boats of these two ships cleared the Patna of her passengers.\nIndeed his torpid demeanour concealed nothing: it had that mysterious,\nalmost miraculous, power of producing striking effects by means\nimpossible of detection which is the last word of the highest art.\n\"Twenty-five minutes--watch in hand--twenty-five, no more.\" . . . He\nunclasped and clasped again his fingers without removing his hands from\nhis stomach, and made it infinitely more effective than if he had thrown\nup his arms to heaven in amazement. . . . \"All that lot (tout ce monde)\non shore--with their little affairs--nobody left but a guard of\nseamen (marins de l'Etat) and that interesting corpse (cet interessant\ncadavre). Twenty-five minutes.\" . . . With downcast eyes and his head\ntilted slightly on one side he seemed to roll knowingly on his tongue\nthe savour of a smart bit of work. He persuaded one without any further\ndemonstration that his approval was eminently worth having, and resuming\nhis hardly interrupted immobility, he went on to inform me that, being\nunder orders to make the best of their way to Toulon, they left in\ntwo hours' time, \"so that (de sorte que) there are many things in this\nincident of my life (dans cet episode de ma vie) which have remained\nobscure.\"'\n\n'After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, so to speak,\nsubmitted himself passively to a state of silence. I kept him company;\nand suddenly, but not abruptly, as if the appointed time had arrived\nfor his moderate and husky voice to come out of his immobility, he\npronounced, \"Mon Dieu! how the time passes!\" Nothing could have been\nmore commonplace than this remark; but its utterance coincided for me\nwith a moment of vision. It's extraordinary how we go through life with\neyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just\nas well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to\nthe incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless,\nthere can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments\nof awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much--everything--in\na flash--before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I\nraised my eyes when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen\nhim before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy folds of his\ncoat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so curiously suggestive\nof his having been simply left there. Time had passed indeed: it had\novertaken him and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with\na few poor gifts: the iron-grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the tanned\nface, two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulder-straps; one of those\nsteady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations,\none of those uncounted lives that are buried without drums and\ntrumpets under the foundations of monumental successes. \"I am now third\nlieutenant of the Victorieuse\" (she was the flagship of the French\nPacific squadron at the time), he said, detaching his shoulders from\nthe wall a couple of inches to introduce himself. I bowed slightly on my\nside of the table, and told him I commanded a merchant vessel at present\nanchored in Rushcutters' Bay. He had \"remarked\" her,--a pretty little\ncraft. He was very civil about it in his impassive way. I even fancy\nhe went the length of tilting his head in compliment as he repeated,\nbreathing visibly the while, \"Ah, yes. A little craft painted\nblack--very pretty--very pretty (tres coquet).\" After a time he twisted\nhis body slowly to face the glass door on our right. \"A dull town\n(triste ville),\" he observed, staring into the street. It was a\nbrilliant day; a southerly buster was raging, and we could see the\npassers-by, men and women, buffeted by the wind on the sidewalks, the\nsunlit fronts of the houses across the road blurred by the tall whirls\nof dust. \"I descended on shore,\" he said, \"to stretch my legs a little,\nbut . . .\" He didn't finish, and sank into the depths of his repose.\n\"Pray--tell me,\" he began, coming up ponderously, \"what was there at the\nbottom of this affair--precisely (au juste)? It is curious. That dead\nman, for instance--and so on.\"\n\n'\"There were living men too,\" I said; \"much more curious.\"\n\n'\"No doubt, no doubt,\" he agreed half audibly, then, as if after\nmature consideration, murmured, \"Evidently.\" I made no difficulty in\ncommunicating to him what had interested me most in this affair. It\nseemed as though he had a right to know: hadn't he spent thirty hours\non board the Patna--had he not taken the succession, so to speak, had\nhe not done \"his possible\"? He listened to me, looking more priest-like\nthan ever, and with what--probably on account of his downcast eyes--had\nthe appearance of devout concentration. Once or twice he elevated\nhis eyebrows (but without raising his eyelids), as one would say \"The\ndevil!\" Once he calmly exclaimed, \"Ah, bah!\" under his breath, and when\nI had finished he pursed his lips in a deliberate way and emitted a sort\nof sorrowful whistle.\n\n'In any one else it might have been an evidence of boredom, a sign of\nindifference; but he, in his occult way, managed to make his immobility\nappear profoundly responsive, and as full of valuable thoughts as an\negg is of meat. What he said at last was nothing more than a \"Very\ninteresting,\" pronounced politely, and not much above a whisper. Before\nI got over my disappointment he added, but as if speaking to himself,\n\"That's it. That _is_ it.\" His chin seemed to sink lower on his breast,\nhis body to weigh heavier on his seat. I was about to ask him what he\nmeant, when a sort of preparatory tremor passed over his whole person,\nas a faint ripple may be seen upon stagnant water even before the wind\nis felt. \"And so that poor young man ran away along with the others,\" he\nsaid, with grave tranquillity.\n\n'I don't know what made me smile: it is the only genuine smile of mine\nI can remember in connection with Jim's affair. But somehow this simple\nstatement of the matter sounded funny in French. . . . \"S'est enfui avec\nles autres,\" had said the lieutenant. And suddenly I began to admire the\ndiscrimination of the man. He had made out the point at once: he did\nget hold of the only thing I cared about. I felt as though I were taking\nprofessional opinion on the case. His imperturbable and mature calmness\nwas that of an expert in possession of the facts, and to whom one's\nperplexities are mere child's-play. \"Ah! The young, the young,\" he said\nindulgently. \"And after all, one does not die of it.\" \"Die of what?\" I\nasked swiftly. \"Of being afraid.\" He elucidated his meaning and sipped\nhis drink.\n\n'I perceived that the three last fingers of his wounded hand were stiff\nand could not move independently of each other, so that he took up his\ntumbler with an ungainly clutch. \"One is always afraid. One may talk,\nbut . . .\" He put down the glass awkwardly. . . . \"The fear, the\nfear--look you--it is always there.\" . . . He touched his breast near\na brass button, on the very spot where Jim had given a thump to his\nown when protesting that there was nothing the matter with his heart. I\nsuppose I made some sign of dissent, because he insisted, \"Yes! yes! One\ntalks, one talks; this is all very fine; but at the end of the reckoning\none is no cleverer than the next man--and no more brave. Brave! This\nis always to be seen. I have rolled my hump (roule ma bosse),\" he said,\nusing the slang expression with imperturbable seriousness, \"in all parts\nof the world; I have known brave men--famous ones! Allez!\" . . . He\ndrank carelessly. . . . \"Brave--you conceive--in the Service--one has\ngot to be--the trade demands it (le metier veut ca). Is it not so?\" he\nappealed to me reasonably. \"Eh bien! Each of them--I say each of them,\nif he were an honest man--bien entendu--would confess that there is a\npoint--there is a point--for the best of us--there is somewhere a point\nwhen you let go everything (vous lachez tout). And you have got to\nlive with that truth--do you see? Given a certain combination\nof circumstances, fear is sure to come. Abominable funk (un trac\nepouvantable). And even for those who do not believe this truth there is\nfear all the same--the fear of themselves. Absolutely so. Trust me. Yes.\nYes. . . . At my age one knows what one is talking about--que diable!\"\n. . . He had delivered himself of all this as immovably as though he had\nbeen the mouthpiece of abstract wisdom, but at this point he heightened\nthe effect of detachment by beginning to twirl his thumbs slowly. \"It's\nevident--parbleu!\" he continued; \"for, make up your mind as much as you\nlike, even a simple headache or a fit of indigestion (un derangement\nd'estomac) is enough to . . . Take me, for instance--I have made my\nproofs. Eh bien! I, who am speaking to you, once . . .\"\n\n'He drained his glass and returned to his twirling. \"No, no; one does\nnot die of it,\" he pronounced finally, and when I found he did not mean\nto proceed with the personal anecdote, I was extremely disappointed; the\nmore so as it was not the sort of story, you know, one could very well\npress him for. I sat silent, and he too, as if nothing could please him\nbetter. Even his thumbs were still now. Suddenly his lips began to move.\n\"That is so,\" he resumed placidly. \"Man is born a coward (L'homme est ne\npoltron). It is a difficulty--parbleu! It would be too easy other vise.\nBut habit--habit--necessity--do you see?--the eye of others--voila. One\nputs up with it. And then the example of others who are no better than\nyourself, and yet make good countenance. . . .\"\n\n'His voice ceased.\n\n'\"That young man--you will observe--had none of these inducements--at\nleast at the moment,\" I remarked.\n\n'He raised his eyebrows forgivingly: \"I don't say; I don't say. The\nyoung man in question might have had the best dispositions--the best\ndispositions,\" he repeated, wheezing a little.\n\n'\"I am glad to see you taking a lenient view,\" I said. \"His own feeling\nin the matter was--ah!--hopeful, and . . .\"\n\n'The shuffle of his feet under the table interrupted me. He drew up\nhis heavy eyelids. Drew up, I say--no other expression can describe the\nsteady deliberation of the act--and at last was disclosed completely to\nme. I was confronted by two narrow grey circlets, like two tiny steel\nrings around the profound blackness of the pupils. The sharp glance,\ncoming from that massive body, gave a notion of extreme efficiency, like\na razor-edge on a battle-axe. \"Pardon,\" he said punctiliously. His right\nhand went up, and he swayed forward. \"Allow me . . . I contended that\none may get on knowing very well that one's courage does not come of\nitself (ne vient pas tout seul). There's nothing much in that to\nget upset about. One truth the more ought not to make life\nimpossible. . . . But the honour--the honour, monsieur! . . . The honour\n. . . that is real--that is! And what life may be worth when\" . . . he\ngot on his feet with a ponderous impetuosity, as a startled ox might\nscramble up from the grass . . . \"when the honour is gone--ah\nca! par exemple--I can offer no opinion. I can offer no\nopinion--because--monsieur--I know nothing of it.\"\n\n'I had risen too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness into\nour attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china dogs on a\nmantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked the bubble. The blight\nof futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our\nconversation, and made it a thing of empty sounds. \"Very well,\" I said,\nwith a disconcerted smile; \"but couldn't it reduce itself to not being\nfound out?\" He made as if to retort readily, but when he spoke he had\nchanged his mind. \"This, monsieur, is too fine for me--much above me--I\ndon't think about it.\" He bowed heavily over his cap, which he held\nbefore him by the peak, between the thumb and the forefinger of his\nwounded hand. I bowed too. We bowed together: we scraped our feet at\neach other with much ceremony, while a dirty specimen of a waiter looked\non critically, as though he had paid for the performance. \"Serviteur,\"\nsaid the Frenchman. Another scrape. \"Monsieur\" . . . \"Monsieur.\" . . .\nThe glass door swung behind his burly back. I saw the southerly buster\nget hold of him and drive him down wind with his hand to his head, his\nshoulders braced, and the tails of his coat blown hard against his legs.\n\n'I sat down again alone and discouraged--discouraged about Jim's case.\nIf you wonder that after more than three years it had preserved its\nactuality, you must know that I had seen him only very lately. I had\ncome straight from Samarang, where I had loaded a cargo for Sydney: an\nutterly uninteresting bit of business,--what Charley here would call one\nof my rational transactions,--and in Samarang I had seen something\nof Jim. He was then working for De Jongh, on my recommendation.\nWater-clerk. \"My representative afloat,\" as De Jongh called him. You\ncan't imagine a mode of life more barren of consolation, less capable of\nbeing invested with a spark of glamour--unless it be the business of an\ninsurance canvasser. Little Bob Stanton--Charley here knew him well--had\ngone through that experience. The same who got drowned afterwards trying\nto save a lady's-maid in the Sephora disaster. A case of collision on a\nhazy morning off the Spanish coast--you may remember. All the passengers\nhad been packed tidily into the boats and shoved clear of the ship, when\nBob sheered alongside again and scrambled back on deck to fetch that\ngirl. How she had been left behind I can't make out; anyhow, she had\ngone completely crazy--wouldn't leave the ship--held to the rail like\ngrim death. The wrestling-match could be seen plainly from the boats;\nbut poor Bob was the shortest chief mate in the merchant service, and\nthe woman stood five feet ten in her shoes and was as strong as a horse,\nI've been told. So it went on, pull devil, pull baker, the wretched girl\nscreaming all the time, and Bob letting out a yell now and then to\nwarn his boat to keep well clear of the ship. One of the hands told me,\nhiding a smile at the recollection, \"It was for all the world, sir, like\na naughty youngster fighting with his mother.\" The same old chap said\nthat \"At the last we could see that Mr. Stanton had given up hauling\nat the gal, and just stood by looking at her, watchful like. We thought\nafterwards he must've been reckoning that, maybe, the rush of water\nwould tear her away from the rail by-and-by and give him a show to save\nher. We daren't come alongside for our life; and after a bit the old\nship went down all on a sudden with a lurch to starboard--plop. The suck\nin was something awful. We never saw anything alive or dead come up.\"\nPoor Bob's spell of shore-life had been one of the complications of a\nlove affair, I believe. He fondly hoped he had done with the sea for\never, and made sure he had got hold of all the bliss on earth, but it\ncame to canvassing in the end. Some cousin of his in Liverpool put up\nto it. He used to tell us his experiences in that line. He made us laugh\ntill we cried, and, not altogether displeased at the effect, undersized\nand bearded to the waist like a gnome, he would tiptoe amongst us and\nsay, \"It's all very well for you beggars to laugh, but my immortal soul\nwas shrivelled down to the size of a parched pea after a week of that\nwork.\" I don't know how Jim's soul accommodated itself to the new\nconditions of his life--I was kept too busy in getting him something to\ndo that would keep body and soul together--but I am pretty certain his\nadventurous fancy was suffering all the pangs of starvation. It had\ncertainly nothing to feed upon in this new calling. It was distressing\nto see him at it, though he tackled it with a stubborn serenity for\nwhich I must give him full credit. I kept my eye on his shabby plodding\nwith a sort of notion that it was a punishment for the heroics of his\nfancy--an expiation for his craving after more glamour than he could\ncarry. He had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse,\nand now he was condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger's\ndonkey. He did it very well. He shut himself in, put his head down, said\nnever a word. Very well; very well indeed--except for certain\nfantastic and violent outbreaks, on the deplorable occasions when the\nirrepressible Patna case cropped up. Unfortunately that scandal of the\nEastern seas would not die out. And this is the reason why I could never\nfeel I had done with Jim for good.\n\n'I sat thinking of him after the French lieutenant had left, not,\nhowever, in connection with De Jongh's cool and gloomy backshop, where\nwe had hurriedly shaken hands not very long ago, but as I had seen him\nyears before in the last flickers of the candle, alone with me in the\nlong gallery of the Malabar House, with the chill and the darkness of\nthe night at his back. The respectable sword of his country's law was\nsuspended over his head. To-morrow--or was it to-day? (midnight had\nslipped by long before we parted)--the marble-faced police\nmagistrate, after distributing fines and terms of imprisonment in the\nassault-and-battery case, would take up the awful weapon and smite his\nbowed neck. Our communion in the night was uncommonly like a last vigil\nwith a condemned man. He was guilty too. He was guilty--as I had told\nmyself repeatedly, guilty and done for; nevertheless, I wished to spare\nhim the mere detail of a formal execution. I don't pretend to explain\nthe reasons of my desire--I don't think I could; but if you haven't got\na sort of notion by this time, then I must have been very obscure in\nmy narrative, or you too sleepy to seize upon the sense of my words.\nI don't defend my morality. There was no morality in the impulse which\ninduced me to lay before him Brierly's plan of evasion--I may call\nit--in all its primitive simplicity. There were the rupees--absolutely\nready in my pocket and very much at his service. Oh! a loan; a loan of\ncourse--and if an introduction to a man (in Rangoon) who could put some\nwork in his way . . . Why! with the greatest pleasure. I had pen, ink,\nand paper in my room on the first floor And even while I was speaking I\nwas impatient to begin the letter--day, month, year, 2.30 A.M. . . . for\nthe sake of our old friendship I ask you to put some work in the way of\nMr. James So-and-so, in whom, &c., &c. . . . I was even ready to write\nin that strain about him. If he had not enlisted my sympathies he had\ndone better for himself--he had gone to the very fount and origin of\nthat sentiment he had reached the secret sensibility of my egoism. I\nam concealing nothing from you, because were I to do so my action would\nappear more unintelligible than any man's action has the right to be,\nand--in the second place--to-morrow you will forget my sincerity along\nwith the other lessons of the past. In this transaction, to speak\ngrossly and precisely, I was the irreproachable man; but the subtle\nintentions of my immorality were defeated by the moral simplicity of the\ncriminal. No doubt he was selfish too, but his selfishness had a higher\norigin, a more lofty aim. I discovered that, say what I would, he was\neager to go through the ceremony of execution, and I didn't say much,\nfor I felt that in argument his youth would tell against me heavily: he\nbelieved where I had already ceased to doubt. There was something fine\nin the wildness of his unexpressed, hardly formulated hope. \"Clear out!\nCouldn't think of it,\" he said, with a shake of the head. \"I make you\nan offer for which I neither demand nor expect any sort of gratitude,\"\nI said; \"you shall repay the money when convenient, and . . .\" \"Awfully\ngood of you,\" he muttered without looking up. I watched him narrowly:\nthe future must have appeared horribly uncertain to him; but he did not\nfalter, as though indeed there had been nothing wrong with his heart.\nI felt angry--not for the first time that night. \"The whole wretched\nbusiness,\" I said, \"is bitter enough, I should think, for a man of your\nkind . . .\" \"It is, it is,\" he whispered twice, with his eyes fixed on\nthe floor. It was heartrending. He towered above the light, and I could\nsee the down on his cheek, the colour mantling warm under the smooth\nskin of his face. Believe me or not, I say it was outrageously\nheartrending. It provoked me to brutality. \"Yes,\" I said; \"and allow me\nto confess that I am totally unable to imagine what advantage you can\nexpect from this licking of the dregs.\" \"Advantage!\" he murmured out of\nhis stillness. \"I am dashed if I do,\" I said, enraged. \"I've been trying\nto tell you all there is in it,\" he went on slowly, as if meditating\nsomething unanswerable. \"But after all, it is _my_ trouble.\" I opened my\nmouth to retort, and discovered suddenly that I'd lost all confidence in\nmyself; and it was as if he too had given me up, for he mumbled like a\nman thinking half aloud. \"Went away . . . went into hospitals. . . . Not\none of them would face it. . . . They! . . .\" He moved his hand slightly\nto imply disdain. \"But I've got to get over this thing, and I mustn't\nshirk any of it or . . . I won't shirk any of it.\" He was silent. He\ngazed as though he had been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the\npassing expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution--reflected\nthem in turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of\nunearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by austere\nshades. \"Oh! nonsense, my dear fellow,\" I began. He had a movement of\nimpatience. \"You don't seem to understand,\" he said incisively; then\nlooking at me without a wink, \"I may have jumped, but I don't run away.\"\n\"I meant no offence,\" I said; and added stupidly, \"Better men than you\nhave found it expedient to run, at times.\" He coloured all over, while\nin my confusion I half-choked myself with my own tongue. \"Perhaps so,\"\nhe said at last, \"I am not good enough; I can't afford it. I am bound to\nfight this thing down--I am fighting it now.\" I got out of my chair and\nfelt stiff all over. The silence was embarrassing, and to put an end\nto it I imagined nothing better but to remark, \"I had no idea it was so\nlate,\" in an airy tone. . . . \"I dare say you have had enough of this,\"\nhe said brusquely: \"and to tell you the truth\"--he began to look round\nfor his hat--\"so have I.\"\n\n'Well! he had refused this unique offer. He had struck aside my helping\nhand; he was ready to go now, and beyond the balustrade the night seemed\nto wait for him very still, as though he had been marked down for its\nprey. I heard his voice. \"Ah! here it is.\" He had found his hat. For a\nfew seconds we hung in the wind. \"What will you do after--after . . .\"\nI asked very low. \"Go to the dogs as likely as not,\" he answered in a\ngruff mutter. I had recovered my wits in a measure, and judged best to\ntake it lightly. \"Pray remember,\" I said, \"that I should like very much\nto see you again before you go.\" \"I don't know what's to prevent\nyou. The damned thing won't make me invisible,\" he said with intense\nbitterness,--\"no such luck.\" And then at the moment of taking leave he\ntreated me to a ghastly muddle of dubious stammers and movements, to an\nawful display of hesitations. God forgive him--me! He had taken it\ninto his fanciful head that I was likely to make some difficulty as to\nshaking hands. It was too awful for words. I believe I shouted suddenly\nat him as you would bellow to a man you saw about to walk over a cliff;\nI remember our voices being raised, the appearance of a miserable grin\non his face, a crushing clutch on my hand, a nervous laugh. The candle\nspluttered out, and the thing was over at last, with a groan that\nfloated up to me in the dark. He got himself away somehow. The night\nswallowed his form. He was a horrible bungler. Horrible. I heard the\nquick crunch-crunch of the gravel under his boots. He was running.\nAbsolutely running, with nowhere to go to. And he was not yet\nfour-and-twenty.'\n\n\n\n'I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a slight\nhesitation gave up my early morning visit to my ship. It was really\nvery wrong of me, because, though my chief mate was an excellent man all\nround, he was the victim of such black imaginings that if he did not get\na letter from his wife at the expected time he would go quite distracted\nwith rage and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, quarrel with all\nhands, and either weep in his cabin or develop such a ferocity of temper\nas all but drove the crew to the verge of mutiny. The thing had always\nseemed inexplicable to me: they had been married thirteen years; I had a\nglimpse of her once, and, honestly, I couldn't conceive a man abandoned\nenough to plunge into sin for the sake of such an unattractive person. I\ndon't know whether I have not done wrong by refraining from putting\nthat view before poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for\nhimself, and I also suffered indirectly, but some sort of, no doubt,\nfalse delicacy prevented me. The marital relations of seamen would make\nan interesting subject, and I could tell you instances. . . . However,\nthis is not the place, nor the time, and we are concerned with Jim--who\nwas unmarried. If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all the\nextravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous familiars\nof his youth would not let him run away from the block, I, who of course\ncan't be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go\nand see his head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn't\nhope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested or even\nfrightened--though, as long as there is any life before one, a jolly\ngood fright now and then is a salutary discipline. But neither did I\nexpect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness of his punishment was\nin its chill and mean atmosphere. The real significance of crime is in\nits being a breach of faith with the community of mankind, and from\nthat point of view he was no mean traitor, but his execution was a\nhole-and-corner affair. There was no high scaffolding, no scarlet cloth\n(did they have scarlet cloth on Tower Hill? They should have had), no\nawe-stricken multitude to be horrified at his guilt and be moved to\ntears at his fate--no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked\nalong, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate to be consoling,\nthe streets full of jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope:\nyellow, green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped\nshoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry\nin a drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native\npoliceman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent\nleather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful eyes as though his\nmigrating spirit were suffering exceedingly from that unforeseen--what\nd'ye call 'em?--avatar--incarnation. Under the shade of a lonely tree\nin the courtyard, the villagers connected with the assault case sat in a\npicturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph of a camp in a book\nof Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory thread of smoke in the\nforeground and the pack-animals grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind\novertopping the tree, reflecting the glare. The court-room was sombre,\nseemed more vast. High up in the dim space the punkahs were swaying\nshort to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed\nby the bare walls, remained without stirring amongst the rows of empty\nbenches, as if absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had\nbeen beaten,--an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one\nfat breast bare and a bright yellow caste-mark above the bridge of his\nnose,--sat in pompous immobility: only his eyes glittered, rolling\nin the gloom, and the nostrils dilated and collapsed violently as he\nbreathed. Brierly dropped into his seat looking done up, as though\nhe had spent the night in sprinting on a cinder-track. The pious\nsailing-ship skipper appeared excited and made uneasy movements, as\nif restraining with difficulty an impulse to stand up and exhort\nus earnestly to prayer and repentance. The head of the magistrate,\ndelicately pale under the neatly arranged hair, resembled the head of a\nhopeless invalid after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in\nbed. He moved aside the vase of flowers--a bunch of purple with a few\npink blossoms on long stalks--and seizing in both hands a long sheet of\nbluish paper, ran his eye over it, propped his forearms on the edge of\nthe desk, and began to read aloud in an even, distinct, and careless\nvoice.\n\n'By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling\noff--I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy\nsense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest\nand safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the\ncold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of\nexile. This is how I looked at it that morning--and even now I seem to\nsee an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated view of a common\noccurrence. You may imagine how strongly I felt this at the time.\nPerhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring myself to admit\nthe finality. The thing was always with me, I was always eager to take\nopinion on it, as though it had not been practically settled: individual\nopinion--international opinion--by Jove! That Frenchman's, for instance.\nHis own country's pronouncement was uttered in the passionless and\ndefinite phraseology a machine would use, if machines could speak. The\nhead of the magistrate was half hidden by the paper, his brow was like\nalabaster.\n\n'There were several questions before the court. The first as to whether\nthe ship was in every respect fit and seaworthy for the voyage. The\ncourt found she was not. The next point, I remember, was, whether up\nto the time of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper and\nseamanlike care. They said Yes to that, goodness knows why, and then\nthey declared that there was no evidence to show the exact cause of\nthe accident. A floating derelict probably. I myself remember that a\nNorwegian barque bound out with a cargo of pitch-pine had been given up\nas missing about that time, and it was just the sort of craft that would\ncapsize in a squall and float bottom up for months--a kind of maritime\nghoul on the prowl to kill ships in the dark. Such wandering corpses are\ncommon enough in the North Atlantic, which is haunted by all the terrors\nof the sea,--fogs, icebergs, dead ships bent upon mischief, and long\nsinister gales that fasten upon one like a vampire till all the strength\nand the spirit and even hope are gone, and one feels like the empty\nshell of a man. But there--in those seas--the incident was rare enough\nto resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent providence, which,\nunless it had for its object the killing of a donkeyman and the bringing\nof worse than death upon Jim, appeared an utterly aimless piece of\ndevilry. This view occurring to me took off my attention. For a time I\nwas aware of the magistrate's voice as a sound merely; but in a moment\nit shaped itself into distinct words . . . \"in utter disregard of their\nplain duty,\" it said. The next sentence escaped me somehow, and\nthen . . . \"abandoning in the moment of danger the lives and property\nconfided to their charge\" . . . went on the voice evenly, and stopped. A\npair of eyes under the white forehead shot darkly a glance above the\nedge of the paper. I looked for Jim hurriedly, as though I had expected\nhim to disappear. He was very still--but he was there. He sat pink and\nfair and extremely attentive. \"Therefore, . . .\" began the voice\nemphatically. He stared with parted lips, hanging upon the words of the\nman behind the desk. These came out into the stillness wafted on the\nwind made by the punkahs, and I, watching for their effect upon him,\ncaught only the fragments of official language. . . . \"The Court . . .\nGustav So-and-so . . . master . . . native of Germany . . . James\nSo-and-so . . . mate . . . certificates cancelled.\" A silence fell. The\nmagistrate had dropped the paper, and, leaning sideways on the arm of\nhis chair, began to talk with Brierly easily. People started to move\nout; others were pushing in, and I also made for the door. Outside I\nstood still, and when Jim passed me on his way to the gate, I caught at\nhis arm and detained him. The look he gave discomposed me, as though I\nhad been responsible for his state he looked at me as if I had been the\nembodied evil of life. \"It's all over,\" I stammered. \"Yes,\" he said\nthickly. \"And now let no man . . .\" He jerked his arm out of my grasp. I\nwatched his back as he went away. It was a long street, and he remained\nin sight for some time. He walked rather slow, and straddling his legs a\nlittle, as if he had found it difficult to keep a straight line. Just\nbefore I lost him I fancied he staggered a bit.\n\n'\"Man overboard,\" said a deep voice behind me. Turning round, I saw a\nfellow I knew slightly, a West Australian; Chester was his name. He,\ntoo, had been looking after Jim. He was a man with an immense girth of\nchest, a rugged, clean-shaved face of mahogany colour, and two blunt\ntufts of iron-grey, thick, wiry hairs on his upper lip. He had\nbeen pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler too, I believe; in his own\nwords--anything and everything a man may be at sea, but a pirate. The\nPacific, north and south, was his proper hunting-ground; but he had\nwandered so far afield looking for a cheap steamer to buy. Lately he\nhad discovered--so he said--a guano island somewhere, but its approaches\nwere dangerous, and the anchorage, such as it was, could not be\nconsidered safe, to say the least of it. \"As good as a gold-mine,\" he\nwould exclaim. \"Right bang in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if\nit's true enough that you can get no holding-ground anywhere in less\nthan forty fathom, then what of that? There are the hurricanes, too. But\nit's a first-rate thing. As good as a gold-mine--better! Yet there's not\na fool of them that will see it. I can't get a skipper or a shipowner\nto go near the place. So I made up my mind to cart the blessed stuff\nmyself.\" . . . This was what he required a steamer for, and I knew he\nwas just then negotiating enthusiastically with a Parsee firm for an\nold, brig-rigged, sea-anachronism of ninety horse-power. We had met and\nspoken together several times. He looked knowingly after Jim. \"Takes\nit to heart?\" he asked scornfully. \"Very much,\" I said. \"Then he's no\ngood,\" he opined. \"What's all the to-do about? A bit of ass's skin. That\nnever yet made a man. You must see things exactly as they are--if you\ndon't, you may just as well give in at once. You will never do anything\nin this world. Look at me. I made it a practice never to take anything\nto heart.\" \"Yes,\" I said, \"you see things as they are.\" \"I wish I could\nsee my partner coming along, that's what I wish to see,\" he said. \"Know\nmy partner? Old Robinson. Yes; _the_ Robinson. Don't _you_ know? The\nnotorious Robinson. The man who smuggled more opium and bagged more\nseals in his time than any loose Johnny now alive. They say he used to\nboard the sealing-schooners up Alaska way when the fog was so thick that\nthe Lord God, He alone, could tell one man from another. Holy-Terror\nRobinson. That's the man. He is with me in that guano thing. The best\nchance he ever came across in his life.\" He put his lips to my ear.\n\"Cannibal?--well, they used to give him the name years and years ago.\nYou remember the story? A shipwreck on the west side of Stewart Island;\nthat's right; seven of them got ashore, and it seems they did not get\non very well together. Some men are too cantankerous for anything--don't\nknow how to make the best of a bad job--don't see things as they are--as\nthey _are_, my boy! And then what's the consequence? Obvious! Trouble,\ntrouble; as likely as not a knock on the head; and serve 'em right too.\nThat sort is the most useful when it's dead. The story goes that a boat\nof Her Majesty's ship Wolverine found him kneeling on the kelp, naked as\nthe day he was born, and chanting some psalm-tune or other; light snow\nwas falling at the time. He waited till the boat was an oar's length\nfrom the shore, and then up and away. They chased him for an hour up and\ndown the boulders, till a marihe flung a stone that took him behind\nthe ear providentially and knocked him senseless. Alone? Of course. But\nthat's like that tale of sealing-schooners; the Lord God knows the right\nand the wrong of that story. The cutter did not investigate much. They\nwrapped him in a boat-cloak and took him off as quick as they could,\nwith a dark night coming on, the weather threatening, and the ship\nfiring recall guns every five minutes. Three weeks afterwards he was as\nwell as ever. He didn't allow any fuss that was made on shore to upset\nhim; he just shut his lips tight, and let people screech. It was bad\nenough to have lost his ship, and all he was worth besides, without\npaying attention to the hard names they called him. That's the man for\nme.\" He lifted his arm for a signal to some one down the street. \"He's\ngot a little money, so I had to let him into my thing. Had to! It\nwould have been sinful to throw away such a find, and I was cleaned out\nmyself. It cut me to the quick, but I could see the matter just as\nit was, and if I _must_ share--thinks I--with any man, then give me\nRobinson. I left him at breakfast in the hotel to come to court, because\nI've an idea. . . . Ah! Good morning, Captain Robinson. . . . Friend of\nmine, Captain Robinson.\"\n\n'An emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill, a solah topi with a\ngreen-lined rim on a head trembling with age, joined us after crossing\nthe street in a trotting shuffle, and stood propped with both hands on\nthe handle of an umbrella. A white beard with amber streaks hung lumpily\ndown to his waist. He blinked his creased eyelids at me in a bewildered\nway. \"How do you do? how do you do?\" he piped amiably, and tottered. \"A\nlittle deaf,\" said Chester aside. \"Did you drag him over six thousand\nmiles to get a cheap steamer?\" I asked. \"I would have taken him twice\nround the world as soon as look at him,\" said Chester with immense\nenergy. \"The steamer will be the making of us, my lad. Is it my fault\nthat every skipper and shipowner in the whole of blessed Australasia\nturns out a blamed fool? Once I talked for three hours to a man in\nAuckland. 'Send a ship,' I said, 'send a ship. I'll give you half of the\nfirst cargo for yourself, free gratis for nothing--just to make a good\nstart.' Says he, 'I wouldn't do it if there was no other place on\nearth to send a ship to.' Perfect ass, of course. Rocks, currents, no\nanchorage, sheer cliff to lay to, no insurance company would take the\nrisk, didn't see how he could get loaded under three years. Ass! I\nnearly went on my knees to him. 'But look at the thing as it is,' says\nI. 'Damn rocks and hurricanes. Look at it as it is. There's guano there\nQueensland sugar-planters would fight for--fight for on the quay, I\ntell you.' . . . What can you do with a fool? . . . 'That's one of your\nlittle jokes, Chester,' he says. . . . Joke! I could have wept. Ask\nCaptain Robinson here. . . . And there was another shipowning fellow--a\nfat chap in a white waistcoat in Wellington, who seemed to think I was\nup to some swindle or other. 'I don't know what sort of fool you're\nlooking for,' he says, 'but I am busy just now. Good morning.' I longed\nto take him in my two hands and smash him through the window of his own\noffice. But I didn't. I was as mild as a curate. 'Think of it,' says I.\n'_Do_ think it over. I'll call to-morrow.' He grunted something about\nbeing 'out all day.' On the stairs I felt ready to beat my head against\nthe wall from vexation. Captain Robinson here can tell you. It was awful\nto think of all that lovely stuff lying waste under the sun--stuff that\nwould send the sugar-cane shooting sky-high. The making of Queensland!\nThe making of Queensland! And in Brisbane, where I went to have a last\ntry, they gave me the name of a lunatic. Idiots! The only sensible man\nI came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he\nwas, I fancy. Hey! Captain Robinson? You remember I told you about my\ncabby in Brisbane--don't you? The chap had a wonderful eye for things.\nHe saw it all in a jiffy. It was a real pleasure to talk with him. One\nevening after a devil of a day amongst shipowners I felt so bad that,\nsays I, 'I must get drunk. Come along; I must get drunk, or I'll go\nmad.' 'I am your man,' he says; 'go ahead.' I don't know what I would\nhave done without him. Hey! Captain Robinson.\"\n\n'He poked the ribs of his partner. \"He! he! he!\" laughed the Ancient,\nlooked aimlessly down the street, then peered at me doubtfully with sad,\ndim pupils. . . . \"He! he! he!\" . . . He leaned heavier on the umbrella,\nand dropped his gaze on the ground. I needn't tell you I had tried to\nget away several times, but Chester had foiled every attempt by simply\ncatching hold of my coat. \"One minute. I've a notion.\" \"What's your\ninfernal notion?\" I exploded at last. \"If you think I am going in with\nyou . . .\" \"No, no, my boy. Too late, if you wanted ever so much. We've\ngot a steamer.\" \"You've got the ghost of a steamer,\" I said. \"Good\nenough for a start--there's no superior nonsense about us. Is there,\nCaptain Robinson?\" \"No! no! no!\" croaked the old man without lifting\nhis eyes, and the senile tremble of his head became almost fierce with\ndetermination. \"I understand you know that young chap,\" said Chester,\nwith a nod at the street from which Jim had disappeared long ago. \"He's\nbeen having grub with you in the Malabar last night--so I was told.\"\n\n'I said that was true, and after remarking that he too liked to live\nwell and in style, only that, for the present, he had to be saving of\nevery penny--\"none too many for the business! Isn't that so, Captain\nRobinson?\"--he squared his shoulders and stroked his dumpy moustache,\nwhile the notorious Robinson, coughing at his side, clung more than ever\nto the handle of the umbrella, and seemed ready to subside passively\ninto a heap of old bones. \"You see, the old chap has all the money,\"\nwhispered Chester confidentially. \"I've been cleaned out trying to\nengineer the dratted thing. But wait a bit, wait a bit. The good time is\ncoming.\" . . . He seemed suddenly astonished at the signs of impatience\nI gave. \"Oh, crakee!\" he cried; \"I am telling you of the biggest thing\nthat ever was, and you . . .\" \"I have an appointment,\" I pleaded mildly.\n\"What of that?\" he asked with genuine surprise; \"let it wait.\" \"That's\nexactly what I am doing now,\" I remarked; \"hadn't you better tell me\nwhat it is you want?\" \"Buy twenty hotels like that,\" he growled to\nhimself; \"and every joker boarding in them too--twenty times over.\" He\nlifted his head smartly \"I want that young chap.\" \"I don't understand,\"\nI said. \"He's no good, is he?\" said Chester crisply. \"I know nothing\nabout it,\" I protested. \"Why, you told me yourself he was taking it to\nheart,\" argued Chester. \"Well, in my opinion a chap who . . . Anyhow, he\ncan't be much good; but then you see I am on the look-out for somebody,\nand I've just got a thing that will suit him. I'll give him a job on\nmy island.\" He nodded significantly. \"I'm going to dump forty coolies\nthere--if I've to steal 'em. Somebody must work the stuff. Oh! I mean\nto act square: wooden shed, corrugated-iron roof--I know a man in Hobart\nwho will take my bill at six months for the materials. I do. Honour\nbright. Then there's the water-supply. I'll have to fly round and get\nsomebody to trust me for half-a-dozen second-hand iron tanks. Catch\nrain-water, hey? Let him take charge. Make him supreme boss over the\ncoolies. Good idea, isn't it? What do you say?\" \"There are whole years\nwhen not a drop of rain falls on Walpole,\" I said, too amazed to laugh.\nHe bit his lip and seemed bothered. \"Oh, well, I will fix up something\nfor them--or land a supply. Hang it all! That's not the question.\"\n\n'I said nothing. I had a rapid vision of Jim perched on a shadowless\nrock, up to his knees in guano, with the screams of sea-birds in his\nears, the incandescent ball of the sun above his head; the empty sky and\nthe empty ocean all a-quiver, simmering together in the heat as far as\nthe eye could reach. \"I wouldn't advise my worst enemy . . .\" I began.\n\"What's the matter with you?\" cried Chester; \"I mean to give him a good\nscrew--that is, as soon as the thing is set going, of course. It's as\neasy as falling off a log. Simply nothing to do; two six-shooters in his\nbelt . . . Surely he wouldn't be afraid of anything forty coolies could\ndo--with two six-shooters and he the only armed man too! It's much\nbetter than it looks. I want you to help me to talk him over.\" \"No!\"\nI shouted. Old Robinson lifted his bleared eyes dismally for a moment,\nChester looked at me with infinite contempt. \"So you wouldn't advise\nhim?\" he uttered slowly. \"Certainly not,\" I answered, as indignant as\nthough he had requested me to help murder somebody; \"moreover, I am sure\nhe wouldn't. He is badly cut up, but he isn't mad as far as I know.\" \"He\nis no earthly good for anything,\" Chester mused aloud. \"He would just\nhave done for me. If you only could see a thing as it is, you would\nsee it's the very thing for him. And besides . . . Why! it's the most\nsplendid, sure chance . . .\" He got angry suddenly. \"I must have a man.\nThere! . . .\" He stamped his foot and smiled unpleasantly. \"Anyhow, I\ncould guarantee the island wouldn't sink under him--and I believe he\nis a bit particular on that point.\" \"Good morning,\" I said curtly. He\nlooked at me as though I had been an incomprehensible fool. . . . \"Must\nbe moving, Captain Robinson,\" he yelled suddenly into the old man's ear.\n\"These Parsee Johnnies are waiting for us to clinch the bargain.\" He\ntook his partner under the arm with a firm grip, swung him round, and,\nunexpectedly, leered at me over his shoulder. \"I was trying to do him\na kindness,\" he asserted, with an air and tone that made my blood boil.\n\"Thank you for nothing--in his name,\" I rejoined. \"Oh! you are devilish\nsmart,\" he sneered; \"but you are like the rest of them. Too much in the\nclouds. See what you will do with him.\" \"I don't know that I want to\ndo anything with him.\" \"Don't you?\" he spluttered; his grey moustache\nbristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson, propped\non the umbrella, stood with his back to me, as patient and still as a\nworn-out cab-horse. \"I haven't found a guano island,\" I said. \"It's\nmy belief you wouldn't know one if you were led right up to it by the\nhand,\" he riposted quickly; \"and in this world you've got to see a thing\nfirst, before you can make use of it. Got to see it through and through\nat that, neither more nor less.\" \"And get others to see it, too,\" I\ninsinuated, with a glance at the bowed back by his side. Chester snorted\nat me. \"His eyes are right enough--don't you worry. He ain't a puppy.\"\n\"Oh, dear, no!\" I said. \"Come along, Captain Robinson,\" he shouted, with\na sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old man's hat; the\nHoly Terror gave a submissive little jump. The ghost of a steamer was\nwaiting for them, Fortune on that fair isle! They made a curious pair\nof Argonauts. Chester strode on leisurely, well set up, portly, and of\nconquering mien; the other, long, wasted, drooping, and hooked to his\narm, shuffled his withered shanks with desperate haste.'\n\n'I did not start in search of Jim at once, only because I had really an\nappointment which I could not neglect. Then, as ill-luck would have\nit, in my agent's office I was fastened upon by a fellow fresh from\nMadagascar with a little scheme for a wonderful piece of business. It\nhad something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince Ravonalo\nsomething; but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity of some\nadmiral--Admiral Pierre, I think. Everything turned on that, and the\nchap couldn't find words strong enough to express his confidence. He had\nglobular eyes starting out of his head with a fishy glitter, bumps on\nhis forehead, and wore his long hair brushed back without a parting.\nHe had a favourite phrase which he kept on repeating triumphantly, \"The\nminimum of risk with the maximum of profit is my motto. What?\" He made\nmy head ache, spoiled my tiffin, but got his own out of me all right;\nand as soon as I had shaken him off, I made straight for the water-side.\nI caught sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. Three native\nboatmen quarrelling over five annas were making an awful row at his\nelbow. He didn't hear me come up, but spun round as if the slight\ncontact of my finger had released a catch. \"I was looking,\" he\nstammered. I don't remember what I said, not much anyhow, but he made no\ndifficulty in following me to the hotel.\n\n'He followed me as manageable as a little child, with an obedient air,\nwith no sort of manifestation, rather as though he had been waiting\nfor me there to come along and carry him off. I need not have been so\nsurprised as I was at his tractability. On all the round earth, which to\nsome seems so big and that others affect to consider as rather smaller\nthan a mustard-seed, he had no place where he could--what shall I\nsay?--where he could withdraw. That's it! Withdraw--be alone with his\nloneliness. He walked by my side very calm, glancing here and there, and\nonce turned his head to look after a Sidiboy fireman in a cutaway coat\nand yellowish trousers, whose black face had silky gleams like a lump\nof anthracite coal. I doubt, however, whether he saw anything, or even\nremained all the time aware of my companionship, because if I had not\nedged him to the left here, or pulled him to the right there, I believe\nhe would have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped by\na wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my bedroom, and sat\ndown at once to write letters. This was the only place in the world\n(unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef--but that was not so handy) where he\ncould have it out with himself without being bothered by the rest of\nthe universe. The damned thing--as he had expressed it--had not made\nhim invisible, but I behaved exactly as though he were. No sooner in my\nchair I bent over my writing-desk like a medieval scribe, and, but for\nthe movement of the hand holding the pen, remained anxiously quiet. I\ncan't say I was frightened; but I certainly kept as still as if there\nhad been something dangerous in the room, that at the first hint of a\nmovement on my part would be provoked to pounce upon me. There was not\nmuch in the room--you know how these bedrooms are--a sort of four-poster\nbedstead under a mosquito-net, two or three chairs, the table I was\nwriting at, a bare floor. A glass door opened on an upstairs verandah,\nand he stood with his face to it, having a hard time with all possible\nprivacy. Dusk fell; I lit a candle with the greatest economy of movement\nand as much prudence as though it were an illegal proceeding. There is\nno doubt that he had a very hard time of it, and so had I, even to the\npoint, I must own, of wishing him to the devil, or on Walpole Reef at\nleast. It occurred to me once or twice that, after all, Chester was,\nperhaps, the man to deal effectively with such a disaster. That strange\nidealist had found a practical use for it at once--unerringly, as it\nwere. It was enough to make one suspect that, maybe, he really could see\nthe true aspect of things that appeared mysterious or utterly hopeless\nto less imaginative persons. I wrote and wrote; I liquidated all the\narrears of my correspondence, and then went on writing to people who had\nno reason whatever to expect from me a gossipy letter about nothing at\nall. At times I stole a sidelong glance. He was rooted to the spot,\nbut convulsive shudders ran down his back; his shoulders would heave\nsuddenly. He was fighting, he was fighting--mostly for his breath, as it\nseemed. The massive shadows, cast all one way from the straight flame of\nthe candle, seemed possessed of gloomy consciousness; the immobility of\nthe furniture had to my furtive eye an air of attention. I was becoming\nfanciful in the midst of my industrious scribbling; and though, when the\nscratching of my pen stopped for a moment, there was complete silence\nand stillness in the room, I suffered from that profound disturbance\nand confusion of thought which is caused by a violent and menacing\nuproar--of a heavy gale at sea, for instance. Some of you may know what\nI mean: that mingled anxiety, distress, and irritation with a sort of\ncraven feeling creeping in--not pleasant to acknowledge, but which gives\na quite special merit to one's endurance. I don't claim any merit\nfor standing the stress of Jim's emotions; I could take refuge in the\nletters; I could have written to strangers if necessary. Suddenly, as I\nwas taking up a fresh sheet of notepaper, I heard a low sound, the first\nsound that, since we had been shut up together, had come to my ears in\nthe dim stillness of the room. I remained with my head down, with my\nhand arrested. Those who have kept vigil by a sick-bed have heard such\nfaint sounds in the stillness of the night watches, sounds wrung from a\nracked body, from a weary soul. He pushed the glass door with such force\nthat all the panes rang: he stepped out, and I held my breath, straining\nmy ears without knowing what else I expected to hear. He was really\ntaking too much to heart an empty formality which to Chester's rigorous\ncriticism seemed unworthy the notice of a man who could see things as\nthey were. An empty formality; a piece of parchment. Well, well. As to\nan inaccessible guano deposit, that was another story altogether. One\ncould intelligibly break one's heart over that. A feeble burst of many\nvoices mingled with the tinkle of silver and glass floated up from the\ndining-room below; through the open door the outer edge of the light\nfrom my candle fell on his back faintly; beyond all was black; he stood\non the brink of a vast obscurity, like a lonely figure by the shore of\na sombre and hopeless ocean. There was the Walpole Reef in it--to\nbe sure--a speck in the dark void, a straw for the drowning man. My\ncompassion for him took the shape of the thought that I wouldn't have\nliked his people to see him at that moment. I found it trying myself.\nHis back was no longer shaken by his gasps; he stood straight as an\narrow, faintly visible and still; and the meaning of this stillness sank\nto the bottom of my soul like lead into the water, and made it so heavy\nthat for a second I wished heartily that the only course left open for\nme was to pay for his funeral. Even the law had done with him. To bury\nhim would have been such an easy kindness! It would have been so much\nin accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in putting out of\nsight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our mortality;\nall that makes against our efficiency--the memory of our failures, the\nhints of our undying fears, the bodies of our dead friends. Perhaps he\ndid take it too much to heart. And if so then--Chester's offer. . . . At\nthis point I took up a fresh sheet and began to write resolutely. There\nwas nothing but myself between him and the dark ocean. I had a sense of\nresponsibility. If I spoke, would that motionless and suffering youth\nleap into the obscurity--clutch at the straw? I found out how difficult\nit may be sometimes to make a sound. There is a weird power in a spoken\nword. And why the devil not? I was asking myself persistently while I\ndrove on with my writing. All at once, on the blank page, under the very\npoint of the pen, the two figures of Chester and his antique partner,\nvery distinct and complete, would dodge into view with stride and\ngestures, as if reproduced in the field of some optical toy. I would\nwatch them for a while. No! They were too phantasmal and extravagant\nto enter into any one's fate. And a word carries far--very far--deals\ndestruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. I said\nnothing; and he, out there with his back to the light, as if bound\nand gagged by all the invisible foes of man, made no stir and made no\nsound.'\n\n\n\n'The time was coming when I should see him loved, trusted, admired, with\na legend of strength and prowess forming round his name as though he\nhad been the stuff of a hero. It's true--I assure you; as true as\nI'm sitting here talking about him in vain. He, on his side, had that\nfaculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape\nof his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no\nadventurer. He captured much honour and an Arcadian happiness (I won't\nsay anything about innocence) in the bush, and it was as good to him\nas the honour and the Arcadian happiness of the streets to another man.\nFelicity, felicity--how shall I say it?--is quaffed out of a golden cup\nin every latitude: the flavour is with you--with you alone, and you can\nmake it as intoxicating as you please. He was of the sort that would\ndrink deep, as you may guess from what went before. I found him, if not\nexactly intoxicated, then at least flushed with the elixir at his lips.\nHe had not obtained it at once. There had been, as you know, a period of\nprobation amongst infernal ship-chandlers, during which he had suffered\nand I had worried about--about--my trust--you may call it. I don't\nknow that I am completely reassured now, after beholding him in all his\nbrilliance. That was my last view of him--in a strong light, dominating,\nand yet in complete accord with his surroundings--with the life of the\nforests and with the life of men. I own that I was impressed, but I must\nadmit to myself that after all this is not the lasting impression. He\nwas protected by his isolation, alone of his own superior kind, in close\ntouch with Nature, that keeps faith on such easy terms with her lovers.\nBut I cannot fix before my eye the image of his safety. I shall always\nremember him as seen through the open door of my room, taking, perhaps,\ntoo much to heart the mere consequences of his failure. I am pleased,\nof course, that some good--and even some splendour--came out of my\nendeavours; but at times it seems to me it would have been better for my\npeace of mind if I had not stood between him and Chester's confoundedly\ngenerous offer. I wonder what his exuberant imagination would have made\nof Walpole islet--that most hopelessly forsaken crumb of dry land on the\nface of the waters. It is not likely I would ever have heard, for I must\ntell you that Chester, after calling at some Australian port to patch\nup his brig-rigged sea-anachronism, steamed out into the Pacific with a\ncrew of twenty-two hands all told, and the only news having a possible\nbearing upon the mystery of his fate was the news of a hurricane which\nis supposed to have swept in its course over the Walpole shoals, a month\nor so afterwards. Not a vestige of the Argonauts ever turned up; not a\nsound came out of the waste. Finis! The Pacific is the most discreet of\nlive, hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic can keep a secret too,\nbut more in the manner of a grave.\n\n'And there is a sense of blessed finality in such discretion, which is\nwhat we all more or less sincerely are ready to admit--for what else is\nit that makes the idea of death supportable? End! Finis! the potent word\nthat exorcises from the house of life the haunting shadow of fate. This\nis what--notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes and his own earnest\nassurances--I miss when I look back upon Jim's success. While there's\nlife there is hope, truly; but there is fear too. I don't mean to say\nthat I regret my action, nor will I pretend that I can't sleep o' nights\nin consequence; still, the idea obtrudes itself that he made so much of\nhis disgrace while it is the guilt alone that matters. He was not--if I\nmay say so--clear to me. He was not clear. And there is a suspicion he\nwas not clear to himself either. There were his fine sensibilities,\nhis fine feelings, his fine longings--a sort of sublimated, idealised\nselfishness. He was--if you allow me to say so--very fine; very\nfine--and very unfortunate. A little coarser nature would not have borne\nthe strain; it would have had to come to terms with itself--with a sigh,\nwith a grunt, or even with a guffaw; a still coarser one would have\nremained invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting.\n\n'But he was too interesting or too unfortunate to be thrown to the dogs,\nor even to Chester. I felt this while I sat with my face over the paper\nand he fought and gasped, struggling for his breath in that terribly\nstealthy way, in my room; I felt it when he rushed out on the verandah\nas if to fling himself over--and didn't; I felt it more and more all the\ntime he remained outside, faintly lighted on the background of night, as\nif standing on the shore of a sombre and hopeless sea.\n\n'An abrupt heavy rumble made me lift my head. The noise seemed to roll\naway, and suddenly a searching and violent glare fell on the blind face\nof the night. The sustained and dazzling flickers seemed to last for an\nunconscionable time. The growl of the thunder increased steadily while I\nlooked at him, distinct and black, planted solidly upon the shores of a\nsea of light. At the moment of greatest brilliance the darkness leaped\nback with a culminating crash, and he vanished before my dazzled eyes as\nutterly as though he had been blown to atoms. A blustering sigh passed;\nfurious hands seemed to tear at the shrubs, shake the tops of the\ntrees below, slam doors, break window-panes, all along the front of\nthe building. He stepped in, closing the door behind him, and found me\nbending over the table: my sudden anxiety as to what he would say was\nvery great, and akin to a fright. \"May I have a cigarette?\" he asked. I\ngave a push to the box without raising my head. \"I want--want--tobacco,\"\nhe muttered. I became extremely buoyant. \"Just a moment.\" I grunted\npleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. \"That's over,\" I heard\nhim say. A single distant clap of thunder came from the sea like a\ngun of distress. \"The monsoon breaks up early this year,\" he remarked\nconversationally, somewhere behind me. This encouraged me to turn round,\nwhich I did as soon as I had finished addressing the last envelope. He\nwas smoking greedily in the middle of the room, and though he heard the\nstir I made, he remained with his back to me for a time.\n\n'\"Come--I carried it off pretty well,\" he said, wheeling suddenly.\n\"Something's paid off--not much. I wonder what's to come.\" His face did\nnot show any emotion, only it appeared a little darkened and swollen, as\nthough he had been holding his breath. He smiled reluctantly as it\nwere, and went on while I gazed up at him mutely. . . . \"Thank you,\nthough--your room--jolly convenient--for a chap--badly hipped.\" . . .\nThe rain pattered and swished in the garden; a water-pipe (it must\nhave had a hole in it) performed just outside the window a parody of\nblubbering woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted\nby jerky spasms of silence. . . . \"A bit of shelter,\" he mumbled and\nceased.\n\n'A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black framework of the\nwindows and ebbed out without any noise. I was thinking how I had best\napproach him (I did not want to be flung off again) when he gave a\nlittle laugh. \"No better than a vagabond now\" . . . the end of\nthe cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . \"without a\nsingle--single,\" he pronounced slowly; \"and yet . . .\" He paused; the\nrain fell with redoubled violence. \"Some day one's bound to come upon\nsome sort of chance to get it all back again. Must!\" he whispered\ndistinctly, glaring at my boots.\n\n'I did not even know what it was he wished so much to regain, what it\nwas he had so terribly missed. It might have been so much that it was\nimpossible to say. A piece of ass's skin, according to Chester. . . .\nHe looked up at me inquisitively. \"Perhaps. If life's long enough,\" I\nmuttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity. \"Don't reckon too\nmuch on it.\"\n\n'\"Jove! I feel as if nothing could ever touch me,\" he said in a tone\nof sombre conviction. \"If this business couldn't knock me over, then\nthere's no fear of there being not enough time to--climb out, and . . .\"\nHe looked upwards.\n\n'It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of waifs\nand strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down into all the\ngutters of the earth. As soon as he left my room, that \"bit of shelter,\"\nhe would take his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the\nbottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a\nmoment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to\nspeak, in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery\nhold. It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that\nwe perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings\nthat share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It\nis as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the\nenvelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the\noutstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable,\nand elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp. It was\nthe fear of losing him that kept me silent, for it was borne upon me\nsuddenly and with unaccountable force that should I let him slip away\ninto the darkness I would never forgive myself.\n\n'\"Well. Thanks--once more. You've been--er--uncommonly--really there's\nno word to . . . Uncommonly! I don't know why, I am sure. I am afraid\nI don't feel as grateful as I would if the whole thing hadn't been so\nbrutally sprung on me. Because at bottom . . . you, yourself . . .\" He\nstuttered.\n\n'\"Possibly,\" I struck in. He frowned.\n\n'\"All the same, one is responsible.\" He watched me like a hawk.\n\n'\"And that's true, too,\" I said.\n\n'\"Well. I've gone with it to the end, and I don't intend to let any man\ncast it in my teeth without--without--resenting it.\" He clenched his\nfist.\n\n'\"There's yourself,\" I said with a smile--mirthless enough, God\nknows--but he looked at me menacingly. \"That's my business,\" he said.\nAn air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain\nand passing shadow. Next moment he looked a dear good boy in trouble,\nas before. He flung away the cigarette. \"Good-bye,\" he said, with the\nsudden haste of a man who had lingered too long in view of a pressing\nbit of work waiting for him; and then for a second or so he made not the\nslightest movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush\nof a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that\ncalled to one's mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted\ntrees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and\nheadlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness\nin which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. The\nperforated pipe gurgled, choked, spat, and splashed in odious ridicule\nof a swimmer fighting for his life. \"It is raining,\" I remonstrated,\n\"and I . . .\" \"Rain or shine,\" he began brusquely, checked himself, and\nwalked to the window. \"Perfect deluge,\" he muttered after a while: he\nleaned his forehead on the glass. \"It's dark, too.\"\n\n'\"Yes, it is very dark,\" I said.\n\n'He pivoted on his heels, crossed the room, and had actually opened the\ndoor leading into the corridor before I leaped up from my chair. \"Wait,\"\nI cried, \"I want you to . . .\" \"I can't dine with you again to-night,\"\nhe flung at me, with one leg out of the room already. \"I haven't the\nslightest intention to ask you,\" I shouted. At this he drew back his\nfoot, but remained mistrustfully in the very doorway. I lost no time\nin entreating him earnestly not to be absurd; to come in and shut the\ndoor.'\n\n\n\n'He came in at last; but I believe it was mostly the rain that did it;\nit was falling just then with a devastating violence which quieted\ndown gradually while we talked. His manner was very sober and set; his\nbearing was that of a naturally taciturn man possessed by an idea. My\ntalk was of the material aspect of his position; it had the sole aim of\nsaving him from the degradation, ruin, and despair that out there close\nso swiftly upon a friendless, homeless man; I pleaded with him to\naccept my help; I argued reasonably: and every time I looked up at that\nabsorbed smooth face, so grave and youthful, I had a disturbing sense of\nbeing no help but rather an obstacle to some mysterious, inexplicable,\nimpalpable striving of his wounded spirit.\n\n'\"I suppose you intend to eat and drink and to sleep under shelter in\nthe usual way,\" I remember saying with irritation. \"You say you won't\ntouch the money that is due to you.\" . . . He came as near as his sort\ncan to making a gesture of horror. (There were three weeks and five\ndays' pay owing him as mate of the Patna.) \"Well, that's too little to\nmatter anyhow; but what will you do to-morrow? Where will you turn? You\nmust live . . .\" \"That isn't the thing,\" was the comment that escaped\nhim under his breath. I ignored it, and went on combating what I assumed\nto be the scruples of an exaggerated delicacy. \"On every conceivable\nground,\" I concluded, \"you must let me help you.\" \"You can't,\" he said\nvery simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I\ncould detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which\nI despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed his\nwell-proportioned bulk. \"At any rate,\" I said, \"I am able to help what\nI can see of you. I don't pretend to do more.\" He shook his head\nsceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. \"But I can,\" I\ninsisted. \"I can do even more. I _am_ doing more. I am trusting\nyou . . .\" \"The money . . .\" he began. \"Upon my word you deserve being\ntold to go to the devil,\" I cried, forcing the note of indignation. He\nwas startled, smiled, and I pressed my attack home. \"It isn't a question\nof money at all. You are too superficial,\" I said (and at the same time\nI was thinking to myself: Well, here goes! And perhaps he is, after\nall). \"Look at the letter I want you to take. I am writing to a man of\nwhom I've never asked a favour, and I am writing about you in terms that\none only ventures to use when speaking of an intimate friend. I make\nmyself unreservedly responsible for you. That's what I am doing. And\nreally if you will only reflect a little what that means . . .\"\n\n'He lifted his head. The rain had passed away; only the water-pipe went\non shedding tears with an absurd drip, drip outside the window. It was\nvery quiet in the room, whose shadows huddled together in corners, away\nfrom the still flame of the candle flaring upright in the shape of a\ndagger; his face after a while seemed suffused by a reflection of a soft\nlight as if the dawn had broken already.\n\n'\"Jove!\" he gasped out. \"It is noble of you!\"\n\n'Had he suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, I could not have\nfelt more humiliated. I thought to myself--Serve me right for a sneaking\nhumbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face, but I perceived\nit was not a mocking brightness. All at once he sprang into jerky\nagitation, like one of those flat wooden figures that are worked by a\nstring. His arms went up, then came down with a slap. He became another\nman altogether. \"And I had never seen,\" he shouted; then suddenly bit\nhis lip and frowned. \"What a bally ass I've been,\" he said very slow\nin an awed tone. . . . \"You are a brick!\" he cried next in a muffled\nvoice. He snatched my hand as though he had just then seen it for the\nfirst time, and dropped it at once. \"Why! this is what I--you--I . . .\"\nhe stammered, and then with a return of his old stolid, I may say\nmulish, manner he began heavily, \"I would be a brute now if I . . .\" and\nthen his voice seemed to break. \"That's all right,\" I said. I was almost\nalarmed by this display of feeling, through which pierced a strange\nelation. I had pulled the string accidentally, as it were; I did not\nfully understand the working of the toy. \"I must go now,\" he said.\n\"Jove! You _have_ helped me. Can't sit still. The very thing . . .\" He\nlooked at me with puzzled admiration. \"The very thing . . .\"\n\n'Of course it was the thing. It was ten to one that I had saved him from\nstarvation--of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably associated\nwith drink. This was all. I had not a single illusion on that score, but\nlooking at him, I allowed myself to wonder at the nature of the one he\nhad, within the last three minutes, so evidently taken into his bosom.\nI had forced into his hand the means to carry on decently the serious\nbusiness of life, to get food, drink, and shelter of the customary kind\nwhile his wounded spirit, like a bird with a broken wing, might hop and\nflutter into some hole to die quietly of inanition there. This is what\nI had thrust upon him: a definitely small thing; and--behold!--by the\nmanner of its reception it loomed in the dim light of the candle like\na big, indistinct, perhaps a dangerous shadow. \"You don't mind me not\nsaying anything appropriate,\" he burst out. \"There isn't anything one\ncould say. Last night already you had done me no end of good. Listening\nto me--you know. I give you my word I've thought more than once the top\nof my head would fly off. . .\" He darted--positively darted--here and\nthere, rammed his hands into his pockets, jerked them out again, flung\nhis cap on his head. I had no idea it was in him to be so airily\nbrisk. I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an eddy of wind, while a\nmysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite doubt, weighed me down in\nmy chair. He stood stock-still, as if struck motionless by a discovery.\n\"You have given me confidence,\" he declared, soberly. \"Oh! for God's\nsake, my dear fellow--don't!\" I entreated, as though he had hurt me.\n\"All right. I'll shut up now and henceforth. Can't prevent me thinking\nthough. . . . Never mind! . . . I'll show yet . . .\" He went to the\ndoor in a hurry, paused with his head down, and came back, stepping\ndeliberately. \"I always thought that if a fellow could begin with a\nclean slate . . . And now you . . . in a measure . . . yes . . . clean\nslate.\" I waved my hand, and he marched out without looking back; the\nsound of his footfalls died out gradually behind the closed door--the\nunhesitating tread of a man walking in broad daylight.\n\n'But as to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained strangely\nunenlightened. I was no longer young enough to behold at every turn\nthe magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps in good and in\nevil. I smiled to think that, after all, it was yet he, of us two, who\nhad the light. And I felt sad. A clean slate, did he say? As if the\ninitial word of each our destiny were not graven in imperishable\ncharacters upon the face of a rock.'\n\n\n'Six months afterwards my friend (he was a cynical, more than\nmiddle-aged bachelor, with a reputation for eccentricity, and owned\na rice-mill) wrote to me, and judging, from the warmth of my\nrecommendation, that I would like to hear, enlarged a little upon Jim's\nperfections. These were apparently of a quiet and effective sort.\n\"Not having been able so far to find more in my heart than a resigned\ntoleration for any individual of my kind, I have lived till now alone\nin a house that even in this steaming climate could be considered as too\nbig for one man. I have had him to live with me for some time past. It\nseems I haven't made a mistake.\" It seemed to me on reading this letter\nthat my friend had found in his heart more than tolerance for Jim--that\nthere were the beginnings of active liking. Of course he stated his\ngrounds in a characteristic way. For one thing, Jim kept his freshness\nin the climate. Had he been a girl--my friend wrote--one could have\nsaid he was blooming--blooming modestly--like a violet, not like some of\nthese blatant tropical flowers. He had been in the house for six weeks,\nand had not as yet attempted to slap him on the back, or address him\nas \"old boy,\" or try to make him feel a superannuated fossil. He had\nnothing of the exasperating young man's chatter. He was good-tempered,\nhad not much to say for himself, was not clever by any means, thank\ngoodness--wrote my friend. It appeared, however, that Jim was clever\nenough to be quietly appreciative of his wit, while, on the other hand,\nhe amused him by his naiveness. \"The dew is yet on him, and since I\nhad the bright idea of giving him a room in the house and having him\nat meals I feel less withered myself. The other day he took it into his\nhead to cross the room with no other purpose but to open a door for\nme; and I felt more in touch with mankind than I had been for years.\nRidiculous, isn't it? Of course I guess there is something--some awful\nlittle scrape--which you know all about--but if I am sure that it is\nterribly heinous, I fancy one could manage to forgive it. For my part,\nI declare I am unable to imagine him guilty of anything much worse than\nrobbing an orchard. Is it much worse? Perhaps you ought to have told me;\nbut it is such a long time since we both turned saints that you may have\nforgotten we, too, had sinned in our time? It may be that some day I\nshall have to ask you, and then I shall expect to be told. I don't care\nto question him myself till I have some idea what it is. Moreover, it's\ntoo soon as yet. Let him open the door a few times more for me. . . .\"\nThus my friend. I was trebly pleased--at Jim's shaping so well, at the\ntone of the letter, at my own cleverness. Evidently I had known what\nI was doing. I had read characters aright, and so on. And what if\nsomething unexpected and wonderful were to come of it? That evening,\nreposing in a deck-chair under the shade of my own poop awning (it\nwas in Hong-Kong harbour), I laid on Jim's behalf the first stone of a\ncastle in Spain.\n\n'I made a trip to the northward, and when I returned I found another\nletter from my friend waiting for me. It was the first envelope I tore\nopen. \"There are no spoons missing, as far as I know,\" ran the first\nline; \"I haven't been interested enough to inquire. He is gone, leaving\non the breakfast-table a formal little note of apology, which is either\nsilly or heartless. Probably both--and it's all one to me. Allow me to\nsay, lest you should have some more mysterious young men in reserve,\nthat I have shut up shop, definitely and for ever. This is the last\neccentricity I shall be guilty of. Do not imagine for a moment that I\ncare a hang; but he is very much regretted at tennis-parties, and for\nmy own sake I've told a plausible lie at the club. . . .\" I flung the\nletter aside and started looking through the batch on my table, till\nI came upon Jim's handwriting. Would you believe it? One chance in a\nhundred! But it is always that hundredth chance! That little second\nengineer of the Patna had turned up in a more or less destitute state,\nand got a temporary job of looking after the machinery of the mill. \"I\ncouldn't stand the familiarity of the little beast,\" Jim wrote from a\nseaport seven hundred miles south of the place where he should have been\nin clover. \"I am now for the time with Egstrom & Blake, ship-chandlers,\nas their--well--runner, to call the thing by its right name. For\nreference I gave them your name, which they know of course, and if you\ncould write a word in my favour it would be a permanent employment.\" I\nwas utterly crushed under the ruins of my castle, but of course I wrote\nas desired. Before the end of the year my new charter took me that way,\nand I had an opportunity of seeing him.\n\n'He was still with Egstrom & Blake, and we met in what they called\n\"our parlour\" opening out of the store. He had that moment come in from\nboarding a ship, and confronted me head down, ready for a tussle. \"What\nhave you got to say for yourself?\" I began as soon as we had shaken\nhands. \"What I wrote you--nothing more,\" he said stubbornly. \"Did the\nfellow blab--or what?\" I asked. He looked up at me with a troubled\nsmile. \"Oh, no! He didn't. He made it a kind of confidential business\nbetween us. He was most damnably mysterious whenever I came over to the\nmill; he would wink at me in a respectful manner--as much as to say 'We\nknow what we know.' Infernally fawning and familiar--and that sort of\nthing . . .\" He threw himself into a chair and stared down his legs.\n\"One day we happened to be alone and the fellow had the cheek to say,\n'Well, Mr. James'--I was called Mr. James there as if I had been the\nson--'here we are together once more. This is better than the old\nship--ain't it?' . . . Wasn't it appalling, eh? I looked at him, and\nhe put on a knowing air. 'Don't you be uneasy, sir,' he says. 'I know\na gentleman when I see one, and I know how a gentleman feels. I hope,\nthough, you will be keeping me on this job. I had a hard time of it too,\nalong of that rotten old Patna racket.' Jove! It was awful. I don't know\nwhat I should have said or done if I had not just then heard Mr. Denver\ncalling me in the passage. It was tiffin-time, and we walked together\nacross the yard and through the garden to the bungalow. He began to\nchaff me in his kindly way . . . I believe he liked me . . .\"\n\n'Jim was silent for a while.\n\n'\"I know he liked me. That's what made it so hard. Such a splendid man!\n. . . That morning he slipped his hand under my arm. . . . He, too, was\nfamiliar with me.\" He burst into a short laugh, and dropped his chin on\nhis breast. \"Pah! When I remembered how that mean little beast had been\ntalking to me,\" he began suddenly in a vibrating voice, \"I couldn't bear\nto think of myself . . . I suppose you know . . .\" I nodded. . . . \"More\nlike a father,\" he cried; his voice sank. \"I would have had to tell him.\nI couldn't let it go on--could I?\" \"Well?\" I murmured, after waiting a\nwhile. \"I preferred to go,\" he said slowly; \"this thing must be buried.\"\n\n'We could hear in the shop Blake upbraiding Egstrom in an abusive,\nstrained voice. They had been associated for many years, and every day\nfrom the moment the doors were opened to the last minute before closing,\nBlake, a little man with sleek, jetty hair and unhappy, beady eyes,\ncould be heard rowing his partner incessantly with a sort of scathing\nand plaintive fury. The sound of that everlasting scolding was part of\nthe place like the other fixtures; even strangers would very soon come\nto disregard it completely unless it be perhaps to mutter \"Nuisance,\" or\nto get up suddenly and shut the door of the \"parlour.\" Egstrom himself,\na raw-boned, heavy Scandinavian, with a busy manner and immense blonde\nwhiskers, went on directing his people, checking parcels, making out\nbills or writing letters at a stand-up desk in the shop, and comported\nhimself in that clatter exactly as though he had been stone-deaf. Now\nand again he would emit a bothered perfunctory \"Sssh,\" which neither\nproduced nor was expected to produce the slightest effect. \"They are\nvery decent to me here,\" said Jim. \"Blake's a little cad, but Egstrom's\nall right.\" He stood up quickly, and walking with measured steps to a\ntripod telescope standing in the window and pointed at the roadstead,\nhe applied his eye to it. \"There's that ship which has been becalmed\noutside all the morning has got a breeze now and is coming in,\" he\nremarked patiently; \"I must go and board.\" We shook hands in silence,\nand he turned to go. \"Jim!\" I cried. He looked round with his hand on\nthe lock. \"You--you have thrown away something like a fortune.\" He came\nback to me all the way from the door. \"Such a splendid old chap,\" he\nsaid. \"How could I? How could I?\" His lips twitched. \"Here it does not\nmatter.\" \"Oh! you--you--\" I began, and had to cast about for a suitable\nword, but before I became aware that there was no name that would just\ndo, he was gone. I heard outside Egstrom's deep gentle voice saying\ncheerily, \"That's the Sarah W. Granger, Jimmy. You must manage to be\nfirst aboard\"; and directly Blake struck in, screaming after the manner\nof an outraged cockatoo, \"Tell the captain we've got some of his mail\nhere. That'll fetch him. D'ye hear, Mister What's-your-name?\" And there\nwas Jim answering Egstrom with something boyish in his tone. \"All right.\nI'll make a race of it.\" He seemed to take refuge in the boat-sailing\npart of that sorry business.\n\n'I did not see him again that trip, but on my next (I had a six months'\ncharter) I went up to the store. Ten yards away from the door Blake's\nscolding met my ears, and when I came in he gave me a glance of utter\nwretchedness; Egstrom, all smiles, advanced, extending a large bony\nhand. \"Glad to see you, captain. . . . Sssh. . . . Been thinking you\nwere about due back here. What did you say, sir? . . . Sssh. . . . Oh!\nhim! He has left us. Come into the parlour.\" . . . After the slam of the\ndoor Blake's strained voice became faint, as the voice of one scolding\ndesperately in a wilderness. . . . \"Put us to a great inconvenience,\ntoo. Used us badly--I must say . . .\" \"Where's he gone to? Do you\nknow?\" I asked. \"No. It's no use asking either,\" said Egstrom, standing\nbewhiskered and obliging before me with his arms hanging down his sides\nclumsily, and a thin silver watch-chain looped very low on a rucked-up\nblue serge waistcoat. \"A man like that don't go anywhere in particular.\"\nI was too concerned at the news to ask for the explanation of that\npronouncement, and he went on. \"He left--let's see--the very day a\nsteamer with returning pilgrims from the Red Sea put in here with\ntwo blades of her propeller gone. Three weeks ago now.\" \"Wasn't there\nsomething said about the Patna case?\" I asked, fearing the worst. He\ngave a start, and looked at me as if I had been a sorcerer. \"Why, yes!\nHow do you know? Some of them were talking about it here. There was a\ncaptain or two, the manager of Vanlo's engineering shop at the harbour,\ntwo or three others, and myself. Jim was in here too, having a sandwich\nand a glass of beer; when we are busy--you see, captain--there's no time\nfor a proper tiffin. He was standing by this table eating sandwiches,\nand the rest of us were round the telescope watching that steamer come\nin; and by-and-by Vanlo's manager began to talk about the chief of the\nPatna; he had done some repairs for him once, and from that he went on\nto tell us what an old ruin she was, and the money that had been made\nout of her. He came to mention her last voyage, and then we all struck\nin. Some said one thing and some another--not much--what you or any\nother man might say; and there was some laughing. Captain O'Brien of the\nSarah W. Granger, a large, noisy old man with a stick--he was sitting\nlistening to us in this arm-chair here--he let drive suddenly with his\nstick at the floor, and roars out, 'Skunks!' . . . Made us all jump.\nVanlo's manager winks at us and asks, 'What's the matter, Captain\nO'Brien?' 'Matter! matter!' the old man began to shout; 'what are you\nInjuns laughing at? It's no laughing matter. It's a disgrace to human\nnatur'--that's what it is. I would despise being seen in the same room\nwith one of those men. Yes, sir!' He seemed to catch my eye like, and\nI had to speak out of civility. 'Skunks!' says I, 'of course, Captain\nO'Brien, and I wouldn't care to have them here myself, so you're quite\nsafe in this room, Captain O'Brien. Have a little something cool to\ndrink.' 'Dam' your drink, Egstrom,' says he, with a twinkle in his eye;\n'when I want a drink I will shout for it. I am going to quit. It stinks\nhere now.' At this all the others burst out laughing, and out they go\nafter the old man. And then, sir, that blasted Jim he puts down the\nsandwich he had in his hand and walks round the table to me; there was\nhis glass of beer poured out quite full. 'I am off,' he says--just like\nthis. 'It isn't half-past one yet,' says I; 'you might snatch a smoke\nfirst.' I thought he meant it was time for him to go down to his work.\nWhen I understood what he was up to, my arms fell--so! Can't get a man\nlike that every day, you know, sir; a regular devil for sailing a boat;\nready to go out miles to sea to meet ships in any sort of weather. More\nthan once a captain would come in here full of it, and the first thing\nhe would say would be, 'That's a reckless sort of a lunatic you've got\nfor water-clerk, Egstrom. I was feeling my way in at daylight under\nshort canvas when there comes flying out of the mist right under my\nforefoot a boat half under water, sprays going over the mast-head, two\nfrightened niggers on the bottom boards, a yelling fiend at the tiller.\nHey! hey! Ship ahoy! ahoy! Captain! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake's man\nfirst to speak to you! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake! Hallo! hey! whoop!\nKick the niggers--out reefs--a squall on at the time--shoots ahead\nwhooping and yelling to me to make sail and he would give me a lead\nin--more like a demon than a man. Never saw a boat handled like that in\nall my life. Couldn't have been drunk--was he? Such a quiet, soft-spoken\nchap too--blush like a girl when he came on board. . . .' I tell you,\nCaptain Marlow, nobody had a chance against us with a strange ship when\nJim was out. The other ship-chandlers just kept their old customers, and\n. . .\"\n\n'Egstrom appeared overcome with emotion.\n\n'\"Why, sir--it seemed as though he wouldn't mind going a hundred miles\nout to sea in an old shoe to nab a ship for the firm. If the business\nhad been his own and all to make yet, he couldn't have done more in\nthat way. And now . . . all at once . . . like this! Thinks I to myself:\n'Oho! a rise in the screw--that's the trouble--is it?' 'All right,' says\nI, 'no need of all that fuss with me, Jimmy. Just mention your figure.\nAnything in reason.' He looks at me as if he wanted to swallow something\nthat stuck in his throat. 'I can't stop with you.' 'What's that blooming\njoke?' I asks. He shakes his head, and I could see in his eye he was as\ngood as gone already, sir. So I turned to him and slanged him till all\nwas blue. 'What is it you're running away from?' I asks. 'Who has been\ngetting at you? What scared you? You haven't as much sense as a rat;\nthey don't clear out from a good ship. Where do you expect to get a\nbetter berth?--you this and you that.' I made him look sick, I can tell\nyou. 'This business ain't going to sink,' says I. He gave a big jump.\n'Good-bye,' he says, nodding at me like a lord; 'you ain't half a\nbad chap, Egstrom. I give you my word that if you knew my reasons you\nwouldn't care to keep me.' 'That's the biggest lie you ever told in your\nlife,' says I; 'I know my own mind.' He made me so mad that I had to\nlaugh. 'Can't you really stop long enough to drink this glass of beer\nhere, you funny beggar, you?' I don't know what came over him; he didn't\nseem able to find the door; something comical, I can tell you, captain.\nI drank the beer myself. 'Well, if you're in such a hurry, here's luck\nto you in your own drink,' says I; 'only, you mark my words, if you keep\nup this game you'll very soon find that the earth ain't big enough to\nhold you--that's all.' He gave me one black look, and out he rushed with\na face fit to scare little children.\"\n\n'Egstrom snorted bitterly, and combed one auburn whisker with knotty\nfingers. \"Haven't been able to get a man that was any good since. It's\nnothing but worry, worry, worry in business. And where might you have\ncome across him, captain, if it's fair to ask?\"\n\n'\"He was the mate of the Patna that voyage,\" I said, feeling that I\nowed some explanation. For a time Egstrom remained very still, with his\nfingers plunged in the hair at the side of his face, and then exploded.\n\"And who the devil cares about that?\" \"I daresay no one,\" I began . . .\n\"And what the devil is he--anyhow--for to go on like this?\" He stuffed\nsuddenly his left whisker into his mouth and stood amazed. \"Jee!\" he\nexclaimed, \"I told him the earth wouldn't be big enough to hold his\ncaper.\"'\n\n\n\n'I have told you these two episodes at length to show his manner of\ndealing with himself under the new conditions of his life. There were\nmany others of the sort, more than I could count on the fingers of my\ntwo hands. They were all equally tinged by a high-minded absurdity of\nintention which made their futility profound and touching. To fling away\nyour daily bread so as to get your hands free for a grapple with a ghost\nmay be an act of prosaic heroism. Men had done it before (though we who\nhave lived know full well that it is not the haunted soul but the hungry\nbody that makes an outcast), and men who had eaten and meant to eat\nevery day had applauded the creditable folly. He was indeed unfortunate,\nfor all his recklessness could not carry him out from under the shadow.\nThere was always a doubt of his courage. The truth seems to be that\nit is impossible to lay the ghost of a fact. You can face it or shirk\nit--and I have come across a man or two who could wink at their familiar\nshades. Obviously Jim was not of the winking sort; but what I could\nnever make up my mind about was whether his line of conduct amounted to\nshirking his ghost or to facing him out.\n\n'I strained my mental eyesight only to discover that, as with the\ncomplexion of all our actions, the shade of difference was so delicate\nthat it was impossible to say. It might have been flight and it might\nhave been a mode of combat. To the common mind he became known as a\nrolling stone, because this was the funniest part: he did after a time\nbecome perfectly known, and even notorious, within the circle of his\nwanderings (which had a diameter of, say, three thousand miles), in the\nsame way as an eccentric character is known to a whole countryside. For\ninstance, in Bankok, where he found employment with Yucker Brothers,\ncharterers and teak merchants, it was almost pathetic to see him go\nabout in sunshine hugging his secret, which was known to the very\nup-country logs on the river. Schomberg, the keeper of the hotel where\nhe boarded, a hirsute Alsatian of manly bearing and an irrepressible\nretailer of all the scandalous gossip of the place, would, with both\nelbows on the table, impart an adorned version of the story to any guest\nwho cared to imbibe knowledge along with the more costly liquors. \"And,\nmind you, the nicest fellow you could meet,\" would be his generous\nconclusion; \"quite superior.\" It says a lot for the casual crowd that\nfrequented Schomberg's establishment that Jim managed to hang out\nin Bankok for a whole six months. I remarked that people, perfect\nstrangers, took to him as one takes to a nice child. His manner was\nreserved, but it was as though his personal appearance, his hair, his\neyes, his smile, made friends for him wherever he went. And, of course,\nhe was no fool. I heard Siegmund Yucker (native of Switzerland), a\ngentle creature ravaged by a cruel dyspepsia, and so frightfully lame\nthat his head swung through a quarter of a circle at every step he took,\ndeclare appreciatively that for one so young he was \"of great gabasidy,\"\nas though it had been a mere question of cubic contents. \"Why not send\nhim up country?\" I suggested anxiously. (Yucker Brothers had concessions\nand teak forests in the interior.) \"If he has capacity, as you say,\nhe will soon get hold of the work. And physically he is very fit. His\nhealth is always excellent.\" \"Ach! It's a great ting in dis goundry\nto be vree vrom tispep-shia,\" sighed poor Yucker enviously, casting a\nstealthy glance at the pit of his ruined stomach. I left him drumming\npensively on his desk and muttering, \"Es ist ein' Idee. Es ist ein'\nIdee.\" Unfortunately, that very evening an unpleasant affair took place\nin the hotel.\n\n'I don't know that I blame Jim very much, but it was a truly regrettable\nincident. It belonged to the lamentable species of bar-room scuffles,\nand the other party to it was a cross-eyed Dane of sorts whose\nvisiting-card recited, under his misbegotten name: first lieutenant in\nthe Royal Siamese Navy. The fellow, of course, was utterly hopeless at\nbilliards, but did not like to be beaten, I suppose. He had had enough\nto drink to turn nasty after the sixth game, and make some scornful\nremark at Jim's expense. Most of the people there didn't hear what\nwas said, and those who had heard seemed to have had all precise\nrecollection scared out of them by the appalling nature of the\nconsequences that immediately ensued. It was very lucky for the Dane\nthat he could swim, because the room opened on a verandah and the Menam\nflowed below very wide and black. A boat-load of Chinamen, bound, as\nlikely as not, on some thieving expedition, fished out the officer of\nthe King of Siam, and Jim turned up at about midnight on board my ship\nwithout a hat. \"Everybody in the room seemed to know,\" he said, gasping\nyet from the contest, as it were. He was rather sorry, on general\nprinciples, for what had happened, though in this case there had been,\nhe said, \"no option.\" But what dismayed him was to find the nature of\nhis burden as well known to everybody as though he had gone about all\nthat time carrying it on his shoulders. Naturally after this he couldn't\nremain in the place. He was universally condemned for the brutal\nviolence, so unbecoming a man in his delicate position; some maintained\nhe had been disgracefully drunk at the time; others criticised his want\nof tact. Even Schomberg was very much annoyed. \"He is a very nice young\nman,\" he said argumentatively to me, \"but the lieutenant is a first-rate\nfellow too. He dines every night at my table d'hote, you know. And\nthere's a billiard-cue broken. I can't allow that. First thing this\nmorning I went over with my apologies to the lieutenant, and I think\nI've made it all right for myself; but only think, captain, if everybody\nstarted such games! Why, the man might have been drowned! And here I\ncan't run out into the next street and buy a new cue. I've got to write\nto Europe for them. No, no! A temper like that won't do!\" . . . He was\nextremely sore on the subject.\n\n'This was the worst incident of all in his--his retreat. Nobody could\ndeplore it more than myself; for if, as somebody said hearing him\nmentioned, \"Oh yes! I know. He has knocked about a good deal out here,\"\nyet he had somehow avoided being battered and chipped in the process.\nThis last affair, however, made me seriously uneasy, because if his\nexquisite sensibilities were to go the length of involving him in\npot-house shindies, he would lose his name of an inoffensive, if\naggravating, fool, and acquire that of a common loafer. For all my\nconfidence in him I could not help reflecting that in such cases\nfrom the name to the thing itself is but a step. I suppose you will\nunderstand that by that time I could not think of washing my hands\nof him. I took him away from Bankok in my ship, and we had a longish\npassage. It was pitiful to see how he shrank within himself. A seaman,\neven if a mere passenger, takes an interest in a ship, and looks at\nthe sea-life around him with the critical enjoyment of a painter,\nfor instance, looking at another man's work. In every sense of the\nexpression he is \"on deck\"; but my Jim, for the most part, skulked down\nbelow as though he had been a stowaway. He infected me so that I avoided\nspeaking on professional matters, such as would suggest themselves\nnaturally to two sailors during a passage. For whole days we did\nnot exchange a word; I felt extremely unwilling to give orders to my\nofficers in his presence. Often, when alone with him on deck or in the\ncabin, we didn't know what to do with our eyes.\n\n'I placed him with De Jongh, as you know, glad enough to dispose of him\nin any way, yet persuaded that his position was now growing intolerable.\nHe had lost some of that elasticity which had enabled him to rebound\nback into his uncompromising position after every overthrow. One\nday, coming ashore, I saw him standing on the quay; the water of the\nroadstead and the sea in the offing made one smooth ascending plane, and\nthe outermost ships at anchor seemed to ride motionless in the sky.\nHe was waiting for his boat, which was being loaded at our feet\nwith packages of small stores for some vessel ready to leave. After\nexchanging greetings, we remained silent--side by side. \"Jove!\" he said\nsuddenly, \"this is killing work.\"\n\n'He smiled at me; I must say he generally could manage a smile. I made\nno reply. I knew very well he was not alluding to his duties; he had an\neasy time of it with De Jongh. Nevertheless, as soon as he had spoken\nI became completely convinced that the work was killing. I did not even\nlook at him. \"Would you like,\" said I, \"to leave this part of the world\naltogether; try California or the West Coast? I'll see what I can\ndo . . .\" He interrupted me a little scornfully. \"What difference would\nit make?\" . . . I felt at once convinced that he was right. It would make\nno difference; it was not relief he wanted; I seemed to perceive dimly\nthat what he wanted, what he was, as it were, waiting for, was something\nnot easy to define--something in the nature of an opportunity. I had\ngiven him many opportunities, but they had been merely opportunities to\nearn his bread. Yet what more could any man do? The position struck me\nas hopeless, and poor Brierly's saying recurred to me, \"Let him creep\ntwenty feet underground and stay there.\" Better that, I thought, than\nthis waiting above ground for the impossible. Yet one could not be sure\neven of that. There and then, before his boat was three oars' lengths\naway from the quay, I had made up my mind to go and consult Stein in the\nevening.\n\n'This Stein was a wealthy and respected merchant. His \"house\" (because\nit was a house, Stein & Co., and there was some sort of partner who,\nas Stein said, \"looked after the Moluccas\") had a large inter-island\nbusiness, with a lot of trading posts established in the most\nout-of-the-way places for collecting the produce. His wealth and his\nrespectability were not exactly the reasons why I was anxious to seek\nhis advice. I desired to confide my difficulty to him because he was\none of the most trustworthy men I had ever known. The gentle light of a\nsimple, unwearied, as it were, and intelligent good-nature illumined his\nlong hairless face. It had deep downward folds, and was pale as of a\nman who had always led a sedentary life--which was indeed very far from\nbeing the case. His hair was thin, and brushed back from a massive and\nlofty forehead. One fancied that at twenty he must have looked very much\nlike what he was now at threescore. It was a student's face; only the\neyebrows nearly all white, thick and bushy, together with the resolute\nsearching glance that came from under them, were not in accord with his,\nI may say, learned appearance. He was tall and loose-jointed; his slight\nstoop, together with an innocent smile, made him appear benevolently\nready to lend you his ear; his long arms with pale big hands had rare\ndeliberate gestures of a pointing out, demonstrating kind. I speak of\nhim at length, because under this exterior, and in conjunction with\nan upright and indulgent nature, this man possessed an intrepidity of\nspirit and a physical courage that could have been called reckless had\nit not been like a natural function of the body--say good digestion, for\ninstance--completely unconscious of itself. It is sometimes said of a\nman that he carries his life in his hand. Such a saying would have been\ninadequate if applied to him; during the early part of his existence in\nthe East he had been playing ball with it. All this was in the past, but\nI knew the story of his life and the origin of his fortune. He was also\na naturalist of some distinction, or perhaps I should say a learned\ncollector. Entomology was his special study. His collection of\nBuprestidae and Longicorns--beetles all--horrible miniature monsters,\nlooking malevolent in death and immobility, and his cabinet of\nbutterflies, beautiful and hovering under the glass of cases on\nlifeless wings, had spread his fame far over the earth. The name of this\nmerchant, adventurer, sometime adviser of a Malay sultan (to whom he\nnever alluded otherwise than as \"my poor Mohammed Bonso\"), had, on\naccount of a few bushels of dead insects, become known to learned\npersons in Europe, who could have had no conception, and certainly would\nnot have cared to know anything, of his life or character. I, who knew,\nconsidered him an eminently suitable person to receive my confidences\nabout Jim's difficulties as well as my own.'\n\n'Late in the evening I entered his study, after traversing an imposing\nbut empty dining-room very dimly lit. The house was silent. I was\npreceded by an elderly grim Javanese servant in a sort of livery of\nwhite jacket and yellow sarong, who, after throwing the door open,\nexclaimed low, \"O master!\" and stepping aside, vanished in a mysterious\nway as though he had been a ghost only momentarily embodied for that\nparticular service. Stein turned round with the chair, and in the same\nmovement his spectacles seemed to get pushed up on his forehead. He\nwelcomed me in his quiet and humorous voice. Only one corner of the vast\nroom, the corner in which stood his writing-desk, was strongly lighted\nby a shaded reading-lamp, and the rest of the spacious apartment melted\ninto shapeless gloom like a cavern. Narrow shelves filled with dark\nboxes of uniform shape and colour ran round the walls, not from floor\nto ceiling, but in a sombre belt about four feet broad. Catacombs of\nbeetles. Wooden tablets were hung above at irregular intervals. The\nlight reached one of them, and the word Coleoptera written in gold\nletters glittered mysteriously upon a vast dimness. The glass cases\ncontaining the collection of butterflies were ranged in three long rows\nupon slender-legged little tables. One of these cases had been removed\nfrom its place and stood on the desk, which was bestrewn with oblong\nslips of paper blackened with minute handwriting.\n\n'\"So you see me--so,\" he said. His hand hovered over the case where\na butterfly in solitary grandeur spread out dark bronze wings, seven\ninches or more across, with exquisite white veinings and a gorgeous\nborder of yellow spots. \"Only one specimen like this they have in _your_\nLondon, and then--no more. To my small native town this my collection I\nshall bequeath. Something of me. The best.\"\n\n'He bent forward in the chair and gazed intently, his chin over the\nfront of the case. I stood at his back. \"Marvellous,\" he whispered, and\nseemed to forget my presence. His history was curious. He had been born\nin Bavaria, and when a youth of twenty-two had taken an active part in\nthe revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily compromised, he managed\nto make his escape, and at first found a refuge with a poor republican\nwatchmaker in Trieste. From there he made his way to Tripoli with a\nstock of cheap watches to hawk about,--not a very great opening truly,\nbut it turned out lucky enough, because it was there he came upon a\nDutch traveller--a rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember\nhis name. It was that naturalist who, engaging him as a sort of\nassistant, took him to the East. They travelled in the Archipelago\ntogether and separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years or\nmore. Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having no home to go to,\nremained with an old trader he had come across in his journeys in the\ninterior of Celebes--if Celebes may be said to have an interior. This\nold Scotsman, the only white man allowed to reside in the country at the\ntime, was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of Wajo States, who\nwas a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that chap, who was slightly\nparalysed on one side, had introduced him to the native court a short\ntime before another stroke carried him off. He was a heavy man with\na patriarchal white beard, and of imposing stature. He came into\nthe council-hall where all the rajahs, pangerans, and headmen were\nassembled, with the queen, a fat wrinkled woman (very free in her\nspeech, Stein said), reclining on a high couch under a canopy. He\ndragged his leg, thumping with his stick, and grasped Stein's arm,\nleading him right up to the couch. \"Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is\nmy son,\" he proclaimed in a stentorian voice. \"I have traded with your\nfathers, and when I die he shall trade with you and your sons.\"\n\n'By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's\nprivileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a\nfortified house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country.\nShortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech, died,\nand the country became disturbed by various pretenders to the throne.\nStein joined the party of a younger son, the one of whom thirty years\nlater he never spoke otherwise but as \"my poor Mohammed Bonso.\" They\nboth became the heroes of innumerable exploits; they had wonderful\nadventures, and once stood a siege in the Scotsman's house for a month,\nwith only a score of followers against a whole army. I believe the\nnatives talk of that war to this day. Meantime, it seems, Stein never\nfailed to annex on his own account every butterfly or beetle he could\nlay hands on. After some eight years of war, negotiations, false truces,\nsudden outbreaks, reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as\npeace seemed at last permanently established, his \"poor Mohammed\nBonso\" was assassinated at the gate of his own royal residence while\ndismounting in the highest spirits on his return from a successful\ndeer-hunt. This event rendered Stein's position extremely insecure,\nbut he would have stayed perhaps had it not been that a short time\nafterwards he lost Mohammed's sister (\"my dear wife the princess,\" he\nused to say solemnly), by whom he had had a daughter--mother and child\nboth dying within three days of each other from some infectious fever.\nHe left the country, which this cruel loss had made unbearable to\nhim. Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What\nfollowed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which\nremained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream. He\nhad a little money; he started life afresh, and in the course of years\nacquired a considerable fortune. At first he had travelled a good deal\namongst the islands, but age had stolen upon him, and of late he seldom\nleft his spacious house three miles out of town, with an extensive\ngarden, and surrounded by stables, offices, and bamboo cottages for\nhis servants and dependants, of whom he had many. He drove in his buggy\nevery morning to town, where he had an office with white and Chinese\nclerks. He owned a small fleet of schooners and native craft, and dealt\nin island produce on a large scale. For the rest he lived solitary,\nbut not misanthropic, with his books and his collection, classing and\narranging specimens, corresponding with entomologists in Europe, writing\nup a descriptive catalogue of his treasures. Such was the history of\nthe man whom I had come to consult upon Jim's case without any definite\nhope. Simply to hear what he would have to say would have been a relief.\nI was very anxious, but I respected the intense, almost passionate,\nabsorption with which he looked at a butterfly, as though on the bronze\nsheen of these frail wings, in the white tracings, in the gorgeous\nmarkings, he could see other things, an image of something as perishable\nand defying destruction as these delicate and lifeless tissues\ndisplaying a splendour unmarred by death.\n\n'\"Marvellous!\" he repeated, looking up at me. \"Look! The beauty--but\nthat is nothing--look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And\nso strong! And so exact! This is Nature--the balance of colossal forces.\nEvery star is so--and every blade of grass stands so--and the mighty\nKosmos ib perfect equilibrium produces--this. This wonder; this\nmasterpiece of Nature--the great artist.\"\n\n'\"Never heard an entomologist go on like this,\" I observed cheerfully.\n\"Masterpiece! And what of man?\"\n\n'\"Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece,\" he said, keeping his\neyes fixed on the glass case. \"Perhaps the artist was a little mad. Eh?\nWhat do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is\nnot wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should\nhe want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making\na great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the\nblades of grass? . . .\"\n\n'\"Catching butterflies,\" I chimed in.\n\n'He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and stretched his legs.\n\"Sit down,\" he said. \"I captured this rare specimen myself one very fine\nmorning. And I had a very big emotion. You don't know what it is for a\ncollector to capture such a rare specimen. You can't know.\"\n\n'I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair. His eyes seemed to look far\nbeyond the wall at which they stared; and he narrated how, one night,\na messenger arrived from his \"poor Mohammed,\" requiring his presence\nat the \"residenz\"--as he called it--which was distant some nine or ten\nmiles by a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with patches of forest\nhere and there. Early in the morning he started from his fortified\nhouse, after embracing his little Emma, and leaving the \"princess,\" his\nwife, in command. He described how she came with him as far as the\ngate, walking with one hand on the neck of his horse; she had on a white\njacket, gold pins in her hair, and a brown leather belt over her left\nshoulder with a revolver in it. \"She talked as women will talk,\" he\nsaid, \"telling me to be careful, and to try to get back before dark, and\nwhat a great wickedness it was for me to go alone. We were at war, and\nthe country was not safe; my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters\nto the house and loading their rifles, and she begged me to have no fear\nfor her. She could defend the house against anybody till I returned. And\nI laughed with pleasure a little. I liked to see her so brave and young\nand strong. I too was young then. At the gate she caught hold of my\nhand and gave it one squeeze and fell back. I made my horse stand still\noutside till I heard the bars of the gate put up behind me. There was a\ngreat enemy of mine, a great noble--and a great rascal too--roaming with\na band in the neighbourhood. I cantered for four or five miles; there\nhad been rain in the night, but the musts had gone up, up--and the\nface of the earth was clean; it lay smiling to me, so fresh and\ninnocent--like a little child. Suddenly somebody fires a volley--twenty\nshots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets sing in my ear, and\nmy hat jumps to the back of my head. It was a little intrigue, you\nunderstand. They got my poor Mohammed to send for me and then laid\nthat ambush. I see it all in a minute, and I think--This wants a little\nmanagement. My pony snort, jump, and stand, and I fall slowly forward\nwith my head on his mane. He begins to walk, and with one eye I could\nsee over his neck a faint cloud of smoke hanging in front of a clump\nof bamboos to my left. I think--Aha! my friends, why you not wait long\nenough before you shoot? This is not yet gelungen. Oh no! I get hold of\nmy revolver with my right hand--quiet--quiet. After all, there were only\nseven of these rascals. They get up from the grass and start running\nwith their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above their heads, and\nyelling to each other to look out and catch the horse, because I was\ndead. I let them come as close as the door here, and then bang, bang,\nbang--take aim each time too. One more shot I fire at a man's back, but\nI miss. Too far already. And then I sit alone on my horse with the clean\nearth smiling at me, and there are the bodies of three men lying on the\nground. One was curled up like a dog, another on his back had an arm\nover his eyes as if to keep off the sun, and the third man he draws up\nhis leg very slowly and makes it with one kick straight again. I watch\nhim very carefully from my horse, but there is no more--bleibt ganz\nruhig--keep still, so. And as I looked at his face for some sign of life\nI observed something like a faint shadow pass over his forehead. It was\nthe shadow of this butterfly. Look at the form of the wing. This species\nfly high with a strong flight. I raised my eyes and I saw him fluttering\naway. I think--Can it be possible? And then I lost him. I dismounted\nand went on very slow, leading my horse and holding my revolver with one\nhand and my eyes darting up and down and right and left, everywhere! At\nlast I saw him sitting on a small heap of dirt ten feet away. At once\nmy heart began to beat quick. I let go my horse, keep my revolver in one\nhand, and with the other snatch my soft felt hat off my head. One step.\nSteady. Another step. Flop! I got him! When I got up I shook like a leaf\nwith excitement, and when I opened these beautiful wings and made sure\nwhat a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen I had, my head went\nround and my legs became so weak with emotion that I had to sit on the\nground. I had greatly desired to possess myself of a specimen of that\nspecies when collecting for the professor. I took long journeys and\nunderwent great privations; I had dreamed of him in my sleep, and here\nsuddenly I had him in my fingers--for myself! In the words of the poet\"\n(he pronounced it \"boet\")--\n\n     \"'So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen,\n     Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein.'\"\n\nHe gave to the last word the emphasis of a suddenly lowered voice, and\nwithdrew his eyes slowly from my face. He began to charge a long-stemmed\npipe busily and in silence, then, pausing with his thumb on the orifice\nof the bowl, looked again at me significantly.\n\n'\"Yes, my good friend. On that day I had nothing to desire; I had\ngreatly annoyed my principal enemy; I was young, strong; I had\nfriendship; I had the love\" (he said \"lof\") \"of woman, a child I had,\nto make my heart very full--and even what I had once dreamed in my sleep\nhad come into my hand too!\"\n\n'He struck a match, which flared violently. His thoughtful placid face\ntwitched once.\n\n'\"Friend, wife, child,\" he said slowly, gazing at the small\nflame--\"phoo!\" The match was blown out. He sighed and turned again to\nthe glass case. The frail and beautiful wings quivered faintly, as if\nhis breath had for an instant called back to life that gorgeous object\nof his dreams.\n\n'\"The work,\" he began suddenly, pointing to the scattered slips, and in\nhis usual gentle and cheery tone, \"is making great progress. I have been\nthis rare specimen describing. . . . Na! And what is your good news?\"\n\n'\"To tell you the truth, Stein,\" I said with an effort that surprised\nme, \"I came here to describe a specimen. . . .\"\n\n'\"Butterfly?\" he asked, with an unbelieving and humorous eagerness.\n\n'\"Nothing so perfect,\" I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited with all\nsorts of doubts. \"A man!\"\n\n'\"Ach so!\" he murmured, and his smiling countenance, turned to me,\nbecame grave. Then after looking at me for a while he said slowly,\n\"Well--I am a man too.\"\n\n'Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so generously\nencouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesitate on the brink of\nconfidence; but if I did hesitate it was not for long.\n\n'He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes his head would\ndisappear completely in a great eruption of smoke, and a sympathetic\ngrowl would come out from the cloud. When I finished he uncrossed his\nlegs, laid down his pipe, leaned forward towards me earnestly with his\nelbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of his fingers together.\n\n'\"I understand very well. He is romantic.\"\n\n'He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was quite startled to\nfind how simple it was; and indeed our conference resembled so much a\nmedical consultation--Stein, of learned aspect, sitting in an arm-chair\nbefore his desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him, but a little to one\nside--that it seemed natural to ask--\n\n'\"What's good for it?\"\n\n'He lifted up a long forefinger.\n\n'\"There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us from being ourselves\ncure!\" The finger came down on the desk with a smart rap. The case\nwhich he had made to look so simple before became if possible still\nsimpler--and altogether hopeless. There was a pause. \"Yes,\" said I,\n\"strictly speaking, the question is not how to get cured, but how to\nlive.\"\n\n'He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed. \"Ja! ja! In\ngeneral, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the\nquestion. . . .\" He went on nodding sympathetically. . . . \"How to be!\nAch! How to be.\"\n\n'He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the desk.\n\n'\"We want in so many different ways to be,\" he began again. \"This\nmagnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it;\nbut man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want to be so,\nand again he want to be so. . . .\" He moved his hand up, then down. . . .\n\"He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil--and every time he\nshuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow--so fine as he can\nnever be. . . . In a dream. . . .\"\n\n'He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked sharply, and\ntaking up the case in both hands he bore it religiously away to its\nplace, passing out of the bright circle of the lamp into the ring of\nfainter light--into shapeless dusk at last. It had an odd effect--as\nif these few steps had carried him out of this concrete and perplexed\nworld. His tall form, as though robbed of its substance, hovered\nnoiselessly over invisible things with stooping and indefinite\nmovements; his voice, heard in that remoteness where he could be\nglimpsed mysteriously busy with immaterial cares, was no longer\nincisive, seemed to roll voluminous and grave--mellowed by distance.\n\n'\"And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the\nreal trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it\nis not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for\nthe reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. . . .\nJa! . . . And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie? Was?\nGott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!\"\n\n'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed\nboisterously.\n\n'\"Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into\na dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into\nthe air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns--nicht wahr?\n. . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit\nyourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water\nmake the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me--how to be?\"\n\n'His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though away there in\nthe dusk he had been inspired by some whisper of knowledge. \"I will tell\nyou! For that too there is only one way.\"\n\n'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring of\nfaint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the lamp. His\nextended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deepset eyes seemed\nto pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered no word, and the\naustere exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk vanished from his\nface. The hand that had been pointing at my breast fell, and by-and-by,\ncoming a step nearer, he laid it gently on my shoulder. There were\nthings, he said mournfully, that perhaps could never be told, only he\nhad lived so much alone that sometimes he forgot--he forgot. The light\nhad destroyed the assurance which had inspired him in the distant\nshadows. He sat down and, with both elbows on the desk, rubbed his\nforehead. \"And yet it is true--it is true. In the destructive element\nimmerse.\" . . . He spoke in a subdued tone, without looking at me, one\nhand on each side of his face. \"That was the way. To follow the dream,\nand again to follow the dream--and so--ewig--usque ad finem. . . .\" The\nwhisper of his conviction seemed to open before me a vast and uncertain\nexpanse, as of a crepuscular horizon on a plain at dawn--or was it,\nperchance, at the coming of the night? One had not the courage to\ndecide; but it was a charming and deceptive light, throwing the\nimpalpable poesy of its dimness over pitfalls--over graves. His life had\nbegun in sacrifice, in enthusiasm for generous ideas; he had travelled\nvery far, on various ways, on strange paths, and whatever he followed\nit had been without faltering, and therefore without shame and without\nregret. In so far he was right. That was the way, no doubt. Yet for all\nthat, the great plain on which men wander amongst graves and pitfalls\nremained very desolate under the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular\nlight, overshadowed in the centre, circled with a bright edge as if\nsurrounded by an abyss full of flames. When at last I broke the silence\nit was to express the opinion that no one could be more romantic than\nhimself.\n\n'He shook his head slowly, and afterwards looked at me with a patient\nand inquiring glance. It was a shame, he said. There we were sitting\nand talking like two boys, instead of putting our heads together to find\nsomething practical--a practical remedy--for the evil--for the great\nevil--he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent smile. For all that,\nour talk did not grow more practical. We avoided pronouncing Jim's name\nas though we had tried to keep flesh and blood out of our discussion,\nor he were nothing but an erring spirit, a suffering and nameless shade.\n\"Na!\" said Stein, rising. \"To-night you sleep here, and in the morning\nwe shall do something practical--practical. . . .\" He lit a two-branched\ncandlestick and led the way. We passed through empty dark rooms,\nescorted by gleams from the lights Stein carried. They glided along the\nwaxed floors, sweeping here and there over the polished surface of\na table, leaped upon a fragmentary curve of a piece of furniture, or\nflashed perpendicularly in and out of distant mirrors, while the forms\nof two men and the flicker of two flames could be seen for a moment\nstealing silently across the depths of a crystalline void. He walked\nslowly a pace in advance with stooping courtesy; there was a profound,\nas it were a listening, quietude on his face; the long flaxen locks\nmixed with white threads were scattered thinly upon his slightly bowed\nneck.\n\n'\"He is romantic--romantic,\" he repeated. \"And that is very bad--very\nbad. . . . Very good, too,\" he added. \"But _is he_?\" I queried.\n\n'\"Gewiss,\" he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum, but\nwithout looking at me. \"Evident! What is it that by inward pain makes\nhim know himself? What is it that for you and me makes him--exist?\"\n\n'At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim's existence--starting\nfrom a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by clouds of\ndust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in a material\nworld--but his imperishable reality came to me with a convincing, with\nan irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in our progress\nthrough the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams of light and\nthe sudden revelations of human figures stealing with flickering flames\nwithin unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to\nabsolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half\nsubmerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. \"Perhaps he is,\" I\nadmitted with a slight laugh, whose unexpectedly loud reverberation\nmade me lower my voice directly; \"but I am sure you are.\" With his head\ndropping on his breast and the light held high he began to walk again.\n\"Well--I exist, too,\" he said.\n\n'He preceded me. My eyes followed his movements, but what I did see was\nnot the head of the firm, the welcome guest at afternoon receptions,\nthe correspondent of learned societies, the entertainer of stray\nnaturalists; I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had known\nhow to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humble\nsurroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war--in\nall the exalted elements of romance. At the door of my room he faced me.\n\"Yes,\" I said, as though carrying on a discussion, \"and amongst other\nthings you dreamed foolishly of a certain butterfly; but when one\nfine morning your dream came in your way you did not let the splendid\nopportunity escape. Did you? Whereas he . . .\" Stein lifted his hand.\n\"And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams\nI had lost that had come in my way?\" He shook his head regretfully. \"It\nseems to me that some would have been very fine--if I had made them come\ntrue. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know.\" \"Whether his\nwere fine or not,\" I said, \"he knows of one which he certainly did not\ncatch.\" \"Everybody knows of one or two like that,\" said Stein; \"and that\nis the trouble--the great trouble. . . .\"\n\n'He shook hands on the threshold, peered into my room under his\nraised arm. \"Sleep well. And to-morrow we must do something\npractical--practical. . . .\"\n\n'Though his own room was beyond mine I saw him return the way he came.\nHe was going back to his butterflies.'\n\n\n'I don't suppose any of you have ever heard of Patusan?' Marlow resumed,\nafter a silence occupied in the careful lighting of a cigar. 'It does\nnot matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of\na night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphere\nof its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to the\nastronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,\nweight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of its\nlight--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. Thus with Patusan. It\nwas referred to knowingly in the inner government circles in Batavia,\nespecially as to its irregularities and aberrations, and it was known\nby name to some few, very few, in the mercantile world. Nobody, however,\nhad been there, and I suspect no one desired to go there in person,\njust as an astronomer, I should fancy, would strongly object to being\ntransported into a distant heavenly body, where, parted from his earthly\nemoluments, he would be bewildered by the view of an unfamiliar heavens.\nHowever, neither heavenly bodies nor astronomers have anything to do\nwith Patusan. It was Jim who went there. I only meant you to understand\nthat had Stein arranged to send him into a star of the fifth magnitude\nthe change could not have been greater. He left his earthly failings\nbehind him and what sort of reputation he had, and there was a totally\nnew set of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work upon. Entirely\nnew, entirely remarkable. And he got hold of them in a remarkable way.\n\n'Stein was the man who knew more about Patusan than anybody else. More\nthan was known in the government circles I suspect. I have no doubt he\nhad been there, either in his butterfly-hunting days or later on, when\nhe tried in his incorrigible way to season with a pinch of romance the\nfattening dishes of his commercial kitchen. There were very few places\nin the Archipelago he had not seen in the original dusk of their being,\nbefore light (and even electric light) had been carried into them for\nthe sake of better morality and--and--well--the greater profit, too.\nIt was at breakfast of the morning following our talk about Jim that he\nmentioned the place, after I had quoted poor Brierly's remark: \"Let him\ncreep twenty feet underground and stay there.\" He looked up at me with\ninterested attention, as though I had been a rare insect. \"This could be\ndone, too,\" he remarked, sipping his coffee. \"Bury him in some sort,\"\nI explained. \"One doesn't like to do it of course, but it would be the\nbest thing, seeing what he is.\" \"Yes; he is young,\" Stein mused. \"The\nyoungest human being now in existence,\" I affirmed. \"Schon. There's\nPatusan,\" he went on in the same tone. . . . \"And the woman is dead\nnow,\" he added incomprehensibly.\n\n'Of course I don't know that story; I can only guess that once before\nPatusan had been used as a grave for some sin, transgression, or\nmisfortune. It is impossible to suspect Stein. The only woman that\nhad ever existed for him was the Malay girl he called \"My wife the\nprincess,\" or, more rarely, in moments of expansion, \"the mother of my\nEmma.\" Who was the woman he had mentioned in connection with Patusan I\ncan't say; but from his allusions I understand she had been an educated\nand very good-looking Dutch-Malay girl, with a tragic or perhaps only a\npitiful history, whose most painful part no doubt was her marriage with\na Malacca Portuguese who had been clerk in some commercial house in\nthe Dutch colonies. I gathered from Stein that this man was an\nunsatisfactory person in more ways than one, all being more or less\nindefinite and offensive. It was solely for his wife's sake that Stein\nhad appointed him manager of Stein & Co.'s trading post in Patusan;\nbut commercially the arrangement was not a success, at any rate for\nthe firm, and now the woman had died, Stein was disposed to try another\nagent there. The Portuguese, whose name was Cornelius, considered\nhimself a very deserving but ill-used person, entitled by his abilities\nto a better position. This man Jim would have to relieve. \"But I don't\nthink he will go away from the place,\" remarked Stein. \"That has nothing\nto do with me. It was only for the sake of the woman that I . . . But as\nI think there is a daughter left, I shall let him, if he likes to stay,\nkeep the old house.\"\n\n'Patusan is a remote district of a native-ruled state, and the chief\nsettlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty\nmiles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can\nbe seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep\nhills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep\nfissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the\nvalley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance from the\nsettlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two, and with the\ntwo halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the full, the\nmoon, as seen from the open space in front of Jim's house (he had a very\nfine house in the native style when I visited him), rose exactly behind\nthese hills, its diffused light at first throwing the two masses into\nintensely black relief, and then the nearly perfect disc, glowing\nruddily, appeared, gliding upwards between the sides of the chasm, till\nit floated away above the summits, as if escaping from a yawning grave\nin gentle triumph. \"Wonderful effect,\" said Jim by my side. \"Worth\nseeing. Is it not?\"\n\n'And this question was put with a note of personal pride that made me\nsmile, as though he had had a hand in regulating that unique spectacle.\nHe had regulated so many things in Patusan--things that would have\nappeared as much beyond his control as the motions of the moon and the\nstars.\n\n'It was inconceivable. That was the distinctive quality of the part into\nwhich Stein and I had tumbled him unwittingly, with no other notion than\nto get him out of the way; out of his own way, be it understood. That\nwas our main purpose, though, I own, I might have had another motive\nwhich had influenced me a little. I was about to go home for a time;\nand it may be I desired, more than I was aware of myself, to dispose of\nhim--to dispose of him, you understand--before I left. I was going home,\nand he had come to me from there, with his miserable trouble and his\nshadowy claim, like a man panting under a burden in a mist. I cannot\nsay I had ever seen him distinctly--not even to this day, after I had\nmy last view of him; but it seemed to me that the less I understood\nthe more I was bound to him in the name of that doubt which is the\ninseparable part of our knowledge. I did not know so much more about\nmyself. And then, I repeat, I was going home--to that home distant\nenough for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the\nhumblest of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands over the\nface of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the\nseas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me\nthat for each of us going home must be like going to render an account.\nWe return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--those whom we\nobey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most\nfree, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties,--even those for whom\nhome holds no dear face, no familiar voice,--even they have to meet the\nspirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its\nvalleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees--a\nmute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy,\nto breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear\nconscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed\nvery few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under\nthe surface of familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the men\nwe look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the\npleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with\nclean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I\nthink it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call\ntheir own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to\nmeet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit--it is those who\nunderstand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular\nright to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but\nwe all feel it though, and I say _all_ without exception, because those\nwho do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth\nwhence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land\nfrom which he draws his faith together with his life. I don't know\nhow much Jim understood; but I know he felt, he felt confusedly but\npowerfully, the demand of some such truth or some such illusion--I don't\ncare how you call it, there is so little difference, and the difference\nmeans so little. The thing is that in virtue of his feeling he mattered.\nHe would never go home now. Not he. Never. Had he been capable of\npicturesque manifestations he would have shuddered at the thought\nand made you shudder too. But he was not of that sort, though he was\nexpressive enough in his way. Before the idea of going home he would\ngrow desperately stiff and immovable, with lowered chin and pouted lips,\nand with those candid blue eyes of his glowering darkly under a frown,\nas if before something unbearable, as if before something revolting.\nThere was imagination in that hard skull of his, over which the thick\nclustering hair fitted like a cap. As to me, I have no imagination (I\nwould be more certain about him today, if I had), and I do not mean to\nimply that I figured to myself the spirit of the land uprising above the\nwhite cliffs of Dover, to ask me what I--returning with no bones broken,\nso to speak--had done with my very young brother. I could not make\nsuch a mistake. I knew very well he was of those about whom there is\nno inquiry; I had seen better men go out, disappear, vanish utterly,\nwithout provoking a sound of curiosity or sorrow. The spirit of\nthe land, as becomes the ruler of great enterprises, is careless of\ninnumerable lives. Woe to the stragglers! We exist only in so far as we\nhang together. He had straggled in a way; he had not hung on; but he was\naware of it with an intensity that made him touching, just as a man's\nmore intense life makes his death more touching than the death of a\ntree. I happened to be handy, and I happened to be touched. That's all\nthere is to it. I was concerned as to the way he would go out. It would\nhave hurt me if, for instance, he had taken to drink. The earth is so\nsmall that I was afraid of, some day, being waylaid by a blear-eyed,\nswollen-faced, besmirched loafer, with no soles to his canvas shoes,\nand with a flutter of rags about the elbows, who, on the strength of old\nacquaintance, would ask for a loan of five dollars. You know the awful\njaunty bearing of these scarecrows coming to you from a decent past,\nthe rasping careless voice, the half-averted impudent glances--those\nmeetings more trying to a man who believes in the solidarity of our\nlives than the sight of an impenitent death-bed to a priest. That, to\ntell you the truth, was the only danger I could see for him and for\nme; but I also mistrusted my want of imagination. It might even come\nto something worse, in some way it was beyond my powers of fancy to\nforesee. He wouldn't let me forget how imaginative he was, and your\nimaginative people swing farther in any direction, as if given a longer\nscope of cable in the uneasy anchorage of life. They do. They take to\ndrink too. It may be I was belittling him by such a fear. How could I\ntell? Even Stein could say no more than that he was romantic. I only\nknew he was one of us. And what business had he to be romantic? I\nam telling you so much about my own instinctive feelings and bemused\nreflections because there remains so little to be told of him. He\nexisted for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for\nyou. I've led him out by the hand; I have paraded him before you. Were\nmy commonplace fears unjust? I won't say--not even now. You may be able\nto tell better, since the proverb has it that the onlookers see most of\nthe game. At any rate, they were superfluous. He did not go out, not at\nall; on the contrary, he came on wonderfully, came on straight as a die\nand in excellent form, which showed that he could stay as well as spurt.\nI ought to be delighted, for it is a victory in which I had taken my\npart; but I am not so pleased as I would have expected to be. I ask\nmyself whether his rush had really carried him out of that mist in\nwhich he loomed interesting if not very big, with floating outlines--a\nstraggler yearning inconsolably for his humble place in the ranks. And\nbesides, the last word is not said,--probably shall never be said. Are\nnot our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our\nstammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given\nup expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be\npronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to\nsay our last word--the last word of our love, of our desire, faith,\nremorse, submissions, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be\nshaken, I suppose--at least, not by us who know so many truths about\neither. My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved\ngreatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in\nthe hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds.\nI could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your\nimaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is\nrespectable to have no illusions--and safe--and profitable--and dull.\nYet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that\nlight of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow\nof sparks struck from a cold stone--and as short-lived, alas!'\n\n\n\n'The conquest of love, honour, men's confidence--the pride of it, the\npower of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds are\nstruck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim's successes there\nwere no externals. Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the sight of\nan indifferent world, and the noise of the white surf along the coast\noverpowered the voice of fame. The stream of civilisation, as if divided\non a headland a hundred miles north of Patusan, branches east and\nsouth-east, leaving its plains and valleys, its old trees and its old\nmankind, neglected and isolated, such as an insignificant and crumbling\nislet between the two branches of a mighty, devouring stream. You find\nthe name of the country pretty often in collections of old voyages. The\nseventeenth-century traders went there for pepper, because the passion\nfor pepper seemed to burn like a flame of love in the breast of Dutch\nand English adventurers about the time of James the First. Where\nwouldn't they go for pepper! For a bag of pepper they would cut each\nother's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls,\nof which they were so careful otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that\ndesire made them defy death in a thousand shapes--the unknown seas, the\nloathsome and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence,\nand despair. It made them great! By heavens! it made them heroic; and\nit made them pathetic too in their craving for trade with the inflexible\ndeath levying its toll on young and old. It seems impossible to believe\nthat mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of purpose, to\nsuch a blind persistence in endeavour and sacrifice. And indeed those\nwho adventured their persons and lives risked all they had for a slender\nreward. They left their bones to lie bleaching on distant shores, so\nthat wealth might flow to the living at home. To us, their less tried\nsuccessors, they appear magnified, not as agents of trade but as\ninstruments of a recorded destiny, pushing out into the unknown in\nobedience to an inward voice, to an impulse beating in the blood, to a\ndream of the future. They were wonderful; and it must be owned they\nwere ready for the wonderful. They recorded it complacently in their\nsufferings, in the aspect of the seas, in the customs of strange\nnations, in the glory of splendid rulers.\n\n'In Patusan they had found lots of pepper, and had been impressed by the\nmagnificence and the wisdom of the Sultan; but somehow, after a century\nof chequered intercourse, the country seems to drop gradually out of the\ntrade. Perhaps the pepper had given out. Be it as it may, nobody cares\nfor it now; the glory has departed, the Sultan is an imbecile youth\nwith two thumbs on his left hand and an uncertain and beggarly revenue\nextorted from a miserable population and stolen from him by his many\nuncles.\n\n'This of course I have from Stein. He gave me their names and a short\nsketch of the life and character of each. He was as full of information\nabout native states as an official report, but infinitely more amusing.\nHe _had_ to know. He traded in so many, and in some districts--as in\nPatusan, for instance--his firm was the only one to have an agency by\nspecial permit from the Dutch authorities. The Government trusted his\ndiscretion, and it was understood that he took all the risks. The men\nhe employed understood that too, but he made it worth their while\napparently. He was perfectly frank with me over the breakfast-table in\nthe morning. As far as he was aware (the last news was thirteen months\nold, he stated precisely), utter insecurity for life and property was\nthe normal condition. There were in Patusan antagonistic forces, and one\nof them was Rajah Allang, the worst of the Sultan's uncles, the governor\nof the river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and ground down\nto the point of extinction the country-born Malays, who, utterly\ndefenceless, had not even the resource of emigrating--\"For indeed,\" as\nStein remarked, \"where could they go, and how could they get away?\"\nNo doubt they did not even desire to get away. The world (which is\ncircumscribed by lofty impassable mountains) has been given into the\nhand of the high-born, and _this_ Rajah they knew: he was of their own\nroyal house. I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman later on. He\nwas a dirty, little, used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth,\nwho swallowed an opium pill every two hours, and in defiance of common\ndecency wore his hair uncovered and falling in wild stringy locks about\nhis wizened grimy face. When giving audience he would clamber upon a\nsort of narrow stage erected in a hall like a ruinous barn with a rotten\nbamboo floor, through the cracks of which you could see, twelve or\nfifteen feet below, the heaps of refuse and garbage of all kinds lying\nunder the house. That is where and how he received us when, accompanied\nby Jim, I paid him a visit of ceremony. There were about forty people in\nthe room, and perhaps three times as many in the great courtyard below.\nThere was constant movement, coming and going, pushing and murmuring,\nat our backs. A few youths in gay silks glared from the distance; the\nmajority, slaves and humble dependants, were half naked, in ragged\nsarongs, dirty with ashes and mud-stains. I had never seen Jim look so\ngrave, so self-possessed, in an impenetrable, impressive way. In the\nmidst of these dark-faced men, his stalwart figure in white apparel,\nthe gleaming clusters of his fair hair, seemed to catch all the sunshine\nthat trickled through the cracks in the closed shutters of that dim\nhall, with its walls of mats and a roof of thatch. He appeared like a\ncreature not only of another kind but of another essence. Had they not\nseen him come up in a canoe they might have thought he had descended\nupon them from the clouds. He did, however, come in a crazy dug-out,\nsitting (very still and with his knees together, for fear of overturning\nthe thing)--sitting on a tin box--which I had lent him--nursing on his\nlap a revolver of the Navy pattern--presented by me on parting--which,\nthrough an interposition of Providence, or through some wrong-headed\nnotion, that was just like him, or else from sheer instinctive sagacity,\nhe had decided to carry unloaded. That's how he ascended the Patusan\nriver. Nothing could have been more prosaic and more unsafe, more\nextravagantly casual, more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would\ncast the complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive\nunreflecting desertion of a jump into the unknown.\n\n'It is precisely the casualness of it that strikes me most. Neither\nStein nor I had a clear conception of what might be on the other side\nwhen we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him over the\nwall with scant ceremony. At the moment I merely wished to achieve his\ndisappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a sentimental motive.\nHe had a notion of paying off (in kind, I suppose) the old debt he had\nnever forgotten. Indeed he had been all his life especially friendly to\nanybody from the British Isles. His late benefactor, it is true, was a\nScot--even to the length of being called Alexander McNeil--and Jim came\nfrom a long way south of the Tweed; but at the distance of six or\nseven thousand miles Great Britain, though never diminished, looks\nforeshortened enough even to its own children to rob such details of\ntheir importance. Stein was excusable, and his hinted intentions were\nso generous that I begged him most earnestly to keep them secret for\na time. I felt that no consideration of personal advantage should be\nallowed to influence Jim; that not even the risk of such influence\nshould be run. We had to deal with another sort of reality. He wanted\na refuge, and a refuge at the cost of danger should be offered\nhim--nothing more.\n\n'Upon every other point I was perfectly frank with him, and I even (as\nI believed at the time) exaggerated the danger of the undertaking. As\na matter of fact I did not do it justice; his first day in Patusan was\nnearly his last--would have been his last if he had not been so reckless\nor so hard on himself and had condescended to load that revolver. I\nremember, as I unfolded our precious scheme for his retreat, how his\nstubborn but weary resignation was gradually replaced by surprise,\ninterest, wonder, and by boyish eagerness. This was a chance he had been\ndreaming of. He couldn't think how he merited that I . . . He would be\nshot if he could see to what he owed . . . And it was Stein, Stein the\nmerchant, who . . . but of course it was me he had to . . . I cut him\nshort. He was not articulate, and his gratitude caused me inexplicable\npain. I told him that if he owed this chance to any one especially, it\nwas to an old Scot of whom he had never heard, who had died many years\nago, of whom little was remembered besides a roaring voice and a rough\nsort of honesty. There was really no one to receive his thanks. Stein\nwas passing on to a young man the help he had received in his own young\ndays, and I had done no more than to mention his name. Upon this he\ncoloured, and, twisting a bit of paper in his fingers, he remarked\nbashfully that I had always trusted him.\n\n'I admitted that such was the case, and added after a pause that I\nwished he had been able to follow my example. \"You think I don't?\" he\nasked uneasily, and remarked in a mutter that one had to get some sort\nof show first; then brightening up, and in a loud voice he protested he\nwould give me no occasion to regret my confidence, which--which . . .\n\n'\"Do not misapprehend,\" I interrupted. \"It is not in your power to make\nme regret anything.\" There would be no regrets; but if there were, it\nwould be altogether my own affair: on the other hand, I wished him to\nunderstand clearly that this arrangement, this--this--experiment, was\nhis own doing; he was responsible for it and no one else. \"Why? Why,\" he\nstammered, \"this is the very thing that I . . .\" I begged him not to\nbe dense, and he looked more puzzled than ever. He was in a fair way\nto make life intolerable to himself . . . \"Do you think so?\" he asked,\ndisturbed; but in a moment added confidently, \"I was going on though.\nWas I not?\" It was impossible to be angry with him: I could not help a\nsmile, and told him that in the old days people who went on like\nthis were on the way of becoming hermits in a wilderness. \"Hermits be\nhanged!\" he commented with engaging impulsiveness. Of course he didn't\nmind a wilderness. . . . \"I was glad of it,\" I said. That was where\nhe would be going to. He would find it lively enough, I ventured to\npromise. \"Yes, yes,\" he said, keenly. He had shown a desire, I continued\ninflexibly, to go out and shut the door after him. . . . \"Did I?\" he\ninterrupted in a strange access of gloom that seemed to envelop him\nfrom head to foot like the shadow of a passing cloud. He was wonderfully\nexpressive after all. Wonderfully! \"Did I?\" he repeated bitterly. \"You\ncan't say I made much noise about it. And I can keep it up, too--only,\nconfound it! you show me a door.\" . . . \"Very well. Pass on,\" I struck\nin. I could make him a solemn promise that it would be shut behind him\nwith a vengeance. His fate, whatever it was, would be ignored,\nbecause the country, for all its rotten state, was not judged ripe\nfor interference. Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as\nthough he had never existed. He would have nothing but the soles of his\ntwo feet to stand upon, and he would have first to find his ground at\nthat. \"Never existed--that's it, by Jove,\" he murmured to himself. His\neyes, fastened upon my lips, sparkled. If he had thoroughly understood\nthe conditions, I concluded, he had better jump into the first gharry he\ncould see and drive on to Stein's house for his final instructions. He\nflung out of the room before I had fairly finished speaking.'\n\n\n\n'He did not return till next morning. He had been kept to dinner and for\nthe night. There never had been such a wonderful man as Mr. Stein. He\nhad in his pocket a letter for Cornelius (\"the Johnnie who's going to\nget the sack,\" he explained, with a momentary drop in his elation), and\nhe exhibited with glee a silver ring, such as natives use, worn down\nvery thin and showing faint traces of chasing.\n\n'This was his introduction to an old chap called Doramin--one of the\nprincipal men out there--a big pot--who had been Mr. Stein's friend in\nthat country where he had all these adventures. Mr. Stein called him\n\"war-comrade.\" War-comrade was good. Wasn't it? And didn't Mr. Stein\nspeak English wonderfully well? Said he had learned it in Celebes--of\nall places! That was awfully funny. Was it not? He did speak with an\naccent--a twang--did I notice? That chap Doramin had given him the ring.\nThey had exchanged presents when they parted for the last time. Sort of\npromising eternal friendship. He called it fine--did I not? They had\nto make a dash for dear life out of the country when that\nMohammed--Mohammed--What's-his-name had been killed. I knew the story,\nof course. Seemed a beastly shame, didn't it? . . .\n\n'He ran on like this, forgetting his plate, with a knife and fork in\nhand (he had found me at tiffin), slightly flushed, and with his eyes\ndarkened many shades, which was with him a sign of excitement. The ring\nwas a sort of credential--(\"It's like something you read of in books,\"\nhe threw in appreciatively)--and Doramin would do his best for him. Mr.\nStein had been the means of saving that chap's life on some occasion;\npurely by accident, Mr. Stein had said, but he--Jim--had his own opinion\nabout that. Mr. Stein was just the man to look out for such accidents.\nNo matter. Accident or purpose, this would serve his turn immensely.\nHoped to goodness the jolly old beggar had not gone off the hooks\nmeantime. Mr. Stein could not tell. There had been no news for more\nthan a year; they were kicking up no end of an all-fired row amongst\nthemselves, and the river was closed. Jolly awkward, this; but, no fear;\nhe would manage to find a crack to get in.\n\n'He impressed, almost frightened, me with his elated rattle. He was\nvoluble like a youngster on the eve of a long holiday with a prospect of\ndelightful scrapes, and such an attitude of mind in a grown man and in\nthis connection had in it something phenomenal, a little mad, dangerous,\nunsafe. I was on the point of entreating him to take things seriously\nwhen he dropped his knife and fork (he had begun eating, or rather\nswallowing food, as it were, unconsciously), and began a search all\nround his plate. The ring! The ring! Where the devil . . . Ah! Here it\nwas . . . He closed his big hand on it, and tried all his pockets one\nafter another. Jove! wouldn't do to lose the thing. He meditated gravely\nover his fist. Had it? Would hang the bally affair round his neck! And\nhe proceeded to do this immediately, producing a string (which looked\nlike a bit of a cotton shoe-lace) for the purpose. There! That would do\nthe trick! It would be the deuce if . . . He seemed to catch sight of my\nface for the first time, and it steadied him a little. I probably didn't\nrealise, he said with a naive gravity, how much importance he attached\nto that token. It meant a friend; and it is a good thing to have a\nfriend. He knew something about that. He nodded at me expressively, but\nbefore my disclaiming gesture he leaned his head on his hand and for\na while sat silent, playing thoughtfully with the bread-crumbs on the\ncloth . . . \"Slam the door--that was jolly well put,\" he cried, and\njumping up, began to pace the room, reminding me by the set of the\nshoulders, the turn of his head, the headlong and uneven stride, of\nthat night when he had paced thus, confessing, explaining--what you\nwill--but, in the last instance, living--living before me, under his\nown little cloud, with all his unconscious subtlety which could draw\nconsolation from the very source of sorrow. It was the same mood, the\nsame and different, like a fickle companion that to-day guiding you\non the true path, with the same eyes, the same step, the same impulse,\nto-morrow will lead you hopelessly astray. His tread was assured, his\nstraying, darkened eyes seemed to search the room for something. One of\nhis footfalls somehow sounded louder than the other--the fault of his\nboots probably--and gave a curious impression of an invisible halt in\nhis gait. One of his hands was rammed deep into his trousers' pocket,\nthe other waved suddenly above his head. \"Slam the door!\" he shouted.\n\"I've been waiting for that. I'll show yet . . . I'll . . . I'm ready\nfor any confounded thing . . . I've been dreaming of it . . . Jove! Get\nout of this. Jove! This is luck at last . . . You wait. I'll . . .\"\n\n'He tossed his head fearlessly, and I confess that for the first and\nlast time in our acquaintance I perceived myself unexpectedly to be\nthoroughly sick of him. Why these vapourings? He was stumping about\nthe room flourishing his arm absurdly, and now and then feeling on\nhis breast for the ring under his clothes. Where was the sense of such\nexaltation in a man appointed to be a trading-clerk, and in a place\nwhere there was no trade--at that? Why hurl defiance at the universe?\nThis was not a proper frame of mind to approach any undertaking; an\nimproper frame of mind not only for him, I said, but for any man. He\nstood still over me. Did I think so? he asked, by no means subdued, and\nwith a smile in which I seemed to detect suddenly something insolent.\nBut then I am twenty years his senior. Youth is insolent; it is its\nright--its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in\nthis world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence. He went off into a\nfar corner, and coming back, he, figuratively speaking, turned to rend\nme. I spoke like that because I--even I, who had been no end kind\nto him--even I remembered--remembered--against him--what--what had\nhappened. And what about others--the--the--world? Where's the wonder he\nwanted to get out, meant to get out, meant to stay out--by heavens! And\nI talked about proper frames of mind!\n\n'\"It is not I or the world who remember,\" I shouted. \"It is you--you,\nwho remember.\"\n\n'He did not flinch, and went on with heat, \"Forget everything,\neverybody, everybody.\" . . . His voice fell. . . \"But you,\" he added.\n\n'\"Yes--me too--if it would help,\" I said, also in a low tone. After this\nwe remained silent and languid for a time as if exhausted. Then he began\nagain, composedly, and told me that Mr. Stein had instructed him to wait\nfor a month or so, to see whether it was possible for him to remain,\nbefore he began building a new house for himself, so as to avoid\n\"vain expense.\" He did make use of funny expressions--Stein did. \"Vain\nexpense\" was good. . . . Remain? Why! of course. He would hang on. Let\nhim only get in--that's all; he would answer for it he would remain.\nNever get out. It was easy enough to remain.\n\n'\"Don't be foolhardy,\" I said, rendered uneasy by his threatening tone.\n\"If you only live long enough you will want to come back.\"\n\n'\"Come back to what?\" he asked absently, with his eyes fixed upon the\nface of a clock on the wall.\n\n'I was silent for a while. \"Is it to be never, then?\" I said. \"Never,\"\nhe repeated dreamily without looking at me, and then flew into sudden\nactivity. \"Jove! Two o'clock, and I sail at four!\"\n\n'It was true. A brigantine of Stein's was leaving for the westward that\nafternoon, and he had been instructed to take his passage in her, only\nno orders to delay the sailing had been given. I suppose Stein forgot.\nHe made a rush to get his things while I went aboard my ship, where\nhe promised to call on his way to the outer roadstead. He turned up\naccordingly in a great hurry and with a small leather valise in his\nhand. This wouldn't do, and I offered him an old tin trunk of mine\nsupposed to be water-tight, or at least damp-tight. He effected the\ntransfer by the simple process of shooting out the contents of his\nvalise as you would empty a sack of wheat. I saw three books in the\ntumble; two small, in dark covers, and a thick green-and-gold volume--a\nhalf-crown complete Shakespeare. \"You read this?\" I asked. \"Yes. Best\nthing to cheer up a fellow,\" he said hastily. I was struck by this\nappreciation, but there was no time for Shakespearian talk. A\nheavy revolver and two small boxes of cartridges were lying on the\ncuddy-table. \"Pray take this,\" I said. \"It may help you to remain.\"\nNo sooner were these words out of my mouth than I perceived what grim\nmeaning they could bear. \"May help you to get in,\" I corrected myself\nremorsefully. He however was not troubled by obscure meanings; he\nthanked me effusively and bolted out, calling Good-bye over his\nshoulder. I heard his voice through the ship's side urging his boatmen\nto give way, and looking out of the stern-port I saw the boat rounding\nunder the counter. He sat in her leaning forward, exciting his men with\nvoice and gestures; and as he had kept the revolver in his hand and\nseemed to be presenting it at their heads, I shall never forget the\nscared faces of the four Javanese, and the frantic swing of their stroke\nwhich snatched that vision from under my eyes. Then turning away, the\nfirst thing I saw were the two boxes of cartridges on the cuddy-table.\nHe had forgotten to take them.\n\n'I ordered my gig manned at once; but Jim's rowers, under the impression\nthat their lives hung on a thread while they had that madman in the\nboat, made such excellent time that before I had traversed half the\ndistance between the two vessels I caught sight of him clambering over\nthe rail, and of his box being passed up. All the brigantine's canvas\nwas loose, her mainsail was set, and the windlass was just beginning to\nclink as I stepped upon her deck: her master, a dapper little half-caste\nof forty or so, in a blue flannel suit, with lively eyes, his round\nface the colour of lemon-peel, and with a thin little black moustache\ndrooping on each side of his thick, dark lips, came forward smirking. He\nturned out, notwithstanding his self-satisfied and cheery exterior, to\nbe of a careworn temperament. In answer to a remark of mine (while Jim\nhad gone below for a moment) he said, \"Oh yes. Patusan.\" He was going to\ncarry the gentleman to the mouth of the river, but would \"never ascend.\"\nHis flowing English seemed to be derived from a dictionary compiled by\na lunatic. Had Mr. Stein desired him to \"ascend,\" he would have\n\"reverentially\"--(I think he wanted to say respectfully--but devil only\nknows)--\"reverentially made objects for the safety of properties.\"\nIf disregarded, he would have presented \"resignation to quit.\" Twelve\nmonths ago he had made his last voyage there, and though Mr. Cornelius\n\"propitiated many offertories\" to Mr. Rajah Allang and the \"principal\npopulations,\" on conditions which made the trade \"a snare and ashes\nin the mouth,\" yet his ship had been fired upon from the woods by\n\"irresponsive parties\" all the way down the river; which causing his\ncrew \"from exposure to limb to remain silent in hidings,\" the brigantine\nwas nearly stranded on a sandbank at the bar, where she \"would have\nbeen perishable beyond the act of man.\" The angry disgust at the\nrecollection, the pride of his fluency, to which he turned an attentive\near, struggled for the possession of his broad simple face. He scowled\nand beamed at me, and watched with satisfaction the undeniable effect\nof his phraseology. Dark frowns ran swiftly over the placid sea, and\nthe brigantine, with her fore-topsail to the mast and her main-boom\namidships, seemed bewildered amongst the cat's-paws. He told me further,\ngnashing his teeth, that the Rajah was a \"laughable hyaena\" (can't\nimagine how he got hold of hyaenas); while somebody else was many\ntimes falser than the \"weapons of a crocodile.\" Keeping one eye on the\nmovements of his crew forward, he let loose his volubility--comparing\nthe place to a \"cage of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence.\" I\nfancy he meant impunity. He had no intention, he cried, to \"exhibit\nhimself to be made attached purposefully to robbery.\" The long-drawn\nwails, giving the time for the pull of the men catting the anchor,\ncame to an end, and he lowered his voice. \"Plenty too much enough of\nPatusan,\" he concluded, with energy.\n\n'I heard afterwards he had been so indiscreet as to get himself tied up\nby the neck with a rattan halter to a post planted in the middle of a\nmud-hole before the Rajah's house. He spent the best part of a day and a\nwhole night in that unwholesome situation, but there is every reason\nto believe the thing had been meant as a sort of joke. He brooded for\na while over that horrid memory, I suppose, and then addressed in a\nquarrelsome tone the man coming aft to the helm. When he turned to me\nagain it was to speak judicially, without passion. He would take the\ngentleman to the mouth of the river at Batu Kring (Patusan town \"being\nsituated internally,\" he remarked, \"thirty miles\"). But in his eyes,\nhe continued--a tone of bored, weary conviction replacing his previous\nvoluble delivery--the gentleman was already \"in the similitude of a\ncorpse.\" \"What? What do you say?\" I asked. He assumed a startlingly\nferocious demeanour, and imitated to perfection the act of stabbing from\nbehind. \"Already like the body of one deported,\" he explained, with the\ninsufferably conceited air of his kind after what they imagine a display\nof cleverness. Behind him I perceived Jim smiling silently at me, and\nwith a raised hand checking the exclamation on my lips.\n\n'Then, while the half-caste, bursting with importance, shouted his\norders, while the yards swung creaking and the heavy boom came surging\nover, Jim and I, alone as it were, to leeward of the mainsail, clasped\neach other's hands and exchanged the last hurried words. My heart was\nfreed from that dull resentment which had existed side by side with\ninterest in his fate. The absurd chatter of the half-caste had given\nmore reality to the miserable dangers of his path than Stein's careful\nstatements. On that occasion the sort of formality that had been always\npresent in our intercourse vanished from our speech; I believe I\ncalled him \"dear boy,\" and he tacked on the words \"old man\" to some\nhalf-uttered expression of gratitude, as though his risk set off against\nmy years had made us more equal in age and in feeling. There was a\nmoment of real and profound intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a\nglimpse of some everlasting, of some saving truth. He exerted himself to\nsoothe me as though he had been the more mature of the two. \"All right,\nall right,\" he said, rapidly, and with feeling. \"I promise to take care\nof myself. Yes; I won't take any risks. Not a single blessed risk. Of\ncourse not. I mean to hang out. Don't you worry. Jove! I feel as if\nnothing could touch me. Why! this is luck from the word Go. I wouldn't\nspoil such a magnificent chance!\" . . . A magnificent chance! Well, it\n_was_ magnificent, but chances are what men make them, and how was I\nto know? As he had said, even I--even I remembered--his--his misfortune\nagainst him. It was true. And the best thing for him was to go.\n\n'My gig had dropped in the wake of the brigantine, and I saw him aft\ndetached upon the light of the westering sun, raising his cap high above\nhis head. I heard an indistinct shout, \"You--shall--hear--of--me.\" Of\nme, or from me, I don't know which. I think it must have been of me. My\neyes were too dazzled by the glitter of the sea below his feet to see\nhim clearly; I am fated never to see him clearly; but I can assure you\nno man could have appeared less \"in the similitude of a corpse,\" as that\nhalf-caste croaker had put it. I could see the little wretch's face,\nthe shape and colour of a ripe pumpkin, poked out somewhere under Jim's\nelbow. He, too, raised his arm as if for a downward thrust. Absit omen!'\n\n\n'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight\nand sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts\nof rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of bushes and creepers\nclothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers,\nwith a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing\na chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the everlasting\nsunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea.\n\n'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch\nof the estuary. The river, which had been closed so long, was open then,\nand Stein's little schooner, in which I had my passage, worked her\nway up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade from\n\"irresponsive parties.\" Such a state of affairs belonged already to\nancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of the fishing\nvillage, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot. He talked to me\n(the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his\ntalk was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called him Tuan\nJim, and the tone of his references was made remarkable by a strange\nmixture of familiarity and awe. They, in the village, were under that\nlord's special protection, which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If\nhe had warned me that I would hear of him it was perfectly true. I was\nhearing of him. There was already a story that the tide had turned\ntwo hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river. The\ntalkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the\nphenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son and his\nson-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience,\nwho did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them\nthe amazing fact.\n\n'Jim's coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them, as to\nmany of us, the blessing came heralded by terrors. So many generations\nhad been released since the last white man had visited the river that\nthe very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that\ndescended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan\nwas discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than\nsuspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What\nwould the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part\nof the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the\nanger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out\nwas got ready. The women shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless\nold hag cursed the stranger.\n\n'He sat in it, as I've told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded\nrevolver on his lap. He sat with precaution--than which there is nothing\nmore fatiguing--and thus entered the land he was destined to fill with\nthe fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to the white ribbon\nof surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with\nits labouring waves for ever rising, sinking, and vanishing to rise\nagain--the very image of struggling mankind--and faced the immovable\nforests rooted deep in the soil, soaring towards the sunshine,\neverlasting in the shadowy might of their tradition, like life itself.\nAnd his opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride waiting\nto be uncovered by the hand of the master. He too was the heir of a\nshadowy and mighty tradition! He told me, however, that he had never in\nhis life felt so depressed and tired as in that canoe. All the movement\nhe dared to allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the\nshell of half a cocoa-nut floating between his shoes, and bale some of\nthe water out with a carefully restrained action. He discovered how hard\nthe lid of a block-tin case was to sit upon. He had heroic health; but\nseveral times during that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and\nbetween whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the\nsun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to\ndecide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water's edge was a\nlog of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No\nfun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all\nbut capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in\na long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came\nright down on the bank and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage.\nSuch was the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any\nman ever achieved. Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime\nhis three paddlers were preparing to put into execution their plan of\ndelivering him up to the Rajah.\n\n'\"I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I did doze\noff for a time,\" he said. The first thing he knew was his canoe coming\nto the bank. He became instantaneously aware of the forest having been\nleft behind, of the first houses being visible higher up, of a stockade\non his left, and of his boatmen leaping out together upon a low point of\nland and taking to their heels. Instinctively he leaped out after them.\nAt first he thought himself deserted for some inconceivable reason, but\nhe heard excited shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured\nout, making towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed men\nappeared on the river and came alongside his empty canoe, thus shutting\noff his retreat.\n\n'\"I was too startled to be quite cool--don't you know? and if that\nrevolver had been loaded I would have shot somebody--perhaps two, three\nbodies, and that would have been the end of me. But it wasn't. . . .\"\n\"Why not?\" I asked. \"Well, I couldn't fight the whole population, and\nI wasn't coming to them as if I were afraid of my life,\" he said, with\njust a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness in the glance he gave me.\nI refrained from pointing out to him that they could not have known the\nchambers were actually empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own way.\n. . . \"Anyhow it wasn't,\" he repeated good-humouredly, \"and so I just\nstood still and asked them what was the matter. That seemed to strike\nthem dumb. I saw some of these thieves going off with my box. That\nlong-legged old scoundrel Kassim (I'll show him to you to-morrow)\nran out fussing to me about the Rajah wanting to see me. I said, 'All\nright.' I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply walked in through\nthe gate and--and--here I am.\" He laughed, and then with unexpected\nemphasis, \"And do you know what's the best in it?\" he asked. \"I'll tell\nyou. It's the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place that\nwould have been the loser.\"\n\n'He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I've\nmentioned--after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm\nbetween the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen\ndescended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There\nis something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the\ndispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its\ninconceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine, which--say what you\nlike--is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound:\nmisleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or sad. It robs all\nforms of matter--which, after all, is our domain--of their substance,\nand gives a sinister reality to shadows alone. And the shadows were\nvery real around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as though\nnothing--not even the occult power of moonlight--could rob him of his\nreality in my eyes. Perhaps, indeed, nothing could touch him since he\nhad survived the assault of the dark powers. All was silent, all was\nstill; even on the river the moonbeams slept as on a pool. It was the\nmoment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter\nisolation of this lost corner of the earth. The houses crowding along\nthe wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the\nwater in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with\nblack masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures\npressing forward to drink in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and\nthere a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living\nspark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose.\n\n'He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams go\nout one by one, that he loved to see people go to sleep under his eyes,\nconfident in the security of to-morrow. \"Peaceful here, eh?\" he asked.\nHe was not eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in the words that\nfollowed. \"Look at these houses; there's not one where I am not trusted.\nJove! I told you I would hang on. Ask any man, woman, or child . . .\" He\npaused. \"Well, I am all right anyhow.\"\n\n'I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end. I had been\nsure of it, I added. He shook his head. \"Were you?\" He pressed my arm\nlightly above the elbow. \"Well, then--you were right.\"\n\n'There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low\nexclamation. \"Jove!\" he cried, \"only think what it is to me.\" Again he\npressed my arm. \"And you asked me whether I thought of leaving. Good\nGod! I! want to leave! Especially now after what you told me of Mr.\nStein's . . . Leave! Why! That's what I was afraid of. It would have\nbeen--it would have been harder than dying. No--on my word. Don't\nlaugh. I must feel--every day, every time I open my eyes--that I am\ntrusted--that nobody has a right--don't you know? Leave! For where? What\nfor? To get what?\"\n\n'I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it was\nStein's intention to present him at once with the house and the stock\nof trading goods, on certain easy conditions which would make the\ntransaction perfectly regular and valid. He began to snort and plunge at\nfirst. \"Confound your delicacy!\" I shouted. \"It isn't Stein at all. It's\ngiving you what you had made for yourself. And in any case keep your\nremarks for McNeil--when you meet him in the other world. I hope it\nwon't happen soon. . . .\" He had to give in to my arguments, because all\nhis conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these\nthings that made him master had made him a captive, too. He looked with\nan owner's eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses,\nat the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind,\nat the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart; but it was\nthey that possessed him and made him their own to the innermost thought,\nto the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath.\n\n'It was something to be proud of. I, too, was proud--for him, if not so\ncertain of the fabulous value of the bargain. It was wonderful. It was\nnot so much of his fearlessness that I thought. It is strange how little\naccount I took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be\nat the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he\nhad displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation,\nhis intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his\nreadiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like\nkeen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a\ndignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness\nin his stammerings. He had still his old trick of stubborn blushing. Now\nand then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how\ndeeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the\ncertitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land\nand the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous\ntenderness.'\n\n\n'\"This is where I was prisoner for three days,\" he murmured to me (it\nwas on the occasion of our visit to the Rajah), while we were making our\nway slowly through a kind of awestruck riot of dependants across Tunku\nAllang's courtyard. \"Filthy place, isn't it? And I couldn't get anything\nto eat either, unless I made a row about it, and then it was only\na small plate of rice and a fried fish not much bigger than a\nstickleback--confound them! Jove! I've been hungry prowling inside this\nstinking enclosure with some of these vagabonds shoving their mugs right\nunder my nose. I had given up that famous revolver of yours at the first\ndemand. Glad to get rid of the bally thing. Look like a fool walking\nabout with an empty shooting-iron in my hand.\" At that moment we came\ninto the presence, and he became unflinchingly grave and complimentary\nwith his late captor. Oh! magnificent! I want to laugh when I think of\nit. But I was impressed, too. The old disreputable Tunku Allang could\nnot help showing his fear (he was no hero, for all the tales of his hot\nyouth he was fond of telling); and at the same time there was a wistful\nconfidence in his manner towards his late prisoner. Note! Even where he\nwould be most hated he was still trusted. Jim--as far as I could follow\nthe conversation--was improving the occasion by the delivery of a\nlecture. Some poor villagers had been waylaid and robbed while on their\nway to Doramin's house with a few pieces of gum or beeswax which they\nwished to exchange for rice. \"It was Doramin who was a thief,\" burst\nout the Rajah. A shaking fury seemed to enter that old frail body.\nHe writhed weirdly on his mat, gesticulating with his hands and feet,\ntossing the tangled strings of his mop--an impotent incarnation of rage.\nThere were staring eyes and dropping jaws all around us. Jim began to\nspeak. Resolutely, coolly, and for some time he enlarged upon the text\nthat no man should be prevented from getting his food and his children's\nfood honestly. The other sat like a tailor at his board, one palm on\neach knee, his head low, and fixing Jim through the grey hair that\nfell over his very eyes. When Jim had done there was a great stillness.\nNobody seemed to breathe even; no one made a sound till the old Rajah\nsighed faintly, and looking up, with a toss of his head, said quickly,\n\"You hear, my people! No more of these little games.\" This decree\nwas received in profound silence. A rather heavy man, evidently in a\nposition of confidence, with intelligent eyes, a bony, broad, very dark\nface, and a cheerily of officious manner (I learned later on he was the\nexecutioner), presented to us two cups of coffee on a brass tray, which\nhe took from the hands of an inferior attendant. \"You needn't drink,\"\nmuttered Jim very rapidly. I didn't perceive the meaning at first, and\nonly looked at him. He took a good sip and sat composedly, holding the\nsaucer in his left hand. In a moment I felt excessively annoyed. \"Why\nthe devil,\" I whispered, smiling at him amiably, \"do you expose me to\nsuch a stupid risk?\" I drank, of course, there was nothing for it, while\nhe gave no sign, and almost immediately afterwards we took our leave.\nWhile we were going down the courtyard to our boat, escorted by the\nintelligent and cheery executioner, Jim said he was very sorry. It was\nthe barest chance, of course. Personally he thought nothing of poison.\nThe remotest chance. He was--he assured me--considered to be infinitely\nmore useful than dangerous, and so . . . \"But the Rajah is afraid of\nyou abominably. Anybody can see that,\" I argued with, I own, a certain\npeevishness, and all the time watching anxiously for the first twist of\nsome sort of ghastly colic. I was awfully disgusted. \"If I am to do any\ngood here and preserve my position,\" he said, taking his seat by my\nside in the boat, \"I must stand the risk: I take it once every month, at\nleast. Many people trust me to do that--for them. Afraid of me! That's\njust it. Most likely he is afraid of me because I am not afraid of his\ncoffee.\" Then showing me a place on the north front of the stockade\nwhere the pointed tops of several stakes were broken, \"This is where\nI leaped over on my third day in Patusan. They haven't put new stakes\nthere yet. Good leap, eh?\" A moment later we passed the mouth of a muddy\ncreek. \"This is my second leap. I had a bit of a run and took this one\nflying, but fell short. Thought I would leave my skin there. Lost my\nshoes struggling. And all the time I was thinking to myself how beastly\nit would be to get a jab with a bally long spear while sticking in the\nmud like this. I remember how sick I felt wriggling in that slime. I\nmean really sick--as if I had bitten something rotten.\"\n\n'That's how it was--and the opportunity ran by his side, leaped over the\ngap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. The unexpectedness of his\ncoming was the only thing, you understand, that saved him from being at\nonce dispatched with krisses and flung into the river. They had him, but\nit was like getting hold of an apparition, a wraith, a portent. What did\nit mean? What to do with it? Was it too late to conciliate him? Hadn't\nhe better be killed without more delay? But what would happen then?\nWretched old Allang went nearly mad with apprehension and through the\ndifficulty of making up his mind. Several times the council was broken\nup, and the advisers made a break helter-skelter for the door and out\non to the verandah. One--it is said--even jumped down to the\nground--fifteen feet, I should judge--and broke his leg. The royal\ngovernor of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to\nintroduce boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when,\ngetting gradually excited, he would end by flying off his perch with a\nkriss in his hand. But, barring such interruptions, the deliberations\nupon Jim's fate went on night and day.\n\n'Meanwhile he wandered about the courtyard, shunned by some, glared at\nby others, but watched by all, and practically at the mercy of the first\ncasual ragamuffin with a chopper, in there. He took possession of a\nsmall tumble-down shed to sleep in; the effluvia of filth and rotten\nmatter incommoded him greatly: it seems he had not lost his appetite\nthough, because--he told me--he had been hungry all the blessed time.\nNow and again \"some fussy ass\" deputed from the council-room would\ncome out running to him, and in honeyed tones would administer amazing\ninterrogatories: \"Were the Dutch coming to take the country? Would the\nwhite man like to go back down the river? What was the object of coming\nto such a miserable country? The Rajah wanted to know whether the white\nman could repair a watch?\" They did actually bring out to him a nickel\nclock of New England make, and out of sheer unbearable boredom he busied\nhimself in trying to get the alarum to work. It was apparently when\nthus occupied in his shed that the true perception of his extreme peril\ndawned upon him. He dropped the thing--he says--\"like a hot potato,\"\nand walked out hastily, without the slightest idea of what he would,\nor indeed could, do. He only knew that the position was intolerable. He\nstrolled aimlessly beyond a sort of ramshackle little granary on posts,\nand his eyes fell on the broken stakes of the palisade; and then--he\nsays--at once, without any mental process as it were, without any stir\nof emotion, he set about his escape as if executing a plan matured for a\nmonth. He walked off carelessly to give himself a good run, and when he\nfaced about there was some dignitary, with two spearmen in attendance,\nclose at his elbow ready with a question. He started off \"from under his\nvery nose,\" went over \"like a bird,\" and landed on the other side with\na fall that jarred all his bones and seemed to split his head. He picked\nhimself up instantly. He never thought of anything at the time; all he\ncould remember--he said--was a great yell; the first houses of Patusan\nwere before him four hundred yards away; he saw the creek, and as it\nwere mechanically put on more pace. The earth seemed fairly to fly\nbackwards under his feet. He took off from the last dry spot, felt\nhimself flying through the air, felt himself, without any shock, planted\nupright in an extremely soft and sticky mudbank. It was only when he\ntried to move his legs and found he couldn't that, in his own words,\n\"he came to himself.\" He began to think of the \"bally long spears.\" As\na matter of fact, considering that the people inside the stockade had to\nrun to the gate, then get down to the landing-place, get into boats,\nand pull round a point of land, he had more advance than he imagined.\nBesides, it being low water, the creek was without water--you couldn't\ncall it dry--and practically he was safe for a time from everything but\na very long shot perhaps. The higher firm ground was about six feet in\nfront of him. \"I thought I would have to die there all the same,\"\nhe said. He reached and grabbed desperately with his hands, and only\nsucceeded in gathering a horrible cold shiny heap of slime against his\nbreast--up to his very chin. It seemed to him he was burying himself\nalive, and then he struck out madly, scattering the mud with his fists.\nIt fell on his head, on his face, over his eyes, into his mouth. He told\nme that he remembered suddenly the courtyard, as you remember a place\nwhere you had been very happy years ago. He longed--so he said--to be\nback there again, mending the clock. Mending the clock--that was the\nidea. He made efforts, tremendous sobbing, gasping efforts, efforts that\nseemed to burst his eyeballs in their sockets and make him blind, and\nculminating into one mighty supreme effort in the darkness to crack the\nearth asunder, to throw it off his limbs--and he felt himself creeping\nfeebly up the bank. He lay full length on the firm ground and saw the\nlight, the sky. Then as a sort of happy thought the notion came to him\nthat he would go to sleep. He will have it that he _did_ actually go to\nsleep; that he slept--perhaps for a minute, perhaps for twenty seconds,\nor only for one second, but he recollects distinctly the violent\nconvulsive start of awakening. He remained lying still for a while, and\nthen he arose muddy from head to foot and stood there, thinking he\nwas alone of his kind for hundreds of miles, alone, with no help, no\nsympathy, no pity to expect from any one, like a hunted animal. The\nfirst houses were not more than twenty yards from him; and it was the\ndesperate screaming of a frightened woman trying to carry off a child\nthat started him again. He pelted straight on in his socks, beplastered\nwith filth out of all semblance to a human being. He traversed more\nthan half the length of the settlement. The nimbler women fled right and\nleft, the slower men just dropped whatever they had in their hands, and\nremained petrified with dropping jaws. He was a flying terror. He says\nhe noticed the little children trying to run for life, falling on their\nlittle stomachs and kicking. He swerved between two houses up a slope,\nclambered in desperation over a barricade of felled trees (there wasn't\na week without some fight in Patusan at that time), burst through a\nfence into a maize-patch, where a scared boy flung a stick at him,\nblundered upon a path, and ran all at once into the arms of several\nstartled men. He just had breath enough to gasp out, \"Doramin! Doramin!\"\nHe remembers being half-carried, half-rushed to the top of the slope,\nand in a vast enclosure with palms and fruit trees being run up to a\nlarge man sitting massively in a chair in the midst of the greatest\npossible commotion and excitement. He fumbled in mud and clothes to\nproduce the ring, and, finding himself suddenly on his back, wondered\nwho had knocked him down. They had simply let him go--don't you\nknow?--but he couldn't stand. At the foot of the slope random shots were\nfired, and above the roofs of the settlement there rose a dull roar of\namazement. But he was safe. Doramin's people were barricading the gate\nand pouring water down his throat; Doramin's old wife, full of business\nand commiseration, was issuing shrill orders to her girls. \"The old\nwoman,\" he said softly, \"made a to-do over me as if I had been her own\nson. They put me into an immense bed--her state bed--and she ran in\nand out wiping her eyes to give me pats on the back. I must have been a\npitiful object. I just lay there like a log for I don't know how long.\"\n\n'He seemed to have a great liking for Doramin's old wife. She on her\nside had taken a motherly fancy to him. She had a round, nut-brown,\nsoft face, all fine wrinkles, large, bright red lips (she chewed\nbetel assiduously), and screwed up, winking, benevolent eyes. She was\nconstantly in movement, scolding busily and ordering unceasingly a troop\nof young women with clear brown faces and big grave eyes, her daughters,\nher servants, her slave-girls. You know how it is in these households:\nit's generally impossible to tell the difference. She was very spare,\nand even her ample outer garment, fastened in front with jewelled\nclasps, had somehow a skimpy effect. Her dark bare feet were thrust into\nyellow straw slippers of Chinese make. I have seen her myself flitting\nabout with her extremely thick, long, grey hair falling about her\nshoulders. She uttered homely shrewd sayings, was of noble birth, and\nwas eccentric and arbitrary. In the afternoon she would sit in a very\nroomy arm-chair, opposite her husband, gazing steadily through a wide\nopening in the wall which gave an extensive view of the settlement and\nthe river.\n\n'She invariably tucked up her feet under her, but old Doramin sat\nsquarely, sat imposingly as a mountain sits on a plain. He was only\nof the nakhoda or merchant class, but the respect shown to him and\nthe dignity of his bearing were very striking. He was the chief of\nthe second power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes (about sixty\nfamilies that, with dependants and so on, could muster some two hundred\nmen \"wearing the kriss\") had elected him years ago for their head. The\nmen of that race are intelligent, enterprising, revengeful, but with a\nmore frank courage than the other Malays, and restless under oppression.\nThey formed the party opposed to the Rajah. Of course the quarrels were\nfor trade. This was the primary cause of faction fights, of the sudden\noutbreaks that would fill this or that part of the settlement with\nsmoke, flame, the noise of shots and shrieks. Villages were burnt, men\nwere dragged into the Rajah's stockade to be killed or tortured for the\ncrime of trading with anybody else but himself. Only a day or two before\nJim's arrival several heads of households in the very fishing village\nthat was afterwards taken under his especial protection had been driven\nover the cliffs by a party of the Rajah's spearmen, on suspicion of\nhaving been collecting edible birds' nests for a Celebes trader. Rajah\nAllang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty\nfor the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was\nindistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and\nrapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of\nthe organised power of the Celebes men, only--till Jim came--he was not\nafraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them through his subjects, and\nthought himself pathetically in the right. The situation was complicated\nby a wandering stranger, an Arab half-breed, who, I believe, on\npurely religious grounds, had incited the tribes in the interior (the\nbush-folk, as Jim himself called them) to rise, and had established\nhimself in a fortified camp on the summit of one of the twin hills. He\nhung over the town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he\ndevastated the open country. Whole villages, deserted, rotted on their\nblackened posts over the banks of clear streams, dropping piecemeal into\nthe water the grass of their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a\ncurious effect of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation\nstricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in Patusan were\nnot sure which one this partisan most desired to plunder. The Rajah\nintrigued with him feebly. Some of the Bugis settlers, weary with\nendless insecurity, were half inclined to call him in. The younger\nspirits amongst them, chaffing, advised to \"get Sherif Ali with his wild\nmen and drive the Rajah Allang out of the country.\" Doramin restrained\nthem with difficulty. He was growing old, and, though his influence had\nnot diminished, the situation was getting beyond him. This was the state\nof affairs when Jim, bolting from the Rajah's stockade, appeared before\nthe chief of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in a manner\nof speaking, into the heart of the community.'\n\n\n'Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen.\nHis bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look merely fat; he\nlooked imposing, monumental. This motionless body, clad in rich stuffs,\ncoloured silks, gold embroideries; this huge head, enfolded in a\nred-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big, round face, wrinkled,\nfurrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds starting on each side of\nwide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a thick-lipped mouth; the throat\nlike a bull; the vast corrugated brow overhanging the staring proud\neyes--made a whole that, once seen, can never be forgotten. His\nimpassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb when once he sat down) was\nlike a display of dignity. He was never known to raise his voice. It\nwas a hoarse and powerful murmur, slightly veiled as if heard from a\ndistance. When he walked, two short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the\nwaist, in white sarongs and with black skull-caps on the backs of their\nheads, sustained his elbows; they would ease him down and stand behind\nhis chair till he wanted to rise, when he would turn his head slowly,\nas if with difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would\ncatch him under his armpits and help him up. For all that, there was\nnothing of a cripple about him: on the contrary, all his ponderous\nmovements were like manifestations of a mighty deliberate force. It\nwas generally believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs; but\nnobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange a single word.\nWhen they sat in state by the wide opening it was in silence. They could\nsee below them in the declining light the vast expanse of the forest\ncountry, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating as far as the\nviolet and purple range of mountains; the shining sinuosity of the river\nlike an immense letter S of beaten silver; the brown ribbon of houses\nfollowing the sweep of both banks, overtopped by the twin hills uprising\nabove the nearer tree-tops. They were wonderfully contrasted: she,\nlight, delicate, spare, quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of\nmotherly fussiness in her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy,\nlike a figure of a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something\nmagnanimous and ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people\nwas a most distinguished youth.\n\n'They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really so young as he\nlooked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so young when a man is already\nfather of a family at eighteen. When he entered the large room, lined\nand carpeted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of white sheeting,\nwhere the couple sat in state surrounded by a most deferential retinue,\nhe would make his way straight to Doramin, to kiss his hand--which the\nother abandoned to him, majestically--and then would step across to\nstand by his mother's chair. I suppose I may say they idolised him, but\nI never caught them giving him an overt glance. Those, it is true, were\npublic functions. The room was generally thronged. The solemn formality\nof greetings and leave-takings, the profound respect expressed in\ngestures, on the faces, in the low whispers, is simply indescribable.\n\"It's well worth seeing,\" Jim had assured me while we were crossing the\nriver, on our way back. \"They are like people in a book, aren't they?\"\nhe said triumphantly. \"And Dain Waris--their son--is the best\nfriend (barring you) I ever had. What Mr. Stein would call a good\n'war-comrade.' I was in luck. Jove! I was in luck when I tumbled amongst\nthem at my last gasp.\" He meditated with bowed head, then rousing\nhimself he added--'\"Of course I didn't go to sleep over it, but . . .\"\nHe paused again. \"It seemed to come to me,\" he murmured. \"All at once I\nsaw what I had to do . . .\"\n\n'There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come through\nwar, too, as is natural, since this power that came to him was the power\nto make peace. It is in this sense alone that might so often is right.\nYou must not think he had seen his way at once. When he arrived the\nBugis community was in a most critical position. \"They were all afraid,\"\nhe said to me--\"each man afraid for himself; while I could see as plain\nas possible that they must do something at once, if they did not want\nto go under one after another, what between the Rajah and that vagabond\nSherif.\" But to see that was nothing. When he got his idea he had\nto drive it into reluctant minds, through the bulwarks of fear, of\nselfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was nothing. He had to\ndevise the means. He devised them--an audacious plan; and his task\nwas only half done. He had to inspire with his own confidence a lot\nof people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang back; he had to\nconciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all sorts of senseless\nmistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority, and his son's\nfiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the distinguished\nyouth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of those strange,\nprofound, rare friendships between brown and white, in which the very\ndifference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic\nelement of sympathy. Of Dain Waris, his own people said with pride that\nhe knew how to fight like a white man. This was true; he had that\nsort of courage--the courage in the open, I may say--but he had also a\nEuropean mind. You meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to\ndiscover unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision,\na tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but\nadmirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a\npolished, easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky\nface, with big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose\nthoughtful. He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic\nsmile, a courteous deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great\nreserves of intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western eye,\nso often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden possibilities of races\nand lands over which hangs the mystery of unrecorded ages. He not only\ntrusted Jim, he understood him, I firmly believe. I speak of him because\nhe had captivated me. His--if I may say so--his caustic placidity,\nand, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy with Jim's aspirations,\nappealed to me. I seemed to behold the very origin of friendship. If\nJim took the lead, the other had captivated his leader. In fact, Jim\nthe leader was a captive in every sense. The land, the people, the\nfriendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body.\nEvery day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom. I felt\nconvinced of it, as from day to day I learned more of the story.\n\n'The story! Haven't I heard the story? I've heard it on the march, in\ncamp (he made me scour the country after invisible game); I've listened\nto a good part of it on one of the twin summits, after climbing the last\nhundred feet or so on my hands and knees. Our escort (we had volunteer\nfollowers from village to village) had camped meantime on a bit of level\nground half-way up the slope, and in the still breathless evening the\nsmell of wood-smoke reached our nostrils from below with the penetrating\ndelicacy of some choice scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their\ndistinct and immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a felled\ntree, and pulling out his pipe began to smoke. A new growth of grass and\nbushes was springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass\nof thorny twigs. \"It all started from here,\" he said, after a long and\nmeditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre\nprecipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there\nruinously--the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp.\n\n'But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. He had\nmounted Doramin's old ordnance on the top of that hill; two rusty iron\n7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon--currency cannon. But if the\nbrass guns represent wealth, they can also, when crammed recklessly to\nthe muzzle, send a solid shot to some little distance. The thing was\nto get them up there. He showed me where he had fastened the cables,\nexplained how he had improvised a rude capstan out of a hollowed log\nturning upon a pointed stake, indicated with the bowl of his pipe the\noutline of the earthwork. The last hundred feet of the ascent had been\nthe most difficult. He had made himself responsible for success on his\nown head. He had induced the war party to work hard all night. Big\nfires lighted at intervals blazed all down the slope, \"but up here,\" he\nexplained, \"the hoisting gang had to fly around in the dark.\" From the\ntop he saw men moving on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on\nthat night had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel,\ndirecting, encouraging, watching all along the line. Old Doramin had\nhimself carried up the hill in his arm-chair. They put him down on the\nlevel place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the\nbig fires--\"amazing old chap--real old chieftain,\" said Jim, \"with his\nlittle fierce eyes--a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees.\nMagnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and\na calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it seems--in\nexchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to good old McNeil. God\nonly knows how _he_ came by them. There he sat, moving neither hand nor\nfoot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and lots of people rushing\nabout, shouting and pulling round him--the most solemn, imposing old\nchap you can imagine. He wouldn't have had much chance if Sherif Ali had\nlet his infernal crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. Eh? Anyhow, he\nhad come up there to die if anything went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It\nthrilled me to see him there--like a rock. But the Sherif must have\nthought us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on. Nobody\nbelieved it could be done. Why! I think the very chaps who pulled and\nshoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done! Upon my\nword I don't think they did. . . .\"\n\n'He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with a smile\non his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes. I sat on the stump of a\ntree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the great expanse of\nthe forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints\nof winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a\nclearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous\ntree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape;\nthe light fell on it as if into an abyss. The land devoured the\nsunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and\npolished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall\nof steel.\n\n'And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of that\nhistoric hill of his. He dominated the forest, the secular gloom, the\nold mankind. He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to represent in\nhis persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that\nnever grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I don't know why he\nshould always have appeared to me symbolic. Perhaps this is the real\ncause of my interest in his fate. I don't know whether it was exactly\nfair to him to remember the incident which had given a new direction to\nhis life, but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly. It was\nlike a shadow in the light.'\n\n\n'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it\nwas said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange\ncontrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went\nup tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in\nthe undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest shook their heads. There was\nsomething occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of\nropes and of men's arms? There is a rebellious soul in things which must\nbe overcome by powerful charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very\nrespectable householder of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one\nevening. However, Sura was a professional sorcerer also, who attended\nall the rice sowings and reapings for miles around for the purpose of\nsubduing the stubborn souls of things. This occupation he seemed to\nthink a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more\nstubborn than the souls of men. As to the simple folk of outlying\nvillages, they believed and said (as the most natural thing in the\nworld) that Jim had carried the guns up the hill on his back--two at a\ntime.\n\n'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an\nexasperated little laugh, \"What can you do with such silly beggars? They\nwill sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie\nthe more they seem to like it.\" You could trace the subtle influence of\nhis surroundings in this irritation. It was part of his captivity. The\nearnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said, \"My dear\nfellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this.\" He looked at me quite\nstartled. \"Well, no! I suppose not,\" he said, and burst into a Homeric\npeal of laughter. \"Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all\ntogether at sunrise. Jove! You should have seen the splinters fly,\" he\ncried. By his side Dain Waris, listening with a quiet smile, dropped his\neyelids and shuffled his feet a little. It appears that the success in\nmounting the guns had given Jim's people such a feeling of confidence\nthat he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two elderly Bugis\nwho had seen some fighting in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and\nthe storming party who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours\nthey began creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the\nwet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed\nsignal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he watched the\nswift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing,\nhe felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he was he\nwould begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before the time came for\nthe advance. \"It was the slowest half-hour in my life,\" he declared.\nGradually the silent stockade came out on the sky above him. Men\nscattered all down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones and\ndripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying flattened by his side. \"We\nlooked at each other,\" Jim said, resting a gentle hand on his friend's\nshoulder. \"He smiled at me as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir\nmy lips for fear I would break out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word,\nit's true! I had been streaming with perspiration when we took cover--so\nyou may imagine . . .\" He declared, and I believe him, that he had no\nfears as to the result. He was only anxious as to his ability to repress\nthese shivers. He didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to\nthe top of that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could\nbe no going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him\nalone! His bare word. . . .\n\n'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed upon me.\n\"As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret it yet,\"\nhe said. \"Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--worse\nluck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for anything and\neverything. I could have no idea! Why, only the other day an old fool he\nhad never seen in his life came from some village miles away to find\nout if he should divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That's the sort\nof thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the\nverandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for\nmore than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with\nthat dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as\nit looks. What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old\nthough. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been\nliving together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell. A long,\nlong time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a little, when\nshe was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour. Suddenly in her old\nage she goes and lends three brass pots to her sister's son's wife, and\nbegins to abuse him every day in a loud voice. His enemies jeered at\nhim; his face was utterly blackened. Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up\nabout it. Impossible to fathom a story like that; told him to go home,\nand promised to come along myself and settle it all. It's all very well\nto grin, but it was the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the\nforest, another day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at\nthe rights of the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy\nin the thing. Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other,\nand one half of the village was ready to go for the other half with\nanything that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of\nattending to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of\ncourse--and pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not.\nCould settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little\nfinger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not sure\nto this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried him. And\nthe talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail to it. Rather\nstorm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much! Child's play to\nthat other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well, yes; a funny set\nout, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough to be his grandfather.\nBut from another point of view it was no joke. His word decided\neverything--ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali. An awful\nresponsibility,\" he repeated. \"No, really--joking apart, had it been\nthree lives instead of three rotten brass pots it would have been the\nsame. . . .\"\n\n'Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in\ntruth immense. It had led him from strife to peace, and through death\ninto the innermost life of the people; but the gloom of the land spread\nout under the sunshine preserved its appearance of inscrutable, of\nsecular repose. The sound of his fresh young voice--it's extraordinary\nhow very few signs of wear he showed--floated lightly, and passed away\nover the unchanged face of the forests like the sound of the big guns\non that cold dewy morning when he had no other concern on earth but\nthe proper control of the chills in his body. With the first slant of\nsun-rays along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill wreathed\nitself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of smoke, and the other\nburst into an amazing noise of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of\nsurprise, of dismay. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to lay their\nhands on the stakes. The popular story has it that Jim with a touch\nof one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, anxious\nto disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade--he would insist on\nexplaining to you--was a poor affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the\ninaccessible position); and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked\nto pieces and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it\nlike a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn't been\nfor Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him\nwith his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein's beetles. The\nthird man in, it seems, had been Tamb' Itam, Jim's own servant. This was\na Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and\nhad been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the\nstate boats. He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and\nfinding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis\nsettlers, had attached himself to Jim's person. His complexion was very\ndark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There\nwas something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his\n\"white lord.\" He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow. On state\noccasions he would tread on his master's heels, one hand on the haft\nof his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his truculent\nbrooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his establishment, and\nall Patusan respected and courted him as a person of much influence. At\nthe taking of the stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the\nmethodical ferocity of his fighting. The storming party had come on so\nquick--Jim said--that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there\nwas a \"hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some\nbally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all\nhad to clear out for dear life.\"\n\n'The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin, waiting immovably in\nhis chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading slowly\nabove his big head, received the news with a deep grunt. When informed\nthat his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he, without another\nsound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his help,\nand, held up reverently, he shuffled with great dignity into a bit of\nshade, where he laid himself down to sleep, covered entirely with a\npiece of white sheeting. In Patusan the excitement was intense. Jim told\nme that from the hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers,\nblack ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the\nopen spaces between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly\nwith a seething rush of people and get empty in a moment. His ears\ncaught feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild\nshouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot of\nstreamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst\nthe brown ridges of roofs. \"You must have enjoyed it,\" I murmured,\nfeeling the stir of sympathetic emotion.\n\n'\"It was . . . it was immense! Immense!\" he cried aloud, flinging his\narms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare\nthe secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to\nthe steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks\nof a stream whose current seemed to sleep. \"Immense!\" he repeated for a\nthird time, speaking in a whisper, for himself alone.\n\n'Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon his words,\nthe conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind trust of\nmen, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude of his\nachievement. All this, as I've warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling.\nI can't with mere words convey to you the impression of his total and\nutter isolation. I know, of course, he was in every sense alone of his\nkind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his nature had brought him\nin such close touch with his surroundings that this isolation seemed\nonly the effect of his power. His loneliness added to his stature. There\nwas nothing within sight to compare him with, as though he had been one\nof those exceptional men who can be only measured by the greatness of\ntheir fame; and his fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for\nmany a day's journey. You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long\nweary way through the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its\nvoice. Its voice was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we\nall know--not blatant--not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness\nand gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth\nof every passing day. It shared something of the nature of that\nsilence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths, heard\ncontinuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching--tinged with wonder\nand mystery on the lips of whispering men.'\n\n'The defeated Sherif Ali fled the country without making another stand,\nand when the miserable hunted villagers began to crawl out of the jungle\nback to their rotting houses, it was Jim who, in consultation with Dain\nWaris, appointed the headmen. Thus he became the virtual ruler of the\nland. As to old Tunku Allang, his fears at first had known no bounds. It\nis said that at the intelligence of the successful storming of the hill\nhe flung himself, face down, on the bamboo floor of his audience-hall,\nand lay motionless for a whole night and a whole day, uttering stifled\nsounds of such an appalling nature that no man dared approach his\nprostrate form nearer than a spear's length. Already he could see\nhimself driven ignominiously out of Patusan, wandering abandoned,\nstripped, without opium, without his women, without followers, a fair\ngame for the first comer to kill. After Sherif Ali his turn would come,\nand who could resist an attack led by such a devil? And indeed he owed\nhis life and such authority as he still possessed at the time of my\nvisit to Jim's idea of what was fair alone. The Bugis had been extremely\nanxious to pay off old scores, and the impassive old Doramin cherished\nthe hope of yet seeing his son ruler of Patusan. During one of our\ninterviews he deliberately allowed me to get a glimpse of this secret\nambition. Nothing could be finer in its way than the dignified wariness\nof his approaches. He himself--he began by declaring--had used his\nstrength in his young days, but now he had grown old and tired. . . .\nWith his imposing bulk and haughty little eyes darting sagacious,\ninquisitive glances, he reminded one irresistibly of a cunning old\nelephant; the slow rise and fall of his vast breast went on powerful and\nregular, like the heave of a calm sea. He too, as he protested, had an\nunbounded confidence in Tuan Jim's wisdom. If he could only obtain a\npromise! One word would be enough! . . . His breathing silences, the\nlow rumblings of his voice, recalled the last efforts of a spent\nthunderstorm.\n\n'I tried to put the subject aside. It was difficult, for there could be\nno question that Jim had the power; in his new sphere there did not seem\nto be anything that was not his to hold or to give. But that, I repeat,\nwas nothing in comparison with the notion, which occurred to me, while I\nlistened with a show of attention, that he seemed to have come very near\nat last to mastering his fate. Doramin was anxious about the future of\nthe country, and I was struck by the turn he gave to the argument. The\nland remains where God had put it; but white men--he said--they come to\nus and in a little while they go. They go away. Those they leave behind\ndo not know when to look for their return. They go to their own land, to\ntheir people, and so this white man too would. . . . I don't know what\ninduced me to commit myself at this point by a vigorous \"No, no.\" The\nwhole extent of this indiscretion became apparent when Doramin, turning\nfull upon me his face, whose expression, fixed in rugged deep folds,\nremained unalterable, like a huge brown mask, said that this was good\nnews indeed, reflectively; and then wanted to know why.\n\n'His little, motherly witch of a wife sat on my other hand, with\nher head covered and her feet tucked up, gazing through the great\nshutter-hole. I could only see a straying lock of grey hair, a high\ncheek-bone, the slight masticating motion of the sharp chin. Without\nremoving her eyes from the vast prospect of forests stretching as far as\nthe hills, she asked me in a pitying voice why was it that he so young\nhad wandered from his home, coming so far, through so many dangers?\nHad he no household there, no kinsmen in his own country? Had he no old\nmother, who would always remember his face? . . .\n\n'I was completely unprepared for this. I could only mutter and shake my\nhead vaguely. Afterwards I am perfectly aware I cut a very poor figure\ntrying to extricate myself out of this difficulty. From that moment,\nhowever, the old nakhoda became taciturn. He was not very pleased, I\nfear, and evidently I had given him food for thought. Strangely enough,\non the evening of that very day (which was my last in Patusan) I was\nonce more confronted with the same question, with the unanswerable why\nof Jim's fate. And this brings me to the story of his love.\n\n'I suppose you think it is a story that you can imagine for yourselves.\nWe have heard so many such stories, and the majority of us don't believe\nthem to be stories of love at all. For the most part we look upon them\nas stories of opportunities: episodes of passion at best, or perhaps\nonly of youth and temptation, doomed to forgetfulness in the end, even\nif they pass through the reality of tenderness and regret. This view\nmostly is right, and perhaps in this case too. . . . Yet I don't know.\nTo tell this story is by no means so easy as it should be--were the\nordinary standpoint adequate. Apparently it is a story very much like\nthe others: for me, however, there is visible in its background the\nmelancholy figure of a woman, the shadow of a cruel wisdom buried in a\nlonely grave, looking on wistfully, helplessly, with sealed lips. The\ngrave itself, as I came upon it during an early morning stroll, was a\nrather shapeless brown mound, with an inlaid neat border of white lumps\nof coral at the base, and enclosed within a circular fence made of split\nsaplings, with the bark left on. A garland of leaves and flowers was\nwoven about the heads of the slender posts--and the flowers were fresh.\n\n'Thus, whether the shadow is of my imagination or not, I can at all\nevents point out the significant fact of an unforgotten grave. When I\ntell you besides that Jim with his own hands had worked at the rustic\nfence, you will perceive directly the difference, the individual side of\nthe story. There is in his espousal of memory and affection belonging to\nanother human being something characteristic of his seriousness. He had\na conscience, and it was a romantic conscience. Through her whole life\nthe wife of the unspeakable Cornelius had no other companion, confidant,\nand friend but her daughter. How the poor woman had come to marry the\nawful little Malacca Portuguese--after the separation from the father\nof her girl--and how that separation had been brought about, whether by\ndeath, which can be sometimes merciful, or by the merciless pressure of\nconventions, is a mystery to me. From the little which Stein (who knew\nso many stories) had let drop in my hearing, I am convinced that she was\nno ordinary woman. Her own father had been a white; a high official;\none of the brilliantly endowed men who are not dull enough to nurse a\nsuccess, and whose careers so often end under a cloud. I suppose she too\nmust have lacked the saving dullness--and her career ended in Patusan.\nOur common fate . . . for where is the man--I mean a real sentient\nman--who does not remember vaguely having been deserted in the fullness\nof possession by some one or something more precious than life? . . .\nour common fate fastens upon the women with a peculiar cruelty. It\ndoes not punish like a master, but inflicts lingering torment, as if to\ngratify a secret, unappeasable spite. One would think that, appointed\nto rule on earth, it seeks to revenge itself upon the beings that come\nnearest to rising above the trammels of earthly caution; for it is\nonly women who manage to put at times into their love an element just\npalpable enough to give one a fright--an extra-terrestrial touch. I ask\nmyself with wonder--how the world can look to them--whether it has the\nshape and substance _we_ know, the air _we_ breathe! Sometimes I fancy\nit must be a region of unreasonable sublimities seething with the\nexcitement of their adventurous souls, lighted by the glory of all\npossible risks and renunciations. However, I suspect there are very few\nwomen in the world, though of course I am aware of the multitudes of\nmankind and of the equality of sexes--in point of numbers, that is. But\nI am sure that the mother was as much of a woman as the daughter seemed\nto be. I cannot help picturing to myself these two, at first the young\nwoman and the child, then the old woman and the young girl, the awful\nsameness and the swift passage of time, the barrier of forest, the\nsolitude and the turmoil round these two lonely lives, and every word\nspoken between them penetrated with sad meaning. There must have\nbeen confidences, not so much of fact, I suppose, as of innermost\nfeelings--regrets--fears--warnings, no doubt: warnings that the younger\ndid not fully understand till the elder was dead--and Jim came along.\nThen I am sure she understood much--not everything--the fear mostly, it\nseems. Jim called her by a word that means precious, in the sense of a\nprecious gem--jewel. Pretty, isn't it? But he was capable of anything.\nHe was equal to his fortune, as he--after all--must have been equal to\nhis misfortune. Jewel he called her; and he would say this as he might\nhave said \"Jane,\" don't you know--with a marital, homelike, peaceful\neffect. I heard the name for the first time ten minutes after I had\nlanded in his courtyard, when, after nearly shaking my arm off, he\ndarted up the steps and began to make a joyous, boyish disturbance at\nthe door under the heavy eaves. \"Jewel! O Jewel! Quick! Here's a friend\ncome,\" . . . and suddenly peering at me in the dim verandah, he mumbled\nearnestly, \"You know--this--no confounded nonsense about it--can't tell\nyou how much I owe to her--and so--you understand--I--exactly as\nif . . .\" His hurried, anxious whispers were cut short by the flitting of\na white form within the house, a faint exclamation, and a child-like but\nenergetic little face with delicate features and a profound, attentive\nglance peeped out of the inner gloom, like a bird out of the recess of a\nnest. I was struck by the name, of course; but it was not till later\non that I connected it with an astonishing rumour that had met me on my\njourney, at a little place on the coast about 230 miles south of Patusan\nRiver. Stein's schooner, in which I had my passage, put in there, to\ncollect some produce, and, going ashore, I found to my great surprise\nthat the wretched locality could boast of a third-class deputy-assistant\nresident, a big, fat, greasy, blinking fellow of mixed descent, with\nturned-out, shiny lips. I found him lying extended on his back in a cane\nchair, odiously unbuttoned, with a large green leaf of some sort on the\ntop of his steaming head, and another in his hand which he used lazily\nas a fan . . . Going to Patusan? Oh yes. Stein's Trading Company. He\nknew. Had a permission? No business of his. It was not so bad there now,\nhe remarked negligently, and, he went on drawling, \"There's some sort of\nwhite vagabond has got in there, I hear. . . . Eh? What you say?\nFriend of yours? So! . . . Then it was true there was one of these\nverdammte--What was he up to? Found his way in, the rascal. Eh? I had\nnot been sure. Patusan--they cut throats there--no business of ours.\" He\ninterrupted himself to groan. \"Phoo! Almighty! The heat! The heat! Well,\nthen, there might be something in the story too, after all, and . . .\"\nHe shut one of his beastly glassy eyes (the eyelid went on quivering)\nwhile he leered at me atrociously with the other. \"Look here,\" says\nhe mysteriously, \"if--do you understand?--if he has really got hold of\nsomething fairly good--none of your bits of green glass--understand?--I\nam a Government official--you tell the rascal . . . Eh? What? Friend of\nyours?\" . . . He continued wallowing calmly in the chair . . . \"You said\nso; that's just it; and I am pleased to give you the hint. I suppose\nyou too would like to get something out of it? Don't interrupt. You\njust tell him I've heard the tale, but to my Government I have made no\nreport. Not yet. See? Why make a report? Eh? Tell him to come to me if\nthey let him get alive out of the country. He had better look out\nfor himself. Eh? I promise to ask no questions. On the quiet--you\nunderstand? You too--you shall get something from me. Small commission\nfor the trouble. Don't interrupt. I am a Government official, and make\nno report. That's business. Understand? I know some good people that\nwill buy anything worth having, and can give him more money than\nthe scoundrel ever saw in his life. I know his sort.\" He fixed me\nsteadfastly with both his eyes open, while I stood over him utterly\namazed, and asking myself whether he was mad or drunk. He perspired,\npuffed, moaning feebly, and scratching himself with such horrible\ncomposure that I could not bear the sight long enough to find out. Next\nday, talking casually with the people of the little native court of the\nplace, I discovered that a story was travelling slowly down the\ncoast about a mysterious white man in Patusan who had got hold of\nan extraordinary gem--namely, an emerald of an enormous size, and\naltogether priceless. The emerald seems to appeal more to the Eastern\nimagination than any other precious stone. The white man had obtained\nit, I was told, partly by the exercise of his wonderful strength and\npartly by cunning, from the ruler of a distant country, whence he had\nfled instantly, arriving in Patusan in utmost distress, but frightening\nthe people by his extreme ferocity, which nothing seemed able to subdue.\nMost of my informants were of the opinion that the stone was probably\nunlucky,--like the famous stone of the Sultan of Succadana, which in\nthe old times had brought wars and untold calamities upon that country.\nPerhaps it was the same stone--one couldn't say. Indeed the story of a\nfabulously large emerald is as old as the arrival of the first white men\nin the Archipelago; and the belief in it is so persistent that less than\nforty years ago there had been an official Dutch inquiry into the truth\nof it. Such a jewel--it was explained to me by the old fellow from whom\nI heard most of this amazing Jim-myth--a sort of scribe to the wretched\nlittle Rajah of the place;--such a jewel, he said, cocking his poor\npurblind eyes up at me (he was sitting on the cabin floor out of\nrespect), is best preserved by being concealed about the person of a\nwoman. Yet it is not every woman that would do. She must be young--he\nsighed deeply--and insensible to the seductions of love. He shook his\nhead sceptically. But such a woman seemed to be actually in existence.\nHe had been told of a tall girl, whom the white man treated with great\nrespect and care, and who never went forth from the house unattended.\nPeople said the white man could be seen with her almost any day; they\nwalked side by side, openly, he holding her arm under his--pressed to\nhis side--thus--in a most extraordinary way. This might be a lie, he\nconceded, for it was indeed a strange thing for any one to do: on the\nother hand, there could be no doubt she wore the white man's jewel\nconcealed upon her bosom.'\n\n\n'This was the theory of Jim's marital evening walks. I made a third on\nmore than one occasion, unpleasantly aware every time of Cornelius,\nwho nursed the aggrieved sense of his legal paternity, slinking in\nthe neighbourhood with that peculiar twist of his mouth as if he were\nperpetually on the point of gnashing his teeth. But do you notice how,\nthree hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat\nlines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilisation wither and die,\nto be replaced by pure exercises of imagination, that have the futility,\noften the charm, and sometimes the deep hidden truthfulness, of works of\nart? Romance had singled Jim for its own--and that was the true part of\nthe story, which otherwise was all wrong. He did not hide his jewel. In\nfact, he was extremely proud of it.\n\n'It comes to me now that I had, on the whole, seen very little of her.\nWhat I remember best is the even, olive pallor of her complexion, and\nthe intense blue-black gleams of her hair, flowing abundantly from under\na small crimson cap she wore far back on her shapely head. Her movements\nwere free, assured, and she blushed a dusky red. While Jim and I were\ntalking, she would come and go with rapid glances at us, leaving on her\npassage an impression of grace and charm and a distinct suggestion of\nwatchfulness. Her manner presented a curious combination of shyness and\naudacity. Every pretty smile was succeeded swiftly by a look of silent,\nrepressed anxiety, as if put to flight by the recollection of some\nabiding danger. At times she would sit down with us and, with her soft\ncheek dimpled by the knuckles of her little hand, she would listen\nto our talk; her big clear eyes would remain fastened on our lips, as\nthough each pronounced word had a visible shape. Her mother had taught\nher to read and write; she had learned a good bit of English from\nJim, and she spoke it most amusingly, with his own clipping, boyish\nintonation. Her tenderness hovered over him like a flutter of wings. She\nlived so completely in his contemplation that she had acquired something\nof his outward aspect, something that recalled him in her movements, in\nthe way she stretched her arm, turned her head, directed her glances.\nHer vigilant affection had an intensity that made it almost perceptible\nto the senses; it seemed actually to exist in the ambient matter\nof space, to envelop him like a peculiar fragrance, to dwell in the\nsunshine like a tremulous, subdued, and impassioned note. I suppose you\nthink that I too am romantic, but it is a mistake. I am relating to you\nthe sober impressions of a bit of youth, of a strange uneasy romance\nthat had come in my way. I observed with interest the work of\nhis--well--good fortune. He was jealously loved, but why she should\nbe jealous, and of what, I could not tell. The land, the people, the\nforests were her accomplices, guarding him with vigilant accord, with\nan air of seclusion, of mystery, of invincible possession. There was\nno appeal, as it were; he was imprisoned within the very freedom of his\npower, and she, though ready to make a footstool of her head for his\nfeet, guarded her conquest inflexibly--as though he were hard to keep.\nThe very Tamb' Itam, marching on our journeys upon the heels of his\nwhite lord, with his head thrown back, truculent and be-weaponed like a\njanissary, with kriss, chopper, and lance (besides carrying Jim's gun);\neven Tamb' Itam allowed himself to put on the airs of uncompromising\nguardianship, like a surly devoted jailer ready to lay down his life for\nhis captive. On the evenings when we sat up late, his silent, indistinct\nform would pass and repass under the verandah, with noiseless footsteps,\nor lifting my head I would unexpectedly make him out standing rigidly\nerect in the shadow. As a general rule he would vanish after a time,\nwithout a sound; but when we rose he would spring up close to us as if\nfrom the ground, ready for any orders Jim might wish to give. The girl\ntoo, I believe, never went to sleep till we had separated for the night.\nMore than once I saw her and Jim through the window of my room come out\ntogether quietly and lean on the rough balustrade--two white forms very\nclose, his arm about her waist, her head on his shoulder. Their soft\nmurmurs reached me, penetrating, tender, with a calm sad note in the\nstillness of the night, like a self-communion of one being carried on\nin two tones. Later on, tossing on my bed under the mosquito-net, I\nwas sure to hear slight creakings, faint breathing, a throat cleared\ncautiously--and I would know that Tamb' Itam was still on the prowl.\nThough he had (by the favour of the white lord) a house in the compound,\nhad \"taken wife,\" and had lately been blessed with a child, I believe\nthat, during my stay at all events, he slept on the verandah every\nnight. It was very difficult to make this faithful and grim retainer\ntalk. Even Jim himself was answered in jerky short sentences, under\nprotest as it were. Talking, he seemed to imply, was no business of his.\nThe longest speech I heard him volunteer was one morning when, suddenly\nextending his hand towards the courtyard, he pointed at Cornelius and\nsaid, \"Here comes the Nazarene.\" I don't think he was addressing me,\nthough I stood at his side; his object seemed rather to awaken the\nindignant attention of the universe. Some muttered allusions, which\nfollowed, to dogs and the smell of roast-meat, struck me as singularly\nfelicitous. The courtyard, a large square space, was one torrid blaze of\nsunshine, and, bathed in intense light, Cornelius was creeping across\nin full view with an inexpressible effect of stealthiness, of dark and\nsecret slinking. He reminded one of everything that is unsavoury. His\nslow laborious walk resembled the creeping of a repulsive beetle, the\nlegs alone moving with horrid industry while the body glided evenly. I\nsuppose he made straight enough for the place where he wanted to get to,\nbut his progress with one shoulder carried forward seemed oblique. He\nwas often seen circling slowly amongst the sheds, as if following\na scent; passing before the verandah with upward stealthy glances;\ndisappearing without haste round the corner of some hut. That he seemed\nfree of the place demonstrated Jim's absurd carelessness or else his\ninfinite disdain, for Cornelius had played a very dubious part (to say\nthe least of it) in a certain episode which might have ended fatally for\nJim. As a matter of fact, it had redounded to his glory. But everything\nredounded to his glory; and it was the irony of his good fortune that\nhe, who had been too careful of it once, seemed to bear a charmed life.\n\n'You must know he had left Doramin's place very soon after his\narrival--much too soon, in fact, for his safety, and of course a long\ntime before the war. In this he was actuated by a sense of duty; he had\nto look after Stein's business, he said. Hadn't he? To that end, with an\nutter disregard of his personal safety, he crossed the river and took up\nhis quarters with Cornelius. How the latter had managed to exist through\nthe troubled times I can't say. As Stein's agent, after all, he must\nhave had Doramin's protection in a measure; and in one way or another\nhe had managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, while I\nhave no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he was forced to take, was\nmarked by that abjectness which was like the stamp of the man. That was\nhis characteristic; he was fundamentally and outwardly abject, as other\nmen are markedly of a generous, distinguished, or venerable appearance.\nIt was the element of his nature which permeated all his acts and\npassions and emotions; he raged abjectly, smiled abjectly, was abjectly\nsad; his civilities and his indignations were alike abject. I am sure\nhis love would have been the most abject of sentiments--but can one\nimagine a loathsome insect in love? And his loathsomeness, too, was\nabject, so that a simply disgusting person would have appeared noble\nby his side. He has his place neither in the background nor in the\nforeground of the story; he is simply seen skulking on its outskirts,\nenigmatical and unclean, tainting the fragrance of its youth and of its\nnaiveness.\n\n'His position in any case could not have been other than extremely\nmiserable, yet it may very well be that he found some advantages in it.\nJim told me he had been received at first with an abject display of\nthe most amicable sentiments. \"The fellow apparently couldn't contain\nhimself for joy,\" said Jim with disgust. \"He flew at me every morning to\nshake both my hands--confound him!--but I could never tell whether there\nwould be any breakfast. If I got three meals in two days I considered\nmyself jolly lucky, and he made me sign a chit for ten dollars every\nweek. Said he was sure Mr. Stein did not mean him to keep me for\nnothing. Well--he kept me on nothing as near as possible. Put it down to\nthe unsettled state of the country, and made as if to tear his hair out,\nbegging my pardon twenty times a day, so that I had at last to entreat\nhim not to worry. It made me sick. Half the roof of his house had\nfallen in, and the whole place had a mangy look, with wisps of dry grass\nsticking out and the corners of broken mats flapping on every wall. He\ndid his best to make out that Mr. Stein owed him money on the last three\nyears' trading, but his books were all torn, and some were missing. He\ntried to hint it was his late wife's fault. Disgusting scoundrel! At\nlast I had to forbid him to mention his late wife at all. It made Jewel\ncry. I couldn't discover what became of all the trade-goods; there was\nnothing in the store but rats, having a high old time amongst a litter\nof brown paper and old sacking. I was assured on every hand that he had\na lot of money buried somewhere, but of course could get nothing out of\nhim. It was the most miserable existence I led there in that wretched\nhouse. I tried to do my duty by Stein, but I had also other matters to\nthink of. When I escaped to Doramin old Tunku Allang got frightened and\nreturned all my things. It was done in a roundabout way, and with no end\nof mystery, through a Chinaman who keeps a small shop here; but as soon\nas I left the Bugis quarter and went to live with Cornelius it began\nto be said openly that the Rajah had made up his mind to have me killed\nbefore long. Pleasant, wasn't it? And I couldn't see what there was to\nprevent him if he really _had_ made up his mind. The worst of it was,\nI couldn't help feeling I wasn't doing any good either for Stein or for\nmyself. Oh! it was beastly--the whole six weeks of it.\"'\n\n\n'He told me further that he didn't know what made him hang on--but of\ncourse we may guess. He sympathised deeply with the defenceless girl, at\nthe mercy of that \"mean, cowardly scoundrel.\" It appears Cornelius led\nher an awful life, stopping only short of actual ill-usage, for which\nhe had not the pluck, I suppose. He insisted upon her calling him\nfather--\"and with respect, too--with respect,\" he would scream, shaking\na little yellow fist in her face. \"I am a respectable man, and what are\nyou? Tell me--what are you? You think I am going to bring up somebody\nelse's child and not be treated with respect? You ought to be glad I let\nyou. Come--say Yes, father. . . . No? . . . You wait a bit.\" Thereupon\nhe would begin to abuse the dead woman, till the girl would run off with\nher hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in and out and round the\nhouse and amongst the sheds, would drive her into some corner, where she\nwould fall on her knees stopping her ears, and then he would stand at a\ndistance and declaim filthy denunciations at her back for half an hour\nat a stretch. \"Your mother was a devil, a deceitful devil--and you too\nare a devil,\" he would shriek in a final outburst, pick up a bit of dry\nearth or a handful of mud (there was plenty of mud around the house),\nand fling it into her hair. Sometimes, though, she would hold out full\nof scorn, confronting him in silence, her face sombre and contracted,\nand only now and then uttering a word or two that would make the other\njump and writhe with the sting. Jim told me these scenes were terrible.\nIt was indeed a strange thing to come upon in a wilderness. The\nendlessness of such a subtly cruel situation was appalling--if you think\nof it. The respectable Cornelius (Inchi 'Nelyus the Malays called him,\nwith a grimace that meant many things) was a much-disappointed man. I\ndon't know what he had expected would be done for him in consideration\nof his marriage; but evidently the liberty to steal, and embezzle, and\nappropriate to himself for many years and in any way that suited him\nbest, the goods of Stein's Trading Company (Stein kept the supply up\nunfalteringly as long as he could get his skippers to take it there) did\nnot seem to him a fair equivalent for the sacrifice of his honourable\nname. Jim would have enjoyed exceedingly thrashing Cornelius within an\ninch of his life; on the other hand, the scenes were of so painful\na character, so abominable, that his impulse would be to get out of\nearshot, in order to spare the girl's feelings. They left her agitated,\nspeechless, clutching her bosom now and then with a stony,\ndesperate face, and then Jim would lounge up and say unhappily,\n\"Now--come--really--what's the use--you must try to eat a bit,\" or give\nsome such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through\nthe doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and\nwith malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. \"I can stop his game,\"\nJim said to her once. \"Just say the word.\" And do you know what she\nanswered? She said--Jim told me impressively--that if she had not been\nsure he was intensely wretched himself, she would have found the courage\nto kill him with her own hands. \"Just fancy that! The poor devil of a\ngirl, almost a child, being driven to talk like that,\" he exclaimed in\nhorror. It seemed impossible to save her not only from that mean\nrascal but even from herself! It wasn't that he pitied her so much, he\naffirmed; it was more than pity; it was as if he had something on his\nconscience, while that life went on. To leave the house would have\nappeared a base desertion. He had understood at last that there was\nnothing to expect from a longer stay, neither accounts nor money, nor\ntruth of any sort, but he stayed on, exasperating Cornelius to the\nverge, I won't say of insanity, but almost of courage. Meantime he felt\nall sorts of dangers gathering obscurely about him. Doramin had sent\nover twice a trusty servant to tell him seriously that he could do\nnothing for his safety unless he would recross the river again and live\namongst the Bugis as at first. People of every condition used to call,\noften in the dead of night, in order to disclose to him plots for\nhis assassination. He was to be poisoned. He was to be stabbed in the\nbath-house. Arrangements were being made to have him shot from a boat\non the river. Each of these informants professed himself to be his very\ngood friend. It was enough--he told me--to spoil a fellow's rest for\never. Something of the kind was extremely possible--nay, probable--but\nthe lying warnings gave him only the sense of deadly scheming going on\nall around him, on all sides, in the dark. Nothing more calculated to\nshake the best of nerve. Finally, one night, Cornelius himself, with a\ngreat apparatus of alarm and secrecy, unfolded in solemn wheedling tones\na little plan wherein for one hundred dollars--or even for eighty; let's\nsay eighty--he, Cornelius, would procure a trustworthy man to smuggle\nJim out of the river, all safe. There was nothing else for it now--if\nJim cared a pin for his life. What's eighty dollars? A trifle. An\ninsignificant sum. While he, Cornelius, who had to remain behind, was\nabsolutely courting death by this proof of devotion to Mr. Stein's young\nfriend. The sight of his abject grimacing was--Jim told me--very hard\nto bear: he clutched at his hair, beat his breast, rocked himself to\nand fro with his hands pressed to his stomach, and actually pretended to\nshed tears. \"Your blood be on your own head,\" he squeaked at last, and\nrushed out. It is a curious question how far Cornelius was sincere in\nthat performance. Jim confessed to me that he did not sleep a wink after\nthe fellow had gone. He lay on his back on a thin mat spread over the\nbamboo flooring, trying idly to make out the bare rafters, and listening\nto the rustlings in the torn thatch. A star suddenly twinkled through a\nhole in the roof. His brain was in a whirl; but, nevertheless, it was on\nthat very night that he matured his plan for overcoming Sherif Ali. It\nhad been the thought of all the moments he could spare from the hopeless\ninvestigation into Stein's affairs, but the notion--he says--came to him\nthen all at once. He could see, as it were, the guns mounted on the top\nof the hill. He got very hot and excited lying there; sleep was out of\nthe question more than ever. He jumped up, and went out barefooted\non the verandah. Walking silently, he came upon the girl, motionless\nagainst the wall, as if on the watch. In his then state of mind it did\nnot surprise him to see her up, nor yet to hear her ask in an anxious\nwhisper where Cornelius could be. He simply said he did not know. She\nmoaned a little, and peered into the campong. Everything was very quiet.\nHe was possessed by his new idea, and so full of it that he could not\nhelp telling the girl all about it at once. She listened, clapped her\nhands lightly, whispered softly her admiration, but was evidently on the\nalert all the time. It seems he had been used to make a confidant of\nher all along--and that she on her part could and did give him a lot of\nuseful hints as to Patusan affairs there is no doubt. He assured me more\nthan once that he had never found himself the worse for her advice. At\nany rate, he was proceeding to explain his plan fully to her there and\nthen, when she pressed his arm once, and vanished from his side. Then\nCornelius appeared from somewhere, and, perceiving Jim, ducked sideways,\nas though he had been shot at, and afterwards stood very still in the\ndusk. At last he came forward prudently, like a suspicious cat. \"There\nwere some fishermen there--with fish,\" he said in a shaky voice. \"To\nsell fish--you understand.\" . . . It must have been then two o'clock in\nthe morning--a likely time for anybody to hawk fish about!\n\n'Jim, however, let the statement pass, and did not give it a single\nthought. Other matters occupied his mind, and besides he had neither\nseen nor heard anything. He contented himself by saying, \"Oh!\" absently,\ngot a drink of water out of a pitcher standing there, and leaving\nCornelius a prey to some inexplicable emotion--that made him embrace\nwith both arms the worm-eaten rail of the verandah as if his legs had\nfailed--went in again and lay down on his mat to think. By-and-by he\nheard stealthy footsteps. They stopped. A voice whispered tremulously\nthrough the wall, \"Are you asleep?\" \"No! What is it?\" he answered\nbriskly, and there was an abrupt movement outside, and then all was\nstill, as if the whisperer had been startled. Extremely annoyed at this,\nJim came out impetuously, and Cornelius with a faint shriek fled\nalong the verandah as far as the steps, where he hung on to the broken\nbanister. Very puzzled, Jim called out to him from the distance to know\nwhat the devil he meant. \"Have you given your consideration to what\nI spoke to you about?\" asked Cornelius, pronouncing the words with\ndifficulty, like a man in the cold fit of a fever. \"No!\" shouted Jim in\na passion. \"I have not, and I don't intend to. I am going to live here,\nin Patusan.\" \"You shall d-d-die h-h-here,\" answered Cornelius,\nstill shaking violently, and in a sort of expiring voice. The whole\nperformance was so absurd and provoking that Jim didn't know whether he\nought to be amused or angry. \"Not till I have seen you tucked away,\nyou bet,\" he called out, exasperated yet ready to laugh. Half seriously\n(being excited with his own thoughts, you know) he went on shouting,\n\"Nothing can touch me! You can do your damnedest.\" Somehow the shadowy\nCornelius far off there seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all the\nannoyances and difficulties he had found in his path. He let himself\ngo--his nerves had been over-wrought for days--and called him many\npretty names,--swindler, liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an\nextraordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite\nbeside himself--defied all Patusan to scare him away--declared he would\nmake them all dance to his own tune yet, and so on, in a menacing,\nboasting strain. Perfectly bombastic and ridiculous, he said. His ears\nburned at the bare recollection. Must have been off his chump in some\nway. . . . The girl, who was sitting with us, nodded her little head at\nme quickly, frowned faintly, and said, \"I heard him,\" with child-like\nsolemnity. He laughed and blushed. What stopped him at last, he said,\nwas the silence, the complete deathlike silence, of the indistinct\nfigure far over there, that seemed to hang collapsed, doubled over the\nrail in a weird immobility. He came to his senses, and ceasing suddenly,\nwondered greatly at himself. He watched for a while. Not a stir, not a\nsound. \"Exactly as if the chap had died while I had been making all that\nnoise,\" he said. He was so ashamed of himself that he went indoors in a\nhurry without another word, and flung himself down again. The row seemed\nto have done him good though, because he went to sleep for the rest of\nthe night like a baby. Hadn't slept like that for weeks. \"But _I_ didn't\nsleep,\" struck in the girl, one elbow on the table and nursing her\ncheek. \"I watched.\" Her big eyes flashed, rolling a little, and then she\nfixed them on my face intently.'\n\n\n'You may imagine with what interest I listened. All these details were\nperceived to have some significance twenty-four hours later. In the\nmorning Cornelius made no allusion to the events of the night. \"I\nsuppose you will come back to my poor house,\" he muttered, surlily,\nslinking up just as Jim was entering the canoe to go over to Doramin's\ncampong. Jim only nodded, without looking at him. \"You find it good fun,\nno doubt,\" muttered the other in a sour tone. Jim spent the day with the\nold nakhoda, preaching the necessity of vigorous action to the principal\nmen of the Bugis community, who had been summoned for a big talk. He\nremembered with pleasure how very eloquent and persuasive he had been.\n\"I managed to put some backbone into them that time, and no mistake,\" he\nsaid. Sherif Ali's last raid had swept the outskirts of the settlement,\nand some women belonging to the town had been carried off to the\nstockade. Sherif Ali's emissaries had been seen in the market-place the\nday before, strutting about haughtily in white cloaks, and boasting of\nthe Rajah's friendship for their master. One of them stood forward\nin the shade of a tree, and, leaning on the long barrel of a rifle,\nexhorted the people to prayer and repentance, advising them to kill all\nthe strangers in their midst, some of whom, he said, were infidels and\nothers even worse--children of Satan in the guise of Moslems. It was\nreported that several of the Rajah's people amongst the listeners had\nloudly expressed their approbation. The terror amongst the common people\nwas intense. Jim, immensely pleased with his day's work, crossed the\nriver again before sunset.\n\n'As he had got the Bugis irretrievably committed to action and had made\nhimself responsible for success on his own head, he was so elated that\nin the lightness of his heart he absolutely tried to be civil with\nCornelius. But Cornelius became wildly jovial in response, and it was\nalmost more than he could stand, he says, to hear his little squeaks of\nfalse laughter, to see him wriggle and blink, and suddenly catch hold of\nhis chin and crouch low over the table with a distracted stare. The\ngirl did not show herself, and Jim retired early. When he rose to say\ngood-night, Cornelius jumped up, knocking his chair over, and ducked out\nof sight as if to pick up something he had dropped. His good-night came\nhuskily from under the table. Jim was amazed to see him emerge with a\ndropping jaw, and staring, stupidly frightened eyes. He clutched the\nedge of the table. \"What's the matter? Are you unwell?\" asked Jim. \"Yes,\nyes, yes. A great colic in my stomach,\" says the other; and it is\nJim's opinion that it was perfectly true. If so, it was, in view of his\ncontemplated action, an abject sign of a still imperfect callousness for\nwhich he must be given all due credit.\n\n'Be it as it may, Jim's slumbers were disturbed by a dream of heavens\nlike brass resounding with a great voice, which called upon him to\nAwake! Awake! so loud that, notwithstanding his desperate determination\nto sleep on, he did wake up in reality. The glare of a red spluttering\nconflagration going on in mid-air fell on his eyes. Coils of black thick\nsmoke curved round the head of some apparition, some unearthly being,\nall in white, with a severe, drawn, anxious face. After a second or so\nhe recognised the girl. She was holding a dammar torch at arm's-length\naloft, and in a persistent, urgent monotone she was repeating, \"Get up!\nGet up! Get up!\"\n\n'Suddenly he leaped to his feet; at once she put into his hand a\nrevolver, his own revolver, which had been hanging on a nail, but loaded\nthis time. He gripped it in silence, bewildered, blinking in the light.\nHe wondered what he could do for her.\n\n'She asked rapidly and very low, \"Can you face four men with this?\"\nHe laughed while narrating this part at the recollection of his polite\nalacrity. It seems he made a great display of it. \"Certainly--of\ncourse--certainly--command me.\" He was not properly awake, and had a\nnotion of being very civil in these extraordinary circumstances, of\nshowing his unquestioning, devoted readiness. She left the room, and\nhe followed her; in the passage they disturbed an old hag who did the\ncasual cooking of the household, though she was so decrepit as to be\nhardly able to understand human speech. She got up and hobbled behind\nthem, mumbling toothlessly. On the verandah a hammock of sail-cloth,\nbelonging to Cornelius, swayed lightly to the touch of Jim's elbow. It\nwas empty.\n\n'The Patusan establishment, like all the posts of Stein's Trading\nCompany, had originally consisted of four buildings. Two of them were\nrepresented by two heaps of sticks, broken bamboos, rotten thatch,\nover which the four corner-posts of hardwood leaned sadly at different\nangles: the principal storeroom, however, stood yet, facing the agent's\nhouse. It was an oblong hut, built of mud and clay; it had at one end a\nwide door of stout planking, which so far had not come off the hinges,\nand in one of the side walls there was a square aperture, a sort of\nwindow, with three wooden bars. Before descending the few steps the girl\nturned her face over her shoulder and said quickly, \"You were to be set\nupon while you slept.\" Jim tells me he experienced a sense of deception.\nIt was the old story. He was weary of these attempts upon his life. He\nhad had his fill of these alarms. He was sick of them. He assured me he\nwas angry with the girl for deceiving him. He had followed her under the\nimpression that it was she who wanted his help, and now he had half\na mind to turn on his heel and go back in disgust. \"Do you know,\" he\ncommented profoundly, \"I rather think I was not quite myself for whole\nweeks on end about that time.\" \"Oh yes. You were though,\" I couldn't\nhelp contradicting.\n\n'But she moved on swiftly, and he followed her into the courtyard. All\nits fences had fallen in a long time ago; the neighbours' buffaloes\nwould pace in the morning across the open space, snorting profoundly,\nwithout haste; the very jungle was invading it already. Jim and the girl\nstopped in the rank grass. The light in which they stood made a dense\nblackness all round, and only above their heads there was an opulent\nglitter of stars. He told me it was a beautiful night--quite cool, with\na little stir of breeze from the river. It seems he noticed its friendly\nbeauty. Remember this is a love story I am telling you now. A lovely\nnight seemed to breathe on them a soft caress. The flame of the torch\nstreamed now and then with a fluttering noise like a flag, and for\na time this was the only sound. \"They are in the storeroom waiting,\"\nwhispered the girl; \"they are waiting for the signal.\" \"Who's to give\nit?\" he asked. She shook the torch, which blazed up after a shower of\nsparks. \"Only you have been sleeping so restlessly,\" she continued in\na murmur; \"I watched your sleep, too.\" \"You!\" he exclaimed, craning his\nneck to look about him. \"You think I watched on this night only!\" she\nsaid, with a sort of despairing indignation.\n\n'He says it was as if he had received a blow on the chest. He gasped.\nHe thought he had been an awful brute somehow, and he felt remorseful,\ntouched, happy, elated. This, let me remind you again, is a love story;\nyou can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive imbecility, the\nexalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station in torchlight, as\nif they had come there on purpose to have it out for the edification of\nconcealed murderers. If Sherif Ali's emissaries had been possessed--as\nJim remarked--of a pennyworth of spunk, this was the time to make a\nrush. His heart was thumping--not with fear--but he seemed to hear the\ngrass rustle, and he stepped smartly out of the light. Something dark,\nimperfectly seen, flitted rapidly out of sight. He called out in a\nstrong voice, \"Cornelius! O Cornelius!\" A profound silence succeeded:\nhis voice did not seem to have carried twenty feet. Again the girl was\nby his side. \"Fly!\" she said. The old woman was coming up; her broken\nfigure hovered in crippled little jumps on the edge of the light; they\nheard her mumbling, and a light, moaning sigh. \"Fly!\" repeated the girl\nexcitedly. \"They are frightened now--this light--the voices. They know\nyou are awake now--they know you are big, strong, fearless . . .\" \"If\nI am all that,\" he began; but she interrupted him: \"Yes--to-night! But\nwhat of to-morrow night? Of the next night? Of the night after--of all\nthe many, many nights? Can I be always watching?\" A sobbing catch of her\nbreath affected him beyond the power of words.\n\n'He told me that he had never felt so small, so powerless--and as to\ncourage, what was the good of it? he thought. He was so helpless that\neven flight seemed of no use; and though she kept on whispering, \"Go to\nDoramin, go to Doramin,\" with feverish insistence, he realised that for\nhim there was no refuge from that loneliness which centupled all his\ndangers except--in her. \"I thought,\" he said to me, \"that if I went\naway from her it would be the end of everything somehow.\" Only as they\ncouldn't stop there for ever in the middle of that courtyard, he made\nup his mind to go and look into the storehouse. He let her follow\nhim without thinking of any protest, as if they had been indissolubly\nunited. \"I am fearless--am I?\" he muttered through his teeth. She\nrestrained his arm. \"Wait till you hear my voice,\" she said, and,\ntorch in hand, ran lightly round the corner. He remained alone in the\ndarkness, his face to the door: not a sound, not a breath came from\nthe other side. The old hag let out a dreary groan somewhere behind his\nback. He heard a high-pitched almost screaming call from the girl. \"Now!\nPush!\" He pushed violently; the door swung with a creak and a clatter,\ndisclosing to his intense astonishment the low dungeon-like interior\nilluminated by a lurid, wavering glare. A turmoil of smoke eddied down\nupon an empty wooden crate in the middle of the floor, a litter of rags\nand straw tried to soar, but only stirred feebly in the draught. She had\nthrust the light through the bars of the window. He saw her bare round\narm extended and rigid, holding up the torch with the steadiness of\nan iron bracket. A conical ragged heap of old mats cumbered a distant\ncorner almost to the ceiling, and that was all.\n\n'He explained to me that he was bitterly disappointed at this. His\nfortitude had been tried by so many warnings, he had been for weeks\nsurrounded by so many hints of danger, that he wanted the relief of\nsome reality, of something tangible that he could meet. \"It would have\ncleared the air for a couple of hours at least, if you know what I\nmean,\" he said to me. \"Jove! I had been living for days with a stone on\nmy chest.\" Now at last he had thought he would get hold of something,\nand--nothing! Not a trace, not a sign of anybody. He had raised his\nweapon as the door flew open, but now his arm fell. \"Fire! Defend\nyourself,\" the girl outside cried in an agonising voice. She, being in\nthe dark and with her arm thrust in to the shoulder through the small\nhole, couldn't see what was going on, and she dared not withdraw\nthe torch now to run round. \"There's nobody here!\" yelled Jim\ncontemptuously, but his impulse to burst into a resentful exasperated\nlaugh died without a sound: he had perceived in the very act of turning\naway that he was exchanging glances with a pair of eyes in the heap of\nmats. He saw a shifting gleam of whites. \"Come out!\" he cried in a fury,\na little doubtful, and a dark-faced head, a head without a body, shaped\nitself in the rubbish, a strangely detached head, that looked at him\nwith a steady scowl. Next moment the whole mound stirred, and with a\nlow grunt a man emerged swiftly, and bounded towards Jim. Behind him the\nmats as it were jumped and flew, his right arm was raised with a crooked\nelbow, and the dull blade of a kriss protruded from his fist held off,\na little above his head. A cloth wound tight round his loins seemed\ndazzlingly white on his bronze skin; his naked body glistened as if wet.\n\n'Jim noted all this. He told me he was experiencing a feeling of\nunutterable relief, of vengeful elation. He held his shot, he says,\ndeliberately. He held it for the tenth part of a second, for three\nstrides of the man--an unconscionable time. He held it for the pleasure\nof saying to himself, That's a dead man! He was absolutely positive\nand certain. He let him come on because it did not matter. A dead man,\nanyhow. He noticed the dilated nostrils, the wide eyes, the intent,\neager stillness of the face, and then he fired.\n\n'The explosion in that confined space was stunning. He stepped back a\npace. He saw the man jerk his head up, fling his arms forward, and drop\nthe kriss. He ascertained afterwards that he had shot him through the\nmouth, a little upwards, the bullet coming out high at the back of the\nskull. With the impetus of his rush the man drove straight on, his face\nsuddenly gaping disfigured, with his hands open before him gropingly, as\nthough blinded, and landed with terrific violence on his forehead, just\nshort of Jim's bare toes. Jim says he didn't lose the smallest detail\nof all this. He found himself calm, appeased, without rancour, without\nuneasiness, as if the death of that man had atoned for everything. The\nplace was getting very full of sooty smoke from the torch, in which\nthe unswaying flame burned blood-red without a flicker. He walked in\nresolutely, striding over the dead body, and covered with his revolver\nanother naked figure outlined vaguely at the other end. As he was about\nto pull the trigger, the man threw away with force a short heavy spear,\nand squatted submissively on his hams, his back to the wall and his\nclasped hands between his legs. \"You want your life?\" Jim said. The\nother made no sound. \"How many more of you?\" asked Jim again. \"Two more,\nTuan,\" said the man very softly, looking with big fascinated eyes into\nthe muzzle of the revolver. Accordingly two more crawled from under the\nmats, holding out ostentatiously their empty hands.'\n\n'Jim took up an advantageous position and shepherded them out in a bunch\nthrough the doorway: all that time the torch had remained vertical in\nthe grip of a little hand, without so much as a tremble. The three men\nobeyed him, perfectly mute, moving automatically. He ranged them in a\nrow. \"Link arms!\" he ordered. They did so. \"The first who withdraws his\narm or turns his head is a dead man,\" he said. \"March!\" They stepped out\ntogether, rigidly; he followed, and at the side the girl, in a trailing\nwhite gown, her black hair falling as low as her waist, bore the light.\nErect and swaying, she seemed to glide without touching the earth; the\nonly sound was the silky swish and rustle of the long grass. \"Stop!\"\ncried Jim.\n\n'The river-bank was steep; a great freshness ascended, the light fell on\nthe edge of smooth dark water frothing without a ripple; right and left\nthe shapes of the houses ran together below the sharp outlines of the\nroofs. \"Take my greetings to Sherif Ali--till I come myself,\" said\nJim. Not one head of the three budged. \"Jump!\" he thundered. The\nthree splashes made one splash, a shower flew up, black heads bobbed\nconvulsively, and disappeared; but a great blowing and spluttering went\non, growing faint, for they were diving industriously in great fear of\na parting shot. Jim turned to the girl, who had been a silent and\nattentive observer. His heart seemed suddenly to grow too big for his\nbreast and choke him in the hollow of his throat. This probably made\nhim speechless for so long, and after returning his gaze she flung the\nburning torch with a wide sweep of the arm into the river. The ruddy\nfiery glare, taking a long flight through the night, sank with a vicious\nhiss, and the calm soft starlight descended upon them, unchecked.\n\n'He did not tell me what it was he said when at last he recovered his\nvoice. I don't suppose he could be very eloquent. The world was still,\nthe night breathed on them, one of those nights that seem created for\nthe sheltering of tenderness, and there are moments when our souls, as\nif freed from their dark envelope, glow with an exquisite sensibility\nthat makes certain silences more lucid than speeches. As to the girl,\nhe told me, \"She broke down a bit. Excitement--don't you know.\nReaction. Deucedly tired she must have been--and all that kind of thing.\nAnd--and--hang it all--she was fond of me, don't you see. . . . I\ntoo . . . didn't know, of course . . . never entered my head . . .\"\n\n'Then he got up and began to walk about in some agitation. \"I--I love\nher dearly. More than I can tell. Of course one cannot tell. You take a\ndifferent view of your actions when you come to understand, when you\nare _made_ to understand every day that your existence is necessary--you\nsee, absolutely necessary--to another person. I am made to feel that.\nWonderful! But only try to think what her life has been. It is too\nextravagantly awful! Isn't it? And me finding her here like this--as you\nmay go out for a stroll and come suddenly upon somebody drowning in a\nlonely dark place. Jove! No time to lose. Well, it is a trust too . . .\nI believe I am equal to it . . .\"\n\n'I must tell you the girl had left us to ourselves some time before. He\nslapped his chest. \"Yes! I feel that, but I believe I am equal to all my\nluck!\" He had the gift of finding a special meaning in everything that\nhappened to him. This was the view he took of his love affair; it was\nidyllic, a little solemn, and also true, since his belief had all the\nunshakable seriousness of youth. Some time after, on another occasion,\nhe said to me, \"I've been only two years here, and now, upon my word, I\ncan't conceive being able to live anywhere else. The very thought of the\nworld outside is enough to give me a fright; because, don't you see,\" he\ncontinued, with downcast eyes watching the action of his boot busied in\nsquashing thoroughly a tiny bit of dried mud (we were strolling on the\nriver-bank)--\"because I have not forgotten why I came here. Not yet!\"\n\n'I refrained from looking at him, but I think I heard a short sigh; we\ntook a turn or two in silence. \"Upon my soul and conscience,\" he began\nagain, \"if such a thing can be forgotten, then I think I have a right to\ndismiss it from my mind. Ask any man here\" . . . his voice changed. \"Is\nit not strange,\" he went on in a gentle, almost yearning tone, \"that all\nthese people, all these people who would do anything for me, can never\nbe made to understand? Never! If you disbelieved me I could not call\nthem up. It seems hard, somehow. I am stupid, am I not? What more can I\nwant? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just--who is it\nthey would trust with their lives?--they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet\nthey can never know the real, real truth . . .\"\n\n'That's what he said to me on my last day with him. I did not let a\nmurmur escape me: I felt he was going to say more, and come no nearer\nto the root of the matter. The sun, whose concentrated glare dwarfs the\nearth into a restless mote of dust, had sunk behind the forest, and\nthe diffused light from an opal sky seemed to cast upon a world without\nshadows and without brilliance the illusion of a calm and pensive\ngreatness. I don't know why, listening to him, I should have noted\nso distinctly the gradual darkening of the river, of the air; the\nirresistible slow work of the night settling silently on all the visible\nforms, effacing the outlines, burying the shapes deeper and deeper, like\na steady fall of impalpable black dust.\n\n'\"Jove!\" he began abruptly, \"there are days when a fellow is too absurd\nfor anything; only I know I can tell you what I like. I talk about\nbeing done with it--with the bally thing at the back of my head . . .\nForgetting . . . Hang me if I know! I can think of it quietly. After\nall, what has it proved? Nothing. I suppose you don't think so . . .\"\n\n'I made a protesting murmur.\n\n'\"No matter,\" he said. \"I am satisfied . . . nearly. I've got to\nlook only at the face of the first man that comes along, to regain my\nconfidence. They can't be made to understand what is going on in me.\nWhat of that? Come! I haven't done so badly.\"\n\n'\"Not so badly,\" I said.\n\n'\"But all the same, you wouldn't like to have me aboard your own ship\nhey?\"\n\n'\"Confound you!\" I cried. \"Stop this.\"\n\n'\"Aha! You see,\" he said, crowing, as it were, over me placidly. \"Only,\"\nhe went on, \"you just try to tell this to any of them here. They would\nthink you a fool, a liar, or worse. And so I can stand it. I've done a\nthing or two for them, but this is what they have done for me.\"\n\n'\"My dear chap,\" I cried, \"you shall always remain for them an insoluble\nmystery.\" Thereupon we were silent.\n\n'\"Mystery,\" he repeated, before looking up. \"Well, then let me always\nremain here.\"\n\n'After the sun had set, the darkness seemed to drive upon us, borne in\nevery faint puff of the breeze. In the middle of a hedged path I saw the\narrested, gaunt, watchful, and apparently one-legged silhouette of Tamb'\nItam; and across the dusky space my eye detected something white moving\nto and fro behind the supports of the roof. As soon as Jim, with Tamb'\nItam at his heels, had started upon his evening rounds, I went up to the\nhouse alone, and, unexpectedly, found myself waylaid by the girl, who\nhad been clearly waiting for this opportunity.\n\n'It is hard to tell you what it was precisely she wanted to wrest\nfrom me. Obviously it would be something very simple--the simplest\nimpossibility in the world; as, for instance, the exact description of\nthe form of a cloud. She wanted an assurance, a statement, a promise, an\nexplanation--I don't know how to call it: the thing has no name. It was\ndark under the projecting roof, and all I could see were the flowing\nlines of her gown, the pale small oval of her face, with the white flash\nof her teeth, and, turned towards me, the big sombre orbits of her eyes,\nwhere there seemed to be a faint stir, such as you may fancy you can\ndetect when you plunge your gaze to the bottom of an immensely deep\nwell. What is it that moves there? you ask yourself. Is it a blind\nmonster or only a lost gleam from the universe? It occurred to me--don't\nlaugh--that all things being dissimilar, she was more inscrutable in\nher childish ignorance than the Sphinx propounding childish riddles\nto wayfarers. She had been carried off to Patusan before her eyes\nwere open. She had grown up there; she had seen nothing, she had known\nnothing, she had no conception of anything. I ask myself whether she\nwere sure that anything else existed. What notions she may have formed\nof the outside world is to me inconceivable: all that she knew of its\ninhabitants were a betrayed woman and a sinister pantaloon. Her lover\nalso came to her from there, gifted with irresistible seductions; but\nwhat would become of her if he should return to these inconceivable\nregions that seemed always to claim back their own? Her mother had\nwarned her of this with tears, before she died . . .\n\n'She had caught hold of my arm firmly, and as soon as I had stopped she\nhad withdrawn her hand in haste. She was audacious and shrinking. She\nfeared nothing, but she was checked by the profound incertitude and the\nextreme strangeness--a brave person groping in the dark. I belonged to\nthis Unknown that might claim Jim for its own at any moment. I was,\nas it were, in the secret of its nature and of its intentions--the\nconfidant of a threatening mystery--armed with its power perhaps! I\nbelieve she supposed I could with a word whisk Jim away out of her very\narms; it is my sober conviction she went through agonies of apprehension\nduring my long talks with Jim; through a real and intolerable anguish\nthat might have conceivably driven her into plotting my murder, had the\nfierceness of her soul been equal to the tremendous situation it had\ncreated. This is my impression, and it is all I can give you: the whole\nthing dawned gradually upon me, and as it got clearer and clearer I was\noverwhelmed by a slow incredulous amazement. She made me believe her,\nbut there is no word that on my lips could render the effect of the\nheadlong and vehement whisper, of the soft, passionate tones, of the\nsudden breathless pause and the appealing movement of the white arms\nextended swiftly. They fell; the ghostly figure swayed like a slender\ntree in the wind, the pale oval of the face drooped; it was impossible\nto distinguish her features, the darkness of the eyes was unfathomable;\ntwo wide sleeves uprose in the dark like unfolding wings, and she stood\nsilent, holding her head in her hands.'\n\n\n\n'I was immensely touched: her youth, her ignorance, her pretty beauty,\nwhich had the simple charm and the delicate vigour of a wild-flower,\nher pathetic pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me with almost\nthe strength of her own unreasonable and natural fear. She feared the\nunknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely\nvast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows, for all the world\nthat neither cared for Jim nor needed him in the least. I would have\nbeen ready enough to answer for the indifference of the teeming earth\nbut for the reflection that he too belonged to this mysterious unknown\nof her fears, and that, however much I stood for, I did not stand for\nhim. This made me hesitate. A murmur of hopeless pain unsealed my lips.\nI began by protesting that I at least had come with no intention to take\nJim away.\n\n'Why did I come, then? After a slight movement she was as still as a\nmarble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship,\nbusiness; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him stay.\n. . . \"They always leave us,\" she murmured. The breath of sad wisdom\nfrom the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers seemed to pass in a\nfaint sigh. . . . Nothing, I said, could separate Jim from her.\n\n'It is my firm conviction now; it was my conviction at the time; it was\nthe only possible conclusion from the facts of the case. It was not made\nmore certain by her whispering in a tone in which one speaks to oneself,\n\"He swore this to me.\" \"Did you ask him?\" I said.\n\n'She made a step nearer. \"No. Never!\" She had asked him only to go away.\nIt was that night on the river-bank, after he had killed the man--after\nshe had flung the torch in the water because he was looking at her so.\nThere was too much light, and the danger was over then--for a little\ntime--for a little time. He said then he would not abandon her to\nCornelius. She had insisted. She wanted him to leave her. He said that\nhe could not--that it was impossible. He trembled while he said this.\nShe had felt him tremble. . . . One does not require much imagination\nto see the scene, almost to hear their whispers. She was afraid for him\ntoo. I believe that then she saw in him only a predestined victim of\ndangers which she understood better than himself. Though by nothing\nbut his mere presence he had mastered her heart, had filled all\nher thoughts, and had possessed himself of all her affections, she\nunderestimated his chances of success. It is obvious that at about\nthat time everybody was inclined to underestimate his chances. Strictly\nspeaking he didn't seem to have any. I know this was Cornelius's view.\nHe confessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part he had\nplayed in Sherif Ali's plot to do away with the infidel. Even Sherif Ali\nhimself, as it seems certain now, had nothing but contempt for the white\nman. Jim was to be murdered mainly on religious grounds, I believe. A\nsimple act of piety (and so far infinitely meritorious), but otherwise\nwithout much importance. In the last part of this opinion Cornelius\nconcurred. \"Honourable sir,\" he argued abjectly on the only occasion he\nmanaged to have me to himself--\"honourable sir, how was I to know? Who\nwas he? What could he do to make people believe him? What did Mr. Stein\nmean sending a boy like that to talk big to an old servant? I was ready\nto save him for eighty dollars. Only eighty dollars. Why didn't the\nfool go? Was I to get stabbed myself for the sake of a stranger?\" He\ngrovelled in spirit before me, with his body doubled up insinuatingly\nand his hands hovering about my knees, as though he were ready to\nembrace my legs. \"What's eighty dollars? An insignificant sum to give to\na defenceless old man ruined for life by a deceased she-devil.\" Here he\nwept. But I anticipate. I didn't that night chance upon Cornelius till I\nhad had it out with the girl.\n\n'She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and even to leave\nthe country. It was his danger that was foremost in her thoughts--even\nif she wanted to save herself too--perhaps unconsciously: but then look\nat the warning she had, look at the lesson that could be drawn from\nevery moment of the recently ended life in which all her memories were\ncentred. She fell at his feet--she told me so--there by the river, in\nthe discreet light of stars which showed nothing except great masses of\nsilent shadows, indefinite open spaces, and trembling faintly upon the\nbroad stream made it appear as wide as the sea. He had lifted her up.\nHe lifted her up, and then she would struggle no more. Of course not.\nStrong arms, a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to rest her poor lonely\nlittle head upon. The need--the infinite need--of all this for the\naching heart, for the bewildered mind;--the promptings of youth--the\nnecessity of the moment. What would you have? One understands--unless\none is incapable of understanding anything under the sun. And so she was\ncontent to be lifted up--and held. \"You know--Jove! this is serious--no\nnonsense in it!\" as Jim had whispered hurriedly with a troubled\nconcerned face on the threshold of his house. I don't know so much about\nnonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their romance: they\ncame together under the shadow of a life's disaster, like knight and\nmaiden meeting to exchange vows amongst haunted ruins. The starlight was\ngood enough for that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot\nresolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream. I\ndid look upon the stream that night and from the very place; it rolled\nsilent and as black as Styx: the next day I went away, but I am not\nlikely to forget what it was she wanted to be saved from when she\nentreated him to leave her while there was time. She told me what\nit was, calmed--she was now too passionately interested for mere\nexcitement--in a voice as quiet in the obscurity as her white half-lost\nfigure. She told me, \"I didn't want to die weeping.\" I thought I had not\nheard aright.\n\n'\"You did not want to die weeping?\" I repeated after her. \"Like my\nmother,\" she added readily. The outlines of her white shape did not\nstir in the least. \"My mother had wept bitterly before she died,\" she\nexplained. An inconceivable calmness seemed to have risen from the\nground around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of a flood in the\nnight, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions. There came\nupon me, as though I had felt myself losing my footing in the midst of\nwaters, a sudden dread, the dread of the unknown depths. She went on\nexplaining that, during the last moments, being alone with her mother,\nshe had to leave the side of the couch to go and set her back against\nthe door, in order to keep Cornelius out. He desired to get in, and\nkept on drumming with both fists, only desisting now and again to shout\nhuskily, \"Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!\" In a far corner upon a few\nmats the moribund woman, already speechless and unable to lift her arm,\nrolled her head over, and with a feeble movement of her hand seemed to\ncommand--\"No! No!\" and the obedient daughter, setting her shoulders with\nall her strength against the door, was looking on. \"The tears fell from\nher eyes--and then she died,\" concluded the girl in an imperturbable\nmonotone, which more than anything else, more than the white statuesque\nimmobility of her person, more than mere words could do, troubled my\nmind profoundly with the passive, irremediable horror of the scene. It\nhad the power to drive me out of my conception of existence, out of\nthat shelter each of us makes for himself to creep under in moments of\ndanger, as a tortoise withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had\na view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of\ndisorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is\nas sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can\nconceive. But still--it was only a moment: I went back into my shell\ndirectly. One _must_--don't you know?--though I seemed to have lost all\nmy words in the chaos of dark thoughts I had contemplated for a second\nor two beyond the pale. These came back, too, very soon, for words also\nbelong to the sheltering conception of light and order which is our\nrefuge. I had them ready at my disposal before she whispered softly, \"He\nswore he would never leave me, when we stood there alone! He swore to\nme!\". . . \"And it is possible that you--you! do not believe him?\"\nI asked, sincerely reproachful, genuinely shocked. Why couldn't she\nbelieve? Wherefore this craving for incertitude, this clinging to fear,\nas if incertitude and fear had been the safeguards of her love. It was\nmonstrous. She should have made for herself a shelter of inexpugnable\npeace out of that honest affection. She had not the knowledge--not the\nskill perhaps. The night had come on apace; it had grown pitch-dark\nwhere we were, so that without stirring she had faded like the\nintangible form of a wistful and perverse spirit. And suddenly I heard\nher quiet whisper again, \"Other men had sworn the same thing.\" It was\nlike a meditative comment on some thoughts full of sadness, of awe. And\nshe added, still lower if possible, \"My father did.\" She paused the\ntime to draw an inaudible breath. \"Her father too.\" . . . These were the\nthings she knew! At once I said, \"Ah! but he is not like that.\" This,\nit seemed, she did not intend to dispute; but after a time the strange\nstill whisper wandering dreamily in the air stole into my ears. \"Why\nis he different? Is he better? Is he . . .\" \"Upon my word of honour,\" I\nbroke in, \"I believe he is.\" We subdued our tones to a mysterious pitch.\nAmongst the huts of Jim's workmen (they were mostly liberated slaves\nfrom the Sherif's stockade) somebody started a shrill, drawling song.\nAcross the river a big fire (at Doramin's, I think) made a glowing\nball, completely isolated in the night. \"Is he more true?\" she murmured.\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"More true than any other man,\" she repeated in\nlingering accents. \"Nobody here,\" I said, \"would dream of doubting his\nword--nobody would dare--except you.\"\n\n'I think she made a movement at this. \"More brave,\" she went on in a\nchanged tone. \"Fear will never drive him away from you,\" I said a little\nnervously. The song stopped short on a shrill note, and was succeeded by\nseveral voices talking in the distance. Jim's voice too. I was struck\nby her silence. \"What has he been telling you? He has been telling you\nsomething?\" I asked. There was no answer. \"What is it he told you?\" I\ninsisted.\n\n'\"Do you think I can tell you? How am I to know? How am I to\nunderstand?\" she cried at last. There was a stir. I believe she was\nwringing her hands. \"There is something he can never forget.\"\n\n'\"So much the better for you,\" I said gloomily.\n\n'\"What is it? What is it?\" She put an extraordinary force of appeal into\nher supplicating tone. \"He says he had been afraid. How can I believe\nthis? Am I a mad woman to believe this? You all remember something! You\nall go back to it. What is it? You tell me! What is this thing? Is it\nalive?--is it dead? I hate it. It is cruel. Has it got a face and a\nvoice--this calamity? Will he see it--will he hear it? In his sleep\nperhaps when he cannot see me--and then arise and go. Ah! I shall never\nforgive him. My mother had forgiven--but I, never! Will it be a sign--a\ncall?\"\n\n'It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and\nshe seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by\nthe charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another\nghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a\ndisembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very\nground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so\nsimple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have\never to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians\nthat we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered\nin the hopeless chill of such a task. A sign, a call! How telling in its\nexpression was her ignorance. A few words! How she came to know them,\nhow she came to pronounce them, I can't imagine. Women find their\ninspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely awful,\nabsurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice at all was enough\nto strike awe into the heart. Had a spurned stone cried out in pain it\ncould not have appeared a greater and more pitiful miracle. These few\nsounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted lives tragic\nto my mind. It was impossible to make her understand. I chafed silently\nat my impotence. And Jim, too--poor devil! Who would need him? Who would\nremember him? He had what he wanted. His very existence probably had\nbeen forgotten by this time. They had mastered their fates. They were\ntragic.\n\n'Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and my part was to\nspeak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I was deeply\nmoved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would have given\nanything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in\nits invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel\nwires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more\ndifficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre\nthrough the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral\nthroat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad\nto make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is\nnot run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words\nof truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a\ndesperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too\nsubtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters!\n\n'I began my exorcism with a heavy heart, with a sort of sullen anger in\nit too. Jim's voice, suddenly raised with a stern intonation, carried\nacross the courtyard, reproving the carelessness of some dumb sinner by\nthe river-side. Nothing--I said, speaking in a distinct murmur--there\ncould be nothing, in that unknown world she fancied so eager to rob her\nof her happiness, there was nothing, neither living nor dead, there was\nno face, no voice, no power, that could tear Jim from her side. I drew\nbreath and she whispered softly, \"He told me so.\" \"He told you the\ntruth,\" I said. \"Nothing,\" she sighed out, and abruptly turned upon me\nwith a barely audible intensity of tone: \"Why did you come to us from\nout there? He speaks of you too often. You make me afraid. Do you--do\nyou want him?\" A sort of stealthy fierceness had crept into our hurried\nmutters. \"I shall never come again,\" I said bitterly. \"And I don't want\nhim. No one wants him.\" \"No one,\" she repeated in a tone of doubt. \"No\none,\" I affirmed, feeling myself swayed by some strange excitement. \"You\nthink him strong, wise, courageous, great--why not believe him to be\ntrue too? I shall go to-morrow--and that is the end. You shall never be\ntroubled by a voice from there again. This world you don't know is too\nbig to miss him. You understand? Too big. You've got his heart in your\nhand. You must feel that. You must know that.\" \"Yes, I know that,\" she\nbreathed out, hard and still, as a statue might whisper.\n\n'I felt I had done nothing. And what is it that I had wished to do? I am\nnot sure now. At the time I was animated by an inexplicable ardour, as\nif before some great and necessary task--the influence of the moment\nupon my mental and emotional state. There are in all our lives\nsuch moments, such influences, coming from the outside, as it were,\nirresistible, incomprehensible--as if brought about by the mysterious\nconjunctions of the planets. She owned, as I had put it to her, his\nheart. She had that and everything else--if she could only believe it.\nWhat I had to tell her was that in the whole world there was no one who\never would need his heart, his mind, his hand. It was a common fate, and\nyet it seemed an awful thing to say of any man. She listened without\na word, and her stillness now was like the protest of an invincible\nunbelief. What need she care for the world beyond the forests? I asked.\nFrom all the multitudes that peopled the vastness of that unknown there\nwould come, I assured her, as long as he lived, neither a call nor a\nsign for him. Never. I was carried away. Never! Never! I remember with\nwonder the sort of dogged fierceness I displayed. I had the illusion\nof having got the spectre by the throat at last. Indeed the whole real\nthing has left behind the detailed and amazing impression of a dream.\nWhy should she fear? She knew him to be strong, true, wise, brave. He\nwas all that. Certainly. He was more. He was great--invincible--and the\nworld did not want him, it had forgotten him, it would not even know\nhim.\n\n'I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound, and the feeble dry\nsound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in the middle\nof the river seemed to make it infinite. \"Why?\" she murmured. I felt\nthat sort of rage one feels during a hard tussle. The spectre was trying\nto slip out of my grasp. \"Why?\" she repeated louder; \"tell me!\" And as\nI remained confounded, she stamped with her foot like a spoilt child.\n\"Why? Speak.\" \"You want to know?\" I asked in a fury. \"Yes!\" she cried.\n\"Because he is not good enough,\" I said brutally. During the moment's\npause I noticed the fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating the\ncircle of its glow like an amazed stare, and contract suddenly to a\nred pin-point. I only knew how close to me she had been when I felt\nthe clutch of her fingers on my forearm. Without raising her voice, she\nthrew into it an infinity of scathing contempt, bitterness, and despair.\n\n'\"This is the very thing he said. . . . You lie!\"\n\n'The last two words she cried at me in the native dialect. \"Hear me\nout!\" I entreated; she caught her breath tremulously, flung my arm away.\n\"Nobody, nobody is good enough,\" I began with the greatest earnestness.\nI could hear the sobbing labour of her breath frightfully quickened. I\nhung my head. What was the use? Footsteps were approaching; I slipped\naway without another word. . . .'\n\n\nMarlow swung his legs out, got up quickly, and staggered a little, as\nthough he had been set down after a rush through space. He leaned his\nback against the balustrade and faced a disordered array of long cane\nchairs. The bodies prone in them seemed startled out of their torpor by\nhis movement. One or two sat up as if alarmed; here and there a cigar\nglowed yet; Marlow looked at them all with the eyes of a man returning\nfrom the excessive remoteness of a dream. A throat was cleared; a calm\nvoice encouraged negligently, 'Well.'\n\n'Nothing,' said Marlow with a slight start. 'He had told her--that's\nall. She did not believe him--nothing more. As to myself, I do not know\nwhether it be just, proper, decent for me to rejoice or to be sorry. For\nmy part, I cannot say what I believed--indeed I don't know to this day,\nand never shall probably. But what did the poor devil believe himself?\nTruth shall prevail--don't you know Magna est veritas el . . . Yes, when\nit gets a chance. There is a law, no doubt--and likewise a law regulates\nyour luck in the throwing of dice. It is not Justice the servant of men,\nbut accident, hazard, Fortune--the ally of patient Time--that holds an\neven and scrupulous balance. Both of us had said the very same thing.\nDid we both speak the truth--or one of us did--or neither? . . .'\n\nMarlow paused, crossed his arms on his breast, and in a changed tone--\n\n'She said we lied. Poor soul! Well--let's leave it to Chance, whose ally\nis Time, that cannot be hurried, and whose enemy is Death, that will not\nwait. I had retreated--a little cowed, I must own. I had tried a fall\nwith fear itself and got thrown--of course. I had only succeeded in\nadding to her anguish the hint of some mysterious collusion, of an\ninexplicable and incomprehensible conspiracy to keep her for ever in the\ndark. And it had come easily, naturally, unavoidably, by his act, by her\nown act! It was as though I had been shown the working of the implacable\ndestiny of which we are the victims--and the tools. It was appalling\nto think of the girl whom I had left standing there motionless; Jim's\nfootsteps had a fateful sound as he tramped by, without seeing me, in\nhis heavy laced boots. \"What? No lights!\" he said in a loud, surprised\nvoice. \"What are you doing in the dark--you two?\" Next moment he caught\nsight of her, I suppose. \"Hallo, girl!\" he cried cheerily. \"Hallo, boy!\"\nshe answered at once, with amazing pluck.\n\n'This was their usual greeting to each other, and the bit of swagger she\nwould put into her rather high but sweet voice was very droll, pretty,\nand childlike. It delighted Jim greatly. This was the last occasion on\nwhich I heard them exchange this familiar hail, and it struck a chill\ninto my heart. There was the high sweet voice, the pretty effort, the\nswagger; but it all seemed to die out prematurely, and the playful call\nsounded like a moan. It was too confoundedly awful. \"What have you done\nwith Marlow?\" Jim was asking; and then, \"Gone down--has he? Funny I\ndidn't meet him. . . . You there, Marlow?\"\n\n'I didn't answer. I wasn't going in--not yet at any rate. I really\ncouldn't. While he was calling me I was engaged in making my escape\nthrough a little gate leading out upon a stretch of newly cleared\nground. No; I couldn't face them yet. I walked hastily with lowered head\nalong a trodden path. The ground rose gently, the few big trees had been\nfelled, the undergrowth had been cut down and the grass fired. He had a\nmind to try a coffee-plantation there. The big hill, rearing its double\nsummit coal-black in the clear yellow glow of the rising moon, seemed\nto cast its shadow upon the ground prepared for that experiment. He was\ngoing to try ever so many experiments; I had admired his energy, his\nenterprise, and his shrewdness. Nothing on earth seemed less real now\nthan his plans, his energy, and his enthusiasm; and raising my eyes, I\nsaw part of the moon glittering through the bushes at the bottom of the\nchasm. For a moment it looked as though the smooth disc, falling from\nits place in the sky upon the earth, had rolled to the bottom of that\nprecipice: its ascending movement was like a leisurely rebound; it\ndisengaged itself from the tangle of twigs; the bare contorted limb of\nsome tree, growing on the slope, made a black crack right across its\nface. It threw its level rays afar as if from a cavern, and in this\nmournful eclipse-like light the stumps of felled trees uprose very dark,\nthe heavy shadows fell at my feet on all sides, my own moving shadow,\nand across my path the shadow of the solitary grave perpetually\ngarlanded with flowers. In the darkened moonlight the interlaced\nblossoms took on shapes foreign to one's memory and colours indefinable\nto the eye, as though they had been special flowers gathered by no man,\ngrown not in this world, and destined for the use of the dead alone.\nTheir powerful scent hung in the warm air, making it thick and heavy\nlike the fumes of incense. The lumps of white coral shone round the dark\nmound like a chaplet of bleached skulls, and everything around was so\nquiet that when I stood still all sound and all movement in the world\nseemed to come to an end.\n\n'It was a great peace, as if the earth had been one grave, and for a\ntime I stood there thinking mostly of the living who, buried in remote\nplaces out of the knowledge of mankind, still are fated to share in its\ntragic or grotesque miseries. In its noble struggles too--who knows?\nThe human heart is vast enough to contain all the world. It is valiant\nenough to bear the burden, but where is the courage that would cast it\noff?\n\n'I suppose I must have fallen into a sentimental mood; I only know that\nI stood there long enough for the sense of utter solitude to get hold\nof me so completely that all I had lately seen, all I had heard, and the\nvery human speech itself, seemed to have passed away out of existence,\nliving only for a while longer in my memory, as though I had been the\nlast of mankind. It was a strange and melancholy illusion, evolved\nhalf-consciously like all our illusions, which I suspect only to be\nvisions of remote unattainable truth, seen dimly. This was, indeed, one\nof the lost, forgotten, unknown places of the earth; I had looked under\nits obscure surface; and I felt that when to-morrow I had left it for\never, it would slip out of existence, to live only in my memory till I\nmyself passed into oblivion. I have that feeling about me now; perhaps\nit is that feeling which has incited me to tell you the story, to try to\nhand over to you, as it were, its very existence, its reality--the truth\ndisclosed in a moment of illusion.\n\n'Cornelius broke upon it. He bolted out, vermin-like, from the long\ngrass growing in a depression of the ground. I believe his house was\nrotting somewhere near by, though I've never seen it, not having been\nfar enough in that direction. He ran towards me upon the path; his feet,\nshod in dirty white shoes, twinkled on the dark earth; he pulled himself\nup, and began to whine and cringe under a tall stove-pipe hat. His\ndried-up little carcass was swallowed up, totally lost, in a suit of\nblack broadcloth. That was his costume for holidays and ceremonies, and\nit reminded me that this was the fourth Sunday I had spent in Patusan.\nAll the time of my stay I had been vaguely aware of his desire to\nconfide in me, if he only could get me all to himself. He hung about\nwith an eager craving look on his sour yellow little face; but his\ntimidity had kept him back as much as my natural reluctance to have\nanything to do with such an unsavoury creature. He would have succeeded,\nnevertheless, had he not been so ready to slink off as soon as you\nlooked at him. He would slink off before Jim's severe gaze, before my\nown, which I tried to make indifferent, even before Tamb' Itam's surly,\nsuperior glance. He was perpetually slinking away; whenever seen he was\nseen moving off deviously, his face over his shoulder, with either a\nmistrustful snarl or a woe-begone, piteous, mute aspect; but no assumed\nexpression could conceal this innate irremediable abjectness of his\nnature, any more than an arrangement of clothing can conceal some\nmonstrous deformity of the body.\n\n'I don't know whether it was the demoralisation of my utter defeat in\nmy encounter with a spectre of fear less than an hour ago, but I let\nhim capture me without even a show of resistance. I was doomed to be\nthe recipient of confidences, and to be confronted with unanswerable\nquestions. It was trying; but the contempt, the unreasoned contempt, the\nman's appearance provoked, made it easier to bear. He couldn't possibly\nmatter. Nothing mattered, since I had made up my mind that Jim, for\nwhom alone I cared, had at last mastered his fate. He had told me he\nwas satisfied . . . nearly. This is going further than most of us dare.\nI--who have the right to think myself good enough--dare not. Neither\ndoes any of you here, I suppose? . . .'\n\nMarlow paused, as if expecting an answer. Nobody spoke.\n\n'Quite right,' he began again. 'Let no soul know, since the truth can be\nwrung out of us only by some cruel, little, awful catastrophe. But he\nis one of us, and he could say he was satisfied . . . nearly. Just\nfancy this! Nearly satisfied. One could almost envy him his catastrophe.\nNearly satisfied. After this nothing could matter. It did not matter who\nsuspected him, who trusted him, who loved him, who hated him--especially\nas it was Cornelius who hated him.\n\n'Yet after all this was a kind of recognition. You shall judge of a man\nby his foes as well as by his friends, and this enemy of Jim was such as\nno decent man would be ashamed to own, without, however, making too\nmuch of him. This was the view Jim took, and in which I shared; but Jim\ndisregarded him on general grounds. \"My dear Marlow,\" he said, \"I feel\nthat if I go straight nothing can touch me. Indeed I do. Now you have\nbeen long enough here to have a good look round--and, frankly, don't\nyou think I am pretty safe? It all depends upon me, and, by Jove! I have\nlots of confidence in myself. The worst thing he could do would be to\nkill me, I suppose. I don't think for a moment he would. He couldn't,\nyou know--not if I were myself to hand him a loaded rifle for the\npurpose, and then turn my back on him. That's the sort of thing he is.\nAnd suppose he would--suppose he could? Well--what of that? I didn't\ncome here flying for my life--did I? I came here to set my back against\nthe wall, and I am going to stay here . . .\"\n\n'\"Till you are _quite_ satisfied,\" I struck in.\n\n'We were sitting at the time under the roof in the stern of his boat;\ntwenty paddles flashed like one, ten on a side, striking the water with\na single splash, while behind our backs Tamb' Itam dipped silently right\nand left, and stared right down the river, attentive to keep the long\ncanoe in the greatest strength of the current. Jim bowed his head, and\nour last talk seemed to flicker out for good. He was seeing me off as\nfar as the mouth of the river. The schooner had left the day before,\nworking down and drifting on the ebb, while I had prolonged my stay\novernight. And now he was seeing me off.\n\n'Jim had been a little angry with me for mentioning Cornelius at all.\nI had not, in truth, said much. The man was too insignificant to be\ndangerous, though he was as full of hate as he could hold. He had called\nme \"honourable sir\" at every second sentence, and had whined at my elbow\nas he followed me from the grave of his \"late wife\" to the gate of Jim's\ncompound. He declared himself the most unhappy of men, a victim, crushed\nlike a worm; he entreated me to look at him. I wouldn't turn my head to\ndo so; but I could see out of the corner of my eye his obsequious shadow\ngliding after mine, while the moon, suspended on our right hand, seemed\nto gloat serenely upon the spectacle. He tried to explain--as I've told\nyou--his share in the events of the memorable night. It was a matter of\nexpediency. How could he know who was going to get the upper hand? \"I\nwould have saved him, honourable sir! I would have saved him for eighty\ndollars,\" he protested in dulcet tones, keeping a pace behind me. \"He\nhas saved himself,\" I said, \"and he has forgiven you.\" I heard a sort of\ntittering, and turned upon him; at once he appeared ready to take to his\nheels. \"What are you laughing at?\" I asked, standing still. \"Don't be\ndeceived, honourable sir!\" he shrieked, seemingly losing all control\nover his feelings. \"_He_ save himself! He knows nothing, honourable\nsir--nothing whatever. Who is he? What does he want here--the big thief?\nWhat does he want here? He throws dust into everybody's eyes; he throws\ndust into your eyes, honourable sir; but he can't throw dust into my\neyes. He is a big fool, honourable sir.\" I laughed contemptuously, and,\nturning on my heel, began to walk on again. He ran up to my elbow and\nwhispered forcibly, \"He's no more than a little child here--like a\nlittle child--a little child.\" Of course I didn't take the slightest\nnotice, and seeing the time pressed, because we were approaching the\nbamboo fence that glittered over the blackened ground of the clearing,\nhe came to the point. He commenced by being abjectly lachrymose. His\ngreat misfortunes had affected his head. He hoped I would kindly forget\nwhat nothing but his troubles made him say. He didn't mean anything\nby it; only the honourable sir did not know what it was to be ruined,\nbroken down, trampled upon. After this introduction he approached the\nmatter near his heart, but in such a rambling, ejaculatory, craven\nfashion, that for a long time I couldn't make out what he was driving\nat. He wanted me to intercede with Jim in his favour. It seemed, too,\nto be some sort of money affair. I heard time and again the words,\n\"Moderate provision--suitable present.\" He seemed to be claiming value\nfor something, and he even went the length of saying with some warmth\nthat life was not worth having if a man were to be robbed of everything.\nI did not breathe a word, of course, but neither did I stop my ears.\nThe gist of the affair, which became clear to me gradually, was in this,\nthat he regarded himself as entitled to some money in exchange for the\ngirl. He had brought her up. Somebody else's child. Great trouble and\npains--old man now--suitable present. If the honourable sir would say\na word. . . . I stood still to look at him with curiosity, and fearful\nlest I should think him extortionate, I suppose, he hastily brought\nhimself to make a concession. In consideration of a \"suitable present\"\ngiven at once, he would, he declared, be willing to undertake the charge\nof the girl, \"without any other provision--when the time came for the\ngentleman to go home.\" His little yellow face, all crumpled as though it\nhad been squeezed together, expressed the most anxious, eager avarice.\nHis voice whined coaxingly, \"No more trouble--natural guardian--a sum of\nmoney . . .\"\n\n'I stood there and marvelled. That kind of thing, with him, was\nevidently a vocation. I discovered suddenly in his cringing attitude\na sort of assurance, as though he had been all his life dealing in\ncertitudes. He must have thought I was dispassionately considering his\nproposal, because he became as sweet as honey. \"Every gentleman made\na provision when the time came to go home,\" he began insinuatingly. I\nslammed the little gate. \"In this case, Mr. Cornelius,\" I said, \"the\ntime will never come.\" He took a few seconds to gather this in. \"What!\"\nhe fairly squealed. \"Why,\" I continued from my side of the gate,\n\"haven't you heard him say so himself? He will never go home.\" \"Oh! this\nis too much,\" he shouted. He would not address me as \"honoured sir\" any\nmore. He was very still for a time, and then without a trace of humility\nbegan very low: \"Never go--ah! He--he--he comes here devil knows\nfrom where--comes here--devil knows why--to trample on me till I\ndie--ah--trample\" (he stamped softly with both feet), \"trample like\nthis--nobody knows why--till I die. . . .\" His voice became quite\nextinct; he was bothered by a little cough; he came up close to the\nfence and told me, dropping into a confidential and piteous tone,\nthat he would not be trampled upon. \"Patience--patience,\" he muttered,\nstriking his breast. I had done laughing at him, but unexpectedly he\ntreated me to a wild cracked burst of it. \"Ha! ha! ha! We shall see! We\nshall see! What! Steal from me! Steal from me everything! Everything!\nEverything!\" His head drooped on one shoulder, his hands were hanging\nbefore him lightly clasped. One would have thought he had cherished\nthe girl with surpassing love, that his spirit had been crushed and his\nheart broken by the most cruel of spoliations. Suddenly he lifted his\nhead and shot out an infamous word. \"Like her mother--she is like her\ndeceitful mother. Exactly. In her face, too. In her face. The devil!\"\nHe leaned his forehead against the fence, and in that position\nuttered threats and horrible blasphemies in Portuguese in very weak\nejaculations, mingled with miserable plaints and groans, coming out with\na heave of the shoulders as though he had been overtaken by a deadly fit\nof sickness. It was an inexpressibly grotesque and vile performance,\nand I hastened away. He tried to shout something after me. Some\ndisparagement of Jim, I believe--not too loud though, we were too near\nthe house. All I heard distinctly was, \"No more than a little child--a\nlittle child.\"'\n\n\n\n'But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the\nhouses of Patusan, all this dropped out of my sight bodily, with its\ncolour, its design, and its meaning, like a picture created by fancy on\na canvas, upon which, after long contemplation, you turn your back for\nthe last time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with its\nlife arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the ambitions, the\nfears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain in my mind just as I had\nseen them--intense and as if for ever suspended in their expression. I\nhad turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where\nevents move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream,\nno matter whether over mud or over stones. I wasn't going to dive into\nit; I would have enough to do to keep my head above the surface. But\nas to what I was leaving behind, I cannot imagine any alteration. The\nimmense and magnanimous Doramin and his little motherly witch of a\nwife, gazing together upon the land and nursing secretly their dreams\nof parental ambition; Tunku Allang, wizened and greatly perplexed;\nDain Waris, intelligent and brave, with his faith in Jim, with his\nfirm glance and his ironic friendliness; the girl, absorbed in her\nfrightened, suspicious adoration; Tamb' Itam, surly and faithful;\nCornelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under the moonlight--I\nam certain of them. They exist as if under an enchanter's wand. But the\nfigure round which all these are grouped--that one lives, and I am not\ncertain of him. No magician's wand can immobilise him under my eyes. He\nis one of us.\n\n'Jim, as I've told you, accompanied me on the first stage of my journey\nback to the world he had renounced, and the way at times seemed to\nlead through the very heart of untouched wilderness. The empty reaches\nsparkled under the high sun; between the high walls of vegetation the\nheat drowsed upon the water, and the boat, impelled vigorously, cut her\nway through the air that seemed to have settled dense and warm under the\nshelter of lofty trees.\n\n'The shadow of the impending separation had already put an immense space\nbetween us, and when we spoke it was with an effort, as if to force our\nlow voices across a vast and increasing distance. The boat fairly flew;\nwe sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated air; the smell of\nmud, of mush, the primeval smell of fecund earth, seemed to sting our\nfaces; till suddenly at a bend it was as if a great hand far away had\nlifted a heavy curtain, had flung open un immense portal. The light\nitself seemed to stir, the sky above our heads widened, a far-off murmur\nreached our ears, a freshness enveloped us, filled our lungs, quickened\nour thoughts, our blood, our regrets--and, straight ahead, the forests\nsank down against the dark-blue ridge of the sea.\n\n'I breathed deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the opened horizon, in\nthe different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life,\nwith the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were open\nto me. The girl was right--there was a sign, a call in them--something\nto which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let my eyes roam\nthrough space, like a man released from bonds who stretches his cramped\nlimbs, runs, leaps, responds to the inspiring elation of freedom. \"This\nis glorious!\" I cried, and then I looked at the sinner by my side. He\nsat with his head sunk on his breast and said \"Yes,\" without raising his\neyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the\nreproach of his romantic conscience.\n\n'I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We landed on a bit\nof white beach. It was backed by a low cliff wooded on the brow, draped\nin creepers to the very foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of a serene\nand intense blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the thread-like\nhorizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great waves of glitter blew\nlightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by\nthe breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide\nestuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully\nthe contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary\nbird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with\na slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy\nmat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked\nmultitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off\nfrom amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly,\nstriking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide painfully\non a mirror. This bunch of miserable hovels was the fishing village\nthat boasted of the white lord's especial protection, and the two men\ncrossing over were the old headman and his son-in-law. They landed\nand walked up to us on the white sand, lean, dark-brown as if dried\nin smoke, with ashy patches on the skin of their naked shoulders\nand breasts. Their heads were bound in dirty but carefully folded\nheadkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to state a complaint,\nvoluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared eyes\nconfidently. The Rajah's people would not leave them alone; there had\nbeen some trouble about a lot of turtles' eggs his people had collected\non the islets there--and leaning at arm's-length upon his paddle, he\npointed with a brown skinny hand over the sea. Jim listened for a time\nwithout looking up, and at last told him gently to wait. He would hear\nhim by-and-by. They withdrew obediently to some little distance, and sat\non their heels, with their paddles lying before them on the sand; the\nsilvery gleams in their eyes followed our movements patiently; and the\nimmensity of the outspread sea, the stillness of the coast, passing\nnorth and south beyond the limits of my vision, made up one colossal\nPresence watching us four dwarfs isolated on a strip of glistening sand.\n\n'\"The trouble is,\" remarked Jim moodily, \"that for generations these\nbeggars of fishermen in that village there had been considered as the\nRajah's personal slaves--and the old rip can't get it into his head that\n. . .\"\n\n'He paused. \"That you have changed all that,\" I said.\n\n'\"Yes I've changed all that,\" he muttered in a gloomy voice.\n\n'\"You have had your opportunity,\" I pursued.\n\n'\"Have I?\" he said. \"Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I have got back my\nconfidence in myself--a good name--yet sometimes I wish . . . No! I\nshall hold what I've got. Can't expect anything more.\" He flung his arm\nout towards the sea. \"Not out there anyhow.\" He stamped his foot upon\nthe sand. \"This is my limit, because nothing less will do.\"\n\n'We continued pacing the beach. \"Yes, I've changed all that,\" he went\non, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; \"but\nonly try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! can't you see\nit? Hell loose. No! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking\nthat silly old Tunku Allang's coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss\nover these rotten turtles' eggs. No. I can't say--enough. Never. I must\ngo on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can\ntouch me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and to--to\"\n. . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it on the sea . . .\n\"to keep in touch with\" . . . His voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . .\n\"with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any more. With--with--you,\nfor instance.\"\n\n'I was profoundly humbled by his words. \"For God's sake,\" I said, \"don't\nset me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself.\" I felt a gratitude,\nan affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping\nmy place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How little that\nwas to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face away; under the\nlow sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like un ember snatched from the\nfire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the\napproach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak, but checked\nhimself; at last, as if he had found a formula--\n\n'\"I shall be faithful,\" he said quietly. \"I shall be faithful,\" he\nrepeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes\nwander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple\nunder the fires of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I recalled\nsome words of Stein's. . . . \"In the destructive element immerse! . . .\nTo follow the dream, and again to follow the dream--and\nso--always--usque ad finem . . .\" He was romantic, but none the\nless true. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what\nforgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! . . . A small boat,\nleaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars,\ntowards the sandbank to take me off. \"And then there's Jewel,\" he said,\nout of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mastered my\nvery thoughts so that his voice made me start. \"There's Jewel.\" \"Yes,\"\nI murmured. \"I need not tell you what she is to me,\" he pursued.\n\"You've seen. In time she will come to understand . . .\" \"I hope so,\" I\ninterrupted. \"She trusts me, too,\" he mused, and then changed his tone.\n\"When shall we meet next, I wonder?\" he said.\n\n'\"Never--unless you come out,\" I answered, avoiding his glance. He\ndidn't seem to be surprised; he kept very quiet for a while.\n\n'\"Good-bye, then,\" he said, after a pause. \"Perhaps it's just as well.\"\n\n'We shook hands, and I walked to the boat, which waited with her nose\non the beach. The schooner, her mainsail set and jib-sheet to windward,\ncurveted on the purple sea; there was a rosy tinge on her sails. \"Will\nyou be going home again soon?\" asked Jim, just as I swung my leg over\nthe gunwale. \"In a year or so if I live,\" I said. The forefoot grated on\nthe sand, the boat floated, the wet oars flashed and dipped once, twice.\nJim, at the water's edge, raised his voice. \"Tell them . . .\" he began.\nI signed to the men to cease rowing, and waited in wonder. Tell who? The\nhalf-submerged sun faced him; I could see its red gleam in his eyes that\nlooked dumbly at me. . . . \"No--nothing,\" he said, and with a slight\nwave of his hand motioned the boat away. I did not look again at the\nshore till I had clambered on board the schooner.\n\n'By that time the sun had set. The twilight lay over the east, and the\ncoast, turned black, extended infinitely its sombre wall that seemed the\nvery stronghold of the night; the western horizon was one great blaze of\ngold and crimson in which a big detached cloud floated dark and still,\ncasting a slaty shadow on the water beneath, and I saw Jim on the beach\nwatching the schooner fall off and gather headway.\n\n'The two half-naked fishermen had arisen as soon as I had gone; they\nwere no doubt pouring the plaint of their trifling, miserable, oppressed\nlives into the ears of the white lord, and no doubt he was listening to\nit, making it his own, for was it not a part of his luck--the luck \"from\nthe word Go\"--the luck to which he had assured me he was so completely\nequal? They, too, I should think, were in luck, and I was sure their\npertinacity would be equal to it. Their dark-skinned bodies vanished on\nthe dark background long before I had lost sight of their protector. He\nwas white from head to foot, and remained persistently visible with\nthe stronghold of the night at his back, the sea at his feet, the\nopportunity by his side--still veiled. What do you say? Was it still\nveiled? I don't know. For me that white figure in the stillness of coast\nand sea seemed to stand at the heart of a vast enigma. The twilight\nwas ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of sand had sunk\nalready under his feet, he himself appeared no bigger than a child--then\nonly a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light\nleft in a darkened world. . . . And, suddenly, I lost him. . . .\n\n\n\n\nWith these words Marlow had ended his narrative, and his audience had\nbroken up forthwith, under his abstract, pensive gaze. Men drifted off\nthe verandah in pairs or alone without loss of time, without offering\na remark, as if the last image of that incomplete story, its\nincompleteness itself, and the very tone of the speaker, had made\ndiscussion in vain and comment impossible. Each of them seemed to carry\naway his own impression, to carry it away with him like a secret; but\nthere was only one man of all these listeners who was ever to hear the\nlast word of the story. It came to him at home, more than two years\nlater, and it came contained in a thick packet addressed in Marlow's\nupright and angular handwriting.\n\nThe privileged man opened the packet, looked in, then, laying it down,\nwent to the window. His rooms were in the highest flat of a lofty\nbuilding, and his glance could travel afar beyond the clear panes of\nglass, as though he were looking out of the lantern of a lighthouse.\nThe slopes of the roofs glistened, the dark broken ridges succeeded each\nother without end like sombre, uncrested waves, and from the depths of\nthe town under his feet ascended a confused and unceasing mutter. The\nspires of churches, numerous, scattered haphazard, uprose like beacons\non a maze of shoals without a channel; the driving rain mingled with the\nfalling dusk of a winter's evening; and the booming of a big clock on a\ntower, striking the hour, rolled past in voluminous, austere bursts\nof sound, with a shrill vibrating cry at the core. He drew the heavy\ncurtains.\n\nThe light of his shaded reading-lamp slept like a sheltered pool, his\nfootfalls made no sound on the carpet, his wandering days were over. No\nmore horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the forests\nas solemn as temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscovered\nCountry over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The hour\nwas striking! No more! No more!--but the opened packet under the lamp\nbrought back the sounds, the visions, the very savour of the past--a\nmultitude of fading faces, a tumult of low voices, dying away upon the\nshores of distant seas under a passionate and unconsoling sunshine. He\nsighed and sat down to read.\n\nAt first he saw three distinct enclosures. A good many pages closely\nblackened and pinned together; a loose square sheet of greyish paper\nwith a few words traced in a handwriting he had never seen before, and\nan explanatory letter from Marlow. From this last fell another letter,\nyellowed by time and frayed on the folds. He picked it up and, laying it\naside, turned to Marlow's message, ran swiftly over the opening lines,\nand, checking himself, thereafter read on deliberately, like one\napproaching with slow feet and alert eyes the glimpse of an undiscovered\ncountry.\n\n'. . . I don't suppose you've forgotten,' went on the letter. 'You alone\nhave showed an interest in him that survived the telling of his story,\nthough I remember well you would not admit he had mastered his fate.\nYou prophesied for him the disaster of weariness and of disgust with\nacquired honour, with the self-appointed task, with the love sprung from\npity and youth. You had said you knew so well \"that kind of thing,\" its\nillusory satisfaction, its unavoidable deception. You said also--I call\nto mind--that \"giving your life up to them\" (them meaning all of mankind\nwith skins brown, yellow, or black in colour) \"was like selling your\nsoul to a brute.\" You contended that \"that kind of thing\" was only\nendurable and enduring when based on a firm conviction in the truth of\nideas racially our own, in whose name are established the order, the\nmorality of an ethical progress. \"We want its strength at our backs,\"\nyou had said. \"We want a belief in its necessity and its justice, to\nmake a worthy and conscious sacrifice of our lives. Without it the\nsacrifice is only forgetfulness, the way of offering is no better than\nthe way to perdition.\" In other words, you maintained that we must fight\nin the ranks or our lives don't count. Possibly! You ought to know--be\nit said without malice--you who have rushed into one or two places\nsingle-handed and came out cleverly, without singeing your wings. The\npoint, however, is that of all mankind Jim had no dealings but with\nhimself, and the question is whether at the last he had not confessed to\na faith mightier than the laws of order and progress.\n\n'I affirm nothing. Perhaps you may pronounce--after you've read. There\nis much truth--after all--in the common expression \"under a cloud.\" It\nis impossible to see him clearly--especially as it is through the eyes\nof others that we take our last look at him. I have no hesitation in\nimparting to you all I know of the last episode that, as he used to say,\nhad \"come to him.\" One wonders whether this was perhaps that supreme\nopportunity, that last and satisfying test for which I had always\nsuspected him to be waiting, before he could frame a message to the\nimpeccable world. You remember that when I was leaving him for the last\ntime he had asked whether I would be going home soon, and suddenly cried\nafter me, \"Tell them . . .\" I had waited--curious I'll own, and hopeful\ntoo--only to hear him shout, \"No--nothing.\" That was all then--and there\nwill be nothing more; there will be no message, unless such as each of\nus can interpret for himself from the language of facts, that are so\noften more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words. He made,\nit is true, one more attempt to deliver himself; but that too failed, as\nyou may perceive if you look at the sheet of greyish foolscap enclosed\nhere. He had tried to write; do you notice the commonplace hand? It is\nheaded \"The Fort, Patusan.\" I suppose he had carried out his intention\nof making out of his house a place of defence. It was an excellent plan:\na deep ditch, an earth wall topped by a palisade, and at the angles\nguns mounted on platforms to sweep each side of the square. Doramin had\nagreed to furnish him the guns; and so each man of his party would know\nthere was a place of safety, upon which every faithful partisan could\nrally in case of some sudden danger. All this showed his judicious\nforesight, his faith in the future. What he called \"my own people\"--the\nliberated captives of the Sherif--were to make a distinct quarter of\nPatusan, with their huts and little plots of ground under the walls of\nthe stronghold. Within he would be an invincible host in himself \"The\nFort, Patusan.\" No date, as you observe. What is a number and a name to\na day of days? It is also impossible to say whom he had in his mind when\nhe seized the pen: Stein--myself--the world at large--or was this only\nthe aimless startled cry of a solitary man confronted by his fate? \"An\nawful thing has happened,\" he wrote before he flung the pen down for the\nfirst time; look at the ink blot resembling the head of an arrow under\nthese words. After a while he had tried again, scrawling heavily, as if\nwith a hand of lead, another line. \"I must now at once . . .\" The pen\nhad spluttered, and that time he gave it up. There's nothing more;\nhe had seen a broad gulf that neither eye nor voice could span. I\ncan understand this. He was overwhelmed by the inexplicable; he was\noverwhelmed by his own personality--the gift of that destiny which he\nhad done his best to master.\n\n'I send you also an old letter--a very old letter. It was found\ncarefully preserved in his writing-case. It is from his father, and\nby the date you can see he must have received it a few days before he\njoined the Patna. Thus it must be the last letter he ever had from home.\nHe had treasured it all these years. The good old parson fancied his\nsailor son. I've looked in at a sentence here and there. There is\nnothing in it except just affection. He tells his \"dear James\" that the\nlast long letter from him was very \"honest and entertaining.\" He would\nnot have him \"judge men harshly or hastily.\" There are four pages of it,\neasy morality and family news. Tom had \"taken orders.\" Carrie's husband\nhad \"money losses.\" The old chap goes on equably trusting Providence and\nthe established order of the universe, but alive to its small dangers\nand its small mercies. One can almost see him, grey-haired and serene in\nthe inviolable shelter of his book-lined, faded, and comfortable study,\nwhere for forty years he had conscientiously gone over and over again\nthe round of his little thoughts about faith and virtue, about the\nconduct of life and the only proper manner of dying; where he had\nwritten so many sermons, where he sits talking to his boy, over there,\non the other side of the earth. But what of the distance? Virtue is one\nall over the world, and there is only one faith, one conceivable conduct\nof life, one manner of dying. He hopes his \"dear James\" will never\nforget that \"who once gives way to temptation, in the very instant\nhazards his total depravity and everlasting ruin. Therefore resolve\nfixedly never, through any possible motives, to do anything which you\nbelieve to be wrong.\" There is also some news of a favourite dog; and a\npony, \"which all you boys used to ride,\" had gone blind from old age and\nhad to be shot. The old chap invokes Heaven's blessing; the mother and\nall the girls then at home send their love. . . . No, there is nothing\nmuch in that yellow frayed letter fluttering out of his cherishing\ngrasp after so many years. It was never answered, but who can say what\nconverse he may have held with all these placid, colourless forms of men\nand women peopling that quiet corner of the world as free of danger\nor strife as a tomb, and breathing equably the air of undisturbed\nrectitude. It seems amazing that he should belong to it, he to whom so\nmany things \"had come.\" Nothing ever came to them; they would never be\ntaken unawares, and never be called upon to grapple with fate. Here they\nall are, evoked by the mild gossip of the father, all these brothers\nand sisters, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, gazing with clear\nunconscious eyes, while I seem to see him, returned at last, no longer\na mere white speck at the heart of an immense mystery, but of full\nstature, standing disregarded amongst their untroubled shapes, with a\nstern and romantic aspect, but always mute, dark--under a cloud.\n\n'The story of the last events you will find in the few pages enclosed\nhere. You must admit that it is romantic beyond the wildest dreams\nof his boyhood, and yet there is to my mind a sort of profound and\nterrifying logic in it, as if it were our imagination alone that could\nset loose upon us the might of an overwhelming destiny. The imprudence\nof our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with the sword shall\nperish by the sword. This astounding adventure, of which the most\nastounding part is that it is true, comes on as an unavoidable\nconsequence. Something of the sort had to happen. You repeat this to\nyourself while you marvel that such a thing could happen in the year of\ngrace before last. But it has happened--and there is no disputing its\nlogic.\n\n'I put it down here for you as though I had been an eyewitness. My\ninformation was fragmentary, but I've fitted the pieces together, and\nthere is enough of them to make an intelligible picture. I wonder how\nhe would have related it himself. He has confided so much in me that at\ntimes it seems as though he must come in presently and tell the story\nin his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, with his offhand\nmanner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, a little hurt, but now and\nthen by a word or a phrase giving one of these glimpses of his very\nown self that were never any good for purposes of orientation. It's\ndifficult to believe he will never come. I shall never hear his voice\nagain, nor shall I see his smooth tan-and-pink face with a white line\non the forehead, and the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a\nprofound, unfathomable blue.'\n\n\n\n'It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown, who\nstole with complete success a Spanish schooner out of a small bay near\nZamboanga. Till I discovered the fellow my information was incomplete,\nbut most unexpectedly I did come upon him a few hours before he gave up\nhis arrogant ghost. Fortunately he was willing and able to talk between\nthe choking fits of asthma, and his racked body writhed with malicious\nexultation at the bare thought of Jim. He exulted thus at the idea that\nhe had \"paid out the stuck-up beggar after all.\" He gloated over his\naction. I had to bear the sunken glare of his fierce crow-footed eyes if\nI wanted to know; and so I bore it, reflecting how much certain forms\nof evil are akin to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by\nresistance, tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to\nthe body. The story also reveals unsuspected depths of cunning in the\nwretched Cornelius, whose abject and intense hate acts like a subtle\ninspiration, pointing out an unerring way towards revenge.\n\n'\"I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he was,\"\ngasped the dying Brown. \"He a man! Hell! He was a hollow sham. As if he\ncouldn't have said straight out, 'Hands off my plunder!' blast him! That\nwould have been like a man! Rot his superior soul! He had me there--but\nhe hadn't devil enough in him to make an end of me. Not he! A thing like\nthat letting me off as if I wasn't worth a kick! . . .\" Brown struggled\ndesperately for breath. . . . \"Fraud. . . . Letting me off. . . . And\nso I did make an end of him after all. . . .\" He choked again. . . . \"I\nexpect this thing'll kill me, but I shall die easy now. You . . . you\nhere . . . I don't know your name--I would give you a five-pound note\nif--if I had it--for the news--or my name's not Brown. . . .\" He grinned\nhorribly. . . . \"Gentleman Brown.\"\n\n'He said all these things in profound gasps, staring at me with his\nyellow eyes out of a long, ravaged, brown face; he jerked his left arm;\na pepper-and-salt matted beard hung almost into his lap; a dirty ragged\nblanket covered his legs. I had found him out in Bankok through that\nbusybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had, confidentially, directed\nme where to look. It appears that a sort of loafing, fuddled vagabond--a\nwhite man living amongst the natives with a Siamese woman--had\nconsidered it a great privilege to give a shelter to the last days of\nthe famous Gentleman Brown. While he was talking to me in the wretched\nhovel, and, as it were, fighting for every minute of his life, the\nSiamese woman, with big bare legs and a stupid coarse face, sat in a\ndark corner chewing betel stolidly. Now and then she would get up for\nthe purpose of shooing a chicken away from the door. The whole hut shook\nwhen she walked. An ugly yellow child, naked and pot-bellied like a\nlittle heathen god, stood at the foot of the couch, finger in mouth,\nlost in a profound and calm contemplation of the dying man.\n\n'He talked feverishly; but in the middle of a word, perhaps, an\ninvisible hand would take him by the throat, and he would look at me\ndumbly with an expression of doubt and anguish. He seemed to fear that\nI would get tired of waiting and go away, leaving him with his tale\nuntold, with his exultation unexpressed. He died during the night, I\nbelieve, but by that time I had nothing more to learn.\n\n'So much as to Brown, for the present.\n\n'Eight months before this, coming into Samarang, I went as usual to see\nStein. On the garden side of the house a Malay on the verandah greeted\nme shyly, and I remembered that I had seen him in Patusan, in Jim's\nhouse, amongst other Bugis men who used to come in the evening to talk\ninterminably over their war reminiscences and to discuss State affairs.\nJim had pointed him out to me once as a respectable petty trader owning\na small seagoing native craft, who had showed himself \"one of the best\nat the taking of the stockade.\" I was not very surprised to see him,\nsince any Patusan trader venturing as far as Samarang would naturally\nfind his way to Stein's house. I returned his greeting and passed on. At\nthe door of Stein's room I came upon another Malay in whom I recognised\nTamb' Itam.\n\n'I asked him at once what he was doing there; it occurred to me that\nJim might have come on a visit. I own I was pleased and excited at the\nthought. Tamb' Itam looked as if he did not know what to say. \"Is Tuan\nJim inside?\" I asked impatiently. \"No,\" he mumbled, hanging his head\nfor a moment, and then with sudden earnestness, \"He would not fight. He\nwould not fight,\" he repeated twice. As he seemed unable to say anything\nelse, I pushed him aside and went in.\n\n'Stein, tall and stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room between\nthe rows of butterfly cases. \"Ach! is it you, my friend?\" he said\nsadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca hung,\nunbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his head, and\nthere were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. \"What's the matter now?\"\nI asked nervously. \"There's Tamb' Itam there. . . .\" \"Come and see the\ngirl. Come and see the girl. She is here,\" he said, with a half-hearted\nshow of activity. I tried to detain him, but with gentle obstinacy he\nwould take no notice of my eager questions. \"She is here, she is here,\"\nhe repeated, in great perturbation. \"They came here two days ago. An old\nman like me, a stranger--sehen Sie--cannot do much. . . . Come this way.\n. . . Young hearts are unforgiving. . . .\" I could see he was in utmost\ndistress. . . . \"The strength of life in them, the cruel strength of\nlife. . . .\" He mumbled, leading me round the house; I followed him,\nlost in dismal and angry conjectures. At the door of the drawing-room he\nbarred my way. \"He loved her very much,\" he said interrogatively, and\nI only nodded, feeling so bitterly disappointed that I would not trust\nmyself to speak. \"Very frightful,\" he murmured. \"She can't understand\nme. I am only a strange old man. Perhaps you . . . she knows you. Talk\nto her. We can't leave it like this. Tell her to forgive him. It was\nvery frightful.\" \"No doubt,\" I said, exasperated at being in the dark;\n\"but have you forgiven him?\" He looked at me queerly. \"You shall hear,\"\nhe said, and opening the door, absolutely pushed me in.\n\n'You know Stein's big house and the two immense reception-rooms,\nuninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full of solitude and of shining\nthings that look as if never beheld by the eye of man? They are cool\non the hottest days, and you enter them as you would a scrubbed cave\nunderground. I passed through one, and in the other I saw the girl\nsitting at the end of a big mahogany table, on which she rested her\nhead, the face hidden in her arms. The waxed floor reflected her dimly\nas though it had been a sheet of frozen water. The rattan screens were\ndown, and through the strange greenish gloom made by the foliage of the\ntrees outside a strong wind blew in gusts, swaying the long draperies\nof windows and doorways. Her white figure seemed shaped in snow; the\npendent crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her head like\nglittering icicles. She looked up and watched my approach. I was chilled\nas if these vast apartments had been the cold abode of despair.\n\n'She recognised me at once, and as soon as I had stopped, looking down\nat her: \"He has left me,\" she said quietly; \"you always leave us--for\nyour own ends.\" Her face was set. All the heat of life seemed withdrawn\nwithin some inaccessible spot in her breast. \"It would have been easy to\ndie with him,\" she went on, and made a slight weary gesture as if giving\nup the incomprehensible. \"He would not! It was like a blindness--and yet\nit was I who was speaking to him; it was I who stood before his eyes;\nit was at me that he looked all the time! Ah! you are hard, treacherous,\nwithout truth, without compassion. What makes you so wicked? Or is it\nthat you are all mad?\"\n\n'I took her hand; it did not respond, and when I dropped it, it hung\ndown to the floor. That indifference, more awful than tears, cries, and\nreproaches, seemed to defy time and consolation. You felt that nothing\nyou could say would reach the seat of the still and benumbing pain.\n\n'Stein had said, \"You shall hear.\" I did hear. I heard it all, listening\nwith amazement, with awe, to the tones of her inflexible weariness.\nShe could not grasp the real sense of what she was telling me, and her\nresentment filled me with pity for her--for him too. I stood rooted to\nthe spot after she had finished. Leaning on her arm, she stared with\nhard eyes, and the wind passed in gusts, the crystals kept on clicking\nin the greenish gloom. She went on whispering to herself: \"And yet he\nwas looking at me! He could see my face, hear my voice, hear my grief!\nWhen I used to sit at his feet, with my cheek against his knee and his\nhand on my head, the curse of cruelty and madness was already within\nhim, waiting for the day. The day came! . . . and before the sun had\nset he could not see me any more--he was made blind and deaf and without\npity, as you all are. He shall have no tears from me. Never, never. Not\none tear. I will not! He went away from me as if I had been worse than\ndeath. He fled as if driven by some accursed thing he had heard or seen\nin his sleep. . . .\"\n\n'Her steady eyes seemed to strain after the shape of a man torn out of\nher arms by the strength of a dream. She made no sign to my silent bow.\nI was glad to escape.\n\n'I saw her once again, the same afternoon. On leaving her I had gone\nin search of Stein, whom I could not find indoors; and I wandered out,\npursued by distressful thoughts, into the gardens, those famous gardens\nof Stein, in which you can find every plant and tree of tropical\nlowlands. I followed the course of the canalised stream, and sat for\na long time on a shaded bench near the ornamental pond, where some\nwaterfowl with clipped wings were diving and splashing noisily. The\nbranches of casuarina trees behind me swayed lightly, incessantly,\nreminding me of the soughing of fir trees at home.\n\n'This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my\nmeditations. She had said he had been driven away from her by a\ndream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be\nno forgiveness for such a transgression. And yet is not mankind itself,\npushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and\nits power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive\ndevotion? And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?\n\n'When I rose to get back to the house I caught sight of Stein's drab\ncoat through a gap in the foliage, and very soon at a turn of the path\nI came upon him walking with the girl. Her little hand rested on his\nforearm, and under the broad, flat rim of his Panama hat he bent over\nher, grey-haired, paternal, with compassionate and chivalrous deference.\nI stood aside, but they stopped, facing me. His gaze was bent on the\nground at his feet; the girl, erect and slight on his arm, stared\nsombrely beyond my shoulder with black, clear, motionless eyes.\n\"Schrecklich,\" he murmured. \"Terrible! Terrible! What can one do?\" He\nseemed to be appealing to me, but her youth, the length of the days\nsuspended over her head, appealed to me more; and suddenly, even as I\nrealised that nothing could be said, I found myself pleading his cause\nfor her sake. \"You must forgive him,\" I concluded, and my own voice\nseemed to me muffled, lost in un irresponsive deaf immensity. \"We all\nwant to be forgiven,\" I added after a while.\n\n'\"What have I done?\" she asked with her lips only.\n\n'\"You always mistrusted him,\" I said.\n\n'\"He was like the others,\" she pronounced slowly.\n\n'\"Not like the others,\" I protested, but she continued evenly, without\nany feeling--\n\n'\"He was false.\" And suddenly Stein broke in. \"No! no! no! My poor\nchild! . . .\" He patted her hand lying passively on his sleeve. \"No! no!\nNot false! True! True! True!\" He tried to look into her stony face. \"You\ndon't understand. Ach! Why you do not understand? . . . Terrible,\" he\nsaid to me. \"Some day she _shall_ understand.\"\n\n'\"Will you explain?\" I asked, looking hard at him. They moved on.\n\n'I watched them. Her gown trailed on the path, her black hair fell\nloose. She walked upright and light by the side of the tall man, whose\nlong shapeless coat hung in perpendicular folds from the stooping\nshoulders, whose feet moved slowly. They disappeared beyond that\nspinney (you may remember) where sixteen different kinds of bamboo grow\ntogether, all distinguishable to the learned eye. For my part, I was\nfascinated by the exquisite grace and beauty of that fluted grove,\ncrowned with pointed leaves and feathery heads, the lightness, the\nvigour, the charm as distinct as a voice of that unperplexed luxuriating\nlife. I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would\nlinger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It\nwas one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories\ncrowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces.\n\n'I drove back to town the same afternoon, taking with me Tamb' Itam\nand the other Malay, in whose seagoing craft they had escaped in the\nbewilderment, fear, and gloom of the disaster. The shock of it seemed to\nhave changed their natures. It had turned her passion into stone, and\nit made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost loquacious. His surliness,\ntoo, was subdued into puzzled humility, as though he had seen the\nfailure of a potent charm in a supreme moment. The Bugis trader, a shy\nhesitating man, was very clear in the little he had to say. Both were\nevidently over-awed by a sense of deep inexpressible wonder, by the\ntouch of an inscrutable mystery.'\n\nThere with Marlow's signature the letter proper ended. The privileged\nreader screwed up his lamp, and solitary above the billowy roofs of the\ntown, like a lighthouse-keeper above the sea, he turned to the pages of\nthe story.\n\n\n\n'It all begins, as I've told you, with the man called Brown,' ran the\nopening sentence of Marlow's narrative. 'You who have knocked about the\nWestern Pacific must have heard of him. He was the show ruffian on the\nAustralian coast--not that he was often to be seen there, but because\nhe was always trotted out in the stories of lawless life a visitor from\nhome is treated to; and the mildest of these stories which were told\nabout him from Cape York to Eden Bay was more than enough to hang a man\nif told in the right place. They never failed to let you know, too,\nthat he was supposed to be the son of a baronet. Be it as it may, it is\ncertain he had deserted from a home ship in the early gold-digging days,\nand in a few years became talked about as the terror of this or that\ngroup of islands in Polynesia. He would kidnap natives, he would strip\nsome lonely white trader to the very pyjamas he stood in, and after he\nhad robbed the poor devil, he would as likely as not invite him to fight\na duel with shot-guns on the beach--which would have been fair enough\nas these things go, if the other man hadn't been by that time already\nhalf-dead with fright. Brown was a latter-day buccaneer, sorry enough,\nlike his more celebrated prototypes; but what distinguished him from\nhis contemporary brother ruffians, like Bully Hayes or the mellifluous\nPease, or that perfumed, Dundreary-whiskered, dandified scoundrel known\nas Dirty Dick, was the arrogant temper of his misdeeds and a vehement\nscorn for mankind at large and for his victims in particular. The\nothers were merely vulgar and greedy brutes, but he seemed moved by some\ncomplex intention. He would rob a man as if only to demonstrate his poor\nopinion of the creature, and he would bring to the shooting or maiming\nof some quiet, unoffending stranger a savage and vengeful earnestness\nfit to terrify the most reckless of desperadoes. In the days of his\ngreatest glory he owned an armed barque, manned by a mixed crew of\nKanakas and runaway whalers, and boasted, I don't know with what truth,\nof being financed on the quiet by a most respectable firm of copra\nmerchants. Later on he ran off--it was reported--with the wife of a\nmissionary, a very young girl from Clapham way, who had married the\nmild, flat-footed fellow in a moment of enthusiasm, and, suddenly\ntransplanted to Melanesia, lost her bearings somehow. It was a dark\nstory. She was ill at the time he carried her off, and died on board his\nship. It is said--as the most wonderful put of the tale--that over her\nbody he gave way to an outburst of sombre and violent grief. His luck\nleft him, too, very soon after. He lost his ship on some rocks off\nMalaita, and disappeared for a time as though he had gone down with her.\nHe is heard of next at Nuka-Hiva, where he bought an old French schooner\nout of Government service. What creditable enterprise he might have had\nin view when he made that purchase I can't say, but it is evident that\nwhat with High Commissioners, consuls, men-of-war, and international\ncontrol, the South Seas were getting too hot to hold gentlemen of his\nkidney. Clearly he must have shifted the scene of his operations farther\nwest, because a year later he plays an incredibly audacious, but not a\nvery profitable part, in a serio-comic business in Manila Bay, in which\na peculating governor and an absconding treasurer are the principal\nfigures; thereafter he seems to have hung around the Philippines in his\nrotten schooner battling with un adverse fortune, till at last, running\nhis appointed course, he sails into Jim's history, a blind accomplice of\nthe Dark Powers.\n\n'His tale goes that when a Spanish patrol cutter captured him he was\nsimply trying to run a few guns for the insurgents. If so, then I can't\nunderstand what he was doing off the south coast of Mindanao. My belief,\nhowever, is that he was blackmailing the native villages along the\ncoast. The principal thing is that the cutter, throwing a guard on\nboard, made him sail in company towards Zamboanga. On the way, for some\nreason or other, both vessels had to call at one of these new Spanish\nsettlements--which never came to anything in the end--where there was\nnot only a civil official in charge on shore, but a good stout coasting\nschooner lying at anchor in the little bay; and this craft, in every way\nmuch better than his own, Brown made up his mind to steal.\n\n'He was down on his luck--as he told me himself. The world he had\nbullied for twenty years with fierce, aggressive disdain, had yielded\nhim nothing in the way of material advantage except a small bag of\nsilver dollars, which was concealed in his cabin so that \"the devil\nhimself couldn't smell it out.\" And that was all--absolutely all. He\nwas tired of his life, and not afraid of death. But this man, who would\nstake his existence on a whim with a bitter and jeering recklessness,\nstood in mortal fear of imprisonment. He had an unreasoning cold-sweat,\nnerve-shaking, blood-to-water-turning sort of horror at the bare\npossibility of being locked up--the sort of terror a superstitious man\nwould feel at the thought of being embraced by a spectre. Therefore the\ncivil official who came on board to make a preliminary investigation\ninto the capture, investigated arduously all day long, and only went\nashore after dark, muffled up in a cloak, and taking great care not to\nlet Brown's little all clink in its bag. Afterwards, being a man of his\nword, he contrived (the very next evening, I believe) to send off\nthe Government cutter on some urgent bit of special service. As her\ncommander could not spare a prize crew, he contented himself by taking\naway before he left all the sails of Brown's schooner to the very last\nrag, and took good care to tow his two boats on to the beach a couple of\nmiles off.\n\n'But in Brown's crew there was a Solomon Islander, kidnapped in his\nyouth and devoted to Brown, who was the best man of the whole gang. That\nfellow swam off to the coaster--five hundred yards or so--with the end\nof a warp made up of all the running gear unrove for the purpose. The\nwater was smooth, and the bay dark, \"like the inside of a cow,\" as Brown\ndescribed it. The Solomon Islander clambered over the bulwarks with the\nend of the rope in his teeth. The crew of the coaster--all Tagals--were\nashore having a jollification in the native village. The two shipkeepers\nleft on board woke up suddenly and saw the devil. It had glittering eyes\nand leaped quick as lightning about the deck. They fell on their knees,\nparalysed with fear, crossing themselves and mumbling prayers. With\na long knife he found in the caboose the Solomon Islander, without\ninterrupting their orisons, stabbed first one, then the other; with the\nsame knife he set to sawing patiently at the coir cable till suddenly it\nparted under the blade with a splash. Then in the silence of the bay\nhe let out a cautious shout, and Brown's gang, who meantime had been\npeering and straining their hopeful ears in the darkness, began to\npull gently at their end of the warp. In less than five minutes the two\nschooners came together with a slight shock and a creak of spars.\n\n'Brown's crowd transferred themselves without losing an instant, taking\nwith them their firearms and a large supply of ammunition. They were\nsixteen in all: two runaway blue-jackets, a lanky deserter from a Yankee\nman-of-war, a couple of simple, blond Scandinavians, a mulatto of sorts,\none bland Chinaman who cooked--and the rest of the nondescript spawn\nof the South Seas. None of them cared; Brown bent them to his will, and\nBrown, indifferent to gallows, was running away from the spectre of\na Spanish prison. He didn't give them the time to trans-ship enough\nprovisions; the weather was calm, the air was charged with dew, and when\nthey cast off the ropes and set sail to a faint off-shore draught there\nwas no flutter in the damp canvas; their old schooner seemed to detach\nitself gently from the stolen craft and slip away silently, together\nwith the black mass of the coast, into the night.\n\n'They got clear away. Brown related to me in detail their passage down\nthe Straits of Macassar. It is a harrowing and desperate story. They\nwere short of food and water; they boarded several native craft and got\na little from each. With a stolen ship Brown did not dare to put into\nany port, of course. He had no money to buy anything, no papers to show,\nand no lie plausible enough to get him out again. An Arab barque, under\nthe Dutch flag, surprised one night at anchor off Poulo Laut, yielded a\nlittle dirty rice, a bunch of bananas, and a cask of water; three days\nof squally, misty weather from the north-east shot the schooner across\nthe Java Sea. The yellow muddy waves drenched that collection of hungry\nruffians. They sighted mail-boats moving on their appointed routes;\npassed well-found home ships with rusty iron sides anchored in the\nshallow sea waiting for a change of weather or the turn of the tide; an\nEnglish gunboat, white and trim, with two slim masts, crossed their bows\none day in the distance; and on another occasion a Dutch corvette, black\nand heavily sparred, loomed up on their quarter, steaming dead slow\nin the mist. They slipped through unseen or disregarded, a wan,\nsallow-faced band of utter outcasts, enraged with hunger and hunted by\nfear. Brown's idea was to make for Madagascar, where he expected, on\ngrounds not altogether illusory, to sell the schooner in Tamatave, and\nno questions asked, or perhaps obtain some more or less forged papers\nfor her. Yet before he could face the long passage across the Indian\nOcean food was wanted--water too.\n\n'Perhaps he had heard of Patusan--or perhaps he just only happened to\nsee the name written in small letters on the chart--probably that of a\nlargish village up a river in a native state, perfectly defenceless, far\nfrom the beaten tracks of the sea and from the ends of submarine cables.\nHe had done that kind of thing before--in the way of business;\nand this now was an absolute necessity, a question of life and\ndeath--or rather of liberty. Of liberty! He was sure to get\nprovisions--bullocks--rice--sweet-potatoes. The sorry gang licked\ntheir chops. A cargo of produce for the schooner perhaps could be\nextorted--and, who knows?--some real ringing coined money! Some of these\nchiefs and village headmen can be made to part freely. He told me he\nwould have roasted their toes rather than be baulked. I believe him. His\nmen believed him too. They didn't cheer aloud, being a dumb pack, but\nmade ready wolfishly.\n\n'Luck served him as to weather. A few days of calm would have brought\nunmentionable horrors on board that schooner, but with the help of land\nand sea breezes, in less than a week after clearing the Sunda Straits,\nhe anchored off the Batu Kring mouth within a pistol-shot of the fishing\nvillage.\n\n'Fourteen of them packed into the schooner's long-boat (which was big,\nhaving been used for cargo-work) and started up the river, while two\nremained in charge of the schooner with food enough to keep starvation\noff for ten days. The tide and wind helped, and early one afternoon the\nbig white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way before the sea\nbreeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen assorted scarecrows\nglaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the breech-blocks of cheap rifles.\nBrown calculated upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They\nsailed in with the last of the flood; the Rajah's stockade gave no sign;\nthe first houses on both sides of the stream seemed deserted. A few\ncanoes were seen up the reach in full flight. Brown was astonished at\nthe size of the place. A profound silence reigned. The wind dropped\nbetween the houses; two oars were got out and the boat held on\nup-stream, the idea being to effect a lodgment in the centre of the town\nbefore the inhabitants could think of resistance.\n\n'It seems, however, that the headman of the fishing village at Batu\nKring had managed to send off a timely warning. When the long-boat came\nabreast of the mosque (which Doramin had built: a structure with gables\nand roof finials of carved coral) the open space before it was full of\npeople. A shout went up, and was followed by a clash of gongs all up the\nriver. From a point above two little brass 6-pounders were discharged,\nand the round-shot came skipping down the empty reach, spurting\nglittering jets of water in the sunshine. In front of the mosque a\nshouting lot of men began firing in volleys that whipped athwart the\ncurrent of the river; an irregular, rolling fusillade was opened on the\nboat from both banks, and Brown's men replied with a wild, rapid fire.\nThe oars had been got in.\n\n'The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quickly in that river,\nand the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in smoke, began to drift back\nstern foremost. Along both shores the smoke thickened also, lying below\nthe roofs in a level streak as you may see a long cloud cutting the\nslope of a mountain. A tumult of war-cries, the vibrating clang\nof gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage, crashes of\nvolley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat confounded but\nsteady at the tiller, working himself into a fury of hate and rage\nagainst those people who dared to defend themselves. Two of his men\nhad been wounded, and he saw his retreat cut off below the town by some\nboats that had put off from Tunku Allang's stockade. There were six of\nthem, full of men. While he was thus beset he perceived the entrance of\nthe narrow creek (the same which Jim had jumped at low water). It was\nthen brim full. Steering the long-boat in, they landed, and, to make a\nlong story short, they established themselves on a little knoll about\n900 yards from the stockade, which, in fact, they commanded from that\nposition. The slopes of the knoll were bare, but there were a few trees\non the summit. They went to work cutting these down for a breastwork,\nand were fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah's boats\nremained in the river with curious neutrality. When the sun set the glue\nof many brushwood blazes lighted on the river-front, and between the\ndouble line of houses on the land side threw into black relief the\nroofs, the groups of slender palms, the heavy clumps of fruit trees.\nBrown ordered the grass round his position to be fired; a low ring of\nthin flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled rapidly down the\nslopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush caught with a tall,\nvicious roar. The conflagration made a clear zone of fire for the rifles\nof the small party, and expired smouldering on the edge of the forests\nand along the muddy bank of the creek. A strip of jungle luxuriating in\na damp hollow between the knoll and the Rajah's stockade stopped it\non that side with a great crackling and detonations of bursting bamboo\nstems. The sky was sombre, velvety, and swarming with stars. The\nblackened ground smoked quietly with low creeping wisps, till a little\nbreeze came on and blew everything away. Brown expected an attack to\nbe delivered as soon as the tide had flowed enough again to enable the\nwar-boats which had cut off his retreat to enter the creek. At any rate\nhe was sure there would be an attempt to carry off his long-boat,\nwhich lay below the hill, a dark high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet\nmud-flat. But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the river.\nOver the stockade and the Rajah's buildings Brown saw their lights on\nthe water. They seemed to be anchored across the stream. Other lights\nafloat were moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to\nside. There were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of\nhouses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others\nisolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs,\nblack piles as far as he could see. It was an immense place. The\nfourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised\ntheir chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend\nup-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. They did not\nspeak to each other. Now and then they would hear a loud yell, or a\nsingle shot rang out, fired very far somewhere. But round their position\neverything was still, dark, silent. They seemed to be forgotten, as if\nthe excitement keeping awake all the population had nothing to do with\nthem, as if they had been dead already.'\n\n\n'All the events of that night have a great importance, since they\nbrought about a situation which remained unchanged till Jim's return.\nJim had been away in the interior for more than a week, and it was Dain\nWaris who had directed the first repulse. That brave and intelligent\nyouth (\"who knew how to fight after the manner of white men\") wished to\nsettle the business off-hand, but his people were too much for him.\nHe had not Jim's racial prestige and the reputation of invincible,\nsupernatural power. He was not the visible, tangible incarnation of\nunfailing truth and of unfailing victory. Beloved, trusted, and\nadmired as he was, he was still one of _them_, while Jim was one of\nus. Moreover, the white man, a tower of strength in himself, was\ninvulnerable, while Dain Waris could be killed. Those unexpressed\nthoughts guided the opinions of the chief men of the town, who elected\nto assemble in Jim's fort for deliberation upon the emergency, as if\nexpecting to find wisdom and courage in the dwelling of the absent white\nman. The shooting of Brown's ruffians was so far good, or lucky, that\nthere had been half-a-dozen casualties amongst the defenders. The\nwounded were lying on the verandah tended by their women-folk. The women\nand children from the lower part of the town had been sent into the\nfort at the first alarm. There Jewel was in command, very efficient and\nhigh-spirited, obeyed by Jim's \"own people,\" who, quitting in a body\ntheir little settlement under the stockade, had gone in to form the\ngarrison. The refugees crowded round her; and through the whole affair,\nto the very disastrous last, she showed an extraordinary martial ardour.\nIt was to her that Dain Waris had gone at once at the first intelligence\nof danger, for you must know that Jim was the only one in Patusan who\npossessed a store of gunpowder. Stein, with whom he had kept up intimate\nrelations by letters, had obtained from the Dutch Government a special\nauthorisation to export five hundred kegs of it to Patusan. The\npowder-magazine was a small hut of rough logs covered entirely with\nearth, and in Jim's absence the girl had the key. In the council, held\nat eleven o'clock in the evening in Jim's dining-room, she backed up\nWaris's advice for immediate and vigorous action. I am told that she\nstood up by the side of Jim's empty chair at the head of the long table\nand made a warlike impassioned speech, which for the moment extorted\nmurmurs of approbation from the assembled headmen. Old Doramin, who had\nnot showed himself outside his own gate for more than a year, had been\nbrought across with great difficulty. He was, of course, the chief man\nthere. The temper of the council was very unforgiving, and the old man's\nword would have been decisive; but it is my opinion that, well aware of\nhis son's fiery courage, he dared not pronounce the word. More dilatory\ncounsels prevailed. A certain Haji Saman pointed out at great length\nthat \"these tyrannical and ferocious men had delivered themselves to\na certain death in any case. They would stand fast on their hill and\nstarve, or they would try to regain their boat and be shot from ambushes\nacross the creek, or they would break and fly into the forest and perish\nsingly there.\" He argued that by the use of proper stratagems these\nevil-minded strangers could be destroyed without the risk of a battle,\nand his words had a great weight, especially with the Patusan men\nproper. What unsettled the minds of the townsfolk was the failure of\nthe Rajah's boats to act at the decisive moment. It was the diplomatic\nKassim who represented the Rajah at the council. He spoke very little,\nlistened smilingly, very friendly and impenetrable. During the sitting\nmessengers kept arriving every few minutes almost, with reports of the\ninvaders' proceedings. Wild and exaggerated rumours were flying: there\nwas a large ship at the mouth of the river with big guns and many more\nmen--some white, others with black skins and of bloodthirsty appearance.\nThey were coming with many more boats to exterminate every living thing.\nA sense of near, incomprehensible danger affected the common people.\nAt one moment there was a panic in the courtyard amongst the women;\nshrieking; a rush; children crying--Haji Sunan went out to quiet them.\nThen a fort sentry fired at something moving on the river, and nearly\nkilled a villager bringing in his women-folk in a canoe together with\nthe best of his domestic utensils and a dozen fowls. This caused more\nconfusion. Meantime the palaver inside Jim's house went on in the\npresence of the girl. Doramin sat fierce-faced, heavy, looking at the\nspeakers in turn, and breathing slow like a bull. He didn't speak till\nthe last, after Kassim had declared that the Rajah's boats would be\ncalled in because the men were required to defend his master's stockade.\nDain Waris in his father's presence would offer no opinion, though the\ngirl entreated him in Jim's name to speak out. She offered him Jim's own\nmen in her anxiety to have these intruders driven out at once. He only\nshook his head, after a glance or two at Doramin. Finally, when the\ncouncil broke up it had been decided that the houses nearest the creek\nshould be strongly occupied to obtain the command of the enemy's boat.\nThe boat itself was not to be interfered with openly, so that the\nrobbers on the hill should be tempted to embark, when a well-directed\nfire would kill most of them, no doubt. To cut off the escape of those\nwho might survive, and to prevent more of them coming up, Dain Waris was\nordered by Doramin to take an armed party of Bugis down the river to a\ncertain spot ten miles below Patusan, and there form a camp on the shore\nand blockade the stream with the canoes. I don't believe for a moment\nthat Doramin feared the arrival of fresh forces. My opinion is that his\nconduct was guided solely by his wish to keep his son out of harm's\nway. To prevent a rush being made into the town the construction of a\nstockade was to be commenced at daylight at the end of the street on\nthe left bank. The old nakhoda declared his intention to command there\nhimself. A distribution of powder, bullets, and percussion-caps was made\nimmediately under the girl's supervision. Several messengers were to be\ndispatched in different directions after Jim, whose exact whereabouts\nwere unknown. These men started at dawn, but before that time Kassim had\nmanaged to open communications with the besieged Brown.\n\n'That accomplished diplomatist and confidant of the Rajah, on leaving\nthe fort to go back to his master, took into his boat Cornelius, whom he\nfound slinking mutely amongst the people in the courtyard. Kassim had a\nlittle plan of his own and wanted him for an interpreter. Thus it came\nabout that towards morning Brown, reflecting upon the desperate nature\nof his position, heard from the marshy overgrown hollow an amicable,\nquavering, strained voice crying--in English--for permission to come up,\nunder a promise of personal safety and on a very important errand. He\nwas overjoyed. If he was spoken to he was no longer a hunted wild beast.\nThese friendly sounds took off at once the awful stress of vigilant\nwatchfulness as of so many blind men not knowing whence the deathblow\nmight come. He pretended a great reluctance. The voice declared itself\n\"a white man--a poor, ruined, old man who had been living here for\nyears.\" A mist, wet and chilly, lay on the slopes of the hill, and after\nsome more shouting from one to the other, Brown called out, \"Come on,\nthen, but alone, mind!\" As a matter of fact--he told me, writhing with\nrage at the recollection of his helplessness--it made no difference.\nThey couldn't see more than a few yards before them, and no treachery\ncould make their position worse. By-and-by Cornelius, in his\nweek-day attire of a ragged dirty shirt and pants, barefooted, with a\nbroken-rimmed pith hat on his head, was made out vaguely, sidling up to\nthe defences, hesitating, stopping to listen in a peering posture. \"Come\nalong! You are safe,\" yelled Brown, while his men stared. All their\nhopes of life became suddenly centered in that dilapidated, mean\nnewcomer, who in profound silence clambered clumsily over a felled\ntree-trunk, and shivering, with his sour, mistrustful face, looked about\nat the knot of bearded, anxious, sleepless desperadoes.\n\n'Half an hour's confidential talk with Cornelius opened Brown's eyes as\nto the home affairs of Patusan. He was on the alert at once. There were\npossibilities, immense possibilities; but before he would talk over\nCornelius's proposals he demanded that some food should be sent up as\na guarantee of good faith. Cornelius went off, creeping sluggishly down\nthe hill on the side of the Rajah's palace, and after some delay a\nfew of Tunku Allang's men came up, bringing a scanty supply of rice,\nchillies, and dried fish. This was immeasurably better than nothing.\nLater on Cornelius returned accompanying Kassim, who stepped out with\nan air of perfect good-humoured trustfulness, in sandals, and muffled\nup from neck to ankles in dark-blue sheeting. He shook hands with Brown\ndiscreetly, and the three drew aside for a conference. Brown's men,\nrecovering their confidence, were slapping each other on the back, and\ncast knowing glances at their captain while they busied themselves with\npreparations for cooking.\n\n'Kassim disliked Doramin and his Bugis very much, but he hated the new\norder of things still more. It had occurred to him that these whites,\ntogether with the Rajah's followers, could attack and defeat the\nBugis before Jim's return. Then, he reasoned, general defection of\nthe townsfolk was sure to follow, and the reign of the white man who\nprotected poor people would be over. Afterwards the new allies could be\ndealt with. They would have no friends. The fellow was perfectly able to\nperceive the difference of character, and had seen enough of white men\nto know that these newcomers were outcasts, men without country.\nBrown preserved a stern and inscrutable demeanour. When he first heard\nCornelius's voice demanding admittance, it brought merely the hope of a\nloophole for escape. In less than an hour other thoughts were seething\nin his head. Urged by an extreme necessity, he had come there to steal\nfood, a few tons of rubber or gum may be, perhaps a handful of dollars,\nand had found himself enmeshed by deadly dangers. Now in consequence\nof these overtures from Kassim he began to think of stealing the whole\ncountry. Some confounded fellow had apparently accomplished something of\nthe kind--single-handed at that. Couldn't have done it very well though.\nPerhaps they could work together--squeeze everything dry and then go out\nquietly. In the course of his negotiations with Kassim he became aware\nthat he was supposed to have a big ship with plenty of men outside.\nKassim begged him earnestly to have this big ship with his many guns and\nmen brought up the river without delay for the Rajah's service. Brown\nprofessed himself willing, and on this basis the negotiation was carried\non with mutual distrust. Three times in the course of the morning the\ncourteous and active Kassim went down to consult the Rajah and came up\nbusily with his long stride. Brown, while bargaining, had a sort of grim\nenjoyment in thinking of his wretched schooner, with nothing but a heap\nof dirt in her hold, that stood for an armed ship, and a Chinaman and\na lame ex-beachcomber of Levuka on board, who represented all his many\nmen. In the afternoon he obtained further doles of food, a promise\nof some money, and a supply of mats for his men to make shelters\nfor themselves. They lay down and snored, protected from the burning\nsunshine; but Brown, sitting fully exposed on one of the felled trees,\nfeasted his eyes upon the view of the town and the river. There was much\nloot there. Cornelius, who had made himself at home in the camp, talked\nat his elbow, pointing out the localities, imparting advice, giving his\nown version of Jim's character, and commenting in his own fashion upon\nthe events of the last three years. Brown, who, apparently indifferent\nand gazing away, listened with attention to every word, could not make\nout clearly what sort of man this Jim could be. \"What's his name?\nJim! Jim! That's not enough for a man's name.\" \"They call him,\" said\nCornelius scornfully, \"Tuan Jim here. As you may say Lord Jim.\" \"What is\nhe? Where does he come from?\" inquired Brown. \"What sort of man is he?\nIs he an Englishman?\" \"Yes, yes, he's an Englishman. I am an Englishman\ntoo. From Malacca. He is a fool. All you have to do is to kill him and\nthen you are king here. Everything belongs to him,\" explained Cornelius.\n\"It strikes me he may be made to share with somebody before very long,\"\ncommented Brown half aloud. \"No, no. The proper way is to kill him the\nfirst chance you get, and then you can do what you like,\" Cornelius\nwould insist earnestly. \"I have lived for many years here, and I am\ngiving you a friend's advice.\"\n\n'In such converse and in gloating over the view of Patusan, which he had\ndetermined in his mind should become his prey, Brown whiled away most\nof the afternoon, his men, meantime, resting. On that day Dain Waris's\nfleet of canoes stole one by one under the shore farthest from the\ncreek, and went down to close the river against his retreat. Of this\nBrown was not aware, and Kassim, who came up the knoll an hour before\nsunset, took good care not to enlighten him. He wanted the white\nman's ship to come up the river, and this news, he feared, would be\ndiscouraging. He was very pressing with Brown to send the \"order,\"\noffering at the same time a trusty messenger, who for greater secrecy\n(as he explained) would make his way by land to the mouth of the river\nand deliver the \"order\" on board. After some reflection Brown judged\nit expedient to tear a page out of his pocket-book, on which he simply\nwrote, \"We are getting on. Big job. Detain the man.\" The stolid youth\nselected by Kassim for that service performed it faithfully, and was\nrewarded by being suddenly tipped, head first, into the schooner's empty\nhold by the ex-beachcomber and the Chinaman, who thereupon hastened to\nput on the hatches. What became of him afterwards Brown did not say.'\n\n\n\n\n'Brown's object was to gain time by fooling with Kassim's diplomacy. For\ndoing a real stroke of business he could not help thinking the white man\nwas the person to work with. He could not imagine such a chap (who must\nbe confoundedly clever after all to get hold of the natives like\nthat) refusing a help that would do away with the necessity for slow,\ncautious, risky cheating, that imposed itself as the only possible\nline of conduct for a single-handed man. He, Brown, would offer him\nthe power. No man could hesitate. Everything was in coming to a clear\nunderstanding. Of course they would share. The idea of there being a\nfort--all ready to his hand--a real fort, with artillery (he knew this\nfrom Cornelius), excited him. Let him only once get in and . . . He\nwould impose modest conditions. Not too low, though. The man was no\nfool, it seemed. They would work like brothers till . . . till the time\ncame for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all accounts. With grim\nimpatience of plunder he wished himself to be talking with the man now.\nThe land already seemed to be his to tear to pieces, squeeze, and throw\naway. Meantime Kassim had to be fooled for the sake of food first--and\nfor a second string. But the principal thing was to get something to eat\nfrom day to day. Besides, he was not averse to begin fighting on that\nRajah's account, and teach a lesson to those people who had received him\nwith shots. The lust of battle was upon him.\n\n'I am sorry that I can't give you this part of the story, which of\ncourse I have mainly from Brown, in Brown's own words. There was in the\nbroken, violent speech of that man, unveiling before me his thoughts\nwith the very hand of Death upon his throat, an undisguised ruthlessness\nof purpose, a strange vengeful attitude towards his own past, and a\nblind belief in the righteousness of his will against all mankind,\nsomething of that feeling which could induce the leader of a horde of\nwandering cut-throats to call himself proudly the Scourge of God.\nNo doubt the natural senseless ferocity which is the basis of such\na character was exasperated by failure, ill-luck, and the recent\nprivations, as well as by the desperate position in which he found\nhimself; but what was most remarkable of all was this, that while he\nplanned treacherous alliances, had already settled in his own mind the\nfate of the white man, and intrigued in an overbearing, offhand manner\nwith Kassim, one could perceive that what he had really desired, almost\nin spite of himself, was to play havoc with that jungle town which had\ndefied him, to see it strewn over with corpses and enveloped in flames.\nListening to his pitiless, panting voice, I could imagine how he must\nhave looked at it from the hillock, peopling it with images of murder\nand rapine. The part nearest to the creek wore an abandoned aspect,\nthough as a matter of fact every house concealed a few armed men on the\nalert. Suddenly beyond the stretch of waste ground, interspersed with\nsmall patches of low dense bush, excavations, heaps of rubbish, with\ntrodden paths between, a man, solitary and looking very small, strolled\nout into the deserted opening of the street between the shut-up, dark,\nlifeless buildings at the end. Perhaps one of the inhabitants, who had\nfled to the other bank of the river, coming back for some object of\ndomestic use. Evidently he supposed himself quite safe at that distance\nfrom the hill on the other side of the creek. A light stockade, set up\nhastily, was just round the turn of the street, full of his friends.\nHe moved leisurely. Brown saw him, and instantly called to his side the\nYankee deserter, who acted as a sort of second in command. This lanky,\nloose-jointed fellow came forward, wooden-faced, trailing his rifle\nlazily. When he understood what was wanted from him a homicidal and\nconceited smile uncovered his teeth, making two deep folds down his\nsallow, leathery cheeks. He prided himself on being a dead shot. He\ndropped on one knee, and taking aim from a steady rest through the\nunlopped branches of a felled tree, fired, and at once stood up to look.\nThe man, far away, turned his head to the report, made another step\nforward, seemed to hesitate, and abruptly got down on his hands and\nknees. In the silence that fell upon the sharp crack of the rifle, the\ndead shot, keeping his eyes fixed upon the quarry, guessed that \"this\nthere coon's health would never be a source of anxiety to his friends\nany more.\" The man's limbs were seen to move rapidly under his body\nin an endeavour to run on all-fours. In that empty space arose a\nmultitudinous shout of dismay and surprise. The man sank flat, face\ndown, and moved no more. \"That showed them what we could do,\" said Brown\nto me. \"Struck the fear of sudden death into them. That was what we\nwanted. They were two hundred to one, and this gave them something to\nthink over for the night. Not one of them had an idea of such a long\nshot before. That beggar belonging to the Rajah scooted down-hill with\nhis eyes hanging out of his head.\"\n\n'As he was telling me this he tried with a shaking hand to wipe the thin\nfoam on his blue lips. \"Two hundred to one. Two hundred to one . . .\nstrike terror, . . . terror, terror, I tell you. . . .\" His own eyes\nwere starting out of their sockets. He fell back, clawing the air with\nskinny fingers, sat up again, bowed and hairy, glared at me sideways\nlike some man-beast of folk-lore, with open mouth in his miserable and\nawful agony before he got his speech back after that fit. There are\nsights one never forgets.\n\n'Furthermore, to draw the enemy's fire and locate such parties as\nmight have been hiding in the bushes along the creek, Brown ordered the\nSolomon Islander to go down to the boat and bring an oar, as you send a\nspaniel after a stick into the water. This failed, and the fellow came\nback without a single shot having been fired at him from anywhere.\n\"There's nobody,\" opined some of the men. It is \"onnatural,\" remarked\nthe Yankee. Kassim had gone, by that time, very much impressed, pleased\ntoo, and also uneasy. Pursuing his tortuous policy, he had dispatched a\nmessage to Dain Waris warning him to look out for the white men's\nship, which, he had had information, was about to come up the river.\nHe minimised its strength and exhorted him to oppose its passage. This\ndouble-dealing answered his purpose, which was to keep the Bugis forces\ndivided and to weaken them by fighting. On the other hand, he had in\nthe course of that day sent word to the assembled Bugis chiefs in town,\nassuring them that he was trying to induce the invaders to retire; his\nmessages to the fort asked earnestly for powder for the Rajah's men. It\nwas a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or\nso of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall.\nThe open intercourse between the hill and the palace unsettled all the\nminds. It was already time for men to take sides, it began to be said.\nThere would soon be much bloodshed, and thereafter great trouble for\nmany people. The social fabric of orderly, peaceful life, when every man\nwas sure of to-morrow, the edifice raised by Jim's hands, seemed on that\nevening ready to collapse into a ruin reeking with blood. The poorer\nfolk were already taking to the bush or flying up the river. A good many\nof the upper class judged it necessary to go and pay their court to the\nRajah. The Rajah's youths jostled them rudely. Old Tunku Allang, almost\nout of his mind with fear and indecision, either kept a sullen silence\nor abused them violently for daring to come with empty hands: they\ndeparted very much frightened; only old Doramin kept his countrymen\ntogether and pursued his tactics inflexibly. Enthroned in a big chair\nbehind the improvised stockade, he issued his orders in a deep veiled\nrumble, unmoved, like a deaf man, in the flying rumours.\n\n'Dusk fell, hiding first the body of the dead man, which had been left\nlying with arms outstretched as if nailed to the ground, and then the\nrevolving sphere of the night rolled smoothly over Patusan and came to\na rest, showering the glitter of countless worlds upon the earth. Again,\nin the exposed part of the town big fires blazed along the only street,\nrevealing from distance to distance upon their glares the falling\nstraight lines of roofs, the fragments of wattled walls jumbled in\nconfusion, here and there a whole hut elevated in the glow upon the\nvertical black stripes of a group of high piles and all this line of\ndwellings, revealed in patches by the swaying flames, seemed to flicker\ntortuously away up-river into the gloom at the heart of the land. A\ngreat silence, in which the looms of successive fires played without\nnoise, extended into the darkness at the foot of the hill; but the\nother bank of the river, all dark save for a solitary bonfire at the\nriver-front before the fort, sent out into the air an increasing tremor\nthat might have been the stamping of a multitude of feet, the hum of\nmany voices, or the fall of an immensely distant waterfall. It was\nthen, Brown confessed to me, while, turning his back on his men, he sat\nlooking at it all, that notwithstanding his disdain, his ruthless faith\nin himself, a feeling came over him that at last he had run his head\nagainst a stone wall. Had his boat been afloat at the time, he believed\nhe would have tried to steal away, taking his chances of a long chase\ndown the river and of starvation at sea. It is very doubtful whether he\nwould have succeeded in getting away. However, he didn't try this. For\nanother moment he had a passing thought of trying to rush the town,\nbut he perceived very well that in the end he would find himself in the\nlighted street, where they would be shot down like dogs from the houses.\nThey were two hundred to one--he thought, while his men, huddling round\ntwo heaps of smouldering embers, munched the last of the bananas and\nroasted the few yams they owed to Kassim's diplomacy. Cornelius sat\namongst them dozing sulkily.\n\n'Then one of the whites remembered that some tobacco had been left in\nthe boat, and, encouraged by the impunity of the Solomon Islander,\nsaid he would go to fetch it. At this all the others shook off\ntheir despondency. Brown applied to, said, \"Go, and be d--d to you,\"\nscornfully. He didn't think there was any danger in going to the creek\nin the dark. The man threw a leg over the tree-trunk and disappeared. A\nmoment later he was heard clambering into the boat and then clambering\nout. \"I've got it,\" he cried. A flash and a report at the very foot of\nthe hill followed. \"I am hit,\" yelled the man. \"Look out, look out--I am\nhit,\" and instantly all the rifles went off. The hill squirted fire\nand noise into the night like a little volcano, and when Brown and\nthe Yankee with curses and cuffs stopped the panic-stricken firing, a\nprofound, weary groan floated up from the creek, succeeded by a plaint\nwhose heartrending sadness was like some poison turning the blood\ncold in the veins. Then a strong voice pronounced several distinct\nincomprehensible words somewhere beyond the creek. \"Let no one fire,\"\nshouted Brown. \"What does it mean?\" . . . \"Do you hear on the hill?\nDo you hear? Do you hear?\" repeated the voice three times. Cornelius\ntranslated, and then prompted the answer. \"Speak,\" cried Brown, \"we\nhear.\" Then the voice, declaiming in the sonorous inflated tone of a\nherald, and shifting continually on the edge of the vague waste-land,\nproclaimed that between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan\nand the white men on the hill and those with them, there would be no\nfaith, no compassion, no speech, no peace. A bush rustled; a haphazard\nvolley rang out. \"Dam' foolishness,\" muttered the Yankee, vexedly\ngrounding the butt. Cornelius translated. The wounded man below\nthe hill, after crying out twice, \"Take me up! take me up!\" went on\ncomplaining in moans. While he had kept on the blackened earth of the\nslope, and afterwards crouching in the boat, he had been safe enough.\nIt seems that in his joy at finding the tobacco he forgot himself and\njumped out on her off-side, as it were. The white boat, lying high and\ndry, showed him up; the creek was no more than seven yards wide in that\nplace, and there happened to be a man crouching in the bush on the other\nbank.\n\n'He was a Bugis of Tondano only lately come to Patusan, and a relation\nof the man shot in the afternoon. That famous long shot had indeed\nappalled the beholders. The man in utter security had been struck down,\nin full view of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they\nseemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a bitter rage.\nThat relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was then with Doramin in the\nstockade only a few feet away. You who know these chaps must admit that\nthe fellow showed an unusual pluck by volunteering to carry the message,\nalone, in the dark. Creeping across the open ground, he had deviated\nto the left and found himself opposite the boat. He was startled when\nBrown's man shouted. He came to a sitting position with his gun to his\nshoulder, and when the other jumped out, exposing himself, he pulled the\ntrigger and lodged three jagged slugs point-blank into the poor wretch's\nstomach. Then, lying flat on his face, he gave himself up for dead,\nwhile a thin hail of lead chopped and swished the bushes close on his\nright hand; afterwards he delivered his speech shouting, bent double,\ndodging all the time in cover. With the last word he leaped sideways,\nlay close for a while, and afterwards got back to the houses unharmed,\nhaving achieved on that night such a renown as his children will not\nwillingly allow to die.\n\n'And on the hill the forlorn band let the two little heaps of embers\ngo out under their bowed heads. They sat dejected on the ground with\ncompressed lips and downcast eyes, listening to their comrade below. He\nwas a strong man and died hard, with moans now loud, now sinking to a\nstrange confidential note of pain. Sometimes he shrieked, and again,\nafter a period of silence, he could be heard muttering deliriously a\nlong and unintelligible complaint. Never for a moment did he cease.\n\n'\"What's the good?\" Brown had said unmoved once, seeing the Yankee, who\nhad been swearing under his breath, prepare to go down. \"That's so,\"\nassented the deserter, reluctantly desisting. \"There's no encouragement\nfor wounded men here. Only his noise is calculated to make all the\nothers think too much of the hereafter, cap'n.\" \"Water!\" cried the\nwounded man in an extraordinarily clear vigorous voice, and then went\noff moaning feebly. \"Ay, water. Water will do it,\" muttered the other to\nhimself, resignedly. \"Plenty by-and-by. The tide is flowing.\"\n\n'At last the tide flowed, silencing the plaint and the cries of pain,\nand the dawn was near when Brown, sitting with his chin in the palm of\nhis hand before Patusan, as one might stare at the unscalable side of a\nmountain, heard the brief ringing bark of a brass 6-pounder far away\nin town somewhere. \"What's this?\" he asked of Cornelius, who hung about\nhim. Cornelius listened. A muffled roaring shout rolled down-river over\nthe town; a big drum began to throb, and others responded, pulsating and\ndroning. Tiny scattered lights began to twinkle in the dark half of the\ntown, while the part lighted by the loom of fires hummed with a deep and\nprolonged murmur. \"He has come,\" said Cornelius. \"What? Already? Are\nyou sure?\" Brown asked. \"Yes! yes! Sure. Listen to the noise.\" \"What\nare they making that row about?\" pursued Brown. \"For joy,\" snorted\nCornelius; \"he is a very great man, but all the same, he knows no more\nthan a child, and so they make a great noise to please him, because they\nknow no better.\" \"Look here,\" said Brown, \"how is one to get at him?\"\n\"He shall come to talk to you,\" Cornelius declared. \"What do you mean?\nCome down here strolling as it were?\" Cornelius nodded vigorously in the\ndark. \"Yes. He will come straight here and talk to you. He is just like\na fool. You shall see what a fool he is.\" Brown was incredulous. \"You\nshall see; you shall see,\" repeated Cornelius. \"He is not afraid--not\nafraid of anything. He will come and order you to leave his people\nalone. Everybody must leave his people alone. He is like a little child.\nHe will come to you straight.\" Alas! he knew Jim well--that \"mean little\nskunk,\" as Brown called him to me. \"Yes, certainly,\" he pursued with\nardour, \"and then, captain, you tell that tall man with a gun to shoot\nhim. Just you kill him, and you will frighten everybody so much that\nyou can do anything you like with them afterwards--get what you like--go\naway when you like. Ha! ha! ha! Fine . . .\" He almost danced with\nimpatience and eagerness; and Brown, looking over his shoulder at him,\ncould see, shown up by the pitiless dawn, his men drenched with dew,\nsitting amongst the cold ashes and the litter of the camp, haggard,\ncowed, and in rags.'\n\n\n\n\n'To the very last moment, till the full day came upon them with a\nspring, the fires on the west bank blazed bright and clear; and then\nBrown saw in a knot of coloured figures motionless between the advanced\nhouses a man in European clothes, in a helmet, all white. \"That's him;\nlook! look!\" Cornelius said excitedly. All Brown's men had sprung up and\ncrowded at his back with lustreless eyes. The group of vivid colours\nand dark faces with the white figure in their midst were observing the\nknoll. Brown could see naked arms being raised to shade the eyes and\nother brown arms pointing. What should he do? He looked around, and the\nforests that faced him on all sides walled the cock-pit of an unequal\ncontest. He looked once more at his men. A contempt, a weariness, the\ndesire of life, the wish to try for one more chance--for some other\ngrave--struggled in his breast. From the outline the figure presented\nit seemed to him that the white man there, backed up by all the power of\nthe land, was examining his position through binoculars. Brown jumped up\non the log, throwing his arms up, the palms outwards. The coloured group\nclosed round the white man, and fell back twice before he got clear of\nthem, walking slowly alone. Brown remained standing on the log till\nJim, appearing and disappearing between the patches of thorny scrub, had\nnearly reached the creek; then Brown jumped off and went down to meet\nhim on his side.\n\n'They met, I should think, not very far from the place, perhaps on the\nvery spot, where Jim took the second desperate leap of his life--the\nleap that landed him into the life of Patusan, into the trust, the love,\nthe confidence of the people. They faced each other across the creek,\nand with steady eyes tried to understand each other before they opened\ntheir lips. Their antagonism must have been expressed in their glances;\nI know that Brown hated Jim at first sight. Whatever hopes he might have\nhad vanished at once. This was not the man he had expected to see. He\nhated him for this--and in a checked flannel shirt with sleeves cut\noff at the elbows, grey bearded, with a sunken, sun-blackened face--he\ncursed in his heart the other's youth and assurance, his clear eyes and\nhis untroubled bearing. That fellow had got in a long way before him!\nHe did not look like a man who would be willing to give anything for\nassistance. He had all the advantages on his side--possession, security,\npower; he was on the side of an overwhelming force! He was not hungry\nand desperate, and he did not seem in the least afraid. And there was\nsomething in the very neatness of Jim's clothes, from the white helmet\nto the canvas leggings and the pipeclayed shoes, which in Brown's sombre\nirritated eyes seemed to belong to things he had in the very shaping of\nhis life condemned and flouted.\n\n'\"Who are you?\" asked Jim at last, speaking in his usual voice. \"My\nname's Brown,\" answered the other loudly; \"Captain Brown. What's yours?\"\nand Jim after a little pause went on quietly, as If he had not heard:\n\"What made you come here?\" \"You want to know,\" said Brown bitterly.\n\"It's easy to tell. Hunger. And what made you?\"\n\n'\"The fellow started at this,\" said Brown, relating to me the opening of\nthis strange conversation between those two men, separated only by\nthe muddy bed of a creek, but standing on the opposite poles of that\nconception of life which includes all mankind--\"The fellow started at\nthis and got very red in the face. Too big to be questioned, I suppose.\nI told him that if he looked upon me as a dead man with whom you may\ntake liberties, he himself was not a whit better off really. I had\na fellow up there who had a bead drawn on him all the time, and only\nwaited for a sign from me. There was nothing to be shocked at in this.\nHe had come down of his own free will. 'Let us agree,' said I, 'that we\nare both dead men, and let us talk on that basis, as equals. We are\nall equal before death,' I said. I admitted I was there like a rat in\na trap, but we had been driven to it, and even a trapped rat can give\na bite. He caught me up in a moment. 'Not if you don't go near the trap\ntill the rat is dead.' I told him that sort of game was good enough for\nthese native friends of his, but I would have thought him too white to\nserve even a rat so. Yes, I had wanted to talk with him. Not to beg\nfor my life, though. My fellows were--well--what they were--men like\nhimself, anyhow. All we wanted from him was to come on in the devil's\nname and have it out. 'God d--n it,' said I, while he stood there as\nstill as a wooden post, 'you don't want to come out here every day with\nyour glasses to count how many of us are left on our feet. Come. Either\nbring your infernal crowd along or let us go out and starve in the open\nsea, by God! You have been white once, for all your tall talk of this\nbeing your own people and you being one with them. Are you? And what the\ndevil do you get for it; what is it you've found here that is so d--d\nprecious? Hey? You don't want us to come down here perhaps--do you? You\nare two hundred to one. You don't want us to come down into the open.\nAh! I promise you we shall give you some sport before you've done. You\ntalk about me making a cowardly set upon unoffending people. What's\nthat to me that they are unoffending, when I am starving for next to no\noffence? But I am not a coward. Don't you be one. Bring them along or,\nby all the fiends, we shall yet manage to send half your unoffending\ntown to heaven with us in smoke!'\"\n\n'He was terrible--relating this to me--this tortured skeleton of a man\ndrawn up together with his face over his knees, upon a miserable bed in\nthat wretched hovel, and lifting his head to look at me with malignant\ntriumph.\n\n'\"That's what I told him--I knew what to say,\" he began again, feebly\nat first, but working himself up with incredible speed into a fiery\nutterance of his scorn. \"We aren't going into the forest to wander like\na string of living skeletons dropping one after another for ants to\ngo to work upon us before we are fairly dead. Oh no! . . . 'You don't\ndeserve a better fate,' he said. 'And what do you deserve,' I shouted\nat him, 'you that I find skulking here with your mouth full of your\nresponsibility, of innocent lives, of your infernal duty? What do\nyou know more of me than I know of you? I came here for food. D'ye\nhear?--food to fill our bellies. And what did _you_ come for? What did\nyou ask for when you came here? We don't ask you for anything but to\ngive us a fight or a clear road to go back whence we came. . . .' 'I\nwould fight with you now,' says he, pulling at his little moustache.\n'And I would let you shoot me, and welcome,' I said. 'This is as good a\njumping-off place for me as another. I am sick of my infernal luck. But\nit would be too easy. There are my men in the same boat--and, by God, I\nam not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d--d lurch,'\nI said. He stood thinking for a while and then wanted to know what I\nhad done ('out there' he says, tossing his head down-stream) to be hazed\nabout so. 'Have we met to tell each other the story of our lives?' I\nasked him. 'Suppose you begin. No? Well, I am sure I don't want to hear.\nKeep it to yourself. I know it is no better than mine. I've lived--and\nso did you, though you talk as if you were one of those people that\nshould have wings so as to go about without touching the dirty earth.\nWell--it is dirty. I haven't got any wings. I am here because I was\nafraid once in my life. Want to know what of? Of a prison. That scares\nme, and you may know it--if it's any good to you. I won't ask you what\nscared you into this infernal hole, where you seem to have found pretty\npickings. That's your luck and this is mine--the privilege to beg for\nthe favour of being shot quickly, or else kicked out to go free and\nstarve in my own way.' . . .\"\n\n'His debilitated body shook with an exultation so vehement, so assured,\nand so malicious that it seemed to have driven off the death waiting for\nhim in that hut. The corpse of his mad self-love uprose from rags and\ndestitution as from the dark horrors of a tomb. It is impossible to say\nhow much he lied to Jim then, how much he lied to me now--and to himself\nalways. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of\nevery passion wants some pretence to make it live. Standing at the gate\nof the other world in the guise of a beggar, he had slapped this world's\nface, he had spat on it, he had thrown upon it an immensity of scorn\nand revolt at the bottom of his misdeeds. He had overcome them all--men,\nwomen, savages, traders, ruffians, missionaries--and Jim--\"that\nbeefy-faced beggar.\" I did not begrudge him this triumph in articulo\nmortis, this almost posthumous illusion of having trampled all the earth\nunder his feet. While he was boasting to me, in his sordid and repulsive\nagony, I couldn't help thinking of the chuckling talk relating to the\ntime of his greatest splendour when, during a year or more, Gentleman\nBrown's ship was to be seen, for many days on end, hovering off an islet\nbefringed with green upon azure, with the dark dot of the mission-house\non a white beach; while Gentleman Brown, ashore, was casting his spells\nover a romantic girl for whom Melanesia had been too much, and giving\nhopes of a remarkable conversion to her husband. The poor man, some time\nor other, had been heard to express the intention of winning \"Captain\nBrown to a better way of life.\" . . . \"Bag Gentleman Brown for\nGlory\"--as a leery-eyed loafer expressed it once--\"just to let them see\nup above what a Western Pacific trading skipper looks like.\" And this\nwas the man, too, who had run off with a dying woman, and had shed tears\nover her body. \"Carried on like a big baby,\" his then mate was never\ntired of telling, \"and where the fun came in may I be kicked to death by\ndiseased Kanakas if _I_ know. Why, gents! she was too far gone when he\nbrought her aboard to know him; she just lay there on her back in his\nbunk staring at the beam with awful shining eyes--and then she died.\nDam' bad sort of fever, I guess. . . .\" I remembered all these stories\nwhile, wiping his matted lump of a beard with a livid hand, he was\ntelling me from his noisome couch how he got round, got in, got home,\non that confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow. He\nadmitted that he couldn't be scared, but there was a way, \"as broad as\na turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny soul around and inside out\nand upside down--by God!\"'\n\n'I don't think he could do more than perhaps look upon that straight\npath. He seemed to have been puzzled by what he saw, for he interrupted\nhimself in his narrative more than once to exclaim, \"He nearly slipped\nfrom me there. I could not make him out. Who was he?\" And after\nglaring at me wildly he would go on, jubilating and sneering. To me the\nconversation of these two across the creek appears now as the deadliest\nkind of duel on which Fate looked on with her cold-eyed knowledge of the\nend. No, he didn't turn Jim's soul inside out, but I am much mistaken if\nthe spirit so utterly out of his reach had not been made to taste to the\nfull the bitterness of that contest. These were the emissaries with whom\nthe world he had renounced was pursuing him in his retreat--white men\nfrom \"out there\" where he did not think himself good enough to live.\nThis was all that came to him--a menace, a shock, a danger to his\nwork. I suppose it is this sad, half-resentful, half-resigned feeling,\npiercing through the few words Jim said now and then, that puzzled Brown\nso much in the reading of his character. Some great men owe most of\ntheir greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for\ntheir tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work;\nand Brown, as though he had been really great, had a satanic gift of\nfinding out the best and the weakest spot in his victims. He admitted\nto me that Jim wasn't of the sort that can be got over by truckling, and\naccordingly he took care to show himself as a man confronting without\ndismay ill-luck, censure, and disaster. The smuggling of a few guns was\nno great crime, he pointed out. As to coming to Patusan, who had the\nright to say he hadn't come to beg? The infernal people here let loose\nat him from both banks without staying to ask questions. He made\nthe point brazenly, for, in truth, Dain Waris's energetic action had\nprevented the greatest calamities; because Brown told me distinctly\nthat, perceiving the size of the place, he had resolved instantly in his\nmind that as soon as he had gained a footing he would set fire right and\nleft, and begin by shooting down everything living in sight, in order to\ncow and terrify the population. The disproportion of forces was so great\nthat this was the only way giving him the slightest chance of attaining\nhis ends--he argued in a fit of coughing. But he didn't tell Jim this.\nAs to the hardships and starvation they had gone through, these had been\nvery real; it was enough to look at his band. He made, at the sound of a\nshrill whistle, all his men appear standing in a row on the logs in full\nview, so that Jim could see them. For the killing of the man, it had\nbeen done--well, it had--but was not this war, bloody war--in a corner?\nand the fellow had been killed cleanly, shot through the chest, not like\nthat poor devil of his lying now in the creek. They had to listen to him\ndying for six hours, with his entrails torn with slugs. At any rate this\nwas a life for a life. . . . And all this was said with the weariness,\nwith the recklessness of a man spurred on and on by ill-luck till he\ncares not where he runs. When he asked Jim, with a sort of brusque\ndespairing frankness, whether he himself--straight now--didn't\nunderstand that when \"it came to saving one's life in the dark, one\ndidn't care who else went--three, thirty, three hundred people\"--it was\nas if a demon had been whispering advice in his ear. \"I made him wince,\"\nboasted Brown to me. \"He very soon left off coming the righteous over\nme. He just stood there with nothing to say, and looking as black as\nthunder--not at me--on the ground.\" He asked Jim whether he had nothing\nfishy in his life to remember that he was so damnedly hard upon a man\ntrying to get out of a deadly hole by the first means that came to\nhand--and so on, and so on. And there ran through the rough talk a\nvein of subtle reference to their common blood, an assumption of common\nexperience; a sickening suggestion of common guilt, of secret knowledge\nthat was like a bond of their minds and of their hearts.\n\n'At last Brown threw himself down full length and watched Jim out of\nthe corners of his eyes. Jim on his side of the creek stood thinking and\nswitching his leg. The houses in view were silent, as if a pestilence\nhad swept them clean of every breath of life; but many invisible eyes\nwere turned, from within, upon the two men with the creek between them,\na stranded white boat, and the body of the third man half sunk in the\nmud. On the river canoes were moving again, for Patusan was recovering\nits belief in the stability of earthly institutions since the return of\nthe white lord. The right bank, the platforms of the houses, the rafts\nmoored along the shores, even the roofs of bathing-huts, were covered\nwith people that, far away out of earshot and almost out of sight, were\nstraining their eyes towards the knoll beyond the Rajah's stockade.\nWithin the wide irregular ring of forests, broken in two places by the\nsheen of the river, there was a silence. \"Will you promise to leave the\ncoast?\" Jim asked. Brown lifted and let fall his hand, giving everything\nup as it were--accepting the inevitable. \"And surrender your arms?\" Jim\nwent on. Brown sat up and glared across. \"Surrender our arms! Not till\nyou come to take them out of our stiff hands. You think I am gone crazy\nwith funk? Oh no! That and the rags I stand in is all I have got in the\nworld, besides a few more breechloaders on board; and I expect to sell\nthe lot in Madagascar, if I ever get so far--begging my way from ship to\nship.\"\n\n'Jim said nothing to this. At last, throwing away the switch he held in\nhis hand, he said, as if speaking to himself, \"I don't know whether I\nhave the power.\" . . . \"You don't know! And you wanted me just now to\ngive up my arms! That's good, too,\" cried Brown; \"Suppose they say one\nthing to you, and do the other thing to me.\" He calmed down markedly. \"I\ndare say you have the power, or what's the meaning of all this talk?\" he\ncontinued. \"What did you come down here for? To pass the time of day?\"\n\n'\"Very well,\" said Jim, lifting his head suddenly after a long silence.\n\"You shall have a clear road or else a clear fight.\" He turned on his\nheel and walked away.\n\n'Brown got up at once, but he did not go up the hill till he had seen\nJim disappear between the first houses. He never set his eyes on him\nagain. On his way back he met Cornelius slouching down with his head\nbetween his shoulders. He stopped before Brown. \"Why didn't you kill\nhim?\" he demanded in a sour, discontented voice. \"Because I could do\nbetter than that,\" Brown said with an amused smile. \"Never! never!\"\nprotested Cornelius with energy. \"Couldn't. I have lived here for many\nyears.\" Brown looked up at him curiously. There were many sides to the\nlife of that place in arms against him; things he would never find out.\nCornelius slunk past dejectedly in the direction of the river. He was\nnow leaving his new friends; he accepted the disappointing course of\nevents with a sulky obstinacy which seemed to draw more together his\nlittle yellow old face; and as he went down he glanced askant here and\nthere, never giving up his fixed idea.\n\n'Henceforth events move fast without a check, flowing from the very\nhearts of men like a stream from a dark source, and we see Jim amongst\nthem, mostly through Tamb' Itam's eyes. The girl's eyes had watched him\ntoo, but her life is too much entwined with his: there is her passion,\nher wonder, her anger, and, above all, her fear and her unforgiving\nlove. Of the faithful servant, uncomprehending as the rest of them, it\nis the fidelity alone that comes into play; a fidelity and a belief in\nhis lord so strong that even amazement is subdued to a sort of saddened\nacceptance of a mysterious failure. He has eyes only for one figure,\nand through all the mazes of bewilderment he preserves his air of\nguardianship, of obedience, of care.\n\n'His master came back from his talk with the white men, walking slowly\ntowards the stockade in the street. Everybody was rejoiced to see him\nreturn, for while he was away every man had been afraid not only of him\nbeing killed, but also of what would come after. Jim went into one of\nthe houses, where old Doramin had retired, and remained alone for a\nlong time with the head of the Bugis settlers. No doubt he discussed\nthe course to follow with him then, but no man was present at the\nconversation. Only Tamb' Itam, keeping as close to the door as he could,\nheard his master say, \"Yes. I shall let all the people know that such\nis my wish; but I spoke to you, O Doramin, before all the others, and\nalone; for you know my heart as well as I know yours and its greatest\ndesire. And you know well also that I have no thought but for the\npeople's good.\" Then his master, lifting the sheeting in the doorway,\nwent out, and he, Tamb' Itam, had a glimpse of old Doramin within,\nsitting in the chair with his hands on his knees, and looking between\nhis feet. Afterwards he followed his master to the fort, where all the\nprincipal Bugis and Patusan inhabitants had been summoned for a talk.\nTamb' Itam himself hoped there would be some fighting. \"What was it but\nthe taking of another hill?\" he exclaimed regretfully. However, in the\ntown many hoped that the rapacious strangers would be induced, by the\nsight of so many brave men making ready to fight, to go away. It would\nbe a good thing if they went away. Since Jim's arrival had been made\nknown before daylight by the gun fired from the fort and the beating of\nthe big drum there, the fear that had hung over Patusan had broken and\nsubsided like a wave on a rock, leaving the seething foam of excitement,\ncuriosity, and endless speculation. Half of the population had been\nousted out of their homes for purposes of defence, and were living in\nthe street on the left side of the river, crowding round the fort, and\nin momentary expectation of seeing their abandoned dwellings on the\nthreatened bank burst into flames. The general anxiety was to see the\nmatter settled quickly. Food, through Jewel's care, had been served\nout to the refugees. Nobody knew what their white man would do. Some\nremarked that it was worse than in Sherif Ali's war. Then many people\ndid not care; now everybody had something to lose. The movements of\ncanoes passing to and fro between the two parts of the town were watched\nwith interest. A couple of Bugis war-boats lay anchored in the middle of\nthe stream to protect the river, and a thread of smoke stood at the bow\nof each; the men in them were cooking their midday rice when Jim, after\nhis interviews with Brown and Doramin, crossed the river and entered by\nthe water-gate of his fort. The people inside crowded round him, so that\nhe could hardly make his way to the house. They had not seen him before,\nbecause on his arrival during the night he had only exchanged a few\nwords with the girl, who had come down to the landing-stage for the\npurpose, and had then gone on at once to join the chiefs and the\nfighting men on the other bank. People shouted greetings after him.\nOne old woman raised a laugh by pushing her way to the front madly and\nenjoining him in a scolding voice to see to it that her two sons, who\nwere with Doramin, did not come to harm at the hands of the robbers.\nSeveral of the bystanders tried to pull her away, but she struggled and\ncried, \"Let me go. What is this, O Muslims? This laughter is unseemly.\nAre they not cruel, bloodthirsty robbers bent on killing?\" \"Let her be,\"\nsaid Jim, and as a silence fell suddenly, he said slowly, \"Everybody\nshall be safe.\" He entered the house before the great sigh, and the loud\nmurmurs of satisfaction, had died out.\n\n'There's no doubt his mind was made up that Brown should have his way\nclear back to the sea. His fate, revolted, was forcing his hand. He\nhad for the first time to affirm his will in the face of outspoken\nopposition. \"There was much talk, and at first my master was silent,\"\nTamb' Itam said. \"Darkness came, and then I lit the candles on the long\ntable. The chiefs sat on each side, and the lady remained by my master's\nright hand.\"\n\n'When he began to speak, the unaccustomed difficulty seemed only to\nfix his resolve more immovably. The white men were now waiting for his\nanswer on the hill. Their chief had spoken to him in the language of his\nown people, making clear many things difficult to explain in any other\nspeech. They were erring men whom suffering had made blind to right and\nwrong. It is true that lives had been lost already, but why lose more?\nHe declared to his hearers, the assembled heads of the people, that\ntheir welfare was his welfare, their losses his losses, their mourning\nhis mourning. He looked round at the grave listening faces and told them\nto remember that they had fought and worked side by side. They knew his\ncourage . . . Here a murmur interrupted him . . . And that he had never\ndeceived them. For many years they had dwelt together. He loved the\nland and the people living in it with a very great love. He was ready to\nanswer with his life for any harm that should come to them if the white\nmen with beards were allowed to retire. They were evil-doers, but their\ndestiny had been evil, too. Had he ever advised them ill? Had his words\never brought suffering to the people? he asked. He believed that it\nwould be best to let these whites and their followers go with their\nlives. It would be a small gift. \"I whom you have tried and found always\ntrue ask you to let them go.\" He turned to Doramin. The old nakhoda made\nno movement. \"Then,\" said Jim, \"call in Dain Waris, your son, my friend,\nfor in this business I shall not lead.\"'\n\n\n'Tamb' Itam behind his chair was thunderstruck. The declaration produced\nan immense sensation. \"Let them go because this is best in my knowledge\nwhich has never deceived you,\" Jim insisted. There was a silence. In\nthe darkness of the courtyard could be heard the subdued whispering,\nshuffling noise of many people. Doramin raised his heavy head and said\nthat there was no more reading of hearts than touching the sky with the\nhand, but--he consented. The others gave their opinion in turn. \"It is\nbest,\" \"Let them go,\" and so on. But most of them simply said that they\n\"believed Tuan Jim.\"\n\n'In this simple form of assent to his will lies the whole gist of\nthe situation; their creed, his truth; and the testimony to that\nfaithfulness which made him in his own eyes the equal of the\nimpeccable men who never fall out of the ranks. Stein's words,\n\"Romantic!--Romantic!\" seem to ring over those distances that will never\ngive him up now to a world indifferent to his failings and his virtues,\nand to that ardent and clinging affection that refuses him the dole of\ntears in the bewilderment of a great grief and of eternal separation.\nFrom the moment the sheer truthfulness of his last three years of life\ncarries the day against the ignorance, the fear, and the anger of men,\nhe appears no longer to me as I saw him last--a white speck catching all\nthe dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea--but greater\nand more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, that remains even for\nher who loved him best a cruel and insoluble mystery.\n\n'It is evident that he did not mistrust Brown; there was no reason to\ndoubt the story, whose truth seemed warranted by the rough frankness,\nby a sort of virile sincerity in accepting the morality and the\nconsequences of his acts. But Jim did not know the almost inconceivable\negotism of the man which made him, when resisted and foiled in his will,\nmad with the indignant and revengeful rage of a thwarted autocrat.\nBut if Jim did not mistrust Brown, he was evidently anxious that some\nmisunderstanding should not occur, ending perhaps in collision and\nbloodshed. It was for this reason that directly the Malay chiefs had\ngone he asked Jewel to get him something to eat, as he was going out of\nthe fort to take command in the town. On her remonstrating against this\non the score of his fatigue, he said that something might happen for\nwhich he would never forgive himself. \"I am responsible for every life\nin the land,\" he said. He was moody at first; she served him with her\nown hands, taking the plates and dishes (of the dinner-service presented\nhim by Stein) from Tamb' Itam. He brightened up after a while; told her\nshe would be again in command of the fort for another night. \"There's\nno sleep for us, old girl,\" he said, \"while our people are in danger.\"\nLater on he said jokingly that she was the best man of them all. \"If you\nand Dain Waris had done what you wanted, not one of these poor devils\nwould be alive to-day.\" \"Are they very bad?\" she asked, leaning over his\nchair. \"Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others,\"\nhe said after some hesitation.\n\n'Tamb' Itam followed his master to the landing-stage outside the fort.\nThe night was clear but without a moon, and the middle of the river was\ndark, while the water under each bank reflected the light of many fires\n\"as on a night of Ramadan,\" Tamb' Itam said. War-boats drifted silently\nin the dark lane or, anchored, floated motionless with a loud ripple.\nThat night there was much paddling in a canoe and walking at his\nmaster's heels for Tamb' Itam: up and down the street they tramped,\nwhere the fires were burning, inland on the outskirts of the town where\nsmall parties of men kept guard in the fields. Tuan Jim gave his orders\nand was obeyed. Last of all they went to the Rajah's stockade, which a\ndetachment of Jim's people manned on that night. The old Rajah had fled\nearly in the morning with most of his women to a small house he had\nnear a jungle village on a tributary stream. Kassim, left behind, had\nattended the council with his air of diligent activity to explain away\nthe diplomacy of the day before. He was considerably cold-shouldered,\nbut managed to preserve his smiling, quiet alertness, and professed\nhimself highly delighted when Jim told him sternly that he proposed to\noccupy the stockade on that night with his own men. After the council\nbroke up he was heard outside accosting this and that deputing chief,\nand speaking in a loud, gratified tone of the Rajah's property being\nprotected in the Rajah's absence.\n\n'About ten or so Jim's men marched in. The stockade commanded the mouth\nof the creek, and Jim meant to remain there till Brown had passed below.\nA small fire was lit on the flat, grassy point outside the wall of\nstakes, and Tamb' Itam placed a little folding-stool for his master. Jim\ntold him to try and sleep. Tamb' Itam got a mat and lay down a little\nway off; but he could not sleep, though he knew he had to go on an\nimportant journey before the night was out. His master walked to and fro\nbefore the fire with bowed head and with his hands behind his back. His\nface was sad. Whenever his master approached him Tamb' Itam pretended to\nsleep, not wishing his master to know he had been watched. At last his\nmaster stood still, looking down on him as he lay, and said softly, \"It\nis time.\"\n\n'Tamb' Itam arose directly and made his preparations. His mission was\nto go down the river, preceding Brown's boat by an hour or more, to tell\nDain Waris finally and formally that the whites were to be allowed to\npass out unmolested. Jim would not trust anybody else with that service.\nBefore starting, Tamb' Itam, more as a matter of form (since his\nposition about Jim made him perfectly known), asked for a token.\n\"Because, Tuan,\" he said, \"the message is important, and these are thy\nvery words I carry.\" His master first put his hand into one pocket, then\ninto another, and finally took off his forefinger Stein's silver ring,\nwhich he habitually wore, and gave it to Tamb' Itam. When Tamb' Itam\nleft on his mission, Brown's camp on the knoll was dark but for a single\nsmall glow shining through the branches of one of the trees the white\nmen had cut down.\n\n'Early in the evening Brown had received from Jim a folded piece of\npaper on which was written, \"You get the clear road. Start as soon\nas your boat floats on the morning tide. Let your men be careful. The\nbushes on both sides of the creek and the stockade at the mouth are full\nof well-armed men. You would have no chance, but I don't believe you\nwant bloodshed.\" Brown read it, tore the paper into small pieces, and,\nturning to Cornelius, who had brought it, said jeeringly, \"Good-bye, my\nexcellent friend.\" Cornelius had been in the fort, and had been sneaking\naround Jim's house during the afternoon. Jim chose him to carry the note\nbecause he could speak English, was known to Brown, and was not likely\nto be shot by some nervous mistake of one of the men as a Malay,\napproaching in the dusk, perhaps might have been.\n\n'Cornelius didn't go away after delivering the paper. Brown was sitting\nup over a tiny fire; all the others were lying down. \"I could tell you\nsomething you would like to know,\" Cornelius mumbled crossly. Brown paid\nno attention. \"You did not kill him,\" went on the other, \"and what do\nyou get for it? You might have had money from the Rajah, besides the\nloot of all the Bugis houses, and now you get nothing.\" \"You had better\nclear out from here,\" growled Brown, without even looking at him. But\nCornelius let himself drop by his side and began to whisper very fast,\ntouching his elbow from time to time. What he had to say made Brown sit\nup at first, with a curse. He had simply informed him of Dain Waris's\narmed party down the river. At first Brown saw himself completely sold\nand betrayed, but a moment's reflection convinced him that there could\nbe no treachery intended. He said nothing, and after a while Cornelius\nremarked, in a tone of complete indifference, that there was another way\nout of the river which he knew very well. \"A good thing to know, too,\"\nsaid Brown, pricking up his ears; and Cornelius began to talk of\nwhat went on in town and repeated all that had been said in council,\ngossiping in an even undertone at Brown's ear as you talk amongst\nsleeping men you do not wish to wake. \"He thinks he has made me\nharmless, does he?\" mumbled Brown very low. . . . \"Yes. He is a fool. A\nlittle child. He came here and robbed me,\" droned on Cornelius, \"and he\nmade all the people believe him. But if something happened that they did\nnot believe him any more, where would he be? And the Bugis Dain who\nis waiting for you down the river there, captain, is the very man who\nchased you up here when you first came.\" Brown observed nonchalantly\nthat it would be just as well to avoid him, and with the same detached,\nmusing air Cornelius declared himself acquainted with a backwater broad\nenough to take Brown's boat past Waris's camp. \"You will have to be\nquiet,\" he said as an afterthought, \"for in one place we pass close\nbehind his camp. Very close. They are camped ashore with their boats\nhauled up.\" \"Oh, we know how to be as quiet as mice; never fear,\" said\nBrown. Cornelius stipulated that in case he were to pilot Brown out, his\ncanoe should be towed. \"I'll have to get back quick,\" he explained.\n\n'It was two hours before the dawn when word was passed to the stockade\nfrom outlying watchers that the white robbers were coming down to their\nboat. In a very short time every armed man from one end of Patusan\nto the other was on the alert, yet the banks of the river remained so\nsilent that but for the fires burning with sudden blurred flares the\ntown might have been asleep as if in peace-time. A heavy mist lay very\nlow on the water, making a sort of illusive grey light that showed\nnothing. When Brown's long-boat glided out of the creek into the\nriver, Jim was standing on the low point of land before the Rajah's\nstockade--on the very spot where for the first time he put his foot on\nPatusan shore. A shadow loomed up, moving in the greyness, solitary,\nvery bulky, and yet constantly eluding the eye. A murmur of low talking\ncame out of it. Brown at the tiller heard Jim speak calmly: \"A clear\nroad. You had better trust to the current while the fog lasts; but\nthis will lift presently.\" \"Yes, presently we shall see clear,\" replied\nBrown.\n\n'The thirty or forty men standing with muskets at ready outside the\nstockade held their breath. The Bugis owner of the prau, whom I saw\non Stein's verandah, and who was amongst them, told me that the boat,\nshaving the low point close, seemed for a moment to grow big and hang\nover it like a mountain. \"If you think it worth your while to wait a\nday outside,\" called out Jim, \"I'll try to send you down something--a\nbullock, some yams--what I can.\" The shadow went on moving. \"Yes. Do,\"\nsaid a voice, blank and muffled out of the fog. Not one of the many\nattentive listeners understood what the words meant; and then Brown\nand his men in their boat floated away, fading spectrally without the\nslightest sound.\n\n'Thus Brown, invisible in the mist, goes out of Patusan elbow to elbow\nwith Cornelius in the stern-sheets of the long-boat. \"Perhaps you shall\nget a small bullock,\" said Cornelius. \"Oh yes. Bullock. Yam. You'll get\nit if he said so. He always speaks the truth. He stole everything I had.\nI suppose you like a small bullock better than the loot of many houses.\"\n\"I would advise you to hold your tongue, or somebody here may fling\nyou overboard into this damned fog,\" said Brown. The boat seemed to be\nstanding still; nothing could be seen, not even the river alongside,\nonly the water-dust flew and trickled, condensed, down their beards and\nfaces. It was weird, Brown told me. Every individual man of them felt\nas though he were adrift alone in a boat, haunted by an almost\nimperceptible suspicion of sighing, muttering ghosts. \"Throw me out,\nwould you? But I would know where I was,\" mumbled Cornelius surlily.\n\"I've lived many years here.\" \"Not long enough to see through a fog like\nthis,\" Brown said, lolling back with his arm swinging to and fro on the\nuseless tiller. \"Yes. Long enough for that,\" snarled Cornelius. \"That's\nvery useful,\" commented Brown. \"Am I to believe you could find that\nbackway you spoke of blindfold, like this?\" Cornelius grunted. \"Are you\ntoo tired to row?\" he asked after a silence. \"No, by God!\" shouted Brown\nsuddenly. \"Out with your oars there.\" There was a great knocking in\nthe fog, which after a while settled into a regular grind of invisible\nsweeps against invisible thole-pins. Otherwise nothing was changed, and\nbut for the slight splash of a dipped blade it was like rowing a balloon\ncar in a cloud, said Brown. Thereafter Cornelius did not open his lips\nexcept to ask querulously for somebody to bale out his canoe, which\nwas towing behind the long-boat. Gradually the fog whitened and became\nluminous ahead. To the left Brown saw a darkness as though he had been\nlooking at the back of the departing night. All at once a big bough\ncovered with leaves appeared above his head, and ends of twigs, dripping\nand still, curved slenderly close alongside. Cornelius, without a word,\ntook the tiller from his hand.'\n\n\n\n'I don't think they spoke together again. The boat entered a narrow\nby-channel, where it was pushed by the oar-blades set into crumbling\nbanks, and there was a gloom as if enormous black wings had been\noutspread above the mist that filled its depth to the summits of the\ntrees. The branches overhead showered big drops through the gloomy fog.\nAt a mutter from Cornelius, Brown ordered his men to load. \"I'll\ngive you a chance to get even with them before we're done, you dismal\ncripples, you,\" he said to his gang. \"Mind you don't throw it away--you\nhounds.\" Low growls answered that speech. Cornelius showed much fussy\nconcern for the safety of his canoe.\n\n'Meantime Tamb' Itam had reached the end of his journey. The fog had\ndelayed him a little, but he had paddled steadily, keeping in touch with\nthe south bank. By-and-by daylight came like a glow in a ground glass\nglobe. The shores made on each side of the river a dark smudge, in which\none could detect hints of columnar forms and shadows of twisted branches\nhigh up. The mist was still thick on the water, but a good watch was\nbeing kept, for as Iamb' Itam approached the camp the figures of two men\nemerged out of the white vapour, and voices spoke to him boisterously.\nHe answered, and presently a canoe lay alongside, and he exchanged news\nwith the paddlers. All was well. The trouble was over. Then the men in\nthe canoe let go their grip on the side of his dug-out and incontinently\nfell out of sight. He pursued his way till he heard voices coming to him\nquietly over the water, and saw, under the now lifting, swirling mist,\nthe glow of many little fires burning on a sandy stretch, backed by\nlofty thin timber and bushes. There again a look-out was kept, for he\nwas challenged. He shouted his name as the two last sweeps of his paddle\nran his canoe up on the strand. It was a big camp. Men crouched in many\nlittle knots under a subdued murmur of early morning talk. Many thin\nthreads of smoke curled slowly on the white mist. Little shelters,\nelevated above the ground, had been built for the chiefs. Muskets were\nstacked in small pyramids, and long spears were stuck singly into the\nsand near the fires.\n\n'Tamb' Itam, assuming an air of importance, demanded to be led to Dain\nWaris. He found the friend of his white lord lying on a raised couch\nmade of bamboo, and sheltered by a sort of shed of sticks covered with\nmats. Dain Waris was awake, and a bright fire was burning before his\nsleeping-place, which resembled a rude shrine. The only son of nakhoda\nDoramin answered his greeting kindly. Tamb' Itam began by handing him\nthe ring which vouched for the truth of the messenger's words. Dain\nWaris, reclining on his elbow, bade him speak and tell all the news.\nBeginning with the consecrated formula, \"The news is good,\" Tamb' Itam\ndelivered Jim's own words. The white men, deputing with the consent of\nall the chiefs, were to be allowed to pass down the river. In answer to\na question or two Tamb' Itam then reported the proceedings of the last\ncouncil. Dain Waris listened attentively to the end, toying with the\nring which ultimately he slipped on the forefinger of his right hand.\nAfter hearing all he had to say he dismissed Tamb' Itam to have food\nand rest. Orders for the return in the afternoon were given immediately.\nAfterwards Dain Waris lay down again, open-eyed, while his personal\nattendants were preparing his food at the fire, by which Tamb' Itam also\nsat talking to the men who lounged up to hear the latest intelligence\nfrom the town. The sun was eating up the mist. A good watch was kept\nupon the reach of the main stream where the boat of the whites was\nexpected to appear every moment.\n\n'It was then that Brown took his revenge upon the world which, after\ntwenty years of contemptuous and reckless bullying, refused him the\ntribute of a common robber's success. It was an act of cold-blooded\nferocity, and it consoled him on his deathbed like a memory of an\nindomitable defiance. Stealthily he landed his men on the other side\nof the island opposite to the Bugis camp, and led them across. After a\nshort but quite silent scuffle, Cornelius, who had tried to slink away\nat the moment of landing, resigned himself to show the way where the\nundergrowth was most sparse. Brown held both his skinny hands together\nbehind his back in the grip of one vast fist, and now and then impelled\nhim forward with a fierce push. Cornelius remained as mute as a fish,\nabject but faithful to his purpose, whose accomplishment loomed before\nhim dimly. At the edge of the patch of forest Brown's men spread\nthemselves out in cover and waited. The camp was plain from end to end\nbefore their eyes, and no one looked their way. Nobody even dreamed that\nthe white men could have any knowledge of the narrow channel at the back\nof the island. When he judged the moment come, Brown yelled, \"Let them\nhave it,\" and fourteen shots rang out like one.\n\n'Tamb' Itam told me the surprise was so great that, except for those who\nfell dead or wounded, not a soul of them moved for quite an appreciable\ntime after the first discharge. Then a man screamed, and after that\nscream a great yell of amazement and fear went up from all the throats.\nA blind panic drove these men in a surging swaying mob to and fro along\nthe shore like a herd of cattle afraid of the water. Some few jumped\ninto the river then, but most of them did so only after the last\ndischarge. Three times Brown's men fired into the ruck, Brown, the only\none in view, cursing and yelling, \"Aim low! aim low!\"\n\n'Tamb' Itam says that, as for him, he understood at the first volley\nwhat had happened. Though untouched he fell down and lay as if dead,\nbut with his eyes open. At the sound of the first shots Dain Waris,\nreclining on the couch, jumped up and ran out upon the open shore, just\nin time to receive a bullet in his forehead at the second discharge.\nTamb' Itam saw him fling his arms wide open before he fell. Then, he\nsays, a great fear came upon him--not before. The white men retired as\nthey had come--unseen.\n\n'Thus Brown balanced his account with the evil fortune. Notice that even\nin this awful outbreak there is a superiority as of a man who carries\nright--the abstract thing--within the envelope of his common desires.\nIt was not a vulgar and treacherous massacre; it was a lesson, a\nretribution--a demonstration of some obscure and awful attribute of our\nnature which, I am afraid, is not so very far under the surface as we\nlike to think.\n\n'Afterwards the whites depart unseen by Tamb' Itam, and seem to vanish\nfrom before men's eyes altogether; and the schooner, too, vanishes after\nthe manner of stolen goods. But a story is told of a white long-boat\npicked up a month later in the Indian Ocean by a cargo steamer. Two\nparched, yellow, glassy-eyed, whispering skeletons in her recognised\nthe authority of a third, who declared that his name was Brown. His\nschooner, he reported, bound south with a cargo of Java sugar, had\nsprung a bad leak and sank under his feet. He and his companions were\nthe survivors of a crew of six. The two died on board the steamer which\nrescued them. Brown lived to be seen by me, and I can testify that he\nhad played his part to the last.\n\n'It seems, however, that in going away they had neglected to cast off\nCornelius's canoe. Cornelius himself Brown had let go at the beginning\nof the shooting, with a kick for a parting benediction. Tamb' Itam,\nafter arising from amongst the dead, saw the Nazarene running up and\ndown the shore amongst the corpses and the expiring fires. He uttered\nlittle cries. Suddenly he rushed to the water, and made frantic efforts\nto get one of the Bugis boats into the water. \"Afterwards, till he had\nseen me,\" related Tamb' Itam, \"he stood looking at the heavy canoe and\nscratching his head.\" \"What became of him?\" I asked. Tamb' Itam, staring\nhard at me, made an expressive gesture with his right arm. \"Twice I\nstruck, Tuan,\" he said. \"When he beheld me approaching he cast himself\nviolently on the ground and made a great outcry, kicking. He screeched\nlike a frightened hen till he felt the point; then he was still, and lay\nstaring at me while his life went out of his eyes.\"\n\n'This done, Tamb' Itam did not tarry. He understood the importance of\nbeing the first with the awful news at the fort. There were, of course,\nmany survivors of Dain Waris's party; but in the extremity of panic some\nhad swum across the river, others had bolted into the bush. The fact is\nthat they did not know really who struck that blow--whether more white\nrobbers were not coming, whether they had not already got hold of\nthe whole land. They imagined themselves to be the victims of a vast\ntreachery, and utterly doomed to destruction. It is said that some small\nparties did not come in till three days afterwards. However, a few tried\nto make their way back to Patusan at once, and one of the canoes that\nwere patrolling the river that morning was in sight of the camp at\nthe very moment of the attack. It is true that at first the men in her\nleaped overboard and swam to the opposite bank, but afterwards they\nreturned to their boat and started fearfully up-stream. Of these Tamb'\nItam had an hour's advance.'\n\n'When Tamb' Itam, paddling madly, came into the town-reach, the women,\nthronging the platforms before the houses, were looking out for the\nreturn of Dain Waris's little fleet of boats. The town had a festive\nair; here and there men, still with spears or guns in their hands, could\nbe seen moving or standing on the shore in groups. Chinamen's shops had\nbeen opened early; but the market-place was empty, and a sentry, still\nposted at the corner of the fort, made out Tamb' Itam, and shouted to\nthose within. The gate was wide open. Tamb' Itam jumped ashore and ran\nin headlong. The first person he met was the girl coming down from the\nhouse.\n\n'Tamb' Itam, disordered, panting, with trembling lips and wild eyes,\nstood for a time before her as if a sudden spell had been laid on him.\nThen he broke out very quickly: \"They have killed Dain Waris and many\nmore.\" She clapped her hands, and her first words were, \"Shut the\ngates.\" Most of the fortmen had gone back to their houses, but Tamb'\nItam hurried on the few who remained for their turn of duty within. The\ngirl stood in the middle of the courtyard while the others ran about.\n\"Doramin,\" she cried despairingly, as Tamb' Itam passed her. Next time\nhe went by he answered her thought rapidly, \"Yes. But we have all the\npowder in Patusan.\" She caught him by the arm, and, pointing at the\nhouse, \"Call him out,\" she whispered, trembling.\n\n'Tamb' Itam ran up the steps. His master was sleeping. \"It is I, Tamb'\nItam,\" he cried at the door, \"with tidings that cannot wait.\" He saw\nJim turn over on the pillow and open his eyes, and he burst out at\nonce. \"This, Tuan, is a day of evil, an accursed day.\" His master raised\nhimself on his elbow to listen--just as Dain Waris had done. And then\nTamb' Itam began his tale, trying to relate the story in order, calling\nDain Waris Panglima, and saying: \"The Panglima then called out to the\nchief of his own boatmen, 'Give Tamb' Itam something to eat'\"--when\nhis master put his feet to the ground and looked at him with such a\ndiscomposed face that the words remained in his throat.\n\n'\"Speak out,\" said Jim. \"Is he dead?\" \"May you live long,\" cried Tamb'\nItam. \"It was a most cruel treachery. He ran out at the first shots and\nfell.\" . . . His master walked to the window and with his fist struck\nat the shutter. The room was made light; and then in a steady voice, but\nspeaking fast, he began to give him orders to assemble a fleet of boats\nfor immediate pursuit, go to this man, to the other--send messengers;\nand as he talked he sat down on the bed, stooping to lace his boots\nhurriedly, and suddenly looked up. \"Why do you stand here?\" he asked\nvery red-faced. \"Waste no time.\" Tamb' Itam did not move. \"Forgive me,\nTuan, but . . . but,\" he began to stammer. \"What?\" cried his master\naloud, looking terrible, leaning forward with his hands gripping the\nedge of the bed. \"It is not safe for thy servant to go out amongst the\npeople,\" said Tamb' Itam, after hesitating a moment.\n\n'Then Jim understood. He had retreated from one world, for a small\nmatter of an impulsive jump, and now the other, the work of his own\nhands, had fallen in ruins upon his head. It was not safe for his\nservant to go out amongst his own people! I believe that in that very\nmoment he had decided to defy the disaster in the only way it occurred\nto him such a disaster could be defied; but all I know is that, without\na word, he came out of his room and sat before the long table, at the\nhead of which he was accustomed to regulate the affairs of his world,\nproclaiming daily the truth that surely lived in his heart. The dark\npowers should not rob him twice of his peace. He sat like a stone\nfigure. Tamb' Itam, deferential, hinted at preparations for defence.\nThe girl he loved came in and spoke to him, but he made a sign with his\nhand, and she was awed by the dumb appeal for silence in it. She went\nout on the verandah and sat on the threshold, as if to guard him with\nher body from dangers outside.\n\n'What thoughts passed through his head--what memories? Who can tell?\nEverything was gone, and he who had been once unfaithful to his trust\nhad lost again all men's confidence. It was then, I believe, he tried\nto write--to somebody--and gave it up. Loneliness was closing on him.\nPeople had trusted him with their lives--only for that; and yet they\ncould never, as he had said, never be made to understand him. Those\nwithout did not hear him make a sound. Later, towards the evening, he\ncame to the door and called for Tamb' Itam. \"Well?\" he asked. \"There is\nmuch weeping. Much anger too,\" said Tamb' Itam. Jim looked up at him.\n\"You know,\" he murmured. \"Yes, Tuan,\" said Tamb' Itam. \"Thy servant does\nknow, and the gates are closed. We shall have to fight.\" \"Fight! What\nfor?\" he asked. \"For our lives.\" \"I have no life,\" he said. Tamb' Itam\nheard a cry from the girl at the door. \"Who knows?\" said Tamb' Itam.\n\"By audacity and cunning we may even escape. There is much fear in men's\nhearts too.\" He went out, thinking vaguely of boats and of open sea,\nleaving Jim and the girl together.\n\n'I haven't the heart to set down here such glimpses as she had given\nme of the hour or more she passed in there wrestling with him for the\npossession of her happiness. Whether he had any hope--what he expected,\nwhat he imagined--it is impossible to say. He was inflexible, and with\nthe growing loneliness of his obstinacy his spirit seemed to rise above\nthe ruins of his existence. She cried \"Fight!\" into his ear. She could\nnot understand. There was nothing to fight for. He was going to prove\nhis power in another way and conquer the fatal destiny itself. He came\nout into the courtyard, and behind him, with streaming hair, wild\nof face, breathless, she staggered out and leaned on the side of the\ndoorway. \"Open the gates,\" he ordered. Afterwards, turning to those of\nhis men who were inside, he gave them leave to depart to their homes.\n\"For how long, Tuan?\" asked one of them timidly. \"For all life,\" he\nsaid, in a sombre tone.\n\n'A hush had fallen upon the town after the outburst of wailing and\nlamentation that had swept over the river, like a gust of wind from the\nopened abode of sorrow. But rumours flew in whispers, filling the hearts\nwith consternation and horrible doubts. The robbers were coming back,\nbringing many others with them, in a great ship, and there would be no\nrefuge in the land for any one. A sense of utter insecurity as during\nan earthquake pervaded the minds of men, who whispered their suspicions,\nlooking at each other as if in the presence of some awful portent.\n\n'The sun was sinking towards the forests when Dain Waris's body was\nbrought into Doramin's campong. Four men carried it in, covered decently\nwith a white sheet which the old mother had sent out down to the gate to\nmeet her son on his return. They laid him at Doramin's feet, and the old\nman sat still for a long time, one hand on each knee, looking down. The\nfronds of palms swayed gently, and the foliage of fruit trees stirred\nabove his head. Every single man of his people was there, fully armed,\nwhen the old nakhoda at last raised his eyes. He moved them slowly over\nthe crowd, as if seeking for a missing face. Again his chin sank on his\nbreast. The whispers of many men mingled with the slight rustling of the\nleaves.\n\n'The Malay who had brought Tamb' Itam and the girl to Samarang was there\ntoo. \"Not so angry as many,\" he said to me, but struck with a great\nawe and wonder at the \"suddenness of men's fate, which hangs over their\nheads like a cloud charged with thunder.\" He told me that when Dain\nWaris's body was uncovered at a sign of Doramin's, he whom they often\ncalled the white lord's friend was disclosed lying unchanged with his\neyelids a little open as if about to wake. Doramin leaned forward a\nlittle more, like one looking for something fallen on the ground. His\neyes searched the body from its feet to its head, for the wound maybe.\nIt was in the forehead and small; and there was no word spoken while\none of the by-standers, stooping, took off the silver ring from the cold\nstiff hand. In silence he held it up before Doramin. A murmur of dismay\nand horror ran through the crowd at the sight of that familiar token.\nThe old nakhoda stared at it, and suddenly let out one great fierce cry,\ndeep from the chest, a roar of pain and fury, as mighty as the bellow of\na wounded bull, bringing great fear into men's hearts, by the magnitude\nof his anger and his sorrow that could be plainly discerned without\nwords. There was a great stillness afterwards for a space, while the\nbody was being borne aside by four men. They laid it down under a tree,\nand on the instant, with one long shriek, all the women of the household\nbegan to wail together; they mourned with shrill cries; the sun\nwas setting, and in the intervals of screamed lamentations the high\nsing-song voices of two old men intoning the Koran chanted alone.\n\n'About this time Jim, leaning on a gun-carriage, looked at the river,\nand turned his back on the house; and the girl, in the doorway, panting\nas if she had run herself to a standstill, was looking at him across the\nyard. Tamb' Itam stood not far from his master, waiting patiently for\nwhat might happen. All at once Jim, who seemed to be lost in quiet\nthought, turned to him and said, \"Time to finish this.\"\n\n'\"Tuan?\" said Tamb' Itam, advancing with alacrity. He did not know what\nhis master meant, but as soon as Jim made a movement the girl started\ntoo and walked down into the open space. It seems that no one else of\nthe people of the house was in sight. She tottered slightly, and about\nhalf-way down called out to Jim, who had apparently resumed his peaceful\ncontemplation of the river. He turned round, setting his back against\nthe gun. \"Will you fight?\" she cried. \"There is nothing to fight for,\"\nhe said; \"nothing is lost.\" Saying this he made a step towards her.\n\"Will you fly?\" she cried again. \"There is no escape,\" he said, stopping\nshort, and she stood still also, silent, devouring him with her eyes.\n\"And you shall go?\" she said slowly. He bent his head. \"Ah!\" she\nexclaimed, peering at him as it were, \"you are mad or false. Do you\nremember the night I prayed you to leave me, and you said that you could\nnot? That it was impossible! Impossible! Do you remember you said you\nwould never leave me? Why? I asked you for no promise. You promised\nunasked--remember.\" \"Enough, poor girl,\" he said. \"I should not be worth\nhaving.\"\n\n'Tamb' Itam said that while they were talking she would laugh loud and\nsenselessly like one under the visitation of God. His master put his\nhands to his head. He was fully dressed as for every day, but without\na hat. She stopped laughing suddenly. \"For the last time,\" she cried\nmenacingly, \"will you defend yourself?\" \"Nothing can touch me,\" he said\nin a last flicker of superb egoism. Tamb' Itam saw her lean forward\nwhere she stood, open her arms, and run at him swiftly. She flung\nherself upon his breast and clasped him round the neck.\n\n'\"Ah! but I shall hold thee thus,\" she cried. . . . \"Thou art mine!\"\n\n'She sobbed on his shoulder. The sky over Patusan was blood-red,\nimmense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson\namongst the tree-tops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding\nface.\n\n'Tamb' Itam tells me that on that evening the aspect of the heavens was\nangry and frightful. I may well believe it, for I know that on that very\nday a cyclone passed within sixty miles of the coast, though there was\nhardly more than a languid stir of air in the place.\n\n'Suddenly Tamb' Itam saw Jim catch her arms, trying to unclasp her\nhands. She hung on them with her head fallen back; her hair touched the\nground. \"Come here!\" his master called, and Tamb' Itam helped to ease\nher down. It was difficult to separate her fingers. Jim, bending\nover her, looked earnestly upon her face, and all at once ran to the\nlanding-stage. Tamb' Itam followed him, but turning his head, he saw\nthat she had struggled up to her feet. She ran after them a few steps,\nthen fell down heavily on her knees. \"Tuan! Tuan!\" called Tamb' Itam,\n\"look back;\" but Jim was already in a canoe, standing up paddle in hand.\nHe did not look back. Tamb' Itam had just time to scramble in after\nhim when the canoe floated clear. The girl was then on her knees, with\nclasped hands, at the water-gate. She remained thus for a time in\na supplicating attitude before she sprang up. \"You are false!\" she\nscreamed out after Jim. \"Forgive me,\" he cried. \"Never! Never!\" she\ncalled back.\n\n'Tamb' Itam took the paddle from Jim's hands, it being unseemly that he\nshould sit while his lord paddled. When they reached the other shore his\nmaster forbade him to come any farther; but Tamb' Itam did follow him at\na distance, walking up the slope to Doramin's campong.\n\n'It was beginning to grow dark. Torches twinkled here and there. Those\nthey met seemed awestruck, and stood aside hastily to let Jim pass. The\nwailing of women came from above. The courtyard was full of armed Bugis\nwith their followers, and of Patusan people.\n\n'I do not know what this gathering really meant. Were these preparations\nfor war, or for vengeance, or to repulse a threatened invasion? Many\ndays elapsed before the people had ceased to look out, quaking, for\nthe return of the white men with long beards and in rags, whose exact\nrelation to their own white man they could never understand. Even for\nthose simple minds poor Jim remains under a cloud.\n\n'Doramin, alone! immense and desolate, sat in his arm-chair with the\npair of flintlock pistols on his knees, faced by a armed throng. When\nJim appeared, at somebody's exclamation, all the heads turned round\ntogether, and then the mass opened right and left, and he walked up a\nlane of averted glances. Whispers followed him; murmurs: \"He has worked\nall the evil.\" \"He hath a charm.\" . . . He heard them--perhaps!\n\n'When he came up into the light of torches the wailing of the women\nceased suddenly. Doramin did not lift his head, and Jim stood silent\nbefore him for a time. Then he looked to the left, and moved in that\ndirection with measured steps. Dain Waris's mother crouched at the head\nof the body, and the grey dishevelled hair concealed her face. Jim came\nup slowly, looked at his dead friend, lifting the sheet, than dropped it\nwithout a word. Slowly he walked back.\n\n'\"He came! He came!\" was running from lip to lip, making a murmur to\nwhich he moved. \"He hath taken it upon his own head,\" a voice said\naloud. He heard this and turned to the crowd. \"Yes. Upon my head.\" A few\npeople recoiled. Jim waited awhile before Doramin, and then said gently,\n\"I am come in sorrow.\" He waited again. \"I am come ready and unarmed,\"\nhe repeated.\n\n'The unwieldy old man, lowering his big forehead like an ox under a\nyoke, made an effort to rise, clutching at the flintlock pistols on his\nknees. From his throat came gurgling, choking, inhuman sounds, and his\ntwo attendants helped him from behind. People remarked that the ring\nwhich he had dropped on his lap fell and rolled against the foot of\nthe white man, and that poor Jim glanced down at the talisman that had\nopened for him the door of fame, love, and success within the wall of\nforests fringed with white foam, within the coast that under the western\nsun looks like the very stronghold of the night. Doramin, struggling to\nkeep his feet, made with his two supporters a swaying, tottering group;\nhis little eyes stared with an expression of mad pain, of rage, with\na ferocious glitter, which the bystanders noticed; and then, while Jim\nstood stiffened and with bared head in the light of torches, looking him\nstraight in the face, he clung heavily with his left arm round the neck\nof a bowed youth, and lifting deliberately his right, shot his son's\nfriend through the chest.\n\n'The crowd, which had fallen apart behind Jim as soon as Doramin had\nraised his hand, rushed tumultuously forward after the shot. They say\nthat the white man sent right and left at all those faces a proud and\nunflinching glance. Then with his hand over his lips he fell forward,\ndead.\n\n'And that's the end. He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart,\nforgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic. Not in the wildest days\nof his boyish visions could he have seen the alluring shape of such an\nextraordinary success! For it may very well be that in the short moment\nof his last proud and unflinching glance, he had beheld the face of that\nopportunity which, like an Eastern bride, had come veiled to his side.\n\n'But we can see him, an obscure conqueror of fame, tearing himself out\nof the arms of a jealous love at the sign, at the call of his exalted\negoism. He goes away from a living woman to celebrate his pitiless\nwedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct. Is he satisfied--quite, now, I\nwonder? We ought to know. He is one of us--and have I not stood up once,\nlike an evoked ghost, to answer for his eternal constancy? Was I so very\nwrong after all? Now he is no more, there are days when the reality of\nhis existence comes to me with an immense, with an overwhelming force;\nand yet upon my honour there are moments, too when he passes from my\neyes like a disembodied spirit astray amongst the passions of this\nearth, ready to surrender himself faithfully to the claim of his own\nworld of shades.\n\n'Who knows? He is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the poor girl is\nleading a sort of soundless, inert life in Stein's house. Stein has\naged greatly of late. He feels it himself, and says often that he is\n\"preparing to leave all this; preparing to leave . . .\" while he waves\nhis hand sadly at his butterflies.'\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "Jim, the well-loved son of an English parson, goes to sea to make a name for himself. Just how he is to become \"Tuan Jim\" or \"Lord Jim,\" however, remains to be told. With his youthful, romantic aspirations for the sea, he is physically powerful; he has \"Ability in the abstract.\" He roams the Asian south seas as a water-clerk, moving from place to place, always trying to outrun, it seems, a particular fact of his past. The story then cuts to an early incident where Jim lost an opportunity to prove his mettle: he \"leapt\" too late, missing his chance. Then, after a long injury and hospital stay, instead of deciding to return to England, Jim accepts the position of chief mate of the Patna, an old local steamship carrying 800 Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. There are five white men on board, as crew, and the voyage is led by a fat, crazy, German captain. One night, as the ship sails quietly through the Arabian sea, the crew, including Jim, feels a strange vibration disturb the underbelly of the ship. The reader is given no reason for the vibration and the eventual conclusion of the incident. Suddenly, we encounter Jim speaking at the official Inquiry, which is attempting to gather facts about the event. In time, the story grows clear, pieced together for the reader. Believing that the steamship was on the verge of sinking at any moment, and fearful of a panic, the crew of the Patna loosed a lifeboat for themselves. Though it had been only a trick of the eyes, they believed that when the light on the ship had gone out, the ship had sunk like iron to the floor of the sea. The crew had devised a story: they told their rescuers that the ship sank beneath their very feet and that they alone were able to launch a single lifeboat in time. Ironically, however, we learn that the steamship never actually sank. Iron proved to be a hardy metal. Upon its discovery by a French gunboat, the Patna is brought safely to an English port. The story becomes notorious throughout the region. Marlow, a British captain, attends the Inquiry and is struck by some quality of Jim's character. Thus he is now telling the story of Jim. A party is gathered around him on a verandah, listening, as he explains what happened next. When the judgment was meted out and Jim's sea certificates were effectively canceled, Marlow, having befriended the poor youth, offered him help. Thus Jim is sent to live with an old friend of Marlow's with no family, the owner of a rice mill. But when another crew member of the Patna coincidentally turns out to be the manager of the machinery at the very same mill, Jim leaves, not wanting to be near the memory of the event. He instead works as a runner of boats and then as a water-clerk, getting in a barroom brawl with a man who makes a derogatory comment regarding the Patna. Driven by intense shame and guilt with regard to the incident, Marlow worries, what is the fate of such a man? He consults his good friend Stein, a successful merchant with a romantic and tragic life history. Stein, also a collector of fragile, beautiful butterflies, dreams and leads a solitary life. Both he and Marlow share a thoughtful conversation about Jim, where Stein concludes: \"He is a romantic.\" This idea marks a turn in the novel. Stein offers Jim the chance that Stein himself had been given when he was a youth: the chance to make the dreams real. The practical solution is thus to send Jim to Stein's trade post in Patusan, a remote settlement on the island of Borneo . There, Jim is to manage the post. Excited by the opportunity and the chance for a \"clean slate,\" a chance to be free of the past, Jim carries a silver ring around his neck. The ring was a token of friendship between Stein and Doramin, a chief native trader in Patusan, serving as a sign of good will and trust. In Patusan, Jim falls into the depths of a romantically archetypal setting: political intrigues abound, and factional fighting over trade is becoming increasingly bitter. Jim is immediately taken prisoner by the Rajah, though after three days he leaps over the wall--and then the creek--into the beginning of his charmed life. He leads the defeat of Doramin's key opponent for trade, driving him out of the area completely, which establishes a sense of peaceful stalemate with the frightened Rajah. Jim thus achieves power, status, and a good name. He also becomes the best friend of Doramin's only son, Dain Waris. Marlow, who visits him once in Patusan, is struck by some change of essence in Jim. There is now a love story, too. Jim, admits to Marlow that he loves a woman, \"Jewel.\" Jewel's mother, an educated Dutch-Malay woman, had been married to Cornelius, the prior manager of Stein's trade post, although Cornelius had proven very bad for business, and Jewel's mother had died as well. Jewel, the natural daughter of a different, unknown man, is oppressed and hounded by Cornelius. Jim protects her, feeling deep sympathy for her position. She becomes his link to the insights needed to manage among Patusan affairs and, in the end, the entire situation comes to echo much of Stein's own romantic history. Unstable elements in this picture remain clear. As Marlow's visit draws to a close, Jewel confronts him and asks whether there is anything in Jim's past that might take him away from her--that would cause him to leave Patusan. Marlow assures her that there is nothing and that Jim will never leave. But there is a sense of overwhelming dread in the girl's voice and manner; she thus foreshadows the tragic events to come. Cornelius's hatred for Jim, as well as the Rajah's fear for his own power, both contribute to the uncertain future. But this part of the tale, which Marlow has been telling his audience, now comes to a close. The audience rises. There is no comment. The story is incomplete. The tale resumes later in time in the written story, along with a letter and some fragments including details from Jim's own writing. All of these enclosures are sent to a single \"privileged man\" or \"privileged reader,\" the one person who had been listening to Marlow and who had expressed an interest in Jim's fate. Marlow explains to this anonymous man that he had gone to Stein's house and found Jim's servant, and then Jewel. Hoping that Jim was also present, he instead learned that the story ended. Now cutting to another source, Marlow also explains that, on a tip, he met Brown, a man of sordid reputation, in Bangkok. Brown explained that he had stolen a schooner. Brown's band of men wanted to cross the Indian Ocean, but they realized they were running out of both food and water. Landing in Patusan in the hope of replenishing their supplies, Brown and his men were greeted by gunfire. The attack was led by Dain Waris . One of the Rajah's men took the opportunity to double-deal and to encourage Brown and his men to kill Jim in order to defeat Doramin's settlement. Cornelius encouraged him likewise. Upon Jim's return, he and Brown have an exchange that strikes Jim in his weak spot. Recognizing that this man Brown is what he himself could have become, had Fortune given him the right opportunity, Jim gives Brown the chance to escape safely. In the end, however, with Cornelius's help, Brown and his men sneak up on Dain Waris and his men and open fire, killing Dain Waris, who just received news from Jim that all had been settled and things were stable. Jim had even sent the ring along as a sign of trust. Now, when Doramin looks upon his son's dead body and sees the silver ring on his forefinger, Doramin throws an emotional rage. Jim, hearing the news, ignores Jewel's pleas and walks resolutely to meet justice in the form of Doramin. Doramin shoots him in the chest, killing Jim. But Jim has now atoned for his failures. The tale ends with Marlow offering his reader a last view of Stein, growing old, and a muted Jewel.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "Captain Marlow, professional sailor and amateur storyteller, decides to hold his own open mic night and tell an audience all about the tragic tale of Jim. Back in the day Jim abandoned his sinking ship along with other members of the crew. Jim turned himself in to authorities and went on trial for dereliction of duty. Though publicly disgraced, Jim found a sympathetic buddy in Marlow. Jim told Marlow his whole, sorry story, and Marlow tried to help Jim out over the next few years. Marlow found him jobs, but Jim always quit and ran off again in an effort to escape his humiliation and shame. Eventually Jim makes his way to the island of Patusan and becomes a local leader among the native people there. He even lands himself a girlfriend. The good times don't last, though. A pirate named Gentleman Brown shows up and wreaks havoc on the island, and Jim makes some bad judgment calls that result in a death. Yikes. Once again Jim turns himself in to the authorities - this time the native leaders of the island. The father of a man Jim inadvertently got killed shoots Jim and kills him. Marlow relates this incident in a letter to an unknown recipient.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "cliffnotes", "text": "We are introduced to Jim at a time when he was working as a water-clerk for a ship-chandler firm in the Far East. It was menial work, but Jim seemed fairly happy, and everyone liked him. They knew him simply as \"Jim.\" Yet, as the plot unfolds, with Conrad's skillful analysis of Jim's character, we gradually realize that Jim was not \"merely\" Jim; he was \"one of us.\" Jim was born and raised in an English parson's home, and when he was still a young lad, he decided to make the sea his career; thus, he enrolled on a training ship for officers of the merchant marine. He did well and advanced to third place in navigation. While still aboard the training ship, he met his first test of courage. But during that test of courage, Jim held back in fear when he was called upon to assist a vessel injured in a fierce storm. Afterward, he justified himself and rationalized that he was not really afraid; he was simply waiting for a challenge that would be equal to his heroism. Next time, he would be heroic. He was convinced that he would have another chance. Sometime later, an injury from a falling spar put Jim in the hospital, and after recovering, he shipped out as first mate on the Patna, an old iron tramp steamer bound for holy places with 800 Moslem religious pilgrims. The other four officers of the Patna were riff-raff. Accordingly, Jim held himself aloof from them. On a calm, dark night in the Arabian Sea, the Patna ran over some floating wreckage and got badly damaged in her forepeak compartment. Jim discovered the damage and saw that the sea was pressing in on the bulkhead, which walled in the hold, where hundreds of the pilgrims were asleep. The bulkhead bulged. It could not possibly withstand the pressure. Jim was convinced that within minutes the sea would rush in and the pilgrims would all be drowned. With too few lifeboats and no time, there was no possible salvation for everybody on board. Meanwhile, the skipper and the other officers struggled to lower a lifeboat. Jim despised their cowardice and refused to help them. Then he spotted a squall bearing down on the Patna, and he knew that the lightest shudder would burst the bulkhead. It might be a matter of seconds. The officers got the boat over the side, while the squall closed in with dark, tumbling clouds. The first gust of wind hit the Patna, and she plunged. Jim was sure that it was her last tremor. He jumped. Hours of horror followed. The other officers resented Jim's presence in the lifeboat. They watched as the lights of the Patna seemed to go out, and meanwhile, Jim listened and seemed to hear the hysterical screams of the helpless passengers. Once, he even considered throwing himself over the lifeboat and swimming back. Before sundown of the following day, the ship Avondale picked up the four men, and ten days later, it delivered them to an Eastern port. The story which the Patna's skipper invented as their alibi for desertion was immediately useless when they heard the news that a French man-o-war had discovered the Patna listing badly, deserted by her officers, and towed it into Aden. At this news, the skipper vanished, and the two engineers drank themselves into a hospital. Jim faced the official inquiry panel alone. He defended himself doggedly and insisted that there hadn't been a chance in a million that the Patna could have survived. \"There was not the thickness of a sheet of paper between the right and wrong of this affair.\" At the inquiry, a man named Marlow entered the scene, and throughout most of the novel, the reader will see Jim through Marlow's sympathetic eyes and emotions. Deeply interested in the young, wholesome-looking Englishman who seemed so \"doomed,\" Marlow attended the inquiry and tried to discover why Jim deserted the Patna. Then, a strange and dramatic circumstance brought Marlow and Jim together. Jim confronted Marlow and accused him of calling him a \"wretched cur.\" Marlow convinced Jim that another person had made the remark and was referring not to Jim, but to an actual dog. Jim realized that he had exposed his low opinion of himself to Marlow. Nevertheless, Marlow found himself even more drawn to Jim, and so he invited the young man to have dinner with him at Malabar House. There, Jim related the story of what happened that night aboard the Patna. Marlow was puzzled by the young man's attitude toward himself, and, despite himself, he caught glimpses of his own tormented soul within Jim. The inquiry ended, Jim lost his naval certificate, and Marlow invited him to his hotel room, where the reader sees the agony of the promising young officer who now regarded himself as \"no better than a vagabond.\" Marlow found a job for Jim, and the young man did well and pleased his employer. But suddenly, Jim disappeared. Someone had mentioned the Patna affair and Jim could not endure it. Under such circumstances, Jim left job after job until every waterfront character throughout the Orient knew Jim's story. Marlow finally confided Jim's story to a Herr Stein, a philosophical old trader with a fabulous butterfly collection. Stein, who had never seen Jim, labeled him a \"romantic\" and suggested that Jim go to Patusan, an isolated island community in a Malay state where three warring factions were contending for supremacy. In Patusan, Stein had an unprofitable trading post under the direction of a slimy Portuguese, Cornelius. Jim could take over the trading post and begin a new life; no one would know him in Patusan. Stein's offer delighted Jim. He felt that he could now bury his past completely and no one would ever find out about it. Stein also gave Jim a silver ring, a symbol of eternal friendship between Stein and Doramin, chief of the Bugis Malays in Patusan. Alone, Jim traveled upriver to Patusan, but he was soon captured by Rajah Allang's men. He did, however, manage to leap over the stockade and escape to Doramin's village, where he showed him Stein's silver ring, symbolic of eternal friendship between Stein and Doramin. Afterward, Jim was warmly welcomed and was protected. Jim's hopes seemed about to be realized. Doramin's son, Dain Waris, was a strong, intelligent youth about Jim's age, and the two worked together to put down the vandalism of Sherif Ali and to bring Rajah Allang under control. Jim felt secure in the love and trust of all the Malays. He had a noble and beloved friend in Dain Waris, and he fell in love with a girl, Jewel, who shared his life. After two years, Marlow visited Jim at Patusan, but it wasn't a completely successful visit; Marlow felt that even his temporary intrusion into this idyllic existence upset Jim and those who were close to him. He resolved never again to visit Patusan. The outside world also reentered Jim's sanctuary in the person of \"Gentleman Brown,\" a renegade Australian who stole a ship and, with a band of desperate seamen, traveled upriver to Patusan. He intended to plunder the settlement and supply his ship for a voyage to Madagascar. When the bandits arrived, Jim was away, but the village people under Dain Waris repulsed the invaders and drove them to a knoll, where the white men were able to throw up a temporary defense. When Jim returned, Doramin, Dain Waris, and all of the villagers urged immediate annihilation for the robbers, but Jim decided to talk to Brown. Brown did not really know anything about Jim's past, but he knew enough of his own vile history, and so he judged Jim by himself; thus, Jim's old fears and shame returned. Brown was able to see that Jim had a guilty conscience about something. Jim did not want bloodshed, so he promised Brown and his men safe conduct down the river. Then he made a persuasive speech to the Bugis in which he pledged his own life as security -- should any harm come to any of the villagers as a result of his letting Brown's party go free. Brown, advised and guided by the slimy Cornelius, left as planned, but he treacherously ambushed a party of Malays under Dain Waris on the way downriver. The chief's son and many of his soldiers were killed. Survivors brought Dain Waris' body to his father, Doramin. On the young man's hand was the silver ring which Jim had sent to him as a pledge of Brown's good faith. Someone took the ring and held it up for Doramin to see. The old chief let out \"one fierce cry, deep from the chest, a cry of pain and fury.\" Meanwhile, the awful news reached Jim. His new life had fallen into ruins. The Malays would never again trust him. He had three choices. He could run; he could fight ; or he could give himself up according to Malay custom. Jewel and Tamb' Itam, Jim's servant, urged him to fight or, at least, flee, but Jim deliberately crossed the creek and climbed the hill to Doramin's village. Stooping down, he lifted the sheet from Dain Waris' face. Then, alone and unarmed, he faced Doramin. As the old chief rose up, the silver ring fell from his lap and rolled to Jim's feet. Doramin shot Jim through the chest, and as he did so, Lord Jim flashed a proud and unflinching look toward all of the assembled Malays. Then he fell at Doramin's feet, a hero in death.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "Lord Jim is the story of a man named Marlow's struggle to tell and to understand the life story of a man named Jim. Jim is a promising young man who goes to sea as a youth. He rises quickly through the ranks and soon becomes chief mate. Raised on popular sea literature, Jim constantly daydreams about becoming a hero, yet he has never faced any real danger. Finally, his chance comes. He is serving aboard a vessel called the Patna, carrying Muslim pilgrims to Mecca, when the ship strikes an underwater object and springs a leak. With a storm approaching, the crew abandons her and her passengers to their fate. Jim, not thinking clearly, abandons the ship with the rest of the crew. The Patna does not sink, however, and Jim, along with the rest of the officers, is subjected to an official inquiry by his fellow seamen. It is at this inquiry, where Jim is stripped of his officer's certification, that he first meets Marlow. Seeing something in Jim that he recognizes, or perhaps fears, in himself, Marlow strikes up a tortured friendship with Jim. Jim tells him his story, and Marlow helps him obtain a series of jobs. The Patna incident haunts him, though; each time it is mentioned, Jim flees his current situation, enlisting Marlow's help once again. Finally, with the help of Stein, an expatriate trader, Marlow gets Jim situated as post manager in the remote territory of Patusan. Jim is initially captured by one of the warring factions of the area, but soon escapes and finally becomes a hero by defeating a local bandit. He falls in love with Jewel, the beautiful, half-native stepdaughter of the previous trading post manager, a bitter little man called Cornelius. Jim becomes the spiritual leader of Patusan. Its citizens place their trust in him and rely on him to enforce justice. One day, Gentleman Brown, a pirate, shows up in Patusan with his crew in search of provisions. A skirmish ensues, and Brown holes up atop a hill. Cornelius, annoyed by Jim's success and his own failures, secretly meets with Brown and a conspiracy, including a dissenting Patusan faction, is formed against Jim. Jim, unaware of the plot, agrees to let Brown leave the area peacefully . Cornelius guides Brown down an alternate river channel, which leads him to the camp of Dain Waris, the son of Jim's closest ally, Doramin. Brown and his men ambush the camp, killing Dain Waris. Jim, realizing that he has still not been able to escape his initial failure aboard the Patna, ignores Jewel's pleas and goes to Doramin's compound, where the grieving father shoots and kills him. Much of the novel is concerned with Marlow's attempts to piece together Jim's story from a variety of sources. Finally, he recounts the story to a group of acquaintances. At this point in time, though, Brown has not yet come to Patusan, and the story remains unfinished. Once events are completed, Marlow writes them down in manuscript form, which he then sends to a member of the audience of the first part of the story. The novel fragments time, and Marlow juxtaposes different, non-chronological pieces of Jim's story for maximum effect, all the while seeking to discover the source of his own fascination with Jim and the meaning behind the story.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "107", "title": "Far from the Madding Crowd", "text": "\n\nDESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK--AN INCIDENT\n\n\nWhen Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they\nwere within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were\nreduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them,\nextending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch\nof the rising sun.\n\nHis Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young\nman of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good\ncharacter.  On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to\npostponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the\nwhole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space\nof Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of\nthe parish and the drunken section,--that is, he went to church, but\nyawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene\ncreed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to\nbe listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood\nin the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in\ntantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased,\nhe was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose\nmoral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.\n\nSince he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's\nappearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own--the mental\npicture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always\ndressed in that way.  He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at\nthe base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds,\nand a coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lower extremities being encased\nin ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording\nto each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might\nstand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp--their maker\nbeing a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any\nweakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.\n\nMr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a\nsmall silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and\nintention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being\nseveral years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of\ngoing either too fast or not at all.  The smaller of its hands, too,\noccasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes\nwere told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour\nthey belonged to.  The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied\nby thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the\nother two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of\nthe sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his\nneighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the\ngreen-faced timekeepers within.  It may be mentioned that Oak's fob\nbeing difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation\nin the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height\nunder his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by\nthrowing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a\nmere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and\ndrawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.\n\nBut some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one\nof his fields on a certain December morning--sunny and exceedingly\nmild--might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these.\nIn his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of\nyouth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter\ncrannies some relics of the boy.  His height and breadth would\nhave been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been\nexhibited with due consideration.  But there is a way some men have,\nrural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than\nflesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their\nmanner of showing them.  And from a quiet modesty that would have\nbecome a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he\nhad no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and\nwith a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the\nshoulders.  This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he\ndepends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his\ncapacity to wear well, which Oak did not.\n\nHe had just reached the time of life at which \"young\" is ceasing to\nbe the prefix of \"man\" in speaking of one.  He was at the brightest\nperiod of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were\nclearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence\nof youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse,\nand he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united\nagain, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and\nfamily.  In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.\n\nThe field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe\nHill.  Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster\nand Chalk-Newton.  Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming\ndown the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon, painted\nyellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner walking\nalongside bearing a whip perpendicularly.  The waggon was laden with\nhousehold goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat\na woman, young and attractive.  Gabriel had not beheld the sight for\nmore than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill\njust beneath his eyes.\n\n\"The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss,\" said the waggoner.\n\n\"Then I heard it fall,\" said the girl, in a soft, though not\nparticularly low voice.  \"I heard a noise I could not account for\nwhen we were coming up the hill.\"\n\n\"I'll run back.\"\n\n\"Do,\" she answered.\n\nThe sensible horses stood--perfectly still, and the waggoner's steps\nsank fainter and fainter in the distance.\n\nThe girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by\ntables and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle,\nand ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses,\ntogether with a caged canary--all probably from the windows of the\nhouse just vacated.  There was also a cat in a willow basket, from\nthe partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and\naffectionately surveyed the small birds around.\n\nThe handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the\nonly sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up\nand down the perches of its prison.  Then she looked attentively\ndownwards.  It was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an\noblong package tied in paper, and lying between them.  She turned her\nhead to learn if the waggoner were coming.  He was not yet in sight;\nand her eyes crept back to the package, her thoughts seeming to run\nupon what was inside it.  At length she drew the article into her\nlap, and untied the paper covering; a small swing looking-glass was\ndisclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively.  She\nparted her lips and smiled.\n\nIt was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the\ncrimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright\nface and dark hair.  The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed\naround her were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they\ninvested the whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girl\nwith a peculiar vernal charm.  What possessed her to indulge in\nsuch a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and\nunperceived farmer who were alone its spectators,--whether the smile\nbegan as a factitious one, to test her capacity in that art,--nobody\nknows; it ended certainly in a real smile.  She blushed at herself,\nand seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more.\n\nThe change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such an\nact--from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling out\nof doors--lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically\npossess.  The picture was a delicate one.  Woman's prescriptive\ninfirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the\nfreshness of an originality.  A cynical inference was irresistible by\nGabriel Oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would\nhave been.  There was no necessity whatever for her looking in the\nglass.  She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a\ndimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention\nhad been her motive in taking up the glass.  She simply observed\nherself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind, her\nthoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which\nmen would play a part--vistas of probable triumphs--the smiles being\nof a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won.\nStill, this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions was\nso idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had any\npart in them at all.\n\nThe waggoner's steps were heard returning.  She put the glass in the\npaper, and the whole again into its place.\n\nWhen the waggon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of\nespial, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to the\nturnpike-gate some way beyond the bottom of the hill, where the\nobject of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll.\nAbout twenty steps still remained between him and the gate, when he\nheard a dispute.  It was a difference concerning twopence between the\npersons with the waggon and the man at the toll-bar.\n\n\"Mis'ess's niece is upon the top of the things, and she says that's\nenough that I've offered ye, you great miser, and she won't pay any\nmore.\"  These were the waggoner's words.\n\n\"Very well; then mis'ess's niece can't pass,\" said the turnpike-keeper,\nclosing the gate.\n\nOak looked from one to the other of the disputants, and fell into\na reverie.  There was something in the tone of twopence remarkably\ninsignificant.  Threepence had a definite value as money--it was an\nappreciable infringement on a day's wages, and, as such, a higgling\nmatter; but twopence--\"Here,\" he said, stepping forward and handing\ntwopence to the gatekeeper; \"let the young woman pass.\"  He looked up\nat her then; she heard his words, and looked down.\n\nGabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the\nmiddle line between the beauty of St. John and the ugliness of Judas\nIscariot, as represented in a window of the church he attended, that\nnot a single lineament could be selected and called worthy either of\ndistinction or notoriety.  The red-jacketed and dark-haired maiden\nseemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him, and told\nher man to drive on.  She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel on\na minute scale, but she did not speak them; more probably she felt\nnone, for in gaining her a passage he had lost her her point, and we\nknow how women take a favour of that kind.\n\nThe gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle.  \"That's a\nhandsome maid,\" he said to Oak.\n\n\"But she has her faults,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"True, farmer.\"\n\n\"And the greatest of them is--well, what it is always.\"\n\n\"Beating people down? ay, 'tis so.\"\n\n\"O no.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\nGabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller's\nindifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance\nover the hedge, and said, \"Vanity.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNIGHT--THE FLOCK--AN INTERIOR--ANOTHER INTERIOR\n\n\nIt was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas's, the shortest day\nin the year.  A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill\nwhereon Oak had watched the yellow waggon and its occupant in the\nsunshine of a few days earlier.\n\nNorcombe Hill--not far from lonely Toller-Down--was one of the spots\nwhich suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape\napproaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on\nearth.  It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil--an ordinary\nspecimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which\nmay remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far\ngrander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down.\n\nThe hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying\nplantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the\ncrest, fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane.\nTo-night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest\nblasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound\nas of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened\nmoan.  The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same\nbreezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and\nsending them spinning across the grass.  A group or two of the latest\nin date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very\nmid-winter time on the twigs which bore them and in falling rattled\nagainst the trunks with smart taps.\n\nBetween this half-wooded half-naked hill, and the vague still horizon\nthat its summit indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious sheet of\nfathomless shade--the sounds from which suggested that what it\nconcealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here.  The thin\ngrasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in\nbreezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures--one\nrubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another\nbrushing them like a soft broom.  The instinctive act of humankind\nwas to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the\ntrees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular\nantiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to\nleeward then caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and\nhow the hurrying gust then plunged into the south, to be heard no\nmore.\n\nThe sky was clear--remarkably clear--and the twinkling of all the\nstars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.\nThe North Star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the\nBear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at\na right angle with the meridian.  A difference of colour in the\nstars--oftener read of than seen in England--was really perceptible\nhere.  The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a\nsteely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and\nBetelgueux shone with a fiery red.\n\nTo persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as\nthis, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.\nThe sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past\nearthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness,\nor by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the\nwind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression\nof riding along is vivid and abiding.  The poetry of motion is a\nphrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification\nit is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night,\nand, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass\nof civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all\nsuch proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately\nprogress through the stars.  After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is\nhard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of\nsuch majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.\n\nSuddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this\nplace up against the sky.  They had a clearness which was to be found\nnowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in\nnature.  They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute.\n\nThe tune was not floating unhindered into the open air: it seemed\nmuffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to\nspread high or wide.  It came from the direction of a small dark\nobject under the plantation hedge--a shepherd's hut--now presenting\nan outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled\nto attach either meaning or use.\n\nThe image as a whole was that of a small Noah's Ark on a small\nArarat, allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of\nthe Ark which are followed by toy-makers--and by these means are\nestablished in men's imaginations among their firmest, because\nearliest impressions--to pass as an approximate pattern.  The hut\nstood on little wheels, which raised its floor about a foot from the\nground.  Such shepherds' huts are dragged into the fields when the\nlambing season comes on, to shelter the shepherd in his enforced\nnightly attendance.\n\nIt was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel \"Farmer\"\nOak.  During the twelvemonth preceding this time he had been enabled\nby sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease\nthe small sheep-farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion, and stock\nit with two hundred sheep.  Previously he had been a bailiff for a\nshort time, and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his\nchildhood assisted his father in tending the flocks of large\nproprietors, till old Gabriel sank to rest.\n\nThis venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master\nand not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a\ncritical juncture with Gabriel Oak, and he recognised his position\nclearly.  The first movement in his new progress was the lambing of\nhis ewes, and sheep having been his speciality from his youth, he\nwisely refrained from deputing the task of tending them at this\nseason to a hireling or a novice.\n\nThe wind continued to beat about the corners of the hut, but the\nflute-playing ceased.  A rectangular space of light appeared in the\nside of the hut, and in the opening the outline of Farmer Oak's\nfigure.  He carried a lantern in his hand, and closing the door\nbehind him, came forward and busied himself about this nook of the\nfield for nearly twenty minutes, the lantern light appearing and\ndisappearing here and there, and brightening him or darkening him\nas he stood before or behind it.\n\nOak's motions, though they had a quiet-energy, were slow, and their\ndeliberateness accorded well with his occupation.  Fitness being the\nbasis of beauty, nobody could have denied that his steady swings and\nturns in and about the flock had elements of grace.  Yet, although if\noccasion demanded he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a\ndash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born, his\nspecial power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing\nlittle or nothing to momentum as a rule.\n\nA close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan\nstarlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been\ncasually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for\nhis great purpose this winter.  Detached hurdles thatched with straw\nwere stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid and\nunder which the whitish forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled.\nThe ring of the sheep-bell, which had been silent during his absence,\nrecommenced, in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing\nto an increasing growth of surrounding wool.  This continued till Oak\nwithdrew again from the flock.  He returned to the hut, bringing in\nhis arms a new-born lamb, consisting of four legs large enough for\na full-grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable membrane\nabout half the substance of the legs collectively, which constituted\nthe animal's entire body just at present.\n\nThe little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small\nstove, where a can of milk was simmering.  Oak extinguished the\nlantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being\nlighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire.  A rather hard\ncouch, formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered\nhalf the floor of this little habitation, and here the young man\nstretched himself along, loosened his woollen cravat, and closed his\neyes.  In about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would\nhave decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep.\n\nThe inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and\nalluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle,\nreflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung\nassociations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools.  In the\ncorner stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were\nranged bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to\novine surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia,\nginger, and castor-oil being the chief.  On a triangular shelf across\nthe corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider,\nwhich was supplied from a flagon beneath.  Beside the provisions lay\nthe flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely\nwatcher to beguile a tedious hour.  The house was ventilated by two\nround holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood slides.\n\nThe lamb, revived by the warmth began to bleat, and the sound entered\nGabriel's ears and brain with an instant meaning, as expected\nsounds will.  Passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert\nwakefulness with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse\noperation, he looked at his watch, found that the hour-hand had\nshifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried\nit into the darkness.  After placing the little creature with its\nmother, he stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the\ntime of night from the altitudes of the stars.\n\nThe Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were\nhalf-way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which\ngorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it\nsoared forth above the rim of the landscape.  Castor and Pollux with\ntheir quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy\nSquare of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away\nthrough the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the\nleafless trees, and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the\nuppermost boughs.\n\n\"One o'clock,\" said Gabriel.\n\nBeing a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some\ncharm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky\nas a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit,\nas a work of art superlatively beautiful.  For a moment he seemed\nimpressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with\nthe complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and\nsounds of man.  Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys\nwere all as if they were not, and there seemed to be on the shaded\nhemisphere of the globe no sentient being save himself; he could\nfancy them all gone round to the sunny side.\n\nOccupied thus, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived\nthat what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the\noutskirts of the plantation was in reality no such thing.  It was an\nartificial light, almost close at hand.\n\nTo find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable\nand expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by\nfar to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when\nintuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability,\ninduction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united\nto persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.\n\nFarmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower\nboughs to the windy side.  A dim mass under the slope reminded him\nthat a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the\nslope of the hill, so that at its back part the roof was almost level\nwith the ground.  In front it was formed of board nailed to posts and\ncovered with tar as a preservative.  Through crevices in the roof and\nside spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made\nthe radiance that had attracted him.  Oak stepped up behind, where,\nleaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he\ncould see into the interior clearly.\n\nThe place contained two women and two cows.  By the side of the\nlatter a steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket.  One of the women was\npast middle age.  Her companion was apparently young and graceful;\nhe could form no decided opinion upon her looks, her position being\nalmost beneath his eye, so that he saw her in a bird's-eye view, as\nMilton's Satan first saw Paradise.  She wore no bonnet or hat, but\nhad enveloped herself in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung\nover her head as a covering.\n\n\"There, now we'll go home,\" said the elder of the two, resting her\nknuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole.\n\"I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now.  I have never been more\nfrightened in my life, but I don't mind breaking my rest if she\nrecovers.\"\n\nThe young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall\ntogether on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without\nparting her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught\nthe infection and slightly yawned in sympathy.\n\n\"I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things,\" she\nsaid.\n\n\"As we are not, we must do them ourselves,\" said the other; \"for you\nmust help me if you stay.\"\n\n\"Well, my hat is gone, however,\" continued the younger. \"It went over\nthe hedge, I think.  The idea of such a slight wind catching it.\"\n\nThe cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was encased in a\ntight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes\nto tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her\nlong back being mathematically level.  The other was spotted, grey\nand white.  Beside her Oak now noticed a little calf about a day old,\nlooking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not\nlong been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning\nto the lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon, inherited\ninstinct having as yet had little time for correction by experience.\nBetween the sheep and the cows Lucina had been busy on Norcombe Hill\nlately.\n\n\"I think we had better send for some oatmeal,\" said the elder woman;\n\"there's no more bran.\"\n\n\"Yes, aunt; and I'll ride over for it as soon as it is light.\"\n\n\"But there's no side-saddle.\"\n\n\"I can ride on the other: trust me.\"\n\nOak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her\nfeatures, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of\nthe cloak, and by his aerial position, he felt himself drawing upon\nhis fancy for their details.  In making even horizontal and clear\ninspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us\nwhatever our eyes bring in.  Had Gabriel been able from the first to\nget a distinct view of her countenance, his estimate of it as very\nhandsome or slightly so would have been as his soul required a\ndivinity at the moment or was ready supplied with one.  Having for\nsome time known the want of a satisfactory form to fill an increasing\nvoid within him, his position moreover affording the widest scope for\nhis fancy, he painted her a beauty.\n\nBy one of those whimsical coincidences in which Nature, like a busy\nmother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn\nand make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and\nforth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket.  Oak knew\nher instantly as the heroine of the yellow waggon, myrtles, and\nlooking-glass: prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence.\n\nThey placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern,\nand went out, the light sinking down the hill till it was no more\nthan a nebula.  Gabriel Oak returned to his flock.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA GIRL ON HORSEBACK--CONVERSATION\n\n\nThe sluggish day began to break.  Even its position terrestrially is\none of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason\nsave that the incident of the night had occurred there Oak went again\ninto the plantation.  Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of\na horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an\nauburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading\npast the cattle-shed.  She was the young woman of the night before.\nGabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having\nlost in the wind; possibly she had come to look for it.  He hastily\nscanned the ditch and after walking about ten yards along it found\nthe hat among the leaves.  Gabriel took it in his hand and returned\nto his hut.  Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the\nloophole in the direction of the rider's approach.\n\nShe came up and looked around--then on the other side of the hedge.\nGabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article when\nan unexpected performance induced him to suspend the action for\nthe present.  The path, after passing the cowshed, bisected the\nplantation.  It was not a bridle-path--merely a pedestrian's track,\nand the boughs spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven\nfeet above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath\nthem.  The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a\nmoment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was out of view,\nthen dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her\nhead over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to\nthe sky.  The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of\na kingfisher--its noiselessness that of a hawk.  Gabriel's eyes had\nscarcely been able to follow her.  The tall lank pony seemed used to\nsuch doings, and ambled along unconcerned.  Thus she passed under the\nlevel boughs.\n\nThe performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse's head\nand its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having\nceased with the passage of the plantation, she began to adopt\nanother, even more obviously convenient than the first.  She had\nno side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the\nsmooth leather beneath her was unattainable sideways.  Springing to\nher accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying\nherself that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner\ndemanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and\ntrotted off in the direction of Tewnell Mill.\n\nOak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat\nin his hut, went again among his ewes.  An hour passed, the girl\nreturned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of\nher.  On nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a\nmilking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off.\nThe boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman.\n\nSoon soft spirts alternating with loud spirts came in regular\nsuccession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person\nmilking a cow.  Gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited\nbeside the path she would follow in leaving the hill.\n\nShe came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left\narm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make\nOak wish that the event had happened in the summer, when the whole\nwould have been revealed.  There was a bright air and manner about\nher now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her\nexistence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption\nfailed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the\nwhole, true.  Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius,\nthat which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to\nrecognised power.  It was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel's\nface rising like the moon behind the hedge.\n\nThe adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her charms to the\nportrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution\nthan a difference.  The starting-point selected by the judgment was\nher height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the\nhedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison\nwith these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by\nwomen as best.  All features of consequence were severe and regular.\nIt may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with\neyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a classically-formed face is\nseldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the\nhighly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder\nof the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads\nusually goes off into random facial curves.  Without throwing a\nNymphean tissue over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism\nchecked itself as out of place, and looked at her proportions with a\nlong consciousness of pleasure.  From the contours of her figure in\nits upper part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but\nsince her infancy nobody had ever seen them.  Had she been put into\na low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush.  Yet\nshe was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her instinct to\ndraw the line dividing the seen from the unseen higher than they do\nit in towns.\n\nThat the girl's thoughts hovered about her face and form as soon as\nshe caught Oak's eyes conning the same page was natural, and almost\ncertain.  The self-consciousness shown would have been vanity if\na little more pronounced, dignity if a little less.  Rays of male\nvision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural\ndistricts; she brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been\nirritating its pink surface by actual touch, and the free air of her\nprevious movements was reduced at the same time to a chastened phase\nof itself.  Yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not at all.\n\n\"I found a hat,\" said Oak.\n\n\"It is mine,\" said she, and, from a sense of proportion, kept down to\na small smile an inclination to laugh distinctly: \"it flew away last\nnight.\"\n\n\"One o'clock this morning?\"\n\n\"Well--it was.\"  She was surprised.  \"How did you know?\" she said.\n\n\"I was here.\"\n\n\"You are Farmer Oak, are you not?\"\n\n\"That or thereabouts.  I'm lately come to this place.\"\n\n\"A large farm?\" she inquired, casting her eyes round, and swinging\nback her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass; but\nit being now an hour past sunrise the rays touched its prominent\ncurves with a colour of their own.\n\n\"No; not large.  About a hundred.\"  (In speaking of farms the word\n\"acres\" is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old expressions\nas \"a stag of ten.\")\n\n\"I wanted my hat this morning,\" she went on.  \"I had to ride to\nTewnell Mill.\"\n\n\"Yes you had.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"I saw you.\"\n\n\"Where?\" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her\nlineaments and frame to a standstill.\n\n\"Here--going through the plantation, and all down the hill,\" said\nFarmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some\nmatter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction\nnamed, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes.\n\nA perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as\nsuddenly as if he had been caught in a theft.  Recollection of the\nstrange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was\nsucceeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot\nface.  It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to\nreddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the\ndeepest rose-colour.  From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties\nof the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's\nacquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness,\nturned away his head.\n\nThe sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she\nwould recover coolness sufficient to justify him in facing her again.\nHe heard what seemed to be the flitting of a dead leaf upon the\nbreeze, and looked.  She had gone away.\n\nWith an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel returned to\nhis work.\n\nFive mornings and evenings passed.  The young woman came regularly to\nmilk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick one, but never allowed\nher vision to stray in the direction of Oak's person.  His want of\ntact had deeply offended her--not by seeing what he could not help,\nbut by letting her know that he had seen it.  For, as without law\nthere is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared\nto feel that Gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman\nwithout her own connivance.  It was food for great regret with him;\nit was also a _contretemps_ which touched into life a latent heat he\nhad experienced in that direction.\n\nThe acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a slow forgetting,\nbut for an incident which occurred at the end of the same week.  One\nafternoon it began to freeze, and the frost increased with evening,\nwhich drew on like a stealthy tightening of bonds.  It was a time\nwhen in cottages the breath of the sleepers freezes to the sheets;\nwhen round the drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion the\nsitters' backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow.  Many\na small bird went to bed supperless that night among the bare boughs.\n\nAs the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual watch upon the\ncowshed.  At last he felt cold, and shaking an extra quantity of\nbedding round the yearling ewes he entered the hut and heaped more\nfuel upon the stove.  The wind came in at the bottom of the door,\nand to prevent it Oak laid a sack there and wheeled the cot round a\nlittle more to the south.  Then the wind spouted in at a ventilating\nhole--of which there was one on each side of the hut.\n\nGabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door\nclosed one of these must be kept open--that chosen being always on\nthe side away from the wind.  Closing the slide to windward, he\nturned to open the other; on second thoughts the farmer considered\nthat he would first sit down leaving both closed for a minute or two,\ntill the temperature of the hut was a little raised.  He sat down.\n\nHis head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and, fancying himself\nweary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, Oak\ndecided to get up, open the slide, and then allow himself to fall\nasleep.  He fell asleep, however, without having performed the\nnecessary preliminary.\n\nHow long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew.  During the\nfirst stages of his return to perception peculiar deeds seemed to be\nin course of enactment.  His dog was howling, his head was aching\nfearfully--somebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his\nneckerchief.\n\nOn opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in\na strange manner of unexpectedness.  The young girl with the\nremarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him.  More than\nthis--astonishingly more--his head was upon her lap, his face and\nneck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning his\ncollar.\n\n\"Whatever is the matter?\" said Oak, vacantly.\n\nShe seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignificant a kind to\nstart enjoyment.\n\n\"Nothing now,\" she answered, \"since you are not dead. It is a wonder\nyou were not suffocated in this hut of yours.\"\n\n\"Ah, the hut!\" murmured Gabriel.  \"I gave ten pounds for that hut.\nBut I'll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they did in old\ntimes, and curl up to sleep in a lock of straw!  It played me nearly\nthe same trick the other day!\"  Gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought\ndown his fist upon the floor.\n\n\"It was not exactly the fault of the hut,\" she observed in a tone\nwhich showed her to be that novelty among women--one who finished a\nthought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it.  \"You\nshould, I think, have considered, and not have been so foolish as to\nleave the slides closed.\"\n\n\"Yes I suppose I should,\" said Oak, absently.  He was endeavouring to\ncatch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head\nupon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone\nthings.  He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon\nhave thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey\nthe intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language.\nSo he remained silent.\n\nShe made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face and shaking\nhimself like a Samson.  \"How can I thank 'ee?\" he said at last,\ngratefully, some of the natural rusty red having returned to his\nface.\n\n\"Oh, never mind that,\" said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile\nto hold good for Gabriel's next remark, whatever that might prove to\nbe.\n\n\"How did you find me?\"\n\n\"I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the hut when\nI came to the milking (it was so lucky, Daisy's milking is almost\nover for the season, and I shall not come here after this week or the\nnext).  The dog saw me, and jumped over to me, and laid hold of my\nskirt.  I came across and looked round the hut the very first thing\nto see if the slides were closed.  My uncle has a hut like this one,\nand I have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without\nleaving a slide open.  I opened the door, and there you were like\ndead.  I threw the milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting\nit was warm, and no use.\"\n\n\"I wonder if I should have died?\" Gabriel said, in a low voice, which\nwas rather meant to travel back to himself than to her.\n\n\"Oh no!\" the girl replied.  She seemed to prefer a less tragic\nprobability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that should\nharmonise with the dignity of such a deed--and she shunned it.\n\n\"I believe you saved my life, Miss--I don't know your name.  I know\nyour aunt's, but not yours.\"\n\n\"I would just as soon not tell it--rather not.  There is no reason\neither why I should, as you probably will never have much to do with\nme.\"\n\n\"Still, I should like to know.\"\n\n\"You can inquire at my aunt's--she will tell you.\"\n\n\"My name is Gabriel Oak.\"\n\n\"And mine isn't.  You seem fond of yours in speaking it so\ndecisively, Gabriel Oak.\"\n\n\"You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must make the\nmost of it.\"\n\n\"I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable.\"\n\n\"I should think you might soon get a new one.\"\n\n\"Mercy!--how many opinions you keep about you concerning other\npeople, Gabriel Oak.\"\n\n\"Well, Miss--excuse the words--I thought you would like them.  But I\ncan't match you, I know, in mapping out my mind upon my tongue.  I\nnever was very clever in my inside.  But I thank you.  Come, give me\nyour hand.\"\n\nShe hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at Oak's old-fashioned earnest\nconclusion to a dialogue lightly carried on.  \"Very well,\" she\nsaid, and gave him her hand, compressing her lips to a demure\nimpassivity. He held it but an instant, and in his fear of being too\ndemonstrative, swerved to the opposite extreme, touching her fingers\nwith the lightness of a small-hearted person.\n\n\"I am sorry,\" he said the instant after.\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"Letting your hand go so quick.\"\n\n\"You may have it again if you like; there it is.\"  She gave him her\nhand again.\n\nOak held it longer this time--indeed, curiously long.  \"How soft it\nis--being winter time, too--not chapped or rough or anything!\" he\nsaid.\n\n\"There--that's long enough,\" said she, though without pulling it\naway. \"But I suppose you are thinking you would like to kiss it?  You\nmay if you want to.\"\n\n\"I wasn't thinking of any such thing,\" said Gabriel, simply; \"but I\nwill--\"\n\n\"That you won't!\" She snatched back her hand.\n\nGabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact.\n\n\"Now find out my name,\" she said, teasingly; and withdrew.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGABRIEL'S RESOLVE--THE VISIT--THE MISTAKE\n\n\nThe only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is,\nas a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which\nrecognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities\nof capture to the subordinated man.\n\nThis well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon\nthe emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak.\n\nLove, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant\nprofit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of\npure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially,\nis at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning Oak's\nfeelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon\nhis chances.  His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in\nwhich Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quite\nstruck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at\nthe dog.  However, he continued to watch through the hedge for her\nregular coming, and thus his sentiments towards her were deepened\nwithout any corresponding effect being produced upon herself.  Oak\nhad nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able to\nframe love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales--\n\n\n         --Full of sound and fury\n      --Signifying nothing--\n\n\nhe said no word at all.\n\nBy making inquiries he found that the girl's name was Bathsheba\nEverdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days.  He\ndreaded the eighth day.\n\nAt last the eighth day came.  The cow had ceased to give milk for\nthat year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more.  Gabriel\nhad reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated\na short time before.  He liked saying \"Bathsheba\" as a private\nenjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair,\nthough he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated\nhimself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly\nsmall.  Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.  Marriage\ntransforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should\nbe, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of\nimbecility it supplants.  Oak began now to see light in this\ndirection, and said to himself, \"I'll make her my wife, or upon my\nsoul I shall be good for nothing!\"\n\nAll this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which he\nmight consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba's aunt.\n\nHe found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a living\nlamb.  On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution--a\nfine January morning, when there was just enough blue sky visible\nto make cheerfully-disposed people wish for more, and an occasional\ngleam of silvery sunshine, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday\nbasket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the\naunt--George, the dog walking behind, with a countenance of great\nconcern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking.\n\nGabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the chimney with\nstrange meditation.  At evening he had fancifully traced it down the\nchimney to the spot of its origin--seen the hearth and Bathsheba\nbeside it--beside it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she had\nworn on the hill were by association equally with her person included\nin the compass of his affection; they seemed at this early time of\nhis love a necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called Bathsheba\nEverdene.\n\nHe had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind--of a nature between\nthe carefully neat and the carelessly ornate--of a degree between\nfine-market-day and wet-Sunday selection.  He thoroughly cleaned his\nsilver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots,\nlooked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the\nplantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his\nway back; took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box,\nput on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of an\nelegant flower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without the\ndefects of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his\nusually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened\nit to a splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and Roman\ncement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet\nseaweed round a boulder after the ebb.\n\nNothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a\nknot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and rumour to\nbe no less the staple topic of these little coteries on roofs than of\nthose under them.  It seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one,\nfor, as the rather untoward commencement of Oak's overtures, just\nas he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into\nvarious arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his\ndog George.  The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age at\nwhich all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of\nbreath--in fact, he never barked even at the sheep except to order,\nwhen it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of\nCommination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through\nonce now and then to frighten the flock for their own good.\n\nA voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat had\nrun:\n\n\"Poor dear!  Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it;--did he,\npoor dear!\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon,\" said Oak to the voice, \"but George was walking\non behind me with a temper as mild as milk.\"\n\nAlmost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a misgiving\nas to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. Nobody appeared, and\nhe heard the person retreat among the bushes.\n\nGabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into\nhis forehead by sheer force of reverie.  Where the issue of an\ninterview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for\nthe better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping\nsensations of failure.  Oak went up to the door a little abashed:\nhis mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of\nopening.\n\nBathsheba's aunt was indoors.  \"Will you tell Miss Everdene that\nsomebody would be glad to speak to her?\" said Mr. Oak.  (Calling\none's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken\nas an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs\nfrom a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and\nannouncements, have no notion whatever.)\n\nBathsheba was out.  The voice had evidently been hers.\n\n\"Will you come in, Mr. Oak?\"\n\n\"Oh, thank 'ee,\" said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace.  \"I've\nbrought a lamb for Miss Everdene.  I thought she might like one to\nrear; girls do.\"\n\n\"She might,\" said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; \"though she's only a visitor\nhere.  If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in.\"\n\n\"Yes, I will wait,\" said Gabriel, sitting down.  \"The lamb isn't\nreally the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst.  In short, I was going\nto ask her if she'd like to be married.\"\n\n\"And were you indeed?\"\n\n\"Yes.  Because if she would, I should be very glad to marry her.\nD'ye know if she's got any other young man hanging about her at all?\"\n\n\"Let me think,\" said Mrs. Hurst, poking the fire superfluously....\n\"Yes--bless you, ever so many young men.  You see, Farmer Oak, she's\nso good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides--she was going to\nbe a governess once, you know, only she was too wild.  Not that her\nyoung men ever come here--but, Lord, in the nature of women, she must\nhave a dozen!\"\n\n\"That's unfortunate,\" said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack in the\nstone floor with sorrow.  \"I'm only an every-day sort of man, and my\nonly chance was in being the first comer ... Well, there's no use in\nmy waiting, for that was all I came about: so I'll take myself off\nhome-along, Mrs. Hurst.\"\n\nWhen Gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the down, he\nheard a \"hoi-hoi!\" uttered behind him, in a piping note of more\ntreble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies\nitself when shouted across a field.  He looked round, and saw a girl\nracing after him, waving a white handkerchief.\n\nOak stood still--and the runner drew nearer.  It was Bathsheba\nEverdene.  Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as\nit appeared, from emotion, but from running.\n\n\"Farmer Oak--I--\" she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up in\nfront of him with a slanted face and putting her hand to her side.\n\n\"I have just called to see you,\" said Gabriel, pending her further\nspeech.\n\n\"Yes--I know that,\" she said panting like a robin, her face red and\nmoist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off\nthe dew.  \"I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should\nhave come in from the garden instantly.  I ran after you to say--that\nmy aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me--\"\n\nGabriel expanded. \"I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear,\"\nhe said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. \"Wait a bit till\nyou've found your breath.\"\n\n\"--It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young man\nalready,\" Bathsheba went on.  \"I haven't a sweetheart at all--and I\nnever had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was\nSUCH a pity to send you away thinking that I had several.\"\n\n\"Really and truly I am glad to hear that!\" said Farmer Oak, smiling\none of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness.  He held\nout his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by\npressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her\nloud-beating heart.  Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so\nthat it slipped through his fingers like an eel.\n\n\"I have a nice snug little farm,\" said Gabriel, with half a degree\nless assurance than when he had seized her hand.\n\n\"Yes; you have.\"\n\n\"A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon\nbe paid off, and though I am only an every-day sort of man, I have\ngot on a little since I was a boy.\"  Gabriel uttered \"a little\" in a\ntone to show her that it was the complacent form of \"a great deal.\"\nHe continued: \"When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twice\nas hard as I do now.\"\n\nHe went forward and stretched out his arm again.  Bathsheba had\novertaken him at a point beside which stood a low stunted holly bush,\nnow laden with red berries.  Seeing his advance take the form of an\nattitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her\nperson, she edged off round the bush.\n\n\"Why, Farmer Oak,\" she said, over the top, looking at him with\nrounded eyes, \"I never said I was going to marry you.\"\n\n\"Well--that IS a tale!\" said Oak, with dismay. \"To run after anybody\nlike this, and then say you don't want him!\"\n\n\"What I meant to tell you was only this,\" she said eagerly, and yet\nhalf conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for\nherself--\"that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my\nhaving a dozen, as my aunt said; I HATE to be thought men's property\nin that way, though possibly I shall be had some day.  Why, if I'd\nwanted you I shouldn't have run after you like this; 'twould have\nbeen the FORWARDEST thing!  But there was no harm in hurrying to\ncorrect a piece of false news that had been told you.\"\n\n\"Oh, no--no harm at all.\"  But there is such a thing as being too\ngenerous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and Oak added with a\nmore appreciative sense of all the circumstances--\"Well, I am not\nquite certain it was no harm.\"\n\n\"Indeed, I hadn't time to think before starting whether I wanted to\nmarry or not, for you'd have been gone over the hill.\"\n\n\"Come,\" said Gabriel, freshening again; \"think a minute or two.  I'll\nwait a while, Miss Everdene.  Will you marry me?  Do, Bathsheba.  I\nlove you far more than common!\"\n\n\"I'll try to think,\" she observed, rather more timorously; \"if I can\nthink out of doors; my mind spreads away so.\"\n\n\"But you can give a guess.\"\n\n\"Then give me time.\"  Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the\ndistance, away from the direction in which Gabriel stood.\n\n\"I can make you happy,\" said he to the back of her head, across the\nbush.  \"You shall have a piano in a year or two--farmers' wives are\ngetting to have pianos now--and I'll practise up the flute right well\nto play with you in the evenings.\"\n\n\"Yes; I should like that.\"\n\n\"And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market--and nice\nflowers, and birds--cocks and hens I mean, because they be useful,\"\ncontinued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality.\n\n\"I should like it very much.\"\n\n\"And a frame for cucumbers--like a gentleman and lady.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And when the wedding was over, we'd have it put in the newspaper\nlist of marriages.\"\n\n\"Dearly I should like that!\"\n\n\"And the babies in the births--every man jack of 'em!  And at home by\nthe fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be--and whenever I look\nup there will be you.\"\n\n\"Wait, wait, and don't be improper!\"\n\nHer countenance fell, and she was silent awhile.  He regarded the red\nberries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that\nholly seemed in his after life to be a cypher signifying a proposal\nof marriage.  Bathsheba decisively turned to him.\n\n\"No; 'tis no use,\" she said.  \"I don't want to marry you.\"\n\n\"Try.\"\n\n\"I have tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a marriage\nwould be very nice in one sense.  People would talk about me, and\nthink I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all\nthat, But a husband--\"\n\n\"Well!\"\n\n\"Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there\nhe'd be.\"\n\n\"Of course he would--I, that is.\"\n\n\"Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a\nwedding, if I could be one without having a husband.  But since a\nwoman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry--at least\nyet.\"\n\n\"That's a terrible wooden story!\"\n\nAt this criticism of her statement Bathsheba made an addition to her\ndignity by a slight sweep away from him.\n\n\"Upon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say stupider\nthan that,\" said Oak.  \"But dearest,\" he continued in a palliative\nvoice, \"don't be like it!\" Oak sighed a deep honest sigh--none the\nless so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was\nrather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere.  \"Why won't you\nhave me?\" he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side.\n\n\"I cannot,\" she said, retreating.\n\n\"But why?\" he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever\nreaching her, and facing over the bush.\n\n\"Because I don't love you.\"\n\n\"Yes, but--\"\n\nShe contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was\nhardly ill-mannered at all.  \"I don't love you,\" she said.\n\n\"But I love you--and, as for myself, I am content to be liked.\"\n\n\"Oh Mr. Oak--that's very fine!  You'd get to despise me.\"\n\n\"Never,\" said Mr Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, by\nthe force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms.\n\"I shall do one thing in this life--one thing certain--that is, love\nyou, and long for you, and KEEP WANTING YOU till I die.\"  His voice\nhad a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly\ntrembled.\n\n\"It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much!\"\nshe said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around\nfor some means of escape from her moral dilemma.  \"How I wish I\nhadn't run after you!\"  However she seemed to have a short cut for\ngetting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness.\n\"It wouldn't do, Mr Oak.  I want somebody to tame me; I am too\nindependent; and you would never be able to, I know.\"\n\nOak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it was\nuseless to attempt argument.\n\n\"Mr. Oak,\" she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense,\n\"you are better off than I.  I have hardly a penny in the world--I am\nstaying with my aunt for my bare sustenance.  I am better educated\nthan you--and I don't love you a bit: that's my side of the case.\nNow yours: you are a farmer just beginning; and you ought in common\nprudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly not think\nof doing at present), to marry a woman with money, who would stock a\nlarger farm for you than you have now.\"\n\nGabriel looked at her with a little surprise and much admiration.\n\n\"That's the very thing I had been thinking myself!\" he naively said.\n\nFarmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to\nsucceed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of\nhonesty.  Bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted.\n\n\"Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?\" she said, almost\nangrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek.\n\n\"I can't do what I think would be--would be--\"\n\n\"Right?\"\n\n\"No: wise.\"\n\n\"You have made an admission NOW, Mr. Oak,\" she exclaimed, with even\nmore hauteur, and rocking her head disdainfully.  \"After that, do you\nthink I could marry you?  Not if I know it.\"\n\nHe broke in passionately.  \"But don't mistake me like that!  Because\nI am open enough to own what every man in my shoes would have thought\nof, you make your colours come up your face, and get crabbed with me.\nThat about your not being good enough for me is nonsense.  You speak\nlike a lady--all the parish notice it, and your uncle at Weatherbury\nis, I have heerd, a large farmer--much larger than ever I shall be.\nMay I call in the evening, or will you walk along with me o' Sundays?\nI don't want you to make-up your mind at once, if you'd rather not.\"\n\n\"No--no--I cannot.  Don't press me any more--don't.  I don't love\nyou--so 'twould be ridiculous,\" she said, with a laugh.\n\nNo man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round of\nskittishness.  \"Very well,\" said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of one\nwho was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever.\n\"Then I'll ask you no more.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBA--A PASTORAL TRAGEDY\n\n\nThe news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdene\nhad left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might\nhave surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the\nrenunciation the less absolute its character.\n\nIt may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting\nout of love as there is for getting in.  Some people look upon\nmarriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.\nSeparation, which was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by\nBathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain\nhumours, is apt to idealize the removed object with others--notably\nthose whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep\nand long.  Oak belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity, and\nfelt the secret fusion of himself in Bathsheba to be burning with a\nfiner flame now that she was gone--that was all.\n\nHis incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the\nfailure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's\nmovements was done indirectly.  It appeared that she had gone to\na place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in\nwhat capacity--whether as a visitor, or permanently, he could not\ndiscover.\n\nGabriel had two dogs.  George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped\nnose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked\nin random splotches approximating in colour to white and slaty\ngrey; but the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched\nand washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a\nreddish-brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like\nthe indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner's pictures.  In\nsubstance it had originally been hair, but long contact with sheep\nseemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality and\nstaple.\n\nThis dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals\nand dreadful temper, and the result was that George knew the exact\ndegrees of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of all\ndescriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood.\nLong experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference\nbetween such exclamations as \"Come in!\" and \"D---- ye, come in!\" that\nhe knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes'\ntails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep crook\nwas to be escaped.  Though old, he was clever and trustworthy still.\n\nThe young dog, George's son, might possibly have been the image\nof his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and\nGeorge.  He was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow\non at the flock when the other should die, but had got no further\nthan the rudiments as yet--still finding an insuperable difficulty\nin distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too\nwell.  So earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog (he had\nno name in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to any\npleasant interjection), that if sent behind the flock to help them\non, he did it so thoroughly that he would have chased them across the\nwhole county with the greatest pleasure if not called off or reminded\nwhen to stop by the example of old George.\n\nThus much for the dogs.  On the further side of Norcombe Hill was\na chalk-pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations, and\nspread over adjacent farms.  Two hedges converged upon it in the form\nof a V, but without quite meeting.  The narrow opening left, which\nwas immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough\nrailing.\n\nOne night, when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing there\nwould be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he\ncalled as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the\nouthouse till next morning.  Only one responded--old George; the\nother could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden.\nGabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill\neating a dead lamb (a kind of meat he usually kept from them, except\nwhen other food ran short), and concluding that the young one had\nnot finished his meal, he went indoors to the luxury of a bed, which\nlatterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays.\n\nIt was a still, moist night.  Just before dawn he was assisted in\nwaking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music.  To the\nshepherd, the note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clock\nto other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by\nceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idle\ntwinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that\nall is well in the fold.  In the solemn calm of the awakening morn\nthat note was heard by Gabriel, beating with unusual violence and\nrapidity.  This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways--by\nthe rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock\nbreaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity,\nor by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regular\npalpitation.  The experienced ear of Oak knew the sound he now heard\nto be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity.\n\nHe jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through a foggy\ndawn, and ascended the hill.  The forward ewes were kept apart from\nthose among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two\nhundred of the latter class in Gabriel's flock.  These two hundred\nseemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill.  There were the\nfifty with their lambs, enclosed at the other end as he had left\nthem, but the rest, forming the bulk of the flock, were nowhere.\nGabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call:\n\n\"Ovey, ovey, ovey!\"\n\nNot a single bleat.  He went to the hedge; a gap had been broken\nthrough it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep.  Rather\nsurprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it\ndown instantly to their great fondness for ivy in winter-time, of\nwhich a great deal grew in the plantation, he followed through the\nhedge.  They were not in the plantation.  He called again: the\nvalleys and farthest hills resounded as when the sailors invoked the\nlost Hylas on the Mysian shore; but no sheep.  He passed through the\ntrees and along the ridge of the hill.  On the extreme summit, where\nthe ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken were\nstopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk-pit, he saw the\nyounger dog standing against the sky--dark and motionless as Napoleon\nat St. Helena.\n\nA horrible conviction darted through Oak.  With a sensation of bodily\nfaintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through,\nand there he saw the footprints of his ewes.  The dog came up, licked\nhis hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward\nfor signal services rendered.  Oak looked over the precipice.  The\newes lay dead and dying at its foot--a heap of two hundred mangled\ncarcasses, representing in their condition just now at least two\nhundred more.\n\nOak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in\npieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and\ncarried him on as by gravitation.  A shadow in his life had always\nbeen that his flock ended in mutton--that a day came and found every\nshepherd an arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep.  His first\nfeeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle\newes and their unborn lambs.\n\nIt was a second to remember another phase of the matter.  The\nsheep were not insured.  All the savings of a frugal life had been\ndispersed at a blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer were\nlaid low--possibly for ever.  Gabriel's energies, patience, and\nindustry had been so severely taxed during the years of his life\nbetween eighteen and eight-and-twenty, to reach his present stage of\nprogress that no more seemed to be left in him.  He leant down upon a\nrail, and covered his face with his hands.\n\nStupors, however, do not last for ever, and Farmer Oak recovered from\nhis.  It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one\nsentence he uttered was in thankfulness:--\n\n\"Thank God I am not married: what would SHE have done in the poverty\nnow coming upon me!\"\n\nOak raised his head, and wondering what he could do, listlessly\nsurveyed the scene.  By the outer margin of the Pit was an oval pond,\nand over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a chrome-yellow moon\nwhich had only a few days to last--the morning star dogging her on\nthe left hand.  The pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as the\nworld awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of\nthe moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a\nphosphoric streak upon the water.  All this Oak saw and remembered.\n\nAs far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still\nunder the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep,\nthe more he ran after them the better, had at the end of his meal\noff the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy and\nspirits, collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timid\ncreatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main\nforce of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a\nportion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge.\n\nGeorge's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered\ntoo good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically\nshot at twelve o'clock that same day--another instance of the\nuntoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers\nwho follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and\nattempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely\nof compromise.\n\nGabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer--on the strength of Oak's\npromising look and character--who was receiving a percentage from the\nfarmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off. Oak found\nthat the value of stock, plant, and implements which were really his\nown would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a\nfree man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE FAIR--THE JOURNEY--THE FIRE\n\n\nTwo months passed away.  We are brought on to a day in February, on\nwhich was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county-town\nof Casterbridge.\n\nAt one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and\nhearty labourers waiting upon Chance--all men of the stamp to whom\nlabour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and\npleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among\nthese, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece\nof whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of\nwoven straw; shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and\nthus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance.\n\nIn the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior\nappearance to the rest--in fact, his superiority was marked enough to\nlead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly,\nas to a farmer, and to use \"Sir\" as a finishing word.  His answer\nalways was,--\n\n\"I am looking for a place myself--a bailiff's.  Do ye know of anybody\nwho wants one?\"\n\nGabriel was paler now.  His eyes were more meditative, and his\nexpression was more sad.  He had passed through an ordeal of\nwretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away.  He\nhad sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very\nslime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he\nhad never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though\nit often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when\nit does not.  And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the\nloss gain.\n\nIn the morning a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a\nsergeant and his party had been beating up for recruits through the\nfour streets.  As the end of the day drew on, and he found himself\nnot hired, Gabriel almost wished that he had joined them, and gone\noff to serve his country.  Weary of standing in the market-place, and\nnot much minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided\nto offer himself in some other capacity than that of bailiff.\n\nAll the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds.  Sheep-tending was\nGabriel's speciality.  Turning down an obscure street and entering\nan obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop.\n\n\"How long would it take you to make a shepherd's crook?\"\n\n\"Twenty minutes.\"\n\n\"How much?\"\n\n\"Two shillings.\"\n\nHe sat on a bench and the crook was made, a stem being given him into\nthe bargain.\n\nHe then went to a ready-made clothes' shop, the owner of which had a\nlarge rural connection.  As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel's\nmoney, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for\na shepherd's regulation smock-frock.\n\nThis transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the\ncentre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a\nshepherd, crook in hand.\n\nNow that Oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that\nbailiffs were most in demand.  However, two or three farmers noticed\nhim and drew near.  Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoined\nform:--\n\n\"Where do you come from?\"\n\n\"Norcombe.\"\n\n\"That's a long way.\n\n\"Fifteen miles.\"\n\n\"Who's farm were you upon last?\"\n\n\"My own.\"\n\nThis reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The\ninquiring farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously.\nGabriel, like his dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never\nmade advance beyond this point.\n\nIt is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize\na procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for\na chance of using it.  Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his\ncolours as a shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the\nwhole cycle of labour that was required in the fair.  It grew dusk.\nSome merry men were whistling and singing by the corn-exchange.\nGabriel's hand, which had lain for some time idle in his smock-frock\npocket, touched his flute which he carried there.  Here was an\nopportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice.\n\nHe drew out his flute and began to play \"Jockey to the Fair\" in the\nstyle of a man who had never known moment's sorrow.  Oak could pipe\nwith Arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes\ncheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers.  He played on\nwith spirit, and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small\nfortune to a destitute man.\n\nBy making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at\nShottsford the next day.\n\n\"How far is Shottsford?\"\n\n\"Ten miles t'other side of Weatherbury.\"\n\nWeatherbury!  It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before.\nThis information was like coming from night into noon.\n\n\"How far is it to Weatherbury?\"\n\n\"Five or six miles.\"\n\nBathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but\nthe place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose\nShottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the\nWeatherbury quarter.  Moreover, the Weatherbury folk were by no means\nuninteresting intrinsically.  If report spoke truly they were as\nhardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county.  Oak\nresolved to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shottsford,\nand struck out at once into the high road which had been recommended\nas the direct route to the village in question.\n\nThe road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks,\nwhose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and\nfolded into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more\nrapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode\non in undisturbed serenity.  On the higher levels the dead and\ndry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along\nhelter-skelter upon the shoulders of the wind, and little birds in\nthe hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in\ncomfortably for the night, retaining their places if Oak kept moving,\nbut flying away if he stopped to look at them.  He passed by Yalbury\nWood where the game-birds were rising to their roosts, and heard the\ncrack-voiced cock-pheasants \"cu-uck, cuck,\" and the wheezy whistle of\nthe hens.\n\nBy the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the\nlandscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness.  He descended\nYalbury Hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up\nunder a great over-hanging tree by the roadside.\n\nOn coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it, the\nspot being apparently quite deserted.  The waggon, from its position,\nseemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half\na truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty.\nGabriel sat down on the shafts of the vehicle and considered his\nposition.  He calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of\nthe journey; and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted\nto lie down upon the hay in the waggon instead of pushing on to the\nvillage of Weatherbury, and having to pay for a lodging.\n\nEating his last slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle\nof cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into\nthe lonely waggon.  Here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and,\nas well as he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over\nhim by way of bed-clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling,\nphysically, as comfortable as ever he had been in his life.  Inward\nmelancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far\nbeyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present\nuntoward page of his history.  So, thinking of his misfortunes,\namorous and pastoral, he fell asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common\nwith sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the god instead\nof having to wait for him.\n\nOn somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of whose length he had no\nidea, Oak found that the waggon was in motion.  He was being carried\nalong the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without\nsprings, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his\nhead being dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a\nkettledrum-stick.  He then distinguished voices in conversation,\ncoming from the forpart of the waggon.  His concern at this dilemma\n(which would have been alarm, had he been a thriving man; but\nmisfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror) led him to peer\ncautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars\nabove him.  Charles's Wain was getting towards a right angle with\nthe Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it must be about nine\no'clock--in other words, that he had slept two hours.  This small\nastronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and\nwhilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible, into whose\nhands he had fallen.\n\nTwo figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs\noutside the waggon, one of whom was driving.  Gabriel soon found that\nthis was the waggoner, and it appeared they had come from\nCasterbridge fair, like himself.\n\nA conversation was in progress, which continued thus:--\n\n\"Be as 'twill, she's a fine handsome body as far's looks be\nconcerned.  But that's only the skin of the woman, and these dandy\ncattle be as proud as a lucifer in their insides.\"\n\n\"Ay--so 'a do seem, Billy Smallbury--so 'a do seem.\"  This utterance\nwas very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of\nthe waggon not being without its effect upon the speaker's larynx.\nIt came from the man who held the reins.\n\n\"She's a very vain feymell--so 'tis said here and there.\"\n\n\"Ah, now.  If so be 'tis like that, I can't look her in the face.\nLord, no: not I--heh-heh-heh!  Such a shy man as I be!\"\n\n\"Yes--she's very vain.  'Tis said that every night at going to bed\nshe looks in the glass to put on her night-cap properly.\"\n\n\"And not a married woman.  Oh, the world!\"\n\n\"And 'a can play the peanner, so 'tis said.  Can play so clever that\n'a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a\nman can wish for.\"\n\n\"D'ye tell o't!  A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man!\nAnd how do she pay?\"\n\n\"That I don't know, Master Poorgrass.\"\n\nOn hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed\ninto Gabriel's mind that they might be speaking of Bathsheba.  There\nwere, however, no grounds for retaining such a supposition, for the\nwaggon, though going in the direction of Weatherbury, might be going\nbeyond it, and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some\nestate.  They were now apparently close upon Weatherbury and not to\nalarm the speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the waggon\nunseen.\n\nHe turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate,\nand mounting thereon, he sat meditating whether to seek a cheap\nlodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under\nsome hay or corn-stack.  The crunching jangle of the waggon died upon\nhis ear.  He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand\nan unusual light--appearing about half a mile distant.  Oak watched\nit, and the glow increased.  Something was on fire.\n\nGabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side\nupon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the\nexact direction of the fire.  The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio\nby his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer\nthe outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness.  A\nrick-yard was the source of the fire.  His weary face now began to\nbe painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his\nsmock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of\nthorn-twigs--the light reaching him through a leafless intervening\nhedge--and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright\nin the same abounding rays.  He came up to the boundary fence, and\nstood to regain breath.  It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by\na living soul.\n\nThe fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone\nas to preclude a possibility of saving it.  A rick burns differently\nfrom a house.  As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in\nflames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is\nlost to the eye.  However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together,\nwill resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the\noutside.\n\nThis before Gabriel's eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together,\nand the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness.  It glowed on\nthe windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of\na cigar.  Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking\nnoise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet\nroar, but no crackle.  Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the\nback like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres,\nilluminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow\nuniformity.  Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a\ncreeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms,\nand above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips,\nglaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks\nflew in clusters like birds from a nest.\n\nOak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the\ncase to be more serious than he had at first imagined.  A scroll\nof smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling\njuxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of\nothers, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead\nof the straw-stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively\nisolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining\nstacks of the group.\n\nGabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone.  The\nfirst man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his\nthoughts were several yards in advance of his body, which they could\nnever drag on fast enough.\n\n\"O, man--fire, fire!  A good master and a bad servant is fire,\nfire!--I mane a bad servant and a good master.  Oh, Mark Clark--come!\nAnd you, Billy Smallbury--and you, Maryann Money--and you, Jan\nCoggan, and Matthew there!\"  Other figures now appeared behind this\nshouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from\nbeing alone he was in a great company--whose shadows danced merrily\nup and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by\ntheir owners' movements.  The assemblage--belonging to that class of\nsociety which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its\nfeelings into the form of commotion--set to work with a remarkable\nconfusion of purpose.\n\n\"Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!\" cried Gabriel to those\nnearest to him.  The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these,\ntongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted\nplayfully.  If the fire once got UNDER this stack, all would be lost.\n\n\"Get a tarpaulin--quick!\" said Gabriel.\n\nA rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the\nchannel.  The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the\ncorn-stack, and stood up vertical.\n\n\"Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet.\" said\nGabriel again.\n\nThe flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the\nhuge roof covering the wheat-stack.\n\n\"A ladder,\" cried Gabriel.\n\n\"The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder,\"\nsaid a spectre-like form in the smoke.\n\nOak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage\nin the operation of \"reed-drawing,\" and digging in his feet, and\noccasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up\nthe beetling face.  He at once sat astride the very apex, and began\nwith his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged\nthereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and\nsome water.\n\nBilly Smallbury--one of the men who had been on the waggon--by this\ntime had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside\nOak upon the thatch.  The smoke at this corner was stifling, and\nClark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed\nOak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a\nlong beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other,\nkept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.\n\nOn the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing\nall they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much.\nThey were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying\npattern.  Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct\nrays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back.\nBy her side was another woman, on foot.  These two seemed to keep at\na distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive.\n\n\"He's a shepherd,\" said the woman on foot.  \"Yes--he is. See how his\ncrook shines as he beats the rick with it.  And his smock-frock is\nburnt in two holes, I declare!  A fine young shepherd he is too,\nma'am.\"\n\n\"Whose shepherd is he?\" said the equestrian in a clear voice.\n\n\"Don't know, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Don't any of the others know?\"\n\n\"Nobody at all--I've asked 'em.  Quite a stranger, they say.\"\n\nThe young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked\nanxiously around.\n\n\"Do you think the barn is safe?\" she said.\n\n\"D'ye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan?\" said the second woman,\npassing on the question to the nearest man in that direction.\n\n\"Safe-now--leastwise I think so.  If this rick had gone the barn\nwould have followed.  'Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done\nthe most good--he sitting on the top o' rick, whizzing his great\nlong-arms about like a windmill.\"\n\n\"He does work hard,\" said the young woman on horseback, looking up at\nGabriel through her thick woollen veil.  \"I wish he was shepherd\nhere.  Don't any of you know his name.\"\n\n\"Never heard the man's name in my life, or seed his form afore.\"\n\nThe fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel's elevated position being\nno longer required of him, he made as if to descend.\n\n\"Maryann,\" said the girl on horseback, \"go to him as he comes down,\nand say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he\nhas done.\"\n\nMaryann stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the\nladder.  She delivered her message.\n\n\"Where is your master the farmer?\" asked Gabriel, kindling with the\nidea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now.\n\n\"'Tisn't a master; 'tis a mistress, shepherd.\"\n\n\"A woman farmer?\"\n\n\"Ay, 'a b'lieve, and a rich one too!\" said a bystander. \"Lately\n'a came here from a distance.  Took on her uncle's farm, who died\nsuddenly.  Used to measure his money in half-pint cups.  They say\nnow that she've business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks\nno more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I, do\npitch-halfpenny--not a bit in the world, shepherd.\"\n\n\"That's she, back there upon the pony,\" said Maryann; \"wi' her face\na-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it.\"\n\nOak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke\nand heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water,\nthe ash stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter, advanced\nwith the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the\nslight female form in the saddle.  He lifted his hat with respect,\nand not without gallantry: stepping close to her hanging feet he said\nin a hesitating voice,--\n\n\"Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?\"\n\nShe lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all\nastonishment.  Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba\nEverdene, were face to face.\n\nBathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed\nand sad voice,--\n\n\"Do you want a shepherd, ma'am?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRECOGNITION--A TIMID GIRL\n\n\nBathsheba withdrew into the shade.  She scarcely knew whether most to\nbe amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at\nits awkwardness.  There was room for a little pity, also for a very\nlittle exultation: the former at his position, the latter at her own.\nEmbarrassed she was not, and she remembered Gabriel's declaration of\nlove to her at Norcombe only to think she had nearly forgotten it.\n\n\"Yes,\" she murmured, putting on an air of dignity, and turning again\nto him with a little warmth of cheek; \"I do want a shepherd.  But--\"\n\n\"He's the very man, ma'am,\" said one of the villagers, quietly.\n\nConviction breeds conviction.  \"Ay, that 'a is,\" said a second,\ndecisively.\n\n\"The man, truly!\" said a third, with heartiness.\n\n\"He's all there!\" said number four, fervidly.\n\n\"Then will you tell him to speak to the bailiff,\" said Bathsheba.\n\nAll was practical again now.  A summer eve and loneliness would have\nbeen necessary to give the meeting its proper fulness of romance.\n\nThe bailiff was pointed out to Gabriel, who, checking the palpitation\nwithin his breast at discovering that this Ashtoreth of strange\nreport was only a modification of Venus the well-known and admired,\nretired with him to talk over the necessary preliminaries of hiring.\n\nThe fire before them wasted away.  \"Men,\" said Bathsheba, \"you shall\ntake a little refreshment after this extra work.  Will you come to\nthe house?\"\n\n\"We could knock in a bit and a drop a good deal freer, Miss, if so be\nye'd send it to Warren's Malthouse,\" replied the spokesman.\n\nBathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on\nto the village in twos and threes--Oak and the bailiff being left by\nthe rick alone.\n\n\"And now,\" said the bailiff, finally, \"all is settled, I think, about\nyour coming, and I am going home-along.  Good-night to ye, shepherd.\"\n\n\"Can you get me a lodging?\" inquired Gabriel.\n\n\"That I can't, indeed,\" he said, moving past Oak as a Christian edges\npast an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute.  \"If you\nfollow on the road till you come to Warren's Malthouse, where they\nare all gone to have their snap of victuals, I daresay some of 'em\nwill tell you of a place.  Good-night to ye, shepherd.\"\n\nThe bailiff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as\nhimself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still\nastonished at the reencounter with Bathsheba, glad of his nearness to\nher, and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpractised girl of\nNorcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here.  But\nsome women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.\n\nObliged, to some extent, to forgo dreaming in order to find the way,\nhe reached the churchyard, and passed round it under the wall where\nseveral ancient trees grew.  There was a wide margin of grass along\nhere, and Gabriel's footsteps were deadened by its softness, even at\nthis indurating period of the year.  When abreast of a trunk which\nappeared to be the oldest of the old, he became aware that a figure\nwas standing behind it.  Gabriel did not pause in his walk, and in\nanother moment he accidentally kicked a loose stone. The noise was\nenough to disturb the motionless stranger, who started and assumed\na careless position.\n\nIt was a slim girl, rather thinly clad.\n\n\"Good-night to you,\" said Gabriel, heartily.\n\n\"Good-night,\" said the girl to Gabriel.\n\nThe voice was unexpectedly attractive; it was the low and dulcet note\nsuggestive of romance; common in descriptions, rare in experience.\n\n\"I'll thank you to tell me if I'm in the way for Warren's Malthouse?\"\nGabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get\nmore of the music.\n\n\"Quite right.  It's at the bottom of the hill.  And do you know--\"\nThe girl hesitated and then went on again.  \"Do you know how late\nthey keep open the Buck's Head Inn?\"  She seemed to be won by\nGabriel's heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations.\n\n\"I don't know where the Buck's Head is, or anything about it.  Do you\nthink of going there to-night?\"\n\n\"Yes--\"  The woman again paused.  There was no necessity for any\ncontinuance of speech, and the fact that she did add more seemed to\nproceed from an unconscious desire to show unconcern by making a\nremark, which is noticeable in the ingenuous when they are acting by\nstealth.  \"You are not a Weatherbury man?\" she said, timorously.\n\n\"I am not.  I am the new shepherd--just arrived.\"\n\n\"Only a shepherd--and you seem almost a farmer by your ways.\"\n\n\"Only a shepherd,\" Gabriel repeated, in a dull cadence of finality.\nHis thoughts were directed to the past, his eyes to the feet of the\ngirl; and for the first time he saw lying there a bundle of some\nsort.  She may have perceived the direction of his face, for she said\ncoaxingly,--\n\n\"You won't say anything in the parish about having seen me here, will\nyou--at least, not for a day or two?\"\n\n\"I won't if you wish me not to,\" said Oak.\n\n\"Thank you, indeed,\" the other replied.  \"I am rather poor, and I\ndon't want people to know anything about me.\"  Then she was silent\nand shivered.\n\n\"You ought to have a cloak on such a cold night,\" Gabriel observed.\n\"I would advise 'ee to get indoors.\"\n\n\"O no!  Would you mind going on and leaving me?  I thank you much for\nwhat you have told me.\"\n\n\"I will go on,\" he said; adding hesitatingly,--\"Since you are not\nvery well off, perhaps you would accept this trifle from me.  It is\nonly a shilling, but it is all I have to spare.\"\n\n\"Yes, I will take it,\" said the stranger gratefully.\n\nShe extended her hand; Gabriel his.  In feeling for each other's palm\nin the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident\noccurred which told much.  Gabriel's fingers alighted on the young\nwoman's wrist.  It was beating with a throb of tragic intensity.  He\nhad frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery\nof his lambs when overdriven.  It suggested a consumption too great\nof a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was\nalready too little.\n\n\"What is the matter?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"But there is?\"\n\n\"No, no, no!  Let your having seen me be a secret!\"\n\n\"Very well; I will.  Good-night, again.\"\n\n\"Good-night.\"\n\nThe young girl remained motionless by the tree, and Gabriel descended\ninto the village of Weatherbury, or Lower Longpuddle as it was\nsometimes called.  He fancied that he had felt himself in the\npenumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile\ncreature.  But wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and\nGabriel endeavoured to think little of this.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE MALTHOUSE--THE CHAT--NEWS\n\n\nWarren's Malthouse was enclosed by an old wall inwrapped with ivy,\nand though not much of the exterior was visible at this hour, the\ncharacter and purposes of the building were clearly enough shown by\nits outline upon the sky.  From the walls an overhanging thatched\nroof sloped up to a point in the centre, upon which rose a small\nwooden lantern, fitted with louvre-boards on all the four sides,\nand from these openings a mist was dimly perceived to be escaping\ninto the night air.  There was no window in front; but a square\nhole in the door was glazed with a single pane, through which red,\ncomfortable rays now stretched out upon the ivied wall in front.\nVoices were to be heard inside.\n\nOak's hand skimmed the surface of the door with fingers extended to\nan Elymas-the-Sorcerer pattern, till he found a leathern strap, which\nhe pulled.  This lifted a wooden latch, and the door swung open.\n\nThe room inside was lighted only by the ruddy glow from the kiln\nmouth, which shone over the floor with the streaming horizontality\nof the setting sun, and threw upwards the shadows of all facial\nirregularities in those assembled around.  The stone-flag floor was\nworn into a path from the doorway to the kiln, and into undulations\neverywhere.  A curved settle of unplaned oak stretched along one\nside, and in a remote corner was a small bed and bedstead, the owner\nand frequent occupier of which was the maltster.\n\nThis aged man was now sitting opposite the fire, his frosty white\nhair and beard overgrowing his gnarled figure like the grey moss and\nlichen upon a leafless apple-tree.  He wore breeches and the laced-up\nshoes called ankle-jacks; he kept his eyes fixed upon the fire.\n\nGabriel's nose was greeted by an atmosphere laden with the sweet\nsmell of new malt.  The conversation (which seemed to have been\nconcerning the origin of the fire) immediately ceased, and every one\nocularly criticised him to the degree expressed by contracting the\nflesh of their foreheads and looking at him with narrowed eyelids, as\nif he had been a light too strong for their sight.  Several exclaimed\nmeditatively, after this operation had been completed:--\n\n\"Oh, 'tis the new shepherd, 'a b'lieve.\"\n\n\"We thought we heard a hand pawing about the door for the bobbin, but\nweren't sure 'twere not a dead leaf blowed across,\" said another.\n\"Come in, shepherd; sure ye be welcome, though we don't know yer\nname.\"\n\n\"Gabriel Oak, that's my name, neighbours.\"\n\nThe ancient maltster sitting in the midst turned at this--his turning\nbeing as the turning of a rusty crane.\n\n\"That's never Gable Oak's grandson over at Norcombe--never!\" he said,\nas a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed for a\nmoment to take literally.\n\n\"My father and my grandfather were old men of the name of Gabriel,\"\nsaid the shepherd, placidly.\n\n\"Thought I knowed the man's face as I seed him on the rick!--thought\nI did!  And where be ye trading o't to now, shepherd?\"\n\n\"I'm thinking of biding here,\" said Mr. Oak.\n\n\"Knowed yer grandfather for years and years!\" continued the maltster,\nthe words coming forth of their own accord as if the momentum\npreviously imparted had been sufficient.\n\n\"Ah--and did you!\"\n\n\"Knowed yer grandmother.\"\n\n\"And her too!\"\n\n\"Likewise knowed yer father when he was a child.  Why, my boy\nJacob there and your father were sworn brothers--that they were\nsure--weren't ye, Jacob?\"\n\n\"Ay, sure,\" said his son, a young man about sixty-five, with a\nsemi-bald head and one tooth in the left centre of his upper jaw,\nwhich made much of itself by standing prominent, like a milestone in\na bank.  \"But 'twas Joe had most to do with him.  However, my son\nWilliam must have knowed the very man afore us--didn't ye, Billy,\nafore ye left Norcombe?\"\n\n\"No, 'twas Andrew,\" said Jacob's son Billy, a child of forty, or\nthereabouts, who manifested the peculiarity of possessing a cheerful\nsoul in a gloomy body, and whose whiskers were assuming a chinchilla\nshade here and there.\n\n\"I can mind Andrew,\" said Oak, \"as being a man in the place when I\nwas quite a child.\"\n\n\"Ay--the other day I and my youngest daughter, Liddy, were over at\nmy grandson's christening,\" continued Billy.  \"We were talking about\nthis very family, and 'twas only last Purification Day in this very\nworld, when the use-money is gied away to the second-best poor folk,\nyou know, shepherd, and I can mind the day because they all had to\ntraypse up to the vestry--yes, this very man's family.\"\n\n\"Come, shepherd, and drink.  'Tis gape and swaller with us--a drap of\nsommit, but not of much account,\" said the maltster, removing from\nthe fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing\ninto it for so many years.  \"Take up the God-forgive-me, Jacob.  See\nif 'tis warm, Jacob.\"\n\nJacob stooped to the God-forgive-me, which was a two-handled tall mug\nstanding in the ashes, cracked and charred with heat: it was rather\nfurred with extraneous matter about the outside, especially in the\ncrevices of the handles, the innermost curves of which may not have\nseen daylight for several years by reason of this encrustation\nthereon--formed of ashes accidentally wetted with cider and baked\nhard; but to the mind of any sensible drinker the cup was no\nworse for that, being incontestably clean on the inside and about\nthe rim.  It may be observed that such a class of mug is called a\nGod-forgive-me in Weatherbury and its vicinity for uncertain reasons;\nprobably because its size makes any given toper feel ashamed of\nhimself when he sees its bottom in drinking it empty.\n\nJacob, on receiving the order to see if the liquor was warm enough,\nplacidly dipped his forefinger into it by way of thermometer, and\nhaving pronounced it nearly of the proper degree, raised the cup and\nvery civilly attempted to dust some of the ashes from the bottom with\nthe skirt of his smock-frock, because Shepherd Oak was a stranger.\n\n\"A clane cup for the shepherd,\" said the maltster commandingly.\n\n\"No--not at all,\" said Gabriel, in a reproving tone of\nconsiderateness.  \"I never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and\nwhen I know what sort it is.\"  Taking the mug he drank an inch or\nmore from the depth of its contents, and duly passed it to the\nnext man.  \"I wouldn't think of giving such trouble to neighbours\nin washing up when there's so much work to be done in the world\nalready.\" continued Oak in a moister tone, after recovering from the\nstoppage of breath which is occasioned by pulls at large mugs.\n\n\"A right sensible man,\" said Jacob.\n\n\"True, true; it can't be gainsaid!\" observed a brisk young man--Mark\nClark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere\nin your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink\nwith was, unfortunately, to pay for.\n\n\"And here's a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis'ess have sent,\nshepherd.  The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals.\nDon't ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in\nthe road outside as I was bringing it along, and may be 'tis rather\ngritty.  There, 'tis clane dirt; and we all know what that is, as you\nsay, and you bain't a particular man we see, shepherd.\"\n\n\"True, true--not at all,\" said the friendly Oak.\n\n\"Don't let your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at\nall.  Ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!\"\n\n\"My own mind exactly, neighbour.\"\n\n\"Ah, he's his grandfer's own grandson!--his grandfer were just such a\nnice unparticular man!\" said the maltster.\n\n\"Drink, Henry Fray--drink,\" magnanimously said Jan Coggan, a person\nwho held Saint-Simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor\nwas concerned, as the vessel showed signs of approaching him in its\ngradual revolution among them.\n\nHaving at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air,\nHenry did not refuse.  He was a man of more than middle age, with\neyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of\nthe world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners\nat the world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination.\nHe always signed his name \"Henery\"--strenuously insisting upon that\nspelling, and if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the\nsecond \"e\" was superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply\nthat \"H-e-n-e-r-y\" was the name he was christened and the name he\nwould stick to--in the tone of one to whom orthographical differences\nwere matters which had a great deal to do with personal character.\n\nMr. Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man\nwith a spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose\nname had appeared on the marriage register of Weatherbury and\nneighbouring parishes as best man and chief witness in countless\nunions of the previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled\nthe post of head godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind.\n\n\"Come, Mark Clark--come.  Ther's plenty more in the barrel,\" said\nJan.\n\n\"Ay--that I will, 'tis my only doctor,\" replied Mr. Clark, who,\ntwenty years younger than Jan Coggan, revolved in the same orbit.  He\nsecreted mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular\nparties.\n\n\"Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye han't had a drop!\" said Mr. Coggan to a\nself-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him.\n\n\"Such a modest man as he is!\" said Jacob Smallbury.  \"Why, ye've\nhardly had strength of eye enough to look in our young mis'ess's\nface, so I hear, Joseph?\"\n\nAll looked at Joseph Poorgrass with pitying reproach.\n\n\"No--I've hardly looked at her at all,\" simpered Joseph, reducing his\nbody smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue\nprominence.  \"And when I seed her, 'twas nothing but blushes with\nme!\"\n\n\"Poor feller,\" said Mr. Clark.\n\n\"'Tis a curious nature for a man,\" said Jan Coggan.\n\n\"Yes,\" continued Joseph Poorgrass--his shyness, which was so painful\nas a defect, filling him with a mild complacency now that it was\nregarded as an interesting study.  \"'Twere blush, blush, blush with\nme every minute of the time, when she was speaking to me.\"\n\n\"I believe ye, Joseph Poorgrass, for we all know ye to be a very\nbashful man.\"\n\n\"'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul,\" said the maltster.  \"And\nhow long have ye have suffered from it, Joseph?\" [a]\n\n   [Transcriber's note a: Alternate text, appears in all three\n   editions on hand: \"'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul,\"\n   said the maltster.  \"And ye have suffered from it a long time, we\n   know.\"\n\n   \"Ay, ever since...\"]\n\n\"Oh, ever since I was a boy.  Yes--mother was concerned to her heart\nabout it--yes.  But 'twas all nought.\"\n\n\"Did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?\"\n\n\"Oh ay, tried all sorts o' company.  They took me to Greenhill\nFair, and into a great gay jerry-go-nimble show, where there were\nwomen-folk riding round--standing upon horses, with hardly anything\non but their smocks; but it didn't cure me a morsel.  And then I\nwas put errand-man at the Women's Skittle Alley at the back of the\nTailor's Arms in Casterbridge.  'Twas a horrible sinful situation,\nand a very curious place for a good man.  I had to stand and look\nba'dy people in the face from morning till night; but 'twas no use--I\nwas just as bad as ever after all.  Blushes hev been in the family\nfor generations.  There, 'tis a happy providence that I be no worse.\"\n\n\"True,\" said Jacob Smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder\nview of the subject.  \"'Tis a thought to look at, that ye might have\nbeen worse; but even as you be, 'tis a very bad affliction for 'ee,\nJoseph.  For ye see, shepherd, though 'tis very well for a woman,\ndang it all, 'tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?\"\n\n\"'Tis--'tis,\" said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation.  \"Yes, very\nawkward for the man.\"\n\n\"Ay, and he's very timid, too,\" observed Jan Coggan.  \"Once he had\nbeen working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and\nlost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didn't\nye, Master Poorgrass?\"\n\n\"No, no, no; not that story!\" expostulated the modest man, forcing a\nlaugh to bury his concern.\n\n\"--And so 'a lost himself quite,\" continued Mr. Coggan, with an\nimpassive face, implying that a true narrative, like time and tide,\nmust run its course and would respect no man.  \"And as he was coming\nalong in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to\nfind his way out of the trees nohow, 'a cried out, 'Man-a-lost!\nman-a-lost!'  A owl in a tree happened to be crying 'Whoo-whoo-whoo!'\nas owls do, you know, shepherd\" (Gabriel nodded), \"and Joseph, all in\na tremble, said, 'Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!'\"\n\n\"No, no, now--that's too much!\" said the timid man, becoming a man\nof brazen courage all of a sudden.  \"I didn't say SIR.  I'll take my\noath I didn't say 'Joseph Poorgrass o' Weatherbury, sir.'  No, no;\nwhat's right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very\nwell that no man of a gentleman's rank would be hollering there at\nthat time o' night.  'Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,'--that's every\nword I said, and I shouldn't ha' said that if 't hadn't been for\nKeeper Day's metheglin....  There, 'twas a merciful thing it ended\nwhere it did.\"\n\nThe question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company,\nJan went on meditatively:--\n\n\"And he's the fearfullest man, bain't ye, Joseph?  Ay, another time\nye were lost by Lambing-Down Gate, weren't ye, Joseph?\"\n\n\"I was,\" replied Poorgrass, as if there were some conditions too\nserious even for modesty to remember itself under, this being one.\n\n\"Yes; that were the middle of the night, too.  The gate would not\nopen, try how he would, and knowing there was the Devil's hand in it,\nhe kneeled down.\"\n\n\"Ay,\" said Joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire,\nthe cider, and a perception of the narrative capabilities of the\nexperience alluded to.  \"My heart died within me, that time; but I\nkneeled down and said the Lord's Prayer, and then the Belief right\nthrough, and then the Ten Commandments, in earnest prayer.  But\nno, the gate wouldn't open; and then I went on with Dearly Beloved\nBrethren, and, thinks I, this makes four, and 'tis all I know out\nof book, and if this don't do it nothing will, and I'm a lost man.\nWell, when I got to Saying After Me, I rose from my knees and found\nthe gate would open--yes, neighbours, the gate opened the same as\never.\"\n\nA meditation on the obvious inference was indulged in by all, and\nduring its continuance each directed his vision into the ashpit,\nwhich glowed like a desert in the tropics under a vertical sun,\nshaping their eyes long and liny, partly because of the light, partly\nfrom the depth of the subject discussed.\n\nGabriel broke the silence.  \"What sort of a place is this to live at,\nand what sort of a mis'ess is she to work under?\" Gabriel's bosom\nthrilled gently as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly\nthe inner-most subject of his heart.\n\n\"We d' know little of her--nothing.  She only showed herself a few\ndays ago.  Her uncle was took bad, and the doctor was called with his\nworld-wide skill; but he couldn't save the man.  As I take it, she's\ngoing to keep on the farm.\n\n\"That's about the shape o't, 'a b'lieve,\" said Jan Coggan.  \"Ay, 'tis\na very good family.  I'd as soon be under 'em as under one here and\nthere.  Her uncle was a very fair sort of man.  Did ye know en,\nshepherd--a bachelor-man?\"\n\n\"Not at all.\"\n\n\"I used to go to his house a-courting my first wife, Charlotte,\nwho was his dairymaid.  Well, a very good-hearted man were Farmer\nEverdene, and I being a respectable young fellow was allowed to call\nand see her and drink as much ale as I liked, but not to carry away\nany--outside my skin I mane of course.\"\n\n\"Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning.\"\n\n\"And so you see 'twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his\nkindness as much as I could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to\ndrink only a thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man's\ngenerosity--\"\n\n\"True, Master Coggan, 'twould so,\" corroborated Mark Clark.\n\n\"--And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by\nthe time I got there I were as dry as a lime-basket--so thorough dry\nthat that ale would slip down--ah, 'twould slip down sweet!  Happy\ntimes!  Heavenly times!  Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that\nhouse!  You can mind, Jacob?  You used to go wi' me sometimes.\"\n\n\"I can--I can,\" said Jacob.  \"That one, too, that we had at Buck's\nHead on a White Monday was a pretty tipple.\"\n\n\"'Twas.  But for a wet of the better class, that brought you no\nnearer to the horned man than you were afore you begun, there was\nnone like those in Farmer Everdene's kitchen.  Not a single damn\nallowed; no, not a bare poor one, even at the most cheerful moment\nwhen all were blindest, though the good old word of sin thrown in\nhere and there at such times is a great relief to a merry soul.\"\n\n\"True,\" said the maltster.  \"Nater requires her swearing at the\nregular times, or she's not herself; and unholy exclamations is a\nnecessity of life.\"\n\n\"But Charlotte,\" continued Coggan--\"not a word of the sort would\nCharlotte allow, nor the smallest item of taking in vain....  Ay,\npoor Charlotte, I wonder if she had the good fortune to get into\nHeaven when 'a died!  But 'a was never much in luck's way, and\nperhaps 'a went downwards after all, poor soul.\"\n\n\"And did any of you know Miss Everdene's father and mother?\" inquired\nthe shepherd, who found some difficulty in keeping the conversation\nin the desired channel.\n\n\"I knew them a little,\" said Jacob Smallbury; \"but they were\ntownsfolk, and didn't live here.  They've been dead for years.\nFather, what sort of people were mis'ess' father and mother?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the maltster, \"he wasn't much to look at; but she was a\nlovely woman.  He was fond enough of her as his sweetheart.\"\n\n\"Used to kiss her scores and long-hundreds o' times, so 'twas said,\"\nobserved Coggan.\n\n\"He was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as I've been\ntold,\" said the maltster.\n\n\"Ay,\" said Coggan.  \"He admired her so much that he used to light the\ncandle three times a night to look at her.\"\n\n\"Boundless love; I shouldn't have supposed it in the universe!\"\nmurmured Joseph Poorgrass, who habitually spoke on a large scale in\nhis moral reflections.\n\n\"Well, to be sure,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"Oh, 'tis true enough.  I knowed the man and woman both well.  Levi\nEverdene--that was the man's name, sure.  'Man,' saith I in my\nhurry, but he were of a higher circle of life than that--'a was a\ngentleman-tailor really, worth scores of pounds.  And he became a\nvery celebrated bankrupt two or three times.\"\n\n\"Oh, I thought he was quite a common man!\" said Joseph.\n\n\"Oh no, no!  That man failed for heaps of money; hundreds in gold and\nsilver.\"\n\nThe maltster being rather short of breath, Mr. Coggan, after absently\nscrutinising a coal which had fallen among the ashes, took up the\nnarrative, with a private twirl of his eye:--\n\n\"Well, now, you'd hardly believe it, but that man--our Miss\nEverdene's father--was one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a\nwhile.  Understand? 'a didn't want to be fickle, but he couldn't help\nit.  The pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his\nwish, but his heart would rove, do what he would.  He spoke to me in\nreal tribulation about it once.  'Coggan,' he said, 'I could never\nwish for a handsomer woman than I've got, but feeling she's ticketed\nas my lawful wife, I can't help my wicked heart wandering, do what I\nwill.'  But at last I believe he cured it by making her take off her\nwedding-ring and calling her by her maiden name as they sat together\nafter the shop was shut, and so 'a would get to fancy she was only\nhis sweetheart, and not married to him at all.  And as soon as he\ncould thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh,\n'a got to like her as well as ever, and they lived on a perfect\npicture of mutel love.\"\n\n\"Well, 'twas a most ungodly remedy,\" murmured Joseph Poorgrass; \"but\nwe ought to feel deep cheerfulness that a happy Providence kept it\nfrom being any worse.  You see, he might have gone the bad road and\ngiven his eyes to unlawfulness entirely--yes, gross unlawfulness, so\nto say it.\"\n\n\"You see,\" said Billy Smallbury, \"The man's will was to do right,\nsure enough, but his heart didn't chime in.\"\n\n\"He got so much better, that he was quite godly in his later years,\nwasn't he, Jan?\" said Joseph Poorgrass.  \"He got himself confirmed\nover again in a more serious way, and took to saying 'Amen' almost as\nloud as the clerk, and he liked to copy comforting verses from the\ntombstones.  He used, too, to hold the money-plate at Let Your Light\nso Shine, and stand godfather to poor little come-by-chance children;\nand he kept a missionary box upon his table to nab folks unawares\nwhen they called; yes, and he would box the charity-boys' ears, if\nthey laughed in church, till they could hardly stand upright, and do\nother deeds of piety natural to the saintly inclined.\"\n\n\"Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but high things,\" added Billy\nSmallbury.  \"One day Parson Thirdly met him and said, 'Good-Morning,\nMister Everdene; 'tis a fine day!'  'Amen' said Everdene, quite\nabsent-like, thinking only of religion when he seed a parson.  Yes,\nhe was a very Christian man.\"\n\n\"Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time,\" said\nHenery Fray.  \"Never should have thought she'd have growed up such a\nhandsome body as she is.\"\n\n\"'Tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face.\"\n\n\"Well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and\nourselves.  Ah!\" Henery gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of\nironical knowledge.\n\n\"A queer Christian, like the Devil's head in a cowl, [1] as the\nsaying is,\" volunteered Mark Clark.\n\n   [Footnote 1: This phrase is a conjectural emendation of the\n   unintelligible expression, \"as the Devil said to the Owl,\"\n   used by the natives.]\n\n\"He is,\" said Henery, implying that irony must cease at a certain\npoint.  \"Between we two, man and man, I believe that man would as\nsoon tell a lie Sundays as working-days--that I do so.\"\n\n\"Good faith, you do talk!\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"True enough,\" said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon\nthe company with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener\nappreciation of the miseries of life than ordinary men are capable\nof.  \"Ah, there's people of one sort, and people of another, but\nthat man--bless your souls!\"\n\nGabriel thought fit to change the subject.  \"You must be a very aged\nman, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient,\" he remarked.\n\n\"Father's so old that 'a can't mind his age, can ye, father?\"\ninterposed Jacob.  \"And he's growed terrible crooked too, lately,\"\nJacob continued, surveying his father's figure, which was rather\nmore bowed than his own.  \"Really one may say that father there is\nthree-double.\"\n\n\"Crooked folk will last a long while,\" said the maltster, grimly, and\nnot in the best humour.\n\n\"Shepherd would like to hear the pedigree of yer life, father--\nwouldn't ye, shepherd?\"\n\n\"Ay that I should,\" said Gabriel with the heartiness of a man who had\nlonged to hear it for several months.  \"What may your age be,\nmalter?\"\n\nThe maltster cleared his throat in an exaggerated form for emphasis,\nand elongating his gaze to the remotest point of the ashpit, said, in\nthe slow speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is so\ngenerally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated in getting at it,\n\"Well, I don't mind the year I were born in, but perhaps I can reckon\nup the places I've lived at, and so get it that way.  I bode at\nUpper Longpuddle across there\" (nodding to the north) \"till I were\neleven. I bode seven at Kingsbere\" (nodding to the east) \"where\nI took to malting.  I went therefrom to Norcombe, and malted\nthere two-and-twenty years, and-two-and-twenty years I was there\nturnip-hoeing and harvesting.  Ah, I knowed that old place, Norcombe,\nyears afore you were thought of, Master Oak\" (Oak smiled sincere\nbelief in the fact).  \"Then I malted at Durnover four year, and\nfour year turnip-hoeing; and I was fourteen times eleven months at\nMillpond St. Jude's\" (nodding north-west-by-north).  \"Old Twills\nwouldn't hire me for more than eleven months at a time, to keep me\nfrom being chargeable to the parish if so be I was disabled.  Then I\nwas three year at Mellstock, and I've been here one-and-thirty year\ncome Candlemas.  How much is that?\"\n\n\"Hundred and seventeen,\" chuckled another old gentleman, given to\nmental arithmetic and little conversation, who had hitherto sat\nunobserved in a corner.\n\n\"Well, then, that's my age,\" said the maltster, emphatically.\n\n\"O no, father!\" said Jacob.  \"Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer\nand your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don't ought\nto count-both halves, father.\"\n\n\"Chok' it all!  I lived through the summers, didn't I?  That's my\nquestion.  I suppose ye'll say next I be no age at all to speak of?\"\n\n\"Sure we shan't,\" said Gabriel, soothingly.\n\n\"Ye be a very old aged person, malter,\" attested Jan Coggan, also\nsoothingly. \"We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented\nconstitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?\"\n\n\"True, true; ye must, malter, wonderful,\" said the meeting\nunanimously.\n\nThe maltster, being now pacified, was even generous enough to\nvoluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a\ngreat many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out\nof was three years older than he.\n\nWhile the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oak's flute\nbecame visible over his smock-frock pocket, and Henery Fray\nexclaimed, \"Surely, shepherd, I seed you blowing into a great flute\nby now at Casterbridge?\"\n\n\"You did,\" said Gabriel, blushing faintly.  \"I've been in great\ntrouble, neighbours, and was driven to it.  I used not to be so poor\nas I be now.\"\n\n\"Never mind, heart!\" said Mark Clark.  \"You should take it\ncareless-like, shepherd, and your time will come.  But we could thank\nye for a tune, if ye bain't too tired?\"\n\n\"Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard since Christmas,\" said Jan\nCoggan.  \"Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!\"\n\n\"Ay, that I will,\" said Gabriel, pulling out his flute and putting it\ntogether.  \"A poor tool, neighbours; but such as I can do ye shall\nhave and welcome.\"\n\nOak then struck up \"Jockey to the Fair,\" and played that sparkling\nmelody three times through, accenting the notes in the third round in\na most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks\nand tapping with his foot to beat time.\n\n\"He can blow the flute very well--that 'a can,\" said a young married\nman, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as \"Susan\nTall's husband.\"  He continued, \"I'd as lief as not be able to blow\ninto a flute as well as that.\"\n\n\"He's a clever man, and 'tis a true comfort for us to have such a\nshepherd,\" murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft cadence.  \"We ought\nto feel full o' thanksgiving that he's not a player of ba'dy songs\ninstead of these merry tunes; for 'twould have been just as easy for\nGod to have made the shepherd a loose low man--a man of iniquity, so\nto speak it--as what he is.  Yes, for our wives' and daughters' sakes\nwe should feel real thanksgiving.\"\n\n\"True, true,--real thanksgiving!\" dashed in Mark Clark conclusively,\nnot feeling it to be of any consequence to his opinion that he had\nonly heard about a word and three-quarters of what Joseph had said.\n\n\"Yes,\" added Joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the Bible; \"for\nevil do thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in\nthe cleanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp\nupon the turnpike, if I may term it so.\"\n\n\"Ay, I can mind yer face now, shepherd,\" said Henery Fray,\ncriticising Gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second\ntune.  \"Yes--now I see 'ee blowing into the flute I know 'ee to be\nthe same man I see play at Casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped\nup and yer eyes a-staring out like a strangled man's--just as they be\nnow.\"\n\n\"'Tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a\nscarecrow,\" observed Mr. Mark Clark, with additional criticism of\nGabriel's countenance, the latter person jerking out, with the\nghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of \"Dame\nDurden:\"--\n\n   'Twas Moll' and Bet', and Doll' and Kate',\n   And Dor'-othy Drag'-gle Tail'.\n\n\"I hope you don't mind that young man's bad manners in naming your\nfeatures?\" whispered Joseph to Gabriel.\n\n\"Not at all,\" said Mr. Oak.\n\n\"For by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd,\" continued Joseph\nPoorgrass, with winning sauvity.\n\n\"Ay, that ye be, shepard,\" said the company.\n\n\"Thank you very much,\" said Oak, in the modest tone good manners\ndemanded, thinking, however, that he would never let Bathsheba see\nhim playing the flute; in this resolve showing a discretion equal to\nthat related to its sagacious inventress, the divine Minerva herself.\n\n\"Ah, when I and my wife were married at Norcombe Church,\" said the\nold maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject,\n\"we were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhood--everybody\nsaid so.\"\n\n\"Danged if ye bain't altered now, malter,\" said a voice with the\nvigour natural to the enunciation of a remarkably evident truism.\nIt came from the old man in the background, whose offensiveness and\nspiteful ways were barely atoned for by the occasional chuckle he\ncontributed to general laughs.\n\n\"O no, no,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"Don't ye play no more shepherd\" said Susan Tall's husband, the young\nmarried man who had spoken once before.  \"I must be moving and when\nthere's tunes going on I seem as if hung in wires.  If I thought\nafter I'd left that music was still playing, and I not there, I\nshould be quite melancholy-like.\"\n\n\"What's yer hurry then, Laban?\" inquired Coggan.  \"You used to bide\nas late as the latest.\"\n\n\"Well, ye see, neighbours, I was lately married to a woman, and she's\nmy vocation now, and so ye see--\"  The young man halted lamely.\n\n\"New Lords new laws, as the saying is, I suppose,\" remarked Coggan.\n\n\"Ay, 'a b'lieve--ha, ha!\" said Susan Tall's husband, in a tone\nintended to imply his habitual reception of jokes without minding\nthem at all.  The young man then wished them good-night and withdrew.\n\nHenery Fray was the first to follow.  Then Gabriel arose and went off\nwith Jan Coggan, who had offered him a lodging.  A few minutes later,\nwhen the remaining ones were on their legs and about to depart, Fray\ncame back again in a hurry.  Flourishing his finger ominously he\nthrew a gaze teeming with tidings just where his eye alighted by\naccident, which happened to be in Joseph Poorgrass's face.\n\n\"O--what's the matter, what's the matter, Henery?\" said Joseph,\nstarting back.\n\n\"What's a-brewing, Henrey?\" asked Jacob and Mark Clark.\n\n\"Baily Pennyways--Baily Pennyways--I said so; yes, I said so!\"\n\n\"What, found out stealing anything?\"\n\n\"Stealing it is.  The news is, that after Miss Everdene got home she\nwent out again to see all was safe, as she usually do, and coming in\nfound Baily Pennyways creeping down the granary steps with half a a\nbushel of barley.  She fleed at him like a cat--never such a tomboy\nas she is--of course I speak with closed doors?\"\n\n\"You do--you do, Henery.\"\n\n\"She fleed at him, and, to cut a long story short, he owned to having\ncarried off five sack altogether, upon her promising not to persecute\nhim.  Well, he's turned out neck and crop, and my question is, who's\ngoing to be baily now?\"\n\nThe question was such a profound one that Henery was obliged to drink\nthere and then from the large cup till the bottom was distinctly\nvisible inside.  Before he had replaced it on the table, in came the\nyoung man, Susan Tall's husband, in a still greater hurry.\n\n\"Have ye heard the news that's all over parish?\"\n\n\"About Baily Pennyways?\"\n\n\"But besides that?\"\n\n\"No--not a morsel of it!\" they replied, looking into the very midst\nof Laban Tall as if to meet his words half-way down his throat.\n\n\"What a night of horrors!\" murmured Joseph Poorgrass, waving his\nhands spasmodically.  \"I've had the news-bell ringing in my left ear\nquite bad enough for a murder, and I've seen a magpie all alone!\"\n\n\"Fanny Robin--Miss Everdene's youngest servant--can't be found.\nThey've been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she\nisn't come in.  And they don't know what to do about going to bed for\nfear of locking her out.  They wouldn't be so concerned if she hadn't\nbeen noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and Maryann d'\nthink the beginning of a crowner's inquest has happened to the poor\ngirl.\"\n\n\"Oh--'tis burned--'tis burned!\" came from Joseph Poorgrass's dry\nlips.\n\n\"No--'tis drowned!\" said Tall.\n\n\"Or 'tis her father's razor!\" suggested Billy Smallbury, with a vivid\nsense of detail.\n\n\"Well--Miss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go\nto bed.  What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the\ngirl, mis'ess is almost wild.\"\n\nThey all hastened up the lane to the farmhouse, excepting the old\nmaltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from\nhis hole.  There, as the others' footsteps died away he sat down\nagain and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red,\nbleared eyes.\n\nFrom the bedroom window above their heads Bathsheba's head and\nshoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the\nair.\n\n\"Are any of my men among you?\" she said anxiously.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, several,\" said Susan Tall's husband.\n\n\"To-morrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in\nthe villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin.\nDo it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet.  She must have\nleft whilst we were all at the fire.\"\n\n\"I beg yer pardon, but had she any young man courting her in the\nparish, ma'am?\" asked Jacob Smallbury.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Bathsheba.\n\n\"I've never heard of any such thing, ma'am,\" said two or three.\n\n\"It is hardly likely, either,\" continued Bathsheba.  \"For any lover\nof hers might have come to the house if he had been a respectable\nlad.  The most mysterious matter connected with her absence--indeed,\nthe only thing which gives me serious alarm--is that she was seen\nto go out of the house by Maryann with only her indoor working gown\non--not even a bonnet.\"\n\n\"And you mean, ma'am, excusing my words, that a young woman would\nhardly go to see her young man without dressing up,\" said Jacob,\nturning his mental vision upon past experiences.  \"That's true--she\nwould not, ma'am.\"\n\n\"She had, I think, a bundle, though I couldn't see very well,\" said a\nfemale voice from another window, which seemed that of Maryann.  \"But\nshe had no young man about here.  Hers lives in Casterbridge, and I\nbelieve he's a soldier.\"\n\n\"Do you know his name?\" Bathsheba said.\n\n\"No, mistress; she was very close about it.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I might be able to find out if I went to Casterbridge\nbarracks,\" said William Smallbury.\n\n\"Very well; if she doesn't return to-morrow, mind you go there and try\nto discover which man it is, and see him.  I feel more responsible\nthan I should if she had had any friends or relations alive.  I do\nhope she has come to no harm through a man of that kind....  And then\nthere's this disgraceful affair of the bailiff--but I can't speak of\nhim now.\"\n\nBathsheba had so many reasons for uneasiness that it seemed she did\nnot think it worth while to dwell upon any particular one.  \"Do as I\ntold you, then,\" she said in conclusion, closing the casement.\n\n\"Ay, ay, mistress; we will,\" they replied, and moved away.\n\nThat night at Coggan's, Gabriel Oak, beneath the screen of closed\neyelids, was busy with fancies, and full of movement, like a river\nflowing rapidly under its ice.  Night had always been the time at\nwhich he saw Bathsheba most vividly, and through the slow hours\nof shadow he tenderly regarded her image now.  It is rarely that\nthe pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of\nsleeplessness, but they possibly did with Oak to-night, for the\ndelight of merely seeing her effaced for the time his perception\nof the great difference between seeing and possessing.\n\nHe also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from\nNorcombe.  _The Young Man's Best Companion_, _The Farrier's Sure\nGuide_, _The Veterinary Surgeon_, _Paradise Lost_, _The Pilgrim's\nProgress_, _Robinson Crusoe_, Ash's _Dictionary_, and Walkingame's\n_Arithmetic_, constituted his library; and though a limited series,\nit was one from which he had acquired more sound information by\ndiligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a\nfurlong of laden shelves.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE HOMESTEAD--A VISITOR--HALF-CONFIDENCES\n\n\nBy daylight, the bower of Oak's new-found mistress, Bathsheba\nEverdene, presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of\nClassic Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion\nwhich told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had\nonce been the memorial hall upon a small estate around it, now\naltogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast\ntract of a non-resident landlord, which comprised several such modest\ndemesnes.\n\nFluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front,\nand above the roof the chimneys were panelled or columnar, some coped\ngables with finials and like features still retaining traces of their\nGothic extraction.  Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed\ncushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or\nsengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings.  A\ngravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted\nat the sides with more moss--here it was a silver-green variety, the\nnut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot\nor two in the centre.  This circumstance, and the generally sleepy\nair of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and\ncontrasting state of the reverse facade, suggested to the imagination\nthat on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the\nvital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to\nface the other way.  Reversals of this kind, strange deformities,\ntremendous paralyses, are often seen to be inflicted by trade upon\nedifices--either individual or in the aggregate as streets and\ntowns--which were originally planned for pleasure alone.\n\nLively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the\nmain staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as\nbed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their\ncentury, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs\nthemselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look\nover his shoulder.  Going up, the floors above were found to have a\nvery irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys; and\nbeing just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be\neaten into innumerable vermiculations.  Every window replied by a\nclang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed\nevery bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the\nhouse, like a spirit, wherever he went.\n\nIn the room from which the conversation proceeded Bathsheba and her\nservant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting\nupon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles,\nand rubbish spread out thereon--remnants from the household stores\nof the late occupier.  Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter,\nwas about Bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent\nadvertisement of the light-hearted English country girl.  The beauty\nher features might have lacked in form was amply made up for by\nperfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened\nruddiness on a surface of high rotundity that we meet with in a\nTerburg or a Gerard Douw; and, like the presentations of those great\ncolourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary\nbetween comeliness and the ideal.  Though elastic in nature she was\nless daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness,\nwhich consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness\nsuperadded by way of duty.\n\nThrough a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to\nthe charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular\ndisc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at\ndistant objects.  To think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak\nof her was to raise the image of a dried Normandy pippin.\n\n\"Stop your scrubbing a moment,\" said Bathsheba through the door to\nher.  \"I hear something.\"\n\nMaryann suspended the brush.\n\nThe tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the\nbuilding.  The paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what\nwas most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door.  The door\nwas tapped with the end of a crop or stick.\n\n\"What impertinence!\" said Liddy, in a low voice.  \"To ride up the\nfootpath like that!  Why didn't he stop at the gate? Lord!  'Tis a\ngentleman!  I see the top of his hat.\"\n\n\"Be quiet!\" said Bathsheba.\n\nThe further expression of Liddy's concern was continued by aspect\ninstead of narrative.\n\n\"Why doesn't Mrs. Coggan go to the door?\" Bathsheba continued.\n\nRat-tat-tat-tat resounded more decisively from Bathsheba's oak.\n\n\"Maryann, you go!\" said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of\nromantic possibilities.\n\n\"Oh ma'am--see, here's a mess!\"\n\nThe argument was unanswerable after a glance at Maryann.\n\n\"Liddy--you must,\" said Bathsheba.\n\nLiddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish\nthey were sorting, and looked imploringly at her mistress.\n\n\"There--Mrs. Coggan is going!\" said Bathsheba, exhaling her relief\nin the form of a long breath which had lain in her bosom a minute or\nmore.\n\nThe door opened, and a deep voice said--\n\n\"Is Miss Everdene at home?\"\n\n\"I'll see, sir,\" said Mrs. Coggan, and in a minute appeared in the\nroom.\n\n\"Dear, what a thirtover place this world is!\" continued Mrs. Coggan\n(a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark\naccording to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl\na mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment\nshowed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted with\nflour).  \"I am never up to my elbows, Miss, in making a pudding but\none of two things do happen--either my nose must needs begin\ntickling, and I can't live without scratching it, or somebody knocks\nat the door.  Here's Mr. Boldwood wanting to see you, Miss Everdene.\"\n\nA woman's dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in\nthe one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the\nother, Bathsheba said at once--\n\n\"I can't see him in this state.  Whatever shall I do?\"\n\nNot-at-homes were hardly naturalized in Weatherbury farmhouses, so\nLiddy suggested--\"Say you're a fright with dust, and can't come\ndown.\"\n\n\"Yes--that sounds very well,\" said Mrs. Coggan, critically.\n\n\"Say I can't see him--that will do.\"\n\nMrs. Coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested,\nadding, however, on her own responsibility, \"Miss is dusting bottles,\nsir, and is quite a object--that's why 'tis.\"\n\n\"Oh, very well,\" said the deep voice indifferently.  \"All I wanted to\nask was, if anything had been heard of Fanny Robin?\"\n\n\"Nothing, sir--but we may know to-night.  William Smallbury is gone\nto Casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the\nother men be inquiring about everywhere.\"\n\nThe horse's tramp then recommenced and retreated, and the door\nclosed.\n\n\"Who is Mr. Boldwood?\" said Bathsheba.\n\n\"A gentleman-farmer at Little Weatherbury.\"\n\n\"Married?\"\n\n\"No, miss.\"\n\n\"How old is he?\"\n\n\"Forty, I should say--very handsome--rather stern-looking--and rich.\"\n\n\"What a bother this dusting is!  I am always in some unfortunate\nplight or other,\" Bathsheba said, complainingly.  \"Why should he\ninquire about Fanny?\"\n\n\"Oh, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and\nput her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle.  He's\na very kind man that way, but Lord--there!\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Never was such a hopeless man for a woman!  He's been courted by\nsixes and sevens--all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round,\nhave tried him.  Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a\nslave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost\nFarmer Ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of\nnew clothes; but Lord--the money might as well have been thrown out\nof the window.\"\n\nA little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them.  This\nchild was one of the Coggans, who, with the Smallburys, were as\ncommon among the families of this district as the Avons and Derwents\namong our rivers.  He always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to\nshow to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby\nelevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanity--to which\nexhibition people were expected to say \"Poor child!\" with a dash of\ncongratulation as well as pity.\n\n\"I've got a pen-nee!\" said Master Coggan in a scanning measure.\n\n\"Well--who gave it you, Teddy?\" said Liddy.\n\n\"Mis-terr Bold-wood!  He gave it to me for opening the gate.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"He said, 'Where are you going, my little man?' and I said, 'To Miss\nEverdene's please,' and he said, 'She is a staid woman, isn't she, my\nlittle man?' and I said, 'Yes.'\"\n\n\"You naughty child!  What did you say that for?\"\n\n\"'Cause he gave me the penny!\"\n\n\"What a pucker everything is in!\" said Bathsheba, discontentedly\nwhen the child had gone.  \"Get away, Maryann, or go on with your\nscrubbing, or do something!  You ought to be married by this time,\nand not here troubling me!\"\n\n\"Ay, mistress--so I did.  But what between the poor men I won't have,\nand the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the\nwilderness!\"\n\n\"Did anybody ever want to marry you miss?\" Liddy ventured to ask when\nthey were again alone.  \"Lots of 'em, I daresay?\"\n\nBathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation\nto say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by\naspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published\nas old.\n\n\"A man wanted to once,\" she said, in a highly experienced tone, and\nthe image of Gabriel Oak, as the farmer, rose before her.\n\n\"How nice it must seem!\" said Liddy, with the fixed features of\nmental realization.  \"And you wouldn't have him?\"\n\n\"He wasn't quite good enough for me.\"\n\n\"How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say,\n'Thank you!'  I seem I hear it.  'No, sir--I'm your better.' or 'Kiss\nmy foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence.'  And did you\nlove him, miss?\"\n\n\"Oh, no.  But I rather liked him.\"\n\n\"Do you now?\"\n\n\"Of course not--what footsteps are those I hear?\"\n\nLiddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was\nnow getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night.  A\ncrooked file of men was approaching the back door.  The whole string\nof trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of\nintention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpae, which,\ndistinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a\nwhole family.  Some were, as usual, in snow-white smock-frocks of\nRussia duck, and some in whitey-brown ones of drabbet--marked on the\nwrists, breasts, backs, and sleeves with honeycomb-work.  Two or\nthree women in pattens brought up the rear.\n\n\"The Philistines be upon us,\" said Liddy, making her nose white\nagainst the glass.\n\n\"Oh, very well.  Maryann, go down and keep them in the kitchen till I\nam dressed, and then show them in to me in the hall.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMISTRESS AND MEN\n\n\nHalf-an-hour later Bathsheba, in finished dress, and followed by\nLiddy, entered the upper end of the old hall to find that her men had\nall deposited themselves on a long form and a settle at the lower\nextremity.  She sat down at a table and opened the time-book, pen in\nher hand, with a canvas money-bag beside her.  From this she poured\na small heap of coin.  Liddy chose a position at her elbow and began\nto sew, sometimes pausing and looking round, or, with the air of\na privileged person, taking up one of the half-sovereigns lying\nbefore her and surveying it merely as a work of art, while strictly\npreventing her countenance from expressing any wish to possess it as\nmoney.\n\n\"Now before I begin, men,\" said Bathsheba, \"I have two matters to\nspeak of.  The first is that the bailiff is dismissed for thieving,\nand that I have formed a resolution to have no bailiff at all, but to\nmanage everything with my own head and hands.\"\n\nThe men breathed an audible breath of amazement.\n\n\"The next matter is, have you heard anything of Fanny?\"\n\n\"Nothing, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Have you done anything?\"\n\n\"I met Farmer Boldwood,\" said Jacob Smallbury, \"and I went with him\nand two of his men, and dragged Newmill Pond, but we found nothing.\"\n\n\"And the new shepherd have been to Buck's Head, by Yalbury, thinking\nshe had gone there, but nobody had seed her,\" said Laban Tall.\n\n\"Hasn't William Smallbury been to Casterbridge?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, but he's not yet come home.  He promised to be back by\nsix.\"\n\n\"It wants a quarter to six at present,\" said Bathsheba, looking at\nher watch.  \"I daresay he'll be in directly.  Well, now then\"--she\nlooked into the book--\"Joseph Poorgrass, are you there?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir--ma'am I mane,\" said the person addressed.  \"I be the\npersonal name of Poorgrass.\"\n\n\"And what are you?\"\n\n\"Nothing in my own eye.  In the eye of other people--well, I don't\nsay it; though public thought will out.\"\n\n\"What do you do on the farm?\"\n\n\"I do do carting things all the year, and in seed time I shoots the\nrooks and sparrows, and helps at pig-killing, sir.\"\n\n\"How much to you?\"\n\n\"Please nine and ninepence and a good halfpenny where 'twas a bad\none, sir--ma'am I mane.\"\n\n\"Quite correct.  Now here are ten shillings in addition as a small\npresent, as I am a new comer.\"\n\nBathsheba blushed slightly at the sense of being generous in public,\nand Henery Fray, who had drawn up towards her chair, lifted his\neyebrows and fingers to express amazement on a small scale.\n\n\"How much do I owe you--that man in the corner--what's your name?\"\ncontinued Bathsheba.\n\n\"Matthew Moon, ma'am,\" said a singular framework of clothes with\nnothing of any consequence inside them, which advanced with the toes\nin no definite direction forwards, but turned in or out as they\nchanced to swing.\n\n\"Matthew Mark, did you say?--speak out--I shall not hurt you,\"\ninquired the young farmer, kindly.\n\n\"Matthew Moon, mem,\" said Henery Fray, correctingly, from behind her\nchair, to which point he had edged himself.\n\n\"Matthew Moon,\" murmured Bathsheba, turning her bright eyes to the\nbook.  \"Ten and twopence halfpenny is the sum put down to you, I\nsee?\"\n\n\"Yes, mis'ess,\" said Matthew, as the rustle of wind among dead\nleaves.\n\n\"Here it is, and ten shillings.  Now the next--Andrew Randle, you are\na new man, I hear.  How come you to leave your last farm?\"\n\n\"P-p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-l-l-l-l-ease, ma'am, p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-please,\nma'am-please'm-please'm--\"\n\n\"'A's a stammering man, mem,\" said Henery Fray in an undertone, \"and\nthey turned him away because the only time he ever did speak plain\nhe said his soul was his own, and other iniquities, to the squire.\n'A can cuss, mem, as well as you or I, but 'a can't speak a common\nspeech to save his life.\"\n\n\"Andrew Randle, here's yours--finish thanking me in a day or two.\nTemperance Miller--oh, here's another, Soberness--both women I\nsuppose?\"\n\n\"Yes'm.  Here we be, 'a b'lieve,\" was echoed in shrill unison.\n\n\"What have you been doing?\"\n\n\"Tending thrashing-machine and wimbling haybonds, and saying 'Hoosh!'\nto the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds, and planting\nEarly Flourballs and Thompson's Wonderfuls with a dibble.\"\n\n\"Yes--I see.  Are they satisfactory women?\" she inquired softly of\nHenery Fray.\n\n\"Oh mem--don't ask me!  Yielding women--as scarlet a pair as ever\nwas!\" groaned Henery under his breath.\n\n\"Sit down.\"\n\n\"Who, mem?\"\n\n\"Sit down.\"\n\nJoseph Poorgrass, in the background twitched, and his lips became\ndry with fear of some terrible consequences, as he saw Bathsheba\nsummarily speaking, and Henery slinking off to a corner.\n\n\"Now the next.  Laban Tall, you'll stay on working for me?\"\n\n\"For you or anybody that pays me well, ma'am,\" replied the young\nmarried man.\n\n\"True--the man must live!\" said a woman in the back quarter, who had\njust entered with clicking pattens.\n\n\"What woman is that?\" Bathsheba asked.\n\n\"I be his lawful wife!\" continued the voice with greater prominence\nof manner and tone.  This lady called herself five-and-twenty, looked\nthirty, passed as thirty-five, and was forty.  She was a woman who\nnever, like some newly married, showed conjugal tenderness in public,\nperhaps because she had none to show.\n\n\"Oh, you are,\" said Bathsheba.  \"Well, Laban, will you stay on?\"\n\n\"Yes, he'll stay, ma'am!\" said again the shrill tongue of Laban's\nlawful wife.\n\n\"Well, he can speak for himself, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Oh Lord, not he, ma'am!  A simple tool.  Well enough, but a poor\ngawkhammer mortal,\" the wife replied.\n\n\"Heh-heh-heh!\" laughed the married man with a hideous effort of\nappreciation, for he was as irrepressibly good-humoured under ghastly\nsnubs as a parliamentary candidate on the hustings.\n\nThe names remaining were called in the same manner.\n\n\"Now I think I have done with you,\" said Bathsheba, closing the book\nand shaking back a stray twine of hair.  \"Has William Smallbury\nreturned?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am.\"\n\n\"The new shepherd will want a man under him,\" suggested Henery Fray,\ntrying to make himself official again by a sideway approach towards\nher chair.\n\n\"Oh--he will.  Who can he have?\"\n\n\"Young Cain Ball is a very good lad,\" Henery said, \"and Shepherd Oak\ndon't mind his youth?\" he added, turning with an apologetic smile to\nthe shepherd, who had just appeared on the scene, and was now leaning\nagainst the doorpost with his arms folded.\n\n\"No, I don't mind that,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"How did Cain come by such a name?\" asked Bathsheba.\n\n\"Oh you see, mem, his pore mother, not being a Scripture-read woman,\nmade a mistake at his christening, thinking 'twas Abel killed Cain,\nand called en Cain, meaning Abel all the time.  The parson put it\nright, but 'twas too late, for the name could never be got rid of in\nthe parish.  'Tis very unfortunate for the boy.\"\n\n\"It is rather unfortunate.\"\n\n\"Yes.  However, we soften it down as much as we can, and call him\nCainy.  Ah, pore widow-woman! she cried her heart out about it\nalmost.  She was brought up by a very heathen father and mother, who\nnever sent her to church or school, and it shows how the sins of the\nparents are visited upon the children, mem.\"\n\nMr. Fray here drew up his features to the mild degree of melancholy\nrequired when the persons involved in the given misfortune do not\nbelong to your own family.\n\n\"Very well then, Cainey Ball to be under-shepherd.  And you quite\nunderstand your duties?--you I mean, Gabriel Oak?\"\n\n\"Quite well, I thank you, Miss Everdene,\" said Shepherd Oak from the\ndoorpost.  \"If I don't, I'll inquire.\"  Gabriel was rather staggered\nby the remarkable coolness of her manner.  Certainly nobody without\nprevious information would have dreamt that Oak and the handsome\nwoman before whom he stood had ever been other than strangers.  But\nperhaps her air was the inevitable result of the social rise which\nhad advanced her from a cottage to a large house and fields.  The\ncase is not unexampled in high places.  When, in the writings of the\nlater poets, Jove and his family are found to have moved from their\ncramped quarters on the peak of Olympus into the wide sky above it,\ntheir words show a proportionate increase of arrogance and reserve.\n\nFootsteps were heard in the passage, combining in their character\nthe qualities both of weight and measure, rather at the expense of\nvelocity.\n\n(All.) \"Here's Billy Smallbury come from Casterbridge.\"\n\n\"And what's the news?\" said Bathsheba, as William, after marching to\nthe middle of the hall, took a handkerchief from his hat and wiped\nhis forehead from its centre to its remoter boundaries.\n\n\"I should have been sooner, miss,\" he said, \"if it hadn't been for\nthe weather.\"  He then stamped with each foot severely, and on\nlooking down his boots were perceived to be clogged with snow.\n\n\"Come at last, is it?\" said Henery.\n\n\"Well, what about Fanny?\" said Bathsheba.\n\n\"Well, ma'am, in round numbers, she's run away with the soldiers,\"\nsaid William.\n\n\"No; not a steady girl like Fanny!\"\n\n\"I'll tell ye all particulars.  When I got to Casterbridge Barracks,\nthey said, 'The Eleventh Dragoon-Guards be gone away, and new troops\nhave come.' The Eleventh left last week for Melchester and onwards.\nThe Route came from Government like a thief in the night, as is his\nnature to, and afore the Eleventh knew it almost, they were on the\nmarch.  They passed near here.\"\n\nGabriel had listened with interest.  \"I saw them go,\" he said.\n\n\"Yes,\" continued William, \"they pranced down the street playing 'The\nGirl I Left Behind Me,' so 'tis said, in glorious notes of triumph.\nEvery looker-on's inside shook with the blows of the great drum to\nhis deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town\namong the public-house people and the nameless women!\"\n\n\"But they're not gone to any war?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am; but they be gone to take the places of them who may,\nwhich is very close connected.  And so I said to myself, Fanny's\nyoung man was one of the regiment, and she's gone after him.  There,\nma'am, that's it in black and white.\"\n\n\"Did you find out his name?\"\n\n\"No; nobody knew it.  I believe he was higher in rank than a\nprivate.\"\n\nGabriel remained musing and said nothing, for he was in doubt.\n\n\"Well, we are not likely to know more to-night, at any rate,\"\nsaid Bathsheba.  \"But one of you had better run across to Farmer\nBoldwood's and tell him that much.\"\n\nShe then rose; but before retiring, addressed a few words to them\nwith a pretty dignity, to which her mourning dress added a soberness\nthat was hardly to be found in the words themselves.\n\n\"Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I don't yet know\nmy powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do my best, and if\nyou serve me well, so shall I serve you.  Don't any unfair ones among\nyou (if there are any such, but I hope not) suppose that because I'm\na woman I don't understand the difference between bad goings-on and\ngood.\"\n\n(All.) \"No'm!\"\n\n(Liddy.) \"Excellent well said.\"\n\n\"I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are\nup; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield.  In short, I\nshall astonish you all.\"\n\n(All.) \"Yes'm!\"\n\n\"And so good-night.\"\n\n(All.) \"Good-night, ma'am.\"\n\nThen this small thesmothete stepped from the table, and surged out of\nthe hall, her black silk dress licking up a few straws and dragging\nthem along with a scratching noise upon the floor.  Liddy, elevating\nher feelings to the occasion from a sense of grandeur, floated\noff behind Bathsheba with a milder dignity not entirely free from\ntravesty, and the door was closed.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOUTSIDE THE BARRACKS--SNOW--A MEETING\n\n\nFor dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a\ncertain town and military station, many miles north of Weatherbury,\nat a later hour on this same snowy evening--if that may be called a\nprospect of which the chief constituent was darkness.\n\nIt was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing\nany great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love\nbecomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope:\nwhen the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at\nopportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation\ndoes not prompt to enterprise.\n\nThe scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river,\nbehind which rose a high wall.  On the right was a tract of land,\npartly meadow and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a\nwide undulating upland.\n\nThe changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this\nkind than amid woodland scenery.  Still, to a close observer, they\nare just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of\nmanifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones\nas the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf.  Many are not\nso stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering\nthe general torpidity of a moor or waste.  Winter, in coming to the\ncountry hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might\nhave been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the\ntransformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of\nfogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an\nobliteration by snow.\n\nThis climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid\nmoor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were\nforms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing,\nand without more character than that of being the limit of something\nelse--the lowest layer of a firmament of snow.  From this chaotic\nskyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received\nadditional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby.\nThe vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were\nthe roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor;\nfor the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and\nthat encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any\nintervening stratum of air at all.\n\nWe turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics; which were\nflatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall\nbehind it, and darkness as to both.  These features made up the mass.\nIf anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any\nthing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath.  The\nindistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys\nhere and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong\nshapes of windows, though only in the upper part.  Below, down to the\nwater's edge, the flat was unbroken by hole or projection.\n\nAn indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their\nregularity, sent their sound with difficulty through the fluffy\natmosphere.  It was a neighbouring clock striking ten.  The bell was\nin the open air, and being overlaid with several inches of muffling\nsnow, had lost its voice for the time.\n\nAbout this hour the snow abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had\nfallen, then one had the room of ten.  Not long after a form moved\nby the brink of the river.\n\nBy its outline upon the colourless background, a close observer\nmight have seen that it was small.  This was all that was positively\ndiscoverable, though it seemed human.\n\nThe shape went slowly along, but without much exertion, for the snow,\nthough sudden, was not as yet more than two inches deep.  At this\ntime some words were spoken aloud:--\n\n\"One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five.\"\n\nBetween each utterance the little shape advanced about half a dozen\nyards.  It was evident now that the windows high in the wall were\nbeing counted.  The word \"Five\" represented the fifth window from the\nend of the wall.\n\nHere the spot stopped, and dwindled smaller.  The figure was\nstooping.  Then a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the\nfifth window.  It smacked against the wall at a point several yards\nfrom its mark.  The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the\nexecution of a woman.  No man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or\nsquirrel in his childhood, could possibly have thrown with such utter\nimbecility as was shown here.\n\nAnother attempt, and another; till by degrees the wall must have\nbecome pimpled with the adhering lumps of snow.  At last one fragment\nstruck the fifth window.\n\nThe river would have been seen by day to be of that deep smooth sort\nwhich races middle and sides with the same gliding precision, any\nirregularities of speed being immediately corrected by a small\nwhirlpool.  Nothing was heard in reply to the signal but the gurgle\nand cluck of one of these invisible wheels--together with a few small\nsounds which a sad man would have called moans, and a happy man\nlaughter--caused by the flapping of the waters against trifling\nobjects in other parts of the stream.\n\nThe window was struck again in the same manner.\n\nThen a noise was heard, apparently produced by the opening of the\nwindow.  This was followed by a voice from the same quarter.\n\n\"Who's there?\"\n\nThe tones were masculine, and not those of surprise.  The high\nwall being that of a barrack, and marriage being looked upon with\ndisfavour in the army, assignations and communications had probably\nbeen made across the river before to-night.\n\n\"Is it Sergeant Troy?\" said the blurred spot in the snow,\ntremulously.\n\nThis person was so much like a mere shade upon the earth, and the\nother speaker so much a part of the building, that one would have\nsaid the wall was holding a conversation with the snow.\n\n\"Yes,\" came suspiciously from the shadow. \"What girl are you?\"\n\n\"Oh, Frank--don't you know me?\" said the spot.  \"Your wife, Fanny\nRobin.\"\n\n\"Fanny!\" said the wall, in utter astonishment.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the girl, with a half-suppressed gasp of emotion.\n\nThere was something in the woman's tone which is not that of the\nwife, and there was a manner in the man which is rarely a husband's.\nThe dialogue went on:\n\n\"How did you come here?\"\n\n\"I asked which was your window.  Forgive me!\"\n\n\"I did not expect you to-night.  Indeed, I did not think you would\ncome at all.  It was a wonder you found me here.  I am orderly\nto-morrow.\"\n\n\"You said I was to come.\"\n\n\"Well--I said that you might.\"\n\n\"Yes, I mean that I might.  You are glad to see me, Frank?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--of course.\"\n\n\"Can you--come to me!\"\n\n\"My dear Fan, no!  The bugle has sounded, the barrack gates are\nclosed, and I have no leave.  We are all of us as good as in the\ncounty gaol till to-morrow morning.\"\n\n\"Then I shan't see you till then!\"  The words were in a faltering\ntone of disappointment.\n\n\"How did you get here from Weatherbury?\"\n\n\"I walked--some part of the way--the rest by the carriers.\"\n\n\"I am surprised.\"\n\n\"Yes--so am I.  And Frank, when will it be?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"That you promised.\"\n\n\"I don't quite recollect.\"\n\n\"O you do!  Don't speak like that.  It weighs me to the earth.  It\nmakes me say what ought to be said first by you.\"\n\n\"Never mind--say it.\"\n\n\"O, must I?--it is, when shall we be married, Frank?\"\n\n\"Oh, I see.  Well--you have to get proper clothes.\"\n\n\"I have money.  Will it be by banns or license?\"\n\n\"Banns, I should think.\"\n\n\"And we live in two parishes.\"\n\n\"Do we?  What then?\"\n\n\"My lodgings are in St. Mary's, and this is not.  So they will have\nto be published in both.\"\n\n\"Is that the law?\"\n\n\"Yes.  O Frank--you think me forward, I am afraid!  Don't, dear\nFrank--will you--for I love you so.  And you said lots of times you\nwould marry me, and--and--I--I--I--\"\n\n\"Don't cry, now!  It is foolish.  If I said so, of course I will.\"\n\n\"And shall I put up the banns in my parish, and will you in yours?\"\n\n\"Yes\"\n\n\"To-morrow?\"\n\n\"Not to-morrow.  We'll settle in a few days.\"\n\n\"You have the permission of the officers?\"\n\n\"No, not yet.\"\n\n\"O--how is it?  You said you almost had before you left\nCasterbridge.\"\n\n\"The fact is, I forgot to ask.  Your coming like this is so sudden\nand unexpected.\"\n\n\"Yes--yes--it is.  It was wrong of me to worry you.  I'll go away\nnow.  Will you come and see me to-morrow, at Mrs. Twills's, in North\nStreet?  I don't like to come to the Barracks.  There are bad women\nabout, and they think me one.\"\n\n\"Quite, so.  I'll come to you, my dear.  Good-night.\"\n\n\"Good-night, Frank--good-night!\"\n\nAnd the noise was again heard of a window closing.  The little spot\nmoved away.  When she passed the corner a subdued exclamation was\nheard inside the wall.\n\n\"Ho--ho--Sergeant--ho--ho!\" An  expostulation followed, but it was\nindistinct; and it became lost amid a low peal of laughter, which was\nhardly distinguishable from the gurgle of the tiny whirlpools\noutside.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFARMERS--A RULE--AN EXCEPTION\n\n\nThe first public evidence of Bathsheba's decision to be a farmer in\nher own person and by proxy no more was her appearance the following\nmarket-day in the cornmarket at Casterbridge.\n\nThe low though extensive hall, supported by beams and pillars,\nand latterly dignified by the name of Corn Exchange, was thronged\nwith hot men who talked among each other in twos and threes, the\nspeaker of the minute looking sideways into his auditor's face and\nconcentrating his argument by a contraction of one eyelid during\ndelivery.  The greater number carried in their hands ground-ash\nsaplings, using them partly as walking-sticks and partly for poking\nup pigs, sheep, neighbours with their backs turned, and restful\nthings in general, which seemed to require such treatment in the\ncourse of their peregrinations.  During conversations each subjected\nhis sapling to great varieties of usage--bending it round his back,\nforming an arch of it between his two hands, overweighting it on the\nground till it reached nearly a semicircle; or perhaps it was hastily\ntucked under the arm whilst the sample-bag was pulled forth and a\nhandful of corn poured into the palm, which, after criticism, was\nflung upon the floor, an issue of events perfectly well known to\nhalf-a-dozen acute town-bred fowls which had as usual crept into the\nbuilding unobserved, and waited the fulfilment of their anticipations\nwith a high-stretched neck and oblique eye.\n\nAmong these heavy yeomen a feminine figure glided, the single one of\nher sex that the room contained.  She was prettily and even daintily\ndressed.  She moved between them as a chaise between carts, was heard\nafter them as a romance after sermons, was felt among them like a\nbreeze among furnaces.  It had required a little determination--far\nmore than she had at first imagined--to take up a position here, for\nat her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every\nface had been turned towards her, and those that were already turned\nrigidly fixed there.\n\nTwo or three only of the farmers were personally known to Bathsheba,\nand to these she had made her way.  But if she was to be the\npractical woman she had intended to show herself, business must\nbe carried on, introductions or none, and she ultimately acquired\nconfidence enough to speak and reply boldly to men merely known to\nher by hearsay.  Bathsheba too had her sample-bags, and by degrees\nadopted the professional pour into the hand--holding up the grains\nin her narrow palm for inspection, in perfect Casterbridge manner.\n\nSomething in the exact arch of her upper unbroken row of teeth, and\nin the keenly pointed corners of her red mouth when, with parted\nlips, she somewhat defiantly turned up her face to argue a point with\na tall man, suggested that there was potentiality enough in that\nlithe slip of humanity for alarming exploits of sex, and daring\nenough to carry them out.  But her eyes had a softness--invariably a\nsoftness--which, had they not been dark, would have seemed mistiness;\nas they were, it lowered an expression that might have been piercing\nto simple clearness.\n\nStrange to say of a woman in full bloom and vigor, she always allowed\nher interlocutors to finish their statements before rejoining with\nhers.  In arguing on prices, she held to her own firmly, as was\nnatural in a dealer, and reduced theirs persistently, as was\ninevitable in a woman.  But there was an elasticity in her firmness\nwhich removed it from obstinacy, as there was a _naivete_ in her\ncheapening which saved it from meanness.\n\nThose of the farmers with whom she had no dealings (by far the\ngreater part) were continually asking each other, \"Who is she?\"\nThe reply would be--\n\n\"Farmer Everdene's niece; took on Weatherbury Upper Farm; turned away\nthe baily, and swears she'll do everything herself.\"\n\nThe other man would then shake his head.\n\n\"Yes, 'tis a pity she's so headstrong,\" the first would say.  \"But we\nought to be proud of her here--she lightens up the old place.  'Tis\nsuch a shapely maid, however, that she'll soon get picked up.\"\n\nIt would be ungallant to suggest that the novelty of her engagement\nin such an occupation had almost as much to do with the magnetism\nas had the beauty of her face and movements.  However, the interest\nwas general, and this Saturday's _debut_ in the forum, whatever it\nmay have been to Bathsheba as the buying and selling farmer, was\nunquestionably a triumph to her as the maiden.  Indeed, the sensation\nwas so pronounced that her instinct on two or three occasions was\nmerely to walk as a queen among these gods of the fallow, like a\nlittle sister of a little Jove, and to neglect closing prices\naltogether.\n\nThe numerous evidences of her power to attract were only thrown into\ngreater relief by a marked exception.  Women seem to have eyes in\ntheir ribbons for such matters as these.  Bathsheba, without looking\nwithin a right angle of him, was conscious of a black sheep among the\nflock.\n\nIt perplexed her first.  If there had been a respectable minority on\neither side, the case would have been most natural.  If nobody had\nregarded her, she would have taken the matter indifferently--such\ncases had occurred.  If everybody, this man included, she would have\ntaken it as a matter of course--people had done so before.  But the\nsmallness of the exception made the mystery.\n\nShe soon knew thus much of the recusant's appearance.  He was a\ngentlemanly man, with full and distinctly outlined Roman features,\nthe prominences of which glowed in the sun with a bronze-like\nrichness of tone.  He was erect in attitude, and quiet in demeanour.\nOne characteristic pre-eminently marked him--dignity.\n\nApparently he had some time ago reached that entrance to middle age\nat which a man's aspect naturally ceases to alter for the term of\na dozen years or so; and, artificially, a woman's does likewise.\nThirty-five and fifty were his limits of variation--he might have\nbeen either, or anywhere between the two.\n\nIt may be said that married men of forty are usually ready and\ngenerous enough to fling passing glances at any specimen of moderate\nbeauty they may discern by the way.  Probably, as with persons\nplaying whist for love, the consciousness of a certain immunity under\nany circumstances from that worst possible ultimate, the having to\npay, makes them unduly speculative.  Bathsheba was convinced that\nthis unmoved person was not a married man.\n\nWhen marketing was over, she rushed off to Liddy, who was waiting\nfor her beside the yellow gig in which they had driven to town.\nThe horse was put in, and on they trotted--Bathsheba's sugar, tea,\nand drapery parcels being packed behind, and expressing in some\nindescribable manner, by their colour, shape, and general lineaments,\nthat they were that young lady-farmer's property, and the grocer's\nand draper's no more.\n\n\"I've been through it, Liddy, and it is over.  I shan't mind it\nagain, for they will all have grown accustomed to seeing me there;\nbut this morning it was as bad as being married--eyes everywhere!\"\n\n\"I knowed it would be,\" Liddy said.  \"Men be such a terrible class of\nsociety to look at a body.\"\n\n\"But there was one man who had more sense than to waste his time upon\nme.\"  The information was put in this form that Liddy might not for a\nmoment suppose her mistress was at all piqued.  \"A very good-looking\nman,\" she continued, \"upright; about forty, I should think.  Do you\nknow at all who he could be?\"\n\nLiddy couldn't think.\n\n\"Can't you guess at all?\" said Bathsheba with some disappointment.\n\n\"I haven't a notion; besides, 'tis no difference, since he took less\nnotice of you than any of the rest.  Now, if he'd taken more, it\nwould have mattered a great deal.\"\n\nBathsheba was suffering from the reverse feeling just then, and they\nbowled along in silence.  A low carriage, bowling along still more\nrapidly behind a horse of unimpeachable breed, overtook and passed\nthem.\n\n\"Why, there he is!\" she said.\n\nLiddy looked.  \"That!  That's Farmer Boldwood--of course 'tis--the\nman you couldn't see the other day when he called.\"\n\n\"Oh, Farmer Boldwood,\" murmured Bathsheba, and looked at him as he\noutstripped them.  The farmer had never turned his head once, but\nwith eyes fixed on the most advanced point along the road, passed as\nunconsciously and abstractedly as if Bathsheba and her charms were\nthin air.\n\n\"He's an interesting man--don't you think so?\" she remarked.\n\n\"O yes, very.  Everybody owns it,\" replied Liddy.\n\n\"I wonder why he is so wrapt up and indifferent, and seemingly so far\naway from all he sees around him.\"\n\n\"It is said--but not known for certain--that he met with some bitter\ndisappointment when he was a young man and merry.  A woman jilted\nhim, they say.\"\n\n\"People always say that--and we know very well women scarcely ever\njilt men; 'tis the men who jilt us.  I expect it is simply his nature\nto be so reserved.\"\n\n\"Simply his nature--I expect so, miss--nothing else in the world.\"\n\n\"Still, 'tis more romantic to think he has been served cruelly, poor\nthing'!  Perhaps, after all, he has!\"\n\n\"Depend upon it he has.  Oh yes, miss, he has!  I feel he must have.\"\n\n\"However, we are very apt to think extremes of people.  I shouldn't\nwonder after all if it wasn't a little of both--just between the\ntwo--rather cruelly used and rather reserved.\"\n\n\"Oh dear no, miss--I can't think it between the two!\"\n\n\"That's most likely.\"\n\n\"Well, yes, so it is.  I am convinced it is most likely. You may take\nmy word, miss, that that's what's the matter with him.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSORTES SANCTORUM--THE VALENTINE\n\n\nIt was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of\nFebruary.  Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a better\ncompanion, had asked Liddy to come and sit with her.  The mouldy pile\nwas dreary in winter-time before the candles were lighted and the\nshutters closed; the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the\nwalls; every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own,\nfor the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the\nday; and Bathsheba's new piano, which was an old one in other annals,\nlooked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor\nbefore night threw a shade over its less prominent angles and hid\nthe unpleasantness.  Liddy, like a little brook, though shallow, was\nalways rippling; her presence had not so much weight as to task\nthought, and yet enough to exercise it.\n\nOn the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather.  Liddy\nlooking at it said,--\n\n\"Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of\nthe Bible and key?\"\n\n\"Don't be so foolish, Liddy.  As if such things could be.\"\n\n\"Well, there's a good deal in it, all the same.\"\n\n\"Nonsense, child.\"\n\n\"And it makes your heart beat fearful.  Some believe in it; some\ndon't; I do.\"\n\n\"Very well, let's try it,\" said Bathsheba, bounding from her seat\nwith that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in\ntowards a dependent, and entering into the spirit of divination at\nonce.  \"Go and get the front door key.\"\n\nLiddy fetched it.  \"I wish it wasn't Sunday,\" she said, on returning.\n\"Perhaps 'tis wrong.\"\n\n\"What's right week days is right Sundays,\" replied her mistress in a\ntone which was a proof in itself.\n\nThe book was opened--the leaves, drab with age, being quite worn away\nat much-read verses by the forefingers of unpractised readers in\nformer days, where they were moved along under the line as an aid to\nthe vision.  The special verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by\nBathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye.  They slightly thrilled\nand abashed her.  It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the\nconcrete.  Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention,\nand placed the key on the book.  A rusty patch immediately upon the\nverse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told\nthat this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the\npurpose.\n\n\"Now keep steady, and be silent,\" said Bathsheba.\n\nThe verse was repeated; the book turned round; Bathsheba blushed\nguiltily.\n\n\"Who did you try?\" said Liddy curiously.\n\n\"I shall not tell you.\"\n\n\"Did you notice Mr. Boldwood's doings in church this morning, miss?\"\nLiddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had\ntaken.\n\n\"No, indeed,\" said Bathsheba, with serene indifference.\n\n\"His pew is exactly opposite yours, miss.\"\n\n\"I know it.\"\n\n\"And you did not see his goings on!\"\n\n\"Certainly I did not, I tell you.\"\n\nLiddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips decisively.\n\nThis move was unexpected, and proportionately disconcerting.  \"What\ndid he do?\" Bathsheba said perforce.\n\n\"Didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service.\"\n\n\"Why should he?\" again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look.\n\"I didn't ask him to.\"\n\n\"Oh no.  But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he\ndidn't.  There, 'tis like him.  Rich and gentlemanly, what does he\ncare?\"\n\nBathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had\nopinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's comprehension, rather\nthan that she had nothing to say.\n\n\"Dear me--I had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought yesterday,\"\nshe exclaimed at length.\n\n\"Valentine! who for, miss?\" said Liddy.  \"Farmer Boldwood?\"\n\nIt was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at\nthis moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right.\n\n\"Well, no.  It is only for little Teddy Coggan.  I have promised him\nsomething, and this will be a pretty surprise for him.  Liddy, you\nmay as well bring me my desk and I'll direct it at once.\"\n\nBathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed\ndesign in post-octavo, which had been bought on the previous\nmarket-day at the chief stationer's in Casterbridge.  In the centre\nwas a small oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender\nmight insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion\nthan any generalities by a printer could possibly be.\n\n\"Here's a place for writing,\" said Bathsheba.  \"What shall I put?\"\n\n\"Something of this sort, I should think,\" returned Liddy promptly:--\n\n\n   \"The rose is red,\n   The violet blue,\n   Carnation's sweet,\n   And so are you.\"\n\n\n\"Yes, that shall be it.  It just suits itself to a chubby-faced child\nlike him,\" said Bathsheba.  She inserted the words in a small though\nlegible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped\nher pen for the direction.\n\n\"What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how\nhe would wonder!\" said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows,\nand indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought\nof the moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated.\n\nBathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length.  Boldwood's had\nbegun to be a troublesome image--a species of Daniel in her kingdom\nwho persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said\nthat he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her\nthe official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all.  She was\nfar from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity.  Still,\nit was faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man\nin the parish should withhold his eyes, and that a girl like Liddy\nshould talk about it.  So Liddy's idea was at first rather harassing\nthan piquant.\n\n\"No, I won't do that.  He wouldn't see any humour in it.\"\n\n\"He'd worry to death,\" said the persistent Liddy.\n\n\"Really, I don't care particularly to send it to Teddy,\" remarked her\nmistress.  \"He's rather a naughty child sometimes.\"\n\n\"Yes--that he is.\"\n\n\"Let's toss as men do,\" said Bathsheba, idly.  \"Now then, head,\nBoldwood; tail, Teddy.  No, we won't toss money on a Sunday, that\nwould be tempting the devil indeed.\"\n\n\"Toss this hymn-book; there can't be no sinfulness in that, miss.\"\n\n\"Very well.  Open, Boldwood--shut, Teddy.  No; it's more likely to\nfall open.  Open, Teddy--shut, Boldwood.\"\n\nThe book went fluttering in the air and came down shut.\n\nBathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and with\noff-hand serenity directed the missive to Boldwood.\n\n\"Now light a candle, Liddy.  Which seal shall we use? Here's a\nunicorn's head--there's nothing in that.  What's this?--two\ndoves--no.  It ought to be something extraordinary, ought it not,\nLiddy? Here's one with a motto--I remember it is some funny one, but\nI can't read it. We'll try this, and if it doesn't do we'll have\nanother.\"\n\nA large red seal was duly affixed.  Bathsheba looked closely at the\nhot wax to discover the words.\n\n\"Capital!\" she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely.\n\"'Twould upset the solemnity of a parson and clerke too.\"\n\nLiddy looked at the words of the seal, and read--\n\n\n   \"MARRY ME.\"\n\n\nThe same evening the letter was sent, and was duly sorted in\nCasterbridge post-office that night, to be returned to Weatherbury\nagain in the morning.\n\nSo very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done.  Of love as a\nspectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively\nshe knew nothing.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEFFECT OF THE LETTER--SUNRISE\n\n\nAt dusk, on the evening of St. Valentine's Day, Boldwood sat down\nto supper as usual, by a beaming fire of aged logs.  Upon the\nmantel-shelf before him was a time-piece, surmounted by a spread\neagle, and upon the eagle's wings was the letter Bathsheba had sent.\nHere the bachelor's gaze was continually fastening itself, till the\nlarge red seal became as a blot of blood on the retina of his eye;\nand as he ate and drank he still read in fancy the words thereon,\nalthough they were too remote for his sight--\n\n\n   \"MARRY ME.\"\n\n\nThe pert injunction was like those crystal substances which,\ncolourless themselves, assume the tone of objects about them.  Here,\nin the quiet of Boldwood's parlour, where everything that was not\ngrave was extraneous, and where the atmosphere was that of a Puritan\nSunday lasting all the week, the letter and its dictum changed their\ntenor from the thoughtlessness of their origin to a deep solemnity,\nimbibed from their accessories now.\n\nSince the receipt of the missive in the morning, Boldwood had felt\nthe symmetry of his existence to be slowly getting distorted in the\ndirection of an ideal passion.  The disturbance was as the first\nfloating weed to Columbus--the contemptibly little suggesting\npossibilities of the infinitely great.\n\nThe letter must have had an origin and a motive.  That the latter\nwas of the smallest magnitude compatible with its existence at all,\nBoldwood, of course, did not know.  And such an explanation did not\nstrike him as a possibility even.  It is foreign to a mystified\ncondition of mind to realize of the mystifier that the processes of\napproving a course suggested by circumstance, and of striking out a\ncourse from inner impulse, would look the same in the result.  The\nvast difference between starting a train of events, and directing\ninto a particular groove a series already started, is rarely apparent\nto the person confounded by the issue.\n\nWhen Boldwood went to bed he placed the valentine in the corner of\nthe looking-glass.  He was conscious of its presence, even when his\nback was turned upon it.  It was the first time in Boldwood's life\nthat such an event had occurred.  The same fascination that caused\nhim to think it an act which had a deliberate motive prevented\nhim from regarding it as an impertinence.  He looked again at\nthe direction.  The mysterious influences of night invested the\nwriting with the presence of the unknown writer.  Somebody's--some\nWOMAN'S--hand had travelled softly over the paper bearing his name;\nher unrevealed eyes had watched every curve as she formed it; her\nbrain had seen him in imagination the while.  Why should she have\nimagined him?  Her mouth--were the lips red or pale, plump or\ncreased?--had curved itself to a certain expression as the pen went\non--the corners had moved with all their natural tremulousness: what\nhad been the expression?\n\nThe vision of the woman writing, as a supplement to the words\nwritten, had no individuality.  She was a misty shape, and well she\nmight be, considering that her original was at that moment sound\nasleep and oblivious of all love and letter-writing under the sky.\nWhenever Boldwood dozed she took a form, and comparatively ceased to\nbe a vision: when he awoke there was the letter justifying the dream.\n\nThe moon shone to-night, and its light was not of a customary kind.\nHis window admitted only a reflection of its rays, and the pale sheen\nhad that reversed direction which snow gives, coming upward and\nlighting up his ceiling in an unnatural way, casting shadows in\nstrange places, and putting lights where shadows had used to be.\n\nThe substance of the epistle had occupied him but little in\ncomparison with the fact of its arrival.  He suddenly wondered\nif anything more might be found in the envelope than what he had\nwithdrawn.  He jumped out of bed in the weird light, took the\nletter, pulled out the flimsy sheet, shook the envelope--searched it.\nNothing more was there.  Boldwood looked, as he had a hundred times\nthe preceding day, at the insistent red seal: \"Marry me,\" he said\naloud.\n\nThe solemn and reserved yeoman again closed the letter, and stuck\nit in the frame of the glass.  In doing so he caught sight of his\nreflected features, wan in expression, and insubstantial in form.\nHe saw how closely compressed was his mouth, and that his eyes were\nwide-spread and vacant.  Feeling uneasy and dissatisfied with himself\nfor this nervous excitability, he returned to bed.\n\nThen the dawn drew on.  The full power of the clear heaven was not\nequal to that of a cloudy sky at noon, when Boldwood arose and\ndressed himself.  He descended the stairs and went out towards the\ngate of a field to the east, leaning over which he paused and looked\naround.\n\nIt was one of the usual slow sunrises of this time of the year, and\nthe sky, pure violet in the zenith, was leaden to the northward,\nand murky to the east, where, over the snowy down or ewe-lease on\nWeatherbury Upper Farm, and apparently resting upon the ridge, the\nonly half of the sun yet visible burnt rayless, like a red and\nflameless fire shining over a white hearthstone.  The whole effect\nresembled a sunset as childhood resembles age.\n\nIn other directions, the fields and sky were so much of one colour by\nthe snow, that it was difficult in a hasty glance to tell whereabouts\nthe horizon occurred; and in general there was here, too, that\nbefore-mentioned preternatural inversion of light and shade which\nattends the prospect when the garish brightness commonly in the sky\nis found on the earth, and the shades of earth are in the sky.  Over\nthe west hung the wasting moon, now dull and greenish-yellow, like\ntarnished brass.\n\nBoldwood was listlessly noting how the frost had hardened and glazed\nthe surface of the snow, till it shone in the red eastern light with\nthe polish of marble; how, in some portions of the slope, withered\ngrass-bents, encased in icicles, bristled through the smooth wan\ncoverlet in the twisted and curved shapes of old Venetian glass; and\nhow the footprints of a few birds, which had hopped over the snow\nwhilst it lay in the state of a soft fleece, were now frozen to a\nshort permanency.  A half-muffled noise of light wheels interrupted\nhim.  Boldwood turned back into the road.  It was the mail-cart--a\ncrazy, two-wheeled vehicle, hardly heavy enough to resist a puff of\nwind.  The driver held out a letter.  Boldwood seized it and opened\nit, expecting another anonymous one--so greatly are people's ideas of\nprobability a mere sense that precedent will repeat itself.\n\n\"I don't think it is for you, sir,\" said the man, when he saw\nBoldwood's action.  \"Though there is no name, I think it is for your\nshepherd.\"\n\nBoldwood looked then at the address--\n\n\n   To the New Shepherd,\n         Weatherbury Farm,\n               Near Casterbridge\n\n\n\"Oh--what a mistake!--it is not mine.  Nor is it for my shepherd.  It\nis for Miss Everdene's.  You had better take it on to him--Gabriel\nOak--and say I opened it in mistake.\"\n\nAt this moment, on the ridge, up against the blazing sky, a figure\nwas visible, like the black snuff in the midst of a candle-flame.\nThen it moved and began to bustle about vigorously from place to\nplace, carrying square skeleton masses, which were riddled by the\nsame rays.  A small figure on all fours followed behind.  The tall\nform was that of Gabriel Oak; the small one that of George; the\narticles in course of transit were hurdles.\n\n\"Wait,\" said Boldwood. \"That's the man on the hill.  I'll take the\nletter to him myself.\"\n\nTo Boldwood it was now no longer merely a letter to another man.  It\nwas an opportunity.  Exhibiting a face pregnant with intention, he\nentered the snowy field.\n\nGabriel, at that minute, descended the hill towards the right.  The\nglow stretched down in this direction now, and touched the distant\nroof of Warren's Malthouse--whither the shepherd was apparently bent:\nBoldwood followed at a distance.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA MORNING MEETING--THE LETTER AGAIN\n\n\nThe scarlet and orange light outside the malthouse did not penetrate\nto its interior, which was, as usual, lighted by a rival glow of\nsimilar hue, radiating from the hearth.\n\nThe maltster, after having lain down in his clothes for a few\nhours, was now sitting beside a three-legged table, breakfasting of\nbread and bacon.  This was eaten on the plateless system, which is\nperformed by placing a slice of bread upon the table, the meat flat\nupon the bread, a mustard plaster upon the meat, and a pinch of salt\nupon the whole, then cutting them vertically downwards with a large\npocket-knife till wood is reached, when the severed lump is impaled\non the knife, elevated, and sent the proper way of food.\n\nThe maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly diminish\nhis powers as a mill.  He had been without them for so many years\nthat toothlessness was felt less to be a defect than hard gums an\nacquisition.  Indeed, he seemed to approach the grave as a hyperbolic\ncurve approaches a straight line--less directly as he got nearer,\ntill it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.\n\nIn the ashpit was a heap of potatoes roasting, and a boiling pipkin\nof charred bread, called \"coffee\", for the benefit of whomsoever\nshould call, for Warren's was a sort of clubhouse, used as an\nalternative to the inn.\n\n\"I say, says I, we get a fine day, and then down comes a snapper at\nnight,\" was a remark now suddenly heard spreading into the malthouse\nfrom the door, which had been opened the previous moment.  The form\nof Henery Fray advanced to the fire, stamping the snow from his boots\nwhen about half-way there.  The speech and entry had not seemed to be\nat all an abrupt beginning to the maltster, introductory matter being\noften omitted in this neighbourhood, both from word and deed, and\nthe maltster having the same latitude allowed him, did not hurry to\nreply.  He picked up a fragment of cheese, by pecking upon it with\nhis knife, as a butcher picks up skewers.\n\nHenery appeared in a drab kerseymere great-coat, buttoned over his\nsmock-frock, the white skirts of the latter being visible to the\ndistance of about a foot below the coat-tails, which, when you\ngot used to the style of dress, looked natural enough, and even\nornamental--it certainly was comfortable.\n\nMatthew Moon, Joseph Poorgrass, and other carters and waggoners\nfollowed at his heels, with great lanterns dangling from their hands,\nwhich showed that they had just come from the cart-horse stables,\nwhere they had been busily engaged since four o'clock that morning.\n\n\"And how is she getting on without a baily?\" the maltster inquired.\nHenery shook his head, and smiled one of the bitter smiles, dragging\nall the flesh of his forehead into a corrugated heap in the centre.\n\n\"She'll rue it--surely, surely!\" he said.  \"Benjy Pennyways were not\na true man or an honest baily--as big a betrayer as Judas Iscariot\nhimself.  But to think she can carr' on alone!\" He allowed his head\nto swing laterally three or four times in silence.  \"Never in all my\ncreeping up--never!\"\n\nThis was recognized by all as the conclusion of some gloomy speech\nwhich had been expressed in thought alone during the shake of the\nhead; Henery meanwhile retained several marks of despair upon his\nface, to imply that they would be required for use again directly\nhe should go on speaking.\n\n\"All will be ruined, and ourselves too, or there's no meat in\ngentlemen's houses!\" said Mark Clark.\n\n\"A headstrong maid, that's what she is--and won't listen to no advice\nat all.  Pride and vanity have ruined many a cobbler's dog.  Dear,\ndear, when I think o' it, I sorrows like a man in travel!\"\n\n\"True, Henery, you do, I've heard ye,\" said Joseph Poorgrass in a\nvoice of thorough attestation, and with a wire-drawn smile of misery.\n\n\"'Twould do a martel man no harm to have what's under her bonnet,\"\nsaid Billy Smallbury, who had just entered, bearing his one tooth\nbefore him.  \"She can spaik real language, and must have some sense\nsomewhere.  Do ye foller me?\"\n\n\"I do, I do; but no baily--I deserved that place,\" wailed Henery,\nsignifying wasted genius by gazing blankly at visions of a high\ndestiny apparently visible to him on Billy Smallbury's smock-frock.\n\"There, 'twas to be, I suppose.  Your lot is your lot, and Scripture\nis nothing; for if you do good you don't get rewarded according to\nyour works, but be cheated in some mean way out of your recompense.\"\n\n\"No, no; I don't agree with'ee there,\" said Mark Clark.  \"God's a\nperfect gentleman in that respect.\"\n\n\"Good works good pay, so to speak it,\" attested Joseph Poorgrass.\n\nA short pause ensued, and as a sort of _entr'acte_ Henery turned and\nblew out the lanterns, which the increase of daylight rendered no\nlonger necessary even in the malthouse, with its one pane of glass.\n\n\"I wonder what a farmer-woman can want with a harpsichord, dulcimer,\npianner, or whatever 'tis they d'call it?\" said the maltster.  \"Liddy\nsaith she've a new one.\"\n\n\"Got a pianner?\"\n\n\"Ay.  Seems her old uncle's things were not good enough for her.\nShe've bought all but everything new.  There's heavy chairs for the\nstout, weak and wiry ones for the slender; great watches, getting on\nto the size of clocks, to stand upon the chimbley-piece.\"\n\n\"Pictures, for the most part wonderful frames.\"\n\n\"And long horse-hair settles for the drunk, with horse-hair pillows\nat each end,\" said Mr. Clark.  \"Likewise looking-glasses for the\npretty, and lying books for the wicked.\"\n\nA firm loud tread was now heard stamping outside; the door was opened\nabout six inches, and somebody on the other side exclaimed--\n\n\"Neighbours, have ye got room for a few new-born lambs?\"\n\n\"Ay, sure, shepherd,\" said the conclave.\n\nThe door was flung back till it kicked the wall and trembled from\ntop to bottom with the blow.  Mr. Oak appeared in the entry with a\nsteaming face, hay-bands wound about his ankles to keep out the snow,\na leather strap round his waist outside the smock-frock, and looking\naltogether an epitome of the world's health and vigour.  Four lambs\nhung in various embarrassing attitudes over his shoulders, and the\ndog George, whom Gabriel had contrived to fetch from Norcombe,\nstalked solemnly behind.\n\n\"Well, Shepherd Oak, and how's lambing this year, if I mid say it?\"\ninquired Joseph Poorgrass.\n\n\"Terrible trying,\" said Oak.  \"I've been wet through twice a-day,\neither in snow or rain, this last fortnight.  Cainy and I haven't\ntined our eyes to-night.\"\n\n\"A good few twins, too, I hear?\"\n\n\"Too many by half.  Yes; 'tis a very queer lambing this year.  We\nshan't have done by Lady Day.\"\n\n\"And last year 'twer all over by Sexajessamine Sunday,\" Joseph\nremarked.\n\n\"Bring on the rest Cain,\" said Gabriel, \"and then run back to the\newes.  I'll follow you soon.\"\n\nCainy Ball--a cheery-faced young lad, with a small circular orifice\nby way of mouth, advanced and deposited two others, and retired as he\nwas bidden.  Oak lowered the lambs from their unnatural elevation,\nwrapped them in hay, and placed them round the fire.\n\n\"We've no lambing-hut here, as I used to have at Norcombe,\" said\nGabriel, \"and 'tis such a plague to bring the weakly ones to a house.\nIf 'twasn't for your place here, malter, I don't know what I should\ndo i' this keen weather.  And how is it with you to-day, malter?\"\n\n\"Oh, neither sick nor sorry, shepherd; but no younger.\"\n\n\"Ay--I understand.\"\n\n\"Sit down, Shepherd Oak,\" continued the ancient man of malt.  \"And\nhow was the old place at Norcombe, when ye went for your dog?  I\nshould like to see the old familiar spot; but faith, I shouldn't know\na soul there now.\"\n\n\"I suppose you wouldn't.  'Tis altered very much.\"\n\n\"Is it true that Dicky Hill's wooden cider-house is pulled down?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--years ago, and Dicky's cottage just above it.\"\n\n\"Well, to be sure!\"\n\n\"Yes; and Tompkins's old apple-tree is rooted that used to bear two\nhogsheads of cider; and no help from other trees.\"\n\n\"Rooted?--you don't say it!  Ah! stirring times we live in--stirring\ntimes.\"\n\n\"And you can mind the old well that used to be in the middle of the\nplace?  That's turned into a solid iron pump with a large stone\ntrough, and all complete.\"\n\n\"Dear, dear--how the face of nations alter, and what we live to see\nnowadays!  Yes--and 'tis the same here.  They've been talking but now\nof the mis'ess's strange doings.\"\n\n\"What have you been saying about her?\" inquired Oak, sharply turning\nto the rest, and getting very warm.\n\n\"These middle-aged men have been pulling her over the coals for pride\nand vanity,\" said Mark Clark; \"but I say, let her have rope enough.\nBless her pretty face--shouldn't I like to do so--upon her cherry\nlips!\" The gallant Mark Clark here made a peculiar and well known\nsound with his own.\n\n\"Mark,\" said Gabriel, sternly, \"now you mind this! none of that\ndalliance-talk--that smack-and-coddle style of yours--about Miss\nEverdene.  I don't allow it.  Do you hear?\"\n\n\"With all my heart, as I've got no chance,\" replied Mr. Clark,\ncordially.\n\n\"I suppose you've been speaking against her?\" said Oak, turning to\nJoseph Poorgrass with a very grim look.\n\n\"No, no--not a word I--'tis a real joyful thing that she's no worse,\nthat's what I say,\" said Joseph, trembling and blushing with terror.\n\"Matthew just said--\"\n\n\"Matthew Moon, what have you been saying?\" asked Oak.\n\n\"I?  Why ye know I wouldn't harm a worm--no, not one underground\nworm?\" said Matthew Moon, looking very uneasy.\n\n\"Well, somebody has--and look here, neighbours,\" Gabriel, though one\nof the quietest and most gentle men on earth, rose to the occasion,\nwith martial promptness and vigour.  \"That's my fist.\"  Here he\nplaced his fist, rather smaller in size than a common loaf, in the\nmathematical centre of the maltster's little table, and with it gave\na bump or two thereon, as if to ensure that their eyes all thoroughly\ntook in the idea of fistiness before he went further.  \"Now--the\nfirst man in the parish that I hear prophesying bad of our mistress,\nwhy\" (here the fist was raised and let fall as Thor might have done\nwith his hammer in assaying it)--\"he'll smell and taste that--or I'm\na Dutchman.\"\n\nAll earnestly expressed by their features that their minds did not\nwander to Holland for a moment on account of this statement, but were\ndeploring the difference which gave rise to the figure; and Mark\nClark cried \"Hear, hear; just what I should ha' said.\" The dog George\nlooked up at the same time after the shepherd's menace, and though he\nunderstood English but imperfectly, began to growl.\n\n\"Now, don't ye take on so, shepherd, and sit down!\" said Henery,\nwith a deprecating peacefulness equal to anything of the kind in\nChristianity.\n\n\"We hear that ye be a extraordinary good and clever man, shepherd,\"\nsaid Joseph Poorgrass with considerable anxiety from behind the\nmaltster's bedstead, whither he had retired for safety.  \"'Tis a\ngreat thing to be clever, I'm sure,\" he added, making movements\nassociated with states of mind rather than body; \"we wish we were,\ndon't we, neighbours?\"\n\n\"Ay, that we do, sure,\" said Matthew Moon, with a small anxious laugh\ntowards Oak, to show how very friendly disposed he was likewise.\n\n\"Who's been telling you I'm clever?\" said Oak.\n\n\"'Tis blowed about from pillar to post quite common,\" said Matthew.\n\"We hear that ye can tell the time as well by the stars as we can by\nthe sun and moon, shepherd.\"\n\n\"Yes, I can do a little that way,\" said Gabriel, as a man of medium\nsentiments on the subject.\n\n\"And that ye can make sun-dials, and prent folks' names upon their\nwaggons almost like copper-plate, with beautiful flourishes, and\ngreat long tails.  A excellent fine thing for ye to be such a clever\nman, shepherd.  Joseph Poorgrass used to prent to Farmer James\nEverdene's waggons before you came, and 'a could never mind which way\nto turn the J's and E's--could ye, Joseph?\" Joseph shook his head\nto express how absolute was the fact that he couldn't.  \"And so you\nused to do 'em the wrong way, like this, didn't ye, Joseph?\" Matthew\nmarked on the dusty floor with his whip-handle\n\n\n   [the word J A M E S appears here with the \"J\" and the \"E\"\n   printed backwards]\n\n\n\"And how Farmer James would cuss, and call thee a fool, wouldn't he,\nJoseph, when 'a seed his name looking so inside-out-like?\" continued\nMatthew Moon with feeling.\n\n\"Ay--'a would,\" said Joseph, meekly.  \"But, you see, I wasn't so much\nto blame, for them J's and E's be such trying sons o' witches for the\nmemory to mind whether they face backward or forward; and I always\nhad such a forgetful memory, too.\"\n\n\"'Tis a very bad affliction for ye, being such a man of calamities in\nother ways.\"\n\n\"Well, 'tis; but a happy Providence ordered that it should be no\nworse, and I feel my thanks.  As to shepherd, there, I'm sure mis'ess\nought to have made ye her baily--such a fitting man for't as you be.\"\n\n\"I don't mind owning that I expected it,\" said Oak, frankly.\n\"Indeed, I hoped for the place.  At the same time, Miss Everdene has\na right to be her own baily if she choose--and to keep me down to be\na common shepherd only.\"  Oak drew a slow breath, looked sadly into\nthe bright ashpit, and seemed lost in thoughts not of the most\nhopeful hue.\n\nThe genial warmth of the fire now began to stimulate the nearly\nlifeless lambs to bleat and move their limbs briskly upon the hay,\nand to recognize for the first time the fact that they were born.\nTheir noise increased to a chorus of baas, upon which Oak pulled the\nmilk-can from before the fire, and taking a small tea-pot from the\npocket of his smock-frock, filled it with milk, and taught those of\nthe helpless creatures which were not to be restored to their dams\nhow to drink from the spout--a trick they acquired with astonishing\naptitude.\n\n\"And she don't even let ye have the skins of the dead lambs, I hear?\"\nresumed Joseph Poorgrass, his eyes lingering on the operations of Oak\nwith the necessary melancholy.\n\n\"I don't have them,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"Ye be very badly used, shepherd,\" hazarded Joseph again, in the hope\nof getting Oak as an ally in lamentation after all.  \"I think she's\ntook against ye--that I do.\"\n\n\"Oh no--not at all,\" replied Gabriel, hastily, and a sigh escaped\nhim, which the deprivation of lamb skins could hardly have caused.\n\nBefore any further remark had been added a shade darkened the door,\nand Boldwood entered the malthouse, bestowing upon each a nod of a\nquality between friendliness and condescension.\n\n\"Ah! Oak, I thought you were here,\" he said.  \"I met the mail-cart\nten minutes ago, and a letter was put into my hand, which I opened\nwithout reading the address.  I believe it is yours.  You must excuse\nthe accident please.\"\n\n\"Oh yes--not a bit of difference, Mr. Boldwood--not a bit,\" said\nGabriel, readily.  He had not a correspondent on earth, nor was there\na possible letter coming to him whose contents the whole parish would\nnot have been welcome to peruse.\n\nOak stepped aside, and read the following in an unknown hand:--\n\n\n   DEAR FRIEND,--I do not know your name, but I think these\n   few lines will reach you, which I wrote to thank you for\n   your kindness to me the night I left Weatherbury in a\n   reckless way.  I also return the money I owe you, which you\n   will excuse my not keeping as a gift.  All has ended well,\n   and I am happy to say I am going to be married to the young\n   man who has courted me for some time--Sergeant Troy, of\n   the 11th Dragoon Guards, now quartered in this town.  He\n   would, I know, object to my having received anything except\n   as a loan, being a man of great respectability and high\n   honour--indeed, a nobleman by blood.\n\n   I should be much obliged to you if you would keep the\n   contents of this letter a secret for the present, dear\n   friend.  We mean to surprise Weatherbury by coming there\n   soon as husband and wife, though I blush to state it to one\n   nearly a stranger.  The sergeant grew up in Weatherbury.\n   Thanking you again for your kindness,\n\n            I am, your sincere well-wisher,\n                     FANNY ROBIN.\n\n\n\"Have you read it, Mr. Boldwood?\" said Gabriel; \"if not, you had\nbetter do so.  I know you are interested in Fanny Robin.\"\n\nBoldwood read the letter and looked grieved.\n\n\"Fanny--poor Fanny! the end she is so confident of has not yet\ncome, she should remember--and may never come.  I see she gives no\naddress.\"\n\n\"What sort of a man is this Sergeant Troy?\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"H'm--I'm afraid not one to build much hope upon in such a case as\nthis,\" the farmer murmured, \"though he's a clever fellow, and up to\neverything.  A slight romance attaches to him, too.  His mother was\na French governess, and it seems that a secret attachment existed\nbetween her and the late Lord Severn.  She was married to a poor\nmedical man, and soon after an infant was born; and while money was\nforthcoming all went on well.  Unfortunately for her boy, his best\nfriends died; and he got then a situation as second clerk at a\nlawyer's in Casterbridge.  He stayed there for some time, and might\nhave worked himself into a dignified position of some sort had he not\nindulged in the wild freak of enlisting.  I have much doubt if ever\nlittle Fanny will surprise us in the way she mentions--very much\ndoubt. A silly girl!--silly girl!\"\n\nThe door was hurriedly burst open again, and in came running Cainy\nBall out of breath, his mouth red and open, like the bell of a penny\ntrumpet, from which he coughed with noisy vigour and great distension\nof face.\n\n\"Now, Cain Ball,\" said Oak, sternly, \"why will you run so fast and\nlose your breath so?  I'm always telling you of it.\"\n\n\"Oh--I--a puff of mee breath--went--the--wrong way, please, Mister\nOak, and made me cough--hok--hok!\"\n\n\"Well--what have you come for?\"\n\n\"I've run to tell ye,\" said the junior shepherd, supporting his\nexhausted youthful frame against the doorpost, \"that you must come\ndirectly.  Two more ewes have twinned--that's what's the matter,\nShepherd Oak.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's it,\" said Oak, jumping up, and dimissing for the present\nhis thoughts on poor Fanny.  \"You are a good boy to run and tell me,\nCain, and you shall smell a large plum pudding some day as a treat.\nBut, before we go, Cainy, bring the tarpot, and we'll mark this lot\nand have done with 'em.\"\n\nOak took from his illimitable pockets a marking iron, dipped it\ninto the pot, and imprinted on the buttocks of the infant sheep the\ninitials of her he delighted to muse on--\"B. E.,\" which signified to\nall the region round that henceforth the lambs belonged to Farmer\nBathsheba Everdene, and to no one else.\n\n\"Now, Cainy, shoulder your two, and off. Good morning, Mr. Boldwood.\"\nThe shepherd lifted the sixteen large legs and four small bodies he\nhad himself brought, and vanished with them in the direction of the\nlambing field hard by--their frames being now in a sleek and hopeful\nstate, pleasantly contrasting with their death's-door plight of half\nan hour before.\n\nBoldwood followed him a little way up the field, hesitated, and\nturned back.  He followed him again with a last resolve, annihilating\nreturn.  On approaching the nook in which the fold was constructed,\nthe farmer drew out his pocket-book, unfastened it, and allowed it to\nlie open on his hand.  A letter was revealed--Bathsheba's.\n\n\"I was going to ask you, Oak,\" he said, with unreal carelessness, \"if\nyou know whose writing this is?\"\n\nOak glanced into the book, and replied instantly, with a flushed\nface, \"Miss Everdene's.\"\n\nOak had coloured simply at the consciousness of sounding her name.\nHe now felt a strangely distressing qualm from a new thought.  The\nletter could of course be no other than anonymous, or the inquiry\nwould not have been necessary.\n\nBoldwood mistook his confusion: sensitive persons are always ready\nwith their \"Is it I?\" in preference to objective reasoning.\n\n\"The question was perfectly fair,\" he returned--and there was\nsomething incongruous in the serious earnestness with which he\napplied himself to an argument on a valentine.  \"You know it is\nalways expected that privy inquiries will be made: that's where\nthe--fun lies.\"  If the word \"fun\" had been \"torture,\" it could not\nhave been uttered with a more constrained and restless countenance\nthan was Boldwood's then.\n\nSoon parting from Gabriel, the lonely and reserved man returned to\nhis house to breakfast--feeling twinges of shame and regret at having\nso far exposed his mood by those fevered questions to a stranger.  He\nagain placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of\nthe circumstances attending it by the light of Gabriel's information.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS'\n\n\nOn a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of\nwomen and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of a church\ncalled All Saints', in the distant barrack-town before-mentioned, at\nthe end of a service without a sermon.  They were about to disperse,\nwhen a smart footstep, entering the porch and coming up the central\npassage, arrested their attention.  The step echoed with a ring\nunusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs.  Everybody looked.  A\nyoung cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the three chevrons of a\nsergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the aisle, with an embarrassment\nwhich was only the more marked by the intense vigour of his step, and\nby the determination upon his face to show none.  A slight flush had\nmounted his cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between these\nwomen; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never paused till\nhe came close to the altar railing.  Here for a moment he stood\nalone.\n\nThe officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice,\nperceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion-space.  He\nwhispered to the soldier, and then beckoned to the clerk, who in his\nturn whispered to an elderly woman, apparently his wife, and they\nalso went up the chancel steps.\n\n\"'Tis a wedding!\" murmured some of the women, brightening.  \"Let's\nwait!\"\n\nThe majority again sat down.\n\nThere was a creaking of machinery behind, and some of the young ones\nturned their heads.  From the interior face of the west wall of the\ntower projected a little canopy with a quarter-jack and small bell\nbeneath it, the automaton being driven by the same clock machinery\nthat struck the large bell in the tower.  Between the tower and the\nchurch was a close screen, the door of which was kept shut during\nservices, hiding this grotesque clockwork from sight.  At present,\nhowever, the door was open, and the egress of the jack, the blows on\nthe bell, and the mannikin's retreat into the nook again, were\nvisible to many, and audible throughout the church.\n\nThe jack had struck half-past eleven.\n\n\"Where's the woman?\" whispered some of the spectators.\n\nThe young sergeant stood still with the abnormal rigidity of the old\npillars around.  He faced the south-east, and was as silent as he was\nstill.\n\nThe silence grew to be a noticeable thing as the minutes went on,\nand nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved.  The rattle of the\nquarter-jack again from its niche, its blows for three-quarters, its\nfussy retreat, were almost painfully abrupt, and caused many of the\ncongregation to start palpably.\n\n\"I wonder where the woman is!\" a voice whispered again.\n\nThere began now that slight shifting of feet, that artificial\ncoughing among several, which betrays a nervous suspense.  At length\nthere was a titter.  But the soldier never moved.  There he stood,\nhis face to the south-east, upright as a column, his cap in his hand.\n\nThe clock ticked on.  The women threw off their nervousness, and\ntitters and giggling became more frequent.  Then came a dead silence.\nEvery one was waiting for the end.  Some persons may have noticed how\nextraordinarily the striking of quarters seems to quicken the flight\nof time.  It was hardly credible that the jack had not got wrong with\nthe minutes when the rattle began again, the puppet emerged, and the\nfour quarters were struck fitfully as before.  One could almost be\npositive that there was a malicious leer upon the hideous creature's\nface, and a mischievous delight in its twitchings.  Then followed the\ndull and remote resonance of the twelve heavy strokes in the tower\nabove.  The women were impressed, and there was no giggle this time.\n\nThe clergyman glided into the vestry, and the clerk vanished.  The\nsergeant had not yet turned; every woman in the church was waiting to\nsee his face, and he appeared to know it.  At last he did turn, and\nstalked resolutely down the nave, braving them all, with a compressed\nlip.  Two bowed and toothless old almsmen then looked at each other\nand chuckled, innocently enough; but the sound had a strange weird\neffect in that place.\n\nOpposite to the church was a paved square, around which several\noverhanging wood buildings of old time cast a picturesque shade.  The\nyoung man on leaving the door went to cross the square, when, in the\nmiddle, he met a little woman.  The expression of her face, which had\nbeen one of intense anxiety, sank at the sight of his nearly to\nterror.\n\n\"Well?\" he said, in a suppressed passion, fixedly looking at her.\n\n\"Oh, Frank--I made a mistake!--I thought that church with the spire\nwas All Saints', and I was at the door at half-past eleven to a\nminute as you said.  I waited till a quarter to twelve, and found\nthen that I was in All Souls'.  But I wasn't much frightened, for\nI thought it could be to-morrow as well.\"\n\n\"You fool, for so fooling me!  But say no more.\"\n\n\"Shall it be to-morrow, Frank?\" she asked blankly.\n\n\"To-morrow!\" and he gave vent to a hoarse laugh.  \"I don't go through\nthat experience again for some time, I warrant you!\"\n\n\"But after all,\" she expostulated in a trembling voice, \"the mistake\nwas not such a terrible thing!  Now, dear Frank, when shall it be?\"\n\n\"Ah, when?  God knows!\" he said, with a light irony, and turning from\nher walked rapidly away.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIN THE MARKET-PLACE\n\n\nOn Saturday Boldwood was in Casterbridge market house as usual, when\nthe disturber of his dreams entered and became visible to him.  Adam\nhad awakened from his deep sleep, and behold! there was Eve.  The\nfarmer took courage, and for the first time really looked at her.\n\nMaterial causes and emotional effects are not to be arranged in\nregular equation.  The result from capital employed in the production\nof any movement of a mental nature is sometimes as tremendous as the\ncause itself is absurdly minute.  When women are in a freakish mood,\ntheir usual intuition, either from carelessness or inherent defect,\nseemingly fails to teach them this, and hence it was that Bathsheba\nwas fated to be astonished to-day.\n\nBoldwood looked at her--not slily, critically, or understandingly,\nbut blankly at gaze, in the way a reaper looks up at a passing\ntrain--as something foreign to his element, and but dimly understood.\nTo Boldwood women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary\ncomplements--comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and\npermanence, that whether their orbits were as geometrical,\nunchangeable, and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely\nerratic as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty\nto consider.\n\nHe saw her black hair, her correct facial curves and profile, and\nthe roundness of her chin and throat.  He saw then the side of her\neyelids, eyes, and lashes, and the shape of her ear.  Next he noticed\nher figure, her skirt, and the very soles of her shoes.\n\nBoldwood thought her beautiful, but wondered whether he was right in\nhis thought, for it seemed impossible that this romance in the flesh,\nif so sweet as he imagined, could have been going on long without\ncreating a commotion of delight among men, and provoking more inquiry\nthan Bathsheba had done, even though that was not a little.  To the\nbest of his judgement neither nature nor art could improve this\nperfect one of an imperfect many.  His heart began to move within\nhim.  Boldwood, it must be remembered, though forty years of age, had\nnever before inspected a woman with the very centre and force of his\nglance; they had struck upon all his senses at wide angles.\n\nWas she really beautiful?  He could not assure himself that his\nopinion was true even now.  He furtively said to a neighbour, \"Is\nMiss Everdene considered handsome?\"\n\n\"Oh yes; she was a good deal noticed the first time she came, if you\nremember.  A very handsome girl indeed.\"\n\nA man is never more credulous than in receiving favourable opinions\non the beauty of a woman he is half, or quite, in love with; a mere\nchild's word on the point has the weight of an R.A.'s.  Boldwood was\nsatisfied now.\n\nAnd this charming woman had in effect said to him, \"Marry me.\"  Why\nshould she have done that strange thing?  Boldwood's blindness to\nthe difference between approving of what circumstances suggest, and\noriginating what they do not suggest, was well matched by Bathsheba's\ninsensibility to the possibly great issues of little beginnings.\n\nShe was at this moment coolly dealing with a dashing young farmer,\nadding up accounts with him as indifferently as if his face had been\nthe pages of a ledger.  It was evident that such a nature as his had\nno attraction for a woman of Bathsheba's taste.  But Boldwood grew\nhot down to his hands with an incipient jealousy; he trod for the\nfirst time the threshold of \"the injured lover's hell.\"  His first\nimpulse was to go and thrust himself between them.  This could be\ndone, but only in one way--by asking to see a sample of her corn.\nBoldwood renounced the idea.  He could not make the request; it was\ndebasing loveliness to ask it to buy and sell, and jarred with his\nconceptions of her.\n\nAll this time Bathsheba was conscious of having broken into that\ndignified stronghold at last.  His eyes, she knew, were following her\neverywhere.  This was a triumph; and had it come naturally, such a\ntriumph would have been the sweeter to her for this piquing delay.\nBut it had been brought about by misdirected ingenuity, and she\nvalued it only as she valued an artificial flower or a wax fruit.\n\nBeing a woman with some good sense in reasoning on subjects wherein\nher heart was not involved, Bathsheba genuinely repented that a freak\nwhich had owed its existence as much to Liddy as to herself, should\never have been undertaken, to disturb the placidity of a man she\nrespected too highly to deliberately tease.\n\nShe that day nearly formed the intention of begging his pardon on\nthe very next occasion of their meeting.  The worst features of this\narrangement were that, if he thought she ridiculed him, an apology\nwould increase the offence by being disbelieved; and if he thought\nshe wanted him to woo her, it would read like additional evidence of\nher forwardness.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBOLDWOOD IN MEDITATION--REGRET\n\n\nBoldwood was tenant of what was called Little Weatherbury Farm, and\nhis person was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter\nquarter of the parish could boast of.  Genteel strangers, whose god\nwas their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this\nnook for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see\ngood society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very\nleast, but it was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the day.  They\nheard the sound of wheels yet once more, and were re-animated to\nexpectancy: it was only Mr. Boldwood coming home again.\n\nHis house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are\nto a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lower\nportions being lost amid bushes of laurel.  Inside the blue door,\nopen half-way down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails\nof half-a-dozen warm and contented horses standing in their stalls;\nand as thus viewed, they presented alternations of roan and bay,\nin shapes like a Moorish arch, the tail being a streak down the\nmidst of each.  Over these, and lost to the eye gazing in from the\nouter light, the mouths of the same animals could be heard busily\nsustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness by quantities of oats\nand hay.  The restless and shadowy figure of a colt wandered about a\nloose-box at the end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters was\noccasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a\nfoot.\n\nPacing up and down at the heels of the animals was Farmer Boldwood\nhimself.  This place was his almonry and cloister in one: here, after\nlooking to the feeding of his four-footed dependants, the celibate\nwould walk and meditate of an evening till the moon's rays streamed\nin through the cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped the\nscene.\n\nHis square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in the\ncrowd and bustle of the market-house.  In this meditative walk his\nfoot met the floor with heel and toe simultaneously, and his fine\nreddish-fleshed face was bent downwards just enough to render obscure\nthe still mouth and the well-rounded though rather prominent and\nbroad chin.  A few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were the\nonly interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his large\nforehead.\n\nThe phases of Boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his was not\nan ordinary nature.  That stillness, which struck casual observers\nmore than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed so\nprecisely like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfect\nbalance of enormous antagonistic forces--positives and negatives in\nfine adjustment.  His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at\nonce.  If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feeling\nnot mastering him was entirely latent.  Stagnant or rapid, it was\nnever slow.  He was always hit mortally, or he was missed.\n\nHe had no light and careless touches in his constitution, either\nfor good or for evil.  Stern in the outlines of action, mild in the\ndetails, he was serious throughout all.  He saw no absurd sides to\nthe follies of life, and thus, though not quite companionable in the\neyes of merry men and scoffers, and those to whom all things show\nlife as a jest, he was not intolerable to the earnest and those\nacquainted with grief.  Being a man who read all the dramas of life\nseriously, if he failed to please when they were comedies, there was\nno frivolous treatment to reproach him for when they chanced to end\ntragically.\n\nBathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon\nwhich she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic\nintensity.  Had she known Boldwood's moods, her blame would have\nbeen fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable.  Moreover,\nhad she known her present power for good or evil over this man, she\nwould have trembled at her responsibility.  Luckily for her present,\nunluckily for her future tranquillity, her understanding had not yet\ntold her what Boldwood was.  Nobody knew entirely; for though it was\npossible to form guesses concerning his wild capabilities from old\nfloodmarks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides\nwhich caused them.\n\nFarmer Boldwood came to the stable-door and looked forth across the\nlevel fields.  Beyond the first enclosure was a hedge, and on the\nother side of this a meadow belonging to Bathsheba's farm.\n\nIt was now early spring--the time of going to grass with the sheep,\nwhen they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laid\nup for mowing.  The wind, which had been blowing east for several\nweeks, had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come\nabruptly--almost without a beginning.  It was that period in the\nvernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the\nseason.  The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to\nrise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless\nplantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the\nbond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united\nthrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the\npowerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy\nefforts.\n\nBoldwood, looking into the distant meadows, saw there three figures.\nThey were those of Miss Everdene, Shepherd Oak, and Cainy Ball.\n\nWhen Bathsheba's figure shone upon the farmer's eyes it lighted him\nup as the moon lights up a great tower.  A man's body is as the\nshell, or the tablet, of his soul, as he is reserved or ingenuous,\noverflowing or self-contained.  There was a change in Boldwood's\nexterior from its former impassibleness; and his face showed that he\nwas now living outside his defences for the first time, and with a\nfearful sense of exposure.  It is the usual experience of strong\nnatures when they love.\n\nAt last he arrived at a conclusion.  It was to go across and inquire\nboldly of her.\n\nThe insulation of his heart by reserve during these many years,\nwithout a channel of any kind for disposable emotion, had worked its\neffect.  It has been observed more than once that the causes of love\nare chiefly subjective, and Boldwood was a living testimony to the\ntruth of the proposition.  No mother existed to absorb his devotion,\nno sister for his tenderness, no idle ties for sense.  He became\nsurcharged with the compound, which was genuine lover's love.\n\nHe approached the gate of the meadow.  Beyond it the ground was\nmelodious with ripples, and the sky with larks; the low bleating of\nthe flock mingling with both.  Mistress and man were engaged in the\noperation of making a lamb \"take,\" which is performed whenever an ewe\nhas lost her own offspring, one of the twins of another ewe being\ngiven her as a substitute.  Gabriel had skinned the dead lamb, and\nwas tying the skin over the body of the live lamb, in the customary\nmanner, whilst Bathsheba was holding open a little pen of four\nhurdles, into which the Mother and foisted lamb were driven, where\nthey would remain till the old sheep conceived an affection for the\nyoung one.\n\nBathsheba looked up at the completion of the manoeuvre and saw the\nfarmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a willow tree in full\nbloom.  Gabriel, to whom her face was as the uncertain glory of an\nApril day, was ever regardful of its faintest changes, and instantly\ndiscerned thereon the mark of some influence from without, in the\nform of a keenly self-conscious reddening.  He also turned and beheld\nBoldwood.\n\nAt once connecting these signs with the letter Boldwood had shown\nhim, Gabriel suspected her of some coquettish procedure begun by that\nmeans, and carried on since, he knew not how.\n\nFarmer Boldwood had read the pantomime denoting that they were aware\nof his presence, and the perception was as too much light turned upon\nhis new sensibility.  He was still in the road, and by moving on he\nhoped that neither would recognize that he had originally intended\nto enter the field.  He passed by with an utter and overwhelming\nsensation of ignorance, shyness, and doubt.  Perhaps in her manner\nthere were signs that she wished to see him--perhaps not--he could\nnot read a woman.  The cabala of this erotic philosophy seemed to\nconsist of the subtlest meanings expressed in misleading ways.  Every\nturn, look, word, and accent contained a mystery quite distinct from\nits obvious import, and not one had ever been pondered by him until\nnow.\n\nAs for Bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that Farmer\nBoldwood had walked by on business or in idleness.  She collected\nthe probabilities of the case, and concluded that she was herself\nresponsible for Boldwood's appearance there.  It troubled her much\nto see what a great flame a little wildfire was likely to kindle.\nBathsheba was no schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately a\ntrifler with the affections of men, and a censor's experience on\nseeing an actual flirt after observing her would have been a feeling\nof surprise that Bathsheba could be so different from such a one,\nand yet so like what a flirt is supposed to be.\n\nShe resolved never again, by look or by sign, to interrupt the steady\nflow of this man's life.  But a resolution to avoid an evil is\nseldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance\nimpossible.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE SHEEP-WASHING--THE OFFER\n\n\nBoldwood did eventually call upon her.  She was not at home.  \"Of\ncourse not,\" he murmured.  In contemplating Bathsheba as a woman, he\nhad forgotten the accidents of her position as an agriculturist--that\nbeing as much of a farmer, and as extensive a farmer, as himself,\nher probable whereabouts was out-of-doors at this time of the year.\nThis, and the other oversights Boldwood was guilty of, were natural\nto the mood, and still more natural to the circumstances.  The\ngreat aids to idealization in love were present here: occasional\nobservation of her from a distance, and the absence of social\nintercourse with her--visual familiarity, oral strangeness.  The\nsmaller human elements were kept out of sight; the pettinesses that\nenter so largely into all earthly living and doing were disguised by\nthe accident of lover and loved-one not being on visiting terms; and\nthere was hardly awakened a thought in Boldwood that sorry household\nrealities appertained to her, or that she, like all others, had\nmoments of commonplace, when to be least plainly seen was to be most\nprettily remembered.  Thus a mild sort of apotheosis took place\nin his fancy, whilst she still lived and breathed within his own\nhorizon, a troubled creature like himself.\n\nIt was the end of May when the farmer determined to be no longer\nrepulsed by trivialities or distracted by suspense.  He had by this\ntime grown used to being in love; the passion now startled him less\neven when it tortured him more, and he felt himself adequate to the\nsituation.  On inquiring for her at her house they had told him she\nwas at the sheep-washing, and he went off to seek her there.\n\nThe sheep-washing pool was a perfectly circular basin of brickwork in\nthe meadows, full of the clearest water.  To birds on the wing its\nglassy surface, reflecting the light sky, must have been visible for\nmiles around as a glistening Cyclops' eye in a green face.  The grass\nabout the margin at this season was a sight to remember long--in a\nminor sort of way.  Its activity in sucking the moisture from the\nrich damp sod was almost a process observable by the eye.  The\noutskirts of this level water-meadow were diversified by rounded and\nhollow pastures, where just now every flower that was not a buttercup\nwas a daisy.  The river slid along noiselessly as a shade, the\nswelling reeds and sedge forming a flexible palisade upon its moist\nbrink.  To the north of the mead were trees, the leaves of which\nwere new, soft, and moist, not yet having stiffened and darkened\nunder summer sun and drought, their colour being yellow beside a\ngreen--green beside a yellow.  From the recesses of this knot of\nfoliage the loud notes of three cuckoos were resounding through the\nstill air.\n\nBoldwood went meditating down the slopes with his eyes on his boots,\nwhich the yellow pollen from the buttercups had bronzed in artistic\ngradations.  A tributary of the main stream flowed through the\nbasin of the pool by an inlet and outlet at opposite points of its\ndiameter.  Shepherd Oak, Jan Coggan, Moon, Poorgrass, Cain Ball,\nand several others were assembled here, all dripping wet to the\nvery roots of their hair, and Bathsheba was standing by in a new\nriding-habit--the most elegant she had ever worn--the reins of her\nhorse being looped over her arm.  Flagons of cider were rolling about\nupon the green.  The meek sheep were pushed into the pool by Coggan\nand Matthew Moon, who stood by the lower hatch, immersed to their\nwaists; then Gabriel, who stood on the brink, thrust them under as\nthey swam along, with an instrument like a crutch, formed for the\npurpose, and also for assisting the exhausted animals when the wool\nbecame saturated and they began to sink.  They were let out against\nthe stream, and through the upper opening, all impurities flowing\naway below.  Cainy Ball and Joseph, who performed this latter\noperation, were if possible wetter than the rest; they resembled\ndolphins under a fountain, every protuberance and angle of their\nclothes dribbling forth a small rill.\n\nBoldwood came close and bade her good morning, with such constraint\nthat she could not but think he had stepped across to the washing for\nits own sake, hoping not to find her there; more, she fancied his\nbrow severe and his eye slighting.  Bathsheba immediately contrived\nto withdraw, and glided along by the river till she was a stone's\nthrow off.  She heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a\nconsciousness that love was encircling her like a perfume.  Instead\nof turning or waiting, Bathsheba went further among the high sedges,\nbut Boldwood seemed determined, and pressed on till they were\ncompletely past the bend of the river. Here, without being seen,\nthey could hear the splashing and shouts of the washers above.\n\n\"Miss Everdene!\" said the farmer.\n\nShe trembled, turned, and said \"Good morning.\"  His tone was so\nutterly removed from all she had expected as a beginning.  It was\nlowness and quiet accentuated: an emphasis of deep meanings, their\nform, at the same time, being scarcely expressed.  Silence has\nsometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied\nsoul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more\nimpressive than speech.  In the same way, to say a little is often to\ntell more than to say a great deal.  Boldwood told everything in that\nword.\n\nAs the consciousness expands on learning that what was fancied to\nbe the rumble of wheels is the reverberation of thunder, so did\nBathsheba's at her intuitive conviction.\n\n\"I feel--almost too much--to think,\" he said, with a solemn\nsimplicity.  \"I have come to speak to you without preface.  My life\nis not my own since I have beheld you clearly, Miss Everdene--I come\nto make you an offer of marriage.\"\n\nBathsheba tried to preserve an absolutely neutral countenance, and\nall the motion she made was that of closing lips which had previously\nbeen a little parted.\n\n\"I am now forty-one years old,\" he went on.  \"I may have been called\na confirmed bachelor, and I was a confirmed bachelor.  I had never\nany views of myself as a husband in my earlier days, nor have I made\nany calculation on the subject since I have been older.  But we all\nchange, and my change, in this matter, came with seeing you.  I have\nfelt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in\nevery respect.  Beyond all things, I want you as my wife.\"\n\n\"I feel, Mr. Boldwood, that though I respect you much, I do not\nfeel--what would justify me to--in accepting your offer,\" she\nstammered.\n\nThis giving back of dignity for dignity seemed to open the sluices of\nfeeling that Boldwood had as yet kept closed.\n\n\"My life is a burden without you,\" he exclaimed, in a low voice.  \"I\nwant you--I want you to let me say I love you again and again!\"\n\nBathsheba answered nothing, and the horse upon her arm seemed so\nimpressed that instead of cropping the herbage she looked up.\n\n\"I think and hope you care enough for me to listen to what I have to\ntell!\"\n\nBathsheba's momentary impulse at hearing this was to ask why he\nthought that, till she remembered that, far from being a conceited\nassumption on Boldwood's part, it was but the natural conclusion of\nserious reflection based on deceptive premises of her own offering.\n\n\"I wish I could say courteous flatteries to you,\" the farmer\ncontinued in an easier tone, \"and put my rugged feeling into a\ngraceful shape: but I have neither power nor patience to learn such\nthings.  I want you for my wife--so wildly that no other feeling can\nabide in me; but I should not have spoken out had I not been led to\nhope.\"\n\n\"The valentine again!  O that valentine!\" she said to herself, but\nnot a word to him.\n\n\"If you can love me say so, Miss Everdene.  If not--don't say no!\"\n\n\"Mr. Boldwood, it is painful to have to say I am surprised, so that\nI don't know how to answer you with propriety and respect--but am\nonly just able to speak out my feeling--I mean my meaning; that I am\nafraid I can't marry you, much as I respect you.  You are too\ndignified for me to suit you, sir.\"\n\n\"But, Miss Everdene!\"\n\n\"I--I didn't--I know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that\nvalentine--forgive me, sir--it was a wanton thing which no woman with\nany self-respect should have done.  If you will only pardon my\nthoughtlessness, I promise never to--\"\n\n\"No, no, no.  Don't say thoughtlessness!  Make me think it was\nsomething more--that it was a sort of prophetic instinct--the\nbeginning of a feeling that you would like me.  You torture me to say\nit was done in thoughtlessness--I never thought of it in that light,\nand I can't endure it. Ah!  I wish I knew how to win you! but that I\ncan't do--I can only ask if I have already got you.  If I have not,\nand it is not true that you have come unwittingly to me as I have to\nyou, I can say no more.\"\n\n\"I have not fallen in love with you, Mr. Boldwood--certainly I must\nsay that.\"  She allowed a very small smile to creep for the first\ntime over her serious face in saying this, and the white row of upper\nteeth, and keenly-cut lips already noticed, suggested an idea of\nheartlessness, which was immediately contradicted by the pleasant\neyes.\n\n\"But you will just think--in kindness and condescension think--if you\ncannot bear with me as a husband!  I fear I am too old for you, but\nbelieve me I will take more care of you than would many a man of your\nown age.  I will protect and cherish you with all my strength--I will\nindeed!  You shall have no cares--be worried by no household affairs,\nand live quite at ease, Miss Everdene.  The dairy superintendence\nshall be done by a man--I can afford it well--you shall never have\nso much as to look out of doors at haymaking time, or to think of\nweather in the harvest.  I rather cling to the chaise, because it is\nthe same my poor father and mother drove, but if you don't like it\nI will sell it, and you shall have a pony-carriage of your own.  I\ncannot say how far above every other idea and object on earth you\nseem to me--nobody knows--God only knows--how much you are to me!\"\n\nBathsheba's heart was young, and it swelled with sympathy for the\ndeep-natured man who spoke so simply.\n\n\"Don't say it! don't!  I cannot bear you to feel so much, and me to\nfeel nothing.  And I am afraid they will notice us, Mr. Boldwood.\nWill you let the matter rest now?  I cannot think collectedly.  I did\nnot know you were going to say this to me.  Oh, I am wicked to have\nmade you suffer so!\"  She was frightened as well as agitated at his\nvehemence.\n\n\"Say then, that you don't absolutely refuse.  Do not quite refuse?\"\n\n\"I can do nothing.  I cannot answer.\"\n\n\"I may speak to you again on the subject?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I may think of you?\"\n\n\"Yes, I suppose you may think of me.\"\n\n\"And hope to obtain you?\"\n\n\"No--do not hope!  Let us go on.\"\n\n\"I will call upon you again to-morrow.\"\n\n\"No--please not.  Give me time.\"\n\n\"Yes--I will give you any time,\" he said earnestly and gratefully.\n\"I am happier now.\"\n\n\"No--I beg you!  Don't be happier if happiness only comes from my\nagreeing.  Be neutral, Mr. Boldwood!  I must think.\"\n\n\"I will wait,\" he said.\n\nAnd then she turned away.  Boldwood dropped his gaze to the ground,\nand stood long like a man who did not know where he was.  Realities\nthen returned upon him like the pain of a wound received in an\nexcitement which eclipses it, and he, too, then went on.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPERPLEXITY--GRINDING THE SHEARS--A QUARREL\n\n\n\"He is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that I can desire,\"\nBathsheba mused.\n\nYet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind,\ndid not exercise kindness, here.  The rarest offerings of the purest\nloves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all.\n\nBathsheba, not being the least in love with him, was eventually able\nto look calmly at his offer.  It was one which many women of her own\nstation in the neighbourhood, and not a few of higher rank, would\nhave been wild to accept and proud to publish.  In every point of\nview, ranging from politic to passionate, it was desirable that she,\na lonely girl, should marry, and marry this earnest, well-to-do,\nand respected man.  He was close to her doors: his standing was\nsufficient: his qualities were even supererogatory.  Had she felt,\nwhich she did not, any wish whatever for the married state in the\nabstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him, being a woman\nwho frequently appealed to her understanding for deliverance from\nher whims.  Boldwood as a means to marriage was unexceptionable: she\nesteemed and liked him, yet she did not want him.  It appears that\nordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without\nmarriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage\nis not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the\nmethod is the same on both sides.  But the understood incentive on\nthe woman's part was wanting here.  Besides, Bathsheba's position\nas absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the\nnovelty had not yet begun to wear off.\n\nBut a disquiet filled her which was somewhat to her credit, for it\nwould have affected few.  Beyond the mentioned reasons with which\nshe combated her objections, she had a strong feeling that, having\nbeen the one who began the game, she ought in honesty to accept the\nconsequences.  Still the reluctance remained.  She said in the same\nbreath that it would be ungenerous not to marry Boldwood, and that\nshe couldn't do it to save her life.\n\nBathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect.  An\nElizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit, she often performed\nactions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion.\nMany of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always\nremained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but,\nunfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into\ndeeds.\n\nThe next day to that of the declaration she found Gabriel Oak at the\nbottom of her garden, grinding his shears for the sheep-shearing.\nAll the surrounding cottages were more or less scenes of the same\noperation; the scurr of whetting spread into the sky from all parts\nof the village as from an armoury previous to a campaign.  Peace and\nwar kiss each other at their hours of preparation--sickles, scythes,\nshears, and pruning-hooks, ranking with swords, bayonets, and lances,\nin their common necessity for point and edge.\n\nCainy Ball turned the handle of Gabriel's grindstone, his head\nperforming a melancholy see-saw up and down with each turn of the\nwheel.  Oak stood somewhat as Eros is represented when in the act of\nsharpening his arrows: his figure slightly bent, the weight of his\nbody thrown over on the shears, and his head balanced side-ways, with\na critical compression of the lips and contraction of the eyelids to\ncrown the attitude.\n\nHis mistress came up and looked upon them in silence for a minute or\ntwo; then she said--\n\n\"Cain, go to the lower mead and catch the bay mare.  I'll turn the\nwinch of the grindstone.  I want to speak to you, Gabriel.\"\n\nCain departed, and Bathsheba took the handle.  Gabriel had glanced up\nin intense surprise, quelled its expression, and looked down again.\nBathsheba turned the winch, and Gabriel applied the shears.\n\nThe peculiar motion involved in turning a wheel has a wonderful\ntendency to benumb the mind.  It is a sort of attenuated variety of\nIxion's punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history\nof gaols.  The brain gets muddled, the head grows heavy, and the\nbody's centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump\nsomewhere between the eyebrows and the crown.  Bathsheba felt the\nunpleasant symptoms after two or three dozen turns.\n\n\"Will you turn, Gabriel, and let me hold the shears?\" she said.  \"My\nhead is in a whirl, and I can't talk.\"\n\nGabriel turned.  Bathsheba then began, with some awkwardness,\nallowing her thoughts to stray occasionally from her story to attend\nto the shears, which required a little nicety in sharpening.\n\n\"I wanted to ask you if the men made any observations on my going\nbehind the sedge with Mr. Boldwood yesterday?\"\n\n\"Yes, they did,\" said Gabriel.  \"You don't hold the shears right,\nmiss--I knew you wouldn't know the way--hold like this.\"\n\nHe relinquished the winch, and inclosing her two hands completely in\nhis own (taking each as we sometimes slap a child's hand in teaching\nhim to write), grasped the shears with her.  \"Incline the edge so,\"\nhe said.\n\nHands and shears were inclined to suit the words, and held thus for a\npeculiarly long time by the instructor as he spoke.\n\n\"That will do,\" exclaimed Bathsheba.  \"Loose my hands.  I won't have\nthem held!  Turn the winch.\"\n\nGabriel freed her hands quietly, retired to his handle, and the\ngrinding went on.\n\n\"Did the men think it odd?\" she said again.\n\n\"Odd was not the idea, miss.\"\n\n\"What did they say?\"\n\n\"That Farmer Boldwood's name and your own were likely to be flung\nover pulpit together before the year was out.\"\n\n\"I thought so by the look of them!  Why, there's nothing in it.  A\nmore foolish remark was never made, and I want you to contradict it!\nthat's what I came for.\"\n\nGabriel looked incredulous and sad, but between his moments of\nincredulity, relieved.\n\n\"They must have heard our conversation,\" she continued.\n\n\"Well, then, Bathsheba!\" said Oak, stopping the handle, and gazing\ninto her face with astonishment.\n\n\"Miss Everdene, you mean,\" she said, with dignity.\n\n\"I mean this, that if Mr. Boldwood really spoke of marriage, I bain't\ngoing to tell a story and say he didn't to please you.  I have\nalready tried to please you too much for my own good!\"\n\nBathsheba regarded him with round-eyed perplexity.  She did not know\nwhether to pity him for disappointed love of her, or to be angry with\nhim for having got over it--his tone being ambiguous.\n\n\"I said I wanted you just to mention that it was not true I was going\nto be married to him,\" she murmured, with a slight decline in her\nassurance.\n\n\"I can say that to them if you wish, Miss Everdene.  And I could\nlikewise give an opinion to 'ee on what you have done.\"\n\n\"I daresay.  But I don't want your opinion.\"\n\n\"I suppose not,\" said Gabriel bitterly, and going on with his\nturning, his words rising and falling in a regular swell and cadence\nas he stooped or rose with the winch, which directed them, according\nto his position, perpendicularly into the earth, or horizontally\nalong the garden, his eyes being fixed on a leaf upon the ground.\n\nWith Bathsheba a hastened act was a rash act; but, as does not always\nhappen, time gained was prudence insured.  It must be added, however,\nthat time was very seldom gained.  At this period the single opinion\nin the parish on herself and her doings that she valued as sounder\nthan her own was Gabriel Oak's.  And the outspoken honesty of his\ncharacter was such that on any subject, even that of her love for,\nor marriage with, another man, the same disinterestedness of opinion\nmight be calculated on, and be had for the asking.  Thoroughly\nconvinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve\nconstrained him not to injure that of another.  This is a lover's\nmost stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin.\nKnowing he would reply truly she asked the question, painful as\nshe must have known the subject would be.  Such is the selfishness\nof some charming women.  Perhaps it was some excuse for her thus\ntorturing honesty to her own advantage, that she had absolutely no\nother sound judgment within easy reach.\n\n\"Well, what is your opinion of my conduct,\" she said, quietly.\n\n\"That it is unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman.\"\n\nIn an instant Bathsheba's face coloured with the angry crimson of\na Danby sunset.  But she forbore to utter this feeling, and the\nreticence of her tongue only made the loquacity of her face the more\nnoticeable.\n\nThe next thing Gabriel did was to make a mistake.\n\n\"Perhaps you don't like the rudeness of my reprimanding you, for I\nknow it is rudeness; but I thought it would do good.\"\n\nShe instantly replied sarcastically--\n\n\"On the contrary, my opinion of you is so low, that I see in your\nabuse the praise of discerning people!\"\n\n\"I am glad you don't mind it, for I said it honestly and with every\nserious meaning.\"\n\n\"I see.  But, unfortunately, when you try not to speak in jest you\nare amusing--just as when you wish to avoid seriousness you sometimes\nsay a sensible word.\"\n\nIt was a hard hit, but Bathsheba had unmistakably lost her temper,\nand on that account Gabriel had never in his life kept his own\nbetter.  He said nothing.  She then broke out--\n\n\"I may ask, I suppose, where in particular my unworthiness lies?  In\nmy not marrying you, perhaps!\"\n\n\"Not by any means,\" said Gabriel quietly.  \"I have long given up\nthinking of that matter.\"\n\n\"Or wishing it, I suppose,\" she said; and it was apparent that she\nexpected an unhesitating denial of this supposition.\n\nWhatever Gabriel felt, he coolly echoed her words--\n\n\"Or wishing it either.\"\n\nA woman may be treated with a bitterness which is sweet to her,\nand with a rudeness which is not offensive.  Bathsheba would have\nsubmitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel\nprotested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity\nof passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and\nanathematizes--there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a\ntenderness in the strife.  This was what she had been expecting,\nand what she had not got.  To be lectured because the lecturer saw\nher in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was\nexasperating.  He had not finished, either.  He continued in a more\nagitated voice:--\n\n\"My opinion is (since you ask it) that you are greatly to blame for\nplaying pranks upon a man like Mr. Boldwood, merely as a pastime.\nLeading on a man you don't care for is not a praiseworthy action.\nAnd even, Miss Everdene, if you seriously inclined towards him, you\nmight have let him find it out in some way of true loving-kindness,\nand not by sending him a valentine's letter.\"\n\nBathsheba laid down the shears.\n\n\"I cannot allow any man to--to criticise my private conduct!\" she\nexclaimed.  \"Nor will I for a minute.  So you'll please leave the\nfarm at the end of the week!\"\n\nIt may have been a peculiarity--at any rate it was a fact--that when\nBathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthly sort her lower lip\ntrembled: when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one.\nHer nether lip quivered now.\n\n\"Very well, so I will,\" said Gabriel calmly.  He had been held to\nher by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking,\nrather than by a chain he could not break.  \"I should be even better\npleased to go at once,\" he added.\n\n\"Go at once then, in Heaven's name!\" said she, her eyes flashing at\nhis, though never meeting them.  \"Don't let me see your face any\nmore.\"\n\n\"Very well, Miss Everdene--so it shall be.\"\n\nAnd he took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity, as\nMoses left the presence of Pharaoh.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTROUBLES IN THE FOLD--A MESSAGE\n\n\nGabriel Oak had ceased to feed the Weatherbury flock for about\nfour-and-twenty hours, when on Sunday afternoon the elderly gentlemen\nJoseph Poorgrass, Matthew Moon, Fray, and half-a-dozen others, came\nrunning up to the house of the mistress of the Upper Farm.\n\n\"Whatever IS the matter, men?\" she said, meeting them at the door\njust as she was coming out on her way to church, and ceasing in a\nmoment from the close compression of her two red lips, with which\nshe had accompanied the exertion of pulling on a tight glove.\n\n\"Sixty!\" said Joseph Poorgrass.\n\n\"Seventy!\" said Moon.\n\n\"Fifty-nine!\" said Susan Tall's husband.\n\n\"--Sheep have broke fence,\" said Fray.\n\n\"--And got into a field of young clover,\" said Tall.\n\n\"--Young clover!\" said Moon.\n\n\"--Clover!\" said Joseph Poorgrass.\n\n\"And they be getting blasted,\" said Henery Fray.\n\n\"That they be,\" said Joseph.\n\n\"And will all die as dead as nits, if they bain't got out and cured!\"\nsaid Tall.\n\nJoseph's countenance was drawn into lines and puckers by his concern.\nFray's forehead was wrinkled both perpendicularly and crosswise,\nafter the pattern of a portcullis, expressive of a double despair.\nLaban Tall's lips were thin, and his face was rigid.  Matthew's jaws\nsank, and his eyes turned whichever way the strongest muscle happened\nto pull them.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Joseph, \"and I was sitting at home, looking for\nEphesians, and says I to myself, ''Tis nothing but Corinthians and\nThessalonians in this danged Testament,' when who should come in but\nHenery there: 'Joseph,' he said, 'the sheep have blasted\ntheirselves--'\"\n\nWith Bathsheba it was a moment when thought was speech and speech\nexclamation.  Moreover, she had hardly recovered her equanimity since\nthe disturbance which she had suffered from Oak's remarks.\n\n\"That's enough--that's enough!--oh, you fools!\" she cried, throwing\nthe parasol and Prayer-book into the passage, and running out of\ndoors in the direction signified.  \"To come to me, and not go and get\nthem out directly!  Oh, the stupid numskulls!\"\n\nHer eyes were at their darkest and brightest now.  Bathsheba's beauty\nbelonging rather to the demonian than to the angelic school, she\nnever looked so well as when she was angry--and particularly when the\neffect was heightened by a rather dashing velvet dress, carefully put\non before a glass.\n\nAll the ancient men ran in a jumbled throng after her to the\nclover-field, Joseph sinking down in the midst when about half-way,\nlike an individual withering in a world which was more and more\ninsupportable.  Having once received the stimulus that her presence\nalways gave them they went round among the sheep with a will.  The\nmajority of the afflicted animals were lying down, and could not be\nstirred.  These were bodily lifted out, and the others driven into\nthe adjoining field.  Here, after the lapse of a few minutes, several\nmore fell down, and lay helpless and livid as the rest.\n\nBathsheba, with a sad, bursting heart, looked at these primest\nspecimens of her prime flock as they rolled there--\n\n\n   Swoln with wind and the rank mist they drew.\n\n\nMany of them foamed at the mouth, their breathing being quick and\nshort, whilst the bodies of all were fearfully distended.\n\n\"Oh, what can I do, what can I do!\" said Bathsheba, helplessly.\n\"Sheep are such unfortunate animals!--there's always something\nhappening to them!  I never knew a flock pass a year without getting\ninto some scrape or other.\"\n\n\"There's only one way of saving them,\" said Tall.\n\n\"What way?  Tell me quick!\"\n\n\"They must be pierced in the side with a thing made on purpose.\"\n\n\"Can you do it?  Can I?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am.  We can't, nor you neither.  It must be done in a\nparticular spot.  If ye go to the right or left but an inch you stab\nthe ewe and kill her.  Not even a shepherd can do it, as a rule.\"\n\n\"Then they must die,\" she said, in a resigned tone.\n\n\"Only one man in the neighbourhood knows the way,\" said Joseph, now\njust come up.  \"He could cure 'em all if he were here.\"\n\n\"Who is he?  Let's get him!\"\n\n\"Shepherd Oak,\" said Matthew.  \"Ah, he's a clever man in talents!\"\n\n\"Ah, that he is so!\" said Joseph Poorgrass.\n\n\"True--he's the man,\" said Laban Tall.\n\n\"How dare you name that man in my presence!\" she said excitedly.  \"I\ntold you never to allude to him, nor shall you if you stay with me.\nAh!\" she added, brightening, \"Farmer Boldwood knows!\"\n\n\"O no, ma'am\" said Matthew.  \"Two of his store ewes got into some\nvetches t'other day, and were just like these.  He sent a man on\nhorseback here post-haste for Gable, and Gable went and saved 'em.\nFarmer Boldwood hev got the thing they do it with.  'Tis a holler\npipe, with a sharp pricker inside.  Isn't it, Joseph?\"\n\n\"Ay--a holler pipe,\" echoed Joseph.  \"That's what 'tis.\"\n\n\"Ay, sure--that's the machine,\" chimed in Henery Fray, reflectively,\nwith an Oriental indifference to the flight of time.\n\n\"Well,\" burst out Bathsheba, \"don't stand there with your 'ayes'\nand your 'sures' talking at me!  Get somebody to cure the sheep\ninstantly!\"\n\nAll then stalked off in consternation, to get somebody as directed,\nwithout any idea of who it was to be.  In a minute they had vanished\nthrough the gate, and she stood alone with the dying flock.\n\n\"Never will I send for him--never!\" she said firmly.\n\nOne of the ewes here contracted its muscles horribly, extended\nitself, and jumped high into the air.  The leap was an astonishing\none.  The ewe fell heavily, and lay still.\n\nBathsheba went up to it.  The sheep was dead.\n\n\"Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do!\" she again exclaimed, wringing\nher hands.  \"I won't send for him.  No, I won't!\"\n\nThe most vigorous expression of a resolution does not always coincide\nwith the greatest vigour of the resolution itself.  It is often flung\nout as a sort of prop to support a decaying conviction which, whilst\nstrong, required no enunciation to prove it so.  The \"No, I won't\" of\nBathsheba meant virtually, \"I think I must.\"\n\nShe followed her assistants through the gate, and lifted her hand to\none of them.  Laban answered to her signal.\n\n\"Where is Oak staying?\"\n\n\"Across the valley at Nest Cottage!\"\n\n\"Jump on the bay mare, and ride across, and say he must return\ninstantly--that I say so.\"\n\nTall scrambled off to the field, and in two minutes was on Poll,\nthe bay, bare-backed, and with only a halter by way of rein.  He\ndiminished down the hill.\n\nBathsheba watched.  So did all the rest.  Tall cantered along the\nbridle-path through Sixteen Acres, Sheeplands, Middle Field, The\nFlats, Cappel's Piece, shrank almost to a point, crossed the bridge,\nand ascended from the valley through Springmead and Whitepits on the\nother side.  The cottage to which Gabriel had retired before taking\nhis final departure from the locality was visible as a white spot on\nthe opposite hill, backed by blue firs.  Bathsheba walked up and\ndown.  The men entered the field and endeavoured to ease the anguish\nof the dumb creatures by rubbing them.  Nothing availed.\n\nBathsheba continued walking.  The horse was seen descending the\nhill, and the wearisome series had to be repeated in reverse order:\nWhitepits, Springmead, Cappel's Piece, The Flats, Middle Field,\nSheeplands, Sixteen Acres.  She hoped Tall had had presence of mind\nenough to give the mare up to Gabriel, and return himself on foot.\nThe rider neared them.  It was Tall.\n\n\"Oh, what folly!\" said Bathsheba.\n\nGabriel was not visible anywhere.\n\n\"Perhaps he is already gone!\" she said.\n\nTall came into the inclosure, and leapt off, his face tragic as\nMorton's after the battle of Shrewsbury.\n\n\"Well?\" said Bathsheba, unwilling to believe that her verbal\n_lettre-de-cachet_ could possibly have miscarried.\n\n\"He says BEGGARS MUSTN'T BE CHOOSERS,\" replied Laban.\n\n\"What!\" said the young farmer, opening her eyes and drawing in her\nbreath for an outburst.  Joseph Poorgrass retired a few steps behind\na hurdle.\n\n\"He says he shall not come onless you request en to come civilly and\nin a proper manner, as becomes any 'ooman begging a favour.\"\n\n\"Oh, oh, that's his answer!  Where does he get his airs?  Who am I,\nthen, to be treated like that?  Shall I beg to a man who has begged\nto me?\"\n\nAnother of the flock sprang into the air, and fell dead.\n\nThe men looked grave, as if they suppressed opinion.\n\nBathsheba turned aside, her eyes full of tears.  The strait she was\nin through pride and shrewishness could not be disguised longer: she\nburst out crying bitterly; they all saw it; and she attempted no\nfurther concealment.\n\n\"I wouldn't cry about it, miss,\" said William Smallbury,\ncompassionately.  \"Why not ask him softer like?  I'm sure he'd come\nthen.  Gable is a true man in that way.\"\n\nBathsheba checked her grief and wiped her eyes.  \"Oh, it is a wicked\ncruelty to me--it is--it is!\" she murmured.  \"And he drives me to do\nwhat I wouldn't; yes, he does!--Tall, come indoors.\"\n\nAfter this collapse, not very dignified for the head of an\nestablishment, she went into the house, Tall at her heels.  Here she\nsat down and hastily scribbled a note between the small convulsive\nsobs of convalescence which follow a fit of crying as a ground-swell\nfollows a storm.  The note was none the less polite for being written\nin a hurry.  She held it at a distance, was about to fold it, then\nadded these words at the bottom:--\n\n\n   \"DO NOT DESERT ME, GABRIEL!\"\n\n\nShe looked a little redder in refolding it, and closed her lips,\nas if thereby to suspend till too late the action of conscience in\nexamining whether such strategy were justifiable.  The note was\ndespatched as the message had been, and Bathsheba waited indoors\nfor the result.\n\nIt was an anxious quarter of an hour that intervened between the\nmessenger's departure and the sound of the horse's tramp again\noutside.  She could not watch this time, but, leaning over the old\nbureau at which she had written the letter, closed her eyes, as if\nto keep out both hope and fear.\n\nThe case, however, was a promising one.  Gabriel was not angry: he\nwas simply neutral, although her first command had been so haughty.\nSuch imperiousness would have damned a little less beauty; and\non the other hand, such beauty would have redeemed a little less\nimperiousness.\n\nShe went out when the horse was heard, and looked up.  A mounted\nfigure passed between her and the sky, and drew on towards the field\nof sheep, the rider turning his face in receding.  Gabriel looked at\nher.  It was a moment when a woman's eyes and tongue tell distinctly\nopposite tales. Bathsheba looked full of gratitude, and she said:--\n\n\"Oh, Gabriel, how could you serve me so unkindly!\"\n\nSuch a tenderly-shaped reproach for his previous delay was the\none speech in the language that he could pardon for not being\ncommendation of his readiness now.\n\nGabriel murmured a confused reply, and hastened on.  She knew from\nthe look which sentence in her note had brought him.  Bathsheba\nfollowed to the field.\n\nGabriel was already among the turgid, prostrate forms.  He had flung\noff his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and taken from his pocket\nthe instrument of salvation.  It was a small tube or trochar, with\na lance passing down the inside; and Gabriel began to use it with a\ndexterity that would have graced a hospital surgeon.  Passing his\nhand over the sheep's left flank, and selecting the proper point, he\npunctured the skin and rumen with the lance as it stood in the tube;\nthen he suddenly withdrew the lance, retaining the tube in its place.\nA current of air rushed up the tube, forcible enough to have\nextinguished a candle held at the orifice.\n\nIt has been said that mere ease after torment is delight for a time;\nand the countenances of these poor creatures expressed it now.\nForty-nine operations were successfully performed.  Owing to the\ngreat hurry necessitated by the far-gone state of some of the flock,\nGabriel missed his aim in one case, and in one only--striking wide\nof the mark, and inflicting a mortal blow at once upon the suffering\newe.  Four had died; three recovered without an operation.  The total\nnumber of sheep which had thus strayed and injured themselves so\ndangerously was fifty-seven.\n\nWhen the love-led man had ceased from his labours, Bathsheba came and\nlooked him in the face.\n\n\"Gabriel, will you stay on with me?\" she said, smiling winningly,\nand not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end,\nbecause there was going to be another smile soon.\n\n\"I will,\" said Gabriel.\n\nAnd she smiled on him again.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS\n\n\nMen thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not\nmaking the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking\ngood spirits when they are indispensable.  Gabriel lately, for the\nfirst time since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent\nin thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent--conditions\nwhich, powerless without an opportunity as an opportunity without\nthem is barren, would have given him a sure lift upwards when the\nfavourable conjunction should have occurred.  But this incurable\nloitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time ruinously.  The\nspring tides were going by without floating him off, and the neap\nmight soon come which could not.\n\nIt was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing season\nculminated, the landscape, even to the leanest pasture, being\nall health and colour.  Every green was young, every pore was\nopen, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice.\nGod was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone\nwith the world to town.  Flossy catkins of the later kinds,\nfern-sprouts like bishops' croziers, the square-headed moschatel,\nthe odd cuckoo-pint,--like an apoplectic saint in a niche of\nmalachite,--snow-white ladies'-smocks, the toothwort, approximating\nto human flesh, the enchanter's night-shade, and the black-petaled\ndoleful-bells, were among the quainter objects of the vegetable world\nin and about Weatherbury at this teeming time; and of the animal,\nthe metamorphosed figures of Mr. Jan Coggan, the master-shearer; the\nsecond and third shearers, who travelled in the exercise of their\ncalling, and do not require definition by name; Henery Fray the\nfourth shearer, Susan Tall's husband the fifth, Joseph Poorgrass\nthe sixth, young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer, and Gabriel Oak as\ngeneral supervisor.  None of these were clothed to any extent worth\nmentioning, each appearing to have hit in the matter of raiment the\ndecent mean between a high and low caste Hindoo.  An angularity of\nlineament, and a fixity of facial machinery in general, proclaimed\nthat serious work was the order of the day.\n\nThey sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the\nShearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a church with\ntransepts.  It not only emulated the form of the neighbouring church\nof the parish, but vied with it in antiquity.  Whether the barn had\never formed one of a group of conventual buildings nobody seemed to\nbe aware; no trace of such surroundings remained.  The vast porches\nat the sides, lofty enough to admit a waggon laden to its highest\nwith corn in the sheaf, were spanned by heavy-pointed arches of\nstone, broadly and boldly cut, whose very simplicity was the origin\nof a grandeur not apparent in erections where more ornament has been\nattempted.  The dusky, filmed, chestnut roof, braced and tied in\nby huge collars, curves, and diagonals, was far nobler in design,\nbecause more wealthy in material, than nine-tenths of those in our\nmodern churches.  Along each side wall was a range of striding\nbuttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them, which\nwere perforated by lancet openings, combining in their proportions\nthe precise requirements both of beauty and ventilation.\n\nOne could say about this barn, what could hardly be said of either\nthe church or the castle, akin to it in age and style, that the\npurpose which had dictated its original erection was the same with\nthat to which it was still applied.  Unlike and superior to either\nof those two typical remnants of mediaevalism, the old barn embodied\npractices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time.\nHere at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with\nthe spirit of the modern beholder.  Standing before this abraded\npile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its\npast history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity\nthroughout--a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the\npermanence of the idea which had heaped it up.  The fact that four\ncenturies had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired\nany hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had\nbattered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with\na repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt\nto disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers.  For once\nmediaevalism and modernism had a common stand-point.  The lanceolate\nwindows, the time-eaten archstones and chamfers, the orientation of\nthe axis, the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no\nexploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed.  The defence and\nsalvation of the body by daily bread is still a study, a religion,\nand a desire.\n\nTo-day the large side doors were thrown open towards the sun to admit\na bountiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers' operations,\nwhich was the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick\noak, black with age and polished by the beating of flails for many\ngenerations, till it had grown as slippery and as rich in hue as\nthe state-room floors of an Elizabethan mansion.  Here the shearers\nknelt, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms,\nand the polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle\nwith a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man.  Beneath\nthem a captive sheep lay panting, quickening its pants as misgiving\nmerged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside.\n\nThis picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did\nnot produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which\nis implied by the contrast of date.  In comparison with cities,\nWeatherbury was immutable.  The citizen's THEN is the rustic's\nNOW.  In London, twenty or thirty-years ago are old times; in Paris\nten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were\nincluded in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a\nmark on its face or tone.  Five decades hardly modified the cut of a\ngaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair.\nTen generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase.  In\nthese Wessex nooks the busy outsider's ancient times are only old;\nhis old times are still new; his present is futurity.\n\nSo the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers were in\nharmony with the barn.\n\nThe spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesiastically to nave\nand chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep\nbeing all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in\none angle a catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep\nwere continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss\nof time.  In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three\nwomen, Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering\nup the fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying\nthem round.  They were indifferently well assisted by the old\nmaltster, who, when the malting season from October to April had\npassed, made himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads.\n\nBehind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the men to see that\nthere was no cutting or wounding through carelessness, and that the\nanimals were shorn close.  Gabriel, who flitted and hovered under her\nbright eyes like a moth, did not shear continuously, half his time\nbeing spent in attending to the others and selecting the sheep for\nthem.  At the present moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of\nmild liquor, supplied from a barrel in the corner, and cut pieces of\nbread and cheese.\n\nBathsheba, after throwing a glance here, a caution there, and\nlecturing one of the younger operators who had allowed his last\nfinished sheep to go off among the flock without re-stamping it with\nher initials, came again to Gabriel, as he put down the luncheon to\ndrag a frightened ewe to his shear-station, flinging it over upon its\nback with a dexterous twist of the arm.  He lopped off the tresses\nabout its head, and opened up the neck and collar, his mistress\nquietly looking on.\n\n\"She blushes at the insult,\" murmured Bathsheba, watching the pink\nflush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe\nwhere they were left bare by the clicking shears--a flush which was\nenviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would\nhave been creditable, for its promptness, to any woman in the world.\n\nPoor Gabriel's soul was fed with a luxury of content by having her\nover him, her eyes critically regarding his skilful shears, which\napparently were going to gather up a piece of the flesh at every\nclose, and yet never did so.  Like Guildenstern, Oak was happy in\nthat he was not over happy.  He had no wish to converse with her:\nthat his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their\nown, and containing no others in the world, was enough.\n\nSo the chatter was all on her side.  There is a loquacity that tells\nnothing, which was Bathsheba's; and there is a silence which says\nmuch: that was Gabriel's.  Full of this dim and temperate bliss, he\nwent on to fling the ewe over upon her other side, covering her head\nwith his knee, gradually running the shears line after line round her\ndewlap; thence about her flank and back, and finishing over the tail.\n\n\"Well done, and done quickly!\" said Bathsheba, looking at her watch\nas the last snip resounded.\n\n\"How long, miss?\" said Gabriel, wiping his brow.\n\n\"Three-and-twenty minutes and a half since you took the first lock\nfrom its forehead.  It is the first time that I have ever seen one\ndone in less than half an hour.\"\n\nThe clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece--how perfectly\nlike Aphrodite rising from the foam should have been seen to be\nrealized--looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which\nlay on the floor in one soft cloud, united throughout, the portion\nvisible being the inner surface only, which, never before exposed,\nwas white as snow, and without flaw or blemish of the minutest kind.\n\n\"Cain Ball!\"\n\n\"Yes, Mister Oak; here I be!\"\n\nCainy now runs forward with the tar-pot.  \"B. E.\" is newly stamped\nupon the shorn skin, and away the simple dam leaps, panting, over the\nboard into the shirtless flock outside.  Then up comes Maryann;\nthrows the loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up,\nand carries it into the background as three-and-a-half pounds of\nunadulterated warmth for the winter enjoyment of persons unknown and\nfar away, who will, however, never experience the superlative comfort\nderivable from the wool as it here exists, new and pure--before\nthe unctuousness of its nature whilst in a living state has dried,\nstiffened, and been washed out--rendering it just now as superior\nto anything WOOLLEN as cream is superior to milk-and-water.\n\nBut heartless circumstance could not leave entire Gabriel's happiness\nof this morning.  The rams, old ewes, and two-shear ewes had duly\nundergone their stripping, and the men were proceeding with the\nshear-lings and hogs, when Oak's belief that she was going to stand\npleasantly by and time him through another performance was painfully\ninterrupted by Farmer Boldwood's appearance in the extremest corner\nof the barn.  Nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there he\ncertainly was.  Boldwood always carried with him a social atmosphere\nof his own, which everybody felt who came near him; and the talk,\nwhich Bathsheba's presence had somewhat suppressed, was now totally\nsuspended.\n\nHe crossed over towards Bathsheba, who turned to greet him with a\ncarriage of perfect ease.  He spoke to her in low tones, and she\ninstinctively modulated her own to the same pitch, and her voice\nultimately even caught the inflection of his.  She was far from\nhaving a wish to appear mysteriously connected with him; but woman at\nthe impressionable age gravitates to the larger body not only in her\nchoice of words, which is apparent every day, but even in her shades\nof tone and humour, when the influence is great.\n\nWhat they conversed about was not audible to Gabriel, who was too\nindependent to get near, though too concerned to disregard.  The\nissue of their dialogue was the taking of her hand by the courteous\nfarmer to help her over the spreading-board into the bright June\nsunlight outside.  Standing beside the sheep already shorn, they went\non talking again.  Concerning the flock?  Apparently not. Gabriel\ntheorized, not without truth, that in quiet discussion of any matter\nwithin reach of the speakers' eyes, these are usually fixed upon\nit.  Bathsheba demurely regarded a contemptible straw lying upon the\nground, in a way which suggested less ovine criticism than womanly\nembarrassment.  She became more or less red in the cheek, the blood\nwavering in uncertain flux and reflux over the sensitive space\nbetween ebb and flood.  Gabriel sheared on, constrained and sad.\n\nShe left Boldwood's side, and he walked up and down alone for nearly\na quarter of an hour.  Then she reappeared in her new riding-habit of\nmyrtle green, which fitted her to the waist as a rind fits its fruit;\nand young Bob Coggan led on her mare, Boldwood fetching his own horse\nfrom the tree under which it had been tied.\n\nOak's eyes could not forsake them; and in endeavouring to continue\nhis shearing at the same time that he watched Boldwood's manner,\nhe snipped the sheep in the groin.  The animal plunged; Bathsheba\ninstantly gazed towards it, and saw the blood.\n\n\"Oh, Gabriel!\" she exclaimed, with severe remonstrance, \"you who are\nso strict with the other men--see what you are doing yourself!\"\n\nTo an outsider there was not much to complain of in this remark; but\nto Oak, who knew Bathsheba to be well aware that she herself was the\ncause of the poor ewe's wound, because she had wounded the ewe's\nshearer in a still more vital part, it had a sting which the abiding\nsense of his inferiority to both herself and Boldwood was not\ncalculated to heal.  But a manly resolve to recognize boldly that he\nhad no longer a lover's interest in her, helped him occasionally to\nconceal a feeling.\n\n\"Bottle!\" he shouted, in an unmoved voice of routine.  Cainy Ball ran\nup, the wound was anointed, and the shearing continued.\n\nBoldwood gently tossed Bathsheba into the saddle, and before they\nturned away she again spoke out to Oak with the same dominative and\ntantalizing graciousness.\n\n\"I am going now to see Mr. Boldwood's Leicesters.  Take my place in\nthe barn, Gabriel, and keep the men carefully to their work.\"\n\nThe horses' heads were put about, and they trotted away.\n\nBoldwood's deep attachment was a matter of great interest among all\naround him; but, after having been pointed out for so many years\nas the perfect exemplar of thriving bachelorship, his lapse was an\nanticlimax somewhat resembling that of St. John Long's death by\nconsumption in the midst of his proofs that it was not a fatal\ndisease.\n\n\"That means matrimony,\" said Temperance Miller, following them out of\nsight with her eyes.\n\n\"I reckon that's the size o't,\" said Coggan, working along without\nlooking up.\n\n\"Well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor,\" said Laban\nTall, turning his sheep.\n\nHenery Fray spoke, exhibiting miserable eyes at the same time: \"I\ndon't see why a maid should take a husband when she's bold enough\nto fight her own battles, and don't want a home; for 'tis keeping\nanother woman out.  But let it be, for 'tis a pity he and she should\ntrouble two houses.\"\n\nAs usual with decided characters, Bathsheba invariably provoked the\ncriticism of individuals like Henery Fray.  Her emblazoned fault was\nto be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in\nher likings.  We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb,\nbut those which they reject, that give them the colours they are\nknown by; and in the same way people are specialized by their\ndislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no\nattribute at all.\n\nHenery continued in a more complaisant mood: \"I once hinted my mind\nto her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so\nto such a froward piece.  You all know, neighbours, what a man I be,\nand how I come down with my powerful words when my pride is boiling\nwi' scarn?\"\n\n\"We do, we do, Henery.\"\n\n\"So I said, 'Mistress Everdene, there's places empty, and there's\ngifted men willing; but the spite'--no, not the spite--I didn't say\nspite--'but the villainy of the contrarikind,' I said (meaning\nwomankind), 'keeps 'em out.'  That wasn't too strong for her, say?\"\n\n\"Passably well put.\"\n\n\"Yes; and I would have said it, had death and salvation overtook me\nfor it.  Such is my spirit when I have a mind.\"\n\n\"A true man, and proud as a lucifer.\"\n\n\"You see the artfulness?  Why, 'twas about being baily really; but\nI didn't put it so plain that she could understand my meaning, so I\ncould lay it on all the stronger.  That was my depth! ... However,\nlet her marry an she will.  Perhaps 'tis high time.  I believe Farmer\nBoldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-washing t'other\nday--that I do.\"\n\n\"What a lie!\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"Ah, neighbour Oak--how'st know?\" said, Henery, mildly.\n\n\"Because she told me all that passed,\" said Oak, with a pharisaical\nsense that he was not as other shearers in this matter.\n\n\"Ye have a right to believe it,\" said Henery, with dudgeon; \"a very\ntrue right.  But I mid see a little distance into things!  To be\nlong-headed enough for a baily's place is a poor mere trifle--yet\na trifle more than nothing.  However, I look round upon life quite\ncool.  Do you heed me, neighbours?  My words, though made as simple\nas I can, mid be rather deep for some heads.\"\n\n\"O yes, Henery, we quite heed ye.\"\n\n\"A strange old piece, goodmen--whirled about from here to yonder, as\nif I were nothing!  A little warped, too.  But I have my depths; ha,\nand even my great depths!  I might gird at a certain shepherd, brain\nto brain.  But no--O no!\"\n\n\"A strange old piece, ye say!\" interposed the maltster, in a\nquerulous voice.  \"At the same time ye be no old man worth naming--no\nold man at all.  Yer teeth bain't half gone yet; and what's a old\nman's standing if so be his teeth bain't gone?  Weren't I stale in\nwedlock afore ye were out of arms?  'Tis a poor thing to be sixty,\nwhen there's people far past four-score--a boast weak as water.\"\n\nIt was the unvarying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor differences\nwhen the maltster had to be pacified.\n\n\"Weak as water! yes,\" said Jan Coggan. \"Malter, we feel ye to be a\nwonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it.\"\n\n\"Nobody,\" said Joseph Poorgrass.  \"Ye be a very rare old spectacle,\nmalter, and we all admire ye for that gift.\"\n\n\"Ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity, I was\nlikewise liked by a good-few who knowed me,\" said the maltster.\n\n\"'Ithout doubt you was--'ithout doubt.\"\n\nThe bent and hoary man was satisfied, and so apparently was Henery\nFray.  That matters should continue pleasant Maryann spoke, who, what\nwith her brown complexion, and the working wrapper of rusty linsey,\nhad at present the mellow hue of an old sketch in oils--notably some\nof Nicholas Poussin's:--\n\n\"Do anybody know of a crooked man, or a lame, or any second-hand\nfellow at all that would do for poor me?\" said Maryann.  \"A perfect\none I don't expect to get at my time of life.  If I could hear of\nsuch a thing twould do me more good than toast and ale.\"\n\nCoggan furnished a suitable reply.  Oak went on with his shearing,\nand said not another word.  Pestilent moods had come, and teased\naway his quiet.  Bathsheba had shown indications of anointing him\nabove his fellows by installing him as the bailiff that the farm\nimperatively required.  He did not covet the post relatively to the\nfarm: in relation to herself, as beloved by him and unmarried to\nanother, he had coveted it.  His readings of her seemed now to be\nvapoury and indistinct.  His lecture to her was, he thought, one of\nthe absurdest mistakes.  Far from coquetting with Boldwood, she had\ntrifled with himself in thus feigning that she had trifled with\nanother.  He was inwardly convinced that, in accordance with the\nanticipations of his easy-going and worse-educated comrades, that day\nwould see Boldwood the accepted husband of Miss Everdene.  Gabriel\nat this time of his life had out-grown the instinctive dislike which\nevery Christian boy has for reading the Bible, perusing it now\nquite frequently, and he inwardly said, \"'I find more bitter than\ndeath the woman whose heart is snares and nets!'\" This was mere\nexclamation--the froth of the storm.  He adored Bathsheba just the\nsame.\n\n\"We workfolk shall have some lordly junketing to-night,\" said Cainy\nBall, casting forth his thoughts in a new direction.  \"This morning I\nsee 'em making the great puddens in the milking-pails--lumps of fat\nas big as yer thumb, Mister Oak!  I've never seed such splendid large\nknobs of fat before in the days of my life--they never used to be\nbigger then a horse-bean.  And there was a great black crock upon the\nbrandish with his legs a-sticking out, but I don't know what was in\nwithin.\"\n\n\"And there's two bushels of biffins for apple-pies,\" said Maryann.\n\n\"Well, I hope to do my duty by it all,\" said Joseph Poorgrass, in a\npleasant, masticating manner of anticipation.  \"Yes; victuals and\ndrink is a cheerful thing, and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the\nform of words may be used.  'Tis the gospel of the body, without\nwhich we perish, so to speak it.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEVENTIDE--A SECOND DECLARATION\n\n\nFor the shearing-supper a long table was placed on the grass-plot\nbeside the house, the end of the table being thrust over the sill\nof the wide parlour window and a foot or two into the room.  Miss\nEverdene sat inside the window, facing down the table.  She was\nthus at the head without mingling with the men.\n\nThis evening Bathsheba was unusually excited, her red cheeks and lips\ncontrasting lustrously with the mazy skeins of her shadowy hair.  She\nseemed to expect assistance, and the seat at the bottom of the table\nwas at her request left vacant until after they had begun the meal.\nShe then asked Gabriel to take the place and the duties appertaining\nto that end, which he did with great readiness.\n\nAt this moment Mr. Boldwood came in at the gate, and crossed the\ngreen to Bathsheba at the window.  He apologized for his lateness:\nhis arrival was evidently by arrangement.\n\n\"Gabriel,\" said she, \"will you move again, please, and let Mr.\nBoldwood come there?\"\n\nOak moved in silence back to his original seat.\n\nThe gentleman-farmer was dressed in cheerful style, in a new coat\nand white waistcoat, quite contrasting with his usual sober suits of\ngrey.  Inwardy, too, he was blithe, and consequently chatty to an\nexceptional degree.  So also was Bathsheba now that he had come,\nthough the uninvited presence of Pennyways, the bailiff who had been\ndismissed for theft, disturbed her equanimity for a while.\n\nSupper being ended, Coggan began on his own private account, without\nreference to listeners:--\n\n\n   I've lost my love, and I care not,\n   I've lost my love, and I care not;\n     I shall soon have another\n     That's better than t'other;\n   I've lost my love, and I care not.\n\n\nThis lyric, when concluded, was received with a silently appreciative\ngaze at the table, implying that the performance, like a work by\nthose established authors who are independent of notices in the\npapers, was a well-known delight which required no applause.\n\n\"Now, Master Poorgrass, your song!\" said Coggan.\n\n\"I be all but in liquor, and the gift is wanting in me,\" said Joseph,\ndiminishing himself.\n\n\"Nonsense; wou'st never be so ungrateful, Joseph--never!\" said\nCoggan, expressing hurt feelings by an inflection of voice.  \"And\nmistress is looking hard at ye, as much as to say, 'Sing at once,\nJoseph Poorgrass.'\"\n\n\"Faith, so she is; well, I must suffer it! ... Just eye my features,\nand see if the tell-tale blood overheats me much, neighbours?\"\n\n\"No, yer blushes be quite reasonable,\" said Coggan.\n\n\"I always tries to keep my colours from rising when a beauty's eyes\nget fixed on me,\" said Joseph, differently; \"but if so be 'tis willed\nthey do, they must.\"\n\n\"Now, Joseph, your song, please,\" said Bathsheba, from the window.\n\n\"Well, really, ma'am,\" he replied, in a yielding tone, \"I don't know\nwhat to say.  It would be a poor plain ballet of my own composure.\"\n\n\"Hear, hear!\" said the supper-party.\n\nPoorgrass, thus assured, trilled forth a flickering yet commendable\npiece of sentiment, the tune of which consisted of the key-note and\nanother, the latter being the sound chiefly dwelt upon.  This was so\nsuccessful that he rashly plunged into a second in the same breath,\nafter a few false starts:--\n\n\n   I sow'-ed th'-e .....\n   I sow'-ed .....\n   I sow'-ed th'-e seeds' of' love',\n      I-it was' all' i'-in the'-e spring',\n   I-in A'-pril', Ma'-ay, a'-nd sun'-ny' June',\n      When sma'-all bi'-irds they' do' sing.\n\n\n\"Well put out of hand,\" said Coggan, at the end of the verse.  \"'They\ndo sing' was a very taking paragraph.\"\n\n\"Ay; and there was a pretty place at 'seeds of love.' and 'twas well\nheaved out.  Though 'love' is a nasty high corner when a man's voice\nis getting crazed.  Next verse, Master Poorgrass.\"\n\nBut during this rendering young Bob Coggan exhibited one of those\nanomalies which will afflict little people when other persons are\nparticularly serious: in trying to check his laughter, he pushed down\nhis throat as much of the tablecloth as he could get hold of, when,\nafter continuing hermetically sealed for a short time, his mirth\nburst out through his nose.  Joseph perceived it, and with hectic\ncheeks of indignation instantly ceased singing.  Coggan boxed Bob's\nears immediately.\n\n\"Go on, Joseph--go on, and never mind the young scamp,\" said Coggan.\n\"'Tis a very catching ballet.  Now then again--the next bar; I'll\nhelp ye to flourish up the shrill notes where yer wind is rather\nwheezy:--\n\n\n   \"Oh the wi'-il-lo'-ow tree' will' twist',\n   And the wil'-low' tre'-ee wi'-ill twine'.\"\n\n\nBut the singer could not be set going again.  Bob Coggan was sent\nhome for his ill manners, and tranquility was restored by Jacob\nSmallbury, who volunteered a ballad as inclusive and interminable\nas that with which the worthy toper old Silenus amused on a similar\noccasion the swains Chromis and Mnasylus, and other jolly dogs of\nhis day.\n\nIt was still the beaming time of evening, though night was stealthily\nmaking itself visible low down upon the ground, the western lines of\nlight raking the earth without alighting upon it to any extent, or\nilluminating the dead levels at all.  The sun had crept round the\ntree as a last effort before death, and then began to sink, the\nshearers' lower parts becoming steeped in embrowning twilight, whilst\ntheir heads and shoulders were still enjoying day, touched with a\nyellow of self-sustained brilliancy that seemed inherent rather than\nacquired.\n\nThe sun went down in an ochreous mist; but they sat, and talked on,\nand grew as merry as the gods in Homer's heaven.  Bathsheba still\nremained enthroned inside the window, and occupied herself in\nknitting, from which she sometimes looked up to view the fading scene\noutside.  The slow twilight expanded and enveloped them completely\nbefore the signs of moving were shown.\n\nGabriel suddenly missed Farmer Boldwood from his place at the bottom\nof the table.  How long he had been gone Oak did not know; but he\nhad apparently withdrawn into the encircling dusk.  Whilst he was\nthinking of this, Liddy brought candles into the back part of the\nroom overlooking the shearers, and their lively new flames shone down\nthe table and over the men, and dispersed among the green shadows\nbehind.  Bathsheba's form, still in its original position, was now\nagain distinct between their eyes and the light, which revealed that\nBoldwood had gone inside the room, and was sitting near her.\n\nNext came the question of the evening.  Would Miss Everdene sing to\nthem the song she always sang so charmingly--\"The Banks of Allan\nWater\"--before they went home?\n\nAfter a moment's consideration Bathsheba assented, beckoning to\nGabriel, who hastened up into the coveted atmosphere.\n\n\"Have you brought your flute?\" she whispered.\n\n\"Yes, miss.\"\n\n\"Play to my singing, then.\"\n\nShe stood up in the window-opening, facing the men, the candles\nbehind her, Gabriel on her right hand, immediately outside the\nsash-frame.  Boldwood had drawn up on her left, within the room.\nHer singing was soft and rather tremulous at first, but it soon\nswelled to a steady clearness.  Subsequent events caused one of the\nverses to be remembered for many months, and even years, by more\nthan one of those who were gathered there:--\n\n\n   For his bride a soldier sought her,\n     And a winning tongue had he:\n   On the banks of Allan Water\n     None was gay as she!\n\n\nIn addition to the dulcet piping of Gabriel's flute, Boldwood\nsupplied a bass in his customary profound voice, uttering his notes\nso softly, however, as to abstain entirely from making anything like\nan ordinary duet of the song; they rather formed a rich unexplored\nshadow, which threw her tones into relief.  The shearers reclined\nagainst each other as at suppers in the early ages of the world, and\nso silent and absorbed were they that her breathing could almost be\nheard between the bars; and at the end of the ballad, when the last\ntone loitered on to an inexpressible close, there arose that buzz of\npleasure which is the attar of applause.\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to state that Gabriel could not avoid noting\nthe farmer's bearing to-night towards their entertainer.  Yet there\nwas nothing exceptional in his actions beyond what appertained to\nhis time of performing them.  It was when the rest were all looking\naway that Boldwood observed her; when they regarded her he turned\naside; when they thanked or praised he was silent; when they\nwere inattentive he murmured his thanks.  The meaning lay in the\ndifference between actions, none of which had any meaning of itself;\nand the necessity of being jealous, which lovers are troubled with,\ndid not lead Oak to underestimate these signs.\n\nBathsheba then wished them good-night, withdrew from the window, and\nretired to the back part of the room, Boldwood thereupon closing the\nsash and the shutters, and remaining inside with her.  Oak wandered\naway under the quiet and scented trees.  Recovering from the softer\nimpressions produced by Bathsheba's voice, the shearers rose to\nleave, Coggan turning to Pennyways as he pushed back the bench to\npass out:--\n\n\"I like to give praise where praise is due, and the man deserves\nit--that 'a do so,\" he remarked, looking at the worthy thief, as if\nhe were the masterpiece of some world-renowned artist.\n\n\"I'm sure I should never have believed it if we hadn't proved it, so\nto allude,\" hiccupped Joseph Poorgrass, \"that every cup, every one of\nthe best knives and forks, and every empty bottle be in their place\nas perfect now as at the beginning, and not one stole at all.\"\n\n\"I'm sure I don't deserve half the praise you give me,\" said the\nvirtuous thief, grimly.\n\n\"Well, I'll say this for Pennyways,\" added Coggan, \"that whenever he\ndo really make up his mind to do a noble thing in the shape of a good\naction, as I could see by his face he did to-night afore sitting\ndown, he's generally able to carry it out.  Yes, I'm proud to say,\nneighbours, that he's stole nothing at all.\"\n\n\"Well, 'tis an honest deed, and we thank ye for it, Pennyways,\" said\nJoseph; to which opinion the remainder of the company subscribed\nunanimously.\n\nAt this time of departure, when nothing more was visible of the\ninside of the parlour than a thin and still chink of light between\nthe shutters, a passionate scene was in course of enactment there.\n\nMiss Everdene and Boldwood were alone.  Her cheeks had lost a\ngreat deal of their healthful fire from the very seriousness of\nher position; but her eye was bright with the excitement of a\ntriumph--though it was a triumph which had rather been contemplated\nthan desired.\n\nShe was standing behind a low arm-chair, from which she had just\nrisen, and he was kneeling in it--inclining himself over its back\ntowards her, and holding her hand in both his own.  His body moved\nrestlessly, and it was with what Keats daintily calls a too happy\nhappiness.  This unwonted abstraction by love of all dignity from\na man of whom it had ever seemed the chief component, was, in its\ndistressing incongruity, a pain to her which quenched much of the\npleasure she derived from the proof that she was idolized.\n\n\"I will try to love you,\" she was saying, in a trembling voice quite\nunlike her usual self-confidence.  \"And if I can believe in any way\nthat I shall make you a good wife I shall indeed be willing to marry\nyou.  But, Mr. Boldwood, hesitation on so high a matter is honourable\nin any woman, and I don't want to give a solemn promise to-night.  I\nwould rather ask you to wait a few weeks till I can see my situation\nbetter.\n\n\"But you have every reason to believe that THEN--\"\n\n\"I have every reason to hope that at the end of the five or six\nweeks, between this time and harvest, that you say you are going to\nbe away from home, I shall be able to promise to be your wife,\" she\nsaid, firmly.  \"But remember this distinctly, I don't promise yet.\"\n\n\"It is enough; I don't ask more.  I can wait on those dear words.\nAnd now, Miss Everdene, good-night!\"\n\n\"Good-night,\" she said, graciously--almost tenderly; and Boldwood\nwithdrew with a serene smile.\n\nBathsheba knew more of him now; he had entirely bared his heart\nbefore her, even until he had almost worn in her eyes the sorry look\nof a grand bird without the feathers that make it grand.  She had\nbeen awe-struck at her past temerity, and was struggling to make\namends without thinking whether the sin quite deserved the penalty\nshe was schooling herself to pay.  To have brought all this about her\nears was terrible; but after a while the situation was not without\na fearful joy.  The facility with which even the most timid women\nsometimes acquire a relish for the dreadful when that is amalgamated\nwith a little triumph, is marvellous.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE SAME NIGHT--THE FIR PLANTATION\n\n\nAmong the multifarious duties which Bathsheba had voluntarily imposed\nupon herself by dispensing with the services of a bailiff, was the\nparticular one of looking round the homestead before going to bed,\nto see that all was right and safe for the night.  Gabriel had\nalmost constantly preceded her in this tour every evening, watching\nher affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of\nsurveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was to a\ngreat extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as was known was\nsomewhat thanklessly received.  Women are never tired of bewailing\nman's fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.\n\nAs watching is best done invisibly, she usually carried a dark\nlantern in her hand, and every now and then turned on the light\nto examine nooks and corners with the coolness of a metropolitan\npoliceman.  This coolness may have owed its existence not so much\nto her fearlessness of expected danger as to her freedom from the\nsuspicion of any; her worst anticipated discovery being that a horse\nmight not be well bedded, the fowls not all in, or a door not closed.\n\nThis night the buildings were inspected as usual, and she went round\nto the farm paddock.  Here the only sounds disturbing the stillness\nwere steady munchings of many mouths, and stentorian breathings from\nall but invisible noses, ending in snores and puffs like the blowing\nof bellows slowly.  Then the munching would recommence, when the\nlively imagination might assist the eye to discern a group of\npink-white nostrils, shaped as caverns, and very clammy and humid on\ntheir surfaces, not exactly pleasant to the touch until one got used\nto them; the mouths beneath having a great partiality for closing\nupon any loose end of Bathsheba's apparel which came within reach of\ntheir tongues.  Above each of these a still keener vision suggested a\nbrown forehead and two staring though not unfriendly eyes, and above\nall a pair of whitish crescent-shaped horns like two particularly\nnew moons, an occasional stolid \"moo!\" proclaiming beyond the shade\nof a doubt that these phenomena were the features and persons of\nDaisy, Whitefoot, Bonny-lass, Jolly-O, Spot, Twinkle-eye, etc.,\netc.--the respectable dairy of Devon cows belonging to Bathsheba\naforesaid.\n\nHer way back to the house was by a path through a young plantation of\ntapering firs, which had been planted some years earlier to shelter\nthe premises from the north wind.  By reason of the density of\nthe interwoven foliage overhead, it was gloomy there at cloudless\nnoontide, twilight in the evening, dark as midnight at dusk, and\nblack as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight.  To describe the spot\nis to call it a vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy ceiling\nof which was supported by slender pillars of living wood, the floor\nbeing covered with a soft dun carpet of dead spikelets and mildewed\ncones, with a tuft of grass-blades here and there.\n\nThis bit of the path was always the crux of the night's ramble,\nthough, before starting, her apprehensions of danger were not vivid\nenough to lead her to take a companion.  Slipping along here covertly\nas Time, Bathsheba fancied she could hear footsteps entering the\ntrack at the opposite end.  It was certainly a rustle of footsteps.\nHer own instantly fell as gently as snowflakes.  She reassured\nherself by a remembrance that the path was public, and that the\ntraveller was probably some villager returning home; regretting,\nat the same time, that the meeting should be about to occur in the\ndarkest point of her route, even though only just outside her own\ndoor.\n\nThe noise approached, came close, and a figure was apparently on the\npoint of gliding past her when something tugged at her skirt and\npinned it forcibly to the ground.  The instantaneous check nearly\nthrew Bathsheba off her balance.  In recovering she struck against\nwarm clothes and buttons.\n\n\"A rum start, upon my soul!\" said a masculine voice, a foot or so\nabove her head.  \"Have I hurt you, mate?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bathsheba, attempting to shrink away.\n\n\"We have got hitched together somehow, I think.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Are you a woman?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"A lady, I should have said.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"I am a man.\"\n\n\"Oh!\"\n\nBathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose.\n\n\"Is that a dark lantern you have?  I fancy so,\" said the man.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"If you'll allow me I'll open it, and set you free.\"\n\nA hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst\nout from their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her position with\nastonishment.\n\nThe man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet.\nHe was a soldier.  His sudden appearance was to darkness what the\nsound of a trumpet is to silence.  Gloom, the _genius loci_ at all\ntimes hitherto, was now totally overthrown, less by the lantern-light\nthan by what the lantern lighted.  The contrast of this revelation\nwith her anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so\ngreat that it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation.\n\nIt was immediately apparent that the military man's spur had become\nentangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of her dress.  He\ncaught a view of her face.\n\n\"I'll unfasten you in one moment, miss,\" he said, with new-born\ngallantry.\n\n\"Oh no--I can do it, thank you,\" she hastily replied, and stooped for\nthe performance.\n\nThe unfastening was not such a trifling affair.  The rowel of the\nspur had so wound itself among the gimp cords in those few moments,\nthat separation was likely to be a matter of time.\n\nHe too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground betwixt them\nthrew the gleam from its open side among the fir-tree needles and the\nblades of long damp grass with the effect of a large glowworm.  It\nradiated upwards into their faces, and sent over half the plantation\ngigantic shadows of both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming\ndistorted and mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing.\n\nHe looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a moment;\nBathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too strong to be\nreceived point-blank with her own.  But she had obliquely noticed\nthat he was young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his\nsleeve.\n\nBathsheba pulled again.\n\n\"You are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the matter,\" said\nthe soldier, drily.  \"I must cut your dress if you are in such a\nhurry.\"\n\n\"Yes--please do!\" she exclaimed, helplessly.\n\n\"It wouldn't be necessary if you could wait a moment,\" and he unwound\na cord from the little wheel.  She withdrew her own hand, but,\nwhether by accident or design, he touched it.  Bathsheba was vexed;\nshe hardly knew why.\n\nHis unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming to no end.\nShe looked at him again.\n\n\"Thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!\" said the young\nsergeant, without ceremony.\n\nShe coloured with embarrassment.  \"'Twas unwillingly shown,\" she\nreplied, stiffly, and with as much dignity--which was very little--as\nshe could infuse into a position of captivity.\n\n\"I like you the better for that incivility, miss,\" he said.\n\n\"I should have liked--I wish--you had never shown yourself to me by\nintruding here!\" She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began\nto give way like liliputian musketry.\n\n\"I deserve the chastisement your words give me.  But why should such\na fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father's sex?\"\n\n\"Go on your way, please.\"\n\n\"What, Beauty, and drag you after me?  Do but look; I never saw such\na tangle!\"\n\n\"Oh, 'tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on purpose\nto keep me here--you have!\"\n\n\"Indeed, I don't think so,\" said the sergeant, with a merry twinkle.\n\n\"I tell you you have!\" she exclaimed, in high temper.  \"I insist upon\nundoing it.  Now, allow me!\"\n\n\"Certainly, miss; I am not of steel.\"  He added a sigh which had as\nmuch archness in it as a sigh could possess without losing its nature\naltogether.  \"I am thankful for beauty, even when 'tis thrown to me\nlike a bone to a dog.  These moments will be over too soon!\"\n\nShe closed her lips in a determined silence.\n\nBathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and desperate\nrush she could free herself at the risk of leaving her skirt bodily\nbehind her.  The thought was too dreadful.  The dress--which she had\nput on to appear stately at the supper--was the head and front of her\nwardrobe; not another in her stock became her so well.  What woman\nin Bathsheba's position, not naturally timid, and within call of her\nretainers, would have bought escape from a dashing soldier at so dear\na price?\n\n\"All in good time; it will soon be done, I perceive,\" said her cool\nfriend.\n\n\"This trifling provokes, and--and--\"\n\n\"Not too cruel!\"\n\n\"--Insults me!\"\n\n\"It is done in order that I may have the pleasure of apologizing to\nso charming a woman, which I straightway do most humbly, madam,\" he\nsaid, bowing low.\n\nBathsheba really knew not what to say.\n\n\"I've seen a good many women in my time,\" continued the young man in\na murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto, critically regarding\nher bent head at the same time; \"but I've never seen a woman so\nbeautiful as you.  Take it or leave it--be offended or like it--I\ndon't care.\"\n\n\"Who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise opinion?\"\n\n\"No stranger.  Sergeant Troy.  I am staying in this place.--There!\nit is undone at last, you see.  Your light fingers were more eager\nthan mine.  I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there's no\nuntying!\"\n\nThis was worse and worse.  She started up, and so did he.  How to\ndecently get away from him--that was her difficulty now.  She sidled\noff inch by inch, the lantern in her hand, till she could see the\nredness of his coat no longer.\n\n\"Ah, Beauty; good-bye!\" he said.\n\nShe made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or thirty\nyards, turned about, and ran indoors.\n\nLiddy had just retired to rest.  In ascending to her own chamber,\nBathsheba opened the girl's door an inch or two, and, panting, said--\n\n\"Liddy, is any soldier staying in the village--sergeant somebody--\nrather gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good looking--a red coat with\nblue facings?\"\n\n\"No, miss ... No, I say; but really it might be Sergeant Troy home on\nfurlough, though I have not seen him.  He was here once in that way\nwhen the regiment was at Casterbridge.\"\n\n\"Yes; that's the name.  Had he a moustache--no whiskers or beard?\"\n\n\"He had.\"\n\n\"What kind of a person is he?\"\n\n\"Oh! miss--I blush to name it--a gay man!  But I know him to be very\nquick and trim, who might have made his thousands, like a squire.\nSuch a clever young dandy as he is!  He's a doctor's son by name,\nwhich is a great deal; and he's an earl's son by nature!\"\n\n\"Which is a great deal more.  Fancy!  Is it true?\"\n\n\"Yes.  And, he was brought up so well, and sent to Casterbridge\nGrammar School for years and years.  Learnt all languages while he\nwas there; and it was said he got on so far that he could take down\nChinese in shorthand; but that I don't answer for, as it was only\nreported.  However, he wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier;\nbut even then he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all.  Ah!\nsuch a blessing it is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine\nout even in the ranks and files.  And is he really come home, miss?\"\n\n\"I believe so.  Good-night, Liddy.\"\n\nAfter all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be permanently\noffended with the man?  There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba\nwill put up with a great deal of unconventional behaviour.  When they\nwant to be praised, which is often, when they want to be mastered,\nwhich is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom.\nJust now the first feeling was in the ascendant with Bathsheba,\nwith a dash of the second.  Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the\nministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome\nstranger who had evidently seen better days.\n\nSo she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion that he\nhad insulted her or not.\n\n\"Was ever anything so odd!\" she at last exclaimed to herself, in her\nown room.  \"And was ever anything so meanly done as what I did--to\nskulk away like that from a man who was only civil and kind!\" Clearly\nshe did not think his barefaced praise of her person an insult now.\n\nIt was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her\nshe was beautiful.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE NEW ACQUAINTANCE DESCRIBED\n\n\nIdiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as\nan exceptional being.\n\nHe was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations\na superfluity.  Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was\nbefore his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present.  His outlook\nupon time was as a transient flash of the eye now and then: that\nprojection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, which\nmakes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a word\nfor circumspection, was foreign to Troy.  With him the past was\nyesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after.\n\nOn this account he might, in certain lights, have been regarded as\none of the most fortunate of his order.  For it may be argued with\ngreat plausibility that reminiscence is less an endowment than a\ndisease, and that expectation in its only comfortable form--that of\nabsolute faith--is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form\nof hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve,\ncuriosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain.\n\nSergeant Troy, being entirely innocent of the practice of\nexpectation, was never disappointed.  To set against this negative\ngain there may have been some positive losses from a certain\nnarrowing of the higher tastes and sensations which it entailed.  But\nlimitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser\ntherefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrasts\nplausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it,\nwhilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer.  It is not a denial\nof anything to have been always without it, and what Troy had never\nenjoyed he did not miss; but, being fully conscious that what sober\npeople missed he enjoyed, his capacity, though really less, seemed\ngreater than theirs.\n\nHe was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like\na Cretan--a system of ethics above all others calculated to win\npopularity at the first flush of admission into lively society; and\nthe possibility of the favour gained being transitory had reference\nonly to the future.\n\nHe never passed the line which divides the spruce vices from the\nugly; and hence, though his morals had hardly been applauded,\ndisapproval of them had frequently been tempered with a smile.  This\ntreatment had led to his becoming a sort of regrater of other men's\ngallantries, to his own aggrandizement as a Corinthian, rather than\nto the moral profit of his hearers.\n\nHis reason and his propensities had seldom any reciprocating\ninfluence, having separated by mutual consent long ago: thence it\nsometimes happened that, while his intentions were as honourable as\ncould be wished, any particular deed formed a dark background which\nthrew them into fine relief.  The sergeant's vicious phases being the\noffspring of impulse, and his virtuous phases of cool meditation, the\nlatter had a modest tendency to be oftener heard of than seen.\n\nTroy was full of activity, but his activities were less of a\nlocomotive than a vegetative nature; and, never being based upon\nany original choice of foundation or direction, they were exercised\non whatever object chance might place in their way.  Hence, whilst\nhe sometimes reached the brilliant in speech because that was\nspontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from inability\nto guide incipient effort.  He had a quick comprehension and\nconsiderable force of character; but, being without the power to\ncombine them, the comprehension became engaged with trivialities\nwhilst waiting for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itself\nin useless grooves through unheeding the comprehension.\n\nHe was a fairly well-educated man for one of middle class--\nexceptionally well educated for a common soldier.  He spoke fluently\nand unceasingly.  He could in this way be one thing and seem another:\nfor instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner; call on the\nhusband to look at the wife; be eager to pay and intend to owe.\n\nThe wondrous power of flattery in _passados_ at woman is a perception\nso universal as to be remarked upon by many people almost as\nautomatically as they repeat a proverb, or say that they are\nChristians and the like, without thinking much of the enormous\ncorollaries which spring from the proposition.  Still less is it\nacted upon for the good of the complemental being alluded to.\nWith the majority such an opinion is shelved with all those trite\naphorisms which require some catastrophe to bring their tremendous\nmeanings thoroughly home.  When expressed with some amount of\nreflectiveness it seems co-ordinate with a belief that this flattery\nmust be reasonable to be effective.  It is to the credit of men that\nfew attempt to settle the question by experiment, and it is for\ntheir happiness, perhaps, that accident has never settled it for\nthem.  Nevertheless, that a male dissembler who by deluging her with\nuntenable fictions charms the female wisely, may acquire powers\nreaching to the extremity of perdition, is a truth taught to many by\nunsought and wringing occurrences.  And some profess to have attained\nto the same knowledge by experiment as aforesaid, and jauntily\ncontinue their indulgence in such experiments with terrible effect.\nSergeant Troy was one.\n\nHe had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankind\nthe only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing.  There was\nno third method.  \"Treat them fairly, and you are a lost man.\" he\nwould say.\n\nThis person's public appearance in Weatherbury promptly followed his\narrival there.  A week or two after the shearing, Bathsheba, feeling\na nameless relief of spirits on account of Boldwood's absence,\napproached her hayfields and looked over the hedge towards the\nhaymakers.  They consisted in about equal proportions of gnarled and\nflexuous forms, the former being the men, the latter the women, who\nwore tilt bonnets covered with nankeen, which hung in a curtain upon\ntheir shoulders.  Coggan and Mark Clark were mowing in a less forward\nmeadow, Clark humming a tune to the strokes of his scythe, to\nwhich Jan made no attempt to keep time with his.  In the first mead\nthey were already loading hay, the women raking it into cocks and\nwindrows, and the men tossing it upon the waggon.\n\nFrom behind the waggon a bright scarlet spot emerged, and went on\nloading unconcernedly with the rest.  It was the gallant sergeant,\nwho had come haymaking for pleasure; and nobody could deny that\nhe was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by this\nvoluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time.\n\nAs soon as she had entered the field Troy saw her, and sticking his\npitchfork into the ground and picking up his crop or cane, he came\nforward.  Bathsheba blushed with half-angry embarrassment, and\nadjusted her eyes as well as her feet to the direct line of her path.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE ON THE VERGE OF THE HAY-MEAD\n\n\n\"Ah, Miss Everdene!\" said the sergeant, touching his diminutive cap.\n\"Little did I think it was you I was speaking to the other night.\nAnd yet, if I had reflected, the 'Queen of the Corn-market' (truth is\ntruth at any hour of the day or night, and I heard you so named in\nCasterbridge yesterday), the 'Queen of the Corn-market.' I say, could\nbe no other woman.  I step across now to beg your forgiveness a\nthousand times for having been led by my feelings to express myself\ntoo strongly for a stranger.  To be sure I am no stranger to the\nplace--I am Sergeant Troy, as I told you, and I have assisted your\nuncle in these fields no end of times when I was a lad.  I have been\ndoing the same for you to-day.\"\n\n\"I suppose I must thank you for that, Sergeant Troy,\" said the Queen\nof the Corn-market, in an indifferently grateful tone.\n\nThe sergeant looked hurt and sad.  \"Indeed you must not, Miss\nEverdene,\" he said.  \"Why could you think such a thing necessary?\"\n\n\"I am glad it is not.\"\n\n\"Why? if I may ask without offence.\"\n\n\"Because I don't much want to thank you for anything.\"\n\n\"I am afraid I have made a hole with my tongue that my heart will\nnever mend.  O these intolerable times: that ill-luck should follow\na man for honestly telling a woman she is beautiful!  'Twas the most\nI said--you must own that; and the least I could say--that I own\nmyself.\"\n\n\"There is some talk I could do without more easily than money.\"\n\n\"Indeed.  That remark is a sort of digression.\"\n\n\"No.  It means that I would rather have your room than your company.\"\n\n\"And I would rather have curses from you than kisses from any other\nwoman; so I'll stay here.\"\n\nBathsheba was absolutely speechless.  And yet she could not help\nfeeling that the assistance he was rendering forbade a harsh repulse.\n\n\"Well,\" continued Troy, \"I suppose there is a praise which is\nrudeness, and that may be mine.  At the same time there is a\ntreatment which is injustice, and that may be yours.  Because a plain\nblunt man, who has never been taught concealment, speaks out his mind\nwithout exactly intending it, he's to be snapped off like the son of\na sinner.\"\n\n\"Indeed there's no such case between us,\" she said, turning away.  \"I\ndon't allow strangers to be bold and impudent--even in praise of me.\"\n\n\"Ah--it is not the fact but the method which offends you,\" he said,\ncarelessly.  \"But I have the sad satisfaction of knowing that my\nwords, whether pleasing or offensive, are unmistakably true.  Would\nyou have had me look at you, and tell my acquaintance that you are\nquite a common-place woman, to save you the embarrassment of being\nstared at if they come near you?  Not I.  I couldn't tell any such\nridiculous lie about a beauty to encourage a single woman in England\nin too excessive a modesty.\"\n\n\"It is all pretence--what you are saying!\" exclaimed Bathsheba,\nlaughing in spite of herself at the sly method.  \"You have a rare\ninvention, Sergeant Troy.  Why couldn't you have passed by me that\nnight, and said nothing?--that was all I meant to reproach you for.\"\n\n\"Because I wasn't going to.  Half the pleasure of a feeling lies in\nbeing able to express it on the spur of the moment, and I let out\nmine.  It would have been just the same if you had been the reverse\nperson--ugly and old--I should have exclaimed about it in the same\nway.\"\n\n\"How long is it since you have been so afflicted with strong feeling,\nthen?\"\n\n\"Oh, ever since I was big enough to know loveliness from deformity.\"\n\n\"'Tis to be hoped your sense of the difference you speak of doesn't\nstop at faces, but extends to morals as well.\"\n\n\"I won't speak of morals or religion--my own or anybody else's.\nThough perhaps I should have been a very good Christian if you pretty\nwomen hadn't made me an idolater.\"\n\nBathsheba moved on to hide the irrepressible dimplings of merriment.\nTroy followed, whirling his crop.\n\n\"But--Miss Everdene--you do forgive me?\"\n\n\"Hardly.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"You say such things.\"\n\n\"I said you were beautiful, and I'll say so still; for, by G---- so you\nare!  The most beautiful ever I saw, or may I fall dead this instant!\nWhy, upon my ----\"\n\n\"Don't--don't!  I won't listen to you--you are so profane!\" she said,\nin a restless state between distress at hearing him and a _penchant_\nto hear more.\n\n\"I again say you are a most fascinating woman.  There's nothing\nremarkable in my saying so, is there?  I'm sure the fact is evident\nenough.  Miss Everdene, my opinion may be too forcibly let out\nto please you, and, for the matter of that, too insignificant to\nconvince you, but surely it is honest, and why can't it be excused?\"\n\n\"Because it--it isn't a correct one,\" she femininely murmured.\n\n\"Oh, fie--fie!  Am I any worse for breaking the third of that\nTerrible Ten than you for breaking the ninth?\"\n\n\"Well, it doesn't seem QUITE true to me that I am fascinating,\" she\nreplied evasively.\n\n\"Not so to you: then I say with all respect that, if so, it is owing\nto your modesty, Miss Everdene.  But surely you must have been told\nby everybody of what everybody notices?  And you should take their\nwords for it.\"\n\n\"They don't say so exactly.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, they must!\"\n\n\"Well, I mean to my face, as you do,\" she went on, allowing herself\nto be further lured into a conversation that intention had rigorously\nforbidden.\n\n\"But you know they think so?\"\n\n\"No--that is--I certainly have heard Liddy say they do, but--\"  She\npaused.\n\nCapitulation--that was the purport of the simple reply, guarded as it\nwas--capitulation, unknown to herself.  Never did a fragile tailless\nsentence convey a more perfect meaning.  The careless sergeant smiled\nwithin himself, and probably too the devil smiled from a loop-hole in\nTophet, for the moment was the turning-point of a career.  Her tone\nand mien signified beyond mistake that the seed which was to lift the\nfoundation had taken root in the chink: the remainder was a mere\nquestion of time and natural changes.\n\n\"There the truth comes out!\" said the soldier, in reply.  \"Never tell\nme that a young lady can live in a buzz of admiration without knowing\nsomething about it.  Ah, well, Miss Everdene, you are--pardon my\nblunt way--you are rather an injury to our race than otherwise.\"\n\n\"How--indeed?\" she said, opening her eyes.\n\n\"Oh, it is true enough.  I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb\n(an old country saying, not of much account, but it will do for a\nrough soldier), and so I will speak my mind, regardless of your\npleasure, and without hoping or intending to get your pardon.  Why,\nMiss Everdene, it is in this manner that your good looks may do more\nharm than good in the world.\"  The sergeant looked down the mead in\ncritical abstraction.  \"Probably some one man on an average falls in\nlove with each ordinary woman.  She can marry him: he is content,\nand leads a useful life.  Such women as you a hundred men always\ncovet--your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing\nfancy for you--you can only marry one of that many.  Out of these\nsay twenty will endeavour to drown the bitterness of despised love\nin drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or\nattempt to make a mark in he world, because they have no ambition\napart from their attachment to you; twenty more--the susceptible\nperson myself possibly among them--will be always draggling after\nyou, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things.\nMen are such constant fools!  The rest may try to get over their\npassion with more or less success.  But all these men will be\nsaddened.  And not only those ninety-nine men, but the ninety-nine\nwomen they might have married are saddened with them.  There's my\ntale.  That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss\nEverdene, is hardly a blessing to her race.\"\n\nThe handsome sergeant's features were during this speech as rigid and\nstern as John Knox's in addressing his gay young queen.\n\nSeeing she made no reply, he said, \"Do you read French?\"\n\n\"No; I began, but when I got to the verbs, father died,\" she said\nsimply.\n\n\"I do--when I have an opportunity, which latterly has not been often\n(my mother was a Parisienne)--and there's a proverb they have,\n_Qui aime bien, chatie bien_--'He chastens who loves well.'  Do you\nunderstand me?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" she replied, and there was even a little tremulousness in the\nusually cool girl's voice; \"if you can only fight half as winningly\nas you can talk, you are able to make a pleasure of a bayonet wound!\"\nAnd then poor Bathsheba instantly perceived her slip in making this\nadmission: in hastily trying to retrieve it, she went from bad to\nworse.  \"Don't, however, suppose that _I_ derive any pleasure from\nwhat you tell me.\"\n\n\"I know you do not--I know it perfectly,\" said Troy, with much hearty\nconviction on the exterior of his face: and altering the expression\nto moodiness; \"when a dozen men are ready to speak tenderly to you,\nand give the admiration you deserve without adding the warning you\nneed, it stands to reason that my poor rough-and-ready mixture of\npraise and blame cannot convey much pleasure.  Fool as I may be, I\nam not so conceited as to suppose that!\"\n\n\"I think you--are conceited, nevertheless,\" said Bathsheba, looking\naskance at a reed she was fitfully pulling with one hand, having\nlately grown feverish under the soldier's system of procedure--not\nbecause the nature of his cajolery was entirely unperceived, but\nbecause its vigour was overwhelming.\n\n\"I would not own it to anybody else--nor do I exactly to you.  Still,\nthere might have been some self-conceit in my foolish supposition\nthe other night.  I knew that what I said in admiration might be\nan opinion too often forced upon you to give any pleasure, but I\ncertainly did think that the kindness of your nature might prevent\nyou judging an uncontrolled tongue harshly--which you have done--and\nthinking badly of me and wounding me this morning, when I am working\nhard to save your hay.\"\n\n\"Well, you need not think more of that: perhaps you did not mean to\nbe rude to me by speaking out your mind: indeed, I believe you did\nnot,\" said the shrewd woman, in painfully innocent earnest.  \"And I\nthank you for giving help here.  But--but mind you don't speak to me\nagain in that way, or in any other, unless I speak to you.\"\n\n\"Oh, Miss Bathsheba!  That is too hard!\"\n\n\"No, it isn't.  Why is it?\"\n\n\"You will never speak to me; for I shall not be here long.  I am soon\ngoing back again to the miserable monotony of drill--and perhaps\nour regiment will be ordered out soon.  And yet you take away the\none little ewe-lamb of pleasure that I have in this dull life\nof mine. Well, perhaps generosity is not a woman's most marked\ncharacteristic.\"\n\n\"When are you going from here?\" she asked, with some interest.\n\n\"In a month.\"\n\n\"But how can it give you pleasure to speak to me?\"\n\n\"Can you ask Miss Everdene--knowing as you do--what my offence is\nbased on?\"\n\n\"If you do care so much for a silly trifle of that kind, then, I\ndon't mind doing it,\" she uncertainly and doubtingly answered.  \"But\nyou can't really care for a word from me? you only say so--I think\nyou only say so.\"\n\n\"That's unjust--but I won't repeat the remark.  I am too gratified to\nget such a mark of your friendship at any price to cavil at the tone.\nI DO, Miss Everdene, care for it.  You may think a man foolish to\nwant a mere word--just a good morning.  Perhaps he is--I don't know.\nBut you have never been a man looking upon a woman, and that woman\nyourself.\"\n\n\"Well.\"\n\n\"Then you know nothing of what such an experience is like--and Heaven\nforbid that you ever should!\"\n\n\"Nonsense, flatterer!  What is it like?  I am interested in knowing.\"\n\n\"Put shortly, it is not being able to think, hear, or look in\nany direction except one without wretchedness, nor there without\ntorture.\"\n\n\"Ah, sergeant, it won't do--you are pretending!\" she said, shaking\nher head. \"Your words are too dashing to be true.\"\n\n\"I am not, upon the honour of a soldier.\"\n\n\"But WHY is it so?--Of course I ask for mere pastime.\"\n\n\"Because you are so distracting--and I am so distracted.\"\n\n\"You look like it.\"\n\n\"I am indeed.\"\n\n\"Why, you only saw me the other night!\"\n\n\"That makes no difference.  The lightning works instantaneously.  I\nloved you then, at once--as I do now.\"\n\nBathsheba surveyed him curiously, from the feet upward, as high as\nshe liked to venture her glance, which was not quite so high as his\neyes.\n\n\"You cannot and you don't,\" she said demurely.  \"There is no such\nsudden feeling in people.  I won't listen to you any longer.  Hear\nme, I wish I knew what o'clock it is--I am going--I have wasted too\nmuch time here already!\"\n\nThe sergeant looked at his watch and told her.  \"What, haven't you a\nwatch, miss?\" he inquired.\n\n\"I have not just at present--I am about to get a new one.\"\n\n\"No.  You shall be given one.  Yes--you shall.  A gift, Miss\nEverdene--a gift.\"\n\nAnd before she knew what the young man was intending, a heavy gold\nwatch was in her hand.\n\n\"It is an unusually good one for a man like me to possess,\" he\nquietly said.  \"That watch has a history.  Press the spring and open\nthe back.\"\n\nShe did so.\n\n\"What do you see?\"\n\n\"A crest and a motto.\"\n\n\"A coronet with five points, and beneath, _Cedit amor rebus_--'Love\nyields to circumstance.' It's the motto of the Earls of Severn.\nThat watch belonged to the last lord, and was given to my mother's\nhusband, a medical man, for his use till I came of age, when it was\nto be given to me.  It was all the fortune that ever I inherited.\nThat watch has regulated imperial interests in its time--the stately\nceremonial, the courtly assignation, pompous travels, and lordly\nsleeps.  Now it is yours.\"\n\n\"But, Sergeant Troy, I cannot take this--I cannot!\" she exclaimed,\nwith round-eyed wonder.  \"A gold watch!  What are you doing?  Don't\nbe such a dissembler!\"\n\nThe sergeant retreated to avoid receiving back his gift, which she\nheld out persistently towards him.  Bathsheba followed as he retired.\n\n\"Keep it--do, Miss Everdene--keep it!\" said the erratic child of\nimpulse.  \"The fact of your possessing it makes it worth ten times\nas much to me.  A more plebeian one will answer my purpose just\nas well, and the pleasure of knowing whose heart my old one beats\nagainst--well, I won't speak of that.  It is in far worthier hands\nthan ever it has been in before.\"\n\n\"But indeed I can't have it!\" she said, in a perfect simmer of\ndistress.  \"Oh, how can you do such a thing; that is if you really\nmean it!  Give me your dead father's watch, and such a valuable one!\nYou should not be so reckless, indeed, Sergeant Troy!\"\n\n\"I loved my father: good; but better, I love you more.  That's how I\ncan do it,\" said the sergeant, with an intonation of such exquisite\nfidelity to nature that it was evidently not all acted now.  Her\nbeauty, which, whilst it had been quiescent, he had praised in jest,\nhad in its animated phases moved him to earnest; and though his\nseriousness was less than she imagined, it was probably more than he\nimagined himself.\n\nBathsheba was brimming with agitated bewilderment, and she said, in\nhalf-suspicious accents of feeling, \"Can it be!  Oh, how can it be,\nthat you care for me, and so suddenly!  You have seen so little\nof me: I may not be really so--so nice-looking as I seem to you.\nPlease, do take it; Oh, do!  I cannot and will not have it.  Believe\nme, your generosity is too great.  I have never done you a single\nkindness, and why should you be so kind to me?\"\n\nA factitious reply had been again upon his lips, but it was again\nsuspended, and he looked at her with an arrested eye.  The truth was,\nthat as she now stood--excited, wild, and honest as the day--her\nalluring beauty bore out so fully the epithets he had bestowed upon\nit that he was quite startled at his temerity in advancing them as\nfalse.  He said mechanically, \"Ah, why?\" and continued to look at\nher.\n\n\"And my workfolk see me following you about the field, and are\nwondering.  Oh, this is dreadful!\" she went on, unconscious of the\ntransmutation she was effecting.\n\n\"I did not quite mean you to accept it at first, for it was my one\npoor patent of nobility,\" he broke out, bluntly; \"but, upon my soul,\nI wish you would now.  Without any shamming, come!  Don't deny me the\nhappiness of wearing it for my sake?  But you are too lovely even to\ncare to be kind as others are.\"\n\n\"No, no; don't say so!  I have reasons for reserve which I cannot\nexplain.\"\n\n\"Let it be, then, let it be,\" he said, receiving back the watch at\nlast; \"I must be leaving you now.  And will you speak to me for these\nfew weeks of my stay?\"\n\n\"Indeed I will.  Yet, I don't know if I will!  Oh, why did you come\nand disturb me so!\"\n\n\"Perhaps in setting a gin, I have caught myself.  Such things have\nhappened.  Well, will you let me work in your fields?\" he coaxed.\n\n\"Yes, I suppose so; if it is any pleasure to you.\"\n\n\"Miss Everdene, I thank you.\"\n\n\"No, no.\"\n\n\"Good-bye!\"\n\nThe sergeant brought his hand to the cap on the slope of his head,\nsaluted, and returned to the distant group of haymakers.\n\nBathsheba could not face the haymakers now.  Her heart erratically\nflitting hither and thither from perplexed excitement, hot, and\nalmost tearful, she retreated homeward, murmuring, \"Oh, what have I\ndone!  What does it mean!  I wish I knew how much of it was true!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHIVING THE BEES\n\n\nThe Weatherbury bees were late in their swarming this year. It was in\nthe latter part of June, and the day after the interview with Troy in\nthe hayfield, that Bathsheba was standing in her garden, watching a\nswarm in the air and guessing their probable settling place.  Not\nonly were they late this year, but unruly.  Sometimes throughout a\nwhole season all the swarms would alight on the lowest attainable\nbough--such as part of a currant-bush or espalier apple-tree; next\nyear they would, with just the same unanimity, make straight off to\nthe uppermost member of some tall, gaunt costard, or quarrenden,\nand there defy all invaders who did not come armed with ladders and\nstaves to take them.\n\nThis was the case at present.  Bathsheba's eyes, shaded by one hand,\nwere following the ascending multitude against the unexplorable\nstretch of blue till they ultimately halted by one of the unwieldy\ntrees spoken of.  A process somewhat analogous to that of alleged\nformations of the universe, time and times ago, was observable.  The\nbustling swarm had swept the sky in a scattered and uniform haze,\nwhich now thickened to a nebulous centre: this glided on to a bough\nand grew still denser, till it formed a solid black spot upon the\nlight.\n\nThe men and women being all busily engaged in saving the hay--even\nLiddy had left the house for the purpose of lending a hand--Bathsheba\nresolved to hive the bees herself, if possible.  She had dressed the\nhive with herbs and honey, fetched a ladder, brush, and crook, made\nherself impregnable with armour of leather gloves, straw hat, and\nlarge gauze veil--once green but now faded to snuff colour--and\nascended a dozen rungs of the ladder.  At once she heard, not ten\nyards off, a voice that was beginning to have a strange power in\nagitating her.\n\n\"Miss Everdene, let me assist you; you should not attempt such a\nthing alone.\"\n\nTroy was just opening the garden gate.\n\nBathsheba flung down the brush, crook, and empty hive, pulled the\nskirt of her dress tightly round her ankles in a tremendous flurry,\nand as well as she could slid down the ladder.  By the time she\nreached the bottom Troy was there also, and he stooped to pick up\nthe hive.\n\n\"How fortunate I am to have dropped in at this moment!\" exclaimed the\nsergeant.\n\nShe found her voice in a minute.  \"What! and will you shake them in\nfor me?\" she asked, in what, for a defiant girl, was a faltering way;\nthough, for a timid girl, it would have seemed a brave way enough.\n\n\"Will I!\" said Troy.  \"Why, of course I will.  How blooming you are\nto-day!\"  Troy flung down his cane and put his foot on the ladder to\nascend.\n\n\"But you must have on the veil and gloves, or you'll be stung\nfearfully!\"\n\n\"Ah, yes.  I must put on the veil and gloves.  Will you kindly show\nme how to fix them properly?\"\n\n\"And you must have the broad-brimmed hat, too, for your cap has no\nbrim to keep the veil off, and they'd reach your face.\"\n\n\"The broad-brimmed hat, too, by all means.\"\n\nSo a whimsical fate ordered that her hat should be taken off--veil\nand all attached--and placed upon his head, Troy tossing his own into\na gooseberry bush.  Then the veil had to be tied at its lower edge\nround his collar and the gloves put on him.\n\nHe looked such an extraordinary object in this guise that, flurried\nas she was, she could not avoid laughing outright. It was the removal\nof yet another stake from the palisade of cold manners which had kept\nhim off.\n\nBathsheba looked on from the ground whilst he was busy sweeping and\nshaking the bees from the tree, holding up the hive with the other\nhand for them to fall into.  She made use of an unobserved minute\nwhilst his attention was absorbed in the operation to arrange her\nplumes a little.  He came down holding the hive at arm's length,\nbehind which trailed a cloud of bees.\n\n\"Upon my life,\" said Troy, through the veil, \"holding up this hive\nmakes one's arm ache worse than a week of sword-exercise.\" When the\nmanoeuvre was complete he approached her.  \"Would you be good enough\nto untie me and let me out? I am nearly stifled inside this silk\ncage.\"\n\nTo hide her embarrassment during the unwonted process of untying the\nstring about his neck, she said:--\n\n\"I have never seen that you spoke of.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"The sword-exercise.\"\n\n\"Ah! would you like to?\" said Troy.\n\nBathsheba hesitated.  She had heard wondrous reports from time to\ntime by dwellers in Weatherbury, who had by chance sojourned awhile\nin Casterbridge, near the barracks, of this strange and glorious\nperformance, the sword-exercise.  Men and boys who had peeped through\nchinks or over walls into the barrack-yard returned with accounts of\nits being the most flashing affair conceivable; accoutrements and\nweapons glistening like stars--here, there, around--yet all by rule\nand compass.  So she said mildly what she felt strongly.\n\n\"Yes; I should like to see it very much.\"\n\n\"And so you shall; you shall see me go through it.\"\n\n\"No!  How?\"\n\n\"Let me consider.\"\n\n\"Not with a walking-stick--I don't care to see that.  It must be a\nreal sword.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know; and I have no sword here; but I think I could get one\nby the evening.  Now, will you do this?\"\n\nTroy bent over her and murmured some suggestion in a low voice.\n\n\"Oh no, indeed!\" said Bathsheba, blushing. \"Thank you very much, but\nI couldn't on any account.\"\n\n\"Surely you might?  Nobody would know.\"\n\nShe shook her head, but with a weakened negation.  \"If I were to,\"\nshe said, \"I must bring Liddy too.  Might I not?\"\n\nTroy looked far away.  \"I don't see why you want to bring her,\" he\nsaid coldly.\n\nAn unconscious look of assent in Bathsheba's eyes betrayed that\nsomething more than his coldness had made her also feel that Liddy\nwould be superfluous in the suggested scene.  She had felt it, even\nwhilst making the proposal.\n\n\"Well, I won't bring Liddy--and I'll come.  But only for a very short\ntime,\" she added; \"a very short time.\"\n\n\"It will not take five minutes,\" said Troy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE HOLLOW AMID THE FERNS\n\n\nThe hill opposite Bathsheba's dwelling extended, a mile off, into an\nuncultivated tract of land, dotted at this season with tall thickets\nof brake fern, plump and diaphanous from recent rapid growth, and\nradiant in hues of clear and untainted green.\n\nAt eight o'clock this midsummer evening, whilst the bristling ball\nof gold in the west still swept the tips of the ferns with its long,\nluxuriant rays, a soft brushing-by of garments might have been heard\namong them, and Bathsheba appeared in their midst, their soft,\nfeathery arms caressing her up to her shoulders.  She paused, turned,\nwent back over the hill and half-way to her own door, whence she cast\na farewell glance upon the spot she had just left, having resolved\nnot to remain near the place after all.\n\nShe saw a dim spot of artificial red moving round the shoulder of the\nrise.  It disappeared on the other side.\n\nShe waited one minute--two minutes--thought of Troy's disappointment\nat her non-fulfilment of a promised engagement, till she again ran\nalong the field, clambered over the bank, and followed the original\ndirection.  She was now literally trembling and panting at this her\ntemerity in such an errant undertaking; her breath came and went\nquickly, and her eyes shone with an infrequent light.  Yet go she\nmust.  She reached the verge of a pit in the middle of the ferns.\nTroy stood in the bottom, looking up towards her.\n\n\"I heard you rustling through the fern before I saw you,\" he said,\ncoming up and giving her his hand to help her down the slope.\n\nThe pit was a saucer-shaped concave, naturally formed, with a top\ndiameter of about thirty feet, and shallow enough to allow the\nsunshine to reach their heads.  Standing in the centre, the sky\noverhead was met by a circular horizon of fern: this grew nearly to\nthe bottom of the slope and then abruptly ceased.  The middle within\nthe belt of verdure was floored with a thick flossy carpet of moss\nand grass intermingled, so yielding that the foot was half-buried\nwithin it.\n\n\"Now,\" said Troy, producing the sword, which, as he raised it into\nthe sunlight, gleamed a sort of greeting, like a living thing,\n\"first, we have four right and four left cuts; four right and four\nleft thrusts.   Infantry cuts and guards are more interesting than\nours, to my mind; but they are not so swashing.  They have seven\ncuts and three thrusts.   So much as a preliminary.  Well, next, our\ncut one is as if you were sowing your corn--so.\"  Bathsheba saw a\nsort of rainbow, upside down in the air, and Troy's arm was still\nagain.  \"Cut two, as if you were hedging--so.  Three, as if you were\nreaping--so. Four, as if you were threshing--in that way.  Then the\nsame on the left.  The thrusts are these: one, two, three, four,\nright; one, two, three, four, left.\"  He repeated them.  \"Have 'em\nagain?\" he said.  \"One, two--\"\n\nShe hurriedly interrupted: \"I'd rather not; though I don't mind your\ntwos and fours; but your ones and threes are terrible!\"\n\n\"Very well.  I'll let you off the ones and threes.  Next, cuts,\npoints and guards altogether.\"  Troy duly exhibited them.  \"Then\nthere's pursuing practice, in this way.\"  He gave the movements as\nbefore.   \"There, those are the stereotyped forms.  The infantry have\ntwo most diabolical upward cuts, which we are too humane to use.\nLike this--three, four.\"\n\n\"How murderous and bloodthirsty!\"\n\n\"They are rather deathly.  Now I'll be more interesting, and let you\nsee some loose play--giving all the cuts and points, infantry and\ncavalry, quicker than lightning, and as promiscuously--with just\nenough rule to regulate instinct and yet not to fetter it.  You are\nmy antagonist, with this difference from real warfare, that I shall\nmiss you every time by one hair's breadth, or perhaps two.  Mind you\ndon't flinch, whatever you do.\"\n\n\"I'll be sure not to!\" she said invincibly.\n\nHe pointed to about a yard in front of him.\n\nBathsheba's adventurous spirit was beginning to find some grains of\nrelish in these highly novel proceedings.  She took up her position\nas directed, facing Troy.\n\n\"Now just to learn whether you have pluck enough to let me do what I\nwish, I'll give you a preliminary test.\"\n\nHe flourished the sword by way of introduction number two, and the\nnext thing of which she was conscious was that the point and blade of\nthe sword were darting with a gleam towards her left side, just above\nher hip; then of their reappearance on her right side, emerging as\nit were from between her ribs, having apparently passed through her\nbody.  The third item of consciousness was that of seeing the same\nsword, perfectly clean and free from blood held vertically in Troy's\nhand (in the position technically called \"recover swords\").  All was\nas quick as electricity.\n\n\"Oh!\" she cried out in affright, pressing her hand to her side. \"Have\nyou run me through?--no, you have not!  Whatever have you done!\"\n\n\"I have not touched you,\" said Troy, quietly.  \"It was mere sleight\nof hand.  The sword passed behind you.  Now you are not afraid, are\nyou?  Because if you are I can't perform.  I give my word that I will\nnot only not hurt you, but not once touch you.\"\n\n\"I don't think I am afraid.  You are quite sure you will not hurt\nme?\"\n\n\"Quite sure.\"\n\n\"Is the sword very sharp?\"\n\n\"O no--only stand as still as a statue.  Now!\"\n\nIn an instant the atmosphere was transformed to Bathsheba's eyes.\nBeams of light caught from the low sun's rays, above, around, in\nfront of her, well-nigh shut out earth and heaven--all emitted in\nthe marvellous evolutions of Troy's reflecting blade, which seemed\neverywhere at once, and yet nowhere specially.  These circling gleams\nwere accompanied by a keen rush that was almost a whistling--also\nspringing from all sides of her at once.  In short, she was enclosed\nin a firmament of light, and of sharp hisses, resembling a sky-full\nof meteors close at hand.\n\nNever since the broadsword became the national weapon had there been\nmore dexterity shown in its management than by the hands of Sergeant\nTroy, and never had he been in such splendid temper for the\nperformance as now in the evening sunshine among the ferns with\nBathsheba.  It may safely be asserted with respect to the closeness\nof his cuts, that had it been possible for the edge of the sword to\nleave in the air a permanent substance wherever it flew past, the\nspace left untouched would have been almost a mould of Bathsheba's\nfigure.\n\nBehind the luminous streams of this _aurora militaris_, she could see\nthe hue of Troy's sword arm, spread in a scarlet haze over the space\ncovered by its motions, like a twanged harpstring, and behind all\nTroy himself, mostly facing her; sometimes, to show the rear cuts,\nhalf turned away, his eye nevertheless always keenly measuring\nher breadth and outline, and his lips tightly closed in sustained\neffort.  Next, his movements lapsed slower, and she could see them\nindividually.  The hissing of the sword had ceased, and he stopped\nentirely.\n\n\"That outer loose lock of hair wants tidying,\" he said, before she\nhad moved or spoken.  \"Wait: I'll do it for you.\"\n\nAn arc of silver shone on her right side: the sword had descended.\nThe lock dropped to the ground.\n\n\"Bravely borne!\" said Troy.  \"You didn't flinch a shade's thickness.\nWonderful in a woman!\"\n\n\"It was because I didn't expect it.  Oh, you have spoilt my hair!\"\n\n\"Only once more.\"\n\n\"No--no!  I am afraid of you--indeed I am!\" she cried.\n\n\"I won't touch you at all--not even your hair.  I am only going to\nkill that caterpillar settling on you.  Now: still!\"\n\nIt appeared that a caterpillar had come from the fern and chosen the\nfront of her bodice as his resting place.  She saw the point glisten\ntowards her bosom, and seemingly enter it.  Bathsheba closed her eyes\nin the full persuasion that she was killed at last.  However, feeling\njust as usual, she opened them again.\n\n\"There it is, look,\" said the sergeant, holding his sword before her\neyes.\n\nThe caterpillar was spitted upon its point.\n\n\"Why, it is magic!\" said Bathsheba, amazed.\n\n\"Oh no--dexterity.  I merely gave point to your bosom where the\ncaterpillar was, and instead of running you through checked the\nextension a thousandth of an inch short of your surface.\"\n\n\"But how could you chop off a curl of my hair with a sword that has\nno edge?\"\n\n\"No edge!  This sword will shave like a razor.  Look here.\"\n\nHe touched the palm of his hand with the blade, and then, lifting it,\nshowed her a thin shaving of scarf-skin dangling therefrom.\n\n\"But you said before beginning that it was blunt and couldn't cut\nme!\"\n\n\"That was to get you to stand still, and so make sure of your safety.\nThe risk of injuring you through your moving was too great not to\nforce me to tell you a fib to escape it.\"\n\nShe shuddered.  \"I have been within an inch of my life, and didn't\nknow it!\"\n\n\"More precisely speaking, you have been within half an inch of being\npared alive two hundred and ninety-five times.\"\n\n\"Cruel, cruel, 'tis of you!\"\n\n\"You have been perfectly safe, nevertheless.  My sword never errs.\"\nAnd Troy returned the weapon to the scabbard.\n\nBathsheba, overcome by a hundred tumultuous feelings resulting from\nthe scene, abstractedly sat down on a tuft of heather.\n\n\"I must leave you now,\" said Troy, softly.  \"And I'll venture to take\nand keep this in remembrance of you.\"\n\nShe saw him stoop to the grass, pick up the winding lock which he\nhad severed from her manifold tresses, twist it round his fingers,\nunfasten a button in the breast of his coat, and carefully put\nit inside.  She felt powerless to withstand or deny him.  He was\naltogether too much for her, and Bathsheba seemed as one who, facing\na reviving wind, finds it blow so strongly that it stops the breath.\nHe drew near and said, \"I must be leaving you.\"\n\nHe drew nearer still.  A minute later and she saw his scarlet form\ndisappear amid the ferny thicket, almost in a flash, like a brand\nswiftly waved.\n\nThat minute's interval had brought the blood beating into her face,\nset her stinging as if aflame to the very hollows of her feet, and\nenlarged emotion to a compass which quite swamped thought.  It had\nbrought upon her a stroke resulting, as did that of Moses in Horeb,\nin a liquid stream--here a stream of tears.  She felt like one who\nhas sinned a great sin.\n\nThe circumstance had been the gentle dip of Troy's mouth downwards\nupon her own.  He had kissed her.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK\n\n\nWe now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the many\nvarying particulars which made up the character of Bathsheba\nEverdene.  It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature.  Introduced\nas lymph on the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and coloured\nher whole constitution.  Bathsheba, though she had too much\nunderstanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had too\nmuch womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage.\nPerhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than\nin the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she\nknows to be false--except, indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical\non strictures that she knows to be true.\n\nBathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women\nlove when they abandon their self-reliance.  When a strong woman\nrecklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman\nwho has never had any strength to throw away.  One source of her\ninadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice\nin making the best of such a condition.  Weakness is doubly weak by\nbeing new.\n\nBathsheba was not conscious of guile in this matter.  Though in one\nsense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of daylight\ncoteries and green carpets wherein cattle form the passing crowd and\nwinds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on\nthe other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybody\nin the tything, and where calculation is confined to market-days.\nOf the fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew but\nlittle, and of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all.\nHad her utmost thoughts in this direction been distinctly worded (and\nby herself they never were), they would only have amounted to such a\nmatter as that she felt her impulses to be pleasanter guides than her\ndiscretion.  Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as\nsummer it was fresh as spring.  Her culpability lay in her making\nno attempt to control feeling by subtle and careful inquiry into\nconsequences.  She could show others the steep and thorny way, but\n\"reck'd not her own rede.\"\n\nAnd Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst\nhis embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with\nhomely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose\nvirtues were as metals in a mine.\n\nThe difference between love and respect was markedly shown in her\nconduct.  Bathsheba had spoken of her interest in Boldwood with the\ngreatest freedom to Liddy, but she had only communed with her own\nheart concerning Troy.\n\nAll this infatuation Gabriel saw, and was troubled thereby from the\ntime of his daily journey a-field to the time of his return, and on\nto the small hours of many a night.  That he was not beloved had\nhitherto been his great sorrow; that Bathsheba was getting into\nthe toils was now a sorrow greater than the first, and one which\nnearly obscured it.  It was a result which paralleled the oft-quoted\nobservation of Hippocrates concerning physical pains.\n\nThat is a noble though perhaps an unpromising love which not even the\nfear of breeding aversion in the bosom of the one beloved can deter\nfrom combating his or her errors.  Oak determined to speak to his\nmistress.  He would base his appeal on what he considered her unfair\ntreatment of Farmer Boldwood, now absent from home.\n\nAn opportunity occurred one evening when she had gone for a short\nwalk by a path through the neighbouring cornfields.  It was dusk when\nOak, who had not been far a-field that day, took the same path and\nmet her returning, quite pensively, as he thought.\n\nThe wheat was now tall, and the path was narrow; thus the way was\nquite a sunken groove between the embowing thicket on either side.\nTwo persons could not walk abreast without damaging the crop, and\nOak stood aside to let her pass.\n\n\"Oh, is it Gabriel?\" she said.  \"You are taking a walk too.\nGood-night.\"\n\n\"I thought I would come to meet you, as it is rather late,\" said Oak,\nturning and following at her heels when she had brushed somewhat\nquickly by him.\n\n\"Thank you, indeed, but I am not very fearful.\"\n\n\"Oh no; but there are bad characters about.\"\n\n\"I never meet them.\"\n\nNow Oak, with marvellous ingenuity, had been going to introduce the\ngallant sergeant through the channel of \"bad characters.\"  But all at\nonce the scheme broke down, it suddenly occurring to him that this\nwas rather a clumsy way, and too barefaced to begin with.  He tried\nanother preamble.\n\n\"And as the man who would naturally come to meet you is away from\nhome, too--I mean Farmer Boldwood--why, thinks I, I'll go,\" he said.\n\n\"Ah, yes.\"  She walked on without turning her head, and for many\nsteps nothing further was heard from her quarter than the rustle\nof her dress against the heavy corn-ears.  Then she resumed rather\ntartly--\n\n\"I don't quite understand what you meant by saying that Mr. Boldwood\nwould naturally come to meet me.\"\n\n\"I meant on account of the wedding which they say is likely to take\nplace between you and him, miss.  Forgive my speaking plainly.\"\n\n\"They say what is not true.\" she returned quickly.  \"No marriage is\nlikely to take place between us.\"\n\nGabriel now put forth his unobscured opinion, for the moment had\ncome.  \"Well, Miss Everdene,\" he said, \"putting aside what people\nsay, I never in my life saw any courting if his is not a courting\nof you.\"\n\nBathsheba would probably have terminated the conversation there and\nthen by flatly forbidding the subject, had not her conscious weakness\nof position allured her to palter and argue in endeavours to better\nit.\n\n\"Since this subject has been mentioned,\" she said very emphatically,\n\"I am glad of the opportunity of clearing up a mistake which is very\ncommon and very provoking.  I didn't definitely promise Mr. Boldwood\nanything.  I have never cared for him.  I respect him, and he has\nurged me to marry him.  But I have given him no distinct answer.\nAs soon as he returns I shall do so; and the answer will be that I\ncannot think of marrying him.\"\n\n\"People are full of mistakes, seemingly.\"\n\n\"They are.\"\n\n\"The other day they said you were trifling with him, and you almost\nproved that you were not; lately they have said that you be not, and\nyou straightway begin to show--\"\n\n\"That I am, I suppose you mean.\"\n\n\"Well, I hope they speak the truth.\"\n\n\"They do, but wrongly applied.  I don't trifle with him; but then, I\nhave nothing to do with him.\"\n\nOak was unfortunately led on to speak of Boldwood's rival in a wrong\ntone to her after all.  \"I wish you had never met that young Sergeant\nTroy, miss,\" he sighed.\n\nBathsheba's steps became faintly spasmodic.  \"Why?\" she asked.\n\n\"He is not good enough for 'ee.\"\n\n\"Did any one tell you to speak to me like this?\"\n\n\"Nobody at all.\"\n\n\"Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not concern us here,\"\nshe said, intractably. \"Yet I must say that Sergeant Troy is an\neducated man, and quite worthy of any woman.  He is well born.\"\n\n\"His being higher in learning and birth than the ruck o' soldiers\nis anything but a proof of his worth.  It show's his course to be\ndown'ard.\"\n\n\"I cannot see what this has to do with our conversation.  Mr. Troy's\ncourse is not by any means downward; and his superiority IS a proof\nof his worth!\"\n\n\"I believe him to have no conscience at all.  And I cannot help\nbegging you, miss, to have nothing to do with him.  Listen to me this\nonce--only this once!  I don't say he's such a bad man as I have\nfancied--I pray to God he is not.  But since we don't exactly know\nwhat he is, why not behave as if he MIGHT be bad, simply for your own\nsafety?  Don't trust him, mistress; I ask you not to trust him so.\"\n\n\"Why, pray?\"\n\n\"I like soldiers, but this one I do not like,\" he said, sturdily.\n\"His cleverness in his calling may have tempted him astray, and what\nis mirth to the neighbours is ruin to the woman.  When he tries to\ntalk to 'ee again, why not turn away with a short 'Good day'; and\nwhen you see him coming one way, turn the other.  When he says\nanything laughable, fail to see the point and don't smile, and speak\nof him before those who will report your talk as 'that fantastical\nman,' or 'that Sergeant What's-his-name.' 'That man of a family\nthat has come to the dogs.'  Don't be unmannerly towards en, but\nharmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the man.\"\n\nNo Christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever pulsed as did\nBathsheba now.\n\n\"I say--I say again--that it doesn't become you to talk about\nhim.  Why he should be mentioned passes me quite!\" she exclaimed\ndesperately.  \"I know this, th-th-that he is a thoroughly\nconscientious man--blunt sometimes even to rudeness--but always\nspeaking his mind about you plain to your face!\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"He is as good as anybody in this parish!  He is very particular,\ntoo, about going to church--yes, he is!\"\n\n\"I am afeard nobody saw him there.  I never did, certainly.\"\n\n\"The reason of that is,\" she said eagerly, \"that he goes in privately\nby the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at\nthe back of the gallery.  He told me so.\"\n\nThis supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel ears like\nthe thirteenth stroke of crazy clock.  It was not only received with\nutter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the\nassurances that had preceded it.\n\nOak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him.  He brimmed\nwith deep feeling as he replied in a steady voice, the steadiness of\nwhich was spoilt by the palpableness of his great effort to keep it\nso:--\n\n\"You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always.\nI only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate I would\nwish to do you no harm: beyond that I put it aside.  I have lost in\nthe race for money and good things, and I am not such a fool as to\npretend to 'ee now I am poor, and you have got altogether above me.\nBut Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider--that, both\nto keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in common\ngenerosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, you\nshould be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier.\"\n\n\"Don't, don't, don't!\" she exclaimed, in a choking voice.\n\n\"Are ye not more to me than my own affairs, and even life!\" he went\non.  \"Come, listen to me!  I am six years older than you, and Mr.\nBoldwood is ten years older than I, and consider--I do beg of 'ee to\nconsider before it is too late--how safe you would be in his hands!\"\n\nOak's allusion to his own love for her lessened, to some extent, her\nanger at his interference; but she could not really forgive him for\nletting his wish to marry her be eclipsed by his wish to do her good,\nany more than for his slighting treatment of Troy.\n\n\"I wish you to go elsewhere,\" she commanded, a paleness of face\ninvisible to the eye being suggested by the trembling words.  \"Do not\nremain on this farm any longer.  I don't want you--I beg you to go!\"\n\n\"That's nonsense,\" said Oak, calmly.  \"This is the second time you\nhave pretended to dismiss me; and what's the use o' it?\"\n\n\"Pretended!  You shall go, sir--your lecturing I will not hear!  I am\nmistress here.\"\n\n\"Go, indeed--what folly will you say next?  Treating me like Dick,\nTom and Harry when you know that a short time ago my position was as\ngood as yours!  Upon my life, Bathsheba, it is too barefaced.  You\nknow, too, that I can't go without putting things in such a strait as\nyou wouldn't get out of I can't tell when.  Unless, indeed, you'll\npromise to have an understanding man as bailiff, or manager, or\nsomething.  I'll go at once if you'll promise that.\"\n\n\"I shall have no bailiff; I shall continue to be my own manager,\" she\nsaid decisively.\n\n\"Very well, then; you should be thankful to me for biding.  How would\nthe farm go on with nobody to mind it but a woman?  But mind this, I\ndon't wish 'ee to feel you owe me anything.  Not I.  What I do, I do.\nSometimes I say I should be as glad as a bird to leave the place--for\ndon't suppose I'm content to be a nobody.  I was made for better\nthings.  However, I don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, as\nthey must if you keep in this mind....  I hate taking my own measure\nso plain, but, upon my life, your provoking ways make a man say\nwhat he wouldn't dream of at other times!  I own to being rather\ninterfering.  But you know well enough how it is, and who she is that\nI like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be civil to\nher!\"\n\nIt is more than probable that she privately and unconsciously\nrespected him a little for this grim fidelity, which had been shown\nin his tone even more than in his words.  At any rate she murmured\nsomething to the effect that he might stay if he wished.  She said\nmore distinctly, \"Will you leave me alone now?  I don't order it\nas a mistress--I ask it as a woman, and I expect you not to be so\nuncourteous as to refuse.\"\n\n\"Certainly I will, Miss Everdene,\" said Gabriel, gently.  He wondered\nthat the request should have come at this moment, for the strife was\nover, and they were on a most desolate hill, far from every human\nhabitation, and the hour was getting late.  He stood still and\nallowed her to get far ahead of him till he could only see her form\nupon the sky.\n\nA distressing explanation of this anxiety to be rid of him at that\npoint now ensued.  A figure apparently rose from the earth beside\nher.  The shape beyond all doubt was Troy's.  Oak would not be even\na possible listener, and at once turned back till a good two hundred\nyards were between the lovers and himself.\n\nGabriel went home by way of the churchyard.  In passing the tower\nhe thought of what she had said about the sergeant's virtuous habit\nof entering the church unperceived at the beginning of service.\nBelieving that the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused,\nhe ascended the external flight of steps at the top of which\nit stood, and examined it.  The pale lustre yet hanging in the\nnorth-western heaven was sufficient to show that a sprig of ivy had\ngrown from the wall across the door to a length of more than a foot,\ndelicately tying the panel to the stone jamb.  It was a decisive\nproof that the door had not been opened at least since Troy came back\nto Weatherbury.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHOT CHEEKS AND TEARFUL EYES\n\n\nHalf an hour later Bathsheba entered her own house.  There burnt\nupon her face when she met the light of the candles the flush and\nexcitement which were little less than chronic with her now.  The\nfarewell words of Troy, who had accompanied her to the very door,\nstill lingered in her ears.  He had bidden her adieu for two days,\nwhich were, so he stated, to be spent at Bath in visiting some\nfriends.  He had also kissed her a second time.\n\nIt is only fair to Bathsheba to explain here a little fact which\ndid not come to light till a long time afterwards: that Troy's\npresentation of himself so aptly at the roadside this evening was\nnot by any distinctly preconcerted arrangement.  He had hinted--she\nhad forbidden; and it was only on the chance of his still coming\nthat she had dismissed Oak, fearing a meeting between them just\nthen.\n\nShe now sank down into a chair, wild and perturbed by all these\nnew and fevering sequences.  Then she jumped up with a manner of\ndecision, and fetched her desk from a side table.\n\nIn three minutes, without pause or modification, she had written a\nletter to Boldwood, at his address beyond Casterbridge, saying mildly\nbut firmly that she had well considered the whole subject he had\nbrought before her and kindly given her time to decide upon; that\nher final decision was that she could not marry him.  She had\nexpressed to Oak an intention to wait till Boldwood came home before\ncommunicating to him her conclusive reply.  But Bathsheba found that\nshe could not wait.\n\nIt was impossible to send this letter till the next day; yet to quell\nher uneasiness by getting it out of her hands, and so, as it were,\nsetting the act in motion at once, she arose to take it to any one of\nthe women who might be in the kitchen.\n\nShe paused in the passage.  A dialogue was going on in the kitchen,\nand Bathsheba and Troy were the subject of it.\n\n\"If he marry her, she'll gie up farming.\"\n\n\"'Twill be a gallant life, but may bring some trouble between the\nmirth--so say I.\"\n\n\"Well, I wish I had half such a husband.\"\n\nBathsheba had too much sense to mind seriously what her servitors\nsaid about her; but too much womanly redundance of speech to leave\nalone what was said till it died the natural death of unminded\nthings.  She burst in upon them.\n\n\"Who are you speaking of?\" she asked.\n\nThere was a pause before anybody replied.  At last Liddy said\nfrankly, \"What was passing was a bit of a word about yourself, miss.\"\n\n\"I thought so!  Maryann and Liddy and Temperance--now I forbid you\nto suppose such things.  You know I don't care the least for Mr.\nTroy--not I.   Everybody knows how much I hate him.--Yes,\" repeated\nthe froward young person, \"HATE him!\"\n\n\"We know you do, miss,\" said Liddy; \"and so do we all.\"\n\n\"I hate him too,\" said Maryann.\n\n\"Maryann--Oh you perjured woman!  How can you speak that wicked\nstory!\" said Bathsheba, excitedly.  \"You admired him from your heart\nonly this morning in the very world, you did.  Yes, Maryann, you know\nit!\"\n\n\"Yes, miss, but so did you.  He is a wild scamp now, and you are\nright to hate him.\"\n\n\"He's NOT a wild scamp!  How dare you to my face!  I have no right to\nhate him, nor you, nor anybody.  But I am a silly woman!  What is it\nto me what he is?  You know it is nothing.  I don't care for him; I\ndon't mean to defend his good name, not I.  Mind this, if any of you\nsay a word against him you'll be dismissed instantly!\"\n\nShe flung down the letter and surged back into the parlour, with a\nbig heart and tearful eyes, Liddy following her.\n\n\"Oh miss!\" said mild Liddy, looking pitifully into Bathsheba's face.\n\"I am sorry we mistook you so!  I did think you cared for him; but I\nsee you don't now.\"\n\n\"Shut the door, Liddy.\"\n\nLiddy closed the door, and went on: \"People always say such foolery,\nmiss.  I'll make answer hencefor'ard, 'Of course a lady like Miss\nEverdene can't love him'; I'll say it out in plain black and white.\"\n\nBathsheba burst out: \"O Liddy, are you such a simpleton?  Can't you\nread riddles?  Can't you see?  Are you a woman yourself?\"\n\nLiddy's clear eyes rounded with wonderment.\n\n\"Yes; you must be a blind thing, Liddy!\" she said, in reckless\nabandonment and grief.  \"Oh, I love him to very distraction and\nmisery and agony!  Don't be frightened at me, though perhaps I am\nenough to frighten any innocent woman.  Come closer--closer.\" She\nput her arms round Liddy's neck.  \"I must let it out to somebody; it\nis wearing me away!  Don't you yet know enough of me to see through\nthat miserable denial of mine?  O God, what a lie it was! Heaven and\nmy Love forgive me.  And don't you know that a woman who loves at\nall thinks nothing of perjury when it is balanced against her love?\nThere, go out of the room; I want to be quite alone.\"\n\nLiddy went towards the door.\n\n\"Liddy, come here.  Solemnly swear to me that he's not a fast man;\nthat it is all lies they say about him!\"\n\n\"But, miss, how can I say he is not if--\"\n\n\"You graceless girl!  How can you have the cruel heart to repeat what\nthey say?  Unfeeling thing that you are....  But I'LL see if you or\nanybody else in the village, or town either, dare do such a thing!\"\nShe started off, pacing from fireplace to door, and back again.\n\n\"No, miss.  I don't--I know it is not true!\" said Liddy, frightened\nat Bathsheba's unwonted vehemence.\n\n\"I suppose you only agree with me like that to please me.  But,\nLiddy, he CANNOT BE bad, as is said.  Do you hear?\"\n\n\"Yes, miss, yes.\"\n\n\"And you don't believe he is?\"\n\n\"I don't know what to say, miss,\" said Liddy, beginning to cry.  \"If\nI say No, you don't believe me; and if I say Yes, you rage at me!\"\n\n\"Say you don't believe it--say you don't!\"\n\n\"I don't believe him to be so bad as they make out.\"\n\n\"He is not bad at all....  My poor life and heart, how weak I\nam!\" she moaned, in a relaxed, desultory way, heedless of Liddy's\npresence.  \"Oh, how I wish I had never seen him!  Loving is misery\nfor women always.  I shall never forgive God for making me a woman,\nand dearly am I beginning to pay for the honour of owning a pretty\nface.\"  She freshened and turned to Liddy suddenly.  \"Mind this,\nLydia Smallbury, if you repeat anywhere a single word of what I have\nsaid to you inside this closed door, I'll never trust you, or love\nyou, or have you with me a moment longer--not a moment!\"\n\n\"I don't want to repeat anything,\" said Liddy, with womanly dignity\nof a diminutive order; \"but I don't wish to stay with you.  And,\nif you please, I'll go at the end of the harvest, or this week, or\nto-day....  I don't see that I deserve to be put upon and stormed at\nfor nothing!\" concluded the small woman, bigly.\n\n\"No, no, Liddy; you must stay!\" said Bathsheba, dropping from\nhaughtiness to entreaty with capricious inconsequence.  \"You must not\nnotice my being in a taking just now.  You are not as a servant--you\nare a companion to me.  Dear, dear--I don't know what I am doing\nsince this miserable ache of my heart has weighted and worn upon me\nso!  What shall I come to!  I suppose I shall get further and further\ninto troubles.  I wonder sometimes if I am doomed to die in the\nUnion.  I am friendless enough, God knows!\"\n\n\"I won't notice anything, nor will I leave you!\" sobbed Liddy,\nimpulsively putting up her lips to Bathsheba's, and kissing her.\n\nThen Bathsheba kissed Liddy, and all was smooth again.\n\n\"I don't often cry, do I, Lidd? but you have made tears come into my\neyes,\" she said, a smile shining through the moisture.  \"Try to think\nhim a good man, won't you, dear Liddy?\"\n\n\"I will, miss, indeed.\"\n\n\"He is a sort of steady man in a wild way, you know.  That's better\nthan to be as some are, wild in a steady way.  I am afraid that's\nhow I am.  And promise me to keep my secret--do, Liddy!  And do not\nlet them know that I have been crying about him, because it will be\ndreadful for me, and no good to him, poor thing!\"\n\n\"Death's head himself shan't wring it from me, mistress, if I've\na mind to keep anything; and I'll always be your friend,\" replied\nLiddy, emphatically, at the same time bringing a few more tears into\nher own eyes, not from any particular necessity, but from an artistic\nsense of making herself in keeping with the remainder of the picture,\nwhich seems to influence women at such times.  \"I think God likes us\nto be good friends, don't you?\"\n\n\"Indeed I do.\"\n\n\"And, dear miss, you won't harry me and storm at me, will you?\nbecause you seem to swell so tall as a lion then, and it frightens\nme!  Do you know, I fancy you would be a match for any man when you\nare in one o' your takings.\"\n\n\"Never! do you?\" said Bathsheba, slightly laughing, though somewhat\nseriously alarmed by this Amazonian picture of herself.  \"I hope I am\nnot a bold sort of maid--mannish?\" she continued with some anxiety.\n\n\"Oh no, not mannish; but so almighty womanish that 'tis getting on\nthat way sometimes.  Ah! miss,\" she said, after having drawn her\nbreath very sadly in and sent it very sadly out, \"I wish I had half\nyour failing that way.  'Tis a great protection to a poor maid in\nthese illegit'mate days!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBLAME--FURY\n\n\nThe next evening Bathsheba, with the idea of getting out of the way\nof Mr. Boldwood in the event of his returning to answer her note\nin person, proceeded to fulfil an engagement made with Liddy some\nfew hours earlier.  Bathsheba's companion, as a gauge of their\nreconciliation, had been granted a week's holiday to visit her\nsister, who was married to a thriving hurdler and cattle-crib-maker\nliving in a delightful labyrinth of hazel copse not far beyond\nYalbury.  The arrangement was that Miss Everdene should honour\nthem by coming there for a day or two to inspect some ingenious\ncontrivances which this man of the woods had introduced into his\nwares.\n\nLeaving her instructions with Gabriel and Maryann, that they were to\nsee everything carefully locked up for the night, she went out of the\nhouse just at the close of a timely thunder-shower, which had refined\nthe air, and daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneath\nwas dry as ever.  Freshness was exhaled in an essence from the varied\ncontours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath;\nand the pleased birds were hymning to the scene.  Before her, among\nthe clouds, there was a contrast in the shape of lairs of fierce\nlight which showed themselves in the neighbourhood of a hidden sun,\nlingering on to the farthest north-west corner of the heavens that\nthis midsummer season allowed.\n\nShe had walked nearly two miles of her journey, watching how the\nday was retreating, and thinking how the time of deeds was quietly\nmelting into the time of thought, to give place in its turn to the\ntime of prayer and sleep, when she beheld advancing over Yalbury\nhill the very man she sought so anxiously to elude.  Boldwood was\nstepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved strength which\nwas his customary gait, in which he always seemed to be balancing\ntwo thoughts.  His manner was stunned and sluggish now.\n\nBoldwood had for the first time been awakened to woman's privileges\nin tergiversation even when it involves another person's possible\nblight.  That Bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far less\ninconsequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of his hope;\nfor he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a\nstraight course for consistency's sake, and accept him, though her\nfancy might not flood him with the iridescent hues of uncritical\nlove.  But the argument now came back as sorry gleams from a broken\nmirror.  The discovery was no less a scourge than a surprise.\n\nHe came on looking upon the ground, and did not see Bathsheba till\nthey were less than a stone's throw apart.  He looked up at the sound\nof her pit-pat, and his changed appearance sufficiently denoted to\nher the depth and strength of the feelings paralyzed by her letter.\n\n\"Oh; is it you, Mr. Boldwood?\" she faltered, a guilty warmth pulsing\nin her face.\n\nThose who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it a\nmeans more effective than words.  There are accents in the eye which\nare not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can\nenter an ear.  It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter\nmoods that they avoid the pathway of sound.  Boldwood's look was\nunanswerable.\n\nSeeing she turned a little aside, he said, \"What, are you afraid of\nme?\"\n\n\"Why should you say that?\" said Bathsheba.\n\n\"I fancied you looked so,\" said he.  \"And it is most strange, because\nof its contrast with my feeling for you.\"\n\nShe regained self-possession, fixed her eyes calmly, and waited.\n\n\"You know what that feeling is,\" continued Boldwood, deliberately.\n\"A thing strong as death.  No dismissal by a hasty letter affects\nthat.\"\n\n\"I wish you did not feel so strongly about me,\" she murmured.  \"It is\ngenerous of you, and more than I deserve, but I must not hear it\nnow.\"\n\n\"Hear it?  What do you think I have to say, then?  I am not to marry\nyou, and that's enough.  Your letter was excellently plain.  I want\nyou to hear nothing--not I.\"\n\nBathsheba was unable to direct her will into any definite groove for\nfreeing herself from this fearfully awkward position.  She confusedly\nsaid, \"Good evening,\" and was moving on.  Boldwood walked up to her\nheavily and dully.\n\n\"Bathsheba--darling--is it final indeed?\"\n\n\"Indeed it is.\"\n\n\"Oh, Bathsheba--have pity upon me!\" Boldwood burst out. \"God's sake,\nyes--I am come to that low, lowest stage--to ask a woman for pity!\nStill, she is you--she is you.\"\n\nBathsheba commanded herself well.  But she could hardly get a clear\nvoice for what came instinctively to her lips: \"There is little\nhonour to the woman in that speech.\"  It was only whispered, for\nsomething unutterably mournful no less than distressing in this\nspectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a\npassion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios.\n\n\"I am beyond myself about this, and am mad,\" he said.  \"I am no stoic\nat all to be supplicating here; but I do supplicate to you.  I wish\nyou knew what is in me of devotion to you; but it is impossible,\nthat.  In bare human mercy to a lonely man, don't throw me off now!\"\n\n\"I don't throw you off--indeed, how can I?  I never had you.\"  In her\nnoon-clear sense that she had never loved him she forgot for a moment\nher thoughtless angle on that day in February.\n\n\"But there was a time when you turned to me, before I thought of you!\nI don't reproach you, for even now I feel that the ignorant and cold\ndarkness that I should have lived in if you had not attracted me by\nthat letter--valentine you call it--would have been worse than my\nknowledge of you, though it has brought this misery.  But, I say,\nthere was a time when I knew nothing of you, and cared nothing\nfor you, and yet you drew me on.  And if you say you gave me no\nencouragement, I cannot but contradict you.\"\n\n\"What you call encouragement was the childish game of an idle minute.\nI have bitterly repented of it--ay, bitterly, and in tears.  Can you\nstill go on reminding me?\"\n\n\"I don't accuse you of it--I deplore it.  I took for earnest what\nyou insist was jest, and now this that I pray to be jest you say is\nawful, wretched earnest.  Our moods meet at wrong places.  I wish\nyour feeling was more like mine, or my feeling more like yours!  Oh,\ncould I but have foreseen the torture that trifling trick was going\nto lead me into, how I should have cursed you; but only having been\nable to see it since, I cannot do that, for I love you too well!  But\nit is weak, idle drivelling to go on like this....  Bathsheba, you\nare the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever looked at\nto love, and it is the having been so near claiming you for my own\nthat makes this denial so hard to bear.  How nearly you promised me!\nBut I don't speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve because\nof my pain; it is no use, that.  I must bear it; my pain would get no\nless by paining you.\"\n\n\"But I do pity you--deeply--O, so deeply!\" she earnestly said.\n\n\"Do no such thing--do no such thing.  Your dear love, Bathsheba, is\nsuch a vast thing beside your pity, that the loss of your pity as\nwell as your love is no great addition to my sorrow, nor does the\ngain of your pity make it sensibly less.  O sweet--how dearly you\nspoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool, and in the barn\nat the shearing, and that dearest last time in the evening at your\nhome!  Where are your pleasant words all gone--your earnest hope to\nbe able to love me?  Where is your firm conviction that you would get\nto care for me very much?  Really forgotten?--really?\"\n\nShe checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the face, and\nsaid in her low, firm voice, \"Mr. Boldwood, I promised you nothing.\nWould you have had me a woman of clay when you paid me that furthest,\nhighest compliment a man can pay a woman--telling her he loves her?\nI was bound to show some feeling, if I would not be a graceless\nshrew.  Yet each of those pleasures was just for the day--the day\njust for the pleasure.  How was I to know that what is a pastime to\nall other men was death to you?  Have reason, do, and think more\nkindly of me!\"\n\n\"Well, never mind arguing--never mind.  One thing is sure: you\nwere all but mine, and now you are not nearly mine.  Everything is\nchanged, and that by you alone, remember.  You were nothing to me\nonce, and I was contented; you are now nothing to me again, and how\ndifferent the second nothing is from the first!  Would to God you\nhad never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!\"\n\nBathsheba, in spite of her mettle, began to feel unmistakable signs\nthat she was inherently the weaker vessel. She strove miserably\nagainst this femininity which would insist upon supplying unbidden\nemotions in stronger and stronger current.  She had tried to elude\nagitation by fixing her mind on the trees, sky, any trivial object\nbefore her eyes, whilst his reproaches fell, but ingenuity could not\nsave her now.\n\n\"I did not take you up--surely I did not!\" she answered as heroically\nas she could.  \"But don't be in this mood with me.  I can endure\nbeing told I am in the wrong, if you will only tell it me gently!\nO sir, will you not kindly forgive me, and look at it cheerfully?\"\n\n\"Cheerfully!  Can a man fooled to utter heart-burning find a reason\nfor being merry?  If I have lost, how can I be as if I had won?\nHeavens you must be heartless quite!  Had I known what a fearfully\nbitter sweet this was to be, how I would have avoided you, and never\nseen you, and been deaf of you.  I tell you all this, but what do you\ncare!  You don't care.\"\n\nShe returned silent and weak denials to his charges, and swayed\nher head desperately, as if to thrust away the words as they came\nshowering about her ears from the lips of the trembling man in the\nclimax of life, with his bronzed Roman face and fine frame.\n\n\"Dearest, dearest, I am wavering even now between the two opposites\nof recklessly renouncing you, and labouring humbly for you again.\nForget that you have said No, and let it be as it was!  Say,\nBathsheba, that you only wrote that refusal to me in fun--come, say\nit to me!\"\n\n\"It would be untrue, and painful to both of us.  You overrate my\ncapacity for love.  I don't possess half the warmth of nature you\nbelieve me to have.  An unprotected childhood in a cold world has\nbeaten gentleness out of me.\"\n\nHe immediately said with more resentment: \"That may be true,\nsomewhat; but ah, Miss Everdene, it won't do as a reason!  You are\nnot the cold woman you would have me believe.  No, no!  It isn't\nbecause you have no feeling in you that you don't love me.  You\nnaturally would have me think so--you would hide from me that you\nhave a burning heart like mine.  You have love enough, but it is\nturned into a new channel. I know where.\"\n\nThe swift music of her heart became hubbub now, and she throbbed\nto extremity.  He was coming to Troy.  He did then know what had\noccurred!  And the name fell from his lips the next moment.\n\n\"Why did Troy not leave my treasure alone?\" he asked, fiercely.\n\"When I had no thought of injuring him, why did he force himself upon\nyour notice!  Before he worried you your inclination was to have me;\nwhen next I should have come to you your answer would have been Yes.\nCan you deny it--I ask, can you deny it?\"\n\nShe delayed the reply, but was too honest to withhold it.  \"I\ncannot,\" she whispered.\n\n\"I know you cannot.  But he stole in in my absence and robbed me.\nWhy didn't he win you away before, when nobody would have been\ngrieved?--when nobody would have been set tale-bearing.  Now the\npeople sneer at me--the very hills and sky seem to laugh at me till I\nblush shamefully for my folly.  I have lost my respect, my good name,\nmy standing--lost it, never to get it again.  Go and marry your\nman--go on!\"\n\n\"Oh sir--Mr. Boldwood!\"\n\n\"You may as well.  I have no further claim upon you.  As for me, I\nhad better go somewhere alone, and hide--and pray. I loved a woman\nonce.  I am now ashamed.  When I am dead they'll say, miserable\nlove-sick man that he was.  Heaven--heaven--if I had got jilted\nsecretly, and the dishonour not known, and my position kept!  But\nno matter, it is gone, and the woman not gained.  Shame upon\nhim--shame!\"\n\nHis unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided from him,\nwithout obviously moving, as she said, \"I am only a girl--do not\nspeak to me so!\"\n\n\"All the time you knew--how very well you knew--that your new freak\nwas my misery.  Dazzled by brass and scarlet--Oh, Bathsheba--this is\nwoman's folly indeed!\"\n\nShe fired up at once.  \"You are taking too much upon yourself!\" she\nsaid, vehemently.  \"Everybody is upon me--everybody.  It is unmanly\nto attack a woman so!  I have nobody in the world to fight my battles\nfor me; but no mercy is shown.  Yet if a thousand of you sneer and\nsay things against me, I WILL NOT be put down!\"\n\n\"You'll chatter with him doubtless about me.  Say to him, 'Boldwood\nwould have died for me.'  Yes, and you have given way to him, knowing\nhim to be not the man for you.  He has kissed you--claimed you as\nhis.  Do you hear--he has kissed you.  Deny it!\"\n\nThe most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although Boldwood\nwas, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into another\nsex, Bathsheba's cheek quivered.  She gasped, \"Leave me, sir--leave\nme!  I am nothing to you.  Let me go on!\"\n\n\"Deny that he has kissed you.\"\n\n\"I shall not.\"\n\n\"Ha--then he has!\" came hoarsely from the farmer.\n\n\"He has,\" she said, slowly, and, in spite of her fear, defiantly.  \"I\nam not ashamed to speak the truth.\"\n\n\"Then curse him; and curse him!\" said Boldwood, breaking into a\nwhispered fury. \"Whilst I would have given worlds to touch your hand,\nyou have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and--kiss you!\nHeaven's mercy--kiss you! ...  Ah, a time of his life shall come\nwhen he will have to repent, and think wretchedly of the pain he has\ncaused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, and\nyearn--as I do now!\"\n\n\"Don't, don't, oh, don't pray down evil upon him!\" she implored in a\nmiserable cry.  \"Anything but that--anything.  Oh, be kind to him,\nsir, for I love him true!\"\n\nBoldwood's ideas had reached that point of fusion at which outline\nand consistency entirely disappear.  The impending night appeared to\nconcentrate in his eye.  He did not hear her at all now.\n\n\"I'll punish him--by my soul, that will I!  I'll meet him, soldier or\nno, and I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for this reckless theft\nof my one delight.  If he were a hundred men I'd horsewhip him--\"\nHe dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally.  \"Bathsheba, sweet,\nlost coquette, pardon me!  I've been blaming you, threatening you,\nbehaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner.  He\nstole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! ...  It is a\nfortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment--that\nhe's away up the country, and not here!  I hope he may not return\nhere just yet.  I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may\nbe tempted beyond myself.  Oh, Bathsheba, keep him away--yes, keep\nhim away from me!\"\n\nFor a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul\nseemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his\npassionate words.  He turned his face away, and withdrew, and his\nform was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed\nin with the low hiss of the leafy trees.\n\nBathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this\nlatter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to\nponder on the exhibition which had just passed away.  Such astounding\nwells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were\nincomprehensible, dreadful.  Instead of being a man trained to\nrepression he was--what she had seen him.\n\nThe force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a\ncircumstance known at present only to herself: her lover was coming\nback to Weatherbury in the course of the very next day or two.  Troy\nhad not returned to his distant barracks as Boldwood and others\nsupposed, but had merely gone to visit some acquaintance in Bath,\nand had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough.\n\nShe felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this\nnick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrel\nwould be the consequence.  She panted with solicitude when she\nthought of possible injury to Troy.  The least spark would kindle\nthe farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his\nself-mastery as he had this evening; Troy's blitheness might become\naggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and Boldwood's\nanger might then take the direction of revenge.\n\nWith almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this\nguileless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of\ncarelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions.  But now there\nwas no reserve.  In her distraction, instead of advancing further she\nwalked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing on her\nbrow, and sobbing brokenly to herself.  Then she sat down on a heap\nof stones by the wayside to think.  There she remained long.  Above\nthe dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontories of\ncoppery cloud, bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the western\nsky.  Amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting\nworld wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the\nshape of indecisive and palpitating stars.  She gazed upon their\nsilent throes amid the shades of space, but realised none at all.\nHer troubled spirit was far away with Troy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNIGHT--HORSES TRAMPING\n\n\nThe village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst,\nand the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead.  The church\nclock struck eleven.  The air was so empty of other sounds that the\nwhirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct,\nand so was also the click of the same at their close.  The notes flew\nforth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things--flapping\nand rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds,\nspreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.\n\nBathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by\nMaryann, Liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom Bathsheba\nhad set out to visit.  A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann\nturned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed.  She was totally\nunconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep.  It led\nto a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation\nthat something had happened.  She left her bed and looked out of the\nwindow.  The paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the\npaddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure\napproaching the horse that was feeding there.  The figure seized the\nhorse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the field.  Here\nshe could see some object which circumstances proved to be a vehicle,\nfor after a few minutes spent apparently in harnessing, she heard the\ntrot of the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light\nwheels.\n\nTwo varieties only of humanity could have entered the paddock with\nthe ghostlike glide of that mysterious figure.  They were a woman and\na gipsy man.  A woman was out of the question in such an occupation\nat this hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who might\nprobably have known the weakness of the household on this particular\nnight, and have chosen it on that account for his daring attempt.\nMoreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies\nin Weatherbury Bottom.\n\nMaryann, who had been afraid to shout in the robber's presence,\nhaving seen him depart had no fear.  She hastily slipped on her\nclothes, stumped down the disjointed staircase with its hundred\ncreaks, ran to Coggan's, the nearest house, and raised an alarm.\nCoggan called Gabriel, who now again lodged in his house as at first,\nand together they went to the paddock.  Beyond all doubt the horse\nwas gone.\n\n\"Hark!\" said Gabriel.\n\nThey listened.  Distinct upon the stagnant air came the sounds of a\ntrotting horse passing up Longpuddle Lane--just beyond the gipsies'\nencampment in Weatherbury Bottom.\n\n\"That's our Dainty--I'll swear to her step,\" said Jan.\n\n\"Mighty me!  Won't mis'ess storm and call us stupids when she comes\nback!\" moaned Maryann.  \"How I wish it had happened when she was at\nhome, and none of us had been answerable!\"\n\n\"We must ride after,\" said Gabriel, decisively.  \"I'll  be\nresponsible to Miss Everdene for what we do.  Yes, we'll follow.\"\n\n\"Faith, I don't see how,\" said Coggan.  \"All our horses are too heavy\nfor that trick except little Poppet, and what's she between two of\nus?--If we only had that pair over the hedge we might do something.\"\n\n\"Which pair?\"\n\n\"Mr. Boldwood's Tidy and Moll.\"\n\n\"Then wait here till I come hither again,\" said Gabriel.  He ran down\nthe hill towards Farmer Boldwood's.\n\n\"Farmer Boldwood is not at home,\" said Maryann.\n\n\"All the better,\" said Coggan.  \"I know what he's gone for.\"\n\nLess than five minutes brought up Oak again, running at the same\npace, with two halters dangling from his hand.\n\n\"Where did you find 'em?\" said Coggan, turning round and leaping upon\nthe hedge without waiting for an answer.\n\n\"Under the eaves.  I knew where they were kept,\" said Gabriel,\nfollowing him.  \"Coggan, you can ride bare-backed? there's no time to\nlook for saddles.\"\n\n\"Like a hero!\" said Jan.\n\n\"Maryann, you go to bed,\" Gabriel shouted to her from the top of the\nhedge.\n\nSpringing down into Boldwood's pastures, each pocketed his halter to\nhide it from the horses, who, seeing the men empty-handed, docilely\nallowed themselves to be seized by the mane, when the halters were\ndexterously slipped on.  Having neither bit nor bridle, Oak and\nCoggan extemporized the former by passing the rope in each case\nthrough the animal's mouth and looping it on the other side.  Oak\nvaulted astride, and Coggan clambered up by aid of the bank, when\nthey ascended to the gate and galloped off in the direction taken by\nBathsheba's horse and the robber.  Whose vehicle the horse had been\nharnessed to was a matter of some uncertainty.\n\nWeatherbury Bottom was reached in three or four minutes.  They\nscanned the shady green patch by the roadside.  The gipsies were\ngone.\n\n\"The villains!\" said Gabriel.  \"Which way have they gone, I wonder?\"\n\n\"Straight on, as sure as God made little apples,\" said Jan.\n\n\"Very well; we are better mounted, and must overtake em\", said Oak.\n\"Now on at full speed!\"\n\nNo sound of the rider in their van could now be discovered.  The\nroad-metal grew softer and more clayey as Weatherbury was left\nbehind, and the late rain had wetted its surface to a somewhat\nplastic, but not muddy state.  They came to cross-roads.  Coggan\nsuddenly pulled up Moll and slipped off.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"We must try to track 'em, since we can't hear 'em,\" said Jan,\nfumbling in his pockets.  He struck a light, and held the match to\nthe ground.  The rain had been heavier here, and all foot and horse\ntracks made previous to the storm had been abraded and blurred by\nthe drops, and they were now so many little scoops of water, which\nreflected the flame of the match like eyes.  One set of tracks was\nfresh and had no water in them; one pair of ruts was also empty,\nand not small canals, like the others.  The footprints forming this\nrecent impression were full of information as to pace; they were in\nequidistant pairs, three or four feet apart, the right and left foot\nof each pair being exactly opposite one another.\n\n\"Straight on!\" Jan exclaimed.  \"Tracks like that mean a stiff gallop.\nNo wonder we don't hear him.  And the horse is harnessed--look at the\nruts.  Ay, that's our mare sure enough!\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Old Jimmy Harris only shoed her last week, and I'd swear to his make\namong ten thousand.\"\n\n\"The rest of the gipsies must ha' gone on earlier, or some other\nway,\" said Oak.  \"You saw there were no other tracks?\"\n\n\"True.\" They rode along silently for a long weary time. Coggan\ncarried an old pinchbeck repeater which he had inherited from some\ngenius in his family; and it now struck one.  He lighted another\nmatch, and examined the ground again.\n\n\"'Tis a canter now,\" he said, throwing away the light.  \"A twisty,\nrickety pace for a gig.  The fact is, they over-drove her at\nstarting; we shall catch 'em yet.\"\n\nAgain they hastened on, and entered Blackmore Vale.  Coggan's watch\nstruck one.  When they looked again the hoof-marks were so spaced as\nto form a sort of zigzag if united, like the lamps along a street.\n\n\"That's a trot, I know,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"Only a trot now,\" said Coggan, cheerfully.  \"We shall overtake him\nin time.\"\n\nThey pushed rapidly on for yet two or three miles.  \"Ah! a moment,\"\nsaid Jan.  \"Let's see how she was driven up this hill.  'Twill help\nus.\"  A light was promptly struck upon his gaiters as before, and the\nexamination made.\n\n\"Hurrah!\" said Coggan.  \"She walked up here--and well she might.  We\nshall get them in two miles, for a crown.\"\n\nThey rode three, and listened.  No sound was to be heard save a\nmillpond trickling hoarsely through a hatch, and suggesting gloomy\npossibilities of drowning by jumping in.  Gabriel dismounted when\nthey came to a turning.  The tracks were absolutely the only guide as\nto the direction that they now had, and great caution was necessary\nto avoid confusing them with some others which had made their\nappearance lately.\n\n\"What does this mean?--though I guess,\" said Gabriel, looking up\nat Coggan as he moved the match over the ground about the turning.\nCoggan, who, no less than the panting horses, had latterly shown\nsigns of weariness, again scrutinized the mystic characters.  This\ntime only three were of the regular horseshoe shape.  Every fourth\nwas a dot.\n\nHe screwed up his face and emitted a long \"Whew-w-w!\"\n\n\"Lame,\" said Oak.\n\n\"Yes.  Dainty is lamed; the near-foot-afore,\" said Coggan slowly,\nstaring still at the footprints.\n\n\"We'll push on,\" said Gabriel, remounting his humid steed.\n\nAlthough the road along its greater part had been as good as any\nturnpike-road in the country, it was nominally only a byway.  The\nlast turning had brought them into the high road leading to Bath.\nCoggan recollected himself.\n\n\"We shall have him now!\" he exclaimed.\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Sherton Turnpike.  The keeper of that gate is the sleepiest man\nbetween here and London--Dan Randall, that's his name--knowed en for\nyears, when he was at Casterbridge gate. Between the lameness and the\ngate 'tis a done job.\"\n\nThey now advanced with extreme caution.  Nothing was said until,\nagainst a shady background of foliage, five white bars were visible,\ncrossing their route a little way ahead.\n\n\"Hush--we are almost close!\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"Amble on upon the grass,\" said Coggan.\n\nThe white bars were blotted out in the midst by a dark shape in\nfront of them.  The silence of this lonely time was pierced by an\nexclamation from that quarter.\n\n\"Hoy-a-hoy!  Gate!\"\n\nIt appeared that there had been a previous call which they had not\nnoticed, for on their close approach the door of the turnpike-house\nopened, and the keeper came out half-dressed, with a candle in his\nhand.  The rays illumined the whole group.\n\n\"Keep the gate close!\" shouted Gabriel.  \"He has stolen the horse!\"\n\n\"Who?\" said the turnpike-man.\n\nGabriel looked at the driver of the gig, and saw a woman--Bathsheba,\nhis mistress.\n\nOn hearing his voice she had turned her face away from the light.\nCoggan had, however, caught sight of her in the meanwhile.\n\n\"Why, 'tis mistress--I'll take my oath!\" he said, amazed.\n\nBathsheba it certainly was, and she had by this time done the trick\nshe could do so well in crises not of love, namely, mask a surprise\nby coolness of manner.\n\n\"Well, Gabriel,\" she inquired quietly, \"where are you going?\"\n\n\"We thought--\" began Gabriel.\n\n\"I am driving to Bath,\" she said, taking for her own use the\nassurance that Gabriel lacked.  \"An important matter made it\nnecessary for me to give up my visit to Liddy, and go off at once.\nWhat, then, were you following me?\"\n\n\"We thought the horse was stole.\"\n\n\"Well--what a thing!  How very foolish of you not to know that I had\ntaken the trap and horse.  I could neither wake Maryann nor get into\nthe house, though I hammered for ten minutes against her window-sill.\nFortunately, I could get the key of the coach-house, so I troubled no\none further. Didn't you think it might be me?\"\n\n\"Why should we, miss?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not.  Why, those are never Farmer Boldwood's horses!\nGoodness mercy! what have you been doing--bringing trouble upon me in\nthis way?  What! mustn't a lady move an inch from her door without\nbeing dogged like a thief?\"\n\n\"But how was we to know, if you left no account of your doings?\"\nexpostulated Coggan, \"and ladies don't drive at these hours, miss,\nas a jineral rule of society.\"\n\n\"I did leave an account--and you would have seen it in the morning.\nI wrote in chalk on the coach-house doors that I had come back for\nthe horse and gig, and driven off; that I could arouse nobody, and\nshould return soon.\"\n\n\"But you'll consider, ma'am, that we couldn't see that till it got\ndaylight.\"\n\n\"True,\" she said, and though vexed at first she had too much sense\nto blame them long or seriously for a devotion to her that was as\nvaluable as it was rare.  She added with a very pretty grace, \"Well,\nI really thank you heartily for taking all this trouble; but I wish\nyou had borrowed anybody's horses but Mr. Boldwood's.\"\n\n\"Dainty is lame, miss,\" said Coggan.  \"Can ye go on?\"\n\n\"It was only a stone in her shoe.  I got down and pulled it out a\nhundred yards back.  I can manage very well, thank you.  I shall be\nin Bath by daylight.  Will you now return, please?\"\n\nShe turned her head--the gateman's candle shimmering upon her quick,\nclear eyes as she did so--passed through the gate, and was soon\nwrapped in the embowering shades of mysterious summer boughs.  Coggan\nand Gabriel put about their horses, and, fanned by the velvety air of\nthis July night, retraced the road by which they had come.\n\n\"A strange vagary, this of hers, isn't it, Oak?\" said Coggan,\ncuriously.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Gabriel, shortly.\n\n\"She won't be in Bath by no daylight!\"\n\n\"Coggan, suppose we keep this night's work as quiet as we can?\"\n\n\"I am of one and the same mind.\"\n\n\"Very well.  We shall be home by three o'clock or so, and can creep\ninto the parish like lambs.\"\n\n\nBathsheba's perturbed meditations by the roadside had ultimately\nevolved a conclusion that there were only two remedies for the\npresent desperate state of affairs.  The first was merely to\nkeep Troy away from Weatherbury till Boldwood's indignation had\ncooled; the second to listen to Oak's entreaties, and Boldwood's\ndenunciations, and give up Troy altogether.\n\nAlas!  Could she give up this new love--induce him to renounce her\nby saying she did not like him--could no more speak to him, and beg\nhim, for her good, to end his furlough in Bath, and see her and\nWeatherbury no more?\n\nIt was a picture full of misery, but for a while she contemplated it\nfirmly, allowing herself, nevertheless, as girls will, to dwell upon\nthe happy life she would have enjoyed had Troy been Boldwood, and the\npath of love the path of duty--inflicting upon herself gratuitous\ntortures by imagining him the lover of another woman after forgetting\nher; for she had penetrated Troy's nature so far as to estimate his\ntendencies pretty accurately, but unfortunately loved him no less in\nthinking that he might soon cease to love her--indeed, considerably\nmore.\n\nShe jumped to her feet.  She would see him at once.  Yes, she would\nimplore him by word of mouth to assist her in this dilemma.  A letter\nto keep him away could not reach him in time, even if he should be\ndisposed to listen to it.\n\nWas Bathsheba altogether blind to the obvious fact that the support\nof a lover's arms is not of a kind best calculated to assist a\nresolve to renounce him?  Or was she sophistically sensible, with a\nthrill of pleasure, that by adopting this course for getting rid of\nhim she was ensuring a meeting with him, at any rate, once more?\n\nIt was now dark, and the hour must have been nearly ten.  The only\nway to accomplish her purpose was to give up her idea of visiting\nLiddy at Yalbury, return to Weatherbury Farm, put the horse into\nthe gig, and drive at once to Bath.  The scheme seemed at first\nimpossible: the journey was a fearfully heavy one, even for a strong\nhorse, at her own estimate; and she much underrated the distance.\nIt was most venturesome for a woman, at night, and alone.\n\nBut could she go on to Liddy's and leave things to take their course?\nNo, no; anything but that.  Bathsheba was full of a stimulating\nturbulence, beside which caution vainly prayed for a hearing.  She\nturned back towards the village.\n\nHer walk was slow, for she wished not to enter Weatherbury till the\ncottagers were in bed, and, particularly, till Boldwood was secure.\nHer plan was now to drive to Bath during the night, see Sergeant Troy\nin the morning before he set out to come to her, bid him farewell,\nand dismiss him: then to rest the horse thoroughly (herself to weep\nthe while, she thought), starting early the next morning on her\nreturn journey.  By this arrangement she could trot Dainty gently\nall the day, reach Liddy at Yalbury in the evening, and come home to\nWeatherbury with her whenever they chose--so nobody would know she\nhad been to Bath at all.  Such was Bathsheba's scheme.  But in her\ntopographical ignorance as a late comer to the place, she misreckoned\nthe distance of her journey as not much more than half what it really\nwas.\n\nThis idea she proceeded to carry out, with what initial success we\nhave already seen.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIN THE SUN--A HARBINGER\n\n\nA week passed, and there were no tidings of Bathsheba; nor was there\nany explanation of her Gilpin's rig.\n\nThen a note came for Maryann, stating that the business which had\ncalled her mistress to Bath still detained her there; but that she\nhoped to return in the course of another week.\n\nAnother week passed.  The oat-harvest began, and all the men were\na-field under a monochromatic Lammas sky, amid the trembling air\nand short shadows of noon.  Indoors nothing was to be heard save\nthe droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of\nscythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their\nperpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath.\nEvery drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the\nform of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and\ncheeks.  Drought was everywhere else.\n\nThey were about to withdraw for a while into the charitable shade\nof a tree in the fence, when Coggan saw a figure in a blue coat and\nbrass buttons running to them across the field.\n\n\"I wonder who that is?\" he said.\n\n\"I hope nothing is wrong about mistress,\" said Maryann, who with some\nother women was tying the bundles (oats being always sheafed on this\nfarm), \"but an unlucky token came to me indoors this morning.  I\nwent to unlock the door and dropped the key, and it fell upon the\nstone floor and broke into two pieces.  Breaking a key is a dreadful\nbodement.  I wish mis'ess was home.\"\n\n\"'Tis Cain Ball,\" said Gabriel, pausing from whetting his reaphook.\n\nOak was not bound by his agreement to assist in the corn-field; but\nthe harvest month is an anxious time for a farmer, and the corn was\nBathsheba's, so he lent a hand.\n\n\"He's dressed up in his best clothes,\" said Matthew Moon.  \"He hev\nbeen away from home for a few days, since he's had that felon upon\nhis finger; for 'a said, since I can't work I'll have a hollerday.\"\n\n\"A good time for one--a' excellent time,\" said Joseph Poorgrass,\nstraightening his back; for he, like some of the others, had a way\nof resting a while from his labour on such hot days for reasons\npreternaturally small; of which Cain Ball's advent on a week-day in\nhis Sunday-clothes was one of the first magnitude.  \"Twas a bad leg\nallowed me to read the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and Mark Clark learnt\nAll-Fours in a whitlow.\"\n\n\"Ay, and my father put his arm out of joint to have time to go\ncourting,\" said Jan Coggan, in an eclipsing tone, wiping his face\nwith his shirt-sleeve and thrusting back his hat upon the nape of\nhis neck.\n\nBy this time Cainy was nearing the group of harvesters, and was\nperceived to be carrying a large slice of bread and ham in one hand,\nfrom which he took mouthfuls as he ran, the other being wrapped in a\nbandage.  When he came close, his mouth assumed the bell shape, and\nhe began to cough violently.\n\n\"Now, Cainy!\" said Gabriel, sternly.  \"How many more times must I\ntell you to keep from running so fast when you be eating?  You'll\nchoke yourself some day, that's what you'll do, Cain Ball.\"\n\n\"Hok-hok-hok!\" replied Cain.  \"A crumb of my victuals went the\nwrong way--hok-hok!  That's what 'tis, Mister Oak!  And I've been\nvisiting to Bath because I had a felon on my thumb; yes, and I've\nseen--ahok-hok!\"\n\nDirectly Cain mentioned Bath, they all threw down their hooks and\nforks and drew round him.  Unfortunately the erratic crumb did not\nimprove his narrative powers, and a supplementary hindrance was that\nof a sneeze, jerking from his pocket his rather large watch, which\ndangled in front of the young man pendulum-wise.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued, directing his thoughts to Bath and letting his\neyes follow, \"I've seed the world at last--yes--and I've seed our\nmis'ess--ahok-hok-hok!\"\n\n\"Bother the boy!\" said Gabriel. \"Something is always going the wrong\nway down your throat, so that you can't tell what's necessary to be\ntold.\"\n\n\"Ahok! there!  Please, Mister Oak, a gnat have just fleed into my\nstomach and brought the cough on again!\"\n\n\"Yes, that's just it.  Your mouth is always open, you young rascal!\"\n\n\"'Tis terrible bad to have a gnat fly down yer throat, pore boy!\"\nsaid Matthew Moon.\n\n\"Well, at Bath you saw--\" prompted Gabriel.\n\n\"I saw our mistress,\" continued the junior shepherd, \"and a sojer,\nwalking along.  And bymeby they got closer and closer, and then they\nwent arm-in-crook, like courting complete--hok-hok! like courting\ncomplete--hok!--courting complete--\"  Losing the thread of his\nnarrative at this point simultaneously with his loss of breath, their\ninformant looked up and down the field apparently for some clue to\nit.  \"Well, I see our mis'ess and a soldier--a-ha-a-wk!\"\n\n\"Damn the boy!\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"'Tis only my manner, Mister Oak, if ye'll excuse it,\" said Cain\nBall, looking reproachfully at Oak, with eyes drenched in their own\ndew.\n\n\"Here's some cider for him--that'll cure his throat,\" said Jan\nCoggan, lifting a flagon of cider, pulling out the cork, and applying\nthe hole to Cainy's mouth; Joseph Poorgrass in the meantime beginning\nto think apprehensively of the serious consequences that would follow\nCainy Ball's strangulation in his cough, and the history of his Bath\nadventures dying with him.\n\n\"For my poor self, I always say 'please God' afore I do anything,\"\nsaid Joseph, in an unboastful voice; \"and so should you, Cain Ball.\n'Tis a great safeguard, and might perhaps save you from being choked\nto death some day.\"\n\nMr. Coggan poured the liquor with unstinted liberality at the\nsuffering Cain's circular mouth; half of it running down the side of\nthe flagon, and half of what reached his mouth running down outside\nhis throat, and half of what ran in going the wrong way, and being\ncoughed and sneezed around the persons of the gathered reapers in the\nform of a cider fog, which for a moment hung in the sunny air like a\nsmall exhalation.\n\n\"There's a great clumsy sneeze!  Why can't ye have better manners,\nyou young dog!\" said Coggan, withdrawing the flagon.\n\n\"The cider went up my nose!\" cried Cainy, as soon as he could speak;\n\"and now 'tis gone down my neck, and into my poor dumb felon, and\nover my shiny buttons and all my best cloze!\"\n\n\"The poor lad's cough is terrible unfortunate,\" said Matthew Moon.\n\"And a great history on hand, too.  Bump his back, shepherd.\"\n\n\"'Tis my nater,\" mourned Cain.  \"Mother says I always was so\nexcitable when my feelings were worked up to a point!\"\n\n\"True, true,\" said Joseph Poorgrass.  \"The Balls were always a very\nexcitable family.  I knowed the boy's grandfather--a truly nervous\nand modest man, even to genteel refinery. 'Twas blush, blush with\nhim, almost as much as 'tis with me--not but that 'tis a fault in\nme!\"\n\n\"Not at all, Master Poorgrass,\" said Coggan.  \"'Tis a very noble\nquality in ye.\"\n\n\"Heh-heh! well, I wish to noise nothing abroad--nothing at all,\"\nmurmured Poorgrass, diffidently.  \"But we be born to things--that's\ntrue.  Yet I would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high\nnater is a little high, and at my birth all things were possible to\nmy Maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts....  But under your\nbushel, Joseph! under your bushel with 'ee!  A strange desire,\nneighbours, this desire to hide, and no praise due.  Yet there is a\nSermon on the Mount with a calendar of the blessed at the head, and\ncertain meek men may be named therein.\"\n\n\"Cainy's grandfather was a very clever man,\" said Matthew Moon.\n\"Invented a' apple-tree out of his own head, which is called by his\nname to this day--the Early Ball.  You know 'em, Jan?  A Quarrenden\ngrafted on a Tom Putt, and a Rathe-ripe upon top o' that again.  'Tis\ntrew 'a used to bide about in a public-house wi' a 'ooman in a way he\nhad no business to by rights, but there--'a were a clever man in the\nsense of the term.\"\n\n\"Now then,\" said Gabriel, impatiently, \"what did you see, Cain?\"\n\n\"I seed our mis'ess go into a sort of a park place, where there's\nseats, and shrubs and flowers, arm-in-crook with a sojer,\" continued\nCainy, firmly, and with a dim sense that his words were very\neffective as regarded Gabriel's emotions.  \"And I think the sojer\nwas Sergeant Troy.  And they sat there together for more than\nhalf-an-hour, talking moving things, and she once was crying a'most\nto death. And when they came out her eyes were shining and she was\nas white as a lily; and they looked into one another's faces, as\nfar-gone friendly as a man and woman can be.\"\n\nGabriel's features seemed to get thinner.  \"Well, what did you see\nbesides?\"\n\n\"Oh, all sorts.\"\n\n\"White as a lily?  You are sure 'twas she?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Well, what besides?\"\n\n\"Great glass windows to the shops, and great clouds in the sky, full\nof rain, and old wooden trees in the country round.\"\n\n\"You stun-poll!  What will ye say next?\" said Coggan.\n\n\"Let en alone,\" interposed Joseph Poorgrass.  \"The boy's meaning is\nthat the sky and the earth in the kingdom of Bath is not altogether\ndifferent from ours here.  'Tis for our good to gain knowledge of\nstrange cities, and as such the boy's words should be suffered, so\nto speak it.\"\n\n\"And the people of Bath,\" continued Cain, \"never need to light their\nfires except as a luxury, for the water springs up out of the earth\nready boiled for use.\"\n\n\"'Tis true as the light,\" testified Matthew Moon. \"I've heard other\nnavigators say the same thing.\"\n\n\"They drink nothing else there,\" said Cain, \"and seem to enjoy it, to\nsee how they swaller it down.\"\n\n\"Well, it seems a barbarian practice enough to us, but I daresay the\nnatives think nothing o' it,\" said Matthew.\n\n\"And don't victuals spring up as well as drink?\" asked Coggan,\ntwirling his eye.\n\n\"No--I own to a blot there in Bath--a true blot.  God didn't provide\n'em with victuals as well as drink, and 'twas a drawback I couldn't\nget over at all.\"\n\n\"Well, 'tis a curious place, to say the least,\" observed Moon; \"and\nit must be a curious people that live therein.\"\n\n\"Miss Everdene and the soldier were walking about together, you say?\"\nsaid Gabriel, returning to the group.\n\n\"Ay, and she wore a beautiful gold-colour silk gown, trimmed with\nblack lace, that would have stood alone 'ithout legs inside if\nrequired.  'Twas a very winsome sight; and her hair was brushed\nsplendid.  And when the sun shone upon the bright gown and his red\ncoat--my! how handsome they looked.  You could see 'em all the\nlength of the street.\"\n\n\"And what then?\" murmured Gabriel.\n\n\"And then I went into Griffin's to hae my boots hobbed, and then I\nwent to Riggs's batty-cake shop, and asked 'em for a penneth of the\ncheapest and nicest stales, that were all but blue-mouldy, but not\nquite.  And whilst I was chawing 'em down I walked on and seed a\nclock with a face as big as a baking trendle--\"\n\n\"But that's nothing to do with mistress!\"\n\n\"I'm coming to that, if you'll leave me alone, Mister Oak!\"\nremonstrated Cainy.  \"If you excites me, perhaps you'll bring on my\ncough, and then I shan't be able to tell ye nothing.\"\n\n\"Yes--let him tell it his own way,\" said Coggan.\n\nGabriel settled into a despairing attitude of patience, and Cainy\nwent on:--\n\n\"And there were great large houses, and more people all the week long\nthan at Weatherbury club-walking on White Tuesdays.  And I went to\ngrand churches and chapels.  And how the parson would pray!  Yes; he\nwould kneel down and put up his hands together, and make the holy\ngold rings on his fingers gleam and twinkle in yer eyes, that he'd\nearned by praying so excellent well!--Ah yes, I wish I lived there.\"\n\n\"Our poor Parson Thirdly can't get no money to buy such rings,\" said\nMatthew Moon, thoughtfully.  \"And as good a man as ever walked.  I\ndon't believe poor Thirdly have a single one, even of humblest tin\nor copper.  Such a great ornament as they'd be to him on a dull\nafternoon, when he's up in the pulpit lighted by the wax candles!\nBut 'tis impossible, poor man.  Ah, to think how unequal things be.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he's made of different stuff than to wear 'em,\" said\nGabriel, grimly. \"Well, that's enough of this.  Go on, Cainy--quick.\"\n\n\"Oh--and the new style of parsons wear moustaches and long beards,\"\ncontinued the illustrious traveller, \"and look like Moses and Aaron\ncomplete, and make we fokes in the congregation feel all over like\nthe children of Israel.\"\n\n\"A very right feeling--very,\" said Joseph Poorgrass.\n\n\"And there's two religions going on in the nation now--High Church\nand High Chapel.  And, thinks I, I'll play fair; so I went to High\nChurch in the morning, and High Chapel in the afternoon.\"\n\n\"A right and proper boy,\" said Joseph Poorgrass.\n\n\"Well, at High Church they pray singing, and worship all the colours\nof the rainbow; and at High Chapel they pray preaching, and worship\ndrab and whitewash only.  And then--I didn't see no more of Miss\nEverdene at all.\"\n\n\"Why didn't you say so afore, then?\" exclaimed Oak, with much\ndisappointment.\n\n\"Ah,\" said Matthew Moon, \"she'll wish her cake dough if so be she's\nover intimate with that man.\"\n\n\"She's not over intimate with him,\" said Gabriel, indignantly.\n\n\"She would know better,\" said Coggan.  \"Our mis'ess has too much\nsense under they knots of black hair to do such a mad thing.\"\n\n\"You see, he's not a coarse, ignorant man, for he was well brought\nup,\" said Matthew, dubiously.  \"'Twas only wildness that made him a\nsoldier, and maids rather like your man of sin.\"\n\n\"Now, Cain Ball,\" said Gabriel restlessly, \"can you swear in the most\nawful form that the woman you saw was Miss Everdene?\"\n\n\"Cain Ball, you be no longer a babe and suckling,\" said Joseph in the\nsepulchral tone the circumstances demanded, \"and you know what taking\nan oath is.  'Tis a horrible testament mind ye, which you say and\nseal with your blood-stone, and the prophet Matthew tells us that on\nwhomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder.  Now, before\nall the work-folk here assembled, can you swear to your words as the\nshepherd asks ye?\"\n\n\"Please no, Mister Oak!\" said Cainy, looking from one to the other\nwith great uneasiness at the spiritual magnitude of the position.  \"I\ndon't mind saying 'tis true, but I don't like to say 'tis damn true,\nif that's what you mane.\"\n\n\"Cain, Cain, how can you!\" asked Joseph sternly.  \"You be asked to\nswear in a holy manner, and you swear like wicked Shimei, the son of\nGera, who cursed as he came.  Young man, fie!\"\n\n\"No, I don't!  'Tis you want to squander a pore boy's soul, Joseph\nPoorgrass--that's what 'tis!\" said Cain, beginning to cry.  \"All I\nmane is that in common truth 'twas Miss Everdene and Sergeant Troy,\nbut in the horrible so-help-me truth that ye want to make of it\nperhaps 'twas somebody else!\"\n\n\"There's no getting at the rights of it,\" said Gabriel, turning to\nhis work.\n\n\"Cain Ball, you'll come to a bit of bread!\" groaned Joseph Poorgrass.\n\nThen the reapers' hooks were flourished again, and the old sounds\nwent on.  Gabriel, without making any pretence of being lively, did\nnothing to show that he was particularly dull.  However, Coggan knew\npretty nearly how the land lay, and when they were in a nook together\nhe said--\n\n\"Don't take on about her, Gabriel.  What difference does it make\nwhose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?\"\n\n\"That's the very thing I say to myself,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHOME AGAIN--A TRICKSTER\n\n\nThat same evening at dusk Gabriel was leaning over Coggan's\ngarden-gate, taking an up-and-down survey before retiring to rest.\n\nA vehicle of some kind was softly creeping along the grassy margin of\nthe lane.  From it spread the tones of two women talking.  The tones\nwere natural and not at all suppressed. Oak instantly knew the voices\nto be those of Bathsheba and Liddy.\n\nThe carriage came opposite and passed by.  It was Miss Everdene's\ngig, and Liddy and her mistress were the only occupants of the seat.\nLiddy was asking questions about the city of Bath, and her companion\nwas answering them listlessly and unconcernedly.  Both Bathsheba and\nthe horse seemed weary.\n\nThe exquisite relief of finding that she was here again, safe and\nsound, overpowered all reflection, and Oak could only luxuriate in\nthe sense of it.  All grave reports were forgotten.\n\nHe lingered and lingered on, till there was no difference between the\neastern and western expanses of sky, and the timid hares began to\nlimp courageously round the dim hillocks.  Gabriel might have been\nthere an additional half-hour when a dark form walked slowly by.\n\"Good-night, Gabriel,\" the passer said.\n\nIt was Boldwood.  \"Good-night, sir,\" said Gabriel.\n\nBoldwood likewise vanished up the road, and Oak shortly afterwards\nturned indoors to bed.\n\nFarmer Boldwood went on towards Miss Everdene's house.  He reached\nthe front, and approaching the entrance, saw a light in the parlour.\nThe blind was not drawn down, and inside the room was Bathsheba,\nlooking over some papers or letters.  Her back was towards Boldwood.\nHe went to the door, knocked, and waited with tense muscles and an\naching brow.\n\nBoldwood had not been outside his garden since his meeting with\nBathsheba in the road to Yalbury.  Silent and alone, he had remained\nin moody meditation on woman's ways, deeming as essentials of the\nwhole sex the accidents of the single one of their number he had ever\nclosely beheld.  By degrees a more charitable temper had pervaded\nhim, and this was the reason of his sally to-night.  He had come to\napologize and beg forgiveness of Bathsheba with something like a\nsense of shame at his violence, having but just now learnt that she\nhad returned--only from a visit to Liddy, as he supposed, the Bath\nescapade being quite unknown to him.\n\nHe inquired for Miss Everdene.  Liddy's manner was odd, but he did\nnot notice it.  She went in, leaving him standing there, and in her\nabsence the blind of the room containing Bathsheba was pulled down.\nBoldwood augured ill from that sign.  Liddy came out.\n\n\"My mistress cannot see you, sir,\" she said.\n\nThe farmer instantly went out by the gate.  He was unforgiven--that\nwas the issue of it all.  He had seen her who was to him\nsimultaneously a delight and a torture, sitting in the room he had\nshared with her as a peculiarly privileged guest only a little\nearlier in the summer, and she had denied him an entrance there now.\n\nBoldwood did not hurry homeward.  It was ten o'clock at least, when,\nwalking deliberately through the lower part of Weatherbury, he heard\nthe carrier's spring van entering the village.  The van ran to and\nfrom a town in a northern direction, and it was owned and driven by\na Weatherbury man, at the door of whose house it now pulled up.  The\nlamp fixed to the head of the hood illuminated a scarlet and gilded\nform, who was the first to alight.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Boldwood to himself, \"come to see her again.\"\n\nTroy entered the carrier's house, which had been the place of his\nlodging on his last visit to his native place.  Boldwood was moved\nby a sudden determination.  He hastened home.  In ten minutes he was\nback again, and made as if he were going to call upon Troy at the\ncarrier's.  But as he approached, some one opened the door and came\nout.  He heard this person say \"Good-night\" to the inmates, and the\nvoice was Troy's.  This was strange, coming so immediately after\nhis arrival.  Boldwood, however, hastened up to him.  Troy had what\nappeared to be a carpet-bag in his hand--the same that he had brought\nwith him.  It seemed as if he were going to leave again this very\nnight.\n\nTroy turned up the hill and quickened his pace.  Boldwood stepped\nforward.\n\n\"Sergeant Troy?\"\n\n\"Yes--I'm Sergeant Troy.\"\n\n\"Just arrived from up the country, I think?\"\n\n\"Just arrived from Bath.\"\n\n\"I am William Boldwood.\"\n\n\"Indeed.\"\n\nThe tone in which this word was uttered was all that had been wanted\nto bring Boldwood to the point.\n\n\"I wish to speak a word with you,\" he said.\n\n\"What about?\"\n\n\"About her who lives just ahead there--and about a woman you have\nwronged.\"\n\n\"I wonder at your impertinence,\" said Troy, moving on.\n\n\"Now look here,\" said Boldwood, standing in front of him, \"wonder or\nnot, you are going to hold a conversation with me.\"\n\nTroy heard the dull determination in Boldwood's voice, looked at his\nstalwart frame, then at the thick cudgel he carried in his hand.  He\nremembered it was past ten o'clock. It seemed worth while to be civil\nto Boldwood.\n\n\"Very well, I'll listen with pleasure,\" said Troy, placing his bag on\nthe ground, \"only speak low, for somebody or other may overhear us in\nthe farmhouse there.\"\n\n\"Well then--I know a good deal concerning your Fanny Robin's\nattachment to you.  I may say, too, that I believe I am the only\nperson in the village, excepting Gabriel Oak, who does know it.  You\nought to marry her.\"\n\n\"I suppose I ought.  Indeed, I wish to, but I cannot.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nTroy was about to utter something hastily; he then checked himself\nand said, \"I am too poor.\"  His voice was changed.  Previously it had\nhad a devil-may-care tone.  It was the voice of a trickster now.\n\nBoldwood's present mood was not critical enough to notice tones.  He\ncontinued, \"I may as well speak plainly; and understand, I don't\nwish to enter into the questions of right or wrong, woman's honour\nand shame, or to express any opinion on your conduct.  I intend a\nbusiness transaction with you.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Troy.  \"Suppose we sit down here.\"\n\nAn old tree trunk lay under the hedge immediately opposite, and they\nsat down.\n\n\"I was engaged to be married to Miss Everdene,\" said Boldwood, \"but\nyou came and--\"\n\n\"Not engaged,\" said Troy.\n\n\"As good as engaged.\"\n\n\"If I had not turned up she might have become engaged to you.\"\n\n\"Hang might!\"\n\n\"Would, then.\"\n\n\"If you had not come I should certainly--yes, CERTAINLY--have been\naccepted by this time.  If you had not seen her you might have been\nmarried to Fanny.  Well, there's too much difference between Miss\nEverdene's station and your own for this flirtation with her ever to\nbenefit you by ending in marriage.  So all I ask is, don't molest her\nany more. Marry Fanny.  I'll make it worth your while.\"\n\n\"How will you?\"\n\n\"I'll pay you well now, I'll settle a sum of money upon her, and\nI'll see that you don't suffer from poverty in the future.  I'll put\nit clearly.  Bathsheba is only playing with you: you are too poor\nfor her as I said; so give up wasting your time about a great match\nyou'll never make for a moderate and rightful match you may make\nto-morrow; take up your carpet-bag, turn about, leave Weatherbury\nnow, this night, and you shall take fifty pounds with you.  Fanny\nshall have fifty to enable her to prepare for the wedding, when you\nhave told me where she is living, and she shall have five hundred\npaid down on her wedding-day.\"\n\nIn making this statement Boldwood's voice revealed only too clearly\na consciousness of the weakness of his position, his aims, and his\nmethod.  His manner had lapsed quite from that of the firm and\ndignified Boldwood of former times; and such a scheme as he had now\nengaged in he would have condemned as childishly imbecile only a few\nmonths ago.  We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks\nwhilst a free man; but there is a breadth of vision in the free\nman which in the lover we vainly seek.  Where there is much bias\nthere must be some narrowness, and love, though added emotion, is\nsubtracted capacity.  Boldwood exemplified this to an abnormal\ndegree: he knew nothing of Fanny Robin's circumstances or\nwhereabouts, he knew nothing of Troy's possibilities, yet that was\nwhat he said.\n\n\"I like Fanny best,\" said Troy; \"and if, as you say, Miss Everdene is\nout of my reach, why I have all to gain by accepting your money, and\nmarrying Fan.  But she's only a servant.\"\n\n\"Never mind--do you agree to my arrangement?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Boldwood, in a more elastic voice.  \"Oh, Troy, if you like\nher best, why then did you step in here and injure my happiness?\"\n\n\"I love Fanny best now,\" said Troy.  \"But Bathsh--Miss Everdene\ninflamed me, and displaced Fanny for a time.  It is over now.\"\n\n\"Why should it be over so soon?  And why then did you come here\nagain?\"\n\n\"There are weighty reasons.  Fifty pounds at once, you said!\"\n\n\"I did,\" said Boldwood, \"and here they are--fifty sovereigns.\" He\nhanded Troy a small packet.\n\n\"You have everything ready--it seems that you calculated on my\naccepting them,\" said the sergeant, taking the packet.\n\n\"I thought you might accept them,\" said Boldwood.\n\n\"You've only my word that the programme shall be adhered to, whilst\nI at any rate have fifty pounds.\"\n\n\"I had thought of that, and I have considered that if I can't appeal\nto your honour I can trust to your--well, shrewdness we'll call\nit--not to lose five hundred pounds in prospect, and also make a\nbitter enemy of a man who is willing to be an extremely useful\nfriend.\"\n\n\"Stop, listen!\" said Troy in a whisper.\n\nA light pit-pat was audible upon the road just above them.\n\n\"By George--'tis she,\" he continued.  \"I must go on and meet her.\"\n\n\"She--who?\"\n\n\"Bathsheba.\"\n\n\"Bathsheba--out alone at this time o' night!\" said Boldwood in\namazement, and starting up. \"Why must you meet her?\"\n\n\"She was expecting me to-night--and I must now speak to her, and wish\nher good-bye, according to your wish.\"\n\n\"I don't see the necessity of speaking.\"\n\n\"It can do no harm--and she'll be wandering about looking for me if\nI don't.  You shall hear all I say to her.  It will help you in your\nlove-making when I am gone.\"\n\n\"Your tone is mocking.\"\n\n\"Oh no.  And remember this, if she does not know what has become of\nme, she will think more about me than if I tell her flatly I have\ncome to give her up.\"\n\n\"Will you confine your words to that one point?--Shall I hear every\nword you say?\"\n\n\"Every word.  Now sit still there, and hold my carpet bag for me, and\nmark what you hear.\"\n\nThe light footstep came closer, halting occasionally, as if the\nwalker listened for a sound.  Troy whistled a double note in a soft,\nfluty tone.\n\n\"Come to that, is it!\" murmured Boldwood, uneasily.\n\n\"You promised silence,\" said Troy.\n\n\"I promise again.\"\n\nTroy stepped forward.\n\n\"Frank, dearest, is that you?\" The tones were Bathsheba's.\n\n\"O God!\" said Boldwood.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Troy to her.\n\n\"How late you are,\" she continued, tenderly.  \"Did you come by the\ncarrier?  I listened and heard his wheels entering the village, but\nit was some time ago, and I had almost given you up, Frank.\"\n\n\"I was sure to come,\" said Frank.  \"You knew I should, did you not?\"\n\n\"Well, I thought you would,\" she said, playfully; \"and, Frank, it\nis so lucky!  There's not a soul in my house but me to-night.  I've\npacked them all off so nobody on earth will know of your visit to\nyour lady's bower.  Liddy wanted to go to her grandfather's to tell\nhim about her holiday, and I said she might stay with them till\nto-morrow--when you'll be gone again.\"\n\n\"Capital,\" said Troy.  \"But, dear me, I had better go back for my\nbag, because my slippers and brush and comb are in it; you run home\nwhilst I fetch it, and I'll promise to be in your parlour in ten\nminutes.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She turned and tripped up the hill again.\n\nDuring the progress of this dialogue there was a nervous twitching\nof Boldwood's tightly closed lips, and his face became bathed in a\nclammy dew.  He now started forward towards Troy.  Troy turned to\nhim and took up the bag.\n\n\"Shall I tell her I have come to give her up and cannot marry her?\"\nsaid the soldier, mockingly.\n\n\"No, no; wait a minute.  I want to say more to you--more to you!\"\nsaid Boldwood, in a hoarse whisper.\n\n\"Now,\" said Troy, \"you see my dilemma.  Perhaps I am a bad man--the\nvictim of my impulses--led away to do what I ought to leave undone.\nI can't, however, marry them both.  And I have two reasons for\nchoosing Fanny.  First, I like her best upon the whole, and second,\nyou make it worth my while.\"\n\nAt the same instant Boldwood sprang upon him, and held him by the\nneck.  Troy felt Boldwood's grasp slowly tightening. The move was\nabsolutely unexpected.\n\n\"A moment,\" he gasped.  \"You are injuring her you love!\"\n\n\"Well, what do you mean?\" said the farmer.\n\n\"Give me breath,\" said Troy.\n\nBoldwood loosened his hand, saying, \"By Heaven, I've a mind to kill\nyou!\"\n\n\"And ruin her.\"\n\n\"Save her.\"\n\n\"Oh, how can she be saved now, unless I marry her?\"\n\nBoldwood groaned.  He reluctantly released the soldier, and flung him\nback against the hedge.  \"Devil, you torture me!\" said he.\n\nTroy rebounded like a ball, and was about to make a dash at the\nfarmer; but he checked himself, saying lightly--\n\n\"It is not worth while to measure my strength with you.  Indeed it\nis a barbarous way of settling a quarrel.  I shall shortly leave the\narmy because of the same conviction.  Now after that revelation of\nhow the land lies with Bathsheba, 'twould be a mistake to kill me,\nwould it not?\"\n\n\"'Twould be a mistake to kill you,\" repeated Boldwood, mechanically,\nwith a bowed head.\n\n\"Better kill yourself.\"\n\n\"Far better.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you see it.\"\n\n\"Troy, make her your wife, and don't act upon what I arranged just\nnow.  The alternative is dreadful, but take Bathsheba; I give her up!\nShe must love you indeed to sell soul and body to you so utterly as\nshe has done.  Wretched woman--deluded woman--you are, Bathsheba!\"\n\n\"But about Fanny?\"\n\n\"Bathsheba is a woman well to do,\" continued Boldwood, in nervous\nanxiety, \"and, Troy, she will make a good wife; and, indeed, she is\nworth your hastening on your marriage with her!\"\n\n\"But she has a will--not to say a temper, and I shall be a mere slave\nto her.  I could do anything with poor Fanny Robin.\"\n\n\"Troy,\" said Boldwood, imploringly, \"I'll do anything for you, only\ndon't desert her; pray don't desert her, Troy.\"\n\n\"Which, poor Fanny?\"\n\n\"No; Bathsheba Everdene.  Love her best!  Love her tenderly!  How\nshall I get you to see how advantageous it will be to you to secure\nher at once?\"\n\n\"I don't wish to secure her in any new way.\"\n\nBoldwood's arm moved spasmodically towards Troy's person again.  He\nrepressed the instinct, and his form drooped as with pain.\n\nTroy went on--\n\n\"I shall soon purchase my discharge, and then--\"\n\n\"But I wish you to hasten on this marriage!  It will be better for\nyou both.  You love each other, and you must let me help you to do\nit.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Why, by settling the five hundred on Bathsheba instead of Fanny, to\nenable you to marry at once.  No; she wouldn't have it of me.  I'll\npay it down to you on the wedding-day.\"\n\nTroy paused in secret amazement at Boldwood's wild infatuation.  He\ncarelessly said, \"And am I to have anything now?\"\n\n\"Yes, if you wish to.  But I have not much additional money with me.\nI did not expect this; but all I have is yours.\"\n\nBoldwood, more like a somnambulist than a wakeful man, pulled out the\nlarge canvas bag he carried by way of a purse, and searched it.\n\n\"I have twenty-one pounds more with me,\" he said.  \"Two notes and a\nsovereign.  But before I leave you I must have a paper signed--\"\n\n\"Pay me the money, and we'll go straight to her parlour, and make any\narrangement you please to secure my compliance with your wishes.  But\nshe must know nothing of this cash business.\"\n\n\"Nothing, nothing,\" said Boldwood, hastily.  \"Here is the sum, and\nif you'll come to my house we'll write out the agreement for the\nremainder, and the terms also.\"\n\n\"First we'll call upon her.\"\n\n\"But why?  Come with me to-night, and go with me to-morrow to the\nsurrogate's.\"\n\n\"But she must be consulted; at any rate informed.\"\n\n\"Very well; go on.\"\n\nThey went up the hill to Bathsheba's house.  When they stood at the\nentrance, Troy said, \"Wait here a moment.\"  Opening the door, he\nglided inside, leaving the door ajar.\n\nBoldwood waited.  In two minutes a light appeared in the passage.\nBoldwood then saw that the chain had been fastened across the door.\nTroy appeared inside, carrying a bedroom candlestick.\n\n\"What, did you think I should break in?\" said Boldwood,\ncontemptuously.\n\n\"Oh, no, it is merely my humour to secure things.  Will you read this\na moment?  I'll hold the light.\"\n\nTroy handed a folded newspaper through the slit between door and\ndoorpost, and put the candle close.  \"That's the paragraph,\" he said,\nplacing his finger on a line.\n\nBoldwood looked and read--\n\n\n   MARRIAGES.\n\n   On the 17th inst., at St. Ambrose's Church, Bath, by the\n   Rev. G. Mincing, B.A., Francis Troy, only son of the late\n   Edward Troy, Esq., M.D., of Weatherbury, and sergeant with\n   Dragoon Guards, to Bathsheba, only surviving daughter of\n   the late Mr. John Everdene, of Casterbridge.\n\n\n\"This may be called Fort meeting Feeble, hey, Boldwood?\" said Troy.\nA low gurgle of derisive laughter followed the words.\n\nThe paper fell from Boldwood's hands.  Troy continued--\n\n\"Fifty pounds to marry Fanny.  Good.  Twenty-one pounds not to marry\nFanny, but Bathsheba.  Good.  Finale: already Bathsheba's husband.\nNow, Boldwood, yours is the ridiculous fate which always attends\ninterference between a man and his wife.  And another word.  Bad as I\nam, I am not such a villain as to make the marriage or misery of any\nwoman a matter of huckster and sale.  Fanny has long ago left me.  I\ndon't know where she is.  I have searched everywhere.  Another word\nyet.  You say you love Bathsheba; yet on the merest apparent evidence\nyou instantly believe in her dishonour.  A fig for such love!  Now\nthat I've taught you a lesson, take your money back again.\"\n\n\"I will not; I will not!\" said Boldwood, in a hiss.\n\n\"Anyhow I won't have it,\" said Troy, contemptuously.  He wrapped the\npacket of gold in the notes, and threw the whole into the road.\n\nBoldwood shook his clenched fist at him.  \"You juggler of Satan!  You\nblack hound!  But I'll punish you yet; mark me, I'll punish you yet!\"\n\nAnother peal of laughter.  Troy then closed the door, and locked\nhimself in.\n\nThroughout the whole of that night Boldwood's dark form might have\nbeen seen walking about the hills and downs of Weatherbury like an\nunhappy Shade in the Mournful Fields by Acheron.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAT AN UPPER WINDOW\n\n\nIt was very early the next morning--a time of sun and dew.  The\nconfused beginnings of many birds' songs spread into the healthy air,\nand the wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin\nwebs of incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day.\nAll the lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the\nshadows were attenuated as to form.  The creeping plants about the\nold manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which\nhad upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high\nmagnifying power.\n\nJust before the clock struck five Gabriel Oak and Coggan passed the\nvillage cross, and went on together to the fields.  They were yet\nbarely in view of their mistress's house, when Oak fancied he saw the\nopening of a casement in one of the upper windows.  The two men were\nat this moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning\nto be enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before\nemerging from its shade.\n\nA handsome man leaned idly from the lattice.  He looked east and then\nwest, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey.  The\nman was Sergeant Troy.  His red jacket was loosely thrown on, but\nnot buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier\ntaking his ease.\n\nCoggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window.\n\n\"She has married him!\" he said.\n\nGabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his\nback turned, making no reply.\n\n\"I fancied we should know something to-day,\" continued Coggan.  \"I\nheard wheels pass my door just after dark--you were out somewhere.\"\nHe glanced round upon Gabriel.  \"Good heavens above us, Oak, how\nwhite your face is; you look like a corpse!\"\n\n\"Do I?\" said Oak, with a faint smile.\n\n\"Lean on the gate: I'll wait a bit.\"\n\n\"All right, all right.\"\n\nThey stood by the gate awhile, Gabriel listlessly staring at the\nground.  His mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in\nyears of leisure the scenes of repentance that would ensue from this\nwork of haste.  That they were married he had instantly decided.  Why\nhad it been so mysteriously managed?  It had become known that she\nhad had a fearful journey to Bath, owing to her miscalculating the\ndistance: that the horse had broken down, and that she had been more\nthan two days getting there.  It was not Bathsheba's way to do things\nfurtively.  With all her faults, she was candour itself.  Could she\nhave been entrapped?  The union was not only an unutterable grief to\nhim: it amazed him, notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding\nweek in a suspicion that such might be the issue of Troy's meeting\nher away from home.  Her quiet return with Liddy had to some extent\ndispersed the dread.  Just as that imperceptible motion which appears\nlike stillness is infinitely divided in its properties from stillness\nitself, so had his hope undistinguishable from despair differed from\ndespair indeed.\n\nIn a few minutes they moved on again towards the house.  The sergeant\nstill looked from the window.\n\n\"Morning, comrades!\" he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came\nup.\n\nCoggan replied to the greeting.  \"Bain't ye going to answer the man?\"\nhe then said to Gabriel.  \"I'd say good morning--you needn't spend a\nhapenny of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil.\"\n\nGabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the\nbest face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he\nloved.\n\n\"Good morning, Sergeant Troy,\" he returned, in a ghastly voice.\n\n\"A rambling, gloomy house this,\" said Troy, smiling.\n\n\"Why--they MAY not be married!\" suggested Coggan.  \"Perhaps she's not\nthere.\"\n\nGabriel shook his head.  The soldier turned a little towards the\neast, and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow.\n\n\"But it is a nice old house,\" responded Gabriel.\n\n\"Yes--I suppose so; but I feel like new wine in an old bottle here.\nMy notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these\nold wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite\naway, and the walls papered.\"\n\n\"It would be a pity, I think.\"\n\n\"Well, no.  A philosopher once said in my hearing that the old\nbuilders, who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect\nfor the work of builders who went before them, but pulled down and\naltered as they thought fit; and why shouldn't we?  'Creation and\npreservation don't do well together,' says he, 'and a million of\nantiquarians can't invent a style.' My mind exactly.  I am for making\nthis place more modern, that we may be cheerful whilst we can.\"\n\nThe military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to\nassist his ideas of improvement in this direction.  Gabriel and\nCoggan began to move on.\n\n\"Oh, Coggan,\" said Troy, as if inspired by a recollection \"do you\nknow if insanity has ever appeared in Mr. Boldwood's family?\"\n\nJan reflected for a moment.\n\n\"I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don't\nknow the rights o't,\" he said.\n\n\"It is of no importance,\" said Troy, lightly.  \"Well, I shall be down\nin the fields with you some time this week; but I have a few matters\nto attend to first.  So good-day to you.  We shall, of course, keep\non just as friendly terms as usual.  I'm not a proud man: nobody is\never able to say that of Sergeant Troy.  However, what is must be,\nand here's half-a-crown to drink my health, men.\"\n\nTroy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the\nfence towards Gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning\nto an angry red.  Coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught\nthe money in its ricochet upon the road.\n\n\"Very well--you keep it, Coggan,\" said Gabriel with disdain and\nalmost fiercely.  \"As for me, I'll do without gifts from him!\"\n\n\"Don't show it too much,\" said Coggan, musingly.  \"For if he's\nmarried to her, mark my words, he'll buy his discharge and be our\nmaster here.  Therefore 'tis well to say 'Friend' outwardly, though\nyou say 'Troublehouse' within.\"\n\n\"Well--perhaps it is best to be silent; but I can't go further than\nthat.  I can't flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by\nsmoothing him down, my place must be lost.\"\n\nA horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now\nappeared close beside them.\n\n\"There's Mr. Boldwood,\" said Oak.  \"I wonder what Troy meant by his\nquestion.\"\n\nCoggan and Oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their\npaces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not\nstood back to let him pass on.\n\nThe only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating\nthrough the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour\nin his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in\nhis forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth.\nThe horse bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed\nsignificant of dogged despair.  Gabriel, for a minute, rose above his\nown grief in noticing Boldwood's.  He saw the square figure sitting\nerect upon the horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows\nsteady by the hips, the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in\nits onward glide, until the keen edges of Boldwood's shape sank by\ndegrees over the hill.  To one who knew the man and his story there\nwas something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse.\nThe clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced\npainfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more\ndreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of\nthis agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWEALTH IN JEOPARDY--THE REVEL\n\n\nOne night, at the end of August, when Bathsheba's experiences as a\nmarried woman were still new, and when the weather was yet dry and\nsultry, a man stood motionless in the stockyard of Weatherbury Upper\nFarm, looking at the moon and sky.\n\nThe night had a sinister aspect.  A heated breeze from the south\nslowly fanned the summits of lofty objects, and in the sky dashes\nof buoyant cloud were sailing in a course at right angles to that\nof another stratum, neither of them in the direction of the breeze\nbelow.  The moon, as seen through these films, had a lurid metallic\nlook.  The fields were sallow with the impure light, and all were\ntinged in monochrome, as if beheld through stained glass.  The same\nevening the sheep had trailed homeward head to tail, the behaviour of\nthe rooks had been confused, and the horses had moved with timidity\nand caution.\n\nThunder was imminent, and, taking some secondary appearances into\nconsideration, it was likely to be followed by one of the lengthened\nrains which mark the close of dry weather for the season.  Before\ntwelve hours had passed a harvest atmosphere would be a bygone thing.\n\nOak gazed with misgiving at eight naked and unprotected ricks,\nmassive and heavy with the rich produce of one-half the farm for\nthat year.  He went on to the barn.\n\nThis was the night which had been selected by Sergeant Troy--ruling\nnow in the room of his wife--for giving the harvest supper and dance.\nAs Oak approached the building the sound of violins and a tambourine,\nand the regular jigging of many feet, grew more distinct.  He came\nclose to the large doors, one of which stood slightly ajar, and\nlooked in.\n\nThe central space, together with the recess at one end, was emptied\nof all incumbrances, and this area, covering about two-thirds of\nthe whole, was appropriated for the gathering, the remaining end,\nwhich was piled to the ceiling with oats, being screened off with\nsail-cloth.  Tufts and garlands of green foliage decorated the walls,\nbeams, and extemporized chandeliers, and immediately opposite to Oak\na rostrum had been erected, bearing a table and chairs.  Here sat\nthree fiddlers, and beside them stood a frantic man with his hair\non end, perspiration streaming down his cheeks, and a tambourine\nquivering in his hand.\n\nThe dance ended, and on the black oak floor in the midst a new row of\ncouples formed for another.\n\n\"Now, ma'am, and no offence I hope, I ask what dance you would like\nnext?\" said the first violin.\n\n\"Really, it makes no difference,\" said the clear voice of Bathsheba,\nwho stood at the inner end of the building, observing the scene from\nbehind a table covered with cups and viands.  Troy was lolling beside\nher.\n\n\"Then,\" said the fiddler, \"I'll venture to name that the right and\nproper thing is 'The Soldier's Joy'--there being a gallant soldier\nmarried into the farm--hey, my sonnies, and gentlemen all?\"\n\n\"It shall be 'The Soldier's Joy,'\" exclaimed a chorus.\n\n\"Thanks for the compliment,\" said the sergeant gaily, taking\nBathsheba by the hand and leading her to the top of the dance.  \"For\nthough I have purchased my discharge from Her Most Gracious Majesty's\nregiment of cavalry the 11th Dragoon Guards, to attend to the new\nduties awaiting me here, I shall continue a soldier in spirit and\nfeeling as long as I live.\"\n\nSo the dance began.  As to the merits of \"The Soldier's Joy,\" there\ncannot be, and never were, two opinions.  It has been observed in the\nmusical circles of Weatherbury and its vicinity that this melody, at\nthe end of three-quarters of an hour of thunderous footing, still\npossesses more stimulative properties for the heel and toe than the\nmajority of other dances at their first opening.  \"The Soldier's Joy\"\nhas, too, an additional charm, in being so admirably adapted to the\ntambourine aforesaid--no mean instrument in the hands of a performer\nwho understands the proper convulsions, spasms, St. Vitus's dances,\nand fearful frenzies necessary when exhibiting its tones in their\nhighest perfection.\n\nThe immortal tune ended, a fine DD rolling forth from the bass-viol\nwith the sonorousness of a cannonade, and Gabriel delayed his entry\nno longer.  He avoided Bathsheba, and got as near as possible\nto the platform, where Sergeant Troy was now seated, drinking\nbrandy-and-water, though the others drank without exception cider and\nale. Gabriel could not easily thrust himself within speaking distance\nof the sergeant, and he sent a message, asking him to come down for a\nmoment.  The sergeant said he could not attend.\n\n\"Will you tell him, then,\" said Gabriel, \"that I only stepped ath'art\nto say that a heavy rain is sure to fall soon, and that something\nshould be done to protect the ricks?\"\n\n\"Mr. Troy says it will not rain,\" returned the messenger, \"and he\ncannot stop to talk to you about such fidgets.\"\n\nIn juxtaposition with Troy, Oak had a melancholy tendency to look\nlike a candle beside gas, and ill at ease, he went out again,\nthinking he would go home; for, under the circumstances, he had no\nheart for the scene in the barn.  At the door he paused for a moment:\nTroy was speaking.\n\n\"Friends, it is not only the harvest home that we are celebrating\nto-night; but this is also a Wedding Feast.  A short time ago I had\nthe happiness to lead to the altar this lady, your mistress, and not\nuntil now have we been able to give any public flourish to the event\nin Weatherbury.  That it may be thoroughly well done, and that every\nman may go happy to bed, I have ordered to be brought here some\nbottles of brandy and kettles of hot water.  A treble-strong goblet\nwill be handed round to each guest.\"\n\nBathsheba put her hand upon his arm, and, with upturned pale face,\nsaid imploringly, \"No--don't give it to them--pray don't, Frank!  It\nwill only do them harm: they have had enough of everything.\"\n\n\"True--we don't wish for no more, thank ye,\" said one or two.\n\n\"Pooh!\" said the sergeant contemptuously, and raised his voice as\nif lighted up by a new idea.  \"Friends,\" he said, \"we'll send the\nwomen-folk home!  'Tis time they were in bed.  Then we cockbirds will\nhave a jolly carouse to ourselves!  If any of the men show the white\nfeather, let them look elsewhere for a winter's work.\"\n\nBathsheba indignantly left the barn, followed by all the women and\nchildren.  The musicians, not looking upon themselves as \"company,\"\nslipped quietly away to their spring waggon and put in the horse.\nThus Troy and the men on the farm were left sole occupants of the\nplace.  Oak, not to appear unnecessarily disagreeable, stayed a\nlittle while; then he, too, arose and quietly took his departure,\nfollowed by a friendly oath from the sergeant for not staying to a\nsecond round of grog.\n\nGabriel proceeded towards his home.  In approaching the door, his\ntoe kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and\ndistended, like a boxing-glove.  It was a large toad humbly\ntravelling across the path.  Oak took it up, thinking it might be\nbetter to kill the creature to save it from pain; but finding it\nuninjured, he placed it again among the grass.  He knew what this\ndirect message from the Great Mother meant.  And soon came another.\n\nWhen he struck a light indoors there appeared upon the table a thin\nglistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had been lightly dragged\nacross it.  Oak's eyes followed the serpentine sheen to the other\nside, where it led up to a huge brown garden-slug, which had come\nindoors to-night for reasons of its own.  It was Nature's second way\nof hinting to him that he was to prepare for foul weather.\n\nOak sat down meditating for nearly an hour.  During this time two\nblack spiders, of the kind common in thatched houses, promenaded the\nceiling, ultimately dropping to the floor.  This reminded him that\nif there was one class of manifestation on this matter that he\nthoroughly understood, it was the instincts of sheep.  He left the\nroom, ran across two or three fields towards the flock, got upon a\nhedge, and looked over among them.\n\nThey were crowded close together on the other side around some furze\nbushes, and the first peculiarity observable was that, on the sudden\nappearance of Oak's head over the fence, they did not stir or run\naway.  They had now a terror of something greater than their terror\nof man.  But this was not the most noteworthy feature: they were all\ngrouped in such a way that their tails, without a single exception,\nwere towards that half of the horizon from which the storm\nthreatened.  There was an inner circle closely huddled, and outside\nthese they radiated wider apart, the pattern formed by the flock as a\nwhole not being unlike a vandyked lace collar, to which the clump of\nfurze-bushes stood in the position of a wearer's neck.\n\nThis was enough to re-establish him in his original opinion.  He knew\nnow that he was right, and that Troy was wrong. Every voice in nature\nwas unanimous in bespeaking change.  But two distinct translations\nattached to these dumb expressions.  Apparently there was to be a\nthunder-storm, and afterwards a cold continuous rain.  The creeping\nthings seemed to know all about the later rain, but little of the\ninterpolated thunder-storm; whilst the sheep knew all about the\nthunder-storm and nothing of the later rain.\n\nThis complication of weathers being uncommon, was all the more to be\nfeared.  Oak returned to the stack-yard.  All was silent here, and\nthe conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky.  There were\nfive wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley.  The wheat\nwhen threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the\nbarley, at least forty.  Their value to Bathsheba, and indeed to\nanybody, Oak mentally estimated by the following simple\ncalculation:--\n\n\n      5 x 30 = 150 quarters = 500 L.\n      3 x 40 = 120 quarters = 250 L.\n                            -------\n                    Total . . 750 L.\n\n\nSeven hundred and fifty pounds in the divinest form that money can\nwear--that of necessary food for man and beast: should the risk be\nrun of deteriorating this bulk of corn to less than half its value,\nbecause of the instability of a woman?  \"Never, if I can prevent it!\"\nsaid Gabriel.\n\nSuch was the argument that Oak set outwardly before him.  But man,\neven to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and\nanother beneath the lines.  It is possible that there was this golden\nlegend under the utilitarian one: \"I will help to my last effort the\nwoman I have loved so dearly.\"\n\nHe went back to the barn to endeavour to obtain assistance for\ncovering the ricks that very night.  All was silent within, and he\nwould have passed on in the belief that the party had broken up, had\nnot a dim light, yellow as saffron by contrast with the greenish\nwhiteness outside, streamed through a knot-hole in the folding doors.\n\nGabriel looked in.  An unusual picture met his eye.\n\nThe candles suspended among the evergreens had burnt down to their\nsockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched.\nMany of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank,\ngrease dropping from them upon the floor.  Here, under the table, and\nleaning against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except\nthe perpendicular, were the wretched persons of all the work-folk,\nthe hair of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops\nand brooms.  In the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure\nof Sergeant Troy, leaning back in a chair.  Coggan was on his back,\nwith his mouth open, huzzing forth snores, as were several others;\nthe united breathings of the horizonal assemblage forming a subdued\nroar like London from a distance.  Joseph Poorgrass was curled round\nin the fashion of a hedge-hog, apparently in attempts to present the\nleast possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him\nwas dimly visible an unimportant remnant of William Smallbury.\nThe glasses and cups still stood upon the table, a water-jug being\noverturned, from which a small rill, after tracing its course with\nmarvellous precision down the centre of the long table, fell into the\nneck of the unconscious Mark Clark, in a steady, monotonous drip,\nlike the dripping of a stalactite in a cave.\n\nGabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two\nexceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm.  He saw\nat once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the\nnext morning, he must save them with his own hands.\n\nA faint \"ting-ting\" resounded from under Coggan's waistcoat.  It was\nCoggan's watch striking the hour of two.\n\nOak went to the recumbent form of Matthew Moon, who usually undertook\nthe rough thatching of the home-stead, and shook him.  The shaking\nwas without effect.\n\nGabriel shouted in his ear, \"where's your thatching-beetle and\nrick-stick and spars?\"\n\n\"Under the staddles,\" said Moon, mechanically, with the unconscious\npromptness of a medium.\n\nGabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl.\nHe then went to Susan Tall's husband.\n\n\"Where's the key of the granary?\"\n\nNo answer.  The question was repeated, with the same result.  To be\nshouted to at night was evidently less of a novelty to Susan Tall's\nhusband than to Matthew Moon.  Oak flung down Tall's head into the\ncorner again and turned away.\n\nTo be just, the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and\ndemoralizing termination to the evening's entertainment.  Sergeant\nTroy had so strenuously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should\nbe the bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly\nliked to be so unmannerly under the circumstances.  Having from their\nyouth up been entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider\nor mild ale, it was no wonder that they had succumbed, one and all,\nwith extraordinary uniformity, after the lapse of about an hour.\n\nGabriel was greatly depressed.  This debauch boded ill for that\nwilful and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt\nwithin him as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and\nhopeless.\n\nHe put out the expiring lights, that the barn might not be\nendangered, closed the door upon the men in their deep and oblivious\nsleep, and went again into the lone night.  A hot breeze, as if\nbreathed from the parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the\nglobe, fanned him from the south, while directly opposite in the\nnorth rose a grim misshapen body of cloud, in the very teeth of the\nwind.  So unnaturally did it rise that one could fancy it to be\nlifted by machinery from below.  Meanwhile the faint cloudlets had\nflown back into the south-east corner of the sky, as if in terror of\nthe large cloud, like a young brood gazed in upon by some monster.\n\nGoing on to the village, Oak flung a small stone against the window\nof Laban Tall's bedroom, expecting Susan to open it; but nobody\nstirred.  He went round to the back door, which had been left\nunfastened for Laban's entry, and passed in to the foot of the\nstaircase.\n\n\"Mrs. Tall, I've come for the key of the granary, to get at the\nrick-cloths,\" said Oak, in a stentorian voice.\n\n\"Is that you?\" said Mrs. Susan Tall, half awake.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"Come along to bed, do, you drawlatching rogue--keeping a body awake\nlike this!\"\n\n\"It isn't Laban--'tis Gabriel Oak.  I want the key of the granary.\"\n\n\"Gabriel!  What in the name of fortune did you pretend to be Laban\nfor?\"\n\n\"I didn't.  I thought you meant--\"\n\n\"Yes you did!  What do you want here?\"\n\n\"The key of the granary.\"\n\n\"Take it then.  'Tis on the nail.  People coming disturbing women at\nthis time of night ought--\"\n\nGabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the\ntirade.  Ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen\ndragging four large water-proof coverings across the yard, and soon\ntwo of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug--two cloths\nto each.  Two hundred pounds were secured.  Three wheat-stacks\nremained open, and there were no more cloths.  Oak looked under the\nstaddles and found a fork.  He mounted the third pile of wealth and\nbegan operating, adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one\nover the other; and, in addition, filling the interstices with the\nmaterial of some untied sheaves.\n\nSo far all was well.  By this hurried contrivance Bathsheba's\nproperty in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided\nalways that there was not much wind.\n\nNext came the barley.  This it was only possible to protect by\nsystematic thatching.  Time went on, and the moon vanished not to\nreappear.  It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war.\nThe night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came\nfinally an utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form\nof a slow breeze, which might have been likened to a death.  And now\nnothing was heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which\ndrove in the spars, and the rustle of thatch in the intervals.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE STORM--THE TWO TOGETHER\n\n\nA light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent\nwings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air.  It was the\nfirst move of the approaching storm.\n\nThe second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible\nlightning.  Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba's bedroom,\nand soon a shadow swept to and fro upon the blind.\n\nThen there came a third flash.  Manoeuvres of a most extraordinary\nkind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead.  The\nlightning now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens\nlike a mailed army. Rumbles became rattles.  Gabriel from his\nelevated position could see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen\nmiles in front.  Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a\nline engraving.  In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of\nheifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the\nact of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging\ntheir heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth.\nA poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on\nburnished tin.  Then the picture vanished, leaving the darkness so\nintense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands.\n\nHe had stuck his ricking-rod, or poniard, as it was indifferently\ncalled--a long iron lance, polished by handling--into the stack,\nused to support the sheaves instead of the support called a groom\nused on houses.  A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some\nindescribable manner flickered down near the top of the rod.  It\nwas the fourth of the larger flashes.  A moment later and there was\na smack--smart, clear, and short.  Gabriel felt his position to be\nanything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend.\n\nNot a drop of rain had fallen as yet.  He wiped his weary brow, and\nlooked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks.  Was his\nlife so valuable to him after all?  What were his prospects that he\nshould be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour\ncould not be carried on without such risk?  He resolved to stick to\nthe stack.  However, he took a precaution.  Under the staddles was a\nlong tethering chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses.\nThis he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog\nat one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the\nground.  The spike attached to it he drove in.  Under the shadow of\nthis extemporized lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively\nsafe.\n\nBefore Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the\nfifth flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend.\nIt was green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning.  What\nwas this the light revealed to him?  In the open ground before him,\nas he looked over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently\nfemale form.  Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the\nparish--Bathsheba?  The form moved on a step: then he could see no\nmore.\n\n\"Is that you, ma'am?\" said Gabriel to the darkness.\n\n\"Who is there?\" said the voice of Bathsheba.\n\n\"Gabriel.  I am on the rick, thatching.\"\n\n\"Oh, Gabriel!--and are you?  I have come about them.  The weather\nawoke me, and I thought of the corn.  I am so distressed about\nit--can we save it anyhow?  I cannot find my husband.  Is he with\nyou?\"\n\n\"He is not here.\"\n\n\"Do you know where he is?\"\n\n\"Asleep in the barn.\"\n\n\"He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all\nneglected!  Can I do anything to help?  Liddy is afraid to come out.\nFancy finding you here at such an hour!  Surely I can do something?\"\n\n\"You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma'am; if you\nare not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark,\" said Gabriel.\n\"Every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of\ntime.  It is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit.\"\n\n\"I'll do anything!\" she said, resolutely.  She instantly took a sheaf\nupon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind\nthe rod, and descended for another.  At her third ascent the rick\nsuddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica--every\nknot in every straw was visible.  On the slope in front of him\nappeared two human shapes, black as jet.  The rick lost its\nsheen--the shapes vanished.  Gabriel turned his head.  It had been\nthe sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two\ndark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and\nBathsheba.\n\nThen came the peal.  It hardly was credible that such a heavenly\nlight could be the parent of such a diabolical sound.\n\n\"How terrible!\" she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve.\nGabriel turned, and steadied her on her aerial perch by holding\nher arm.  At the same moment, while he was still reversed in his\nattitude, there was more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the\ntall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn.\nIt was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash\nin the west.\n\nThe next flare came.  Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering\nanother sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching--thunder\nand all--and again ascended with the load.  There was then a silence\neverywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as\nGabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard.  He\nthought the crisis of the storm had passed.  But there came a burst\nof light.\n\n\"Hold on!\" said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and\ngrasping her arm again.\n\nHeaven opened then, indeed.  The flash was almost too novel for its\ninexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could\nonly comprehend the magnificence of its beauty.  It sprang from\neast, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death.  The\nforms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for\nbones--dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling\naltogether in unparalleled confusion.  With these were intertwined\nundulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of\nlesser light.  Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling\nsky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came\nnear it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else\nearthly.  In the meantime one of the grisly forms had alighted upon\nthe point of Gabriel's rod, to run invisibly down it, down the chain,\nand into the earth.  Gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel\nBathsheba's warm arm tremble in his hand--a sensation novel and\nthrilling enough; but love, life, everything human, seemed small and\ntrifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe.\n\nOak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought,\nand to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this\nlight, when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire\nto a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled\nwith the last crash of those preceding.  It was a stupefying blast,\nharsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow,\nwithout that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more\ndistant thunder.  By the lustre reflected from every part of the\nearth and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the\ntree was sliced down the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a\nhuge riband of bark being apparently flung off.  The other portion\nremained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white\ndown the front.  The lightning had struck the tree.  A sulphurous\nsmell filled the air; then all was silent, and black as a cave in\nHinnom.\n\n\"We had a narrow escape!\" said Gabriel, hurriedly.  \"You had better\ngo down.\"\n\nBathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical\npants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response\nto her frightened pulsations.  She descended the ladder, and, on\nsecond thoughts, he followed her.  The darkness was now impenetrable\nby the sharpest vision.  They both stood still at the bottom, side by\nside.  Bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather--Oak thought\nonly of her just then.  At last he said--\n\n\"The storm seems to have passed now, at any rate.\"\n\n\"I think so too,\" said Bathsheba.  \"Though there are multitudes of\ngleams, look!\"\n\nThe sky was now filled with an incessant light, frequent repetition\nmelting into complete continuity, as an unbroken sound results from\nthe successive strokes on a gong.\n\n\"Nothing serious,\" said he.  \"I cannot understand no rain falling.\nBut Heaven be praised, it is all the better for us.  I am now going\nup again.\"\n\n\"Gabriel, you are kinder than I deserve!  I will stay and help you\nyet.  Oh, why are not some of the others here!\"\n\n\"They would have been here if they could,\" said Oak, in a hesitating\nway.\n\n\"O, I know it all--all,\" she said, adding slowly: \"They are all\nasleep in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them.\nThat's it, is it not?  Don't think I am a timid woman and can't\nendure things.\"\n\n\"I am not certain,\" said Gabriel.  \"I will go and see.\"\n\nHe crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone.  He looked through\nthe chinks of the door.  All was in total darkness, as he had left\nit, and there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of\nmany snores.\n\nHe felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned.  It was\nBathsheba's breath--she had followed him, and was looking into the\nsame chink.\n\nHe endeavoured to put off the immediate and painful subject of\ntheir thoughts by remarking gently, \"If you'll come back again,\nmiss--ma'am, and hand up a few more; it would save much time.\"\n\nThen Oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder\nfor greater expedition, and went on thatching.  She followed, but\nwithout a sheaf.\n\n\"Gabriel,\" she said, in a strange and impressive voice.\n\nOak looked up at her.  She had not spoken since he left the barn.\nThe soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble\nface high against the black sky of the opposite quarter.  Bathsheba\nwas sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up\nbeneath her, and resting on the top round of the ladder.\n\n\"Yes, mistress,\" he said.\n\n\"I suppose you thought that when I galloped away to Bath that night\nit was on purpose to be married?\"\n\n\"I did at last--not at first,\" he answered, somewhat surprised at the\nabruptness with which this new subject was broached.\n\n\"And others thought so, too?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And you blamed me for it?\"\n\n\"Well--a little.\"\n\n\"I thought so.  Now, I care a little for your good opinion, and\nI want to explain something--I have longed to do it ever since I\nreturned, and you looked so gravely at me.  For if I were to die--and\nI may die soon--it would be dreadful that you should always think\nmistakenly of me.  Now, listen.\"\n\nGabriel ceased his rustling.\n\n\"I went to Bath that night in the full intention of breaking off my\nengagement to Mr. Troy.  It was owing to circumstances which occurred\nafter I got there that--that we were married.  Now, do you see the\nmatter in a new light?\"\n\n\"I do--somewhat.\"\n\n\"I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun.  And perhaps\nit's no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever\nloved you, or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that\nobject I have mentioned.  Well, I was alone in a strange city, and\nthe horse was lame.  And at last I didn't know what to do.  I saw,\nwhen it was too late, that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting\nhim alone in that way.  But I was coming away, when he suddenly said\nhe had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his\nconstancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his....\nAnd I was grieved and troubled--\"  She cleared her voice, and waited\na moment, as if to gather breath.  \"And then, between jealousy\nand distraction, I married him!\" she whispered with desperate\nimpetuosity.\n\nGabriel made no reply.\n\n\"He was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about--about his\nseeing somebody else,\" she quickly added.  \"And now I don't wish for\na single remark from you upon the subject--indeed, I forbid it.  I\nonly wanted you to know that misunderstood bit of my history before\na time comes when you could never know it.--You want some more\nsheaves?\"\n\nShe went down the ladder, and the work proceeded.  Gabriel soon\nperceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and\nhe said to her, gently as a mother--\n\n\"I think you had better go indoors now, you are tired.  I can finish\nthe rest alone.  If the wind does not change the rain is likely to\nkeep off.\"\n\n\"If I am useless I will go,\" said Bathsheba, in a flagging cadence.\n\"But O, if your life should be lost!\"\n\n\"You are not useless; but I would rather not tire you longer.  You\nhave done well.\"\n\n\"And you better!\" she said, gratefully.  \"Thank you for your\ndevotion, a thousand times, Gabriel!  Goodnight--I know you are doing\nyour very best for me.\"\n\nShe diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch\nof the gate fall as she passed through.  He worked in a reverie\nnow, musing upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that\nfeminine heart which had caused her to speak more warmly to him\nto-night than she ever had done whilst unmarried and free to speak\nas warmly as she chose.\n\nHe was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the\ncoach-house.  It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this\nchange in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRAIN--ONE SOLITARY MEETS ANOTHER\n\n\nIt was now five o'clock, and the dawn was promising to break in hues\nof drab and ash.\n\nThe air changed its temperature and stirred itself more vigorously.\nCool breezes coursed in transparent eddies round Oak's face.  The\nwind shifted yet a point or two and blew stronger.  In ten minutes\nevery wind of heaven seemed to be roaming at large.  Some of the\nthatching on the wheat-stacks was now whirled fantastically aloft,\nand had to be replaced and weighted with some rails that lay near at\nhand.  This done, Oak slaved away again at the barley.  A huge drop\nof rain smote his face, the wind snarled round every corner, the\ntrees rocked to the bases of their trunks, and the twigs clashed in\nstrife.  Driving in spars at any point and on any system, inch by\ninch he covered more and more safely from ruin this distracting\nimpersonation of seven hundred pounds.  The rain came on in earnest,\nand Oak soon felt the water to be tracking cold and clammy routes\ndown his back.  Ultimately he was reduced well-nigh to a homogeneous\nsop, and the dyes of his clothes trickled down and stood in a pool\nat the foot of the ladder.  The rain stretched obliquely through the\ndull atmosphere in liquid spines, unbroken in continuity between\ntheir beginnings in the clouds and their points in him.\n\nOak suddenly remembered that eight months before this time he had\nbeen fighting against fire in the same spot as desperately as he\nwas fighting against water now--and for a futile love of the same\nwoman.  As for her--But Oak was generous and true, and dismissed\nhis reflections.\n\nIt was about seven o'clock in the dark leaden morning when Gabriel\ncame down from the last stack, and thankfully exclaimed, \"It is\ndone!\"  He was drenched, weary, and sad, and yet not so sad as\ndrenched and weary, for he was cheered by a sense of success in a\ngood cause.\n\nFaint sounds came from the barn, and he looked that way.  Figures\nstepped singly and in pairs through the doors--all walking awkwardly,\nand abashed, save the foremost, who wore a red jacket, and advanced\nwith his hands in his pockets, whistling.  The others shambled after\nwith a conscience-stricken air: the whole procession was not unlike\nFlaxman's group of the suitors tottering on towards the infernal\nregions under the conduct of Mercury.  The gnarled shapes passed\ninto the village, Troy, their leader, entering the farmhouse.  Not a\nsingle one of them had turned his face to the ricks, or apparently\nbestowed one thought upon their condition.\n\nSoon Oak too went homeward, by a different route from theirs.  In\nfront of him against the wet glazed surface of the lane he saw a\nperson walking yet more slowly than himself under an umbrella.  The\nman turned and plainly started; he was Boldwood.\n\n\"How are you this morning, sir?\" said Oak.\n\n\"Yes, it is a wet day.--Oh, I am well, very well, I thank you; quite\nwell.\"\n\n\"I am glad to hear it, sir.\"\n\nBoldwood seemed to awake to the present by degrees.  \"You look tired\nand ill, Oak,\" he said then, desultorily regarding his companion.\n\n\"I am tired.  You look strangely altered, sir.\"\n\n\"I?  Not a bit of it: I am well enough.  What put that into your\nhead?\"\n\n\"I thought you didn't look quite so topping as you used to, that was\nall.\"\n\n\"Indeed, then you are mistaken,\" said Boldwood, shortly.  \"Nothing\nhurts me.  My constitution is an iron one.\"\n\n\"I've been working hard to get our ricks covered, and was barely in\ntime.  Never had such a struggle in my life....  Yours of course are\nsafe, sir.\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" Boldwood added, after an interval of silence: \"What did you\nask, Oak?\"\n\n\"Your ricks are all covered before this time?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"At any rate, the large ones upon the stone staddles?\"\n\n\"They are not.\"\n\n\"Them under the hedge?\"\n\n\"No.  I forgot to tell the thatcher to set about it.\"\n\n\"Nor the little one by the stile?\"\n\n\"Nor the little one by the stile.  I overlooked the ricks this year.\"\n\n\"Then not a tenth of your corn will come to measure, sir.\"\n\n\"Possibly not.\"\n\n\"Overlooked them,\" repeated Gabriel slowly to himself.  It is\ndifficult to describe the intensely dramatic effect that announcement\nhad upon Oak at such a moment.  All the night he had been feeling\nthat the neglect he was labouring to repair was abnormal and\nisolated--the only instance of the kind within the circuit of the\ncounty.  Yet at this very time, within the same parish, a greater\nwaste had been going on, uncomplained of and disregarded.  A few\nmonths earlier Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as\npreposterous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a ship.  Oak\nwas just thinking that whatever he himself might have suffered from\nBathsheba's marriage, here was a man who had suffered more, when\nBoldwood spoke in a changed voice--that of one who yearned to make\na confidence and relieve his heart by an outpouring.\n\n\"Oak, you know as well as I that things have gone wrong with me\nlately.  I may as well own it.  I was going to get a little settled\nin life; but in some way my plan has come to nothing.\"\n\n\"I thought my mistress would have married you,\" said Gabriel, not\nknowing enough of the full depths of Boldwood's love to keep silence\non the farmer's account, and determined not to evade discipline by\ndoing so on his own.  \"However, it is so sometimes, and nothing\nhappens that we expect,\" he added, with the repose of a man whom\nmisfortune had inured rather than subdued.\n\n\"I daresay I am a joke about the parish,\" said Boldwood, as if\nthe subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a miserable\nlightness meant to express his indifference.\n\n\"Oh no--I don't think that.\"\n\n\"--But the real truth of the matter is that there was not, as some\nfancy, any jilting on--her part.  No engagement ever existed between\nme and Miss Everdene.  People say so, but it is untrue: she never\npromised me!\"  Boldwood stood still now and turned his wild face to\nOak.  \"Oh, Gabriel,\" he continued, \"I am weak and foolish, and I\ndon't know what, and I can't fend off my miserable grief! ...  I had\nsome faint belief in the mercy of God till I lost that woman.  Yes,\nHe prepared a gourd to shade me, and like the prophet I thanked Him\nand was glad.  But the next day He prepared a worm to smite the gourd\nand wither it; and I feel it is better to die than to live!\"\n\nA silence followed.  Boldwood aroused himself from the momentary\nmood of confidence into which he had drifted, and walked on again,\nresuming his usual reserve.\n\n\"No, Gabriel,\" he resumed, with a carelessness which was like\nthe smile on the countenance of a skull: \"it was made more of by\nother people than ever it was by us.  I do feel a little regret\noccasionally, but no woman ever had power over me for any length of\ntime.  Well, good morning; I can trust you not to mention to others\nwhat has passed between us two here.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCOMING HOME--A CRY\n\n\nOn the turnpike road, between Casterbridge and Weatherbury, and about\nthree miles from the former place, is Yalbury Hill, one of those\nsteep long ascents which pervade the highways of this undulating\npart of South Wessex.  In returning from market it is usual for the\nfarmers and other gig-gentry to alight at the bottom and walk up.\n\nOne Saturday evening in the month of October Bathsheba's vehicle was\nduly creeping up this incline.  She was sitting listlessly in the\nsecond seat of the gig, whilst walking beside her in a farmer's\nmarketing suit of unusually fashionable cut was an erect, well-made\nyoung man.  Though on foot, he held the reins and whip, and\noccasionally aimed light cuts at the horse's ear with the end of the\nlash, as a recreation.  This man was her husband, formerly Sergeant\nTroy, who, having bought his discharge with Bathsheba's money, was\ngradually transforming himself into a farmer of a spirited and very\nmodern school.  People of unalterable ideas still insisted upon\ncalling him \"Sergeant\" when they met him, which was in some degree\nowing to his having still retained the well-shaped moustache of his\nmilitary days, and the soldierly bearing inseparable from his form\nand training.\n\n\"Yes, if it hadn't been for that wretched rain I should have cleared\ntwo hundred as easy as looking, my love,\" he was saying.  \"Don't you\nsee, it altered all the chances?  To speak like a book I once read,\nwet weather is the narrative, and fine days are the episodes, of our\ncountry's history; now, isn't that true?\"\n\n\"But the time of year is come for changeable weather.\"\n\n\"Well, yes.  The fact is, these autumn races are the ruin of\neverybody.  Never did I see such a day as 'twas!  'Tis a wild open\nplace, just out of Budmouth, and a drab sea rolled in towards us like\nliquid misery.  Wind and rain--good Lord!  Dark?  Why, 'twas as black\nas my hat before the last race was run.  'Twas five o'clock, and\nyou couldn't see the horses till they were almost in, leave alone\ncolours.  The ground was as heavy as lead, and all judgment from a\nfellow's experience went for nothing.  Horses, riders, people, were\nall blown about like ships at sea.  Three booths were blown over,\nand the wretched folk inside crawled out upon their hands and knees;\nand in the next field were as many as a dozen hats at one time.  Ay,\nPimpernel regularly stuck fast, when about sixty yards off, and when\nI saw Policy stepping on, it did knock my heart against the lining\nof my ribs, I assure you, my love!\"\n\n\"And you mean, Frank,\" said Bathsheba, sadly--her voice was painfully\nlowered from the fulness and vivacity of the previous summer--\"that\nyou have lost more than a hundred pounds in a month by this dreadful\nhorse-racing?  O, Frank, it is cruel; it is foolish of you to take\naway my money so.  We shall have to leave the farm; that will be the\nend of it!\"\n\n\"Humbug about cruel.  Now, there 'tis again--turn on the waterworks;\nthat's just like you.\"\n\n\"But you'll promise me not to go to Budmouth second meeting, won't\nyou?\" she implored.  Bathsheba was at the full depth for tears, but\nshe maintained a dry eye.\n\n\"I don't see why I should; in fact, if it turns out to be a fine day,\nI was thinking of taking you.\"\n\n\"Never, never!  I'll go a hundred miles the other way first. I hate\nthe sound of the very word!\"\n\n\"But the question of going to see the race or staying at home has\nvery little to do with the matter.  Bets are all booked safely enough\nbefore the race begins, you may depend.  Whether it is a bad race for\nme or a good one, will have very little to do with our going there\nnext Monday.\"\n\n\"But you don't mean to say that you have risked anything on this one\ntoo!\" she exclaimed, with an agonized look.\n\n\"There now, don't you be a little fool.  Wait till you are told.\nWhy, Bathsheba, you have lost all the pluck and sauciness you\nformerly had, and upon my life if I had known what a chicken-hearted\ncreature you were under all your boldness, I'd never have--I know\nwhat.\"\n\nA flash of indignation might have been seen in Bathsheba's dark eyes\nas she looked resolutely ahead after this reply.  They moved on\nwithout further speech, some early-withered leaves from the trees\nwhich hooded the road at this spot occasionally spinning downward\nacross their path to the earth.\n\nA woman appeared on the brow of the hill.  The ridge was in a\ncutting, so that she was very near the husband and wife before she\nbecame visible.  Troy had turned towards the gig to remount, and\nwhilst putting his foot on the step the woman passed behind him.\n\nThough the overshadowing trees and the approach of eventide enveloped\nthem in gloom, Bathsheba could see plainly enough to discern the\nextreme poverty of the woman's garb, and the sadness of her face.\n\n\"Please, sir, do you know at what time Casterbridge Union-house\ncloses at night?\"\n\nThe woman said these words to Troy over his shoulder.\n\nTroy started visibly at the sound of the voice; yet he seemed to\nrecover presence of mind sufficient to prevent himself from giving\nway to his impulse to suddenly turn and face her.  He said, slowly--\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nThe woman, on hearing him speak, quickly looked up, examined the side\nof his face, and recognized the soldier under the yeoman's garb.  Her\nface was drawn into an expression which had gladness and agony both\namong its elements.  She uttered an hysterical cry, and fell down.\n\n\"Oh, poor thing!\" exclaimed Bathsheba, instantly preparing to alight.\n\n\"Stay where you are, and attend to the horse!\" said Troy,\nperemptorily throwing her the reins and the whip.  \"Walk the horse\nto the top: I'll see to the woman.\"\n\n\"But I--\"\n\n\"Do you hear?  Clk--Poppet!\"\n\nThe horse, gig, and Bathsheba moved on.\n\n\"How on earth did you come here?  I thought you were miles away, or\ndead!  Why didn't you write to me?\" said Troy to the woman, in a\nstrangely gentle, yet hurried voice, as he lifted her up.\n\n\"I feared to.\"\n\n\"Have you any money?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Good Heaven--I wish I had more to give you!  Here's--wretched--the\nmerest trifle.  It is every farthing I have left.  I have none but\nwhat my wife gives me, you know, and I can't ask her now.\"\n\nThe woman made no answer.\n\n\"I have only another moment,\" continued Troy; \"and now listen.  Where\nare you going to-night?  Casterbridge Union?\"\n\n\"Yes; I thought to go there.\"\n\n\"You shan't go there; yet, wait.  Yes, perhaps for to-night; I can\ndo nothing better--worse luck!  Sleep there to-night, and stay there\nto-morrow.  Monday is the first free day I have; and on Monday\nmorning, at ten exactly, meet me on Grey's Bridge just out of the\ntown.  I'll bring all the money I can muster.  You shan't want--I'll\nsee that, Fanny; then I'll get you a lodging somewhere.  Good-bye\ntill then.  I am a brute--but good-bye!\"\n\nAfter advancing the distance which completed the ascent of the\nhill, Bathsheba turned her head.  The woman was upon her feet, and\nBathsheba saw her withdrawing from Troy, and going feebly down the\nhill by the third milestone from Casterbridge.  Troy then came on\ntowards his wife, stepped into the gig, took the reins from her hand,\nand without making any observation whipped the horse into a trot.  He\nwas rather agitated.\n\n\"Do you know who that woman was?\" said Bathsheba, looking searchingly\ninto his face.\n\n\"I do,\" he said, looking boldly back into hers.\n\n\"I thought you did,\" said she, with angry hauteur, and still\nregarding him.  \"Who is she?\"\n\nHe suddenly seemed to think that frankness would benefit neither of\nthe women.\n\n\"Nothing to either of us,\" he said.  \"I know her by sight.\"\n\n\"What is her name?\"\n\n\"How should I know her name?\"\n\n\"I think you do.\"\n\n\"Think if you will, and be--\" The sentence was completed by a smart\ncut of the whip round Poppet's flank, which caused the animal to\nstart forward at a wild pace.  No more was said.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nON CASTERBRIDGE HIGHWAY\n\n\nFor a considerable time the woman walked on.  Her steps became\nfeebler, and she strained her eyes to look afar upon the naked road,\nnow indistinct amid the penumbrae of night.  At length her onward walk\ndwindled to the merest totter, and she opened a gate within which was\na haystack.  Underneath this she sat down and presently slept.\n\nWhen the woman awoke it was to find herself in the depths of a\nmoonless and starless night.  A heavy unbroken crust of cloud\nstretched across the sky, shutting out every speck of heaven; and a\ndistant halo which hung over the town of Casterbridge was visible\nagainst the black concave, the luminosity appearing the brighter by\nits great contrast with the circumscribing darkness.  Towards this\nweak, soft glow the woman turned her eyes.\n\n\"If I could only get there!\" she said.  \"Meet him the day after\nto-morrow: God help me!  Perhaps I shall be in my grave before then.\"\n\nA manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour,\none, in a small, attenuated tone.  After midnight the voice of a\nclock seems to lose in breadth as much as in length, and to diminish\nits sonorousness to a thin falsetto.\n\nAfterwards a light--two lights--arose from the remote shade, and grew\nlarger.  A carriage rolled along the road, and passed the gate.  It\nprobably contained some late diners-out.  The beams from one lamp\nshone for a moment upon the crouching woman, and threw her face into\nvivid relief.  The face was young in the groundwork, old in the\nfinish; the general contours were flexuous and childlike, but the\nfiner lineaments had begun to be sharp and thin.\n\nThe pedestrian stood up, apparently with revived determination, and\nlooked around.  The road appeared to be familiar to her, and she\ncarefully scanned the fence as she slowly walked along.  Presently\nthere became visible a dim white shape; it was another milestone.\nShe drew her fingers across its face to feel the marks.\n\n\"Two more!\" she said.\n\nShe leant against the stone as a means of rest for a short interval,\nthen bestirred herself, and again pursued her way.  For a slight\ndistance she bore up bravely, afterwards flagging as before.  This\nwas beside a lone copsewood, wherein heaps of white chips strewn upon\nthe leafy ground showed that woodmen had been faggoting and making\nhurdles during the day.  Now there was not a rustle, not a breeze,\nnot the faintest clash of twigs to keep her company.  The woman\nlooked over the gate, opened it, and went in.  Close to the entrance\nstood a row of faggots, bound and un-bound, together with stakes of\nall sizes.\n\nFor a few seconds the wayfarer stood with that tense stillness which\nsignifies itself to be not the end, but merely the suspension, of\na previous motion.  Her attitude was that of a person who listens,\neither to the external world of sound, or to the imagined discourse\nof thought.  A close criticism might have detected signs proving that\nshe was intent on the latter alternative.  Moreover, as was shown by\nwhat followed, she was oddly exercising the faculty of invention upon\nthe speciality of the clever Jacquet Droz, the designer of automatic\nsubstitutes for human limbs.\n\nBy the aid of the Casterbridge aurora, and by feeling with her hands,\nthe woman selected two sticks from the heaps.  These sticks were\nnearly straight to the height of three or four feet, where each\nbranched into a fork like the letter Y.  She sat down, snapped off\nthe small upper twigs, and carried the remainder with her into the\nroad.  She placed one of these forks under each arm as a crutch,\ntested them, timidly threw her whole weight upon them--so little that\nit was--and swung herself forward.  The girl had made for herself a\nmaterial aid.\n\nThe crutches answered well.  The pat of her feet, and the tap of\nher sticks upon the highway, were all the sounds that came from\nthe traveller now.  She had passed the last milestone by a good\nlong distance, and began to look wistfully towards the bank as if\ncalculating upon another milestone soon.  The crutches, though so\nvery useful, had their limits of power.  Mechanism only transfers\nlabour, being powerless to supersede it, and the original amount of\nexertion was not cleared away; it was thrown into the body and arms.\nShe was exhausted, and each swing forward became fainter.  At last\nshe swayed sideways, and fell.\n\nHere she lay, a shapeless heap, for ten minutes and more.  The\nmorning wind began to boom dully over the flats, and to move afresh\ndead leaves which had lain still since yesterday.  The woman\ndesperately turned round upon her knees, and next rose to her feet.\nSteadying herself by the help of one crutch, she essayed a step, then\nanother, then a third, using the crutches now as walking-sticks only.\nThus she progressed till descending Mellstock Hill another milestone\nappeared, and soon the beginning of an iron-railed fence came into\nview.  She staggered across to the first post, clung to it, and\nlooked around.\n\nThe Casterbridge lights were now individually visible. It was getting\ntowards morning, and vehicles might be hoped for, if not expected\nsoon.  She listened.  There was not a sound of life save that acme\nand sublimation of all dismal sounds, the bark of a fox, its three\nhollow notes being rendered at intervals of a minute with the\nprecision of a funeral bell.\n\n\"Less than a mile!\" the woman murmured.  \"No; more,\" she added, after\na pause.  \"The mile is to the county hall, and my resting-place is on\nthe other side Casterbridge.  A little over a mile, and there I am!\"\nAfter an interval she again spoke.  \"Five or six steps to a yard--six\nperhaps.  I have to go seventeen hundred yards.  A hundred times six,\nsix hundred.  Seventeen times that.  O pity me, Lord!\"\n\nHolding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting one hand forward upon\nthe rail, then the other, then leaning over it whilst she dragged her\nfeet on beneath.\n\nThis woman was not given to soliloquy; but extremity of feeling\nlessens the individuality of the weak, as it increases that of the\nstrong.  She said again in the same tone, \"I'll believe that the end\nlies five posts forward, and no further, and so get strength to pass\nthem.\"\n\nThis was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned\nand fictitious faith is better than no faith at all.\n\nShe passed five posts and held on to the fifth.\n\n\"I'll pass five more by believing my longed-for spot is at the next\nfifth.  I can do it.\"\n\nShe passed five more.\n\n\"It lies only five further.\"\n\nShe passed five more.\n\n\"But it is five further.\"\n\nShe passed them.\n\n\"That stone bridge is the end of my journey,\" she said, when the\nbridge over the Froom was in view.\n\nShe crawled to the bridge.  During the effort each breath of the\nwoman went into the air as if never to return again.\n\n\"Now for the truth of the matter,\" she said, sitting down.  \"The\ntruth is, that I have less than half a mile.\"  Self-beguilement with\nwhat she had known all the time to be false had given her strength to\ncome over half a mile that she would have been powerless to face in\nthe lump.  The artifice showed that the woman, by some mysterious\nintuition, had grasped the paradoxical truth that blindness may\noperate more vigorously than prescience, and the short-sighted effect\nmore than the far-seeing; that limitation, and not comprehensiveness,\nis needed for striking a blow.\n\nThe half-mile stood now before the sick and weary woman like a stolid\nJuggernaut.  It was an impassive King of her world.  The road here\nran across Durnover Moor, open to the road on either side.  She\nsurveyed the wide space, the lights, herself, sighed, and lay down\nagainst a guard-stone of the bridge.\n\nNever was ingenuity exercised so sorely as the traveller here\nexercised hers.  Every conceivable aid, method, stratagem, mechanism,\nby which these last desperate eight hundred yards could be overpassed\nby a human being unperceived, was revolved in her busy brain,\nand dismissed as impracticable.  She thought of sticks, wheels,\ncrawling--she even thought of rolling.  But the exertion demanded\nby either of these latter two was greater than to walk erect.  The\nfaculty of contrivance was worn out.  Hopelessness had come at last.\n\n\"No further!\" she whispered, and closed her eyes.\n\nFrom the stripe of shadow on the opposite side of the bridge a\nportion of shade seemed to detach itself and move into isolation\nupon the pale white of the road.  It glided noiselessly towards the\nrecumbent woman.\n\nShe became conscious of something touching her hand; it was softness\nand it was warmth.  She opened her eyes, and the substance touched\nher face.  A dog was licking her cheek.\n\nHe was a huge, heavy, and quiet creature, standing darkly against the\nlow horizon, and at least two feet higher than the present position\nof her eyes.  Whether Newfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what\nnot, it was impossible to say.  He seemed to be of too strange and\nmysterious a nature to belong to any variety among those of popular\nnomenclature.  Being thus assignable to no breed, he was the ideal\nembodiment of canine greatness--a generalization from what was common\nto all.  Night, in its sad, solemn, and benevolent aspect, apart from\nits stealthy and cruel side, was personified in this form.  Darkness\nendows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power,\nand even the suffering woman threw her idea into figure.\n\nIn her reclining position she looked up to him just as in earlier\ntimes she had, when standing, looked up to a man.  The animal, who\nwas as homeless as she, respectfully withdrew a step or two when the\nwoman moved, and, seeing that she did not repulse him, he licked her\nhand again.\n\nA thought moved within her like lightning.  \"Perhaps I can make use\nof him--I might do it then!\"\n\nShe pointed in the direction of Casterbridge, and the dog seemed to\nmisunderstand: he trotted on.  Then, finding she could not follow, he\ncame back and whined.\n\nThe ultimate and saddest singularity of woman's effort and invention\nwas reached when, with a quickened breathing, she rose to a stooping\nposture, and, resting her two little arms upon the shoulders of the\ndog, leant firmly thereon, and murmured stimulating words.  Whilst\nshe sorrowed in her heart she cheered with her voice, and what was\nstranger than that the strong should need encouragement from the weak\nwas that cheerfulness should be so well stimulated by such utter\ndejection.  Her friend moved forward slowly, and she with small\nmincing steps moved forward beside him, half her weight being thrown\nupon the animal.  Sometimes she sank as she had sunk from walking\nerect, from the crutches, from the rails.  The dog, who now\nthoroughly understood her desire and her incapacity, was frantic in\nhis distress on these occasions; he would tug at her dress and run\nforward.  She always called him back, and it was now to be observed\nthat the woman listened for human sounds only to avoid them.  It was\nevident that she had an object in keeping her presence on the road\nand her forlorn state unknown.\n\nTheir progress was necessarily very slow.  They reached the bottom\nof the town, and the Casterbridge lamps lay before them like fallen\nPleiads as they turned to the left into the dense shade of a deserted\navenue of chestnuts, and so skirted the borough.  Thus the town was\npassed, and the goal was reached.\n\nOn this much-desired spot outside the town rose a picturesque\nbuilding.  Originally it had been a mere case to hold people.  The\nshell had been so thin, so devoid of excrescence, and so closely\ndrawn over the accommodation granted, that the grim character of what\nwas beneath showed through it, as the shape of a body is visible\nunder a winding-sheet.\n\nThen Nature, as if offended, lent a hand.  Masses of ivy grew up,\ncompletely covering the walls, till the place looked like an abbey;\nand it was discovered that the view from the front, over the\nCasterbridge chimneys, was one of the most magnificent in the\ncounty. A neighbouring earl once said that he would give up a year's\nrental to have at his own door the view enjoyed by the inmates from\ntheirs--and very probably the inmates would have given up the view\nfor his year's rental.\n\nThis stone edifice consisted of a central mass and two wings, whereon\nstood as sentinels a few slim chimneys, now gurgling sorrowfully to\nthe slow wind.  In the wall was a gate, and by the gate a bellpull\nformed of a hanging wire.  The woman raised herself as high as\npossible upon her knees, and could just reach the handle.  She moved\nit and fell forwards in a bowed attitude, her face upon her bosom.\n\nIt was getting on towards six o'clock, and sounds of movement were\nto be heard inside the building which was the haven of rest to this\nwearied soul.  A little door by the large one was opened, and a man\nappeared inside.  He discerned the panting heap of clothes, went back\nfor a light, and came again.  He entered a second time, and returned\nwith two women.\n\nThese lifted the prostrate figure and assisted her in through the\ndoorway.  The man then closed the door.\n\n\"How did she get here?\" said one of the women.\n\n\"The Lord knows,\" said the other.\n\n\"There is a dog outside,\" murmured the overcome traveller.  \"Where is\nhe gone?  He helped me.\"\n\n\"I stoned him away,\" said the man.\n\nThe little procession then moved forward--the man in front bearing\nthe light, the two bony women next, supporting between them the small\nand supple one.  Thus they entered the house and disappeared.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSUSPICION--FANNY IS SENT FOR\n\n\nBathsheba said very little to her husband all that evening of their\nreturn from market, and he was not disposed to say much to her.  He\nexhibited the unpleasant combination of a restless condition with a\nsilent tongue.  The next day, which was Sunday, passed nearly in the\nsame manner as regarded their taciturnity, Bathsheba going to church\nboth morning and afternoon.  This was the day before the Budmouth\nraces.  In the evening Troy said, suddenly--\n\n\"Bathsheba, could you let me have twenty pounds?\"\n\nHer countenance instantly sank. \"Twenty pounds?\" she said.\n\n\"The fact is, I want it badly.\"  The anxiety upon Troy's face was\nunusual and very marked.  It was a culmination of the mood he had\nbeen in all the day.\n\n\"Ah! for those races to-morrow.\"\n\nTroy for the moment made no reply.  Her mistake had its advantages\nto a man who shrank from having his mind inspected as he did now.\n\"Well, suppose I do want it for races?\" he said, at last.\n\n\"Oh, Frank!\" Bathsheba replied, and there was such a volume of\nentreaty in the words.  \"Only such a few weeks ago you said that I\nwas far sweeter than all your other pleasures put together, and that\nyou would give them all up for me; and now, won't you give up this\none, which is more a worry than a pleasure?  Do, Frank.  Come, let\nme fascinate you by all I can do--by pretty words and pretty looks,\nand everything I can think of--to stay at home.  Say yes to your\nwife--say yes!\"\n\nThe tenderest and softest phases of Bathsheba's nature were prominent\nnow--advanced impulsively for his acceptance, without any of the\ndisguises and defences which the wariness of her character when she\nwas cool too frequently threw over them.  Few men could have resisted\nthe arch yet dignified entreaty of the beautiful face, thrown a\nlittle back and sideways in the well known attitude that expresses\nmore than the words it accompanies, and which seems to have been\ndesigned for these special occasions.  Had the woman not been his\nwife, Troy would have succumbed instantly; as it was, he thought he\nwould not deceive her longer.\n\n\"The money is not wanted for racing debts at all,\" he said.\n\n\"What is it for?\" she asked.  \"You worry me a great deal by these\nmysterious responsibilities, Frank.\"\n\nTroy hesitated.  He did not now love her enough to allow himself\nto be carried too far by her ways.  Yet it was necessary to be\ncivil.  \"You wrong me by such a suspicious manner,\" he said.  \"Such\nstrait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so\nearly a date.\"\n\n\"I think that I have a right to grumble a little if I pay,\" she said,\nwith features between a smile and a pout.\n\n\"Exactly; and, the former being done, suppose we proceed to the\nlatter.  Bathsheba, fun is all very well, but don't go too far, or\nyou may have cause to regret something.\"\n\nShe reddened.  \"I do that already,\" she said, quickly.\n\n\"What do you regret?\"\n\n\"That my romance has come to an end.\"\n\n\"All romances end at marriage.\"\n\n\"I wish you wouldn't talk like that.  You grieve me to my soul by\nbeing smart at my expense.\"\n\n\"You are dull enough at mine.  I believe you hate me.\"\n\n\"Not you--only your faults.  I do hate them.\"\n\n\"'Twould be much more becoming if you set yourself to cure them.\nCome, let's strike a balance with the twenty pounds, and be friends.\"\n\nShe gave a sigh of resignation.  \"I have about that sum here for\nhousehold expenses.  If you must have it, take it.\"\n\n\"Very good.  Thank you.  I expect I shall have gone away before you\nare in to breakfast to-morrow.\"\n\n\"And must you go?  Ah! there was a time, Frank, when it would have\ntaken a good many promises to other people to drag you away from me.\nYou used to call me darling, then.  But it doesn't matter to you how\nmy days are passed now.\"\n\n\"I must go, in spite of sentiment.\"  Troy, as he spoke, looked at his\nwatch, and, apparently actuated by _non lucendo_ principles, opened\nthe case at the back, revealing, snugly stowed within it, a small\ncoil of hair.\n\nBathsheba's eyes had been accidentally lifted at that moment, and she\nsaw the action and saw the hair.  She flushed in pain and surprise,\nand some words escaped her before she had thought whether or not it\nwas wise to utter them.  \"A woman's curl of hair!\" she said.  \"Oh,\nFrank, whose is that?\"\n\nTroy had instantly closed his watch.  He carelessly replied, as one\nwho cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred.  \"Why, yours,\nof course.  Whose should it be?  I had quite forgotten that I had\nit.\"\n\n\"What a dreadful fib, Frank!\"\n\n\"I tell you I had forgotten it!\" he said, loudly.\n\n\"I don't mean that--it was yellow hair.\"\n\n\"Nonsense.\"\n\n\"That's insulting me.  I know it was yellow.  Now whose was it?  I\nwant to know.\"\n\n\"Very well--I'll tell you, so make no more ado.  It is the hair of a\nyoung woman I was going to marry before I knew you.\"\n\n\"You ought to tell me her name, then.\"\n\n\"I cannot do that.\"\n\n\"Is she married yet?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Is she alive?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Is she pretty?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"It is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful\naffliction!\"\n\n\"Affliction--what affliction?\" he inquired, quickly.\n\n\"Having hair of that dreadful colour.\"\n\n\"Oh--ho--I like that!\" said Troy, recovering himself.  \"Why, her hair\nhas been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it\nloose, which has not been long.  It is beautiful hair.  People used\nto turn their heads to look at it, poor girl!\"\n\n\"Pooh! that's nothing--that's nothing!\" she exclaimed, in incipient\naccents of pique.  \"If I cared for your love as much as I used to I\ncould say people had turned to look at mine.\"\n\n\"Bathsheba, don't be so fitful and jealous.  You knew what married\nlife would be like, and shouldn't have entered it if you feared these\ncontingencies.\"\n\nTroy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in\nher throat, and the ducts to her eyes were painfully full.  Ashamed\nas she was to show emotion, at last she burst out:--\n\n\"This is all I get for loving you so well!  Ah! when I married you\nyour life was dearer to me than my own.  I would have died for\nyou--how truly I can say that I would have died for you!  And now\nyou sneer at my foolishness in marrying you.  O! is it kind to me to\nthrow my mistake in my face?  Whatever opinion you may have of my\nwisdom, you should not tell me of it so mercilessly, now that I am\nin your power.\"\n\n\"I can't help how things fall out,\" said Troy; \"upon my heart, women\nwill be the death of me!\"\n\n\"Well you shouldn't keep people's hair.  You'll burn it, won't you,\nFrank?\"\n\nFrank went on as if he had not heard her.  \"There are considerations\neven before my consideration for you; reparations to be made--ties\nyou know nothing of.  If you repent of marrying, so do I.\"\n\nTrembling now, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, in mingled\ntones of wretchedness and coaxing, \"I only repent it if you don't\nlove me better than any woman in the world!  I don't otherwise,\nFrank.  You don't repent because you already love somebody better\nthan you love me, do you?\"\n\n\"I don't know.  Why do you say that?\"\n\n\"You won't burn that curl.  You like the woman who owns that pretty\nhair--yes; it is pretty--more beautiful than my miserable black mane!\nWell, it is no use; I can't help being ugly.  You must like her best,\nif you will!\"\n\n\"Until to-day, when I took it from a drawer, I have never looked upon\nthat bit of hair for several months--that I am ready to swear.\"\n\n\"But just now you said 'ties'; and then--that woman we met?\"\n\n\"'Twas the meeting with her that reminded me of the hair.\"\n\n\"Is it hers, then?\"\n\n\"Yes.  There, now that you have wormed it out of me, I hope you are\ncontent.\"\n\n\"And what are the ties?\"\n\n\"Oh! that meant nothing--a mere jest.\"\n\n\"A mere jest!\" she said, in mournful astonishment.  \"Can you jest\nwhen I am so wretchedly in earnest?  Tell me the truth, Frank.  I\nam not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman's\nmoments.  Come! treat me fairly,\" she said, looking honestly and\nfearlessly into his face.  \"I don't want much; bare justice--that's\nall!  Ah! once I felt I could be content with nothing less than the\nhighest homage from the husband I should choose.  Now, anything\nshort of cruelty will content me.  Yes! the independent and spirited\nBathsheba is come to this!\"\n\n\"For Heaven's sake don't be so desperate!\" Troy said, snappishly,\nrising as he did so, and leaving the room.\n\nDirectly he had gone, Bathsheba burst into great sobs--dry-eyed sobs,\nwhich cut as they came, without any softening by tears.  But she\ndetermined to repress all evidences of feeling.  She was conquered;\nbut she would never own it as long as she lived.  Her pride was\nindeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by\nmarriage with a less pure nature than her own.  She chafed to and fro\nin rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms,\nand the blood fired her face.  Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had\nbeen proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to\nknow that her lips had been touched by no man's on earth--that her\nwaist had never been encircled by a lover's arm.  She hated herself\nnow.  In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret\ncontempt for girls who were the slaves of the first good-looking\nyoung fellow who should choose to salute them.  She had never taken\nkindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of\nwomen she saw about her.  In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover\nshe had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied\nher happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice\nthan of promotion and honour.  Although she scarcely knew the\ndivinity's name, Diana was the goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively\nadored.  That she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man\nto approach her--that she had felt herself sufficient to herself,\nand had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was\na certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden\nexistence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial\nwhole--were facts now bitterly remembered.  Oh, if she had never\nstooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only\nstand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and dare Troy\nor any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference!\n\nThe next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse\nsaddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way.  When she\ncame in at half-past eight--their usual hour for breakfasting--she\nwas informed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and\ndriven off to Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet.\n\nAfter breakfast she was cool and collected--quite herself in\nfact--and she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another\nquarter of the farm, which she still personally superintended as\nwell as her duties in the house would permit, continually, however,\nfinding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she\nbegan to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister.  Of course,\nshe sometimes thought of him in the light of an old lover, and had\nmomentary imaginings of what life with him as a husband would have\nbeen like; also of life with Boldwood under the same conditions.\nBut Bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile\ndreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely\nconfined to the times when Troy's neglect was more than ordinarily\nevident.\n\nShe saw coming up the road a man like Mr. Boldwood.  It was Mr.\nBoldwood.  Bathsheba blushed painfully, and watched.  The farmer\nstopped when still a long way off, and held up his hand to Gabriel\nOak, who was in a footpath across the field.  The two men then\napproached each other and seemed to engage in earnest conversation.\n\nThus they continued for a long time.  Joseph Poorgrass now passed\nnear them, wheeling a barrow of apples up the hill to Bathsheba's\nresidence.  Boldwood and Gabriel called to him, spoke to him for a\nfew minutes, and then all three parted, Joseph immediately coming\nup the hill with his barrow.\n\nBathsheba, who had seen this pantomime with some surprise,\nexperienced great relief when Boldwood turned back again.  \"Well,\nwhat's the message, Joseph?\" she said.\n\nHe set down his barrow, and, putting upon himself the refined aspect\nthat a conversation with a lady required, spoke to Bathsheba over the\ngate.\n\n\"You'll never see Fanny Robin no more--use nor principal--ma'am.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because she's dead in the Union.\"\n\n\"Fanny dead--never!\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"What did she die from?\"\n\n\"I don't know for certain; but I should be inclined to think it was\nfrom general neshness of constitution.  She was such a limber maid\nthat 'a could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and 'a went\nlike a candle-snoff, so 'tis said.  She was took bad in the morning,\nand, being quite feeble and worn out, she died in the evening.  She\nbelongs by law to our parish; and Mr. Boldwood is going to send a\nwaggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her.\"\n\n\"Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing--I shall do\nit!  Fanny was my uncle's servant, and, although I only knew her\nfor a couple of days, she belongs to me.  How very, very sad this\nis!--the idea of Fanny being in a workhouse.\"  Bathsheba had begun to\nknow what suffering was, and she spoke with real feeling....  \"Send\nacross to Mr. Boldwood's, and say that Mrs. Troy will take upon\nherself the duty of fetching an old servant of the family....  We\nought not to put her in a waggon; we'll get a hearse.\"\n\n\"There will hardly be time, ma'am, will there?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not,\" she said, musingly.  \"When did you say we must be at\nthe door--three o'clock?\"\n\n\"Three o'clock this afternoon, ma'am, so to speak it.\"\n\n\"Very well--you go with it.  A pretty waggon is better than an ugly\nhearse, after all.  Joseph, have the new spring waggon with the blue\nbody and red wheels, and wash it very clean.  And, Joseph--\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Carry with you some evergreens and flowers to put upon her\ncoffin--indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in\nthem.  Get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew,\nand boy's-love; ay, and some bunches of chrysanthemum.  And let old\nPleasant draw her, because she knew him so well.\"\n\n\"I will, ma'am.  I ought to have said that the Union, in the form of\nfour labouring men, will meet me when I gets to our churchyard gate,\nand take her and bury her according to the rites of the Board of\nGuardians, as by law ordained.\"\n\n\"Dear me--Casterbridge Union--and is Fanny come to this?\" said\nBathsheba, musing.  \"I wish I had known of it sooner.  I thought she\nwas far away.  How long has she lived there?\"\n\n\"On'y been there a day or two.\"\n\n\"Oh!--then she has not been staying there as a regular inmate?\"\n\n\"No.  She first went to live in a garrison-town t'other side o'\nWessex, and since then she's been picking up a living at seampstering\nin Melchester for several months, at the house of a very respectable\nwidow-woman who takes in work of that sort.  She only got handy the\nUnion-house on Sunday morning 'a b'lieve, and 'tis supposed here and\nthere that she had traipsed every step of the way from Melchester.\nWhy she left her place, I can't say, for I don't know; and as to a\nlie, why, I wouldn't tell it.  That's the short of the story, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Ah-h!\"\n\nNo gem ever flashed from a rosy ray to a white one more rapidly than\nchanged the young wife's countenance whilst this word came from her\nin a long-drawn breath.  \"Did she walk along our turnpike-road?\" she\nsaid, in a suddenly restless and eager voice.\n\n\"I believe she did....  Ma'am, shall I call Liddy?  You bain't well,\nma'am, surely?  You look like a lily--so pale and fainty!\"\n\n\"No; don't call her; it is nothing.  When did she pass Weatherbury?\"\n\n\"Last Saturday night.\"\n\n\"That will do, Joseph; now you may go.\"\n\n\"Certainly, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Joseph, come hither a moment.  What was the colour of Fanny Robin's\nhair?\"\n\n\"Really, mistress, now that 'tis put to me so judge-and-jury like, I\ncan't call to mind, if ye'll believe me!\"\n\n\"Never mind; go on and do what I told you.  Stop--well no, go on.\"\n\nShe turned herself away from him, that he might no longer notice the\nmood which had set its sign so visibly upon her, and went indoors\nwith a distressing sense of faintness and a beating brow.  About an\nhour after, she heard the noise of the waggon and went out, still\nwith a painful consciousness of her bewildered and troubled look.\nJoseph, dressed in his best suit of clothes, was putting in the horse\nto start.  The shrubs and flowers were all piled in the waggon, as\nshe had directed; Bathsheba hardly saw them now.\n\n\"Died of what? did you say, Joseph?\"\n\n\"I don't know, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Are you quite sure?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, quite sure.\"\n\n\"Sure of what?\"\n\n\"I'm sure that all I know is that she arrived in the morning and died\nin the evening without further parley.  What Oak and Mr. Boldwood\ntold me was only these few words.  'Little Fanny Robin is dead,\nJoseph,' Gabriel said, looking in my face in his steady old way.\nI was very sorry, and I said, 'Ah!--and how did she come to die?'\n'Well, she's dead in Casterbridge Union,' he said, 'and perhaps\n'tisn't much matter about how she came to die.  She reached the\nUnion early Sunday morning, and died in the afternoon--that's clear\nenough.' Then I asked what she'd been doing lately, and Mr. Boldwood\nturned round to me then, and left off spitting a thistle with the end\nof his stick.  He told me about her having lived by seampstering in\nMelchester, as I mentioned to you, and that she walked therefrom at\nthe end of last week, passing near here Saturday night in the dusk.\nThey then said I had better just name a hint of her death to you, and\naway they went.  Her death might have been brought on by biding in\nthe night wind, you know, ma'am; for people used to say she'd go off\nin a decline: she used to cough a good deal in winter time.  However,\n'tisn't much odds to us about that now, for 'tis all over.\"\n\n\"Have you heard a different story at all?\" She looked at him so\nintently that Joseph's eyes quailed.\n\n\"Not a word, mistress, I assure 'ee!\" he said.  \"Hardly anybody in\nthe parish knows the news yet.\"\n\n\"I wonder why Gabriel didn't bring the message to me himself.  He\nmostly makes a point of seeing me upon the most trifling errand.\"\nThese words were merely murmured, and she was looking upon the\nground.\n\n\"Perhaps he was busy, ma'am,\" Joseph suggested.  \"And sometimes he\nseems to suffer from things upon his mind, connected with the time\nwhen he was better off than 'a is now.  'A's rather a curious item,\nbut a very understanding shepherd, and learned in books.\"\n\n\"Did anything seem upon his mind whilst he was speaking to you about\nthis?\"\n\n\"I cannot but say that there did, ma'am.  He was terrible down, and\nso was Farmer Boldwood.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Joseph.  That will do.  Go on now, or you'll be late.\"\n\nBathsheba, still unhappy, went indoors again.  In the course of the\nafternoon she said to Liddy, who had been informed of the occurrence,\n\"What was the colour of poor Fanny Robin's hair?  Do you know?  I\ncannot recollect--I only saw her for a day or two.\"\n\n\"It was light, ma'am; but she wore it rather short, and packed away\nunder her cap, so that you would hardly notice it.  But I have seen\nher let it down when she was going to bed, and it looked beautiful\nthen.  Real golden hair.\"\n\n\"Her young man was a soldier, was he not?\"\n\n\"Yes.  In the same regiment as Mr. Troy.  He says he knew him very\nwell.\"\n\n\"What, Mr. Troy says so?  How came he to say that?\"\n\n\"One day I just named it to him, and asked him if he knew Fanny's\nyoung man.  He said, 'Oh yes, he knew the young man as well as he\nknew himself, and that there wasn't a man in the regiment he liked\nbetter.'\"\n\n\"Ah!  Said that, did he?\"\n\n\"Yes; and he said there was a strong likeness between himself and the\nother young man, so that sometimes people mistook them--\"\n\n\"Liddy, for Heaven's sake stop your talking!\" said Bathsheba, with\nthe nervous petulance that comes from worrying perceptions.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJOSEPH AND HIS BURDEN--BUCK'S HEAD\n\n\nA wall bounded the site of Casterbridge Union-house, except along a\nportion of the end.  Here a high gable stood prominent, and it was\ncovered like the front with a mat of ivy.  In this gable was no\nwindow, chimney, ornament, or protuberance of any kind.  The single\nfeature appertaining to it, beyond the expanse of dark green leaves,\nwas a small door.\n\nThe situation of the door was peculiar.  The sill was three or four\nfeet above the ground, and for a moment one was at a loss for an\nexplanation of this exceptional altitude, till ruts immediately\nbeneath suggested that the door was used solely for the passage of\narticles and persons to and from the level of a vehicle standing on\nthe outside.  Upon the whole, the door seemed to advertise itself as\na species of Traitor's Gate translated to another sphere.  That entry\nand exit hereby was only at rare intervals became apparent on noting\nthat tufts of grass were allowed to flourish undisturbed in the\nchinks of the sill.\n\nAs the clock over the South-street Alms-house pointed to five minutes\nto three, a blue spring waggon, picked out with red, and containing\nboughs and flowers, passed the end of the street, and up towards this\nside of the building.  Whilst the chimes were yet stammering out a\nshattered form of \"Malbrook,\" Joseph Poorgrass rang the bell, and\nreceived directions to back his waggon against the high door under\nthe gable.  The door then opened, and a plain elm coffin was slowly\nthrust forth, and laid by two men in fustian along the middle of the\nvehicle.\n\nOne of the men then stepped up beside it, took from his pocket a lump\nof chalk, and wrote upon the cover the name and a few other words in\na large scrawling hand.  (We believe that they do these things more\ntenderly now, and provide a plate.) He covered the whole with a\nblack cloth, threadbare, but decent, the tail-board of the waggon\nwas returned to its place, one of the men handed a certificate of\nregistry to Poorgrass, and both entered the door, closing it behind\nthem.  Their connection with her, short as it had been, was over for\never.\n\nJoseph then placed the flowers as enjoined, and the evergreens\naround the flowers, till it was difficult to divine what the waggon\ncontained; he smacked his whip, and the rather pleasing funeral car\ncrept down the hill, and along the road to Weatherbury.\n\nThe afternoon drew on apace, and, looking to the right towards the\nsea as he walked beside the horse, Poorgrass saw strange clouds and\nscrolls of mist rolling over the long ridges which girt the landscape\nin that quarter.  They came in yet greater volumes, and indolently\ncrept across the intervening valleys, and around the withered papery\nflags of the moor and river brinks.  Then their dank spongy forms\nclosed in upon the sky.  It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric\nfungi which had their roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time\nthat horse, man, and corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent\nworkings of an invisible hand had reached them, and they were\ncompletely enveloped, this being the first arrival of the autumn\nfogs, and the first fog of the series.\n\nThe air was as an eye suddenly struck blind.  The waggon and its load\nrolled no longer on the horizontal division between clearness and\nopacity, but were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor\nthroughout.  There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a\nvisible drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches,\nand firs composing the wood on either side.  The trees stood in an\nattitude of intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to\ncome and rock them.  A startling quiet overhung all surrounding\nthings--so completely, that the crunching of the waggon-wheels\nwas as a great noise, and small rustles, which had never obtained\na hearing except by night, were distinctly individualized.\n\nJoseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed\nfaintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable\ngloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and\nspectre-like in their monochrome of grey.  He felt anything but\ncheerful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog.\nStopping the horse, he listened.  Not a footstep or wheel was audible\nanywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy\nparticle falling from a tree through the evergreens and alighting\nwith a smart rap upon the coffin of poor Fanny.  The fog had by this\ntime saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water\nfrom the overbrimming leaves.  The hollow echo of its fall reminded\nthe waggoner painfully of the grim Leveller.  Then hard by came down\nanother drop, then two or three.  Presently there was a continual\ntapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and\nthe travellers.  The nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the\ngreyness of aged men, and the rusty-red leaves of the beeches were\nhung with similar drops, like diamonds on auburn hair.\n\nAt the roadside hamlet called Roy-Town, just beyond this wood,\nwas the old inn Buck's Head.  It was about a mile and a half from\nWeatherbury, and in the meridian times of stage-coach travelling\nhad been the place where many coaches changed and kept their relays\nof horses.  All the old stabling was now pulled down, and little\nremained besides the habitable inn itself, which, standing a little\nway back from the road, signified its existence to people far up and\ndown the highway by a sign hanging from the horizontal bough of an\nelm on the opposite side of the way.\n\nTravellers--for the variety _tourist_ had hardly developed into a\ndistinct species at this date--sometimes said in passing, when they\ncast their eyes up to the sign-bearing tree, that artists were fond\nof representing the signboard hanging thus, but that they themselves\nhad never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual working\norder.  It was near this tree that the waggon was standing into which\nGabriel Oak crept on his first journey to Weatherbury; but, owing to\nthe darkness, the sign and the inn had been unobserved.\n\nThe manners of the inn were of the old-established type.  Indeed,\nin the minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulae:\n_e.g._--\n\n\n   Rap with the bottom of your pint for more liquor.\n   For tobacco, shout.\n   In calling for the girl in waiting, say, \"Maid!\"\n   Ditto for the landlady, \"Old Soul!\" etc., etc.\n\n\nIt was a relief to Joseph's heart when the friendly signboard came in\nview, and, stopping his horse immediately beneath it, he proceeded to\nfulfil an intention made a long time before.  His spirits were oozing\nout of him quite.  He turned the horse's head to the green bank, and\nentered the hostel for a mug of ale.\n\nGoing down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a\nstep below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the\nroad outside, what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two\ncopper-coloured discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan\nCoggan and Mr. Mark Clark.  These owners of the two most appreciative\nthroats in the neighbourhood, within the pale of respectability, were\nnow sitting face to face over a three-legged circular table, having\nan iron rim to keep cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed\noff; they might have been said to resemble the setting sun and the\nfull moon shining _vis-a-vis_ across the globe.\n\n\"Why, 'tis neighbour Poorgrass!\" said Mark Clark.  \"I'm sure your\nface don't praise your mistress's table, Joseph.\"\n\n\"I've had a very pale companion for the last four miles,\" said\nJoseph, indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation.  \"And to\nspeak the truth, 'twas beginning to tell upon me.  I assure ye, I\nha'n't seed the colour of victuals or drink since breakfast time\nthis morning, and that was no more than a dew-bit afield.\"\n\n\"Then drink, Joseph, and don't restrain yourself!\" said Coggan,\nhanding him a hooped mug three-quarters full.\n\nJoseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time,\nsaying, as he lowered the jug, \"'Tis pretty drinking--very pretty\ndrinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to\nspeak it.\"\n\n\"True, drink is a pleasant delight,\" said Jan, as one who repeated a\ntruism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage\nover his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head\ngradually backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul\nmight not be diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant\nsurroundings.\n\n\"Well, I must be on again,\" said Poorgrass.  \"Not but that I should\nlike another nip with ye; but the parish might lose confidence in me\nif I was seed here.\"\n\n\"Where be ye trading o't to to-day, then, Joseph?\"\n\n\"Back to Weatherbury.  I've got poor little Fanny Robin in my waggon\noutside, and I must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five\nwith her.\"\n\n\"Ay--I've heard of it.  And so she's nailed up in parish boards after\nall, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown.\"\n\n\"The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling,\nbecause the bell's a luxery: but 'a can hardly do without the grave,\npoor body.  However, I expect our mistress will pay all.\"\n\n\"A pretty maid as ever I see!  But what's yer hurry, Joseph?  The\npore woman's dead, and you can't bring her to life, and you may as\nwell sit down comfortable, and finish another with us.\"\n\n\"I don't mind taking just the least thimbleful ye can dream of more\nwith ye, sonnies.  But only a few minutes, because 'tis as 'tis.\"\n\n\"Of course, you'll have another drop.  A man's twice the man\nafterwards.  You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at\nyour work without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks\na-breaking.  Too much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man\nin the smoky house; but after all, many people haven't the gift of\nenjoying a wet, and since we be highly favoured with a power that\nway, we should make the most o't.\"\n\n\"True,\" said Mark Clark.  \"'Tis a talent the Lord has mercifully\nbestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. But, what with the\nparsons and clerks and school-people and serious tea-parties, the\nmerry old ways of good life have gone to the dogs--upon my carcase,\nthey have!\"\n\n\"Well, really, I must be onward again now,\" said Joseph.\n\n\"Now, now, Joseph; nonsense!  The poor woman is dead, isn't she, and\nwhat's your hurry?\"\n\n\"Well, I hope Providence won't be in a way with me for my doings,\"\nsaid Joseph, again sitting down.  \"I've been troubled with weak\nmoments lately, 'tis true.  I've been drinky once this month already,\nand I did not go to church a-Sunday, and I dropped a curse or two\nyesterday; so I don't want to go too far for my safety.  Your next\nworld is your next world, and not to be squandered offhand.\"\n\n\"I believe ye to be a chapelmember, Joseph.  That I do.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no!  I don't go so far as that.\"\n\n\"For my part,\" said Coggan, \"I'm staunch Church of England.\"\n\n\"Ay, and faith, so be I,\" said Mark Clark.\n\n\"I won't say much for myself; I don't wish to,\" Coggan continued,\nwith that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of\nthe barley-corn.  \"But I've never changed a single doctrine: I've\nstuck like a plaster to the old faith I was born in.  Yes; there's\nthis to be said for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and\nbide in his cheerful old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind\nabout doctrines at all.  But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel\nin all winds and weathers, and make yerself as frantic as a skit.\nNot but that chapel members be clever chaps enough in their way.\nThey can lift up beautiful prayers out of their own heads, all about\ntheir families and shipwrecks in the newspaper.\"\n\n\"They can--they can,\" said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling;\n\"but we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or,\ndang it all, we should no more know what to say to a great gaffer\nlike the Lord than babes unborn.\"\n\n\"Chapelfolk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we,\" said\nJoseph, thoughtfully.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Coggan.  \"We know very well that if anybody do go to\nheaven, they will.  They've worked hard for it, and they deserve to\nhave it, such as 'tis.  I bain't such a fool as to pretend that we\nwho stick to the Church have the same chance as they, because we\nknow we have not.  But I hate a feller who'll change his old ancient\ndoctrines for the sake of getting to heaven.  I'd as soon turn\nking's-evidence for the few pounds you get.  Why, neighbours, when\nevery one of my taties were frosted, our Parson Thirdly were the man\nwho gave me a sack for seed, though he hardly had one for his own\nuse, and no money to buy 'em.  If it hadn't been for him, I shouldn't\nhae had a tatie to put in my garden.  D'ye think I'd turn after that?\nNo, I'll stick to my side; and if we be in the wrong, so be it: I'll\nfall with the fallen!\"\n\n\"Well said--very well said,\" observed Joseph.--\"However, folks, I\nmust be moving now: upon my life I must.  Pa'son Thirdly will be\nwaiting at the church gates, and there's the woman a-biding outside\nin the waggon.\"\n\n\"Joseph Poorgrass, don't be so miserable!  Pa'son Thirdly won't mind.\nHe's a generous man; he's found me in tracts for years, and I've\nconsumed a good many in the course of a long and shady life; but he's\nnever been the man to cry out at the expense.  Sit down.\"\n\nThe longer Joseph Poorgrass remained, the less his spirit was\ntroubled by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon.\nThe minutes glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began\nperceptibly to deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling\npoints on the surface of darkness.  Coggan's repeater struck six\nfrom his pocket in the usual still small tones.\n\nAt that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door\nopened to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of\nthe inn bearing a candle.  He stared sternly at the one lengthy\nand two round faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the\nexpressions of a fiddle and a couple of warming-pans.  Joseph\nPoorgrass blinked, and shrank several inches into the background.\n\n\"Upon my soul, I'm ashamed of you; 'tis disgraceful, Joseph,\ndisgraceful!\" said Gabriel, indignantly.  \"Coggan, you call yourself\na man, and don't know better than this.\"\n\nCoggan looked up indefinitely at Oak, one or other of his eyes\noccasionally opening and closing of its own accord, as if it were not\na member, but a dozy individual with a distinct personality.\n\n\"Don't take on so, shepherd!\" said Mark Clark, looking reproachfully\nat the candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest\nfor his eyes.\n\n\"Nobody can hurt a dead woman,\" at length said Coggan, with the\nprecision of a machine.  \"All that could be done for her is\ndone--she's beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing\nhurry for lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don't know\nwhat you do with her at all?  If she'd been alive, I would have been\nthe first to help her.  If she now wanted victuals and drink, I'd pay\nfor it, money down.  But she's dead, and no speed of ours will bring\nher to life.  The woman's past us--time spent upon her is throwed\naway: why should we hurry to do what's not required?  Drink,\nshepherd, and be friends, for to-morrow we may be like her.\"\n\n\"We may,\" added Mark Clark, emphatically, at once drinking himself,\nto run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded\nto, Jan meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of to-morrow in a\nsong:--\n\n\n                          To-mor-row, to-mor-row!\n    And while peace and plen-ty I find at my board,\n       With a heart free from sick-ness and sor-row,\n    With my friends will I share what to-day may af-ford,\n       And let them spread the ta-ble to-mor-row.\n                          To-mor-row', to-mor--\n\n\n\"Do hold thy horning, Jan!\" said Oak; and turning upon Poorgrass, \"as\nfor you, Joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy\nways, you are as drunk as you can stand.\"\n\n\"No, Shepherd Oak, no!  Listen to reason, shepherd.  All that's the\nmatter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that's\nhow it is I look double to you--I mean, you look double to me.\"\n\n\"A multiplying eye is a very bad thing,\" said Mark Clark.\n\n\"It always comes on when I have been in a public-house a little\ntime,\" said Joseph Poorgrass, meekly.  \"Yes; I see two of every\nsort, as if I were some holy man living in the times of King Noah\nand entering into the ark....  Y-y-y-yes,\" he added, becoming much\naffected by the picture of himself as a person thrown away, and\nshedding tears; \"I feel too good for England: I ought to have lived\nin Genesis by rights, like the other men of sacrifice, and then I\nshouldn't have b-b-been called a d-d-drunkard in such a way!\"\n\n\"I wish you'd show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining\nthere!\"\n\n\"Show myself a man of spirit? ...  Ah, well! let me take the name of\ndrunkard humbly--let me be a man of contrite knees--let it be!  I\nknow that I always do say 'Please God' afore I do anything, from my\ngetting up to my going down of the same, and I be willing to take as\nmuch disgrace as there is in that holy act.  Hah, yes! ...  But not\na man of spirit?  Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted\nagainst my hinder parts without groaning manfully that I question\nthe right to do so?  I inquire that query boldly?\"\n\n\"We can't say that you have, Hero Poorgrass,\" admitted Jan.\n\n\"Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned!  Yet the\nshepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that I be not a man\nof spirit!  Well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend!\"\n\nGabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to take\ncharge of the waggon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply,\nbut, closing the door again upon them, went across to where the\nvehicle stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this\nmildewy time.  He pulled the horse's head from the large patch of\nturf it had eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and\ndrove along through the unwholesome night.\n\nIt had gradually become rumoured in the village that the body to be\nbrought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate\nFanny Robin who had followed the Eleventh from Casterbridge through\nMelchester and onwards.  But, thanks to Boldwood's reticence\nand Oak's generosity, the lover she had followed had never been\nindividualized as Troy.  Gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the\nmatter might not be published till at any rate the girl had been in\nher grave for a few days, when the interposing barriers of earth\nand time, and a sense that the events had been somewhat shut into\noblivion, would deaden the sting that revelation and invidious\nremark would have for Bathsheba just now.\n\nBy the time that Gabriel reached the old manor-house, her residence,\nwhich lay in his way to the church, it was quite dark.  A man came\nfrom the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like\nblown flour--\n\n\"Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?\"\n\nGabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson.\n\n\"The corpse is here, sir,\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the\nreason of the delay.  I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral\nto be performed with proper decency.  Have you the registrar's\ncertificate?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Gabriel.  \"I expect Poorgrass has that; and he's at the\nBuck's Head.  I forgot to ask him for it.\"\n\n\"Then that settles the matter.  We'll put off the funeral till\nto-morrow morning.  The body may be brought on to the church, or\nit may be left here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the\nmorning. They waited more than an hour, and have now gone home.\"\n\nGabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable\nplan, notwithstanding that Fanny had been an inmate of the farm-house\nfor several years in the lifetime of Bathsheba's uncle.  Visions\nof several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay\nflitted before him.  But his will was not law, and he went indoors\nto inquire of his mistress what were her wishes on the subject.  He\nfound her in an unusual mood: her eyes as she looked up to him were\nsuspicious and perplexed as with some antecedent thought.  Troy\nhad not yet returned.  At first Bathsheba assented with a mien of\nindifference to his proposition that they should go on to the church\nat once with their burden; but immediately afterwards, following\nGabriel to the gate, she swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on\nFanny's account, and desired that the girl might be brought into the\nhouse.  Oak argued upon the convenience of leaving her in the waggon,\njust as she lay now, with her flowers and green leaves about her,\nmerely wheeling the vehicle into the coach-house till the morning,\nbut to no purpose.  \"It is unkind and unchristian,\" she said, \"to\nleave the poor thing in a coach-house all night.\"\n\n\"Very well, then,\" said the parson.  \"And I will arrange that the\nfuneral shall take place early to-morrow.  Perhaps Mrs. Troy is\nright in feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too\nthoughtfully.  We must remember that though she may have erred\ngrievously in leaving her home, she is still our sister: and it is\nto be believed that God's uncovenanted mercies are extended towards\nher, and that she is a member of the flock of Christ.\"\n\nThe parson's words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet\nunperturbed cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear.  Bathsheba\nseemed unmoved.  Mr. Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted\na lantern.  Fetching three other men to assist him, they bore the\nunconscious truant indoors, placing the coffin on two benches in the\nmiddle of a little sitting-room next the hall, as Bathsheba directed.\n\nEvery one except Gabriel Oak then left the room.  He still\nindecisively lingered beside the body.  He was deeply troubled at the\nwretchedly ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with\nregard to Troy's wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract\nthem.  In spite of his careful manoeuvering all this day, the very\nworst event that could in any way have happened in connection with\nthe burial had happened now.  Oak imagined a terrible discovery\nresulting from this afternoon's work that might cast over Bathsheba's\nlife a shade which the interposition of many lapsing years might but\nindifferently lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether\nremove.\n\nSuddenly, as in a last attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate,\nimmediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the\nchalk writing upon the coffin-lid.  The scrawl was this simple one,\n\"FANNY ROBIN AND CHILD.\"  Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully\nrubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription\n\"FANNY ROBIN\" only.  He then left the room, and went out quietly by\nthe front door.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFANNY'S REVENGE\n\n\n\"Do you want me any longer ma'am?\" inquired Liddy, at a later hour\nthe same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in\nher hand and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the\nlarge parlour beside the first fire of the season.\n\n\"No more to-night, Liddy.\"\n\n\"I'll sit up for master if you like, ma'am.  I am not at all afraid\nof Fanny, if I may sit in my own room and have a candle.  She was\nsuch a childlike, nesh young thing that her spirit couldn't appear\nto anybody if it tried, I'm quite sure.\"\n\n\"Oh no, no!  You go to bed.  I'll sit up for him myself till twelve\no'clock, and if he has not arrived by that time, I shall give him up\nand go to bed too.\"\n\n\"It is half-past ten now.\"\n\n\"Oh! is it?\"\n\n\"Why don't you sit upstairs, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Why don't I?\" said Bathsheba, desultorily.  \"It isn't worth\nwhile--there's a fire here, Liddy.\"  She suddenly exclaimed in an\nimpulsive and excited whisper, \"Have you heard anything strange said\nof Fanny?\" The words had no sooner escaped her than an expression of\nunutterable regret crossed her face, and she burst into tears.\n\n\"No--not a word!\" said Liddy, looking at the weeping woman with\nastonishment.  \"What is it makes you cry so, ma'am; has anything hurt\nyou?\"  She came to Bathsheba's side with a face full of sympathy.\n\n\"No, Liddy--I don't want you any more.  I can hardly say why I have\ntaken to crying lately: I never used to cry.  Good-night.\"\n\nLiddy then left the parlour and closed the door.\n\nBathsheba was lonely and miserable now; not lonelier actually than\nshe had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that\nof the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude\nof a cave.  And within the last day or two had come these disquieting\nthoughts about her husband's past.  Her wayward sentiment that\nevening concerning Fanny's temporary resting-place had been the\nresult of a strange complication of impulses in Bathsheba's bosom.\nPerhaps it would be more accurately described as a determined\nrebellion against her prejudices, a revulsion from a lower instinct\nof uncharitableness, which would have withheld all sympathy from\nthe dead woman, because in life she had preceded Bathsheba in the\nattentions of a man whom Bathsheba had by no means ceased from\nloving, though her love was sick to death just now with the gravity\nof a further misgiving.\n\nIn five or ten minutes there was another tap at the door.  Liddy\nreappeared, and coming in a little way stood hesitating, until at\nlength she said, \"Maryann has just heard something very strange, but\nI know it isn't true.  And we shall be sure to know the rights of it\nin a day or two.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing connected with you or us, ma'am.  It is about Fanny.\nThat same thing you have heard.\"\n\n\"I have heard nothing.\"\n\n\"I mean that a wicked story is got to Weatherbury within this last\nhour--that--\"  Liddy came close to her mistress and whispered the\nremainder of the sentence slowly into her ear, inclining her head as\nshe spoke in the direction of the room where Fanny lay.\n\nBathsheba trembled from head to foot.\n\n\"I don't believe it!\" she said, excitedly.  \"And there's only one\nname written on the coffin-cover.\"\n\n\"Nor I, ma'am.  And a good many others don't; for we should surely\nhave been told more about it if it had been true--don't you think so,\nma'am?\"\n\n\"We might or we might not.\"\n\nBathsheba turned and looked into the fire, that Liddy might not see\nher face.  Finding that her mistress was going to say no more, Liddy\nglided out, closed the door softly, and went to bed.\n\nBathsheba's face, as she continued looking into the fire that\nevening, might have excited solicitousness on her account even among\nthose who loved her least.  The sadness of Fanny Robin's fate did not\nmake Bathsheba's glorious, although she was the Esther to this poor\nVashti, and their fates might be supposed to stand in some respects\nas contrasts to each other.  When Liddy came into the room a second\ntime the beautiful eyes which met hers had worn a listless, weary\nlook.  When she went out after telling the story they had expressed\nwretchedness in full activity.  Her simple country nature, fed on\nold-fashioned principles, was troubled by that which would have\ntroubled a woman of the world very little, both Fanny and her child,\nif she had one, being dead.\n\nBathsheba had grounds for conjecturing a connection between her own\nhistory and the dimly suspected tragedy of Fanny's end which Oak\nand Boldwood never for a moment credited her with possessing.  The\nmeeting with the lonely woman on the previous Saturday night had been\nunwitnessed and unspoken of.  Oak may have had the best of intentions\nin withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had\nhappened to Fanny; but had he known that Bathsheba's perceptions had\nalready been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to\nlengthen the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the\ncertainty which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected\nafter all.\n\nShe suddenly felt a longing desire to speak to some one stronger than\nherself, and so get strength to sustain her surmised position with\ndignity and her lurking doubts with stoicism.  Where could she find\nsuch a friend? nowhere in the house.  She was by far the coolest of\nthe women under her roof.  Patience and suspension of judgement for\na few hours were what she wanted to learn, and there was nobody to\nteach her.  Might she but go to Gabriel Oak!--but that could not be.\nWhat a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things.  Boldwood,\nwho seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than\nGabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple\nlesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he\ngave--that among the multitude of interests by which he was\nsurrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the\nmost absorbing and important in his eyes.  Oak meditatively looked\nupon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his\nown standpoint in the midst.  That was how she would wish to be.  But\nthen Oak was not racked by incertitude upon the inmost matter of his\nbosom, as she was at this moment.  Oak knew all about Fanny that he\nwished to know--she felt convinced of that.  If she were to go to him\nnow at once and say no more than these few words, \"What is the truth\nof the story?\" he would feel bound in honour to tell her.  It would\nbe an inexpressible relief.  No further speech would need to be\nuttered.  He knew her so well that no eccentricity of behaviour in\nher would alarm him.\n\nShe flung a cloak round her, went to the door and opened it.  Every\nblade, every twig was still.  The air was yet thick with moisture,\nthough somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady\nsmack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost\nmusical in its soothing regularity.  It seemed better to be out of\nthe house than within it, and Bathsheba closed the door, and walked\nslowly down the lane till she came opposite to Gabriel's cottage,\nwhere he now lived alone, having left Coggan's house through being\npinched for room.  There was a light in one window only, and that\nwas downstairs.  The shutters were not closed, nor was any blind or\ncurtain drawn over the window, neither robbery nor observation being\na contingency which could do much injury to the occupant of the\ndomicile.  Yes, it was Gabriel himself who was sitting up: he was\nreading.  From her standing-place in the road she could see him\nplainly, sitting quite still, his light curly head upon his hand, and\nonly occasionally looking up to snuff the candle which stood beside\nhim.  At length he looked at the clock, seemed surprised at the\nlateness of the hour, closed his book, and arose.  He was going to\nbed, she knew, and if she tapped it must be done at once.\n\nAlas for her resolve!  She felt she could not do it.  Not for worlds\nnow could she give a hint about her misery to him, much less ask him\nplainly for information on the cause of Fanny's death.  She must\nsuspect, and guess, and chafe, and bear it all alone.\n\nLike a homeless wanderer she lingered by the bank, as if lulled and\nfascinated by the atmosphere of content which seemed to spread from\nthat little dwelling, and was so sadly lacking in her own.  Gabriel\nappeared in an upper room, placed his light in the window-bench,\nand then--knelt down to pray.  The contrast of the picture with her\nrebellious and agitated existence at this same time was too much for\nher to bear to look upon longer.  It was not for her to make a truce\nwith trouble by any such means.  She must tread her giddy distracting\nmeasure to its last note, as she had begun it.  With a swollen heart\nshe went again up the lane, and entered her own door.\n\nMore fevered now by a reaction from the first feelings which Oak's\nexample had raised in her, she paused in the hall, looking at the\ndoor of the room wherein Fanny lay.  She locked her fingers, threw\nback her head, and strained her hot hands rigidly across her\nforehead, saying, with a hysterical sob, \"Would to God you would\nspeak and tell me your secret, Fanny! ... Oh, I hope, hope it is not\ntrue that there are two of you! ... If I could only look in upon you\nfor one little minute, I should know all!\"\n\nA few moments passed, and she added, slowly, \"AND I WILL.\"\n\nBathsheba in after times could never gauge the mood which carried\nher through the actions following this murmured resolution on this\nmemorable evening of her life.  She went to the lumber-closet for a\nscrew-driver.  At the end of a short though undefined time she found\nherself in the small room, quivering with emotion, a mist before her\neyes, and an excruciating pulsation in her brain, standing beside the\nuncovered coffin of the girl whose conjectured end had so entirely\nengrossed her, and saying to herself in a husky voice as she gazed\nwithin--\n\n\"It was best to know the worst, and I know it now!\"\n\nShe was conscious of having brought about this situation by a series\nof actions done as by one in an extravagant dream; of following that\nidea as to method, which had burst upon her in the hall with glaring\nobviousness, by gliding to the top of the stairs, assuring herself by\nlistening to the heavy breathing of her maids that they were asleep,\ngliding down again, turning the handle of the door within which the\nyoung girl lay, and deliberately setting herself to do what, if she\nhad anticipated any such undertaking at night and alone, would have\nhorrified her, but which, when done, was not so dreadful as was the\nconclusive proof of her husband's conduct which came with knowing\nbeyond doubt the last chapter of Fanny's story.\n\nBathsheba's head sank upon her bosom, and the breath which had been\nbated in suspense, curiosity, and interest, was exhaled now in the\nform of a whispered wail: \"Oh-h-h!\" she said, and the silent room\nadded length to her moan.\n\nHer tears fell fast beside the unconscious pair in the coffin:\ntears of a complicated origin, of a nature indescribable, almost\nindefinable except as other than those of simple sorrow.  Assuredly\ntheir wonted fires must have lived in Fanny's ashes when events were\nso shaped as to chariot her hither in this natural, unobtrusive, yet\neffectual manner.  The one feat alone--that of dying--by which a mean\ncondition could be resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved.\nAnd to that had destiny subjoined this reencounter to-night, which\nhad, in Bathsheba's wild imagining, turned her companion's failure to\nsuccess, her humiliation to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendency;\nit had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon\nall things about her an ironical smile.\n\nFanny's face was framed in by that yellow hair of hers; and there was\nno longer much room for doubt as to the origin of the curl owned by\nTroy.  In Bathsheba's heated fancy the innocent white countenance\nexpressed a dim triumphant consciousness of the pain she was\nretaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic\nlaw: \"Burning for burning; wound for wound: strife for strife.\"\n\nBathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from her position by\nimmediate death, which, thought she, though it was an inconvenient\nand awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that\ncould not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless.\nYet even this scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying\nher rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in her\nrival's case.  She glided rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly\nher habit when excited, her hands hanging clasped in front of her, as\nshe thought and in part expressed in broken words: \"O, I hate her,\nyet I don't mean that I hate her, for it is grievous and wicked; and\nyet I hate her a little!  Yes, my flesh insists upon hating her,\nwhether my spirit is willing or no! ... If she had only lived, I\ncould have been angry and cruel towards her with some justification;\nbut to be vindictive towards a poor dead woman recoils upon myself.\nO God, have mercy!  I am miserable at all this!\"\n\nBathsheba became at this moment so terrified at her own state of mind\nthat she looked around for some sort of refuge from herself.  The\nvision of Oak kneeling down that night recurred to her, and with the\nimitative instinct which animates women she seized upon the idea,\nresolved to kneel, and, if possible, pray.  Gabriel had prayed; so\nwould she.\n\nShe knelt beside the coffin, covered her face with her hands, and\nfor a time the room was silent as a tomb.  Whether from a purely\nmechanical, or from any other cause, when Bathsheba arose it was with\na quieted spirit, and a regret for the antagonistic instincts which\nhad seized upon her just before.\n\nIn her desire to make atonement she took flowers from a vase by the\nwindow, and began laying them around the dead girl's head.  Bathsheba\nknew no other way of showing kindness to persons departed than by\ngiving them flowers.  She knew not how long she remained engaged\nthus.  She forgot time, life, where she was, what she was doing.  A\nslamming together of the coach-house doors in the yard brought her to\nherself again.  An instant after, the front door opened and closed,\nsteps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the entrance to\nthe room, looking in upon her.\n\nHe beheld it all by degrees, stared in stupefaction at the scene, as\nif he thought it an illusion raised by some fiendish incantation.\nBathsheba, pallid as a corpse on end, gazed back at him in the same\nwild way.\n\nSo little are instinctive guesses the fruit of a legitimate induction\nthat, at this moment, as he stood with the door in his hand, Troy\nnever once thought of Fanny in connection with what he saw.  His\nfirst confused idea was that somebody in the house had died.\n\n\"Well--what?\" said Troy, blankly.\n\n\"I must go!  I must go!\" said Bathsheba, to herself more than to him.\nShe came with a dilated eye towards the door, to push past him.\n\n\"What's the matter, in God's name? who's dead?\" said Troy.\n\n\"I cannot say; let me go out.  I want air!\" she continued.\n\n\"But no; stay, I insist!\"  He seized her hand, and then volition\nseemed to leave her, and she went off into a state of passivity.  He,\nstill holding her, came up the room, and thus, hand in hand, Troy and\nBathsheba approached the coffin's side.\n\nThe candle was standing on a bureau close by them, and the light\nslanted down, distinctly enkindling the cold features of both mother\nand babe.  Troy looked in, dropped his wife's hand, knowledge of it\nall came over him in a lurid sheen, and he stood still.\n\nSo still he remained that he could be imagined to have left in him no\nmotive power whatever.  The clashes of feeling in all directions\nconfounded one another, produced a neutrality, and there was motion\nin none.\n\n\"Do you know her?\" said Bathsheba, in a small enclosed echo, as from\nthe interior of a cell.\n\n\"I do,\" said Troy.\n\n\"Is it she?\"\n\n\"It is.\"\n\nHe had originally stood perfectly erect.  And now, in the well-nigh\ncongealed immobility of his frame could be discerned an incipient\nmovement, as in the darkest night may be discerned light after a\nwhile.  He was gradually sinking forwards.  The lines of his features\nsoftened, and dismay modulated to illimitable sadness.  Bathsheba\nwas regarding him from the other side, still with parted lips and\ndistracted eyes.  Capacity for intense feeling is proportionate to\nthe general intensity of the nature, and perhaps in all Fanny's\nsufferings, much greater relatively to her strength, there never was\na time she suffered in an absolute sense what Bathsheba suffered now.\n\nWhat Troy did was to sink upon his knees with an indefinable union of\nremorse and reverence upon his face, and, bending over Fanny Robin,\ngently kissed her, as one would kiss an infant asleep to avoid\nawakening it.\n\nAt the sight and sound of that, to her, unendurable act, Bathsheba\nsprang towards him.  All the strong feelings which had been scattered\nover her existence since she knew what feeling was, seemed gathered\ntogether into one pulsation now.  The revulsion from her indignant\nmood a little earlier, when she had meditated upon compromised\nhonour, forestalment, eclipse in maternity by another, was violent\nand entire.  All that was forgotten in the simple and still\nstrong attachment of wife to husband.  She had sighed for her\nself-completeness then, and now she cried aloud against the severance\nof the union she had deplored.  She flung her arms round Troy's neck,\nexclaiming wildly from the deepest deep of her heart--\n\n\"Don't--don't kiss them!  O, Frank, I can't bear it--I can't!  I love\nyou better than she did: kiss me too, Frank--kiss me!  YOU WILL,\nFRANK, KISS ME TOO!\"\n\nThere was something so abnormal and startling in the childlike pain\nand simplicity of this appeal from a woman of Bathsheba's calibre\nand independence, that Troy, loosening her tightly clasped arms from\nhis neck, looked at her in bewilderment.  It was such an unexpected\nrevelation of all women being alike at heart, even those so different\nin their accessories as Fanny and this one beside him, that Troy\ncould hardly seem to believe her to be his proud wife Bathsheba.\nFanny's own spirit seemed to be animating her frame.  But this was\nthe mood of a few instants only.  When the momentary surprise had\npassed, his expression changed to a silencing imperious gaze.\n\n\"I will not kiss you!\" he said pushing her away.\n\nHad the wife now but gone no further.  Yet, perhaps, under the\nharrowing circumstances, to speak out was the one wrong act which\ncan be better understood, if not forgiven in her, than the right and\npolitic one, her rival being now but a corpse.  All the feeling she\nhad been betrayed into showing she drew back to herself again by a\nstrenuous effort of self-command.\n\n\"What have you to say as your reason?\" she asked, her bitter voice\nbeing strangely low--quite that of another woman now.\n\n\"I have to say that I have been a bad, black-hearted man,\" he\nanswered.\n\n\"And that this woman is your victim; and I not less than she.\"\n\n\"Ah! don't taunt me, madam.  This woman is more to me, dead as she\nis, than ever you were, or are, or can be.  If Satan had not tempted\nme with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should\nhave married her.  I never had another thought till you came in my\nway.  Would to God that I had; but it is all too late!\"  He turned\nto Fanny then.  \"But never mind, darling,\" he said; \"in the sight of\nHeaven you are my very, very wife!\"\n\nAt these words there arose from Bathsheba's lips a long, low cry of\nmeasureless despair and indignation, such a wail of anguish as had\nnever before been heard within those old-inhabited walls.  It was the\n\"Tetelestai\" [GREEK word meaning \"it is finished\"] of her union with Troy.\n\n\"If she's--that,--what--am I?\" she added, as a continuation of the\nsame cry, and sobbing pitifully: and the rarity with her of such\nabandonment only made the condition more dire.\n\n\"You are nothing to me--nothing,\" said Troy, heartlessly.  \"A\nceremony before a priest doesn't make a marriage.  I am not morally\nyours.\"\n\nA vehement impulse to flee from him, to run from this place, hide,\nand escape his words at any price, not stopping short of death\nitself, mastered Bathsheba now.  She waited not an instant, but\nturned to the door and ran out.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUNDER A TREE--REACTION\n\n\nBathsheba went along the dark road, neither knowing nor caring about\nthe direction or issue of her flight.  The first time that she\ndefinitely noticed her position was when she reached a gate leading\ninto a thicket overhung by some large oak and beech trees.  On\nlooking into the place, it occurred to her that she had seen it by\ndaylight on some previous occasion, and that what appeared like an\nimpassable thicket was in reality a brake of fern now withering fast.\nShe could think of nothing better to do with her palpitating self\nthan to go in here and hide; and entering, she lighted on a spot\nsheltered from the damp fog by a reclining trunk, where she sank down\nupon a tangled couch of fronds and stems.  She mechanically pulled\nsome armfuls round her to keep off the breezes, and closed her eyes.\n\nWhether she slept or not that night Bathsheba was not clearly aware.\nBut it was with a freshened existence and a cooler brain that, a long\ntime afterwards, she became conscious of some interesting proceedings\nwhich were going on in the trees above her head and around.\n\nA coarse-throated chatter was the first sound.\n\nIt was a sparrow just waking.\n\nNext: \"Chee-weeze-weeze-weeze!\" from another retreat.\n\nIt was a finch.\n\nThird: \"Tink-tink-tink-tink-a-chink!\" from the hedge.\n\nIt was a robin.\n\n\"Chuck-chuck-chuck!\" overhead.\n\nA squirrel.\n\nThen, from the road, \"With my ra-ta-ta, and my rum-tum-tum!\"\n\nIt was a ploughboy.  Presently he came opposite, and she believed\nfrom his voice that he was one of the boys on her own farm.  He was\nfollowed by a shambling tramp of heavy feet, and looking through the\nferns Bathsheba could just discern in the wan light of daybreak a\nteam of her own horses.  They stopped to drink at a pond on the other\nside of the way.  She watched them flouncing into the pool, drinking,\ntossing up their heads, drinking again, the water dribbling from\ntheir lips in silver threads.  There was another flounce, and they\ncame out of the pond, and turned back again towards the farm.\n\nShe looked further around.  Day was just dawning, and beside its cool\nair and colours her heated actions and resolves of the night stood\nout in lurid contrast.  She perceived that in her lap, and clinging\nto her hair, were red and yellow leaves which had come down from\nthe tree and settled silently upon her during her partial sleep.\nBathsheba shook her dress to get rid of them, when multitudes of the\nsame family lying round about her rose and fluttered away in the\nbreeze thus created, \"like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.\"\n\nThere was an opening towards the east, and the glow from the as yet\nunrisen sun attracted her eyes thither.  From her feet, and between\nthe beautiful yellowing ferns with their feathery arms, the ground\nsloped downwards to a hollow, in which was a species of swamp,\ndotted with fungi.  A morning mist hung over it now--a fulsome\nyet magnificent silvery veil, full of light from the sun, yet\nsemi-opaque--the hedge behind it being in some measure hidden by its\nhazy luminousness.  Up the sides of this depression grew sheaves of\nthe common rush, and here and there a peculiar species of flag, the\nblades of which glistened in the emerging sun, like scythes.  But\nthe general aspect of the swamp was malignant.  From its moist and\npoisonous coat seemed to be exhaled the essences of evil things in\nthe earth, and in the waters under the earth.  The fungi grew in\nall manner of positions from rotting leaves and tree stumps, some\nexhibiting to her listless gaze their clammy tops, others their\noozing gills.  Some were marked with great splotches, red as arterial\nblood, others were saffron yellow, and others tall and attenuated,\nwith stems like macaroni.  Some were leathery and of richest browns.\nThe hollow seemed a nursery of pestilences small and great, in the\nimmediate neighbourhood of comfort and health, and Bathsheba arose\nwith a tremor at the thought of having passed the night on the brink\nof so dismal a place.\n\nThere were now other footsteps to be heard along the road.\nBathsheba's nerves were still unstrung: she crouched down out of\nsight again, and the pedestrian came into view.  He was a schoolboy,\nwith a bag slung over his shoulder containing his dinner, and a\nbook in his hand.  He paused by the gate, and, without looking up,\ncontinued murmuring words in tones quite loud enough to reach her\nears.\n\n\"'O Lord, O Lord, O Lord, O Lord, O Lord':--that I know out o' book.\n'Give us, give us, give us, give us, give us':--that I know.  'Grace\nthat, grace that, grace that, grace that':--that I know.\" Other\nwords followed to the same effect.  The boy was of the dunce class\napparently; the book was a psalter, and this was his way of learning\nthe collect.  In the worst attacks of trouble there appears to be\nalways a superficial film of consciousness which is left disengaged\nand open to the notice of trifles, and Bathsheba was faintly amused\nat the boy's method, till he too passed on.\n\nBy this time stupor had given place to anxiety, and anxiety began to\nmake room for hunger and thirst.  A form now appeared upon the rise\non the other side of the swamp, half-hidden by the mist, and came\ntowards Bathsheba.  The woman--for it was a woman--approached with\nher face askance, as if looking earnestly on all sides of her.\nWhen she got a little further round to the left, and drew nearer,\nBathsheba could see the newcomer's profile against the sunny sky, and\nknew the wavy sweep from forehead to chin, with neither angle nor\ndecisive line anywhere about it, to be the familiar contour of Liddy\nSmallbury.\n\nBathsheba's heart bounded with gratitude in the thought that she was\nnot altogether deserted, and she jumped up.  \"Oh, Liddy!\" she said,\nor attempted to say; but the words had only been framed by her lips;\nthere came no sound.  She had lost her voice by exposure to the\nclogged atmosphere all these hours of night.\n\n\"Oh, ma'am!  I am so glad I have found you,\" said the girl, as soon\nas she saw Bathsheba.\n\n\"You can't come across,\" Bathsheba said in a whisper, which she\nvainly endeavoured to make loud enough to reach Liddy's ears.  Liddy,\nnot knowing this, stepped down upon the swamp, saying, as she did so,\n\"It will bear me up, I think.\"\n\nBathsheba never forgot that transient little picture of Liddy\ncrossing the swamp to her there in the morning light.  Iridescent\nbubbles of dank subterranean breath rose from the sweating sod beside\nthe waiting-maid's feet as she trod, hissing as they burst and\nexpanded away to join the vapoury firmament above.  Liddy did not\nsink, as Bathsheba had anticipated.\n\nShe landed safely on the other side, and looked up at the beautiful\nthough pale and weary face of her young mistress.\n\n\"Poor thing!\" said Liddy, with tears in her eyes, \"Do hearten\nyourself up a little, ma'am.  However did--\"\n\n\"I can't speak above a whisper--my voice is gone for the present,\"\nsaid Bathsheba, hurriedly.  \"I suppose the damp air from that\nhollow has taken it away.  Liddy, don't question me, mind.  Who\nsent you--anybody?\"\n\n\"Nobody.  I thought, when I found you were not at home, that\nsomething cruel had happened.  I fancy I heard his voice late last\nnight; and so, knowing something was wrong--\"\n\n\"Is he at home?\"\n\n\"No; he left just before I came out.\"\n\n\"Is Fanny taken away?\"\n\n\"Not yet.  She will soon be--at nine o'clock.\"\n\n\"We won't go home at present, then.  Suppose we walk about in this\nwood?\"\n\nLiddy, without exactly understanding everything, or anything, in this\nepisode, assented, and they walked together further among the trees.\n\n\"But you had better come in, ma'am, and have something to eat.  You\nwill die of a chill!\"\n\n\"I shall not come indoors yet--perhaps never.\"\n\n\"Shall I get you something to eat, and something else to put over\nyour head besides that little shawl?\"\n\n\"If you will, Liddy.\"\n\nLiddy vanished, and at the end of twenty minutes returned with a\ncloak, hat, some slices of bread and butter, a tea-cup, and some hot\ntea in a little china jug.\n\n\"Is Fanny gone?\" said Bathsheba.\n\n\"No,\" said her companion, pouring out the tea.\n\nBathsheba wrapped herself up and ate and drank sparingly.  Her voice\nwas then a little clearer, and trifling colour returned to her face.\n\"Now we'll walk about again,\" she said.\n\nThey wandered about the wood for nearly two hours, Bathsheba replying\nin monosyllables to Liddy's prattle, for her mind ran on one subject,\nand one only.  She interrupted with--\n\n\"I wonder if Fanny is gone by this time?\"\n\n\"I will go and see.\"\n\nShe came back with the information that the men were just taking\naway the corpse; that Bathsheba had been inquired for; that she had\nreplied to the effect that her mistress was unwell and could not be\nseen.\n\n\"Then they think I am in my bedroom?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"  Liddy then ventured to add: \"You said when I first found you\nthat you might never go home again--you didn't mean it, ma'am?\"\n\n\"No; I've altered my mind.  It is only women with no pride in them\nwho run away from their husbands.  There is one position worse than\nthat of being found dead in your husband's house from his ill usage,\nand that is, to be found alive through having gone away to the house\nof somebody else.  I've thought of it all this morning, and I've\nchosen my course.  A runaway wife is an encumbrance to everybody,\na burden to herself and a byword--all of which make up a heap of\nmisery greater than any that comes by staying at home--though this\nmay include the trifling items of insult, beating, and starvation.\nLiddy, if ever you marry--God forbid that you ever should!--you'll\nfind yourself in a fearful situation; but mind this, don't you\nflinch. Stand your ground, and be cut to pieces.  That's what I'm\ngoing to do.\"\n\n\"Oh, mistress, don't talk so!\" said Liddy, taking her hand; \"but I\nknew you had too much sense to bide away.  May I ask what dreadful\nthing it is that has happened between you and him?\"\n\n\"You may ask; but I may not tell.\"\n\nIn about ten minutes they returned to the house by a circuitous\nroute, entering at the rear.  Bathsheba glided up the back stairs to\na disused attic, and her companion followed.\n\n\"Liddy,\" she said, with a lighter heart, for youth and hope had\nbegun to reassert themselves; \"you are to be my confidante for the\npresent--somebody must be--and I choose you.  Well, I shall take up\nmy abode here for a while.  Will you get a fire lighted, put down\na piece of carpet, and help me to make the place comfortable.\nAfterwards, I want you and Maryann to bring up that little stump\nbedstead in the small room, and the bed belonging to it, and a table,\nand some other things....  What shall I do to pass the heavy time\naway?\"\n\n\"Hemming handkerchiefs is a very good thing,\" said Liddy.\n\n\"Oh no, no!  I hate needlework--I always did.\"\n\n\"Knitting?\"\n\n\"And that, too.\"\n\n\"You might finish your sampler.  Only the carnations and peacocks\nwant filling in; and then it could be framed and glazed, and hung\nbeside your aunt's ma'am.\"\n\n\"Samplers are out of date--horribly countrified.  No Liddy, I'll\nread.  Bring up some books--not new ones.  I haven't heart to read\nanything new.\"\n\n\"Some of your uncle's old ones, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Yes.  Some of those we stowed away in boxes.\"  A faint gleam\nof humour passed over her face as she said: \"Bring Beaumont and\nFletcher's _Maid's Tragedy_, and the _Mourning Bride_, and--let\nme see--_Night Thoughts_, and the _Vanity of Human Wishes_.\"\n\n\"And that story of the black man, who murdered his wife Desdemona?\nIt is a nice dismal one that would suit you excellent just now.\"\n\n\"Now, Liddy, you've been looking into my books without telling me;\nand I said you were not to!  How do you know it would suit me?  It\nwouldn't suit me at all.\"\n\n\"But if the others do--\"\n\n\"No, they don't; and I won't read dismal books.  Why should\nI read dismal books, indeed?  Bring me _Love in a Village_,\nand _Maid of the Mill_, and _Doctor Syntax_, and some volumes of\nthe _Spectator-_.\"\n\nAll that day Bathsheba and Liddy lived in the attic in a state of\nbarricade; a precaution which proved to be needless as against Troy,\nfor he did not appear in the neighbourhood or trouble them at all.\nBathsheba sat at the window till sunset, sometimes attempting to\nread, at other times watching every movement outside without much\npurpose, and listening without much interest to every sound.\n\nThe sun went down almost blood-red that night, and a livid cloud\nreceived its rays in the east.  Up against this dark background the\nwest front of the church tower--the only part of the edifice visible\nfrom the farm-house windows--rose distinct and lustrous, the vane\nupon the summit bristling with rays.  Hereabouts, at six o'clock, the\nyoung men of the village gathered, as was their custom, for a game\nof Prisoners' base.  The spot had been consecrated to this ancient\ndiversion from time immemorial, the old stocks conveniently forming\na base facing the boundary of the churchyard, in front of which the\nground was trodden hard and bare as a pavement by the players.  She\ncould see the brown and black heads of the young lads darting about\nright and left, their white shirt-sleeves gleaming in the sun;\nwhilst occasionally a shout and a peal of hearty laughter varied the\nstillness of the evening air.  They continued playing for a quarter\nof an hour or so, when the game concluded abruptly, and the players\nleapt over the wall and vanished round to the other side behind a\nyew-tree, which was also half behind a beech, now spreading in one\nmass of golden foliage, on which the branches traced black lines.\n\n\"Why did the base-players finish their game so suddenly?\" Bathsheba\ninquired, the next time that Liddy entered the room.\n\n\"I think 'twas because two men came just then from Casterbridge and\nbegan putting up a grand carved tombstone,\" said Liddy.  \"The lads\nwent to see whose it was.\"\n\n\"Do you know?\" Bathsheba asked.\n\n\"I don't,\" said Liddy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTROY'S ROMANTICISM\n\n\nWhen Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his\nfirst act was to cover the dead from sight.  This done he ascended\nthe stairs, and throwing himself down upon the bed dressed as he was,\nhe waited miserably for the morning.\n\nFate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty\nhours.  His day had been spent in a way which varied very materially\nfrom his intentions regarding it.  There is always an inertia to\nbe overcome in striking out a new line of conduct--not more in\nourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as\nif leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.\n\nTwenty pounds having been secured from Bathsheba, he had managed to\nadd to the sum every farthing he could muster on his own account,\nwhich had been seven pounds ten.  With this money, twenty-seven\npounds ten in all, he had hastily driven from the gate that morning\nto keep his appointment with Fanny Robin.\n\nOn reaching Casterbridge he left the horse and trap at an inn, and\nat five minutes before ten came back to the bridge at the lower end\nof the town, and sat himself upon the parapet.  The clocks struck\nthe hour, and no Fanny appeared.  In fact, at that moment she was\nbeing robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union\npoorhouse--the first and last tiring-women the gentle creature had\never been honoured with.  The quarter went, the half hour.  A rush of\nrecollection came upon Troy as he waited: this was the second time\nshe had broken a serious engagement with him.  In anger he vowed\nit should be the last, and at eleven o'clock, when he had lingered\nand watched the stone of the bridge till he knew every lichen upon\ntheir face and heard the chink of the ripples underneath till they\noppressed him, he jumped from his seat, went to the inn for his\ngig, and in a bitter mood of indifference concerning the past, and\nrecklessness about the future, drove on to Budmouth races.\n\nHe reached the race-course at two o'clock, and remained either there\nor in the town till nine.  But Fanny's image, as it had appeared to\nhim in the sombre shadows of that Saturday evening, returned to his\nmind, backed up by Bathsheba's reproaches.  He vowed he would not\nbet, and he kept his vow, for on leaving the town at nine o'clock in\nthe evening he had diminished his cash only to the extent of a few\nshillings.\n\nHe trotted slowly homeward, and it was now that he was struck for the\nfirst time with a thought that Fanny had been really prevented by\nillness from keeping her promise.  This time she could have made no\nmistake.  He regretted that he had not remained in Casterbridge and\nmade inquiries.  Reaching home he quietly unharnessed the horse and\ncame indoors, as we have seen, to the fearful shock that awaited him.\n\n\nAs soon as it grew light enough to distinguish objects, Troy arose\nfrom the coverlet of the bed, and in a mood of absolute indifference\nto Bathsheba's whereabouts, and almost oblivious of her existence, he\nstalked downstairs and left the house by the back door.  His walk was\ntowards the churchyard, entering which he searched around till he\nfound a newly dug unoccupied grave--the grave dug the day before for\nFanny.  The position of this having been marked, he hastened on to\nCasterbridge, only pausing and musing for a while at the hill whereon\nhe had last seen Fanny alive.\n\nReaching the town, Troy descended into a side street and entered a\npair of gates surmounted by a board bearing the words, \"Lester, stone\nand marble mason.\"  Within were lying about stones of all sizes and\ndesigns, inscribed as being sacred to the memory of unnamed persons\nwho had not yet died.\n\nTroy was so unlike himself now in look, word, and deed, that the\nwant of likeness was perceptible even to his own consciousness.  His\nmethod of engaging himself in this business of purchasing a tomb was\nthat of an absolutely unpractised man.  He could not bring himself\nto consider, calculate, or economize.  He waywardly wished for\nsomething, and he set about obtaining it like a child in a nursery.\n\"I want a good tomb,\" he said to the man who stood in a little office\nwithin the yard.  \"I want as good a one as you can give me for\ntwenty-seven pounds.\"\n\nIt was all the money he possessed.\n\n\"That sum to include everything?\"\n\n\"Everything.  Cutting the name, carriage to Weatherbury, and\nerection.  And I want it now, at once.\"\n\n\"We could not get anything special worked this week.\"\n\n\"I must have it now.\"\n\n\"If you would like one of these in stock it could be got ready\nimmediately.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Troy, impatiently.  \"Let's see what you have.\"\n\n\"The best I have in stock is this one,\" said the stone-cutter, going\ninto a shed.  \"Here's a marble headstone beautifully crocketed, with\nmedallions beneath of typical subjects; here's the footstone after\nthe same pattern, and here's the coping to enclose the grave.  The\npolishing alone of the set cost me eleven pounds--the slabs are the\nbest of their kind, and I can warrant them to resist rain and frost\nfor a hundred years without flying.\"\n\n\"And how much?\"\n\n\"Well, I could add the name, and put it up at Weatherbury for the sum\nyou mention.\"\n\n\"Get it done to-day, and I'll pay the money now.\"\n\nThe man agreed, and wondered at such a mood in a visitor who wore not\na shred of mourning.  Troy then wrote the words which were to form\nthe inscription, settled the account and went away.  In the afternoon\nhe came back again, and found that the lettering was almost done.  He\nwaited in the yard till the tomb was packed, and saw it placed in the\ncart and starting on its way to Weatherbury, giving directions to the\ntwo men who were to accompany it to inquire of the sexton for the\ngrave of the person named in the inscription.\n\nIt was quite dark when Troy came out of Casterbridge.  He carried\nrather a heavy basket upon his arm, with which he strode moodily\nalong the road, resting occasionally at bridges and gates, whereon\nhe deposited his burden for a time.  Midway on his journey he met,\nreturning in the darkness, the men and the waggon which had conveyed\nthe tomb.  He merely inquired if the work was done, and, on being\nassured that it was, passed on again.\n\nTroy entered Weatherbury churchyard about ten o'clock and went\nimmediately to the corner where he had marked the vacant grave early\nin the morning.  It was on the obscure side of the tower, screened to\na great extent from the view of passers along the road--a spot which\nuntil lately had been abandoned to heaps of stones and bushes of\nalder, but now it was cleared and made orderly for interments, by\nreason of the rapid filling of the ground elsewhere.\n\nHere now stood the tomb as the men had stated, snow-white and shapely\nin the gloom, consisting of head and foot-stone, and enclosing border\nof marble-work uniting them.  In the midst was mould, suitable for\nplants.\n\nTroy deposited his basket beside the tomb, and vanished for a few\nminutes.  When he returned he carried a spade and a lantern, the\nlight of which he directed for a few moments upon the marble, whilst\nhe read the inscription.  He hung his lantern on the lowest bough\nof the yew-tree, and took from his basket flower-roots of several\nvarieties.  There were bundles of snow-drop, hyacinth and crocus\nbulbs, violets and double daisies, which were to bloom in early\nspring, and of carnations, pinks, picotees, lilies of the valley,\nforget-me-not, summer's farewell, meadow-saffron and others, for\nthe later seasons of the year.\n\nTroy laid these out upon the grass, and with an impassive face set\nto work to plant them.  The snowdrops were arranged in a line on the\noutside of the coping, the remainder within the enclosure of the\ngrave.  The crocuses and hyacinths were to grow in rows; some of\nthe summer flowers he placed over her head and feet, the lilies and\nforget-me-nots over her heart.  The remainder were dispersed in the\nspaces between these.\n\nTroy, in his prostration at this time, had no perception that in the\nfutility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction\nfrom previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity.\nDeriving his idiosyncrasies from both sides of the Channel, he showed\nat such junctures as the present the inelasticity of the Englishman,\ntogether with that blindness to the line where sentiment verges on\nmawkishness, characteristic of the French.\n\nIt was a cloudy, muggy, and very dark night, and the rays from Troy's\nlantern spread into the two old yews with a strange illuminating\npower, flickering, as it seemed, up to the black ceiling of cloud\nabove.  He felt a large drop of rain upon the back of his hand, and\npresently one came and entered one of the holes of the lantern,\nwhereupon the candle sputtered and went out.  Troy was weary and\nit being now not far from midnight, and the rain threatening to\nincrease, he resolved to leave the finishing touches of his labour\nuntil the day should break.  He groped along the wall and over the\ngraves in the dark till he found himself round at the north side.\nHere he entered the porch, and, reclining upon the bench within,\nfell asleep.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE GURGOYLE: ITS DOINGS\n\n\nThe tower of Weatherbury Church was a square erection of\nfourteenth-century date, having two stone gurgoyles on each of the\nfour faces of its parapet.  Of these eight carved protuberances\nonly two at this time continued to serve the purpose of their\nerection--that of spouting the water from the lead roof within.  One\nmouth in each front had been closed by bygone church-wardens as\nsuperfluous, and two others were broken away and choked--a matter not\nof much consequence to the wellbeing of the tower, for the two mouths\nwhich still remained open and active were gaping enough to do all the\nwork.\n\nIt has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the\nvitality of any given art-period than the power of the master-spirits\nof that time in grotesque; and certainly in the instance of Gothic\nart there is no disputing the proposition.  Weatherbury tower was a\nsomewhat early instance of the use of an ornamental parapet in parish\nas distinct from cathedral churches, and the gurgoyles, which are the\nnecessary correlatives of a parapet, were exceptionally prominent--of\nthe boldest cut that the hand could shape, and of the most original\ndesign that a human brain could conceive.  There was, so to speak,\nthat symmetry in their distortion which is less the characteristic\nof British than of Continental grotesques of the period.  All the\neight were different from each other.  A beholder was convinced that\nnothing on earth could be more hideous than those he saw on the north\nside until he went round to the south.  Of the two on this latter\nface, only that at the south-eastern corner concerns the story.  It\nwas too human to be called like a dragon, too impish to be like a\nman, too animal to be like a fiend, and not enough like a bird to be\ncalled a griffin.  This horrible stone entity was fashioned as if\ncovered with a wrinkled hide; it had short, erect ears, eyes starting\nfrom their sockets, and its fingers and hands were seizing the\ncorners of its mouth, which they thus seemed to pull open to give\nfree passage to the water it vomited.  The lower row of teeth was\nquite washed away, though the upper still remained.  Here and thus,\njutting a couple of feet from the wall against which its feet rested\nas a support, the creature had for four hundred years laughed at the\nsurrounding landscape, voicelessly in dry weather, and in wet with a\ngurgling and snorting sound.\n\nTroy slept on in the porch, and the rain increased outside. Presently\nthe gurgoyle spat.  In due time a small stream began to trickle\nthrough the seventy feet of aerial space between its mouth and\nthe ground, which the water-drops smote like duckshot in their\naccelerated velocity.  The stream thickened in substance, and\nincreased in power, gradually spouting further and yet further from\nthe side of the tower.  When the rain fell in a steady and ceaseless\ntorrent the stream dashed downward in volumes.\n\nWe follow its course to the ground at this point of time. The end of\nthe liquid parabola has come forward from the wall, has advanced over\nthe plinth mouldings, over a heap of stones, over the marble border,\ninto the midst of Fanny Robin's grave.\n\nThe force of the stream had, until very lately, been received upon\nsome loose stones spread thereabout, which had acted as a shield to\nthe soil under the onset.  These during the summer had been cleared\nfrom the ground, and there was now nothing to resist the down-fall\nbut the bare earth.  For several years the stream had not spouted\nso far from the tower as it was doing on this night, and such a\ncontingency had been over-looked.  Sometimes this obscure corner\nreceived no inhabitant for the space of two or three years, and\nthen it was usually but a pauper, a poacher, or other sinner of\nundignified sins.\n\nThe persistent torrent from the gurgoyle's jaws directed all its\nvengeance into the grave.  The rich tawny mould was stirred into\nmotion, and boiled like chocolate.  The water accumulated and washed\ndeeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the\nnight as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created\nby the deluging rain.  The flowers so carefully planted by Fanny's\nrepentant lover began to move and writhe in their bed.  The\nwinter-violets turned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of\nmud.  Soon the snowdrop and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass\nlike ingredients in a cauldron.  Plants of the tufted species were\nloosened, rose to the surface, and floated off.\n\nTroy did not awake from his comfortless sleep till it was broad day.\nNot having been in bed for two nights his shoulders felt stiff, his\nfeet tender, and his head heavy.  He remembered his position, arose,\nshivered, took the spade, and again went out.\n\nThe rain had quite ceased, and the sun was shining through the\ngreen, brown, and yellow leaves, now sparkling and varnished by the\nraindrops to the brightness of similar effects in the landscapes of\nRuysdael and Hobbema, and full of all those infinite beauties that\narise from the union of water and colour with high lights.  The air\nwas rendered so transparent by the heavy fall of rain that the autumn\nhues of the middle distance were as rich as those near at hand, and\nthe remote fields intercepted by the angle of the tower appeared in\nthe same plane as the tower itself.\n\nHe entered the gravel path which would take him behind the tower.\nThe path, instead of being stony as it had been the night before, was\nbrowned over with a thin coating of mud.  At one place in the path\nhe saw a tuft of stringy roots washed white and clean as a bundle\nof tendons.  He picked it up--surely it could not be one of the\nprimroses he had planted?  He saw a bulb, another, and another as\nhe advanced.  Beyond doubt they were the crocuses.  With a face of\nperplexed dismay Troy turned the corner and then beheld the wreck\nthe stream had made.\n\nThe pool upon the grave had soaked away into the ground, and in its\nplace was a hollow.  The disturbed earth was washed over the grass\nand pathway in the guise of the brown mud he had already seen, and it\nspotted the marble tombstone with the same stains.  Nearly all the\nflowers were washed clean out of the ground, and they lay, roots\nupwards, on the spots whither they had been splashed by the stream.\n\nTroy's brow became heavily contracted.  He set his teeth closely,\nand his compressed lips moved as those of one in great pain.  This\nsingular accident, by a strange confluence of emotions in him, was\nfelt as the sharpest sting of all.  Troy's face was very expressive,\nand any observer who had seen him now would hardly have believed him\nto be a man who had laughed, and sung, and poured love-trifles into\na woman's ear.  To curse his miserable lot was at first his impulse,\nbut even that lowest stage of rebellion needed an activity whose\nabsence was necessarily antecedent to the existence of the morbid\nmisery which wrung him.  The sight, coming as it did, superimposed\nupon the other dark scenery of the previous days, formed a sort of\nclimax to the whole panorama, and it was more than he could endure.\nSanguine by nature, Troy had a power of eluding grief by simply\nadjourning it.  He could put off the consideration of any particular\nspectre till the matter had become old and softened by time.  The\nplanting of flowers on Fanny's grave had been perhaps but a species\nof elusion of the primary grief, and now it was as if his intention\nhad been known and circumvented.\n\nAlmost for the first time in his life, Troy, as he stood by this\ndismantled grave, wished himself another man.  It is seldom that a\nperson with much animal spirit does not feel that the fact of his\nlife being his own is the one qualification which singles it out as a\nmore hopeful life than that of others who may actually resemble him\nin every particular.  Troy had felt, in his transient way, hundreds\nof times, that he could not envy other people their condition,\nbecause the possession of that condition would have necessitated a\ndifferent personality, when he desired no other than his own.  He had\nnot minded the peculiarities of his birth, the vicissitudes of his\nlife, the meteor-like uncertainty of all that related to him, because\nthese appertained to the hero of his story, without whom there would\nhave been no story at all for him; and it seemed to be only in the\nnature of things that matters would right themselves at some proper\ndate and wind up well.  This very morning the illusion completed its\ndisappearance, and, as it were, all of a sudden, Troy hated himself.\nThe suddenness was probably more apparent than real.  A coral reef\nwhich just comes short of the ocean surface is no more to the horizon\nthan if it had never been begun, and the mere finishing stroke is\nwhat often appears to create an event which has long been potentially\nan accomplished thing.\n\nHe stood and meditated--a miserable man.  Whither should he\ngo?  \"He that is accursed, let him be accursed still,\" was the\npitiless anathema written in this spoliated effort of his new-born\nsolicitousness.  A man who has spent his primal strength in\njourneying in one direction has not much spirit left for reversing\nhis course.  Troy had, since yesterday, faintly reversed his; but the\nmerest opposition had disheartened him.  To turn about would have\nbeen hard enough under the greatest providential encouragement; but\nto find that Providence, far from helping him into a new course, or\nshowing any wish that he might adopt one, actually jeered his first\ntrembling and critical attempt in that kind, was more than nature\ncould bear.\n\nHe slowly withdrew from the grave.  He did not attempt to fill up the\nhole, replace the flowers, or do anything at all.  He simply threw up\nhis cards and forswore his game for that time and always.  Going out\nof the churchyard silently and unobserved--none of the villagers\nhaving yet risen--he passed down some fields at the back, and emerged\njust as secretly upon the high road.  Shortly afterwards he had gone\nfrom the village.\n\nMeanwhile, Bathsheba remained a voluntary prisoner in the attic.  The\ndoor was kept locked, except during the entries and exits of Liddy,\nfor whom a bed had been arranged in a small adjoining room.  The\nlight of Troy's lantern in the churchyard was noticed about ten\no'clock by the maid-servant, who casually glanced from the window in\nthat direction whilst taking her supper, and she called Bathsheba's\nattention to it.  They looked curiously at the phenomenon for a time,\nuntil Liddy was sent to bed.\n\nBathsheba did not sleep very heavily that night.  When her attendant\nwas unconscious and softly breathing in the next room, the mistress\nof the house was still looking out of the window at the faint gleam\nspreading from among the trees--not in a steady shine, but blinking\nlike a revolving coast-light, though this appearance failed to\nsuggest to her that a person was passing and repassing in front\nof it.  Bathsheba sat here till it began to rain, and the light\nvanished, when she withdrew to lie restlessly in her bed and re-enact\nin a worn mind the lurid scene of yesternight.\n\nAlmost before the first faint sign of dawn appeared she arose again,\nand opened the window to obtain a full breathing of the new morning\nair, the panes being now wet with trembling tears left by the night\nrain, each one rounded with a pale lustre caught from primrose-hued\nslashes through a cloud low down in the awakening sky.  From the\ntrees came the sound of steady dripping upon the drifted leaves under\nthem, and from the direction of the church she could hear another\nnoise--peculiar, and not intermittent like the rest, the purl of\nwater falling into a pool.\n\nLiddy knocked at eight o'clock, and Bathsheba un-locked the door.\n\n\"What a heavy rain we've had in the night, ma'am!\" said Liddy, when\nher inquiries about breakfast had been made.\n\n\"Yes, very heavy.\"\n\n\"Did you hear the strange noise from the churchyard?\"\n\n\"I heard one strange noise.  I've been thinking it must have been the\nwater from the tower spouts.\"\n\n\"Well, that's what the shepherd was saying, ma'am.  He's now gone on\nto see.\"\n\n\"Oh!  Gabriel has been here this morning!\"\n\n\"Only just looked in in passing--quite in his old way, which I\nthought he had left off lately.  But the tower spouts used to spatter\non the stones, and we are puzzled, for this was like the boiling of a\npot.\"\n\nNot being able to read, think, or work, Bathsheba asked Liddy to stay\nand breakfast with her.  The tongue of the more childish woman still\nran upon recent events.  \"Are you going across to the church, ma'am?\"\nshe asked.\n\n\"Not that I know of,\" said Bathsheba.\n\n\"I thought you might like to go and see where they have put Fanny.\nThe trees hide the place from your window.\"\n\nBathsheba had all sorts of dreads about meeting her husband.  \"Has\nMr. Troy been in to-night?\" she said.\n\n\"No, ma'am; I think he's gone to Budmouth.\"\n\nBudmouth!  The sound of the word carried with it a much diminished\nperspective of him and his deeds; there were thirteen miles interval\nbetwixt them now.  She hated questioning Liddy about her husband's\nmovements, and indeed had hitherto sedulously avoided doing so; but\nnow all the house knew that there had been some dreadful disagreement\nbetween them, and it was futile to attempt disguise.  Bathsheba had\nreached a stage at which people cease to have any appreciative regard\nfor public opinion.\n\n\"What makes you think he has gone there?\" she said.\n\n\"Laban Tall saw him on the Budmouth road this morning before\nbreakfast.\"\n\nBathsheba was momentarily relieved of that wayward heaviness of the\npast twenty-four hours which had quenched the vitality of youth in\nher without substituting the philosophy of maturer years, and she\nresolved to go out and walk a little way.  So when breakfast was\nover, she put on her bonnet, and took a direction towards the church.\nIt was nine o'clock, and the men having returned to work again from\ntheir first meal, she was not likely to meet many of them in the\nroad.  Knowing that Fanny had been laid in the reprobates' quarter\nof the graveyard, called in the parish \"behind church,\" which was\ninvisible from the road, it was impossible to resist the impulse to\nenter and look upon a spot which, from nameless feelings, she at\nthe same time dreaded to see.  She had been unable to overcome an\nimpression that some connection existed between her rival and the\nlight through the trees.\n\nBathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the hole and the tomb, its\ndelicately veined surface splashed and stained just as Troy had seen\nit and left it two hours earlier.  On the other side of the scene\nstood Gabriel.  His eyes, too, were fixed on the tomb, and her\narrival having been noiseless, she had not as yet attracted his\nattention.  Bathsheba did not at once perceive that the grand tomb\nand the disturbed grave were Fanny's, and she looked on both sides\nand around for some humbler mound, earthed up and clodded in the\nusual way.  Then her eye followed Oak's, and she read the words with\nwhich the inscription opened:--\n\n\n     ERECTED BY FRANCIS TROY\n      IN BELOVED MEMORY OF\n           FANNY ROBIN\n\n\nOak saw her, and his first act was to gaze inquiringly and learn how\nshe received this knowledge of the authorship of the work, which to\nhimself had caused considerable astonishment.  But such discoveries\ndid not much affect her now.  Emotional convulsions seemed to have\nbecome the commonplaces of her history, and she bade him good\nmorning, and asked him to fill in the hole with the spade which\nwas standing by.  Whilst Oak was doing as she desired, Bathsheba\ncollected the flowers, and began planting them with that sympathetic\nmanipulation of roots and leaves which is so conspicuous in a woman's\ngardening, and which flowers seem to understand and thrive upon.  She\nrequested Oak to get the churchwardens to turn the leadwork at the\nmouth of the gurgoyle that hung gaping down upon them, that by this\nmeans the stream might be directed sideways, and a repetition of the\naccident prevented.  Finally, with the superfluous magnanimity of\na woman whose narrower instincts have brought down bitterness upon\nher instead of love, she wiped the mud spots from the tomb as if she\nrather liked its words than otherwise, and went again home. [2]\n\n   [Footnote 2: The local tower and churchyard do not answer\n   precisely to the foregoing description.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nADVENTURES BY THE SHORE\n\n\nTroy wandered along towards the south.  A composite feeling, made up\nof disgust with the, to him, humdrum tediousness of a farmer's life,\ngloomy images of her who lay in the churchyard, remorse, and a\ngeneral averseness to his wife's society, impelled him to seek a\nhome in any place on earth save Weatherbury.  The sad accessories of\nFanny's end confronted him as vivid pictures which threatened to be\nindelible, and made life in Bathsheba's house intolerable.  At three\nin the afternoon he found himself at the foot of a slope more than\na mile in length, which ran to the ridge of a range of hills lying\nparallel with the shore, and forming a monotonous barrier between\nthe basin of cultivated country inland and the wilder scenery of the\ncoast.  Up the hill stretched a road nearly straight and perfectly\nwhite, the two sides approaching each other in a gradual taper till\nthey met the sky at the top about two miles off.  Throughout the\nlength of this narrow and irksome inclined plane not a sign of life\nwas visible on this garish afternoon.  Troy toiled up the road with a\nlanguor and depression greater than any he had experienced for many a\nday and year before.  The air was warm and muggy, and the top seemed\nto recede as he approached.\n\nAt last he reached the summit, and a wide and novel prospect burst\nupon him with an effect almost like that of the Pacific upon Balboa's\ngaze.  The broad steely sea, marked only by faint lines, which had\na semblance of being etched thereon to a degree not deep enough to\ndisturb its general evenness, stretched the whole width of his front\nand round to the right, where, near the town and port of Budmouth,\nthe sun bristled down upon it, and banished all colour, to substitute\nin its place a clear oily polish.  Nothing moved in sky, land, or\nsea, except a frill of milkwhite foam along the nearer angles of the\nshore, shreds of which licked the contiguous stones like tongues.\n\nHe descended and came to a small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs.\nTroy's nature freshened within him; he thought he would rest and\nbathe here before going farther.  He undressed and plunged in.\nInside the cove the water was uninteresting to a swimmer, being\nsmooth as a pond, and to get a little of the ocean swell, Troy\npresently swam between the two projecting spurs of rock which\nformed the pillars of Hercules to this miniature Mediterranean.\nUnfortunately for Troy a current unknown to him existed outside,\nwhich, unimportant to craft of any burden, was awkward for a swimmer\nwho might be taken in it unawares.  Troy found himself carried to\nthe left and then round in a swoop out to sea.\n\nHe now recollected the place and its sinister character.  Many\nbathers had there prayed for a dry death from time to time, and, like\nGonzalo also, had been unanswered; and Troy began to deem it possible\nthat he might be added to their number.  Not a boat of any kind was\nat present within sight, but far in the distance Budmouth lay upon\nthe sea, as it were quietly regarding his efforts, and beside the\ntown the harbour showed its position by a dim meshwork of ropes and\nspars.  After well-nigh exhausting himself in attempts to get back to\nthe mouth of the cove, in his weakness swimming several inches deeper\nthan was his wont, keeping up his breathing entirely by his nostrils,\nturning upon his back a dozen times over, swimming _en papillon_, and\nso on, Troy resolved as a last resource to tread water at a slight\nincline, and so endeavour to reach the shore at any point, merely\ngiving himself a gentle impetus inwards whilst carried on in the\ngeneral direction of the tide.  This, necessarily a slow process,\nhe found to be not altogether so difficult, and though there was no\nchoice of a landing-place--the objects on shore passing by him in a\nsad and slow procession--he perceptibly approached the extremity of a\nspit of land yet further to the right, now well defined against the\nsunny portion of the horizon.  While the swimmer's eyes were fixed\nupon the spit as his only means of salvation on this side of the\nUnknown, a moving object broke the outline of the extremity, and\nimmediately a ship's boat appeared manned with several sailor lads,\nher bows towards the sea.\n\nAll Troy's vigour spasmodically revived to prolong the struggle yet a\nlittle further.  Swimming with his right arm, he held up his left to\nhail them, splashing upon the waves, and shouting with all his might.\nFrom the position of the setting sun his white form was distinctly\nvisible upon the now deep-hued bosom of the sea to the east of the\nboat, and the men saw him at once.  Backing their oars and putting\nthe boat about, they pulled towards him with a will, and in five or\nsix minutes from the time of his first halloo, two of the sailors\nhauled him in over the stern.\n\nThey formed part of a brig's crew, and had come ashore for sand.\nLending him what little clothing they could spare among them as a\nslight protection against the rapidly cooling air, they agreed to\nland him in the morning; and without further delay, for it was\ngrowing late, they made again towards the roadstead where their\nvessel lay.\n\nAnd now night drooped slowly upon the wide watery levels in front;\nand at no great distance from them, where the shoreline curved round,\nand formed a long riband of shade upon the horizon, a series of\npoints of yellow light began to start into existence, denoting the\nspot to be the site of Budmouth, where the lamps were being lighted\nalong the parade.  The cluck of their oars was the only sound of any\ndistinctness upon the sea, and as they laboured amid the thickening\nshades the lamp-lights grew larger, each appearing to send a flaming\nsword deep down into the waves before it, until there arose, among\nother dim shapes of the kind, the form of the vessel for which they\nwere bound.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDOUBTS ARISE--DOUBTS LINGER\n\n\nBathsheba underwent the enlargement of her husband's absence from\nhours to days with a slight feeling of surprise, and a slight feeling\nof relief; yet neither sensation rose at any time far above the\nlevel commonly designated as indifference.  She belonged to him: the\ncertainties of that position were so well defined, and the reasonable\nprobabilities of its issue so bounded that she could not speculate on\ncontingencies.  Taking no further interest in herself as a splendid\nwoman, she acquired the indifferent feelings of an outsider in\ncontemplating her probable fate as a singular wretch; for Bathsheba\ndrew herself and her future in colours that no reality could exceed\nfor darkness.  Her original vigorous pride of youth had sickened,\nand with it had declined all her anxieties about coming years, since\nanxiety recognizes a better and a worse alternative, and Bathsheba\nhad made up her mind that alternatives on any noteworthy scale had\nceased for her.  Soon, or later--and that not very late--her husband\nwould be home again.  And then the days of their tenancy of the Upper\nFarm would be numbered.  There had originally been shown by the agent\nto the estate some distrust of Bathsheba's tenure as James Everdene's\nsuccessor, on the score of her sex, and her youth, and her beauty;\nbut the peculiar nature of her uncle's will, his own frequent\ntestimony before his death to her cleverness in such a pursuit, and\nher vigorous marshalling of the numerous flocks and herds which came\nsuddenly into her hands before negotiations were concluded, had won\nconfidence in her powers, and no further objections had been raised.\nShe had latterly been in great doubt as to what the legal effects of\nher marriage would be upon her position; but no notice had been taken\nas yet of her change of name, and only one point was clear--that in\nthe event of her own or her husband's inability to meet the agent at\nthe forthcoming January rent-day, very little consideration would be\nshown, and, for that matter, very little would be deserved.  Once out\nof the farm, the approach of poverty would be sure.\n\nHence Bathsheba lived in a perception that her purposes were broken\noff.  She was not a woman who could hope on without good materials\nfor the process, differing thus from the less far-sighted and\nenergetic, though more petted ones of the sex, with whom hope goes\non as a sort of clockwork which the merest food and shelter are\nsufficient to wind up; and perceiving clearly that her mistake had\nbeen a fatal one, she accepted her position, and waited coldly for\nthe end.\n\nThe first Saturday after Troy's departure she went to Casterbridge\nalone, a journey she had not before taken since her marriage.  On\nthis Saturday Bathsheba was passing slowly on foot through the crowd\nof rural business-men gathered as usual in front of the market-house,\nwho were as usual gazed upon by the burghers with feelings that\nthose healthy lives were dearly paid for by exclusion from possible\naldermanship, when a man, who had apparently been following her,\nsaid some words to another on her left hand.  Bathsheba's ears were\nkeen as those of any wild animal, and she distinctly heard what the\nspeaker said, though her back was towards him.\n\n\"I am looking for Mrs. Troy.  Is that she there?\"\n\n\"Yes; that's the young lady, I believe,\" said the the person\naddressed.\n\n\"I have some awkward news to break to her.  Her husband is drowned.\"\n\nAs if endowed with the spirit of prophecy, Bathsheba gasped out, \"No,\nit is not true; it cannot be true!\"  Then she said and heard no more.\nThe ice of self-command which had latterly gathered over her was\nbroken, and the currents burst forth again, and overwhelmed her.  A\ndarkness came into her eyes, and she fell.\n\nBut not to the ground.  A gloomy man, who had been observing her from\nunder the portico of the old corn-exchange when she passed through\nthe group without, stepped quickly to her side at the moment of her\nexclamation, and caught her in his arms as she sank down.\n\n\"What is it?\" said Boldwood, looking up at the bringer of the big\nnews, as he supported her.\n\n\"Her husband was drowned this week while bathing in Lulwind Cove.\nA coastguardsman found his clothes, and brought them into Budmouth\nyesterday.\"\n\nThereupon a strange fire lighted up Boldwood's eye, and his face\nflushed with the suppressed excitement of an unutterable thought.\nEverybody's glance was now centred upon him and the unconscious\nBathsheba.  He lifted her bodily off the ground, and smoothed down\nthe folds of her dress as a child might have taken a storm-beaten\nbird and arranged its ruffled plumes, and bore her along the\npavement to the King's Arms Inn.  Here he passed with her under the\narchway into a private room; and by the time he had deposited--so\nlothly--the precious burden upon a sofa, Bathsheba had opened her\neyes.  Remembering all that had occurred, she murmured, \"I want to go\nhome!\"\n\nBoldwood left the room.  He stood for a moment in the passage to\nrecover his senses.  The experience had been too much for his\nconsciousness to keep up with, and now that he had grasped it it had\ngone again.  For those few heavenly, golden moments she had been in\nhis arms.  What did it matter about her not knowing it?  She had been\nclose to his breast; he had been close to hers.\n\nHe started onward again, and sending a woman to her, went out to\nascertain all the facts of the case.  These appeared to be limited to\nwhat he had already heard.  He then ordered her horse to be put into\nthe gig, and when all was ready returned to inform her.  He found\nthat, though still pale and unwell, she had in the meantime sent for\nthe Budmouth man who brought the tidings, and learnt from him all\nthere was to know.\n\nBeing hardly in a condition to drive home as she had driven to town,\nBoldwood, with every delicacy of manner and feeling, offered to get\nher a driver, or to give her a seat in his phaeton, which was more\ncomfortable than her own conveyance.  These proposals Bathsheba\ngently declined, and the farmer at once departed.\n\nAbout half-an-hour later she invigorated herself by an effort, and\ntook her seat and the reins as usual--in external appearance much\nas if nothing had happened.  She went out of the town by a tortuous\nback street, and drove slowly along, unconscious of the road and the\nscene.  The first shades of evening were showing themselves when\nBathsheba reached home, where, silently alighting and leaving the\nhorse in the hands of the boy, she proceeded at once upstairs.\nLiddy met her on the landing.  The news had preceded Bathsheba to\nWeatherbury by half-an-hour, and Liddy looked inquiringly into her\nmistress's face.  Bathsheba had nothing to say.\n\nShe entered her bedroom and sat by the window, and thought and\nthought till night enveloped her, and the extreme lines only of her\nshape were visible.  Somebody came to the door, knocked, and opened\nit.\n\n\"Well, what is it, Liddy?\" she said.\n\n\"I was thinking there must be something got for you to wear,\" said\nLiddy, with hesitation.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Mourning.\"\n\n\"No, no, no,\" said Bathsheba, hurriedly.\n\n\"But I suppose there must be something done for poor--\"\n\n\"Not at present, I think.  It is not necessary.\"\n\n\"Why not, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Because he's still alive.\"\n\n\"How do you know that?\" said Liddy, amazed.\n\n\"I don't know it.  But wouldn't it have been different, or shouldn't\nI have heard more, or wouldn't they have found him, Liddy?--or--I\ndon't know how it is, but death would have been different from how\nthis is.  I am perfectly convinced that he is still alive!\"\n\n\nBathsheba remained firm in this opinion till Monday, when two\ncircumstances conjoined to shake it.  The first was a short paragraph\nin the local newspaper, which, beyond making by a methodizing\npen formidable presumptive evidence of Troy's death by drowning,\ncontained the important testimony of a young Mr. Barker, M.D., of\nBudmouth, who spoke to being an eyewitness of the accident, in a\nletter to the editor.  In this he stated that he was passing over the\ncliff on the remoter side of the cove just as the sun was setting.\nAt that time he saw a bather carried along in the current outside the\nmouth of the cove, and guessed in an instant that there was but a\npoor chance for him unless he should be possessed of unusual muscular\npowers.  He drifted behind a projection of the coast, and Mr. Barker\nfollowed along the shore in the same direction.  But by the time that\nhe could reach an elevation sufficiently great to command a view of\nthe sea beyond, dusk had set in, and nothing further was to be seen.\n\nThe other circumstance was the arrival of his clothes, when it became\nnecessary for her to examine and identify them--though this had\nvirtually been done long before by those who inspected the letters in\nhis pockets.  It was so evident to her in the midst of her agitation\nthat Troy had undressed in the full conviction of dressing again\nalmost immediately, that the notion that anything but death could\nhave prevented him was a perverse one to entertain.\n\nThen Bathsheba said to herself that others were assured in their\nopinion; strange that she should not be.  A strange reflection\noccurred to her, causing her face to flush.  Suppose that Troy had\nfollowed Fanny into another world. Had he done this intentionally,\nyet contrived to make his death appear like an accident?\nNevertheless, this thought of how the apparent might differ from the\nreal--made vivid by her bygone jealousy of Fanny, and the remorse\nhe had shown that night--did not blind her to the perception of a\nlikelier difference, less tragic, but to herself far more disastrous.\n\nWhen alone late that evening beside a small fire, and much calmed\ndown, Bathsheba took Troy's watch into her hand, which had been\nrestored to her with the rest of the articles belonging to him.  She\nopened the case as he had opened it before her a week ago.  There was\nthe little coil of pale hair which had been as the fuze to this great\nexplosion.\n\n\"He was hers and she was his; they should be gone together,\" she\nsaid.  \"I am nothing to either of them, and why should I keep\nher hair?\"  She took it in her hand, and held it over the fire.\n\"No--I'll not burn it--I'll keep it in memory of her, poor thing!\"\nshe added, snatching back her hand.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOAK'S ADVANCEMENT--A GREAT HOPE\n\n\nThe later autumn and the winter drew on apace, and the leaves lay\nthick upon the turf of the glades and the mosses of the woods.\nBathsheba, having previously been living in a state of suspended\nfeeling which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of quietude which\nwas not precisely peacefulness.  While she had known him to be alive\nshe could have thought of his death with equanimity; but now that it\nmight be she had lost him, she regretted that he was not hers still.\nShe kept the farm going, raked in her profits without caring keenly\nabout them, and expended money on ventures because she had done so\nin bygone days, which, though not long gone by, seemed infinitely\nremoved from her present.  She looked back upon that past over a\ngreat gulf, as if she were now a dead person, having the faculty of\nmeditation still left in her, by means of which, like the mouldering\ngentlefolk of the poet's story, she could sit and ponder what a gift\nlife used to be.\n\nHowever, one excellent result of her general apathy was the\nlong-delayed installation of Oak as bailiff; but he having virtually\nexercised that function for a long time already, the change, beyond\nthe substantial increase of wages it brought, was little more than a\nnominal one addressed to the outside world.\n\nBoldwood lived secluded and inactive.  Much of his wheat and all his\nbarley of that season had been spoilt by the rain.  It sprouted,\ngrew into intricate mats, and was ultimately thrown to the pigs in\narmfuls.  The strange neglect which had produced this ruin and waste\nbecame the subject of whispered talk among all the people round; and\nit was elicited from one of Boldwood's men that forgetfulness had\nnothing to do with it, for he had been reminded of the danger to his\ncorn as many times and as persistently as inferiors dared to do.\nThe sight of the pigs turning in disgust from the rotten ears seemed\nto arouse Boldwood, and he one evening sent for Oak.  Whether it\nwas suggested by Bathsheba's recent act of promotion or not, the\nfarmer proposed at the interview that Gabriel should undertake the\nsuperintendence of the Lower Farm as well as of Bathsheba's, because\nof the necessity Boldwood felt for such aid, and the impossibility\nof discovering a more trustworthy man. Gabriel's malignant star was\nassuredly setting fast.\n\nBathsheba, when she learnt of this proposal--for Oak was obliged to\nconsult her--at first languidly objected.  She considered that the\ntwo farms together were too extensive for the observation of one\nman.  Boldwood, who was apparently determined by personal rather than\ncommercial reasons, suggested that Oak should be furnished with a\nhorse for his sole use, when the plan would present no difficulty,\nthe two farms lying side by side.  Boldwood did not directly\ncommunicate with her during these negotiations, only speaking to Oak,\nwho was the go-between throughout.  All was harmoniously arranged at\nlast, and we now see Oak mounted on a strong cob, and daily trotting\nthe length and breadth of about two thousand acres in a cheerful spirit\nof surveillance, as if the crops all belonged to him--the actual\nmistress of the one-half and the master of the other, sitting in\ntheir respective homes in gloomy and sad seclusion.\n\nOut of this there arose, during the spring succeeding, a talk in the\nparish that Gabriel Oak was feathering his nest fast.\n\n\"Whatever d'ye think,\" said Susan Tall, \"Gable Oak is coming it quite\nthe dand.  He now wears shining boots with hardly a hob in 'em, two\nor three times a-week, and a tall hat a-Sundays, and 'a hardly knows\nthe name of smockfrock.  When I see people strut enough to be cut up\ninto bantam cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, and says no more!\"\n\nIt was eventually known that Gabriel, though paid a fixed wage by\nBathsheba independent of the fluctuations of agricultural profits,\nhad made an engagement with Boldwood by which Oak was to receive a\nshare of the receipts--a small share certainly, yet it was money of\na higher quality than mere wages, and capable of expansion in a way\nthat wages were not.  Some were beginning to consider Oak a \"near\"\nman, for though his condition had thus far improved, he lived in no\nbetter style than before, occupying the same cottage, paring his own\npotatoes, mending his stockings, and sometimes even making his bed\nwith his own hands.  But as Oak was not only provokingly indifferent\nto public opinion, but a man who clung persistently to old habits and\nusages, simply because they were old, there was room for doubt as to\nhis motives.\n\nA great hope had latterly germinated in Boldwood, whose unreasoning\ndevotion to Bathsheba could only be characterized as a fond madness\nwhich neither time nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could\nweaken or destroy.  This fevered hope had grown up again like a grain\nof mustard-seed during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture\nthat Troy was drowned.  He nourished it fearfully, and almost shunned\nthe contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal the\nwildness of the dream.  Bathsheba having at last been persuaded to\nwear mourning, her appearance as she entered the church in that\nguise was in itself a weekly addition to his faith that a time was\ncoming--very far off perhaps, yet surely nearing--when his waiting on\nevents should have its reward.  How long he might have to wait he had\nnot yet closely considered.  What he would try to recognize was that\nthe severe schooling she had been subjected to had made Bathsheba\nmuch more considerate than she had formerly been of the feelings of\nothers, and he trusted that, should she be willing at any time in the\nfuture to marry any man at all, that man would be himself.  There was\na substratum of good feeling in her: her self-reproach for the injury\nshe had thoughtlessly done him might be depended upon now to a much\ngreater extent than before her infatuation and disappointment.  It\nwould be possible to approach her by the channel of her good nature,\nand to suggest a friendly businesslike compact between them for\nfulfilment at some future day, keeping the passionate side of his\ndesire entirely out of her sight.  Such was Boldwood's hope.\n\nTo the eyes of the middle-aged, Bathsheba was perhaps additionally\ncharming just now.  Her exuberance of spirit was pruned down; the\noriginal phantom of delight had shown herself to be not too bright\nfor human nature's daily food, and she had been able to enter this\nsecond poetical phase without losing much of the first in the\nprocess.\n\nBathsheba's return from a two months' visit to her old aunt at\nNorcombe afforded the impassioned and yearning farmer a pretext for\ninquiring directly after her--now possibly in the ninth month of her\nwidowhood--and endeavouring to get a notion of her state of mind\nregarding him.  This occurred in the middle of the haymaking, and\nBoldwood contrived to be near Liddy, who was assisting in the fields.\n\n\"I am glad to see you out of doors, Lydia,\" he said pleasantly.\n\nShe simpered, and wondered in her heart why he should speak so\nfrankly to her.\n\n\"I hope Mrs. Troy is quite well after her long absence,\" he\ncontinued, in a manner expressing that the coldest-hearted neighbour\ncould scarcely say less about her.\n\n\"She is quite well, sir.\"\n\n\"And cheerful, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Yes, cheerful.\"\n\n\"Fearful, did you say?\"\n\n\"Oh no.  I merely said she was cheerful.\"\n\n\"Tells you all her affairs?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Some of them?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Troy puts much confidence in you, Lydia, and very wisely,\nperhaps.\"\n\n\"She do, sir.  I've been with her all through her troubles, and was\nwith her at the time of Mr. Troy's going and all.  And if she were\nto marry again I expect I should bide with her.\"\n\n\"She promises that you shall--quite natural,\" said the strategic\nlover, throbbing throughout him at the presumption which Liddy's\nwords appeared to warrant--that his darling had thought of\nre-marriage.\n\n\"No--she doesn't promise it exactly.  I merely judge on my own\naccount.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I understand.  When she alludes to the possibility of\nmarrying again, you conclude--\"\n\n\"She never do allude to it, sir,\" said Liddy, thinking how very\nstupid Mr. Boldwood was getting.\n\n\"Of course not,\" he returned hastily, his hope falling again.  \"You\nneedn't take quite such long reaches with your rake, Lydia--short\nand quick ones are best.  Well, perhaps, as she is absolute mistress\nagain now, it is wise of her to resolve never to give up her\nfreedom.\"\n\n\"My mistress did certainly once say, though not seriously, that she\nsupposed she might marry again at the end of seven years from last\nyear, if she cared to risk Mr. Troy's coming back and claiming her.\"\n\n\"Ah, six years from the present time.  Said that she might.  She\nmight marry at once in every reasonable person's opinion, whatever\nthe lawyers may say to the contrary.\"\n\n\"Have you been to ask them?\" said Liddy, innocently.\n\n\"Not I,\" said Boldwood, growing red.  \"Liddy, you needn't stay here\na minute later than you wish, so Mr. Oak says.  I am now going on a\nlittle farther.  Good-afternoon.\"\n\nHe went away vexed with himself, and ashamed of having for this one\ntime in his life done anything which could be called underhand.  Poor\nBoldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he\nwas uneasy with a sense of having made himself to appear stupid and,\nwhat was worse, mean.  But he had, after all, lighted upon one fact\nby way of repayment.  It was a singularly fresh and fascinating fact,\nand though not without its sadness it was pertinent and real.  In\nlittle more than six years from this time Bathsheba might certainly\nmarry him.  There was something definite in that hope, for admitting\nthat there might have been no deep thought in her words to Liddy\nabout marriage, they showed at least her creed on the matter.\n\nThis pleasant notion was now continually in his mind.  Six years were\na long time, but how much shorter than never, the idea he had for so\nlong been obliged to endure!  Jacob had served twice seven years for\nRachel: what were six for such a woman as this?  He tried to like the\nnotion of waiting for her better than that of winning her at once.\nBoldwood felt his love to be so deep and strong and eternal, that\nit was possible she had never yet known its full volume, and this\npatience in delay would afford him an opportunity of giving sweet\nproof on the point.  He would annihilate the six years of his life as\nif they were minutes--so little did he value his time on earth beside\nher love.  He would let her see, all those six years of intangible\nethereal courtship, how little care he had for anything but as it\nbore upon the consummation.\n\nMeanwhile the early and the late summer brought round the week in\nwhich Greenhill Fair was held.  This fair was frequently attended by\nthe folk of Weatherbury.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE SHEEP FAIR--TROY TOUCHES HIS WIFE'S HAND\n\n\nGreenhill was the Nijni Novgorod of South Wessex; and the busiest,\nmerriest, noisiest day of the whole statute number was the day of\nthe sheep fair.  This yearly gathering was upon the summit of a\nhill which retained in good preservation the remains of an ancient\nearthwork, consisting of a huge rampart and entrenchment of an oval\nform encircling the top of the hill, though somewhat broken down here\nand there.  To each of the two chief openings on opposite sides a\nwinding road ascended, and the level green space of ten or fifteen\nacres enclosed by the bank was the site of the fair.  A few permanent\nerections dotted the spot, but the majority of visitors patronized\ncanvas alone for resting and feeding under during the time of their\nsojourn here.\n\nShepherds who attended with their flocks from long distances started\nfrom home two or three days, or even a week, before the fair, driving\ntheir charges a few miles each day--not more than ten or twelve--and\nresting them at night in hired fields by the wayside at previously\nchosen points, where they fed, having fasted since morning.  The\nshepherd of each flock marched behind, a bundle containing his kit\nfor the week strapped upon his shoulders, and in his hand his crook,\nwhich he used as the staff of his pilgrimage.  Several of the sheep\nwould get worn and lame, and occasionally a lambing occurred on the\nroad.  To meet these contingencies, there was frequently provided, to\naccompany the flocks from the remoter points, a pony and waggon into\nwhich the weakly ones were taken for the remainder of the journey.\n\nThe Weatherbury Farms, however, were no such long distance from the\nhill, and those arrangements were not necessary in their case.  But\nthe large united flocks of Bathsheba and Farmer Boldwood formed a\nvaluable and imposing multitude which demanded much attention, and\non this account Gabriel, in addition to Boldwood's shepherd and Cain\nBall, accompanied them along the way, through the decayed old town of\nKingsbere, and upward to the plateau,--old George the dog of course\nbehind them.\n\nWhen the autumn sun slanted over Greenhill this morning and lighted\nthe dewy flat upon its crest, nebulous clouds of dust were to be seen\nfloating between the pairs of hedges which streaked the wide prospect\naround in all directions.  These gradually converged upon the base of\nthe hill, and the flocks became individually visible, climbing the\nserpentine ways which led to the top.  Thus, in a slow procession,\nthey entered the opening to which the roads tended, multitude after\nmultitude, horned and hornless--blue flocks and red flocks, buff\nflocks and brown flocks, even green and salmon-tinted flocks,\naccording to the fancy of the colourist and custom of the farm.\nMen were shouting, dogs were barking, with greatest animation, but\nthe thronging travellers in so long a journey had grown nearly\nindifferent to such terrors, though they still bleated piteously at\nthe unwontedness of their experiences, a tall shepherd rising here\nand there in the midst of them, like a gigantic idol amid a crowd\nof prostrate devotees.\n\nThe great mass of sheep in the fair consisted of South Downs and the\nold Wessex horned breeds; to the latter class Bathsheba's and Farmer\nBoldwood's mainly belonged.  These filed in about nine o'clock, their\nvermiculated horns lopping gracefully on each side of their cheeks in\ngeometrically perfect spirals, a small pink and white ear nestling\nunder each horn.  Before and behind came other varieties, perfect\nleopards as to the full rich substance of their coats, and only\nlacking the spots.  There were also a few of the Oxfordshire breed,\nwhose wool was beginning to curl like a child's flaxen hair, though\nsurpassed in this respect by the effeminate Leicesters, which were in\nturn less curly than the Cotswolds.  But the most picturesque by far\nwas a small flock of Exmoors, which chanced to be there this year.\nTheir pied faces and legs, dark and heavy horns, tresses of wool\nhanging round their swarthy foreheads, quite relieved the monotony\nof the flocks in that quarter.\n\nAll these bleating, panting, and weary thousands had entered and were\npenned before the morning had far advanced, the dog belonging to each\nflock being tied to the corner of the pen containing it.  Alleys for\npedestrians intersected the pens, which soon became crowded with\nbuyers and sellers from far and near.\n\nIn another part of the hill an altogether different scene began\nto force itself upon the eye towards midday.  A circular tent, of\nexceptional newness and size, was in course of erection here.  As\nthe day drew on, the flocks began to change hands, lightening the\nshepherd's responsibilities; and they turned their attention to\nthis tent and inquired of a man at work there, whose soul seemed\nconcentrated on tying a bothering knot in no time, what was going\non.\n\n\"The Royal Hippodrome Performance of Turpin's Ride to York and the\nDeath of Black Bess,\" replied the man promptly, without turning his\neyes or leaving off tying.\n\nAs soon as the tent was completed the band struck up highly\nstimulating harmonies, and the announcement was publicly made, Black\nBess standing in a conspicuous position on the outside, as a living\nproof, if proof were wanted, of the truth of the oracular utterances\nfrom the stage over which the people were to enter.  These were so\nconvinced by such genuine appeals to heart and understanding both\nthat they soon began to crowd in abundantly, among the foremost being\nvisible Jan Coggan and Joseph Poorgrass, who were holiday keeping\nhere to-day.\n\n\"That's the great ruffen pushing me!\" screamed a woman in front of\nJan over her shoulder at him when the rush was at its fiercest.\n\n\"How can I help pushing ye when the folk behind push me?\" said\nCoggan, in a deprecating tone, turning his head towards the aforesaid\nfolk as far as he could without turning his body, which was jammed as\nin a vice.\n\nThere was a silence; then the drums and trumpets again sent forth\ntheir echoing notes.  The crowd was again ecstasied, and gave another\nlurch in which Coggan and Poorgrass were again thrust by those behind\nupon the women in front.\n\n\"Oh that helpless feymels should be at the mercy of such ruffens!\"\nexclaimed one of these ladies again, as she swayed like a reed shaken\nby the wind.\n\n\"Now,\" said Coggan, appealing in an earnest voice to the public at\nlarge as it stood clustered about his shoulder-blades, \"did ye ever\nhear such onreasonable woman as that?  Upon my carcase, neighbours,\nif I could only get out of this cheese-wring, the damn women might\neat the show for me!\"\n\n\"Don't ye lose yer temper, Jan!\" implored Joseph Poorgrass, in a\nwhisper.  \"They might get their men to murder us, for I think by the\nshine of their eyes that they be a sinful form of womankind.\"\n\nJan held his tongue, as if he had no objection to be pacified to\nplease a friend, and they gradually reached the foot of the ladder,\nPoorgrass being flattened like a jumping-jack, and the sixpence, for\nadmission, which he had got ready half-an-hour earlier, having become\nso reeking hot in the tight squeeze of his excited hand that the\nwoman in spangles, brazen rings set with glass diamonds, and with\nchalked face and shoulders, who took the money of him, hastily\ndropped it again from a fear that some trick had been played to burn\nher fingers.  So they all entered, and the cloth of the tent, to the\neyes of an observer on the outside, became bulged into innumerable\npimples such as we observe on a sack of potatoes, caused by the\nvarious human heads, backs, and elbows at high pressure within.\n\nAt the rear of the large tent there were two small dressing-tents.\nOne of these, alloted to the male performers, was partitioned into\nhalves by a cloth; and in one of the divisions there was sitting on\nthe grass, pulling on a pair of jack-boots, a young man whom we\ninstantly recognise as Sergeant Troy.\n\nTroy's appearance in this position may be briefly accounted for.  The\nbrig aboard which he was taken in Budmouth Roads was about to start\non a voyage, though somewhat short of hands.  Troy read the articles\nand joined, but before they sailed a boat was despatched across the\nbay to Lulwind cove; as he had half expected, his clothes were gone.\nHe ultimately worked his passage to the United States, where he made\na precarious living in various towns as Professor of Gymnastics,\nSword Exercise, Fencing, and Pugilism.  A few months were sufficient\nto give him a distaste for this kind of life.  There was a certain\nanimal form of refinement in his nature; and however pleasant a\nstrange condition might be whilst privations were easily warded off,\nit was disadvantageously coarse when money was short.  There was ever\npresent, too, the idea that he could claim a home and its comforts\ndid he but chose to return to England and Weatherbury Farm.  Whether\nBathsheba thought him dead was a frequent subject of curious\nconjecture.  To England he did return at last; but the fact of\ndrawing nearer to Weatherbury abstracted its fascinations, and his\nintention to enter his old groove at the place became modified.  It\nwas with gloom he considered on landing at Liverpool that if he\nwere to go home his reception would be of a kind very unpleasant\nto contemplate; for what Troy had in the way of emotion was an\noccasional fitful sentiment which sometimes caused him as much\ninconvenience as emotion of a strong and healthy kind.  Bathsheba was\nnot a woman to be made a fool of, or a woman to suffer in silence;\nand how could he endure existence with a spirited wife to whom at\nfirst entering he would be beholden for food and lodging?  Moreover,\nit was not at all unlikely that his wife would fail at her farming,\nif she had not already done so; and he would then become liable for\nher maintenance: and what a life such a future of poverty with her\nwould be, the spectre of Fanny constantly between them, harrowing\nhis temper and embittering her words!  Thus, for reasons touching on\ndistaste, regret, and shame commingled, he put off his return from\nday to day, and would have decided to put it off altogether if he\ncould have found anywhere else the ready-made establishment which\nexisted for him there.\n\nAt this time--the July preceding the September in which we find\nat Greenhill Fair--he fell in with a travelling circus which was\nperforming in the outskirts of a northern town.  Troy introduced\nhimself to the manager by taming a restive horse of the troupe,\nhitting a suspended apple with a pistol-bullet fired from the\nanimal's back when in full gallop, and other feats.  For his\nmerits in these--all more or less based upon his experiences as a\ndragoon-guardsman--Troy was taken into the company, and the play\nof Turpin was prepared with a view to his personation of the chief\ncharacter.  Troy was not greatly elated by the appreciative spirit in\nwhich he was undoubtedly treated, but he thought the engagement might\nafford him a few weeks for consideration.  It was thus carelessly,\nand without having formed any definite plan for the future, that Troy\nfound himself at Greenhill Fair with the rest of the company on this\nday.\n\nAnd now the mild autumn sun got lower, and in front of the pavilion\nthe following incident had taken place.  Bathsheba--who was driven\nto the fair that day by her odd man Poorgrass--had, like every one\nelse, read or heard the announcement that Mr. Francis, the Great\nCosmopolitan Equestrian and Roughrider, would enact the part of\nTurpin, and she was not yet too old and careworn to be without a\nlittle curiosity to see him.  This particular show was by far the\nlargest and grandest in the fair, a horde of little shows grouping\nthemselves under its shade like chickens around a hen.  The crowd had\npassed in, and Boldwood, who had been watching all the day for an\nopportunity of speaking to her, seeing her comparatively isolated,\ncame up to her side.\n\n\"I hope the sheep have done well to-day, Mrs. Troy?\" he said,\nnervously.\n\n\"Oh yes, thank you,\" said Bathsheba, colour springing up in the\ncentre of her cheeks.  \"I was fortunate enough to sell them all just\nas we got upon the hill, so we hadn't to pen at all.\"\n\n\"And now you are entirely at leisure?\"\n\n\"Yes, except that I have to see one more dealer in two hours' time:\notherwise I should be going home.  He was looking at this large tent\nand the announcement.  Have you ever seen the play of 'Turpin's Ride\nto York'?  Turpin was a real man, was he not?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, perfectly true--all of it.  Indeed, I think I've heard Jan\nCoggan say that a relation of his knew Tom King, Turpin's friend,\nquite well.\"\n\n\"Coggan is rather given to strange stories connected with his\nrelations, we must remember.  I hope they can all be believed.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes; we know Coggan.  But Turpin is true enough.  You have\nnever seen it played, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Never.  I was not allowed to go into these places when I was young.\nHark!  What's that prancing?  How they shout!\"\n\n\"Black Bess just started off, I suppose.  Am I right in supposing\nyou would like to see the performance, Mrs. Troy?  Please excuse my\nmistake, if it is one; but if you would like to, I'll get a seat for\nyou with pleasure.\"  Perceiving that she hesitated, he added, \"I\nmyself shall not stay to see it: I've seen it before.\"\n\nNow Bathsheba did care a little to see the show, and had only\nwithheld her feet from the ladder because she feared to go in alone.\nShe had been hoping that Oak might appear, whose assistance in such\ncases was always accepted as an inalienable right, but Oak was\nnowhere to be seen; and hence it was that she said, \"Then if you will\njust look in first, to see if there's room, I think I will go in for\na minute or two.\"\n\nAnd so a short time after this Bathsheba appeared in the tent with\nBoldwood at her elbow, who, taking her to a \"reserved\" seat, again\nwithdrew.\n\nThis feature consisted of one raised bench in a very conspicuous\npart of the circle, covered with red cloth, and floored with a piece\nof carpet, and Bathsheba immediately found, to her confusion, that\nshe was the single reserved individual in the tent, the rest of\nthe crowded spectators, one and all, standing on their legs on the\nborders of the arena, where they got twice as good a view of the\nperformance for half the money.  Hence as many eyes were turned upon\nher, enthroned alone in this place of honour, against a scarlet\nbackground, as upon the ponies and clown who were engaged in\npreliminary exploits in the centre, Turpin not having yet appeared.\nOnce there, Bathsheba was forced to make the best of it and remain:\nshe sat down, spreading her skirts with some dignity over the\nunoccupied space on each side of her, and giving a new and feminine\naspect to the pavilion.  In a few minutes she noticed the fat red\nnape of Coggan's neck among those standing just below her, and Joseph\nPoorgrass's saintly profile a little further on.\n\nThe interior was shadowy with a peculiar shade.  The strange luminous\nsemi-opacities of fine autumn afternoons and eves intensified into\nRembrandt effects the few yellow sunbeams which came through holes\nand divisions in the canvas, and spirted like jets of gold-dust\nacross the dusky blue atmosphere of haze pervading the tent, until\nthey alighted on inner surfaces of cloth opposite, and shone like\nlittle lamps suspended there.\n\nTroy, on peeping from his dressing-tent through a slit for a\nreconnoitre before entering, saw his unconscious wife on high before\nhim as described, sitting as queen of the tournament.  He started\nback in utter confusion, for although his disguise effectually\nconcealed his personality, he instantly felt that she would be sure\nto recognize his voice.  He had several times during the day thought\nof the possibility of some Weatherbury person or other appearing and\nrecognizing him; but he had taken the risk carelessly.  If they see\nme, let them, he had said.  But here was Bathsheba in her own person;\nand the reality of the scene was so much intenser than any of his\nprefigurings that he felt he had not half enough considered the\npoint.\n\nShe looked so charming and fair that his cool mood about Weatherbury\npeople was changed.  He had not expected her to exercise this power\nover him in the twinkling of an eye.  Should he go on, and care\nnothing?  He could not bring himself to do that.  Beyond a politic\nwish to remain unknown, there suddenly arose in him now a sense of\nshame at the possibility that his attractive young wife, who already\ndespised him, should despise him more by discovering him in so mean a\ncondition after so long a time.  He actually blushed at the thought,\nand was vexed beyond measure that his sentiments of dislike towards\nWeatherbury should have led him to dally about the country in this\nway.\n\nBut Troy was never more clever than when absolutely at his wit's end.\nHe hastily thrust aside the curtain dividing his own little dressing\nspace from that of the manager and proprietor, who now appeared as\nthe individual called Tom King as far down as his waist, and as the\naforesaid respectable manager thence to his toes.\n\n\"Here's the devil to pay!\" said Troy.\n\n\"How's that?\"\n\n\"Why, there's a blackguard creditor in the tent I don't want to see,\nwho'll discover me and nab me as sure as Satan if I open my mouth.\nWhat's to be done?\"\n\n\"You must appear now, I think.\"\n\n\"I can't.\"\n\n\"But the play must proceed.\"\n\n\"Do you give out that Turpin has got a bad cold, and can't speak his\npart, but that he'll perform it just the same without speaking.\"\n\nThe proprietor shook his head.\n\n\"Anyhow, play or no play, I won't open my mouth,\" said Troy, firmly.\n\n\"Very well, then let me see.  I tell you how we'll manage,\" said the\nother, who perhaps felt it would be extremely awkward to offend his\nleading man just at this time.  \"I won't tell 'em anything about your\nkeeping silence; go on with the piece and say nothing, doing what\nyou can by a judicious wink now and then, and a few indomitable nods\nin the heroic places, you know.  They'll never find out that the\nspeeches are omitted.\"\n\nThis seemed feasible enough, for Turpin's speeches were not many or\nlong, the fascination of the piece lying entirely in the action; and\naccordingly the play began, and at the appointed time Black Bess\nleapt into the grassy circle amid the plaudits of the spectators.\nAt the turnpike scene, where Bess and Turpin are hotly pursued at\nmidnight by the officers, and the half-awake gatekeeper in his\ntasselled nightcap denies that any horseman has passed, Coggan\nuttered a broad-chested \"Well done!\" which could be heard all over\nthe fair above the bleating, and Poorgrass smiled delightedly with a\nnice sense of dramatic contrast between our hero, who coolly leaps\nthe gate, and halting justice in the form of his enemies, who must\nneeds pull up cumbersomely and wait to be let through.  At the death\nof Tom King, he could not refrain from seizing Coggan by the hand,\nand whispering, with tears in his eyes, \"Of course he's not really\nshot, Jan--only seemingly!\"  And when the last sad scene came on, and\nthe body of the gallant and faithful Bess had to be carried out on a\nshutter by twelve volunteers from among the spectators, nothing could\nrestrain Poorgrass from lending a hand, exclaiming, as he asked\nJan to join him, \"Twill be something to tell of at Warren's in\nfuture years, Jan, and hand down to our children.\"  For many a year\nin Weatherbury, Joseph told, with the air of a man who had had\nexperiences in his time, that he touched with his own hand the hoof\nof Bess as she lay upon the board upon his shoulder.  If, as some\nthinkers hold, immortality consists in being enshrined in others'\nmemories, then did Black Bess become immortal that day if she never\nhad done so before.\n\nMeanwhile Troy had added a few touches to his ordinary make-up for\nthe character, the more effectually to disguise himself, and though\nhe had felt faint qualms on first entering, the metamorphosis\neffected by judiciously \"lining\" his face with a wire rendered him\nsafe from the eyes of Bathsheba and her men.  Nevertheless, he was\nrelieved when it was got through.\n\nThere was a second performance in the evening, and the tent was\nlighted up.  Troy had taken his part very quietly this time,\nventuring to introduce a few speeches on occasion; and was just\nconcluding it when, whilst standing at the edge of the circle\ncontiguous to the first row of spectators, he observed within a\nyard of him the eye of a man darted keenly into his side features.\nTroy hastily shifted his position, after having recognized in the\nscrutineer the knavish bailiff Pennyways, his wife's sworn enemy,\nwho still hung about the outskirts of Weatherbury.\n\nAt first Troy resolved to take no notice and abide by circumstances.\nThat he had been recognized by this man was highly probable; yet\nthere was room for a doubt.  Then the great objection he had felt to\nallowing news of his proximity to precede him to Weatherbury in the\nevent of his return, based on a feeling that knowledge of his present\noccupation would discredit him still further in his wife's eyes,\nreturned in full force.  Moreover, should he resolve not to return at\nall, a tale of his being alive and being in the neighbourhood would\nbe awkward; and he was anxious to acquire a knowledge of his wife's\ntemporal affairs before deciding which to do.\n\nIn this dilemma Troy at once went out to reconnoitre.  It occurred\nto him that to find Pennyways, and make a friend of him if possible,\nwould be a very wise act.  He had put on a thick beard borrowed from\nthe establishment, and in this he wandered about the fair-field.  It\nwas now almost dark, and respectable people were getting their carts\nand gigs ready to go home.\n\nThe largest refreshment booth in the fair was provided by an\ninnkeeper from a neighbouring town.  This was considered an\nunexceptionable place for obtaining the necessary food and rest:\nHost Trencher (as he was jauntily called by the local newspaper)\nbeing a substantial man of high repute for catering through all the\ncountry round.  The tent was divided into first and second-class\ncompartments, and at the end of the first-class division was a yet\nfurther enclosure for the most exclusive, fenced off from the body\nof the tent by a luncheon-bar, behind which the host himself stood\nbustling about in white apron and shirt-sleeves, and looking as if\nhe had never lived anywhere but under canvas all his life.  In these\npenetralia were chairs and a table, which, on candles being lighted,\nmade quite a cozy and luxurious show, with an urn, plated tea and\ncoffee pots, china teacups, and plum cakes.\n\nTroy stood at the entrance to the booth, where a gipsy-woman was\nfrying pancakes over a little fire of sticks and selling them at a\npenny a-piece, and looked over the heads of the people within.  He\ncould see nothing of Pennyways, but he soon discerned Bathsheba\nthrough an opening into the reserved space at the further end.  Troy\nthereupon retreated, went round the tent into the darkness, and\nlistened.  He could hear Bathsheba's voice immediately inside the\ncanvas; she was conversing with a man.  A warmth overspread his\nface: surely she was not so unprincipled as to flirt in a fair!\nHe wondered if, then, she reckoned upon his death as an absolute\ncertainty.  To get at the root of the matter, Troy took a penknife\nfrom his pocket and softly made two little cuts crosswise in the\ncloth, which, by folding back the corners left a hole the size of a\nwafer.  Close to this he placed his face, withdrawing it again in a\nmovement of surprise; for his eye had been within twelve inches of\nthe top of Bathsheba's head.  It was too near to be convenient.  He\nmade another hole a little to one side and lower down, in a shaded\nplace beside her chair, from which it was easy and safe to survey\nher by looking horizontally.\n\nTroy took in the scene completely now.  She was leaning back, sipping\na cup of tea that she held in her hand, and the owner of the male\nvoice was Boldwood, who had apparently just brought the cup to her,\nBathsheba, being in a negligent mood, leant so idly against the\ncanvas that it was pressed to the shape of her shoulder, and she was,\nin fact, as good as in Troy's arms; and he was obliged to keep his\nbreast carefully backward that she might not feel its warmth through\nthe cloth as he gazed in.\n\nTroy found unexpected chords of feeling to be stirred again within\nhim as they had been stirred earlier in the day.  She was handsome\nas ever, and she was his.  It was some minutes before he could\ncounteract his sudden wish to go in, and claim her.  Then he thought\nhow the proud girl who had always looked down upon him even whilst it\nwas to love him, would hate him on discovering him to be a strolling\nplayer.  Were he to make himself known, that chapter of his life\nmust at all risks be kept for ever from her and from the Weatherbury\npeople, or his name would be a byword throughout the parish.  He\nwould be nicknamed \"Turpin\" as long as he lived.  Assuredly before\nhe could claim her these few past months of his existence must be\nentirely blotted out.\n\n\"Shall I get you another cup before you start, ma'am?\" said Farmer\nBoldwood.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Bathsheba.  \"But I must be going at once.  It was\ngreat neglect in that man to keep me waiting here till so late.  I\nshould have gone two hours ago, if it had not been for him.  I had no\nidea of coming in here; but there's nothing so refreshing as a cup of\ntea, though I should never have got one if you hadn't helped me.\"\n\nTroy scrutinized her cheek as lit by the candles, and watched each\nvarying shade thereon, and the white shell-like sinuosities of her\nlittle ear.  She took out her purse and was insisting to Boldwood on\npaying for her tea for herself, when at this moment Pennyways entered\nthe tent.  Troy trembled: here was his scheme for respectability\nendangered at once.  He was about to leave his hole of espial,\nattempt to follow Pennyways, and find out if the ex-bailiff had\nrecognized him, when he was arrested by the conversation, and found\nhe was too late.\n\n\"Excuse me, ma'am,\" said Pennyways; \"I've some private information\nfor your ear alone.\"\n\n\"I cannot hear it now,\" she said, coldly.  That Bathsheba could not\nendure this man was evident; in fact, he was continually coming to\nher with some tale or other, by which he might creep into favour at\nthe expense of persons maligned.\n\n\"I'll write it down,\" said Pennyways, confidently.  He stooped over\nthe table, pulled a leaf from a warped pocket-book, and wrote upon\nthe paper, in a round hand--\n\n\"YOUR HUSBAND IS HERE.  I'VE SEEN HIM.  WHO'S THE FOOL NOW?\"\n\nThis he folded small, and handed towards her.  Bathsheba would not\nread it; she would not even put out her hand to take it.  Pennyways,\nthen, with a laugh of derision, tossed it into her lap, and, turning\naway, left her.\n\nFrom the words and action of Pennyways, Troy, though he had not been\nable to see what the ex-bailiff wrote, had not a moment's doubt that\nthe note referred to him.  Nothing that he could think of could be\ndone to check the exposure.  \"Curse my luck!\" he whispered, and\nadded imprecations which rustled in the gloom like a pestilent wind.\nMeanwhile Boldwood said, taking up the note from her lap--\n\n\"Don't you wish to read it, Mrs. Troy?  If not, I'll destroy it.\"\n\n\"Oh, well,\" said Bathsheba, carelessly, \"perhaps it is unjust not to\nread it; but I can guess what it is about.  He wants me to recommend\nhim, or it is to tell me of some little scandal or another connected\nwith my work-people.  He's always doing that.\"\n\nBathsheba held the note in her right hand.  Boldwood handed towards\nher a plate of cut bread-and-butter; when, in order to take a slice,\nshe put the note into her left hand, where she was still holding\nthe purse, and then allowed her hand to drop beside her close to\nthe canvas.  The moment had come for saving his game, and Troy\nimpulsively felt that he would play the card.  For yet another time\nhe looked at the fair hand, and saw the pink finger-tips, and the\nblue veins of the wrist, encircled by a bracelet of coral chippings\nwhich she wore: how familiar it all was to him!  Then, with the\nlightning action in which he was such an adept, he noiselessly\nslipped his hand under the bottom of the tent-cloth, which was far\nfrom being pinned tightly down, lifted it a little way, keeping his\neye to the hole, snatched the note from her fingers, dropped the\ncanvas, and ran away in the gloom towards the bank and ditch, smiling\nat the scream of astonishment which burst from her.  Troy then slid\ndown on the outside of the rampart, hastened round in the bottom of\nthe entrenchment to a distance of a hundred yards, ascended again,\nand crossed boldly in a slow walk towards the front entrance of\nthe tent.  His object was now to get to Pennyways, and prevent a\nrepetition of the announcement until such time as he should choose.\n\nTroy reached the tent door, and standing among the groups there\ngathered, looked anxiously for Pennyways, evidently not wishing to\nmake himself prominent by inquiring for him.  One or two men were\nspeaking of a daring attempt that had just been made to rob a young\nlady by lifting the canvas of the tent beside her.  It was supposed\nthat the rogue had imagined a slip of paper which she held in her\nhand to be a bank note, for he had seized it, and made off with\nit, leaving her purse behind.  His chagrin and disappointment at\ndiscovering its worthlessness would be a good joke, it was said.\nHowever, the occurrence seemed to have become known to few, for it\nhad not interrupted a fiddler, who had lately begun playing by the\ndoor of the tent, nor the four bowed old men with grim countenances\nand walking-sticks in hand, who were dancing \"Major Malley's Reel\"\nto the tune.  Behind these stood Pennyways.  Troy glided up to him,\nbeckoned, and whispered a few words; and with a mutual glance of\nconcurrence the two men went into the night together.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBATHSHEBA TALKS WITH HER OUTRIDER\n\n\nThe arrangement for getting back again to Weatherbury had been that\nOak should take the place of Poorgrass in Bathsheba's conveyance and\ndrive her home, it being discovered late in the afternoon that Joseph\nwas suffering from his old complaint, a multiplying eye, and was,\ntherefore, hardly trustworthy as coachman and protector to a woman.\nBut Oak had found himself so occupied, and was full of so many\ncares relative to those portions of Boldwood's flocks that were not\ndisposed of, that Bathsheba, without telling Oak or anybody, resolved\nto drive home herself, as she had many times done from Casterbridge\nMarket, and trust to her good angel for performing the journey\nunmolested.  But having fallen in with Farmer Boldwood accidentally\n(on her part at least) at the refreshment-tent, she found it\nimpossible to refuse his offer to ride on horseback beside her as\nescort.  It had grown twilight before she was aware, but Boldwood\nassured her that there was no cause for uneasiness, as the moon\nwould be up in half-an-hour.\n\nImmediately after the incident in the tent, she had risen to\ngo--now absolutely alarmed and really grateful for her old lover's\nprotection--though regretting Gabriel's absence, whose company she\nwould have much preferred, as being more proper as well as more\npleasant, since he was her own managing-man and servant.  This,\nhowever, could not be helped; she would not, on any consideration,\ntreat Boldwood harshly, having once already ill-used him, and the\nmoon having risen, and the gig being ready, she drove across the\nhilltop in the wending way's which led downwards--to oblivious\nobscurity, as it seemed, for the moon and the hill it flooded with\nlight were in appearance on a level, the rest of the world lying as\na vast shady concave between them.  Boldwood mounted his horse, and\nfollowed in close attendance behind.  Thus they descended into the\nlowlands, and the sounds of those left on the hill came like voices\nfrom the sky, and the lights were as those of a camp in heaven.  They\nsoon passed the merry stragglers in the immediate vicinity of the\nhill, traversed Kingsbere, and got upon the high road.\n\nThe keen instincts of Bathsheba had perceived that the farmer's\nstaunch devotion to herself was still undiminished, and she\nsympathized deeply.  The sight had quite depressed her this evening;\nhad reminded her of her folly; she wished anew, as she had wished\nmany months ago, for some means of making reparation for her fault.\nHence her pity for the man who so persistently loved on to his own\ninjury and permanent gloom had betrayed Bathsheba into an injudicious\nconsiderateness of manner, which appeared almost like tenderness,\nand gave new vigour to the exquisite dream of a Jacob's seven years\nservice in poor Boldwood's mind.\n\nHe soon found an excuse for advancing from his position in the rear,\nand rode close by her side.  They had gone two or three miles in\nthe moonlight, speaking desultorily across the wheel of her gig\nconcerning the fair, farming, Oak's usefulness to them both, and\nother indifferent subjects, when Boldwood said suddenly and simply--\n\n\"Mrs. Troy, you will marry again some day?\"\n\nThis point-blank query unmistakably confused her, and it was not till\na minute or more had elapsed that she said, \"I have not seriously\nthought of any such subject.\"\n\n\"I quite understand that.  Yet your late husband has been dead nearly\none year, and--\"\n\n\"You forget that his death was never absolutely proved, and may not\nhave taken place; so that I may not be really a widow,\" she said,\ncatching at the straw of escape that the fact afforded.\n\n\"Not absolutely proved, perhaps, but it was proved circumstantially.\nA man saw him drowning, too.  No reasonable person has any doubt of\nhis death; nor have you, ma'am, I should imagine.\"\n\n\"I have none now, or I should have acted differently,\" she said,\ngently.  \"I certainly, at first, had a strange unaccountable feeling\nthat he could not have perished, but I have been able to explain that\nin several ways since.  But though I am fully persuaded that I shall\nsee him no more, I am far from thinking of marriage with another.  I\nshould be very contemptible to indulge in such a thought.\"\n\nThey were silent now awhile, and having struck into an unfrequented\ntrack across a common, the creaks of Boldwood's saddle and her gig\nsprings were all the sounds to be heard. Boldwood ended the pause.\n\n\"Do you remember when I carried you fainting in my arms into the\nKing's Arms, in Casterbridge?  Every dog has his day: that was mine.\"\n\n\"I know--I know it all,\" she said, hurriedly.\n\n\"I, for one, shall never cease regretting that events so fell out as\nto deny you to me.\"\n\n\"I, too, am very sorry,\" she said, and then checked herself.  \"I\nmean, you know, I am sorry you thought I--\"\n\n\"I have always this dreary pleasure in thinking over those past times\nwith you--that I was something to you before HE was anything, and\nthat you belonged ALMOST to me.  But, of course, that's nothing.  You\nnever liked me.\"\n\n\"I did; and respected you, too.\"\n\n\"Do you now?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Which?\"\n\n\"How do you mean which?\"\n\n\"Do you like me, or do you respect me?\"\n\n\"I don't know--at least, I cannot tell you.  It is difficult for a\nwoman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men\nto express theirs.  My treatment of you was thoughtless, inexcusable,\nwicked!  I shall eternally regret it.  If there had been anything\nI could have done to make amends I would most gladly have done\nit--there was nothing on earth I so longed to do as to repair the\nerror.  But that was not possible.\"\n\n\"Don't blame yourself--you were not so far in the wrong as you\nsuppose.  Bathsheba, suppose you had real complete proof that you are\nwhat, in fact, you are--a widow--would you repair the old wrong to me\nby marrying me?\"\n\n\"I cannot say.  I shouldn't yet, at any rate.\"\n\n\"But you might at some future time of your life?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I might at some time.\"\n\n\"Well, then, do you know that without further proof of any kind you\nmay marry again in about six years from the present--subject to\nnobody's objection or blame?\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" she said, quickly.  \"I know all that.  But don't talk of\nit--seven or six years--where may we all be by that time?\"\n\n\"They will soon glide by, and it will seem an astonishingly short\ntime to look back upon when they are past--much less than to look\nforward to now.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes; I have found that in my own experience.\"\n\n\"Now listen once more,\" Boldwood pleaded.  \"If I wait that time, will\nyou marry me?  You own that you owe me amends--let that be your way\nof making them.\"\n\n\"But, Mr. Boldwood--six years--\"\n\n\"Do you want to be the wife of any other man?\"\n\n\"No indeed!  I mean, that I don't like to talk about this matter now.\nPerhaps it is not proper, and I ought not to allow it.  Let us drop\nit.  My husband may be living, as I said.\"\n\n\"Of course, I'll drop the subject if you wish.  But propriety has\nnothing to do with reasons.  I am a middle-aged man, willing to\nprotect you for the remainder of our lives.  On your side, at least,\nthere is no passion or blamable haste--on mine, perhaps, there is.\nBut I can't help seeing that if you choose from a feeling of pity,\nand, as you say, a wish to make amends, to make a bargain with me for\na far-ahead time--an agreement which will set all things right and\nmake me happy, late though it may be--there is no fault to be found\nwith you as a woman.  Hadn't I the first place beside you?  Haven't\nyou been almost mine once already?  Surely you can say to me as much\nas this, you will have me back again should circumstances permit?\nNow, pray speak!  O Bathsheba, promise--it is only a little\npromise--that if you marry again, you will marry me!\"\n\nHis tone was so excited that she almost feared him at this moment,\neven whilst she sympathized.  It was a simple physical fear--the weak\nof the strong; there was no emotional aversion or inner repugnance.\nShe said, with some distress in her voice, for she remembered vividly\nhis outburst on the Yalbury Road, and shrank from a repetition of his\nanger:--\n\n\"I will never marry another man whilst you wish me to be your wife,\nwhatever comes--but to say more--you have taken me so by surprise--\"\n\n\"But let it stand in these simple words--that in six years' time you\nwill be my wife?  Unexpected accidents we'll not mention, because\nthose, of course, must be given way to.  Now, this time I know you\nwill keep your word.\"\n\n\"That's why I hesitate to give it.\"\n\n\"But do give it!  Remember the past, and be kind.\"\n\nShe breathed; and then said mournfully: \"Oh what shall I do?  I don't\nlove you, and I much fear that I never shall love you as much as a\nwoman ought to love a husband.  If you, sir, know that, and I can\nyet give you happiness by a mere promise to marry at the end of six\nyears, if my husband should not come back, it is a great honour to\nme.  And if you value such an act of friendship from a woman who\ndoesn't esteem herself as she did, and has little love left, why\nI--I will--\"\n\n\"Promise!\"\n\n\"--Consider, if I cannot promise soon.\"\n\n\"But soon is perhaps never?\"\n\n\"Oh no, it is not!  I mean soon.  Christmas, we'll say.\"\n\n\"Christmas!\"  He said nothing further till he added: \"Well, I'll say\nno more to you about it till that time.\"\n\n\nBathsheba was in a very peculiar state of mind, which showed how\nentirely the soul is the slave of the body, the ethereal spirit\ndependent for its quality upon the tangible flesh and blood.  It is\nhardly too much to say that she felt coerced by a force stronger than\nher own will, not only into the act of promising upon this singularly\nremote and vague matter, but into the emotion of fancying that she\nought to promise.  When the weeks intervening between the night of\nthis conversation and Christmas day began perceptibly to diminish,\nher anxiety and perplexity increased.\n\nOne day she was led by an accident into an oddly confidential\ndialogue with Gabriel about her difficulty.  It afforded her a little\nrelief--of a dull and cheerless kind.  They were auditing accounts,\nand something occurred in the course of their labours which led Oak\nto say, speaking of Boldwood, \"He'll never forget you, ma'am, never.\"\n\nThen out came her trouble before she was aware; and she told him how\nshe had again got into the toils; what Boldwood had asked her, and\nhow he was expecting her assent.  \"The most mournful reason of all\nfor my agreeing to it,\" she said sadly, \"and the true reason why I\nthink to do so for good or for evil, is this--it is a thing I have\nnot breathed to a living soul as yet--I believe that if I don't give\nmy word, he'll go out of his mind.\"\n\n\"Really, do ye?\" said Gabriel, gravely.\n\n\"I believe this,\" she continued, with reckless frankness; \"and Heaven\nknows I say it in a spirit the very reverse of vain, for I am grieved\nand troubled to my soul about it--I believe I hold that man's future\nin my hand.  His career depends entirely upon my treatment of him.  O\nGabriel, I tremble at my responsibility, for it is terrible!\"\n\n\"Well, I think this much, ma'am, as I told you years ago,\" said Oak,\n\"that his life is a total blank whenever he isn't hoping for 'ee; but\nI can't suppose--I hope that nothing so dreadful hangs on to it as\nyou fancy.  His natural manner has always been dark and strange, you\nknow.  But since the case is so sad and odd-like, why don't ye give\nthe conditional promise?  I think I would.\"\n\n\"But is it right?  Some rash acts of my past life have taught me that\na watched woman must have very much circumspection to retain only a\nvery little credit, and I do want and long to be discreet in this!\nAnd six years--why we may all be in our graves by that time, even if\nMr. Troy does not come back again, which he may not impossibly do!\nSuch thoughts give a sort of absurdity to the scheme.  Now, isn't\nit preposterous, Gabriel?  However he came to dream of it, I cannot\nthink.  But is it wrong?  You know--you are older than I.\"\n\n\"Eight years older, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Yes, eight years--and is it wrong?\"\n\n\"Perhaps it would be an uncommon agreement for a man and woman to\nmake: I don't see anything really wrong about it,\" said Oak, slowly.\n\"In fact the very thing that makes it doubtful if you ought to marry\nen under any condition, that is, your not caring about him--for I\nmay suppose--\"\n\n\"Yes, you may suppose that love is wanting,\" she said shortly.  \"Love\nis an utterly bygone, sorry, worn-out, miserable thing with me--for\nhim or any one else.\"\n\n\"Well, your want of love seems to me the one thing that takes away\nharm from such an agreement with him.  If wild heat had to do wi'\nit, making ye long to over-come the awkwardness about your husband's\nvanishing, it mid be wrong; but a cold-hearted agreement to oblige a\nman seems different, somehow.  The real sin, ma'am in my mind, lies\nin thinking of ever wedding wi' a man you don't love honest and\ntrue.\"\n\n\"That I'm willing to pay the penalty of,\" said Bathsheba, firmly.\n\"You know, Gabriel, this is what I cannot get off my conscience--that\nI once seriously injured him in sheer idleness.  If I had never\nplayed a trick upon him, he would never have wanted to marry me.  Oh\nif I could only pay some heavy damages in money to him for the harm\nI did, and so get the sin off my soul that way!...  Well, there's\nthe debt, which can only be discharged in one way, and I believe\nI am bound to do it if it honestly lies in my power, without any\nconsideration of my own future at all.  When a rake gambles away his\nexpectations, the fact that it is an inconvenient debt doesn't make\nhim the less liable.  I've been a rake, and the single point I ask\nyou is, considering that my own scruples, and the fact that in the\neye of the law my husband is only missing, will keep any man from\nmarrying me until seven years have passed--am I free to entertain\nsuch an idea, even though 'tis a sort of penance--for it will be\nthat?  I HATE the act of marriage under such circumstances, and the\nclass of women I should seem to belong to by doing it!\"\n\n\"It seems to me that all depends upon whe'r you think, as everybody\nelse do, that your husband is dead.\"\n\n\"Yes--I've long ceased to doubt that.  I well know what would have\nbrought him back long before this time if he had lived.\"\n\n\"Well, then, in a religious sense you will be as free to THINK o'\nmarrying again as any real widow of one year's standing.  But why\ndon't ye ask Mr. Thirdly's advice on how to treat Mr. Boldwood?\"\n\n\"No.  When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment,\ndistinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in\nthe subject professionally.  So I like the parson's opinion on\nlaw, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my\nbusiness-man's--that is, yours--on morals.\"\n\n\"And on love--\"\n\n\"My own.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid there's a hitch in that argument,\" said Oak, with a grave\nsmile.\n\nShe did not reply at once, and then saying, \"Good evening, Mr. Oak.\"\nwent away.\n\nShe had spoken frankly, and neither asked nor expected any reply\nfrom Gabriel more satisfactory than that she had obtained.  Yet in\nthe centremost parts of her complicated heart there existed at this\nminute a little pang of disappointment, for a reason she would not\nallow herself to recognize.  Oak had not once wished her free that he\nmight marry her himself--had not once said, \"I could wait for you as\nwell as he.\"  That was the insect sting.  Not that she would have\nlistened to any such hypothesis.  O no--for wasn't she saying all\nthe time that such thoughts of the future were improper, and wasn't\nGabriel far too poor a man to speak sentiment to her?  Yet he might\nhave just hinted about that old love of his, and asked, in a playful\noff-hand way, if he might speak of it.  It would have seemed pretty\nand sweet, if no more; and then she would have shown how kind and\ninoffensive a woman's \"No\" can sometimes be.  But to give such cool\nadvice--the very advice she had asked for--it ruffled our heroine all\nthe afternoon.\n\n\n\nCONVERGING COURSES\n\n\nChristmas-eve came, and a party that Boldwood was to give in the\nevening was the great subject of talk in Weatherbury.  It was not\nthat the rarity of Christmas parties in the parish made this one a\nwonder, but that Boldwood should be the giver.  The announcement\nhad had an abnormal and incongruous sound, as if one should hear of\ncroquet-playing in a cathedral aisle, or that some much-respected\njudge was going upon the stage.  That the party was intended to be\na truly jovial one there was no room for doubt.  A large bough of\nmistletoe had been brought from the woods that day, and suspended\nin the hall of the bachelor's home.  Holly and ivy had followed in\narmfuls.  From six that morning till past noon the huge wood fire\nin the kitchen roared and sparkled at its highest, the kettle, the\nsaucepan, and the three-legged pot appearing in the midst of the\nflames like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; moreover, roasting\nand basting operations were continually carried on in front of the\ngenial blaze.\n\nAs it grew later the fire was made up in the large long hall into\nwhich the staircase descended, and all encumbrances were cleared out\nfor dancing.  The log which was to form the back-brand of the evening\nfire was the uncleft trunk of a tree, so unwieldy that it could be\nneither brought nor rolled to its place; and accordingly two men were\nto be observed dragging and heaving it in by chains and levers as the\nhour of assembly drew near.\n\nIn spite of all this, the spirit of revelry was wanting in the\natmosphere of the house.  Such a thing had never been attempted\nbefore by its owner, and it was now done as by a wrench.  Intended\ngaieties would insist upon appearing like solemn grandeurs, the\norganization of the whole effort was carried out coldly, by\nhirelings, and a shadow seemed to move about the rooms, saying that\nthe proceedings were unnatural to the place and the lone man who\nlived therein, and hence not good.\n\n\nBathsheba was at this time in her room, dressing for the event.  She\nhad called for candles, and Liddy entered and placed one on each side\nof her mistress's glass.\n\n\"Don't go away, Liddy,\" said Bathsheba, almost timidly. \"I am\nfoolishly agitated--I cannot tell why.  I wish I had not been obliged\nto go to this dance; but there's no escaping now.  I have not spoken\nto Mr. Boldwood since the autumn, when I promised to see him at\nChristmas on business, but I had no idea there was to be anything of\nthis kind.\"\n\n\"But I would go now,\" said Liddy, who was going with her; for\nBoldwood had been indiscriminate in his invitations.\n\n\"Yes, I shall make my appearance, of course,\" said Bathsheba.  \"But I\nam THE CAUSE of the party, and that upsets me!--Don't tell, Liddy.\"\n\n\"Oh no, ma'am.  You the cause of it, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Yes.  I am the reason of the party--I.  If it had not been for me,\n    there would never have been one.  I can't explain any more--there's\n    no more to be explained.  I wish I had never seen Weatherbury.\"\n\n    \"That's wicked of you--to wish to be worse off than you are.\"\n\n    \"No, Liddy.  I have never been free from trouble since I have lived\n    here, and this party is likely to bring me more.  Now, fetch my black\n    silk dress, and see how it sits upon me.\"\n\n    \"But you will leave off that, surely, ma'am?  You have been a\n    widow-lady fourteen months, and ought to brighten up a little on\n    such a night as this.\"\n\n    \"Is it necessary?  No; I will appear as usual, for if I were to wear\n    any light dress people would say things about me, and I should seem\n    to be rejoicing when I am solemn all the time.  The party doesn't\n    suit me a bit; but never mind, stay and help to finish me off.\"\n\n    Boldwood was dressing also at this hour.  A tailor from Casterbridge\n    was with him, assisting him in the operation of trying on a new coat\n    that had just been brought home.\n\n    Never had Boldwood been so fastidious, unreasonable about the fit,\n    and generally difficult to please.  The tailor walked round and round\n    him, tugged at the waist, pulled the sleeve, pressed out the collar,\n    and for the first time in his experience Boldwood was not bored.\n    Times had been when the farmer had exclaimed against all such\n    niceties as childish, but now no philosophic or hasty rebuke whatever\n    was provoked by this man for attaching as much importance to a crease\n    in the coat as to an earthquake in South America.  Boldwood at last\n    expressed himself nearly satisfied, and paid the bill, the tailor\n    passing out of the door just as Oak came in to report progress for\n    the day.\n\n    \"Oh, Oak,\" said Boldwood.  \"I shall of course see you here to-night.\n    Make yourself merry.  I am determined that neither expense nor\n    trouble shall be spared.\"\n\n    \"I'll try to be here, sir, though perhaps it may not be very early,\"\n    said Gabriel, quietly.  \"I am glad indeed to see such a change in\n    'ee from what it used to be.\"\n\n    \"Yes--I must own it--I am bright to-night: cheerful and more than\n    cheerful--so much so that I am almost sad again with the sense that\n    all of it is passing away.  And sometimes, when I am excessively\n    hopeful and blithe, a trouble is looming in the distance: so that I\n    often get to look upon gloom in me with content, and to fear a happy\n    mood.  Still this may be absurd--I feel that it is absurd.  Perhaps\n    my day is dawning at last.\"\n\n    \"I hope it 'ill be a long and a fair one.\"\n\n    \"Thank you--thank you.  Yet perhaps my cheerfulness rests on a\n    slender hope.  And yet I trust my hope.  It is faith, not hope.  I\n    think this time I reckon with my host.--Oak, my hands are a little\n    shaky, or something; I can't tie this neckerchief properly.  Perhaps\n    you will tie it for me.  The fact is, I have not been well lately,\n    you know.\"\n\n    \"I am sorry to hear that, sir.\"\n\n    \"Oh, it's nothing.  I want it done as well as you can, please.  Is\n    there any late knot in fashion, Oak?\"\n\n    \"I don't know, sir,\" said Oak.  His tone had sunk to sadness.\n\n    Boldwood approached Gabriel, and as Oak tied the neckerchief the\n    farmer went on feverishly--\n\n    \"Does a woman keep her promise, Gabriel?\"\n\n    \"If it is not inconvenient to her she may.\"\n\n    \"--Or rather an implied promise.\"\n\n    \"I won't answer for her implying,\" said Oak, with faint bitterness.\n    \"That's a word as full o' holes as a sieve with them.\"\n\n    \"Oak, don't talk like that.  You have got quite cynical lately--how\n    is it?  We seem to have shifted our positions: I have become the\n    young and hopeful man, and you the old and unbelieving one.  However,\n    does a woman keep a promise, not to marry, but to enter on an\n    engagement to marry at some time?  Now you know women better than\n    I--tell me.\"\n\n    \"I am afeard you honour my understanding too much.  However, she may\n    keep such a promise, if it is made with an honest meaning to repair\n    a wrong.\"\n\n    \"It has not gone far yet, but I think it will soon--yes, I know it\n    will,\" he said, in an impulsive whisper.  \"I have pressed her upon\n    the subject, and she inclines to be kind to me, and to think of me\n    as a husband at a long future time, and that's enough for me.  How\n    can I expect more?  She has a notion that a woman should not marry\n    within seven years of her husband's disappearance--that her own self\n    shouldn't, I mean--because his body was not found.  It may be merely\n    this legal reason which influences her, or it may be a religious\n    one, but she is reluctant to talk on the point. Yet she has\n    promised--implied--that she will ratify an engagement to-night.\"\n\n    \"Seven years,\" murmured Oak.\n\n    \"No, no--it's no such thing!\" he said, with impatience.  \"Five years,\n    nine months, and a few days.  Fifteen months nearly have passed since\n    he vanished, and is there anything so wonderful in an engagement of\n    little more than five years?\"\n\n    \"It seems long in a forward view.  Don't build too much upon such\n    promises, sir.  Remember, you have once be'n deceived.  Her meaning\n    may be good; but there--she's young yet.\"\n\n    \"Deceived?  Never!\" said Boldwood, vehemently.  \"She never promised\n    me at that first time, and hence she did not break her promise!  If\n    she promises me, she'll marry me.  Bathsheba is a woman to her word.\"\n\n    Troy was sitting in a corner of The White Hart tavern at\n    Casterbridge, smoking and drinking a steaming mixture from a glass.\n    A knock was given at the door, and Pennyways entered.\n\n    \"Well, have you seen him?\" Troy inquired, pointing to a chair.\n\n    \"Boldwood?\"\n\n    \"No--Lawyer Long.\"\n\n    \"He wadn' at home.  I went there first, too.\"\n\n    \"That's a nuisance.\"\n\n    \"'Tis rather, I suppose.\"\n\n    \"Yet I don't see that, because a man appears to be drowned and was\n    not, he should be liable for anything.  I shan't ask any lawyer--not\n    I.\"\n\n    \"But that's not it, exactly.  If a man changes his name and so forth,\n    and takes steps to deceive the world and his own wife, he's a cheat,\n    and that in the eye of the law is ayless a rogue, and that is ayless\n    a lammocken vagabond; and that's a punishable situation.\"\n\n    \"Ha-ha!  Well done, Pennyways,\" Troy had laughed, but it was with\n    some anxiety that he said, \"Now, what I want to know is this, do you\n    think there's really anything going on between her and Boldwood?\n    Upon my soul, I should never have believed it!  How she must detest\n    me!  Have you found out whether she has encouraged him?\"\n\n    \"I haen't been able to learn.  There's a deal of feeling on his side\n    seemingly, but I don't answer for her.  I didn't know a word about\n    any such thing till yesterday, and all I heard then was that she was\n    gwine to the party at his house to-night.  This is the first time she\n    has ever gone there, they say.  And they say that she've not so much\n    as spoke to him since they were at Greenhill Fair: but what can folk\n    believe o't?  However, she's not fond of him--quite offish and quite\n    careless, I know.\"\n\n    \"I'm not so sure of that....  She's a handsome woman, Pennyways, is\n    she not?  Own that you never saw a finer or more splendid creature\n    in your life.  Upon my honour, when I set eyes upon her that day I\n    wondered what I could have been made of to be able to leave her by\n    herself so long.  And then I was hampered with that bothering show,\n    which I'm free of at last, thank the stars.\"  He smoked on awhile,\n    and then added, \"How did she look when you passed by yesterday?\"\n\n    \"Oh, she took no great heed of me, ye may well fancy; but she looked\n    well enough, far's I know.  Just flashed her haughty eyes upon my\n    poor scram body, and then let them go past me to what was yond, much\n    as if I'd been no more than a leafless tree.  She had just got off\n    her mare to look at the last wring-down of cider for the year; she\n    had been riding, and so her colours were up and her breath rather\n    quick, so that her bosom plimmed and fell--plimmed and fell--every\n    time plain to my eye.  Ay, and there were the fellers round her\n    wringing down the cheese and bustling about and saying, 'Ware o' the\n    pommy, ma'am: 'twill spoil yer gown.'  'Never mind me,' says she.\n    Then Gabe brought her some of the new cider, and she must needs go\n    drinking it through a strawmote, and not in a nateral way at all.\n    'Liddy,' says she, 'bring indoors a few gallons, and I'll make some\n    cider-wine.'  Sergeant, I was no more to her than a morsel of scroff\n    in the fuel-house!\"\n\n    \"I must go and find her out at once--O yes, I see that--I must go.\n    Oak is head man still, isn't he?\"\n\n    \"Yes, 'a b'lieve.  And at Little Weatherbury Farm too.  He manages\n    everything.\"\n\n    \"'Twill puzzle him to manage her, or any other man of his compass!\"\n\n    \"I don't know about that.  She can't do without him, and knowing it\n    well he's pretty independent.  And she've a few soft corners to her\n    mind, though I've never been able to get into one, the devil's in't!\"\n\n    \"Ah, baily, she's a notch above you, and you must own it: a higher\n    class of animal--a finer tissue.  However, stick to me, and neither\n    this haughty goddess, dashing piece of womanhood, Juno-wife of mine\n    (Juno was a goddess, you know), nor anybody else shall hurt you.  But\n    all this wants looking into, I perceive.  What with one thing and\n    another, I see that my work is well cut out for me.\"\n\n    \"How do I look to-night, Liddy?\" said Bathsheba, giving a final\n    adjustment to her dress before leaving the glass.\n\n    \"I never saw you look so well before.  Yes--I'll tell you when you\n    looked like it--that night, a year and a half ago, when you came in\n    so wildlike, and scolded us for making remarks about you and Mr.\n    Troy.\"\n\n    \"Everybody will think that I am setting myself to captivate Mr.\n    Boldwood, I suppose,\" she murmured.  \"At least they'll say so.  Can't\n    my hair be brushed down a little flatter? I dread going--yet I dread\n    the risk of wounding him by staying away.\"\n\n    \"Anyhow, ma'am, you can't well be dressed plainer than you are,\n    unless you go in sackcloth at once.  'Tis your excitement is what\n    makes you look so noticeable to-night.\"\n\n    \"I don't know what's the matter, I feel wretched at one time, and\n    buoyant at another.  I wish I could have continued quite alone as I\n    have been for the last year or so, with no hopes and no fears, and\n    no pleasure and no grief.\"\n\n    \"Now just suppose Mr. Boldwood should ask you--only just suppose\n    it--to run away with him, what would you do, ma'am?\"\n\n    \"Liddy--none of that,\" said Bathsheba, gravely.  \"Mind, I won't hear\n    joking on any such matter.  Do you hear?\"\n\n    \"I beg pardon, ma'am.  But knowing what rum things we women be, I\n    just said--however, I won't speak of it again.\"\n\n    \"No marrying for me yet for many a year; if ever, 'twill be for\n    reasons very, very different from those you think, or others will\n    believe!  Now get my cloak, for it is time to go.\"\n\n\n    \"Oak,\" said Boldwood, \"before you go I want to mention what has been\n    passing in my mind lately--that little arrangement we made about\n    your share in the farm I mean.  That share is small, too small,\n    considering how little I attend to business now, and how much time\n    and thought you give to it.  Well, since the world is brightening\n    for me, I want to show my sense of it by increasing your proportion\n    in the partnership.  I'll make a memorandum of the arrangement which\n    struck me as likely to be convenient, for I haven't time to talk\n    about it now; and then we'll discuss it at our leisure.  My intention\n    is ultimately to retire from the management altogether, and until you\n    can take all the expenditure upon your shoulders, I'll be a sleeping\n    partner in the stock.  Then, if I marry her--and I hope--I feel I\n    shall, why--\"\n\n    \"Pray don't speak of it, sir,\" said Oak, hastily.  \"We don't know\n    what may happen.  So many upsets may befall 'ee.  There's many a\n    slip, as they say--and I would advise you--I know you'll pardon me\n    this once--not to be TOO SURE.\"\n\n    \"I know, I know.  But the feeling I have about increasing your share\n    is on account of what I know of you.  Oak, I have learnt a little\n    about your secret: your interest in her is more than that of bailiff\n    for an employer.  But you have behaved like a man, and I, as a sort\n    of successful rival--successful partly through your goodness of\n    heart--should like definitely to show my sense of your friendship\n    under what must have been a great pain to you.\"\n\n    \"O that's not necessary, thank 'ee,\" said Oak, hurriedly. \"I must get\n    used to such as that; other men have, and so shall I.\"\n\n    Oak then left him.  He was uneasy on Boldwood's account, for he saw\n    anew that this constant passion of the farmer made him not the man\n    he once had been.\n\n    As Boldwood continued awhile in his room alone--ready and dressed to\n    receive his company--the mood of anxiety about his appearance seemed\n    to pass away, and to be succeeded by a deep solemnity.  He looked out\n    of the window, and regarded the dim outline of the trees upon the\n    sky, and the twilight deepening to darkness.\n\n    Then he went to a locked closet, and took from a locked drawer\n    therein a small circular case the size of a pillbox, and was about to\n    put it into his pocket.  But he lingered to open the cover and take\n    a momentary glance inside.  It contained a woman's finger-ring, set\n    all the way round with small diamonds, and from its appearance had\n    evidently been recently purchased.  Boldwood's eyes dwelt upon its\n    many sparkles a long time, though that its material aspect concerned\n    him little was plain from his manner and mien, which were those of\n    a mind following out the presumed thread of that jewel's future\n    history.\n\n    The noise of wheels at the front of the house became audible.\n    Boldwood closed the box, stowed it away carefully in his pocket, and\n    went out upon the landing.  The old man who was his indoor factotum\n    came at the same moment to the foot of the stairs.\n\n    \"They be coming, sir--lots of 'em--a-foot and a-driving!\"\n\n    \"I was coming down this moment.  Those wheels I heard--is it Mrs.\n    Troy?\"\n\n    \"No, sir--'tis not she yet.\"\n\n    A reserved and sombre expression had returned to Boldwood's face\n    again, but it poorly cloaked his feelings when he pronounced\n    Bathsheba's name; and his feverish anxiety continued to show its\n    existence by a galloping motion of his fingers upon the side of\n    his thigh as he went down the stairs.\n\n\n    \"How does this cover me?\" said Troy to Pennyways.  \"Nobody would\n    recognize me now, I'm sure.\"\n\n    He was buttoning on a heavy grey overcoat of Noachian cut, with cape\n    and high collar, the latter being erect and rigid, like a girdling\n    wall, and nearly reaching to the verge of a travelling cap which was\n    pulled down over his ears.\n\n    Pennyways snuffed the candle, and then looked up and deliberately\n    inspected Troy.\n\n    \"You've made up your mind to go then?\" he said.\n\n    \"Made up my mind?  Yes; of course I have.\"\n\n    \"Why not write to her?  'Tis a very queer corner that you have got\n    into, sergeant.  You see all these things will come to light if you\n    go back, and they won't sound well at all.  Faith, if I was you I'd\n    even bide as you be--a single man of the name of Francis.  A good\n    wife is good, but the best wife is not so good as no wife at all.\n    Now that's my outspoke mind, and I've been called a long-headed\n    feller here and there.\"\n\n    \"All nonsense!\" said Troy, angrily.  \"There she is with plenty of\n    money, and a house and farm, and horses, and comfort, and here am I\n    living from hand to mouth--a needy adventurer.  Besides, it is no use\n    talking now; it is too late, and I am glad of it; I've been seen and\n    recognized here this very afternoon.  I should have gone back to her\n    the day after the fair, if it hadn't been for you talking about the\n    law, and rubbish about getting a separation; and I don't put it off\n    any longer.  What the deuce put it into my head to run away at all, I\n    can't think!  Humbugging sentiment--that's what it was.  But what man\n    on earth was to know that his wife would be in such a hurry to get\n    rid of his name!\"\n\n    \"I should have known it.  She's bad enough for anything.\"\n\n    \"Pennyways, mind who you are talking to.\"\n\n    \"Well, sergeant, all I say is this, that if I were you I'd go abroad\n    again where I came from--'tisn't too late to do it now.  I wouldn't\n    stir up the business and get a bad name for the sake of living with\n    her--for all that about your play-acting is sure to come out, you\n    know, although you think otherwise.  My eyes and limbs, there'll\n    be a racket if you go back just now--in the middle of Boldwood's\n    Christmasing!\"\n\n    \"H'm, yes.  I expect I shall not be a very welcome guest if he has\n    her there,\" said the sergeant, with a slight laugh.  \"A sort of\n    Alonzo the Brave; and when I go in the guests will sit in silence and\n    fear, and all laughter and pleasure will be hushed, and the lights in\n    the chamber burn blue, and the worms--Ugh, horrible!--Ring for some\n    more brandy, Pennyways, I felt an awful shudder just then!  Well,\n    what is there besides?  A stick--I must have a walking-stick.\"\n\n    Pennyways now felt himself to be in something of a difficulty, for\n    should Bathsheba and Troy become reconciled it would be necessary\n    to regain her good opinion if he would secure the patronage of her\n    husband.  \"I sometimes think she likes you yet, and is a good woman\n    at bottom,\" he said, as a saving sentence.  \"But there's no telling\n    to a certainty from a body's outside.  Well, you'll do as you like\n    about going, of course, sergeant, and as for me, I'll do as you tell\n    me.\"\n\n    \"Now, let me see what the time is,\" said Troy, after emptying his\n    glass in one draught as he stood.  \"Half-past six o'clock.  I shall\n    not hurry along the road, and shall be there then before nine.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONCURRITUR--HORAE MOMENTO\n\n\nOutside the front of Boldwood's house a group of men stood in the\ndark, with their faces towards the door, which occasionally opened\nand closed for the passage of some guest or servant, when a golden\nrod of light would stripe the ground for the moment and vanish again,\nleaving nothing outside but the glowworm shine of the pale lamp amid\nthe evergreens over the door.\n\n\"He was seen in Casterbridge this afternoon--so the boy said,\" one of\nthem remarked in a whisper.  \"And I for one believe it.  His body was\nnever found, you know.\"\n\n\"'Tis a strange story,\" said the next.  \"You may depend upon't that\nshe knows nothing about it.\"\n\n\"Not a word.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he don't mean that she shall,\" said another man.\n\n\"If he's alive and here in the neighbourhood, he means mischief,\"\nsaid the first.  \"Poor young thing: I do pity her, if 'tis true.\nHe'll drag her to the dogs.\"\n\n\"O no; he'll settle down quiet enough,\" said one disposed to take a\nmore hopeful view of the case.\n\n\"What a fool she must have been ever to have had anything to do with\nthe man!  She is so self-willed and independent too, that one is more\nminded to say it serves her right than pity her.\"\n\n\"No, no.  I don't hold with 'ee there.  She was no otherwise than a\ngirl mind, and how could she tell what the man was made of?  If 'tis\nreally true, 'tis too hard a punishment, and more than she ought to\nhae.--Hullo, who's that?\"  This was to some footsteps that were heard\napproaching.\n\n\"William Smallbury,\" said a dim figure in the shades, coming up and\njoining them.  \"Dark as a hedge, to-night, isn't it? I all but missed\nthe plank over the river ath'art there in the bottom--never did such\na thing before in my life.  Be ye any of Boldwood's workfolk?\"  He\npeered into their faces.\n\n\"Yes--all o' us.  We met here a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\"Oh, I hear now--that's Sam Samway: thought I knowed the voice, too.\nGoing in?\"\n\n\"Presently.  But I say, William,\" Samway whispered, \"have ye heard\nthis strange tale?\"\n\n\"What--that about Sergeant Troy being seen, d'ye mean, souls?\" said\nSmallbury, also lowering his voice.\n\n\"Ay: in Casterbridge.\"\n\n\"Yes, I have.  Laban Tall named a hint of it to me but now--but I\ndon't think it.  Hark, here Laban comes himself, 'a b'lieve.\"  A\nfootstep drew near.\n\n\"Laban?\"\n\n\"Yes, 'tis I,\" said Tall.\n\n\"Have ye heard any more about that?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Tall, joining the group.  \"And I'm inclined to think we'd\nbetter keep quiet.  If so be 'tis not true, 'twill flurry her, and do\nher much harm to repeat it; and if so be 'tis true, 'twill do no good\nto forestall her time o' trouble.  God send that it mid be a lie, for\nthough Henery Fray and some of 'em do speak against her, she's never\nbeen anything but fair to me.  She's hot and hasty, but she's a brave\ngirl who'll never tell a lie however much the truth may harm her, and\nI've no cause to wish her evil.\"\n\n\"She never do tell women's little lies, that's true; and 'tis a thing\nthat can be said of very few.  Ay, all the harm she thinks she says\nto yer face: there's nothing underhand wi' her.\"\n\nThey stood silent then, every man busied with his own thoughts,\nduring which interval sounds of merriment could be heard within.\nThen the front door again opened, the rays streamed out, the\nwell-known form of Boldwood was seen in the rectangular area of\nlight, the door closed, and Boldwood walked slowly down the path.\n\n\"'Tis master,\" one of the men whispered, as he neared them. \"We'd\nbetter stand quiet--he'll go in again directly.  He would think it\nunseemly o' us to be loitering here.\"\n\nBoldwood came on, and passed by the men without seeing them, they\nbeing under the bushes on the grass.  He paused, leant over the gate,\nand breathed a long breath.  They heard low words come from him.\n\n\"I hope to God she'll come, or this night will be nothing but misery\nto me!  Oh my darling, my darling, why do you keep me in suspense\nlike this?\"\n\nHe said this to himself, and they all distinctly heard it.  Boldwood\nremained silent after that, and the noise from indoors was again\njust audible, until, a few minutes later, light wheels could be\ndistinguished coming down the hill.  They drew nearer, and ceased at\nthe gate.  Boldwood hastened back to the door, and opened it; and the\nlight shone upon Bathsheba coming up the path.\n\nBoldwood compressed his emotion to mere welcome: the men marked her\nlight laugh and apology as she met him: he took her into the house;\nand the door closed again.\n\n\"Gracious heaven, I didn't know it was like that with him!\" said one\nof the men.  \"I thought that fancy of his was over long ago.\"\n\n\"You don't know much of master, if you thought that,\" said Samway.\n\n\"I wouldn't he should know we heard what 'a said for the world,\"\nremarked a third.\n\n\"I wish we had told of the report at once,\" the first uneasily\ncontinued.  \"More harm may come of this than we know of.  Poor Mr.\nBoldwood, it will be hard upon en.  I wish Troy was in--Well, God\nforgive me for such a wish!  A scoundrel to play a poor wife such\ntricks.  Nothing has prospered in Weatherbury since he came here.\nAnd now I've no heart to go in.  Let's look into Warren's for a few\nminutes first, shall us, neighbours?\"\n\nSamway, Tall, and Smallbury agreed to go to Warren's, and went out at\nthe gate, the remaining ones entering the house.  The three soon drew\nnear the malt-house, approaching it from the adjoining orchard, and\nnot by way of the street.  The pane of glass was illuminated as\nusual.  Smallbury was a little in advance of the rest when, pausing,\nhe turned suddenly to his companions and said, \"Hist!  See there.\"\n\nThe light from the pane was now perceived to be shining not upon the\nivied wall as usual, but upon some object close to the glass.  It was\na human face.\n\n\"Let's come closer,\" whispered Samway; and they approached on tiptoe.\nThere was no disbelieving the report any longer.  Troy's face was\nalmost close to the pane, and he was looking in.  Not only was he\nlooking in, but he appeared to have been arrested by a conversation\nwhich was in progress in the malt-house, the voices of the\ninterlocutors being those of Oak and the maltster.\n\n\"The spree is all in her honour, isn't it--hey?\" said the old man.\n\"Although he made believe 'tis only keeping up o' Christmas?\"\n\n\"I cannot say,\" replied Oak.\n\n\"Oh 'tis true enough, faith.  I cannot understand Farmer Boldwood\nbeing such a fool at his time of life as to ho and hanker after this\nwoman in the way 'a do, and she not care a bit about en.\"\n\nThe men, after recognizing Troy's features, withdrew across\nthe orchard as quietly as they had come.  The air was big with\nBathsheba's fortunes to-night: every word everywhere concerned her.\nWhen they were quite out of earshot all by one instinct paused.\n\n\"It gave me quite a turn--his face,\" said Tall, breathing.\n\n\"And so it did me,\" said Samway.  \"What's to be done?\"\n\n\"I don't see that 'tis any business of ours,\" Smallbury murmured\ndubiously.\n\n\"But it is!  'Tis a thing which is everybody's business,\" said\nSamway.  \"We know very well that master's on a wrong tack, and that\nshe's quite in the dark, and we should let 'em know at once.  Laban,\nyou know her best--you'd better go and ask to speak to her.\"\n\n\"I bain't fit for any such thing,\" said Laban, nervously.  \"I should\nthink William ought to do it if anybody.  He's oldest.\"\n\n\"I shall have nothing to do with it,\" said Smallbury.  \"'Tis a\nticklish business altogether.  Why, he'll go on to her himself in a\nfew minutes, ye'll see.\"\n\n\"We don't know that he will.  Come, Laban.\"\n\n\"Very well, if I must I must, I suppose,\" Tall reluctantly answered.\n\"What must I say?\"\n\n\"Just ask to see master.\"\n\n\"Oh no; I shan't speak to Mr. Boldwood.  If I tell anybody, 'twill be\nmistress.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Samway.\n\nLaban then went to the door.  When he opened it the hum of bustle\nrolled out as a wave upon a still strand--the assemblage being\nimmediately inside the hall--and was deadened to a murmur as he\nclosed it again.  Each man waited intently, and looked around at\nthe dark tree tops gently rocking against the sky and occasionally\nshivering in a slight wind, as if he took interest in the scene,\nwhich neither did.  One of them began walking up and down, and then\ncame to where he started from and stopped again, with a sense that\nwalking was a thing not worth doing now.\n\n\"I should think Laban must have seen mistress by this time,\" said\nSmallbury, breaking the silence.  \"Perhaps she won't come and speak\nto him.\"\n\nThe door opened.  Tall appeared, and joined them.\n\n\"Well?\" said both.\n\n\"I didn't like to ask for her after all,\" Laban faltered out.  \"They\nwere all in such a stir, trying to put a little spirit into the\nparty.  Somehow the fun seems to hang fire, though everything's there\nthat a heart can desire, and I couldn't for my soul interfere and\nthrow damp upon it--if 'twas to save my life, I couldn't!\"\n\n\"I suppose we had better all go in together,\" said Samway, gloomily.\n\"Perhaps I may have a chance of saying a word to master.\"\n\nSo the men entered the hall, which was the room selected and arranged\nfor the gathering because of its size.  The younger men and maids\nwere at last just beginning to dance.  Bathsheba had been perplexed\nhow to act, for she was not much more than a slim young maid herself,\nand the weight of stateliness sat heavy upon her.  Sometimes she\nthought she ought not to have come under any circumstances; then she\nconsidered what cold unkindness that would have been, and finally\nresolved upon the middle course of staying for about an hour only,\nand gliding off unobserved, having from the first made up her mind\nthat she could on no account dance, sing, or take any active part in\nthe proceedings.\n\nHer allotted hour having been passed in chatting and looking on,\nBathsheba told Liddy not to hurry herself, and went to the small\nparlour to prepare for departure, which, like the hall, was decorated\nwith holly and ivy, and well lighted up.\n\nNobody was in the room, but she had hardly been there a moment when\nthe master of the house entered.\n\n\"Mrs. Troy--you are not going?\" he said.  \"We've hardly begun!\"\n\n\"If you'll excuse me, I should like to go now.\"  Her manner was\nrestive, for she remembered her promise, and imagined what he was\nabout to say.  \"But as it is not late,\" she added, \"I can walk home,\nand leave my man and Liddy to come when they choose.\"\n\n\"I've been trying to get an opportunity of speaking to you,\" said\nBoldwood.  \"You know perhaps what I long to say?\"\n\nBathsheba silently looked on the floor.\n\n\"You do give it?\" he said, eagerly.\n\n\"What?\" she whispered.\n\n\"Now, that's evasion!  Why, the promise.  I don't want to intrude\nupon you at all, or to let it become known to anybody.  But do give\nyour word!  A mere business compact, you know, between two people who\nare beyond the influence of passion.\"  Boldwood knew how false this\npicture was as regarded himself; but he had proved that it was the\nonly tone in which she would allow him to approach her.  \"A promise\nto marry me at the end of five years and three-quarters.  You owe it\nto me!\"\n\n\"I feel that I do,\" said Bathsheba; \"that is, if you demand it.  But\nI am a changed woman--an unhappy woman--and not--not--\"\n\n\"You are still a very beautiful woman,\" said Boldwood.  Honesty and\npure conviction suggested the remark, unaccompanied by any perception\nthat it might have been adopted by blunt flattery to soothe and win\nher.\n\nHowever, it had not much effect now, for she said, in a passionless\nmurmur which was in itself a proof of her words: \"I have no feeling\nin the matter at all.  And I don't at all know what is right to do\nin my difficult position, and I have nobody to advise me.  But I\ngive my promise, if I must.  I give it as the rendering of a debt,\nconditionally, of course, on my being a widow.\"\n\n\"You'll marry me between five and six years hence?\"\n\n\"Don't press me too hard.  I'll marry nobody else.\"\n\n\"But surely you will name the time, or there's nothing in the promise\nat all?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know, pray let me go!\" she said, her bosom beginning to\nrise.  \"I am afraid what to do! I want to be just to you, and to be\nthat seems to be wronging myself, and perhaps it is breaking the\ncommandments.  There is considerable doubt of his death, and then it\nis dreadful; let me ask a solicitor, Mr. Boldwood, if I ought or no!\"\n\n\"Say the words, dear one, and the subject shall be dismissed;\na blissful loving intimacy of six years, and then marriage--O\nBathsheba, say them!\" he begged in a husky voice, unable to sustain\nthe forms of mere friendship any longer.  \"Promise yourself to me; I\ndeserve it, indeed I do, for I have loved you more than anybody in\nthe world!  And if I said hasty words and showed uncalled-for heat\nof manner towards you, believe me, dear, I did not mean to distress\nyou; I was in agony, Bathsheba, and I did not know what I said.  You\nwouldn't let a dog suffer what I have suffered, could you but know\nit!  Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you,\nand sometimes I am distressed that all of it you never will know.  Be\ngracious, and give up a little to me, when I would give up my life\nfor you!\"\n\nThe trimmings of her dress, as they quivered against the light,\nshowed how agitated she was, and at last she burst out crying.  \"And\nyou'll not--press me--about anything more--if I say in five or six\nyears?\" she sobbed, when she had power to frame the words.\n\n\"Yes, then I'll leave it to time.\"\n\nShe waited a moment.  \"Very well.  I'll marry you in six years from\nthis day, if we both live,\" she said solemnly.\n\n\"And you'll take this as a token from me.\"\n\nBoldwood had come close to her side, and now he clasped one of her\nhands in both his own, and lifted it to his breast.\n\n\"What is it?  Oh I cannot wear a ring!\" she exclaimed, on seeing\nwhat he held; \"besides, I wouldn't have a soul know that it's an\nengagement!  Perhaps it is improper?  Besides, we are not engaged in\nthe usual sense, are we?  Don't insist, Mr. Boldwood--don't!\"  In her\ntrouble at not being able to get her hand away from him at once, she\nstamped passionately on the floor with one foot, and tears crowded to\nher eyes again.\n\n\"It means simply a pledge--no sentiment--the seal of a practical\ncompact,\" he said more quietly, but still retaining her hand in\nhis firm grasp.  \"Come, now!\" And Boldwood slipped the ring on her\nfinger.\n\n\"I cannot wear it,\" she said, weeping as if her heart would break.\n\"You frighten me, almost.  So wild a scheme!  Please let me go home!\"\n\n\"Only to-night: wear it just to-night, to please me!\"\n\nBathsheba sat down in a chair, and buried her face in her\nhandkerchief, though Boldwood kept her hand yet.  At length she\nsaid, in a sort of hopeless whisper--\n\n\"Very well, then, I will to-night, if you wish it so earnestly.  Now\nloosen my hand; I will, indeed I will wear it to-night.\"\n\n\"And it shall be the beginning of a pleasant secret courtship of six\nyears, with a wedding at the end?\"\n\n\"It must be, I suppose, since you will have it so!\" she said, fairly\nbeaten into non-resistance.\n\nBoldwood pressed her hand, and allowed it to drop in her lap.  \"I am\nhappy now,\" he said.  \"God bless you!\"\n\nHe left the room, and when he thought she might be sufficiently\ncomposed sent one of the maids to her.  Bathsheba cloaked the effects\nof the late scene as she best could, followed the girl, and in a few\nmoments came downstairs with her hat and cloak on, ready to go.  To\nget to the door it was necessary to pass through the hall, and before\ndoing so she paused on the bottom of the staircase which descended\ninto one corner, to take a last look at the gathering.\n\nThere was no music or dancing in progress just now.  At the lower\nend, which had been arranged for the work-folk specially, a group\nconversed in whispers, and with clouded looks.  Boldwood was standing\nby the fireplace, and he, too, though so absorbed in visions arising\nfrom her promise that he scarcely saw anything, seemed at that moment\nto have observed their peculiar manner, and their looks askance.\n\n\"What is it you are in doubt about, men?\" he said.\n\nOne of them turned and replied uneasily: \"It was something Laban\nheard of, that's all, sir.\"\n\n\"News?  Anybody married or engaged, born or dead?\" inquired the\nfarmer, gaily.  \"Tell it to us, Tall.  One would think from your\nlooks and mysterious ways that it was something very dreadful\nindeed.\"\n\n\"Oh no, sir, nobody is dead,\" said Tall.\n\n\"I wish somebody was,\" said Samway, in a whisper.\n\n\"What do you say, Samway?\" asked Boldwood, somewhat sharply.  \"If you\nhave anything to say, speak out; if not, get up another dance.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Troy has come downstairs,\" said Samway to Tall.  \"If you want\nto tell her, you had better do it now.\"\n\n\"Do you know what they mean?\" the farmer asked Bathsheba, across the\nroom.\n\n\"I don't in the least,\" said Bathsheba.\n\nThere was a smart rapping at the door.  One of the men opened it\ninstantly, and went outside.\n\n\"Mrs. Troy is wanted,\" he said, on returning.\n\n\"Quite ready,\" said Bathsheba.  \"Though I didn't tell them to send.\"\n\n\"It is a stranger, ma'am,\" said the man by the door.\n\n\"A stranger?\" she said.\n\n\"Ask him to come in,\" said Boldwood.\n\nThe message was given, and Troy, wrapped up to his eyes as we have\nseen him, stood in the doorway.\n\nThere was an unearthly silence, all looking towards the newcomer.\nThose who had just learnt that he was in the neighbourhood recognized\nhim instantly; those who did not were perplexed.  Nobody noted\nBathsheba.  She was leaning on the stairs.  Her brow had heavily\ncontracted; her whole face was pallid, her lips apart, her eyes\nrigidly staring at their visitor.\n\nBoldwood was among those who did not notice that he was Troy.  \"Come\nin, come in!\" he repeated, cheerfully, \"and drain a Christmas beaker\nwith us, stranger!\"\n\nTroy next advanced into the middle of the room, took off his cap,\nturned down his coat-collar, and looked Boldwood in the face.  Even\nthen Boldwood did not recognize that the impersonator of Heaven's\npersistent irony towards him, who had once before broken in upon his\nbliss, scourged him, and snatched his delight away, had come to do\nthese things a second time.  Troy began to laugh a mechanical laugh:\nBoldwood recognized him now.\n\nTroy turned to Bathsheba.  The poor girl's wretchedness at this time\nwas beyond all fancy or narration.  She had sunk down on the lowest\nstair; and there she sat, her mouth blue and dry, and her dark eyes\nfixed vacantly upon him, as if she wondered whether it were not all\na terrible illusion.\n\nThen Troy spoke.  \"Bathsheba, I come here for you!\"\n\nShe made no reply.\n\n\"Come home with me: come!\"\n\nBathsheba moved her feet a little, but did not rise.  Troy went\nacross to her.\n\n\"Come, madam, do you hear what I say?\" he said, peremptorily.\n\nA strange voice came from the fireplace--a voice sounding far off\nand confined, as if from a dungeon.  Hardly a soul in the assembly\nrecognized the thin tones to be those of Boldwood.  Sudden despair\nhad transformed him.\n\n\"Bathsheba, go with your husband!\"\n\nNevertheless, she did not move.  The truth was that Bathsheba was\nbeyond the pale of activity--and yet not in a swoon.  She was in a\nstate of mental _gutta serena_; her mind was for the minute totally\ndeprived of light at the same time no obscuration was apparent from\nwithout.\n\nTroy stretched out his hand to pull her her towards him, when she\nquickly shrank back.  This visible dread of him seemed to irritate\nTroy, and he seized her arm and pulled it sharply.  Whether his grasp\npinched her, or whether his mere touch was the cause, was never\nknown, but at the moment of his seizure she writhed, and gave a\nquick, low scream.\n\nThe scream had been heard but a few seconds when it was followed by\nsudden deafening report that echoed through the room and stupefied\nthem all.  The oak partition shook with the concussion, and the place\nwas filled with grey smoke.\n\nIn bewilderment they turned their eyes to Boldwood.  At his back,\nas stood before the fireplace, was a gun-rack, as is usual in\nfarmhouses, constructed to hold two guns.  When Bathsheba had cried\nout in her husband's grasp, Boldwood's face of gnashing despair had\nchanged.  The veins had swollen, and a frenzied look had gleamed in\nhis eye.  He had turned quickly, taken one of the guns, cocked it,\nand at once discharged it at Troy.\n\nTroy fell.  The distance apart of the two men was so small that\nthe charge of shot did not spread in the least, but passed like a\nbullet into his body.  He uttered a long guttural sigh--there was\na contraction--an extension--then his muscles relaxed, and he lay\nstill.\n\nBoldwood was seen through the smoke to be now again engaged with the\ngun.  It was double-barrelled, and he had, meanwhile, in some way\nfastened his hand-kerchief to the trigger, and with his foot on the\nother end was in the act of turning the second barrel upon himself.\nSamway his man was the first to see this, and in the midst of the\ngeneral horror darted up to him.  Boldwood had already twitched\nthe handkerchief, and the gun exploded a second time, sending its\ncontents, by a timely blow from Samway, into the beam which crossed\nthe ceiling.\n\n\"Well, it makes no difference!\" Boldwood gasped.  \"There is another\nway for me to die.\"\n\nThen he broke from Samway, crossed the room to Bathsheba, and kissed\nher hand.  He put on his hat, opened the door, and went into the\ndarkness, nobody thinking of preventing him.\n\n\n\n\n\nAFTER THE SHOCK\n\n\nBoldwood passed into the high road and turned in the direction of\nCasterbridge.  Here he walked at an even, steady pace over Yalbury\nHill, along the dead level beyond, mounted Mellstock Hill, and\nbetween eleven and twelve o'clock crossed the Moor into the town.\nThe streets were nearly deserted now, and the waving lamp-flames only\nlighted up rows of grey shop-shutters, and strips of white paving\nupon which his step echoed as his passed along.  He turned to the\nright, and halted before an archway of heavy stonework, which was\nclosed by an iron studded pair of doors.  This was the entrance\nto the gaol, and over it a lamp was fixed, the light enabling the\nwretched traveller to find a bell-pull.\n\nThe small wicket at last opened, and a porter appeared.  Boldwood\nstepped forward, and said something in a low tone, when, after a\ndelay, another man came.  Boldwood entered, and the door was closed\nbehind him, and he walked the world no more.\n\nLong before this time Weatherbury had been thoroughly aroused, and\nthe wild deed which had terminated Boldwood's merrymaking became\nknown to all.  Of those out of the house Oak was one of the first to\nhear of the catastrophe, and when he entered the room, which was\nabout five minutes after Boldwood's exit, the scene was terrible.\nAll the female guests were huddled aghast against the walls like\nsheep in a storm, and the men were bewildered as to what to do.  As\nfor Bathsheba, she had changed.  She was sitting on the floor beside\nthe body of Troy, his head pillowed in her lap, where she had herself\nlifted it.  With one hand she held her handkerchief to his breast and\ncovered the wound, though scarcely a single drop of blood had flowed,\nand with the other she tightly clasped one of his.  The household\nconvulsion had made her herself again.  The temporary coma had\nceased, and activity had come with the necessity for it.  Deeds of\nendurance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct,\nand Bathsheba was astonishing all around her now, for her philosophy\nwas her conduct, and she seldom thought practicable what she did\nnot practise.  She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers\nare made.  She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea\nparties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.  Troy recumbent in\nhis wife's lap formed now the sole spectacle in the middle of the\nspacious room.\n\n\"Gabriel,\" she said, automatically, when he entered, turning up a\nface of which only the well-known lines remained to tell him it\nwas hers, all else in the picture having faded quite.  \"Ride to\nCasterbridge instantly for a surgeon.  It is, I believe, useless,\nbut go.  Mr. Boldwood has shot my husband.\"\n\nHer statement of the fact in such quiet and simple words came with\nmore force than a tragic declamation, and had somewhat the effect of\nsetting the distorted images in each mind present into proper focus.\nOak, almost before he had comprehended anything beyond the briefest\nabstract of the event, hurried out of the room, saddled a horse and\nrode away.  Not till he had ridden more than a mile did it occur to\nhim that he would have done better by sending some other man on this\nerrand, remaining himself in the house.  What had become of Boldwood?\nHe should have been looked after.  Was he mad--had there been a\nquarrel?  Then how had Troy got there?  Where had he come from?  How\ndid this remarkable reappearance effect itself when he was supposed\nby many to be at the bottom of the sea?  Oak had in some slight\nmeasure been prepared for the presence of Troy by hearing a rumour\nof his return just before entering Boldwood's house; but before he\nhad weighed that information, this fatal event had been superimposed.\nHowever, it was too late now to think of sending another messenger,\nand he rode on, in the excitement of these self-inquiries\nnot discerning, when about three miles from Casterbridge, a\nsquare-figured pedestrian passing along under the dark hedge in the\nsame direction as his own.\n\nThe miles necessary to be traversed, and other hindrances incidental\nto the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, delayed\nthe arrival of Mr. Aldritch, the surgeon; and more than three hours\npassed between the time at which the shot was fired and that of his\nentering the house.  Oak was additionally detained in Casterbridge\nthrough having to give notice to the authorities of what had\nhappened; and he then found that Boldwood had also entered the town,\nand delivered himself up.\n\nIn the meantime the surgeon, having hastened into the hall at\nBoldwood's, found it in darkness and quite deserted.  He went on to\nthe back of the house, where he discovered in the kitchen an old man,\nof whom he made inquiries.\n\n\"She's had him took away to her own house, sir,\" said his informant.\n\n\"Who has?\" said the doctor.\n\n\"Mrs. Troy.  'A was quite dead, sir.\"\n\nThis was astonishing information.  \"She had no right to do that,\"\nsaid the doctor.  \"There will have to be an inquest, and she should\nhave waited to know what to do.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir; it was hinted to her that she had better wait till the law\nwas known.  But she said law was nothing to her, and she wouldn't let\nher dear husband's corpse bide neglected for folks to stare at for\nall the crowners in England.\"\n\nMr. Aldritch drove at once back again up the hill to Bathsheba's.\nThe first person he met was poor Liddy, who seemed literally to have\ndwindled smaller in these few latter hours.  \"What has been done?\" he\nsaid.\n\n\"I don't know, sir,\" said Liddy, with suspended breath.  \"My mistress\nhas done it all.\"\n\n\"Where is she?\"\n\n\"Upstairs with him, sir.  When he was brought home and taken\nupstairs, she said she wanted no further help from the men.  And then\nshe called me, and made me fill the bath, and after that told me I\nhad better go and lie down because I looked so ill.  Then she locked\nherself into the room alone with him, and would not let a nurse come\nin, or anybody at all.  But I thought I'd wait in the next room in\ncase she should want me.  I heard her moving about inside for more\nthan an hour, but she only came out once, and that was for more\ncandles, because hers had burnt down into the socket.  She said we\nwere to let her know when you or Mr. Thirdly came, sir.\"\n\nOak entered with the parson at this moment, and they all went\nupstairs together, preceded by Liddy Smallbury.  Everything was\nsilent as the grave when they paused on the landing.  Liddy knocked,\nand Bathsheba's dress was heard rustling across the room: the key\nturned in the lock, and she opened the door.  Her looks were calm and\nnearly rigid, like a slightly animated bust of Melpomene.\n\n\"Oh, Mr. Aldritch, you have come at last,\" she murmured from her lips\nmerely, and threw back the door.  \"Ah, and Mr. Thirdly.  Well, all is\ndone, and anybody in the world may see him now.\"  She then passed by\nhim, crossed the landing, and entered another room.\n\nLooking into the chamber of death she had vacated they saw by the\nlight of the candles which were on the drawers a tall straight\nshape lying at the further end of the bedroom, wrapped in white.\nEverything around was quite orderly.  The doctor went in, and after a\nfew minutes returned to the landing again, where Oak and the parson\nstill waited.\n\n\"It is all done, indeed, as she says,\" remarked Mr. Aldritch, in a\nsubdued voice.  \"The body has been undressed and properly laid out in\ngrave clothes.  Gracious Heaven--this mere girl!  She must have the\nnerve of a stoic!\"\n\n\"The heart of a wife merely,\" floated in a whisper about the ears\nof the three, and turning they saw Bathsheba in the midst of them.\nThen, as if at that instant to prove that her fortitude had been\nmore of will than of spontaneity, she silently sank down between\nthem and was a shapeless heap of drapery on the floor.  The simple\nconsciousness that superhuman strain was no longer required had at\nonce put a period to her power to continue it.\n\nThey took her away into a further room, and the medical attendance\nwhich had been useless in Troy's case was invaluable in Bathsheba's,\nwho fell into a series of fainting-fits that had a serious aspect\nfor a time.  The sufferer was got to bed, and Oak, finding from the\nbulletins that nothing really dreadful was to be apprehended on her\nscore, left the house.  Liddy kept watch in Bathsheba's chamber,\nwhere she heard her mistress, moaning in whispers through the dull\nslow hours of that wretched night: \"Oh it is my fault--how can I\nlive!  O Heaven, how can I live!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE MARCH FOLLOWING--\"BATHSHEBA BOLDWOOD\"\n\n\nWe pass rapidly on into the month of March, to a breezy day without\nsunshine, frost, or dew.  On Yalbury Hill, about midway between\nWeatherbury and Casterbridge, where the turnpike road passes over\nthe crest, a numerous concourse of people had gathered, the eyes of\nthe greater number being frequently stretched afar in a northerly\ndirection.  The groups consisted of a throng of idlers, a party of\njavelin-men, and two trumpeters, and in the midst were carriages, one\nof which contained the high sheriff.  With the idlers, many of whom\nhad mounted to the top of a cutting formed for the road, were several\nWeatherbury men and boys--among others Poorgrass, Coggan, and Cain\nBall.\n\nAt the end of half-an-hour a faint dust was seen in the expected\nquarter, and shortly after a travelling-carriage, bringing one of the\ntwo judges on the Western Circuit, came up the hill and halted on the\ntop.  The judge changed carriages whilst a flourish was blown by the\nbig-cheeked trumpeters, and a procession being formed of the vehicles\nand javelin-men, they all proceeded towards the town, excepting the\nWeatherbury men, who as soon as they had seen the judge move off\nreturned home again to their work.\n\n\"Joseph, I seed you squeezing close to the carriage,\" said Coggan, as\nthey walked.  \"Did ye notice my lord judge's face?\"\n\n\"I did,\" said Poorgrass.  \"I looked hard at en, as if I would read\nhis very soul; and there was mercy in his eyes--or to speak with the\nexact truth required of us at this solemn time, in the eye that was\ntowards me.\"\n\n\"Well, I hope for the best,\" said Coggan, \"though bad that must be.\nHowever, I shan't go to the trial, and I'd advise the rest of ye\nthat bain't wanted to bide away.  'Twill disturb his mind more than\nanything to see us there staring at him as if he were a show.\"\n\n\"The very thing I said this morning,\" observed Joseph, \"'Justice is\ncome to weigh him in the balances,' I said in my reflectious way,\n'and if he's found wanting, so be it unto him,' and a bystander said\n'Hear, hear!  A man who can talk like that ought to be heard.' But I\ndon't like dwelling upon it, for my few words are my few words, and\nnot much; though the speech of some men is rumoured abroad as though\nby nature formed for such.\"\n\n\"So 'tis, Joseph.  And now, neighbours, as I said, every man bide at\nhome.\"\n\nThe resolution was adhered to; and all waited anxiously for the news\nnext day.  Their suspense was diverted, however, by a discovery which\nwas made in the afternoon, throwing more light on Boldwood's conduct\nand condition than any details which had preceded it.\n\nThat he had been from the time of Greenhill Fair until the fatal\nChristmas Eve in excited and unusual moods was known to those who had\nbeen intimate with him; but nobody imagined that there had shown in\nhim unequivocal symptoms of the mental derangement which Bathsheba\nand Oak, alone of all others and at different times, had momentarily\nsuspected.  In a locked closet was now discovered an extraordinary\ncollection of articles.  There were several sets of ladies' dresses\nin the piece, of sundry expensive materials; silks and satins,\npoplins and velvets, all of colours which from Bathsheba's style of\ndress might have been judged to be her favourites.  There were two\nmuffs, sable and ermine.  Above all there was a case of jewellery,\ncontaining four heavy gold bracelets and several lockets and rings,\nall of fine quality and manufacture.  These things had been bought in\nBath and other towns from time to time, and brought home by stealth.\nThey were all carefully packed in paper, and each package was\nlabelled \"Bathsheba Boldwood,\" a date being subjoined six years in\nadvance in every instance.\n\nThese somewhat pathetic evidences of a mind crazed with care and love\nwere the subject of discourse in Warren's malt-house when Oak entered\nfrom Casterbridge with tidings of sentence. He came in the afternoon,\nand his face, as the kiln glow shone upon it, told the tale\nsufficiently well.  Boldwood, as every one supposed he would do, had\npleaded guilty, and had been sentenced to death.\n\nThe conviction that Boldwood had not been morally responsible for his\nlater acts now became general.  Facts elicited previous to the trial\nhad pointed strongly in the same direction, but they had not been of\nsufficient weight to lead to an order for an examination into the\nstate of Boldwood's mind.  It was astonishing, now that a presumption\nof insanity was raised, how many collateral circumstances were\nremembered to which a condition of mental disease seemed to afford\nthe only explanation--among others, the unprecedented neglect of his\ncorn stacks in the previous summer.\n\nA petition was addressed to the Home Secretary, advancing\nthe circumstances which appeared to justify a request for a\nreconsideration of the sentence.  It was not \"numerously signed\"\nby the inhabitants of Casterbridge, as is usual in such cases, for\nBoldwood had never made many friends over the counter.  The shops\nthought it very natural that a man who, by importing direct from\nthe producer, had daringly set aside the first great principle of\nprovincial existence, namely that God made country villages to supply\ncustomers to county towns, should have confused ideas about the\nDecalogue.  The prompters were a few merciful men who had perhaps too\nfeelingly considered the facts latterly unearthed, and the result was\nthat evidence was taken which it was hoped might remove the crime in\na moral point of view, out of the category of wilful murder, and lead\nit to be regarded as a sheer outcome of madness.\n\nThe upshot of the petition was waited for in Weatherbury with\nsolicitous interest.  The execution had been fixed for eight o'clock\non a Saturday morning about a fortnight after the sentence was\npassed, and up to Friday afternoon no answer had been received.  At\nthat time Gabriel came from Casterbridge Gaol, whither he had been\nto wish Boldwood good-bye, and turned down a by-street to avoid the\ntown.  When past the last house he heard a hammering, and lifting\nhis bowed head he looked back for a moment.  Over the chimneys he\ncould see the upper part of the gaol entrance, rich and glowing\nin the afternoon sun, and some moving figures were there.  They\nwere carpenters lifting a post into a vertical position within the\nparapet.  He withdrew his eyes quickly, and hastened on.\n\nIt was dark when he reached home, and half the village was out to\nmeet him.\n\n\"No tidings,\" Gabriel said, wearily.  \"And I'm afraid there's no\nhope.  I've been with him more than two hours.\"\n\n\"Do ye think he REALLY was out of his mind when he did it?\" said\nSmallbury.\n\n\"I can't honestly say that I do,\" Oak replied.  \"However, that we can\ntalk of another time.  Has there been any change in mistress this\nafternoon?\"\n\n\"None at all.\"\n\n\"Is she downstairs?\"\n\n\"No.  And getting on so nicely as she was too.  She's but very little\nbetter now again than she was at Christmas.  She keeps on asking\nif you be come, and if there's news, till one's wearied out wi'\nanswering her.  Shall I go and say you've come?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Oak.  \"There's a chance yet; but I couldn't stay in town\nany longer--after seeing him too.  So Laban--Laban is here, isn't\nhe?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Tall.\n\n\"What I've arranged is, that you shall ride to town the last thing\nto-night; leave here about nine, and wait a while there, getting home\nabout twelve.  If nothing has been received by eleven to-night, they\nsay there's no chance at all.\"\n\n\"I do so hope his life will be spared,\" said Liddy.  \"If it is not,\nshe'll go out of her mind too.  Poor thing; her sufferings have been\ndreadful; she deserves anybody's pity.\"\n\n\"Is she altered much?\" said Coggan.\n\n\"If you haven't seen poor mistress since Christmas, you wouldn't know\nher,\" said Liddy.  \"Her eyes are so miserable that she's not the same\nwoman.  Only two years ago she was a romping girl, and now she's\nthis!\"\n\nLaban departed as directed, and at eleven o'clock that night several\nof the villagers strolled along the road to Casterbridge and awaited\nhis arrival--among them Oak, and nearly all the rest of Bathsheba's\nmen.  Gabriel's anxiety was great that Boldwood might be saved, even\nthough in his conscience he felt that he ought to die; for there had\nbeen qualities in the farmer which Oak loved.  At last, when they all\nwere weary the tramp of a horse was heard in the distance--\n\n\n     First dead, as if on turf it trode,\n     Then, clattering on the village road\n     In other pace than forth he yode.\n\n\n\"We shall soon know now, one way or other.\" said Coggan, and they all\nstepped down from the bank on which they had been standing into the\nroad, and the rider pranced into the midst of them.\n\n\"Is that you, Laban?\" said Gabriel.\n\n\"Yes--'tis come.  He's not to die.  'Tis confinement during Her\nMajesty's pleasure.\"\n\n\"Hurrah!\" said Coggan, with a swelling heart.  \"God's above the devil\nyet!\"\n\n\n\n\n\nBEAUTY IN LONELINESS--AFTER ALL\n\n\nBathsheba revived with the spring.  The utter prostration that\nhad followed the low fever from which she had suffered diminished\nperceptibly when all uncertainty upon every subject had come to\nan end.\n\nBut she remained alone now for the greater part of her time, and\nstayed in the house, or at furthest went into the garden.  She\nshunned every one, even Liddy, and could be brought to make no\nconfidences, and to ask for no sympathy.\n\nAs the summer drew on she passed more of her time in the open air,\nand began to examine into farming matters from sheer necessity,\nthough she never rode out or personally superintended as at former\ntimes.  One Friday evening in August she walked a little way along\nthe road and entered the village for the first time since the sombre\nevent of the preceding Christmas.  None of the old colour had as yet\ncome to her cheek, and its absolute paleness was heightened by the\njet black of her gown, till it appeared preternatural.  When she\nreached a little shop at the other end of the place, which stood\nnearly opposite to the churchyard, Bathsheba heard singing inside the\nchurch, and she knew that the singers were practising.  She crossed\nthe road, opened the gate, and entered the graveyard, the high sills\nof the church windows effectually screening her from the eyes of\nthose gathered within.  Her stealthy walk was to the nook wherein\nTroy had worked at planting flowers upon Fanny Robin's grave, and\nshe came to the marble tombstone.\n\nA motion of satisfaction enlivened her face as she read the complete\ninscription.  First came the words of Troy himself:--\n\n\n     ERECTED BY FRANCIS TROY\n      IN BELOVED MEMORY OF\n          FANNY ROBIN,\n    WHO DIED OCTOBER 9, 18--,\n          AGED 20 YEARS\n\n\nUnderneath this was now inscribed in new letters:--\n\n\n      IN THE SAME GRAVE LIE\n   THE REMAINS OF THE AFORESAID\n          FRANCIS TROY,\n   WHO DIED DECEMBER 24TH, 18--,\n          AGED 26 YEARS\n\n\nWhilst she stood and read and meditated the tones of the organ\nbegan again in the church, and she went with the same light step\nround to the porch and listened.  The door was closed, and the\nchoir was learning a new hymn.  Bathsheba was stirred by emotions\nwhich latterly she had assumed to be altogether dead within her.\nThe little attenuated voices of the children brought to her ear\nin distinct utterance the words they sang without thought or\ncomprehension--\n\n\n     Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,\n       Lead Thou me on.\n\n\nBathsheba's feeling was always to some extent dependent upon her\nwhim, as is the case with many other women.  Something big came into\nher throat and an uprising to her eyes--and she thought that she\nwould allow the imminent tears to flow if they wished.  They did\nflow and plenteously, and one fell upon the stone bench beside her.\nOnce that she had begun to cry for she hardly knew what, she could\nnot leave off for crowding thoughts she knew too well.  She would\nhave given anything in the world to be, as those children were,\nunconcerned at the meaning of their words, because too innocent to\nfeel the necessity for any such expression.  All the impassioned\nscenes of her brief experience seemed to revive with added emotion at\nthat moment, and those scenes which had been without emotion during\nenactment had emotion then.  Yet grief came to her rather as a luxury\nthan as the scourge of former times.\n\nOwing to Bathsheba's face being buried in her hands she did not\nnotice a form which came quietly into the porch, and on seeing\nher, first moved as if to retreat, then paused and regarded her.\nBathsheba did not raise her head for some time, and when she looked\nround her face was wet, and her eyes drowned and dim.  \"Mr. Oak,\"\nexclaimed she, disconcerted, \"how long have you been here?\"\n\n\"A few minutes, ma'am,\" said Oak, respectfully.\n\n\"Are you going in?\" said Bathsheba; and there came from within the\nchurch as from a prompter--\n\n\n     I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,\n     Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.\n\n\n\"I was,\" said Gabriel.  \"I am one of the bass singers, you know.  I\nhave sung bass for several months.\"\n\n\"Indeed: I wasn't aware of that.  I'll leave you, then.\"\n\n\n     Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile,\n\n\nsang the children.\n\n\"Don't let me drive you away, mistress.  I think I won't go in\nto-night.\"\n\n\"Oh no--you don't drive me away.\"\n\nThen they stood in a state of some embarrassment, Bathsheba trying to\nwipe her dreadfully drenched and inflamed face without his noticing\nher.  At length Oak said, \"I've not seen you--I mean spoken to\nyou--since ever so long, have I?\"  But he feared to bring distressing\nmemories back, and interrupted himself with: \"Were you going into\nchurch?\"\n\n\"No,\" she said.  \"I came to see the tombstone privately--to see if\nthey had cut the inscription as I wished.  Mr. Oak, you needn't mind\nspeaking to me, if you wish to, on the matter which is in both our\nminds at this moment.\"\n\n\"And have they done it as you wished?\" said Oak.\n\n\"Yes.  Come and see it, if you have not already.\"\n\nSo together they went and read the tomb.  \"Eight months ago!\" Gabriel\nmurmured when he saw the date.  \"It seems like yesterday to me.\"\n\n\"And to me as if it were years ago--long years, and I had been dead\nbetween.  And now I am going home, Mr. Oak.\"\n\nOak walked after her.  \"I wanted to name a small matter to you as\nsoon as I could,\" he said, with hesitation.  \"Merely about business,\nand I think I may just mention it now, if you'll allow me.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, certainly.\"\n\n\"It is that I may soon have to give up the management of your farm,\nMrs. Troy.  The fact is, I am thinking of leaving England--not yet,\nyou know--next spring.\"\n\n\"Leaving England!\" she said, in surprise and genuine disappointment.\n\"Why, Gabriel, what are you going to do that for?\"\n\n\"Well, I've thought it best,\" Oak stammered out.  \"California is the\nspot I've had in my mind to try.\"\n\n\"But it is understood everywhere that you are going to take poor Mr.\nBoldwood's farm on your own account.\"\n\n\"I've had the refusal o' it 'tis true; but nothing is settled yet,\nand I have reasons for giving up.  I shall finish out my year there\nas manager for the trustees, but no more.\"\n\n\"And what shall I do without you?  Oh, Gabriel, I don't think you\nought to go away.  You've been with me so long--through bright times\nand dark times--such old friends as we are--that it seems unkind\nalmost.  I had fancied that if you leased the other farm as master,\nyou might still give a helping look across at mine.  And now going\naway!\"\n\n\"I would have willingly.\"\n\n\"Yet now that I am more helpless than ever you go away!\"\n\n\"Yes, that's the ill fortune o' it,\" said Gabriel, in a distressed\ntone.  \"And it is because of that very helplessness that I feel bound\nto go.  Good afternoon, ma'am\" he concluded, in evident anxiety to\nget away, and at once went out of the churchyard by a path she could\nfollow on no pretence whatever.\n\nBathsheba went home, her mind occupied with a new trouble, which\nbeing rather harassing than deadly was calculated to do good by\ndiverting her from the chronic gloom of her life.  She was set\nthinking a great deal about Oak and of his wish to shun her;\nand there occurred to Bathsheba several incidents of her latter\nintercourse with him, which, trivial when singly viewed, amounted\ntogether to a perceptible disinclination for her society.  It broke\nupon her at length as a great pain that her last old disciple was\nabout to forsake her and flee.  He who had believed in her and argued\non her side when all the rest of the world was against her, had at\nlast like the others become weary and neglectful of the old cause,\nand was leaving her to fight her battles alone.\n\nThree weeks went on, and more evidence of his want of interest in\nher was forthcoming.  She noticed that instead of entering the small\nparlour or office where the farm accounts were kept, and waiting, or\nleaving a memorandum as he had hitherto done during her seclusion,\nOak never came at all when she was likely to be there, only entering\nat unseasonable hours when her presence in that part of the house\nwas least to be expected.  Whenever he wanted directions he sent a\nmessage, or note with neither heading nor signature, to which she was\nobliged to reply in the same offhand style.  Poor Bathsheba began to\nsuffer now from the most torturing sting of all--a sensation that she\nwas despised.\n\nThe autumn wore away gloomily enough amid these melancholy\nconjectures, and Christmas-day came, completing a year of her legal\nwidowhood, and two years and a quarter of her life alone.  On\nexamining her heart it appeared beyond measure strange that the\nsubject of which the season might have been supposed suggestive--the\nevent in the hall at Boldwood's--was not agitating her at all; but\ninstead, an agonizing conviction that everybody abjured her--for what\nshe could not tell--and that Oak was the ringleader of the recusants.\nComing out of church that day she looked round in hope that Oak,\nwhose bass voice she had heard rolling out from the gallery overhead\nin a most unconcerned manner, might chance to linger in her path in\nthe old way.  There he was, as usual, coming down the path behind\nher.  But on seeing Bathsheba turn, he looked aside, and as soon\nas he got beyond the gate, and there was the barest excuse for a\ndivergence, he made one, and vanished.\n\nThe next morning brought the culminating stroke; she had been\nexpecting it long.  It was a formal notice by letter from him that he\nshould not renew his engagement with her for the following Lady-day.\n\nBathsheba actually sat and cried over this letter most bitterly.  She\nwas aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from\nGabriel, which she had grown to regard as her inalienable right for\nlife, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this\nway.  She was bewildered too by the prospect of having to rely on her\nown resources again: it seemed to herself that she never could again\nacquire energy sufficient to go to market, barter, and sell.\nSince Troy's death Oak had attended all sales and fairs for her,\ntransacting her business at the same time with his own.  What should\nshe do now?  Her life was becoming a desolation.\n\nSo desolate was Bathsheba this evening, that in an absolute hunger\nfor pity and sympathy, and miserable in that she appeared to have\noutlived the only true friendship she had ever owned, she put on her\nbonnet and cloak and went down to Oak's house just after sunset,\nguided on her way by the pale primrose rays of a crescent moon a few\ndays old.\n\nA lively firelight shone from the window, but nobody was visible in\nthe room.  She tapped nervously, and then thought it doubtful if\nit were right for a single woman to call upon a bachelor who lived\nalone, although he was her manager, and she might be supposed to call\non business without any real impropriety.  Gabriel opened the door,\nand the moon shone upon his forehead.\n\n\"Mr. Oak,\" said Bathsheba, faintly.\n\n\"Yes; I am Mr. Oak,\" said Gabriel.  \"Who have I the honour--O how\nstupid of me, not to know you, mistress!\"\n\n\"I shall not be your mistress much longer, shall I Gabriel?\" she\nsaid, in pathetic tones.\n\n\"Well, no.  I suppose--But come in, ma'am.  Oh--and I'll get a\nlight,\" Oak replied, with some awkwardness.\n\n\"No; not on my account.\"\n\n\"It is so seldom that I get a lady visitor that I'm afraid I haven't\nproper accommodation.  Will you sit down, please? Here's a chair, and\nthere's one, too.  I am sorry that my chairs all have wood seats, and\nare rather hard, but I--was thinking of getting some new ones.\"  Oak\nplaced two or three for her.\n\n\"They are quite easy enough for me.\"\n\nSo down she sat, and down sat he, the fire dancing in their faces,\nand upon the old furniture,\n\n\n            all a-sheenen\n     Wi' long years o' handlen, [3]\n\n   [Footnote 3: W. Barnes]\n\nthat formed Oak's array of household possessions, which sent back a\ndancing reflection in reply.  It was very odd to these two persons,\nwho knew each other passing well, that the mere circumstance of their\nmeeting in a new place and in a new way should make them so awkward\nand constrained.  In the fields, or at her house, there had never\nbeen any embarrassment; but now that Oak had become the entertainer\ntheir lives seemed to be moved back again to the days when they were\nstrangers.\n\n\"You'll think it strange that I have come, but--\"\n\n\"Oh no; not at all.\"\n\n\"But I thought--Gabriel, I have been uneasy in the belief that I\nhave offended you, and that you are going away on that account.  It\ngrieved me very much and I couldn't help coming.\"\n\n\"Offended me!  As if you could do that, Bathsheba!\"\n\n\"Haven't I?\" she asked, gladly.  \"But, what are you going away for\nelse?\"\n\n\"I am not going to emigrate, you know; I wasn't aware that you would\nwish me not to when I told 'ee or I shouldn't ha' thought of doing\nit,\" he said, simply.  \"I have arranged for Little Weatherbury Farm\nand shall have it in my own hands at Lady-day.  You know I've had a\nshare in it for some time.  Still, that wouldn't prevent my attending\nto your business as before, hadn't it been that things have been said\nabout us.\"\n\n\"What?\" said Bathsheba, in surprise.  \"Things said about you and me!\nWhat are they?\"\n\n\"I cannot tell you.\"\n\n\"It would be wiser if you were to, I think.  You have played the part\nof mentor to me many times, and I don't see why you should fear to do\nit now.\"\n\n\"It is nothing that you have done, this time.  The top and tail\no't is this--that I am sniffing about here, and waiting for poor\nBoldwood's farm, with a thought of getting you some day.\"\n\n\"Getting me!  What does that mean?\"\n\n\"Marrying of 'ee, in plain British.  You asked me to tell, so you\nmustn't blame me.\"\n\nBathsheba did not look quite so alarmed as if a cannon had been\ndischarged by her ear, which was what Oak had expected.  \"Marrying\nme!  I didn't know it was that you meant,\" she said, quietly.  \"Such\na thing as that is too absurd--too soon--to think of, by far!\"\n\n\"Yes; of course, it is too absurd.  I don't desire any such thing;\nI should think that was plain enough by this time.  Surely, surely\nyou be the last person in the world I think of marrying.  It is too\nabsurd, as you say.\"\n\n\"'Too--s-s-soon' were the words I used.\"\n\n\"I must beg your pardon for correcting you, but you said, 'too\nabsurd,' and so do I.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon too!\" she returned, with tears in her eyes.  \"'Too\nsoon' was what I said.  But it doesn't matter a bit--not at all--but\nI only meant, 'too soon.'  Indeed, I didn't, Mr. Oak, and you must\nbelieve me!\"\n\nGabriel looked her long in the face, but the firelight being faint\nthere was not much to be seen.  \"Bathsheba,\" he said, tenderly and in\nsurprise, and coming closer: \"if I only knew one thing--whether you\nwould allow me to love you and win you, and marry you after all--if\nI only knew that!\"\n\n\"But you never will know,\" she murmured.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because you never ask.\"\n\n\"Oh--Oh!\" said Gabriel, with a low laugh of joyousness.  \"My own\ndear--\"\n\n\"You ought not to have sent me that harsh letter this morning,\" she\ninterrupted.  \"It shows you didn't care a bit about me, and were\nready to desert me like all the rest of them!  It was very cruel of\nyou, considering I was the first sweetheart that you ever had, and\nyou were the first I ever had; and I shall not forget it!\"\n\n\"Now, Bathsheba, was ever anybody so provoking,\" he said, laughing.\n\"You know it was purely that I, as an unmarried man, carrying on a\nbusiness for you as a very taking young woman, had a proper hard part\nto play--more particular that people knew I had a sort of feeling for\n'ee; and I fancied, from the way we were mentioned together, that it\nmight injure your good name.  Nobody knows the heat and fret I have\nbeen caused by it.\"\n\n\"And was that all?\"\n\n\"All.\"\n\n\"Oh, how glad I am I came!\" she exclaimed, thankfully, as she rose\nfrom her seat.  \"I have thought so much more of you since I fancied\nyou did not want even to see me again.  But I must be going now, or\nI shall be missed.  Why Gabriel,\" she said, with a slight laugh, as\nthey went to the door, \"it seems exactly as if I had come courting\nyou--how dreadful!\"\n\n\"And quite right too,\" said Oak.  \"I've danced at your skittish\nheels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long mile, and many a long\nday; and it is hard to begrudge me this one visit.\"\n\nHe accompanied her up the hill, explaining to her the details of\nhis forthcoming tenure of the other farm.  They spoke very little\nof their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being\nprobably unnecessary between such tried friends.  Theirs was that\nsubstantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the\ntwo who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher\nsides of each other's character, and not the best till further on,\nthe romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic\nreality.  This good-fellowship--_camaraderie_--usually occurring\nthrough similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded\nto love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in\ntheir labours, but in their pleasures merely.  Where, however, happy\ncircumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves\nitself to be the only love which is strong as death--that love which\nmany waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the\npassion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.\n\n\n\n\n\nA FOGGY NIGHT AND MORNING--CONCLUSION\n\n\n\"The most private, secret, plainest wedding that it is possible to\nhave.\"\n\nThose had been Bathsheba's words to Oak one evening, some time after\nthe event of the preceding f, and he meditated a full hour by\nthe clock upon how to carry out her wishes to the letter.\n\n\"A license--O yes, it must be a license,\" he said to himself at last.\n\"Very well, then; first, a license.\"\n\nOn a dark night, a few days later, Oak came with mysterious steps\nfrom the surrogate's door, in Casterbridge.  On the way home he heard\na heavy tread in front of him, and, overtaking the man, found him to\nbe Coggan.  They walked together into the village until they came to\na little lane behind the church, leading down to the cottage of Laban\nTall, who had lately been installed as clerk of the parish, and was\nyet in mortal terror at church on Sundays when he heard his lone\nvoice among certain hard words of the Psalms, whither no man ventured\nto follow him.\n\n\"Well, good-night, Coggan,\" said Oak, \"I'm going down this way.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Coggan, surprised; \"what's going on to-night then, make so\nbold Mr. Oak?\"\n\nIt seemed rather ungenerous not to tell Coggan, under the\ncircumstances, for Coggan had been true as steel all through the time\nof Gabriel's unhappiness about Bathsheba, and Gabriel said, \"You can\nkeep a secret, Coggan?\"\n\n\"You've proved me, and you know.\"\n\n\"Yes, I have, and I do know.  Well, then, mistress and I mean to get\nmarried to-morrow morning.\"\n\n\"Heaven's high tower!  And yet I've thought of such a thing from time\nto time; true, I have.  But keeping it so close!  Well, there, 'tis\nno consarn of of mine, and I wish 'ee joy o' her.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Coggan.  But I assure 'ee that this great hush is not\nwhat I wished for at all, or what either of us would have wished if\nit hadn't been for certain things that would make a gay wedding seem\nhardly the thing.  Bathsheba has a great wish that all the parish\nshall not be in church, looking at her--she's shy-like and nervous\nabout it, in fact--so I be doing this to humour her.\"\n\n\"Ay, I see: quite right, too, I suppose I must say.  And you be now\ngoing down to the clerk.\"\n\n\"Yes; you may as well come with me.\"\n\n\"I am afeard your labour in keeping it close will be throwed away,\"\nsaid Coggan, as they walked along.  \"Labe Tall's old woman will horn\nit all over parish in half-an-hour.\"\n\n\"So she will, upon my life; I never thought of that,\" said Oak,\npausing.  \"Yet I must tell him to-night, I suppose, for he's working\nso far off, and leaves early.\"\n\n\"I'll tell 'ee how we could tackle her,\" said Coggan.  \"I'll knock\nand ask to speak to Laban outside the door, you standing in the\nbackground.  Then he'll come out, and you can tell yer tale.  She'll\nnever guess what I want en for; and I'll make up a few words about\nthe farm-work, as a blind.\"\n\nThis scheme was considered feasible; and Coggan advanced boldly, and\nrapped at Mrs. Tall's door.  Mrs. Tall herself opened it.\n\n\"I wanted to have a word with Laban.\"\n\n\"He's not at home, and won't be this side of eleven o'clock.  He've\nbeen forced to go over to Yalbury since shutting out work.  I shall\ndo quite as well.\"\n\n\"I hardly think you will.  Stop a moment;\" and Coggan stepped round\nthe corner of the porch to consult Oak.\n\n\"Who's t'other man, then?\" said Mrs. Tall.\n\n\"Only a friend,\" said Coggan.\n\n\"Say he's wanted to meet mistress near church-hatch to-morrow morning\nat ten,\" said Oak, in a whisper.  \"That he must come without fail,\nand wear his best clothes.\"\n\n\"The clothes will floor us as safe as houses!\" said Coggan.\n\n\"It can't be helped,\" said Oak.  \"Tell her.\"\n\nSo Coggan delivered the message.  \"Mind, het or wet, blow or snow,\nhe must come,\" added Jan.  \"'Tis very particular, indeed.  The fact\nis, 'tis to witness her sign some law-work about taking shares wi'\nanother farmer for a long span o' years.  There, that's what 'tis,\nand now I've told 'ee, Mother Tall, in a way I shouldn't ha' done\nif I hadn't loved 'ee so hopeless well.\"\n\nCoggan retired before she could ask any further; and next they called\nat the vicar's in a manner which excited no curiosity at all.  Then\nGabriel went home, and prepared for the morrow.\n\n\n\"Liddy,\" said Bathsheba, on going to bed that night, \"I want you to\ncall me at seven o'clock to-morrow, In case I shouldn't wake.\"\n\n\"But you always do wake afore then, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Yes, but I have something important to do, which I'll tell you of\nwhen the time comes, and it's best to make sure.\"\n\nBathsheba, however, awoke voluntarily at four, nor could she by any\ncontrivance get to sleep again.  About six, being quite positive that\nher watch had stopped during the night, she could wait no longer.\nShe went and tapped at Liddy's door, and after some labour awoke her.\n\n\"But I thought it was I who had to call you?\" said the bewildered\nLiddy.  \"And it isn't six yet.\"\n\n\"Indeed it is; how can you tell such a story, Liddy?  I know it must\nbe ever so much past seven.  Come to my room as soon as you can; I\nwant you to give my hair a good brushing.\"\n\nWhen Liddy came to Bathsheba's room her mistress was already waiting.\nLiddy could not understand this extraordinary promptness.  \"Whatever\nIS going on, ma'am?\" she said.\n\n\"Well, I'll tell you,\" said Bathsheba, with a mischievous smile in\nher bright eyes.  \"Farmer Oak is coming here to dine with me to-day!\"\n\n\"Farmer Oak--and nobody else?--you two alone?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"But is it safe, ma'am, after what's been said?\" asked her companion,\ndubiously.  \"A woman's good name is such a perishable article that--\"\n\nBathsheba laughed with a flushed cheek, and whispered in Liddy's ear,\nalthough there was nobody present.  Then Liddy stared and exclaimed,\n\"Souls alive, what news!  It makes my heart go quite bumpity-bump!\"\n\n\"It makes mine rather furious, too,\" said Bathsheba.  \"However,\nthere's no getting out of it now!\"\n\nIt was a damp disagreeable morning.  Nevertheless, at twenty minutes\nto ten o'clock, Oak came out of his house, and\n\n\n              Went up the hill side\n              With that sort of stride\n     A man puts out when walking in search of a bride,\n\n\nand knocked Bathsheba's door.  Ten minutes later a large and a\nsmaller umbrella might have been seen moving from the same door, and\nthrough the mist along the road to the church.  The distance was not\nmore than a quarter of a mile, and these two sensible persons deemed\nit unnecessary to drive.  An observer must have been very close\nindeed to discover that the forms under the umbrellas were those of\nOak and Bathsheba, arm-in-arm for the first time in their lives, Oak\nin a greatcoat extending to his knees, and Bathsheba in a cloak that\nreached her clogs.  Yet, though so plainly dressed, there was a\ncertain rejuvenated appearance about her:--\n\n\n     As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.\n\n\nRepose had again incarnadined her cheeks; and having, at Gabriel's\nrequest, arranged her hair this morning as she had worn it years ago\non Norcombe Hill, she seemed in his eyes remarkably like a girl of\nthat fascinating dream, which, considering that she was now only\nthree or four-and-twenty, was perhaps not very wonderful.  In the\nchurch were Tall, Liddy, and the parson, and in a remarkably short\nspace of time the deed was done.\n\nThe two sat down very quietly to tea in Bathsheba's parlour in the\nevening of the same day, for it had been arranged that Farmer Oak\nshould go there to live, since he had as yet neither money, house,\nnor furniture worthy of the name, though he was on a sure way towards\nthem, whilst Bathsheba was, comparatively, in a plethora of all\nthree.\n\nJust as Bathsheba was pouring out a cup of tea, their ears were\ngreeted by the firing of a cannon, followed by what seemed like a\ntremendous blowing of trumpets, in the front of the house.\n\n\"There!\" said Oak, laughing, \"I knew those fellows were up to\nsomething, by the look on their faces\"\n\nOak took up the light and went into the porch, followed by Bathsheba\nwith a shawl over her head.  The rays fell upon a group of male\nfigures gathered upon the gravel in front, who, when they saw the\nnewly-married couple in the porch, set up a loud \"Hurrah!\" and at the\nsame moment bang again went the cannon in the background, followed by\na hideous clang of music from a drum, tambourine, clarionet, serpent,\nhautboy, tenor-viol, and double-bass--the only remaining relics\nof the true and original Weatherbury band--venerable worm-eaten\ninstruments, which had celebrated in their own persons the victories\nof Marlborough, under the fingers of the forefathers of those who\nplayed them now.  The performers came forward, and marched up to the\nfront.\n\n\"Those bright boys, Mark Clark and Jan, are at the bottom of all\nthis,\" said Oak.  \"Come in, souls, and have something to eat and\ndrink wi' me and my wife.\"\n\n\"Not to-night,\" said Mr. Clark, with evident self-denial.  \"Thank\nye all the same; but we'll call at a more seemly time.  However, we\ncouldn't think of letting the day pass without a note of admiration\nof some sort.  If ye could send a drop of som'at down to Warren's,\nwhy so it is.  Here's long life and happiness to neighbour Oak and\nhis comely bride!\"\n\n\"Thank ye; thank ye all,\" said Gabriel.  \"A bit and a drop shall be\nsent to Warren's for ye at once.  I had a thought that we might very\nlikely get a salute of some sort from our old friends, and I was\nsaying so to my wife but now.\"\n\n\"Faith,\" said Coggan, in a critical tone, turning to his companions,\n\"the man hev learnt to say 'my wife' in a wonderful naterel way,\nconsidering how very youthful he is in wedlock as yet--hey,\nneighbours all?\"\n\n\"I never heerd a skilful old married feller of twenty years'\nstanding pipe 'my wife' in a more used note than 'a did,\" said Jacob\nSmallbury.  \"It might have been a little more true to nater if't had\nbeen spoke a little chillier, but that wasn't to be expected just\nnow.\"\n\n\"That improvement will come wi' time,\" said Jan, twirling his eye.\n\nThen Oak laughed, and Bathsheba smiled (for she never laughed readily\nnow), and their friends turned to go.\n\n\"Yes; I suppose that's the size o't,\" said Joseph Poorgrass with a\ncheerful sigh as they moved away; \"and I wish him joy o' her; though\nI were once or twice upon saying to-day with holy Hosea, in my\nscripture manner, which is my second nature, 'Ephraim is joined to\nidols: let him alone.'  But since 'tis as 'tis, why, it might have\nbeen worse, and I feel my thanks accordingly.\"\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The novel opens with a chance encounter between Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene just outside the town of Casterbridge. Gabriel comes from humble origins as a shepherd, but has recently leased his own farm and seems to have good economic prospects. He is immediately struck by Bathsheba's beauty, although he quickly becomes aware that she is proud and headstrong. Although Bathsheba has been well-educated, she has fallen on hard times and is now required to take a very hands-on role helping her aunt to take care of her farm. The close proximity of their farms leads to a series of encounters between the two, including an incident in which Bathsheba saves Gabriel's life. After only knowing her for a short time, Gabriel proposes to Bathsheba and is surprised when she turns him down, explaining that she does not love him and is reluctant to give up her independence. Shortly after this conversation, Bathsheba moves away to the town of Weatherbury. A short time later, Gabriel experiences a dramatic reversal of fortune when he loses the majority of his sheep in a disastrous accident. He loses all of his money and has to give up his farm and seek work in whatever capacity he can find. While he is looking for work near the town of Weatherbury, he happens to come across a fire that is threatening to destroy a large amount of valuable crops. Gabriel takes charge of the situation and helps to get the fire under control, only to learn later that the owner of the farm is Bathsheba. She has inherited it from her uncle, and has taken the unusual step of managing it herself, even though this was uncommon for a woman at the time. She hires Gabriel to work as a shepherd. Bathsheba attracts a great deal of attention as an attractive, single, and prosperous woman with unconventional ideas, but she is dismayed to notice that William Boldwood, a successful middle-aged farmer, does not seem curious about her. On a whim, Bathsheba sends him a Valentine's Day card as a prank; when she does so, she unwittingly sets the stage for Boldwood, who is lonely and shy, to fall deeply in love with her. Boldwood proposes to Bathsheba a short time later, leaving her surprised and uncomfortable. She turns down the offer but is not entirely sure how to proceed in the future, since she knows some aspects of the marriage would be advantageous. Boldwood's courtship leads to disagreement between Gabriel and Bathsheba, to the point where she initially dismisses him from his job, but quickly hires him back when he saves many of her sheep after they eat poisonous plants and become ill. Boldwood proposes to Bathsheba a second time and although she does not accept, she gives him reason to be hopeful that she will. That same night, however, Bathsheba meets the handsome and charismatic Sergeant Troy, who quickly stirs her emotions. Knowing that Bathsheba is attracted to Troy, whom he is suspicious of, Gabriel encourages her to choose to marry Boldwood instead. Nonetheless, Bathsheba's growing feelings for Troy lead her to tell Boldwood she can never marry him. Boldwood is angry and jealous, and even threatens violence against Troy, especially since Troy has a bad reputation as a womanizer. Bathsheba is nervous about what will happen when Troy, who is currently away in Bath, returns and she decides to go to Bath herself to end the relationship and tell him not to come back. However, when Troy and Bathsheba return from Bath, they are married, a fact which Troy reveals to Boldwood only after playing a cruel trick on him and deceiving Boldwood into offering to pay Troy to marry the woman he loves. Both Boldwood and Gabriel are deeply upset by this reckless decision. Their worries seem well-founded, since Troy quickly proves to be lazy and unmotivated to help with running the farm. Gabriel narrowly averts disaster when a severe thunderstorm takes place on the night of the harvest celebrations and he takes the initiative to protect the uncovered crops since everyone else at the farm has gotten too drunk to help out. With Troy showing no signs of wanting to change his behavior, and spending money recklessly, the relationship between him and Bathsheba becomes worse and worse. In October, about 9 months after the beginning of the novel, Troy and Bathsheba meet a young woman walking on the road. She seems to be ill and impoverished, and the sight of her triggers strange behavior from Troy, which he refuses to explain to his wife. Troy is determined to hide the identity of the woman: Fanny Robbins, who was formerly a servant at the Everdene farm. She and Troy had an affair the previous winter while he was stationed with his troops in Melchester, and Fanny ran away believing she and Troy were going to elope. However, he abandoned her and she found herself pregnant. Now close to giving birth, she is trying to make her way to a local poorhouse. Troy arranges to meet her in a few days time, hoping to give her money and help her. However, after making an agonizing journey to the poorhouse, Fanny and her baby both die during childbirth. When Bathsheba learns of the death of her former servant, although not the cause, she sends for the body to be brought back to Weatherbury and buried there. Meanwhile, Troy sets out to meet Fanny, unaware of her death. Gabriel arranges for the fact that Fanny died giving birth to be hidden from Bathsheba, but the combination of rumors and her husband's suspicious behavior lead her to open the coffin and find the corpses of both Fanny and the infant inside. Bathsheba also realizes that Troy must be the father of Fanny's child, and when he comes home, the two of them have a heated argument. Bathsheba flees from the house and does not return until the coffin has been taken away. By that time, Troy has also left the house and he is seen leaving town a short time later. Troy makes his way to the seashore, where he gets caught up in a strong tide while taking a swim. He is rescued by some sailors and impulsively decides to join them on their voyage to America. As a result of this sudden disappearance, Troy is presumed to have drowned, and Bathsheba is declared a widow. This train of events leads Boldwood to hope that he will be able to marry her eventually, although Bathsheba insists that because Troy's death was only established circumstantially, she wants to wait a full 7 years after his death. Time passes, and at the end of the summer, almost a year after his vanishing, Troy secretly returns to Weatherbury. He has gotten tried of living in poverty and is considering reuniting with his wife, although he does not immediately reveal his identity or presence. Meanwhile, Boldwood has mentioned his hopes of marriage to Bathsheba and she has agreed to tell him at Christmas whether or not she will begin the 6-year engagement. Troy has learned that Bathsheba is considering remarrying, and on Christmas Eve, he makes a surprise appearance at the lavish party Boldwood is throwing. He tries to reclaim Bathsheba as his wife, but Boldwood flies into a rage and shoots and kills him. Boldwood is initially sentenced to death for this crime, but is eventually found to be insane and sentenced to life in prison. Bathsheba is traumatized by these events but slowly recovers, becoming more and more dependent on Gabriel to help her run the farm. She is shocked and unhappy to learn that he plans to leave England and move to America. This news leads Bathsheba to reflect on how valuable and loyal Gabriel has been. One night, she goes to his cottage to ask him why he is determined to leave, and as the two talk, it becomes clear that they both love each other, but have each been confused about the feelings of the other. A short time later, Gabriel and Bathsheba finally marry with much rejoicing from the local people and farm workers.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "So there's this guy named Gabriel Oak and he sounds like a pretty solid dude . One day, he sees a proud and beautiful young woman named Bathsheba and decides he wants to marry her. The problem is that Bathsheba thinks she's too good for him and turns him down. Worse yet, Oak loses his livelihood when one of his dogs chases all his sheep off a cliff. Things aren't looking great for the guy. After wandering the countryside looking for a job, Oak arrives in a town called Weatherbury and gets himself a job as a shepherd. And who should happen to be his new boss but his old flame Bathsheba, who has inherited the farm after her uncle's recent death. Uh oh. Meanwhile, a wealthy old farmer in the area named Boldwood decides that he'd like to marry Bathsheba, too. And she even gives Boldwood a half-promise to say yes, even though she doesn't love him. Things look like they might wrap up nicely at this point. But nope. Not so fast. Enter a cocky, handsome young man named Sergeant Troy. He rolls into Weatherbury and sweeps Bathsheba off her feet. The two of them get married quickly, which breaks the hearts of both Boldwood and Gabriel Oak. As you might expect, Troy is a total jerk to Bathsheba after they're married. What's even worse, though, is that Troy used to be engaged to one of Bathsheba's servants--Fanny Robin--and he has left her to die in the streets. When Bathsheba finds this out, her heart totally breaks. It's around this time that Troy realizes he's a bad dude, so he just does everyone a favor by faking his death and disappearing for a year. When life turns out to be really hard without his wife's money, though, he comes skulking back to Weatherbury to claim his fortune. During his absence, Boldwood has pestered Bathsheba into marrying him. On the night Boldwood hopes to announce the engagement, though, Troy shows up to steal Bathsheba away for a second time. Boldwood snaps and blows the dude away with a shotgun. Shortly afterwards, Boldwood turns himself in at a nearby police station. He's sentenced to be executed, but gets pardoned at the last minute because everyone thinks he's insane. Meanwhile, Gabriel Oak tells Bathsheba that he'll be leaving for America soon. She begs him to stay, and he agrees to... if the two of them can get married. She agrees and they get married shortly after. Now if Bathsheba had just agreed to marry Gabriel Oak the first time he asked, things would have been a lot tidier. Troy wouldn't have been blown to smithereens and Boldwood would still be hanging around. Oh, well. It was way more dramatic and juicy this way, and at least there's a happy ending?", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "cliffnotes", "text": "Bathsheba Everdene has the enviable problem of coping with three suitors simultaneously. The first to appear is Gabriel Oak, a farmer as ordinary, stable, and sturdy as his name suggests. Perceiving her beauty, he proposes to her and is promptly rejected. He vows not to ask again. Oak's flock of sheep is tragically destroyed, and he is obliged to seek employment. Chance has it that in the search he spies a serious fire, hastens to aid in extinguishing it, and manages to obtain employment on the estate. Bathsheba inherits her uncle's farm, and it is she who employs Gabriel as a shepherd. She intends to manage the farm by herself. Her farmhands have reservations about the abilities of this woman, whom they think is a bit vain and capricious. Indeed, it is caprice that prompts her to send an anonymous valentine to a neighboring landowner, Mr. Boldwood, a middle-aged bachelor. His curiosity and, subsequently, his emotions are seriously aroused, and he becomes Bathsheba's second suitor. She rejects him, too, but he vows to pursue her until she consents to marry him. The vicissitudes of country life and the emergencies of farming, coupled with Bathsheba's temperament, cause Gabriel to be alternately fired and rehired. He has made himself indispensable. He does his work, gives advice when asked, and usually withholds it when not consulted. But it is her third suitor, Sergeant Francis Troy, who, with his flattery, insouciance, and scarlet uniform, finally captures the interest of Bathsheba. Troy, who does not believe in promises, and laments with some truth that \"women will be the death of me,\" has wronged a young serving maid. After a misunderstanding about the time and place where they were to be married, he left her. This fickle soldier marries Bathsheba and becomes an arrogant landlord. Months later, Fanny, his abandoned victim, dies in childbirth. Troy is stunned -- and so is Bathsheba, when she learns the truth. She feels indirectly responsible for the tragedy and knows that her marriage is over. Bathsheba is remorseful but somewhat relieved when Troy disappears. His clothes are found on the shore of a bay where there is a strong current. People accept the circumstantial evidence of his death, but Bathsheba knows intuitively that he is alive. Troy does return, over a year later, just as Boldwood, almost mad, is trying to exact Bathsheba's promise that she will marry him six years hence, when the law can declare her legally widowed. Troy interrupts the Christmas party that Boldwood is giving. The infuriated Boldwood shoots him. Troy is buried beside Fanny, his wronged love. Because of his insanity, Boldwood's sentence is eventually commuted to internment at Her Majesty's pleasure. Gabriel, who has served Bathsheba patiently and loyally all this time, marries her at the story's conclusion. The augury is that, having lived through tragedy together, the pair will now find happiness.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "At the beginning of the novel, Bathsheba Everdene is a beautiful young woman without a fortune. She meets Gabriel Oak, a young farmer, and saves his life one evening. He asks her to marry him, but she refuses because she does not love him. Upon inheriting her uncle's prosperous farm she moves away to the town of Weatherbury. A disaster befalls Gabriel's farm and he loses his sheep; he is forced to give up farming. He goes looking for work, and in his travels finds himself in Weatherbury. After rescuing a local farm from fire he asks the mistress if she needs a shepherd. It is Bathsheba, and she hires him. As Bathsheba learns to manage her farm she becomes acquainted with her neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, and on a whim sends him a valentine with the words \"Marry me.\" Boldwood becomes obsessed with her and becomes her second suitor. Rich and handsome, he has been sought after by many women. Bathsheba refuses him because she does not love him, but she then agrees to reconsider her decision. That very night, Bathsheba meets a handsome soldier, Sergeant Troy. Unbeknownst to Bathsheba, he has recently impregnated a local girl, Fanny Robin, and almost married her. Troy falls in love with Bathsheba, enraging Boldwood. Bathsheba travels to Bath to warn Troy of Boldwood's anger, and while she is there, Troy convinces her to marry him. Gabriel has remained her friend throughout and does not approve of the marriage. A few weeks after his marriage to Bathsheba, Troy sees Fanny, poor and sick; she later dies giving birth to her child. Bathsheba discovers that Troy is the father. Grief-stricken at Fanny's death and riddled with shame, Troy runs away and is thought to have drowned. With Troy supposedly dead, Boldwood becomes more and more emphatic about Bathsheba marrying him. Troy sees Bathsheba at a fair and decides to return to her. Boldwood holds a Christmas, to which he invites Bathsheba and again proposes marriage; just after she has agreed, Troy arrives to claim her. Bathsheba screams, and Boldwood shoots Troy dead. He is sentenced to life in prison. A few months later, Bathsheba marries Gabriel, now a prosperous bailiff.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "161", "title": "Sense and Sensibility", "text": "\n\nThe family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex.  Their estate\nwas large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of\ntheir property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so\nrespectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their\nsurrounding acquaintance.  The late owner of this estate was a single\nman, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his\nlife, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister.  But her\ndeath, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great\nalteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received\ninto his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal\ninheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to\nbequeath it.  In the society of his nephew and niece, and their\nchildren, the old Gentleman's days were comfortably spent.  His\nattachment to them all increased.  The constant attention of Mr. and\nMrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from\ninterest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid\ncomfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the\nchildren added a relish to his existence.\n\nBy a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one son: by his present\nlady, three daughters.  The son, a steady respectable young man, was\namply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large,\nand half of which devolved on him on his coming of age.  By his own\nmarriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to his\nwealth.  To him therefore the succession to the Norland estate was not\nso really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent\nof what might arise to them from their father's inheriting that\nproperty, could be but small.  Their mother had nothing, and their\nfather only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal; for the\nremaining moiety of his first wife's fortune was also secured to her\nchild, and he had only a life-interest in it.\n\nThe old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other\nwill, gave as much disappointment as pleasure.  He was neither so\nunjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;--but\nhe left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the\nbequest.  Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife\nand daughters than for himself or his son;--but to his son, and his\nson's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as\nto leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear\nto him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate, or\nby any sale of its valuable woods.  The whole was tied up for the\nbenefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and\nmother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by\nsuch attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three\nyears old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his\nown way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh\nall the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received\nfrom his niece and her daughters.  He meant not to be unkind, however,\nand, as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a\nthousand pounds a-piece.\n\nMr. Dashwood's disappointment was, at first, severe; but his temper was\ncheerful and sanguine; and he might reasonably hope to live many years,\nand by living economically, lay by a considerable sum from the produce\nof an estate already large, and capable of almost immediate\nimprovement.  But the fortune, which had been so tardy in coming, was\nhis only one twelvemonth.  He survived his uncle no longer; and ten\nthousand pounds, including the late legacies, was all that remained for\nhis widow and daughters.\n\nHis son was sent for as soon as his danger was known, and to him Mr.\nDashwood recommended, with all the strength and urgency which illness\ncould command, the interest of his mother-in-law and sisters.\n\nMr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the\nfamily; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at\nsuch a time, and he promised to do every thing in his power to make\nthem comfortable.  His father was rendered easy by such an assurance,\nand Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there might\nprudently be in his power to do for them.\n\nHe was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted\nand rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well\nrespected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of\nhis ordinary duties.  Had he married a more amiable woman, he might\nhave been made still more respectable than he was:--he might even have\nbeen made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and\nvery fond of his wife.  But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature\nof himself;--more narrow-minded and selfish.\n\nWhen he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to\nincrease the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand\npounds a-piece.  He then really thought himself equal to it.  The\nprospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income,\nbesides the remaining half of his own mother's fortune, warmed his\nheart, and made him feel capable of generosity.-- \"Yes, he would give\nthem three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would\nbe enough to make them completely easy.  Three thousand pounds! he\ncould spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience.\"-- He\nthought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did\nnot repent.\n\nNo sooner was his father's funeral over, than Mrs. John Dashwood,\nwithout sending any notice of her intention to her mother-in-law,\narrived with her child and their attendants.  No one could dispute her\nright to come; the house was her husband's from the moment of his\nfather's decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the\ngreater, and to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood's situation, with only common\nfeelings, must have been highly unpleasing;--but in HER mind there was\na sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any offence of\nthe kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a source of\nimmovable disgust.  Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with\nany of her husband's family; but she had had no opportunity, till the\npresent, of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort of\nother people she could act when occasion required it.\n\nSo acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour, and so\nearnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the\narrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever, had\nnot the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on the\npropriety of going, and her own tender love for all her three children\ndetermined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid a breach\nwith their brother.\n\nElinor, this eldest daughter, whose advice was so effectual, possessed\na strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified\nher, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and\nenabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all,\nthat eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led\nto imprudence.  She had an excellent heart;--her disposition was\naffectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern\nthem: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn; and which\none of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.\n\nMarianne's abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor's.\nShe was sensible and clever; but eager in everything: her sorrows, her\njoys, could have no moderation.  She was generous, amiable,\ninteresting: she was everything but prudent.  The resemblance between\nher and her mother was strikingly great.\n\nElinor saw, with concern, the excess of her sister's sensibility; but\nby Mrs. Dashwood it was valued and cherished.  They encouraged each\nother now in the violence of their affliction.  The agony of grief\nwhich overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, was sought\nfor, was created again and again.  They gave themselves up wholly to\ntheir sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that\ncould afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in\nfuture.  Elinor, too, was deeply afflicted; but still she could\nstruggle, she could exert herself.  She could consult with her brother,\ncould receive her sister-in-law on her arrival, and treat her with\nproper attention; and could strive to rouse her mother to similar\nexertion, and encourage her to similar forbearance.\n\nMargaret, the other sister, was a good-humored, well-disposed girl; but\nas she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance, without\nhaving much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal\nher sisters at a more advanced period of life.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. John Dashwood now installed herself mistress of Norland; and her\nmother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors.\nAs such, however, they were treated by her with quiet civility; and by\nher husband with as much kindness as he could feel towards anybody\nbeyond himself, his wife, and their child.  He really pressed them,\nwith some earnestness, to consider Norland as their home; and, as no\nplan appeared so eligible to Mrs. Dashwood as remaining there till she\ncould accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, his\ninvitation was accepted.\n\nA continuance in a place where everything reminded her of former\ndelight, was exactly what suited her mind.  In seasons of cheerfulness,\nno temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater\ndegree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness\nitself.  But in sorrow she must be equally carried away by her fancy,\nand as far beyond consolation as in pleasure she was beyond alloy.\n\nMrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended\nto do for his sisters.  To take three thousand pounds from the fortune\nof their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most\ndreadful degree.  She begged him to think again on the subject.  How\ncould he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too,\nof so large a sum?  And what possible claim could the Miss Dashwoods,\nwho were related to him only by half blood, which she considered as no\nrelationship at all, have on his generosity to so large an amount.  It\nwas very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist\nbetween the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he\nto ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his\nmoney to his half sisters?\n\n\"It was my father's last request to me,\" replied her husband, \"that I\nshould assist his widow and daughters.\"\n\n\"He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he\nwas light-headed at the time.  Had he been in his right senses, he\ncould not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half\nyour fortune from your own child.\"\n\n\"He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only\nrequested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their\nsituation more comfortable than it was in his power to do.  Perhaps it\nwould have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself.  He could\nhardly suppose I should neglect them.  But as he required the promise,\nI could not do less than give it; at least I thought so at the time.\nThe promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed.  Something\nmust be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new\nhome.\"\n\n\"Well, then, LET something be done for them; but THAT something need\nnot be three thousand pounds.  Consider,\" she added, \"that when the\nmoney is once parted with, it never can return.  Your sisters will\nmarry, and it will be gone for ever.  If, indeed, it could be restored\nto our poor little boy--\"\n\n\"Why, to be sure,\" said her husband, very gravely, \"that would make\ngreat difference.  The time may come when Harry will regret that so\nlarge a sum was parted with.  If he should have a numerous family, for\ninstance, it would be a very convenient addition.\"\n\n\"To be sure it would.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, if the sum were\ndiminished one half.--Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious\nincrease to their fortunes!\"\n\n\"Oh! beyond anything great!  What brother on earth would do half so\nmuch for his sisters, even if REALLY his sisters!  And as it is--only\nhalf blood!--But you have such a generous spirit!\"\n\n\"I would not wish to do any thing mean,\" he replied.  \"One had rather,\non such occasions, do too much than too little.  No one, at least, can\nthink I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly\nexpect more.\"\n\n\"There is no knowing what THEY may expect,\" said the lady, \"but we are\nnot to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can\nafford to do.\"\n\n\"Certainly--and I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds\na-piece.  As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have\nabout three thousand pounds on their mother's death--a very comfortable\nfortune for any young woman.\"\n\n\"To be sure it is; and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no\naddition at all.  They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst\nthem.  If they marry, they will be sure of doing well, and if they do\nnot, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of ten\nthousand pounds.\"\n\n\"That is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, upon the\nwhole, it would not be more advisable to do something for their mother\nwhile she lives, rather than for them--something of the annuity kind I\nmean.--My sisters would feel the good effects of it as well as herself.\nA hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable.\"\n\nHis wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this\nplan.\n\n\"To be sure,\" said she, \"it is better than parting with fifteen hundred\npounds at once.  But, then, if Mrs. Dashwood should live fifteen years\nwe shall be completely taken in.\"\n\n\"Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that\npurchase.\"\n\n\"Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when\nthere is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy,\nand hardly forty.  An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over\nand over every year, and there is no getting rid of it.  You are not\naware of what you are doing.  I have known a great deal of the trouble\nof annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to\nold superannuated servants by my father's will, and it is amazing how\ndisagreeable she found it.  Twice every year these annuities were to be\npaid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then\none of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be\nno such thing.  My mother was quite sick of it.  Her income was not her\nown, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more\nunkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been\nentirely at my mother's disposal, without any restriction whatever.  It\nhas given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would\nnot pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world.\"\n\n\"It is certainly an unpleasant thing,\" replied Mr. Dashwood, \"to have\nthose kind of yearly drains on one's income.  One's fortune, as your\nmother justly says, is NOT one's own.  To be tied down to the regular\npayment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it\ntakes away one's independence.\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it.  They think\nthemselves secure, you do no more than what is expected, and it raises\nno gratitude at all.  If I were you, whatever I did should be done at\nmy own discretion entirely.  I would not bind myself to allow them any\nthing yearly.  It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a\nhundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses.\"\n\n\"I believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should\nbe no annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will\nbe of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they\nwould only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger\nincome, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the\nyear.  It will certainly be much the best way.  A present of fifty\npounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for\nmoney, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father.\"\n\n\"To be sure it will.  Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within\nmyself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at\nall.  The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might\nbe reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a\ncomfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things,\nand sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they\nare in season.  I'll lay my life that he meant nothing farther; indeed,\nit would be very strange and unreasonable if he did.  Do but consider,\nmy dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively comfortable your mother-in-law\nand her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand pounds,\nbesides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which\nbrings them in fifty pounds a year a-piece, and, of course, they will\npay their mother for their board out of it.  Altogether, they will have\nfive hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want\nfor more than that?--They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will\nbe nothing at all.  They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly\nany servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of\nany kind!  Only conceive how comfortable they will be!  Five hundred a\nyear! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as\nto your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it.  They will\nbe much more able to give YOU something.\"\n\n\"Upon my word,\" said Mr. Dashwood, \"I believe you are perfectly right.\nMy father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than\nwhat you say.  I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil\nmy engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you\nhave described.  When my mother removes into another house my services\nshall be readily given to accommodate her as far as I can.  Some little\npresent of furniture too may be acceptable then.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" returned Mrs. John Dashwood.  \"But, however, ONE thing\nmust be considered.  When your father and mother moved to Norland,\nthough the furniture of Stanhill was sold, all the china, plate, and\nlinen was saved, and is now left to your mother.  Her house will\ntherefore be almost completely fitted up as soon as she takes it.\"\n\n\"That is a material consideration undoubtedly.  A valuable legacy\nindeed! And yet some of the plate would have been a very pleasant\naddition to our own stock here.\"\n\n\"Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what\nbelongs to this house.  A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for\nany place THEY can ever afford to live in.  But, however, so it is.\nYour father thought only of THEM.  And I must say this: that you owe no\nparticular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very\nwell know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the\nworld to THEM.\"\n\nThis argument was irresistible.  It gave to his intentions whatever of\ndecision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be\nabsolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the\nwidow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as\nhis own wife pointed out.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months; not from any\ndisinclination to move when the sight of every well known spot ceased\nto raise the violent emotion which it produced for a while; for when\nher spirits began to revive, and her mind became capable of some other\nexertion than that of heightening its affliction by melancholy\nremembrances, she was impatient to be gone, and indefatigable in her\ninquiries for a suitable dwelling in the neighbourhood of Norland; for\nto remove far from that beloved spot was impossible.  But she could\nhear of no situation that at once answered her notions of comfort and\nease, and suited the prudence of her eldest daughter, whose steadier\njudgment rejected several houses as too large for their income, which\nher mother would have approved.\n\nMrs. Dashwood had been informed by her husband of the solemn promise on\nthe part of his son in their favour, which gave comfort to his last\nearthly reflections.  She doubted the sincerity of this assurance no\nmore than he had doubted it himself, and she thought of it for her\ndaughters' sake with satisfaction, though as for herself she was\npersuaded that a much smaller provision than 7000L would support her in\naffluence.  For their brother's sake, too, for the sake of his own\nheart, she rejoiced; and she reproached herself for being unjust to his\nmerit before, in believing him incapable of generosity.  His attentive\nbehaviour to herself and his sisters convinced her that their welfare\nwas dear to him, and, for a long time, she firmly relied on the\nliberality of his intentions.\n\nThe contempt which she had, very early in their acquaintance, felt for\nher daughter-in-law, was very much increased by the farther knowledge\nof her character, which half a year's residence in her family afforded;\nand perhaps in spite of every consideration of politeness or maternal\naffection on the side of the former, the two ladies might have found it\nimpossible to have lived together so long, had not a particular\ncircumstance occurred to give still greater eligibility, according to\nthe opinions of Mrs. Dashwood, to her daughters' continuance at Norland.\n\nThis circumstance was a growing attachment between her eldest girl and\nthe brother of Mrs. John Dashwood, a gentleman-like and pleasing young\nman, who was introduced to their acquaintance soon after his sister's\nestablishment at Norland, and who had since spent the greatest part of\nhis time there.\n\nSome mothers might have encouraged the intimacy from motives of\ninterest, for Edward Ferrars was the eldest son of a man who had died\nvery rich; and some might have repressed it from motives of prudence,\nfor, except a trifling sum, the whole of his fortune depended on the\nwill of his mother.  But Mrs. Dashwood was alike uninfluenced by either\nconsideration.  It was enough for her that he appeared to be amiable,\nthat he loved her daughter, and that Elinor returned the partiality.\nIt was contrary to every doctrine of hers that difference of fortune\nshould keep any couple asunder who were attracted by resemblance of\ndisposition; and that Elinor's merit should not be acknowledged by\nevery one who knew her, was to her comprehension impossible.\n\nEdward Ferrars was not recommended to their good opinion by any\npeculiar graces of person or address.  He was not handsome, and his\nmanners required intimacy to make them pleasing.  He was too diffident\nto do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome,\nhis behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart.\nHis understanding was good, and his education had given it solid\nimprovement.  But he was neither fitted by abilities nor disposition to\nanswer the wishes of his mother and sister, who longed to see him\ndistinguished--as--they hardly knew what.  They wanted him to make a\nfine figure in the world in some manner or other.  His mother wished to\ninterest him in political concerns, to get him into parliament, or to\nsee him connected with some of the great men of the day.  Mrs. John\nDashwood wished it likewise; but in the mean while, till one of these\nsuperior blessings could be attained, it would have quieted her\nambition to see him driving a barouche.  But Edward had no turn for\ngreat men or barouches.  All his wishes centered in domestic comfort\nand the quiet of private life.  Fortunately he had a younger brother\nwho was more promising.\n\nEdward had been staying several weeks in the house before he engaged\nmuch of Mrs. Dashwood's attention; for she was, at that time, in such\naffliction as rendered her careless of surrounding objects.  She saw\nonly that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it.  He\ndid not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation.\nShe was first called to observe and approve him farther, by a\nreflection which Elinor chanced one day to make on the difference\nbetween him and his sister.  It was a contrast which recommended him\nmost forcibly to her mother.\n\n\"It is enough,\" said she; \"to say that he is unlike Fanny is enough.\nIt implies everything amiable.  I love him already.\"\n\n\"I think you will like him,\" said Elinor, \"when you know more of him.\"\n\n\"Like him!\" replied her mother with a smile.  \"I feel no sentiment of\napprobation inferior to love.\"\n\n\"You may esteem him.\"\n\n\"I have never yet known what it was to separate esteem and love.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood now took pains to get acquainted with him.  Her manners\nwere attaching, and soon banished his reserve.  She speedily\ncomprehended all his merits; the persuasion of his regard for Elinor\nperhaps assisted her penetration; but she really felt assured of his\nworth: and even that quietness of manner, which militated against all\nher established ideas of what a young man's address ought to be, was no\nlonger uninteresting when she knew his heart to be warm and his temper\naffectionate.\n\nNo sooner did she perceive any symptom of love in his behaviour to\nElinor, than she considered their serious attachment as certain, and\nlooked forward to their marriage as rapidly approaching.\n\n\"In a few months, my dear Marianne.\" said she, \"Elinor will, in all\nprobability be settled for life.  We shall miss her; but SHE will be\nhappy.\"\n\n\"Oh! Mama, how shall we do without her?\"\n\n\"My love, it will be scarcely a separation.  We shall live within a few\nmiles of each other, and shall meet every day of our lives.  You will\ngain a brother, a real, affectionate brother.  I have the highest\nopinion in the world of Edward's heart.  But you look grave, Marianne;\ndo you disapprove your sister's choice?\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Marianne, \"I may consider it with some surprise.\nEdward is very amiable, and I love him tenderly.  But yet--he is not\nthe kind of young man--there is something wanting--his figure is not\nstriking; it has none of that grace which I should expect in the man\nwho could seriously attach my sister.  His eyes want all that spirit,\nthat fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence.  And besides\nall this, I am afraid, Mama, he has no real taste.  Music seems\nscarcely to attract him, and though he admires Elinor's drawings very\nmuch, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their\nworth.  It is evident, in spite of his frequent attention to her while\nshe draws, that in fact he knows nothing of the matter.  He admires as\na lover, not as a connoisseur.  To satisfy me, those characters must be\nunited.  I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every\npoint coincide with my own.  He must enter into all my feelings; the\nsame books, the same music must charm us both.  Oh! mama, how\nspiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night!\nI felt for my sister most severely.  Yet she bore it with so much\ncomposure, she seemed scarcely to notice it.  I could hardly keep my\nseat.  To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost\ndriven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such\ndreadful indifference!\"\n\n\"He would certainly have done more justice to simple and elegant prose.\nI thought so at the time; but you WOULD give him Cowper.\"\n\n\"Nay, Mama, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!--but we must allow\nfor difference of taste.  Elinor has not my feelings, and therefore she\nmay overlook it, and be happy with him.  But it would have broke MY\nheart, had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility.\nMama, the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I\nshall never see a man whom I can really love.  I require so much!  He\nmust have all Edward's virtues, and his person and manners must\nornament his goodness with every possible charm.\"\n\n\"Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen.  It is yet too early in\nlife to despair of such a happiness.  Why should you be less fortunate\nthan your mother?  In one circumstance only, my Marianne, may your\ndestiny be different from hers!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"What a pity it is, Elinor,\" said Marianne, \"that Edward should have no\ntaste for drawing.\"\n\n\"No taste for drawing!\" replied Elinor, \"why should you think so? He\ndoes not draw himself, indeed, but he has great pleasure in seeing the\nperformances of other people, and I assure you he is by no means\ndeficient in natural taste, though he has not had opportunities of\nimproving it.  Had he ever been in the way of learning, I think he\nwould have drawn very well.  He distrusts his own judgment in such\nmatters so much, that he is always unwilling to give his opinion on any\npicture; but he has an innate propriety and simplicity of taste, which\nin general direct him perfectly right.\"\n\nMarianne was afraid of offending, and said no more on the subject; but\nthe kind of approbation which Elinor described as excited in him by the\ndrawings of other people, was very far from that rapturous delight,\nwhich, in her opinion, could alone be called taste.  Yet, though\nsmiling within herself at the mistake, she honoured her sister for that\nblind partiality to Edward which produced it.\n\n\"I hope, Marianne,\" continued Elinor, \"you do not consider him as\ndeficient in general taste.  Indeed, I think I may say that you cannot,\nfor your behaviour to him is perfectly cordial, and if THAT were your\nopinion, I am sure you could never be civil to him.\"\n\nMarianne hardly knew what to say.  She would not wound the feelings of\nher sister on any account, and yet to say what she did not believe was\nimpossible.  At length she replied:\n\n\"Do not be offended, Elinor, if my praise of him is not in every thing\nequal to your sense of his merits.  I have not had so many\nopportunities of estimating the minuter propensities of his mind, his\ninclinations and tastes, as you have; but I have the highest opinion in\nthe world of his goodness and sense.  I think him every thing that is\nworthy and amiable.\"\n\n\"I am sure,\" replied Elinor, with a smile, \"that his dearest friends\ncould not be dissatisfied with such commendation as that.  I do not\nperceive how you could express yourself more warmly.\"\n\nMarianne was rejoiced to find her sister so easily pleased.\n\n\"Of his sense and his goodness,\" continued Elinor, \"no one can, I\nthink, be in doubt, who has seen him often enough to engage him in\nunreserved conversation.  The excellence of his understanding and his\nprinciples can be concealed only by that shyness which too often keeps\nhim silent.  You know enough of him to do justice to his solid worth.\nBut of his minuter propensities, as you call them you have from\npeculiar circumstances been kept more ignorant than myself.  He and I\nhave been at times thrown a good deal together, while you have been\nwholly engrossed on the most affectionate principle by my mother.  I\nhave seen a great deal of him, have studied his sentiments and heard\nhis opinion on subjects of literature and taste; and, upon the whole, I\nventure to pronounce that his mind is well-informed, enjoyment of books\nexceedingly great, his imagination lively, his observation just and\ncorrect, and his taste delicate and pure.  His abilities in every\nrespect improve as much upon acquaintance as his manners and person.\nAt first sight, his address is certainly not striking; and his person\ncan hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which\nare uncommonly good, and the general sweetness of his countenance, is\nperceived.  At present, I know him so well, that I think him really\nhandsome; or at least, almost so.  What say you, Marianne?\"\n\n\"I shall very soon think him handsome, Elinor, if I do not now.  When\nyou tell me to love him as a brother, I shall no more see imperfection\nin his face, than I now do in his heart.\"\n\nElinor started at this declaration, and was sorry for the warmth she\nhad been betrayed into, in speaking of him.  She felt that Edward stood\nvery high in her opinion.  She believed the regard to be mutual; but\nshe required greater certainty of it to make Marianne's conviction of\ntheir attachment agreeable to her.  She knew that what Marianne and her\nmother conjectured one moment, they believed the next--that with them,\nto wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.  She tried to explain\nthe real state of the case to her sister.\n\n\"I do not attempt to deny,\" said she, \"that I think very highly of\nhim--that I greatly esteem, that I like him.\"\n\nMarianne here burst forth with indignation--\n\n\"Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh!  worse than\ncold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise.  Use those words again, and I\nwill leave the room this moment.\"\n\nElinor could not help laughing.  \"Excuse me,\" said she; \"and be assured\nthat I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my\nown feelings.  Believe them to be stronger than I have declared;\nbelieve them, in short, to be such as his merit, and the suspicion--the\nhope of his affection for me may warrant, without imprudence or folly.\nBut farther than this you must not believe.  I am by no means assured\nof his regard for me.  There are moments when the extent of it seems\ndoubtful; and till his sentiments are fully known, you cannot wonder at\nmy wishing to avoid any encouragement of my own partiality, by\nbelieving or calling it more than it is.  In my heart I feel\nlittle--scarcely any doubt of his preference.  But there are other\npoints to be considered besides his inclination.  He is very far from\nbeing independent.  What his mother really is we cannot know; but, from\nFanny's occasional mention of her conduct and opinions, we have never\nbeen disposed to think her amiable; and I am very much mistaken if\nEdward is not himself aware that there would be many difficulties in\nhis way, if he were to wish to marry a woman who had not either a great\nfortune or high rank.\"\n\nMarianne was astonished to find how much the imagination of her mother\nand herself had outstripped the truth.\n\n\"And you really are not engaged to him!\" said she.  \"Yet it certainly\nsoon will happen.  But two advantages will proceed from this delay.  I\nshall not lose you so soon, and Edward will have greater opportunity of\nimproving that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must be\nso indispensably necessary to your future felicity.  Oh! if he should\nbe so far stimulated by your genius as to learn to draw himself, how\ndelightful it would be!\"\n\nElinor had given her real opinion to her sister.  She could not\nconsider her partiality for Edward in so prosperous a state as Marianne\nhad believed it.  There was, at times, a want of spirits about him\nwhich, if it did not denote indifference, spoke of something almost as\nunpromising.  A doubt of her regard, supposing him to feel it, need not\ngive him more than inquietude.  It would not be likely to produce that\ndejection of mind which frequently attended him.  A more reasonable\ncause might be found in the dependent situation which forbade the\nindulgence of his affection.  She knew that his mother neither behaved\nto him so as to make his home comfortable at present, nor to give him\nany assurance that he might form a home for himself, without strictly\nattending to her views for his aggrandizement.  With such a knowledge\nas this, it was impossible for Elinor to feel easy on the subject.  She\nwas far from depending on that result of his preference of her, which\nher mother and sister still considered as certain.  Nay, the longer\nthey were together the more doubtful seemed the nature of his regard;\nand sometimes, for a few painful minutes, she believed it to be no more\nthan friendship.\n\nBut, whatever might really be its limits, it was enough, when perceived\nby his sister, to make her uneasy, and at the same time, (which was\nstill more common,) to make her uncivil.  She took the first\nopportunity of affronting her mother-in-law on the occasion, talking to\nher so expressively of her brother's great expectations, of Mrs.\nFerrars's resolution that both her sons should marry well, and of the\ndanger attending any young woman who attempted to DRAW HIM IN; that\nMrs. Dashwood could neither pretend to be unconscious, nor endeavor to\nbe calm.  She gave her an answer which marked her contempt, and\ninstantly left the room, resolving that, whatever might be the\ninconvenience or expense of so sudden a removal, her beloved Elinor\nshould not be exposed another week to such insinuations.\n\nIn this state of her spirits, a letter was delivered to her from the\npost, which contained a proposal particularly well timed.  It was the\noffer of a small house, on very easy terms, belonging to a relation of\nher own, a gentleman of consequence and property in Devonshire.  The\nletter was from this gentleman himself, and written in the true spirit\nof friendly accommodation.  He understood that she was in need of a\ndwelling; and though the house he now offered her was merely a cottage,\nhe assured her that everything should be done to it which she might\nthink necessary, if the situation pleased her.  He earnestly pressed\nher, after giving the particulars of the house and garden, to come with\nher daughters to Barton Park, the place of his own residence, from\nwhence she might judge, herself, whether Barton Cottage, for the houses\nwere in the same parish, could, by any alteration, be made comfortable\nto her.  He seemed really anxious to accommodate them and the whole of\nhis letter was written in so friendly a style as could not fail of\ngiving pleasure to his cousin; more especially at a moment when she was\nsuffering under the cold and unfeeling behaviour of her nearer\nconnections.  She needed no time for deliberation or inquiry.  Her\nresolution was formed as she read.  The situation of Barton, in a\ncounty so far distant from Sussex as Devonshire, which, but a few hours\nbefore, would have been a sufficient objection to outweigh every\npossible advantage belonging to the place, was now its first\nrecommendation.  To quit the neighbourhood of Norland was no longer an\nevil; it was an object of desire; it was a blessing, in comparison of\nthe misery of continuing her daughter-in-law's guest; and to remove for\never from that beloved place would be less painful than to inhabit or\nvisit it while such a woman was its mistress.  She instantly wrote Sir\nJohn Middleton her acknowledgment of his kindness, and her acceptance\nof his proposal; and then hastened to shew both letters to her\ndaughters, that she might be secure of their approbation before her\nanswer were sent.\n\nElinor had always thought it would be more prudent for them to settle\nat some distance from Norland, than immediately amongst their present\nacquaintance.  On THAT head, therefore, it was not for her to oppose\nher mother's intention of removing into Devonshire.  The house, too, as\ndescribed by Sir John, was on so simple a scale, and the rent so\nuncommonly moderate, as to leave her no right of objection on either\npoint; and, therefore, though it was not a plan which brought any charm\nto her fancy, though it was a removal from the vicinity of Norland\nbeyond her wishes, she made no attempt to dissuade her mother from\nsending a letter of acquiescence.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNo sooner was her answer dispatched, than Mrs. Dashwood indulged herself\nin the pleasure of announcing to her son-in-law and his wife that she\nwas provided with a house, and should incommode them no longer than till\nevery thing were ready for her inhabiting it. They heard her with\nsurprise. Mrs. John Dashwood said nothing; but her husband civilly hoped\nthat she would not be settled far from Norland. She had great\nsatisfaction in replying that she was going into Devonshire.--Edward\nturned hastily towards her, on hearing this, and, in a voice of surprise\nand concern, which required no explanation to her, repeated,\n\"Devonshire! Are you, indeed, going there? So far from hence! And to\nwhat part of it?\" She explained the situation. It was within four miles\nnorthward of Exeter.\n\n\"It is but a cottage,\" she continued, \"but I hope to see many of my\nfriends in it.  A room or two can easily be added; and if my friends\nfind no difficulty in travelling so far to see me, I am sure I will\nfind none in accommodating them.\"\n\nShe concluded with a very kind invitation to Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood\nto visit her at Barton; and to Edward she gave one with still greater\naffection.  Though her late conversation with her daughter-in-law had\nmade her resolve on remaining at Norland no longer than was\nunavoidable, it had not produced the smallest effect on her in that\npoint to which it principally tended.  To separate Edward and Elinor\nwas as far from being her object as ever; and she wished to show Mrs.\nJohn Dashwood, by this pointed invitation to her brother, how totally\nshe disregarded her disapprobation of the match.\n\nMr. John Dashwood told his mother again and again how exceedingly sorry\nhe was that she had taken a house at such a distance from Norland as to\nprevent his being of any service to her in removing her furniture.  He\nreally felt conscientiously vexed on the occasion; for the very\nexertion to which he had limited the performance of his promise to his\nfather was by this arrangement rendered impracticable.-- The furniture\nwas all sent around by water.  It chiefly consisted of household linen,\nplate, china, and books, with a handsome pianoforte of Marianne's.\nMrs. John Dashwood saw the packages depart with a sigh: she could not\nhelp feeling it hard that as Mrs. Dashwood's income would be so\ntrifling in comparison with their own, she should have any handsome\narticle of furniture.\n\nMrs. Dashwood took the house for a twelvemonth; it was ready furnished,\nand she might have immediate possession.  No difficulty arose on either\nside in the agreement; and she waited only for the disposal of her\neffects at Norland, and to determine her future household, before she\nset off for the west; and this, as she was exceedingly rapid in the\nperformance of everything that interested her, was soon done.--The\nhorses which were left her by her husband had been sold soon after his\ndeath, and an opportunity now offering of disposing of her carriage,\nshe agreed to sell that likewise at the earnest advice of her eldest\ndaughter.  For the comfort of her children, had she consulted only her\nown wishes, she would have kept it; but the discretion of Elinor\nprevailed.  HER wisdom too limited the number of their servants to\nthree; two maids and a man, with whom they were speedily provided from\namongst those who had formed their establishment at Norland.\n\nThe man and one of the maids were sent off immediately into Devonshire,\nto prepare the house for their mistress's arrival; for as Lady\nMiddleton was entirely unknown to Mrs. Dashwood, she preferred going\ndirectly to the cottage to being a visitor at Barton Park; and she\nrelied so undoubtingly on Sir John's description of the house, as to\nfeel no curiosity to examine it herself till she entered it as her own.\nHer eagerness to be gone from Norland was preserved from diminution by\nthe evident satisfaction of her daughter-in-law in the prospect of her\nremoval; a satisfaction which was but feebly attempted to be concealed\nunder a cold invitation to her to defer her departure.  Now was the\ntime when her son-in-law's promise to his father might with particular\npropriety be fulfilled.  Since he had neglected to do it on first\ncoming to the estate, their quitting his house might be looked on as\nthe most suitable period for its accomplishment.  But Mrs. Dashwood\nbegan shortly to give over every hope of the kind, and to be convinced,\nfrom the general drift of his discourse, that his assistance extended\nno farther than their maintenance for six months at Norland.  He so\nfrequently talked of the increasing expenses of housekeeping, and of\nthe perpetual demands upon his purse, which a man of any consequence in\nthe world was beyond calculation exposed to, that he seemed rather to\nstand in need of more money himself than to have any design of giving\nmoney away.\n\nIn a very few weeks from the day which brought Sir John Middleton's\nfirst letter to Norland, every thing was so far settled in their future\nabode as to enable Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters to begin their\njourney.\n\nMany were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so\nmuch beloved.  \"Dear, dear Norland!\" said Marianne, as she wandered\nalone before the house, on the last evening of their being there; \"when\nshall I cease to regret you!--when learn to feel a home elsewhere!--Oh!\nhappy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this\nspot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more!--And you, ye\nwell-known trees!--but you will continue the same.--No leaf will decay\nbecause we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we\ncan observe you no longer!--No; you will continue the same; unconscious\nof the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any\nchange in those who walk under your shade!--But who will remain to\nenjoy you?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe first part of their journey was performed in too melancholy a\ndisposition to be otherwise than tedious and unpleasant.  But as they\ndrew towards the end of it, their interest in the appearance of a\ncountry which they were to inhabit overcame their dejection, and a view\nof Barton Valley as they entered it gave them cheerfulness.  It was a\npleasant fertile spot, well wooded, and rich in pasture.  After winding\nalong it for more than a mile, they reached their own house.  A small\ngreen court was the whole of its demesne in front; and a neat wicket\ngate admitted them into it.\n\nAs a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact;\nbut as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the\nroof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were\nthe walls covered with honeysuckles.  A narrow passage led directly\nthrough the house into the garden behind.  On each side of the entrance\nwas a sitting room, about sixteen feet square; and beyond them were the\noffices and the stairs.  Four bed-rooms and two garrets formed the rest\nof the house.  It had not been built many years and was in good repair.\nIn comparison of Norland, it was poor and small indeed!--but the tears\nwhich recollection called forth as they entered the house were soon\ndried away.  They were cheered by the joy of the servants on their\narrival, and each for the sake of the others resolved to appear happy.\nIt was very early in September; the season was fine, and from first\nseeing the place under the advantage of good weather, they received an\nimpression in its favour which was of material service in recommending\nit to their lasting approbation.\n\nThe situation of the house was good.  High hills rose immediately\nbehind, and at no great distance on each side; some of which were open\ndowns, the others cultivated and woody.  The village of Barton was\nchiefly on one of these hills, and formed a pleasant view from the\ncottage windows.  The prospect in front was more extensive; it\ncommanded the whole of the valley, and reached into the country beyond.\nThe hills which surrounded the cottage terminated the valley in that\ndirection; under another name, and in another course, it branched out\nagain between two of the steepest of them.\n\nWith the size and furniture of the house Mrs. Dashwood was upon the\nwhole well satisfied; for though her former style of life rendered many\nadditions to the latter indispensable, yet to add and improve was a\ndelight to her; and she had at this time ready money enough to supply\nall that was wanted of greater elegance to the apartments.  \"As for the\nhouse itself, to be sure,\" said she, \"it is too small for our family,\nbut we will make ourselves tolerably comfortable for the present, as it\nis too late in the year for improvements.  Perhaps in the spring, if I\nhave plenty of money, as I dare say I shall, we may think about\nbuilding.  These parlors are both too small for such parties of our\nfriends as I hope to see often collected here; and I have some thoughts\nof throwing the passage into one of them with perhaps a part of the\nother, and so leave the remainder of that other for an entrance; this,\nwith a new drawing room which may be easily added, and a bed-chamber\nand garret above, will make it a very snug little cottage.  I could\nwish the stairs were handsome.  But one must not expect every thing;\nthough I suppose it would be no difficult matter to widen them.  I\nshall see how much I am before-hand with the world in the spring, and\nwe will plan our improvements accordingly.\"\n\nIn the mean time, till all these alterations could be made from the\nsavings of an income of five hundred a-year by a woman who never saved\nin her life, they were wise enough to be contented with the house as it\nwas; and each of them was busy in arranging their particular concerns,\nand endeavoring, by placing around them books and other possessions, to\nform themselves a home.  Marianne's pianoforte was unpacked and\nproperly disposed of; and Elinor's drawings were affixed to the walls\nof their sitting room.\n\nIn such employments as these they were interrupted soon after breakfast\nthe next day by the entrance of their landlord, who called to welcome\nthem to Barton, and to offer them every accommodation from his own\nhouse and garden in which theirs might at present be deficient.  Sir\nJohn Middleton was a good looking man about forty.  He had formerly\nvisited at Stanhill, but it was too long for his young cousins to\nremember him.  His countenance was thoroughly good-humoured; and his\nmanners were as friendly as the style of his letter.  Their arrival\nseemed to afford him real satisfaction, and their comfort to be an\nobject of real solicitude to him.  He said much of his earnest desire\nof their living in the most sociable terms with his family, and pressed\nthem so cordially to dine at Barton Park every day till they were\nbetter settled at home, that, though his entreaties were carried to a\npoint of perseverance beyond civility, they could not give offence.\nHis kindness was not confined to words; for within an hour after he\nleft them, a large basket full of garden stuff and fruit arrived from\nthe park, which was followed before the end of the day by a present of\ngame.  He insisted, moreover, on conveying all their letters to and\nfrom the post for them, and would not be denied the satisfaction of\nsending them his newspaper every day.\n\nLady Middleton had sent a very civil message by him, denoting her\nintention of waiting on Mrs. Dashwood as soon as she could be assured\nthat her visit would be no inconvenience; and as this message was\nanswered by an invitation equally polite, her ladyship was introduced\nto them the next day.\n\nThey were, of course, very anxious to see a person on whom so much of\ntheir comfort at Barton must depend; and the elegance of her appearance\nwas favourable to their wishes.  Lady Middleton was not more than six\nor seven and twenty; her face was handsome, her figure tall and\nstriking, and her address graceful.  Her manners had all the elegance\nwhich her husband's wanted.  But they would have been improved by some\nshare of his frankness and warmth; and her visit was long enough to\ndetract something from their first admiration, by shewing that, though\nperfectly well-bred, she was reserved, cold, and had nothing to say for\nherself beyond the most common-place inquiry or remark.\n\nConversation however was not wanted, for Sir John was very chatty, and\nLady Middleton had taken the wise precaution of bringing with her their\neldest child, a fine little boy about six years old, by which means\nthere was one subject always to be recurred to by the ladies in case of\nextremity, for they had to enquire his name and age, admire his beauty,\nand ask him questions which his mother answered for him, while he hung\nabout her and held down his head, to the great surprise of her\nladyship, who wondered at his being so shy before company, as he could\nmake noise enough at home.  On every formal visit a child ought to be\nof the party, by way of provision for discourse.  In the present case\nit took up ten minutes to determine whether the boy were most like his\nfather or mother, and in what particular he resembled either, for of\ncourse every body differed, and every body was astonished at the\nopinion of the others.\n\nAn opportunity was soon to be given to the Dashwoods of debating on the\nrest of the children, as Sir John would not leave the house without\nsecuring their promise of dining at the park the next day.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBarton Park was about half a mile from the cottage.  The ladies had\npassed near it in their way along the valley, but it was screened from\ntheir view at home by the projection of a hill.  The house was large\nand handsome; and the Middletons lived in a style of equal hospitality\nand elegance.  The former was for Sir John's gratification, the latter\nfor that of his lady.  They were scarcely ever without some friends\nstaying with them in the house, and they kept more company of every\nkind than any other family in the neighbourhood.  It was necessary to\nthe happiness of both; for however dissimilar in temper and outward\nbehaviour, they strongly resembled each other in that total want of\ntalent and taste which confined their employments, unconnected with\nsuch as society produced, within a very narrow compass.  Sir John was a\nsportsman, Lady Middleton a mother.  He hunted and shot, and she\nhumoured her children; and these were their only resources.  Lady\nMiddleton had the advantage of being able to spoil her children all the\nyear round, while Sir John's independent employments were in existence\nonly half the time.  Continual engagements at home and abroad, however,\nsupplied all the deficiencies of nature and education; supported the\ngood spirits of Sir John, and gave exercise to the good breeding of his\nwife.\n\nLady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance of her table, and of\nall her domestic arrangements; and from this kind of vanity was her\ngreatest enjoyment in any of their parties.  But Sir John's\nsatisfaction in society was much more real; he delighted in collecting\nabout him more young people than his house would hold, and the noisier\nthey were the better was he pleased.  He was a blessing to all the\njuvenile part of the neighbourhood, for in summer he was for ever\nforming parties to eat cold ham and chicken out of doors, and in winter\nhis private balls were numerous enough for any young lady who was not\nsuffering under the unsatiable appetite of fifteen.\n\nThe arrival of a new family in the country was always a matter of joy\nto him, and in every point of view he was charmed with the inhabitants\nhe had now procured for his cottage at Barton.  The Miss Dashwoods were\nyoung, pretty, and unaffected.  It was enough to secure his good\nopinion; for to be unaffected was all that a pretty girl could want to\nmake her mind as captivating as her person.  The friendliness of his\ndisposition made him happy in accommodating those, whose situation\nmight be considered, in comparison with the past, as unfortunate.  In\nshowing kindness to his cousins therefore he had the real satisfaction\nof a good heart; and in settling a family of females only in his\ncottage, he had all the satisfaction of a sportsman; for a sportsman,\nthough he esteems only those of his sex who are sportsmen likewise, is\nnot often desirous of encouraging their taste by admitting them to a\nresidence within his own manor.\n\nMrs. Dashwood and her daughters were met at the door of the house by\nSir John, who welcomed them to Barton Park with unaffected sincerity;\nand as he attended them to the drawing room repeated to the young\nladies the concern which the same subject had drawn from him the day\nbefore, at being unable to get any smart young men to meet them.  They\nwould see, he said, only one gentleman there besides himself; a\nparticular friend who was staying at the park, but who was neither very\nyoung nor very gay.  He hoped they would all excuse the smallness of\nthe party, and could assure them it should never happen so again.  He\nhad been to several families that morning in hopes of procuring some\naddition to their number, but it was moonlight and every body was full\nof engagements.  Luckily Lady Middleton's mother had arrived at Barton\nwithin the last hour, and as she was a very cheerful agreeable woman,\nhe hoped the young ladies would not find it so very dull as they might\nimagine.  The young ladies, as well as their mother, were perfectly\nsatisfied with having two entire strangers of the party, and wished for\nno more.\n\nMrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, was a good-humoured, merry,\nfat, elderly woman, who talked a great deal, seemed very happy, and\nrather vulgar.  She was full of jokes and laughter, and before dinner\nwas over had said many witty things on the subject of lovers and\nhusbands; hoped they had not left their hearts behind them in Sussex,\nand pretended to see them blush whether they did or not.  Marianne was\nvexed at it for her sister's sake, and turned her eyes towards Elinor\nto see how she bore these attacks, with an earnestness which gave\nElinor far more pain than could arise from such common-place raillery\nas Mrs. Jennings's.\n\nColonel Brandon, the friend of Sir John, seemed no more adapted by\nresemblance of manner to be his friend, than Lady Middleton was to be\nhis wife, or Mrs. Jennings to be Lady Middleton's mother.  He was\nsilent and grave.  His appearance however was not unpleasing, in spite\nof his being in the opinion of Marianne and Margaret an absolute old\nbachelor, for he was on the wrong side of five and thirty; but though\nhis face was not handsome, his countenance was sensible, and his\naddress was particularly gentlemanlike.\n\nThere was nothing in any of the party which could recommend them as\ncompanions to the Dashwoods; but the cold insipidity of Lady Middleton\nwas so particularly repulsive, that in comparison of it the gravity of\nColonel Brandon, and even the boisterous mirth of Sir John and his\nmother-in-law was interesting.  Lady Middleton seemed to be roused to\nenjoyment only by the entrance of her four noisy children after dinner,\nwho pulled her about, tore her clothes, and put an end to every kind of\ndiscourse except what related to themselves.\n\nIn the evening, as Marianne was discovered to be musical, she was\ninvited to play.  The instrument was unlocked, every body prepared to\nbe charmed, and Marianne, who sang very well, at their request went\nthrough the chief of the songs which Lady Middleton had brought into\nthe family on her marriage, and which perhaps had lain ever since in\nthe same position on the pianoforte, for her ladyship had celebrated\nthat event by giving up music, although by her mother's account, she\nhad played extremely well, and by her own was very fond of it.\n\nMarianne's performance was highly applauded.  Sir John was loud in his\nadmiration at the end of every song, and as loud in his conversation\nwith the others while every song lasted.  Lady Middleton frequently\ncalled him to order, wondered how any one's attention could be diverted\nfrom music for a moment, and asked Marianne to sing a particular song\nwhich Marianne had just finished.  Colonel Brandon alone, of all the\nparty, heard her without being in raptures.  He paid her only the\ncompliment of attention; and she felt a respect for him on the\noccasion, which the others had reasonably forfeited by their shameless\nwant of taste.  His pleasure in music, though it amounted not to that\necstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own, was\nestimable when contrasted against the horrible insensibility of the\nothers; and she was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five and\nthirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every\nexquisite power of enjoyment.  She was perfectly disposed to make every\nallowance for the colonel's advanced state of life which humanity\nrequired.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Jennings was a widow with an ample jointure.  She had only two\ndaughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and\nshe had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the\nworld.  In the promotion of this object she was zealously active, as\nfar as her ability reached; and missed no opportunity of projecting\nweddings among all the young people of her acquaintance.  She was\nremarkably quick in the discovery of attachments, and had enjoyed the\nadvantage of raising the blushes and the vanity of many a young lady by\ninsinuations of her power over such a young man; and this kind of\ndiscernment enabled her soon after her arrival at Barton decisively to\npronounce that Colonel Brandon was very much in love with Marianne\nDashwood.  She rather suspected it to be so, on the very first evening\nof their being together, from his listening so attentively while she\nsang to them; and when the visit was returned by the Middletons' dining\nat the cottage, the fact was ascertained by his listening to her again.\nIt must be so.  She was perfectly convinced of it.  It would be an\nexcellent match, for HE was rich, and SHE was handsome.  Mrs. Jennings\nhad been anxious to see Colonel Brandon well married, ever since her\nconnection with Sir John first brought him to her knowledge; and she\nwas always anxious to get a good husband for every pretty girl.\n\nThe immediate advantage to herself was by no means inconsiderable, for\nit supplied her with endless jokes against them both.  At the park she\nlaughed at the colonel, and in the cottage at Marianne.  To the former\nher raillery was probably, as far as it regarded only himself,\nperfectly indifferent; but to the latter it was at first\nincomprehensible; and when its object was understood, she hardly knew\nwhether most to laugh at its absurdity, or censure its impertinence,\nfor she considered it as an unfeeling reflection on the colonel's\nadvanced years, and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor.\n\nMrs. Dashwood, who could not think a man five years younger than\nherself, so exceedingly ancient as he appeared to the youthful fancy of\nher daughter, ventured to clear Mrs. Jennings from the probability of\nwishing to throw ridicule on his age.\n\n\"But at least, Mama, you cannot deny the absurdity of the accusation,\nthough you may not think it intentionally ill-natured.  Colonel Brandon\nis certainly younger than Mrs. Jennings, but he is old enough to be MY\nfather; and if he were ever animated enough to be in love, must have\nlong outlived every sensation of the kind.  It is too ridiculous!  When\nis a man to be safe from such wit, if age and infirmity will not\nprotect him?\"\n\n\"Infirmity!\" said Elinor, \"do you call Colonel Brandon infirm?  I can\neasily suppose that his age may appear much greater to you than to my\nmother; but you can hardly deceive yourself as to his having the use of\nhis limbs!\"\n\n\"Did not you hear him complain of the rheumatism?  and is not that the\ncommonest infirmity of declining life?\"\n\n\"My dearest child,\" said her mother, laughing, \"at this rate you must\nbe in continual terror of MY decay; and it must seem to you a miracle\nthat my life has been extended to the advanced age of forty.\"\n\n\"Mama, you are not doing me justice.  I know very well that Colonel\nBrandon is not old enough to make his friends yet apprehensive of\nlosing him in the course of nature.  He may live twenty years longer.\nBut thirty-five has nothing to do with matrimony.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Elinor, \"thirty-five and seventeen had better not have\nany thing to do with matrimony together.  But if there should by any\nchance happen to be a woman who is single at seven and twenty, I should\nnot think Colonel Brandon's being thirty-five any objection to his\nmarrying HER.\"\n\n\"A woman of seven and twenty,\" said Marianne, after pausing a moment,\n\"can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be\nuncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring\nherself to submit to the offices of a nurse, for the sake of the\nprovision and security of a wife.  In his marrying such a woman\ntherefore there would be nothing unsuitable.  It would be a compact of\nconvenience, and the world would be satisfied.  In my eyes it would be\nno marriage at all, but that would be nothing.  To me it would seem\nonly a commercial exchange, in which each wished to be benefited at the\nexpense of the other.\"\n\n\"It would be impossible, I know,\" replied Elinor, \"to convince you that\na woman of seven and twenty could feel for a man of thirty-five\nanything near enough to love, to make him a desirable companion to her.\nBut I must object to your dooming Colonel Brandon and his wife to the\nconstant confinement of a sick chamber, merely because he chanced to\ncomplain yesterday (a very cold damp day) of a slight rheumatic feel in\none of his shoulders.\"\n\n\"But he talked of flannel waistcoats,\" said Marianne; \"and with me a\nflannel waistcoat is invariably connected with aches, cramps,\nrheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and\nthe feeble.\"\n\n\"Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him\nhalf so much.  Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to\nyou in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?\"\n\nSoon after this, upon Elinor's leaving the room, \"Mama,\" said\nMarianne, \"I have an alarm on the subject of illness which I cannot\nconceal from you.  I am sure Edward Ferrars is not well.  We have now\nbeen here almost a fortnight, and yet he does not come.  Nothing but\nreal indisposition could occasion this extraordinary delay.  What else\ncan detain him at Norland?\"\n\n\"Had you any idea of his coming so soon?\" said Mrs. Dashwood.  \"I had\nnone.  On the contrary, if I have felt any anxiety at all on the\nsubject, it has been in recollecting that he sometimes showed a want of\npleasure and readiness in accepting my invitation, when I talked of his\ncoming to Barton.  Does Elinor expect him already?\"\n\n\"I have never mentioned it to her, but of course she must.\"\n\n\"I rather think you are mistaken, for when I was talking to her\nyesterday of getting a new grate for the spare bedchamber, she observed\nthat there was no immediate hurry for it, as it was not likely that the\nroom would be wanted for some time.\"\n\n\"How strange this is! what can be the meaning of it!  But the whole of\ntheir behaviour to each other has been unaccountable! How cold, how\ncomposed were their last adieus! How languid their conversation the\nlast evening of their being together! In Edward's farewell there was no\ndistinction between Elinor and me: it was the good wishes of an\naffectionate brother to both.  Twice did I leave them purposely\ntogether in the course of the last morning, and each time did he most\nunaccountably follow me out of the room.  And Elinor, in quitting\nNorland and Edward, cried not as I did.  Even now her self-command is\ninvariable.  When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try to\navoid society, or appear restless and dissatisfied in it?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Dashwoods were now settled at Barton with tolerable comfort to\nthemselves.  The house and the garden, with all the objects surrounding\nthem, were now become familiar, and the ordinary pursuits which had\ngiven to Norland half its charms were engaged in again with far greater\nenjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the loss of their\nfather.  Sir John Middleton, who called on them every day for the first\nfortnight, and who was not in the habit of seeing much occupation at\nhome, could not conceal his amazement on finding them always employed.\n\nTheir visitors, except those from Barton Park, were not many; for, in\nspite of Sir John's urgent entreaties that they would mix more in the\nneighbourhood, and repeated assurances of his carriage being always at\ntheir service, the independence of Mrs. Dashwood's spirit overcame the\nwish of society for her children; and she was resolute in declining to\nvisit any family beyond the distance of a walk.  There were but few who\ncould be so classed; and it was not all of them that were attainable.\nAbout a mile and a half from the cottage, along the narrow winding\nvalley of Allenham, which issued from that of Barton, as formerly\ndescribed, the girls had, in one of their earliest walks, discovered an\nancient respectable looking mansion which, by reminding them a little\nof Norland, interested their imagination and made them wish to be\nbetter acquainted with it.  But they learnt, on enquiry, that its\npossessor, an elderly lady of very good character, was unfortunately\ntoo infirm to mix with the world, and never stirred from home.\n\nThe whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks.  The high\ndowns which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to\nseek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy\nalternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior\nbeauties; and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one\nmemorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine\nof a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the\nsettled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned.  The weather was\nnot tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their\nbook, in spite of Marianne's declaration that the day would be\nlastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would be drawn off\nfrom their hills; and the two girls set off together.\n\nThey gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at\nevery glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the\nanimating gales of a high south-westerly wind, they pitied the fears\nwhich had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such\ndelightful sensations.\n\n\"Is there a felicity in the world,\" said Marianne, \"superior to\nthis?--Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours.\"\n\nMargaret agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind, resisting\nit with laughing delight for about twenty minutes longer, when suddenly\nthe clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain set full in\ntheir face.-- Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged, though\nunwillingly, to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own\nhouse.  One consolation however remained for them, to which the\nexigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety; it was that of\nrunning with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which\nled immediately to their garden gate.\n\nThey set off.  Marianne had at first the advantage, but a false step\nbrought her suddenly to the ground; and Margaret, unable to stop\nherself to assist her, was involuntarily hurried along, and reached the\nbottom in safety.\n\nA gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was\npassing up the hill and within a few yards of Marianne, when her\naccident happened.  He put down his gun and ran to her assistance.  She\nhad raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in\nher fall, and she was scarcely able to stand.  The gentleman offered\nhis services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her\nsituation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther\ndelay, and carried her down the hill.  Then passing through the garden,\nthe gate of which had been left open by Margaret, he bore her directly\ninto the house, whither Margaret was just arrived, and quitted not his\nhold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour.\n\nElinor and her mother rose up in amazement at their entrance, and while\nthe eyes of both were fixed on him with an evident wonder and a secret\nadmiration which equally sprung from his appearance, he apologized for\nhis intrusion by relating its cause, in a manner so frank and so\ngraceful that his person, which was uncommonly handsome, received\nadditional charms from his voice and expression.  Had he been even old,\nugly, and vulgar, the gratitude and kindness of Mrs. Dashwood would\nhave been secured by any act of attention to her child; but the\ninfluence of youth, beauty, and elegance, gave an interest to the\naction which came home to her feelings.\n\nShe thanked him again and again; and, with a sweetness of address which\nalways attended her, invited him to be seated.  But this he declined,\nas he was dirty and wet.  Mrs. Dashwood then begged to know to whom she\nwas obliged.  His name, he replied, was Willoughby, and his present\nhome was at Allenham, from whence he hoped she would allow him the\nhonour of calling tomorrow to enquire after Miss Dashwood.  The honour\nwas readily granted, and he then departed, to make himself still more\ninteresting, in the midst of a heavy rain.\n\nHis manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly the\ntheme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised\nagainst Marianne received particular spirit from his exterior\nattractions.-- Marianne herself had seen less of his Mama the\nrest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting\nher up, had robbed her of the power of regarding him after their\nentering the house.  But she had seen enough of him to join in all the\nadmiration of the others, and with an energy which always adorned her\npraise.  His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn\nfor the hero of a favourite story; and in his carrying her into the\nhouse with so little previous formality, there was a rapidity of\nthought which particularly recommended the action to her.  Every\ncircumstance belonging to him was interesting.  His name was good, his\nresidence was in their favourite village, and she soon found out that\nof all manly dresses a shooting-jacket was the most becoming.  Her\nimagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, and the pain of a\nsprained ankle was disregarded.\n\nSir John called on them as soon as the next interval of fair weather\nthat morning allowed him to get out of doors; and Marianne's accident\nbeing related to him, he was eagerly asked whether he knew any\ngentleman of the name of Willoughby at Allenham.\n\n\"Willoughby!\" cried Sir John; \"what, is HE in the country? That is good\nnews however; I will ride over tomorrow, and ask him to dinner on\nThursday.\"\n\n\"You know him then,\" said Mrs. Dashwood.\n\n\"Know him! to be sure I do.  Why, he is down here every year.\"\n\n\"And what sort of a young man is he?\"\n\n\"As good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you.  A very decent\nshot, and there is not a bolder rider in England.\"\n\n\"And is that all you can say for him?\" cried Marianne, indignantly.\n\"But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his\npursuits, his talents, and genius?\"\n\nSir John was rather puzzled.\n\n\"Upon my soul,\" said he, \"I do not know much about him as to all THAT.\nBut he is a pleasant, good humoured fellow, and has got the nicest\nlittle black bitch of a pointer I ever saw.  Was she out with him\ntoday?\"\n\nBut Marianne could no more satisfy him as to the colour of Mr.\nWilloughby's pointer, than he could describe to her the shades of his\nmind.\n\n\"But who is he?\" said Elinor.  \"Where does he come from?  Has he a\nhouse at Allenham?\"\n\nOn this point Sir John could give more certain intelligence; and he\ntold them that Mr. Willoughby had no property of his own in the\ncountry; that he resided there only while he was visiting the old lady\nat Allenham Court, to whom he was related, and whose possessions he was\nto inherit; adding, \"Yes, yes, he is very well worth catching I can\ntell you, Miss Dashwood; he has a pretty little estate of his own in\nSomersetshire besides; and if I were you, I would not give him up to my\nyounger sister, in spite of all this tumbling down hills.  Miss\nMarianne must not expect to have all the men to herself.  Brandon will\nbe jealous, if she does not take care.\"\n\n\"I do not believe,\" said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good humoured smile,\n\"that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of MY\ndaughters towards what you call CATCHING him.  It is not an employment\nto which they have been brought up.  Men are very safe with us, let\nthem be ever so rich.  I am glad to find, however, from what you say,\nthat he is a respectable young man, and one whose acquaintance will not\nbe ineligible.\"\n\n\"He is as good a sort of fellow, I believe, as ever lived,\" repeated\nSir John.  \"I remember last Christmas at a little hop at the park, he\ndanced from eight o'clock till four, without once sitting down.\"\n\n\"Did he indeed?\" cried Marianne with sparkling eyes, \"and with\nelegance, with spirit?\"\n\n\"Yes; and he was up again at eight to ride to covert.\"\n\n\"That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be.  Whatever\nbe his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and\nleave him no sense of fatigue.\"\n\n\"Aye, aye, I see how it will be,\" said Sir John, \"I see how it will be.\nYou will be setting your cap at him now, and never think of poor\nBrandon.\"\n\n\"That is an expression, Sir John,\" said Marianne, warmly, \"which I\nparticularly dislike.  I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit\nis intended; and 'setting one's cap at a man,' or 'making a conquest,'\nare the most odious of all.  Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and\nif their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago\ndestroyed all its ingenuity.\"\n\nSir John did not much understand this reproof; but he laughed as\nheartily as if he did, and then replied,\n\n\"Ay, you will make conquests enough, I dare say, one way or other.\nPoor Brandon! he is quite smitten already, and he is very well worth\nsetting your cap at, I can tell you, in spite of all this tumbling\nabout and spraining of ankles.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarianne's preserver, as Margaret, with more elegance than precision,\nstyled Willoughby, called at the cottage early the next morning to make\nhis personal enquiries.  He was received by Mrs. Dashwood with more\nthan politeness; with a kindness which Sir John's account of him and\nher own gratitude prompted; and every thing that passed during the\nvisit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, mutual affection,\nand domestic comfort of the family to whom accident had now introduced\nhim.  Of their personal charms he had not required a second interview\nto be convinced.\n\nMiss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a\nremarkably pretty figure.  Marianne was still handsomer.  Her form,\nthough not so correct as her sister's, in having the advantage of\nheight, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the\ncommon cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less\nviolently outraged than usually happens.  Her skin was very brown, but,\nfrom its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her\nfeatures were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her\neyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness,\nwhich could hardily be seen without delight.  From Willoughby their\nexpression was at first held back, by the embarrassment which the\nremembrance of his assistance created.  But when this passed away, when\nher spirits became collected, when she saw that to the perfect\ngood-breeding of the gentleman, he united frankness and vivacity, and\nabove all, when she heard him declare, that of music and dancing he was\npassionately fond, she gave him such a look of approbation as secured\nthe largest share of his discourse to herself for the rest of his stay.\n\nIt was only necessary to mention any favourite amusement to engage her\nto talk.  She could not be silent when such points were introduced, and\nshe had neither shyness nor reserve in their discussion.  They speedily\ndiscovered that their enjoyment of dancing and music was mutual, and\nthat it arose from a general conformity of judgment in all that related\nto either.  Encouraged by this to a further examination of his\nopinions, she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her\nfavourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous\na delight, that any young man of five and twenty must have been\ninsensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence\nof such works, however disregarded before.  Their taste was strikingly\nalike.  The same books, the same passages were idolized by each--or if\nany difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than\ntill the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be\ndisplayed.  He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her\nenthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with\nthe familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.\n\n\"Well, Marianne,\" said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, \"for ONE\nmorning I think you have done pretty well.  You have already\nascertained Mr. Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of\nimportance.  You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are\ncertain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have\nreceived every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper.\nBut how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such\nextraordinary despatch of every subject for discourse?  You will soon\nhave exhausted each favourite topic.  Another meeting will suffice to\nexplain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and\nthen you can have nothing farther to ask.\"--\n\n\"Elinor,\" cried Marianne, \"is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so\nscanty?  But I see what you mean.  I have been too much at my ease, too\nhappy, too frank.  I have erred against every common-place notion of\ndecorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been\nreserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful--had I talked only of the\nweather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this\nreproach would have been spared.\"\n\n\"My love,\" said her mother, \"you must not be offended with Elinor--she\nwas only in jest.  I should scold her myself, if she were capable of\nwishing to check the delight of your conversation with our new\nfriend.\"-- Marianne was softened in a moment.\n\nWilloughby, on his side, gave every proof of his pleasure in their\nacquaintance, which an evident wish of improving it could offer.  He\ncame to them every day.  To enquire after Marianne was at first his\nexcuse; but the encouragement of his reception, to which every day gave\ngreater kindness, made such an excuse unnecessary before it had ceased\nto be possible, by Marianne's perfect recovery.  She was confined for\nsome days to the house; but never had any confinement been less\nirksome.  Willoughby was a young man of good abilities, quick\nimagination, lively spirits, and open, affectionate manners.  He was\nexactly formed to engage Marianne's heart, for with all this, he joined\nnot only a captivating person, but a natural ardour of mind which was\nnow roused and increased by the example of her own, and which\nrecommended him to her affection beyond every thing else.\n\nHis society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment.  They read,\nthey talked, they sang together; his musical talents were considerable;\nand he read with all the sensibility and spirit which Edward had\nunfortunately wanted.\n\nIn Mrs. Dashwood's estimation he was as faultless as in Marianne's; and\nElinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he\nstrongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too\nmuch what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons or\ncircumstances.  In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other\npeople, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided\nattention where his heart was engaged, and in slighting too easily the\nforms of worldly propriety, he displayed a want of caution which Elinor\ncould not approve, in spite of all that he and Marianne could say in\nits support.\n\nMarianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized\nher at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her\nideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable.  Willoughby was\nall that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour and in every\nbrighter period, as capable of attaching her; and his behaviour\ndeclared his wishes to be in that respect as earnest, as his abilities\nwere strong.\n\nHer mother too, in whose mind not one speculative thought of their\nmarriage had been raised, by his prospect of riches, was led before the\nend of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate\nherself on having gained two such sons-in-law as Edward and Willoughby.\n\nColonel Brandon's partiality for Marianne, which had so early been\ndiscovered by his friends, now first became perceptible to Elinor, when\nit ceased to be noticed by them.  Their attention and wit were drawn\noff to his more fortunate rival; and the raillery which the other had\nincurred before any partiality arose, was removed when his feelings\nbegan really to call for the ridicule so justly annexed to sensibility.\nElinor was obliged, though unwillingly, to believe that the sentiments\nwhich Mrs. Jennings had assigned him for her own satisfaction, were now\nactually excited by her sister; and that however a general resemblance\nof disposition between the parties might forward the affection of Mr.\nWilloughby, an equally striking opposition of character was no\nhindrance to the regard of Colonel Brandon.  She saw it with concern;\nfor what could a silent man of five and thirty hope, when opposed to a\nvery lively one of five and twenty? and as she could not even wish him\nsuccessful, she heartily wished him indifferent.  She liked him--in\nspite of his gravity and reserve, she beheld in him an object of\ninterest.  His manners, though serious, were mild; and his reserve\nappeared rather the result of some oppression of spirits than of any\nnatural gloominess of temper.  Sir John had dropped hints of past\ninjuries and disappointments, which justified her belief of his being\nan unfortunate man, and she regarded him with respect and compassion.\n\nPerhaps she pitied and esteemed him the more because he was slighted by\nWilloughby and Marianne, who, prejudiced against him for being neither\nlively nor young, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits.\n\n\"Brandon is just the kind of man,\" said Willoughby one day, when they\nwere talking of him together, \"whom every body speaks well of, and\nnobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers\nto talk to.\"\n\n\"That is exactly what I think of him,\" cried Marianne.\n\n\"Do not boast of it, however,\" said Elinor, \"for it is injustice in\nboth of you.  He is highly esteemed by all the family at the park, and\nI never see him myself without taking pains to converse with him.\"\n\n\"That he is patronised by YOU,\" replied Willoughby, \"is certainly in\nhis favour; but as for the esteem of the others, it is a reproach in\nitself.  Who would submit to the indignity of being approved by such a\nwoman as Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, that could command the\nindifference of any body else?\"\n\n\"But perhaps the abuse of such people as yourself and Marianne will\nmake amends for the regard of Lady Middleton and her mother.  If their\npraise is censure, your censure may be praise, for they are not more\nundiscerning, than you are prejudiced and unjust.\"\n\n\"In defence of your protege you can even be saucy.\"\n\n\"My protege, as you call him, is a sensible man; and sense will always\nhave attractions for me.  Yes, Marianne, even in a man between thirty\nand forty.  He has seen a great deal of the world; has been abroad, has\nread, and has a thinking mind.  I have found him capable of giving me\nmuch information on various subjects; and he has always answered my\ninquiries with readiness of good-breeding and good nature.\"\n\n\"That is to say,\" cried Marianne contemptuously, \"he has told you, that\nin the East Indies the climate is hot, and the mosquitoes are\ntroublesome.\"\n\n\"He WOULD have told me so, I doubt not, had I made any such inquiries,\nbut they happened to be points on which I had been previously informed.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Willoughby, \"his observations may have extended to the\nexistence of nabobs, gold mohrs, and palanquins.\"\n\n\"I may venture to say that HIS observations have stretched much further\nthan your candour.  But why should you dislike him?\"\n\n\"I do not dislike him.  I consider him, on the contrary, as a very\nrespectable man, who has every body's good word, and nobody's notice;\nwho, has more money than he can spend, more time than he knows how to\nemploy, and two new coats every year.\"\n\n\"Add to which,\" cried Marianne, \"that he has neither genius, taste, nor\nspirit.  That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no\nardour, and his voice no expression.\"\n\n\"You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass,\" replied Elinor,\n\"and so much on the strength of your own imagination, that the\ncommendation I am able to give of him is comparatively cold and\ninsipid.  I can only pronounce him to be a sensible man, well-bred,\nwell-informed, of gentle address, and, I believe, possessing an amiable\nheart.\"\n\n\"Miss Dashwood,\" cried Willoughby, \"you are now using me unkindly.  You\nare endeavouring to disarm me by reason, and to convince me against my\nwill.  But it will not do.  You shall find me as stubborn as you can be\nartful.  I have three unanswerable reasons for disliking Colonel\nBrandon; he threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine; he has\nfound fault with the hanging of my curricle, and I cannot persuade him\nto buy my brown mare.  If it will be any satisfaction to you, however,\nto be told, that I believe his character to be in other respects\nirreproachable, I am ready to confess it.  And in return for an\nacknowledgment, which must give me some pain, you cannot deny me the\nprivilege of disliking him as much as ever.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLittle had Mrs. Dashwood or her daughters imagined when they first came\ninto Devonshire, that so many engagements would arise to occupy their\ntime as shortly presented themselves, or that they should have such\nfrequent invitations and such constant visitors as to leave them little\nleisure for serious employment.  Yet such was the case.  When Marianne\nwas recovered, the schemes of amusement at home and abroad, which Sir\nJohn had been previously forming, were put into execution.  The private\nballs at the park then began; and parties on the water were made and\naccomplished as often as a showery October would allow.  In every\nmeeting of the kind Willoughby was included; and the ease and\nfamiliarity which naturally attended these parties were exactly\ncalculated to give increasing intimacy to his acquaintance with the\nDashwoods, to afford him opportunity of witnessing the excellencies of\nMarianne, of marking his animated admiration of her, and of receiving,\nin her behaviour to himself, the most pointed assurance of her\naffection.\n\nElinor could not be surprised at their attachment.  She only wished\nthat it were less openly shewn; and once or twice did venture to\nsuggest the propriety of some self-command to Marianne.  But Marianne\nabhorred all concealment where no real disgrace could attend unreserve;\nand to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were not in themselves\nillaudable, appeared to her not merely an unnecessary effort, but a\ndisgraceful subjection of reason to common-place and mistaken notions.\nWilloughby thought the same; and their behaviour at all times, was an\nillustration of their opinions.\n\nWhen he was present she had no eyes for any one else.  Every thing he\ndid, was right.  Every thing he said, was clever.  If their evenings at\nthe park were concluded with cards, he cheated himself and all the rest\nof the party to get her a good hand.  If dancing formed the amusement\nof the night, they were partners for half the time; and when obliged to\nseparate for a couple of dances, were careful to stand together and\nscarcely spoke a word to any body else.  Such conduct made them of\ncourse most exceedingly laughed at; but ridicule could not shame, and\nseemed hardly to provoke them.\n\nMrs. Dashwood entered into all their feelings with a warmth which left\nher no inclination for checking this excessive display of them.  To her\nit was but the natural consequence of a strong affection in a young and\nardent mind.\n\nThis was the season of happiness to Marianne.  Her heart was devoted to\nWilloughby, and the fond attachment to Norland, which she brought with\nher from Sussex, was more likely to be softened than she had thought it\npossible before, by the charms which his society bestowed on her\npresent home.\n\nElinor's happiness was not so great.  Her heart was not so much at\nease, nor her satisfaction in their amusements so pure.  They afforded\nher no companion that could make amends for what she had left behind,\nnor that could teach her to think of Norland with less regret than\never.  Neither Lady Middleton nor Mrs. Jennings could supply to her the\nconversation she missed; although the latter was an everlasting talker,\nand from the first had regarded her with a kindness which ensured her a\nlarge share of her discourse.  She had already repeated her own history\nto Elinor three or four times; and had Elinor's memory been equal to\nher means of improvement, she might have known very early in their\nacquaintance all the particulars of Mr. Jennings's last illness, and\nwhat he said to his wife a few minutes before he died.  Lady Middleton\nwas more agreeable than her mother only in being more silent.  Elinor\nneeded little observation to perceive that her reserve was a mere\ncalmness of manner with which sense had nothing to do.  Towards her\nhusband and mother she was the same as to them; and intimacy was\ntherefore neither to be looked for nor desired.  She had nothing to say\none day that she had not said the day before.  Her insipidity was\ninvariable, for even her spirits were always the same; and though she\ndid not oppose the parties arranged by her husband, provided every\nthing were conducted in style and her two eldest children attended her,\nshe never appeared to receive more enjoyment from them than she might\nhave experienced in sitting at home;--and so little did her presence\nadd to the pleasure of the others, by any share in their conversation,\nthat they were sometimes only reminded of her being amongst them by her\nsolicitude about her troublesome boys.\n\nIn Colonel Brandon alone, of all her new acquaintance, did Elinor find\na person who could in any degree claim the respect of abilities, excite\nthe interest of friendship, or give pleasure as a companion.\nWilloughby was out of the question.  Her admiration and regard, even\nher sisterly regard, was all his own; but he was a lover; his\nattentions were wholly Marianne's, and a far less agreeable man might\nhave been more generally pleasing.  Colonel Brandon, unfortunately for\nhimself, had no such encouragement to think only of Marianne, and in\nconversing with Elinor he found the greatest consolation for the\nindifference of her sister.\n\nElinor's compassion for him increased, as she had reason to suspect\nthat the misery of disappointed love had already been known to him.\nThis suspicion was given by some words which accidentally dropped from\nhim one evening at the park, when they were sitting down together by\nmutual consent, while the others were dancing.  His eyes were fixed on\nMarianne, and, after a silence of some minutes, he said, with a faint\nsmile, \"Your sister, I understand, does not approve of second\nattachments.\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Elinor, \"her opinions are all romantic.\"\n\n\"Or rather, as I believe, she considers them impossible to exist.\"\n\n\"I believe she does.  But how she contrives it without reflecting on\nthe character of her own father, who had himself two wives, I know not.\nA few years however will settle her opinions on the reasonable basis of\ncommon sense and observation; and then they may be more easy to define\nand to justify than they now are, by any body but herself.\"\n\n\"This will probably be the case,\" he replied; \"and yet there is\nsomething so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is\nsorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.\"\n\n\"I cannot agree with you there,\" said Elinor.  \"There are\ninconveniences attending such feelings as Marianne's, which all the\ncharms of enthusiasm and ignorance of the world cannot atone for.  Her\nsystems have all the unfortunate tendency of setting propriety at\nnought; and a better acquaintance with the world is what I look forward\nto as her greatest possible advantage.\"\n\nAfter a short pause he resumed the conversation by saying,--\n\n\"Does your sister make no distinction in her objections against a\nsecond attachment? or is it equally criminal in every body?  Are those\nwho have been disappointed in their first choice, whether from the\ninconstancy of its object, or the perverseness of circumstances, to be\nequally indifferent during the rest of their lives?\"\n\n\"Upon my word, I am not acquainted with the minutiae of her principles.\nI only know that I never yet heard her admit any instance of a second\nattachment's being pardonable.\"\n\n\"This,\" said he, \"cannot hold; but a change, a total change of\nsentiments--No, no, do not desire it; for when the romantic refinements\nof a young mind are obliged to give way, how frequently are they\nsucceeded by such opinions as are but too common, and too dangerous!  I\nspeak from experience.  I once knew a lady who in temper and mind\ngreatly resembled your sister, who thought and judged like her, but who\nfrom an inforced change--from a series of unfortunate circumstances\"--\nHere he stopt suddenly; appeared to think that he had said too much,\nand by his countenance gave rise to conjectures, which might not\notherwise have entered Elinor's head.  The lady would probably have\npassed without suspicion, had he not convinced Miss Dashwood that what\nconcerned her ought not to escape his lips.  As it was, it required but\na slight effort of fancy to connect his emotion with the tender\nrecollection of past regard.  Elinor attempted no more.  But Marianne,\nin her place, would not have done so little.  The whole story would\nhave been speedily formed under her active imagination; and every thing\nestablished in the most melancholy order of disastrous love.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs Elinor and Marianne were walking together the next morning the\nlatter communicated a piece of news to her sister, which in spite of\nall that she knew before of Marianne's imprudence and want of thought,\nsurprised her by its extravagant testimony of both.  Marianne told her,\nwith the greatest delight, that Willoughby had given her a horse, one\nthat he had bred himself on his estate in Somersetshire, and which was\nexactly calculated to carry a woman.  Without considering that it was\nnot in her mother's plan to keep any horse, that if she were to alter\nher resolution in favour of this gift, she must buy another for the\nservant, and keep a servant to ride it, and after all, build a stable\nto receive them, she had accepted the present without hesitation, and\ntold her sister of it in raptures.\n\n\"He intends to send his groom into Somersetshire immediately for it,\"\nshe added, \"and when it arrives we will ride every day.  You shall\nshare its use with me.  Imagine to yourself, my dear Elinor, the\ndelight of a gallop on some of these downs.\"\n\nMost unwilling was she to awaken from such a dream of felicity to\ncomprehend all the unhappy truths which attended the affair; and for\nsome time she refused to submit to them.  As to an additional servant,\nthe expense would be a trifle; Mama she was sure would never object to\nit; and any horse would do for HIM; he might always get one at the\npark; as to a stable, the merest shed would be sufficient.  Elinor then\nventured to doubt the propriety of her receiving such a present from a\nman so little, or at least so lately known to her.  This was too much.\n\n\"You are mistaken, Elinor,\" said she warmly, \"in supposing I know very\nlittle of Willoughby.  I have not known him long indeed, but I am much\nbetter acquainted with him, than I am with any other creature in the\nworld, except yourself and mama.  It is not time or opportunity that is\nto determine intimacy;--it is disposition alone.  Seven years would be\ninsufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven\ndays are more than enough for others.  I should hold myself guilty of\ngreater impropriety in accepting a horse from my brother, than from\nWilloughby.  Of John I know very little, though we have lived together\nfor years; but of Willoughby my judgment has long been formed.\"\n\nElinor thought it wisest to touch that point no more.  She knew her\nsister's temper.  Opposition on so tender a subject would only attach\nher the more to her own opinion.  But by an appeal to her affection for\nher mother, by representing the inconveniences which that indulgent\nmother must draw on herself, if (as would probably be the case) she\nconsented to this increase of establishment, Marianne was shortly\nsubdued; and she promised not to tempt her mother to such imprudent\nkindness by mentioning the offer, and to tell Willoughby when she saw\nhim next, that it must be declined.\n\nShe was faithful to her word; and when Willoughby called at the\ncottage, the same day, Elinor heard her express her disappointment to\nhim in a low voice, on being obliged to forego the acceptance of his\npresent.  The reasons for this alteration were at the same time\nrelated, and they were such as to make further entreaty on his side\nimpossible.  His concern however was very apparent; and after\nexpressing it with earnestness, he added, in the same low voice,--\"But,\nMarianne, the horse is still yours, though you cannot use it now.  I\nshall keep it only till you can claim it.  When you leave Barton to\nform your own establishment in a more lasting home, Queen Mab shall\nreceive you.\"\n\nThis was all overheard by Miss Dashwood; and in the whole of the\nsentence, in his manner of pronouncing it, and in his addressing her\nsister by her Christian name alone, she instantly saw an intimacy so\ndecided, a meaning so direct, as marked a perfect agreement between\nthem.  From that moment she doubted not of their being engaged to each\nother; and the belief of it created no other surprise than that she, or\nany of their friends, should be left by tempers so frank, to discover\nit by accident.\n\nMargaret related something to her the next day, which placed this\nmatter in a still clearer light.  Willoughby had spent the preceding\nevening with them, and Margaret, by being left some time in the parlour\nwith only him and Marianne, had had opportunity for observations,\nwhich, with a most important face, she communicated to her eldest\nsister, when they were next by themselves.\n\n\"Oh, Elinor!\" she cried, \"I have such a secret to tell you about\nMarianne.  I am sure she will be married to Mr. Willoughby very soon.\"\n\n\"You have said so,\" replied Elinor, \"almost every day since they first\nmet on High-church Down; and they had not known each other a week, I\nbelieve, before you were certain that Marianne wore his picture round\nher neck; but it turned out to be only the miniature of our great\nuncle.\"\n\n\"But indeed this is quite another thing.  I am sure they will be\nmarried very soon, for he has got a lock of her hair.\"\n\n\"Take care, Margaret.  It may be only the hair of some great uncle of\nHIS.\"\n\n\"But, indeed, Elinor, it is Marianne's. I am almost sure it is, for I\nsaw him cut it off.  Last night after tea, when you and mama went out\nof the room, they were whispering and talking together as fast as could\nbe, and he seemed to be begging something of her, and presently he took\nup her scissors and cut off a long lock of her hair, for it was all\ntumbled down her back; and he kissed it, and folded it up in a piece of\nwhite paper; and put it into his pocket-book.\"\n\nFor such particulars, stated on such authority, Elinor could not\nwithhold her credit; nor was she disposed to it, for the circumstance\nwas in perfect unison with what she had heard and seen herself.\n\nMargaret's sagacity was not always displayed in a way so satisfactory\nto her sister.  When Mrs. Jennings attacked her one evening at the\npark, to give the name of the young man who was Elinor's particular\nfavourite, which had been long a matter of great curiosity to her,\nMargaret answered by looking at her sister, and saying, \"I must not\ntell, may I, Elinor?\"\n\nThis of course made every body laugh; and Elinor tried to laugh too.\nBut the effort was painful.  She was convinced that Margaret had fixed\non a person whose name she could not bear with composure to become a\nstanding joke with Mrs. Jennings.\n\nMarianne felt for her most sincerely; but she did more harm than good\nto the cause, by turning very red and saying in an angry manner to\nMargaret,\n\n\"Remember that whatever your conjectures may be, you have no right to\nrepeat them.\"\n\n\"I never had any conjectures about it,\" replied Margaret; \"it was you\nwho told me of it yourself.\"\n\nThis increased the mirth of the company, and Margaret was eagerly\npressed to say something more.\n\n\"Oh! pray, Miss Margaret, let us know all about it,\" said Mrs.\nJennings.  \"What is the gentleman's name?\"\n\n\"I must not tell, ma'am. But I know very well what it is; and I know\nwhere he is too.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, we can guess where he is; at his own house at Norland to be\nsure.  He is the curate of the parish I dare say.\"\n\n\"No, THAT he is not.  He is of no profession at all.\"\n\n\"Margaret,\" said Marianne with great warmth, \"you know that all this is\nan invention of your own, and that there is no such person in\nexistence.\"\n\n\"Well, then, he is lately dead, Marianne, for I am sure there was such\na man once, and his name begins with an F.\"\n\nMost grateful did Elinor feel to Lady Middleton for observing, at this\nmoment, \"that it rained very hard,\" though she believed the\ninterruption to proceed less from any attention to her, than from her\nladyship's great dislike of all such inelegant subjects of raillery as\ndelighted her husband and mother.  The idea however started by her, was\nimmediately pursued by Colonel Brandon, who was on every occasion\nmindful of the feelings of others; and much was said on the subject of\nrain by both of them.  Willoughby opened the piano-forte, and asked\nMarianne to sit down to it; and thus amidst the various endeavours of\ndifferent people to quit the topic, it fell to the ground.  But not so\neasily did Elinor recover from the alarm into which it had thrown her.\n\nA party was formed this evening for going on the following day to see a\nvery fine place about twelve miles from Barton, belonging to a\nbrother-in-law of Colonel Brandon, without whose interest it could not\nbe seen, as the proprietor, who was then abroad, had left strict orders\non that head.  The grounds were declared to be highly beautiful, and\nSir John, who was particularly warm in their praise, might be allowed\nto be a tolerable judge, for he had formed parties to visit them, at\nleast, twice every summer for the last ten years.  They contained a\nnoble piece of water; a sail on which was to a form a great part of the\nmorning's amusement; cold provisions were to be taken, open carriages\nonly to be employed, and every thing conducted in the usual style of a\ncomplete party of pleasure.\n\nTo some few of the company it appeared rather a bold undertaking,\nconsidering the time of year, and that it had rained every day for the\nlast fortnight;--and Mrs. Dashwood, who had already a cold, was\npersuaded by Elinor to stay at home.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTheir intended excursion to Whitwell turned out very different from\nwhat Elinor had expected.  She was prepared to be wet through,\nfatigued, and frightened; but the event was still more unfortunate, for\nthey did not go at all.\n\nBy ten o'clock the whole party was assembled at the park, where they\nwere to breakfast.  The morning was rather favourable, though it had\nrained all night, as the clouds were then dispersing across the sky,\nand the sun frequently appeared.  They were all in high spirits and\ngood humour, eager to be happy, and determined to submit to the\ngreatest inconveniences and hardships rather than be otherwise.\n\nWhile they were at breakfast the letters were brought in.  Among the\nrest there was one for Colonel Brandon;--he took it, looked at the\ndirection, changed colour, and immediately left the room.\n\n\"What is the matter with Brandon?\" said Sir John.\n\nNobody could tell.\n\n\"I hope he has had no bad news,\" said Lady Middleton.  \"It must be\nsomething extraordinary that could make Colonel Brandon leave my\nbreakfast table so suddenly.\"\n\nIn about five minutes he returned.\n\n\"No bad news, Colonel, I hope;\" said Mrs. Jennings, as soon as he\nentered the room.\n\n\"None at all, ma'am, I thank you.\"\n\n\"Was it from Avignon?  I hope it is not to say that your sister is\nworse.\"\n\n\"No, ma'am. It came from town, and is merely a letter of business.\"\n\n\"But how came the hand to discompose you so much, if it was only a\nletter of business?  Come, come, this won't do, Colonel; so let us hear\nthe truth of it.\"\n\n\"My dear madam,\" said Lady Middleton, \"recollect what you are saying.\"\n\n\"Perhaps it is to tell you that your cousin Fanny is married?\" said\nMrs. Jennings, without attending to her daughter's reproof.\n\n\"No, indeed, it is not.\"\n\n\"Well, then, I know who it is from, Colonel.  And I hope she is well.\"\n\n\"Whom do you mean, ma'am?\" said he, colouring a little.\n\n\"Oh! you know who I mean.\"\n\n\"I am particularly sorry, ma'am,\" said he, addressing Lady Middleton,\n\"that I should receive this letter today, for it is on business which\nrequires my immediate attendance in town.\"\n\n\"In town!\" cried Mrs. Jennings.  \"What can you have to do in town at\nthis time of year?\"\n\n\"My own loss is great,\" he continued, \"in being obliged to leave so\nagreeable a party; but I am the more concerned, as I fear my presence\nis necessary to gain your admittance at Whitwell.\"\n\nWhat a blow upon them all was this!\n\n\"But if you write a note to the housekeeper, Mr. Brandon,\" said\nMarianne, eagerly, \"will it not be sufficient?\"\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"We must go,\" said Sir John.--\"It shall not be put off when we are so\nnear it.  You cannot go to town till tomorrow, Brandon, that is all.\"\n\n\"I wish it could be so easily settled.  But it is not in my power to\ndelay my journey for one day!\"\n\n\"If you would but let us know what your business is,\" said Mrs.\nJennings, \"we might see whether it could be put off or not.\"\n\n\"You would not be six hours later,\" said Willoughby, \"if you were to\ndefer your journey till our return.\"\n\n\"I cannot afford to lose ONE hour.\"--\n\nElinor then heard Willoughby say, in a low voice to Marianne, \"There\nare some people who cannot bear a party of pleasure.  Brandon is one of\nthem.  He was afraid of catching cold I dare say, and invented this\ntrick for getting out of it.  I would lay fifty guineas the letter was\nof his own writing.\"\n\n\"I have no doubt of it,\" replied Marianne.\n\n\"There is no persuading you to change your mind, Brandon, I know of\nold,\" said Sir John, \"when once you are determined on anything.  But,\nhowever, I hope you will think better of it.  Consider, here are the\ntwo Miss Careys come over from Newton, the three Miss Dashwoods walked\nup from the cottage, and Mr. Willoughby got up two hours before his\nusual time, on purpose to go to Whitwell.\"\n\nColonel Brandon again repeated his sorrow at being the cause of\ndisappointing the party; but at the same time declared it to be\nunavoidable.\n\n\"Well, then, when will you come back again?\"\n\n\"I hope we shall see you at Barton,\" added her ladyship, \"as soon as\nyou can conveniently leave town; and we must put off the party to\nWhitwell till you return.\"\n\n\"You are very obliging.  But it is so uncertain, when I may have it in\nmy power to return, that I dare not engage for it at all.\"\n\n\"Oh! he must and shall come back,\" cried Sir John.  \"If he is not here\nby the end of the week, I shall go after him.\"\n\n\"Ay, so do, Sir John,\" cried Mrs. Jennings, \"and then perhaps you may\nfind out what his business is.\"\n\n\"I do not want to pry into other men's concerns.  I suppose it is\nsomething he is ashamed of.\"\n\nColonel Brandon's horses were announced.\n\n\"You do not go to town on horseback, do you?\" added Sir John.\n\n\"No. Only to Honiton.  I shall then go post.\"\n\n\"Well, as you are resolved to go, I wish you a good journey.  But you\nhad better change your mind.\"\n\n\"I assure you it is not in my power.\"\n\nHe then took leave of the whole party.\n\n\"Is there no chance of my seeing you and your sisters in town this\nwinter, Miss Dashwood?\"\n\n\"I am afraid, none at all.\"\n\n\"Then I must bid you farewell for a longer time than I should wish to\ndo.\"\n\nTo Marianne, he merely bowed and said nothing.\n\n\"Come Colonel,\" said Mrs. Jennings, \"before you go, do let us know what\nyou are going about.\"\n\nHe wished her a good morning, and, attended by Sir John, left the room.\n\nThe complaints and lamentations which politeness had hitherto\nrestrained, now burst forth universally; and they all agreed again and\nagain how provoking it was to be so disappointed.\n\n\"I can guess what his business is, however,\" said Mrs. Jennings\nexultingly.\n\n\"Can you, ma'am?\" said almost every body.\n\n\"Yes; it is about Miss Williams, I am sure.\"\n\n\"And who is Miss Williams?\" asked Marianne.\n\n\"What! do not you know who Miss Williams is? I am sure you must have\nheard of her before.  She is a relation of the Colonel's, my dear; a\nvery near relation.  We will not say how near, for fear of shocking the\nyoung ladies.\" Then, lowering her voice a little, she said to Elinor,\n\"She is his natural daughter.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\"\n\n\"Oh, yes; and as like him as she can stare.  I dare say the Colonel\nwill leave her all his fortune.\"\n\nWhen Sir John returned, he joined most heartily in the general regret\non so unfortunate an event; concluding however by observing, that as\nthey were all got together, they must do something by way of being\nhappy; and after some consultation it was agreed, that although\nhappiness could only be enjoyed at Whitwell, they might procure a\ntolerable composure of mind by driving about the country.  The\ncarriages were then ordered; Willoughby's was first, and Marianne never\nlooked happier than when she got into it.  He drove through the park\nvery fast, and they were soon out of sight; and nothing more of them\nwas seen till their return, which did not happen till after the return\nof all the rest.  They both seemed delighted with their drive; but said\nonly in general terms that they had kept in the lanes, while the others\nwent on the downs.\n\nIt was settled that there should be a dance in the evening, and that\nevery body should be extremely merry all day long.  Some more of the\nCareys came to dinner, and they had the pleasure of sitting down nearly\ntwenty to table, which Sir John observed with great contentment.\nWilloughby took his usual place between the two elder Miss Dashwoods.\nMrs. Jennings sat on Elinor's right hand; and they had not been long\nseated, before she leant behind her and Willoughby, and said to\nMarianne, loud enough for them both to hear, \"I have found you out in\nspite of all your tricks.  I know where you spent the morning.\"\n\nMarianne coloured, and replied very hastily, \"Where, pray?\"--\n\n\"Did not you know,\" said Willoughby, \"that we had been out in my\ncurricle?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, Mr. Impudence, I know that very well, and I was determined\nto find out WHERE you had been to.-- I hope you like your house, Miss\nMarianne.  It is a very large one, I know; and when I come to see you,\nI hope you will have new-furnished it, for it wanted it very much when\nI was there six years ago.\"\n\nMarianne turned away in great confusion.  Mrs. Jennings laughed\nheartily; and Elinor found that in her resolution to know where they\nhad been, she had actually made her own woman enquire of Mr.\nWilloughby's groom; and that she had by that method been informed that\nthey had gone to Allenham, and spent a considerable time there in\nwalking about the garden and going all over the house.\n\nElinor could hardly believe this to be true, as it seemed very unlikely\nthat Willoughby should propose, or Marianne consent, to enter the house\nwhile Mrs. Smith was in it, with whom Marianne had not the smallest\nacquaintance.\n\nAs soon as they left the dining-room, Elinor enquired of her about it;\nand great was her surprise when she found that every circumstance\nrelated by Mrs. Jennings was perfectly true.  Marianne was quite angry\nwith her for doubting it.\n\n\"Why should you imagine, Elinor, that we did not go there, or that we\ndid not see the house?  Is not it what you have often wished to do\nyourself?\"\n\n\"Yes, Marianne, but I would not go while Mrs. Smith was there, and with\nno other companion than Mr. Willoughby.\"\n\n\"Mr. Willoughby however is the only person who can have a right to shew\nthat house; and as he went in an open carriage, it was impossible to\nhave any other companion.  I never spent a pleasanter morning in my\nlife.\"\n\n\"I am afraid,\" replied Elinor, \"that the pleasantness of an employment\ndoes not always evince its propriety.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, nothing can be a stronger proof of it, Elinor; for if\nthere had been any real impropriety in what I did, I should have been\nsensible of it at the time, for we always know when we are acting\nwrong, and with such a conviction I could have had no pleasure.\"\n\n\"But, my dear Marianne, as it has already exposed you to some very\nimpertinent remarks, do you not now begin to doubt the discretion of\nyour own conduct?\"\n\n\"If the impertinent remarks of Mrs. Jennings are to be the proof of\nimpropriety in conduct, we are all offending every moment of our lives.\nI value not her censure any more than I should do her commendation.  I\nam not sensible of having done anything wrong in walking over Mrs.\nSmith's grounds, or in seeing her house.  They will one day be Mr.\nWilloughby's, and--\"\n\n\"If they were one day to be your own, Marianne, you would not be\njustified in what you have done.\"\n\nShe blushed at this hint; but it was even visibly gratifying to her;\nand after a ten minutes' interval of earnest thought, she came to her\nsister again, and said with great good humour, \"Perhaps, Elinor, it WAS\nrather ill-judged in me to go to Allenham; but Mr. Willoughby wanted\nparticularly to shew me the place; and it is a charming house, I assure\nyou.--There is one remarkably pretty sitting room up stairs; of a nice\ncomfortable size for constant use, and with modern furniture it would\nbe delightful.  It is a corner room, and has windows on two sides.  On\none side you look across the bowling-green, behind the house, to a\nbeautiful hanging wood, and on the other you have a view of the church\nand village, and, beyond them, of those fine bold hills that we have so\noften admired.  I did not see it to advantage, for nothing could be\nmore forlorn than the furniture,--but if it were newly fitted up--a\ncouple of hundred pounds, Willoughby says, would make it one of the\npleasantest summer-rooms in England.\"\n\nCould Elinor have listened to her without interruption from the others,\nshe would have described every room in the house with equal delight.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe sudden termination of Colonel Brandon's visit at the park, with his\nsteadiness in concealing its cause, filled the mind, and raised the\nwonder of Mrs. Jennings for two or three days; she was a great\nwonderer, as every one must be who takes a very lively interest in all\nthe comings and goings of all their acquaintance.  She wondered, with\nlittle intermission what could be the reason of it; was sure there must\nbe some bad news, and thought over every kind of distress that could\nhave befallen him, with a fixed determination that he should not escape\nthem all.\n\n\"Something very melancholy must be the matter, I am sure,\" said she.\n\"I could see it in his face.  Poor man!  I am afraid his circumstances\nmay be bad.  The estate at Delaford was never reckoned more than two\nthousand a year, and his brother left everything sadly involved.  I do\nthink he must have been sent for about money matters, for what else can\nit be?  I wonder whether it is so.  I would give anything to know the\ntruth of it.  Perhaps it is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I dare\nsay it is, because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her.  May be\nshe is ill in town; nothing in the world more likely, for I have a\nnotion she is always rather sickly.  I would lay any wager it is about\nMiss Williams.  It is not so very likely he should be distressed in his\ncircumstances NOW, for he is a very prudent man, and to be sure must\nhave cleared the estate by this time.  I wonder what it can be!  May be\nhis sister is worse at Avignon, and has sent for him over.  His setting\noff in such a hurry seems very like it.  Well, I wish him out of all\nhis trouble with all my heart, and a good wife into the bargain.\"\n\nSo wondered, so talked Mrs. Jennings.  Her opinion varying with every\nfresh conjecture, and all seeming equally probable as they arose.\nElinor, though she felt really interested in the welfare of Colonel\nBrandon, could not bestow all the wonder on his going so suddenly away,\nwhich Mrs. Jennings was desirous of her feeling; for besides that the\ncircumstance did not in her opinion justify such lasting amazement or\nvariety of speculation, her wonder was otherwise disposed of.  It was\nengrossed by the extraordinary silence of her sister and Willoughby on\nthe subject, which they must know to be peculiarly interesting to them\nall.  As this silence continued, every day made it appear more strange\nand more incompatible with the disposition of both.  Why they should\nnot openly acknowledge to her mother and herself, what their constant\nbehaviour to each other declared to have taken place, Elinor could not\nimagine.\n\nShe could easily conceive that marriage might not be immediately in\ntheir power; for though Willoughby was independent, there was no reason\nto believe him rich.  His estate had been rated by Sir John at about\nsix or seven hundred a year; but he lived at an expense to which that\nincome could hardly be equal, and he had himself often complained of\nhis poverty.  But for this strange kind of secrecy maintained by them\nrelative to their engagement, which in fact concealed nothing at all,\nshe could not account; and it was so wholly contradictory to their\ngeneral opinions and practice, that a doubt sometimes entered her mind\nof their being really engaged, and this doubt was enough to prevent her\nmaking any inquiry of Marianne.\n\nNothing could be more expressive of attachment to them all, than\nWilloughby's behaviour.  To Marianne it had all the distinguishing\ntenderness which a lover's heart could give, and to the rest of the\nfamily it was the affectionate attention of a son and a brother.  The\ncottage seemed to be considered and loved by him as his home; many more\nof his hours were spent there than at Allenham; and if no general\nengagement collected them at the park, the exercise which called him\nout in the morning was almost certain of ending there, where the rest\nof the day was spent by himself at the side of Marianne, and by his\nfavourite pointer at her feet.\n\nOne evening in particular, about a week after Colonel Brandon left the\ncountry, his heart seemed more than usually open to every feeling of\nattachment to the objects around him; and on Mrs. Dashwood's happening\nto mention her design of improving the cottage in the spring, he warmly\nopposed every alteration of a place which affection had established as\nperfect with him.\n\n\"What!\" he exclaimed--\"Improve this dear cottage!  No. THAT I will\nnever consent to.  Not a stone must be added to its walls, not an inch\nto its size, if my feelings are regarded.\"\n\n\"Do not be alarmed,\" said Miss Dashwood, \"nothing of the kind will be\ndone; for my mother will never have money enough to attempt it.\"\n\n\"I am heartily glad of it,\" he cried.  \"May she always be poor, if she\ncan employ her riches no better.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Willoughby.  But you may be assured that I would not\nsacrifice one sentiment of local attachment of yours, or of any one\nwhom I loved, for all the improvements in the world.  Depend upon it\nthat whatever unemployed sum may remain, when I make up my accounts in\nthe spring, I would even rather lay it uselessly by than dispose of it\nin a manner so painful to you.  But are you really so attached to this\nplace as to see no defect in it?\"\n\n\"I am,\" said he.  \"To me it is faultless.  Nay, more, I consider it as\nthe only form of building in which happiness is attainable, and were I\nrich enough I would instantly pull Combe down, and build it up again in\nthe exact plan of this cottage.\"\n\n\"With dark narrow stairs and a kitchen that smokes, I suppose,\" said\nElinor.\n\n\"Yes,\" cried he in the same eager tone, \"with all and every thing\nbelonging to it;--in no one convenience or INconvenience about it,\nshould the least variation be perceptible.  Then, and then only, under\nsuch a roof, I might perhaps be as happy at Combe as I have been at\nBarton.\"\n\n\"I flatter myself,\" replied Elinor, \"that even under the disadvantage\nof better rooms and a broader staircase, you will hereafter find your\nown house as faultless as you now do this.\"\n\n\"There certainly are circumstances,\" said Willoughby, \"which might\ngreatly endear it to me; but this place will always have one claim of\nmy affection, which no other can possibly share.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood looked with pleasure at Marianne, whose fine eyes were\nfixed so expressively on Willoughby, as plainly denoted how well she\nunderstood him.\n\n\"How often did I wish,\" added he, \"when I was at Allenham this time\ntwelvemonth, that Barton cottage were inhabited!  I never passed within\nview of it without admiring its situation, and grieving that no one\nshould live in it.  How little did I then think that the very first\nnews I should hear from Mrs. Smith, when I next came into the country,\nwould be that Barton cottage was taken: and I felt an immediate\nsatisfaction and interest in the event, which nothing but a kind of\nprescience of what happiness I should experience from it, can account\nfor.  Must it not have been so, Marianne?\" speaking to her in a lowered\nvoice.  Then continuing his former tone, he said, \"And yet this house\nyou would spoil, Mrs. Dashwood?  You would rob it of its simplicity by\nimaginary improvement! and this dear parlour in which our acquaintance\nfirst began, and in which so many happy hours have been since spent by\nus together, you would degrade to the condition of a common entrance,\nand every body would be eager to pass through the room which has\nhitherto contained within itself more real accommodation and comfort\nthan any other apartment of the handsomest dimensions in the world\ncould possibly afford.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood again assured him that no alteration of the kind should\nbe attempted.\n\n\"You are a good woman,\" he warmly replied.  \"Your promise makes me\neasy.  Extend it a little farther, and it will make me happy.  Tell me\nthat not only your house will remain the same, but that I shall ever\nfind you and yours as unchanged as your dwelling; and that you will\nalways consider me with the kindness which has made everything\nbelonging to you so dear to me.\"\n\nThe promise was readily given, and Willoughby's behaviour during the\nwhole of the evening declared at once his affection and happiness.\n\n\"Shall we see you tomorrow to dinner?\" said Mrs. Dashwood, when he was\nleaving them.  \"I do not ask you to come in the morning, for we must\nwalk to the park, to call on Lady Middleton.\"\n\nHe engaged to be with them by four o'clock.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Dashwood's visit to Lady Middleton took place the next day, and\ntwo of her daughters went with her; but Marianne excused herself from\nbeing of the party, under some trifling pretext of employment; and her\nmother, who concluded that a promise had been made by Willoughby the\nnight before of calling on her while they were absent, was perfectly\nsatisfied with her remaining at home.\n\nOn their return from the park they found Willoughby's curricle and\nservant in waiting at the cottage, and Mrs. Dashwood was convinced that\nher conjecture had been just.  So far it was all as she had foreseen;\nbut on entering the house she beheld what no foresight had taught her\nto expect.  They were no sooner in the passage than Marianne came\nhastily out of the parlour apparently in violent affliction, with her\nhandkerchief at her eyes; and without noticing them ran up stairs.\nSurprised and alarmed they proceeded directly into the room she had\njust quitted, where they found only Willoughby, who was leaning against\nthe mantel-piece with his back towards them.  He turned round on their\ncoming in, and his countenance shewed that he strongly partook of the\nemotion which over-powered Marianne.\n\n\"Is anything the matter with her?\" cried Mrs. Dashwood as she\nentered--\"is she ill?\"\n\n\"I hope not,\" he replied, trying to look cheerful; and with a forced\nsmile presently added, \"It is I who may rather expect to be ill--for I\nam now suffering under a very heavy disappointment!\"\n\n\"Disappointment?\"\n\n\"Yes, for I am unable to keep my engagement with you.  Mrs. Smith has\nthis morning exercised the privilege of riches upon a poor dependent\ncousin, by sending me on business to London.  I have just received my\ndispatches, and taken my farewell of Allenham; and by way of\nexhilaration I am now come to take my farewell of you.\"\n\n\"To London!--and are you going this morning?\"\n\n\"Almost this moment.\"\n\n\"This is very unfortunate.  But Mrs. Smith must be obliged;--and her\nbusiness will not detain you from us long I hope.\"\n\nHe coloured as he replied, \"You are very kind, but I have no idea of\nreturning into Devonshire immediately.  My visits to Mrs. Smith are\nnever repeated within the twelvemonth.\"\n\n\"And is Mrs. Smith your only friend?  Is Allenham the only house in the\nneighbourhood to which you will be welcome?  For shame, Willoughby, can\nyou wait for an invitation here?\"\n\nHis colour increased; and with his eyes fixed on the ground he only\nreplied, \"You are too good.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood looked at Elinor with surprise.  Elinor felt equal\namazement.  For a few moments every one was silent.  Mrs. Dashwood\nfirst spoke.\n\n\"I have only to add, my dear Willoughby, that at Barton cottage you\nwill always be welcome; for I will not press you to return here\nimmediately, because you only can judge how far THAT might be pleasing\nto Mrs. Smith; and on this head I shall be no more disposed to question\nyour judgment than to doubt your inclination.\"\n\n\"My engagements at present,\" replied Willoughby, confusedly, \"are of\nsuch a nature--that--I dare not flatter myself\"--\n\nHe stopt.  Mrs. Dashwood was too much astonished to speak, and another\npause succeeded.  This was broken by Willoughby, who said with a faint\nsmile, \"It is folly to linger in this manner.  I will not torment\nmyself any longer by remaining among friends whose society it is\nimpossible for me now to enjoy.\"\n\nHe then hastily took leave of them all and left the room.  They saw him\nstep into his carriage, and in a minute it was out of sight.\n\nMrs. Dashwood felt too much for speech, and instantly quitted the\nparlour to give way in solitude to the concern and alarm which this\nsudden departure occasioned.\n\nElinor's uneasiness was at least equal to her mother's.  She thought of\nwhat had just passed with anxiety and distrust.  Willoughby's behaviour\nin taking leave of them, his embarrassment, and affectation of\ncheerfulness, and, above all, his unwillingness to accept her mother's\ninvitation, a backwardness so unlike a lover, so unlike himself,\ngreatly disturbed her.  One moment she feared that no serious design\nhad ever been formed on his side; and the next that some unfortunate\nquarrel had taken place between him and her sister;--the distress in\nwhich Marianne had quitted the room was such as a serious quarrel could\nmost reasonably account for, though when she considered what Marianne's\nlove for him was, a quarrel seemed almost impossible.\n\nBut whatever might be the particulars of their separation, her sister's\naffliction was indubitable; and she thought with the tenderest\ncompassion of that violent sorrow which Marianne was in all probability\nnot merely giving way to as a relief, but feeding and encouraging as a\nduty.\n\nIn about half an hour her mother returned, and though her eyes were\nred, her countenance was not uncheerful.\n\n\"Our dear Willoughby is now some miles from Barton, Elinor,\" said she,\nas she sat down to work, \"and with how heavy a heart does he travel?\"\n\n\"It is all very strange.  So suddenly to be gone! It seems but the work\nof a moment.  And last night he was with us so happy, so cheerful, so\naffectionate?  And now, after only ten minutes notice--Gone too without\nintending to return!--Something more than what he owned to us must have\nhappened.  He did not speak, he did not behave like himself.  YOU must\nhave seen the difference as well as I.  What can it be?  Can they have\nquarrelled?  Why else should he have shewn such unwillingness to accept\nyour invitation here?\"--\n\n\"It was not inclination that he wanted, Elinor; I could plainly see\nTHAT.  He had not the power of accepting it.  I have thought it all\nover I assure you, and I can perfectly account for every thing that at\nfirst seemed strange to me as well as to you.\"\n\n\"Can you, indeed!\"\n\n\"Yes. I have explained it to myself in the most satisfactory way;--but\nyou, Elinor, who love to doubt where you can--it will not satisfy YOU,\nI know; but you shall not talk ME out of my trust in it.  I am\npersuaded that Mrs. Smith suspects his regard for Marianne, disapproves\nof it, (perhaps because she has other views for him,) and on that\naccount is eager to get him away;--and that the business which she\nsends him off to transact is invented as an excuse to dismiss him.\nThis is what I believe to have happened.  He is, moreover, aware that\nshe DOES disapprove the connection, he dares not therefore at present\nconfess to her his engagement with Marianne, and he feels himself\nobliged, from his dependent situation, to give into her schemes, and\nabsent himself from Devonshire for a while.  You will tell me, I know,\nthat this may or may NOT have happened; but I will listen to no cavil,\nunless you can point out any other method of understanding the affair\nas satisfactory at this.  And now, Elinor, what have you to say?\"\n\n\"Nothing, for you have anticipated my answer.\"\n\n\"Then you would have told me, that it might or might not have happened.\nOh, Elinor, how incomprehensible are your feelings!  You had rather\ntake evil upon credit than good.  You had rather look out for misery\nfor Marianne, and guilt for poor Willoughby, than an apology for the\nlatter.  You are resolved to think him blameable, because he took leave\nof us with less affection than his usual behaviour has shewn.  And is\nno allowance to be made for inadvertence, or for spirits depressed by\nrecent disappointment?  Are no probabilities to be accepted, merely\nbecause they are not certainties?  Is nothing due to the man whom we\nhave all such reason to love, and no reason in the world to think ill\nof?  To the possibility of motives unanswerable in themselves, though\nunavoidably secret for a while?  And, after all, what is it you suspect\nhim of?\"\n\n\"I can hardly tell myself.  But suspicion of something unpleasant is\nthe inevitable consequence of such an alteration as we just witnessed\nin him.  There is great truth, however, in what you have now urged of\nthe allowances which ought to be made for him, and it is my wish to be\ncandid in my judgment of every body.  Willoughby may undoubtedly have\nvery sufficient reasons for his conduct, and I will hope that he has.\nBut it would have been more like Willoughby to acknowledge them at\nonce.  Secrecy may be advisable; but still I cannot help wondering at\nits being practiced by him.\"\n\n\"Do not blame him, however, for departing from his character, where the\ndeviation is necessary.  But you really do admit the justice of what I\nhave said in his defence?--I am happy--and he is acquitted.\"\n\n\"Not entirely.  It may be proper to conceal their engagement (if they\nARE engaged) from Mrs. Smith--and if that is the case, it must be\nhighly expedient for Willoughby to be but little in Devonshire at\npresent.  But this is no excuse for their concealing it from us.\"\n\n\"Concealing it from us! my dear child, do you accuse Willoughby and\nMarianne of concealment? This is strange indeed, when your eyes have\nbeen reproaching them every day for incautiousness.\"\n\n\"I want no proof of their affection,\" said Elinor; \"but of their\nengagement I do.\"\n\n\"I am perfectly satisfied of both.\"\n\n\"Yet not a syllable has been said to you on the subject, by either of\nthem.\"\n\n\"I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly.  Has\nnot his behaviour to Marianne and to all of us, for at least the last\nfortnight, declared that he loved and considered her as his future\nwife, and that he felt for us the attachment of the nearest relation?\nHave we not perfectly understood each other?  Has not my consent been\ndaily asked by his looks, his manner, his attentive and affectionate\nrespect?  My Elinor, is it possible to doubt their engagement?  How\ncould such a thought occur to you?  How is it to be supposed that\nWilloughby, persuaded as he must be of your sister's love, should leave\nher, and leave her perhaps for months, without telling her of his\naffection;--that they should part without a mutual exchange of\nconfidence?\"\n\n\"I confess,\" replied Elinor, \"that every circumstance except ONE is in\nfavour of their engagement; but that ONE is the total silence of both\non the subject, and with me it almost outweighs every other.\"\n\n\"How strange this is!  You must think wretchedly indeed of Willoughby,\nif, after all that has openly passed between them, you can doubt the\nnature of the terms on which they are together.  Has he been acting a\npart in his behaviour to your sister all this time?  Do you suppose him\nreally indifferent to her?\"\n\n\"No, I cannot think that.  He must and does love her I am sure.\"\n\n\"But with a strange kind of tenderness, if he can leave her with such\nindifference, such carelessness of the future, as you attribute to him.\"\n\n\"You must remember, my dear mother, that I have never considered this\nmatter as certain.  I have had my doubts, I confess; but they are\nfainter than they were, and they may soon be entirely done away.  If we\nfind they correspond, every fear of mine will be removed.\"\n\n\"A mighty concession indeed!  If you were to see them at the altar, you\nwould suppose they were going to be married.  Ungracious girl!  But I\nrequire no such proof.  Nothing in my opinion has ever passed to\njustify doubt; no secrecy has been attempted; all has been uniformly\nopen and unreserved.  You cannot doubt your sister's wishes.  It must\nbe Willoughby therefore whom you suspect.  But why?  Is he not a man of\nhonour and feeling? Has there been any inconsistency on his side to\ncreate alarm? can he be deceitful?\"\n\n\"I hope not, I believe not,\" cried Elinor.  \"I love Willoughby,\nsincerely love him; and suspicion of his integrity cannot be more\npainful to yourself than to me.  It has been involuntary, and I will\nnot encourage it.  I was startled, I confess, by the alteration in his\nmanners this morning;--he did not speak like himself, and did not\nreturn your kindness with any cordiality.  But all this may be\nexplained by such a situation of his affairs as you have supposed.  He\nhad just parted from my sister, had seen her leave him in the greatest\naffliction; and if he felt obliged, from a fear of offending Mrs.\nSmith, to resist the temptation of returning here soon, and yet aware\nthat by declining your invitation, by saying that he was going away for\nsome time, he should seem to act an ungenerous, a suspicious part by\nour family, he might well be embarrassed and disturbed.  In such a\ncase, a plain and open avowal of his difficulties would have been more\nto his honour I think, as well as more consistent with his general\ncharacter;--but I will not raise objections against any one's conduct\non so illiberal a foundation, as a difference in judgment from myself,\nor a deviation from what I may think right and consistent.\"\n\n\"You speak very properly.  Willoughby certainly does not deserve to be\nsuspected.  Though WE have not known him long, he is no stranger in\nthis part of the world; and who has ever spoken to his disadvantage?\nHad he been in a situation to act independently and marry immediately,\nit might have been odd that he should leave us without acknowledging\neverything to me at once: but this is not the case.  It is an\nengagement in some respects not prosperously begun, for their marriage\nmust be at a very uncertain distance; and even secrecy, as far as it\ncan be observed, may now be very advisable.\"\n\nThey were interrupted by the entrance of Margaret; and Elinor was then\nat liberty to think over the representations of her mother, to\nacknowledge the probability of many, and hope for the justice of all.\n\nThey saw nothing of Marianne till dinner time, when she entered the\nroom and took her place at the table without saying a word.  Her eyes\nwere red and swollen; and it seemed as if her tears were even then\nrestrained with difficulty.  She avoided the looks of them all, could\nneither eat nor speak, and after some time, on her mother's silently\npressing her hand with tender compassion, her small degree of fortitude\nwas quite overcome, she burst into tears and left the room.\n\nThis violent oppression of spirits continued the whole evening.  She\nwas without any power, because she was without any desire of command\nover herself.  The slightest mention of anything relative to Willoughby\noverpowered her in an instant; and though her family were most\nanxiously attentive to her comfort, it was impossible for them, if they\nspoke at all, to keep clear of every subject which her feelings\nconnected with him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able\nto sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby.  She\nwould have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next\nmorning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than\nwhen she lay down in it.  But the feelings which made such composure a\ndisgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it.  She was awake the\nwhole night, and she wept the greatest part of it.  She got up with a\nheadache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment;\ngiving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding all\nattempt at consolation from either.  Her sensibility was potent enough!\n\nWhen breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about\nthe village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment\nand crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning.\n\nThe evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling.  She played\nover every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby,\nevery air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at\nthe instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out\nfor her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be\ngained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied.  She spent\nwhole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice\noften totally suspended by her tears.  In books too, as well as in\nmusic, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and\npresent was certain of giving.  She read nothing but what they had been\nused to read together.\n\nSuch violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it\nsunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these employments,\nto which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and silent meditations,\nstill produced occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever.\n\nNo letter from Willoughby came; and none seemed expected by Marianne.\nHer mother was surprised, and Elinor again became uneasy.  But Mrs.\nDashwood could find explanations whenever she wanted them, which at\nleast satisfied herself.\n\n\"Remember, Elinor,\" said she, \"how very often Sir John fetches our\nletters himself from the post, and carries them to it.  We have already\nagreed that secrecy may be necessary, and we must acknowledge that it\ncould not be maintained if their correspondence were to pass through\nSir John's hands.\"\n\nElinor could not deny the truth of this, and she tried to find in it a\nmotive sufficient for their silence.  But there was one method so\ndirect, so simple, and in her opinion so eligible of knowing the real\nstate of the affair, and of instantly removing all mystery, that she\ncould not help suggesting it to her mother.\n\n\"Why do you not ask Marianne at once,\" said she, \"whether she is or she\nis not engaged to Willoughby?  From you, her mother, and so kind, so\nindulgent a mother, the question could not give offence.  It would be\nthe natural result of your affection for her.  She used to be all\nunreserve, and to you more especially.\"\n\n\"I would not ask such a question for the world.  Supposing it possible\nthat they are not engaged, what distress would not such an enquiry\ninflict!  At any rate it would be most ungenerous.  I should never\ndeserve her confidence again, after forcing from her a confession of\nwhat is meant at present to be unacknowledged to any one.  I know\nMarianne's heart: I know that she dearly loves me, and that I shall not\nbe the last to whom the affair is made known, when circumstances make\nthe revealment of it eligible.  I would not attempt to force the\nconfidence of any one; of a child much less; because a sense of duty\nwould prevent the denial which her wishes might direct.\"\n\nElinor thought this generosity overstrained, considering her sister's\nyouth, and urged the matter farther, but in vain; common sense, common\ncare, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood's romantic\ndelicacy.\n\nIt was several days before Willoughby's name was mentioned before\nMarianne by any of her family; Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, indeed, were\nnot so nice; their witticisms added pain to many a painful hour;--but\none evening, Mrs. Dashwood, accidentally taking up a volume of\nShakespeare, exclaimed,\n\n\"We have never finished Hamlet, Marianne; our dear Willoughby went away\nbefore we could get through it.  We will put it by, that when he comes\nagain...But it may be months, perhaps, before THAT happens.\"\n\n\"Months!\" cried Marianne, with strong surprise.  \"No--nor many weeks.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood was sorry for what she had said; but it gave Elinor\npleasure, as it produced a reply from Marianne so expressive of\nconfidence in Willoughby and knowledge of his intentions.\n\nOne morning, about a week after his leaving the country, Marianne was\nprevailed on to join her sisters in their usual walk, instead of\nwandering away by herself.  Hitherto she had carefully avoided every\ncompanion in her rambles.  If her sisters intended to walk on the\ndowns, she directly stole away towards the lanes; if they talked of the\nvalley, she was as speedy in climbing the hills, and could never be\nfound when the others set off.  But at length she was secured by the\nexertions of Elinor, who greatly disapproved such continual seclusion.\nThey walked along the road through the valley, and chiefly in silence,\nfor Marianne's MIND could not be controlled, and Elinor, satisfied with\ngaining one point, would not then attempt more.  Beyond the entrance of\nthe valley, where the country, though still rich, was less wild and\nmore open, a long stretch of the road which they had travelled on first\ncoming to Barton, lay before them; and on reaching that point, they\nstopped to look around them, and examine a prospect which formed the\ndistance of their view from the cottage, from a spot which they had\nnever happened to reach in any of their walks before.\n\nAmongst the objects in the scene, they soon discovered an animated one;\nit was a man on horseback riding towards them.  In a few minutes they\ncould distinguish him to be a gentleman; and in a moment afterwards\nMarianne rapturously exclaimed,\n\n\"It is he; it is indeed;--I know it is!\"--and was hastening to meet\nhim, when Elinor cried out,\n\n\"Indeed, Marianne, I think you are mistaken.  It is not Willoughby.\nThe person is not tall enough for him, and has not his air.\"\n\n\"He has, he has,\" cried Marianne, \"I am sure he has.  His air, his\ncoat, his horse.  I knew how soon he would come.\"\n\nShe walked eagerly on as she spoke; and Elinor, to screen Marianne from\nparticularity, as she felt almost certain of its not being Willoughby,\nquickened her pace and kept up with her.  They were soon within thirty\nyards of the gentleman.  Marianne looked again; her heart sunk within\nher; and abruptly turning round, she was hurrying back, when the voices\nof both her sisters were raised to detain her; a third, almost as well\nknown as Willoughby's, joined them in begging her to stop, and she\nturned round with surprise to see and welcome Edward Ferrars.\n\nHe was the only person in the world who could at that moment be\nforgiven for not being Willoughby; the only one who could have gained a\nsmile from her; but she dispersed her tears to smile on HIM, and in her\nsister's happiness forgot for a time her own disappointment.\n\nHe dismounted, and giving his horse to his servant, walked back with\nthem to Barton, whither he was purposely coming to visit them.\n\nHe was welcomed by them all with great cordiality, but especially by\nMarianne, who showed more warmth of regard in her reception of him than\neven Elinor herself.  To Marianne, indeed, the meeting between Edward\nand her sister was but a continuation of that unaccountable coldness\nwhich she had often observed at Norland in their mutual behaviour.  On\nEdward's side, more particularly, there was a deficiency of all that a\nlover ought to look and say on such an occasion.  He was confused,\nseemed scarcely sensible of pleasure in seeing them, looked neither\nrapturous nor gay, said little but what was forced from him by\nquestions, and distinguished Elinor by no mark of affection.  Marianne\nsaw and listened with increasing surprise.  She began almost to feel a\ndislike of Edward; and it ended, as every feeling must end with her, by\ncarrying back her thoughts to Willoughby, whose manners formed a\ncontrast sufficiently striking to those of his brother elect.\n\nAfter a short silence which succeeded the first surprise and enquiries\nof meeting, Marianne asked Edward if he came directly from London.  No,\nhe had been in Devonshire a fortnight.\n\n\"A fortnight!\" she repeated, surprised at his being so long in the same\ncounty with Elinor without seeing her before.\n\nHe looked rather distressed as he added, that he had been staying with\nsome friends near Plymouth.\n\n\"Have you been lately in Sussex?\" said Elinor.\n\n\"I was at Norland about a month ago.\"\n\n\"And how does dear, dear Norland look?\" cried Marianne.\n\n\"Dear, dear Norland,\" said Elinor, \"probably looks much as it always\ndoes at this time of the year.  The woods and walks thickly covered\nwith dead leaves.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" cried Marianne, \"with what transporting sensation have I formerly\nseen them fall!  How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven\nin showers about me by the wind!  What feelings have they, the season,\nthe air altogether inspired!  Now there is no one to regard them.  They\nare seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as\npossible from the sight.\"\n\n\"It is not every one,\" said Elinor, \"who has your passion for dead\nleaves.\"\n\n\"No; my feelings are not often shared, not often understood.  But\nSOMETIMES they are.\"--As she said this, she sunk into a reverie for a\nfew moments;--but rousing herself again, \"Now, Edward,\" said she,\ncalling his attention to the prospect, \"here is Barton valley.  Look up\nto it, and be tranquil if you can.  Look at those hills!  Did you ever\nsee their equals?  To the left is Barton park, amongst those woods and\nplantations.  You may see the end of the house.  And there, beneath\nthat farthest hill, which rises with such grandeur, is our cottage.\"\n\n\"It is a beautiful country,\" he replied; \"but these bottoms must be\ndirty in winter.\"\n\n\"How can you think of dirt, with such objects before you?\"\n\n\"Because,\" replied he, smiling, \"among the rest of the objects before\nme, I see a very dirty lane.\"\n\n\"How strange!\" said Marianne to herself as she walked on.\n\n\"Have you an agreeable neighbourhood here?  Are the Middletons pleasant\npeople?\"\n\n\"No, not all,\" answered Marianne; \"we could not be more unfortunately\nsituated.\"\n\n\"Marianne,\" cried her sister, \"how can you say so? How can you be so\nunjust?  They are a very respectable family, Mr. Ferrars; and towards\nus have behaved in the friendliest manner.  Have you forgot, Marianne,\nhow many pleasant days we have owed to them?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Marianne, in a low voice, \"nor how many painful moments.\"\n\nElinor took no notice of this; and directing her attention to their\nvisitor, endeavoured to support something like discourse with him, by\ntalking of their present residence, its conveniences, &c. extorting\nfrom him occasional questions and remarks.  His coldness and reserve\nmortified her severely; she was vexed and half angry; but resolving to\nregulate her behaviour to him by the past rather than the present, she\navoided every appearance of resentment or displeasure, and treated him\nas she thought he ought to be treated from the family connection.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Dashwood was surprised only for a moment at seeing him; for his\ncoming to Barton was, in her opinion, of all things the most natural.\nHer joy and expression of regard long outlived her wonder.  He received\nthe kindest welcome from her; and shyness, coldness, reserve could not\nstand against such a reception.  They had begun to fail him before he\nentered the house, and they were quite overcome by the captivating\nmanners of Mrs. Dashwood.  Indeed a man could not very well be in love\nwith either of her daughters, without extending the passion to her; and\nElinor had the satisfaction of seeing him soon become more like\nhimself.  His affections seemed to reanimate towards them all, and his\ninterest in their welfare again became perceptible.  He was not in\nspirits, however; he praised their house, admired its prospect, was\nattentive, and kind; but still he was not in spirits.  The whole family\nperceived it, and Mrs. Dashwood, attributing it to some want of\nliberality in his mother, sat down to table indignant against all\nselfish parents.\n\n\"What are Mrs. Ferrars's views for you at present, Edward?\" said she,\nwhen dinner was over and they had drawn round the fire; \"are you still\nto be a great orator in spite of yourself?\"\n\n\"No. I hope my mother is now convinced that I have no more talents than\ninclination for a public life!\"\n\n\"But how is your fame to be established? for famous you must be to\nsatisfy all your family; and with no inclination for expense, no\naffection for strangers, no profession, and no assurance, you may find\nit a difficult matter.\"\n\n\"I shall not attempt it.  I have no wish to be distinguished; and have\nevery reason to hope I never shall.  Thank Heaven! I cannot be forced\ninto genius and eloquence.\"\n\n\"You have no ambition, I well know.  Your wishes are all moderate.\"\n\n\"As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe.  I wish as\nwell as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body\nelse it must be in my own way.  Greatness will not make me so.\"\n\n\"Strange that it would!\" cried Marianne.  \"What have wealth or grandeur\nto do with happiness?\"\n\n\"Grandeur has but little,\" said Elinor, \"but wealth has much to do with\nit.\"\n\n\"Elinor, for shame!\" said Marianne, \"money can only give happiness\nwhere there is nothing else to give it.  Beyond a competence, it can\nafford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Elinor, smiling, \"we may come to the same point.  YOUR\ncompetence and MY wealth are very much alike, I dare say; and without\nthem, as the world goes now, we shall both agree that every kind of\nexternal comfort must be wanting.  Your ideas are only more noble than\nmine.  Come, what is your competence?\"\n\n\"About eighteen hundred or two thousand a year; not more than THAT.\"\n\nElinor laughed.  \"TWO thousand a year! ONE is my wealth! I guessed how\nit would end.\"\n\n\"And yet two thousand a-year is a very moderate income,\" said Marianne.\n\"A family cannot well be maintained on a smaller.  I am sure I am not\nextravagant in my demands.  A proper establishment of servants, a\ncarriage, perhaps two, and hunters, cannot be supported on less.\"\n\nElinor smiled again, to hear her sister describing so accurately their\nfuture expenses at Combe Magna.\n\n\"Hunters!\" repeated Edward--\"but why must you have hunters?  Every body\ndoes not hunt.\"\n\nMarianne coloured as she replied, \"But most people do.\"\n\n\"I wish,\" said Margaret, striking out a novel thought, \"that somebody\nwould give us all a large fortune apiece!\"\n\n\"Oh that they would!\" cried Marianne, her eyes sparkling with\nanimation, and her cheeks glowing with the delight of such imaginary\nhappiness.\n\n\"We are all unanimous in that wish, I suppose,\" said Elinor, \"in spite\nof the insufficiency of wealth.\"\n\n\"Oh dear!\" cried Margaret, \"how happy I should be!  I wonder what I\nshould do with it!\"\n\nMarianne looked as if she had no doubt on that point.\n\n\"I should be puzzled to spend so large a fortune myself,\" said Mrs.\nDashwood, \"if my children were all to be rich without my help.\"\n\n\"You must begin your improvements on this house,\" observed Elinor, \"and\nyour difficulties will soon vanish.\"\n\n\"What magnificent orders would travel from this family to London,\" said\nEdward, \"in such an event!  What a happy day for booksellers,\nmusic-sellers, and print-shops!  You, Miss Dashwood, would give a\ngeneral commission for every new print of merit to be sent you--and as\nfor Marianne, I know her greatness of soul, there would not be music\nenough in London to content her.  And books!--Thomson, Cowper,\nScott--she would buy them all over and over again: she would buy up\nevery copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands;\nand she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old\ntwisted tree.  Should not you, Marianne?  Forgive me, if I am very\nsaucy.  But I was willing to shew you that I had not forgot our old\ndisputes.\"\n\n\"I love to be reminded of the past, Edward--whether it be melancholy or\ngay, I love to recall it--and you will never offend me by talking of\nformer times.  You are very right in supposing how my money would be\nspent--some of it, at least--my loose cash would certainly be employed\nin improving my collection of music and books.\"\n\n\"And the bulk of your fortune would be laid out in annuities on the\nauthors or their heirs.\"\n\n\"No, Edward, I should have something else to do with it.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, then, you would bestow it as a reward on that person who\nwrote the ablest defence of your favourite maxim, that no one can ever\nbe in love more than once in their life--your opinion on that point is\nunchanged, I presume?\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed.  It is\nnot likely that I should now see or hear any thing to change them.\"\n\n\"Marianne is as steadfast as ever, you see,\" said Elinor, \"she is not\nat all altered.\"\n\n\"She is only grown a little more grave than she was.\"\n\n\"Nay, Edward,\" said Marianne, \"you need not reproach me.  You are not\nvery gay yourself.\"\n\n\"Why should you think so!\" replied he, with a sigh.  \"But gaiety never\nwas a part of MY character.\"\n\n\"Nor do I think it a part of Marianne's,\" said Elinor; \"I should hardly\ncall her a lively girl--she is very earnest, very eager in all she\ndoes--sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation--but she\nis not often really merry.\"\n\n\"I believe you are right,\" he replied, \"and yet I have always set her\ndown as a lively girl.\"\n\n\"I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes,\" said\nElinor, \"in a total misapprehension of character in some point or\nother: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or\nstupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the\ndeception originated.  Sometimes one is guided by what they say of\nthemselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them,\nwithout giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.\"\n\n\"But I thought it was right, Elinor,\" said Marianne, \"to be guided\nwholly by the opinion of other people.  I thought our judgments were\ngiven us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours.  This has\nalways been your doctrine, I am sure.\"\n\n\"No, Marianne, never.  My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of\nthe understanding.  All I have ever attempted to influence has been the\nbehaviour.  You must not confound my meaning.  I am guilty, I confess,\nof having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with\ngreater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their\nsentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?\"\n\n\"You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of\ngeneral civility,\" said Edward to Elinor.  \"Do you gain no ground?\"\n\n\"Quite the contrary,\" replied Elinor, looking expressively at Marianne.\n\n\"My judgment,\" he returned, \"is all on your side of the question; but I\nam afraid my practice is much more on your sister's.  I never wish to\noffend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I\nam only kept back by my natural awkwardness.  I have frequently thought\nthat I must have been intended by nature to be fond of low company, I\nam so little at my ease among strangers of gentility!\"\n\n\"Marianne has not shyness to excuse any inattention of hers,\" said\nElinor.\n\n\"She knows her own worth too well for false shame,\" replied Edward.\n\"Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or\nother.  If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy\nand graceful, I should not be shy.\"\n\n\"But you would still be reserved,\" said Marianne, \"and that is worse.\"\n\nEdward started--\"Reserved! Am I reserved, Marianne?\"\n\n\"Yes, very.\"\n\n\"I do not understand you,\" replied he, colouring.  \"Reserved!--how, in\nwhat manner?  What am I to tell you?  What can you suppose?\"\n\nElinor looked surprised at his emotion; but trying to laugh off the\nsubject, she said to him, \"Do not you know my sister well enough to\nunderstand what she means?  Do not you know she calls every one\nreserved who does not talk as fast, and admire what she admires as\nrapturously as herself?\"\n\nEdward made no answer.  His gravity and thoughtfulness returned on him\nin their fullest extent--and he sat for some time silent and dull.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nElinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend.  His\nvisit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own\nenjoyment in it appeared so imperfect.  It was evident that he was\nunhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished\nher by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of\ninspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very\nuncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted\none moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one.\n\nHe joined her and Marianne in the breakfast-room the next morning\nbefore the others were down; and Marianne, who was always eager to\npromote their happiness as far as she could, soon left them to\nthemselves.  But before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour\ndoor open, and, turning round, was astonished to see Edward himself\ncome out.\n\n\"I am going into the village to see my horses,\" said he, \"as you are\nnot yet ready for breakfast; I shall be back again presently.\"\n\n                    ***\n\nEdward returned to them with fresh admiration of the surrounding\ncountry; in his walk to the village, he had seen many parts of the\nvalley to advantage; and the village itself, in a much higher situation\nthan the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole, which had\nexceedingly pleased him.  This was a subject which ensured Marianne's\nattention, and she was beginning to describe her own admiration of\nthese scenes, and to question him more minutely on the objects that had\nparticularly struck him, when Edward interrupted her by saying, \"You\nmust not enquire too far, Marianne--remember I have no knowledge in the\npicturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste\nif we come to particulars.  I shall call hills steep, which ought to be\nbold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and\nrugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be\nindistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere.  You must be\nsatisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give.  I call it a\nvery fine country--the hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine\ntimber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug--with rich meadows\nand several neat farm houses scattered here and there.  It exactly\nanswers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with\nutility--and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire\nit; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey\nmoss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me.  I know nothing of\nthe picturesque.\"\n\n\"I am afraid it is but too true,\" said Marianne; \"but why should you\nboast of it?\"\n\n\"I suspect,\" said Elinor, \"that to avoid one kind of affectation,\nEdward here falls into another.  Because he believes many people\npretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really\nfeel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater\nindifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he\npossesses.  He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own.\"\n\n\"It is very true,\" said Marianne, \"that admiration of landscape scenery\nis become a mere jargon.  Every body pretends to feel and tries to\ndescribe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what\npicturesque beauty was.  I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I\nhave kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to\ndescribe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and\nmeaning.\"\n\n\"I am convinced,\" said Edward, \"that you really feel all the delight in\na fine prospect which you profess to feel.  But, in return, your sister\nmust allow me to feel no more than I profess.  I like a fine prospect,\nbut not on picturesque principles.  I do not like crooked, twisted,\nblasted trees.  I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and\nflourishing.  I do not like ruined, tattered cottages.  I am not fond\nof nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms.  I have more pleasure in a\nsnug farm-house than a watch-tower--and a troop of tidy, happy villages\nplease me better than the finest banditti in the world.\"\n\nMarianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her\nsister.  Elinor only laughed.\n\nThe subject was continued no farther; and Marianne remained\nthoughtfully silent, till a new object suddenly engaged her attention.\nShe was sitting by Edward, and in taking his tea from Mrs. Dashwood,\nhis hand passed so directly before her, as to make a ring, with a plait\nof hair in the centre, very conspicuous on one of his fingers.\n\n\"I never saw you wear a ring before, Edward,\" she cried.  \"Is that\nFanny's hair? I remember her promising to give you some.  But I should\nhave thought her hair had been darker.\"\n\nMarianne spoke inconsiderately what she really felt--but when she saw\nhow much she had pained Edward, her own vexation at her want of thought\ncould not be surpassed by his.  He coloured very deeply, and giving a\nmomentary glance at Elinor, replied, \"Yes; it is my sister's hair.  The\nsetting always casts a different shade on it, you know.\"\n\nElinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise.  That the hair\nwas her own, she instantaneously felt as well satisfied as Marianne;\nthe only difference in their conclusions was, that what Marianne\nconsidered as a free gift from her sister, Elinor was conscious must\nhave been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself.\nShe was not in a humour, however, to regard it as an affront, and\naffecting to take no notice of what passed, by instantly talking of\nsomething else, she internally resolved henceforward to catch every\nopportunity of eyeing the hair and of satisfying herself, beyond all\ndoubt, that it was exactly the shade of her own.\n\nEdward's embarrassment lasted some time, and it ended in an absence of\nmind still more settled.  He was particularly grave the whole morning.\nMarianne severely censured herself for what she had said; but her own\nforgiveness might have been more speedy, had she known how little\noffence it had given her sister.\n\nBefore the middle of the day, they were visited by Sir John and Mrs.\nJennings, who, having heard of the arrival of a gentleman at the\ncottage, came to take a survey of the guest.  With the assistance of\nhis mother-in-law, Sir John was not long in discovering that the name\nof Ferrars began with an F. and this prepared a future mine of raillery\nagainst the devoted Elinor, which nothing but the newness of their\nacquaintance with Edward could have prevented from being immediately\nsprung.  But, as it was, she only learned, from some very significant\nlooks, how far their penetration, founded on Margaret's instructions,\nextended.\n\nSir John never came to the Dashwoods without either inviting them to\ndine at the park the next day, or to drink tea with them that evening.\nOn the present occasion, for the better entertainment of their visitor,\ntowards whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute, he wished\nto engage them for both.\n\n\"You MUST drink tea with us to night,\" said he, \"for we shall be quite\nalone--and tomorrow you must absolutely dine with us, for we shall be a\nlarge party.\"\n\nMrs. Jennings enforced the necessity.  \"And who knows but you may raise\na dance,\" said she.  \"And that will tempt YOU, Miss Marianne.\"\n\n\"A dance!\" cried Marianne.  \"Impossible! Who is to dance?\"\n\n\"Who! why yourselves, and the Careys, and Whitakers to be sure.--What!\nyou thought nobody could dance because a certain person that shall be\nnameless is gone!\"\n\n\"I wish with all my soul,\" cried Sir John, \"that Willoughby were among\nus again.\"\n\nThis, and Marianne's blushing, gave new suspicions to Edward.  \"And who\nis Willoughby?\" said he, in a low voice, to Miss Dashwood, by whom he\nwas sitting.\n\nShe gave him a brief reply.  Marianne's countenance was more\ncommunicative.  Edward saw enough to comprehend, not only the meaning\nof others, but such of Marianne's expressions as had puzzled him\nbefore; and when their visitors left them, he went immediately round\nher, and said, in a whisper, \"I have been guessing.  Shall I tell you\nmy guess?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Shall I tell you.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"Well then; I guess that Mr. Willoughby hunts.\"\n\nMarianne was surprised and confused, yet she could not help smiling at\nthe quiet archness of his manner, and after a moment's silence, said,\n\n\"Oh, Edward! How can you?--But the time will come I hope...I am sure\nyou will like him.\"\n\n\"I do not doubt it,\" replied he, rather astonished at her earnestness\nand warmth; for had he not imagined it to be a joke for the good of her\nacquaintance in general, founded only on a something or a nothing\nbetween Mr. Willoughby and herself, he would not have ventured to\nmention it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEdward remained a week at the cottage; he was earnestly pressed by Mrs.\nDashwood to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on\nself-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment\namong his friends was at the height.  His spirits, during the last two\nor three days, though still very unequal, were greatly improved--he\ngrew more and more partial to the house and environs--never spoke of\ngoing away without a sigh--declared his time to be wholly\ndisengaged--even doubted to what place he should go when he left\nthem--but still, go he must.  Never had any week passed so quickly--he\ncould hardly believe it to be gone.  He said so repeatedly; other\nthings he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave the\nlie to his actions.  He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being\nin town; but either to Norland or London, he must go.  He valued their\nkindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being with\nthem.  Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite of their\nwishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time.\n\nElinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his\nmother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose\ncharacter was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse\nfor every thing strange on the part of her son.  Disappointed, however,\nand vexed as she was, and sometimes displeased with his uncertain\nbehaviour to herself, she was very well disposed on the whole to regard\nhis actions with all the candid allowances and generous qualifications,\nwhich had been rather more painfully extorted from her, for\nWilloughby's service, by her mother.  His want of spirits, of openness,\nand of consistency, were most usually attributed to his want of\nindependence, and his better knowledge of Mrs. Ferrars's disposition\nand designs.  The shortness of his visit, the steadiness of his purpose\nin leaving them, originated in the same fettered inclination, the same\ninevitable necessity of temporizing with his mother.  The old\nwell-established grievance of duty against will, parent against child,\nwas the cause of all.  She would have been glad to know when these\ndifficulties were to cease, this opposition was to yield,--when Mrs.\nFerrars would be reformed, and her son be at liberty to be happy.  But\nfrom such vain wishes she was forced to turn for comfort to the renewal\nof her confidence in Edward's affection, to the remembrance of every\nmark of regard in look or word which fell from him while at Barton, and\nabove all to that flattering proof of it which he constantly wore round\nhis finger.\n\n\"I think, Edward,\" said Mrs. Dashwood, as they were at breakfast the\nlast morning, \"you would be a happier man if you had any profession to\nengage your time and give an interest to your plans and actions.  Some\ninconvenience to your friends, indeed, might result from it--you would\nnot be able to give them so much of your time.  But (with a smile) you\nwould be materially benefited in one particular at least--you would\nknow where to go when you left them.\"\n\n\"I do assure you,\" he replied, \"that I have long thought on this point,\nas you think now.  It has been, and is, and probably will always be a\nheavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage\nme, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing like\nindependence.  But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my\nfriends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being.  We never\ncould agree in our choice of a profession.  I always preferred the\nchurch, as I still do.  But that was not smart enough for my family.\nThey recommended the army.  That was a great deal too smart for me.\nThe law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had\nchambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first\ncircles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs.  But I had no\ninclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which\nmy family approved.  As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I\nwas too old when the subject was first started to enter it--and, at\nlength, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all,\nas I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as\nwith one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous\nand honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so\nearnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his\nfriends to do nothing.  I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been\nproperly idle ever since.\"\n\n\"The consequence of which, I suppose, will be,\" said Mrs. Dashwood,\n\"since leisure has not promoted your own happiness, that your sons will\nbe brought up to as many pursuits, employments, professions, and trades\nas Columella's.\"\n\n\"They will be brought up,\" said he, in a serious accent, \"to be as\nunlike myself as is possible.  In feeling, in action, in condition, in\nevery thing.\"\n\n\"Come, come; this is all an effusion of immediate want of spirits,\nEdward.  You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike\nyourself must be happy.  But remember that the pain of parting from\nfriends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their\neducation or state.  Know your own happiness.  You want nothing but\npatience--or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.  Your\nmother will secure to you, in time, that independence you are so\nanxious for; it is her duty, and it will, it must ere long become her\nhappiness to prevent your whole youth from being wasted in discontent.\nHow much may not a few months do?\"\n\n\"I think,\" replied Edward, \"that I may defy many months to produce any\ngood to me.\"\n\nThis desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to\nMrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain to them all in the parting, which\nshortly took place, and left an uncomfortable impression on Elinor's\nfeelings especially, which required some trouble and time to subdue.\nBut as it was her determination to subdue it, and to prevent herself\nfrom appearing to suffer more than what all her family suffered on his\ngoing away, she did not adopt the method so judiciously employed by\nMarianne, on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, by\nseeking silence, solitude and idleness.  Their means were as different\nas their objects, and equally suited to the advancement of each.\n\nElinor sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the\nhouse, busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor\navoided the mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost as\nmuch as ever in the general concerns of the family, and if, by this\nconduct, she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented\nfrom unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters were spared much\nsolicitude on her account.\n\nSuch behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no\nmore meritorious to Marianne, than her own had seemed faulty to her.\nThe business of self-command she settled very easily;--with strong\naffections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit.\nThat her sister's affections WERE calm, she dared not deny, though she\nblushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she gave a\nvery striking proof, by still loving and respecting that sister, in\nspite of this mortifying conviction.\n\nWithout shutting herself up from her family, or leaving the house in\ndetermined solitude to avoid them, or lying awake the whole night to\nindulge meditation, Elinor found every day afforded her leisure enough\nto think of Edward, and of Edward's behaviour, in every possible\nvariety which the different state of her spirits at different times\ncould produce,--with tenderness, pity, approbation, censure, and doubt.\nThere were moments in abundance, when, if not by the absence of her\nmother and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments,\nconversation was forbidden among them, and every effect of solitude was\nproduced.  Her mind was inevitably at liberty; her thoughts could not\nbe chained elsewhere; and the past and the future, on a subject so\ninteresting, must be before her, must force her attention, and engross\nher memory, her reflection, and her fancy.\n\nFrom a reverie of this kind, as she sat at her drawing-table, she was\nroused one morning, soon after Edward's leaving them, by the arrival of\ncompany.  She happened to be quite alone.  The closing of the little\ngate, at the entrance of the green court in front of the house, drew\nher eyes to the window, and she saw a large party walking up to the\ndoor.  Amongst them were Sir John and Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings,\nbut there were two others, a gentleman and lady, who were quite unknown\nto her.  She was sitting near the window, and as soon as Sir John\nperceived her, he left the rest of the party to the ceremony of\nknocking at the door, and stepping across the turf, obliged her to open\nthe casement to speak to him, though the space was so short between the\ndoor and the window, as to make it hardly possible to speak at one\nwithout being heard at the other.\n\n\"Well,\" said he, \"we have brought you some strangers.  How do you like\nthem?\"\n\n\"Hush! they will hear you.\"\n\n\"Never mind if they do.  It is only the Palmers.  Charlotte is very\npretty, I can tell you.  You may see her if you look this way.\"\n\nAs Elinor was certain of seeing her in a couple of minutes, without\ntaking that liberty, she begged to be excused.\n\n\"Where is Marianne? Has she run away because we are come? I see her\ninstrument is open.\"\n\n\"She is walking, I believe.\"\n\nThey were now joined by Mrs. Jennings, who had not patience enough to\nwait till the door was opened before she told HER story.  She came\nhallooing to the window, \"How do you do, my dear?  How does Mrs.\nDashwood do?  And where are your sisters?  What! all alone! you will be\nglad of a little company to sit with you.  I have brought my other son\nand daughter to see you.  Only think of their coming so suddenly!  I\nthought I heard a carriage last night, while we were drinking our tea,\nbut it never entered my head that it could be them.  I thought of\nnothing but whether it might not be Colonel Brandon come back again; so\nI said to Sir John, I do think I hear a carriage; perhaps it is Colonel\nBrandon come back again\"--\n\nElinor was obliged to turn from her, in the middle of her story, to\nreceive the rest of the party; Lady Middleton introduced the two\nstrangers; Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret came down stairs at the same\ntime, and they all sat down to look at one another, while Mrs. Jennings\ncontinued her story as she walked through the passage into the parlour,\nattended by Sir John.\n\nMrs. Palmer was several years younger than Lady Middleton, and totally\nunlike her in every respect.  She was short and plump, had a very\npretty face, and the finest expression of good humour in it that could\npossibly be.  Her manners were by no means so elegant as her sister's,\nbut they were much more prepossessing.  She came in with a smile,\nsmiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled\nwhen she went away.  Her husband was a grave looking young man of five\nor six and twenty, with an air of more fashion and sense than his wife,\nbut of less willingness to please or be pleased.  He entered the room\nwith a look of self-consequence, slightly bowed to the ladies, without\nspeaking a word, and, after briefly surveying them and their\napartments, took up a newspaper from the table, and continued to read\nit as long as he staid.\n\nMrs. Palmer, on the contrary, who was strongly endowed by nature with a\nturn for being uniformly civil and happy, was hardly seated before her\nadmiration of the parlour and every thing in it burst forth.\n\n\"Well! what a delightful room this is! I never saw anything so\ncharming!  Only think, Mama, how it is improved since I was here last!\nI always thought it such a sweet place, ma'am! (turning to Mrs.\nDashwood) but you have made it so charming!  Only look, sister, how\ndelightful every thing is! How I should like such a house for myself!\nShould not you, Mr. Palmer?\"\n\nMr. Palmer made her no answer, and did not even raise his eyes from the\nnewspaper.\n\n\"Mr. Palmer does not hear me,\" said she, laughing; \"he never does\nsometimes.  It is so ridiculous!\"\n\nThis was quite a new idea to Mrs. Dashwood; she had never been used to\nfind wit in the inattention of any one, and could not help looking with\nsurprise at them both.\n\nMrs. Jennings, in the meantime, talked on as loud as she could, and\ncontinued her account of their surprise, the evening before, on seeing\ntheir friends, without ceasing till every thing was told.  Mrs. Palmer\nlaughed heartily at the recollection of their astonishment, and every\nbody agreed, two or three times over, that it had been quite an\nagreeable surprise.\n\n\"You may believe how glad we all were to see them,\" added Mrs.\nJennings, leaning forward towards Elinor, and speaking in a low voice\nas if she meant to be heard by no one else, though they were seated on\ndifferent sides of the room; \"but, however, I can't help wishing they\nhad not travelled quite so fast, nor made such a long journey of it,\nfor they came all round by London upon account of some business, for\nyou know (nodding significantly and pointing to her daughter) it was\nwrong in her situation.  I wanted her to stay at home and rest this\nmorning, but she would come with us; she longed so much to see you all!\"\n\nMrs. Palmer laughed, and said it would not do her any harm.\n\n\"She expects to be confined in February,\" continued Mrs. Jennings.\n\nLady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, and\ntherefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in\nthe paper.\n\n\"No, none at all,\" he replied, and read on.\n\n\"Here comes Marianne,\" cried Sir John.  \"Now, Palmer, you shall see a\nmonstrous pretty girl.\"\n\nHe immediately went into the passage, opened the front door, and\nushered her in himself.  Mrs. Jennings asked her, as soon as she\nappeared, if she had not been to Allenham; and Mrs. Palmer laughed so\nheartily at the question, as to show she understood it.  Mr. Palmer\nlooked up on her entering the room, stared at her some minutes, and\nthen returned to his newspaper.  Mrs. Palmer's eye was now caught by\nthe drawings which hung round the room.  She got up to examine them.\n\n\"Oh! dear, how beautiful these are!  Well! how delightful!  Do but\nlook, mama, how sweet! I declare they are quite charming; I could look\nat them for ever.\" And then sitting down again, she very soon forgot\nthat there were any such things in the room.\n\nWhen Lady Middleton rose to go away, Mr. Palmer rose also, laid down\nthe newspaper, stretched himself and looked at them all around.\n\n\"My love, have you been asleep?\" said his wife, laughing.\n\nHe made her no answer; and only observed, after again examining the\nroom, that it was very low pitched, and that the ceiling was crooked.\nHe then made his bow, and departed with the rest.\n\nSir John had been very urgent with them all to spend the next day at\nthe park.  Mrs. Dashwood, who did not chuse to dine with them oftener\nthan they dined at the cottage, absolutely refused on her own account;\nher daughters might do as they pleased.  But they had no curiosity to\nsee how Mr. and Mrs. Palmer ate their dinner, and no expectation of\npleasure from them in any other way.  They attempted, therefore,\nlikewise, to excuse themselves; the weather was uncertain, and not\nlikely to be good.  But Sir John would not be satisfied--the carriage\nshould be sent for them and they must come.  Lady Middleton too, though\nshe did not press their mother, pressed them.  Mrs. Jennings and Mrs.\nPalmer joined their entreaties, all seemed equally anxious to avoid a\nfamily party; and the young ladies were obliged to yield.\n\n\"Why should they ask us?\" said Marianne, as soon as they were gone.\n\"The rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very\nhard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying\neither with them, or with us.\"\n\n\"They mean no less to be civil and kind to us now,\" said Elinor, \"by\nthese frequent invitations, than by those which we received from them a\nfew weeks ago.  The alteration is not in them, if their parties are\ngrown tedious and dull.  We must look for the change elsewhere.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs the Miss Dashwoods entered the drawing-room of the park the next\nday, at one door, Mrs. Palmer came running in at the other, looking as\ngood humoured and merry as before.  She took them all most\naffectionately by the hand, and expressed great delight in seeing them\nagain.\n\n\"I am so glad to see you!\" said she, seating herself between Elinor and\nMarianne, \"for it is so bad a day I was afraid you might not come,\nwhich would be a shocking thing, as we go away again tomorrow. We must\ngo, for the Westons come to us next week you know.  It was quite a\nsudden thing our coming at all, and I knew nothing of it till the\ncarriage was coming to the door, and then Mr. Palmer asked me if I\nwould go with him to Barton.  He is so droll! He never tells me any\nthing! I am so sorry we cannot stay longer; however we shall meet again\nin town very soon, I hope.\"\n\nThey were obliged to put an end to such an expectation.\n\n\"Not go to town!\" cried Mrs. Palmer, with a laugh, \"I shall be quite\ndisappointed if you do not.  I could get the nicest house in the world for\nyou, next door to ours, in Hanover-square.  You must come, indeed.  I\nam sure I shall be very happy to chaperon you at any time till I am\nconfined, if Mrs. Dashwood should not like to go into public.\"\n\nThey thanked her; but were obliged to resist all her entreaties.\n\n\"Oh, my love,\" cried Mrs. Palmer to her husband, who just then entered\nthe room--\"you must help me to persuade the Miss Dashwoods to go to\ntown this winter.\"\n\nHer love made no answer; and after slightly bowing to the ladies, began\ncomplaining of the weather.\n\n\"How horrid all this is!\" said he.  \"Such weather makes every thing and\nevery body disgusting.  Dullness is as much produced within doors as\nwithout, by rain.  It makes one detest all one's acquaintance.  What\nthe devil does Sir John mean by not having a billiard room in his\nhouse?  How few people know what comfort is!  Sir John is as stupid as\nthe weather.\"\n\nThe rest of the company soon dropt in.\n\n\"I am afraid, Miss Marianne,\" said Sir John, \"you have not been able to\ntake your usual walk to Allenham today.\"\n\nMarianne looked very grave and said nothing.\n\n\"Oh, don't be so sly before us,\" said Mrs. Palmer; \"for we know all\nabout it, I assure you; and I admire your taste very much, for I think\nhe is extremely handsome.  We do not live a great way from him in the\ncountry, you know.  Not above ten miles, I dare say.\"\n\n\"Much nearer thirty,\" said her husband.\n\n\"Ah, well! there is not much difference.  I never was at his house; but\nthey say it is a sweet pretty place.\"\n\n\"As vile a spot as I ever saw in my life,\" said Mr. Palmer.\n\nMarianne remained perfectly silent, though her countenance betrayed her\ninterest in what was said.\n\n\"Is it very ugly?\" continued Mrs. Palmer--\"then it must be some other\nplace that is so pretty I suppose.\"\n\nWhen they were seated in the dining room, Sir John observed with regret\nthat they were only eight all together.\n\n\"My dear,\" said he to his lady, \"it is very provoking that we should be\nso few.  Why did not you ask the Gilberts to come to us today?\"\n\n\"Did not I tell you, Sir John, when you spoke to me about it before,\nthat it could not be done?  They dined with us last.\"\n\n\"You and I, Sir John,\" said Mrs. Jennings, \"should not stand upon such\nceremony.\"\n\n\"Then you would be very ill-bred,\" cried Mr. Palmer.\n\n\"My love you contradict every body,\" said his wife with her usual\nlaugh.  \"Do you know that you are quite rude?\"\n\n\"I did not know I contradicted any body in calling your mother\nill-bred.\"\n\n\"Ay, you may abuse me as you please,\" said the good-natured old lady,\n\"you have taken Charlotte off my hands, and cannot give her back again.\nSo there I have the whip hand of you.\"\n\nCharlotte laughed heartily to think that her husband could not get rid\nof her; and exultingly said, she did not care how cross he was to her,\nas they must live together.  It was impossible for any one to be more\nthoroughly good-natured, or more determined to be happy than Mrs.\nPalmer.  The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her\nhusband gave her no pain; and when he scolded or abused her, she was\nhighly diverted.\n\n\"Mr. Palmer is so droll!\" said she, in a whisper, to Elinor.  \"He is\nalways out of humour.\"\n\nElinor was not inclined, after a little observation, to give him credit\nfor being so genuinely and unaffectedly ill-natured or ill-bred as he\nwished to appear.  His temper might perhaps be a little soured by\nfinding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable\nbias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly\nwoman,--but she knew that this kind of blunder was too common for any\nsensible man to be lastingly hurt by it.-- It was rather a wish of\ndistinction, she believed, which produced his contemptuous treatment of\nevery body, and his general abuse of every thing before him.  It was\nthe desire of appearing superior to other people.  The motive was too\ncommon to be wondered at; but the means, however they might succeed by\nestablishing his superiority in ill-breeding, were not likely to attach\nany one to him except his wife.\n\n\"Oh, my dear Miss Dashwood,\" said Mrs. Palmer soon afterwards, \"I have\ngot such a favour to ask of you and your sister.  Will you come and\nspend some time at Cleveland this Christmas?  Now, pray do,--and come\nwhile the Westons are with us.  You cannot think how happy I shall be!\nIt will be quite delightful!--My love,\" applying to her husband, \"don't\nyou long to have the Miss Dashwoods come to Cleveland?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" he replied, with a sneer--\"I came into Devonshire with no\nother view.\"\n\n\"There now,\"--said his lady, \"you see Mr. Palmer expects you; so you\ncannot refuse to come.\"\n\nThey both eagerly and resolutely declined her invitation.\n\n\"But indeed you must and shall come.  I am sure you will like it of all\nthings.  The Westons will be with us, and it will be quite delightful.\nYou cannot think what a sweet place Cleveland is; and we are so gay\nnow, for Mr. Palmer is always going about the country canvassing\nagainst the election; and so many people came to dine with us that I\nnever saw before, it is quite charming!  But, poor fellow! it is very\nfatiguing to him! for he is forced to make every body like him.\"\n\nElinor could hardly keep her countenance as she assented to the\nhardship of such an obligation.\n\n\"How charming it will be,\" said Charlotte, \"when he is in\nParliament!--won't it? How I shall laugh!  It will be so ridiculous to\nsee all his letters directed to him with an M.P.--But do you know, he\nsays, he will never frank for me?  He declares he won't.  Don't you,\nMr. Palmer?\"\n\nMr. Palmer took no notice of her.\n\n\"He cannot bear writing, you know,\" she continued--\"he says it is quite\nshocking.\"\n\n\"No,\" said he, \"I never said any thing so irrational.  Don't palm all\nyour abuses of languages upon me.\"\n\n\"There now; you see how droll he is.  This is always the way with him!\nSometimes he won't speak to me for half a day together, and then he\ncomes out with something so droll--all about any thing in the world.\"\n\nShe surprised Elinor very much as they returned into the drawing-room,\nby asking her whether she did not like Mr. Palmer excessively.\n\n\"Certainly,\" said Elinor; \"he seems very agreeable.\"\n\n\"Well--I am so glad you do.  I thought you would, he is so pleasant;\nand Mr. Palmer is excessively pleased with you and your sisters I can\ntell you, and you can't think how disappointed he will be if you don't\ncome to Cleveland.--I can't imagine why you should object to it.\"\n\nElinor was again obliged to decline her invitation; and by changing the\nsubject, put a stop to her entreaties.  She thought it probable that as\nthey lived in the same county, Mrs. Palmer might be able to give some\nmore particular account of Willoughby's general character, than could\nbe gathered from the Middletons' partial acquaintance with him; and she\nwas eager to gain from any one, such a confirmation of his merits as\nmight remove the possibility of fear from Marianne.  She began by\ninquiring if they saw much of Mr. Willoughby at Cleveland, and whether\nthey were intimately acquainted with him.\n\n\"Oh dear, yes; I know him extremely well,\" replied Mrs. Palmer;--\"Not\nthat I ever spoke to him, indeed; but I have seen him for ever in town.\nSomehow or other I never happened to be staying at Barton while he was\nat Allenham.  Mama saw him here once before;--but I was with my uncle\nat Weymouth.  However, I dare say we should have seen a great deal of\nhim in Somersetshire, if it had not happened very unluckily that we\nshould never have been in the country together.  He is very little at\nCombe, I believe; but if he were ever so much there, I do not think Mr.\nPalmer would visit him, for he is in the opposition, you know, and\nbesides it is such a way off.  I know why you inquire about him, very\nwell; your sister is to marry him.  I am monstrous glad of it, for then\nI shall have her for a neighbour you know.\"\n\n\"Upon my word,\" replied Elinor, \"you know much more of the matter than\nI do, if you have any reason to expect such a match.\"\n\n\"Don't pretend to deny it, because you know it is what every body talks\nof.  I assure you I heard of it in my way through town.\"\n\n\"My dear Mrs. Palmer!\"\n\n\"Upon my honour I did.--I met Colonel Brandon Monday morning in\nBond-street, just before we left town, and he told me of it directly.\"\n\n\"You surprise me very much.  Colonel Brandon tell you of it!  Surely\nyou must be mistaken.  To give such intelligence to a person who could\nnot be interested in it, even if it were true, is not what I should\nexpect Colonel Brandon to do.\"\n\n\"But I do assure you it was so, for all that, and I will tell you how\nit happened.  When we met him, he turned back and walked with us; and\nso we began talking of my brother and sister, and one thing and\nanother, and I said to him, 'So, Colonel, there is a new family come to\nBarton cottage, I hear, and mama sends me word they are very pretty,\nand that one of them is going to be married to Mr. Willoughby of Combe\nMagna.  Is it true, pray? for of course you must know, as you have been\nin Devonshire so lately.'\"\n\n\"And what did the Colonel say?\"\n\n\"Oh--he did not say much; but he looked as if he knew it to be true, so\nfrom that moment I set it down as certain.  It will be quite\ndelightful, I declare!  When is it to take place?\"\n\n\"Mr. Brandon was very well I hope?\"\n\n\"Oh! yes, quite well; and so full of your praises, he did nothing but\nsay fine things of you.\"\n\n\"I am flattered by his commendation.  He seems an excellent man; and I\nthink him uncommonly pleasing.\"\n\n\"So do I.--He is such a charming man, that it is quite a pity he should\nbe so grave and so dull.  Mama says HE was in love with your sister\ntoo.-- I assure you it was a great compliment if he was, for he hardly\never falls in love with any body.\"\n\n\"Is Mr. Willoughby much known in your part of Somersetshire?\" said\nElinor.\n\n\"Oh! yes, extremely well; that is, I do not believe many people are\nacquainted with him, because Combe Magna is so far off; but they all\nthink him extremely agreeable I assure you.  Nobody is more liked than\nMr. Willoughby wherever he goes, and so you may tell your sister.  She\nis a monstrous lucky girl to get him, upon my honour; not but that he\nis much more lucky in getting her, because she is so very handsome and\nagreeable, that nothing can be good enough for her.  However, I don't\nthink her hardly at all handsomer than you, I assure you; for I think\nyou both excessively pretty, and so does Mr. Palmer too I am sure,\nthough we could not get him to own it last night.\"\n\nMrs. Palmer's information respecting Willoughby was not very material;\nbut any testimony in his favour, however small, was pleasing to her.\n\n\"I am so glad we are got acquainted at last,\" continued\nCharlotte.--\"And now I hope we shall always be great friends.  You\ncan't think how much I longed to see you!  It is so delightful that you\nshould live at the cottage!  Nothing can be like it, to be sure!  And I\nam so glad your sister is going to be well married!  I hope you will be\na great deal at Combe Magna.  It is a sweet place, by all accounts.\"\n\n\"You have been long acquainted with Colonel Brandon, have not you?\"\n\n\"Yes, a great while; ever since my sister married.-- He was a\nparticular friend of Sir John's. I believe,\" she added in a low voice,\n\"he would have been very glad to have had me, if he could.  Sir John\nand Lady Middleton wished it very much.  But mama did not think the\nmatch good enough for me, otherwise Sir John would have mentioned it to\nthe Colonel, and we should have been married immediately.\"\n\n\"Did not Colonel Brandon know of Sir John's proposal to your mother\nbefore it was made?  Had he never owned his affection to yourself?\"\n\n\"Oh, no; but if mama had not objected to it, I dare say he would have\nliked it of all things.  He had not seen me then above twice, for it\nwas before I left school.  However, I am much happier as I am.  Mr.\nPalmer is the kind of man I like.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Palmers returned to Cleveland the next day, and the two families at\nBarton were again left to entertain each other.  But this did not last\nlong; Elinor had hardly got their last visitors out of her head, had\nhardly done wondering at Charlotte's being so happy without a cause, at\nMr. Palmer's acting so simply, with good abilities, and at the strange\nunsuitableness which often existed between husband and wife, before Sir\nJohn's and Mrs. Jennings's active zeal in the cause of society,\nprocured her some other new acquaintance to see and observe.\n\nIn a morning's excursion to Exeter, they had met with two young ladies,\nwhom Mrs. Jennings had the satisfaction of discovering to be her\nrelations, and this was enough for Sir John to invite them directly to\nthe park, as soon as their present engagements at Exeter were over.\nTheir engagements at Exeter instantly gave way before such an\ninvitation, and Lady Middleton was thrown into no little alarm on the\nreturn of Sir John, by hearing that she was very soon to receive a\nvisit from two girls whom she had never seen in her life, and of whose\nelegance,--whose tolerable gentility even, she could have no proof; for\nthe assurances of her husband and mother on that subject went for\nnothing at all.  Their being her relations too made it so much the\nworse; and Mrs. Jennings's attempts at consolation were therefore\nunfortunately founded, when she advised her daughter not to care about\ntheir being so fashionable; because they were all cousins and must put\nup with one another.  As it was impossible, however, now to prevent\ntheir coming, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it, with\nall the philosophy of a well-bred woman, contenting herself with merely\ngiving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times\nevery day.\n\nThe young ladies arrived: their appearance was by no means ungenteel or\nunfashionable.  Their dress was very smart, their manners very civil,\nthey were delighted with the house, and in raptures with the furniture,\nand they happened to be so doatingly fond of children that Lady\nMiddleton's good opinion was engaged in their favour before they had\nbeen an hour at the Park.  She declared them to be very agreeable girls\nindeed, which for her ladyship was enthusiastic admiration.  Sir John's\nconfidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise, and he\nset off directly for the cottage to tell the Miss Dashwoods of the Miss\nSteeles' arrival, and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls\nin the world.  From such commendation as this, however, there was not\nmuch to be learned; Elinor well knew that the sweetest girls in the\nworld were to be met with in every part of England, under every\npossible variation of form, face, temper and understanding.  Sir John\nwanted the whole family to walk to the Park directly and look at his\nguests.  Benevolent, philanthropic man!  It was painful to him even to\nkeep a third cousin to himself.\n\n\"Do come now,\" said he--\"pray come--you must come--I declare you shall\ncome--You can't think how you will like them.  Lucy is monstrous\npretty, and so good humoured and agreeable!  The children are all\nhanging about her already, as if she was an old acquaintance.  And they\nboth long to see you of all things, for they have heard at Exeter that\nyou are the most beautiful creatures in the world; and I have told them\nit is all very true, and a great deal more.  You will be delighted with\nthem I am sure.  They have brought the whole coach full of playthings\nfor the children.  How can you be so cross as not to come?  Why they\nare your cousins, you know, after a fashion.  YOU are my cousins, and\nthey are my wife's, so you must be related.\"\n\nBut Sir John could not prevail.  He could only obtain a promise of\ntheir calling at the Park within a day or two, and then left them in\namazement at their indifference, to walk home and boast anew of their\nattractions to the Miss Steeles, as he had been already boasting of the\nMiss Steeles to them.\n\nWhen their promised visit to the Park and consequent introduction to\nthese young ladies took place, they found in the appearance of the\neldest, who was nearly thirty, with a very plain and not a sensible\nface, nothing to admire; but in the other, who was not more than two or\nthree and twenty, they acknowledged considerable beauty; her features\nwere pretty, and she had a sharp quick eye, and a smartness of air,\nwhich though it did not give actual elegance or grace, gave distinction\nto her person.-- Their manners were particularly civil, and Elinor soon\nallowed them credit for some kind of sense, when she saw with what\nconstant and judicious attention they were making themselves agreeable\nto Lady Middleton.  With her children they were in continual raptures,\nextolling their beauty, courting their notice, and humouring their\nwhims; and such of their time as could be spared from the importunate\ndemands which this politeness made on it, was spent in admiration of\nwhatever her ladyship was doing, if she happened to be doing any thing,\nor in taking patterns of some elegant new dress, in which her\nappearance the day before had thrown them into unceasing delight.\nFortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond\nmother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most\nrapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands\nare exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the excessive\naffection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her offspring were\nviewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the smallest surprise or\ndistrust.  She saw with maternal complacency all the impertinent\nencroachments and mischievous tricks to which her cousins submitted.\nShe saw their sashes untied, their hair pulled about their ears, their\nwork-bags searched, and their knives and scissors stolen away, and felt\nno doubt of its being a reciprocal enjoyment.  It suggested no other\nsurprise than that Elinor and Marianne should sit so composedly by,\nwithout claiming a share in what was passing.\n\n\"John is in such spirits today!\" said she, on his taking Miss Steeles's\npocket handkerchief, and throwing it out of window--\"He is full of\nmonkey tricks.\"\n\nAnd soon afterwards, on the second boy's violently pinching one of the\nsame lady's fingers, she fondly observed, \"How playful William is!\"\n\n\"And here is my sweet little Annamaria,\" she added, tenderly caressing\na little girl of three years old, who had not made a noise for the last\ntwo minutes; \"And she is always so gentle and quiet--Never was there\nsuch a quiet little thing!\"\n\nBut unfortunately in bestowing these embraces, a pin in her ladyship's\nhead dress slightly scratching the child's neck, produced from this\npattern of gentleness such violent screams, as could hardly be outdone\nby any creature professedly noisy.  The mother's consternation was\nexcessive; but it could not surpass the alarm of the Miss Steeles, and\nevery thing was done by all three, in so critical an emergency, which\naffection could suggest as likely to assuage the agonies of the little\nsufferer.  She was seated in her mother's lap, covered with kisses, her\nwound bathed with lavender-water, by one of the Miss Steeles, who was\non her knees to attend her, and her mouth stuffed with sugar plums by\nthe other.  With such a reward for her tears, the child was too wise to\ncease crying.  She still screamed and sobbed lustily, kicked her two\nbrothers for offering to touch her, and all their united soothings were\nineffectual till Lady Middleton luckily remembering that in a scene of\nsimilar distress last week, some apricot marmalade had been\nsuccessfully applied for a bruised temple, the same remedy was eagerly\nproposed for this unfortunate scratch, and a slight intermission of\nscreams in the young lady on hearing it, gave them reason to hope that\nit would not be rejected.-- She was carried out of the room therefore\nin her mother's arms, in quest of this medicine, and as the two boys\nchose to follow, though earnestly entreated by their mother to stay\nbehind, the four young ladies were left in a quietness which the room\nhad not known for many hours.\n\n\"Poor little creatures!\" said Miss Steele, as soon as they were gone.\n\"It might have been a very sad accident.\"\n\n\"Yet I hardly know how,\" cried Marianne, \"unless it had been under\ntotally different circumstances.  But this is the usual way of\nheightening alarm, where there is nothing to be alarmed at in reality.\"\n\n\"What a sweet woman Lady Middleton is!\" said Lucy Steele.\n\nMarianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not\nfeel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor therefore the whole\ntask of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell.  She did\nher best when thus called on, by speaking of Lady Middleton with more\nwarmth than she felt, though with far less than Miss Lucy.\n\n\"And Sir John too,\" cried the elder sister, \"what a charming man he is!\"\n\nHere too, Miss Dashwood's commendation, being only simple and just,\ncame in without any eclat.  She merely observed that he was perfectly\ngood humoured and friendly.\n\n\"And what a charming little family they have!  I never saw such fine\nchildren in my life.--I declare I quite doat upon them already, and\nindeed I am always distractedly fond of children.\"\n\n\"I should guess so,\" said Elinor, with a smile, \"from what I have\nwitnessed this morning.\"\n\n\"I have a notion,\" said Lucy, \"you think the little Middletons rather\ntoo much indulged; perhaps they may be the outside of enough; but it is\nso natural in Lady Middleton; and for my part, I love to see children\nfull of life and spirits; I cannot bear them if they are tame and\nquiet.\"\n\n\"I confess,\" replied Elinor, \"that while I am at Barton Park, I never\nthink of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence.\"\n\nA short pause succeeded this speech, which was first broken by Miss\nSteele, who seemed very much disposed for conversation, and who now\nsaid rather abruptly, \"And how do you like Devonshire, Miss Dashwood?\nI suppose you were very sorry to leave Sussex.\"\n\nIn some surprise at the familiarity of this question, or at least of\nthe manner in which it was spoken, Elinor replied that she was.\n\n\"Norland is a prodigious beautiful place, is not it?\" added Miss Steele.\n\n\"We have heard Sir John admire it excessively,\" said Lucy, who seemed\nto think some apology necessary for the freedom of her sister.\n\n\"I think every one MUST admire it,\" replied Elinor, \"who ever saw the\nplace; though it is not to be supposed that any one can estimate its\nbeauties as we do.\"\n\n\"And had you a great many smart beaux there?  I suppose you have not so\nmany in this part of the world; for my part, I think they are a vast\naddition always.\"\n\n\"But why should you think,\" said Lucy, looking ashamed of her sister,\n\"that there are not as many genteel young men in Devonshire as Sussex?\"\n\n\"Nay, my dear, I'm sure I don't pretend to say that there an't.  I'm\nsure there's a vast many smart beaux in Exeter; but you know, how could\nI tell what smart beaux there might be about Norland; and I was only\nafraid the Miss Dashwoods might find it dull at Barton, if they had not\nso many as they used to have.  But perhaps you young ladies may not\ncare about the beaux, and had as lief be without them as with them.\nFor my part, I think they are vastly agreeable, provided they dress\nsmart and behave civil.  But I can't bear to see them dirty and nasty.\nNow there's Mr. Rose at Exeter, a prodigious smart young man, quite a\nbeau, clerk to Mr. Simpson, you know, and yet if you do but meet him of\na morning, he is not fit to be seen.-- I suppose your brother was quite\na beau, Miss Dashwood, before he married, as he was so rich?\"\n\n\"Upon my word,\" replied Elinor, \"I cannot tell you, for I do not\nperfectly comprehend the meaning of the word.  But this I can say, that\nif he ever was a beau before he married, he is one still for there is\nnot the smallest alteration in him.\"\n\n\"Oh! dear! one never thinks of married men's being beaux--they have\nsomething else to do.\"\n\n\"Lord! Anne,\" cried her sister, \"you can talk of nothing but\nbeaux;--you will make Miss Dashwood believe you think of nothing else.\"\nAnd then to turn the discourse, she began admiring the house and the\nfurniture.\n\nThis specimen of the Miss Steeles was enough.  The vulgar freedom and\nfolly of the eldest left her no recommendation, and as Elinor was not\nblinded by the beauty, or the shrewd look of the youngest, to her want\nof real elegance and artlessness, she left the house without any wish\nof knowing them better.\n\nNot so the Miss Steeles.--They came from Exeter, well provided with\nadmiration for the use of Sir John Middleton, his family, and all his\nrelations, and no niggardly proportion was now dealt out to his fair\ncousins, whom they declared to be the most beautiful, elegant,\naccomplished, and agreeable girls they had ever beheld, and with whom\nthey were particularly anxious to be better acquainted.-- And to be\nbetter acquainted therefore, Elinor soon found was their inevitable\nlot, for as Sir John was entirely on the side of the Miss Steeles,\ntheir party would be too strong for opposition, and that kind of\nintimacy must be submitted to, which consists of sitting an hour or two\ntogether in the same room almost every day.  Sir John could do no more;\nbut he did not know that any more was required: to be together was, in\nhis opinion, to be intimate, and while his continual schemes for their\nmeeting were effectual, he had not a doubt of their being established\nfriends.\n\nTo do him justice, he did every thing in his power to promote their\nunreserve, by making the Miss Steeles acquainted with whatever he knew\nor supposed of his cousins' situations in the most delicate\nparticulars,--and Elinor had not seen them more than twice, before the\neldest of them wished her joy on her sister's having been so lucky as\nto make a conquest of a very smart beau since she came to Barton.\n\n\"'Twill be a fine thing to have her married so young to be sure,\" said\nshe, \"and I hear he is quite a beau, and prodigious handsome.  And I\nhope you may have as good luck yourself soon,--but perhaps you may have\na friend in the corner already.\"\n\nElinor could not suppose that Sir John would be more nice in\nproclaiming his suspicions of her regard for Edward, than he had been\nwith respect to Marianne; indeed it was rather his favourite joke of\nthe two, as being somewhat newer and more conjectural; and since\nEdward's visit, they had never dined together without his drinking to\nher best affections with so much significancy and so many nods and\nwinks, as to excite general attention.  The letter F--had been likewise\ninvariably brought forward, and found productive of such countless\njokes, that its character as the wittiest letter in the alphabet had\nbeen long established with Elinor.\n\nThe Miss Steeles, as she expected, had now all the benefit of these\njokes, and in the eldest of them they raised a curiosity to know the\nname of the gentleman alluded to, which, though often impertinently\nexpressed, was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness\ninto the concerns of their family.  But Sir John did not sport long\nwith the curiosity which he delighted to raise, for he had at least as\nmuch pleasure in telling the name, as Miss Steele had in hearing it.\n\n\"His name is Ferrars,\" said he, in a very audible whisper; \"but pray do\nnot tell it, for it's a great secret.\"\n\n\"Ferrars!\" repeated Miss Steele; \"Mr. Ferrars is the happy man, is he?\nWhat! your sister-in-law's brother, Miss Dashwood? a very agreeable\nyoung man to be sure; I know him very well.\"\n\n\"How can you say so, Anne?\" cried Lucy, who generally made an amendment\nto all her sister's assertions.  \"Though we have seen him once or twice\nat my uncle's, it is rather too much to pretend to know him very well.\"\n\nElinor heard all this with attention and surprise.  \"And who was this\nuncle?  Where did he live?  How came they acquainted?\"  She wished very\nmuch to have the subject continued, though she did not chuse to join in\nit herself; but nothing more of it was said, and for the first time in\nher life, she thought Mrs. Jennings deficient either in curiosity after\npetty information, or in a disposition to communicate it.  The manner\nin which Miss Steele had spoken of Edward, increased her curiosity; for\nit struck her as being rather ill-natured, and suggested the suspicion\nof that lady's knowing, or fancying herself to know something to his\ndisadvantage.--But her curiosity was unavailing, for no farther notice\nwas taken of Mr. Ferrars's name by Miss Steele when alluded to, or even\nopenly mentioned by Sir John.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarianne, who had never much toleration for any thing like\nimpertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of\ntaste from herself, was at this time particularly ill-disposed, from\nthe state of her spirits, to be pleased with the Miss Steeles, or to\nencourage their advances; and to the invariable coldness of her\nbehaviour towards them, which checked every endeavour at intimacy on\ntheir side, Elinor principally attributed that preference of herself\nwhich soon became evident in the manners of both, but especially of\nLucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or of\nstriving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank\ncommunication of her sentiments.\n\nLucy was naturally clever; her remarks were often just and amusing; and\nas a companion for half an hour Elinor frequently found her agreeable;\nbut her powers had received no aid from education: she was ignorant and\nilliterate; and her deficiency of all mental improvement, her want of\ninformation in the most common particulars, could not be concealed from\nMiss Dashwood, in spite of her constant endeavour to appear to\nadvantage.  Elinor saw, and pitied her for, the neglect of abilities\nwhich education might have rendered so respectable; but she saw, with\nless tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy, of\nrectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions, her\nassiduities, her flatteries at the Park betrayed; and she could have no\nlasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined insincerity\nwith ignorance; whose want of instruction prevented their meeting in\nconversation on terms of equality, and whose conduct toward others made\nevery shew of attention and deference towards herself perfectly\nvalueless.\n\n\"You will think my question an odd one, I dare say,\" said Lucy to her\none day, as they were walking together from the park to the\ncottage--\"but pray, are you personally acquainted with your\nsister-in-law's mother, Mrs. Ferrars?\"\n\nElinor DID think the question a very odd one, and her countenance\nexpressed it, as she answered that she had never seen Mrs. Ferrars.\n\n\"Indeed!\" replied Lucy; \"I wonder at that, for I thought you must have\nseen her at Norland sometimes.  Then, perhaps, you cannot tell me what\nsort of a woman she is?\"\n\n\"No,\" returned Elinor, cautious of giving her real opinion of Edward's\nmother, and not very desirous of satisfying what seemed impertinent\ncuriosity-- \"I know nothing of her.\"\n\n\"I am sure you think me very strange, for enquiring about her in such a\nway,\" said Lucy, eyeing Elinor attentively as she spoke; \"but perhaps\nthere may be reasons--I wish I might venture; but however I hope you\nwill do me the justice of believing that I do not mean to be\nimpertinent.\"\n\nElinor made her a civil reply, and they walked on for a few minutes in\nsilence.  It was broken by Lucy, who renewed the subject again by\nsaying, with some hesitation,\n\n\"I cannot bear to have you think me impertinently curious.  I am sure I\nwould rather do any thing in the world than be thought so by a person\nwhose good opinion is so well worth having as yours.  And I am sure I\nshould not have the smallest fear of trusting YOU; indeed, I should be\nvery glad of your advice how to manage in such an uncomfortable\nsituation as I am; but, however, there is no occasion to trouble YOU.\nI am sorry you do not happen to know Mrs. Ferrars.\"\n\n\"I am sorry I do NOT,\" said Elinor, in great astonishment, \"if it could\nbe of any use to YOU to know my opinion of her.  But really I never\nunderstood that you were at all connected with that family, and\ntherefore I am a little surprised, I confess, at so serious an inquiry\ninto her character.\"\n\n\"I dare say you are, and I am sure I do not at all wonder at it.  But\nif I dared tell you all, you would not be so much surprised.  Mrs.\nFerrars is certainly nothing to me at present--but the time MAY\ncome--how soon it will come must depend upon herself--when we may be\nvery intimately connected.\"\n\nShe looked down as she said this, amiably bashful, with only one side\nglance at her companion to observe its effect on her.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" cried Elinor, \"what do you mean?  Are you acquainted\nwith Mr. Robert Ferrars?  Can you be?\" And she did not feel much\ndelighted with the idea of such a sister-in-law.\n\n\"No,\" replied Lucy, \"not to Mr. ROBERT Ferrars--I never saw him in my\nlife; but,\" fixing her eyes upon Elinor, \"to his eldest brother.\"\n\nWhat felt Elinor at that moment? Astonishment, that would have been as\npainful as it was strong, had not an immediate disbelief of the\nassertion attended it.  She turned towards Lucy in silent amazement,\nunable to divine the reason or object of such a declaration; and though\nher complexion varied, she stood firm in incredulity, and felt in no\ndanger of an hysterical fit, or a swoon.\n\n\"You may well be surprised,\" continued Lucy; \"for to be sure you could\nhave had no idea of it before; for I dare say he never dropped the\nsmallest hint of it to you or any of your family; because it was always\nmeant to be a great secret, and I am sure has been faithfully kept so\nby me to this hour.  Not a soul of all my relations know of it but\nAnne, and I never should have mentioned it to you, if I had not felt\nthe greatest dependence in the world upon your secrecy; and I really\nthought my behaviour in asking so many questions about Mrs. Ferrars\nmust seem so odd, that it ought to be explained.  And I do not think\nMr. Ferrars can be displeased, when he knows I have trusted you,\nbecause I know he has the highest opinion in the world of all your\nfamily, and looks upon yourself and the other Miss Dashwoods quite as\nhis own sisters.\"--She paused.\n\nElinor for a few moments remained silent.  Her astonishment at what she\nheard was at first too great for words; but at length forcing herself\nto speak, and to speak cautiously, she said, with calmness of manner,\nwhich tolerably well concealed her surprise and solicitude-- \"May I ask\nif your engagement is of long standing?\"\n\n\"We have been engaged these four years.\"\n\n\"Four years!\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nElinor, though greatly shocked, still felt unable to believe it.\n\n\"I did not know,\" said she, \"that you were even acquainted till the\nother day.\"\n\n\"Our acquaintance, however, is of many years date.  He was under my\nuncle's care, you know, a considerable while.\"\n\n\"Your uncle!\"\n\n\"Yes; Mr. Pratt.  Did you never hear him talk of Mr. Pratt?\"\n\n\"I think I have,\" replied Elinor, with an exertion of spirits, which\nincreased with her increase of emotion.\n\n\"He was four years with my uncle, who lives at Longstaple, near\nPlymouth.  It was there our acquaintance begun, for my sister and me\nwas often staying with my uncle, and it was there our engagement was\nformed, though not till a year after he had quitted as a pupil; but he\nwas almost always with us afterwards.  I was very unwilling to enter\ninto it, as you may imagine, without the knowledge and approbation of\nhis mother; but I was too young, and loved him too well, to be so\nprudent as I ought to have been.-- Though you do not know him so well\nas me, Miss Dashwood, you must have seen enough of him to be sensible\nhe is very capable of making a woman sincerely attached to him.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" answered Elinor, without knowing what she said; but after\na moment's reflection, she added, with revived security of Edward's\nhonour and love, and her companion's falsehood--\"Engaged to Mr. Edward\nFerrars!--I confess myself so totally surprised at what you tell me,\nthat really--I beg your pardon; but surely there must be some mistake\nof person or name.  We cannot mean the same Mr. Ferrars.\"\n\n\"We can mean no other,\" cried Lucy, smiling.  \"Mr. Edward Ferrars, the\neldest son of Mrs. Ferrars, of Park Street, and brother of your\nsister-in-law, Mrs. John Dashwood, is the person I mean; you must allow\nthat I am not likely to be deceived as to the name of the man on who\nall my happiness depends.\"\n\n\"It is strange,\" replied Elinor, in a most painful perplexity, \"that I\nshould never have heard him even mention your name.\"\n\n\"No; considering our situation, it was not strange.  Our first care has\nbeen to keep the matter secret.-- You knew nothing of me, or my family,\nand, therefore, there could be no OCCASION for ever mentioning my name\nto you; and, as he was always particularly afraid of his sister's\nsuspecting any thing, THAT was reason enough for his not mentioning it.\"\n\nShe was silent.--Elinor's security sunk; but her self-command did not\nsink with it.\n\n\"Four years you have been engaged,\" said she with a firm voice.\n\n\"Yes; and heaven knows how much longer we may have to wait.  Poor\nEdward!  It puts him quite out of heart.\" Then taking a small miniature\nfrom her pocket, she added, \"To prevent the possibility of mistake, be\nso good as to look at this face.  It does not do him justice, to be\nsure, but yet I think you cannot be deceived as to the person it was\ndrew for.--I have had it above these three years.\"\n\nShe put it into her hands as she spoke; and when Elinor saw the\npainting, whatever other doubts her fear of a too hasty decision, or\nher wish of detecting falsehood might suffer to linger in her mind, she\ncould have none of its being Edward's face.  She returned it almost\ninstantly, acknowledging the likeness.\n\n\"I have never been able,\" continued Lucy, \"to give him my picture in\nreturn, which I am very much vexed at, for he has been always so\nanxious to get it!  But I am determined to set for it the very first\nopportunity.\"\n\n\"You are quite in the right,\" replied Elinor calmly.  They then\nproceeded a few paces in silence.  Lucy spoke first.\n\n\"I am sure,\" said she, \"I have no doubt in the world of your faithfully\nkeeping this secret, because you must know of what importance it is to\nus, not to have it reach his mother; for she would never approve of it,\nI dare say.  I shall have no fortune, and I fancy she is an exceeding\nproud woman.\"\n\n\"I certainly did not seek your confidence,\" said Elinor; \"but you do me\nno more than justice in imagining that I may be depended on.  Your\nsecret is safe with me; but pardon me if I express some surprise at so\nunnecessary a communication.  You must at least have felt that my being\nacquainted with it could not add to its safety.\"\n\nAs she said this, she looked earnestly at Lucy, hoping to discover\nsomething in her countenance; perhaps the falsehood of the greatest\npart of what she had been saying; but Lucy's countenance suffered no\nchange.\n\n\"I was afraid you would think I was taking a great liberty with you,\"\nsaid she, \"in telling you all this.  I have not known you long to be\nsure, personally at least, but I have known you and all your family by\ndescription a great while; and as soon as I saw you, I felt almost as\nif you was an old acquaintance.  Besides in the present case, I really\nthought some explanation was due to you after my making such particular\ninquiries about Edward's mother; and I am so unfortunate, that I have\nnot a creature whose advice I can ask.  Anne is the only person that\nknows of it, and she has no judgment at all; indeed, she does me a\ngreat deal more harm than good, for I am in constant fear of her\nbetraying me.  She does not know how to hold her tongue, as you must\nperceive, and I am sure I was in the greatest fright in the world\nt'other day, when Edward's name was mentioned by Sir John, lest she\nshould out with it all.  You can't think how much I go through in my\nmind from it altogether.  I only wonder that I am alive after what I\nhave suffered for Edward's sake these last four years.  Every thing in\nsuch suspense and uncertainty; and seeing him so seldom--we can hardly\nmeet above twice a-year.  I am sure I wonder my heart is not quite\nbroke.\"\n\nHere she took out her handkerchief; but Elinor did not feel very\ncompassionate.\n\n\"Sometimes.\" continued Lucy, after wiping her eyes, \"I think whether it\nwould not be better for us both to break off the matter entirely.\"  As\nshe said this, she looked directly at her companion.  \"But then at\nother times I have not resolution enough for it.-- I cannot bear the\nthoughts of making him so miserable, as I know the very mention of such\na thing would do.  And on my own account too--so dear as he is to me--I\ndon't think I could be equal to it.  What would you advise me to do in\nsuch a case, Miss Dashwood?  What would you do yourself?\"\n\n\"Pardon me,\" replied Elinor, startled by the question; \"but I can give\nyou no advice under such circumstances.  Your own judgment must direct\nyou.\"\n\n\"To be sure,\" continued Lucy, after a few minutes silence on both\nsides, \"his mother must provide for him sometime or other; but poor\nEdward is so cast down by it!  Did you not think him dreadful\nlow-spirited when he was at Barton?  He was so miserable when he left\nus at Longstaple, to go to you, that I was afraid you would think him\nquite ill.\"\n\n\"Did he come from your uncle's, then, when he visited us?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes; he had been staying a fortnight with us.  Did you think he\ncame directly from town?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Elinor, most feelingly sensible of every fresh\ncircumstance in favour of Lucy's veracity; \"I remember he told us, that\nhe had been staying a fortnight with some friends near Plymouth.\" She\nremembered too, her own surprise at the time, at his mentioning nothing\nfarther of those friends, at his total silence with respect even to\ntheir names.\n\n\"Did not you think him sadly out of spirits?\" repeated Lucy.\n\n\"We did, indeed, particularly so when he first arrived.\"\n\n\"I begged him to exert himself for fear you should suspect what was the\nmatter; but it made him so melancholy, not being able to stay more than\na fortnight with us, and seeing me so much affected.-- Poor fellow!--I\nam afraid it is just the same with him now; for he writes in wretched\nspirits.  I heard from him just before I left Exeter;\" taking a letter\nfrom her pocket and carelessly showing the direction to Elinor.  \"You\nknow his hand, I dare say, a charming one it is; but that is not\nwritten so well as usual.--He was tired, I dare say, for he had just\nfilled the sheet to me as full as possible.\"\n\nElinor saw that it WAS his hand, and she could doubt no longer.  This\npicture, she had allowed herself to believe, might have been\naccidentally obtained; it might not have been Edward's gift; but a\ncorrespondence between them by letter, could subsist only under a\npositive engagement, could be authorised by nothing else; for a few\nmoments, she was almost overcome--her heart sunk within her, and she\ncould hardly stand; but exertion was indispensably necessary; and she\nstruggled so resolutely against the oppression of her feelings, that\nher success was speedy, and for the time complete.\n\n\"Writing to each other,\" said Lucy, returning the letter into her\npocket, \"is the only comfort we have in such long separations.  Yes, I\nhave one other comfort in his picture, but poor Edward has not even\nTHAT.  If he had but my picture, he says he should be easy.  I gave him\na lock of my hair set in a ring when he was at Longstaple last, and\nthat was some comfort to him, he said, but not equal to a picture.\nPerhaps you might notice the ring when you saw him?\"\n\n\"I did,\" said Elinor, with a composure of voice, under which was\nconcealed an emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt\nbefore.  She was mortified, shocked, confounded.\n\nFortunately for her, they had now reached the cottage, and the\nconversation could be continued no farther.  After sitting with them a\nfew minutes, the Miss Steeles returned to the Park, and Elinor was then\nat liberty to think and be wretched.\n\n\n\n\n\n[At this point in the first and second editions, Volume 1 ends.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHowever small Elinor's general dependence on Lucy's veracity might be,\nit was impossible for her on serious reflection to suspect it in the\npresent case, where no temptation could be answerable to the folly of\ninventing a falsehood of such a description.  What Lucy had asserted to\nbe true, therefore, Elinor could not, dared not longer doubt; supported\nas it was too on every side by such probabilities and proofs, and\ncontradicted by nothing but her own wishes.  Their opportunity of\nacquaintance in the house of Mr. Pratt was a foundation for the rest,\nat once indisputable and alarming; and Edward's visit near Plymouth,\nhis melancholy state of mind, his dissatisfaction at his own prospects,\nhis uncertain behaviour towards herself, the intimate knowledge of the\nMiss Steeles as to Norland and their family connections, which had\noften surprised her, the picture, the letter, the ring, formed\naltogether such a body of evidence, as overcame every fear of\ncondemning him unfairly, and established as a fact, which no partiality\ncould set aside, his ill-treatment of herself.--Her resentment of such\nbehaviour, her indignation at having been its dupe, for a short time\nmade her feel only for herself; but other ideas, other considerations,\nsoon arose.  Had Edward been intentionally deceiving her?  Had he\nfeigned a regard for her which he did not feel?  Was his engagement to\nLucy an engagement of the heart?  No; whatever it might once have been,\nshe could not believe it such at present.  His affection was all her\nown.  She could not be deceived in that.  Her mother, sisters, Fanny,\nall had been conscious of his regard for her at Norland; it was not an\nillusion of her own vanity.  He certainly loved her.  What a softener\nof the heart was this persuasion!  How much could it not tempt her to\nforgive!  He had been blamable, highly blamable, in remaining at\nNorland after he first felt her influence over him to be more than it\nought to be.  In that, he could not be defended; but if he had injured\nher, how much more had he injured himself; if her case were pitiable,\nhis was hopeless.  His imprudence had made her miserable for a while;\nbut it seemed to have deprived himself of all chance of ever being\notherwise.  She might in time regain tranquillity; but HE, what had he\nto look forward to?  Could he ever be tolerably happy with Lucy Steele;\ncould he, were his affection for herself out of the question, with his\nintegrity, his delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a\nwife like her--illiterate, artful, and selfish?\n\nThe youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind him to every\nthing but her beauty and good nature; but the four succeeding\nyears--years, which if rationally spent, give such improvement to the\nunderstanding, must have opened his eyes to her defects of education,\nwhile the same period of time, spent on her side in inferior society\nand more frivolous pursuits, had perhaps robbed her of that simplicity\nwhich might once have given an interesting character to her beauty.\n\nIf in the supposition of his seeking to marry herself, his difficulties\nfrom his mother had seemed great, how much greater were they now likely\nto be, when the object of his engagement was undoubtedly inferior in\nconnections, and probably inferior in fortune to herself.  These\ndifficulties, indeed, with a heart so alienated from Lucy, might not\npress very hard upon his patience; but melancholy was the state of the\nperson by whom the expectation of family opposition and unkindness,\ncould be felt as a relief!\n\nAs these considerations occurred to her in painful succession, she wept\nfor him, more than for herself.  Supported by the conviction of having\ndone nothing to merit her present unhappiness, and consoled by the\nbelief that Edward had done nothing to forfeit her esteem, she thought\nshe could even now, under the first smart of the heavy blow, command\nherself enough to guard every suspicion of the truth from her mother\nand sisters.  And so well was she able to answer her own expectations,\nthat when she joined them at dinner only two hours after she had first\nsuffered the extinction of all her dearest hopes, no one would have\nsupposed from the appearance of the sisters, that Elinor was mourning\nin secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever from the object\nof her love, and that Marianne was internally dwelling on the\nperfections of a man, of whose whole heart she felt thoroughly\npossessed, and whom she expected to see in every carriage which drove\nnear their house.\n\nThe necessity of concealing from her mother and Marianne, what had been\nentrusted in confidence to herself, though it obliged her to unceasing\nexertion, was no aggravation of Elinor's distress.  On the contrary it\nwas a relief to her, to be spared the communication of what would give\nsuch affliction to them, and to be saved likewise from hearing that\ncondemnation of Edward, which would probably flow from the excess of\ntheir partial affection for herself, and which was more than she felt\nequal to support.\n\nFrom their counsel, or their conversation, she knew she could receive\nno assistance, their tenderness and sorrow must add to her distress,\nwhile her self-command would neither receive encouragement from their\nexample nor from their praise.  She was stronger alone, and her own\ngood sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken,\nher appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as with regrets so\npoignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.\n\nMuch as she had suffered from her first conversation with Lucy on the\nsubject, she soon felt an earnest wish of renewing it; and this for\nmore reasons than one.  She wanted to hear many particulars of their\nengagement repeated again, she wanted more clearly to understand what\nLucy really felt for Edward, whether there were any sincerity in her\ndeclaration of tender regard for him, and she particularly wanted to\nconvince Lucy, by her readiness to enter on the matter again, and her\ncalmness in conversing on it, that she was no otherwise interested in\nit than as a friend, which she very much feared her involuntary\nagitation, in their morning discourse, must have left at least\ndoubtful.  That Lucy was disposed to be jealous of her appeared very\nprobable: it was plain that Edward had always spoken highly in her\npraise, not merely from Lucy's assertion, but from her venturing to\ntrust her on so short a personal acquaintance, with a secret so\nconfessedly and evidently important.  And even Sir John's joking\nintelligence must have had some weight.  But indeed, while Elinor\nremained so well assured within herself of being really beloved by\nEdward, it required no other consideration of probabilities to make it\nnatural that Lucy should be jealous; and that she was so, her very\nconfidence was a proof.  What other reason for the disclosure of the\naffair could there be, but that Elinor might be informed by it of\nLucy's superior claims on Edward, and be taught to avoid him in future?\nShe had little difficulty in understanding thus much of her rival's\nintentions, and while she was firmly resolved to act by her as every\nprinciple of honour and honesty directed, to combat her own affection\nfor Edward and to see him as little as possible; she could not deny\nherself the comfort of endeavouring to convince Lucy that her heart was\nunwounded.  And as she could now have nothing more painful to hear on\nthe subject than had already been told, she did not mistrust her own\nability of going through a repetition of particulars with composure.\n\nBut it was not immediately that an opportunity of doing so could be\ncommanded, though Lucy was as well disposed as herself to take\nadvantage of any that occurred; for the weather was not often fine\nenough to allow of their joining in a walk, where they might most\neasily separate themselves from the others; and though they met at\nleast every other evening either at the park or cottage, and chiefly at\nthe former, they could not be supposed to meet for the sake of\nconversation.  Such a thought would never enter either Sir John or Lady\nMiddleton's head; and therefore very little leisure was ever given for\na general chat, and none at all for particular discourse.  They met for\nthe sake of eating, drinking, and laughing together, playing at cards,\nor consequences, or any other game that was sufficiently noisy.\n\nOne or two meetings of this kind had taken place, without affording\nElinor any chance of engaging Lucy in private, when Sir John called at\nthe cottage one morning, to beg, in the name of charity, that they\nwould all dine with Lady Middleton that day, as he was obliged to\nattend the club at Exeter, and she would otherwise be quite alone,\nexcept her mother and the two Miss Steeles.  Elinor, who foresaw a\nfairer opening for the point she had in view, in such a party as this\nwas likely to be, more at liberty among themselves under the tranquil\nand well-bred direction of Lady Middleton than when her husband united\nthem together in one noisy purpose, immediately accepted the\ninvitation; Margaret, with her mother's permission, was equally\ncompliant, and Marianne, though always unwilling to join any of their\nparties, was persuaded by her mother, who could not bear to have her\nseclude herself from any chance of amusement, to go likewise.\n\nThe young ladies went, and Lady Middleton was happily preserved from\nthe frightful solitude which had threatened her.  The insipidity of the\nmeeting was exactly such as Elinor had expected; it produced not one\nnovelty of thought or expression, and nothing could be less interesting\nthan the whole of their discourse both in the dining parlour and\ndrawing room: to the latter, the children accompanied them, and while\nthey remained there, she was too well convinced of the impossibility of\nengaging Lucy's attention to attempt it.  They quitted it only with the\nremoval of the tea-things.  The card-table was then placed, and Elinor\nbegan to wonder at herself for having ever entertained a hope of\nfinding time for conversation at the park.  They all rose up in\npreparation for a round game.\n\n\"I am glad,\" said Lady Middleton to Lucy, \"you are not going to finish\npoor little Annamaria's basket this evening; for I am sure it must hurt\nyour eyes to work filigree by candlelight.  And we will make the dear\nlittle love some amends for her disappointment to-morrow, and then I\nhope she will not much mind it.\"\n\nThis hint was enough, Lucy recollected herself instantly and replied,\n\"Indeed you are very much mistaken, Lady Middleton; I am only waiting\nto know whether you can make your party without me, or I should have\nbeen at my filigree already.  I would not disappoint the little angel\nfor all the world: and if you want me at the card-table now, I am\nresolved to finish the basket after supper.\"\n\n\"You are very good, I hope it won't hurt your eyes--will you ring the\nbell for some working candles?  My poor little girl would be sadly\ndisappointed, I know, if the basket was not finished tomorrow, for\nthough I told her it certainly would not, I am sure she depends upon\nhaving it done.\"\n\nLucy directly drew her work table near her and reseated herself with an\nalacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to infer that she could taste no\ngreater delight than in making a filigree basket for a spoilt child.\n\nLady Middleton proposed a rubber of Casino to the others.  No one made\nany objection but Marianne, who with her usual inattention to the forms\nof general civility, exclaimed, \"Your Ladyship will have the goodness\nto excuse ME--you know I detest cards.  I shall go to the piano-forte;\nI have not touched it since it was tuned.\"  And without farther\nceremony, she turned away and walked to the instrument.\n\nLady Middleton looked as if she thanked heaven that SHE had never made\nso rude a speech.\n\n\"Marianne can never keep long from that instrument you know, ma'am,\"\nsaid Elinor, endeavouring to smooth away the offence; \"and I do not\nmuch wonder at it; for it is the very best toned piano-forte I ever\nheard.\"\n\nThe remaining five were now to draw their cards.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" continued Elinor, \"if I should happen to cut out, I may be\nof some use to Miss Lucy Steele, in rolling her papers for her; and\nthere is so much still to be done to the basket, that it must be\nimpossible I think for her labour singly, to finish it this evening.  I\nshould like the work exceedingly, if she would allow me a share in it.\"\n\n\"Indeed I shall be very much obliged to you for your help,\" cried Lucy,\n\"for I find there is more to be done to it than I thought there was;\nand it would be a shocking thing to disappoint dear Annamaria after\nall.\"\n\n\"Oh! that would be terrible, indeed,\" said Miss Steele-- \"Dear little\nsoul, how I do love her!\"\n\n\"You are very kind,\" said Lady Middleton to Elinor; \"and as you really\nlike the work, perhaps you will be as well pleased not to cut in till\nanother rubber, or will you take your chance now?\"\n\nElinor joyfully profited by the first of these proposals, and thus by a\nlittle of that address which Marianne could never condescend to\npractise, gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton at the same\ntime.  Lucy made room for her with ready attention, and the two fair\nrivals were thus seated side by side at the same table, and, with the\nutmost harmony, engaged in forwarding the same work.  The pianoforte at\nwhich Marianne, wrapped up in her own music and her own thoughts, had\nby this time forgotten that any body was in the room besides herself,\nwas luckily so near them that Miss Dashwood now judged she might\nsafely, under the shelter of its noise, introduce the interesting\nsubject, without any risk of being heard at the card-table.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn a firm, though cautious tone, Elinor thus began.\n\n\"I should be undeserving of the confidence you have honoured me with,\nif I felt no desire for its continuance, or no farther curiosity on its\nsubject.  I will not apologize therefore for bringing it forward again.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" cried Lucy warmly, \"for breaking the ice; you have set my\nheart at ease by it; for I was somehow or other afraid I had offended\nyou by what I told you that Monday.\"\n\n\"Offended me! How could you suppose so? Believe me,\" and Elinor spoke\nit with the truest sincerity, \"nothing could be farther from my\nintention than to give you such an idea.  Could you have a motive for\nthe trust, that was not honourable and flattering to me?\"\n\n\"And yet I do assure you,\" replied Lucy, her little sharp eyes full of\nmeaning, \"there seemed to me to be a coldness and displeasure in your\nmanner that made me quite uncomfortable.  I felt sure that you was\nangry with me; and have been quarrelling with myself ever since, for\nhaving took such a liberty as to trouble you with my affairs.  But I am\nvery glad to find it was only my own fancy, and that you really do not\nblame me.  If you knew what a consolation it was to me to relieve my\nheart speaking to you of what I am always thinking of every moment of\nmy life, your compassion would make you overlook every thing else I am\nsure.\"\n\n\"Indeed, I can easily believe that it was a very great relief to you,\nto acknowledge your situation to me, and be assured that you shall\nnever have reason to repent it.  Your case is a very unfortunate one;\nyou seem to me to be surrounded with difficulties, and you will have\nneed of all your mutual affection to support you under them.  Mr.\nFerrars, I believe, is entirely dependent on his mother.\"\n\n\"He has only two thousand pounds of his own; it would be madness to\nmarry upon that, though for my own part, I could give up every prospect\nof more without a sigh.  I have been always used to a very small\nincome, and could struggle with any poverty for him; but I love him too\nwell to be the selfish means of robbing him, perhaps, of all that his\nmother might give him if he married to please her.  We must wait, it\nmay be for many years.  With almost every other man in the world, it\nwould be an alarming prospect; but Edward's affection and constancy\nnothing can deprive me of I know.\"\n\n\"That conviction must be every thing to you; and he is undoubtedly\nsupported by the same trust in your's.  If the strength of your\nreciprocal attachment had failed, as between many people, and under\nmany circumstances it naturally would during a four years' engagement,\nyour situation would have been pitiable, indeed.\"\n\nLucy here looked up; but Elinor was careful in guarding her countenance\nfrom every expression that could give her words a suspicious tendency.\n\n\"Edward's love for me,\" said Lucy, \"has been pretty well put to the\ntest, by our long, very long absence since we were first engaged, and\nit has stood the trial so well, that I should be unpardonable to doubt\nit now.  I can safely say that he has never gave me one moment's alarm\non that account from the first.\"\n\nElinor hardly knew whether to smile or sigh at this assertion.\n\nLucy went on.  \"I am rather of a jealous temper too by nature, and from\nour different situations in life, from his being so much more in the\nworld than me, and our continual separation, I was enough inclined for\nsuspicion, to have found out the truth in an instant, if there had been\nthe slightest alteration in his behaviour to me when we met, or any\nlowness of spirits that I could not account for, or if he had talked\nmore of one lady than another, or seemed in any respect less happy at\nLongstaple than he used to be.  I do not mean to say that I am\nparticularly observant or quick-sighted in general, but in such a case\nI am sure I could not be deceived.\"\n\n\"All this,\" thought Elinor, \"is very pretty; but it can impose upon\nneither of us.\"\n\n\"But what,\" said she after a short silence, \"are your views? or have\nyou none but that of waiting for Mrs. Ferrars's death, which is a\nmelancholy and shocking extremity?--Is her son determined to submit to\nthis, and to all the tediousness of the many years of suspense in which\nit may involve you, rather than run the risk of her displeasure for a\nwhile by owning the truth?\"\n\n\"If we could be certain that it would be only for a while!  But Mrs.\nFerrars is a very headstrong proud woman, and in her first fit of anger\nupon hearing it, would very likely secure every thing to Robert, and\nthe idea of that, for Edward's sake, frightens away all my inclination\nfor hasty measures.\"\n\n\"And for your own sake too, or you are carrying your disinterestedness\nbeyond reason.\"\n\nLucy looked at Elinor again, and was silent.\n\n\"Do you know Mr. Robert Ferrars?\" asked Elinor.\n\n\"Not at all--I never saw him; but I fancy he is very unlike his\nbrother--silly and a great coxcomb.\"\n\n\"A great coxcomb!\" repeated Miss Steele, whose ear had caught those\nwords by a sudden pause in Marianne's music.-- \"Oh, they are talking of\ntheir favourite beaux, I dare say.\"\n\n\"No sister,\" cried Lucy, \"you are mistaken there, our favourite beaux\nare NOT great coxcombs.\"\n\n\"I can answer for it that Miss Dashwood's is not,\" said Mrs. Jennings,\nlaughing heartily; \"for he is one of the modestest, prettiest behaved\nyoung men I ever saw; but as for Lucy, she is such a sly little\ncreature, there is no finding out who SHE likes.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" cried Miss Steele, looking significantly round at them, \"I dare\nsay Lucy's beau is quite as modest and pretty behaved as Miss\nDashwood's.\"\n\nElinor blushed in spite of herself.  Lucy bit her lip, and looked\nangrily at her sister.  A mutual silence took place for some time.\nLucy first put an end to it by saying in a lower tone, though Marianne\nwas then giving them the powerful protection of a very magnificent\nconcerto--\n\n\"I will honestly tell you of one scheme which has lately come into my\nhead, for bringing matters to bear; indeed I am bound to let you into\nthe secret, for you are a party concerned.  I dare say you have seen\nenough of Edward to know that he would prefer the church to every other\nprofession; now my plan is that he should take orders as soon as he\ncan, and then through your interest, which I am sure you would be kind\nenough to use out of friendship for him, and I hope out of some regard\nto me, your brother might be persuaded to give him Norland living;\nwhich I understand is a very good one, and the present incumbent not\nlikely to live a great while.  That would be enough for us to marry\nupon, and we might trust to time and chance for the rest.\"\n\n\"I should always be happy,\" replied Elinor, \"to show any mark of my\nesteem and friendship for Mr. Ferrars; but do you not perceive that my\ninterest on such an occasion would be perfectly unnecessary?  He is\nbrother to Mrs. John Dashwood--THAT must be recommendation enough to\nher husband.\"\n\n\"But Mrs. John Dashwood would not much approve of Edward's going into\norders.\"\n\n\"Then I rather suspect that my interest would do very little.\"\n\nThey were again silent for many minutes.  At length Lucy exclaimed with\na deep sigh,\n\n\"I believe it would be the wisest way to put an end to the business at\nonce by dissolving the engagement.  We seem so beset with difficulties\non every side, that though it would make us miserable for a time, we\nshould be happier perhaps in the end.  But you will not give me your\nadvice, Miss Dashwood?\"\n\n\"No,\" answered Elinor, with a smile, which concealed very agitated\nfeelings, \"on such a subject I certainly will not.  You know very well\nthat my opinion would have no weight with you, unless it were on the\nside of your wishes.\"\n\n\"Indeed you wrong me,\" replied Lucy, with great solemnity; \"I know\nnobody of whose judgment I think so highly as I do of yours; and I do\nreally believe, that if you was to say to me, 'I advise you by all\nmeans to put an end to your engagement with Edward Ferrars, it will be\nmore for the happiness of both of you,' I should resolve upon doing it\nimmediately.\"\n\nElinor blushed for the insincerity of Edward's future wife, and\nreplied, \"This compliment would effectually frighten me from giving any\nopinion on the subject had I formed one.  It raises my influence much\ntoo high; the power of dividing two people so tenderly attached is too\nmuch for an indifferent person.\"\n\n\"'Tis because you are an indifferent person,\" said Lucy, with some\npique, and laying a particular stress on those words, \"that your\njudgment might justly have such weight with me.  If you could be\nsupposed to be biased in any respect by your own feelings, your opinion\nwould not be worth having.\"\n\nElinor thought it wisest to make no answer to this, lest they might\nprovoke each other to an unsuitable increase of ease and unreserve; and\nwas even partly determined never to mention the subject again.  Another\npause therefore of many minutes' duration, succeeded this speech, and\nLucy was still the first to end it.\n\n\"Shall you be in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?\" said she with all\nher accustomary complacency.\n\n\"Certainly not.\"\n\n\"I am sorry for that,\" returned the other, while her eyes brightened at\nthe information, \"it would have gave me such pleasure to meet you\nthere!  But I dare say you will go for all that.  To be sure, your\nbrother and sister will ask you to come to them.\"\n\n\"It will not be in my power to accept their invitation if they do.\"\n\n\"How unlucky that is! I had quite depended upon meeting you there.\nAnne and me are to go the latter end of January to some relations who\nhave been wanting us to visit them these several years!  But I only go\nfor the sake of seeing Edward.  He will be there in February, otherwise\nLondon would have no charms for me; I have not spirits for it.\"\n\nElinor was soon called to the card-table by the conclusion of the first\nrubber, and the confidential discourse of the two ladies was therefore\nat an end, to which both of them submitted without any reluctance, for\nnothing had been said on either side to make them dislike each other\nless than they had done before; and Elinor sat down to the card table\nwith the melancholy persuasion that Edward was not only without\naffection for the person who was to be his wife; but that he had not\neven the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage, which sincere\naffection on HER side would have given, for self-interest alone could\ninduce a woman to keep a man to an engagement, of which she seemed so\nthoroughly aware that he was weary.\n\nFrom this time the subject was never revived by Elinor, and when\nentered on by Lucy, who seldom missed an opportunity of introducing it,\nand was particularly careful to inform her confidante, of her happiness\nwhenever she received a letter from Edward, it was treated by the\nformer with calmness and caution, and dismissed as soon as civility\nwould allow; for she felt such conversations to be an indulgence which\nLucy did not deserve, and which were dangerous to herself.\n\nThe visit of the Miss Steeles at Barton Park was lengthened far beyond\nwhat the first invitation implied.  Their favour increased; they could\nnot be spared; Sir John would not hear of their going; and in spite of\ntheir numerous and long arranged engagements in Exeter, in spite of the\nabsolute necessity of returning to fulfill them immediately, which was\nin full force at the end of every week, they were prevailed on to stay\nnearly two months at the park, and to assist in the due celebration of\nthat festival which requires a more than ordinary share of private\nballs and large dinners to proclaim its importance.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThough Mrs. Jennings was in the habit of spending a large portion of\nthe year at the houses of her children and friends, she was not without\na settled habitation of her own.  Since the death of her husband, who\nhad traded with success in a less elegant part of the town, she had\nresided every winter in a house in one of the streets near Portman\nSquare.  Towards this home, she began on the approach of January to\nturn her thoughts, and thither she one day abruptly, and very\nunexpectedly by them, asked the elder Misses Dashwood to accompany her.\nElinor, without observing the varying complexion of her sister, and the\nanimated look which spoke no indifference to the plan, immediately gave\na grateful but absolute denial for both, in which she believed herself\nto be speaking their united inclinations.  The reason alleged was their\ndetermined resolution of not leaving their mother at that time of the\nyear.  Mrs. Jennings received the refusal with some surprise, and\nrepeated her invitation immediately.\n\n\"Oh, Lord! I am sure your mother can spare you very well, and I DO beg\nyou will favour me with your company, for I've quite set my heart upon\nit.  Don't fancy that you will be any inconvenience to me, for I shan't\nput myself at all out of my way for you.  It will only be sending Betty\nby the coach, and I hope I can afford THAT.  We three shall be able to\ngo very well in my chaise; and when we are in town, if you do not like\nto go wherever I do, well and good, you may always go with one of my\ndaughters.  I am sure your mother will not object to it; for I have had\nsuch good luck in getting my own children off my hands that she will\nthink me a very fit person to have the charge of you; and if I don't\nget one of you at least well married before I have done with you, it\nshall not be my fault.  I shall speak a good word for you to all the\nyoung men, you may depend upon it.\"\n\n\"I have a notion,\" said Sir John, \"that Miss Marianne would not object\nto such a scheme, if her elder sister would come into it.  It is very\nhard indeed that she should not have a little pleasure, because Miss\nDashwood does not wish it.  So I would advise you two, to set off for\ntown, when you are tired of Barton, without saying a word to Miss\nDashwood about it.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" cried Mrs. Jennings, \"I am sure I shall be monstrous glad of\nMiss Marianne's company, whether Miss Dashwood will go or not, only the\nmore the merrier say I, and I thought it would be more comfortable for\nthem to be together; because, if they got tired of me, they might talk\nto one another, and laugh at my old ways behind my back.  But one or\nthe other, if not both of them, I must have.  Lord bless me! how do you\nthink I can live poking by myself, I who have been always used till\nthis winter to have Charlotte with me.  Come, Miss Marianne, let us\nstrike hands upon the bargain, and if Miss Dashwood will change her\nmind by and bye, why so much the better.\"\n\n\"I thank you, ma'am, sincerely thank you,\" said Marianne, with warmth:\n\"your invitation has insured my gratitude for ever, and it would give\nme such happiness, yes, almost the greatest happiness I am capable of,\nto be able to accept it.  But my mother, my dearest, kindest mother,--I\nfeel the justice of what Elinor has urged, and if she were to be made\nless happy, less comfortable by our absence--Oh! no, nothing should\ntempt me to leave her.  It should not, must not be a struggle.\"\n\nMrs. Jennings repeated her assurance that Mrs. Dashwood could spare\nthem perfectly well; and Elinor, who now understood her sister, and saw\nto what indifference to almost every thing else she was carried by her\neagerness to be with Willoughby again, made no farther direct\nopposition to the plan, and merely referred it to her mother's\ndecision, from whom however she scarcely expected to receive any\nsupport in her endeavour to prevent a visit, which she could not\napprove of for Marianne, and which on her own account she had\nparticular reasons to avoid.  Whatever Marianne was desirous of, her\nmother would be eager to promote--she could not expect to influence the\nlatter to cautiousness of conduct in an affair respecting which she had\nnever been able to inspire her with distrust; and she dared not explain\nthe motive of her own disinclination for going to London.  That\nMarianne, fastidious as she was, thoroughly acquainted with Mrs.\nJennings' manners, and invariably disgusted by them, should overlook\nevery inconvenience of that kind, should disregard whatever must be\nmost wounding to her irritable feelings, in her pursuit of one object,\nwas such a proof, so strong, so full, of the importance of that object\nto her, as Elinor, in spite of all that had passed, was not prepared to\nwitness.\n\nOn being informed of the invitation, Mrs. Dashwood, persuaded that such\nan excursion would be productive of much amusement to both her\ndaughters, and perceiving through all her affectionate attention to\nherself, how much the heart of Marianne was in it, would not hear of\ntheir declining the offer upon HER account; insisted on their both\naccepting it directly; and then began to foresee, with her usual\ncheerfulness, a variety of advantages that would accrue to them all,\nfrom this separation.\n\n\"I am delighted with the plan,\" she cried, \"it is exactly what I could\nwish.  Margaret and I shall be as much benefited by it as yourselves.\nWhen you and the Middletons are gone, we shall go on so quietly and\nhappily together with our books and our music! You will find Margaret\nso improved when you come back again!  I have a little plan of\nalteration for your bedrooms too, which may now be performed without\nany inconvenience to any one.  It is very right that you SHOULD go to\ntown; I would have every young woman of your condition in life\nacquainted with the manners and amusements of London.  You will be\nunder the care of a motherly good sort of woman, of whose kindness to\nyou I can have no doubt.  And in all probability you will see your\nbrother, and whatever may be his faults, or the faults of his wife,\nwhen I consider whose son he is, I cannot bear to have you so wholly\nestranged from each other.\"\n\n\"Though with your usual anxiety for our happiness,\" said Elinor, \"you\nhave been obviating every impediment to the present scheme which\noccurred to you, there is still one objection which, in my opinion,\ncannot be so easily removed.\"\n\nMarianne's countenance sunk.\n\n\"And what,\" said Mrs. Dashwood, \"is my dear prudent Elinor going to\nsuggest?  What formidable obstacle is she now to bring forward?  Do let\nme hear a word about the expense of it.\"\n\n\"My objection is this; though I think very well of Mrs. Jennings's\nheart, she is not a woman whose society can afford us pleasure, or\nwhose protection will give us consequence.\"\n\n\"That is very true,\" replied her mother, \"but of her society,\nseparately from that of other people, you will scarcely have any thing\nat all, and you will almost always appear in public with Lady\nMiddleton.\"\n\n\"If Elinor is frightened away by her dislike of Mrs. Jennings,\" said\nMarianne, \"at least it need not prevent MY accepting her invitation.  I\nhave no such scruples, and I am sure I could put up with every\nunpleasantness of that kind with very little effort.\"\n\nElinor could not help smiling at this display of indifference towards\nthe manners of a person, to whom she had often had difficulty in\npersuading Marianne to behave with tolerable politeness; and resolved\nwithin herself, that if her sister persisted in going, she would go\nlikewise, as she did not think it proper that Marianne should be left\nto the sole guidance of her own judgment, or that Mrs. Jennings should\nbe abandoned to the mercy of Marianne for all the comfort of her\ndomestic hours.  To this determination she was the more easily\nreconciled, by recollecting that Edward Ferrars, by Lucy's account, was\nnot to be in town before February; and that their visit, without any\nunreasonable abridgement, might be previously finished.\n\n\"I will have you BOTH go,\" said Mrs. Dashwood; \"these objections are\nnonsensical.  You will have much pleasure in being in London, and\nespecially in being together; and if Elinor would ever condescend to\nanticipate enjoyment, she would foresee it there from a variety of\nsources; she would, perhaps, expect some from improving her\nacquaintance with her sister-in-law's family.\"\n\nElinor had often wished for an opportunity of attempting to weaken her\nmother's dependence on the attachment of Edward and herself, that the\nshock might be less when the whole truth were revealed, and now on this\nattack, though almost hopeless of success, she forced herself to begin\nher design by saying, as calmly as she could, \"I like Edward Ferrars\nvery much, and shall always be glad to see him; but as to the rest of\nthe family, it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, whether I am\never known to them or not.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood smiled, and said nothing.  Marianne lifted up her eyes in\nastonishment, and Elinor conjectured that she might as well have held\nher tongue.\n\nAfter very little farther discourse, it was finally settled that the\ninvitation should be fully accepted.  Mrs. Jennings received the\ninformation with a great deal of joy, and many assurances of kindness\nand care; nor was it a matter of pleasure merely to her.  Sir John was\ndelighted; for to a man, whose prevailing anxiety was the dread of\nbeing alone, the acquisition of two, to the number of inhabitants in\nLondon, was something.  Even Lady Middleton took the trouble of being\ndelighted, which was putting herself rather out of her way; and as for\nthe Miss Steeles, especially Lucy, they had never been so happy in\ntheir lives as this intelligence made them.\n\nElinor submitted to the arrangement which counteracted her wishes with\nless reluctance than she had expected to feel.  With regard to herself,\nit was now a matter of unconcern whether she went to town or not, and\nwhen she saw her mother so thoroughly pleased with the plan, and her\nsister exhilarated by it in look, voice, and manner, restored to all\nher usual animation, and elevated to more than her usual gaiety, she\ncould not be dissatisfied with the cause, and would hardly allow\nherself to distrust the consequence.\n\nMarianne's joy was almost a degree beyond happiness, so great was the\nperturbation of her spirits and her impatience to be gone.  Her\nunwillingness to quit her mother was her only restorative to calmness;\nand at the moment of parting her grief on that score was excessive.\nHer mother's affliction was hardly less, and Elinor was the only one of\nthe three, who seemed to consider the separation as any thing short of\neternal.\n\nTheir departure took place in the first week in January.  The\nMiddletons were to follow in about a week.  The Miss Steeles kept their\nstation at the park, and were to quit it only with the rest of the\nfamily.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nElinor could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs. Jennings, and\nbeginning a journey to London under her protection, and as her guest,\nwithout wondering at her own situation, so short had their acquaintance\nwith that lady been, so wholly unsuited were they in age and\ndisposition, and so many had been her objections against such a measure\nonly a few days before! But these objections had all, with that happy\nardour of youth which Marianne and her mother equally shared, been\novercome or overlooked; and Elinor, in spite of every occasional doubt\nof Willoughby's constancy, could not witness the rapture of delightful\nexpectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of\nMarianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless\nher own state of mind in the comparison, and how gladly she would\nengage in the solicitude of Marianne's situation to have the same\nanimating object in view, the same possibility of hope.  A short, a\nvery short time however must now decide what Willoughby's intentions\nwere; in all probability he was already in town.  Marianne's eagerness\nto be gone declared her dependence on finding him there; and Elinor was\nresolved not only upon gaining every new light as to his character\nwhich her own observation or the intelligence of others could give her,\nbut likewise upon watching his behaviour to her sister with such\nzealous attention, as to ascertain what he was and what he meant,\nbefore many meetings had taken place.  Should the result of her\nobservations be unfavourable, she was determined at all events to open\nthe eyes of her sister; should it be otherwise, her exertions would be\nof a different nature--she must then learn to avoid every selfish\ncomparison, and banish every regret which might lessen her satisfaction\nin the happiness of Marianne.\n\nThey were three days on their journey, and Marianne's behaviour as they\ntravelled was a happy specimen of what future complaisance and\ncompanionableness to Mrs. Jennings might be expected to be.  She sat in\nsilence almost all the way, wrapt in her own meditations, and scarcely\never voluntarily speaking, except when any object of picturesque beauty\nwithin their view drew from her an exclamation of delight exclusively\naddressed to her sister.  To atone for this conduct therefore, Elinor\ntook immediate possession of the post of civility which she had\nassigned herself, behaved with the greatest attention to Mrs. Jennings,\ntalked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her whenever she\ncould; and Mrs. Jennings on her side treated them both with all\npossible kindness, was solicitous on every occasion for their ease and\nenjoyment, and only disturbed that she could not make them choose their\nown dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their preferring\nsalmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets.  They reached town by\nthree o'clock the third day, glad to be released, after such a journey,\nfrom the confinement of a carriage, and ready to enjoy all the luxury\nof a good fire.\n\nThe house was handsome, and handsomely fitted up, and the young ladies\nwere immediately put in possession of a very comfortable apartment.  It\nhad formerly been Charlotte's, and over the mantelpiece still hung a\nlandscape in coloured silks of her performance, in proof of her having\nspent seven years at a great school in town to some effect.\n\nAs dinner was not to be ready in less than two hours from their\narrival, Elinor determined to employ the interval in writing to her\nmother, and sat down for that purpose.  In a few moments Marianne did\nthe same.  \"I am writing home, Marianne,\" said Elinor; \"had not you\nbetter defer your letter for a day or two?\"\n\n\"I am NOT going to write to my mother,\" replied Marianne, hastily, and\nas if wishing to avoid any farther inquiry.  Elinor said no more; it\nimmediately struck her that she must then be writing to Willoughby; and\nthe conclusion which as instantly followed was, that, however\nmysteriously they might wish to conduct the affair, they must be\nengaged.  This conviction, though not entirely satisfactory, gave her\npleasure, and she continued her letter with greater alacrity.\nMarianne's was finished in a very few minutes; in length it could be no\nmore than a note; it was then folded up, sealed, and directed with\neager rapidity.  Elinor thought she could distinguish a large W in the\ndirection; and no sooner was it complete than Marianne, ringing the\nbell, requested the footman who answered it to get that letter conveyed\nfor her to the two-penny post.  This decided the matter at once.\n\nHer spirits still continued very high; but there was a flutter in them\nwhich prevented their giving much pleasure to her sister, and this\nagitation increased as the evening drew on.  She could scarcely eat any\ndinner, and when they afterwards returned to the drawing room, seemed\nanxiously listening to the sound of every carriage.\n\nIt was a great satisfaction to Elinor that Mrs. Jennings, by being much\nengaged in her own room, could see little of what was passing.  The tea\nthings were brought in, and already had Marianne been disappointed more\nthan once by a rap at a neighbouring door, when a loud one was suddenly\nheard which could not be mistaken for one at any other house, Elinor\nfelt secure of its announcing Willoughby's approach, and Marianne,\nstarting up, moved towards the door.  Every thing was silent; this\ncould not be borne many seconds; she opened the door, advanced a few\nsteps towards the stairs, and after listening half a minute, returned\ninto the room in all the agitation which a conviction of having heard\nhim would naturally produce; in the ecstasy of her feelings at that\ninstant she could not help exclaiming, \"Oh, Elinor, it is Willoughby,\nindeed it is!\" and seemed almost ready to throw herself into his arms,\nwhen Colonel Brandon appeared.\n\nIt was too great a shock to be borne with calmness, and she immediately\nleft the room.  Elinor was disappointed too; but at the same time her\nregard for Colonel Brandon ensured his welcome with her; and she felt\nparticularly hurt that a man so partial to her sister should perceive\nthat she experienced nothing but grief and disappointment in seeing\nhim.  She instantly saw that it was not unnoticed by him, that he even\nobserved Marianne as she quitted the room, with such astonishment and\nconcern, as hardly left him the recollection of what civility demanded\ntowards herself.\n\n\"Is your sister ill?\" said he.\n\nElinor answered in some distress that she was, and then talked of\nhead-aches, low spirits, and over fatigues; and of every thing to which\nshe could decently attribute her sister's behaviour.\n\nHe heard her with the most earnest attention, but seeming to recollect\nhimself, said no more on the subject, and began directly to speak of\nhis pleasure at seeing them in London, making the usual inquiries about\ntheir journey, and the friends they had left behind.\n\nIn this calm kind of way, with very little interest on either side,\nthey continued to talk, both of them out of spirits, and the thoughts\nof both engaged elsewhere.  Elinor wished very much to ask whether\nWilloughby were then in town, but she was afraid of giving him pain by\nany enquiry after his rival; and at length, by way of saying something,\nshe asked if he had been in London ever since she had seen him last.\n\"Yes,\" he replied, with some embarrassment, \"almost ever since; I have\nbeen once or twice at Delaford for a few days, but it has never been in\nmy power to return to Barton.\"\n\nThis, and the manner in which it was said, immediately brought back to\nher remembrance all the circumstances of his quitting that place, with\nthe uneasiness and suspicions they had caused to Mrs. Jennings, and she\nwas fearful that her question had implied much more curiosity on the\nsubject than she had ever felt.\n\nMrs. Jennings soon came in.  \"Oh! Colonel,\" said she, with her usual\nnoisy cheerfulness, \"I am monstrous glad to see you--sorry I could not\ncome before--beg your pardon, but I have been forced to look about me a\nlittle, and settle my matters; for it is a long while since I have been\nat home, and you know one has always a world of little odd things to do\nafter one has been away for any time; and then I have had Cartwright to\nsettle with-- Lord, I have been as busy as a bee ever since dinner!\nBut pray, Colonel, how came you to conjure out that I should be in town\ntoday?\"\n\n\"I had the pleasure of hearing it at Mr. Palmer's, where I have been\ndining.\"\n\n\"Oh, you did; well, and how do they all do at their house?  How does\nCharlotte do?  I warrant you she is a fine size by this time.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Palmer appeared quite well, and I am commissioned to tell you,\nthat you will certainly see her to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Ay, to be sure, I thought as much.  Well, Colonel, I have brought two\nyoung ladies with me, you see--that is, you see but one of them now,\nbut there is another somewhere.  Your friend, Miss Marianne, too--which\nyou will not be sorry to hear.  I do not know what you and Mr.\nWilloughby will do between you about her.  Ay, it is a fine thing to be\nyoung and handsome.  Well! I was young once, but I never was very\nhandsome--worse luck for me.  However, I got a very good husband, and I\ndon't know what the greatest beauty can do more.  Ah! poor man! he has\nbeen dead these eight years and better.  But Colonel, where have you\nbeen to since we parted?  And how does your business go on?  Come,\ncome, let's have no secrets among friends.\"\n\nHe replied with his accustomary mildness to all her inquiries, but\nwithout satisfying her in any.  Elinor now began to make the tea, and\nMarianne was obliged to appear again.\n\nAfter her entrance, Colonel Brandon became more thoughtful and silent\nthan he had been before, and Mrs. Jennings could not prevail on him to\nstay long.  No other visitor appeared that evening, and the ladies were\nunanimous in agreeing to go early to bed.\n\nMarianne rose the next morning with recovered spirits and happy looks.\nThe disappointment of the evening before seemed forgotten in the\nexpectation of what was to happen that day.  They had not long finished\ntheir breakfast before Mrs. Palmer's barouche stopped at the door, and\nin a few minutes she came laughing into the room: so delighted to see\nthem all, that it was hard to say whether she received most pleasure\nfrom meeting her mother or the Miss Dashwoods again.  So surprised at\ntheir coming to town, though it was what she had rather expected all\nalong; so angry at their accepting her mother's invitation after having\ndeclined her own, though at the same time she would never have forgiven\nthem if they had not come!\n\n\"Mr. Palmer will be so happy to see you,\" said she; \"What do you think\nhe said when he heard of your coming with Mama?  I forget what it was\nnow, but it was something so droll!\"\n\nAfter an hour or two spent in what her mother called comfortable chat,\nor in other words, in every variety of inquiry concerning all their\nacquaintance on Mrs. Jennings's side, and in laughter without cause on\nMrs. Palmer's, it was proposed by the latter that they should all\naccompany her to some shops where she had business that morning, to\nwhich Mrs. Jennings and Elinor readily consented, as having likewise\nsome purchases to make themselves; and Marianne, though declining it at\nfirst was induced to go likewise.\n\nWherever they went, she was evidently always on the watch.  In Bond\nStreet especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in\nconstant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind\nwas equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, from all\nthat interested and occupied the others.  Restless and dissatisfied\nevery where, her sister could never obtain her opinion of any article\nof purchase, however it might equally concern them both: she received\nno pleasure from anything; was only impatient to be at home again, and\ncould with difficulty govern her vexation at the tediousness of Mrs.\nPalmer, whose eye was caught by every thing pretty, expensive, or new;\nwho was wild to buy all, could determine on none, and dawdled away her\ntime in rapture and indecision.\n\nIt was late in the morning before they returned home; and no sooner had\nthey entered the house than Marianne flew eagerly up stairs, and when\nElinor followed, she found her turning from the table with a sorrowful\ncountenance, which declared that no Willoughby had been there.\n\n\"Has no letter been left here for me since we went out?\" said she to\nthe footman who then entered with the parcels.  She was answered in the\nnegative.  \"Are you quite sure of it?\" she replied.  \"Are you certain\nthat no servant, no porter has left any letter or note?\"\n\nThe man replied that none had.\n\n\"How very odd!\" said she, in a low and disappointed voice, as she\nturned away to the window.\n\n\"How odd, indeed!\" repeated Elinor within herself, regarding her sister\nwith uneasiness.  \"If she had not known him to be in town she would not\nhave written to him, as she did; she would have written to Combe Magna;\nand if he is in town, how odd that he should neither come nor write!\nOh! my dear mother, you must be wrong in permitting an engagement\nbetween a daughter so young, a man so little known, to be carried on in\nso doubtful, so mysterious a manner!  I long to inquire; and how will\nMY interference be borne.\"\n\nShe determined, after some consideration, that if appearances continued\nmany days longer as unpleasant as they now were, she would represent in\nthe strongest manner to her mother the necessity of some serious\nenquiry into the affair.\n\nMrs. Palmer and two elderly ladies of Mrs. Jennings's intimate\nacquaintance, whom she had met and invited in the morning, dined with\nthem.  The former left them soon after tea to fulfill her evening\nengagements; and Elinor was obliged to assist in making a whist table\nfor the others.  Marianne was of no use on these occasions, as she\nwould never learn the game; but though her time was therefore at her\nown disposal, the evening was by no means more productive of pleasure\nto her than to Elinor, for it was spent in all the anxiety of\nexpectation and the pain of disappointment.  She sometimes endeavoured\nfor a few minutes to read; but the book was soon thrown aside, and she\nreturned to the more interesting employment of walking backwards and\nforwards across the room, pausing for a moment whenever she came to the\nwindow, in hopes of distinguishing the long-expected rap.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"If this open weather holds much longer,\" said Mrs. Jennings, when they\nmet at breakfast the following morning, \"Sir John will not like leaving\nBarton next week; 'tis a sad thing for sportsmen to lose a day's\npleasure.  Poor souls!  I always pity them when they do; they seem to\ntake it so much to heart.\"\n\n\"That is true,\" cried Marianne, in a cheerful voice, and walking to the\nwindow as she spoke, to examine the day.  \"I had not thought of that.\nThis weather will keep many sportsmen in the country.\"\n\nIt was a lucky recollection, all her good spirits were restored by it.\n\"It is charming weather for THEM indeed,\" she continued, as she sat\ndown to the breakfast table with a happy countenance.  \"How much they\nmust enjoy it! But\" (with a little return of anxiety) \"it cannot be\nexpected to last long.  At this time of the year, and after such a\nseries of rain, we shall certainly have very little more of it.  Frosts\nwill soon set in, and in all probability with severity.  In another day\nor two perhaps; this extreme mildness can hardly last longer--nay,\nperhaps it may freeze tonight!\"\n\n\"At any rate,\" said Elinor, wishing to prevent Mrs. Jennings from\nseeing her sister's thoughts as clearly as she did, \"I dare say we\nshall have Sir John and Lady Middleton in town by the end of next week.\"\n\n\"Ay, my dear, I'll warrant you we do.  Mary always has her own way.\"\n\n\"And now,\" silently conjectured Elinor, \"she will write to Combe by\nthis day's post.\"\n\nBut if she DID, the letter was written and sent away with a privacy\nwhich eluded all her watchfulness to ascertain the fact.  Whatever the\ntruth of it might be, and far as Elinor was from feeling thorough\ncontentment about it, yet while she saw Marianne in spirits, she could\nnot be very uncomfortable herself.  And Marianne was in spirits; happy\nin the mildness of the weather, and still happier in her expectation of\na frost.\n\nThe morning was chiefly spent in leaving cards at the houses of Mrs.\nJennings's acquaintance to inform them of her being in town; and\nMarianne was all the time busy in observing the direction of the wind,\nwatching the variations of the sky and imagining an alteration in the\nair.\n\n\"Don't you find it colder than it was in the morning, Elinor? There\nseems to me a very decided difference.  I can hardly keep my hands warm\neven in my muff.  It was not so yesterday, I think.  The clouds seem\nparting too, the sun will be out in a moment, and we shall have a clear\nafternoon.\"\n\nElinor was alternately diverted and pained; but Marianne persevered,\nand saw every night in the brightness of the fire, and every morning in\nthe appearance of the atmosphere, the certain symptoms of approaching\nfrost.\n\nThe Miss Dashwoods had no greater reason to be dissatisfied with Mrs.\nJennings's style of living, and set of acquaintance, than with her\nbehaviour to themselves, which was invariably kind.  Every thing in her\nhousehold arrangements was conducted on the most liberal plan, and\nexcepting a few old city friends, whom, to Lady Middleton's regret, she\nhad never dropped, she visited no one to whom an introduction could at\nall discompose the feelings of her young companions.  Pleased to find\nherself more comfortably situated in that particular than she had\nexpected, Elinor was very willing to compound for the want of much real\nenjoyment from any of their evening parties, which, whether at home or\nabroad, formed only for cards, could have little to amuse her.\n\nColonel Brandon, who had a general invitation to the house, was with\nthem almost every day; he came to look at Marianne and talk to Elinor,\nwho often derived more satisfaction from conversing with him than from\nany other daily occurrence, but who saw at the same time with much\nconcern his continued regard for her sister.  She feared it was a\nstrengthening regard.  It grieved her to see the earnestness with which\nhe often watched Marianne, and his spirits were certainly worse than\nwhen at Barton.\n\nAbout a week after their arrival, it became certain that Willoughby was\nalso arrived.  His card was on the table when they came in from the\nmorning's drive.\n\n\"Good God!\" cried Marianne, \"he has been here while we were out.\"\nElinor, rejoiced to be assured of his being in London, now ventured to\nsay, \"Depend upon it, he will call again tomorrow.\"  But Marianne\nseemed hardly to hear her, and on Mrs. Jennings's entrance, escaped with\nthe precious card.\n\nThis event, while it raised the spirits of Elinor, restored to those of\nher sister all, and more than all, their former agitation.  From this\nmoment her mind was never quiet; the expectation of seeing him every\nhour of the day, made her unfit for any thing.  She insisted on being\nleft behind, the next morning, when the others went out.\n\nElinor's thoughts were full of what might be passing in Berkeley Street\nduring their absence; but a moment's glance at her sister when they\nreturned was enough to inform her, that Willoughby had paid no second\nvisit there.  A note was just then brought in, and laid on the table.\n\n\"For me!\" cried Marianne, stepping hastily forward.\n\n\"No, ma'am, for my mistress.\"\n\nBut Marianne, not convinced, took it instantly up.\n\n\"It is indeed for Mrs. Jennings; how provoking!\"\n\n\"You are expecting a letter, then?\" said Elinor, unable to be longer\nsilent.\n\n\"Yes, a little--not much.\"\n\nAfter a short pause.  \"You have no confidence in me, Marianne.\"\n\n\"Nay, Elinor, this reproach from YOU--you who have confidence in no\none!\"\n\n\"Me!\" returned Elinor in some confusion; \"indeed, Marianne, I have\nnothing to tell.\"\n\n\"Nor I,\" answered Marianne with energy, \"our situations then are alike.\nWe have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you do not\ncommunicate, and I, because I conceal nothing.\"\n\nElinor, distressed by this charge of reserve in herself, which she was\nnot at liberty to do away, knew not how, under such circumstances, to\npress for greater openness in Marianne.\n\nMrs. Jennings soon appeared, and the note being given her, she read it\naloud.  It was from Lady Middleton, announcing their arrival in Conduit\nStreet the night before, and requesting the company of her mother and\ncousins the following evening.  Business on Sir John's part, and a\nviolent cold on her own, prevented their calling in Berkeley Street.\nThe invitation was accepted; but when the hour of appointment drew\nnear, necessary as it was in common civility to Mrs. Jennings, that\nthey should both attend her on such a visit, Elinor had some difficulty\nin persuading her sister to go, for still she had seen nothing of\nWilloughby; and therefore was not more indisposed for amusement abroad,\nthan unwilling to run the risk of his calling again in her absence.\n\nElinor found, when the evening was over, that disposition is not\nmaterially altered by a change of abode, for although scarcely settled\nin town, Sir John had contrived to collect around him, nearly twenty\nyoung people, and to amuse them with a ball.  This was an affair,\nhowever, of which Lady Middleton did not approve.  In the country, an\nunpremeditated dance was very allowable; but in London, where the\nreputation of elegance was more important and less easily attained, it\nwas risking too much for the gratification of a few girls, to have it\nknown that Lady Middleton had given a small dance of eight or nine\ncouple, with two violins, and a mere side-board collation.\n\nMr. and Mrs. Palmer were of the party; from the former, whom they had\nnot seen before since their arrival in town, as he was careful to avoid\nthe appearance of any attention to his mother-in-law, and therefore\nnever came near her, they received no mark of recognition on their\nentrance.  He looked at them slightly, without seeming to know who they\nwere, and merely nodded to Mrs. Jennings from the other side of the\nroom.  Marianne gave one glance round the apartment as she entered: it\nwas enough--HE was not there--and she sat down, equally ill-disposed to\nreceive or communicate pleasure.  After they had been assembled about\nan hour, Mr. Palmer sauntered towards the Miss Dashwoods to express his\nsurprise on seeing them in town, though Colonel Brandon had been first\ninformed of their arrival at his house, and he had himself said\nsomething very droll on hearing that they were to come.\n\n\"I thought you were both in Devonshire,\" said he.\n\n\"Did you?\" replied Elinor.\n\n\"When do you go back again?\"\n\n\"I do not know.\" And thus ended their discourse.\n\nNever had Marianne been so unwilling to dance in her life, as she was\nthat evening, and never so much fatigued by the exercise.  She\ncomplained of it as they returned to Berkeley Street.\n\n\"Aye, aye,\" said Mrs. Jennings, \"we know the reason of all that very\nwell; if a certain person who shall be nameless, had been there, you\nwould not have been a bit tired: and to say the truth it was not very\npretty of him not to give you the meeting when he was invited.\"\n\n\"Invited!\" cried Marianne.\n\n\"So my daughter Middleton told me, for it seems Sir John met him\nsomewhere in the street this morning.\" Marianne said no more, but\nlooked exceedingly hurt.  Impatient in this situation to be doing\nsomething that might lead to her sister's relief, Elinor resolved to\nwrite the next morning to her mother, and hoped by awakening her fears\nfor the health of Marianne, to procure those inquiries which had been\nso long delayed; and she was still more eagerly bent on this measure by\nperceiving after breakfast on the morrow, that Marianne was again\nwriting to Willoughby, for she could not suppose it to be to any other\nperson.\n\nAbout the middle of the day, Mrs. Jennings went out by herself on\nbusiness, and Elinor began her letter directly, while Marianne, too\nrestless for employment, too anxious for conversation, walked from one\nwindow to the other, or sat down by the fire in melancholy meditation.\nElinor was very earnest in her application to her mother, relating all\nthat had passed, her suspicions of Willoughby's inconstancy, urging her\nby every plea of duty and affection to demand from Marianne an account\nof her real situation with respect to him.\n\nHer letter was scarcely finished, when a rap foretold a visitor, and\nColonel Brandon was announced.  Marianne, who had seen him from the\nwindow, and who hated company of any kind, left the room before he\nentered it.  He looked more than usually grave, and though expressing\nsatisfaction at finding Miss Dashwood alone, as if he had somewhat in\nparticular to tell her, sat for some time without saying a word.\nElinor, persuaded that he had some communication to make in which her\nsister was concerned, impatiently expected its opening.  It was not the\nfirst time of her feeling the same kind of conviction; for, more than\nonce before, beginning with the observation of \"your sister looks\nunwell to-day,\" or \"your sister seems out of spirits,\" he had appeared\non the point, either of disclosing, or of inquiring, something\nparticular about her.  After a pause of several minutes, their silence\nwas broken, by his asking her in a voice of some agitation, when he was\nto congratulate her on the acquisition of a brother?  Elinor was not\nprepared for such a question, and having no answer ready, was obliged\nto adopt the simple and common expedient, of asking what he meant?  He\ntried to smile as he replied, \"your sister's engagement to Mr.\nWilloughby is very generally known.\"\n\n\"It cannot be generally known,\" returned Elinor, \"for her own family do\nnot know it.\"\n\nHe looked surprised and said, \"I beg your pardon, I am afraid my\ninquiry has been impertinent; but I had not supposed any secrecy\nintended, as they openly correspond, and their marriage is universally\ntalked of.\"\n\n\"How can that be? By whom can you have heard it mentioned?\"\n\n\"By many--by some of whom you know nothing, by others with whom you are\nmost intimate, Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Palmer, and the Middletons.  But\nstill I might not have believed it, for where the mind is perhaps\nrather unwilling to be convinced, it will always find something to\nsupport its doubts, if I had not, when the servant let me in today,\naccidentally seen a letter in his hand, directed to Mr. Willoughby in\nyour sister's writing.  I came to inquire, but I was convinced before I\ncould ask the question.  Is every thing finally settled?  Is it\nimpossible to-?  But I have no right, and I could have no chance of\nsucceeding.  Excuse me, Miss Dashwood.  I believe I have been wrong in\nsaying so much, but I hardly know what to do, and on your prudence I\nhave the strongest dependence.  Tell me that it is all absolutely\nresolved on, that any attempt, that in short concealment, if\nconcealment be possible, is all that remains.\"\n\nThese words, which conveyed to Elinor a direct avowal of his love for\nher sister, affected her very much.  She was not immediately able to\nsay anything, and even when her spirits were recovered, she debated for\na short time, on the answer it would be most proper to give.  The real\nstate of things between Willoughby and her sister was so little known\nto herself, that in endeavouring to explain it, she might be as liable\nto say too much as too little.  Yet as she was convinced that\nMarianne's affection for Willoughby, could leave no hope of Colonel\nBrandon's success, whatever the event of that affection might be, and\nat the same time wished to shield her conduct from censure, she thought\nit most prudent and kind, after some consideration, to say more than\nshe really knew or believed.  She acknowledged, therefore, that though\nshe had never been informed by themselves of the terms on which they\nstood with each other, of their mutual affection she had no doubt, and\nof their correspondence she was not astonished to hear.\n\nHe listened to her with silent attention, and on her ceasing to speak,\nrose directly from his seat, and after saying in a voice of emotion,\n\"to your sister I wish all imaginable happiness; to Willoughby that he\nmay endeavour to deserve her,\"--took leave, and went away.\n\nElinor derived no comfortable feelings from this conversation, to\nlessen the uneasiness of her mind on other points; she was left, on the\ncontrary, with a melancholy impression of Colonel Brandon's\nunhappiness, and was prevented even from wishing it removed, by her\nanxiety for the very event that must confirm it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNothing occurred during the next three or four days, to make Elinor\nregret what she had done, in applying to her mother; for Willoughby\nneither came nor wrote.  They were engaged about the end of that time\nto attend Lady Middleton to a party, from which Mrs. Jennings was kept\naway by the indisposition of her youngest daughter; and for this party,\nMarianne, wholly dispirited, careless of her appearance, and seeming\nequally indifferent whether she went or staid, prepared, without one\nlook of hope or one expression of pleasure.  She sat by the\ndrawing-room fire after tea, till the moment of Lady Middleton's\narrival, without once stirring from her seat, or altering her attitude,\nlost in her own thoughts, and insensible of her sister's presence; and\nwhen at last they were told that Lady Middleton waited for them at the\ndoor, she started as if she had forgotten that any one was expected.\n\nThey arrived in due time at the place of destination, and as soon as\nthe string of carriages before them would allow, alighted, ascended the\nstairs, heard their names announced from one landing-place to another\nin an audible voice, and entered a room splendidly lit up, quite full\nof company, and insufferably hot.  When they had paid their tribute of\npoliteness by curtsying to the lady of the house, they were permitted\nto mingle in the crowd, and take their share of the heat and\ninconvenience, to which their arrival must necessarily add.  After some\ntime spent in saying little or doing less, Lady Middleton sat down to\nCassino, and as Marianne was not in spirits for moving about, she and\nElinor luckily succeeding to chairs, placed themselves at no great\ndistance from the table.\n\nThey had not remained in this manner long, before Elinor perceived\nWilloughby, standing within a few yards of them, in earnest\nconversation with a very fashionable looking young woman.  She soon\ncaught his eye, and he immediately bowed, but without attempting to\nspeak to her, or to approach Marianne, though he could not but see her;\nand then continued his discourse with the same lady.  Elinor turned\ninvoluntarily to Marianne, to see whether it could be unobserved by\nher.  At that moment she first perceived him, and her whole countenance\nglowing with sudden delight, she would have moved towards him\ninstantly, had not her sister caught hold of her.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" she exclaimed, \"he is there--he is there--Oh! why does\nhe not look at me? why cannot I speak to him?\"\n\n\"Pray, pray be composed,\" cried Elinor, \"and do not betray what you\nfeel to every body present.  Perhaps he has not observed you yet.\"\n\nThis however was more than she could believe herself; and to be\ncomposed at such a moment was not only beyond the reach of Marianne, it\nwas beyond her wish.  She sat in an agony of impatience which affected\nevery feature.\n\nAt last he turned round again, and regarded them both; she started up,\nand pronouncing his name in a tone of affection, held out her hand to\nhim.  He approached, and addressing himself rather to Elinor than\nMarianne, as if wishing to avoid her eye, and determined not to observe\nher attitude, inquired in a hurried manner after Mrs. Dashwood, and\nasked how long they had been in town.  Elinor was robbed of all\npresence of mind by such an address, and was unable to say a word.  But\nthe feelings of her sister were instantly expressed.  Her face was\ncrimsoned over, and she exclaimed, in a voice of the greatest emotion,\n\"Good God! Willoughby, what is the meaning of this?  Have you not\nreceived my letters?  Will you not shake hands with me?\"\n\nHe could not then avoid it, but her touch seemed painful to him, and he\nheld her hand only for a moment.  During all this time he was evidently\nstruggling for composure.  Elinor watched his countenance and saw its\nexpression becoming more tranquil.  After a moment's pause, he spoke\nwith calmness.\n\n\"I did myself the honour of calling in Berkeley Street last Tuesday,\nand very much regretted that I was not fortunate enough to find\nyourselves and Mrs. Jennings at home.  My card was not lost, I hope.\"\n\n\"But have you not received my notes?\" cried Marianne in the wildest\nanxiety.  \"Here is some mistake I am sure--some dreadful mistake.  What\ncan be the meaning of it?  Tell me, Willoughby; for heaven's sake tell\nme, what is the matter?\"\n\nHe made no reply; his complexion changed and all his embarrassment\nreturned; but as if, on catching the eye of the young lady with whom he\nhad been previously talking, he felt the necessity of instant exertion,\nhe recovered himself again, and after saying, \"Yes, I had the pleasure\nof receiving the information of your arrival in town, which you were so\ngood as to send me,\" turned hastily away with a slight bow and joined\nhis friend.\n\nMarianne, now looking dreadfully white, and unable to stand, sunk into\nher chair, and Elinor, expecting every moment to see her faint, tried\nto screen her from the observation of others, while reviving her with\nlavender water.\n\n\"Go to him, Elinor,\" she cried, as soon as she could speak, \"and force\nhim to come to me.  Tell him I must see him again--must speak to him\ninstantly.-- I cannot rest--I shall not have a moment's peace till this\nis explained--some dreadful misapprehension or other.-- Oh go to him\nthis moment.\"\n\n\"How can that be done? No, my dearest Marianne, you must wait.  This is\nnot the place for explanations.  Wait only till tomorrow.\"\n\nWith difficulty however could she prevent her from following him\nherself; and to persuade her to check her agitation, to wait, at least,\nwith the appearance of composure, till she might speak to him with more\nprivacy and more effect, was impossible; for Marianne continued\nincessantly to give way in a low voice to the misery of her feelings,\nby exclamations of wretchedness.  In a short time Elinor saw Willoughby\nquit the room by the door towards the staircase, and telling Marianne\nthat he was gone, urged the impossibility of speaking to him again that\nevening, as a fresh argument for her to be calm.  She instantly begged\nher sister would entreat Lady Middleton to take them home, as she was\ntoo miserable to stay a minute longer.\n\nLady Middleton, though in the middle of a rubber, on being informed\nthat Marianne was unwell, was too polite to object for a moment to her\nwish of going away, and making over her cards to a friend, they\ndeparted as soon the carriage could be found.  Scarcely a word was\nspoken during their return to Berkeley Street.  Marianne was in a\nsilent agony, too much oppressed even for tears; but as Mrs. Jennings\nwas luckily not come home, they could go directly to their own room,\nwhere hartshorn restored her a little to herself.  She was soon\nundressed and in bed, and as she seemed desirous of being alone, her\nsister then left her, and while she waited the return of Mrs. Jennings,\nhad leisure enough for thinking over the past.\n\nThat some kind of engagement had subsisted between Willoughby and\nMarianne she could not doubt, and that Willoughby was weary of it,\nseemed equally clear; for however Marianne might still feed her own\nwishes, SHE could not attribute such behaviour to mistake or\nmisapprehension of any kind.  Nothing but a thorough change of\nsentiment could account for it.  Her indignation would have been still\nstronger than it was, had she not witnessed that embarrassment which\nseemed to speak a consciousness of his own misconduct, and prevented\nher from believing him so unprincipled as to have been sporting with\nthe affections of her sister from the first, without any design that\nwould bear investigation.  Absence might have weakened his regard, and\nconvenience might have determined him to overcome it, but that such a\nregard had formerly existed she could not bring herself to doubt.\n\nAs for Marianne, on the pangs which so unhappy a meeting must already\nhave given her, and on those still more severe which might await her in\nits probable consequence, she could not reflect without the deepest\nconcern.  Her own situation gained in the comparison; for while she\ncould ESTEEM Edward as much as ever, however they might be divided in\nfuture, her mind might be always supported.  But every circumstance\nthat could embitter such an evil seemed uniting to heighten the misery\nof Marianne in a final separation from Willoughby--in an immediate and\nirreconcilable rupture with him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBefore the house-maid had lit their fire the next day, or the sun\ngained any power over a cold, gloomy morning in January, Marianne, only\nhalf dressed, was kneeling against one of the window-seats for the sake\nof all the little light she could command from it, and writing as fast\nas a continual flow of tears would permit her.  In this situation,\nElinor, roused from sleep by her agitation and sobs, first perceived\nher; and after observing her for a few moments with silent anxiety,\nsaid, in a tone of the most considerate gentleness,\n\n\"Marianne, may I ask-?\"\n\n\"No, Elinor,\" she replied, \"ask nothing; you will soon know all.\"\n\nThe sort of desperate calmness with which this was said, lasted no\nlonger than while she spoke, and was immediately followed by a return\nof the same excessive affliction.  It was some minutes before she could\ngo on with her letter, and the frequent bursts of grief which still\nobliged her, at intervals, to withhold her pen, were proofs enough of\nher feeling how more than probable it was that she was writing for the\nlast time to Willoughby.\n\nElinor paid her every quiet and unobtrusive attention in her power; and\nshe would have tried to sooth and tranquilize her still more, had not\nMarianne entreated her, with all the eagerness of the most nervous\nirritability, not to speak to her for the world.  In such\ncircumstances, it was better for both that they should not be long\ntogether; and the restless state of Marianne's mind not only prevented\nher from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, but\nrequiring at once solitude and continual change of place, made her\nwander about the house till breakfast time, avoiding the sight of every\nbody.\n\nAt breakfast she neither ate, nor attempted to eat any thing; and\nElinor's attention was then all employed, not in urging her, not in\npitying her, nor in appearing to regard her, but in endeavouring to\nengage Mrs. Jennings's notice entirely to herself.\n\nAs this was a favourite meal with Mrs. Jennings, it lasted a\nconsiderable time, and they were just setting themselves, after it,\nround the common working table, when a letter was delivered to\nMarianne, which she eagerly caught from the servant, and, turning of a\ndeath-like paleness, instantly ran out of the room.  Elinor, who saw as\nplainly by this, as if she had seen the direction, that it must come\nfrom Willoughby, felt immediately such a sickness at heart as made her\nhardly able to hold up her head, and sat in such a general tremour as\nmade her fear it impossible to escape Mrs. Jennings's notice.  That good\nlady, however, saw only that Marianne had received a letter from\nWilloughby, which appeared to her a very good joke, and which she\ntreated accordingly, by hoping, with a laugh, that she would find it to\nher liking.  Of Elinor's distress, she was too busily employed in\nmeasuring lengths of worsted for her rug, to see any thing at all; and\ncalmly continuing her talk, as soon as Marianne disappeared, she said,\n\n\"Upon my word, I never saw a young woman so desperately in love in my\nlife!  MY girls were nothing to her, and yet they used to be foolish\nenough; but as for Miss Marianne, she is quite an altered creature.  I\nhope, from the bottom of my heart, he won't keep her waiting much\nlonger, for it is quite grievous to see her look so ill and forlorn.\nPray, when are they to be married?\"\n\nElinor, though never less disposed to speak than at that moment,\nobliged herself to answer such an attack as this, and, therefore,\ntrying to smile, replied, \"And have you really, Ma'am, talked yourself\ninto a persuasion of my sister's being engaged to Mr. Willoughby?  I\nthought it had been only a joke, but so serious a question seems to\nimply more; and I must beg, therefore, that you will not deceive\nyourself any longer.  I do assure you that nothing would surprise me\nmore than to hear of their being going to be married.\"\n\n\"For shame, for shame, Miss Dashwood! how can you talk so?  Don't we\nall know that it must be a match, that they were over head and ears in\nlove with each other from the first moment they met?  Did not I see\nthem together in Devonshire every day, and all day long; and did not I\nknow that your sister came to town with me on purpose to buy wedding\nclothes?  Come, come, this won't do.  Because you are so sly about it\nyourself, you think nobody else has any senses; but it is no such\nthing, I can tell you, for it has been known all over town this ever so\nlong.  I tell every body of it and so does Charlotte.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Ma'am,\" said Elinor, very seriously, \"you are mistaken.\nIndeed, you are doing a very unkind thing in spreading the report, and\nyou will find that you have though you will not believe me now.\"\n\nMrs. Jennings laughed again, but Elinor had not spirits to say more,\nand eager at all events to know what Willoughby had written, hurried\naway to their room, where, on opening the door, she saw Marianne\nstretched on the bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand,\nand two or three others laying by her.  Elinor drew near, but without\nsaying a word; and seating herself on the bed, took her hand, kissed\nher affectionately several times, and then gave way to a burst of\ntears, which at first was scarcely less violent than Marianne's. The\nlatter, though unable to speak, seemed to feel all the tenderness of\nthis behaviour, and after some time thus spent in joint affliction, she\nput all the letters into Elinor's hands; and then covering her face\nwith her handkerchief, almost screamed with agony.  Elinor, who knew\nthat such grief, shocking as it was to witness it, must have its\ncourse, watched by her till this excess of suffering had somewhat spent\nitself, and then turning eagerly to Willoughby's letter, read as\nfollows:\n\n                              \"Bond Street, January.\n     \"MY DEAR MADAM,\n\n     \"I have just had the honour of receiving your\n     letter, for which I beg to return my sincere\n     acknowledgments.  I am much concerned to find there\n     was anything in my behaviour last night that did\n     not meet your approbation; and though I am quite at\n     a loss to discover in what point I could be so\n     unfortunate as to offend you, I entreat your\n     forgiveness of what I can assure you to have been\n     perfectly unintentional.  I shall never reflect on\n     my former acquaintance with your family in Devonshire\n     without the most grateful pleasure, and flatter\n     myself it will not be broken by any mistake or\n     misapprehension of my actions.  My esteem for your\n     whole family is very sincere; but if I have been so\n     unfortunate as to give rise to a belief of more than\n     I felt, or meant to express, I shall reproach myself\n     for not having been more guarded in my professions\n     of that esteem.  That I should ever have meant more\n     you will allow to be impossible, when you understand\n     that my affections have been long engaged elsewhere,\n     and it will not be many weeks, I believe, before\n     this engagement is fulfilled.  It is with great\n     regret that I obey your commands in returning the\n     letters with which I have been honoured from you,\n     and the lock of hair, which you so obligingly bestowed\n     on me.\n\n     \"I am, dear Madam,\n               \"Your most obedient\n                    \"humble servant,\n                                        \"JOHN WILLOUGHBY.\"\n\n\nWith what indignation such a letter as this must be read by Miss\nDashwood, may be imagined.  Though aware, before she began it, that it\nmust bring a confession of his inconstancy, and confirm their\nseparation for ever, she was not aware that such language could be\nsuffered to announce it; nor could she have supposed Willoughby capable\nof departing so far from the appearance of every honourable and\ndelicate feeling--so far from the common decorum of a gentleman, as to\nsend a letter so impudently cruel: a letter which, instead of bringing\nwith his desire of a release any professions of regret, acknowledged no\nbreach of faith, denied all peculiar affection whatever--a letter of\nwhich every line was an insult, and which proclaimed its writer to be\ndeep in hardened villainy.\n\nShe paused over it for some time with indignant astonishment; then read\nit again and again; but every perusal only served to increase her\nabhorrence of the man, and so bitter were her feelings against him,\nthat she dared not trust herself to speak, lest she might wound\nMarianne still deeper by treating their disengagement, not as a loss to\nher of any possible good but as an escape from the worst and most\nirremediable of all evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled\nman, as a deliverance the most real, a blessing the most important.\n\nIn her earnest meditations on the contents of the letter, on the\ndepravity of that mind which could dictate it, and probably, on the\nvery different mind of a very different person, who had no other\nconnection whatever with the affair than what her heart gave him with\nevery thing that passed, Elinor forgot the immediate distress of her\nsister, forgot that she had three letters on her lap yet unread, and so\nentirely forgot how long she had been in the room, that when on hearing\na carriage drive up to the door, she went to the window to see who\ncould be coming so unreasonably early, she was all astonishment to\nperceive Mrs. Jennings's chariot, which she knew had not been ordered\ntill one.  Determined not to quit Marianne, though hopeless of\ncontributing, at present, to her ease, she hurried away to excuse\nherself from attending Mrs. Jennings, on account of her sister being\nindisposed.  Mrs. Jennings, with a thoroughly good-humoured concern for\nits cause, admitted the excuse most readily, and Elinor, after seeing\nher safe off, returned to Marianne, whom she found attempting to rise\nfrom the bed, and whom she reached just in time to prevent her from\nfalling on the floor, faint and giddy from a long want of proper rest\nand food; for it was many days since she had any appetite, and many\nnights since she had really slept; and now, when her mind was no longer\nsupported by the fever of suspense, the consequence of all this was\nfelt in an aching head, a weakened stomach, and a general nervous\nfaintness.  A glass of wine, which Elinor procured for her directly,\nmade her more comfortable, and she was at last able to express some\nsense of her kindness, by saying,\n\n\"Poor Elinor! how unhappy I make you!\"\n\n\"I only wish,\" replied her sister, \"there were any thing I COULD do,\nwhich might be of comfort to you.\"\n\nThis, as every thing else would have been, was too much for Marianne,\nwho could only exclaim, in the anguish of her heart, \"Oh! Elinor, I am\nmiserable, indeed,\" before her voice was entirely lost in sobs.\n\nElinor could no longer witness this torrent of unresisted grief in\nsilence.\n\n\"Exert yourself, dear Marianne,\" she cried, \"if you would not kill\nyourself and all who love you.  Think of your mother; think of her\nmisery while YOU suffer: for her sake you must exert yourself.\"\n\n\"I cannot, I cannot,\" cried Marianne; \"leave me, leave me, if I\ndistress you; leave me, hate me, forget me!  but do not torture me so.\nOh! how easy for those, who have no sorrow of their own to talk of\nexertion!  Happy, happy Elinor, YOU cannot have an idea of what I\nsuffer.\"\n\n\"Do you call ME happy, Marianne?  Ah! if you knew!--And can you believe\nme to be so, while I see you so wretched!\"\n\n\"Forgive me, forgive me,\" throwing her arms round her sister's neck; \"I\nknow you feel for me; I know what a heart you have; but yet you\nare--you must be happy; Edward loves you--what, oh what, can do away\nsuch happiness as that?\"\n\n\"Many, many circumstances,\" said Elinor, solemnly.\n\n\"No, no, no,\" cried Marianne wildly, \"he loves you, and only you.  You\nCAN have no grief.\"\n\n\"I can have no pleasure while I see you in this state.\"\n\n\"And you will never see me otherwise.  Mine is a misery which nothing\ncan do away.\"\n\n\"You must not talk so, Marianne.  Have you no comforts? no friends?  Is\nyour loss such as leaves no opening for consolation?  Much as you\nsuffer now, think of what you would have suffered if the discovery of\nhis character had been delayed to a later period--if your engagement\nhad been carried on for months and months, as it might have been,\nbefore he chose to put an end to it.  Every additional day of unhappy\nconfidence, on your side, would have made the blow more dreadful.\"\n\n\"Engagement!\" cried Marianne, \"there has been no engagement.\"\n\n\"No engagement!\"\n\n\"No, he is not so unworthy as you believe him.  He has broken no faith\nwith me.\"\n\n\"But he told you that he loved you.\"\n\n\"Yes--no--never absolutely.  It was every day implied, but never\nprofessedly declared.  Sometimes I thought it had been--but it never\nwas.\"\n\n\"Yet you wrote to him?\"--\n\n\"Yes--could that be wrong after all that had passed?-- But I cannot\ntalk.\"\n\nElinor said no more, and turning again to the three letters which now\nraised a much stronger curiosity than before, directly ran over the\ncontents of all.  The first, which was what her sister had sent him on\ntheir arrival in town, was to this effect.\n\n                         Berkeley Street, January.\n\n     \"How surprised you will be, Willoughby, on\n     receiving this; and I think you will feel something\n     more than surprise, when you know that I am in town.\n     An opportunity of coming hither, though with Mrs.\n     Jennings, was a temptation we could not resist.\n     I wish you may receive this in time to come here\n     to-night, but I will not depend on it.  At any rate\n     I shall expect you to-morrow. For the present, adieu.\n\n                                             \"M.D.\"\n\nHer second note, which had been written on the morning after the dance\nat the Middletons', was in these words:--\n\n     \"I cannot express my disappointment in having\n     missed you the day before yesterday, nor my astonishment\n     at not having received any answer to a note which\n     I sent you above a week ago.  I have been expecting\n     to hear from you, and still more to see you, every\n     hour of the day.  Pray call again as soon as possible,\n     and explain the reason of my having expected this\n     in vain.  You had better come earlier another time,\n     because we are generally out by one.  We were last\n     night at Lady Middleton's, where there was a dance.\n     I have been told that you were asked to be of the\n     party.  But could it be so?  You must be very much\n     altered indeed since we parted, if that could be\n     the case, and you not there.  But I will not suppose\n     this possible, and I hope very soon to receive your\n     personal assurance of its being otherwise.\n\n                                            \"M.D.\"\n\nThe contents of her last note to him were these:--\n\n     \"What am I to imagine, Willoughby, by your\n     behaviour last night?  Again I demand an explanation\n     of it.  I was prepared to meet you with the pleasure\n     which our separation naturally produced, with the\n     familiarity which our intimacy at Barton appeared\n     to me to justify.  I was repulsed indeed! I have\n     passed a wretched night in endeavouring to excuse\n     a conduct which can scarcely be called less than\n     insulting; but though I have not yet been able to\n     form any reasonable apology for your behaviour,\n     I am perfectly ready to hear your justification of\n     it.  You have perhaps been misinformed, or purposely\n     deceived, in something concerning me, which may have\n     lowered me in your opinion.  Tell me what it is,\n     explain the grounds on which you acted, and I shall\n     be satisfied, in being able to satisfy you.  It\n     would grieve me indeed to be obliged to think ill\n     of you; but if I am to do it, if I am to learn that\n     you are not what we have hitherto believed you, that\n     your regard for us all was insincere, that your\n     behaviour to me was intended only to deceive, let\n     it be told as soon as possible.  My feelings are at\n     present in a state of dreadful indecision; I wish\n     to acquit you, but certainty on either side will be\n     ease to what I now suffer.  If your sentiments are\n     no longer what they were, you will return my notes,\n     and the lock of my hair which is in your possession.\n\n                                             \"M.D.\"\n\nThat such letters, so full of affection and confidence, could have been\nso answered, Elinor, for Willoughby's sake, would have been unwilling\nto believe.  But her condemnation of him did not blind her to the\nimpropriety of their having been written at all; and she was silently\ngrieving over the imprudence which had hazarded such unsolicited proofs\nof tenderness, not warranted by anything preceding, and most severely\ncondemned by the event, when Marianne, perceiving that she had finished\nthe letters, observed to her that they contained nothing but what any\none would have written in the same situation.\n\n\"I felt myself,\" she added, \"to be as solemnly engaged to him, as if\nthe strictest legal covenant had bound us to each other.\"\n\n\"I can believe it,\" said Elinor; \"but unfortunately he did not feel the\nsame.\"\n\n\"He DID feel the same, Elinor--for weeks and weeks he felt it.  I know\nhe did.  Whatever may have changed him now, (and nothing but the\nblackest art employed against me can have done it), I was once as dear\nto him as my own soul could wish.  This lock of hair, which now he can\nso readily give up, was begged of me with the most earnest\nsupplication.  Had you seen his look, his manner, had you heard his\nvoice at that moment!  Have you forgot the last evening of our being\ntogether at Barton?  The morning that we parted too!  When he told me\nthat it might be many weeks before we met again--his distress--can I\never forget his distress?\"\n\nFor a moment or two she could say no more; but when this emotion had\npassed away, she added, in a firmer tone,\n\n\"Elinor, I have been cruelly used; but not by Willoughby.\"\n\n\"Dearest Marianne, who but himself?  By whom can he have been\ninstigated?\"\n\n\"By all the world, rather than by his own heart.  I could rather\nbelieve every creature of my acquaintance leagued together to ruin me\nin his opinion, than believe his nature capable of such cruelty.  This\nwoman of whom he writes--whoever she be--or any one, in short, but your\nown dear self, mama, and Edward, may have been so barbarous to bely me.\nBeyond you three, is there a creature in the world whom I would not\nrather suspect of evil than Willoughby, whose heart I know so well?\"\n\nElinor would not contend, and only replied, \"Whoever may have been so\ndetestably your enemy, let them be cheated of their malignant triumph,\nmy dear sister, by seeing how nobly the consciousness of your own\ninnocence and good intentions supports your spirits.  It is a\nreasonable and laudable pride which resists such malevolence.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" cried Marianne, \"misery such as mine has no pride.  I care\nnot who knows that I am wretched.  The triumph of seeing me so may be\nopen to all the world.  Elinor, Elinor, they who suffer little may be\nproud and independent as they like--may resist insult, or return\nmortification--but I cannot.  I must feel--I must be wretched--and they\nare welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can.\"\n\n\"But for my mother's sake and mine--\"\n\n\"I would do more than for my own.  But to appear happy when I am so\nmiserable--Oh! who can require it?\"\n\nAgain they were both silent.  Elinor was employed in walking\nthoughtfully from the fire to the window, from the window to the fire,\nwithout knowing that she received warmth from one, or discerning\nobjects through the other; and Marianne, seated at the foot of the bed,\nwith her head leaning against one of its posts, again took up\nWilloughby's letter, and, after shuddering over every sentence,\nexclaimed--\n\n\"It is too much! Oh, Willoughby, Willoughby, could this be yours!\nCruel, cruel--nothing can acquit you.  Elinor, nothing can.  Whatever\nhe might have heard against me--ought he not to have suspended his\nbelief? ought he not to have told me of it, to have given me the power\nof clearing myself? 'The lock of hair, (repeating it from the letter,)\nwhich you so obligingly bestowed on me'--That is unpardonable.\nWilloughby, where was your heart when you wrote those words?  Oh,\nbarbarously insolent!--Elinor, can he be justified?\"\n\n\"No, Marianne, in no possible way.\"\n\n\"And yet this woman--who knows what her art may have been?--how long it\nmay have been premeditated, and how deeply contrived by her!--Who is\nshe?--Who can she be?--Whom did I ever hear him talk of as young and\nattractive among his female acquaintance?--Oh! no one, no one--he\ntalked to me only of myself.\"\n\nAnother pause ensued; Marianne was greatly agitated, and it ended thus.\n\n\"Elinor, I must go home.  I must go and comfort mama.  Can not we be\ngone to-morrow?\"\n\n\"To-morrow, Marianne!\"\n\n\"Yes, why should I stay here? I came only for Willoughby's sake--and\nnow who cares for me? Who regards me?\"\n\n\"It would be impossible to go to-morrow. We owe Mrs. Jennings much more\nthan civility; and civility of the commonest kind must prevent such a\nhasty removal as that.\"\n\n\"Well then, another day or two, perhaps; but I cannot stay here long, I\ncannot stay to endure the questions and remarks of all these people.\nThe Middletons and Palmers--how am I to bear their pity?  The pity of\nsuch a woman as Lady Middleton!  Oh, what would HE say to that!\"\n\nElinor advised her to lie down again, and for a moment she did so; but\nno attitude could give her ease; and in restless pain of mind and body\nshe moved from one posture to another, till growing more and more\nhysterical, her sister could with difficulty keep her on the bed at\nall, and for some time was fearful of being constrained to call for\nassistance.  Some lavender drops, however, which she was at length\npersuaded to take, were of use; and from that time till Mrs. Jennings\nreturned, she continued on the bed quiet and motionless.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Jennings came immediately to their room on her return, and without\nwaiting to have her request of admittance answered, opened the door and\nwalked in with a look of real concern.\n\n\"How do you do my dear?\"--said she in a voice of great compassion to\nMarianne, who turned away her face without attempting to answer.\n\n\"How is she, Miss Dashwood?--Poor thing! she looks very bad.-- No\nwonder.  Ay, it is but too true.  He is to be married very soon--a\ngood-for-nothing fellow!  I have no patience with him.  Mrs. Taylor\ntold me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular\nfriend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed\nit; and I was almost ready to sink as it was.  Well, said I, all I can\nsay is, that if this be true, he has used a young lady of my\nacquaintance abominably ill, and I wish with all my soul his wife may\nplague his heart out.  And so I shall always say, my dear, you may\ndepend on it.  I have no notion of men's going on in this way; and if\never I meet him again, I will give him such a dressing as he has not\nhad this many a day.  But there is one comfort, my dear Miss Marianne;\nhe is not the only young man in the world worth having; and with your\npretty face you will never want admirers.  Well, poor thing!  I won't\ndisturb her any longer, for she had better have her cry out at once and\nhave done with.  The Parrys and Sandersons luckily are coming tonight\nyou know, and that will amuse her.\"\n\nShe then went away, walking on tiptoe out of the room, as if she\nsupposed her young friend's affliction could be increased by noise.\n\nMarianne, to the surprise of her sister, determined on dining with\nthem.  Elinor even advised her against it.  But \"no, she would go down;\nshe could bear it very well, and the bustle about her would be less.\"\nElinor, pleased to have her governed for a moment by such a motive,\nthough believing it hardly possible that she could sit out the dinner,\nsaid no more; and adjusting her dress for her as well as she could,\nwhile Marianne still remained on the bed, was ready to assist her into\nthe dining room as soon as they were summoned to it.\n\nWhen there, though looking most wretchedly, she ate more and was calmer\nthan her sister had expected.  Had she tried to speak, or had she been\nconscious of half Mrs. Jennings's well-meant but ill-judged attentions\nto her, this calmness could not have been maintained; but not a\nsyllable escaped her lips; and the abstraction of her thoughts\npreserved her in ignorance of every thing that was passing before her.\n\nElinor, who did justice to Mrs. Jennings's kindness, though its\neffusions were often distressing, and sometimes almost ridiculous, made\nher those acknowledgments, and returned her those civilities, which her\nsister could not make or return for herself.  Their good friend saw\nthat Marianne was unhappy, and felt that every thing was due to her\nwhich might make her at all less so.  She treated her therefore, with\nall the indulgent fondness of a parent towards a favourite child on the\nlast day of its holidays.  Marianne was to have the best place by the\nfire, was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy in the house, and to\nbe amused by the relation of all the news of the day.  Had not Elinor,\nin the sad countenance of her sister, seen a check to all mirth, she\ncould have been entertained by Mrs. Jennings's endeavours to cure a\ndisappointment in love, by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a\ngood fire.  As soon, however, as the consciousness of all this was\nforced by continual repetition on Marianne, she could stay no longer.\nWith a hasty exclamation of Misery, and a sign to her sister not to\nfollow her, she directly got up and hurried out of the room.\n\n\"Poor soul!\" cried Mrs. Jennings, as soon as she was gone, \"how it\ngrieves me to see her!  And I declare if she is not gone away without\nfinishing her wine!  And the dried cherries too!  Lord! nothing seems\nto do her any good.  I am sure if I knew of any thing she would like, I\nwould send all over the town for it.  Well, it is the oddest thing to\nme, that a man should use such a pretty girl so ill!  But when there is\nplenty of money on one side, and next to none on the other, Lord bless\nyou! they care no more about such things!--\"\n\n\"The lady then--Miss Grey I think you called her--is very rich?\"\n\n\"Fifty thousand pounds, my dear.  Did you ever see her? a smart,\nstylish girl they say, but not handsome.  I remember her aunt very\nwell, Biddy Henshawe; she married a very wealthy man.  But the family\nare all rich together.  Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts, it\nwon't come before it's wanted; for they say he is all to pieces.  No\nwonder! dashing about with his curricle and hunters!  Well, it don't\nsignify talking; but when a young man, be who he will, comes and makes\nlove to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly\noff from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is\nready to have him.  Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let\nhis house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once? I\nwarrant you, Miss Marianne would have been ready to wait till matters\ncame round.  But that won't do now-a-days; nothing in the way of\npleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age.\"\n\n\"Do you know what kind of a girl Miss Grey is?  Is she said to be\namiable?\"\n\n\"I never heard any harm of her; indeed I hardly ever heard her\nmentioned; except that Mrs. Taylor did say this morning, that one day\nMiss Walker hinted to her, that she believed Mr. and Mrs. Ellison would\nnot be sorry to have Miss Grey married, for she and Mrs. Ellison could\nnever agree.\"--\n\n\"And who are the Ellisons?\"\n\n\"Her guardians, my dear.  But now she is of age and may choose for\nherself; and a pretty choice she has made!--What now,\" after pausing a\nmoment--\"your poor sister is gone to her own room, I suppose, to moan\nby herself.  Is there nothing one can get to comfort her?  Poor dear,\nit seems quite cruel to let her be alone.  Well, by-and-by we shall\nhave a few friends, and that will amuse her a little.  What shall we\nplay at?  She hates whist I know; but is there no round game she cares\nfor?\"\n\n\"Dear ma'am, this kindness is quite unnecessary.  Marianne, I dare say,\nwill not leave her room again this evening.  I shall persuade her if I\ncan to go early to bed, for I am sure she wants rest.\"\n\n\"Aye, I believe that will be best for her.  Let her name her own\nsupper, and go to bed.  Lord! no wonder she has been looking so bad and\nso cast down this last week or two, for this matter I suppose has been\nhanging over her head as long as that.  And so the letter that came\ntoday finished it!  Poor soul!  I am sure if I had had a notion of it,\nI would not have joked her about it for all my money.  But then you\nknow, how should I guess such a thing?  I made sure of its being\nnothing but a common love letter, and you know young people like to be\nlaughed at about them.  Lord!  how concerned Sir John and my daughters\nwill be when they hear it!  If I had my senses about me I might have\ncalled in Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it.  But I\nshall see them tomorrow.\"\n\n\"It would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and\nSir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest\nallusion to what has passed, before my sister.  Their own good-nature\nmust point out to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing\nabout it when she is present; and the less that may ever be said to\nmyself on the subject, the more my feelings will be spared, as you my\ndear madam will easily believe.\"\n\n\"Oh! Lord! yes, that I do indeed.  It must be terrible for you to hear\nit talked of; and as for your sister, I am sure I would not mention a\nword about it to her for the world.  You saw I did not all dinner time.\nNo more would Sir John, nor my daughters, for they are all very\nthoughtful and considerate; especially if I give them a hint, as I\ncertainly will.  For my part, I think the less that is said about such\nthings, the better, the sooner 'tis blown over and forgot.  And what\ndoes talking ever do you know?\"\n\n\"In this affair it can only do harm; more so perhaps than in many cases\nof a similar kind, for it has been attended by circumstances which, for\nthe sake of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to become the\npublic conversation.  I must do THIS justice to Mr. Willoughby--he has\nbroken no positive engagement with my sister.\"\n\n\"Law, my dear!  Don't pretend to defend him.  No positive engagement\nindeed! after taking her all over Allenham House, and fixing on the\nvery rooms they were to live in hereafter!\"\n\nElinor, for her sister's sake, could not press the subject farther, and\nshe hoped it was not required of her for Willoughby's; since, though\nMarianne might lose much, he could gain very little by the enforcement\nof the real truth.  After a short silence on both sides, Mrs. Jennings,\nwith all her natural hilarity, burst forth again.\n\n\"Well, my dear, 'tis a true saying about an ill-wind, for it will be\nall the better for Colonel Brandon.  He will have her at last; aye,\nthat he will.  Mind me, now, if they an't married by Mid-summer.  Lord!\nhow he'll chuckle over this news!  I hope he will come tonight.  It\nwill be all to one a better match for your sister.  Two thousand a year\nwithout debt or drawback--except the little love-child, indeed; aye, I\nhad forgot her; but she may be 'prenticed out at a small cost, and then\nwhat does it signify?  Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you;\nexactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and\nconveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered\nwith the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in\none corner!  Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we were\nthere!  Then, there is a dove-cote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a\nvery pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for;\nand, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile\nfrom the turnpike-road, so 'tis never dull, for if you only go and sit\nup in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the carriages\nthat pass along.  Oh! 'tis a nice place!  A butcher hard by in the\nvillage, and the parsonage-house within a stone's throw.  To my fancy,\na thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced to\nsend three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than\nyour mother.  Well, I shall spirit up the Colonel as soon as I can.\nOne shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down.  If we CAN but\nput Willoughby out of her head!\"\n\n\"Ay, if we can do THAT, Ma'am,\" said Elinor, \"we shall do very well\nwith or without Colonel Brandon.\" And then rising, she went away to\njoin Marianne, whom she found, as she expected, in her own room,\nleaning, in silent misery, over the small remains of a fire, which,\ntill Elinor's entrance, had been her only light.\n\n\"You had better leave me,\" was all the notice that her sister received\nfrom her.\n\n\"I will leave you,\" said Elinor, \"if you will go to bed.\" But this,\nfrom the momentary perverseness of impatient suffering, she at first\nrefused to do.  Her sister's earnest, though gentle persuasion,\nhowever, soon softened her to compliance, and Elinor saw her lay her\naching head on the pillow, and as she hoped, in a way to get some quiet\nrest before she left her.\n\nIn the drawing-room, whither she then repaired, she was soon joined by\nMrs. Jennings, with a wine-glass, full of something, in her hand.\n\n\"My dear,\" said she, entering, \"I have just recollected that I have\nsome of the finest old Constantia wine in the house that ever was\ntasted, so I have brought a glass of it for your sister.  My poor\nhusband! how fond he was of it!  Whenever he had a touch of his old\ncolicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the\nworld.  Do take it to your sister.\"\n\n\"Dear Ma'am,\" replied Elinor, smiling at the difference of the\ncomplaints for which it was recommended, \"how good you are!  But I have\njust left Marianne in bed, and, I hope, almost asleep; and as I think\nnothing will be of so much service to her as rest, if you will give me\nleave, I will drink the wine myself.\"\n\nMrs. Jennings, though regretting that she had not been five minutes\nearlier, was satisfied with the compromise; and Elinor, as she\nswallowed the chief of it, reflected, that though its effects on a\ncolicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing\npowers, on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself\nas on her sister.\n\nColonel Brandon came in while the party were at tea, and by his manner\nof looking round the room for Marianne, Elinor immediately fancied that\nhe neither expected nor wished to see her there, and, in short, that he\nwas already aware of what occasioned her absence.  Mrs. Jennings was\nnot struck by the same thought; for soon after his entrance, she walked\nacross the room to the tea-table where Elinor presided, and whispered--\n\"The Colonel looks as grave as ever you see.  He knows nothing of it;\ndo tell him, my dear.\"\n\nHe shortly afterwards drew a chair close to hers, and, with a look\nwhich perfectly assured her of his good information, inquired after her\nsister.\n\n\"Marianne is not well,\" said she.  \"She has been indisposed all day,\nand we have persuaded her to go to bed.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, then,\" he hesitatingly replied, \"what I heard this morning\nmay be--there may be more truth in it than I could believe possible at\nfirst.\"\n\n\"What did you hear?\"\n\n\"That a gentleman, whom I had reason to think--in short, that a man,\nwhom I KNEW to be engaged--but how shall I tell you?  If you know it\nalready, as surely you must, I may be spared.\"\n\n\"You mean,\" answered Elinor, with forced calmness, \"Mr. Willoughby's\nmarriage with Miss Grey.  Yes, we DO know it all.  This seems to have\nbeen a day of general elucidation, for this very morning first unfolded\nit to us.  Mr. Willoughby is unfathomable!  Where did you hear it?\"\n\n\"In a stationer's shop in Pall Mall, where I had business.  Two ladies\nwere waiting for their carriage, and one of them was giving the other\nan account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting\nconcealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all.  The name\nof Willoughby, John Willoughby, frequently repeated, first caught my\nattention; and what followed was a positive assertion that every thing\nwas now finally settled respecting his marriage with Miss Grey--it was\nno longer to be a secret--it would take place even within a few weeks,\nwith many particulars of preparations and other matters.  One thing,\nespecially, I remember, because it served to identify the man still\nmore:--as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to go to Combe\nMagna, his seat in Somersetshire.  My astonishment!--but it would be\nimpossible to describe what I felt.  The communicative lady I learnt,\non inquiry, for I stayed in the shop till they were gone, was a Mrs.\nEllison, and that, as I have been since informed, is the name of Miss\nGrey's guardian.\"\n\n\"It is.  But have you likewise heard that Miss Grey has fifty thousand\npounds?  In that, if in any thing, we may find an explanation.\"\n\n\"It may be so; but Willoughby is capable--at least I think\"--he stopped\na moment; then added in a voice which seemed to distrust itself, \"And\nyour sister--how did she--\"\n\n\"Her sufferings have been very severe.  I have only to hope that they\nmay be proportionately short.  It has been, it is a most cruel\naffliction.  Till yesterday, I believe, she never doubted his regard;\nand even now, perhaps--but I am almost convinced that he never was\nreally attached to her.  He has been very deceitful! and, in some\npoints, there seems a hardness of heart about him.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Colonel Brandon, \"there is, indeed!  But your sister does\nnot--I think you said so--she does not consider quite as you do?\"\n\n\"You know her disposition, and may believe how eagerly she would still\njustify him if she could.\"\n\nHe made no answer; and soon afterwards, by the removal of the\ntea-things, and the arrangement of the card parties, the subject was\nnecessarily dropped.  Mrs. Jennings, who had watched them with pleasure\nwhile they were talking, and who expected to see the effect of Miss\nDashwood's communication, in such an instantaneous gaiety on Colonel\nBrandon's side, as might have become a man in the bloom of youth, of\nhope and happiness, saw him, with amazement, remain the whole evening\nmore serious and thoughtful than usual.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFrom a night of more sleep than she had expected, Marianne awoke the\nnext morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had\nclosed her eyes.\n\nElinor encouraged her as much as possible to talk of what she felt; and\nbefore breakfast was ready, they had gone through the subject again and\nagain; and with the same steady conviction and affectionate counsel on\nElinor's side, the same impetuous feelings and varying opinions on\nMarianne's, as before.  Sometimes she could believe Willoughby to be as\nunfortunate and as innocent as herself, and at others, lost every\nconsolation in the impossibility of acquitting him.  At one moment she\nwas absolutely indifferent to the observation of all the world, at\nanother she would seclude herself from it for ever, and at a third\ncould resist it with energy.  In one thing, however, she was uniform,\nwhen it came to the point, in avoiding, where it was possible, the\npresence of Mrs. Jennings, and in a determined silence when obliged to\nendure it.  Her heart was hardened against the belief of Mrs.\nJennings's entering into her sorrows with any compassion.\n\n\"No, no, no, it cannot be,\" she cried; \"she cannot feel.  Her kindness\nis not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness.  All that she wants\nis gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it.\"\n\nElinor had not needed this to be assured of the injustice to which her\nsister was often led in her opinion of others, by the irritable\nrefinement of her own mind, and the too great importance placed by her\non the delicacies of a strong sensibility, and the graces of a polished\nmanner.  Like half the rest of the world, if more than half there be\nthat are clever and good, Marianne, with excellent abilities and an\nexcellent disposition, was neither reasonable nor candid.  She expected\nfrom other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she\njudged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on\nherself.  Thus a circumstance occurred, while the sisters were together\nin their own room after breakfast, which sunk the heart of Mrs.\nJennings still lower in her estimation; because, through her own\nweakness, it chanced to prove a source of fresh pain to herself, though\nMrs. Jennings was governed in it by an impulse of the utmost goodwill.\n\nWith a letter in her outstretched hand, and countenance gaily smiling,\nfrom the persuasion of bringing comfort, she entered their room, saying,\n\n\"Now, my dear, I bring you something that I am sure will do you good.\"\n\nMarianne heard enough.  In one moment her imagination placed before her\na letter from Willoughby, full of tenderness and contrition,\nexplanatory of all that had passed, satisfactory, convincing; and\ninstantly followed by Willoughby himself, rushing eagerly into the room\nto inforce, at her feet, by the eloquence of his eyes, the assurances\nof his letter.  The work of one moment was destroyed by the next.  The\nhand writing of her mother, never till then unwelcome, was before her;\nand, in the acuteness of the disappointment which followed such an\necstasy of more than hope, she felt as if, till that instant, she had\nnever suffered.\n\nThe cruelty of Mrs. Jennings no language, within her reach in her\nmoments of happiest eloquence, could have expressed; and now she could\nreproach her only by the tears which streamed from her eyes with\npassionate violence--a reproach, however, so entirely lost on its\nobject, that after many expressions of pity, she withdrew, still\nreferring her to the letter of comfort.  But the letter, when she was\ncalm enough to read it, brought little comfort.  Willoughby filled\nevery page.  Her mother, still confident of their engagement, and\nrelying as warmly as ever on his constancy, had only been roused by\nElinor's application, to intreat from Marianne greater openness towards\nthem both; and this, with such tenderness towards her, such affection\nfor Willoughby, and such a conviction of their future happiness in each\nother, that she wept with agony through the whole of it.\n\nAll her impatience to be at home again now returned; her mother was\ndearer to her than ever; dearer through the very excess of her mistaken\nconfidence in Willoughby, and she was wildly urgent to be gone.\nElinor, unable herself to determine whether it were better for Marianne\nto be in London or at Barton, offered no counsel of her own except of\npatience till their mother's wishes could be known; and at length she\nobtained her sister's consent to wait for that knowledge.\n\nMrs. Jennings left them earlier than usual; for she could not be easy\ntill the Middletons and Palmers were able to grieve as much as herself;\nand positively refusing Elinor's offered attendance, went out alone for\nthe rest of the morning.  Elinor, with a very heavy heart, aware of the\npain she was going to communicate, and perceiving, by Marianne's\nletter, how ill she had succeeded in laying any foundation for it, then\nsat down to write her mother an account of what had passed, and entreat\nher directions for the future; while Marianne, who came into the\ndrawing-room on Mrs. Jennings's going away, remained fixed at the table\nwhere Elinor wrote, watching the advancement of her pen, grieving over\nher for the hardship of such a task, and grieving still more fondly\nover its effect on her mother.\n\nIn this manner they had continued about a quarter of an hour, when\nMarianne, whose nerves could not then bear any sudden noise, was\nstartled by a rap at the door.\n\n\"Who can this be?\" cried Elinor.  \"So early too! I thought we HAD been\nsafe.\"\n\nMarianne moved to the window--\n\n\"It is Colonel Brandon!\" said she, with vexation.  \"We are never safe\nfrom HIM.\"\n\n\"He will not come in, as Mrs. Jennings is from home.\"\n\n\"I will not trust to THAT,\" retreating to her own room.  \"A man who has\nnothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on\nthat of others.\"\n\nThe event proved her conjecture right, though it was founded on\ninjustice and error; for Colonel Brandon DID come in; and Elinor, who\nwas convinced that solicitude for Marianne brought him thither, and who\nsaw THAT solicitude in his disturbed and melancholy look, and in his\nanxious though brief inquiry after her, could not forgive her sister\nfor esteeming him so lightly.\n\n\"I met Mrs. Jennings in Bond Street,\" said he, after the first\nsalutation, \"and she encouraged me to come on; and I was the more\neasily encouraged, because I thought it probable that I might find you\nalone, which I was very desirous of doing.  My object--my wish--my sole\nwish in desiring it--I hope, I believe it is--is to be a means of\ngiving comfort;--no, I must not say comfort--not present comfort--but\nconviction, lasting conviction to your sister's mind.  My regard for\nher, for yourself, for your mother--will you allow me to prove it, by\nrelating some circumstances which nothing but a VERY sincere\nregard--nothing but an earnest desire of being useful--I think I am\njustified--though where so many hours have been spent in convincing\nmyself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be\nwrong?\" He stopped.\n\n\"I understand you,\" said Elinor.  \"You have something to tell me of Mr.\nWilloughby, that will open his character farther.  Your telling it will\nbe the greatest act of friendship that can be shewn Marianne.  MY\ngratitude will be insured immediately by any information tending to\nthat end, and HERS must be gained by it in time.  Pray, pray let me\nhear it.\"\n\n\"You shall; and, to be brief, when I quitted Barton last October,--but\nthis will give you no idea--I must go farther back.  You will find me a\nvery awkward narrator, Miss Dashwood; I hardly know where to begin.  A\nshort account of myself, I believe, will be necessary, and it SHALL be\na short one.  On such a subject,\" sighing heavily, \"can I have little\ntemptation to be diffuse.\"\n\nHe stopt a moment for recollection, and then, with another sigh, went\non.\n\n\"You have probably entirely forgotten a conversation--(it is not to be\nsupposed that it could make any impression on you)--a conversation\nbetween us one evening at Barton Park--it was the evening of a\ndance--in which I alluded to a lady I had once known, as resembling, in\nsome measure, your sister Marianne.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" answered Elinor, \"I have NOT forgotten it.\" He looked pleased\nby this remembrance, and added,\n\n\"If I am not deceived by the uncertainty, the partiality of tender\nrecollection, there is a very strong resemblance between them, as well\nin mind as person.  The same warmth of heart, the same eagerness of\nfancy and spirits.  This lady was one of my nearest relations, an\norphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father.  Our\nages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were\nplayfellows and friends.  I cannot remember the time when I did not\nlove Eliza; and my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as\nperhaps, judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you\nmight think me incapable of having ever felt.  Hers, for me, was, I\nbelieve, fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby and\nit was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate.  At\nseventeen she was lost to me for ever.  She was married--married\nagainst her inclination to my brother.  Her fortune was large, and our\nfamily estate much encumbered.  And this, I fear, is all that can be\nsaid for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.\nMy brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her.  I had hoped\nthat her regard for me would support her under any difficulty, and for\nsome time it did; but at last the misery of her situation, for she\nexperienced great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though\nshe had promised me that nothing--but how blindly I relate!  I have\nnever told you how this was brought on.  We were within a few hours of\neloping together for Scotland.  The treachery, or the folly, of my\ncousin's maid betrayed us.  I was banished to the house of a relation\nfar distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement,\ntill my father's point was gained.  I had depended on her fortitude too\nfar, and the blow was a severe one--but had her marriage been happy, so\nyoung as I then was, a few months must have reconciled me to it, or at\nleast I should not have now to lament it.  This however was not the\ncase.  My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what\nthey ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly.\nThe consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so\ninexperienced as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural.  She resigned\nherself at first to all the misery of her situation; and happy had it\nbeen if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the\nremembrance of me occasioned.  But can we wonder that, with such a\nhusband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or\nrestrain her (for my father lived only a few months after their\nmarriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she should\nfall?  Had I remained in England, perhaps--but I meant to promote the\nhappiness of both by removing from her for years, and for that purpose\nhad procured my exchange.  The shock which her marriage had given me,\"\nhe continued, in a voice of great agitation, \"was of trifling\nweight--was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two years\nafterwards, of her divorce.  It was THAT which threw this gloom,--even\nnow the recollection of what I suffered--\"\n\nHe could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few minutes about\nthe room.  Elinor, affected by his relation, and still more by his\ndistress, could not speak.  He saw her concern, and coming to her, took\nher hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect.  A few\nminutes more of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure.\n\n\"It was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned\nto England.  My first care, when I DID arrive, was of course to seek\nfor her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy.  I could\nnot trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to\nfear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of\nsin.  Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor\nsufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my\nbrother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months\nbefore to another person.  He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it,\nthat her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to\ndispose of it for some immediate relief.  At last, however, and after I\nhad been six months in England, I DID find her.  Regard for a former\nservant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to\nvisit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt; and\nthere, in the same house, under a similar confinement, was my unfortunate\nsister.  So altered--so faded--worn down by acute suffering of every\nkind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before\nme, to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom\nI had once doted.  What I endured in so beholding her--but I have no\nright to wound your feelings by attempting to describe it--I have\npained you too much already.  That she was, to all appearance, in the\nlast stage of a consumption, was--yes, in such a situation it was my\ngreatest comfort.  Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time\nfor a better preparation for death; and that was given.  I saw her\nplaced in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited\nher every day during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her\nlast moments.\"\n\nAgain he stopped to recover himself; and Elinor spoke her feelings in\nan exclamation of tender concern, at the fate of his unfortunate friend.\n\n\"Your sister, I hope, cannot be offended,\" said he, \"by the resemblance\nI have fancied between her and my poor disgraced relation.  Their\nfates, their fortunes, cannot be the same; and had the natural sweet\ndisposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind, or a happier\nmarriage, she might have been all that you will live to see the other\nbe.  But to what does all this lead?  I seem to have been distressing\nyou for nothing.  Ah! Miss Dashwood--a subject such as this--untouched\nfor fourteen years--it is dangerous to handle it at all!  I WILL be\nmore collected--more concise.  She left to my care her only child, a\nlittle girl, the offspring of her first guilty connection, who was then\nabout three years old.  She loved the child, and had always kept it\nwith her.  It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I\nhave discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her\neducation myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I\nhad no family, no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at\nschool.  I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my\nbrother, (which happened about five years ago, and which left to me the\npossession of the family property,) she visited me at Delaford.  I\ncalled her a distant relation; but I am well aware that I have in\ngeneral been suspected of a much nearer connection with her.  It is now\nthree years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I\nremoved her from school, to place her under the care of a very\nrespectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four\nor five other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I\nhad every reason to be pleased with her situation.  But last February,\nalmost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared.  I had allowed\nher, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire,\nto go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her\nfather there for his health.  I knew him to be a very good sort of man,\nand I thought well of his daughter--better than she deserved, for, with\na most obstinate and ill-judged secrecy, she would tell nothing, would\ngive no clue, though she certainly knew all.  He, her father, a\nwell-meaning, but not a quick-sighted man, could really, I believe,\ngive no information; for he had been generally confined to the house,\nwhile the girls were ranging over the town and making what acquaintance\nthey chose; and he tried to convince me, as thoroughly as he was\nconvinced himself, of his daughter's being entirely unconcerned in the\nbusiness.  In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone; all\nthe rest, for eight long months, was left to conjecture.  What I\nthought, what I feared, may be imagined; and what I suffered too.\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" cried Elinor, \"could it be--could Willoughby!\"--\n\n\"The first news that reached me of her,\" he continued, \"came in a\nletter from herself, last October.  It was forwarded to me from\nDelaford, and I received it on the very morning of our intended party\nto Whitwell; and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly,\nwhich I am sure must at the time have appeared strange to every body,\nand which I believe gave offence to some.  Little did Mr. Willoughby\nimagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility in\nbreaking up the party, that I was called away to the relief of one whom\nhe had made poor and miserable; but HAD he known it, what would it have\navailed?  Would he have been less gay or less happy in the smiles of\nyour sister?  No, he had already done that, which no man who CAN feel\nfor another would do.  He had left the girl whose youth and innocence\nhe had seduced, in a situation of the utmost distress, with no\ncreditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant of his address!  He had\nleft her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor\nrelieved her.\"\n\n\"This is beyond every thing!\" exclaimed Elinor.\n\n\"His character is now before you; expensive, dissipated, and worse than\nboth.  Knowing all this, as I have now known it many weeks, guess what\nI must have felt on seeing your sister as fond of him as ever, and on\nbeing assured that she was to marry him: guess what I must have felt\nfor all your sakes.  When I came to you last week and found you alone,\nI came determined to know the truth; though irresolute what to do when\nit WAS known.  My behaviour must have seemed strange to you then; but\nnow you will comprehend it.  To suffer you all to be so deceived; to\nsee your sister--but what could I do?  I had no hope of interfering\nwith success; and sometimes I thought your sister's influence might yet\nreclaim him.  But now, after such dishonorable usage, who can tell what\nwere his designs on her.  Whatever they may have been, however, she may\nnow, and hereafter doubtless WILL turn with gratitude towards her own\ncondition, when she compares it with that of my poor Eliza, when she\nconsiders the wretched and hopeless situation of this poor girl, and\npictures her to herself, with an affection for him so strong, still as\nstrong as her own, and with a mind tormented by self-reproach, which\nmust attend her through life.  Surely this comparison must have its use\nwith her.  She will feel her own sufferings to be nothing.  They\nproceed from no misconduct, and can bring no disgrace.  On the\ncontrary, every friend must be made still more her friend by them.\nConcern for her unhappiness, and respect for her fortitude under it,\nmust strengthen every attachment.  Use your own discretion, however, in\ncommunicating to her what I have told you.  You must know best what\nwill be its effect; but had I not seriously, and from my heart believed\nit might be of service, might lessen her regrets, I would not have\nsuffered myself to trouble you with this account of my family\nafflictions, with a recital which may seem to have been intended to\nraise myself at the expense of others.\"\n\nElinor's thanks followed this speech with grateful earnestness;\nattended too with the assurance of her expecting material advantage to\nMarianne, from the communication of what had passed.\n\n\"I have been more pained,\" said she, \"by her endeavors to acquit him\nthan by all the rest; for it irritates her mind more than the most\nperfect conviction of his unworthiness can do.  Now, though at first\nshe will suffer much, I am sure she will soon become easier.  Have\nyou,\" she continued, after a short silence, \"ever seen Mr. Willoughby\nsince you left him at Barton?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he replied gravely, \"once I have.  One meeting was unavoidable.\"\n\nElinor, startled by his manner, looked at him anxiously, saying,\n\n\"What? have you met him to--\"\n\n\"I could meet him no other way.  Eliza had confessed to me, though most\nreluctantly, the name of her lover; and when he returned to town, which\nwas within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he to\ndefend, I to punish his conduct.  We returned unwounded, and the\nmeeting, therefore, never got abroad.\"\n\nElinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this; but to a man and a\nsoldier she presumed not to censure it.\n\n\"Such,\" said Colonel Brandon, after a pause, \"has been the unhappy\nresemblance between the fate of mother and daughter! and so imperfectly\nhave I discharged my trust!\"\n\n\"Is she still in town?\"\n\n\"No; as soon as she recovered from her lying-in, for I found her near\nher delivery, I removed her and her child into the country, and there\nshe remains.\"\n\nRecollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably dividing Elinor\nfrom her sister, he put an end to his visit, receiving from her again\nthe same grateful acknowledgments, and leaving her full of compassion\nand esteem for him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhen the particulars of this conversation were repeated by Miss\nDashwood to her sister, as they very soon were, the effect on her was\nnot entirely such as the former had hoped to see.  Not that Marianne\nappeared to distrust the truth of any part of it, for she listened to\nit all with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither\nobjection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby, and\nseemed to shew by her tears that she felt it to be impossible.  But\nthough this behaviour assured Elinor that the conviction of this guilt\nWAS carried home to her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the\neffect of it, in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he called,\nin her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, with a kind of\ncompassionate respect, and though she saw her spirits less violently\nirritated than before, she did not see her less wretched.  Her mind did\nbecome settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection.  She felt the\nloss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the\nloss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss Williams, the\nmisery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his designs might ONCE\nhave been on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits, that\nshe could not bring herself to speak of what she felt even to Elinor;\nand, brooding over her sorrows in silence, gave more pain to her sister\nthan could have been communicated by the most open and most frequent\nconfession of them.\n\nTo give the feelings or the language of Mrs. Dashwood on receiving and\nanswering Elinor's letter would be only to give a repetition of what\nher daughters had already felt and said; of a disappointment hardly\nless painful than Marianne's, and an indignation even greater than\nElinor's.  Long letters from her, quickly succeeding each other,\narrived to tell all that she suffered and thought; to express her\nanxious solicitude for Marianne, and entreat she would bear up with\nfortitude under this misfortune.  Bad indeed must the nature of\nMarianne's affliction be, when her mother could talk of fortitude!\nmortifying and humiliating must be the origin of those regrets, which\nSHE could wish her not to indulge!\n\nAgainst the interest of her own individual comfort, Mrs. Dashwood had\ndetermined that it would be better for Marianne to be any where, at\nthat time, than at Barton, where every thing within her view would be\nbringing back the past in the strongest and most afflicting manner, by\nconstantly placing Willoughby before her, such as she had always seen\nhim there.  She recommended it to her daughters, therefore, by all\nmeans not to shorten their visit to Mrs. Jennings; the length of which,\nthough never exactly fixed, had been expected by all to comprise at\nleast five or six weeks.  A variety of occupations, of objects, and of\ncompany, which could not be procured at Barton, would be inevitable\nthere, and might yet, she hoped, cheat Marianne, at times, into some\ninterest beyond herself, and even into some amusement, much as the\nideas of both might now be spurned by her.\n\nFrom all danger of seeing Willoughby again, her mother considered her\nto be at least equally safe in town as in the country, since his\nacquaintance must now be dropped by all who called themselves her\nfriends.  Design could never bring them in each other's way: negligence\ncould never leave them exposed to a surprise; and chance had less in\nits favour in the crowd of London than even in the retirement of\nBarton, where it might force him before her while paying that visit at\nAllenham on his marriage, which Mrs. Dashwood, from foreseeing at first\nas a probable event, had brought herself to expect as a certain one.\n\nShe had yet another reason for wishing her children to remain where\nthey were; a letter from her son-in-law had told her that he and his\nwife were to be in town before the middle of February, and she judged\nit right that they should sometimes see their brother.\n\nMarianne had promised to be guided by her mother's opinion, and she\nsubmitted to it therefore without opposition, though it proved\nperfectly different from what she wished and expected, though she felt\nit to be entirely wrong, formed on mistaken grounds, and that by\nrequiring her longer continuance in London it deprived her of the only\npossible alleviation of her wretchedness, the personal sympathy of her\nmother, and doomed her to such society and such scenes as must prevent\nher ever knowing a moment's rest.\n\nBut it was a matter of great consolation to her, that what brought evil\nto herself would bring good to her sister; and Elinor, on the other\nhand, suspecting that it would not be in her power to avoid Edward\nentirely, comforted herself by thinking, that though their longer stay\nwould therefore militate against her own happiness, it would be better\nfor Marianne than an immediate return into Devonshire.\n\nHer carefulness in guarding her sister from ever hearing Willoughby's\nname mentioned, was not thrown away.  Marianne, though without knowing\nit herself, reaped all its advantage; for neither Mrs. Jennings, nor\nSir John, nor even Mrs. Palmer herself, ever spoke of him before her.\nElinor wished that the same forbearance could have extended towards\nherself, but that was impossible, and she was obliged to listen day\nafter day to the indignation of them all.\n\nSir John, could not have thought it possible.  \"A man of whom he had\nalways had such reason to think well!  Such a good-natured fellow!  He\ndid not believe there was a bolder rider in England!  It was an\nunaccountable business.  He wished him at the devil with all his heart.\nHe would not speak another word to him, meet him where he might, for\nall the world!  No, not if it were to be by the side of Barton covert,\nand they were kept watching for two hours together.  Such a scoundrel\nof a fellow! such a deceitful dog!  It was only the last time they met\nthat he had offered him one of Folly's puppies! and this was the end of\nit!\"\n\nMrs. Palmer, in her way, was equally angry.  \"She was determined to\ndrop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she\nhad never been acquainted with him at all.  She wished with all her\nheart Combe Magna was not so near Cleveland; but it did not signify,\nfor it was a great deal too far off to visit; she hated him so much\nthat she was resolved never to mention his name again, and she should\ntell everybody she saw, how good-for-nothing he was.\"\n\nThe rest of Mrs. Palmer's sympathy was shewn in procuring all the\nparticulars in her power of the approaching marriage, and communicating\nthem to Elinor.  She could soon tell at what coachmaker's the new\ncarriage was building, by what painter Mr. Willoughby's portrait was\ndrawn, and at what warehouse Miss Grey's clothes might be seen.\n\nThe calm and polite unconcern of Lady Middleton on the occasion was a\nhappy relief to Elinor's spirits, oppressed as they often were by the\nclamorous kindness of the others.  It was a great comfort to her to be\nsure of exciting no interest in ONE person at least among their circle\nof friends: a great comfort to know that there was ONE who would meet\nher without feeling any curiosity after particulars, or any anxiety for\nher sister's health.\n\nEvery qualification is raised at times, by the circumstances of the\nmoment, to more than its real value; and she was sometimes worried down\nby officious condolence to rate good-breeding as more indispensable to\ncomfort than good-nature.\n\nLady Middleton expressed her sense of the affair about once every day,\nor twice, if the subject occurred very often, by saying, \"It is very\nshocking, indeed!\" and by the means of this continual though gentle\nvent, was able not only to see the Miss Dashwoods from the first\nwithout the smallest emotion, but very soon to see them without\nrecollecting a word of the matter; and having thus supported the\ndignity of her own sex, and spoken her decided censure of what was\nwrong in the other, she thought herself at liberty to attend to the\ninterest of her own assemblies, and therefore determined (though rather\nagainst the opinion of Sir John) that as Mrs. Willoughby would at once\nbe a woman of elegance and fortune, to leave her card with her as soon\nas she married.\n\nColonel Brandon's delicate, unobtrusive enquiries were never unwelcome\nto Miss Dashwood.  He had abundantly earned the privilege of intimate\ndiscussion of her sister's disappointment, by the friendly zeal with\nwhich he had endeavoured to soften it, and they always conversed with\nconfidence.  His chief reward for the painful exertion of disclosing\npast sorrows and present humiliations, was given in the pitying eye\nwith which Marianne sometimes observed him, and the gentleness of her\nvoice whenever (though it did not often happen) she was obliged, or\ncould oblige herself to speak to him.  THESE assured him that his\nexertion had produced an increase of good-will towards himself, and\nTHESE gave Elinor hopes of its being farther augmented hereafter; but\nMrs. Jennings, who knew nothing of all this, who knew only that the\nColonel continued as grave as ever, and that she could neither prevail\non him to make the offer himself, nor commission her to make it for\nhim, began, at the end of two days, to think that, instead of\nMidsummer, they would not be married till Michaelmas, and by the end of\na week that it would not be a match at all.  The good understanding\nbetween the Colonel and Miss Dashwood seemed rather to declare that the\nhonours of the mulberry-tree, the canal, and the yew arbour, would all\nbe made over to HER; and Mrs. Jennings had, for some time ceased to\nthink at all of Mrs. Ferrars.\n\nEarly in February, within a fortnight from the receipt of Willoughby's\nletter, Elinor had the painful office of informing her sister that he\nwas married.  She had taken care to have the intelligence conveyed to\nherself, as soon as it was known that the ceremony was over, as she was\ndesirous that Marianne should not receive the first notice of it from\nthe public papers, which she saw her eagerly examining every morning.\n\nShe received the news with resolute composure; made no observation on\nit, and at first shed no tears; but after a short time they would burst\nout, and for the rest of the day, she was in a state hardly less\npitiable than when she first learnt to expect the event.\n\nThe Willoughbys left town as soon as they were married; and Elinor now\nhoped, as there could be no danger of her seeing either of them, to\nprevail on her sister, who had never yet left the house since the blow\nfirst fell, to go out again by degrees as she had done before.\n\nAbout this time the two Miss Steeles, lately arrived at their cousin's\nhouse in Bartlett's Buildings, Holburn, presented themselves again\nbefore their more grand relations in Conduit and Berkeley Streets; and\nwere welcomed by them all with great cordiality.\n\nElinor only was sorry to see them.  Their presence always gave her\npain, and she hardly knew how to make a very gracious return to the\noverpowering delight of Lucy in finding her STILL in town.\n\n\"I should have been quite disappointed if I had not found you here\nSTILL,\" said she repeatedly, with a strong emphasis on the word.  \"But\nI always thought I SHOULD.  I was almost sure you would not leave\nLondon yet awhile; though you TOLD me, you know, at Barton, that you\nshould not stay above a MONTH.  But I thought, at the time, that you\nwould most likely change your mind when it came to the point.  It would\nhave been such a great pity to have went away before your brother and\nsister came.  And now to be sure you will be in no hurry to be gone.  I\nam amazingly glad you did not keep to YOUR WORD.\"\n\nElinor perfectly understood her, and was forced to use all her\nself-command to make it appear that she did NOT.\n\n\"Well, my dear,\" said Mrs. Jennings, \"and how did you travel?\"\n\n\"Not in the stage, I assure you,\" replied Miss Steele, with quick\nexultation; \"we came post all the way, and had a very smart beau to\nattend us.  Dr. Davies was coming to town, and so we thought we'd join\nhim in a post-chaise; and he behaved very genteelly, and paid ten or\ntwelve shillings more than we did.\"\n\n\"Oh, oh!\" cried Mrs. Jennings; \"very pretty, indeed! and the Doctor is\na single man, I warrant you.\"\n\n\"There now,\" said Miss Steele, affectedly simpering, \"everybody laughs\nat me so about the Doctor, and I cannot think why.  My cousins say they\nare sure I have made a conquest; but for my part I declare I never\nthink about him from one hour's end to another.  'Lord! here comes your\nbeau, Nancy,' my cousin said t'other day, when she saw him crossing the\nstreet to the house.  My beau, indeed! said I--I cannot think who you\nmean.  The Doctor is no beau of mine.\"\n\n\"Aye, aye, that is very pretty talking--but it won't do--the Doctor is\nthe man, I see.\"\n\n\"No, indeed!\" replied her cousin, with affected earnestness, \"and I beg\nyou will contradict it, if you ever hear it talked of.\"\n\nMrs. Jennings directly gave her the gratifying assurance that she\ncertainly would NOT, and Miss Steele was made completely happy.\n\n\"I suppose you will go and stay with your brother and sister, Miss\nDashwood, when they come to town,\" said Lucy, returning, after a\ncessation of hostile hints, to the charge.\n\n\"No, I do not think we shall.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I dare say you will.\"\n\nElinor would not humour her by farther opposition.\n\n\"What a charming thing it is that Mrs. Dashwood can spare you both for\nso long a time together!\"\n\n\"Long a time, indeed!\" interposed Mrs. Jennings.  \"Why, their visit is\nbut just begun!\"\n\nLucy was silenced.\n\n\"I am sorry we cannot see your sister, Miss Dashwood,\" said Miss\nSteele.  \"I am sorry she is not well--\" for Marianne had left the room\non their arrival.\n\n\"You are very good.  My sister will be equally sorry to miss the\npleasure of seeing you; but she has been very much plagued lately with\nnervous head-aches, which make her unfit for company or conversation.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear, that is a great pity! but such old friends as Lucy and\nme!--I think she might see US; and I am sure we would not speak a word.\"\n\nElinor, with great civility, declined the proposal.  Her sister was\nperhaps laid down upon the bed, or in her dressing gown, and therefore\nnot able to come to them.\n\n\"Oh, if that's all,\" cried Miss Steele, \"we can just as well go and see\nHER.\"\n\nElinor began to find this impertinence too much for her temper; but she\nwas saved the trouble of checking it, by Lucy's sharp reprimand, which\nnow, as on many occasions, though it did not give much sweetness to the\nmanners of one sister, was of advantage in governing those of the other.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAfter some opposition, Marianne yielded to her sister's entreaties, and\nconsented to go out with her and Mrs. Jennings one morning for half an\nhour. She expressly conditioned, however, for paying no visits, and\nwould do no more than accompany them to Gray's in Sackville Street,\nwhere Elinor was carrying on a negotiation for the exchange of a few\nold-fashioned jewels of her mother.\n\nWhen they stopped at the door, Mrs. Jennings recollected that there was\na lady at the other end of the street on whom she ought to call; and as\nshe had no business at Gray's, it was resolved, that while her young\nfriends transacted their's, she should pay her visit and return for\nthem.\n\nOn ascending the stairs, the Miss Dashwoods found so many people before\nthem in the room, that there was not a person at liberty to tend to\ntheir orders; and they were obliged to wait.  All that could be done\nwas, to sit down at that end of the counter which seemed to promise the\nquickest succession; one gentleman only was standing there, and it is\nprobable that Elinor was not without hope of exciting his politeness to\na quicker despatch.  But the correctness of his eye, and the delicacy\nof his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness.  He was giving orders\nfor a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size, shape, and\nornaments were determined, all of which, after examining and debating\nfor a quarter of an hour over every toothpick-case in the shop, were\nfinally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no leisure to\nbestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was comprised\nin three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which served to\nimprint on Elinor the remembrance of a person and face, of strong,\nnatural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first style of\nfashion.\n\nMarianne was spared from the troublesome feelings of contempt and\nresentment, on this impertinent examination of their features, and on\nthe puppyism of his manner in deciding on all the different horrors of\nthe different toothpick-cases presented to his inspection, by remaining\nunconscious of it all; for she was as well able to collect her thoughts\nwithin herself, and be as ignorant of what was passing around her, in\nMr. Gray's shop, as in her own bedroom.\n\nAt last the affair was decided.  The ivory, the gold, and the pearls,\nall received their appointment, and the gentleman having named the last\nday on which his existence could be continued without the possession of\nthe toothpick-case, drew on his gloves with leisurely care, and\nbestowing another glance on the Miss Dashwoods, but such a one as\nseemed rather to demand than express admiration, walked off with a\nhappy air of real conceit and affected indifference.\n\nElinor lost no time in bringing her business forward, was on the point\nof concluding it, when another gentleman presented himself at her side.\nShe turned her eyes towards his face, and found him with some surprise\nto be her brother.\n\nTheir affection and pleasure in meeting was just enough to make a very\ncreditable appearance in Mr. Gray's shop.  John Dashwood was really far\nfrom being sorry to see his sisters again; it rather gave them\nsatisfaction; and his inquiries after their mother were respectful and\nattentive.\n\nElinor found that he and Fanny had been in town two days.\n\n\"I wished very much to call upon you yesterday,\" said he, \"but it was\nimpossible, for we were obliged to take Harry to see the wild beasts at\nExeter Exchange; and we spent the rest of the day with Mrs. Ferrars.\nHarry was vastly pleased.  THIS morning I had fully intended to call on\nyou, if I could possibly find a spare half hour, but one has always so\nmuch to do on first coming to town.  I am come here to bespeak Fanny a\nseal.  But tomorrow I think I shall certainly be able to call in\nBerkeley Street, and be introduced to your friend Mrs. Jennings.  I\nunderstand she is a woman of very good fortune.  And the Middletons\ntoo, you must introduce me to THEM.  As my mother-in-law's relations, I\nshall be happy to show them every respect.  They are excellent\nneighbours to you in the country, I understand.\"\n\n\"Excellent indeed.  Their attention to our comfort, their friendliness\nin every particular, is more than I can express.\"\n\n\"I am extremely glad to hear it, upon my word; extremely glad indeed.\nBut so it ought to be; they are people of large fortune, they are\nrelated to you, and every civility and accommodation that can serve to\nmake your situation pleasant might be reasonably expected.  And so you\nare most comfortably settled in your little cottage and want for\nnothing!  Edward brought us a most charming account of the place: the\nmost complete thing of its kind, he said, that ever was, and you all\nseemed to enjoy it beyond any thing.  It was a great satisfaction to us\nto hear it, I assure you.\"\n\nElinor did feel a little ashamed of her brother; and was not sorry to\nbe spared the necessity of answering him, by the arrival of Mrs.\nJennings's servant, who came to tell her that his mistress waited for\nthem at the door.\n\nMr. Dashwood attended them down stairs, was introduced to Mrs. Jennings\nat the door of her carriage, and repeating his hope of being able to\ncall on them the next day, took leave.\n\nHis visit was duly paid.  He came with a pretence at an apology from\ntheir sister-in-law, for not coming too; \"but she was so much engaged\nwith her mother, that really she had no leisure for going any where.\"\nMrs. Jennings, however, assured him directly, that she should not stand\nupon ceremony, for they were all cousins, or something like it, and she\nshould certainly wait on Mrs. John Dashwood very soon, and bring her\nsisters to see her.  His manners to THEM, though calm, were perfectly\nkind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel\nBrandon's coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity\nwhich seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be\nequally civil to HIM.\n\nAfter staying with them half an hour, he asked Elinor to walk with him\nto Conduit Street, and introduce him to Sir John and Lady Middleton.\nThe weather was remarkably fine, and she readily consented.  As soon as\nthey were out of the house, his enquiries began.\n\n\"Who is Colonel Brandon?  Is he a man of fortune?\"\n\n\"Yes; he has very good property in Dorsetshire.\"\n\n\"I am glad of it.  He seems a most gentlemanlike man; and I think,\nElinor, I may congratulate you on the prospect of a very respectable\nestablishment in life.\"\n\n\"Me, brother! what do you mean?\"\n\n\"He likes you.  I observed him narrowly, and am convinced of it.  What\nis the amount of his fortune?\"\n\n\"I believe about two thousand a year.\"\n\n\"Two thousand a-year;\" and then working himself up to a pitch of\nenthusiastic generosity, he added, \"Elinor, I wish with all my heart it\nwere TWICE as much, for your sake.\"\n\n\"Indeed I believe you,\" replied Elinor; \"but I am very sure that\nColonel Brandon has not the smallest wish of marrying ME.\"\n\n\"You are mistaken, Elinor; you are very much mistaken.  A very little\ntrouble on your side secures him.  Perhaps just at present he may be\nundecided; the smallness of your fortune may make him hang back; his\nfriends may all advise him against it.  But some of those little\nattentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily give will fix\nhim, in spite of himself.  And there can be no reason why you should\nnot try for him.  It is not to be supposed that any prior attachment on\nyour side--in short, you know as to an attachment of that kind, it is\nquite out of the question, the objections are insurmountable--you have\ntoo much sense not to see all that.  Colonel Brandon must be the man;\nand no civility shall be wanting on my part to make him pleased with\nyou and your family.  It is a match that must give universal\nsatisfaction.  In short, it is a kind of thing that\"--lowering his\nvoice to an important whisper--\"will be exceedingly welcome to ALL\nPARTIES.\" Recollecting himself, however, he added, \"That is, I mean to\nsay--your friends are all truly anxious to see you well settled; Fanny\nparticularly, for she has your interest very much at heart, I assure\nyou.  And her mother too, Mrs. Ferrars, a very good-natured woman, I am\nsure it would give her great pleasure; she said as much the other day.\"\n\nElinor would not vouchsafe any answer.\n\n\"It would be something remarkable, now,\" he continued, \"something\ndroll, if Fanny should have a brother and I a sister settling at the\nsame time.  And yet it is not very unlikely.\"\n\n\"Is Mr. Edward Ferrars,\" said Elinor, with resolution, \"going to be\nmarried?\"\n\n\"It is not actually settled, but there is such a thing in agitation.\nHe has a most excellent mother.  Mrs. Ferrars, with the utmost\nliberality, will come forward, and settle on him a thousand a year, if\nthe match takes place.  The lady is the Hon. Miss Morton, only daughter\nof the late Lord Morton, with thirty thousand pounds.  A very desirable\nconnection on both sides, and I have not a doubt of its taking place in\ntime.  A thousand a-year is a great deal for a mother to give away, to\nmake over for ever; but Mrs. Ferrars has a noble spirit.  To give you\nanother instance of her liberality:--The other day, as soon as we came\nto town, aware that money could not be very plenty with us just now,\nshe put bank-notes into Fanny's hands to the amount of two hundred\npounds.  And extremely acceptable it is, for we must live at a great\nexpense while we are here.\"\n\nHe paused for her assent and compassion; and she forced herself to say,\n\n\"Your expenses both in town and country must certainly be considerable;\nbut your income is a large one.\"\n\n\"Not so large, I dare say, as many people suppose.  I do not mean to\ncomplain, however; it is undoubtedly a comfortable one, and I hope will\nin time be better.  The enclosure of Norland Common, now carrying on,\nis a most serious drain.  And then I have made a little purchase within\nthis half year; East Kingham Farm, you must remember the place, where\nold Gibson used to live.  The land was so very desirable for me in\nevery respect, so immediately adjoining my own property, that I felt it\nmy duty to buy it.  I could not have answered it to my conscience to\nlet it fall into any other hands.  A man must pay for his convenience;\nand it HAS cost me a vast deal of money.\"\n\n\"More than you think it really and intrinsically worth.\"\n\n\"Why, I hope not that.  I might have sold it again, the next day, for\nmore than I gave: but, with regard to the purchase-money, I might have\nbeen very unfortunate indeed; for the stocks were at that time so low,\nthat if I had not happened to have the necessary sum in my banker's\nhands, I must have sold out to very great loss.\"\n\nElinor could only smile.\n\n\"Other great and inevitable expenses too we have had on first coming to\nNorland.  Our respected father, as you well know, bequeathed all the\nStanhill effects that remained at Norland (and very valuable they were)\nto your mother.  Far be it from me to repine at his doing so; he had an\nundoubted right to dispose of his own property as he chose, but, in\nconsequence of it, we have been obliged to make large purchases of\nlinen, china, &c. to supply the place of what was taken away.  You may\nguess, after all these expenses, how very far we must be from being\nrich, and how acceptable Mrs. Ferrars's kindness is.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" said Elinor; \"and assisted by her liberality, I hope you\nmay yet live to be in easy circumstances.\"\n\n\"Another year or two may do much towards it,\" he gravely replied; \"but\nhowever there is still a great deal to be done.  There is not a stone\nlaid of Fanny's green-house, and nothing but the plan of the\nflower-garden marked out.\"\n\n\"Where is the green-house to be?\"\n\n\"Upon the knoll behind the house.  The old walnut trees are all come\ndown to make room for it.  It will be a very fine object from many\nparts of the park, and the flower-garden will slope down just before\nit, and be exceedingly pretty.  We have cleared away all the old thorns\nthat grew in patches over the brow.\"\n\nElinor kept her concern and her censure to herself; and was very\nthankful that Marianne was not present, to share the provocation.\n\nHaving now said enough to make his poverty clear, and to do away the\nnecessity of buying a pair of ear-rings for each of his sisters, in his\nnext visit at Gray's his thoughts took a cheerfuller turn, and he began\nto congratulate Elinor on having such a friend as Mrs. Jennings.\n\n\"She seems a most valuable woman indeed--Her house, her style of\nliving, all bespeak an exceeding good income; and it is an acquaintance\nthat has not only been of great use to you hitherto, but in the end may\nprove materially advantageous.--Her inviting you to town is certainly a\nvast thing in your favour; and indeed, it speaks altogether so great a\nregard for you, that in all probability when she dies you will not be\nforgotten.-- She must have a great deal to leave.\"\n\n\"Nothing at all, I should rather suppose; for she has only her\njointure, which will descend to her children.\"\n\n\"But it is not to be imagined that she lives up to her income.  Few\npeople of common prudence will do THAT; and whatever she saves, she\nwill be able to dispose of.\"\n\n\"And do you not think it more likely that she should leave it to her\ndaughters, than to us?\"\n\n\"Her daughters are both exceedingly well married, and therefore I\ncannot perceive the necessity of her remembering them farther.\nWhereas, in my opinion, by her taking so much notice of you, and\ntreating you in this kind of way, she has given you a sort of claim on\nher future consideration, which a conscientious woman would not\ndisregard.  Nothing can be kinder than her behaviour; and she can\nhardly do all this, without being aware of the expectation it raises.\"\n\n\"But she raises none in those most concerned.  Indeed, brother, your\nanxiety for our welfare and prosperity carries you too far.\"\n\n\"Why, to be sure,\" said he, seeming to recollect himself, \"people have\nlittle, have very little in their power.  But, my dear Elinor, what is\nthe matter with Marianne?-- she looks very unwell, has lost her colour,\nand is grown quite thin.  Is she ill?\"\n\n\"She is not well, she has had a nervous complaint on her for several\nweeks.\"\n\n\"I am sorry for that.  At her time of life, any thing of an illness\ndestroys the bloom for ever!  Hers has been a very short one!  She was\nas handsome a girl last September, as I ever saw; and as likely to\nattract the man.  There was something in her style of beauty, to please\nthem particularly.  I remember Fanny used to say that she would marry\nsooner and better than you did; not but what she is exceedingly fond of\nYOU, but so it happened to strike her.  She will be mistaken, however.\nI question whether Marianne NOW, will marry a man worth more than five\nor six hundred a-year, at the utmost, and I am very much deceived if\nYOU do not do better.  Dorsetshire!  I know very little of Dorsetshire;\nbut, my dear Elinor, I shall be exceedingly glad to know more of it;\nand I think I can answer for your having Fanny and myself among the\nearliest and best pleased of your visitors.\"\n\nElinor tried very seriously to convince him that there was no\nlikelihood of her marrying Colonel Brandon; but it was an expectation\nof too much pleasure to himself to be relinquished, and he was really\nresolved on seeking an intimacy with that gentleman, and promoting the\nmarriage by every possible attention.  He had just compunction enough\nfor having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly\nanxious that everybody else should do a great deal; and an offer from\nColonel Brandon, or a legacy from Mrs. Jennings, was the easiest means\nof atoning for his own neglect.\n\nThey were lucky enough to find Lady Middleton at home, and Sir John\ncame in before their visit ended.  Abundance of civilities passed on\nall sides.  Sir John was ready to like anybody, and though Mr. Dashwood\ndid not seem to know much about horses, he soon set him down as a very\ngood-natured fellow: while Lady Middleton saw enough of fashion in his\nappearance to think his acquaintance worth having; and Mr. Dashwood\nwent away delighted with both.\n\n\"I shall have a charming account to carry to Fanny,\" said he, as he\nwalked back with his sister.  \"Lady Middleton is really a most elegant\nwoman!  Such a woman as I am sure Fanny will be glad to know.  And Mrs.\nJennings too, an exceedingly well-behaved woman, though not so elegant\nas her daughter.  Your sister need not have any scruple even of\nvisiting HER, which, to say the truth, has been a little the case, and\nvery naturally; for we only knew that Mrs. Jennings was the widow of a\nman who had got all his money in a low way; and Fanny and Mrs. Ferrars\nwere both strongly prepossessed, that neither she nor her daughters\nwere such kind of women as Fanny would like to associate with.  But now\nI can carry her a most satisfactory account of both.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. John Dashwood had so much confidence in her husband's judgment,\nthat she waited the very next day both on Mrs. Jennings and her\ndaughter; and her confidence was rewarded by finding even the former,\neven the woman with whom her sisters were staying, by no means unworthy\nher notice; and as for Lady Middleton, she found her one of the most\ncharming women in the world!\n\nLady Middleton was equally pleased with Mrs. Dashwood.  There was a\nkind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually\nattracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid\npropriety of demeanor, and a general want of understanding.\n\nThe same manners, however, which recommended Mrs. John Dashwood to the\ngood opinion of Lady Middleton did not suit the fancy of Mrs. Jennings,\nand to HER she appeared nothing more than a little proud-looking woman\nof uncordial address, who met her husband's sisters without any\naffection, and almost without having anything to say to them; for of\nthe quarter of an hour bestowed on Berkeley Street, she sat at least\nseven minutes and a half in silence.\n\nElinor wanted very much to know, though she did not chuse to ask,\nwhether Edward was then in town; but nothing would have induced Fanny\nvoluntarily to mention his name before her, till able to tell her that\nhis marriage with Miss Morton was resolved on, or till her husband's\nexpectations on Colonel Brandon were answered; because she believed\nthem still so very much attached to each other, that they could not be\ntoo sedulously divided in word and deed on every occasion.  The\nintelligence however, which SHE would not give, soon flowed from\nanother quarter.  Lucy came very shortly to claim Elinor's compassion\non being unable to see Edward, though he had arrived in town with Mr.\nand Mrs. Dashwood.  He dared not come to Bartlett's Buildings for fear\nof detection, and though their mutual impatience to meet, was not to be\ntold, they could do nothing at present but write.\n\nEdward assured them himself of his being in town, within a very short\ntime, by twice calling in Berkeley Street.  Twice was his card found on\nthe table, when they returned from their morning's engagements.  Elinor\nwas pleased that he had called; and still more pleased that she had\nmissed him.\n\nThe Dashwoods were so prodigiously delighted with the Middletons, that,\nthough not much in the habit of giving anything, they determined to\ngive them--a dinner; and soon after their acquaintance began, invited\nthem to dine in Harley Street, where they had taken a very good house\nfor three months.  Their sisters and Mrs. Jennings were invited\nlikewise, and John Dashwood was careful to secure Colonel Brandon, who,\nalways glad to be where the Miss Dashwoods were, received his eager\ncivilities with some surprise, but much more pleasure.  They were to\nmeet Mrs. Ferrars; but Elinor could not learn whether her sons were to\nbe of the party.  The expectation of seeing HER, however, was enough to\nmake her interested in the engagement; for though she could now meet\nEdward's mother without that strong anxiety which had once promised to\nattend such an introduction, though she could now see her with perfect\nindifference as to her opinion of herself, her desire of being in\ncompany with Mrs. Ferrars, her curiosity to know what she was like, was\nas lively as ever.\n\nThe interest with which she thus anticipated the party, was soon\nafterwards increased, more powerfully than pleasantly, by her hearing\nthat the Miss Steeles were also to be at it.\n\nSo well had they recommended themselves to Lady Middleton, so agreeable\nhad their assiduities made them to her, that though Lucy was certainly\nnot so elegant, and her sister not even genteel, she was as ready as\nSir John to ask them to spend a week or two in Conduit Street; and it\nhappened to be particularly convenient to the Miss Steeles, as soon as\nthe Dashwoods' invitation was known, that their visit should begin a\nfew days before the party took place.\n\nTheir claims to the notice of Mrs. John Dashwood, as the nieces of the\ngentleman who for many years had had the care of her brother, might not\nhave done much, however, towards procuring them seats at her table; but\nas Lady Middleton's guests they must be welcome; and Lucy, who had long\nwanted to be personally known to the family, to have a nearer view of\ntheir characters and her own difficulties, and to have an opportunity\nof endeavouring to please them, had seldom been happier in her life,\nthan she was on receiving Mrs. John Dashwood's card.\n\nOn Elinor its effect was very different.  She began immediately to\ndetermine, that Edward who lived with his mother, must be asked as his\nmother was, to a party given by his sister; and to see him for the\nfirst time, after all that passed, in the company of Lucy!--she hardly\nknew how she could bear it!\n\nThese apprehensions, perhaps, were not founded entirely on reason, and\ncertainly not at all on truth.  They were relieved however, not by her\nown recollection, but by the good will of Lucy, who believed herself to\nbe inflicting a severe disappointment when she told her that Edward\ncertainly would not be in Harley Street on Tuesday, and even hoped to\nbe carrying the pain still farther by persuading her that he was kept\naway by the extreme affection for herself, which he could not conceal\nwhen they were together.\n\nThe important Tuesday came that was to introduce the two young ladies\nto this formidable mother-in-law.\n\n\"Pity me, dear Miss Dashwood!\" said Lucy, as they walked up the stairs\ntogether--for the Middletons arrived so directly after Mrs. Jennings,\nthat they all followed the servant at the same time--\"There is nobody\nhere but you, that can feel for me.--I declare I can hardly stand.\nGood gracious!--In a moment I shall see the person that all my\nhappiness depends on--that is to be my mother!\"--\n\nElinor could have given her immediate relief by suggesting the\npossibility of its being Miss Morton's mother, rather than her own,\nwhom they were about to behold; but instead of doing that, she assured\nher, and with great sincerity, that she did pity her--to the utter\namazement of Lucy, who, though really uncomfortable herself, hoped at\nleast to be an object of irrepressible envy to Elinor.\n\nMrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in\nher figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect.  Her\ncomplexion was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and\nnaturally without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had\nrescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it\nthe strong characters of pride and ill nature.  She was not a woman of\nmany words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the\nnumber of her ideas; and of the few syllables that did escape her, not\none fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed with the spirited\ndetermination of disliking her at all events.\n\nElinor could not NOW be made unhappy by this behaviour.-- A few months\nago it would have hurt her exceedingly; but it was not in Mrs. Ferrars'\npower to distress her by it now;--and the difference of her manners to\nthe Miss Steeles, a difference which seemed purposely made to humble\nher more, only amused her.  She could not but smile to see the\ngraciousness of both mother and daughter towards the very person-- for\nLucy was particularly distinguished--whom of all others, had they known\nas much as she did, they would have been most anxious to mortify; while\nshe herself, who had comparatively no power to wound them, sat\npointedly slighted by both.  But while she smiled at a graciousness so\nmisapplied, she could not reflect on the mean-spirited folly from which\nit sprung, nor observe the studied attentions with which the Miss\nSteeles courted its continuance, without thoroughly despising them all\nfour.\n\nLucy was all exultation on being so honorably distinguished; and Miss\nSteele wanted only to be teazed about Dr. Davies to be perfectly happy.\n\nThe dinner was a grand one, the servants were numerous, and every thing\nbespoke the Mistress's inclination for show, and the Master's ability\nto support it.  In spite of the improvements and additions which were\nmaking to the Norland estate, and in spite of its owner having once\nbeen within some thousand pounds of being obliged to sell out at a\nloss, nothing gave any symptom of that indigence which he had tried to\ninfer from it;--no poverty of any kind, except of conversation,\nappeared--but there, the deficiency was considerable.  John Dashwood\nhad not much to say for himself that was worth hearing, and his wife\nhad still less.  But there was no peculiar disgrace in this; for it was\nvery much the case with the chief of their visitors, who almost all\nlaboured under one or other of these disqualifications for being\nagreeable--Want of sense, either natural or improved--want of\nelegance--want of spirits--or want of temper.\n\nWhen the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room after dinner, this poverty\nwas particularly evident, for the gentlemen HAD supplied the discourse\nwith some variety--the variety of politics, inclosing land, and\nbreaking horses--but then it was all over; and one subject only engaged\nthe ladies till coffee came in, which was the comparative heights of\nHarry Dashwood, and Lady Middleton's second son William, who were\nnearly of the same age.\n\nHad both the children been there, the affair might have been determined\ntoo easily by measuring them at once; but as Harry only was present, it\nwas all conjectural assertion on both sides; and every body had a right\nto be equally positive in their opinion, and to repeat it over and over\nagain as often as they liked.\n\nThe parties stood thus:\n\nThe two mothers, though each really convinced that her own son was the\ntallest, politely decided in favour of the other.\n\nThe two grandmothers, with not less partiality, but more sincerity,\nwere equally earnest in support of their own descendant.\n\nLucy, who was hardly less anxious to please one parent than the other,\nthought the boys were both remarkably tall for their age, and could not\nconceive that there could be the smallest difference in the world\nbetween them; and Miss Steele, with yet greater address gave it, as\nfast as she could, in favour of each.\n\nElinor, having once delivered her opinion on William's side, by which\nshe offended Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny still more, did not see the\nnecessity of enforcing it by any farther assertion; and Marianne, when\ncalled on for hers, offended them all, by declaring that she had no\nopinion to give, as she had never thought about it.\n\nBefore her removing from Norland, Elinor had painted a very pretty pair\nof screens for her sister-in-law, which being now just mounted and\nbrought home, ornamented her present drawing room; and these screens,\ncatching the eye of John Dashwood on his following the other gentlemen\ninto the room, were officiously handed by him to Colonel Brandon for\nhis admiration.\n\n\"These are done by my eldest sister,\" said he; \"and you, as a man of\ntaste, will, I dare say, be pleased with them.  I do not know whether\nyou have ever happened to see any of her performances before, but she\nis in general reckoned to draw extremely well.\"\n\nThe Colonel, though disclaiming all pretensions to connoisseurship,\nwarmly admired the screens, as he would have done any thing painted by\nMiss Dashwood; and on the curiosity of the others being of course\nexcited, they were handed round for general inspection.  Mrs. Ferrars,\nnot aware of their being Elinor's work, particularly requested to look\nat them; and after they had received gratifying testimony of Lady\nMiddletons's approbation, Fanny presented them to her mother,\nconsiderately informing her, at the same time, that they were done by\nMiss Dashwood.\n\n\"Hum\"--said Mrs. Ferrars--\"very pretty,\"--and without regarding them at\nall, returned them to her daughter.\n\nPerhaps Fanny thought for a moment that her mother had been quite rude\nenough,--for, colouring a little, she immediately said,\n\n\"They are very pretty, ma'am--an't they?\" But then again, the dread of\nhaving been too civil, too encouraging herself, probably came over her,\nfor she presently added,\n\n\"Do you not think they are something in Miss Morton's style of\npainting, Ma'am?--She DOES paint most delightfully!--How beautifully\nher last landscape is done!\"\n\n\"Beautifully indeed!  But SHE does every thing well.\"\n\nMarianne could not bear this.--She was already greatly displeased with\nMrs. Ferrars; and such ill-timed praise of another, at Elinor's\nexpense, though she had not any notion of what was principally meant by\nit, provoked her immediately to say with warmth,\n\n\"This is admiration of a very particular kind!--what is Miss Morton to\nus?--who knows, or who cares, for her?--it is Elinor of whom WE think\nand speak.\"\n\nAnd so saying, she took the screens out of her sister-in-law's hands,\nto admire them herself as they ought to be admired.\n\nMrs. Ferrars looked exceedingly angry, and drawing herself up more\nstiffly than ever, pronounced in retort this bitter philippic, \"Miss\nMorton is Lord Morton's daughter.\"\n\nFanny looked very angry too, and her husband was all in a fright at his\nsister's audacity.  Elinor was much more hurt by Marianne's warmth than\nshe had been by what produced it; but Colonel Brandon's eyes, as they\nwere fixed on Marianne, declared that he noticed only what was amiable\nin it, the affectionate heart which could not bear to see a sister\nslighted in the smallest point.\n\nMarianne's feelings did not stop here.  The cold insolence of Mrs.\nFerrars's general behaviour to her sister, seemed, to her, to foretell\nsuch difficulties and distresses to Elinor, as her own wounded heart\ntaught her to think of with horror; and urged by a strong impulse of\naffectionate sensibility, she moved after a moment, to her sister's\nchair, and putting one arm round her neck, and one cheek close to hers,\nsaid in a low, but eager, voice,\n\n\"Dear, dear Elinor, don't mind them.  Don't let them make YOU unhappy.\"\n\nShe could say no more; her spirits were quite overcome, and hiding her\nface on Elinor's shoulder, she burst into tears.  Every body's\nattention was called, and almost every body was concerned.--Colonel\nBrandon rose up and went to them without knowing what he did.--Mrs.\nJennings, with a very intelligent \"Ah! poor dear,\" immediately gave her\nher salts; and Sir John felt so desperately enraged against the author\nof this nervous distress, that he instantly changed his seat to one\nclose by Lucy Steele, and gave her, in a whisper, a brief account of\nthe whole shocking affair.\n\nIn a few minutes, however, Marianne was recovered enough to put an end\nto the bustle, and sit down among the rest; though her spirits retained\nthe impression of what had passed, the whole evening.\n\n\"Poor Marianne!\" said her brother to Colonel Brandon, in a low voice,\nas soon as he could secure his attention,-- \"She has not such good\nhealth as her sister,--she is very nervous,--she has not Elinor's\nconstitution;--and one must allow that there is something very trying\nto a young woman who HAS BEEN a beauty in the loss of her personal\nattractions.  You would not think it perhaps, but Marianne WAS\nremarkably handsome a few months ago; quite as handsome as Elinor.--\nNow you see it is all gone.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nElinor's curiosity to see Mrs. Ferrars was satisfied.-- She had found\nin her every thing that could tend to make a farther connection between\nthe families undesirable.-- She had seen enough of her pride, her\nmeanness, and her determined prejudice against herself, to comprehend\nall the difficulties that must have perplexed the engagement, and\nretarded the marriage, of Edward and herself, had he been otherwise\nfree;--and she had seen almost enough to be thankful for her OWN sake,\nthat one greater obstacle preserved her from suffering under any other\nof Mrs. Ferrars's creation, preserved her from all dependence upon her\ncaprice, or any solicitude for her good opinion.  Or at least, if she\ndid not bring herself quite to rejoice in Edward's being fettered to\nLucy, she determined, that had Lucy been more amiable, she OUGHT to\nhave rejoiced.\n\nShe wondered that Lucy's spirits could be so very much elevated by the\ncivility of Mrs. Ferrars;--that her interest and her vanity should so\nvery much blind her as to make the attention which seemed only paid her\nbecause she was NOT ELINOR, appear a compliment to herself--or to allow\nher to derive encouragement from a preference only given her, because\nher real situation was unknown.  But that it was so, had not only been\ndeclared by Lucy's eyes at the time, but was declared over again the\nnext morning more openly, for at her particular desire, Lady Middleton\nset her down in Berkeley Street on the chance of seeing Elinor alone,\nto tell her how happy she was.\n\nThe chance proved a lucky one, for a message from Mrs. Palmer soon\nafter she arrived, carried Mrs. Jennings away.\n\n\"My dear friend,\" cried Lucy, as soon as they were by themselves, \"I\ncome to talk to you of my happiness.  Could anything be so flattering\nas Mrs. Ferrars's way of treating me yesterday?  So exceeding affable\nas she was!--You know how I dreaded the thoughts of seeing her;--but\nthe very moment I was introduced, there was such an affability in her\nbehaviour as really should seem to say, she had quite took a fancy to\nme.  Now was not it so?-- You saw it all; and was not you quite struck\nwith it?\"\n\n\"She was certainly very civil to you.\"\n\n\"Civil!--Did you see nothing but only civility?-- I saw a vast deal\nmore.  Such kindness as fell to the share of nobody but me!--No pride,\nno hauteur, and your sister just the same--all sweetness and\naffability!\"\n\nElinor wished to talk of something else, but Lucy still pressed her to\nown that she had reason for her happiness; and Elinor was obliged to go\non.--\n\n\"Undoubtedly, if they had known your engagement,\" said she, \"nothing\ncould be more flattering than their treatment of you;--but as that was\nnot the case\"--\n\n\"I guessed you would say so,\"--replied Lucy quickly--\"but there was no\nreason in the world why Mrs. Ferrars should seem to like me, if she did\nnot, and her liking me is every thing.  You shan't talk me out of my\nsatisfaction.  I am sure it will all end well, and there will be no\ndifficulties at all, to what I used to think.  Mrs. Ferrars is a\ncharming woman, and so is your sister.  They are both delightful women,\nindeed!--I wonder I should never hear you say how agreeable Mrs.\nDashwood was!\"\n\nTo this Elinor had no answer to make, and did not attempt any.\n\n\"Are you ill, Miss Dashwood?--you seem low--you don't speak;--sure you\nan't well.\"\n\n\"I never was in better health.\"\n\n\"I am glad of it with all my heart; but really you did not look it.  I\nshould be sorry to have YOU ill; you, that have been the greatest\ncomfort to me in the world!--Heaven knows what I should have done\nwithout your friendship.\"--\n\nElinor tried to make a civil answer, though doubting her own success.\nBut it seemed to satisfy Lucy, for she directly replied,\n\n\"Indeed I am perfectly convinced of your regard for me, and next to\nEdward's love, it is the greatest comfort I have.--Poor Edward!--But\nnow there is one good thing, we shall be able to meet, and meet pretty\noften, for Lady Middleton's delighted with Mrs. Dashwood, so we shall\nbe a good deal in Harley Street, I dare say, and Edward spends half his\ntime with his sister--besides, Lady Middleton and Mrs. Ferrars will\nvisit now;--and Mrs. Ferrars and your sister were both so good to say\nmore than once, they should always be glad to see me.-- They are such\ncharming women!--I am sure if ever you tell your sister what I think of\nher, you cannot speak too high.\"\n\nBut Elinor would not give her any encouragement to hope that she SHOULD\ntell her sister.  Lucy continued.\n\n\"I am sure I should have seen it in a moment, if Mrs. Ferrars had took\na dislike to me.  If she had only made me a formal courtesy, for\ninstance, without saying a word, and never after had took any notice of\nme, and never looked at me in a pleasant way--you know what I mean--if\nI had been treated in that forbidding sort of way, I should have gave\nit all up in despair.  I could not have stood it.  For where she DOES\ndislike, I know it is most violent.\"\n\nElinor was prevented from making any reply to this civil triumph, by\nthe door's being thrown open, the servant's announcing Mr. Ferrars, and\nEdward's immediately walking in.\n\nIt was a very awkward moment; and the countenance of each shewed that\nit was so.  They all looked exceedingly foolish; and Edward seemed to\nhave as great an inclination to walk out of the room again, as to\nadvance farther into it.  The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest\nform, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen\non them.--They were not only all three together, but were together\nwithout the relief of any other person.  The ladies recovered\nthemselves first.  It was not Lucy's business to put herself forward,\nand the appearance of secrecy must still be kept up.  She could\ntherefore only LOOK her tenderness, and after slightly addressing him,\nsaid no more.\n\nBut Elinor had more to do; and so anxious was she, for his sake and her\nown, to do it well, that she forced herself, after a moment's\nrecollection, to welcome him, with a look and manner that were almost\neasy, and almost open; and another struggle, another effort still\nimproved them.  She would not allow the presence of Lucy, nor the\nconsciousness of some injustice towards herself, to deter her from\nsaying that she was happy to see him, and that she had very much\nregretted being from home, when he called before in Berkeley Street.\nShe would not be frightened from paying him those attentions which, as\na friend and almost a relation, were his due, by the observant eyes of\nLucy, though she soon perceived them to be narrowly watching her.\n\nHer manners gave some re-assurance to Edward, and he had courage enough\nto sit down; but his embarrassment still exceeded that of the ladies in\na proportion, which the case rendered reasonable, though his sex might\nmake it rare; for his heart had not the indifference of Lucy's, nor\ncould his conscience have quite the ease of Elinor's.\n\nLucy, with a demure and settled air, seemed determined to make no\ncontribution to the comfort of the others, and would not say a word;\nand almost every thing that WAS said, proceeded from Elinor, who was\nobliged to volunteer all the information about her mother's health,\ntheir coming to town, &c. which Edward ought to have inquired about,\nbut never did.\n\nHer exertions did not stop here; for she soon afterwards felt herself\nso heroically disposed as to determine, under pretence of fetching\nMarianne, to leave the others by themselves; and she really did it, and\nTHAT in the handsomest manner, for she loitered away several minutes on\nthe landing-place, with the most high-minded fortitude, before she went\nto her sister.  When that was once done, however, it was time for the\nraptures of Edward to cease; for Marianne's joy hurried her into the\ndrawing-room immediately.  Her pleasure in seeing him was like every\nother of her feelings, strong in itself, and strongly spoken.  She met\nhim with a hand that would be taken, and a voice that expressed the\naffection of a sister.\n\n\"Dear Edward!\" she cried, \"this is a moment of great happiness!--This\nwould almost make amends for every thing!\"\n\nEdward tried to return her kindness as it deserved, but before such\nwitnesses he dared not say half what he really felt.  Again they all\nsat down, and for a moment or two all were silent; while Marianne was\nlooking with the most speaking tenderness, sometimes at Edward and\nsometimes at Elinor, regretting only that their delight in each other\nshould be checked by Lucy's unwelcome presence.  Edward was the first\nto speak, and it was to notice Marianne's altered looks, and express\nhis fear of her not finding London agree with her.\n\n\"Oh, don't think of me!\" she replied with spirited earnestness, though\nher eyes were filled with tears as she spoke, \"don't think of MY\nhealth.  Elinor is well, you see.  That must be enough for us both.\"\n\nThis remark was not calculated to make Edward or Elinor more easy, nor\nto conciliate the good will of Lucy, who looked up at Marianne with no\nvery benignant expression.\n\n\"Do you like London?\" said Edward, willing to say any thing that might\nintroduce another subject.\n\n\"Not at all.  I expected much pleasure in it, but I have found none.\nThe sight of you, Edward, is the only comfort it has afforded; and\nthank Heaven! you are what you always were!\"\n\nShe paused--no one spoke.\n\n\"I think, Elinor,\" she presently added, \"we must employ Edward to take\ncare of us in our return to Barton.  In a week or two, I suppose, we\nshall be going; and, I trust, Edward will not be very unwilling to\naccept the charge.\"\n\nPoor Edward muttered something, but what it was, nobody knew, not even\nhimself.  But Marianne, who saw his agitation, and could easily trace\nit to whatever cause best pleased herself, was perfectly satisfied, and\nsoon talked of something else.\n\n\"We spent such a day, Edward, in Harley Street yesterday!  So dull, so\nwretchedly dull!--But I have much to say to you on that head, which\ncannot be said now.\"\n\nAnd with this admirable discretion did she defer the assurance of her\nfinding their mutual relatives more disagreeable than ever, and of her\nbeing particularly disgusted with his mother, till they were more in\nprivate.\n\n\"But why were you not there, Edward?--Why did you not come?\"\n\n\"I was engaged elsewhere.\"\n\n\"Engaged!  But what was that, when such friends were to be met?\"\n\n\"Perhaps, Miss Marianne,\" cried Lucy, eager to take some revenge on\nher, \"you think young men never stand upon engagements, if they have no\nmind to keep them, little as well as great.\"\n\nElinor was very angry, but Marianne seemed entirely insensible of the\nsting; for she calmly replied,\n\n\"Not so, indeed; for, seriously speaking, I am very sure that\nconscience only kept Edward from Harley Street.  And I really believe\nhe HAS the most delicate conscience in the world; the most scrupulous\nin performing every engagement, however minute, and however it may make\nagainst his interest or pleasure.  He is the most fearful of giving\npain, of wounding expectation, and the most incapable of being selfish,\nof any body I ever saw.  Edward, it is so, and I will say it.  What!\nare you never to hear yourself praised!--Then you must be no friend of\nmine; for those who will accept of my love and esteem, must submit to\nmy open commendation.\"\n\nThe nature of her commendation, in the present case, however, happened\nto be particularly ill-suited to the feelings of two thirds of her\nauditors, and was so very unexhilarating to Edward, that he very soon\ngot up to go away.\n\n\"Going so soon!\" said Marianne; \"my dear Edward, this must not be.\"\n\nAnd drawing him a little aside, she whispered her persuasion that Lucy\ncould not stay much longer.  But even this encouragement failed, for he\nwould go; and Lucy, who would have outstaid him, had his visit lasted\ntwo hours, soon afterwards went away.\n\n\"What can bring her here so often?\" said Marianne, on her leaving them.\n\"Could not she see that we wanted her gone!--how teazing to Edward!\"\n\n\"Why so?--we were all his friends, and Lucy has been the longest known\nto him of any.  It is but natural that he should like to see her as\nwell as ourselves.\"\n\nMarianne looked at her steadily, and said, \"You know, Elinor, that this\nis a kind of talking which I cannot bear.  If you only hope to have\nyour assertion contradicted, as I must suppose to be the case, you\nought to recollect that I am the last person in the world to do it.  I\ncannot descend to be tricked out of assurances, that are not really\nwanted.\"\n\nShe then left the room; and Elinor dared not follow her to say more,\nfor bound as she was by her promise of secrecy to Lucy, she could give\nno information that would convince Marianne; and painful as the\nconsequences of her still continuing in an error might be, she was\nobliged to submit to it.  All that she could hope, was that Edward\nwould not often expose her or himself to the distress of hearing\nMarianne's mistaken warmth, nor to the repetition of any other part of\nthe pain that had attended their recent meeting--and this she had every\nreason to expect.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWithin a few days after this meeting, the newspapers announced to the\nworld, that the lady of Thomas Palmer, Esq. was safely delivered of a\nson and heir; a very interesting and satisfactory paragraph, at least\nto all those intimate connections who knew it before.\n\nThis event, highly important to Mrs. Jennings's happiness, produced a\ntemporary alteration in the disposal of her time, and influenced, in a\nlike degree, the engagements of her young friends; for as she wished to\nbe as much as possible with Charlotte, she went thither every morning as\nsoon as she was dressed, and did not return till late in the evening;\nand the Miss Dashwoods, at the particular request of the Middletons,\nspent the whole of every day in Conduit Street. For their own comfort\nthey would much rather have remained, at least all the morning, in Mrs.\nJennings's house; but it was not a thing to be urged against the wishes\nof everybody. Their hours were therefore made over to Lady Middleton and\nthe two Miss Steeles, by whom their company, in fact was as little\nvalued, as it was professedly sought.\n\nThey had too much sense to be desirable companions to the former; and\nby the latter they were considered with a jealous eye, as intruding on\nTHEIR ground, and sharing the kindness which they wanted to monopolize.\nThough nothing could be more polite than Lady Middleton's behaviour to\nElinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all.  Because they\nneither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them\ngood-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them\nsatirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical;\nbut THAT did not signify.  It was censure in common use, and easily\ngiven.\n\nTheir presence was a restraint both on her and on Lucy.  It checked the\nidleness of one, and the business of the other.  Lady Middleton was\nashamed of doing nothing before them, and the flattery which Lucy was\nproud to think of and administer at other times, she feared they would\ndespise her for offering.  Miss Steele was the least discomposed of the\nthree, by their presence; and it was in their power to reconcile her to\nit entirely.  Would either of them only have given her a full and\nminute account of the whole affair between Marianne and Mr. Willoughby,\nshe would have thought herself amply rewarded for the sacrifice of the\nbest place by the fire after dinner, which their arrival occasioned.\nBut this conciliation was not granted; for though she often threw out\nexpressions of pity for her sister to Elinor, and more than once dropt\na reflection on the inconstancy of beaux before Marianne, no effect was\nproduced, but a look of indifference from the former, or of disgust in\nthe latter.  An effort even yet lighter might have made her their\nfriend.  Would they only have laughed at her about the Doctor!  But so\nlittle were they, anymore than the others, inclined to oblige her, that\nif Sir John dined from home, she might spend a whole day without\nhearing any other raillery on the subject, than what she was kind\nenough to bestow on herself.\n\nAll these jealousies and discontents, however, were so totally\nunsuspected by Mrs. Jennings, that she thought it a delightful thing\nfor the girls to be together; and generally congratulated her young\nfriends every night, on having escaped the company of a stupid old\nwoman so long.  She joined them sometimes at Sir John's, sometimes at\nher own house; but wherever it was, she always came in excellent\nspirits, full of delight and importance, attributing Charlotte's well\ndoing to her own care, and ready to give so exact, so minute a detail\nof her situation, as only Miss Steele had curiosity enough to desire.\nOne thing DID disturb her; and of that she made her daily complaint.\nMr. Palmer maintained the common, but unfatherly opinion among his sex,\nof all infants being alike; and though she could plainly perceive, at\ndifferent times, the most striking resemblance between this baby and\nevery one of his relations on both sides, there was no convincing his\nfather of it; no persuading him to believe that it was not exactly like\nevery other baby of the same age; nor could he even be brought to\nacknowledge the simple proposition of its being the finest child in the\nworld.\n\nI come now to the relation of a misfortune, which about this time\nbefell Mrs. John Dashwood.  It so happened that while her two sisters\nwith Mrs. Jennings were first calling on her in Harley Street, another\nof her acquaintance had dropt in--a circumstance in itself not\napparently likely to produce evil to her.  But while the imaginations\nof other people will carry them away to form wrong judgments of our\nconduct, and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness\nmust in some measure be always at the mercy of chance.  In the present\ninstance, this last-arrived lady allowed her fancy to so far outrun\ntruth and probability, that on merely hearing the name of the Miss\nDashwoods, and understanding them to be Mr. Dashwood's sisters, she\nimmediately concluded them to be staying in Harley Street; and this\nmisconstruction produced within a day or two afterwards, cards of\ninvitation for them as well as for their brother and sister, to a small\nmusical party at her house.  The consequence of which was, that Mrs.\nJohn Dashwood was obliged to submit not only to the exceedingly great\ninconvenience of sending her carriage for the Miss Dashwoods, but, what\nwas still worse, must be subject to all the unpleasantness of appearing\nto treat them with attention: and who could tell that they might not\nexpect to go out with her a second time?  The power of disappointing\nthem, it was true, must always be hers.  But that was not enough; for\nwhen people are determined on a mode of conduct which they know to be\nwrong, they feel injured by the expectation of any thing better from\nthem.\n\nMarianne had now been brought by degrees, so much into the habit of\ngoing out every day, that it was become a matter of indifference to\nher, whether she went or not: and she prepared quietly and mechanically\nfor every evening's engagement, though without expecting the smallest\namusement from any, and very often without knowing, till the last\nmoment, where it was to take her.\n\nTo her dress and appearance she was grown so perfectly indifferent, as\nnot to bestow half the consideration on it, during the whole of her\ntoilet, which it received from Miss Steele in the first five minutes of\ntheir being together, when it was finished.  Nothing escaped HER minute\nobservation and general curiosity; she saw every thing, and asked every\nthing; was never easy till she knew the price of every part of\nMarianne's dress; could have guessed the number of her gowns altogether\nwith better judgment than Marianne herself, and was not without hopes\nof finding out before they parted, how much her washing cost per week,\nand how much she had every year to spend upon herself.  The\nimpertinence of these kind of scrutinies, moreover, was generally\nconcluded with a compliment, which though meant as its douceur, was\nconsidered by Marianne as the greatest impertinence of all; for after\nundergoing an examination into the value and make of her gown, the\ncolour of her shoes, and the arrangement of her hair, she was almost\nsure of being told that upon \"her word she looked vastly smart, and she\ndared to say she would make a great many conquests.\"\n\nWith such encouragement as this, was she dismissed on the present\noccasion, to her brother's carriage; which they were ready to enter\nfive minutes after it stopped at the door, a punctuality not very\nagreeable to their sister-in-law, who had preceded them to the house of\nher acquaintance, and was there hoping for some delay on their part\nthat might inconvenience either herself or her coachman.\n\nThe events of this evening were not very remarkable.  The party, like\nother musical parties, comprehended a great many people who had real\ntaste for the performance, and a great many more who had none at all;\nand the performers themselves were, as usual, in their own estimation,\nand that of their immediate friends, the first private performers in\nEngland.\n\nAs Elinor was neither musical, nor affecting to be so, she made no\nscruple of turning her eyes from the grand pianoforte, whenever it\nsuited her, and unrestrained even by the presence of a harp, and\nvioloncello, would fix them at pleasure on any other object in the\nroom.  In one of these excursive glances she perceived among a group of\nyoung men, the very he, who had given them a lecture on toothpick-cases\nat Gray's.  She perceived him soon afterwards looking at herself, and\nspeaking familiarly to her brother; and had just determined to find out\nhis name from the latter, when they both came towards her, and Mr.\nDashwood introduced him to her as Mr. Robert Ferrars.\n\nHe addressed her with easy civility, and twisted his head into a bow\nwhich assured her as plainly as words could have done, that he was\nexactly the coxcomb she had heard him described to be by Lucy.  Happy\nhad it been for her, if her regard for Edward had depended less on his\nown merit, than on the merit of his nearest relations!  For then his\nbrother's bow must have given the finishing stroke to what the\nill-humour of his mother and sister would have begun.  But while she\nwondered at the difference of the two young men, she did not find that\nthe emptiness of conceit of the one, put her out of all charity with\nthe modesty and worth of the other.  Why they WERE different, Robert\nexclaimed to her himself in the course of a quarter of an hour's\nconversation; for, talking of his brother, and lamenting the extreme\nGAUCHERIE which he really believed kept him from mixing in proper\nsociety, he candidly and generously attributed it much less to any\nnatural deficiency, than to the misfortune of a private education;\nwhile he himself, though probably without any particular, any material\nsuperiority by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school,\nwas as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man.\n\n\"Upon my soul,\" he added, \"I believe it is nothing more; and so I often\ntell my mother, when she is grieving about it.  'My dear Madam,' I\nalways say to her, 'you must make yourself easy.  The evil is now\nirremediable, and it has been entirely your own doing.  Why would you\nbe persuaded by my uncle, Sir Robert, against your own judgment, to\nplace Edward under private tuition, at the most critical time of his\nlife?  If you had only sent him to Westminster as well as myself,\ninstead of sending him to Mr. Pratt's, all this would have been\nprevented.' This is the way in which I always consider the matter, and\nmy mother is perfectly convinced of her error.\"\n\nElinor would not oppose his opinion, because, whatever might be her\ngeneral estimation of the advantage of a public school, she could not\nthink of Edward's abode in Mr. Pratt's family, with any satisfaction.\n\n\"You reside in Devonshire, I think,\"--was his next observation, \"in a\ncottage near Dawlish.\"\n\nElinor set him right as to its situation; and it seemed rather\nsurprising to him that anybody could live in Devonshire, without living\nnear Dawlish.  He bestowed his hearty approbation however on their\nspecies of house.\n\n\"For my own part,\" said he, \"I am excessively fond of a cottage; there\nis always so much comfort, so much elegance about them.  And I protest,\nif I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one\nmyself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself\ndown at any time, and collect a few friends about me, and be happy.  I\nadvise every body who is going to build, to build a cottage.  My friend\nLord Courtland came to me the other day on purpose to ask my advice,\nand laid before me three different plans of Bonomi's.  I was to decide\non the best of them.  'My dear Courtland,' said I, immediately throwing\nthem all into the fire, 'do not adopt either of them, but by all means\nbuild a cottage.' And that I fancy, will be the end of it.\n\n\"Some people imagine that there can be no accommodations, no space in a\ncottage; but this is all a mistake.  I was last month at my friend\nElliott's, near Dartford.  Lady Elliott wished to give a dance.  'But\nhow can it be done?' said she; 'my dear Ferrars, do tell me how it is\nto be managed.  There is not a room in this cottage that will hold ten\ncouple, and where can the supper be?' I immediately saw that there\ncould be no difficulty in it, so I said, 'My dear Lady Elliott, do not\nbe uneasy.  The dining parlour will admit eighteen couple with ease;\ncard-tables may be placed in the drawing-room; the library may be open\nfor tea and other refreshments; and let the supper be set out in the\nsaloon.'  Lady Elliott was delighted with the thought.  We measured the\ndining-room, and found it would hold exactly eighteen couple, and the\naffair was arranged precisely after my plan.  So that, in fact, you\nsee, if people do but know how to set about it, every comfort may be as\nwell enjoyed in a cottage as in the most spacious dwelling.\"\n\nElinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the\ncompliment of rational opposition.\n\nAs John Dashwood had no more pleasure in music than his eldest sister,\nhis mind was equally at liberty to fix on any thing else; and a thought\nstruck him during the evening, which he communicated to his wife, for\nher approbation, when they got home.  The consideration of Mrs.\nDennison's mistake, in supposing his sisters their guests, had\nsuggested the propriety of their being really invited to become such,\nwhile Mrs. Jennings's engagements kept her from home.  The expense would\nbe nothing, the inconvenience not more; and it was altogether an\nattention which the delicacy of his conscience pointed out to be\nrequisite to its complete enfranchisement from his promise to his\nfather.  Fanny was startled at the proposal.\n\n\"I do not see how it can be done,\" said she, \"without affronting Lady\nMiddleton, for they spend every day with her; otherwise I should be\nexceedingly glad to do it.  You know I am always ready to pay them any\nattention in my power, as my taking them out this evening shews.  But\nthey are Lady Middleton's visitors.  How can I ask them away from her?\"\n\nHer husband, but with great humility, did not see the force of her\nobjection.  \"They had already spent a week in this manner in Conduit\nStreet, and Lady Middleton could not be displeased at their giving the\nsame number of days to such near relations.\"\n\nFanny paused a moment, and then, with fresh vigor, said,\n\n\"My love I would ask them with all my heart, if it was in my power.\nBut I had just settled within myself to ask the Miss Steeles to spend a\nfew days with us.  They are very well behaved, good kind of girls; and\nI think the attention is due to them, as their uncle did so very well\nby Edward.  We can ask your sisters some other year, you know; but the\nMiss Steeles may not be in town any more.  I am sure you will like\nthem; indeed, you DO like them, you know, very much already, and so\ndoes my mother; and they are such favourites with Harry!\"\n\nMr. Dashwood was convinced.  He saw the necessity of inviting the Miss\nSteeles immediately, and his conscience was pacified by the resolution\nof inviting his sisters another year; at the same time, however, slyly\nsuspecting that another year would make the invitation needless, by\nbringing Elinor to town as Colonel Brandon's wife, and Marianne as\nTHEIR visitor.\n\nFanny, rejoicing in her escape, and proud of the ready wit that had\nprocured it, wrote the next morning to Lucy, to request her company and\nher sister's, for some days, in Harley Street, as soon as Lady\nMiddleton could spare them.  This was enough to make Lucy really and\nreasonably happy.  Mrs. Dashwood seemed actually working for her,\nherself; cherishing all her hopes, and promoting all her views!  Such\nan opportunity of being with Edward and his family was, above all\nthings, the most material to her interest, and such an invitation the\nmost gratifying to her feelings!  It was an advantage that could not be\ntoo gratefully acknowledged, nor too speedily made use of; and the\nvisit to Lady Middleton, which had not before had any precise limits,\nwas instantly discovered to have been always meant to end in two days'\ntime.\n\nWhen the note was shown to Elinor, as it was within ten minutes after\nits arrival, it gave her, for the first time, some share in the\nexpectations of Lucy; for such a mark of uncommon kindness, vouchsafed\non so short an acquaintance, seemed to declare that the good-will\ntowards her arose from something more than merely malice against\nherself; and might be brought, by time and address, to do every thing\nthat Lucy wished.  Her flattery had already subdued the pride of Lady\nMiddleton, and made an entry into the close heart of Mrs. John\nDashwood; and these were effects that laid open the probability of\ngreater.\n\nThe Miss Steeles removed to Harley Street, and all that reached Elinor\nof their influence there, strengthened her expectation of the event.\nSir John, who called on them more than once, brought home such accounts\nof the favour they were in, as must be universally striking.  Mrs.\nDashwood had never been so much pleased with any young women in her\nlife, as she was with them; had given each of them a needle book made\nby some emigrant; called Lucy by her Christian name; and did not know\nwhether she should ever be able to part with them.\n\n\n\n\n\n[At this point in the first and second editions, Volume II ended.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Palmer was so well at the end of a fortnight, that her mother felt\nit no longer necessary to give up the whole of her time to her; and,\ncontenting herself with visiting her once or twice a day, returned from\nthat period to her own home, and her own habits, in which she found the\nMiss Dashwoods very ready to resume their former share.\n\nAbout the third or fourth morning after their being thus resettled in\nBerkeley Street, Mrs. Jennings, on returning from her ordinary visit to\nMrs. Palmer, entered the drawing-room, where Elinor was sitting by\nherself, with an air of such hurrying importance as prepared her to\nhear something wonderful; and giving her time only to form that idea,\nbegan directly to justify it, by saying,\n\n\"Lord! my dear Miss Dashwood! have you heard the news?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am.  What is it?\"\n\n\"Something so strange!  But you shall hear it all.-- When I got to Mr.\nPalmer's, I found Charlotte quite in a fuss about the child.  She was\nsure it was very ill--it cried, and fretted, and was all over pimples.\nSo I looked at it directly, and, 'Lord! my dear,' says I, 'it is\nnothing in the world, but the red gum--' and nurse said just the same.\nBut Charlotte, she would not be satisfied, so Mr. Donavan was sent for;\nand luckily he happened to just come in from Harley Street, so he\nstepped over directly, and as soon as ever Mama, he said\njust as we did, that it was nothing in the world but the red gum, and\nthen Charlotte was easy.  And so, just as he was going away again, it\ncame into my head, I am sure I do not know how I happened to think of\nit, but it came into my head to ask him if there was any news.  So upon\nthat, he smirked, and simpered, and looked grave, and seemed to know\nsomething or other, and at last he said in a whisper, 'For fear any\nunpleasant report should reach the young ladies under your care as to\ntheir sister's indisposition, I think it advisable to say, that I\nbelieve there is no great reason for alarm; I hope Mrs. Dashwood will\ndo very well.'\"\n\n\"What! is Fanny ill?\"\n\n\"That is exactly what I said, my dear.  'Lord!' says I, 'is Mrs.\nDashwood ill?' So then it all came out; and the long and the short of\nthe matter, by all I can learn, seems to be this.  Mr. Edward Ferrars,\nthe very young man I used to joke with you about (but however, as it\nturns out, I am monstrous glad there was never any thing in it), Mr.\nEdward Ferrars, it seems, has been engaged above this twelvemonth to my\ncousin Lucy!--There's for you, my dear!--And not a creature knowing a\nsyllable of the matter, except Nancy!--Could you have believed such a\nthing possible?-- There is no great wonder in their liking one another;\nbut that matters should be brought so forward between them, and nobody\nsuspect it!--THAT is strange!--I never happened to see them together,\nor I am sure I should have found it out directly.  Well, and so this\nwas kept a great secret, for fear of Mrs. Ferrars, and neither she nor\nyour brother or sister suspected a word of the matter;--till this very\nmorning, poor Nancy, who, you know, is a well-meaning creature, but no\nconjurer, popt it all out.  'Lord!' thinks she to herself, 'they are\nall so fond of Lucy, to be sure they will make no difficulty about it;'\nand so, away she went to your sister, who was sitting all alone at her\ncarpet-work, little suspecting what was to come--for she had just been\nsaying to your brother, only five minutes before, that she thought to\nmake a match between Edward and some Lord's daughter or other, I forget\nwho.  So you may think what a blow it was to all her vanity and pride.\nShe fell into violent hysterics immediately, with such screams as\nreached your brother's ears, as he was sitting in his own dressing-room\ndown stairs, thinking about writing a letter to his steward in the\ncountry.  So up he flew directly, and a terrible scene took place, for\nLucy was come to them by that time, little dreaming what was going on.\nPoor soul!  I pity HER.  And I must say, I think she was used very\nhardly; for your sister scolded like any fury, and soon drove her into\na fainting fit.  Nancy, she fell upon her knees, and cried bitterly;\nand your brother, he walked about the room, and said he did not know\nwhat to do.  Mrs. Dashwood declared they should not stay a minute\nlonger in the house, and your brother was forced to go down upon HIS\nknees too, to persuade her to let them stay till they had packed up\ntheir clothes.  THEN she fell into hysterics again, and he was so\nfrightened that he would send for Mr. Donavan, and Mr. Donavan found\nthe house in all this uproar.  The carriage was at the door ready to\ntake my poor cousins away, and they were just stepping in as he came\noff; poor Lucy in such a condition, he says, she could hardly walk; and\nNancy, she was almost as bad.  I declare, I have no patience with your\nsister; and I hope, with all my heart, it will be a match in spite of\nher.  Lord! what a taking poor Mr. Edward will be in when he hears of\nit!  To have his love used so scornfully! for they say he is monstrous\nfond of her, as well he may.  I should not wonder, if he was to be in\nthe greatest passion!--and Mr. Donavan thinks just the same.  He and I\nhad a great deal of talk about it; and the best of all is, that he is\ngone back again to Harley Street, that he may be within call when Mrs.\nFerrars is told of it, for she was sent for as soon as ever my cousins\nleft the house, for your sister was sure SHE would be in hysterics too;\nand so she may, for what I care.  I have no pity for either of them.  I\nhave no notion of people's making such a to-do about money and\ngreatness.  There is no reason on earth why Mr. Edward and Lucy should\nnot marry; for I am sure Mrs. Ferrars may afford to do very well by her\nson, and though Lucy has next to nothing herself, she knows better than\nany body how to make the most of every thing; I dare say, if Mrs.\nFerrars would only allow him five hundred a-year, she would make as\ngood an appearance with it as any body else would with eight.  Lord!\nhow snug they might live in such another cottage as yours--or a little\nbigger--with two maids, and two men; and I believe I could help them to\na housemaid, for my Betty has a sister out of place, that would fit\nthem exactly.\"\n\nHere Mrs. Jennings ceased, and as Elinor had had time enough to collect\nher thoughts, she was able to give such an answer, and make such\nobservations, as the subject might naturally be supposed to produce.\nHappy to find that she was not suspected of any extraordinary interest\nin it; that Mrs. Jennings (as she had of late often hoped might be the\ncase) had ceased to imagine her at all attached to Edward; and happy\nabove all the rest, in the absence of Marianne, she felt very well able\nto speak of the affair without embarrassment, and to give her judgment,\nas she believed, with impartiality on the conduct of every one\nconcerned in it.\n\nShe could hardly determine what her own expectation of its event really\nwas; though she earnestly tried to drive away the notion of its being\npossible to end otherwise at last, than in the marriage of Edward and\nLucy.  What Mrs. Ferrars would say and do, though there could not be a\ndoubt of its nature, she was anxious to hear; and still more anxious to\nknow how Edward would conduct himself.  For HIM she felt much\ncompassion;--for Lucy very little--and it cost her some pains to\nprocure that little;--for the rest of the party none at all.\n\nAs Mrs. Jennings could talk on no other subject, Elinor soon saw the\nnecessity of preparing Marianne for its discussion.  No time was to be\nlost in undeceiving her, in making her acquainted with the real truth,\nand in endeavouring to bring her to hear it talked of by others,\nwithout betraying that she felt any uneasiness for her sister, or any\nresentment against Edward.\n\nElinor's office was a painful one.--She was going to remove what she\nreally believed to be her sister's chief consolation,--to give such\nparticulars of Edward as she feared would ruin him for ever in her good\nopinion,-and to make Marianne, by a resemblance in their situations,\nwhich to HER fancy would seem strong, feel all her own disappointment\nover again.  But unwelcome as such a task must be, it was necessary to\nbe done, and Elinor therefore hastened to perform it.\n\nShe was very far from wishing to dwell on her own feelings, or to\nrepresent herself as suffering much, any otherwise than as the\nself-command she had practised since her first knowledge of Edward's\nengagement, might suggest a hint of what was practicable to Marianne.\nHer narration was clear and simple; and though it could not be given\nwithout emotion, it was not accompanied by violent agitation, nor\nimpetuous grief.--THAT belonged rather to the hearer, for Marianne\nlistened with horror, and cried excessively.  Elinor was to be the\ncomforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and\nall the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure\nof mind, and a very earnest vindication of Edward from every charge but\nof imprudence, was readily offered.\n\nBut Marianne for some time would give credit to neither.  Edward seemed\na second Willoughby; and acknowledging as Elinor did, that she HAD\nloved him most sincerely, could she feel less than herself!  As for\nLucy Steele, she considered her so totally unamiable, so absolutely\nincapable of attaching a sensible man, that she could not be persuaded\nat first to believe, and afterwards to pardon, any former affection of\nEdward for her.  She would not even admit it to have been natural; and\nElinor left her to be convinced that it was so, by that which only\ncould convince her, a better knowledge of mankind.\n\nHer first communication had reached no farther than to state the fact\nof the engagement, and the length of time it had existed.--Marianne's\nfeelings had then broken in, and put an end to all regularity of\ndetail; and for some time all that could be done was to soothe her\ndistress, lessen her alarms, and combat her resentment.  The first\nquestion on her side, which led to farther particulars, was,--\n\n\"How long has this been known to you, Elinor? has he written to you?\"\n\n\"I have known it these four months.  When Lucy first came to Barton\nPark last November, she told me in confidence of her engagement.\"\n\nAt these words, Marianne's eyes expressed the astonishment which her\nlips could not utter.  After a pause of wonder, she exclaimed--\n\n\"Four months!--Have you known of this four months?\"\n\nElinor confirmed it.\n\n\"What!--while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your\nheart?--And I have reproached you for being happy!\"--\n\n\"It was not fit that you should then know how much I was the reverse!\"\n\n\"Four months!\"--cried Marianne again.--\"So calm!--so cheerful!--how\nhave you been supported?\"--\n\n\"By feeling that I was doing my duty.--My promise to Lucy, obliged me\nto be secret.  I owed it to her, therefore, to avoid giving any hint of\nthe truth; and I owed it to my family and friends, not to create in\nthem a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to\nsatisfy.\"\n\nMarianne seemed much struck.\n\n\"I have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my mother,\" added\nElinor; \"and once or twice I have attempted it;--but without betraying\nmy trust, I never could have convinced you.\"\n\n\"Four months!--and yet you loved him!\"--\n\n\"Yes. But I did not love only him;--and while the comfort of others was\ndear to me, I was glad to spare them from knowing how much I felt.\nNow, I can think and speak of it with little emotion.  I would not have\nyou suffer on my account; for I assure you I no longer suffer\nmaterially myself.  I have many things to support me.  I am not\nconscious of having provoked the disappointment by any imprudence of my\nown, I have borne it as much as possible without spreading it farther.\nI acquit Edward of essential misconduct.  I wish him very happy; and I\nam so sure of his always doing his duty, that though now he may harbour\nsome regret, in the end he must become so.  Lucy does not want sense,\nand that is the foundation on which every thing good may be built.--And\nafter all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a\nsingle and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's\nhappiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not\nmeant--it is not fit--it is not possible that it should be so.-- Edward\nwill marry Lucy; he will marry a woman superior in person and\nunderstanding to half her sex; and time and habit will teach him to\nforget that he ever thought another superior to HER.\"--\n\n\"If such is your way of thinking,\" said Marianne, \"if the loss of what\nis most valued is so easily to be made up by something else, your\nresolution, your self-command, are, perhaps, a little less to be\nwondered at.--They are brought more within my comprehension.\"\n\n\"I understand you.--You do not suppose that I have ever felt much.--For\nfour months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without\nbeing at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it\nwould make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to\nyou, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least.-- It was told\nme,--it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself, whose\nprior engagement ruined all my prospects; and told me, as I thought,\nwith triumph.-- This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to\noppose, by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most\ndeeply interested;--and it has not been only once;--I have had her\nhopes and exultation to listen to again and again.-- I have known\nmyself to be divided from Edward for ever, without hearing one\ncircumstance that could make me less desire the connection.--Nothing\nhas proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to\nme.-- I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and\nthe insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an\nattachment, without enjoying its advantages.-- And all this has been\ngoing on at a time, when, as you know too well, it has not been my only\nunhappiness.-- If you can think me capable of ever feeling--surely you\nmay suppose that I have suffered NOW.  The composure of mind with which\nI have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the\nconsolation that I have been willing to admit, have been the effect of\nconstant and painful exertion;--they did not spring up of\nthemselves;--they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first.-- No,\nMarianne.--THEN, if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing\ncould have kept me entirely--not even what I owed to my dearest\nfriends--from openly shewing that I was VERY unhappy.\"--\n\nMarianne was quite subdued.--\n\n\"Oh! Elinor,\" she cried, \"you have made me hate myself for ever.--How\nbarbarous have I been to you!--you, who have been my only comfort, who\nhave borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only\nsuffering for me!--Is this my gratitude?--Is this the only return I can\nmake you?--Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying\nto do it away.\"\n\nThe tenderest caresses followed this confession.  In such a frame of\nmind as she was now in, Elinor had no difficulty in obtaining from her\nwhatever promise she required; and at her request, Marianne engaged\nnever to speak of the affair to any one with the least appearance of\nbitterness;--to meet Lucy without betraying the smallest increase of\ndislike to her;--and even to see Edward himself, if chance should bring\nthem together, without any diminution of her usual cordiality.-- These\nwere great concessions;--but where Marianne felt that she had injured,\nno reparation could be too much for her to make.\n\nShe performed her promise of being discreet, to admiration.--She\nattended to all that Mrs. Jennings had to say upon the subject, with an\nunchanging complexion, dissented from her in nothing, and was heard\nthree times to say, \"Yes, ma'am.\"--She listened to her praise of Lucy\nwith only moving from one chair to another, and when Mrs. Jennings\ntalked of Edward's affection, it cost her only a spasm in her\nthroat.--Such advances towards heroism in her sister, made Elinor feel\nequal to any thing herself.\n\nThe next morning brought a farther trial of it, in a visit from their\nbrother, who came with a most serious aspect to talk over the dreadful\naffair, and bring them news of his wife.\n\n\"You have heard, I suppose,\" said he with great solemnity, as soon as\nhe was seated, \"of the very shocking discovery that took place under\nour roof yesterday.\"\n\nThey all looked their assent; it seemed too awful a moment for speech.\n\n\"Your sister,\" he continued, \"has suffered dreadfully.  Mrs. Ferrars\ntoo--in short it has been a scene of such complicated distress--but I\nwill hope that the storm may be weathered without our being any of us\nquite overcome.  Poor Fanny! she was in hysterics all yesterday.  But I\nwould not alarm you too much.  Donavan says there is nothing materially\nto be apprehended; her constitution is a good one, and her resolution\nequal to any thing.  She has borne it all, with the fortitude of an\nangel!  She says she never shall think well of anybody again; and one\ncannot wonder at it, after being so deceived!--meeting with such\ningratitude, where so much kindness had been shewn, so much confidence\nhad been placed!  It was quite out of the benevolence of her heart,\nthat she had asked these young women to her house; merely because she\nthought they deserved some attention, were harmless, well-behaved\ngirls, and would be pleasant companions; for otherwise we both wished\nvery much to have invited you and Marianne to be with us, while your\nkind friend there, was attending her daughter.  And now to be so\nrewarded!  'I wish, with all my heart,' says poor Fanny in her\naffectionate way, 'that we had asked your sisters instead of them.'\"\n\nHere he stopped to be thanked; which being done, he went on.\n\n\"What poor Mrs. Ferrars suffered, when first Fanny broke it to her, is\nnot to be described.  While she with the truest affection had been\nplanning a most eligible connection for him, was it to be supposed that\nhe could be all the time secretly engaged to another person!--such a\nsuspicion could never have entered her head!  If she suspected ANY\nprepossession elsewhere, it could not be in THAT quarter.  'THERE, to\nbe sure,' said she, 'I might have thought myself safe.' She was quite\nin an agony.  We consulted together, however, as to what should be\ndone, and at last she determined to send for Edward.  He came.  But I\nam sorry to relate what ensued.  All that Mrs. Ferrars could say to\nmake him put an end to the engagement, assisted too as you may well\nsuppose by my arguments, and Fanny's entreaties, was of no avail.\nDuty, affection, every thing was disregarded.  I never thought Edward\nso stubborn, so unfeeling before.  His mother explained to him her\nliberal designs, in case of his marrying Miss Morton; told him she\nwould settle on him the Norfolk estate, which, clear of land-tax,\nbrings in a good thousand a-year; offered even, when matters grew\ndesperate, to make it twelve hundred; and in opposition to this, if he\nstill persisted in this low connection, represented to him the certain\npenury that must attend the match.  His own two thousand pounds she\nprotested should be his all; she would never see him again; and so far\nwould she be from affording him the smallest assistance, that if he\nwere to enter into any profession with a view of better support, she\nwould do all in her power to prevent him advancing in it.\"\n\nHere Marianne, in an ecstasy of indignation, clapped her hands\ntogether, and cried, \"Gracious God!  can this be possible!\"\n\n\"Well may you wonder, Marianne,\" replied her brother, \"at the obstinacy\nwhich could resist such arguments as these.  Your exclamation is very\nnatural.\"\n\nMarianne was going to retort, but she remembered her promises, and\nforbore.\n\n\"All this, however,\" he continued, \"was urged in vain.  Edward said\nvery little; but what he did say, was in the most determined manner.\nNothing should prevail on him to give up his engagement.  He would\nstand to it, cost him what it might.\"\n\n\"Then,\" cried Mrs. Jennings with blunt sincerity, no longer able to be\nsilent, \"he has acted like an honest man! I beg your pardon, Mr.\nDashwood, but if he had done otherwise, I should have thought him a\nrascal.  I have some little concern in the business, as well as\nyourself, for Lucy Steele is my cousin, and I believe there is not a\nbetter kind of girl in the world, nor one who more deserves a good\nhusband.\"\n\nJohn Dashwood was greatly astonished; but his nature was calm, not open\nto provocation, and he never wished to offend anybody, especially\nanybody of good fortune.  He therefore replied, without any resentment,\n\n\"I would by no means speak disrespectfully of any relation of yours,\nmadam.  Miss Lucy Steele is, I dare say, a very deserving young woman,\nbut in the present case you know, the connection must be impossible.\nAnd to have entered into a secret engagement with a young man under her\nuncle's care, the son of a woman especially of such very large fortune\nas Mrs. Ferrars, is perhaps, altogether a little extraordinary. In\nshort, I do not mean to reflect upon the behaviour of any person whom\nyou have a regard for, Mrs. Jennings.  We all wish her extremely happy;\nand Mrs. Ferrars's conduct throughout the whole, has been such as every\nconscientious, good mother, in like circumstances, would adopt.  It has\nbeen dignified and liberal.  Edward has drawn his own lot, and I fear\nit will be a bad one.\"\n\nMarianne sighed out her similar apprehension; and Elinor's heart wrung\nfor the feelings of Edward, while braving his mother's threats, for a\nwoman who could not reward him.\n\n\"Well, sir,\" said Mrs. Jennings, \"and how did it end?\"\n\n\"I am sorry to say, ma'am, in a most unhappy rupture:-- Edward is\ndismissed for ever from his mother's notice.  He left her house\nyesterday, but where he is gone, or whether he is still in town, I do\nnot know; for WE of course can make no inquiry.\"\n\n\"Poor young man!--and what is to become of him?\"\n\n\"What, indeed, ma'am!  It is a melancholy consideration.  Born to the\nprospect of such affluence!  I cannot conceive a situation more\ndeplorable.  The interest of two thousand pounds--how can a man live on\nit?--and when to that is added the recollection, that he might, but for\nhis own folly, within three months have been in the receipt of two\nthousand, five hundred a-year (for Miss Morton has thirty thousand\npounds,) I cannot picture to myself a more wretched condition.  We must\nall feel for him; and the more so, because it is totally out of our\npower to assist him.\"\n\n\"Poor young man!\" cried Mrs. Jennings, \"I am sure he should be very\nwelcome to bed and board at my house; and so I would tell him if I\ncould see him.  It is not fit that he should be living about at his own\ncharge now, at lodgings and taverns.\"\n\nElinor's heart thanked her for such kindness towards Edward, though she\ncould not forbear smiling at the form of it.\n\n\"If he would only have done as well by himself,\" said John Dashwood,\n\"as all his friends were disposed to do by him, he might now have been\nin his proper situation, and would have wanted for nothing.  But as it\nis, it must be out of anybody's power to assist him.  And there is one\nthing more preparing against him, which must be worse than all--his\nmother has determined, with a very natural kind of spirit, to settle\nTHAT estate upon Robert immediately, which might have been Edward's, on\nproper conditions.  I left her this morning with her lawyer, talking\nover the business.\"\n\n\"Well!\" said Mrs. Jennings, \"that is HER revenge.  Everybody has a way\nof their own.  But I don't think mine would be, to make one son\nindependent, because another had plagued me.\"\n\nMarianne got up and walked about the room.\n\n\"Can anything be more galling to the spirit of a man,\" continued John,\n\"than to see his younger brother in possession of an estate which might\nhave been his own?  Poor Edward!  I feel for him sincerely.\"\n\nA few minutes more spent in the same kind of effusion, concluded his\nvisit; and with repeated assurances to his sisters that he really\nbelieved there was no material danger in Fanny's indisposition, and\nthat they need not therefore be very uneasy about it, he went away;\nleaving the three ladies unanimous in their sentiments on the present\noccasion, as far at least as it regarded Mrs. Ferrars's conduct, the\nDashwoods', and Edward's.\n\nMarianne's indignation burst forth as soon as he quitted the room; and\nas her vehemence made reserve impossible in Elinor, and unnecessary in\nMrs. Jennings, they all joined in a very spirited critique upon the\nparty.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Jennings was very warm in her praise of Edward's conduct, but only\nElinor and Marianne understood its true merit.  THEY only knew how\nlittle he had had to tempt him to be disobedient, and how small was the\nconsolation, beyond the consciousness of doing right, that could remain\nto him in the loss of friends and fortune.  Elinor gloried in his\nintegrity; and Marianne forgave all his offences in compassion for his\npunishment.  But though confidence between them was, by this public\ndiscovery, restored to its proper state, it was not a subject on which\neither of them were fond of dwelling when alone.  Elinor avoided it\nupon principle, as tending to fix still more upon her thoughts, by the\ntoo warm, too positive assurances of Marianne, that belief of Edward's\ncontinued affection for herself which she rather wished to do away; and\nMarianne's courage soon failed her, in trying to converse upon a topic\nwhich always left her more dissatisfied with herself than ever, by the\ncomparison it necessarily produced between Elinor's conduct and her own.\n\nShe felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had\nhoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of\ncontinual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never\nexerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence,\nwithout the hope of amendment.  Her mind was so much weakened that she\nstill fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only\ndispirited her more.\n\nNothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, of affairs\nin Harley Street, or Bartlett's Buildings.  But though so much of the\nmatter was known to them already, that Mrs. Jennings might have had\nenough to do in spreading that knowledge farther, without seeking after\nmore, she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort and\ninquiry to her cousins as soon as she could; and nothing but the\nhindrance of more visitors than usual, had prevented her going to them\nwithin that time.\n\nThe third day succeeding their knowledge of the particulars, was so\nfine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw many to Kensington Gardens,\nthough it was only the second week in March.  Mrs. Jennings and Elinor\nwere of the number; but Marianne, who knew that the Willoughbys were\nagain in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, chose rather\nto stay at home, than venture into so public a place.\n\nAn intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Jennings joined them soon after they\nentered the Gardens, and Elinor was not sorry that by her continuing\nwith them, and engaging all Mrs. Jennings's conversation, she was\nherself left to quiet reflection.  She saw nothing of the Willoughbys,\nnothing of Edward, and for some time nothing of anybody who could by\nany chance whether grave or gay, be interesting to her.  But at last\nshe found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Steele, who,\nthough looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting\nthem, and on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of\nMrs. Jennings, left her own party for a short time, to join their's.\nMrs. Jennings immediately whispered to Elinor,\n\n\"Get it all out of her, my dear.  She will tell you any thing if you\nask.  You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke.\"\n\nIt was lucky, however, for Mrs. Jennings's curiosity and Elinor's too,\nthat she would tell any thing WITHOUT being asked; for nothing would\notherwise have been learnt.\n\n\"I am so glad to meet you;\" said Miss Steele, taking her familiarly by\nthe arm--\"for I wanted to see you of all things in the world.\"  And\nthen lowering her voice, \"I suppose Mrs. Jennings has heard all about\nit.  Is she angry?\"\n\n\"Not at all, I believe, with you.\"\n\n\"That is a good thing.  And Lady Middleton, is SHE angry?\"\n\n\"I cannot suppose it possible that she should be.\"\n\n\"I am monstrous glad of it.  Good gracious!  I have had such a time of\nit!  I never saw Lucy in such a rage in my life.  She vowed at first\nshe would never trim me up a new bonnet, nor do any thing else for me\nagain, so long as she lived; but now she is quite come to, and we are\nas good friends as ever.  Look, she made me this bow to my hat, and put\nin the feather last night.  There now, YOU are going to laugh at me\ntoo.  But why should not I wear pink ribbons?  I do not care if it IS\nthe Doctor's favourite colour.  I am sure, for my part, I should never\nhave known he DID like it better than any other colour, if he had not\nhappened to say so.  My cousins have been so plaguing me!  I declare\nsometimes I do not know which way to look before them.\"\n\nShe had wandered away to a subject on which Elinor had nothing to say,\nand therefore soon judged it expedient to find her way back again to\nthe first.\n\n\"Well, but Miss Dashwood,\" speaking triumphantly, \"people may say what\nthey chuse about Mr. Ferrars's declaring he would not have Lucy, for it\nis no such thing I can tell you; and it is quite a shame for such\nill-natured reports to be spread abroad.  Whatever Lucy might think\nabout it herself, you know, it was no business of other people to set\nit down for certain.\"\n\n\"I never heard any thing of the kind hinted at before, I assure you,\"\nsaid Elinor.\n\n\"Oh, did not you?  But it WAS said, I know, very well, and by more than\none; for Miss Godby told Miss Sparks, that nobody in their senses could\nexpect Mr. Ferrars to give up a woman like Miss Morton, with thirty\nthousand pounds to her fortune, for Lucy Steele that had nothing at\nall; and I had it from Miss Sparks myself.  And besides that, my cousin\nRichard said himself, that when it came to the point he was afraid Mr.\nFerrars would be off; and when Edward did not come near us for three\ndays, I could not tell what to think myself; and I believe in my heart\nLucy gave it up all for lost; for we came away from your brother's\nWednesday, and we saw nothing of him not all Thursday, Friday, and\nSaturday, and did not know what was become of him.  Once Lucy thought\nto write to him, but then her spirits rose against that.  However this\nmorning he came just as we came home from church; and then it all came\nout, how he had been sent for Wednesday to Harley Street, and been\ntalked to by his mother and all of them, and how he had declared before\nthem all that he loved nobody but Lucy, and nobody but Lucy would he\nhave.  And how he had been so worried by what passed, that as soon as\nhe had went away from his mother's house, he had got upon his horse,\nand rid into the country, some where or other; and how he had stayed\nabout at an inn all Thursday and Friday, on purpose to get the better\nof it.  And after thinking it all over and over again, he said, it\nseemed to him as if, now he had no fortune, and no nothing at all, it\nwould be quite unkind to keep her on to the engagement, because it must\nbe for her loss, for he had nothing but two thousand pounds, and no\nhope of any thing else; and if he was to go into orders, as he had some\nthoughts, he could get nothing but a curacy, and how was they to live\nupon that?--He could not bear to think of her doing no better, and so\nhe begged, if she had the least mind for it, to put an end to the\nmatter directly, and leave him shift for himself.  I heard him say all\nthis as plain as could possibly be.  And it was entirely for HER sake,\nand upon HER account, that he said a word about being off, and not upon\nhis own.  I will take my oath he never dropt a syllable of being tired\nof her, or of wishing to marry Miss Morton, or any thing like it.  But,\nto be sure, Lucy would not give ear to such kind of talking; so she\ntold him directly (with a great deal about sweet and love, you know,\nand all that--Oh, la! one can't repeat such kind of things you\nknow)--she told him directly, she had not the least mind in the world\nto be off, for she could live with him upon a trifle, and how little so\never he might have, she should be very glad to have it all, you know,\nor something of the kind.  So then he was monstrous happy, and talked\non some time about what they should do, and they agreed he should take\norders directly, and they must wait to be married till he got a living.\nAnd just then I could not hear any more, for my cousin called from\nbelow to tell me Mrs. Richardson was come in her coach, and would take\none of us to Kensington Gardens; so I was forced to go into the room\nand interrupt them, to ask Lucy if she would like to go, but she did\nnot care to leave Edward; so I just run up stairs and put on a pair of\nsilk stockings and came off with the Richardsons.\"\n\n\"I do not understand what you mean by interrupting them,\" said Elinor;\n\"you were all in the same room together, were not you?\"\n\n\"No, indeed, not us.  La! Miss Dashwood, do you think people make love\nwhen any body else is by?  Oh, for shame!--To be sure you must know\nbetter than that.  (Laughing affectedly.)--No, no; they were shut up in\nthe drawing-room together, and all I heard was only by listening at the\ndoor.\"\n\n\"How!\" cried Elinor; \"have you been repeating to me what you only\nlearnt yourself by listening at the door?  I am sorry I did not know it\nbefore; for I certainly would not have suffered you to give me\nparticulars of a conversation which you ought not to have known\nyourself.  How could you behave so unfairly by your sister?\"\n\n\"Oh, la! there is nothing in THAT.  I only stood at the door, and heard\nwhat I could.  And I am sure Lucy would have done just the same by me;\nfor a year or two back, when Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets\ntogether, she never made any bones of hiding in a closet, or behind a\nchimney-board, on purpose to hear what we said.\"\n\nElinor tried to talk of something else; but Miss Steele could not be\nkept beyond a couple of minutes, from what was uppermost in her mind.\n\n\"Edward talks of going to Oxford soon,\" said she; \"but now he is\nlodging at No. --, Pall Mall.  What an ill-natured woman his mother is,\nan't she? And your brother and sister were not very kind! However, I\nshan't say anything against them to YOU; and to be sure they did send\nus home in their own chariot, which was more than I looked for.  And\nfor my part, I was all in a fright for fear your sister should ask us\nfor the huswifes she had gave us a day or two before; but, however,\nnothing was said about them, and I took care to keep mine out of sight.\nEdward have got some business at Oxford, he says; so he must go there\nfor a time; and after THAT, as soon as he can light upon a Bishop, he\nwill be ordained.  I wonder what curacy he will get!--Good gracious!\n(giggling as she spoke) I'd lay my life I know what my cousins will\nsay, when they hear of it.  They will tell me I should write to the\nDoctor, to get Edward the curacy of his new living.  I know they will;\nbut I am sure I would not do such a thing for all the world.-- 'La!' I\nshall say directly, 'I wonder how you could think of such a thing?  I\nwrite to the Doctor, indeed!'\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Elinor, \"it is a comfort to be prepared against the worst.\nYou have got your answer ready.\"\n\nMiss Steele was going to reply on the same subject, but the approach of\nher own party made another more necessary.\n\n\"Oh, la! here come the Richardsons.  I had a vast deal more to say to\nyou, but I must not stay away from them not any longer.  I assure you\nthey are very genteel people.  He makes a monstrous deal of money, and\nthey keep their own coach.  I have not time to speak to Mrs. Jennings\nabout it myself, but pray tell her I am quite happy to hear she is not\nin anger against us, and Lady Middleton the same; and if anything\nshould happen to take you and your sister away, and Mrs. Jennings\nshould want company, I am sure we should be very glad to come and stay\nwith her for as long a time as she likes.  I suppose Lady Middleton\nwon't ask us any more this bout.  Good-by; I am sorry Miss Marianne was\nnot here.  Remember me kindly to her.  La! if you have not got your\nspotted muslin on!--I wonder you was not afraid of its being torn.\"\n\nSuch was her parting concern; for after this, she had time only to pay\nher farewell compliments to Mrs. Jennings, before her company was\nclaimed by Mrs. Richardson; and Elinor was left in possession of\nknowledge which might feed her powers of reflection some time, though\nshe had learnt very little more than what had been already foreseen and\nforeplanned in her own mind.  Edward's marriage with Lucy was as firmly\ndetermined on, and the time of its taking place remained as absolutely\nuncertain, as she had concluded it would be;--every thing depended,\nexactly after her expectation, on his getting that preferment, of\nwhich, at present, there seemed not the smallest chance.\n\nAs soon as they returned to the carriage, Mrs. Jennings was eager for\ninformation; but as Elinor wished to spread as little as possible\nintelligence that had in the first place been so unfairly obtained, she\nconfined herself to the brief repetition of such simple particulars, as\nshe felt assured that Lucy, for the sake of her own consequence, would\nchoose to have known.  The continuance of their engagement, and the\nmeans that were able to be taken for promoting its end, was all her\ncommunication; and this produced from Mrs. Jennings the following\nnatural remark.\n\n\"Wait for his having a living!--ay, we all know how THAT will\nend:--they will wait a twelvemonth, and finding no good comes of it,\nwill set down upon a curacy of fifty pounds a-year, with the interest\nof his two thousand pounds, and what little matter Mr. Steele and Mr.\nPratt can give her.--Then they will have a child every year! and Lord\nhelp 'em! how poor they will be!--I must see what I can give them\ntowards furnishing their house.  Two maids and two men, indeed!--as I\ntalked of t'other day.--No, no, they must get a stout girl of all\nworks.-- Betty's sister would never do for them NOW.\"\n\nThe next morning brought Elinor a letter by the two-penny post from\nLucy herself.  It was as follows:\n\n                    \"Bartlett's Building, March.\n\n     \"I hope my dear Miss Dashwood will excuse the\n     liberty I take of writing to her; but I know your\n     friendship for me will make you pleased to hear such\n     a good account of myself and my dear Edward, after\n     all the troubles we have went through lately,\n     therefore will make no more apologies, but proceed\n     to say that, thank God! though we have suffered\n     dreadfully, we are both quite well now, and as happy\n     as we must always be in one another's love.  We have\n     had great trials, and great persecutions, but\n     however, at the same time, gratefully acknowledge\n     many friends, yourself not the least among them,\n     whose great kindness I shall always thankfully\n     remember, as will Edward too, who I have told of\n     it.  I am sure you will be glad to hear, as likewise\n     dear Mrs. Jennings, I spent two happy hours with\n     him yesterday afternoon, he would not hear of our\n     parting, though earnestly did I, as I thought my\n     duty required, urge him to it for prudence sake,\n     and would have parted for ever on the spot, would\n     he consent to it; but he said it should never be,\n     he did not regard his mother's anger, while he could\n     have my affections; our prospects are not very\n     bright, to be sure, but we must wait, and hope for\n     the best; he will be ordained shortly; and should\n     it ever be in your power to recommend him to any\n     body that has a living to bestow, am very sure you\n     will not forget us, and dear Mrs. Jennings too,\n     trust she will speak a good word for us to Sir John,\n     or Mr. Palmer, or any friend that may be able to\n     assist us.--Poor Anne was much to blame for what\n     she did, but she did it for the best, so I say\n     nothing; hope Mrs. Jennings won't think it too much\n     trouble to give us a call, should she come this way\n     any morning, 'twould be a great kindness, and my\n     cousins would be proud to know her.--My paper reminds\n     me to conclude; and begging to be most gratefully\n     and respectfully remembered to her, and to Sir John,\n     and Lady Middleton, and the dear children, when you\n     chance to see them, and love to Miss Marianne,\n\n                                      \"I am, &c.\"\n\nAs soon as Elinor had finished it, she performed what she concluded to\nbe its writer's real design, by placing it in the hands of Mrs.\nJennings, who read it aloud with many comments of satisfaction and\npraise.\n\n\"Very well indeed!--how prettily she writes!--aye, that was quite\nproper to let him be off if he would.  That was just like Lucy.--Poor\nsoul! I wish I COULD get him a living, with all my heart.--She calls me\ndear Mrs. Jennings, you see.  She is a good-hearted girl as ever\nlived.--Very well upon my word.  That sentence is very prettily turned.\nYes, yes, I will go and see her, sure enough.  How attentive she is, to\nthink of every body!--Thank you, my dear, for shewing it me.  It is as\npretty a letter as ever I saw, and does Lucy's head and heart great\ncredit.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Miss Dashwoods had now been rather more than two months in town,\nand Marianne's impatience to be gone increased every day.  She sighed\nfor the air, the liberty, the quiet of the country; and fancied that if\nany place could give her ease, Barton must do it.  Elinor was hardly\nless anxious than herself for their removal, and only so much less bent\non its being effected immediately, as that she was conscious of the\ndifficulties of so long a journey, which Marianne could not be brought\nto acknowledge.  She began, however, seriously to turn her thoughts\ntowards its accomplishment, and had already mentioned their wishes to\ntheir kind hostess, who resisted them with all the eloquence of her\ngood-will, when a plan was suggested, which, though detaining them from\nhome yet a few weeks longer, appeared to Elinor altogether much more\neligible than any other. The Palmers were to remove to Cleveland about\nthe end of March, for the Easter holidays; and Mrs. Jennings, with both\nher friends, received a very warm invitation from Charlotte to go with\nthem.  This would not, in itself, have been sufficient for the delicacy\nof Miss Dashwood;--but it was inforced with so much real politeness by\nMr. Palmer himself, as, joined to the very great amendment of his\nmanners towards them since her sister had been known to be unhappy,\ninduced her to accept it with pleasure.\n\nWhen she told Marianne what she had done, however, her first reply was\nnot very auspicious.\n\n\"Cleveland!\"--she cried, with great agitation.  \"No, I cannot go to\nCleveland.\"--\n\n\"You forget,\" said Elinor gently, \"that its situation is not...that it\nis not in the neighbourhood of...\"\n\n\"But it is in Somersetshire.--I cannot go into Somersetshire.--There,\nwhere I looked forward to going...No, Elinor, you cannot expect me to\ngo there.\"\n\nElinor would not argue upon the propriety of overcoming such\nfeelings;--she only endeavoured to counteract them by working on\nothers;--represented it, therefore, as a measure which would fix the\ntime of her returning to that dear mother, whom she so much wished to\nsee, in a more eligible, more comfortable manner, than any other plan\ncould do, and perhaps without any greater delay.  From Cleveland, which\nwas within a few miles of Bristol, the distance to Barton was not\nbeyond one day, though a long day's journey; and their mother's servant\nmight easily come there to attend them down; and as there could be no\noccasion of their staying above a week at Cleveland, they might now be\nat home in little more than three weeks' time.  As Marianne's affection\nfor her mother was sincere, it must triumph with little difficulty,\nover the imaginary evils she had started.\n\nMrs. Jennings was so far from being weary of her guests, that she\npressed them very earnestly to return with her again from Cleveland.\nElinor was grateful for the attention, but it could not alter her\ndesign; and their mother's concurrence being readily gained, every\nthing relative to their return was arranged as far as it could be;--and\nMarianne found some relief in drawing up a statement of the hours that\nwere yet to divide her from Barton.\n\n\"Ah! Colonel, I do not know what you and I shall do without the Miss\nDashwoods;\"--was Mrs. Jennings's address to him when he first called on\nher, after their leaving her was settled--\"for they are quite resolved\nupon going home from the Palmers;--and how forlorn we shall be, when I\ncome back!--Lord! we shall sit and gape at one another as dull as two\ncats.\"\n\nPerhaps Mrs. Jennings was in hopes, by this vigorous sketch of their\nfuture ennui, to provoke him to make that offer, which might give\nhimself an escape from it;--and if so, she had soon afterwards good\nreason to think her object gained; for, on Elinor's moving to the\nwindow to take more expeditiously the dimensions of a print, which she\nwas going to copy for her friend, he followed her to it with a look of\nparticular meaning, and conversed with her there for several minutes.\nThe effect of his discourse on the lady too, could not escape her\nobservation, for though she was too honorable to listen, and had even\nchanged her seat, on purpose that she might NOT hear, to one close by\nthe piano forte on which Marianne was playing, she could not keep\nherself from seeing that Elinor changed colour, attended with\nagitation, and was too intent on what he said to pursue her\nemployment.-- Still farther in confirmation of her hopes, in the\ninterval of Marianne's turning from one lesson to another, some words\nof the Colonel's inevitably reached her ear, in which he seemed to be\napologising for the badness of his house.  This set the matter beyond a\ndoubt.  She wondered, indeed, at his thinking it necessary to do so;\nbut supposed it to be the proper etiquette.  What Elinor said in reply\nshe could not distinguish, but judged from the motion of her lips, that\nshe did not think THAT any material objection;--and Mrs. Jennings\ncommended her in her heart for being so honest.  They then talked on\nfor a few minutes longer without her catching a syllable, when another\nlucky stop in Marianne's performance brought her these words in the\nColonel's calm voice,--\n\n\"I am afraid it cannot take place very soon.\"\n\nAstonished and shocked at so unlover-like a speech, she was almost\nready to cry out, \"Lord! what should hinder it?\"--but checking her\ndesire, confined herself to this silent ejaculation.\n\n\"This is very strange!--sure he need not wait to be older.\"\n\nThis delay on the Colonel's side, however, did not seem to offend or\nmortify his fair companion in the least, for on their breaking up the\nconference soon afterwards, and moving different ways, Mrs. Jennings\nvery plainly heard Elinor say, and with a voice which shewed her to\nfeel what she said,\n\n\"I shall always think myself very much obliged to you.\"\n\nMrs. Jennings was delighted with her gratitude, and only wondered that\nafter hearing such a sentence, the Colonel should be able to take leave\nof them, as he immediately did, with the utmost sang-froid, and go away\nwithout making her any reply!--She had not thought her old friend could\nhave made so indifferent a suitor.\n\nWhat had really passed between them was to this effect.\n\n\"I have heard,\" said he, with great compassion, \"of the injustice your\nfriend Mr. Ferrars has suffered from his family; for if I understand\nthe matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering\nin his engagement with a very deserving young woman.-- Have I been\nrightly informed?--Is it so?--\"\n\nElinor told him that it was.\n\n\"The cruelty, the impolitic cruelty,\"--he replied, with great\nfeeling,--\"of dividing, or attempting to divide, two young people long\nattached to each other, is terrible.-- Mrs. Ferrars does not know what\nshe may be doing--what she may drive her son to.  I have seen Mr.\nFerrars two or three times in Harley Street, and am much pleased with\nhim.  He is not a young man with whom one can be intimately acquainted\nin a short time, but I have seen enough of him to wish him well for his\nown sake, and as a friend of yours, I wish it still more.  I understand\nthat he intends to take orders.  Will you be so good as to tell him\nthat the living of Delaford, now just vacant, as I am informed by this\nday's post, is his, if he think it worth his acceptance--but THAT,\nperhaps, so unfortunately circumstanced as he is now, it may be\nnonsense to appear to doubt; I only wish it were more  valuable.-- It\nis a rectory, but a small one; the late incumbent, I believe, did not\nmake more than 200 L per annum, and though it is certainly capable of\nimprovement, I fear, not to such an amount as to afford him a very\ncomfortable income.  Such as it is, however, my pleasure in presenting\nit to him, will be very great.  Pray assure him of it.\"\n\nElinor's astonishment at this commission could hardly have been\ngreater, had the Colonel been really making her an offer of his hand.\nThe preferment, which only two days before she had considered as\nhopeless for Edward, was already provided to enable him to marry;--and\nSHE, of all people in the world, was fixed on to bestow it!--Her\nemotion was such as Mrs. Jennings had attributed to a very different\ncause;--but whatever minor feelings less pure, less pleasing, might\nhave a share in that emotion, her esteem for the general benevolence,\nand her gratitude for the particular friendship, which together\nprompted Colonel Brandon to this act, were strongly felt, and warmly\nexpressed.  She thanked him for it with all her heart, spoke of\nEdward's principles and disposition with that praise which she knew\nthem to deserve; and promised to undertake the commission with\npleasure, if it were really his wish to put off so agreeable an office\nto another.  But at the same time, she could not help thinking that no\none could so well perform it as himself.  It was an office in short,\nfrom which, unwilling to give Edward the pain of receiving an\nobligation from HER, she would have been very glad to be spared\nherself;-- but Colonel Brandon, on motives of equal delicacy, declining\nit likewise, still seemed so desirous of its being given through her\nmeans, that she would not on any account make farther opposition.\nEdward, she believed, was still in town, and fortunately she had heard\nhis address from Miss Steele.  She could undertake therefore to inform\nhim of it, in the course of the day.  After this had been settled,\nColonel Brandon began to talk of his own advantage in securing so\nrespectable and agreeable a neighbour, and THEN it was that he\nmentioned with regret, that the house was small and indifferent;--an\nevil which Elinor, as Mrs. Jennings had supposed her to do, made very\nlight of, at least as far as regarded its size.\n\n\"The smallness of the house,\" said she, \"I cannot imagine any\ninconvenience to them, for it will be in proportion to their family and\nincome.\"\n\nBy which the Colonel was surprised to find that SHE was considering Mr.\nFerrars's marriage as the certain consequence of the presentation; for\nhe did not suppose it possible that Delaford living could supply such\nan income, as anybody in his style of life would venture to settle\non--and he said so.\n\n\"This little rectory CAN do no more than make Mr. Ferrars comfortable\nas a bachelor; it cannot enable him to marry.  I am sorry to say that\nmy patronage ends with this; and my interest is hardly more extensive.\nIf, however, by an unforeseen chance it should be in my power to serve\nhim farther, I must think very differently of him from what I now do,\nif I am not as ready to be useful to him then as I sincerely wish I\ncould be at present.  What I am now doing indeed, seems nothing at all,\nsince it can advance him so little towards what must be his principal,\nhis only object of happiness.  His marriage must still be a distant\ngood;--at least, I am afraid it cannot take place very soon.--\"\n\nSuch was the sentence which, when misunderstood, so justly offended the\ndelicate feelings of Mrs. Jennings; but after this narration of what\nreally passed between Colonel Brandon and Elinor, while they stood at\nthe window, the gratitude expressed by the latter on their parting, may\nperhaps appear in general, not less reasonably excited, nor less\nproperly worded than if it had arisen from an offer of marriage.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Well, Miss Dashwood,\" said Mrs. Jennings, sagaciously smiling, as soon\nas the gentleman had withdrawn, \"I do not ask you what the Colonel has\nbeen saying to you; for though, upon my honour, I TRIED to keep out of\nhearing, I could not help catching enough to understand his business.\nAnd I assure you I never was better pleased in my life, and I wish you\njoy of it with all my heart.\"\n\n\"Thank you, ma'am,\" said Elinor.  \"It is a matter of great joy to me;\nand I feel the goodness of Colonel Brandon most sensibly.  There are\nnot many men who would act as he has done.  Few people who have so\ncompassionate a heart!  I never was more astonished in my life.\"\n\n\"Lord! my dear, you are very modest.  I an't the least astonished at it\nin the world, for I have often thought of late, there was nothing more\nlikely to happen.\"\n\n\"You judged from your knowledge of the Colonel's general benevolence;\nbut at least you could not foresee that the opportunity would so very\nsoon occur.\"\n\n\"Opportunity!\" repeated Mrs. Jennings--\"Oh! as to that, when a man has\nonce made up his mind to such a thing, somehow or other he will soon\nfind an opportunity.  Well, my dear, I wish you joy of it again and\nagain; and if ever there was a happy couple in the world, I think I\nshall soon know where to look for them.\"\n\n\"You mean to go to Delaford after them I suppose,\" said Elinor, with a\nfaint smile.\n\n\"Aye, my dear, that I do, indeed.  And as to the house being a bad one,\nI do not know what the Colonel would be at, for it is as good a one as\never I saw.\"\n\n\"He spoke of its being out of repair.\"\n\n\"Well, and whose fault is that? why don't he repair it?--who should do\nit but himself?\"\n\nThey were interrupted by the servant's coming in to announce the\ncarriage being at the door; and Mrs. Jennings immediately preparing to\ngo, said,--\n\n\"Well, my dear, I must be gone before I have had half my talk out.\nBut, however, we may have it all over in the evening; for we shall be\nquite alone.  I do not ask you to go with me, for I dare say your mind\nis too full of the matter to care for company; and besides, you must\nlong to tell your sister all about it.\"\n\nMarianne had left the room before the conversation began.\n\n\"Certainly, ma'am, I shall tell Marianne of it; but I shall not mention\nit at present to any body else.\"\n\n\"Oh! very well,\" said Mrs. Jennings rather disappointed.  \"Then you\nwould not have me tell it to Lucy, for I think of going as far as\nHolborn to-day.\"\n\n\"No, ma'am, not even Lucy if you please.  One day's delay will not be\nvery material; and till I have written to Mr. Ferrars, I think it ought\nnot to be mentioned to any body else.  I shall do THAT directly.  It is\nof importance that no time should be lost with him, for he will of\ncourse have much to do relative to his ordination.\"\n\nThis speech at first puzzled Mrs. Jennings exceedingly.  Why Mr.\nFerrars was to have been written to about it in such a hurry, she could\nnot immediately comprehend.  A few moments' reflection, however,\nproduced a very happy idea, and she exclaimed;--\n\n\"Oh, ho!--I understand you.  Mr. Ferrars is to be the man.  Well, so\nmuch the better for him.  Ay, to be sure, he must be ordained in\nreadiness; and I am very glad to find things are so forward between\nyou.  But, my dear, is not this rather out of character?  Should not\nthe Colonel write himself?--sure, he is the proper person.\"\n\nElinor did not quite understand the beginning of Mrs. Jennings's\nspeech, neither did she think it worth inquiring into; and therefore\nonly replied to its conclusion.\n\n\"Colonel Brandon is so delicate a man, that he rather wished any one to\nannounce his intentions to Mr. Ferrars than himself.\"\n\n\"And so YOU are forced to do it.  Well THAT is an odd kind of delicacy!\nHowever, I will not disturb you (seeing her preparing to write.)  You\nknow your own concerns best.  So goodby, my dear.  I have not heard of\nany thing to please me so well since Charlotte was brought to bed.\"\n\nAnd away she went; but returning again in a moment,\n\n\"I have just been thinking of Betty's sister, my dear.  I should be\nvery glad to get her so good a mistress.  But whether she would do for\na lady's maid, I am sure I can't tell.  She is an excellent housemaid,\nand works very well at her needle.  However, you will think of all that\nat your leisure.\"\n\n\"Certainly, ma'am,\" replied Elinor, not hearing much of what she said,\nand more anxious to be alone, than to be mistress of the subject.\n\nHow she should begin--how she should express herself in her note to\nEdward, was now all her concern.  The particular circumstances between\nthem made a difficulty of that which to any other person would have\nbeen the easiest thing in the world; but she equally feared to say too\nmuch or too little, and sat deliberating over her paper, with the pen\nin her hand, till broken in on by the entrance of Edward himself.\n\nHe had met Mrs. Jennings at the door in her way to the carriage, as he\ncame to leave his farewell card; and she, after apologising for not\nreturning herself, had obliged him to enter, by saying that Miss\nDashwood was above, and wanted to speak with him on very particular\nbusiness.\n\nElinor had just been congratulating herself, in the midst of her\nperplexity, that however difficult it might be to express herself\nproperly by letter, it was at least preferable to giving the\ninformation by word of mouth, when her visitor entered, to force her\nupon this greatest exertion of all.  Her astonishment and confusion\nwere very great on his so sudden appearance.  She had not seen him\nbefore since his engagement became public, and therefore not since his\nknowing her to be acquainted with it; which, with the consciousness of\nwhat she had been thinking of, and what she had to tell him, made her\nfeel particularly uncomfortable for some minutes.  He too was much\ndistressed; and they sat down together in a most promising state of\nembarrassment.--Whether he had asked her pardon for his intrusion on\nfirst coming into the room, he could not recollect; but determining to\nbe on the safe side, he made his apology in form as soon as he could\nsay any thing, after taking a chair.\n\n\"Mrs. Jennings told me,\" said he, \"that you wished to speak with me, at\nleast I understood her so--or I certainly should not have intruded on\nyou in such a manner; though at the same time, I should have been\nextremely sorry to leave London without seeing you and your sister;\nespecially as it will most likely be some time--it is not probable that\nI should soon have the pleasure of meeting you again.  I go to Oxford\ntomorrow.\"\n\n\"You would not have gone, however,\" said Elinor, recovering herself,\nand determined to get over what she so much dreaded as soon as\npossible, \"without receiving our good wishes, even if we had not been\nable to give them in person.  Mrs. Jennings was quite right in what she\nsaid.  I have something of consequence to inform you of, which I was on\nthe point of communicating by paper.  I am charged with a most\nagreeable office (breathing rather faster than usual as she spoke.)\nColonel Brandon, who was here only ten minutes ago, has desired me to\nsay, that understanding you mean to take orders, he has great pleasure\nin offering you the living of Delaford now just vacant, and only wishes\nit were more valuable.  Allow me to congratulate you on having so\nrespectable and well-judging a friend, and to join in his wish that the\nliving--it is about two hundred a-year--were much more considerable,\nand such as might better enable you to--as might be more than a\ntemporary accommodation to yourself--such, in short, as might establish\nall your views of happiness.\"\n\nWhat Edward felt, as he could not say it himself, it cannot be expected\nthat any one else should say for him.  He LOOKED all the astonishment\nwhich such unexpected, such unthought-of information could not fail of\nexciting; but he said only these two words,\n\n\"Colonel Brandon!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" continued Elinor, gathering more resolution, as some of the\nworst was over, \"Colonel Brandon means it as a testimony of his concern\nfor what has lately passed--for the cruel situation in which the\nunjustifiable conduct of your family has placed you--a concern which I\nam sure Marianne, myself, and all your friends, must share; and\nlikewise as a proof of his high esteem for your general character, and\nhis particular approbation of your behaviour on the present occasion.\"\n\n\"Colonel Brandon give ME a living!--Can it be possible?\"\n\n\"The unkindness of your own relations has made you astonished to find\nfriendship any where.\"\n\n\"No,\" replied he, with sudden consciousness, \"not to find it in YOU;\nfor I cannot be ignorant that to you, to your goodness, I owe it\nall.--I feel it--I would express it if I could--but, as you well know,\nI am no orator.\"\n\n\"You are very much mistaken.  I do assure you that you owe it entirely,\nat least almost entirely, to your own merit, and Colonel Brandon's\ndiscernment of it.  I have had no hand in it.  I did not even know,\ntill I understood his design, that the living was vacant; nor had it\never occurred to me that he might have had such a living in his gift.\nAs a friend of mine, of my family, he may, perhaps--indeed I know he\nHAS, still greater pleasure in bestowing it; but, upon my word, you owe\nnothing to my solicitation.\"\n\nTruth obliged her to acknowledge some small share in the action, but\nshe was at the same time so unwilling to appear as the benefactress of\nEdward, that she acknowledged it with hesitation; which probably\ncontributed to fix that suspicion in his mind which had recently\nentered it.  For a short time he sat deep in thought, after Elinor had\nceased to speak;--at last, and as if it were rather an effort, he said,\n\n\"Colonel Brandon seems a man of great worth and respectability.  I have\nalways heard him spoken of as such, and your brother I know esteems him\nhighly.  He is undoubtedly a sensible man, and in his manners perfectly\nthe gentleman.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" replied Elinor, \"I believe that you will find him, on farther\nacquaintance, all that you have heard him to be, and as you will be\nsuch very near neighbours (for I understand the parsonage is almost\nclose to the mansion-house,) it is particularly important that he\nSHOULD be all this.\"\n\nEdward made no answer; but when she had turned away her head, gave her\na look so serious, so earnest, so uncheerful, as seemed to say, that he\nmight hereafter wish the distance between the parsonage and the\nmansion-house much greater.\n\n\"Colonel Brandon, I think, lodges in St. James Street,\" said he, soon\nafterwards, rising from his chair.\n\nElinor told him the number of the house.\n\n\"I must hurry away then, to give him those thanks which you will not\nallow me to give YOU; to assure him that he has made me a very--an\nexceedingly happy man.\"\n\nElinor did not offer to detain him; and they parted, with a very\nearnest assurance on HER side of her unceasing good wishes for his\nhappiness in every change of situation that might befall him; on HIS,\nwith rather an attempt to return the same good will, than the power of\nexpressing it.\n\n\"When I see him again,\" said Elinor to herself, as the door shut him\nout, \"I shall see him the husband of Lucy.\"\n\nAnd with this pleasing anticipation, she sat down to reconsider the\npast, recall the words and endeavour to comprehend all the feelings of\nEdward; and, of course, to reflect on her own with discontent.\n\nWhen Mrs. Jennings came home, though she returned from seeing people\nwhom she had never seen before, and of whom therefore she must have a\ngreat deal to say, her mind was so much more occupied by the important\nsecret in her possession, than by anything else, that she reverted to\nit again as soon as Elinor appeared.\n\n\"Well, my dear,\" she cried, \"I sent you up the young man.  Did not I\ndo right?--And I suppose you had no great difficulty--You did not find\nhim very unwilling to accept your proposal?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am; THAT was not very likely.\"\n\n\"Well, and how soon will he be ready?--For it seems all to depend upon\nthat.\"\n\n\"Really,\" said Elinor, \"I know so little of these kind of forms, that I\ncan hardly even conjecture as to the time, or the preparation\nnecessary; but I suppose two or three months will complete his\nordination.\"\n\n\"Two or three months!\" cried Mrs. Jennings; \"Lord! my dear, how calmly\nyou talk of it; and can the Colonel wait two or three months! Lord\nbless me!--I am sure it would put ME quite out of patience!--And though\none would be very glad to do a kindness by poor Mr. Ferrars, I do think\nit is not worth while to wait two or three months for him.  Sure\nsomebody else might be found that would do as well; somebody that is in\norders already.\"\n\n\"My dear ma'am,\" said Elinor, \"what can you be thinking of?-- Why,\nColonel Brandon's only object is to be of use to Mr. Ferrars.\"\n\n\"Lord bless you, my dear!--Sure you do not mean to persuade me that the\nColonel only marries you for the sake of giving ten guineas to Mr.\nFerrars!\"\n\nThe deception could not continue after this; and an explanation\nimmediately took place, by which both gained considerable amusement for\nthe moment, without any material loss of happiness to either, for Mrs.\nJennings only exchanged one form of delight for another, and still\nwithout forfeiting her expectation of the first.\n\n\"Aye, aye, the parsonage is but a small one,\" said she, after the first\nebullition of surprise and satisfaction was over, \"and very likely MAY\nbe out of repair; but to hear a man apologising, as I thought, for a\nhouse that to my knowledge has five sitting rooms on the ground-floor,\nand I think the housekeeper told me could make up fifteen beds!--and to\nyou too, that had been used to live in Barton cottage!-- It seems quite\nridiculous.  But, my dear, we must touch up the Colonel to do some\nthing to the parsonage, and make it comfortable for them, before Lucy\ngoes to it.\"\n\n\"But Colonel Brandon does not seem to have any idea of the living's\nbeing enough to allow them to marry.\"\n\n\"The Colonel is a ninny, my dear; because he has two thousand a-year\nhimself, he thinks that nobody else can marry on less.  Take my word\nfor it, that, if I am alive, I shall be paying a visit at Delaford\nParsonage before Michaelmas; and I am sure I shan't go if Lucy an't\nthere.\"\n\nElinor was quite of her opinion, as to the probability of their not\nwaiting for any thing more.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEdward, having carried his thanks to Colonel Brandon, proceeded with\nhis happiness to Lucy; and such was the excess of it by the time he\nreached Bartlett's Buildings, that she was able to assure Mrs.\nJennings, who called on her again the next day with her\ncongratulations, that she had never seen him in such spirits before in\nher life.\n\nHer own happiness, and her own spirits, were at least very certain; and\nshe joined Mrs. Jennings most heartily in her expectation of their\nbeing all comfortably together in Delaford Parsonage before Michaelmas.\nSo far was she, at the same time, from any backwardness to give Elinor\nthat credit which Edward WOULD give her, that she spoke of her\nfriendship for them both with the most grateful warmth, was ready to\nown all their obligation to her, and openly declared that no exertion\nfor their good on Miss Dashwood's part, either present or future, would\never surprise her, for she believed her capable of doing any thing in\nthe world for those she really valued.  As for Colonel Brandon, she was\nnot only ready to worship him as a saint, but was moreover truly\nanxious that he should be treated as one in all worldly concerns;\nanxious that his tithes should be raised to the utmost; and scarcely\nresolved to avail herself, at Delaford, as far as she possibly could,\nof his servants, his carriage, his cows, and his poultry.\n\nIt was now above a week since John Dashwood had called in Berkeley\nStreet, and as since that time no notice had been taken by them of his\nwife's indisposition, beyond one verbal enquiry, Elinor began to feel\nit necessary to pay her a visit.--This was an obligation, however,\nwhich not only opposed her own inclination, but which had not the\nassistance of any encouragement from her companions.  Marianne, not\ncontented with absolutely refusing to go herself, was very urgent to\nprevent her sister's going at all; and Mrs. Jennings, though her\ncarriage was always at Elinor's service, so very much disliked Mrs.\nJohn Dashwood, that not even her curiosity to see how she looked after\nthe late discovery, nor her strong desire to affront her by taking\nEdward's part, could overcome her unwillingness to be in her company\nagain.  The consequence was, that Elinor set out by herself to pay a\nvisit, for which no one could really have less inclination, and to run\nthe risk of a tete-a-tete with a woman, whom neither of the others had\nso much reason to dislike.\n\nMrs. Dashwood was denied; but before the carriage could turn from the\nhouse, her husband accidentally came out.  He expressed great pleasure\nin meeting Elinor, told her that he had been just going to call in\nBerkeley Street, and, assuring her that Fanny would be very glad to see\nher, invited her to come in.\n\nThey walked up stairs in to the drawing-room.--Nobody was there.\n\n\"Fanny is in her own room, I suppose,\" said he:--\"I will go to her\npresently, for I am sure she will not have the least objection in the\nworld to seeing YOU.-- Very far from it, indeed.  NOW especially there\ncannot be--but however, you and Marianne were always great\nfavourites.--Why would not Marianne come?\"--\n\nElinor made what excuse she could for her.\n\n\"I am not sorry to see you alone,\" he replied, \"for I have a good deal\nto say to you.  This living of Colonel Brandon's--can it be true?--has\nhe really given it to Edward?--I heard it yesterday by chance, and was\ncoming to you on purpose to enquire farther about it.\"\n\n\"It is perfectly true.--Colonel Brandon has given the living of\nDelaford to Edward.\"\n\n\"Really!--Well, this is very astonishing!--no relationship!--no\nconnection between them!--and now that livings fetch such a\nprice!--what was the value of this?\"\n\n\"About two hundred a year.\"\n\n\"Very well--and for the next presentation to a living of that\nvalue--supposing the late incumbent to have been old and sickly, and\nlikely to vacate it soon--he might have got I dare say--fourteen\nhundred pounds.  And how came he not to have settled that matter before\nthis person's death?--NOW indeed it would be too late to sell it, but a\nman of Colonel Brandon's sense!--I wonder he should be so improvident\nin a point of such common, such natural, concern!--Well, I am convinced\nthat there is a vast deal of inconsistency in almost every human\ncharacter.  I suppose, however--on recollection--that the case may\nprobably be THIS.  Edward is only to hold the living till the person to\nwhom the Colonel has really sold the presentation, is old enough to\ntake it.--Aye, aye, that is the fact, depend upon it.\"\n\nElinor contradicted it, however, very positively; and by relating that\nshe had herself been employed in conveying the offer from Colonel\nBrandon to Edward, and, therefore, must understand the terms on which\nit was given, obliged him to submit to her authority.\n\n\"It is truly astonishing!\"--he cried, after hearing what she\nsaid--\"what could be the Colonel's motive?\"\n\n\"A very simple one--to be of use to Mr. Ferrars.\"\n\n\"Well, well; whatever Colonel Brandon may be, Edward is a very lucky\nman.--You will not mention the matter to Fanny, however, for though I\nhave broke it to her, and she bears it vastly well,--she will not like\nto hear it much talked of.\"\n\nElinor had some difficulty here to refrain from observing, that she\nthought Fanny might have borne with composure, an acquisition of wealth\nto her brother, by which neither she nor her child could be possibly\nimpoverished.\n\n\"Mrs. Ferrars,\" added he, lowering his voice to the tone becoming so\nimportant a subject, \"knows nothing about it at present, and I believe\nit will be best to keep it entirely concealed from her as long as may\nbe.-- When the marriage takes place, I fear she must hear of it all.\"\n\n\"But why should such precaution be used?--Though it is not to be\nsupposed that Mrs. Ferrars can have the smallest satisfaction in\nknowing that her son has money enough to live upon,--for THAT must be\nquite out of the question; yet why, upon her late behaviour, is she\nsupposed to feel at all?--She has done with her son, she cast him off\nfor ever, and has made all those over whom she had any influence, cast\nhim off likewise.  Surely, after doing so, she cannot be imagined\nliable to any impression of sorrow or of joy on his account--she cannot\nbe interested in any thing that befalls him.-- She would not be so weak\nas to throw away the comfort of a child, and yet retain the anxiety of\na parent!\"\n\n\"Ah! Elinor,\" said John, \"your reasoning is very good, but it is\nfounded on ignorance of human nature.  When Edward's unhappy match\ntakes place, depend upon it his mother will feel as much as if she had\nnever discarded him; and, therefore every circumstance that may\naccelerate that dreadful event, must be concealed from her as much as\npossible.  Mrs. Ferrars can never forget that Edward is her son.\"\n\n\"You surprise me; I should think it must nearly have escaped her memory\nby THIS time.\"\n\n\"You wrong her exceedingly.  Mrs. Ferrars is one of the most\naffectionate mothers in the world.\"\n\nElinor was silent.\n\n\"We think NOW,\"--said Mr. Dashwood, after a short pause, \"of ROBERT'S\nmarrying Miss Morton.\"\n\nElinor, smiling at the grave and decisive importance of her brother's\ntone, calmly replied,\n\n\"The lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair.\"\n\n\"Choice!--how do you mean?\"\n\n\"I only mean that I suppose, from your manner of speaking, it must be\nthe same to Miss Morton whether she marry Edward or Robert.\"\n\n\"Certainly, there can be no difference; for Robert will now to all\nintents and purposes be considered as the eldest son;--and as to any\nthing else, they are both very agreeable young men: I do not know that\none is superior to the other.\"\n\nElinor said no more, and John was also for a short time silent.--His\nreflections ended thus.\n\n\"Of ONE thing, my dear sister,\" kindly taking her hand, and speaking in\nan awful whisper,--\"I may assure you;--and I WILL do it, because I know\nit must gratify you.  I have good reason to think--indeed I have it\nfrom the best authority, or I should not repeat it, for otherwise it\nwould be very wrong to say any thing about it--but I have it from the\nvery best authority--not that I ever precisely heard Mrs. Ferrars say\nit herself--but her daughter DID, and I have it from her--That in\nshort, whatever objections there might be against a certain--a certain\nconnection--you understand me--it would have been far preferable to\nher, it would not have given her half the vexation that THIS does.  I\nwas exceedingly pleased to hear that Mrs. Ferrars considered it in that\nlight--a very gratifying circumstance you know to us all.  'It would\nhave been beyond comparison,' she said, 'the least evil of the two, and\nshe would be glad to compound NOW for nothing worse.' But however, all\nthat is quite out of the question--not to be thought of or\nmentioned--as to any attachment you know--it never could be--all that\nis gone by.  But I thought I would just tell you of this, because I\nknew how much it must please you.  Not that you have any reason to\nregret, my dear Elinor.  There is no doubt of your doing exceedingly\nwell--quite as well, or better, perhaps, all things considered.  Has\nColonel Brandon been with you lately?\"\n\nElinor had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity, and raise her\nself-importance, to agitate her nerves and fill her mind;--and she was\ntherefore glad to be spared from the necessity of saying much in reply\nherself, and from the danger of hearing any thing more from her\nbrother, by the entrance of Mr. Robert Ferrars.  After a few moments'\nchat, John Dashwood, recollecting that Fanny was yet uninformed of her\nsister's being there, quitted the room in quest of her; and Elinor was\nleft to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the gay\nunconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner while enjoying so\nunfair a division of his mother's love and liberality, to the prejudice\nof his banished brother, earned only by his own dissipated course of\nlife, and that brother's integrity, was confirming her most\nunfavourable opinion of his head and heart.\n\nThey had scarcely been two minutes by themselves, before he began to\nspeak of Edward; for he, too, had heard of the living, and was very\ninquisitive on the subject.  Elinor repeated the particulars of it, as\nshe had given them to John; and their effect on Robert, though very\ndifferent, was not less striking than it had been on HIM.  He laughed\nmost immoderately.  The idea of Edward's being a clergyman, and living\nin a small parsonage-house, diverted him beyond measure;--and when to\nthat was added the fanciful imagery of Edward reading prayers in a\nwhite surplice, and publishing the banns of marriage between John Smith\nand Mary Brown, he could conceive nothing more ridiculous.\n\nElinor, while she waited in silence and immovable gravity, the\nconclusion of such folly, could not restrain her eyes from being fixed\non him with a look that spoke all the contempt it excited.  It was a\nlook, however, very well bestowed, for it relieved her own feelings,\nand gave no intelligence to him.  He was recalled from wit to wisdom,\nnot by any reproof of hers, but by his own sensibility.\n\n\"We may treat it as a joke,\" said he, at last, recovering from the\naffected laugh which had considerably lengthened out the genuine gaiety\nof the moment--\"but, upon my soul, it is a most serious business.  Poor\nEdward!  he is ruined for ever.  I am extremely sorry for it--for I\nknow him to be a very good-hearted creature; as well-meaning a fellow\nperhaps, as any in the world.  You must not judge of him, Miss\nDashwood, from YOUR slight acquaintance.--Poor Edward!--His manners are\ncertainly not the happiest in nature.--But we are not all born, you\nknow, with the same powers,--the same address.-- Poor fellow!--to see\nhim in a circle of strangers!--to be sure it was pitiable enough!--but\nupon my soul, I believe he has as good a heart as any in the kingdom;\nand I declare and protest to you I never was so shocked in my life, as\nwhen it all burst forth.  I could not believe it.-- My mother was the\nfirst person who told me of it; and I, feeling myself called on to act\nwith resolution, immediately said to her, 'My dear madam, I do not know\nwhat you may intend to do on the occasion, but as for myself, I must\nsay, that if Edward does marry this young woman, I never will see him\nagain.' That was what I said immediately.-- I was most uncommonly\nshocked, indeed!--Poor Edward!--he has done for himself\ncompletely--shut himself out for ever from all decent society!--but, as\nI directly said to my mother, I am not in the least surprised at it;\nfrom his style of education, it was always to be expected.  My poor\nmother was half frantic.\"\n\n\"Have you ever seen the lady?\"\n\n\"Yes; once, while she was staying in this house, I happened to drop in\nfor ten minutes; and I saw quite enough of her.  The merest awkward\ncountry girl, without style, or elegance, and almost without beauty.--\nI remember her perfectly.  Just the kind of girl I should suppose\nlikely to captivate poor Edward.  I offered immediately, as soon as my\nmother related the affair to me, to talk to him myself, and dissuade\nhim from the match; but it was too late THEN, I found, to do any thing,\nfor unluckily, I was not in the way at first, and knew nothing of it\ntill after the breach had taken place, when it was not for me, you\nknow, to interfere.  But had I been informed of it a few hours\nearlier--I think it is most probable--that something might have been\nhit on.  I certainly should have represented it to Edward in a very\nstrong light.  'My dear fellow,' I should have said, 'consider what you\nare doing.  You are making a most disgraceful connection, and such a\none as your family are unanimous in disapproving.' I cannot help\nthinking, in short, that means might have been found.  But now it is\nall too late.  He must be starved, you know;--that is certain;\nabsolutely starved.\"\n\nHe had just settled this point with great composure, when the entrance\nof Mrs. John Dashwood put an end to the subject.  But though SHE never\nspoke of it out of her own family, Elinor could see its influence on\nher mind, in the something like confusion of countenance with which she\nentered, and an attempt at cordiality in her behaviour to herself.  She\neven proceeded so far as to be concerned to find that Elinor and her\nsister were so soon to leave town, as she had hoped to see more of\nthem;--an exertion in which her husband, who attended her into the\nroom, and hung enamoured over her accents, seemed to distinguish every\nthing that was most affectionate and graceful.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOne other short call in Harley Street, in which Elinor received her\nbrother's congratulations on their travelling so far towards Barton\nwithout any expense, and on Colonel Brandon's being to follow them to\nCleveland in a day or two, completed the intercourse of the brother and\nsisters in town;--and a faint invitation from Fanny, to come to Norland\nwhenever it should happen to be in their way, which of all things was\nthe most unlikely to occur, with a more warm, though less public,\nassurance, from John to Elinor, of the promptitude with which he should\ncome to see her at Delaford, was all that foretold any meeting in the\ncountry.\n\nIt amused her to observe that all her friends seemed determined to send\nher to Delaford;--a place, in which, of all others, she would now least\nchuse to visit, or wish to reside; for not only was it considered as\nher future home by her brother and Mrs. Jennings, but even Lucy, when\nthey parted, gave her a pressing invitation to visit her there.\n\nVery early in April, and tolerably early in the day, the two parties\nfrom Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out from their respective\nhomes, to meet, by appointment, on the road.  For the convenience of\nCharlotte and her child, they were to be more than two days on their\njourney, and Mr. Palmer, travelling more expeditiously with Colonel\nBrandon, was to join them at Cleveland soon after their arrival.\n\nMarianne, few as had been her hours of comfort in London, and eager as\nshe had long been to quit it, could not, when it came to the point, bid\nadieu to the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed those\nhopes, and that confidence, in Willoughby, which were now extinguished\nfor ever, without great pain.  Nor could she leave the place in which\nWilloughby remained, busy in new engagements, and new schemes, in which\nSHE could have no share, without shedding many tears.\n\nElinor's satisfaction, at the moment of removal, was more positive.\nShe had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left\nno creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment's regret to be\ndivided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the\npersecution of Lucy's friendship, she was grateful for bringing her\nsister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, and she looked\nforward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might\ndo towards restoring Marianne's peace of mind, and confirming her own.\n\nTheir journey was safely performed.  The second day brought them into\nthe cherished, or the prohibited, county of Somerset, for as such was\nit dwelt on by turns in Marianne's imagination; and in the forenoon of\nthe third they drove up to Cleveland.\n\nCleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping\nlawn.  It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably\nextensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance,\nit had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth\ngravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was\ndotted over with timber, the house itself was under the guardianship of\nthe fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of them\naltogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, shut out the\noffices.\n\nMarianne entered the house with a heart swelling with emotion from the\nconsciousness of being only eighty miles from Barton, and not thirty\nfrom Combe Magna; and before she had been five minutes within its\nwalls, while the others were busily helping Charlotte to show her child\nto the housekeeper, she quitted it again, stealing away through the\nwinding shrubberies, now just beginning to be in beauty, to gain a\ndistant eminence; where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering\nover a wide tract of country to the south-east, could fondly rest on\nthe farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, and fancy that from their\nsummits Combe Magna might be seen.\n\nIn such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears\nof agony to be at Cleveland; and as she returned by a different circuit\nto the house, feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, of\nwandering from place to place in free and luxurious solitude, she\nresolved to spend almost every hour of every day while she remained\nwith the Palmers, in the indulgence of such solitary rambles.\n\nShe returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the house,\non an excursion through its more immediate premises; and the rest of\nthe morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen\ngarden, examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to the\ngardener's lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through the\ngreen-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed,\nand nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of\nCharlotte,--and in visiting her poultry-yard, where, in the\ndisappointed hopes of her dairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests, or\nbeing stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising young\nbrood, she found fresh sources of merriment.\n\nThe morning was fine and dry, and Marianne, in her plan of employment\nabroad, had not calculated for any change of weather during their stay\nat Cleveland.  With great surprise therefore, did she find herself\nprevented by a settled rain from going out again after dinner.  She had\ndepended on a twilight walk to the Grecian temple, and perhaps all over\nthe grounds, and an evening merely cold or damp would not have deterred\nher from it; but a heavy and settled rain even SHE could not fancy dry\nor pleasant weather for walking.\n\nTheir party was small, and the hours passed quietly away.  Mrs. Palmer\nhad her child, and Mrs. Jennings her carpet-work; they talked of the\nfriends they had left behind, arranged Lady Middleton's engagements,\nand wondered whether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon would get farther\nthan Reading that night.  Elinor, however little concerned in it,\njoined in their discourse; and Marianne, who had the knack of finding\nher way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by\nthe family in general, soon procured herself a book.\n\nNothing was wanting on Mrs. Palmer's side that constant and friendly\ngood humour could do, to make them feel themselves welcome.  The\nopenness and heartiness of her manner more than atoned for that want of\nrecollection and elegance which made her often deficient in the forms\nof politeness; her kindness, recommended by so pretty a face, was\nengaging; her folly, though evident was not disgusting, because it was\nnot conceited; and Elinor could have forgiven every thing but her laugh.\n\nThe two gentlemen arrived the next day to a very late dinner, affording\na pleasant enlargement of the party, and a very welcome variety to\ntheir conversation, which a long morning of the same continued rain had\nreduced very low.\n\nElinor had seen so little of Mr. Palmer, and in that little had seen so\nmuch variety in his address to her sister and herself, that she knew\nnot what to expect to find him in his own family.  She found him,\nhowever, perfectly the gentleman in his behaviour to all his visitors,\nand only occasionally rude to his wife and her mother; she found him\nvery capable of being a pleasant companion, and only prevented from\nbeing so always, by too great an aptitude to fancy himself as much\nsuperior to people in general, as he must feel himself to be to Mrs.\nJennings and Charlotte.  For the rest of his character and habits, they\nwere marked, as far as Elinor could perceive, with no traits at all\nunusual in his sex and time of life.  He was nice in his eating,\nuncertain in his hours; fond of his child, though affecting to slight\nit; and idled away the mornings at billiards, which ought to have been\ndevoted to business.  She liked him, however, upon the whole, much\nbetter than she had expected, and in her heart was not sorry that she\ncould like him no more;--not sorry to be driven by the observation of\nhis Epicurism, his selfishness, and his conceit, to rest with\ncomplacency on the remembrance of Edward's generous temper, simple\ntaste, and diffident feelings.\n\nOf Edward, or at least of some of his concerns, she now received\nintelligence from Colonel Brandon, who had been into Dorsetshire\nlately; and who, treating her at once as the disinterested friend of\nMr. Ferrars, and the kind confidante of himself, talked to her a\ngreat deal of the parsonage at Delaford, described its deficiencies,\nand told her what he meant to do himself towards removing them.--His\nbehaviour to her in this, as well as in every other particular, his\nopen pleasure in meeting her after an absence of only ten days, his\nreadiness to converse with her, and his deference for her opinion,\nmight very well justify Mrs. Jennings's persuasion of his attachment,\nand would have been enough, perhaps, had not Elinor still, as from the\nfirst, believed Marianne his real favourite, to make her suspect it\nherself.  But as it was, such a notion had scarcely ever entered her\nhead, except by Mrs. Jennings's suggestion; and she could not help\nbelieving herself the nicest observer of the two;--she watched his\neyes, while Mrs. Jennings thought only of his behaviour;--and while his\nlooks of anxious solicitude on Marianne's feeling, in her head and\nthroat, the beginning of a heavy cold, because unexpressed by words,\nentirely escaped the latter lady's observation;--SHE could discover in\nthem the quick feelings, and needless alarm of a lover.\n\nTwo delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her\nbeing there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all\nover the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them,\nwhere there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the\ntrees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest,\nhad--assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet\nshoes and stockings--given Marianne a cold so violent as, though for a\nday or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing\nailments on the concern of every body, and the notice of herself.\nPrescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual, were all\ndeclined.  Though heavy and feverish, with a pain in her limbs, and a\ncough, and a sore throat, a good night's rest was to cure her entirely;\nand it was with difficulty that Elinor prevailed on her, when she went\nto bed, to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarianne got up the next morning at her usual time; to every inquiry\nreplied that she was better, and tried to prove herself so, by engaging\nin her accustomary employments.  But a day spent in sitting shivering\nover the fire with a book in her hand, which she was unable to read, or\nin lying, weary and languid, on a sofa, did not speak much in favour of\nher amendment; and when, at last, she went early to bed, more and more\nindisposed, Colonel Brandon was only astonished at her sister's\ncomposure, who, though attending and nursing her the whole day, against\nMarianne's inclination, and forcing proper medicines on her at night,\ntrusted, like Marianne, to the certainty and efficacy of sleep, and\nfelt no real alarm.\n\nA very restless and feverish night, however, disappointed the\nexpectation of both; and when Marianne, after persisting in rising,\nconfessed herself unable to sit up, and returned voluntarily to her\nbed, Elinor was very ready to adopt Mrs. Jennings's advice, of sending\nfor the Palmers' apothecary.\n\nHe came, examined his patient, and though encouraging Miss Dashwood to\nexpect that a very few days would restore her sister to health, yet, by\npronouncing her disorder to have a putrid tendency, and allowing the\nword \"infection\" to pass his lips, gave instant alarm to Mrs. Palmer,\non her baby's account.  Mrs. Jennings, who had been inclined from the\nfirst to think Marianne's complaint more serious than Elinor, now\nlooked very grave on Mr. Harris's report, and confirming Charlotte's\nfears and caution, urged the necessity of her immediate removal with\nher infant; and Mr. Palmer, though treating their apprehensions as\nidle, found the anxiety and importunity of his wife too great to be\nwithstood.  Her departure, therefore, was fixed on; and within an hour\nafter Mr. Harris's arrival, she set off, with her little boy and his\nnurse, for the house of a near relation of Mr. Palmer's, who lived a\nfew miles on the other side of Bath; whither her husband promised, at\nher earnest entreaty, to join her in a day or two; and whither she was\nalmost equally urgent with her mother to accompany her.  Mrs. Jennings,\nhowever, with a kindness of heart which made Elinor really love her,\ndeclared her resolution of not stirring from Cleveland as long as\nMarianne remained ill, and of endeavouring, by her own attentive care,\nto supply to her the place of the mother she had taken her from; and\nElinor found her on every occasion a most willing and active helpmate,\ndesirous to share in all her fatigues, and often by her better\nexperience in nursing, of material use.\n\nPoor Marianne, languid and low from the nature of her malady, and\nfeeling herself universally ill, could no longer hope that tomorrow\nwould find her recovered; and the idea of what tomorrow would have\nproduced, but for this unlucky illness, made every ailment severe; for\non that day they were to have begun their journey home; and, attended\nthe whole way by a servant of Mrs. Jennings, were to have taken their\nmother by surprise on the following forenoon.  The little she said was\nall in lamentation of this inevitable delay; though Elinor tried to\nraise her spirits, and make her believe, as she THEN really believed\nherself, that it would be a very short one.\n\nThe next day produced little or no alteration in the state of the\npatient; she certainly was not better, and, except that there was no\namendment, did not appear worse.  Their party was now farther reduced;\nfor Mr. Palmer, though very unwilling to go as well from real humanity\nand good-nature, as from a dislike of appearing to be frightened away\nby his wife, was persuaded at last by Colonel Brandon to perform his\npromise of following her; and while he was preparing to go, Colonel\nBrandon himself, with a much greater exertion, began to talk of going\nlikewise.--Here, however, the kindness of Mrs. Jennings interposed most\nacceptably; for to send the Colonel away while his love was in so much\nuneasiness on her sister's account, would be to deprive them both, she\nthought, of every comfort; and therefore telling him at once that his\nstay at Cleveland was necessary to herself, that she should want him to\nplay at piquet of an evening, while Miss Dashwood was above with her\nsister, &c. she urged him so strongly to remain, that he, who was\ngratifying the first wish of his own heart by a compliance, could not\nlong even affect to demur; especially as Mrs. Jennings's entreaty was\nwarmly seconded by Mr. Palmer, who seemed to feel a relief to himself,\nin leaving behind him a person so well able to assist or advise Miss\nDashwood in any emergence.\n\nMarianne was, of course, kept in ignorance of all these arrangements.\nShe knew not that she had been the means of sending the owners of\nCleveland away, in about seven days from the time of their arrival.  It\ngave her no surprise that she saw nothing of Mrs. Palmer; and as it\ngave her likewise no concern, she never mentioned her name.\n\nTwo days passed away from the time of Mr. Palmer's departure, and her\nsituation continued, with little variation, the same.  Mr. Harris, who\nattended her every day, still talked boldly of a speedy recovery, and\nMiss Dashwood was equally sanguine; but the expectation of the others\nwas by no means so cheerful.  Mrs. Jennings had determined very early\nin the seizure that Marianne would never get over it, and Colonel\nBrandon, who was chiefly of use in listening to Mrs. Jennings's\nforebodings, was not in a state of mind to resist their influence.  He\ntried to reason himself out of fears, which the different judgment of\nthe apothecary seemed to render absurd; but the many hours of each day\nin which he was left entirely alone, were but too favourable for the\nadmission of every melancholy idea, and he could not expel from his\nmind the persuasion that he should see Marianne no more.\n\nOn the morning of the third day however, the gloomy anticipations of\nboth were almost done away; for when Mr. Harris arrived, he declared\nhis patient materially better.  Her pulse was much stronger, and every\nsymptom more favourable than on the preceding visit.  Elinor, confirmed\nin every pleasant hope, was all cheerfulness; rejoicing that in her\nletters to her mother, she had pursued her own judgment rather than her\nfriend's, in making very light of the indisposition which delayed them\nat Cleveland; and almost fixing on the time when Marianne would be able\nto travel.\n\nBut the day did not close so auspiciously as it began.-- Towards the\nevening Marianne became ill again, growing more heavy, restless, and\nuncomfortable than before.  Her sister, however, still sanguine, was\nwilling to attribute the change to nothing more than the fatigue of\nhaving sat up to have her bed made; and carefully administering the\ncordials prescribed, saw her, with satisfaction, sink at last into a\nslumber, from which she expected the most beneficial effects.  Her\nsleep, though not so quiet as Elinor wished to see it, lasted a\nconsiderable time; and anxious to observe the result of it herself, she\nresolved to sit with her during the whole of it.  Mrs. Jennings,\nknowing nothing of any change in the patient, went unusually early to\nbed; her maid, who was one of the principal nurses, was recreating\nherself in the housekeeper's room, and Elinor remained alone with\nMarianne.\n\nThe repose of the latter became more and more disturbed; and her\nsister, who watched, with unremitting attention her continual change of\nposture, and heard the frequent but inarticulate sounds of complaint\nwhich passed her lips, was almost wishing to rouse her from so painful\na slumber, when Marianne, suddenly awakened by some accidental noise in\nthe house, started hastily up, and, with feverish wildness, cried out,--\n\n\"Is mama coming?--\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" cried the other, concealing her terror, and assisting\nMarianne to lie down again, \"but she will be here, I hope, before it is\nlong.  It is a great way, you know, from hence to Barton.\"\n\n\"But she must not go round by London,\" cried Marianne, in the same\nhurried manner.  \"I shall never see her, if she goes by London.\"\n\nElinor perceived with alarm that she was not quite herself, and, while\nattempting to soothe her, eagerly felt her pulse.  It was lower and\nquicker than ever!  and Marianne, still talking wildly of mama, her\nalarm increased so rapidly, as to determine her on sending instantly\nfor Mr. Harris, and despatching a messenger to Barton for her mother.\nTo consult with Colonel Brandon on the best means of effecting the\nlatter, was a thought which immediately followed the resolution of its\nperformance; and as soon she had rung up the maid to take her place by\nher sister, she hastened down to the drawing-room, where she knew he\nwas generally to be found at a much later hour than the present.\n\nIt was no time for hesitation.  Her fears and her difficulties were\nimmediately before him.  Her fears, he had no courage, no confidence to\nattempt the removal of:--he listened to them in silent despondence;--but\nher difficulties were instantly obviated, for with a readiness that\nseemed to speak the occasion, and the service pre-arranged in his mind,\nhe offered himself as the messenger who should fetch Mrs. Dashwood.\nElinor made no resistance that was not easily overcome. She thanked him\nwith brief, though fervent gratitude, and while he went to hurry off his\nservant with a message to Mr. Harris, and an order for post-horses\ndirectly, she wrote a few lines to her mother.\n\nThe comfort of such a friend at that moment as Colonel Brandon--or such\na companion for her mother,--how gratefully was it felt!--a companion\nwhose judgment would guide, whose attendance must relieve, and whose\nfriendship might soothe her!--as far as the shock of such a summons\nCOULD be lessened to her, his presence, his manners, his assistance,\nwould lessen it.\n\nHE, meanwhile, whatever he might feel, acted with all the firmness of a\ncollected mind, made every necessary arrangement with the utmost\ndespatch, and calculated with exactness the time in which she might\nlook for his return.  Not a moment was lost in delay of any kind.  The\nhorses arrived, even before they were expected, and Colonel Brandon\nonly pressing her hand with a look of solemnity, and a few words spoken\ntoo low to reach her ear, hurried into the carriage.  It was then about\ntwelve o'clock, and she returned to her sister's apartment to wait for\nthe arrival of the apothecary, and to watch by her the rest of the\nnight.  It was a night of almost equal suffering to both.  Hour after\nhour passed away in sleepless pain and delirium on Marianne's side, and\nin the most cruel anxiety on Elinor's, before Mr. Harris appeared.  Her\napprehensions once raised, paid by their excess for all her former\nsecurity; and the servant who sat up with her, for she would not allow\nMrs. Jennings to be called, only tortured her more, by hints of what\nher mistress had always thought.\n\nMarianne's ideas were still, at intervals, fixed incoherently on her\nmother, and whenever she mentioned her name, it gave a pang to the\nheart of poor Elinor, who, reproaching herself for having trifled with\nso many days of illness, and wretched for some immediate relief,\nfancied that all relief might soon be in vain, that every thing had\nbeen delayed too long, and pictured to herself her suffering mother\narriving too late to see this darling child, or to see her rational.\n\nShe was on the point of sending again for Mr. Harris, or if HE could\nnot come, for some other advice, when the former--but not till after\nfive o'clock--arrived.  His opinion, however, made some little amends\nfor his delay, for though acknowledging a very unexpected and\nunpleasant alteration in his patient, he would not allow the danger to\nbe material, and talked of the relief which a fresh mode of treatment\nmust procure, with a confidence which, in a lesser degree, was\ncommunicated to Elinor.  He promised to call again in the course of\nthree or four hours, and left both the patient and her anxious\nattendant more composed than he had found them.\n\nWith strong concern, and with many reproaches for not being called to\ntheir aid, did Mrs. Jennings hear in the morning of what had passed.\nHer former apprehensions, now with greater reason restored, left her no\ndoubt of the event; and though trying to speak comfort to Elinor, her\nconviction of her sister's danger would not allow her to offer the\ncomfort of hope.  Her heart was really grieved.  The rapid decay, the\nearly death of a girl so young, so lovely as Marianne, must have struck\na less interested person with concern.  On Mrs. Jennings's compassion\nshe had other claims.  She had been for three months her companion, was\nstill under her care, and she was known to have been greatly injured,\nand long unhappy.  The distress of her sister too, particularly a\nfavourite, was before her;--and as for their mother, when Mrs. Jennings\nconsidered that Marianne might probably be to HER what Charlotte was to\nherself, her sympathy in HER sufferings was very sincere.\n\nMr. Harris was punctual in his second visit;--but he came to be\ndisappointed in his hopes of what the last would produce.  His\nmedicines had failed;--the fever was unabated; and Marianne only more\nquiet--not more herself--remained in a heavy stupor.  Elinor, catching\nall, and more than all, his fears in a moment, proposed to call in\nfurther advice.  But he judged it unnecessary: he had still something\nmore to try, some more fresh application, of whose success he was as\nconfident as the last, and his visit concluded with encouraging\nassurances which reached the ear, but could not enter the heart of Miss\nDashwood.  She was calm, except when she thought of her mother; but she\nwas almost hopeless; and in this state she continued till noon,\nscarcely stirring from her sister's bed, her thoughts wandering from\none image of grief, one suffering friend to another, and her spirits\noppressed to the utmost by the conversation of Mrs. Jennings, who\nscrupled not to attribute the severity and danger of this attack to the\nmany weeks of previous indisposition which Marianne's disappointment\nhad brought on.  Elinor felt all the reasonableness of the idea, and it\ngave fresh misery to her reflections.\n\nAbout noon, however, she began--but with a caution--a dread of\ndisappointment which for some time kept her silent, even to her\nfriend--to fancy, to hope she could perceive a slight amendment in her\nsister's pulse;--she waited, watched, and examined it again and\nagain;--and at last, with an agitation more difficult to bury under\nexterior calmness, than all her foregoing distress, ventured to\ncommunicate her hopes.  Mrs. Jennings, though forced, on examination,\nto acknowledge a temporary revival, tried to keep her young friend from\nindulging a thought of its continuance;--and Elinor, conning over every\ninjunction of distrust, told herself likewise not to hope.  But it was\ntoo late.  Hope had already entered; and feeling all its anxious\nflutter, she bent over her sister to watch--she hardly knew for what.\nHalf an hour passed away, and the favourable symptom yet blessed her.\nOthers even arose to confirm it.  Her breath, her skin, her lips, all\nflattered Elinor with signs of amendment; and Marianne fixed her eyes\non her with a rational, though languid, gaze.  Anxiety and hope now\noppressed her in equal degrees, and left her no moment of tranquillity\ntill the arrival of Mr. Harris at four o'clock;--when his assurances,\nhis felicitations on a recovery in her sister even surpassing his\nexpectation, gave her confidence, comfort, and tears of joy.\n\nMarianne was in every respect materially better, and he declared her\nentirely out of danger.  Mrs. Jennings, perhaps satisfied with the\npartial justification of her forebodings which had been found in their\nlate alarm, allowed herself to trust in his judgment, and admitted,\nwith unfeigned joy, and soon with unequivocal cheerfulness, the\nprobability of an entire recovery.\n\nElinor could not be cheerful.  Her joy was of a different kind, and led\nto any thing rather than to gaiety.  Marianne restored to life, health,\nfriends, and to her doting mother, was an idea to fill her heart with\nsensations of exquisite comfort, and expand it in fervent\ngratitude;--but it led to no outward demonstrations of joy, no words,\nno smiles.  All within Elinor's breast was satisfaction, silent and\nstrong.\n\nShe continued by the side of her sister, with little intermission the\nwhole afternoon, calming every fear, satisfying every inquiry of her\nenfeebled spirits, supplying every succour, and watching almost every\nlook and every breath.  The possibility of a relapse would of course,\nin some moments, occur to remind her of what anxiety was--but when she\nsaw, on her frequent and minute examination, that every symptom of\nrecovery continued, and saw Marianne at six o'clock sink into a quiet,\nsteady, and to all appearance comfortable, sleep, she silenced every\ndoubt.\n\nThe time was now drawing on, when Colonel Brandon might be expected\nback.  At ten o'clock, she trusted, or at least not much later her\nmother would be relieved from the dreadful suspense in which she must\nnow be travelling towards them.  The Colonel, too!--perhaps scarcely\nless an object of pity!--Oh!--how slow was the progress of time which\nyet kept them in ignorance!\n\nAt seven o'clock, leaving Marianne still sweetly asleep, she joined\nMrs. Jennings in the drawing-room to tea.  Of breakfast she had been\nkept by her fears, and of dinner by their sudden reverse, from eating\nmuch;--and the present refreshment, therefore, with such feelings of\ncontent as she brought to it, was particularly welcome.  Mrs. Jennings\nwould have persuaded her, at its conclusion, to take some rest before\nher mother's arrival, and allow HER to take her place by Marianne; but\nElinor had no sense of fatigue, no capability of sleep at that moment\nabout her, and she was not to be kept away from her sister an\nunnecessary instant.  Mrs. Jennings therefore attending her up stairs\ninto the sick chamber, to satisfy herself that all continued right,\nleft her there again to her charge and her thoughts, and retired to her\nown room to write letters and sleep.\n\nThe night was cold and stormy.  The wind roared round the house, and\nthe rain beat against the windows; but Elinor, all happiness within,\nregarded it not.  Marianne slept through every blast; and the\ntravellers--they had a rich reward in store, for every present\ninconvenience.\n\nThe clock struck eight.  Had it been ten, Elinor would have been\nconvinced that at that moment she heard a carriage driving up to the\nhouse; and so strong was the persuasion that she DID, in spite of the\nALMOST impossibility of their being already come, that she moved into\nthe adjoining dressing-closet and opened a window shutter, to be\nsatisfied of the truth.  She instantly saw that her ears had not\ndeceived her.  The flaring lamps of a carriage were immediately in\nview.  By their uncertain light she thought she could discern it to be\ndrawn by four horses; and this, while it told the excess of her poor\nmother's alarm, gave some explanation to such unexpected rapidity.\n\nNever in her life had Elinor found it so difficult to be calm, as at\nthat moment.  The knowledge of what her mother must be feeling as the\ncarriage stopt at the door--of her doubt--her dread--perhaps her\ndespair!--and of what SHE had to tell!--with such knowledge it was\nimpossible to be calm.  All that remained to be done was to be speedy;\nand, therefore staying only till she could leave Mrs. Jennings's maid\nwith her sister, she hurried down stairs.\n\nThe bustle in the vestibule, as she passed along an inner lobby,\nassured her that they were already in the house.  She rushed to the\ndrawing-room,--she entered it,--and saw only Willoughby.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nElinor, starting back with a look of horror at the sight of him, obeyed\nthe first impulse of her heart in turning instantly to quit the room,\nand her hand was already on the lock, when its action was suspended by\nhis hastily advancing, and saying, in a voice rather of command than\nsupplication,\n\n\"Miss Dashwood, for half an hour--for ten minutes--I entreat you to\nstay.\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" she replied with firmness, \"I shall NOT stay.  Your business\ncannot be with ME.  The servants, I suppose, forgot to tell you that\nMr. Palmer was not in the house.\"\n\n\"Had they told me,\" he cried with vehemence, \"that Mr. Palmer and all\nhis relations were at the devil, it would not have turned me from the\ndoor.  My business is with you, and only you.\"\n\n\"With me!\"--in the utmost amazement--\"well, sir,--be quick--and if you\ncan--less violent.\"\n\n\"Sit down, and I will be both.\"\n\nShe hesitated; she knew not what to do.  The possibility of Colonel\nBrandon's arriving and finding her there, came across her.  But she had\npromised to hear him, and her curiosity no less than her honor was\nengaged.  After a moment's recollection, therefore, concluding that\nprudence required dispatch, and that her acquiescence would best\npromote it, she walked silently towards the table, and sat down.  He\ntook the opposite chair, and for half a minute not a word was said by\neither.\n\n\"Pray be quick, sir,\"--said Elinor, impatiently;--\"I have no time to\nspare.\"\n\nHe was sitting in an attitude of deep meditation, and seemed not to\nhear her.\n\n\"Your sister,\" said he, with abruptness, a moment afterwards--\"is out\nof danger.  I heard it from the servant.  God be praised!--But is it\ntrue? is it really true?\"\n\nElinor would not speak.  He repeated the inquiry with yet greater\neagerness.\n\n\"For God's sake tell me, is she out of danger, or is she not?\"\n\n\"We hope she is.\"\n\nHe rose up, and walked across the room.\n\n\"Had I known as much half an hour ago--But since I AM here,\"--speaking\nwith a forced vivacity as he returned to his seat--\"what does it\nsignify?--For once, Miss Dashwood--it will be the last time,\nperhaps--let us be cheerful together.--I am in a fine mood for\ngaiety.-- Tell me honestly\"--a deeper glow overspreading his\ncheeks--\"do you think me most a knave or a fool?\"\n\nElinor looked at him with greater astonishment than ever.  She began to\nthink that he must be in liquor;--the strangeness of such a visit, and\nof such manners, seemed no otherwise intelligible; and with this\nimpression she immediately rose, saying,\n\n\"Mr. Willoughby, I advise you at present to return to Combe--I am not\nat leisure to remain with you longer.-- Whatever your business may be\nwith me, it will be better recollected and explained to-morrow.\"\n\n\"I understand you,\" he replied, with an expressive smile, and a voice\nperfectly calm; \"yes, I am very drunk.-- A pint of porter with my cold\nbeef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me.\"\n\n\"At Marlborough!\"--cried Elinor, more and more at a loss to understand\nwhat he would be at.\n\n\"Yes,--I left London this morning at eight o'clock, and the only ten\nminutes I have spent out of my chaise since that time procured me a\nnuncheon at Marlborough.\"\n\nThe steadiness of his manner, and the intelligence of his eye as he\nspoke, convincing Elinor, that whatever other unpardonable folly might\nbring him to Cleveland, he was not brought there by intoxication, she\nsaid, after a moment's recollection,\n\n\"Mr. Willoughby, you OUGHT to feel, and I certainly DO--that after what\nhas passed--your coming here in this manner, and forcing yourself upon\nmy notice, requires a very particular excuse.--What is it, that you\nmean by it?\"--\n\n\"I mean,\"--said he, with serious energy--\"if I can, to make you hate me\none degree less than you do NOW.  I mean to offer some kind of\nexplanation, some kind of apology, for the past; to open my whole heart\nto you, and by convincing you, that though I have been always a\nblockhead, I have not been always a rascal, to obtain something like\nforgiveness from Ma--from your sister.\"\n\n\"Is this the real reason of your coming?\"\n\n\"Upon my soul it is,\"--was his answer, with a warmth which brought all\nthe former Willoughby to her remembrance, and in spite of herself made\nher think him sincere.\n\n\"If that is all, you may be satisfied already,--for Marianne DOES--she\nhas LONG forgiven you.\"\n\n\"Has she?\"--he cried, in the same eager tone.-- \"Then she has forgiven\nme before she ought to have done it.  But she shall forgive me again,\nand on more reasonable grounds.--NOW will you listen to me?\"\n\nElinor bowed her assent.\n\n\"I do not know,\" said he, after a pause of expectation on her side, and\nthoughtfulness on his own,--\"how YOU may have accounted for my\nbehaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have\nimputed to me.-- Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me,--it is\nworth the trial however, and you shall hear every thing.  When I first\nbecame intimate in your family, I had no other intention, no other view\nin the acquaintance than to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged\nto remain in Devonshire, more pleasantly than I had ever done before.\nYour sister's lovely person and interesting manners could not but\nplease me; and her behaviour to me almost from the first, was of a\nkind--It is astonishing, when I reflect on what it was, and what SHE\nwas, that my heart should have been so insensible!  But at first I must\nconfess, my vanity only was elevated by it.  Careless of her happiness,\nthinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had\nalways been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by every\nmeans in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any design\nof returning her affection.\"\n\nMiss Dashwood, at this point, turning her eyes on him with the most\nangry contempt, stopped him, by saying,\n\n\"It is hardly worth while, Mr. Willoughby, for you to relate, or for me\nto listen any longer.  Such a beginning as this cannot be followed by\nany thing.-- Do not let me be pained by hearing any thing more on the\nsubject.\"\n\n\"I insist on you hearing the whole of it,\" he replied, \"My fortune was\nnever large, and I had always been expensive, always in the habit of\nassociating with people of better income than myself.  Every year since\nmy coming of age, or even before, I believe, had added to my debts; and\nthough the death of my old cousin, Mrs. Smith, was to set me free; yet\nthat event being uncertain, and possibly far distant, it had been for\nsome time my intention to re-establish my circumstances by marrying a\nwoman of fortune.  To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not\na thing to be thought of;--and with a meanness, selfishness,\ncruelty--which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss\nDashwood, can ever reprobate too much--I was acting in this manner,\ntrying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it.--But\none thing may be said for me: even in that horrid state of selfish\nvanity, I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated, because I\ndid not THEN know what it was to love.  But have I ever known it?--Well\nmay it be doubted; for, had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my\nfeelings to vanity, to avarice?--or, what is more, could I have\nsacrificed hers?-- But I have done it.  To avoid a comparative poverty,\nwhich her affection and her society would have deprived of all its\nhorrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost every thing that\ncould make it a blessing.\"\n\n\"You did then,\" said Elinor, a little softened, \"believe yourself at\none time attached to her?\"\n\n\"To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such\ntenderness!--Is there a man on earth who could have done it?--Yes, I\nfound myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the\nhappiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my\nintentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless.  Even\nTHEN, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I\nallowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment\nof doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my\ncircumstances were so greatly embarrassed.  I will not reason here--nor\nwill I stop for YOU to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than\nabsurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already\nbound.  The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with\ngreat circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself\ncontemptible and wretched for ever.  At last, however, my resolution\nwas taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone,\nto justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly\nassure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to\ndisplay.  But in the interim--in the interim of the very few hours that\nwere to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her\nin private--a circumstance occurred--an unlucky circumstance, to ruin\nall my resolution, and with it all my comfort.  A discovery took\nplace,\"--here he hesitated and looked down.--\"Mrs. Smith had somehow or\nother been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose interest\nit was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a connection--but I\nneed not explain myself farther,\" he added, looking at her with an\nheightened colour and an enquiring eye--\"your particular intimacy--you\nhave probably heard the whole story long ago.\"\n\n\"I have,\" returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart\nanew against any compassion for him, \"I have heard it all.  And how you\nwill explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I\nconfess is beyond my comprehension.\"\n\n\"Remember,\" cried Willoughby, \"from whom you received the account.\nCould it be an impartial one?  I acknowledge that her situation and her\ncharacter ought to have been respected by me.  I do not mean to justify\nmyself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have\nnothing to urge--that because she was injured she was irreproachable,\nand because I was a libertine, SHE must be a saint.  If the violence of\nher passions, the weakness of her understanding--I do not mean,\nhowever, to defend myself.  Her affection for me deserved better\ntreatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness\nwhich, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return.  I\nwish--I heartily wish it had never been.  But I have injured more than\nherself; and I have injured one, whose affection for me--(may I say\nit?) was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose mind--Oh! how\ninfinitely superior!\"--\n\n\"Your indifference, however, towards that unfortunate girl--I must say\nit, unpleasant to me as the discussion of such a subject may well\nbe--your indifference is no apology for your cruel neglect of her.  Do\nnot think yourself excused by any weakness, any natural defect of\nunderstanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours.\nYou must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in\nDevonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was\nreduced to the extremest indigence.\"\n\n\"But, upon my soul, I did NOT know it,\" he warmly replied; \"I did not\nrecollect that I had omitted to give her my direction; and common sense\nmight have told her how to find it out.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?\"\n\n\"She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be\nguessed.  The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her\nignorance of the world--every thing was against me.  The matter itself\nI could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it.  She was\npreviously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in\ngeneral, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention,\nthe very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my\npresent visit.  In short, it ended in a total breach.  By one measure I\nmight have saved myself.  In the height of her morality, good woman!\nshe offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza.  That could\nnot be--and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house.\nThe night following this affair--I was to go the next morning--was\nspent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be.  The\nstruggle was great--but it ended too soon.  My affection for Marianne,\nmy thorough conviction of her attachment to me--it was all insufficient\nto outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false\nideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to\nfeel, and expensive society had increased.  I had reason to believe\nmyself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I\npersuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained\nfor me to do.  A heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave\nDevonshire;--I was engaged to dine with you on that very day; some\napology was therefore necessary for my breaking this engagement.  But\nwhether I should write this apology, or deliver it in person, was a\npoint of long debate.  To see Marianne, I felt, would be dreadful, and\nI even doubted whether I could see her again, and keep to my\nresolution.  In that point, however, I undervalued my own magnanimity,\nas the event declared; for I went, I saw her, and saw her miserable,\nand left her miserable--and left her hoping never to see her again.\"\n\n\"Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?\" said Elinor, reproachfully; \"a note\nwould have answered every purpose.-- Why was it necessary to call?\"\n\n\"It was necessary to my own pride.  I could not bear to leave the\ncountry in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the\nneighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between\nMrs. Smith and myself--and I resolved therefore on calling at the\ncottage, in my way to Honiton.  The sight of your dear sister, however,\nwas really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone.\nYou were all gone I do not know where.  I had left her only the evening\nbefore, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right!  A\nfew hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how\nhappy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to\nAllenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body!  But in\nthis, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense\nof guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling.  Her\nsorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was\nobliged to leave Devonshire so immediately--I never shall forget\nit--united too with such reliance, such confidence in me!--Oh,\nGod!--what a hard-hearted rascal I was!\"\n\nThey were both silent for a few moments.  Elinor first spoke.\n\n\"Did you tell her that you should soon return?\"\n\n\"I do not know what I told her,\" he replied, impatiently; \"less than\nwas due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more\nthan was justified by the future.  I cannot think of it.--It won't\ndo.--Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her\nkindness and confidence.  Thank Heaven! it DID torture me.  I was\nmiserable.  Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it\ngives me to look back on my own misery.  I owe such a grudge to myself\nfor the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past\nsufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now.  Well, I\nwent, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was\nonly indifferent.  My journey to town--travelling with my own horses,\nand therefore so tediously--no creature to speak to--my own reflections\nso cheerful--when I looked forward every thing so inviting!--when I\nlooked back at Barton, the picture so soothing!--oh, it was a blessed\njourney!\"\n\nHe stopped.\n\n\"Well, sir,\" said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for\nhis departure, \"and this is all?\"\n\n\"Ah!--no,--have you forgot what passed in town?-- That infamous\nletter--Did she shew it you?\"\n\n\"Yes, I saw every note that passed.\"\n\n\"When the first of hers reached me (as it immediately did, for I was in\ntown the whole time,) what I felt is--in the common phrase, not to be\nexpressed; in a more simple one--perhaps too simple to raise any\nemotion--my feelings were very, very painful.--Every line, every word\nwas--in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here,\nwould forbid--a dagger to my heart.  To know that Marianne was in town\nwas--in the same language--a thunderbolt.--Thunderbolts and\ndaggers!--what a reproof would she have given me!--her taste, her\nopinions--I believe they are better known to me than my own,--and I am\nsure they are dearer.\"\n\nElinor's heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this\nextraordinary conversation, was now softened again;--yet she felt it\nher duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last.\n\n\"This is not right, Mr. Willoughby.--Remember that you are married.\nRelate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to hear.\"\n\n\"Marianne's note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in\nformer days, that in spite of the many, many weeks we had been\nseparated, she was as constant in her own feelings, and as full of\nfaith in the constancy of mine as ever, awakened all my remorse.  I say\nawakened, because time and London, business and dissipation, had in\nsome measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened\nvillain, fancying myself indifferent to her, and chusing to fancy that\nshe too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our\npast attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my\nshoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach,\novercoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, 'I shall be\nheartily glad to hear she is well married.'-- But this note made me\nknow myself better.  I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than\nany other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously.  But\nevery thing was then just settled between Miss Grey and me.  To retreat\nwas impossible.  All that I had to do, was to avoid you both.  I sent\nno answer to Marianne, intending by that to preserve myself from her\nfarther notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call in\nBerkeley Street;--but at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of a\ncool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all safely\nout of the house one morning, and left my name.\"\n\n\"Watched us out of the house!\"\n\n\"Even so.  You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how\noften I was on the point of falling in with you.  I have entered many a\nshop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by.  Lodging as I did\nin Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a\nglimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant\nwatchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep\nout of your sight, could have separated us so long.  I avoided the\nMiddletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was\nlikely to prove an acquaintance in common.  Not aware of their being in\ntown, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of his\ncoming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings's.  He asked me\nto a party, a dance at his house in the evening.--Had he NOT told me as\nan inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I should have\nfelt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him.  The next\nmorning brought another short note from Marianne--still affectionate,\nopen, artless, confiding--everything that could make MY conduct most\nhateful.  I could not answer it.  I tried--but could not frame a\nsentence.  But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day.\nIf you CAN pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was THEN.\nWith my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the\nhappy lover to another woman!--Those three or four weeks were worse\nthan all.  Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on\nme; and what a sweet figure I cut!--what an evening of agony it was!--\nMarianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in\nsuch a tone!--Oh, God!--holding out her hand to me, asking me for an\nexplanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking\nsolicitude on my face!--and Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other\nhand, looking all that was--Well, it does not signify; it is over\nnow.-- Such an evening!--I ran away from you all as soon as I could;\nbut not before I had seen Marianne's sweet face as white as\ndeath.--THAT was the last, last look I ever had of her;--the last\nmanner in which she appeared to me.  It was a horrid sight!--yet when I\nthought of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me\nto imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw\nher last in this world.  She was before me, constantly before me, as I\ntravelled, in the same look and hue.\"\n\nA short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded.  Willoughby first\nrousing himself, broke it thus:\n\n\"Well, let me make haste and be gone.  Your sister is certainly better,\ncertainly out of danger?\"\n\n\"We are assured of it.\"\n\n\"Your poor mother, too!--doting on Marianne.\"\n\n\"But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you any thing to\nsay about that?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, THAT in particular.  Your sister wrote to me again, you\nknow, the very next morning.  You saw what she said.  I was\nbreakfasting at the Ellisons,--and her letter, with some others, was\nbrought to me there from my lodgings.  It happened to catch Sophia's\neye before it caught mine--and its size, the elegance of the paper, the\nhand-writing altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion.  Some vague\nreport had reached her before of my attachment to some young lady in\nDevonshire, and what had passed within her observation the preceding\nevening had marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous\nthan ever.  Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is\ndelightful in a woman one loves, she opened the letter directly,\nand read its contents.  She was well paid for her impudence.\nShe read what made her wretched.  Her wretchedness I could have\nborne, but her passion--her malice--At all events it must be appeased.\nAnd, in short--what do you think of my wife's style of\nletter-writing?--delicate--tender--truly feminine--was it not?\"\n\n\"Your wife!--The letter was in your own hand-writing.\"\n\n\"Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as\nI was ashamed to put my name to.  The original was all her own--her own\nhappy thoughts and gentle diction.  But what could I do!--we were\nengaged, every thing in preparation, the day almost fixed--But I am\ntalking like a fool.  Preparation!--day!--In honest words, her money\nwas necessary to me, and in a situation like mine, any thing was to be\ndone to prevent a rupture.  And after all, what did it signify to my\ncharacter in the opinion of Marianne and her friends, in what language\nmy answer was couched?--It must have been only to one end.  My business\nwas to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether I did it with a bow or a\nbluster was of little importance.-- 'I am ruined for ever in their\nopinion--' said I to myself--'I am shut out for ever from their\nsociety, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will\nonly make them think me a blackguard one.' Such were my reasonings, as,\nin a sort of desperate carelessness, I copied my wife's words, and\nparted with the last relics of Marianne.  Her three notes--unluckily\nthey were all in my pocketbook, or I should have denied their\nexistence, and hoarded them for ever--I was forced to put them up, and\ncould not even kiss them.  And the lock of hair--that too I had always\ncarried about me in the same pocket-book, which was now searched by\nMadam with the most ingratiating virulence,--the dear lock--all, every\nmemento was torn from me.\"\n\n\"You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable,\" said Elinor, while\nher voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion;\n\"you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my\nsister.  You had made your own choice.  It was not forced on you.  Your\nwife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least.  She\nmust be attached to you, or she would not have married you.  To treat\nher with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to\nMarianne--nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience.\"\n\n\"Do not talk to me of my wife,\" said he with a heavy sigh.-- \"She does\nnot deserve your compassion.--She knew I had no regard for her when we\nmarried.--Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be\nhappy, and afterwards returned to town to be gay.--And now do you pity\nme, Miss Dashwood?--or have I said all this to no purpose?-- Am I--be\nit only one degree--am I less guilty in your opinion than I was\nbefore?--My intentions were not always wrong.  Have I explained away\nany part of my guilt?\"\n\n\"Yes, you have certainly removed something--a little.-- You have proved\nyourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you.  You have\nproved your heart less wicked, much less wicked.  But I hardly\nknow--the misery that you have inflicted--I hardly know what could have\nmade it worse.\"\n\n\"Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have been\ntelling you?--Let me be a little lightened too in her opinion as well\nas in yours.  You tell me that she has forgiven me already.  Let me be\nable to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present\nfeelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more\ngentle, less dignified, forgiveness.  Tell her of my misery and my\npenitence--tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if\nyou will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever.\"\n\n\"I will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be\ncalled, your justification.  But you have not explained to me the\nparticular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness.\"\n\n\"Last night, in Drury Lane lobby, I ran against Sir John Middleton, and\nwhen he saw who I was--for the first time these two months--he spoke to\nme.--That he had cut me ever since my marriage, I had seen without\nsurprise or resentment.  Now, however, his good-natured, honest, stupid\nsoul, full of indignation against me, and concern for your sister,\ncould not resist the temptation of telling me what he knew ought\nto--though probably he did not think it WOULD--vex me horridly.  As\nbluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that Marianne\nDashwood was dying of a putrid fever at Cleveland--a letter that\nmorning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger most\nimminent--the Palmers are all gone off in a fright, &c.--I was too much\nshocked to be able to pass myself off as insensible even to the\nundiscerning Sir John.  His heart was softened in seeing mine suffer;\nand so much of his ill-will was done away, that when we parted, he\nalmost shook me by the hand while he reminded me of an old promise\nabout a pointer puppy.  What I felt on hearing that your sister was\ndying--and dying too, believing me the greatest villain upon earth,\nscorning, hating me in her latest moments--for how could I tell what\nhorrid projects might not have been imputed?  ONE person I was sure\nwould represent me as capable of any thing-- What I felt was\ndreadful!--My resolution was soon made, and at eight o'clock this\nmorning I was in my carriage.  Now you know all.\"\n\nElinor made no answer.  Her thoughts were silently fixed on the\nirreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent\nhabits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the\ncharacter, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person\nand talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a\nfeeling, affectionate temper.  The world had made him extravagant and\nvain--Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish.\nVanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another,\nhad involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least\nits offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed.  Each faulty\npropensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment.\nThe attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against\nevery better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no\nlonger allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the\nsake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery,\nwas likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more\nincurable nature.  From a reverie of this kind she was recalled at the\nend of some minutes by Willoughby, who, rousing himself from a reverie\nat least equally painful, started up in preparation for going, and\nsaid--\n\n\"There is no use in staying here; I must be off.\"\n\n\"Are you going back to town?\"\n\n\"No--to Combe Magna.  I have business there; from thence to town in a\nday or two.  Good bye.\"\n\nHe held out his hand.  She could not refuse to give him hers;--he\npressed it with affection.\n\n\"And you DO think something better of me than you did?\"--said he,\nletting it fall, and leaning against the mantel-piece as if forgetting\nhe was to go.\n\nElinor assured him that she did;--that she forgave, pitied, wished him\nwell--was even interested in his happiness--and added some gentle\ncounsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it.  His answer was\nnot very encouraging.\n\n\"As to that,\" said he, \"I must rub through the world as well as I can.\nDomestic happiness is out of the question.  If, however, I am allowed\nto think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it\nmay be the means--it may put me on my guard--at least, it may be\nsomething to live for.  Marianne to be sure is lost to me for ever.\nWere I even by any blessed chance at liberty again--\"\n\nElinor stopped him with a reproof.\n\n\"Well,\"--he replied--\"once more good bye. I shall now go away and live\nin dread of one event.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Your sister's marriage.\"\n\n\"You are very wrong.  She can never be more lost to you than she is\nnow.\"\n\n\"But she will be gained by some one else.  And if that some one should\nbe the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear--but I will not\nstay to rob myself of all your compassionate goodwill, by shewing that\nwhere I have most injured I can least forgive.  Good bye,--God bless\nyou!\"\n\nAnd with these words, he almost ran out of the room.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nElinor, for some time after he left her, for some time even after the\nsound of his carriage had died away, remained too much oppressed by a\ncrowd of ideas, widely differing in themselves, but of which sadness\nwas the general result, to think even of her sister.\n\nWilloughby, he, whom only half an hour ago she had abhorred as the most\nworthless of men, Willoughby, in spite of all his faults, excited a\ndegree of commiseration for the sufferings produced by them, which made\nher think of him as now separated for ever from her family, with a\ntenderness, a regret, rather in proportion, as she soon acknowledged\nwithin herself--to his wishes than to his merits.  She felt that his\ninfluence over her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought not\nin reason to have weight; by that person of uncommon attraction, that\nopen, affectionate, and lively manner which it was no merit to possess;\nand by that still ardent love for Marianne, which it was not even\ninnocent to indulge.  But she felt that it was so, long, long before\nshe could feel his influence less.\n\nWhen at last she returned to the unconscious Marianne, she found her\njust awaking, refreshed by so long and sweet a sleep to the extent of\nher hopes.  Elinor's heart was full.  The past, the present, the\nfuture, Willoughby's visit, Marianne's safety, and her mother's\nexpected arrival, threw her altogether into an agitation of spirits\nwhich kept off every indication of fatigue, and made her only fearful\nof betraying herself to her sister.  Short was the time, however, in\nwhich that fear could affect her, for within half an hour after\nWilloughby's leaving the house, she was again called down stairs by the\nsound of another carriage.--Eager to save her mother from every\nunnecessary moment's horrible suspense, she ran immediately into the\nhall, and reached the outward door just in time to receive and support\nher as she entered it.\n\nMrs. Dashwood, whose terror as they drew near the house had produced\nalmost the conviction of Marianne's being no more, had no voice to\ninquire after her, no voice even for Elinor; but SHE, waiting neither\nfor salutation nor inquiry, instantly gave the joyful relief;--and her\nmother, catching it with all her usual warmth, was in a moment as much\novercome by her happiness, as she had been before by her fears.  She\nwas supported into the drawing-room between her daughter and her\nfriend;--and there, shedding tears of joy, though still unable to\nspeak, embraced Elinor again and again, turning from her at intervals\nto press Colonel Brandon's hand, with a look which spoke at once her\ngratitude, and her conviction of his sharing with herself in the bliss\nof the moment.  He shared it, however, in a silence even greater than\nher own.\n\nAs soon as Mrs. Dashwood had recovered herself, to see Marianne was her\nfirst desire; and in two minutes she was with her beloved child,\nrendered dearer to her than ever by absence, unhappiness, and danger.\nElinor's delight, as she saw what each felt in the meeting, was only\nchecked by an apprehension of its robbing Marianne of farther\nsleep;--but Mrs. Dashwood could be calm, could be even prudent, when\nthe life of a child was at stake, and Marianne, satisfied in knowing\nher mother was near her, and conscious of being too weak for\nconversation, submitted readily to the silence and quiet prescribed by\nevery nurse around her.  Mrs. Dashwood WOULD sit up with her all night;\nand Elinor, in compliance with her mother's entreaty, went to bed.  But\nthe rest, which one night entirely sleepless, and many hours of the\nmost wearing anxiety seemed to make requisite, was kept off by\nirritation of spirits.  Willoughby, \"poor Willoughby,\" as she now\nallowed herself to call him, was constantly in her thoughts; she would\nnot but have heard his vindication for the world, and now blamed, now\nacquitted herself for having judged him so harshly before.  But her\npromise of relating it to her sister was invariably painful.  She\ndreaded the performance of it, dreaded what its effect on Marianne\nmight be; doubted whether after such an explanation she could ever be\nhappy with another; and for a moment wished Willoughby a widower.\nThen, remembering Colonel Brandon, reproved herself, felt that to HIS\nsufferings and his constancy far more than to his rival's, the reward\nof her sister was due, and wished any thing rather than Mrs.\nWilloughby's death.\n\nThe shock of Colonel Brandon's errand at Barton had been much softened\nto Mrs. Dashwood by her own previous alarm; for so great was her\nuneasiness about Marianne, that she had already determined to set out\nfor Cleveland on that very day, without waiting for any further\nintelligence, and had so far settled her journey before his arrival,\nthat the Careys were then expected every moment to fetch Margaret away,\nas her mother was unwilling to take her where there might be infection.\n\nMarianne continued to mend every day, and the brilliant cheerfulness of\nMrs. Dashwood's looks and spirits proved her to be, as she repeatedly\ndeclared herself, one of the happiest women in the world.  Elinor could\nnot hear the declaration, nor witness its proofs without sometimes\nwondering whether her mother ever recollected Edward.  But Mrs.\nDashwood, trusting to the temperate account of her own disappointment\nwhich Elinor had sent her, was led away by the exuberance of her joy to\nthink only of what would increase it.  Marianne was restored to her\nfrom a danger in which, as she now began to feel, her own mistaken\njudgment in encouraging the unfortunate attachment to Willoughby, had\ncontributed to place her;--and in her recovery she had yet another\nsource of joy unthought of by Elinor.  It was thus imparted to her, as\nsoon as any opportunity of private conference between them occurred.\n\n\"At last we are alone.  My Elinor, you do not yet know all my\nhappiness.  Colonel Brandon loves Marianne.  He has told me so himself.\"\n\nHer daughter, feeling by turns both pleased and pained, surprised and\nnot surprised, was all silent attention.\n\n\"You are never like me, dear Elinor, or I should wonder at your\ncomposure now.  Had I sat down to wish for any possible good to my\nfamily, I should have fixed on Colonel Brandon's marrying one of you as\nthe object most desirable.  And I believe Marianne will be the most\nhappy with him of the two.\"\n\nElinor was half inclined to ask her reason for thinking so, because\nsatisfied that none founded on an impartial consideration of their age,\ncharacters, or feelings, could be given;--but her mother must always be\ncarried away by her imagination on any interesting subject, and\ntherefore instead of an inquiry, she passed it off with a smile.\n\n\"He opened his whole heart to me yesterday as we travelled.  It came\nout quite unawares, quite undesignedly.  I, you may well believe, could\ntalk of nothing but my child;--he could not conceal his distress; I saw\nthat it equalled my own, and he perhaps, thinking that mere friendship,\nas the world now goes, would not justify so warm a sympathy--or rather,\nnot thinking at all, I suppose--giving way to irresistible feelings,\nmade me acquainted with his earnest, tender, constant, affection for\nMarianne.  He has loved her, my Elinor, ever since the first moment of\nseeing her.\"\n\nHere, however, Elinor perceived,--not the language, not the professions\nof Colonel Brandon, but the natural embellishments of her mother's\nactive fancy, which fashioned every thing delightful to her as it chose.\n\n\"His regard for her, infinitely surpassing anything that Willoughby\never felt or feigned, as much more warm, as more sincere or\nconstant--which ever we are to call it--has subsisted through all the\nknowledge of dear Marianne's unhappy prepossession for that worthless\nyoung man!--and without selfishness--without encouraging a hope!--could\nhe have seen her happy with another--Such a noble mind!--such openness,\nsuch sincerity!--no one can be deceived in HIM.\"\n\n\"Colonel Brandon's character,\" said Elinor, \"as an excellent man, is\nwell established.\"\n\n\"I know it is,\"--replied her mother seriously, \"or after such a warning,\nI should be the last to encourage such affection, or even to be pleased\nby it.  But his coming for me as he did, with such active, such ready\nfriendship, is enough to prove him one of the worthiest of men.\"\n\n\"His character, however,\" answered Elinor, \"does not rest on ONE act of\nkindness, to which his affection for Marianne, were humanity out of the\ncase, would have prompted him.  To Mrs. Jennings, to the Middletons, he\nhas been long and intimately known; they equally love and respect him;\nand even my own knowledge of him, though lately acquired, is very\nconsiderable; and so highly do I value and esteem him, that if Marianne\ncan be happy with him, I shall be as ready as yourself to think our\nconnection the greatest blessing to us in the world.  What answer did\nyou give him?--Did you allow him to hope?\"\n\n\"Oh! my love, I could not then talk of hope to him or to myself.\nMarianne might at that moment be dying.  But he did not ask for hope or\nencouragement.  His was an involuntary confidence, an irrepressible\neffusion to a soothing friend--not an application to a parent.  Yet\nafter a time I DID say, for at first I was quite overcome--that if she\nlived, as I trusted she might, my greatest happiness would lie in\npromoting their marriage; and since our arrival, since our delightful\nsecurity, I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every\nencouragement in my power.  Time, a very little time, I tell him, will\ndo everything;--Marianne's heart is not to be wasted for ever on such a\nman as Willoughby.-- His own merits must soon secure it.\"\n\n\"To judge from the Colonel's spirits, however, you have not yet made\nhim equally sanguine.\"\n\n\"No.--He thinks Marianne's affection too deeply rooted for any change\nin it under a great length of time, and even supposing her heart again\nfree, is too diffident of himself to believe, that with such a\ndifference of age and disposition he could ever attach her.  There,\nhowever, he is quite mistaken.  His age is only so much beyond hers as\nto be an advantage, as to make his character and principles fixed;--and\nhis disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very one to make\nyour sister happy.  And his person, his manners too, are all in his\nfavour.  My partiality does not blind me; he certainly is not so\nhandsome as Willoughby--but at the same time, there is something much\nmore pleasing in his countenance.-- There was always a something,--if\nyou remember,--in Willoughby's eyes at times, which I did not like.\"\n\nElinor could NOT remember it;--but her mother, without waiting for her\nassent, continued,\n\n\"And his manners, the Colonel's manners are not only more pleasing to\nme than Willoughby's ever were, but they are of a kind I well know to\nbe more solidly attaching to Marianne.  Their gentleness, their genuine\nattention to other people, and their manly unstudied simplicity is much\nmore accordant with her real disposition, than the liveliness--often\nartificial, and often ill-timed of the other.  I am very sure myself,\nthat had Willoughby turned out as really amiable, as he has proved\nhimself the contrary, Marianne would yet never have been so happy with\nHIM, as she will be with Colonel Brandon.\"\n\nShe paused.--Her daughter could not quite agree with her, but her\ndissent was not heard, and therefore gave no offence.\n\n\"At Delaford, she will be within an easy distance of me,\" added Mrs.\nDashwood, \"even if I remain at Barton; and in all probability,--for I\nhear it is a large village,--indeed there certainly MUST be some small\nhouse or cottage close by, that would suit us quite as well as our\npresent situation.\"\n\nPoor Elinor!--here was a new scheme for getting her to Delaford!--but\nher spirit was stubborn.\n\n\"His fortune too!--for at my time of life you know, everybody cares\nabout THAT;--and though I neither know nor desire to know, what it\nreally is, I am sure it must be a good one.\"\n\nHere they were interrupted by the entrance of a third person, and\nElinor withdrew to think it all over in private, to wish success to her\nfriend, and yet in wishing it, to feel a pang for Willoughby.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarianne's illness, though weakening in its kind, had not been long\nenough to make her recovery slow; and with youth, natural strength, and\nher mother's presence in aid, it proceeded so smoothly as to enable her\nto remove, within four days after the arrival of the latter, into Mrs.\nPalmer's dressing-room.  When there, at her own particular request, for\nshe was impatient to pour forth her thanks to him for fetching her\nmother, Colonel Brandon was invited to visit her.\n\nHis emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in\nreceiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, was\nsuch, as, in Elinor's conjecture, must arise from something more than\nhis affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to\nothers; and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying\ncomplexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many\npast scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance\nbetween Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened\nby the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness,\nand the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation.\n\nMrs. Dashwood, not less watchful of what passed than her daughter, but\nwith a mind very differently influenced, and therefore watching to very\ndifferent effect, saw nothing in the Colonel's behaviour but what arose\nfrom the most simple and self-evident sensations, while in the actions\nand words of Marianne she persuaded herself to think that something\nmore than gratitude already dawned.\n\nAt the end of another day or two, Marianne growing visibly stronger\nevery twelve hours, Mrs. Dashwood, urged equally by her own and her\ndaughter's wishes, began to talk of removing to Barton.  On HER\nmeasures depended those of her two friends; Mrs. Jennings could not\nquit Cleveland during the Dashwoods' stay; and Colonel Brandon was soon\nbrought, by their united request, to consider his own abode there as\nequally determinate, if not equally indispensable.  At his and Mrs.\nJennings's united request in return, Mrs. Dashwood was prevailed on to\naccept the use of his carriage on her journey back, for the better\naccommodation of her sick child; and the Colonel, at the joint\ninvitation of Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings, whose active good-nature\nmade her friendly and hospitable for other people as well as herself,\nengaged with pleasure to redeem it by a visit at the cottage, in the\ncourse of a few weeks.\n\nThe day of separation and departure arrived; and Marianne, after taking\nso particular and lengthened a leave of Mrs. Jennings, one so earnestly\ngrateful, so full of respect and kind wishes as seemed due to her own\nheart from a secret acknowledgment of past inattention, and bidding\nColonel Brandon farewell with a cordiality of a friend, was carefully\nassisted by him into the carriage, of which he seemed anxious that she\nshould engross at least half.  Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor then followed,\nand the others were left by themselves, to talk of the travellers, and\nfeel their own dullness, till Mrs. Jennings was summoned to her chaise\nto take comfort in the gossip of her maid for the loss of her two young\ncompanions; and Colonel Brandon immediately afterwards took his\nsolitary way to Delaford.\n\nThe Dashwoods were two days on the road, and Marianne bore her journey\non both, without essential fatigue.  Every thing that the most zealous\naffection, the most solicitous care could do to render her comfortable,\nwas the office of each watchful companion, and each found their reward\nin her bodily ease, and her calmness of spirits.  To Elinor, the\nobservation of the latter was particularly grateful.  She, who had seen\nher week after week so constantly suffering, oppressed by anguish of\nheart which she had neither courage to speak of, nor fortitude to\nconceal, now saw with a joy, which no other could equally share, an\napparent composure of mind, which, in being the result as she trusted\nof serious reflection, must eventually lead her to contentment and\ncheerfulness.\n\nAs they approached Barton, indeed, and entered on scenes of which every\nfield and every tree brought some peculiar, some painful recollection,\nshe grew silent and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their\nnotice, sat earnestly gazing through the window.  But here, Elinor\ncould neither wonder nor blame; and when she saw, as she assisted\nMarianne from the carriage, that she had been crying, she saw only an\nemotion too natural in itself to raise any thing less tender than pity,\nand in its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise.  In the whole of her\nsubsequent manner, she traced the direction of a mind awakened to\nreasonable exertion; for no sooner had they entered their common\nsitting-room, than Marianne turned her eyes around it with a look of\nresolute firmness, as if determined at once to accustom herself to the\nsight of every object with which the remembrance of Willoughby could be\nconnected.--She said little, but every sentence aimed at cheerfulness,\nand though a sigh sometimes escaped her, it never passed away without\nthe atonement of a smile.  After dinner she would try her piano-forte.\nShe went to it; but the music on which her eye first rested was an\nopera, procured for her by Willoughby, containing some of their\nfavourite duets, and bearing on its outward leaf her own name in his\nhand-writing.--That would not do.--She shook her head, put the music\naside, and after running over the keys for a minute, complained of\nfeebleness in her fingers, and closed the instrument again; declaring\nhowever with firmness as she did so, that she should in future practice\nmuch.\n\nThe next morning produced no abatement in these happy symptoms.  On the\ncontrary, with a mind and body alike strengthened by rest, she looked\nand spoke with more genuine spirit, anticipating the pleasure of\nMargaret's return, and talking of the dear family party which would\nthen be restored, of their mutual pursuits and cheerful society, as the\nonly happiness worth a wish.\n\n\"When the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength,\" said\nshe, \"we will take long walks together every day.  We will walk to the\nfarm at the edge of the down, and see how the children go on; we will\nwalk to Sir John's new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland;\nand we will often go to the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its\nfoundations as far as we are told they once reached.  I know we shall\nbe happy.  I know the summer will pass happily away.  I mean never to\nbe later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall\ndivide every moment between music and reading.  I have formed my plan,\nand am determined to enter on a course of serious study.  Our own\nlibrary is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing beyond\nmere amusement.  But there are many works well worth reading at the\nPark; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can\nborrow of Colonel Brandon.  By reading only six hours a-day, I shall\ngain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which\nI now feel myself to want.\"\n\nElinor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this;\nthough smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her\nto the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work\nin introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and\nvirtuous self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she\nremembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, and feared\nshe had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of\nMarianne, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy\ntranquillity.  Willing therefore to delay the evil hour, she resolved\nto wait till her sister's health were more secure, before she appointed\nit.  But the resolution was made only to be broken.\n\nMarianne had been two or three days at home, before the weather was\nfine enough for an invalid like herself to venture out.  But at last a\nsoft, genial morning appeared; such as might tempt the daughter's\nwishes and the mother's confidence; and Marianne, leaning on Elinor's\narm, was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue, in\nthe lane before the house.\n\nThe sisters set out at a pace, slow as the feebleness of Marianne in an\nexercise hitherto untried since her illness required;--and they had\nadvanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the\nhill, the important hill behind, when pausing with her eyes turned\ntowards it, Marianne calmly said,\n\n\"There, exactly there,\"--pointing with one hand, \"on that projecting\nmound,--there I fell; and there I first saw Willoughby.\"\n\nHer voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added,\n\n\"I am thankful to find that I can look with so little pain on the\nspot!--shall we ever talk on that subject, Elinor?\"--hesitatingly it\nwas said.--\"Or will it be wrong?--I can talk of it now, I hope, as I\nought to do.\"--\n\nElinor tenderly invited her to be open.\n\n\"As for regret,\" said Marianne, \"I have done with that, as far as HE is\nconcerned.  I do not mean to talk to you of what my feelings have been\nfor him, but what they are NOW.--At present, if I could be satisfied on\none point, if I could be allowed to think that he was not ALWAYS acting\na part, not ALWAYS deceiving me;--but above all, if I could be assured\nthat he never was so VERY wicked as my fears have sometimes fancied\nhim, since the story of that unfortunate girl\"--\n\nShe stopt.  Elinor joyfully treasured her words as she answered,\n\n\"If you could be assured of that, you think you should be easy.\"\n\n\"Yes. My peace of mind is doubly involved in it;--for not only is it\nhorrible to suspect a person, who has been what HE has been to ME, of\nsuch designs,--but what must it make me appear to myself?--What in a\nsituation like mine, but a most shamefully unguarded affection could\nexpose me to\"--\n\n\"How then,\" asked her sister, \"would you account for his behaviour?\"\n\n\"I would suppose him,--Oh, how gladly would I suppose him, only fickle,\nvery, very fickle.\"\n\nElinor said no more.  She was debating within herself on the\neligibility of beginning her story directly, or postponing it till\nMarianne were in stronger health;--and they crept on for a few minutes\nin silence.\n\n\"I am not wishing him too much good,\" said Marianne at last with a\nsigh, \"when I wish his secret reflections may be no more unpleasant\nthan my own.  He will suffer enough in them.\"\n\n\"Do you compare your conduct with his?\"\n\n\"No. I compare it with what it ought to have been; I compare it with\nyours.\"\n\n\"Our situations have borne little resemblance.\"\n\n\"They have borne more than our conduct.--Do not, my dearest Elinor, let\nyour kindness defend what I know your judgment must censure.  My\nillness has made me think-- It has given me leisure and calmness for\nserious recollection.  Long before I was enough recovered to talk, I\nwas perfectly able to reflect.  I considered the past: I saw in my own\nbehaviour, since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last\nautumn, nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of\nkindness to others.  I saw that my own feelings had prepared my\nsufferings, and that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me\nto the grave.  My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by\nmyself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the\ntime to be wrong.  Had I died,--it would have been self-destruction. I\ndid not know my danger till the danger was removed; but with such\nfeelings as these reflections gave me, I wonder at my recovery,--wonder\nthat the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for\natonement to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once.  Had I\ndied,--in what peculiar misery should I have left you, my nurse, my\nfriend, my sister!--You, who had seen all the fretful selfishness of my\nlatter days; who had known all the murmurings of my heart!--How should\nI have lived in YOUR remembrance!--My mother too! How could you have\nconsoled her!--I cannot express my own abhorrence of myself.  Whenever\nI looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing\nindulged.  Every body seemed injured by me.  The kindness, the\nunceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, I had repaid with ungrateful\ncontempt.  To the Middletons, to the Palmers, the Steeles, to every\ncommon acquaintance even, I had been insolent and unjust; with a heart\nhardened against their merits, and a temper irritated by their very\nattention.--To John, to Fanny,--yes, even to them, little as they\ndeserve, I had given less than their due.  But you,--you above all,\nabove my mother, had been wronged by me.  I, and only I, knew your\nheart and its sorrows; yet to what did it influence me?--not to any\ncompassion that could benefit you or myself.--Your example was before\nme; but to what avail?--Was I more considerate of you and your comfort?\nDid I imitate your forbearance, or lessen your restraints, by taking\nany part in those offices of general complaisance or particular\ngratitude which you had hitherto been left to discharge\nalone?--No;--not less when I knew you to be unhappy, than when I had\nbelieved you at ease, did I turn away from every exertion of duty or\nfriendship; scarcely allowing sorrow to exist but with me, regretting\nonly THAT heart which had deserted and wronged me, and leaving you, for\nwhom I professed an unbounded affection, to be miserable for my sake.\"\n\nHere ceased the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit; and Elinor,\nimpatient to soothe, though too honest to flatter, gave her instantly\nthat praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well\ndeserved.  Marianne pressed her hand and replied,\n\n\"You are very good.--The future must be my proof.  I have laid down my\nplan, and if I am capable of adhering to it--my feelings shall be\ngoverned and my temper improved.  They shall no longer worry others,\nnor torture myself.  I shall now live solely for my family.  You, my\nmother, and Margaret, must henceforth be all the world to me; you will\nshare my affections entirely between you.  From you, from my home, I\nshall never again have the smallest incitement to move; and if I do mix\nin other society, it will be only to shew that my spirit is humbled, my\nheart amended, and that I can practise the civilities, the lesser\nduties of life, with gentleness and forbearance.  As for Willoughby--to\nsay that I shall soon or that I shall ever forget him, would be idle.\nHis remembrance can be overcome by no change of circumstances or\nopinions.  But it shall be regulated, it shall be checked by religion,\nby reason, by constant employment.\"\n\nShe paused--and added in a low voice, \"If I could but know HIS heart,\neverything would become easy.\"\n\nElinor, who had now been for some time reflecting on the propriety or\nimpropriety of speedily hazarding her narration, without feeling at all\nnearer decision than at first, heard this; and perceiving that as\nreflection did nothing, resolution must do all, soon found herself\nleading to the fact.\n\nShe managed the recital, as she hoped, with address; prepared her\nanxious listener with caution; related simply and honestly the chief\npoints on which Willoughby grounded his apology; did justice to his\nrepentance, and softened only his protestations of present regard.\nMarianne said not a word.--She trembled, her eyes were fixed on the\nground, and her lips became whiter than even sickness had left them.  A\nthousand inquiries sprung up from her heart, but she dared not urge\none.  She caught every syllable with panting eagerness; her hand,\nunknowingly to herself, closely pressed her sister's, and tears covered\nher cheeks.\n\nElinor, dreading her being tired, led her towards home; and till they\nreached the door of the cottage, easily conjecturing what her curiosity\nmust be though no question was suffered to speak it, talked of nothing\nbut Willoughby, and their conversation together; and was carefully\nminute in every particular of speech and look, where minuteness could\nbe safely indulged.  As soon as they entered the house, Marianne with a\nkiss of gratitude and these two words just articulate through her\ntears, \"Tell mama,\" withdrew from her sister and walked slowly up\nstairs.  Elinor would not attempt to disturb a solitude so reasonable\nas what she now sought; and with a mind anxiously pre-arranging its\nresult, and a resolution of reviving the subject again, should Marianne\nfail to do it, she turned into the parlour to fulfill her parting\ninjunction.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMrs. Dashwood did not hear unmoved the vindication of her former\nfavourite.  She rejoiced in his being cleared from some part of his\nimputed guilt;--she was sorry for him;--she wished him happy.  But the\nfeelings of the past could not be recalled.--Nothing could restore him\nwith a faith unbroken--a character unblemished, to Marianne.  Nothing\ncould do away the knowledge of what the latter had suffered through his\nmeans, nor remove the guilt of his conduct towards Eliza.  Nothing\ncould replace him, therefore, in her former esteem, nor injure the\ninterests of Colonel Brandon.\n\nHad Mrs. Dashwood, like her daughter, heard Willoughby's story from\nhimself--had she witnessed his distress, and been under the influence\nof his countenance and his manner, it is probable that her compassion\nwould have been greater.  But it was neither in Elinor's power, nor in\nher wish, to rouse such feelings in another, by her retailed\nexplanation, as had at first been called forth in herself.  Reflection\nhad given calmness to her judgment, and sobered her own opinion of\nWilloughby's deserts;--she wished, therefore, to declare only the\nsimple truth, and lay open such facts as were really due to his\ncharacter, without any embellishment of tenderness to lead the fancy\nastray.\n\nIn the evening, when they were all three together, Marianne began\nvoluntarily to speak of him again;--but that it was not without an\neffort, the restless, unquiet thoughtfulness in which she had been for\nsome time previously sitting--her rising colour, as she spoke,--and her\nunsteady voice, plainly shewed.\n\n\"I wish to assure you both,\" said she, \"that I see every thing--as you\ncan desire me to do.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood would have interrupted her instantly with soothing\ntenderness, had not Elinor, who really wished to hear her sister's\nunbiased opinion, by an eager sign, engaged her silence.  Marianne\nslowly continued--\n\n\"It is a great relief to me--what Elinor told me this morning--I have\nnow heard exactly what I wished to hear.\"--For some moments her voice\nwas lost; but recovering herself, she added, and with greater calmness\nthan before--\"I am now perfectly satisfied, I wish for no change.  I\nnever could have been happy with him, after knowing, as sooner or later\nI must have known, all this.--I should have had no confidence, no\nesteem.  Nothing could have done it away to my feelings.\"\n\n\"I know it--I know it,\" cried her mother.  \"Happy with a man of\nlibertine practices!--With one who so injured the peace of the dearest\nof our friends, and the best of men!--No--my Marianne has not a heart\nto be made happy with such a man!--Her conscience, her sensitive\nconscience, would have felt all that the conscience of her husband\nought to have felt.\"\n\nMarianne sighed, and repeated, \"I wish for no change.\"\n\n\"You consider the matter,\" said Elinor, \"exactly as a good mind and a\nsound understanding must consider it; and I dare say you perceive, as\nwell as myself, not only in this, but in many other circumstances,\nreason enough to be convinced that your marriage must have involved you\nin many certain troubles and disappointments, in which you would have\nbeen poorly supported by an affection, on his side, much less certain.\nHad you married, you must have been always poor.  His expensiveness is\nacknowledged even by himself, and his whole conduct declares that\nself-denial is a word hardly understood by him.  His demands and your\ninexperience together, on a small, very small income, must have brought\non distresses which would not be the LESS grievous to you, from having\nbeen entirely unknown and unthought of before.  YOUR sense of honour\nand honesty would have led you, I know, when aware of your situation,\nto attempt all the economy that would appear to you possible: and,\nperhaps, as long as your frugality retrenched only on your own comfort,\nyou might have been suffered to practice it, but beyond that--and how\nlittle could the utmost of your single management do to stop the ruin\nwhich had begun before your marriage?-- Beyond THAT, had you\nendeavoured, however reasonably, to abridge HIS enjoyments, is it not\nto be feared, that instead of prevailing on feelings so selfish to\nconsent to it, you would have lessened your own influence on his heart,\nand made him regret the connection which had involved him in such\ndifficulties?\"\n\nMarianne's lips quivered, and she repeated the word \"Selfish?\" in a\ntone that implied--\"do you really think him selfish?\"\n\n\"The whole of his behaviour,\" replied Elinor, \"from the beginning to\nthe end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness.  It was\nselfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which\nafterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of\nit, and which finally carried him from Barton.  His own enjoyment, or\nhis own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.\"\n\n\"It is very true.  MY happiness never was his object.\"\n\n\"At present,\" continued Elinor, \"he regrets what he has done.  And why\ndoes he regret it?--Because he finds it has not answered towards\nhimself.  It has not made him happy.  His circumstances are now\nunembarrassed--he suffers from no evil of that kind; and he thinks only\nthat he has married a woman of a less amiable temper than yourself.\nBut does it follow that had he married you, he would have been\nhappy?--The inconveniences would have been different.  He would then\nhave suffered under the pecuniary distresses which, because they are\nremoved, he now reckons as nothing.  He would have had a wife of whose\ntemper he could make no complaint, but he would have been always\nnecessitous--always poor; and probably would soon have learned to rank\nthe innumerable comforts of a clear estate and good income as of far\nmore importance, even to domestic happiness, than the mere temper of a\nwife.\"\n\n\"I have not a doubt of it,\" said Marianne; \"and I have nothing to\nregret--nothing but my own folly.\"\n\n\"Rather say your mother's imprudence, my child,\" said Mrs. Dashwood;\n\"SHE must be answerable.\"\n\nMarianne would not let her proceed;--and Elinor, satisfied that each\nfelt their own error, wished to avoid any survey of the past that might\nweaken her sister's spirits; she, therefore, pursuing the first\nsubject, immediately continued,\n\n\"One observation may, I think, be fairly drawn from the whole of the\nstory--that all Willoughby's difficulties have arisen from the first\noffence against virtue, in his behaviour to Eliza Williams.  That crime\nhas been the origin of every lesser one, and of all his present\ndiscontents.\"\n\nMarianne assented most feelingly to the remark; and her mother was led\nby it to an enumeration of Colonel Brandon's injuries and merits, warm\nas friendship and design could unitedly dictate.  Her daughter did not\nlook, however, as if much of it were heard by her.\n\nElinor, according to her expectation, saw on the two or three following\ndays, that Marianne did not continue to gain strength as she had done;\nbut while her resolution was unsubdued, and she still tried to appear\ncheerful and easy, her sister could safely trust to the effect of time\nupon her health.\n\nMargaret returned, and the family were again all restored to each\nother, again quietly settled at the cottage; and if not pursuing their\nusual studies with quite so much vigour as when they first came to\nBarton, at least planning a vigorous prosecution of them in future.\n\nElinor grew impatient for some tidings of Edward.  She had heard\nnothing of him since her leaving London, nothing new of his plans,\nnothing certain even of his present abode.  Some letters had passed\nbetween her and her brother, in consequence of Marianne's illness; and\nin the first of John's, there had been this sentence:-- \"We know\nnothing of our unfortunate Edward, and can make no enquiries on so\nprohibited a subject, but conclude him to be still at Oxford;\" which\nwas all the intelligence of Edward afforded her by the correspondence,\nfor his name was not even mentioned in any of the succeeding letters.\nShe was not doomed, however, to be long in ignorance of his measures.\n\nTheir man-servant had been sent one morning to Exeter on business; and\nwhen, as he waited at table, he had satisfied the inquiries of his\nmistress as to the event of his errand, this was his voluntary\ncommunication--\n\n\"I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is married.\"\n\nMarianne gave a violent start, fixed her eyes upon Elinor, saw her\nturning pale, and fell back in her chair in hysterics.  Mrs. Dashwood,\nwhose eyes, as she answered the servant's inquiry, had intuitively\ntaken the same direction, was shocked to perceive by Elinor's\ncountenance how much she really suffered, and a moment afterwards,\nalike distressed by Marianne's situation, knew not on which child to\nbestow her principal attention.\n\nThe servant, who saw only that Miss Marianne was taken ill, had sense\nenough to call one of the maids, who, with Mrs. Dashwood's assistance,\nsupported her into the other room.  By that time, Marianne was rather\nbetter, and her mother leaving her to the care of Margaret and the\nmaid, returned to Elinor, who, though still much disordered, had so far\nrecovered the use of her reason and voice as to be just beginning an\ninquiry of Thomas, as to the source of his intelligence.  Mrs. Dashwood\nimmediately took all that trouble on herself; and Elinor had the\nbenefit of the information without the exertion of seeking it.\n\n\"Who told you that Mr. Ferrars was married, Thomas?\"\n\n\"I see Mr. Ferrars myself, ma'am, this morning in Exeter, and his lady\ntoo, Miss Steele as was.  They was stopping in a chaise at the door of\nthe New London Inn, as I went there with a message from Sally at the\nPark to her brother, who is one of the post-boys. I happened to look up\nas I went by the chaise, and so I see directly it was the youngest Miss\nSteele; so I took off my hat, and she knew me and called to me, and\ninquired after you, ma'am, and the young ladies, especially Miss\nMarianne, and bid me I should give her compliments and Mr. Ferrars's,\ntheir best compliments and service, and how sorry they was they had not\ntime to come on and see you, but they was in a great hurry to go\nforwards, for they was going further down for a little while, but\nhowsever, when they come back, they'd make sure to come and see you.\"\n\n\"But did she tell you she was married, Thomas?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am. She smiled, and said how she had changed her name since\nshe was in these parts.  She was always a very affable and free-spoken\nyoung lady, and very civil behaved.  So, I made free to wish her joy.\"\n\n\"Was Mr. Ferrars in the carriage with her?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, I just see him leaning back in it, but he did not look\nup;--he never was a gentleman much for talking.\"\n\nElinor's heart could easily account for his not putting himself\nforward; and Mrs. Dashwood probably found the same explanation.\n\n\"Was there no one else in the carriage?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am, only they two.\"\n\n\"Do you know where they came from?\"\n\n\"They come straight from town, as Miss Lucy--Mrs. Ferrars told me.\"\n\n\"And are they going farther westward?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am--but not to bide long.  They will soon be back again, and\nthen they'd be sure and call here.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood now looked at her daughter; but Elinor knew better than\nto expect them.  She recognised the whole of Lucy in the message, and\nwas very confident that Edward would never come near them.  She\nobserved in a low voice, to her mother, that they were probably going\ndown to Mr. Pratt's, near Plymouth.\n\nThomas's intelligence seemed over.  Elinor looked as if she wished to\nhear more.\n\n\"Did you see them off, before you came away?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am--the horses were just coming out, but I could not bide any\nlonger; I was afraid of being late.\"\n\n\"Did Mrs. Ferrars look well?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, she said how she was very well; and to my mind she was\nalways a very handsome young lady--and she seemed vastly contented.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood could think of no other question, and Thomas and the\ntablecloth, now alike needless, were soon afterwards dismissed.\nMarianne had already sent to say, that she should eat nothing more.\nMrs. Dashwood's and Elinor's appetites were equally lost, and Margaret\nmight think herself very well off, that with so much uneasiness as both\nher sisters had lately experienced, so much reason as they had often\nhad to be careless of their meals, she had never been obliged to go\nwithout her dinner before.\n\nWhen the dessert and the wine were arranged, and Mrs. Dashwood and\nElinor were left by themselves, they remained long together in a\nsimilarity of thoughtfulness and silence.  Mrs. Dashwood feared to\nhazard any remark, and ventured not to offer consolation.  She now\nfound that she had erred in relying on Elinor's representation of\nherself; and justly concluded that every thing had been expressly\nsoftened at the time, to spare her from an increase of unhappiness,\nsuffering as she then had suffered for Marianne.  She found that she\nhad been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her\ndaughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well\nunderstood, much slighter in reality, than she had been wont to\nbelieve, or than it was now proved to be.  She feared that under this\npersuasion she had been unjust, inattentive, nay, almost unkind, to her\nElinor;--that Marianne's affliction, because more acknowledged, more\nimmediately before her, had too much engrossed her tenderness, and led\nher away to forget that in Elinor she might have a daughter suffering\nalmost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater\nfortitude.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nElinor now found the difference between the expectation of an\nunpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it,\nand certainty itself.  She now found, that in spite of herself, she had\nalways admitted a hope, while Edward remained single, that something\nwould occur to prevent his marrying Lucy; that some resolution of his\nown, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of\nestablishment for the lady, would arise to assist the happiness of all.\nBut he was now married; and she condemned her heart for the lurking\nflattery, which so much heightened the pain of the intelligence.\n\nThat he should be married soon, before (as she imagined) he could be in\norders, and consequently before he could be in possession of the\nliving, surprised her a little at first.  But she soon saw how likely\nit was that Lucy, in her self-provident care, in her haste to secure\nhim, should overlook every thing but the risk of delay.  They were\nmarried, married in town, and now hastening down to her uncle's.  What\nhad Edward felt on being within four miles from Barton, on seeing her\nmother's servant, on hearing Lucy's message!\n\nThey would soon, she supposed, be settled at Delaford.--Delaford,--that\nplace in which so much conspired to give her an interest; which she\nwished to be acquainted with, and yet desired to avoid.  She saw them\nin an instant in their parsonage-house; saw in Lucy, the active,\ncontriving manager, uniting at once a desire of smart appearance with\nthe utmost frugality, and ashamed to be suspected of half her\neconomical practices;--pursuing her own interest in every thought,\ncourting the favour of Colonel Brandon, of Mrs. Jennings, and of every\nwealthy friend.  In Edward--she knew not what she saw, nor what she\nwished to see;--happy or unhappy,--nothing pleased her; she turned away\nher head from every sketch of him.\n\nElinor flattered herself that some one of their connections in London\nwould write to them to announce the event, and give farther\nparticulars,--but day after day passed off, and brought no letter, no\ntidings.  Though uncertain that any one were to blame, she found fault\nwith every absent friend.  They were all thoughtless or indolent.\n\n\"When do you write to Colonel Brandon, ma'am?\" was an inquiry which\nsprung from the impatience of her mind to have something going on.\n\n\"I wrote to him, my love, last week, and rather expect to see, than to\nhear from him again.  I earnestly pressed his coming to us, and should\nnot be surprised to see him walk in today or tomorrow, or any day.\"\n\nThis was gaining something, something to look forward to.  Colonel\nBrandon must have some information to give.\n\nScarcely had she so determined it, when the figure of a man on\nhorseback drew her eyes to the window.  He stopt at their gate.  It was\na gentleman, it was Colonel Brandon himself.  Now she could hear more;\nand she trembled in expectation of it.  But--it was NOT Colonel\nBrandon--neither his air--nor his height.  Were it possible, she must\nsay it must be Edward.  She looked again.  He had just dismounted;--she\ncould not be mistaken,--it WAS Edward.  She moved away and sat down.\n\"He comes from Mr. Pratt's purposely to see us.  I WILL be calm; I WILL\nbe mistress of myself.\"\n\nIn a moment she perceived that the others were likewise aware of the\nmistake.  She saw her mother and Marianne change colour; saw them look\nat herself, and whisper a few sentences to each other.  She would have\ngiven the world to be able to speak--and to make them understand that\nshe hoped no coolness, no slight, would appear in their behaviour to\nhim;--but she had no utterance, and was obliged to leave all to their\nown discretion.\n\nNot a syllable passed aloud.  They all waited in silence for the\nappearance of their visitor.  His footsteps were heard along the gravel\npath; in a moment he was in the passage, and in another he was before\nthem.\n\nHis countenance, as he entered the room, was not too happy, even for\nElinor.  His complexion was white with agitation, and he looked as if\nfearful of his reception, and conscious that he merited no kind one.\nMrs. Dashwood, however, conforming, as she trusted, to the wishes of\nthat daughter, by whom she then meant in the warmth of her heart to be\nguided in every thing, met with a look of forced complacency, gave him\nher hand, and wished him joy.\n\nHe coloured, and stammered out an unintelligible reply.  Elinor's lips\nhad moved with her mother's, and, when the moment of action was over,\nshe wished that she had shaken hands with him too.  But it was then too\nlate, and with a countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again and\ntalked of the weather.\n\nMarianne had retreated as much as possible out of sight, to conceal her\ndistress; and Margaret, understanding some part, but not the whole of\nthe case, thought it incumbent on her to be dignified, and therefore\ntook a seat as far from him as she could, and maintained a strict\nsilence.\n\nWhen Elinor had ceased to rejoice in the dryness of the season, a very\nawful pause took place.  It was put an end to by Mrs. Dashwood, who\nfelt obliged to hope that he had left Mrs. Ferrars very well.  In a\nhurried manner, he replied in the affirmative.\n\nAnother pause.\n\nElinor resolving to exert herself, though fearing the sound of her own\nvoice, now said,\n\n\"Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?\"\n\n\"At Longstaple!\" he replied, with an air of surprise.-- \"No, my mother\nis in town.\"\n\n\"I meant,\" said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, \"to inquire\nfor Mrs. EDWARD Ferrars.\"\n\nShe dared not look up;--but her mother and Marianne both turned their\neyes on him.  He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and,\nafter some hesitation, said,--\n\n\"Perhaps you mean--my brother--you mean Mrs.--Mrs. ROBERT Ferrars.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Robert Ferrars!\"--was repeated by Marianne and her mother in an\naccent of the utmost amazement;--and though Elinor could not speak,\neven HER eyes were fixed on him with the same impatient wonder.  He\nrose from his seat, and walked to the window, apparently from not\nknowing what to do; took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and\nwhile spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to\npieces as he spoke, said, in a hurried voice,\n\n\"Perhaps you do not know--you may not have heard that my brother is\nlately married to--to the youngest--to Miss Lucy Steele.\"\n\nHis words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment by all but Elinor,\nwho sat with her head leaning over her work, in a state of such\nagitation as made her hardly know where she was.\n\n\"Yes,\" said he, \"they were married last week, and are now at Dawlish.\"\n\nElinor could sit it no longer.  She almost ran out of the room, and as\nsoon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first\nshe thought would never cease.  Edward, who had till then looked any\nwhere, rather than at her, saw her hurry away, and perhaps saw--or even\nheard, her emotion; for immediately afterwards he fell into a reverie,\nwhich no remarks, no inquiries, no affectionate address of Mrs.\nDashwood could penetrate, and at last, without saying a word, quitted\nthe room, and walked out towards the village--leaving the others in the\ngreatest astonishment and perplexity on a change in his situation, so\nwonderful and so sudden;--a perplexity which they had no means of\nlessening but by their own conjectures.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUnaccountable, however, as the circumstances of his release might\nappear to the whole family, it was certain that Edward was free; and to\nwhat purpose that freedom would be employed was easily pre-determined\nby all;--for after experiencing the blessings of ONE imprudent\nengagement, contracted without his mother's consent, as he had already\ndone for more than four years, nothing less could be expected of him in\nthe failure of THAT, than the immediate contraction of another.\n\nHis errand at Barton, in fact, was a simple one.  It was only to ask\nElinor to marry him;--and considering that he was not altogether\ninexperienced in such a question, it might be strange that he should\nfeel so uncomfortable in the present case as he really did, so much in\nneed of encouragement and fresh air.\n\nHow soon he had walked himself into the proper resolution, however, how\nsoon an opportunity of exercising it occurred, in what manner he\nexpressed himself, and how he was received, need not be particularly\ntold.  This only need be said;--that when they all sat down to table at\nfour o'clock, about three hours after his arrival, he had secured his\nlady, engaged her mother's consent, and was not only in the rapturous\nprofession of the lover, but, in the reality of reason and truth, one\nof the happiest of men.  His situation indeed was more than commonly\njoyful.  He had more than the ordinary triumph of accepted love to\nswell his heart, and raise his spirits.  He was released without any\nreproach to himself, from an entanglement which had long formed his\nmisery, from a woman whom he had long ceased to love;--and elevated at\nonce to that security with another, which he must have thought of\nalmost with despair, as soon as he had learnt to consider it with\ndesire.  He was brought, not from doubt or suspense, but from misery to\nhappiness;--and the change was openly spoken in such a genuine,\nflowing, grateful cheerfulness, as his friends had never witnessed in\nhim before.\n\nHis heart was now open to Elinor, all its weaknesses, all its errors\nconfessed, and his first boyish attachment to Lucy treated with all the\nphilosophic dignity of twenty-four.\n\n\"It was a foolish, idle inclination on my side,\" said he, \"the\nconsequence of ignorance of the world--and want of employment.  Had my\nmother given me some active profession when I was removed at eighteen\nfrom the care of Mr. Pratt, I think--nay, I am sure, it would never\nhave happened; for though I left Longstaple with what I thought, at the\ntime, a most unconquerable preference for his niece, yet had I then had\nany pursuit, any object to engage my time and keep me at a distance\nfrom her for a few months, I should very soon have outgrown the fancied\nattachment, especially by mixing more with the world, as in such case I\nmust have done.  But instead of having any thing to do, instead of\nhaving any profession chosen for me, or being allowed to chuse any\nmyself, I returned home to be completely idle; and for the first\ntwelvemonth afterwards I had not even the nominal employment, which\nbelonging to the university would have given me; for I was not entered\nat Oxford till I was nineteen.  I had therefore nothing in the world to\ndo, but to fancy myself in love; and as my mother did not make my home\nin every respect comfortable, as I had no friend, no companion in my\nbrother, and disliked new acquaintance, it was not unnatural for me to\nbe very often at Longstaple, where I always felt myself at home, and\nwas always sure of a welcome; and accordingly I spent the greatest part\nof my time there from eighteen to nineteen: Lucy appeared everything\nthat was amiable and obliging.  She was pretty too--at least I thought\nso THEN; and I had seen so little of other women, that I could make no\ncomparisons, and see no defects.  Considering everything, therefore, I\nhope, foolish as our engagement was, foolish as it has since in every\nway been proved, it was not at the time an unnatural or an inexcusable\npiece of folly.\"\n\nThe change which a few hours had wrought in the minds and the happiness\nof the Dashwoods, was such--so great--as promised them all, the\nsatisfaction of a sleepless night.  Mrs. Dashwood, too happy to be\ncomfortable, knew not how to love Edward, nor praise Elinor enough, how\nto be enough thankful for his release without wounding his delicacy,\nnor how at once to give them leisure for unrestrained conversation\ntogether, and yet enjoy, as she wished, the sight and society of both.\n\nMarianne could speak HER happiness only by tears.  Comparisons would\noccur--regrets would arise;--and her joy, though sincere as her love\nfor her sister, was of a kind to give her neither spirits nor language.\n\nBut Elinor--how are HER feelings to be described?--From the moment of\nlearning that Lucy was married to another, that Edward was free, to the\nmoment of his justifying the hopes which had so instantly followed, she\nwas every thing by turns but tranquil.  But when the second moment had\npassed, when she found every doubt, every solicitude removed, compared\nher situation with what so lately it had been,--saw him honourably\nreleased from his former engagement, saw him instantly profiting by the\nrelease, to address herself and declare an affection as tender, as\nconstant as she had ever supposed it to be,--she was oppressed, she was\novercome by her own felicity;--and happily disposed as is the human\nmind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it\nrequired several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree\nof tranquillity to her heart.\n\nEdward was now fixed at the cottage at least for a week;--for whatever\nother claims might be made on him, it was impossible that less than a\nweek should be given up to the enjoyment of Elinor's company, or\nsuffice to say half that was to be said of the past, the present, and\nthe future;--for though a very few hours spent in the hard labor of\nincessant talking will despatch more subjects than can really be in\ncommon between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is\ndifferent.  Between THEM no subject is finished, no communication is\neven made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.\n\nLucy's marriage, the unceasing and reasonable wonder among them all,\nformed of course one of the earliest discussions of the lovers;--and\nElinor's particular knowledge of each party made it appear to her in\nevery view, as one of the most extraordinary and unaccountable\ncircumstances she had ever heard.  How they could be thrown together,\nand by what attraction Robert could be drawn on to marry a girl, of\nwhose beauty she had herself heard him speak without any admiration,--a\ngirl too already engaged to his brother, and on whose account that\nbrother had been thrown off by his family--it was beyond her\ncomprehension to make out.  To her own heart it was a delightful\naffair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her\nreason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.\n\nEdward could only attempt an explanation by supposing, that, perhaps,\nat first accidentally meeting, the vanity of the one had been so worked\non by the flattery of the other, as to lead by degrees to all the rest.\nElinor remembered what Robert had told her in Harley Street, of his\nopinion of what his own mediation in his brother's affairs might have\ndone, if applied to in time.  She repeated it to Edward.\n\n\"THAT was exactly like Robert,\"--was his immediate observation.--\"And\nTHAT,\" he presently added, \"might perhaps be in HIS head when the\nacquaintance between them first began.  And Lucy perhaps at first might\nthink only of procuring his good offices in my favour.  Other designs\nmight afterward arise.\"\n\nHow long it had been carrying on between them, however, he was equally\nat a loss with herself to make out; for at Oxford, where he had\nremained for choice ever since his quitting London, he had had no means\nof hearing of her but from herself, and her letters to the very last\nwere neither less frequent, nor less affectionate than usual.  Not the\nsmallest suspicion, therefore, had ever occurred to prepare him for\nwhat followed;--and when at last it burst on him in a letter from Lucy\nherself, he had been for some time, he believed, half stupified between\nthe wonder, the horror, and the joy of such a deliverance.  He put the\nletter into Elinor's hands.\n\n     \"DEAR SIR,\n\n     \"Being very sure I have long lost your affections,\n     I have thought myself at liberty to bestow my own\n     on another, and have no doubt of being as happy with\n     him as I once used to think I might be with you;\n     but I scorn to accept a hand while the heart was\n     another's.  Sincerely wish you happy in your choice,\n     and it shall not be my fault if we are not always\n     good friends, as our near relationship now makes\n     proper.  I can safely say I owe you no ill-will,\n     and am sure you will be too generous to do us any\n     ill offices.  Your brother has gained my affections\n     entirely, and as we could not live without one\n     another, we are just returned from the altar, and\n     are now on our way to Dawlish for a few weeks, which\n     place your dear brother has great curiosity to see,\n     but thought I would first trouble you with these\n     few lines, and shall always remain,\n\n     \"Your sincere well-wisher, friend, and sister,\n                                        \"LUCY FERRARS.\n\n     \"I have burnt all your letters, and will return\n     your picture the first opportunity.  Please to destroy\n     my scrawls--but the ring with my hair you are very\n     welcome to keep.\"\n\nElinor read and returned it without any comment.\n\n\"I will not ask your opinion of it as a composition,\" said\nEdward.--\"For worlds would not I have had a letter of hers seen by YOU\nin former days.--In a sister it is bad enough, but in a wife!--how I\nhave blushed over the pages of her writing!--and I believe I may say\nthat since the first half year of our foolish--business--this is the\nonly letter I ever received from her, of which the substance made me\nany amends for the defect of the style.\"\n\n\"However it may have come about,\" said Elinor, after a pause,--\"they\nare certainly married.  And your mother has brought on herself a most\nappropriate punishment.  The independence she settled on Robert,\nthrough resentment against you, has put it in his power to make his own\nchoice; and she has actually been bribing one son with a thousand\na-year, to do the very deed which she disinherited the other for\nintending to do.  She will hardly be less hurt, I suppose, by Robert's\nmarrying Lucy, than she would have been by your marrying her.\"\n\n\"She will be more hurt by it, for Robert always was her favourite.--She\nwill be more hurt by it, and on the same principle will forgive him\nmuch sooner.\"\n\nIn what state the affair stood at present between them, Edward knew\nnot, for no communication with any of his family had yet been attempted\nby him.  He had quitted Oxford within four and twenty hours after\nLucy's letter arrived, and with only one object before him, the nearest\nroad to Barton, had had no leisure to form any scheme of conduct, with\nwhich that road did not hold the most intimate connection.  He could do\nnothing till he were assured of his fate with Miss Dashwood; and by his\nrapidity in seeking THAT fate, it is to be supposed, in spite of the\njealousy with which he had once thought of Colonel Brandon, in spite of\nthe modesty with which he rated his own deserts, and the politeness\nwith which he talked of his doubts, he did not, upon the whole, expect\na very cruel reception.  It was his business, however, to say that he\nDID, and he said it very prettily.  What he might say on the subject a\ntwelvemonth after, must be referred to the imagination of husbands and\nwives.\n\nThat Lucy had certainly meant to deceive, to go off with a flourish of\nmalice against him in her message by Thomas, was perfectly clear to\nElinor; and Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her\ncharacter, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost\nmeanness of wanton ill-nature. Though his eyes had been long opened,\neven before his acquaintance with Elinor began, to her ignorance and a\nwant of liberality in some of her opinions--they had been equally\nimputed, by him, to her want of education; and till her last letter\nreached him, he had always believed her to be a well-disposed,\ngood-hearted girl, and thoroughly attached to himself.  Nothing but\nsuch a persuasion could have prevented his putting an end to an\nengagement, which, long before the discovery of it laid him open to his\nmother's anger, had been a continual source of disquiet and regret to\nhim.\n\n\"I thought it my duty,\" said he, \"independent of my feelings, to give\nher the option of continuing the engagement or not, when I was\nrenounced by my mother, and stood to all appearance without a friend in\nthe world to assist me.  In such a situation as that, where there\nseemed nothing to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living\ncreature, how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly\ninsisted on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing but\nthe most disinterested affection was her inducement?  And even now, I\ncannot comprehend on what motive she acted, or what fancied advantage\nit could be to her, to be fettered to a man for whom she had not the\nsmallest regard, and who had only two thousand pounds in the world.\nShe could not foresee that Colonel Brandon would give me a living.\"\n\n\"No; but she might suppose that something would occur in your favour;\nthat your own family might in time relent.  And at any rate, she lost\nnothing by continuing the engagement, for she has proved that it\nfettered neither her inclination nor her actions.  The connection was\ncertainly a respectable one, and probably gained her consideration\namong her friends; and, if nothing more advantageous occurred, it would\nbe better for her to marry YOU than be single.\"\n\nEdward was, of course, immediately convinced that nothing could have\nbeen more natural than Lucy's conduct, nor more self-evident than the\nmotive of it.\n\nElinor scolded him, harshly as ladies always scold the imprudence which\ncompliments themselves, for having spent so much time with them at\nNorland, when he must have felt his own inconstancy.\n\n\"Your behaviour was certainly very wrong,\" said she; \"because--to say\nnothing of my own conviction, our relations were all led away by it to\nfancy and expect WHAT, as you were THEN situated, could never be.\"\n\nHe could only plead an ignorance of his own heart, and a mistaken\nconfidence in the force of his engagement.\n\n\"I was simple enough to think, that because my FAITH was plighted to\nanother, there could be no danger in my being with you; and that the\nconsciousness of my engagement was to keep my heart as safe and sacred\nas my honour.  I felt that I admired you, but I told myself it was only\nfriendship; and till I began to make comparisons between yourself and\nLucy, I did not know how far I was got.  After that, I suppose, I WAS\nwrong in remaining so much in Sussex, and the arguments with which I\nreconciled myself to the expediency of it, were no better than\nthese:--The danger is my own; I am doing no injury to anybody but\nmyself.\"\n\nElinor smiled, and shook her head.\n\nEdward heard with pleasure of Colonel Brandon's being expected at the\nCottage, as he really wished not only to be better acquainted with him,\nbut to have an opportunity of convincing him that he no longer resented\nhis giving him the living of Delaford--\"Which, at present,\" said he,\n\"after thanks so ungraciously delivered as mine were on the occasion,\nhe must think I have never forgiven him for offering.\"\n\nNOW he felt astonished himself that he had never yet been to the place.\nBut so little interest had he taken in the matter, that he owed all his\nknowledge of the house, garden, and glebe, extent of the parish,\ncondition of the land, and rate of the tithes, to Elinor herself, who\nhad heard so much of it from Colonel Brandon, and heard it with so much\nattention, as to be entirely mistress of the subject.\n\nOne question after this only remained undecided, between them, one\ndifficulty only was to be overcome.  They were brought together by\nmutual affection, with the warmest approbation of their real friends;\ntheir intimate knowledge of each other seemed to make their happiness\ncertain--and they only wanted something to live upon.  Edward had two\nthousand pounds, and Elinor one, which, with Delaford living, was all\nthat they could call their own; for it was impossible that Mrs.\nDashwood should advance anything; and they were neither of them quite\nenough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a-year\nwould supply them with the comforts of life.\n\nEdward was not entirely without hopes of some favourable change in his\nmother towards him; and on THAT he rested for the residue of their\nincome.  But Elinor had no such dependence; for since Edward would\nstill be unable to marry Miss Morton, and his chusing herself had been\nspoken of in Mrs. Ferrars's flattering language as only a lesser evil\nthan his chusing Lucy Steele, she feared that Robert's offence would\nserve no other purpose than to enrich Fanny.\n\nAbout four days after Edward's arrival Colonel Brandon appeared, to\ncomplete Mrs. Dashwood's satisfaction, and to give her the dignity of\nhaving, for the first time since her living at Barton, more company\nwith her than her house would hold.  Edward was allowed to retain the\nprivilege of first comer, and Colonel Brandon therefore walked every\nnight to his old quarters at the Park; from whence he usually returned\nin the morning, early enough to interrupt the lovers' first tete-a-tete\nbefore breakfast.\n\nA three weeks' residence at Delaford, where, in his evening hours at\nleast, he had little to do but to calculate the disproportion between\nthirty-six and seventeen, brought him to Barton in a temper of mind\nwhich needed all the improvement in Marianne's looks, all the kindness\nof her welcome, and all the encouragement of her mother's language, to\nmake it cheerful.  Among such friends, however, and such flattery, he\ndid revive.  No rumour of Lucy's marriage had yet reached him:--he knew\nnothing of what had passed; and the first hours of his visit were\nconsequently spent in hearing and in wondering.  Every thing was\nexplained to him by Mrs. Dashwood, and he found fresh reason to rejoice\nin what he had done for Mr. Ferrars, since eventually it promoted the\ninterest of Elinor.\n\nIt would be needless to say, that the gentlemen advanced in the good\nopinion of each other, as they advanced in each other's acquaintance,\nfor it could not be otherwise.  Their resemblance in good principles\nand good sense, in disposition and manner of thinking, would probably\nhave been sufficient to unite them in friendship, without any other\nattraction; but their being in love with two sisters, and two sisters\nfond of each other, made that mutual regard inevitable and immediate,\nwhich might otherwise have waited the effect of time and judgment.\n\nThe letters from town, which a few days before would have made every\nnerve in Elinor's body thrill with transport, now arrived to be read\nwith less emotion than mirth.  Mrs. Jennings wrote to tell the\nwonderful tale, to vent her honest indignation against the jilting\ngirl, and pour forth her compassion towards poor Mr. Edward, who, she\nwas sure, had quite doted upon the worthless hussy, and was now, by all\naccounts, almost broken-hearted, at Oxford.-- \"I do think,\" she\ncontinued, \"nothing was ever carried on so sly; for it was but two days\nbefore Lucy called and sat a couple of hours with me.  Not a soul\nsuspected anything of the matter, not even Nancy, who, poor soul!  came\ncrying to me the day after, in a great fright for fear of Mrs. Ferrars,\nas well as not knowing how to get to Plymouth; for Lucy it seems\nborrowed all her money before she went off to be married, on purpose we\nsuppose to make a show with, and poor Nancy had not seven shillings in\nthe world;--so I was very glad to give her five guineas to take her\ndown to Exeter, where she thinks of staying three or four weeks with\nMrs. Burgess, in hopes, as I tell her, to fall in with the Doctor\nagain.  And I must say that Lucy's crossness not to take them along\nwith them in the chaise is worse than all.  Poor Mr. Edward! I cannot\nget him out of my head, but you must send for him to Barton, and Miss\nMarianne must try to comfort him.\"\n\nMr. Dashwood's strains were more solemn.  Mrs. Ferrars was the most\nunfortunate of women--poor Fanny had suffered agonies of\nsensibility--and he considered the existence of each, under such a\nblow, with grateful wonder.  Robert's offence was unpardonable, but\nLucy's was infinitely worse.  Neither of them were ever again to be\nmentioned to Mrs. Ferrars; and even, if she might hereafter be induced\nto forgive her son, his wife should never be acknowledged as her\ndaughter, nor be permitted to appear in her presence.  The secrecy with\nwhich everything had been carried on between them, was rationally\ntreated as enormously heightening the crime, because, had any suspicion\nof it occurred to the others, proper measures would have been taken to\nprevent the marriage; and he called on Elinor to join with him in\nregretting that Lucy's engagement with Edward had not rather been\nfulfilled, than that she should thus be the means of spreading misery\nfarther in the family.-- He thus continued:\n\n\"Mrs. Ferrars has never yet mentioned Edward's name, which does not\nsurprise us; but, to our great astonishment, not a line has been\nreceived from him on the occasion.  Perhaps, however, he is kept silent\nby his fear of offending, and I shall, therefore, give him a hint, by a\nline to Oxford, that his sister and I both think a letter of proper\nsubmission from him, addressed perhaps to Fanny, and by her shewn to\nher mother, might not be taken amiss; for we all know the tenderness of\nMrs. Ferrars's heart, and that she wishes for nothing so much as to be\non good terms with her children.\"\n\nThis paragraph was of some importance to the prospects and conduct of\nEdward.  It determined him to attempt a reconciliation, though not\nexactly in the manner pointed out by their brother and sister.\n\n\"A letter of proper submission!\" repeated he; \"would they have me beg\nmy mother's pardon for Robert's ingratitude to HER, and breach of\nhonour to ME?--I can make no submission--I am grown neither humble nor\npenitent by what has passed.--I am grown very happy; but that would not\ninterest.--I know of no submission that IS proper for me to make.\"\n\n\"You may certainly ask to be forgiven,\" said Elinor, \"because you have\noffended;--and I should think you might NOW venture so far as to\nprofess some concern for having ever formed the engagement which drew\non you your mother's anger.\"\n\nHe agreed that he might.\n\n\"And when she has forgiven you, perhaps a little humility may be\nconvenient while acknowledging a second engagement, almost as imprudent\nin HER eyes as the first.\"\n\nHe had nothing to urge against it, but still resisted the idea of a\nletter of proper submission; and therefore, to make it easier to him,\nas he declared a much greater willingness to make mean concessions by\nword of mouth than on paper, it was resolved that, instead of writing\nto Fanny, he should go to London, and personally intreat her good\noffices in his favour.-- \"And if they really DO interest themselves,\"\nsaid Marianne, in her new character of candour, \"in bringing about a\nreconciliation, I shall think that even John and Fanny are not entirely\nwithout merit.\"\n\nAfter a visit on Colonel Brandon's side of only three or four days, the\ntwo gentlemen quitted Barton together.-- They were to go immediately to\nDelaford, that Edward might have some personal knowledge of his future\nhome, and assist his patron and friend in deciding on what improvements\nwere needed to it; and from thence, after staying there a couple of\nnights, he was to proceed on his journey to town.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAfter a proper resistance on the part of Mrs. Ferrars, just so violent\nand so steady as to preserve her from that reproach which she always\nseemed fearful of incurring, the reproach of being too amiable, Edward\nwas admitted to her presence, and pronounced to be again her son.\n\nHer family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating.  For many years of\nher life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of Edward\na few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar annihilation of\nRobert had left her for a fortnight without any; and now, by the\nresuscitation of Edward, she had one again.\n\nIn spite of his being allowed once more to live, however, he did not\nfeel the continuance of his existence secure, till he had revealed his\npresent engagement; for the publication of that circumstance, he\nfeared, might give a sudden turn to his constitution, and carry him off\nas rapidly as before.  With apprehensive caution therefore it was\nrevealed, and he was listened to with unexpected calmness.  Mrs.\nFerrars at first reasonably endeavoured to dissuade him from marrying\nMiss Dashwood, by every argument in her power;--told him, that in Miss\nMorton he would have a woman of higher rank and larger fortune;--and\nenforced the assertion, by observing that Miss Morton was the daughter\nof a nobleman with thirty thousand pounds, while Miss Dashwood was only\nthe daughter of a private gentleman with no more than THREE; but when\nshe found that, though perfectly admitting the truth of her\nrepresentation, he was by no means inclined to be guided by it, she\njudged it wisest, from the experience of the past, to submit--and\ntherefore, after such an ungracious delay as she owed to her own\ndignity, and as served to prevent every suspicion of good-will, she\nissued her decree of consent to the marriage of Edward and Elinor.\n\nWhat she would engage to do towards augmenting their income was next to\nbe considered; and here it plainly appeared, that though Edward was now\nher only son, he was by no means her eldest; for while Robert was\ninevitably endowed with a thousand pounds a-year, not the smallest\nobjection was made against Edward's taking orders for the sake of two\nhundred and fifty at the utmost; nor was anything promised either for\nthe present or in future, beyond the ten thousand pounds, which had\nbeen given with Fanny.\n\nIt was as much, however, as was desired, and more than was expected, by\nEdward and Elinor; and Mrs. Ferrars herself, by her shuffling excuses,\nseemed the only person surprised at her not giving more.\n\nWith an income quite sufficient to their wants thus secured to them,\nthey had nothing to wait for after Edward was in possession of the\nliving, but the readiness of the house, to which Colonel Brandon, with\nan eager desire for the accommodation of Elinor, was making\nconsiderable improvements; and after waiting some time for their\ncompletion, after experiencing, as usual, a thousand disappointments\nand delays from the unaccountable dilatoriness of the workmen, Elinor,\nas usual, broke through the first positive resolution of not marrying\ntill every thing was ready, and the ceremony took place in Barton\nchurch early in the autumn.\n\nThe first month after their marriage was spent with their friend at the\nMansion-house; from whence they could superintend the progress of the\nParsonage, and direct every thing as they liked on the spot;--could\nchuse papers, project shrubberies, and invent a sweep.  Mrs. Jennings's\nprophecies, though rather jumbled together, were chiefly fulfilled; for\nshe was able to visit Edward and his wife in their Parsonage by\nMichaelmas, and she found in Elinor and her husband, as she really\nbelieved, one of the happiest couples in the world.  They had in fact\nnothing to wish for, but the marriage of Colonel Brandon and Marianne,\nand rather better pasturage for their cows.\n\nThey were visited on their first settling by almost all their relations\nand friends.  Mrs. Ferrars came to inspect the happiness which she was\nalmost ashamed of having authorised; and even the Dashwoods were at the\nexpense of a journey from Sussex to do them honour.\n\n\"I will not say that I am disappointed, my dear sister,\" said John, as\nthey were walking together one morning before the gates of Delaford\nHouse, \"THAT would be saying too much, for certainly you have been one\nof the most fortunate young women in the world, as it is.  But, I\nconfess, it would give me great pleasure to call Colonel Brandon\nbrother.  His property here, his place, his house, every thing is in\nsuch respectable and excellent condition!--and his woods!--I have not\nseen such timber any where in Dorsetshire, as there is now standing in\nDelaford Hanger!--And though, perhaps, Marianne may not seem exactly\nthe person to attract him--yet I think it would altogether be advisable\nfor you to have them now frequently staying with you, for as Colonel\nBrandon seems a great deal at home, nobody can tell what may\nhappen--for, when people are much thrown together, and see little of\nanybody else--and it will always be in your power to set her off to\nadvantage, and so forth;--in short, you may as well give her a\nchance--You understand me.\"--\n\nBut though Mrs. Ferrars DID come to see them, and always treated them\nwith the make-believe of decent affection, they were never insulted by\nher real favour and preference.  THAT was due to the folly of Robert,\nand the cunning of his wife; and it was earned by them before many\nmonths had passed away.  The selfish sagacity of the latter, which had\nat first drawn Robert into the scrape, was the principal instrument of\nhis deliverance from it; for her respectful humility, assiduous\nattentions, and endless flatteries, as soon as the smallest opening was\ngiven for their exercise, reconciled Mrs. Ferrars to his choice, and\nre-established him completely in her favour.\n\nThe whole of Lucy's behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which\ncrowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance\nof what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however\nits progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every\nadvantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and\nconscience.  When Robert first sought her acquaintance, and privately\nvisited her in Bartlett's Buildings, it was only with the view imputed\nto him by his brother.  He merely meant to persuade her to give up the\nengagement; and as there could be nothing to overcome but the affection\nof both, he naturally expected that one or two interviews would settle\nthe matter.  In that point, however, and that only, he erred;--for\nthough Lucy soon gave him hopes that his eloquence would convince her\nin TIME, another visit, another conversation, was always wanted to\nproduce this conviction.  Some doubts always lingered in her mind when\nthey parted, which could only be removed by another half hour's\ndiscourse with himself.  His attendance was by this means secured, and\nthe rest followed in course.  Instead of talking of Edward, they came\ngradually to talk only of Robert,--a subject on which he had always\nmore to say than on any other, and in which she soon betrayed an\ninterest even equal to his own; and in short, it became speedily\nevident to both, that he had entirely supplanted his brother.  He was\nproud of his conquest, proud of tricking Edward, and very proud of\nmarrying privately without his mother's consent.  What immediately\nfollowed is known.  They passed some months in great happiness at\nDawlish; for she had many relations and old acquaintances to cut--and\nhe drew several plans for magnificent cottages;--and from thence\nreturning to town, procured the forgiveness of Mrs. Ferrars, by the\nsimple expedient of asking it, which, at Lucy's instigation, was\nadopted.  The forgiveness, at first, indeed, as was reasonable,\ncomprehended only Robert; and Lucy, who had owed his mother no duty and\ntherefore could have transgressed none, still remained some weeks\nlonger unpardoned.  But perseverance in humility of conduct and\nmessages, in self-condemnation for Robert's offence, and gratitude for\nthe unkindness she was treated with, procured her in time the haughty\nnotice which overcame her by its graciousness, and led soon afterwards,\nby rapid degrees, to the highest state of affection and influence.\nLucy became as necessary to Mrs. Ferrars, as either Robert or Fanny;\nand while Edward was never cordially forgiven for having once intended\nto marry her, and Elinor, though superior to her in fortune and birth,\nwas spoken of as an intruder, SHE was in every thing considered, and\nalways openly acknowledged, to be a favourite child.  They settled in\ntown, received very liberal assistance from Mrs. Ferrars, were on the\nbest terms imaginable with the Dashwoods; and setting aside the\njealousies and ill-will continually subsisting between Fanny and Lucy,\nin which their husbands of course took a part, as well as the frequent\ndomestic disagreements between Robert and Lucy themselves, nothing\ncould exceed the harmony in which they all lived together.\n\nWhat Edward had done to forfeit the right of eldest son, might have\npuzzled many people to find out; and what Robert had done to succeed to\nit, might have puzzled them still more.  It was an arrangement,\nhowever, justified in its effects, if not in its cause; for nothing\never appeared in Robert's style of living or of talking to give a\nsuspicion of his regretting the extent of his income, as either leaving\nhis brother too little, or bringing himself too much;--and if Edward\nmight be judged from the ready discharge of his duties in every\nparticular, from an increasing attachment to his wife and his home, and\nfrom the regular cheerfulness of his spirits, he might be supposed no\nless contented with his lot, no less free from every wish of an\nexchange.\n\nElinor's marriage divided her as little from her family as could well\nbe contrived, without rendering the cottage at Barton entirely useless,\nfor her mother and sisters spent much more than half their time with\nher.  Mrs. Dashwood was acting on motives of policy as well as pleasure\nin the frequency of her visits at Delaford; for her wish of bringing\nMarianne and Colonel Brandon together was hardly less earnest, though\nrather more liberal than what John had expressed.  It was now her\ndarling object.  Precious as was the company of her daughter to her,\nshe desired nothing so much as to give up its constant enjoyment to her\nvalued friend; and to see Marianne settled at the mansion-house was\nequally the wish of Edward and Elinor.  They each felt his sorrows, and\ntheir own obligations, and Marianne, by general consent, was to be the\nreward of all.\n\nWith such a confederacy against her--with a knowledge so intimate of\nhis goodness--with a conviction of his fond attachment to herself,\nwhich at last, though long after it was observable to everybody\nelse--burst on her--what could she do?\n\nMarianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate.  She was born to\ndiscover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her\nconduct, her most favourite maxims.  She was born to overcome an\naffection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment\nsuperior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give\nher hand to another!--and THAT other, a man who had suffered no less\nthan herself under the event of a former attachment, whom, two years\nbefore, she had considered too old to be married,--and who still sought\nthe constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!\n\nBut so it was.  Instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible\npassion, as once she had fondly flattered herself with expecting,--instead\nof remaining even for ever with her mother, and finding her only\npleasures in retirement and study, as afterwards in her more calm and\nsober judgment she had determined on,--she found herself at nineteen,\nsubmitting to new attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new\nhome, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village.\n\nColonel Brandon was now as happy, as all those who best loved him,\nbelieved he deserved to be;--in Marianne he was consoled for every past\naffliction;--her regard and her society restored his mind to animation,\nand his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Marianne found her own\nhappiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of\neach observing friend.  Marianne could never love by halves; and her\nwhole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had\nonce been to Willoughby.\n\nWilloughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his\npunishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of\nMrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as\nthe source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had he\nbehaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been happy\nand rich.  That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought its\nown punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;--nor that he long\nthought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret.  But\nthat he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or\ncontracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must\nnot be depended on--for he did neither.  He lived to exert, and\nfrequently to enjoy himself.  His wife was not always out of humour,\nnor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs,\nand in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of\ndomestic felicity.\n\nFor Marianne, however--in spite of his incivility in surviving her\nloss--he always retained that decided regard which interested him in\nevery thing that befell her, and made her his secret standard of\nperfection in woman;--and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him\nin after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon.\n\nMrs. Dashwood was prudent enough to remain at the cottage, without\nattempting a removal to Delaford; and fortunately for Sir John and Mrs.\nJennings, when Marianne was taken from them, Margaret had reached an\nage highly suitable for dancing, and not very ineligible for being\nsupposed to have a lover.\n\nBetween Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication\nwhich strong family affection would naturally dictate;--and among the\nmerits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked\nas the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost\nwithin sight of each other, they could live without disagreement\nbetween themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.\n\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The Dashwood family is introduced; Mr. and Mrs. Dashwood and their three daughters live at Norland Park, an estate in Sussex. Unfortunately, Mr. Dashwood's wife and daughters are left with very little when he dies and the estate goes to his son, John Dashwood. John and his wife Fanny have a great deal of money, yet refuse to help his half-sisters and their mother. Elinor, one of the Dashwood girls, is entirely sensible and prudent; her sister, Marianne, is very emotional and never moderate. Margaret, the youngest sister, is young and good-natured. Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters stay at Norland for a few months, mostly because of the promising friendship developing between Elinor and Edward Ferrars, Fanny's shy, but very kind, brother. Elinor likes Edward, but is not convinced her feelings are mutual; Fanny is especially displeased by their apparent regard, as Edward's mother wants him to marry very well. A relative of Mrs. Dashwood's, Sir John Middleton, offers them a cottage at Barton Park in Devonshire; the family must accept, and are sad at leaving their home and having to separate Edward and Elinor. They find Barton Cottage and the countryside around it charming, and Sir John Middleton a very kind and obliging host. His wife, Lady Middleton, is cold and passionless; still, they accept frequent invitations to dinners and parties at Barton Park. The Dashwoods meet Mrs. Jennings, Sir John's mother-in-law, a merry, somewhat vulgar older woman, and Colonel Brandon, a gentleman and a bachelor. The Colonel is soon taken with Marianne, but Marianne objects to Mrs. Jennings attempts to get them together, and to the \"advanced\" age and serious demeanor of the Colonel. Marianne falls and twists her ankle while walking; she is lucky enough to be found and carried home by a dashing man named Willoughby. Marianne and Willoughby have a similar romantic temperament, and Marianne is much pleased to find that Willoughby has a passion for art, poetry, and music. Willoughby and Marianne's attachment develops steadily, though Elinor believes that they should be more restrained in showing their regard publicly. One pleasant day, the Middletons, the Dashwoods, and Willoughby are supposed to go on a picnic with the Colonel, but their plans are ditched when Colonel Brandon is forced to leave because of distressing news. Willoughby becomes an even more attentive guest at the cottage, spending a great deal more time there than Allenham with his aunt. Willoughby openly confesses his affections for Marianne and for all of them, and hopes they will always think of him as fondly as he does of them; this leaves Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor convinced that if Marianne and Willoughby are not engaged, they soon will be. One morning, Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, and Margaret leave the couple, hoping for a proposal; when they return, they find Marianne crying, and Willoughby saying that he must immediately go to London. Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor are completely unsettled by this hasty departure, and Elinor fears that they might have had a falling-out. Marianne is torn up by Willoughby's departure, and Elinor begins to question whether Willoughby's intentions were honorable. But, whether Willoughby and Marianne are engaged remains a mystery, as Marianne will not speak of it. Edward comes to visit them at Barton, and is welcomed very warmly as their guest. It is soon apparent that Edward is unhappy, and doesn't show as much affection for Elinor; when they spot a ring he is wearing, with a lock of hair suspiciously similar to Elinor's, even Elinor is baffled. Edward finally forces himself to leave, still seeming distressed. Sir John and Mrs. Jennings soon introduce Mrs. Jennings' other daughter, Mrs. Palmer, and her husband to the family. Mrs. Palmer says that people in town believe that Willoughby and Marianne will soon be married, which puzzles Elinor, as she knows of no such arrangements herself. Elinor and Marianne meet the Middletons' new guests, the Miss Steeles, apparently cousins; they find Miss Steele to be nothing remarkable, while Lucy is very pretty but not much better company. However, the Miss Steeles instantly gain Lady Middleton's admiration by paying endless attention to her obnoxious children. Elinor, unfortunately, becomes the preferred companion of Lucy. Lucy inquires of Mrs. Ferrars, which prompts Elinor to ask about her acquaintance with the Ferrars family; Lucy then reveals that she is secretly engaged to Edward. It turns out that Edward and Lucy knew each other while Edward studied with Lucy's uncle, Mr. Pratt, and have been engaged for some years. Although Elinor is first angry about Edward's secrecy, she soon sees that marrying Lucy will be punishment enough, as she is unpolished, manipulative, and jealous of Edward's high regard for Elinor. The Miss Steeles end up staying at Barton Park for two months. Mrs. Jennings invites Marianne and Elinor to spend the winter with her in London. Marianne is determined to go to see Willoughby, and Elinor decides she must go too, because Marianne needs Elinor's polite guidance. They accept the invitation, and leave in January. Once in town, they find Mrs. Jennings' house comfortable, and their company less than ideal; still, they try their best to enjoy it all. Marianne anxiously awaits Willoughby's arrival, while Elinor finds her greatest enjoyment in Colonel Brandon's daily visits. Elinor is much disturbed when Colonel Brandon tells her that the engagement between Marianne and Willoughby is widely known throughout town. At a party, Elinor and Marianne see Willoughby; Marianne approaches him, although he avoids Marianne, and his behavior is insulting. Marianne angrily writes Willoughby, and receives a reply in which he denies having loved Marianne, and says he hopes he didn't lead her on. Marianne is deeply grieved at being deceived and dumped so coldly; Elinor feels only anger at Willoughby's unpardonable behavior. Marianne then reveals that she and Willoughby were never engaged, and Elinor observes that Marianne should have been more prudent in her affections. Apparently, Willoughby is to marry the wealthy Lady Grey due to his constant need for money. Colonel Brandon calls after hearing the news, and offers up his knowledge of Willoughby's character to Elinor. Colonel Brandon was once in love with a ward to his family, Eliza, who became a fallen woman and had an illegitimate daughter. Colonel Brandon placed the daughter, Miss Williams, in care after her mother's death. The Colonel learned on the day of the Delaford picnic that she had become pregnant, and was abandoned by Willoughby. Elinor is shocked, though the Colonel sincerely hopes that this will help Marianne feel better about losing Willoughby, since he was not of solid character. The story convinces Marianne of Willoughby's guilt, though it does not ease her mind. Out of sympathy, Marianne also stops avoiding the Colonel's company and becomes more civil to him. Willoughby is soon married, which Marianne is grieved to hear; then, again unfortunately, the Miss Steeles come to stay with the Middletons. John and Fanny Dashwood arrive, and are introduced to Mrs. Jennings, and to Sir John and Lady Middleton, deeming them worthy company. John reveals to Elinor that Edward is soon to be married to Miss Morton, an orphan with a great deal of money left to her, as per the plans of his mother. At a dinner party given by John and Fanny for their new acquaintance, Mrs. Ferrars is present, along with the entire Barton party. Mrs. Ferrars turns out to be sallow, unpleasant, and uncivil; she slights Elinor, which hurts Marianne deeply, as she is Edward's mother. The Miss Steeles are invited to stay with John and Fanny. But, Mrs. Jennings soon informs them that Miss Steele told Fanny of Lucy and Edward's engagement, and that the Ferrars family threw the Steele girls out in a rage. Marianne is much grieved to hear of the engagement, and cannot believe that Elinor has also kept her knowledge of it a secret for so long. Edward is to be disinherited if he chooses to marry Lucy; unfortunately, Edward is too honorable to reject Lucy, even if he no longer loves her. Financial obstacles to their marriage remain; he must find a position in the church that pays enough to allow them to marry. Much to Elinor's chagrin, the Colonel, although he barely knows Edward, generously offers the small parish at Delaford to him. Elinor is to convey the offer to Edward, though she regrets that it might help the marriage. Edward is surprised at the generous offer, since he hardly knows the Colonel. Edward decides to accept the position; they say goodbye, as Elinor is to leave town soon. Much to Elinor's surprise, Robert Ferrars, Edward's selfish, vain, and rather dim brother, is now to marry Miss Morton; he has also received Edward's inheritance and money, and doesn't care about Edward's grim situation. It is April, and the Dashwood girls, the Palmers, and Mrs. Jennings, and Colonel Brandon set out for Cleveland, the Palmer's estate. Marianne is still feeling grief over Willoughby; she soon becomes ill after her walks in the rain, and gets a serious fever. The Palmers leave with her child; Mrs. Jennings, though, helps Elinor nurse Marianne, and insists that Colonel Brandon stay, since he is anxious about Marianne's health. Colonel Brandon soon sets off to get Mrs. Dashwood from Barton when Marianne's illness worsens. At last, Marianne's state improves, right in time for her mother and the Colonel's arrival; but Willoughby makes an unexpected visit. Elinor is horrified at seeing him; he has come to inquire after Marianne's health and to explain his past actions. Willoughby says he led Marianne on at first out of vanity; he finally began to love her as well, and would have proposed to her, if not for the money. By saying that he also has no regard for his wife, and still loves Marianne, he attempts to gain Elinor's compassion; Elinor's opinion of him is somewhat improved in being assured of his regard for Marianne. Elinor cannot think him a total blackguard since he has been punished for his mistakes, and tells him so; Willoughby leaves with this assurance, lamenting that Marianne is lost to him forever. Mrs. Dashwood finally arrives, and Elinor assures her that Marianne is out of danger; both Mrs. Dashwood and the Colonel are relieved. Mrs. Dashwood tells Elinor that the Colonel had confessed his love for Marianne during the journey from Barton; Mrs. Dashwood wishes the Colonel and Marianne to be married. Elinor wishes the Colonel well in securing Marianne's affections, but is more pessimistic regarding Marianne's ability to accept the Colonel after disliking him for so long. Marianne makes a quick recovery, thanking Colonel Brandon for his help and acting friendly toward him. Marianne finally seems calm and happy as they leave for Barton, which Elinor believes to signal Marianne's recovery from Willoughby. She is also far more mature, keeping herself busy and refusing to let herself languish in her grief. When Marianne decides to talk about Willoughby, Elinor takes the opportunity to tell her what Willoughby had said at Cleveland, and Marianne takes this very well. Marianne also laments her selfishness toward Elinor, and her lack of civility toward most of their acquaintance. Marianne finally says that she could not have been happy with Willoughby, after hearing of his cruelty toward Miss Williams, and no longer regrets him. The family is stunned when one of their servants returns with news that Edward is married to Lucy, as he just saw them in the village. Elinor knows now that Edward is lost to her forever. Mrs. Dashwood sees how upset Elinor is, and realizes that Elinor felt more for Edward than she ever revealed. One afternoon, Elinor is convinced that the Colonel has arrived at the cottage, but is surprised to find that it is Edward instead. Their meeting is awkward at best; he soon informs them that it is his brother who has been married to Lucy, and not him. Elinor immediately runs from the room, crying out of joy; Edward then senses Elinor's regard for him, and proposes to her that afternoon. Elinor accepts and he gains Mrs. Dashwood's consent to the match. Edward admits that any regard he had for Lucy was formed out of idleness and lack of knowledge; he came to regret the engagement soon after it was formed. After leaving London, Edward received a letter from Lucy saying that she had married his brother Robert, and has not seen her since; thus, he was honorably relieved of the engagement. After receiving the letter, he set out for Barton immediately to see Elinor. Edward will still accept the position at Delaford, although he and Elinor again will not have enough money to live on comfortably. The Colonel visits Barton, and he and Edward become good friends. Edward then becomes reconciled with his family, although he does not regain his inheritance from Robert. His mother even gives her consent for his marriage to Elinor, however much she is displeased by it; she gives them ten thousand pounds, the interest of which will allow them to live comfortably. Edward and Elinor are married at Barton that fall. Mrs. Dashwood and her two remaining daughters spend most of their time at Delaford, both to be near Elinor, and out of the hope that Marianne might accept the Colonel. In the two years that have passed, Marianne has become more mature and more grounded; and she does finally change her mind about the Colonel, and accepts his offer of marriage. The Colonel becomes far more cheerful, and soon Marianne grows to love him as much as she ever loved Willoughby. Mrs. Dashwood remains at Barton with Margaret, now fifteen, much to the delight of Sir John, who retains their company. And Elinor and Marianne both live together at Delaford, and remain good friends with each other and each other's husbands.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "In the wake of their father's death, the Dashwood sisters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret, are left at the financial mercy of John, half-brother, and his greedy wife. Though their father asked John to take care of the girls and their distraught mother, the women end up getting seriously shafted - they're turned out of their family home, and basically left with a barely-respectable income to live on. Left to their own devices, the ladies decide to move away to a cottage owned by a distant cousin in Barton Park, Devonshire. Before they move house, though, Elinor tentatively allows herself to fall in love with Edward Ferrars, the gentle brother of the girls' obnoxious sister-in-law. However, both of these young people are on the, shall we say, cautious side of the emotional spectrum, and the romance doesn't go anywhere. The Dashwood girls move away to their new home, leaving Edward behind. In Devonshire, they find themselves in the company of the aforementioned cousin, Sir John Middleton, and his rather oddball family, comprised of a dully proper wife and a hilariously raucous mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings. Also present is Sir John's good friend, Colonel Brandon, a thirty-something, somewhat stodgy, but good-hearted bachelor, who falls for young Marianne's girlish charms. The Dashwoods try make themselves at home in the cottage, but can't help but miss their childhood home. Marianne is particularly blue - that is, until she develops a love interest of her own, a dashing young man named Willoughby. Everyone gets along with the new guy just swimmingly, and the whole family expects that Marianne and Willoughby will announce their engagement any day. Marianne is sure that she's found her soul mate. Things start to go wrong fairly soon, though. Willoughby leaves rather suddenly for London, for reasons we're not entirely certain of, and doesn't give any indication of when he'll be back. Marianne takes this very hard, as she does everything. The plot continues to thicken with the arrival of an unexpected visitor - Edward Ferrars. He stays with his friends for a week, and all the while, everyone has a great time, even morose Marianne. However, Edward's departure heralds the arrival of another set of visitors, Mrs. Palmer, Lady Middleton's hyperactive sister, and her dour husband, Mr. Palmer. The Palmers just happen to live in the general vicinity of Willoughby's country home, and Marianne is eager for news of him - but there isn't any. After the Palmers' departure, yet another wave of newcomers washes in... and this time, they're unwelcome ones. Mrs. Jennings invites some unknown relations of hers, Miss Steele and her younger sister, Lucy, to come and stay at Barton Park. To cut a long story short, Lucy Steele admits to Elinor that she's secretly engaged - to Edward Ferrars! Elinor is shocked and upset, and her hopes for the future all crumble before her eyes. Both Dashwood sisters are now down in the dumps with regards to romance. At this low point, Mrs. Jennings asks Elinor and Marianne to accompany her to London for an extended trip, and after some squabbling, the girls accept. They embark upon their journey with mixed feelings - Marianne hoping to see Willoughby, and Elinor afraid that she'll run into Edward. Both of these things come to pass, but not in ways that the girls expect. Willoughby avoids Marianne like the plague, despite many, many letters from her. When they finally meet at a ball , he evades her once again. Soon thereafter, Marianne receives a rather cold letter of dumpage from Willoughby, and she falls ill with the shock. Colonel Brandon, still carrying a torch for Marianne, is concerned, but also relieved - he finally tells Elinor the horrible truth about Willoughby, which he'd been concealing all along, thinking that Willoughby and Marianne were engaged. It turns out that Willoughby is a real cad; he got Colonel Brandon's adopted daughter pregnant, dumped her, and now is engaged to a super-wealthy socialite instead of Marianne. Meanwhile, Elinor is forced to endure the company of her unwitting enemy, Lucy Steele, who's also in town. It seems that everyone is around - even the Dashwoods' brother, John, and sister-in-law Fanny . To make matters even worse, Elinor finds out that Fanny and Edward's mother has decided that Edward must marry an heiress, a certain Miss Morton. It seems like nothing is going right for poor Elinor, but she tries to keep her emotions in check. However, Lucy and Edward's engagement comes to light, much to the dismay of pretty much everyone involved. The Ferrars are all in a fit about it, and Edward is in serious trouble. Distraught, Elinor eventually confesses everything to Marianne - that she's in love with Edward, but she's known for months about the secret engagement. Marianne instantly realizes that she's been too harsh on her sister; she used to berate Elinor for being too logical, but she sees now how much her older sis has been suffering. It emerges that Edward has been cut out of the family fortune for his disobedient conduct, and that all of the money that was supposed to come his way has been given to his obnoxious younger brother, Robert. The sympathetic Colonel Brandon helps out by offering the young man a job as the curate at his estate, Delaford. It seems as though things have worked out for Edward and Lucy . Disgruntled, the Dashwoods and Mrs. Jenkins leave town, and head out to the Palmers' country house, Cleveland. The party hangs out there for a while, but Marianne can't help but be upset by their proximity to Willoughby's ancestral home, Combe Magna. She catches a cold wandering around outside, and quickly becomes dangerously ill. Everyone's in crisis mode because of Marianne's frightening illness - apparently, even Willoughby. He shows up, disheveled and distraught, having heard that Marianne is at death's door. He opens his heart to Elinor, explaining that the only reason he married someone else was because of money - basically, he screwed up a lot of things , and his mistakes ended up preventing him from marrying Marianne, his true love. He leaves, after being reassured that Marianne's on the mend. Elinor finally forgives him for his dastardly deeds, and knows that this story will make Marianne feel better. Elinor and Marianne's mother arrives shortly thereafter, with dramatic news of her own: Colonel Brandon has confessed that he's in love with Marianne, and Mrs. Dashwood already regards their engagement as a foregone conclusion. Marianne slowly gets better in the company of her mother, sister, and friends, and finally, the little family heads back home to Barton, where Elinor tells Marianne and her mother about Willoughby's true feelings. Everyone feels something akin to resolution, at long last. Elinor, however, is unsettled anew by a report that \"Mr. Ferrars\" is married to Lucy Steele. Happily, though, there turns out to be a miscommunication; the Mr. Ferrars in question is Robert, the younger brother, not Edward. Elinor receives this good news from Edward himself, who comes to finally ask her to marry him . In the end, that little minx, Lucy, managed to ingratiate herself with the new heir to the Ferrars fortune, and broke off her engagement with the no-longer-wealthy Edward. In the end, everything works out - Lucy gets her rich husband, and Elinor gets the man she loves. Finally, Marianne finds her own happiness, too - she learns to love Colonel Brandon back, and the pair is married. After all the drama, both Elinor and Marianne end up with their happy endings.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "cliffnotes", "text": "This is the story of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, sisters who respectively represent the \"sense\" and \"sensibility\" of the title. With their mother, their sister Margaret, and their stepbrother John, they make up the Dashwood family. Henry Dashwood, their father, has just died. Norland Park, his estate, is inherited by John; to his chagrin, Henry has nothing but ten thousand pounds to leave to his wife and daughters. On his deathbed, he urges John to provide for them and John promises that he will do so. He is already wealthy because he has a fortune from his mother and is also married to the wealthy Fanny Ferrars. Immediately after Henry's burial, the insensitive Mrs. Dashwood moves into Norland Park and cleverly persuades John not to make any provision for his stepmother and stepsisters. Mrs. Henry Dashwood, disliking Fanny, wants to leave Norland Park at once, but Elinor prudently restrains her until they can find a house within their means. Edward Ferrars, Fanny's brother, comes to stay and is attracted to Elinor. Mrs. Dashwood and Marianne expect an engagement, but Elinor is not so sure; she knows that Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny will object to Edward's interest in her. Fanny takes exception to Edward's fondness for Elinor and is so rude that Mrs. Dashwood at once rents a cottage fortuitously offered to her by her cousin, Sir John Middleton. The Dashwoods move to Barton Cottage and are met by Sir John, who does all in his power to make them comfortable. They soon meet his elegant but insipid wife and their four children. One day, when Marianne and Margaret are walking on the downs, Marianne sprains her ankle. She is carried home by a stranger, John Willoughby, who is staying at Allenham Court, a country estate which he will inherit after the death of its elderly owner, Mrs. Smith. Marianne and Willoughby fall in love and are inseparable. But after a short time, Willoughby leaves unexpectedly for London without explaining or declaring himself. Edward Ferrars soon pays a visit to Barton Cottage. But he is distraught and gloomy, and Elinor is puzzled by his reserve. Lady Middleton's mother, Mrs. Jennings, has been staying at Barton Park. She teases Marianne about Colonel Brandon, a friend of Sir Henry, who obviously admires Marianne. Though she likes the colonel, Mrs. Jennings repeats some scandal about him; he is said to have an illegitimate daughter, Miss Williams. Lady Middleton's younger sister, Charlotte Palmer, and her husband visit Barton Park. When they leave, Sir John invites the Misses Steele, two young ladies whom he has met in Exeter and has found to be connections of Mrs. Jennings. Lucy confides to Elinor that she has been secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars for four years. He was tutored by her uncle and became well acquainted with Lucy and Anne at that time. Elinor is shocked but concludes that Edward had a youthful infatuation for Lucy. Lucy persists in asking for advice and begs Elinor to persuade her brother John to give Edward the Barton living if he decides to take orders. Mrs. Jennings invites Elinor and Marianne to stay with her in London. Marianne is eager to go because she hopes to see Willoughby there. He has not been back to visit them, nor has he written to Marianne. In London, Marianne waits for a visit from Willoughby. She writes him several times but receives no reply. One day he leaves his card but never calls personally. Finally, Elinor and Marianne see Willoughby at a dance with a fashionable heiress, Miss Grey. He speaks curtly to Marianne, who is distracted by his coldness. She writes him for an explanation, and he returns her letters with a cruel note, denying that he had ever been especially interested in her and announcing his engagement to Miss Grey. Colonel Brandon, who is also in London, is distressed by Willoughby's conduct to Marianne and tells Elinor his own story. As a young man, he had loved his cousin Eliza, his father's ward. But to gain Eliza's fortune, his father had married her to his eldest son, who had treated her badly. Years later, the colonel discovered that Eliza had left her husband for another man. She had sunk lower and lower, and was now penniless and on her deathbed. The colonel did all he could for her and promised to bring up her daughter, also named Eliza. Eliza, now grown, had been seduced by Willoughby, who had deserted her. The colonel had fought a duel with Willoughby, but neither had been injured. John Dashwood and his wife come to London for the season. He meets his sisters and is introduced to the Middletons, whom he finds very congenial. Anne and Lucy Steele are invited to stay with the Middletons and eventually pay a visit to the Dashwoods, John and Fanny. They are treated so kindly that Anne feels it is safe to break the secret of Lucy's engagement to Edward. Fanny Dashwood has hysterics and orders Lucy and Anne out of her house. Edward's mother disinherits him because he will not break his word to Lucy. He decides to take orders and offers to free Lucy from her engagement, but Lucy will not give him up. Charlotte Palmer's son is born, and she invites Elinor and Marianne to accompany her mother on a visit to her country house, Cleveland. Marianne falls ill there and seems near death. Colonel Brandon is also staying at Cleveland and offers to fetch Mrs. Dashwood. The Palmers leave their house, fearing infection for the baby, and while Elinor awaits her mother's arrival, she is amazed by a visit from Willoughby. He has heard of Marianne's illness and has come to get news of her. He tells Elinor how bitterly he repents of his conduct and how wretched his wife has made him; it was she who dictated the cruel note which he sent to Marianne. Elinor is sorry for him. Marianne recovers and the family returns to Barton Cottage. Eventually, Elinor tells Marianne about Willoughby's repentant visit. Marianne is now sorry that the family has suffered on her behalf. One day, a servant tells them that Edward Ferrars is married. Elinor tries to put him out of her mind; however, he arrives at Barton Cottage and explains that Lucy did not marry him; instead, she eloped with his brother, Robert. Everything ends happily. Edward is reconciled to his mother and marries Elinor. He takes orders and is given the living at Delaford, Colonel Brandon's estate. Eventually Marianne agrees to marry the colonel, and the two couples live happily, close in distance and in friendship.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "When Mr. Henry Dashwood dies, leaving all his money to his first wife's son John Dashwood, his second wife and her three daughters are left with no permanent home and very little income. Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are invited to stay with their distant relations, the Middletons, at Barton Park. Elinor is sad to leave their home at Norland because she has become closely attached to Edward Ferrars, the brother-in-law of her half-brother John. However, once at Barton Park, Elinor and Marianne discover many new acquaintances, including the retired officer and bachelor Colonel Brandon, and the gallant and impetuous John Willoughby, who rescues Marianne after she twists her ankle running down the hills of Barton in the rain. Willoughby openly and unabashedly courts Marianne, and together the two flaunt their attachment to one another, until Willoughby suddenly announces that he must depart for London on business, leaving Marianne lovesick and miserable. Meanwhile, Anne and Lucy Steele, two recently discovered relations of Lady Middleton's mother, Mrs. Jennings, arrive at Barton Park as guests of the Middletons. Lucy ingratiates herself to Elinor and informs her that she has been secretly engaged to Mr. Ferrars for a whole year. Elinor initially assumes that Lucy is referring to Edward's younger brother, Robert, but is shocked and pained to learn that Lucy is actually referring to her own beloved Edward. In Volume II of the novel, Elinor and Marianne travel to London with Mrs. Jennings. Colonel Brandon informs Elinor that everyone in London is talking of an engagement between Willoughby and Marianne, though Marianne has not told her family of any such attachment. Marianne is anxious to be reunited with her beloved Willoughby, but when she sees him at a party in town, he cruelly rebuffs her and then sends her a letter denying that he ever had feelings for her. Colonel Brandon tells Elinor of Willoughby's history of callousness and debauchery, and Mrs. Jennings confirms that Willoughby, having squandered his fortune, has become engaged to the wealthy heiress Miss Grey. In Volume III, Lucy's older sister inadvertently reveals the news of Lucy's secret engagement to Edward Ferrars. Edward's mother is outraged at the information and disinherits him, promising his fortune to Robert instead. Meanwhile, the Dashwood sisters visit family friends at Cleveland on their way home from London. At Cleveland, Marianne develops a severe cold while taking long walks in the rain, and she falls deathly ill. Upon hearing of her illness, Willoughby comes to visit, attempting to explain his misconduct and seek forgiveness. Elinor pities him and ultimately shares his story with Marianne, who finally realizes that she behaved imprudently with Willoughby and could never have been happy with him anyway. Mrs. Dashwood and Colonel Brandon arrive at Cleveland and are relieved to learn that Marianne has begun to recover. When the Dashwoods return to Barton, they learn from their manservant that Lucy Steele and Mr. Ferrars are engaged. They assume that he means Edward Ferrars, and are thus unsurprised, but Edward himself soon arrives and corrects their misconception: it was Robert, not himself, whom the money-grubbing Lucy ultimately decided to marry. Thus,x Edward is finally free to propose to his beloved Elinor, and not long after, Marianne and Colonel Brandon become engaged as well. The couples live together at Delaford and remain in close touch with their mother and younger sister at Barton Cottage.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "1130", "title": "The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra", "text": "ACT I. SCENE I.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\nEnter DEMETRIUS and PHILO\n\n  PHILO. Nay, but this dotage of our general's\n    O'erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes,\n    That o'er the files and musters of the war\n    Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,\n    The office and devotion of their view\n    Upon a tawny front. His captain's heart,\n    Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst\n    The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,\n    And is become the bellows and the fan\n    To cool a gipsy's lust.\n\n     Flourish. Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, her LADIES, the train,\n                    with eunuchs fanning her\n\n    Look where they come!\n    Take but good note, and you shall see in him\n    The triple pillar of the world transform'd\n    Into a strumpet's fool. Behold and see.\n  CLEOPATRA. If it be love indeed, tell me how much.\n  ANTONY. There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.\n  CLEOPATRA. I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.\n  ANTONY. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.\n\n                       Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. News, my good lord, from Rome.\n  ANTONY. Grates me the sum.\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, hear them, Antony.\n    Fulvia perchance is angry; or who knows\n    If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent\n    His pow'rful mandate to you: 'Do this or this;\n    Take in that kingdom and enfranchise that;\n    Perform't, or else we damn thee.'\n  ANTONY. How, my love?\n  CLEOPATRA. Perchance? Nay, and most like,\n    You must not stay here longer; your dismission\n    Is come from Caesar; therefore hear it, Antony.\n    Where's Fulvia's process? Caesar's I would say? Both?\n    Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt's Queen,\n    Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine\n    Is Caesar's homager. Else so thy cheek pays shame\n    When shrill-tongu'd Fulvia scolds. The messengers!\n  ANTONY. Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch\n    Of the rang'd empire fall! Here is my space.\n    Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike\n    Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life\n    Is to do thus [emhracing], when such a mutual pair\n    And such a twain can do't, in which I bind,\n    On pain of punishment, the world to weet\n    We stand up peerless.\n  CLEOPATRA. Excellent falsehood!\n    Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?\n    I'll seem the fool I am not. Antony\n    Will be himself.\n  ANTONY. But stirr'd by Cleopatra.\n    Now for the love of Love and her soft hours,\n    Let's not confound the time with conference harsh;\n    There's not a minute of our lives should stretch\n    Without some pleasure now. What sport to-night?\n  CLEOPATRA. Hear the ambassadors.\n  ANTONY. Fie, wrangling queen!\n    Whom everything becomes- to chide, to laugh,\n    To weep; whose every passion fully strives\n    To make itself in thee fair and admir'd.\n    No messenger but thine, and all alone\n    To-night we'll wander through the streets and note\n    The qualities of people. Come, my queen;\n    Last night you did desire it. Speak not to us.\n                     Exeunt ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, with the train\n  DEMETRIUS. Is Caesar with Antonius priz'd so slight?\n  PHILO. Sir, sometimes when he is not Antony,\n    He comes too short of that great property\n    Which still should go with Antony.\n  DEMETRIUS. I am full sorry\n    That he approves the common liar, who\n    Thus speaks of him at Rome; but I will hope\n    Of better deeds to-morrow. Rest you happy!            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\nEnter CHARMIAN, IRAS, ALEXAS, and a SOOTHSAYER\n\n  CHARMIAN. Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas,\nalmost\n    most absolute Alexas, where's the soothsayer that you prais'd\nso\n    to th' Queen? O that I knew this husband, which you say must\n    charge his horns with garlands!\n  ALEXAS. Soothsayer!\n  SOOTHSAYER. Your will?\n  CHARMIAN. Is this the man? Is't you, sir, that know things?\n  SOOTHSAYER. In nature's infinite book of secrecy\n    A little I can read.\n  ALEXAS. Show him your hand.\n\n                       Enter ENOBARBUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough\n    Cleopatra's health to drink.\n  CHARMIAN. Good, sir, give me good fortune.\n  SOOTHSAYER. I make not, but foresee.\n  CHARMIAN. Pray, then, foresee me one.\n  SOOTHSAYER. You shall be yet far fairer than you are.\n  CHARMIAN. He means in flesh.\n  IRAS. No, you shall paint when you are old.\n  CHARMIAN. Wrinkles forbid!\n  ALEXAS. Vex not his prescience; be attentive.\n  CHARMIAN. Hush!\n  SOOTHSAYER. You shall be more beloving than beloved.\n  CHARMIAN. I had rather heat my liver with drinking.\n  ALEXAS. Nay, hear him.\n  CHARMIAN. Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married\nto\n    three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all. Let me have a\n    child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry may do homage. Find me\nto\n    marry me with Octavius Caesar, and companion me with my\nmistress.\n  SOOTHSAYER. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.\n  CHARMIAN. O, excellent! I love long life better than figs.\n  SOOTHSAYER. You have seen and prov'd a fairer former fortune\n    Than that which is to approach.\n  CHARMIAN. Then belike my children shall have no names.\n    Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?\n  SOOTHSAYER. If every of your wishes had a womb,\n    And fertile every wish, a million.\n  CHARMIAN. Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.\n  ALEXAS. You think none but your sheets are privy to your\nwishes.\n  CHARMIAN. Nay, come, tell Iras hers.\n  ALEXAS. We'll know all our fortunes.\n  ENOBARBUS. Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall be-\n    drunk to bed.\n  IRAS. There's a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.\n  CHARMIAN. E'en as the o'erflowing Nilus presageth famine.\n  IRAS. Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.\n  CHARMIAN. Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful\nprognostication, I\n    cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee, tell her but worky-day\nfortune.\n  SOOTHSAYER. Your fortunes are alike.\n  IRAS. But how, but how? Give me particulars.\n  SOOTHSAYER. I have said.\n  IRAS. Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?\n  CHARMIAN. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than\nI,\n    where would you choose it?\n  IRAS. Not in my husband's nose.\n  CHARMIAN. Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas- come, his\n    fortune, his fortune! O, let him marry a woman that cannot\ngo,\n    sweet Isis, I beseech thee! And let her die too, and give him\na\n    worse! And let worse follow worse, till the worst of all\nfollow\n    him laughing to his grave, fiftyfold a cuckold! Good Isis,\nhear\n    me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight;\ngood\n    Isis, I beseech thee!\n  IRAS. Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! For,\nas\n    it is a heartbreaking to see a handsome man loose-wiv'd, so\nit is\n    a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded.\nTherefore,\n    dear Isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly!\n  CHARMIAN. Amen.\n  ALEXAS. Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold,\nthey\n    would make themselves whores but they'ld do't!\n\n                          Enter CLEOPATRA\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Hush! Here comes Antony.\n  CHARMIAN. Not he; the Queen.\n  CLEOPATRA. Saw you my lord?\n  ENOBARBUS. No, lady.\n  CLEOPATRA. Was he not here?\n  CHARMIAN. No, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. He was dispos'd to mirth; but on the sudden\n    A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!\n  ENOBARBUS. Madam?\n  CLEOPATRA. Seek him, and bring him hither. Where's Alexas?\n  ALEXAS. Here, at your service. My lord approaches.\n\n          Enter ANTONY, with a MESSENGER and attendants\n\n  CLEOPATRA. We will not look upon him. Go with us.\n                       Exeunt CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, and the rest\n  MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.\n  ANTONY. Against my brother Lucius?\n  MESSENGER. Ay.\n    But soon that war had end, and the time's state\n    Made friends of them, jointing their force 'gainst Caesar,\n    Whose better issue in the war from Italy\n    Upon the first encounter drave them.\n  ANTONY. Well, what worst?\n  MESSENGER. The nature of bad news infects the teller.\n  ANTONY. When it concerns the fool or coward. On!\n    Things that are past are done with me. 'Tis thus:\n    Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,\n    I hear him as he flatter'd.\n  MESSENGER. Labienus-\n    This is stiff news- hath with his Parthian force\n    Extended Asia from Euphrates,\n    His conquering banner shook from Syria\n    To Lydia and to Ionia,\n    Whilst-\n  ANTONY. Antony, thou wouldst say.\n  MESSENGER. O, my lord!\n  ANTONY. Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue;\n    Name Cleopatra as she is call'd in Rome.\n    Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase, and taunt my faults\n    With such full licence as both truth and malice\n    Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds\n    When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us\n    Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.\n  MESSENGER. At your noble pleasure.                        Exit\n  ANTONY. From Sicyon, ho, the news! Speak there!\n  FIRST ATTENDANT. The man from Sicyon- is there such an one?\n  SECOND ATTENDANT. He stays upon your will.\n  ANTONY. Let him appear.\n    These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,\n    Or lose myself in dotage.\n\n                 Enter another MESSENGER with a letter\n\n    What are you?\n  SECOND MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife is dead.\n  ANTONY. Where died she?\n  SECOND MESSENGER. In Sicyon.\n    Her length of sickness, with what else more serious\n    Importeth thee to know, this bears.       [Gives the letter]\n  ANTONY. Forbear me.                             Exit MESSENGER\n    There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it.\n    What our contempts doth often hurl from us\n    We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,\n    By revolution low'ring, does become\n    The opposite of itself. She's good, being gone;\n    The hand could pluck her back that shov'd her on.\n    I must from this enchanting queen break off.\n    Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,\n    My idleness doth hatch. How now, Enobarbus!\n\n                    Re-enter ENOBARBUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. What's your pleasure, sir?\n  ANTONY. I must with haste from hence.\n  ENOBARBUS. Why, then we kill all our women. We see how mortal\nan\n    unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death's\nthe\n    word.\n  ANTONY. I must be gone.\n  ENOBARBUS. Under a compelling occasion, let women die. It were\npity\n    to cast them away for nothing, though between them and a\ngreat\n    cause they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching\nbut\n    the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die\n\n    twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is\nmettle\n    in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath\nsuch a\n    celerity in dying.\n  ANTONY. She is cunning past man's thought.\n  ENOBARBUS. Alack, sir, no! Her passions are made of nothing but\nthe\n    finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters\n    sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than\n    almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her; if it be,\nshe\n    makes a show'r of rain as well as Jove.\n  ANTONY. Would I had never seen her!\n  ENOBARBUS. O Sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of\n    work, which not to have been blest withal would have\ndiscredited\n    your travel.\n  ANTONY. Fulvia is dead.\n  ENOBARBUS. Sir?\n  ANTONY. Fulvia is dead.\n  ENOBARBUS. Fulvia?\n  ANTONY. Dead.\n  ENOBARBUS. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When\nit\n    pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it\n\n\n    shows to man the tailors of the earth; comforting therein\nthat\n    when old robes are worn out there are members to make new. If\n    there were no more women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a\ncut,\n    and the case to be lamented. This grief is crown'd with\n    consolation: your old smock brings forth a new petticoat; and\n    indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this\nsorrow.\n  ANTONY. The business she hath broached in the state\n    Cannot endure my absence.\n  ENOBARBUS. And the business you have broach'd here cannot be\n    without you; especially that of Cleopatra's, which wholly\ndepends\n    on your abode.\n  ANTONY. No more light answers. Let our officers\n    Have notice what we purpose. I shall break\n    The cause of our expedience to the Queen,\n    And get her leave to part. For not alone\n    The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,\n    Do strongly speak to us; but the letters to\n    Of many our contriving friends in Rome\n    Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius\n    Hath given the dare to Caesar, and commands\n    The empire of the sea; our slippery people,\n    Whose love is never link'd to the deserver\n    Till his deserts are past, begin to throw\n    Pompey the Great and all his dignities\n    Upon his son; who, high in name and power,\n    Higher than both in blood and life, stands up\n    For the main soldier; whose quality, going on,\n    The sides o' th' world may danger. Much is breeding\n    Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life\n    And not a serpent's poison. Say our pleasure,\n    To such whose place is under us, requires\n    Our quick remove from hence.\n  ENOBARBUS. I shall do't.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\nEnter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Where is he?\n  CHARMIAN. I did not see him since.\n  CLEOPATRA. See where he is, who's with him, what he does.\n    I did not send you. If you find him sad,\n    Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report\n    That I am sudden sick. Quick, and return.        Exit ALEXAS\n  CHARMIAN. Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly,\n    You do not hold the method to enforce\n    The like from him.\n  CLEOPATRA. What should I do I do not?\n  CHARMIAN. In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.\n  CLEOPATRA. Thou teachest like a fool- the way to lose him.\n  CHARMIAN. Tempt him not so too far; I wish, forbear;\n    In time we hate that which we often fear.\n\n                            Enter ANTONY\n\n    But here comes Antony.\n  CLEOPATRA. I am sick and sullen.\n  ANTONY. I am sorry to give breathing to my purpose-\n  CLEOPATRA. Help me away, dear Charmian; I shall fall.\n    It cannot be thus long; the sides of nature\n    Will not sustain it.\n  ANTONY. Now, my dearest queen-\n  CLEOPATRA. Pray you, stand farther from me.\n  ANTONY. What's the matter?\n  CLEOPATRA. I know by that same eye there's some good news.\n    What says the married woman? You may go.\n    Would she had never given you leave to come!\n    Let her not say 'tis I that keep you here-\n    I have no power upon you; hers you are.\n  ANTONY. The gods best know-\n  CLEOPATRA. O, never was there queen\n    So mightily betray'd! Yet at the first\n    I saw the treasons planted.\n  ANTONY. Cleopatra-\n  CLEOPATRA. Why should I think you can be mine and true,\n    Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,\n    Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness,\n    To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,\n    Which break themselves in swearing!\n  ANTONY. Most sweet queen-\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you seek no colour for your going,\n    But bid farewell, and go. When you sued staying,\n    Then was the time for words. No going then!\n    Eternity was in our lips and eyes,\n    Bliss in our brows' bent, none our parts so poor\n    But was a race of heaven. They are so still,\n    Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world,\n    Art turn'd the greatest liar.\n  ANTONY. How now, lady!\n  CLEOPATRA. I would I had thy inches. Thou shouldst know\n    There were a heart in Egypt.\n  ANTONY. Hear me, queen:\n    The strong necessity of time commands\n    Our services awhile; but my full heart\n    Remains in use with you. Our Italy\n    Shines o'er with civil swords: Sextus Pompeius\n    Makes his approaches to the port of Rome;\n    Equality of two domestic powers\n    Breed scrupulous faction; the hated, grown to strength,\n    Are newly grown to love. The condemn'd Pompey,\n    Rich in his father's honour, creeps apace\n    Into the hearts of such as have not thrived\n    Upon the present state, whose numbers threaten;\n    And quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge\n    By any desperate change. My more particular,\n    And that which most with you should safe my going,\n    Is Fulvia's death.\n  CLEOPATRA. Though age from folly could not give me freedom,\n     It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?\n  ANTONY. She's dead, my Queen.\n    Look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read\n    The garboils she awak'd. At the last, best.\n    See when and where she died.\n  CLEOPATRA. O most false love!\n    Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill\n    With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,\n    In Fulvia's death how mine receiv'd shall be.\n  ANTONY. Quarrel no more, but be prepar'd to know\n    The purposes I bear; which are, or cease,\n    As you shall give th' advice. By the fire\n    That quickens Nilus' slime, I go from hence\n    Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war\n    As thou affects.\n  CLEOPATRA. Cut my lace, Charmian, come!\n    But let it be; I am quickly ill and well-\n    So Antony loves.\n  ANTONY. My precious queen, forbear,\n    And give true evidence to his love, which stands\n    An honourable trial.\n  CLEOPATRA. So Fulvia told me.\n    I prithee turn aside and weep for her;\n    Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears\n    Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene\n    Of excellent dissembling, and let it look\n    Like perfect honour.\n  ANTONY. You'll heat my blood; no more.\n  CLEOPATRA. You can do better yet; but this is meetly.\n  ANTONY. Now, by my sword-\n  CLEOPATRA. And target. Still he mends;\n    But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian,\n    How this Herculean Roman does become\n    The carriage of his chafe.\n  ANTONY. I'll leave you, lady.\n  CLEOPATRA. Courteous lord, one word.\n    Sir, you and I must part- but that's not it.\n    Sir, you and I have lov'd- but there's not it.\n    That you know well. Something it is I would-\n    O, my oblivion is a very Antony,\n    And I am all forgotten!\n  ANTONY. But that your royalty\n    Holds idleness your subject, I should take you\n    For idleness itself.\n  CLEOPATRA. 'Tis sweating labour\n    To bear such idleness so near the heart\n    As Cleopatra this. But, sir, forgive me;\n    Since my becomings kill me when they do not\n    Eye well to you. Your honour calls you hence;\n    Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,\n    And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword\n    Sit laurel victory, and smooth success\n    Be strew'd before your feet!\n  ANTONY. Let us go. Come.\n    Our separation so abides and flies\n    That thou, residing here, goes yet with me,\n    And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee.\n    Away!                                                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRome. CAESAR'S house\n\nEnter OCTAVIUS CAESAR, reading a letter; LEPIDUS, and their train\n\n  CAESAR. You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,\n    It is not Caesar's natural vice to hate\n    Our great competitor. From Alexandria\n    This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes\n    The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike\n    Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy\n    More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or\n    Vouchsaf'd to think he had partners. You shall find there\n    A man who is the abstract of all faults\n    That all men follow.\n  LEPIDUS. I must not think there are\n    Evils enow to darken all his goodness.\n    His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,\n    More fiery by night's blackness; hereditary\n    Rather than purchas'd; what he cannot change\n    Than what he chooses.\n  CAESAR. You are too indulgent. Let's grant it is not\n    Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,\n    To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit\n    And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,\n    To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet\n    With knaves that smell of sweat. Say this becomes him-\n    As his composure must be rare indeed\n    Whom these things cannot blemish- yet must Antony\n    No way excuse his foils when we do bear\n    So great weight in his lightness. If he fill'd\n    His vacancy with his voluptuousness,\n    Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones\n    Call on him for't! But to confound such time\n    That drums him from his sport and speaks as loud\n    As his own state and ours- 'tis to be chid\n    As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge,\n    Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,\n    And so rebel to judgment.\n\n                   Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  LEPIDUS. Here's more news.\n  MESSENGER. Thy biddings have been done; and every hour,\n    Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report\n    How 'tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea,\n    And it appears he is belov'd of those\n    That only have fear'd Caesar. To the ports\n    The discontents repair, and men's reports\n    Give him much wrong'd.\n  CAESAR. I should have known no less.\n    It hath been taught us from the primal state\n    That he which is was wish'd until he were;\n    And the ebb'd man, ne'er lov'd till ne'er worth love,\n    Comes dear'd by being lack'd. This common body,\n    Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,\n    Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,\n    To rot itself with motion.\n  MESSENGER. Caesar, I bring thee word\n    Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,\n    Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound\n    With keels of every kind. Many hot inroads\n    They make in Italy; the borders maritime\n    Lack blood to think on't, and flush youth revolt.\n    No vessel can peep forth but 'tis as soon\n    Taken as seen; for Pompey's name strikes more\n    Than could his war resisted.\n  CAESAR. Antony,\n    Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once\n    Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st\n    Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel\n    Did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against,\n    Though daintily brought up, with patience more\n    Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink\n    The stale of horses and the gilded puddle\n    Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign\n    The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;\n    Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,\n    The barks of trees thou brows'd. On the Alps\n    It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,\n    Which some did die to look on. And all this-\n    It wounds thine honour that I speak it now-\n    Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek\n    So much as lank'd not.\n  LEPIDUS. 'Tis pity of him.\n  CAESAR. Let his shames quickly\n    Drive him to Rome. 'Tis time we twain\n    Did show ourselves i' th' field; and to that end\n    Assemble we immediate council. Pompey\n    Thrives in our idleness.\n  LEPIDUS. To-morrow, Caesar,\n    I shall be furnish'd to inform you rightly\n    Both what by sea and land I can be able\n    To front this present time.\n  CAESAR. Till which encounter\n    It is my business too. Farewell.\n  LEPIDUS. Farewell, my lord. What you shall know meantime\n    Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,\n    To let me be partaker.\n  CAESAR. Doubt not, sir;\n    I knew it for my bond.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\nEnter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Charmian!\n  CHARMIAN. Madam?\n  CLEOPATRA. Ha, ha!\n    Give me to drink mandragora.\n  CHARMIAN. Why, madam?\n  CLEOPATRA. That I might sleep out this great gap of time\n    My Antony is away.\n  CHARMIAN. You think of him too much.\n  CLEOPATRA. O, 'tis treason!\n  CHARMIAN. Madam, I trust, not so.\n  CLEOPATRA. Thou, eunuch Mardian!\n  MARDIAN. What's your Highness' pleasure?\n  CLEOPATRA. Not now to hear thee sing; I take no pleasure\n    In aught an eunuch has. 'Tis well for thee\n    That, being unseminar'd, thy freer thoughts\n    May not fly forth of Egypt. Hast thou affections?\n  MARDIAN. Yes, gracious madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. Indeed?\n  MARDIAN. Not in deed, madam; for I can do nothing\n    But what indeed is honest to be done.\n    Yet have I fierce affections, and think\n    What Venus did with Mars.\n  CLEOPATRA. O Charmian,\n    Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he or sits he?\n    Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?\n    O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!\n    Do bravely, horse; for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st?\n    The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm\n    And burgonet of men. He's speaking now,\n    Or murmuring 'Where's my serpent of old Nile?'\n    For so he calls me. Now I feed myself\n    With most delicious poison. Think on me,\n    That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black,\n    And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Caesar,\n    When thou wast here above the ground, I was\n    A morsel for a monarch; and great Pompey\n    Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;\n    There would he anchor his aspect and die\n    With looking on his life.\n\n                         Enter ALEXAS\n\n  ALEXAS. Sovereign of Egypt, hail!\n  CLEOPATRA. How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!\n    Yet, coming from him, that great med'cine hath\n    With his tinct gilded thee.\n    How goes it with my brave Mark Antony?\n  ALEXAS. Last thing he did, dear Queen,\n    He kiss'd- the last of many doubled kisses-\n    This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart.\n  CLEOPATRA. Mine ear must pluck it thence.\n  ALEXAS. 'Good friend,' quoth he\n    'Say the firm Roman to great Egypt sends\n    This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot,\n    To mend the petty present, I will piece\n    Her opulent throne with kingdoms. All the East,\n    Say thou, shall call her mistress.' So he nodded,\n    And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed,\n    Who neigh'd so high that what I would have spoke\n    Was beastly dumb'd by him.\n  CLEOPATRA. What, was he sad or merry?\n  ALEXAS. Like to the time o' th' year between the extremes\n    Of hot and cold; he was nor sad nor merry.\n  CLEOPATRA. O well-divided disposition! Note him,\n    Note him, good Charmian; 'tis the man; but note him!\n    He was not sad, for he would shine on those\n    That make their looks by his; he was not merry,\n    Which seem'd to tell them his remembrance lay\n    In Egypt with his joy; but between both.\n    O heavenly mingle! Be'st thou sad or merry,\n    The violence of either thee becomes,\n    So does it no man else. Met'st thou my posts?\n  ALEXAS. Ay, madam, twenty several messengers.\n    Why do you send so thick?\n  CLEOPATRA. Who's born that day\n    When I forget to send to Antony\n    Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian.\n    Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian,\n    Ever love Caesar so?\n  CHARMIAN. O that brave Caesar!\n  CLEOPATRA. Be chok'd with such another emphasis!\n    Say 'the brave Antony.'\n  CHARMIAN. The valiant Caesar!\n  CLEOPATRA. By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth\n    If thou with Caesar paragon again\n    My man of men.\n  CHARMIAN. By your most gracious pardon,\n    I sing but after you.\n  CLEOPATRA. My salad days,\n    When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,\n    To say as I said then. But come, away!\n    Get me ink and paper.\n    He shall have every day a several greeting,\n    Or I'll unpeople Egypt.                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nMessina. POMPEY'S house\n\nEnter POMPEY, MENECRATES, and MENAS, in warlike manner\n\n  POMPEY. If the great gods be just, they shall assist\n    The deeds of justest men.\n  MENECRATES. Know, worthy Pompey,\n    That what they do delay they not deny.\n  POMPEY. Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays\n    The thing we sue for.\n  MENECRATES. We, ignorant of ourselves,\n    Beg often our own harms, which the wise pow'rs\n    Deny us for our good; so find we profit\n    By losing of our prayers.\n  POMPEY. I shall do well.\n    The people love me, and the sea is mine;\n    My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope\n    Says it will come to th' full. Mark Antony\n    In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make\n    No wars without doors. Caesar gets money where\n    He loses hearts. Lepidus flatters both,\n    Of both is flatter'd; but he neither loves,\n    Nor either cares for him.\n  MENAS. Caesar and Lepidus\n    Are in the field. A mighty strength they carry.\n  POMPEY. Where have you this? 'Tis false.\n  MENAS. From Silvius, sir.\n  POMPEY. He dreams. I know they are in Rome together,\n    Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love,\n    Salt Cleopatra, soften thy wan'd lip!\n    Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both;\n    Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts,\n    Keep his brain fuming. Epicurean cooks\n    Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite,\n    That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour\n    Even till a Lethe'd dullness-\n\n                       Enter VARRIUS\n\n    How now, Varrius!\n  VARRIUS. This is most certain that I shall deliver:\n    Mark Antony is every hour in Rome\n    Expected. Since he went from Egypt 'tis\n    A space for farther travel.\n  POMPEY. I could have given less matter\n    A better ear. Menas, I did not think\n    This amorous surfeiter would have donn'd his helm\n    For such a petty war; his soldiership\n    Is twice the other twain. But let us rear\n    The higher our opinion, that our stirring\n    Can from the lap of Egypt's widow pluck\n    The ne'er-lust-wearied Antony.\n  MENAS. I cannot hope\n    Caesar and Antony shall well greet together.\n    His wife that's dead did trespasses to Caesar;\n    His brother warr'd upon him; although, I think,\n    Not mov'd by Antony.\n  POMPEY. I know not, Menas,\n    How lesser enmities may give way to greater.\n    Were't not that we stand up against them all,\n    'Twere pregnant they should square between themselves;\n    For they have entertained cause enough\n    To draw their swords. But how the fear of us\n    May cement their divisions, and bind up\n    The petty difference we yet not know.\n    Be't as our gods will have't! It only stands\n    Our lives upon to use our strongest hands.\n    Come, Menas.                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nRome. The house of LEPIDUS\n\nEnter ENOBARBUS and LEPIDUS\n\n  LEPIDUS. Good Enobarbus, 'tis a worthy deed,\n    And shall become you well, to entreat your captain\n    To soft and gentle speech.\n  ENOBARBUS. I shall entreat him\n    To answer like himself. If Caesar move him,\n    Let Antony look over Caesar's head\n    And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter,\n    Were I the wearer of Antonius' beard,\n    I would not shave't to-day.\n  LEPIDUS. 'Tis not a time\n    For private stomaching.\n  ENOBARBUS. Every time\n    Serves for the matter that is then born in't.\n  LEPIDUS. But small to greater matters must give way.\n  ENOBARBUS. Not if the small come first.\n  LEPIDUS. Your speech is passion;\n    But pray you stir no embers up. Here comes\n    The noble Antony.\n\n                Enter ANTONY and VENTIDIUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. And yonder, Caesar.\n\n            Enter CAESAR, MAECENAS, and AGRIPPA\n\n  ANTONY. If we compose well here, to Parthia.\n    Hark, Ventidius.\n  CAESAR. I do not know, Maecenas. Ask Agrippa.\n  LEPIDUS. Noble friends,\n    That which combin'd us was most great, and let not\n    A leaner action rend us. What's amiss,\n    May it be gently heard. When we debate\n    Our trivial difference loud, we do commit\n    Murder in healing wounds. Then, noble partners,\n    The rather for I earnestly beseech,\n    Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,\n    Nor curstness grow to th' matter.\n  ANTONY. 'Tis spoken well.\n    Were we before our arinies, and to fight,\n    I should do thus.                                 [Flourish]\n  CAESAR. Welcome to Rome.\n  ANTONY. Thank you.\n  CAESAR. Sit.\n  ANTONY. Sit, sir.\n  CAESAR. Nay, then.                                  [They sit]\n  ANTONY. I learn you take things ill which are not so,\n    Or being, concern you not.\n  CAESAR. I must be laugh'd at\n    If, or for nothing or a little,\n    Should say myself offended, and with you\n    Chiefly i' the world; more laugh'd at that I should\n    Once name you derogately when to sound your name\n    It not concern'd me.\n  ANTONY. My being in Egypt, Caesar,\n    What was't to you?\n  CAESAR. No more than my residing here at Rome\n    Might be to you in Egypt. Yet, if you there\n    Did practise on my state, your being in Egypt\n    Might be my question.\n  ANTONY. How intend you- practis'd?\n  CAESAR. You may be pleas'd to catch at mine intent\n    By what did here befall me. Your wife and brother\n    Made wars upon me, and their contestation\n    Was theme for you; you were the word of war.\n  ANTONY. You do mistake your business; my brother never\n    Did urge me in his act. I did inquire it,\n    And have my learning from some true reports\n    That drew their swords with you. Did he not rather\n    Discredit my authority with yours,\n    And make the wars alike against my stomach,\n    Having alike your cause? Of this my letters\n    Before did satisfy you. If you'll patch a quarrel,\n    As matter whole you have not to make it with,\n    It must not be with this.\n  CAESAR. You praise yourself\n    By laying defects of judgment to me; but\n    You patch'd up your excuses.\n  ANTONY. Not so, not so;\n    I know you could not lack, I am certain on't,\n    Very necessity of this thought, that I,\n    Your partner in the cause 'gainst which he fought,\n    Could not with graceful eyes attend those wars\n    Which fronted mine own peace. As for my wife,\n    I would you had her spirit in such another!\n    The third o' th' world is yours, which with a snaffle\n    You may pace easy, but not such a wife.\n  ENOBARBUS. Would we had all such wives, that the men might go\nto\n    wars with the women!\n  ANTONY. So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar,\n    Made out of her impatience- which not wanted\n    Shrewdness of policy too- I grieving grant\n    Did you too much disquiet. For that you must\n    But say I could not help it.\n  CAESAR. I wrote to you\n    When rioting in Alexandria; you\n    Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts\n    Did gibe my missive out of audience.\n  ANTONY. Sir,\n    He fell upon me ere admitted. Then\n    Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want\n    Of what I was i' th' morning; but next day\n    I told him of myself, which was as much\n    As to have ask'd him pardon. Let this fellow\n    Be nothing of our strife; if we contend,\n    Out of our question wipe him.\n  CAESAR. You have broken\n    The article of your oath, which you shall never\n    Have tongue to charge me with.\n  LEPIDUS. Soft, Caesar!\n  ANTONY. No;\n    Lepidus, let him speak.\n    The honour is sacred which he talks on now,\n    Supposing that I lack'd it. But on, Caesar:\n    The article of my oath-\n  CAESAR. To lend me arms and aid when I requir'd them,\n    The which you both denied.\n  ANTONY. Neglected, rather;\n    And then when poisoned hours had bound me up\n    From mine own knowledge. As nearly as I may,\n    I'll play the penitent to you; but mine honesty\n    Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power\n    Work without it. Truth is, that Fulvia,\n    To have me out of Egypt, made wars here;\n    For which myself, the ignorant motive, do\n    So far ask pardon as befits mine honour\n    To stoop in such a case.\n  LEPIDUS. 'Tis noble spoken.\n  MAECENAS. If it might please you to enforce no further\n    The griefs between ye- to forget them quite\n    Were to remember that the present need\n    Speaks to atone you.\n  LEPIDUS. Worthily spoken, Maecenas.\n  ENOBARBUS. Or, if you borrow one another's love for the\ninstant,\n    you may, when you hear no more words of Pompey, return it\nagain.\n    You shall have time to wrangle in when you have nothing else\nto\n    do.\n  ANTONY. Thou art a soldier only. Speak no more.\n  ENOBARBUS. That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.\n  ANTONY. You wrong this presence; therefore speak no more.\n  ENOBARBUS. Go to, then- your considerate stone!\n  CAESAR. I do not much dislike the matter, but\n    The manner of his speech; for't cannot be\n    We shall remain in friendship, our conditions\n    So diff'ring in their acts. Yet if I knew\n    What hoop should hold us stanch, from edge to edge\n    O' th' world, I would pursue it.\n  AGRIPPA. Give me leave, Caesar.\n  CAESAR. Speak, Agrippa.\n  AGRIPPA. Thou hast a sister by the mother's side,\n    Admir'd Octavia. Great Mark Antony\n    Is now a widower.\n  CAESAR. Say not so, Agrippa.\n    If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof\n    Were well deserv'd of rashness.\n  ANTONY. I am not married, Caesar. Let me hear\n    Agrippa further speak.\n  AGRIPPA. To hold you in perpetual amity,\n    To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts\n    With an unslipping knot, take Antony\n    Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims\n    No worse a husband than the best of men;\n    Whose virtue and whose general graces speak\n    That which none else can utter. By this marriage\n    All little jealousies, which now seem great,\n    And all great fears, which now import their dangers,\n    Would then be nothing. Truths would be tales,\n    Where now half tales be truths. Her love to both\n    Would each to other, and all loves to both,\n    Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke;\n    For 'tis a studied, not a present thought,\n    By duty ruminated.\n  ANTONY. Will Caesar speak?\n  CAESAR. Not till he hears how Antony is touch'd\n    With what is spoke already.\n  ANTONY. What power is in Agrippa,\n    If I would say 'Agrippa, be it so,'\n    To make this good?\n  CAESAR. The power of Caesar, and\n    His power unto Octavia.\n  ANTONY. May I never\n    To this good purpose, that so fairly shows,\n    Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand.\n    Further this act of grace; and from this hour\n    The heart of brothers govern in our loves\n    And sway our great designs!\n  CAESAR. There is my hand.\n    A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother\n    Did ever love so dearly. Let her live\n    To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never\n    Fly off our loves again!\n  LEPIDUS. Happily, amen!\n  ANTONY. I did not think to draw my sword 'gainst Pompey;\n    For he hath laid strange courtesies and great\n    Of late upon me. I must thank him only,\n    Lest my remembrance suffer ill report;\n    At heel of that, defy him.\n  LEPIDUS. Time calls upon's.\n    Of us must Pompey presently be sought,\n    Or else he seeks out us.\n  ANTONY. Where lies he?\n  CAESAR. About the Mount Misenum.\n  ANTONY. What is his strength by land?\n  CAESAR. Great and increasing; but by sea\n    He is an absolute master.\n  ANTONY. So is the fame.\n    Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it.\n    Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we\n    The business we have talk'd of.\n  CAESAR. With most gladness;\n    And do invite you to my sister's view,\n    Whither straight I'll lead you.\n  ANTONY. Let us, Lepidus,\n    Not lack your company.\n  LEPIDUS. Noble Antony,\n    Not sickness should detain me.                    [Flourish]\n                     Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS\n  MAECENAS. Welcome from Egypt, sir.\n  ENOBARBUS. Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Maecenas! My\nhonourable\n    friend, Agrippa!\n  AGRIPPA. Good Enobarbus!\n  MAECENAS. We have cause to be glad that matters are so well\n    digested. You stay'd well by't in Egypt.\n  ENOBARBUS. Ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance and\nmade\n    the night light with drinking.\n  MAECENAS. Eight wild boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and\nbut\n    twelve persons there. Is this true?\n  ENOBARBUS. This was but as a fly by an eagle. We had much more\n    monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.\n  MAECENAS. She's a most triumphant lady, if report be square to\nher.\n  ENOBARBUS. When she first met Mark Antony she purs'd up his\nheart,\n    upon the river of Cydnus.\n  AGRIPPA. There she appear'd indeed! Or my reporter devis'd well\nfor\n    her.\n  ENOBARBUS. I will tell you.\n    The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,\n    Burn'd on the water. The poop was beaten gold;\n    Purple the sails, and so perfumed that\n    The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,\n    Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made\n    The water which they beat to follow faster,\n    As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,\n    It beggar'd all description. She did lie\n    In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold, of tissue,\n    O'erpicturing that Venus where we see\n    The fancy out-work nature. On each side her\n    Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,\n    With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem\n    To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,\n    And what they undid did.\n  AGRIPPA. O, rare for Antony!\n  ENOBARBUS. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,\n    So many mermaids, tended her i' th' eyes,\n    And made their bends adornings. At the helm\n    A seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle\n    Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands\n    That yarely frame the office. From the barge\n    A strange invisible perfume hits the sense\n    Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast\n    Her people out upon her; and Antony,\n    Enthron'd i' th' market-place, did sit alone,\n    Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy,\n    Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,\n    And made a gap in nature.\n  AGRIPPA. Rare Egyptian!\n  ENOBARBUS. Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,\n    Invited her to supper. She replied\n    It should be better he became her guest;\n    Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,\n    Whom ne'er the word of 'No' woman heard speak,\n    Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast,\n    And for his ordinary pays his heart\n    For what his eyes eat only.\n  AGRIPPA. Royal wench!\n    She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed.\n    He ploughed her, and she cropp'd.\n  ENOBARBUS. I saw her once\n    Hop forty paces through the public street;\n    And, having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,\n    That she did make defect perfection,\n    And, breathless, pow'r breathe forth.\n  MAECENAS. Now Antony must leave her utterly.\n  ENOBARBUS. Never! He will not.\n    Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale\n    Her infinite variety. Other women cloy\n    The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry\n    Where most she satisfies; for vilest things\n    Become themselves in her, that the holy priests\n    Bless her when she is riggish.\n  MAECENAS. If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle\n    The heart of Antony, Octavia is\n    A blessed lottery to him.\n  AGRIPPA. Let us go.\n    Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest\n    Whilst you abide here.\n  ENOBARBUS. Humbly, sir, I thank you.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nRome. CAESAR'S house\n\nEnter ANTONY, CAESAR, OCTAVIA between them\n\n  ANTONY. The world and my great office will sometimes\n    Divide me from your bosom.\n  OCTAVIA. All which time\n    Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers\n    To them for you.\n  ANTONY. Good night, sir. My Octavia,\n    Read not my blemishes in the world's report.\n    I have not kept my square; but that to come\n    Shall all be done by th' rule. Good night, dear lady.\n  OCTAVIA. Good night, sir.\n  CAESAR. Good night.                  Exeunt CAESAR and OCTAVIA\n\n                        Enter SOOTHSAYER\n\n  ANTONY. Now, sirrah, you do wish yourself in Egypt?\n  SOOTHSAYER. Would I had never come from thence, nor you\nthither!\n  ANTONY. If you can- your reason.\n  SOOTHSAYER. I see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue;\nbut\n    yet hie you to Egypt again.\n  ANTONY. Say to me,\n    Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar's or mine?\n  SOOTHSAYER. Caesar's.\n    Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side.\n    Thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee, is\n    Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,\n    Where Caesar's is not; but near him thy angel\n    Becomes a fear, as being o'erpow'r'd. Therefore\n    Make space enough between you.\n  ANTONY. Speak this no more.\n  SOOTHSAYER. To none but thee; no more but when to thee.\n    If thou dost play with him at any game,\n    Thou art sure to lose; and of that natural luck\n    He beats thee 'gainst the odds. Thy lustre thickens\n    When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit\n    Is all afraid to govern thee near him;\n    But, he away, 'tis noble.\n  ANTONY. Get thee gone.\n    Say to Ventidius I would speak with him.\n                                                 Exit SOOTHSAYER\n    He shall to Parthia.- Be it art or hap,\n    He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him;\n    And in our sports my better cunning faints\n    Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds;\n    His cocks do win the battle still of mine,\n    When it is all to nought, and his quails ever\n    Beat mine, inhoop'd, at odds. I will to Egypt;\n    And though I make this marriage for my peace,\n    I' th' East my pleasure lies.\n\n                       Enter VENTIDIUS\n\n    O, come, Ventidius,\n    You must to Parthia. Your commission's ready;\n    Follow me and receive't.                              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRome. A street\n\nEnter LEPIDUS, MAECENAS, and AGRIPPA\n\n  LEPIDUS. Trouble yourselves no further. Pray you hasten\n    Your generals after.\n  AGRIPPA. Sir, Mark Antony\n    Will e'en but kiss Octavia, and we'll follow.\n  LEPIDUS. Till I shall see you in your soldier's dress,\n    Which will become you both, farewell.\n  MAECENAS. We shall,\n    As I conceive the journey, be at th' Mount\n    Before you, Lepidus.\n  LEPIDUS. Your way is shorter;\n    My purposes do draw me much about.\n    You'll win two days upon me.\n  BOTH. Sir, good success!\n  LEPIDUS. Farewell.                                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\nEnter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Give me some music- music, moody food\n    Of us that trade in love.\n  ALL. The music, ho!\n\n                    Enter MARDIAN the eunuch\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Let it alone! Let's to billiards. Come, Charmian.\n  CHARMIAN. My arm is sore; best play with Mardian.\n  CLEOPATRA. As well a woman with an eunuch play'd\n    As with a woman. Come, you'll play with me, sir?\n  MARDIAN. As well as I can, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. And when good will is show'd, though't come too\nshort,\n    The actor may plead pardon. I'll none now.\n    Give me mine angle- we'll to th' river. There,\n    My music playing far off, I will betray\n    Tawny-finn'd fishes; my bended hook shall pierce\n    Their slimy jaws; and as I draw them up\n    I'll think them every one an Antony,\n    And say 'Ah ha! Y'are caught.'\n  CHARMIAN. 'Twas merry when\n    You wager'd on your angling; when your diver\n    Did hang a salt fish on his hook, which he\n    With fervency drew up.\n  CLEOPATRA. That time? O times\n    I laughed him out of patience; and that night\n    I laugh'd him into patience; and next morn,\n    Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed,\n    Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst\n    I wore his sword Philippan.\n\n                    Enter a MESSENGER\n\n    O! from Italy?\n    Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears,\n    That long time have been barren.\n  MESSENGER. Madam, madam-\n  CLEOPATRA. Antony's dead! If thou say so, villain,\n    Thou kill'st thy mistress; but well and free,\n    If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here\n    My bluest veins to kiss- a hand that kings\n    Have lipp'd, and trembled kissing.\n  MESSENGER. First, madam, he is well.\n  CLEOPATRA. Why, there's more gold.\n    But, sirrah, mark, we use\n    To say the dead are well. Bring it to that,\n    The gold I give thee will I melt and pour\n    Down thy ill-uttering throat.\n  MESSENGER. Good madam, hear me.\n  CLEOPATRA. Well, go to, I will.\n    But there's no goodness in thy face. If Antony\n    Be free and healthful- why so tart a favour\n    To trumpet such good tidings? If not well,\n    Thou shouldst come like a Fury crown'd with snakes,\n    Not like a formal man.\n  MESSENGER. Will't please you hear me?\n  CLEOPATRA. I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak'st.\n    Yet, if thou say Antony lives, is well,\n    Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him,\n    I'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail\n    Rich pearls upon thee.\n  MESSENGER. Madam, he's well.\n  CLEOPATRA. Well said.\n  MESSENGER. And friends with Caesar.\n  CLEOPATRA. Th'art an honest man.\n  MESSENGER. Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.\n  CLEOPATRA. Make thee a fortune from me.\n  MESSENGER. But yet, madam-\n  CLEOPATRA. I do not like 'but yet.' It does allay\n    The good precedence; fie upon 'but yet'!\n    'But yet' is as a gaoler to bring forth\n    Some monstrous malefactor. Prithee, friend,\n    Pour out the pack of matter to mine ear,\n    The good and bad together. He's friends with Caesar;\n    In state of health, thou say'st; and, thou say'st, free.\n  MESSENGER. Free, madam! No; I made no such report.\n    He's bound unto Octavia.\n  CLEOPATRA. For what good turn?\n  MESSENGER. For the best turn i' th' bed.\n  CLEOPATRA. I am pale, Charmian.\n  MESSENGER. Madam, he's married to Octavia.\n  CLEOPATRA. The most infectious pestilence upon thee!\n                                              [Strikes him down]\n  MESSENGER. Good madam, patience.\n  CLEOPATRA. What say you? Hence,                  [Strikes him]\n    Horrible villain! or I'll spurn thine eyes\n    Like balls before me; I'll unhair thy head;\n                                     [She hales him up and down]\n    Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire and stew'd in brine,\n    Smarting in ling'ring pickle.\n  MESSENGER. Gracious madam,\n    I that do bring the news made not the match.\n  CLEOPATRA. Say 'tis not so, a province I will give thee,\n    And make thy fortunes proud. The blow thou hadst\n    Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage;\n    And I will boot thee with what gift beside\n    Thy modesty can beg.\n  MESSENGER. He's married, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. Rogue, thou hast liv'd too long.    [Draws a knife]\n  MESSENGER. Nay, then I'll run.\n    What mean you, madam? I have made no fault.             Exit\n  CHARMIAN. Good madam, keep yourself within yourself:\n    The man is innocent.\n  CLEOPATRA. Some innocents scape not the thunderbolt.\n    Melt Egypt into Nile! and kindly creatures\n    Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again.\n    Though I am mad, I will not bite him. Call!\n  CHARMIAN. He is afear'd to come.\n  CLEOPATRA. I will not hurt him.\n    These hands do lack nobility, that they strike\n    A meaner than myself; since I myself\n    Have given myself the cause.\n\n                    Enter the MESSENGER again\n\n    Come hither, sir.\n    Though it be honest, it is never good\n    To bring bad news. Give to a gracious message\n    An host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell\n    Themselves when they be felt.\n  MESSENGER. I have done my duty.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is he married?\n    I cannot hate thee worser than I do\n    If thou again say 'Yes.'\n  MESSENGER. He's married, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. The gods confound thee! Dost thou hold there still?\n  MESSENGER. Should I lie, madam?\n  CLEOPATRA. O, I would thou didst,\n    So half my Egypt were submerg'd and made\n    A cistern for scal'd snakes! Go, get thee hence.\n    Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me\n    Thou wouldst appear most ugly. He is married?\n  MESSENGER. I crave your Highness' pardon.\n  CLEOPATRA. He is married?\n  MESSENGER. Take no offence that I would not offend you;\n    To punish me for what you make me do\n    Seems much unequal. He's married to Octavia.\n  CLEOPATRA. O, that his fault should make a knave of thee\n    That art not what th'art sure of! Get thee hence.\n    The merchandise which thou hast brought from Rome\n    Are all too dear for me. Lie they upon thy hand,\n    And be undone by 'em!                         Exit MESSENGER\n  CHARMIAN. Good your Highness, patience.\n  CLEOPATRA. In praising Antony I have disprais'd Caesar.\n  CHARMIAN. Many times, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. I am paid for't now. Lead me from hence,\n    I faint. O Iras, Charmian! 'Tis no matter.\n    Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him\n    Report the feature of Octavia, her years,\n    Her inclination; let him not leave out\n    The colour of her hair. Bring me word quickly.\n                                                     Exit ALEXAS\n    Let him for ever go- let him not, Charmian-\n    Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,\n    The other way's a Mars.                         [To MARDIAN]\n    Bid you Alexas\n    Bring me word how tall she is.- Pity me, Charmian,\n    But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nNear Misenum\n\nFlourish. Enter POMPEY and MENAS at one door, with drum and\ntrumpet;\nat another, CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, ENOBARBUS, MAECENAS,\nAGRIPPA,\nwith soldiers marching\n\n  POMPEY. Your hostages I have, so have you mine;\n    And we shall talk before we fight.\n  CAESAR. Most meet\n    That first we come to words; and therefore have we\n    Our written purposes before us sent;\n    Which if thou hast considered, let us know\n    If 'twill tie up thy discontented sword\n    And carry back to Sicily much tall youth\n    That else must perish here.\n  POMPEY. To you all three,\n    The senators alone of this great world,\n    Chief factors for the gods: I do not know\n    Wherefore my father should revengers want,\n    Having a son and friends, since Julius Caesar,\n    Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted,\n    There saw you labouring for him. What was't\n    That mov'd pale Cassius to conspire? and what\n    Made the all-honour'd honest Roman, Brutus,\n    With the arm'd rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom,\n    To drench the Capitol, but that they would\n    Have one man but a man? And that is it\n    Hath made me rig my navy, at whose burden\n    The anger'd ocean foams; with which I meant\n    To scourge th' ingratitude that despiteful Rome\n    Cast on my noble father.\n  CAESAR. Take your time.\n  ANTONY. Thou canst not fear us, Pompey, with thy sails;\n    We'll speak with thee at sea; at land thou know'st\n    How much we do o'er-count thee.\n  POMPEY. At land, indeed,\n    Thou dost o'er-count me of my father's house.\n    But since the cuckoo builds not for himself,\n    Remain in't as thou mayst.\n  LEPIDUS. Be pleas'd to tell us-\n    For this is from the present- how you take\n    The offers we have sent you.\n  CAESAR. There's the point.\n  ANTONY. Which do not be entreated to, but weigh\n    What it is worth embrac'd.\n  CAESAR. And what may follow,\n    To try a larger fortune.\n  POMPEY. You have made me offer\n    Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must\n    Rid all the sea of pirates; then to send\n    Measures of wheat to Rome; this 'greed upon,\n    To part with unhack'd edges and bear back\n    Our targes undinted.\n  ALL. That's our offer.\n  POMPEY. Know, then,\n    I came before you here a man prepar'd\n    To take this offer; but Mark Antony\n    Put me to some impatience. Though I lose\n    The praise of it by telling, you must know,\n    When Caesar and your brother were at blows,\n    Your mother came to Sicily and did find\n    Her welcome friendly.\n  ANTONY. I have heard it, Pompey,\n    And am well studied for a liberal thanks\n    Which I do owe you.\n  POMPEY. Let me have your hand.\n    I did not think, sir, to have met you here.\n  ANTONY. The beds i' th' East are soft; and thanks to you,\n    That call'd me timelier than my purpose hither;\n    For I have gained by't.\n  CAESAR. Since I saw you last\n    There is a change upon you.\n  POMPEY. Well, I know not\n    What counts harsh fortune casts upon my face;\n    But in my bosom shall she never come\n    To make my heart her vassal.\n  LEPIDUS. Well met here.\n  POMPEY. I hope so, Lepidus. Thus we are agreed.\n    I crave our composition may be written,\n    And seal'd between us.\n  CAESAR. That's the next to do.\n  POMPEY. We'll feast each other ere we part, and let's\n    Draw lots who shall begin.\n  ANTONY. That will I, Pompey.\n  POMPEY. No, Antony, take the lot;\n    But, first or last, your fine Egyptian cookery\n    Shall have the fame. I have heard that Julius Caesar\n    Grew fat with feasting there.\n  ANTONY. You have heard much.\n  POMPEY. I have fair meanings, sir.\n  ANTONY. And fair words to them.\n  POMPEY. Then so much have I heard;\n    And I have heard Apollodorus carried-\n  ENOBARBUS. No more of that! He did so.\n  POMPEY. What, I pray you?\n  ENOBARBUS. A certain queen to Caesar in a mattress.\n  POMPEY. I know thee now. How far'st thou, soldier?\n  ENOBARBUS. Well;\n    And well am like to do, for I perceive\n    Four feasts are toward.\n  POMPEY. Let me shake thy hand.\n    I never hated thee; I have seen thee fight,\n    When I have envied thy behaviour.\n  ENOBARBUS. Sir,\n    I never lov'd you much; but I ha' prais'd ye\n    When you have well deserv'd ten times as much\n    As I have said you did.\n  POMPEY. Enjoy thy plainness;\n    It nothing ill becomes thee.\n    Aboard my galley I invite you all.\n    Will you lead, lords?\n  ALL. Show's the way, sir.\n  POMPEY. Come.               Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS and MENAS\n  MENAS. [Aside] Thy father, Pompey, would ne'er have made this\n    treaty.- You and I have known, sir.\n  ENOBARBUS. At sea, I think.\n  MENAS. We have, sir.\n  ENOBARBUS. You have done well by water.\n  MENAS. And you by land.\n  ENOBARBUS. I Will praise any man that will praise me; though it\n\n\n    cannot be denied what I have done by land.\n  MENAS. Nor what I have done by water.\n  ENOBARBUS. Yes, something you can deny for your own safety: you\n    have been a great thief by sea.\n  MENAS. And you by land.\n  ENOBARBUS. There I deny my land service. But give me your hand,\n    Menas; if our eyes had authority, here they might take two\n    thieves kissing.\n  MENAS. All men's faces are true, whatsome'er their hands are.\n  ENOBARBUS. But there is never a fair woman has a true face.\n  MENAS. No slander: they steal hearts.\n  ENOBARBUS. We came hither to fight with you.\n  MENAS. For my part, I am sorry it is turn'd to a drinking.\n    Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.\n  ENOBARBUS. If he do, sure he cannot weep't back again.\n  MENAS. Y'have said, sir. We look'd not for Mark Antony here.\nPray\n    you, is he married to Cleopatra?\n  ENOBARBUS. Caesar' sister is call'd Octavia.\n  MENAS. True, sir; she was the wife of Caius Marcellus.\n  ENOBARBUS. But she is now the wife of Marcus Antonius.\n  MENAS. Pray ye, sir?\n  ENOBARBUS. 'Tis true.\n  MENAS. Then is Caesar and he for ever knit together.\n  ENOBARBUS. If I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not\n    prophesy so.\n  MENAS. I think the policy of that purpose made more in the\nmarriage\n    than the love of the parties.\n  ENOBARBUS. I think so too. But you shall find the band that\nseems\n    to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler\nof\n    their amity: Octavia is of a holy, cold, and still\nconversation.\n  MENAS. Who would not have his wife so?\n  ENOBARBUS. Not he that himself is not so; which is Mark Antony.\nHe\n    will to his Egyptian dish again; then shall the sighs of\nOctavia\n    blow the fire up in Caesar, and, as I said before, that which\nis\n    the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author\nof\n    their variance. Antony will use his affection where it is; he\n    married but his occasion here.\n  MENAS. And thus it may be. Come, sir, will you aboard? I have a\n    health for you.\n  ENOBARBUS. I shall take it, sir. We have us'd our throats in\nEgypt.\n  MENAS. Come, let's away.                                Exeunt\n\nACT_2|SC_7\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\n             On board POMPEY'S galley, off Misenum\n\n     Music plays. Enter two or three SERVANTS with a banquet\n\n  FIRST SERVANT. Here they'll be, man. Some o' their plants are\n    ill-rooted already; the least wind i' th' world will blow\nthem\n    down.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Lepidus is high-colour'd.\n  FIRST SERVANT. They have made him drink alms-drink.\n  SECOND SERVANT. As they pinch one another by the disposition,\nhe\n    cries out 'No more!'; reconciles them to his entreaty and\nhimself\n    to th' drink.\n  FIRST SERVANT. But it raises the greater war between him and\nhis\n    discretion.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Why, this it is to have a name in great men's\n    fellowship. I had as lief have a reed that will do me no\nservice\n    as a partizan I could not heave.\n  FIRST SERVANT. To be call'd into a huge sphere, and not to be\nseen\n    to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be, which\npitifully\n    disaster the cheeks.\n\n           A sennet sounded. Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS,\n            POMPEY, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS, ENOBARBUS, MENAS,\n                         with other CAPTAINS\n\n  ANTONY. [To CAESAR] Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o'\nth'\n      Nile\n    By certain scales i' th' pyramid; they know\n    By th' height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth\n    Or foison follow. The higher Nilus swells\n    The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman\n    Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,\n    And shortly comes to harvest.\n  LEPIDUS. Y'have strange serpents there.\n  ANTONY. Ay, Lepidus.\n  LEPIDUS. Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the\n    operation of your sun; so is your crocodile.\n  ANTONY. They are so.\n  POMPEY. Sit- and some wine! A health to Lepidus!\n  LEPIDUS. I am not so well as I should be, but I'll ne'er out.\n  ENOBARBUS. Not till you have slept. I fear me you'll be in till\n\n\n    then.\n  LEPIDUS. Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies' pyramises\nare\n    very goodly things. Without contradiction I have heard that.\n  MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] Pompey, a word.\n  POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] Say in mine ear; what is't?\n  MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] Forsake thy seat, I do beseech thee,\n      Captain,\n    And hear me speak a word.\n  POMPEY. [ Whispers in's ear ] Forbear me till anon-\n    This wine for Lepidus!\n  LEPIDUS. What manner o' thing is your crocodile?\n  ANTONY. It is shap'd, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as\nit\n    hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with it\nown\n    organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the\nelements\n    once out of it, it transmigrates.\n  LEPIDUS. What colour is it of?\n  ANTONY. Of it own colour too.\n  LEPIDUS. 'Tis a strange serpent.\n  ANTONY. 'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.\n  CAESAR. Will this description satisfy him?\n  ANTONY. With the health that Pompey gives him, else he is a\nvery\n    epicure.\n  POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] Go, hang, sir, hang! Tell me of that!\n      Away!\n    Do as I bid you.- Where's this cup I call'd for?\n  MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] If for the sake of merit thou wilt\nhear\n      me,\n    Rise from thy stool.\n  POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] I think th'art mad. [Rises and walks\n    aside] The matter?\n  MENAS. I have ever held my cap off to thy fortunes.\n  POMPEY. Thou hast serv'd me with much faith. What's else to\nsay?-\n    Be jolly, lords.\n  ANTONY. These quicksands, Lepidus,\n    Keep off them, for you sink.\n  MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of all the world?\n  POMPEY. What say'st thou?\n  MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of the whole world? That's twice.\n  POMPEY. How should that be?\n  MENAS. But entertain it,\n    And though you think me poor, I am the man\n    Will give thee all the world.\n  POMPEY. Hast thou drunk well?\n  MENAS. No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup.\n    Thou art, if thou dar'st be, the earthly Jove;\n    Whate'er the ocean pales or sky inclips\n    Is thine, if thou wilt ha't.\n  POMPEY. Show me which way.\n  MENAS. These three world-sharers, these competitors,\n    Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable;\n    And when we are put off, fall to their throats.\n    All there is thine.\n  POMPEY. Ah, this thou shouldst have done,\n    And not have spoke on't. In me 'tis villainy:\n    In thee't had been good service. Thou must know\n    'Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour:\n    Mine honour, it. Repent that e'er thy tongue\n    Hath so betray'd thine act. Being done unknown,\n    I should have found it afterwards well done,\n    But must condemn it now. Desist, and drink.\n  MENAS. [Aside] For this,\n    I'll never follow thy pall'd fortunes more.\n    Who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offer'd,\n    Shall never find it more.\n  POMPEY. This health to Lepidus!\n  ANTONY. Bear him ashore. I'll pledge it for him, Pompey.\n  ENOBARBUS. Here's to thee, Menas!\n  MENAS. Enobarbus, welcome!\n  POMPEY. Fill till the cup be hid.\n  ENOBARBUS. There's a strong fellow, Menas.\n               [Pointing to the servant who carries off LEPIDUS]\n  MENAS. Why?\n  ENOBARBUS. 'A bears the third part of the world, man; see'st\nnot?\n  MENAS. The third part, then, is drunk. Would it were all,\n    That it might go on wheels!\n  ENOBARBUS. Drink thou; increase the reels.\n  MENAS. Come.\n  POMPEY. This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.\n  ANTONY. It ripens towards it. Strike the vessels, ho!\n    Here's to Caesar!\n  CAESAR. I could well forbear't.\n    It's monstrous labour when I wash my brain\n    And it grows fouler.\n  ANTONY. Be a child o' th' time.\n  CAESAR. Possess it, I'll make answer.\n    But I had rather fast from all four days\n    Than drink so much in one.\n  ENOBARBUS. [To ANTONY] Ha, my brave emperor!\n    Shall we dance now the Egyptian Bacchanals\n    And celebrate our drink?\n  POMPEY. Let's ha't, good soldier.\n  ANTONY. Come, let's all take hands,\n    Till that the conquering wine hath steep'd our sense\n    In soft and delicate Lethe.\n  ENOBARBUS. All take hands.\n    Make battery to our ears with the loud music,\n    The while I'll place you; then the boy shall sing;\n    The holding every man shall bear as loud\n    As his strong sides can volley.\n               [Music plays. ENOBARBUS places them hand in hand]\n\n\n                        THE SONG\n            Come, thou monarch of the vine,\n            Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!\n            In thy fats our cares be drown'd,\n            With thy grapes our hairs be crown'd.\n            Cup us till the world go round,\n            Cup us till the world go round!\n\n  CAESAR. What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good brother,\n    Let me request you off; our graver business\n    Frowns at this levity. Gentle lords, let's part;\n    You see we have burnt our cheeks. Strong Enobarb\n    Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue\n    Splits what it speaks. The wild disguise hath almost\n    Antick'd us all. What needs more words? Good night.\n    Good Antony, your hand.\n  POMPEY. I'll try you on the shore.\n  ANTONY. And shall, sir. Give's your hand.\n  POMPEY. O Antony,\n    You have my father's house- but what? We are friends.\n    Come, down into the boat.\n  ENOBARBUS. Take heed you fall not.\n                              Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS and MENAS\n    Menas, I'll not on shore.\n  MENAS. No, to my cabin.\n    These drums! these trumpets, flutes! what!\n    Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell\n    To these great fellows. Sound and be hang'd, sound out!\n                                  [Sound a flourish, with drums]\n  ENOBARBUS. Hoo! says 'a. There's my cap.\n  MENAS. Hoo! Noble Captain, come.                        Exeunt\nACT_3|SC_1\n\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\n                     A plain in Syria\n\n       Enter VENTIDIUS, as it were in triumph, with SILIUS\n      and other Romans, OFFICERS and soldiers; the dead body\n                of PACORUS borne before him\n\n  VENTIDIUS. Now, darting Parthia, art thou struck, and now\n    Pleas'd fortune does of Marcus Crassus' death\n    Make me revenger. Bear the King's son's body\n    Before our army. Thy Pacorus, Orodes,\n    Pays this for Marcus Crassus.\n  SILIUS. Noble Ventidius,\n    Whilst yet with Parthian blood thy sword is warm\n    The fugitive Parthians follow; spur through Media,\n    Mesopotamia, and the shelters whither\n    The routed fly. So thy grand captain, Antony,\n    Shall set thee on triumphant chariots and\n    Put garlands on thy head.\n  VENTIDIUS. O Silius, Silius,\n    I have done enough. A lower place, note well,\n    May make too great an act; for learn this, Silius:\n    Better to leave undone than by our deed\n    Acquire too high a fame when him we serve's away.\n    Caesar and Antony have ever won\n    More in their officer, than person. Sossius,\n    One of my place in Syria, his lieutenant,\n    For quick accumulation of renown,\n    Which he achiev'd by th' minute, lost his favour.\n    Who does i' th' wars more than his captain can\n    Becomes his captain's captain; and ambition,\n    The soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss\n    Than gain which darkens him.\n    I could do more to do Antonius good,\n    But 'twould offend him; and in his offence\n    Should my performance perish.\n  SILIUS. Thou hast, Ventidius, that\n    Without the which a soldier and his sword\n    Grants scarce distinction. Thou wilt write to Antony?\n  VENTIDIUS. I'll humbly signify what in his name,\n    That magical word of war, we have effected;\n    How, with his banners, and his well-paid ranks,\n    The ne'er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia\n    We have jaded out o' th' field.\n  SILIUS. Where is he now?\n  VENTIDIUS. He purposeth to Athens; whither, with what haste\n    The weight we must convey with's will permit,\n    We shall appear before him.- On, there; pass along.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_2\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\nRome. CAESAR'S house\n\n        Enter AGRIPPA at one door, ENOBARBUS at another\n\n  AGRIPPA. What, are the brothers parted?\n  ENOBARBUS. They have dispatch'd with Pompey; he is gone;\n    The other three are sealing. Octavia weeps\n    To part from Rome; Caesar is sad; and Lepidus,\n    Since Pompey's feast, as Menas says, is troubled\n    With the green sickness.\n  AGRIPPA. 'Tis a noble Lepidus.\n  ENOBARBUS. A very fine one. O, how he loves Caesar!\n  AGRIPPA. Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony!\n  ENOBARBUS. Caesar? Why he's the Jupiter of men.\n  AGRIPPA. What's Antony? The god of Jupiter.\n  ENOBARBUS. Spake you of Caesar? How! the nonpareil!\n  AGRIPPA. O, Antony! O thou Arabian bird!\n  ENOBARBUS. Would you praise Caesar, say 'Caesar'- go no\nfurther.\n  AGRIPPA. Indeed, he plied them both with excellent praises.\n  ENOBARBUS. But he loves Caesar best. Yet he loves Antony.\n    Hoo! hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards, poets, cannot\n\n    Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number- hoo!-\n    His love to Antony. But as for Caesar,\n    Kneel down, kneel down, and wonder.\n  AGRIPPA. Both he loves.\n  ENOBARBUS. They are his shards, and he their beetle. [Trumpets\n      within] So-\n    This is to horse. Adieu, noble Agrippa.\n  AGRIPPA. Good fortune, worthy soldier, and farewell.\n\n           Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, and OCTAVIA\n\n  ANTONY. No further, sir.\n  CAESAR. You take from me a great part of myself;\n    Use me well in't. Sister, prove such a wife\n    As my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest band\n    Shall pass on thy approof. Most noble Antony,\n    Let not the piece of virtue which is set\n    Betwixt us as the cement of our love\n    To keep it builded be the ram to batter\n    The fortress of it; for better might we\n    Have lov'd without this mean, if on both parts\n    This be not cherish'd.\n  ANTONY. Make me not offended\n    In your distrust.\n  CAESAR. I have said.\n  ANTONY. You shall not find,\n    Though you be therein curious, the least cause\n    For what you seem to fear. So the gods keep you,\n    And make the hearts of Romans serve your ends!\n    We will here part.\n  CAESAR. Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well.\n    The elements be kind to thee and make\n    Thy spirits all of comfort! Fare thee well.\n  OCTAVIA. My noble brother!\n  ANTONY. The April's in her eyes. It is love's spring,\n    And these the showers to bring it on. Be cheerful.\n  OCTAVIA. Sir, look well to my husband's house; and-\n  CAESAR. What, Octavia?\n  OCTAVIA. I'll tell you in your ear.\n  ANTONY. Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can\n    Her heart inform her tongue- the swan's down feather,\n    That stands upon the swell at the full of tide,\n    And neither way inclines.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] Will Caesar weep?\n  AGRIPPA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] He has a cloud in's face.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] He were the worse for that, were\nhe a\n      horse;\n    So is he, being a man.\n  AGRIPPA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] Why, Enobarbus,\n    When Antony found Julius Caesar dead,\n    He cried almost to roaring; and he wept\n    When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] That year, indeed, he was\ntroubled\n      with a rheum;\n    What willingly he did confound he wail'd,\n    Believe't- till I weep too.\n  CAESAR. No, sweet Octavia,\n    You shall hear from me still; the time shall not\n    Out-go my thinking on you.\n  ANTONY. Come, sir, come;\n    I'll wrestle with you in my strength of love.\n    Look, here I have you; thus I let you go,\n    And give you to the gods.\n  CAESAR. Adieu; be happy!\n  LEPIDUS. Let all the number of the stars give light\n    To thy fair way!\n  CAESAR. Farewell, farewell!                   [Kisses OCTAVIA]\n  ANTONY. Farewell!                       Trumpets sound. Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_3\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\n              Alexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\n         Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Where is the fellow?\n  ALEXAS. Half afeard to come.\n  CLEOPATRA. Go to, go to.\n\n                Enter the MESSENGER as before\n\n    Come hither, sir.\n  ALEXAS. Good Majesty,\n    Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you\n    But when you are well pleas'd.\n  CLEOPATRA. That Herod's head\n    I'll have. But how, when Antony is gone,\n    Through whom I might command it? Come thou near.\n  MESSENGER. Most gracious Majesty!\n  CLEOPATRA. Didst thou behold Octavia?\n  MESSENGER. Ay, dread Queen.\n  CLEOPATRA. Where?\n  MESSENGER. Madam, in Rome\n    I look'd her in the face, and saw her led\n    Between her brother and Mark Antony.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is she as tall as me?\n  MESSENGER. She is not, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. Didst hear her speak? Is she shrill-tongu'd or low?\n  MESSENGER. Madam, I heard her speak: she is low-voic'd.\n  CLEOPATRA. That's not so good. He cannot like her long.\n  CHARMIAN. Like her? O Isis! 'tis impossible.\n  CLEOPATRA. I think so, Charmian. Dull of tongue and dwarfish!\n    What majesty is in her gait? Remember,\n    If e'er thou look'dst on majesty.\n  MESSENGER. She creeps.\n    Her motion and her station are as one;\n    She shows a body rather than a life,\n    A statue than a breather.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is this certain?\n  MESSENGER. Or I have no observance.\n  CHARMIAN. Three in Egypt\n    Cannot make better note.\n  CLEOPATRA. He's very knowing;\n    I do perceive't. There's nothing in her yet.\n    The fellow has good judgment.\n  CHARMIAN. Excellent.\n  CLEOPATRA. Guess at her years, I prithee.\n  MESSENGER. Madam,\n    She was a widow.\n  CLEOPATRA. Widow? Charmian, hark!\n  MESSENGER. And I do think she's thirty.\n  CLEOPATRA. Bear'st thou her face in mind? Is't long or round?\n  MESSENGER. Round even to faultiness.\n  CLEOPATRA. For the most part, too, they are foolish that are\nso.\n    Her hair, what colour?\n  MESSENGER. Brown, madam; and her forehead\n    As low as she would wish it.\n  CLEOPATRA. There's gold for thee.\n    Thou must not take my former sharpness ill.\n    I will employ thee back again; I find thee\n    Most fit for business. Go make thee ready;\n    Our letters are prepar'd.                   Exeunt MESSENGER\n\n  CHARMIAN. A proper man.\n  CLEOPATRA. Indeed, he is so. I repent me much\n    That so I harried him. Why, methinks, by him,\n    This creature's no such thing.\n  CHARMIAN. Nothing, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. The man hath seen some majesty, and should know.\n  CHARMIAN. Hath he seen majesty? Isis else defend,\n    And serving you so long!\n  CLEOPATRA. I have one thing more to ask him yet, good Charmian.\n    But 'tis no matter; thou shalt bring him to me\n    Where I will write. All may be well enough.\n  CHARMIAN. I warrant you, madam.                         Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_4\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\n                  Athens. ANTONY'S house\n\n                 Enter ANTONY and OCTAVIA\n\n  ANTONY. Nay, nay, Octavia, not only that-\n    That were excusable, that and thousands more\n    Of semblable import- but he hath wag'd\n    New wars 'gainst Pompey; made his will, and read it\n    To public ear;\n    Spoke scandy of me; when perforce he could not\n    But pay me terms of honour, cold and sickly\n    He vented them, most narrow measure lent me;\n    When the best hint was given him, he not took't,\n    Or did it from his teeth.\n  OCTAVIA. O my good lord,\n    Believe not all; or if you must believe,\n    Stomach not all. A more unhappy lady,\n    If this division chance, ne'er stood between,\n    Praying for both parts.\n    The good gods will mock me presently\n    When I shall pray 'O, bless my lord and husband!'\n    Undo that prayer by crying out as loud\n    'O, bless my brother!' Husband win, win brother,\n    Prays, and destroys the prayer; no mid-way\n    'Twixt these extremes at all.\n  ANTONY. Gentle Octavia,\n    Let your best love draw to that point which seeks\n    Best to preserve it. If I lose mine honour,\n    I lose myself; better I were not yours\n    Than yours so branchless. But, as you requested,\n    Yourself shall go between's. The meantime, lady,\n    I'll raise the preparation of a war\n    Shall stain your brother. Make your soonest haste;\n    So your desires are yours.\n  OCTAVIA. Thanks to my lord.\n    The Jove of power make me, most weak, most weak,\n    Your reconciler! Wars 'twixt you twain would be\n    As if the world should cleave, and that slain men\n    Should solder up the rift.\n  ANTONY. When it appears to you where this begins,\n    Turn your displeasure that way, for our faults\n    Can never be so equal that your love\n    Can equally move with them. Provide your going;\n    Choose your own company, and command what cost\n    Your heart has mind to.                               Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_5\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\n                   Athens. ANTONY'S house\n\n             Enter ENOBARBUS and EROS, meeting\n\n  ENOBARBUS. How now, friend Eros!\n  EROS. There's strange news come, sir.\n  ENOBARBUS. What, man?\n  EROS. Caesar and Lepidus have made wars upon Pompey.\n  ENOBARBUS. This is old. What is the success?\n  EROS. Caesar, having made use of him in the wars 'gainst\nPompey,\n    presently denied him rivality, would not let him partake in\nthe\n    glory of the action; and not resting here, accuses him of\nletters\n    he had formerly wrote to Pompey; upon his own appeal, seizes\nhim.\n    So the poor third is up, till death enlarge his confine.\n  ENOBARBUS. Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps- no more;\n    And throw between them all the food thou hast,\n    They'll grind the one the other. Where's Antony?\n  EROS. He's walking in the garden- thus, and spurns\n    The rush that lies before him; cries 'Fool Lepidus!'\n    And threats the throat of that his officer\n    That murd'red Pompey.\n  ENOBARBUS. Our great navy's rigg'd.\n  EROS. For Italy and Caesar. More, Domitius:\n    My lord desires you presently; my news\n    I might have told hereafter.\n  ENOBARBUS. 'Twill be naught;\n    But let it be. Bring me to Antony.\n  EROS. Come, sir.                                        Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_6\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\n                   Rome. CAESAR'S house\n\n             Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, and MAECENAS\n\n  CAESAR. Contemning Rome, he has done all this and more\n    In Alexandria. Here's the manner of't:\n    I' th' market-place, on a tribunal silver'd,\n    Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold\n    Were publicly enthron'd; at the feet sat\n    Caesarion, whom they call my father's son,\n    And all the unlawful issue that their lust\n    Since then hath made between them. Unto her\n    He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her\n    Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,\n    Absolute queen.\n  MAECENAS. This in the public eye?\n  CAESAR. I' th' common show-place, where they exercise.\n    His sons he there proclaim'd the kings of kings:\n    Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia,\n    He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assign'd\n    Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. She\n    In th' habiliments of the goddess Isis\n    That day appear'd; and oft before gave audience,\n    As 'tis reported, so.\n  MAECENAS. Let Rome be thus\n    Inform'd.\n  AGRIPPA. Who, queasy with his insolence\n    Already, will their good thoughts call from him.\n  CAESAR. The people knows it, and have now receiv'd\n    His accusations.\n  AGRIPPA. Who does he accuse?\n  CAESAR. Caesar; and that, having in Sicily\n    Sextus Pompeius spoil'd, we had not rated him\n    His part o' th' isle. Then does he say he lent me\n    Some shipping, unrestor'd. Lastly, he frets\n    That Lepidus of the triumvirate\n    Should be depos'd; and, being, that we detain\n    All his revenue.\n  AGRIPPA. Sir, this should be answer'd.\n  CAESAR. 'Tis done already, and messenger gone.\n    I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel,\n    That he his high authority abus'd,\n    And did deserve his change. For what I have conquer'd\n    I grant him part; but then, in his Armenia\n    And other of his conquer'd kingdoms,\n    Demand the like.\n  MAECENAS. He'll never yield to that.\n  CAESAR. Nor must not then be yielded to in this.\n\n                Enter OCTAVIA, with her train\n\n  OCTAVIA. Hail, Caesar, and my lord! hail, most dear Caesar!\n  CAESAR. That ever I should call thee cast-away!\n  OCTAVIA. You have not call'd me so, nor have you cause.\n  CAESAR. Why have you stol'n upon us thus? You come not\n    Like Caesar's sister. The wife of Antony\n    Should have an army for an usher, and\n    The neighs of horse to tell of her approach\n    Long ere she did appear. The trees by th' way\n    Should have borne men, and expectation fainted,\n    Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust\n    Should have ascended to the roof of heaven,\n    Rais'd by your populous troops. But you are come\n    A market-maid to Rome, and have prevented\n    The ostentation of our love, which left unshown\n    Is often left unlov'd. We should have met you\n    By sea and land, supplying every stage\n    With an augmented greeting.\n  OCTAVIA. Good my lord,\n    To come thus was I not constrain'd, but did it\n    On my free will. My lord, Mark Antony,\n    Hearing that you prepar'd for war, acquainted\n    My grieved ear withal; whereon I begg'd\n    His pardon for return.\n  CAESAR. Which soon he granted,\n    Being an obstruct 'tween his lust and him.\n  OCTAVIA. Do not say so, my lord.\n  CAESAR. I have eyes upon him,\n    And his affairs come to me on the wind.\n    Where is he now?\n  OCTAVIA. My lord, in Athens.\n  CAESAR. No, my most wronged sister: Cleopatra\n    Hath nodded him to her. He hath given his empire\n    Up to a whore, who now are levying\n    The kings o' th' earth for war. He hath assembled\n    Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus\n    Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king\n    Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;\n    King Manchus of Arabia; King of Pont;\n    Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king\n    Of Comagene; Polemon and Amyntas,\n    The kings of Mede and Lycaonia, with\n    More larger list of sceptres.\n  OCTAVIA. Ay me most wretched,\n    That have my heart parted betwixt two friends,\n    That does afflict each other!\n  CAESAR. Welcome hither.\n    Your letters did withhold our breaking forth,\n    Till we perceiv'd both how you were wrong led\n    And we in negligent danger. Cheer your heart;\n    Be you not troubled with the time, which drives\n    O'er your content these strong necessities,\n    But let determin'd things to destiny\n    Hold unbewail'd their way. Welcome to Rome;\n    Nothing more dear to me. You are abus'd\n    Beyond the mark of thought, and the high gods,\n    To do you justice, make their ministers\n    Of us and those that love you. Best of comfort,\n    And ever welcome to us.\n  AGRIPPA. Welcome, lady.\n  MAECENAS. Welcome, dear madam.\n    Each heart in Rome does love and pity you;\n    Only th' adulterous Antony, most large\n    In his abominations, turns you off,\n    And gives his potent regiment to a trull\n    That noises it against us.\n  OCTAVIA. Is it so, sir?\n  CAESAR. Most certain. Sister, welcome. Pray you\n    Be ever known to patience. My dear'st sister!         Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_7\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\n                  ANTONY'S camp near Actium\n\n                Enter CLEOPATRA and ENOBARBUS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. I will be even with thee, doubt it not.\n  ENOBARBUS. But why, why,\n  CLEOPATRA. Thou hast forspoke my being in these wars,\n    And say'st it is not fit.\n  ENOBARBUS. Well, is it, is it?\n  CLEOPATRA. Is't not denounc'd against us? Why should not we\n    Be there in person?\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside] Well, I could reply:\n    If we should serve with horse and mares together\n    The horse were merely lost; the mares would bear\n    A soldier and his horse.\n  CLEOPATRA. What is't you say?\n  ENOBARBUS. Your presence needs must puzzle Antony;\n    Take from his heart, take from his brain, from's time,\n    What should not then be spar'd. He is already\n    Traduc'd for levity; and 'tis said in Rome\n    That Photinus an eunuch and your maids\n    Manage this war.\n  CLEOPATRA. Sink Rome, and their tongues rot\n    That speak against us! A charge we bear i' th' war,\n    And, as the president of my kingdom, will\n    Appear there for a man. Speak not against it;\n    I will not stay behind.\n\n                   Enter ANTONY and CANIDIUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Nay, I have done.\n    Here comes the Emperor.\n  ANTONY. Is it not strange, Canidius,\n    That from Tarentum and Brundusium\n    He could so quickly cut the Ionian sea,\n    And take in Toryne?- You have heard on't, sweet?\n  CLEOPATRA. Celerity is never more admir'd\n    Than by the negligent.\n  ANTONY. A good rebuke,\n    Which might have well becom'd the best of men\n    To taunt at slackness. Canidius, we\n    Will fight with him by sea.\n  CLEOPATRA. By sea! What else?\n  CANIDIUS. Why will my lord do so?\n  ANTONY. For that he dares us to't.\n  ENOBARBUS. So hath my lord dar'd him to single fight.\n  CANIDIUS. Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia,\n    Where Caesar fought with Pompey. But these offers,\n    Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off;\n    And so should you.\n  ENOBARBUS. Your ships are not well mann'd;\n    Your mariners are muleteers, reapers, people\n    Ingross'd by swift impress. In Caesar's fleet\n    Are those that often have 'gainst Pompey fought;\n    Their ships are yare; yours heavy. No disgrace\n    Shall fall you for refusing him at sea,\n    Being prepar'd for land.\n  ANTONY. By sea, by sea.\n  ENOBARBUS. Most worthy sir, you therein throw away\n    The absolute soldiership you have by land;\n    Distract your army, which doth most consist\n    Of war-mark'd footmen; leave unexecuted\n    Your own renowned knowledge; quite forgo\n    The way which promises assurance; and\n    Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard\n    From firm security.\n  ANTONY. I'll fight at sea.\n  CLEOPATRA. I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.\n  ANTONY. Our overplus of shipping will we burn,\n    And, with the rest full-mann'd, from th' head of Actium\n    Beat th' approaching Caesar. But if we fail,\n    We then can do't at land.\n\n                       Enter a MESSENGER\n\n    Thy business?\n  MESSENGER. The news is true, my lord: he is descried;\n    Caesar has taken Toryne.\n  ANTONY. Can he be there in person? 'Tis impossible-\n    Strange that his power should be. Canidius,\n    Our nineteen legions thou shalt hold by land,\n    And our twelve thousand horse. We'll to our ship.\n    Away, my Thetis!\n\n                       Enter a SOLDIER\n\n    How now, worthy soldier?\n  SOLDIER. O noble Emperor, do not fight by sea;\n    Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt\n    This sword and these my wounds? Let th' Egyptians\n    And the Phoenicians go a-ducking; we\n    Have us'd to conquer standing on the earth\n    And fighting foot to foot.\n  ANTONY. Well, well- away.\n                         Exeunt ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, and ENOBARBUS\n  SOLDIER. By Hercules, I think I am i' th' right.\n  CANIDIUS. Soldier, thou art; but his whole action grows\n    Not in the power on't. So our leader's led,\n    And we are women's men.\n  SOLDIER. You keep by land\n    The legions and the horse whole, do you not?\n  CANIDIUS. Marcus Octavius, Marcus Justeius,\n    Publicola, and Caelius are for sea;\n    But we keep whole by land. This speed of Caesar's\n    Carries beyond belief.\n  SOLDIER. While he was yet in Rome,\n    His power went out in such distractions as\n    Beguil'd all spies.\n  CANIDIUS. Who's his lieutenant, hear you?\n  SOLDIER. They say one Taurus.\n  CANIDIUS. Well I know the man.\n\n                        Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. The Emperor calls Canidius.\n  CANIDIUS. With news the time's with labour and throes forth\n    Each minute some.                                     Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_8\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VIII.\n                      A plain near Actium\n\n             Enter CAESAR, with his army, marching\n\n  CAESAR. Taurus!\n  TAURUS. My lord?\n  CAESAR. Strike not by land; keep whole; provoke not battle\n    Till we have done at sea. Do not exceed\n    The prescript of this scroll. Our fortune lies\n    Upon this jump.                                       Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_9\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IX.\n                  Another part of the plain\n\n                  Enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS\n\n  ANTONY. Set we our squadrons on yon side o' th' hill,\n    In eye of Caesar's battle; from which place\n    We may the number of the ships behold,\n    And so proceed accordingly.                           Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_10\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE X.\n                 Another part of the plain\n\n        CANIDIUS marcheth with his land army one way\n        over the stage, and TAURUS, the Lieutenant of\n      CAESAR, the other way. After their going in is heard\n                   the noise of a sea-fight\n\n                    Alarum. Enter ENOBARBUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer.\n    Th' Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,\n    With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder.\n    To see't mine eyes are blasted.\n\n                        Enter SCARUS\n\n  SCARUS. Gods and goddesses,\n    All the whole synod of them!\n  ENOBARBUS. What's thy passion?\n  SCARUS. The greater cantle of the world is lost\n    With very ignorance; we have kiss'd away\n    Kingdoms and provinces.\n  ENOBARBUS. How appears the fight?\n  SCARUS. On our side like the token'd pestilence,\n    Where death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt-\n    Whom leprosy o'ertake!- i' th' midst o' th' fight,\n    When vantage like a pair of twins appear'd,\n    Both as the same, or rather ours the elder-\n    The breese upon her, like a cow in June-\n    Hoists sails and flies.\n  ENOBARBUS. That I beheld;\n    Mine eyes did sicken at the sight and could not\n    Endure a further view.\n  SCARUS. She once being loof'd,\n    The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,\n    Claps on his sea-wing, and, like a doting mallard,\n    Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.\n    I never saw an action of such shame;\n    Experience, manhood, honour, ne'er before\n    Did violate so itself.\n  ENOBARBUS. Alack, alack!\n\n                       Enter CANIDIUS\n\n  CANIDIUS. Our fortune on the sea is out of breath,\n    And sinks most lamentably. Had our general\n    Been what he knew himself, it had gone well.\n    O, he has given example for our flight\n    Most grossly by his own!\n  ENOBARBUS. Ay, are you thereabouts?\n    Why then, good night indeed.\n  CANIDIUS. Toward Peloponnesus are they fled.\n  SCARUS. 'Tis easy to't; and there I will attend\n    What further comes.\n  CANIDIUS. To Caesar will I render\n    My legions and my horse; six kings already\n    Show me the way of yielding.\n  ENOBARBUS. I'll yet follow\n    The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason\n    Sits in the wind against me.                          Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_11\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE XI.\n              Alexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\n               Enter ANTONY With attendants\n\n  ANTONY. Hark! the land bids me tread no more upon't;\n    It is asham'd to bear me. Friends, come hither.\n    I am so lated in the world that I\n    Have lost my way for ever. I have a ship\n    Laden with gold; take that; divide it. Fly,\n    And make your peace with Caesar.\n  ALL. Fly? Not we!\n  ANTONY. I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards\n    To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone;\n    I have myself resolv'd upon a course\n    Which has no need of you; be gone.\n    My treasure's in the harbour, take it. O,\n    I follow'd that I blush to look upon.\n    My very hairs do mutiny; for the white\n    Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them\n    For fear and doting. Friends, be gone; you shall\n    Have letters from me to some friends that will\n    Sweep your way for you. Pray you look not sad,\n    Nor make replies of loathness; take the hint\n    Which my despair proclaims. Let that be left\n    Which leaves itself. To the sea-side straight way.\n    I will possess you of that ship and treasure.\n    Leave me, I pray, a little; pray you now;\n    Nay, do so, for indeed I have lost command;\n    Therefore I pray you. I'll see you by and by.    [Sits down]\n\n            Enter CLEOPATRA, led by CHARMIAN and IRAS,\n                         EROS following\n\n  EROS. Nay, gentle madam, to him! Comfort him.\n  IRAS. Do, most dear Queen.\n  CHARMIAN. Do? Why, what else?\n  CLEOPATRA. Let me sit down. O Juno!\n  ANTONY. No, no, no, no, no.\n  EROS. See you here, sir?\n  ANTONY. O, fie, fie, fie!\n  CHARMIAN. Madam!\n  IRAS. Madam, O good Empress!\n  EROS. Sir, sir!\n  ANTONY. Yes, my lord, yes. He at Philippi kept\n    His sword e'en like a dancer, while I struck\n    The lean and wrinkled Cassius; and 'twas I\n    That the mad Brutus ended; he alone\n    Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had\n    In the brave squares of war. Yet now- no matter.\n  CLEOPATRA. Ah, stand by!\n  EROS. The Queen, my lord, the Queen!\n  IRAS. Go to him, madam, speak to him.\n    He is unqualitied with very shame.\n  CLEOPATRA. Well then, sustain me. O!\n EROS. Most noble sir, arise; the Queen approaches.\n    Her head's declin'd, and death will seize her but\n    Your comfort makes the rescue.\n  ANTONY. I have offended reputation-\n    A most unnoble swerving.\n  EROS. Sir, the Queen.\n  ANTONY. O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? See\n    How I convey my shame out of thine eyes\n    By looking back what I have left behind\n    'Stroy'd in dishonour.\n  CLEOPATRA. O my lord, my lord,\n    Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought\n    You would have followed.\n  ANTONY. Egypt, thou knew'st too well\n    My heart was to thy rudder tied by th' strings,\n    And thou shouldst tow me after. O'er my spirit\n    Thy full supremacy thou knew'st, and that\n    Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods\n    Command me.\n  CLEOPATRA. O, my pardon!\n  ANTONY. Now I must\n    To the young man send humble treaties, dodge\n    And palter in the shifts of lowness, who\n    With half the bulk o' th' world play'd as I pleas'd,\n    Making and marring fortunes. You did know\n    How much you were my conqueror, and that\n    My sword, made weak by my affection, would\n    Obey it on all cause.\n  CLEOPATRA. Pardon, pardon!\n  ANTONY. Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates\n    All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;\n    Even this repays me.\n    We sent our schoolmaster; is 'a come back?\n    Love, I am full of lead. Some wine,\n    Within there, and our viands! Fortune knows\n    We scorn her most when most she offers blows.         Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_12\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE XII.\n                   CAESAR'S camp in Egypt\n\n   Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, THYREUS, with others\n\n  CAESAR. Let him appear that's come from Antony.\n    Know you him?\n  DOLABELLA. Caesar, 'tis his schoolmaster:\n    An argument that he is pluck'd, when hither\n    He sends so poor a pinion of his wing,\n    Which had superfluous kings for messengers\n    Not many moons gone by.\n\n            Enter EUPHRONIUS, Ambassador from ANTONY\n\n  CAESAR. Approach, and speak.\n  EUPHRONIUS. Such as I am, I come from Antony.\n    I was of late as petty to his ends\n    As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf\n    To his grand sea.\n  CAESAR. Be't so. Declare thine office.\n  EUPHRONIUS. Lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and\n    Requires to live in Egypt; which not granted,\n    He lessens his requests and to thee sues\n    To let him breathe between the heavens and earth,\n    A private man in Athens. This for him.\n    Next, Cleopatra does confess thy greatness,\n    Submits her to thy might, and of thee craves\n    The circle of the Ptolemies for her heirs,\n    Now hazarded to thy grace.\n  CAESAR. For Antony,\n    I have no ears to his request. The Queen\n    Of audience nor desire shall fail, so she\n    From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend,\n    Or take his life there. This if she perform,\n    She shall not sue unheard. So to them both.\n  EUPHRONIUS. Fortune pursue thee!\n  CAESAR. Bring him through the bands.           Exit EUPHRONIUS\n    [To THYREUS] To try thy eloquence, now 'tis time. Dispatch;\n    From Antony win Cleopatra. Promise,\n    And in our name, what she requires; add more,\n    From thine invention, offers. Women are not\n    In their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure\n    The ne'er-touch'd vestal. Try thy cunning, Thyreus;\n    Make thine own edict for thy pains, which we\n    Will answer as a law.\n  THYREUS. Caesar, I go.\n  CAESAR. Observe how Antony becomes his flaw,\n    And what thou think'st his very action speaks\n    In every power that moves.\n  THYREUS. Caesar, I shall.                               Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_13\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE XIII.\n               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\n        Enter CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, CHARMIAN, and IRAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. What shall we do, Enobarbus?\n  ENOBARBUS. Think, and die.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is Antony or we in fault for this?\n  ENOBARBUS. Antony only, that would make his will\n    Lord of his reason. What though you fled\n    From that great face of war, whose several ranges\n    Frighted each other? Why should he follow?\n    The itch of his affection should not then\n    Have nick'd his captainship, at such a point,\n    When half to half the world oppos'd, he being\n    The mered question. 'Twas a shame no less\n    Than was his loss, to course your flying flags\n    And leave his navy gazing.\n  CLEOPATRA. Prithee, peace.\n\n          Enter EUPHRONIUS, the Ambassador; with ANTONY\n\n  ANTONY. Is that his answer?\n  EUPHRONIUS. Ay, my lord.\n  ANTONY. The Queen shall then have courtesy, so she\n    Will yield us up.\n  EUPHRONIUS. He says so.\n  ANTONY. Let her know't.\n    To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head,\n    And he will fill thy wishes to the brim\n    With principalities.\n  CLEOPATRA. That head, my lord?\n  ANTONY. To him again. Tell him he wears the rose\n    Of youth upon him; from which the world should note\n    Something particular. His coin, ships, legions,\n    May be a coward's whose ministers would prevail\n    Under the service of a child as soon\n    As i' th' command of Caesar. I dare him therefore\n    To lay his gay comparisons apart,\n    And answer me declin'd, sword against sword,\n    Ourselves alone. I'll write it. Follow me.\n                                    Exeunt ANTONY and EUPHRONIUS\n\n  EUPHRONIUS. [Aside] Yes, like enough high-battled Caesar will\n    Unstate his happiness, and be stag'd to th' show\n    Against a sworder! I see men's judgments are\n    A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward\n    Do draw the inward quality after them,\n    To suffer all alike. That he should dream,\n    Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will\n    Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdu'd\n    His judgment too.\n\n                       Enter a SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. A messenger from Caesar.\n  CLEOPATRA. What, no more ceremony? See, my women!\n    Against the blown rose may they stop their nose\n    That kneel'd unto the buds. Admit him, sir.     Exit SERVANT\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside] Mine honesty and I begin to square.\n    The loyalty well held to fools does make\n    Our faith mere folly. Yet he that can endure\n    To follow with allegiance a fall'n lord\n    Does conquer him that did his master conquer,\n    And earns a place i' th' story.\n\n                       Enter THYREUS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Caesar's will?\n  THYREUS. Hear it apart.\n  CLEOPATRA. None but friends: say boldly.\n  THYREUS. So, haply, are they friends to Antony.\n  ENOBARBUS. He needs as many, sir, as Caesar has,\n    Or needs not us. If Caesar please, our master\n    Will leap to be his friend. For us, you know\n    Whose he is we are, and that is Caesar's.\n  THYREUS. So.\n    Thus then, thou most renown'd: Caesar entreats\n    Not to consider in what case thou stand'st\n    Further than he is Caesar.\n  CLEOPATRA. Go on. Right royal!\n  THYREUS. He knows that you embrace not Antony\n    As you did love, but as you fear'd him.\n  CLEOPATRA. O!\n  THYREUS. The scars upon your honour, therefore, he\n    Does pity, as constrained blemishes,\n    Not as deserv'd.\n  CLEOPATRA. He is a god, and knows\n    What is most right. Mine honour was not yielded,\n    But conquer'd merely.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside] To be sure of that,\n    I will ask Antony. Sir, sir, thou art so leaky\n    That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for\n    Thy dearest quit thee.                                  Exit\n  THYREUS. Shall I say to Caesar\n    What you require of him? For he partly begs\n    To be desir'd to give. It much would please him\n    That of his fortunes you should make a staff\n    To lean upon. But it would warm his spirits\n    To hear from me you had left Antony,\n    And put yourself under his shroud,\n    The universal landlord.\n  CLEOPATRA. What's your name?\n  THYREUS. My name is Thyreus.\n  CLEOPATRA. Most kind messenger,\n    Say to great Caesar this: in deputation\n    I kiss his conquring hand. Tell him I am prompt\n    To lay my crown at 's feet, and there to kneel.\n    Tell him from his all-obeying breath I hear\n    The doom of Egypt.\n  THYREUS. 'Tis your noblest course.\n    Wisdom and fortune combating together,\n    If that the former dare but what it can,\n    No chance may shake it. Give me grace to lay\n    My duty on your hand.\n  CLEOPATRA. Your Caesar's father oft,\n    When he hath mus'd of taking kingdoms in,\n    Bestow'd his lips on that unworthy place,\n    As it rain'd kisses.\n\n                Re-enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS\n\n  ANTONY. Favours, by Jove that thunders!\n    What art thou, fellow?\n  THYREUS. One that but performs\n    The bidding of the fullest man, and worthiest\n    To have command obey'd.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside] You will be whipt.\n  ANTONY. Approach there.- Ah, you kite!- Now, gods and devils!\n    Authority melts from me. Of late, when I cried 'Ho!'\n    Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth\n    And cry 'Your will?' Have you no ears? I am\n    Antony yet.\n\n                       Enter servants\n\n    Take hence this Jack and whip him.\n  ENOBARBUS. 'Tis better playing with a lion's whelp\n    Than with an old one dying.\n  ANTONY. Moon and stars!\n    Whip him. Were't twenty of the greatest tributaries\n    That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them\n    So saucy with the hand of she here- what's her name\n    Since she was Cleopatra? Whip him, fellows,\n    Till like a boy you see him cringe his face,\n    And whine aloud for mercy. Take him hence.\n  THYMUS. Mark Antony-\n  ANTONY. Tug him away. Being whipt,\n    Bring him again: the Jack of Caesar's shall\n    Bear us an errand to him.       Exeunt servants with THYREUS\n    You were half blasted ere I knew you. Ha!\n    Have I my pillow left unpress'd in Rome,\n    Forborne the getting of a lawful race,\n    And by a gem of women, to be abus'd\n    By one that looks on feeders?\n  CLEOPATRA. Good my lord-\n  ANTONY. You have been a boggler ever.\n    But when we in our viciousness grow hard-\n    O misery on't!- the wise gods seel our eyes,\n    In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us\n    Adore our errors, laugh at's while we strut\n    To our confusion.\n  CLEOPATRA. O, is't come to this?\n  ANTONY. I found you as a morsel cold upon\n    Dead Caesar's trencher. Nay, you were a fragment\n    Of Cneius Pompey's, besides what hotter hours,\n    Unregist'red in vulgar fame, you have\n    Luxuriously pick'd out; for I am sure,\n    Though you can guess what temperance should be,\n    You know not what it is.\n  CLEOPATRA. Wherefore is this?\n  ANTONY. To let a fellow that will take rewards,\n    And say 'God quit you!' be familiar with\n    My playfellow, your hand, this kingly seal\n    And plighter of high hearts! O that I were\n    Upon the hill of Basan to outroar\n    The horned herd! For I have savage cause,\n    And to proclaim it civilly were like\n    A halter'd neck which does the hangman thank\n    For being yare about him.\n\n              Re-enter a SERVANT with THYREUS\n\n    Is he whipt?\n  SERVANT. Soundly, my lord.\n  ANTONY. Cried he? and begg'd 'a pardon?\n  SERVANT. He did ask favour.\n  ANTONY. If that thy father live, let him repent\n    Thou wast not made his daughter; and be thou sorry\n    To follow Caesar in his triumph, since\n    Thou hast been whipt for following him. Henceforth\n    The white hand of a lady fever thee!\n    Shake thou to look on't. Get thee back to Caesar;\n    Tell him thy entertainment; look thou say\n    He makes me angry with him; for he seems\n    Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am,\n    Not what he knew I was. He makes me angry;\n    And at this time most easy 'tis to do't,\n    When my good stars, that were my former guides,\n    Have empty left their orbs and shot their fires\n    Into th' abysm of hell. If he mislike\n    My speech and what is done, tell him he has\n    Hipparchus, my enfranched bondman, whom\n    He may at pleasure whip or hang or torture,\n    As he shall like, to quit me. Urge it thou.\n    Hence with thy stripes, be gone.                Exit THYREUS\n  CLEOPATRA. Have you done yet?\n  ANTONY. Alack, our terrene moon\n    Is now eclips'd, and it portends alone\n    The fall of Antony.\n  CLEOPATRA. I must stay his time.\n  ANTONY. To flatter Caesar, would you mingle eyes\n    With one that ties his points?\n  CLEOPATRA. Not know me yet?\n  ANTONY. Cold-hearted toward me?\n  CLEOPATRA. Ah, dear, if I be so,\n    From my cold heart let heaven engender hail,\n    And poison it in the source, and the first stone\n    Drop in my neck; as it determines, so\n    Dissolve my life! The next Caesarion smite!\n    Till by degrees the memory of my womb,\n    Together with my brave Egyptians all,\n    By the discandying of this pelleted storm,\n    Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile\n    Have buried them for prey.\n  ANTONY. I am satisfied.\n    Caesar sits down in Alexandria, where\n    I will oppose his fate. Our force by land\n    Hath nobly held; our sever'd navy to\n    Have knit again, and fleet, threat'ning most sea-like.\n    Where hast thou been, my heart? Dost thou hear, lady?\n    If from the field I shall return once more\n    To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood.\n    I and my sword will earn our chronicle.\n    There's hope in't yet.\n  CLEOPATRA. That's my brave lord!\n  ANTONY. I will be treble-sinew'd, hearted, breath'd,\n    And fight maliciously. For when mine hours\n    Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives\n    Of me for jests; but now I'll set my teeth,\n    And send to darkness all that stop me. Come,\n    Let's have one other gaudy night. Call to me\n    All my sad captains; fill our bowls once more;\n    Let's mock the midnight bell.\n  CLEOPATRA. It is my birthday.\n    I had thought t'have held it poor; but since my lord\n    Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.\n  ANTONY. We will yet do well.\n  CLEOPATRA. Call all his noble captains to my lord.\n  ANTONY. Do so, we'll speak to them; and to-night I'll force\n    The wine peep through their scars. Come on, my queen,\n    There's sap in't yet. The next time I do fight\n    I'll make death love me; for I will contend\n    Even with his pestilent scythe.     Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS\n  ENOBARBUS. Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious\n    Is to be frighted out of fear, and in that mood\n    The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still\n    A diminution in our captain's brain\n    Restores his heart. When valour preys on reason,\n    It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek\n    Some way to leave him.                                  Exit\n\nACT_4|SC_1\n\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\n              CAESAR'S camp before Alexandria\n\n      Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, and MAECENAS, with his army;\n                 CAESAR reading a letter\n\n  CAESAR. He calls me boy, and chides as he had power\n    To beat me out of Egypt. My messenger\n    He hath whipt with rods; dares me to personal combat,\n    Caesar to Antony. Let the old ruffian know\n    I have many other ways to die, meantime\n    Laugh at his challenge.\n  MAECENAS. Caesar must think\n    When one so great begins to rage, he's hunted\n    Even to falling. Give him no breath, but now\n    Make boot of his distraction. Never anger\n    Made good guard for itself.\n  CAESAR. Let our best heads\n    Know that to-morrow the last of many battles\n    We mean to fight. Within our files there are\n    Of those that serv'd Mark Antony but late\n    Enough to fetch him in. See it done;\n    And feast the army; we have store to do't,\n    And they have earn'd the waste. Poor Antony!          Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_2\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA's palace\n\n      Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, CHARMIAN, IRAS,\n                     ALEXAS, with others\n\n  ANTONY. He will not fight with me, Domitius?\n  ENOBARBUS. No.\n  ANTONY. Why should he not?\n  ENOBARBUS. He thinks, being twenty times of better fortune,\n    He is twenty men to one.\n  ANTONY. To-morrow, soldier,\n    By sea and land I'll fight. Or I will live,\n    Or bathe my dying honour in the blood\n    Shall make it live again. Woo't thou fight well?\n  ENOBARBUS. I'll strike, and cry 'Take all.'\n  ANTONY. Well said; come on.\n    Call forth my household servants; let's to-night\n    Be bounteous at our meal.\n\n                Enter three or four servitors\n\n    Give me thy hand,\n    Thou has been rightly honest. So hast thou;\n    Thou, and thou, and thou. You have serv'd me well,\n    And kings have been your fellows.\n  CLEOPATRA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] What means this?\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside to CLEOPATRA] 'Tis one of those odd tricks\nwhich\n      sorrow shoots\n    Out of the mind.\n  ANTONY. And thou art honest too.\n    I wish I could be made so many men,\n    And all of you clapp'd up together in\n    An Antony, that I might do you service\n    So good as you have done.\n  SERVANT. The gods forbid!\n  ANTONY. Well, my good fellows, wait on me to-night.\n    Scant not my cups, and make as much of me\n    As when mine empire was your fellow too,\n    And suffer'd my command.\n  CLEOPATRA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] What does he mean?\n    ENOBARBUS. [Aside to CLEOPATRA] To make his followers weep.\n  ANTONY. Tend me to-night;\n    May be it is the period of your duty.\n    Haply you shall not see me more; or if,\n    A mangled shadow. Perchance to-morrow\n    You'll serve another master. I look on you\n    As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends,\n    I turn you not away; but, like a master\n    Married to your good service, stay till death.\n    Tend me to-night two hours, I ask no more,\n    And the gods yield you for't!\n  ENOBARBUS. What mean you, sir,\n    To give them this discomfort? Look, they weep;\n    And I, an ass, am onion-ey'd. For shame!\n    Transform us not to women.\n  ANTONY. Ho, ho, ho!\n    Now the witch take me if I meant it thus!\n    Grace grow where those drops fall! My hearty friends,\n    You take me in too dolorous a sense;\n    For I spake to you for your comfort, did desire you\n    To burn this night with torches. Know, my hearts,\n    I hope well of to-morrow, and will lead you\n    Where rather I'll expect victorious life\n    Than death and honour. Let's to supper, come,\n    And drown consideration.                              Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_3\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\n             Alexandria. Before CLEOPATRA's palace\n\n                 Enter a company of soldiers\n\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Brother, good night. To-morrow is the day.\n  SECOND SOLDIER. It will determine one way. Fare you well.\n    Heard you of nothing strange about the streets?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Nothing. What news?\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Belike 'tis but a rumour. Good night to you.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Well, sir, good night.\n                                      [They meet other soldiers]\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Soldiers, have careful watch.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. And you. Good night, good night.\n                [The two companies separate and place themselves\n                                   in every corner of the stage]\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Here we. And if to-morrow\n    Our navy thrive, I have an absolute hope\n    Our landmen will stand up.\n  THIRD SOLDIER. 'Tis a brave army,\n    And full of purpose.\n                      [Music of the hautboys is under the stage]\n\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Peace, what noise?\n  THIRD SOLDIER. List, list!\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Hark!\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Music i' th' air.\n  FOURTH SOLDIER. Under the earth.\n  THIRD SOLDIER. It signs well, does it not?\n  FOURTH SOLDIER. No.\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Peace, I say!\n    What should this mean?\n  SECOND SOLDIER. 'Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony lov'd,\n    Now leaves him.\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Walk; let's see if other watchmen\n    Do hear what we do.\n  SECOND SOLDIER. How now, masters!\n  SOLDIERS. [Speaking together] How now!\n    How now! Do you hear this?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Ay; is't not strange?\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Do you hear, masters? Do you hear?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Follow the noise so far as we have quarter;\n    Let's see how it will give off.\n  SOLDIERS. Content. 'Tis strange.                        Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_4\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\n               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA's palace\n\n         Enter ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS,\n                          with others\n\n  ANTONY. Eros! mine armour, Eros!\n  CLEOPATRA. Sleep a little.\n  ANTONY. No, my chuck. Eros! Come, mine armour, Eros!\n\n                   Enter EROS with armour\n\n    Come, good fellow, put mine iron on.\n    If fortune be not ours to-day, it is\n    Because we brave her. Come.\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, I'll help too.\n    What's this for?\n  ANTONY. Ah, let be, let be! Thou art\n    The armourer of my heart. False, false; this, this.\n  CLEOPATRA. Sooth, la, I'll help. Thus it must be.\n  ANTONY. Well, well;\n    We shall thrive now. Seest thou, my good fellow?\n    Go put on thy defences.\n  EROS. Briefly, sir.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is not this buckled well?\n  ANTONY. Rarely, rarely!\n    He that unbuckles this, till we do please\n    To daff't for our repose, shall hear a storm.\n    Thou fumblest, Eros, and my queen's a squire\n    More tight at this than thou. Dispatch. O love,\n    That thou couldst see my wars to-day, and knew'st\n    The royal occupation! Thou shouldst see\n    A workman in't.\n\n                   Enter an armed SOLDIER\n\n    Good-morrow to thee. Welcome.\n    Thou look'st like him that knows a warlike charge.\n    To business that we love we rise betime,\n    And go to't with delight.\n  SOLDIER. A thousand, sir,\n    Early though't be, have on their riveted trim,\n    And at the port expect you.\n                            [Shout. Flourish of trumpets within]\n\n                 Enter CAPTAINS and soldiers\n\n  CAPTAIN. The morn is fair. Good morrow, General.\n  ALL. Good morrow, General.\n  ANTONY. 'Tis well blown, lads.\n    This morning, like the spirit of a youth\n    That means to be of note, begins betimes.\n    So, so. Come, give me that. This way. Well said.\n    Fare thee well, dame, whate'er becomes of me.\n    This is a soldier's kiss. Rebukeable,\n    And worthy shameful check it were, to stand\n    On more mechanic compliment; I'll leave thee\n    Now like a man of steel. You that will fight,\n    Follow me close; I'll bring you to't. Adieu.\n                      Exeunt ANTONY, EROS, CAPTAINS and soldiers\n  CHARMIAN. Please you retire to your chamber?\n  CLEOPATRA. Lead me.\n    He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might\n    Determine this great war in single fight!\n    Then, Antony- but now. Well, on.                      Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_5\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\n                  Alexandria. ANTONY'S camp\n\n        Trumpets sound. Enter ANTONY and EROS, a SOLDIER\n                       meeting them\n\n  SOLDIER. The gods make this a happy day to Antony!\n  ANTONY. Would thou and those thy scars had once prevail'd\n    To make me fight at land!\n  SOLDIER. Hadst thou done so,\n    The kings that have revolted, and the soldier\n    That has this morning left thee, would have still\n    Followed thy heels.\n  ANTONY. Who's gone this morning?\n  SOLDIER. Who?\n    One ever near thee. Call for Enobarbus,\n    He shall not hear thee; or from Caesar's camp\n    Say 'I am none of thine.'\n  ANTONY. What say'st thou?\n  SOLDIER. Sir,\n    He is with Caesar.\n  EROS. Sir, his chests and treasure\n    He has not with him.\n  ANTONY. Is he gone?\n  SOLDIER. Most certain.\n  ANTONY. Go, Eros, send his treasure after; do it;\n    Detain no jot, I charge thee. Write to him-\n    I will subscribe- gentle adieus and greetings;\n    Say that I wish he never find more cause\n    To change a master. O, my fortunes have\n    Corrupted honest men! Dispatch. Enobarbus!            Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_6\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\n                 Alexandria. CAESAR'S camp\n\n       Flourish. Enter AGRIPPA, CAESAR, With DOLABELLA\n                       and ENOBARBUS\n\n  CAESAR. Go forth, Agrippa, and begin the fight.\n    Our will is Antony be took alive;\n    Make it so known.\n  AGRIPPA. Caesar, I shall.                                 Exit\n  CAESAR. The time of universal peace is near.\n    Prove this a prosp'rous day, the three-nook'd world\n    Shall bear the olive freely.\n\n                     Enter A MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Antony\n    Is come into the field.\n  CAESAR. Go charge Agrippa\n    Plant those that have revolted in the vant,\n    That Antony may seem to spend his fury\n    Upon himself.                       Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Alexas did revolt and went to Jewry on\n    Affairs of Antony; there did dissuade\n    Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar\n    And leave his master Antony. For this pains\n    Casaer hath hang'd him. Canidius and the rest\n    That fell away have entertainment, but\n    No honourable trust. I have done ill,\n    Of which I do accuse myself so sorely\n    That I will joy no more.\n\n                  Enter a SOLDIER of CAESAR'S\n\n  SOLDIER. Enobarbus, Antony\n    Hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with\n    His bounty overplus. The messenger\n    Came on my guard, and at thy tent is now\n    Unloading of his mules.\n  ENOBARBUS. I give it you.\n  SOLDIER. Mock not, Enobarbus.\n    I tell you true. Best you saf'd the bringer\n    Out of the host. I must attend mine office,\n    Or would have done't myself. Your emperor\n    Continues still a Jove.                                 Exit\n  ENOBARBUS. I am alone the villain of the earth,\n    And feel I am so most. O Antony,\n    Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid\n    My better service, when my turpitude\n    Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.\n    If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean\n    Shall outstrike thought; but thought will do't, I feel.\n    I fight against thee? No! I will go seek\n    Some ditch wherein to die; the foul'st best fits\n    My latter part of life.                                 Exit\n\nACT_4|SC_7\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\n             Field of battle between the camps\n\n         Alarum. Drums and trumpets. Enter AGRIPPA\n                        and others\n\n  AGRIPPA. Retire. We have engag'd ourselves too far.\n    Caesar himself has work, and our oppression\n    Exceeds what we expected.                             Exeunt\n\n          Alarums. Enter ANTONY, and SCARUS wounded\n\n  SCARUS. O my brave Emperor, this is fought indeed!\n    Had we done so at first, we had droven them home\n    With clouts about their heads.\n  ANTONY. Thou bleed'st apace.\n  SCARUS. I had a wound here that was like a T,\n    But now 'tis made an H.\n  ANTONY. They do retire.\n  SCARUS. We'll beat'em into bench-holes. I have yet\n    Room for six scotches more.\n\n                        Enter EROS\n\n  EROS. They are beaten, sir, and our advantage serves\n    For a fair victory.\n  SCARUS. Let us score their backs\n    And snatch 'em up, as we take hares, behind.\n    'Tis sport to maul a runner.\n  ANTONY. I will reward thee\n    Once for thy sprightly comfort, and tenfold\n    For thy good valour. Come thee on.\n    SCARUS. I'll halt after.                              Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_8\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VIII.\n               Under the walls of Alexandria\n\n        Alarum. Enter ANTONY, again in a march; SCARUS\n                        with others\n\n  ANTONY. We have beat him to his camp. Run one before\n    And let the Queen know of our gests. To-morrow,\n    Before the sun shall see's, we'll spill the blood\n    That has to-day escap'd. I thank you all;\n    For doughty-handed are you, and have fought\n    Not as you serv'd the cause, but as't had been\n    Each man's like mine; you have shown all Hectors.\n    Enter the city, clip your wives, your friends,\n    Tell them your feats; whilst they with joyful tears\n    Wash the congealment from your wounds and kiss\n    The honour'd gashes whole.\n\n                 Enter CLEOPATRA, attended\n\n    [To SCARUS] Give me thy hand-\n    To this great fairy I'll commend thy acts,\n    Make her thanks bless thee. O thou day o' th' world,\n    Chain mine arm'd neck. Leap thou, attire and all,\n    Through proof of harness to my heart, and there\n    Ride on the pants triumphing.\n  CLEOPATRA. Lord of lords!\n    O infinite virtue, com'st thou smiling from\n    The world's great snare uncaught?\n  ANTONY. Mine nightingale,\n    We have beat them to their beds. What, girl! though grey\n    Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha' we\n    A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can\n    Get goal for goal of youth. Behold this man;\n    Commend unto his lips thy favouring hand-\n    Kiss it, my warrior- he hath fought to-day\n    As if a god in hate of mankind had\n    Destroyed in such a shape.\n  CLEOPATRA. I'll give thee, friend,\n    An armour all of gold; it was a king's.\n  ANTONY. He has deserv'd it, were it carbuncled\n    Like holy Phoebus' car. Give me thy hand.\n    Through Alexandria make a jolly march;\n    Bear our hack'd targets like the men that owe them.\n    Had our great palace the capacity\n    To camp this host, we all would sup together,\n    And drink carouses to the next day's fate,\n    Which promises royal peril. Trumpeters,\n    With brazen din blast you the city's ear;\n    Make mingle with our rattling tabourines,\n    That heaven and earth may strike their sounds together\n    Applauding our approach.                              Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_9\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IX.\n                      CAESAR'S camp\n\n      Enter a CENTURION and his company; ENOBARBUS follows\n\n  CENTURION. If we be not reliev'd within this hour,\n    We must return to th' court of guard. The night\n    Is shiny, and they say we shall embattle\n    By th' second hour i' th' morn.\n  FIRST WATCH. This last day was\n    A shrewd one to's.\n  ENOBARBUS. O, bear me witness, night-\n  SECOND WATCH. What man is this?\n  FIRST WATCH. Stand close and list him.\n  ENOBARBUS. Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon,\n    When men revolted shall upon record\n    Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did\n    Before thy face repent!\n  CENTURION. Enobarbus?\n  SECOND WATCH. Peace!\n    Hark further.\n  ENOBARBUS. O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,\n    The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,\n    That life, a very rebel to my will,\n    May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart\n    Against the flint and hardness of my fault,\n    Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder,\n    And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony,\n    Nobler than my revolt is infamous,\n    Forgive me in thine own particular,\n    But let the world rank me in register\n    A master-leaver and a fugitive!\n    O Antony! O Antony!                                   [Dies]\n  FIRST WATCH. Let's speak to him.\n  CENTURION. Let's hear him, for the things he speaks\n    May concern Caesar.\n  SECOND WATCH. Let's do so. But he sleeps.\n  CENTURION. Swoons rather; for so bad a prayer as his\n    Was never yet for sleep.\n  FIRST WATCH. Go we to him.\n  SECOND WATCH. Awake, sir, awake; speak to us.\n  FIRST WATCH. Hear you, sir?\n  CENTURION. The hand of death hath raught him.\n    [Drums afar off ] Hark! the drums\n    Demurely wake the sleepers. Let us bear him\n    To th' court of guard; he is of note. Our hour\n    Is fully out.\n  SECOND WATCH. Come on, then;\n    He may recover yet.                     Exeunt with the body\n\nACT_4|SC_10\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE X.\n                    Between the two camps\n\n            Enter ANTONY and SCARUS, with their army\n\n  ANTONY. Their preparation is to-day by sea;\n    We please them not by land.\n  SCARUS. For both, my lord.\n  ANTONY. I would they'd fight i' th' fire or i' th' air;\n    We'd fight there too. But this it is, our foot\n    Upon the hills adjoining to the city\n    Shall stay with us- Order for sea is given;\n    They have put forth the haven-\n    Where their appointment we may best discover\n    And look on their endeavour.                          Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_11\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE XI.\n                    Between the camps\n\n                Enter CAESAR and his army\n\n  CAESAR. But being charg'd, we will be still by land,\n    Which, as I take't, we shall; for his best force\n    Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales,\n    And hold our best advantage.                          Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_12\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE XII.\n                  A hill near Alexandria\n\n                  Enter ANTONY and SCARUS\n\n  ANTONY. Yet they are not join'd. Where yond pine does stand\n    I shall discover all. I'll bring thee word\n    Straight how 'tis like to go.                           Exit\n  SCARUS. Swallows have built\n    In Cleopatra's sails their nests. The augurers\n    Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly,\n    And dare not speak their knowledge. Antony\n    Is valiant and dejected; and by starts\n    His fretted fortunes give him hope and fear\n    Of what he has and has not.\n                            [Alarum afar off, as at a sea-fight]\n\n                      Re-enter ANTONY\n\n  ANTONY. All is lost!\n    This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.\n    My fleet hath yielded to the foe, and yonder\n    They cast their caps up and carouse together\n    Like friends long lost. Triple-turn'd whore! 'tis thou\n    Hast sold me to this novice; and my heart\n    Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly;\n    For when I am reveng'd upon my charm,\n    I have done all. Bid them all fly; begone.       Exit SCARUS\n    O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more!\n    Fortune and Antony part here; even here\n    Do we shake hands. All come to this? The hearts\n    That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave\n    Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets\n    On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is bark'd\n    That overtopp'd them all. Betray'd I am.\n    O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm-\n    Whose eye beck'd forth my wars and call'd them home,\n    Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end-\n    Like a right gypsy hath at fast and loose\n    Beguil'd me to the very heart of loss.\n    What, Eros, Eros!\n\n                      Enter CLEOPATRA\n\n    Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!\n  CLEOPATRA. Why is my lord enrag'd against his love?\n  ANTONY. Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving\n    And blemish Caesar's triumph. Let him take thee\n    And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians;\n    Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot\n    Of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown\n    For poor'st diminutives, for doits, and let\n    Patient Octavia plough thy visage up\n    With her prepared nails.                      Exit CLEOPATRA\n    'Tis well th'art gone,\n    If it be well to live; but better 'twere\n    Thou fell'st into my fury, for one death\n    Might have prevented many. Eros, ho!\n    The shirt of Nessus is upon me; teach me,\n    Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage;\n    Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o' th' moon,\n    And with those hands that grasp'd the heaviest club\n    Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die.\n    To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall\n    Under this plot. She dies for't. Eros, ho!              Exit\n\nACT_4|SC_13\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE XIII.\n               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA's palace\n\n      Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Help me, my women. O, he is more mad\n    Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly\n    Was never so emboss'd.\n  CHARMIAN. To th'monument!\n    There lock yourself, and send him word you are dead.\n    The soul and body rive not more in parting\n    Than greatness going off.\n  CLEOPATRA. To th' monument!\n    Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself;\n    Say that the last I spoke was 'Antony'\n    And word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian,\n    And bring me how he takes my death. To th' monument!\n                                                          Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_14\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE XIV.\n                     CLEOPATRA'S palace\n\n                   Enter ANTONY and EROS\n\n  ANTONY. Eros, thou yet behold'st me?\n  EROS. Ay, noble lord.\n  ANTONY. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;\n    A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,\n    A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,\n    A forked mountain, or blue promontory\n    With trees upon't that nod unto the world\n    And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs;\n    They are black vesper's pageants.\n  EROS. Ay, my lord.\n  ANTONY. That which is now a horse, even with a thought\n    The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,\n    As water is in water.\n  EROS. It does, my lord.\n  ANTONY. My good knave Eros, now thy captain is\n    Even such a body. Here I am Antony;\n    Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.\n    I made these wars for Egypt; and the Queen-\n    Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine,\n    Which, whilst it was mine, had annex'd unto't\n    A million moe, now lost- she, Eros, has\n    Pack'd cards with Caesar, and false-play'd my glory\n    Unto an enemy's triumph.\n    Nay, weep not, gentle Eros; there is left us\n    Ourselves to end ourselves.\n\n                         Enter MARDIAN\n\n    O, thy vile lady!\n    She has robb'd me of my sword.\n  MARDIAN. No, Antony;\n    My mistress lov'd thee, and her fortunes mingled\n    With thine entirely.\n  ANTONY. Hence, saucy eunuch; peace!\n    She hath betray'd me, and shall die the death.\n  MARDIAN. Death of one person can be paid but once,\n    And that she has discharg'd. What thou wouldst do\n    Is done unto thy hand. The last she spake\n    Was 'Antony! most noble Antony!'\n    Then in the midst a tearing groan did break\n    The name of Antony; it was divided\n    Between her heart and lips. She rend'red life,\n    Thy name so buried in her.\n  ANTONY. Dead then?\n  MARDIAN. Dead.\n  ANTONY. Unarm, Eros; the long day's task is done,\n    And we must sleep. That thou depart'st hence safe\n    Does pay thy labour richly. Go.                 Exit MARDIAN\n    Off, pluck off!\n    The sevenfold shield of Ajax cannot keep\n    The battery from my heart. O, cleave, my sides!\n    Heart, once be stronger than thy continent,\n    Crack thy frail case. Apace, Eros, apace.-\n    No more a soldier. Bruised pieces, go;\n    You have been nobly borne.- From me awhile.        Exit EROS\n    I will o'ertake thee, Cleopatra, and\n    Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now\n    All length is torture. Since the torch is out,\n    Lie down, and stray no farther. Now all labour\n    Mars what it does; yea, very force entangles\n    Itself with strength. Seal then, and all is done.\n    Eros!- I come, my queen.- Eros!- Stay for me;\n    Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand,\n    And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.\n    Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,\n    And all the haunt be ours.- Come, Eros, Eros!\n\n                       Re-enter EROS\n\n  EROS. What would my lord?\n  ANTONY. Since Cleopatra died,\n    I have liv'd in such dishonour that the gods\n    Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword\n    Quarter'd the world, and o'er green Neptune's back\n    With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack\n    The courage of a woman; less noble mind\n    Than she which by her death our Caesar tells\n    'I am conqueror of myself.' Thou art sworn, Eros,\n    That, when the exigent should come- which now\n    Is come indeed- when I should see behind me\n    Th' inevitable prosecution of\n    Disgrace and horror, that, on my command,\n    Thou then wouldst kill me. Do't; the time is come.\n    Thou strik'st not me; 'tis Caesar thou defeat'st.\n    Put colour in thy cheek.\n  EROS. The gods withhold me!\n    Shall I do that which all the Parthian darts,\n    Though enemy, lost aim and could not?\n  ANTONY. Eros,\n    Wouldst thou be window'd in great Rome and see\n    Thy master thus with pleach'd arms, bending down\n    His corrigible neck, his face subdu'd\n    To penetrative shame, whilst the wheel'd seat\n    Of fortunate Caesar, drawn before him, branded\n    His baseness that ensued?\n  EROS. I would not see't.\n  ANTONY. Come, then; for with a wound I must be cur'd.\n    Draw that thy honest sword, which thou hast worn\n    Most useful for thy country.\n  EROS. O, sir, pardon me!\n  ANTONY. When I did make thee free, swor'st thou not then\n    To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once,\n    Or thy precedent services are all\n    But accidents unpurpos'd. Draw, and come.\n  EROS. Turn from me then that noble countenance,\n    Wherein the worship of the whole world lies.\n  ANTONY. Lo thee!                            [Turning from him]\n  EROS. My sword is drawn.\n  ANTONY. Then let it do at once\n    The thing why thou hast drawn it.\n  EROS. My dear master,\n    My captain and my emperor, let me say,\n    Before I strike this bloody stroke, farewell.\n  ANTONY. 'Tis said, man; and farewell.\n  EROS. Farewell, great chief. Shall I strike now?\n  ANTONY. Now, Eros.\n  EROS. Why, there then! Thus do I escape the sorrow\n    Of Antony's death.                            [Kills himself\n  ANTONY. Thrice nobler than myself!\n    Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what\n    I should, and thou couldst not. My queen and Eros\n    Have, by their brave instruction, got upon me\n    A nobleness in record. But I will be\n    A bridegroom in my death, and run into't\n    As to a lover's bed. Come, then; and, Eros,\n    Thy master dies thy scholar. To do thus\n                                          [Falling on his sword]\n    I learn'd of thee. How? not dead? not dead?-\n    The guard, ho! O, dispatch me!\n\n                  Enter DERCETAS and a guard\n\n  FIRST GUARD. What's the noise?\n  ANTONY. I have done my work ill, friends. O, make an end\n    Of what I have begun.\n  SECOND GUARD. The star is fall'n.\n  FIRST GUARD. And time is at his period.\n  ALL. Alas, and woe!\n  ANTONY. Let him that loves me, strike me dead.\n  FIRST GUARD. Not I.\n  SECOND GUARD. Nor I.\n  THIRD GUARD. Nor any one.                         Exeunt guard\n  DERCETAS. Thy death and fortunes bid thy followers fly.\n    This sword but shown to Caesar, with this tidings,\n    Shall enter me with him.\n\n                       Enter DIOMEDES\n\n  DIOMEDES. Where's Antony?\n  DERCETAS. There, Diomed, there.\n  DIOMEDES. Lives he?\n    Wilt thou not answer, man?                     Exit DERCETAS\n  ANTONY. Art thou there, Diomed? Draw thy sword and give me\n    Sufficing strokes for death.\n  DIOMEDES. Most absolute lord,\n    My mistress Cleopatra sent me to thee.\n  ANTONY. When did she send thee?\n  DIOMEDES. Now, my lord.\n  ANTONY. Where is she?\n  DIOMEDES. Lock'd in her monument. She had a prophesying fear\n    Of what hath come to pass; for when she saw-\n    Which never shall be found- you did suspect\n    She had dispos'd with Caesar, and that your rage\n    Would not be purg'd, she sent you word she was dead;\n    But fearing since how it might work, hath sent\n    Me to proclaim the truth; and I am come,\n    I dread, too late.\n  ANTONY. Too late, good Diomed. Call my guard, I prithee.\n  DIOMEDES. What, ho! the Emperor's guard! The guard, what ho!\n    Come, your lord calls!\n\n             Enter four or five of the guard of ANTONY\n\n  ANTONY. Bear me, good friends, where Cleopatra bides;\n    'Tis the last service that I shall command you.\n  FIRST GUARD. Woe, woe are we, sir, you may not live to wear\n    All your true followers out.\n  ALL. Most heavy day!\n  ANTONY. Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate\n    To grace it with your sorrows. Bid that welcome\n    Which comes to punish us, and we punish it,\n    Seeming to bear it lightly. Take me up.\n    I have led you oft; carry me now, good friends,\n    And have my thanks for all.           Exeunt, hearing ANTONY\nACT_4|SC_15\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE XV.\n                   Alexandria. A monument\n\n      Enter CLEOPATRA and her maids aloft, with CHARMIAN\n                         and IRAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. O Charmian, I will never go from hence!\n  CHARMIAN. Be comforted, dear madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. No, I will not.\n    All strange and terrible events are welcome,\n    But comforts we despise; our size of sorrow,\n    Proportion'd to our cause, must be as great\n    As that which makes it.\n\n                   Enter DIOMEDES, below\n\n    How now! Is he dead?\n  DIOMEDES. His death's upon him, but not dead.\n    Look out o' th' other side your monument;\n    His guard have brought him thither.\n\n            Enter, below, ANTONY, borne by the guard\n\n  CLEOPATRA. O sun,\n    Burn the great sphere thou mov'st in! Darkling stand\n    The varying shore o' th' world. O Antony,\n    Antony, Antony! Help, Charmian; help, Iras, help;\n    Help, friends below! Let's draw him hither.\n  ANTONY. Peace!\n    Not Caesar's valour hath o'erthrown Antony,\n    But Antony's hath triumph'd on itself.\n  CLEOPATRA. So it should be, that none but Antony\n    Should conquer Antony; but woe 'tis so!\n  ANTONY. I am dying, Egypt, dying; only\n    I here importune death awhile, until\n    Of many thousand kisses the poor last\n    I lay upon thy lips.\n  CLEOPATRA. I dare not, dear.\n    Dear my lord, pardon! I dare not,\n    Lest I be taken. Not th' imperious show\n    Of the full-fortun'd Caesar ever shall\n    Be brooch'd with me. If knife, drugs, serpents, have\n    Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe.\n    Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes\n    And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour\n    Demuring upon me. But come, come, Antony-\n    Help me, my women- we must draw thee up;\n    Assist, good friends.\n  ANTONY. O, quick, or I am gone.\n  CLEOPATRA. Here's sport indeed! How heavy weighs my lord!\n    Our strength is all gone into heaviness;\n    That makes the weight. Had I great Juno's power,\n    The strong-wing'd Mercury should fetch thee up,\n    And set thee by Jove's side. Yet come a little.\n    Wishers were ever fools. O come, come,\n                          [They heave ANTONY aloft to CLEOPATRA]\n    And welcome, welcome! Die where thou hast liv'd.\n    Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power,\n    Thus would I wear them out.\n  ALL. A heavy sight!\n  ANTONY. I am dying, Egypt, dying.\n    Give me some wine, and let me speak a little.\n  CLEOPATRA. No, let me speak; and let me rail so high\n    That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel,\n    Provok'd by my offence.\n  ANTONY. One word, sweet queen:\n    Of Caesar seek your honour, with your safety. O!\n  CLEOPATRA. They do not go together.\n  ANTONY. Gentle, hear me:\n    None about Caesar trust but Proculeius.\n  CLEOPATRA. My resolution and my hands I'll trust;\n    None about Caesar\n  ANTONY. The miserable change now at my end\n    Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts\n    In feeding them with those my former fortunes\n    Wherein I liv'd the greatest prince o' th' world,\n    The noblest; and do now not basely die,\n    Not cowardly put off my helmet to\n    My countryman- a Roman by a Roman\n    Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going\n    I can no more.\n  CLEOPATRA. Noblest of men, woo't die?\n    Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide\n    In this dull world, which in thy absence is\n    No better than a sty? O, see, my women,        [Antony dies]\n    The crown o' th' earth doth melt. My lord!\n    O, wither'd is the garland of the war,\n    The soldier's pole is fall'n! Young boys and girls\n    Are level now with men. The odds is gone,\n    And there is nothing left remarkable\n    Beneath the visiting moon.                          [Swoons]\n  CHARMIAN. O, quietness, lady!\n  IRAS. She's dead too, our sovereign.\n  CHARMIAN. Lady!\n  IRAS. Madam!\n  CHARMIAN. O madam, madam, madam!\n  IRAS. Royal Egypt, Empress!\n  CHARMIAN. Peace, peace, Iras!\n  CLEOPATRA. No more but e'en a woman, and commanded\n    By such poor passion as the maid that milks\n    And does the meanest chares. It were for me\n    To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;\n    To tell them that this world did equal theirs\n    Till they had stol'n our jewel. All's but nought;\n    Patience is sottish, and impatience does\n    Become a dog that's mad. Then is it sin\n    To rush into the secret house of death\n    Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?\n    What, what! good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian!\n    My noble girls! Ah, women, women, look,\n    Our lamp is spent, it's out! Good sirs, take heart.\n    We'll bury him; and then, what's brave, what's noble,\n    Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,\n    And make death proud to take us. Come, away;\n    This case of that huge spirit now is cold.\n    Ah, women, women! Come; we have no friend\n    But resolution and the briefest end.\n                   Exeunt; those above hearing off ANTONY'S body\n\nACT_5|SC_1\n\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\n                  Alexandria. CAESAR'S camp\n\n      Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, MAECENAS, GALLUS,\n          PROCULEIUS, and others, his Council of War\n\n  CAESAR. Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield;\n    Being so frustrate, tell him he mocks\n    The pauses that he makes.\n  DOLABELLA. Caesar, I shall.                               Exit\n\n             Enter DERCETAS With the sword of ANTONY\n\n  CAESAR. Wherefore is that? And what art thou that dar'st\n    Appear thus to us?\n  DERCETAS. I am call'd Dercetas;\n    Mark Antony I serv'd, who best was worthy\n    Best to be serv'd. Whilst he stood up and spoke,\n    He was my master, and I wore my life\n    To spend upon his haters. If thou please\n    To take me to thee, as I was to him\n    I'll be to Caesar; if thou pleasest not,\n    I yield thee up my life.\n  CAESAR. What is't thou say'st?\n  DERCETAS. I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.\n  CAESAR. The breaking of so great a thing should make\n    A greater crack. The round world\n    Should have shook lions into civil streets,\n    And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony\n    Is not a single doom; in the name lay\n    A moiety of the world.\n  DERCETAS. He is dead, Caesar,\n    Not by a public minister of justice,\n    Nor by a hired knife; but that self hand\n    Which writ his honour in the acts it did\n    Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,\n    Splitted the heart. This is his sword;\n    I robb'd his wound of it; behold it stain'd\n    With his most noble blood.\n  CAESAR. Look you sad, friends?\n    The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings\n    To wash the eyes of kings.\n  AGRIPPA. And strange it is\n    That nature must compel us to lament\n    Our most persisted deeds.\n  MAECENAS. His taints and honours\n    Wag'd equal with him.\n  AGRIPPA. A rarer spirit never\n    Did steer humanity. But you gods will give us\n    Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touch'd.\n  MAECENAS. When such a spacious mirror's set before him,\n    He needs must see himself.\n  CAESAR. O Antony,\n    I have follow'd thee to this! But we do lance\n    Diseases in our bodies. I must perforce\n    Have shown to thee such a declining day\n    Or look on thine; we could not stall together\n    In the whole world. But yet let me lament,\n    With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,\n    That thou, my brother, my competitor\n    In top of all design, my mate in empire,\n    Friend and companion in the front of war,\n    The arm of mine own body, and the heart\n    Where mine his thoughts did kindle- that our stars,\n    Unreconciliable, should divide\n    Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends-\n\n                    Enter an EGYPTIAN\n\n    But I will tell you at some meeter season.\n    The business of this man looks out of him;\n    We'll hear him what he says. Whence are you?\n  EGYPTIAN. A poor Egyptian, yet the Queen, my mistress,\n    Confin'd in all she has, her monument,\n    Of thy intents desires instruction,\n    That she preparedly may frame herself\n    To th' way she's forc'd to.\n  CAESAR. Bid her have good heart.\n    She soon shall know of us, by some of ours,\n    How honourable and how kindly we\n    Determine for her; for Caesar cannot learn\n    To be ungentle.\n  EGYPTIAN. So the gods preserve thee!                      Exit\n  CAESAR. Come hither, Proculeius. Go and say\n    We purpose her no shame. Give her what comforts\n    The quality of her passion shall require,\n    Lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke\n    She do defeat us; for her life in Rome\n    Would be eternal in our triumph. Go,\n    And with your speediest bring us what she says,\n    And how you find her.\n  PROCULEIUS. Caesar, I shall.                              Exit\n  CAESAR. Gallus, go you along.                      Exit GALLUS\n    Where's Dolabella, to second Proculeius?\n  ALL. Dolabella!\n  CAESAR. Let him alone, for I remember now\n    How he's employ'd; he shall in time be ready.\n    Go with me to my tent, where you shall see\n    How hardly I was drawn into this war,\n    How calm and gentle I proceeded still\n    In all my writings. Go with me, and see\n    What I can show in this.                              Exeunt\n\nACT_5|SC_2\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n                Alexandria. The monument\n\n      Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN\n\n  CLEOPATRA. My desolation does begin to make\n    A better life. 'Tis paltry to be Caesar:\n    Not being Fortune, he's but Fortune's knave,\n    A minister of her will; and it is great\n    To do that thing that ends all other deeds,\n    Which shackles accidents and bolts up change,\n    Which sleeps, and never palates more the dug,\n    The beggar's nurse and Caesar's.\n\n       Enter, to the gates of the monument, PROCULEIUS, GALLUS,\n                          and soldiers\n\n  PROCULEIUS. Caesar sends greetings to the Queen of Egypt,\n    And bids thee study on what fair demands\n    Thou mean'st to have him grant thee.\n  CLEOPATRA. What's thy name?\n  PROCULEIUS. My name is Proculeius.\n  CLEOPATRA. Antony\n    Did tell me of you, bade me trust you; but\n    I do not greatly care to be deceiv'd,\n    That have no use for trusting. If your master\n    Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him\n    That majesty, to keep decorum, must\n    No less beg than a kingdom. If he please\n    To give me conquer'd Egypt for my son,\n    He gives me so much of mine own as I\n    Will kneel to him with thanks.\n  PROCULEIUS. Be of good cheer;\n    Y'are fall'n into a princely hand; fear nothing.\n    Make your full reference freely to my lord,\n    Who is so full of grace that it flows over\n    On all that need. Let me report to him\n    Your sweet dependency, and you shall find\n    A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness\n    Where he for grace is kneel'd to.\n  CLEOPATRA. Pray you tell him\n    I am his fortune's vassal and I send him\n    The greatness he has got. I hourly learn\n    A doctrine of obedience, and would gladly\n    Look him i' th' face.\n  PROCULEIUS. This I'll report, dear lady.\n    Have comfort, for I know your plight is pitied\n    Of him that caus'd it.\n  GALLUS. You see how easily she may be surpris'd.\n\n      Here PROCULEIUS and two of the guard ascend the\n       monument by a ladder placed against a window,\n       and come behind CLEOPATRA. Some of the guard\n                unbar and open the gates\n\n    Guard her till Caesar come.                             Exit\n  IRAS. Royal Queen!\n  CHARMIAN. O Cleopatra! thou art taken, Queen!\n  CLEOPATRA. Quick, quick, good hands.        [Drawing a dagger]\n  PROCULEIUS. Hold, worthy lady, hold,             [Disarms her]\n    Do not yourself such wrong, who are in this\n    Reliev'd, but not betray'd.\n  CLEOPATRA. What, of death too,\n    That rids our dogs of languish?\n  PROCULEIUS. Cleopatra,\n    Do not abuse my master's bounty by\n    Th' undoing of yourself. Let the world see\n    His nobleness well acted, which your death\n    Will never let come forth.\n  CLEOPATRA. Where art thou, death?\n    Come hither, come! Come, come, and take a queen\n    Worth many babes and beggars!\n  PROCULEIUS. O, temperance, lady!\n  CLEOPATRA. Sir, I will eat no meat; I'll not drink, sir;\n    If idle talk will once be necessary,\n    I'll not sleep neither. This mortal house I'll ruin,\n    Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I\n    Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court,\n    Nor once be chastis'd with the sober eye\n    Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up,\n    And show me to the shouting varletry\n    Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt\n    Be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus' mud\n    Lay me stark-nak'd, and let the water-flies\n    Blow me into abhorring! Rather make\n    My country's high pyramides my gibbet,\n    And hang me up in chains!\n  PROCULEIUS. You do extend\n    These thoughts of horror further than you shall\n    Find cause in Caesar.\n\n                      Enter DOLABELLA\n\n  DOLABELLA. Proculeius,\n    What thou hast done thy master Caesar knows,\n    And he hath sent for thee. For the Queen,\n    I'll take her to my guard.\n  PROCULEIUS. So, Dolabella,\n    It shall content me best. Be gentle to her.\n    [To CLEOPATRA] To Caesar I will speak what you shall please,\n    If you'll employ me to him.\n  CLEOPATRA. Say I would die.\n                                  Exeunt PROCULEIUS and soldiers\n  DOLABELLA. Most noble Empress, you have heard of me?\n  CLEOPATRA. I cannot tell.\n  DOLABELLA. Assuredly you know me.\n  CLEOPATRA. No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.\n    You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams;\n    Is't not your trick?\n  DOLABELLA. I understand not, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. I dreamt there was an Emperor Antony-\n    O, such another sleep, that I might see\n    But such another man!\n  DOLABELLA. If it might please ye-\n  CLEOPATRA. His face was as the heav'ns, and therein stuck\n    A sun and moon, which kept their course and lighted\n    The little O, the earth.\n  DOLABELLA. Most sovereign creature-\n  CLEOPATRA. His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear'd arm\n    Crested the world. His voice was propertied\n    As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;\n    But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,\n    He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,\n    There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas\n    That grew the more by reaping. His delights\n    Were dolphin-like: they show'd his back above\n    The element they liv'd in. In his livery\n    Walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were\n    As plates dropp'd from his pocket.\n  DOLABELLA. Cleopatra-\n  CLEOPATRA. Think you there was or might be such a man\n    As this I dreamt of?\n  DOLABELLA. Gentle madam, no.\n  CLEOPATRA. You lie, up to the hearing of the gods.\n    But if there be nor ever were one such,\n    It's past the size of drearning. Nature wants stuff\n    To vie strange forms with fancy; yet t' imagine\n    An Antony were nature's piece 'gainst fancy,\n    Condemning shadows quite.\n  DOLABELLA. Hear me, good madam.\n    Your loss is, as yourself, great; and you bear it\n    As answering to the weight. Would I might never\n    O'ertake pursu'd success, but I do feel,\n    By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites\n    My very heart at root.\n  CLEOPATRA. I thank you, sir.\n    Know you what Caesar means to do with me?\n  DOLABELLA. I am loath to tell you what I would you knew.\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you, sir.\n  DOLABELLA. Though he be honourable-\n  CLEOPATRA. He'll lead me, then, in triumph?\n  DOLABELLA. Madam, he will. I know't.                [Flourish]\n                              [Within: 'Make way there-Caesar!']\n\n       Enter CAESAR; GALLUS, PROCULEIUS, MAECENAS, SELEUCUS,\n                     and others of his train\n\n  CAESAR. Which is the Queen of Egypt?\n  DOLABELLA. It is the Emperor, madam.        [CLEOPATPA kneels]\n  CAESAR. Arise, you shall not kneel.\n    I pray you, rise; rise, Egypt.\n  CLEOPATRA. Sir, the gods\n    Will have it thus; my master and my lord\n    I must obey.\n  CAESAR. Take to you no hard thoughts.\n    The record of what injuries you did us,\n    Though written in our flesh, we shall remember\n    As things but done by chance.\n  CLEOPATRA. Sole sir o' th' world,\n    I cannot project mine own cause so well\n    To make it clear, but do confess I have\n    Been laden with like frailties which before\n    Have often sham'd our sex.\n  CAESAR. Cleopatra, know\n    We will extenuate rather than enforce.\n    If you apply yourself to our intents-\n    Which towards you are most gentle- you shall find\n    A benefit in this change; but if you seek\n    To lay on me a cruelty by taking\n    Antony's course, you shall bereave yourself\n    Of my good purposes, and put your children\n    To that destruction which I'll guard them from,\n    If thereon you rely. I'll take my leave.\n  CLEOPATRA. And may, through all the world. 'Tis yours, and we,\n    Your scutcheons and your signs of conquest, shall\n    Hang in what place you please. Here, my good lord.\n  CAESAR. You shall advise me in all for Cleopatra.\n  CLEOPATRA. This is the brief of money, plate, and jewels,\n    I am possess'd of. 'Tis exactly valued,\n    Not petty things admitted. Where's Seleucus?\n  SELEUCUS. Here, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. This is my treasurer; let him speak, my lord,\n    Upon his peril, that I have reserv'd\n    To myself nothing. Speak the truth, Seleucus.\n  SELEUCUS. Madam,\n    I had rather seal my lips than to my peril\n    Speak that which is not.\n  CLEOPATRA. What have I kept back?\n  SELEUCUS. Enough to purchase what you have made known.\n  CAESAR. Nay, blush not, Cleopatra; I approve\n    Your wisdom in the deed.\n  CLEOPATRA. See, Caesar! O, behold,\n    How pomp is followed! Mine will now be yours;\n    And, should we shift estates, yours would be mine.\n    The ingratitude of this Seleucus does\n    Even make me wild. O slave, of no more trust\n    Than love that's hir'd! What, goest thou back? Thou shalt\n    Go back, I warrant thee; but I'll catch thine eyes\n    Though they had wings. Slave, soulless villain, dog!\n    O rarely base!\n  CAESAR. Good Queen, let us entreat you.\n  CLEOPATRA. O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this,\n    That thou vouchsafing here to visit me,\n    Doing the honour of thy lordliness\n    To one so meek, that mine own servant should\n    Parcel the sum of my disgraces by\n    Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,\n    That I some lady trifles have reserv'd,\n    Immoment toys, things of such dignity\n    As we greet modern friends withal; and say\n    Some nobler token I have kept apart\n    For Livia and Octavia, to induce\n    Their mediation- must I be unfolded\n    With one that I have bred? The gods! It smites me\n    Beneath the fall I have. [To SELEUCUS] Prithee go hence;\n    Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits\n    Through th' ashes of my chance. Wert thou a man,\n    Thou wouldst have mercy on me.\n  CAESAR. Forbear, Seleucus.                       Exit SELEUCUS\n  CLEOPATRA. Be it known that we, the greatest, are misthought\n    For things that others do; and when we fall\n    We answer others' merits in our name,\n    Are therefore to be pitied.\n  CAESAR. Cleopatra,\n    Not what you have reserv'd, nor what acknowledg'd,\n    Put we i' th' roll of conquest. Still be't yours,\n    Bestow it at your pleasure; and believe\n    Caesar's no merchant, to make prize with you\n    Of things that merchants sold. Therefore be cheer'd;\n    Make not your thoughts your prisons. No, dear Queen;\n    For we intend so to dispose you as\n    Yourself shall give us counsel. Feed and sleep.\n    Our care and pity is so much upon you\n    That we remain your friend; and so, adieu.\n  CLEOPATRA. My master and my lord!\n  CAESAR. Not so. Adieu.\n                           Flourish. Exeunt CAESAR and his train\n  CLEOPATRA. He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not\n    Be noble to myself. But hark thee, Charmian!\n                                             [Whispers CHARMIAN]\n  IRAS. Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,\n    And we are for the dark.\n  CLEOPATRA. Hie thee again.\n    I have spoke already, and it is provided;\n    Go put it to the haste.\n  CHARMIAN. Madam, I will.\n\n                      Re-enter DOLABELLA\n\n  DOLABELLA. Where's the Queen?\n  CHARMIAN. Behold, sir.                                    Exit\n  CLEOPATRA. Dolabella!\n  DOLABELLA. Madam, as thereto sworn by your command,\n    Which my love makes religion to obey,\n    I tell you this: Caesar through Syria\n    Intends his journey, and within three days\n    You with your children will he send before.\n    Make your best use of this; I have perform'd\n    Your pleasure and my promise.\n  CLEOPATRA. Dolabella,\n    I shall remain your debtor.\n  DOLABELLA. I your servant.\n    Adieu, good Queen; I must attend on Caesar.\n  CLEOPATRA. Farewell, and thanks.                Exit DOLABELLA\n    Now, Iras, what think'st thou?\n    Thou an Egyptian puppet shall be shown\n    In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves,\n    With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall\n    Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths,\n    Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,\n    And forc'd to drink their vapour.\n  IRAS. The gods forbid!\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, 'tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors\n    Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers\n    Ballad us out o' tune; the quick comedians\n    Extemporally will stage us, and present\n    Our Alexandrian revels; Antony\n    Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see\n    Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness\n    I' th' posture of a whore.\n  IRAS. O the good gods!\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, that's certain.\n  IRAS. I'll never see't, for I am sure mine nails\n    Are stronger than mine eyes.\n  CLEOPATRA. Why, that's the way\n    To fool their preparation and to conquer\n    Their most absurd intents.\n\n                      Enter CHARMIAN\n\n    Now, Charmian!\n    Show me, my women, like a queen. Go fetch\n    My best attires. I am again for Cydnus,\n    To meet Mark Antony. Sirrah, Iras, go.\n    Now, noble Charmian, we'll dispatch indeed;\n    And when thou hast done this chare, I'll give thee leave\n    To play till doomsday. Bring our crown and all.\n                                       Exit IRAS. A noise within\n    Wherefore's this noise?\n\n                     Enter a GUARDSMAN\n\n  GUARDSMAN. Here is a rural fellow\n    That will not be denied your Highness' presence.\n    He brings you figs.\n  CLEOPATRA. Let him come in.                     Exit GUARDSMAN\n    What poor an instrument\n    May do a noble deed! He brings me liberty.\n    My resolution's plac'd, and I have nothing\n    Of woman in me. Now from head to foot\n    I am marble-constant; now the fleeting moon\n    No planet is of mine.\n\n          Re-enter GUARDSMAN and CLOWN, with a basket\n\n  GUARDSMAN. This is the man.\n  CLEOPATRA. Avoid, and leave him.                Exit GUARDSMAN\n    Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there\n    That kills and pains not?\n  CLOWN. Truly, I have him. But I would not be the party that\nshould\n    desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal; those\nthat\n    do die of it do seldom or never recover.\n  CLEOPATRA. Remember'st thou any that have died on't?\n  CLOWN. Very many, men and women too. I heard of one of them no\n    longer than yesterday: a very honest woman, but something\ngiven\n    to lie, as a woman should not do but in the way of honesty;\nhow\n    she died of the biting of it, what pain she felt- truly she\nmakes\n    a very good report o' th' worm. But he that will believe all\nthat\n    they say shall never be saved by half that they do. But this\nis\n    most falliable, the worm's an odd worm.\n  CLEOPATRA. Get thee hence; farewell.\n  CLOWN. I wish you all joy of the worm.\n                                          [Sets down the basket]\n  CLEOPATRA. Farewell.\n  CLOWN. You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his\n    kind.\n  CLEOPATRA. Ay, ay; farewell.\n  CLOWN. Look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in the\nkeeping\n    of wise people; for indeed there is no goodness in the worm.\n  CLEOPATRA. Take thou no care; it shall be heeded.\n  CLOWN. Very good. Give it nothing, I pray you, for it is not\nworth\n    the feeding.\n  CLEOPATRA. Will it eat me?\n  CLOWN. You must not think I am so simple but I know the devil\n    himself will not eat a woman. I know that a woman is a dish\nfor\n    the gods, if the devil dress her not. But truly, these same\n    whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women, for in\n    every ten that they make the devils mar five.\n  CLEOPATRA. Well, get thee gone; farewell.\n  CLOWN. Yes, forsooth. I wish you joy o' th' worm.         Exit\n\n             Re-enter IRAS, with a robe, crown, &c.\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have\n    Immortal longings in me. Now no more\n    The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip.\n    Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear\n    Antony call. I see him rouse himself\n    To praise my noble act. I hear him mock\n    The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men\n    To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come.\n    Now to that name my courage prove my title!\n    I am fire and air; my other elements\n    I give to baser life. So, have you done?\n    Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.\n    Farewell, kind Charmian. Iras, long farewell.\n                              [Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies]\n    Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?\n    If thus thou and nature can so gently part,\n    The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,\n    Which hurts and is desir'd. Dost thou lie still?\n    If thou vanishest, thou tell'st the world\n    It is not worth leave-taking.\n  CHARMIAN. Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say\n    The gods themselves do weep.\n  CLEOPATRA. This proves me base.\n    If she first meet the curled Antony,\n    He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss\n    Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou mortal wretch,\n                    [To an asp, which she applies to her breast]\n    With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate\n    Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool,\n    Be angry and dispatch. O couldst thou speak,\n    That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass\n    Unpolicied!\n  CHARMIAN. O Eastern star!\n  CLEOPATRA. Peace, peace!\n    Dost thou not see my baby at my breast\n    That sucks the nurse asleep?\n  CHARMIAN. O, break! O, break!\n  CLEOPATRA. As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle-\n    O Antony! Nay, I will take thee too:\n                               [Applying another asp to her arm]\n    What should I stay-                                   [Dies]\n  CHARMIAN. In this vile world? So, fare thee well.\n    Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies\n    A lass unparallel'd. Downy windows, close;\n    And golden Phoebus never be beheld\n    Of eyes again so royal! Your crown's awry;\n    I'll mend it and then play-\n\n                  Enter the guard, rushing in\n\n  FIRST GUARD. Where's the Queen?\n  CHARMIAN. Speak softly, wake her not.\n  FIRST GUARD. Caesar hath sent-\n  CHARMIAN. Too slow a messenger.               [Applies an asp]\n    O, come apace, dispatch. I partly feel thee.\n  FIRST GUARD. Approach, ho! All's not well: Caesar's beguil'd.\n  SECOND GUARD. There's Dolabella sent from Caesar; call him.\n  FIRST GUARD. What work is here! Charmian, is this well done?\n  CHARMIAN. It is well done, and fitting for a princes\n    Descended of so many royal kings.\n    Ah, soldier!                                 [CHARMIAN dies]\n\n                      Re-enter DOLABELLA\n\n  DOLABELLA. How goes it here?\n  SECOND GUARD. All dead.\n  DOLABELLA. Caesar, thy thoughts\n    Touch their effects in this. Thyself art coming\n    To see perform'd the dreaded act which thou\n    So sought'st to hinder.\n                      [Within: 'A way there, a way for Caesar!']\n\n              Re-enter CAESAR and all his train\n\n  DOLABELLA. O sir, you are too sure an augurer:\n    That you did fear is done.\n  CAESAR. Bravest at the last,\n    She levell'd at our purposes, and being royal,\n    Took her own way. The manner of their deaths?\n    I do not see them bleed.\n  DOLABELLA. Who was last with them?\n  FIRST GUARD. A simple countryman that brought her figs.\n    This was his basket.\n  CAESAR. Poison'd then.\n  FIRST GUARD. O Caesar,\n    This Charmian liv'd but now; she stood and spake.\n    I found her trimming up the diadem\n    On her dead mistress. Tremblingly she stood,\n    And on the sudden dropp'd.\n  CAESAR. O noble weakness!\n    If they had swallow'd poison 'twould appear\n    By external swelling; but she looks like sleep,\n    As she would catch another Antony\n    In her strong toil of grace.\n  DOLABELLA. Here on her breast\n    There is a vent of blood, and something blown;\n    The like is on her arm.\n  FIRST GUARD. This is an aspic's trail; and these fig-leaves\n    Have slime upon them, such as th' aspic leaves\n    Upon the caves of Nile.\n  CAESAR. Most probable\n    That so she died; for her physician tells me\n    She hath pursu'd conclusions infinite\n    Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed,\n    And bear her women from the monument.\n    She shall be buried by her Antony;\n    No grave upon the earth shall clip in it\n    A pair so famous. High events as these\n    Strike those that make them; and their story is\n    No less in pity than his glory which\n    Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall\n    In solemn show attend this funeral,\n    And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see\n    High order in this great solemnity.                   Exeunt\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "shmoop", "text": "The complicated plot of Antony and Cleopatra has numerous twists and turns, and takes us across an ocean and back several times. We begin in Egypt with Mark Antony, one of the three leaders of the Roman Republic, reveling with his powerful lover Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt. This drunken merry-making is getting in the way of his being an effective ruler in Rome, and the people at home are beginning to resent it. He gets news that his wife, Fulvia, alongside his brother, has been making war against the other triumvirs, and also that Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey the Great , is threatening Rome as well. Also, there are pirates. Argh!Antony finds out that his wife is dead, which solves the war problem--but he really does need to be getting back to Rome to address the Pompey situation. He leaves Egypt with Cleopatra's half-hearted blessing and begins to fix stuff back home in Rome. He and Octavius Caesar have a fight about the personal things between them, and decide to fix the situation by marrying off Caesar's sister, Octavia, to Antony. Even though Antony hasn't proven to be Mr. Marrying-Kind, the idea is that Octavia will form a bond between the two men--because she loves them both, they'll love each other. It's not two minutes before Antony meets with a soothsayer who tells him to get away from Caesar, because Caesar mutes his power. Antony agrees that he should head back to Egypt, where his pleasure lies. Then, the triumvirs meet with Pompey to see if they can negotiate instead of going to war. Pompey is fighting to avenge his father's death, but he gives in to the others and makes a truce. They agree that he gets a little piece of southern Italy, as long as he gives wheat to the Romans. They all celebrate drunkenly onboard Pompey's ship that night. One of Pompey's servants, Menas, suggests that they kill the drunk triumvirs while they have them, but Pompey is too honest to do this . Murder aside, they go back to drinking. So much partying goes down that Lepidus gets carted out of drunken scene.Later, the plan is for Antony is to head back to Athens with his new bride while Caesar stays in Rome. Caesar charges Antony to take good care of his sister, and Antony promises to do so. Also, Antony's men have been fighting a war in Parthia with good success, even without his leadership. Back in Egypt, Cleopatra has found out about Antony's marriage, whipped the messenger, threatened to stab him, and then sent him to see if Octavia's assets rival her own. Cleopatra is pleased to find out that Octavia looks plain, since it means she has a good chance of winning Antony back. Back in Athens, Antony reports to Octavia that Caesar has already violated the pact with Pompey, is trash-talking Antony in public, and has dismissed Lepidus from office. Antony can't abide by this and needs to fight for his honor. Octavia is torn between her brother and her husband, and asks to go back to Rome to see if she can make peace with her brother. Antony sends her off, and then promptly heads back to Egypt to begin preparing war for and also to hang out with his lover.In Egypt, Cleopatra lends her ships to Antony while he gets ready to meet Caesar at sea. Although it's not his arena of choice, Antony's going for the sea showdown because Caesar has challenged him to a face-off on the ocean and he doesn't want to be a chicken. Cleopatra stubbornly refuses to sit at home while all the action is outside, but once in the battle, even as things are looking up for Antony's side, she runs away. Antony, essentially whipped, follows her and totally forfeits the battle. He admits she's conquered his heart, and laments that he's no longer a soldier. But then she gives him a kiss. He sends a schoolmaster, his children's tutor, to give conditions of surrender to Caesar. He asks to either be left alone in Egypt, or to be allowed to be a private citizen in Athens. Caesar won't grant any of Antony's wishes, but says Cleopatra can have anything she wants if she'll either exile Antony or have him murdered in Egypt. Hearing this, Antony is not a happy camper, and resolves to murder Caesar in hand-to-hand combat . While he goes off to write an \"I'm going to murder you in hand-to-hand combat\" letter, another messenger from Caesar slips in. This guy is supposed to use his cunning linguistic skills to whet Cleopatra's appetite for treachery against Antony. She's just about to give her allegiance to Caesar when Antony walks in, has Thidias whipped, and gives Cleopatra a piece of his mind. She says she's sorry, and he forgives her. Then they party hard, preparing for a new battle the next day. We learn that Enobarbus, Antony's loyal friend, has defected to Caesar's camp because he thinks even Cleopatra has abandoned Antony . He thinks Antony has no chance of winning. Later that same night, soldiers on watch hear strange music playing, and they conclude that this is the sound of Hercules abandoning Antony.The next morning, everyone is in high spirits about battle. Antony hears that Enobarbus has fled and instead of being angry he feels sorry for the guy, sending treasure chests after him. He laments that his own bad fortune has driven Enobarbus to switch teams. In that day's battle, Antony soundly trounces Caesar's troops, and there's much celebrating. Antony is all courage again, and they have a big march in Alexandria, which they've won back. Meanwhile, Enobarbus stands under the moon and laments his broken heart. He regrets that he's betrayed Antony, and wishes the world to remember him as the worst traitor ever. Some soldiers are watching him, unnoticed, and see him die of a broken heart. It's morning again, and perhaps with renewed courage from yesterday's victory, Antony meets Caesar at sea. This time, he watches his fleet greet Caesar's men as friends. Oops. The battle is lost and he's furious. He blames Cleopatra, not the men, because he's convinced that her treachery is at the root of his loss--she must have betrayed him to Caesar. He goes to the palace in a rage, resolving to kill her. Seeing her lover's rage, Cleopatra flees to her monument and locks herself up. She has her servant send word to Antony that she's killed herself, to see how he'll respond. He responds by deciding to kill himself too--thinking it was noble of Cleopatra to be the one who decided when her life was over. He'd like to be his own conqueror. He asks his friend Eros to kill him, and Eros chooses to kill himself instead rather than go through with it. Antony then takes it upon himself to fall on his sword, and he's done a bad job of it apparently, so he doesn't die immediately. Just then Diomedes enters, bringing the news that Cleopatra isn't really dead. Antony, hearing this, asks to be taken to her, so he can die near her. He's not even that mad.Antony, bleeding all over the place, tells Cleopatra she should yield herself to Caesar for her safety and honor. He says she can't trust anyone around Caesar except this one guy, Proculeius. Cleopatra says she won't trust anyone but her own resolution and her own hand, which seems to mean she's going to kill herself. As Antony's dying, he asks to be remembered as a noble Roman who was conquered by himself and no other, especially not Caesar. He dies, and Cleopatra beings the preparations to kill herself, too.Just then, Caesar's guy Proculeius comes into the monument to negotiate with Cleopatra and give her basically whatever she wants. She asks for her kingdom, Egypt, to be given to her son. As Proculeius leaves, Cleopatra is overtaken by some of Caesar's guards. She tries to kill herself, but they're fast and stop her. Dolabella, one of Caesar's more kindhearted guys, takes over, pitying Cleopatra as she tells him of Antony's greatness. Dolabella confirms her fear that Caesar means to make her a central attraction in his victory parade. Caesar shows up, and there's an episode where Cleopatra claims to have given him all her treasure. Unfortunately, her treasurer says she lied, so fighting follows. Anyway, Caesar says she can keep her stuff, and she shouldn't worry, as she will direct how the Romans will treat her. Once Caesar leaves, Dolabella tells Cleopatra that Caesar will send for her and her children in three days to be put in the victory march. Cleopatra wails that she doesn't want to be breathed on and scowled at by filthy Romans. So, instead, she has a plan. She has her women dress her in her finest robes and then receives a rather harmless looking visitor. It turns out this harmless visitor brought her some figs in which he's hidden some poisonous snakes at her request. Cleopatra, all dolled up, says she's going to meet her husband . She kisses Iras, her servant, who dies immediately. Then, she puts an asp to her breast, and says some insulting things about Caesar. As Charmian cries out that there is a snake on her breast, Cleopatra applies another asp to her arm and dies. Charmian is very sad about this, so naturally she fixes her lady's crown. Just then, Caesar's guard enters, so Charmian applies an asp to herself. She says Cleopatra's work was befitting for a royal princess descended of many kings, and then she dies. Dolabella and then Caesar march in to find all the dead women, and wonder how they died. Dolabella discovers the wounds on Cleopatra's chest and arms, and another guard finds the slimy trail of the poisonous snake in the figs. Caesar admits it was in Cleopatra's royal nature to do what she pleased, and decrees that she'll be buried next to Antony. The funeral will be attended by the solemn Romans, and then they'll go back home to the former Roman Republic, which is now the new Roman Empire.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "1929", "title": "The School for Scandal", "text": "PROLOGUE WRITTEN BY MR. GARRICK\n\n     A school for Scandal! tell me, I beseech you,\n     Needs there a school this modish art to teach you?\n     No need of lessons now, the knowing think;\n     We might as well be taught to eat and drink.\n     Caused by a dearth of scandal, should the vapours\n     Distress our fair ones--let them read the papers;\n     Their powerful mixtures such disorders hit;\n     Crave what you will--there's quantum sufficit.\n     \"Lord!\" cries my Lady Wormwood (who loves tattle,\n     And puts much salt and pepper in her prattle),\n     Just risen at noon, all night at cards when threshing\n     Strong tea and scandal--\"Bless me, how refreshing!\n     Give me the papers, Lisp--how bold and free!  [Sips.]\n     LAST NIGHT LORD L. [Sips] WAS CAUGHT WITH LADY D.\n     For aching heads what charming sal volatile!  [Sips.]\n     IF MRS. B. WILL STILL CONTINUE FLIRTING,\n     WE HOPE SHE'LL draw, OR WE'LL undraw THE CURTAIN.\n     Fine satire, poz--in public all abuse it,\n     But, by ourselves [Sips], our praise we can't refuse it.\n     Now, Lisp, read you--there, at that dash and star:\"\n     \"Yes, ma'am--A CERTAIN LORD HAD BEST BEWARE,\n     WHO LIVES NOT TWENTY MILES FROM GROSVENOR SQUARE;\n     FOR, SHOULD HE LADY W. FIND WILLING,\n     WORMWOOD IS BITTER\"----\"Oh! that's me! the villain!\n     Throw it behind the fire, and never more\n     Let that vile paper come within my door.\"\n     Thus at our friends we laugh, who feel the dart;\n     To reach our feelings, we ourselves must smart.\n     Is our young bard so young, to think that he\n     Can stop the full spring-tide of calumny?\n     Knows he the world so little, and its trade?\n     Alas! the devil's sooner raised than laid.\n     So strong, so swift, the monster there's no gagging:\n     Cut Scandal's head off, still the tongue is wagging.\n     Proud of your smiles once lavishly bestow'd,\n     Again our young Don Quixote takes the road;\n     To show his gratitude he draws his pen,\n     And seeks his hydra, Scandal, in his den.\n     For your applause all perils he would through--\n     He'll fight--that's write--a cavalliero true,\n     Till every drop of blood--that's ink--is spilt for you.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT I SCENE I.\n\n--LADY SNEERWELL'S House\n\nLADY SNEERWELL at her dressing table with LAPPET; MISS VERJUICE drinking\nchocolate\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. The Paragraphs you say were all inserted:\n\nVERJUICE. They were Madam--and as I copied them myself in a feigned Hand\nthere can be no suspicion whence they came.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Did you circulate the Report of Lady Brittle's Intrigue\nwith Captain Boastall?\n\nVERJUICE. Madam by this Time Lady Brittle is the Talk of half the\nTown--and I doubt not in a week the Men will toast her as a Demirep.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. What have you done as to the insinuation as to a certain\nBaronet's Lady and a certain Cook.\n\nVERJUICE. That is in as fine a Train as your Ladyship could wish. I told\nthe story yesterday to my own maid with directions to communicate it\ndirectly to my Hairdresser. He I am informed has a Brother who courts a\nMilliners' Prentice in Pallmall whose mistress has a first cousin whose\nsister is Feme [Femme] de Chambre to Mrs. Clackit--so that in the\ncommon course of Things it must reach Mrs. Clackit's Ears within\nfour-and-twenty hours and then you know the Business is as good as done.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Why truly Mrs. Clackit has a very pretty Talent--a great\ndeal of industry--yet--yes--been tolerably successful in her way--To my\nknowledge she has been the cause of breaking off six matches[,] of three\nsons being disinherited and four Daughters being turned out of Doors.\nOf three several Elopements, as many close confinements--nine separate\nmaintenances and two Divorces.--nay I have more than once traced her\ncausing a Tete-a-Tete in the Town and Country Magazine--when the Parties\nperhaps had never seen each other's Faces before in the course of their\nLives.\n\nVERJUICE. She certainly has Talents.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. But her manner is gross.\n\nVERJUICE. 'Tis very true. She generally designs well[,] has a free\ntongue and a bold invention--but her colouring is too dark and her\noutline often extravagant--She wants that delicacy of Tint--and\nmellowness of sneer--which distinguish your Ladyship's Scandal.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Ah you are Partial Verjuice.\n\nVERJUICE. Not in the least--everybody allows that Lady Sneerwell can do\nmore with a word or a Look than many can with the most laboured Detail\neven when they happen to have a little truth on their side to support\nit.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Yes my dear Verjuice. I am no Hypocrite to deny the\nsatisfaction I reap from the Success of my Efforts. Wounded myself, in\nthe early part of my Life by the envenomed Tongue of Slander I confess\nI have since known no Pleasure equal to the reducing others to the Level\nof my own injured Reputation.\n\nVERJUICE. Nothing can be more natural--But my dear Lady Sneerwell There\nis one affair in which you have lately employed me, wherein, I confess I\nam at a Loss to guess your motives.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. I conceive you mean with respect to my neighbour, Sir\nPeter Teazle, and his Family--Lappet.--And has my conduct in this matter\nreally appeared to you so mysterious?\n\n     [Exit MAID.]\n\nVERJUICE. Entirely so.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. [VERJUICE.?] An old Batchelor as Sir Peter was[,] having\ntaken a young wife from out of the Country--as Lady Teazle is--are\ncertainly fair subjects for a little mischievous raillery--but here are\ntwo young men--to whom Sir Peter has acted as a kind of Guardian since\ntheir Father's death, the eldest possessing the most amiable Character\nand universally well spoken of[,] the youngest the most dissipated\nand extravagant young Fellow in the Kingdom, without Friends or\ncaracter--the former one an avowed admirer of yours and apparently\nyour Favourite[,] the latter attached to Maria Sir Peter's ward--and\nconfessedly beloved by her. Now on the face of these circumstances it\nis utterly unaccountable to me why you a young Widow with no great\njointure--should not close with the passion of a man of such character\nand expectations as Mr. Surface--and more so why you should be so\nuncommonly earnest to destroy the mutual Attachment subsisting between\nhis Brother Charles and Maria.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Then at once to unravel this mistery--I must inform you\nthat Love has no share whatever in the intercourse between Mr. Surface\nand me.\n\nVERJUICE. No!\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. His real attachment is to Maria or her Fortune--but\nfinding in his Brother a favoured Rival, He has been obliged to mask his\nPretensions--and profit by my Assistance.\n\nVERJUICE. Yet still I am more puzzled why you should interest yourself\nin his success.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Heavens! how dull you are! cannot you surmise the\nweakness which I hitherto, thro' shame have concealed even from\nyou--must I confess that Charles--that Libertine, that extravagant, that\nBankrupt in Fortune and Reputation--that He it is for whom I am thus\nanxious and malicious and to gain whom I would sacrifice--everything----\n\nVERJUICE. Now indeed--your conduct appears consistent and I no longer\nwonder at your enmity to Maria, but how came you and Surface so\nconfidential?\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. For our mutual interest--but I have found out him a long\ntime since[,] altho' He has contrived to deceive everybody beside--I\nknow him to be artful selfish and malicious--while with Sir Peter, and\nindeed with all his acquaintance, He passes for a youthful Miracle of\nPrudence--good sense and Benevolence.\n\nVERJUICE. Yes yes--I know Sir Peter vows He has not his equal in\nEngland; and, above all, He praises him as a MAN OF SENTIMENT.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. True and with the assistance of his sentiments and\nhypocrisy he has brought Sir Peter entirely in his interests with\nrespect to Maria and is now I believe attempting to flatter Lady Teazle\ninto the same good opinion towards him--while poor Charles has no Friend\nin the House--though I fear he has a powerful one in Maria's Heart,\nagainst whom we must direct our schemes.\n\nSERVANT. Mr. Surface.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Shew him up. He generally calls about this Time. I don't\nwonder at People's giving him to me for a Lover.\n\n     Enter SURFACE\n\nSURFACE. My dear Lady Sneerwell, how do you do to-day--your most\nobedient.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Miss Verjuice has just been arraigning me on our mutual\nattachment now; but I have informed her of our real views and the\nPurposes for which our Geniuses at present co-operate. You know\nhow useful she has been to us--and believe me the confidence is not\nill-placed.\n\nSURFACE. Madam, it is impossible for me to suspect that a Lady of Miss\nVerjuice's sensibility and discernment----\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Well--well--no compliments now--but tell me when you saw\nyour mistress or what is more material to me your Brother.\n\nSURFACE. I have not seen either since I saw you--but I can inform you\nthat they are at present at Variance--some of your stories have taken\ngood effect on Maria.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Ah! my dear Verjuice the merit of this belongs to you.\nBut do your Brother's Distresses encrease?\n\nSURFACE. Every hour. I am told He had another execution in his house\nyesterday--in short his Dissipation and extravagance exceed anything I\nhave ever heard of.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Poor Charles!\n\nSURFACE. True Madam--notwithstanding his Vices one can't help feeling\nfor him--ah poor Charles! I'm sure I wish it was in my Power to be of\nany essential Service to him--for the man who does not share in\nthe Distresses of a Brother--even though merited by his own\nmisconduct--deserves----\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. O Lud you are going to be moral, and forget that you are\namong Friends.\n\nSURFACE. Egad, that's true--I'll keep that sentiment till I see Sir\nPeter. However it is certainly a charity to rescue Maria from such a\nLibertine who--if He is to be reclaim'd, can be so only by a Person of\nyour Ladyship's superior accomplishments and understanding.\n\nVERJUICE. 'Twould be a Hazardous experiment.\n\nSURFACE. But--Madam--let me caution you to place no more confidence in\nour Friend Snake the Libeller--I have lately detected him in frequent\nconference with old Rowland [Rowley] who was formerly my Father's\nSteward and has never been a friend of mine.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. I'm not disappointed in Snake, I never suspected the\nfellow to have virtue enough to be faithful even to his own Villany.\n\n     Enter MARIA\n\nMaria my dear--how do you do--what's the matter?\n\nMARIA. O here is that disagreeable lover of mine, Sir Benjamin Backbite,\nhas just call'd at my guardian's with his odious Uncle Crabtree--so I\nslipt out and ran hither to avoid them.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Is that all?\n\nVERJUICE. Lady Sneerwell--I'll go and write the Letter I mention'd to\nyou.\n\nSURFACE. If my Brother Charles had been of the Party, madam, perhaps you\nwould not have been so much alarmed.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Nay now--you are severe for I dare swear the Truth\nof the matter is Maria heard YOU were here--but my dear--what has Sir\nBenjamin done that you should avoid him so----\n\nMARIA. Oh He has done nothing--but his conversation is a perpetual Libel\non all his Acquaintance.\n\nSURFACE. Aye and the worst of it is there is no advantage in not knowing\nThem, for He'll abuse a stranger just as soon as his best Friend--and\nCrabtree is as bad.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Nay but we should make allowance[--]Sir Benjamin is a\nwit and a poet.\n\nMARIA. For my Part--I own madam--wit loses its respect with me, when I\nsee it in company with malice.--What do you think, Mr. Surface?\n\nSURFACE. Certainly, Madam, to smile at the jest which plants a Thorn on\nanother's Breast is to become a principal in the mischief.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Pshaw--there's no possibility of being witty without a\nlittle [ill] nature--the malice of a good thing is the Barb that makes\nit stick.--What's your opinion, Mr. Surface?\n\nSURFACE. Certainly madam--that conversation where the Spirit of Raillery\nis suppressed will ever appear tedious and insipid--\n\nMARIA. Well I'll not debate how far Scandal may be allowable--but in a\nman I am sure it is always contemtable.--We have Pride, envy, Rivalship,\nand a Thousand motives to depreciate each other--but the male-slanderer\nmust have the cowardice of a woman before He can traduce one.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. I wish my Cousin Verjuice hadn't left us--she should\nembrace you.\n\nSURFACE. Ah! she's an old maid and is privileged of course.\n\n     Enter SERVANT\n\nMadam Mrs. Candour is below and if your Ladyship's at leisure will leave\nher carriage.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Beg her to walk in. Now, Maria[,] however here is a\nCharacter to your Taste, for tho' Mrs. Candour is a little talkative\neverybody allows her to be the best-natured and best sort of woman.\n\nMARIA. Yes with a very gross affectation of good Nature and\nBenevolence--she does more mischief than the Direct malice of old\nCrabtree.\n\nSURFACE. Efaith 'tis very true Lady Sneerwell--Whenever I hear the\ncurrent running again the characters of my Friends, I never think them\nin such Danger as when Candour undertakes their Defence.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Hush here she is----\n\n     Enter MRS. CANDOUR\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. My dear Lady Sneerwell how have you been this Century.\nI have never seen you tho' I have heard of you very often.--Mr.\nSurface--the World says scandalous things of you--but indeed it is\nno matter what the world says, for I think one hears nothing else but\nscandal.\n\nSURFACE. Just so, indeed, Ma'am.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Ah Maria Child--what[!] is the whole affair off between\nyou and Charles? His extravagance; I presume--The Town talks of nothing\nelse----\n\nMARIA. I am very sorry, Ma'am, the Town has so little to do.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. True, true, Child; but there's no stopping people's\nTongues. I own I was hurt to hear it--as I indeed was to learn from the\nsame quarter that your guardian, Sir Peter[,] and Lady Teazle have not\nagreed lately so well as could be wish'd.\n\nMARIA. 'Tis strangely impertinent for people to busy themselves so.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Very true, Child; but what's to be done? People will\ntalk--there's no preventing it.--why it was but yesterday I was told\nthat Miss Gadabout had eloped with Sir Filagree Flirt. But, Lord! there\nis no minding what one hears; tho' to be sure I had this from very good\nauthority.\n\nMARIA. Such reports are highly scandalous.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. So they are Child--shameful! shameful! but the world is\nso censorious no character escapes. Lord, now! who would have suspected\nyour friend, Miss Prim, of an indiscretion Yet such is the ill-nature\nof people, that they say her unkle stopped her last week just as she was\nstepping into a Postchaise with her Dancing-master.\n\nMARIA. I'll answer for't there are no grounds for the Report.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Oh, no foundation in the world I dare swear[;] no more\nprobably than for the story circulated last month, of Mrs. Festino's\naffair with Colonel Cassino--tho' to be sure that matter was never\nrightly clear'd up.\n\nSURFACE. The license of invention some people take is monstrous indeed.\n\nMARIA. 'Tis so but in my opinion, those who report such things are\nequally culpable.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. To be sure they are[;] Tale Bearers are as bad as the Tale\nmakers--'tis an old observation and a very true one--but what's to be\ndone as I said before--how will you prevent People from talking--to-day,\nMrs. Clackitt assured me, Mr. and Mrs. Honeymoon were at last become\nmere man and wife--like [the rest of their] acquaintance--she likewise\nhinted that a certain widow in the next street had got rid of her Dropsy\nand recovered her shape in a most surprising manner--at the same [time]\nMiss Tattle, who was by affirm'd, that Lord Boffalo had discover'd his\nLady at a house of no extraordinary Fame--and that Sir Harry Bouquet and\nTom Saunter were to measure swords on a similar Provocation. But--Lord!\ndo you think I would report these Things--No, no[!] Tale Bearers as I\nsaid before are just as bad as the talemakers.\n\nSURFACE. Ah! Mrs. Candour, if everybody had your Forbearance and good\nnature--\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. I confess Mr. Surface I cannot bear to hear People\ntraduced behind their Backs[;] and when ugly circumstances come out\nagainst our acquaintances I own I always love to think the best--by the\nbye I hope 'tis not true that your Brother is absolutely ruin'd--\n\nSURFACE. I am afraid his circumstances are very bad indeed, Ma'am--\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Ah! I heard so--but you must tell him to keep up his\nSpirits--everybody almost is in the same way--Lord Spindle, Sir Thomas\nSplint, Captain Quinze, and Mr. Nickit--all up, I hear, within this\nweek; so, if Charles is undone, He'll find half his Acquaintance ruin'd\ntoo, and that, you know, is a consolation--\n\nSURFACE. Doubtless, Ma'am--a very great one.\n\n     Enter SERVANT\n\nSERVANT. Mr. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin Backbite.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Soh! Maria, you see your lover pursues you--Positively\nyou shan't escape.\n\n     Enter CRABTREE and SIR BENJAMIN BACKBITE\n\nCRABTREE. Lady Sneerwell, I kiss your hand. Mrs. Candour I don't believe\nyou are acquainted with my Nephew Sir Benjamin Backbite--Egad, Ma'am, He\nhas a pretty wit--and is a pretty Poet too isn't He Lady Sneerwell?\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. O fie, Uncle!\n\nCRABTREE. Nay egad it's true--I back him at a Rebus or a Charade against\nthe best Rhymer in the Kingdom--has your Ladyship heard the Epigram he\nwrote last week on Lady Frizzle's Feather catching Fire--Do Benjamin\nrepeat it--or the Charade you made last Night extempore at Mrs.\nDrowzie's conversazione--Come now your first is the Name of a Fish, your\nsecond a great naval commander--and\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Dear Uncle--now--prithee----\n\nCRABTREE. Efaith, Ma'am--'twould surprise you to hear how ready he is at\nall these Things.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. I wonder Sir Benjamin you never publish anything.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. To say truth, Ma'am, 'tis very vulgar to Print and as my\nlittle Productions are mostly Satires and Lampoons I find they\ncirculate more by giving copies in confidence to the Friends of the\nParties--however I have some love-Elegies, which, when favoured with\nthis lady's smile I mean to give to the Public.\n\n[Pointing to MARIA.]\n\nCRABTREE. 'Fore Heaven, ma'am, they'll immortalize you--you'll be handed\ndown to Posterity, like Petrarch's Laura, or Waller's Sacharissa.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Yes Madam I think you will like them--when you shall see\nin a beautiful Quarto Page how a neat rivulet of Text shall meander\nthro' a meadow of margin--'fore Gad, they will be the most elegant\nThings of their kind--\n\nCRABTREE. But Ladies, have you heard the news?\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. What, Sir, do you mean the Report of----\n\nCRABTREE. No ma'am that's not it.--Miss Nicely is going to be married to\nher own Footman.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Impossible!\n\nCRABTREE. Ask Sir Benjamin.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. 'Tis very true, Ma'am--everything is fixed and the wedding\nLivery bespoke.\n\nCRABTREE. Yes and they say there were pressing reasons for't.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. It cannot be--and I wonder any one should believe such a\nstory of so prudent a Lady as Miss Nicely.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. O Lud! ma'am, that's the very reason 'twas believed at\nonce. She has always been so cautious and so reserved, that everybody\nwas sure there was some reason for it at bottom.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Yes a Tale of Scandal is as fatal to the Reputation of\na prudent Lady of her stamp as a Fever is generally to those of the\nstrongest Constitutions, but there is a sort of puny sickly Reputation,\nthat is always ailing yet will outlive the robuster characters of a\nhundred Prudes.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. True Madam there are Valetudinarians in Reputation as well\nas constitution--who being conscious of their weak Part, avoid the\nleast breath of air, and supply their want of Stamina by care and\ncircumspection--\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Well but this may be all mistake--You know, Sir Benjamin\nvery trifling circumstances often give rise to the most injurious Tales.\n\nCRABTREE. That they do I'll be sworn Ma'am--did you ever hear how\nMiss Shepherd came to lose her Lover and her Character last summer at\nTunbridge--Sir Benjamin you remember it--\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. O to be sure the most whimsical circumstance--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. How was it Pray--\n\nCRABTREE. Why one evening at Mrs. Ponto's Assembly--the conversation\nhappened to turn on the difficulty of breeding Nova-Scotia Sheep in\nthis country--says a young Lady in company[, \"]I have known instances\nof it[--]for Miss Letitia Shepherd, a first cousin of mine, had a\nNova-Scotia Sheep that produced her Twins.[\"--\"]What![\"] cries the old\nDowager Lady Dundizzy (who you know is as deaf as a Post), [\"]has Miss\nLetitia Shepherd had twins[\"]--This Mistake--as you may imagine, threw\nthe whole company into a fit of Laughing--However 'twas the next morning\neverywhere reported and in a few Days believed by the whole Town, that\nMiss Letitia Shepherd had actually been brought to Bed of a fine Boy\nand Girl--and in less than a week there were People who could name the\nFather, and the Farm House where the Babies were put out to Nurse.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Strange indeed!\n\nCRABTREE. Matter of Fact, I assure you--O Lud! Mr. Surface pray is it\ntrue that your uncle Sir Oliver is coming home--\n\nSURFACE. Not that I know of indeed Sir.\n\nCRABTREE. He has been in the East Indies a long time--you can scarcely\nremember him--I believe--sad comfort on his arrival to hear how your\nBrother has gone on!\n\nSURFACE. Charles has been imprudent Sir to be sure[;] but I hope no Busy\npeople have already prejudiced Sir Oliver against him--He may reform--\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. To be sure He may--for my Part I never believed him to be\nso utterly void of Principle as People say--and tho' he has lost all his\nFriends I am told nobody is better spoken of--by the Jews.\n\nCRABTREE. That's true egad nephew--if the Old Jewry was a Ward I believe\nCharles would be an alderman--no man more popular there, 'fore Gad I\nhear He pays as many annuities as the Irish Tontine and that whenever\nHe's sick they have Prayers for the recovery of his Health in the\nsynagogue--\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Yet no man lives in greater Splendour:--they tell me when\nHe entertains his Friends--He can sit down to dinner with a dozen of his\nown Securities, have a score Tradesmen waiting in the Anti-Chamber, and\nan officer behind every guest's Chair.\n\nSURFACE. This may be entertainment to you Gentlemen but you pay very\nlittle regard to the Feelings of a Brother.\n\nMARIA. Their malice is intolerable--Lady Sneerwell I must wish you a\ngood morning--I'm not very well.\n\n     [Exit MARIA.]\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. O dear she chang'd colour very much!\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Do Mrs. Candour follow her--she may want assistance.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. That I will with all my soul ma'am.--Poor dear Girl--who\nknows--what her situation may be!\n\n     [Exit MRS. CANDOUR.]\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. 'Twas nothing but that she could not bear to hear\nCharles reflected on notwithstanding their difference.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. The young Lady's Penchant is obvious.\n\nCRABTREE. But Benjamin--you mustn't give up the Pursuit for that--follow\nher and put her into good humour--repeat her some of your verses--come,\nI'll assist you--\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Mr. Surface I did not mean to hurt you--but depend on't\nyour Brother is utterly undone--\n\n     [Going.]\n\nCRABTREE. O Lud! aye--undone--as ever man was--can't raise a guinea.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. And everything sold--I'm told--that was movable--\n\n     [Going.]\n\nCRABTREE. I was at his house--not a thing left but some empty Bottles\nthat were overlooked and the Family Pictures, which I believe are framed\nin the Wainscot.\n\n     [Going.]\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. And I'm very sorry to hear also some bad stories against\nhim.\n\n     [Going.]\n\nCRABTREE. O He has done many mean things--that's certain!\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. But however as He is your Brother----\n\n     [Going.]\n\nCRABTREE. We'll tell you all another opportunity.\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Ha! ha! ha! 'tis very hard for them to leave a subject\nthey have not quite run down.\n\nSURFACE. And I believe the Abuse was no more acceptable to your Ladyship\nthan Maria.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. I doubt her Affections are farther engaged than we\nimagin'd but the Family are to be here this Evening so you may as\nwell dine where you are and we shall have an opportunity of observing\nfarther--in the meantime, I'll go and plot Mischief and you shall study\nSentiments.\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\n--SIR PETER'S House\n\n     Enter SIR PETER\n\nSIR PETER. When an old Bachelor takes a young Wife--what is He to\nexpect--'Tis now six months since Lady Teazle made me the happiest\nof men--and I have been the most miserable Dog ever since that ever\ncommitted wedlock. We tift a little going to church--and came to a\nQuarrel before the Bells had done ringing--I was more than once nearly\nchok'd with gall during the Honeymoon--and had lost all comfort in Life\nbefore my Friends had done wishing me Joy--yet I chose with caution--a\ngirl bred wholly in the country--who never knew luxury beyond one silk\ngown--nor dissipation above the annual Gala of a Race-Ball--Yet she now\nplays her Part in all the extravagant Fopperies of the Fashion and the\nTown, with as ready a Grace as if she had never seen a Bush nor a\ngrass Plot out of Grosvenor-Square! I am sneered at by my old\nacquaintance--paragraphed--in the news Papers--She dissipates my\nFortune, and contradicts all my Humours--yet the worst of it is I doubt\nI love her or I should never bear all this. However I'll never be weak\nenough to own it.\n\n     Enter ROWLEY\n\nROWLEY. Sir Peter, your servant:--how is 't with you Sir--\n\nSIR PETER. Very bad--Master Rowley--very bad[.] I meet with nothing but\ncrosses and vexations--\n\nROWLEY. What can have happened to trouble you since yesterday?\n\nSIR PETER. A good--question to a married man--\n\nROWLEY. Nay I'm sure your Lady Sir Peter can't be the cause of your\nuneasiness.\n\nSIR PETER. Why has anybody told you she was dead[?]\n\nROWLEY. Come, come, Sir Peter, you love her, notwithstanding your\ntempers do not exactly agree.\n\nSIR PETER. But the Fault is entirely hers, Master Rowley--I am myself,\nthe sweetest temper'd man alive, and hate a teasing temper; and so I\ntell her a hundred Times a day--\n\nROWLEY. Indeed!\n\nSIR PETER. Aye and what is very extraordinary in all our disputes she\nis always in the wrong! But Lady Sneerwell, and the Set she meets at her\nHouse, encourage the perverseness of her Disposition--then to complete\nmy vexations--Maria--my Ward--whom I ought to have the Power of a Father\nover, is determined to turn Rebel too and absolutely refuses the man\nwhom I have long resolved on for her husband--meaning I suppose, to\nbestow herself on his profligate Brother.\n\nROWLEY. You know Sir Peter I have always taken the Liberty to differ\nwith you on the subject of these two young Gentlemen--I only wish you\nmay not be deceived in your opinion of the elder. For Charles, my life\non't! He will retrieve his errors yet--their worthy Father, once my\nhonour'd master, was at his years nearly as wild a spark.\n\nSIR PETER. You are wrong, Master Rowley--on their Father's Death you\nknow I acted as a kind of Guardian to them both--till their uncle Sir\nOliver's Eastern Bounty gave them an early independence. Of course no\nperson could have more opportunities of judging of their Hearts--and I\nwas never mistaken in my life. Joseph is indeed a model for the young\nmen of the Age--He is a man of Sentiment--and acts up to the Sentiments\nhe professes--but for the other[,] take my word for't [if] he had any\ngrain of Virtue by descent--he has dissipated it with the rest of his\ninheritance. Ah! my old Friend, Sir Oliver will be deeply mortified when\nhe finds how Part of his Bounty has been misapplied.\n\nROWLEY. I am sorry to find you so violent against the young man because\nthis may be the most critical Period of his Fortune. I came hither with\nnews that will surprise you.\n\nSIR PETER. What! let me hear--\n\nROWLEY. Sir Oliver is arrived and at this moment in Town.\n\nSIR PETER. How!--you astonish me--I thought you did not expect him this\nmonth!--\n\nROWLEY. I did not--but his Passage has been remarkably quick.\n\nSIR PETER. Egad I shall rejoice to see my old Friend--'Tis sixteen years\nsince we met--We have had many a Day together--but does he still enjoin\nus not to inform his Nephews of his Arrival?\n\nROWLEY. Most strictly--He means, before He makes it known to make some\ntrial of their Dispositions and we have already planned something for\nthe purpose.\n\nSIR PETER. Ah there needs no art to discover their merits--however he\nshall have his way--but pray does he know I am married!\n\nROWLEY. Yes and will soon wish you joy.\n\nSIR PETER. You may tell him 'tis too late--ah Oliver will laugh at\nme--we used to rail at matrimony together--but He has been steady to his\nText--well He must be at my house tho'--I'll instantly give orders for\nhis Reception--but Master Rowley--don't drop a word that Lady Teazle and\nI ever disagree.\n\nROWLEY. By no means.\n\nSIR PETER. For I should never be able to stand Noll's jokes; so I'd have\nhim think that we are a very happy couple.\n\nROWLEY. I understand you--but then you must be very careful not to\ndiffer while He's in the House with you.\n\nSIR PETER. Egad--and so we must--that's impossible. Ah! Master Rowley\nwhen an old Batchelor marries a young wife--He deserves--no the crime\ncarries the Punishment along with it.\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\n     END OF THE FIRST ACT\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT II  SCENE I.\n\n--SIR PETER and LADY TEAZLE\n\nSIR PETER. Lady Teazle--Lady Teazle I'll not bear it.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Sir Peter--Sir Peter you--may scold or smile, according to\nyour Humour[,] but I ought to have my own way in everything, and what's\nmore I will too--what! tho' I was educated in the country I know very\nwell that women of Fashion in London are accountable to nobody after\nthey are married.\n\nSIR PETER. Very well! ma'am very well! so a husband is to have no\ninfluence, no authority?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Authority! no, to be sure--if you wanted authority over me,\nyou should have adopted me and not married me[:] I am sure you were old\nenough.\n\nSIR PETER. Old enough--aye there it is--well--well--Lady Teazle, tho'\nmy life may be made unhappy by your Temper--I'll not be ruined by your\nextravagance--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. My extravagance! I'm sure I'm not more extravagant than a\nwoman of Fashion ought to be.\n\nSIR PETER. No no Madam, you shall throw away no more sums on such\nunmeaning Luxury--'Slife to spend as much to furnish your Dressing Room\nwith Flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a\nGreenhouse, and give a Fete Champetre at Christmas.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Lord! Sir Peter am I to blame because Flowers are dear in\ncold weather? You should find fault with the Climate, and not with me.\nFor my Part I'm sure I wish it was spring all the year round--and that\nRoses grew under one's Feet!\n\nSIR PETER. Oons! Madam--if you had been born to those Fopperies I\nshouldn't wonder at your talking thus;--but you forget what your\nsituation was when I married you--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. No, no, I don't--'twas a very disagreeable one or I should\nnever nave married you.\n\nSIR PETER. Yes, yes, madam, you were then in somewhat a humbler\nStyle--the daughter of a plain country Squire. Recollect Lady Teazle\nwhen I saw you first--sitting at your tambour in a pretty figured linen\ngown--with a Bunch of Keys at your side, and your apartment hung round\nwith Fruits in worsted, of your own working--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. O horrible!--horrible!--don't put me in mind of it!\n\nSIR PETER. Yes, yes Madam and your daily occupation to inspect\nthe Dairy, superintend the Poultry, make extracts from the Family\nReceipt-book, and comb your aunt Deborah's Lap Dog.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Abominable!\n\nSIR PETER. Yes Madam--and what were your evening amusements? to draw\nPatterns for Ruffles, which you hadn't the materials to make--play Pope\nJoan with the Curate--to read a sermon to your Aunt--or be stuck down to\nan old Spinet to strum your father to sleep after a Fox Chase.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Scandalous--Sir Peter not a word of it true--\n\nSIR PETER. Yes, Madam--These were the recreations I took you from--and\nnow--no one more extravagantly in the Fashion--Every Fopery adopted--a\nhead-dress to o'er top Lady Pagoda with feathers pendant horizontal and\nperpendicular--you forget[,] Lady Teazle--when a little wired gauze with\na few Beads made you a fly Cap not much bigger than a blew-bottle, and\nyour Hair was comb'd smooth over a Roll--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Shocking! horrible Roll!!\n\nSIR PETER. But now--you must have your coach--Vis-a-vis, and three\npowder'd Footmen before your Chair--and in the summer a pair of white\ncobs to draw you to Kensington Gardens--no recollection when y ou were\ncontent to ride double, behind the Butler, on a docked Coach-Horse?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Horrid!--I swear I never did.\n\nSIR PETER. This, madam, was your situation--and what have I not done\nfor you? I have made you woman of Fashion of Fortune of Rank--in short I\nhave made you my wife.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Well then and there is but one thing more you can make me\nto add to the obligation.\n\nSIR PETER. What's that pray?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Your widow.--\n\nSIR PETER. Thank you Madam--but don't flatter yourself for though your\nill-conduct may disturb my Peace it shall never break my Heart I promise\nyou--however I am equally obliged to you for the Hint.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Then why will you endeavour to make yourself so\ndisagreeable to me--and thwart me in every little elegant expense.\n\nSIR PETER. 'Slife--Madam I pray, had you any of these elegant expenses\nwhen you married me?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Lud Sir Peter would you have me be out of the Fashion?\n\nSIR PETER. The Fashion indeed!--what had you to do with the Fashion\nbefore you married me?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. For my Part--I should think you would like to have your\nwife thought a woman of Taste--\n\nSIR PETER. Aye there again--Taste! Zounds Madam you had no Taste when\nyou married me--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. That's very true indeed Sir Peter! after having married you\nI should never pretend to Taste again I allow.\n\nSIR PETER. So--so then--Madam--if these are your Sentiments pray how\ncame I to be honour'd with your Hand?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Shall I tell you the Truth?\n\nSIR PETER. If it's not too great a Favour.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Why the Fact is I was tired of all those agreeable\nRecreations which you have so good naturally [naturedly] Described--and\nhaving a Spirit to spend and enjoy a Fortune--I determined to marry the\nfirst rich man that would have me.\n\nSIR PETER. A very honest confession--truly--but pray madam was there no\none else you might have tried to ensnare but me.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. O lud--I drew my net at several but you were the only one I\ncould catch.\n\nSIR PETER. This is plain dealing indeed--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. But now Sir Peter if we have finish'd our daily Jangle I\npresume I may go to my engagement at Lady Sneerwell's?\n\nSIR PETER. Aye--there's another Precious circumstance--a charming set of\nacquaintance--you have made there!\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Nay Sir Peter they are People of Rank and Fortune--and\nremarkably tenacious of reputation.\n\nSIR PETER. Yes egad they are tenacious of Reputation with a vengeance,\nfor they don't chuse anybody should have a Character but themselves!\nSuch a crew! Ah! many a wretch has rid on hurdles who has done less\nmischief than these utterers of forged Tales, coiners of Scandal, and\nclippers of Reputation.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. What would you restrain the freedom of speech?\n\nSIR PETER. Aye they have made you just as bad [as] any one of the\nSociety.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Why--I believe I do bear a Part with a tolerable Grace--But\nI vow I bear no malice against the People I abuse, when I say an\nill-natured thing, 'tis out of pure Good Humour--and I take it for\ngranted they deal exactly in the same manner with me, but Sir Peter you\nknow you promised to come to Lady Sneerwell's too.\n\nSIR PETER. Well well I'll call in, just to look after my own character.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Then, indeed, you must make Haste after me, or you'll be\ntoo late--so good bye to ye.\n\nSIR PETER. So--I have gain'd much by my intended expostulation--yet\nwith what a charming air she contradicts every thing I say--and how\npleasingly she shows her contempt of my authority--Well tho' I can't\nmake her love me, there is certainly a great satisfaction in quarrelling\nwith her; and I think she never appears to such advantage as when she is\ndoing everything in her Power to plague me.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\n--At LADY SNEERWELL'S\n\n     LADY SNEERWELL, MRS. CANDOUR, CRABTREE, SIR BENJAMIN BACKBITE,\n     and SURFACE\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Nay, positively, we will hear it.\n\nSURFACE. Yes--yes the Epigram by all means.\n\nSiR BENJAMIN. O plague on't unkle--'tis mere nonsense--\n\nCRABTREE. No no; 'fore gad very clever for an extempore!\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. But ladies you should be acquainted with the\ncircumstances. You must know that one day last week as Lady Betty\nCurricle was taking the Dust in High Park, in a sort of duodecimo\nPhaeton--she desired me to write some verses on her Ponies--upon which I\ntook out my Pocket-Book--and in one moment produced--the following:--\n\n   'Sure never were seen two such beautiful Ponies;\n   Other Horses are Clowns--and these macaronies,\n   Nay to give 'em this Title, I'm sure isn't wrong,\n   Their Legs are so slim--and their Tails are so long.\n\nCRABTREE. There Ladies--done in the smack of a whip and on Horseback\ntoo.\n\nSURFACE. A very Phoebus, mounted--indeed Sir Benjamin.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Oh dear Sir--Trifles--Trifles.\n\n     Enter LADY TEAZLE and MARIA\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. I must have a Copy--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Lady Teazle--I hope we shall see Sir Peter?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. I believe He'll wait on your Ladyship presently.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Maria my love you look grave. Come, you sit down to\nPiquet with Mr. Surface.\n\nMARIA. I take very little Pleasure in cards--however, I'll do as you\nPlease.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. I am surprised Mr. Surface should sit down her--I thought\nHe would have embraced this opportunity of speaking to me before Sir\nPeter came--[Aside.]\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Now, I'll die but you are so scandalous I'll forswear your\nsociety.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. What's the matter, Mrs. Candour?\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. They'll not allow our friend Miss Vermillion to be\nhandsome.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Oh, surely she is a pretty woman. . . .\n\n[CRABTREE.] I am very glad you think so ma'am.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. She has a charming fresh Colour.\n\nCRABTREE. Yes when it is fresh put on--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. O fie! I'll swear her colour is natural--I have seen it\ncome and go--\n\nCRABTREE. I dare swear you have, ma'am: it goes of a Night, and comes\nagain in the morning.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. True, uncle, it not only comes and goes but what's more\negad her maid can fetch and carry it--\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Ha! ha! ha! how I hate to hear you talk so! But surely,\nnow, her Sister, is or was very handsome.\n\nCRABTREE. Who? Mrs. Stucco? O lud! she's six-and-fifty if she's an hour!\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Now positively you wrong her[;] fifty-two, or fifty-three\nis the utmost--and I don't think she looks more.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Ah! there's no judging by her looks, unless one was to see\nher Face.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Well--well--if she does take some pains to repair the\nravages of Time--you must allow she effects it with great ingenuity--and\nsurely that's better than the careless manner in which the widow Ocre\nchaulks her wrinkles.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Nay now--you are severe upon the widow--come--come, it\nisn't that she paints so ill--but when she has finished her Face she\njoins it on so badly to her Neck, that she looks like a mended Statue,\nin which the Connoisseur sees at once that the Head's modern tho' the\nTrunk's antique----\n\nCRABTREE. Ha! ha! ha! well said, Nephew!\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Ha! ha! ha! Well, you make me laugh but I vow I hate you\nfor it--what do you think of Miss Simper?\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Why, she has very pretty Teeth.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Yes and on that account, when she is neither speaking nor\nlaughing (which very seldom happens)--she never absolutely shuts her\nmouth, but leaves it always on a-Jar, as it were----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. How can you be so ill-natured!\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Nay, I allow even that's better than the Pains Mrs. Prim\ntakes to conceal her losses in Front--she draws her mouth till it\nresembles the aperture of a Poor's-Box, and all her words appear to\nslide out edgewise.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Very well Lady Teazle I see you can be a little severe.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. In defence of a Friend it is but justice, but here comes\nSir Peter to spoil our Pleasantry.\n\n     Enter SIR PETER\n\nSIR PETER. Ladies, your obedient--Mercy on me--here is the whole set! a\ncharacter's dead at every word, I suppose.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. I am rejoiced you are come, Sir Peter--they have been so\ncensorious and Lady Teazle as bad as any one.\n\nSIR PETER. That must be very distressing to you, Mrs. Candour I dare\nswear.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. O they will allow good Qualities to nobody--not even good\nnature to our Friend Mrs. Pursy.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. What, the fat dowager who was at Mrs. Codrille's\n[Quadrille's] last Night?\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Nay--her bulk is her misfortune and when she takes such\nPains to get rid of it you ought not to reflect on her.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. 'Tis very true, indeed.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Yes, I know she almost lives on acids and small whey--laces\nherself by pulleys and often in the hottest noon of summer you may\nsee her on a little squat Pony, with her hair plaited up behind like a\nDrummer's and puffing round the Ring on a full trot.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. I thank you Lady Teazle for defending her.\n\nSIR PETER. Yes, a good Defence, truly!\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. But for Sir Benjamin, He is as censorious as Miss Sallow.\n\nCRABTREE. Yes and she is a curious Being to pretend to be censorious--an\nawkward Gawky, without any one good Point under Heaven!\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Positively you shall not be so very severe. Miss\nSallow is a Relation of mine by marriage, and, as for her Person great\nallowance is to be made--for, let me tell you a woman labours under many\ndisadvantages who tries to pass for a girl at six-and-thirty.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Tho', surely she is handsome still--and for the weakness\nin her eyes considering how much she reads by candle-light it is not to\nbe wonder'd at.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. True and then as to her manner--upon my word I think\nit is particularly graceful considering she never had the least\nEducation[:] for you know her Mother was a Welch milliner, and her\nFather a sugar-Baker at Bristow.--\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Ah! you are both of you too good-natured!\n\nSIR PETER. Yes, damned good-natured! Her own relation! mercy on me!\n[Aside.]\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. For my Part I own I cannot bear to hear a friend\nill-spoken of?\n\nSIR PETER. No, to be sure!\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Ah you are of a moral turn Mrs. Candour and can sit for an\nhour to hear Lady Stucco talk sentiments.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Nay I vow Lady Stucco is very well with the Dessert\nafter Dinner for she's just like the Spanish Fruit one cracks for\nmottoes--made up of Paint and Proverb.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Well, I never will join in ridiculing a Friend--and so I\nconstantly tell my cousin Ogle--and you all know what pretensions she\nhas to be critical in Beauty.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. O to be sure she has herself the oddest countenance that\never was seen--'tis a collection of Features from all the different\nCountries of the globe.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. So she has indeed--an Irish Front----\n\nCRABTREE. Caledonian Locks----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Dutch Nose----\n\nCRABTREE. Austrian Lips----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Complexion of a Spaniard----\n\nCRABTREE. And Teeth a la Chinoise----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. In short, her Face resembles a table d'hote at Spa--where\nno two guests are of a nation----\n\nCRABTREE. Or a Congress at the close of a general War--wherein all the\nmembers even to her eyes appear to have a different interest and her\nNose and Chin are the only Parties likely to join issue.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Ha! ha! ha!\n\nSIR PETER. Mercy on my Life[!] a Person they dine with twice a week!\n[Aside.]\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Go--go--you are a couple of provoking Toads.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Nay but I vow you shall not carry the Laugh off so--for\ngive me leave to say, that Mrs. Ogle----\n\nSIR PETER. Madam--madam--I beg your Pardon--there's no stopping these\ngood Gentlemen's Tongues--but when I tell you Mrs. Candour that the Lady\nthey are abusing is a particular Friend of mine, I hope you'll not take\nher Part.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Ha! ha! ha! well said, Sir Peter--but you are a cruel\ncreature--too Phlegmatic yourself for a jest and too peevish to allow\nwit in others.\n\nSIR PETER. Ah Madam true wit is more nearly allow'd [allied?] to good\nNature than your Ladyship is aware of.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. True Sir Peter--I believe they are so near akin that\nthey can never be united.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. O rather Madam suppose them man and wife because one\nseldom sees them together.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. But Sir Peter is such an Enemy to Scandal I believe He\nwould have it put down by Parliament.\n\nSIR PETER. 'Fore heaven! Madam, if they were to consider the Sporting\nwith Reputation of as much importance as poaching on manors--and pass\nan Act for the Preservation of Fame--there are many would thank them for\nthe Bill.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. O Lud! Sir Peter would you deprive us of our\nPrivileges--\n\nSIR PETER. Aye Madam--and then no person should be permitted to\nkill characters or run down reputations, but qualified old Maids and\ndisappointed Widows.--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Go, you monster--\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. But sure you would not be quite so severe on those who\nonly report what they hear?\n\nSIR PETER. Yes Madam, I would have Law Merchant for that too--and in all\ncases of slander currency, whenever the Drawer of the Lie was not to\nbe found, the injured Party should have a right to come on any of the\nindorsers.\n\nCRABTREE. Well for my Part I believe there never was a Scandalous Tale\nwithout some foundation.<3>\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Come Ladies shall we sit down to Cards in the next Room?\n\n     Enter SERVANT, whispers SIR PETER\n\nSIR PETER. I'll be with them directly.--\n\n     [Exit SERVANT.]\nI'll get away unperceived.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Sir Peter you are not leaving us?\n\nSIR PETER. Your Ladyship must excuse me--I'm called away by particular\nBusiness--but I leave my Character behind me--\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Well certainly Lady Teazle that lord of yours is a\nstrange being--I could tell you some stories of him would make you laugh\nheartily if He wern't your Husband.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. O pray don't mind that--come do let's hear 'em.\n\n     [join the rest of the Company going into the Next Room.]\n\nSURFACE. Maria I see you have no satisfaction in this society.\n\nMARIA. How is it possible I should? If to raise malicious smiles at the\ninfirmities or misfortunes of those who have never injured us be\nthe province of wit or Humour, Heaven grant me a double Portion of\nDullness--\n\nSURFACE. Yet they appear more ill-natured than they are--they have no\nmalice at heart--\n\nMARIA. Then is their conduct still more contemptible[;] for in my\nopinion--nothing could excuse the intemperance of their tongues but a\nnatural and ungovernable bitterness of Mind.\n\nSURFACE. Undoubtedly Madam--and it has always been a sentiment of\nmine--that to propagate a malicious Truth wantonly--is more despicable\nthan to falsify from Revenge, but can you Maria feel thus [f]or others\nand be unkind to me alone--nay is hope to be denied the tenderest\nPassion.--\n\nMARIA. Why will you distress me by renewing this subject--\n\nSURFACE. Ah! Maria! you would not treat me thus and oppose your\nguardian's Sir Peter's wishes--but that I see that my Profligate Brother\nis still a favour'd Rival.\n\nMARIA. Ungenerously urged--but whatever my sentiments of that\nunfortunate young man are, be assured I shall not feel more bound to\ngive him up because his Distresses have sunk him so low as to deprive\nhim of the regard even of a Brother.\n\nSURFACE. Nay but Maria do not leave me with a Frown--by all that's\nhonest, I swear----Gad's Life here's Lady Teazle--you must not--no you\nshall--for tho' I have the greatest Regard for Lady Teazle----\n\nMARIA. Lady Teazle!\n\nSURFACE. Yet were Sir Peter to suspect----\n\n     [Enter LADY TEAZLE, and comes forward]\n\nLADY TEAZLE. What's this, Pray--do you take her for me!--Child you are\nwanted in the next Room.--What's all this, pray--\n\nSURFACE. O the most unlucky circumstance in Nature. Maria has somehow\nsuspected the tender concern I have for your happiness, and threaten'd\nto acquaint Sir Peter with her suspicions--and I was just endeavouring\nto reason with her when you came.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Indeed but you seem'd to adopt--a very tender mode of\nreasoning--do you usually argue on your knees?\n\nSURFACE. O she's a Child--and I thought a little Bombast----but Lady\nTeazle when are you to give me your judgment on my Library as you\npromised----\n\nLADY TEAZLE. No--no I begin to think it would be imprudent--and you know\nI admit you as a Lover no farther than Fashion requires.\n\nSURFACE. True--a mere Platonic Cicisbeo, what every London wife is\nentitled to.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Certainly one must not be out of the Fashion--however, I\nhave so much of my country Prejudices left--that--though Sir Peter's ill\nhumour may vex me ever so, it never shall provoke me to----\n\nSURFACE. The only revenge in your Power--well I applaud your moderation.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Go--you are an insinuating Hypocrite--but we shall be\nmiss'd--let us join the company.\n\nSURFACE. True, but we had best not return together.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Well don't stay--for Maria shan't come to hear any more of\nyour Reasoning, I promise you--\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSURFACE. A curious Dilemma truly my Politics have run me into. I wanted\nat first only to ingratiate myself with Lady Teazle that she might not\nbe my enemy with Maria--and I have I don't know how--become her\nserious Lover, so that I stand a chance of Committing a Crime I never\nmeditated--and probably of losing Maria by the Pursuit!--Sincerely I\nbegin to wish I had never made such a Point of gaining so very good a\ncharacter, for it has led me into so many curst Rogueries that I doubt I\nshall be exposed at last.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\n\n--At SIR PETER'S\n\n     --ROWLEY and SIR OLIVER--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Ha! ha! ha! and so my old Friend is married, hey?--a young\nwife out of the country!--ha! ha! that he should have stood Bluff to old\nBachelor so long and sink into a Husband at last!\n\nROWLEY. But you must not rally him on the subject Sir Oliver--'tis a\ntender Point I assure you though He has been married only seven months.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Ah then he has been just half a year on the stool\nof Repentance--Poor Peter! But you say he has entirely given up\nCharles--never sees him, hey?\n\nROWLEY. His Prejudice against him is astonishing--and I am sure greatly\nincreased by a jealousy of him with Lady Teazle--which he has\nbeen industriously led into by a scandalous Society--in the\nneighbourhood--who have contributed not a little to Charles's ill name.\nWhereas the truth is[,] I believe[,] if the lady is partial to either of\nthem his Brother is the Favourite.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Aye--I know--there are a set of malicious prating prudent\nGossips both male and Female, who murder characters to kill time, and\nwill rob a young Fellow of his good name before He has years to know the\nvalue of it. . . but I am not to be prejudiced against my nephew by\nsuch I promise you! No! no--if Charles has done nothing false or mean, I\nshall compound for his extravagance.\n\nROWLEY. Then my life on't, you will reclaim him. Ah, Sir, it gives me\nnew vigour to find that your heart is not turned against him--and that\nthe son of my good old master has one friend however left--\n\nSIR OLIVER. What! shall I forget Master Rowley--when I was at his\nhouse myself--egad my Brother and I were neither of us very prudent\nyouths--and yet I believe you have not seen many better men than your\nold master was[.]\n\nROWLEY. 'Tis this Reflection gives me assurance that Charles may yet be\na credit to his Family--but here comes Sir Peter----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Egad so He does--mercy on me--He's greatly altered--and\nseems to have a settled married look--one may read Husband in his Face\nat this Distance.--\n\n     Enter SIR PETER\n\nSIR PETER. Ha! Sir Oliver--my old Friend--welcome to England--a thousand\nTimes!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Thank you--thank you--Sir Peter--and Efaith I am as glad to\nfind you well[,] believe me--\n\nSIR PETER. Ah! 'tis a long time since we met--sixteen year I doubt Sir\nOliver--and many a cross accident in the Time--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Aye I have had my share--but, what[!] I find you are\nmarried--hey my old Boy--well--well it can't be help'd--and so I wish\nyou joy with all my heart--\n\nSIR PETER. Thank you--thanks Sir Oliver.--Yes, I have entered into the\nhappy state but we'll not talk of that now.\n\nSIR OLIVER. True true Sir Peter old Friends shouldn't begin on\ngrievances at first meeting. No, no--\n\nROWLEY. Take care pray Sir----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well--so one of my nephews I find is a wild Rogue--hey?\n\nSIR PETER. Wild!--oh! my old Friend--I grieve for your disappointment\nthere--He's a lost young man indeed--however his Brother will make you\namends; Joseph is indeed what a youth should be--everybody in the world\nspeaks well of him--\n\nSIR OLIVER. I am sorry to hear it--he has too good a character to be an\nhonest Fellow. Everybody speaks well of him! Psha! then He has bow'd as\nlow to Knaves and Fools as to the honest dignity of Virtue.\n\nSIR PETER. What Sir Oliver do you blame him for not making Enemies?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes--if He has merit enough to deserve them.\n\nSIR PETER. Well--well--you'll be convinced when you know him--'tis\nedification to hear him converse--he professes the noblest Sentiments.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Ah plague on his Sentiments--if he salutes me with a scrap\nsentence of morality in his mouth I shall be sick directly--but however\ndon't mistake me Sir Peter I don't mean to defend Charles's Errors--but\nbefore I form my judgment of either of them, I intend to make a trial of\ntheir Hearts--and my Friend Rowley and I have planned something for the\nPurpose.\n\nROWLEY. And Sir Peter shall own he has been for once mistaken.\n\nSIR PETER. My life on Joseph's Honour----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well come give us a bottle of good wine--and we'll drink the\nLads' Healths and tell you our scheme.\n\nSIR PETER. Alons [Allons], then----\n\nSIR OLIVER. But don't Sir Peter be so severe against your old Friend's\nson.\n\nSIR PETER. 'Tis his Vices and Follies have made me his Enemy.--\n\nROWLEY. Come--come--Sir Peter consider how early He was left to his own\nguidance.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Odds my Life--I am not sorry that He has run out of the\ncourse a little--for my Part, I hate to see dry Prudence clinging to\nthe green juices of youth--'tis like ivy round a sapling and spoils the\ngrowth of the Tree.\n\n     END OF THE SECOND ACT\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT III SCENE I.\n\n--At SIR PETER'S\n\n     SIR PETER, SIR OLIVER, and ROWLEY\n\nSIR PETER. Well, then, we will see the Fellows first and have our wine\nafterwards.--but how is this, Master Rowley--I don't see the Jet of your\nscheme.\n\nROWLEY. Why Sir--this Mr. Stanley whom I was speaking of, is nearly\nrelated to them by their mother. He was once a merchant in Dublin--but\nhas been ruined by a series of undeserved misfortunes--and now lately\ncoming over to solicit the assistance of his friends here--has been\nflyng [flung] into prison by some of his Creditors--where he is now with\ntwo helpless Boys.--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Aye and a worthy Fellow too I remember him. But what is this\nto lead to--?\n\nROWLEY. You shall hear--He has applied by letter both to Mr. Surface and\nCharles--from the former he has received nothing but evasive promises\nof future service, while Charles has done all that his extravagance has\nleft him power to do--and He is at this time endeavouring to raise a sum\nof money--part of which, in the midst of his own distresses, I know He\nintends for the service of poor Stanley.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Ah! he is my Brother's Son.\n\nSIR PETER. Well, but how is Sir Oliver personally to----\n\nROWLEY. Why Sir I will inform Charles and his Brother that Stanley has\nobtain'd permission to apply in person to his Friends--and as they\nhave neither of them ever seen him[,] let Sir Oliver assume his\ncharacter--and he will have a fair opportunity of judging at least of\nthe Benevolence of their Dispositions.\n\nSIR PETER. Pshaw! this will prove nothing--I make no doubt Charles is\nCoxcomb and thoughtless enough to give money to poor relations if he had\nit--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Then He shall never want it--. I have brought a few Rupees\nhome with me Sir Peter--and I only want to be sure of bestowing them\nrightly.--\n\nROWLEY. Then Sir believe me you will find in the youngest Brother one\nwho in the midst of Folly and dissipation--has still, as our immortal\nBard expresses it,--\n\n   \"a Tear for Pity and a Hand open as the day for melting Charity.\"\n\nSIR PETER. Pish! What signifies his having an open Hand or Purse\neither when He has nothing left to give!--but if you talk of humane\nSentiments--Joseph is the man--Well, well, make the trial, if you\nplease. But where is the fellow whom you brought for Sir Oliver to\nexamine, relative to Charles's affairs?\n\nROWLEY. Below waiting his commands, and no one can give him better\nintelligence--This, Sir Oliver, is a friendly Jew, who to do him\njustice, has done everything in his power to bring your nephew to a\nproper sense of his extravagance.\n\nSIR PETER. Pray let us have him in.\n\nROWLEY. Desire Mr. Moses to walk upstairs.\n\n     [Calls to SERVANT.]\n\nSIR PETER. But Pray why should you suppose he will speak the truth?\n\nROWLEY. Oh, I have convinced him that he has no chance of recovering\ncertain Sums advanced to Charles but through the bounty of Sir Oliver,\nwho He knows is arrived; so that you may depend on his Fidelity to his\ninterest. I have also another evidence in my Power, one Snake, whom I\nshall shortly produce to remove some of YOUR Prejudices[,] Sir Peter[,]\nrelative to Charles and Lady Teazle.\n\nSIR PETER. I have heard too much on that subject.\n\nROWLEY. Here comes the honest Israelite.\n\n     Enter MOSES\n--This is Sir Oliver.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Sir--I understand you have lately had great dealings with my\nNephew Charles.\n\nMOSES. Yes Sir Oliver--I have done all I could for him, but He was\nruined before He came to me for Assistance.\n\nSIR OLIVER. That was unlucky truly--for you have had no opportunity of\nshowing your Talents.\n\nMOSES. None at all--I hadn't the Pleasure of knowing his Distresses till\nhe was some thousands worse than nothing, till it was impossible to add\nto them.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Unfortunate indeed! but I suppose you have done all in your\nPower for him honest Moses?\n\nMOSES. Yes he knows that--This very evening I was to have brought him a\ngentleman from the city who does not know him and will I believe advance\nsome money.\n\nSIR PETER. What[!] one Charles has never had money from before?\n\nMOSES. Yes[--]Mr. Premium, of Crutched Friars.\n\nSIR PETER. Egad, Sir Oliver a Thought strikes me!--Charles you say\ndoes'nt know Mr. Premium?\n\nMOSES. Not at all.\n\nSIR PETER. Now then Sir Oliver you may have a better opportunity of\nsatisfying yourself than by an old romancing tale of a poor Relation--go\nwith my friend Moses and represent Mr. Premium and then I'll answer\nfor't you'll see your Nephew in all his glory.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Egad I like this Idea better than the other, and I may visit\nJoseph afterwards as old Stanley.\n\nSIR PETER. True so you may.\n\nROWLEY. Well this is taking Charles rather at a disadvantage, to be\nsure--however Moses--you understand Sir Peter and will be faithful----\n\nMOSES. You may depend upon me--and this is near the Time I was to have\ngone.\n\nSIR OLIVER. I'll accompany you as soon as you please, Moses----but\nhold--I have forgot one thing--how the plague shall I be able to pass\nfor a Jew?\n\nMOSES. There's no need--the Principal is Christian.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Is He--I'm very sorry to hear it--but then again--an't I\nrather too smartly dressed to look like a money-Lender?\n\nSIR PETER. Not at all; 'twould not be out of character, if you went in\nyour own carriage--would it, Moses!\n\nMOSES. Not in the least.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well--but--how must I talk[?] there's certainly some cant of\nusury and mode of treating that I ought to know.\n\nSIR PETER. Oh, there's not much to learn--the great point as I take it\nis to be exorbitant enough in your Demands hey Moses?\n\nMOSES. Yes that's very great Point.\n\nSIR OLIVER. I'll answer for't I'll not be wanting in that--I'll ask him\neight or ten per cent. on the loan--at least.\n\nMOSES. You'll be found out directly--if you ask him no more than that,\nyou'll be discovered immediately.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Hey!--what the Plague!--how much then?\n\nMOSES. That depends upon the Circumstances--if he appears not very\nanxious for the supply, you should require only forty or fifty per\ncent.--but if you find him in great Distress, and want the monies very\nbad--you may ask double.\n\nSIR PETER. A good--[h]onest Trade you're learning, Sir Oliver--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Truly, I think so--and not unprofitable--\n\nMOSES. Then you know--you haven't the monies yourself, but are forced to\nborrow them for him of a Friend.\n\nSIR OLIVER. O I borrow it of a Friend do I?\n\nMOSES. And your friend is an unconscion'd Dog--but you can't help it.\n\nSIR OLIVER. My Friend's an unconscionable Dog, is he?\n\nMOSES. Yes--and He himself hasn't the monies by him--but is forced to\nsell stock--at a great loss--\n\nSIR OLIVER. He is forced to sell stock is he--at a great loss, is\nhe--well that's very kind of him--\n\nSIR PETER. Efaith, Sir Oliver--Mr. Premium I mean--you'll soon be master\nof the Trade--but, Moses would have him inquire if the borrower is a\nminor--\n\nMOSES. O yes--\n\nSIR PETER. And in that case his Conscience will direct him--\n\nMOSES. To have the Bond in another Name to be sure.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well--well I shall be perfect--\n\nSIR PETER. But hearkee wouldn't you have him also run out a little\nagainst the annuity Bill--that would be in character I should think--\n\nMOSES. Very much--\n\nROWLEY. And lament that a young man now must be at years of discretion\nbefore He is suffered to ruin himself!\n\nMOSES. Aye, great Pity!\n\nSIR PETER. And abuse the Public for allowing merit to an act whose only\nobject is to snatch misfortune and imprudence from the rapacious Relief\nof usury! and give the minor a chance of inheriting his estate without\nbeing undone by coming into Possession.\n\nSIR OLIVER. So--so--Moses shall give me further instructions as we go\ntogether.\n\nSIR PETER. You will not have much time[,] for your Nephew lives hard\nbye--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Oh Never--fear[:] my Tutor appears so able that tho' Charles\nlived in the next street it must be my own Fault if I am not a compleat\nRogue before I turn the Corner--\n\n     [Exeunt SIR OLIVER and MOSES.]\n\nSIR PETER. So--now I think Sir Oliver will be convinced--you shan't\nfollow them Rowley. You are partial and would have prepared Charles for\n'tother plot.\n\nROWLEY. No upon my word Sir Peter--\n\nSIR PETER. Well, go bring me this Snake, and I'll hear what he has to\nsay presently. I see Maria, and want to speak with her.--\n\n     [Exit ROWLEY.]\nI should be glad to be convinced my suspicions of Lady Teazle and\nCharles were unjust--I have never yet opened my mind on this subject to\nmy Friend Joseph. . . . I am determined. I will do it--He will give me\nhis opinion sincerely.--\n\n     Enter MARIA\n\nSo Child--has Mr. Surface returned with you--\n\nMARIA. No Sir--He was engaged.\n\nSIR PETER. Well--Maria--do you not reflect[,] the more you converse with\nthat amiable young man[,] what return his Partiality for you deserves?\n\nMARIA. Indeed Sir Peter--your frequent importunity on this subject\ndistresses me extremely--you compell me to Declare that I know no man\nwho has ever paid me a particular Attention whom I would not prefer to\nMr. Surface--\n\nSIR PETER. Soh! Here's Perverseness--no--no--Maria, 'tis Charles only\nwhom you would prefer--'tis evident his Vices and Follies have won your\nHeart.\n\nMARIA. This is unkind Sir--You know I have obey'd you in neither seeing\nnor corresponding with him--I have heard enough to convince me that\nHe is unworthy my regard--Yet I cannot think it culpable--if while my\nunderstanding severely condemns his Vices, my Heart suggests some Pity\nfor his Distresses.\n\nSIR PETER. Well well pity him as much as you please, but give your Heart\nand Hand to a worthier object.\n\nMARIA. Never to his Brother!\n\nSIR PETER. Go--perverse and obstinate! but take care, Madam--you have\nnever yet known what the authority of a Guardian is--don't compel me to\ninform you of it.--\n\nMARIA. I can only say, you shall not have just Reason--'tis true, by\nmy Father's will I am for a short period bound to regard you as his\nsubstitute, but I must cease to think you so when you would compel me to\nbe miserable.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSIR PETER. Was ever man so crossed as I am[?] everything conspiring to\nfret me! I had not been involved in matrimony a fortnight[,] before\nher Father--a hale and hearty man, died on purpose, I believe--for the\nPleasure of plaguing me with the care of his Daughter . . . but here\ncomes my Helpmate!--She appears in great good humour----how happy I\nshould be if I could teaze her into loving me tho' but a little----\n\n     Enter LADY TEAZLE\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Lud! Sir Peter I hope you haven't been quarrelling with\nMaria? It isn't using me well to be ill humour'd when I am not bye--!\n\nSIR PETER. Ah! Lady Teazle you might have the Power to make me good\nhumour'd at all times--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. I am sure--I wish I had--for I want you to be in a charming\nsweet temper at this moment--do be good humour'd now--and let me have\ntwo hundred Pounds will you?\n\nSIR PETER. Two hundred Pounds! what an't I to be in a good humour\nwithout paying for it--but speak to me thus--and Efaith there's nothing\nI could refuse you. You shall have it--but seal me a bond for the\nrepayment.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. O no--there--my Note of Hand will do as well--\n\nSIR PETER. And you shall no longer reproach me with not giving you an\nindependent settlement--I shall shortly surprise you--and you'll not\ncall me ungenerous--but shall we always live thus--hey?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. If you--please--I'm sure I don't care how soon we leave off\nquarrelling provided you'll own you were tired first--\n\nSIR PETER. Well--then let our future contest be who shall be most\nobliging.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. I assure you Sir Peter Good Nature becomes you--you look\nnow as you did before we were married--when you used to walk with me\nunder the Elms, and tell me stories of what a Gallant you were in your\nyouth--and chuck me under the chin you would--and ask me if I thought I\ncould love an old Fellow who would deny me nothing--didn't you?\n\nSIR PETER. Yes--yes--and you were as kind and attentive----\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Aye so I was--and would always take your Part, when my\nacquaintance used to abuse you and turn you into ridicule--\n\nSIR PETER. Indeed!\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Aye--and when my cousin Sophy has called you a stiff\npeevish old batchelor and laugh'd at me for thinking of marrying one who\nmight be my Father--I have always defended you--and said I didn't think\nyou so ugly by any means, and that you'd make a very good sort of a\nhusband--\n\nSIR PETER. And you prophesied right--and we shall certainly now be the\nhappiest couple----\n\nLADY TEAZLE. And never differ again.\n\nSIR PETER. No never--tho' at the same time indeed--my dear Lady\nTeazle--you must watch your Temper very narrowly--for in all our little\nQuarrels--my dear--if you recollect my Love you always began first--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. I beg your Pardon--my dear Sir Peter--indeed--you always\ngave the provocation.\n\nSIR PETER. Now--see, my Love take care--contradicting isn't the way to\nkeep Friends.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Then don't you begin it my Love!\n\nSIR PETER. There now--you are going on--you don't perceive[,] my Life,\nthat you are just doing the very thing my Love which you know always\nmakes me angry.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Nay--you know if you will be angry without any reason--my\nDear----\n\nSIR PETER. There now you want to quarrel again.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. No--I am sure I don't--but if you will be so peevish----\n\nSIR PETER. There--now who begins first?\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Why you to be sure--I said nothing[--]but there's no\nbearing your Temper.\n\nSIR PETER. No--no--my dear--the fault's in your own temper.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Aye you are just what my Cousin Sophy said you would be--\n\nSIR PETER. Your Cousin Sophy--is a forward impertinent Gipsey--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Go you great Bear--how dare you abuse my Relations--\n\nSIR PETER. Now may all the Plagues of marriage be doubled on me, if ever\nI try to be Friends with you any more----\n\nLADY TEAZLE. So much the Better.\n\nSIR PETER. No--no Madam 'tis evident you never cared a pin for me--I was\na madman to marry you--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. And I am sure I was a Fooll to marry you--an old dangling\nBatchelor, who was single of [at] fifty--only because He never could\nmeet with any one who would have him.\n\nSIR PETER. Aye--aye--Madam--but you were pleased enough to listen to\nme--you never had such an offer before--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. No--didn't I refuse Sir Jeremy Terrier--who everybody\nsaid would have been a better Match--for his estate is just as good as\nyours--and he has broke his Neck since we have been married!\n\nSIR PETER. I have done with you Madam! You are an\nunfeeling--ungrateful--but there's an end of everything--I believe you\ncapable of anything that's bad--Yes, Madam--I now believe the Reports\nrelative to you and Charles--Madam--yes--Madam--you and Charles are--not\nwithout grounds----\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Take--care Sir Peter--you had better not insinuate any such\nthing! I'll not be suspected without cause I promise you----\n\nSIR PETER. Very--well--Madam--very well! a separate maintenance--as soon\nas you Please. Yes Madam or a Divorce--I'll make an example of myself\nfor the Benefit of all old Batchelors--Let us separate, Madam.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Agreed--agreed--and now--my dear Sir Peter we are of a\nmind again, we may be the happiest couple--and never differ again, you\nknow--ha! ha!--Well you are going to be in a Passion I see--and I shall\nonly interrupt you--so, bye! bye! hey--young Jockey try'd and countered.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSIR PETER. Plagues and tortures! She pretends to keep her temper, can't\nI make her angry neither! O! I am the miserable fellow! But I'll not\nbear her presuming to keep her Temper--No she may break my Heart--but\nshe shan't keep her Temper.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\n--At CHARLES's House\n\n     Enter TRIP, MOSES, and SIR OLIVER\n\nTRIP. Here Master Moses--if you'll stay a moment--I'll try whether\nMr.----what's the Gentleman's Name?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Mr.----Moses--what IS my name----\n\nMOSES. Mr. Premium----\n\nTRIP. Premium--very well.\n\n     [Exit TRIP--taking snuff.]\n\nSIR OLIVER. To judge by the Servants--one wouldn't believe the master\nwas ruin'd--but what--sure this was my Brother's House----\n\nMOSES. Yes Sir Mr. Charles bought it of Mr. Joseph with the Furniture,\nPictures, &c.--just as the old Gentleman left it--Sir Peter thought it a\ngreat piece of extravagance in him.\n\nSIR OLIVER. In my mind the other's economy in selling it to him was more\nreprehensible by half.----\n\n     Enter TRIP\n\nTRIP. My Master[,] Gentlemen[,] says you must wait, he has company, and\ncan't speak with you yet.\n\nSIR OLIVER. If he knew who it was wanted to see him, perhaps he wouldn't\nhave sent such a Message.\n\nTRIP. Yes--yes--Sir--He knows you are here--I didn't forget little\nPremium--no--no----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Very well--and pray Sir what may be your Name?\n\nTRIP. Trip Sir--my Name is Trip, at your Service.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well then Mr. Trip--I presume your master is seldom without\ncompany----\n\nTRIP. Very seldom Sir--the world says ill-natured things of him but 'tis\nall malice--no man was ever better beloved--Sir he seldom sits down to\ndinner without a dozen particular Friends----\n\nSIR OLIVER. He's very happy indeed--you have a pleasant sort of Place\nhere I guess?\n\nTRIP. Why yes--here are three or four of us pass our time agreeably\nenough--but then our wages are sometimes a little in arrear--and not\nvery great either--but fifty Pounds a year and find our own Bags and\nBouquets----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Bags and Bouquets!--Halters and Bastinadoes! [Aside.]\n\nTRIP. But a propos Moses--have you been able to get me that little Bill\ndiscounted?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Wants to raise money too!--mercy on me! has his distresses,\nI warrant[,] like a Lord--and affects Creditors and Duns! [Aside.]\n\nMOSES. 'Twas not be done, indeed----\n\nTRIP. Good lack--you surprise me--My Friend Brush has indorsed it and\nI thought when he put his name at the Back of a Bill 'twas as good as\ncash.\n\nMOSES. No 'twouldn't do.\n\nTRIP. A small sum--but twenty Pound--harkee, Moses do you think you\ncould get it me by way of annuity?\n\nSIR OLIVER. An annuity! ha! ha! a Footman raise money by annuity--Well\ndone Luxury egad! [Aside.]\n\nMOSES. Who would you get to join with you?\n\nTRIP. You know my Lord Applice--you have seen him however----\n\nMOSES. Yes----\n\nTRIP. You must have observed what an appearance he makes--nobody dresses\nbetter, nobody throws off faster--very well this Gentleman will stand my\nsecurity.\n\nMOSES. Well--but you must insure your Place.\n\nTRIP. O with all my Heart--I'll insure my Place, and my Life too, if you\nplease.\n\nSIR OLIVER. It's more than I would your neck----\n\nMOSES. But is there nothing you could deposit?\n\nTRIP. Why nothing capital of my master's wardrobe has drop'd lately--but\nI could give you a mortgage on some of his winter Cloaths with equity\nof redemption before November or--you shall have the reversion--of the\nFrench velvet, or a post obit on the Blue and Silver--these I\nshould think Moses--with a few Pair of Point Ruffles as a collateral\nsecurity--hey, my little Fellow?\n\nMOSES. Well well--we'll talk presently--we detain the Gentlemen----\n\nSIR OLIVER. O pray don't let me interrupt Mr. Trip's Negotiation.\n\nTRIP. Harkee--I heard the Bell--I believe, Gentlemen I can now introduce\nyou--don't forget the annuity little Moses.\n\nSIR OLIVER. If the man be a shadow of his Master this is the Temple of\nDissipation indeed!\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\n\n--CHARLES, CARELESS, etc., etc.\n\n     At Table with Wine\n\nCHARLES. 'Fore Heaven, 'tis true!--there is the great Degeneracy of the\nage--many of our acquaintance have Taste--Spirit, and Politeness--but\nplague on't they won't drink----\n\nCARELESS. It is so indeed--Charles--they give into all the substantial\nLuxuries of the Table--and abstain from nothing but wine and wit--Oh,\ncertainly society suffers by it intolerably--for now instead of the\nsocial spirit of Raillery that used to mantle over a glass of bright\nBurgundy their conversation is become just like the Spa water they\ndrink which has all the Pertness and flatulence of champaine without its\nspirit or Flavour.\n\nFIRST GENTLEMAN. But what are they to do who love Play better than\nwine----\n\nCARELESS. True--there's Harry diets himself--for gaming and is now under\na hazard Regimen.\n\nCHARLES. Then He'll have the worst of it--what you wouldn't train a\nhorse for the course by keeping him from corn--For my Part egad I am\nnever so successful as when I'm a little--merry--let me throw on a\nBottle of Champaine and I never lose--at least I never feel my losses\nwhich is exactly the same thing.\n\nSECOND GENTLEMAN. Aye that may be--but it is as impossible to follow\nwine and play as to unite Love and Politics.\n\nCHARLES. Pshaw--you may do both--Caesar made Love and Laws in a\nBreath--and was liked by the Senate as well as the Ladies--but no man\ncan pretend to be a Believer in Love, who is an abjurer of wine--'tis\nthe Test by which a Lover knows his own Heart--fill a dozen Bumpers to a\ndozen Beauties, and she that floats atop is the maid that has bewitched\nyou.\n\nCARELESS. Now then Charles--be honest and give us yours----\n\nCHARLES. Why I have withheld her only in compassion to you--if I toast\nher you should give a round of her Peers, which is impossible! on earth!\n\nCARELESS. O, then we'll find some canonized Vestals or heathen Goddesses\nthat will do I warrant----\n\nCHARLES. Here then--Bumpers--you Rogues--Bumpers! Maria--Maria----\n\nFIRST GENTLEMAN. Maria who?\n\nCHARLES. Oh, damn the Surname 'tis too formal to be register'd in\nLove's calendar--but now Careless beware--beware--we must have Beauty's\nsuperlative.\n\nFIRST GENTLEMAN. Nay Never study[,] Careless--we'll stand to the\nToast--tho' your mistress should want an eye--and you know you have a\nsong will excuse you----\n\nCARELESS. Egad so I have--and I'll give him the song instead of the\nLady.----\n\n     SONG.--AND CHORUS--<4>\n\n     Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen;\n        Here's to the widow of fifty;\n     Here's to the flaunting extravagant quean,\n        And here's to the housewife that's thrifty.\n     Chorus.  Let the toast pass,--\n                  Drink to the lass,\n     I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for a glass.\n\n     Here's to the charmer whose dimples we prize;\n        Now to the maid who has none, sir;\n     Here's to the girl with a pair of blue eyes,\n        And here's to the nymph with but one, sir.\n     Chorus.  Let the toast pass, &c.\n\n     Here's to the maid with a bosom of snow:\n        Now to her that's as brown as a berry:\n     Here's to the wife with a face full of woe,\n        And now to the damsel that's merry.\n     Chorus.  Let the toast pass, &c.\n\n     For let 'em be clumsy, or let 'em be slim,\n        Young or ancient, I care not a feather;\n     So fill a pint bumper quite up to the brim,\n     So fill up your glasses, nay, fill to the brim,\n        And let us e'en toast them together.\n     Chorus.  Let the toast pass, &c.\n\n     [Enter TRIP whispers CHARLES]\n\nSECOND GENTLEMAN. Bravo Careless--Ther's Toast and Sentiment too.\n\nFIRST GENTLEMAN. E' faith there's infinite charity in that song.----\n\nCHARLES. Gentlemen, you must excuse me a little.--Careless, take the\nChair, will you?\n\nCARELESS. Nay prithee, Charles--what now--this is one of your Peerless\nBeauties I suppose--has dropped in by chance?\n\nCHARLES. No--Faith--to tell you the Truth 'tis a Jew and a Broker who\nare come by appointment.\n\nCARELESS. O dam it let's have the Jew in.\n\nFIRST GENTLEMAN. Aye and the Broker too by all means----\n\nSECOND GENTLEMAN. Yes yes the Jew and the Broker.\n\nCHARLES. Egad with all my Heart--Trip--bid the Gentlemen walk in--tho'\nthere's one of them a Stranger I can tell you----\n\nTRIP. What Sir--would you chuse Mr. Premium to come up with----\n\nFIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes--yes Mr. Premium certainly.\n\nCARELESS. To be sure--Mr. Premium--by all means Charles, let us give\nthem some generous Burgundy, and perhaps they'll grow conscientious----\n\nCHARLES. O, Hang 'em--no--wine does but draw forth a man's natural\nqualities; and to make them drink would only be to whet their Knavery.\n\n     Enter TRIP, SIR OLIVER, and MOSES\n\nCHARLES. So--honest Moses--walk in--walk in pray Mr. Premium--that's the\nGentleman's name isn't it Moses.\n\nMOSES. Yes Sir.\n\nCHARLES. Set chairs--Trim.--Sit down, Mr Premium.--Glasses Trim.--sit\ndown Moses.--Come, Mr. Premium I'll give you a sentiment--Here's Success\nto Usury--Moses fill the Gentleman a bumper.\n\nMOSES. Success to Usury!\n\nCARELESS. Right Moses--Usury is Prudence and industry and deserves to\nsucceed----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Then Here is--all the success it deserves!     [Drinks.]\n\nCHARLES. Mr. Premium you and I are but strangers yet--but I hope we\nshall be better acquainted by and bye----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes Sir hope we shall--more intimately perhaps than you'll\nwish. [Aside.<5>]\n\nCARELESS. No, no, that won't do! Mr. Premium, you have demurred at the\ntoast, and must drink it in a pint bumper.\n\nFIRST GENTLEMAN. A pint bumper, at least.\n\nMOSES. Oh, pray, sir, consider--Mr. Premium's a gentleman.\n\nCARELESS. And therefore loves good wine.\n\nSECOND GENTLEMAN. Give Moses a quart glass--this is mutiny, and a high\ncontempt for the chair.\n\nCARELESS. Here, now for't! I'll see justice done, to the last drop of my\nbottle.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Nay, pray, gentlemen--I did not expect this usage.\n\nCHARLES. No, hang it, you shan't; Mr. Premium's a stranger.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Odd! I wish I was well out of their company. [Aside.]\n\nCARELESS. Plague on 'em then! if they won't drink, we'll not sit down\nwith them. Come, Harry, the dice are in the next room.--Charles, you'll\njoin us when you have finished your business with the gentlemen?\n\nCHARLES. I will! I will!--\n\n     [Exeunt SIR HARRY BUMPER and GENTLEMEN; CARELESS following.]\nCareless.\n\nCARELESS. [Returning.] Well!\n\nCHARLES. Perhaps I may want you.\n\nCARELESS. Oh, you know I am always ready: word, note, or bond, 'tis all\nthe same to me.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nMOSES. Sir, this is Mr. Premium, a gentleman of the strictest honour\nand secrecy; and always performs what he undertakes. Mr. Premium, this\nis----\n\nCHARLES. Psha! have done. Sir, my friend Moses is a very honest fellow,\nbut a little slow at expression: he'll be an hour giving us our titles.\nMr. Premium, the plain state of the matter is this: I am an extravagant\nyoung fellow who wants to borrow money; you I take to be a prudent old\nfellow, who have got money to lend. I am blockhead enough to give fifty\nper cent. sooner than not have it! and you, I presume, are rogue enough\nto take a hundred if you can get it. Now, sir, you see we are acquainted\nat once, and may proceed to business without further ceremony.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Exceeding frank, upon my word. I see, sir, you are not a man\nof many compliments.\n\nCHARLES. Oh, no, sir! plain dealing in business I always think best.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Sir, I like you the better for it. However, You are mistaken\nin one thing; I have no money to lend, but I believe I could procure\nsome of a friend; but then he's an unconscionable dog. Isn't he, Moses?\nAnd must sell stock to accommodate you. Mustn't he, Moses!\n\nMOSES. Yes, indeed! You know I always speak the truth, and scorn to tell\na lie!\n\nCHARLES. Right. People that speak truth generally do. But these are\ntrifles, Mr. Premium. What! I know money isn't to be bought without\npaying for't!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well, but what security could you give? You have no land, I\nsuppose?\n\nCHARLES. Not a mole-hill, nor a twig, but what's in the bough pots out\nof the window!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Nor any stock, I presume?\n\nCHARLES. Nothing but live stock--and that's only a few pointers and\nponies. But pray, Mr. Premium, are you acquainted at all with any of my\nconnections?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Why, to say the truth, I am.\n\nCHARLES. Then you must know that I have a devilish rich uncle in\nthe East Indies, Sir Oliver Surface, from whom I have the greatest\nexpectations?\n\nSIR OLIVER. That you have a wealthy uncle, I have heard; but how your\nexpectations will turn out is more, I believe, than you can tell.\n\nCHARLES. Oh, no!--there can be no doubt. They tell me I'm a prodigious\nfavourite, and that he talks of leaving me everything.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Indeed! this is the first I've heard of it.\n\nCHARLES. Yes, yes, 'tis just so. Moses knows 'tis true; don't you,\nMoses?\n\nMOSES. Oh, yes! I'll swear to't.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Egad, they'll persuade me presently I'm at Bengal. [Aside.]\n\nCHARLES. Now I propose, Mr. Premium, if it's agreeable to you, a\npost-obit on Sir Oliver's life: though at the same time the old fellow\nhas been so liberal to me, that I give you my word, I should be very\nsorry to hear that anything had happened to him.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Not more than I should, I assure you. But the bond you\nmention happens to be just the worst security you could offer me--for I\nmight live to a hundred and never see the principal.\n\nCHARLES. Oh, yes, you would! the moment Sir Oliver dies, you know, you\nwould come on me for the money.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Then I believe I should be the most unwelcome dun you ever\nhad in your life.\n\nCHARLES. What! I suppose you're afraid that Sir Oliver is too good a\nlife?\n\nSIR OLIVER. No, indeed I am not; though I have heard he is as hale and\nhealthy as any man of his years in Christendom.\n\nCHARLES. There again, now, you are misinformed. No, no, the climate has\nhurt him considerably, poor uncle Oliver. Yes, yes, he breaks apace, I'm\ntold--and is so much altered lately that his nearest relations would not\nknow him.\n\nSIR OLIVER. No! Ha! ha! ha! so much altered lately that his nearest\nrelations would not know him! Ha! ha! ha! egad--ha! ha! ha!\n\nCHARLES. Ha! ha!--you're glad to hear that, little Premium?\n\nSIR OLIVER. No, no, I'm not.\n\nCHARLES. Yes, yes, you are--ha! ha! ha!--you know that mends your\nchance.\n\nSIR OLIVER. But I'm told Sir Oliver is coming over; nay, some say he is\nactually arrived.\n\nCHARLES. Psha! sure I must know better than you whether he's come or\nnot. No, no, rely on't he's at this moment at Calcutta. Isn't he, Moses?\n\nMOSES. Oh, yes, certainly.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Very true, as you say, you must know better than I, though I\nhave it from pretty good authority. Haven't I, Moses?\n\nMOSES. Yes, most undoubted!\n\nSIR OLIVER. But, Sir, as I understand you want a few hundreds\nimmediately, is there nothing you could dispose of?\n\nCHARLES. How do you mean?\n\nSIR OLIVER. For instance, now, I have heard that your father left behind\nhim a great quantity of massy old plate.\n\nCHARLES. O Lud! that's gone long ago. Moses can tell you how better than\nI can.\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] Good lack! all the family race-cups and\ncorporation-bowls!--[Aloud.] Then it was also supposed that his library\nwas one of the most valuable and compact.\n\nCHARLES. Yes, yes, so it was--vastly too much so for a private\ngentleman. For my part, I was always of a communicative disposition, so\nI thought it a shame to keep so much knowledge to myself.\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] Mercy upon me! learning that had run in the family\nlike an heir-loom!--[Aloud.] Pray, what has become of the books?\n\nCHARLES. You must inquire of the auctioneer, Master Premium, for I don't\nbelieve even Moses can direct you.\n\nMOSES. I know nothing of books.\n\nSIR OLIVER. So, so, nothing of the family property left, I suppose?\n\nCHARLES. Not much, indeed; unless you have a mind to the family\npictures. I have got a room full of ancestors above: and if you have a\ntaste for old paintings, egad, you shall have 'em a bargain!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Hey! what the devil! sure, you wouldn't sell your\nforefathers, would you?\n\nCHARLES. Every man of them, to the best bidder.\n\nSIR OLIVER. What! your great-uncles and aunts?\n\nCHARLES. Ay, and my great-grandfathers and grandmothers too.\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] Now I give him up!--[Aloud.] What the plague,\nhave you no bowels for your own kindred? Odd's life! do you take me for\nShylock in the play, that you would raise money of me on your own flesh\nand blood?\n\nCHARLES. Nay, my little broker, don't be angry: what need you care, if\nyou have your money's worth?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well, I'll be the purchaser: I think I can dispose of the\nfamily canvas.--[Aside.] Oh, I'll never forgive him this! never!\n\n     Re-enter CARELESS\n\nCARELESS. Come, Charles, what keeps you?\n\nCHARLES. I can't come yet. I'faith, we are going to have a sale above\nstairs; here's little Premium will buy all my ancestors!\n\nCARELESS. Oh, burn your ancestors!\n\nCHARLES. No, he may do that afterwards, if he pleases. Stay, Careless,\nwe want you: egad, you shall be auctioneer--so come along with us.\n\nCARELESS. Oh, have with you, if that's the case. I can handle a hammer\nas well as a dice box! Going! going!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Oh, the profligates! [Aside.]\n\nCHARLES. Come, Moses, you shall be appraiser, if we want one. Gad's\nlife, little Premium, you don't seem to like the business?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Oh, yes, I do, vastly! Ha! ha! ha! yes, yes, I think it a\nrare joke to sell one's family by auction--ha! ha!--[Aside.] Oh, the\nprodigal!\n\nCHARLES. To be sure! when a man wants money, where the plague should he\nget assistance, if he can't make free with his own relations?\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\nSIR OLIVER. I'll never forgive him; never! never!\n\n     END OF THE THIRD ACT\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT IV  SCENE I.\n\n--A Picture Room in CHARLES SURFACE'S House\n\n     Enter CHARLES, SIR OLIVER, MOSES, and CARELESS\n\nCHARLES. Walk in, gentlemen, pray walk in;--here they are, the family of\nthe Surfaces, up to the Conquest.\n\nSIR OLIVER. And, in my opinion, a goodly collection.\n\nCHARLES. Ay, ay, these are done in the true spirit of portrait-painting;\nno volontiere grace or expression. Not like the works of your modern\nRaphaels, who give you the strongest resemblance, yet contrive to make\nyour portrait independent of you; so that you may sink the original\nand not hurt the picture. No, no; the merit of these is the inveterate\nlikeness--all stiff and awkward as the originals, and like nothing in\nhuman nature besides.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Ah! we shall never see such figures of men again.\n\nCHARLES. I hope not. Well, you see, Master Premium, what a domestic\ncharacter I am; here I sit of an evening surrounded by my family. But\ncome, get to your pulpit, Mr. Auctioneer; here's an old gouty chair of\nmy grandfather's will answer the purpose.\n\nCARELESS. Ay, ay, this will do. But, Charles, I haven't a hammer; and\nwhat's an auctioneer without his hammer?\n\nCHARLES. Egad, that's true. What parchment have we here? Oh, our\ngenealogy in full. [Taking pedigree down.] Here, Careless, you shall\nhave no common bit of mahogany, here's the family tree for you,\nyou rogue! This shall be your hammer, and now you may knock down my\nancestors with their own pedigree.\n\nSIR OLIVER. What an unnatural rogue!--an ex post facto parricide!\n[Aside.]\n\nCARELESS. Yes, yes, here's a list of your generation indeed;--faith,\nCharles, this is the most convenient thing you could have found for the\nbusiness, for 'twill not only serve as a hammer, but a catalogue into\nthe bargain. Come, begin--A-going, a-going, a-going!\n\nCHARLES. Bravo, Careless! Well, here's my great uncle, Sir Richard\nRavelin, a marvellous good general in his day, I assure you. He served\nin all the Duke of Marlborough's wars, and got that cut over his eye\nat the battle of Malplaquet. What say you, Mr. Premium? look at\nhim--there's a hero! not cut out of his feathers, as your modern clipped\ncaptains are, but enveloped in wig and regimentals, as a general should\nbe. What do you bid?\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside to Moses.] Bid him speak.\n\nMOSES. Mr. Premium would have you speak.\n\nCHARLES. Why, then, he shall have him for ten pounds, and I'm sure\nthat's not dear for a staff-officer.\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] Heaven deliver me! his famous uncle Richard for ten\npounds!--[Aloud.] Very well, sir, I take him at that.\n\nCHARLES. Careless, knock down my uncle Richard.--Here, now, is a maiden\nsister of his, my great-aunt Deborah, done by Kneller, in his best\nmanner, and esteemed a very formidable likeness. There she is, you see,\na shepherdess feeding her flock. You shall have her for five pounds\nten--the sheep are worth the money.\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] Ah! poor Deborah! a woman who set such a value on\nherself!--[Aloud.] Five pounds ten--she's mine.\n\nCHARLES. Knock down my aunt Deborah! Here, now, are two that were a sort\nof cousins of theirs.--You see, Moses, these pictures were done some\ntime ago, when beaux wore wigs, and the ladies their own hair.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes, truly, head-dresses appear to have been a little lower\nin those days.\n\nCHARLES. Well, take that couple for the same.\n\nMOSES. 'Tis a good bargain.\n\nCHARLES. Careless!--This, now, is a grandfather of my mother's, a\nlearned judge, well known on the western circuit,--What do you rate him\nat, Moses?\n\nMOSES. Four guineas.\n\nCHARLES. Four guineas! Gad's life, you don't bid me the price of his\nwig.--Mr. Premium, you have more respect for the woolsack; do let us\nknock his lordship down at fifteen.\n\nSIR OLIVER. By all means.\n\nCARELESS. Gone!\n\nCHARLES. And there are two brothers of his, William and Walter Blunt,\nEsquires, both members of Parliament, and noted speakers; and, what's\nvery extraordinary, I believe, this is the first time they were ever\nbought or sold.\n\nSIR OLIVER. That is very extraordinary, indeed! I'll take them at your\nown price, for the honour of Parliament.\n\nCARELESS. Well said, little Premium! I'll knock them down at forty.\n\nCHARLES. Here's a jolly fellow--I don't know what relation, but he was\nmayor of Norwich: take him at eight pounds.\n\nSIR OLIVER. No, no; six will do for the mayor.\n\nCHARLES. Come, make it guineas, and I'll throw you the two aldermen here\ninto the bargain.\n\nSIR OLIVER. They're mine.\n\nCHARLES. Careless, knock down the mayor and aldermen. But, plague on't!\nwe shall be all day retailing in this manner; do let us deal wholesale:\nwhat say you, little Premium? Give me three hundred pounds for the rest\nof the family in the lump.\n\nCARELESS. Ay, ay, that will be the best way.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well, well, anything to accommodate you; they are mine. But\nthere is one portrait which you have always passed over.\n\nCARELESS. What, that ill-looking little fellow over the settee?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes, sir, I mean that; though I don't think him so\nill-looking a little fellow, by any means.\n\nCHARLES. What, that? Oh; that's my uncle Oliver! 'Twas done before he\nwent to India.\n\nCARELESS. Your uncle Oliver! Gad, then you'll never be friends,\nCharles. That, now, to me, is as stern a looking rogue as ever I saw; an\nunforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance! an inveterate\nknave, depend on't. Don't you think so, little Premium?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Upon my soul, Sir, I do not; I think it is as honest a\nlooking face as any in the room, dead or alive. But I suppose uncle\nOliver goes with the rest of the lumber?\n\nCHARLES. No, hang it! I'll not part with poor Noll. The old fellow has\nbeen very good to me, and, egad, I'll keep his picture while I've a room\nto put it in.\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] The rogue's my nephew after all!--[Aloud.] But,\nsir, I have somehow taken a fancy to that picture.\n\nCHARLES. I'm sorry for't, for you certainly will not have it. Oons,\nhaven't you got enough of them?\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] I forgive him everything!--[Aloud.] But, Sir, when\nI take a whim in my head, I don't value money. I'll give you as much for\nthat as for all the rest.\n\nCHARLES. Don't tease me, master broker; I tell you I'll not part with\nit, and there's an end of it.\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] How like his father the dog is.--[Aloud.] Well,\nwell, I have done.--[Aside.] I did not perceive it before, but I think\nI never saw such a striking resemblance.--[Aloud.] Here is a draught for\nyour sum.\n\nCHARLES. Why, 'tis for eight hundred pounds!\n\nSIR OLIVER. You will not let Sir Oliver go?\n\nCHARLES. Zounds! no! I tell you, once more.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Then never mind the difference, we'll balance that another\ntime. But give me your hand on the bargain; you are an honest fellow,\nCharles--I beg pardon, sir, for being so free.--Come, Moses.\n\nCHARLES. Egad, this is a whimsical old fellow!--But hark'ee, Premium,\nyou'll prepare lodgings for these gentlemen.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes, yes, I'll send for them in a day or two.\n\nCHARLES. But, hold; do now send a genteel conveyance for them, for, I\nassure you, they were most of them used to ride in their own carriages.\n\nSIR OLIVER. I will, I will--for all but Oliver.\n\nCHARLES. Ay, all but the little nabob.\n\nSIR OLIVER. You're fixed on that?\n\nCHARLES. Peremptorily.\n\nSIR OLIVER. [Aside.] A dear extravagant rogue!--[Aloud.] Good day! Come,\nMoses.--[Aside.] Let me hear now who dares call him profligate!\n\n     [Exit with MOSES.]\n\nCARELESS. Why, this is the oddest genius of the sort I ever met with!\n\nCHARLES. Egad, he's the prince of brokers, I think. I wonder how\nthe devil Moses got acquainted with so honest a fellow.--Ha! here's\nRowley.--Do, Careless, say I'll join the company in a few moments.\n\nCARELESS. I will--but don't let that old blockhead persuade you to\nsquander any of that money on old musty debts, or any such nonsense; for\ntradesmen, Charles, are the most exorbitant fellows.\n\nCHARLES. Very true, and paying them is only encouraging them.\n\nCARELESS. Nothing else.\n\nCHARLES. Ay, ay, never fear.--\n\n     [Exit CARELESS.]\nSo! this was an odd old fellow, indeed. Let me see, two-thirds of these\nfive hundred and thirty odd pounds are mine by right. Fore Heaven!\nI find one's ancestors are more valuable relations than I took them\nfor!--Ladies and gentlemen, your most obedient and very grateful\nservant.     [Bows ceremoniously to the pictures.]\n\n     Enter ROWLEY\n\nHa! old Rowley! egad, you are just come in time to take leave of your\nold acquaintance.\n\nROWLEY. Yes, I heard they were a-going. But I wonder you can have such\nspirits under so many distresses.\n\nCHARLES. Why, there's the point! my distresses are so many, that I can't\naffort to part with my spirits; but I shall be rich and splenetic, all\nin good time. However, I suppose you are surprised that I am not more\nsorrowful at parting with so many near relations; to be sure, 'tis very\naffecting; but you see they never move a muscle, so why should I?\n\nROWLEY. There's no making you serious a moment.\n\nCHARLES. Yes, faith, I am so now. Here, my honest Rowley, here, get me\nthis changed directly, and take a hundred pounds of it immediately to\nold Stanley.\n\nROWLEY. A hundred pounds! Consider only----\n\nCHARLES. Gad's life, don't talk about it! poor Stanley's wants are\npressing, and, if you don't make haste, we shall have some one call that\nhas a better right to the money.\n\nROWLEY. Ah! there's the point! I never will cease dunning you with the\nold proverb----\n\nCHARLES. BE JUST BEFORE YOU'RE GENEROUS.--Why, so I would if I could;\nbut Justice is an old hobbling beldame, and I can't get her to keep pace\nwith Generosity, for the soul of me.\n\nROWLEY. Yet, Charles, believe me, one hour's reflection----\n\nCHARLES. Ay, ay, it's very true; but, hark'ee, Rowley, while I have, by\nHeaven I'll give; so, damn your economy! and now for hazard.\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\n--The Parlour\n\n     Enter SIR OLIVER and MOSES\n\nMOSES. Well sir, I think as Sir Peter said you have seen Mr. Charles in\nhigh Glory--'tis great Pity He's so extravagant.\n\nSIR OLIVER. True--but he would not sell my Picture--\n\nMOSES. And loves wine and women so much--\n\nSIR OLIVER. But He wouldn't sell my Picture.\n\nMOSES. And game so deep--\n\nSIR OLIVER. But He wouldn't sell my Picture. O--here's Rowley!\n\n     Enter ROWLEY\n\nROWLEY. So--Sir Oliver--I find you have made a Purchase----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes--yes--our young Rake has parted with his Ancestors like\nold Tapestry--sold Judges and Generals by the foot--and maiden Aunts as\ncheap as broken China.--\n\nROWLEY. And here has he commissioned me to re-deliver you Part of\nthe purchase-money--I mean tho' in your necessitous character of old\nStanley----\n\nMOSES. Ah! there is the Pity of all! He is so damned charitable.\n\nROWLEY. And I left a Hosier and two Tailors in the Hall--who I'm sure\nwon't be paid, and this hundred would satisfy 'em.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well--well--I'll pay his debts and his Benevolences\ntoo--I'll take care of old Stanley--myself--But now I am no more\na Broker, and you shall introduce me to the elder Brother as Stanley----\n\nROWLEY. Not yet a while--Sir Peter I know means to call there about this\ntime.\n\n     Enter TRIP\n\nTRIP. O Gentlemen--I beg Pardon for not showing you out--this\nway--Moses, a word.\n\n     [Exit TRIP with MOSES.]\n\nSIR OLIVER. There's a Fellow for you--Would you believe it that Puppy\nintercepted the Jew, on our coming, and wanted to raise money before he\ngot to his master!\n\nROWLEY. Indeed!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes--they are now planning an annuity Business--Ah Master\nRowley[,] in my Day Servants were content with the Follies of their\nMasters when they were worn a little Thread Bare but now they have their\nVices like their Birth Day cloaths with the gloss on.\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\n\n--A Library\n\n     SURFACE and SERVANT\n\nSURFACE. No letter from Lady Teazle?\n\nSERVANT. No Sir--\n\nSURFACE. I am surprised she hasn't sent if she is prevented from\ncoming--! Sir Peter certainly does not suspect me--yet I wish I may\nnot lose the Heiress, thro' the scrape I have drawn myself in with the\nwife--However, Charles's imprudence and bad character are great Points\nin my Favour.\n\nSERVANT. Sir--I believe that must be Lady Teazle--\n\nSURFACE. Hold[!] see--whether it is or not before you go to the Door--I\nhave a particular Message for you if it should be my Brother.\n\nSERVANT. 'Tis her ladyship Sir--She always leaves her Chair at the\nmilliner's in the next Street.\n\nSURFACE. Stay--stay--draw that Screen before the Window--that will\ndo--my opposite Neighbour is a maiden Lady of so curious a temper!--\n\n     [SERVANT draws the screen and exit.]\n\nI have a difficult Hand to play in this Affair--Lady Teazle as lately\nsuspected my Views on Maria--but She must by no means be let into that\nsecret, at least till I have her more in my Power.\n\n     Enter LADY TEAZLE\n\nLADY TEAZLE. What[!] Sentiment in soliloquy--have you been very\nimpatient now?--O Lud! don't pretend to look grave--I vow I couldn't\ncome before----\n\nSURFACE. O Madam[,] Punctuality is a species of Constancy, a very\nunfashionable quality in a Lady.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Upon my word you ought to pity me, do you now Sir Peter\nis grown so ill-tempered to me of Late! and so jealous! of Charles too\nthat's the best of the story isn't it?\n\nSURFACE. I am glad my scandalous Friends keep that up. [Aside.]\n\nLADY TEAZLE. I am sure I wish He would let Maria marry him--and then\nperhaps He would be convinced--don't you--Mr. Surface?\n\nSURFACE. Indeed I do not.--[Aside.] O certainly I do--for then my dear\nLady Teazle would also be convinced how wrong her suspicions were of my\nhaving any design on the silly Girl----\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Well--well I'm inclined to believe you--besides I really\nnever could perceive why she should have so any admirers.\n\nSURFACE. O for her Fortune--nothing else--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. I believe so for tho' she is certainly very pretty--yet she\nhas no conversation in the world--and is so grave and reserved--that I\ndeclare I think she'd have made an excellent wife for Sir Peter.--\n\nSURFACE. So she would.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Then--one never hears her speak ill of anybody--which you\nknow is mighty dull--\n\nSURFACE. Yet she doesn't want understanding--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. No more she does--yet one is always disapointed when\none hears [her] speak--For though her Eyes have no kind of meaning in\nthem--she very seldom talks Nonsense.\n\nSURFACE. Nay--nay surely--she has very fine eyes--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Why so she has--tho' sometimes one fancies there's a little\nsort of a squint--\n\nSURFACE. A squint--O fie--Lady Teazle.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Yes yes--I vow now--come there is a left-handed Cupid in\none eye--that's the Truth on't.\n\nSURFACE. Well--his aim is very direct however--but Lady Sneerwell has\nquite corrupted you.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. No indeed--I have not opinion enough of her to be taught\nby her, and I know that she has lately rais'd many scandalous hints of\nme--which you know one always hears from one common Friend, or other.\n\nSURFACE. Why to say truth I believe you are not more obliged to her than\nothers of her acquaintance.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. But isn't [it] provoking to hear the most ill-natured\nThings said to one and there's my friend Lady Sneerwell has circulated\nI don't know how many scandalous tales of me, and all without any\nfoundation, too; that's what vexes me.\n\nSURFACE. Aye Madam to be sure that is the Provoking\ncircumstance--without Foundation--yes yes--there's the mortification\nindeed--for when a slanderous story is believed against one--there\ncertainly is no comfort like the consciousness of having deserved it----\n\nLADY TEAZLE. No to be sure--then I'd forgive their malice--but to attack\nme, who am really so innocent--and who never say an ill-natured thing of\nanybody--that is, of any Friend--! and then Sir Peter too--to have\nhim so peevish--and so suspicious--when I know the integrity of my own\nHeart--indeed 'tis monstrous.\n\nSURFACE. But my dear Lady Teazle 'tis your own fault if you suffer\nit--when a Husband entertains a groundless suspicion of his Wife and\nwithdraws his confidence from her--the original compact is broke and she\nowes it to the Honour of her sex to endeavour to outwit him--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Indeed--So that if He suspects me without cause it follows\nthat the best way of curing his jealousy is to give him reason for't--\n\nSURFACE. Undoubtedly--for your Husband [should] never be deceived in\nyou--and in that case it becomes you to be frail in compliment to his\ndiscernment--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. To be sure what you say is very reasonable--and when the\nconsciousness of my own Innocence----\n\nSURFACE. Ah: my dear--Madam there is the great mistake--'tis this very\nconscious Innocence that is of the greatest Prejudice to you--what is\nit makes you negligent of Forms and careless of the world's opinion--why\nthe consciousness of your Innocence--what makes you thoughtless in\nyour Conduct and apt to run into a thousand little imprudences--why the\nconsciousness of your Innocence--what makes you impatient of Sir Peter's\ntemper, and outrageous at his suspicions--why the consciousness of your\nown Innocence--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. 'Tis very true.\n\nSURFACE. Now my dear Lady Teazle if you but once make a trifling Faux\nPas you can't conceive how cautious you would grow, and how ready to\nhumour and agree with your Husband.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Do you think so--\n\nSURFACE. O I'm sure on't; and then you'd find all scandal would cease\nat once--for in short your Character at Present is like a Person in a\nPlethora, absolutely dying of too much Health--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. So--so--then I perceive your Prescription is that I\nmust sin in my own Defence--and part with my virtue to preserve my\nReputation.--\n\nSURFACE. Exactly so upon my credit Ma'am[.]\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Well certainly this is the oddest Doctrine--and the newest\nReceipt for avoiding calumny.\n\nSURFACE. An infallible one believe me--Prudence like experience must be\npaid for--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Why if my understanding were once convinced----\n\nSURFACE. Oh, certainly Madam, your understanding SHOULD be\nconvinced--yes--yes--Heaven forbid I should persuade you to do anything\nyou THOUGHT wrong--no--no--I have too much honor to desire it--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Don't--you think we may as well leave Honor out of the\nArgument? [Rises.]\n\nSURFACE. Ah--the ill effects of your country education I see still\nremain with you.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. I doubt they do indeed--and I will fairly own to you,\nthat If I could be persuaded to do wrong it would be by Sir Peter's\nill-usage--sooner than your honourable Logic, after all.\n\nSURFACE. Then by this Hand, which He is unworthy of----\n\n     Enter SERVANT\n\nSdeath, you Blockhead--what do you want?\n\nSERVANT. I beg your Pardon Sir, but I thought you wouldn't chuse Sir\nPeter to come up without announcing him?\n\nSURFACE. Sir Peter--Oons--the Devil!\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Sir Peter! O Lud! I'm ruined! I'm ruin'd!\n\nSERVANT. Sir, 'twasn't I let him in.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. O I'm undone--what will become of me now Mr. Logick.--Oh!\nmercy, He's on the Stairs--I'll get behind here--and if ever I'm so\nimprudent again----\n\n     [Goes behind the screen--]\n\nSURFACE. Give me that--Book!----\n\n     [Sits down--SERVANT pretends to adjust his Hair--]\n\n     Enter SIR PETER\n\nSIR PETER. Aye--ever improving himself!--Mr. Surface--\n\nSURFACE. Oh! my dear Sir Peter--I beg your Pardon--[Gaping and throws\naway the Book.] I have been dosing [dozing] over a stupid Book! well--I\nam much obliged to you for this Call--You haven't been here I believe\nsince I fitted up this Room--Books you know are the only Things I am a\nCoxcomb in--\n\nSIR PETER. 'Tis very neat indeed--well well that's proper--and you make\neven your Screen a source of knowledge--hung I perceive with Maps--\n\nSURFACE. O yes--I find great use in that Screen.\n\nSIR PETER. I dare say you must--certainly--when you want to find out\nanything in a Hurry.\n\nSURFACE. Aye or to hide anything in a Hurry either--\n\nSIR PETER. Well I have a little private Business--if we were alone--\n\nSURFACE. You needn't stay.\n\nSERVANT. No--Sir----\n\n     [Exit SERVANT.]\n\nSURFACE. Here's a Chair--Sir Peter--I beg----\n\nSIR PETER. Well--now we are alone--there IS a subject--my dear\nFriend--on which I wish to unburthen my Mind to you--a Point of the\ngreatest moment to my Peace--in short, my good Friend--Lady Teazle's\nconduct of late has made me very unhappy.\n\nSURFACE. Indeed I'm very sorry to hear it--\n\nSIR PETER. Yes 'tis but too plain she has not the least regard for\nme--but what's worse, I have pretty good Authority to suspect that she\nmust have formed an attachment to another.\n\nSURFACE. Indeed! you astonish me.\n\nSIR PETER. Yes--and between ourselves--I think I have discover'd the\nPerson.\n\nSURFACE. How--you alarm me exceedingly!\n\nSIR PETER. Ah: my dear Friend I knew you would sympathize with me.--\n\nSURFACE. Yes--believe me Sir Peter--such a discovery would hurt me just\nas much as it would you--\n\nSIR PETER. I am convinced of it--ah--it is a happiness to have a Friend\nwhom one can trust even with one's Family secrets--but have you no guess\nwho I mean?\n\nSURFACE. I haven't the most distant Idea--it can't be Sir Benjamin\nBackbite.\n\nSIR PETER. O--No. What say you to Charles?\n\nSURFACE. My Brother--impossible!--O no Sir Peter you mustn't credit the\nscandalous insinuations you hear--no no--Charles to be sure has been\ncharged with many things but go I can never think He would meditate so\ngross an injury--\n\nSIR PETER. Ah! my dear Friend--the goodness of your own Heart misleads\nyou--you judge of others by yourself.\n\nSURFACE. Certainly Sir Peter--the Heart that is conscious of its own\nintegrity is ever slowest to credit another's Treachery.--\n\nSIR PETER. True--but your Brother has no sentiment[--]you never hear him\ntalk so.--\n\nSURFACE. Well there certainly is no knowing what men are capable\nof--no--there is no knowing--yet I can't but think Lady Teazle herself\nhas too much Principle----\n\nSIR PETER. Aye but what's Principle against the Flattery of a\nhandsome--lively young Fellow--\n\nSURFACE. That's very true--\n\nSIR PETER. And then you know the difference of our ages makes it very\nimprobable that she should have any great affection for me--and if she\nwere to be frail and I were to make it Public--why the Town would only\nlaugh at the foolish old Batchelor, who had married a girl----\n\nSURFACE. That's true--to be sure People would laugh.\n\nSIR PETER. Laugh--aye and make Ballads--and Paragraphs and the Devil\nknows what of me--\n\nSURFACE. No--you must never make it public--\n\nSIR PETER. But then again that the Nephew of my old Friend, Sir\nOliver[,] should be the Person to attempt such an injury--hurts me more\nnearly--\n\nSURFACE. Undoubtedly--when Ingratitude barbs the Dart of Injury--the\nwound has double danger in it--\n\nSIR PETER. Aye--I that was in a manner left his Guardian--in his House\nhe had been so often entertain'd--who never in my Life denied him my\nadvice--\n\nSURFACE. O 'tis not to be credited--There may be a man capable of such\nBaseness, to be sure--but for my Part till you can give me positive\nProofs you must excuse me withholding my Belief. However, if this should\nbe proved on him He is no longer a brother of mine I disclaim kindred\nwith him--for the man who can break thro' the Laws of Hospitality--and\nattempt the wife of his Friend deserves to be branded as the Pest of\nSociety.\n\nSIR PETER. What a difference there is between you--what noble\nsentiments!--\n\nSURFACE. But I cannot suspect Lady Teazle's honor.\n\nSIR PETER. I'm sure I wish to think well of her--and to remove all\nground of Quarrel between us--She has lately reproach'd me more than\nonce with having made no settlement on her--and, in our last Quarrel,\nshe almost hinted that she should not break her Heart if I was\ndead.--now as we seem to differ in our Ideas of Expense I have resolved\nshe shall be her own Mistress in that Respect for the future--and if\nI were to die--she shall find that I have not been inattentive to her\nInterests while living--Here my Friend are the Draughts of two Deeds\nwhich I wish to have your opinion on--by one she will enjoy eight\nhundred a year independent while I live--and by the other the bulk of my\nFortune after my Death.\n\nSURFACE. This conduct Sir Peter is indeed truly Generous! I wish it may\nnot corrupt my pupil.--[Aside.]\n\nSIR PETER. Yes I am determined she shall have no cause to complain--tho'\nI would not have her acquainted with the latter instance of my affection\nyet awhile.\n\nSURFACE. Nor I--if I could help it.\n\nSIR PETER. And now my dear Friend if you please we will talk over the\nsituation of your Hopes with Maria.\n\nSURFACE. No--no--Sir Peter--another Time if you Please--[softly].\n\nSIR PETER. I am sensibly chagrined at the little Progress you seem to\nmake in her affection.\n\nSURFACE. I beg you will not mention it--What are my Disappointments when\nyour Happiness is in Debate [softly]. 'Sdeath I shall be ruined every\nway.\n\nSIR PETER. And tho' you are so averse to my acquainting Lady Teazle with\nYOUR passion, I am sure she's not your Enemy in the Affair.\n\nSURFACE. Pray Sir Peter, now oblige me.--I am really too much affected\nby the subject we have been speaking of to bestow a thought on my own\nconcerns--The Man who is entrusted with his Friend's Distresses can\nnever----\n\n     Enter SERVANT\n\nWell, Sir?\n\nSERVANT. Your Brother Sir, is--speaking to a Gentleman in the Street,\nand says He knows you're within.\n\nSURFACE. 'Sdeath, Blockhead--I'm NOT within--I'm out for the Day.\n\nSIR PETER. Stay--hold--a thought has struck me--you shall be at home.\n\nSURFACE. Well--well--let him up.--\n\n     [Exit SERVANT.]\n\nHe'll interrupt Sir Peter, however. [Aside.]\n\nSIR PETER. Now, my good Friend--oblige me I Intreat you--before Charles\ncomes--let me conceal myself somewhere--Then do you tax him on the Point\nwe have been talking on--and his answers may satisfy me at once.--\n\nSURFACE. O Fie--Sir Peter--would you have ME join in so mean a Trick? to\ntrepan my Brother too?\n\nSIR PETER. Nay you tell me you are SURE He is innocent--if so you do\nhim the greatest service in giving him an opportunity to clear\nhimself--and--you will set my Heart at rest--come you shall not refuse\nme--here behind this Screen will be--hey! what the Devil--there seems to\nbe one listener here already--I'll swear I saw a Petticoat.--\n\nSURFACE. Ha! ha! ha! Well this is ridiculous enough--I'll tell you,\nSir Peter--tho' I hold a man of Intrigue to be a most despicable\nCharacter--yet you know it doesn't follow that a man is to be an\nabsolute Joseph either--hark'ee--'tis a little French Milliner--a silly\nRogue that plagues me--and having some character, on your coming she ran\nbehind the Screen.--\n\nSIR PETER. Ah a Rogue--but 'egad she has overheard all I have been\nsaying of my Wife.\n\nSURFACE. O 'twill never go any farther, you may depend on't.\n\nSIR PETER. No!--then efaith let her hear it out.--Here's a Closet will\ndo as well.--\n\nSURFACE. Well, go in there.--\n\nSIR PETER. Sly rogue--sly Rogue.--\n\nSURFACE. Gad's my Life what an Escape--! and a curious situation I'm\nin!--to part man and wife in this manner.--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. [peeps out.] Couldn't I steal off--\n\nSURFACE. Keep close, my Angel!\n\nSIR PETER. [Peeping out.] Joseph--tax him home.\n\nSURFACE. Back--my dear Friend\n\nLADY TEAZLE. [Peeping out.] Couldn't you lock Sir Peter in?--\n\nSURFACE. Be still--my Life!\n\nSIR PETER. [Peeping.] You're sure the little Milliner won't blab?\n\nSURFACE. In! in! my good Sir Peter--'Fore Gad, I wish I had a key to the\nDoor.\n\n     Enter CHARLES\n\nCHARLES. Hollo! Brother--what has been the matter? your Fellow wouldn't\nlet me up at first--What[?] have you had a Jew or a wench with you.--\n\nSURFACE. Neither Brother I assure you.\n\nCHARLES. But--what has made Sir Peter steal off--I thought He had been\nwith you--\n\nSURFACE. He WAS Brother--but hearing you were coming He didn't chuse to\nstay--\n\nCHARLES. What[!] was the old Gentleman afraid I wanted to borrow money\nof him?\n\nSURFACE. No Sir--but I am sorry to find[,] Charles--you have lately\ngiven that worthy man grounds for great Uneasiness.\n\nCHARLES. Yes they tell me I do that to a great many worthy men--but how\nso Pray?\n\nSURFACE. To be plain with you Brother He thinks you are endeavouring to\ngain Lady Teazle's Affections from him.\n\nCHARLES. Who I--O Lud! not I upon my word.--Ha! ha! ha! so the old\nFellow has found out that He has got a young wife has He? or what's\nworse she has discover'd that she has an old Husband?\n\nSURFACE. This is no subject to jest on Brother--He who can laugh----\n\nCHARLES. True true as you were going to say--then seriously I never had\nthe least idea of what you charge me with, upon my honour.\n\nSURFACE. Well it will give Sir Peter great satisfaction to hear this.\n\nCHARLES. [Aloud.] To be sure, I once thought the lady seemed to\nhave taken a fancy--but upon my soul I never gave her the least\nencouragement.--Beside you know my Attachment to Maria--\n\nSURFACE. But sure Brother even if Lady Teazle had betray'd the fondest\nPartiality for you----\n\nCHARLES. Why--look'ee Joseph--I hope I shall never deliberately do\na dishonourable Action--but if a pretty woman was purposely to throw\nherself in my way--and that pretty woman married to a man old enough to\nbe her Father----\n\nSURFACE. Well?\n\nCHARLES. Why I believe I should be obliged to borrow a little of your\nMorality, that's all.--but, Brother do you know now that you surprize me\nexceedingly by naming me with Lady Teazle--for faith I always understood\nYOU were her Favourite--\n\nSURFACE. O for shame--Charles--This retort is Foolish.\n\nCHARLES. Nay I swear I have seen you exchange such significant\nGlances----\n\nSURFACE. Nay--nay--Sir--this is no jest--\n\nCHARLES. Egad--I'm serious--Don't you remember--one Day, when I called\nhere----\n\nSURFACE. Nay--prithee--Charles\n\nCHARLES. And found you together----\n\nSURFACE. Zounds, Sir--I insist----\n\nCHARLES. And another time when your Servant----\n\nSURFACE. Brother--brother a word with you--Gad I must stop him--[Aside.]\n\nCHARLES. Informed--me that----\n\nSURFACE. Hush!--I beg your Pardon but Sir Peter has overheard all we\nhave been saying--I knew you would clear yourself, or I shouldn't have\nconsented--\n\nCHARLES. How Sir Peter--Where is He--\n\nSURFACE. Softly, there! [Points to the closet.]\n\nCHARLES. [In the Closet!] O 'fore Heaven I'll have him out--Sir Peter\ncome forth!\n\nSURFACE. No--no----\n\nCHARLES. I say Sir Peter--come into court.--\n\n     [Pulls in SIR PETER.]\n\nWhat--my old Guardian--what[!] turn inquisitor and take evidence\nincog.--\n\nSIR PETER. Give me your hand--Charles--I believe I have suspected you\nwrongfully; but you mustn't be angry with Joseph--'twas my Plan--\n\nCHARLES. Indeed!--\n\nSIR PETER. But I acquit you--I promise you I don't think near so ill of\nyou as I did--what I have heard has given me great satisfaction.\n\nCHARLES. Egad then 'twas lucky you didn't hear any more. Wasn't it\nJoseph?\n\nSIR PETER. Ah! you would have retorted on him.\n\nCHARLES. Aye--aye--that was a Joke.\n\nSIR PETER. Yes, yes, I know his honor too well.\n\nCHARLES. Yet you might as well have suspected him as me in this matter,\nfor all that--mightn't He, Joseph?\n\nSIR PETER. Well well I believe you--\n\nSURFACE. Would they were both out of the Room!\n\n     Enter SERVANT, whispers SURFACE\n\nSIR PETER. And in future perhaps we may not be such Strangers.\n\nSURFACE. Gentlemen--I beg Pardon--I must wait on you downstairs--Here is\na Person come on particular Business----\n\nCHARLES. Well you can see him in another Room--Sir Peter and I haven't\nmet a long time and I have something to say [to] him.\n\nSURFACE. They must not be left together.--I'll send this man away and\nreturn directly--\n\n     [SURFACE goes out.]\n\nSIR PETER. Ah--Charles if you associated more with your Brother, one\nmight indeed hope for your reformation--He is a man of Sentiment--Well!\nthere is nothing in the world so noble as a man of Sentiment!\n\nCHARLES. Pshaw! He is too moral by half--and so apprehensive of his good\nName, as he calls it, that I suppose He would as soon let a Priest in\nhis House as a Girl--\n\nSIR PETER. No--no--come come,--you wrong him. No, no, Joseph is no Rake\nbut he is no such Saint in that respect either. I have a great mind to\ntell him--we should have such a Laugh!\n\nCHARLES. Oh, hang him? He's a very Anchorite--a young Hermit!\n\nSIR PETER. Harkee--you must not abuse him, he may chance to hear of it\nagain I promise you.\n\nCHARLES. Why you won't tell him?\n\nSIR PETER. No--but--this way. Egad, I'll tell him--Harkee, have you a\nmind to have a good laugh against Joseph?\n\nCHARLES. I should like it of all things--\n\nSIR PETER. Then, E'faith, we will--I'll be quit with him for discovering\nme.--He had a girl with him when I called. [Whispers.]\n\nCHARLES. What[!] Joseph[!] you jest--\n\nSIR PETER. Hush!--a little French Milliner--and the best of the jest\nis--she's in the room now.\n\nCHARLES. The devil she is--\n\nSIR PETER. Hush! I tell you. [Points.]\n\nCHARLES. Behind the screen! Odds Life, let's unveil her!\n\nSIR PETER. No--no! He's coming--you shan't indeed!\n\nCHARLES. Oh, egad, we'll have a peep at the little milliner!\n\nSIR PETER. Not for the world--Joseph will never forgive me.\n\nCHARLES. I'll stand by you----\n\nSIR PETER. Odds Life! Here He's coming--\n\n     [SURFACE enters just as CHARLES throws down the Screen.]\n\n     Re-enter JOSEPH SURFACE\n\nCHARLES. Lady Teazle! by all that's wonderful!\n\nSIR PETER. Lady Teazle! by all that's Horrible!\n\nCHARLES. Sir Peter--This is one of the smartest French Milliners I ever\nsaw!--Egad, you seem all to have been diverting yourselves here at Hide\nand Seek--and I don't see who is out of the Secret!--Shall I beg your\nLadyship to inform me!--Not a word!--Brother!--will you please to\nexplain this matter? What! is Honesty Dumb too?--Sir Peter, though I\nfound you in the Dark--perhaps you are not so now--all mute! Well tho'\nI can make nothing of the Affair, I make no doubt but you perfectly\nunderstand one another--so I'll leave you to yourselves.--[Going.]\nBrother I'm sorry to find you have given that worthy man grounds for so\nmuch uneasiness!--Sir Peter--there's nothing in the world so noble as a\nman of Sentiment!--\n\n     [Stand for some time looking at one another.  Exit CHARLES.]\n\nSURFACE. Sir Peter--notwithstanding I confess that appearances are\nagainst me. If you will afford me your Patience I make no doubt but I\nshall explain everything to your satisfaction.--\n\nSIR PETER. If you please--Sir--\n\nSURFACE. The Fact is Sir--that Lady Teazle knowing my Pretensions\nto your ward Maria--I say Sir Lady Teazle--being apprehensive of the\nJealousy of your Temper--and knowing my Friendship to the Family. S\nhe Sir--I say call'd here--in order that I might explain those\nPretensions--but on your coming being apprehensive--as I said of your\nJealousy--she withdrew--and this, you may depend on't is the whole truth\nof the Matter.\n\nSIR PETER. A very clear account upon the [my] word and I dare swear the\nLady will vouch for every article of it.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. For not one word of it Sir Peter--\n\nSIR PETER. How[!] don't you think it worthwhile to agree in the lie.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. There is not one Syllable of Truth in what that Gentleman\nhas told you.\n\nSIR PETER. I believe you upon my soul Ma'am--\n\nSURFACE. 'Sdeath, madam, will you betray me! [Aside.]\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Good Mr. Hypocrite by your leave I will speak for myself--\n\nSIR PETER. Aye let her alone Sir--you'll find she'll make out a better\nstory than you without Prompting.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Hear me Sir Peter--I came hither on no matter relating to\nyour ward and even ignorant of this Gentleman's pretensions to her--but\nI came--seduced by his insidious arguments--and pretended Passion[--]at\nleast to listen to his dishonourable Love if not to sacrifice your\nHonour to his Baseness.\n\nSIR PETER. Now, I believe, the Truth is coming indeed[.]\n\nSURFACE. The Woman's mad--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. No Sir--she has recovered her Senses. Your own Arts have\nfurnished her with the means. Sir Peter--I do not expect you to credit\nme--but the Tenderness you express'd for me, when I am sure you could\nnot think I was a witness to it, has penetrated so to my Heart that had\nI left the Place without the Shame of this discovery--my future\nlife should have spoken the sincerity of my Gratitude--as for that\nsmooth-tongued Hypocrite--who would have seduced the wife of his too\ncredulous Friend while he pretended honourable addresses to his ward--I\nbehold him now in a light so truly despicable that I shall never again\nRespect myself for having Listened to him.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSURFACE. Notwithstanding all this Sir Peter--Heaven knows----\n\nSIR PETER. That you are a Villain!--and so I leave you to your\nconscience--\n\nSURFACE. You are too Rash Sir Peter--you SHALL hear me--The man who\nshuts out conviction by refusing to----\n\n     [Exeunt, SURFACE following and speaking.]\n\n     END OF THE FOURTH\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT V    SCENE I.\n\n--The Library\n\n     Enter SURFACE and SERVANT\n\nSURFACE. Mr. Stanley! and why should you think I would see him?--you\nmust know he came to ask something!\n\nSERVANT. Sir--I shouldn't have let him in but that Mr. Rowley came to\nthe Door with him.\n\nSURFACE. Pshaw!--Blockhead to suppose that I should now be in a Temper\nto receive visits from poor Relations!--well why don't you show the\nFellow up?\n\nSERVANT. I will--Sir--Why, Sir--it was not my Fault that Sir Peter\ndiscover'd my Lady----\n\nSURFACE. Go, fool!--\n\n    [Exit SERVANT.]\n\nSure Fortune never play'd a man of my policy such a Trick before--my\ncharacter with Sir Peter!--my Hopes with Maria!--destroy'd in a\nmoment!--I'm in a rare Humour to listen to other People's Distresses!--I\nshan't be able to bestow even a benevolent sentiment on Stanley--So!\nhere--He comes and Rowley with him--I MUST try to recover myself, and\nput a little Charity into my Face however.----\n\n     [Exit.]\n\n     Enter SIR OLIVER and ROWLEY\n\nSIR OLIVER. What! does He avoid us? that was He--was it not?\n\nROWLEY. It was Sir--but I doubt you are come a little too abruptly--his\nNerves are so weak that the sight of a poor Relation may be too much for\nhim--I should have gone first to break you to him.\n\nSIR OLIVER. A Plague of his Nerves--yet this is He whom Sir Peter\nextolls as a Man of the most Benevolent way of thinking!--\n\nROWLEY. As to his way of thinking--I can't pretend to decide[,] for, to\ndo him justice He appears to have as much speculative Benevolence as any\nprivate Gentleman in the Kingdom--though he is seldom so sensual as to\nindulge himself in the exercise of it----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yet [he] has a string of charitable Sentiments I suppose at\nhis Fingers' ends!--\n\nROWLEY. Or, rather at his Tongue's end Sir Oliver; for I believe there\nis no sentiment he has more faith in than that 'Charity begins at Home.'\n\nSIR OLIVER. And his I presume is of that domestic sort which never stirs\nabroad at all.\n\nROWLEY. I doubt you'll find it so--but He's coming--I mustn't seem to\ninterrupt you--and you know immediately--as you leave him--I come in to\nannounce--your arrival in your real Character.\n\nSIR OLIVER. True--and afterwards you'll meet me at Sir Peter's----\n\nROWLEY. Without losing a moment.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSIR OLIVER. So--I see he has premeditated a Denial by the Complaisance\nof his Features.\n\n     Enter SURFACE\n\nSURFACE. Sir--I beg you ten thousand Pardons for keeping--you a moment\nwaiting--Mr. Stanley--I presume----\n\nSIR OLIVER. At your Service.\n\nSURFACE. Sir--I beg you will do me the honour to sit down--I entreat you\nSir.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Dear Sir there's no occasion--too civil by half!\n\nSURFACE. I have not the Pleasure of knowing you, Mr. Stanley--but I am\nextremely happy to see you look so well--you were nearly related to my\nmother--I think Mr. Stanley----\n\nSIR OLIVER. I was Sir--so nearly that my present Poverty I fear may do\ndiscredit to her Wealthy Children--else I should not have presumed to\ntrouble you.--\n\nSURFACE. Dear Sir--there needs no apology--He that is in Distress tho' a\nstranger has a right to claim kindred with the wealthy--I am sure I wish\nI was of that class, and had it in my power to offer you even a small\nrelief.\n\nSIR OLIVER. If your Unkle, Sir Oliver were here--I should have a\nFriend----\n\nSURFACE. I wish He was Sir, with all my Heart--you should not want an\nadvocate with him--believe me Sir.\n\nSIR OLIVER. I should not need one--my Distresses would recommend\nme.--but I imagined--his Bounty had enabled you to become the agent of\nhis Charity.\n\nSURFACE. My dear Sir--you are strangely misinformed--Sir Oliver is a\nworthy Man, a worthy man--a very worthy sort of Man--but avarice\nMr. Stanley is the vice of age--I will tell you my good Sir in\nconfidence:--what he has done for me has been a mere--nothing[;] tho'\nPeople I know have thought otherwise and for my Part I never chose to\ncontradict the Report.\n\nSIR OLIVER. What!--has he never\ntransmitted--you--Bullion--Rupees--Pagodas!\n\nSURFACE. O Dear Sir--Nothing of the kind--no--no--a few Presents now and\nthen--china, shawls, congo Tea, Avadavats--and indian Crackers--little\nmore, believe me.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Here's Gratitude for twelve thousand pounds!--Avadavats and\nindian Crackers.\n\nSURFACE. Then my dear--Sir--you have heard, I doubt not, of the\nextravagance of my Brother--Sir--there are very few would credit what I\nhave done for that unfortunate young man.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Not I for one!\n\nSURFACE. The sums I have lent him! indeed--I have been exceedingly to\nblame--it was an amiable weakness! however I don't pretend to defend\nit--and now I feel it doubly culpable--since it has deprived me of the\npower of serving YOU Mr. Stanley as my Heart directs----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Dissembler! Then Sir--you cannot assist me?\n\nSURFACE. At Present it grieves me to say I cannot--but whenever I have\nthe ability, you may depend upon hearing from me.\n\nSIR OLIVER. I am extremely sorry----\n\nSURFACE. Not more than I am believe me--to pity without the Power to\nrelieve is still more painful than to ask and be denied----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Kind Sir--your most obedient humble servant.\n\nSURFACE. You leave me deeply affected Mr. Stanley--William--be ready to\nopen the door----\n\nSIR OLIVER. O, Dear Sir, no ceremony----\n\nSURFACE. Your very obedient----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Your most obsequious----\n\nSURFACE. You may depend on hearing from me whenever I can be of\nservice----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Sweet Sir--you are too good----\n\nSURFACE. In the mean time I wish you Health and Spirits----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Your ever grateful and perpetual humble Servant----\n\nSURFACE. Sir--yours as sincerely----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Charles!--you are my Heir.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSURFACE, solus Soh!--This is one bad effect of a good Character--it\ninvites applications from the unfortunate and there needs no small\ndegree of address to gain the reputation of Benevolence without\nincurring the expence.--The silver ore of pure Charity is an expensive\narticle in the catalogue of a man's good Qualities--whereas the\nsentimental French Plate I use instead of it makes just as good a\nshew--and pays no tax.\n\n     Enter ROWLEY\n\nROWLEY. Mr. Surface--your Servant: I was apprehensive of interrupting\nyou, tho' my Business demands immediate attention--as this Note will\ninform you----\n\nSURFACE. Always Happy to see Mr. Rowley--how--Oliver--Surface!--My Unkle\narrived!\n\nROWLEY. He is indeed--we have just parted--quite well--after a speedy\nvoyage--and impatient to embrace his worthy Nephew.\n\nSURFACE. I am astonished!--William[!] stop Mr. Stanley, if He's not\ngone----\n\nROWLEY. O--He's out of reach--I believe.\n\nSURFACE. Why didn't you let me know this when you came in together.--\n\nROWLEY. I thought you had particular--Business--but must be gone to\ninform your Brother, and appoint him here to meet his Uncle. He will be\nwith you in a quarter of an hour----\n\nSURFACE. So he says. Well--I am strangely overjoy'd at his coming--never\nto be sure was anything so damn'd unlucky!\n\nROWLEY. You will be delighted to see how well He looks.\n\nSURFACE. O--I'm rejoiced to hear it--just at this time----\n\nROWLEY. I'll tell him how impatiently you expect him----\n\nSURFACE. Do--do--pray--give my best duty and affection--indeed, I cannot\nexpress the sensations I feel at the thought of seeing him!--certainly\nhis coming just at this Time is the cruellest piece of ill Fortune----\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\n--At SIR PETER'S House\n\n     Enter MRS. CANDOUR and SERVANT\n\nSERVANT. Indeed Ma'am, my Lady will see nobody at Present.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Did you tell her it was her Friend Mrs. Candour----\n\nSERVANT. Yes Ma'am but she begs you will excuse her----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Do go again--I shall be glad to see her if it be only for\na moment--for I am sure she must be in great Distress\n\n     [exit MAID]\n\n--Dear Heart--how provoking!--I'm not mistress of half the\ncircumstances!--We shall have the whole affair in the newspapers with\nthe Names of the Parties at length before I have dropt the story at a\ndozen houses.\n\n     Enter SIR BENJAMIN\n\nSir Benjamin you have heard, I suppose----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Of Lady Teazle and Mr. Surface----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. And Sir Peter's Discovery----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. O the strangest Piece of Business to be sure----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Well I never was so surprised in my life!--I am so sorry\nfor all Parties--indeed,\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Now I don't Pity Sir Peter at all--he was so\nextravagant--partial to Mr. Surface----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Mr. Surface!--why 'twas with Charles Lady Teazle was\ndetected.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. No such thing Mr. Surface is the gallant.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. No--no--Charles is the man--'twas Mr. Surface brought Sir\nPeter on purpose to discover them----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. I tell you I have it from one----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. And I have it from one----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Who had it from one who had it----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. From one immediately--but here comes Lady\nSneerwell--perhaps she knows the whole affair.\n\n     Enter LADY SNEERWELL\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. So--my dear Mrs. Candour Here's a sad affair of our\nFriend Teazle----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Aye my dear Friend, who could have thought it.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Well there is no trusting to appearances[;] tho'--indeed\nshe was always too lively for me.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. To be sure, her manners were a little too--free--but she\nwas very young----\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. And had indeed some good Qualities.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. So she had indeed--but have you heard the Particulars?\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. No--but everybody says that Mr. Surface----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Aye there I told you--Mr. Surface was the Man.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. No--no--indeed the assignation was with Charles----\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. With Charles!--You alarm me Mrs. Candour!\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Yes--yes He was the Lover--Mr. Surface--do him\njustice--was only the Informer.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Well I'll not dispute with you Mrs. Candour--but be it\nwhich it may--I hope that Sir Peter's wound will not----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Sir Peter's wound! O mercy! I didn't hear a word of their\nFighting----\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Nor I a syllable!\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. No--what no mention of the Duel----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Not a word--\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. O, Lord--yes--yes--they fought before they left the Room.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Pray let us hear.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Aye--do oblige--us with the Duel----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. 'Sir'--says Sir Peter--immediately after the Discovery,\n'you are a most ungrateful Fellow.'\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Aye to Charles----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. No, no--to Mr. Surface--'a most ungrateful Fellow; and old\nas I am, Sir,' says He, 'I insist on immediate satisfaction.'\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Aye that must have been to Charles for 'tis very unlikely\nMr. Surface should go to fight in his own House.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Gad's Life, Ma'am, not at all--giving me immediate\nsatisfaction--on this, Madam--Lady Teazle seeing Sir Peter in such\nDanger--ran out of the Room in strong Hysterics--and Charles after her\ncalling out for Hartshorn and Water! Then Madam--they began to fight\nwith Swords----\n\n     Enter CRABTREE\n\nCRABTREE. With Pistols--Nephew--I have it from undoubted authority.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Oh, Mr. Crabtree then it is all true----\n\nCRABTREE. Too true indeed Ma'am, and Sir Peter Dangerously wounded----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. By a thrust in second--quite thro' his left side\n\nCRABTREE. By a Bullet lodged in the Thorax----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Mercy--on me[!] Poor Sir Peter----\n\nCRABTREE. Yes, ma'am tho' Charles would have avoided the matter if he\ncould----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. I knew Charles was the Person----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. O my Unkle I see knows nothing of the matter----\n\nCRABTREE. But Sir Peter tax'd him with the basest ingratitude----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. That I told you, you know----\n\nCRABTREE. Do Nephew let me speak--and insisted on immediate----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Just as I said----\n\nCRABTREE. Odds life! Nephew allow others to know something too--A Pair\nof Pistols lay on the Bureau--for Mr. Surface--it seems, had come home\nthe Night before late from Salt-Hill where He had been to see the Montem\nwith a Friend, who has a Son at Eton--so unluckily the Pistols were left\nCharged----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. I heard nothing of this----\n\nCRABTREE. Sir Peter forced Charles to take one and they fired--it seems\npretty nearly together--Charles's shot took Place as I tell you--and Sir\nPeter's miss'd--but what is very extraordinary the Ball struck against\na little Bronze Pliny that stood over the Fire Place--grazed out of the\nwindow at a right angle--and wounded the Postman, who was just coming to\nthe Door with a double letter from Northamptonshire.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. My Unkle's account is more circumstantial I must\nconfess--but I believe mine is the true one for all that.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. I am more interested in this Affair than they\nimagine--and must have better information.--\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Ah! Lady Sneerwell's alarm is very easily accounted for.--\n\nCRABTREE. Yes yes, they certainly DO say--but that's neither here nor\nthere.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. But pray where is Sir Peter at present----\n\nCRABTREE. Oh! they--brought him home and He is now in the House, tho'\nthe Servants are order'd to deny it----\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. I believe so--and Lady Teazle--I suppose attending him----\n\nCRABTREE. Yes yes--and I saw one of the Faculty enter just before me----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Hey--who comes here----\n\nCRABTREE. Oh, this is He--the Physician depend on't.\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. O certainly it must be the Physician and now we shall\nknow----\n\n     Enter SIR OLIVER\n\nCRABTREE. Well, Doctor--what Hopes?\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Aye Doctor how's your Patient?\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Now Doctor isn't it a wound with a small sword----\n\nCRABTREE. A bullet lodged in the Thorax--for a hundred!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Doctor!--a wound with a small sword! and a Bullet in the\nThorax!--oon's are you mad, good People?\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Perhaps, Sir, you are not a Doctor.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Truly Sir I am to thank you for my degree If I am.\n\nCRABTREE. Only a Friend of Sir Peter's then I presume--but, sir, you\nmust have heard of this accident--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Not a word!\n\nCRABTREE. Not of his being dangerously wounded?\n\nSIR OLIVER. The Devil he is!\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Run thro' the Body----\n\nCRABTREE. Shot in the breast----\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. By one Mr. Surface----\n\nCRABTREE. Aye the younger.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Hey! what the plague! you seem to differ strangely in your\naccounts--however you agree that Sir Peter is dangerously wounded.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. Oh yes, we agree in that.\n\nCRABTREE. Yes, yes, I believe there can be no doubt in that.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Then, upon my word, for a person in that Situation, he is\nthe most imprudent man alive--For here he comes walking as if nothing at\nall was the matter.\n\n     Enter SIR PETER\n\nOdd's heart, sir Peter! you are come in good time I promise you, for we\nhad just given you over!\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. 'Egad, Uncle this is the most sudden Recovery!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Why, man, what do you do out of Bed with a Small Sword\nthrough your Body, and a Bullet lodg'd in your Thorax?\n\nSIR PETER. A Small Sword and a Bullet--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Aye these Gentlemen would have kill'd you without Law or\nPhysic, and wanted to dub me a Doctor to make me an accomplice.\n\nSIR PETER. Why! what is all this?\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. We rejoice, Sir Peter, that the Story of the Duel is not\ntrue--and are sincerely sorry for your other Misfortune.\n\nSIR PETER. So--so--all over the Town already! [Aside.]\n\nCRABTREE. Tho', Sir Peter, you were certainly vastly to blame to marry\nat all at your years.\n\nSIR PETER. Sir, what Business is that of yours?\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Tho' Indeed, as Sir Peter made so good a Husband, he's\nvery much to be pitied.\n\nSIR PETER. Plague on your pity, Ma'am, I desire none of it.\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. However Sir Peter, you must not mind the Laughing and\njests you will meet with on the occasion.\n\nSIR PETER. Sir, I desire to be master in my own house.\n\nCRABTREE. 'Tis no Uncommon Case, that's one comfort.\n\nSIR PETER. I insist on being left to myself, without ceremony,--I insist\non your leaving my house directly!\n\nMRS. CANDOUR. Well, well, we are going and depend on't, we'll make the\nbest report of you we can.\n\nSIR PETER. Leave my house!\n\nCRABTREE. And tell how hardly you have been treated.\n\nSIR PETER. Leave my House--\n\nSIR BENJAMIN. And how patiently you bear it.\n\nSIR PETER. Friends! Vipers! Furies! Oh that their own Venom would choke\nthem!\n\nSIR OLIVER. They are very provoking indeed, Sir Peter.\n\n     Enter ROWLEY\n\nROWLEY. I heard high words: what has ruffled you Sir Peter--\n\nSIR PETER. Pshaw what signifies asking--do I ever pass a Day without my\nVexations?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well I'm not Inquisitive--I come only to tell you, that I\nhave seen both my Nephews in the manner we proposed.\n\nSIR PETER. A Precious Couple they are!\n\nROWLEY. Yes and Sir Oliver--is convinced that your judgment was right\nSir Peter.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes I find Joseph is Indeed the Man after all.\n\nROWLEY. Aye as Sir Peter says, He's a man of Sentiment.\n\nSIR OLIVER. And acts up to the Sentiments he professes.\n\nROWLEY. It certainly is Edification to hear him talk.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Oh, He's a model for the young men of the age! But how's\nthis, Sir Peter? you don't Join us in your Friend Joseph's Praise as I\nexpected.\n\nSIR PETER. Sir Oliver, we live in a damned wicked world, and the fewer\nwe praise the better.\n\nROWLEY. What do YOU say so, Sir Peter--who were never mistaken in your\nLife?\n\nSIR PETER. Pshaw--Plague on you both--I see by your sneering you have\nheard--the whole affair--I shall go mad among you!\n\nROWLEY. Then to fret you no longer Sir Peter--we are indeed acquainted\nwith it all--I met Lady Teazle coming from Mr. Surface's so humbled,\nthat she deigned to request ME to be her advocate with you--\n\nSIR PETER. And does Sir Oliver know all too?\n\nSIR OLIVER. Every circumstance!\n\nSIR PETER. What of the closet and the screen--hey[?]\n\nSIR OLIVER. Yes yes--and the little French Milliner. Oh, I have been\nvastly diverted with the story! ha! ha! ha!\n\nSIR PETER. 'Twas very pleasant!\n\nSIR OLIVER. I never laugh'd more in my life, I assure you: ha! ha!\n\nSIR PETER. O vastly diverting! ha! ha!\n\nROWLEY. To be sure Joseph with his Sentiments! ha! ha!\n\nSIR PETER. Yes his sentiments! ha! ha! a hypocritical Villain!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Aye and that Rogue Charles--to pull Sir Peter out of the\ncloset: ha! ha!\n\nSIR PETER. Ha! ha! 'twas devilish entertaining to be sure--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Ha! ha! Egad, Sir Peter I should like to have seen your Face\nwhen the screen was thrown down--ha! ha!\n\nSIR PETER. Yes, my face when the Screen was thrown down: ha! ha! ha! O I\nmust never show my head again!\n\nSIR OLIVER. But come--come it isn't fair to laugh at you neither my old\nFriend--tho' upon my soul I can't help it--\n\nSIR PETER. O pray don't restrain your mirth on my account: it does not\nhurt me at all--I laugh at the whole affair myself--Yes--yes--I\nthink being a standing Jest for all one's acquaintance a very happy\nsituation--O yes--and then of a morning to read the Paragraphs about\nMr. S----, Lady T----, and Sir P----, will be so entertaining!--I shall\ncertainly leave town tomorrow and never look mankind in the Face again!\n\nROWLEY. Without affectation Sir Peter, you may despise the ridicule of\nFools--but I see Lady Teazle going towards the next Room--I am sure you\nmust desire a Reconciliation as earnestly as she does.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Perhaps MY being here prevents her coming to you--well I'll\nleave honest Rowley to mediate between you; but he must bring you all\npresently to Mr. Surface's--where I am now returning--if not to reclaim\na Libertine, at least to expose Hypocrisy.\n\nSIR PETER. Ah! I'll be present at your discovering yourself there with\nall my heart; though 'tis a vile unlucky Place for discoveries.\n\nSIR OLIVER. However it is very convenient to the carrying on of my Plot\nthat you all live so near one another!\n\n     [Exit SIR OLIVER.]\n\nROWLEY. We'll follow--\n\nSIR PETER. She is not coming here you see, Rowley--\n\nROWLEY. No but she has left the Door of that Room open you\nperceive.--see she is in Tears--!\n\nSIR PETER. She seems indeed to wish I should go to her.--how dejected\nshe appears--\n\nROWLEY. And will you refrain from comforting her--\n\nSIR PETER. Certainly a little mortification appears very becoming in a\nwife--don't you think it will do her good to let her Pine a little.\n\nROWLEY. O this is ungenerous in you--\n\nSIR PETER. Well I know not what to think--you remember Rowley the Letter\nI found of her's--evidently intended for Charles?\n\nROWLEY. A mere forgery, Sir Peter--laid in your way on Purpose--this is\none of the Points which I intend Snake shall give you conviction on--\n\nSIR PETER. I wish I were once satisfied of that--She looks this\nway----what a remarkably elegant Turn of the Head she has! Rowley I'll\ngo to her--\n\nROWLEY. Certainly--\n\nSIR PETER. Tho' when it is known that we are reconciled, People will\nlaugh at me ten times more!\n\nROWLEY. Let--them laugh--and retort their malice only by showing them\nyou are happy in spite of it.\n\nSIR PETER. Efaith so I will--and, if I'm not mistaken we may yet be the\nhappiest couple in the country--\n\nROWLEY. Nay Sir Peter--He who once lays aside suspicion----\n\nSIR PETER. Hold Master Rowley--if you have any Regard for me--never let\nme hear you utter anything like a Sentiment. I have had enough of THEM\nto serve me the rest of my Life.\n\n     [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE THE LAST.\n\n--The Library\n\n     SURFACE and LADY SNEERWELL\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Impossible! will not Sir Peter immediately be reconciled\nto CHARLES? and of consequence no longer oppose his union with MARIA?\nthe thought is Distraction to me!\n\nSURFACE. Can Passion--furnish a Remedy?\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. No--nor cunning either. O I was a Fool, an Ideot--to\nleague with such a Blunderer!\n\nSURFACE. Surely Lady Sneerwell I am the greatest Sufferer--yet you see I\nbear the accident with Calmness.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Because the Disappointment hasn't reached your\nHEART--your interest only attached you to Maria--had you felt for\nher--what I have for that ungrateful Libertine--neither your Temper nor\nHypocrisy could prevent your showing the sharpness of your Vexation.\n\nSURFACE. But why should your Reproaches fall on me for this\nDisappointment?\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Are not you the cause of it? what had you to bate in\nyour Pursuit of Maria to pervert Lady Teazle by the way.--had you not a\nsufficient field for your Roguery in blinding Sir Peter and supplanting\nyour Brother--I hate such an avarice of crimes--'tis an unfair monopoly\nand never prospers.\n\nSURFACE. Well I admit I have been to blame--I confess I deviated from\nthe direct Road of wrong but I don't think we're so totally defeated\nneither.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. No!\n\nSURFACE. You tell me you have made a trial of Snake since we met--and\nthat you still believe him faithful to us--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. I do believe so.\n\nSURFACE. And that he has undertaken should it be necessary--to swear and\nprove that Charles is at this Time contracted by vows and Honour to\nyour Ladyship--which some of his former letters to you will serve to\nsupport--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. This, indeed, might have assisted--\n\nSURFACE. Come--come it is not too late yet--but hark! this is probably\nmy Unkle Sir Oliver--retire to that Room--we'll consult further when\nHe's gone.--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Well but if HE should find you out to--\n\nSURFACE. O I have no fear of that--Sir Peter will hold his tongue for\nhis own credit sake--and you may depend on't I shall soon Discover Sir\nOliver's weak side!--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. I have no diffidence of your abilities--only be constant\nto one roguery at a time--\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSURFACE. I will--I will--So 'tis confounded hard after such bad Fortune,\nto be baited by one's confederate in evil--well at all events\nmy character is so much better than Charles's, that I\ncertainly--hey--what!--this is not Sir Oliver--but old Stanley\nagain!--Plague on't that He should return to teaze me just now--I shall\nhave Sir Oliver come and find him here--and----\n\n     Enter SIR OLIVER\n\nGad's life, Mr. Stanley--why have you come back to plague me at this\ntime? you must not stay now upon my word!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Sir--I hear your Unkle Oliver is expected here--and tho' He\nhas been so penurious to you, I'll try what He'll do for me--\n\nSURFACE. Sir! 'tis impossible for you to stay now--so I must beg----come\nany other time and I promise you you shall be assisted.\n\nSIR OLIVER. No--Sir Oliver and I must be acquainted--\n\nSURFACE. Zounds Sir then [I] insist on your quitting the--Room\ndirectly--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Nay Sir----\n\nSURFACE. Sir--I insist on't--here William show this Gentleman out. Since\nyou compel me Sir--not one moment--this is such insolence.\n\n     [Going to push him out.]\n\n     Enter CHARLES\n\nCHARLES. Heyday! what's the matter now?--what the Devil have you got\nhold of my little Broker here! Zounds--Brother, don't hurt little\nPremium. What's the matter--my little Fellow?\n\nSURFACE. So! He has been with you, too, has He--\n\nCHARLES. To be sure He has! Why, 'tis as honest a little----But sure\nJoseph you have not been borrowing money too have you?\n\nSURFACE. Borrowing--no!--But, Brother--you know sure we expect Sir\nOliver every----\n\nCHARLES. O Gad, that's true--Noll mustn't find the little Broker here to\nbe sure--\n\nSURFACE. Yet Mr. Stanley insists----\n\nCHARLES. Stanley--why his name's Premium--\n\nSURFACE. No no Stanley.\n\nCHARLES. No, no--Premium.\n\nSURFACE. Well no matter which--but----\n\nCHARLES. Aye aye Stanley or Premium, 'tis the same thing as you say--for\nI suppose He goes by half a hundred Names, besides A. B's at the\nCoffee-House. [Knock.]\n\nSURFACE. 'Sdeath--here's Sir Oliver at the Door----Now I beg--Mr.\nStanley----\n\nCHARLES. Aye aye and I beg Mr. Premium----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Gentlemen----\n\nSURFACE. Sir, by Heaven you shall go--\n\nCHARLES. Aye out with him certainly----\n\nSIR OLIVER. This violence----\n\nSURFACE. 'Tis your own Fault.\n\nCHARLES. Out with him to be sure.     [Both forcing SIR OLIVER out.]\n\n     Enter SIR PETER TEAZLE, LADY TEAZLE, MARIA, and ROWLEY\n\nSIR PETER. My old Friend, Sir Oliver!--hey! what in the name of\nwonder!--Here are dutiful Nephews!--assault their Unkle at his first\nVisit!\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Indeed Sir Oliver 'twas well we came in to rescue you.\n\nROWLEY. Truly it was--for I perceive Sir Oliver the character of old\nStanley was no Protection to you.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Nor of Premium either--the necessities of the former could\nnot extort a shilling from that benevolent Gentleman; and with the other\nI stood a chance of faring worse than my Ancestors, and being knocked\ndown without being bid for.\n\nSURFACE. Charles!\n\nCHARLES. Joseph!\n\nSURFACE. 'Tis compleat!\n\nCHARLES. Very!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Sir Peter--my Friend and Rowley too--look on that elder\nNephew of mine--You know what He has already received from my Bounty and\nyou know also how gladly I would have look'd on half my Fortune as held\nin trust for him--judge then my Disappointment in discovering him to be\ndestitute of Truth--Charity--and Gratitude--\n\nSIR PETER. Sir Oliver--I should be more surprized at this Declaration,\nif I had not myself found him to be selfish--treacherous and\nHypocritical.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. And if the Gentleman pleads not guilty to these pray let\nhim call ME to his Character.\n\nSIR PETER. Then I believe we need add no more--if He knows himself He\nwill consider it as the most perfect Punishment that He is known to the\nworld--\n\nCHARLES. If they talk this way to Honesty--what will they say to ME by\nand bye!\n\nSIR OLIVER. As for that Prodigal--his Brother there----\n\nCHARLES. Aye now comes my Turn--the damn'd Family Pictures will ruin\nme--\n\nSURFACE. Sir Oliver--Unkle--will you honour me with a hearing--\n\nCHARLES. I wish Joseph now would make one of his long speeches and I\nmight recollect myself a little--\n\nSIR OLIVER. And I suppose you would undertake to vindicate yourself\nentirely--\n\nSURFACE. I trust I could--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Nay--if you desert your Roguery in its Distress and try to\nbe justified--you have even less principle than I thought you had.--[To\nCHARLES SURFACE] Well, Sir--and YOU could JUSTIFY yourself too I\nsuppose--\n\nCHARLES. Not that I know of, Sir Oliver.\n\nSIR OLIVER. What[!] little Premium has been let too much into the secret\nI presume.\n\nCHARLES. True--Sir--but they were Family Secrets, and should not be\nmentioned again you know.\n\nROWLEY. Come Sir Oliver I know you cannot speak of Charles's Follies\nwith anger.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Odd's heart no more I can--nor with gravity either--Sir\nPeter do you know the Rogue bargain'd with me for all his\nAncestors--sold me judges and Generals by the Foot, and Maiden Aunts as\ncheap as broken China!\n\nCHARLES. To be sure, Sir Oliver, I did make a little free with the\nFamily Canvas that's the truth on't:--my Ancestors may certainly rise in\njudgment against me there's no denying it--but believe me sincere when I\ntell you, and upon my soul I would not say so if I was not--that if I do\nnot appear mortified at the exposure of my Follies, it is because I\nfeel at this moment the warmest satisfaction in seeing you, my liberal\nbenefactor.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Charles--I believe you--give me your hand again: the\nill-looking little fellow over the Couch has made your Peace.\n\nCHARLES. Then Sir--my Gratitude to the original is still encreased.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. [Advancing.] Yet I believe, Sir Oliver, here is one whom\nCharles is still more anxious to be reconciled to.\n\nSIR OLIVER. O I have heard of his Attachment there--and, with the young\nLady's Pardon if I construe right that Blush----\n\nSIR PETER. Well--Child--speak your sentiments--you know--we are going to\nbe reconciled to Charles--\n\nMARIA. Sir--I have little to say--but that I shall rejoice to hear that\nHe is happy--For me--whatever claim I had to his Affection--I willing\nresign to one who has a better title.\n\nCHARLES. How Maria!\n\nSIR PETER. Heyday--what's the mystery now? while he appeared an\nincorrigible Rake, you would give your hand to no one else and now that\nHe's likely to reform I'll warrant You won't have him!\n\nMARIA. His own Heart--and Lady Sneerwell know the cause.\n\n[CHARLES.] Lady Sneerwell!\n\nSURFACE. Brother it is with great concern--I am obliged to speak on\nthis Point, but my Regard to justice obliges me--and Lady Sneerwell's\ninjuries can no longer--be concealed--[Goes to the Door.]\n\n     Enter LADY SNEERWELL\n\nSIR PETER. Soh! another French milliner egad! He has one in every Room\nin the House I suppose--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Ungrateful Charles! Well may you be surprised and feel\nfor the indelicate situation which your Perfidy has forced me into.\n\nCHARLES. Pray Unkle, is this another Plot of yours? for as I have Life I\ndon't understand it.\n\nSURFACE. I believe Sir there is but the evidence of one Person more\nnecessary to make it extremely clear.\n\nSIR PETER. And that Person--I imagine, is Mr. Snake--Rowley--you were\nperfectly right to bring him with us--and pray let him appear.\n\nROWLEY. Walk in, Mr. Snake--\n\n     Enter SNAKE\n\nI thought his Testimony might be wanted--however it happens unluckily\nthat He comes to confront Lady Sneerwell and not to support her--\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. A Villain!--Treacherous to me at last! Speak, Fellow,\nhave you too conspired against me?\n\nSNAKE. I beg your Ladyship--ten thousand Pardons--you paid me extremely\nLiberally for the Lie in question--but I unfortunately have been offer'd\ndouble to speak the Truth.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. The Torments of Shame and Disappointment on you all!\n\nLADY TEAZLE. Hold--Lady Sneerwell--before you go let me thank you for\nthe trouble you and that Gentleman have taken in writing Letters from me\nto Charles and answering them yourself--and let me also request you\nto make my Respects to the Scandalous College--of which you are\nPresident--and inform them that Lady Teazle, Licentiate, begs leave to\nreturn the diploma they granted her--as she leaves of[f] Practice and\nkills Characters no longer.\n\nLADY SNEERWELL. Provoking--insolent!--may your Husband live these fifty\nyears!\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSIR PETER. Oons what a Fury----\n\nLADY TEAZLE. A malicious Creature indeed!\n\nSIR PETER. Hey--not for her last wish?--\n\nLADY TEAZLE. O No--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well Sir, and what have you to say now?\n\nSURFACE. Sir, I am so confounded, to find that Lady Sneerwell could be\nguilty of suborning Mr. Snake in this manner to impose on us all that\nI know not what to say----however, lest her Revengeful Spirit should\nprompt her to injure my Brother I had certainly better follow her\ndirectly.\n\n     [Exit.]\n\nSIR PETER. Moral to the last drop!\n\nSIR OLIVER. Aye and marry her Joseph if you can.--Oil and Vinegar\negad:--you'll do very well together.\n\nROWLEY. I believe we have no more occasion for Mr. Snake at Present--\n\nSNAKE. Before I go--I beg Pardon once for all for whatever uneasiness I\nhave been the humble instrument of causing to the Parties present.\n\nSIR PETER. Well--well you have made atonement by a good Deed at last--\n\nSNAKE. But I must Request of the Company that it shall never be known--\n\nSIR PETER. Hey!--what the Plague--are you ashamed of having done a right\nthing once in your life?\n\nSNAKE. Ah: Sir--consider I live by the Badness of my Character!--I have\nnothing but my Infamy to depend on!--and, if it were once known that I\nhad been betray'd into an honest Action, I should lose every Friend I\nhave in the world.\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well--well we'll not traduce you by saying anything to your\nPraise never fear.\n\n     [Exit SNAKE.]\n\nSIR PETER. There's a precious Rogue--Yet that fellow is a Writer and a\nCritic.\n\nLADY TEAZLE. See[,] Sir Oliver[,] there needs no persuasion now to\nreconcile your Nephew and Maria--\n\nSIR OLIVER. Aye--aye--that's as it should be and egad we'll have the\nwedding to-morrow morning--\n\nCHARLES. Thank you, dear Unkle!\n\nSIR PETER. What! you rogue don't you ask the Girl's consent first--\n\nCHARLES. Oh, I have done that a long time--above a minute ago--and She\nhas look'd yes--\n\nMARIA. For Shame--Charles--I protest Sir Peter, there has not been a\nword----\n\nSIR OLIVER. Well then the fewer the Better--may your love for each other\nnever know--abatement.\n\nSIR PETER. And may you live as happily together as Lady Teazle and\nI--intend to do--\n\nCHARLES. Rowley my old Friend--I am sure you congratulate me and I\nsuspect too that I owe you much.\n\nSIR OLIVER. You do, indeed, Charles--\n\nROWLEY. If my Efforts to serve you had not succeeded you would have been\nin my debt for the attempt--but deserve to be happy--and you over-repay\nme.\n\nSIR PETER. Aye honest Rowley always said you would reform.\n\nCHARLES. Why as to reforming Sir Peter I'll make no promises--and that\nI take to be a proof that I intend to set about it--But here shall be my\nMonitor--my gentle Guide.--ah! can I leave the Virtuous path those Eyes\nillumine?\n\n   Tho' thou, dear Maid, should'st wave [waive] thy Beauty's Sway,\n   --Thou still must Rule--because I will obey:\n   An humbled fugitive from Folly View,\n   No sanctuary near but Love and YOU:\n   You can indeed each anxious Fear remove,\n   For even Scandal dies if you approve.  [To the audience.]\n\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE\n\n     BY MR. COLMAN\n\n     SPOKEN BY LADY TEAZLE\n\n     I, who was late so volatile and gay,\n     Like a trade-wind must now blow all one way,\n     Bend all my cares, my studies, and my vows,\n     To one dull rusty weathercock--my spouse!\n     So wills our virtuous bard--the motley Bayes\n     Of crying epilogues and laughing plays!\n     Old bachelors, who marry smart young wives,\n     Learn from our play to regulate your lives:\n     Each bring his dear to town, all faults upon her--\n     London will prove the very source of honour.\n     Plunged fairly in, like a cold bath it serves,\n     When principles relax, to brace the nerves:\n     Such is my case; and yet I must deplore\n     That the gay dream of dissipation's o'er.\n     And say, ye fair! was ever lively wife,\n     Born with a genius for the highest life,\n     Like me untimely blasted in her bloom,\n     Like me condemn'd to such a dismal doom?\n     Save money--when I just knew how to waste it!\n     Leave London--just as I began to taste it!\n       Must I then watch the early crowing cock,\n     The melancholy ticking of a clock;\n     In a lone rustic hall for ever pounded,\n     With dogs, cats, rats, and squalling brats surrounded?\n     With humble curate can I now retire,\n     (While good Sir Peter boozes with the squire,)\n     And at backgammon mortify my soul,\n     That pants for loo, or flutters at a vole?\n     Seven's the main!  Dear sound that must expire,\n     Lost at hot cockles round a Christmas fire;\n     The transient hour of fashion too soon spent,\n     Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content!\n     Farewell the plumed head, the cushion'd tete,\n     That takes the cushion from its proper seat!\n     That spirit-stirring drum!--card drums I mean,\n     Spadille--odd trick--pam--basto--king and queen!\n     And you, ye knockers, that, with brazen throat,\n     The welcome visitors' approach denote;\n     Farewell all quality of high renown,\n     Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious town!\n     Farewell! your revels I partake no more,\n     And Lady Teazle's occupation's o'er!\n     All this I told our bard; he smiled, and said 'twas clear,\n     I ought to play deep tragedy next year.\n     Meanwhile he drew wise morals from his play,\n     And in these solemn periods stalk'd away:--\n     \"Bless'd were the fair like you; her faults who stopp'd,\n     And closed her follies when the curtain dropp'd!\n     No more in vice or error to engage,\n     Or play the fool at large on life's great stage.\"\n\n\nEND OF PLAY\n\n\n\n\n\n<1> This PORTRAIT and Garrick's PROLOGUE are not included in Fraser\nRae's text.\n\n<2> From Sheridan's manuscript.\n\n<3> The story in Act I. Scene I., told by Crabtree about Miss Letitia\nPiper, is repeated here, the speaker being Sir Peter:\n\n   SIR PETER.  O nine out of ten malicious inventions are founded\n   on some ridiculous misrepresentation--Mrs. Candour you remember\n   how poor Miss Shepherd lost her Lover and her Character one\n   Summer at Tunbridge.\n\n   MRS. C.  To be sure that was a very ridiculous affair.\n\n   CRABTREE.  Pray tell us Sir Peter how it was.\n\n   SIR P.  Why madam--[The story follows.]\n\n   MRS. C.  Ha ha strange indeed--\n\n   SIR P.  Matter of Fact I assure you....\n\n   LADY T.  As sure as can be--Sir Peter will grow scandalous\n   himself--if you encourage him to tell stories.\n   [Fraser Rae's footnote--Ed.]\n\n<4> The words which follow this title are not inserted in the manuscript\nof the play. [Fraser Rae's footnote.--Ed.]\n\n<5> From this place to Scene ii. Act IV. several sheets are missing.\n[Fraser Rae's footnote.--Ed.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "In a part of English high society where gossip runs rampant, a tangle of love has formed. Lady Sneerwell is in love with a young, rebellious man named Charles Surface. However, Charles is in love with Maria, as is his brother Joseph. Maria is in love with Charles, but Lady Sneerwell and Joseph plot to ruin this relationship through rumors of unfaithfulness on Charles' part. At the same time, an older man named Sir Peter Teazle has taken a young wife from the country, now called Lady Teazle; after only a few months of marriage they now bicker constantly about money, driving Lady Teazle to contemplate an affair with Joseph Surface. The plot thickens when Sir Oliver Surface, the rich uncle of Joseph and Charles, returns to town from abroad. He schemes to test the rumors he has heard of Joseph being the well-bred and deserving brother and Charles having fallen into ruin; to do so, he goes to each of them in disguise. He disguises himself as a money lender named Mr. Premium to investigate Charles's spending habits, and is infuriated when he sees Charles living lavishly while driving the family far into debt. Charles proposes to sell him all he has left, the collection of family portraits, angering his uncle even more; however he forgives him when Charles refuses to sell the painting of his uncle. The tangle of love and rumors becomes clear when, while Lady Teazle is visiting Joseph Surface, her husband comes to call. Lady Teazle hides behind a screen and listens to their conversation. Then, Charles Surface comes to call on his brother as well; Sir Teazle, hoping to see whether Charles is having an affair with his wife as has been rumored, also tries to hide behind the screen. He sees what he thinks is simply a young woman Joseph has been trying to hide. Sir Teazle hides in the closet instead, but when Charles starts to talk about Joseph's relationship with Lady Teazle, Joseph reveals that Sir Teazle is hiding in the closet, and Charles pulls him out. When Joseph goes out of the room momentarily, Sir Teazle tells Charles about the young woman he thinks is hiding behind the screen, and they pull it down to reveal his wife. Sir Oliver visits Joseph dressed as one of their poor relations looking for money. Sir Oliver is disappointed to find that Joseph is only kind on the surface, but will not do anything material to help his relative. The play ends with Sir Oliver revealing his plot and his findings to Charles and Joseph. Everyone realizes that Lady Sneerwell and her servant Snake orchestrated the rumor about Charles and Lady Teazle.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "12915", "title": "The White Devil", "text": "ACT I SCENE I\n\n\nEnter Count Lodovico, Antonelli, and Gasparo\n\n\nLodo.   Banish'd!\n\n\nAnt.   It griev'd me much to hear the sentence.\n\n\nLodo.   Ha, ha, O Democritus, thy gods\n  That govern the whole world! courtly reward\n  And punishment.  Fortune 's a right whore:\n  If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,\n  That she may take away all at one swoop.\n  This 'tis to have great enemies!  God 'quite them.\n  Your wolf no longer seems to be a wolf\n  Than when she 's hungry.\n\n\nGas.   You term those enemies,\n  Are men of princely rank.\n\n\nLodo.   Oh, I pray for them:\n  The violent thunder is adored by those\n  Are pasht in pieces by it.\n\n\nAnt.   Come, my lord,\n  You are justly doom'd; look but a little back\n  Into your former life: you have in three years\n  Ruin'd the noblest earldom.\n\n\nGas.   Your followers\n  Have swallowed you, like mummia, and being sick\n  With such unnatural and horrid physic,\n  Vomit you up i' th' kennel.\n\n\nAnt.   All the damnable degrees\n  Of drinking have you stagger'd through.  One citizen,\n  Is lord of two fair manors, call'd you master,\n  Only for caviare.\n\n\nGas.   Those noblemen\n  Which were invited to your prodigal feasts,\n  (Wherein the phoenix scarce could 'scape your throats)\n  Laugh at your misery, as fore-deeming you\n  An idle meteor, which drawn forth, the earth\n  Would be soon lost i' the air.\n\n\nAnt.   Jest upon you,\n  And say you were begotten in an earthquake,\n  You have ruin'd such fair lordships.\n\n\nLodo.   Very good.\n  This well goes with two buckets: I must tend\n  The pouring out of either.\n\n\nGas.   Worse than these.\n  You have acted certain murders here in Rome,\n  Bloody and full of horror.\n\n\nLodo.   'Las, they were flea-bitings:\n  Why took they not my head then?\n\n\nGas.   O, my lord!\n  The law doth sometimes mediate, thinks it good\n  Not ever to steep violent sins in blood:\n  This gentle penance may both end your crimes,\n  And in the example better these bad times.\n\n\nLodo.   So; but I wonder then some great men 'scape\n  This banishment: there 's Paulo Giordano Ursini,\n  The Duke of Brachiano, now lives in Rome,\n  And by close panderism seeks to prostitute\n  The honour of Vittoria Corombona:\n  Vittoria, she that might have got my pardon\n  For one kiss to the duke.\n\n\nAnt.   Have a full man within you:\n  We see that trees bear no such pleasant fruit\n  There where they grew first, as where they are new set.\n  Perfumes, the more they are chaf'd, the more they render\n  Their pleasing scents, and so affliction\n  Expresseth virtue fully, whether true,\n  Or else adulterate.\n\n\nLodo.   Leave your painted comforts;\n  I 'll make Italian cut-works in their guts\n  If ever I return.\n\n\nGas.   Oh, sir.\n\n\nLodo.   I am patient.\n  I have seen some ready to be executed,\n  Give pleasant looks, and money, and grown familiar\n  With the knave hangman; so do I; I thank them,\n  And would account them nobly merciful,\n  Would they dispatch me quickly.\n\n\nAnt.   Fare you well;\n  We shall find time, I doubt not, to repeal\n  Your banishment.\n\n\nLodo.   I am ever bound to you.\n  This is the world's alms; pray make use of it.\n  Great men sell sheep, thus to be cut in pieces,\n  When first they have shorn them bare, and sold their fleeces.\n                                                                  [Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II\n\n\nEnter Brachiano, Camillo, Flamineo, Vittoria\n\n\nBrach.   Your best of rest.\n\n\nVit.   Unto my lord the duke,\n  The best of welcome.  More lights: attend the duke.\n                                            [Exeunt Camillo and Vittoria.\n\n\nBrach.   Flamineo.\n\n\nFlam.   My lord.\n\n\nBrach.   Quite lost, Flamineo.\n\n\nFlam.   Pursue your noble wishes, I am prompt\n  As lightning to your service.  O my lord!\n  The fair Vittoria, my happy sister,\n  Shall give you present audience--Gentlemen,                   [Whisper.\n  Let the caroch go on--and 'tis his pleasure\n  You put out all your torches and depart.\n\n\nBrach.   Are we so happy?\n\n\nFlam.   Can it be otherwise?\n  Observ'd you not to-night, my honour'd lord,\n  Which way soe'er you went, she threw her eyes?\n  I have dealt already with her chambermaid,\n  Zanche the Moor, and she is wondrous proud\n  To be the agent for so high a spirit.\n\n\nBrach.   We are happy above thought, because 'bove merit.\n\n\nFlam.   'Bove merit! we may now talk freely: 'bove merit! what is 't you\n  doubt? her coyness! that 's but the superficies of lust most women have;\n  yet why should ladies blush to hear that named, which they do not fear\n  to handle?  Oh, they are politic; they know our desire is increased by\n  the difficulty of enjoying; whereas satiety is a blunt, weary, and\n  drowsy passion.  If the buttery-hatch at court stood continually open,\n  there would be nothing so passionate crowding, nor hot suit after the\n  beverage.\n\n\nBrach.   Oh, but her jealous husband----\n\n\nFlam.   Hang him; a gilder that hath his brains perished with quicksilver\n  is not more cold in the liver.  The great barriers moulted not more\n  feathers, than he hath shed hairs, by the confession of his doctor.  An\n  Irish gamester that will play himself naked, and then wage all\n  downward, at hazard, is not more venturous.  So unable to please a\n  woman, that, like a Dutch doublet, all his back is shrunk into his\n  breaches.\n  Shroud you within this closet, good my lord;\n  Some trick now must be thought on to divide\n  My brother-in-law from his fair bed-fellow.\n\n\nBrach.   Oh, should she fail to come----\n\n\nFlam.   I must not have your lordship thus unwisely amorous.  I myself\n  have not loved a lady, and pursued her with a great deal of under-age\n  protestation, whom some three or four gallants that have enjoyed would\n  with all their hearts have been glad to have been rid of.  'Tis just\n  like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair\n  to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a\n  consumption for fear they shall never get out.  Away, away, my lord.\n                                       [Exit Brachiano as Camillo enters.\n\n\n  See here he comes.  This fellow by his apparel\n  Some men would judge a politician;\n  But call his wit in question, you shall find it\n  Merely an ass in 's foot-cloth.  How now, brother?\n  What, travelling to bed with your kind wife?\n\n\nCam.   I assure you, brother, no.  My voyage lies\n  More northerly, in a far colder clime.\n  I do not well remember, I protest,\n  When I last lay with her.\n\n\nFlam.   Strange you should lose your count.\n\n\nCam.   We never lay together, but ere morning\n  There grew a flaw between us.\n\n\nFlam.   'T had been your part\n  To have made up that flaw.\n\n\nCam.   True, but she loathes I should be seen in 't.\n\n\nFlam.   Why, sir, what 's the matter?\n\n\nCam.   The duke your master visits me, I thank him;\n  And I perceive how, like an earnest bowler,\n  He very passionately leans that way\n  he should have his bowl run.\n\n\nFlam.   I hope you do not think----\n\n\nCam.   That nobleman bowl booty? faith, his cheek\n  Hath a most excellent bias: it would fain\n  Jump with my mistress.\n\n\nFlam.   Will you be an ass,\n  Despite your Aristotle? or a cuckold,\n  Contrary to your Ephemerides,\n  Which shows you under what a smiling planet\n  You were first swaddled?\n\n\nCam.   Pew wew, sir; tell me not\n  Of planets nor of Ephemerides.\n  A man may be made cuckold in the day-time,\n  When the stars' eyes are out.\n\n\nFlam.   Sir, good-bye you;\n  I do commit you to your pitiful pillow\n  Stuffed with horn-shavings.\n\n\nCam.   Brother!\n\n\nFlam.   God refuse me.\n  Might I advise you now, your only course\n  Were to lock up your wife.\n\n\nCam.   'Twere very good.\n\n\nFlam.   Bar her the sight of revels.\n\n\nCam.   Excellent.\n\n\nFlam.   Let her not go to church, but, like a hound\n  In leon, at your heels.\n\n\nCam.   'Twere for her honour.\n\n\nFlam.   And so you should be certain in one fortnight,\n  Despite her chastity or innocence,\n  To be cuckolded, which yet is in suspense:\n  This is my counsel, and I ask no fee for 't.\n\n\nCam.   Come, you know not where my nightcap wrings me.\n\n\nFlam.   Wear it a' th' old fashion; let your large ears come through,\n  it will be more easy--nay, I will be bitter--bar your wife of her\n  entertainment: women are more willingly and more gloriously chaste,\n  when they are least restrained of their liberty.  It seems you would\n  be a fine capricious, mathematically jealous coxcomb; take the height\n  of your own horns with a Jacob's staff, afore they are up.  These\n  politic enclosures for paltry mutton, makes more rebellion in the\n  flesh, than all the provocative electuaries doctors have uttered since\n  last jubilee.\n\n\nCam.   This doth not physic me----\n\n\nFlam.   It seems you are jealous: I 'll show you the error of it by a\n  familiar example: I have seen a pair of spectacles fashioned with such\n  perspective art, that lay down but one twelve pence a' th' board,\n  'twill appear as if there were twenty; now should you wear a pair of\n  these spectacles, and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine\n  twenty hands were taking up of your wife's clothes, and this would put\n  you into a horrible causeless fury.\n\n\nCam.   The fault there, sir, is not in the eyesight.\n\n\nFlam.   True, but they that have the yellow jaundice think all objects\n  they look on to be yellow.  Jealousy is worse; her fits present to a\n  man, like so many bubbles in a basin of water, twenty several crabbed\n  faces, many times makes his own shadow his cuckold-maker.  [Enter\n  Vittoria Corombona.]  See, she comes; what reason have you to be\n  jealous of this creature? what an ignorant ass or flattering knave\n  might be counted, that should write sonnets to her eyes, or call her\n  brow the snow of Ida, or ivory of Corinth; or compare her hair to the\n  blackbird's bill, when 'tis liker the blackbird's feather?  This is\n  all.  Be wise; I will make you friends, and you shall go to bed\n  together.  Marry, look you, it shall not be your seeking.  Do you stand\n  upon that, by any means: walk you aloof; I would not have you seen\n  in 't.--Sister [my lord attend you in the banqueting-house,] your\n  husband is wondrous discontented.\n\n\nVit.   I did nothing to displease him; I carved to him at supper-time.\n\n\nFlam.   [You need not have carved him, in faith; they say he is a capon\n  already.  I must now seemingly fall out with you.]  Shall a gentleman\n  so well descended as Camillo [a lousy slave, that within this twenty\n  years rode with the black guard in the duke's carriage, 'mongst spits\n  and dripping-pans!]--\n\n\nCam.   Now he begins to tickle her.\n\n\nFlam.   An excellent scholar [one that hath a head fill'd with calves'\n  brains without any sage in them,] come crouching in the hams to you for\n  a night's lodging? [that hath an itch in 's hams, which like the fire\n  at the glass-house hath not gone out this seven years]  Is he not a\n  courtly gentleman? [when he wears white satin, one would take him by\n  his black muzzle to be no other creature than a maggot]  You are a\n  goodly foil, I confess, well set out [but cover'd with a false stone--\n  yon counterfeit diamond].\n\n\nCam.   He will make her know what is in me.\n\n\nFlam.   Come, my lord attends you; thou shalt go to bed to my lord.\n\n\nCam.   Now he comes to 't.\n\n\nFlam.   [With a relish as curious as a vintner going to taste new wine.]\n  [To Camillo.]  I am opening your case hard.\n\n\nCam.   A virtuous brother, o' my credit!\n\n\nFlam.   He will give thee a ring with a philosopher's stone in it.\n\n\nCam.   Indeed, I am studying alchemy.\n\n\nFlam.   Thou shalt lie in a bed stuffed with turtle's feathers; swoon in\n  perfumed linen, like the fellow was smothered in roses.  So perfect\n  shall be thy happiness, that as men at sea think land, and trees, and\n  ships, go that way they go; so both heaven and earth shall seem to go\n  your voyage.  Shalt meet him; 'tis fix'd, with nails of diamonds to\n  inevitable necessity.\n\n\nVit.   How shalt rid him hence?\n\n\nFlam.   [I will put brize in 's tail, set him gadding presently.]  I have\n  almost wrought her to it; I find her coming: but, might I advise you\n  now, for this night I would not lie with her, I would cross her humour\n  to make her more humble.\n\n\nCam.   Shall I, shall I?\n\n\nFlam.  It will show in you a supremacy of judgment.\n\n\nCam.   True, and a mind differing from the tumultuary opinion; for, quae\n  negata, grata.\n\n\nFlam.   Right: you are the adamant shall draw her to you, though you keep\n  distance off.\n\n\nCam.   A philosophical reason.\n\n\nFlam.   Walk by her a' th' nobleman's fashion, and tell her you will lie\n  with her at the end of the progress.\n\n\nCam.   Vittoria, I cannot be induc'd, or as a man would say, incited----\n\n\nVit.   To do what, sir?\n\n\nCam.   To lie with you to-night.  Your silkworm used to fast every third\n  day, and the next following spins the better.  To-morrow at night, I am\n  for you.\n\n\nVit.   You 'll spin a fair thread, trust to 't.\n\n\nFlam.   But do you hear, I shall have you steal to her chamber about\n  midnight.\n\n\nCam.   Do you think so? why look you, brother, because you shall not say\n  I 'll gull you, take the key, lock me into the chamber, and say you\n  shall be sure of me.\n\n\nFlam.   In troth I will; I 'll be your jailor once.\n\n\nCam.   A pox on 't, as I am a Christian! tell me to-morrow how scurvily\n  she takes my unkind parting.\n\n\nFlam.   I will.\n\n\nCam.   Didst thou not mark the jest of the silkworm?\n  Good-night; in faith, I will use this trick often.\n\n\nFlam.   Do, do, do.                                        [Exit Camillo.\n  So, now you are safe.  Ha, ha, ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own\n  work like a silkworm.  [Enter Brachiano.]  Come, sister, darkness hides\n  your blush.  Women are like cursed dogs: civility keeps them tied all\n  daytime, but they are let loose at midnight; then they do most good, or\n  most mischief.  My lord, my lord!\n\n\nZanche brings out a carpet, spreads it, and lays on it two fair cushions.\n  Enter Cornelia listening, but unperceived.\n\n\nBrach.   Give credit: I could wish time would stand still,\n  And never end this interview, this hour;\n  But all delight doth itself soon'st devour.\n  Let me into your bosom, happy lady,\n  Pour out, instead of eloquence, my vows.\n  Loose me not, madam, for if you forgo me,\n  I am lost eternally.\n\n\nVit.   Sir, in the way of pity,\n  I wish you heart-whole.\n\n\nBrach.   You are a sweet physician.\n\n\nVit.   Sure, sir, a loathed cruelty in ladies\n  Is as to doctors many funerals:\n  It takes away their credit.\n\n\nBrach.   Excellent creature!\n  We call the cruel fair; what name for you\n  That are so merciful?\n\n\nZan.   See now they close.\n\n\nFlam.   Most happy union.\n\n\nCorn.   [Aside.]  My fears are fall'n upon me: oh, my heart!\n  My son the pander! now I find our house\n  Sinking to ruin.  Earthquakes leave behind,\n  Where they have tyranniz'd, iron, or lead, or stone;\n  But woe to ruin, violent lust leaves none.\n\n\nBrach.   What value is this jewel?\n\n\nVit.   'Tis the ornament of a weak fortune.\n\n\nBrach.   In sooth, I 'll have it; nay, I will but change\n  My jewel for your jewel.\n\n\nFlam.   Excellent;\n  His jewel for her jewel: well put in, duke.\n\n\nBrach.   Nay, let me see you wear it.\n\n\nVit.   Here, sir?\n\n\nBrach.   Nay, lower, you shall wear my jewel lower.\n\n\nFlam.   That 's better: she must wear his jewel lower.\n\n\nVit.   To pass away the time, I 'll tell your grace\n  A dream I had last night.\n\n\nBrach.   Most wishedly.\n\n\nVit.   A foolish idle dream:\n  Methought I walked about the mid of night\n  Into a churchyard, where a goodly yew-tree\n  Spread her large root in ground: under that yew,\n  As I sat sadly leaning on a grave,\n  Chequer'd with cross-sticks, there came stealing in\n  Your duchess and my husband; one of them\n  A pickaxe bore, th' other a rusty spade,\n  And in rough terms they 'gan to challenge me\n  About this yew.\n\n\nBrach.   That tree?\n\n\nVit.   This harmless yew;\n  They told me my intent was to root up\n  That well-grown yew, and plant i' the stead of it\n  A wither'd blackthorn; and for that they vow'd\n  To bury me alive.  My husband straight\n  With pickaxe 'gan to dig, and your fell duchess\n  With shovel, like a fury, voided out\n  The earth and scatter'd bones: Lord, how methought\n  I could not pray.\n\n\nFlam.   No; the devil was in your dream.\n\n\nVit.   When to my rescue there arose, methought,\n  A whirlwind, which let fall a massy arm\n  From that strong plant;\n  And both were struck dead by that sacred yew,\n  In that base shallow grave that was their due.\n\n\nFlam.   Excellent devil!\n  She hath taught him in a dream\n  To make away his duchess and her husband.\n\n\nBrach.   Sweetly shall I interpret this your dream.\n  You are lodg'd within his arms who shall protect you\n  From all the fevers of a jealous husband,\n  From the poor envy of our phlegmatic duchess.\n  I 'll seat you above law, and above scandal;\n  Give to your thoughts the invention of delight,\n  And the fruition; nor shall government\n  Divide me from you longer, than a care\n  To keep you great: you shall to me at once\n  Be dukedom, health, wife, children, friends, and all.\n\n\nCorn.   [Advancing.]  Woe to light hearts, they still forerun our fall!\n\n\nFlam.   What fury raised thee up? away, away.               [Exit Zanche.\n\n\nCorn.   What make you here, my lord, this dead of night?\n  Never dropp'd mildew on a flower here till now.\n\n\nFlam.   I pray, will you go to bed then,\n  Lest you be blasted?\n\n\nCorn.   O that this fair garden\n  Had with all poison'd herbs of Thessaly\n  At first been planted; made a nursery\n  For witchcraft, rather than a burial plot\n  For both your honours!\n\n\nVit.   Dearest mother, hear me.\n\n\nCorn.   O, thou dost make my brow bend to the earth.\n  Sooner than nature!  See the curse of children!\n  In life they keep us frequently in tears;\n  And in the cold grave leave us in pale fears.\n\n\nBrach.   Come, come, I will not hear you.\n\n\nVit.   Dear my lord.\n\n\nCorn.   Where is thy duchess now, adulterous duke?\n  Thou little dream'st this night she 's come to Rome.\n\n\nFlam.   How! come to Rome!\n\n\nVit.   The duchess!\n\n\nBrach.   She had been better----\n\n\nCorn.   The lives of princes should like dials move,\n  Whose regular example is so strong,\n  They make the times by them go right, or wrong.\n\n\nFlam.   So, have you done?\n\n\nCorn.   Unfortunate Camillo!\n\n\nVit.   I do protest, if any chaste denial,\n  If anything but blood could have allay'd\n  His long suit to me----\n\n\nCorn.   I will join with thee,\n  To the most woeful end e'er mother kneel'd:\n  If thou dishonour thus thy husband's bed,\n  Be thy life short as are the funeral tears\n  In great men's----\n\n\nBrach.   Fie, fie, the woman's mad.\n\n\nCorn.   Be thy act Judas-like; betray in kissing:\n  May'st thou be envied during his short breath,\n  And pitied like a wretch after his death!\n\n\nVit.   O me accurs'd!                                              [Exit.\n\n\nFlam.   Are you out of your wits? my lord,\n  I 'll fetch her back again.\n\n\nBrach.   No, I 'll to bed:\n  Send Doctor Julio to me presently.\n  Uncharitable woman! thy rash tongue\n  Hath rais'd a fearful and prodigious storm:\n  Be thou the cause of all ensuing harm.                           [Exit.\n\n\nFlam.   Now, you that stand so much upon your honour,\n  Is this a fitting time a' night, think you,\n  To send a duke home without e'er a man?\n  I would fain know where lies the mass of wealth\n  Which you have hoarded for my maintenance,\n  That I may bear my bear out of the level\n  Of my lord's stirrup.\n\n\nCorn.   What! because we are poor\n  Shall we be vicious?\n\n\nFlam.   Pray, what means have you\n  To keep me from the galleys, or the gallows?\n  My father prov'd himself a gentleman,\n  Sold all 's land, and, like a fortunate fellow,\n  Died ere the money was spent.  You brought me up\n  At Padua, I confess, where I protest,\n  For want of means--the University judge me--\n  I have been fain to heel my tutor's stockings,\n  At least seven years; conspiring with a beard,\n  Made me a graduate; then to this duke's service,\n  I visited the court, whence I return'd\n  More courteous, more lecherous by far,\n  But not a suit the richer.  And shall I,\n  Having a path so open, and so free\n  To my preferment, still retain your milk\n  In my pale forehead?  No, this face of mine\n  I 'll arm, and fortify with lusty wine,\n  'Gainst shame and blushing.\n\n\nCorn.   O that I ne'er had borne thee!\n\n\nFlam.   So would I;\n  I would the common'st courtesan in Rome\n  Had been my mother, rather than thyself.\n  Nature is very pitiful to whores,\n  To give them but few children, yet those children\n  Plurality of fathers; they are sure\n  They shall not want.  Go, go,\n  Complain unto my great lord cardinal;\n  It may be he will justify the act.\n  Lycurgus wonder'd much, men would provide\n  Good stallions for their mares, and yet would suffer\n  Their fair wives to be barren.\n\n\nCorn.   Misery of miseries!                                        [Exit.\n\n\nFlam.   The duchess come to court!  I like not that.\n  We are engag'd to mischief, and must on;\n  As rivers to find out the ocean\n  Flow with crook bendings beneath forced banks,\n  Or as we see, to aspire some mountain's top,\n  The way ascends not straight, but imitates\n  The subtle foldings of a winter's snake,\n  So who knows policy and her true aspect,\n  Shall find her ways winding and indirect.\n\n\n\n\n\nACT II SCENE I\n\n\nEnter Francisco de Medicis, Cardinal Monticelso, Marcello, Isabella,\n  young Giovanni, with little Jacques the Moor\n\n\nFran.   Have you not seen your husband since you arrived?\n\n\nIsab.   Not yet, sir.\n\n\nFran.   Surely he is wondrous kind;\n  If I had such a dove-house as Camillo's,\n  I would set fire on 't were 't but to destroy\n  The polecats that haunt to it--My sweet cousin!\n\n\nGiov.   Lord uncle, you did promise me a horse,\n  And armour.\n\n\nFran.   That I did, my pretty cousin.\n  Marcello, see it fitted.\n\n\nMarc.   My lord, the duke is here.\n\n\nFran.   Sister, away; you must not yet be seen.\n\n\nIsab.   I do beseech you,\n  Entreat him mildly, let not your rough tongue\n  Set us at louder variance; all my wrongs\n  Are freely pardon'd; and I do not doubt,\n  As men to try the precious unicorn's horn\n  Make of the powder a preservative circle,\n  And in it put a spider, so these arms\n  Shall charm his poison, force it to obeying,\n  And keep him chaste from an infected straying.\n\n\nFran.   I wish it may.  Begone.  [Exit Isabella as Brachiano and Flamineo\n  enter.]  Void the chamber.\n  You are welcome; will you sit?--I pray, my lord,\n  Be you my orator, my heart 's too full;\n  I 'll second you anon.\n\n\nMont.   Ere I begin,\n  Let me entreat your grace forgo all passion,\n  Which may be raised by my free discourse.\n\n\nBrach.   As silent as i' th' church: you may proceed.\n\n\nMont.   It is a wonder to your noble friends,\n  That you, having as 'twere enter'd the world\n  With a free scepter in your able hand,\n  And having to th' use of nature well applied\n  High gifts of learning, should in your prime age\n  Neglect your awful throne for the soft down\n  Of an insatiate bed.  O my lord,\n  The drunkard after all his lavish cups\n  Is dry, and then is sober; so at length,\n  When you awake from this lascivious dream,\n  Repentance then will follow, like the sting\n  Plac'd in the adder's tail.  Wretched are princes\n  When fortune blasteth but a petty flower\n  Of their unwieldy crowns, or ravisheth\n  But one pearl from their scepter; but alas!\n  When they to wilful shipwreck lose good fame,\n  All princely titles perish with their name.\n\n\nBrach.   You have said, my lord----\n\n\nMont.   Enough to give you taste\n  How far I am from flattering your greatness.\n\n\nBrach.   Now you that are his second, what say you?\n  Do not like young hawks fetch a course about;\n  Your game flies fair, and for you.\n\n\nFran.   Do not fear it:\n  I 'll answer you in your own hawking phrase.\n  Some eagles that should gaze upon the sun\n  Seldom soar high, but take their lustful ease,\n  Since they from dunghill birds their prey can seize.\n  You know Vittoria?\n\n\nBrach.   Yes.\n\n\nFran.   You shift your shirt there,\n  When you retire from tennis?\n\n\nBrach.   Happily.\n\n\nFran.   Her husband is lord of a poor fortune,\n  Yet she wears cloth of tissue.\n\n\nBrach.   What of this?\n  Will you urge that, my good lord cardinal,\n  As part of her confession at next shrift,\n  And know from whence it sails?\n\n\nFran.   She is your strumpet----\n\n\nBrach.   Uncivil sir, there 's hemlock in thy breath,\n  And that black slander.  Were she a whore of mine,\n  All thy loud cannons, and thy borrow'd Switzers,\n  Thy galleys, nor thy sworn confederates,\n  Durst not supplant her.\n\n\nFran.   Let 's not talk on thunder.\n  Thou hast a wife, our sister; would I had given\n  Both her white hands to death, bound and lock'd fast\n  In her last winding sheet, when I gave thee\n  But one.\n\n\nBrach.  Thou hadst given a soul to God then.\n\n\nFran.   True:\n  Thy ghostly father, with all his absolution,\n  Shall ne'er do so by thee.\n\n\nBrach.   Spit thy poison.\n\n\nFran.   I shall not need; lust carries her sharp whip\n  At her own girdle.  Look to 't, for our anger\n  Is making thunderbolts.\n\n\nBrach.   Thunder! in faith,\n  They are but crackers.\n\n\nFran.   We 'll end this with the cannon.\n\n\nBrach.   Thou 'lt get naught by it, but iron in thy wounds,\n  And gunpowder in thy nostrils.\n\n\nFran.   Better that,\n  Than change perfumes for plasters.\n\n\nBrach.   Pity on thee!\n  'Twere good you 'd show your slaves or men condemn'd,\n  Your new-plough'd forehead.  Defiance! and I 'll meet thee,\n  Even in a thicket of thy ablest men.\n\n\nMont.   My lords, you shall not word it any further\n  Without a milder limit.\n\n\nFran.   Willingly.\n\n\nBrach.   Have you proclaim'd a triumph, that you bait\n  A lion thus?\n\n\nMont.   My lord!\n\n\nBrach.   I am tame, I am tame, sir.\n\n\nFran.   We send unto the duke for conference\n  'Bout levies 'gainst the pirates; my lord duke\n  Is not at home: we come ourself in person;\n  Still my lord duke is busied.  But we fear\n  When Tiber to each prowling passenger\n  Discovers flocks of wild ducks, then, my lord--\n  'Bout moulting time I mean--we shall be certain\n  To find you sure enough, and speak with you.\n\n\nBrach.   Ha!\n\n\nFran.   A mere tale of a tub: my words are idle.\n  But to express the sonnet by natural reason,\n                                                         [Enter Giovanni.\n  When stags grow melancholic you 'll find the season.\n\n\nMont.   No more, my lord; here comes a champion\n  Shall end the difference between you both;\n  Your son, the Prince Giovanni.  See, my lords,\n  What hopes you store in him; this is a casket\n  For both your crowns, and should be held like dear.\n  Now is he apt for knowledge; therefore know\n  It is a more direct and even way,\n  To train to virtue those of princely blood,\n  By examples than by precepts: if by examples,\n  Whom should he rather strive to imitate\n  Than his own father? be his pattern then,\n  Leave him for a stock of virtue that may last,\n  Should fortune rend his sails, and split his mast.\n\n\nBrach.   Your hand, boy: growing to a soldier?\n\n\nGiov.   Give me a pike.\n\n\nFran.   What, practising your pike so young, fair cousin?\n\n\nGiov.   Suppose me one of Homer's frogs, my lord,\n  Tossing my bulrush thus.  Pray, sir, tell me,\n  Might not a child of good discretion\n  Be leader to an army?\n\n\nFran.   Yes, cousin, a young prince\n  Of good discretion might.\n\n\nGiov.   Say you so?\n  Indeed I have heard, 'tis fit a general\n  Should not endanger his own person oft;\n  So that he make a noise when he 's a-horseback,\n  Like a Danske drummer,--Oh, 'tis excellent!--\n  He need not fight! methinks his horse as well\n  Might lead an army for him.  If I live,\n  I 'll charge the French foe in the very front\n  Of all my troops, the foremost man.\n\n\nFran.   What! what!\n\n\nGiov.   And will not bid my soldiers up, and follow,\n  But bid them follow me.\n\n\nBrach.   Forward lapwing!\n  He flies with the shell on 's head.\n\n\nFran.   Pretty cousin!\n\n\nGiov.   The first year, uncle, that I go to war,\n  All prisoners that I take, I will set free,\n  Without their ransom.\n\n\nFran.   Ha! without their ransom!\n  How then will you reward your soldiers,\n  That took those prisoners for you?\n\n\nGiov.   Thus, my lord:\n  I 'll marry them to all the wealthy widows\n  That falls that year.\n\n\nFran.   Why then, the next year following,\n  You 'll have no men to go with you to war.\n\n\nGiov.   Why then I 'll press the women to the war,\n  And then the men will follow.\n\n\nMont.   Witty prince!\n\n\nFran.   See, a good habit makes a child a man,\n  Whereas a bad one makes a man a beast.\n  Come, you and I are friends.\n\n\nBrach.   Most wishedly:\n  Like bones which, broke in sunder, and well set,\n  Knit the more strongly.\n\n\nFran.   Call Camillo hither.--\n  You have receiv'd the rumour, how Count Lodowick\n  Is turn'd a pirate?\n\n\nBrach.   Yes.\n\n\nFran.   We are now preparing to fetch him in.  Behold your duchess.\n  We now will leave you, and expect from you\n  Nothing but kind entreaty.\n\n\nBrach.   You have charm'd me.\n                             [Exeunt Francisco, Monticelso, and Giovanni.\n                                     Enter Isabella\n  You are in health, we see.\n\n\nIsab.   And above health,\n  To see my lord well.\n\n\nBrach.   So: I wonder much\n  What amorous whirlwind hurried you to Rome.\n\n\nIsab.   Devotion, my lord.\n\n\nBrach.   Devotion!\n  Is your soul charg'd with any grievous sin?\n\n\nIsab.   'Tis burden'd with too many; and I think\n  The oftener that we cast our reckonings up,\n  Our sleep will be the sounder.\n\n\nBrach.   Take your chamber.\n\n\nIsab.   Nay, my dear lord, I will not have you angry!\n  Doth not my absence from you, now two months,\n  Merit one kiss?\n\n\nBrach.  I do not use to kiss:\n  If that will dispossess your jealousy,\n  I 'll swear it to you.\n\n\nIsab.   O, my loved lord,\n  I do not come to chide: my jealousy!\n  I am to learn what that Italian means.\n  You are as welcome to these longing arms,\n  As I to you a virgin.\n\n\nBrach.   Oh, your breath!\n  Out upon sweetmeats and continued physic,\n  The plague is in them!\n\n\nIsab.   You have oft, for these two lips,\n  Neglected cassia, or the natural sweets\n  Of the spring-violet: they are not yet much wither'd.\n  My lord, I should be merry: these your frowns\n  Show in a helmet lovely; but on me,\n  In such a peaceful interview, methinks\n  They are too roughly knit.\n\n\nBrach.   O dissemblance!\n  Do you bandy factions 'gainst me? have you learnt\n  The trick of impudent baseness to complain\n  Unto your kindred?\n\n\nIsab.   Never, my dear lord.\n\n\nBrach.   Must I be hunted out? or was 't your trick\n  To meet some amorous gallant here in Rome,\n  That must supply our discontinuance?\n\n\nIsab.   Pray, sir, burst my heart; and in my death\n  Turn to your ancient pity, though not love.\n\n\nBrach.   Because your brother is the corpulent duke,\n  That is, the great duke, 'sdeath, I shall not shortly\n  Racket away five hundred crowns at tennis,\n  But it shall rest 'pon record!  I scorn him\n  Like a shav'd Polack: all his reverend wit\n  Lies in his wardrobe; he 's a discreet fellow,\n  When he 's made up in his robes of state.\n  Your brother, the great duke, because h' 'as galleys,\n  And now and then ransacks a Turkish fly-boat,\n  (Now all the hellish furies take his soul!)\n  First made this match: accursed be the priest\n  That sang the wedding-mass, and even my issue!\n\n\nIsab.   Oh, too, too far you have curs'd!\n\n\nBrach.   Your hand I 'll kiss;\n  This is the latest ceremony of my love.\n  Henceforth I 'll never lie with thee; by this,\n  This wedding-ring, I 'll ne'er more lie with thee!\n  And this divorce shall be as truly kept,\n  As if the judge had doomed it.  Fare you well:\n  Our sleeps are sever'd.\n\n\nIsab.   Forbid it the sweet union\n  Of all things blessed! why, the saints in heaven\n  Will knit their brows at that.\n\n\nBrach.   Let not thy love\n  Make thee an unbeliever; this my vow\n  Shall never, on my soul, be satisfied\n  With my repentance: let thy brother rage\n  Beyond a horrid tempest, or sea-fight,\n  My vow is fixed.\n\n\nIsab.   O, my winding-sheet!\n  Now shall I need thee shortly.  Dear my lord,\n  Let me hear once more, what I would not hear:\n  Never?\n\n\nBrach.   Never.\n\n\nIsab.   Oh, my unkind lord! may your sins find mercy,\n  As I upon a woeful widow'd bed\n  Shall pray for you, if not to turn your eyes\n  Upon your wretched wife and hopeful son,\n  Yet that in time you 'll fix them upon heaven!\n\n\nBrach.   No more; go, go, complain to the great duke.\n\n\nIsab.   No, my dear lord; you shall have present witness\n  How I 'll work peace between you.  I will make\n  Myself the author of your cursed vow;\n  I have some cause to do it, you have none.\n  Conceal it, I beseech you, for the weal\n  Of both your dukedoms, that you wrought the means\n  Of such a separation: let the fault\n  Remain with my supposed jealousy,\n  And think with what a piteous and rent heart\n  I shall perform this sad ensuing part.\n\n\nEnter Francisco, Flamineo, Monticelso, and Camillo\n\n\nBrach.   Well, take your course.--My honourable brother!\n\n\nFran.   Sister!--This is not well, my lord.--Why, sister!--She merits not\n  this welcome.\n\n\nBrach.   Welcome, say!\n  She hath given a sharp welcome.\n\n\nFran.   Are you foolish?\n  Come, dry your tears: is this a modest course\n  To better what is naught, to rail and weep?\n  Grow to a reconcilement, or, by heaven,\n  I 'll ne'er more deal between you.\n\n\nIsab.   Sir, you shall not;\n  No, though Vittoria, upon that condition,\n  Would become honest.\n\n\nFran.   Was your husband loud\n  Since we departed?\n\n\nIsab.   By my life, sir, no,\n  I swear by that I do not care to lose.\n  Are all these ruins of my former beauty\n  Laid out for a whore's triumph?\n\n\nFran.   Do you hear?\n  Look upon other women, with what patience\n  They suffer these slight wrongs, and with what justice\n  They study to requite them: take that course.\n\n\nIsab.   O that I were a man, or that I had power\n  To execute my apprehended wishes!\n  I would whip some with scorpions.\n\n\nFran.   What! turn'd fury!\n\n\nIsab.   To dig that strumpet's eyes out; let her die\n  Some twenty months a-dying; to cut off\n  Her nose and lips, pull out her rotten teeth;\n  Preserve her flesh like mummia, for trophies\n  Of my just anger!  Hell, to my affliction,\n  Is mere snow-water.  By your favour, sir;--\n  Brother, draw near, and my lord cardinal;--\n  Sir, let me borrow of you but one kiss;\n  Henceforth I 'll never lie with you, by this,\n  This wedding-ring.\n\n\nFran.   How, ne'er more lie with him!\n\n\nIsab.   And this divorce shall be as truly kept\n  As if in thronged court a thousand ears\n  Had heard it, and a thousand lawyers' hands\n  Sealed to the separation.\n\n\nBrach.   Ne'er lie with me!\n\n\nIsab.   Let not my former dotage\n  Make thee an unbeliever; this my vow\n  Shall never on my soul be satisfied\n  With my repentance: manet alta mente repostum.\n\n\nFran.   Now, by my birth, you are a foolish, mad,\n  And jealous woman.\n\n\nBrach.   You see 'tis not my seeking.\n\n\nFran.   Was this your circle of pure unicorn's horn,\n  You said should charm your lord! now horns upon thee,\n  For jealousy deserves them!  Keep your vow\n  And take your chamber.\n\n\nIsab.   No, sir, I 'll presently to Padua;\n  I will not stay a minute.\n\n\nMont.   Oh, good madam!\n\n\nBrach.   'Twere best to let her have her humour;\n  Some half-day's journey will bring down her stomach,\n  And then she 'll turn in post.\n\n\nFran.   To see her come\n  To my lord for a dispensation\n  Of her rash vow, will beget excellent laughter.\n\n\nIsab.   'Unkindness, do thy office; poor heart, break:\n  Those are the killing griefs, which dare not speak.'             [Exit.\n\n\nMarc.   Camillo's come, my lord.\n\n\nEnter Camillo\n\n\nFran.   Where 's the commission?\n\n\nMarc.   'Tis here.\n\n\nFran.   Give me the signet.\n\n\nFlam.   [Leading Brachiano aside.]  My lord, do you mark their\n  whispering?  I will compound a medicine, out of their two heads,\n  stronger than garlic, deadlier than stibium: the cantharides, which\n  are scarce seen to stick upon the flesh, when they work to the heart,\n  shall not do it with more silence or invisible cunning.\n\n\nEnter Doctor\n\n\nBrach.   About the murder?\n\n\nFlam.   They are sending him to Naples, but I 'll send him to Candy.\n  Here 's another property too.\n\n\nBrach.   Oh, the doctor!\n\n\nFlam.   A poor quack-salving knave, my lord; one that should have been\n  lashed for 's lechery, but that he confessed a judgment, had an\n  execution laid upon him, and so put the whip to a non plus.\n\n\nDoctor.   And was cozened, my lord, by an arranter knave than myself, and\n  made pay all the colorable execution.\n\n\nFlam.   He will shoot pills into a man's guts shall make them have more\n  ventages than a cornet or a lamprey; he will poison a kiss; and was\n  once minded for his masterpiece, because Ireland breeds no poison, to\n  have prepared a deadly vapour in a Spaniard's fart, that should have\n  poisoned all Dublin.\n\n\nBrach.   Oh, Saint Anthony's fire!\n\n\nDoctor.   Your secretary is merry, my lord.\n\n\nFlam.   O thou cursed antipathy to nature!  Look, his eye 's bloodshot,\n  like a needle a surgeon stitcheth a wound with.  Let me embrace thee,\n  toad, and love thee, O thou abominable, loathsome gargarism, that will\n  fetch up lungs, lights, heart, and liver, by scruples!\n\n\nBrach.  No more.--I must employ thee, honest doctor:\n  You must to Padua, and by the way,\n  Use some of your skill for us.\n\n\nDoctor.   Sir, I shall.\n\n\nBrach.   But for Camillo?\n\n\nFlam.   He dies this night, by such a politic strain,\n  Men shall suppose him by 's own engine slain.\n  But for your duchess' death----\n\n\nDoctor.   I 'll make her sure.\n\n\nBrach.   Small mischiefs are by greater made secure.\n\n\nFlam.   Remember this, you slave; when knaves come to preferment, they\n  rise as gallows in the Low Countries, one upon another's shoulders.\n               [Exeunt.  Monticelso, Camillo, and Francisco come forward.\n\n\nMont.   Here is an emblem, nephew, pray peruse it:\n  'Twas thrown in at your window.\n\n\nCam.   At my window!\n  Here is a stag, my lord, hath shed his horns,\n  And, for the loss of them, the poor beast weeps:\n  The word, Inopem me copia fecit.\n\n\nMont.   That is,\n  Plenty of horns hath made him poor of horns.\n\n\nCam.   What should this mean?\n\n\nMont.   I 'll tell you; 'tis given out\n  You are a cuckold.\n\n\nCam.   Is it given out so?\n  I had rather such reports as that, my lord,\n  Should keep within doors.\n\n\nFran.   Have you any children?\n\n\nCam.   None, my lord.\n\n\nFran.   You are the happier:\n  I 'll tell you a tale.\n\n\nCam.   Pray, my lord.\n\n\nFran.   An old tale.\n  Upon a time Phoebus, the god of light,\n  Or him we call the sun, would need to be married:\n  The gods gave their consent, and Mercury\n  Was sent to voice it to the general world.\n  But what a piteous cry there straight arose\n  Amongst smiths and felt-makers, brewers and cooks,\n  Reapers and butter-women, amongst fishmongers,\n  And thousand other trades, which are annoyed\n  By his excessive heat! 'twas lamentable.\n  They came to Jupiter all in a sweat,\n  And do forbid the banns.  A great fat cook\n  Was made their speaker, who entreats of Jove\n  That Phoebus might be gelded; for if now,\n  When there was but one sun, so many men\n  Were like to perish by his violent heat,\n  What should they do if he were married,\n  And should beget more, and those children\n  Make fireworks like their father?  So say I;\n  Only I apply it to your wife;\n  Her issue, should not providence prevent it,\n  Would make both nature, time, and man repent it.\n\n\nMont.   Look you, cousin,\n  Go, change the air for shame; see if your absence\n  Will blast your cornucopia.  Marcello\n  Is chosen with you joint commissioner,\n  For the relieving our Italian coast\n  From pirates.\n\n\nMarc.   I am much honour'd in 't.\n\n\nCam.   But, sir,\n  Ere I return, the stag's horns may be sprouted\n  Greater than those are shed.\n\n\nMont.   Do not fear it;\n  I 'll be your ranger.\n\n\nCam.   You must watch i' th' nights;\n  Then 's the most danger.\n\n\nFran.   Farewell, good Marcello:\n  All the best fortunes of a soldier's wish\n  Bring you a-shipboard.\n\n\nCam.   Were I not best, now I am turn'd soldier,\n  Ere that I leave my wife, sell all she hath,\n  And then take leave of her?\n\n\nMont.   I expect good from you,\n  Your parting is so merry.\n\n\nCam.   Merry, my lord! a' th' captain's humour right,\n  I am resolved to be drunk this night.                          [Exeunt.\n\n\nFran.   So, 'twas well fitted; now shall we discern\n  How his wish'd absence will give violent way\n  To Duke Brachiano's lust.\n\n\nMont.   Why, that was it;\n  To what scorn'd purpose else should we make choice\n  Of him for a sea-captain? and, besides,\n  Count Lodowick, which was rumour'd for a pirate,\n  Is now in Padua.\n\n\nFran.   Is 't true?\n\n\nMont.   Most certain.\n  I have letters from him, which are suppliant\n  To work his quick repeal from banishment:\n  He means to address himself for pension\n  Unto our sister duchess.\n\n\nFran.   Oh, 'twas well!\n  We shall not want his absence past six days:\n  I fain would have the Duke Brachiano run\n  Into notorious scandal; for there 's naught\n  In such cursed dotage, to repair his name,\n  Only the deep sense of some deathless shame.\n\n\nMont.   It may be objected, I am dishonourable\n  To play thus with my kinsman; but I answer,\n  For my revenge I 'd stake a brother's life,\n  That being wrong'd, durst not avenge himself.\n\n\nFran.   Come, to observe this strumpet.\n\n\nMont.   Curse of greatness!\n  Sure he 'll not leave her?\n\n\nFran.   There 's small pity in 't:\n  Like mistletoe on sere elms spent by weather,\n  Let him cleave to her, and both rot together.                  [Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II\n\n\nEnter Brachiano, with one in the habit of a conjurer\n\n\nBrach.   Now, sir, I claim your promise: 'tis dead midnight,\n  The time prefix'd to show me by your art,\n  How the intended murder of Camillo,\n  And our loath'd duchess, grow to action.\n\n\nConj.   You have won me by your bounty to a deed\n  I do not often practise.  Some there are,\n  Which by sophistic tricks, aspire that name\n  Which I would gladly lose, of necromancer;\n  As some that use to juggle upon cards,\n  Seeming to conjure, when indeed they cheat;\n  Others that raise up their confederate spirits\n  'Bout windmills, and endanger their own necks\n  For making of a squib; and some there are\n  Will keep a curtal to show juggling tricks,\n  And give out 'tis a spirit; besides these,\n  Such a whole ream of almanac-makers, figure-flingers,\n  Fellows, indeed that only live by stealth,\n  Since they do merely lie about stol'n goods,\n  They 'd make men think the devil were fast and loose,\n  With speaking fustian Latin.  Pray, sit down;\n  Put on this nightcap, sir, 'tis charmed; and now\n  I 'll show you, by my strong commanding art,\n  The circumstance that breaks your duchess' heart.\n\n\nA Dumb Show\n\n\nEnter suspiciously Julio and Christophero: they draw a curtain where\n  Brachiano's picture is; they put on spectacles of glass, which cover\n  their eyes and noses, and then burn perfumes before the picture, and\n  wash the lips of the picture; that done, quenching the fire, and\n  putting off their spectacles, they depart laughing.\n\n\nEnter Isabella in her night-gown, as to bedward, with lights, after her,\n  Count Lodovico, Giovanni, Guidantonio, and others waiting on her: she\n  kneels down as to prayers, then draws the curtain of the picture, does\n  three reverences to it, and kisses it thrice; she faints, and will not\n  suffer them to come near it; dies; sorrow expressed in Giovanni, and in\n  Count Lodovico.  She is conveyed out solemnly.\n\n\nBrach.   Excellent! then she 's dead.\n\n\nConj.   She 's poisoned\n  By the fumed picture.  'Twas her custom nightly,\n  Before she went to bed, to go and visit\n  Your picture, and to feed her eyes and lips\n  On the dead shadow: Doctor Julio,\n  Observing this, infects it with an oil,\n  And other poison'd stuff, which presently\n  Did suffocate her spirits.\n\n\nBrach.   Methought I saw\n  Count Lodowick there.\n\n\nConj.   He was; and by my art\n  I find he did most passionately dote\n  Upon your duchess.  Now turn another way,\n  And view Camillo's far more politic fate.\n  Strike louder, music, from this charmed ground,\n  To yield, as fits the act, a tragic sound!\n\n\nThe Second Dumb Show\n\n\nEnter Flamineo, Marcello, Camillo, with four more as captains: they drink\n  healths, and dance; a vaulting horse is brought into the room; Marcello\n  and two more whispered out of the room, while Flamineo and Camillo\n  strip themselves into their shirts, as to vault; compliment who shall\n  begin; as Camillo is about to vault, Flamineo pitcheth him upon his\n  neck, and, with the help of the rest, writhes his neck about; seems to\n  see if it be broke, and lays him folded double, as 'twere under the\n  horse; makes show to call for help; Marcello comes in, laments; sends\n  for the cardinal and duke, who comes forth with armed men; wonders at\n  the act; commands the body to be carried home; apprehends Flamineo,\n  Marcello, and the rest, and go, as 'twere, to apprehend Vittoria.\n\n\nBrach.   'Twas quaintly done; but yet each circumstance\n  I taste not fully.\n\n\nConj.   Oh, 'twas most apparent!\n  You saw them enter, charg'd with their deep healths\n  To their boon voyage; and, to second that,\n  Flamineo calls to have a vaulting horse\n  Maintain their sport; the virtuous Marcello\n  Is innocently plotted forth the room;\n  Whilst your eye saw the rest, and can inform you\n  The engine of all.\n\n\nBrach.   It seems Marcello and Flamineo\n  Are both committed.\n\n\nConj.   Yes, you saw them guarded;\n  And now they are come with purpose to apprehend\n  Your mistress, fair Vittoria.  We are now\n  Beneath her roof: 'twere fit we instantly\n  Make out by some back postern.\n\n\nBrach.   Noble friend,\n  You bind me ever to you: this shall stand\n  As the firm seal annexed to my hand;\n  It shall enforce a payment.                            [Exit Brachiano.\n\n\nConj.   Sir, I thank you.\n  Both flowers and weeds spring, when the sun is warm,\n  And great men do great good, or else great harm.\n                                                                   [Exit.\n\n\n\n\n\nACT III SCENE I\n\n\nEnter Francisco de Medicis, and Monticelso, their Chancellor and Register\n\n\nFran.   You have dealt discreetly, to obtain the presence\n  Of all the great lieger ambassadors\n  To hear Vittoria's trial.\n\n\nMont.   'Twas not ill;\n  For, sir, you know we have naught but circumstances\n  To charge her with, about her husband's death:\n  Their approbation, therefore, to the proofs\n  Of her black lust shall make her infamous\n  To all our neighbouring kingdoms.  I wonder\n  If Brachiano will be here?\n\n\nFran.   Oh, fie!  'Twere impudence too palpable.                 [Exeunt.\n\n\nEnter Flamineo and Marcello guarded, and a Lawyer\n\n\nLawyer.   What, are you in by the week?  So--I will try now whether they\n  wit be close prisoner--methinks none should sit upon thy sister, but\n  old whore-masters----\n\n\nFlam.   Or cuckolds; for your cuckold is your most terrible tickler of\n  lechery.  Whore-masters would serve; for none are judges at tilting,\n  but those that have been old tilters.\n\n\nLawyer.   My lord duke and she have been very private.\n\n\nFlam.   You are a dull ass; 'tis threatened they have been very public.\n\n\nLawyer.   If it can be proved they have but kissed one another----\n\n\nFlam.   What then?\n\n\nLawyer.   My lord cardinal will ferret them.\n\n\nFlam.   A cardinal, I hope, will not catch conies.\n\n\nLawyer.   For to sow kisses (mark what I say), to sow kisses is to reap\n  lechery; and, I am sure, a woman that will endure kissing is half won.\n\n\nFlam.   True, her upper part, by that rule; if you will win her neither\n  part too, you know what follows.\n\n\nLawyer.   Hark! the ambassadors are 'lighted----\n\n\nFlam.   I do put on this feigned garb of mirth,\n  To gull suspicion.\n\n\nMarc.   Oh, my unfortunate sister!\n  I would my dagger-point had cleft her heart\n  When she first saw Brachiano: you, 'tis said,\n  Were made his engine, and his stalking horse,\n  To undo my sister.\n\n\nFlam.   I am a kind of path\n  To her and mine own preferment.\n\n\nMarc.   Your ruin.\n\n\nFlam.   Hum! thou art a soldier,\n  Followest the great duke, feed'st his victories,\n  As witches do their serviceable spirits,\n  Even with thy prodigal blood: what hast got?\n  But, like the wealth of captains, a poor handful,\n  Which in thy palm thou bear'st, as men hold water;\n  Seeking to grip it fast, the frail reward\n  Steals through thy fingers.\n\n\nMarc.   Sir!\n\n\nFlam.   Thou hast scarce maintenance\n  To keep thee in fresh chamois.\n\n\nMarc.   Brother!\n\n\nFlam.   Hear me:\n  And thus, when we have even pour'd ourselves\n  Into great fights, for their ambition,\n  Or idle spleen, how shall we find reward?\n  But as we seldom find the mistletoe,\n  Sacred to physic, or the builder oak,\n  Without a mandrake by it; so in our quest of gain,\n  Alas, the poorest of their forc'd dislikes\n  At a limb proffers, but at heart it strikes!\n  This is lamented doctrine.\n\n\nMarc.   Come, come.\n\n\nFlam.   When age shall turn thee\n  White as a blooming hawthorn----\n\n\nMarc.   I 'll interrupt you:\n  For love of virtue bear an honest heart,\n  And stride o'er every politic respect,\n  Which, where they most advance, they most infect.\n  Were I your father, as I am your brother,\n  I should not be ambitious to leave you\n  A better patrimony.\n\n\nFlam.   I 'll think on 't.                       [Enter Savoy Ambassador.\n  The lord ambassadors.\n\n\n[Here there is a passage of the Lieger Ambassadors over the stage\n  severally.\n\n\nEnter French Ambassador\n\n\nLawyer.   Oh, my sprightly Frenchman!  Do you know him? he 's an\n  admirable tilter.\n\n\nFlam.   I saw him at last tilting: he showed like a pewter candlestick\n  fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting staff in his hand,\n  little bigger than a candle of twelve i' th' pound.\n\n\nLawyer.   Oh, but he's an excellent horseman!\n\n\nFlam.   A lame one in his lofty tricks; he sleeps a-horseback, like a\n  poulterer.\n\n\nEnter English and Spanish\n\n\nLawyer.   Lo you, my Spaniard!\n\n\nFlam.   He carried his face in 's ruff, as I have seen a serving-man\n  carry glasses in a cypress hatband, monstrous steady, for fear of\n  breaking; he looks like the claw of a blackbird, first salted, and\n  then broiled in a candle.                                      [Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II\n\n\nThe Arraignment of Vittoria\n\n\nEnter Francisco, Monticelso, the six Lieger Ambassadors, Brachiano,\n  Vittoria, Zanche, Flamineo, Marcello, Lawyer, and a Guard.\n\n\nMont.   Forbear, my lord, here is no place assign'd you.\n  This business, by his Holiness, is left\n  To our examination.\n\n\nBrach.   May it thrive with you.             [Lays a rich gown under him.\n\n\nFran.   A chair there for his Lordship.\n\n\nBrach.   Forbear your kindness: an unbidden guest\n  Should travel as Dutch women go to church,\n  Bear their stools with them.\n\n\nMont.   At your pleasure, sir.\n  Stand to the table, gentlewoman.  Now, signior,\n  Fall to your plea.\n\n\nLawyer.   Domine judex, converte oculos in hanc pestem, mulierum\n  corruptissiman.\n\n\nVit.   What 's he?\n\n\nFran.   A lawyer that pleads against you.\n\n\nVit.   Pray, my lord, let him speak his usual tongue,\n  I 'll make no answer else.\n\n\nFran.   Why, you understand Latin.\n\n\nVit.   I do, sir, but amongst this auditory\n  Which come to hear my cause, the half or more\n  May be ignorant in 't.\n\n\nMont.   Go on, sir.\n\n\nVit.   By your favour,\n  I will not have my accusation clouded\n  In a strange tongue: all this assembly\n  Shall hear what you can charge me with.\n\n\nFran.   Signior,\n  You need not stand on 't much; pray, change your language.\n\n\nMont.   Oh, for God's sake--Gentlewoman, your credit\n  Shall be more famous by it.\n\n\nLawyer.   Well then, have at you.\n\n\nVit.   I am at the mark, sir; I 'll give aim to you,\n  And tell you how near you shoot.\n\n\nLawyer.   Most literated judges, please your lordships\n  So to connive your judgments to the view\n  Of this debauch'd and diversivolent woman;\n  Who such a black concatenation\n  Of mischief hath effected, that to extirp\n  The memory of 't, must be the consummation\n  Of her, and her projections----\n\n\nVit.   What 's all this?\n\n\nLawyer.   Hold your peace!\n  Exorbitant sins must have exulceration.\n\n\nVit.   Surely, my lords, this lawyer here hath swallow'd\n  Some 'pothecaries' bills, or proclamations;\n  And now the hard and undigestible words\n  Come up, like stones we use give hawks for physic.\n  Why, this is Welsh to Latin.\n\n\nLawyer.   My lords, the woman\n  Knows not her tropes, nor figures, nor is perfect\n  In the academic derivation\n  Of grammatical elocution.\n\n\nFran.   Sir, your pains\n  Shall be well spar'd, and your deep eloquence\n  Be worthily applauded amongst thouse\n  Which understand you.\n\n\nLawyer.   My good lord.\n\n\nFran.   Sir,\n  Put up your papers in your fustian bag--\n                                      [Francisco speaks this as in scorn.\n  Cry mercy, sir, 'tis buckram and accept\n  My notion of your learn'd verbosity.\n\n\nLawyer.   I most graduatically thank your lordship:\n  I shall have use for them elsewhere.\n\n\nMont.   I shall be plainer with you, and paint out\n  Your follies in more natural red and white\n  Than that upon your cheek.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, you mistake!\n  You raise a blood as noble in this cheek\n  As ever was your mother's.\n\n\nMont.   I must spare you, till proof cry whore to that.\n  Observe this creature here, my honour'd lords,\n  A woman of must prodigious spirit,\n  In her effected.\n\n\nVit.   My honourable lord,\n  It doth not suit a reverend cardinal\n  To play the lawyer thus.\n\n\nMont.   Oh, your trade instructs your language!\n  You see, my lords, what goodly fruit she seems;\n  Yet like those apples travellers report\n  To grow where Sodom and Gomorrah stood,\n  I will but touch her, and you straight shall see\n  She 'll fall to soot and ashes.\n\n\nVit.   Your envenom'd 'pothecary should do 't.\n\n\nMont.   I am resolv'd,\n  Were there a second paradise to lose,\n  This devil would betray it.\n\n\nVit.   O poor Charity!\n  Thou art seldom found in scarlet.\n\n\nMont.   Who knows not how, when several night by night\n  Her gates were chok'd with coaches, and her rooms\n  Outbrav'd the stars with several kind of lights;\n  When she did counterfeit a prince's court\n  In music, banquets, and most riotous surfeits;\n  This whore forsooth was holy.\n\n\nVit.   Ha! whore! what 's that?\n\n\nMont.   Shall I expound whore to you? sure I shall;\n  I 'll give their perfect character.  They are first,\n  Sweetmeats which rot the eater; in man's nostrils\n  Poison'd perfumes.  They are cozening alchemy;\n  Shipwrecks in calmest weather.  What are whores!\n  Cold Russian winters, that appear so barren,\n  As if that nature had forgot the spring.\n  They are the true material fire of hell:\n  Worse than those tributes i' th' Low Countries paid,\n  Exactions upon meat, drink, garments, sleep,\n  Ay, even on man's perdition, his sin.\n  They are those brittle evidences of law,\n  Which forfeit all a wretched man's estate\n  For leaving out one syllable.  What are whores!\n  They are those flattering bells have all one tune,\n  At weddings, and at funerals.  Your rich whores\n  Are only treasures by extortion fill'd,\n  And emptied by curs'd riot.  They are worse,\n  Worse than dead bodies which are begg'd at gallows,\n  And wrought upon by surgeons, to teach man\n  Wherein he is imperfect.  What's a whore!\n  She 's like the guilty counterfeited coin,\n  Which, whosoe'er first stamps it, brings in trouble\n  All that receive it.\n\n\nVit.   This character 'scapes me.\n\n\nMont.   You, gentlewoman!\n  Take from all beasts and from all minerals\n  Their deadly poison----\n\n\nVit.   Well, what then?\n\n\nMont.   I 'll tell thee;\n  I 'll find in thee a 'pothecary's shop,\n  To sample them all.\n\n\nFr. Ambass.   She hath liv'd ill.\n\n\nEng. Ambass.   True, but the cardinal 's too bitter.\n\n\nMont.   You know what whore is.  Next the devil adultery,\n  Enters the devil murder.\n\n\nFran.   Your unhappy husband\n  Is dead.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, he 's a happy husband!\n  Now he owes nature nothing.\n\n\nFran.   And by a vaulting engine.\n\n\nMont.   An active plot; he jump'd into his grave.\n\n\nFran.   What a prodigy was 't,\n  That from some two yards' height, a slender man\n  Should break his neck!\n\n\nMont.   I' th' rushes!\n\n\nFran.   And what's more,\n  Upon the instant lose all use of speech,\n  All vital motion, like a man had lain\n  Wound up three days.  Now mark each circumstance.\n\n\nMont.   And look upon this creature was his wife!\n  She comes not like a widow; she comes arm'd\n  With scorn and impudence: is this a mourning-habit?\n\n\nVit.   Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest,\n  I would have bespoke my mourning.\n\n\nMont.   Oh, you are cunning!\n\n\nVit.   You shame your wit and judgment,\n  To call it so.  What! is my just defence\n  By him that is my judge call'd impudence?\n  Let me appeal then from this Christian court,\n  To the uncivil Tartar.\n\n\nMont.   See, my lords,\n  She scandals our proceedings.\n\n\nVit.   Humbly thus,\n  Thus low to the most worthy and respected\n  Lieger ambassadors, my modesty\n  And womanhood I tender; but withal,\n  So entangled in a curs'd accusation,\n  That my defence, of force, like Perseus,\n  Must personate masculine virtue.  To the point.\n  Find me but guilty, sever head from body,\n  We 'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life\n  At yours, or any man's entreaty, sir.\n\n\nEng. Ambass.   She hath a brave spirit.\n\n\nMont.   Well, well, such counterfeit jewels\n  Make true ones oft suspected.\n\n\nVit.   You are deceiv'd:\n  For know, that all your strict-combined heads,\n  Which strike against this mine of diamonds,\n  Shall prove but glassen hammers: they shall break.\n  These are but feigned shadows of my evils.\n  Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils,\n  I am past such needless palsy.  For your names\n  Of 'whore' and 'murderess', they proceed from you,\n  As if a man should spit against the wind,\n  The filth returns in 's face.\n\n\nMont.   Pray you, mistress, satisfy me one question:\n  Who lodg'd beneath your roof that fatal night\n  Your husband broke his neck?\n\n\nBrach.   That question\n  Enforceth me break silence: I was there.\n\n\nMont.   Your business?\n\n\nBrach.   Why, I came to comfort he,\n  And take some course for settling her estate,\n  Because I heard her husband was in debt\n  To you, my lord.\n\n\nMont.   He was.\n\n\nBrach.   And 'twas strangely fear'd,\n  That you would cozen her.\n\n\nMont.   Who made you overseer?\n\n\nBrach.   Why, my charity, my charity, which should flow\n  From every generous and noble spirit,\n  To orphans and to widows.\n\n\nMont.   Your lust!\n\n\nBrach.   Cowardly dogs bark loudest: sirrah priest,\n  I 'll talk with you hereafter.  Do you hear?\n  The sword you frame of such an excellent temper,\n  I 'll sheath in your own bowels.\n  There are a number of thy coat resemble\n  Your common post-boys.\n\n\nMont.   Ha!\n\n\nBrach.   Your mercenary post-boys;\n  Your letters carry truth, but 'tis your guise\n  To fill your mouths with gross and impudent lies.\n\n\nServant.   My lord, your gown.\n\n\nBrach.   Thou liest, 'twas my stool:\n  Bestow 't upon thy master, that will challenge\n  The rest o' th' household-stuff; for Brachiano\n  Was ne'er so beggarly to take a stool\n  Out of another's lodging: let him make\n  Vallance for his bed on 't, or a demy foot-cloth\n  For his most reverend moil.  Monticelso,\n  Nemo me impune lacessit.                                         [Exit.\n\n\nMont.   Your champion's gone.\n\n\nVit.   The wolf may prey the better.\n\n\nFran.   My lord, there 's great suspicion of the murder,\n  But no sound proof who did it.  For my part,\n  I do not think she hath a soul so black\n  To act a deed so bloody; if she have,\n  As in cold countries husbandmen plant vines,\n  And with warm blood manure them; even so\n  One summer she will bear unsavoury fruit,\n  And ere next spring wither both branch and root.\n  The act of blood let pass; only descend\n  To matters of incontinence.\n\n\nVit.   I discern poison\n  Under your gilded pills.\n\n\nMont.   Now the duke's gone, I will produce a letter\n  Wherein 'twas plotted, he and you should meet\n  At an apothecary's summer-house,\n  Down by the River Tiber,--view 't, my lords,\n  Where after wanton bathing and the heat\n  Of a lascivious banquet--I pray read it,\n  I shame to speak the rest.\n\n\nVit.   Grant I was tempted;\n  Temptation to lust proves not the act:\n  Casta est quam nemo rogavit.\n  You read his hot love to me, but you want\n  My frosty answer.\n\n\nMont.   Frost i' th' dog-days! strange!\n\n\nVit.   Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?\n  So may you blame some fair and crystal river,\n  For that some melancholic distracted man\n  Hath drown'd himself in 't.\n\n\nMont.   Truly drown'd, indeed.\n\n\nVit.   Sum up my faults, I pray, and you shall find,\n  That beauty and gay clothes, a merry heart,\n  And a good stomach to feast, are all,\n  All the poor crimes that you can charge me with.\n  In faith, my lord, you might go pistol flies,\n  The sport would be more noble.\n\n\nMont.  Very good.\n\n\nVit.   But take your course: it seems you 've beggar'd me first,\n  And now would fain undo me.  I have houses,\n  Jewels, and a poor remnant of crusadoes;\n  Would those would make you charitable!\n\n\nMont.   If the devil\n  Did ever take good shape, behold his picture.\n\n\nVit.   You have one virtue left,\n  You will not flatter me.\n\n\nFran.   Who brought this letter?\n\n\nVit.   I am not compell'd to tell you.\n\n\nMont.   My lord duke sent to you a thousand ducats\n  The twelfth of August.\n\n\nVit.   'Twas to keep your cousin\n  From prison; I paid use for 't.\n\n\nMont.   I rather think,\n  'Twas interest for his lust.\n\n\nVit.   Who says so but yourself?\n  If you be my accuser,\n  Pray cease to be my judge: come from the bench;\n  Give in your evidence 'gainst me, and let these\n  Be moderators.  My lord cardinal,\n  Were your intelligencing ears as loving\n  As to my thoughts, had you an honest tongue,\n  I would not care though you proclaim'd them all.\n\n\nMont.   Go to, go to.\n  After your goodly and vainglorious banquet,\n  I 'll give you a choke-pear.\n\n\nVit.   O' your own grafting?\n\n\nMont.   You were born in Venice, honourably descended\n  From the Vittelli: 'twas my cousin's fate,\n  Ill may I name the hour, to marry you;\n  He bought you of your father.\n\n\nVit.   Ha!\n\n\nMont.   He spent there in six months\n  Twelve thousand ducats, and (to my acquaintance)\n  Receiv'd in dowry with you not one Julio:\n  'Twas a hard pennyworth, the ware being so light.\n  I yet but draw the curtain; now to your picture:\n  You came from thence a most notorious strumpet,\n  And so you have continued.\n\n\nVit.   My lord!\n\n\nMont.   Nay, hear me,\n  You shall have time to prate.  My Lord Brachiano--\n  Alas!  I make but repetition\n  Of what is ordinary and Rialto talk,\n  And ballated, and would be play'd a' th' stage,\n  But that vice many times finds such loud friends,\n  That preachers are charm'd silent.\n  You, gentlemen, Flamineo and Marcello,\n  The Court hath nothing now to charge you with,\n  Only you must remain upon your sureties\n  For your appearance.\n\n\nFran.   I stand for Marcello.\n\n\nFlam.   And my lord duke for me.\n\n\nMont.   For you, Vittoria, your public fault,\n  Join'd to th' condition of the present time,\n  Takes from you all the fruits of noble pity,\n  Such a corrupted trial have you made\n  Both of your life and beauty, and been styl'd\n  No less an ominous fate than blazing stars\n  To princes.  Hear your sentence: you are confin'd\n  Unto a house of convertites, and your bawd----\n\n\nFlam.   [Aside.]  Who, I?\n\n\nMont.   The Moor.\n\n\nFlam.   [Aside.]  Oh, I am a sound man again.\n\n\nVit.   A house of convertites! what 's that?\n\n\nMont.   A house of penitent whores.\n\n\nVit.   Do the noblemen in Rome\n  Erect it for their wives, that I am sent\n  To lodge there?\n\n\nFran.   You must have patience.\n\n\nVit.   I must first have vengeance!\n  I fain would know if you have your salvation\n  By patent, that you proceed thus.\n\n\nMont.   Away with her,\n  Take her hence.\n\n\nVit.   A rape! a rape!\n\n\nMont.   How?\n\n\nVit.   Yes, you have ravish'd justice;\n  Forc'd her to do your pleasure.\n\n\nMont.   Fie, she 's mad----\n\n\nVit.   Die with those pills in your most cursed maw,\n  Should bring you health! or while you sit o' th' bench,\n  Let your own spittle choke you!\n\n\nMont.   She 's turned fury.\n\n\nVit.   That the last day of judgment may so find you,\n  And leave you the same devil you were before!\n  Instruct me, some good horse-leech, to speak treason;\n  For since you cannot take my life for deeds,\n  Take it for words.  O woman's poor revenge,\n  Which dwells but in the tongue!  I will not weep;\n  No, I do scorn to call up one poor tear\n  To fawn on your injustice: bear me hence\n  Unto this house of--what's your mitigating title?\n\n\nMont.   Of convertites.\n\n\nVit.   It shall not be a house of convertites;\n  My mind shall make it honester to me\n  Than the Pope's palace, and more peaceable\n  Than thy soul, though thou art a cardinal.\n  Know this, and let it somewhat raise your spite,\n  Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light.            [Exit.\n\n\nEnter Brachiano\n\n\nBrach.   Now you and I are friends, sir, we'll shake hands\n  In a friend's grave together; a fit place,\n  Being th' emblem of soft peace, t' atone our hatred.\n\n\nFran.   Sir, what 's the matter?\n\n\nBrach.  I will not chase more blood from that lov'd cheek;\n  You have lost too much already; fare you well.                   [Exit.\n\n\nFran.   How strange these words sound! what 's the interpretation?\n\n\nFlam.   [Aside.]  Good; this is a preface to the discovery of the\n  duchess' death: he carries it well.  Because now I cannot counterfeit\n  a whining passion for the death of my lady, I will feign a mad humour\n  for the disgrace of my sister; and that will keep off idle questions.\n  Treason's tongue hath a villainous palsy in 't; I will talk to any man,\n  hear no man, and for a time appear a politic madman.\n\n\nEnter Giovanni, and Count Lodovico\n\n\nFran.   How now, my noble cousin? what, in black!\n\n\nGiov.   Yes, uncle, I was taught to imitate you\n  In virtue, and you must imitate me\n  In colours of your garments.  My sweet mother\n  Is----\n\n\nFran.   How? where?\n\n\nGiov.   Is there; no, yonder: indeed, sir, I 'll not tell you,\n  For I shall make you weep.\n\n\nFran.   Is dead?\n\n\nGiov.   Do not blame me now,\n  I did not tell you so.\n\n\nLodo.   She 's dead, my lord.\n\n\nFran.   Dead!\n\n\nMont.   Bless'd lady, thou art now above thy woes!\n  Will 't please your lordships to withdraw a little?\n\n\nGiov.   What do the dead do, uncle? do they eat,\n  Hear music, go a-hunting, and be merry,\n  As we that live?\n\n\nFran.   No, coz; they sleep.\n\n\nGiov.   Lord, Lord, that I were dead!\n  I have not slept these six nights.  When do they wake?\n\n\nFran.   When God shall please.\n\n\nGiov.   Good God, let her sleep ever!\n  For I have known her wake an hundred nights,\n  When all the pillow where she laid her head\n  Was brine-wet with her tears.  I am to complain to you, sir;\n  I 'll tell you how they have us'd her now she 's dead:\n  They wrapp'd her in a cruel fold of lead,\n  And would not let me kiss her.\n\n\nFran.   Thou didst love her?\n\n\nGiov.   I have often heard her say she gave me suck,\n  And it should seem by that she dearly lov'd me,\n  Since princes seldom do it.\n\n\nFran.   Oh, all of my poor sister that remains!\n  Take him away for God's sake!                           [Exit Giovanni.\n\n\nMont.   How now, my lord?\n\n\nFran.   Believe me, I am nothing but her grave;\n  And I shall keep her blessed memory\n  Longer than thousand epitaphs.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III\n\n\nEnter Flamineo as distracted, Marcello, and Lodovico\n\n\nFlam.   We endure the strokes like anvils or hard steel,\n  Till pain itself make us no pain to feel.\n  Who shall do me right now? is this the end of service?  I'd rather go\n  weed garlic; travel through France, and be mine own ostler; wear\n  sheep-skin linings, or shoes that stink of blacking; be entered into\n  the list of the forty thousand pedlars in Poland.  [Enter Savoy\n  Ambassador.]  Would I had rotted in some surgeon's house at Venice,\n  built upon the pox as well as one pines, ere I had served Brachiano!\n\n\nSavoy Ambass.  You must have comfort.\n\n\nFlam.   Your comfortable words are like honey: they relish well in your\n  mouth that 's whole, but in mine that 's wounded, they go down as if\n  the sting of the bee were in them.  Oh, they have wrought their purpose\n  cunningly, as if they would not seem to do it of malice!  In this a\n  politician imitates the devil, as the devil imitates a canon;\n  wheresoever he comes to do mischief, he comes with his backside towards\n  you.\n\n\nEnter French Ambassador\n\n\nFr. Ambass.   The proofs are evident.\n\n\nFlam.   Proof! 'twas corruption.  O gold, what a god art thou! and O man,\n  what a devil art thou to be tempted by that cursed mineral!  Your\n  diversivolent lawyer, mark him! knaves turn informers, as maggots turn\n  to flies, you may catch gudgeons with either.  A cardinal!  I would he\n  would hear me: there 's nothing so holy but money will corrupt and\n  putrity it, like victual under the line.  [Enter English Ambassador.]\n  You are happy in England, my lord; here they sell justice with those\n  weights they press men to death with.  O horrible salary!\n\n\nEng. Ambass.   Fie, fie, Flamineo.\n\n\nFlam.   Bells ne'er ring well, till they are at their full pitch; and I\n  hope yon cardinal shall never have the grace to pray well, till he come\n  to the scaffold.  If they were racked now to know the confederacy: but\n  your noblemen are privileged from the rack; and well may, for a little\n  thing would pull some of them a-pieces afore they came to their\n  arraignment.  Religion, oh, how it is commeddled with policy!  The\n  first blood shed in the world happened about religion.  Would I were a\n  Jew!\n\n\nMarc.   Oh, there are too many!\n\n\nFlam.   You are deceived; there are not Jews enough, priests enough, nor\n  gentlemen enough.\n\n\nMarc.   How?\n\n\nFlam.   I 'll prove it; for if there were Jews enough, so many Christians\n  would not turn usurers; if priests enough, one should not have six\n  benefices; and if gentlemen enough, so many early mushrooms, whose best\n  growth sprang from a live by begging: be thou one of them practise the\n  art of Wolner in England, to swallow all 's given thee: and yet let one\n  purgation make thee as hungry again as fellows that work in a saw-pit.\n  I 'll go hear the screech-owl.                                   [Exit.\n\n\nLodo.   This was Brachiano's pander; and 'tis strange\n  That in such open, and apparent guilt\n  Of his adulterous sister, he dare utter\n  So scandalous a passion.  I must wind him.\n\n\nRe-enter Flamineo.\n\n\nFlam.   How dares this banish'd count return to Rome,\n  His pardon not yet purchas'd!  I have heard\n  The deceased duchess gave him pension,\n  And that he came along from Padua\n  I' th' train of the young prince.  There 's somewhat in 't:\n  Physicians, that cure poisons, still do work\n  With counter-poisons.\n\n\nMarc.   Mark this strange encounter.\n\n\nFlam.   The god of melancholy turn thy gall to poison,\n  And let the stigmatic wrinkles in thy face,\n  Like to the boisterous waves in a rough tide,\n  One still overtake another.\n\n\nLodo.   I do thank thee,\n  And I do wish ingeniously for thy sake,\n  The dog-days all year long.\n\n\nFlam.   How croaks the raven?\n  Is our good duchess dead?\n\n\nLodo.   Dead.\n\n\nFlam.   O fate!\n  Misfortune comes like the coroner's business\n  Huddle upon huddle.\n\n\nLodo.   Shalt thou and I join housekeeping?\n\n\nFlam.   Yes, content:\n  Let 's be unsociably sociable.\n\n\nLodo.   Sit some three days together, and discourse?\n\n\nFlam.   Only with making faces;\n  Lie in our clothes.\n\n\nLodo.   With faggots for our pillows.\n\n\nFlam.   And be lousy.\n\n\nLodo.   In taffeta linings, that 's genteel melancholy;\n  Sleep all day.\n\n\nFlam.   Yes; and, like your melancholic hare,\n  Feed after midnight.                      [Enter Antonelli and Gasparo.\n  We are observed: see how yon couple grieve.\n\n\nLodo.   What a strange creature is a laughing fool!\n  As if man were created to no use\n  But only to show his teeth.\n\n\nFlam.   I 'll tell thee what,\n  It would do well instead of looking-glasses,\n  To set one's face each morning by a saucer\n  Of a witch's congeal'd blood.\n\n\nLodo.   Precious rogue!\n  We'll never part.\n\n\nFlam.   Never, till the beggary of courtiers,\n  The discontent of churchmen, want of soldiers,\n  And all the creatures that hang manacled,\n  Worse than strappadoed, on the lowest felly\n  Of fortune's wheel, be taught, in our two lives,\n  To scorn that world which life of means deprives.\n\n\nAnt.   My lord, I bring good news.  The Pope, on 's death bed,\n  At th' earnest suit of the great Duke of Florence,\n  Hath sign'd your pardon, and restor'd unto you----\n\n\nLodo.   I thank you for your news.  Look up again,\n  Flamineo, see my pardon.\n\n\nFlam.   Why do you laugh?\n  There was no such condition in our covenant.\n\n\nLodo.   Why?\n\n\nFlam.   You shall not seem a happier man than I:\n  You know our vow, sir; if you will be merry,\n  Do it i' th' like posture, as if some great man\n  Sat while his enemy were executed:\n  Though it be very lechery unto thee,\n  Do 't with a crabbed politician's face.\n\n\nLodo.   Your sister is a damnable whore.\n\n\nFlam.   Ha!\n\n\nLodo.   Look you, I spake that laughing.\n\n\nFlam.   Dost ever think to speak again?\n\n\nLodo.   Do you hear?\n  Wilt sell me forty ounces of her blood\n  To water a mandrake?\n\n\nFlam.   Poor lord, you did vow\n  To live a lousy creature.\n\n\nLodo.   Yes.\n\n\nFlam.   Like one\n  That had for ever forfeited the daylight,\n  By being in debt.\n\n\nLodo.   Ha, ha!\n\n\nFlam.   I do not greatly wonder you do break,\n  Your lordship learn'd 't long since.  But I 'll tell you.\n\n\nLodo.   What?\n\n\nFlam.   And 't shall stick by you.\n\n\nLodo.   I long for it.\n\n\nFlam.   This laughter scurvily becomes your face:\n  If you will not be melancholy, be angry.                  [Strikes him.\n  See, now I laugh too.\n\n\nMarc.   You are to blame: I 'll force you hence.\n\n\nLodo.   Unhand me.                         [Exeunt Marcello and Flamineo.\n  That e'er I should be forc'd to right myself,\n  Upon a pander!\n\n\nAnt.   My lord.\n\n\nLodo.   H' had been as good met with his fist a thunderbolt.\n\n\nGas.   How this shows!\n\n\nLodo.   Ud's death! how did my sword miss him?\n  These rogues that are most weary of their lives\n  Still 'scape the greatest dangers.\n  A pox upon him; all his reputation,\n  Nay, all the goodness of his family,\n  Is not worth half this earthquake:\n  I learn'd it of no fencer to shake thus:\n  Come, I 'll forget him, and go drink some wine.\n                                                                 [Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n\nACT IV SCENE I\n\n\nEnter Francisco and Monticelso\n\n\nMont.   Come, come, my lord, untie your folded thoughts,\n  And let them dangle loose, as a bride's hair.\n\n\nFran.   Far be it from my thoughts\n  To seek revenge.\n\n\nMont.   What, are you turn'd all marble?\n\n\nFran.   Shall I defy him, and impose a war,\n  Most burthensome on my poor subjects' necks,\n  Which at my will I have not power to end?\n  You know, for all the murders, rapes, and thefts,\n  Committed in the horrid lust of war,\n  He that unjustly caus'd it first proceed,\n  Shall find it in his grave, and in his seed.\n\n\nMont.   That 's not the course I 'd wish you; pray observe me.\n  We see that undermining more prevails\n  Than doth the cannon.  Bear your wrongs conceal'd,\n  And, patient as the tortoise, let this camel\n  Stalk o'er your back unbruis'd: sleep with the lion,\n  And let this brood of secure foolish mice\n  Play with your nostrils, till the time be ripe\n  For th' bloody audit, and the fatal gripe:\n  Aim like a cunning fowler, close one eye,\n  That you the better may your game espy.\n\n\nFran.   Free me, my innocence, from treacherous acts!\n  I know there 's thunder yonder; and I 'll stand,\n  Like a safe valley, which low bends the knee\n  To some aspiring mountain: since I know\n  Treason, like spiders weaving nets for flies,\n  By her foul work is found, and in it dies.\n  To pass away these thoughts, my honour'd lord,\n  It is reported you possess a book,\n  Wherein you have quoted, by intelligence,\n  The names of all notorious offenders\n  Lurking about the city.\n\n\nMont.   Sir, I do;\n  And some there are which call it my black-book.\n  Well may the title hold; for though it teach not\n  The art of conjuring, yet in it lurk\n  The names of many devils.\n\n\nFran.   Pray let 's see it.\n\n\nMont.   I 'll fetch it to your lordship.                           [Exit.\n\n\nFran.   Monticelso,\n  I will not trust thee, but in all my plots\n  I 'll rest as jealous as a town besieg'd.\n  Thou canst not reach what I intend to act:\n  Your flax soon kindles, soon is out again,\n  But gold slow heats, and long will hot remain.\n\n\nEnter Monticelso, with the book\n\n\nMont.   'Tis here, my lord.\n\n\nFran.   First, your intelligencers, pray let 's see.\n\n\nMont.   Their number rises strangely;\n  And some of them\n  You 'd take for honest men.\n  Next are panders.\n  These are your pirates; and these following leaves\n  For base rogues, that undo young gentlemen,\n  By taking up commodities; for politic bankrupts;\n  For fellows that are bawds to their own wives,\n  Only to put off horses, and slight jewels,\n  Clocks, defac'd plate, and such commodities,\n  At birth of their first children.\n\n\nFran.   Are there such?\n\n\nMont.   These are for impudent bawds,\n  That go in men's apparel; for usurers\n  That share with scriveners for their good reportage:\n  For lawyers that will antedate their writs:\n  And some divines you might find folded there,\n  But that I slip them o'er for conscience' sake.\n  Here is a general catalogue of knaves:\n  A man might study all the prisons o'er,\n  Yet never attain this knowledge.\n\n\nFran.   Murderers?\n  Fold down the leaf, I pray;\n  Good my lord, let me borrow this strange doctrine.\n\n\nMont.   Pray, use 't, my lord.\n\n\nFran.   I do assure your lordship,\n  You are a worthy member of the State,\n  And have done infinite good in your discovery\n  Of these offenders.\n\n\nMont.   Somewhat, sir.\n\n\nFran.   O God!\n  Better than tribute of wolves paid in England;\n  'Twill hang their skins o' th' hedge.\n\n\nMont.   I must make bold\n  To leave your lordship.\n\n\nFran.   Dearly, sir, I thank you:\n  If any ask for me at court, report\n  You have left me in the company of knaves.\n                                                        [Exit Monticelso.\n  I gather now by this, some cunning fellow\n  That 's my lord's officer, and that lately skipp'd\n  From a clerk's desk up to a justice' chair,\n  Hath made this knavish summons, and intends,\n  As th' rebels wont were to sell heads,\n  So to make prize of these.  And thus it happens:\n  Your poor rogues pay for 't, which have not the means\n  To present bribe in fist; the rest o' th' band\n  Are razed out of the knaves' record; or else\n  My lord he winks at them with easy will;\n  His man grows rich, the knaves are the knaves still.\n  But to the use I 'll make of it; it shall serve\n  To point me out a list of murderers,\n  Agents for my villany.  Did I want\n  Ten leash of courtesans, it would furnish me;\n  Nay, laundress three armies.  That in so little paper\n  Should lie th' undoing of so many men!\n  'Tis not so big as twenty declarations.\n  See the corrupted use some make of books:\n  Divinity, wrested by some factious blood,\n  Draws swords, swells battles, and o'erthrows all good.\n  To fashion my revenge more seriously,\n  Let me remember my dear sister's face:\n  Call for her picture? no, I 'll close mine eyes,\n  And in a melancholic thought I 'll frame\n                                                 [Enter Isabella's Ghost.\n  Her figure 'fore me.  Now I ha' 't--how strong\n  Imagination works! how she can frame\n  Things which are not! methinks she stands afore me,\n  And by the quick idea of my mind,\n  Were my skill pregnant, I could draw her picture.\n  Thought, as a subtle juggler, makes us deem\n  Things supernatural, which have cause\n  Common as sickness.  'Tis my melancholy.\n  How cam'st thou by thy death?--how idle am I\n  To question mine own idleness!--did ever\n  Man dream awake till now?--remove this object;\n  Out of my brain with 't: what have I to do\n  With tombs, or death-beds, funerals, or tears,\n  That have to meditate upon revenge?                        [Exit Ghost.\n  So, now 'tis ended, like an old wife's story.\n  Statesmen think often they see stranger sights\n  Than madmen.  Come, to this weighty business.\n  My tragedy must have some idle mirth in 't,\n  Else it will never pass.  I am in love,\n  In love with Corombona; and my suit\n  Thus halts to her in verse.--                               [He writes.\n  I have done it rarely: Oh, the fate of princes!\n  I am so us'd to frequent flattery,\n  That, being alone, I now flatter myself:\n  But it will serve; 'tis seal'd.  [Enter servant.]  Bear this\n  To the House of Convertites, and watch your leisure\n  To give it to the hands of Corombona,\n  Or to the Matron, when some followers\n  Of Brachiano may be by.  Away!                           [Exit Servant.\n  He that deals all by strength, his wit is shallow;\n  When a man's head goes through, each limb will follow.\n  The engine for my business, bold Count Lodowick;\n  'Tis gold must such an instrument procure,\n  With empty fist no man doth falcons lure.\n  Brachiano, I am now fit for thy encounter:\n  Like the wild Irish, I 'll ne'er think thee dead\n  Till I can play at football with thy head,\n  Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.                    [Exit.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II\n\n\nEnter the Matron, and Flamineo\n\n\nMatron.   Should it be known the duke hath such recourse\n  To your imprison'd sister, I were like\n  T' incur much damage by it.\n\n\nFlam.   Not a scruple.\n  The Pope lies on his death-bed, and their heads\n  Are troubled now with other business\n  Than guarding of a lady.\n\n\nEnter Servant\n\n\nServant.   Yonder 's Flamineo in conference\n  With the Matrona.--Let me speak with you:\n  I would entreat you to deliver for me\n  This letter to the fair Vittoria.\n\n\nMatron.   I shall, sir.\n\n\nEnter Brachiano\n\n\nServant.   With all care and secrecy;\n  Hereafter you shall know me, and receive\n  Thanks for this courtesy.                                        [Exit.\n\n\nFlam.   How now? what 's that?\n\n\nMatron.   A letter.\n\n\nFlam.   To my sister?  I 'll see 't deliver'd.\n\n\nBrach.   What 's that you read, Flamineo?\n\n\nFlam.   Look.\n\n\nBrach.   Ha!  'To the most unfortunate, his best respected Vittoria'.\n  Who was the messenger?\n\n\nFlam.   I know not.\n\n\nBrach.   No! who sent it?\n\n\nFlam.   Ud's foot! you speak as if a man\n  Should know what fowl is coffin'd in a bak'd meat\n  Afore you cut it up.\n\n\nBrach.   I 'll open 't, were 't her heart.  What 's here subscrib'd!\n  Florence! this juggling is gross and palpable.\n  I have found out the conveyance.  Read it, read it.\n\n\nFlam.   [Reads the letter.]  \"Your tears I 'll turn to triumphs, be but\n  mine;\n  Your prop is fallen: I pity, that a vine\n  Which princes heretofore have long'd to gather,\n  Wanting supporters, now should fade and wither.\"\n  Wine, i' faith, my lord, with lees would serve his turn.\n  \"Your sad imprisonment I 'll soon uncharm,\n  And with a princely uncontrolled arm\n  Lead you to Florence, where my love and care\n  Shall hang your wishes in my silver hair.\"\n  A halter on his strange equivocation!\n  \"Nor for my years return me the sad willow;\n  Who prefer blossoms before fruit that 's mellow?\"\n  Rotten, on my knowledge, with lying too long i' th' bedstraw.\n  \"And all the lines of age this line convinces;\n  The gods never wax old, no more do princes.\"\n  A pox on 't, tear it; let 's have no more atheists, for God's sake.\n\n\nBrach.   Ud's death!  I 'll cut her into atomies,\n  And let th' irregular north wind sweep her up,\n  And blow her int' his nostrils: where 's this whore?\n\n\nFlam.   What? what do you call her?\n\n\nBrach.   Oh, I could be mad!\n  Prevent the curs'd disease she 'll bring me to,\n  And tear my hair off.  Where 's this changeable stuff?\n\n\nFlam.   O'er head and ears in water, I assure you;\n  She is not for your wearing.\n\n\nBrach.   In, you pander!\n\n\nFlam.   What, me, my lord? am I your dog?\n\n\nBrach.   A bloodhound: do you brave, do you stand me?\n\n\nFlam.   Stand you! let those that have diseases run;\n  I need no plasters.\n\n\nBrach.   Would you be kick'd?\n\n\nFlam.   Would you have your neck broke?\n  I tell you, duke, I am not in Russia;\n  My shins must be kept whole.\n\n\nBrach.   Do you know me?\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, my lord, methodically!\n  As in this world there are degrees of evils,\n  So in this world there are degrees of devils.\n  You 're a great duke, I your poor secretary.\n  I do look now for a Spanish fig, or an Italian sallet, daily.\n\n\nBrach.   Pander, ply your convoy, and leave your prating.\n\n\nFlam.   All your kindness to me, is like that miserable courtesy of\n  Polyphemus to Ulysses; you reserve me to be devoured last: you would\n  dig turfs out of my grave to feed your larks; that would be music to\n  you.  Come, I 'll lead you to her.\n\n\nBrach.   Do you face me?\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, sir, I would not go before a politic enemy with my back\n  towards him, though there were behind me a whirlpool.\n\n\nEnter Vittoria to Brachiano and Flamineo\n\n\nBrach.   Can you read, mistress? look upon that letter:\n  There are no characters, nor hieroglyphics.\n  You need no comment; I am grown your receiver.\n  God's precious! you shall be a brave great lady,\n  A stately and advanced whore.\n\n\nVit.   Say, sir?\n\n\nBrach.   Come, come, let 's see your cabinet, discover\n  Your treasury of love-letters.  Death and furies!\n  I 'll see them all.\n\n\nVit.   Sir, upon my soul,\n  I have not any.  Whence was this directed?\n\n\nBrach.   Confusion on your politic ignorance!\n  You are reclaim'd, are you?  I 'll give you the bells,\n  And let you fly to the devil.\n\n\nFlam.   Ware hawk, my lord.\n\n\nVit.   Florence! this is some treacherous plot, my lord;\n  To me he ne'er was lovely, I protest,\n  So much as in my sleep.\n\n\nBrach.   Right! there are plots.\n  Your beauty!  Oh, ten thousand curses on 't!\n  How long have I beheld the devil in crystal!\n  Thou hast led me, like an heathen sacrifice,\n  With music, and with fatal yokes of flowers,\n  To my eternal ruin.  Woman to man\n  Is either a god, or a wolf.\n\n\nVit.   My lord----\n\n\nBrach.   Away!\n  We 'll be as differing as two adamants,\n  The one shall shun the other.  What! dost weep?\n  Procure but ten of thy dissembling trade,\n  Ye 'd furnish all the Irish funerals\n  With howling past wild Irish.\n\n\nFlam.   Fie, my lord!\n\n\nBrach.   That hand, that cursed hand, which I have wearied\n  With doting kisses!--Oh, my sweetest duchess,\n  How lovely art thou now!--My loose thoughts\n  Scatter like quicksilver: I was bewitch'd;\n  For all the world speaks ill of thee.\n\n\nVit.   No matter;\n  I 'll live so now, I 'll make that world recant,\n  And change her speeches.  You did name your duchess.\n\n\nBrach.   Whose death God pardon!\n\n\nVit.   Whose death God revenge\n  On thee, most godless duke!\n\n\nFlam.   Now for ten whirlwinds.\n\n\nVit.   What have I gain'd by thee, but infamy?\n  Thou hast stain'd the spotless honour of my house,\n  And frighted thence noble society:\n  Like those, which sick o' th' palsy, and retain\n  Ill-scenting foxes 'bout them, are still shunn'd\n  By those of choicer nostrils.  What do you call this house?\n  Is this your palace? did not the judge style it\n  A house of penitent whores? who sent me to it?\n  To this incontinent college? is 't not you?\n  Is 't not your high preferment? go, go, brag\n  How many ladies you have undone, like me.\n  Fare you well, sir; let me hear no more of you!\n  I had a limb corrupted to an ulcer,\n  But I have cut it off; and now I 'll go\n  Weeping to heaven on crutches.  For your gifts,\n  I will return them all, and I do wish\n  That I could make you full executor\n  To all my sins.  O that I could toss myself\n  Into a grave as quickly! for all thou art worth\n  I 'll not shed one tear more--I 'll burst first.\n                                          [She throws herself upon a bed.\n\n\nBrach.   I have drunk Lethe: Vittoria!\n  My dearest happiness!  Vittoria!\n  What do you ail, my love? why do you weep?\n\n\nVit.   Yes, I now weep poniards, do you see?\n\n\nBrach.   Are not those matchless eyes mine?\n\n\nVit.   I had rather\n   They were not matches.\n\n\nBrach.   Is not this lip mine?\n\n\nVit.   Yes; thus to bite it off, rather than give it thee.\n\n\nFlam.   Turn to my lord, good sister.\n\n\nVit.   Hence, you pander!\n\n\nFlam.   Pander! am I the author of your sin?\n\n\nVit.   Yes; he 's a base thief that a thief lets in.\n\n\nFlam.   We 're blown up, my lord----\n\n\nBrach.   Wilt thou hear me?\n  Once to be jealous of thee, is t' express\n  That I will love thee everlastingly,\n  And never more be jealous.\n\n\nVit.   O thou fool,\n  Whose greatness hath by much o'ergrown thy wit!\n  What dar'st thou do, that I not dare to suffer,\n  Excepting to be still thy whore? for that,\n  In the sea's bottom sooner thou shalt make\n  A bonfire.\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, no oaths, for God's sake!\n\n\nBrach.   Will you hear me?\n\n\nVit.   Never.\n\n\nFlam.   What a damn'd imposthume is a woman's will!\n  Can nothing break it?  [Aside.]  Fie, fie, my lord,\n  Women are caught as you take tortoises,\n  She must be turn'd on her back.  Sister, by this hand\n  I am on your side.--Come, come, you have wrong'd her;\n  What a strange credulous man were you, my lord,\n  To think the Duke of Florence would love her!\n  Will any mercer take another's ware\n  When once 'tis tows'd and sullied?  And yet, sister,\n  How scurvily this forwardness becomes you!\n  Young leverets stand not long, and women's anger\n  Should, like their flight, procure a little sport;\n  A full cry for a quarter of an hour,\n  And then be put to th' dead quat.\n\n\nBrach.   Shall these eyes,\n  Which have so long time dwelt upon your face,\n  Be now put out?\n\n\nFlam.   No cruel landlady i' th' world,\n  Which lends forth groats to broom-men, and takes use\n  For them, would do 't.\n  Hand her, my lord, and kiss her: be not like\n  A ferret, to let go your hold with blowing.\n\n\nBrach.   Let us renew right hands.\n\n\nVit.   Hence!\n\n\nBrach.   Never shall rage, or the forgetful wine,\n  Make me commit like fault.\n\n\nFlam.   Now you are i' th' way on 't, follow 't hard.\n\n\nBrach.   Be thou at peace with me, let all the world\n  Threaten the cannon.\n\n\nFlam.   Mark his penitence;\n  Best natures do commit the grosses faults,\n  When they 're given o'er to jealousy, as best wine,\n  Dying, makes strongest vinegar.  I 'll tell you:\n  The sea 's more rough and raging than calm rivers,\n  But not so sweet, nor wholesome.  A quiet woman\n  Is a still water under a great bridge;\n  A man may shoot her safely.\n\n\nVit.   O ye dissembling men!\n\n\nFlam.   We suck'd that, sister,\n  From women's breasts, in our first infancy.\n\n\nVit.   To add misery to misery!\n\n\nBrach.   Sweetest!\n\n\nVit.   Am I not low enough?\n  Ay, ay, your good heart gathers like a snowball,\n  Now your affection 's cold.\n\n\nFlam.   Ud's foot, it shall melt\n  To a heart again, or all the wine in Rome\n  Shall run o' th' lees for 't.\n\n\nVit.   Your dog or hawk should be rewarded better\n  Than I have been.  I 'll speak not one word more.\n\n\nFlam.   Stop her mouth\n  With a sweet kiss, my lord.  So,\n  Now the tide 's turn'd, the vessel 's come about.\n  He 's a sweet armful.  Oh, we curl-hair'd men\n  Are still most kind to women!  This is well.\n\n\nBrach.   That you should chide thus!\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, sir, your little chimneys\n  Do ever cast most smoke!  I sweat for you.\n  Couple together with as deep a silence,\n  As did the Grecians in their wooden horse.\n  My lord, supply your promises with deeds;\n  You know that painted meat no hunger feeds.\n\n\nBrach.   Stay, ungrateful Rome----\n\n\nFlam.   Rome! it deserve to be call'd Barbary,\n  For our villainous usage.\n\n\nBrach.   Soft; the same project which the Duke of Florence,\n  (Whether in love or gallery I know not)\n  Laid down for her escape, will I pursue.\n\n\nFlam.   And no time fitter than this night, my lord.\n  The Pope being dead, and all the cardinals enter'd\n  The conclave, for th' electing a new Pope;\n  The city in a great confusion;\n  We may attire her in a page's suit,\n  Lay her post-horse, take shipping, and amain\n  For Padua.\n\n\nBrach.   I 'll instantly steal forth the Prince Giovanni,\n  And make for Padua.  You two with your old mother,\n  And young Marcello that attends on Florence,\n  If you can work him to it, follow me:\n  I will advance you all; for you, Vittoria,\n  Think of a duchess' title.\n\n\nFlam.   Lo you, sister!\n  Stay, my lord; I 'll tell you a tale.  The crocodile, which lives\n  in the River Nilus, hath a worm breeds i' th' teeth of 't, which puts\n  it to extreme anguish: a little bird, no bigger than a wren, is\n  barber-surgeon to this crocodile; flies into the jaws of 't, picks out\n  the worm, and brings present remedy.  The fish, glad of ease, but\n  ungrateful to her that did it, that the bird may not talk largely of\n  her abroad for non-payment, closeth her chaps, intending to swallow\n  her, and so put her to perpetual silence.  But nature, loathing such\n  ingratitude, hath armed this bird with a quill or prick on the head,\n  top o' th' which wounds the crocodile i' th' mouth, forceth her open\n  her bloody prison, and away flies the pretty tooth-picker from her\n  cruel patient.\n\n\nBrach.   Your application is, I have not rewarded\n  The service you have done me.\n\n\nFlam.   No, my lord.\n  You, sister, are the crocodile: you are blemish'd in your fame, my lord\n  cures it; and though the comparison hold not in every particle, yet\n  observe, remember, what good the bird with the prick i' th' head hath\n  done you, and scorn ingratitude.\n  It may appear to some ridiculous\n  Thus to talk knave and madman, and sometimes\n  Come in with a dried sentence, stuffed with sage:\n  But this allows my varying of shapes;\n  Knaves do grow great by being great men's apes.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III\n\n\nEnter Francisco, Lodovico, Gasparo, and six Ambassadors\n\n\nFran.   So, my lord, I commend your diligence.\n  Guard well the conclave; and, as the order is,\n  Let none have conference with the cardinals.\n\n\nLodo.   I shall, my lord.  Room for the ambassadors.\n\n\nGas.  They 're wondrous brave to-day: why do they wear\n  These several habits?\n\n\nLodo.   Oh, sir, they 're knights\n  Of several orders:\n  That lord i' th' black cloak, with the silver cross,\n  Is Knight of Rhodes; the next, Knight of St. Michael;\n  That, of the Golden Fleece; the Frenchman, there,\n  Knight of the Holy Ghost; my Lord of Savoy,\n  Knight of th' Annunciation; the Englishman\n  Is Knight of th' honour'd Garter, dedicated\n  Unto their saint, St. George.  I could describe to you\n  Their several institutions, with the laws\n  Annexed to their orders; but that time\n  Permits not such discovery.\n\n\nFran.   Where 's Count Lodowick?\n\n\nLodo.   Here, my lord.\n\n\nFran.   'Tis o' th' point of dinner time;\n  Marshal the cardinals' service.\n\n\nLodo.   Sir, I shall.       [Enter Servants, with several dishes covered.\n  Stand, let me search your dish.  Who 's this for?\n\n\nServant.   For my Lord Cardinal Monticelso.\n\n\nLodo.   Whose this?\n\n\nServant.   For my Lord Cardinal of Bourbon.\n\n\nFr. Ambass.   Why doth he search the dishes? to observe\n  What meat is dressed?\n\n\nEng. Ambass.   No, sir, but to prevent\n  Lest any letters should be convey'd in,\n  To bribe or to solicit the advancement\n  Of any cardinal.  When first they enter,\n  'Tis lawful for the ambassadors of princes\n  To enter with them, and to make their suit\n  For any man their prince affecteth best;\n  But after, till a general election,\n  No man may speak with them.\n\n\nLodo.   You that attend on the lord cardinals,\n  Open the window, and receive their viands.\n\n\nCard.   [Within.]  You must return the service: the lord cardinals\n  Are busied 'bout electing of the Pope;\n  They have given o'er scrutiny, and are fallen\n  To admiration.\n\n\nLodo.   Away, away.\n\n\nFran.   I 'll lay a thousand ducats you hear news\n  Of a Pope presently.  Hark; sure he 's elected:\n  Behold, my Lord of Arragon appears\n  On the church battlements.                  [A Cardinal on the terrace.\n\n\nArragon.   Denuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Reverendissimus Cardinalis\n  Lorenzo de Monticelso electus est in sedem apostolicam, et elegit sibi\n  nomen Paulum Quartum.\n\n\nOmnes.   Vivat Sanctus Pater Paulus Quartus!\n\n\nServant.   Vittoria, my lord----\n\n\nFran.   Well, what of her?\n\n\nServant.   Is fled the city----\n\n\nFran.   Ha!\n\n\nServant.   With Duke Brachiano.\n\n\nFran.   Fled! where 's the Prince Giovanni?\n\n\nServant.   Gone with his father.\n\n\nFran.   Let the Matrona of the Convertites\n  Be apprehended.  Fled?  O damnable!\n  How fortunate are my wishes! why, 'twas this\n  I only labour'd: I did send the letter\n  T' instruct him what to do.  Thy fame, fond duke,\n  I first have poison'd; directed thee the way\n  To marry a whore; what can be worse?  This follows:\n  The hand must act to drown the passionate tongue,\n  I scorn to wear a sword and prate of wrong.\n\n\nEnter Monticelso in State\n\n\nMont.   Concedimus vobis Apostolicam benedictionem, et remissionem\n  peccatorum.\n  My lord reports Vittoria Corombona\n  Is stol'n from forth the House of Convertites\n  By Brachiano, and they 're fled the city.\n  Now, though this be the first day of our seat,\n  We cannot better please the Divine Power,\n  Than to sequester from the Holy Church\n  These cursed persons.  Make it therefore known,\n  We do denounce excommunication\n  Against them both: all that are theirs in Rome\n  We likewise banish.  Set on.\n                                  [Exeunt all but Francisco and Lodovico.\n\n\nFran.   Come, dear Lodovico;\n  You have ta'en the sacrament to prosecute\n  Th' intended murder?\n\n\nLodo.   With all constancy.\n  But, sir, I wonder you 'll engage yourself\n  In person, being a great prince.\n\n\nFran.   Divert me not.\n  Most of his court are of my faction,\n  And some are of my council.  Noble friend,\n  Our danger shall be like in this design:\n  Give leave part of the glory may be mine.              [Exit Francisco.\n\n\nEnter Monticelso\n\n\nMont.   Why did the Duke of Florence with such care\n  Labour your pardon? say.\n\n\nLodo.   Italian beggars will resolve you that,\n  Who, begging of alms, bid those they beg of,\n  Do good for their own sakes; or 't may be,\n  He spreads his bounty with a sowing hand,\n  Like kings, who many times give out of measure,\n  Not for desert so much, as for their pleasure.\n\n\nMont.   I know you 're cunning.  Come, what devil was that\n  That you were raising?\n\n\nLodo.   Devil, my lord?\n\n\nMont.   I ask you,\n  How doth the duke employ you, that his bonnet\n  Fell with such compliment unto his knee,\n  When he departed from you?\n\n\nLodo.   Why, my lord,\n  He told me of a resty Barbary horse\n  Which he would fain have brought to the career,\n  The sault, and the ring galliard: now, my lord,\n  I have a rare French rider.\n\n\nMont.   Take your heed,\n  Lest the jade break your neck.  Do you put me off\n  With your wild horse-tricks?  Sirrah, you do lie.\n  Oh, thou 'rt a foul black cloud, and thou dost threat\n  A violent storm!\n\n\nLodo.   Storms are i' th' air, my lord;\n  I am too low to storm.\n\n\nMont.   Wretched creature!\n  I know that thou art fashion'd for all ill,\n  Like dogs, that once get blood, they 'll ever kill.\n  About some murder, was 't not?\n\n\nLodo.   I 'll not tell you:\n  And yet I care not greatly if I do;\n  Marry, with this preparation.  Holy father,\n  I come not to you as an intelligencer,\n  But as a penitent sinner: what I utter\n  Is in confession merely; which, you know,\n  Must never be reveal'd.\n\n\nMont.   You have o'erta'en me.\n\n\nLodo.   Sir, I do love Brachiano's duchess dearly,\n  Or rather I pursued her with hot lust,\n  Though she ne'er knew on 't.  She was poison'd;\n  Upon my soul she was: for which I have sworn\n  T' avenge her murder.\n\n\nMont.   To the Duke of Florence?\n\n\nLodo.   To him I have.\n\n\nMont.   Miserable creature!\n  If thou persist in this, 'tis damnable.\n  Dost thou imagine, thou canst slide on blood,\n  And not be tainted with a shameful fall?\n  Or, like the black and melancholic yew-tree,\n  Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves,\n  And yet to prosper?  Instruction to thee\n  Comes like sweet showers to o'er-harden'd ground;\n  They wet, but pierce not deep.   And so I leave thee,\n  With all the furies hanging 'bout thy neck,\n  Till by thy penitence thou remove this evil,\n  In conjuring from thy breast that cruel devil.                   [Exit.\n\n\nLodo.   I 'll give it o'er; he says 'tis damnable:\n  Besides I did expect his suffrage,\n  By reason of Camillo's death.\n\n\nEnter Servant and Francisco\n\n\nFran.   Do you know that count?\n\n\nServant.   Yes, my lord.\n\n\nFran.   Bear him these thousand ducats to his lodging.\n  Tell him the Pope hath sent them.  Happily\n  That will confirm more than all the rest.                        [Exit.\n\n\nServant.   Sir.\n\n\nLodo.   To me, sir?\n\n\nServant.   His Holiness hath sent you a thousand crowns,\n  And wills you, if you travel, to make him\n  Your patron for intelligence.\n\n\nLodo.   His creature ever to be commanded.--\n  Why now 'tis come about.  He rail'd upon me;\n  And yet these crowns were told out, and laid ready,\n  Before he knew my voyage.  Oh, the art,\n  The modest form of greatness! that do sit,\n  Like brides at wedding-dinners, with their looks turn'd\n  From the least wanton jests, their puling stomach\n  Sick from the modesty, when their thoughts are loose,\n  Even acting of those hot and lustful sports\n  Are to ensue about midnight: such his cunning!\n  He sounds my depth thus with a golden plummet.\n  I am doubly arm'd now.  Now to th' act of blood,\n  There 's but three furies found in spacious hell,\n  But in a great man's breast three thousand dwell.                [Exit.\n\n\n\n\n\nACT V SCENE I\n\n\nA passage over the stage of Brachiano, Flamineo, Marcello, Hortensio,\n  Corombona, Cornelia, Zanche, and others: Flamineo and Hortensio remain.\n\n\nFlam.   In all the weary minutes of my life,\n  Day ne'er broke up till now.  This marriage\n  Confirms me happy.\n\n\nHort.   'Tis a good assurance.\n  Saw you not yet the Moor that 's come to court?\n\n\nFlam.   Yes, and conferr'd with him i' th' duke's closet.\n  I have not seen a goodlier personage,\n  Nor ever talk'd with man better experience'd\n  In State affairs, or rudiments of war.\n  He hath, by report, serv'd the Venetian\n  In Candy these twice seven years, and been chief\n  In many a bold design.\n\n\nHort.   What are those two\n  That bear him company?\n\n\nFlam.   Two noblemen of Hungary, that, living in the emperor's service as\n  commanders, eight years since, contrary to the strict Order of\n  Capuchins; but, being not well settled in their undertaking, they left\n  their Order, and returned to court; for which, being after troubled in\n  conscience, they vowed their service against the enemies of Christ,\n  went to Malta, were there knighted, and in their return back, at this\n  great solemnity, they are resolved for ever to forsake the world, and\n  settle themselves here in a house of Capuchins in Padua.\n\n\nHort.   'Tis strange.\n\n\nFlam.   One thing makes it so: they have vowed for ever to wear, next\n  their bare bodies, those coats of mail they served in.\n\n\nHort.   Hard penance!\n  Is the Moor a Christian?\n\n\nFlam.   He is.\n\n\nHort.   Why proffers he his service to our duke?\n\n\nFlam.   Because he understands there 's like to grow\n  Some wars between us and the Duke of Florence,\n  In which he hopes employment.\n  I never saw one in a stern bold look\n  Wear more command, nor in a lofty phrase\n  Express more knowing, or more deep contempt\n  As if he travell'd all the princes' courts\n  Of Christendom: in all things strives t' express,\n  That all, that should dispute with him, may know,\n  Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,\n  But look'd to near, have neither heat nor light.\n  The duke.\n\n\nEnter Brachiano, Francisco disguised like Mulinassar, Lodovico\n  and Gasparo, bearing their swords, their helmets down, Antonelli,\n  Farnese.\n\n\nBrach.  You are nobly welcome.  We have heard at full\n  Your honourable service 'gainst the Turk.\n  To you, brave Mulinassar, we assign\n  A competent pension: and are inly sorry,\n  The vows of those two worthy gentlemen\n  Make them incapable of our proffer'd bounty.\n  Your wish is, you may leave your warlike swords\n  For monuments in our chapel: I accept it,\n  As a great honour done me, and must crave\n  Your leave to furnish out our duchess' revels.\n  Only one thing, as the last vanity\n  You e'er shall view, deny me not to stay\n  To see a barriers prepar'd to-night:\n  You shall have private standings.  It hath pleas'd\n  The great ambassadors of several princes,\n  In their return from Rome to their own countries,\n  To grace our marriage, and to honour me\n  With such a kind of sport.\n\n\nFran.   I shall persuade them to stay, my lord.\n\n\nBrach.   Set on there to the presence.\n                              [Exeunt Brachiano, Flamineo, and Hortensio.\n\n\nLodo.   Noble my lord, most fortunately welcome;\n                                           [The conspirators her embrace.\n  You have our vows, seal'd with the sacrament,\n  To second your attempts.\n\n\nGas.   And all things ready;\n  He could not have invented his own ruin\n  (Had he despair'd) with more propriety.\n\n\nLodo.   You would not take my way.\n\n\nFran.   'Tis better order'd.\n\n\nLodo.   T' have poison'd his prayer-book, or a pair of beads,\n  The pummel of his saddle, his looking-glass,\n  Or th' handle of his racket,--O, that, that!\n  That while he had been bandying at tennis,\n  He might have sworn himself to hell, and strook\n  His soul into the hazard!  Oh, my lord,\n  I would have our plot be ingenious,\n  And have it hereafter recorded for example,\n  Rather than borrow example.\n\n\nFran.   There 's now way\n  More speeding that this thought on.\n\n\nLodo.   On, then.\n\n\nFran.   And yet methinks that this revenge is poor,\n  Because it steals upon him like a thief:\n  To have ta'en him by the casque in a pitch'd field,\n  Led him to Florence----\n\n\nLodo.   It had been rare: and there\n  Have crown'd him with a wreath of stinking garlic,\n  T' have shown the sharpness of his government,\n  And rankness of his lust.  Flamineo comes.\n                                [Exeunt Lodovico, Antonelli, and Gasparo.\n\n\nEnter Flamineo, Marcello, and Zanche\n\n\nMarc.   Why doth this devil haunt you, say?\n\n\nFlam.   I know not:\n  For by this light, I do not conjure for her.\n  'Tis not so great a cunning as men think,\n  To raise the devil; for here 's one up already;\n  The greatest cunning were to lay him down.\n\n\nMarc.   She is your shame.\n\n\nFlam.   I pray thee pardon her.\n  In faith, you see, women are like to burs,\n  Where their affection throws them, there they 'll stick.\n\n\nZan.   That is my countryman, a goodly person;\n  When he 's at leisure, I 'll discourse with him\n  In our own language.\n\n\nFlam.   I beseech you do.                                   [Exit Zanche.\n  How is 't, brave soldier?  Oh, that I had seen\n  Some of your iron days!  I pray relate\n  Some of your service to us.\n\n\nFran.   'Tis a ridiculous thing for a man to be his own chronicle: I did\n  never wash my mouth with mine own praise, for fear of getting a\n  stinking breath.\n\n\nMarc.   You 're too stoical.  The duke will expect other discourse from\n  you.\n\n\nFran.   I shall never flatter him: I have studied man too much to do\n  that.  What difference is between the duke and I? no more than between\n  two bricks, all made of one clay: only 't may be one is placed in top\n  of a turret, the other in the bottom of a well, by mere chance.  If I\n  were placed as high as the duke, I should stick as fast, make as fair a\n  show, and bear out weather equally.\n\n\nFlam.   If this soldier had a patent to beg in churches, then he would\n  tell them stories.\n\n\nMarc.   I have been a soldier too.\n\n\nFran.   How have you thrived?\n\n\nMarc.   Faith, poorly.\n\n\nFran.   That 's the misery of peace: only outsides are then respected.\n  As ships seem very great upon the river, which show very little upon\n  the seas, so some men i' th' court seem Colossuses in a chamber, who,\n  if they came into the field, would appear pitiful pigmies.\n\n\nFlam.   Give me a fair room yet hung with arras, and some great cardinal\n  to lug me by th' ears, as his endeared minion.\n\n\nFran.   And thou mayest do the devil knows what villainy.\n\n\nFlam.   And safely.\n\n\nFran.   Right: you shall see in the country, in harvest-time, pigeons,\n  though they destroy never so much corn, the farmer dare not present the\n  fowling-piece to them: why? because they belong to the lord of the\n  manor; whilst your poor sparrows, that belong to the Lord of Heaven,\n  they go to the pot for 't.\n\n\nFlam.   I will now give you some politic instruction.  The duke says he\n  will give you pension; that 's but bare promise; get it under his hand.\n  For I have known men that have come from serving against the Turk, for\n  three or four months they have had pension to buy them new wooden legs,\n  and fresh plasters; but after, 'twas not to be had.  And this miserable\n  courtesy shows as if a tormentor should give hot cordial drinks to one\n  three-quarters dead o' th' rack, only to fetch the miserable soul again\n  to endure more dog-days.\n   [Exit Francisco.  Enter Hortensio, a young Lord, Zanche, and two more.\n  How now, gallants? what, are they ready for the barriers?\n\n\nYoung Lord.   Yes: the lords are putting on their armour.\n\n\nHort.   What 's he?\n\n\nFlam.   A new upstart; one that swears like a falconer, and will lie in\n  the duke's ear day by day, like a maker of almanacs: and yet I knew\n  him, since he came to th' court, smell worse of sweat than an under\n  tennis-court keeper.\n\n\nHort.   Look you, yonder 's your sweet mistress.\n\n\nFlam.   Thou art my sworn brother: I 'll tell thee, I do love that Moor,\n  that witch, very constrainedly.  She knows some of my villainy.  I do\n  love her just as a man holds a wolf by the ears; but for fear of her\n  turning upon me, and pulling out my throat, I would let her go to the\n  devil.\n\n\nHort.   I hear she claims marriage of thee.\n\n\nFlam.   'Faith, I made to her some such dark promise; and, in seeking to\n  fly from 't, I run on, like a frighted dog with a bottle at 's tail,\n  that fain would bite it off, and yet dares not look behind him.  Now,\n  my precious gipsy.\n\n\nZan.   Ay, your love to me rather cools than heats.\n\n\nFlam.   Marry, I am the sounder lover; we have many wenches about the\n  town heat too fast.\n\n\nHort.   What do you think of these perfumed gallants, then?\n\n\nFlam.   Their satin cannot save them: I am confident\n  They have a certain spice of the disease;\n  For they that sleep with dogs shall rise with fleas.\n\n\nZan.   Believe it, a little painting and gay clothes make you loathe me.\n\n\nFlam.   How, love a lady for painting or gay apparel?  I 'll unkennel one\n  example more for thee.  AEsop had a foolish dog that let go the flesh to\n  catch the shadow; I would have courtiers be better diners.\n\n\nZan.   You remember your oaths?\n\n\nFlam.   Lovers' oaths are like mariners' prayers, uttered in extremity;\n  but when the tempest is o'er, and that the vessel leaves tumbling, they\n  fall from protesting to drinking.  And yet, amongst gentlemen,\n  protesting and drinking go together, and agree as well as shoemakers\n  and Westphalia bacon: they are both drawers on; for drink draws on\n  protestation, and protestation draws on more drink.  Is not this\n  discourse better now than the morality of your sunburnt gentleman?\n\n\nEnter Cornelia\n\n\nCorn.   Is this your perch, you haggard? fly to th' stews.\n                                                         [Strikes Zanche.\n\n\nFlam.   You should be clapped by th' heels now: strike i' th' court!\n                                                          [Exit Cornelia.\n\n\nZan.   She 's good for nothing, but to make her maids\n  Catch cold a-nights: they dare not use a bedstaff,\n  For fear of her light fingers.\n\n\nMarc.   You 're a strumpet,\n  An impudent one.                                         [Kicks Zanche.\n\n\nFlam.   Why do you kick her, say?\n  Do you think that she 's like a walnut tree?\n  Must she be cudgell'd ere she bear good fruit?\n\n\nMarc.   She brags that you shall marry her.\n\n\nFlam.   What then?\n\n\nMarc.   I had rather she were pitch'd upon a stake,\n  In some new-seeded garden, to affright\n  Her fellow crows thence.\n\n\nFlam.   You 're a boy, a fool,\n  Be guardian to your hound; I am of age.\n\n\nMarc.   If I take her near you, I 'll cut her throat.\n\n\nFlam.   With a fan of feather?\n\n\nMarc.   And, for you, I 'll whip\n  This folly from you.\n\n\nFlam.   Are you choleric?\n  I 'll purge it with rhubarb.\n\n\nHort.   Oh, your brother!\n\n\nFlam.   Hang him,\n  He wrongs me most, that ought t' offend me least:\n  I do suspect my mother play'd foul play,\n  When she conceiv'd thee.\n\n\nMarc.   Now, by all my hopes,\n  Like the two slaughter'd sons of OEdipus,\n  The very flames of our affection\n  Shall turn two ways.  Those words I 'll make thee answer\n  With thy heart-blood.\n\n\nFlam.   Do, like the geese in the progress;\n  You know where you shall find me.\n\n\nMarc.   Very good.                                        [Exit Flamineo.\n  And thou be'st a noble friend, bear him my sword,\n  And bid him fit the length on 't.\n\n\nYoung Lord.   Sir, I shall.                       [Exeunt all but Zanche.\n\n\nZan.   He comes.  Hence petty thought of my disgrace!\n                                                        [Enter Francisco.\n  I ne'er lov'd my complexion till now,\n  'Cause I may boldly say, without a blush,\n  I love you.\n\n\nFran.   Your love is untimely sown; there 's a spring at Michaelmas, but\n  'tis but a faint one: I am sunk in years, and I have vowed never to\n  marry.\n\n\nZan.   Alas! poor maids get more lovers than husbands: yet you may\n  mistake my wealth.  For, as when ambassadors are sent to congratulate\n  princes, there 's commonly sent along with them a rich present, so\n  that, though the prince like not the ambassador's person, nor words,\n  yet he likes well of the presentment; so I may come to you in the same\n  manner, and be better loved for my dowry than my virtue.\n\n\nFran.   I 'll think on the motion.\n\n\nZan.   Do; I 'll now detain you no longer.  At your better leisure, I 'll\n  tell you things shall startle your blood:\n  Nor blame me that this passion I reveal;\n  Lovers die inward that their flames conceal.\n\n\nFran.   Of all intelligence this may prove the best:\n  Sure I shall draw strange fowl from this foul nest.            [Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II\n\n\nEnter Marcello and Cornelia\n\n\nCorn.   I hear a whispering all about the court,\n  You are to fight: who is your opposite?\n  What is the quarrel?\n\n\nMarc.   'Tis an idle rumour.\n\n\nCorn.   Will you dissemble? sure you do not well\n  To fright me thus: you never look thus pale,\n  But when you are most angry.  I do charge you,\n  Upon my blessing--nay, I 'll call the duke,\n  And he shall school you.\n\n\nMarc.   Publish not a fear,\n  Which would convert to laughter: 'tis not so.\n  Was not this crucifix my father's?\n\n\nCorn.   Yes.\n\n\nMarc.   I have heard you say, giving my brother suck\n  He took the crucifix between his hands,                [Enter Flamineo.\n  And broke a limb off.\n\n\nCorn.   Yes, but 'tis mended.\n\n\nFlam.   I have brought your weapon back.\n                                         [Flamineo runs Marcello through.\n\n\nCorn.   Ha!  Oh, my horror!\n\n\nMarc.   You have brought it home, indeed.\n\n\nCorn.   Help!  Oh, he 's murder'd!\n\n\nFlam.   Do you turn your gall up?  I 'll to sanctuary,\n  And send a surgeon to you.                                       [Exit.\n\n\nEnter Lodovico, Hortensio, and Gasparo\n\n\nHort.   How! o' th' ground!\n\n\nMarc.   Oh, mother, now remember what I told\n  Of breaking of the crucifix!  Farewell.\n  There are some sins, which heaven doth duly punish\n  In a whole family.  This it is to rise\n  By all dishonest means!  Let all men know,\n  That tree shall long time keep a steady foot,\n  Whose branches spread no wider than the root.                    [Dies.\n\n\nCorn.   Oh, my perpetual sorrow!\n\n\nHort.   Virtuous Marcello!\n  He 's dead.  Pray leave him, lady: come, you shall.\n\n\nCorn.  Alas! he is not dead; he 's in a trance.  Why, here 's nobody\n  shall get anything by his death.  Let me call him again, for God's\n  sake!\n\n\nLodo.   I would you were deceived.\n\n\nCorn.   Oh, you abuse me, you abuse me, you abuse me! how many have gone\n  away thus, for lack of 'tendance! rear up 's head, rear up 's head! his\n  bleeding inward will kill him.\n\n\nHort.   You see he is departed.\n\n\nCorn.   Let me come to him; give me him as he is, if he be turn'd to\n  earth; let me but give him one hearty kiss, and you shall put us both\n  in one coffin.  Fetch a looking-glass: see if his breath will not stain\n  it; or pull out some feathers from my pillow, and lay them to his lips.\n  Will you lose him for a little painstaking?\n\n\nHort.   Your kindest office is to pray for him.\n\n\nCorn.   Alas! I would not pray for him yet.  He may live to lay me i' th'\n  ground, and pray for me, if you 'll let me come to him.\n\n\nEnter Brachiano, all armed, save the beaver, with Flamineo and others\n\n\nBrach.   Was this your handiwork?\n\n\nFlam.   It was my misfortune.\n\n\nCorn.   He lies, he lies! he did not kill him: these have killed him,\n  that would not let him be better looked to.\n\n\nBrach.   Have comfort, my griev'd mother.\n\n\nCorn.   Oh, you screech-owl!\n\n\nHort.   Forbear, good madam.\n\n\nCorn.   Let me go, let me go.\n  [She runs to Flamineo with her knife drawn, and coming to him lets it\n  fall.\n  The God of heaven forgive thee!  Dost not wonder\n  I pray for thee?  I 'll tell thee what 's the reason,\n  I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes;\n  I 'd not spend that in cursing.  Fare thee well:\n  Half of thyself lies there; and mayst thou live\n  To fill an hour-glass with his moulder'd ashes,\n  To tell how thou shouldst spend the time to come\n  In blessed repentance!\n\n\nBrach.   Mother, pray tell me\n  How came he by his death? what was the quarrel?\n\n\nCorn.   Indeed, my younger boy presum'd too much\n  Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words,\n  Drew his sword first; and so, I know not how,\n  For I was out of my wits, he fell with 's head\n  Just in my bosom.\n\n\nPage.   That is not true, madam.\n\n\nCorn.   I pray thee, peace.\n  One arrow 's graze'd already; it were vain\n  T' lose this, for that will ne'er be found again.\n\n\nBrach.   Go, bear the body to Cornelia's lodging:\n  And we command that none acquaint our duchess\n  With this sad accident.  For you, Flamineo,\n  Hark you, I will not grant your pardon.\n\n\nFlam.   No?\n\n\nBrach.   Only a lease of your life; and that shall last\n  But for one day: thou shalt be forc'd each evening\n  To renew it, or be hang'd.\n\n\nFlam.   At your pleasure.\n                    [Lodovico sprinkles Brachiano's beaver with a poison.\n                           Enter Francisco\n  Your will is law now, I 'll not meddle with it.\n\n\nBrach.   You once did brave me in your sister's lodging:\n  I 'll now keep you in awe for 't.  Where 's our beaver?\n\n\nFran.   [Aside.]  He calls for his destruction.  Noble youth,\n  I pity thy sad fate!  Now to the barriers.\n  This shall his passage to the black lake further;\n  The last good deed he did, he pardon'd murder.                 [Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III\n\n\nCharges and shouts.  They fight at barriers; first single pairs, then\n  three to three\n\n\nEnter Brachiano and Flamineo, with others\n\n\nBrach.   An armourer! ud's death, an armourer!\n\n\nFlam.   Armourer! where 's the armourer?\n\n\nBrach.   Tear off my beaver.\n\n\nFlam.   Are you hurt, my lord?\n\n\nBrach.   Oh, my brain 's on fire!                        [Enter Armourer.\n  The helmet is poison'd.\n\n\nArmourer.   My lord, upon my soul----\n\n\nBrach.   Away with him to torture.\n  There are some great ones that have hand in this,\n  And near about me.\n\n\nEnter Vittoria Corombona\n\n\nVit.   Oh, my lov'd lord! poison'd!\n\n\nFlam.   Remove the bar.  Here 's unfortunate revels!\n  Call the physicians.                             [Enter two Physicians.\n  A plague upon you!\n  We have too much of your cunning here already:\n  I fear the ambassadors are likewise poison'd.\n\n\nBrach.   Oh, I am gone already! the infection\n  Flies to the brain and heart.  O thou strong heart!\n  There 's such a covenant 'tween the world and it,\n  They 're loath to break.\n\n\nGiov.   Oh, my most loved father!\n\n\nBrach.   Remove the boy away.\n  Where 's this good woman?  Had I infinite worlds,\n  They were too little for thee: must I leave thee?\n  What say you, screech-owls, is the venom mortal?\n\n\nPhysicians.   Most deadly.\n\n\nBrach.   Most corrupted politic hangman,\n  You kill without book; but your art to save\n  Fails you as oft as great men's needy friends.\n  I that have given life to offending slaves,\n  And wretched murderers, have I not power\n  To lengthen mine own a twelvemonth?\n  [To Vittoria.]  Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee.\n  This unctions 's sent from the great Duke of Florence.\n\n\nFran.   Sir, be of comfort.\n\n\nBrach.   O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin\n  To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet\n  Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl\n  Bears not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf\n  Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse,\n  Whilst horror waits on princes'.\n\n\nVit.   I am lost for ever.\n\n\nBrach.   How miserable a thing it is to die\n  'Mongst women howling!  [Enter Lodovico and Gasparo, as Capuchins.\n  What are those?\n\n\nFlam.   Franciscans:\n  They have brought the extreme unction.\n\n\nBrach.   On pain of death, let no man name death to me:\n  It is a word infinitely terrible.\n  Withdraw into our cabinet.\n                                  [Exeunt all but Francisco and Flamineo.\n\n\nFlam.   To see what solitariness is about dying princes! as heretofore\n  they have unpeopled towns, divorced friends, and made great houses\n  unhospitable, so now, O justice! where are their flatterers now?\n  flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick\n  cloud makes them invisible.\n\n\nFran.   There 's great moan made for him.\n\n\nFlam.   'Faith, for some few hours salt-water will run most plentifully\n  in every office o' th' court; but, believe it, most of them do weep\n  over their stepmothers' graves.\n\n\nFran.   How mean you?\n\n\nFlam.   Why, they dissemble; as some men do that live without compass o'\n  th' verge.\n\n\nFran.   Come, you have thrived well under him.\n\n\nFlam.   'Faith, like a wolf in a woman's breast; I have been fed with\n  poultry: but for money, understand me, I had as good a will to cozen\n  him as e'er an officer of them all; but I had not cunning enough to do\n  it.\n\n\nFran.   What didst thou think of him? 'faith, speak freely.\n\n\nFlam.   He was a kind of statesman, that would sooner have reckoned how\n  many cannon-bullets he had discharged against a town, to count his\n  expense that way, than think how many of his valiant and deserving\n  subjects he lost before it.\n\n\nFran.   Oh, speak well of the duke!\n\n\nFlam.   I have done.                                     [Enter Lodovico.\n  Wilt hear some of my court-wisdom?  To reprehend princes is dangerous;\n  and to over-commend some of them is palpable lying.\n\n\nFran.   How is it with the duke?\n\n\nLodo.   Most deadly ill.\n  He 's fallen into a strange distraction:\n  He talks of battles and monopolies,\n  Levying of taxes; and from that descends\n  To the most brain-sick language.  His mind fastens\n  On twenty several objects, which confound\n  Deep sense with folly.  Such a fearful end\n  May teach some men that bear too lofty crest,\n  Though they live happiest yet they die not best.\n  He hath conferr'd the whole state of the dukedom\n  Upon your sister, till the prince arrive\n  At mature age.\n\n\nFlam.   There 's some good luck in that yet.\n\n\nFran.   See, here he comes.\n               [Enter Brachiano, presented in a bed, Vittoria and others.\n  There 's death in 's face already.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, my good lord!\n\n\nBrach.   Away, you have abus'd me:\n     [These speeches are several kinds of distractions, and in the action\n       should appear so.\n  You have convey'd coin forth our territories,\n  Bought and sold offices, oppress'd the poor,\n  And I ne'er dreamt on 't.  Make up your accounts,\n  I 'll now be mine own steward.\n\n\nFlam.   Sir, have patience.\n\n\nBrach.   Indeed, I am to blame:\n  For did you ever hear the dusky raven\n  Chide blackness? or was 't ever known the devil\n  Rail'd against cloven creatures?\n\n\nVit.   Oh, my lord!\n\n\nBrach.   Let me have some quails to supper.\n\n\nFlam.   Sir, you shall.\n\n\nBrach.   No, some fried dog-fish; your quails feed on poison.\n  That old dog-fox, that politician, Florence!\n  I 'll forswear hunting, and turn dog-killer.\n  Rare!  I 'll be friends with him; for, mark you, sir, one dog\n  Still sets another a-barking.  Peace, peace!\n  Yonder 's a fine slave come in now.\n\n\nFlam.   Where?\n\n\nBrach.   Why, there,\n  In a blue bonnet, and a pair of breeches\n  With a great cod-piece: ha, ha, ha!\n  Look you, his cod-piece is stuck full of pins,\n  With pearls o' th' head of them.  Do you not know him?\n\n\nFlam.   No, my lord.\n\n\nBrach.   Why, 'tis the devil.\n  I know him by a great rose he wears on 's shoe,\n  To hide his cloven foot.  I 'll dispute with him;\n  He 's a rare linguist.\n\n\nVit.   My lord, here 's nothing.\n\n\nBrach.   Nothing! rare! nothing! when I want money,\n  Our treasury is empty, there is nothing:\n  I 'll not be use'd thus.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, lie still, my lord!\n\n\nBrach.   See, see Flamineo, that kill'd his brother,\n  Is dancing on the ropes there, and he carries\n  A money-bag in each hand, to keep him even,\n  For fear of breaking 's neck: and there 's a lawyer,\n  In a gown whipped with velvet, stares and gapes\n  When the money will fall.  How the rogue cuts capers!\n  It should have been in a halter.  'Tis there; what 's she?\n\n\nFlam.   Vittoria, my lord.\n\n\nBrach.   Ha, ha, ha! her hair is sprinkl'd with orris powder,\n  That makes her look as if she had sinn'd in the pastry.\n  What 's he?\n\n\nFlam.   A divine, my lord.\n  [Brachiano seems here near his end; Lodovico and Gasparo, in the habit\n    of Capuchins, present him in his bed with a crucifix and hallowed\n    candle.\n\n\nBrach.   He will be drunk; avoid him: th' argument\n  Is fearful, when churchmen stagger in 't.\n  Look you, six grey rats that have lost their tails\n  Crawl upon the pillow; send for a rat-catcher:\n  I 'll do a miracle, I 'll free the court\n  From all foul vermin.  Where 's Flamineo?\n\n\nFlam.   I do not like that he names me so often,\n  Especially on 's death-bed; 'tis a sign\n  I shall not live long.  See, he 's near his end.\n\n\nLodo.   Pray, give us leave.  Attende, domine Brachiane.\n\n\nFlam.   See how firmly he doth fix his eye\n  Upon the crucifix.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, hold it constant!\n  It settles his wild spirits; and so his eyes\n  Melt into tears.\n\n\nLodo.   Domine Brachiane, solebas in bello tutus esse tuo clypeo; nunc\n  hunc clypeum hosti tuo opponas infernali.             [By the crucifix.\n\n\nGas.   Olim hasta valuisti in bello; nunc hanc sacram hastam vibrabis\n  contra hostem animarum.                         [By the hallowed taper.\n\n\nLodo.   Attende, Domine Brachiane, si nunc quoque probes ea, quae acta\n  sunt inter nos, flecte caput in dextrum.\n\n\nGas.   Esto securus, Domine Brachiane; cogita, quantum habeas meritorum;\n  denique memineris mean animam pro tua oppignoratum si quid esset\n  periculi.\n\n\nLodo.   Si nunc quoque probas ea, quae acta sunt inter nos, flecte caput\n  in loevum.\n  He is departing: pray stand all apart,\n  And let us only whisper in his ears\n  Some private meditations, which our order\n  Permits you not to hear.\n[Here, the rest being departed, Lodovico and Gasparo discover themselves.\n\n\nGas.   Brachiano.\n\n\nLodo.   Devil Brachiano, thou art damn'd.\n\n\nGas.   Perpetually.\n\n\nLodo.   A slave condemn'd and given up to the gallows,\n  Is thy great lord and master.\n\n\nGas.   True; for thou\n  Art given up to the devil.\n\n\nLodo.   Oh, you slave!\n  You that were held the famous politician,\n  Whose art was poison.\n\n\nGas.   And whose conscience, murder.\n\n\nLodo.   That would have broke your wife's neck down the stairs,\n  Ere she was poison'd.\n\n\nGas.  That had your villainous sallets.\n\n\nLodo.   And fine embroider'd bottles, and perfumes,\n  Equally mortal with a winter plague.\n\n\nGas.   Now there 's mercury----\n\n\nLodo.   And copperas----\n\n\nGas.   And quicksilver----\n\n\nLodo.   With other devilish 'pothecary stuff,\n  A-melting in your politic brains: dost hear?\n\n\nGas.   This is Count Lodovico.\n\n\nLodo.   This, Gasparo:\n  And thou shalt die like a poor rogue.\n\n\nGas.   And stink\n  Like a dead fly-blown dog.\n\n\nLodo.   And be forgotten\n  Before the funeral sermon.\n\n\nBrach.   Vittoria!  Vittoria!\n\n\nLodo.   Oh, the cursed devil\n  Comes to himself a gain! we are undone.\n\n\nGas.   Strangle him in private.       [Enter Vittoria and the Attendants.\n\n\nLodo.   You would prate, sir?  This is a true-love knot\n  Sent from the Duke of Florence.                [Brachiano is strangled.\n\n\nGas.   What, is it done?\n\n\nLodo.   The snuff is out.  No woman-keeper i' th' world,\n  Though she had practis'd seven year at the pest-house,\n  Could have done 't quaintlier.  My lords, he 's dead.\n\n\nVittoria and the others come forward\n\n\nOmnes.   Rest to his soul!\n\n\nVit.   Oh me! this place is hell.\n\n\nFran.   How heavily she takes it!\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, yes, yes;\n  Had women navigable rivers in their eyes,\n  They would dispend them all.  Surely, I wonder\n  Why we should wish more rivers to the city,\n  When they sell water so good cheap.  I 'll tell theen\n  These are but Moorish shades of griefs or fears;\n  There 's nothing sooner dry than women's tears.\n  Why, here 's an end of all my harvest; he has given me nothing.\n  Court promises! let wise men count them curs'd;\n  For while you live, he that scores best, pays worst.\n\n\nFran.   Sure this was Florence' doing.\n\n\nFlam.   Very likely:\n  Those are found weighty strokes which come from th' hand,\n  But those are killing strokes which come from th' head.\n  Oh, the rare tricks of a Machiavellian!\n  He doth not come, like a gross plodding slave,\n  And buffet you to death; no, my quaint knave,\n  He tickles you to death, makes you die laughing,\n  As if you had swallow'd down a pound of saffron.\n  You see the feat, 'tis practis'd in a trice;\n  To teach court honesty, it jumps on ice.\n\n\nFran.   Now have the people liberty to talk,\n  And descant on his vices.\n\n\nFlam.   Misery of princes,\n  That must of force be censur'd by their slaves!\n  Not only blam'd for doing things are ill,\n  But for not doing all that all men will:\n  One were better be a thresher.\n  Ud's death!  I would fain speak with this duke yet.\n\n\nFran.   Now he 's dead?\n\n\nFlam.   I cannot conjure; but if prayers or oaths\n  Will get to th' speech of him, though forty devils\n  Wait on him in his livery of flames,\n  I 'll speak to him, and shake him by the hand,\n  Though I be blasted.                                             [Exit.\n\n\nFran.   Excellent Lodovico!\n  What! did you terrify him at the last gasp?\n\n\nLodo.   Yes, and so idly, that the duke had like\n  T' have terrified us.\n\n\nFran.   How?\n\n\nEnter the Moor\n\n\nLodo.   You shall hear that hereafter.\n  See, yon 's the infernal, that would make up sport.\n  Now to the revelation of that secret\n  She promis'd when she fell in love with you.\n\n\nFran.   You 're passionately met in this sad world.\n\n\nZan.   I would have you look up, sir; these court tears\n  Claim not your tribute to them: let those weep,\n  That guiltily partake in the sad cause.\n  I knew last night, by a sad dream I had,\n  Some mischief would ensue: yet, to say truth,\n  My dream most concern'd you.\n\n\nLodo.   Shall 's fall a-dreaming?\n\n\nFran.   Yes, and for fashion sake I 'll dream with her.\n\n\nZan.   Methought, sir, you came stealing to my bed.\n\n\nFran.   Wilt thou believe me, sweeting? by this light\n  I was a-dreamt on thee too; for methought\n  I saw thee naked.\n\n\nZan.   Fie, sir! as I told you,\n  Methought you lay down by me.\n\n\nFran.   So dreamt I;\n  And lest thou shouldst take cold, I cover'd thee\n  With this Irish mantle.\n\n\nZan.   Verily I did dream\n  You were somewhat bold with me: but to come to 't----\n\n\nLodo.   How! how!  I hope you will not got to 't here.\n\n\nFran.   Nay, you must hear my dream out.\n\n\nZan.   Well, sir, forth.\n\n\nFran.   When I threw the mantle o'er thee, thou didst laugh\n  Exceedingly, methought.\n\n\nZan.   Laugh!\n\n\nFran.   And criedst out, the hair did tickle thee.\n\n\nZan.   There was a dream indeed!\n\n\nLodo.   Mark her, I pray thee, she simpers like the suds\n  A collier hath been wash'd in.\n\n\nZan.   Come, sir; good fortune tends you.  I did tell you\n  I would reveal a secret: Isabella,\n  The Duke of Florence' sister, was empoisone'd\n  By a fum'd picture; and Camillo's neck\n  Was broke by damn'd Flamineo, the mischance\n  Laid on a vaulting-horse.\n\n\nFran.   Most strange!\n\n\nZan.   Most true.\n\n\nLodo.  The bed of snakes is broke.\n\n\nZan.   I sadly do confess, I had a hand\n  In the black deed.\n\n\nFran.   Thou kept'st their counsel.\n\n\nZan.   Right;\n  For which, urg'd with contrition, I intend\n  This night to rob Vittoria.\n\n\nLodo.   Excellent penitence!\n  Usurers dream on 't while they sleep out sermons.\n\n\nZan.   To further our escape, I have entreated\n  Leave to retire me, till the funeral,\n  Unto a friend i' th' country: that excuse\n  Will further our escape.  In coin and jewels\n  I shall at least make good unto your use\n  An hundred thousand crowns.\n\n\nFran.   Oh, noble wench!\n\n\nLodo.   Those crowns we 'll share.\n\n\nZan.   It is a dowry,\n  Methinks, should make that sun-burnt proverb false,\n  And was the AEthiop white.\n\n\nFran.   It shall; away.\n\n\nZan.   Be ready for our flight.\n\n\nFran.   An hour 'fore day.                                  [Exit Zanche.\n  Oh, strange discovery! why, till now we knew not\n  The circumstances of either of their deaths.\n\n\nRe-enter Zanche\n\n\nZan.   You 'll wait about midnight in the chapel?\n\n\nFran.   There.                                              [Exit Zanche.\n\n\nLodo.   Why, now our action 's justified.\n\n\nFran.   Tush for justice!\n  What harms it justice? we now, like the partridge,\n  Purge the disease with laurel; for the fame\n  Shall crown the enterprise, and quit the shame.                [Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV\n\n\nEnter Flamineo and Gasparo, at one door; another way, Giovanni, attended\n\n\nGas.   The young duke: did you e'er see a sweeter prince?\n\n\nFlam.   I have known a poor woman's bastard better favoured--this is\n  behind him.  Now, to his face--all comparisons were hateful.   Wise was\n  the courtly peacock, that, being a great minion, and being compared for\n  beauty by some dottrels that stood by to the kingly eagle, said the\n  eagle was a far fairer bird than herself, not in respect of her\n  feathers, but in respect of her long talons: his will grow out in time.\n  --My gracious lord.\n\n\nGiov.   I pray leave me, sir.\n\n\nFlam.   Your grace must be merry; 'tis I have cause to mourn; for wot\n  you, what said the little boy that rode behind his father on horseback?\n\n\nGiov.   Why, what said he?\n\n\nFlam.   When you are dead, father, said he, I hope that I shall ride in\n  the saddle.  Oh, 'tis a brave thing for a man to sit by himself! he may\n  stretch himself in the stirrups, look about, and see the whole compass\n  of the hemisphere.  You 're now, my lord, i' th' saddle.\n\n\nGiov.   Study your prayers, sir, and be penitent:\n  'Twere fit you 'd think on what hath former been;\n  I have heard grief nam'd the eldest child of sin.                [Exit.\n\n\nFlam.   Study my prayers! he threatens me divinely!  I am falling to\n  pieces already.  I care not, though, like Anacharsis, I were pounded to\n  death in a mortar: and yet that death were fitter for usurers, gold and\n  themselves to be beaten together, to make a most cordial cullis for the\n  devil.\n  He hath his uncle's villainous look already,\n  In decimo-sexto.  [Enter Courtier.]  Now, sir, what are you?\n\n\nCourt.   It is the pleasure, sir, of the young duke,\n  That you forbear the presence, and all rooms\n  That owe him reverence.\n\n\nFlam.   So the wolf and the raven are very pretty fools when they are\n  young.  It is your office, sir, to keep me out?\n\n\nCourt.   So the duke wills.\n\n\nFlam.   Verily, Master Courtier, extremity is not to be used in all\n  offices: say, that a gentlewoman were taken out of her bed about\n  midnight, and committed to Castle Angelo, to the tower yonder, with\n  nothing about her but her smock, would it not show a cruel part in the\n  gentleman-porter to lay claim to her upper garment, pull it o'er her\n  head and ears, and put her in naked?\n\n\nCourt.   Very good: you are merry.                                 [Exit.\n\n\nFlam.   Doth he make a court-ejectment of me? a flaming fire-brand casts\n  more smoke without a chimney than within 't.\n  I 'll smoor some of them.                  [Enter Francisco de Medicis.\n  How now? thou art sad.\n\n\nFran.   I met even now with the most piteous sight.\n\n\nFlam.   Thou meet'st another here, a pitiful\n  Degraded courtier.\n\n\nFran.   Your reverend mother\n  Is grown a very old woman in two hours.\n  I found them winding of Marcello's corse;\n  And there is such a solemn melody,\n  'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies;\n  Such as old granddames, watching by the dead,\n  Were wont t' outwear the nights with that, believe me,\n  I had no eyes to guide me forth the room,\n  They were so o'ercharg'd with water.\n\n\nFlam.   I will see them.\n\n\nFran.   'Twere much uncharity in you; for your sight\n  Will add unto their tears.\n\n\nFlam.   I will see them:\n  They are behind the traverse; I 'll discover\n  Their superstitions howling.\n      [He draws the traverse.  Cornelia, the Moor, and three other\n         Ladies discovered winding Marcello's corse.  A song.\n\n\nCorn.   This rosemary is wither'd; pray, get fresh.\n  I would have these herbs grow upon his grave,\n  When I am dead and rotten.  Reach the bays,\n  I 'll tie a garland here about his head;\n  I have kept this twenty year, and every day\n  Hallow'd it with my prayers; I did not think\n  He should have wore it.\n\n\nZan.   Look you, who are yonder?\n\n\nCorn.   Oh, reach me the flowers!\n\n\nZan.   Her ladyship 's foolish.\n\n\nWoman.   Alas, her grief\n  Hath turn'd her child again!\n\n\nCorn.   You 're very welcome:                               [To Flamineo.\n  There 's rosemary for you, and rue for you,\n  Heart's-ease for you; I pray make much of it,\n  I have left more for myself.\n\n\nFran.   Lady, who 's this?\n\n\nCorn.   You are, I take it, the grave-maker.\n\n\nFlam.   So.\n\n\nZan.   'Tis Flamineo.\n\n\nCorn.   Will you make me such a fool? here 's a white hand:\n  Can blood so soon be washed out? let me see;\n  When screech-owls croak upon the chimney-tops,\n  And the strange cricket i' th' oven sings and hops,\n  When yellow spots do on your hands appear,\n  Be certain then you of a corse shall hear.\n  Out upon 't, how 'tis speckled! h' 'as handled a toad sure.\n  Cowslip water is good for the memory:\n  Pray, buy me three ounces of 't.\n\n\nFlam.   I would I were from hence.\n\n\nCorn.   Do you hear, sir?\n  I 'll give you a saying which my grandmother\n  Was wont, when she heard the bell toll, to sing o'er\n  Unto her lute.\n\n\nFlam.   Do, an you will, do.\n\n\nCorn.   Call for the robin redbreast, and the wren,\n                     [Cornelia doth this in several forms of distraction.\n  Since o'er shady groves they hover,\n  And with leaves and flowers do cover\n  The friendless bodies of unburied men.\n  Call unto his funeral dole\n  The ant, the fieldmouse, and the mole,\n  To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,\n  And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm;\n  But keep the wolf far thence, that 's foe to men,\n  For with his nails he 'll dig them up again.\n  They would not bury him 'cause he died in a quarrel;\n  But I have an answer for them:\n  Let holy Church receive him duly,\n  Since he paid the church-tithes truly.\n  His wealth is summ'd, and this is all his store,\n  This poor men get, and great men get no more.\n  Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop.\n  Bless you all, good people.                [Exeunt Cornelia and Ladies.\n\n\nFlam.   I have a strange thing in me, to th' which\n  I cannot give a name, without it be\n  Compassion.  I pray leave me.                         [Enter Francisco.\n  This night I 'll know the utmost of my fate;\n  I 'll be resolv'd what my rich sister means\n  T' assign me for my service.  I have liv'd\n  Riotously ill, like some that live in court,\n  And sometimes when my face was full of smiles,\n  Have felt the maze of conscience in my breast.\n  Oft gay and honour'd robes those tortures try:\n  We think cag'd birds sing, when indeed they cry.\n\n\nEnter Brachiano's Ghost, in his leather cassock and breeches, boots, a\n  cowl, a pot of lily flowers, with a skull in 't\n\n\n  Ha!  I can stand thee: nearer, nearer yet.\n  What a mockery hath death made thee! thou look'st sad.\n  In what place art thou? in yon starry gallery?\n  Or in the cursed dungeon?  No? not speak?\n  Pray, sir, resolve me, what religion 's best\n  For a man to die in? or is it in your knowledge\n  To answer me how long I have to live?\n  That 's the most necessary question.\n  Not answer? are you still, like some great men\n  That only walk like shadows up and down,\n  And to no purpose; say----\n               [The Ghost throws earth upon him, and shows him the skull.\n  What 's that?  O fatal! he throws earth upon me.\n  A dead man's skull beneath the roots of flowers!\n  I pray speak, sir: our Italian churchmen\n  Make us believe dead men hold conference\n  With their familiars, and many times\n  Will come to bed with them, and eat with them.             [Exit Ghost.\n  He 's gone; and see, the skull and earth are vanish'd.\n  This is beyond melancholy.  I do dare my fate\n  To do its worst.  Now to my sister's lodging,\n  And sum up all those horrors: the disgrace\n  The prince threw on me; next the piteous sight\n  Of my dead brother; and my mother's dotage;\n  And last this terrible vision: all these\n  Shall with Vittoria's bounty turn to good,\n  Or I will drown this weapon in her blood.                        [Exit.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V\n\n\nEnter Francisco, Lodovico, and Hortensio\n\n\nLodo.   My lord, upon my soul you shall no further;\n  You have most ridiculously engag'd yourself\n  Too far already.  For my part, I have paid\n  All my debts: so, if I should chance to fall,\n  My creditors fall not with me; and I vow,\n  To quit all in this bold assembly,\n  To the meanest follower.  My lord, leave the city,\n  Or I 'll forswear the murder.                                    [Exit.\n\n\nFran.   Farewell, Lodovico:\n  If thou dost perish in this glorious act,\n  I 'll rear unto thy memory that fame,\n  Shall in the ashes keep alive thy name.                          [Exit.\n\n\nHort.   There 's some black deed on foot.  I 'll presently\n  Down to the citadel, and raise some force.\n  These strong court-factions, that do brook no checks,\n  In the career oft break the riders' necks.                       [Exit.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI\n\n\nEnter Vittoria with a book in her hand, Zanche; Flamineo following them\n\n\nFlam.   What, are you at your prayers?  Give o'er.\n\n\nVit.   How, ruffian?\n\n\nFlam.   I come to you 'bout worldly business.\n  Sit down, sit down.  Nay, stay, blowze, you may hear it:\n  The doors are fast enough.\n\n\nVit.   Ha! are you drunk?\n\n\nFlam.   Yes, yes, with wormwood water; you shall taste\n  Some of it presently.\n\n\nVit.   What intends the fury?\n\n\nFlam.   You are my lord's executrix; and I claim\n  Reward for my long service.\n\n\nVit.   For your service!\n\n\nFlam.   Come, therefore, here is pen and ink, set down\n  What you will give me.\n\n\nVit.   There.                                                [She writes.\n\n\nFlam.   Ha! have you done already?\n  'Tis a most short conveyance.\n\n\nVit.   I will read it:\n  I give that portion to thee, and no other,\n  Which Cain groan'd under, having slain his brother.\n\n\nFlam.   A most courtly patent to beg by.\n\n\nVit.   You are a villain!\n\n\nFlam.   Is 't come to this? they say affrights cure agues:\n  Thou hast a devil in thee; I will try\n  If I can scare him from thee.  Nay, sit still:\n  My lord hath left me yet two cases of jewels,\n  Shall make me scorn your bounty; you shall see them.             [Exit.\n\n\nVit.   Sure he 's distracted.\n\n\nZan.   Oh, he 's desperate!\n  For your own safety give him gentle language.\n                                    [He enters with two cases of pistols.\n\n\nFlam.   Look, these are better far at a dead lift,\n  Than all your jewel house.\n\n\nVit.   And yet, methinks,\n  These stones have no fair lustre, they are ill set.\n\n\nFlam.   I 'll turn the right side towards you: you shall see\n  How they will sparkle.\n\n\nVit.   Turn this horror from me!\n  What do you want? what would you  have me do?\n  Is not all mine yours? have I any children?\n\n\nFlam.   Pray thee, good woman, do not trouble me\n  With this vain worldly business; say your prayers:\n  Neither yourself nor I should outlive him\n  The numbering of four hours.\n\n\nVit.   Did he enjoin it?\n\n\nFlam.   He did, and 'twas a deadly jealousy,\n  Lest any should enjoy thee after him,\n  That urged him vow me to it.  For my death,\n  I did propound it voluntarily, knowing,\n  If he could not be safe in his own court,\n  Being a great duke, what hope then for us?\n\n\nVit.   This is your melancholy, and despair.\n\n\nFlam.   Away:\n  Fool thou art, to think that politicians\n  DO use to kill the effects or injuries\n  And let the cause live.  Shall we groan in irons,\n  Or be a shameful and a weighty burthen\n  To a public scaffold?  This is my resolve:\n  I would not live at any man's entreaty,\n  Nor die at any's bidding.\n\n\nVit.   Will you hear me?\n\n\nFlam.   My life hath done service to other men,\n  My death shall serve mine own turn: make you ready.\n\n\nVit.   Do you mean to die indeed?\n\n\nFlam.   With as much pleasure,\n  As e'er my father gat me.\n\n\nVit.   Are the doors lock'd?\n\n\nZan.   Yes, madam.\n\n\nVit.   Are you grown an atheist? will you turn your body,\n  Which is the goodly palace of the soul,\n  To the soul's slaughter-house?  Oh, the cursed devil,\n  Which doth present us with all other sins\n  Thrice candied o'er, despair with gall and stibium;\n  Yet we carouse it off.  [Aside to Zanche.]  Cry out for help!\n  Makes us forsake that which was made for man,\n  The world, to sink to that was made for devils,\n  Eternal darkness!\n\n\nZan.   Help, help!\n\n\nFlam.   I 'll stop your throat\n  With winter plums.\n\n\nVit.   I pray thee yet remember,\n  Millions are now in graves, which at last day\n  Like mandrakes shall rise shrieking.\n\n\nFlam.   Leave your prating,\n  For these are but grammatical laments,\n  Feminine arguments: and they move me,\n  As some in pulpits move their auditory,\n  More with their exclamation than sense\n  Of reason, or sound doctrine.\n\n\nZan.   [Aside.]  Gentle madam,\n  Seem to consent, only persuade him to teach\n  The way to death; let him die first.\n\n\nVit.   'Tis good, I apprehend it.--\n  To kill one's self is meat that we must take\n  Like pills, not chew'd, but quickly swallow it;\n  The smart o' th' wound, or weakness of the hand,\n  May else bring treble torments.\n\n\nFlam.   I have held it\n  A wretched and most miserable life,\n  Which is not able to die.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, but frailty!\n  Yet I am now resolv'd; farewell, affliction!\n  Behold, Brachiano, I that while you liv'd\n  Did make a flaming altar of my heart\n  To sacrifice unto you, now am ready\n  To sacrifice heart and all.  Farewell, Zanche!\n\n\nZan.   How, madam! do you think that I 'll outlive you;\n  Especially when my best self, Flamineo,\n  Goes the same voyage?\n\n\nFlam.   O most loved Moor!\n\n\nZan.   Only, by all my love, let me entreat you,\n  Since it is most necessary one of us\n  Do violence on ourselves, let you or I\n  Be her sad taster, teach her how to die.\n\n\nFlam.   Thou dost instruct me nobly; take these pistols,\n  Because my hand is stain'd with blood already:\n  Two of these you shall level at my breast,\n  The other 'gainst your own, and so we 'll die\n  Most equally contented: but first swear\n  Not to outlive me.\n\n\nVit. and Zan.   Most religiously.\n\n\nFlam.   Then here 's an end of me; farewell, daylight.\n  And, O contemptible physic! that dost take\n  So long a study, only to preserve\n  So short a life, I take my leave of thee.         [Showing the pistols.\n  These are two cupping-glasses, that shall draw\n  All my infected blood out.  Are you ready?\n\n\nBoth.   Ready.\n\n\nFlam.   Whither shall I go now?  O Lucian, thy ridiculous purgatory! to\n  find Alexander the Great cobbling shoes, Pompey tagging points, and\n  Julius Caesar making hair-buttons, Hannibal selling blacking, and\n  Augustus crying garlic, Charlemagne selling lists by the dozen, and\n  King Pepin crying apples in a cart drawn with one horse!\n  Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air,\n  Or all the elements by scruples, I know not,\n  Nor greatly care.--Shoot! shoot!\n  Of all deaths, the violent death is best;\n  For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast,\n  The pain, once apprehended, is quite past.\n                         [They shoot, and run to him, and tread upon him.\n\n\nVit.   What, are you dropped?\n\n\nFlam.   I am mix'd with earth already: as you are noble,\n  Perform your vows, and bravely follow me.\n\n\nVit.   Whither? to hell?\n\n\nZan.   To most assur'd damnation?\n\n\nVit.   Oh, thou most cursed devil!\n\n\nZan.   Thou art caught----\n\n\nVit.   In thine own engine.  I tread the fire out\n  That would have been my ruin.\n\n\nFlam.   Will you be perjured? what a religious oath was Styx, that the\n  gods never durst swear by, and violate!  Oh, that we had such an oath\n  to minister, and to be so well kept in our courts of justice!\n\n\nVit.   Think whither thou art going.\n\n\nZan.   And remember\n  What villainies thou hast acted.\n\n\nVit.   This thy death\n  Shall make me, like a blazing ominous star,\n  Look up and tremble.\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, I am caught with a spring!\n\n\nVit.   You see the fox comes many times short home;\n  'Tis here prov'd true.\n\n\nFlam.   Kill'd with a couple of braches!\n\n\nVit.   No fitter offing for the infernal furies,\n  Than one in whom they reign'd while he was living.\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, the way 's dark and horrid!  I cannot see:\n  Shall I have no company?\n\n\nVit.   Oh, yes, thy sins\n  Do run before thee to fetch fire from hell,\n  To light thee thither.\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, I smell soot,\n  Most stinking soot! the chimney 's afire:\n  My liver 's parboil'd, like Scotch holly-bread;\n  There 's a plumber laying pipes in my guts, it scalds.\n  Wilt thou outlive me?\n\n\nZan.   Yes, and drive a stake\n  Through thy body; for we 'll give it out,\n  Thou didst this violence upon thyself.\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, cunning devils! now I have tried your love,\n  And doubled all your reaches: I am not wounded.\n                                                        [Flamineo riseth.\n  The pistols held no bullets; 'twas a plot\n  To prove your kindness to me; and I live\n  To punish your ingratitude.  I knew,\n  One time or other, you would find a way\n  To give a strong potion.  O men,\n  That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted\n  With howling wives! ne'er trust them; they 'll re-marry\n  Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider\n  Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.\n  How cunning you were to discharge! do you practise at the Artillery\n  yard?  Trust a woman? never, never; Brachiano be my precedent.  We lay\n  our souls to pawn to the devil for a little pleasure, and a woman makes\n  the bill of sale.  That ever man should marry!  For one Hypermnestra\n  that saved her lord and husband, forty-nine of her sisters cut their\n  husbands' throats all in one night.  There was a shoal of virtuous\n  horse leeches!  Here are two other instruments.\n\n\nEnter Lodovico, Gasparo, still disguised as Capuchins\n\n\nVit.   Help, help!\n\n\nFlam.   What noise is that? ha! false keys i' th 'court!\n\n\nLodo.   We have brought you a mask.\n\n\nFlam.   A matachin it seems by your drawn swords.\n  Churchmen turned revelers!\n\n\nGas.   Isabella!  Isabella!\n\n\nLodo.   Do you know us now?\n\n\nFlam.   Lodovico! and Gasparo!\n\n\nLodo.   Yes; and that Moor the duke gave pension to\n  Was the great Duke of Florence.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, we are lost!\n\n\nFlam.   You shall not take justice forth from my hands,\n  Oh, let me kill her!--I 'll cut my safety\n  Through your coats of steel.  Fate 's a spaniel,\n  We cannot beat it from us.  What remains now?\n  Let all that do ill, take this precedent:\n  Man may his fate foresee, but not prevent;\n  And of all axioms this shall win the prize:\n  'Tis better to be fortunate than wise.\n\n\nGas.   Bind him to the pillar.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, your gentle pity!\n  I have seen a blackbird that would sooner fly\n  To a man's bosom, than to stay the gripe\n  Of the fierce sparrow-hawk.\n\n\nGas.   Your hope deceives you.\n\n\nVit.   If Florence be i' th' court, would he kill me!\n\n\nGas.   Fool!  Princes give rewards with their own hands,\n  But death or punishment by the hands of other.\n\n\nLodo.   Sirrah, you once did strike me; I 'll strike you\n  Unto the centre.\n\n\nFlam.   Thou 'lt do it like a hangman, a base hangman,\n  Not like a noble fellow, for thou see'st\n  I cannot strike again.\n\n\nLodo.   Dost laugh?\n\n\nFlam.   Wouldst have me die, as I was born, in whining?\n\n\nGas.   Recommend yourself to heaven.\n\n\nFlam.   No, I will carry mine own commendations thither.\n\n\nLodo.   Oh, I could kill you forty times a day,\n  And use 't four years together, 'twere too little!\n  Naught grieves but that you are too few to feed\n  The famine of our vengeance.  What dost think on?\n\n\nFlam.   Nothing; of nothing: leave thy idle questions.\n  I am i' th' way to study a long silence:\n  To prate were idle.  I remember nothing.\n  There 's nothing of so infinite vexation\n  As man's own thoughts.\n\n\nLodo.   O thou glorious strumpet!\n  Could I divide thy breath from this pure air\n  When 't leaves thy body, I would suck it up,\n  And breathe 't upon some dunghill.\n\n\nVit.   You, my death's-man!\n  Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough,\n  Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman:\n  If thou be, do thy office in right form;\n  Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness.\n\n\nLodo.   Oh, thou hast been a most prodigious comet!\n  But I 'll cut off your train.  Kill the Moor first.\n\n\nVit.   You shall not kill her first; behold my breast:\n  I will be waited on in death; my servant\n  Shall never go before me.\n\n\nGas.   Are you so brave?\n\n\nVit.   Yes, I shall welcome death,\n  As princes do some great ambassadors;\n  I 'll meet thy weapon half-way.\n\n\nLodo.  Thou dost tremble:\n  Methinks, fear should dissolve thee into air.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, thou art deceiv'd, I am too true a woman!\n  Conceit can never kill me.  I 'll tell thee what,\n  I will not in my death shed one base tear;\n  Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear.\n\n\nGas.   Thou art my task, black fury.\n\n\nZan.   I have blood\n  As red as either of theirs: wilt drink some?\n  'Tis good for the falling-sickness.  I am proud:\n  Death cannot alter my complexion,\n  For I shall ne'er look pale.\n\n\nLodo.   Strike, strike,\n  With a joint motion.                                      [They strike.\n\n\nVit.   'Twas a manly blow;\n  The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant;\n  And then thou wilt be famous.\n\n\nFlam.   Oh, what blade is 't?\n  A Toledo, or an English fox?\n  I ever thought a culter should distinguish\n  The cause of my death, rather than a doctor.\n  Search my wound deeper; tent it with the steel\n  That made it.\n\n\nVit.   Oh, my greatest sin lay in my blood!\n  Now my blood pays for 't.\n\n\nFlam.   Th' art a noble sister!\n  I love thee now; if woman do breed man,\n  She ought to teach him manhood.  Fare thee well.\n  Know, many glorious women that are fam'd\n  For masculine virtue, have been vicious,\n  Only a happier silence did betide them:\n  She hath no faults, who hath the art to hide them.\n\n\nVit.   My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,\n  Is driven, I know not whither.\n\n\nFlam.   Then cast anchor.\n  Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear;\n  But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.\n  We cease to grieve, cease to be fortune's slaves,\n  Nay, cease to die by dying.  Art thou gone?\n  And thou so near the bottom? false report,\n  Which says that women vie with the nine Muses,\n  For nine tough durable lives!  I do not look\n  Who went before, nor who shall follow me;\n  No, at my self I will begin the end.\n  While we look up to heaven, we confound\n  Knowledge with knowledge.  Oh, I am in a mist!\n\n\nVit.   Oh, happy they that never saw the court,\n  Nor ever knew great men but by report!                  [Vittoria dies.\n\n\nFlam.   I recover like a spent taper, for a flash,\n  And instantly go out.\n  Let all that belong to great men remember th' old wives' tradition, to\n  be like the lions i' th' Tower on Candlemas-day; to mourn if the sun\n  shine, for fear of the pitiful remainder of winter to come.\n  'Tis well yet there 's some goodness in my death;\n  My life was a black charnel.  I have caught\n  An everlasting cold; I have lost my voice\n  Most irrecoverably.  Farewell, glorious villains.\n  This busy trade of life appears most vain,\n  Since rest breeds rest, where all seek pain by pain.\n  Let no harsh flattering bells resound my knell;\n  Strike, thunder, and strike loud, to my farewell!                [Dies.\n\n\nEnter Ambassadors and Giovanni\n\n\nEng. Ambass.   This way, this way! break open the doors! this way!\n\n\nLodo.   Ha! are we betray'd?\n  Why then let 's constantly all die together;\n  And having finish'd this most noble deed,\n  Defy the worst of fate, nor fear to bleed.\n\n\nEng. Ambass.   Keep back the prince: shoot! shoot!\n\n\nLodo.   Oh, I am wounded!\n  I fear I shall be ta'en.\n\n\nGiov.   You bloody villains,\n  By what authority have you committed\n  This massacre?\n\n\nLodo.   By thine.\n\n\nGiov.   Mine!\n\n\nLodo.   Yes; thy uncle, which is a part of thee, enjoined us to 't:\n  Thou know'st me, I am sure; I am Count Lodowick;\n  And thy most noble uncle in disguise\n  Was last night in thy court.\n\n\nGiov.   Ha!\n\n\nLodo.   Yes, that Moor thy father chose his pensioner.\n\n\nGiov.   He turn'd murderer!\n  Away with them to prison, and to torture:\n  All that have hands in this shall taste our justice,\n  As I hope heaven.\n\n\nLodo.   I do glory yet,\n  That I can call this act mine own.  For my part,\n  The rack, the gallows, and the torturing wheel,\n  Shall be but sound sleeps to me: here 's my rest;\n  I limn'd this night-piece, and it was my best.\n\n\nGiov.   Remove these bodies.  See, my honour'd lord,\n  What use you ought make of their punishment.\n  Let guilty men remember, their black deeds\n  Do lean on crutches made of slender reeds.\n\n\n\n                *   *   *  *\n\n\nInstead of an epilogue, only this of Martial supplies me:\n\n\n       Haec fuerint nobis praemia, si placui.\n\n\nFor the action of the play, 'twas generally well, and I dare affirm, with\nthe joint testimony of some of their own quality (for the true imitation\nof life, without striving to make nature a monster,) the best that ever\nbecame them: whereof as I make a general acknowledgment, so in particular\nI must remember the well-approved industry of my friend Master Perkins,\nand confess the worth of his action did crown both the beginning and end.\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The White Devil opens with Lodovico, a murderous Italian count, being informed by his two friends Gasparo and Antonelli of his banishment from Rome. Lodovico is enraged, but he agrees to leave, and gives his friends money to work towards securing his pardon. Elsewhere, the Duke of Brachiano visits the house of Camillo with the intention of seducing his beautiful wife, Vittoria Corombona. Aided by her social-climbing brother Flamineo and her Moor servant Zanche, Vittoria allows Brachiano to secretly visit her. He gives her a jewel, and she tells him of a dream she had wherein her husband and his wife tried to kill her. Brachiano promises to protect her. Suddenly, Vittoria's mother, Cornelia, steps out of the shadows. She criticizes Brachiano's and Vittoria's affair, cursing them and her family. In Act 2, Francisco de Medici, the Duke of Florence, welcomes home his sister and Brachiano's wife, Isabella. Despite her husband's infidelities, Isabella pleads with Francisco to be kind to Brachiano. She leaves, and Brachiano enters. Francisco recruits Cardinal Monticelso to chastise Brachiano for his infidelities. Threats of war between Brachiano and Francisco are made. After Giovanni, Isabella and Brachiano's son, comes on stage, Francisco and Brachiano seem to reconcile, and their threatening talk of war subside. Monticelso and Francisco leave, and Isabella approaches Brachiano. He quarrels with her despite her placating nature, and he cruelly divorces her. Isabella is unhappy, but she offers to take responsibility for instigating the divorce since she has justifiable cause , and he doesn't. Monticelso and Francisco re-enter to find Isabella yelling at Brachiano for his involvement with Vittoria, and for divorcing him. They scold her for being a jealous woman, and she leaves. Meanwhile, Doctor Julio plots with Flamineo and Brachiano on how to best murder Isabella and Camillo. Monticelso and Francisco address the newly arrived Camillo, who is also Monticelso's nephew. They send him off to fight pirates so that they may secretly observe Brachiano's and Vittoria's behavior while he is away. Later, Brachiano and a conjurer meet in the middle of the night. Brachiano asks him to reveal the particulars of the two planned murders, and the conjurer draws up silent shows of the simultaneous events. In Padua, Doctor Julio and his assistant Christophero poison the lips of a painting of Brachiano. During her nightly devotions, Isabella kisses the lips, and quickly dies. Meanwhile, at Camillo's house, a night of drinking and carousing leads Camillo and Flamineo to compete in vaulting. While all the other revelers are out of the room, Flamineo grabs Camillo and breaks his neck, making his death look like a vaulting accident. Pleased with the visions, Brachiano leaves. Monticelso and Francisco suspect foul play in Camillo's death, and they put Vittoria on trial for it. Although they lack evidence that she committed the murders, they plan to ruin her character and secure conviction that way. Flamineo and Marcello argue over Flamineo's illicit actions, while various ambassadors arrive to act as judges in the trial. Brachiano unexpectedly shows up to the trial, and Vittoria dismisses her lawyer because he refuses to speak plainly. Monticelso then takes on the role of both prosecutor and judge, and repeatedly calls Vittoria a whore. Vittoria indignantly defends herself, and her bravery wins over the admiration of the ambassadors. Despite this, Monticelso sentences her to a \"house of convertites,\" a place for penitent whores. Vittoria rages against Monticelso, crying as she is taken away that he has raped Justice. After the trial, Brachiano re-enters and murmurs a few mysterious words to Francisco. Giovanni then clarifies the mystery: Isabella is dead. Flamineo is upset with the trial's verdict, and accuses Monticelso of being corrupt. Lodovico enters, and the two murderers exchange insults before Antonelli reveals that Lodovico's banishment has been lifted. Flamineo hits Lodovico for calling Vittoria a whore, and everyone disperses. Secretly seeking revenge for his sister's death, Francisco borrows Monticelso's \"black book\" of criminals, looking for a hitman. Isabella's ghost appears to him, but he dismisses it, thinking it simply a symptom of his melancholy. He writes a fake love letter to Vittoria in order to enrage Brachiano. Later, while Flamineo is talking with the matron of the house of convertites, Francisco's servant delivers the love letter. When Brachiano reads it, he becomes wildly jealous of Vittoria, and calls her a whore. Although Vittoria denies any relationship with Francisco, Brachiano breaks off his relationship with her. When he sees her sobbing, however, he has a change of heart, believes her, and resolves to break her out of her prison. Meanwhile, the papal election is underway, and Lodovico stands guard outside of the conclave to prevent bribery. Soon, the Cardinal of Arragon announces the new Pope: Cardinal Monticelso. During the pageantry, a servant informs Francisco that Vittoria, Brachiano, Flamineo, and Giovanni have fled the city. Outwardly outraged, Francisco inwardly admits that this has been his plan all along. He gets Monticelso to excommunicate Brachiano and Vittoria, and hires Lodovico to murder them. After Francisco leaves, Monticelso asks Lodovico why Francisco pushed for his pardon. Lodovico reveals the murder plan, which Monticelso outwardly disapproves of but secretly facilitates through money sent to Lodovico. Lodovico leaves on his mission, encouraged by the support of both Francisco and the new Pope. Meanwhile, Vittoria and Brachiano have married and are now holding court in Padua. Mulinassar, a mysterious Moor, has recently arrived at their court, along with two Capuchin monks. Brachiano welcomes them, but when he leaves the stage, the men reveal their true identities. Francisco has disguised himself as a Moor, and Lodovico and Gasparo are accompanying him. Flamineo speaks with Hortensio, a member of Brachiano's court, and reveals that he is sleeping with Zanche, Vittoria's Moor servant. Zanche has a brief fight with Flamineo, during which Cornelia flies in and attacks her. Marcello and Flamineo fight over Flamineo's improper relationship with Zanche, and in response to Marcello's criticism, Flamineo kills him. Brachiano is forced to try Flamineo for murder. While they talk, Lodovico poisons the mouthpiece of Brachiano's helmet. Soon after, during the celebratory wedding games, Brachiano realizes that he has been poisoned. Gasparo and Lodovico, disguised as monks, are left alone to preside over his last rites, but they instead curse and strangle him. Zanche, now in love with the supposed Moor Mulinassar , admits to him how Isabella and Camillo died, as well as that she and Vittoria are running away that night. Now in charge, Giovanni banishes Flamineo from the court. While leaving, Flamineo encounters his brother's funeral, and his distracted mother. After witnessing Brachiano's ghost, Flamineo decides to kill his sister in order to set everything right. Elsewhere, Francisco and Lodovico meet, and Lodovico tells Francisco to leave the court so that he is not implicated in the murders. Hortensio overhears their conversation, and alerts Giovanni and the armies. Flamineo finds Vittoria and Zanche, and demands money. He reveals that Brachiano made him promise to kill Vittoria if he ever died. The women agree to a three-way suicide pact, with Flamineo dying first. They break their promise, however, and shoot only him. Flamineo is outraged, and reveals that the gun was not loaded with bullets. He springs up to kill them, but Lodovico, Gasparo, Carlo and Pedro barge in. The men stab Flamineo, Vittoria, and Zanche to death. However, Giovanni and his guards storm on stage at the moment and capture the four murderers.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "The White Devil begins on an odd note--the city of Rome banishes Lodovico, a depraved and murderous Count, who will be important in the story later, just not right now. At the moment, he's just going to complain about getting banished. The real main characters are introduced in scene two: Vittoria Corombona, an Italian noblewoman , who is unhappily married to Camillo--the nephew of an important Cardinal, Monticelso. The scheming Duke of Brachiano--Paulo Giordano Orsini--plots to seduce Vittoria, with the help of her brother Flamineo. Flamineo is a bit of a social-climber, and hopes this will help his advancement in the world. He's also a cold-blooded murderer and a pessimistic arm-chair philosopher. Vittoria seems willing enough to be seduced, and asks Brachiano for protection from her husband and the Duke's own wife, since she had a dream where they were trying to bury her alive. The Duke promises to help--by killing both Camillo and his wife, though it's unclear if Vittoria fully gets this . Also, quite awkwardly, Vittoria and Flamineo's Mom, Cornelia, overhears their conversation with the Duke, and yells at Flamineo for being such a vicious, murder-plotting schemer. Brachiano has to deal with his highly suspicious wife, Isabella after he states that he doesn't love her and wants a divorce. Isabella remains pretty devoted to this creep and pretends to be enraged at Vittoria in order to make herself look jealous and throw suspicion off the Duke. Francisco de Medici, Isabella's brother, and Camillo's uncle want to make sure that the Duke doesn't get away with this whole divorce thing. But it's too late--the Duke has both his wife and Vittoria's husband killed. A corrupt doctor who specializes in poison helps arrange Isabella's death, and Flamineo breaks Camillo's neck and makes it look like a gymnastics accident. Lacking evidence, but really angry, Francisco and Monticelso put Vittoria on trial for the murders--but they don't try Flamineo or Brachiano, the men who actually arranged the deed . After Monticelso delivers an incredibly aggressive and bitter courtroom attack on Vittoria for being a \"whore,\" and Vittoria gives a spirited defense, she is sentenced to live out the rest of her life in \"a house of penitent whores.\" In order to avoid any unpleasant questionings about his own guilt, Flamineo pretends to go mad. . After some initial jealousy and confusion caused by a fake love letter Francisco writes to Vittoria while she is in the house of \"convertites,\" Vittoria escapes with the Duke to Padua and they get married. Meanwhile, Monticelso is low-key elected Pope , but that doesn't stop he and Francisco from scheming out a revenge plot, intending to use Count Lodovico--the dude from the beginning, who also was in love with Isabella and wants to kill the Duke for that reason--as their assassin. Francisco infiltrates Brachiano's court in Padua, along with Lodovico and a henchman named Gasparo. Francisco is disguised as an important Moor , and the other two are disguised as Capuchin monks. Flamineo ends up murdering his own brother, Marcello--who confronts him about an affair Flamineo has been having with the Moorish maid, Zanche. This upsets Flamineo's mother, which upsets Flamineo--reminding him of his humanity . Lodovico successfully poisons Brachiano and then strangles him just to speed things along, while pretending to minister the last rites to the Duke. After being banished from Padua by Giovanni Flamineo goes to Vittoria, pretending that he aims to kill her and himself. When Vittoria fake agrees to kill herself, she uses the pistol Flamineo gives her to \"shoot\" him. But it turns out that it wasn't really loaded with bullets, and Flamineo--after making a fake death speech--was just testing her loyalty. But, although Vittoria thinks she's narrowly escaped death, she hasn't: Lodovico and Gasparo bust into the room and fatally stab her and Flamineo. They both give eloquent deathbed speeches. Then Giovanni and his officers enter the room, are horrified by the scene, and arrest Lodovico for committing these revenge murders. They drag him off to be tortured and killed. And they lived happily ever after.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "23042", "title": "The Tempest", "text": "ACT I. SCENE I.\n\nOn a ship at sea: a tempestuous noise of thunder\nand lightning heard._\n\n  _Enter _a Ship-Master_ and _a Boatswain_._\n\n_Mast._ Boatswain!\n\n_Boats._ Here, master: what cheer?\n\n_Mast._ Good, speak to the mariners: fall to't, yarely, or\nwe run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir.    [_Exit._\n\n  _Enter _Mariners_._\n\n_Boats._ Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts!              5\nyare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's\nwhistle. Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!\n\n  _Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND, GONZALO,\n  and others._\n\n_Alon._ Good boatswain, have care. Where's the master?\nPlay the men.\n\n_Boats._ I pray now, keep below.                                    10\n\n_Ant._ Where is the master, boatswain?\n\n_Boats._ Do you not hear him? You mar our labour:\nkeep your cabins: you do assist the storm.\n\n_Gon._ Nay, good, be patient.\n\n_Boats._ When the sea is. Hence! What cares these                   15\nroarers for the name of king? To cabin: silence! trouble\nus not.\n\n_Gon._ Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.\n\n_Boats._ None that I more love than myself. You are a\nCounsellor; if you can command these elements to silence,           20\nand work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope\nmore; use your authority: if you cannot, give thanks you\nhave lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin\nfor the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. Cheerly, good\nhearts! Out of our way, I say.    [_Exit._                          25\n\n_Gon._ I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks\nhe hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is\nperfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging:\nmake the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth\nlittle advantage. If he be not born to be hanged, our case          30\nis miserable.    [_Exeunt._\n\n  _Re-enter Boatswain._\n\n_Boats._ Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower!\nBring her to try with main-course. [_A cry within._] A\nplague upon this howling! they are louder than the weather\nor our office.                                                      35\n\n  _Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and GONZALO._\n\nYet again! what do you here? Shall we give o'er, and\ndrown? Have you a mind to sink?\n\n_Seb._ A pox o' your throat, you bawling, blasphemous,\nincharitable dog!\n\n_Boats._ Work you, then.                                            40\n\n_Ant._ Hang, cur! hang, you whoreson, insolent noise-maker.\nWe are less afraid to be drowned than thou art.\n\n_Gon._ I'll warrant him for drowning; though the ship\nwere no stronger than a nutshell, and as leaky as an unstanched\nwench.                                                              45\n\n_Boats._ Lay her a-hold, a-hold! set her two courses off\nto sea again; lay her off.\n\n  _Enter _Mariners_ wet._\n\n_Mariners._ All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost!\n\n_Boats._ What, must our mouths be cold?\n\n_Gon._ The king and prince at prayers! let's assist them,           50\nFor our case is as theirs.\n\n_Seb._                   I'm out of patience.\n\n_Ant._ We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards:\nThis wide-chapp'd rascal,--would thou mightst lie drowning\nThe washing of ten tides!\n\n_Gon._                  He'll be hang'd yet,\nThough every drop of water swear against it,                        55\nAnd gape at widest to glut him.\n\n  [_A confused noise within:_ \"Mercy on us!\"--\n  \"We split, we split!\"-- \"Farewell my wife and children!\"--\n  \"Farewell, brother!\"-- \"We split, we split, we split!\"]\n\n_Ant._ Let's all sink with the king.                                60\n\n_Seb._ Let's take leave of him. [_Exeunt Ant. and Seb._\n\n_Gon._ Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for\nan acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any\nthing. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a\ndry death.    [_Exeunt._                                            65\n\n\n  Notes: I, 1.\n\n  SC. I. On a ship at sea] Pope.\n  Enter ... Boatswain] Collier MS. adds 'shaking off wet.'\n  3: _Good,_] Rowe. _Good:_ Ff. _Good._ Collier.\n  7: _till thou burst thy wind_] _till thou burst, wind_ Johnson conj.\n    _till thou burst thee, wind_ Steevens conj.\n  8: Capell adds stage direction [Exeunt Mariners aloft.\n  11: _boatswain_] Pope. _boson_ Ff.\n  11-18: Verse. S. Walker conj.\n  15: _cares_] _care_ Rowe. See note (I).\n  31:  [Exeunt] Theobald. [Exit. Ff.\n  33: _Bring her to try_] F4. _Bring her to Try_ F1 F2 F3.\n    _Bring her to. Try_ Story conj.\n  33-35: Text as in Capell. _A plague_--A cry within. Enter Sebastian,\n    Anthonio, and Gonzalo. _upon this howling._ Ff.\n  34-37: Verse. S. Walker conj.\n  43: _for_] _from_ Theobald.\n  46: _two courses off to sea_] _two courses; off to sea_ Steevens\n    (Holt conj.).\n  46: [Enter...] [Re-enter... Dyce.\n  47: [Exeunt. Theobald.\n  50: _at_] _are at_ Rowe.\n  50-54: Printed as prose in Ff.\n  56: _to glut_] _t' englut_ Johnson conj.\n  57: See note (II).\n  59: _Farewell, brother!_] _Brother, farewell!_ Theobald.\n  60: _with the_] Rowe. _with'_ F1 F2. _with_ F3 F4.\n  61: [Exeunt A. and S.] [Exit. Ff.\n  63: _furze_ Rowe. _firrs_ F1 F2 F3. _firs_ F4.\n  _long heath, brown furze_] _ling, heath, broom, furze_ Hanmer.]\n  65: [Exeunt] [Exit F1, om. F2 F3 F4.]\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II. \n\n_The island.\n\nBefore PROSPERO'S cell._\n\n  _Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA._\n\n_Mir._ If by your art, my dearest father, you have\nPut the wild waters in this roar, allay them.\nThe sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,\nBut that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,\nDashes the fire out. O, I have suffer'd                              5\nWith those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel,\nWho had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,\nDash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock\nAgainst my very heart! Poor souls, they perish'd!\nHad I been any god of power, I would                                10\nHave sunk the sea within the earth, or ere\nIt should the good ship so have swallow'd and\nThe fraughting souls within her.\n\n_Pros._                        Be collected:\nNo more amazement: tell your piteous heart\nThere's no harm done.\n\n_Mir._              O, woe the day!\n\n_Pros._                           No harm.                          15\nI have done nothing but in care of thee,\nOf thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who\nArt ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing\nOf whence I am, nor that I am more better\nThan Prospero, master of a full poor cell,                          20\nAnd thy no greater father.\n\n_Mir._                   More to know\nDid never meddle with my thoughts.\n\n_Pros._                          'Tis time\nI should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand,\nAnd pluck my magic garment from me. --So:\n                                [_Lays down his mantle._\nLie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.              25\nThe direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd\nThe very virtue of compassion in thee,\nI have with such provision in mine art\nSo safely order'd, that there is no soul,\nNo, not so much perdition as an hair                                30\nBetid to any creature in the vessel\nWhich thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink. Sit down;\nFor thou must now know farther.\n\n_Mir._                        You have often\nBegun to tell me what I am; but stopp'd,\nAnd left me to a bootless inquisition,                              35\nConcluding \"Stay: not yet.\"\n\n_Pros._                The hour's now come;\nThe very minute bids thee ope thine ear;\nObey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember\nA time before we came unto this cell?\nI do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not                   40\nOut three years old.\n\n_Mir._             Certainly, sir, I can.\n\n_Pros._ By what? by any other house or person?\nOf any thing the image tell me that\nHath kept with thy remembrance.\n\n_Mir._                        'Tis far off,\nAnd rather like a dream than an assurance                           45\nThat my remembrance warrants. Had I not\nFour or five women once that tended me?\n\n_Pros._ Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it\nThat this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else\nIn the dark backward and abysm of time?                             50\nIf thou remember'st ought ere thou camest here,\nHow thou camest here thou mayst.\n\n_Mir._                         But that I do not.\n\n_Pros._ Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,\nThy father was the Duke of Milan, and\nA prince of power.\n\n_Mir._           Sir, are not you my father?                        55\n\n_Pros._ Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and\nShe said thou wast my daughter; and thy father\nWas Duke of Milan; and his only heir\nAnd princess, no worse issued.\n\n_Mir._                       O the heavens!\nWhat foul play had we, that we came from thence?                    60\nOr blessed was't we did?\n\n_Pros._                Both, both, my girl:\nBy foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence;\nBut blessedly holp hither.\n\n_Mir._                   O, my heart bleeds\nTo think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to.\nWhich is from my remembrance! Please you, farther.                  65\n\n_Pros._ My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio,--\nI pray thee, mark me,--that a brother should\nBe so perfidious!--he whom, next thyself,\nOf all the world I loved, and to him put\nThe manage of my state; as, at that time,                           70\nThrough all the signories it was the first,\nAnd Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed\nIn dignity, and for the liberal arts\nWithout a parallel; those being all my study,\nThe government I cast upon my brother,                              75\nAnd to my state grew stranger, being transported\nAnd rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle--\nDost thou attend me?\n\n_Mir._             Sir, most heedfully.\n\n_Pros._ Being once perfected how to grant suits,\nHow to deny them, whom to advance, and whom                         80\nTo trash for over-topping, new created\nThe creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em,\nOr else new form'd 'em; having both the key\nOf officer and office, set all hearts i' the state\nTo what tune pleased his ear; that now he was                       85\nThe ivy which had hid my princely trunk,\nAnd suck'd my verdure out on't. Thou attend'st not.\n\n_Mir._ O, good sir, I do.\n\n_Pros._                 I pray thee, mark me.\nI, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated\nTo closeness and the bettering of my mind                           90\nWith that which, but by being so retired,\nO'er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother\nAwaked an evil nature; and my trust,\nLike a good parent, did beget of him\nA falsehood in its contrary, as great                               95\nAs my trust was; which had indeed no limit,\nA confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,\nNot only with what my revenue yielded,\nBut what my power might else exact, like one\nWho having into truth, by telling of it,                           100\nMade such a sinner of his memory,\nTo credit his own lie, he did believe\nHe was indeed the duke; out o' the substitution,\nAnd executing the outward face of royalty,\nWith all prerogative:--hence his ambition growing,--               105\nDost thou hear?\n\n_Mir._        Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.\n\n_Pros._ To have no screen between this part he play'd\nAnd him he play'd it for, he needs will be\nAbsolute Milan. Me, poor man, my library\nWas dukedom large enough: of temporal royalties                    110\nHe thinks me now incapable; confederates,\nSo dry he was for sway, wi' the King of Naples\nTo give him annual tribute, do him homage,\nSubject his coronet to his crown, and bend\nThe dukedom, yet unbow'd,--alas, poor Milan!--                     115\nTo most ignoble stooping.\n\n_Mir._                  O the heavens!\n\n_Pros._ Mark his condition, and th' event; then tell me\nIf this might be a brother.\n\n_Mir._                    I should sin\nTo think but nobly of my grandmother:\nGood wombs have borne bad sons.\n\n_Pros._                       Now the condition.                   120\nThis King of Naples, being an enemy\nTo me inveterate, hearkens my brother's suit;\nWhich was, that he, in lieu o' the premises,\nOf homage and I know not how much tribute,\nShould presently extirpate me and mine                             125\nOut of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan,\nWith all the honours, on my brother: whereon,\nA treacherous army levied, one midnight\nFated to the purpose, did Antonio open\nThe gates of Milan; and, i' the dead of darkness,                  130\nThe ministers for the purpose hurried thence\nMe and thy crying self.\n\n_Mir._                Alack, for pity!\nI, not remembering how I cried out then,\nWill cry it o'er again: it is a hint\nThat wrings mine eyes to't.\n\n_Pros._                   Hear a little further,                   135\nAnd then I'll bring thee to the present business\nWhich now's upon 's; without the which, this story\nWere most impertinent.\n\n_Mir._               Wherefore did they not\nThat hour destroy us?\n\n_Pros._             Well demanded, wench:\nMy tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not,              140\nSo dear the love my people bore me; nor set\nA mark so bloody on the business; but\nWith colours fairer painted their foul ends.\nIn few, they hurried us aboard a bark,\nBore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared                   145\nA rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,\nNor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats\nInstinctively have quit it: there they hoist us,\nTo cry to the sea that roar'd to us; to sigh\nTo the winds, whose pity, sighing back again,                      150\nDid us but loving wrong.\n\n_Mir._                 Alack, what trouble\nWas I then to you!\n\n_Pros._          O, a cherubin\nThou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile,\nInfused with a fortitude from heaven,\nWhen I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt,                   155\nUnder my burthen groan'd; which raised in me\nAn undergoing stomach, to bear up\nAgainst what should ensue.\n\n_Mir._                   How came we ashore?\n\n_Pros._ By Providence divine.\nSome food we had, and some fresh water, that                       160\nA noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,\nOut of his charity, who being then appointed\nMaster of this design, did give us, with\nRich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries,\nWhich since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness,              165\nKnowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me\nFrom mine own library with volumes that\nI prize above my dukedom.\n\n_Mir._                  Would I might\nBut ever see that man!\n\n_Pros._              Now I arise:  [_Resumes his mantle._\nSit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow.                    170\nHere in this island we arrived; and here\nHave I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit\nThan other princesses can, that have more time\nFor vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.\n\n_Mir._ Heavens thank you for't! And now, I pray you, sir,          175\nFor still 'tis beating in my mind, your reason\nFor raising this sea-storm?\n\n_Pros._                   Know thus far forth.\nBy accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,\nNow my dear lady, hath mine enemies\nBrought to this shore; and by my prescience                        180\nI find my zenith doth depend upon\nA most auspicious star, whose influence\nIf now I court not, but omit, my fortunes\nWill ever after droop. Here cease more questions:\nThou art inclined to sleep; 'tis a good dulness,                   185\nAnd give it way: I know thou canst not choose.\n                                        [_Miranda sleeps._\nCome away, servant, come. I am ready now.\nApproach, my Ariel, come.\n\n  _Enter _ARIEL_._\n\n_Ari._ All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come\nTo answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,                          190\nTo swim, to dive into the fire, to ride\nOn the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task\nAriel and all his quality.\n\n_Pros._                  Hast thou, spirit,\nPerform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?\n\n_Ari._ To every article.                                           195\nI boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,\nNow in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,\nI flamed amazement: sometime I'ld divide,\nAnd burn in many places; on the topmast,\nThe yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,                  200\nThen meet and join. Jove's lightnings, the precursors\nO' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary\nAnd sight-outrunning were not: the fire and cracks\nOf sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune\nSeem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble,                  205\nYea, his dread trident shake.\n\n_Pros._                     My brave spirit!\nWho was so firm, so constant, that this coil\nWould not infect his reason?\n\n_Ari._                     Not a soul\nBut felt a fever of the mad, and play'd\nSome tricks of desperation. All but mariners                       210\nPlunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel,\nThen all afire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand,\nWith hair up-staring,--then like reeds, not hair,--\nWas the first man that leap'd; cried, \"Hell is empty,\nAnd all the devils are here.\"\n\n_Pros._                 Why, that's my spirit!                     215\nBut was not this nigh shore?\n\n_Ari._                    Close by, my master.\n\n_Pros._ But are they, Ariel, safe?\n\n_Ari._                           Not a hair perish'd;\nOn their sustaining garments not a blemish,\nBut fresher than before: and, as thou badest me,\nIn troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle.                    220\nThe king's son have I landed by himself;\nWhom I left cooling of the air with sighs\nIn an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,\nHis arms in this sad knot.\n\n_Pros._                  Of the king's ship\nThe mariners, say how thou hast disposed,                          225\nAnd all the rest o' the fleet.\n\n_Ari._                       Safely in harbour\nIs the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once\nThou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew\nFrom the still-vex'd Bermoothes, there she's hid:\nThe mariners all under hatches stow'd;                             230\nWho, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour,\nI have left asleep: and for the rest o' the fleet,\nWhich I dispersed, they all have met again,\nAnd are upon the Mediterranean flote,\nBound sadly home for Naples;                                       235\nSupposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd,\nAnd his great person perish.\n\n_Pros._                    Ariel, thy charge\nExactly is perform'd: but there's more work.\nWhat is the time o' the day?\n\n_Ari._                     Past the mid season.\n\n_Pros._ At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now          240\nMust by us both be spent most preciously.\n\n_Ari._ Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,\nLet me remember thee what thou hast promised,\nWhich is not yet perform'd me.\n\n_Pros._                      How now? moody?\nWhat is't thou canst demand?\n\n_Ari._                     My liberty.                             245\n\n_Pros._ Before the time be out? no more!\n\n_Ari._                                 I prithee,\nRemember I have done thee worthy service;\nTold thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served\nWithout or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise\nTo bate me a full year.\n\n_Pros._               Dost thou forget                             250\nFrom what a torment I did free thee?\n\n_Ari._                             No.\n\n_Pros._ Thou dost; and think'st it much to tread the ooze\nOf the salt deep,\nTo run upon the sharp wind of the north,\nTo do me business in the veins o' the earth                        255\nWhen it is baked with frost.\n\n_Ari._                     I do not, sir.\n\n_Pros._ Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot\nThe foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy\nWas grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her?\n\n_Ari._ No, sir.\n\n_Pros._       Thou hast. Where was she born? speak; tell me.       260\n\n_Ari._ Sir, in Argier.\n\n_Pros._              O, was she so? I must\nOnce in a month recount what thou hast been,\nWhich thou forget'st. This damn'd witch Sycorax,\nFor mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible\nTo enter human hearing, from Argier,                               265\nThou know'st, was banish'd: for one thing she did\nThey would not take her life. Is not this true?\n\n_Ari._ Ay, sir.\n\n_Pros._ This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,\nAnd here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave,                  270\nAs thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant;\nAnd, for thou wast a spirit too delicate\nTo act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,\nRefusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,\nBy help of her more potent ministers,                              275\nAnd in her most unmitigable rage,\nInto a cloven pine; within which rift\nImprison'd thou didst painfully remain\nA dozen years; within which space she died,\nAnd left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans              280\nAs fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island--\nSave for the son that she did litter here,\nA freckled whelp hag-born--not honour'd with\nA human shape.\n\n_Ari._       Yes, Caliban her son.\n\n_Pros._ Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban,                    285\nWhom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st\nWhat torment I did find thee in; thy groans\nDid make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts\nOf ever-angry bears: it was a torment\nTo lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax                              290\nCould not again undo: it was mine art,\nWhen I arrived and heard thee, that made gape\nThe pine, and let thee out.\n\n_Ari._                    I thank thee, master.\n\n_Pros._ If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak,\nAnd peg thee in his knotty entrails, till                          295\nThou hast howl'd away twelve winters.\n\n_Ari._                              Pardon, master:\nI will be correspondent to command,\nAnd do my spiriting gently.\n\n_Pros._                   Do so; and after two days\nI will discharge thee.\n\n_Ari._               That's my noble master!\nWhat shall I do? say what; what shall I do?                        300\n\n_Pros._ Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea:\nBe subject to no sight but thine and mine; invisible\nTo every eyeball else. Go take this shape,\nAnd hither come in't: go, hence with diligence!\n\n    [_Exit Ariel._\n\nAwake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well;                    305\nAwake!\n\n_Mir._ The strangeness of your story put\nHeaviness in me.\n\n_Pros._        Shake it off. Come on;\nWe'll visit Caliban my slave, who never\nYields us kind answer.\n\n_Mir._               'Tis a villain, sir,\nI do not love to look on.\n\n_Pros._                 But, as 'tis,                              310\nWe cannot miss him: he does make our fire,\nFetch in our wood, and serves in offices\nThat profit us. What, ho! slave! Caliban!\nThou earth, thou! speak.\n\n_Cal._ [_within_] There's wood enough within.\n\n_Pros._ Come forth, I say! there's other business for thee:        315\nCome, thou tortoise! when?\n\n  _Re-enter ARIEL like a water-nymph._\n\nFine apparition! My quaint Ariel,\nHark in thine ear.\n\n_Ari._           My lord, it shall be done.    [_Exit._\n\n_Pros._ Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself\nUpon thy wicked dam, come forth!                                   320\n\n  _Enter CALIBAN._\n\n_Cal._ As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd\nWith raven's feather from unwholesome fen\nDrop on you both! a south-west blow on ye\nAnd blister you all o'er!\n\n_Pros._ For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,        325\nSide-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins\nShall, for that vast of night that they may work,\nAll exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd\nAs thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging\nThan bees that made 'em.\n\n_Cal._                 I must eat my dinner.                       330\nThis island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,\nWhich thou takest from me. When thou camest first,\nThou strokedst me, and madest much of me; wouldst give me\nWater with berries in't; and teach me how\nTo name the bigger light, and how the less,                        335\nThat burn by day and night: and then I loved thee,\nAnd show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle,\nThe fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:\nCurs'd be I that did so! All the charms\nOf Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!                    340\nFor I am all the subjects that you have,\nWhich first was mine own king: and here you sty me\nIn this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me\nThe rest o' th' island.\n\n_Pros._               Thou most lying slave,\nWhom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee,             345\nFilth as thou art, with human care; and lodged thee\nIn mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate\nThe honour of my child.\n\n_Cal._ O ho, O ho! would 't had been done!\nThou didst prevent me; I had peopled else                          350\nThis isle with Calibans.\n\n_Pros._                Abhorred slave,\nWhich any print of goodness wilt not take,\nBeing capable of all ill! I pitied thee,\nTook pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour\nOne thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,                   355\nKnow thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like\nA thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes\nWith words that made them known. But thy vile race,\nThough thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures\nCould not abide to be with; therefore wast thou                    360\nDeservedly confined into this rock,\nWho hadst deserved more than a prison.\n\n_Cal._ You taught me language; and my profit on't\nIs, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you\nFor learning me your language!\n\n_Pros._                      Hag-seed, hence!                      365\nFetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou'rt best,\nTo answer other business. Shrug'st thou, malice?\nIf thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly\nWhat I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps,\nFill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar,                     370\nThat beasts shall tremble at thy din.\n\n_Cal._                              No, pray thee.\n[_Aside_] I must obey: his art is of such power,\nIt would control my dam's god, Setebos,\nAnd make a vassal of him.\n\n_Pros._                 So, slave; hence!    [_Exit Caliban._\n\n  _Re-enter ARIEL, invisible, playing and singing; FERDINAND\n  following._\n\n_ARIEL'S song._\n\n    Come unto these yellow sands,                                  375\n        And then take hands:\n    Courtsied when you have and kiss'd\n        The wild waves whist:\n    Foot it featly here and there;\n    And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.                          380\n\n _Burthen_ [_dispersedly_]. Hark, hark!\n                           Bow-wow.\n        The watch-dogs bark:\n                            Bow-wow.\n\n_Ari._  Hark, hark! I hear\n        The strain of strutting chanticleer                        385\n        Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.\n\n_Fer._ Where should this music be? i' th' air or th' earth?\nIt sounds no more: and, sure, it waits upon\nSome god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank,\nWeeping again the king my father's wreck,                          390\nThis music crept by me upon the waters,\nAllaying both their fury and my passion\nWith its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it.\nOr it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone.\nNo, it begins again.                                               395\n\n_ARIEL sings._\n\n    Full fathom five thy father lies;\n        Of his bones are coral made;\n    Those are pearls that were his eyes:\n        Nothing of him that doth fade,\n    But doth suffer a sea-change                                   400\n    Into something rich and strange.\n    Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:\n\n                    _Burthen:_ Ding-dong.\n\n_Ari._ Hark! now I hear them,--Ding-dong, bell.\n\n_Fer._ The ditty does remember my drown'd father.                  405\nThis is no mortal business, nor no sound\nThat the earth owes:--I hear it now above me.\n\n_Pros._ The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,\nAnd say what thou seest yond.\n\n_Mir._                      What is't? a spirit?\nLord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,                         410\nIt carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit.\n\n_Pros._ No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses\nAs we have, such. This gallant which thou seest\nWas in the wreck; and, but he's something stain'd\nWith grief, that's beauty's canker, thou mightst call him          415\nA goodly person: he hath lost his fellows,\nAnd strays about to find 'em.\n\n_Mir._                      I might call him\nA thing divine; for nothing natural\nI ever saw so noble.\n\n_Pros._ [_Aside_] It goes on, I see,\nAs my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit! I'll free thee         420\nWithin two days for this.\n\n_Fer._                  Most sure, the goddess\nOn whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe my prayer\nMay know if you remain upon this island;\nAnd that you will some good instruction give\nHow I may bear me here: my prime request,                          425\nWhich I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder!\nIf you be maid or no?\n\n_Mir._              No wonder, sir;\nBut certainly a maid.\n\n_Fer._              My language! heavens!\nI am the best of them that speak this speech,\nWere I but where 'tis spoken.\n\n_Pros._                     How? the best?                         430\nWhat wert thou, if the King of Naples heard thee?\n\n_Fer._ A single thing, as I am now, that wonders\nTo hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me;\nAnd that he does I weep: myself am Naples,\nWho with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld                     435\nThe king my father wreck'd.\n\n_Mir._                    Alack, for mercy!\n\n_Fer._ Yes, faith, and all his lords; the Duke of Milan\nAnd his brave son being twain.\n\n_Pros._                      [_Aside_] The Duke of Milan\nAnd his more braver daughter could control thee,\nIf now 'twere fit to do't. At the first sight                      440\nThey have changed eyes. Delicate Ariel,\nI'll set thee free for this. [_To Fer._] A word, good sir;\nI fear you have done yourself some wrong: a word.\n\n_Mir._ Why speaks my father so ungently? This\nIs the third man that e'er I saw; the first                        445\nThat e'er I sigh'd for: pity move my father\nTo be inclined my way!\n\n_Fer._               O, if a virgin,\nAnd your affection not gone forth, I'll make you\nThe queen of Naples.\n\n_Pros._            Soft, sir! one word more.\n[_Aside_] They are both in either's powers:\n        but this swift business                                    450\nI must uneasy make, lest too light winning\nMake the prize light. [_To Fer._] One word more; I charge thee\nThat thou attend me: thou dost here usurp\nThe name thou owest not; and hast put thyself\nUpon this island as a spy, to win it                               455\nFrom me, the lord on't.\n\n_Fer._                No, as I am a man.\n\n_Mir._ There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:\nIf the ill spirit have so fair a house,\nGood things will strive to dwell with't.\n\n_Pros._                                Follow me.\nSpeak not you for him; he's a traitor. Come;                       460\nI'll manacle thy neck and feet together:\nSea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be\nThe fresh-brook muscles, wither'd roots, and husks\nWherein the acorn cradled. Follow.\n\n_Fer._                           No;\nI will resist such entertainment till                              465\nMine enemy has more power.\n            [_Draws, and is charmed from moving._\n\n_Mir._                O dear father,\nMake not too rash a trial of him, for\nHe's gentle, and not fearful.\n\n_Pros._                     What! I say,\nMy foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor;\nWho makest a show, but darest not strike, thy conscience           470\nIs so possess'd with guilt: come from thy ward;\nFor I can here disarm thee with this stick\nAnd make thy weapon drop.\n\n_Mir._                  Beseech you, father.\n\n_Pros._ Hence! hang not on my garments.\n\n_Mir._                                Sir, have pity;\nI'll be his surety.\n\n_Pros._           Silence! one word more                           475\nShall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What!\nAn advocate for an impostor! hush!\nThou think'st there is no more such shapes as he,\nHaving seen but him and Caliban: foolish wench!\nTo the most of men this is a Caliban,                              480\nAnd they to him are angels.\n\n_Mir._                    My affections\nAre, then, most humble; I have no ambition\nTo see a goodlier man.\n\n_Pros._              Come on; obey:\nThy nerves are in their infancy again,\nAnd have no vigour in them.\n\n_Fer._             So they are:                                    485\nMy spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.\nMy father's loss, the weakness which I feel,\nThe wreck of all my friends, nor this man's threats,\nTo whom I am subdued, are but light to me,\nMight I but through my prison once a day                           490\nBehold this maid: all corners else o' th' earth\nLet liberty make use of; space enough\nHave I in such a prison.\n\n_Pros._ [_Aside_]      It works. [_To Fer._] Come on.\nThou hast done well, fine Ariel! [_To Fer._] Follow me.\n[_To Ari._] Hark what thou else shalt do me.\n\n_Mir._                                     Be of comfort;          495\nMy father's of a better nature, sir,\nThan he appears by speech: this is unwonted\nWhich now came from him.\n\n_Pros._                Thou shalt be as free\nAs mountain winds: but then exactly do\nAll points of my command.\n\n_Ari._                  To the syllable.                           500\n\n_Pros._ Come, follow. Speak not for him.    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n  Notes: I, 2.\n\n  3: _stinking_] _flaming_ Singer conj. _kindling_ S. Verges conj.\n  4: _cheek_] _heat_ Collier MS. _crack_ Staunton conj.\n  7: _creature_] _creatures_ Theobald.\n  13: _fraughting_] Ff. _fraighted_ Pope. _fraighting_ Theobald.\n    _freighting_ Steevens.\n  15: Mir. _O, woe the day!_ Pros. _No harm._] Mir. _O woe the day!\n    no harm?_ Johnson conj.\n  19: _I am more better_] _I'm more or better_ Pope.\n  24: [Lays ... mantle] Pope.\n  28: _provision_] F1. _compassion_ F2 F3 F4. _prevision_ Hunter conj.\n  29: _soul_] _soul lost_ Rowe. _foyle_ Theobald. _soil_ Johnson conj.\n    _loss_ Capell. _foul_ Wright conj.\n  31: _betid_] F1. _betide_ F2 F3 F4.\n  35: _a_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4.\n  38: _thou_] om. Pope.\n  41: _Out_] _Full_ Pope (after Dryden). _Quite_ Collier MS.\n  44: _with_] _in_ Pope (after Dryden).\n  53: _Twelve year ... year_] _Tis twelve years ... years_ Pope.\n  58, 59: _and his only heir And princess_] _and his only heir\n    A princess_ Pope. _thou his only heir And princess_ Steevens.\n    _and though his only heir A princess_] Johnson conj.\n  63: _holp_] _help'd_ Pope.\n  _O, my heart_] _My heart_ Pope.\n  78: _me_] om. F3 F4.\n  80: _whom ... whom_] F2 F3 F4. _who ... who_ F1.\n  81: _trash_] _plash_ Hanmer.\n  82, 83: _'em ... 'em_] _them ... them_ Capell.\n  84: _i' the state_] _i'th state_ F1. _e'th state_ F2.\n    _o'th state_ F3 F4. om. Pope.\n  88: _O, good sir ... mark me._] _Good sir ... mark me then._ Pope.\n    _O yes, good sir ... mark me._ Capell.\n  Mir. _O, ... do._ Pros. _I ... me_] _I ... me._ Mir. _O ... do._\n    Steevens.\n  89: _dedicated_] _dedicate_ Steevens (Ritson conj.).\n  91: _so_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.\n  97: _lorded_] _loaded_ Collier MS.\n  99: _exact, like_] _exact. Like_ Ff.\n  100: _having into truth ... of it_] _loving an untruth, and telling\n    't oft_ Hanmer. _having unto truth ... oft_ Warburton. _having to\n    untruth ... of it_ Collier MS. _having sinn'd to truth ... oft_\n    Musgrave conj.\n  _telling_] _quelling_ S. Verges conj.\n  101: _Made ... memory_] _Makes ... memory_ Hanmer. _Makes ...\n    memory too_ Musgrave conj.\n  103: _indeed the duke_] _the duke_ Steevens. _indeed duke_ S. Walker\n    conj.\n  _out o' the_] _from_ Pope.\n  105: _his_] _is_ F2.\n  105, 106: _ambition growing_] _ambition Growing_ Steevens.\n  106: _hear?_] _hear, child?_ Hanmer.\n  109: _Milan_] _Millanie_ F1 (Capell's copy).\n  112: _wi' the_] Capell. _with_ Ff. _wi' th'_ Rowe. _with the_\n    Steevens.\n  116: _most_] F1. _much_ F2 F3 F4.\n  119: _but_] _not_ Pope.\n  120: _Good ... sons_] Theobald suggested that these words should be\n    given to Prospero. Hanmer prints them so.\n  122: _hearkens_] _hears_ Pope. _hearks_ Theobald.\n  129: _Fated_] _Mated_ Dryden's version.\n  _purpose_] _practise_ Collier MS.\n  131: _ministers_] _minister_ Rowe.\n  133: _out_] _on't_ Steevens conj.\n  135: _to 't_] om. Steevens (Farmer conj.).\n  138: _Wherefore_] _Why_ Pope.\n  141: _me_] om. Pope.\n  146: _boat_] Rowe (after Dryden). _butt_ F1 F2 F3. _but_ F4.\n    _busse_ Black conj.\n  147: _sail_] F1. _nor sail_ F2 F3 F4.\n  148: _have_] _had_ Rowe (after Dryden).\n  150: _the winds_] _winds_ Pope.\n  155: _deck'd_] _brack'd_ Hanmer. _mock'd_ Warburton. _fleck'd_\n    Johnson conj. _degg'd_ anon. ap. Reed conj.\n  162: _who_] om. Pope. _he_ Steevens conj.\n  169: _Now I arise_] Continued to Miranda. Blackstone conj.\n  [Resumes his mantle] om. Ff. [Put on robe again. Collier MS.\n  173: _princesses_] _princesse_ F1 F2 F3. _princess_ F4.\n    _princes_ Rowe. _princess'_ Dyce (S. Walker conj.). See note (III).\n  186: [M. sleeps] Theobald.\n  189: SCENE III. Pope.\n  190: _be't_] F1. _be it_ F2 F3 F4.\n  193: _quality_] _qualities_ Pope (after Dryden).\n  198: _sometime_] F1. _sometimes_ F2 F3 F4.\n  200: _bowsprit_] _bore-sprit_ Ff. _bolt-sprit_ Rowe.\n  201: _lightnings_] Theobald. _lightning_ Ff.\n  202: _o' the_] _of_ Pope.\n  _thunder-claps_] _thunder-clap_ Johnson.\n  205: _Seem_] _Seem'd_ Theobald.\n  206: _dread_] F1. _dead_ F2 F3 F4.\n  _My brave_] _My brave, brave_ Theobald. _That's my brave_ Hanmer.\n  209: _mad_] _mind_ Pope (after Dryden).\n  211, 212: _vessel, ... son_] _vessell; Then all a fire with me\n    the King's sonne_ Ff.\n  218: _sustaining_] _sea-stained_ Edwards conj. _unstaining_ or\n    _sea-staining_ Spedding conj.\n  229: _Bermoothes_] _Bermudas_ Theobald.\n  231: _Who_] _Whom_ Hanmer.\n  234: _are_] _all_ Collier MS.\n  _upon_] _on_ Pope.\n  239-240: Ari. _Past the mid season._ Pros. _At least two glasses_]\n    Ari. _Past the mid season at least two glasses._ Warburton.\n    Pros. _... Past the mid season?_ Ari. _At least two glasses_\n    Johnson conj.\n  244: _How now? moody?_] _How now, moody!_ Dyce (so Dryden, ed. 1808).\n  245: _What_] F1. _Which_ F2 F3 F4.\n  248: _made thee_] Ff. _made_ Pope.\n  249: _didst_] F3 F4. _did_ F1 F2.\n  264: _and sorceries_] _sorceries too_ Hanmer.\n  267: _Is not this true?_] _Is this not true?_ Pope.\n  271: _wast then_] Rowe (after Dryden). _was then_ Ff.\n  273: _earthy_] _earthly_ Pope.\n  282: _son_] F1. _sunne_ F2. _sun_ F3 F4.\n  _she_] Rowe (after Dryden). _he_ Ff.\n  298: See note (IV).\n  301: _like_] F1. _like to_ F2 F3 F4.\n  302: _Be subject to_] _be subject To_ Malone.\n  _but thine and mine_] _but mine_ Pope.\n  304: _in't_] _in it_ Pope.\n  _go, hence_] _goe: hence_ Ff. _go hence_ Pope. _hence_ Hanmer.\n  307: _Heaviness_] _Strange heaviness_ Edd. conj.\n  312: _serves in offices_] F1. _serves offices_ F2 F3 F4.\n    _serveth offices_ Collier MS.\n  316: _Come, thou tortoise! when?_] om. Pope.\n  _Come_] _Come forth_ Steevens.]\n  320: _come forth!_] _come forth, thou tortoise!_ Pope.\n  321: SCENE IV. Pope.\n  332: _camest_] Rowe. _cam'st_ Ff. _cam'st here_ Ritson conj.\n  333: _madest_] Rowe (after Dryden). _made_ Ff.\n  339: _Curs'd be I that_] F1. _Curs'd be I that I_ F2 F3 F4.\n    _cursed be I that_ Steevens.\n  342: _Which_] _Who_ Pope, and at line 351.\n  346: _thee_] om. F4.\n  349: _would 't_] Ff. _I wou'd it_ Pope.\n  351: Pros.] Theobald (after Dryden). Mira. Ff.\n  352: _wilt_] F1. _will_ F2 F3 F4.\n  355, 356: _didst not ... Know_] _couldst not ... Shew_ Hanmer.\n  356: _wouldst_] _didst_ Hanmer.\n  361, 362: _Deservedly ... deserved_] _Justly ... who hadst Deserv'd_\n    S. Walker conj. _Confin'd ... deserv'd_ id. conj.\n  362: _Who ... prison_] om. Pope (after Dryden).\n  366: _thou'rt_] F1 F2 F3. _thou art_ F4. _thou wer't_ Rowe.\n  375: SCENE V. Pope.\n  following.] Malone.\n  378: _The wild waves whist_] Printed as a parenthesis by Steevens.\n    See note (V).\n  380: _the burthen bear_] Pope. _bear the burthen_ Ff.\n  381-383: Steevens gives _Hark, hark! The watch-dogs bark_ to Ariel.\n  387: _i' th' air or th' earth?_] _in air or earth?_ Pope.\n  390: _again_] _against_ Rowe (after Dryden).\n  407: _owes_] _owns_ Pope (after Dryden), but leaves _ow'st_ 454.\n  408: SCENE VI. Pope.\n  419: _It goes on, I see,_] _It goes, I see_ Capell. _It goes on_\n    Steevens.\n  420: _fine spirit!_] om. Hanmer.\n  427: _maid_] F3. _mayd_ F1 F2. _made_ F4.\n  443: See note (VI).\n  444: _ungently_] F1. _urgently_ F2 F3 F4.\n  451: _lest_] F4. _least_ F1 F2 F3.\n  452: _One_] _Sir, one_ Pope.\n    _I charge thee_] _I charge thee_ [to Ariel. Pope.\n  460: Pros. prefixed again to this line in Ff.\n  468: _and_] _tho'_ Hanmer.\n  469: _foot_] _fool_ S. Walker conj. _child_ Dryden's version.\n  470: _makest_] _mak'st_ F1. _makes_ F2 F3 F4.\n  471: _so_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. _all_ Pope.\n  478: _is_] _are_ Rowe.\n  488: _nor_] _and_ Rowe (after Dryden). _or_ Capell.\n  489: _are_] _were_ Malone conj.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\n\n_Another part of the island._\n\n  _Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO,\n  and others._\n\n_Gon._ Beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause,\nSo have we all, of joy; for our escape\nIs much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe\nIs common; every day, some sailor's wife,\nThe masters of some merchant, and the merchant,                      5\nHave just our theme of woe; but for the miracle,\nI mean our preservation, few in millions\nCan speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh\nOur sorrow with our comfort.\n\n_Alon._                    Prithee, peace.\n\n_Seb._ He receives comfort like cold porridge.                      10\n\n_Ant._ The visitor will not give him o'er so.\n\n_Seb._ Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by\nand by it will strike.\n\n_Gon._ Sir,--\n\n_Seb._ One: tell.                                                   15\n\n_Gon._ When every grief is entertain'd that's offer'd,\nComes to the entertainer--\n\n_Seb._ A dollar.\n\n_Gon._ Dolour comes to him, indeed: you have spoken\ntruer than you purposed.                                            20\n\n_Seb._ You have taken it wiselier than I meant you should.\n\n_Gon._ Therefore, my lord,--\n\n_Ant._ Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue!\n\n_Alon._ I prithee, spare.\n\n_Gon._ Well, I have done: but yet,--                                25\n\n_Seb._ He will be talking.\n\n_Ant._ Which, of he or Adrian, for a good wager, first\nbegins to crow?\n\n_Seb._ The old cock.\n\n_Ant._ The cockerel.                                                30\n\n_Seb._ Done. The wager?\n\n_Ant._ A laughter.\n\n_Seb._ A match!\n\n_Adr._ Though this island seem to be desert,--\n\n_Seb._ Ha, ha, ha!--So, you're paid.                                35\n\n_Adr._ Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible,--\n\n_Seb._ Yet,--\n\n_Adr._ Yet,--\n\n_Ant._ He could not miss't.\n\n_Adr._ It must needs be of subtle, tender and delicate              40\ntemperance.\n\n_Ant._ Temperance was a delicate wench.\n\n_Seb._ Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly delivered.\n\n_Adr._ The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.\n\n_Seb._ As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.                         45\n\n_Ant._ Or as 'twere perfumed by a fen.\n\n_Gon._ Here is every thing advantageous to life.\n\n_Ant._ True; save means to live.\n\n_Seb._ Of that there's none, or little.\n\n_Gon._ How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!               50\n\n_Ant._ The ground, indeed, is tawny.\n\n_Seb._ With an eye of green in't.\n\n_Ant._ He misses not much.\n\n_Seb._ No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.\n\n_Gon._ But the rarity of it is,--which is indeed almost             55\nbeyond credit,--\n\n_Seb._ As many vouched rarities are.\n\n_Gon._ That our garments, being, as they were, drenched\nin the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness and glosses,\nbeing rather new-dyed than stained with salt water.                 60\n\n_Ant._ If but one of his pockets could speak, would it\nnot say he lies?\n\n_Seb._ Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.\n\n_Gon._ Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when\nwe put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the king's        65\nfair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis.\n\n_Seb._ 'Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in\nour return.\n\n_Adr._ Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon\nto their queen.                                                     70\n\n_Gon._ Not since widow Dido's time.\n\n_Ant._ Widow! a pox o' that! How came that widow\nin? widow Dido!\n\n_Seb._ What if he had said 'widower Aeneas' too? Good\nLord, how you take it!                                              75\n\n_Adr._ 'Widow Dido' said you? you make me study of\nthat: she was of Carthage, not of Tunis.\n\n_Gon._ This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.\n\n_Adr._ Carthage?\n\n_Gon._ I assure you, Carthage.                                      80\n\n_Seb._ His word is more than the miraculous harp; he\nhath raised the wall, and houses too.\n\n_Ant._ What impossible matter will he make easy next?\n\n_Seb._ I think he will carry this island home in his\npocket, and give it his son for an apple.                           85\n\n_Ant._ And, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring\nforth more islands.\n\n_Gon._ Ay.\n\n_Ant._ Why, in good time.\n\n_Gon._ Sir, we were talking that our garments seem now              90\nas fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of your\ndaughter, who is now queen.\n\n_Ant._ And the rarest that e'er came there.\n\n_Seb._ Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido.\n\n_Ant._ O, widow Dido! ay, widow Dido.                               95\n\n_Gon._ Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day I\nwore it? I mean, in a sort.\n\n_Ant._ That sort was well fished for.\n\n_Gon._ When I wore it at your daughter's marriage?\n\n_Alon._ You cram these words into mine ears against                100\nThe stomach of my sense. Would I had never\nMarried my daughter there! for, coming thence,\nMy son is lost, and, in my rate, she too.\nWho is so far from Italy removed\nI ne'er again shall see her. O thou mine heir                      105\nOf Naples and of Milan, what strange fish\nHath made his meal on thee?\n\n_Fran._                   Sir, he may live:\nI saw him beat the surges under him,\nAnd ride upon their backs; he trod the water.\nWhose enmity he flung aside, and breasted                          110\nThe surge most swoln that met him; his bold head\n'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd\nHimself with his good arms in lusty stroke\nTo the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd,\nAs stooping to relieve him: I not doubt                            115\nHe came alive to land.\n\n_Alon._              No, no, he's gone.\n\n_Seb._ Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss,\nThat would not bless our Europe with your daughter,\nBut rather lose her to an African;\nWhere she, at least, is banish'd from your eye,                    120\nWho hath cause to wet the grief on't.\n\n_Alon._                             Prithee, peace.\n\n_Seb._ You were kneel'd to, and importuned otherwise,\nBy all of us; and the fair soul herself\nWeigh'd between loathness and obedience, at\nWhich end o' the beam should bow. We have lost your son,           125\nI fear, for ever: Milan and Naples have\nMore widows in them of this business' making\nThan we bring men to comfort them:\nThe fault's your own.\n\n_Alon._             So is the dear'st o' the loss.\n\n_Gon._ My lord Sebastian,                                          130\nThe truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,\nAnd time to speak it in: you rub the sore,\nWhen you should bring the plaster.\n\n_Seb._                           Very well.\n\n_Ant._ And most chirurgeonly.\n\n_Gon._ It is foul weather in us all, good sir,                     135\nWhen you are cloudy.\n\n_Seb._             Foul weather?\n\n_Ant._                         Very foul.\n\n_Gon._ Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,--\n\n_Ant._ He'ld sow't with nettle-seed.\n\n_Seb._                             Or docks, or mallows.\n\n_Gon._ And were the king on't, what would I do?\n\n_Seb._ 'Scape being drunk for want of wine.                        140\n\n_Gon._ I' the commonwealth I would by contraries\nExecute all things; for no kind of traffic\nWould I admit; no name of magistrate;\nLetters should not be known; riches, poverty,\nAnd use of service, none; contract, succession,                    145\nBourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;\nNo use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;\nNo occupation; all men idle, all;\nAnd women too, but innocent and pure;\nNo sovereignty;--                                                  150\n\n_Seb._      Yet he would be king on't.\n\n_Ant._ The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the\nbeginning.\n\n_Gon._ All things in common nature should produce\nWithout sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,\nSword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,                    155\nWould I not have; but nature should bring forth,\nOf its own kind, all foison, all abundance,\nTo feed my innocent people.\n\n_Seb._ No marrying 'mong his subjects?\n\n_Ant._ None, man; all idle; whores and knaves.                     160\n\n_Gon._ I would with such perfection govern, sir,\nTo excel the golden age.\n\n_Seb._                 'Save his majesty!\n\n_Ant._ Long live Gonzalo!\n\n_Gon._                  And,--do you mark me, sir?\n\n_Alon._ Prithee, no more: thou dost talk nothing to me.\n\n_Gon._ I do well believe your highness; and did it to minister     165\noccasion to these gentlemen, who are of such sensible\nand nimble lungs that they always use to laugh at nothing.\n\n_Ant._ 'Twas you we laughed at.\n\n_Gon._ Who in this kind of merry fooling am nothing to\nyou: so you may continue, and laugh at nothing still.              170\n\n_Ant._ What a blow was there given!\n\n_Seb._ An it had not fallen flat-long.\n\n_Gon._ You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would\nlift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue in it\nfive weeks without changing.                                       175\n\n\n  _Enter ARIEL (invisible) playing solemn music._\n\n_Seb._ We would so, and then go a bat-fowling.\n\n_Ant._ Nay, good my lord, be not angry.\n\n_Gon._ No, I warrant you; I will not adventure my discretion\nso weakly. Will you laugh me asleep, for I am very\nheavy?                                                             180\n\n_Ant._ Go sleep, and hear us.\n            [_All sleep except Alon., Seb., and Ant._\n\n_Alon._ What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes\nWould, with themselves, shut up my thoughts: I find\nThey are inclined to do so.\n\n_Seb._                    Please you, sir,\nDo not omit the heavy offer of it:                                 185\nIt seldom visits sorrow; when it doth,\nIt is a comforter.\n\n_Ant._           We two, my lord,\nWill guard your person while you take your rest,\nAnd watch your safety.\n\n_Alon._              Thank you.--Wondrous heavy.\n                                [_Alonso sleeps. Exit Ariel._\n\n_Seb._ What a strange drowsiness possesses them!                   190\n\n_Ant._ It is the quality o' the climate.\n\n_Seb._                                 Why\nDoth it not then our eyelids sink? I find not\nMyself disposed to sleep.\n\n_Ant._                  Nor I; my spirits are nimble.\nThey fell together all, as by consent;\nThey dropp'd, as by a thunder-stroke. What might,                  195\nWorthy Sebastian?--O, what might?--No more:--\nAnd yet methinks I see it in thy face,\nWhat thou shouldst be: the occasion speaks thee; and\nMy strong imagination sees a crown\nDropping upon thy head.\n\n_Seb._                What, art thou waking?                       200\n\n_Ant._ Do you not hear me speak?\n\n_Seb._                         I do; and surely\nIt is a sleepy language, and thou speak'st\nOut of thy sleep. What is it thou didst say?\nThis is a strange repose, to be asleep\nWith eyes wide open; standing, speaking, moving,                   205\nAnd yet so fast asleep.\n\n_Ant._                Noble Sebastian,\nThou let'st thy fortune sleep--die, rather; wink'st\nWhiles thou art waking.\n\n_Seb._                Thou dost snore distinctly;\nThere's meaning in thy snores.\n\n_Ant._ I am more serious than my custom: you                       210\nMust be so too, if heed me; which to do\nTrebles thee o'er.\n\n_Seb._           Well, I am standing water.\n\n_Ant._ I'll teach you how to flow.\n\n_Seb._                           Do so: to ebb\nHereditary sloth instructs me.\n\n_Ant._                       O,\nIf you but knew how you the purpose cherish                        215\nWhiles thus you mock it! how, in stripping it,\nYou more invest it! Ebbing men, indeed,\nMost often do so near the bottom run\nBy their own fear or sloth.\n\n_Seb._                    Prithee, say on:\nThe setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim                        220\nA matter from thee; and a birth, indeed,\nWhich throes thee much to yield.\n\n_Ant._                         Thus, sir:\nAlthough this lord of weak remembrance, this,\nWho shall be of as little memory\nWhen he is earth'd, hath here almost persuaded,--                  225\nFor he's a spirit of persuasion, only\nProfesses to persuade,--the king his son's alive,\n'Tis as impossible that he's undrown'd\nAs he that sleeps here swims.\n\n_Seb._                      I have no hope\nThat he's undrown'd.\n\n_Ant._             O, out of that 'no hope'                        230\nWhat great hope have you! no hope that way is\nAnother way so high a hope that even\nAmbition cannot pierce a wink beyond,\nBut doubt discovery there. Will you grant with me\nThat Ferdinand is drown'd?\n\n_Seb._                   He's gone.\n\n_Ant._                            Then, tell me,                   235\nWho's the next heir of Naples?\n\n_Seb._                       Claribel.\n\n_Ant._ She that is queen of Tunis; she that dwells\nTen leagues beyond man's life; she that from Naples\nCan have no note, unless the sun were post,--\nThe man i' the moon's too slow,--till new-born chins               240\nBe rough and razorable; she that from whom\nWe all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,\nAnd by that destiny, to perform an act\nWhereof what's past is prologue; what to come,\nIn yours and my discharge.\n\n_Seb._                   What stuff is this! How say you?          245\n'Tis true, my brother's daughter's queen of Tunis;\nSo is she heir of Naples; 'twixt which regions\nThere is some space.\n\n_Ant._             A space whose every cubit\nSeems to cry out, \"How shall that Claribel\nMeasure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis,                          250\nAnd let Sebastian wake.\" Say, this were death\nThat now hath seized them; why, they were no worse\nThan now they are. There be that can rule Naples\nAs well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate\nAs amply and unnecessarily                                         255\nAs this Gonzalo; I myself could make\nA chough of as deep chat. O, that you bore\nThe mind that I do! what a sleep were this\nFor your advancement! Do you understand me?\n\n_Seb._ Methinks I do.\n\n_Ant._              And how does your content                      260\nTender your own good fortune?\n\n_Seb._                      I remember\nYou did supplant your brother Prospero.\n\n_Ant._                                True:\nAnd look how well my garments sit upon me;\nMuch feater than before: my brother's servants\nWere then my fellows; now they are my men.                         265\n\n_Seb._ But for your conscience.\n\n_Ant._ Ay, sir; where lies that? if 'twere a kibe,\n'Twould put me to my slipper: but I feel not\nThis deity in my bosom: twenty consciences,\nThat stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be they,                   270\nAnd melt, ere they molest! Here lies your brother,\nNo better than the earth he lies upon,\nIf he were that which now he's like, that's dead;\nWhom I, with this obedient steel, three inches of it,\nCan lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus,                   275\nTo the perpetual wink for aye might put\nThis ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who\nShould not upbraid our course. For all the rest,\nThey'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk;\nThey'll tell the clock to any business that                        280\nWe say befits the hour.\n\n_Seb._                Thy case, dear friend,\nShall be my precedent; as thou got'st Milan,\nI'll come by Naples. Draw thy sword: one stroke\nShall free thee from the tribute which thou payest;\nAnd I the king shall love thee.\n\n_Ant._                        Draw together;                       285\nAnd when I rear my hand, do you the like,\nTo fall it on Gonzalo.\n\n_Seb._               O, but one word.      [_They talk apart._\n\n  _Re-enter ARIEL invisible._\n\n_Ari._ My master through his art foresees the danger\nThat you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth,--\nFor else his project dies,--to keep them living.                   290\n                            [_Sings in Gonzalo's ear._\n\nWhile you here do snoring lie,\nOpen-eyed conspiracy\n    His time doth take.\nIf of life you keep a care,\nShake off slumber, and beware:                                     295\n    Awake, awake!\n\n_Ant._ Then let us both be sudden.\n\n_Gon._                           Now, good angels\nPreserve the king!                          [_They wake._\n\n_Alon._ Why, how now? ho, awake!--Why are you drawn?\nWherefore this ghastly looking?\n\n_Gon._                        What's the matter?                   300\n\n_Seb._ Whiles we stood here securing your repose,\nEven now, we heard a hollow burst of bellowing\nLike bulls, or rather lions: did't not wake you?\nIt struck mine ear most terribly.\n\n_Alon._                         I heard nothing.\n\n_Ant._ O, 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear,                   305\nTo make an earthquake! sure, it was the roar\nOf a whole herd of lions.\n\n_Alon._                 Heard you this, Gonzalo?\n\n_Gon._ Upon mine honour, sir, I heard a humming,\nAnd that a strange one too, which did awake me:\nI shaked you, sir, and cried: as mine eyes open'd,                 310\nI saw their weapons drawn:--there was a noise,\nThat's verily. 'Tis best we stand upon our guard,\nOr that we quit this place: let's draw our weapons.\n\n_Alon._ Lead off this ground; and let's make further search\nFor my poor son.\n\n_Gon._         Heavens keep him from these beasts!                 315\nFor he is, sure, i' th' island.\n\n_Alon._                       Lead away.\n\n_Ari._ Prospero my lord shall know what I have done:\nSo, king, go safely on to seek thy son.    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n  Notes: II, 1.\n\n  3: _hint_] _stint_ Warburton.\n  5: _masters_] _master_ Johnson. _mistress_ Steevens conj.\n    _master's_ Edd. conj.\n  6: _of woe_] om. Steevens conj.\n  11-99: Marked as interpolated by Pope.\n  11: _visitor_] _'viser_ Warburton.\n  _him_] om. Rowe.\n  15: _one_] F1. _on_ F2 F3 F4.\n  16: _entertain'd ... Comes_] Capell. _entertain'd, That's offer'd\n    comes_] Ff. Printed as prose by Pope.\n  27: _of he_] Ff. _of them, he_ Pope. _or he_ Collier MS.\n    See note (VII).\n  35: Seb. _Ha, ha, ha!--So you're paid_] Theobald. Seb. _Ha, ha, ha!_\n    Ant. _So you'r paid_ Ff. Ant. _So you've paid_ Capell.\n  81, 82: Seb. _His ... too_] Edd. Ant. _His ... harp._\n    Seb. _He ... too_ Ff.\n  88: _Ay._] I. Ff. _Ay?_ Pope.\n  96: _sir, my doublet_] F1. _my doublet, sir_ F2 F3 F4.\n  113: _stroke_] F1 F2 F3. _strokes_ F4.\n  124: _Weigh'd_] _Sway'd_ S. Verges conj.\n  _at_] _as_ Collier MS.]\n  125: _o' the_] _the_ Pope.\n  _should_] _she'd_ Malone.\n  129: _The fault's your own_] _the fault's your own_ (at the end\n    of 128) Capell. _the fault's Your own_ Malone.\n  137: _plantation_] _the plantation_ Rowe. _the planting_ Hanmer.\n  139: _on't_] _of it_ Hanmer.\n  144: _riches, poverty_] _wealth, poverty_ Pope. _poverty, riches_\n    Capell.\n  145: _contract, succession_] _succession, Contract_ Malone conj.\n    _succession, None_ id. conj.\n  146: _none_] _olives, none_ Hanmer.\n  157: _its_] F3 F4. _it_ F1 F2. See note (VIII).\n  162: _'Save_] F1 F2 F3. _Save_ F4. _God save_ Edd. conj.\n  175: Enter ... invisible ... music.] Malone. Enter Ariel, playing\n    solemn music. Ff. om. Pope. [Solemn music. Capell.\n  181: [All sleep ... Ant.] Stage direction to the same effect,\n    first inserted by Capell.\n  182-189: Text as in Pope. In Ff. the lines begin _Would ... I find\n    ... Do not ... It seldom ... We two ... While ... Thank._\n  189: [Exit Ariel] Malone.\n  192: _find not_ Pope. _find Not_ Ff.\n  211: _so too, if heed_] _so too, if you heed_ Rowe.\n    _so, if you heed_ Pope.\n  212: _Trebles thee o'er_] _Troubles thee o'er_ Pope.\n    _Troubles thee not_ Hanmer.\n  222: _throes_] Pope. _throwes_ F1 F2 F3. _throws_ F4.\n  _Thus, sir_] _Why then thus Sir_ Hanmer.\n  226: _he's_] _he'as_ Hanmer. _he_ Johnson conj.\n  227: _Professes to persuade_] om. Steevens.\n  234: _doubt_] _drops_ Hanmer. _doubts_ Capell.\n  241: _she that from whom_] Ff. _she from whom_ Rowe.\n    _she for whom_ Pope. _she from whom coming_ Singer.\n    _she that--from whom?_ Spedding conj. See note (IX).\n  242: _all_] om. Pope.\n  243: _And ... to perform_] _May ... perform_ Pope. _And by that\n    destin'd to perform_ Musgrave conj. _(And that by destiny)\n    to perform_ Staunton conj.\n  244: _is_] F1. _in_ F2 F3 F4.\n  245: _In_] _Is_ Pope.\n  250: _to_] F1. _by_ F2 F3 F4.\n  _Keep_] _Sleep_ Johnson conj.\n  251: See note (X).\n  267: _'twere_] _it were_ Singer.\n  267-271: Pope ends the lines with _that? ... slipper ... bosom ...\n    Milan ... molest ... brother._\n  267: See note (XI).\n  269: _twenty_] _Ten_ Pope.\n  270: _stand_] _stood_ Hanmer.\n  _candied_] _Discandy'd_ Upton conj.\n  271: _And melt_] _Would melt_ Johnson conj. _Or melt_ id. conj.\n  273, 274: _like, that's dead; Whom I, with_] _like, whom I With_\n    Steevens (Farmer conj.).\n  275: _whiles_] om. Pope.\n  277: _morsel_] _Moral_ Warburton.\n  280, 281: _business ... hour._] _hour ... business._ Farmer conj.\n  282: _precedent_] Pope. _president_ Ff.\n  _O_] om. Pope.\n  [They talk apart] Capell.\n  Re-enter Ariel invisible.] Capell. Enter Ariel with music and\n    song. Ff.\n  289: _you, his friend,_] _these, his friends_ Steevens\n    (Johnson conj.).\n  289, 290: _friend ... project dies ... them_] _friend ... projects\n    dies ... you_ Hanmer. _friend ... projects die ... them_\n    Malone conj. _friend ... project dies ... thee_ Dyce.\n  298: [They wake.] Rowe.\n  300: _this_] _thus_ Collier MS.\n  307: _Gonzalo_] om. Pope.\n  312: _verily_] _verity_ Pope.\n  _upon our guard_] _on guard_ Pope.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\n_Another part of the island._\n\n  _Enter CALIBAN with a burden of wood. A noise of thunder heard._\n\n_Cal._ All the infections that the sun sucks up\nFrom bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him\nBy inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me,\nAnd yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,\nFright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire,                   5\nNor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark\nOut of my way, unless he bid 'em: but\nFor every trifle are they set upon me;\nSometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me,\nAnd after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which                       10\nLie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount\nTheir pricks at my footfall; sometime am I\nAll wound with adders, who with cloven tongues\nDo hiss me into madness.\n\n  _Enter TRINCULO._\n\n                        Lo, now, lo!\nHere comes a spirit of his, and to torment me                       15\nFor bringing wood in slowly. I'll fall flat;\nPerchance he will not mind me.\n\n_Trin._ Here's neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any\nweather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it sing i'\nthe wind: yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks               20\nlike a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should\nthunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head:\nyond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. What\nhave we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he\nsmells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind      25\nof not of the newest Poor-John. A strange fish! Were I\nin England now, as once I was, and had but this fish\npainted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of\nsilver: there would this monster make a man; any strange\nbeast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to          30\nrelieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead\nIndian. Legged like a man! and his fins like arms! Warm\no' my troth! I do now let loose my opinion; hold it no\nlonger: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately\nsuffered by a thunderbolt. [_Thunder._] Alas, the storm is come     35\nagain! my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there\nis no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with\nstrange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the\nstorm be past.\n\n  _Enter STEPHANO, singing: a bottle in his hand._\n\n_Ste._ I shall no more to sea, to sea,                              40\n                Here shall I die a-shore,--\n\nThis is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man's funeral: well,\nhere's my comfort.                                  [_Drinks._\n\n\n[_Sings._ The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,\n                       The gunner, and his mate,                    45\n               Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,\n                   But none of us cared for Kate;\n                   For she had a tongue with a tang,\n                   Would cry to a sailor, Go hang!\n               She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch;        50\n               Yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch.\n                   Then, to sea, boys, and let her go hang!\n\nThis is a scurvy tune too: but here's my comfort. [_Drinks._\n\n_Cal._ Do not torment me:--O!\n\n_Ste._ What's the matter? Have we devils here? Do                   55\nyou put tricks upon 's with savages and men of Ind, ha? I\nhave not scaped drowning, to be afeard now of your four\nlegs; for it hath been said, As proper a man as ever went\non four legs cannot make him give ground; and it shall be\nsaid so again, while Stephano breathes at's nostrils.               60\n\n_Cal._ The spirit torments me:--O!\n\n_Ste._ This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who\nhath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil should he\nlearn our language? I will give him some relief, if it be\nbut for that. If I can recover him, and keep him tame, and          65\nget to Naples with him, he's a present for any emperor that\never trod on neat's-leather.\n\n_Cal._ Do not torment me, prithee; I'll bring my wood\nhome faster.\n\n_Ste._ He's in his fit now, and does not talk after the             70\nwisest. He shall taste of my bottle: if he have never drunk\nwine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If I can recover\nhim, and keep him tame, I will not take too much for\nhim; he shall pay for him that hath him, and that soundly.\n\n_Cal._ Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon, I          75\nknow it by thy trembling: now Prosper works upon thee.\n\n_Ste._ Come on your ways; open your mouth; here is that\nwhich will give language to you, cat: open your mouth; this\nwill shake your shaking, I can tell you, and that soundly:\nyou cannot tell who's your friend: open your chaps again.           80\n\n_Trin._ I should know that voice: it should be--but he\nis drowned; and these are devils:--O defend me!\n\n_Ste._ Four legs and two voices,--a most delicate monster!\nHis forward voice, now, is to speak well of his friend;\nhis backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract.        85\nIf all the wine in my bottle will recover him, I will help\nhis ague. Come:--Amen! I will pour some in thy other\nmouth.\n\n_Trin._ Stephano!\n\n_Ste._ Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy, mercy!                  90\nThis is a devil, and no monster: I will leave him; I have\nno long spoon.\n\n_Trin._ Stephano! If thou beest Stephano, touch me,\nand speak to me; for I am Trinculo,--be not afeard,--thy\ngood friend Trinculo.                                               95\n\n_Ste._ If thou beest Trinculo, come forth: I'll pull thee\nby the lesser legs: if any be Trinculo's legs, these are they.\nThou art very Trinculo indeed! How earnest thou to be\nthe siege of this moon-calf? can he vent Trinculos?\n\n_Trin._ I took him to be killed with a thunder-stroke.             100\nBut art thou not drowned, Stephano? I hope, now, thou\nart not drowned. Is the storm overblown? I hid me\nunder the dead moon-calf's gaberdine for fear of the storm.\nAnd art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano, two Neapolitans\nscaped!                                                            105\n\n_Ste._ Prithee, do not turn me about; my stomach is not\nconstant.\n\n_Cal._ [_aside_] These be fine things, an if they be not sprites.\nThat's a brave god, and bears celestial liquor:\nI will kneel to him.                                               110\n\n_Ste._ How didst thou 'scape? How camest thou hither?\nswear, by this bottle, how thou camest hither. I escaped\nupon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved o'erboard, by\nthis bottle! which I made of the bark of a tree with mine\nown hands, since I was cast ashore.                                115\n\n_Cal._ I'll swear, upon that bottle, to be thy true subject;\nfor the liquor is not earthly.\n\n_Ste._ Here; swear, then, how thou escapedst.\n\n_Trin._ Swum ashore, man, like a duck: I can swim\nlike a duck, I'll be sworn.                                        120\n\n_Ste._ Here, kiss the book. Though thou canst swim\nlike a duck, thou art made like a goose.\n\n_Trin._ O Stephano, hast any more of this?\n\n_Ste._ The whole butt, man: my cellar is in a rock by\nthe sea-side, where my wine is hid. How now, moon-calf!            125\nhow does thine ague?\n\n_Cal._ Hast thou not dropp'd from heaven?\n\n_Ste._ Out o' the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man\ni' the moon when time was.\n\n_Cal._ I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee:               130\nMy mistress show'd me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush.\n\n_Ste._ Come, swear to that; kiss the book: I will furnish\nit anon with new contents: swear.\n\n_Trin._ By this good light, this is a very shallow monster!\nI afeard of him! A very weak monster! The                          135\nman i' the moon! A most poor credulous monster! Well\ndrawn, monster, in good sooth!\n\n_Cal._ I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island;\nAnd I will kiss thy foot: I prithee, be my god.\n\n_Trin._ By this light, a most perfidious and drunken               140\nmonster! when's god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle.\n\n_Cal._ I'll kiss thy foot; I'll swear myself thy subject.\n\n_Ste._ Come on, then; down, and swear.\n\n_Trin._ I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed\nmonster. A most scurvy monster! I could find in                    145\nmy heart to beat him,--\n\n_Ste._ Come, kiss.\n\n_Trin._ But that the poor monster's in drink: an abominable\nmonster!\n\n_Cal._ I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries;   150\nI'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.\nA plague upon the tyrant that I serve!\nI'll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee,\nThou wondrous man.\n\n_Trin._ A most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder                155\nof a poor drunkard!\n\n_Cal._ I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow;\nAnd I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts;\nShow thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how\nTo snare the nimble marmoset; I'll bring thee                      160\nTo clustering filberts, and sometimes I'll get thee\nYoung scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?\n\n_Ste._ I prithee now, lead the way, without any more\ntalking. Trinculo, the king and all our company else being\ndrowned, we will inherit here: here; bear my bottle: fellow        165\nTrinculo, we'll fill him by and by again.\n\n_Cal. sings drunkenly._] Farewell, master; farewell, farewell!\n\n_Trin._ A howling monster; a drunken monster!\n\n_Cal._ No more dams I'll make for fish;\n                Nor fetch in firing                                170\n                At requiring;\n             Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish:\n                'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban\n                Has a new master:--get a new man.\n\nFreedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day,              175\nfreedom!\n\n_Ste._ O brave monster! Lead the way.    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n  Notes: II, 2.\n\n  4: _nor_] F1 F2. _not_ F3 F4.\n  15: _and_] _now_ Pope. _sent_ Edd. conj. (so Dryden).\n  21: _foul_] _full_ Upton conj.\n  35: [Thunder] Capell.\n  38: _dregs_] _drench_ Collier MS.\n  40: SCENE III. Pope.\n  [a bottle in his hand] Capell.]\n  46: _and Marian_] _Mirian_ Pope.\n  56: _savages_] _salvages_ Ff.\n  60: _at's nostrils_] Edd. _at 'nostrils_ F1. _at nostrils_ F2 F3 F4.\n    _at his nostrils_ Pope.\n  78: _you, cat_] _you Cat_ Ff. _a cat_ Hanmer. _your cat_ Edd. conj.\n  84: _well_] F1 om. F2 F3 F4.\n  115, 116: Steevens prints as verse, _I'll ... thy True ... earthly._\n  118: _swear, then, how thou escapedst_] _swear then: how escapedst\n    thou?_ Pope.\n  119: _Swum_] _Swom_ Ff.\n  131: _and thy dog, and thy bush_] _thy dog and bush_ Steevens.\n  133: _new_] F1. _the new_ F2 F3 F4.\n  135: _weak_] F1. _shallow_ F2 F3 F4.\n  138: _island_] F1. _isle_ F2 F3 F4.\n  150-154, 157-162, printed as verse by Pope (after Dryden).\n  162: _scamels_] _shamois_ Theobald. _seamalls, stannels_ id. conj.\n  163: Ste.] F1. Cal. F2 F3 F4.\n  165: Before _here; bear my bottle_ Capell inserts [To Cal.].\n    See note (XII).\n  172: _trencher_] Pope (after Dryden). _trenchering_ Ff.\n  175: _hey-day_] Rowe. _high-day_ Ff.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\n\n_Before PROSPERO'S cell._\n\n  _Enter FERDINAND, bearing a log._\n\n_Fer._ There be some sports are painful, and their labour\nDelight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness\nAre nobly undergone, and most poor matters\nPoint to rich ends. This my mean task\nWould be as heavy to me as odious, but                               5\nThe mistress which I serve quickens what's dead,\nAnd makes my labours pleasures: O, she is\nTen times more gentle than her father's crabbed.\nAnd he's composed of harshness. I must remove\nSome thousands of these logs, and pile them up,                     10\nUpon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress\nWeeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness\nHad never like executor. I forget:\nBut these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,\nMost busy lest, when I do it.\n\n  _Enter MIRANDA; and PROSPERO at a distance, unseen._\n\n_Mir._                  Alas, now, pray you,                        15\nWork not so hard: I would the lightning had\nBurnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd to pile!\nPray, set it down, and rest you: when this burns,\n'Twill weep for having wearied you. My father\nIs hard at study; pray, now, rest yourself;                         20\nHe's safe for these three hours.\n\n_Fer._                         O most dear mistress,\nThe sun will set before I shall discharge\nWhat I must strive to do.\n\n_Mir._                  If you'll sit down,\nI'll bear your logs the while: pray, give me that;\nI'll carry it to the pile.\n\n_Fer._                   No, precious creature;                     25\nI had rather crack my sinews, break my back,\nThan you should such dishonour undergo,\nWhile I sit lazy by.\n\n_Mir._             It would become me\nAs well as it does you: and I should do it\nWith much more ease; for my good will is to it,                     30\nAnd yours it is against.\n\n_Pros._                Poor worm, thou art infected!\nThis visitation shows it.\n\n_Mir._                  You look wearily.\n\n_Fer._ No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me\nWhen you are by at night. I do beseech you,--\nChiefly that I might set it in my prayers,--                        35\nWhat is your name?\n\n_Mir._           Miranda. --O my father,\nI have broke your hest to say so!\n\n_Fer._                          Admired Miranda!\nIndeed the top of admiration! worth\nWhat's dearest to the world! Full many a lady\nI have eyed with best regard, and many a time                       40\nThe harmony of their tongues hath into bondage\nBrought my too diligent ear: for several virtues\nHave I liked several women; never any\nWith so full soul, but some defect in her\nDid quarrel with the noblest grace she owed,                        45\nAnd put it to the foil: but you, O you,\nSo perfect and so peerless, are created\nOf every creature's best!\n\n_Mir._             I do not know\nOne of my sex; no woman's face remember,\nSave, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen                      50\nMore that I may call men than you, good friend,\nAnd my dear father: how features are abroad,\nI am skilless of; but, by my modesty,\nThe jewel in my dower, I would not wish\nAny companion in the world but you;                                 55\nNor can imagination form a shape,\nBesides yourself, to like of. But I prattle\nSomething too wildly, and my father's precepts\nI therein do forget.\n\n_Fer._             I am, in my condition,\nA prince, Miranda; I do think, a king;                              60\nI would, not so!--and would no more endure\nThis wooden slavery than to suffer\nThe flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:\nThe very instant that I saw you, did\nMy heart fly to your service; there resides,                        65\nTo make me slave to it; and for your sake\nAm I this patient log-man.\n\n_Mir._                   Do you love me?\n\n_Fer._ O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,\nAnd crown what I profess with kind event,\nIf I speak true! if hollowly, invert                                70\nWhat best is boded me to mischief! I,\nBeyond all limit of what else i' the world,\nDo love, prize, honour you.\n\n_Mir._                    I am a fool\nTo weep at what I am glad of.\n\n_Pros._                     Fair encounter\nOf two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace                     75\nOn that which breeds between 'em!\n\n_Fer._                          Wherefore weep you?\n\n_Mir._ At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer\nWhat I desire to give; and much less take\nWhat I shall die to want. But this is trifling;\nAnd all the more it seeks to hide itself,                           80\nThe bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!\nAnd prompt me, plain and holy innocence!\nI am your wife, if you will marry me;\nIf not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow\nYou may deny me; but I'll be your servant,                          85\nWhether you will or no.\n\n_Fer._                My mistress, dearest;\nAnd I thus humble ever.\n\n_Mir._                My husband, then?\n\n_Fer._ Ay, with a heart as willing\nAs bondage e'er of freedom: here's my hand.\n\n_Mir._ And mine, with my heart in't: and now farewell               90\nTill half an hour hence.\n\n_Fer._                 A thousand thousand!\n\n    [_Exeunt Fer. and Mir. severally._\n\n_Pros._ So glad of this as they I cannot be,\nWho are surprised withal; but my rejoicing\nAt nothing can be more. I'll to my book;\nFor yet, ere supper-time, must I perform                            95\nMuch business appertaining.    [_Exit._\n\n\n  Notes: III, 1.\n\n  1: _and_] _but_ Pope.\n  2: _sets_] Rowe. _set_ Ff.\n  4, 5: _my ... odious_] _my mean task would be As heavy to me as\n    'tis odious_ Pope.\n  9: _remove_] _move_ Pope.\n  14: _labours_] _labour_ Hanmer.\n  15: _Most busy lest_] F1. _Most busy least_ F2 F3 F4. _Least busy_\n    Pope. _Most busie-less_ Theobald._ Most busiest_ Holt White conj.\n    _Most busy felt_ Staunton. _Most busy still_ Staunton conj.\n    _Most busy-blest_ Collier MS. _Most busiliest_ Bullock conj.\n  _Most busy lest, when I do_ (_doe_ F1 F2 F3) _it_] _Most busy when\n    least I do it_ Brae conj. _Most busiest when idlest_ Spedding\n    conj. _Most busy left when idlest_ Edd. conj. See note (XIII).\n  at a distance, unseen] Rowe.\n  17: _you are_] F1. _thou art_ F2 F3 F4.\n  31: _it is_] _is it_ Steevens conj. (ed. 1, 2, and 3). om. Steevens\n    (ed. 4) (Farmer conj.).\n  34, 35: _I do beseech you,--Chiefly_] _I do beseech you Chiefly_ Ff.\n  59: _I therein do_] _I do_ Pope. _Therein_ Steevens.\n  62: _wooden_] _wodden_ F1.\n  _than to_] _than I would_ Pope.\n  72: _what else_] _aught else_ Malone conj. (withdrawn).\n  80: _seeks_] _seekd_ F3 F4.\n  88: _as_] F1. _so_ F2 F3 F4.\n  91: _severally_] Capell.\n  93: _withal_] Theobald. _with all_ Ff.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\n_Another part of the island._\n\n  _Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO._\n\n_Ste._ Tell not me;--when the butt is out, we will drink\nwater; not a drop before: therefore bear up, and board 'em.\nServant-monster, drink to me.\n\n_Trin._ Servant-monster! the folly of this island! They\nsay there's but five upon this isle: we are three of them; if        5\nth' other two be brained like us, the state totters.\n\n_Ste._ Drink, servant-monster, when I bid thee: thy eyes\nare almost set in thy head.\n\n_Trin._ Where should they be set else? he were a brave\nmonster indeed, if they were set in his tail.                       10\n\n_Ste._ My man-monster hath drowned his tongue in sack:\nfor my part, the sea cannot drown me; I swam, ere I could\nrecover the shore, five-and-thirty leagues off and on. By\nthis light, thou shalt be my lieutenant, monster, or my\nstandard.                                                           15\n\n_Trin._ Your lieutenant, if you list; he's no standard.\n\n_Ste._ We'll not run, Monsieur Monster.\n\n_Trin._ Nor go neither; but you'll lie, like dogs, and\nyet say nothing neither.\n\n_Ste._ Moon-calf, speak once in thy life, if thou beest a           20\ngood moon-calf.\n\n_Cal._ How does thy honour? Let me lick thy shoe.\nI'll not serve him, he is not valiant.\n\n_Trin._ Thou liest, most ignorant monster: I am in case\nto justle a constable. Why, thou debauched fish, thou, was          25\nthere ever man a coward that hath drunk so much sack as\nI to-day? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being but half a\nfish and half a monster?\n\n_Cal._ Lo, how he mocks me! wilt thou let him, my lord?\n\n_Trin._ 'Lord,' quoth he! That a monster should be                  30\nsuch a natural!\n\n_Cal._ Lo, lo, again! bite him to death, I prithee.\n\n_Ste._ Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head: if you\nprove a mutineer,--the next tree! The poor monster's my\nsubject, and he shall not suffer indignity.                         35\n\n_Cal._ I thank my noble lord. Wilt thou be pleased to\nhearken once again to the suit I made to thee?\n\n_Ste._ Marry, will I: kneel and repeat it; I will stand,\nand so shall Trinculo.\n\n  _Enter ARIEL, invisible._\n\n_Cal._ As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a           40\nsorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island.\n\n_Ari._ Thou liest.\n\n_Cal._           Thou liest, thou jesting monkey, thou:\nI would my valiant master would destroy thee!\nI do not lie.\n\n_Ste._ Trinculo, if you trouble him any more in's tale, by          45\nthis hand, I will supplant some of your teeth.\n\n_Trin._ Why, I said nothing.\n\n_Ste._ Mum, then, and no more. Proceed.\n\n_Cal._ I say, by sorcery he got this isle;\nFrom me he got it. If thy greatness will                            50\nRevenge it on him,--for I know thou darest,\nBut this thing dare not,--\n\n_Ste._ That's most certain.\n\n_Cal._ Thou shalt be lord of it, and I'll serve thee.\n\n_Ste._ How now shall this be compassed? Canst thou                  55\nbring me to the party?\n\n_Cal._ Yea, yea, my lord: I'll yield him thee asleep,\nWhere thou mayst knock a nail into his head.\n\n_Ari._ Thou liest; thou canst not.\n\n_Cal._ What a pied ninny's this! Thou scurvy patch!                 60\nI do beseech thy Greatness, give him blows,\nAnd take his bottle from him: when that's gone,\nHe shall drink nought but brine; for I'll not show him\nWhere the quick freshes are.\n\n_Ste._ Trinculo, run into no further danger: interrupt the          65\nmonster one word further, and, by this hand, I'll turn my\nmercy out o' doors, and make a stock-fish of thee.\n\n_Trin._ Why, what did I? I did nothing. I'll go farther\noff.\n\n_Ste._ Didst thou not say he lied?                                  70\n\n_Ari._ Thou liest.\n\n_Ste._ Do I so? take thou that. [_Beats him._] As you\nlike this, give me the lie another time.\n\n_Trin._ I did not give the lie. Out o' your wits, and\nhearing too? A pox o' your bottle! this can sack and                75\ndrinking do. A murrain on your monster, and the devil\ntake your fingers!\n\n_Cal._ Ha, ha, ha!\n\n_Ste._ Now, forward with your tale. --Prithee, stand farther\noff.                                                                80\n\n_Cal._ Beat him enough: after a little time,\nI'll beat him too.\n\n_Ste._ Stand farther. Come, proceed.\n\n_Cal._ Why, as I told thee, 'tis a custom with him\nI' th' afternoon to sleep: there thou mayst brain him,\nHaving first seized his books; or with a log                        85\nBatter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,\nOr cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember\nFirst to possess his books; for without them\nHe's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not\nOne spirit to command: they all do hate him                         90\nAs rootedly as I. Burn but his books.\nHe has brave utensils,--for so he calls them,--\nWhich, when he has a house, he'll deck withal.\nAnd that most deeply to consider is\nThe beauty of his daughter; he himself                              95\nCalls her a nonpareil: I never saw a woman,\nBut only Sycorax my dam and she;\nBut she as far surpasseth Sycorax\nAs great'st does least.\n\n_Ste._                Is it so brave a lass?\n\n_Cal._ Ay, lord; she will become thy bed, I warrant,               100\nAnd bring thee forth brave brood.\n\n_Ste._ Monster, I will kill this man: his daughter and I\nwill be king and queen,--save our Graces!--and Trinculo\nand thyself shall be viceroys. Dost thou like the plot,\nTrinculo?                                                          105\n\n_Trin._ Excellent.\n\n_Ste._ Give me thy hand: I am sorry I beat thee; but,\nwhile thou livest, keep a good tongue in thy head.\n\n_Cal._ Within this half hour will he be asleep:\nWilt thou destroy him then?\n\n_Ste._                    Ay, on mine honour.                      110\n\n_Ari._ This will I tell my master.\n\n_Cal._ Thou makest me merry; I am full of pleasure:\nLet us be jocund: will you troll the catch\nYou taught me but while-ere?\n\n_Ste._ At thy request, monster, I will do reason, any              115\nreason. --Come on. Trinculo, let us sing.      [_Sings._\n\n  Flout 'em and scout 'em, and scout 'em and flout 'em;\n  Thought is free.\n\n_Cal._ That's not the tune.\n\n  [_Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe._\n\n_Ste._ What is this same?                                          120\n\n_Trin._ This is the tune of our catch, played by the picture\nof Nobody.\n\n_Ste._ If thou beest a man, show thyself in thy likeness:\nif thou beest a devil, take't as thou list.\n\n_Trin._ O, forgive me my sins!                                     125\n\n_Ste._ He that dies pays all debts: I defy thee. Mercy\nupon us!\n\n_Cal._ Art thou afeard?\n\n_Ste._ No, monster, not I.\n\n_Cal._ Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,                  130\nSounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.\nSometimes a thousand twangling instruments\nWill hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,\nThat, if I then had waked after long sleep,\nWill make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,                   135\nThe clouds methought would open, and show riches\nReady to drop upon me; that, when I waked,\nI cried to dream again.\n\n_Ste._ This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I\nshall have my music for nothing.                                   140\n\n_Cal._ When Prospero is destroyed.\n\n_Ste._ That shall be by and by: I remember the story.\n\n_Trin._ The sound is going away; let's follow it, and\nafter do our work.\n\n_Ste._ Lead, monster; we'll follow. I would I could see            145\nthis taborer; he lays it on.\n\n_Trin._ Wilt come? I'll follow, Stephano.    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n  Notes: III, 2.\n\n  SCENE II. Another...] Theobald. The other... Pope.\n  Enter ...] Enter S. and T. reeling, Caliban following with a bottle.\n    Capell. Enter C. S. and T. with a bottle. Johnson.]\n  8: _head_] F1. _heart_ F2 F3 F4.\n  13, 14: _on. By this light, thou_] _on, by this light thou_ Ff.\n    _on, by this light. --Thou_ Capell.\n  25: _debauched_] _debosh'd_ Ff.\n  37: _to the suit I made to thee_] _the suit I made thee_ Steevens,\n    who prints all Caliban's speeches as verse.\n  60: Johnson conjectured that this line was spoken by Stephano.\n  68: _farther_] F1 _no further_ F2 F3 F4.\n  72: [Beats him.] Rowe.\n  84: _there_] _then_ Collier MS.\n  89: _nor_] _and_ Pope.\n  93: _deck_] _deck't_ Hanmer.\n  96: _I never saw a woman_] _I ne'er saw woman_ Pope.\n  99: _great'st does least_] _greatest does the least_ Rowe.\n  115, 116:] Printed as verse in Ff.\n  115: _any_] F1. _and_ F2 F3 F4.\n  117: _scout 'em, and scout 'em_] Pope. _cout 'em and skowt 'em_ Ff.\n  125: _sins_] _sin_ F4.\n  132: _twangling_] _twanging_ Pope.\n  133: _sometime_] F1. _sometimes_ F2 F3 F4.\n  137: _that_] om. Pope.\n  147: Trin. _Will come? I'll follow, Stephano_] Trin. _Wilt come?_\n    Ste. _I'll follow._ Capell. Ste. _... Wilt come?_\n    Trin. _I'll follow, Stephano._ Ritson conj.\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\n\n_Another part of the island._\n\n  _Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO,\n  and others._\n\n_Gon._ By'r lakin, I can go no further, sir;\nMy old bones ache: here's a maze trod, indeed,\nThrough forth-rights and meanders! By your patience,\nI needs must rest me.\n\n_Alon._             Old lord, I cannot blame thee,\nWho am myself attach'd with weariness,                               5\nTo the dulling of my spirits: sit down, and rest.\nEven here I will put off my hope, and keep it\nNo longer for my flatterer: he is drown'd\nWhom thus we stray to find; and the sea mocks\nOur frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.                     10\n\n_Ant._ [_Aside to Seb._] I am right glad that he's so out of hope.\nDo not, for one repulse, forego the purpose\nThat you resolved to effect.\n\n_Seb._ [_Aside to Ant._] The next advantage\nWill we take throughly.\n\n_Ant._ [_Aside to Seb._] Let it be to-night;\nFor, now they are oppress'd with travel, they                       15\nWill not, nor cannot, use such vigilance\nAs when they are fresh.\n\n_Seb._ [_Aside to Ant._] I say, to-night: no more.\n\n  [_Solemn and strange music._\n\n_Alon._ What harmony is this?--My good friends, hark!\n\n_Gon._ Marvellous sweet music!\n\n  _Enter PROSPERO above, invisible. Enter several strange Shapes,\n  bringing in a banquet: they dance about it with gentle actions of\n  salutation; and, inviting the King, &c. to eat, they depart._\n\n_Alon._ Give us kind keepers, heavens!--What were these?            20\n\n_Seb._ A living drollery. Now I will believe\nThat there are unicorns; that in Arabia\nThere is one tree, the phoenix' throne; one phoenix\nAt this hour reigning there.\n\n_Ant._                     I'll believe both;\nAnd what does else want credit, come to me,                         25\nAnd I'll be sworn 'tis true: travellers ne'er did lie,\nThough fools at home condemn 'em.\n\n_Gon._                          If in Naples\nI should report this now, would they believe me?\nIf I should say, I saw such islanders,--\nFor, certes, these are people of the island,--                      30\nWho, though they are of monstrous shape, yet, note,\nTheir manners are more gentle-kind than of\nOur human generation you shall find\nMany, nay, almost any.\n\n_Pros._              [_Aside_] Honest lord,\nThou hast said well; for some of you there present                  35\nAre worse than devils.\n\n_Alon._              I cannot too much muse\nSuch shapes, such gesture, and such sound, expressing--\nAlthough they want the use of tongue--a kind\nOf excellent dumb discourse.\n\n_Pros._                    [_Aside_] Praise in departing.\n\n_Fran._ They vanish'd strangely.\n\n_Seb._                         No matter, since                     40\nThey have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs.--\nWill't please you taste of what is here?\n\n_Alon._                                Not I.\n\n_Gon._ Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,\nWho would believe that there were mountaineers\nDew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em             45\nWallets of flesh? or that there were such men\nWhose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find\nEach putter-out of five for one will bring us\nGood warrant of.\n\n_Alon._        I will stand to, and feed,\nAlthough my last: no matter, since I feel                           50\nThe best is past. Brother, my lord the duke,\nStand to, and do as we.\n\n  _Thunder and lightning. Enter ARIEL, like a harpy; claps his\n  wings upon the table; and, with a quaint device, the banquet\n  vanishes._\n\n_Ari._ You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,--\nThat hath to instrument this lower world\nAnd what is in't,--the never-surfeited sea                          55\nHath caused to belch up you; and on this island,\nWhere man doth not inhabit,--you 'mongst men\nBeing most unfit to live. I have made you mad;\nAnd even with such-like valour men hang and drown\nTheir proper selves.    [_Alon., Seb. &c. draw their swords._\n                   You fools! I and my fellows                      60\nAre ministers of Fate: the elements,\nOf whom your swords are temper'd, may as well\nWound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs\nKill the still-closing waters, as diminish\nOne dowle that's in my plume: my fellow-ministers                   65\nAre like invulnerable. If you could hurt,\nYour swords are now too massy for your strengths,\nAnd will not be uplifted. But remember,--\nFor that's my business to you,--that you three\nFrom Milan did supplant good Prospero;                              70\nExposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,\nHim and his innocent child: for which foul deed\nThe powers, delaying, not forgetting, have\nIncensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,\nAgainst your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,                        75\nThey have bereft; and do pronounce by me:\nLingering perdition--worse than any death\nCan be at once--shall step by step attend\nYou and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from,--\nWhich here, in this most desolate isle, else falls                  80\nUpon your heads,--is nothing but heart-sorrow\nAnd a clear life ensuing.\n\n  _He vanishes in thunder; then, to soft music, enter the Shapes\n  again, and dance, with mocks and mows, and carrying out the\n  table._\n\n_Pros._ Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou\nPerform'd, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring:\nOf my instruction hast thou nothing bated                           85\nIn what thou hadst to say: so, with good life\nAnd observation strange, my meaner ministers\nTheir several kinds have done. My high charms work,\nAnd these mine enemies are all knit up\nIn their distractions: they now are in my power;                    90\nAnd in these fits I leave them, while I visit\nYoung Ferdinand,--whom they suppose is drown'd,--\nAnd his and mine loved darling.    [_Exit above._\n\n_Gon._ I' the name of something holy, sir, why stand you\nIn this strange stare?\n\n_Alon._              O, it is monstrous, monstrous!                 95\nMethought the billows spoke, and told me of it;\nThe winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,\nThat deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced\nThe name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass.\nTherefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded; and                        100\nI'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded,\nAnd with him there lie mudded.    [_Exit._\n\n_Seb._                       But one fiend at a time,\nI'll fight their legions o'er.\n\n_Ant._                       I'll be thy second.\n\n    [_Exeunt Seb. and Ant._\n\n_Gon._ All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,\nLike poison given to work a great time after,                      105\nNow 'gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you,\nThat are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly,\nAnd hinder them from what this ecstasy\nMay now provoke them to.\n\n_Adr._                 Follow, I pray you.    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n  Notes: III, 3.\n\n  2: _ache_] _ake_ F2 F3 F4. _akes_ F1.\n  3: _forth-rights_] F2 F3 F4. _fourth rights_ F1.\n  8: _flatterer_] F1. _flatterers_ F2 F3 F4.\n  17: Prospero above] Malone. Prosper on the top Ff. See note (XIV).\n  20: _were_] F1 F2 F3. _are_ F4.\n  26: _'tis true_] _to 't_ Steevens conj.\n  _did lie_] _lied_ Hanmer.\n  29: _islanders_] F2 F3 F4. _islands_ F1.\n  32: _gentle-kind_] Theobald. _gentle, kind_ Ff. _gentle kind_ Rowe.\n  36: _muse_] F1 F2 F3. _muse_, F4. _muse_; Capell.\n  48: _of five for one_] Ff. _on five for one_ Theobald.\n    _of one for five_ Malone, (Thirlby conj.) See note (XV).\n  49-51: _I will ... past_] Mason conjectured that these lines formed\n    a rhyming couplet.\n  53: SCENE IV. Pope.\n  54: _instrument_] _instruments_ F4.\n  56: _belch up you_] F1 F2 F3. _belch you up_ F4. _belch up_ Theobald.\n  60: [... draw their swords] Hanmer.\n  65: _dowle_] _down_ Pope.]\n  _plume_] Rowe. _plumbe_ F1 F2 F3. _plumb_ F4.\n  67: _strengths_] _strength_ F4.\n  79: _wraths_] _wrath_ Theobald.\n  81: _heart-sorrow_] Edd. _hearts-sorrow_ Ff. _heart's-sorrow_ Rowe.\n    _heart's sorrow_ Pope.\n  82: mocks] mopps Theobald.\n  86: _life_] _list_ Johnson conj.\n  90: _now_] om. Pope.\n  92: _whom_] _who_ Hanmer.\n  93: _mine_] _my_ Rowe.\n  [Exit above] Theobald.]\n  94: _something holy, sir_,] _something, holy Sir_, F4.\n  99: _bass_] Johnson. _base_ Ff.\n  106: _do_] om. Pope.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\n\n_Before PROSPERO'S cell._\n\n  _Enter PROSPERO, FERDINAND, and MIRANDA._\n\n_Pros._ If I have too austerely punish'd you,\nYour compensation makes amends; for I\nHave given you here a third of mine own life,\nOr that for which I live; who once again\nI tender to thy hand: all thy vexations                              5\nWere but my trials of thy love, and thou\nHast strangely stood the test: here, afore Heaven,\nI ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand,\nDo not smile at me that I boast her off,\nFor thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise,                   10\nAnd make it halt behind her.\n\n_Fer._                     I do believe it\nAgainst an oracle.\n\n_Pros._          Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition\nWorthily purchased, take my daughter: but\nIf thou dost break her virgin-knot before                           15\nAll sanctimonious ceremonies may\nWith full and holy rite be minister'd,\nNo sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall\nTo make this contract grow; but barren hate,\nSour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew                         20\nThe union of your bed with weeds so loathly\nThat you shall hate it both: therefore take heed,\nAs Hymen's lamps shall light you.\n\n_Fer._                          As I hope\nFor quiet days, fair issue and long life,\nWith such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den,                       25\nThe most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion\nOur worser Genius can, shall never melt\nMine honour into lust, to take away\nThe edge of that day's celebration\nWhen I shall think, or Phoebus' steeds are founder'd,               30\nOr Night kept chain'd below.\n\n_Pros._                    Fairly spoke.\nSit, then, and talk with her; she is thine own.\nWhat, Ariel! my industrious servant, Ariel!\n\n  _Enter ARIEL._\n\n_Ari._ What would my potent master? here I am.\n\n_Pros._ Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service               35\nDid worthily perform; and I must use you\nIn such another trick. Go bring the rabble,\nO'er whom I give thee power, here to this place:\nIncite them to quick motion; for I must\nBestow upon the eyes of this young couple                           40\nSome vanity of mine art: it is my promise,\nAnd they expect it from me.\n\n_Ari._                    Presently?\n\n_Pros._ Ay, with a twink.\n\n_Ari._ Before you can say, 'come,' and 'go,'\n            And breathe twice, and cry, 'so, so,'                   45\n            Each one, tripping on his toe,\n            Will be here with mop and mow.\n            Do you love me, master? no?\n\n_Pros._ Dearly, my delicate Ariel. Do not approach\nTill thou dost hear me call.\n\n_Ari._                     Well, I conceive.    [_Exit._            50\n\n_Pros._ Look thou be true; do not give dalliance\nToo much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw\nTo the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious,\nOr else, good night your vow!\n\n_Fer._                      I warrant you, sir;\nThe white cold virgin snow upon my heart                            55\nAbates the ardour of my liver.\n\n_Pros._                      Well.\nNow come, my Ariel! bring a corollary,\nRather than want a spirit: appear, and pertly!\nNo tongue! all eyes! be silent.                  [_Soft music._\n\n    _Enter IRIS._\n\n  _Iris._ Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas                 60\n    Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease;\n    Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,\n    And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep;\n    Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,\n    Which spongy April at thy best betrims,                         65\n    To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom-groves,\n    Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,\n    Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard;\n    And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard,\n    Where thou thyself dost air;--the queen o' the sky,             70\n    Whose watery arch and messenger am I,\n    Bids thee leave these; and with her sovereign grace,\n    Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,\n    To come and sport:--her peacocks fly amain:\n    Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.                         75\n\n    _Enter CERES._\n\n  _Cer._ Hail, many-colour'd messenger, that ne'er\n    Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;\n    Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers\n    Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers;\n    And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown                    80\n    My bosky acres and my unshrubb'd down,\n    Rich scarf to my proud earth;--why hath thy queen\n    Summon'd me hither, to this short-grass'd green?\n\n  _Iris._ A contract of true love to celebrate;\n    And some donation freely to estate                              85\n    On the blest lovers.\n\n  _Cer._             Tell me, heavenly bow,\n    If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,\n    Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot\n    The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,\n    Her and her blind boy's scandal'd company                       90\n    I have forsworn.\n\n  _Iris._        Of her society\n    Be not afraid: I met her Deity\n    Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son\n    Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done\n    Some wanton charm upon this man and maid,                       95\n    Whose vows are, that no bed-right shall be paid\n    Till Hymen's torch be lighted: but in vain;\n    Mars's hot minion is returned again;\n    Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows,\n    Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows,          100\n    And be a boy right out.\n\n  _Cer._                High'st queen of state,\n    Great Juno, comes; I know her by her gait.\n\n    _Enter JUNO._\n\n  _Juno._ How does my bounteous sister? Go with me\n    To bless this twain, that they may prosperous be,\n    And honour'd in their issue.         [_They sing:_             105\n\n  _Juno._ Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,\n            Long continuance, and increasing,\n            Hourly joys be still upon you!\n            Juno sings her blessings on you.\n\n  _Cer._  Earth's increase, foison plenty,                         110\n            Barns and garners never empty;\n            Vines with clustering bunches growing;\n            Plants with goodly burthen bowing;\n            Spring come to you at the farthest\n            In the very end of harvest!                            115\n            Scarcity and want shall shun you;\n            Ceres' blessing so is on you.\n\n_Fer._ This is a most majestic vision, and\nHarmonious charmingly. May I be bold\nTo think these spirits?\n\n_Pros._               Spirits, which by mine art                   120\nI have from their confines call'd to enact\nMy present fancies.\n\n_Fer._            Let me live here ever;\nSo rare a wonder'd father and a wife\nMakes this place Paradise.\n\n    [_Juno and Ceres whisper, and send Iris on employment._\n\n_Pros._                  Sweet, now, silence!\nJuno and Ceres whisper seriously;                                  125\nThere's something else to do: hush, and be mute,\nOr else our spell is marr'd.\n\n  _Iris._ You nymphs, call'd Naiads, of the windring brooks,\n            With your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks,\n            Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land      130\n            Answer your summons; Juno does command:\n            Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate\n            A contract of true love; be not too late.\n\n    _Enter certain Nymphs._\n\n            You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,\n            Come hither from the furrow, and be merry:             135\n            Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on,\n            And these fresh nymphs encounter every one\n            In country footing.\n\n    _Enter certain Reapers, properly habited: they join with the\n    Nymphs in a graceful dance; towards the end whereof PROSPERO\n    starts suddenly, and speaks; after which, to a strange, hollow,\n    and confused noise, they heavily vanish._\n\n_Pros._ [_Aside_] I had forgot that foul conspiracy\nOf the beast Caliban and his confederates                          140\nAgainst my life: the minute of their plot\nIs almost come. [_To the Spirits._] Well done! avoid; no more!\n\n_Fer._ This is strange: your father's in some passion\nThat works him strongly.\n\n_Mir._                 Never till this day\nSaw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd.                       145\n\n_Pros._ You do look, my son, in a moved sort,\nAs if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.\nOur revels now are ended. These our actors,\nAs I foretold you, were all spirits, and\nAre melted into air, into thin air:                                150\nAnd, like the baseless fabric of this vision,\nThe cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,\nThe solemn temples, the great globe itself,\nYea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,\nAnd, like this insubstantial pageant faded,                        155\nLeave not a rack behind. We are such stuff\nAs dreams are made on; and our little life\nIs rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;\nBear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled:\nBe not disturb'd with my infirmity:                                160\nIf you be pleased, retire into my cell,\nAnd there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,\nTo still my beating mind.\n\n_Fer._ _Mir._           We wish your peace.    [_Exeunt._\n\n_Pros._ Come with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel: come.\n\n  _Enter ARIEL._\n\n_Ari._ Thy thoughts I cleave to. What's thy pleasure?              165\n\n_Pros._                                             Spirit,\nWe must prepare to meet with Caliban.\n\n_Ari._ Ay, my commander: when I presented Ceres,\nI thought to have told thee of it; but I fear'd\nLest I might anger thee.\n\n_Pros._ Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?           170\n\n_Ari._ I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;\nSo full of valour that they smote the air\nFor breathing in their faces; beat the ground\nFor kissing of their feet; yet always bending\nTowards their project. Then I beat my tabor;                       175\nAt which, like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears,\nAdvanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses\nAs they smelt music: so I charm'd their ears,\nThat, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through\nTooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns,           180\nWhich enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them\nI' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,\nThere dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake\nO'erstunk their feet.\n\n_Pros._             This was well done, my bird.\nThy shape invisible retain thou still:                             185\nThe trumpery in my house, go bring it hither,\nFor stale to catch these thieves.\n\n_Ari._                          I go, I go.    [_Exit._\n\n_Pros._ A devil, a born devil, on whose nature\nNurture can never stick; on whom my pains,\nHumanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;                         190\nAnd as with age his body uglier grows,\nSo his mind cankers. I will plague them all,\nEven to roaring.\n\n  _Re-enter ARIEL, loaden with glistering apparel, &c._\n\nCome, hang them on this line.\n\n  _PROSPERO and ARIEL remain, invisible. Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO,\n  and TRINCULO, all wet._\n\n_Cal._ Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not\nHear a foot fall: we now are near his cell.                        195\n\n_Ste._ Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless\nfairy, has done little better than played the Jack with us.\n\n_Trin._ Monster, I do smell all horse-piss; at which my\nnose is in great indignation.\n\n_Ste._ So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I should               200\ntake a displeasure against you, look you,--\n\n_Trin._ Thou wert but a lost monster.\n\n_Cal._ Good my lord, give me thy favour still.\nBe patient, for the prize I'll bring thee to\nShall hoodwink this mischance: therefore speak softly.             205\nAll's hush'd as midnight yet.\n\n_Trin._ Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool,--\n\n_Ste._ There is not only disgrace and dishonour in that,\nmonster, but an infinite loss.\n\n_Trin._ That's more to me than my wetting: yet this is             210\nyour harmless fairy, monster.\n\n_Ste._ I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears for\nmy labour.\n\n_Cal._ Prithee, my king, be quiet. See'st thou here,\nThis is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter.                215\nDo that good mischief which may make this island\nThine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,\nFor aye thy foot-licker.\n\n_Ste._ Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody\nthoughts.                                                          220\n\n_Trin._ O King Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano!\nlook what a wardrobe here is for thee!\n\n_Cal._ Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.\n\n_Trin._ O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery.\nO King Stephano!                                                   225\n\n_Ste._ Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I'll\nhave that gown.\n\n_Trin._ Thy Grace shall have it.\n\n_Cal._ The dropsy drown this fool! what do you mean\nTo dote thus on such luggage? Let's alone,                         230\nAnd do the murder first: if he awake,\nFrom toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches,\nMake us strange stuff.\n\n_Ste._ Be you quiet, monster. Mistress line, is not this\nmy jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line: now, jerkin,          235\nyou are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin.\n\n_Trin._ Do, do: we steal by line and level, an't like your\nGrace.\n\n_Ste._ I thank thee for that jest; here's a garment for't:\nwit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country.       240\n'Steal by line and level' is an excellent pass of pate;\nthere's another garment for't.\n\n_Trin._ Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers,\nand away with the rest.\n\n_Cal._ I will have none on't: we shall lose our time,              245\nAnd all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes\nWith foreheads villanous low.\n\n_Ste._ Monster, lay-to your fingers: help to bear this\naway where my hogshead of wine is, or I'll turn you out\nof my kingdom: go to, carry this.                                  250\n\n_Trin._ And this.\n\n_Ste._ Ay, and this.\n\n  _A noise of hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits, in shape of\n  dogs and hounds, and hunt them about, PROSPERO and ARIEL setting\n  them on._\n\n_Pros._ Hey, Mountain, hey!\n\n_Ari._ Silver! there it goes, Silver!\n\n_Pros._ Fury, fury! there, Tyrant, there! hark, hark!              255\n                        [_Cal., Ste., and Trin. are driven out._\n\nGo charge my goblins that they grind their joints\nWith dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews\nWith aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them\nThen pard or cat o' mountain.\n\n_Ari._                      Hark, they roar!\n\n_Pros._ Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour                   260\nLie at my mercy all mine enemies:\nShortly shall all my labours end, and thou\nShalt have the air at freedom: for a little\nFollow, and do me service.    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n  Notes: IV, 1.\n\n  3: _a third_] _a thread_ Theobald. _the thread_ Williams conj.\n  4: _who_] _whom_ Pope.\n  7: _test_] F1. _rest_ F2 F3 F4.\n  9: _off_] F2 F3 F4. _of_ F1.\n  11: _do_] om. Pope.\n  13: _gift_] Rowe. _guest_ Ff.\n  14: _but_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.\n  25: _'tis_] _is_ Capell.\n  30: _Phoebus'_] _Phoebus_ F1. _Phoedus_ F2 F3. _Phoeduus_ F4.\n  34: SCENE II. Pope.\n  41: _vanity_] _rarity_ S. Walker conj.\n  48: _no_?] _no_. Rowe.\n  53: _abstemious_] _abstenious_ F1.\n  60: SCENE III. A MASQUE. Pope.]\n  _thy_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4.\n  64: _pioned_] _pionied_ Warburton. _peonied_ Steevens.\n  _twilled_] _tulip'd_ Rowe. _tilled_ Capell (Holt conj.). _lilied_\n    Steevens.]\n  66: _broom-groves_] _brown groves_ Hanmer.\n  68: _pole-clipt_] _pale-clipt_ Hanmer.\n  72: After this line Ff. have the stage direction, '_Juno descends._'\n  74: _her_] Rowe. _here_ Ff.\n  83: _short-grass'd_] F3 F4. _short gras'd_ F1 F2. _short-grass_ Pope.\n  96: _bed-right_] _bed-rite_ Singer.\n  101: _High'st_] _High_ Pope.\n  102: Enter JUNO] om. Ff.\n  110: Cer.] Theobald. om. Ff.\n  _foison_] F1 _and foison_ F2 F3 F4.\n  114: _Spring_] _Rain_ Collier MS.\n  119: _charmingly_] _charming lay_ Hanmer. _charming lays_ Warburton.\n    _Harmoniously charming_ Steevens conj.\n  121: _from their_] F1. _from all their_ F2 F3 F4.\n  123: _wife_] F1 (var.). Rowe. _wise_ F1 (var.) F2 F3 F4.\n  124: _Makes_] _make_ Pope.\n  _sweet, now, silence_] _now, silence, sweet_ Hanmer.\n  124: In Ff. the stage direction [Juno, &c. follows line 127.\n    Capell made the change.\n  128: _windring_] _winding_ Rowe. _wand'ring_ Steevens.\n  129: _sedged_] _sedge_ Collier MS.\n  136: _holiday_] _holly day_ F1 F2 F3. _holy-day_ F4.\n  139: SCENE IV. Pope.\n  143: _This is_] _This'_ (for This 's) S. Walker conj.]\n  _strange_] _most strange_ Hanmer.\n  145: Ff put a comma after _anger_. Warburton omitted it.\n  146: _do_] om. Pope. See note (XVI).\n  151: _this_] F1. _their_ F2 F3 F4. _th' air visions_ Warburton.\n  156: _rack_] F3 F4. _racke_ F1 F2. _track_ Hanmer. _wreck_ Dyce\n    (Malone conj.).\n  163: _your_] F1 F2 F3. _you_ F4.\n  164: _I thank thee, Ariel: come._] _I thank you:--Ariel, come._\n    Theobald.\n  169: _Lest_] F4. _Least_ F1 F2 F3.\n  170: _Say again_] _Well, say again_ Capell.\n  180: _furzes_] Rowe. _firzes_ Ff.\n  181: _shins_] _skins_ Warburton conj. (note, V. 1. p. 87).\n  182: _filthy-mantled_] _filthy mantled_ Ff. _filth-ymantled_\n    Steevens conj.\n  184: _feet_] _fear_ Spedding conj.\n  190: _all, all_] _are all_ Malone conj.\n  193: _them on_ Rowe. _on them_ Ff.\n  Prospero ... invisible. Theobald, Capell. om. Ff.\n  194: SCENE V. Pope.\n  230: _Let's alone_] _Let's along_ Theobald. _Let it alone_ Hanmer.\n    _Let 't alone_ Collier. See note (XVII).\n  246: _to apes_] om. _to_ Pope.\n  255: Stage direction added by Theobald.\n  256: _they_] F1 F3 F4. _thou_ F2.\n  261: _Lie_] Rowe. _lies_ Ff.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\n\n_Before the cell of Prospero._\n\n  _Enter PROSPERO in his magic robes, and ARIEL._\n\n_Pros._ Now does my project gather to a head:\nMy charms crack not; my spirits obey; and time\nGoes upright with his carriage. How's the day?\n\n_Ari._ On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord,\nYou said our work should cease.\n\n_Pros._                       I did say so,                          5\nWhen first I raised the tempest. Say, my spirit,\nHow fares the king and's followers?\n\n_Ari._                            Confined together\nIn the same fashion as you gave in charge,\nJust as you left them; all prisoners, sir,\nIn the line-grove which weather-fends your cell;                    10\nThey cannot budge till your release. The king,\nHis brother, and yours, abide all three distracted,\nAnd the remainder mourning over them,\nBrimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly\nHim that you term'd, sir, \"The good old lord, Gonzalo;\"             15\nHis tears run down his beard, like winter's drops\nFrom eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em,\nThat if you now beheld them, your affections\nWould become tender.\n\n_Pros._            Dost thou think so, spirit?\n\n_Ari._ Mine would, sir, were I human.\n\n_Pros._                             And mine shall.                 20\nHast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling\nOf their afflictions, and shall not myself,\nOne of their kind, that relish all as sharply,\nPassion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?\nThough with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,             25\nYet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury\nDo I take part: the rarer action is\nIn virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,\nThe sole drift of my purpose doth extend\nNot a frown further. Go release them, Ariel:                        30\nMy charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore,\nAnd they shall be themselves.\n\n_Ari._                      I'll fetch them, sir.    [_Exit._\n\n_Pros._ Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;\nAnd ye that on the sands with printless foot\nDo chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him                         35\nWhen he comes back; you demi-puppets that\nBy moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,\nWhereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime\nIs to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice\nTo hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid--                           40\nWeak masters though ye be--I have bedimm'd\nThe noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds.\nAnd 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault\nSet roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder\nHave I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak                      45\nWith his own bolt; the strong-based promontory\nHave I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up\nThe pine and cedar: graves at my command\nHave waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth\nBy my so potent art. But this rough magic                           50\nI here abjure; and, when I have required\nSome heavenly music,--which even now I do,--\nTo work mine end upon their senses, that\nThis airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,\nBury it certain fathoms in the earth,                               55\nAnd deeper than did ever plummet sound\nI'll drown my book.                    [_Solemn music._\n\n  _Re-enter ARIEL before: then ALONSO, with a frantic gesture,\n  attended by GONZALO; SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO in like manner,\n  attended by ADRIAN and FRANCISCO: they all enter the circle\n  which PROSPERO had made, and there stand charmed; which PROSPERO\n  observing, speaks:_\n\nA solemn air, and the best comforter\nTo an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,\nNow useless, boil'd within thy skull! There stand,                  60\nFor you are spell-stopp'd.\nHoly Gonzalo, honourable man,\nMine eyes, even sociable to the show of thine,\nFall fellowly drops. The charm dissolves apace;\nAnd as the morning steals upon the night,                           65\nMelting the darkness, so their rising senses\nBegin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle\nTheir clearer reason. O good Gonzalo,\nMy true preserver, and a loyal sir\nTo him thou follow'st! I will pay thy graces                        70\nHome both in word and deed. Most cruelly\nDidst thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter:\nThy brother was a furtherer in the act.\nThou art pinch'd for't now, Sebastian. Flesh and blood,\nYou, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition,                       75\nExpell'd remorse and nature; who, with Sebastian,--\nWhose inward pinches therefore are most strong,--\nWould here have kill'd your king; I do forgive thee,\nUnnatural though thou art. Their understanding\nBegins to swell; and the approaching tide                           80\nWill shortly fill the reasonable shore,\nThat now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them\nThat yet looks on me, or would know me: Ariel,\nFetch me the hat and rapier in my cell:\nI will discase me, and myself present                               85\nAs I was sometime Milan: quickly, spirit;\nThou shalt ere long be free.\n\n_ARIEL sings and helps to attire him._\n\n    Where the bee sucks, there suck I:\n    In a cowslip's bell I lie;\n    There I couch when owls do cry.                                 90\n    On the bat's back I do fly\n    After summer merrily.\nMerrily, merrily shall I live now\nUnder the blossom that hangs on the bough.\n\n_Pros._ Why, that's my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee;             95\nBut yet thou shalt have freedom: so, so, so.\nTo the king's ship, invisible as thou art:\nThere shalt thou find the mariners asleep\nUnder the hatches; the master and the boatswain\nBeing awake, enforce them to this place,                           100\nAnd presently, I prithee.\n\n_Ari._ I drink the air before me, and return\nOr ere your pulse twice beat.    [_Exit._\n\n_Gon._ All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement\nInhabits here: some heavenly power guide us                        105\nOut of this fearful country!\n\n_Pros._                    Behold, sir king,\nThe wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero:\nFor more assurance that a living prince\nDoes now speak to thee, I embrace thy body;\nAnd to thee and thy company I bid                                  110\nA hearty welcome.\n\n_Alon._         Whether thou be'st he or no,\nOr some enchanted trifle to abuse me,\nAs late I have been, I not know: thy pulse\nBeats, as of flesh and blood; and, since I saw thee,\nThe affliction of my mind amends, with which,                      115\nI fear, a madness held me: this must crave--\nAn if this be at all--a most strange story.\nThy dukedom I resign, and do entreat\nThou pardon me my wrongs. --But how should Prospero\nBe living and be here?\n\n_Pros._              First, noble friend,                          120\nLet me embrace thine age, whose honour cannot\nBe measured or confined.\n\n_Gon._                 Whether this be\nOr be not, I'll not swear.\n\n_Pros._                  You do yet taste\nSome subtilties o' the isle, that will not let you\nBelieve things certain. Welcome, my friends all!                   125\n[_Aside to Seb. and Ant._]\n    But you, my brace of lords, were I so minded,\nI here could pluck his Highness' frown upon you,\nAnd justify you traitors: at this time\nI will tell no tales.\n\n_Seb._ [_Aside_]    The devil speaks in him.\n\n_Pros._                                    No.\nFor you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother                     130\nWould even infect my mouth, I do forgive\nThy rankest fault,--all of them; and require\nMy dukedom of thee, which perforce, I know,\nThou must restore.\n\n_Alon._          If thou be'st Prospero,\nGive us particulars of thy preservation;                           135\nHow thou hast met us here, who three hours since\nWere wreck'd upon this shore; where I have lost--\nHow sharp the point of this remembrance is!--\nMy dear son Ferdinand.\n\n_Pros._              I am woe for't, sir.\n\n_Alon._ Irreparable is the loss; and patience                      140\nSays it is past her cure.\n\n_Pros._                 I rather think\nYou have not sought her help, of whose soft grace\nFor the like loss I have her sovereign aid,\nAnd rest myself content.\n\n_Alon._                You the like loss!\n\n_Pros._ As great to me as late; and, supportable                   145\nTo make the dear loss, have I means much weaker\nThan you may call to comfort you, for I\nHave lost my daughter.\n\n_Alon._              A daughter?\nO heavens, that they were living both in Naples,\nThe king and queen there! that they were, I wish                   150\nMyself were mudded in that oozy bed\nWhere my son lies. When did you lose you daughter?\n\n_Pros._ In this last tempest. I perceive, these lords\nAt this encounter do so much admire,\nThat they devour their reason, and scarce think                    155\nTheir eyes do offices of truth, their words\nAre natural breath: but, howsoe'er you have\nBeen justled from your senses, know for certain\nThat I am Prospero, and that very duke\nWhich was thrust forth of Milan; who most strangely                160\nUpon this shore, where you were wreck'd, was landed,\nTo be the Lord on't. No more yet of this;\nFor 'tis a chronicle of day by day,\nNot a relation for a breakfast, nor\nBefitting this first meeting. Welcome, sir;                        165\nThis cell's my court: here have I few attendants,\nAnd subjects none abroad: pray you, look in.\nMy dukedom since you have given me again,\nI will requite you with as good a thing;\nAt least bring forth a wonder, to content ye                       170\nAs much as me my dukedom.\n\n  _Here Prospero discovers FERDINAND and MIRANDA playing at chess._\n\n_Mir._ Sweet lord, you play me false.\n\n_Fer._                              No, my dear'st love,\nI would not for the world.\n\n_Mir._ Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle,\nAnd I would call it fair play.\n\n_Alon._                      If this prove                         175\nA vision of the island, one dear son\nShall I twice lose.\n\n_Seb._            A most high miracle!\n\n_Fer._ Though the seas threaten, they are merciful;\nI have cursed them without cause.               [_Kneels._\n\n_Alon._                          Now all the blessings\nOf a glad father compass thee about!                               180\nArise, and say how thou camest here.\n\n_Mir._                             O, wonder!\nHow many goodly creatures are there here!\nHow beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,\nThat has such people in't!\n\n_Pros._                  'Tis new to thee.\n\n_Alon._ What is this maid with whom thou wast at play?             185\nYour eld'st acquaintance cannot be three hours:\nIs she the goddess that hath sever'd us,\nAnd brought us thus together?\n\n_Fer._                      Sir, she is mortal;\nBut by immortal Providence she's mine:\nI chose her when I could not ask my father                         190\nFor his advice, nor thought I had one. She\nIs daughter to this famous Duke of Milan,\nOf whom so often I have heard renown,\nBut never saw before; of whom I have\nReceived a second life; and second father                          195\nThis lady makes him to me.\n\n_Alon._                  I am hers:\nBut, O, how oddly will it sound that I\nMust ask my child forgiveness!\n\n_Pros._                      There, sir, stop:\nLet us not burthen our remembrances with\nA heaviness that's gone.\n\n_Gon._                 I have inly wept,                           200\nOr should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,\nAnd on this couple drop a blessed crown!\nFor it is you that have chalk'd forth the way\nWhich brought us hither.\n\n_Alon._                I say, Amen, Gonzalo!\n\n_Gon._ Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue                 205\nShould become kings of Naples? O, rejoice\nBeyond a common joy! and set it down\nWith gold on lasting pillars: In one voyage\nDid Claribel her husband find at Tunis,\nAnd Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife                           210\nWhere he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom\nIn a poor isle, and all of us ourselves\nWhen no man was his own.\n\n_Alon._ [_to Fer. and Mir._] Give me your hands:\nLet grief and sorrow still embrace his heart\nThat doth not wish you joy!\n\n_Gon._                    Be it so! Amen!                          215\n\n  _Re-enter ARIEL, with the _Master_ and _Boatswain_ amazedly\n  following._\n\nO, look, sir, look, sir! here is more of us:\nI prophesied, if a gallows were on land,\nThis fellow could not drown. Now, blasphemy,\nThat swear'st grace o'erboard, not an oath on shore?\nHast thou no mouth by land? What is the news?                      220\n\n_Boats._ The best news is, that we have safely found\nOur king and company; the next, our ship--\nWhich, but three glasses since, we gave out split--\nIs tight and yare and bravely rigg'd, as when\nWe first put out to sea.\n\n_Ari._ [_Aside to Pros._] Sir, all this service                    225\nHave I done since I went.\n\n_Pros._ [_Aside to Ari._] My tricksy spirit!\n\n_Alon._ These are not natural events; they strengthen\nFrom strange to stranger. Say, how came you hither?\n\n_Boats._ If I did think, sir, I were well awake,\nI'ld strive to tell you. We were dead of sleep,                    230\nAnd--how we know not--all clapp'd under hatches;\nWhere, but even now, with strange and several noises\nOf roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains,\nAnd more diversity of sounds, all horrible,\nWe were awaked; straightway, at liberty;                           235\nWhere we, in all her trim, freshly beheld\nOur royal, good, and gallant ship; our master\nCapering to eye her:--on a trice, so please you,\nEven in a dream, were we divided from them,\nAnd were brought moping hither.\n\n_Ari._ [_Aside to Pros._] Was't well done?                         240\n\n_Pros._ [_Aside to Ari._] Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free.\n\n_Alon._ This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod;\nAnd there is in this business more than nature\nWas ever conduct of: some oracle\nMust rectify our knowledge.\n\n_Pros._                   Sir, my liege,                           245\nDo not infest your mind with beating on\nThe strangeness of this business; at pick'd leisure\nWhich shall be shortly, single I'll resolve you,\nWhich to you shall seem probable, of every\nThese happen'd accidents; till when, be cheerful,                  250\nAnd think of each thing well.\n    [_Aside to Ari._] Come hither, spirit:\nSet Caliban and his companions free;\nUntie the spell. [_Exit Ariel._] How fares my gracious sir?\nThere are yet missing of your company\nSome few odd lads that you remember not.                           255\n\n  _Re-enter ARIEL, driving in CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO,\n  in their stolen apparel._\n\n_Ste._ Every man shift for all the rest, and let no man\ntake care for himself; for all is but fortune. --Coragio,\nbully-monster, coragio!\n\n_Trin._ If these be true spies which I wear in my head,\nhere's a goodly sight.                                             260\n\n_Cal._ O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed!\nHow fine my master is! I am afraid\nHe will chastise me.\n\n_Seb._             Ha, ha!\nWhat things are these, my lord Antonio?\nWill money buy 'em?\n\n_Ant._            Very like; one of them                           265\nIs a plain fish, and, no doubt, marketable.\n\n_Pros._ Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,\nThen say if they be true. This mis-shapen knave,\nHis mother was a witch; and one so strong\nThat could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,                  270\nAnd deal in her command, without her power.\nThese three have robb'd me; and this demi-devil--\nFor he's a bastard one--had plotted with them\nTo take my life. Two of these fellows you\nMust know and own; this thing of darkness I                        275\nAcknowledge mine.\n\n_Cal._          I shall be pinch'd to death.\n\n_Alon._ Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?\n\n_Seb._ He is drunk now: where had he wine?\n\n_Alon._ And Trinculo is reeling ripe: where should they\nFind this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em?--                     280\nHow camest thou in this pickle?\n\n_Trin._ I have been in such a pickle, since I saw you\nlast, that, I fear me, will never out of my bones: I shall not\nfear fly-blowing.\n\n_Seb._ Why, how now, Stephano!                                     285\n\n_Ste._ O, touch me not;--I am not Stephano, but a cramp.\n\n_Pros._ You'ld be king o' the isle, sirrah?\n\n_Ste._ I should have been a sore one, then.\n\n_Alon._ This is a strange thing as e'er I look'd on.\n                                [_Pointing to Caliban._\n\n_Pros._ He is as disproportion'd in his manners                    290\nAs in his shape. Go, sirrah, to my cell;\nTake with you your companions; as you look\nTo have my pardon, trim it handsomely.\n\n_Cal._ Ay, that I will; and I'll be wise hereafter,\nAnd seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass                       295\nWas I, to take this drunkard for a god,\nAnd worship this dull fool!\n\n_Pros._                Go to; away!\n\n_Alon._ Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.\n\n_Seb._ Or stole it, rather.    [_Exeunt Cal., Ste., and Trin._\n\n_Pros._ Sir, I invite your Highness and your train                 300\nTo my poor cell, where you shall take your rest\nFor this one night; which, part of it, I'll waste\nWith such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it\nGo quick away: the story of my life,\nAnd the particular accidents gone by                               305\nSince I came to this isle: and in the morn\nI'll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,\nWhere I have hope to see the nuptial\nOf these our dear-beloved solemnized;\nAnd thence retire me to my Milan, where                            310\nEvery third thought shall be my grave.\n\n_Alon._                              I long\nTo hear the story of your life, which must\nTake the ear strangely.\n\n_Pros._               I'll deliver all;\nAnd promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,\nAnd sail so expeditious, that shall catch\nYour royal fleet far off. [_Aside to Ari._] My Ariel, chick,       315\nThat is thy charge: then to the elements\nBe free, and fare thou well! Please you, draw near.\n    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n  Notes: V, 1.\n\n  7: _together_] om. Pope.\n  9: _all_] _all your_ Pope.\n  10: _line-grove_] _lime-grove_ Rowe.\n  11: _your_] F1 F2. _you_ F3 F4.\n  15: _sir_] om. Pope.\n  16: _run_] _runs_ F1.\n  _winter's_] _winter_ F4.]\n  23: F1 F2 put a comma after _sharply_. F3 F4 omit it.\n  24: _Passion_] _Passion'd_ Pope.\n  26: _'gainst_] Pope. _gainst_ F1 F2. _against_ F3 F4.\n  33: SCENE II. Pope.\n  37: _green sour_] _green-sward_ Douce conj.\n  46: _strong-based_] Rowe. _strong-bass'd_ Ff.\n  58: SCENE III. Pope.\n  60: _boil'd_] Pope. _boile_ F1 F2. _boil_ F3 F4.\n  62: _Holy_] _Noble_ Collier MS.\n  63: _show_] _shew_ Ff. _flow_ Collier MS.\n  64: _fellowly_] _fellow_ Pope.\n  68: _O_] _O my_ Pope. _O thou_ S. Walker conj.\n  69: _sir_] _servant_ Collier MS.\n  72: _Didst_] F3 F4. _Did_ F1 F2.\n  74: _Sebastian. Flesh and blood,_] _Sebastian, flesh and blood._\n    Theobald.\n  75: _entertain'd_] _entertaine_ F1.\n  76: _who_] Rowe. _whom_ Ff.\n  82: _lies_] F3 F4. _ly_ F1 F2.\n  83: _or_] _e'er_ Collier MS.\n  84: Theobald gives as stage direction \"Exit Ariel and returns\n    immediately.\"\n  88: _suck_] _lurk_ Theobald.\n  90: _couch_] _crowch_ F3 F4.\n  [Capell punctuates _There I couch: when owls do cry,_]\n  92: _summer_] _sun-set_ Theobald.\n  106: _Behold,_] _lo!_ Pope.\n  111: _Whether thou be'st_] _Where thou beest_ Ff. _Be'st thou_ Pope.\n    _Whe'r thou be'st_ Capell.\n  112: _trifle_] _devil_ Collier MS.\n  119: _my_] _thy_ Collier MS.\n  124: _not_] F3 F4. _nor_ F1 F2.\n  132: _fault_] _faults_ F4.\n  136: _who_] F2 F3 F4. _whom_ F1.\n  145: _and,_] _sir, and_ Capell.\n  _supportable_] F1 F2. _insupportable_ F3 F4. _portable_ Steevens.\n  148: _my_] _my only_ Hanmer.\n  _A daughter_] _Only daughter_ Hanmer. _Daughter_ Capell.\n  156: _eyes_] F1. _eye_ F2 F3 F4.\n  _their_] _these_ Capell.]\n  172: SCENE IV. Pope.\n  Here Prospero discovers...] Ff. SCENE opens to the entrance of\n    the cell. Here Prospero discovers... Theobald. Cell opens and\n    discovers... Capell.]\n  172: _dear'st_] _dearest_ Ff.\n  179: [Kneels] Theobald.\n  191: _advice_] F4. _advise_ F1 F2 F3.\n  199, 200: _remembrances with_] _remembrance with_ Pope.\n    _remembrances With_ Malone.\n  213: _When_] _Where_ Johnson conj.]\n  _and_] om. Capell.\n  216: SCENE V. Pope.\n  _sir, look, sir_] _sir, look_ F3 F4.]\n  _is_] _are_ Pope.]\n  221: _safely_] _safe_ F3 F4.\n  230: _of sleep_] _a-sleep_ Pope.\n  234: _more_] Rowe. _mo_ F1 F2. _moe_ F3 F4.\n  236: _her_] Theobald (Thirlby conj.). _our_ Ff.\n  242-245: Given to Ariel in F2 F3 F4.\n  247: _leisure_] F1. _seisure_ F2. _seizure_ F3 F4.\n  248: _Which shall be shortly, single_] Pope. _(which shall be\n    shortly single)_ Ff.\n  253: [Exit Ariel] Capell.\n  256: SCENE VI. Pope.\n  258: _Coragio_] _corasio_ F1.\n  268: _mis-shapen_] _mis-shap'd_ Pope.\n  271: _command, without her power._] _command. Without her power,_\n    anon. conj.\n  _without_] _with all_ Collier MS.\n  280: _liquor_] _'lixir_ Theobald.\n  282-284: Printed as verse in Ff.\n  289: _This is_] F1 F2. _'Tis_ F3 F4.]\n  _e'er I_] _I ever_ Hanmer.\n  [Pointing to Caliban.] Steevens.]\n  299: [Exeunt... Trin.] Capell.\n  308: _nuptial_] _nuptiall_ F1. _nuptials_ F2 F3 F4.\n  309: See note (XVIII).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE.\n\nSPOKEN BY PROSPERO.\n\nNow my charms are all o'erthrown,\nAnd what strength I have's mine own,\nWhich is most faint: now, 'tis true,\nI must be here confined by you,\nOr sent to Naples. Let me not,                                       5\nSince I have my dukedom got,\nAnd pardon'd the deceiver, dwell\nIn this bare island by your spell;\nBut release me from my bands\nWith the help of your good hands:                                   10\nGentle breath of yours my sails\nMust fill, or else my project fails,\nWhich was to please. Now I want\nSpirits to enforce, art to enchant;\nAnd my ending is despair,                                           15\nUnless I be relieved by prayer,\nWhich pierces so, that it assaults\nMercy itself, and frees all faults.\nAs you from crimes would pardon'd be,\nLet your indulgence set me free.                                    20\n\n\n\n  Notes: Epilogue.\n\n  EPILOGUE ... PROSPERO.] advancing, Capell.]\n  1: _Now_] _Now, now_ F3 F4.\n  3: _now_] _and now_ Pope.\n  13: _Now_] _For now_ Pope.\n\n\n\n\nNOTES.\n\n\nNOTE I.\n\nI. 1. 15. _What cares these roarers._ This grammatical inaccuracy, which\nescaped correction in the later folios, probably came from Shakespeare's\npen. Similar cases occur frequently, especially when the verb precedes\nits nominative. For example, _Tempest_, IV. 1. 262, 'Lies at my mercy\nall mine enemies,' and _Measure for Measure_, II. 1. 22, 'What knows the\nlaws, &c.' We correct it in those passages where the occurrence of a\nvulgarism would be likely to annoy the reader. In the mouth of a\nBoatswain it can offend no one. We therefore leave it.\n\n\nNOTE II.\n\nI. 1. 57-59. _Mercy on us!--we split, &c._ It may be doubtful whether\nthe printer of the first folio intended these broken speeches to express\n'a confused noise within.' Without question such was the author's\nmeaning. Rowe, however, and subsequent editors, printed them as part of\nGonzalo's speech. Capell was the first editor who gave the true\narrangement.\n\n\nNOTE III.\n\nI. 2. 173. _princesses._ See Mr Sidney Walker's _Shakespeare's\nVersification_, p. 243 sqq. 'The plurals of substantives ending in _s_,\nin certain instances, in _se_, _ss_, _ce_, and sometimes _ge_, ... are\nfound without the usual addition of _s_ or _es_, in pronunciation at\nleast, although in many instances the plural affix is added in printing,\nwhere the metre shows that it is not to be pronounced.'\n\nIn this and other instances, we have thought it better to trust to the\near of the reader for the rhythm than to introduce an innovation in\northography which might perplex him as to the sense. The form\n'princesses,' the use of which in Shakespeare's time was doubted by one\nof our correspondents, is found in the _History of King Leir_.\n\nRowe's reading 'princes' might be defended on the ground that the\nsentiment is general, and applicable to royal children of both sexes; or\nthat Sir Philip Sidney, in the first book of the _Arcadia_, calls Pamela\nand Philoclea 'princes.'\n\n\nNOTE IV.\n\nI. 2. 298. The metre of this line, as well as of lines 301, 302, is\ndefective, but as no mode of correction can be regarded as completely\nsatisfactory we have in accordance with our custom left the lines as\nthey are printed in the Folio. The defect, indeed, in the metre of line\n298 has not been noticed except by Hanmer, who makes a line thus:\n\n  'Do so, and after two days I'll discharge thee.'\n\nPossibly it ought to be printed thus:\n\n              'Do so; and\n  After two days\n  I will discharge thee.'\n\nThere is a broken line, also of four syllables, 253 of the same scene,\nanother of seven, 235.\n\nThere is no reason to doubt that the _words_ are as Shakespeare wrote\nthem, for, although the action of the play terminates in less than four\nhours (I. 2. 240 and V. 1. 186), yet Ariel's ministry is not to end till\nthe voyage to Naples shall be over. Prospero, too, repeats his promise,\nand marks his contentment by further shortening the time of servitude,\n'within two days,' I. 2. 420. Possibly 'Invisible' (301) should have a\nline to itself. Words thus occupying a broken line acquire a marked\nemphasis.\n\nBut the truth is that in dialogue Shakespeare's language passes so\nrapidly from verse to prose and from prose to verse, sometimes even\nhovering, as it were, over the confines, being rhythmical rather than\nmetrical, that all attempts to give regularity to the metre must be made\nwith diffidence and received with doubt.\n\n\nNOTE V.\n\nI. 2. 377, 378:\n\n  _Courtsied when you have and kiss'd_\n  _The wild waves whist._\n\nThis punctuation seems to be supported by what Ferdinand says (391,\n392):\n\n  'The music crept by me upon the waters,\n  Allaying both their fury and my passion, &c.'\n\nAt the end of the stanza we have printed _Hark, hark! ... The watch-dogs\nbark_ as that part of the burthen which 'sweet sprites bear.' The other\npart is borne by distant watch-dogs.\n\n\nNOTE VI.\n\nI. 2. 443. _I fear you have done yourself some wrong._ See this phrase\nused in a similar sense, _Measure for Measure_, I. 11. 39.\n\n\nNOTE VII.\n\nII. 1. 27. _Which, of he or Adrian._ 'Of' is found in the same\nconstruction, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, III. 2. 336,\n\n  'Now follow if thou darest to try whose right,\n  Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.'\n\n\nNOTE VIII.\n\nII. 1. 157. _Of its own kind._ There is no doubt, as Dr Guest has shewn,\nthat 'it,' which is the reading of the 1st and 2nd folios, was commonly\nused as a genitive in Shakespeare's time, as it is still in some\nprovincial dialects. 'Its,' however, was coming into use. One instance\noccurs in this play, I. 11. 95, 'in its contrary.'\n\n\nNOTE IX.\n\nII. 1. 241. _she that from whom._ Mr Spedding writes: 'The received\nemendation is not satisfactory to me. I would rather read, \"She\nthat--From whom? All were sea-swallow'd &c., i.e. from whom should she\nhave note? The report from Naples will be that all were drowned. We\nshall be the only survivors.\" The break in the construction seems to me\ncharacteristic of the speaker. But you must read the whole speech to\nfeel the effect.'\n\n\nNOTE X.\n\nII. 1. 249-251. All editors except Mr Staunton have printed in italics\n(or between inverted commas) only as far as '_Naples?_', but as '_keep_'\nis printed with a small k in the folios, they seem to sanction the\narrangement given in our text.\n\n\nNOTE XI.\n\nII. 1. 267. _Ay, sir; where lies that? if 'twere a kibe._ Mr Singer and\nMr Dyce have changed ''twere' to 'it were' for the sake of the metre.\nBut then the first part of the line must be read with a wrong emphasis.\nThe proper emphasis clearly falls on the first, third, and fifth\nsyllables, 'AY, sir; WHERE lies THAT?' See Preface.\n\n\nNOTE XII.\n\nII. 2. 165. Before 'here; bear my bottle' Capell inserts a stage\ndirection [_To Cal._], but it appears from III. 2. 62, that Trinculo was\nentrusted with the office of bottle-bearer.\n\n\nNOTE XIII.\n\nIII. 1. 15. _Most busy lest, when I do it._ As none of the proposed\nemendations can be regarded as certain, we have left the reading of F1,\nthough it is manifestly corrupt. The spelling 'doe' makes Mr Spedding's\nconjecture 'idlest' for 'I doe it' more probable.\n\n\nNOTE XIV.\n\nIII. 3. 17. The stage direction, which we have divided into two parts,\nis placed all at once in the folios after 'as when they are fresh'\n[Solemne and strange Musicke; and Prosper on the top (invisible:) Enter\n... depart].\n\nPope transferred it to follow Sebastian's words, 'I say, to night: no\nmore.'\n\n\nNOTE XV.\n\nIII. 3. 48. _Each putter out of five for one._ See Beaumont and\nFletcher, _The Noble Gentleman_, I. 1. (Vol. II. p. 261, ed. Moxon):\n'The return will give you five for one.' MARINE is about to travel.\n\n\nNOTE XVI.\n\nIV. 1. 146. _You do look, my son, in a moved sort._ Seymour suggests a\ntransposition: 'you do, my son, look in a moved sort.' This line however\ncan scarcely have come from Shakespeare's pen. Perhaps the writer who\ncomposed the Masque was allowed to join it, as best he might, to\nShakespeare's words, which re-commence at 'Our revels now are ended,'\n&c.\n\n\nNOTE XVII.\n\nIV. 1. 230. _Let's alone._ See Staunton's \"Shakespeare,\" Vol. I. p. 81,\nnote (b).\n\n\nNOTE XVIII.\n\nV. 1. 309. _Of these our dear-beloved solemnized._ The Folios have\n'belov'd'; a mode of spelling, which in this case is convenient as\nindicating the probable rhythm of the verse. We have written 'beloved,'\nin accordance with the general rule mentioned in the Preface.\n\n'Solemnized' occurs in four other verse passages of Shakespeare. It is\nthree times to be accented 'SOlemnized' and once (_Love's Labour's\nLost_, II. 1. 41) 'soLEMnized.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n           *       *       *       *\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSources:\n\nThe editors' Preface (e-text 23041) discusses the 17th- and\n18th-century editions in detail; the newer (19th-century) editions\nare simply listed by name. The following editions may appear in the\nNotes. All inset text is quoted from the Preface.\n\n  Folios:\n  F1 1623; F2 (no date given); F3 1663; F4 1685.\n    \"The five plays contained in this volume occur in the first Folio\n    in the same order, and ... were there printed for the first time.\"\n\n  Early editions:\n  Rowe 1709\n  Pope 1715\n    \"Pope was the first to indicate the _place_ of each new scene;\n    as, for instance, _Tempest_, I. 1. 'On a ship at sea.' He also\n    subdivided the scenes as given by the Folios and Rowe, making\n    a fresh scene whenever a new character entered--an arrangement\n    followed by Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson. For convenience of\n    reference to these editions, we have always recorded the\n    commencement of Pope's scenes.\"\n  Theobald 1733\n  Hanmer (\"Oxford edition\") 1744\n  Warburton 1747\n  Johnson 1765\n  Capell 1768; _also Capell's annotated copy of F2_\n  Steevens 1773\n  Malone 1790\n  Reed 1803\n\n  Later editions:\n  Singer, Knight, Cornwall, Collier, Phelps, Halliwell, Dyce, Staunton\n\n  Dryden:\n    \"_The Tempest_ was altered by Dryden and D'Avenant, and published\n    as _The Tempest; or the Enchanted Island_, in 1669. We mark the\n    emendations derived from it: 'Dryden's version.'\"\n\n\nErrors and inconsistencies:\n\n  _Re-enter Boatswain._\n    [printed BOATSWAIN in small capitals]\n  _Enter _Ariel_._\n    [printed \"Ariel\" in lower case]\n  Where my son lies. When did you lose you daughter?\n    [Text unchanged: error for \"your\"?]\n\n  [Text-critical notes]\n\n  I. 2. 135: _to 't_] om. Steevens (Farmer conj.).\n    [Here and elsewhere in the volume, body text has unspaced \"to't\"\n    while line notes have spaced \"to 't\".]\n  I. 2. 202: _o' the_] _of_ Pope.\n    [Text unchanged: body text is capitalized \"O' the\"]\n  II. 1. 88: _Ay._] I. Ff. _Ay?_ Pope.\n    [Text unchanged: apparent error for italic _I._]\n  III. 3. 17: Prospero above]\n    [Text unchanged: stage direction is after l. 19]\n\n  [Endnotes]\n\n  I: I. 1. 15.  [I. 1. 16]\n  V: 377, 378.  [376-377]\n  XVI: IV. 1. 146  [IV. 1. 147]\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "The play begins on a ship, with a ship-master and a boatswain trying to keep the ship from wrecking in a tempest. Alonso, King of Naples, is on board, as are his brothers Antonio and Sebastian. Alonso comes above deck merely to give the mariners an unnecessary order; the boatswain begs the nobles to keep below deck during the storm, so that the men can do their jobs without distraction. However, Antonio and Sebastian take the opportunity to make rude and sarcastic remarks to the good boatswain, and can do nothing to help. A spell comes over all on board, and the mariners all flee in desperation; the nobles on deck decide that all is lost without the sailors, and go below deck to say goodbye to their king. Miranda and Prospero are revealed on the island; Miranda laments that a shipful of men must have died in the tempest, but her father reassures her that none were hurt, and that the tempest was of his own doing. Upon Miranda's request, Prospero begins to tell her of his history, and how they came upon the island; Miranda was very young when she left the island, and cannot remember anyone but her father, not even her dead mother. Prospero tells her how his kingdom was usurped by his brother Antonio, while Prospero was distracted by his studies, and how the king of Naples supported Antonio's rule. Antonio then cast Prospero and Miranda out of Milan, and ordered both of them killed; however, Prospero tells his daughter how the good councilor Gonzalo arranged for them not to be killed, which led to their landing on the island. Prospero declares his intention of reclaiming his dukedom, and that the tempest and his brothers' shipwreck on the island are part of this plan. Ariel makes his first entrance, and declares that Prospero's bidding has been perfectly performed, and none of the party are harmed; the sailors are still upon the ship, while the King and his companions have been scattered about the island. Ariel reminds Prospero of his promise to free Ariel, and Prospero impresses upon him how much more generous a master he believes himself to be than Sycorax. Caliban enters, stating his claim to the island that comes through his mother Sycorax; Prospero's teachings, for whatever reason, have failed upon Caliban, and Caliban retains his more primitive nature, for which Prospero and Miranda despise him. Ferdinand stumbles upon Miranda, and they immediately fall in love, due to Ariel's magic; but Prospero decides to make him a servant, and will put him to hard tasks about the island. Act II King Alonso has landed on the island, with his brothers Sebastian and Antonio, noblemen Adrian and Francisco, and the councilor Gonzalo. Gonzalo tries to console Alonso upon their good fortune of surviving the shipwreck - but Alonso is grieved - not only because his son Ferdinand is missing and presumed dead, but because he was returning from his daughter's wedding in Africa, and fears he will never see her again because of the distance. Antonio and Sebastian show great skill with mocking wordplay, and use this skill to stifle Gonzalo and Adrian's attempts to speak frankly to the rest of the party. Ariel's magic makes the party fall asleep, with the exception of Antonio and Sebastian. A strange seriousness, of Ariel's doing, falls upon Antonio and Sebastian. Antonio begins to concoct a plan to get his brother the kingship, which will be much easier if Ferdinand, the current heir, really is dead; and since Alonso's daughter is very far away in Tunis, Sebastian might be able to inherit the crown with only two murders, those of Alonso and Gonzalo. Ariel, however, hears to conspirators plan, and wakes Gonzalo with a warning of the danger he is in. Ariel intends to let Prospero know that the conspiracy has indeed been formed as he wished, and Prospero in turn will try to keep Gonzalo safe, out of appreciation for his past help in preserving the lives of Prospero and Miranda. Caliban curses Prospero, as another storm approaches the island; he takes the storm as a sign that Prospero is up to mischief, and hides at the approach of what he fears is one of Prospero's punishing spirits. Trinculo, Alonso's court jester, finds Caliban lying still on the ground and covered with a cloak, and figures him to be a \"dead Indian\"; but, the storm continues to approach, so he also hides himself, using Caliban's cloak as a shelter, and flattening himself on the ground beside Caliban's prostrate form. Alonso's drunken butler, Stephano, enters, drunk and singing, and stumbles upon the strange sight of the two men under the cloak; he figures, in his drunken stupor, that Trinculo and Caliban make a four-legged monster. Caliban,in his delirium, thinks that Stephano is one of Prospero's minions, sent to torment him; Stephano thinks a drink of wine will cure Caliban of what ails him, and bit by bit, gets Caliban drunk as well. It takes Stephano a while to recognize his old friend, Trinculo, whom Caliban seems to be ignoring. Because of Stephano's generosity with his \"celestial liquor,\" Caliban takes him to be some sort of benevolent god; much to Trinculo's disbelief, Caliban actually offers his service to Stephano, forsaking the \"tyrant\" Prospero. Stephano accepts the offer. Act III Ferdinand has been made to take Caliban's place as a servant, despite his royal status; and though he does not like Prospero, he does the work because it will benefit his new love, Miranda. Ferdinand and Miranda express their love for each other, and both express their desire to be married - though they have known each other for less than a day. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban are drinking; Trinculo and Sebastian continue to insult Caliban, though Caliban only protests against Trinculo's remarks, and tries to get Stephano to defend him. Caliban begins to tell the other two about the tyranny of his old master, Prospero, and how he wants to be rid of Prospero forever; Ariel enters, causes further discord among the group, and gets Caliban to form a murder plot against Prospero. Caliban promises Stephano that if Prospero is successfully killed, he will allow Stephano to be ruler of the island, and will be his servant. He also promises that Stephano will get Miranda if the plot is successful - Ariel leaves, to tell Prospero of these developments. Alonso, Adrian, Francisco, Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo are still wandering about the island, and Alonzo has finally given up any hope of his son Ferdinand being alive. Antonio and Sebastian decide to make their murderous move later that night, but their conspiracy is interrupted by Prospero sending in a huge banquet via his spirits, with he himself there, but invisible. They are all amazed, but not too taken aback that they will not eat the food; but, as they are about to eat, a vengeful Ariel enters, taking credit for their shipwreck, and makes the banquet vanish. Alonso recognizes Ariel's words as being of Prospero's pen, and the great guilt of Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian begins to take them over, at the thought of Prospero being alive, and so nearby. Act IV Prospero stops Ferdinand's punishment, and decides to finally give Miranda to him, since he has proven his love for her through his service. Prospero accepts the union, but issues them a warning; if Ferdinand takes Miranda's virginity before a ceremony can be performed, then their union will be cursed. Ferdinand swears to Prospero that they shall wait until the ceremony to consummate their marriage, and then Prospero calls upon Ariel to perform one of his last acts of magic. A betrothal masque is performed for the party by some of Prospero's magical spirits; Juno, Ceres, and Iris are the goddesses who are represented within the masque, and the play speaks about the bounties of a good marriage, and blesses the happy couple. This act of magic so captivates Prospero that he forgets Caliban's plot to kill him; for a moment, he almost loses control, but manages to pull himself out of his reverie and take action. Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo come looking for Prospero, and swipe a few garments of Prospero's on their way. Caliban still wants very much to kill Prospero, and carry out this plot; however, Trinculo and Stephano are very drunk, as usual, and prove completely incapable of anything but petty theft. Prospero catches them - not difficult, since they are making a huge amount of noise--and sends Ariel after them as they flee. Act V Prospero finally has all under his control; Ariel has apprehended Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio, and they are all waiting for Prospero's judgment. Finally, Prospero makes up his mind against revenge, and makes a speech that signifies his renunciation of magic; the accused and the other nobles enter the magic circle that Prospero has made, and stand there, enchanted, while he speaks. Prospero charges Alonso with throwing Prospero and his daughter out of Italy, and Antonio and Sebastian with being part of this crime. Prospero announces Ariel's freedom after Ariel sees the party back to Naples, and Ariel sings a song out of joy. Alonso and Prospero are reconciled after Alonso declares his remorse and repents his wrongs to Prospero and Miranda, and Prospero finally wins back his dukedom from Antonio. Prospero, perhaps unwillingly, also says that he forgives Antonio and Sebastian, though he calls them \"wicked\" and expresses his reservations about letting them off the hook. After despairing that his son is dead, Alonso finds out that his son Ferdinand is indeed alive, and the two are reunited; then, Ferdinand and Miranda's engagement is announced, and is approved before the whole party by Alonso and Prospero. Gonzalo rejoices that on the voyage, such a good match was made, and that the brothers are reunited, and some of the bad blood between them is now flushed out. Ariel has readied Alonso's boat for their departure, and the boatswain shows up again, telling them about what happened to all of the sailors during the tempest. Caliban apologizes to Prospero for taking the foolish Stephano as his master, and Prospero, at last, acknowledges Caliban, and takes him as his own. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban's plot is exposed to the whole group, and is immediately forgiven. Prospero invites everyone to pass one last night in the island at his dwelling, and promises to tell the story of his and Miranda's survival, and of the devices of his magic. The play ends with Prospero addressing the audience, telling them that they hold an even greater power than Prospero the character, and can decide what happens next.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "It's stormy--you might even call it tempestuous--when we meet some characters on a boat . We learn that the King of Naples and several of his attendants are on this boat, and that things are going so badly there's not much to do but pray. The boat splits in half and the people float off into the sea. We cut to dry land and to Prospero, our main character, chatting with his daughter Miranda. We learn that Prospero was the source of the magic that caused the storm that sank this boat, and that he did it for good reason. However, he promises his sweet daughter that nobody was hurt in spite of all the fire, boat-splitting, and drowning that was clearly going on. Prospero also tells Miranda that it's time she found out that she's a princess. Prospero says he used to be the Duke of Milan until his brother, Antonio, betrayed him and stole the dukedom while Prospero was busy learning magic in his library . After all the usurping , Prospero and the three-year-old Miranda were shuttled out to the ocean in a wreck of a boat. They ended up on this island, where the ex-Duke has raised his daughter for the last twelve years. However, a star is looking pretty lucky in the sky, so Prospero thinks the time is right for action and revenge. We briefly meet his two servants. One is a delicate and airy spirit who was imprisoned in a tree by a witch for not being nasty enough and the other is the child of said witch and the Devil . Guess who's Prospero's favorite. Then we learn that mostly all the folks responsible for stealing Prospero's dukedom were on the sinking boat from the beginning of the play, and they're now scattered about the island. Alonso, the King who allowed the wicked Antonio to take Prospero's dukedom, fears he lost his son in the storm. The shipwrecked group--Alonso, Antonio, Alonso's brother Sebastian, and various lesser lords--set off to find Alonso's son, the lost Prince Ferdinand. Meanwhile, the not-so-lost Prince is alive and convinced that his dad and everyone else from the boat is dead. His grieving is kind of soft-core, since he's already fallen in love with Prospero's daughter Miranda. Prospero accuses the shipwrecked Prince of being a traitor and puts Prince Ferdinand to the hard task of carrying wood. Ferdinand is happy to do this because his newfound love for Miranda makes work seem easy. On Ferdinand's second encounter with Miranda, he learns her name and promises to marry her. She also declares her love for him, though he is only the third man she has ever seen . Back with the search party looking for the Prince, everyone feels weary and assumes the guy is dead. A banquet appears in front of the shipwrecked group, set up by silent fairy spirits. Yes, this is weird, but the search party is hungry and wants to eat. Before they can dig in, a scary harpy monster shows up. This freaky harpy says that the sea took Prince Ferdinand in exchange for the wrong Alonso committed against Prospero many years ago. The harpy also points out that there are three traitors at the table. This traitor comment brings us to an important side-plot: Antonio and Sebastian, thinking Prince Ferdinand is dead, are plotting to murder Alonso so Sebastian can be king. This is messed up because Alonso is Sebastian's brother. Still, Antonio clearly has no conscience; he admits that he's never been bothered by stealing his brother Prospero's dukedom. So, back at the scene with the monster harpy: Alonso is disturbed and repents of his foul deed, but Sebastian and Antonio--not so much. Switching back to the other group on the island, Prospero now accepts Ferdinand, saying that he was just testing the young man with all that hard labor. Since the Prince has worked carrying heavy wood, he has permission to marry Prospero's daughter. There is also another side story going on: Caliban has been plotting with the King's drunken butler, Stefano, and jester, Trinculo , to murder Prospero so they can rule the island. Caliban pledges to be Stefano's slave and kisses his feet way more than we are comfortable with. The drunken schemers are led off by Ariel playing music. Ariel leaves the group in a pool that smells like the lesser part of a horse to await his master's orders. The trio eventually gets out of the muck pool and sets off to murder Prospero. However, Prospero sets hounds upon them, and the would-be-murderers run off. Eventually they come back and get made fun of for a bit, at which point Caliban repents and says he'll work to be in Prospero's good graces again. That being dealt with, Prospero now goes to meet the shipwrecked King & Co. The harpy really shook up the King, so Alonso apologizes to Prospero and returns his dukedom. Prospero doesn't tell the King directly of Antonio and Sebastian's treachery, but neither of the traitors apologize or repent or even shuffle their feet. They don't learn a lesson. However, Prospero starts some banter about how he recently lost his daughter to the tempest too, commiserating with the King. Prospero changes the subject and asks if they'd like to see his cell . He pulls back the curtain covering his dwelling to reveal--you guessed it--two very-much-not-dead children, who are very much in love. Alonso rejoices to see his son, Ferdinand rejoices to show-off his new girl, and Miranda rejoices at seeing so many dudes--hence the line \"O brave new world that has such people in it.\" Prospero promises to explain most of this eventually. Tonight he'll tell some of his life story and everyone will head back to Naples via ships in the morning. Prospero says he'll watch the kids get married, and then he'll retire to his dukedom in peace. He charges Ariel to make sure the ships get to Naples safely, and then frees him from the servant gig. During the closing lines, Prospero speaks directly to the audience, and says they can free him from the island with their applause. It's like \"clap if you believe in fairies\" except it's actually the best playwright in Western history saying goodbye to writing plays. All around, it's pretty intense.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "A storm strikes a ship carrying Alonso, Ferdinand, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Stephano, and Trinculo, who are on their way to Italy after coming from the wedding of Alonso's daughter, Claribel, to the prince of Tunis in Africa. The royal party and the other mariners, with the exception of the unflappable Boatswain, begin to fear for their lives. Lightning cracks, and the mariners cry that the ship has been hit. Everyone prepares to sink. The next scene begins much more quietly. Miranda and Prospero stand on the shore of their island, looking out to sea at the recent shipwreck. Miranda asks her father to do anything he can to help the poor souls in the ship. Prospero assures her that everything is all right and then informs her that it is time she learned more about herself and her past. He reveals to her that he orchestrated the shipwreck and tells her the lengthy story of her past, a story he has often started to tell her before but never finished. The story goes that Prospero was the Duke of Milan until his brother Antonio, conspiring with Alonso, the King of Naples, usurped his position. Kidnapped and left to die on a raft at sea, Prospero and his daughter survive because Gonzalo leaves them supplies and Prospero's books, which are the source of his magic and power. Prospero and his daughter arrived on the island where they remain now and have been for twelve years. Only now, Prospero says, has Fortune at last sent his enemies his way, and he has raised the tempest in order to make things right with them once and for all. After telling this story, Prospero charms Miranda to sleep and then calls forth his familiar spirit Ariel, his chief magical agent. Prospero and Ariel's discussion reveals that Ariel brought the tempest upon the ship and set fire to the mast. He then made sure that everyone got safely to the island, though they are now separated from each other into small groups. Ariel, who is a captive servant to Prospero, reminds his master that he has promised Ariel freedom a year early if he performs tasks such as these without complaint. Prospero chastises Ariel for protesting and reminds him of the horrible fate from which he was rescued. Before Prospero came to the island, a witch named Sycorax imprisoned Ariel in a tree. Sycorax died, leaving Ariel trapped until Prospero arrived and freed him. After Ariel assures Prospero that he knows his place, Prospero orders Ariel to take the shape of a sea nymph and make himself invisible to all but Prospero. Miranda awakens from her sleep, and she and Prospero go to visit Caliban, Prospero's servant and the son of the dead Sycorax. Caliban curses Prospero, and Prospero and Miranda berate him for being ungrateful for what they have given and taught him. Prospero sends Caliban to fetch firewood. Ariel, invisible, enters playing music and leading in the awed Ferdinand. Miranda and Ferdinand are immediately smitten with each other. He is the only man Miranda has ever seen, besides Caliban and her father. Prospero is happy to see that his plan for his daughter's future marriage is working, but decides that he must upset things temporarily in order to prevent their relationship from developing too quickly. He accuses Ferdinand of merely pretending to be the Prince of Naples and threatens him with imprisonment. When Ferdinand draws his sword, Prospero charms him and leads him off to prison, ignoring Miranda's cries for mercy. He then sends Ariel on another mysterious mission. On another part of the island, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, and other miscellaneous lords give thanks for their safety but worry about the fate of Ferdinand. Alonso says that he wishes he never had married his daughter to the prince of Tunis because if he had not made this journey, his son would still be alive. Gonzalo tries to maintain high spirits by discussing the beauty of the island, but his remarks are undercut by the sarcastic sourness of Antonio and Sebastian. Ariel appears, invisible, and plays music that puts all but Sebastian and Antonio to sleep. These two then begin to discuss the possible advantages of killing their sleeping companions. Antonio persuades Sebastian that the latter will become ruler of Naples if they kill Alonso. Claribel, who would be the next heir if Ferdinand were indeed dead, is too far away to be able to claim her right. Sebastian is convinced, and the two are about to stab the sleeping men when Ariel causes Gonzalo to wake with a shout. Everyone wakes up, and Antonio and Sebastian concoct a ridiculous story about having drawn their swords to protect the king from lions. Ariel goes back to Prospero while Alonso and his party continue to search for Ferdinand. Caliban, meanwhile, is hauling wood for Prospero when he sees Trinculo and thinks he is a spirit sent by Prospero to torment him. He lies down and hides under his cloak. A storm is brewing, and Trinculo, curious about but undeterred by Caliban's strange appearance and smell, crawls under the cloak with him. Stephano, drunk and singing, comes along and stumbles upon the bizarre spectacle of Caliban and Trinculo huddled under the cloak. Caliban, hearing the singing, cries out that he will work faster so long as the \"spirits\" leave him alone. Stephano decides that this monster requires liquor and attempts to get Caliban to drink. Trinculo recognizes his friend Stephano and calls out to him. Soon the three are sitting up together and drinking. Caliban quickly becomes an enthusiastic drinker, and begins to sing. Prospero puts Ferdinand to work hauling wood. Ferdinand finds his labor pleasant because it is for Miranda's sake. Miranda, thinking that her father is asleep, tells Ferdinand to take a break. The two flirt with one another. Miranda proposes marriage, and Ferdinand accepts. Prospero has been on stage most of the time, unseen, and he is pleased with this development. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban are now drunk and raucous and are made all the more so by Ariel, who comes to them invisibly and provokes them to fight with one another by impersonating their voices and taunting them. Caliban grows more and more fervent in his boasts that he knows how to kill Prospero. He even tells Stephano that he can bring him to where Prospero is sleeping. He proposes that they kill Prospero, take his daughter, and set Stephano up as king of the island. Stephano thinks this a good plan, and the three prepare to set off to find Prospero. They are distracted, however, by the sound of music that Ariel plays on his flute and tabor-drum, and they decide to follow this music before executing their plot. Alonso, Gonzalo, Sebastian, and Antonio grow weary from traveling and pause to rest. Antonio and Sebastian secretly plot to take advantage of Alonso and Gonzalo's exhaustion, deciding to kill them in the evening. Prospero, probably on the balcony of the stage and invisible to the men, causes a banquet to be set out by strangely shaped spirits. As the men prepare to eat, Ariel appears like a harpy and causes the banquet to vanish. He then accuses the men of supplanting Prospero and says that it was for this sin that Alonso's son, Ferdinand, has been taken. He vanishes, leaving Alonso feeling vexed and guilty. Prospero now softens toward Ferdinand and welcomes him into his family as the soon-to-be-husband of Miranda. He sternly reminds Ferdinand, however, that Miranda's \"virgin-knot\" is not to be broken until the wedding has been officially solemnized. Prospero then asks Ariel to call forth some spirits to perform a masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. The spirits assume the shapes of Ceres, Juno, and Iris and perform a short masque celebrating the rites of marriage and the bounty of the earth. A dance of reapers and nymphs follows but is interrupted when Prospero suddenly remembers that he still must stop the plot against his life. He sends the spirits away and asks Ariel about Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban. Ariel tells his master of the three men's drunken plans. He also tells how he led the men with his music through prickly grass and briars and finally into a filthy pond near Prospero's cell. Ariel and Prospero then set a trap by hanging beautiful clothing in Prospero's cell. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban enter looking for Prospero and, finding the beautiful clothing, decide to steal it. They are immediately set upon by a pack of spirits in the shape of dogs and hounds, driven on by Prospero and Ariel. Prospero uses Ariel to bring Alonso and the others before him. He then sends Ariel to bring the Boatswain and the mariners from where they sleep on the wrecked ship. Prospero confronts Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian with their treachery, but tells them that he forgives them. Alonso tells him of having lost Ferdinand in the tempest and Prospero says that he recently lost his own daughter. Clarifying his meaning, he draws aside a curtain to reveal Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess. Alonso and his companions are amazed by the miracle of Ferdinand's survival, and Miranda is stunned by the sight of people unlike any she has seen before. Ferdinand tells his father about his marriage. Ariel returns with the Boatswain and mariners. The Boatswain tells a story of having been awakened from a sleep that had apparently lasted since the tempest. At Prospero's bidding, Ariel releases Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano, who then enter wearing their stolen clothing. Prospero and Alonso command them to return it and to clean up Prospero's cell. Prospero invites Alonso and the others to stay for the night so that he can tell them the tale of his life in the past twelve years. After this, the group plans to return to Italy. Prospero, restored to his dukedom, will retire to Milan. Prospero gives Ariel one final task--to make sure the seas are calm for the return voyage--before setting him free. Finally, Prospero delivers an epilogue to the audience, asking them to forgive him for his wrongdoing and set him free by applauding.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "1756", "title": "Uncle Vanya", "text": "ACT I\n\nA country house on a terrace. In front of it a garden. In an avenue of\ntrees, under an old poplar, stands a table set for tea, with a samovar,\netc. Some benches and chairs stand near the table. On one of them is\nlying a guitar. A hammock is swung near the table. It is three o'clock\nin the afternoon of a cloudy day.\n\nMARINA, a quiet, grey-haired, little old woman, is sitting at the table\nknitting a stocking.\n\nASTROFF is walking up and down near her.\n\nMARINA. [Pouring some tea into a glass] Take a little tea, my son.\n\nASTROFF. [Takes the glass from her unwillingly] Somehow, I don't seem to\nwant any.\n\nMARINA. Then will you have a little vodka instead?\n\nASTROFF. No, I don't drink vodka every day, and besides, it is too hot\nnow. [A pause] Tell me, nurse, how long have we known each other?\n\nMARINA. [Thoughtfully] Let me see, how long is it? Lord--help me to\nremember. You first came here, into our parts--let me think--when was\nit? Sonia's mother was still alive--it was two winters before she died;\nthat was eleven years ago--[thoughtfully] perhaps more.\n\nASTROFF. Have I changed much since then?\n\nMARINA. Oh, yes. You were handsome and young then, and now you are an\nold man and not handsome any more. You drink, too.\n\nASTROFF. Yes, ten years have made me another man. And why? Because I am\noverworked. Nurse, I am on my feet from dawn till dusk. I know no rest;\nat night I tremble under my blankets for fear of being dragged out to\nvisit some one who is sick; I have toiled without repose or a day's\nfreedom since I have known you; could I help growing old? And then,\nexistence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this\nlife, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after\nliving with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is\ninevitable. [Twisting his moustache] See what a long moustache I have\ngrown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I am as silly as the rest, nurse,\nbut not as stupid; no, I have not grown stupid. Thank God, my brain is\nnot addled yet, though my feelings have grown numb. I ask nothing, I\nneed nothing, I love no one, unless it is yourself alone. [He kisses her\nhead] I had a nurse just like you when I was a child.\n\nMARINA. Don't you want a bite of something to eat?\n\nASTROFF. No. During the third week of Lent I went to the epidemic at\nMalitskoi. It was eruptive typhoid. The peasants were all lying side by\nside in their huts, and the calves and pigs were running about the floor\namong the sick. Such dirt there was, and smoke! Unspeakable! I slaved\namong those people all day, not a crumb passed my lips, but when I got\nhome there was still no rest for me; a switchman was carried in from the\nrailroad; I laid him on the operating table and he went and died in\nmy arms under chloroform, and then my feelings that should have been\ndeadened awoke again, my conscience tortured me as if I had killed the\nman. I sat down and closed my eyes--like this--and thought: will our\ndescendants two hundred years from now, for whom we are breaking the\nroad, remember to give us a kind word? No, nurse, they will forget.\n\nMARINA. Man is forgetful, but God remembers.\n\nASTROFF. Thank you for that. You have spoken the truth.\n\nEnter VOITSKI from the house. He has been asleep after dinner and\nlooks rather dishevelled. He sits down on the bench and straightens his\ncollar.\n\nVOITSKI. H'm. Yes. [A pause] Yes.\n\nASTROFF. Have you been asleep?\n\nVOITSKI. Yes, very much so. [He yawns] Ever since the Professor and his\nwife have come, our daily life seems to have jumped the track. I sleep\nat the wrong time, drink wine, and eat all sorts of messes for luncheon\nand dinner. It isn't wholesome. Sonia and I used to work together and\nnever had an idle moment, but now Sonia works alone and I only eat and\ndrink and sleep. Something is wrong.\n\nMARINA. [Shaking her head] Such a confusion in the house! The Professor\ngets up at twelve, the samovar is kept boiling all the morning, and\neverything has to wait for him. Before they came we used to have dinner\nat one o'clock, like everybody else, but now we have it at seven. The\nProfessor sits up all night writing and reading, and suddenly, at two\no'clock, there goes the bell! Heavens, what is that? The Professor wants\nsome tea! Wake the servants, light the samovar! Lord, what disorder!\n\nASTROFF. Will they be here long?\n\nVOITSKI. A hundred years! The Professor has decided to make his home\nhere.\n\nMARINA. Look at this now! The samovar has been on the table for two\nhours, and they are all out walking!\n\nVOITSKI. All right, don't get excited; here they come.\n\nVoices are heard approaching. SEREBRAKOFF, HELENA, SONIA, and TELEGIN\ncome in from the depths of the garden, returning from their walk.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Superb! Superb! What beautiful views!\n\nTELEGIN. They are wonderful, your Excellency.\n\nSONIA. To-morrow we shall go into the woods, shall we, papa?\n\nVOITSKI. Ladies and gentlemen, tea is ready.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Won't you please be good enough to send my tea into the\nlibrary? I still have some work to finish.\n\nSONIA. I am sure you will love the woods.\n\nHELENA, SEREBRAKOFF, and SONIA go into the house. TELEGIN sits down at\nthe table beside MARINA.\n\nVOITSKI. There goes our learned scholar on a hot, sultry day like this,\nin his overcoat and goloshes and carrying an umbrella!\n\nASTROFF. He is trying to take good care of his health.\n\nVOITSKI. How lovely she is! How lovely! I have never in my life seen a\nmore beautiful woman.\n\nTELEGIN. Do you know, Marina, that as I walk in the fields or in\nthe shady garden, as I look at this table here, my heart swells with\nunbounded happiness. The weather is enchanting, the birds are singing,\nwe are all living in peace and contentment--what more could the soul\ndesire? [Takes a glass of tea.]\n\nVOITSKI. [Dreaming] Such eyes--a glorious woman!\n\nASTROFF. Come, Ivan, tell us something.\n\nVOITSKI. [Indolently] What shall I tell you?\n\nASTROFF. Haven't you any news for us?\n\nVOITSKI. No, it is all stale. I am just the same as usual, or perhaps\nworse, because I have become lazy. I don't do anything now but croak\nlike an old raven. My mother, the old magpie, is still chattering about\nthe emancipation of woman, with one eye on her grave and the other on\nher learned books, in which she is always looking for the dawn of a new\nlife.\n\nASTROFF. And the Professor?\n\nVOITSKI. The Professor sits in his library from morning till night, as\nusual--\n\n   \"Straining the mind, wrinkling the brow,\n    We write, write, write,\n    Without respite\n    Or hope of praise in the future or now.\"\n\nPoor paper! He ought to write his autobiography; he would make a\nreally splendid subject for a book! Imagine it, the life of a retired\nprofessor, as stale as a piece of hardtack, tortured by gout, headaches,\nand rheumatism, his liver bursting with jealousy and envy, living on the\nestate of his first wife, although he hates it, because he can't afford\nto live in town. He is everlastingly whining about his hard lot, though,\nas a matter of fact, he is extraordinarily lucky. He is the son of\na common deacon and has attained the professor's chair, become the\nson-in-law of a senator, is called \"your Excellency,\" and so on. But\nI'll tell you something; the man has been writing on art for twenty-five\nyears, and he doesn't know the very first thing about it. For\ntwenty-five years he has been chewing on other men's thoughts about\nrealism, naturalism, and all such foolishness; for twenty-five years he\nhas been reading and writing things that clever men have long known and\nstupid ones are not interested in; for twenty-five years he has been\nmaking his imaginary mountains out of molehills. And just think of the\nman's self-conceit and presumption all this time! For twenty-five years\nhe has been masquerading in false clothes and has now retired absolutely\nunknown to any living soul; and yet see him! stalking across the earth\nlike a demi-god!\n\nASTROFF. I believe you envy him.\n\nVOITSKI. Yes, I do. Look at the success he has had with women! Don Juan\nhimself was not more favoured. His first wife, who was my sister, was\na beautiful, gentle being, as pure as the blue heaven there above us,\nnoble, great-hearted, with more admirers than he has pupils, and she\nloved him as only beings of angelic purity can love those who are as\npure and beautiful as themselves. His mother-in-law, my mother, adores\nhim to this day, and he still inspires a sort of worshipful awe in her.\nHis second wife is, as you see, a brilliant beauty; she married him in\nhis old age and has surrendered all the glory of her beauty and freedom\nto him. Why? What for?\n\nASTROFF. Is she faithful to him?\n\nVOITSKI. Yes, unfortunately she is.\n\nASTROFF. Why unfortunately?\n\nVOITSKI. Because such fidelity is false and unnatural, root and branch.\nIt sounds well, but there is no logic in it. It is thought immoral for a\nwoman to deceive an old husband whom she hates, but quite moral for her\nto strangle her poor youth in her breast and banish every vital desire\nfrom her heart.\n\nTELEGIN. [In a tearful voice] Vanya, I don't like to hear you talk so.\nListen, Vanya; every one who betrays husband or wife is faithless, and\ncould also betray his country.\n\nVOITSKI. [Crossly] Turn off the tap, Waffles.\n\nTELEGIN. No, allow me, Vanya. My wife ran away with a lover on the day\nafter our wedding, because my exterior was unprepossessing. I have never\nfailed in my duty since then. I love her and am true to her to this day.\nI help her all I can and have given my fortune to educate the daughter\nof herself and her lover. I have forfeited my happiness, but I have kept\nmy pride. And she? Her youth has fled, her beauty has faded according to\nthe laws of nature, and her lover is dead. What has she kept?\n\nHELENA and SONIA come in; after them comes MME. VOITSKAYA carrying a\nbook. She sits down and begins to read. Some one hands her a glass of\ntea which she drinks without looking up.\n\nSONIA. [Hurriedly, to the nurse] There are some peasants waiting out\nthere. Go and see what they want. I shall pour the tea. [Pours out some\nglasses of tea.]\n\nMARINA goes out. HELENA takes a glass and sits drinking in the hammock.\n\nASTROFF. I have come to see your husband. You wrote me that he had\nrheumatism and I know not what else, and that he was very ill, but he\nappears to be as lively as a cricket.\n\nHELENA. He had a fit of the blues yesterday evening and complained of\npains in his legs, but he seems all right again to-day.\n\nASTROFF. And I galloped over here twenty miles at break-neck speed! No\nmatter, though, it is not the first time. Once here, however, I am going\nto stay until to-morrow, and at any rate sleep _quantum satis._\n\nSONIA. Oh, splendid! You so seldom spend the night with us. Have you had\ndinner yet?\n\nASTROFF. No.\n\nSONIA. Good. So you will have it with us. We dine at seven now. [Drinks\nher tea] This tea is cold!\n\nTELEGIN. Yes, the samovar has grown cold.\n\nHELENA. Don't mind, Monsieur Ivan, we will drink cold tea, then.\n\nTELEGIN. I beg your pardon, my name is not Ivan, but Ilia, ma'am--Ilia\nTelegin, or Waffles, as I am sometimes called on account of my\npock-marked face. I am Sonia's godfather, and his Excellency, your\nhusband, knows me very well. I now live with you, ma'am, on this estate,\nand perhaps you will be so good as to notice that I dine with you every\nday.\n\nSONIA. He is our great help, our right-hand man. [Tenderly] Dear\ngodfather, let me pour you some tea.\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. Oh! Oh!\n\nSONIA. What is it, grandmother?\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. I forgot to tell Alexander--I have lost my memory--I\nreceived a letter to-day from Paul Alexevitch in Kharkoff. He has sent\nme a new pamphlet.\n\nASTROFF. Is it interesting?\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. Yes, but strange. He refutes the very theories which he\ndefended seven years ago. It is appalling!\n\nVOITSKI. There is nothing appalling about it. Drink your tea, mamma.\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. It seems you never want to listen to what I have to say.\nPardon me, Jean, but you have changed so in the last year that I\nhardly know you. You used to be a man of settled convictions and had an\nilluminating personality----\n\nVOITSKI. Oh, yes. I had an illuminating personality, which illuminated\nno one. [A pause] I had an illuminating personality! You couldn't say\nanything more biting. I am forty-seven years old. Until last year I\nendeavoured, as you do now, to blind my eyes by your pedantry to the\ntruths of life. But now--Oh, if you only knew! If you knew how I lie\nawake at night, heartsick and angry, to think how stupidly I have wasted\nmy time when I might have been winning from life everything which my old\nage now forbids.\n\nSONIA. Uncle Vanya, how dreary!\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. [To her son] You speak as if your former convictions\nwere somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they, were at fault. You\nhave forgotten that a conviction, in itself, is nothing but a dead\nletter. You should have done something.\n\nVOITSKI. Done something! Not every man is capable of being a writer\n_perpetuum mobile_ like your Herr Professor.\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. What do you mean by that?\n\nSONIA. [Imploringly] Mother! Uncle Vanya! I entreat you!\n\nVOITSKI. I am silent. I apologise and am silent. [A pause.]\n\nHELENA. What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.]\n\nVOITSKI. A fine day to hang oneself.\n\nTELEGIN tunes the guitar. MARINA appears near the house, calling the\nchickens.\n\nMARINA. Chick, chick, chick!\n\nSONIA. What did the peasants want, nurse?\n\nMARINA. The same old thing, the same old nonsense. Chick, chick, chick!\n\nSONIA. Why are you calling the chickens?\n\nMARINA. The speckled hen has disappeared with her chicks. I am afraid\nthe crows have got her.\n\nTELEGIN plays a polka. All listen in silence. Enter WORKMAN.\n\nWORKMAN. Is the doctor here? [To ASTROFF] Excuse me, sir, but I have\nbeen sent to fetch you.\n\nASTROFF. Where are you from?\n\nWORKMAN. The factory.\n\nASTROFF. [Annoyed] Thank you. There is nothing for it, then, but to go.\n[Looking around him for his cap] Damn it, this is annoying!\n\nSONIA. Yes, it is too bad, really. You must come back to dinner from the\nfactory.\n\nASTROFF. No, I won't be able to do that. It will be too late. Now where,\nwhere--[To the WORKMAN] Look here, my man, get me a glass of vodka, will\nyou? [The WORKMAN goes out] Where--where--[Finds his cap] One of the\ncharacters in Ostroff's plays is a man with a long moustache and short\nwits, like me. However, let me bid you good-bye, ladies and gentlemen.\n[To HELENA] I should be really delighted if you would come to see me\nsome day with Miss Sonia. My estate is small, but if you are interested\nin such things I should like to show you a nursery and seed-bed whose\nlike you will not find within a thousand miles of here. My place is\nsurrounded by government forests. The forester is old and always ailing,\nso I superintend almost all the work myself.\n\nHELENA. I have always heard that you were very fond of the woods. Of\ncourse one can do a great deal of good by helping to preserve them, but\ndoes not that work interfere with your real calling?\n\nASTROFF. God alone knows what a man's real calling is.\n\nHELENA. And do you find it interesting?\n\nASTROFF. Yes, very.\n\nVOITSKI. [Sarcastically] Oh, extremely!\n\nHELENA. You are still young, not over thirty-six or seven, I should say,\nand I suspect that the woods do not interest you as much as you say they\ndo. I should think you would find them monotonous.\n\nSONIA. No, the work is thrilling. Dr. Astroff watches over the old woods\nand sets out new plantations every year, and he has already received a\ndiploma and a bronze medal. If you will listen to what he can tell you,\nyou will agree with him entirely. He says that forests are the ornaments\nof the earth, that they teach mankind to understand beauty and attune\nhis mind to lofty sentiments. Forests temper a stern climate, and in\ncountries where the climate is milder, less strength is wasted in the\nbattle with nature, and the people are kind and gentle. The inhabitants\nof such countries are handsome, tractable, sensitive, graceful in speech\nand gesture. Their philosophy is joyous, art and science blossom among\nthem, their treatment of women is full of exquisite nobility----\n\nVOITSKI. [Laughing] Bravo! Bravo! All that is very pretty, but it is\nalso unconvincing. So, my friend [To ASTROFF] you must let me go on\nburning firewood in my stoves and building my sheds of planks.\n\nASTROFF. You can burn peat in your stoves and build your sheds of stone.\nOh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why\ndestroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows\nof the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild\nanimals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and\nmany beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too\nlazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.\n[To HELENA] Am I not right, Madame? Who but a stupid barbarian could\nburn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make?\nMan is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may\nincrease that which has been given him, but until now he has not\ncreated, but demolished. The forests are disappearing, the rivers are\nrunning dry, the game is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the\nearth becomes poorer and uglier every day. [To VOITSKI] I read irony in\nyour eye; you do not take what I am saying seriously, and--and--after\nall, it may very well be nonsense. But when I pass peasant-forests\nthat I have preserved from the axe, or hear the rustling of the young\nplantations set out with my own hands, I feel as if I had had some small\nshare in improving the climate, and that if mankind is happy a thousand\nyears from now I will have been a little bit responsible for their\nhappiness. When I plant a little birch tree and then see it budding\ninto young green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride and\nI--[Sees the WORKMAN, who is bringing him a glass of vodka on a tray]\nhowever--[He drinks] I must be off. Probably it is all nonsense, anyway.\nGood-bye.\n\nHe goes toward the house. SONIA takes his arm and goes with him.\n\nSONIA. When are you coming to see us again?\n\nASTROFF. I can't say.\n\nSONIA. In a month?\n\nASTROFF and SONIA go into the house. HELENA and VOITSKI walk over to the\nterrace.\n\nHELENA. You have behaved shockingly again. Ivan, what sense was there\nin teasing your mother and talking about _perpetuum mobile?_ And at\nbreakfast you quarreled with Alexander again. Really, your behaviour is\ntoo petty.\n\nVOITSKI. But if I hate him?\n\nHELENA. You hate Alexander without reason; he is like every one else,\nand no worse than you are.\n\nVOITSKI. If you could only see your face, your gestures! Oh, how tedious\nyour life must be.\n\nHELENA. It is tedious, yes, and dreary! You all abuse my husband and\nlook on me with compassion; you think, \"Poor woman, she is married to\nan old man.\" How well I understand your compassion! As Astroff said just\nnow, see how you thoughtlessly destroy the forests, so that there will\nsoon be none left. So you also destroy mankind, and soon fidelity and\npurity and self-sacrifice will have vanished with the woods. Why cannot\nyou look calmly at a woman unless she is yours? Because, the doctor\nwas right, you are all possessed by a devil of destruction; you have no\nmercy on the woods or the birds or on women or on one another.\n\nVOITSKI. I don't like your philosophy.\n\nHELENA. That doctor has a sensitive, weary face--an interesting face.\nSonia evidently likes him, and she is in love with him, and I can\nunderstand it. This is the third time he has been here since I have\ncome, and I have not had a real talk with him yet or made much of him.\nHe thinks I am disagreeable. Do you know, Ivan, the reason you and I are\nsuch friends? I think it is because we are both lonely and unfortunate.\nYes, unfortunate. Don't look at me in that way, I don't like it.\n\nVOITSKI. How can I look at you otherwise when I love you? You are my\njoy, my life, and my youth. I know that my chances of being loved in\nreturn are infinitely small, do not exist, but I ask nothing of you.\nOnly let me look at you, listen to your voice--\n\nHELENA. Hush, some one will overhear you.\n\n[They go toward the house.]\n\nVOITSKI. [Following her] Let me speak to you of my love, do not drive me\naway, and this alone will be my greatest happiness!\n\nHELENA. Ah! This is agony!\n\nTELEGIN strikes the strings of his guitar and plays a polka. MME.\nVOITSKAYA writes something on the leaves of her pamphlet.\n\nThe curtain falls.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT II\n\nThe dining-room of SEREBRAKOFF'S house. It is night. The tapping of the\nWATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden. SEREBRAKOFF is dozing in an\narm-chair by an open window and HELENA is sitting beside him, also half\nasleep.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [Rousing himself] Who is here? Is it you, Sonia?\n\nHELENA. It is I.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Oh, it is you, Nelly. This pain is intolerable.\n\nHELENA. Your shawl has slipped down. [She wraps up his legs in the\nshawl] Let me shut the window.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. No, leave it open; I am suffocating. I dreamt just now that\nmy left leg belonged to some one else, and it hurt so that I woke. I\ndon't believe this is gout, it is more like rheumatism. What time is it?\n\nHELENA. Half past twelve. [A pause.]\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I want you to look for Batushka's works in the library\nto-morrow. I think we have him.\n\nHELENA. What is that?\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Look for Batushka to-morrow morning; we used to have him, I\nremember. Why do I find it so hard to breathe?\n\nHELENA. You are tired; this is the second night you have had no sleep.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. They say that Turgenieff got angina of the heart from gout.\nI am afraid I am getting angina too. Oh, damn this horrible, accursed\nold age! Ever since I have been old I have been hateful to myself, and I\nam sure, hateful to you all as well.\n\nHELENA. You speak as if we were to blame for your being old.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I am more hateful to you than to any one.\n\nHELENA gets up and walks away from him, sitting down at a distance.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. You are quite right, of course. I am not an idiot; I can\nunderstand you. You are young and healthy and beautiful, and longing for\nlife, and I am an old dotard, almost a dead man already. Don't I know\nit? Of course I see that it is foolish for me to live so long, but wait!\nI shall soon set you all free. My life cannot drag on much longer.\n\nHELENA. You are overtaxing my powers of endurance. Be quiet, for God's\nsake!\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. It appears that, thanks to me, everybody's power of\nendurance is being overtaxed; everybody is miserable, only I am\nblissfully triumphant. Oh, yes, of course!\n\nHELENA. Be quiet! You are torturing me.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I torture everybody. Of course.\n\nHELENA. [Weeping] This is unbearable! Tell me, what is it you want me to\ndo?\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Nothing.\n\nHELENA. Then be quiet, please.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. It is funny that everybody listens to Ivan and his old\nidiot of a mother, but the moment I open my lips you all begin to feel\nill-treated. You can't even stand the sound of my voice. Even if I am\nhateful, even if I am a selfish tyrant, haven't I the right to be one\nat my age? Haven't I deserved it? Haven't I, I ask you, the right to be\nrespected, now that I am old?\n\nHELENA. No one is disputing your rights. [The window slams in the wind]\nThe wind is rising, I must shut the window. [She shuts it] We shall have\nrain in a moment. Your rights have never been questioned by anybody.\n\nThe WATCHMAN in the garden sounds his rattle.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I have spent my life working in the interests of learning.\nI am used to my library and the lecture hall and to the esteem and\nadmiration of my colleagues. Now I suddenly find myself plunged in this\nwilderness, condemned to see the same stupid people from morning till\nnight and listen to their futile conversation. I want to live; I long\nfor success and fame and the stir of the world, and here I am in exile!\nOh, it is dreadful to spend every moment grieving for the lost past, to\nsee the success of others and sit here with nothing to do but to fear\ndeath. I cannot stand it! It is more than I can bear. And you will not\neven forgive me for being old!\n\nHELENA. Wait, have patience; I shall be old myself in four or five\nyears.\n\nSONIA comes in.\n\nSONIA. Father, you sent for Dr. Astroff, and now when he comes you\nrefuse to see him. It is not nice to give a man so much trouble for\nnothing.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. What do I care about your Astroff? He understands medicine\nabout as well as I understand astronomy.\n\nSONIA. We can't send for the whole medical faculty, can we, to treat\nyour gout?\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I won't talk to that madman!\n\nSONIA. Do as you please. It's all the same to me. [She sits down.]\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. What time is it?\n\nHELENA. One o'clock.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. It is stifling in here. Sonia, hand me that bottle on the\ntable.\n\nSONIA. Here it is. [She hands him a bottle of medicine.]\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [Crossly] No, not that one! Can't you understand me? Can't\nI ask you to do a thing?\n\nSONIA. Please don't be captious with me. Some people may like it, but\nyou must spare me, if you please, because I don't. Besides, I haven't\nthe time; we are cutting the hay to-morrow and I must get up early.\n\nVOITSKI comes in dressed in a long gown and carrying a candle.\n\nVOITSKI. A thunderstorm is coming up. [The lightning flashes] There it\nis! Go to bed, Helena and Sonia. I have come to take your place.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [Frightened] No, n-o, no! Don't leave me alone with him!\nOh, don't. He will begin to lecture me.\n\nVOITSKI. But you must give them a little rest. They have not slept for\ntwo nights.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Then let them go to bed, but you go away too! Thank you. I\nimplore you to go. For the sake of our former friendship do not protest\nagainst going. We will talk some other time----\n\nVOITSKI. Our former friendship! Our former----\n\nSONIA. Hush, Uncle Vanya!\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [To his wife] My darling, don't leave me alone with him. He\nwill begin to lecture me.\n\nVOITSKI. This is ridiculous.\n\nMARINA comes in carrying a candle.\n\nSONIA. You must go to bed, nurse, it is late.\n\nMARINA. I haven't cleared away the tea things. Can't go to bed yet.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. No one can go to bed. They are all worn out, only I enjoy\nperfect happiness.\n\nMARINA. [Goes up to SEREBRAKOFF and speaks tenderly] What's the\nmatter, master? Does it hurt? My own legs are aching too, oh, so badly.\n[Arranges his shawl about his legs] You have had this illness such a\nlong time. Sonia's dead mother used to stay awake with you too, and wear\nherself out for you. She loved you dearly. [A pause] Old people want to\nbe pitied as much as young ones, but nobody cares about them somehow.\n[She kisses SEREBRAKOFF'S shoulder] Come, master, let me give you some\nlinden-tea and warm your poor feet for you. I shall pray to God for you.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [Touched] Let us go, Marina.\n\nMARINA. My own feet are aching so badly, oh, so badly! [She and SONIA\nlead SEREBRAKOFF out] Sonia's mother used to wear herself out with\nsorrow and weeping. You were still little and foolish then, Sonia. Come,\ncome, master.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF, SONIA and MARINA go out.\n\nHELENA. I am absolutely exhausted by him, and can hardly stand.\n\nVOITSKI. You are exhausted by him, and I am exhausted by my own self. I\nhave not slept for three nights.\n\nHELENA. Something is wrong in this house. Your mother hates everything\nbut her pamphlets and the professor; the professor is vexed, he won't\ntrust me, and fears you; Sonia is angry with her father, and with me,\nand hasn't spoken to me for two weeks; I am at the end of my strength,\nand have come near bursting into tears at least twenty times to-day.\nSomething is wrong in this house.\n\nVOITSKI. Leave speculating alone.\n\nHELENA. You are cultured and intelligent, Ivan, and you surely\nunderstand that the world is not destroyed by villains and\nconflagrations, but by hate and malice and all this spiteful tattling.\nIt is your duty to make peace, and not to growl at everything.\n\nVOITSKI. Help me first to make peace with myself. My darling! [Seizes\nher hand.]\n\nHELENA. Let go! [She drags her hand away] Go away!\n\nVOITSKI. Soon the rain will be over, and all nature will sigh and awake\nrefreshed. Only I am not refreshed by the storm. Day and night the\nthought haunts me like a fiend, that my life is lost for ever. My past\ndoes not count, because I frittered it away on trifles, and the present\nhas so terribly miscarried! What shall I do with my life and my love?\nWhat is to become of them? This wonderful feeling of mine will be wasted\nand lost as a ray of sunlight is lost that falls into a dark chasm, and\nmy life will go with it.\n\nHELENA. I am as it were benumbed when you speak to me of your love, and\nI don't know how to answer you. Forgive me, I have nothing to say to\nyou. [She tries to go out] Good-night!\n\nVOITSKI. [Barring the way] If you only knew how I am tortured by the\nthought that beside me in this house is another life that is being lost\nforever--it is yours! What are you waiting for? What accursed philosophy\nstands in your way? Oh, understand, understand----\n\nHELENA. [Looking at him intently] Ivan, you are drunk!\n\nVOITSKI. Perhaps. Perhaps.\n\nHELENA. Where is the doctor?\n\nVOITSKI. In there, spending the night with me. Perhaps I am drunk,\nperhaps I am; nothing is impossible.\n\nHELENA. Have you just been drinking together? Why do you do that?\n\nVOITSKI. Because in that way I get a taste of life. Let me do it,\nHelena!\n\nHELENA. You never used to drink, and you never used to talk so much. Go\nto bed, I am tired of you.\n\nVOITSKI. [Falling on his knees before her] My sweetheart, my beautiful\none----\n\nHELENA. [Angrily] Leave me alone! Really, this has become too\ndisagreeable.\n\nHELENA goes out. A pause.\n\nVOITSKI [Alone] She is gone! I met her first ten years ago, at her\nsister's house, when she was seventeen and I was thirty-seven. Why did I\nnot fall in love with her then and propose to her? It would have been so\neasy! And now she would have been my wife. Yes, we would both have been\nwaked to-night by the thunderstorm, and she would have been frightened,\nbut I would have held her in my arms and whispered: \"Don't be afraid!\nI am here.\" Oh, enchanting dream, so sweet that I laugh to think of it.\n[He laughs] But my God! My head reels! Why am I so old? Why won't\nshe understand me? I hate all that rhetoric of hers, that morality of\nindolence, that absurd talk about the destruction of the world----[A\npause] Oh, how I have been deceived! For years I have worshipped that\nmiserable gout-ridden professor. Sonia and I have squeezed this estate\ndry for his sake. We have bartered our butter and curds and peas like\nmisers, and have never kept a morsel for ourselves, so that we could\nscrape enough pennies together to send to him. I was proud of him and\nof his learning; I received all his words and writings as inspired, and\nnow? Now he has retired, and what is the total of his life? A blank! He\nis absolutely unknown, and his fame has burst like a soap-bubble. I have\nbeen deceived; I see that now, basely deceived.\n\nASTROFF comes in. He has his coat on, but is without his waistcoat or\ncollar, and is slightly drunk. TELEGIN follows him, carrying a guitar.\n\nASTROFF. Play!\n\nTELEGIN. But every one is asleep.\n\nASTROFF. Play!\n\nTELEGIN begins to play softly.\n\nASTROFF. Are you alone here? No women about? [Sings with his arms\nakimbo.]\n\n   \"The hut is cold, the fire is dead;\n    Where shall the master lay his head?\"\n\nThe thunderstorm woke me. It was a heavy shower. What time is it?\n\nVOITSKI. The devil only knows.\n\nASTROFF. I thought I heard Helena's voice.\n\nVOITSKI. She was here a moment ago.\n\nASTROFF. What a beautiful woman! [Looking at the medicine bottles on\nthe table] Medicine, is it? What a variety we have; prescriptions from\nMoscow, from Kharkoff, from Tula! Why, he has been pestering all the\ntowns of Russia with his gout! Is he ill, or simply shamming?\n\nVOITSKI. He is really ill.\n\nASTROFF. What is the matter with you to-night? You seem sad. Is it\nbecause you are sorry for the professor?\n\nVOITSKI. Leave me alone.\n\nASTROFF. Or in love with the professor's wife?\n\nVOITSKI. She is my friend.\n\nASTROFF. Already?\n\nVOITSKI. What do you mean by \"already\"?\n\nASTROFF. A woman can only become a man's friend after having first been\nhis acquaintance and then his beloved--then she becomes his friend.\n\nVOITSKI. What vulgar philosophy!\n\nASTROFF. What do you mean? Yes, I must confess I am getting vulgar, but\nthen, you see, I am drunk. I usually only drink like this once a month.\nAt such times my audacity and temerity know no bounds. I feel capable\nof anything. I attempt the most difficult operations and do them\nmagnificently. The most brilliant plans for the future take shape in\nmy head. I am no longer a poor fool of a doctor, but mankind's greatest\nbenefactor. I evolve my own system of philosophy and all of you seem to\ncrawl at my feet like so many insects or microbes. [To TELEGIN] Play,\nWaffles!\n\nTELEGIN. My dear boy, I would with all my heart, but do listen to\nreason; everybody in the house is asleep.\n\nASTROFF. Play!\n\nTELEGIN plays softly.\n\nASTROFF. I want a drink. Come, we still have some brandy left. And then,\nas soon as it is day, you will come home with me. [He sees SONIA, who\ncomes in at that moment.]\n\nASTROFF. I beg your pardon, I have no collar on.\n\n[He goes out quickly, followed by TELEGIN.]\n\nSONIA. Uncle Vanya, you and the doctor have been drinking! The good\nfellows have been getting together! It is all very well for him, he has\nalways done it, but why do you follow his example? It looks dreadfully\nat your age.\n\nVOITSKI. Age has nothing to do with it. When real life is wanting one\nmust create an illusion. It is better than nothing.\n\nSONIA. Our hay is all cut and rotting in these daily rains, and here you\nare busy creating illusions! You have given up the farm altogether.\nI have done all the work alone until I am at the end of my\nstrength--[Frightened] Uncle! Your eyes are full of tears!\n\nVOITSKI. Tears? Nonsense, there are no tears in my eyes. You looked at\nme then just as your dead mother used to, my darling--[He eagerly kisses\nher face and hands] My sister, my dearest sister, where are you now? Ah,\nif you only knew, if you only knew!\n\nSONIA. If she only knew what, Uncle?\n\nVOITSKI. My heart is bursting. It is awful. No matter, though. I must\ngo. [He goes out.]\n\nSONIA. [Knocks at the door] Dr. Astroff! Are you awake? Please come here\nfor a minute.\n\nASTROFF. [Behind the door] In a moment.\n\nHe appears in a few seconds. He has put on his collar and waistcoat.\n\nASTROFF. What do you want?\n\nSONIA. Drink as much as you please yourself if you don't find it\nrevolting, but I implore you not to let my uncle do it. It is bad for\nhim.\n\nASTROFF. Very well; we won't drink any more. I am going home at once.\nThat is settled. It will be dawn by the time the horses are harnessed.\n\nSONIA. It is still raining; wait till morning.\n\nASTROFF. The storm is blowing over. This is only the edge of it. I must\ngo. And please don't ask me to come and see your father any more. I tell\nhim he has gout, and he says it is rheumatism. I tell him to lie down,\nand he sits up. To-day he refused to see me at all.\n\nSONIA. He has been spoilt. [She looks in the sideboard] Won't you have a\nbite to eat?\n\nASTROFF. Yes, please. I believe I will.\n\nSONIA. I love to eat at night. I am sure we shall find something in\nhere. They say that he has made a great many conquests in his life, and\nthat the women have spoiled him. Here is some cheese for you.\n\n[They stand eating by the sideboard.]\n\nASTROFF. I haven't eaten anything to-day. Your father has a very\ndifficult nature. [He takes a bottle out of the sideboard] May I? [He\npours himself a glass of vodka] We are alone here, and I can speak\nfrankly. Do you know, I could not stand living in this house for even a\nmonth? This atmosphere would stifle me. There is your father, entirely\nabsorbed in his books, and his gout; there is your Uncle Vanya with his\nhypochondria, your grandmother, and finally, your step-mother--\n\nSONIA. What about her?\n\nASTROFF. A human being should be entirely beautiful: the face, the\nclothes, the mind, the thoughts. Your step-mother is, of course,\nbeautiful to look at, but don't you see? She does nothing but sleep\nand eat and walk and bewitch us, and that is all. She has no\nresponsibilities, everything is done for her--am I not right? And an\nidle life can never be a pure one. [A pause] However, I may be judging\nher too severely. Like your Uncle Vanya, I am discontented, and so we\nare both grumblers.\n\nSONIA. Aren't you satisfied with life?\n\nASTROFF. I like life as life, but I hate and despise it in a little\nRussian country village, and as far as my own personal life goes, by\nheaven! there is absolutely no redeeming feature about it. Haven't you\nnoticed if you are riding through a dark wood at night and see a little\nlight shining ahead, how you forget your fatigue and the darkness and\nthe sharp twigs that whip your face? I work, that you know--as no one\nelse in the country works. Fate beats me on without rest; at times I\nsuffer unendurably and I see no light ahead. I have no hope; I do not\nlike people. It is long since I have loved any one.\n\nSONIA. You love no one?\n\nASTROFF. Not a soul. I only feel a sort of tenderness for your old nurse\nfor old-times' sake. The peasants are all alike; they are stupid and\nlive in dirt, and the educated people are hard to get along with. One\ngets tired of them. All our good friends are petty and shallow and see\nno farther than their own noses; in one word, they are dull. Those that\nhave brains are hysterical, devoured with a mania for self-analysis.\nThey whine, they hate, they pick faults everywhere with unhealthy\nsharpness. They sneak up to me sideways, look at me out of a corner of\nthe eye, and say: \"That man is a lunatic,\" \"That man is a wind-bag.\" Or,\nif they don't know what else to label me with, they say I am strange. I\nlike the woods; that is strange. I don't eat meat; that is strange, too.\nSimple, natural relations between man and man or man and nature do not\nexist. [He tries to go out; SONIA prevents him.]\n\nSONIA. I beg you, I implore you, not to drink any more!\n\nASTROFF. Why not?\n\nSONIA. It is so unworthy of you. You are well-bred, your voice is sweet,\nyou are even--more than any one I know--handsome. Why do you want to\nresemble the common people that drink and play cards? Oh, don't, I beg\nyou! You always say that people do not create anything, but only destroy\nwhat heaven has given them. Why, oh, why, do you destroy yourself? Oh,\ndon't, I implore you not to! I entreat you!\n\nASTROFF. [Gives her his hand] I won't drink any more.\n\nSONIA. Promise me.\n\nASTROFF. I give you my word of honour.\n\nSONIA. [Squeezing his hand] Thank you.\n\nASTROFF. I have done with it. You see, I am perfectly sober again, and\nso I shall stay till the end of my life. [He looks his watch] But, as\nI was saying, life holds nothing for me; my race is run. I am old, I\nam tired, I am trivial; my sensibilities are dead. I could never attach\nmyself to any one again. I love no one, and never shall! Beauty alone\nhas the power to touch me still. I am deeply moved by it. Helena could\nturn my head in a day if she wanted to, but that is not love, that is\nnot affection--\n\n[He shudders and covers his face with his hands.]\n\nSONIA. What is it?\n\nASTROFF. Nothing. During Lent one of my patients died under chloroform.\n\nSONIA. It is time to forget that. [A pause] Tell me, doctor, if I had a\nfriend or a younger sister, and if you knew that she, well--loved you,\nwhat would you do?\n\nASTROFF. [Shrugging his shoulders] I don't know. I don't think I should\ndo anything. I should make her understand that I could not return her\nlove--however, my mind is not bothered about those things now. I must\nstart at once if I am ever to get off. Good-bye, my dear girl. At this\nrate we shall stand here talking till morning. [He shakes hands with\nher] I shall go out through the sitting-room, because I am afraid your\nuncle might detain me. [He goes out.]\n\nSONIA. [Alone] Not a word! His heart and soul are still locked from me,\nand yet for some reason I am strangely happy. I wonder why? [She laughs\nwith pleasure] I told him that he was well-bred and handsome and that\nhis voice was sweet. Was that a mistake? I can still feel his voice\nvibrating in the air; it caresses me. [Wringing her hands] Oh! how\nterrible it is to be plain! I am plain, I know it. As I came out of\nchurch last Sunday I overheard a woman say, \"She is a dear, noble girl,\nbut what a pity she is so ugly!\" So ugly!\n\nHELENA comes in and throws open the window.\n\nHELENA. The storm is over. What delicious air! [A pause] Where is the\ndoctor?\n\nSONIA. He has gone. [A pause.]\n\nHELENA. Sonia!\n\nSONIA. Yes?\n\nHELENA. How much longer are you going to sulk at me? We have not hurt\neach other. Why not be friends? We have had enough of this.\n\nSONIA. I myself--[She embraces HELENA] Let us make peace.\n\nHELENA. With all my heart. [They are both moved.]\n\nSONIA. Has papa gone to bed?\n\nHELENA. No, he is sitting up in the drawing-room. Heaven knows what\nreason you and I had for not speaking to each other for weeks. [Sees the\nopen sideboard] Who left the sideboard open?\n\nSONIA. Dr. Astroff has just had supper.\n\nHELENA. There is some wine. Let us seal our friendship.\n\nSONIA. Yes, let us.\n\nHELENA. Out of one glass. [She fills a wine-glass] So, we are friends,\nare we?\n\nSONIA. Yes. [They drink and kiss each other] I have long wanted to make\nfriends, but somehow, I was ashamed to. [She weeps.]\n\nHELENA. Why are you crying?\n\nSONIA. I don't know. It is nothing.\n\nHELENA. There, there, don't cry. [She weeps] Silly! Now I am crying\ntoo. [A pause] You are angry with me because I seem to have married your\nfather for his money, but don't believe the gossip you hear. I swear to\nyou I married him for love. I was fascinated by his fame and learning. I\nknow now that it was not real love, but it seemed real at the time. I\nam innocent, and yet your clever, suspicious eyes have been punishing me\nfor an imaginary crime ever since my marriage.\n\nSONIA. Peace, peace! Let us forget the past.\n\nHELENA. You must not look so at people. It is not becoming to you. You\nmust trust people, or life becomes impossible.\n\nSONIA. Tell me truly, as a friend, are you happy?\n\nHELENA. Truly, no.\n\nSONIA. I knew it. One more question: do you wish your husband were\nyoung?\n\nHELENA. What a child you are! Of course I do. Go on, ask something else.\n\nSONIA. Do you like the doctor?\n\nHELENA. Yes, very much indeed.\n\nSONIA. [Laughing] I have a stupid face, haven't I? He has just gone out,\nand his voice is still in my ears; I hear his step; I see his face in\nthe dark window. Let me say all I have in my heart! But no, I cannot\nspeak of it so loudly. I am ashamed. Come to my room and let me tell you\nthere. I seem foolish to you, don't I? Talk to me of him.\n\nHELENA. What can I say?\n\nSONIA. He is clever. He can do everything. He can cure the sick, and\nplant woods.\n\nHELENA. It is not a question of medicine and woods, my dear, he is a man\nof genius. Do you know what that means? It means he is brave, profound,\nand of clear insight. He plants a tree and his mind travels a thousand\nyears into the future, and he sees visions of the happiness of the human\nrace. People like him are rare and should be loved. What if he does\ndrink and act roughly at times? A man of genius cannot be a saint in\nRussia. There he lives, cut off from the world by cold and storm and\nendless roads of bottomless mud, surrounded by a rough people who are\ncrushed by poverty and disease, his life one continuous struggle, with\nnever a day's respite; how can a man live like that for forty years and\nkeep himself sober and unspotted? [Kissing SONIA] I wish you happiness\nwith all my heart; you deserve it. [She gets up] As for me, I am a\nworthless, futile woman. I have always been futile; in music, in love,\nin my husband's house--in a word, in everything. When you come to think\nof it, Sonia, I am really very, very unhappy. [Walks excitedly up and\ndown] Happiness can never exist for me in this world. Never. Why do you\nlaugh?\n\nSONIA. [Laughing and covering her face with her hands] I am so happy, so\nhappy!\n\nHELENA. I want to hear music. I might play a little.\n\nSONIA. Oh, do, do! [She embraces her] I could not possibly go to sleep\nnow. Do play!\n\nHELENA. Yes, I will. Your father is still awake. Music irritates him\nwhen he is ill, but if he says I may, then I shall play a little. Go,\nSonia, and ask him.\n\nSONIA. Very well.\n\n[She goes out. The WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden.]\n\nHELENA. It is long since I have heard music. And now, I shall sit and\nplay, and weep like a fool. [Speaking out of the window] Is that you\nrattling out there, Ephim?\n\nVOICE OF THE WATCHMAN. It is I.\n\nHELENA. Don't make such a noise. Your master is ill.\n\nVOICE OF THE WATCHMAN. I am going away this minute. [Whistles a tune.]\n\nSONIA. [Comes back] He says, no.\n\nThe curtain falls.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT III\n\nThe drawing-room of SEREBRAKOFF'S house. There are three doors: one to\nthe right, one to the left, and one in the centre of the room. VOITSKI\nand SONIA are sitting down. HELENA is walking up and down, absorbed in\nthought.\n\nVOITSKI. We were asked by the professor to be here at one o'clock.\n[Looks at his watch] It is now a quarter to one. It seems he has some\ncommunication to make to the world.\n\nHELENA. Probably a matter of business.\n\nVOITSKI. He never had any business. He writes twaddle, grumbles, and\neats his heart out with jealousy; that's all he does.\n\nSONIA. [Reproachfully] Uncle!\n\nVOITSKI. All right. I beg your pardon. [He points to HELENA] Look at\nher. Wandering up and down from sheer idleness. A sweet picture, really.\n\nHELENA. I wonder you are not bored, droning on in the same key from\nmorning till night. [Despairingly] I am dying of this tedium. What shall\nI do?\n\nSONIA. [Shrugging her shoulders] There is plenty to do if you would.\n\nHELENA. For instance?\n\nSONIA. You could help run this place, teach the children, care for the\nsick--isn't that enough? Before you and papa came, Uncle Vanya and I\nused to go to market ourselves to deal in flour.\n\nHELENA. I don't know anything about such things, and besides, they don't\ninterest me. It is only in novels that women go out and teach and heal\nthe peasants; how can I suddenly begin to do it?\n\nSONIA. How can you live here and not do it? Wait awhile, you will get\nused to it all. [Embraces her] Don't be sad, dearest. [Laughing] You\nfeel miserable and restless, and can't seem to fit into this life, and\nyour restlessness is catching. Look at Uncle Vanya, he does nothing now\nbut haunt you like a shadow, and I have left my work to-day to come here\nand talk with you. I am getting lazy, and don't want to go on with it.\nDr. Astroff hardly ever used to come here; it was all we could do to\npersuade him to visit us once a month, and now he has abandoned his\nforestry and his practice, and comes every day. You must be a witch.\n\nVOITSKI. Why should you languish here? Come, my dearest, my beauty, be\nsensible! The blood of a Nixey runs in your veins. Oh, won't you let\nyourself be one? Give your nature the reins for once in your life; fall\nhead over ears in love with some other water sprite and plunge down head\nfirst into a deep pool, so that the Herr Professor and all of us may\nhave our hands free again.\n\nHELENA. [Angrily] Leave me alone! How cruel you are! [She tries to go\nout.]\n\nVOITSKI. [Preventing her] There, there, my beauty, I apologise. [He\nkisses her hand] Forgive me.\n\nHELENA. Confess that you would try the patience of an angel.\n\nVOITSKI. As a peace offering I am going to fetch some flowers which I\npicked for you this morning: some autumn roses, beautiful, sorrowful\nroses. [He goes out.]\n\nSONIA. Autumn roses, beautiful, sorrowful roses!\n\n[She and HELENA stand looking out of the window.]\n\nHELENA. September already! How shall we live through the long winter\nhere? [A pause] Where is the doctor?\n\nSONIA. He is writing in Uncle Vanya's room. I am glad Uncle Vanya has\ngone out, I want to talk to you about something.\n\nHELENA. About what?\n\nSONIA. About what?\n\n[She lays her head on HELENA'S breast.]\n\nHELENA. [Stroking her hair] There, there, that will do. Don't, Sonia.\n\nSONIA. I am ugly!\n\nHELENA. You have lovely hair.\n\nSONIA. Don't say that! [She turns to look at herself in the glass] No,\nwhen a woman is ugly they always say she has beautiful hair or eyes. I\nhave loved him now for six years, I have loved him more than one loves\none's mother. I seem to hear him beside me every moment of the day. I\nfeel the pressure of his hand on mine. If I look up, I seem to see him\ncoming, and as you see, I run to you to talk of him. He is here every\nday now, but he never looks at me, he does not notice my presence. It\nis agony. I have absolutely no hope, no, no hope. Oh, my God! Give me\nstrength to endure. I prayed all last night. I often go up to him and\nspeak to him and look into his eyes. My pride is gone. I am not mistress\nof myself. Yesterday I told Uncle Vanya I couldn't control myself, and\nall the servants know it. Every one knows that I love him.\n\nHELENA. Does he?\n\nSONIA. No, he never notices me.\n\nHELENA. [Thoughtfully] He is a strange man. Listen, Sonia, will you\nallow me to speak to him? I shall be careful, only hint. [A pause]\nReally, to be in uncertainty all these years! Let me do it!\n\nSONIA nods an affirmative.\n\nHELENA. Splendid! It will be easy to find out whether he loves you or\nnot. Don't be ashamed, sweetheart, don't worry. I shall be careful; he\nwill not notice a thing. We only want to find out whether it is yes or\nno, don't we? [A pause] And if it is no, then he must keep away from\nhere, is that so?\n\nSONIA nods.\n\nHELENA. It will be easier not to see him any more. We won't put off the\nexamination an instant. He said he had a sketch to show me. Go and tell\nhim at once that I want to see him.\n\nSONIA. [In great excitement] Will you tell me the whole truth?\n\nHELENA. Of course I will. I am sure that no matter what it is, it will\nbe easier for you to bear than this uncertainty. Trust to me, dearest.\n\nSONIA. Yes, yes. I shall say that you want to see his sketch. [She\nstarts out, but stops near the door and looks back] No, it is better not\nto know--and yet--there may be hope.\n\nHELENA. What do you say?\n\nSONIA. Nothing. [She goes out.]\n\nHELENA. [Alone] There is no greater sorrow than to know another's secret\nwhen you cannot help them. [In deep thought] He is obviously not in love\nwith her, but why shouldn't he marry her? She is not pretty, but she\nis so clever and pure and good, she would make a splendid wife for a\ncountry doctor of his years. [A pause] I can understand how the poor\nchild feels. She lives here in this desperate loneliness with no one\naround her except these colourless shadows that go mooning about talking\nnonsense and knowing nothing except that they eat, drink, and sleep.\nAmong them appears from time to time this Dr. Astroff, so different, so\nhandsome, so interesting, so charming. It is like seeing the moon\nrise on a dark night. Oh, to surrender oneself to his embrace! To lose\noneself in his arms! I am a little in love with him myself! Yes, I am\nlonely without him, and when I think of him I smile. That Uncle Vanya\nsays I have the blood of a Nixey in my veins: \"Give rein to your nature\nfor once in your life!\" Perhaps it is right that I should. Oh, to be\nfree as a bird, to fly away from all your sleepy faces and your talk and\nforget that you have existed at all! But I am a coward, I am afraid; my\nconscience torments me. He comes here every day now. I can guess why,\nand feel guilty already; I should like to fall on my knees at Sonia's\nfeet and beg her forgiveness, and weep.\n\nASTROFF comes in carrying a portfolio.\n\nASTROFF. How do you do? [Shakes hands with her] Do you want to see my\nsketch?\n\nHELENA. Yes, you promised to show me what you had been doing. Have you\ntime now?\n\nASTROFF. Of course I have!\n\nHe lays the portfolio on the table, takes out the sketch and fastens it\nto the table with thumb-tacks.\n\nASTROFF. Where were you born?\n\nHELENA. [Helping him] In St. Petersburg.\n\nASTROFF. And educated?\n\nHELENA. At the Conservatory there.\n\nASTROFF. You don't find this life very interesting, I dare say?\n\nHELENA. Oh, why not? It is true I don't know the country very well, but\nI have read a great deal about it.\n\nASTROFF. I have my own desk there in Ivan's room. When I am absolutely\ntoo exhausted to go on I drop everything and rush over here to forget\nmyself in this work for an hour or two. Ivan and Miss Sonia sit rattling\nat their counting-boards, the cricket chirps, and I sit beside them and\npaint, feeling warm and peaceful. But I don't permit myself this luxury\nvery often, only once a month. [Pointing to the picture] Look there!\nThat is a map of our country as it was fifty years ago. The green tints,\nboth dark and light, represent forests. Half the map, as you see, is\ncovered with it. Where the green is striped with red the forests were\ninhabited by elk and wild goats. Here on this lake, lived great flocks\nof swans and geese and ducks; as the old men say, there was a power of\nbirds of every kind. Now they have vanished like a cloud. Beside the\nhamlets and villages, you see, I have dotted down here and there the\nvarious settlements, farms, hermit's caves, and water-mills. This\ncountry carried a great many cattle and horses, as you can see by the\nquantity of blue paint. For instance, see how thickly it lies in this\npart; there were great herds of them here, an average of three horses to\nevery house. [A pause] Now, look lower down. This is the country as it\nwas twenty-five years ago. Only a third of the map is green now with\nforests. There are no goats left and no elk. The blue paint is lighter,\nand so on, and so on. Now we come to the third part; our country as it\nappears to-day. We still see spots of green, but not much. The elk, the\nswans, the black-cock have disappeared. It is, on the whole, the picture\nof a regular and slow decline which it will evidently only take about\nten or fifteen more years to complete. You may perhaps object that it\nis the march of progress, that the old order must give place to the new,\nand you might be right if roads had been run through these ruined woods,\nor if factories and schools had taken their place. The people then would\nhave become better educated and healthier and richer, but as it is, we\nhave nothing of the sort. We have the same swamps and mosquitoes;\nthe same disease and want; the typhoid, the diphtheria, the burning\nvillages. We are confronted by the degradation of our country, brought\non by the fierce struggle for existence of the human race. It is the\nconsequence of the ignorance and unconsciousness of starving, shivering,\nsick humanity that, to save its children, instinctively snatches\nat everything that can warm it and still its hunger. So it destroys\neverything it can lay its hands on, without a thought for the morrow.\nAnd almost everything has gone, and nothing has been created to take its\nplace. [Coldly] But I see by your face that I am not interesting you.\n\nHELENA. I know so little about such things!\n\nASTROFF. There is nothing to know. It simply isn't interesting, that's\nall.\n\nHELENA. Frankly, my thoughts were elsewhere. Forgive me! I want to\nsubmit you to a little examination, but I am embarrassed and don't know\nhow to begin.\n\nASTROFF. An examination?\n\nHELENA. Yes, but quite an innocent one. Sit down. [They sit down] It is\nabout a certain young girl I know. Let us discuss it like honest people,\nlike friends, and then forget what has passed between us, shall we?\n\nASTROFF. Very well.\n\nHELENA. It is about my step-daughter, Sonia. Do you like her?\n\nASTROFF. Yes, I respect her.\n\nHELENA. Do you like her--as a woman?\n\nASTROFF. [Slowly] No.\n\nHELENA. One more word, and that will be the last. You have not noticed\nanything?\n\nASTROFF. No, nothing.\n\nHELENA. [Taking his hand] You do not love her. I see that in your eyes.\nShe is suffering. You must realise that, and not come here any more.\n\nASTROFF. My sun has set, yes, and then I haven't the time. [Shrugging\nhis shoulders] Where shall I find time for such things? [He is\nembarrassed.]\n\nHELENA. Bah! What an unpleasant conversation! I am as out of breath as\nif I had been running three miles uphill. Thank heaven, that is over!\nNow let us forget everything as if nothing had been said. You are\nsensible. You understand. [A pause] I am actually blushing.\n\nASTROFF. If you had spoken a month ago I might perhaps have\nconsidered it, but now--[He shrugs his shoulders] Of course, if she is\nsuffering--but I cannot understand why you had to put me through this\nexamination. [He searches her face with his eyes, and shakes his finger\nat her] Oho, you are wily!\n\nHELENA. What does this mean?\n\nASTROFF. [Laughing] You are a wily one! I admit that Sonia is suffering,\nbut what does this examination of yours mean? [He prevents her from\nretorting, and goes on quickly] Please don't put on such a look of\nsurprise; you know perfectly well why I come here every day. Yes, you\nknow perfectly why and for whose sake I come! Oh, my sweet tigress!\ndon't look at me in that way; I am an old bird!\n\nHELENA. [Perplexed] A tigress? I don't understand you.\n\nASTROFF. Beautiful, sleek tigress, you must have your victims! For a\nwhole month I have done nothing but seek you eagerly. I have thrown over\neverything for you, and you love to see it. Now then, I am sure you knew\nall this without putting me through your examination. [Crossing his arms\nand bowing his head] I surrender. Here you have me--now, eat me.\n\nHELENA. You have gone mad!\n\nASTROFF. You are afraid!\n\nHELENA. I am a better and stronger woman than you think me. Good-bye.\n[She tries to leave the room.]\n\nASTROFF. Why good-bye? Don't say good-bye, don't waste words. Oh, how\nlovely you are--what hands! [He kisses her hands.]\n\nHELENA. Enough of this! [She frees her hands] Leave the room! You have\nforgotten yourself.\n\nASTROFF. Tell me, tell me, where can we meet to-morrow? [He puts his arm\naround her] Don't you see that we must meet, that it is inevitable?\n\nHe kisses her. VOITSKI comes in carrying a bunch of roses, and stops in\nthe doorway.\n\nHELENA. [Without seeing VOITSKI] Have pity! Leave me, [lays her head on\nASTROFF'S shoulder] Don't! [She tries to break away from him.]\n\nASTROFF. [Holding her by the waist] Be in the forest tomorrow at two\no'clock. Will you? Will you?\n\nHELENA. [Sees VOITSKI] Let me go! [Goes to the window deeply\nembarrassed] This is appalling!\n\nVOITSKI. [Throws the flowers on a chair, and speaks in great excitement,\nwiping his face with his handkerchief] Nothing--yes, yes, nothing.\n\nASTROFF. The weather is fine to-day, my dear Ivan; the morning was\novercast and looked like rain, but now the sun is shining again.\nHonestly, we have had a very fine autumn, and the wheat is looking\nfairly well. [Puts his map back into the portfolio] But the days are\ngrowing short.\n\nHELENA. [Goes quickly up to VOITSKI] You must do your best; you must use\nall your power to get my husband and myself away from here to-day! Do\nyou hear? I say, this very day!\n\nVOITSKI. [Wiping his face] Oh! Ah! Oh! All right! I--Helena, I saw\neverything!\n\nHELENA. [In great agitation] Do you hear me? I must leave here this very\nday!\n\nSEREBRAKOFF, SONIA, MARINA, and TELEGIN come in.\n\nTELEGIN. I am not very well myself, your Excellency. I have been limping\nfor two days, and my head--\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Where are the others? I hate this house. It is a regular\nlabyrinth. Every one is always scattered through the twenty-six enormous\nrooms; one never can find a soul. [Rings] Ask my wife and Madame\nVoitskaya to come here!\n\nHELENA. I am here already.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Please, all of you, sit down.\n\nSONIA. [Goes up to HELENA and asks anxiously] What did he say?\n\nHELENA. I'll tell you later.\n\nSONIA. You are moved. [looking quickly and inquiringly into her face] I\nunderstand; he said he would not come here any more. [A pause] Tell me,\ndid he?\n\nHELENA nods.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [To TELEGIN] One can, after all, become reconciled to being\nan invalid, but not to this country life. The ways of it stick in my\nthroat and I feel exactly as if I had been whirled off the earth and\nlanded on a strange planet. Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen.\nSonia! [SONIA does not hear. She is standing with her head bowed sadly\nforward on her breast] Sonia! [A pause] She does not hear me. [To\nMARINA] Sit down too, nurse. [MARINA sits down and begins to knit her\nstocking] I crave your indulgence, ladies and gentlemen; hang your ears,\nif I may say so, on the peg of attention. [He laughs.]\n\nVOITSKI. [Agitated] Perhaps you do not need me--may I be excused?\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. No, you are needed now more than any one.\n\nVOITSKI. What is it you want of me?\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. You--but what are you angry about? If it is anything I have\ndone, I ask you to forgive me.\n\nVOITSKI. Oh, drop that and come to business; what do you want?\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA comes in.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Here is mother. Ladies and gentlemen, I shall begin. I\nhave asked you to assemble here, my friends, in order to discuss a very\nimportant matter. I want to ask you for your assistance and advice, and\nknowing your unfailing amiability I think I can count on both. I am a\nbook-worm and a scholar, and am unfamiliar with practical affairs. I\ncannot, I find, dispense with the help of well-informed people such as\nyou, Ivan, and you, Telegin, and you, mother. The truth is, _manet omnes\nuna nox,_ that is to say, our lives are in the hands of God, and as I\nam old and ill, I realise that the time has come for me to dispose of\nmy property in regard to the interests of my family. My life is nearly\nover, and I am not thinking of myself, but I have a young wife and\ndaughter. [A pause] I cannot continue to live in the country; we were\nnot made for country life, and yet we cannot afford to live in town on\nthe income derived from this estate. We might sell the woods, but that\nwould be an expedient we could not resort to every year. We must find\nsome means of guaranteeing to ourselves a certain more or less fixed\nyearly income. With this object in view, a plan has occurred to me which\nI now have the honour of presenting to you for your consideration. I\nshall only give you a rough outline, avoiding all details. Our estate\ndoes not pay on an average more than two per cent on the money invested\nin it. I propose to sell it. If we then invest our capital in bonds,\nit will earn us four to five per cent, and we should probably have a\nsurplus over of several thousand roubles, with which we could buy a\nsummer cottage in Finland--\n\nVOITSKI. Hold on! Repeat what you just said; I don't think I heard you\nquite right.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I said we would invest the money in bonds and buy a cottage\nin Finland with the surplus.\n\nVOITSKI. No, not Finland--you said something else.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I propose to sell this place.\n\nVOITSKI. Aha! That was it! So you are going to sell the place? Splendid.\nThe idea is a rich one. And what do you propose to do with my old mother\nand me and with Sonia here?\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. That will be decided in due time. We can't do everything at\nonce.\n\nVOITSKI. Wait! It is clear that until this moment I have never had a\ngrain of sense in my head. I have always been stupid enough to think\nthat the estate belonged to Sonia. My father bought it as a wedding\npresent for my sister, and I foolishly imagined that as our laws were\nmade for Russians and not Turks, my sister's estate would come down to\nher child.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Of course it is Sonia's. Has any one denied it? I don't\nwant to sell it without Sonia's consent; on the contrary, what I am\ndoing is for Sonia's good.\n\nVOITSKI. This is absolutely incomprehensible. Either I have gone mad\nor--or--\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. Jean, don't contradict Alexander. Trust to him; he knows\nbetter than we do what is right and what is wrong.\n\nVOITSKI. I shan't. Give me some water. [He drinks] Go ahead! Say\nanything you please--anything!\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I can't imagine why you are so upset. I don't pretend\nthat my scheme is an ideal one, and if you all object to it I shall not\ninsist. [A pause.]\n\nTELEGIN. [With embarrassment] I not only nourish feelings of respect\ntoward learning, your Excellency, but I am also drawn to it by family\nties. My brother Gregory's wife's brother, whom you may know; his name\nis Constantine Lakedemonoff, and he used to be a magistrate--\n\nVOITSKI. Stop, Waffles. This is business; wait a bit, we will talk of\nthat later. [To SEREBRAKOFF] There now, ask him what he thinks; this\nestate was bought from his uncle.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Ah! Why should I ask questions? What good would it do?\n\nVOITSKI. The price was ninety-five thousand roubles. My father paid\nseventy and left a debt of twenty-five. Now listen! This place could\nnever have been bought had I not renounced my inheritance in favour of\nmy sister, whom I deeply loved--and what is more, I worked for ten years\nlike an ox, and paid off the debt.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I regret ever having started this conversation.\n\nVOITSKI. Thanks entirely to my own personal efforts, the place is\nentirely clear of debts, and now, when I have grown old, you want to\nthrow me out, neck and crop!\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. I can't imagine what you are driving at.\n\nVOITSKI. For twenty-five years I have managed this place, and have sent\nyou the returns from it like the most honest of servants, and you have\nnever given me one single word of thanks for my work, not one--neither\nin my youth nor now. You allowed me a meagre salary of five hundred\nroubles a year, a beggar's pittance, and have never even thought of\nadding a rouble to it.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. What did I know about such things, Ivan? I am not a\npractical man and don't understand them. You might have helped yourself\nto all you wanted.\n\nVOITSKI. Yes, why did I not steal? Don't you all despise me for not\nstealing, when it would have been only justice? And I should not now\nhave been a beggar!\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. [Sternly] Jean!\n\nTELEGIN. [Agitated] Vanya, old man, don't talk in that way. Why spoil\nsuch pleasant relations? [He embraces him] Do stop!\n\nVOITSKI. For twenty-five years I have been sitting here with my mother\nlike a mole in a burrow. Our every thought and hope was yours and yours\nonly. By day we talked with pride of you and your work, and spoke your\nname with veneration; our nights we wasted reading the books and papers\nwhich my soul now loathes.\n\nTELEGIN. Don't, Vanya, don't. I can't stand it.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [Wrathfully] What under heaven do you want, anyway?\n\nVOITSKI. We used to think of you as almost superhuman, but now the\nscales have fallen from my eyes and I see you as you are! You write on\nart without knowing anything about it. Those books of yours which I used\nto admire are not worth one copper kopeck. You are a hoax!\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Can't any one make him stop? I am going!\n\nHELENA. Ivan, I command you to stop this instant! Do you hear me?\n\nVOITSKI. I refuse! [SEREBRAKOFF tries to get out of the room, but\nVOITSKI bars the door] Wait! I have not done yet! You have wrecked my\nlife. I have never lived. My best years have gone for nothing, have been\nruined, thanks to you. You are my most bitter enemy!\n\nTELEGIN. I can't stand it; I can't stand it. I am going. [He goes out in\ngreat excitement.]\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. But what do you want? What earthly right have you to use\nsuch language to me? Ruination! If this estate is yours, then take it,\nand let me be ruined!\n\nHELENA. I am going away out of this hell this minute. [Shrieks] This is\ntoo much!\n\nVOITSKI. My life has been a failure. I am clever and brave and strong.\nIf I had lived a normal life I might have become another Schopenhauer\nor Dostoieffski. I am losing my head! I am going crazy! Mother, I am in\ndespair! Oh, mother!\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. [Sternly] Listen, Alexander!\n\nSONIA falls on her knees beside the nurse and nestles against her.\n\nSONIA. Oh, nurse, nurse!\n\nVOITSKI. Mother! What shall I do? But no, don't speak! I know what to\ndo. [To SEREBRAKOFF] And you will understand me!\n\nHe goes out through the door in the centre of the room and MME.\nVOITSKAYA follows him.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Tell me, what on earth is the matter? Take this lunatic out\nof my sight! I cannot possibly live under the same roof with him. His\nroom [He points to the centre door] is almost next door to mine. Let him\ntake himself off into the village or into the wing of the house, or I\nshall leave here at once. I cannot stay in the same house with him.\n\nHELENA. [To her husband] We are leaving to-day; we must get ready at\nonce for our departure.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. What a perfectly dreadful man!\n\nSONIA. [On her knees beside the nurse and turning to her father. She\nspeaks with emotion] You must be kind to us, papa. Uncle Vanya and I\nare so unhappy! [Controlling her despair] Have pity on us. Remember how\nUncle Vanya and Granny used to copy and translate your books for you\nevery night--every, every night. Uncle Vanya has toiled without rest;\nhe would never spend a penny on us, we sent it all to you. We have not\neaten the bread of idleness. I am not saying this as I should like to,\nbut you must understand us, papa, you must be merciful to us.\n\nHELENA. [Very excited, to her husband] For heaven's sake, Alexander, go\nand have a talk with him--explain!\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. Very well, I shall have a talk with him, but I won't\napologise for a thing. I am not angry with him, but you must confess\nthat his behaviour has been strange, to say the least. Excuse me, I\nshall go to him.\n\n[He goes out through the centre door.]\n\nHELENA. Be gentle with him; try to quiet him. [She follows him out.]\n\nSONIA. [Nestling nearer to MARINA] Nurse, oh, nurse!\n\nMARINA. It's all right, my baby. When the geese have cackled they will\nbe still again. First they cackle and then they stop.\n\nSONIA. Nurse!\n\nMARINA. You are trembling all over, as if you were freezing. There,\nthere, little orphan baby, God is merciful. A little linden-tea, and it\nwill all pass away. Don't cry, my sweetest. [Looking angrily at the door\nin the centre of the room] See, the geese have all gone now. The devil\ntake them!\n\nA shot is heard. HELENA screams behind the scenes. SONIA shudders.\n\nMARINA. Bang! What's that?\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [Comes in reeling with terror] Hold him! hold him! He has\ngone mad!\n\nHELENA and VOITSKI are seen struggling in the doorway.\n\nHELENA. [Trying to wrest the revolver from him] Give it to me; give it\nto me, I tell you!\n\nVOITSKI. Let me go, Helena, let me go! [He frees himself and rushes in,\nlooking everywhere for SEREBRAKOFF] Where is he? Ah, there he is! [He\nshoots at him. A pause] I didn't get him? I missed again? [Furiously]\nDamnation! Damnation! To hell with him!\n\nHe flings the revolver on the floor, and drops helpless into a chair.\nSEREBRAKOFF stands as if stupefied. HELENA leans against the wall,\nalmost fainting.\n\nHELENA. Take me away! Take me away! I can't stay here--I can't!\n\nVOITSKI. [In despair] Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?\n\nSONIA. [Softly] Oh, nurse, nurse!\n\nThe curtain falls.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT IV\n\nVOITSKI'S bedroom, which is also his office. A table stands near\nthe window; on it are ledgers, letter scales, and papers of every\ndescription. Near by stands a smaller table belonging to ASTROFF, with\nhis paints and drawing materials. On the wall hangs a cage containing a\nstarling. There is also a map of Africa on the wall, obviously of no use\nto anybody. There is a large sofa covered with buckram. A door to the\nleft leads into an inner room; one to the right leads into the front\nhall, and before this door lies a mat for the peasants with their muddy\nboots to stand on. It is an autumn evening. The silence is profound.\nTELEGIN and MARINA are sitting facing one another, winding wool.\n\nTELEGIN. Be quick, Marina, or we shall be called away to say good-bye\nbefore you have finished. The carriage has already been ordered.\n\nMARINA. [Trying to wind more quickly] I am a little tired.\n\nTELEGIN. They are going to Kharkoff to live.\n\nMARINA. They do well to go.\n\nTELEGIN. They have been frightened. The professor's wife won't stay here\nan hour longer. \"If we are going at all, let's be off,\" says she, \"we\nshall go to Kharkoff and look about us, and then we can send for our\nthings.\" They are travelling light. It seems, Marina, that fate has\ndecreed for them not to live here.\n\nMARINA. And quite rightly. What a storm they have just raised! It was\nshameful!\n\nTELEGIN. It was indeed. The scene was worthy of the brush of Aibazofski.\n\nMARINA. I wish I'd never laid eyes on them. [A pause] Now we shall have\nthings as they were again: tea at eight, dinner at one, and supper in\nthe evening; everything in order as decent folks, as Christians like to\nhave it. [Sighs] It is a long time since I have eaten noodles.\n\nTELEGIN. Yes, we haven't had noodles for ages. [A pause] Not for ages.\nAs I was going through the village this morning, Marina, one of the\nshop-keepers called after me, \"Hi! you hanger-on!\" I felt it bitterly.\n\nMARINA. Don't pay the least attention to them, master; we are all\ndependents on God. You and Sonia and all of us. Every one must work, no\none can sit idle. Where is Sonia?\n\nTELEGIN. In the garden with the doctor, looking for Ivan. They fear he\nmay lay violent hands on himself.\n\nMARINA. Where is his pistol?\n\nTELEGIN. [Whispers] I hid it in the cellar.\n\nVOITSKI and ASTROFF come in.\n\nVOITSKI. Leave me alone! [To MARINA and TELEGIN] Go away! Go away and\nleave me to myself, if but for an hour. I won't have you watching me\nlike this!\n\nTELEGIN. Yes, yes, Vanya. [He goes out on tiptoe.]\n\nMARINA. The gander cackles; ho! ho! ho!\n\n[She gathers up her wool and goes out.]\n\nVOITSKI. Leave me by myself!\n\nASTROFF. I would, with the greatest pleasure. I ought to have gone long\nago, but I shan't leave you until you have returned what you took from\nme.\n\nVOITSKI. I took nothing from you.\n\nASTROFF. I am not jesting, don't detain me, I really must go.\n\nVOITSKI. I took nothing of yours.\n\nASTROFF. You didn't? Very well, I shall have to wait a little longer,\nand then you will have to forgive me if I resort to force. We shall have\nto bind you and search you. I mean what I say.\n\nVOITSKI. Do as you please. [A pause] Oh, to make such a fool of myself!\nTo shoot twice and miss him both times! I shall never forgive myself.\n\nASTROFF. When the impulse came to shoot, it would have been as well had\nyou put a bullet through your own head.\n\nVOITSKI. [Shrugging his shoulders] Strange! I attempted murder, and am\nnot going to be arrested or brought to trial. That means they think\nme mad. [With a bitter laugh] Me! I am mad, and those who hide their\nworthlessness, their dullness, their crying heartlessness behind a\nprofessor's mask, are sane! Those who marry old men and then deceive\nthem under the noses of all, are sane! I saw you kiss her; I saw you in\neach other's arms!\n\nASTROFF. Yes, sir, I did kiss her; so there. [He puts his thumb to his\nnose.]\n\nVOITSKI. [His eyes on the door] No, it is the earth that is mad, because\nshe still bears us on her breast.\n\nASTROFF. That is nonsense.\n\nVOITSKI. Well? Am I not a madman, and therefore irresponsible? Haven't I\nthe right to talk nonsense?\n\nASTROFF. This is a farce! You are not mad; you are simply a ridiculous\nfool. I used to think every fool was out of his senses, but now I\nsee that lack of sense is a man's normal state, and you are perfectly\nnormal.\n\nVOITSKI. [Covers his face with his hands] Oh! If you knew how ashamed\nI am! These piercing pangs of shame are like nothing on earth. [In an\nagonised voice] I can't endure them! [He leans against the table] What\ncan I do? What can I do?\n\nASTROFF. Nothing.\n\nVOITSKI. You must tell me something! Oh, my God! I am forty-seven years\nold. I may live to sixty; I still have thirteen years before me; an\neternity! How shall I be able to endure life for thirteen years?\nWhat shall I do? How can I fill them? Oh, don't you see? [He presses\nASTROFF'S hand convulsively] Don't you see, if only I could live the\nrest of my life in some new way! If I could only wake some still, bright\nmorning and feel that life had begun again; that the past was forgotten\nand had vanished like smoke. [He weeps] Oh, to begin life anew! Tell me,\ntell me how to begin.\n\nASTROFF. [Crossly] What nonsense! What sort of a new life can you and I\nlook forward to? We can have no hope.\n\nVOITSKI. None?\n\nASTROFF. None. Of that I am convinced.\n\nVOITSKI. Tell me what to do. [He puts his hand to his heart] I feel such\na burning pain here.\n\nASTROFF. [Shouts angrily] Stop! [Then, more gently] It may be that\nposterity, which will despise us for our blind and stupid lives, will\nfind some road to happiness; but we--you and I--have but one hope, the\nhope that we may be visited by visions, perhaps by pleasant ones, as we\nlie resting in our graves. [Sighing] Yes, brother, there were only two\nrespectable, intelligent men in this county, you and I. Ten years or so\nof this life of ours, this miserable life, have sucked us under, and we\nhave become as contemptible and petty as the rest. But don't try to talk\nme out of my purpose! Give me what you took from me, will you?\n\nVOITSKI. I took nothing from you.\n\nASTROFF. You took a little bottle of morphine out of my medicine-case.\n[A pause] Listen! If you are positively determined to make an end\nto yourself, go into the woods and shoot yourself there. Give up the\nmorphine, or there will be a lot of talk and guesswork; people will\nthink I gave it to you. I don't fancy having to perform a post-mortem on\nyou. Do you think I should find it interesting?\n\nSONIA comes in.\n\nVOITSKI. Leave me alone.\n\nASTROFF. [To SONIA] Sonia, your uncle has stolen a bottle of morphine\nout of my medicine-case and won't give it up. Tell him that his\nbehaviour is--well, unwise. I haven't time, I must be going.\n\nSONIA. Uncle Vanya, did you take the morphine?\n\nASTROFF. Yes, he took it. [A pause] I am absolutely sure.\n\nSONIA. Give it up! Why do you want to frighten us? [Tenderly] Give it\nup, Uncle Vanya! My misfortune is perhaps even greater than yours, but I\nam not plunged in despair. I endure my sorrow, and shall endure it until\nmy life comes to a natural end. You must endure yours, too. [A pause]\nGive it up! Dear, darling Uncle Vanya. Give it up! [She weeps] You are\nso good, I am sure you will have pity on us and give it up. You must\nendure your sorrow, Uncle Vanya; you must endure it.\n\nVOITSKI takes a bottle from the drawer of the table and hands it to\nASTROFF.\n\nVOITSKI. There it is! [To SONIA] And now, we must get to work at once;\nwe must do something, or else I shall not be able to endure it.\n\nSONIA. Yes, yes, to work! As soon as we have seen them off we shall\ngo to work. [She nervously straightens out the papers on the table]\nEverything is in a muddle!\n\nASTROFF. [Putting the bottle in his case, which he straps together] Now\nI can be off.\n\nHELENA comes in.\n\nHELENA. Are you here, Ivan? We are starting in a moment. Go to\nAlexander, he wants to speak to you.\n\nSONIA. Go, Uncle Vanya. [She takes VOITSKI 'S arm] Come, you and papa\nmust make peace; that is absolutely necessary.\n\nSONIA and VOITSKI go out.\n\nHELENA. I am going away. [She gives ASTROFF her hand] Good-bye.\n\nASTROFF. So soon?\n\nHELENA. The carriage is waiting.\n\nASTROFF. Good-bye.\n\nHELENA. You promised me you would go away yourself to-day.\n\nASTROFF. I have not forgotten. I am going at once. [A pause] Were you\nfrightened? Was it so terrible?\n\nHELENA. Yes.\n\nASTROFF. Couldn't you stay? Couldn't you? To-morrow--in the forest--\n\nHELENA. No. It is all settled, and that is why I can look you so bravely\nin the face. Our departure is fixed. One thing I must ask of you: don't\nthink too badly of me; I should like you to respect me.\n\nASTROFF. Ah! [With an impatient gesture] Stay, I implore you! Confess\nthat there is nothing for you to do in this world. You have no object\nin life; there is nothing to occupy your attention, and sooner or later\nyour feelings must master you. It is inevitable. It would be better if\nit happened not in Kharkoff or in Kursk, but here, in nature's lap.\nIt would then at least be poetical, even beautiful. Here you have the\nforests, the houses half in ruins that Turgenieff writes of.\n\nHELENA. How comical you are! I am angry with you and yet I shall always\nremember you with pleasure. You are interesting and original. You and\nI will never meet again, and so I shall tell you--why should I conceal\nit?--that I am just a little in love with you. Come, one more last\npressure of our hands, and then let us part good friends. Let us not\nbear each other any ill will.\n\nASTROFF. [Pressing her hand] Yes, go. [Thoughtfully] You seem to be\nsincere and good, and yet there is something strangely disquieting about\nall your personality. No sooner did you arrive here with your husband\nthan every one whom you found busy and actively creating something was\nforced to drop his work and give himself up for the whole summer to\nyour husband's gout and yourself. You and he have infected us with your\nidleness. I have been swept off my feet; I have not put my hand to\na thing for weeks, during which sickness has been running its course\nunchecked among the people, and the peasants have been pasturing their\ncattle in my woods and young plantations. Go where you will, you and\nyour husband will always carry destruction in your train. I am joking of\ncourse, and yet I am strangely sure that had you stayed here we should\nhave been overtaken by the most immense desolation. I would have gone\nto my ruin, and you--you would not have prospered. So go! E finita la\ncomedia!\n\nHELENA. [Snatching a pencil off ASTROFF'S table, and hiding it with a\nquick movement] I shall take this pencil for memory!\n\nASTROFF. How strange it is. We meet, and then suddenly it seems that\nwe must part forever. That is the way in this world. As long as we are\nalone, before Uncle Vanya comes in with a bouquet--allow me--to kiss you\ngood-bye--may I? [He kisses her on the cheek] So! Splendid!\n\nHELENA. I wish you every happiness. [She glances about her] For once\nin my life, I shall! and scorn the consequences! [She kisses him\nimpetuously, and they quickly part] I must go.\n\nASTROFF. Yes, go. If the carriage is there, then start at once. [They\nstand listening.]\n\nASTROFF. E finita!\n\nVOITSKI, SEREBRAKOFF, MME. VOITSKAYA with her book, TELEGIN, and SONIA\ncome in.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [To VOITSKI] Shame on him who bears malice for the past. I\nhave gone through so much in the last few hours that I feel capable of\nwriting a whole treatise on the conduct of life for the instruction\nof posterity. I gladly accept your apology, and myself ask your\nforgiveness. [He kisses VOITSKI three times.]\n\nHELENA embraces SONIA.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [Kissing MME. VOITSKAYA'S hand] Mother!\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. [Kissing him] Have your picture taken, Alexander, and\nsend me one. You know how dear you are to me.\n\nTELEGIN. Good-bye, your Excellency. Don't forget us.\n\nSEREBRAKOFF. [Kissing his daughter] Good-bye, good-bye all. [Shaking\nhands with ASTROFF] Many thanks for your pleasant company. I have a deep\nregard for your opinions and your enthusiasm, but let me, as an old man,\ngive one word of advice at parting: do something, my friend! Work! Do\nsomething! [They all bow] Good luck to you all. [He goes out followed by\nMME. VOITSKAYA and SONIA.]\n\nVOITSKI [Kissing HELENA'S hand fervently] Good-bye--forgive me. I shall\nnever see you again!\n\nHELENA. [Touched] Good-bye, dear boy.\n\nShe lightly kisses his head as he bends over her hand, and goes out.\n\nASTROFF. Tell them to bring my carriage around too, Waffles.\n\nTELEGIN. All right, old man.\n\nASTROFF and VOITSKI are left behind alone. ASTROFF collects his paints\nand drawing materials on the table and packs them away in a box.\n\nASTROFF. Why don't you go to see them off?\n\nVOITSKI. Let them go! I--I can't go out there. I feel too sad. I must go\nto work on something at once. To work! To work!\n\nHe rummages through his papers on the table. A pause. The tinkling of\nbells is heard as the horses trot away.\n\nASTROFF. They have gone! The professor, I suppose, is glad to go. He\ncouldn't be tempted back now by a fortune.\n\nMARINA comes in.\n\nMARINA. They have gone. [She sits down in an arm-chair and knits her\nstocking.]\n\nSONIA comes in wiping her eyes.\n\nSONIA. They have gone. God be with them. [To her uncle] And now, Uncle\nVanya, let us do something!\n\nVOITSKI. To work! To work!\n\nSONIA. It is long, long, since you and I have sat together at this\ntable. [She lights a lamp on the table] No ink! [She takes the inkstand\nto the cupboard and fills it from an ink-bottle] How sad it is to see\nthem go!\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA comes slowly in.\n\nMME. VOITSKAYA. They have gone.\n\nShe sits down and at once becomes absorbed in her book. SONIA sits down\nat the table and looks through an account book.\n\nSONIA. First, Uncle Vanya, let us write up the accounts. They are in a\ndreadful state. Come, begin. You take one and I will take the other.\n\nVOITSKI. In account with [They sit silently writing.]\n\nMARINA. [Yawning] The sand-man has come.\n\nASTROFF. How still it is. Their pens scratch, the cricket sings; it is\nso warm and comfortable. I hate to go. [The tinkling of bells is heard.]\n\nASTROFF. My carriage has come. There now remains but to say good-bye to\nyou, my friends, and to my table here, and then--away! [He puts the map\ninto the portfolio.]\n\nMARINA. Don't hurry away; sit a little longer with us.\n\nASTROFF. Impossible.\n\nVOITSKI. [Writing] And carry forward from the old debt two\nseventy-five--\n\nWORKMAN comes in.\n\nWORKMAN. Your carriage is waiting, sir.\n\nASTROFF. All right. [He hands the WORKMAN his medicine-case, portfolio,\nand box] Look out, don't crush the portfolio!\n\nWORKMAN. Very well, sir.\n\nSONIA. When shall we see you again?\n\nASTROFF. Hardly before next summer. Probably not this winter, though, of\ncourse, if anything should happen you will let me know. [He shakes\nhands with them] Thank you for your kindness, for your hospitality, for\neverything! [He goes up to MARINA and kisses her head] Good-bye, old\nnurse!\n\nMARINA. Are you going without your tea?\n\nASTROFF. I don't want any, nurse.\n\nMARINA. Won't you have a drop of vodka?\n\nASTROFF. [Hesitatingly] Yes, I might.\n\nMARINA goes out.\n\nASTROFF. [After a pause] My off-wheeler has gone lame for some reason. I\nnoticed it yesterday when Peter was taking him to water.\n\nVOITSKI. You should have him re-shod.\n\nASTROFF. I shall have to go around by the blacksmith's on my way home.\nIt can't be avoided. [He stands looking up at the map of Africa hanging\non the wall] I suppose it is roasting hot in Africa now.\n\nVOITSKI. Yes, I suppose it is.\n\nMARINA comes back carrying a tray on which are a glass of vodka and a\npiece of bread.\n\nMARINA. Help yourself.\n\nASTROFF drinks\n\nMARINA. To your good health! [She bows deeply] Eat your bread with it.\n\nASTROFF. No, I like it so. And now, good-bye. [To MARINA] You needn't\ncome out to see me off, nurse.\n\nHe goes out. SONIA follows him with a candle to light him to the\ncarriage. MARINA sits down in her armchair.\n\nVOITSKI. [Writing] On the 2d of February, twenty pounds of butter; on\nthe 16th, twenty pounds of butter again. Buckwheat flour--[A pause.\nBells are heard tinkling.]\n\nMARINA. He has gone. [A pause.]\n\nSONIA comes in and sets the candle stick on the table.\n\nSONIA. He has gone.\n\nVOITSKI. [Adding and writing] Total, fifteen--twenty-five--\n\nSONIA sits down and begins to write.\n\n[Yawning] Oh, ho! The Lord have mercy.\n\nTELEGIN comes in on tiptoe, sits down near the door, and begins to tune\nhis guitar.\n\nVOITSKI. [To SONIA, stroking her hair] Oh, my child, I am miserable; if\nyou only knew how miserable I am!\n\nSONIA. What can we do? We must live our lives. [A pause] Yes, we shall\nlive, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days\nbefore us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the\ntrials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest,\nboth now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall\nmeet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have\nsuffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on\nus. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful\nlife; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender\nsmile--and--we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate\nfaith. [SONIA kneels down before her uncle and lays her head on his\nhands. She speaks in a weary voice] We shall rest. [TELEGIN plays softly\non the guitar] We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see\nheaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink\naway in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will\nbe as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have\nfaith. [She wipes away her tears] My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are\ncrying! [Weeping] You have never known what happiness was, but wait,\nUncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. [She embraces him] We shall rest. [The\nWATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden; TELEGIN plays softly; MME.\nVOITSKAYA writes something on the margin of her pamphlet; MARINA knits\nher stocking] We shall rest.\n\nThe curtain slowly falls.\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "At the opening of Act I, it is a cloudy autumn day on a Russian country estate. In the garden, the old nurse Marina stands at the samovar and offers Doctor Astrov something to eat, but he refuses. He complains about the difficulty of his job. Telegin, an impoverished local landowner, sits with them. Voynitsky, known as Vanya, comes out of the house and joins them. He is almost fifty and is weary and irritable. He complains about his brother-in-law, Serebryakov , Serebryakov's young second wife, Helen, and about how their visit has turned the place upside down. Serebryakov, Helen, and Serebryakov's daughter, Sonya, join them for a moment. After they depart, Vanya sighs about Helen's beauty and then complains about how he has toiled his whole life on this estate for the professor and it has come to naught. After Vanya's sister's death, he and Sonya worked here so the professor could continue his studies and his writings, but Vanya has come to see that work as foolish and irrelevant. When Astrov suggests that Vanya is jealous, Vanya laughs that he obviously is, especially as the old, gout-and-rheumatism-ridden man seems to attract beautiful women. Helen ventures outside and tells Astrov his services are not needed for her husband. Mrs. Voynitsky, Vanya's mother and Sonya's grandmother, tells them about a new pamphlet written by a friend in Kharkov. When Vanya sneers that all they do is read pamphlets, she becomes distressed and claims he hates her. Vanya merely says he is old, tired, and frustrated. A laborer arrives and tells Astrov he is wanted at the factory; the doctor bitterly departs, but not before they all discuss how he is very interested in forestry work. Sonya speaks up cheerfully about how Astrov is trying to save the old forest from destruction because forests make people happier. Astrov speaks of how Russians have torn down the forests and destroyed the wildlife: they no longer create, but rather destroy. After Sonya walks Astrov out, Vanya tries to seduce Helen, but she pushes him away. She muses about how Sonya clearly seems to love the doctor but he does not love her back. Helen sighs that she is simply bored and life is too much for her. In Act II, Serebryakov complains to Helen of how he is old and no one respects him. His querulous behavior only annoys Helen, who begs him to stop it. Serebryakov ignores her and bemoans how his life of scholarship seems to be nothing now. Sonya joins them and tells them Serebryakov must see Astrov now; she wants her father to stop behaving like a child. The elderly nurse Marina comforts Serebryakov and leads him out. Helen tells Vanya, who entered the room, that her husband wearies her. Vanya can only lament that everything is over for him and his life was wasted on trivial things. Helen is annoyed and moves to leave, but he bars her way. She accuses him of being drunk, and he admits to it. After Helen sweeps out of the room, Vanya ruminates on what a fool he was not to fall in love with her when she was younger; he once admired the professor, but now he does not. When Astrov returns, he mocks Vanya for having feelings for Helen, but Vanya will not admit it. Astrov leaves to get a drink; Sonya pulls him aside and makes him promise to stop drinking and stop getting her uncle drunk. He agrees. They continue to talk for a moment. He comments that Helen is beautiful but idle and useless. This country life makes people like that, and he despises it; he has been beaten down and sees no light at the end for himself. The peasants are all the same, and educated people are ridiculous. He only likes forests. Sonya compliments him and tries to cheer him up. As he prepares to leave, she asks how he might feel if he were to out that a friend of hers has feelings for him, and he drolly says he cannot love anyone. After he leaves, Sonya feels a surge of happiness though she is not sure why. In Act III, Sonya confesses to Helen that she loves Astrov, and Helen suggests that she say something to see if the doctor loves Sonya too. Sonya gives her permission for Helen to do this. Astrov and Helen meet to ostensibly look at his forestry maps. He discourses volubly on the patterns of deforestation until he sees that Helen is uninterested. Helen insists she is interested but says they should talk about something else. She point-blank asks if he likes Sonya, and he says no. He then moves in to seduce Helen, but she wants none of it. As he tries to kiss her, Vanya enters the room with flowers. Helen is horrified by the situation and begs Vanya to tell her husband that they must leave today. A moment later, Serebryakov and the others enter and Serebryakov announces that he has an idea to sell the estate because he and Helen need to afford a place in the city. This announcement angers Vanya tremendously, and he begins to complain violently about how Serebryakov is a fraud, is uninspired, is thankless, and how he, Vanya, has labored for Serebryakov his whole life and for no reason. He insists this is Sonya's estate. He runs out of the room. Serebryakov is startled by Vanya's outburst. He insists he cannot stay here anymore. Sonya implores him to talk to her uncle and he agrees. He departs, and those in the room hear a gunshot, then another. Helen and Vanya struggle over a revolver as Vanya screeches that he missed the professor. Cursing, he sinks into a chair. In Act IV, Telegin and Marina discuss Serebryakov and Helen's planned departure for that day, then exit the room. Vanya and Astrov come in. Astrov mocks Vanya for his behavior and asks him to return what he stole. Vanya maintains that he is innocent of theft. Astrov laments how this parochial existence crushes people: it is stultifying and useless. When Sonya enters Astrov tells her to tell her uncle to return the bottle of morphia he stole. Sonya turns to her uncle and tearfully asks him for the bottle. He complies. She takes him to make up with her father. Helen enters to tell Astrov goodbye. He tries to seduce her again in a rather lackluster fashion; she kisses him and bids him farewell. Everyone bids goodbye to Serebryakov and Helen, who leave the estate. Sonya and Vanya return to work. Marina suggests Astrov stay for dinner; he refuses and says he must be off. Astrov leaves, and even though Sonya knows he did not love her, she is sad. Vanya, though, claims he is extremely depressed. With both in tears, Sonya comforts her uncle. She tells him that life may be difficult for them now, but the afterlife will be full of peace, love, and rest.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "shmoop", "text": "The whole play takes place at Professor Serebryakov's country house, which is inhabited year-round by his daughter, Sonya, his late wife's mother, Mariya, and his late wife's brother, Ivan, or Vanya. They're like his secret, leftover family while he lives it up with his new, hot wife in the city. Marina, the housekeeper/nanny who is like part of the family, sits with Doctor Astrov and Vanya in the garden. They all complain about how life has gotten complicated ever since Serebryakov showed up to stay at the house with his much-younger new wife, Yelena. No one gets any work done with those two around and the schedule is all out of whack. Speak of the devil, Serebryakov, Yelena, Sonya, and a poor neighbor, Telegin, show up and join the others for tea. Mariya joins them, but she's upset by her son Vanya's yapping about his frustration with his life, most of which is directed toward Serebryakov. Dr. Astrov joins the old-man complaining contest, but his beef is about the environment. No, seriously: he's very concerned about the destruction of the Russian forest. After all the griping is over, Vanya turns his attention to the Professor's new wife, Yelena. He's really into her and thinks that she's wasting her youth on the old man. She doesn't seem too interested in what he has to say. Later on, at night, we find out that Serebryakov is a sick man who is almost always in pain. His wife and daughter run around trying to calm him, but nothing really helps. Vanya tries again to get some lovin' from Yelena, but she refuses him. Dr. Astrov shows up drunk, and Sonya, who is secretly in love with him, begs him not to drink. He agrees, but seems to be totally oblivious of that fact that she's got a mad crush on him. Unsurprisingly, Sonya and her stepmother don't get along too well. After the doctor leaves, though, they make nice. During the day, Serebryakov assembles the family and wants to make an announcement. While they wait for him, Vanya tries again to get Yelena to respond to his advances, but she gets mad at him. Sonya and Yelena have a heart-to-heart. Sonya says she's crazy for Astrov but he doesn't notice her because she isn't pretty. Yelena promises to find out what he thinks, and Sonya gets nervous about the prospect of knowing the truth. Yelena asks Astrov whether he loves Sonya. He says he doesn't love Sonya, and he takes the opportunity to class it up and try and kiss Yelena. Hey, it turns out that she's into him, too , but Vanya sees their almost-kiss and Yelena freaks out. She wants to leave the country house and get back to the city ASAP. We can't imagine why. Serebryakov announces, at the family meeting, that he's in financial trouble and is planning to sell the house and invest the money. He and the new wife will move to Finland. Vanya doesn't like the idea and reminds Serebryakov that he, Sonya, and his mother have been working for free, taking care of the house all this time, and that Serebryakov will leave them with nowhere to go. Vanya gets really upset and blames his brother-in-law Serebryakov for all his life's problems. Vanya leaves, and Serebryakov follows him. Shots are fired, but old deadeye Vanya misses the professor. Twice. In the last act, the doctor is trying to leave but he is missing a bottle of morphine, which Vanya has stolen. Sonya gets him to give it back. Yelena and Serebryakov leave, and everyone goes back to their ordinary lives again.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "Uncle Vanya I opens on a muggy autumn afternoon in the garden of Professor Serebryakov's estate. Marina, an old nanny, sits by a samovar as Astrov, the country doctor, reminisces about the time when he first came to the region, a time when Vera Petrovna--Serebryakov's first wife and mother to his daughter Sonya--was still alive. Serebryakov has recently returned with his beautiful young wife, Yelena, to live on the estate; Astrov has come to treat the Professor's case of gout. Astrov delivers an extended speech about how life has become \"boring, stupid, sordid\" and how his feelings are \"dead to the world\"; he needs nothing, wants nothing, and loves no one. Voynitsky , Serebryakov's brother-in-law by his first marriage and caretaker of the estate, then enters, yawning. He complains that the professor and his wife have thrown the estate out of kilter: everyone has succumbed to lethargy. When Astrov reproaches Voynitsky for his ill humor, Voynitsky replies that Voynitsky has grown old and lazy, having wasted his entire life. For many years Voynitsky--who once worshipped the professor--has sent the farm's proceeds to the professor, while reserving only a beggar's salary for himself. He now considers the professor a charlatan. When Astrov remarks that Voynitsky seems to envy Serebryakov, he readily concurs, in particular when it comes to his success with women. Sonya, Yelena, and Maria Vasilevna join the party. Astrov invites Yelena and Sonya to his forest preserve. Though admitting that perhaps only an \"eccentric\" could think thus, he then decries man's impulse to destroy, extolling the beauty of nature and man's capacity leave his legacy to future generations. Yelena and Voynitsky then walk to the veranda. Voynitsky protests Yelena's marriage and suddenly attempts to declare his love to her: she rejects him wholeheartedly. Act II takes place at night with the professor and Yelena sitting next to each other in the dining room, asleep. A night watchman can be heard tapping in the garden. The two awaken, and Serebryakov complains of his old age. He has spent his life in scholarship only to end up in \"exile.\" Voynitsky arrives to relieve Yelena: the professor reacts in terror. Marina enters and tenderly takes Serebryakov to bed, leaving Yelena and Voynitsky alone. Much to Yelena's dismay, Voynitsky resumes his attempts at seduction. When Yelena recoils, he once again decries the years he has wasted; Yelena is numb to his entreaty. She leaves, and Voynitsky delivers a soliloquy that imagines what could have been had they married when they first met. Some disconcerting comic relief ensues involving a tipsy Astrov and guitar-playing Telegin . Once Voynitsky has exited, Sonya, who has entered the room in the meantime, converses with the brooding Astrov. The doctor moans that he cannot love but is \"fascinated\" by beauty . When Sonya hypothetically asks him what he would do if she knew someone who loved him, he answers that could not love her in return. Once alone, Sonya confesses her love for Astrov. Yelena then enters. The two women suddenly exclaim that they must reconcile--apparently they had been at odds since Yelena married Sonya's father even though she does not love him. Inexplicably, Sonya begins laughing, exclaiming that she is happy. Yelena impulsively decides to play the piano, and Sonya rushes out to ask her father's permission. Unfortunately it is withheld. Act III opens in the house drawing room with Voynitsky and Sonya seated as Yelena paces about. The professor has called a meeting. Sonya criticizes Yelena's \"infectious\" idleness for causing everyone to desert his or her work. Yelena is enraged: Voynitsky offers to pick her a bouquet of roses. Once Voynitsky exits, Sonya expresses her anguish over the doctor anew, and Yelena resolves to find out if he loves her. After Sonya runs to fetch him, Yelena, now alone, confesses her own fascination for Astrov. Astrov then enters with a cartogram and proceeds to explain the progressive degeneration of the region to an uninterested Yelena. He breaks off, and she cross-examines him with regards to Sonya. It indeed turns out that Astrov does not love Sonya. He is, however, convinced of Yelena's own desire for him. Passionately he embraces her and insists upon arranging a rendezvous. Yelena momentarily relents; suddenly, however, Voynitsky enters, and she disengages herself from Astrov's arms. Voynitsky is quite disturbed. Finally the other members of the household appear in the drawing room. Serebryakov announces that he plans to sell the estate. Voynitsky is livid, protesting that he has spent his best years working the land to the professor's benefit. Ominously Voynitsky storms out, and Yelena and Serebryakov both go after him. Suddenly a shot rings out off-stage. Serebryakov runs in; Voynitsky appears and fires a second shot. After a pause, it becomes clear he has missed twice. Dejected, Voynitsky tosses the revolver to the ground and sinks into a chair. Act IV is set in Voynitsky's bedroom/estate office. Telegin and Marina sit winding stocking wool. Through their conversation, we learn that Yelena and the professor are departing that evening. Voynitsky and Astrov then enter, the latter asking Vanya to return a stolen bottle of morphine. Voynitsky declares that he is now nothing but a madman. For Astrov, Voynitsky is not mad but \"eccentric\"--such is the \"normal condition\" of man. Dreading the empty years to come, Voynitsky begs Astrov to help him start a new life. Annoyed, Astrov tells him he can do nothing: the provinces have poisoned them both. Sonya then enters, and after she pleads with him, Voynitsky surrenders the bottle. Yelena appears and informs Voynitsky that her husband has sent for him. Begging her father to reconcile with the professor, Sonya exits with him. Yelena and Astrov say their subdued goodbyes. The doctor makes one more attempt to convince her to stay: Yelena declines. Astrov remarks that he is certain that had she remained, great \"devastation\" would ensue. The other members of the household appear. Apparently Serebryakov and Voynitsky have reconciled. \"Everyone will be just as it was,\" the latter murmurs grimly to the professor. Yelena and an apologetic Voynitsky share a brief farewell, Voynitsky telling her that she will never see him again. Terribly depressed, Voynitsky and Sonya return to their long-deferred work. Shortly thereafter Astrov departs as well. Voynitsky then turns to Sonya, bemoaning his misery. Sonya tells him that they must endure their trials and wait for death. Laying her head on his lap, she conjures a vision of the heaven; her uncle weeps. The play closes with her repeated refrain \"We shall rest we shall rest!\"", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "23046", "title": "The Comedy of Errors", "text": "ACT I. SCENE I.\n\nA hall in the DUKE'S palace._\n\n  _Enter DUKE, AEGEON, _Gaoler_, _Officers_, and other _Attendants_._\n\n_Aege._ Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,\nAnd by the doom of death end woes and all.\n\n_Duke._ Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more;\nI am not partial to infringe our laws:\nThe enmity and discord which of late                                 5\nSprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke\nTo merchants, our well-dealing countrymen,\nWho, wanting guilders to redeem their lives,\nHave seal'd his rigorous statutes with their bloods,\nExcludes all pity from our threatening looks.                       10\nFor, since the mortal and intestine jars\n'Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us,\nIt hath in solemn synods been decreed,\nBoth by the Syracusians and ourselves,\nTo admit no traffic to our adverse towns:                           15\nNay, more,\nIf any born at Ephesus be seen\nAt any Syracusian marts and fairs;\nAgain: if any Syracusian born\nCome to the bay of Ephesus, he dies,                                20\nHis goods confiscate to the duke's dispose;\nUnless a thousand marks be levied,\nTo quit the penalty and to ransom him.\nThy substance, valued at the highest rate,\nCannot amount unto a hundred marks;                                 25\nTherefore by law thou art condemn'd to die.\n\n_Aege._ Yet this my comfort: when your words are done,\nMy woes end likewise with the evening sun.\n\n_Duke._ Well, Syracusian, say, in brief, the cause\nWhy thou departed'st from thy native home,                          30\nAnd for what cause thou camest to Ephesus.\n\n_Aege._ A heavier task could not have been imposed\nThan I to speak my griefs unspeakable:\nYet, that the world may witness that my end\nWas wrought by nature, not by vile offence,                         35\nI'll utter what my sorrow gives me leave.\nIn Syracusa was I born; and wed\nUnto a woman, happy but for me,\nAnd by me, had not our hap been bad.\nWith her I lived in joy; our wealth increased                       40\nBy prosperous voyages I often made\nTo Epidamnum; till my factor's death,\nAnd the great care of goods at random left,\nDrew me from kind embracements of my spouse:\nFrom whom my absence was not six months old,                        45\nBefore herself, almost at fainting under\nThe pleasing punishment that women bear,\nHad made provision for her following me,\nAnd soon and safe arrived where I was.\nThere had she not been long but she became                          50\nA joyful mother of two goodly sons;\nAnd, which was strange, the one so like the other\nAs could not be distinguish'd but by names.\nThat very hour, and in the self-same inn,\nA meaner woman was delivered                                        55\nOf such a burden, male twins, both alike:\nThose, for their parents were exceeding poor,\nI bought, and brought up to attend my sons.\nMy wife, not meanly proud of two such boys,\nMade daily motions for our home return:                             60\nUnwilling I agreed; alas! too soon\nWe came aboard.\nA league from Epidamnum had we sail'd,\nBefore the always-wind-obeying deep\nGave any tragic instance of our harm:                               65\nBut longer did we not retain much hope;\nFor what obscured light the heavens did grant\nDid but convey unto our fearful minds\nA doubtful warrant of immediate death;\nWhich though myself would gladly have embraced,                     70\nYet the incessant weepings of my wife,\nWeeping before for what she saw must come,\nAnd piteous plainings of the pretty babes,\nThat mourn'd for fashion, ignorant what to fear,\nForced me to seek delays for them and me.                           75\nAnd this it was, for other means was none:\nThe sailors sought for safety by our boat,\nAnd left the ship, then sinking-ripe, to us:\nMy wife, more careful for the latter-born,\nHad fasten'd him unto a small spare mast,                           80\nSuch as seafaring men provide for storms;\nTo him one of the other twins was bound,\nWhilst I had been like heedful of the other:\nThe children thus disposed, my wife and I,\nFixing our eyes on whom our care was fix'd,                         85\nFasten'd ourselves at either end the mast;\nAnd floating straight, obedient to the stream,\nWas carried towards Corinth, as we thought.\nAt length the sun, gazing upon the earth,\nDispersed those vapours that offended us;                           90\nAnd, by the benefit of his wished light,\nThe seas wax'd calm, and we discovered\nTwo ships from far making amain to us,\nOf Corinth that, of Epidaurus this:\nBut ere they came,--O, let me say no more!                          95\nGather the sequel by that went before.\n\n_Duke._ Nay, forward, old man; do not break off so;\nFor we may pity, though not pardon thee.\n\n_Aege._ O, had the gods done so, I had not now\nWorthily term'd them merciless to us!                              100\nFor, ere the ships could meet by twice five leagues,\nWe were encounter'd by a mighty rock;\nWhich being violently borne upon,\nOur helpful ship was splitted in the midst;\nSo that, in this unjust divorce of us,                             105\nFortune had left to both of us alike\nWhat to delight in, what to sorrow for.\nHer part, poor soul! seeming as burdened\nWith lesser weight, but not with lesser woe,\nWas carried with more speed before the wind;                       110\nAnd in our sight they three were taken up\nBy fishermen of Corinth, as we thought.\nAt length, another ship had seized on us;\nAnd, knowing whom it was their hap to save,\nGave healthful welcome to their shipwreck'd guests;                115\nAnd would have reft the fishers of their prey,\nHad not their bark been very slow of sail;\nAnd therefore homeward did they bend their course.\nThus have you heard me sever'd from my bliss;\nThat by misfortunes was my life prolong'd,                         120\nTo tell sad stories of my own mishaps.\n\n_Duke._ And, for the sake of them thou sorrowest for,\nDo me the favour to dilate at full\nWhat hath befall'n of them and thee till now.\n\n_Aege._ My youngest boy, and yet my eldest care,                   125\nAt eighteen years became inquisitive\nAfter his brother: and importuned me\nThat his attendant--so his case was like,\nReft of his brother, but retain'd his name--\nMight bear him company in the quest of him:                        130\nWhom whilst I labour'd of a love to see,\nI hazarded the loss of whom I loved.\nFive summers have I spent in furthest Greece,\nRoaming clean through the bounds of Asia,\nAnd, coasting homeward, came to Ephesus;                           135\nHopeless to find, yet loath to leave unsought\nOr that, or any place that harbours men.\nBut here must end the story of my life;\nAnd happy were I in my timely death,\nCould all my travels warrant me they live.                         140\n\n_Duke._ Hapless Aegeon, whom the fates have mark'd\nTo bear the extremity of dire mishap!\nNow, trust me, were it not against our laws,\nAgainst my crown, my oath, my dignity,\nWhich princes, would they, may not disannul,                       145\nMy soul should sue as advocate for thee.\nBut, though thou art adjudged to the death,\nAnd passed sentence may not be recall'd\nBut to our honour's great disparagement,\nYet will I favour thee in what I can.                              150\nTherefore, merchant, I'll limit thee this day\nTo seek thy help by beneficial help:\nTry all the friends thou hast in Ephesus;\nBeg thou, or borrow, to make up the sum,\nAnd live; if no, then thou art doom'd to die.                      155\nGaoler, take him to thy custody.\n\n_Gaol._ I will, my lord.\n\n_Aege._ Hopeless and helpless doth Aegeon wend,\nBut to procrastinate his lifeless end.\n\n    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n\n  NOTES: I, 1.\n\n  A hall ... palace.] Malone. The Duke's palace. Theobald.\n    A publick Place. Capell.\n  AEGEON,] Rowe. with the Merchant of Siracusa, Ff.\n  Officers,] Capell. Officer, Staunton. om. Ff.\n  1: _Solinus_] F1. _Salinus_ F2 F3 F4.\n  10: _looks_] _books_ Anon. conj.\n  14: _Syracusians_] F4. _Siracusians_ F1 F2 F3. _Syracusans_ Pope.\n    See note (I).\n  16, 17, 18: _Nay more If ... seen At any_] Malone.\n    _Nay, more, if ... Ephesus Be seen at any_ Ff.\n  18: _any_] om. Pope.\n  23: _to ransom_] F1. _ ransom_ F2 F3 F4.\n  27: _this_] _'tis_ Hanmer.\n  33: _griefs_] F1. _griefe_ F2. _grief_ F3 F4.\n  35: _nature_] _fortune_ Collier MS.\n  39: _by me_] F1. _by me too_ F2 F3 F4.\n  42: _Epidamnum_] Pope. _Epidamium_ Ff. _Epidamnium_ Rowe.\n    See note (I).\n  43: _the_] _then_ Edd. conj.\n  _the ... care ... left_] Theobald. _he ... care ... left_ F1.\n    _he ... store ... leaving_ F2 F3 F4.\n    _heed ... caves ... left_ Jackson conj.\n  _random_] F3 F4. _randone_ F1 F2.\n  50: _had she_] Ff. _she had_ Rowe.\n  55: _meaner_] Delius (S. Walker conj.). _meane_ F1. _poor meane_ F2.\n    _poor mean_ F3 F4.\n  56: _burden, male twins_] _burthen male, twins_ F1.\n  61, 62: So Pope. One line in Ff.\n  61: _soon_] _soon!_] Pope. _soon._ Capell.\n  70: _gladly_] _gently_ Collier MS.\n  71: _weepings_] F1. _weeping_ F2 F3 F4.\n  76: _this_] _thus_ Collier MS.\n  79: _latter-_] _elder-_ Rowe.\n  86: _either end the mast_] _th' end of either mast_ Hanmer.\n  87, 88: _And ... Was_] Ff. _And ... Were_ Rowe.\n    _Which ... Was_ Capell.\n  91: _wished_] F1. _wish'd_ F2 F3 F4.\n  92: _seas wax'd_] _seas waxt_ F1. _seas waxe_ F2. _seas wax_ F3.\n    _seas was_ F4. _sea was_ Rowe.\n  94: _Epidaurus_] _Epidarus_ F1. _Epidamnus_ Theobald conj.\n  103: _upon_] Pope. _up_ F1 _up upon_ F2 F3 F4.\n  104: _helpful_] _helpless_ Rowe.\n  113: _another_] _the other_ Hanmer.\n  115: _healthful_] F1. _helpful_ F2 F3 F4.\n  117: _bark_] _backe_ F1.\n  120: _That_] _Thus_ Hanmer. _Yet_ Anon. conj.\n  122: _sake_] F1. _sakes_ F2 F3 F4.\n  124: _hath ... thee_] _have ... they_ F1.\n  _of_] om. F4.\n  128: _so_] F1. _for_ F2 F3 F4.\n  130: _the_] om. Pope.\n  131: _I labour'd of a_] _he labour'd of all_ Collier MS.\n  144, 145: These lines inverted by Hanmer.\n  145: _princes, would they, may_] Hanmer. _Princes would they may_ F1.\n    _Princes would, they may_ F2 F3 F4.\n  151: _Therefore, merchant, I'll_] Ff. _Therefore merchant, I_ Rowe.\n    _I, therefore, merchant_ Pope. _I'll, therefore, merchant_ Capell.\n  152: _help ... help_] Ff. _life ... help_ Pope.\n    _help ... means_ Steevens conj. _hope ... help_ Collier.\n    _fine ... help_ Singer.\n  _by_] _thy_ Jackson conj.\n  155: _no_] _not_ Rowe.\n  156: _Gaoler,_] _Jailor, now_ Hanmer. _So, jailer,_ Capell.\n  159: _lifeless_] Warburton. _liveless_ Ff.\n\n\n\n\n_SCENE II. \n\nThe Mart._\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_, _DROMIO of Syracuse_, and\n  _First Merchant_._\n\n_First Mer._ Therefore give out you are of Epidamnum,\nLest that your goods too soon be confiscate.\nThis very day a Syracusian merchant\nIs apprehended for arrival here;\nAnd, not being able to buy out his life,                             5\nAccording to the statute of the town,\nDies ere the weary sun set in the west.\nThere is your money that I had to keep.\n\n_Ant. S._ Go bear it to the Centaur, where we host,\nAnd stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee.                        10\nWithin this hour it will be dinner-time:\nTill that. I'll view the manners of the town,\nPeruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings,\nAnd then return, and sleep within mine inn;\nFor with long travel I am stiff and weary.                          15\nGet thee away.\n\n_Dro. S._ Many a man would take you at your word,\nAnd go indeed, having so good a mean.    [_Exit._\n\n_Ant. S._ A trusty villain, sir; that very oft,\nWhen I am dull with care and melancholy,                            20\nLightens my humour with his merry jests.\nWhat, will you walk with me about the town,\nAnd then go to my inn, and dine with me?\n\n_First Mer._ I am invited, sir, to certain merchants,\nOf whom I hope to make much benefit;                                25\nI crave your pardon. Soon at five o'clock,\nPlease you, I'll meet with you upon the mart,\nAnd afterward consort you till bed-time:\nMy present business calls me from you now.\n\n_Ant. S._ Farewell till then: I will go lose myself,                30\nAnd wander up and down to view the city.\n\n_First Mer._ Sir, I commend you to your own content.    [_Exit._\n\n_Ant. S._ He that commends me to mine own content\nCommends me to the thing I cannot get.\nI to the world am like a drop of water,                             35\nThat in the ocean seeks another drop;\nWho, falling there to find his fellow forth,\nUnseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:\nSo I, to find a mother and a brother,\nIn quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.                             40\n\n  _Enter _DROMIO of Ephesus_._\n\nHere comes the almanac of my true date.\nWhat now? how chance thou art return'd so soon?\n\n_Dro. E._ Return'd so soon! rather approach'd too late:\nThe capon burns, the pig falls from the spit;\nThe clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell;                       45\nMy mistress made it one upon my cheek:\nShe is so hot, because the meat is cold;\nThe meat is cold, because you come not home;\nYou come not home, because you have no stomach;\nYou have no stomach, having broke your fast;                        50\nBut we, that know what 'tis to fast and pray,\nAre penitent for your default to-day.\n\n_Ant. S._ Stop in your wind, sir: tell me this, I pray:\nWhere have you left the money that I gave you?\n\n_Dro. E._ O,--sixpence, that I had o' Wednesday last                55\nTo pay the saddler for my mistress' crupper?\nThe saddler had it, sir; I kept it not.\n\n_Ant. S._ I am not in a sportive humour now:\nTell me, and dally not, where is the money?\nWe being strangers here, how darest thou trust                      60\nSo great a charge from thine own custody?\n\n_Dro. E._ I pray you, jest, sir, as you sit at dinner:\nI from my mistress come to you in post;\nIf I return, I shall be post indeed,\nFor she will score your fault upon my pate.                         65\nMethinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock,\nAnd strike you home without a messenger.\n\n_Ant. S._ Come, Dromio, come, these jests are out of season;\nReserve them till a merrier hour than this.\nWhere is the gold I gave in charge to thee?                         70\n\n_Dro. E._ To me, sir? why, you gave no gold to me.\n\n_Ant. S._ Come on, sir knave, have done your foolishness,\nAnd tell me how thou hast disposed thy charge.\n\n_Dro. E._ My charge was but to fetch you from the mart\nHome to your house, the Phoenix, sir, to dinner:                    75\nMy mistress and her sister stays for you.\n\n_Ant. S._ Now, as I am a Christian, answer me,\nIn what safe place you have bestow'd my money;\nOr I shall break that merry sconce of yours,\nThat stands on tricks when I am undisposed:                         80\nWhere is the thousand marks thou hadst of me?\n\n_Dro. E._ I have some marks of yours upon my pate,\nSome of my mistress' marks upon my shoulders;\nBut not a thousand marks between you both.\nIf I should pay your worship those again,                           85\nPerchance you will not bear them patiently.\n\n_Ant. S._ Thy mistress' marks? what mistress, slave, hast thou?\n\n_Dro. E._ Your worship's wife, my mistress at the Phoenix;\nShe that doth fast till you come home to dinner,\nAnd prays that you will hie you home to dinner.                     90\n\n_Ant. S._ What, wilt thou flout me thus unto my face,\nBeing forbid? There, take you that, sir knave.\n\n_Dro. E._ What mean you, sir? for God's sake, hold your hands!\nNay, an you will not, sir, I'll take my heels.    [_Exit._\n\n_Ant. S._ Upon my life, by some device or other                     95\nThe villain is o'er-raught of all my money.\nThey say this town is full of cozenage;\nAs, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,\nDark-working sorcerers that change the mind.\nSoul-killing witches that deform the body,                         100\nDisguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,\nAnd many such-like liberties of sin:\nIf it prove so, I will be gone the sooner.\nI'll to the Centaur, to go seek this slave:\nI greatly fear my money is not safe.    [_Exit._                   105\n\n\n\n  NOTES: I, 2.\n\n  SCENE II.] Pope. No division in Ff.\n  The Mart.] Edd. A public place. Capell. The Street. Pope.\n    See note (II).\n  Enter ...] Enter Antipholis Erotes, a Marchant, and Dromio. Ff.\n  4: _arrival_] _a rivall_ F1.\n  10: _till_] _tell_ F2.\n  11, 12: The order of these lines is inverted by F2 F3 F4.\n  12: _that_] _then_ Collier MS.\n  18: _mean_] F1. _means_ F2 F3 F4.\n  23: _my_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4.\n  28: _consort_] _consort with_ Malone conj.\n  30: _myself_] F1. _my life_ F2 F3 F4.\n  33: SCENE III. Pope.\n  _mine_] F1. _my_ F2 F3 F4.\n  37: _falling_] _failing_ Barron Field conj.\n  37, 38: _fellow forth, Unseen,_] _fellow, for Th' unseen_ Anon. conj.\n  38: _Unseen,_] _In search_ Spedding conj.\n  _Unseen, inquisitive,_] _Unseen inquisitive!_ Staunton.\n  40: _them_] F1. _him_ F2 F3 F4.\n  _unhappy_,] F2 F3 F4. (_unhappie a_) F1. _unhappier_, Edd. conj.\n  65: _score_] Rowe. _scoure_ F1 F2 F3. _scour_ F4.\n  66: _your clock_] Pope. _your cooke_ F1. _you cooke_ F2.\n    _your cook_ F3 F4.\n  76: _stays_] _stay_ Rowe.\n  86: _will_] _would_ Collier MS.\n  93: _God's_] Hanmer. _God_ Ff.\n  96: _o'er-raught_] Hanmer. _ore-wrought_ Ff.\n  99: _Dark-working_] _Drug-working_ Warburton.\n  99, 100: _Dark-working ... Soul-killing_] _Soul-killing ...\n    Dark-working_ Johnson conj.\n  100: _Soul-killing_] _Soul-selling_ Hanmer.\n  102: _liberties_] _libertines_ Hanmer.\n\n\n\n\n\nACT II. _SCENE I.\n\nThe house of _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_._\n\n  _Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA._\n\n_Adr._ Neither my husband nor the slave return'd,\nThat in such haste I sent to seek his master!\nSure, Luciana, it is two o'clock.\n\n_Luc._ Perhaps some merchant hath invited him,\nAnd from the mart he's somewhere gone to dinner.                     5\nGood sister, let us dine, and never fret:\nA man is master of his liberty:\nTime is their master; and when they see time,\nThey'll go or come: if so, be patient, sister.\n\n_Adr._ Why should their liberty than ours be more?                  10\n\n_Luc._ Because their business still lies out o' door.\n\n_Adr._ Look, when I serve him so, he takes it ill.\n\n_Luc._ O, know he is the bridle of your will.\n\n_Adr._ There's none but asses will be bridled so.\n\n_Luc._ Why, headstrong liberty is lash'd with woe.                  15\nThere's nothing situate under heaven's eye\nBut hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky:\nThe beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls,\nAre their males' subjects and at their controls:\nMen, more divine, the masters of all these,                         20\nLords of the wide world and wild watery seas,\nIndued with intellectual sense and souls,\nOf more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,\nAre masters to their females, and their lords:\nThen let your will attend on their accords.                         25\n\n_Adr._ This servitude makes you to keep unwed.\n\n_Luc._ Not this, but troubles of the marriage-bed.\n\n_Adr._ But, were you wedded, you would bear some sway.\n\n_Luc._ Ere I learn love, I'll practise to obey.\n\n_Adr._ How if your husband start some other where?                  30\n\n_Luc._ Till he come home again, I would forbear.\n\n_Adr._ Patience unmoved! no marvel though she pause;\nThey can be meek that have no other cause.\nA wretched soul, bruised with adversity,\nWe bid be quiet when we hear it cry;                                35\nBut were we burden'd with like weight of pain,\nAs much, or more, we should ourselves complain:\nSo thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,\nWith urging helpless patience wouldst relieve me;\nBut, if thou live to see like right bereft,                         40\nThis fool-begg'd patience in thee will be left.\n\n_Luc._ Well, I will marry one day, but to try.\nHere comes your man; now is your husband nigh.\n\n  _Enter _DROMIO of Ephesus_._\n\n_Adr._ Say, is your tardy master now at hand?\n\n_Dro. E._ Nay, he's at two hands with me, and that my               45\ntwo ears can witness.\n\n_Adr._ Say, didst thou speak with him? know'st thou his mind?\n\n_Dro. E._ Ay, ay, he told his mind upon mine ear:\nBeshrew his hand, I scarce could understand it.\n\n_Luc._ Spake he so doubtfully, thou couldst not feel his            50\nmeaning?\n\n_Dro. E._ Nay, he struck so plainly, I could too well\nfeel his blows; and withal so doubtfully, that I could scarce\nunderstand them.\n\n_Adr._ But say, I prithee, is he coming home?                       55\nIt seems he hath great care to please his wife.\n\n_Dro. E._ Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad.\n\n_Adr._ Horn-mad, thou villain!\n\n_Dro. E._                      I mean not cuckold-mad;\nBut, sure, he is stark mad.\nWhen I desired him to come home to dinner,                          60\nHe ask'd me for a thousand marks in gold:\n''Tis dinner-time,' quoth I; 'My gold!' quoth he:\n'Your meat doth burn,' quoth I; 'My gold!' quoth he:\n'Will you come home?' quoth I; 'My gold!' quoth he,\n'Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain?'                 65\n'The pig,' quoth I, 'is burn'd;' 'My gold!' quoth he:\n'My mistress, sir,' quoth I; 'Hang up thy mistress!\nI know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress!'\n\n_Luc._ Quoth who?\n\n_Dro. E._ Quoth my master:                                          70\n'I know,' quoth he, 'no house, no wife, no mistress.'\nSo that my errand, due unto my tongue,\nI thank him, I bare home upon my shoulders;\nFor, in conclusion, he did beat me there.\n\n_Adr._ Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.               75\n\n_Dro. E._ Go back again, and be new beaten home?\nFor God's sake, send some other messenger.\n\n_Adr._ Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across.\n\n_Dro. E._ And he will bless that cross with other beating:\nBetween you I shall have a holy head.                               80\n\n_Adr._ Hence, prating peasant! fetch thy master home.\n\n_Dro. E._ Am I so round with you as you with me,\nThat like a football you do spurn me thus?\nYou spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:\nIf I last in this service, you must case me in leather.\n    [_Exit._                                               85\n\n_Luc._ Fie, how impatience lowereth in your face!\n\n_Adr._ His company must do his minions grace,\nWhilst I at home starve for a merry look.\nHath homely age the alluring beauty took\nFrom my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it:                         90\nAre my discourses dull? barren my wit?\nIf voluble and sharp discourse be marr'd,\nUnkindness blunts it more than marble hard:\nDo their gay vestments his affections bait?\nThat's not my fault; he's master of my state:                       95\nWhat ruins are in me that can be found,\nBy him not ruin'd? then is he the ground\nOf my defeatures. My decayed fair\nA sunny look of his would soon repair:\nBut, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale,                          100\nAnd feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.\n\n_Luc._ Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence!\n\n_Adr._ Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.\nI know his eye doth homage otherwhere;\nOr else what lets it but he would be here?                         105\nSister, you know he promised me a chain;\nWould that alone, alone he would detain,\nSo he would keep fair quarter with his bed!\nI see the jewel best enamelled\nWill lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still,                    110\nThat others touch, and often touching will\nWear gold: and no man that hath a name,\nBy falsehood and corruption doth it shame.\nSince that my beauty cannot please his eye,\nI'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.                       115\n\n_Luc._ How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!\n\n    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n\n  NOTES: II, 1.\n\n  The house ... Ephesus.] Pope. The same (i.e. A publick place).\n    Capell, and passim.\n  11: _o' door_] Capell. _adore_ F1 F2 F3. _adoor_ F4.\n  12: _ill_] F2 F3 F4. _thus_ F1.\n  15: _lash'd_] _leashed_ \"a learned lady\" conj. ap. Steevens.\n    _lach'd_ or _lac'd_ Becket conj.\n  17: _bound, ... sky:_] _bound: ... sky,_ Anon. conj.\n  19: _subjects_] _subject_ Capell.\n  20, 21: _Men ... masters ... Lords_] Hanmer. _Man ... master\n    ... Lord_ Ff.\n  21: _wild watery_] _wilde watry_ F1. _wide watry_ F2 F3 F4.\n  22, 23: _souls ... fowls_] F1. _soul ... fowl_ F2 F3 F4.\n  30: _husband start_] _husband's heart's_ Jackson conj.\n  _other where_] _other hare_ Johnson conj. See note (III).\n  31: _home_] om. Boswell (ed. 1821).\n  39: _wouldst_] Rowe. _would_ Ff.\n  40: _see_] _be_ Hanmer.\n  41: _fool-begg'd_] _fool-egg'd_ Jackson conj. _fool-bagg'd_\n    Staunton conj. _fool-badged_ Id. conj.\n  44: SCENE II. Pope.\n  _now_] _yet_ Capell.\n  45: _Nay_] _At hand? Nay_ Capell.\n  _and_] om. Capell.\n  45, 46: _two ... two_] _too ... two_ F1.\n  50-53: _doubtfully_] _doubly_ Collier MS.\n  53: _withal_] _therewithal_ Capell.\n  _that_] om. Capell, who prints lines 50-54 as four verses ending\n    _feel ... I ... therewithal ... them._\n  59: _he is_] _he's_ Pope. om. Hanmer.\n  61: _a thousand_] F4. _a hundred_ F1 _a 1000_ F2 F3.\n  64: _home_] Hanmer. om. Ff.\n  68: _I know not thy mistress_] _Thy mistress I know not_ Hanmer.\n    _I know not of thy mistress_ Capell. _I know thy mistress not_\n    Seymour conj.\n  _out on thy mistress_] F1 F4. _out on my mistress_ F2 F3.\n    _'out on thy mistress,' Quoth he_ Capell. _I know no mistress;\n    out upon thy mistress_ Steevens conj.\n  70: _Quoth_] _Why, quoth_ Hanmer.\n  71-74: Printed as prose in Ff. Corrected by Pope.\n  73: _bare_] _bear_ Steevens.\n  _my_] _thy_ F2.\n  74: _there_] _thence_ Capell conj.\n  85: _I last_] _I'm to last_ Anon. conj.\n  [Exit.] F2.\n  87: SCENE III. Pope.\n  93: _blunts_] F1. _blots_ F2 F3 F4.\n  107: _alone, alone_] F2 F3 F4. _alone, a love_ F1.\n    _alone, alas!_ Hanmer. _alone, O love,_ Capell conj.\n    _alone a lone_ Nicholson conj.\n  110: _yet the_] Ff. _and the_ Theobald. _and tho'_ Hanmer.\n    _yet though_ Collier.\n  111: _That others touch_] _The tester's touch_ Anon. (Fras. Mag.)\n    conj. _The triers' touch_ Singer.\n  _and_] Ff. _yet_ Theobald. _an_ Collier. _though_ Heath conj.\n  111, 112: _will Wear_] Theobald (Warburton). _will, Where_] F1.\n  112, 113: F2 F3 F4 omit these two lines. See note (IV).\n  112: _and no man_] F1. _and so no man_ Theobald.\n    _and e'en so man_ Capell. _and so a man_ Heath conj.\n  113: _By_] F1. _But_ Theobald.\n  115: _what's left away_] _(what's left away)_ F1.\n    _(what's left) away_ F2 F3 F4.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\nA public place._\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_._\n\n_Ant. S._ The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up\nSafe at the Centaur; and the heedful slave\nIs wander'd forth, in care to seek me out\nBy computation and mine host's report.\nI could not speak with Dromio since at first                         5\nI sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.\n\n  _Enter _DROMIO of Syracuse_._\n\nHow now, sir! is your merry humour alter'd?\nAs you love strokes, so jest with me again.\nYou know no Centaur? you receiv'd no gold?\nYour mistress sent to have me home to dinner?                       10\nMy house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad,\nThat thus so madly thou didst answer me?\n\n_Dro. S._ What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?\n\n_Ant. S._ Even now, even here, not half an hour since.\n\n_Dro. S._ I did not see you since you sent me hence,                15\nHome to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.\n\n_Ant. S._ Villain, thou didst deny the gold's receipt,\nAnd told'st me of a mistress and a dinner;\nFor which, I hope, thou felt'st I was displeased.\n\n_Dro. S._ I am glad to see you in this merry vein:                  20\nWhat means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.\n\n_Ant. S._ Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?\nThink'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.\n    [_Beating him._\n\n_Dro. S._ Hold, sir, for God's sake! now your jest is earnest:\nUpon what bargain do you give it me?                                25\n\n_Ant. S._ Because that I familiarly sometimes\nDo use you for my fool, and chat with you,\nYour sauciness will jest upon my love,\nAnd make a common of my serious hours.\nWhen the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,                   30\nBut creep in crannies when he hides his beams.\nIf you will jest with me, know my aspect,\nAnd fashion your demeanour to my looks,\nOr I will beat this method in your sconce.\n\n_Dro. S._ Sconce call you it? so you would leave battering,         35\nI had rather have it a head: an you use these blows\nlong, I must get a sconce for my head, and insconce it\ntoo; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But,\nI pray, sir, why am I beaten?\n\n_Ant. S._ Dost thou not know?                                       40\n\n_Dro. S._ Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.\n\n_Ant. S._ Shall I tell you why?\n\n_Dro. S._ Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every\nwhy hath a wherefore.\n\n_Ant. S._ Why, first,--for flouting me; and then, wherefore,--      45\nFor urging it the second time to me.\n\n_Dro. S._ Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,\nWhen in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?\nWell, sir, I thank you.\n\n_Ant. S._ Thank me, sir! for what?                                  50\n\n_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, for this something that you gave\nme for nothing.\n\n_Ant. S._ I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing\nfor something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?\n\n_Dro. S._ No, sir: I think the meat wants that I have.              55\n\n_Ant. S._ In good time, sir; what's that?\n\n_Dro. S._ Basting.\n\n_Ant. S._ Well, sir, then 'twill be dry.\n\n_Dro. S._ If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it.\n\n_Ant. S._ Your reason?                                              60\n\n_Dro. S._ Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me\nanother dry basting.\n\n_Ant. S._ Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there's a\ntime for all things.\n\n_Dro. S._ I durst have denied that, before you were so              65\ncholeric.\n\n_Ant. S._ By what rule, sir?\n\n_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald\npate of father Time himself.\n\n_Ant. S._ Let's hear it.                                            70\n\n_Dro. S._ There's no time for a man to recover his hair\nthat grows bald by nature.\n\n_Ant. S._ May he not do it by fine and recovery?\n\n_Dro. S._ Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover\nthe lost hair of another man.                                       75\n\n_Ant. S._ Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as\nit is, so plentiful an excrement?\n\n_Dro. S._ Because it is a blessing that he bestows on\nbeasts: and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath\ngiven them in wit.                                                  80\n\n_Ant. S._ Why, but there's many a man hath more hair\nthan wit.\n\n_Dro. S._ Not a man of those but he hath the wit to\nlose his hair.\n\n_Ant. S._ Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain                  85\ndealers without wit.\n\n_Dro. S._ The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he\nloseth it in a kind of jollity.\n\n_Ant. S._ For what reason?\n\n_Dro. S._ For two; and sound ones too.                              90\n\n_Ant. S._ Nay, not sound, I pray you.\n\n_Dro. S._ Sure ones, then.\n\n_Ant. S._ Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.\n\n_Dro. S._ Certain ones, then.\n\n_Ant. S._ Name them.                                                95\n\n_Dro. S._ The one, to save the money that he spends in\ntrimming; the other, that at dinner they should not drop\nin his porridge.\n\n_Ant. S._ You would all this time have proved there is\nno time for all things.                                            100\n\n_Dro. S._ Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover\nhair lost by nature.\n\n_Ant. S._ But your reason was not substantial, why\nthere is no time to recover.\n\n_Dro. S._ Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and                105\ntherefore to the world's end will have bald followers.\n\n_Ant. S._ I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion:\nBut, soft! who wafts us yonder?\n\n  _Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA._\n\n_Adr._ Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown:\nSome other mistress hath thy sweet aspects;                        110\nI am not Adriana nor thy wife.\nThe time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow\nThat never words were music to thine ear,\nThat never object pleasing in thine eye,\nThat never touch well welcome to thy hand,                         115\nThat never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste,\nUnless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carved to thee.\nHow comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,\nThat thou art then estranged from thyself?\nThyself I call it, being strange to me,                            120\nThat, undividable, incorporate,\nAm better than thy dear self's better part.\nAh, do not tear away thyself from me!\nFor know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall\nA drop of water in the breaking gulf,                              125\nAnd take unmingled thence that drop again,\nWithout addition or diminishing,\nAs take from me thyself, and not me too.\nHow dearly would it touch thee to the quick,\nShouldst thou but hear I were licentious,                          130\nAnd that this body, consecrate to thee,\nBy ruffian lust should be contaminate!\nWouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me,\nAnd hurl the name of husband in my face,\nAnd tear the stain'd skin off my harlot-brow,                      135\nAnd from my false hand cut the wedding-ring,\nAnd break it with a deep-divorcing vow?\nI know thou canst; and therefore see thou do it.\nI am possess'd with an adulterate blot;\nMy blood is mingled with the crime of lust:                        140\nFor if we two be one, and thou play false,\nI do digest the poison of thy flesh,\nBeing strumpeted by thy contagion.\nKeep, then, fair league and truce with thy true bed;\nI live distain'd, thou undishonoured.                              145\n\n_Ant. S._ Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:\nIn Ephesus I am but two hours old,\nAs strange unto your town as to your talk;\nWho, every word by all my wit being scann'd,\nWants wit in all one word to understand.                           150\n\n_Luc._ Fie, brother! how the world is changed with you!\nWhen were you wont to use my sister thus?\nShe sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.\n\n_Ant. S._ By Dromio?\n\n_Dro. S._ By me?                                                   155\n\n_Adr._ By thee; and this thou didst return from him,\nThat he did buffet thee, and, in his blows,\nDenied my house for his, me for his wife.\n\n_Ant. S._ Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?\nWhat is the course and drift of your compact?                      160\n\n_Dro. S._ I, sir? I never saw her till this time.\n\n_Ant. S._ Villain, thou liest; for even her very words\nDidst thou deliver to me on the mart.\n\n_Dro. S._ I never spake with her in all my life.\n\n_Ant. S._ How can she thus, then, call us by our names,            165\nUnless it be by inspiration.\n\n_Adr._ How ill agrees it with your gravity\nTo counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,\nAbetting him to thwart me in my mood!\nBe it my wrong you are from me exempt,                             170\nBut wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.\nCome, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:\nThou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,\nWhose weakness, married to thy stronger state,\nMakes me with thy strength to communicate:                         175\nIf aught possess thee from me, it is dross,\nUsurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;\nWho, all for want of pruning, with intrusion\nInfect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.\n\n_Ant. S._ To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme:            180\nWhat, was I married to her in my dream?\nOr sleep I now, and think I hear all this?\nWhat error drives our eyes and ears amiss?\nUntil I know this sure uncertainty,\nI'll entertain the offer'd fallacy.                                185\n\n_Luc._ Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.\n\n_Dro. S._ O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner.\nThis is the fairy land;--O spite of spites!\nWe talk with goblins, owls, and sprites:\nIf we obey them not, this will ensue,                              190\nThey'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.\n\n_Luc._ Why pratest thou to thyself, and answer'st not?\nDromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!\n\n_Dro. S._ I am transformed, master, am I not?\n\n_Ant. S._ I think thou art in mind, and so am I.                   195\n\n_Dro. S._ Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.\n\n_Ant. S._ Thou hast thine own form.\n\n_Dro. S._                          No, I am an ape.\n\n_Luc._ If thou art chang'd to aught, 'tis to an ass.\n\n_Dro. S._ 'Tis true; she rides me, and I long for grass.\n'Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be                       200\nBut I should know her as well as she knows me.\n\n_Adr._ Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,\nTo put the finger in the eye and weep,\nWhilst man and master laughs my woes to scorn.\nCome, sir, to dinner. Dromio, keep the gate.                       205\nHusband, I'll dine above with you to-day,\nAnd shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.\nSirrah, if any ask you for your master,\nSay he dines forth, and let no creature enter.\nCome, sister. Dromio, play the porter well.                        210\n\n_Ant. S._ Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?\nSleeping or waking? mad or well-advised?\nKnown unto these, and to myself disguised!\nI'll say as they say, and persever so,\nAnd in this mist at all adventures go.                             215\n\n_Dro. S._ Master, shall I be porter at the gate?\n\n_Adr._ Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.\n\n_Luc._ Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.\n\n    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n\n  NOTES: II, 2.\n\n  SCENE II.] Capell. SCENE IV. Pope.\n  A public place.] Capell. A street. Pope.\n  3, 4, 5: _out By ... report. I_] F1 F2 F3. _out By ... report, I_ F4.\n    _out. By ... report, I_ Rowe.\n  12: _didst_] _did didst_ F1.\n  23: Beating him] Beats Dro. Ff.\n  28: _jest_] _jet_ Dyce.\n  29: _common_] _comedy_ Hanmer.\n  35-107: Pope marks as spurious.\n  38: _else_] om. Capell.\n  45: _Why, first_] _First, why_ Capell.\n  53: _next, to_] _next time,_ Capell conj.\n  _to_] _and_ Collier MS.\n  59: _none_] F1. _not_ F2 F3 F4.\n  76: _hair_] _hair to men_ Capell.\n  79: _men_] Pope, ed. 2 (Theobald). _them_ Ff.\n  91: _sound_] F1. _sound ones_ F2 F3 F4.\n  93: _falsing_] _falling_ Heath conj.\n  97: _trimming_] Rowe. _trying_ Ff. _tyring_ Pope. _'tiring_ Collier.\n  101: _no time_] F2 F3 F4. _in no time_ F1. _e'en no time_ Collier\n    (Malone conj.).\n  110: _thy_] F1. _some_ F2 F3 F4.\n  111: _not ... nor_] _but ... and_ Capell conj.\n  112: _unurged_] _unurg'dst_ Pope.\n  117: _or look'd, or_] _look'd,_ Steevens.\n  _to thee_] om. Pope. _thee_ S. Walker conj.\n  119: _then_] _thus_ Rowe.\n  130: _but_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.\n  135: _off_] Hanmer. _of_ Ff.\n  138: _canst_] _wouldst_ Hanmer.\n  140: _crime_] _grime_ Warburton.\n  142: _thy_] F1. _my_ F2 F3 F4.\n  143: _contagion_] _catagion_ F4.\n  145: _distain'd_] _unstain'd_ Hanmer (Theobald conj.).\n    _dis-stain'd_ Theobald. _distained_ Heath conj.\n  _undishonoured_] _dishonoured_ Heath conj.\n  149, 150: Marked as spurious by Pope.\n  _Who, ... Wants_] _Whose every ..., Want_ Becket conj.\n  150: _Wants_] Ff. _Want_ Johnson.\n  155: _By me?_] Pope. _By me._ Ff.\n  156: _this_] F1, Capell. _thus_ F2 F3 F4.\n  167: _your_] _you_ F2.\n  174: _stronger_] F4. _stranger_ F1 F2 F3.\n  180-185: Marked 'aside' by Capell.\n  180: _moves_] _means_ Collier MS.\n  183: _drives_] _draws_ Collier MS.\n  184: _sure uncertainty_] _sure: uncertainly_ Becket conj.\n  185: _offer'd_] Capell. _free'd_ Ff. _favour'd_ Pope.\n    _proffered_ Collier MS.\n  187-201: Marked as spurious by Pope.\n  189: _talk_] _walk and talk_ Anon. conj.\n  _goblins_] _ghosts and goblins_ Lettsom conj.\n  _owls_] _ouphs_ Theobald.\n  _sprites_] F1. _elves sprites_ F2 F3 F4. _elvish sprites_\n    Rowe (ed. 2). _elves and sprites_ Collier MS.\n  191: _or_] _and_ Theobald.\n  192: _and answer'st not?_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.\n  193: _Dromio, thou drone, thou snail_] Theobald.\n    _Dromio, thou Dromio, thou snaile_ F1.\n    _Dromio, thou Dromio, snaile_ F2 F3 F4.\n  194: _am I not?_] Ff. _am not I?_ Theobald.\n  203: _the eye_] _thy eye_ F2 F3.\n  204: _laughs_] Ff. _laugh_ Pope.\n  211-215: Marked as 'aside' by Capell.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT III. _SCENE I.\n\n\n\nBefore the house of _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_._\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_, _DROMIO of Ephesus_, ANGELO,\n  and BALTHAZAR._\n\n_Ant. E._ Good Signior Angelo, you must excuse us all;\nMy wife is shrewish when I keep not hours:\nSay that I linger'd with you at your shop\nTo see the making of her carcanet,\nAnd that to-morrow you will bring it home.                           5\nBut here's a villain that would face me down\nHe met me on the mart, and that I beat him,\nAnd charged him with a thousand marks in gold,\nAnd that I did deny my wife and house.\nThou drunkard, thou, what didst thou mean by this?                  10\n\n_Dro. E._ Say what you will, sir, but I know what I know;\nThat you beat me at the mart, I have your hand to show:\nIf the skin were parchment, and the blows you gave were ink,\nYour own handwriting would tell you what I think.\n\n_Ant. E._ I think thou art an ass.\n\n_Dro. E._                      Marry, so it doth appear             15\nBy the wrongs I suffer, and the blows I bear.\nI should kick, being kick'd; and, being at that pass,\nYou would keep from my heels, and beware of an ass.\n\n_Ant. E._ You're sad, Signior Balthazar: pray God our cheer\nMay answer my good will and your good welcome here.                 20\n\n_Bal._ I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear.\n\n_Ant. E._ O, Signior Balthazar, either at flesh or fish,\nA table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish.\n\n_Bal._ Good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords.\n\n_Ant. E._ And welcome more common; for that's nothing but words.    25\n\n_Bal._ Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.\n\n_Ant. E._ Ay to a niggardly host and more sparing guest:\nBut though my cates be mean, take them in good part;\nBetter cheer may you have, but not with better heart.\nBut, soft! my door is lock'd.--Go bid them let us in.               30\n\n_Dro. E._ Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Mome, malt-horse, capon, coxcomb,\n        idiot, patch!\nEither get thee from the door, or sit down at the hatch.\nDost thou conjure for wenches, that thou call'st for such store,\nWhen one is one too many? Go get thee from the door,                35\n\n_Dro. E._ What patch is made our porter? My master stays\n        in the street.\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Let him walk from whence he came, lest he\n        catch cold on's feet.\n\n_Ant. E._ Who talks within there? ho, open the door!\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Right, sir; I'll tell you when, an you'll\n        tell me wherefore.\n\n_Ant. E._ Wherefore? for my dinner: I have not dined to-day.        40\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Nor to-day here you must not; come again\n        when you may.\n\n_Ant. E._ What art thou that keepest me out from the house I owe?\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] The porter for this time, sir, and\n        my name is Dromio.\n\n_Dro. E._ O villain, thou hast stolen both mine office\n        and my name!\nThe one ne'er got me credit, the other mickle blame.                45\nIf thou hadst been Dromio to-day in my place,\nThou wouldst have changed thy face for a name, or thy name\n        for an ass.\n\n_Luce._ [_Within_] What a coil is there, Dromio? who are\n        those at the gate?\n\n_Dro. E._ Let my master in, Luce.\n\n_Luce._                [_Within_] Faith, no; he comes too late;\nAnd so tell your master.\n\n_Dro. E._          O Lord, I must laugh!                            50\nHave at you with a proverb;--Shall I set in my staff?\n\n_Luce._ [_Within_] Have at you with another; that's,\n       --When? can you tell?\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] If thy name be call'd Luce, --Luce,\n        thou hast answer'd him well.\n\n_Ant. E._ Do you hear, you minion? you'll let us in, I hope?\n\n_Luce._ [_Within_] I thought to have ask'd you.\n\n_Dro. S._     [_Within_] And you said no.                           55\n\n_Dro. E._ So, come, help:--well struck! there was blow for blow.\n\n_Ant. E._ Thou baggage, let me in.\n\n_Luce._            [_Within_] Can you tell for whose sake?\n\n_Dro. E._ Master, knock the door hard.\n\n_Luce._            [_Within_] Let him knock till it ache.\n\n_Ant. E._ You'll cry for this, minion, if I beat the door down.\n\n_Luce._ [_Within_] What needs all that, and a pair of stocks\n        in the town?                                                60\n\n_Adr._ [_Within_] Who is that at the door that keeps\n        all this noise?\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] By my troth, your town is troubled\n        with unruly boys.\n\n_Ant. E._ Are you, there, wife? you might have come before.\n\n_Adr._ [_Within_] Your wife, sir knave! go get you from the door.\n\n_Dro. E._ If you went in pain, master, this 'knave'\n        would go sore.                                              65\n\n_Aug._ Here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome: we would\n        fain have either.\n\n_Bal._ In debating which was best, we shall part with neither.\n\n_Dro. E._ They stand at the door, master; bid them welcome\n        hither.\n\n_Ant. E._ There is something in the wind, that we cannot get in.\n\n_Dro. E._ You would say so, master, if your garments were thin.     70\nYour cake here is warm within; you stand here in the cold:\nIt would make a man mad as a buck, to be so bought and sold.\n\n_Ant. E._ Go fetch me something: I'll break ope the gate.\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Break any breaking here, and I'll break\n        your knave's pate.\n\n_Dro. E._ A man may break a word with you, sir; and words\n        are but wind;                                               75\nAy, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] It seems thou want'st breaking: out\n        upon thee, hind!\n\n_Dro. E._ Here's too much 'out upon thee!' I pray thee,\n        let me in.\n\n_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Ay, when fowls have no feathers, and\n        fish have no fin.\n\n_Ant. E._ Well, I'll break in:--go borrow me a crow.                80\n\n_Dro. E._ A crow without feather? Master, mean you so?\nFor a fish without a fin, there's a fowl without a feather:\nIf a crow help us in, sirrah, we'll pluck a crow together.\n\n_Ant. E._ Go get thee gone; fetch me an iron crow.\n\n_Bal._ Have patience, sir; O, let it not be so!                     85\nHerein you war against your reputation,\nAnd draw within the compass of suspect\nTh' unviolated honour of your wife.\nOnce this,--your long experience of her wisdom,\nHer sober virtue, years, and modesty,                               90\nPlead on her part some cause to you unknown;\nAnd doubt not, sir, but she will well excuse\nWhy at this time the doors are made against you.\nBe ruled by me: depart in patience,\nAnd let us to the Tiger all to dinner;                              95\nAnd about evening come yourself alone\nTo know the reason of this strange restraint.\nIf by strong hand you offer to break in\nNow in the stirring passage of the day,\nA vulgar comment will be made of it,                               100\nAnd that supposed by the common rout\nAgainst your yet ungalled estimation,\nThat may with foul intrusion enter in,\nAnd dwell upon your grave when you are dead;\nFor slander lives upon succession,                                 105\nFor ever housed where it gets possession.\n\n_Ant. E._ You have prevail'd: I will depart in quiet,\nAnd, in despite of mirth, mean to be merry.\nI know a wench of excellent discourse,\nPretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle:                      110\nThere will we dine. This woman that I mean,\nMy wife--but, I protest, without desert--\nHath oftentimes upbraided me withal:\nTo her will we to dinner. [_To Ang._] Get you home,\nAnd fetch the chain; by this I know 'tis made:                     115\nBring it, I pray you, to the Porpentine;\nFor there's the house: that chain will I bestow--\nBe it for nothing but to spite my wife--\nUpon mine hostess there: good sir, make haste.\nSince mine own doors refuse to entertain me,                       120\nI'll knock elsewhere, to see if they'll disdain me.\n\n_Ang._ I'll meet you at that place some hour hence.\n\n_Ant. E._ Do so. This jest shall cost me some expense.\n\n    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n\n  NOTES: III, 1.\n\n  SCENE I. ANGELO and BALTHAZAR.] Angelo the Goldsmith and Balthasar\n    the Merchant. Ff.\n  1: _all_] om. Pope.\n  11-14: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.\n  11: _Say_] _you must say_ Capell.\n  13: _the skin_] _my skin_ Collier MS.\n  14: _own_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.\n  _you_] _you for certain_ Collier MS.\n  15: _doth_] _dont_ Theobald.\n  19: _You're_] _Y'are_ Ff. _you are_ Capell.\n  20: _here_] om. Pope.\n  21-29: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.\n  31: _Ginn_] om. Pope. _Jen'_ Malone. _Gin'_ Collier. _Jin_ Dyce.\n  36-60: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.\n  32, sqq.: [Within] Rowe.\n  46: _been_] F1. _bid_ F2 F3 F4.\n  47: _an ass_] _a face_ Collier MS.\n  48: Luce. [Within] Rowe. Enter Luce. Ff.\n  _there, Dromio? who_] _there! Dromio, who_ Capell.\n  54: _hope_] _trow_ Theobald. Malone supposes a line omitted\n    ending _rope_.\n  61: Adr. [Within]. Rowe. Enter Adriana. Ff.\n  65-83: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.\n  67: _part_] _have part_ Warburton.\n  71: _cake here_] _cake_ Capell. _cake there_ Anon. conj.\n  72: _mad_] F1. _as mad_ F2 F3 F4.\n  _as a buck_] om. Capell.\n  75: _you,_] _your_ F1.\n  85: _so_] _thus_ Pope.\n  89: _Once this_] _Own this_ Malone conj. _This once_ Anon. conj.\n  _her_] Rowe. _your_ Ff.\n  91: _her_] Rowe. _your_ Ff.\n  93: _made_] _barr'd_ Pope.\n  105: _slander_] _lasting slander_ Johnson conj.\n  _upon_] _upon its own_ Capell conj.\n  106: _housed ... gets_] Collier. _hous'd ... gets_ F1.\n    _hous'd ... once gets_ F2 F3 F4. _hous'd where 't gets_ Steevens.\n  108: _mirth_] _wrath_ Theobald.\n  116: _Porpentine_] Ff. _Porcupine_ Rowe (and passim).\n  117: _will I_] F1. _I will_ F2 F3 F4.\n  119: _mine_] F1. _my_ F2 F3 F4.\n  122: _hour_] F1. _hour, sir_ F2 F3 F4.\n\n\n\n\n_SCENE II.\n\nThe same._\n\n  _Enter LUCIANA and _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_._\n\n_Luc._ And may it be that you have quite forgot\n    A husband's office? shall, Antipholus,\nEven in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?\n    Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?\nIf you did wed my sister for her wealth,                             5\n    Then for her wealth's sake use her with more kindness:\nOr if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;\n    Muffle your false love with some show of blindness:\nLet not my sister read it in your eye;\n    Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator;                       10\nLook sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;\n    Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger;\nBear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;\n    Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;\nBe secret-false: what need she be acquainted?                       15\n    What simple thief brags of his own attaint?\n'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed,\n    And let her read it in thy looks at board:\nShame hath a bastard fame, well managed;\n    Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.                        20\nAlas, poor women! make us but believe,\n    Being compact of credit, that you love us;\nThough others have the arm, show us the sleeve;\n    We in your motion turn, and you may move us.\nThen, gentle brother, get you in again;                             25\n    Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife:\n'Tis holy sport, to be a little vain,\n    When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.\n\n_Ant. S._ Sweet mistress,--what your name is else, I know not,\n    Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,--                        30\nLess in your knowledge and your grace you show not\n    Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine.\nTeach me, dear creature, how to think and speak;\n    Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit,\nSmother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,                         35\n    The folded meaning of your words' deceit.\nAgainst my soul's pure truth why labour you\n    To make it wander in an unknown field?\nAre you a god? would you create me new?\n    Transform me, then, and to your power I'll yield.               40\nBut if that I am I, then well I know\n    Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,\nNor to her bed no homage do I owe:\n    Far more, far more to you do I decline.\nO, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,                      45\n    To drown me in thy sister flood of tears:\nSing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote:\n    Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs,\nAnd as a bed I'll take them, and there lie;\n    And, in that glorious supposition, think                        50\nHe gains by death that hath such means to die:\n    Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink!\n\n_Luc._ What, are you mad, that you do reason so?\n\n_Ant. S._ Not mad, but mated; how, I do not know.\n\n_Luc._ It is a fault that springeth from your eye.                  55\n\n_Ant. S._ For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.\n\n_Luc._ Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight.\n\n_Ant. S._ As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.\n\n_Luc._ Why call you me love? call my sister so.\n\n_Ant. S._ Thy sister's sister.\n\n_Luc._                       That's my sister.\n\n_Ant. S._                                    No;                    60\nIt is thyself, mine own self's better part,\nMine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart,\nMy food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim,\nMy sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.\n\n_Luc._ All this my sister is, or else should be.                    65\n\n_Ant. S._ Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee.\nThee will I love, and with thee lead my life:\nThou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife.\nGive me thy hand.\n\n_Luc._          O, soft, sir! hold you still:\nI'll fetch my sister, to get her good will.    [_Exit._             70\n\n  _Enter _DROMIO of Syracuse_._\n\n_Ant. S._ Why, how now, Dromio! where runn'st thou\nso fast?\n\n_Dro. S._ Do you know me, sir? am I Dromio? am I\nyour man? am I myself?\n\n_Ant. S._ Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art                75\nthyself.\n\n_Dro. S._ I am an ass, I am a woman's man, and\nbesides myself.\n\n_Ant. S._ What woman's man? and how besides thyself?\n\n_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a                 80\nwoman; one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that\nwill have me.\n\n_Ant. S._ What claim lays she to thee?\n\n_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to\nyour horse; and she would have me as a beast: not that,             85\nI being a beast, she would have me; but that she, being\na very beastly creature, lays claim to me.\n\n_Ant. S._ What is she?\n\n_Dro. S._ A very reverent body; ay, such a one as a man\nmay not speak of, without he say Sir-reverence. I have              90\nbut lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat\nmarriage.\n\n_Ant. S._ How dost thou mean a fat marriage?\n\n_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, she's the kitchen-wench, and all\ngrease; and I know not what use to put her to, but to make          95\na lamp of her, and run from her by her own light. I warrant,\nher rags, and the tallow in them, will burn a Poland\nwinter: if she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week\nlonger than the whole world.\n\n_Ant. S._ What complexion is she of?                               100\n\n_Dro. S._ Swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing like\nso clean kept: for why she sweats; a man may go over\nshoes in the grime of it.\n\n_Ant. S._ That's a fault that water will mend.\n\n_Dro. S._ No, sir, 'tis in grain; Noah's flood could not           105\ndo it.\n\n_Ant. S._ What's her name?\n\n_Dro. S._ Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters,\nthat's an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from\nhip to hip.                                                        110\n\n_Ant. S._ Then she bears some breadth?\n\n_Dro. S._ No longer from head to foot than from hip to\nhip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries\nin her.\n\n_Ant. S._ In what part of her body stands Ireland?                 115\n\n_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, in her buttocks: I found it out by\nthe bogs.\n\n_Ant. S._ Where Scotland?\n\n_Dro. S._ I found it by the barrenness; hard in the palm\nof the hand.                                                       120\n\n_Ant. S._ Where France?\n\n_Dro. S._ In her forehead; armed and reverted, making\nwar against her heir.\n\n_Ant. S._ Where England?\n\n_Dro. S._ I looked for the chalky cliffs, but I could find         125\nno whiteness in them; but I guess it stood in her chin, by\nthe salt rheum that ran between France and it.\n\n_Ant. S._ Where Spain?\n\n_Dro. S._ Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her\nbreath.                                                            130\n\n_Ant. S._ Where America, the Indies?\n\n_Dro. S._ Oh, sir, upon her nose, all o'er embellished\nwith rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect\nto the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes\nof caracks to be ballast at her nose.                              135\n\n_Ant. S._ Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?\n\n_Dro. S._ Oh, sir, I did not look so low. To conclude,\nthis drudge, or diviner, laid claim to me; called me\nDromio; swore I was assured to her; told me what privy\nmarks I had about me, as, the mark of my shoulder, the             140\nmole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that\nI, amazed, ran from her as a witch:\n\nAnd, I think, if my breast had not been made of faith, and\n        my heart of steel,\nShe had transform'd me to a curtal dog, and made me turn\n        i' the wheel.\n\n_Ant. S._ Go hie thee presently, post to the road:--               145\nAn if the wind blow any way from shore,\nI will not harbour in this town to-night:--\nIf any bark put forth, come to the mart,\nWhere I will walk till thou return to me.\nIf every one knows us, and we know none,                           150\n'Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack, and be gone.\n\n_Dro. S._ As from a bear a man would run for life,\nSo fly I from her that would be my wife.    [_Exit._\n\n_Ant. S._ There's none but witches do inhabit here;\nAnd therefore 'tis high time that I were hence.                    155\nShe that doth call me husband, even my soul\nDoth for a wife abhor. But her fair sister,\nPossess'd with such a gentle sovereign grace,\nOf such enchanting presence and discourse,\nHath almost made me traitor to myself:                             160\nBut, lest myself be guilty to self-wrong,\nI'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song.\n\n  _Enter ANGELO with the chain._\n\n_Ang._ Master Antipholus,--\n\n_Ant. S._                  Ay, that's my name.\n\n_Ang._ I know it well, sir:--lo, here is the chain.\nI thought to have ta'en you at the Porpentine:                     165\nThe chain unfinish'd made me stay thus long.\n\n_Ant. S._ What is your will that I shall do with this?\n\n_Ang._ What please yourself, sir: I have made it for you.\n\n_Ant. S._ Made it for me, sir! I bespoke it not.\n\n_Ang._ Not once, nor twice, but twenty times you have.             170\nGo home with it, and please your wife withal;\nAnd soon at supper-time I'll visit you,\nAnd then receive my money for the chain.\n\n_Ant. S._ I pray you, sir, receive the money now,\nFor fear you ne'er see chain nor money more.                       175\n\n_Ang._ You are a merry man, sir: fare you well.    [_Exit._\n\n_Ant. S._ What I should think of this, I cannot tell:\nBut this I think, there's no man is so vain\nThat would refuse so fair an offer'd chain.\nI see a man here needs not live by shifts,                         180\nWhen in the streets he meets such golden gifts.\nI'll to the mart, and there for Dromio stay:\nIf any ship put out, then straight away.    [_Exit._\n\n\n\n  NOTES: III, 2.\n\n  SCENE II. Enter LUCIANA] F2. Enter JULIANA F1.\n  1: Luc.] Rowe. Julia Ff.\n  2: _Antipholus_] _Antipholis, hate_ Theobald. _Antipholis, thus_\n    Id. conj. _a nipping hate_ Heath conj. _unkind debate_ Collier MS.\n  4: _building_] Theobald. _buildings_ Ff.\n  _ruinous_] Capell (Theobald conj.). _ruinate_ Ff.\n  16: _attaint_] Rowe. _attaine_ F1 F2 F3. _attain_ F4.\n  20: _are_] F2 F3 F4. _is_ F1.\n  21: _but_] Theobald. _not_ Ff.\n  26: _wife_] _wise_ F1.\n  35: _shallow_] F1. _shaddow_ F2 F3. _shadow_ F4.\n  43: _no_] F1. _a_ F2 F3 F4.\n  44: _decline_] _incline_ Collier MS.\n  46: _sister_] F1. _sister's_ F2 F3 F4.\n  49: _bed_] F2 F3 F4. _bud_ F1. _bride_ Dyce.\n  _them_] Capell (Edwards conj.). _thee_ Ff.\n  52: _she_] _he_ Capell.\n  57: _where_] Pope. _when_ Ff.\n  66: _am_] _mean_ Pope. _aim_ Capell.\n  71: SCENE III. Pope.\n  93: _How_] _What_ Capell.\n  97: _Poland_] _Lapland_ Warburton.\n  108: _and_] Theobald (Thirlby conj). _is_ Ff.\n  120: _the_] Ff. _her_ Rowe.\n  122: _forehead_] _sore head_ Jackson conj.\n  _reverted_] _revolted_ Grant White.\n  123: _heir_] _heire_ F1. _haire_ F2 F3. _hair_ F4.\n  125: _chalky_] _chalkle_ F1.\n  135: _caracks_] Hanmer. _carrects_ F1. _carracts_ F2 F3 F4.\n  _ballast_] _ballasted_ Capell.\n  138: _drudge, or_] _drudge of the Devil, this_ Warburton.\n  _or diviner_] _this divine one_ Capell conj.\n  140: _mark_] _marke_ F1. _marks_ F2 F3 F4.\n  143: _faith_] _flint_ Hanmer.\n  143, 144: Printed as prose in Ff. As verse first by Knight.\n  144: _curtal_] F4. _curtull_ F1. _curtall_ F2 F3. _cur-tail_ Hanmer.\n  146: _An_] Capell. _And_ Ff.\n  150: _knows us_] _know us_ Johnson.\n  154: SCENE IV. Pope.\n  161: _to_] _of_ Pope.\n  164: _here is_] Pope. _here's_ Ff.\n  177: Ant. S.] Ant. F1 F4. Dro. F2 F3.\n  181: _streets_] _street_ Capell conj.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\n\nA public place.\n\n  _Enter _Second Merchant_, ANGELO, and an _Officer_._\n\n_Sec. Mer._ You know since Pentecost the sum is due,\nAnd since I have not much importuned you;\nNor now I had not, but that I am bound\nTo Persia, and want guilders for my voyage:\nTherefore make present satisfaction,                                 5\nOr I'll attach you by this officer.\n\n_Ang._ Even just the sum that I do owe to you\nIs growing to me by Antipholus;\nAnd in the instant that I met with you\nHe had of me a chain: at five o'clock                               10\nI shall receive the money for the same.\nPleaseth you walk with me down to his house,\nI will discharge my bond, and thank you too.\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_ and _DROMIO of Ephesus_ from\n  the courtezan's._\n\n_Off._ That labour may you save: see where he comes.\n\n_Ant. E._ While I go to the goldsmith's house, go thou              15\nAnd buy a rope's end: that will I bestow\nAmong my wife and her confederates,\nFor locking me out of my doors by day.--\nBut, soft! I see the goldsmith. Get thee gone;\nBuy thou a rope, and bring it home to me.                           20\n\n_Dro. E._ I buy a thousand pound a year: I buy a rope.\n    [_Exit._\n\n_Ant. E._ A man is well holp up that trusts to you:\nI promised your presence and the chain;\nBut neither chain nor goldsmith came to me.\nBelike you thought our love would last too long,                    25\nIf it were chain'd together, and therefore came not.\n\n_Ang._ Saving your merry humour, here's the note\nHow much your chain weighs to the utmost carat,\nThe fineness of the gold, and chargeful fashion,\nWhich doth amount to three odd ducats more                          30\nThan I stand debted to this gentleman:\nI pray you, see him presently discharged,\nFor he is bound to sea, and stays but for it.\n\n_Ant. E._ I am not furnish'd with the present money;\nBesides, I have some business in the town.                          35\nGood signior, take the stranger to my house,\nAnd with you take the chain, and bid my wife\nDisburse the sum on the receipt thereof:\nPerchance I will be there as soon as you.\n\n_Ang._ Then you will bring the chain to her yourself?               40\n\n_Ant. E._ No; bear it with you, lest I come not time enough.\n\n_Ang._ Well, sir, I will. Have you the chain about you?\n\n_Ant. E._ An if I have not, sir, I hope you have;\nOr else you may return without your money.\n\n_Ang._ Nay, come, I pray you, sir, give me the chain:               45\nBoth wind and tide stays for this gentleman,\nAnd I, to blame, have held him here too long.\n\n_Ant. E._ Good Lord! you use this dalliance to excuse\nYour breach of promise to the Porpentine.\nI should have chid you for not bringing it,                         50\nBut, like a shrew, you first begin to brawl.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ The hour steals on; I pray you, sir, dispatch.\n\n_Ang._ You hear how he importunes me;--the chain!\n\n_Ant. E._ Why, give it to my wife, and fetch your money.\n\n_Ang._ Come, come, you know I gave it you even now.                 55\nEither send the chain, or send me by some token.\n\n_Ant. E._ Fie, now you run this humour out of breath.\nCome, where's the chain? I pray you, let me see it.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ My business cannot brook this dalliance.\nGood sir, say whether you'll answer me or no:                       60\nIf not, I'll leave him to the officer.\n\n_Ant. E._ I answer you! what should I answer you?\n\n_Ang._ The money that you owe me for the chain.\n\n_Ant. E._ I owe you none till I receive the chain.\n\n_Ang._ You know I gave it you half an hour since.                   65\n\n_Ant. E._ You gave me none: you wrong me much to say so.\n\n_Ang._ You wrong me more, sir, in denying it:\nConsider how it stands upon my credit.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ Well, officer, arrest him at my suit.\n\n_Off._ I do; and charge you in the duke's name to obey me.          70\n\n_Ang._ This touches me in reputation.\nEither consent to pay this sum for me,\nOr I attach you by this officer.\n\n_Ant. E._ Consent to pay thee that I never had!\nArrest me, foolish fellow, if thou darest.                          75\n\n_Ang._ Here is thy fee; arrest him, officer.\nI would not spare my brother in this case,\nIf he should scorn me so apparently.\n\n_Off._ I do arrest you, sir: you hear the suit.\n\n_Ant. E._ I do obey thee till I give thee bail.                     80\nBut, sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear\nAs all the metal in your shop will answer.\n\n_Ang._ Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus,\nTo your notorious shame; I doubt it not.\n\n  _Enter _DROMIO of Syracuse_, from the bay._\n\n_Dro. S._ Master, there is a bark of Epidamnum                      85\nThat stays but till her owner comes aboard,\nAnd then, sir, she bears away. Our fraughtage, sir,\nI have convey'd aboard; and I have bought\nThe oil, the balsamum, and aqua-vitae.\nThe ship is in her trim; the merry wind                             90\nBlows fair from land: they stay for nought at all\nBut for their owner, master, and yourself.\n\n_Ant. E._ How now! a madman! Why, thou peevish sheep,\nWhat ship of Epidamnum stays for me?\n\n_Dro. S._ A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage.                   95\n\n_Ant. E._ Thou drunken slave, I sent thee for a rope,\nAnd told thee to what purpose and what end.\n\n_Dro. S._ You sent me for a rope's end as soon:\nYou sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark.\n\n_Ant. E._ I will debate this matter at more leisure,               100\nAnd teach your ears to list me with more heed.\nTo Adriana, villain, hie thee straight:\nGive her this key, and tell her, in the desk\nThat's cover'd o'er with Turkish tapestry\nThere is a purse of ducats; let her send it:                       105\nTell her I am arrested in the street,\nAnd that shall bail me: hie thee, slave, be gone!\nOn, officer, to prison till it come.\n\n    [_Exeunt Sec. Merchant, Angelo, Officer, and Ant. E._\n\n_Dro. S._ To Adriana! that is where we dined,\nWhere Dowsabel did claim me for her husband:                       110\nShe is too big, I hope, for me to compass.\nThither I must, although against my will,\nFor servants must their masters' minds fulfil.    [_Exit._\n\n\n\n  NOTES: IV, 1.\n\n  8: _growing_] _owing_ Pope.\n  12: _Pleaseth you_] Ff. _Please you but_ Pope. _Please it you_\n    Anon. conj.\n  14: _may you_] F1 F2 F3. _you may_ F4.\n  17: _her_] Rowe. _their_ Ff. _these_ Collier MS.\n  26: _and_] om. Pope.\n  28: _carat_] Pope. _charect_ F1. _Raccat_ F2 F3 F4. _caract_ Collier.\n  29: _chargeful_] _charge for_ Anon. conj.\n  41: _time enough_] _in time_ Hanmer.\n  46: _stays_] _stay_ Pope.\n  _this_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4.\n  47: _to blame_] F3. _too blame_ F1 F2 F4.\n  53: _the chain!_] Dyce. _the chain,_ Ff. _the chain--_ Johnson.\n  56: _Either_] _Or_ Pope.\n  _me by_] _by me_ Heath conj.\n  60: _whether_] _whe'r_ Ff. _where_ Rowe. _if_ Pope.\n  62: _what_] F1. _why_ F2 F3 F4.\n  67: _more_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.\n  70: Printed as verse by Capell.\n  73: _this_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4.\n  74: _thee_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. _for_ Rowe.\n  85: SCENE II. Pope.\n  _there is_] Pope. _there's_ Ff.\n  87: _And then, sir,_] F1. _Then, sir,_ F2 F3 F4. _And then_ Capell.\n  _she_] om. Steevens.\n  88: _bought_] F1. _brought_ F2 F3 F4.\n  98: _You sent me_] _A rope! You sent me_ Capell.\n    _You sent me, Sir,_ Steevens.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\n\nThe house of _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_.\n\n  _Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA._\n\n_Adr._ Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so?\n    Mightst thou perceive austerely in his eye\nThat he did plead in earnest? yea or no?\n    Look'd he or red or pale, or sad or merrily?\nWhat observation madest thou, in this case,                          5\nOf his heart's meteors tilting in his face?\n\n_Luc._ First he denied you had in him no right.\n\n_Adr._ He meant he did me none; the more my spite.\n\n_Luc._ Then swore he that he was a stranger here.\n\n_Adr._ And true he swore, though yet forsworn he were.              10\n\n_Luc._ Then pleaded I for you.\n\n_Adr._                       And what said he?\n\n_Luc._ That love I begg'd for you he begg'd of me.\n\n_Adr._ With what persuasion did he tempt thy love?\n\n_Luc._ With words that in an honest suit might move.\nFirst he did praise my beauty, then my speech.                      15\n\n_Adr._ Didst speak him fair?\n\n_Luc._                      Have patience, I beseech.\n\n_Adr._ I cannot, nor I will not, hold me still;\nMy tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.\nHe is deformed, crooked, old, and sere,\nIll-faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;                      20\nVicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind;\nStigmatical in making, worse in mind.\n\n_Luc._ Who would be jealous, then, of such a one?\nNo evil lost is wail'd when it is gone.\n\n_Adr._ Ah, but I think him better than I say,                       25\n    And yet would herein others' eyes were worse.\nFar from her nest the lapwing cries away:\n    My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse.\n\n  _Enter _DROMIO of Syracuse_._\n\n_Dro. S._ Here! go; the desk, the purse! sweet, now, make haste.\n\n_Luc._ How hast thou lost thy breath?\n\n_Dro. S._                            By running fast.               30\n\n_Adr._ Where is thy master, Dromio? is he well?\n\n_Dro. S._ No, he's in Tartar limbo, worse than hell.\nA devil in an everlasting garment hath him;\nOne whose hard heart is button'd up with steel;\nA fiend, a fury, pitiless and rough;                                35\nA wolf, nay, worse; a fellow all in buff;\nA back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands\nThe passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands;\nA hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well;\nOne that, before the Judgment, carries poor souls to hell.          40\n\n_Adr._ Why, man, what is the matter?\n\n_Dro. S._ I do not know the matter: he is 'rested on the case.\n\n_Adr._ What, is he arrested? Tell me at whose suit.\n\n_Dro. S._ I know not at whose suit he is arrested well;\nBut he's in a suit of buff which 'rested him, that can I tell.      45\nWill you send him, mistress, redemption, the money in his desk?\n\n_Adr._ Go fetch it, sister. [_Exit Luciana._] This I wonder at,\nThat he, unknown to me, should be in debt.\nTell me, was he arrested on a band?\n\n_Dro. S._ Not on a band, but on a stronger thing;                   50\nA chain, a chain! Do you not hear it ring?\n\n_Adr._ What, the chain?\n\n_Dro. S._ No, no, the bell: 'tis time that I were gone:\nIt was two ere I left him, and now the clock strikes one.\n\n_Adr._ The hours come back! that did I never hear.                  55\n\n_Dro. S._ O, yes; if any hour meet a sergeant, 'a turns back\n        for very fear.\n\n_Adr._ As if Time were in debt! how fondly dost thou reason!\n\n_Dro. S._ Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he's\n        worth to season.\nNay, he's a thief too: have you not heard men say,\nThat Time comes stealing on by night and day?                       60\nIf Time be in debt and theft, and a sergeant in the way,\nHath he not reason to turn back an hour in a day?\n\n  _Re-enter LUCIANA with a purse._\n\n_Adr._ Go, Dromio; there's the money, bear it straight;\n  And bring thy master home immediately.\nCome, sister: I am press'd down with conceit,--                     65\n  Conceit, my comfort and my injury.\n\n    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n\n  NOTES: IV, 2.\n\n  SCENE II.] SCENE III. Pope.\n  2: _austerely_] _assuredly_ Heath conj.\n  4: _or sad or_] _sad_ Capell.\n  _merrily_] _merry_ Collier MS.\n  6: _Of_] F2 F3 F4. _Oh,_ F1.\n  7: _you_] _you; you_ Capell.\n  _no_] _a_ Rowe.\n  18: _his_] _it's_ Rowe.\n  22: _in mind_] F1. _the mind_ F2 F3 F4.\n  26: _herein_] _he in_ Hanmer.\n  29: SCENE IV. Pope.\n  _sweet_] _swift_ Collier MS.\n  33: _hath him_] _hath him fell_ Collier MS. _hath him by the heel_\n    Spedding conj.\n  34: _One_] F2 F3 F4. _On_ F1.\n  After this line Collier MS. inserts: _Who knows no touch of mercy,\n    cannot feel_.\n  35: _fury_] Pope, ed. 2 (Theobald). _Fairie_ Ff.\n  37: _countermands_] _commands_ Theobald.\n  38: _of_] _and_ Collier MS.\n  _alleys_] _allies_ Ff.\n  _lands_] _lanes_ Grey conj. See note (V).\n  37, 38: _countermands The ... lands_] _his court maintains I' the\n    ... lanes_ Becket conj.\n  42, 45: _'rested_] Theobald. _rested_ Ff.\n  43: _Tell_] _Well, tell_ Edd. conj.\n  44: _arrested well;_] F1. _arrested, well;_ F2 F3.\n    _arrested: well:_ F4.\n  45: _But he's_] F3 F4. _But is_ F1 F2. _But 'a's_ Edd. conj.\n  _can I_] F1 F2. _I can_ F3 F4.\n  46: _mistress, redemption_] Hanmer. _Mistris redemption_ F1 F2 F3.\n    _Mistris Redemption_ F4. See note (VI).\n  48: _That_] _Thus_ F1.\n  49, 50: _band_] _bond_ Rowe.\n  50: _but on_] _but_ Pope.\n  54-62: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.\n  55: _hear_] _here_ F1.\n  56: _'a turns_] _it turns_ Pope. _he turns_ Capell.\n  58: _bankrupt_] _bankrout_ Ff.\n  _to season_] om. Pope.\n  61: _Time_] Rowe. _I_ Ff. _he_ Malone. _'a_ Staunton.\n  62: _an hour_] _any hour_ Collier MS.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\n\nA public place.\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_._\n\n_Ant. S._ There's not a man I meet but doth salute me\nAs if I were their well-acquainted friend;\nAnd every one doth call me by my name.\nSome tender money to me; some invite me;\nSome other give me thanks for kindnesses;                            5\nSome offer me commodities to buy;--\nEven now a tailor call'd me in his shop,\nAnd show'd me silks that he had bought for me,\nAnd therewithal took measure of my body.\nSure, these are but imaginary wiles,                                10\nAnd Lapland sorcerers inhabit here.\n\n  _Enter _DROMIO of Syracuse_._\n\n_Dro. S._ Master, here's the gold you sent me for.--\nWhat, have you got the picture of old Adam new-apparelled?\n\n_Ant. S._ What gold is this? what Adam dost thou mean?\n\n_Dro. S._ Not that Adam that kept the Paradise, but that            15\nAdam that keeps the prison: he that goes in the calf's skin\nthat was killed for the Prodigal; he that came behind you,\nsir, like an evil angel, and bid you forsake your liberty.\n\n_Ant. S._ I understand thee not.\n\n_Dro. S._ No? why, 'tis a plain case: he that went, like a          20\nbase-viol, in a case of leather; the man, sir, that, when\ngentlemen are tired, gives them a sob, and 'rests them; he, sir,\nthat takes pity on decayed men, and gives them suits of\ndurance; he that sets up his rest to do more exploits with\nhis mace than a morris-pike.                                        25\n\n_Ant. S._ What, thou meanest an officer?\n\n_Dro. S._ Ay, sir, the sergeant of the band; he that\nbrings any man to answer it that breaks his band; one that\nthinks a man always going to bed, and says, 'God give you\ngood rest!'                                                         30\n\n_Ant. S._ Well, sir, there rest in your foolery. Is there\nany ship puts forth to-night? may we be gone?\n\n_Dro. S._ Why, sir, I brought you word an hour since,\nthat the bark Expedition put forth to-night; and then were\nyou hindered by the sergeant, to tarry for the hoy Delay.           35\nHere are the angels that you sent for to deliver you.\n\n_Ant. S._ The fellow is distract, and so am I;\nAnd here we wander in illusions:\nSome blessed power deliver us from hence!\n\n  _Enter a _Courtezan_._\n\n_Cour._ Well met, well met, Master Antipholus.                      40\nI see, sir, you have found the goldsmith now:\nIs that the chain you promised me to-day?\n\n_Ant. S._ Satan, avoid! I charge thee, tempt me not.\n\n_Dro. S._ Master, is this Mistress Satan?\n\n_Ant. S._ It is the devil.                                          45\n\n_Dro. S._ Nay, she is worse, she is the devil's dam; and\nhere she comes in the habit of a light wench: and thereof\ncomes that the wenches say, 'God damn me;' that's as\nmuch to say, 'God make me a light wench.' It is written,\nthey appear to men like angels of light: light is an effect of      50\nfire, and fire will burn; ergo, light wenches will burn. Come\nnot near her.\n\n_Cour._ Your man and you are marvellous merry, sir.\nWill you go with me? We'll mend our dinner here?\n\n_Dro. S._ Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat; or bespeak          55\na long spoon.\n\n_Ant. S._ Why, Dromio?\n\n_Dro. S._ Marry, he must have a long spoon that must\neat with the devil.\n\n_Ant. S._ Avoid then, fiend! what tell'st thou me of supping?       60\nThou art, as you are all, a sorceress:\nI conjure thee to leave me and be gone.\n\n_Cour._ Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner,\nOr, for my diamond, the chain you promised,\nAnd I'll be gone, sir, and not trouble you.                         65\n\n_Dro. S._ Some devils ask but the parings of one's nail,\nA rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,\nA nut, a cherry-stone;\nBut she, more covetous, would have a chain.\nMaster, be wise: an if you give it her,                             70\nThe devil will shake her chain, and fright us with it.\n\n_Cour._ I pray you, sir, my ring, or else the chain:\nI hope you do not mean to cheat me so.\n\n_Ant. S._ Avaunt, thou witch! --Come, Dromio, let us go.\n\n_Dro. S._ 'Fly pride,' says the peacock: mistress, that you know.\n\n    [_Exeunt Ant. S. and Dro. S._                                   75\n\n_Cour._ Now, out of doubt Antipholus is mad,\nElse would he never so demean himself.\nA ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats,\nAnd for the same he promised me a chain:\nBoth one and other he denies me now.                                80\nThe reason that I gather he is mad,--\nBesides this present instance of his rage,--\nIs a mad tale he told to-day at dinner,\nOf his own doors being shut against his entrance.\nBelike his wife, acquainted with his fits,                          85\nOn purpose shut the doors against his way.\nMy way is now to his home to his house,\nAnd tell his wife that, being lunatic,\nHe rush'd into my house, and took perforce\nMy ring away. This course I fittest choose;                         90\nFor forty ducats is too much to lose.    [_Exit._\n\n\n\n  NOTES: IV, 3.\n\n  SCENE III.] SCENE V. Pope.\n  13: _What, have_] Pope. _What have_ Ff.\n  _got_] _got rid of_ Theobald. _not_ Anon. conj.\n  16: _calf's skin_] _calves-skin_ Ff.\n  22: _sob_] _fob_ Rowe. _bob_ Hanmer. _sop_ Dyce conj.\n    _stop_ Grant White.\n  _'rests_] Warburton. _rests_ Ff.\n  25: _morris_] _Moris_ Ff. _Maurice_ Hanmer (Warburton).\n  28: _band_] _bond_ Rowe.\n  29: _says_] Capell. _saies_ F1. _saieth_ F2. _saith_ F3 F4.\n  32: _ship_] F2 F3 F4. _ships_ F1.\n  34: _put_] _puts_ Pope.\n  40: SCENE VI. Pope.\n  44-62: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.\n  47-49: _and ... wench.'_] Marked as spurious by Capell, MS.\n  48, 49: _as much_] _as much as_ Pope.\n  54: _me? ... here?_] _me, ... here?_ Ff. _me? ... here._ Steevens.\n  55: _if you do, expect_] F2 F3 F4. _if do expect_ F1.\n  _or_] om. Rowe. _so_ Capell. _either stay away, or_ Malone conj.\n    _and_ Ritson conj. _Oh!_ Anon. conj.\n  60: _then_] F1 F2 F3. _thou_ F4. _thee_ Dyce.\n  61: _are all_] _all are_ Boswell.\n  66-71: Printed as prose by Ff, as verse by Capell, ending the\n    third line at _covetous_.\n  75: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.\n  76: SCENE VII. Pope.\n  84: _doors_] _door_ Johnson.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\n\nA street.\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_ and the _Officer_._\n\n_Ant. E._ Fear me not, man; I will not break away:\nI'll give thee, ere I leave thee, so much money,\nTo warrant thee, as I am 'rested for.\nMy wife is in a wayward mood to-day,\nAnd will not lightly trust the messenger.                            5\nThat I should be attach'd in Ephesus,\nI tell you, 'twill sound harshly in her ears.\n\n  _Enter _DROMIO of Ephesus_ with a ropes-end._\n\nHere comes my man; I think he brings the money.\nHow now, sir! have you that I sent you for?\n\n_Dro. E._ Here's that, I warrant you, will pay them all.            10\n\n_Ant. E._ But where's the money?\n\n_Dro. E._ Why, sir, I gave the money for the rope.\n\n_Ant. E._ Five hundred ducats, villain, for a rope?\n\n_Dro. E._ I'll serve you, sir, five hundred at the rate.\n\n_Ant. E._ To what end did I bid thee hie thee home?                 15\n\n_Dro. E._ To a rope's-end, sir; and to that end am I\nreturned.\n\n_Ant. E._ And to that end, sir, I will welcome you.\n    [_Beating him._\n\n_Off._ Good sir, be patient.\n\n_Dro. E._ Nay, 'tis for me to be patient; I am in adversity.        20\n\n_Off._ Good, now, hold thy tongue.\n\n_Dro. E._ Nay, rather persuade him to hold his hands.\n\n_Ant. E._ Thou whoreson, senseless villain!\n\n_Dro. E._ I would I were senseless, sir, that I might not\nfeel your blows.                                                    25\n\n_Ant. E._ Thou art sensible in nothing but blows, and\nso is an ass.\n\n_Dro. E._ I am an ass, indeed; you may prove it by my\nlong ears. I have served him from the hour of my nativity\nto this instant, and have nothing at his hands for my service       30\nbut blows. When I am cold, he heats me with beating;\nwhen I am warm, he cools me with beating: I am waked\nwith it when I sleep; raised with it when I sit; driven out\nof doors with it when I go from home; welcomed home\nwith it when I return: nay, I bear it on my shoulders, as           35\na beggar wont her brat; and, I think, when he hath lamed\nme, I shall beg with it from door to door.\n\n_Ant. E._ Come, go along; my wife is coming yonder.\n\n  _Enter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, the _Courtezan_, and PINCH._\n\n_Dro. E._ Mistress, 'respice finem,' respect your end; or\nrather, the prophecy like the parrot, 'beware the rope's-end.'      40\n\n_Ant. E._ Wilt thou still talk?    [_Beating him._\n\n_Cour._ How say you now? is not your husband mad?\n\n_Adr._ His incivility confirms no less.\nGood Doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;\nEstablish him in his true sense again,                              45\nAnd I will please you what you will demand.\n\n_Luc._ Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!\n\n_Cour._ Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy!\n\n_Pinch._ Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.\n\n_Ant. E._ There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.               50\n    [_Striking him._\n\n_Pinch._ I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man,\nTo yield possession to my holy prayers,\nAnd to thy state of darkness his thee straight:\nI conjure thee by all the saints in heaven!\n\n_Ant. E._ Peace, doting wizard, peace! I am not mad.                55\n\n_Adr._ O, that thou wert not, poor distressed soul!\n\n_Ant. E._ You minion, you, are these your customers?\nDid this companion with the saffron face\nRevel and feast it at my house to-day,\nWhilst upon me the guilty doors were shut,                          60\nAnd I denied to enter in my house?\n\n_Adr._ O husband, God doth know you dined at home;\nWhere would you had remain'd until this time,\nFree from these slanders and this open shame!\n\n_Ant. E._ Dined at home!--Thou villain, what sayest thou?           65\n\n_Dro. E._ Sir, sooth to say, you did not dine at home.\n\n_Ant. E._ Were not my doors lock'd up, and I shut out?\n\n_Dro. E._ Perdie, your doors were lock'd, and you shut out.\n\n_Ant. E._ And did not she herself revile me there?\n\n_Dro. E._ Sans fable, she herself reviled you there.                70\n\n_Ant. E._ Did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt, and scorn me?\n\n_Dro. E._ Certes, she did; the kitchen-vestal scorn'd you.\n\n_Ant. E._ And did not I in rage depart from thence?\n\n_Dro. E._ In verity you did; my bones bear witness,\nThat since have felt the vigour of his rage.                        75\n\n_Adr._ Is't good to soothe him in these contraries?\n\n_Pinch._ It is no shame: the fellow finds his vein,\nAnd, yielding to him, humours well his frenzy.\n\n_Ant. E._ Thou hast suborn'd the goldsmith to arrest me.\n\n_Adr._ Alas, I sent you money to redeem you,                        80\nBy Dromio here, who came in haste for it.\n\n_Dro. E._ Money by me! heart and good-will you might;\nBut surely, master, not a rag of money.\n\n_Ant. E._ Went'st not thou to her for a purse of ducats?\n\n_Adr._ He came to me, and I deliver'd it.                           85\n\n_Luc._ And I am witness with her that she did.\n\n_Dro. E._ God and the rope-maker bear me witness\nThat I was sent for nothing but a rope!\n\n_Pinch._ Mistress, both man and master is possess'd;\nI know it by their pale and deadly looks:                           90\nThey must be bound, and laid in some dark room.\n\n_Ant. E._ Say, wherefore didst them lock me forth to-day?\nAnd why dost thou deny the bag of gold?\n\n_Adr._ I did not, gentle husband, lock thee forth.\n\n_Dro. E._ And, gentle master, I received no gold;                   95\nBut I confess, sir, that we were lock'd out.\n\n_Adr._ Dissembling villain, them speak'st false in both.\n\n_Ant. E._ Dissembling harlot, them art false in all,\nAnd art confederate with a damned pack\nTo make a loathsome abject scorn of me:                            100\nBut with these nails I'll pluck out these false eyes,\nThat would behold in me this shameful sport.\n\n  _Enter three or four, and offer to bind him. He strives._\n\n_Adr._ O, bind him, bind him! let him not come near me.\n\n_Pinch._ More company! The fiend is strong within him.\n\n_Luc._ Ay me, poor man, how pale and wan he looks!                 105\n\n_Ant. E._ What, will you murder me? Thou gaoler, thou,\nI am thy prisoner: wilt thou suffer them\nTo make a rescue?\n\n_Off._          Masters, let him go:\nHe is my prisoner, and you shall not have him.\n\n_Pinch._ Go bind this man, for he is frantic too.                  110\n\n    [_They offer to bind Dro. E._\n\n_Adr._ What wilt thou do, thou peevish officer?\nHast thou delight to see a wretched man\nDo outrage and displeasure to himself?\n\n_Off._ He is my prisoner: if I let him go,\nThe debt he owes will be required of me.                           115\n\n_Adr._ I will discharge thee ere I go from thee:\nBear me forthwith unto his creditor,\nAnd, knowing how the debt grows, I will pay it.\nGood master doctor, see him safe convey'd\nHome to my house. O most unhappy day!                              120\n\n_Ant. E._ O most unhappy strumpet!\n\n_Dro. E._ Master, I am here entered in bond for you.\n\n_Ant. E._ Out on thee, villain! wherefore dost thou mad me?\n\n_Dro. E._ Will you be bound for nothing? be mad, good\nmaster: cry, The devil!                                            125\n\n_Luc._ God help, poor souls, how idly do they talk!\n\n_Adr._ Go bear him hence. Sister, go you with me.\n    [_Exeunt all but Adriana, Luciana, Officer and Courtezan._]\nSay now; whose suit is he arrested at?\n\n_Off._ One Angelo, a goldsmith: do you know him?\n\n_Adr._ I know the man. What is the sum he owes?                    130\n\n_Off._ Two hundred ducats.\n\n_Adr._                   Say, how grows it due?\n\n_Off._ Due for a chain your husband had of him.\n\n_Adr._ He did bespeak a chain for me, but had it not.\n\n_Cour._ When as your husband, all in rage, to-day\nCame to my house, and took away my ring,--                         135\nThe ring I saw upon his finger now,--\nStraight after did I meet him with a chain.\n\n_Adr._ It may be so, but I did never see it.\nCome, gaoler, bring me where the goldsmith is:\nI long to know the truth hereof at large.                          140\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_ with his rapier drawn,\n  and _DROMIO of Syracuse_._\n\n_Luc._ God, for thy mercy! they are loose again.\n\n_Adr._ And come with naked swords.\nLet's call more help to have them bound again.\n\n_Off._ Away! they'll kill us.\n\n    [_Exeunt all but Ant. S. and Dro. S._\n\n_Ant. S._ I see these witches are afraid of swords.                145\n\n_Dro. S._ She that would be your wife now ran from you.\n\n_Ant. S._ Come to the Centaur; fetch our stuff from thence:\nI long that we were safe and sound aboard.\n\n_Dro. S._ Faith, stay here this night; they will surely do\nus no harm: you saw they speak us fair, give us gold:              150\nmethinks they are such a gentle nation, that, but for the\nmountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me, I could\nfind in my heart to stay here still, and turn witch.\n\n_Ant. S._ I will not stay to-night for all the town;\nTherefore away, to get our stuff aboard.\n\n    [_Exeunt._                                                     155\n\n\n\n  NOTES: IV, 4.\n\n  SCENE IV.] SCENE VIII. Pope.\n  and the Officer.] Capell. with a Jailor. Ff.\n  5, 6: _messenger. That ... Ephesus,_] Rowe.\n    _messenger, That ... Ephesus,_ F1 F2 F3.\n    _messenger; That ... Ephesus,_ F4.\n    _messenger, That ... Ephesus:_ Capell.\n  14: Dro. E.] Off. Edd. conj.\n  15: _hie_] _high_ F2.\n  17: _returned_] _come_ Anon. conj.\n  18: [Beating him.] Capell. [Beats Dro. Pope. om. Ff.\n  29: _ears_] See note (VII).\n  38: SCENE IX. Pope. The stage direction 'Enter ... Pinch,'\n    precedes line 38 in Ff, and all editions till Dyce's.\n  Pinch.] a schoolmaster, call'd Pinch. Ff.\n  40: _the prophecy_] _the prophesie_ F1 F2 F3 F4. _prophesie_ Rowe.\n    _to prophesy_ Dyce.\n  39-41: _or rather ... talk?_] _or rather, 'prospice funem,'\n    beware the rope's end._ Ant. E. _Wilt thou still talk like\n    the parrot?_ Edd. conj.\n  41: [Beating him.] [Beats Dro. Ff.\n  46: _what_] _in what_ Hanmer.\n  65: _Dined_] _Din'd I_ Theobald. _I din'd_ Capell.\n  72: _Certes_] Pope. _certis_ Ff.\n  74: _bear_] _beares_ F1.\n  75: _vigour_] _rigour_ Collier MS.\n  _his_] _your_ Pope.\n  83: _master_] _mistress_ Dyce conj.\n  _rag_] _bag_ Becket conj.\n  84: _not thou_] _thou not_ Capell.\n  87: _bear_] _do bear_ Pope. _now bear_ Collier MS.\n  89: _is_] _are_ Rowe.\n  101: _these false_] Ff. _those false_ Rowe.\n  102: [Flying at his wife. Capell.\n  Enter ...] The stage direction is transferred by Dyce to follow 105.\n  106: _me? Thou ... thou,_] Rowe. _me, thou ... thou?_ Ff.\n  110: [They ... Dro. E.] Edd. om. Ff.\n  117: [They bind ANT. and DRO. Rowe.\n  124: _nothing?_] _nothing thus?_ Hanmer, reading as verse.\n  126: _help, poor_] Theobald. _help poor_ Ff.\n  _idly_] Pope. _idlely_ Ff.\n  127: _go_] _stay_ Pope.\n  [Exeunt all but ...] Exeunt. Manet ... Ff (after line 128).\n  129: SCENE X. Pope.\n  133: _for me_] om. Hanmer.\n  141: SCENE XI. Pope.\n  143: [Runne all out. Ff.\n  144: [Exeunt ...] Exeunt omnes, as fast as may be, frighted. Ff.\n  150: _saw ... speak us ... give_] F1.\n    _saw ... spake us ... give_ F2 F3 F4.\n    _saw ... spake to us ... give_ Rowe.\n    _saw ... spake us ... gave_ Pope.\n    _see ... speak us ... give_ Capell.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\n\nA street before a Priory.\n\n  _Enter _Second Merchant_ and ANGELO._\n\n_Ang._ I am sorry, sir, that I have hinder'd you;\nBut, I protest, he had the chain of me,\nThough most dishonestly he doth deny it.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ How is the man esteem'd here in the city?\n\n_Ang._ Of very reverent reputation, sir,                             5\nOf credit infinite, highly beloved,\nSecond to none that lives here in the city:\nHis word might bear my wealth at any time.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ Speak softly: yonder, as I think, he walks.\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_ and _DROMIO of Syracuse_._\n\n_Ang._ 'Tis so; and that self chain about his neck,                 10\nWhich he forswore most monstrously to have.\nGood sir, draw near to me, I'll speak to him;\nSignior Antipholus, I wonder much\nThat you would put me to this shame and trouble;\nAnd, not without some scandal to yourself,                          15\nWith circumstance and oaths so to deny\nThis chain which now you wear so openly:\nBeside the charge, the shame, imprisonment,\nYou have done wrong to this my honest friend;\nWho, but for staying on our controversy,                            20\nHad hoisted sail and put to sea to-day:\nThis chain you had of me; can you deny it?\n\n_Ant. S._ I think I had; I never did deny it.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ Yes, that you did, sir, and forswore it too.\n\n_Ant. S._ Who heard me to deny it or forswear it?                   25\n\n_Sec. Mer._ These ears of mine, thou know'st, did hear thee.\nFie on thee, wretch! 'tis pity that thou livest\nTo walk where any honest men resort.\n\n_Ant. S._ Thou art a villain to impeach me thus:\nI'll prove mine honour and mine honesty                             30\nAgainst thee presently, if thou darest stand.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ I dare, and do defy thee for a villain.\n\n    [_They draw._\n\n  _Enter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, the _Courtezan_, and others._\n\n_Adr._ Hold, hurt him not, for God's sake! he is mad.\nSome get within him, take his sword away:\nBind Dromio too, and bear them to my house.                         35\n\n_Dro. S._ Run, master, run; for God's sake, take a house!\nThis is some priory.--In, or we are spoil'd!\n\n    [_Exeunt Ant. S. and Dro. S. to the Priory._\n\n  _Enter the _Lady Abbess_._\n\n_Abb._ Be quiet, people. Wherefore throng you hither?\n\n_Adr._ To fetch my poor distracted husband hence.\nLet us come in, that we may bind him fast,                          40\nAnd bear him home for his recovery.\n\n_Ang._ I knew he was not in his perfect wits.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ I am sorry now that I did draw on him.\n\n_Abb._ How long hath this possession held the man?\n\n_Adr._ This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,                     45\nAnd much different from the man he was;\nBut till this afternoon his passion\nNe'er brake into extremity of rage.\n\n_Abb._ Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck of sea?\nBuried some dear friend? Hath not else his eye                      50\nStray'd his affection in unlawful love?\nA sin prevailing much in youthful men,\nWho give their eyes the liberty of gazing.\nWhich of these sorrows is he subject to?\n\n_Adr._ To none of these, except it be the last;                     55\nNamely, some love that drew him oft from home.\n\n_Abb._ You should for that have reprehended him.\n\n_Adr._ Why, so I did.\n\n_Abb._              Ay, but not rough enough.\n\n_Adr._ As roughly as my modesty would let me.\n\n_Abb._ Haply, in private.\n\n_Adr._                  And in assemblies too.                      60\n\n_Abb._ Ay, but not enough.\n\n_Adr._ It was the copy of our conference:\nIn bed, he slept not for my urging it;\nAt board, he fed not for my urging it;\nAlone, it was the subject of my theme;                              65\nIn company I often glanced it;\nStill did I tell him it was vile and bad.\n\n_Abb._ And thereof came it that the man was mad:--\nThe venom clamours of a jealous woman,\nPoisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.                         70\nIt seems his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing:\nAnd thereof comes it that his head is light.\nThou say'st his meat was sauced with thy upbraidings:\nUnquiet meals make ill digestions;\nThereof the raging fire of fever bred;                              75\nAnd what's a fever but a fit of madness?\nThou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls:\nSweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue\nBut moody and dull melancholy,\nKinsman to grim and comfortless despair;                            80\nAnd at her heels a huge infectious troop\nOf pale distemperatures and foes to life?\nIn food, in sport, and life-preserving rest\nTo be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast:\nThe consequence is, then, thy jealous fits                          85\nHave scared thy husband from the use of wits.\n\n_Luc._ She never reprehended him but mildly,\nWhen he demean'd himself rough, rude, and wildly.\nWhy bear you these rebukes, and answer not?\n\n_Adr._ She did betray me to my own reproof.                         90\nGood people, enter, and lay hold on him.\n\n_Abb._ No, not a creature enters in my house.\n\n_Adr._ Then let your servants bring my husband forth.\n\n_Abb._ Neither: he took this place for sanctuary,\nAnd it shall privilege him from your hands                          95\nTill I have brought him to his wits again,\nOr lose my labour in assaying it.\n\n_Adr._ I will attend my husband, be his nurse,\nDiet his sickness, for it is my office,\nAnd will have no attorney but myself;                              100\nAnd therefore let me have him home with me.\n\n_Abb._ Be patient; for I will not let him stir\nTill I have used the approved means I have,\nWith wholesome syrups, drugs and holy prayers,\nTo make of him a formal man again:                                 105\nIt is a branch and parcel of mine oath,\nA charitable duty of my order.\nTherefore depart, and leave him here with me.\n\n_Adr._ I will not hence, and leave my husband here:\nAnd ill it doth beseem your holiness                               110\nTo separate the husband and the wife.\n\n_Abb._ Be quiet, and depart: thou shalt not have him.\n    [_Exit._\n\n_Luc._ Complain unto the Duke of this indignity.\n\n_Adr._ Come, go: I will fall prostrate at his feet,\nAnd never rise until my tears and prayers                          115\nHave won his Grace to come in person hither,\nAnd take perforce my husband from the abbess.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ By this, I think, the dial points at five:\nAnon, I'm sure, the Duke himself in person\nComes this way to the melancholy vale,                             120\nThe place of death and sorry execution,\nBehind the ditches of the abbey here.\n\n_Ang._ Upon what cause?\n\n_Sec. Mer._ To see a reverend Syracusian merchant,\nWho put unluckily into this bay                                    125\nAgainst the laws and statutes of this town,\nBeheaded publicly for his offence.\n\n_Ang._ See where they come: we will behold his death.\n\n_Luc._ Kneel to the Duke before he pass the abbey.\n\n  _Enter DUKE, attended; AEGEON bareheaded; with the _Headsman_\n  and other _Officers_._\n\n_Duke._ Yet once again proclaim it publicly,                       130\nIf any friend will pay the sum for him,\nHe shall not die; so much we tender him.\n\n_Adr._ Justice, most sacred Duke, against the abbess!\n\n_Duke._ She is a virtuous and a reverend lady:\nIt cannot be that she hath done thee wrong.                        135\n\n_Adr._ May it please your Grace, Antipholus my husband,--\nWhom I made lord of me and all I had,\nAt your important letters,--this ill day\nA most outrageous fit of madness took him;\nThat desperately he hurried through the street,--                  140\nWith him his bondman, all as mad as he,--\nDoing displeasure to the citizens\nBy rushing in their houses, bearing thence\nRings, jewels, any thing his rage did like.\nOnce did I get him bound, and sent him home,                       145\nWhilst to take order for the wrongs I went,\nThat here and there his fury had committed.\nAnon, I wot not by what strong escape,\nHe broke from those that had the guard of him;\nAnd with his mad attendant and himself,                            150\nEach one with ireful passion, with drawn swords,\nMet us again, and, madly bent on us,\nChased us away; till, raising of more aid,\nWe came again to bind them. Then they fled\nInto this abbey, whither we pursued them;                          155\nAnd here the abbess shuts the gates on us,\nAnd will not suffer us to fetch him out,\nNor send him forth, that we may bear him hence.\nTherefore, most gracious Duke, with thy command\nLet him be brought forth, and borne hence for help.                160\n\n_Duke._ Long since thy husband served me in my wars;\nAnd I to thee engaged a prince's word,\nWhen thou didst make him master of thy bed,\nTo do him all the grace and good I could.\nGo, some of you, knock at the abbey-gate,                          165\nAnd bid the lady abbess come to me.\nI will determine this before I stir.\n\n  _Enter a _Servant_._\n\n_Serv._ O mistress, mistress, shift and save yourself!\nMy master and his man are both broke loose,\nBeaten the maids a-row, and bound the doctor,                      170\nWhose beard they have singed off with brands of fire;\nAnd ever, as it blazed, they threw on him\nGreat pails of puddled mire to quench the hair:\nMy master preaches patience to him, and the while\nHis man with scissors nicks him like a fool;                       175\nAnd sure, unless you send some present help,\nBetween them they will kill the conjurer.\n\n_Adr._ Peace, fool! thy master and his man are here;\nAnd that is false thou dost report to us.\n\n_Serv._ Mistress, upon my life, I tell you true;                   180\nI have not breathed almost since I did see it.\nHe cries for you, and vows, if he can take you,\nTo scorch your face and to disfigure you.    [_Cry within._\nHark, hark! I hear him, mistress: fly, be gone!\n\n_Duke._ Come, stand by me; fear nothing. Guard with halberds!      185\n\n_Adr._ Ay me, it is my husband! Witness you,\nThat he is borne about invisible:\nEven now we housed him in the abbey here;\nAnd now he's there, past thought of human reason.\n\n  _Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_ and _DROMIO of Ephesus_._\n\n_Ant. E._ Justice, most gracious Duke, O, grant me justice!        190\nEven for the service that long since I did thee,\nWhen I bestrid thee in the wars, and took\nDeep scars to save thy life; even for the blood\nThat then I lost for thee, now grant me justice.\n\n_Aege._ Unless the fear of death doth make me dote,                195\nI see my son Antipholus, and Dromio.\n\n_Ant. E._ Justice, sweet prince, against that woman there!\nShe whom thou gavest to me to be my wife,\nThat hath abused and dishonour'd me\nEven in the strength and height of injury:                         200\nBeyond imagination is the wrong\nThat she this day hath shameless thrown on me.\n\n_Duke._ Discover how, and thou shalt find me just.\n\n_Ant. E._ This day, great Duke, she shut the doors upon me,\nWhile she with harlots feasted in my house.                        205\n\n_Duke._ A grievous fault! Say, woman, didst thou so?\n\n_Adr._ No, my good lord: myself, he and my sister\nTo-day did dine together. So befal my soul\nAs this is false he burdens me withal!\n\n_Luc._ Ne'er may I look on day, nor sleep on night,                210\nBut she tells to your Highness simple truth!\n\n_Ang._ O perjured woman! They are both forsworn:\nIn this the madman justly chargeth them.\n\n_Ant. E._ My liege, I am advised what I say;\nNeither disturbed with the effect of wine,                         215\nNor heady-rash, provoked with raging ire,\nAlbeit my wrongs might make one wiser mad.\nThis woman lock'd me out this day from dinner:\nThat goldsmith there, were he not pack'd with her,\nCould witness it, for he was with me then;                         220\nWho parted with me to go fetch a chain,\nPromising to bring it to the Porpentine,\nWhere Balthazar and I did dine together.\nOur dinner done, and he not coming thither,\nI went to seek him: in the street I met him,                       225\nAnd in his company that gentleman.\nThere did this perjured goldsmith swear me down\nThat I this day of him received the chain,\nWhich, God he knows, I saw not: for the which\nHe did arrest me with an officer.                                  230\nI did obey; and sent my peasant home\nFor certain ducats: he with none return'd.\nThen fairly I bespoke the officer\nTo go in person with me to my house.\nBy the way we met my wife, her sister, and a rabble more           235\nOf vile confederates. Along with them\nThey brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,\nA mere anatomy, a mountebank,\nA threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,\nA needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,                        240\nA living-dead man: this pernicious slave,\nForsooth, took on him as a conjurer;\nAnd, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,\nAnd with no face, as 'twere, outfacing me,\nCries out, I was possess'd. Then all together                      245\nThey fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence,\nAnd in a dark and dankish vault at home\nThere left me and my man, both bound together;\nTill, gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder,\nI gain'd my freedom, and immediately                               250\nRan hither to your Grace; whom I beseech\nTo give me ample satisfaction\nFor these deep shames and great indignities.\n\n_Ang._ My lord, in truth, thus far I witness with him,\nThat he dined not at home, but was lock'd out.                     255\n\n_Duke._ But had he such a chain of thee or no?\n\n_Ang._ He had, my lord: and when he ran in here,\nThese people saw the chain about his neck.\n\n_Sec. Mer._ Besides, I will be sworn these ears of mine\nHeard you confess you had the chain of him,                        260\nAfter you first forswore it on the mart:\nAnd thereupon I drew my sword on you;\nAnd then you fled into this abbey here,\nFrom whence, I think, you are come by miracle.\n\n_Ant. E._ I never came within these abbey-walls;                   265\nNor ever didst thou draw thy sword on me:\nI never saw the chain, so help me Heaven:\nAnd this is false you burden me withal!\n\n_Duke._ Why, what an intricate impeach is this!\nI think you all have drunk of Circe's cup.                         270\nIf here you housed him, here he would have been;\nIf he were mad, he would not plead so coldly:\nYou say he dined at home; the goldsmith here\nDenies that saying. Sirrah, what say you?\n\n_Dro. E._ Sir, he dined with her there, at the Porpentine.         275\n\n_Cour._ He did; and from my finger snatch'd that ring.\n\n_Ant. E._ 'Tis true, my liege; this ring I had of her.\n\n_Duke._ Saw'st thou him enter at the abbey here?\n\n_Cour._ As sure, my liege, as I do see your Grace.\n\n_Duke._ Why, this is strange. Go call the abbess hither.           280\nI think you are all mated, or stark mad.\n\n    [_Exit one to the Abbess._\n\n_Aege._ Most mighty Duke, vouchsafe me speak a word:\nHaply I see a friend will save my life,\nAnd pay the sum that may deliver me.\n\n_Duke._ Speak freely, Syracusian, what thou wilt.                  285\n\n_Aege._ Is not your name, sir, call'd Antipholus?\nAnd is not that your bondman, Dromio?\n\n_Dro. E._ Within this hour I was his bondman, sir,\nBut he, I thank him, gnaw'd in two my cords:\nNow am I Dromio, and his man unbound.                              290\n\n_Aege._ I am sure you both of you remember me.\n\n_Dro. E._ Ourselves we do remember, sir, by you;\nFor lately we were bound, as you are now.\nYou are not Pinch's patient, are you, sir?\n\n_Aege._ Why look you strange on me? you know me well.              295\n\n_Ant. E._ I never saw you in my life till now.\n\n_Aege._ O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last,\nAnd careful hours with time's deformed hand\nHave written strange defeatures in my face:\nBut tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?                      300\n\n_Ant. E._ Neither.\n\n_Aege._ Dromio, nor thou?\n\n_Dro. E._              No, trust me, sir, nor I.\n\n_Aege._ I am sure thou dost.\n\n_Dro. E._ Ay, sir, but I am sure I do not; and whatsoever\na man denies, you are now bound to believe him.                    305\n\n_Aege._ Not know my voice! O time's extremity,\nHast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue\nIn seven short years, that here my only son\nKnows not my feeble key of untuned cares?\nThough now this grained face of mine be hid                        310\nIn sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow,\nAnd all the conduits of my blood froze up,\nYet hath my night of life some memory,\nMy wasting lamps some fading glimmer left,\nMy dull deaf ears a little use to hear:                            315\nAll these old witnesses--I cannot err--\nTell me thou art my son Antipholus.\n\n_Ant. E._ I never saw my father in my life.\n\n_Aege._ But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy,\nThou know'st we parted: but perhaps, my son,                       320\nThou shamest to acknowledge me in misery.\n\n_Ant. E._ The Duke and all that know me in the city\nCan witness with me that it is not so:\nI ne'er saw Syracusa in my life.\n\n_Duke._ I tell thee, Syracusian, twenty years                      325\nHave I been patron to Antipholus,\nDuring which time he ne'er saw Syracusa:\nI see thy age and dangers make thee dote.\n\n  _Re-enter _Abbess_, with _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_ and\n  _DROMIO of Syracuse_._\n\n_Abb._ Most mighty Duke, behold a man much wrong'd.\n\n    [_All gather to see them._\n\n_Adr._ I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me.                330\n\n_Duke._ One of these men is Genius to the other;\nAnd so of these. Which is the natural man,\nAnd which the spirit? who deciphers them?\n\n_Dro. S._ I, sir, am Dromio: command him away.\n\n_Dro. E._ I, sir, am Dromio: pray, let me stay.                    335\n\n_Ant. S._ Aegeon art thou not? or else his ghost?\n\n_Dro. S._ O, my old master! who hath bound him here?\n\n_Abb._ Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds,\nAnd gain a husband by his liberty.\nSpeak, old Aegeon, if thou be'st the man                           340\nThat hadst a wife once call'd Aemilia,\nThat bore thee at a burden two fair sons:\nO, if thou be'st the same Aegeon, speak,\nAnd speak unto the same Aemilia!\n\n_Aege._ If I dream not, thou art Aemilia:                          345\nIf thou art she, tell me where is that son\nThat floated with thee on the fatal raft?\n\n_Abb._ By men of Epidamnum he and I\nAnd the twin Dromio, all were taken up;\nBut by and by rude fishermen of Corinth                            350\nBy force took Dromio and my son from them,\nAnd me they left with those of Epidamnum.\nWhat then became of them I cannot tell;\nI to this fortune that you see me in.\n\n_Duke._ Why, here begins his morning story right:                  355\nThese two Antipholuses, these two so like,\nAnd these two Dromios, one in semblance,--\nBesides her urging of her wreck at sea,--\nThese are the parents to these children,\nWhich accidentally are met together.                               360\nAntipholus, thou camest from Corinth first?\n\n_Ant. S._ No, sir, not I; I came from Syracuse.\n\n_Duke._ Stay, stand apart; I know not which is which.\n\n_Ant. E._ I came from Corinth, my most gracious lord,--\n\n_Dro. E._ And I with him.                                          365\n\n_Ant. E._ Brought to this town by that most famous warrior.\nDuke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle.\n\n_Adr._ Which of you two did dine with me to-day?\n\n_Ant. S._ I, gentle mistress.\n\n_Adr._                      And are not you my husband?\n\n_Ant. E._ No; I say nay to that.                                   370\n\n_Ant. S._ And so do I; yet did she call me so:\nAnd this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,\nDid call me brother. [_To Lucia._] What I told you then,\nI hope I shall have leisure to make good;\nIf this be not a dream I see and hear.                             375\n\n_Ang._ That is the chain, sir, which you had of me.\n\n_Ant. S._ I think it be, sir; I deny it not.\n\n_Ant. E._ And you, sir, for this chain arrested me.\n\n_Ang._ I think I did, sir; I deny it not.\n\n_Adr._ I sent you money, sir, to be your bail,                     380\nBy Dromio; but I think he brought it not.\n\n_Dro. E._ No, none by me.\n\n_Ant. S._ This purse of ducats I received from you,\nAnd Dromio my man did bring them me.\nI see we still did meet each other's man;                          385\nAnd I was ta'en for him, and he for me;\nAnd thereupon these ERRORS are arose.\n\n_Ant. E._ These ducats pawn I for my father here.\n\n_Duke._ It shall not need; thy father hath his life.\n\n_Cour._ Sir, I must have that diamond from you.                    390\n\n_Ant. E._ There, take it; and much thanks for my good cheer.\n\n_Abb._ Renowned Duke, vouchsafe to take the pains\nTo go with us into the abbey here,\nAnd hear at large discoursed all our fortunes;--\nAnd all that are assembled in this place,                          395\nThat by this sympathized one day's error\nHave suffer'd wrong, go keep us company,\nAnd we shall make full satisfaction.--\nThirty-three years have I but gone in travail\nOf you, my sons; and till this present hour                        400\nMy heavy burthen ne'er delivered.\nThe Duke, my husband, and my children both,\nAnd you the calendars of their nativity,\nGo to a gossips' feast, and go with me;\nAfter so long grief, such nativity!                                405\n\n_Duke._ With all my heart, I'll gossip at this feast.\n\n    [_Exeunt all but Ant. S., Ant. E., Dro. S., and Dro. E._\n\n_Dro. S._ Master, shall I fetch your stuff from ship-board?\n\n_Ant. E._ Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embark'd?\n\n_Dro. S._ Your goods that lay at host, sir, in the Centaur.\n\n_Ant. S._ He speaks to me. --I am your master, Dromio:             410\nCome, go with us; we'll look to that anon:\nEmbrace thy brother there; rejoice with him.\n\n    [_Exeunt Ant. S. and Ant. E._\n\n_Dro. S._ There is a fat friend at your master's house,\nThat kitchen'd me for you to-day at dinner:\nShe now shall be my sister, not my wife.                           415\n\n_Dro. E._ Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother:\nI see by you I am a sweet-faced youth.\nWill you walk in to see their gossiping?\n\n_Dro. S._ Not I, sir; you are my elder.\n\n_Dro. E._ That's a question: how shall we try it?                  420\n\n_Dro. S._ We'll draw cuts for the senior: till then lead\n        thou first.\n\n_Dro. E._ Nay, then, thus:--\nWe came into the world like brother and brother;\nAnd now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.\n\n    [_Exeunt._\n\n\n  NOTES: V, 1.\n\n  SCENE I. A street ... Priory] Pope. See note (VIII).\n  3: _doth_] F1. _did_ F2 F3 F4.\n  9: Enter ...] Enter Antipholis and Dromio againe. Ff.\n  12: _to me_] _with me_ Collier MS.\n  18: _Beside_] Ff. _Besides_ Pope.\n  26: _know'st ... thee._] Ff. _knowest ... thee._ Pope.\n    _knowest well ... thee._ Hanmer. _know'st ... thee, sir._ Capell.\n    _know'st ... thee swear_ Grant White conj.\n  30: _mine honesty_] F1 F2 F3. _my honesty_ F4.\n  33: SCENE II. Pope.\n  33, 36: _God's ... God's_] F3 F4. _God ... God's_ F1 F2.\n  38: _quiet, people._] Theobald. _quiet people._ Ff.\n  45: _sour_] Rowe. _sower_ Ff.\n  46: _much_] F1 F4. _much, much_ F2 F3.\n  49: _of sea_] F1. _at sea_ F2 F3 F4.\n  50: _Hath not else his eye_] _Hath nought else his eye?_ Anon. conj.\n  51: _his ... in_] _in ... and_ Anon. conj.\n  61: _Ay_] _Ay, ay_ Hanmer.\n  66: _it_] _at it_ Pope.\n  69: _venom_] _venome_ F1 F2. _venomous_ F3 F4. _venom'd_ Pope.\n  _woman,_] _woman_ Pope.\n  69, 70: _clamours ... Poisons_] _clamours ... Poison_ Pope.\n    _clamour ... Poisons_ Capell.\n  72, 75: _thereof_] _therefore_ Johnson.\n  74: _make_] F1. _makes_ F2 F3 F4.\n  77: _by_] _with_ Pope.\n  79: _moody_] F1. _muddy_ F2 F3 F4.] _moody, moping_ Hanmer.\n    _moody sadness_ Singer conj.\n  _melancholy_] _melancholia_ Anon. conj.\n  80: _Kinsman_] _kins-woman_ Capell. ending line 79 at _kins-_.\n    _A'kin_ Hanmer.\n  Warburton marks this line as spurious.\n  81: _her_] _their_ Malone (Heath conj.).\n  86: _Have_] F2 F3 F4. _Hath_ F1.\n  88: _wildly_] _wild_ Capell.\n  89: _these_] F1 F2. _those_ F3 F4.\n  112: [Exit.] Theobald.\n  117: [Exeunt. Enter Merchant and Goldsmith. F2.\n  121: _death_] F3 F4. _depth_ F1 F2.\n  _sorry_] _solemn_ Collier MS.\n  124: _reverend_ F3 F4. _reverent_ F1 F2.\n  128: Enter Adriana and Lucia. F2.\n  130: SCENE III. Pope.\n  attended] Theobald.\n  132: Enter Adriana. F2.\n  134: _reverend_] Ff.\n  137: _Whom_] F2 F3 F4. _Who_ F1.\n  138: _important_] F1. _impoteant_ F2. _impotent_ F3 F4.\n    _all-potent_ Rowe.\n  _letters_] F1 F2 F3. _letter_ F4.\n  148: _strong_] _strange_ Malone conj.\n  150: _with_] _here_ Capell. _then_ Ritson conj.\n  _and himself_] mad himself Warburton.\n  158: _hence_] F1 F2. _thence_ F3 F4.\n  168: SCENE IV. Pope.\n  Enter a servant.] Capell. Enter a Messenger. Ff.\n  174: _to him_] om. Capell.\n  _and_] om. Hanmer. _and the_ om. Steevens.\n  176: _some_] F1 _some other_ F2 F3 F4.\n  179: _to_] F1 F3 F4. _of_ F2.\n  183: _scorch_] _scotch_ Warburton.\n  205: _While_] F1 _Whilst_ F2 F3 F4.\n  208: _To-day_] om. Hanmer.\n  _So befal_] _So fall_ Capell.\n  212, 213: [To Mer. Capell.\n  228: _of_] F1. _from_ F2 F3 F4.\n  235: _By the way_] _To which he yielded: by the way_ Capell,\n    making two verses of 235. See note (IX).\n  235, 236: Pope ends these lines _and ... confederates_.\n  236: _Along with them_] om. Pope.\n  247: _And in_] _Into_ Lettsom conj.\n  248: _There_] _They_ Collier MS.\n  249: _in sunder_] F1. _asunder_ F2 F3 F4.\n  267, 268: _chain, so ... Heaven: And_] _chain. So ... heaven As_\n    Dyce.\n  281: _mad_] _made_ F2.\n  [Exit ...] F1 F2. [Enter ... F3 F4.\n  291: _you both_] F1. _both_ F2 F3 F4.\n  298: _deformed_] _deforming_ Capell.\n  304: _Ay, sir,_] Capell. _I sir,_ Ff. _I, sir?_ Pope.\n    _Ay, sir?_ Malone.\n  304, 305: Printed as verse by Capell: _But ... whatsoever A ... him_.\n  307: _crack'd and splitted_] _crack'd my voice, split_ Collier MS.\n  309: _of untuned cares_] _untuned of cares_ Anon. conj.\n  _cares_] _ears_ Anon. conj.\n  314: _lamps_] _lamp_ Pope.\n  316: _All_] _And all_ Rowe.\n  _old_] _hold_ Warburton.\n  _witnesses--I cannot err--_] _witnesses, I cannot erre._ Ff.\n  319: _Syracusa, boy_] Capell. _Syracusa boy_ Ff. _Syracusa bay_ Rowe.\n    _Syracusa's bay_ Hanmer.\n  329: SCENE VII. Pope.\n  [All ... them.] [All ... him. Warburton.\n  332: _these. Which_] _these, which_ Ff.\n  355-360: _Why ... together_] Ff insert this speech after 344.\n    The alteration is due to Capell.\n  355: _his_] F1 F2. _this_ F3 F4. _the_ Pope.\n  _story right_] _story's light_ Capell.\n  356: _Antipholuses, these_] _Antipholus, these_ F1.\n    _Antipholis, these_ F2 F3 F4. _Antipholis's_ Hanmer. See note (I).\n  357: _these_] F1 F4. _those_ F2 F3.\n  _semblance_] _semblance prove_ Capell.\n  358: _Besides her urging of her_]\n    _Both sides emerging from their_ Hanmer.\n    _Besides his urging of his_ Collier MS.\n    _Besides his urging of her_ Dyce conj.\n    Malone supposes a line, beginning with _These_, lost after 358.\n  _wreck at sea,--_] _wreck,--all say,_ Jackson conj.\n  359: _These are_] _These plainly are_ Pope.\n  361: Ff prefix 'Duke.'\n  372: _her sister_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.\n  373: [To Lucia.] [Aside to Lucia. Staunton conj.\n  387: _are arose_] Ff. _all arose_ Rowe. _rare arose_ Staunton.\n    _here arose_ Anon. conj.\n  394: _hear_] _here_ Johnson.\n  398: _we shall make_] _ye shalt have_ Pope.\n  399: _Thirty-three_] Ff. _Twenty-five_ Theobald.\n    _Twenty-three_ Capell. See note (X).\n  _but_] F1. _been_ F2 F3 F4. om. Hanmer.\n  400: _and till_] _nor till_ Theobald. _until_ Malone (Boaden conj.).\n    _and at_ Collier MS.\n  401: _burthen ne'er_] Dyce. _burthen are_ F1.\n    _burthens are_ F2 F3 F4. _burden not_ Capell.\n    _burden undelivered_ Collier. _burden here_ Grant White.\n    _burden has_ Anon. conj. (ap. Halliwell).\n  404: _Go ... and go_] _Hence ... along_ Lettsom conj.\n    _So ... all go_ Edd. conj.\n  _and go_] F1 F3 F4. _and goe_ F2. _and gaud_ Warburton.\n    _and joy_ Heath conj. _and gout_ Jackson conj. _and see_\n    Anon. conj.\n  405: _nativity_] Ff. _felicity_ Hanmer. _festivity_ Dyce\n    (Johnson conj.).\n  _such nativity!_] _suits festivity._ Anon. conj.\n  406: [Exeunt ...] [Exeunt omnes. Manet the two Dromio's and two\n    brothers. Ff.\n  407: SCENE VIII. Pope.\n  _fetch_] _go fetch_ S. Walker conj.\n  _ship-board_] _shipboard for you_ Capell conj.\n  412: [Exeunt ...] [Exit. Ff.\n  420: _we try it?_] _we trie it._ F1 _I try it._ F2 F3 F4.\n    _we try it, brother?_ Capell.\n  421: _We'll_] _We will_ Capell, ending lines 419-421 at\n    _question ... draw ... first._\n  _senior_] Pope. _signior_ F1 F2. _signiority_ F3 F4.\n  422: [embracing. Rowe.\n\n\n\nNOTES.\n\n\nNOTE I.\n\n\nIn the spelling of the name of 'Solinus' we have followed the first\nFolio. In the subsequent Folios it was altered, most probably by an\naccident in F2 to 'Salinus.' The name occurs only once in the copies,\nand that in the first line of the text. The name which we have given as\n'Antipholus' is spelt indifferently thus, and 'Antipholis' in the\nFolios. It will hardly be doubted that the lines in the rhyming passage,\nIII. 2. 2, 4, where the Folios read 'Antipholus,' are correctly amended\nby Capell, and prove that 'Antipholus' is the spelling of Shakespeare.\nEither word is evidently corrupted from 'Antiphilus.' These names are\nmerely arbitrary, but the surnames, 'Erotes' and 'Sereptus,' are most\nprobably errors for 'Errans,' or 'Erraticus' and 'Surreptus,' of which\nthe latter is plainly derived from Plautus' _Menaechmus Surreptus_,\na well-known character in Shakespeare's day: see Brian Melbancke's\n_Philotimus_ (1582), p. 160: 'Thou art like Menechmus Subreptus his wife\n... whose \"husband shall not neede to be justice of peace\" for she \"will\nhave a charter to make her justice of coram.\"' See _Merry Wives_, I. 1.\n4, 5. In spelling 'Syracusian' instead of 'Syracusan' we follow the\npractice of the Folios in an indifferent matter. 'Epidamnum' not\n'Epidamium' is found in the English translation of the _Menaechmi_,\n1595, so the latter form in F1 is probably a printer's error.\n\n\nNOTE II.\n\nI. 2. 1. That this scene is laid at the Mart appears from Antipholus's\nallusion to this place in II. 2. 5, 6:\n\n  'I could not speak with Dromio since at first\n   I sent him from the mart.'\n\nAs this play is derived from a classical prototype, Capell has supposed\nno change of scene, but lays the whole action in 'a Publick Place;'\nevidently with much inconvenience to the Persons.\n\n\nNOTE III.\n\nII. 1. 30. Johnson's ingenious conjecture may have been suggested to him\nby a passage in _As you like it_, IV. 3. 17:\n\n  'Her love is not the hare that I do hunt.'\n\nBut the received reading of the Folios is perhaps confirmed by a line in\nthe present play, III. 2. 7:\n\n  'Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth.'\n\n\nNOTE IV.\n\nII. 1. 108 sqq. The only correction of this passage which we believe to\nbe quite free from doubt is that in line 112, 'Wear' for 'Where.'\nAccordingly, with this exception, we have retained the precise words of\nthe first Folio.\n\n\nNOTE V.\n\nIV. 2. 38. Grey's conjecture of 'lanes' for 'lands' is made somewhat\nmore probable by the existence of copies of F1 in which the word\nappears 'lans.' A corrector would naturally change this rather to\n'lands' than to 'lanes,' because of the rhyme.\n\n\nNOTE VI.\n\nIV. 2. 46. The Folios have 'send him Mistris redemption,' and Rowe, by\nhis punctuation and capital R, made Dromio call Luciana 'Redemption.'\nPope and Theobald seem to have followed him, though they give the small\nr. The Folios cannot be made chargeable with this error, for the comma\ndoes not regularly follow vocatives in these editions where we expect\nit. There is no comma, for instance, following the word 'Mistress' in\nIV. 3. 75 or in IV. 4. 39.\n\n\nNOTE VII.\n\nIV. 4. 29. The word 'ears' might probably be better printed ''ears' for\n'years;' for a pun--hitherto, however, unnoticed--seems to be indicated\nby the following words. A very farfetched explanation has been offered\nby Steevens, and accepted by Delius and, we believe, by all the modern\neditors, namely, that Antipholus has wrung Dromio's ears so often that\nthey have attained a length like an ass's.\n\n\nNOTE VIII.\n\nV. 1. 1. Shakespeare uses the words 'Priory' and 'Abbey' as synonymous.\nCompare V. 1. 37 and V. 1. 122.\n\n\nNOTE IX.\n\nV. 1. 235. It might possibly be better to print this line as two lines,\nthe first being broken:\n\n  'By the way we met\n   My wife....'\n\nBut the place is probably corrupt.\n\n\nNOTE X.\n\nV. 1. 399. The number Thirty-three has been altered by editors to bring\nthe figures into harmony with other periods named in the play. From\nI. 1. 126, 133 the age of Antipholus has been computed at twenty-three;\nfrom I. 1. 126 and V. 1. 308 we derive twenty-five. The Duke says he has\nbeen patron to Antipholus for twenty years, V. 1. 325; but three or five\nseems too small an age to assign for the commencement of this patronage.\nAntipholus saved the Duke's life in the wars 'long since,' V. 1. 161,\n191. His 'long experience' of his wife's 'wisdom' and her 'years' are\nmentioned, III. 1. 89, 90. But Shakespeare probably did not compute the\nresult of his own figures with any great care or accuracy.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n           *       *       *       *\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSources:\n\nThe editors' Preface (e-text 23041) discusses the 17th- and\n18th-century editions in detail; the newer (19th-century) editions\nare simply listed by name. The following editions may appear in the\nNotes. All inset text is quoted from the Preface.\n\n  Folios:\n  F1 1623; F2 (no date given); F3 1663; F4 1685.\n    \"The five plays contained in this volume occur in the first Folio\n    in the same order, and ... were there printed for the first time.\"\n\n  Early editions:\n  Rowe 1709\n  Pope 1715\n    \"Pope was the first to indicate the _place_ of each new scene;\n    as, for instance, _Tempest_, I. 1. 'On a ship at sea.' He also\n    subdivided the scenes as given by the Folios and Rowe, making\n    a fresh scene whenever a new character entered--an arrangement\n    followed by Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson. For convenience of\n    reference to these editions, we have always recorded the\n    commencement of Pope's scenes.\"\n  Theobald 1733\n  Hanmer (\"Oxford edition\") 1744\n  Warburton 1747\n  Johnson 1765\n  Capell 1768; _also Capell's annotated copy of F2_\n  Steevens 1773\n  Malone 1790\n  Reed 1803\n\n  Later editions:\n  Singer, Knight, Cornwall, Collier, Phelps, Halliwell, Dyce, Staunton\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n           *       *       *       *\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nErrata\n\n  IV. 2. 17 note: ... Anon.  [Aonn.]\n  Note IV. ... line 112, 'Wear' for 'Where.'  [line 111]\n  Note VI. ... the word 'Mistress' in / IV. 3. 75 ...  [IV. 3. 74]\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "shmoop", "text": "Read the full text of The Comedy of Errors with a side-by-side translation HERE. Egeon, a merchant from Syracuse, is spending time in the city of Ephesus. Being in Ephesus means Egeon's life is about to get complicated. Because of some recent strife between the cities of Ephesus and Syracuse, any citizen of either locale caught in the enemy territory is sentenced to death . The Duke of Ephesus explains all of this to Egeon as he hands him a death sentence for trespassing on Ephesian soil. Egeon is eager to get the death sentence - execution is no big deal because his life is pretty crappy - he'll even explain why.A long time ago, Egeon was making a lot of money as a merchant. When his agent died, he went on a business trip with his pregnant wife, who gave birth to identical twin boys while they were away from home. At the same exact time, a poor woman in the same inn also gave birth to identical twin boys. The poor woman sold her boys to Egeon to be servants for his twins. On their way home to Syracuse, a terrible storm overtook the ship that Egeon and his family were sailing in. During the storm, Egeon looked after one of his twin sons and one of the twin servants, as did his wife. However, during the storm, the boat was destroyed and the husband and wife, along with the boys, were separated. Egeon's wife and one set of boys were rescued by a Corinthian ship, and Egeon and the two boys with him were picked up by a ship bound for Epidaurus. Thus separated, Egeon never saw his wife or lost son again.Egeon named his set of boys after their missing twin brothers. He raised the boys until they were 18, at which point his biological son got inquisitive about his lost brother. Egeon's son set off with his servant to find their lost halves. Since then, Egeon has wandered around looking for them. Egeon has now lost all hope, and he welcomes the Duke's death sentence. The Duke gives Egeon until sunset to beg or borrow the money to ransom his life.Meanwhile, the son that Egeon raised in Syracuse has shown up in Ephesus, the very place his dad came to look for him. His name is Antipholus, and his servant's name is Dromio . S. Antipholus sends S. Dromio to go get them a room at a local inn called the Centaur.Just then, Dromio of Ephesus happens upon S. Antipholus and mistakes the Syracusian for his master, Antipholus of Ephesus . E. Dromio bids S. Antipholus to come home to dinner with E. Antipholus's wife. S. Antipholus is reasonably confused, and ends up beating E. Dromio. E. Dromio runs away.E. Dromio goes back to his master's house. Adriana, E. Antipholus' wife, is angry that her husband hasn't returned.S. Dromio, back at the marketplace, meets up with S. Antipholus. S. Antipholus beats S. Dromio for fooling around earlier and telling him weird messages about his \"wife\" wanting him home for dinner. Then the two men are accosted by Adriana , with Luciana in tow. The two women add to the confusion, and they insist S. Dromio and S. Antipholus come home to dinner with them, as they mistake the men for their Ephesian counterparts. S. Antipholus is confused, but he decides to go with the flow and follow this woman who claims to be his wife. S. Dromio is left to play the keeper of the gate at E. Antipholus's house and allow nobody inside.Next, we finally meet the real E. Antipholus, who's been busy with Angelo the goldsmith, making a gold necklace for Adriana. E. Antipholus goes back to his house with E. Dromio, Angelo, and a merchant named Balthazar. The men all arrive expecting to eat dinner, but they get home to find the gate is locked. S. Dromio, who can't see the men through the gate, is taking his gate porter duties really seriously, refusing to let them in.The mayhem only increases, but E. Antipholus and E. Dromio eventually decide to have dinner elsewhere. E. Antipholus asks Angelo the goldsmith to bring him the gold necklace during dinner. Meanwhile, things aren't any prettier inside E. Antipholus's house. S. Antipholus is trying to woo Luciana, his lost-brother's wife's sister. Luciana, unsure of how to respond, deflects his offers and runs off. The situation is getting uncomfortable, so S. Antipholus instructs S. Dromio to go find a ship, so they can get out of this bewitched city. Before he leaves Adriana's house, S. Antipholus is stopped by Angelo the goldsmith. Angelo mistakes S. Antipholus for E. Antipholus, and gives him the golden necklace and refuses payment, saying he knows he'll get paid later. S. Antipholus wants to get out of this place ASAP, but doesn't mind taking such a nice gift.Later in the day at the marketplace, Angelo the goldsmith sees E. Antipholus and approaches his client for payment for the necklace. E. Antipholus, as he never received the necklace, says Angelo must be talking madness. Poor E. Antipholus gets arrested for avoiding paying his debt. The wrongly imprisoned E. Antipholus is furious. S. Dromio approaches and tells E. Antipholus he's secured the ship that S. Antipholus asked for. Since E. Antipholus didn't ask for a ship, he figures Dromio is crazy, too. Wanting to be freed from jail, he sends S. Dromio to Adriana to get bail money. When S. Dromio reaches Adriana and tells her what happened, Adriana sends the servant off with bail money.S. Dromio, rushing back to the marketplace to bail out E. Antipholus, runs into S. Antipholus. S. Dromio tries to give his real master the bail money, but S. Antipholus is confused, and just asks about the ship he sent S. Dromio for a long time ago. E. Antipholus, still arrested, is met by E. Dromio, who knows nothing of his master's arrest. The servant was just receiving a beating when Adriana, Luciana, and a schoolmaster named Pinch arrive. Adriana, thinking her husband is possessed, begs the schoolmaster to cure her husband of whatever demon has possessed him. E. Antipholus is angry and tries to attack Adriana. Ultimately, E. Antipholus and E. Dromio are tied up, and taken to Adriana's house.After the men have been taken away, the women try to clear up E. Antipholus's debt with the arresting officer. As they're puzzling it out, they're encountered by S. Antipholus and S. Dromio. The Syracusians mistake Adriana and company for witches, and run at them with swords drawn. Everyone scampers off.Angelo the goldsmith shows up again and sees that S. Antipholus is wearing the necklace that E. Antipholus denied receiving. S. Antipholus says he never denied anything. The squabble is getting tense and the men are ready to duke it out. Adriana and Co. enter just as the men are about to fight. S. Antipholus and S. Dromio take the opportunity to slip into a conveniently located priory nearby.The Abbess comes out, and asks exactly what all the fuss is about. Adriana begs the Abbess release her husband, but the Abbess refuses, as it would violate their sanctuary in the priory.Just then, the Duke shows up on a merry jaunt to have Egeon beheaded. Adriana wants the Duke to make the Abbess release her husband, but her request is interrupted by a messenger. The messenger says that E. Antipholus and E. Dromio have escaped their bonds, singed Pinch's beard, and are now headed towards the priory to rage against Adriana and Co.Just then, E. Antipholus arrives and pleads for the Duke to deliver justice against his wife, who has much abused him. The Duke throws his hands up and declares everyone is insane. To add to the craziness, Egeon takes this moment to pipe up that he recognizes Antipholus is the son he raised in Syracuse. Of course, E. Antipholus says he's never seen his father in all his life, causing Egeon to despair.This fine kettle of fish is FINALLY de-fishified when the Abbess re-enters the scene with S. Antipholus and S. Dromio in tow. Everyone sees the four men, in two identical sets, face to face. Then they realize what's been going on the whole time. S. Antipholus recognizes his dad, and the Abbess reveals that she's actually Aemilia, Egeon's long lost wife. S. Antipholus takes the opportunity to reiterate his offer of marriage to Luciana. The Duke even frees Egeon! Instead of death and disorder, the play ends with the Abbess calling everybody into the abbey, so they can share the stories of their lives since their separation.", "analysis": ""}, {"source": "sparknotes", "text": "Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse, is condemned to death in Ephesus for violating the ban against travel between the two rival cities. As he is led to his execution, he tells the Ephesian Duke, Solinus, that he has come to Syracuse in search of his wife and one of his twin sons, who were separated from him 25 years ago in a shipwreck. The other twin, who grew up with Egeon, is also traveling the world in search of the missing half of their family. The Duke is so moved by this story that he grants Egeon a day to raise the thousand-mark ransom that would be necessary to save his life. Meanwhile, unknown to Egeon, his son Antipholus of Syracuse is also visiting Ephesus--where Antipholus' missing twin, known as Antipholus of Ephesus, is a prosperous citizen of the city. Adriana, Antipholus of Ephesus' wife, mistakes Antipholus of Syracuse for her husband and drags him home for dinner, leaving Dromio of Syracuse to stand guard at the door and admit no one. Shortly thereafter, Antipholus of Ephesus returns home and is refused entry to his own house. Meanwhile, Antipholus of Syracuse has fallen in love with Luciana, Adriana's sister, who is appalled at the behavior of the man she thinks is her brother-in-law. The confusion increases when a gold chain ordered by the Ephesian Antipholus is given to Antipholus of Syracuse. Antipholus of Ephesus refuses to pay for the chain and is arrested for debt. His wife, seeing his strange behavior, decides he has gone mad and orders him bound and held in a cellar room. Meanwhile, Antipholus of Syracuse and his slave decide to flee the city, which they believe to be enchanted, as soon as possible--only to be menaced by Adriana and the debt officer. They seek refuge in a nearby abbey. Adriana now begs the Duke to intervene and remove her \"husband\" from the abbey into her custody. Her real husband, meanwhile, has broken loose and now comes to the Duke and levels charges against his wife. The situation is finally resolved by the Abbess, Emilia, who brings out the set of twins and reveals herself to be Egeon's long-lost wife. Antipholus of Ephesus reconciles with Adriana; Egeon is pardoned by the Duke and reunited with his spouse; Antipholus of Syracuse resumes his romantic pursuit of Luciana, and all ends happily with the two Dromios embracing.", "analysis": ""}]}
{"bid": "151", "title": "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", "text": "PART THE FIRST.\n\n     It is an ancient Mariner,\n     And he stoppeth one of three.\n     \"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,\n     Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?\n\n     \"The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,\n     And I am next of kin;\n     The guests are met, the feast is set:\n     May'st hear the merry din.\"\n\n     He holds him with his skinny hand,\n     \"There was a ship,\" quoth he.\n     \"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!\"\n     Eftsoons his hand dropt he.\n\n     He holds him with his glittering eye--\n     The Wedding-Guest stood still,\n     And listens like a three years child:\n     The Mariner hath his will.\n\n     The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:\n     He cannot chuse but hear;\n     And thus spake on that ancient man,\n     The bright-eyed Mariner.\n\n     The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,\n     Merrily did we drop\n     Below the kirk, below the hill,\n     Below the light-house top.\n\n     The Sun came up upon the left,\n     Out of the sea came he!\n     And he shone bright, and on the right\n     Went down into the sea.\n\n     Higher and higher every day,\n     Till over the mast at noon--\n     The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,\n     For he heard the loud bassoon.\n\n     The bride hath paced into the hall,\n     Red as a rose is she;\n     Nodding their heads before her goes\n     The merry minstrelsy.\n\n     The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,\n     Yet he cannot chuse but hear;\n     And thus spake on that ancient man,\n     The bright-eyed Mariner.\n\n     And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he\n     Was tyrannous and strong:\n     He struck with his o'ertaking wings,\n     And chased south along.\n\n     With sloping masts and dipping prow,\n     As who pursued with yell and blow\n     Still treads the shadow of his foe\n     And forward bends his head,\n     The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,\n     And southward aye we fled.\n\n     And now there came both mist and snow,\n     And it grew wondrous cold:\n     And ice, mast-high, came floating by,\n     As green as emerald.\n\n     And through the drifts the snowy clifts\n     Did send a dismal sheen:\n     Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken--\n     The ice was all between.\n\n     The ice was here, the ice was there,\n     The ice was all around:\n     It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,\n     Like noises in a swound!\n\n     At length did cross an Albatross:\n     Thorough the fog it came;\n     As if it had been a Christian soul,\n     We hailed it in God's name.\n\n     It ate the food it ne'er had eat,\n     And round and round it flew.\n     The ice did split with a thunder-fit;\n     The helmsman steered us through!\n\n     And a good south wind sprung up behind;\n     The Albatross did follow,\n     And every day, for food or play,\n     Came to the mariners' hollo!\n\n     In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,\n     It perched for vespers nine;\n     Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,\n     Glimmered the white Moon-shine.\n\n     \"God save thee, ancient Mariner!\n     From the fiends, that plague thee thus!--\n     Why look'st thou so?\"--With my cross-bow\n     I shot the ALBATROSS.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART THE SECOND.\n\n     The Sun now rose upon the right:\n     Out of the sea came he,\n     Still hid in mist, and on the left\n     Went down into the sea.\n\n     And the good south wind still blew behind\n     But no sweet bird did follow,\n     Nor any day for food or play\n     Came to the mariners' hollo!\n\n     And I had done an hellish thing,\n     And it would work 'em woe:\n     For all averred, I had killed the bird\n     That made the breeze to blow.\n     Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay\n     That made the breeze to blow!\n\n     Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,\n     The glorious Sun uprist:\n     Then all averred, I had killed the bird\n     That brought the fog and mist.\n     'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,\n     That bring the fog and mist.\n\n     The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,\n     The furrow followed free:\n     We were the first that ever burst\n     Into that silent sea.\n\n     Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,\n     'Twas sad as sad could be;\n     And we did speak only to break\n     The silence of the sea!\n\n     All in a hot and copper sky,\n     The bloody Sun, at noon,\n     Right up above the mast did stand,\n     No bigger than the Moon.\n\n     Day after day, day after day,\n     We stuck, nor breath nor motion;\n     As idle as a painted ship\n     Upon a painted ocean.\n\n     Water, water, every where,\n     And all the boards did shrink;\n     Water, water, every where,\n     Nor any drop to drink.\n\n     The very deep did rot: O Christ!\n     That ever this should be!\n     Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs\n     Upon the slimy sea.\n\n     About, about, in reel and rout\n     The death-fires danced at night;\n     The water, like a witch's oils,\n     Burnt green, and blue and white.\n\n     And some in dreams assured were\n     Of the spirit that plagued us so:\n     Nine fathom deep he had followed us\n     From the land of mist and snow.\n\n     And every tongue, through utter drought,\n     Was withered at the root;\n     We could not speak, no more than if\n     We had been choked with soot.\n\n     Ah! well a-day! what evil looks\n     Had I from old and young!\n     Instead of the cross, the Albatross\n     About my neck was hung.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART THE THIRD.\n\n     There passed a weary time.  Each throat\n     Was parched, and glazed each eye.\n     A weary time! a weary time!\n     How glazed each weary eye,\n     When looking westward, I beheld\n     A something in the sky.\n\n     At first it seemed a little speck,\n     And then it seemed a mist:\n     It moved and moved, and took at last\n     A certain shape, I wist.\n\n     A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!\n     And still it neared and neared:\n     As if it dodged a water-sprite,\n     It plunged and tacked and veered.\n\n     With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,\n     We could not laugh nor wail;\n     Through utter drought all dumb we stood!\n     I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,\n     And cried, A sail! a sail!\n\n     With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,\n     Agape they heard me call:\n     Gramercy! they for joy did grin,\n     And all at once their breath drew in,\n     As they were drinking all.\n\n     See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!\n     Hither to work us weal;\n     Without a breeze, without a tide,\n     She steadies with upright keel!\n\n     The western wave was all a-flame\n     The day was well nigh done!\n     Almost upon the western wave\n     Rested the broad bright Sun;\n     When that strange shape drove suddenly\n     Betwixt us and the Sun.\n\n     And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,\n     (Heaven's Mother send us grace!)\n     As if through a dungeon-grate he peered,\n     With broad and burning face.\n\n     Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)\n     How fast she nears and nears!\n     Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,\n     Like restless gossameres!\n\n     Are those her ribs through which the Sun\n     Did peer, as through a grate?\n     And is that Woman all her crew?\n     Is that a DEATH? and are there two?\n     Is DEATH that woman's mate?\n\n     Her lips were red, her looks were free,\n     Her locks were yellow as gold:\n     Her skin was as white as leprosy,\n     The Night-Mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,\n     Who thicks man's blood with cold.\n\n     The naked hulk alongside came,\n     And the twain were casting dice;\n     \"The game is done!  I've won!  I've won!\"\n     Quoth she, and whistles thrice.\n\n     The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:\n     At one stride comes the dark;\n     With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea.\n     Off shot the spectre-bark.\n\n     We listened and looked sideways up!\n     Fear at my heart, as at a cup,\n     My life-blood seemed to sip!\n\n     The stars were dim, and thick the night,\n     The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white;\n     From the sails the dew did drip--\n     Till clombe above the eastern bar\n     The horned Moon, with one bright star\n     Within the nether tip.\n\n     One after one, by the star-dogged Moon\n     Too quick for groan or sigh,\n     Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,\n     And cursed me with his eye.\n\n     Four times fifty living men,\n     (And I heard nor sigh nor groan)\n     With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,\n     They dropped down one by one.\n\n     The souls did from their bodies fly,--\n     They fled to bliss or woe!\n     And every soul, it passed me by,\n     Like the whizz of my CROSS-BOW!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART THE FOURTH.\n\n     \"I fear thee, ancient Mariner!\n     I fear thy skinny hand!\n     And thou art long, and lank, and brown,\n     As is the ribbed sea-sand.\n\n     \"I fear thee and thy glittering eye,\n     And thy skinny hand, so brown.\"--\n     Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!\n     This body dropt not down.\n\n     Alone, alone, all, all alone,\n     Alone on a wide wide sea!\n     And never a saint took pity on\n     My soul in agony.\n\n     The many men, so beautiful!\n     And they all dead did lie:\n     And a thousand thousand slimy things\n     Lived on; and so did I.\n\n     I looked upon the rotting sea,\n     And drew my eyes away;\n     I looked upon the rotting deck,\n     And there the dead men lay.\n\n     I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray:\n     But or ever a prayer had gusht,\n     A wicked whisper came, and made\n     my heart as dry as dust.\n\n     I closed my lids, and kept them close,\n     And the balls like pulses beat;\n     For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky\n     Lay like a load on my weary eye,\n     And the dead were at my feet.\n\n     The cold sweat melted from their limbs,\n     Nor rot nor reek did they:\n     The look with which they looked on me\n     Had never passed away.\n\n     An orphan's curse would drag to Hell\n     A spirit from on high;\n     But oh! more horrible than that\n     Is a curse in a dead man's eye!\n     Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,\n     And yet I could not die.\n\n     The moving Moon went up the sky,\n     And no where did abide:\n     Softly she was going up,\n     And a star or two beside.\n\n     Her beams bemocked the sultry main,\n     Like April hoar-frost spread;\n     But where the ship's huge shadow lay,\n     The charmed water burnt alway\n     A still and awful red.\n\n     Beyond the shadow of the ship,\n     I watched the water-snakes:\n     They moved in tracks of shining white,\n     And when they reared, the elfish light\n     Fell off in hoary flakes.\n\n     Within the shadow of the ship\n     I watched their rich attire:\n     Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,\n     They coiled and swam; and every track\n     Was a flash of golden fire.\n\n     O happy living things! no tongue\n     Their beauty might declare:\n     A spring of love gushed from my heart,\n     And I blessed them unaware:\n     Sure my kind saint took pity on me,\n     And I blessed them unaware.\n\n     The self same moment I could pray;\n     And from my neck so free\n     The Albatross fell off, and sank\n     Like lead into the sea.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART THE FIFTH.\n\n     Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,\n     Beloved from pole to pole!\n     To Mary Queen the praise be given!\n     She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,\n     That slid into my soul.\n\n     The silly buckets on the deck,\n     That had so long remained,\n     I dreamt that they were filled with dew;\n     And when I awoke, it rained.\n\n     My lips were wet, my throat was cold,\n     My garments all were dank;\n     Sure I had drunken in my dreams,\n     And still my body drank.\n\n     I moved, and could not feel my limbs:\n     I was so light--almost\n     I thought that I had died in sleep,\n     And was a blessed ghost.\n\n     And soon I heard a roaring wind:\n     It did not come anear;\n     But with its sound it shook the sails,\n     That were so thin and sere.\n\n     The upper air burst into life!\n     And a hundred fire-flags sheen,\n     To and fro they were hurried about!\n     And to and fro, and in and out,\n     The wan stars danced between.\n\n     And the coming wind did roar more loud,\n     And the sails did sigh like sedge;\n     And the rain poured down from one black cloud;\n     The Moon was at its edge.\n\n     The thick black cloud was cleft, and still\n     The Moon was at its side:\n     Like waters shot from some high crag,\n     The lightning fell with never a jag,\n     A river steep and wide.\n\n     The loud wind never reached the ship,\n     Yet now the ship moved on!\n     Beneath the lightning and the Moon\n     The dead men gave a groan.\n\n     They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,\n     Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;\n     It had been strange, even in a dream,\n     To have seen those dead men rise.\n\n     The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;\n     Yet never a breeze up blew;\n     The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,\n     Where they were wont to do:\n     They raised their limbs like lifeless tools--\n     We were a ghastly crew.\n\n     The body of my brother's son,\n     Stood by me, knee to knee:\n     The body and I pulled at one rope,\n     But he said nought to me.\n\n     \"I fear thee, ancient Mariner!\"\n     Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest!\n     'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,\n     Which to their corses came again,\n     But a troop of spirits blest:\n\n     For when it dawned--they dropped their arms,\n     And clustered round the mast;\n     Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,\n     And from their bodies passed.\n\n     Around, around, flew each sweet sound,\n     Then darted to the Sun;\n     Slowly the sounds came back again,\n     Now mixed, now one by one.\n\n     Sometimes a-dropping from the sky\n     I heard the sky-lark sing;\n     Sometimes all little birds that are,\n     How they seemed to fill the sea and air\n     With their sweet jargoning!\n\n     And now 'twas like all instruments,\n     Now like a lonely flute;\n     And now it is an angel's song,\n     That makes the Heavens be mute.\n\n     It ceased; yet still the sails made on\n     A pleasant noise till noon,\n     A noise like of a hidden brook\n     In the leafy month of June,\n     That to the sleeping woods all night\n     Singeth a quiet tune.\n\n     Till noon we quietly sailed on,\n     Yet never a breeze did breathe:\n     Slowly and smoothly went the ship,\n     Moved onward from beneath.\n\n     Under the keel nine fathom deep,\n     From the land of mist and snow,\n     The spirit slid: and it was he\n     That made the ship to go.\n     The sails at noon left off their tune,\n     And the ship stood still also.\n\n     The Sun, right up above the mast,\n     Had fixed her to the ocean:\n     But in a minute she 'gan stir,\n     With a short uneasy motion--\n     Backwards and forwards half her length\n     With a short uneasy motion.\n\n     Then like a pawing horse let go,\n     She made a sudden bound:\n     It flung the blood into my head,\n     And I fell down in a swound.\n\n     How long in that same fit I lay,\n     I have not to declare;\n     But ere my living life returned,\n     I heard and in my soul discerned\n     Two VOICES in the air.\n\n     \"Is it he?\" quoth one, \"Is this the man?\n     By him who died on cross,\n     With his cruel bow he laid full low,\n     The harmless Albatross.\n\n     \"The spirit who bideth by himself\n     In the land of mist and snow,\n     He loved the bird that loved the man\n     Who shot him with his bow.\"\n\n     The other was a softer voice,\n     As soft as honey-dew:\n     Quoth he, \"The man hath penance done,\n     And penance more will do.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART THE SIXTH.\n\n\n     FIRST VOICE.\n\n     But tell me, tell me! speak again,\n     Thy soft response renewing--\n     What makes that ship drive on so fast?\n     What is the OCEAN doing?\n\n\n     SECOND VOICE.\n\n     Still as a slave before his lord,\n     The OCEAN hath no blast;\n     His great bright eye most silently\n     Up to the Moon is cast--\n\n     If he may know which way to go;\n     For she guides him smooth or grim\n     See, brother, see! how graciously\n     She looketh down on him.\n\n\n     FIRST VOICE.\n\n     But why drives on that ship so fast,\n     Without or wave or wind?\n\n\n     SECOND VOICE.\n\n     The air is cut away before,\n     And closes from behind.\n\n     Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high\n     Or we shall be belated:\n     For slow and slow that ship will go,\n     When the Mariner's trance is abated.\n\n     I woke, and we were sailing on\n     As in a gentle weather:\n     'Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high;\n     The dead men stood together.\n\n     All stood together on the deck,\n     For a charnel-dungeon fitter:\n     All fixed on me their stony eyes,\n     That in the Moon did glitter.\n\n     The pang, the curse, with which they died,\n     Had never passed away:\n     I could not draw my eyes from theirs,\n     Nor turn them up to pray.\n\n     And now this spell was snapt: once more\n     I viewed the ocean green.\n     And looked far forth, yet little saw\n     Of what had else been seen--\n\n     Like one that on a lonesome road\n     Doth walk in fear and dread,\n     And having once turned round walks on,\n     And turns no more his head;\n     Because he knows, a frightful fiend\n     Doth close behind him tread.\n\n     But soon there breathed a wind on me,\n     Nor sound nor motion made:\n     Its path was not upon the sea,\n     In ripple or in shade.\n\n     It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek\n     Like a meadow-gale of spring--\n     It mingled strangely with my fears,\n     Yet it felt like a welcoming.\n\n     Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,\n     Yet she sailed softly too:\n     Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze--\n     On me alone it blew.\n\n     Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed\n     The light-house top I see?\n     Is this the hill? is this the kirk?\n     Is this mine own countree!\n\n     We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,\n     And I with sobs did pray--\n     O let me be awake, my God!\n     Or let me sleep alway.\n\n     The harbour-bay was clear as glass,\n     So smoothly it was strewn!\n     And on the bay the moonlight lay,\n     And the shadow of the moon.\n\n     The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,\n     That stands above the rock:\n     The moonlight steeped in silentness\n     The steady weathercock.\n\n     And the bay was white with silent light,\n     Till rising from the same,\n     Full many shapes, that shadows were,\n     In crimson colours came.\n\n     A little distance from the prow\n     Those crimson shadows were:\n     I turned my eyes upon the deck--\n     Oh, Christ! what saw I there!\n\n     Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,\n     And, by the holy rood!\n     A man all light, a seraph-man,\n     On every corse there stood.\n\n     This seraph band, each waved his hand:\n     It was a heavenly sight!\n     They stood as signals to the land,\n     Each one a lovely light:\n\n     This seraph-band, each waved his hand,\n     No voice did they impart--\n     No voice; but oh! the silence sank\n     Like music on my heart.\n\n     But soon I heard the dash of oars;\n     I heard the Pilot's cheer;\n     My head was turned perforce away,\n     And I saw a boat appear.\n\n     The Pilot, and the Pilot's boy,\n     I heard them coming fast:\n     Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy\n     The dead men could not blast.\n\n     I saw a third--I heard his voice:\n     It is the Hermit good!\n     He singeth loud his godly hymns\n     That he makes in the wood.\n     He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away\n     The Albatross's blood.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART THE SEVENTH.\n\n     This Hermit good lives in that wood\n     Which slopes down to the sea.\n     How loudly his sweet voice he rears!\n     He loves to talk with marineres\n     That come from a far countree.\n\n     He kneels at morn and noon and eve--\n     He hath a cushion plump:\n     It is the moss that wholly hides\n     The rotted old oak-stump.\n\n     The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,\n     \"Why this is strange, I trow!\n     Where are those lights so many and fair,\n     That signal made but now?\"\n\n     \"Strange, by my faith!\" the Hermit said--\n     \"And they answered not our cheer!\n     The planks looked warped! and see those sails,\n     How thin they are and sere!\n     I never saw aught like to them,\n     Unless perchance it were\n\n     \"Brown skeletons of leaves that lag\n     My forest-brook along;\n     When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,\n     And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,\n     That eats the she-wolf's young.\"\n\n     \"Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look--\n     (The Pilot made reply)\n     I am a-feared\"--\"Push on, push on!\"\n     Said the Hermit cheerily.\n\n     The boat came closer to the ship,\n     But I nor spake nor stirred;\n     The boat came close beneath the ship,\n     And straight a sound was heard.\n\n     Under the water it rumbled on,\n     Still louder and more dread:\n     It reached the ship, it split the bay;\n     The ship went down like lead.\n\n     Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,\n     Which sky and ocean smote,\n     Like one that hath been seven days drowned\n     My body lay afloat;\n     But swift as dreams, myself I found\n     Within the Pilot's boat.\n\n     Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,\n     The boat spun round and round;\n     And all was still, save that the hill\n     Was telling of the sound.\n\n     I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked\n     And fell down in a fit;\n     The holy Hermit raised his eyes,\n     And prayed where he did sit.\n\n     I took the oars: the Pilot's boy,\n     Who now doth crazy go,\n     Laughed loud and long, and all the while\n     His eyes went to and fro.\n     \"Ha! ha!\" quoth he, \"full plain I see,\n     The Devil knows how to row.\"\n\n     And now, all in my own countree,\n     I stood on the firm land!\n     The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,\n     And scarcely he could stand.\n\n     \"O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!\"\n     The Hermit crossed his brow.\n     \"Say quick,\" quoth he, \"I bid thee say--\n     What manner of man art thou?\"\n\n     Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched\n     With a woeful agony,\n     Which forced me to begin my tale;\n     And then it left me free.\n\n     Since then, at an uncertain hour,\n     That agony returns;\n     And till my ghastly tale is told,\n     This heart within me burns.\n\n     I pass, like night, from land to land;\n     I have strange power of speech;\n     That moment that his face I see,\n     I know the man that must hear me:\n     To him my tale I teach.\n\n     What loud uproar bursts from that door!\n     The wedding-guests are there:\n     But in the garden-bower the bride\n     And bride-maids singing are:\n     And hark the little vesper bell,\n     Which biddeth me to prayer!\n\n     O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been\n     Alone on a wide wide sea:\n     So lonely 'twas, that God himself\n     Scarce seemed there to be.\n\n     O sweeter than the marriage-feast,\n     'Tis sweeter far to me,\n     To walk together to the kirk\n     With a goodly company!--\n\n     To walk together to the kirk,\n     And all together pray,\n     While each to his great Father bends,\n     Old men, and babes, and loving friends,\n     And youths and maidens gay!\n\n     Farewell, farewell! but this I tell\n     To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!\n     He prayeth well, who loveth well\n     Both man and bird and beast.\n\n     He prayeth best, who loveth best\n     All things both great and small;\n     For the dear God who loveth us\n     He made and loveth all.\n\n     The Mariner, whose eye is bright,\n     Whose beard with age is hoar,\n     Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest\n     Turned from the bridegroom's door.\n\n     He went like one that hath been stunned,\n     And is of sense forlorn:\n     A sadder and a wiser man,\n     He rose the morrow morn.\n\n\n\n\n", "summary": [{"source": "gradesaver", "text": "An Ancient Mariner, unnaturally old and skinny, with deeply-tanned skin and a \"glittering eye\", stops a Wedding Guest who is on his way to a wedding reception with two companions. He tries to resist the Ancient Mariner, who compels him to sit and listen to his woeful tale. The Ancient Mariner tells his tale, largely interrupted save for the sounds from the wedding reception and the Wedding Guest's fearsome interjections. One day when he was younger, the Ancient Mariner set sail with two hundred other sailors from his native land. The day was sunny and clear, and all were in good cheer until the ship reached the equator. Suddenly, a terrible storm hit and drove the ship southwards into a \"rime\" - a strange, icy patch of ocean. The towering, echoing \"rime\" was bewildering and impenetrable, and also desolate until an Albatross appeared out of the mist. No sooner than the sailors fed it did the ice break and they were able to steer through. As long as the Albatross flew alongside the ship and the sailors treated it kindly, a good wind carried them and a mist followed. One day, however, the Ancient Mariner shot and killed the Albatross on impulse. Suddenly the wind and mist ceased, and the ship was stagnant on the ocean. The other sailors alternately blamed the Ancient Mariner for making the wind die and praised him for making the strange mist disappear. Then things began to go awry. The sun became blindingly hot, and there was no drinkable water amidst the salty ocean, which tossed with terrifying creatures. The sailors went dumb from their thirst and sunburned lips. They hung the Albatross around the Ancient Mariner's neck as a symbol of his sin. After a painful while, a ship appeared on the horizon, and the Ancient Mariner bit his arm and sucked the blood so he could cry out to the other sailors. The ship was strange: it sailed without wind, and when it crossed in front of the sun, its stark masts seemed to imprison the sun. When the ship neared, the Ancient Mariner could see that it was a ghost ship manned by Death, in the form of a man, and Life-in-Death, in the form of a beautiful, naked woman. They were gambling for the Ancient Mariner's soul. Life-in-Death won the Ancient Mariner's soul, and the other sailors were left to Death. The sky went black immediately as the ghost ship sped away. Suddenly all of the sailors cursed the Ancient Mariner with their eyes and dropped dead on the deck. Their souls zoomed out of their bodies, each taunting the Ancient Mariner with a sound like that of his crossbow. Their corpses miraculously refused to rot; they stared at him unrelentingly, cursing him with their eyes. The Ancient Mariner drifted on the ocean in this company, unable to pray. One night he noticed some beautiful water-snakes frolicking at the ship's prow in the icy moonlight. Watching the creatures brought him unprecedented joy, and he blessed them without meaning to. When he was finally able to pray, the Albatross fell from his neck and sank into the sea. He could finally sleep, and dreamed of water. When he awoke, it was raining, and an awesome thunderstorm began. He drank his fill, and the ship began to sail in lieu of wind. Then the dead sailors suddenly arose and sailed the ship without speaking. They sang heavenly music, which the ship's sails continued when they had stopped. Once the ship reached the equator again, the ship jolted, causing the Ancient Mariner to fall unconscious. In his swoon, he heard two voices discussing his fate. They said he would continue to be punished for killing the Albatross, who was loved by a spirit. Then they disappeared. When the Ancient Mariner awoke, the dead sailors were grouped together, all cursing him with their eyes once again. Suddenly, however, they disappeared as well. The Ancient Mariner was not relieved, because he realized that he was doomed to be haunted by them forever. The wind picked up, and the Ancient Mariner spotted his native country's shore. Then bright angels appeared standing over every corpse and waved silently to the shore, serving as beacons to guide the ship home. The Ancient Mariner was overjoyed to see a Pilot, his boy, and a Hermit rowing a small boat out to the ship. He planned to ask the Hermit to absolve him of his sin. Just as the rescuers reached the ship, it sank suddenly and created a vortex in the water. The rescuers were able to pull the Ancient Mariner from the water, but thought he was dead. When he abruptly came to and began to row the boat, the Pilot and Pilot's Boy lost their minds. The spooked Hermit asked the Ancient Mariner what kind of man he was. It was then that the Ancient Mariner learned of his curse; he would be destined to tell his tale to others from beginning to end when an agonizing, physical urge struck him. After he related his tale to the Hermit, he felt normal again. The Ancient Mariner tells the Wedding Guest that he wanders from country to country, and has a special instinct that tells him to whom he must tell his story. After he tells it, he is temporarily relieved of his agony. The Ancient Mariner tells the Wedding Guest that better than any merriment is the company of others in prayer. He says that the best way to become close with God is to respect all of His creatures, because He loves them all. Then he vanishes. Instead of joining the wedding reception, the Wedding Guest walks home, stunned. We are told that he awakes the next day \"sadder and...wiser\" for having heard the Ancient Mariner's tale.", "analysis": ""}]}